__________
COH ungear moi
‘While most of the previous COH records openly shy away from accentuated beat structures and instead build up their rhythmical content by layering waves and pulses, every track on TO BEAT is padded with just that – beats. The music transition is illustrated in the album’s artwork, displaying transformation of a sine-wave, a tone, into a waveform which is “beat”. This mathematical progression is made audible in the album’s opening track WAVE TO BEAT. The rest of the album, however, steers clear from dull math and presents the beats in their more traditional context of what could be referred to as “adventurous dance music”, taking the listener through various examples of beat use with the sense of playfulness and joy.’ — Editions Mego
___________
Shifted Second Wash
‘There’s been a clear direction of development in Shifted since it started, but up until now calling any of it something other than purist techno would be stretching things; Brewer would no doubt wholeheartedly agree with this assessment. Certainly his 2013 Bed Of Nails album presented a tenuous step away from the harshly clipped, razor edge techno he initially become known for, with the duskier sound palette and feedback-laced soundscapes taking in elements of pure noise and industrial music. Over the nine pieces here, for the first time the overriding aspect of the works is not techno, but instead Brewer’s increasingly adept sound designing, and much more than before, there’s an organic element that indicates he’s gone past mastery of production design and into performance flourishes. Turning up the volume on most of the tracks here yields a techno beat somewhere in the arrangement, but more often than not it’s buried in the mix, awash in layers of static, droning synthesiser textures, and often missing essential elements that create a much more impressionistic outcome than he has attempted in the past.’ — collaged
______________
Hiss Tracts Halo Getters
‘Hiss Tracts is the long fermenting collaboration between David Bryant (Godspeed You Black Emperor!) and Kevin Doria (Growing) that began with Bryant engineering three Growing albums from 2006-8. The partnership evolved, and they began making instrumental music together for the films of Karl Lemieux (GY!BE’s current projectionist). The duo produce a singularly haunting sound on their debut under the name, combining vital pre-established elements – Set Fire to Flames’ mysteriousness, Growing’s gentle meander – yet quickly establishing a signature all their own. The album moves forward as a dreamlike patchwork, with flickering dulcimers melting into decayed cassette tape drones, cut up dictaphone whispers morphing into cinematic ambience, and the ever-present sprawl of the pair’s electric guitars droning, fluttering and yearning in equal measure throughout.’ — Drowned in Sound
_____________
Noveller No Dreams
‘Noveller is the solo project of Brooklyn-based guitarist and filmmaker Sarah Lipstate. She has performed in Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Army, and as a member of Glenn Branca’s 100 guitar ensemble. In March 2008, Lipstate joined Brooklyn art-rock outfit Parts & Labor as their guitarist. Her sounds drift from moments that conjure vivid mental movies to something more amorphous and undefined—more visceral than visual. According to press materials for No Dreams, these songs explore “blurred perception of reality and hallucination in the twilight of sleep and awakening.” The result is intoxicatingly hazy music, more fit for a half-remembered nightmare than a movie, with images flickering in and out of focus inside Lipstate’s shadowy soundscape.’ — collaged
_______________
Rie Nakajima On The Desperate and Long-Neglected Need for Small Events
‘Rie Nakajima is an artist, originally from Yokohama, who lives and works in London. She studied art history and aesthetics at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and sculpture at Chelsea School of Arts and Slade School of Fine Arts in London. Her activities are mainly concerned with creating sound-based installations and performances. In both fields, her work develops from observing physical responses to the context of spaces/places by using sound and visuals. For materials she combines found objects, toy instruments, kinetic devices, and audio equipment. She has exhibited at SoundFjord (London), Void+(Tokyo) , and has performed at Experimental Intermedia (NY), Milton Keynes Gallery (Milton Keynes), Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin), Phonofemme (Vienna) and others.’ — monoskop.org
_______________
Jar Moff Tziaitzomanasou
‘As both a visual and musical artist, Jar Moff’s approach to composition is not dissimilar to Burroughs’ infamous cut up technique. With his latest audio product, a large archive (more than 220 samples) of musical fragments were collected, cut, colored, spliced and repurposed to manifest a multilayered montage, one whose source material becomes unrecognisable, masked to the point of camouflage. The sound-design is astonishingly dense as a result, an extricable weave of analog, digital, organic, and synthesised sounds whose effect has an unusual physicality to it, making Financial Glam both strongly visual and extraordinarily immediate.’ — The Quietus
______________
M.E.S.H. Imperial Sewers
‘M.E.S.H.’s “Scythians” and “Imperial Sewers” both feature vocal cut-ups that wouldn’t feel out of place on Oneohtrix Point Never’s R Plus Seven, but their context feels much more grounded in the demands of club rhythm than an exploration of a hyperreal, futuristic VR simulation. Even so, the dense layering of audio on Scythians does create unusually spatial relationships for club music. Varying amounts of reverb and echo drench each stratum, the size and level of which determines the location of particular sounds in a simulated sonic space. Each layer seems to occupy a different area, as if Scythians itself is a massive club with different shows occurring in a variety of rooms, linking up with each other along a rhythmic axis. Whipple guides the listener through the complex’s liminal spaces, alternately swelling and burying sounds in the mix as we step through its thresholds.’ — Tiny Mix Tapes
______________
Olivia Block Opening Night
‘Ever since her 1999 debut album Pure Gaze, Olivia Block has been exploring the surprisingly ephemeral sonic differences between field recordings, chamber music, and electroacoustic improvisation. With each successive release, Block’s disparate sound sources have grown more and more synthesized into a coherent unified whole. Block’s music plays with idiomatic instrumental technique and an extreme integration of sound worlds to create totally new acoustic spaces. “Opening Night” begins with a near Ligeti-esque cloud of voluminous harmonies that eventually gives way to clicks and clacks that seem to come from within the ensemble itself, but gradually transform into something that sounds natural yet completely alien and warped.’ — Tiny Mix Tapes
_____________
Locust Sky Black Horses
‘After the Rain is the latest offering from Mark Van Hoen and Louis Sherman’s Locust project. Following up the 2013 release You’ll Be Safe Together, this new album sees Locust stepping away from the abstracted forms of previous works, presenting a more melodic/harmonic proposition. Bathed in a warm nostalgic memory, After the Rain draws on Mark’s formative influences, primarily ’70s electronic music. With greater input by Louis Sherman (who, although being born when Mark was originally taking in this music, shares an equal enthusiasm for this particular period of European melancholic machine music). Unlike previous Locust and Mark Van Hoen releases which relied on programming and sequencing, much of this new record was played live, creating a space where innovation is secondary to the suggestive power of time, space, mood and melody. Rich in melancholia and a yearning for a world once suggested, After the Rain explores a crack in the historical framework, one embracing female identity and astute observations of melodic atmosphere. After the Rain is a melodic electronic mood record which presents itself as a triumph of historical revisionism.’ — Forced Exposure
_______
tētēma Tenz
‘While many music lovers have spent fall buzzing about the first new Faith No More album in 18 years arriving in 2015, another noteworthy project of FNM’s Mike Patton has simmered below the radar of the mainstream music community. Tētēma, the joint project of the prolific, multitalented vocalist and Australian composer Anthony Pateras. With Geocidal, they dismantle common notions of “place” (both geographic and of social construct), and use its destruction as a springboard into an alternate universe where identities are rebuilt and seemingly anything can happen. Recorded across several continents with an ensemble of accomplished musicians, the duo sculpt industrial noise, electronic beats, jazz, neoclassical, field sounds, tribal rhythms and even some quasi-traditional pop into an amorphous beast that is unlike anything else.’ — Wondering Sound
______________
Monopoly Child Star Searchers Bouganvillea’s Shallow Lobe
‘Monopoly Child Star Searchers is the creative audio project of Spencer Clark (a.k.a. Charles Berlitz, Black Joker, and Vodka soap, as well as 1/2 of Skaters), whose Romance Audio trilogy under the moniker has sought to explore a metaphysical relationship with an aviary sherpa. Clark has worked with an array of artists, including James Ferraro, Mark McGuire, Dolphins Into The Future, and Orphan Fairytale. His sounds as Monopoly Child examine esoteric and spiritual concepts through hypnotic layers of rhythm and melody, and might be exoticist if you find “the outerzone of infinite space” exotic.’ — Underwater Peoples
______________
Lee Gamble Motor System
‘The creative arc Lee Gamble’s music has taken is a strange and wonderful thing to behold. It began with a literal tearing apart of his influences, and then set off on a journey to see how much further away he could progressively move from them. His first full-length release, Diversions 1994-1996, tore passages from jungle mixtapes, stripped all the beats out, and reimagined them as dysfunctional bad dreams. The word “abstract” is never far away when people reach for descriptions of the London-based producer—and with good reason. Gamble’s music is staged in an unusual place, somewhere between the unreal and the all-too-real, where wretched drug experiences at past-peak club hours somehow end up in a form of metaphysical drift into the following morning.’ — Nick Neyland
*
p.s. Hey. ** Sypha, Hi. Ha ha, oh, I do know that by now, James. ** David Ehrenstein, An auspicious start! ** Steevee, Cool, I hope Millhauser’s work pleases you. Looking forward to your film review. Everyone, Steevee has reviewed the ‘newly controversial’ film ‘Foxcatcher’ right here. ** Etc etc etc, Hi. The Barthelme comparison re: Millhauser is really lazy and unhelpful. It’s like the endless Burroughs comparisons my stuff gets. That fiction burn-out you’re going through sucks, but, I don’t know, maybe it’s good for the actual writing? I could see that. ‘Masterful’ is such a weird term. I mean the idea that there’s this thing that writing can become that could be mastered by one writer such that other writers doing that thing in some way or other would be consequently lesser. I like to think that in writing everything is collectively owned and can never be perfected or finished. Or something. That steam organ thing sounds awesome. Joy Williams, so great, so distinct, I think. Definitely one of my very favorite American writer/stylists. Have a superb day, buddy. ** Kier, How do you keep doing that with my name? Wow. I’m shocked by my name’s malleability in your mighty mind. It’s so cool. I ate Mac & Cheese two days ago! Your non- or non-ish day is a good bed fellow with mine. No, circumstances beyond our control, or beyond my control at least, ha ha, caused yesterday to be a complete wash-out on the editing front, so Scene 5 won’t be visible to the powers that be today. It’s still where it was the last time I wrote here, but hopefully we’ll have a long, productive editing session today so we can get it Vimeoed by tomorrow, which was our original deadline anyway, and hopefully that won’t make the Skype session later today scarier still. So, yesterday I mostly waited to see if we were going to start editing and did other work on the blog, my text novel, correspondence, email interviews, etc. while I was doing that. It was fine, but to describe it would be to describe me sitting at my laptop with fingers moving and various expressions, most of them samey variations on ‘concentrated’, crossing my face, which isn’t easy to do. I went out looking for food to buy at one point, but everything was closed. It seems like store owners here take New Years a lot more seriously than they did Xmas, which surprised me. So I ended up in the train station across the street buying and then eating muffins while watching people get on and off trains. It’s the train station that handles trains going to and from Germany, so most of the people were German, I think. Uh, yeah, that’s kind of the story of my yesterday. Blah. Today will hopefully matter more, and I’ll let you know. What did … shit, it’s Friday already, weird … Friday have in store for you? ** Misanthrope, Oh, my pleasure on the guffawing compliment. I hope I get to see you actually unleash one of those in person one of these days. I’ll try to pre-plan doing something that will cause that to happen. HNY to you! I don’t think I know Harold Jacobson. He doesn’t ring a bell. Why is it called ‘J’? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Thank you. We need a wish of ‘every success’. Much appreciated. That sofa time sounds really nice. It does. I got tingly and relaxed just imagining it. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! I’ve been wondering and wondering how you are! I’ve missed you! This is awesome: seeing you! Oh, so are you not handling ALG anymore? Man, concentrating on your writing is such the genius move in my humble opinion. Nice Austin Islam quote. That’s a really good way to think about it, for absolutely sure. Real Pants seems really good. I just got alerted to it yesterday. And Enclave too, yeah. I had the same worry about the post-Alt Lit scandal effect, or I guess I wasn’t sure how damaging that would be to people’s reading and writing. But, from way outside the situation, it seems more like a decentralization has happened, or a new configuration has arisen or something mostly. I don’t know. I was really happy to see the new ‘Shabby Doll House’. I feel like that couldn’t have come at a better time. Anyway, yeah. So good to see you, my friend! Please please hang out here as much as seems fruitful to you in your own great efforts. ** Keaton, Hi. Is that quarter in the cabbage thing one of those kooky New Years ritual things like eating black eyed peas? Over here they have Galette de Rois (sp?), these flat cakes that have a porcelain toy-ette baked into them, and if you get the slice with the porcelain thing inside, you not only get broken teeth, you also get good luck for the whole year. Oh, old Horror stuff, or stuff with classically spooky, anticipatory sounding titles. Okay. It is going to be great New Year! It really is! I really think so too! ** Bill, Hi, Bill! Happy 2015 to you too! Welcome back! Was Vietnam fun or interesting or did it have a quality that doesn’t belong under the descriptive powers of those two adjectives? ** Mark Gluth, Yay. I’m so happy that you, of all people, liked the Millhauser post! Ultra-happy New Year, man! And, oh, I loved your Listi interview! ** James, Hi, James! ‘Edwin Mulhouse’ is one of my all-time favorite novels, yeah. Well, why not read another Millhauser instead of rereading ‘EM’? He’s almost always great. I think, as of this moment, that I will be visiting LA next at the beginning of March. I’m pretty sure that’s going to happen, and, oh, am I looking forward to it. I haven’t been to LA in over a year! Much love back. ** Slatted light, Hi, D! Cool about the Mullen. Yeah, seems completely logical that it would be great. The Carson too, I have no doubt. I.e., don’t hate me, Anne, if I may call you Anne. I’ve actually heard of ‘Lake Mungo’. I made a note to watch it at some point which got covered over in the gigantic pile of crap and non-crap on my desk. Cool, I’ll make a new note and float it on the pile’s top. Ha ha, good joke! And rimshot! I’m going to try to remember it because I only remember 3 jokes which I have now told everyone I know so often they are drones. The musical ones, not the flying ones. Good question about our film’s future. Our producers are extremely cagey and vague with us about that stuff. I think there’s some kind of deal in the US with some company who put a little money into the film’s production in return for getting to do a really limited theater release and release the DVD. Otherwise, I don’t know. I think the plan is to get the film into the best festivals possible, hopefully build buzz and then get swamped by distribution offers? Our producers seem to be into keeping us in the dark. But maybe I’ll know more soon when we finish the film, hopefully sometime this month. Cheerio for now in return! ** Okay. You get another gig today, this one featuring new stuff I’ve been listening to, and please have at it. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Hey Dennis, I can totally picture you eating a muffin in the Gare de l'Est. (Excuse me while I wax nostalgic briefly on that summer month in Paris…)
Most food places are open here on New Year's, it's the city that never takes a break, as long as there's money to be made, haha.
I was only in Saigon/Ho Chi Minh City. Quite a fun trip, ate good food, saw interesting parts of the Mekong delta, and the infamous Cu Chi tunnels. I was with my parents, so it was a bit less adventurous than it could have been.
Very fine gig today; will have to catch up on COH, Olivia Block etc. But first I have to hit that "publish" button to grab the top spot…
Bill
Lovely listens.
Looking forward to seeing you in March, Dennis (It's been WAY too long) and chomping at the bit to see your movie. I do hope you're planning to get it into a film festival or two for its premiere.
Interesting piece steevee. I didn't like Foxcatcher any more than you did (probably even less) but the "American Dream" stuff was stated by Carrel's Dupont more than the film itself — which is about a very rich, very creepy closet queen. I don't know Bennett Miller's story but he would appear to be attracted to DAH GHEY in extremis what with this, Capote and his first film, a documentary called The Cruise about a highly eccentric and very "flamboyant" (as they used to say in the pre Neil Patrick Harris era) tour guide. Moneyball is the sole exceptiona proves the rule.
s you may have read by now the REAL Mark (who Channing Tatum plays so surprisingly well) has had a total meltdown over the movie. He claims it totally misrepresents what happened and is trembling with rage over the gay stuff. Seeing as he was involved with the project from its inception, consulted constantly and knew it basically wouldn't have happened without him I can only surmise that HE'S as much of a closet queen as his pursuer DuPont. We shall hear more of this masquerade I'm sure.
Haha, yeah, it’s kind of gross, but if the cabbage is good it doesn’t take on the flavor of the money. Black eyed peas, I think I only tried those once. That’s a little more southern. Yeah, I like all the old guys. I’ve read several of King’s works and liked some of them. Poppy’s (Billy) great, Anne Rice is sorta okay in a weird vampire way, and Clive Barker’s stuff is fairly interesting. I’ve not read like Campbell or Lugotti. I like crazy shit, like you’re sitting in the parlor with your daughter and a fucking skeleton walks by in the hall LOL. 2015 is gonna be so fun. Millhauser, I think he might be the only one on your books list I’ve not read. Sweet. xoxo
Mark Schultz has attacked Bennett Miller, but it seems to me that his real beef should be with critics who've pointed out that the film suggests he and Du Pont could be having sex. He doesn't seem to have had a problem with the film until reviews started saying this. Didn't it occur to him that the scene where he and Du Pont wrestle is extremely suggestive? In any case, he's coming across as a whiny homophobe with a major case of gay panic.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Exactly steevee. Miller tries to be REAL careful about Mark Schultz and John Dupont's interest in him. But you'd have to be completely stupid not to see what's staring you right in the face.
I strongly suspect that Dupont not only got to first base with Schultz but rounded home. The film doesn't "go there" but the critics aren't fools.
For all his filmmaking skill this is not a project Miller should have taken on to start with. The story is a Total Bummer with no "Lessons Learned" much less anything in the way profound about human nature, or money and power.
Right okay then, the definitive exciting news is that the 1st episode of ART101 will officially launch on the 5th. If it's not delivered on Monday then I'll just take an executive decision and publish it myself, fine tuning be damned.
Dennis,
Love this gig. Love it. And the Millhauser day. Every time I teach stories of him, I get so (internally) frustrated that the students don't jump up and down with excitement and the door to new worlds has just opened up.
I've totally had that muffin kind of day experience.
I just got over the flu, which is good, and then slipped and threw out my back. So more laying around for me.
David E that's an interesting call on Miller's corpus. I hadn't thought of that.
Latest FaBlog: "An Infinite Number of Possible Intervening Causes.”
hey den-ness-monster (i'm reaching today), a gig! happiness! how was the skype meeting? great i hope. work today was fine, nothing special. we do have a sickly sheep though, we have to give her shots of painkillers and medicine, hold her still and poke her with needles basically. i hope she gets better so she doesn't have to be killed. at least she's eating, though not that much. i cleaned out the hen house, it was really dirty, kind of gag-worthy actually. sat on my knees in the grass and watched the rabbits rabbit about for some ten minutes. that was nice. yeah i don't know what it is about your name, i guess it and my brain just mesh! how was your friday den?
Glad you liked the slave haikus, Dennis. Thanks!
A day late but WOW Millhauser's seems like something I really need to check out. Thanks for the introduction. Todays gig is very cool as well. Some stuff I like already, like Lee Gamble, but then there are quite a few new names to me in this selection, which is of course very exciting. I'll be popping back to it tomorrow and chasing up some of these links. I hope the film stuff went well today, Dennis. I worked on my novel for like, 8 or 9 hours on and off today. Feeling quite square eyed from staring at my laptop.
I hear you about the ickiness of 'mastery,' but I guess I just see certain veins that certain people get a lead within, kinda in an almost genre-specific stylistic way — i think its the canonical, genealogical, English-Crit side of me, for sure. What I mean moreso though I guess is more of where something takes on a life of its own even if it does have recognizable tropes and tones and you forget what it even does share — i guess the voice becomes primary. If i can only see the seams or what is cobbled together from where it bums me out, and then when i see someone i know taking a riff from someone else i like and going somewhere new i trip out — sorta like DFW doing his kafka thing in 'brief interviews.' talking about such things thought is definitely always gross– let me ease out through this here margin here…..
I forgot — did you ever get a chance to catch Inherent Vice? I think i'm gonna slump on into there sometime this weekend, curious to see what Andersons cooking up….
Hope the editing is flowing well from your fingers.
xx
c
Hey Dennis,
Nice gig today. I only know Lee Gamble and look forward to checking out the rest this weekend.
Great Millhauser post, too. I need to own more of his work. I've read a few story collections from the library. Are you a fan of his novel Martin Dressler? Other than the great Edwin Mullhouse, I think that's the only one of his books on my shelf. For some reason, I've never been able to get into it.
Recently saw an interesting Japanese movie "The Clone Returns Home" that reminded me of Tarkovsky and Solaris. All about twins, doubling, clones, recurring death scenes. If you're not familiar, I highly recommend it.
And – did you ever get in touch with Mark about the possible GIF novel interview? He mentioned he'd reached out, though I know you're crazy busy right now.
Hope the editing went well today.
Super gig! I thought Monopoly Child Star Searcher is over but here he is and still sounding old and fresh at the same time. I saw Sarah Lipstate / Noveller in Oktober and bought that record at the gig. There will be a new one in the next weeks. Beside all the effects and moods she puts much feeling in the music.
Pan records and Editions Mego: Those two labels are so different but also so … related somehow. The are from the same galaxy but not the from the same planet.
Is there competition between them?
Dennis, thanks for the nice gig.
Hey captain,
Just dropping by to wish you (and ev-uh-ree-body) a HNY — or whatever passes / substitutes for H (and/or N) around here…
Sorry it's been such a while. Second half of the year got really nuts-as-in-coco busy — in a good way, or a productive way, though also an eventually obliterating and tyrannical way, so there was a little bit of doom and gloom there for a while. Anyway. Back on the block now and feeling really energised about the year ahead.
I'm really glad to say that we've found some support to take the DC's show (which I think we might want to call Weaklings now, maybe, because everyone we've ever said "DC's" to has been like what??? and you always have to say it four times and then explain it which is not a good use of calories really) to the bridge. So provided the soy-and-potatoes funding falls into the pig-slot in a few weeks time, we're off to the races and it'll be my major project for the second half of the year. I'm super excited. So I'll probably be around here a lot more, bugging you & everyone and making a general nuisance of my self, or maybe even an extremely specific nuisance of myself, which sounds more fun personally.
Awesome Gig today, I chose a good day to drop by. Like others have said I've been enjoying Luke Gamble these past few months, and Locust too, but lots of new stuff here to be chasing down. Very excited by the new COH whom I revere and also Noveller who is new to me. I'm starting to soundtrack a new ensemble show I'm doing in May with, er, my new ensemble, Ponyboy Curtis. We're trying to do out-and-out romance, in a nineteenth-century homoerotic quest sense of the word, so we need to throw a lot of noise and fuzz and fog and powertools at it to make it palatable. Am wildly enjoying the new Winged Victory for the Sullen album which might do some of the trick.
Anyway man I hope you are super-well and happy and I'll try and stay close —
love you
Ch.xx
I looked uo Bennett Miller in Wikipedia and saw that he's currently dating a woman, for whatever that's worth. I would've preferred a less "closeted" version of FOXCATCHER, but Mark Schultz never would've allowed him to make it if this is how he's reacting to the toned-down edition.
Thanks Dennis, that makes me feel really good — I missed u and the blog too, I always get good vibes from this place
After the scandal there was so much intense fighting going on that for awhile I kind of stopped talking to everyone online, it just seemed like whenever I went online I'd just end up feeling depressed or annoyed. I needed an extended break to recharge
I agree w/ u that the community got decentralized and now it’s reforming in a different configuration, which seems like a natural thing…I hung out w/ Mike Bushnell and Gene Morgan in Austin, and I think because they’ve been a presence in the online literary world for so long, they’ve seen how every couple of years or so there’s a wave of new ppl who start getting really active in the scene, and after awhile some of them move on to other things and some stay…and then a new wave of ppl appear and get things riled up again, and things sort of cycle around that way
After everything happened I kept ALG going for awhile, but it feels like now almost no one is using the phrase ‘alt lit’ except as a pejorative, it feels like almost everybody who was active in the scene is pretty much sick of that phrase, I am too
I always just thought of ‘alt lit’ as a buzz phrase that caught on unexpectedly…I wanted to try and keep that term as broad and nebulous as possible, because it was never one specific manifesto or aesthetic bent or philosophy – I thought the alt lit label would be a good way to introduce a bunch of new writers at once, under one big internet umbrella. But now that term just seems like a toxic distraction from the writing instead of a lure, and it’s hard to get away from that when the blog is called alt lit gossip. Between me, Frank, and Guillaume there wasn’t a specific decision to shut it down or anything, but I don’t know if anybody is all that enthusiastic about starting it up again either. Seems similar to what happened with HTML Giant — I think Gene and others just got tired of dealing with shit storms, it becomes a huge drain on your time and attention – like maybe it’s just better to let things certain things go
For sure, the latest Shabby Doll House was great – that was a very welcome breath of fresh air, I think it lifted everyone’s spirits in a very palpable way
Is there gonna be much music in the film? A lot of the tracks u posted sound like they could work really well in a movie. Is there gonna be any death metal or rock and roll and things like that, or more ambient type of music? Or is the movie really quiet? Are u working w/ someone to create new music for the film, or are u mostly gonna use pre-existing music? I really liked those Noveller and M.E.S.H. songs, I’m gonna go investigate them more
Thanks again for the warm welcome and being such a kind person in general, it makes me happy – take care
You inspired me to download the tetema album from iTunes. Really interesting stuff, almost like REMAIN IN LIGHT as performed by John Zorn's Naked City. Mike Patton's vocals are almost unrecognizable from his Faith No More days. I really like their album ANGEL DUST and hope the reunion album is closer to the weirder, prog-edged material of their later days than "We Care a Lot" and "Epic."
Dennis, I wonder what your thoughts are (if you have any) on the subject of video game music? I guess I'm just curious as two of my brothers, Tom and Bill, are big fans of video game music and play it constantly: not just the original music but also orchestral and rock recreations/covers of it. They tend to favor the soundtracks for games such as Legend of Zelda and other Japanese RPGs (such as Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, and so on). Tom in particular loves the soundtrack for "Earthbound" (to be honest, I've always felt that the soundtrack for "Earthbound" was better than the game itself). I myself find video game music fascinating, though not to the obsessive degree that my brothers do. In particular, I enjoy the heavy metal wannabe music that one can hear in the original "Doom," along with Trent Reznor's dark ambient score for the first "Quake."
Hey Dennis. Hope your holidays went smoothly. Just wanted to check in and see if you got around to doing any reading like you had hoped. India still great, working lots, just finished my app for head editor position at some start up company, working on the novel, things are progressing smoothly around here. Anyways, just wanted to see where you are at. Sending my love!
Happy N Y, Dennis. Just 12 days left till your book's available and I'm really looking forward to it. Hey, comes out around your birthday, doesn't it? Just realized. And of course, excited about the film too.
Not sure how I feel about the new shrink, trying another one on Monday who's got a very warm picture…we'll see. My new insurance enables me to try a few without paying anything, so it's worth an investigation. I want a good guy to discuss family issues, my very dysfunctional family issues. My current thinking is that I need my space from them more than anything, which will cause grief with my sister who is also a shrink and thinks she knows what's best for everyone. Complicated family, but I know I've been happiest when I've had distance from them. This has been going on way too long and it's time to do what I need to do for myself.
Hope you're good. Went to a really nice New Year's party, but glad the holidays are over!
Coop, I've been enjoying Kier's torsions of your first name immensely and was trying to think of one myself today and the best I could come up with is Denn-tal Dam and this brand of muscle pain-relieving, arthritis cream we have here in Oz, called Dencorub, both of which I knew would just thrill you, haha.
That's promising on the film, I was figuring cinema festivals would be its natural habitat for initial screenings but am pleased that a theatrical release of some order and – most crucially – a DVD release is already in the mix. Because here's me when it comes to this film.
I've been thinking a lot about genre writing lately. How it works, how it relates to literary and experimental writing. Do you have any genre books that you really like, Dennis?
I think I'm going to go do a crossword. Do you like them? Has there ever been a day here about them? I enjoy them from time to time but I do difficult ones and am really slow at them and so hardly ever finish. That's it from me. Bye for now!