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Jürg Frey Miniature in Five Parts
‘It’s often said that composition has more decisions about what not to do than anything else (the same, of course, can be said of religion, with its emphasis on proscription) and in every moment of Frey’s music this is abundantly clear. It’s as clear as it is because in each piece Frey excludes a very great deal, establishing soundworlds within which only a few things can happen. Rhythm, pitch, timbre, articulation, dynamic, development, structure—essentially every aspect of compositional potential is strictly defined and confined, the resultant music playing out within those tight boundaries. In the face of music as rarefied as this, the urge to seek connections and/or discern what the music is doing emerges unbidden, and with surprising force. Whether this is fair (in general) or even relevant (in particular) is hard to determine, in part due to the fact that in much of Frey’s work, the nature of compositional intent—whether events are deliberate or coincidental—is unclear.’ — 5 against 4
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d’Eon Transparency Part III
‘Recorded during his time of involvement with Hippos in Tanks, d’Eon’s Foxconn / Trios puts together small arrangements and short loops that are coherent both forward and backward — “the MIDI information can be traversed in any arbitrary direction at any arbitrary intervals and still be harmonically and contrapuntally sound.” Schoenberg once noted that whether looking from above, from below, from the front, from behind, from the left, or from the right, a hat always remains a hat, even though it may look different from different viewpoints. For Schoenberg, musical inversion and retrograde, too, may look different in basic form but are essentially the same motif. In forming mental images, direction is only as consequential to the geometrics of their perception as it is to material objects. We can always recognize an object, no matter its physical place and are able to recreate it in the faculty of the mind in other conceivable ways. Similarly, at the core of d’Eon’s Foxconn / Trios is the presupposition that a sequence of musical events will remain known or independently determined no matter how their mutual relations are reflected.’ — Tiny Mix Tapes
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Apparatus The Unreverberate Blackness Of The Abyss
‘Apparatus hails from the very metal country of Denmark and their first album is finally being released, as they put it, into the physical realm. Performing in strange masks they play a brand of blackened death metal that ventures into art territory. Let’s delve into this album and see what it’s all about. This album is extraordinarily grim and desolate. There is no feeling of hope while listening to these tracks. Apparatus has a superb gift for song writing. It’s easy to write paint by the numbers music. It’s easy to write comfortable music based on well worn chords and drum lines. They don’t use these beaten paths. They stray from convention. Between slowing down to the feeling of falling and out of key piano riffs seemingly played by madmen, listeners are kept on the edge of their seats by just a thread. The details mark the quality of this record. They are everywhere. The riffs, guitars, drums, and vocals are never the standard metal. Apparatus moves past the death (and black) metal inspired growls into operatic runs. I never knew where the songs where going, or what was coming next. These sense of anticipation was great and never ending. When I thought I knew what they were doing and what they’re about, Apparatus always took a different direction to keep me guessing.’ — Glacially Musical
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Paranoid London Paris Dub 3
‘Beginning in 2007, singles began emanating from a British label and act known as Paranoid London. The duo of Gerardo Delgado and Quinn Whalley, flashed an unfettered enthusiasm for—and emulation of—the mad whinnying frequencies of the 303, but coupled it to an ethos that in the 21st century might more closely align with punk. They didn’t do any press, didn’t promo their music, didn’t upload mixes to Soundcloud to build buzz, and when they released their debut album at the end of December 2014, there was no digital version. The tracks that Delgado and Whalley craft are simple as a prison shiv, not adding layers of gloss or paint to its acid-house, but stripping it back to its basics. Almost every track is erected from the same blocks: handclaps bright as tin foil, dry snares, sharp hi-hats, concussive kicks, all of it buoyed by queasy undulations of bass. They emulate Trax and those shoddy, shady days of Chicago pressings to the point that you expect a chunk of rubber to be embedded in the records themselves.’ — Andy Beta
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Lilly Joel A Wheel In The Palm of Your Hand
‘What Lies in the Sea is the fruit of a ten-year collaboration between singer Lynn Cassiers and keyboardist Jozef Dumoulin, and is the first release for their duo Lilly Joel. Both musicians are free spirits and lauded innovators in their respective fields. File under: a mix between Obscure Records and the Birmingham sound. Belgian singer Lynn Cassiers is as much a sound-sculptor as a singer, using her voice, microphone, and electronics to create soundscapes. Belgian pianist Jozef Dumoulin redefines the Fender Rhodes keyboard through a scope that is at once fully contemporary, eclectic, and highly personal. This recording marks a milestone on their path as a band and crystalizes a moment in a universe that was carefully shaped and daringly explored.’ — SOUNDOHM
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Administrator Last-Screamed Thing
‘Admn2 sounds like the your favourite electro pop band merging with thrash metal, industrial metal and synth-punk. The end result is vaguely dystopian and robotic, yet upbeat and infectiously catchy. Distorted electronic guitar riffs are played off against soaring synth lines and pop hooks, and by jove it works damn you! Special mention in particular goes to closing track “Last-Screamed Thing”, ending the album brilliantly with a bona-fide pop banger which recalls both HEALTH’s more recent output AND Yellow Magic Orchestra – while remaining totally original in its own right.’ — Fucked By Noise
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Stephan Mathieu IK Pegasi
‘Mathieu has been working the seam between ambient, musique concrète, and microsound since the late ’90s, running vintage acoustic instruments and obsolete media like wax cylinders through electroacoustic processing and digital treatments. Mathieu describes Before Nostromo as an homage to Alien’s sound design, and he has given the work a novel premise. Just prior to being awakened from hypersleep by the ship’s computer, the film’s seven characters—Ripley, Dallas, Parker, Lambert, Kane, Brett, and even Ash, the android—each have a dream. So does Jonesey the cat. Eight tracks, ranging from four minutes to nearly 20 minutes in length, represent those respective dreams. (A ninth, “Anamorphosis”, rounds out the set; Mathieu suggests that it may be attributed to the Nostromo’s other passenger, the alien.) To record the music, Mathieu used two large gongs, piano, and shortwave radio, but none of those elements are obvious from the sound of the music, which changes colors as imperceptibly as late-afternoon light.’ — Philip Sherburne
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Roly Porter 4101
‘It starts off quietly—just faint, swirling voices that sound like buzzing bees, streaked with the ghost of an orchestra and punctuated by irregular seismic rumble. The track’s midsection adds lustrous drones and two brief percussive explosions reminiscent of Swans’ Filth. And then, a reprieve: everything fades except for a silvery sliver of drone, so quiet that your instinct will be to lean in and turn the volume up. That’s when he hits you. Gale-force chorus, blackened distortion, and a shuddering that might almost be blast beats buried deep beneath white-hot feedback. It’s metal by another means, and it just keeps building from there, wave after wave, each one louder and denser than the last. It heaves like whatever bellows of the damned stokes the fires of Hell, and it is truly, awesomely terrifying.’ — Philip Sherborne
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Foot Hair King of Scum
‘Foot Hair’s self-titled debut album reduces sonics from the likes of Brainbombs and Upsidedown Cross into an unforgiving mash of dirge. It’s simple, raw and extremely powerful stuff. Rarely do bands manage to create such a cacophony of hedonistic terror whilst simultaneously projecting a sense of abject absolute apathy and nihilism. “Foot Hair have excelled themselves on their vinyl debut: this is a very horrible record which their work colleagues/extended family members should probably be kept from hearing about.” — The Quietus “FOOT HAIR make some fucking heavy punk music, repetitive as shit, heavy as fuck (again), and rife with weird devolutions into noise, big bass tones, and the willingness to hang onto the goddamn riff.” — Boston Hassle’ — Box Records
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Mika Vainio & Franck Vigroux Mémoire
‘Mika Vainio and Frank Vigroux have revealed further details of their collaborative album on Cosmo Rhythmatic, the Repitch side-label run by Shapednoise, Ascion and D.Carbone. Titled Peau froide, lèger soleil, the album from the Pan Sonic co-founder and French electroacoustic artist is three years in the making, and follows a show they performed in Paris in 2012. According to the label, the “intense” nine-track album is “an exercise in sensitive intensity” that combines Vainio’s signature electro grooves with Vigroux’s expertise in “spatial abstraction and tonal radicalism”.’ — Fact Magazine
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Golden Teacher Love Rocket
‘Born from a collaboration between the experimental trio Ultimate Thrush and the duo house Silk Cut, Golden Teacher has taken contemporary electronic music one step further mapping out a new sound route in which rhythmic complexity and a dense atmospheres lead directly to the dance floor. Signed to Optimo Records, Golden Teacher blend echoes of Arthur Russell, Shackleton and African music to come up with the unique and inimitable sounds that can be heard on the second EP “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”.’ — Primavera Club
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Circus Devils Wizard Hat Lost In The Stars
‘Circus Devils was originally conceived in 2001 as a side project to Robert Pollard’s main work with Guided by Voices. As of 2015, the band has released thirteen full-length albums. Beginning with the release of their first album, Ringworm Interiors, Circus Devils dismissed the styles of Pollard’s other musical endeavors for a more experimental approach, taking an ominous and nightmarish tone, exploring the themes
of good and evil. According to the group’s whimsical website bio, Circus Devils formed because a dog-faced man approached each member on separate occasions to deliver the message, “Circus Devils is Real.” Like this story, their lyrics are often unsettling fictional tales of horror delivered within deconstructed rock operas. Each Circus Devils album is distinguished by a theme, concept, or production style which sets it apart from the band’s other albums.’ — collaged
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Gnod Vatican
‘Perpetual dorm favorite Jacques Derrida once wrote “there is no outside-text”, as in, context is everything. We can apply this, then, to the all-too-obvious release date of some of Infinity Machines’ songs onto Spotify: April 20, 2015. While the stoner holiday has become relatively commercialized and quickly burned-out by sub-par releases from rappers, GNOD’s offering is a token that even the purest of ‘60s tokers would be apt to spin. By not diluting the droning journey with frequent melody shifts and the inclusion of blaring instruments, the few, consistent sounds pulsating each song’s core makes the daunting, mammoth 1:51:30 runtime seem completely necessary. You don’t sprint through the cosmos, you traverse through them, absorbing the gaseous bodies and finding asylum in the dark. And when that black hole comes, you slip right in like it’s your favorite nightgown.’ — Pop Matters
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Giant Claw DARK WEB 003
‘For at least one album now, musician, artist, label owner, and former writer Keith Rankin has toyed with the counterintuitive idea that the artificiality of digital technology has the power to liberate human nature. As Giant Claw, he’s been engineering virtual spaces that, in their anarchic profusion of decontextualized synths and soundbites, evoke nothing about the everyday environment they leave behind. From 2010’s three-part self-titled release to this year’s Dark Web, he’s created disorienting music almost completely detached from its surrounding world, music that represents not so much this world’s troubling contents as a vast, nonsensical void. As such, he’s enabled his listeners to feel and to think free from any reminder of the constraints they face on a day-to-day basis, enabling them, if only just a little, to be and to become according to their own innate impulses.’ — Simon Chandler
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Yves De Mey Adamance
‘Drawn With Shadow Pens is the new album by Antwerp based synthesist and sound-sculptor Yves De Mey. With previous outings on a slew of renowned labels such as Modal Analysis, Semantica, Opal Tapes, his own Archives Intérieures imprint with Sendai partner Peter Van Hoesen, and the now defunct Sandwell District, Drawn With Shadow Pens is the next offering in the Y.D.M. codex. Rarely is a gifted musician afforded the luxury of also being an incredible engineer, and this new album is a testament to these talents. “Prelament” sets the album off with a dense fog of acrobatic waveform maneuvers slowly shapeshifting through the audio spectrum before arriving at a vibrating, multi-dimensional sonic black hole . Tracks like “Adamance” and Xylo” sound like audible holograms, with stray rhythms dissipating into and out of sharp modulations and sinuous drone layers. A pure sense mastery over the instruments played is evident, however, many compelling sound events seem to occur and disappear almost magically. The beautiful and spacious depths of “Ostia” unfold with monk-like patience, creating a surreal and hypnotic electronic sound environment.’ — Spectrum Spools
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p.s. RIP: Pierre Boulez. ** Moumita Dey, Oh, is that right? ** James, Wait, happy birthday! Everyone, it’s James (Nulick’s) birthday today! Wish him happiness and/or enthrone him in your happier thoughts today. Have a seriously great one! How did you celebrate? Love, me. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Oh, if you want to put in a good word for ‘LCTG’ with Cinefamily, Zac and I would be very grateful. They agreed to consider the film, and we submitted the film to them, about two months ago, and then we never heard a word from them again. We really want to show the film in LA, and Cinefamily seemed like one of our few options, so, yeah, that would be great! Thank you very, very much, David! ** S., Thanks, man. If he does, it’s a big bathroom. I listened to a few of his podcasts, but not for a while. I think I stopped listening for the most part after the Kanye West one, which I thought was just awful. Truth and desire seem like irreconcilable ideas to me, I think. ** Steevee, Hi. The terminology thing is very fluid, though. I think it’s hard to generalize about tags’ effects, or at least it’s not a b&w; decision to put controversial terms on a ‘no use’ list. By pure coincidence, Jayne County, the punk trans legend, was having a big discussion on her Facebook feed yesterday about ‘tranny’, a term she prefers to use and to be called, and she got a lot of support from other trans-identifying people for that. Always best to be cautious when you’re unsure what your listeners’ attitude is. But, at the same time, I think the hypersensitivity around identifiers and equating the mere usage of a controversial term, whatever the context, as an inherent attack and a proof-giver of the user’s homophobia or racism or misogyny and etc., and the connected general trigger warning fad these days, are just bizarre and anti-intelligent and lazy and depressing. Anyway, it’s all very strange and confusing out there these days in so many departments. Congrats on your ‘Hateful 8’ review finally seeing the light, and I hope you see the accompanying moolah asap. That’s funny about the critic calling the Marclay film conservative. I guess that kind of feeds into what we’ve been talking about. Weird. ‘Of the North’ sounds kind of really awful. Jesus. Why do you think First Look is showing it? Strange. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Yeah, exactly like the Republicans. Which is why it’s so important for people in the US to eat their personal ideologies come election day and make a collective effort to do whatever it takes to keep the Republicans away from the top job. In my opinion. But, shit, I really don’t want to get into talking about politics here, actually. Nothing good can come from that. So, never mind. Anyway, scary shit. ** Paul Curran, Hi. Awesome, glad you dug it. The narrative was exciting. It also has an ‘Au Hazard Balthazar’ quality to it. It’s weird. I couldn’t see any logical reason why getting from Australia to Japan and vice versa would be made so difficult. But I suppose the airlines have some moneyed reason. Awesome, yeah, post that clip somewhere if you don’t mind. Your kid seems really incredibly cool. ‘Cellphone novel’: what a cool term. I’ve never heard it before. ‘Light novel’ too. That sounds like an exciting plan. Wow. Yeah, when you get back to thinking about it, I’d love to hear your thoughts! ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. Ha ha, ‘I think it’s just better to call people by their first names’: I’m totally with you on that one. Yeah, but it made a lo
ser nobody famous. But being famous when you’re dead doesn’t do you much good, does it? So, I guess you’re right. That Green Beret friend’s thing/story is kind of awful. I mean, there’s a horrible black humor thing to it. A ‘Jack Ass’ if they were creepy thing. Poor guy. Weird. Huh. ** Bill, Hi, Bill. I know, Pierre Boulez, that’s a huge loss. And people here say that Pierre Henry is really in bad shape. Ugh. Good luck circumventing the ramped up aspect of the work. ** Jeremy McFarland, Hi, Jeremy. Funny that we were talking about North Korea yesterday, and then that whole ‘bomb test’ thing happened. Thank you a lot for that video. I only saw the first two seconds of it so far, but I’ll be all over that. Well, the backstory on the TV series is kind of complicated, but, briefly-ish, the main character is a woman who’s very loosely based on Candice Bergen, the actress, who is the daughter of this guy, Edgar Bergen, who was the most famous ventriloquist in the world when I was kid. Really massively famous. Candice Bergen wrote an autobiography in which she revealed that she grew up feeling really neglected because her father treated his very famous dummy/puppet Charlie McCarthy like it was his son, and he gave it a million times more attention than he gave to her. So, in the TV show, the main character is the tormented, kind of crazy daughter of a deceased, extremely famous fictional ventriloquist named Klaus Kraus, and she has inherited her father’s extremely famous dummy, named Frankie in our version. They live together, and she carries Frankie with her everywhere, animating him and treating him like he’s a real person, and there’s all this tension between them because she resents his former fame and his prized status re: her father, and then all these wacky things happen. And there’s the general weird thing going on where she’s obviously creating everything he does and everything he says, but she acts like she isn’t. In the first episode, one thing that happens is Frankie finds out about Halloween and demands they celebrate it even though they live in Switzerland where no one celebrates Halloween or even knows much about it. In the second episode, Frankie gets kidnapped among other things. The show gets gradually less wacky and more dark and experimental and moody episode by episode. Etc. It’s kind of a hopefully very complicated, strange comedy among other things. So, that’s the gist so far. Thanks for asking! Zac is on the upswing but not completely better. Hm, I don’t know Australia at all, so it all seems like a big exciting mystery. I hope we can travel into the outback a bit. I’m really interested to see that. I’m the type that packs early when I can help it. Zac’s the type who throws everything into a suitcase an hour before he leaves for the airport. Kentucky, huh. I was there once. A long time ago. I just remember it being really green and pretty. And that there was a huge, awesome cave there. Slaughterhouse yikes! That’s intense. (I’ve been vegetarian since I was 16, so stuff like that is freaky to me.) I’m happy to share that info here. Sounds really interesting. Here I go. Everyone, d.l. Jeremy McFarland has an interesting proposal for you. Please read and accept his challenge, if you like. Here he is: ‘I am helping with some contests at the school I just finished at and thought maybe some people here would be interested. I hope you don’t mind if I share some information about it here. There’s a poetry contest and a short fiction (1200 words or less) contest going on. Winners get a cash prize and will be published in the next journal (poetry) or an anthology (short fiction). We’re accepting submissions until February 1st. It does cost a little to submit, but it all goes towards supporting the continuation of The Heartland Review. Here’s the link for more information.’ Thanks, Jeremy! Love to you too! ** Okay. I made another gig of music I’ve been into lately, and now it’s up to you whether you want to enjoy the gig in part, in whole, or, well, not at all, I guess, which doesn’t seem like a very good option really, but, hey, you are free people, free to be you and you! See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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Thanks for your advice and words of encouragement, Dennis. It sounds like the editor is possibly backing down? S. sent her agent an email outlining her objections and making reference to her proposal, which described in detail the kind of book she was writing and the style she had chosen. The editor had not read this. What he’s saying now is, according to S.’s agent, is that he wants to see what S. does with his edits and will take things from there. She is planning to ignore his requests to rewrite and reconceive the book and simply make the line edits she agrees with. So we’ll see what happens.
Is there a "Princess of Scum"? Just asking.
Dennis have you ever met Candice Bergen? She's really fascinating. As everyone knows she was married to Louis Malle. But prior to Louis she was going with Terry Melcher — who was Manson's target in what became the "Tate / La Bianca Massacre" She and Terry decided at the last minute to go to Malibu rather than stay in town. YIKES!
She is also famous for having discovered Oscar Levant's body. She had been doing a series of interviews with him and one day went to the house. June, Levant's wife, told her "Oh he's up in his room" — not knowing that he had passed, which is what Candice discovered.
She's a great sophisticated comedy player. I saw "Rich and Famous" again recenty. Cukor's last film, it was a remake of "Old Acquaintance" with Candice in the Miriam Hopkins t role and Jackie Bissett in the Bette Davis part. Much lighter than the original and quite nice finale for Mr. Cukor.
I agree that we should respect whatever people want to call themselves. However, particularly in the context-free world of social media, it's easy to assume the worst when people throw around terms like "tranny." I thought that the word "queer" had been successfully reclaimed and lost its power as a slur, but when I used it on Facebook, someone got angry at me, not knowing that I identify as queer.
Some critics I respect, like Nick PInkerton and Eric Hynes, are fans of OF THE NORTH. I'm not sure what they see in it; I guess, at best, it plays like a JACKASS episode set in the Inuit community.
Happy Birthday, James
I like the position he takes, it’s almost an analyst’s position, and that of a meta-aesthetician. I really need to read Less Than Zero, listened to the soundtrack for years. He’s obviously a sharp character. Maybe its just hard to talk meaningfully about art. I don’t know anything about Kayne at all. I take the idea of truth at face value. I mean I’m into the Rortian, “Truth is sentences that seem to be making their way in the world. That’s all we really know about truth.” but, I just take it as short for the facts. The Lacanian version of truth seems to be about transference of the unconscious. “So and so is saying this, but the more of it is – the truth.” Truth takes the position of the unconscious intentions defining a dialogue. I think truth and Desire are not irreconcilable in Lacan’s world, as Desire is viewed as the Desire of the Other. Desire is the left over of subtracting need from Demand. Lacanians, seem to say about Desire, become Desire or Desire’s object. Become Desire’s object. Become the Desire of the Other. As my grandmother used to say, “Idol hands are the devil’s workshop.” I’m trying to make a Lacan in 2:00 video. Haha I think I might explore this music, I’ve been a fiend, I’ve just recently listened to all the Ministry records. Their synth pop record is wonderful.
Hey Dennis! Quick drive-by comment! A belated thank you for including me in your year-end list in Dec. Have been thinking about your work a lot the past few days–my next novel is centering around a long monologue, lots of Internet-culture stuff, and have been forced to conclusion that I have to chuck the Bernhard/Kafka/Wallace Shawn models and go for something blanker and less spiraling (that can still shift registers a fair amount and be recursive and etc). Interesting that the voices you developed prior to the World Wide Web and Internet as we now know it are so adaptable to the current culture. I wonder why that is?
Happy '16!
xoxoxo,
M.
dennis!
apologies for my being outside the fold for a minute there–took a trip to LA, then cruised upward up-coast to SF, seeing various tycoon castles and art museums and whatnot. Very 'high intake.' Didn't get nearly enough time in LA–oddly just saw the Alex Israel show at the Huntington (I'm not sure if he is your flavor of pop?) & viewed these rock outcroppings north of LA where they filmed star trek, apparently.
How are the projects faring? Is LCTG perching on the edge of an NYC premiere? I would think Anthology Film Archive would be chomping at the bit for an opportunity to screen it… & the TV project is coalescing, right? Sorry for being outside the loop–have been mainly trying to circle my wagons and get everything on track now that I'm back.
Also, ditto with mark up there about the "internet language" thing–I keep narrowly avoiding tackling some kind of net-diction or video game language head-on, but find your exquisite teasing of it before in things like Dinosaur Jr. — spinning it like cotton candy — very inspiring and suggestive.
hope to be round more often–
hope all's good–
C.
Planet Clare
@ DC, yeah political chat is rarely edifying and I'm happy to put a lid on it.
Another great Gig! Given their mangled lo-fi Chicago house sound, it should come as no surprise that I've an interest in Paranoid London. I also know that Golden Teacher have been taking Scotland by storm of late, from Optimo in Glasgow to the Red club (formerly Sessions where we hosted our NEON parties back in the day) here in Dundee. They're the sound of now round these parts.
There's another trailer out for the forthcoming High-Rise adaptation and needless to say, I'm excited about it.
Dennis check your e-mail.
New BLUE EYES: Ice.
Latest FaBlog: "She's Horrible"
steevee, Yah, tone is so lost on the 'net, especially when you don't know the person…terrestrially? It's funny, even after you'd tell someone that you identify as queer yourself, he/she still would be mad that you said "queer." You can't win sometimes.
I hear you about names and lingo within groups and how that doesn't necessarily translate into something good for someone outside the group to use.
Like me, I don't let people call me queer or faggot or any of that, just gay. (Actually, the last person who called me a faggot got punched in the face and never called me that again. Not bragging, just reporting.) Though I'm sure if you or anyone here referred to me as queer -not as a faggot, that's totally unacceptable to me personally; I just wouldn't talk to you again- I wouldn't mind at all. Somebody else, yeah, I wouldn't like it.
The N-word thing is so weird to me. Though I heard it a lot when around older people growing up, we knew it was a bad word and that it shouldn't be used. And good God, you'd never call a black person that. But these young people these days…I mean, is it possible that they might actually be post-racial or approaching that?
Here's a quick story. The mother of my nephew's best friend, who is white, told us that her son had some friends over. Three other boys, all black kids. She hears the N-word being thrown around and realizes her son is using it too. She went into the room and told the black kids that they should never let her son use that word around them, that it was insulting, etc. She said they looked at her like she was from outer space. They just couldn't understand what she was on about or why it was insulting or offensive. Weird, no?
Or maybe it's that even the younger generation is far enough removed -at least in their own worlds- that they don't understand its history either. Maybe it has a whole new history to them. I don't know.
Just like when I was in high school. You'd have these groups of kids. A lot of times, it'd be all black kids and one white kid, or all white kids and one black kid. Nowadays, at least where I live, you see groups of all kinds of kids walking around. Many times, you'll see just two kids, each of a different race, best friends, walking down the street. It's refreshing, really. I don't like to give kids -or any age group- too much credit, but maybe they're turning a corner or something.
Dennis, Okay, I know absolutely none of these. But which do you think I liked the most? Yes, Circus Devils. Almost all the others, the voices -or the ones that had voices and lyrics- just weren't prominent enough for me. I need a prominent voice. Lyrics are so important to me, as is a good voice, which I consider a major instrument. Many of the others, I just couldn't hear what they were saying/singing. 🙁
Yeah, my Green Beret friend -he was actually one of my brother's best friends- has some stories to tell. He entered the Army right after high school in 1990 and went right into the first Gulf War as a part of The Big Red One. He's one of those crazy guys who loves being in the Army and has worked his way up to commanding his own Special Forces squadron. He was set to retire a few years back, but the Army gave him a bunch of money to stay for another 5 or so years.
Of course, if you met him, you'd have no idea he was a Green Beret or even in the military. He's still goofy as hell.
I do wonder what ol' Elmer would think of his fame after death. Probably not much. Probably just pissed that he got killed.
Well, I'm used to casually dropping the word "queer" in my writing for Gay City News and elsewhere, saying things like "David Cronenberg isn't gay, but he has a queer sensibility." I generally ask editors the first time I use "queer" in publications that aren't aimed at a LGBT readership, and they're always fine with it. It's only on Facebook that I've run into problems with it; I wound up agreeing with the person I argued with about my use of "queer" that we should delete the whole argument.
Paranoid London are awesome. You inspired me to download their album off iTunes. I love that '80s acid house vibe.
@James Nulick:
Happy birthday !! hope u had a good one
@Dennis Cooper
this is another great gig, thank u for continuing to introduce me to so much cool shit
I got sort of stuck on listening to a bunch of music by Jurg Frey after hearing that first track, I want to dig into his music a lot more
I know very little about death metal, so when u post a track like the one from Apparatus, I always check it out & then try to google the band to listen to more songs & to see what they look like & to read their lyrics – I think it’s cool when a band doesn’t have any visual representation except for an album cover & a bandcamp page, which is all that came up for Apparatus — & no lyrics either that I could find, although The Unreverberate Blackness Of The Abyss is pretty great on its own…I can rarely understand death metal lyrics, can u? maybe it’s an acquired comprehension, the more u listen to it – earlier today I was listening to a Napalm Death song & reading the lyrics & it’s awesome that there are lyrics for what just sound like a lot of hellish sounding screams & grunts – I don’t know much about metal though, I’m slowly trying to learn more about it – lately I’ve been listening to Bongripper & some different doom metal bands…I like how slow the drums are & how bleak & grim everything sounds
The song I loved the most was the one by Lilly Joel, it becomes so beautiful when she starts singing like two and a half minutes in…the long buildup made her singing very unexpected and surprising to me & disorienting in the most beautiful sort of way…plus that video is so great, thank u for sharing that w/ everyone
I’ll definitely check out Circus Devils’ discography when I have more time, I liked that song a lot – Pollard makes so much music, his output is very inspiring to me
Also Elmer McCurdy Day was amazing, I enjoyed that story a lot
Hope u have a good morning !! I just felt a random wish to send u a dozen donuts but that would be pretty difficult to coordinate from Texas, I think, so I’m sending u telephathic images of donuts instead, which should be entering your head now: glazed, chocolate iced, jelly filled, sprinkles, etc.
Quite a lineup today, Dennis. The Lilly Joel electronics remind me of CoH (what's he been up to?). Foot Hair is quite the retro mid-80s heavy guitar noise outfit (cute, too!)
And here's Justin Vivian Bond on the T word:
http://www.queerty.com/justin-vivian-bond-insists-were-here-were-trannies-get-used-to-it-20140628
Bill
Dennis,
Thank you for the birthday wishes! Me and the other half had a quiet night in, as I did have to work today. But we had a few gin and tonics, and we are knee-deep in the first season of Dark Shadows, the season before the introduction of Barnabas Collins, and it is quite a hoot. I'd only seen the Barnabas episodes, back when they were on eternal repeat when I was a kid, and I never saw these episodes.. the episodes known as 'The Beginning.' The backstory is quite amazing, and the writing is top notch. Were you ever a fan of DS? Call it my inner-aging goth, but I love this shit. Burke Devlin, Victoria Winters, Elizabeth Stoddard, Sam Evans… wowzers! And it all takes place in Maine!
Thanks again for the birthday wishes, Dennis, and thanks to all my fellow DC'ers in DC'sland… Dennis do you have any special plans on your birthday? I know it's coming up..
Xoxo,
James
@ etc etc etc
your SF trip up the coast sounds pretty amazing… 'high intake' ???
And that lovely Giant Claw video is so disorienting and hallucinatory. Very nice.
Bill
Dennis,
The show sounds super fucking cool! Wow, I really hope to see it soon! Are you going to offer it to American networks or French or? Or are you planning to pitch it to streaming sites like Netflix? Or is all of that very, very far ahead? I don’t know anything about how that process would work haha. I had no idea about Charlie McCarthy or the Bergens but that is a really interesting story that I will definitely look more into before your television debut. I'm still so pumped about the prospect!
Kentucky is very pretty, it’s true. And there are lots of caves! The cave drawings in France are more well-known, but there are a bunch here as well. I was talking to my friend’s grandpa Wednesday and he was telling me about some he found in our county when he was young, even! He explored tons of caves in the area when he was growing up, which is always extremely interesting to hear about. I’ve been reading a lot about cave drawings around here because of the story I’m writing as well, so. Did you just drive through?
I was only familiar with one artist you featured in this post so I’ll be spending some downtime exploring these new names. I’m especially excited to look into more stuff by Giant Claw. It’s amazing how Dark Web 003 is so disorienting but still really listenable. And then the video on top of that, of course. The song sort of reminded me of a super deconstructed Clarence Clarity. Anyway, very very cool.
Thanks for sharing those contests! I appreciate it very much (and I’m sure our advisor/ editor would as well haha).
Hope you’re well,
Jeremy
James, who knows if you will see this but happy birthday.
Dennis, I really like the Frey, Roly Porter, and Circus Devils. Would love more recs for minimalist piano or neoclassical stuff. Sent you an e-mail re: Skype. My cold is near dead. Hooray.
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N’ayez crainte, Trudi: on ne meurt qu’une fois! Et puis, vous pourrez toujours m’accompagner… Quant a mon livre, il ne se… livrera pas comme ca! Pieds et poings lies, en bonne Italienne, que me restera-t-il pour parler!? Point de mains, point de baratin.
Kak Long sempat tengok masa kecoh-kecoh tu sebab suami sedang menonton TV. Terus Kak Long duduk sekali tengok. Ada dirakamkan kekasih dia sedang menangis. Mana tak sedih, tengok depan mata orang.
Budapesta este intradevar fabuloasa. Eu am fost acum o luna pentru ca am prins o super oferta pe aerolines si am petrecut acolo 5 zile minunate. Si inca mai am multe de vizitat!
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