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Thursday 25 February 2010

Feast of the Heart

What do you say about a single that you don't really like that much more than the rest of the album? This, I suppose, although I got a bit bogged down by it. And also having frustratingly managed to, whilst hunting for her relevant website on Google, spot the comment made of her by Tom Waits: "Her music is like going swimming in a lake at night". An image it is impossible to remove oneself from. Still, I thought the flowers-vines analogy went ok.

Jesca Hoop - Feast of the Heart

Wednesday 24 February 2010

Other People Who are Funnier than Me

Again, a post all about other things than my own because I'm simply not this inspired...
Here is Jane Thynne's take on John Donne's possible reaction to modern technology:

to her lover, who is too busy to have a meaningful conversation

you never talk,
you never even text
its quite a miracle you manage sex.
we barely email,
not even twitter
is it any wonder i feel bitter
whenever i can bear to contemplate
your utter failure to communicate?
when first we met in realms of cyberspace
like souls in darkness seeking a friendly face
the web we surfed was like a vasty deep
an ethereal paradise where spirits meet
and through our flickering laptops every night
the world contracted to a megabyte.
we then like astronauts
at heaven's borders
believed ourselves new internet explorers
and in those moments
even dared to think
one day we too might make a hyperlink
though first we met on friends reunited
i knew our love would one day be requited
that continents and countries we would roam
and to exotic lands have one day flown.
but all the global roaming you have known
is what you do on business trips by phone
and when i tell you that i feel neglected
i get the feeling you've disconnected
but how can i your true thoughts even guess
if you will never your Outlook Express?
and now my server's down, my link is broken
too many times after the tone i've spoken
and as for all your new technology
your Blackberry will bear no fruit for me
that's why on Facebook, where other souls may mingle
i have now changed my Relationship Status to 'single'

This here, also, is my favourite Flight of the Conchords song at the moment, and a general counter to my current(/perpetual) achey-heart-ness. I can't help laughing at the same line every time - "Who organised all my ex-girlfriends into a choir, and got them to sing?"

Monday 22 February 2010

Seeing Through Ocean Eyes....

Here's me latest review, in which I caused some debate with my rating:
Owl City - Ocean Eyes
I am that far out of the bubble that I hadn't heard of this guy til I listened to the album and then clocked the MySpace (good lord, HOW many fans?! Who are you?!?) Hence wasn't prepared for the sheer amount of bile most people have towards him.
I simply chose it because I have a weird 'thing' about owls. They're just lovely :)
That aside, ratings are, for me, the nightmare part of the review. I have my struggles with writer's block like anyone else, but then categorising whatever strange metaphors or analogies or whatever I have said to try and sum up others' music into a number out of ten seems almost impossible to me. The editor of the FourOhFive kept telling me off for never putting ratings at the bottom of my reviews. The thing is, I'm okay with writing about something. People can take away what they want from that, and why else would we write it? For instance, the guy who comments that I didn't mention the Postal Service was the one who really got to me because they're the band someone made me a CD of way back when young gentlemen used to make me CDs *Miss Havisham Moment*, and the CD was actually a mix of Death Cab, who I subsequently adore and whose albums got me through a large part of my dissertation, and The Postal Service, who I have since never listened to. They're now on the listen list!!!! I imagine they'd work well as a light side salad to my current many-many-coursed banquet that is getting in to Bob Dylan.
Anyway, yes, I never really got in to Postal Service, so on that comparison fell short. It was akin to getting an essay back and being told about the book I hadn't read which I definitely should have done to write the essay. Possibly demonstrative of my approach to life... but temporality is one of those things I am sadly subservient to. (Yes of course the reviews are trying to replace the hole in my life left by no longer flinging myself into essay writing as an endless attempt to receive recognition and approval....)
I'M DIGRESSING.
I like reviewing music a lot but if all people can do is argue about the ratings I'm sorely disappointed. Owl City is pretty middle-of-the-road pop, but for that week proved an incredible tonic to the dour mood I was in. The singles are constantly on the majority of radio stations and are holding up well in the face of it: I'm not defending mass opine but the playability of the record, which for me is generally what counts. So I gave it a six out of ten because the majority of the album, once you had passed the three listens which I usually allow myself to get a handle on the music, makes your ears feel like they are bleeding syrup as your mind turns to candyfloss. Except that some tracks make me feel really, really good instead. Perhaps that was my main mis-step: I wrote the review in a fairly objective tone, knowing the audience of that website, but when it came to that bloody '... out of ten', my own emotional involvement stepped in and said 'This guy is terrible, but he actually really cheered you up.' Presumbly because he does sound like Death Cab and other bands whose twee-ness is something I quietly appreciate at the right moments.
Equally, I am gratified that those that have commented seem to have listened to the music before dismissing it, but would have wanted more of a response to my actual writing. I suppose the lack of argument with the review itself speaks of a general consensus, and the strong response to the rating thus proves that... I'm really bad at equating numbers with reality? It's been a learning curve at least, I don't think any of my reviews have provoked comment before. I might just start fucking with people to engender more debate.
And Owl Eyes was a strangely welcome counter to the huge amount of 'coolness' I am constantly swimming in living here in Brighton. I would not replace a single one of my friends for all of the Nazi gold in Switzerland, but sometimes I think I'll never be able to keep up with whether I'm hearing the Decemberists' version or the Joanna Newsom version, whether it's noise music as a statement or just plain bad, how many of Tom Waits' albums I know, how many Radiohead album covers I recognise, how many Leonard Cohen lyrics I remember........
Fuck it all, let's put the Dum Dums on really, really loudly.

Tuesday 16 February 2010

Bill Plympton

Haven't been overly creative lately so I'm re-discovering the things that amuse me in the hopes they amuse you too.
For instance, the glorious cartoonist Bill Plympton, whose work is frustratingly sparse due to his labour-intensive creative process, and also relatively unknown in the UK. The examples available on YouTube sadly mainly involve a few short adverts he created, but marketing spiel aside, there's something truly fascinating, and definitely hilarious, about his animation techniques. Long disappeared is the amazing 'Your Face' which served to launch his career, a haunting music video showing a man's head and shoulders distorting constantly as he sang the song, and 'Push Comes to Shove', another exercise in facial squishiness, as the comment next to this particular video describes:

And here's a more recent example of a short toon, from a set of works known as the 'Dog Series':

He did make quite a few full-length films which I intend to find out about......
All is far from lost really. There's a plethora of stuff on his website, including an actual biography (hence me not bothering here - I would only cut-and-paste the damn thing). Finally, and holy cow how I love the internet, one can watch gorgeous timelapse images of him drawing his most recent project, the 2008 release Idiots and Angels:
Woah that's awesome.
Yes, that's right, he does it all himself, as he did for previous feature length, Hair High. Darker, weirder, and far less pretentious than Tim Burton... yay Bill.

Monday 15 February 2010

Yeah fine I give in

It has long been an issue of contention as to whether smoking in the media directly affects whether people grow up to become smokers, and as articles from both 1993 and 2009 show, the lines of argument involved haven't really changed:
In all seriousness, the issue of portrayal of smoking in films and television is an insane one. Films such as Thank You For Smoking pointedly refuse to have anyone smoke onscreen. However go any earlier than the late 90s and every lead role is defined by their ability to casually hold a cancer stick. But I will do some wild dismissal in the form of 'kids are influenced by anything and everything, as are most adults, and the television and film industries are obviously central to this, especially when they are the increasingly preferred form of recreation to spending time with your family.'
I choose to level cynicism instead at the desire to be cool, which smoking seems to have become attached to. No one can deny the flawless effervescence of such people:
Susan Sontag

Rita Hayworth as Gilda
But you can definitely argue that their qualities of beauty, intelligence, charisma, and so on, definitely don't stem from smoking. Smoking is something they get away with because of or in spite of, their beauty, intelligence, etc etc. It could be more pertinent to ask how many bad guys smoke in films, and if this adds to their role as the vice of the piece. Does the good guy smoke if the bad guy does? Does the bad guy always smoke cigars? Scrolling through some articles right now, the surveys taken on the subject revealed that it doesn't matter who is shown smoking: as long as they are smoking, teens and yoofs are influenced.
I guess smoking is cool, after all.

Tuesday 9 February 2010

Not an orginal post, but I found this incredibly moving.

This video shows the winner of 2009's " Ukraine 's Got Talent", Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II. Her talent, which admittedly is a strange... one, is mesmeric to watch.

The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about $75,000.

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated.

It is replaced by a woman's face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman's face appears.

She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier.

This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house.

In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye...

The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine, resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million.



An art critic said:
"I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me. The art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And there's surely no bigger compliment."

Sand Drawings

Saturday 6 February 2010