Now that I think about it, the third season of Buffy (especially its conclusion) is essentially an anarchist parable about the limits of democratic government and the extremes you have to go to overcome them. Hell, it barely qualifies as supernatural: here in Chicago we've had a mayor named Daley for forty-one of the past fifty-four years, and the current one certainly seems politically impervious.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Quite a Long Way from Cairo
More stuff I like.
I recommend Andy Beta's dispatches from his trip to Finland (1, 2, 3, 4), all of which are accompanied by some splendid Tove Jansson artwork. Speaking of Jansson, I'm only familiar with the (wonderful) Moomin comic strip collections that Drawn and Quarterly have been publishing over the past couple years. But I've recently been lent her novel/memoir The Summer Book and I'm looking forward to it even more after reading this little tidbit from her Wikipedia page: "Jansson said that she had designed the Moomins in her youth: after she lost a philosophical quarrel about Immanuel Kant with one of her brothers, she drew 'the ugliest creature imaginable' on the wall of their WC and wrote under it 'Kant'." Check out this nicely illustrated and presumably comprehensive bibliography of her work.
The ES album Beta raves about is on Lala and it lives up to his Harmonia and Popul Vuh comparisons. I also listened to Paavoharju's Yhä hämärää, which was lovely. As Beta mentions, there was quite a bit of buzz about the Finnish psych-folk scene and the Fonal label in particular a few years ago. Now that I know that Fonal's main inspirations are Terry Riley and Alice Coltrane, I'm going to be doing some more investigating.
I recommend Andy Beta's dispatches from his trip to Finland (1, 2, 3, 4), all of which are accompanied by some splendid Tove Jansson artwork. Speaking of Jansson, I'm only familiar with the (wonderful) Moomin comic strip collections that Drawn and Quarterly have been publishing over the past couple years. But I've recently been lent her novel/memoir The Summer Book and I'm looking forward to it even more after reading this little tidbit from her Wikipedia page: "Jansson said that she had designed the Moomins in her youth: after she lost a philosophical quarrel about Immanuel Kant with one of her brothers, she drew 'the ugliest creature imaginable' on the wall of their WC and wrote under it 'Kant'." Check out this nicely illustrated and presumably comprehensive bibliography of her work.
The ES album Beta raves about is on Lala and it lives up to his Harmonia and Popul Vuh comparisons. I also listened to Paavoharju's Yhä hämärää, which was lovely. As Beta mentions, there was quite a bit of buzz about the Finnish psych-folk scene and the Fonal label in particular a few years ago. Now that I know that Fonal's main inspirations are Terry Riley and Alice Coltrane, I'm going to be doing some more investigating.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Sightseeing
If you look to your right, you'll see that I've expanded the blogroll. People that I actually know in real life are now Fellow Pachyderms. Other Animals has become Other Phyla, a name I chose upon reading Wikipedia's definition of phylum: "Although a phylum is often spoken of as if it were a hard and fast entity, no satisfactory definition of a phylum exists. In fact, a phylum is perhaps best described as a statement of taxonomic ignorance." After briefly trying to sort these blogs into categories and realizing they were a frequently overlapping mix of music, politics, comics, film, and other, a statement of taxonomic ignorance seemed apt. Basically, these are (well, most of) the blogs I read regularly and recommend.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Post-Rock
I should probably get out of the habit of making predictions about the direction of the blog; it’s clear that trying to guide or focus this thing just makes me write less. Oh well, here is one anyway: I’m going to try to take a break from writing about depressing things beyond my control like the death penalty or government corruption on a grand scale. Not that I want to seal myself off from politics (not that that’s possible), but if all goes well, the next few posts will be about things closer to home that roughly fall into the category of “stuff I like.”
I’m quite enjoying Bubblegum Cage’s Post-Rocktoberfest as post-rock made up a huge portion of the soundtrack of my early twenties. While it was never widely popular even in its heyday, over the last decade it seemed to inspire a surprisingly intense revulsion, if it was mentioned at all. Maybe it was the name: post-rock is often the go-to whipping boy for the weirdly hated critical practice of naming genres. Not that I carried much of a torch for the stuff: in reaction to the boredom brought on by the overwrought dynamics or endless droning of second- or third-tier post-rock bands, I dumped the bulk of my collection in the early ’00s as I embraced a much wider spectrum of music and began focusing mainly on music from before I was born. But it’s interesting to note something of a groundswell of appreciation or at least an urge to defend the good stuff cropping up this year. Along with Bubblegum Cage, online magazine FACT did one of their “20 Best…” lists, and Matthew Ingram—who wrote about post-rock several times in his earlier Woebot incarnation—has recently put up a couple of posts at his newish blog Hollow Earth. No consensus emerges—though taken together this is an interesting exercise in canon building on a very small scale—apart from a general preference for British post-rock over American, but there were a few albums I was particularly pleased to see mentioned:
Bowery Electric’s Beat. I can’t remember the last time I listened to this, but in the late ’90s it was a personal favorite. Somewhat like my unfortunate dalliance with the lesser lights of trip-hop—but less embarrassing—Beat was an early sign of where my taste would migrate after souring on indie rock. I still find the prospect of smeary guitar pop on top of breakbeats and prominent basslines attractive, though I suspect that Beat would now suffer from my obsessive over-listening (I used to fall asleep to this every night for a long time). But as Bubblegum Cage says, it’s a pity more post-rock bands didn’t explore this territory instead of aping the masculine bombast of bands like Mogwai.
Insides’ Euphoria. A record that manages to be hauntingly beautiful while making your skin crawl. Maybe it’s because I first heard it when I was sixteen, but Euphoria’s frank lyrics perfectly capture the thin line between sexy and icky that makes sexual intimacy emotionally painful and a little terrifying when you’re young: the way the dark pull of desire felt separate from your conscious mind for reasons impossible to put in words, the way guilt and pleasure could mix so easily. Listening to it now, it’s also clear that the sonic palette is equally unsettling; the way they use woozy, chirping, overlapping, and repeating loops to build many of the songs feels a lot like the way your head feels when it’s spinning from drunkenness. As one half of Insides put it in an interview with Simon Reynolds* from 1993, “I’d like [the listener] to swoon first, and then throw up! Or feel that rising, heady sensation you get when they give you anaesthetic at the dentists, and then the next minute you realise you’re covered in blood.”
*Tried to fit this in earlier: it was Reynolds who coined the term post-rock.
Papa M’s Live from a Shark Cage. This is just gorgeous and it’s a genuine loss that David Pajo’s subsequent output took a more conventional turn. His decision to sing on Whatever, Mortal completely broke from the strange and evocative mood he creates on this (though there are some good songs on Mortal). His trajectory is similar to Do Make Say Think’s, who earn a deserved spot on FACT’s list. Do Make Say Think singlehandedly maintained my interest in post-rock into the ’00s with an impressively consistent run which ended when they added insipid, generic indie vocals on You, You’re a History in Rust. Nonetheless, their albums prior to that are all fantastic.
Seefeel’s Quique. Not mentioned in any of the posts I’m linking to, but that’s mostly because this is now recognized as a classic (a bit like MBV’s Loveless, though certainly not nearly as famous on this side of the Atlantic). I’d dismissed Seefeel as sub-Aphex ambient techno back in my original post-rock phase, but hearing it now, it has aged far better than a lot of the bands listed at the bottom of this post on Hollow Earth, quite a few of which I liked at the time. Quique reflects the UK post-rock scene’s openness to dance music and dub, but now it sounds more of a piece with the originators of ambient—Brian Eno, Cluster, Harmonia, etc.—rather than with the garish likes of contemporaries like The Future Sound of London.
I’ve avoided trying to define post-rock, because it’s impossible (though Wikipedia takes a stab at it). But all four of these albums rely on technologies of sampling and looping to a degree that genuinely subverts or bypasses traditional rock songcraft in a way that I think legitimates the label. They're also all quietly moving and hypnotically beautiful.
I’m quite enjoying Bubblegum Cage’s Post-Rocktoberfest as post-rock made up a huge portion of the soundtrack of my early twenties. While it was never widely popular even in its heyday, over the last decade it seemed to inspire a surprisingly intense revulsion, if it was mentioned at all. Maybe it was the name: post-rock is often the go-to whipping boy for the weirdly hated critical practice of naming genres. Not that I carried much of a torch for the stuff: in reaction to the boredom brought on by the overwrought dynamics or endless droning of second- or third-tier post-rock bands, I dumped the bulk of my collection in the early ’00s as I embraced a much wider spectrum of music and began focusing mainly on music from before I was born. But it’s interesting to note something of a groundswell of appreciation or at least an urge to defend the good stuff cropping up this year. Along with Bubblegum Cage, online magazine FACT did one of their “20 Best…” lists, and Matthew Ingram—who wrote about post-rock several times in his earlier Woebot incarnation—has recently put up a couple of posts at his newish blog Hollow Earth. No consensus emerges—though taken together this is an interesting exercise in canon building on a very small scale—apart from a general preference for British post-rock over American, but there were a few albums I was particularly pleased to see mentioned:
Bowery Electric’s Beat. I can’t remember the last time I listened to this, but in the late ’90s it was a personal favorite. Somewhat like my unfortunate dalliance with the lesser lights of trip-hop—but less embarrassing—Beat was an early sign of where my taste would migrate after souring on indie rock. I still find the prospect of smeary guitar pop on top of breakbeats and prominent basslines attractive, though I suspect that Beat would now suffer from my obsessive over-listening (I used to fall asleep to this every night for a long time). But as Bubblegum Cage says, it’s a pity more post-rock bands didn’t explore this territory instead of aping the masculine bombast of bands like Mogwai.
Insides’ Euphoria. A record that manages to be hauntingly beautiful while making your skin crawl. Maybe it’s because I first heard it when I was sixteen, but Euphoria’s frank lyrics perfectly capture the thin line between sexy and icky that makes sexual intimacy emotionally painful and a little terrifying when you’re young: the way the dark pull of desire felt separate from your conscious mind for reasons impossible to put in words, the way guilt and pleasure could mix so easily. Listening to it now, it’s also clear that the sonic palette is equally unsettling; the way they use woozy, chirping, overlapping, and repeating loops to build many of the songs feels a lot like the way your head feels when it’s spinning from drunkenness. As one half of Insides put it in an interview with Simon Reynolds* from 1993, “I’d like [the listener] to swoon first, and then throw up! Or feel that rising, heady sensation you get when they give you anaesthetic at the dentists, and then the next minute you realise you’re covered in blood.”
*Tried to fit this in earlier: it was Reynolds who coined the term post-rock.
Papa M’s Live from a Shark Cage. This is just gorgeous and it’s a genuine loss that David Pajo’s subsequent output took a more conventional turn. His decision to sing on Whatever, Mortal completely broke from the strange and evocative mood he creates on this (though there are some good songs on Mortal). His trajectory is similar to Do Make Say Think’s, who earn a deserved spot on FACT’s list. Do Make Say Think singlehandedly maintained my interest in post-rock into the ’00s with an impressively consistent run which ended when they added insipid, generic indie vocals on You, You’re a History in Rust. Nonetheless, their albums prior to that are all fantastic.
Seefeel’s Quique. Not mentioned in any of the posts I’m linking to, but that’s mostly because this is now recognized as a classic (a bit like MBV’s Loveless, though certainly not nearly as famous on this side of the Atlantic). I’d dismissed Seefeel as sub-Aphex ambient techno back in my original post-rock phase, but hearing it now, it has aged far better than a lot of the bands listed at the bottom of this post on Hollow Earth, quite a few of which I liked at the time. Quique reflects the UK post-rock scene’s openness to dance music and dub, but now it sounds more of a piece with the originators of ambient—Brian Eno, Cluster, Harmonia, etc.—rather than with the garish likes of contemporaries like The Future Sound of London.
I’ve avoided trying to define post-rock, because it’s impossible (though Wikipedia takes a stab at it). But all four of these albums rely on technologies of sampling and looping to a degree that genuinely subverts or bypasses traditional rock songcraft in a way that I think legitimates the label. They're also all quietly moving and hypnotically beautiful.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Usually Cover-Ups Are More Clandestine Than This
It’s not short, but if you haven’t yet read David Grann’s piece in the New Yorker about Cameron Todd Willingham, do so. The article is getting some much-needed attention (not as much as Roman Polanski’s case of course, but I suppose America’s obsession with celebrity isn’t going anywhere anytime soon), and it seems clear that Texas now has the distinction of being the first state to execute a demonstrably innocent human being in decades. Even if you think that’s overselling it, the best spin you could put on this is that, as Scott Lemieux puts it, “they executed a man despite the fact that there was no reliable evidence at all that he was guilty.”
Now we have the spectacle of Governor Rick Perry’s hamfisted and nakedly transparent attempt to make sure the Texas Forensic Science Commission did not review Willingham’s case. While his actions are disturbing (though understandable; if Willingham is ever exonerated, Perry will have been complicit in his murder), surely this won’t work as a long-term plan.
Now we have the spectacle of Governor Rick Perry’s hamfisted and nakedly transparent attempt to make sure the Texas Forensic Science Commission did not review Willingham’s case. While his actions are disturbing (though understandable; if Willingham is ever exonerated, Perry will have been complicit in his murder), surely this won’t work as a long-term plan.
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