July 31, 2014
ReMakeUp
(i'm abroad and can't upload, apologies for the stream)
I see a mini-skirt and hairy legs doing a lean-back creep.
I see the ground is lava.
I see a sewer grill smile with nothing to lose.
"Drugs, hugs, and giant bugs" sloppy rushed in paint.
Steam pillars and neon domino. Hard to see if this restaurant serves food, the menu looks like an airplane safety pamphlet.
In this place, there's no distinction between friend and enemy, it's the same damn word.
[Hani Zahra's 2013 album Along Those Lines is still available]
"A Malaise" is new Hani Zahra, we'll have more updates soon about an exciting new album from them.
***
And on the topic of makeup tests, friend of the blog Kayla Lorette is funding her short film on indiegogo. Normally, of course, I wouldn't trouble you with crowdfunding because it's the way we raise our site costs and it can be annoying as heck, but this has a great pitch video, and I trust the filmmakers fully to make a great piece, even if they're asking for quite a bit. Check out the project, if you like the makeup work, if you like Julian Richings, or if you like Kayla from Space Riders, maybe consider dropping a few dollars, the perks are pretty neat too! Tote!
July 21, 2014
TWO SONGS OF THE SUMMER
James Irwin - "Everything Passed Me By". Flying to Los Angeles tomorrow and what better send-off than this jet-plume of a song by Montreal's James Irwin. Synths prowl softly round the rhythm section's groove; nimble guitars and baby blues; a saxophone like a shot & vanishing rocket.
Seems we're never going to get a record by The Moment, Montreal's best new band of 2013. They were James Irwin and Nick Scribner, Adam Waito and Julia Lewandowski and Jeffrey Malecki. "Everything Passed Me By" was one of theirs - a treasure I was waiting for. In concert, this tune was a blanket and a rainforest. It was a scene, a jam, a whole complete friendship. It was five songs convening in a summer field.
Now James has finished "Everything Passed Me By" on his own. I think it's songier than it was: melody & harmony, a musical arrangement gathered in a room. But still those gorgeous chords, that beautiful diffuseness. A fizz of feelings, vivid and fading and faint, in a story of Californian evenings, summer heat, lying down on a lawn. There's a long sunset. There's distance. There's surf. Ariel Pink is here, with John Maus. Belle & Sebastian are squinting at a concrete ocean-wall. If there are leaves, the leaves' green has lost its saturation. The day is Polaroid, with flat feet and swollen heart. I thought I was Harry Nilsson, here / I thought I'd be walking on the beach and the vision would wash up in a bottle at my feet / Everything passed me by. It's a song that dances with inevitability, around inevitability, splits inevitability into trilling call and answer, division, no mistakes.
Some paradises are very specific, too specific to ever find.
[more from James / there's a remix coming]
Don Jazzy, Tiwa Savage, Dr SID, D'Prince and The Mavins - "Dorobucci". In Africa at least, they have a worthy "song of the summer". "Dorobucci", from Nigeria's Mavin Records, is one of the year's biggest hits. It's a lissom, looping laze. It's a chant of good times, wealth and friendship, sunshine and water and flowing breeze. You can turn it up loud and dance, with all your gang; you can turn it down a little and breathe in/breathe out, among dappled lights. Nighttime and daytime, Dorobucci. Daytime and nighttime, Dorobucci. Simple as a good mood, found.
[official video coming soon / lots of great unofficial ones]
---
If you're on the west coast, I do hope you'll join me for readings & music in Los Angeles on Wednesday 23/7, SF on Monday 28/7, and Portland on Tuesday, 29/7.
(illustration by Adam Waito)
July 18, 2014
Elopement Alotment
Zoo - "Hard Times, Good Times"
Hide your money in a paper bag. Eat the first food you see. Get on a bus. Switch to a cab. Stop to make a phone call. Run bare-legged across the highway. See a plane and feel yourself on it. Break the law and watch the world keep turning.
Zoo - "Samedi Soir a Charnouet"
Wheels crunch into a gravel driveway. There are heels and there are lights off the lake. If Galit is here it will be fun, she will be squeezed into wool, she will paint herself with wool and her hair will be a sculpture. If Geneviève is here there will be sweets. If Ben is here we will hear all about the islands, and how much the army needs to blow them up. If Herve is here he's only going to talk about business. I think we should meet again about the balances, Emil is giving me shit about the balances and I don't want to get it wrong, I think we should meet again. I can feel my back against the ribbed faux-wood as I squeeze to the restroom. I can feel the smoke, I can see the drinks lifted over heads to get through the crowd. I can feel the cool summer air as I step away from the house and towards the lake. I want to feel my voice relax as I can speak in a normal voice. I want to think about swimming. But mostly I want to look at the fire and forget. I want to sip something and I want to catch someone's eye, and I want to think ah, the sun. The terrible, terrible sun, stay right where you are.
[very difficult to find buy links, if anyone can help]
July 17, 2014
WEIRDEST RING TONES
Tonal Blows - "Your Scratchy Face".
Tonal Blows - "By the Sea".
Tonal Blows - "Train Memory".
Tonal Blows - "A Choice Between".
Ringworm Psoriasis, Secret Garden Gallop Way, and From A Pride To Whom Lay with Mangy Mutts are three volumes of avant-garde ringtones recorded by Blobby Rice aka Blane Rose' aka Break Ribbons aka Bones & Rubber aka Body Roial aka my beloved Brendan Reed. Brendan is an artist and musician and programmer and filmmaker, a veteran of Letlowns and Clues and long-ago Arcade Fire. He's himself and none-other, a forge of sparking arcing art. And so when he decided to record and release dozens of ringtones your eyebrows would be right to rise, like floodwaters.
These are ringtones that chime and flail and explode. Some of them dwindle, others burst. Some are catchy hooks, other are the lint that catches on hooks. They are short and they are long. They are diverse. They break open our idea of what a ringtone is and I bet if you put one on your phone, and your phone then rings, you will breathe and smile and actually feel right in this technological world; like finally you are using technology to make your life truer, rather than more of a lie.
Four of my favourite TONAL BLOWS ringtones are available here.
- "Your Scratchy Face" is that phone-call where you are stressed out but also happy about the stress, settled by it; like your life has been given a gift of meaning by all the tiny fractured bits and pieces of roiling business;
- "By The Sea" is that phone-call on Saturday afternoon when things are finally going to get going!!! and you hear the phone in the other room and you're excited, you're excited!, but still it takes a while to get around yr furniture and through the doorway and to that damn phone and along the way you have the chance to imagine the whole story for the rest of your day, and how long it's going to be, and how thorough;
- "Train Memory" is that phone-call where your friend is going to insist on pretending to be a train; and
- "A Choice Between" is the ringing, jumbly sound of mingled friendships; you can't even remember how or when you met this treasured pal.
You can download all three of these volumes of ringtones for free or for cheap or for $1,000 a pop: Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3.
---
Brendan made a riddle of a website for me, Our Shadows Slanting By The Lamps, to help promote my novel. Owen Pallett contributed music. The other sites were I Gazed At A Long Shelf of Batteries, by Jez Burrows (with music by my pal M.G.), and Whispering Machine, by Socialtech, with original music by Bear In Heaven.
July 14, 2014
SHEER FIZZY
The Hydrothermal Vents - "Neptune's Grave".
The Hydrothermal Vents - "Shark!".
A scuba diver has impermeable earbuds in his ears. He dives down through columns of bubbles, quills of current, weaving and sinuous in a search for manta-rays. And he's listening to music, sure he is. The Hydrothermal Vents have given us an album that's like Jacques Cousteau in a band with the Pixies, Devo jamming with Flotsam & Jetsam. Electric pop with spines and fins - rock'n'roll that's a little weird, its queerness hissing in like oxygen. While "Neptune's Grave" is tangled acceleration, the slap and coo of appetite, "Shark!" is fizzier stuff - under the pop and sighs there's something like a motorik, and it almost reminds me of Stereolab.
Yes, there's a silliness to the Vents' undersea project. But it's a serious silliness, po-faced whimsy; the Talking Heads taught us something can be funny without being a joke. Secrets of the Deep! doesn't rely on any punchlines. It uses its conceit as an engine, a chugging dinghy, as it trawls for pop. If "Neptune's Grave" doesn't hook you, "Shark!" will. Both shed silver fishscale whenever I take them up.
[The Hydrothermal Vents at Bandcamp / they launch the album at Casa del Popolo on Friday Saturday]
---
Sincere apologies for my recent absence on the blog. I was book-touring around the US and didn't have time to catch my breath (and type). Honestly I felt the guilt & regret swinging round my neck like a damn medallion. You are all friends and I hate when I neglect our correspondence.
That said, the tour resumes next week. If you live in Los Angeles, San Francisco or Portland, I would love to meet you in person. Please come to a reading, where I'll talk about Us Conductors, and read from it, and we can shake actual hands. (If you prefer it à la Québecoise, we can kiss on each cheek.)
- Los Angeles, CA - July 23 - Largo at the Coronet • Mollie has organized this incredible, almost dumbfounding show: "Moving Through Space Toward You" is a celebration of the theremin, and my novel, featuring Califone, thereminist Eban Schletter, electro-thereminist Probyn Gregory (who tours with the Beach Boys, playing that part on "Good Vibrations"), and This American Life mainstay Starlee Kine. Plus surprise guests? We're going to turn the theatre into paradise. Please come: buy tickets here.
- San Francisco, CA - July 28 - Booksmith • A reading at this amazing bookshop with help from local thereminist Meredith Yayanos. Free!
- Portland, OR - July 29 - Glyph Café & Arts Space • A "Happy Hour with the Theremin" from 5:30 to 7:30, with Us Conductors and local theremin-player Steve Hassett. Free!
I'll also be appearing at LA's Literary Death Match on July 22, competing against DJ Javerbaum, Sara Benincasa and Attica Locke.
July 11, 2014
2003 FOR LIFE
I remember when I first heard Varations. I was ice cream and it was the coast of Portugal. My brother Vincente had made a crystal radio out of a cereal box and a nata. And from the center of Paris had floated these guitars, this riff, those popcorn drums. I remember when I first heard that crystal radio I thought it was like hearing for the first time after being deaf my whole life. I wanted to live on this music, I wanted to be what this music promised was possible. It felt like the world actually existed and had invited me to join. But I was ice cream, for chrissakes, what could I do? I mean ACTUAL ice cream, a pile of cream in a cone and I had some vanilla and some chocolate in my veins. I would melt, SURELY before the summer was out. How was I supposed to live like Variations described? Their voices singing me through that cereal box like magic. I'll never be like them, I thought, I'm just ice cream. Well, look at me now, I tell you. Look at me now.
July 8, 2014
Half Moon
The Black Angels - "Tired Eyes"
His face looked like a living insult, and she was dressed like a door off its hinges. The whole day was slightly sweaty, kind of chafing, whatever day that was. 200, or thereabouts. He got a call on his flip phone. He turned into the shoulder-height weeds and lowered his voice, a family loped past and into the store with frozen lunch and fireworks emanating from their heads in big cushy thought bubbles. He finished his phone call and hung up, his body blushing, if a carrot with carrot eyes can even blush. "That's rude," she said, her hair with no strand the same shade. "How is that rude?" "It's like you're keeping something from me." "It's a personal phone call, why do you want to hear my personal phone call?"
The family came out, and they may have changed clothes while in there, everything seemed to flap against them as they walked.
"I don't want to hear it. I just don't want you to hide it." A church sat hot and empty not far off.
[Buy]