The Crystal World

Khanate

2011-01-31T00:47:00.002Z

'She remembers the moment. The photographer took her picture. She remembers her anger. The man was a stranger. She had never been photographed before. Until they met again 17 years later, she had not been photographed since.'

nationalgeographic.com/afghan-girl/

The Crystal World

2011-01-30T23:36:00.002Z

Psychedelic images from Science - in order, a quartz crystal through a microscope, computerised model of a sunset and a fractal from the Juliet set.

The Concentration City

2011-01-30T23:31:00.003Z

'China to create largest mega city in the world with 42 million people'

The Subliminal Man

2011-01-30T23:24:00.002Z

paleofuture.com/

Civeta Dei

2011-01-21T11:04:00.001Z

The club kids, now they looked like a fun bunch didn't they? For those not in the know... well I guess you could (and should) just watch the above video with them on The Joan Rivers show. Essentially they were a gaggle of eccentricly dressed popular promoters, designers and party types from New York (and to a different extent London) who dominated the club scenes from the mid 80's up until the early 90's. They're a spectle and an entertaining one at that, both visually and due of the stories them all.

I might as well get the juicy part out of the way, in 1996 one of the founding clubkid members Michael Alig was convicted of murder of his friend Andre "Angel" Melendez because of a dispute over drugs. There's a lot more to the story, including heroin, self-exile and decomposing bodies in bathtubs, but the wikipedia article is probably more enjoyable than the atrocious looking early noughties film Party Monster, starring Macaulay Culkin as Alig and bizarrely Seth Green and James St James that portrays Michael's rise and fall.

Despite all this Alig's still got a bit of an endearing appeal, for example in this interview with an imprisoned Alig bemoaing his sober situation the top comment is someone stating how they 'can't wait to go to his first party when he gets out!', this being the party of a convicted murderer and notorious heroin addict, but let's be honest, you know it would be good wouldn't you?

In an another far less jovial interview on the Phil Donahue show the 'clubkids' are forced to justify their outfits, and describe them as a way of living out their fantasies and the whole movement is about espacism essentially. One of the few (if only) surviving clubkids, i.e. not dead, drug riddled or in jail, James St James talks quite soundly about Ketamine in the video below, and claims that it gives him that fulfilling high that apparently all them were always searching for. Quite a strangely sweet sentiment when thought about that way. With the way people live out double lives these days online who knows how these people would have dolled out their personal brands. In fact James does post a lot for the very good blog worldofwonder.net.

But the real star of the scene has to Leigh Bowery, the guy was just phenonmenal, totally above and beyond his peers, just look at the man, listen to him talk, he co-starred with Mark E. Smith in an opera Smith wrote based on the death of Pope John Paul II for gods sake, that's amazing.

Insanely productive and talented during genuinely remarkable career he designed for The Michael Clark company, posed for Lucien Frued, co-owned the nightclub Taboo (which Boy George would later name his musical about the era on), wrote the disgusting semi smash Useless Man and was a celebrated artist and designer, turning his life and body in a living gallery of his works and ideas.

There's a very in depth if not particularly well done documentary called The Legend of Leigh Bowery on Youtube that's worth it's 90 minute run time for all the footage of his life and engaging interviews with close friends and associates. I even got a bit teary towards the end actually.

When you look at sheer outrageous clothes people like Bowery were wearing and look at what people/celebutantes wear in London now it reminds of the interview Vice did with Lawrence a few years ago, where he states, quite rightly, something along the lines of you can't really shock anyone with the clothes you wear now. You feel like you've seen it all before and not even a pack of 7ft raving Cybergoths could make you arch your head. Even though I do maintain that it is good that people can freely wear whatever they want to without getting abused or thrown dirty looks, its feels more like apathy rather than tolerance. And that ability to shock comes from the unexpected and the original, and that's the main attraction of Bowery and the sheer amount of brilliant ideas he had. People are still trying to shock others in how they present themselves and always will, it's just the ease of the internet, that's taken it out of the public sphere, perhaps.

Simlarly though it's this focus on the importance of ideas, and more specifically fresh perspectives that's one of the main arguments of this interesting video I watched recently by Sir Ken Robinson on the need for a new type of school system in the 21st century. Though I must admit that this wide-eyed 2006 lecture carries a somewhat redundant feel in austerity riddled company-sponsered-Academy age of 2011. Then again it was during the last society-purge under Thatchers 80's regime that colourful escapist characters like Bowery emerged, who knows. It's either that or all black Hard Times Chic ala Sade.

Also I couldn't fit it in but in an episode of the Dexters Laboratory spin off Dial M For Monkey Bowery served as inspiration for a fur hungry fashionista villian, though I can't find any footage of that episode I remember it from when I was younger. Sure I do.

Prince

2011-01-14T06:58:00.006Z

I guess we haven't really been exelling at this blog recently, but I think I'm gonna start working on my 'blogosphere presence' again this year, unless until I get bored of it, which I probably will, probably around March/April? But I've written it down and posted it, so that might make a differece. I guess with the Crystal World because posts are so infrequent you never want to post anything unless you're 100% sure about the subject and so it's incredibly easy to talk yourself out of it, especially when you look at a site like Dangerous Minds, which does everything you want to do but better.

I was playing Karaoke at a girl called Purple's house the other day, Love Fool by The Cardigans cropped up and I had forgotten how incredible that song is and they are, here's another gem.

Inferno

2011-01-03T22:20:00.003Z

Music videos influenced by Henri-George Clouzot's unfinished masterpiece Inferno (which was documented in the excellent and imaginatively titled 'Henri-George Clouzot's Inferno') are like buses - you wait ages for one, and two come along at the same time.....

(For the record, Scissor Sisters song & video >>>>>>>>>>> British Sea Power song & video)

Nice try Scorpex

2010-12-18T23:00:00.003Z

Funniest man on the planet and firm Crystal World favourite, Nicholas Gurewitch is back, sort of, with some video shorts on Vimeo . ThePBF creator has even made some sci-fi cartoon epic skits for the BBC called Elite Fleet which have his trademark comic timing and imagination. I can't wait for this guy to make a film. It'd be incredible.

Big in Japan

2010-11-14T16:27:00.004Z

Got rickrolled into listening to this track from a tweet by True Panther Sounds claiming it to be a collaboration between James Ferraro and Oneohtrix Point Never. Despite the fitting connection, it turned out to be the 1984 song Loverboy by Britain's biggest selling Black artist of all time, Billy Ocean.

I also wasn't disappointed, as the video is just incredible, watch it now. It's an insane mix of Ocean warbling in front of a green screen blissfully unaware of the fantasy/tical world around him, seemingly made up from the rejected Star Wars sequel costumes and the weirdness of the The Dark Crystal. The song itself leaves a little bit to be desired but has its charms none the less. Love to know what the record label/general public thought.

Speaking of The Dark Crytal, Jim Hensons terrifying masterpiece, the first ever live action film billed as not having any actors in it, is scheduled for a sequel. Due for release in 2011, The Power of the Dark Crystal is based on Henson and co-writer David Odell's ideas for the film formed in the late 80's. The film's been caught up in pre-production hell since 2005 though and fansites (http://powerofthedarkcrystal.blogspot.com/) have had to struggle with whatever information they can grab onto, currently it seems the film's being produced by an Australian company called Omnilab.

Below's an unofficial teaser trailer for the film, featuring some production sketches, though whether it'll ever be released and scar as many childhoods as the original did to mine, remains to be seen.

Meek Dreams

2010-09-15T15:13:00.001+01:00

DJ Internet History

2010-09-15T03:56:00.007+01:00

It was a desire to listen to some of the work of pioneering Disco remixer Tom Moulton (above) at around 1amish that sparked off one of those brilliant internet voyages that occasionally break up my constant bouts of flicking between Facebook and Gmail.

I went onto the unofficial (?) myspace fan page and listened to his mix of King Goes Forth's Don't Take My Shadow which unsurprisingly turned out to be incredible and had everything that I've come to like about his edits: catchy hook, loads of dreamy soul style back up vocals, classic emo disco vibes etc. Browsing around the page I noticed a link to an interview Moulton did with Dj History in 2008. It's a wholly worthwhile read (link) in which he discusses his career path starting as a buyer for a Jukebox company then onto an early champion of stereo and how he became involved in disco, making the first remixes, the emergence of disco/DJs and the usual banter about how New York gay clubs in the 70's were the pretty much best places in the world ever.

It led me onto a couple of things, Moulton spoke about how B.T. Express were livid when they first heard what he had done to their track "Do It Till You're Satisfied', unsurprisingly it blew up and became a hit. They even got to go on Soul Train and brag about how the song length (in itself revolutionary) was their idea. Now even though the internet is an amazing resource and I can access footage of them playing that song on Soul Train within seconds, we're still not quite at the level of Revenge of the Sith style meta-Jedi library just yet, as I couldn't find the footage of that exact exchange with Don Cornelius. But well done anyway.

I went off and listened to the what is claimed to be the first 12" ever commercially available, made by Walter Gibbons, after he was described by Moulton as a person who was 'as white as can be' - judge for yourself

That photo being infinitely more enjoyable than the release in question - which is disappointingly, pretty tedious

DJHistory also do some other really great interviews with other DJing pioneers, including a fantastic sit down with Jimmy Savile, who you know turns out to be quite important (at least according to him) in the whole business of clubs, disk jockeys and young people congregating and dancing in the UK. One of his claims is that he was the first person to think of having two record players on stage at the same time. Considering he grew up in a world where the very idea of dancing to a record was completely laughable, the fact that he was hugely influentially in changing that (for instance he actually did setup dancehalls and DJ's in other cities, eventually running over 50 and 400, respectively, of them) he can make up what he likes really.

-Special thanks to John Bloomfield for introducing me to Moulton months ago when he played me his mix of So Much For Love by Moment of Truth which completely dicks on the original and was the only thing I wanted to hear for a good few weeks afterwards. I think on that same night I stole a clock from a particular East London pub. The clock is now in broken pieces stuffed in a bag in John's house - 'THANKS' Karma.

Also funnily enough earlier tonight I had a similar urge to listen to some Nas, ended up rippin through the hits on youtube, reading the quite decent article about him on Allmusic and shamefully hearing the acidic Jay-Z diss Ether for the first time.

I did the pretentious thing afterwards and in an attempt to be interesting posted his full name 'Nasir bin Olu Dara Jones' on Twitter, but then thought nargh, deleted it and instead decided to put all the words together and make it a hash tag, clever. I clicked the post afterwards and found out that coincidentally some super fans had used the same tag yesterday, as it it was Nasty Nas' birthday, he was 37.

And another thing, whilst it's probably weird and pretty cool actually that Lil' Wayne sampled Iron Maiden's Fear of the Dark for his song 'Best Rapper Alive'. It's definitely a lot weirder and probably not all that cool that Brandy sampled a relatively obscure Maiden track (The Clansmen) for her song 'I Tried' in which she sings lyrics like 'I’m sittin' home on a cold day...Think I wanna hear some Coldplay'

Brandy's Twitter 4EVERBRANDY

Good Morning, Mr Orwell

2010-09-06T15:39:00.002+01:00

The video for Peter Gabriel & Laurie Anderson's Excellent Birds that I included in my previous post was one that I discovered a while back when searching through YouTube for footage of Anderson to post on facebook. I had been previously unaware of its existence, but perhaps this is because it was not created with MTV in mind, but rather was part of a satellite broadcast "installation" by video art pioneer Nam June Paik, Good Morning, Mr Orwell. Transmitted on 1st January 1984 (for obvious reasons) primarily between WNET TV in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, it was intended as a rebuttal to Orwell's vision, by showing that technological advance is no bad thing. Try telling that to a typical Daily Mail journalist (I'm sure the left-leaning Orwell would be dismayed to find his book become such fodder for those loons). Alongside Anderson and Gabriel, the broadcast featured live and recorded work from the likes of John Cage, Philip Glass, Allen Ginsberg (with Arthur Russell on cello), Merce Cunningham, Oingo Boingo and The Thompson Twins.

Larger version can be found here.

Orwell's 1984 was of course even more explicitly acknowledged in 1984 with the release of the John Hurt/Richard Burton-starring film version of the book, complete with Eurythmics soundtrack.

Good Morning, Mr Gabriel

2010-09-05T13:40:00.003+01:00

Renowned mentalist Fever Ray is soon to release a cover of Peter Gabriel's Mercy Street, this being the year that Gabriel released Scratch My Back, an album of orchestral-and-vocal covers of 12 artists, with an intended sister-release, I'll Scratch Yours, in which the artists each cover one of his songs.

Trouble is, Peter Gabriel covered neither Fever Ray, nor Karin Dreijer Andersson's more famous band, The Knife. It's a tad ironic that someone would voluntarily choose to cover one of his songs, when he has had difficulty getting some artists to return the favour for his own project. While some (Stephen Merritt, David Byrne, Paul Simon, Lou Reed, Bon Iver, Elbow) have recorded tracks (released as double a-sides with the corresponding track on Scratch My Back), others (reportedly David Bowie, Radiohead, The Arcade Fire) have been a little less forthcoming. Of those released, Lou Reed's distortion-drenched version of Solsbury Hill is a clear winner, which is rather apt given that Gabriel and Reed's wife Laurie Anderson once scratched one another's backs when Gabriel did guest vocals on Excellent Birds on Anderson's Mister Heartbreak, which later appeared in a different arrangement on Gabriel's So.

It's long perplexed me that Gabriel does not receive as much hipster kudos as other contemparaneous artists, with his often dark, bleak, paranoid masterpiece third self-titled album deserves to be a revivalist hit on a par with Paul Simon's Graceland or Talking Heads' Remain In Light. Perhaps this is because of many people's (clearly misplaced) misgivings about Genesis or his mega-success with So tying him to the 80s, particularly embedded in the famous boombox raised aloft scene in Cameron Crowe's Say Anything (I feel that in real life Lloyd Dobler would have received a restraining order). My feeling was that perhaps the Scratch My Back/I'll Scratch Yours project would correct this, though its apparent failings point to no. Perhaps the Fever Ray effect will be a winner though. At the very least we can agree it's preferable to Bon Iver.

Zbig

2010-08-09T14:01:00.003+01:00

While watching Beyond The Lighted Stage (the Rush documentary) the other day, I caught a bit of the video for Time Stand Still for the first time. I've actually got the Rush videography on DVD, but I guess I never got as far as this because it's from about the period that I lose interest in Rush (the back end of their New Wave-y material and before their current hard rock sound). Time Stand Still is a tune, mind.

Anyway, the video's bleeding awful, its effects are horribly dated, to the point that you wonder if they ever even looked good at the time. I was surprised then to find out that the video was directed by Zbigniew Rybczynski, who directed this great video for the Art of Noise's Close (To The Edit).

He also directed the video for Stereotomy by The Alan Parsons Project, which, while also fairly dated, actually manages to look quite good, and work well with the music.

He was also co-writer, editor and cinematographer of Gerald Kargl's serial killer movie Angst, which is bloody terrific. The film has been a big influence on Gaspar Noé (particularly Seul Contre Tous aka I Stand Alone), and features a cracking soundtrack by Klaus Schulze.

What Time Is Love Distance?

2010-08-04T01:10:00.014+01:00

Been listening to a lot of The KLF recently, taking in full albums and watching quite a bit of online (i.e. Youtube) footage of their music videos, TOTP performances and original video pieces (below).

I'm sure everyone knows enough about them to justify me not writing a full article, (the wikipedia page sums up everything succinctly enough) but I'm still really fascinated and taken aback by a lot of the bands work both musical and not. The production on their records alone is so alien to what I'm used to hearing that it really seems completely foreign and bizarre. I find myself asking just how something like The KLF ever existed and was so widely experimental yet commercially successful at the same time.

That whole era of late 80's/early 90's in fact just seems like a totally different world to me more so than the 60 or early 80s, maybe because the BBC haven't made a slightly comical idiosyncratic period drama starring Judie Dench or Martin Freeman based on that time yet. I remember I went to a talk by Gavin Watson recently about his new(ish) book Ravin' 89 and having that same feeling of what the hell was going on with these people exactly. I do find myself struggling a lot with 90's pop culture in general, mainly in Britian (not that I'm letting Grunge off the hook) - just makes me think of black berets, The Tube, black leggings, The Word and numerous other awful fashion choices and televisions programs. Really makes me dread the inevitable 90's comeback that's already in semi swing, Chris Evans's Omen-like rise through the ranks of Radio 2 being a portent for the horror that'll unfold (up date perhaps not!).

I do sometimes wonder whether I would have liked a band like The KLF had I been the age I am now during their heyday, same with other genres/scenes like Chicago House, The Beatles, Punk, Juke (oh wait that's now). Would I have been able to enjoy them in the context of the times or would I have rejected it due to overexposure or something else like disliking the majority of people who were fans also. I suppose there's no real point thinking about it, and I should just appreciate that I get to enjoy all this great music, free of context, peer pressure and well actually literally free also. Everything's available to everyone essentially. Kanye West made an interesting speech on a sort of similar subject recently at Rolling Stone (here) talking about making music that's popular and how the underground is no longer the avant-garde due to this ease of access.

But back to The KLF, as it's pretty easy to be enamoured with them, their use of samples, visual aesthetic, philosophy (if you could call it that), publicity stunts and range of output over the course of their career is inspiring, as is their savvy-marketing technique of constantly repeating their own name during songs. must start doing that myself.

Always worth a watch is the 1992 Brit Award performance of the KLF with Extreme Noise Terror during which Bill Drummond fired machine gun blanks into the audience.

As exceptional as that might have been, more shocking to my eyes events occurred on that night, as this video below shows - the KLF somehow managed to tie with Simply Red in the category for 'Best British Band', but more importantly host 'Martika' is seen smoking onstage whilst presenting the award, on television, in an enclosed public space, with four or more walls. The early 90's must have been a very different world indeed.

Howard Brown

2010-07-12T12:01:00.004+01:00

Extra have a new range of mints out in shops, so new in fact that I can't even find a stock image of them on the internet. They're similar to their chewing gum counterpart in packaging and flavours, so much so that accidentally I picked a multipack thinking it was the standard wonderful Extra (rememeber the days when Orbit was the shit? and on that note those tedious Trident adverts). Word to the wise though, the small print on the back mentions that these new mints 'may cause laxative effects' - they should probably drop the 'may'.

Commando

2010-06-29T13:09:00.001+01:00

If you know anything about the crystal world you'll know how ecstatic I was to wake up to this package of records this morning. Sure we'll have a proper write up on Oldfield soon, or at the very least on Pictures in the Dark.

I also happened to do this blogspot entirely on my mobile phone. Tower of Babel man.

It's you and me

2010-06-28T23:06:00.000+01:00

You can make your break in one decade and still make your best songs in the next

Bonk Bonk Bonk

2010-06-28T20:55:00.000+01:00

When I was about to head home the other day, I bumped into a friend who asked if I'd like to join in on an impromptu ride in the countryside around Nottingham, and lacking any reasonable excuse not to, I did. While it was a thoroughly enjoyable ride, unfortunately I bonked on the hills towards the end - beset by muscle fatigue, I struggled to turn the pedals at a decent pace. Seeing David Millar also bonk in the British Road Race Championships on Sunday offered me some comfort, though I think we both would've been better off had we watched this cracking film made by the British Rail film board in 1955, and heeded the advice at the beginning of the second part.

All I Do Is Think Of You

2010-06-28T00:29:00.000+01:00

Above are just a few of serial killer Rodney Alcala's 2,000 plus collection of photographs he took of various women, girls and sometimes boys during the 1970s.

I came upon the photos earlier in the year when Californian Police released them to the press and public in the hopes of finding information about the subjects involved, believing there to be further unreported victims within the set of portraits .

The images offer up a snapshot of distinctly 70s fashion and film aesthetics as well as a feeling of stunningly intense intimacy, giving you a glimpse into the mind and life of this perverted man. Yet behind all the beauty to them they serve as a cold and sobering reminder of the fine line between affinity and obsession and the horrific acts that human beings can commit against each other.

Though sentenced to death in March for the murder of Robin Samsoe in 1979 and four other accounts of homicide (read the official report here) investigative estimates put Alcala's crimes of torture, rape, assault and kidnapping anywhere from 30 to 50 to even 100 cases spanning several years and different states across America.

You can sense the distress and desperation the Police are faced with when trying to tackle the sheer expanse of his crimes when you get quotes from his prosecutor Orange County DDA Matt Murphy, simply exhaling out comments like 'God only knows how many people he killed'.

Due to his confident rapour with women and brutal psychotic violence of his acts Alcala has been compared to the serial killer Tim Bundy and was also sometimes dubbed the 'Dating Game Killer' by the media due to a 1979 spot on the USA equivalent of Blind Date 'The Dating Show'. Joining Steve Martin and Michael Jackson in the list of notable alumni from the TV series (fyi the former is genuinely funny and entertaining, the latter's tragic then quite sweet, then tragic again).

More of the photos released can be found at crime.about.com/od/serial/ig/Rodney-Alcala---Photographs/

I'd rather be in Barcelona

2010-06-23T00:07:00.000+01:00

You can count The Crystal World as fans of Primavera Sound, so it's always quite nice to see its home, the Parc del Forum, used on adverts...

It's hardly surprising, especially given those visually arresting solar panels. But this one for Tesco Mobile really bugs me. I mean, where would you rather be - the beautiful, sunny, cultured Barcelona or the white, soulless vacuum of Tesco?

Shock of Grey

2010-06-10T15:37:00.000+01:00

Ivy-Style is a blog that, as its name suggests, focuses on the life and style of the preps, college students and WASPS of the privileged American East Coast.

It's an interesting and inspirational read, spanning decades, trends and fashions whilst touching on celebrity, culture and history in equal and erudite measures. Despite being essentially a site about pretty awful rich people, there's something infinitely more attractive about boat shoes, Ralph Lauren shirts and rolled up blazers than the offensive Jack Wills affair that plagues much of the current English home counties and Universities. It's probably just a form of Yankophile escapism on my part, and definitely the continued influence of Mad Men (no not the Sesame Street version).

'Like' them on Facebook and you'll receive amusing and varied updates from site-creator (and possible Grand Dragon/Skull and Bones club member) Christian Chensvold, offering up arbitrary freebies and brotherly like advice.

One of Chensvold's recommendations is The Official Prep Handbook by Lisa Birnbach, an all knowing guide similar in vein to Stuff White People Like by Christan Lander, in that you're not sure whether the author is satirising or glamoursing their particular subculture. A bestseller upon its 1980 release, below's a promo video for her new book 'True Prep' with Chip Kidd coming out later this year.

Given that I feel I dress in a certain way to try give off an impression of a well-rounded, presentable and intelligent individual despite only knowing enough about most things just to blag my way through a conversation and not having any real practical or transferable skills there's a certain poignancy when Birnbach says things like 'I think that dressing this way and having some good manners and good eye contact and a nice handshake can be your cover for a lot of things'.

500 Days of Summer

2010-06-10T14:55:00.000+01:00

Altreport just dropped a bomb of a before they were semi-famous bricks with a post about Zooey Deschanel being the star of Crystal World Rhythm game favourites The Offspring's video for She's Got Issues. Kinda disappointed I never made the connection myself, though perhaps Deschanel's convincing pink barnet might have thrown me off the scent, and that I haven't listened to that song since I was MTVtween (was always more of an All I Want man really, the cartoons in SGI's always feared me out a little too much, something about the Richard Nixon animation that was always a little too much)

I can hardly confess that Zooey's one of my favourite manic pixie dream girl's, I would even argue that she isn't even a true MPDG. Something about those retarded doughy eyes that always annoyed me, oh and her music, and acting career, and her fanboys, and her in person. Katy Perry occupies all the space my heart has for dark haired pale girls with prominent fringes.

Indecent Proposal

2010-06-04T16:08:00.000+01:00

When this guy spends a Ted Mosby-esque inordinate amount of time telling his kids how their parents got together, I'm sure they'll be delighted to hear he proposed through the medium of dance to Metro Station.

Although, at least it's less embarassing than the guy who'll tell his kids that his proposal method-of-choice was to pretend to be late to attend a taping of Daily Mail-made-televisual flesh, Noel's HQ, only to reveal himself to be the front end of a pantomime horse dancing here to seminal anthem Britain Has Gone Bonkers.

Fuckin' Martin Bashir, how does he work?

2010-05-24T14:18:00.000+01:00

After his interviews with the People's Princess and the Prince of Pop, it's clear that Martin Bashir has always been building up to this interview with the Kings of Horrorcore. I figure Messrs J and 2 Dope didn't do their research as they too may fall foul of the Curse of Bashir with their untimely deaths.

BTW, I love how there is a Juggalo-crime expert.

Zombie vs Shark vs Windows 7

2010-05-18T14:09:00.000+01:00

Someone in the Microsoft advertising department must be a fan of Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 aka Zombie Flesh Eaters aka Zombie.

Best Coast

2010-05-10T22:56:00.000+01:00

So I was working tonight at the Royal Festival Hall for Glen Campbell peforming his 'Greatest Hits and More' show. And it saddens me to say the night was quite a poor shambles, far from being a storming return of a classic country star, Glen just came across as unproffesional, at best.

Either suffering from an alcohol addiction or perhaps just being quite lazy, Glen look bored and awkward on stage: putting his hands in his pockets for solo routines, hamming up a pre-rehearsed banjo duel offer (lifted straight from Deliverance), hitting bum notes, taking his guitar off after a number only to realise he needed it straight away, finally walking off stage pre-encore with his microphone still in hand. Even the material he played, mostly covers of old country songs and scaled down contemporary rock classics (Foo Fighters, Greenday) seemed like a cheap, uninspired attempt to copy the success Johnny Cash acheived just before his death. The emphasis was hardly ever on 'Greatest Hits'.

It seemed like perhaps Glen was just a guy who got lucky with a couple of tracks in the 70's and now was milking it for all he could (which wasn't much by the way only about 42% of seats were sold for the 3000 seater RFH). By the end of the concert though I felt that maybe Glen wasn't the greedy sloth that I had pegged him as, and that he was being forced into this by a support and backing band of friends and family who were either using him to further thier own careers or just didn't want to let go of the stage. Despite the admiration and applause of a Yankophile audience, the whole event didn't sit well with me.

That said, when he played Rhinestone Cowboy my heart completely melted.

A clip of Jon Lovitz in High School High, sadly only available in German

Moonlight Shadows

2010-05-04T21:45:00.000+01:00

The Shadows. How cool were they? Just watch them perform Apache here - the bassist stops playing at the end and just smokes a cigarette. Effortless cool.

Furthermore, they were immortalised in Supermarionation in Thunderbirds Are Go! I first watched this film on a day off sick from school during the Thunderbirds revival of the early '90s. Not even the presence of puppet Cliff (who would leave an older me, wanting to watch tennis, emotionally and mentally scarred) could drain their cool here.

But what happened? See their performance here on One Show antecendent Pebble Mill in 1986. I've got nothing against the song, I've got a lot of time for Mike Oldfield & Maggie O'Reilly's Moonlight Shadow, which they covered on their album Moonlight Shadows (I'm not making that up). It's the sort of outdoor performance that would become standard on Top Of The Pops in the next decade, where what little cool remains bleeds out into the daylight. And how little is evidenced by Hank's jacket. As Bobby said, it's the definition of naff.

Moonlight Shadows also features covers of other pop hits (Against All Odds, Every Breath You Take, Jennifer Rush's The Power of Love, Lionel Richie's Hello) and Elaine Paige musical ballads (Memory, I Know Him So Well). I am still not making this up.

Sloane Ranger

2010-05-03T17:12:00.000+01:00

Due to the washed out weather conditions of this bank holiday weekend and the loss of my springtime harrington, I've had to resort back to my winter Barbour wax jacket, possibly for the foreseeable future. The past 72 hours though have led me to the conclusion that it is the perfect English overcoat. Stylish, warm and most importantly water proof, the Barbour adds an air of distinctly Anglican formality to whoever's wearing it. Not to discredit the quilted Barbour, but it's just not in the same league given that the wax jacket practically pays for itself with the ample pocket space and a bit of retail subterfuge.

Apologies about the Diana photo, the only decent shot I could find, bar the ones of myself ofcourse.

Further Reading

I of Infinite Forms

2010-05-02T12:13:00.000+01:00

Our friends at Records On Ribs have just released the self-titled album by Chicago proggers Ga'an, and it's available to download entirely for free! I'd say some kind words about it, but I already wrote some for the release - you can read those and grab it from their site here or, if you prefer, from ClearBits (fka Legaltorrents) here.

EDIT: I should also add that Records On Ribs have some of the cassette versions of the album for sale.

This is what you'll get Ke$ha, you twat

2010-04-30T20:11:00.000+01:00

Not sure what it is about Ke$ha, but people seem to react pretty venomously towards her when given half a chance. Whether it be bearing a striking resemblance to John Travolta, simply posting her fairly standard for the decade music taste on myspace or trying to jump on the Lady Gaga bandwagon things just don't go well for singing star.

So, I'm surprised that this video of her performing a cover of Radiohead's 'Karma Police' in her not so glamorous, or acoustically forgiving, school hall aged 13 hasn't gone viral.

I admit, sometimes she does bring it on herself, but Tik Tok wasn't actually that bad once you got past the initial shock of the Uffie-lite-but-was-Uffie-ever-that-good-no-not-really verses. And come to think of it, how would your formative years stand up to scrutiny once fame inevitably struck?

"I'm Finch, David Finch."

2010-04-23T10:41:00.000+01:00

Sesame Street seems to have had a penchant for parodying great* TV shows over the years, even though the references go way over the heads of their diminutive target audience.

*It's par for the course to write off the second season of Twin Peaks. In truth, while it does lose its way in the middle of it (after the conclusion of the Laura Palmer storyline), the momentum kicks back in towards the end. Furthermore, the Black Lodge sequence in the finale and Gordon Cole almost entirely make it worth it. Miami Vice's standalone episode structure inevitably lend it a mixed bag quality, while I agree with the AV Club line that the two latest seasons of 30 Rock are weaker than its first two. Mad Men has yet to hit sucky ground, and let's hope it never does.

beep beep

2010-04-10T12:27:00.000+01:00

My apologies 'Drive My Car', maybe next time 'Happiness Is A Warm Gun', but I have to be honest and say my favourite Beatles song is probably always gonna be 'I Wanna Hold Your Hand'. Not least because of the plethora of interesting and genuinely quite good covers that are out there, ranging from a slice of happiness by funk giants Lakeside, a Philadelphia swirl from everyone's favourite pop band Sparks and an unsurprisingly smooth take on the track by 'bop guitarist' (not necessarily a bad word) Grant Green.

Notable mention to Human Hair of course.

Deutsch Musik ist ganz toll

2010-04-06T15:10:00.000+01:00

Jawohl!

Lemon zest

2010-04-04T15:58:00.000+01:00

After taking part in a marathon SingStar session last night, I couldn't help wishing that, amidst the selection of duets, it were possible to sing Serge & Charlotte Gainsbourg's classic, Lemon Incest.

Unfortunately society's conventions have likely prevented other father/daughter pairings from unleashing their own take on what should be a modern standard. Maybe it would've spared us Ozzy & Kelly Osbourne's version of Black Sabbath's Changes. I could post that too. We do have standards though.

Memento Memorial

2010-03-21T17:33:00.000Z

A month or so since re-discovering the joys of Cosmos I've been on the look out for simarly incredible music. In my search I've spent a lot of time listening to Casiopea, with song titles like 'Passionate Voltage' and 'Princess Moon' as well as loads of classic youtube footage you'd have thought I was onto a winner but I have found myself really questioning really what the hell am I doing and why am I listening to any Japanese Jazz-Fusion in the first place.

Then I put on Tokimeki and all my doubts roll away

Vodafone

2010-03-12T07:14:00.000Z

Of the myriad ways in which Lady Gaga is great, we can now add to that list how she can take one of the main reasons why Madonna probably thought she was relevant for the past 15 years of her career and then make it completely her own, practically erasing any memory of 'our madge' post-Sean Penn.

The 'it' here I am refering to is former Bathory man Jonas Akerlund, who directed and co-wrote the above treatment for Gaga and Beyonce's 'Telephone'. Shame he didnt just do a shot for shot remake of his earlier efforts with Candlemass though:

"He looks good." "He looks flashy."

2010-03-09T13:29:00.000Z

Note: This postscript to my post on the cycling documentaries of Jorgen Leth features three passably diverting personal anecdotes!

Another favourite cycling-related film is Betcher!, a 1971 Cycling Proficiency promo, in which two kids have a competition to see who conforms more to textbook road-safe cycling, as kids naturally do.

This leads me to...

Personal anecdote #1: I failed the Cycling Proficiency Test at the first attempt. My second attempt came the following week, but an untimely bout of illness struck me down in the preceding Maths lesson (sidenote: I hope this sufficiently authenticates my illness). Being the last day of term, I was told I would have no other opportunity to re-take. Having tumbled over my handlebars on my way down to the test, I rode not only sick but also in both pain and tears. I passed, but I can't help thinking sympathy may have played its part. So next time you see this possibly falsely accredited cyclist on the road, make sure you give him a wide berth!

Betcher! features an appearance from Noel Edmond's perpetual Man Friday, which leads me to...

Personal anecdote #2: I once took a Noel Edmonds tea towel to Cub camp.

...and...

Personal anecdote #3: When holidaying in Somerset one year, my family and I visited the Crinkley Bottom theme park at Cricket St. Thomas. (For photographic evidence of the current state of the attractions, see this piece from, all of places, the Daily Mail.)

Neither of these actions were borne of a great affection of Père Noel, but rather a burgeoning sense of irony in my pre-teen self. Natural-born hipster, I guess.

Eccentric Games

2010-03-08T11:12:00.000Z

Over the past few months I've been enjoying the ever-increasing internet presence of Nile Rodgers. As one of the few people on Twitter I actively enjoy following Nile comes across as a charming and talented guy with a healthy dose of nostalgia for his times with Chic and later on as a producer. As well as some insightful updates about the state of music biz back in the day, Nile also shares old pictures of himself with various musicians and celebrities in poses and studios that seem to capture the 1980's in the same way that a John Hughes film does.

Bonus andecdote - Nile Rodgers on the inspiration for Diana Ross' I'm Coming Out

Meehn

2010-03-07T20:09:00.000Z

Crispin Glover is a gift that keeps on giving:

Pavé

2010-03-06T12:18:00.000Z

It is widely held that the cycling documentaries of Jorgen Leth are among the best ever made. Leth (who also commentates on the Tour de France for Danish television) made three cycling films in the 1970's: The Impossible Hour, Stars and Watercarriers and A Sunday In Hell.

Stars and Watercarriers follows the 1973 Giro d'Italia, as Eddy Merckx battles for victory in this Grand Tour with the lies of Felice Gimondi and Ole Ritter. The film not only depicts these contenders, but also the work of their domestiques (literally from the French, 'servants'), team members employed to aid their leader.

(Stars and Watercarriers is in 9 parts on YouTube)

The Impossible Hour documents Ole Ritter's three attempts at the World Hour Record, the ultimate test against the clock.

(The Impossible Hour is in 5 parts on YouTube)

Leth's masterpiece though is A Sunday In Hell, which follows the 1976 edition of Paris-Roubaix, the one-day classic race and battleground of cycling's great strongmen. The race is known for its cobbled sections (around one fifth of the 260km) which often cake the riders in dust or mud, depending on the weather. It is this that make Roubaix the highpoint in the cycling calendar for many fans, myself included.

(Sadly, A Sunday In Hell is not on YouTube, further, it is difficult to get hold of in general in the UK)

Leth recognises the aesthetic quality of bike racing, that hyperediting and showy camerawork can subtract from this, like in recent, flashier films such as Overcoming and Hell On Wheels (though some would say that cycle sport itself had a greater aesthetic quality then than it does now). Further, Leth eschews pace in favour of a clearer narrative and the endeavours take on a epic, mythic quality.

Leth most recently came to semi-prominence when he was tasked by the 'Dennis Bergkamp of cinema', provocateur Lars Von Trier to re-make his 1967 experimental short, The Perfect Human, five times over in Von Trier's The Five Obstructions. The last film was created by Von Trier himself (with Leth forced to read Von Trier's narration and take full directorial credit), and it's testament to Leth's ability that this version is inferior to those made by Leth himself.

Close Encounters

2010-03-01T15:08:00.000Z

In a pure 'how on earth did I not already know this?' moment, it was pointed out to me yesterday that Glenn Close appears in Hook as a MALE PIRATE. Never in a million years would I have realised myself that it was Close (hey, make-up department, great job!), but now knowing that it is her it all seems so obvious.

We can hardly pretend that Paltrow's appearance is a cameo, as it would be another four years until Se7en, but alongside Close and Collins, Steven Spielberg also found room for appearances by Jimmy Buffet, David Crosby, George Lucas and Carrie Fisher. I doubt we would have had this kind of indulgence had Steven's non-union, Mexican equivalent, Señor Spielbergo, been hired instead.

2010-03-01T01:12:00.000Z

In North Korea one of the best jobs for an attractive young lady in the city is as a traffic warden.

Presumably along with a handsome salary the government also gives these women a free gundam stlye body upgrade in order to perform the robotic like manoeuvres that the post requires. Take this warden in Pyongyang for example and how she only turns her body anti clockwise.

Happy Day

2010-02-24T23:36:00.000Z

A semi-steal from Simon Reynolds, Derek Jarman's 1971 short A Journey To Avebury, with a soundtrack recorded by Coil in the 1990s.

Journey to avebury
Uploaded by zohilof. - Independent web videos.

These stones immediately made me think of those in ITV's 1976 cult children's drama,
Children of the Stones, a sort-of magical realist Wicker Man for kids. Hardly surprising given they are the same 5000 years old stones in Avebury.

(The seven episode series is currently up on YouTube in its entirety).

A third and final trip through Avebury is offered up here by a Shell film with narration from John Betjemen.

Altoto

2010-02-16T01:55:00.000Z

In 1973 Xerox released the Alto personal computer. Decades before its time both in scope and content, the Alto used menus, a graphical user interface, bit-mapped graphics, an Ethernet connection, 2.5mb removable drive 'platters' and came complete with a 5 chord keyset and 3 button mouse... in 1973.

With software as vital as a basic word processor and paint program the Alto also boasted one of the world's earliest (if not earliest) first person shooter. Appropriately titled Maze War (demonstrated in this video here) the game saw players dual in a three dimensional labryinth, competing against each other on two separate computers using the Alto's Ethernet connection.

Unfortuneatly for everyone, the computer was never commercially released by Xerox, being seen as a threat to its core business of printed documents, and only saw the light of day in its incarnation as The Star in 1979 - priced at a sensible $16,000. Despite this, the Alto remains an innovative and inspiring invention in modern technological history.

VV Classic

2010-02-14T22:47:00.000Z

Sample Youtube comment:

'@MisterScientist

It's a common Western misconception to ignore the broader musical context that Japanese video game music is rooted in.'

TechnoEstate

Fahr'n Fahr'n Fahr'n

2010-02-10T22:03:00.000Z

Hit me with those laser beams

2010-02-09T15:47:00.000Z

The first time I saw Brian De Palma's Body Double, I was largely unconvinced by it, up until this point in the film, which opened up my mind to the schlocky brilliance of it all.

Crimplene for men

2010-02-03T16:33:00.000Z

Stolen from The Belbury Parish Magazine.

WhoSampled.com

2010-02-03T03:44:00.000Z

dizzy

2010-02-02T00:48:00.000Z

Sun Ra's version of The Elephants On Parade synced up with the Disney original.

Don't think as a child I ever really picked up on these ridiculously overt metaphors for Dumbos inebriation - probably for the best really.

(to say nothing of the animators hilarious vision of a formely enslaved minority)

(and again)

(rotoscoping bastards)

Quad

2010-01-29T17:01:00.000Z

So I was at this exhibition the other night where the above Samuel Beckett video was playing and I couldn't help but cheapen the experiance and be reminded of this 80's childhood classic.

Bacon

2010-01-29T16:58:00.001Z

I don't care if you've already seen this, watch it again. It's my favourite thing on the internet.

As Ed Knock said 'Where's he gonna go?'

Ullmatic

2010-01-29T16:27:00.000Z

"In 1992 Tracey Ullman filed a lawsuit against Twentieth Century Fox in Los Angeles Superior Court over profits from the later half hour incarnation of The Simpsons for $2.5 million of the estimated $50,000,000 USD in profits reaped from merchandising. Several years after her show went off the air, she said jokingly in a late night television interview that she hoped to one day have a regular two-minute spot on The Simpsons."

...

2010-01-26T03:40:00.000Z

What the fuck!? Joe Jackson... man, not cool.

2010-01-25T19:05:00.000Z

The ever incredible Sexy-people.com have just done a feature on the evolution of a young Dustin Diamond from '78-88. Hopefully they won't continue to his lauded brief stint into amateur cinematics. Comes in parts 1 + 2... much like Dustin.

SUPERfluous

2010-01-16T17:35:00.000Z

Curtis Deforest has sent the ordinary bicycle into hyperdrive

Asparagus officinalis

2010-01-13T13:35:00.000Z

Ever since catching Suzan Pitt's animated short Asparagus as part of an ICO Essentials programme, Dreams, a couple of years back, I've not been able to think about the vegetable in the same way. It is, by turns, dazzling, bewildering and disturbing. Richard Teitelbaum's kosmische soundtrack is terrific (with special thanks in the credits to New Age goddess Suzanne Ciani).

You got your peanut butter in my chocolate!

2010-01-10T19:51:00.000Z

Further adventures in modern advertising - this commercial for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups features music from proto-Hauntologists Plone.

Plantasia

2010-01-07T02:14:00.001Z

1973 Animation Fantastic Planet soundtracked by Alain Goraguer. Major source of inspiration for Air apparently. Kinda like One Million Years BC mixed with some chrome and that dirty feeling you get when reading Robert Crumb. Disgusting Stuff

Parts 1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8 - All on Youtube.

The Pain Never Leaves

2010-01-07T01:04:00.000Z

"That was one of the loves of my life. I think she loved me as much as I loved her, you know? We dated a lot. We, we went out a lot. Her pictures were all over my wall, my mirror, everything. And I went to the Academy Awards with Diana Ross and this girl walks up to me and says "Hi, I'm Brooke Shields." Then she goes "Are you going to the after-party?" I go, "Yeah." "Good, I'll see you at the party." I'm going "Oh my God, does she know she's all over my room?" So we go the after-party. She comes up to me she goes, "Will you dance with me?" I went, "Yes. I will dance with you." Man, we exchanged numbers and I was up all night, singing, spinning around my room, just so happy. It was great."

Michael Jackson on Brooke Shields, 2001

See how I fall, like the snow

2010-01-07T00:12:00.000Z

As yuletide comes to its end, it's clear that nothing on TV this year was ever going to be as brilliantly bonkers as Kate Bush's BBC Christmas Special of 1979 (with added Big Pete Gabriel for good measure). Unsurprising really, as it's hard to imagine any of the Brit-female-BBC-Sound-of-2009-core talent vacuums being interesting enough to warrant one. Lady Gaga, however.......

'Mappy Holidays'

2009-12-31T00:44:00.000Z

strangemaps.wordpress.com is brilliant

Green

2009-12-30T02:03:00.000Z

Sound of 2009

The Airing of Grievances

2009-12-23T22:38:00.000Z

Belbury Penguins

2009-12-21T21:37:00.000Z

This recent advert for WWF's Adopt a Wild Penguin scheme features music, specially comissioned for it, by Ghost Box magus Belbury Poly.

Squeekwel

2009-12-21T04:03:00.000Z

70 minute long review of The Phantom Menace - worth every second

Ooo Laa

2009-12-18T02:33:00.000Z

The Kooks' Luke Pritchard once remarked that he was 'a hit factory' - clearly he had never heard of Desmond Child. A Victorian Workhouse of pop production, the man has churned out of some of the biggest hits of the last 30 years, yet remains virtually unheard of outside the industry.

First coming to the attention of Paul Stanley in the late 70's, Desmond co-wrote the faux disco romp of'I Was Made For Loving You' - a pivotal moment for the band who unsurprisingly chose sucess before anything else. Yet the next decade would be even more lucrative for Desmond.

Think Bon Jovi write popular songs? Think again: Livin' On A Prayer, You Give Love A Bad Name, Keep The Faith - All Desmond

Alice Cooper's short time stadium rock comeback, Poison? You Guessed it, Desmond

Aerosmith's longer stadium rock comeback? Probably wouldn't have been as succesful without Crazy and Dude Looks Like Lady.

But the hits don't end with 80's hair metal, Desmond has worked with some of pop music's biggest international stars (Michael Bolton?).

Ricky Martin practically owes his career to the guy, penning Living La Vida Loca AND She Bangs - both cementing his celebrity in pop culture and even convincing the world for a time that he was straight.

Even Robbie Williams managed to wring a hit out of him in 1997.

But Desmond hasn't stopped this side of the 21st Century: working with Shakira, Mika, Hanson and The Jonas Brothers. Plus writing the banger that is Waking Up In Vegas for Katy Perry this year.

Some pop duds want a song for their album? Look no further: Hilary Duff, Lindsay Lohan and Rhydian. In fact the list of credits for his awful pop back catalogue could go on and on (Michelle Mcmanus, Lean Rhymes, The Rock Star Soundtrack)

Yet 'Dezzy' still keeps it real, helping out on occasion The Rasmus, Tokio Hotel and err... Dream Theater to stay metal with thier chops.

But if that list hasn't impressed you or even thinking about the sheer number of people who have sang along and/or danced to his songs at at least one point in their life doesn't either - He co-wrote Thong Song

Desmondchild.com

Danish Dreams

2009-12-18T01:22:00.000Z

Clunge

2009-12-14T01:55:00.001Z

Directed by Patrick Bergh

Life Imitates Ballard

2009-12-13T04:58:00.001Z

Boy with aspergers rides train for 11 days straight

Azurre

2009-12-08T01:43:00.000Z

www.peopleinpizzaslicecostumesbecomingpizzas.com"

NY

2009-12-07T16:12:00.001Z

Saxon

2009-12-07T00:17:00.000Z

Who would have thought a bear with no hair could be so completely terrifying? Surprisingly though "Dolores", here, isn't alone.

Cesky

2009-12-07T00:15:00.001Z

Orson Welles' The Trial set to Josef K

Rus

2009-12-06T23:27:00.000Z

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow's street dogs have started living on and off the cities public transport system in ever more ingenious ways - sleeping in carriages, getting off at correct stations, startling passers-by into dropping their food and melting ladies hearts into giving them theirs. Info, pictures and videos here.

Actually was this on someone's facebook not too long ago? Apologies if it was.

Rus

2009-12-03T01:07:00.000Z

Rus

2009-12-03T00:02:00.000Z

82°06′S 54°58′E is the most inaccessible point in Antarctica, the farthest from the ocean and the coldest place in the world.

It's also where you'll find a bust of Lenin with his head facing towards Moscow.

Dig down 20 feet and you’ll uncover an old Soviet research hut, with a golden visitors’ book to sign.

A-Z

2009-11-22T13:03:00.000Z

The guy from Not Not Fun has given away a link to loads of free music - it's good.

Yacht Rock

2009-11-18T01:19:00.000Z

Christopher Cross with the Roots performing Ride Like The Wind on the Jimmy Fallon Show in America last month. Look out for the special guest appearance from another Yacht Rock legend not too far in.

...

2009-11-18T00:13:00.000Z

The heroes over at Vigilant Citizen, who brought you the excellent 'Beyonce to Sasha Fierce: Symbolic Occult Rebirth' are back with the insightful 'Lady Gaga, The Illuminati Puppet' . Bonafide classic written all over it.

2009-11-18T00:09:00.000Z

23 Skidoo

2009-11-16T22:10:00.000Z

23 Skidoo, American slang phrase, refers to leaving quickly or being forced to leave quickly. Popular usage in the 1920s, exact origins uncertain.

Some may scoff at the notion of Canadian film. To those I recommend watching Atom Egoyan's The Adjuster, David Cronenberg's The Fly, Vincenzo Natali's Cypher, Don McKellar's Last Night and Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg. Canadian cinema is generally more auteur- than star-driven, having more in common with that of Europe than its counterpart south of the border. If you're still scoffing, leave now. I direct those who have stayed to the website of the National Film Board of Canada, which hosts an archive of documentaries, animations and 'alternative dramas'. One such archived film is Julian Biggs' 23 Skidoo, made in 1964. The film is composed of footage of a deserted downtown Montreal, where objects and sounds echo the presence of recently-departed inhabitants.

Formed in London in 1979, 23 Skidoo were an post-punk band in the vein of This Heat and Cabaret Voltaire. It is surprising that their place in musical history is not as recognised as it should be, given their meld of industrialisms and pan-global influences (funk, dub, hip-hop, afrobeat, gamelan), which saw them being proteges of Genesis P-Orridge while also appearing at the first WOMAD Festival (a set which is documented on one side of The Culling Is Coming LP). It is widely held that Block Rockin' Beats by the Chemical Brothers pilfered the bassline from 23 Skidoo's Coup, as played by 'Sketch' Martin (who according to some internet sources, is the uncle of 'The British Will Smith'-turned-bankrupted goon Richard Blackwood).

It Begins

2009-11-16T17:31:00.000Z

Designer Albert Exergian has created a series of minimalist posters for classic tv shows from Lost to Friends and beyond

Full gallery on tumblr

ReBoot

2009-11-16T16:09:00.000Z

Just a quick broadcast to announce a reboot here at The Crystal World. Don't worry dear reader, you still have the pleasure of my company, and hopefully now a far less sporadic company at that. The main thing is to introduce a co-conspirator, Bobby of The Lepanto League infamy.

Obsession is the deadliest desire

2009-05-25T21:47:00.000+01:00

The jury of the 62nd Cannes Film Festival has just bestowed a number of honours upon films screened at the festival, with the coveted Palme d'Or picked up by The White Ribbon by Austrian auteur Michael Haneke. This pleases me greatly as a fan of Haneke's work, particularly since his last film, an English-language shot-for-shot remake of his own Funny Games, was of little interest to me (I have yet to see it), partly since the original is my least favourite of his films (those who have seen it but little else of his other work may be puzzled to hear this is mainly because I find the film too 'warm'). Many have noted that the President of this year's jury, the singular Isabelle Huppert, has featured in two Haneke films, The Piano Teacher (2001) and The Time of the Wolf (2003) (winning a second Best Actress at Cannes for the former, her second after for Claude Chabrol's Violette Noziere (1978)), though many had thought this may have been a hurdle for Haneke. Few have noted, however, that this year's controversial choice for Best Actress, Charlotte Gainsbourg (whom all are obliged to point out is the daughter of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin) for Lars Von Trier's Antichrist (which frankly sounds bonkers), is not the first whose award-winning performance featured a scene of genital self-mutilation. The previous one? Huppert in The Piano Teacher.

Every film distributor would love to use an award given by the Jury (or other panels at the Festival) to help sell their film. However, there are two Cannes award-winning films which also picked up an award that was unlikely to sit alongside the Palm on the poster. The two films in question are Canadian: the 1994 FIPRESCI Prize winner, Exotica, and the 1996 Special Jury Prize winner, Crash. Apparently, both won Best Alternative Adult Film at the Adult Video News (AVN) Awards, the so-called "Oscars of porn".

Crash is, of course, David Cronenberg's adaptation of the 1973 novel of the same name by the dearly departed J. G. Ballard (much can be said about this man- I direct you in the meantime to a post by my brother). Cronenberg had already accidentally made a Ballard semi-adaptation in the form of his first feature, Shivers (1975) - think High-Rise meets Night of the Living Dead by way of a parasite that is both phallic and faecal. The form of Crash is close to that of a pornographic film, with the plot largely structured around a series of sex scenes. However, in Cronenberg's world, these sex scenes are not there for titillation- if they were they would hands down fail on that count, as the scenes are clouded in distinctly cold anti-passion. Cronenberg in fact left one sex scene out that he found to be too warm. Ballard himself admitted he would have considered his book a failure had he ever had an erection whilst writing. If Cronenberg's Crash (and it is Cronenberg's - Iain Sincliar's BFI Reader on Crash points out a Borgesian relationship between the author and auteur, Cronenberg the Menard to Ballard's Cervantes) is pornography, then it is pornography for the mind, not the phallus. On a side note, in an earlier film, Rabid, cast a pornographic actress (the also sadly recently-departed Marilyn Chambers), with a plot the porn industry may rather forget (zombie-like epidemic as metaphor for STDs).

Atom Egoyan's masterful Exotica seems on the face of it a standard erotic thriller from its central setting, the titular strip club, to its tagline ('In a world of temptation, obsession is the deadliest desire.') And yet Exotica turns out instead to be more of an elegant filmic puzzle, owing much to a European arthouse tradition. By his own admission, Egoyan structured the film like a striptease, removing layers gradually to reveal the bigger picture, eventually offering food for thought rather than arousal. Unlike Crash, Exotica has no sex scenes, the closest thing being the strip dances performed within the environment of the club. As the film progresses, these teases take on far more depth than they would in a by-numbers softcore thriller, no small thanks to a standout performance from Mia Kirshner, showing an acting maturity beyond her then 18 years (across-the-board the cast are accomplished yet underappreciated Canadian actors, including Elias Koteas, who also appears in Crash as the deranged Vaughan). At the conclusion, the viewer may well feel implicit guilt for their part in the voyeurism.

The awarding of Best Alternative Adult Film to both these films seems rather misplaced, neither one is successful pornographically, though this is because neither one strives to be. Yet, with a more naïve reading of its title, adult as in intended for adults, the winning of this prize by two intellectual filmmakers can make more sense.

Geometry of Circles

2009-05-24T23:25:00.000+01:00

Rock In Opposition: A Primer

2009-04-15T23:51:00.000+01:00

Prog, it seems is a four-letter word. I often feel sheepish when declaring I love it even in its more mainstream form. Yes and ELP are great in the right forms and doses (Close To The Edge, the Tarkus suite) partly because they are ludicrously overblown, but this makes them largely intellectually unsatisfying and poe-faced. The majority of the best work of the genre took place on its fringes, in the so-called 'Avant-Prog' subgenre, which is itself usually broken down into three main subgenres: Zeuhl, a set of bands linked to or influenced by the sublime Magma; Canterbury Scene, a rather self-explanatory collecting of bands such as Soft Machine, Caravan and Gong; and Rock In Opposition.

In actuality, Rock In Opposition is not strictly a genre (or subgenre), rather a movement. When dropped by Virgin, British band Henry Cow decided to continue outside of the mainstream, and to celebrate this they invited four bands they had encountered on tours of Europe to appear on a festival bill with them in London. Those four bands were Belgium's Univers Zero, Italy's Stormy Six, France's Etron Fou Leloublan and Sweden's Samla Mamma Mannas, and that festival took place on 12th March 1978, under the name Rock In Opposition.

While all could be considered Avant-Prog, the festival was not a collection of stylistically similar bands - Univers Zero's gloomy Stravinsky-inspired chamber-rock differs greatly from Etron Fou's mischievous Dadaist music - rather, they were, as the festival's flyer puts it, "five rock groups the record companies don't want you to hear."

By the end of 1978, the success of the festival inspired the participating bands to form an organisation under the same name. Three bands were added to the collective: France's Art Zoyd, Belgium's Aksak Maboul and Henry Cow-offshoot Art Bears (Henry Cow had disbanded by this point). Further festivals and meetings took place between the bands the following year, but by the end of the decade the organisation was no longer functioning.

Despite the diversity of the groups involved, the term Rock In Opposition has since been applied to a subgenre of bands in the spirit of or inspired by the original set, such as the American bands Thinking Plague and 5uu's.

Ten great RIO albums

Henry Cow with Slapp Happy - In Praise Of Learning
While Prog generally had little room for women, thankfully this does not hold for RIO. Cow already featured reeds player amongst their ranks, but their best work came when Dagmar Krause joined the group on its collaboration with her band Slapp Happy, with her atypical vocals complementing the instrumental mindset of the rest of the band.

Univers Zero - Ceux du Dehors
Placed alongside its predecessor Heresie, Ceux du Dehors is almost playful, but that is to say it is ominous rather than funereal. The Belgians' music, woodwind-laden and heavily influenced by 20th century masters Bartok and Stravinsky, exhibits masterful interplay here through its dizzying, shifting rhythms.

Etron Fou Leloublan - Batelages
Etron Fou Leloublan's (roughly translating to 'Crazy Shit, The White Wolf') debut exudes naivety, a surrealist sense of humour (fluency in French not needed to realise this) and a disdain for conventional structure on a par with Godard's Weekend. Yet this doesn't hide the group's talented musicianship, particularly of its rhythm section - Ferdinand Richard (bass) and Guigou Chenevier (drums) - who would become the band's core.

Samla Mammas Manna - Klossa Knapitatet
Samla Mammas Manna were already on the fringes of an anti-commercial movement in Sweden, called Progg, but their humourous nature jarred with the more political bands of the movement. Their music is simultaneously bravura and silly, while encompassing fusion, folk and circus influences.

Art Bears - Hopes & Fears
When composing new material for a Henry Cow album, some members were dissatisfied with the more song-oriented pieces being written by drummer Chris Cutler and guitarist Fred Frith. These 'songs' formed the basis of the first Art Bears album, with Cutler and Frith being joined by Dagmar Krause. Even when it veers into rockist, The Who-influenced territory, it remains far from conventional. Not to be confused with an album by a wet indie band.

Aksak Maboul - Onze Danses Pour Combattre la Migraine
It's hard to identify this and its successor, Un Peu de l'Ame des Bandits, as the work of the same band, but the same can be said of pairings of songs on the same album. Flitting between classical, ethnic music and jazz, the album's electronic passages seemingly foretell 8-bit video game background music.

Art Zoyd - Génération Sans Futur
A French band in the Univers Zero vein, Art Zoyd take that band's dissonance and portent and use sporadic vocals and trumpet stabs and squalls to give it a more visceral, confrontational edge. Later work has seen the band focus on creating new soundtracks for German Expressionist classics.

Present - High Infidelity
RIO continues to produce great music beyond its original temporal bounds, as evidenced by this 2001 effort from a reformed Present, who originally formed in 1979 when guitarist Roger Trigaux left Univers Zero. The album's stunning centrepiece is the six-part, 28-minute Souls For Sale, built upon violent, brutal, hypnotic repetition.

Fred Frith - Gravity
This solo album, inspired by 'dance music' of multiple cultures, sees the Henry Cow/Art Bears guitarist backed by Samla Mannas Manna on side one, and Americans The Muffins on side two, with further input from Aksak Maboul man Marc Hollander. Frith and his collaborators expertly craft an album that is as joyous as it is complex.

Thinking Plague - In Extremis
A band heavily inspired by the Henry Cow/Art Bears strand of RIO (most obviously through the presence of unconventional female vocals, though supplemented by strange male vocals), Thinking Plague take this and other influences (Fripp, circus, klezmer) into more cinematic territory.

[EDIT: Some interesting responses have been made by Alex and Dave.]

Yacht Prog

2009-03-13T17:02:00.000Z

I can't get enough of the Alan Parsons Project at the moment, yet I feel the band's profile these days is best summed up through this joke from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me...

It's a terribly flat joke, not least because Scott's explanation seems to be more to a majority of the audience rather than Dr. Evil. Most people now just wouldn't know what the Alan Parsons Project is.

The Alan Parsons Project was formed in 1975 by Alan Parsons, an audio engineer who had worked on Abbey Road and Dark Side of the Moon, and vocalist Eric Woolfson. Their best albums tend to follow a similar formula: concept albums (Poe, robots, Pyramids) usually beginning with an instrumental, followed by a mixture of slick, often smooth pop-rock songs and slick, sometimes smooth symphonic-rock songs, featuring a plethora of guest vocalists. The concepts often don't work: Tales of Mystery and Imagination lacks a sonic sense of the macabre to satisfactorily match Poe, with the reading of A Dream Within A Dream by Orson Welles on the re-release failing to better German synthpop band Propaganda's take on the same poem (nicely played here over footage from Powell & Pressburger's A Matter of Life and Death- June! June!)

These days the Project is probably best known for the opening instrumental from Eye In The Sky, Sirius. Much like Michael Nyman's Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds is the quintessential Country House music, Sirius sits alongside Eye of the
Tiger in being quintessential sports build-up music, thanks largely to its use by the unstoppable Chicago Bulls team of the 1990s, but also a number of other teams, including, of late, Manchester City.

So, why is the Project less appreciated these days? That they dropped their first album in 1976, arguably after the heyday of popular Prog Rock, doesn't help: many a history of the genre would not posit them as being overly significant in its development.

The band may be better viewed through a post-ironic filter by labelling them Yacht Prog, alongside Duke-era Genesis and perhaps Nude-era Camel. Noting that they are insufficiently avant-garde and often too over-produced (unsurprising given Parsons' producer as band member role) to be praised on artistic merit alone, they did produce enjoyable vaguely proggy pop numbers. Using this Yacht Prog tag we can then accept the music, much like Italo-Disco, through its uncool/cool and crap/good dualities.

Man On Ledge

2009-03-08T16:14:00.000Z

Two of my favourite films of last year were Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg and James Marsh's Man On Wire.

Guy Maddin is a fairly unique voice in cinema. He has long been going to painstaking lengths to ensure his films echo the style of early cinema - taking clear influence from film noir, Eisenstein's agit-prop and German Expressionism. He was hauntological before the term existed. Others may have recently borrowed this retrofied style, see for example Esteban Sapir's enjoyably pulpy La Antena, but Maddin takes his films into the bizarre and psychosexual - one only need look at Careful, his incestuous take on the German mountain movie.

Recently Maddin has delivered a series of semi-autobiographical works, the latest of which is My Winnipeg, a docu-fantasia looking at his hometown. The film sees Maddin (appearing through voiceover) trying to escape Winnipeg. He decides to film his way out of the city- subletting his old home and hiring actors to play his siblings in order to recreate childhood events with his 'real' mother (played by the late Ann Savage, best-known for her femme fatale role in Edgar G. Ulmer's low-budget noir Detour). All the while, using stock and created footage, Maddin discusses events and landmarks in the history of the city. Some details are clearly true - when the city's NHL side the Jets moves to the more wintry climes of Phoenix (becoming the Coyotes), the team's former home, the historic Winnipeg Arena, is made redundant by the erection of a new ice arena, the MTS Centre, on the site of the beloved Eaton's department store, but this new arena apparently has too small a capacity to entice back an NHL franchise. Other events seem more flights of fancy - the winter when horses froze in the lake, with only their heads protruding; or the public baths consisting of three stacked, segregated swimming pools. However, with Maddin's seamless blending of footage, and further of fact and fiction, it is often hard to tell which parts are actually true. While this might come across as a problem in less capable hands, Maddin is so witty and inventive that, real or not, his Winnipeg is the one you want to believe in.

Man On Wire is a documentary about the high wire walk performed between the Twin Towers in 1974 by Philippe Petit. Carried out without consent, Petit enlisted a group of friends to help him achieve the feat he had dreamed up before the Towers had been constructed. Combining both real and recreated footage, the plot is played out in the film like a heist, gripping you in spite of its well-known conclusion. However, no footage of the wire walk itself exists. This compares interestingly with My Winnipeg: one 'recreates' footage of imagined events, while the other cannot do this for its central, real event. And yet, this is no flaw: understandably it is impossible to recreate the event for real, and no amount of trickery would do it justice. Instead, by simply using still photographs, the vertiginous moment is given a strange air that borders on the surreal, recreating the wonder of the onlookers (or, rather, 'uplookers'), trying to believe the unbelievable.

The one issue I have with the film is in its use of the music of Michael Nyman, culled mainly from the films of Peter Greenaway. Having seen these films, I so strongly associate the music with them, that they evoke strong senses of Englishness (particularly Chasing Is Best Left To Shepherds, as mentioned in a previous post) that seem at odds with the tale of a Frenchman in New York.

Much of the enjoyment of the film though comes directly from the extraordinary personality of its protagonist, which was perfectly illustrated when Man On Wire picked up the award for best documentary at this year's Oscars.

Today, I didn't die.

2009-03-01T19:05:00.000Z

One of the films I'm most looking forward to at the moment is Crank: High Voltage, the sequel to the Jason Statham film, Crank. For those that haven't seen it, here is the trailer for the first film.

So, the Stath plays Chev Chelios, a hitman. At the beginning he wakes up groggy with a DVD nearby, on which a gangster informs him he has been injected with the 'Beijing Cocktail'. This will kill Chelios if he cannot keep his adrenaline above a certain level. This is essentially Speed with Statham being the bus. But whereas that film simply required the bus to stay at a high speed, Crank uses many methods for Chev to keep himself alive, played out in real-time. Herein lies the stupendous brilliance of the film, you struggle to keep your jaw off the floor as Chev headbutts a succession of hoodlums, shouts "Al-Qaeda!" at Arab cab drivers and practically rapes his girlfriend in a bustling Chinatown street. However, the conclusion of the film sees (SPOILER ALERT!) Chev fighting his enemy in a helicopter at a great height and then in freefall. Chev has sufficient time on his way to the ground to snap the gangster's neck, and then phone his girlfriend and apologise to her. The impact upon hitting the ground would be more than enough to kill anyone, but not our Chev, as two heartbeats are heard before the end credits roll. So now we have a sequel:

Thankfully they have managed to come up with an even more absurd premise for Chev to put himself through hyper-strenuous ordeals: Chev must shock himself with jolts of electricity to keep ticking the mechanical heart which the gangsters replaced his natural one with. Fairly recently there have been two bizarre/intriguing additions to the credits. Firstly, slick-haired, wacky-vocals man Mike Patton is to score the film. This is probably a good thing, one only need look at Fantomas' The Director's Cut album to see he is a man of good cinematic taste, and an aficionado of fine soundtracks (Mancini, Herrmann, Rota, Morricone, Badalamenti, Komeda). More importantly though, Geri Halliwell has apparently been cast as a "chavvy mother" (her words). One only need look at her previous acting credits (Spice World, Sex and the City, the acclaimed film-adaptation of the Viz comic strip Fat Slags) to see that her performance will be a surefire shoe-in come next year's awards season.

Commercial break

2009-02-20T15:11:00.000Z

Once upon a time (1999/2000), you couldn't get away from Moby. His music was perpetuated through adverts, since every song on his album Play had been licensed for commercial use, and as a result buyers practically knew the whole album before they'd picked it up off the shelf. Nowadays, however, you're hard pushed to see any adverts using one of those songs. This prevalence is perhaps a sign of how dated the material is.

The same cannot really be said for the music of folk-minimalists Penguin Cafe Orchestra. Their music is often found in television programmes and adverts, many have heard them without consciously knowing it, often producing an "Oh, this is that music!" response. And yet it is 20-30 years since these pieces were recorded and 12 since the group ended after the passing of leader Simon Jeffes. This likely stems from their timeless nature; they seem like arrangements of traditional pieces despite being original compositions, and they are never used as part of a period aesthetic.

First up, Music For A Found Harmonium, as performed here on a BBC broadcast in 1989. A Celtic-leaning cover of this by Patrick Street has been used recently on MFI adverts, and a BBC advert used the abhorrent dance remix by Steve Mac, a producer-of-choice for Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh.

From the same broadcast, Perpetuum Mobile, which has been used for Hewlett-Packard, Knorr and HP sauce.

And finally, Telephone and Rubber Band (here played over reversed footage from Fritz Lang's excellent Metropolis), which seemed destined for use by One2One/T-Mobile.

As a postscript, here is another piece of music that is also unconsciously familiar to many. If we think of big country houses onscreen, the music we hear is inevitably Michael Nyman's Chasing Sheep Is Best Left To Shepherds from the Peter Greenaway film The Draughtsman's Contract.

Father Brian Eno

2009-02-19T00:26:00.000Z

In an era of library music blogs and Trunk Records, there's an odd obscuro music fan to note in Father Ted's Father Dougal McGuire, who ticks the idiot box for the sterotype of an Irish man, who appears in a plethora of jokes with his brethren from across the Irish Sea.

We first encounter this music taste in the Song For Europe episode, when, admittedly, Dougal has, as Ted puts it, less of a record collection and more of a record. That record is by Nin Huugen and the Huugen Notes, which earned them fifth place in Song For Norway in 1976. The pair then shamelessly look to steal the tune for their own attempt at earning the right to represent Ireland in Europe's premier song contest, My Lovely Horse.

However, Dougal has apparently expanded his record to a collection by the time of the later episode, Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep, in which he is listening to BBC Sound Effects Volume 4. He also goes to the local shop to see if he can get Volume 5, without luck (this seemingly minor plot point then plays back into the main plot in a manner that befits Seinfeld).

Perhaps Dougal has fleshed his record out with, recent production for bland mega-sellers aside, records from the esteemable guest who appeared in the last episode of Father Ted.

Alka Seltzer

2009-02-10T20:46:00.000Z

Before I start posting properly, a message from our sponsors...