tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65590014813783833282024-03-19T00:32:45.367-07:00Aeternal FluxA blog about the avant-garde music scene in Melbourne and parallels elsewhere featuring the video production work of Vile Vortices. Also incorporating occasional film/literary discussion, other reflections on contemporary culture. WARNING: Discussion of films and novels over five years old may contain SPOILERS. Any contributions and comments are welcome.Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-42869972507645593962016-03-24T07:28:00.001-07:002016-07-03T21:46:16.001-07:00AUSTRALIAN AVANT-GARDE CLASSICS: THE NECKS – HANGING GARDENS<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="line-height: 200%;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="line-height: 32px;"> <a href="http://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/the_necks/hanging_gardens/"><img alt="The Necks - Hanging Gardens" src="//rymimg.com/lk/f/l/6b6c6e48da31729e5f6a73b785fb0322/1410925.jpg" /></a></span></div>
<div>
<span style="line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For almost 30 years now, Australian trio The Necks have been pursuing a singular methodology: process-oriented improvisation unfolding within the interstice of jazz and minimalism. Their seventh album<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Hanging Gardens</i>, released in 1999 on their Fish of Milk label and then internationally two years later on ReR Megacorp, is an exemplary display of pianist Chris Abrahams, bassist Lloyd Swanton and drummer/guitarist Tony Buck’s collective gestalt. Its single, hour-long title track is a logical culmination of the direction set by their 1989 debut <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sex</i>, a concluding thesis of groove-based jazz before the incorporation of post-rock textures and reductionist silences on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Aether</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mosquito/See Through</i> and<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Chemist</i>. With the release of their new album <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vertigo</i>, there’s an extended tendency towards drone minimalism apparent in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mindset</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Open; </i>enhanced spatiality inundated with a colour density akin to Spectralism's expanded palette. Their approach to process is no less fecund as it encompasses </span><span style="line-height: 200%;">pure sound over rhythmic structures</span><span style="line-height: 200%;">.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a class="irc_mutl i3597" data-noload="" data-ved="0ahUKEwiAzfyct9nLAhVDIqYKHYmyCt4QjRwIBw" href="http://www.thenecks.com/presskit" jsaction="mousedown:irc.rl;keydown:irc.rlk" style="background-color: #f1f1f1; color: #660099; cursor: pointer; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 0px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; outline: 0px; text-align: center;" target="_blank"><img class="irc_mut" height="441" src="https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSOFlcB8Em5Dg3TdkeG8eV5Yvr1imLWIxdDSq4t0p3AUQeC_V6T" style="border: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65098) 0px 5px 35px; margin-top: 0px;" width="659" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Necks: Left to Right - Chris Abrahams, Lloyd Swanton, Tony Buck.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The inspiration of Miles Davis’ Electric groups<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>permeates<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Hanging Gardens</i>, an influence palpable since their second album <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Next</i> (1990), the off-kilter <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">On The Corner</i> swagger of ‘Nice Policeman, Nasty Policeman’ in particular with its McLaughlin-esque guitar stabs and avant-funk keyboard figures. Buck’s drumming mesmerizes in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Next</i>’s Latin American-flavoured epic ‘Pele’, shifting patterns of metronomic rhythm suggesting a dreamy fusion of Temptations hand claps and Tony Williams’ ‘It’s About That Time’ backbeat. By the release of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Aquatic</i> in 1994, groove had morphed into submarine glide, primary bass and keyboard themes creating soothing shapes like bands of dappled light amongst coral outcrops. Space-riddled minimalism infused the 1998 soundtrack of the suburban crime drama <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Boys</i> with claustrophobic tension; a perfect aural complement to the film’s opening shots of bare light bulbs in empty hallways. Stylistic properties in oppositional balance coalesced in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hanging Gardens</i>: the gravitational force of repetition versus the levitation pull of ethereal texture. Among this group’s most satisfying releases, it boasts an internally consistent style that embraces other scenes; a millennial summation of the era’s more promising musical pathways in hiphop and electronic dance music. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBBfgiJNZIl1hvcYQyymqLJ3xmmtaCJH9DEVG39t1JwNsCoZdr61igtnnWS29bip5_zV1bxJst-sDsdMQOtddV2j7ozU1KBpDEb6HbNTKnJH220EcbO6YkTibrUWedkkG-rhlk5FryTqQ/s1600/MilesDavis-electric.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBBfgiJNZIl1hvcYQyymqLJ3xmmtaCJH9DEVG39t1JwNsCoZdr61igtnnWS29bip5_zV1bxJst-sDsdMQOtddV2j7ozU1KBpDEb6HbNTKnJH220EcbO6YkTibrUWedkkG-rhlk5FryTqQ/s320/MilesDavis-electric.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Miles Davis in his Electric period, early 1970s.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Necks participated last year in an international series of concerts commemorating the release of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Discreet Music, </i>Brian Eno’s landmark 1975 album. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hanging Gardens</i>’ lapidescent amalgam of stasis and transformation has a parallel in ‘Iced World’, a track from the ambient pioneer’s 1997 cyberjazz release <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Drop</i>. Buck’s drumming is livelier and more busily polyrhythmic than the gentle locomotion of Eno’s programmed ride cymbal and simple bass pulse, but the two pieces similarly crystallise a luscious anxiety. Subtle music built of basic elements, constantly alternating between prosaic repetition and ecstatic illumination. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSAbu-0J1k7OGR9APQP_8CGVkzapAv5XF9VpZ53Sk1GEnBYvKID3UUBwvxfXtEO_Mi-1Cy0t-GIR8ADGakffoB_cIP02PCx64E5eDh2IZK3louon5L9BWbY12WI5hQbDfv9w5GsuMO02k/s1600/Brian_Eno_2008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSAbu-0J1k7OGR9APQP_8CGVkzapAv5XF9VpZ53Sk1GEnBYvKID3UUBwvxfXtEO_Mi-1Cy0t-GIR8ADGakffoB_cIP02PCx64E5eDh2IZK3louon5L9BWbY12WI5hQbDfv9w5GsuMO02k/s320/Brian_Eno_2008.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bran Eno, June 2008.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mathematician John Conway’s ‘Game of Life’ computer program and its aesthetic implications - simple rules that produce complex results - found sublimation in Eno’s music and infiltrates The Necks’<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>by osmosis. Abrahams’ rudimentary piano/organ/synth patterns, Swanton’s protozoan bass and Buck’s rhythmic palpitations gain elegance in combination. Interaction becomes a lattice, writhing with iridescence; properties that would seem unsophisticated in isolation acquire an alluring gleam, music that unfolds over the length of an hour has the durability to enthrall over that distance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtpBDXVXb1A6NdPPTocRy41fvV8Q5EKcAGZ3uMG5KcKwfE_n3RatrgY_F0Suo7qjbDP3BvmFbREPSiy97QOKON_pZf58i-Rik1_zTJebiif50t3eSOrMcoHPzHIy3MYzRDWYqKHMQhS20/s1600/The_Necks_at_The_Corner_Hotel_Melbourne_Australia.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtpBDXVXb1A6NdPPTocRy41fvV8Q5EKcAGZ3uMG5KcKwfE_n3RatrgY_F0Suo7qjbDP3BvmFbREPSiy97QOKON_pZf58i-Rik1_zTJebiif50t3eSOrMcoHPzHIy3MYzRDWYqKHMQhS20/s320/The_Necks_at_The_Corner_Hotel_Melbourne_Australia.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Necks at The Corner Hotel, Melbourne, February 2010. Photo by Nick Carson.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The trio was heading in a more elemental musical direction, but rhythm and melody is crucial to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hanging Gardens</i>. Buck’s frenetic, breakbeat-like drumming is reminiscent of the halcyon days of jungle techno, the aura of Elysian euphoria surrounding Goldie tracks like ‘Sea of Tears’ from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Timeless</i>. The Necks recreate something of that sense of hearing a new futuristic jazz, digitally enhanced and turbo-charged, but also those paranoid moods of entrapment that darkcore producers conjure with their jittery recombinations of the Amen break. Abrahams’ stately piano theme, the track’s melodic highlight that first enters at the 22 minute mark and then again at 47 minutes, has a pop sensibility that seems spun as much from the 80s jazz-lite songbook of Joe Jackson as the regal touch of Bill Evans’ chord progressions. As a stalwart of the Australian pop scene, the pianist is no stranger to the tunesmith’s trade, having brought his skills as a player to bear with charting acts like The Whitlams and in songwriting partnership with singer Melanie Oxley. What startles and gladdens about the theme as it materialises is a matter of context: melody sounds adrift here, resonating on the horizon like a mirage promising balm to a traveller moving with futile speed along a vast, asymptotic curve. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjglyfhyphenhyphen2nFyi0raAMp8DUaQLWMcel1HurRoMzsJqPpS4W2w7lyx_AM3_CfdflEVRRzyoaDupU2mwbVKd4yG9ObYrZh0KPknexmcnoWuX7iK1nRtt5avLMbNSmPxsisD15KtVX8UBx3c8A/s1600/necksBW_1_.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjglyfhyphenhyphen2nFyi0raAMp8DUaQLWMcel1HurRoMzsJqPpS4W2w7lyx_AM3_CfdflEVRRzyoaDupU2mwbVKd4yG9ObYrZh0KPknexmcnoWuX7iK1nRtt5avLMbNSmPxsisD15KtVX8UBx3c8A/s320/necksBW_1_.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Necks also seem to draw inspiration from sampladelia’s elevation of loop and juxtaposition. There’s a similarity of results to sampling process rather than the boom-bap schematics of hiphop: selecting a moment that contains the most piquant qualities of funk or soul in a track, looping it and bringing it into conjunction with the disruptive element. The paradigmatic reference here is that alluring snatch of bluesy Isaac Hayes piano thrown into a cauldron of scratchy disjuncture on Public Enemy’s ‘Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos’. The Necks bring together both in real time and studio overdubbing what could be a succession of such looped moments, but subjected to gradual change in live performance. Swanton’s bass alternates throughout between a unifying one-note pulse and tumbling cycles of transitional phrase that hint at forward thematic motion without fully delivering. Something magical occurs when an organ motif wreathed in glowering Leslie speaker/wah-wah ambience, its cadence redolent of the noir milieu of the trio’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Boys</i> soundtrack or Larry Young’s ‘Khalid of Space’, is juxtaposed with the gentle optimism of Abrahams’ piano theme. The former is no less menacing, the latter no less conciliatory, but their alignment accentuates their psychoactive qualities, like interstellar matter with diverse origins on an orbital spiral into a black hole, radiating with greater ferocity as drawn nearer to singularity.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9lfkJlxzKLfctCB4GpFzYcgZO0uuHkbaA1u1GAjxInXZZUzHp8ybxAVcrCr8rpMK7ejbRjxBteI8GKy_1BBTl-_qx44Rd_b-QAHwbXc3DtnXRBJKvF-SECJDxUPEyPcjv7We3HbRdjaU/s1600/The-Necks-trio-shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9lfkJlxzKLfctCB4GpFzYcgZO0uuHkbaA1u1GAjxInXZZUzHp8ybxAVcrCr8rpMK7ejbRjxBteI8GKy_1BBTl-_qx44Rd_b-QAHwbXc3DtnXRBJKvF-SECJDxUPEyPcjv7We3HbRdjaU/s320/The-Necks-trio-shot.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Necks - L to R: Tony Buck (drums), Lloyd Swanton (bass), Chris Abrahams (piano).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The willingness to engage with formal elements from pop and techno as well as minimalism sets The Necks apart from other jazz practitioners. Consider music released by Barry Guy, Evan Parker or Marilyn Crispell through such labels as ECM and Leo in the late 90s. Beautiful, exploratory work much of it, but from a more rarified milieu, the hermetic tradition of free improvisation. By embracing fundamental melody, drone and the loop, The Necks’ music sounds more open-aired and just as open-ended. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyeE3FuDNSjquEFHFETMGr5ioxwWSCwxY_M6ZnxIkzn6u9JIHgiMUlrOnC5FECKFLWKUGxcJIZMYBBP2M4eB8onk8o6Sl1vicyBnW5CIQIrel_xy5Gd7JpxF3aNhgCpacWtZoyjfLTL-Q/s1600/the-necks-640x427.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyeE3FuDNSjquEFHFETMGr5ioxwWSCwxY_M6ZnxIkzn6u9JIHgiMUlrOnC5FECKFLWKUGxcJIZMYBBP2M4eB8onk8o6Sl1vicyBnW5CIQIrel_xy5Gd7JpxF3aNhgCpacWtZoyjfLTL-Q/s320/the-necks-640x427.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The trio has drawn fire from purists for this repetitious simplicity, but such criticism only raises deeper questions about the inherent subjectivity of musical appreciation and the perception of genre. Isn’t one man’s dumbing down another’s discovery of wit in concision? Does self-indulgence or lack of taste exist in prolonged displays of extended technique just as much as scalar noodling? Jazz as category has always entailed hybridity as well as reverence for tradition: from its foundational syncretic bonding with elements of classical, blues and other folk forms, through Schullerian Third Stream, fusion and Chicago Underground post-rock participation, with minimalism as another evolutionary bud. The trio operates between poles of hypnotic repetition and micro-melodicism that have already been validated by such luminous forerunners as Terry Riley and Steve Reich. And regardless of their collective origins, is it accurate to strictly label The Necks a jazz group, any more than it is to apply that descriptor to an outfit like Kammerflimmer Kollectiv, whose propensities towards ambient and noise mirror zones Chris Abrahams has explored in his solo work? All that matters in the end is that performance and structure, composed or improvised, engage the contemplative faculties - emotion and imagination. It’s music of fluid boundaries and vortical fascination that makes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hanging Gardens</i> an essential entry point for nascent post-<u>everything</u> aficionados, just as Miles’ psychedelic fusion albums were in the 1970s. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<br /></div>
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
<o:AllowPNG/>
</o:OfficeDocumentSettings>
</xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:EnableOpenTypeKerning/>
<w:DontFlipMirrorIndents/>
<w:OverrideTableStyleHps/>
<w:UseFELayout/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="276">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-ansi-language:EN-US;}
</style>
<![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%;">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>© Copyright Jonathon Kromka 2015<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-89523315691549500762015-12-28T20:05:00.000-08:002016-06-22T19:39:09.415-07:00Magma's 'De Futura' - French apocalyptic prog in excelsis<br />
<br />
<img src="http://montecarlosbm.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Magma-art.jpg" height="372" style="background-color: #1b1b1b; color: yellow; font-family: Telex, sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333px; line-height: 16.6667px; text-align: center;" width="400" /><br />
<br />
"I don't always listen to 'De Futura' in the morning before I go to work, but when I do, I lose my job." This comment from a fan who's posted the Magma track on YouTube is presumably meant in jest; it certainly raised a chuckle of recognition from this fellow musical traveller. There's such euphoric rage in bassist Jannick Top's composition - an intolerance for routine, conformist patterns - that you could certainly imagine a receptive listener, one perhaps fuelled by illegal stimulants, responding to it at day's beginning with employment-threatening enthusiasm. Scope out the media sharing site for a clip made by the late documentary filmmaker Michel Parbot from a live performance of 'De Futura' at the Hippodrome de Pantin in 1977; along with the definitive version of 'Köhntarkösz' from <i>Live/Hhaï </i>(1975), one of the French progressive rock group's finest moments. In this truncated, but still devastatingly effective version of the 18-minute track from <i>Üdü Ŵüdü</i>, you'll find enough of the bridge-burning attitude hinted at in the poster's comment to inspire a whole statute book of Platonic censorship. It's also a neat synthesis of the musical and visual facets of this group's paradigm-disrupting agenda.<br />
<br />
Magma were unique in the progressive music landscape of the 1970s for the epic scope of leader Christian Vander's conceptual vision. A multi-album science fictional sequence, with its own invented language of Kobaïan, it makes oft-referred to examples of prog excess like the Yes and Genesis double concept albums <i>Tales from Topographic Oceans</i> and <i>The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway</i> seem lacking in ambition. A reconfiguration of standard rock instrumentation also set them apart. Keyboards and guitars, vehicles for virtuoso heroics in other contexts, are assigned a more textural or rhythmic role. Bass is often the foremost instrumental voice while the group's vocalists draw on a fusion of the operatic and choral traditions of Wagner and Orff, jazz scat projections and soul shouts to convey the melodic themes. Rock's visual dynamics are similarly reoriented in Parbot's video. Klaus Blasquiz may be the main singer at the front of the stage here, but there's no doubting drummer Vander is the head shaman. Those who can't get on this music's aggressive wavelength might find his manic intensity subject for ridicule. If you can, it's thrilling to see an artist so completely in the zone, so absorbed in organised sound as a magnet for spiritual energy.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Christian Vander" class="img-responsive" src="http://expose.org/assets/img/features/629/vander-christian-medalion.png" style="background-color: #1b1610; border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: #fff6dc; display: block; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; height: auto; line-height: 22.8571px; margin: 4px auto; max-width: 100%; vertical-align: middle; width: 270px;" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Christian Vander</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
Ardor in performance is well served by a masterful combination of dramatic close ups and the highlighting of surreal contrasts and non-sequiturs. Vander's shots are often juxtaposed with the other drummer Clement Bailly like some Apollonian-Dionysian double act. Bailly's face is a model of steely self-possession, accentuated by authoritarian moustache and shades under a protopunk mohawk; Vander's a shifting portrait of grimaces, <i>grand mal</i> twitching and wild-eyed, ecstatic entrancement, his limbs flailing at the kit with frenzied, but unerringly accurate abandon: what Iggy Pop might have become if he'd stayed behind the drum kit and not allowed his raging id an entire stage to prowl on. Cutaways to the female backing vocalists show them swinging their arms to this thuggish, Dante-esque funk as though it was the latest bubblegum pop hit. The clip's final switch to pulsating strobe is intercut with photographic stills from the world's trouble spots. Starving African children and Viet Cong prisoners follow upon subliminal flashes of Vander's haunting strobe-lit stare and the girls air drumming, as though psychically linked to their leader's visionary state, over a synthesizer's air siren-like wail. Visual metaphors perfectly matched with the music's apocalyptic fervor. It's one of the best music videos of the 70s.<br />
<br />
<img alt="magma.jpg" src="http://b00mb0x.org/blog/magma.jpg" style="background-color: #383838; border: none; color: #d4d4d4; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 11px; line-height: 15.4px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; max-width: 788px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;" /><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Magma's style of rhythmic complexity and operatic drama has given rise to the genre of zuehl whose chief luminaries such as Ruins have in turn extended its influence into the realms of math rock and progressive metal. The building of tension common to these genres through the cognitive destabilisation of rhythmic asymmetry has its origin in Magma's driving force, but there's an emotional remoteness in much of the math rock genre outside of Slint and Don Caballero's more Beefheartian currents. By contrast, Vander drew inspiration for his highly spiritual music from his personal hero, jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, and the American soul of Motown and James Brown. A gradual evolution is discernable from the early albums (<i>Kobaïa</i>, <i>1001º Centigrades</i>) which mixed chamber jazz-rock in the style of Frank Zappa and Soft Machine with proto-Laibach totalitarian chanting and military marches out of Ennio Morricone's soundtrack for <i>The Battle of Algiers</i>. By the time of <i>K.A.</i> the group were still cruising over similar warm two-chord vamps as <i>Third</i>-era Softs. <i>Köhntarkösz </i>saw the introduction of avant-funkier elements that found their most gloriously malign expression in 'De Futura'. The two-part, 30-minute title track's dense canvas of glistening Fender Rhodes patterns and paroxysmal rhythms suggests Miles Davis' electric period, a music whose psychedelic globalism had the blues as its spiritual core. Psychedelia teased formal mutation out of traditional blues for other artists in the late 1960s as well. The version of Howlin' Wolf's 'Smokestack Lightning' from <i>The Howlin' Wolf Album</i> (1968) extends its core riff beyond the original's tight cycle within a standard metric boundary into a rambling, serpentine form. The more typical, sleazy blues-funk motif that comes in later in 'De Futura' is like the 'Smokestack Lightning' original of the more steeply contoured anti-melody. Elongated syntax over suspended groove is given even more baroque form in this primary theme, a sci-fi synth motif as iconic as Pierre Henry's 'Psyche Rock' has become since its evocation in the title tune of animated television series <i>Futurama</i>, and as filled with jaunty dread as Miles' 'Black Satin'.<br />
<br />
It took someone who was part of the Magma body corporate but not its leader to write 'De Futura'. The way it intuits the utopian-dystopian dialectic in Vander's Kobaïan mythopoeics and finds churning expression for its irresolvable frustration (Jannick Top appropriately named his later solo project Infernal Machine) suggests a lieutenant's objectivity rather than a commander's investment. In previous Magma albums, expressions of spiritual elation and optimistic joy are often undercut by angst and unease. Sonic depictions of Herculean struggle are rewarded with hallelujah choruses, only for the celebrations to be invaded by snarling goblins. There's a constant uncertainty in this rhythmic urgency - an expression of <i>elan vital</i> or the death drive? Its dualism has never been more perfectly sublimated than in 'De Futura', whose knotty guitar and bass riffs are like math problems that nag at the conscience as well as the intellect. Of the zuehl groups that followed, Ruins invested this concept of music as tricky equation with a manic, hyper-cartoonish vibe that readily found a home on John Zorn's Tzadik label. Only Shub-Niggurath went all the way into its darkness, forming a link in Messiaenic angularity with atmospheric black metal on Southern Lord.<br />
<br />
<img alt="Üdü Wüdü" class="embiggen" data-lightbox="{"image":{"height":495,"width":500,"formatid":16,"author":"","copyrightOwner":"","imageTypeId":0,"zoomLevel":null,"url":"http:\/\/cps-static.rovicorp.com\/3\/JPG_500\/MI0002\/184\/MI0002184912.jpg?partner=allrovi.com"}}" src="http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_400/MI0002/184/MI0002184912.jpg?partner=allrovi.com" itemprop="image" style="background-color: white; border: none; cursor: pointer; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; line-height: 12px; margin: -1px 0px -2px -1px; max-width: none;" title="click to embiggen" width="303" /><br />
<br />
<br />
Vander's vision of humanity's future struggles towards spiritual awakening, with its bizarre depictions of messiahs who urge on mass suicide, has attracted its share of fascist accusations. It has a sensibility formed in an understanding that the battle for supremacy between fascism and democracy is an ongoing one; not consigned to history, but continuing in each individual psyche. His narrative for Magma is too convoluted and eccentric to interpret it as an attempt to expunge the historical stain of Vichy collaborationism as it's possible to hear an exorcism of the Third Reich's unquiet geist in the darker side of cosmic krautrock (i.e. Neu!'s 'Negativland' with its modern-day jackhammers unearthing stone tapes of Nuremburg rallies; the ghastly punning title of Amon Duul II's 'Soap Shop Rock' and the music's supernatural threat and Wagnerian digressions; Can's <i>Tago Mago</i> - surely one of rock's great concept albums of the unconscious - with its Vodoun rhythms rendered with relentless martial precision, its Crowleyian world domination incantations floating in echo so spatially vast as to suggest the psychoacoustic equivalent of cosmic background radiation). Nevertheless, Vander's music contains enough multivalent scope to render it as timeless in its emotional appeal as these other worthy examples of troubled 70s progressivism.<br />
<br />
(C) By Jonathon Kromka. 2015Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-61073541647981952582013-08-02T17:41:00.000-07:002017-04-16T00:32:45.620-07:00BEN WHEATLEY'S KILL LIST: A CRITICAL APPRECIATION<a data-ved="0CAUQjRw" href="http://bt.shu6.edu.cn/mdb/view/6523137/" id="irc_mil" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRJepvIp_m-P6tkprIyzJ-0dcOaBOy49y8nCOjrOsJBP_C54Nse" height="600" id="irc_mi" style="-webkit-background-size: 21px 21px; -webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; background-color: white; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)), -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)); background-position: 0px 0px, 10px 10px; background-size: 21px 21px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; margin-top: 8px;" width="458" /></a><br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Some genres</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">, like crime and horror,</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> have a relationship so symbiotic they intertwine like helical strands in cinema's DNA. Common cinematographic elements like low-key lighting and asymmetrical compositions have their origins in German Expressionism, a movement that shone chiaroscuro light on the macabre and the subaltern. There's a common patrimony for existential themes and oneiric logic in Franz Kafka's magic realism. The publication in 1978 of William Hjortsberg's novel <i>Falling Angel</i> saw a more reflexive blurring of stylistic boundaries, paving the way for a Satanic supervillain like Keyser Soze to invest Bryan Singer's crime film <i>The Usual Suspects </i><span style="font-style: normal;">with Gothic menace</span>.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> Like <i>Angel Heart</i>, Alan Parker's 1987 adaptation of Hjortsberg's novel, the 2011 British thriller <i>Kill List</i> has its protagonist increasingly unhinged as he's drawn under the influence of dark conspiratorial forces. But director Ben Wheatley goes beyond noir pastiche in his pan-generical approach, rendering army veterans turned contract killers with contemporary verisimilitude. This stylistic conglomeration isn't a Loach-noir mash-up, nor a period piece as effective as Hjortsberg's rendering of the tropes and cadences of Raymond Chandler, but a strong contemporary story, stylistically multi-layered yet unified in effect. The film achieves a rare claustrophobic power for aligning social realism with a philosophical core of horror usually neglected in favour of genre conventions like giant monsters, sexy vampires or the ubiquitous living dead. </span></div>
<div style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<a href="http://5plitreel.wordpress.com/2011/08/27/cine-coverage-kill-list-2011/" id="irc_mil" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="http://5plitreel.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/killist.jpg" height="644" id="irc_mi" style="-webkit-background-size: 21px 21px; -webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; background-color: white; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)), -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)); background-position: 0px 0px, 10px 10px; background-size: 21px 21px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; margin-top: 111px;" width="1144" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Neil Maskell's portrayal of hit man Jay builds on a menacing persona he started fashioning with Wheatley in the BBC comedy series <i>The Wrong Door</i> and further developed in Nick Love's <i>The Football Factory</i> (2004). In the great cinematic tradition of the baby-faced psycho, his boyish features act as a palimpsest for wounded expression, something prematurely aged and fractured lurking behind the eyes. (His portrayal of Arby in Dennis Kelly's conspiracy theory TV series <i>Utopia</i> is like a combination of Jay and a lobotomised office worker character from <i>The Wrong Door</i>. Another great character, but Maskell's in serious danger of being forever typecast as the psychotic hitman if he isn't careful.)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The film opens with Jay in the middle of a vicious dispute with his wife Shel (MyAnna Buring, an alumna of <i>The Wrong Door</i>). He's been unemployed for eight months and the family (Jay, Shel and son Sam) has gone through their savings. He says he's got a bad back; she says it's all in his mind. He could be any male provider in recession-hit Britain: worried about his occupational limbo and impending destitution, increasingly alienated from his family - a source of pressure as much love and support for him. His best friend and business partner Gal (Michael Smiley), a fellow Iraq War veteran, comes to dinner one night with new girlfriend Fiona (Emma Fryer) who's been told they're travelling salesmen. Shel, also ex-army, is the manager of what's really a contract killing operation. Their last failed mission in Kiev has sent Jay into a spiral of depression, probably the real cause of his job shyness. We never learn what happened there, but there are suggestions a child was killed. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; font-family: Times; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<div id="irc_mimg" style="display: inline-block; left: 0px; padding-top: 20px; position: absolute; right: 0px; width: 1184px;">
<a data-ved="0CAgQjRwwAA" href="http://shotthroughawindow.wordpress.com/2011/09/08/kill-list/" id="irc_mil" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px;"><img src="http://shotthroughawindow.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/kill-list1.jpg" height="801" id="irc_mi" style="-webkit-background-size: 21px 21px; -webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; background-color: white; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)), -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)); background-position: 0px 0px, 10px 10px; background-size: 21px 21px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; margin-top: 32px;" width="1144" /></a></div>
</div>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="font-style: normal; line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span> <span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span> <span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span> <span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span> <span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span> <span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span> <span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span> <span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span> <span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jay is persuaded to return to work, but not without one last defiant outburst. As a response to Shel and Gal's jibes about his negligence of filial duty, he overturns his still food-laden plate on the dinner table and pulls the table cloth out with a sarcastic "Abracadabra!" Its childishly off-hand, almost unconscious aggression; a frightening revelation of Jay's mental instability. He's like a puppet of his own emotions. </span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 200%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Their new client (Struan Rodger) knows about the Kiev mission and insists on sealing the contract with his and Jay's blood. Gal suspects they've been working for their new employers for some time under different guises when he discovers files in the homes of the hit targets containing information about their activities. There's an unreal contrast between the anonymity of the settings in which they go about their work and the targets' puzzling familiarity with Jay. All of them seem to welcome their deaths and thank Jay for the honour of being dispatched by him. </span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">These plot details create an atmosphere that unsettles exponentially, an affect complemented by Laurie Rose's cinematography; as hyperreal and skewed a perspective on Britain's urban and rural environments as the work of Rob Hardy, Igor Martinovic and David Higgs for the <i>Red Riding</i> trilogy. Deserted suburban landscapes, wind energy props lazily spinning, evoke Michelangelo Antonioni's cinema of alienation. A rainbow's arc spans the screen, radiating surreal menace. Wheatley incorporates other semiotics that act as clues to occult conspiracy, just as author Ira Levin and director Roman Polanski used the contemporary detail of the 1966 Time magazine 'Is God Dead?' cover in a doctor's waiting room to suggest a wider anomic milieu in <i>Rosemary's Baby</i>. In <i>Kill List</i>, there are intertitles for each of the hit targets - The Priest, The Librarian, The MP - that conjure up social archetypes and the nomenclature of Tarot cards. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "times";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Aleister Crowley and Dennis Wheatley are often referenced when the film enters weird fiction territory, but there are more contemporary parallels. Horror writer Ramsey Campbell's black magic realism similarly encompasses paranoid schizophrenic revenge killers (<i>The Face That Must Die</i>, <i>The Count of Eleven</i>), evil cults (<i>The Parasite</i>, <i>The Nameless</i>) and </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">subliminal connections between urban decay and the supernatural</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">British genre filmmaker </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Philip Ridley's <i>Heartless</i> (2009) set out with a promisingly Campbellian <i>mise en scene</i> (the orange glare of sodium street illumination, graffiti-lined underpasses, nightmarish figures half-glimpsed in the windows of abandoned houses). But Ridley's preference for the played out trope of the Faustian bargain, territory better handled by Hjortsberg and Parker, felt like a betrayal of promise. <i>Kill List</i> is the most effectively Lovecraftian British film since Clive Barker's <i>Hellraiser</i>. Its hand-held realism reflects the assimilation of the American writer's documentary technique in the <i>Blair Witch Project</i>/<i>Cloverdale</i>/<i>Quarantine</i>/<i>Apollo 18</i> 'found footage' tradition. Its lingering connotative tension has a match in the atmospheric density that Campbell achieves in prose.</span></span></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.brixpicks.com/the-face-that-must-die-a-19764.html" id="irc_mil" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img src="http://www.brixpicks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Untitled-11.jpg" height="481" id="irc_mi" style="-webkit-background-size: 21px 21px; -webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; background-color: white; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)), -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)); background-position: 0px 0px, 10px 10px; background-size: 21px 21px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; margin-top: 193px;" width="890" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">JK Potter's photomontage illustrations for Ramsey Campbell's <i>The Face That Must Die</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In his cultural survey <i>Danse Macabre</i>, Stephen King categorised H. P. Lovecraft as a writer of 'outside' horror': his mythopoetic pantheon of demonic Old Ones are vast, pan-dimensional beings, capable of destroying the human race in the fulfillment of some obscure agenda with far greater ease than we annihilate other terrestrial species in the pursuit of our interests. This tradition taps into fears of the unknown that are as old as the religious impulse itself. King contrasts this with the 'inside' horror of aberrant psychology as explored in the works of Thomas Harris; a literary sub-genre that stretches from Robert Bloch's <i>Psycho </i>to James Hogg's <i>The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner</i>. 'Outside horror', in King's reading, deals with externalities over which the characters have no control and therefore needn't feel any complicity. 'Inside horror' deals more with moral issues of free will, the choice of evil over good. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">King has incorporated cosmic horror elements effectively in his own fiction, notably in 'The Mist' and <i>It</i>, but his Providence idol's oeuvre isn't suited for this critical dichotomy. Lovecraft wasn't just a fantasist, but also a 'deterministic materialist' whose grim universal stance was informed by evolutionary theory and space-time relativity. His protagonists don't just experience their horrors in the form of some transcendental Kantian Sublime, as Bradley Will has it, but realise them immanently as well, as Gilles Deleuze knew. For Lovecraft there is no clear separation between inside and outside, between subjective will and objective reality; they're attributes of the same materiality, its ultimate nature unknowable and utterly alien. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The cult that manipulates Jay and Gal is either peopled by deluded adherents of a sociopathological neo-pagan groupthink or that belief system is real within the film's fictional borders. Jay's character is a dualistic synecdoche for political or supernatural influences. His exponential mental destabilisation can symbolise a parallax diffusion of power and violence, one of multidirectional volition and shifting agency, as well as a paranormal traversal of ontology. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">In Lovecraft and Campbell's fiction, supernatural force is more often than not intimated; the reader senses its influence in the description of setting or character behaviour rather than manifested in action. The only significantly magical element depicted in <i>Kill List</i> is the occult symbol that appears with the film's opening credits and drawn by one of the characters on the back of Jay's bathroom mirror. Nevertheless, there's a cosmic menace. Jay may be cracking up from a combination of psychological factors: lingering damage from wartime experience; whatever happened on the Kiev mission; financial pressures. But what manner of gateway is that symbol's harsh geometry intended to unlock?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; font-family: Times; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<div id="irc_mimg" style="display: inline-block; left: 0px; padding-top: 20px; position: absolute; right: 0px; width: 1184px;">
<a href="http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&docid=GxZnmZ-gCMvq5M&tbnid=cWngD9E9jXfMLM:&ved=&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdamonwise.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F08%2Finterview-with-ben-wheatley-director-of.html&ei=POXjUeqfOYWRkwXO_IGwDg&psig=AFQjCNEu_VxIR9po2PLCUClfXYfVG498tw&ust=1373976252994233" id="irc_mil" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQ_zep68-a9I4FH6N7JoQB7R4kFl3ndcUU0AezUfpx5Rr9lx4bf" height="866" id="irc_mi" style="-webkit-background-size: 21px 21px; -webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; background-color: white; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)), -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)); background-position: 0px 0px, 10px 10px; background-size: 21px 21px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; margin-top: 0px;" width="652" /></a></div>
</div>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Wheatley's bold lack of exposition allows the viewer to experience the characters' perspective and something of their predicament, pulled along by the undertow of circumstance and conspiratorial machination. <i>Kill List</i>'s eerie sound design enhances this effect; there are moments of aural dislocation that recall another Warp Films production, Shane Meadows' <i>Dead Man's Shoes</i>. Sound keeps the film's vertiginous shifts in genre seamless, its tonal momentum organic. One of the recurrent motifs in Jim Williams' score is atonal whistling: a potent signifier of psychosis. For horror fans, its spookily evocative of the mad piping made by the acolytes of Azathoth, the blind idiot god - Lovecraft's metaphor for the random forces of evolution. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Supernatural horror and political metaphor fuse in <i>Kill List </i>against a background of economic catastrophe, fertile ground for what Slavoj Žižek calls the 'parallax nature of violence.' In his <i>Living in the End Times</i>, the Czech philosopher argues "an economic crisis which causes devastation is experienced as uncontrollable quasi-natural power, but it should be experienced as violence." The GFC spreads waves of its own mutating brutality, just as an avalanche of social and political repercussions saw the Great Depression transform into World War Two. This metamorphosing energy can manifest in directionless criminal activity like the 2011 London summer riots. Or entrepreneurial offshoots of the shadow economy like Jay, Gal and Shel's contract execution business. Human resources specialist Fiona, a paragon of the official economy and all its bureaucratic dissemblance, tells them there's a lot of "dirty work" to be done in a recession. Gal jokingly calls her a "hatchet man", but she assures them there's nothing personal in her duties when out 'de-forcing'. Jay asserts it is nothing but personal for the families of the employees whose jobs she terminates. The fear of unemployment is raw for him, a personal abyss he doesn't dare stare into.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; font-family: Times; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<div id="irc_mimg" style="display: inline-block; left: 0px; padding-top: 20px; position: absolute; right: 0px; width: 1184px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span></div>
</div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jay's gradual absorption into a conspiracy of violence - his agency undermined by forces both seen and unseen - recalls the fate of Warren Beatty's investigative reporter in <i>The Parallax View</i>. The symbolic centrepiece of Alan J. Pakula's 1973 political thriller was a short film the undercover reporter has to watch as part of his training to become a corporate hitman. A semiotic montage of still photography and comic book panels depicts cycles of oppression and heroic </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">vengeance</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. In a feat of symbolic paranoia beautifully reflective of the movie's fractious time, this film within a film is a psychic map of America: a deterritorialised maze of violent, ego-driven impulses. Hideous snuff pornography discovered in The Librarian's lock up seems intended to engineer a psychotic reaction in Jay. Gal has to look away, but Jay is transfixed, his tortured features twisting in the monitor's reflected light. He goes off-list to target the video's producers, triggered into action by a violent collective hatred of those who would disseminate such detestable material. There's a transition from helpless depression during his period of unemployment to increasingly unhinged retributive agency as working hitman. He justifies the act to Gal as rough social justice; but does he also need to redirect perverse feelings the video has provoked?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Camped out on the MP's estate as they prepare for their final hit, Jay sounds genuinely forlorn when he tells Gal he doesn't understand where the anger inside him comes from. Its a scene that registers as political metaphor for the internalisation of parallax violence, invisible until seen from the proper vantage point. It's also a signpost for the film's supernatural undercurrents, foreshadowed by the unsettling juxtaposition of childhood reverie and slow-motion flames as Jay and Gal dispose of the pornographers' remains. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Casual political conversation during the dinner party implies a wider nexus of moral decay, of social progress set in reverse. In a discussion about the recession and 'de-forcing', Jay raises the Nazi regime's readiness to eliminate 'extraneous' social elements, foreshadowing his rationalisation of off-list activity. His isolation may be palpable, but in no way do we feel his are isolated views. Every parent can sympathise a little with his expressed desire to exterminate all child molesters. But there's phenomena conveyed within such a statement that offend liberal conscience: the 'taking out the trash' argument of right-wing vigilantism, the race-to-the-bottom moral posturing that passes for political debate by shock jocks or the virulent bigotry often visible in internet commentary; what sociologists call the online disinhibition effect in overdrive. A pervading sense emerges of a dystopian polity on the rise, poised to grant utilitarian equivalence to Jay and Gal's execution service and the death squads of police states. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The Nazi reference also evokes, within the film's wider thematic structure, a mythology that evolved in the latter half of the twentieth century around the Third Reich's fusion of totalitarianism and the occult. First disseminated in Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwel's <i>The Morning of the Magicians</i>, it's a popular trope in James Herbert's novel <i>The Spear</i>, Campbell's <i>The Parasite</i> and Spielberg and Lucas' <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i>. Politico-occult evocations reach their zenith in the pagan ceremony Jay and Gal discover on the MPs estate. The ritualistic hanging of a young woman dressed in pound notes carries echoes of the Californian occult site of Bohemian Grove, that obsession of radio host Alex Jones. For him the yearly gathering for the Sacrifice of Dull Care is a Luciferian ceremony, symbolising the freedom of political and financial elites from social conscience. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; font-family: Times; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<div id="irc_mimg" style="display: inline-block; left: 0px; padding-top: 20px; position: absolute; right: 0px; width: 1184px;">
<a href="http://toomuchhorrorfiction.blogspot.com/2010/11/paperback-covers-of-ramsey-campbell.html" id="irc_mil" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img src="http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQOaOf1dof9QA80UlkCaGZYxIEGO-SqzT2oOOaMTTBeY_MhHiwm" height="759" id="irc_mi" style="-webkit-background-size: 21px 21px; -webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; background-color: white; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)), -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)); background-position: 0px 0px, 10px 10px; background-size: 21px 21px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; margin-top: 54px;" width="477" /></a></div>
</div>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; font-family: Times; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<div id="irc_mimg" style="display: inline-block; left: 0px; padding-top: 20px; position: absolute; right: 0px; width: 1184px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://dirtyhorror.com/2012/08/15/review-kill-list-2011/" id="irc_mil" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px;"><img src="http://dirtyhorror.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/killlist_big1.jpg" height="866" id="irc_mi" style="-webkit-background-size: 21px 21px; -webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; background-color: white; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)), -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)); background-position: 0px 0px, 10px 10px; background-size: 21px 21px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; margin-top: 0px;" width="1128" /></a></span></div>
</div>
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The worldwide web's viral spiral amplifies a millenarian zeitgeist. The end-of-the-world scenario of Lars Von Trier's <i>Melancholia </i>(another cinematic highlight of 2011) reflected hysteria generated by Internet doomsday groups around Earth's orbital rendezvous with Planet X/Nibiru and the significance of December 21, 2012 in the Mayan calendar. Paranoid conspiracy theories about the Illuminati seem to underline <i>Kill List</i>'s intimations of a corrupt elite exerting demonic control over an atomised society. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Melancholia</i> had its own transgression of outside and inside boundaries: Justine's misanthropic depression finds its wish-fulfillment in the titular planet's collision course with Earth. Apocalyptic denouement unfolded at a measured pace, the relativistic scale of cosmological force looming over family drama. <i>Kill List</i>'s speedier narrative pacing and jump-cut editing suit an even darker eschatology. Psychological desolation </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">hurtling through</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> a serrated continuum of cinematic time. A nightmare plunge into a moral void something like Michel Houellebecq's crystallisation of Lovecraft's vision: the delineation of "universal laws of egoism and malice."</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"></span><br />
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; font-family: Times; line-height: normal; text-align: center;">
<div id="irc_mimg" style="display: inline-block; left: 0px; padding-top: 20px; position: absolute; right: 0px; width: 1184px;">
</div>
</div>
<a class="irc_mil i3597" data-href="http://books.google.com/books/about/H_P_Lovecraft.html?id=dFJlAAAAMAAJ&source=kp_cover" data-noload="" data-ved="0ahUKEwiqrpf-rpfLAhVBLKYKHfpBBRoQjRwIBw" href="https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=imgres&cd=&ved=0ahUKEwiqrpf-rpfLAhVBLKYKHfpBBRoQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%2Fabout%2FH_P_Lovecraft.html%3Fid%3DdFJlAAAAMAAJ%26source%3Dkp_cover&psig=AFQjCNEhChe5tt-h2HpOfRcDPuyG2lRu9A&ust=1456642681309615" jsaction="mousedown:irc.rl;keydown:irc.rlk" style="background-color: #222222; border: 0px; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: 0px; text-align: center;" target="_blank"><img class="irc_mi" src="http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTTt7dNA3lQn3R7AFyHWK_Ujg6xtUU1CFg0TFO9Gdh9HinQGGmR" height="646" style="background-color: white; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)), -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)); background-position: 0px 0px, 10px 10px; background-size: 21px 21px; border: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65098) 0px 5px 35px; margin-top: 0px;" width="405" /></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Wheatley, in writing and editing partnership with wife Amy Jump, is a filmmaker with considerable skill in being able to pull at several different affective strings in his viewer at once. It's this emotional dimensionality, exemplified in character ambiguity and wry humour, that keeps a bleak film like <i>Kill List</i> from being as dispiriting as the preceding exegesis might suggest. Jay and Gal may be a couple of murderous thugs, but they're also funny guys and as affectionate as their damaged psyches allow.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Canny musical choice is also integral to this director's method. Wheatley's cult cool credentials were boosted by the use of classic krautrock as extra-diegetic music in his next film <i>Sightseers</i> (the opening bars of Neu!'s 'Lieber Hoenig' as repeated motif and a kind of theme tune for one of the characters is an appealingly strange touch). Frankie Goes to Hollywood's 'The Power of Love' was used in a crucial moment with obvious ironic intent, but there's the hint of a romantic sensibility behind the jest. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Joan Armatrading's 'It Could Have Been Better' plays on <i>Kill List</i>'s soundtrack when </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Jay and Shel attempt to reconnect </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">after the dinner party's ructions</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">. It's an emotional ballad suitable for a film that up to this point has been a form of domestic drama. But this scene represents more than just a lull in marital conflict and the song takes on a powerful elegiac quality. It's a lament for England's social contract (a major theme as Wheatley and cast have emphasised) and for all its post-traumatic stress disordered war veterans and economic refugees. A moment of fragile, shared empathy, illuminating the movie's darkening psychological terrain with almost Gnostic intensity. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">(C) JONATHON KROMKA 2013</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-41203997883489639742013-05-04T06:35:00.004-07:002016-06-23T08:06:58.324-07:00Masterpieces of 70s TV Horror: 'Baby' from Nigel Kneale's BeastsMore often than not, it's a losing game when the adult fan of horror-themed films and television tries to recapture childhood thrills. Images and concepts that were once deeply impressive are now mundane. Special effects or monster designs that a kid will buy into completely are an unconvincing rip-off to the grown-up who tries to rediscover their <i>frisson</i>. Rarely, a jewel with staying power can be found amongst the dross, rising above technical limitations or mediocre performances.<br />
<br />
During a recent YouTube search for BBC adaptations of M. R. James stories, I stumbled across a video package someone's put together of scenes from classic 70s British TV horror. At the end of the montage is the terrifying, culminating image of a teleplay that disturbed me profoundly when I first encountered it as an eight-year-old. For years, unaware of the name of the program or its author, this scene would sometimes come to mind like a beacon of possibility after viewing horror fare that failed to satisfy. The teleplay is called 'Baby', produced in 1976 as part of a series of Nigel Kneale stories called<br />
<i>Beasts</i>.<br />
<a data-ved="0CAUQjRw" href="http://islandofterror.blogspot.com/2012/04/beasts-baby.html" id="irc_mil" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px;"><img height="384" id="irc_mi" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlfqitTcNHliNQQv9YqXU0vRzwkRa2rqxLfUwrNoRyzTjFQjMYRk_DYMf8UzmWn24siOX0WBBS56up8ckD_BuZi-cwjWQnwoGNhTmgW03ZJd1BI4C8Kv9gjGmHlCdTxWFhoNIdl50Ci3Q_/s1600/Beasts+-+s01e04+-+Baby.avi_snapshot_02.10_%5B2012.04.10_20.34.16%5D.jpg" style="-webkit-background-size: 21px 21px; -webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; background-color: white; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)), -webkit-linear-gradient(45deg, rgb(239, 239, 239) 25%, transparent 25%, transparent 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239) 75%, rgb(239, 239, 239)); background-position: 0px 0px, 10px 10px; background-size: 21px 21px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.648438) 0px 5px 35px; margin-top: 116px;" width="512" /></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 19px;"></span><br />
<div class="rg_hv" data-initialized="1" id="rg_h" style="-webkit-box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.199219) 0px 4px 16px; background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(204, 204, 204); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; box-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.199219) 0px 4px 16px; display: block; margin-bottom: -8px; margin-left: -8px; margin-right: -8px; margin-top: -8px; padding-bottom: 8px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px; position: fixed; visibility: hidden; width: 160px; z-index: 5000;">
<div class="rg_hc uh_hc" id="rg_hc" style="height: 55px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; text-align: left; width: 160px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
Kneale remains one of the most revered of British screenwriters and was the author of the esteemed <i>Quatermass</i> quartet of science fiction-horror television programs. The film based on the <i>Quatermass and the Pit </i>series made by Roy Ward Baker for Hammer Films in 1967 fits the categorisation outlined above perfectly; the special effects are a bit ropey, the acting can be a bit off the mark, but there's an enduring philosophical gravity in its premise, a compelling atmosphere in the story's structure and execution. On recent reacquaintance, 'Baby' has lost very little of the power it had for me as a youngster. It's a reminder of a time when creators of terror for the small screen, often with limited budgets, relied on their faith in a good story rather than CGI effects and flashy editing (a tendency that sometimes spoils recent, more ostensibly professional television productions like <i>American Horror Story</i>).<br />
<br />
<i>Beasts</i> was a six-part horror anthology with a double meaning in its title: each story has a particular creature as its focus, but they're also metaphorical examinations of man's bestial nature, our capacity for the inhumane. 'What Big Eyes' has an insane amateur scientist attempt to reveal the truth contained in legends about lycanthropy, but it also deals with a father's psychological cruelty towards his daughter. 'The Dummy' tracks a downtrodden actor's descent into madness and ultimate identification with the monster he plays in exploitation films. On one level, these televisual plays work fine as psychological dramas rather than strictly genre-based pieces. There are two episodes in the series that are pure horror stories - 'During Barty's Party', in which a rat invasion occurs that is all the more terrifying for being unseen, and 'Baby' which deals with pregnancy and the occult.<br />
<br />
'Baby' is a ghost story in the M. R. James mould, but there's also some parallels with American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft's 'Dreams in the Witch House'. Interestingly, Kneale said he'd never read Lovecraft - he came up with his own distinctly British version of cosmic horror through the influences of James, H.G. Wells and the culture of myth and superstition in his native Isle of Man. A Ramsey Campbell short story of the same name was published in 1976, the same year <i>Beasts </i>was aired, but originally written two years earlier. Campbell's 'Baby' also centres on the theme of the witch's familiar, but it's an urban pulp shocker in the EC Comics tradition, set in his native Liverpool. Kneale's 'Baby' draws in a Jamesian fashion on the occult eeriness of the English countryside.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: white; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 0px;"><img class="CSS_LIGHTBOX_SCALED_IMAGE_IMG" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRVL668tR3ZXidSwNrSuGVsootFCQH5LRiuhOBkIjuks_JsJ_B16jX56lNxl7hOEYQeR_ei26kI-q9lB_j-xWVOc9x5uAU2IC-a4YZNUoQyE-SMXmDEnFiV_EQStCDRsimcP4cXzNV-muX/s1600/Beasts+-+s01e04+-+Baby.avi_snapshot_23.50_%5B2012.04.10_20.35.16%5D.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; height: 384px; outline-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); outline-style: solid; outline-width: 1px; position: relative; width: 512px;" /></span><br />
<br />
Campbell and James are masters of terror glimpsed from the corner of the eye and, to use a term Campbell uses for what he admires in the best of Lovecraft's work, the 'orchestration of effect' through the accumulation of oblique, suggestive detail. The 'glancing phrase of fear', to quote Campbell again, is a phenomenological approach to horror, capable of greater psychological resonance than the sensational tactics of the jump scare and gore: along with the apparitions and unearthly sensations, there are also queasy insights into the obscure workings of our own brains. The Kneale story features a young pregnant woman who, like the Mia Farrow character in Roman Polanski's <i>Rosemary's Baby</i>, may be suffering from a severe case of prepartum paranoia or undergoing a genuine encounter with the occult. Simple, unadorned camerawork and editing create the feel of real time pacing despite frequent transitions; this Bazinian sense of reality in John Nelson Burton's direction, combined with the ambiguous nature of the story, produces a distinctly unnerving atmosphere.<br />
<br />
Peter Gilkes (Simon MacCorkindale) wants to contribute his veterinary skills somewhere he can be of real benefit rather than treating pampered city pets, so he and pregnant wife Jo (Jane Wymark) have moved to the country. An earthen pot containing a mummified animal is discovered during the renovation of their old cottage. Peter can't work out what the creature is and neither can his partner Dick Pummery (T.P. McKenna) or the two workers who are carrying out the renovations, Stan Biddick (Norman Jones) and Arthur Grace (Mark Dignam). It's described variously as a piglet, a cat, a lamb with claws and a monkey, but all agree it's a deviation from natural processes of conception and birth. Peter suggests some random farmyard inter-breeding was involved. It looks to him as though the thing was never actually born.<br />
<br />
Jo's immediate maternal uneasiness is heightened when Arthur, a local with knowledge of ancient lore, posits that the creature was brought into being to harness occult energies by "someone wise in them powers." He suggests its purpose would have likely have been harmful. Even more alarmingly to Jo, he's certain it would have had to have been suckled by a human. Through Dick, the couple learns the last childless owners of the house failed to establish a dog breeding business. In fact, no animals have been born in the surrounding land for generations, an anomaly the two vets put down to persistent outbreaks of contagious abortion.<br />
<br />
Like the haunted meadow in Clark Ashton Smith's story 'Genius Loci', the environment around the farmhouse seems to be under the influence of something inimical. Jo's cat flees from the house as soon as it's brought into it. When she tries to locate her pet in a nearby forest, Jo, in turn, flees from a shadow that comes spreading across a pond towards her. It moves in a way suggestive of a bird in flight over its prey, but without any definite form or origin; a disembodied cloak of darkness that emerges out of the surrounding landscape. It's probably the most basic optical effect, and an eerie evocation of cosmic power, as though some patch of interstellar space, some zone of entropic negation, had been tethered by magic and made to crawl along the forest floor. The shadow's accompanied by a sound like a dove's coo, but more threatening and unreal, simultaneously maternal and malevolent. Jo starts hearing this sound around the house and sees other unreal phenomena - a rocking chair moving by itself, the outline of a black cloaked figure disappearing around a corner.<br />
<br />
Full disclosure must be made that the special effects in the climax have all the limitations of the age - the important thing is, it doesn't matter. What has been built up in terms of suspense, suggestion, an impression of inescapable doom, is so powerful that you don't perceive the effect. Your mind goes straight to what is being represented: the embodiment of alien wrongness, of unholy perversion. In 'My Roots Exhumed', a chapter in S. T. Joshi's 2001 study, <i>Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction</i>, Campbell has written about the impression a viewing of the cover of the November 1952 edition of <i>Weird Tales </i>in a newsagent's window made on him as a seven-year-old and on his subsequent career as a writer. Upon finally acquiring the edition a decade later, he realised the surreal vision he thought he had seen was largely a product of his imagination. The actual illustration was much more conventional and his subconscious had acted out of some transformative urge for the other-worldly. Seeing the climax of 'Baby' again recently made me realise that something similar had happened to me with this program. What's gratifying is that my invention was still there in a sense, superimposed on the prosaic actuality. I was able to appreciate once again how effective the teleplay was in creating a sense of horrified anticipation, jolting my youthful imagination into perceiving something more purely nightmarish than what was actually there on the screen.<br />
<br />
The story's strength also overcomes slightly substandard acting. Simon MacCorkingdale, in particular, is overly forceful in his performance, but youthful brashness is in a way apposite for the arrogance and insensitivity of the character. At least John Cassavettes' Guy in <i>Rosemary's Baby</i> had the sense and the skill as an actor to pretend to be caring towards his wife. Peter Gilkes comes across as particularly self-obsessed and pig headed. He rarely expresses any real warmth towards Jo unless there's some intersection between his interests and hers. This marriage is very unstable and the young woman has already experienced one miscarriage; the strained domesticity accentuates viewer unease. Jane Wymark's acting is also a little green and nervous as the pregnant woman, but this actually helps the performance in a way - we feel the vulnerability in the character and sympathise with her growing fear and isolation. Wymark's performance may not be in Farrow's league, but there are compensating character strengths - Jo Gilkes is feistier and more liberated than Rosemary Woodhouse - and they share a similar quality of doomed, youthful beauty. Mark Dignam is good as old Arthur, his vague intimations of ancient sorcery a source of frustration for Jo who, like one of Campbell's unfortunate heroines, is left trying to sort truth from apocrypha in his rural wisdom.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6559001481378383328" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6559001481378383328" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6559001481378383328" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6559001481378383328" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><a href="webkit-fake-url://2DF4C37E-96CA-41EE-956B-9FF847D82561/Beasts+-+s01e04+-+Baby.avi_snapshot_01.51_%5B2012.04.10_20.34.34%5D.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a>All the really great authors of horror fiction that deal with the occult - James, Campbell, Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Algernon Blackwood, Arthur Machen - are concerned with the perennial human questions of evil and power. Somewhere in the past, some person (or what was once a person) has sold his or her soul for access to abominable energies, the repercussions of this act reaching ineluctably into the present. Kneale, who at his best can definitely be counted in the aforementioned literary lineage, manages to compress themes that he had already dealt with on a grand scale in the Quatermass stories in a short form that is all the more potent for its simplicity. They play out in 'Baby' against an aural background of hypnotic quietude - one of the great strengths of the teleplay is the complete absence of music from opening to closing credits. There are no manipulative cues keeping us alert. There's just the oppressive silence of a rural environment, punctuated by the cawing of birds that may well be malign psychopomps.<br />
<br />
The dreamlike Jamesian approach to the ghost story, where the supernatural and the everyday traverse with alarming inevitability, has parallels with the style of Japanese horror films, particularly Hideo Nakata's <i>Ringu</i> and <i>Dark Water. </i>The J-Horror sub-genre has in turn influenced some of the better recent works of American horror cinema. Scott Derrickson's <i>Sinister</i> has an element of gore, but it resides far more in suggestion than the redundant repulsiveness of torture porn. A sustained atmosphere of occult evil lingers in the viewer's mind with greater effect than blunt visceral strategy. 'Baby' is a powerful exemplar of this tradition of subtle, insinuated fear and it's one of the finest works of television horror.<br />
<br />
Text: (C) JONATHON KROMKA 2013. All rights reserved.<br />
<br />
<br />Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-27462448672630125322012-12-08T18:32:00.002-08:002013-04-12T21:07:20.173-07:00BEST BRITISH DVDS OF 2011: THE TRIP<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1px;"><img height="662" id="il_fi" src="http://www.thereelbits.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/the-trip-poster.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 8px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="463" /></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6559001481378383328" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6559001481378383328" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6559001481378383328" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div>
Michael Winterbottom's 2001 film <i>24 Hour Party People </i>presented a new century perspective on England's theory-dense post-punk era from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s. It outlined social transformations for which postmodernism remains a relevant diagnostic tool, despite its misuse by music industry (self-)promoters like lead character Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan). In one scene the Factory Records mogul attempts to justify his flirtation with a younger woman by saying he's "being postmodern...before it was fashionable." This glib aside to camera encapsulates the television presenter's interchangeable qualities as genius promoter and intellectual con artist. Spin control that can glorify a prosaic mating ritual as stylistic innovation permeates the media and political discourse these days with formulaic ubiquity. It's a form of communication with roots deep in the historical construction of rhetoric - as age-old as the self-aware role play that Wilson and his new love interest adopt - yet adaptable to a growing cultural awareness of "the endless play of signs and signifiers."<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1px;"><img height="554" id="il_fi" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzc_usVzWwRuXaf1K_QJAiPaX8O1PrceGAb601Mq1NfpQNi_8bATFo0fd2ElgHX8KZC5Ny7HkShWkgIcQkAiRFbJu-ISEPeccH91o4F7gU3NbX0he2AJGPq_iFGOcoi9-2qn1hxwLjP0s/s1600/partypeople.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 8px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="554" /></span><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6559001481378383328" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
This astute weave of pun and allusion typifies how flexible self-reflexive irony can be in Winterbottom's cinema; it's insinuated in dramaturgical form and foregrounded with brash one liners. The notion of an assumed pre-postmodernity has become a running gag in his oeuvre. Coogan returned in Winterbottom's 2006 movie about a fictitious film production of <i>The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman</i> to explain Laurence Sterne's radical eighteenth century novel was "postmodern, before there was anything modern to be post about."<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6559001481378383328" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 18px; line-height: 20px;"><img alt="" border="0" name="photo" src="http://www.empireonline.com/images/image_index/hw800/4407.jpg" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(246, 246, 246); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-color: rgb(246, 246, 246); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(246, 246, 246); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgb(246, 246, 246); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px;" /></span><br />
<div style="font: 12.0px Helvetica; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6559001481378383328" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6559001481378383328" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
Despite some humorous scenes between Coogan and 'co-lead' Rob Brydon, <i>Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story</i> was something of a misstep for Winterbottom. The major philosophical conundrums and labyrinthian narrative turns of the source text, a novel essentially about a man failing to write his autobiography due to an endless series of diversions, were reduced into a parodic film about the failure to make a film. The end result of Winterbottom's adaptive ambition is a metafiction overburdened by its intertextuality, yet too depthless to be more than ironic pastiche.<br />
<br />
His latest six-part mini-series and film <i>The Trip</i> is more like a good episode of <i>Seinfeld</i> - a celebration of the potential for comedy in the apparent nothingness of everyday life. The self-reflexivity embodied in the Tony Wilson character's quip inhabits this view of the prosaic. It's Winterbottom's most enjoyable combination of postmodernist style and plotless story telling to date.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6559001481378383328" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1px;"><img height="315" id="il_fi" src="http://500.the400club.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/thetrip.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 8px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="400" /></span><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6559001481378383328" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />
According to the writer/director's docu-realist method, Steve Coogan invites fellow actor-comedian Rob Brydon on an assignment reviewing northern English restaurants and boutique hotels for <i>The Observer</i>. As they set out on their journey, he plays Joy Division's 'Atmosphere' on his Range Rover's stereo system. It could be a reference to <i>24 Hour Party People</i>, the actors' first project with this director; Coogan's description of the song as the "perfect soundtrack for this landscape," is a subtle echo of that film's fourth wall demolition.<br />
<br />
He and Brydon portray their own simulacras, composites of fiction and real personality. Coogan is uptight and often miserable, seething with unfulfilled ambition. Brydon is more affable and content with the level of success he's achieved. They continue the combatative rivalry their alter egos had in <i>A Cock and Bull Story</i>, but for all of Coogan's sarcastic put downs there's also something more than a weary tolerance of the irrepressible Brydon. He concedes in a phone conversation to his son that Brydon's a "good friend", but that seems to be something he would never admit to the actor himself.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1px;"><img height="276" id="il_fi" src="http://philistinebrisbane.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/steve-coogan-and-rob-bryd-006.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 8px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="460" /></span><br />
<br />
The genuine chemistry that exists between them, the tension between companionship and irritable competitiveness, creates an imitation of real life with some of the revelatory quality of John Cassavettes' films. There aren't any scenes comparable to Gina Rowlands' increasingly self-destructive Method preparation in <i>Opening Night</i>, the American independent film maker's examination of artistic sacrifice as everyday experience (a thematic forerunner to Darren Aronofsky's <i>Black Swan</i>). <i>The Trip</i> operates through subtle irony rather than melodrama or black comedy, but just as Cassavettes' character study revealed the mania and isolation involved in the perfection of one theatrical actor's craft, we gain insight into the dedication required to develop the skill set of the professional comedian.<br />
<br />
Rob Brydon has made social interaction an extension of his practice routine, throwing impersonations into normal conversation at every opportunity. There's an element of Ricky Gervais' comedy of embarrassment here - a sense of "doesn't this guy have an off switch?" Coogan disdainfully labels Brydon an 'autistic impersonator,' but we later see Coogan practising some of the same voices into his hotel room mirror, such as Brydon's small-man-stuck-in-a-box routine, with a similar neurotic dedication.<br />
<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1px;"><img height="276" id="il_fi" src="http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/12/15/1292428740657/The-Trip-007.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 8px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="460" /></span><br />
<br />
The impersonation is a cornerstone of many stand-up routines, but with a show's peaks come longueurs - sections where a story drags on too long, a joke is stretched too thin. Audience anticipation is also a frustrated willing of the comedian to get back on form. No matter how personable the stage performer, an inherent power dynamic is always palpable. Impersonations in <i>The Trip</i> are part of the fabric of a performer's everyday life, without set-ups and the distancing of public address. During a discussion about Coogan's love life, Al Pacino emerges, all bulging eyes and New York 'tude, from out of Rob Brydon's face as though he were possessed by one of Sybil Dorsett's alters. He christens his friend "Don Coogan" much to Coogan's annoyance. There's an appearance of unconscious naturalism, as though Brydon is an egoless channel for comedic invention, but as there's no telling where improvisation and script begin or end, the impression could be as artificial, as scripted, as one of the 'real' Brydon's television routines. Notions of performance and authenticity are mutable in these two-hander comic scenes, a satisfyingly subversive texture.<br />
<br />
The incessant trading of pop cultural referents in <i>The Trip</i> brings Quentin Tarantino's cinematic world to mind. The American director's work pops up explicitly when Coogan and Brydon begin versioning Abba's 'The Winner Takes It All' in an empty hotel bar. Brydon tries to imitate the song's Swedish composer Björn Ulvaeus reciting the lines he wrote for the group's singer Agnetha Fältskog to perform. Coogan chides the Welshman for sounding like "the Nazi in <i>Inglourious Basterds</i>."<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6559001481378383328" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=6559001481378383328" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1px;"><img height="366" id="il_fi" src="http://resources0.news.com.au/images/2012/01/09/1226239/849140-the-trip.jpg" style="border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 8px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 8px;" width="650" /></span><br />
<br />
The duelling Michael Caines scene has already acquired some of the aura of classic comedy, but there's an equally impressive duelling Woody Allens. This duel is more relaxed, coming at a time when they're both comfortable in each other's company. They trade their impressions of the Allen persona, with less putdowns and aggressive one-upmanship, like a casually tossed frisbee.<br />
<br />
The charm and underlying depth of the whole show owes a lot to this casual quality; two actors semi-improvise a docu-fiction about their everyday lives, the easygoing vibe in tension with an undercurrent of personal tragedy. Long distance phone calls between Coogan and girlfriend Mischa (Margo Stilley) provide narrative substance, but not enough to take us down the clichéd pathways of romantic comedy. Narcissistic dream sequences inject an element of Pythonesque humour, reaffirming the documentary conceit by momentarily shattering it.<br />
<br />
Brydon's and Coogan's comic talents are key elements of the program's success - it's hard to imagine any other combination of actors maintain viewer interest as two guys eating in restaurants and visiting tourist sites. It's Winterbottom's formal playfulness that most suitably frames the constant movement between authenticity and artifice in their performances. Going beyond the dubious tribute of parody, he reveals himself as a more worthy inheritor of Sterne's literary innovations. <i>The Trip</i> has all the benefits of influence, less of the anxiety.<br />
<br />
Text: (C) JONATHON KROMKA 2012Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-51228978396261424312011-12-22T07:56:00.001-08:002012-12-15T03:23:37.532-08:00SECOND MAKE IT UP CLUB VIDEO: CHAOS OF THE HAUNTED SPIREHere divided into two Vimeo clips is a one hour performance filmed and edited by Vile Vortices Productions featuring Chaos of the Haunted Spire, a Belgian experimental free jazz duo comprising Andrew Claes (saxophone and processing) and Teun Verbruggen (drumkit and processing). The set took place on January 26, 2010 at the Make It Up Club, an avant garde improvised music and sound performance program run every Tuesday night at Bar Open in Fitzroy, Melbourne.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1782597727"></a><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/30123079?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="400"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/30123079">Chaos of the Haunted Spire - live Pt1</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user4889433">vile vortices</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
<br />
There are similarities in the duo's high octane combination of jazz interplay and ambient EAI soundscapes with Fireroom, the trio of Lasse Marhaug, Ken Vandermark and Paal Nilssen-Love, but there are caveats to this comparison. Marhaug's electronics add tangential irritant/stimulant value to Vandermark and Nilssen-Love's sax and drums, the cross-fire producing occasional pearls of sonic intertextuality, but the music of Chaos of the Haunted Spire comes from a more organic and hypnagogic zone. Claes and Verbruggen play and then process the results with effects pedals and laptop programming, either singularly or in combination, producing densely interwoven layers of real time performance and analog/digital abstraction. <br />
<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/30658440?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="400"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/30658440">Chaos of the Haunted Spire - live Pt2</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user4889433">vile vortices</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
<br />
As with Miles Davis and Teo Macero's fusion experimentation in the early 1970s, virtuoso musicianship coalesces with samples, chirrupy electronics and cinematic temporal shifts. Teun Verbruggen's stick work can free swing like Hamid Drake and charge headlong into boiling avant-funk like Christian Vander with his Kobaïen dander up. The employment of extended technique, by contrast, has all the delicacy of touch that Verbruggen brings as an accompanist for more restrained jazz composition in the Jef Neve Trio. Claes's playing combines overblown runs with plaintive appeals like a cross between the monstrous plasticity of Toshinori Kondo's trumpet work in the Die Like A Dog quartet and a more strangled version of Courtney Pine's doom-laden sax laments on the <i>Angel Heart</i> soundtrack. The combination of all these elements make for a near hour of stimulating free jazz - complex, exciting and as haunting as the name suggests.<br />
<br />
For more info go to:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.myspace.com/chaosofthehauntedspire">www.myspace.com/chaosofthehauntedspire</a><br />
<a href="http://teunverbruggen.cktail.com/">www.teunverbruggen.com</a><br />
<a href="http://www.myspace.com/makeitupclub">www.myspace.com/makeitupclub</a>Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-19978199526102769412011-07-23T07:40:00.000-07:002011-07-23T07:40:04.216-07:00GRAVETEMPLARS/MARCO FUSINATO - The Toff, 26 Oct, 2010<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">GRAVETEMPLARS - STEPHEN O'MALLEY (SUNN 0)), KHANATE, KTL), OREN AMBARCHI & BRAD SMITH </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrOU4CvhgI_MCcv8fO2oHwl6utYoccMEMgETKquG2Pu1cAwu8BBSlpXjUJbt5FSI8xroPUmC85yCjVo-qzxuu-nuj_WN7r2tB_7gxnRLBSdqm0ZTVfIsS56l4sCuwFhyxmZY3LuOx6XHY/s1600/IMG_6534.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrOU4CvhgI_MCcv8fO2oHwl6utYoccMEMgETKquG2Pu1cAwu8BBSlpXjUJbt5FSI8xroPUmC85yCjVo-qzxuu-nuj_WN7r2tB_7gxnRLBSdqm0ZTVfIsS56l4sCuwFhyxmZY3LuOx6XHY/s640/IMG_6534.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">Marco Fusinato isn’t so much a guitar ‘player’ as he is a conduit for the instrument’s traversal along the path toward amplification. There is less of an inclination to elicit sound in a manner determined by sheer physicality as there is a tendency to let the guitar feedback upon itself in a constantly regenerative cycle with Fusinato stepping in only to disfigure the resulting vibrations. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">In contrast to the feedback bludgeoning typically associated with the headliners, this set amounted to a demonstration by Fusinato of the guitar as a medium through which he articulates and channels an amalgam of sounds characterised in equal measures by an alien quality as it they are by a quotidian familiarity. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">The set evoked the feeling of being surrounded by the static murmuring of a thousand television sets interspersed by almost reverent blocks of silence; this sonic impression was accentuated by the cerulean hues of a subtle lighting arrangement reminiscent of television static in a darkened room.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGQ4NM4F_2dsLScjl9-12FVSbqTmX1PZmhK3aV7yNbhmUUS7VHC6q8TDpvxcJB1ju95hgUqav4ioapfdAlTRGvLs_nVe5V0vuq6_htear5ApIqEUz05ZY8886Bb8EBK0RYL6945cx3Bdc/s1600/IMG_6537.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGQ4NM4F_2dsLScjl9-12FVSbqTmX1PZmhK3aV7yNbhmUUS7VHC6q8TDpvxcJB1ju95hgUqav4ioapfdAlTRGvLs_nVe5V0vuq6_htear5ApIqEUz05ZY8886Bb8EBK0RYL6945cx3Bdc/s640/IMG_6537.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">The O’Malley/Ambachi guitar duo was originally meant to be accompanied by respected extreme metal drummer Matt ‘Skitz’ Sanders as a reprisal of their series of gigs performed under the ‘Gravetemple’ moniker in 2008. Illness ultimately prevented Skitz’s involvement in this particular performance and he was replaced by Melbourne drummer Brad Smith, a participant in a number of grindcore and noise projects. It was interesting to see how O’Malley and Ambarchi would adapt their musicianship to Smith’s autodidactic and vaguely jazz infused approach to grindcore drumming (much in a similar vein to fellow Melbourne drummer Sean Baxter). Indeed, while Smith is of far less renown than the aforementioned guitarists, his role as a drummer granted him the unique opportunity to significantly influence the aesthetic direction of the largely improvised performance.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA-zwGFRwYxjrOWtT9PBUoEbaP5lBNTmRFkUfSa3eTB6sqymNEZLtWxvS0AHoE-fqWAqQagVLLctPHl3Y-px33tVlPK_mLJ5-pTK9dfdDJ4n6_8ZG0BygxYb5jTzymSrVpEHeMuJuXRI4/s1600/IMG_6561.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA-zwGFRwYxjrOWtT9PBUoEbaP5lBNTmRFkUfSa3eTB6sqymNEZLtWxvS0AHoE-fqWAqQagVLLctPHl3Y-px33tVlPK_mLJ5-pTK9dfdDJ4n6_8ZG0BygxYb5jTzymSrVpEHeMuJuXRI4/s640/IMG_6561.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">Contrary to expectations, O’Malley and Ambarchi opted to commence with clean, reverb laden and sparsely phrased guitar motifs which invoked a measured approach on Smith’s part. Ambarchi diverged from this rather startlingly mellow pastiche of sounds with some effects laden nuances; in response, O’Malley eventually directed the piece toward something more typical of the heavy metal idiom. The culmination of the cymbal phrasing which had persisted throughout the set in a pulsating and wholly atavistic battering of the toms blended well with this divergence. </span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaHZFtTLVkhoorjokXicHpPedYuU3v_eusUpIEiVDugAwtaAU3k9mq74-t1FSC51I4mCaha0PXbe8aD0_v616woSZGijtv_X9M_oki4imjL8F1uPVVlNjmD_Ci-ve1BjKpE81k3koVDgA/s1600/IMG_6562.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaHZFtTLVkhoorjokXicHpPedYuU3v_eusUpIEiVDugAwtaAU3k9mq74-t1FSC51I4mCaha0PXbe8aD0_v616woSZGijtv_X9M_oki4imjL8F1uPVVlNjmD_Ci-ve1BjKpE81k3koVDgA/s640/IMG_6562.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">It was at this point that the gig took an impromptu turn with the failure of O’Malley’s amplifier, in response to which he delivered a guitar lesson with relish and legerdemain. Having resolved this issue, the three musicians embarked on the second half of the set which was more characteristic of the Sunn O))) aesthetic. While sonically satisfying for the most part, it was at this point that the interplay between the three musicians did not come across as coherently as it could have. </span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-I9a2ev9FCK5_WTU3iZiRdj123wYH9dbyuYFbgSiJXJzVSlmS3_9SDnLyAFQVi1YlmhvSouBk_Tkv3gZozMiLCAVO8rVyhrdfKieGYbwprOcgb9iWFbm805MUJy4oD2NG34709tiH8ys/s1600/IMG_6557.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-I9a2ev9FCK5_WTU3iZiRdj123wYH9dbyuYFbgSiJXJzVSlmS3_9SDnLyAFQVi1YlmhvSouBk_Tkv3gZozMiLCAVO8rVyhrdfKieGYbwprOcgb9iWFbm805MUJy4oD2NG34709tiH8ys/s640/IMG_6557.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">The repetitious and minimalistic nature of Ambarchi and O’Malley’s guitar playing is such that it significantly limits the scope within which other participants can adapt their playing. Such repetition tends to invite equally repetitious playing admirable for the mental and physical exertion involved. On the other hand, the more imaginative or technically proficient player is often wont to employ a variety of technical skills as a means of complementing this repetition in a climactic fashion. Smith opted for the latter and while his efforts were respectable, it seemed at times that he was at a loss as to where exactly to direct his efforts. Rather than there being any obvious missed cues or false starts, there seemed a distinct lack of awareness and sensitivity to Smith’s subtleties on the part of both O’Malley and Ambarchi. In spite of this lack of engagement, he sought to explore the parameters of his own musicianship, alternating through a variety of drum patterns, fills, blast beats and cymbal rushes. </span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyL6dbljqAjCToYqrai1krPFJadMd6v40CyO2RAeSsJerzVxK5DA15h3IQw2_cDJQTG5NelKclwlLDhyLpX5BI3pDCtdbhGh4ULjzR3hMfv7_O3AevY60WlWHo512vwXoAh8Jzw7Ya8hI/s1600/IMG_6568.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyL6dbljqAjCToYqrai1krPFJadMd6v40CyO2RAeSsJerzVxK5DA15h3IQw2_cDJQTG5NelKclwlLDhyLpX5BI3pDCtdbhGh4ULjzR3hMfv7_O3AevY60WlWHo512vwXoAh8Jzw7Ya8hI/s640/IMG_6568.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">Smith’s efforts were not in vain, however, as his approach to the music was realised toward the latter stages of the set in an uninhibited and frenetic battering of the drum kit as O’Malley and Ambarchi gradually allowed the chord progressions they had thus far played in unison to climatically disintegrate towards a free form exploration of the guitar which could well have served as a tip of the hat to Fusinato. </span><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF8j8Lqp37j1wVEJ-DFKjUKDAvntZmZmnqTfjlENLwOwBBg6upbRTT8ZMKlQXx8bDF7swVSJQKfTvuH7ElPGMRn-YpPZyzOB5N7r8RMksTInjogPNG3sYm5IpCtztm08OfBneYn2n3ZQY/s1600/IMG_6579.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF8j8Lqp37j1wVEJ-DFKjUKDAvntZmZmnqTfjlENLwOwBBg6upbRTT8ZMKlQXx8bDF7swVSJQKfTvuH7ElPGMRn-YpPZyzOB5N7r8RMksTInjogPNG3sYm5IpCtztm08OfBneYn2n3ZQY/s640/IMG_6579.JPG" width="640" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">With any Ambarchi/O’Malley live performance, cripplingly dense guitar tones, irresponsibly loud explorations into the most nadir recesses of the ‘metal’ aesthetic and the occasional smoke machine are a certainty. Yet, the uncertainty and caprice associated with improvised music rendered this performance not as cataclysmically memorable as the Pentemple or Gravetemple gigs which long preceded and inspired it. Still, the gig had its merits. The first half of the set exhibited within these musicians a musicality less dependent on the quality of speaker cabinets than a genuinely harmonised conjuring of atmospheric call-and-response interludes. Brad Smith's efforts demonstrated his imaginative grasp of the drums to far exceed his relatively young years and indicate a promising career ahead within the avant garde idiom.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: large;">Words & Photos: (C) Tony Batsen (2011)</span>Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-87079375115752204472011-06-21T06:51:00.000-07:002012-12-10T04:42:48.988-08:00OREN AMBARCHI AND JOE TALIA: STUTTER @ GASOMETER 26/1/2011<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFpqOqImhLOKuaQoY_gomZU31YUDfiV9Yuu-aYeLDyJeh4g50wVcJ1cuH3rwKaxPKf1L6JCC78K81RNWOIaCFuWqoy_evOoNwpdCJhn6KPmEdNnRhJrOxwMGALG7VbwUJuQnQ4gwaEeUk/s1600/P1260192.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFpqOqImhLOKuaQoY_gomZU31YUDfiV9Yuu-aYeLDyJeh4g50wVcJ1cuH3rwKaxPKf1L6JCC78K81RNWOIaCFuWqoy_evOoNwpdCJhn6KPmEdNnRhJrOxwMGALG7VbwUJuQnQ4gwaEeUk/s640/P1260192.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Experimental guitarist Oren Ambarchi most often performs solo, glitch-laden loops providing the rhythmic currents of his mutant electronica, but it's understandable he's occasionally drawn to having greater metric flexibility at his disposal given his origins as a drummer. His ongoing collaboration with Robbie Avenaim has borne fruit in such landmark recordings as <i>The Alter Rebbe's Nigun</i> (Tzadik, 1999) and <i>Clockwork</i> (Room40, 2005) in addition to recent European and Asian tours featuring Avenaim's MIDI controlled kickdrums and motorised percussion. A set with Mani Neumeier at The Toff in February, 2009 saw that pairing conjure an epic psychedelic rock improv, the German drummer's polyrhythmic expressionism spurring Ambarchi through a spectrum of modes: tentative, melodic phrasing imbued with alpine yearning giving way to drone blasts like Tibetan Buddhist horns; laminar accretions of ostinato and oscillation; fuzz-wah soloing pitched tonally somewhere between John McLaughlin's incendiary acid funk contributions to the psychedelic fusion of Miles Davis' <i>Big Fun</i> and Keiji Haino's vocalistic phrasing. His new venture with Joe Talia represents a further evolutionary stage by fusing live rhythms to the sulfurous FX sculpture of his dark ambient solo improvs.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgocGVaO7lGvgnzn76wprkVc46DOOWqL02v97_di-1jdVLQ2cH7wB7IonR0xqVWBxCyjd8FXpzChpsfyzYtgjzNSo-foPgub_0q2kYJ2fobOoMxnlWFk1-bphkhUgGrP6TgGOrOmqETSzY/s1600/P1260197.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgocGVaO7lGvgnzn76wprkVc46DOOWqL02v97_di-1jdVLQ2cH7wB7IonR0xqVWBxCyjd8FXpzChpsfyzYtgjzNSo-foPgub_0q2kYJ2fobOoMxnlWFk1-bphkhUgGrP6TgGOrOmqETSzY/s640/P1260197.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
As the latest percussion partner for Ambarchi, Talia doesn't fit the mould of exuberant showmanship that Neumeier has made his stock in trade since Guru Guru's festival stealing appearances in the 70s, nor is he an experimentalist like Avenaim who uses automata and sine tones to generate chromatic tension before action painting it with multiple stroke explosions. Talia has a restrained presence and he achieves a nuanced symmetry with Ambarchi's textural soundscapes. As timekeeper for The Escalators, he has a line in hypnotic ride grooves that would do the late Tony Williams proud. His cymbal work provides a shimmering thread through a 20 minute set which imbues improv's archetypal bell curve with contours redolent of the ambient black metal of Ambarchi's group Gravetemple and the progressive fusion of Arcana, Williams' final project.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJB04pIjvqS9KsjKbBso5ee_-na-pkmkDsprGPNX3P-TkAdZhHLu2czB_jZSmjvkoEyetzVFOIZWZjS6mHn13KJr_EE8T8DLjgmfVEw8X6vSwFMmEfvzrQzqJM7Hg5dpa5kxfpT2KeYuk/s1600/P1260272.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJB04pIjvqS9KsjKbBso5ee_-na-pkmkDsprGPNX3P-TkAdZhHLu2czB_jZSmjvkoEyetzVFOIZWZjS6mHn13KJr_EE8T8DLjgmfVEw8X6vSwFMmEfvzrQzqJM7Hg5dpa5kxfpT2KeYuk/s640/P1260272.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
The duo participate in a historical synthesis of jazz and metal aesthetics that reached a high watermark in the release of Arcana's final album, <i>Arc of the Testimony</i>, in 1997. New York-based saxophonist/composer John Zorn, an early mentor of Ambarchi's, pursued stylistic syncretism via disjunctive noir collage and hardcore/hard bop meltdown in the Naked City and Painkiller projects. Bass player/producer Bill Laswell brought a space dub sensibility to Arcana and Painkiller, a suitably liquid medium for jazz-metal osmosis. The Ambarchi and Talia duo extrapolate several plot points on this historical arc. They replace the modal soloing and nebulous head of <i>Arc of the Testimony</i>'s superb opener 'Gone Tomorrow' with avant metal's blackened austerity, but retain its properties of ambient drift and dramatic propulsion, its capacity for sending the listener's imagination hurtling toward a mysterious destination with exultant unease.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfPc4LUXsdOLpMuZE8bitAoUxHdGkHLMtg8dw1LQfNgt4SHqEOubwLIwDm-3cl2MC7lQipk5SLHmYiPE9Zzu_JQFAjXf3aFtdJXFc2COumhCDZmZwC-vCq4tJpAjCQdy9LitHNUxkm9uQ/s1600/P1260211.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfPc4LUXsdOLpMuZE8bitAoUxHdGkHLMtg8dw1LQfNgt4SHqEOubwLIwDm-3cl2MC7lQipk5SLHmYiPE9Zzu_JQFAjXf3aFtdJXFc2COumhCDZmZwC-vCq4tJpAjCQdy9LitHNUxkm9uQ/s640/P1260211.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Ambarchi drapes strands of feedback tones over a ride pattern percolating with triplets. Resonant whines and growls build gradually in volume, emanate through the performance space, then splinter into ululating fragments: in contrast to the menacing dronescapes he creates for the Gravetemple and Burial Chamber trios, these are fractured glimpses of immanence rather than extended Niblockian horizons. A vibrant tension emerges from the juxtaposition of these cocoons of febrile, atonal harmony and the steady rhythm: impermanence and insistency locked in uneasy orbit. Dramatic low end bends, a slight concession to conventional black metal moves, signal a change in phase to greater turbulence.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpOITFjgD1kW22hcH62nIuzs-qtYW-qBOk6CYIk-RBcs_d2qlfLgloqHSVbXNPTSPwtsh9mUhd_tktkVHTCSf8BVKACpeHggvtpxI6BFYpfHd-Y-YtJRQVKDIwPDTRkntKK33nhH8ZkF0/s1600/P1260284.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpOITFjgD1kW22hcH62nIuzs-qtYW-qBOk6CYIk-RBcs_d2qlfLgloqHSVbXNPTSPwtsh9mUhd_tktkVHTCSf8BVKACpeHggvtpxI6BFYpfHd-Y-YtJRQVKDIwPDTRkntKK33nhH8ZkF0/s640/P1260284.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Ambarchi and Talia are drummers who borrow more from free players with the idiosyncrasies of autodidacts than, say, the hyperslick jazz virtuosity of a Billy Cobham, or the dense blast gridwork of Gravetemple cohort Matt 'Skitz' Sanders; their styles are less locked into generic formulae, more capable of blending in with the abstract improvisational settings that are their chosen metier. A good example is Ambarchi's drum solo that enters at the 45 minute mark of <i>The Holy Down</i>, Gravetemple's finest hour (literally) to date. Its chaotic rain of rolls and cymbal splash comes from a more programmatic dimension than your typical metal solo; it's an expression of ecstatic outrage, a cathartic reaction to a succession of blasphemous musical images. In the duo set, Talia provides a more tangential role to Ambarchi's guitar-electronics manipulations, unleashing an ever splintering algebra of snare, cymbal and kick drum. There's a ragged sympathy with the sonic blocks that Ambarchi carves from his set up, brutally extruded shards and mesmeric howls that evoke the strobophonic miasma of Les Rallizes Denudes frontman Takashi Mizutani. <br />
The austerity of this music can be a bit of a dual-edged sword as a certain unification and intensification of effect is allowed to dissipate in the gradual entropic wind down. But even in this emptier section of the set there's arresting detail. Stray guitar phrases ring out with a penumbra of amp hum and signal clicks, like a country station picked up on some randomly swept radio dial. It's reminiscent of that duet with Mani Neumeier where Ambarchi incorporated folk and funk elements with drones and loop layering. At its sustained peak, this is an exciting reimagined jazz-rock that marries all the fluid invention and elemental power endemic to both fields. Its music that deserves to be captured in a recording and released soon; judicious mixing and mastering would accentuate its compelling spatial elements.<br />
<br />
Words & photos: (C) JONATHON KROMKA (2011)<br />
<br />
For more info go to:<br />
<a href="http://www.orenambarchi.com/">www.orenambarchi.com</a><br />
<a href="http://www.joetalia.com/">www.joetalia.com</a>Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-72526907086340742422010-12-15T23:16:00.000-08:002013-05-19T00:10:23.406-07:00Live review: MIUC August 17th - KIM SALMON & DAVID BROWN<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiPNGhaBMxWFKojq_HOoajiZ-NE6Lh5XtzgQUqU0Pf__Bd3TeO5YD5lX2mPBU8EHkkGuYtmd0YW-_6nJ7fRd2iVpcL4yNoM2uEYHlDHwedsufqQqrZJVUKfLHUTLd2bA2u47U6DDRz75Q/s1600/20100817660.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiPNGhaBMxWFKojq_HOoajiZ-NE6Lh5XtzgQUqU0Pf__Bd3TeO5YD5lX2mPBU8EHkkGuYtmd0YW-_6nJ7fRd2iVpcL4yNoM2uEYHlDHwedsufqQqrZJVUKfLHUTLd2bA2u47U6DDRz75Q/s640/20100817660.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Brown (left), Kim Salmon (right) at Make It Up Club, August 17th, 2010</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
Kim Salmon and David Brown reprised their appearance at the Overground component of the Melbourne Jazz Festival for this <i>Make It Up Club</i> set (they've since performed at <i>Stutter</i> and as part of Salmon's month-long residency over November at The Old Bar). The term 'punk legend' gets bandied around with indecent ubiquity, but it's hard to avoid it when discussing Kim Salmon in the context of the Australian music scene of the 1980s/90s. His groups The Scientists and The Surrealists anticipated (arguably bettered) Grunge and he was part of the original line-up of the Beasts of Bourbon with Tex Perkins that cut the epochal album <i>The Axeman's Jazz</i> in 1984. While The Saints' Chris Bailey or Ed Keupper may have enjoyed greater mainstream visibility, it is Salmon who most deserves to be considered Australia's equivalent to John Lydon. He certainly shares the PiL leader's experimental teenage passions (Can/<i>Bitches Brew</i>/Beefheart/Sun Ra) and you can hear elements of those influences in such exemplary locked groove psych as 'Human Jukebox'. The Scientists' 'Set It on Fire' and Beasts of Bourbon's 'Save Me a Place in the Graveyard' are mesmeric engines of simmering aggression built on the juxtaposition of fractal riffage and cruising freakbeat. The title track of the Beasts' 1990 release <i>Black Milk</i> unfolds with all the pagan blues momentum of a late 60s Dr John voodoo rock session. Salmon continued the experimental side of his career with this set which he began with slide guitar and wah-wah, alternating tonal clusters with sonic roots in the blues amidst flavours of Dieter Moebius in dada guitar mode or early Kraftwerk 'Ananas Symphonie'-style Hawaiian exotica weirdness.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirAlfhftfHWNloW_CB30C8upmCzjXCGbjPX9FvnXJ-fA3ytXa-NoIWzabGZakQwvoPtL1bNaHb9diNjZYnzBO-pPYutvPS8om7r-oPIDwKkm4tTdlFQti8di3daYceEH0FNHithjWJL_4/s1600/20100817662.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirAlfhftfHWNloW_CB30C8upmCzjXCGbjPX9FvnXJ-fA3ytXa-NoIWzabGZakQwvoPtL1bNaHb9diNjZYnzBO-pPYutvPS8om7r-oPIDwKkm4tTdlFQti8di3daYceEH0FNHithjWJL_4/s640/20100817662.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
As anyone remotely familiar with the Melbourne experimental scene will know, there are two David Browns. One is the astringent electric master of sustain and distortion and missing link between Robert Fripp at his gnarliest and the unfettered explorations of Derek Bailey; the one who, in a duet for <i>Stutter</i> with Cat Hope last year, submerged the interior of Horse Bazaar in a double bass lavastream of sonic viscosity, air waves roiling with microtones and overtones in subatomic conflict/resolution. And there's the (relatively) quieter, deep listening one of the prepared guitar who performs on this occasion. His instrument of choice is a hollowbody, festooned with various metal appendages, some struck and allowed to resonate, producing a range of buzzing, rattling timbres. Brown's prepared guitar is a beguiling sound world unto itself, his playing an exercise in disciplined command over a deceptively restricted sound palette as demonstrated on the releases <i>Wakool</i> and <i>Mimosa</i>. For this set, his textural sensitivity blends in and leavens Salmon's methodology which, in this era of digital sampling and Ableton Live processing, could be described as art brut concrète.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFJ4PEwBPxQkvqbsRBkADDUgKAoJ7iPn5uhfIvFe5OdoIiNLg-Se9NpqsznG6B8VwAGs7UNb2MEIXNvPFA6_-NeosT57IGo-uuiR9683L1mWejVaWo2muT4A45yJBCjtqoaa2sCKHYDDo/s1600/20100817665.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFJ4PEwBPxQkvqbsRBkADDUgKAoJ7iPn5uhfIvFe5OdoIiNLg-Se9NpqsznG6B8VwAGs7UNb2MEIXNvPFA6_-NeosT57IGo-uuiR9683L1mWejVaWo2muT4A45yJBCjtqoaa2sCKHYDDo/s640/20100817665.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
Salmon has two dictaphones hanging around his neck and he uses them as primitive time machines in the experimental vein of William Burroughs, Ian Sommerville and Brion Gysin, generating and overlapping temporal striations to which Brown adds real time counterpoint. The two-chord Hawaiian blues theme is played back into the microphone, a trebly, distorted simulacra used as accompaniment for more low-end bluesy lines. Various feedback sonorities, dirty and fractured, begin to intersect. Another dictaphone in ultra slow playback mode is added to a sustained whine from the hollowbody, Brown manipulating it by placing a finger on a resonating string.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglwhTw9V96LQb7a4zUVfTtui82oiVJlZeRrN-uSLIhkFh2xDBlYmj7k5IliPMhYnvMxkMtu3z4FF3JoTNtJ6yu1mtK9o-2O_uezkvYaOp8Z4JJ4q7BWUCWTW6trtnQRRCzJaw1I2vkUz4/s1600/20100817666.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglwhTw9V96LQb7a4zUVfTtui82oiVJlZeRrN-uSLIhkFh2xDBlYmj7k5IliPMhYnvMxkMtu3z4FF3JoTNtJ6yu1mtK9o-2O_uezkvYaOp8Z4JJ4q7BWUCWTW6trtnQRRCzJaw1I2vkUz4/s640/20100817666.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Strategies utilising electromagnetic interference gradually dominate the performance: Salmon unplugs his guitar and uses his thumb to create rhythmic manipulations of the cord signal; Brown drops chains onto the guitar's face and moves metal held close to the body, generating dive bombing variations in tone that suggest hydroacoustic Doppler effect and conjure sonar pulses sucked into chasms. Brown then sets to rubbing an agitator over the guitar body, a whirring milk frother that strikes the strings and resonators at oblique angles, coaxing shifting metallic timbres. Towards the end of the set he summons distressed whale song by gently stroking the guitar with rubber mallets while Salmon's slowed down dictaphone recordings of deconstructed blues descend into a soundscape pitched between ethereality and electric mud. This is process music at its most enjoyably unhinged, where final destination is irrelevant and the accumulation of detail in drifting simultaneity all.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDyHn4qmkqBBlIKnL-HDlJxX9JSirNIevs8GtdzuVp1CnvW2_Kojsuji4VTCJpxC7vtenDEqr97Z_x-RmAqIruN3jugWTC3HVokkoKEAtbTewHxc-9T3oaqoaODwpjM2YXy-s5rzvAz1I/s1600/20100817669.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDyHn4qmkqBBlIKnL-HDlJxX9JSirNIevs8GtdzuVp1CnvW2_Kojsuji4VTCJpxC7vtenDEqr97Z_x-RmAqIruN3jugWTC3HVokkoKEAtbTewHxc-9T3oaqoaODwpjM2YXy-s5rzvAz1I/s640/20100817669.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
JONATHON KROMKA (C) 2010 <br />
<br />
For more info go to:<br />
<a href="http://www.candlesnuffer.org/">www.candlesnuffer.org</a><br />
<a href="http://www.myspace.com/candlesnuffermusic">www.myspace.com/candlesnuffermusic</a><br />
<a href="http://www.myspace.com/kimlsalmon">www.myspace.com/kimlsalmon</a>Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-82341671792374569122010-12-11T17:20:00.000-08:002012-12-14T19:24:21.548-08:00Live Review: TUCCERI/FEBBRAIO/ELLIS - MIUC August 17th<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtnYr0hJw-qWyyECii98Pb3Xg6gdlOpypeoZXVCrhTG-gNUQSHVctCFLO5EjK8l7bxtXneQQX4sprrVJEi7fHkN4lGJfsnL7h3wkdafFbUEXUiv5FGdI2GduL2ZSoQLb3FJFUUqxIgIS0/s1600/20100817673.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtnYr0hJw-qWyyECii98Pb3Xg6gdlOpypeoZXVCrhTG-gNUQSHVctCFLO5EjK8l7bxtXneQQX4sprrVJEi7fHkN4lGJfsnL7h3wkdafFbUEXUiv5FGdI2GduL2ZSoQLb3FJFUUqxIgIS0/s640/20100817673.jpg" width="640" />0</a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dan Tucceri (far left) and Julian Febbraio (far right) being introduced by Make It Up Club host Sean Baxter (centre)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
Dan Tucceri plays through a Marshall amp, the brand name of which has been detourned with masking tape so it reads 'arshole' - a winning touch from the outset and one that sums up his whole eclectic approach which owes a good deal to the Mr Bungle school of psychopastiche. He begins playing guitar with violin bow over a rumbling drum intro, drawing on a tradition of extended rock technique that stretches from Jimmy Page (via The Creation's Eddie Phillips) to Makoto Kawabata.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip06GLshHnf_nZ_DGT1rBHdJPXklq-HQm_ScDRSBIcsBEBezL9ZzF2E6Es3M7gI39dMhtSSy-5RuQ8ZiLe6vxGsZLf84k9RyPZEV_wA5-Mwk15YwL1ixU1DsikByiTk4v7S9quSBB9MLo/s1600/20100817675.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEip06GLshHnf_nZ_DGT1rBHdJPXklq-HQm_ScDRSBIcsBEBezL9ZzF2E6Es3M7gI39dMhtSSy-5RuQ8ZiLe6vxGsZLf84k9RyPZEV_wA5-Mwk15YwL1ixU1DsikByiTk4v7S9quSBB9MLo/s640/20100817675.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
Julian Febbraio's blast drumming over a series of crashing, portentous keyboard chords from Tucceri and Leonard Ellis suggests a collision of the neo-prog high drama of Mars Volta and Acid Mothers Temple in their black metal phase, eventually resolving into a version of Fushitshusa's 'Pathetique 1'. This piece seems to be a particular touchstone for the local experimental scene; Tucceri says he was introduced to it by Oren Ambarchi who has had a longheld fascination with Keiji Haino. (Ambarchi seemed to be drawing inspiration from its well of mystical modality, measured cadence and transcendent disconsolation for an excoriating Melbourne avant-power trio performance with Rob Mayson and Matt 'Skitz' Sanders at <i>Stutter</i> last year).<br />
<br />
The Tucceri/Febbraio/Ellis axis follow their alternately ascending/descending series of power chord shock waves into the rumbling timbreland of Sunn O))). There's a tendency for some artists working in that stylistic nexus comprising noise, dark ambient and black metal to associate the Sunn O))) brand with a certain static approach that you could call the pursuit of transcendent states through extended duration or power drone coasting, depending on taste and level of patience, but various elements give Tucceri's outfit some welcome textural marbling. The addition of Shane van den Akker on metal vokills and some excursions into Acid Mothers Temple outer space radio signal territory via Leonard Ellis' synths shows this outfit open to borrowing from various modes but not slavishly following their particular teleologies. That rich blend of ambient doom metal and avant-rock psychedelia that Sunn O))) and Boris created for their collaborative effort <i>Altar</i> is perhaps a good point of comparison.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir-mkBJhC8OGalG66vgOf46WcrGA48MyLpV6cEZmUNKb2aDNHiacuGx7FDCKwMA29tKIzOanPfPf_E5xUjiVVWPmva__WCA9ntxOffXrFs3-SsgVnUbWm-Kfvg5Wt45_ri6fjlvSUDluo/s1600/20100817690.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEir-mkBJhC8OGalG66vgOf46WcrGA48MyLpV6cEZmUNKb2aDNHiacuGx7FDCKwMA29tKIzOanPfPf_E5xUjiVVWPmva__WCA9ntxOffXrFs3-SsgVnUbWm-Kfvg5Wt45_ri6fjlvSUDluo/s640/20100817690.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Julian Febbraio (far left), Leonard Ellis (centre) and Shane van den Akker (hair visible only, far right)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
There is a quieter solo guitar passage made up of spiky, dissonant phrasing that gives the ears a chance to recover while still keeping things on edge and over which the spirit of Haino again seems to hover, but this time the beshaded one's more ambient side (the ruminative 'Where Shall Released Time Go Next?' from Purple Trap's <i>decided... already the motionless heart of tranquility, tangling the prayer called "i"</i> comes to mind). When<i> </i>the black metal power trip returns, Tuccero decides to push the performance angle into the hellfire zone and summon the Industrial avatars of Faust, Einsturzende Neubauten and Test Department with a bit of grinding action, bringing the set to a spectacular conclusion. <br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWmUGuNyJXbv4pPEjByNJogD2ekexCvwco5JLhV05RWA1UdghErPP29qPE1iFGmJwzPm9zG_D9bwjR4PdKLKOrVI_TXhsRT3kj0MmN9MsJbX9RkasvyC1eYr01kSh2Exv9fIU1gncqPe8/s1600/20100817695.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWmUGuNyJXbv4pPEjByNJogD2ekexCvwco5JLhV05RWA1UdghErPP29qPE1iFGmJwzPm9zG_D9bwjR4PdKLKOrVI_TXhsRT3kj0MmN9MsJbX9RkasvyC1eYr01kSh2Exv9fIU1gncqPe8/s640/20100817695.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<i><br />
</i><br />
This group is utilising some piquant elements in a non-idiomatic way, but seem to be still in pursuit of a sound that's more individually coherent. While<i> </i>the postmodern mixology of Mr Bungle is an often obvious influence, they don't have that group's live capacity for instantaneous Zornian/Zappaian genre-crossing and that's a good thing; the slower, more porous stylistic transitions suggest a liminality from which true originality can still emerge. Given this group's youth and energy, that seems a more likely proposition than not.<br />
<br />
JONATHON KROMKA (C) 2010<br />
<br />
For more info go to:<br />
<a href="http://www.myspace.com/danieltucceri">www.myspace.com/danieltucceri</a>Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-24001831772906839232010-12-04T19:41:00.000-08:002011-03-26T22:43:39.091-07:00Live review: MIUC August 17th - QUE NGUYENQUE NGUYEN<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSIVzomiNWIjgZ59tTPZMK2yKm7qXF7QJ3wKdASUDA7UlDDS-mvmrR5d3AJNLTRuKt2Hms1dIw2p4ViDcLj0yDMWwSlWJh2inUnrmwbR9gGGSKeCB7DNqSEqhzC3FoZCFo6N2HwuEME5s/s1600/20100817656.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSIVzomiNWIjgZ59tTPZMK2yKm7qXF7QJ3wKdASUDA7UlDDS-mvmrR5d3AJNLTRuKt2Hms1dIw2p4ViDcLj0yDMWwSlWJh2inUnrmwbR9gGGSKeCB7DNqSEqhzC3FoZCFo6N2HwuEME5s/s640/20100817656.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>Que Nguyen is a sound designer, co-founder of the Within Earshot collective, composer and performer with an interest in the use of voice within stereo/surround composition and live performance. Her Make It Up Club set begins with a slow, doomy machine pulse a la Coil, a buoy bell tolling on some distant sea, synthesised helicopter rotor blades whirring in and out. The appearance of these latter sounds acts automatically as cinematic madeleine for filmgoers of a certain age, but overall this piece isn't any <i>Apocalypse Now</i>-style assault on the subject of the Vietnam War. There does appear to be an element of biographical sound montage in the piece, perhaps recounting a recent visit or a sonic description of her parents' former life in their home country in the form of an audio verite parade. The set consists of a shifting cinematic montage of sampled sounds, alternately proceeding in a linear fashion or by laminal intersection: festival and street sounds, cymbals, drums, cock crows, gongs, child singing groups, laughter, traffic. Nguyen sings scraps of folk song over the sound elements, her cadences possessing an almost American Indian quality at times (though perhaps that is more due to the cultural default setting of Western ears trying to identify mysterious folk forms - thanks to Daryl Rabel for passing on this theory). As various patterns and motifs emerge out of the samples, those whirring blades, whatever their sonic significance, often reappear to dissect everything else. While a strong programmatic aspect is suggested, a thematic thread connecting the vocals and soundscape isn't palpable in the midst of the performance; possible interpretations - a desire for immersion in ancestral connectivity, say - come to mind more after the event. That minor quibble aside, Que has an appealing singing voice and genuine skill in audio collage construction. The individual components of this set were appealing enough overall to warrant further investigation into this young artist's oeuvre which can only deepen with maturity.<br />
<br />
JONATHON KROMKA (C) 2010 <br />
<br />
For more information go to:<br />
<a href="http://www.artabase.net/artist/433-que-nguyen">www.artabase.net/artist/433-que-nguyen</a><br />
<a href="http://withinearshot-collective.blogspot.com/">withinearshot-collective.blogspot.com</a><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixR3d6nPRFonDhJUhSYyVlK3omHs-ET4HWqdwTcbBSC0ADjddnVZ9sAqyRCxfxH9QGukMC91YMJz4q0-PJOBx2obOrs4oqyZVgLh9xsdrqe7G3RicsB9Einj7HanSKKqMQjXdnvPLJtJk/s1600/20100817657.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixR3d6nPRFonDhJUhSYyVlK3omHs-ET4HWqdwTcbBSC0ADjddnVZ9sAqyRCxfxH9QGukMC91YMJz4q0-PJOBx2obOrs4oqyZVgLh9xsdrqe7G3RicsB9Einj7HanSKKqMQjXdnvPLJtJk/s640/20100817657.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-28209173251855421822010-09-25T19:11:00.000-07:002012-12-08T21:59:17.398-08:00Live venue survey/reviews - Stutter, Maximum Arousal, Make It Up ClubThree programs are currently at the heart of Melbourne's vibrant live experimental music scene: <i>Stutter</i> at Horse Bazaar, <i>Make It Up Club</i> at Bar Open, Fitzroy and <i>Maximum Arousal</i> at The Toff in Town. The artists who run them - Annalee Koernig, Sean Baxter and Oren Ambarchi - forge valiantly ahead in the face of the Hydra-headed pressures of the commercial world and the problematic administration of Victoria's liquor licensing laws to regularly provide programs of consistent aesthetic merit and diversity. <i>Stutter</i> and <i>Make It Up Club</i> are both weekly events, the latter in operation since 1997. A more sporadic affair now than when it started in 2007, <i>Maximum Arousal</i> still provides a vital conduit for connecting Melbourne with the international experimental music scene, playing host to such luminaries as Damo Suzuki, Mani Neumeier and Eugene Chadbourne. <br />
<br />
STUTTER 21/7<br />
<br />
The occasion for this night of diverse experimental sounds is the launch of the Anonymeye CD <i>The Disambiguation of Anonymeye</i> with support from Blankface Distortion and The Bznzz. <br />
<br />
Contrary to the brutalist noise connotations of their name, Blankface Distortion are a neo-prog septet who deal in a soundtrack-friendly form of ambient post-rock with instrumentation consisting of guitar, pedals, computer, percussion, sax and electronics.'Melodramatic popular song' is how they describe their sound on their My Space page, listing Italo-Disco and early Ministry as their main influences, but what comes more readily to mind is some liminal nexus of instrumental dream pop and space rock improv, somewhere between Sigur Ros and Bardo Pond. The three pieces they played on this night all rose on a gentle gradient of intensity, starting from two chord string synth patterns or oscillating sequenced loops, overlaid with softly blown melancholic sax, pointillist dabs of echo guitar, minimal drumming and samples fragmented through laptop processing (a spectral bell tree resonated through their first number in a manner recalling <i>China</i>-era Vangelis or Joy Division's 'Atmosphere'). There were some passages of densely textured ensemble playing, scythed by distortion and snarls of volume swelled phaser, where only the saxophone was clearly identifiable. Their last number most readily suggested one path of origin for Euro-Techno and pop Electronica in Sky label-era Michael Rother or Robert Schroeder's IC albums (<i>Floating Music</i>). Opening with billowing sonic clouds dissipated with a steam piston rhythm and finally fading out with glistening gamelan toned electric piano, it was an apt culmination for a pleasant if not particularly groundbreaking set.<br />
<br />
Sydney's Th Bznzz are just that, a bass and drums duo with serious chops laying down intense, agitated math rock expressed in a syntax of asymmetric funk interplay and militaristic polymetric motifs, pauses and explosive skronk interjections. If there are individual pieces in their set it isn't apparent - all seems to merge into one polyrhythmic stream whose intensity brings to mind not so much the noise elements of experimental bass-drums duos like Lightning Bolt, more the muscularity of King Crimson's classic Wetton/Bruford rhythm section on some counterfactual historical cusp, mutating into an avant-disco built on warped propulsion. Bassist Josh Ahearn's astonishingly agile finger technique is able to perfectly match Alon Ilsar's drumming stroke for stroke. There are quieter passages where Ahearn's chordal arpeggios meet Ilsar's extended techniques such as rubbing cymbals to create ringing shrieks. In the more intense sections, funky octave-spanning intervallic leaps and explosive thumb pops alternate with plucked harmonics. The music is often mind boggling, turning exquisitely on a dime while winding itself into ever more feverish gyres. You're constantly wondering how they are able to remember or count this stuff, especially as they don't ever seem to even look at each other for the occasional cue. A dense mosaic of interlocking motivic cells fashioned from non-Euclidian geometries. <br />
<br />
Anonymeye (aka Brisbane laptop musician and folk guitarist Andrew Tuttle) starts off his short but sweet set with looped harmonica and guitar, layering bucolic lines that are patterned and phased with echo. The introduction of swirling electronics brings about an aesthetic deterritorialisation of heavy industry and pastoral landscape, gradually faded out until there is only live guitar. Single lead notes alternated with bass pedal tone summon the spirit of John Fahey with a rippling cascade of bluegrass flavours. <br />
<br />
His second piece moves from a suggested dialectic of nostalgia and progress further into pure electronic abstraction, building a drone pulsar out of guitar harmonics. Arpeggio loops are added, a motif shimmering in vibrato, amid waves of buzzing electronics. Swirling fragments of drone are set spinning in hard-panned echo and then gradually restitched to radiate warmly. <br />
<br />
MAXIMUM AROUSAL 25/7<br />
<br />
MARCO FUSINATO<br />
THE MENSTRUATION SISTERS<br />
HAIR STYLISTICS<br />
<br />
The realm of guitar abstraction is also a favoured mode of expression for Maximum Arousal curator Oren Ambarchi and Marco Fusinato, the artist who opens this evening's program. Fusinato begins his set with a random succession of static bursts and constrained squeals that suddenly erupt into sustained blasts of roaring feedback, broken up with syntactical pauses. Despite the centrality of signal processing in his methodology, this is a highly tactile music, the guitar held close to the body and rubbed while tabletop FX units and mixer are manipulated to produce textures of deep, crackling booms coupled with high pitched scree. The guitar strings are mostly dampened, but occasionally struck open when Fusinato is going for a particularly dramatic gesture. Expressive twists and detours gradually develop into a overwhelming sound wave churned up by hurricane feedback, gleaming ribbons of guitar string harmony braided through the roaring sound mass. At its best, this is a magical matrix music, emerging supernaturally through the nexus of circuits, both electronic and neural, comprising guitar, mixer, FX units and artist.<br />
<br />
The Menstruation Sisters deal in a whole other zone of energies, most of them primal, viscous and filled with blind purpose, like the earliest amoebic proteins struggling through aeons of natural selection to form the first semblances of sentient life. They reach for something new by first stripping music making back to primordial first principles: Stephen O'Malley, colleague of Sisters drummer Oren Ambarchi in Sunn O))) and Gravetemple, has spoken of wanting to create music that replicates the surreality of a primeval consciousness and its tempting to hear similar objectives in the Sisters sound. But Ambarchi and fellow Sisters Brendan Walls and Nick Kamvissis (aka Rizili) create something altogether more rough hewn than the glacial electronics, Spectralist leanings, black metal texturalist refinement and elegantly menacing negative spaces of <i>Black One</i> and <i>Monoliths and Dimensions</i>. Their first piece opens with bass and guitar feedback drones building up to a roar before Nick Kamvissis begins striking a tonal cluster, bristling with static. There's a kind of oozing coalescence to this free rock that recalls <i>UFO</i>-era Guru Guru (i.e. the opening of 'Girl Call'), but without that trio's tendency to eventually break out into rock riffs and jazzy interplay. The busiest playing from a technical standpoint is Oren Ambarchi's drumming - cymbal rolls intercepted by hi-hat snap - while Kamvissis continues striking the same non-chord like the tolling of an irregular bell. Brendan Walls on bass sways to catch every nuance of feedback from his amp. NK starts singing along with a primitive guitar motif while the drumming becomes more intense. At its best, this is true O-mind rock that would do the Psychedelic Stooges proud, an extension of the kind of No Wave deconstructionism that Phlegm, Kamvissis and Ambarchi's 1990s experimental punk band with Robbie Avenaim, only occasionally essayed from amongst their gonzoid postmodernist palette. Kamvissis gets a little free form and then returns to the same Neanderthalic refrain - then it's over. <br />
<br />
Their second number is an even more severe study in atechnique and asynchrony, strumming and drumming in glorious disconnect. It's impossible to tell if this number has been poorly rehearsed or it's meant to be that way. Kamvissis' atonal drone guitar is disharmonised with droning, atonal singing. Walls meanwhile strums the same single note. Nothing quite matches up in this loose, non-groove; Oren's 4/4 pattern is the most together thing while the others seem to be playing in a more textural fashion, but overall this set sounds less inspired than a previous performance at this venue in 2008. See below, a document of that event by ArchiveAlive<br />
<br />
<object height="385" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yZRC5YSkYxs?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param>
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/yZRC5YSkYxs?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object><br />
<br />
A tricky balancing act is required with music built on a disregard for traditional notions of technique, but where some vestige of the contours and dynamics of song structure is still present. On this occasion the group mind seemed a little short on the necessary ectoplasm required for these raggedy assemblages to really cook. Nevertheless, there were still plenty of pleasures to be found: an aggressive, surf punk-styled number features Kamvissis wailing in a creepy vibrato that recalls Neil Hegarty on 'Yin Jim versus the Vomit People' from Royal Trux's splatter psych masterpiece <i>Twin Infinitives</i>; another song is made from detuned bass and guitar warbling on the sludgy beat, incantatory and hypnotic; the next number has the guitars detuned even further into a microtonal morass that provides the backing for Kamvissis' brain-damaged shaman intonations. Finally a drum beat comes into it, Ambarchi providing a solid funky backbeat and occasional encouraging yelps for single note bass and vocal mantras. They close with a number in a 'LA Blues'/The Dead C vein, 'Footprint' and here something closer to true energy music emerges in a rolling dynamic of ecstatic wailing and drum blitz, voices and feedback united in lunar serenade. Oren's grunt, a kind of solar plexus impact fashioned as ultra-rock gesture, signals the end of the set. <br />
<br />
The headlining Hair Stylistics set begins with crackle and looped whistles and hoots, a horde of ciccadas and owls playing call and response in a forest of static bursts. Micromanaged manipulations merge into looped fragments, vocalese patterns intersected by fluctuating wavelengths. This is rich, deeply textured noise, teeming with alien life and reminiscent of a 2008 performance at this venue by the Fluxus artist Yasunao Tone. But whereas the invigorating, immersive environment conjured by Tone's damaged CD montages at times suggested the kind of biomechanoid ontological horror depicted in Shinya Tsukamoto's film <i>Tetsuo: The Iron Man</i> (i.e. being trapped in its fetishist character's nightmarish fantasy of a metal world), Masaya Nakahara's noise cosmos is an altogether more cartoonish and light-hearted place to be, even if it does operate with similar power dynamics. Piercing whistles and trickling liquid patterns metamorphose into slicing rays of static, sawtooth waves and chirruping, skull-piercing tones. Popcorn rattling, insectoid whistling, shuddering bass tones collapsing against each other across the stereo field. <br />
<br />
A high pitched whine agitates alpha waves on which blocks of feedback and oscillating squiggles erect the kind of monstrous architectures that emerge holographically in the original noise manifesto, Lou Reed's <i>Metal Machine Music</i>. Warring interference waves then tear these structures down to be drowned in noise tsunamis. Nakahara starts screaming into the microphone, conjuring a similar bacchanalian ecstatic mode to that in which Hijokaidan operates, though eventually he cannot even be heard over the constantly mutating stream of roaring noise emanating from his tabletop effects spread. Cracked hallways formed by reverb, flecked with rivulets of static, lead to a wind tunnel symphony where the lower tones coalesce into a hallucinogenic chorus. Sentient squiggles hover in a wave field like dancing cobras or angelic voices. <br />
<br />
MAKE IT UP CLUB 3/8<br />
<br />
SKEPPER/HARRISON/LEWIS/O'HAGEN<br />
BUGGATRONICS<br />
PAUSA II<br />
<br />
Noise also plays a big part in the MIUC program, but so too does jazz, contemporary classical and free forms of improvisation; current curator Sean Baxter and original founders Ren Walters and Will Guthrie are all strongly linked to those scenes.<br />
<br />
The Skepper/Harrison/Lewis/O'Hagen quartet open proceedings with their post-Electric Milesian avant-jazz. Chris Skepper's trumpet tone is faint air blowing to begin with over Andrew Harrison's distorted, pitch bended electric piano. Chris Lewis enters with extended percussion technique: resonant mallet-stroked cymbal like Tibetan bells, bending the tone by pushing down on the cymbal's cone. John O'Hagen lays down rapid flurries of contrabass riffing. Skepper's trumpet playing certainly resembles Miles Davis in various senses: the combination of distortion processing and lambent plainchant-inspired lines and in rapid, vertically contoured arpeggio runs; mercurial eddies of digital keyboard from Harrison suggest Herbie Hancock in his fertile post-<i>Bitches Brew</i>, pre-<i>Headhunters</i> phase. Chris Lewis isn't laying down any solid Al Foster backbeats, though; he's in constant motion, rapidly switching between conventional and extended techniques, playing all around the kit. There are constantly shifting groupings of call and response with tight conversational interplay particularly emerging between drummer, keyboardist and trumpeter. A mad, off-kilter swing passage led by Skepper has a piano solo that recalls Mike Garson channelling Cecil Taylor on David Bowie's 'Aladdin Sane', all cocktail hour block chords and scurrying atonalities. Then everyone starts getting more textural: the trumpet returns with low, sinister, distorted lines; much exploration of cymbal grain and arco contrabass; Harrison switches from skeletal, wah-wah bended e-piano lines to discordant synth strings for an ominous passage. Then muted trumpet over an aggressively smeared amplified bass line and exploratory drums (fluid patterns of rolls, tom tom & cymbal over steady hi-hat). A Monk-ish trumpet line sets the angular crazed swing mood off again which slowly winds down and dissipates. The quartet's second number sets the stylistic polarities of the first into even greater juxtapositional contrast, featuring swinging trumpet over a rolling, dissonant sea of lurching bass, rambling drums and jagged, tone cluster piano. The music proceeds to further describe and negotiate waves of propulsive interplay until finally crashing on its own shore. <br />
<br />
Buggatronic is the duo of Daniel Beuss (percussion) and James Hullick (electronics). Beuss taps and then vigorously shakes a metal cylinder to generate echo patterns that turn into regular techno beats, these machine pulsations overlaid with toe curling distortion blasts: a siren tone pierces textured sonic fog in which some details are distant, others in your face. Elements of techno regularity drift in and out of the set, providing rhythmic hooks to leaven the pure noise element, which is insistently fierce in volume. Beuss shakes the cylinder over his mixers like a shaman. Subsonic tones rattling the speakers, piercing whistles falling into the shrieking void like screaming James Dickey air hostesses plummeting Earthwards or an octopus army of chainsaw-wielding bagpipe players on the march. The phantasmagoria eventually settles into a manipulated and patterned dronescape. Beuss plays a small metal box with springs in it: internal boings processed into a musique concrete of shimmers and explosive roars, gradually reduced to a whining tone with rotation, throwing out sparkles of ring modulated sound. Hullick drapes a golden shaker and metallic spheres over a stick and walks off the stage, shaking the apparatus ritualistically. Eventually, all details are subsumed into a pulsating matrix of feedback and overtones with perceptible features: a high pitched skipping tone; low end roar breathing in and out; other dimensional rustling and scrapings.<br />
<br />
Pausa II featuring Ollie Bown on laptop, Brigid Burke on bass clarinet and Adrian Sherriff on Zendrum and trombone is a new media performance group with backgrounds in, according to the Australian Music Centre site, "contemporary classical, free improvisation, noise music, plunderphonics, algorithmic composition, non western influences and breakbeats" (<a href="http://www.australianmusiccentre.com.au/">www.australianmusiccentre.com.au</a>). They came together through a common interest in "developing live works that reflect the role of the computer in instrumental improvisational contexts." This is a trio whose ambition for cultural synthesis bears favourable comparison with John Zorn or Jan Balke and his Magnetic North Orchestra.<br />
<br />
They open with tumbling, hurtling interplay between Sherriff on Zendrum, played tabla-style with fingers and thumbs and Burke laying down skittish lines and growling multiphonics. Later she switches to kazoo to create duck calls that are then processed by Bown into molten streams like cellular log drums. Burke weaves a mixture of richly overblown and gently tongued lines around processed smears of piano string tones and samples of straightahead rock or jazz drumming reconfigured algorithmically into angular and mutable patterns. This multiform improvisational conversation between real time performance and cybernetic matrix casts off endless shades of invention: tendrils of disembodied piano tone mixed with weird clarinet overtones like didgeridoo; intangible, reverbed tones somewhere between guitar, harp and cimbalon; swirling low end sustained emanations and skittish thumb piano/marimba tone from Sherriff's Zendrum; disembodied laptop voices, ring modulated and timestretched, interplay with clarinet and mbira. Sherriff switches to trombone for some extended technique display, fluttering at the edges of tone, intermingled with Burke's high pitched clarinet bleats. Then a trio of Sherriff on shakuhachi, Burke on kazoo and Bown generating avian chirps; disembodied timpani strokes herald a passage of alien gagaku morphing into Barronesque science fiction soundtrack. Laptop percussion/birds/electronic pulsations move about in irregular Brownian motion until a Zendrum figure, initially off-kilter and distorted, enters and mutates gradually into a hypertense, synthetic funk. This sets the groundwork for the set's culminating passage, a thing of coruscating, levitational beauty. Spectral, plangent harmonies from the laptop float around the rhythm while Burke plays call and response with the desolate tones, adding her own elongated phrasing and skeletal melody. This form of shimmering ambient luxuriance over pulsating, shifting Zendrum figures is one particularly appealing direction for this talented trio, but by no means the only one suggested by their abundant range of improvisational strategies.<br />
<br />
JONATHON KROMKA (C) 2010<br />
<br />
For more information go to:<br />
<a href="http:/">www.myspace.com/stuttermelb</a><br />
<a href="http:/">www.myspace.com/makeitupclub</a>Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-4512784688524951152010-08-07T13:26:00.000-07:002016-03-17T22:18:39.093-07:00UNKNOWN PLEASURES TOURGreat news for Joy Division fans. Peter Hook is touring Australia performing his original band's protean debut album <i>Unknown Pleasures</i> (see press release below). Many people still associate Joy Division primarily with their hit single, 'Love Will Tear Us Apart', a song that has become a pop standard approaching the exalted status of The Beatles or Frank Sinatra's greatest ballads, but their other work is of equal cultural significance. Their albums <i>Unknown Pleasures</i> and <i>Closer</i> are two of the crowning glories of the English post-punk scene and what 'Love Will Tear Us Apart' is to the realm of pop music, 'Disorder' and 'Twenty Four Hours' are to rock - simultaneously archetypal and transcendent. <br />
<br />
Inspired to form by a 1976 Sex Pistols gig in their native Manchester, Joy Division's sound was initially steeped in British and American punk and its antecedents (Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, The Stooges, Pere Ubu, the noirish side of David Bowie, some of Hawkwind's sci-fi menace and Lemmy's driving basslines, a little of Black Sabbath's Ur-doom/black metal power atmospherics). The group and their producer Martin Hannett also drew inspiration from Northern Soul, dub reggae and the European avant-garde. Hannett's celebrated work is often compared to and seen as the next evolutionary stage of Phil Spector's wall of sound technique, but there are also links to the innovative genius of Lee Perry and Krautrock's finest producers. The luminous spatiality Conny Plank gave to some of the major releases by Neu!, Kraftwerk and Guru Guru is key, as is the psychoacoustic vorticality of Holger Czukay's mixes on the classic early Can albums. Joy Division's single 'Transmission' presents a sublime hybrid of the Spector and Czukay production sensibilities. The Gothic reverbscapes through which Dieter Dierks irradiated the sounds of early Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, Walter Wegmueller and the Cosmic Jokers suggest at times a similarly psychogeographic sonic evocation of Cologne as Hannett, according to contemporary residents and critics like Paul Morley, created for Manchester in <i>Unknown Pleasures</i> (see Grant Gee's fine 2006 documentary). <br />
<br />
Hannett's sonic alchemy served to illuminate the shadows cast by Joy Division's songs, Cyclopean structures of deceptive simplicity. Isolate Peter Hook's bass and Bernard Sumner's guitar lines in 'Disorder' and there doesn't seem to be anything more basic and straightforward. Put them together with the bleak impetus of Stephen Morris' drums and they pierce the affective core of your psyche in a way comparable to Miles Davis at his most incisive. The essence of Joy Division's genius was not any typical musical definition of sophistication, virtuosity or formalist innovation, but rather an emotional intelligence; a musical channelling of emotion minus the obstruction of any extraneous filigree.<br />
<br />
Coupled with Ian Curtis' lyrics, this is music that penetrates some strange region of the subconscious where despair and hope seem to intermingle. Consider the lyrics of 'Disorder': just what is the "spirit, new sensation" Curtis keeps referring to? Given the context of the music and the soundscape in which it is enclosed, it could represent a symptom of malaise, the harbinger of imminent and complete societal collapse, or a genuine spiritual renewal. And perhaps it is both. Curtis' main literary influences were J. G. Ballard and William Burroughs, initially as filtered through David Bowie's fascination with the cut-up method and apocalypticism as psychological lens. The truest parallel may well be with Peter Hammill, another strange and visionary British songwriter, also an influence on Bowie, who combines science fiction dystopianism, surreal, cinematic imagery and urgent inquiry into the soul's more alluring and treacherous geometry. <br />
<br />
I'm usually not a big believer in musicians reviving past glories - they're too often a recipe for embarrassment or boredom. But in this case, the body of work is too significant to ignore. As led by one of the finest bass guitarists to emerge from the punk scene, these concerts should be essential for long term fans as well as those who appreciate the experimental edges of contemporary acts like Radiohead, Arcade Fire and The Horrors. <br />
<br />
<br />
<b>RED ANT TOURING AND MAX PROUDLY PRESENTS<br />
<br />
UNKNOWN PLEASURES<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
A JOY DIVISION CELEBRATION WITH PETER HOOK AND FRIENDS - ADELAIDE AND PERTH SHOWS ADDED<br />
</b><br />
<br />
<i>Due to overwhelming demand, two more dates have been added to the Unknown Pleasures: A Joy Division Celebration with Peter Hook and Friends Australian tour this September. </i><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Tuesday September 28. Her Majesty's Theatre. Adelaide.<br />
<br />
&<br />
<br />
Thursday September 30. Astor theatre. Perth.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Tickets for the new shows go on sale next Friday August 13 through Red Ant Touring and Ticketek.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Tickets for the Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane shows are selling fast. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Australian Tour September 2010<br />
<br />
Proudly Supported by MAX<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Friday September 24. Melbourne. Palais Theatre<br />
<br />
Proudly supported by Triple R<br />
<br />
Tickets from <a href="http://ticketmaster.com.au/">Ticketmaster.com.au</a><br />
<br />
ON SALE NOW<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Saturday September 25. Sydney. Enmore Theatre<br />
<br />
Tickets from <a href="http://redanttouring.com/">redanttouring.com</a> and Ticketek 132 849 or <a href="http://ticketek.com.au/">Ticketek.com.au</a><br />
<br />
ON SALE NOW<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Monday September 27. Brisbane. Tivoli Theatre<br />
<br />
Tickets from <a href="http://redanttouring.com/">redanttouring.com </a>and Ticketek 132 849 or <a href="http://ticketek.com.au/">Ticketek.com.au</a><br />
<br />
ON SALE NOW<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Tuesday September 28. Adelaide. Her Majesty's Theatre Tickets from <a href="http://redanttouring.com/">redanttouring.com</a> and Ticketek 132 849 or <a href="http://ticketek.com.au/">Ticketek.com.au</a><br />
<br />
ON SALE FRIDAY AUGUST 13<br />
<br />
<br />
Thursday September 30. Perth. Astor theatre<br />
<br />
Tickets from <a href="http://redanttouring.com/">redanttouring.com</a> and Ticketek 132 849 or <a href="http://ticketek.com.au/">Ticketek.com.au</a><br />
<br />
ON SALE FRIDAY AUGUST 13<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<i><br />
<br />
To commemorate the 30th Anniversary of Joy Divisions’ seminal debut album<br />
Unknown Pleasures, founding member Peter Hook and Friends will perform the album in its entirety in Australia for the first time. The epic show will include live performances of all of the songs from the album including She’s Lost Control, New Dawn Fades and Disorder. Audiences will also be treated to performances of other early Joy Division tracks, as well as the classic non-album singles Transmission and Love Will Tear Us Apart.<br />
<br />
</i>Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-46832695057490254442010-07-12T02:51:00.007-07:002013-05-22T14:18:06.685-07:00DENNIS HOPPER TRIBUTEBefore Dennis Hopper's appearance in Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Vietnam War epic <i>Apocalypse Now</i>, Chef, the patrol boat crew member played by Frederick Forrest, receives a letter from the US with a newspaper clipping about Charles Manson. It's a great example of movie foreshadowing because when the crew finally arrive at Colonel Kurtz's Cambodian compound, Hopper's character of The Photojournalist, in a barbed symbolic sense, embodies some of the qualities of Manson, both in appearance and in rambling discourse. As the film's sole representative of the hippie movement back home that opposes the war, The Photojournalist evokes some of the walking libertarian/fascist contradiction of the acid guru mass murderer from Ohio (the home state of Captain Willard, the film's assassin protagonist played by Martin Sheen). However much he rails in disgust over the US administration's blatant lies in justifying its pursuit of the war (as seen in one of the deleted scenes available in the limited three disc special edition DVD), there's no doubting how much Hopper's character admires the "poet-warrior" renegade Kurtz's single-minded and ruthless approach to achieving the same end ("He can be terrible. He can be mean. And he can be right... There's only love and hate. You either love someone or you hate them"). <br />
<br />
Then Marlon Brando's Kurtz throws a book at him in a moment of pique and he scuttles off in a childish huff as though removing himself from a party scene turned bummer trip ("And with a whimper, I'm splittin', Jack"). Hopper's appearance as court jester brings an apposite absurdism to the film's journey towards the psychopathic godlike figure of Kurtz as national Id run riot. <br />
<br />
The laser beam glare of Hopper's pale blue eyes often seemed to be oscillating between poles of feverish fanaticism and a capricious moral vacuity, nowhere more so than in the role of The Photojournalist. Peter Fonda apparently described Hopper as a "little fascist freak" during the making of <i>Easy Rider</i>. In both his fictional and real-life personas, Hopper represents all the nervous energy, the social/cultural dissatisfaction and the quest for freedom and self-determination that fuelled the sixties counterculture, but also all the contradictory, self-destructive elements that doomed the hippie movement's half-formed utopian desires to failure. It's good intentions had great outcomes like ending a needless and wastefully destructive war, as well as advancing the causes of various civil rights agendas; it's libidinal outpouring spiralled into a druggy, occult twilight and the sociopathic nightmares of the Manson Family and Altamont. It wasn't Hopper's role as actor/character creator to resolve these contradictions, but to embody them. Likewise, Coppola's role in making the film, contrary to popular opinion, was not to create an anti-war statement, rather a meditation on power as a universal condition; a cinematic embodiment of a dialectical conflict between freedom and power within a collective unconscious, precipitating the American war's prosecution and producing the seeds for the eventual withdrawal.<br />
<br />
It is typical of Hopper's bravery that he often chose characters that were not immediately appealing or outright unappealing and made them his own; he made them, if not always sympathetic, then definitely compelling and believable. His style was a refinement and sublimation of Method technique that was comparable to Brando at his best and certainly represented an advancement on his personal hero James Dean. The character of Billy in <i>Easy Rider</i> is probably one of the least likeable in that film, but Hopper's performance is never less than engaging. Whereas Captain America (Peter Fonda) clings to a kind of cannabis-clouded idealism, Billy has no real objectives following the pair's drug deal other than the pursuit of a shallow hedonism: you sense that of the two characters, Hopper's has that mindset closest to the delusional short termism of the true criminal. The actor further penetrated and also poignantly humanised the criminal psyche for his performance in the titular role in Philippe Mora's <i>Mad Dog Morgan</i> (1976), one of the great films from Australia's cinematic revival of the 1970s. On recent viewing, this period movie about the famous Irish outlaw and Australian folk legend is still an impressive achievement, juxtaposing stark depictions of human brutality with extraordinary visual lyricism - an aesthetic unrivalled in Australian cinema until the arrival of John Hillcoat's <i>The Proposition</i> (2005) and Jonathan auf der Heide's <i>Van Diemen's Land</i> (2009).<br />
<br />
You wonder how much of his own personal demons Hopper exorcised through the character of Frank Booth in David Lynch's <i>Blue Velvet</i>. Did directors choose him for these kinds of roles because of his reputation as hell raiser and drug-fuelled trainwreck and therefore the best man for the part? Did Hopper seek them out because he saw aspects of himself reflected in screenplays that represented not only paying gigs but opportunities for psychic purgation? Then again, it would be disrespectful to the departed to indulge too much in psychological speculation - certainly, the calm, measured, likable persona in later interviews suggested someone who had found some degree of peace with himself and the outside world.<br />
<br />
In addition to his acting talent, there's no doubting the scale of Hopper's contribution as filmmaker to American culture. <i>Easy Rider</i>, of course, was the film that helped kickstart the New Hollywood, America's great cinematic renaissance whose apotheosis was <i>Apocalypse Now</i>, the film that, appropriately enough, marked his return from the wilderness. Then there's <i>The Last Movie</i>, the 1971 epic, still sadly unavailable on DVD, whose commercial failure precipitated his banishment to that wilderness, but whose reputation continues to be elevated over the years into a cult sphere inhabitated only by the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky and Samuel Fuller.<br />
<br />
Hopper died aged 74 on Saturday, May 29, 2010 - by any standard, a unique talent who will be sorely missed.<br />
<br />
<br />
BY JONATHON KROMKA(C) 2010. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-16011516769982960302010-05-28T20:40:00.000-07:002013-05-22T14:20:42.763-07:00Recommended video - 'Rush to Relax' by Eddy Current Suppression RingJust had to discuss a great video by Melbourne band Eddy Current Suppression Ring called 'Rush to Relax'. Musically, this is balls out garage rock in that thrillingly scrappy and primal Saints/The Fall/Captain Beefheart-inspired tradition that flows amongst the finer practitioners within the post-punk revival, combined with a Devo/The Monks edginess in band presentation (mongoloid dance styles, bathrobes and face masks conveying a kind of blank, Nixon-era domesticated alienation). Good enough in itself. But the inspiring simplicity of the video and the sheer audacity of the extended song coda/movie epilogue that comprises its second half is something else unique and admirable in light of the thrill-a-millisecond/ADHD-oriented approach prevalent in the music video field. It shifts the standard low-budget pop clip into a abstract and timeless zone closer to world art cinema; i.e. the 'pillow shots' of Yasujiro Ozu, Michelangelo Antonioni's use of cinematic space and extended shots of deserted urban/semi-rural/industrial environments to convey alienation (<i>The Eclipse</i>, <i>The Red Desert</i>) or the nature meditations of Werner Herzog's early black and white films and documentaries (<i>Signs of Life</i>). This is not to suggest it's overly arty, though - the Super 8 home video approach of filmmakers Chris Middlebrook, Johann Rashid and John Huntley is far too humorous and down-to-earth for that, yet beautifully surreal and atmospheric all the same. Just a first class effort and inspiring to think of the sort of work being done in our own backyard geographically speaking.<br />
<br />
<br />Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-80110351151975218032010-01-09T17:37:00.000-08:002010-01-09T18:24:33.222-08:00Stutter Episode Three: ROBBIE AVENAIMVile Vortices Productions' third episode of STUTTER features esteemed percussionist, electroacoustic artist and What is Music? festival curator Robbie Avenaim. This video captures highlights from a performance at Horse Bazaar from 1st July 2009 featuring some of Avenaim's inventions. Drawing on some of the oneiric moods of his latest release <i>Rhythmic Movement Disorder</i>, this extended improvisation is an aural feast of meditative sine tones, aleatoric automata, vibraphonic agitations, Cagean theatrics and some stunningly executed solo statements.<br />
<br />
<object width="480" height="295"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/v9ozpHdabXU&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/v9ozpHdabXU&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object>Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-84735864093573024492010-01-09T17:31:00.000-08:002010-05-28T22:13:18.963-07:00Third Maximum Arousal clip - AUS/COKIYU/CUUSHEOur third clip for Maximum Arousal features Japanese pop electronica artists Aus, Cokiyu, Cuushe and Yugi Tanaka performing at The Toff on their first Australian tour. The song is 'Vertigo', a haunting variety of dream pop written by Aus. Reminiscent of Bjork and the Julee Cruise/Angelo Badalamenti collaboration for <i>Twin Peaks</i>, Cokiyu's beautiful torch rendition floats on the twin currents of ambient laptop glitch and Tanaka's tight, funky drumming. Filmed 15th, September, 2009. <br />
<br />
<object width="480" height="295"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cPXAPh9SUpk&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cPXAPh9SUpk&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0xe1600f&color2=0xfebd01" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="295"></embed></object>Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-71348758134697078742009-10-03T21:01:00.000-07:002012-11-09T02:57:08.961-08:00Live ReviewsHere are some reviews I wrote about Maximum Arousal shows in late 2007, early 2008 with publications/sites like <i>The Wire</i>, <i>Signal to Noise</i> and <i>The Sound Projector</i> in mind. The Mani Neumeier piece found a place on the Guru Guru site - thanks Mani. Just in case anyone who reads this is interested in publishing the pieces or using them in some other way, get in touch with me - jdkromka@yahoo.com.au<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>MANI NEUMEIER <br />
THE TOFF, MELBOURNE, SUNDAY 30TH DECEMBER 2007</b><br />
<br />
Legendary German drummer Mani Neumeier’s first Australian concert was organized under the aegis of Melbournian guitarist/sound artist Oren Ambarchi who has chosen Brendan Walls (second guitar) and Edmondo Ammendola (bass) to play behind the Guru Guru leader. The Toff show is divided into three parts: a dual percussion and voice set between Neumeier and his wife Etsuko Watanabe, a drum solo, and a band improv session with Ambarchi, Walls and Ammendola. Watanabe brings her own intriguing musical pedigree to the venture, being a former member of 70s Japanese psych free folk collective Maru Sankaku Shikaku.<br />
Sprightly and slight sexagenarians, Neumeier and Watanabe introduce themselves to their audience with a shy friendliness. They perform their percussion set as though it were a ritualistic blessing for the whole gig, sitting cross-legged and opening with a simple, affecting form of Oriental plainchant before tapping out busy cross-rhythms on coral shells. There is a lot of reaching across into each other’s performance space, a practice accentuated when they switch to small hand drums, their arms arcing through the air like taiko players restricted to tiny instruments. The joyous incantatory intimacy on display suggests Neumeier has finally found in his partner the ‘Woman Drum’ he first eulogized on Guru Guru’s eponymous fourth album in 1973.<br />
Neumeier then moves behind his drum kit for an extended polyrhythmic exploration. His formative influences as a free jazz drummer in the 1960s with the Irene Schweizer Trio and Alex von Schlippenbach’s Globe Unity Orchestra are discernable within the rock energy on display. The exquisite dynamic control in the execution of complex kit-spanning cyclical patterns at low volumes brings to mind Chico Hamilton while the exuberant forte attack and sensitivity to the harmonic and tonal qualities of tom toms is comparable to Max Roach.<br />
If his famous krautrock power trio comes to mind when Ambarchi and co enter the stage, then the version that plays tonight is a Guru Guru for the noise/sound art generation. The cosmic psychobilly anthems and ur-stoner rock of yore have been abstracted via the alchemical reductionism of the Ambarchi/Walls/Ammendola guitar axis into a burnished sonic alloy equal parts Big Black’s ominous amp hum afterglow, the La Monte Young- avant metal drone connection and the concentrated force of Keiji Haino’s mystical psych rock emanations. Such parallels, however, can only give some slight pointers for identifying a unique sound.<br />
Ambarchi and Walls share the same open tuning through which they fabricate reverbed laminae of sympathetic resonance encrusted with distortion, ring modulation and wah-wah to form a buzzing, raga-less tamboura drone. Ammendola’s bass is an amorphous, subliminal rumble of low tones. This ambient setting provides Neumeier with a substantial amount of musical space in which to operate – a different working situation to Acid Mothers Guru Guru in which the energy of his own playing is often matched by the spiraling banshee scree of Makoto Kawabata’s teeming guitar lines. He goes with the freedom cautiously at first, employing a variety of rattles, cymbals and small gongs to add textural counterweight to the electrical pressure systems swirling around him.<br />
Before long he’s in full swing, deciding perhaps that attack is the best form of defence, or playing the Electric Miles wise old captain role - providing guidance through sheer musical authority to the wild avant garde youngsters. There is one truly thrilling passage in this group’s extended set redolent of those moments of almost psychic genius scattered like jewels throughout kosmiche history: a huge collective increase in volume and intensity from out of nowhere engulfs the room like an uberklang tsunami.<br />
Eventually Ambarchi decides he’s done with the texturist role and steps forward for a psych rock solo redolent of his hero Keiji Haino, but also the malefic microtonality of <i>White Light, White Heat</i>-era Lou Reed or, most fittingly in the context, the stratospheric screams of Ax Genrich. As though in recognition of the spirit of an old colleague, Neumeier throws some rockabilly rebel yells into his microphone, at last conjuring the Guru Guru of old.<br />
<br />
BY JONATHON KROMKA© 2008. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>HI GOD PEOPLE, ZOND, MUTUAL LOATHING, KYNAN LAWLER<br />
THE TOFF, MELBOURNE, SUNDAY 13TH JAN 2008<br />
</b><br />
This split 12” launch by Melbourne groups Hi God People and Zond occurs under the aegis of Maximum Arousal, a weekly program of experimental musical events curated by Oren Ambarchi. As with any such platform, the acts provoke a range of responses from divertissement to epiphany. <br />
Kynan Lawler generates clusters of microrhythms with a contact-miked cymbal, a laptop’s low drone and amplifier vibrations. Electroacoustic improv practice like this has been going on since Stockhausen’s <i>Microphonie I</i>: a more labyrinthine signal processing chain might have given the act greater impact. Mutual Loathing (AKA Michael Lenin) has an intriguing take on the drum solo as neurotic performance art; slithery extended technique gives way to whimpers, defiant whoops and thuds as Lenin ensconces himself within the kick drum. <br />
The Hi God People transmit a more polished interface between humour and raw methodologies. This indeterminate collective of Melbourne musicians have been mining since the late 1990s a seam of surreal prehistoric improv laced with space rock that has parallels with New Weird America. Their stage presentation mixes the anonymous Dada semiotics of The Residents, the cargo cult costumery of Sun City Girls and the space ritual of Sun Ra. The intergender ensemble assembled for this performance is hived off into separate vocal groups: Situationist slogan chants are mixed with atonal wailing as though three barbershop quartets were all performing their own versions of <i>Stimmung</i>. The introduction of ecstatic drumming propels the vocals into a kind of hyperventilating voodoo doo-wop, the lines “come out of the ocean like a prehistoric birth” interspersed with shrieking harmonicas and orgasmic sighs somewhere between Yoko Ono and Kate Pierson in tone. On the plateau of a sustained crescendo, the slogans mutate into animalistic sounds: dogs bark, apes jabber, birds scream. <br />
Sound rock act Zond begin playing over Hi God People’s eerie wordless intonations as they drift into the audience in a trail of kiddies’ fluorescent tubes, toilet paper and eucalyptus branches. Like an Australian version of Sonic Youth, this one girl/three guy rock group lays down shimmering feedback overtones that gradually coalesce into punkish songs. Bass lines reminiscent of Cabaret Voltaire’s ‘Nag Nag Nag’ throb underneath ‘Interstellar Overdrive’/MBV-shaded descending chord detonations. In a pummeling onslaught of feedback Zond comes to resemble a time-traveling Jesus and Mary Chain with its roots more in Bardo Pond or Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’ than 60s surf pop. Eventually even this distinction is lost in a white out interlaced with undulating pitch shift sweeps and rotor blade delay rhythms. <br />
<br />
<br />
BY JONATHON KROMKA© 2008. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>CHRIS CORSANO, PSYCHEDELIC DESERT, DUKE MISERABLES<br />
THE TOFF, MELBOURNE</b><br />
<br />
The first support act for Chris Corsano’s solo percussion set seems to have been chosen to provide variety rather than to form part of a strictly complementary programme. Duke Miserables is the bedroom acid-folk project of Romy Hoffman, leader of hiphop outfit Macromantics. Her delicate minor-key tunes for acoustic guitar and delay accumulation weave a weblike canon effect that at times recalls <i>Solid Air</i>-era John Martyn's space folk approach, Popol Vuh pastoralism or the multi-tracked mandolin counterpoint of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Battle of Evermore’. Despite an unfortunate tendency towards standard two-chord angst when Hoffman turns off the sampler, there‘s an appealing Joanna Newsom-like whimsy in her modal nursery rhymes: ‘keep your head down/gargle with the salt water/that you evolved from’. <br />
The Japanese laptop duo Psychedelic Desert live up to their name with vast, echo-saturated expanses of sound: mountainous drone oscillations peak on the verge of feedback and temple bells drift through phase envelope valleys. Eerie, embryonic melodies rise above the droning miasma; deep moaning plainchant (live), flute tones and disjunctive percussion shards in a similar vein to the Fourth World ambient passages of their Pharmafabrik release <i>Keshiki</i>. The echo vortices of this set reach a crescendo of disembodied choral harmonies striated with atonal tension.<br />
Psychedelic Desert’s sustained intensity provides an appropriate entry point to Corsano’s mind-boggling solo percussion set, a tour de force of polyrhythmic/sonic invention. Studying his playing outside of collaborations with the likes of Paul Flaherty, Evan Parker and Vampire Belt or the miniatures of <i>The Young Cricketer</i> is a most revelatory entertainment. The trademark perpetual motion is on display: incessantly evolving Sunny Murray/Rashied Ali-style rolls broken up with gamelan-toned bell strokes form a turbulent undercurrent for extreme feedback overtones. With the introduction of metapercussive elements it’s obvious there’s something more substantial going on here than a talented musician throwing in some weird gizmos to spice up a drum solo. A genuine, if sometimes humorous, compositional sense is at play, whether he’s summoning Ayler-like high pitched multiphonics/didgeridoo drones from a plastic tube, alloy song from bowed cymbal in the manner of Neu!’s ‘Sonderangebot’ or double bowing the snare’s shell to produce wailing glissandi that suggest microtonal vaguely Korean bluegrass harmonies emanating from a Harry Partch viola adaptation.<br />
More than just one of the most exciting drummers of his generation, he’s a Stomu Yamashta for the noise generation - a percussionist/composer in the process of developing a unique language. <br />
<br />
BY JONATHON KROMKA© 2008. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-12399677332650110942009-10-02T04:27:00.000-07:002009-10-02T04:27:30.640-07:00Make It Up Club Ep1 - The BAXTER BROWN HENDERSON MAJKOWSKI TARNAWSKY WANDERS SextetMAKE IT UP CLUB - Episode #1 features a sample of the 40 minute free form improvisational set by SEAN BAXTER (drumkit), RORY BROWN (double bass), JEFF HENDERSON (baritone saxophone), MIKE MAJKOWSKI (double bass), ANGUS TARNAWSKY (drumkit), & KRIS WANDERS (tenor saxophone). An intense journey. Watch as we try & keep up with the musicians.<br />
<br />
An awesome display of Fire Music at its most incandescent, channeling the spirits of Coltrane, Ayler and Brotzmann in full meltdown mode. A fine example of the kind of improvisatory pyrotechnics that regularly emanate from this decade-plus old Melbourne avant-garde institution.<br />
<br />
<object width="580" height="360"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/LBFJpipHKEk&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/LBFJpipHKEk&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="580" height="360"></embed></object>Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-89009956792413202422009-10-02T03:28:00.000-07:002010-06-07T06:03:35.282-07:00Second Stutter video - Slesu and Videotape<span>CURSE OV DIALECT mc's, RACELESS and VULK MAKEDONSKI perform 20 mins of improvised madness as SLESU & VIDEOTAPE at HORSE BAZAAR's weekly experimental night, 'STUTTER'. In our 2nd episode of STUTTER we serve up a condensed slice of the duo's antics as they freestyle mind bending incantations over an array of eclectic beats and samples. </span><br />
<span><br />
</span><br />
<span>Classic Curse sampladelia (harking back at times to their more aggressive earlier work) that features everything from weird polka/disco mash-ups to nonsensical extrapolations on Laibach's Industrial-style </span> <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Slowenische_Kunst" title="Neue Slowenische Kunst">Neue Slowenische Kunst</a></i> <span>rants. All topped off with a slice of Sicilianistic doo wop that would have warmed the cockles of Frank Zappa's heart.</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><b><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span direction="" id="IDATDH3B" style="color: blue;"><span style="height: 12px; margin-left: 4px; width: 4px;"></span></span></span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span direction="" id="IDATDH3B" style="color: blue;"><span style="height: 12px; margin-left: 4px; width: 4px;"><br />
</span></span></span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><b><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span direction="" id="IDATDH3B" style="color: blue;"><span style="height: 12px; margin-left: 4px; width: 4px;"><object height="360" width="580"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hueYn32Vhx8&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hueYn32Vhx8&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="580" height="360"></embed></object><br />
</span></span></span></b></span>Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-62110431879899310632009-09-21T01:36:00.000-07:002009-09-21T02:48:26.388-07:00First Stutter videoOur first Stutter video and best work yet for the experimental side of Vile Vortices Productions. The digital camera upgrade since the first Maximum Arousal shoots is really noticeable. Looking forward to getting to work editing the other great Stutter footage we've got in storage (currently working on Robbie Avenaim show).<br />
<br />
Originally posted on Experimental Melbourne blog spot.<br />
<br />
<b>Vile Vortices Productions presents the first installment in a series of videos highlighting events at Stutter, Melbourne's premier weekly avant-garde music program at Horse Bazaar. Filmed on the 1st April 2009.</b><br />
<object height="340" width="560"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hSVdjW5cN9g&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hSVdjW5cN9g&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><br />
Featuring the solo looped voice/recorder/sax incantations of JESSE L. DIMMICK (aka 8008), the Faust/Suicide/post-punk-early Industrial era fuzz vibe of four piece REPAIRS and the echo guitar/keyboard duo SUPER STAR. Upcoming videos featuring Australian experimental legends Robbie Avenaim, Sean Baxter, Dave Brown and Cat Hope.Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-24187990927835762002009-09-21T01:01:00.000-07:002009-09-21T01:28:39.060-07:00Second Maximum Arousal video - Super StupidOur second and more successful Maximum Arousal video. Still the same sound problems in the interview section as with the first one featuring Evelyn Morris and Shags (as it was recorded in the same huge, echoey Curtin House stairwell), but overall a cooler, more slickly edited piece. I might post interview transcripts at some point for those who find the audio hard to follow.<br />
<br />
Originally posted on the Experimental Melbourne blog spot.<br />
<br />
<b>Vile Vortices Productions presents the next installment in our ongoing series about Maximum Arousal shows at The Toff.</b><br />
<br />
<object height="315" width="500"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fceKfHZYSl4&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&border=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fceKfHZYSl4&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="500" height="315"></embed></object><br />
<br />
Emil Sarlija of Super Stupid illuminates the origins, major influences and possible future of this riff happy power trio. Following in the acid scoured path laid down by the likes of 'Split'-era Groundhogs, Speed, Glue and Shinki, Sleep, Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs, Blue Cheer, Mainliner and Acid Mothers Guru Guru, this Melbourne outfit, propelled by the powerhouse drumming of Maximum Arousal curator Oren Ambarchi, sets an intense, yet not too serious, trajectory for O mind rock oblivion!Vile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6559001481378383328.post-83603275923448617832009-09-19T07:52:00.000-07:002009-09-19T07:52:38.244-07:00Our First Maximum Arousal VideoThis was originally posted on the Experimental Melbourne blog spot. <br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Vile Vortices Productions</span> presents<br />
<br />
<object height="295" width="480"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/kaFHC2d-yvU&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/kaFHC2d-yvU&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="295" width="480"></embed></object><br />
<br />
The first in a series of short films about Maximum Arousal shows at The Toff<br />
in Swanston Street, CBD. 'Influence, Noise and Hallucinations' features excerpts from a 20 minute improvisation of ambient, minimalist electronica by Evelyn Morris of Pikelet and Shags who discuss aspects of the performance and their influences.<br />
The music in this concert (28/12/2008) suggests to us some of Terry Riley's early 70s organ and delay based works or Cluster's mid 70s fusion of synthesizer melody and loop layering, but according to Evelyn and Shags its roots are more in Philip Glass, Abba and Led Zeppelin.<br />
<br />
<br />
For more information about Vile Vortices Productions go to our website:<br />
www.vorticezine.comVile Vorticeshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11948030122368207202noreply@blogger.com0