Back to those halcyon days of cutting up tape and slicing throats with splicers. Those French guys were decadent. Take a cue, little British girl. I've got something in my pocket for you, come and get it.
This is best heard on a road with very wide lanes and few cars. And, fuck it, driving a sleek silver car shaped like a bullet that can break the speed of sound. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSWAHAWAHAWAHAWAHAWAHAWOOOOOOOOOOOOSH.
Very similar to Michael Rother's solo work. Eduardo Bort definitely needs to take some cues from Bambibanda.
Song of the Day: Bambibanda e Melodie - Pian Della Tortilla
When the second hand strikes the full moon, the carriage barrels down the hill, the wheels flying off as it turns into a pumpkin.
Werewolves sit facing each other, dressed in velvet vests, sipping cognac, arguing over who gets to keep the glass slipper.
“I assume you’re being facetious, Rupert, you must remember the night I won that slipper on a bet with Lady Whisperloin at the annual Breedlove benefit.” Nigel declares as he puffs on a cigar laced with absinthe.
The carriage runs over Jack and Jill, and proceeds to Satan’s Ball.
The distinguished guests rendezvous in the banquet hall (disguised in masks of course, you can tell who is immortal by the glowing eye holes).
At the head of the table, the well oiled neocons sit across from the French avant-garde composers, bragging about which circle of the inferno they’ve reached.
While the bloodsuckers and Scientologists sit at the foot namedropping famous false prophets they were once acquainted with.
The master of ceremonies, El Diablo himself, wields his pitchfork and begins to carve the main entree, who lays topless, handcuffed to a silver platter, with an apple in her mouth.
After dessert blindfolds are distributed, and blood is thrown on the virgins.
Through the smoke machines and strobe lights, I caught a glimpse of Poseidon giving meaning to the life of an insignificant mortal, piercing her with his feverish trident.
After awhile it gets pretty hazy, but there was definitely a lot of buggery.
Or was that a different night? I could be getting my stories mixed up, that party was crazy. Who knows what happened to Cinderella.
So last night I had a dream, and those are usually boring, but I swear to god I had one of the most bizarre dreams ever last night. I was recording music at a radio station, and Van Dyke Parks was there doing a radio show, so I asked if he could help with unloading tape from the machine. He helped me with that and then invited me back to his place to listen to records, to which I replied “Yes Van Dyke Parks it would be totally fucking awesome to go back to your place and listen to your records!” So we get to his place, and he lives in a tiny efficiency, that’s connected to a bigger house, that’s a fucking Chuckie Cheese’s, but, get this, it’s also a brothel! And the waitresses/prostitutes were all teenagers! Really fucked up. So I go order a slice of pizza and a beer, and there are all these video games and a gigantic neon bar with whores and pimps watching children play skee-ball. Anyways, this seventeen-year-old, exploited Slavic girl takes my order and I go back to listen to obscure Japanese and calypso records with Van Dyke fucking Parks who for some reason has fallen on hard times and lives in a one-bedroom apartment that’s connected to a Chuckie Cheese’s/whorehouse. I lose track of time and late in the night a pimp busts into the apartment and demands that I pay for the slice of pizza that I ordered hours ago. He starts accusing me of something about stealing money and proceeds to beat the shit out of me, and that’s when I woke up. Completely batshit insane dream.
So I guess I’ll post a Van Dyke Parks song today. I usually don’t like printed lyrics, they often look odd and unnatural on the page, but Van Dyke Parks’ Song Cycle is probably the closest that pop music will ever get to poetry, both lyrically and sonically.
Song of the Day: Van Dyke Parks - The Attic
The Attic (Van Dyke Parks)
I was there upon a four poster there. Mind tousled I came to bear some thoughts from the past amid a dash of influenza. And then I came to see in baggage the memories of truncated souvenirs. The war years. High moon I said high moon lighted high moon eye to my moon.
Far beyond the blue mist enveloped lawn the blanketed night comes on. The champagne is dead and gone. The forest around sensitive sound forest primeval. Through the panes cloud buttermilk war remains and twisted cross war refrains lunatic so high moon I said high moon lighted high moon eye to my moon.
Your age will most probably carry away the letters enveloped in carrion. Vague unpleasantries of the war. May your son's progenitorship of the state haphazardly help him to carry on. God send your son safe home to you. High Moon. You're eye to my moon.
Watch it. Amazing. Imagine Nic Roeg coupled with the political inclinations of Hi Mom! Really great score as well, best 70s flick I've seen in a while. Can't wait to see Larry Cohen's horror movies.
Prince Buster has got to be the most arrogant guy in the world. This song is very misogynistic.
I bought a Ricoh ZF camera recently, and I got my first roll back yesterday. Light leaked into a few of the prints as a result of me not knowing what I'm doing yet, but it turned out pretty nice for this one.
To the place where I belong. Trinidad, Cuba. Mountain Momma...
I might be getting something confused. Who's appropriating what? Am I mixing my metaphors? What is going on? Where do I wish I was? All I know is that it feels like a Sunday, and you know what that means!
Song of the Day: Emmitt Rhodes - Mary, will you take my hand?
Circus came to town got swept up by Papa Lazarus now I'm in a cage barreling over the mountains in a caravan. Beware of our smokey silhouette on the horizon.
Song of the Day: Boban Markovic Orkestar with Felix Lajko - Felix Kolo
I am no mystic, but every night a full moon appears I hear my dead father reading from the book of Exodus in the parlor as wolves howl in the distance. Death sits in the corner, playing this dance, tempting me with his sickle.
OK, I don't really know how to do this the right way, so it might not work.
First, click on the youtube clip and mute the volume. Then press play on the youtube clip, then press play on the divshareplaylist, and hopefully there won't be any lag and it will sink up and blow your mind all over your face. You will probably have to wait for them both to load and then restart them together. So much work, right? Ugh, I know.
I really don't know too much about either of these guys but here we go...
Bruno Spoerri was a German musician commissioned by the government to make music for factory workers. He used a lot of factory machinery within his compositions and created pretty fun musique concrete pieces that are very lively and playful. Which is why I like it, its musique concrete that doesn't take itself seriously and ultimately has a capitalist motive behind it that cheapens the artistry. It is both lowbrow and highbrow.
Len Lye, a New Zealand born experimental filmmaker and sculptor, is actually similar to Spoerri in a way. He spent his early career making films in association with the British General Post Office, creating television advertisements. It is an interesting notion, sneaking the avant-garde subtly into the general culture, seemingly without them realizing it. More on that in a future post. Anyways, this film was made without a camera, with abstract patterns and designs being painted on the film itself, so that is pretty awesome.
This is kind of cheating because it is very easy to take any avant-garde film and put rhythmic music over it, but I thought this clip sunk up with the two opening tracks of Bruno Spoerri'sGluckskugel pretty serendipitously.
Any German speakers out there know what Gluckskugel means? It is a very fun word to say.
So it's impossible to not check something out when their name uses the words ANDROMEDA and MEGA and EXPRESS. Holy shit, why didn't I think of that? And the bad-ass name does the music no injustice. They've fused Morricone and Jean Claude Vannier with the celestial tendencies of Sun Ra, among other things. At once both progressive and nostalgic, they switch from toe-tapping bombast to eerie tediousness with an uncanny nonchalance that never appears gimmicky.
Its the type of music I imagine playing as Frank Sinatra walks around the Starship Enterprise on Christmas Eve. The crew on vacation, he sits on the bridge alone, entering his captain's log while gazing into the heavens and contemplating the inevitable existential crisis that is created when you are both a Starfleet commander and the most popular singer on Earth. Man, that would be awesome to see on the big screen.
This album really does weave a sonic narrative as you listen to it. I would post Take Off! in its entirety if I wasn't so lazy, but I'm not going to, so stop being a selfish asshole and BUY IT.
Song of the Day: Andromeda Mega Express Orchestra - Gamma Pluto Delta
On an unrelated, self-indulgent note, I really might have some interest in seeing the new Star Trek movie if they made it a musical.
