Old School Classics

It’s initially somewhat jarring to think of an album like The Future Sound of London’s 1992 debut full-length, Accelerator, as being “old school.” Jarring, maybe, because I’m not entirely sure what the term “old school” fully implies, while at the same time I share, at least with a few, the implicit agreement that by granting it such status we give ourselves a new set of tools with which to evaluate it, however tenuous.

I think, at the most basic level, that when an album begins to be referred to as “old school” it has passed some vaguely agreed upon criteria that allows it entry into a new historical echelon where it’s endowed with all sorts of interesting cultural signifiers and, most importantly, a kind of elevated, “classic” status.

Uh-Oh. Am I saying Accelerator is entering the canon and now endowed with all the privileges that come along with such a gesture? Sure. Well, let me make myself clear, because I, like many, find such things like the idea of canon's to be troublesome if not downright dubious. So, how about if it's just my own canon, mind you, just my own and maybe a few others. A personal canon, not one force-fed via the agreed upon curriculums of, say, various English departments in the university system. Like all canons, however, mine is a guide, and here we’re hoping to highlight one of the seminal works of electronic music from the early 90’s. I want to talk about its many commendable attributes and elevate its special status in my collection. I have an agenda. This album rocked my world, man!

Just how long must pass before something can be called “old school” is a topic of great concern for many. (And the term itself seems to apply generally to albums only, especially hip-hop, but increasingly I’ve seen it used when referring to old albums of electronic music.) From what I can tell, a decade seems to be the agreed upon threshold an album must travel before being endowed with this particular status, though I know there exists a strong contingency arguing for 15 to 20 years as well. They’re preparing their very own position papers as we speak, gearing up to launch an all-out campaign to reach as many music collectors as possible in hopes of persuading their allegiances to the simple idea that any culture living in the present must regulate its nostalgia for another time to cycles of (at a minimum) 15 to 20 years. This longer nostalgia cycle seems to be well established in the world of Fashion where, for example, 20 years prior is always so very now. Same with television, where each season introduces at least one popular sitcom that rides on the premise of making fun of what we looked like, talked like and consumed 20 years prior. (Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley, The Wonder Years, That 70’s Show being some of the more popular and enduring examples of this.) Some folks, however, believe that the cycle for when we begin co-opting the cultural signifiers of a previous time and incorporating them into our own is speeding up, perilously growing closer to a time when we find ourselves overwhelmed with near-paralyzing nostalgia for the present. What we all share, I suppose, is a desire for agreed upon nostalgia boundaries, preferably our own. When it comes to music, a decade seems as good a number as any that must pass before granting an album with “old school” status.

We like out eras wrapped up in nice bows. We like them comprehensive. At the end of the 80’s and 90’s newsstands were flooded with retrospectives for the decade that had passed. Best, I find, are the glossy news magazines and their tidy and effective, The Decade in Pictures issues. Bathroom reading of the highest caliber, an editor’s ode to the zeitgeist of the last decade as revealed through images of natural destruction, war, athletic triumph, perfectly coifed politicians, twenty-five million a movie celebrities and a scattering of sparkling moments that represent what is commonly referred to as “the American spirit,” they act as easily digestible summaries of the previous ten years. Sometimes there’s a picture of people cheering, always there’s a picture of an extraordinary child and an act of heroism- of trapped men freed from mines and babies from wells. Looking at them, we have mini-eureka moments as we cast back all those years ago and recall elements of our shared popular history. But maybe it’s not really “history,” per se, but a kind of mythology. Some of those images, just a few, will go on to become potent entities of their own, acting as cultural signifiers that become a kind of short-hand for a more complex, grossly intertwined set of social and economic indicators. They’ll appear again and again alongside articles, books, documentaries and textbooks that seek to summarize or simply comprehend an era, accumulating more and more status as a touchstone for our collective understanding of a particular era. They’ll move further and further away from their original essence and take on all sorts of additional baggage. They become visual metaphors. Accelerator is one of those touchstones for me, a tool for understanding my own musical history as well as the larger more amorphous collective history of electronic music. It no longer packs the same punch it used to (time has not been kind to some of the tracks on the album) but as a signifier for where my own tastes and musical exploration were headed, I find it fascinating.

Accelerator’s most celebrated track, 1992’s top 20 UK hit, Papua New Guinea, has accumulated some interesting cultural baggage. After more then a decade, it now sits in the beginning of the 90’s and acts as a kind of port of entry into the then nascent IDM (Intelligent Dance Music) and Ambient movements. There was something about this track that was noticeably different from so much of the hardcore (‘ardkore) rave music surrounding it at the time. Sure, you could dance to it, but you could also recline in your armchair and read a book to it as well- at least that was the marketing construct the good folks at Warp Records used when they surveyed the scene, noticed the need and launched their Artificial Intelligence series, compiling some of the first ever CD recordings by folks like Autechre and The Black Dog. The music was more “intelligent” and “enduring” then the more “hedonistic” and “disposable” dance floor fodder. It was “electronic listening music.” Thus, the term Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) was birthed, with all its sticky connotations. And truth be told, there were many of us who were ready and waiting for such music. We were having a blast on the dance floor, sure, but sometimes we didn’t want all that sub-bass and pumping beats while we kicked back with a good book on a Sunday afternoon. Papua New Guinea acted as a kind of halfway house. It had a lazy, shuffling breakbeat (the same one, I believe, that propelled The Prodigy’s Charlie to such commercial success, who had, in turn, lifted it from Meat Beat Manifesto’s 1990 classic, Radio Babylon and where Jack Dangers took it from, I have no idea) a lovely seraphic sample of Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard, (taken from the track Host of Seraphim from their masterpiece, The Serpents Egg) and chugging reggae bass line (again, lifted from Radio Babylon) along with a heady mesh of samples (submarine “pings,” various industrial-like reverberations, a random house diva, etc.) that acted as polyrhythms or sonic splashes of sound.

All this talk about samples makes me think that I would like it very much if somebody would begin a website that traced samples from their origin (that is, the original, in all its pre-sampled wholesomeness) through its many appearances elsewhere, chronologically. Could you imagine somebody trying to catalog all the sampled appearances of James Brown’s infamous “Whoo! Yeah!” plundered from his Lynn Collins production of the mighty Think (About It)?

I don’t know much about Brian Dougans and Garry Cobain, the duo behind The Future Sound of London. Their public personas (that odd accumulation of characteristics gleaned from various reviews, interviews and press releases) painted them as a couple techno hippies conspiring to fuse the technological with the spiritual. They would have been perfect Wired cover boys, joining that impressionable readership as “digital revolutionaries.” (It took Wired a few years, but after Moby learned to play the kind of kick-ass capitalism game their readership craves, turning his songs into commercial jingles, they crowned him with a cover and the headline, “Tech-smart, self-effacing & supremely market savvy.”) Their own album covers were usually wonky collages of psychedelic imagery and fetishistic close-ups of gear. They seemed carefully constructed to appear as being on the forefront of gee-whiz cutting edge technology, guru’s living in a virtual world and creating their very own rainbow soundtrack using the most up to date equipment. Truth be told, back in the early 90’s I adored all this. Of course, part of it was my own desire to get my hands on all that cost-prohibitive musical equipment and joyfully while away my afternoons and evenings creating intricate sample-fuelled musical collages of my own. I couldn’t help but live a bit vicariously and cheer them on. I followed the downward arc of their output up through their mildly interesting1996 release, Dead Cities. After that, the duo seemed to stop recording all together, releasing their first new album of new material just last year, 2002's The Isness to less then enthusiastic response.

For me, Accelerator is lumped in with Aphex Twins’s Ambient Works 85-92, LFO’s Frequencies, the KLF’s Chill Out, Biosphere’s Microgravity, Reload’s A Collection of Short Stories, The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, Ultramarine’s Every Man and Women is A Star, Jam and Spoon’s Stella single and all the artists featured on Warp Record’s first Artificial Intelligence compilation. Accelerator was also one of the first full-length albums of the electronic music representative of the acid/warehouse/house/techno/rave/ movement that was, by 1992, 4 years old and going strong in the UK but only just then becoming available (via imports) in the U.S. And it rocked my world. Passing that ten year mark, it can safely be hailed as an old school classic.

Accelerator’s first track, Expander, was something of a revelation. A big old driving funky break but with splashes of samples acting as polyrhythmic shadings. The production savvy was on par with the Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, only darker and far less meandering. The taut, innovative use of samples (such attention to detail!) coupled with the driving rhythm seemed to herald a new direction in electronic music.

Stolen Documents is like an early tech-house prototype, the drum programming, when they aren’t sampling beats, matched the best grooves coming out of Detroit- in fact, some jazzy Juan Atkins style synth chords fizz things up considerably. Again, the groove is paramount, with all sorts of samples shading things in a heady polyrhthmatic collage. There has always been something cinematic about their work, a kind of wide-screen grandeur, but where they excelled the most, especially on this album, was with the sound design. Behind all the grooves they were carefully creating exciting kaleidoscope collages of exuberantly manipulated sonics.

While Others Cry is definitely one of the album’s stand-out tracks. It has a loose, jazz-house feel to it, with a somber but oh, so soulful sample of a man (who?) singing “Day’s go by, people pray, days go by while others die.”. This was once a mix-tape favorite of mine. It’s a cross-over hit that never was. A beautiful vibes breakdown about mid-way through the song warms things up considerably and, again, the beat programming is never any thing less then sublime.

Calcium is a warning of things to come. The first 30 seconds of the song act as a harbinger of sorts to the kind of stoned meanderings (lost amongst a fine collection of samples carefully strained through all sorts of sound processors and turned into a fine mush) that would go on to plague the bands future work. That is, come later albums Dougans and Cobain would forfeit their prodigious talents as purveyors of the perfect blend of killer beats and textured samples and content themselves to wallow in what seem to be cannabis inspired soundscapes, so amorphous and murky they might as well have been swamp gas. Here, though, both were still residing on planet earth, and when the groove comes in accompanied by deep bass the song is at least catchy enough to demand some respect.

It’s Not My Problem comes from the same school as Front 242’s Headhunter or Cabaret Voltaire’s Don’t Argue, a couple of late 80’s pop-industrial dance floor anthems. A sample of a vanilla smooth politician is heard dryly intoning, “It’s not my problem,” over ricocheting beats and other sounds overheard at the apocalypse. To underscore all this, a drone at the songs end has a discombobulated vocal repeating, “Primarliy controlled and operated….” It's a reminder of just how much fun creepy can be.

1 in 8 (also known as Innate) is my favorite track on the album. A gritty beat builds up before a perfectly placed “Oh, wow” sample, full of wide-eyed Disney like wonder, ushers in a massive groove and rolling sub-bass. Throughout the album, Dougans and Cobain drop some killer bongo loops in to flush things out and add additional funk to the mix and never more successfully then here. They add some succulent bleeps and blonks and an absolutely killer house diva who demands that you, “Love me….Love me….Yeah!” It’s body poppin’ music of the highest caliber.

Pulse State is the album’s most blatant homage to Detroit techno. It nicely follows the Derrick May rule book, replicating his exquisitely delicate, ever-building drum programming (how he relishes the trebly hiss of the dancing cymbals) and there’s a slyly morphing, funky-ass glurp of a baseline- even some overtly inspired Strings-of Life string stabs too. Some heavenly choired synth pads enter into the proceeding and don’t help things much, but they don’t do too much damage.

Central Industrial, Accelerator’s last cut, begins with the sample, “We are the new generation.” It continues the vague political-conspiracy thread we find appearing in some of the songs. None of the tracks on the album are what one might first describe as joyful. The atmosphere’s they create, the landscapes they provide, the beats they lay down, all reside in the dark early morning hours of the future. They’re both soulful, like all the best Detroit tracks, (May’s Strings of Live, Underground Resistance’s Jupiter Jazz, Kenny Larkin’s Metaphor album, Model 500’s Night Drive) and futuristic, indebted as they are to the likes of George Clinton, Kraftwerk and those first Detroit Techno albums to reach the English shores in the Summer of '88.

Language is a Virus

It’s new student week at UC Berkeley. Packs of roaming freshmen have been clogging Telegraph along with the occasional baffled parent. I’ve noted a couple things. 1. That fashion trends, especially amongst young women, have remained stagnant for almost a decade now. The reigning trend continues to be the 70’s melded with a mélange of early 90’s hip-hop/rave/urban influences. This year it’s been all about hip-huggers and tank tops. 2. Milk crates and trash bags are still a great way to move your stuff from home to college.

Ahh, freshmen year! Such giddy potential! I remember walking into my dorm room at Ohio State (I had two other roommates along with a view, for what it's worth, of the Columbus skyline) and being horrified to see Budweiser cheesecake posters commandeering the walls. And one of my roommates was prone to playing classic rock mix tapes with unfortunate frequency. I remember opening my flimsy chest full of tapes (I would finally buy a CD player at the end of the school year, the Spring of 1990) with my two roommates standing before me to gage the all important collection.

I began holding up various cassettes. Had they ever heard of The The? Lloyd Cole and the Commotions? Love and Rockets? Siouxsie and the Banshees? The Smiths? The Cure? New Order? Big Audio Dynamite? Dead Can Dance? Laurie Anderson? This Mortal Coil? Cocteau Twins? The Pixies? Echo and the Bunnymen? Art of Noise? Wire? The Replacements? Kraftwerk? Depeche Mode? (though, “Violater” would enjoy cross-over success that Spring, thanks to the popularity of “Personal Jesus” and “Enjoy the Silence”) Joy Division? Book of Love? The Jesus and Mary Chain? Nitzer Ebb? Cabaret Voltaire? Xymox? Shriekback? XTC? (If it was part of the late-80’s “Alternative” cannon, there’s a good chance I had it.) No, they hadn’t heard of any of them. My alternative rock credentials were firmly entrenched (I had stopped listening to the radio, more or less, by 8th grade and I wore that fact like a badge) thanks to the steady flow of interesting new music that trickled down through two older brothers, while my roommates were both heavy into the likes of Eric Clapton, Zeppelin, Bad Company, Queen and Aerosmith. I was sonically brutalized by murky mix-tapes featuring stunning feats of guitar froth wankery. It made me a more tolerant person. Of course, I’d never want to live through it again. I mean, my god, Bad Company?!

Winter quarter I attended a stunning Laurie Anderson concert (her Strange Angles tour) by myself, unable to interest anybody else on my floor to go with me, even after I played them O Superman , half expecting its hypnotic minimalist apocalyptic grandeur to act as a siren, luring them to the concert hall for more. I came back to the dorm positively flipped-out and made my roommates sit and indulge my inchoate attempts to explain the unexplainable. How do you, at 18, explain Anderson’s “voice of authority,” her sing/song elegance, her multimedia savvy, her haunting and hilarious and heartbreaking monologues, her dream logic? How to explain when I had been so affected by her highly palatable avant-garde abstractions that I felt nearly boundless, coming down from a post-show high and feeling as though I had been transported by the spectacle of something rarefied and utterly rich and strange. How to explain all that, without the context of her voice, her movements, her video and her music? Well, my roommates were kind enough to listen.

In high school I had listened to all of her albums religiously. She was one of my heroes. With my high school buddies, we practically wore out a video copy of Home of the Brave (the one with Adrian Belew and his bending guitar, the one with Anderson and William S. Burroughs dancing on stage, the one with White Lilly) and I couldn’t get enough of my treasured copy of her masterpiece, United States I-IV, which I had finally found my junior year of high school in a crappy mall record store. She was a making a living as a glorious freak and that definitely inspired us.

So freshman year was, in good part, about musical evangelism. The album I probably succeeded in turning the most people on to was Peter Gabriel’s Passion, his brilliant soundtrack to Martin Scorsese’s much-maligned The Last Temptation of Christ. This may sound like a shallow achievement and in the grand scheme of things, there’s no doubt that it is, but then, to have half the floor marveling right along with you to the thrilling vocals of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was pretty terrific. In between there were classes, drinking, dancing (at Mean Mr. Mustards, the infamous and now sadly demolished alternative music bar on High Street, where one could hear Front 242’s Headhunter followed by the Cocteau Twins’s Lorelei) letter writing, late night conversation about Big Questions and Santa Barbara, the cheesy soap-opera that more then half the floor got hooked on and would pile into our room to watch each afternoon from 3:00 to 4:00. We gave it a couple months before our attention wandered off to making plans for returning home for summer.

Why Italics?

A gremlin seems to have made its way into my blog. After "publishing" my last post, many of my previous posts magically up and converted entirely into italics. I have no idea why this is.

Phantoms of Lost Liberty Tour, 2003

Almost two years after its congressional passage in the wake of 9/11, Attorney General John Ashcrof kicked off a mini-tour to defend the Patriot Act this afternoon. He’s not looking for a dialogue, mind you, and he’s certainly not looking to interact with those who are out there scaring the pants off of “peace loving people with phantoms of lost liberty,” like, say, the 151 cities that have passed resolutions denouncing certain controversial provisions of the Patriot Act. You’re either with him, or you’re against him. Such “tactics only aid terrorists.” And here you thought you might have actually had some valid concerns about freedom, liberty and justice.

And what better place to begin then the good friends of the administration at The American Enterprise Institute", publisher of The American Enterprise magazine, whose current September 2003 issue is, get this, all about men! Not just any kind of man either, because as is made evident in their many features addressing masculinity today, we’re talking about a very special kind of man, one you’d be proud to bring home to meet the parents and Dick Cheney.

The table of contents for this month’s issue includes a piece by Steve Sailer explaining to his readers “why we want masculine leaders.” Another, by Christina Hoff Summers, warns subscribers that there’s a vast left-wing conspiracy afoot to “make our boys more docile and emotional.” (I just got back from tonight’s meeting. We’re finally ready to launch our “Boys ‘n Quilts 2003” campaign!) You can read that one here. It’s interesting to note that in making her case, to really bring it all jaw-droppingly home, Summers turns to the switchblade carrying scholar, Camille Paglia. (And really, all I want to know is where that long promised second half of Sexual Personae is.) Oh my, there’s even a mini-symposium made up of six “spunky” women (and women are, no doubt, innately spunky, right?) who discuss “What Women Think About Modern Manhood.” Some highlights:

“Manliness has experienced a renaissance for two reasons. The Bush/Cheney administration has set the tone for political culture. And 9/11, of course.”

“The post 9/11 love affair with police, firemen and soldiers is a return of normal relations between men and women.”

“I am distressed by the degree to which feminism still carries political weight.”

“Most people today never needed to be carried out of a burning building. But once they see 3,000 people that needed to be rescued, they know it takes men.”

“When men aren’t inculcated with manly virtues they become wimps, they become hoodlums.”

“Pat Moynihan warned us about about predatory males being raised by single moms.”

“There’s also the sex appeal of someone like Dom Rumsfeld. President Bush possesses this intangible something- you really saw it on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln.”

All this to belabor the point, I suppose, that Ashcroft’s mini “Phantoms of Lost Liberty Tour,” was launched (and opening day is all that really matters here) in a redundant vessel. The good brothers and sisters at American Enterprise are all about beating back the same irksome flames of secular liberal-left relativism as the administration. I would, however, like to offer one bit of advice to those, no doubt, beef fed and hulking husbands of the “spunky” six quoted above- Clearly the bedroom is ripe for some pre-coital role-playing. These gals are practically screaming for a fireman named Iron John! Please, for god’s sake, rescue your women before the Astroturf completely takes over.

So Ashcroft, deep in the bosom of a fellow traveler, the requisite backdrop in place (it read, “Preserving Life and Liberty,”) let it be known, that these aren’t the droids we’re looking for. But first he capitalized on today’s tragic UN suicide bombing in Iraq by saying the following:

“This morning, terrorists struck the United Nations mission in Baghdad, killing at least 13 people and seriously injuring at least 120 others. The victims were innocent people who traveled to Iraq on a mission of peace and human dignity. Let me express sympathy to the victims and their loved ones.

“This morning’s attack again confirms that the worldwide terrorist threat is real and imminent. Our enemies continue to pursue ways to murder the innocent and the peaceful. They seek to kill us abroad and at home. But we will not be deterred from our responsibility to preserve American life and liberty, nor our duty to build a safer, more secure world.”

Terror, you see, is right there in Iraq, which is our burden now. Of course, those of us who might be challenged to ask just how today’s bombing in Iraq relates at all to the Patriot Act- those of us who might even wonder aloud just how, in fact, the war on Iraq was connected to 9/11 at all, would, no doubt, be told that it simply confirms that terrorist threats to our well-being, to our freedom, are real and present and that, thank god, the Patriot Act is there to stop such things from ever happening here. To even suggest, as John Mearsheimer, the Co-Director of the Program on International Security at the University of Chicago was emboldened to do so tonight on the News Hour, that we might have by invading Iraq created a target rich terrorist environment where once there was none, or that Ashcroft and the rest of the Administration have been ruthlessly exploiting and demeaning the veracity of the very real tragedy of 9/11 to advance a dangerous neo-conservative agenda, is to be labeled, as Ashcroft has already made clear, a traitor to the just cause. They know, as we do, that links between the 9/11 terrorists and Hussein’s Iraq don’t exist, but then, so what, most think otherwise. 9/11 is the great malleable onto which an even greater and deadlier agenda is enjoying, at long last, its moment. There are no shades of gray. There are men and there are women, there is good and there is evil, there is right and there is wrong.

Everyone else is pussy-whipped.

Spinning Away

Stewart Brand has called Brian Eno a “wandering clarifier.” I like that. Here’s an excerpt from an article he recently published. You can read it in its entirety here.

In the West the calculated manipulation of public opinion to serve political and ideological interests is much more covert and therefore much more effective. Its greatest triumph is that we generally don't notice it - or laugh at the notion it even exists. We watch the democratic process taking place - heated debates in which we feel we could have a voice - and think that, because we have 'free' media, it would be hard for the Government to get away with anything very devious without someone calling them on it.

It takes something as dramatic as the invasion of Iraq to make us look a bit more closely and ask: 'How did we get here?' How exactly did it come about that, in a world of Aids, global warming, 30-plus active wars, several famines, cloning, genetic engineering, and two billion people in poverty, practically the only thing we all talked about for a year was Iraq and Saddam Hussein? Was it really that big a problem? Or were we somehow manipulated into believing the Iraq issue was important and had to be fixed right now - even though a few months before few had mentioned it, and nothing had changed in the interim.

"This Time I Bite..."

Poor Audrey Tautou. That’s what I was thinking as I watched Stephen Frear’s new film, Dirty Pretty Things the other night. She’s carrying a lot of Amelie baggage in this picture, her first in an English speaking role and certainly one whose international distribution will rival, if not surpass, anything else she’s starred in before or since. Dirty Pretty Things features a glamorous and sultry shot of Tautou in profile (with a hint of naked shoulder) on its marketing poster. You could be irked that such a scene never appears in the film, or you could applaud the fact that Tautou manages to avoid any resemblance (other then she’s devastatingly charming) to her powerful work in Amelie and embodies, very believably, the character of a Turkish refugee (the accent rarely falters) struggling to get by in London.

The women sitting behind us, however, cooed every time Tatou appeared on the screen. According to an article I recently read, over 25 million people have seen Amelie- and clearly the powerful impression this role has left was still resonating with these (there were 3 of them, each weighing in repeatedly) viewers. “Oh, she’s so cute,” they’d remark, when clearly what she was doing on screen, working at a sweatshop, for example, or contemplating the selling of her kidney, was obviously anything but adorable. Their relationship to Senay, the Turkish refugee she was playing, seemed palpably defined by her turn as Amelie- as if any moment they expected her to begin anew her good works with garden gnomes.

The film she’s actually in, a refreshingly multiethnic mainstream feature with working class sympathies and a tidy, if not entirely successful plot “straight from the headlines,” revolves around a scrappy gang made up, more or less, of illegal immigrants and their morally twisted confrontations with the exploitive and seamy underbelly poking through the so-called better life. Chiwetel Ejiofor, as Okwe, oozes noble compassion. He cares deeply, maybe even too much. He’s the film’s conscience, its moral backbone. As such, he’s never given the chance to properly stretch out and do something other then radiate wholesomeness. He veers dangerously close to embodying the unfortunate Hollywood template for the kind, wise and stately African that Morgan Freeman has held for years. He, like everything else about this film, however, manages to hover just beyond its more generic underpinnings and offers something oddly moving and compelling.

A lot of what works with this picture is the dissonance that comes from how it weaves so brashly between humor and tragedy. There’s a queasy undertow at work and Frears never seems to reconcile the two. A couple of immigration enforcement officers have a manic, cartoonish quality to them, bursting into otherwise somber scenes like a couple of keystone cops. There’s a hooker who morphs from coyly malevolent (did she stuff that human heart down the toilet? you’re led to believe) into a hooker with a heart of gold. Sergi Lopez, playing Sneaky, struts and hams through almost every scene he’s in like some kind of vaudeville villain while his actions are, in contrast, shrewd and barbaric. Benedict Wong, as Guo Yi, is a mortuary attendant who deadpans some of the film’s most slyly hilarious lines. It’s a strange energy being thrown off, both wacky and earnest, and while this gives the film its intriguingly off-kilter vibe, it also acts to stop the film from ever settling into a groove. It ends up feeling like it could have used a few more minutes in the oven.

There’s a powerful bow wrapping up the film’s final moments. Tautou and Ejiofor handle its unraveling beautifully. It’s deceptive though, communicating something between its two characters with an enormity not entirely deserved. Still, there’s no resisting, for a moment at least, its magnanimity.

Cathy and i went hiking for a few days in the Stanislaus National Forest this past week. Had a great time hiking around some gigantic sequoias. They aren’t as tall as the coastal redwoods, mind you, but they're definitely wider. Man alive, do they have circumference! Serious girth. Damn. They're freaky wide and glorious to behold. (The third FAQ addressed on the National Park Service’s special Redwoods National and State Parks website asks, after the more practical, “Where are the parks?” and “When are the parks closed,” reads, “Is there a drive-through tree?” and reveals, I believe, that yearning for transcendence so many of us crave and that is satisfied only by driving one’s car through a tree.)

I can’t thing of any other object (natural or otherwise) that so overwhelms and majestically frames a human body. It always provides this exquisite rush of displacement and a poetic punch of context. I’m always left fumbling a bit, thinking, “gee, we’re so…small.” You can’t help but feel a little swept up by the grandeur of it all. And yes, damnit, I am always left with that vague and nagging feeling that it does feel reminiscent of the forest moon of Endor. But who could begrudge Lucas these trees? They are otherworldly.

And while we didn't see any of the heralded Ewoks (or Hobbits, for that matter) we did have bears and plenty of horse manure. The bears came into our campsites (we stayed at designated public campsites) each night, though we never saw any ourselves, only hearing stories of their nocturnal escapades from other campers in the morning. "Hear about the bear?" somebody might ask us, toothbrush in hand. "A couple of them were outside my tent last night, they even picked up my cooler and moved it. I think there might have been two, but my little boy swears he saw a whole bunch of other crazy stuff in the surrounding woods.” We'd nod and think, "What happens if your kid accidentally goes to sleep with a squeeze tube of Chunky peanut butter under their pillow in the tent? What then?" Has this happened before? Did I miss these segments on America’s Funniest Home Videos or in the pages of National Geographic? Or does this never happen?

The first night we camped I awoke sometime in the middle of the night (let’s say 2:30ish) to the sounds of a little girl crying. It’s a terribly distressing sound, a kid crying in the distance under what was, I might add, a full moon and in the middle of an otherwise silent campground. Spooky, that’s for sure. The mind’s little scenario factory starts up and conjures all sorts of possibilities. My best guess, and probably the most rational and likely, was that she was on one of her first camping trips and awoke disoriented and, well, it simply scared the hell out of her to realize she wasn’t in her big-girl bed anymore and that the nightlight was suddenly missing and so her little newly constructed monster factory started up and conjured all sorts of possibilities of its own. She cried for a minute or two longer before somebody successfully managed to quiet her.

The next night I woke up to another creepy sound. Not coyotes- at least I don’t think they were, because I’ve heard coyotes before and these didn’t sound like coyotes. “Maybe they were wolves?” Cathy wondered in the morning. Maybe. They were spookier sounding than the little girl, that’s for sure. Here’s why. They seemed to be replicating that grossly phantasmagoric howl Peter Jackson’s sound designer’s have created and used for the Wringwraiths in his Lord of the Rings trilogy. I lay there in the cocoon of my sleeping bag and awoke just enough to appreciate the tinge of dread such a sound brings to the camping experience. Isn’t this part of the allure of camping, of setting up tent under that canopy of trees and on a bed of needles and sleeping out under the stars? To get…closer to nature? Of course, if that’s so, there’s a part of me that thinks it’s important to reclaim whatever it was I heard from the arguably shallow fate of being understood only by its resemblance to a particular Hollywood sound-designers potent concoction. What was it really? What purpose does the howling serve? Why do we always want to describe this sound as “lonesome?”
My ignorance disappoints me. But still, I wonder and don’t think it the least bit shallow- will the third and final chapter of the trilogy maintain the high enchantment standards of the first two installments?

Some selected quotes from a front page article(To Mollify Iraqis, U.S. Plans To Ease Scope Of Its Raids) in last Thursday’s NYT’s…

-BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 6- The American military, in a major revision of strategy, has decided to limit the scope of its raids in Iraq after receiving warning from Iraqi leaders that they were alienating the public, the top allied commander said today.

-It was a fact that I started to get multiple indicators that maybe our iron-fisted approach to the conduct of op was beginning to alienate Iraqis,” General Sanchez said, referring to military operations. “I started to get those sensing from multiple sources, all the way from the Governing Council down to average people.

-…Iraqis have complained that during these raids too many of those rounded up by American troops were not Baath Party operatives but ordinary citizens. They say the American tactics have been too aggressive and not sensitive enough to Iraqi culture and traditions.

-…the new American approach also reflects a recognition that widespread raids could unintentionally be creating a reservoir of support for the insurgents or even spurring revenge attacks by ordinary citizens.

(Here comes the whopper, hold on…)

-The general added that Iraqi leaders who supported the allies had indicated they understand the goal of the American raids, but that some had expressed concern over their effects on the Iraqi population.

(Here it comes…)

Their message, he said, has been that “when you take a father in front of his family and put a bag over his head and put him on the ground, you have had a significant adverse effect on his dignity and respect in the eyes of his family.” General Sanchez said the message from the Iraqis was that in doing this, you create more enemies than you capture.

Sheesh! It’s a good thing Lt. Gen. Sanchez has those insightful and supportive leaders keeping him up to date on those exotic and downright bizarre Iraqi cultural traditions! Here in the United States, having a group of nervous and ornery 20-somethings raid a nice little suburban home in a gated community replete with their M-16’s cocked and trigger fingers itching is, granted, a rare thing, but perfectly acceptable. It’s the price we pay for our freedom, you know? And to imagine that any young, corn-fed father, dragged from his bed in the middle of the night, a burlap sack placed tightly over his head and thrown down on that perfectly manicured lawn of his and interrogated by gunpoint would feel anything but calm, rational understanding (his wife and kids, one imagines, might raise their sleepy heads amidst the ruckus only to sheepishly smile in patriotic acquiescence once they took in the scene of their husband/father being dragged away by the freedom fighters) is hard to imagine. “How can I help you fellas,” he might helpfully offer. We’re used to this iron-fisted approach. The Iraqi’s however, having never tasted sweet freedom, obviously don’t understand that we just want to help them. We’ve got a great big old super-sized order of Freedom for them. Do they want fries with that, or are they going to want something totally weird like, say, hummus?

Remember Jack Whittaker ? Of course you don’t. He won the largest ever Powerball lottery drawing last December. Whittaker was already a millionaire, the owner of numerous construction companies, so his winning of additional millions was more than just a little annoying. He’s also a member of the Church of God, and promised to use some of his earning to do “good works.” This too, I’m afraid, is more than just a little annoying. Obviously losing a little sleep as he recalled that sunday-school nonsense about it being easier for a camel to travel through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the old kingdom, Whittaker promised to give over 10% of his winnings to the Chruch before he went and spent any himself! Wow, Jesus Christ, what tremendous largesse! So what of the other 90%? What were the good works Jack had in mind for himself? This from last Wednesday’s “National Briefing” section in the NYT’s:

WEST VIRGINIA: LOTTERY WINNER ROBBED AT STRIP CLUB- More than $500,000 was stolen from a sport utility vehicle that a Powerball millionaire parked at a strip club, but the money was recovered, a sheriff’s deputy said. A briefcase with $245,000 in cash and three blank $100,000 cashier’s checks was taken from the vehicle of the lottery winner, Jack Whittaker, who received a $113 million option jackpot after winning a record $314.9 million prize on Dec. 25. The cash and checks were found behind a trash bin. A sheriff’s deputy said Mr. Whittaker carried large sums of money because he liked to gamble.

Apparently, Mr. Whittaker likes a little T & A alongside the Lord's work. To paraphrase our fearless leader, "I am mindful that we're all sinners."

I run across them from time to time, these neglected and nearly forgotten CD’s in my collection. When did I buy this Egberto Gismonti CD? Must have been a few years back when I was on a heavy Brazilian music kick and willing to give just about any Brazilian album made between the years 1968 to 1975 a try. (Honestly, this span of time isn’t nearly as arbitrary as it seems- it’s a glorious sweet-spot in the history of modern Brazilian music- a crazy intersection where all sorts of interesting genres of music fortuitously collided and artists were throwing off masterpieces left and right.)

Gismonti's album, from 1969, isn't one of those masterpieces. There's some of Baden Powell's flair in his guitar playing, but he's not nearly as adventerous. He hops amongst genre's and sprinkles about some nice sit-up-and-listen moments. He whittles a little pop, mixes in a dollop of bossa-nova together with some e-z crooning cheese and tops it all off with some nice classical guitar instrumentals. Not bad, but I’m still afraid of those ECM releases of his. One fears for Manfred Eicher's patented Wall Of Sheen, keeping all his productions germ-free for decades after their release. That's not an entirely fair assessment, I'm afraid, but it sure is true of dozens of those late 70's and 80's ECM productions of Eichers. So many of them sound like they were recorded in my doctor's check-up room- there's something about them that smells of steralized laytex and Soft-Scrub.

You know you’re with a good bunch of folks when it’s mutually decided that those first two hours you’ve all spent browsing Powell’s main bookstore in Portland wasn't nearly enough time- that, in fact, another half hour is not only necessary, but vital. Such was the case last weekend when Cathy and I visited our friends, Rob and Katie.

One of the things I like about Powell’s (and there are many things to like about a bookstore that seems to take up an entire city block and is filled with so many tantalizing books) is the old, used ‘n musty trade paperbacks you can find. I like those high-end Vintage trade paperbacks, too- they look great, feel great, hell, they even smell great but they also cost more than double the mass-trade paperbacks, now seemingly reserved for romances, legal thrillers, science fiction and Stephen King only. Works denoted as “serious fiction” are not to be cheapened by the associations now tied to mass-pulp. For example, Vintage recently dressed up the collective works of Philip K. Dick (previously available in mass-pulp editions) in hopes of attracting the new, more status conscious reader. These new high end paperbacks also assuage the fears of those readers who fret over whether or not science fiction is in fact “serious” literature. Each comes stamped with the obligatory New York Times quote/seal of approval. Would I prefer these high-end editions? You bet. What’s a bummer, as I already mentioned, is that they’re a bit cost prohibitive for those of us not necessarily rolling in the bling bling and who like to buy and read more then a few books a year. It would be nice to have the option, but it seems like the only time “serious” works of fiction or non-fiction get the mass-pulp treatment is if they’re made into bloated Hollywood product.

This wasn’t always the case. Before book publisher’s realized that there was a lucrative market for high end trade paperbacks, “serious” literature also made the journey from stately hardback to cheap compact pulp. Thousands of them have found a cozy temporary retirement on the shelves at Powell’s. Oh, and they’re terribly cheap. I picked up 4 of them, each under $4 and all in great condition. Here’s what I got.

The White Album: Joan Didion
Ray Bradbury: The Machineries of Joy
Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Watchers: Tom Wolfe
The Woman in the Dunes: Kobo Abe

There were tons and tons more, of course, and I had to pass up dozens, but my own shelves are already overflowing with books I’ve yet to read. Sadly, they didn’t have the book I was most interested in finding, John Woodmorappe’s Noah’s Arc: A Feasibility Study.

Stephen Daldry’s screen adoptation of Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, “The Hours,” (if you’re suddenly thinking to yourself, as I presently am, that the 13 words that proceeded the comma at the beginning of this aside read like a million other generic reviews and that, yes, it would probably be a good thing- a great thing even, to avoid beginning any review in so clichéd a way- if you’re thinking that, or even an approximation of it, then I want to buy you a beer! ) manages, for the films first two-thirds at least, to be one of the finest major studio melodrama’s of last year. Not that there was much competition. Gangs of New York is probably the only other major studio release that connected more often to the kind of swooning pathos The Hours was striving for. There were certainly a number of other mainstream-big-studio-Hollywood releases infused with hearty strains of melodrama (like Signs, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 8 Mile, Minority Report, Panic Room, Road to Perdition, Insomnia, Changing Lanes, Solaris, Attack of the Clones) but in each of these films the atmosphere was usually more impressive (and distracting) then the film’s emotional content, which, when present, came across like bland expository stuffing. 8 Mile, for example, Curtis Hanson’s Karate-Kid update starring Eminem (who does, now that I think about it, share some terribly unexploited similarities with Ralph Macchio) hustles its pathos into awkward kitchen-sink/trailer park scenes between Eminem and his mother, played by Kim Basinger. These scenes, while dripping with atmosphere (you can practically smell the dreams deferred) seem obligatory and blunt. They’re exposition enrichment! Their purpose comes, I believe, from the nervous tinkering of those School of Business Management graduates who are more adept and interested in the artistry of executive finance then film. “The studios no longer make movies primarily to attract and please moviegoers,” Pauline Kael wrote in her seminal essay, “Why Are Movies so Bad? Or The Numbers”, “they make movies in such a way as to get as much as possible from the prearranged and anticipated deals.” Executives want a guaranteed $90 million 3000 screen opening on Memorial Day weekend, at least $50 million in oversees revenues, $60 million from video/DVD and, if all goes well, $40 million for pay-television/airline/cable rights- or if they already own any one of the Big 3 networks, in addition to some of those cable channels...well, in that case, at least a $40 million from ad revenue over 20 years and a projected 100 airings. (This does, after all, include cable, where 100 re-runs is a gross underestimate and where repeated viewings of a single movie like “Back to the Future” on TNT can run into the thousands...though each showing chips away at its ability to attract revenue.) Scripts are re-written a dozen, two dozen or more times whereby all nuance, poetry and subtlety is paved over by a franchise mentality. 8 Mile, while not a sequel, walks in the footsteps of films like Rocky and Karate Kid. It replicates those films proven systems of operation; loser struggles, loser becomes even more of a loser, loser becomes a hero in films final 10 minutes by defeating the true loser. A film like 8 Mile is not unlike McDonalds introducing a new hamburger. It may market itself as something new and exciting but chances are it’s going to taste a lot like a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Still, until the final act of The Hours, Daldry and his fine cast manage to avoid most of these clichéd pitfalls and it’s pleasure to watch, with numerous scenes that throw off sparks of honesty and, more importantly, a rare tendency to lean toward a kind of trust for the intelligence of its audience that most mainstream Hollywood films eschew as box office poison.

What is it about the final half hour of The Hours, then, that’s so unfortunate? It all begins to go downhill the moment Ed Harris’s character, Richard, commits suicide. Probably one reason is because each of the leads (Kidman, Moore, Streep) have done much better work in other recent films. Kidman’s Oscar, for example, should have come for her turn in 2001’s Moulin Rouge where she demonstrated a range that leapt from hilarious and sexy hamming to lump in the throat tragic. And she sang and danced with more verve than either Catherine Zeta Jones (too clunky) or Rene Zellweger (I was afraid she was going to fall and shatter) in the flat and disappointing Chicago. In The Hours she relies too much on physical ticks to convey Woolf’s “otherness.” Moore should have won this year’s Oscar for her similar performance (similar, but with a lot more freedom to shade her performance- the result is exquisite) in Todd Haynes’s brilliant film, Far From Heaven, where she gave her best performance since Haynes’s other masterpiece, Safe. And Meryl Streep was hilarious in Jones’s Adaptation, showing an easy-going charm for comedy she rarely gets a chance to exhibit. While each actor is quite good in The Hours, too often they’re forced to step up to the plate and offer to the viewer palatable nuggets of the profound that awkwardly call attention to the studio’s need to remind the audience that it’s watching a tour de force or Oscar bait. “You’re watching some serious, heady stuff!” Kidman, especially, is made to offer up lines that glows like highlights from a copy of Cliff Notes- one or two sentence summaries encapsulating some of the film’s “Major Themes.” And we know why they’re there. Hollywood never trusts its audience to understand films that strive for even a modicum of depth and complexity. The wizards of finance are terrified of nuance...of the unexplained, of losing the audience. Kidman’s Woolf is made to wallow back into the shallows, plant her feet firmly on terra firma and offer expository laxatives to those perceived viewers who might, the executives fret, be blocked with confusion. To those of us who aren’t confused, and I reckon that’s most, such intrusions can be exasperating. The actresses are made to step awkwardly out of character and pander to executive fears and bottom lines. They might as well pause, allow the director and writer to come forward and pontificate on what it all means. It’s a classic case of the timidity that runs through so many of Hollywood’s dramas and it intrudes upon the vitality of each actor’s performance.

Another reason the film crumbles is because you realize that so many of those supporting actors hovering competently about (Stephen Dillane, Jack Rovello, John C. Reilly, Allison Janney and Claire Danes) aren’t really characters at all- they’re more like warm blankets in a film that works to undermine all elements of the cozy. Its themes could be articulated as, “Life is grim- end yours (Kidman), flee from it (Moore), or face it head on, suffer its consequences and find what exactly (Streep)? Grace? All these characters, especially cute little nubin, Jack Rovello, are there not as actors but as soothing lubricants. I mean, none of them really ads up to much, do they? Especially Janney and Danes, whose function seems to be to give Streep’s Clarissa hugs and kisses.

In the last half hour, The Hours wants to provide the audience with sweet resolution. It’s the worst kind of pandering. It expects this is what we want, that this is what we paid our money for. It provides a cathartic powwow between Clarissa and Laura (Moore) that offers up a lot of tears and trembling but is glaringly at odds with all that has come before it. It’s a kind of reconciliation for all the doubts and mistakes each character has made. It’s very sweet, but is it honest? The first two-thirds of the film seem to be saying one thing- that art helps us to survive, that it can offer catharsis and that art intertwines with and enriches our little lives. That is to say, that great art doesn’t offer definitive resolutions but rather, numerous avenues of possibility. When Streep turns off that light at the film’s end, the very light that first baths her warm smile of acceptance and grace in the most ingratiating of yellows, are we to understand that her character has found peace? Philip Glass’s score seems to want to coax us in that direction. His embalming repetitions suddenly arc up into a sugar sighing sweetness that the rest of the film has fought so hard to repress. This is followed by Kidman’s Woolf wading into the water. Her suicide is portrayed as grossly romantic and another kind of redemption without sticky consequences. It’s beautiful to look at and certainly very sad, but it’s forced through you like a spoonful of castor oil for fear that you might leave the film feeling anything but cleansed.

The impossibility over the past few days to get anybody in the administration to give a direct, unequivocally straight answer regarding Bush’s false claim in his State of the Union address that Iraq had attempted to purchase enriched uranium from Africa (in particular, Niger) has been frustrating to watch. Frustrating because this story has been smoldering for so long now and the mainstream press has been all but silent about it except for a few columnists (Nicholas Kristof at the Times, who sometimes drives me crazy with his nagging air of righteousness, has been particularly fantastic in asking the real question, “what did the administration know about the claim and when did the know it?”) who have helped to make it into a small fire. Josh Marshall of Talking Points has been doing a stellar job over the last few days of assembling and dissecting the comments of each player as they’re now (finally) weighing in. Take some time to read Marshall’s comments over the last few days (beginning with his July 7th post, quoting at length Ari Fleischer’s fumbling attempt to answer the questions of an on the ball reporter and ending with today’s bomb from CBS News which headlines, Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False) . One of the administration’s most pressing claims for pre-emptive war against Iraq is, as is becoming more and more transparent, a lie.

I’ve seen and read a lot about the growing obesity epidemic in the U.S. since moving to the Bay area a couple years ago. Moving from Chicago (rated by Men’s Fitness magazine as the 2nd fattest city in the U.S-) to Berkeley it was amazing to see just how much more fit people out here seemed to be in addition to how much things like nutrition, exercise, portion size and general health consciousness were mainstreamed. And I’m not just talking about the prevalence of this regions organic/No-GMO movements, although their activism and advocacy has, no doubt, played an important role. It seems to me like folks out here are simply more aware, more demanding and more concerned about what they eat and how it effects their physical and mental health and have been for far longer than probably anywhere else in the U.S. Perhaps the biggest contributing factor to this "healthy diet consciosness"comes from the massive accumulation of wealth in this area. And with that heavy concentration of wealth comes access to quality grocery stores with wide selections of fresh foods as opposed to low-income neighborhoods and their over-priced corner stores and fast-food restaurants. Returning to Chicago earlier this Summer, both Cathy and I were overwhelmed by how many overweight people we saw. Even more disheartening, overweight people wearing various articles of spandex and sweating profusely. Too many Vienna Beef smoothies perhaps?

According to the Center for Disease Control, “Recent results of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey indicate that an estimated 61 percent of U.S. adults are either overweight or obese.” You’re overweight or obese if your body mass index (BMI) rates 25 or more. Here’s a handy calculator for you to figure out your own. I’m currently at 24.9. I’m clearly living dangerously on the edge. I figure I’m a Krispy Kreme away from pudgy.

This coming Tuesday (that'll be tomorrow!) I’ll be leaving the cozy confines of Berkeley to enjoy a three week sojourn to the Midwest with stops in Cincinnati, Cleveland and Chicago. Initially, this was a hard decision to make given that I am and have been unemployed for far longer than I ever imagined (though, I must admit, I did manage to gain a t-spoon of solace from a recent article in the Economist which pointed out that, currently, the average length of unemployment in the U.S. is 20 months) and that by leaving the Bay area job market for so long I would potentially miss the miracle of doors long closed suddenly opening and beckoning. Of course, that’s not going to happen. The job market here in the Bay reminds me of Sisyphus, toiling to roll that rock up to the top of the hill only to have it roll back down again. Case in point- about a month ago I made it through a few rounds of interviews with a San Francisco based lefty magazine and felt that the interviews had gone quite well. But then the call came that a “very difficult decision” had been made (at least they were nice about pushing the rock back down the hill) and so-forth and so-on and so it goes. I try to keep Albert Camus’s famous essay on Sisyphus in mind by choosing to see not discouragement in trudging back down the hill to meet the burden of the rock once again (though, admittedly, there are times when the thought of writing another cover letter or of receiving another rejection letter is more disheartening than a vat of lima beans), but rather the idea that I am stronger than that particular rock. “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart,” Camus wrote, which I’ve always interpreted as being akin to the aphorism, “It’s not the arrival that matters but the journey.” I’ve learned a lot about myself over the last couple years. I’ve learned a lot about that freakin’ rock! I look forward to these next few weeks as an opportunity to leave my rock idle for a while. It’ll be there when I get back. Some doors might even open and I’ll roll in right on in.

There are a couple things I absolutely must have when going on a vacation. Music and books. There’s something about traveling that seems to infuse whatever music or books I bring with an additional veneer of anticipation. I think it’s that I expect to be even more curious, more attentive and more eager when traveling and that the books I read and the music I’ll listen to will be the fortuitous recipients of this heightening. Here are the books I’m bringing-

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle- Haruki Murakami (I’ve been on a big fiction kick of late and the buzz about Murakami seems to be that he’s the Western reader’s favorite Japanese novelist- which inevitably leads me to wonder just who the West’s favorite writer from Uzbekistan might be?)

The Iraq War Reader: History, Documents, Opinions- Edited by Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf (It seems so vital to me, as a citizen of the U.S., to have as complete an understanding as possible of the various machinations and malfeasances that were perpetuated by this administration in order to bring the U.S. into a war that was fought, not in our best interest, but rather, as becomes increasingly clear, the interests of a small but frighteningly powerful set of neo-conservatives with chips on their shoulders. That being said, and thus betraying my own bias, this collection looks remarkably balanced- you’ve got your lefties, your neo-con’s and your moderates all stomping grapes in their respective vats.)

Here’s the music (of which I always bring way too much...so I may trim the fat off this in the next couple days)

Tosca: Dehli9
Tim Hecker: Haunt me, Haunt Me, Do It Again
Nils Okland: Staum
Supersilent: 6
Barbara Morgenstern: Nichts Muss
Prefuse 73: One Word Extinguisher
Johann Johannson: Englaborn
Four Tet: Rounds
Bert Jansch: Dazzling Stranger
Orchestra Super Mazembe: Giants of East Africa
Information: Biomekano
The Delgados: Hate
Ibrahim Ferrer: Buenos Hermanos
Bill Evans Trio: Sunday at the Village Vanguard
Sigur Ros: ( )
The Minus 5: Down With Wilco
Yo La Tengo: Summer Sun
A Band of Bees: Sunshine Hit Me
Pernice Brothers: Your, Mine and Ours
Autechre: Draft 7.30
Impact!: Rare and Unreleased Reggae, Funk and Soul...
The Soft Pink Truth: Do You Party?
Miles Davis: Seven Steps to Heaven
M. Ward: End of Amnesia
Neil Young: Tonight’s the Night
Daniel Lanois: Shine
Beth Orton: Trailer Park
Lexoleum: Lex Records Compilation
2 Many Dj’s: As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2
Miami Sound: Rare Funk and Soul from Miami, Florida 1967-1974
Neko Case and Her Boyfriends: Furnace Room Lullaby
America: America
The Cars: The Cars
The New Pornographers: Electric Version
Before Night Falls: Before Night Falls Soundtrack
The Roots: Things Fall Apart
A Tribe Called Quest: Midnight Marauders
OMD: Architecture and Morality

It’s a (wonderful) sickness...I know.

I've been slow to post anything new these past few weeks, but I hope to get some new material up soon.

This Week at the Berkeley Library!

”The Red Violin: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack-” I really wanted to like the film this soundtrack was composed for. Francois Girard’s second film, 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould” is one of my favorites- a masterpiece bursting with imagination and intelligence (thanks, in large part, to the acting of Colm Feore)- so, when I had originally read about Girard’s next project, a film that wouid follow a violin through three centuries, I thought nothing of its potential pretensions (after all, “32 Short Films” managed so well to avoid them) and everything of its likely genius. I mean, don’t we always want those people we admire and enjoy to succeed and continue to succeed in delighting us? Sure we do.

As it turned out, “The Red Violin” was a sluggish chunk of period piece tedium that, if I remember correctly (and I can’t remember much) was so poised and polished as to seem devoid of spontaneity, character or joy. It was trapped by an overindulgent reverence for its premise- a violin of near mythical proportions and its ascendance (via its numerous owners, its rich relations to matters of historical importance) through three turbulent (and sometimes very sexy!) centuries. You’re to be wowed by the extravagance of this inanimate object’s travels, to marvel at the melody of its fates and the peculiar effects it’s had on those who’ve come (or are they pulled?) into its orbit but there’s so much put into building the appropriate infrastructure of aggrandizement that the story always seems to be taking place somewhere else, like behind the scaffolding.

The soundtrack for this very special violin was composed by John Corigliano (never heard of him) with mucho solo violin performed by Joshua Bell. (I have heard of him- he’s been trotted out and displayed on enough of the various Arts/Culture pages to cross my path so as to leave an impression, at least the impression the editor’s want me to possess- that he is, or more likely was, the “it” boy of classical music...and while he may not be deserving, I’ve seen fit to lump him into the same camp as the likes of Charlotte Church- just to spite those editors!) I also seem to remember that the soundtrack to this film was quite popular, maybe even more so then the film itself, and that young Joshua even toured with it, rocking music halls across America with “Anna’s Theme” and “End Titles.”

I suppose, spending a balmy summer night at some outdoor concert venue consuming wine and cheese aplenty while listening to this soundtrack being performed would be enjoyable enough. Hell, if the wine were potent enough, I might even find myself, despite the urgent please of my companions to do otherwise, buying a Joshua Bell concert t-shirt! As it stands, the soundtrack leaves me cold. Like so much classical music, the music’s effect is to transport me to a place smelling of varnished wood and watery stone- in other words, a church. I don’t have any desire to unpack where such associations come from, but I’d hazard that classical music’s close relationship to the cultural aristocracy- the folks who, for example, front load the pages of the Arts/Cultural section with Theatre and Classical reviews and bury the Rock/Pop and Film reviews because they believe we should eat our veggies before dessert has something to do with it.

It seems hard to believe that this old cultural dichotomy still seems to prevail- that one edifies and the other sensationalizes/dehumanizes. There’s that element of class that still infects the consumption of classical music and it's one that its current makers and followers seem, from what little evidence I’ve seen, indifferent towards dispelling despite the occasional inspirational documentary wherein cherubic inner-city children are taught to play violins. (And even that has a nasty whiff of teaching the savages to sing.) It’s the music of the wealthy and it sees fit to continue to pander to them and the rattle of their bling bling. Of course, these are pretty big generalizations, but to quote Pauline Kael, “Obviously any of my generalizations are subject to numerous exceptions and infinite qualifications; let’s assume that I know this, and that I use large generalizations in order to be suggestive rather than definitive.”

Oh, and it’s terribly boring. That’s true of most classical music and this soundtrack. It’s all so damn serious. There’s no doubt that Joshua Bell can play a mean violin, but like the film itself, the music is as polished and gleaming as a marble hall and as sterile as one too.

Mulholland Dr.: Original Mothion Picture Soundtrack- Oh, yes. This is more like it. Like an update from the town of Twin Peaks (Population 51,201), especially a song like “Mulholland Drive” which sees the triumphant return of the dark velvet grandeur of Badalamenti’s moody strings.

I can’t think of a composer/director currently teamed up whose work is so seductively complimentary. Lynch, like so many of the great American director’s who got their start in the 70’s, is an intensely musical director. In fact, sound itself plays such a vital role in his films that Lynch one of the few filmmakers I know of who has a clearly identifiable sound. More on that later.

Since “Blue Velvet” Lynch has turned to Angelo Badalamenti, to compose the music for his films. Highlights include the original soundtrack to the television show, “Twin Peaks” (which I was, like many, obsessively devoted to- the debut episode still stands as, hands down, the greatest thing Lynch has ever done- residing in a world, majestically...shit, mythically even... “Gentlemen....don’t drink that coffee! There’s a fish...in the percolator!”...all its own), “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” (where Badalamenti laid down some of the sexiest sleaze Ever!), “Wild At Heart” and, lastly, his tender and Big Sky countrified soundtrack to “The Straight Story.”

What makes the soundtrack to Mulholland Dr. so interesting is that it marks the first time that Lynch has interwoven his own sound design treatments into many of Badalamenti’s compositions. Sound design has always played an important role in all of Lynch’s films, but Badalamenti’s scores, when released on CD, have always been stripped of any trace of them.

The prominence of sound design is relatively new in the world of film. Most consider Ben Burtt, the guy who created the sounds of the lightsaber (mixing an old TV set and an even older 35 mm projector) and TIE fighters (“a drastically altered elephant bellow”) to be the first to really demonstrate and popularize (I mean, who doesn’t love the sounds in the Star Wars films?) its possibilities and to expand upon the use of sound in film. It’s important to note, however, that there have been numerous director’s who have done incredible work with sound previous to Burtt’s experiments. Orson Welles, Robert Bresson, Jean-Luc Goddard and Robert Altman are a few I can think of immediately off the top of my head.

Sound design doesn’t have one tidy, friendly definition. It encompasses, for example, the dialogue, soundtrack and sound effects. I’ve read of sound design, in this broad sense, as being defined as such- just as an interior designer goes into a space and decorates it (a chair here, a lamp there) a sound designer decorates that space with sound. Ever since the Jazz Singer, film has been decorated with its own internal sound, though this was limited to, for the most part, dialogue, basic sound effects (gun shots, thunder, doors slamming) and music. (I’m repeating myself.) It’s only been in the last 25 years, however, that the giddy possibilities of manipulating sound have begun to be explored and realized in film. To flush that out, here’s a quote from an interview with Walter Murch, one of the film worlds most famous sound designers, justly renowned in nerdy little sound design circles for his work on films like “American Graffiti” and “Apocalypse Now.”

“Never before in history, before the invention of recorded sound, had people possessed the ability to manipulate sound the way they’d manipulated color or shapes. We were limited to manipulating sound in music, which is a highly abstract medium. But with recorded material you can manipulate sound effects—the sound of the world—to great effect. In the same way that painting, or looking at paintings, makes you see the world in a different way, listening to interestingly arranged sounds makes you hear differently.”

There’s a international conference, Cinesonic held in Australia every year that focuses on film scores and sound design. Recent papers there included Kathryn Bird’s exploration of sound as used in martial-arts (Kung-Fu) films and, in particular, the effect “projectile sounds made when objects such as weapons or bodies displaced air.” Ken Wark’s paper, “The E.R. Effect: The Sound of Ambient Suffering” investigated “how the sounds of machines and technology that make up the hospital environment assume dramatic and empathetic qualities and function as counterpoints to the action of a scene.”

Reading the synopsis of these and other papers (companion books are available, but unfortunately these articles aren’t available on line) was totally fascinating, like a mini-Eureka moment- “sound manipulation and narrative- right! Of course! Why don’t I know more about this?!” Like most, when I think of sound in film, I first consider the soundtrack. But when I think back, there are dozens of films where I was struck by a particular sound or collection of sounds that weren’t part of the soundtrack, the dialogue or those aforementioned “basic sound effects.” Sounds that I couldn’t identify or seemed to hover around the audible thresholds, appearing then rescinding and casting narrative shades on the action. Sounds both alien and intoxicating but mixed so seamlessly (I rarely suddenly sit up in the movie-theater and think, “No, that’s definitely not the sound this scene needs, or that object deserves!”) as to work almost unconsciously on the viewer. How and why do such sounds effect us, manipulate us, scare us, excite us...? How are they made?

For starters, Lynch’s “Eraserhead” has, quite possibly, the greatest (certainly one of the creepiest) sound designs ever created. It was created by the late Alan Splet and Lynch and described by Philip Brophy (probably the most interesting and perceptive sound design critics I’ve come across) as “a landmark in exploring base emotional states through aural abstraction.” It’s all radiator hiss, low frequency drones and granular static coating everything in psycho-acoustic swabs of loneliness, queasy feelings of otherness and highly potent freakiness. Something else too- what Brophy touched on above- the accentuation of nothingness, the sound of space and the humming air. Individual ambiences (the sound of empty space), the presence of which we’re normally unconscious of, are amplified, tweaked, distorted and reprocessed into symptoms of dread.

In most of Lynch’s films, his sound design (which, I’d argue, is just as vital and potent as his highly individualized visual palate) is mixed into Badalamenti’s soundtrack. As I already mentioned, like most sound design in film, it’s almost always unobtrusively integrated into the film and as the strings swell, you’re usually not aware (unless you’re the type who pays attention to those kind of things or is prone to thinking such thoughts as, “I have my shoes on,” or “Hey, I can feel the elastic of my underwear encompassing my waist!” in which case, I’m so, so sorry) of a cottony sigh of static bubbling under the strings and causing your pulse to quicken in expectation of what? you’re not entirely sure. When the soundtracks have been released on CD, however, the sound design is stripped and you’re left with just the music. That’s been just fine. Here, however, the sound design has been, for the most part, left intact. That’s even better. The best example of this inclusion and its powerful effect is displayed on “Mr. Roque/Betty’s Theme” which begins with about a minute of ominous droning before a heavily reverbed bell sounds and Badalamenti’s music arrives like a balm.

There are a few excellent non-Lynch/Badalamenti compositions. The glorious Hammond slink and slither of Dave Cavanaugh’s “The Beast,” the foot-stompin’ quivering grind of Willie Dixon’s “Bring It On Home,” and best of all, the starry-eyed gee-whiz fizz of Linda Scott performing “I’ve Told Every Little Star.” Oh, and then there’s Rebekah Del Rio’s show stopping a cappella/Spanish rendition of Roy Orbinson’s Crying (LLorando)- used to emotionally devastating effect in the film (like a lot of Mulholland Dr., it makes perfect nonsense) to split the whole thing in two. Doppelganger!

Big Night: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack- When I lived in Columbus, Ohio one of the art theatres (Drexel) would, from time to time, combine a lavish gourmet dinner (what else is a gourmet dinner going to be but lavish? sparse? water and sunflower seeds?) and Big Night. It’s a great idea and I’m not sure why more art theatres don’t do this kind of stuff more often.

Big Night belongs to that genre of food movies (Chocolate, Like Water For Chocolate, Tampopo, Mostly Martha, Eat, Drink, Man, Woman) and that means it’ll make you feel good and really freakin’ hungry. That’s because, like most of the films in this genre, there will be numerous montages of incredible looking food being prepared and eaten by the likes of Isabella Rossellini and Juliette Binoche. That, of course, will make you horny but what are you gonna do?

The soundtrack is great. It’ll make you feel good and hungry too. It’s got too much dramatic flare and swing to make you horny though but what are you gonna do? It might make you want to dance, and well, we all know where that’s going to lead! It’s a mix of Italian and Italian-American songs from the 50’s and 60’s, kicking off with Claudio Villa’s “Stronelli Amorist” a song that makes me want to embody (or at least imagine) a thousand different Italian stereotypes but mostly, it makes me want to eat pasta and shout Mangi! Mangi! What a voice! So histrionic, you know?

George Cloony’s aunt, the late Rosemary Clooney is here, singing the groovy and deliciously hilarious “Mambo Italiano” with lyrics like... “Hey mambo, don’t wanna tarantella, hey mambo, no more a mozzarella, Hey mambo! Mambo Italiano, try an enchilada with da fish a bac a lab and then a...” all sung with a “Wot’s a matta you?” pseudo Italian accent. And then there’s the cuts by Louis Prima, big joyous slices (of pizza, perhaps?) of swinging jazz that aim for, it seems, nothing less than getting your toes tapping and spreading shit eating grins onto every face within earshot. In fact, the whole soundtrack is like that. It’s serving up shit eating grins all around. This is joyous music.

Ghana: High-Life and other Popular Music- One of the recent Electra Nonesuch Explorer Series, remastered so it sounds fantastic. Originally released in 1969, this is a collection of 13 songs performed by Saka Acquaye and His African Ensemble and as the liner notes point out, presents “a small sampling of the fascinating music of modern Africa.” That’s its strength and weakness. It’s an introduction to the “rich spontaneity and color of African life.” (The current editor’s make sure you’re aware that the original liner notes have been reprinted and that the “text has not been edited to reflect changes in general cultural perceptions or specific factual information that may have occurred since then.” ) It sounds great, but there’s the nagging feeling that what you’re hearing isn’t exactly representative of African music, circa 1969 (as if that could be encapsulated in a single CD) but an attempt to indulge the tastes and assumptions of what American listeners wanted African music to sound like in 1969. There are a number of Saka Acquaye original compositions with ‘exotic’ titles like, “Drum Festival,” “Congo Beat,” “Echoes of the African Forest,” and “Kenya Sunset.” And there’s this, from the liner notes: “In a government-issued guide book to Ghana, one finds the remark that ‘enjoyment of life’ and ‘love of laughter’ characterize the people of this African republic. Nowhere is this more evident than in their music.” Raise an eyebrow and you’re reminded that it’s the original liner notes you’re reading, written back when Africans were happy, especially when making polyrhythms.

Most of the songs found here barely pass the 2:00 minute mark, which seems awfully short to me, as if the editors were wary that if they were any longer, attention might wander and those smiles might turn into frowns. So, there’s a little bit of the Disney, “It’s a Small World” infection here, a bit of the Real World buff and polish about it (I worry that I’m hinting that this album somehow isn’t “authentic” enough, ‘cause I have no idea just what “authentic” African music is other than a bundle of my own prejudices and expectations), but that’s not to say it’s a total bust. It’s also a lot of fun. It’s not unlike some of the “exotic” world music songs/sounds some American stars were incorporating into their songs around the same time. I half expect to hear a “Day-O!” called out. The album’s first track, “Sugar Soup,” kicks off with a furious burst of melody, all looping drums, chugging horns, summary vibes (lots of vibes on these tracks- it’s like a sweetener should things get too dissonant) and call and response vocals. But it’s over at 2:00 minutes. It’s in dire need of an extended remix. “Saturday Night” is a great high-life groover, again with brilliant chugging horn lines and lilting vibes. It wrenches quite a bit out of its allotted 1:58 seconds. It’s all very safe and inoffensive- those who bought the original back in ’69 probably moved on to Olatunji’s “Drums of Passion” and were all the better for it.

This Week at the Berkeley Library!

-”The Red Violin: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack”- I really wanted to like the film this soundtrack was composed for. Francois Girard’s second film, table.lfmWidgetchart_27c9f1e1647b0b437f57a545021d4b11 td {margin:0 !important;padding:0 !important;border:0 !important;}table.lfmWidgetchart_27c9f1e1647b0b437f57a545021d4b11 tr.lfmHead a:hover {background:url(http://cdn.last.fm/widgets/images/en/header/chart/recenttracks_regular_red.png) no-repeat 0 0 !important;}table.lfmWidgetchart_27c9f1e1647b0b437f57a545021d4b11 tr.lfmEmbed object {float:left;}table.lfmWidgetchart_27c9f1e1647b0b437f57a545021d4b11 tr.lfmFoot td.lfmConfig a:hover {background:url(http://cdn.last.fm/widgets/images/en/footer/red.png) no-repeat 0px 0 !important;;}table.lfmWidgetchart_27c9f1e1647b0b437f57a545021d4b11 tr.lfmFoot td.lfmView a:hover {background:url(http://cdn.last.fm/widgets/images/en/footer/red.png) no-repeat -85px 0 !important;}table.lfmWidgetchart_27c9f1e1647b0b437f57a545021d4b11 tr.lfmFoot td.lfmPopup a:hover {background:url(http://cdn.last.fm/widgets/images/en/footer/red.png) no-repeat -159px 0 !important;}