Give Me Take You

It took me a long time to get around to watching Intolerably Cruelty, but you know what it was great!  I have no complaints.  All in an enjoyable sense: funny, hip (in that confusing sort of way), sexy, and just inhumane enough to grant a pass to the title.  Who didn't like this movie again?  Why?

Granted, it may be a little on the boring side if you're really leaning on it for a good time.  I, on the other hand, had the opportunity to watch it just to kill time, and it did it fantastically.

"Where you goin' I don't mind, I've killed my world and I've killed my time" -Dave Davies

"Since 1960, the composer Arne Nordheim has enchanted both musicians and audience with a unique soundscape. His music may be considered a source to the later Nordic Sound of electronica. Today's DJs might not willingly announce 'Grandfather taught me this,' but that's actually the case! Cikada Duo is Kenneth Karlsson (piano/synthesizer) and Bjørn Rabben (percussion). They are joined by Åke Parmerud (elektronics) and Elisabeth Holmertz (soprano) in this production of Arne Nordheim's music. Take the stand within the percussion and let yourself be embraced by electronica, vocal and synthesizers in an extreme surround sound recording, as originally intended by the composer." 2006 recordings; hybrid CD/SACD format (the SACD portion is in 5.1 surround sound).

I have a couple of Arne Nordheim discs, all early material.  It's electronic and electro-acoustic music in the vein of Xenakis - very studied and clinical sounding.  The excitement is in the passages that are most interesting.  I'm not sure why the label is trying to push this as DJ music.  Maybe this release is different, but I doubt it, which is a good thing.

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"Alga Marghen presents a new chapter in the documentation of Amos/It's War Boys/Homosexuals recordings. Directly taken from the original It's War Boys catalog, here is one of the most obscure sonic works of the early 1980s, Modern Shit! First 'issued' on tape (cat No. $21) this work circulated only privately among the close friends of the label and was never officially distributed. Actually, it represents one of the most intense and experimental outputs of this creative London period. The idea was to create a contemporary 'Non-stop,' vaguely in emulous contradiction to product by people like Cerrone and Biddulph (1970s disco queens). Lepke and Amos, the two minds behind this project (and 2/3 of the Milk from Cheltenham adventures), each constructed a half hour near-continuous non-stop using only the foulest materials. In those days, they had their 8-track studio in a moldy basement below Brixton Road, South London and they happened to occasionally record some awful wannabe pop bands. It was a truly horrible experience but with a good side. Almost as soon as the idiots left the studio, Lepke and Amos would start re-mixing their music, often stealing and sticking it (suitably mangled) onto new tracks, the basis material for Modern Shit! Also included is Artcoustics: The Stories Told by Record Covers, a 500-page full color catalog issued by Mednarodni Graficni Likovni center in Ljubljana. The catalog is the documentation of an exhibition of record covers conceived by Guy Schraenen mainly based on punk/DIY/underground records from ex-Yugoslavia as well as contemporary/Fluxus/minimal/conceptual art record editions. Some Alga Marghen titles from theVocSon series are included as well. The stories are 'Black Plastic'; 'Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's Design'; 'On Records, Record Covers, and Starving Children'; 'The Eloquence of the Useful Adornment: Stories of the Sleeves of Slovenia's Independent Alternative Records in the Pre-Digital Age'; 'A Radio Station's Library, or The Endless Pursuit of the Ultimate Sound (and the Ultimate Album Cover).' Also included is a Sound Art chapter featuring Guy Schraenen's essay 'Installing Sound.' The CD is presented in beautiful slim-jewel-box with full color cover. First edition of 150 copies. The book and the CD are distributed together by Alga Marghen but they are considered two separate kinds of anthologies."

The sound half of this release represents part of what I consider one of the best reissue projects going.  The obscure, 1980's Homosexuals/It's War Boys releases and side projects seem like they all stand to be stellar, so I'm glad the effort is continuing.  I look forward to a regular CD edition of this so I can check out the music.

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"Noise In You is an album of gorgeous music about noisy emotions: our desires and distractions, anxieties and passions, love and loss, and the living hum of our bodies. It is David Garland's 8th album since entering New York City's downtown scene in the 1980s, and it's the first to receive the wide distribution and attention his music deserves. Garland is a multi-instrumentalist currently exploring the sumptuous jangle of a 12-string guitar; he sings with a voice that's deep, honest, and intimate. Noise In You is unclassifiable: pop music that's both experimental and accessible, and is rich with intricate layered harmonies and startling colors and textures. It features the beautiful, sometimes mystical voices of a younger generation of musicians — Sufjan Stevens, Mira Romantschuk (of Mi and L'Au), Diane Cluck, Viking Moses, and David Deporis — together with guitars, flute, piano, clarinet, sarode, oboe, and more. Noise In You unfolds into a wondrous, subtly interconnected song cycle that sweeps you up in its imaginativeness, drama, and sensual pleasure."

While I don't really care about this release, maybe I will once I hear it.  As I understand it, this is the sort of experimental music that's extremely NPR ready.  Maybe I'll like it?

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"A document of Joe McPhee's first solo concert devoted exclusively to the straight horn, Soprano is both a companion volume to his previous LP for Roaratorio (the critically lauded Everything Happens For A Reason) and a follow-up to his classic album Tenor, which raised the bar for solo saxophone music over 30 years ago. Recorded live in St. George's Church at the Guelph Jazz Festival in 1998, Soprano was inspired by Pauline Oliveros' 'Deep Listening' performance at the venue the previous year. The acoustics of the church provided a natural web of reverberation and delay, and compose as much a part of the sonic palette as Michael Overhage's farmhouse did for Tenor. McPhee's art is informed by the head and the heart in equal measures, and Soprano is thoughtful, passionate music from one of jazz's most eloquent practitioners. A limited edition of 500 copies on 180 gram vinyl, with a Judith Lindbloom silkscreen print on rice paper and liner notes by McPhee and Oliveros."

Ever since hearing his terrific As Serious As Your Life, I've kept a candle lit for Joe McPhee as a great jazz musician.  He's quite a singular figure and I usually have an interest in anything he dows solo.  These LPs look very nice, too.

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"Released at the height of flower power in1967, We Are Ever So Clean is the first record by the UK's Blossom Toes, widely considered to be the finest pop-psych album ever recorded. Produced by Giorgio Gomelsky (discoverer of The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds), it's a fascinating amalgam of whimsical pop, music hall humor and acid rock. Much-bootlegged over the years, this is its first official reissue, timed to coincide with its 40th anniversary. Produced with the band's full involvement, it's presented with no fewer than ten bonus tracks, encompassing non-LP singles, demos, out-takes and live performances, and comes complete with a full-color 12-page booklet incorporating many rare photographs and a comprehensive band history, as well as an introduction from the band's leader, Brian Godding."

A prog-folk-pop record I really need to revisit.

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Grey-area reissue of this once totally unknown Japanese freak-out album, originally issued in 1971 (previously reissued on LP by Shadoks and legit-CD by P-Vine). This was briefly available a few years back and here it is again; say what you will, but this is an monumental album that is never going to go "out of style". Opening in unique fashion with various street sounds collaged into a sampled excerpt of David Axelrod's "Holy Thursday" (from his 1968 masterpiece Song of Innocence), this flows into exceptionally heavy psych from the group People, led by the pure wah-wah excess of guitarist Kimio Mizutani (Love Live Life, Satoh Masahiko & Soundbreakers). Mixing Buddhist chanting, chirping birds and religious ecstasy, this one beats B.O.R.B. to the doughnut hole by 2 decades plus.

Seems like a personal recommendation from Jimmy Johnson himself.  Can't dismiss that easily.  Boots usually have a good reason for existing, too.

Straight Time (1978) with Dustin Hoffman, it lived up to everything I'd hoped it would be and more.  In my opinion, the best role I've ever seen Hoffman play.  It's cliche, but he really does become his character.  The performance is so subtle and unself-conscious that the movie truly takes on a fatefully voyeuristic character.  He nails it.  You must see it to believe it.  Only recently released as a DVD, and the highest recommendation.

Overall the movie does an amazing job of realistically and artfully showing how an ex-con is what he is and how he can struggle and fail to live a straight life.  If there's a single downfall, it's the use of Hoffman's parole officer so bluntly as a personality foil to him in a scene when it's both an unnecessary and overbearing evidence that people's manners are often ironically similar and only act on different planes of reality.  The movie did a well enough job of making all the hardships look like no-one's fault, anyhow, so no need for that.

Other notable supporting cast:  Theresa Russell, Gary Busey (with son Jake), Harry Dean Stanton, and Kathy Bates.  Enough said.

When a friend asked what the movie was about, I told him that it was about a gay man attempting to live a straight life.  It would probably be funny to watch it thinking that, too.

The new Timbaland track "Give It To Me" is compelling to me for a few reasons.  It's fairly enjoyable, firstly, as music, but it's also on the level of being something of a song that's appealing for all the same reasons that reality TV is.  You've got some kind of social viewpoint or staging of the three successful figures in the song, Nelly Furtado, Justin Timberlake, Timbaland.

It's common to gawk at the blatantly insignificant nature of lyrics like Timbaland's - he uses most of his mic time just to give himself props and to fuel a beef with a former protege - but there is one line in the song that's particularly interesting to me.  Even though they make it clear they aren't out to hurt anyone, the tone of the song, which I might simply call Adult, also lets on that they don't have any pretensions of looking out for anyone either.  So, when Nelly Furtado croons that they'll be "acting real nice" there's no doubt that there's some menace at work, however incidental it might be.

"Acting real nice" in the context of a rap song lyric is amazing to me because it is basically claiming manners as a possession, and a powerful one worth bragging about.  Why bother being real nice and then bore everyone by bragging about it?  Not that there's anything wrong with possessing social graces, but if there's a hint of compassion in the words, it barely registers with me, or is drowned out by all the other uncomplimentary sounds about it.  For me, the song borders on being the sort of uncomfortable reminder of people's shifting and manipulative persona's that you would find in the bleaker sections a Bergman film.

"Why don't we just dress up in red like Kraftwerk did for the Man Machine album?"

If anything is not cool, it's this.  Honestly, it wasn't even cool when Kraftwerk did it.  Now you do it because you realize 80% of your fanbase won't realize you didn't come up with the idea yourself or that you didn't bother to shave before the photo, and the other 20% will just be so proud of themselves for getting the reference that they are willing to give you props just for making them feel better about themselves.

BASINSKI, WILLIAM: El Camino Real CD (2062 0703) 13.00

"Hypnotic new electronic ambient recording using another recently discovered loop from the archive. Premiered at Bleeding Edge Festival, Montalvo Arts Center, August 2006."

I'm always interested in anything new by Basinski, but I'm in no hurry to check this out. I own too much mediocre Basinksi as is. I'd be happy if this was like a better-sound-quality Watermusic.

FOVEA HEX: Neither Speak Nor Remain Silent 3CD BOX (DS 089BOX) 55.00

"A limited box including all three parts of the series: Bloom, Huge and Allure. Embossed cover."

I've heard the first EP, and it's very nice. I'd like to see an evolution in the EPs, but I have gotten the impression that it's all just more of the same. Still, I'd like to own this. Too rich for my blood this month.