Thursday, March 27, 2008

Put the Glaaaases Onnnn!

AV Club picks this after yesterday's set?

Those Black Skinned Blue-Eyed Boys Ain't Gonna Fight No Wars

Fresh off some kind of liquid Tylenol daze I'm not sure I entirely fathom, Holly just had to go and cap off the recounting of her Vegas trip with mention of hearing Adam Freeland's new set.

Go Here to download. Right Click. Save As.

Check this fucking set list:


Billy Nayer - Ship Alarm (BSG Records)
Siriusmo - Girls Rock (Bungalow)
Unkle – Restless [loop] (Surrender All)
Evil Nine – They Live(unmixed demo) (Marine Parade)
Rogerseventytwo – Imagination (Tiger Trax)
Grinderman - No Pussy Blues [Adam Freeland Edit] (CDR)
Adam Freeland – Glowstix (Marine Parade)
Boys Noize - Let's Buy Happiness (Boys Noize Records)
Autolux – Blanket [Adam Freeland Mix] (Full Time Hobby)
Junkie XL - Cities in Dust [Glimmers Mix] (Artwerk)
Hot Chip - Ready For The Floor [Soulwax Mix (EMI)
Shadow Dancer - End Hit (Boys Noize Records)
Alan Braxe – Addicted (Vulture)
U.N.K.L.E. – Restless (Surrender All)
Blake Baxter/Mark Romboy - House Ya [Bootleg] (CDR)
Alex Metric – Pins (Marine Parade)
Crookers - Love To Edit (Crack Crack Records)
Bloody Beetroots – Butter (Crack Crack Records)
DJ Shadow - Right thing/Ztrip - Set off the party (Island)
Freeland – Do Ya(unmixed demo) (Marine Parade)
Map Of Africa - Black Skin Blue Eyed Boys (Whatever We Want)
Black Strobe - Shining Brightstar [Phones Mix] (Playlouder / Beggars France)
Sebasien Tellier - Sexual Sportswear [SebastiAn Mix] (Record Makers)
Breakbot – Happy Rabbit (Moshi Moshi)
Tepr - Midniut Jacuzzi [Data Mix] (Wall of Sound)
Soulwax – Krack [Nite Version] (Play It Again Sam)
Midnight Juggernaughts - Road to Discovery (Siberia Records)
Adam Freeland – Hate (Marine Parade)
Freeland - How To Fake Your Life(unmixed demo) (Marine Parade)
Splitter - All Alone [Alex Metric Mix] (Eye Industries)
Can – Mothersky (United Artists Records)
Swayzak - Smile & Receive [Apparat Mix] (K7!)
Simple Minds - Theme for Great Cities (Sanctuary)
Caribou – Niobe [Adam Freeland Edit] (CDR)

Just reading that caused to stand on end the numerous hairs on my body.


I am Up All Night.

Addendum: Never much used drugs. I don't have to. I have music like this. I thought last year was a peak. Thank God these people got the madness.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

I Used To Be Much Older

First: See In Bruges. I'm not at all the first to sing about it, but I haven't seen anything quite so zany that wasn't also drowned in whimsy. It pulls no punches, it takes unbelievable chances, and to top it all off, most of it is hysterical.

Second: Two movies I'm developing a larger appetite for:



and


Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Hope Floats

Yes. Like the rest of you, heard the Obama speech in all its Obamity. His speech was easily the best campaign speech on race the world has ever heard. This is not a small thing.

And then this shows up.

Neither one of them is giving us much but from the mouths of babes, here. I've never understood how Hillary could play the experience card. She hasn't got that much on Obama at all.

Then there's this:

A little disenchantment with Obama could turn out to be a good thing. Too much idealism can blind a leader to reality as surely as too much ideology can.

-From Cozy Curmudgeonly Dowd's response column today.

Obama was forced to examine his alliance with extreme characters, and responded to controversy, trying to confront his shortcomings.

To be forthright is a breath of fresh air after the past eight years, hell, after the past several decades.

Elect him. If he isn't up to the job, we'll replace him in four years. So long as we're making choices bravely, no matter what we're offered, the choices so offered might get better.

He'll still be better suited than Bush, or perhaps, so will she.

Besides, all of the experience in the world isn't alone going to put this place back together again. Experience gave us the atom bomb as well the New Deal.

Obama has the power to move us, and he may very well have the power to lead us. What the hell, let's find out.

Monday, March 17, 2008

Eucharist of this Our Age

the object in its Journey, comes nigh, among the excursions of Chance, the sins of ministers, the inscriptions upon walls of Gate-posts, -- the birth of the 'Sandwhich' at this exact moment in Christianity,-- one of the Noble and Fallen for its Angel! Disks of secular Bread, --enclosing whilst concealing slices of real Flesh, yet a-sop with Blood, under the earthly guise of British Beef, all,-- but for the Species of course,--Consubstantiate, thus...the Sandwhich, Eucharist of this our Age.

- From Mason and Dixon - Thomas Pynchon

The above was a summer spent reading when I should have been tending to more important things, but either way, I get easily distracted by dense, very possibly crackpot writing, and I had this strange, elusive piece as a part of my FB profile for the longest time, unable to take it down due to a fascination with it that I can't quite put my finger on.

I'm intrigued by theology, by belief systems as they affect society, both the good and bad effects those may be (I find it more enlightening to focus on the good things, since we've been dealing too heavily with the results of bad theology in recent years). I find as much good in Religious belief as most Agnostics find bad, which is a turnaround from the cranky Atheist I left behind from my teen years.

Most of all, I kept the quote up for two years because I love language that can find meter, humor and a wily confusion in anything religious, and seriously, have you picked up a copy of Mason & Dixon? It's like 7,000 pages the fuck long and I'll never find that quote again. Yeesh. Gotta save it somewhere.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Auteur Poseur?

"I started out by calling Mr. Haneke a sadist, but it seems to me that he may be too naïve, too delicate, to merit that designation, which should be reserved only for the greatest filmmakers."

- A.O. Scott, reviewing Michael Haneke's remake of his 1998 film Funny Games


I'd hate to do this, but I already agree with A.O. Scott, and must link his Funny Games review. Have I seen Haneke's update? No, I've seen the original German version, and the new one is a shot-by-shot American version, the director's first film in English.

I'll do without. I was propelled, by a fascination with The Piano Teacher and Caché, to see another Haneke feature, Netflixed the original Funny Games (unaware, at the time, of its impending remake), and was thoroughly unhappy for a few days after watching it.

I don't care that that is partly his intention. I don't care that he's deconstructing 'our' predilection for or 'enjoyment' of violence. Nor am I impressed that he lets us know it's all only a movie.

If you want to see acting on a level you've rarely seen, rent the original version. I don't doubt that Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, Michael Pitt and others give performances that are equally powerful, but I know all the twists and turns, and don't wish to return to Hell.

The horror we witness on the screen during your film is borne so realistically and painfully by your actors that it's most certainly hypocritical to deride us for the natural, primal attention we give it in return. But deride us you do. You mock us for wanting them to survive it all, as if you're taking us to task for rubber-necking.

Doddering, curmudgeonly, pomo nonsense like that cheapens both the humanity of your film's suffering actors and the accomplishment of their performances, which, in your original version are considerably brave ones.

Michael Haneke, you make Lars Von Trier look like Marc Forster.