TV PARTY

4 John Rawls

Hybrid Moments

Just in case that last post sucked, there's always this:

When I Get Back To Memphis There Will Be One Less Man Alive

I was reminded of Nietzsche and how he hated Christ because of his pity, and then I felt pity for those whose eyes I looked into compassionately despite the fact that I could have laid them to waste, destroyed them, and been justified in doing so because they failed to meet the supreme standards of almighty Kantian glory.

I felt the pull of my Southern roots, the pull of whiskey, and the magic of being just, of being alive, and of always being the one with supreme morals in a Yankee world.

I remembered what Aesop remembered about fire escapes and visions.

I remembered other things that people remembered.

I remembered Old Dean Moriarity, again and again, and how it’s time to move, again and again, without breaking any hearts, but, ultimately, it's TIME TO MOVE, and how that's perpetual.

I remembered Jack Rose and how even though I didn’t know him I knew him, perhaps simply in virtue of having seen Fredericksburg glow in supernatural ecstasy, and now I futuristically remember his memorial concert coming up this weekend.

I remembered snow days, and not having to go to work, and how snow is the natural world, and how nature is somehow inside of me, and inside of us, and how nature can shut down the other world of work, and how that power sits dormant inside of me and us, and how we have the power, just like nature, to shut this motherfucker down ANYTIME/ANYDAY if only we wanted to.

I remembered EASY WIND.

Hope Is Lack Of Information

I don't watch football and I recently canceled my cable television. I watched Bergman's The Serpent's Egg last night. Am I the only one repulsed by how many bloggers/writers are posting their favorite commercials from last night? The indie blogs are guilty, too, rushing to post the ads that feature their favorite bands/products. I recently canceled my facebook account, but I'm sure that many people have posted links or have status updates from their favorite commercial, and there are likely other people saying they "like" or are "ecstatically waving their hands to" that ad, too. I'd rather not go into detail about why this is so repugnant because it's 101 shit that if you don't understand by now you never will. Rather, here's the trailer for The Serpent's Egg which speaks, I think, directly to this issue.

Sunday Mouvement Stacks

Unrelated, maybe, to Lachenmann: an NDPR review of The Frankfurt School In Exile.

birds shredding

Tonight There's Gonna Be A Jailbreak

I woke up this morning with city wide stains all over my sweatshirt and General Tsao’s sauce on my face with a vague recollection of trying to get the woman behind the counter to teach me how to order food in Chinese to find Philadelphia totally blizzed out, perfect weather to throw down some music reviews and OD on green tea. I’m currently working on one for Jailbreak’s The Rocker, featuring Chris Corsano and Heather Leigh Murray. A video has been circulating recently.

Choppin Wood

I met an old cat at the bar who sold his record collection back in the day so he could surf for a few extra years. He saw all the old bands play live in various places throughout the country. He's gonna go home now and sleep it off then wake up later when the wind is blowing real strong and walk the streets when they're more dangerous, listen to the sounds. He likes Mayall and Hendrix's Axis: Bold As Love. He walks alone and makes his own rules, up and down the coast.

Post-Show: Stellar Om Source / Daniel Higgs / Zomes

This review was originally published by Tiny Mix Tapes.

[Brickbat Books; Philadelphia, PA]

[01-29-2010]
Photo: Dan Cohoon

Though I had romanticized it a bit in my mind the night prior, going to see a show at a bookstore isn’t really any different than seeing one at a more conventional indie venue. If you don’t manage to score the perfect real estate you’ll still be staring at the backs of heads, and the vast majority of those heads will belong to white men. The only difference, which may be a big one for the well-read aesthete, is that if the low-end gets especially heavy there’s a possibility that it may rattle the bones of some dusty text such that it jumps off the shelf and into your hands. Aside from absorbing some interesting sounds, I walked away from the night with a copy of Louis Althusser’s The Future Lasts Forever, the memoir he wrote about accidently strangling his wife to death during a routine Sunday morning massage.

Zomes is the recording project of Asa Osbourne, who used to play guitar in Lungfish alongside Daniel Higgs. As on his 2008 Holy Mountain Records debut, Osbourne’s performance gear consists of a series of pre-recorded percussion tapes and a keyboard run through several effects pedals that distort, fuzz, and sustain the phrases. The consequence is a mesmerizing and head-nodding pop world stripped of all frills; minimal, and confidently basic. The beats and simple pop phrases conjoin in a sonically sophisticated and architectural way, and while there may be better comparisons, the repetitive sounds instantly reminded me of Jackie Mittoo. Osbourne’s bare sound structures leave much space for autonomous thinking, namely for the listener to imagine the possibility of additional pop fills that the artist cleverly denies due to his well-practiced restraint and allegiance to pop minimalism.

Daniel Higgs has a sage presence that warms up a room. He’s some sort of hyper-spiritualized and worldly warrior/comedian who has returned from outside places to deliver coded messages, warnings, laughs, and blessings. Armed with a profound understanding of oratorical power, his mostly improvised parables and chants fully absorb the listener like opium. His banjo sounded like it was played through an amplified radiator, jagged and brushed with steel wool, transitioning between folk phrases and violent raga outbursts. While his stories and lessons are enticing, they quickly become preachy. Given our constant bombardment with persuasive language – the politician, the preacher, the monsters of advertising, the boss, the culture industry, and so on – silence and non-verbal sound may be more appropriate for healing and learning. Higgs’ aesthetic, though, is deeply rooted in the oral tradition.

The crowd significantly thinned during and after Higgs' performance. By the time Stellar Om Source, the sound project of synth-lord Christelle Gualdi, juiced up her sound stations and got the green-light waves swirling around the room it was possible to see her furiously spinning and tweaking the countless knobs and pedals. Gualdi has created a sizeable discography over the past 5 or so years, though I’m most impressed with her 2009 self-released CDR, Ocean Woman. The moods and sounds are concurrently meditative and intense, flirting with New Age sound without falling into sweat-lodge-dehydration ridiculousness and pounding the keys toward some unrealized past or future world like fellow hypnagogist Daniel Lopatin. Her synth waves delicately washed over and pulsed through the room, soothing and blasting minds out into other spaces. Without being restricted by time and beat, the rootless sounds are free to linger and float, searching for some curious ear. Seeing this music performed live only increases the joy: leaping and grooving behind the multiple sound-stations like some deranged astronaut who's attempting to remember which button delivers the ship to eternal bliss. Regardless of whether you prefer to call this recent return to the synthesizer h-pop or neo-Kosmische or something else, Gualdi is constructing some powerful sound-worlds that deserve exploration.