What I’m Listening To (3/2/14)

    Though I still find myself listening to M.I.A. while riding the bus, I’ve been listening to a bunch of other stuff while at home.  Due in part to starting up a Call of Cthulhu game, and because I like it, I’ve been cycling through a lot of 20s music, from some Jelly Roll Morton to Eddie Cantor to Josephine Baker.  I knew I had a good deal of music from the time, but I was surprised how easy it was to assemble a 4 hour playlist, especially considering many of the songs are rather short.  Along with the 20s music (some of it 30s), I raided my soundtrack collection, pulling tunes from Cloud Atlas, The Cell, and even Once Upon a Time in the West.  And I’ve been on YouTube listening to some weird electronica in the vein of the sadly unavailable Beyond the Black Rainbow soundtrack.  Black Mountain and Sinoia Caves both share musicians in some complicated Canadian way I don’t understand.  But there are traces of the Black Rainbow sound in there.  More investigation is needed.

    So, here are some of the things I’m listening to this week.

Artist: Die Antwoord
Album: $O$
    Somehow, I stumbled across this group in my net crawling, and found something about them challenging and appealing.  Their Zef style is so off-putting, yet taps into that 80s Cyberpunk spirit I love so much.  "The Street finds its own uses for things."  And the dirty, in your face, middle finger waving music kept me listening.  Are they good?  I don’t think so.  But darn it if some of their tunes aren’t aggressively catchy.  In Your Face, Enter the Ninja, Rich Bitch, and Doos Dronk are all infectious.  And the others keep you going from track to track.  Ninja is actually a pretty good rapper, and Yo-Landi’s weirdass singing works well with the whole package.  This isn’t going to be for everyone.  Even for fans of rap (I’m generally not among them), this stuff is pretty crazy.  This is music I could imagine being performed in a Bartertown bar, with Master-Blaster rocking out in the corner.

Artist: St. Vincent
Album: St. Vincent
    I first found St. Vincent a few years back as a blind buy, and I really enjoyed the album I picked up (Actor).  It reminded me a bit of Laurie Anderson, but there was certainly a unique quality.  Over the last couple years, I’ve picked up more albums (Marry Me, Strange Mercy, and the David Byrne collaboration Love the Giant).  As I listened to more and more of her music, I began to put her in with Devo and well, David Byrne and Talking Heads.  Her music is more experimental and challenging than a simple singer/songwriter.  This is Nerd Rock.  So last week, she put out a new album, the self titled St. Vincent.  Listening to it, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the recent Devo album Something for Everybody.  She even deals with the kinds of emotional dissonance of the digital age Devo touches on.  I’ve listened to the album a couple times through so far, and I’m certainly liking it.  As with the best Nerd Rock, I doubt I ‘get’ half of it.  The music feels smarter than me, if you catch my drift.  It’s not like hearing Celine Dion, where you can guess all the lyrics of the song from the first few lines, or Fergie, where you feel yourself getting dumber while you listen.  I’m going to need more time with it to feel my way through each track.  But my overall feeling is that this is a another winner from a very interesting contemporary musician.

Artist: H.P. Lovecraft
Album: H.P. Lovecraft I
    I always had a taste for the psychedelic music of the 60s and 70s, and the wild imagery they conjure when you let yourself drift off with headphones on.  I’m two steps from Straight Edge and I’ve never dabbled in recreational drugs, but this music still hits a chord with me.  And in the case of the semi-obscure band H.P. Lovecraft, there’s also the added bonus of their tenuous connection to the works of…well, H.P. Lovecraft.  They draw on Lovecraft’s work in much the same way, and with a similar frequency, as Led Zeppelin with J.R.R. Tolkien.  I love the dreamy organ playing, the duel vocals, and the messy guitars.  Wayfaring Stranger and The White Ship are my two favorite tracks.  The White Ship is their epic masterpiece.  It’s a dreamy trip through astral space.  Really listening to it is like meditation, and by the time it ends, I feel more mentally clear than when I started.

    So, that’s some of what’s on my rotation right now.  St. Vincent’s new album has got me in the mood for something a bit different than the harsh, messy rap-beat stuff I’ve been consuming a lot since the beginning of the year.  Maybe, with Spring allegedly on its way, I’ll slide over into the more nostalgic, mellow music I have a tendency to play around this time of year.  I think pulling up H.P. Lovecraft might have been the beginning of that.  Until next time…

-Matt

What I’m Listening To (1/21/14)

    I thought I’d try a new feature here on In the Mouth of Dorkness, focusing on one of the parts of my nerdiness that I don’t talk about all that much, my love of music.  I am not an audiophile.  I don’t have an opinion on vinyl.  I don’t have any kind of education in music theory, and I didn’t spend my high school years living in an indi music store, talking to all the people in local bands.  Heck, I’m not a fan of the Beetles, Bob Dylan, or Michael Jackson.  I’m just a dork who listens to music and is always glad to find something new.

    For a long time, I would joke that everyone I listen to was dead.  That isn’t the case anymore, thankfully.  Over the last ten years or so, I’ve found several active, productive bands and artists that I can now look forward to hearing new music from.  You’ll notice I don’t stick to one genre, nor do I tend to explore any genre too deeply.  I may love Ministry, for example, but not go for a lot of other respected Industrial bands.  I may find myself listening to Lightnin’ Hopkins, but not go in for Albert King.  And I go through moods, phases where I’ll be very into a certain type of music, to the exclusion of all others.  And then out of nowhere, I’ll be on to something different.

    I don’t know how often I’ll post one of these.  My moods often last for a few weeks at least, so I might go quite a while without new music to talk about.  Hopefully no less than once a month, I’ll write up some of the albums and songs I’m most in tune with …Oh, puns…at a given time.  Of course, I welcome your thoughts and suggestions.  Most of the music I discover comes from two sources, movie soundtracks and friends.  On the rare occasion I listen to the radio, it’s NPR, so I don’t hear new music there, and am generally unaware of whatever thing is ‘hot’ right now.

Without further blather…Oh, wait, with further blather…here’s what I’m currently listening to:

Artist: M.I.A.
Album: Kala
    I’ve been dimly aware of M.I.A. for quite some time, but never given her much attention.  I knew she had that song with the guns going off that was featured in Pineapple Express (Paper Planes) and I knew she was from Sri Lanka (well, born in England) because of some dialog in the movie Hanna.  But other than that, nothing.  After catching a couple of her tunes on YouTube for some reason or another, I got hooked and picked up Kala.  Right off, I was into it.  As a young teen, I was listening to a lot of early rap, N.W.A. and Public Enemy mostly.  And that’s what M.I.A. reminded me of straight away.  There was a raw, garage sound to the music, but also a vitality you tend to miss in big studio albums.  Add to that samples of music and instruments from around the world and it’s a crazy mix of sounds that’s infinitely danceable, but also layered enough to concentrate on.  As a long time Cyberpunk junky, I couldn’t help but think of this as being the sound of the Sprawl.  I wanted to take out my copy of Count Zero and jack in.  The weakest two tracks on the album, XR2 and Come Around are still perfectly listenable.  Ten of the twelve tracks were instant classics in my mind.  If I were pressed to name my favorite tracks, I guess I’d have to go with Bird Flu and $20.

Artist: Kate Nash
Album:  Girl Talk
    I find something very charming about Kate Nash’s lowbrow London accent and awkward relationship stresses.  When her new album came out, I picked it up, but I wasn’t quite in that mood, so it sat by my desk for a while.  When I finally popped it up on my playlist, I was kind of surprised by it, but pleasantly so.  While she’s still singing a lot about the struggles with love, betrayal, and confusion, and she still has that Rose from Doctor Who accent, the music has a much more polished and produced sound to it.  But where some performers loose their heart when the glitz is added, Nash seems to have kept her harsh edge.  There’s a retro vibe to it, tapping into 80s punky flare and even a bit of rockabilly.  I really like Part Heart and Sister, and You’re So Cool I’m so Freaky is cute.  Plus, the song Labyrinth is based on…the movie Labyrinth.  So, that’s cool.  Rap for Rejection is probably the weakest track.  It just doesn’t quite work.  Overall, the album is pretty good if you’re in the mood for her sort of music.  This is good post break-up music.  Or maybe, it’s really bad post break-up music.

This tune needs more propellers!

Artist:  George Antheil
Album:  Antheil: Ballet Mécanique, Serenade For String Orchestra
    While recently reading the book Heddy’s Folly, I was introduced to the rather odd character of George Antheil, who seems to have been trying to make Industrial music within the cultural and technological constraints of early 20th Century orchestral work.  Well I just had to listen to this guy’s stuff.  Interestingly, like the author Robert W. Chambers, he was quite popular at one time, but has now fallen off of most people’s radar.  I was able to find a CD and give it a listen.  It’s pretty intense.  Ballet Mécanique is darned intense.  His desire to make mechanical music, music as written and performed by machines was pretty out there.  I feel like there’s some similarity to Gershwin, though you’d never mistake one for the other.  Perhaps just elements of the times in which they were working.  If you haven’t listened to Antheil’s music, it’s something to check out for sure.

Artist:  Magnet
Album:  The Wicker Man (soundtrack)
    I recently started work on a script for a horror movie.  The idea started as a kind of modern day pagan tale, but has evolved away from that.  However, part of the vibe I imagined when I started has remained, that of the 70s pagan/psychic/Satanist type horror films, like The Wicker Man, The Exorcist, or The Fury.  In keeping with that, I’ve been kicking around the soundtrack of The Wicker Man, which is so much of its time.  I love it.  I can imagine the slightly oranged film footage, the tweed jackets, and the subtle hint of sinister post-hippie madness.  The whole album, from the saucy, beer soaked tune The Landlord’s Daughter, to the dreamy Willow’s Song is quite good and evocative.

    That’s all for now.  I’m sure I’ll be having some kind of tectonic shift in listening soon as it often changes in a big way with the seasons.

It might as well be spring...

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (12/22/13-12/28/13)

Mmm. Crack.

    Ugh.  Glad this season is nearly at an end.  I miss when I could actually enjoy the holidays, when they weren’t just oppressive, depressive, stress filled weeks of gloom and frustration.  Flippin’ retail, man.  Flippin’ awful consumers.  I’m all for commerce, but the holiday season is sickening.  Like human swine pushing each other out of the way for more space at the trough, where they’re sucking down foul smelling bits of waste.   Anyway, the week was made better by a bunch of new movies.  I’ve been trying to cram in a bunch of 2013 films as we get down to the wire for writing the Dorkies.

The Prowler:  “If you were just a dame, it’d be different.”  Van Heflyn plays a failed sports star who became a cop for all the wrong reasons.  When he latches on to a bored housewife, the force of his persistent personality on her.  And it’s probably no surprise that things start getting ugly fast.  Heflyn is repugnant.  He should get together with Ann Savage from Detour.  The movie itself isn’t all that great.  But it’s fun to watch such an awful monster try to get one over on the world.

Stoker:  After the death of her father, a strange girl must deal with a distant mother and a sinister uncle.  Family secrets slowly creep out.  Things get weirder and weirder, as relationships become more tangled.  And then murder.  The film is extremely kinky and strange.  It’s beautifully shot and drips with a kind of Gothic eroticism.  I can’t say I loved the movie, but I definitely found myself enjoying watching it.  It’s like Poe writing a Noir.

Blancanieves:  This silent, black & white take on Snow White is a worthy attempt, though I don’t think a particular success.  There are some great bits, and I like some of the ending.  But it’s too often too modern, in spite of its early 20th century setting.  And, to be honest, the first hour is kind of bloated.  Still, there is charm, and it isn’t a bad movie.  I think it could have been much better, though.

Sapphire & Steel:  When I first tried this show, I wasn’t especially enamored of it, but for some reason kept watching, and came to really like it.  The atmosphere is kind of amazing; the surreal mystery and existential danger, with time and space being cracked in unfathomable ways.  I would love to try to recapture some of the gut-level weirdness this show managed to maintain.  Each story keeps you guessing, not just about where things will go, but even about where they’ve already been.  Really something.  And what an ending.  Holy crap.

Computer Chess:  “It could be Sanskrit, it could be Pig Latin.”  Set in the dorky world of a 1980s computer programmer chess tournament, this awkward slice of low budget comedy is very, very odd.  I suspect that much of the film is at least in part adlib, which definitely adds to the discomfort level, but I don’t know if it adds to the plot or characters all that much.  Man, things get so danged creepy and awkward as the film goes on.  Swingers are creepy, man.

Getaway:  Wow, this is some low-budget, shot in Eastern Europe garbage.  Cheap looking, boring, irritating, and ultimately dumb.  The ‘twist’ ending is f’ing stupid.  This along with The Purge, puts Ethan Hawke in two of the worst films of 2013.  I’ve never been a fan, but dang man.  What happened?  And Selena Gomez?  Some people have it.  And then there’s Selena Gomez.  I’ve now seen entirely too much of her attempts to act.  Enough.

Alice in Wonderland:  Disney’s take on the classic surreal children’s novel is kind of definitive Disney.  It has some really good moments and some technical mastery, but is ultimately a bit soulless and bland.  Alice wanders around, dealing with Warner Bros. cartoon type odd situations, where I guess she learns some lessons…sort of.  I feel about this movie sort of what I feel about the 1939 Wizard of Oz.  While taken on its own, it’s a heck of an achievement, but being familiar with the source material, I can’t help but be disappointed that more of the essential nature of the work didn’t make the translation.

Her:  This subject is something I’ve read a good deal about.  Emerging A.I., our relationships with them, the possibilities and pitfalls of romantic love with non-human intelligences, etc.  And Her does get into some of the less obvious, less ‘Hollywood’ areas of it.  And it creates a very buyable near-future world where this relationship becomes possible and very relatable.  It also manages to go in directions that kept me guessing for much of the film, which was itself sort of surprising.  That said, I didn’t love the movie.  I think part of what never quite worked for me might be what works for other people.  At its heart, it’s a movie about a guy and his difficulties with love.  OK.  That’s fine.  But while it did deal with some of the issues of human-A.I. love, it didn’t explore them to the depths I’d have liked.  The social aspects, the ramifications, etc.  Still, it felt more ‘adult’ than a lot of films about robots and A.I.  Less sensationalistic, and much less anti-tech than I expect from this sort of film.  And it’s well acted and well shot.  The movie looks beautiful.  Overall, I enjoyed it, but I didn’t love it.

The Future (Il Futuro):  “At the beginning, we’re all good.  And at some point, we all turn bad.”  The beginning of this movie reminded me of Rust and Bone, and other such depressing slice of European life movies.  You’ve got despondent young people, an emotionally confusing (and confused) young woman with an uncomfortable relationship with sex, thuggish petty criminals.  You know, all that Euro stuff that’s considered so ‘real’ and ‘not Hollywood,’ but is just as cliché as anything churned out by the US studios.  Not my favorite genre of film (Euro-Depression).  However, once Rutger Hauer appears as a former body builder and actor in schlocky 60s beefcake action movies, the film got my attention.  Hauer is typically excellent, playing a sad, former champion.  As he and the young woman, played by Manuela Martelli, begin their relationship, we see deeper levels of each.  She unravels his demon haunted past while he wakes her up to the wonder and possibilities of life.  Had the film not featured the whole drug dealing, weight-lifting thug subplot, and focused instead entirely on the Martelli-Hauer relationship, I think it would have been a better film, and I’d certainly have been more interested.  I don’t know that Martelli is a great actress (like most European actresses, she spends most of her time staring and looking sullen), but she and Hauer are excellent together and their scenes raise the movie several notches.

Tomb of Torture:  Yes, more like Tomb of Boring.  Perhaps not my most clever of reviews, but bloody true.  This movie looks pretty good.  The set design is nice and it’s shot competently, if not masterfully.  But it’s just so, amazing, completely, excruciatingly boring.  Even the Italians have done this kind of wannabe Edgar Alan Poe monster movie better elsewhere.  To say nothing of Corman and the like who could make a more interesting horror movie with a super 8 and fifty dollars.  Skip it.

John Dies at the End:  “Apparently, it’s Eyes Wide Shut World.”  Scott Pilgrim VS. The Naked Lunch.  Fear and Loathing in Las White Castle.  This hipster vision of a drug fueled break in timespace has elements of William S. Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, and H.P. Lovecraft.  Unfortunately, it’s got a couple extra doses of Chris Hardwick and the MTV’s Wild ‘n Out.  There’s definitely a lot of things in the film I enjoyed, but at no point did it ever feel as authentically weird as the authors it was obviously harkening back to.  I never quite connected; never quite bought into the weird world.  I’d be curious to see a follow-up to the film.  I liked it enough to say that.  But I can’t sing its praises.  And really, I spent a lot of the film thinking about how much I'd like to punch in the smug faces of the two leads.  They're extremely unlikable in that jock/cockbag high school cool kid sort of way, with their constantly ironic tone and bored contemptuous expressions.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues:  Occasionally very funny, this sequel to one of my favorite modern comedies just doesn’t have the magic.  It’s not bad.  There are a bunch of really good bits.  But there are too many moments that just call back to the first one, and few of those are particularly good.  Everyone does a fine job and there are some good humorous shocks.  However, it seems like this is another sequel from 2013 that misses the boat.  Not as bad as Die Hard, Star Trek, Monsters Inc., or Machete, by any means.  But it doesn’t thrill.

    I found myself really digging M.I.A. this week, too.  Her album Kala has an old school Rap sound, mixed with some cool world beats.  The whole thing trips off my Cyberpunk love.  I imagine the sounds of the under-dome being something like this.

    And that was it.  I’m still scanning through various roleplaying game books to get ready for trying to run a game in the near future.  We set a date for the first meeting, near the end of January.  There are so many great games, and so little time.  I have a dozen or more that I’d love to run, and most of them I’d especially love to run as long term campaigns.  Obviously, that’s not going to happen.

-Matt