==pla|\|ing lakes==

Monday, January 30, 2006

"Purveyors of the unique and bizarre": Mulatta Records

Someone visited here from google's related search using this URL...I don't get it either, but it was someone in Hong Kong, and the handful of "related sites" yielded the above link.

7:13 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, January 28, 2006

I've always thought that the advent of the internet and new technologies that by their nature undermine hierarchichal, tightly controlled realities (perhaps the penultimate extension (tool) of the humanitarian ethos of the 60s counterculture and the democratic ideal) was what 9/11 and much of the reactional spasm that followed was a reaction to; now a newly declassifed document demonstrates the US military's strategy for returning us all to the good old days [American Samizdat]

When it describes plans for electronic warfare, or EW, the document takes on an extraordinary tone.

It seems to see the internet as being equivalent to an enemy weapons system.

"Strategy should be based on the premise that the Department [of Defense] will 'fight the net' as it would an enemy weapons system," it reads.

The slogan "fight the net" appears several times throughout the roadmap.

The authors warn that US networks are very vulnerable to attack by hackers, enemies seeking to disable them, or spies looking for intelligence.

"Networks are growing faster than we can defend them... Attack sophistication is increasing... Number of events is increasing."

And, in a grand finale, the document recommends that the United States should seek the ability to "provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum".

US forces should be able to "disrupt or destroy the full spectrum of globally emerging communications systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependent on the electromagnetic spectrum".

Sounds like paranoid schizophrenia to me, but then I'm not a trained expert....

9:13 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

And 2 other noteworthy reviews from DVD Talk: Universal's Collector's Edition Repo Man & the new Zhangke Jia release The World

10:23 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tsai Ming-Liang's recent bombshell release The Wayward Cloud (Tian bian yi duo yun) had audiences --in sophisticated Berlin no less -- walking out on the last scene -- and also won 3 awards and was nominated for a fourth; DVD Talk reviews the single disc Taiwanese edition this week (available in Region 3 NTSC edition only so far), and the colorful and somewhat explicit French site for the film is worth a look (the French title translates as The Taste of the Watermelon, I think)

From the review above, DVD Beaver's review of the 2 disc set, and the customer review on the YesAsia site (they have the best price), I think I'll wait to buy this, if I can help it ($13.99 for the single disc is sorely tempting though). The 3 (!) director interviews in the 2 disc set have no English subs, though the booklet does. And as the DVD Talk reviewer says, the film is a French co-production and there may well be a loaded Region 2 edition on the way (which will no doubt be pricy -- French DVDs are in general).

As to the film itself, it's clearly a break with -- as well as a daring continuation of -- Tsai's oeuvre. In fact, it is the third part of a trilogy which includes What Time Is It There? and the short The Skywalk is Gone (which appears on the Goodbye Dragon Inn DVD available in North America). The reviews make it sound like a cross between The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (which I guess I'll finally have to break down and see now -- I generally can't stomach musicals, even brilliantly executed ones) and something like Lynch's Blue Velvet. Acquarello's critical comments on it place it in the context of Tsai's other films and pedigree, and the distancing effect may not be obvious to viewers unfamiliar with his work and/or triggered by the explicit sexuality. Tsai was trying to keep a lot of balls in the air with this one, and he may not have completely succeeded.

But at the very least, it's a spectacular experiment, and a half-successful Tsai Ming-Liang film is worth 10 others in general.

BTW, nicheflix carries the 2 disc edition, if you have a region-free player.

10:11 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, January 22, 2006

UFO sightings, the disappearance of a woman after being taken into custody by Spanish police and the little-known Guimar pyramid complex at Canary Island resort Tenerife [The Anomalist]

7:27 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, January 20, 2006

my favorite films seen in 2005 for the first time, whether new or not (in order of when i saw them)

Stage Beauty
Last Life in the Universe
A Snake of June
Tetsuo: The Iron Man
The Hole (Tsai Ming-Liang, 1998)
Le Amiche
Birth
The Exterminating Angel
Millennium Mambo
Even Dwarfs Started Small
Hotel (Mike Figgis, 2001)
Fando & Lis
Kairo
The River (Tsai Ming-Liang, 1998)
Tokyo Twilight
Touching the Void
Punk: Attitude
Stupeur et tremblement (Fear and Trembling)
La captive
Bob Dylan: No Direction Home
Mysterious Skin
L'Eclisse
Yes
Spider Forest
The Browning Version (Anthony Asquith, 1951)
Kings and Queen
The Boys from Fengkuei

11:55 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

As usual when a star whose career flourished before 1960 passes, TCM is pre-empting their schedule for a day and running a retrospective of Shelley Winters' films on Monday Jan 23

I'm delighted because I haven't yet caught the classic noir from 1951 He Ran All the Way, with Winters and John Garfield.

Of the others, many people have enjoyed A Place in the Sun (Winters won an Oscar for this and The Diary of Anne Frank) & A Patch of Blue though I never made it through either. Executive Suite is a fine dissection of corporate culture for the early 50s, and Winchester '73 & Odds Against Tomorrow are pretty good examples of their kind (Anthony Mann western & quirky late noir) and have aged fairly well. I've heard good things about The Scalphunters, but haven't seen it.

If you haven't seen Kubrick's Lolita and Laughton's The Night of the Hunter, please do so immediately.

9:45 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Marking a London retrospective, David Thomson salutes Jean Renoir

The National Film Theatre in London is about to begin its most complete season on the works of Jean Renoir. Some argue that this season should be in permanent repertory. Others say that would be impractical. You are cheating Renoir and yourself if you pick and choose like a connoisseur. Nothing but greed and obsession will suffice: you have to see every film. Only then will you know which ones you need to see more than once. This will change your life.

I can only offer Renoir to you with the shyness that knows I do not have the words to convey the beauty, the wisdom or the full value of the experience. I feel like the Marquis (Marcel Dalio) in La R⃬e du Jeu as he displays his latest toy for the company's amusement. He adores his little piece of theatre. Yet he is timid about revealing so much raw love to sophisticated people. And he has the nagging worry that they may not see all he has seen. At the same time, he has given his life to the collection of mechanical toys and musical boxes and I suppose, apart from a few other things, I have been as lost in film. My report, coming back from that wild and lurid country - the cinema - is to study Jean Renoir.

I hold with Martin Scorsese, who says in an interview on the Criterion disc of The River that the latter film affected me far more.

But as Thomson says, if you want to experience how film can portray subtlety and depth of character and theme to rival the novel, Renoir's oeuvre is essential.

8:05 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, January 19, 2006

After reading DVD Talk's review of the Canadian disc Radio Revolution: The Rise and Fall of The Big 8, I may have to shell out the $36+ it'll cost to get it, since even netflix doesn't carry it (yet anyway -- I just requested it)

I listened to WABC in Jersey, and this format was the soundtrack of my youth, and influenced me in ways I still don't get completely. At one point I even kept track of the top 20 songs each week. Especially for those in the suburbs (or without many or any friends), it was a lifeline to a bigger world, and the community of listeners linked by these stations around North America.

But it was mostly about the music, and there's no way to explain what that meant to people like me to iPodnodders.

The single most influential radio station in all of North America was a foreign juggernaut that single-handedly redefined Top 40 radio. This mid-sized media giant, going under the call letters of CKLW, is now the subject of the fascinating film Radio Revolution: The Rise and Fall of The Big 8. While overflowing with nostalgia, this masterful documentary is also a primer about how rock, pop and soul became completely ingrained into the fabric of our scattered social order.

10:09 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Latin America leads the world into the 21st century, despite their reactionary superneighbor to the north

Brazilian musical legend and influential politico Gilberto Gil on copyright and network society

Gil’s constant references to the hippy counterculture are not simply the nostalgia of a 63-year-old with more than 40 albums to his name. For several years now, largely under the rest of the world’s radar, the Brazilian government has been building a counterculture of its own. The battlefield has been intellectual property - the ownership of ideas - and the revolution has touched everything, from internet filesharing to GM crops to HIV medication. Pharmaceutical companies selling patented Aids drugs, for example, were informed that Brazil would simply ignore their claims to ownership and copy their products more cheaply if they didn’t offer deep discounts. (The discounts were forthcoming.) Gil himself has thrown his weight behind new forms of copyright law, enabling musicians to incorporate parts of others’ work in their own. And in one small development that none the less sums up the mood, the left-wing administration of President Luiz Inacio da Silva, or “Lula”, has announced that all ministries will stop using Microsoft Windows on their office computers. Instead of paying through the nose for Microsoft operating licences, while millions of Brazilians live in poverty, the government will use open-source software, collaboratively designed by programmers worldwide and owned by no one.

I distribute Arthur magazine in my little corner of Arizona, and I recommend checking it out at a local distro point, and also checking their blog, Magpie, at the link above.

10:07 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, January 16, 2006

The Beat Museum moves to North Beach in San Francisco from Monterey

The emphasis is on Kerouac, but the online store carries updated texts of Ginsberg & Burroughs as well.

9:12 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

From the (still) exotic edge

The Sublime Frequencies catalog of CDs & DVDs

From Phnom Penh to Mali to Iraq, native instruments and rhythms and Western idioms collide. Plus field recordings of insects and folk music.

12:49 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, January 15, 2006

disquiet's Mark Weidenbaum leads an email discussion on Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon CD, 20 years on, as the disc is reissued/remastered and the video released on DVD with other work

Michael Jarrett: The music is tentative. It is no grand statement exemplifying (and, thereby, exhausting) all the possibilities of a medium. Long by pop standards, Thursday Afternoon is not Mahler or Wagner -- not by a long shot. It is a small gesture writ large (calligraphy on a banner?). It seems almost offhand. There's no attempt to erect a monument to an emerging technology. (The music, therefore, is not phallic; it is a matrix: womblike.) In a word, Thursday Afternoon is simple. Instead of waiting around, hanging back, trying to comprehend (to grasp it all) and, then, to express the potential of a new medium in a definitive work, Eno composed a note worth celebrating.

The pic above is a lightly doctored version of the cover.

11:10 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

igloo magazine interview with sound sculptor, labelmeister & multi-sensual artist Heribert Friedl (link to his site at left below, along with a few other new ones)

Like I mentioned, I come from a visual art context. I studied sculpture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. I was first concretely confronted music at the age of six. During my time at school I also attended a musical school, where I first studied flute and then up to the age of 14, the Hackbrett. Afterwards I studied classical guitar. So music has always accompanied my visual art.

I took part in exhibitions in many countries. One of my favorite works was realized at the Museum Folkwang (Essen, Germany). It was an empty room you could enter from two sides. Only the walls were painted with scent substance that you could scratch and smell. Even though the room was completely empty, visually speaking, it was plumply filled with the scent.

4:36 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Worth a listen

Had a nice chat with Federico Baglivi on soulseek last weekend -- he's behind Fever Asym, and his blog is here (in Italian, with snippets of a new project with a lady on vocals playing in the background)

He has net releases at no type's nishi subsidiary and at sinewaves (also here).

If you're visiting, hi Federico!

3:44 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Saturday, January 14, 2006

R.I.P. Shelley Winters

I'll remember her for Lolita & The Night of the Hunter, and perhaps The Tenant, but she was in 127 other movies plus Roseanne. She won Oscars for A Patch of Blue & The Diary of Anne Frank, and her presence belied her diminutive height of 5'4".

Thanks, Shelley.

1:35 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Friday, January 13, 2006

I was intrigued by Steven Shaviro's post on Tricia Sullivan's new book Double Vision, which actually seems to tread in Phil Dick territory -- unlike countless books reviewers have claimed such kinship for with little excuse that I can see

But not enough to pay two double fins for, since it's only available as a UK import right now (Sullivan is American but resides in the UK).

I haven't read any of Sullivan's other books, but I'll catch up with her eventually, I think.

Here are some interviews: Locus in 1998; infinity plus in 2000 ; a review of her last book, Maul; and a year ago in SF crowsnest, discussing Double Vision.

From Claire Brialey's review (second link above):

Imagine a world in which you’re just a passive observer of all the action undertaken by other people, able to move about and observe but prevented from fully interacting with those you spend the most time with.

Imagine a world in which your value to other people depends on you not knowing exactly what it is you’re doing. In which no one understands you, although they think they do. In which the levels of your mind that you thought were hidden seem to be getting out.

Imagine a world in which your life is screwed, although you don’t yet know quite how badly.

Imagine that there are several different worlds, with some connections you haven’t quite been able to puzzle out yet, and that you can move between them although you don’t have much control over when, or indeed over anything much else in your life.

Then tell me where the real world is, and how you can get there.

10:19 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Thursday, January 12, 2006

America's model housewife turns feminist as husband abandons her

Terry Hekker wrote a book in 1980 that made her famous. Ever Since Adam & Eve was a passionate defence of her decision to eschew a career and spend her life as a wife and a mother.

Coming at the end of the Seventies, when feminism was enjoying a renaissance and the career woman was emerging from behind the cooker, Hekker became a celebrated poster child for more old-fashioned values. She wanted her job choice of 'homemaker' to be considered as valid as those of up-and-coming women bankers, bosses and company directors. The book sold well, Hekker appeared on all the TV prime-time chat shows and went on a national tour. But that was then.

Today, Hekker told The Observer, she is planning a follow-up book. Its working, albeit jokey, title is bluntly honest: Disregard First Book. For her life did not turn out as she planned, and she now believes her decision to become a housewife and homemaker should serve as a warning for young American women.

'My anachronistic book was written while I was in a successful marriage that I expected would go on forever. Sadly, it now has little relevance for modern women, except perhaps as a cautionary tale,' Hekker wrote last week as she announced her U-turn.

In a display of spectacular bad taste, Hekker's husband presented her with divorce papers on their 40th wedding anniversary and left her for a younger woman. The divorce left her facing an uncertain financial future, bereft of income and - after spending her adult life bringing up five children - lacking skills to make her attractive in the job market. Despite that, the judge in her divorce case suggested that - at 67 - she go for job training.

She ended up selling her engagement ring to pay for roof repairs and discovering she was eligible for food stamps. Her ex-husband, meanwhile, was holidaying with his new lover in Mexico. Hekker, once a role model for young homemakers, is now rapidly becoming an icon for so-called 'silver divorcees', older women who suddenly find themselves alone without skills and with a much reduced income.

11:32 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Quicktime video of Windy & Carl live and being interviewed [textura]

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Blog on netlabels and digital art, Milieu

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Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Henry Flynt on a main American minimalist composers' inspiration, Pandit Pran Nath, part of a tribute to Nath on the hungry ghost site

The whole question of artistic use of the eerie, uncanny, sombre, morose, morbid, macabre — which is central in Hindu mythology. It is involving, not estranging, if it is sublimated [done with acceptance] — excluding resentment and ridicule.

Why does the vicarious encounter of grief conjured up with tones have a healing, remedying effect? [this function is intended in traditional music, characteristically]

Our emotion makes us real, and deep, and we want to re-experience it as a re-commitment to our depth. (And as a way of mastering or absorbing a loss or injury.)

The evoked joy is elicited, is real, not aestheticized.

A joy that heals despair and grief.

In Asavari, Guruji’s performance is profoundly mastered in terms of system and technique. Yet he stays close to the intonation of speech, chant, the storyteller. An ancient sound. He never turns himself into a musical instrument. He never leaves the intonation of speech, chant, storytelling.

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Photo of Ozu's grave from DVD Beaver

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Saturday, January 07, 2006

Remarkable (and deadly/costly) 2005 storm season finally over

9:06 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Films I watched all the way through in 2005 (* = recommended; ** = highly recommended)

Movies 2005

The Time of the Wolf
The Office Special*
Mulholland Drive (r)**
Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism**
Smiley's People (r)*
A proposito de Bunuel*
Le jour se leve
Cutter's Way
Time Regained
The Forgotten (2004)
Le Quai des Brumes (Port of Shadows)*
Something the Lord Made**
Pickup on South Street**
Mean Creek
Notes from Underground
Lewis Black on Broadway
Thieves' Highway**
Secret Agent (series)*
Two Lane Blacktop
Eulogy (2004)
Bright Young Things*
Vanity Fair (2004)
Ray*
The Edge of the World**
Heat of the Sun: Private Lives (r)*
Fly Jefferson Airplane
I Heart Huckabees
Northern Exposure -- The First Season (r)
Io non ho paura (I'm Not Scared)
The Yes Men (2003)**
Bitter Victory
Goodbye Dragon Inn**
The Skywalk Is Gone**
Casque d'or*
Etre et avoir (To be and to have)
Ararat
La Cienaga**
Rey Muerto*
Stage Beauty**
Fear X
Fandango (r)
49th Parallel*
Last Life in the Universe**
Night and the City**
City of God*
What the #$*! Do We Know!?*
Contraband (1940)
Chappaqua
A Murder of Quality
Incident at Loch Ness
Against All Odds (r)*
A Snake of June**
Scarlet Street**
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp**
Doppelganger (2003)
Ride in the Whirlwind
Without Limits*
Les Bonnes Femmes*
Begotten*
Bright Future (2003)*
Riding Giants**
The Hole (1998)**
Mr Klein
Diary of a Chambermaid (1964)(r)**
Suspect Zero
Touchez pas au Grisbi*
The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream**
Zero Focus
Bad Education*
Le Amiche**
Birth (2004)**
Primer
Pepe le Moko*
Parajanov: A Requiem*
Since Otar Left*
Criminal (2004)
Mamma Roma
Munchhausen (1943)*
Maborosi (Maboroshi no hikari)**
Destiny (Der Mute Tod)(1921)**
Red Desert (Il Deserto Rosso)**
My Architect: A Son's Journey*
DiG!*
Nazarin**
Hearts and Minds (1974)*
Viridiana (r)**
The Exterminating Angel**
The Last Laugh (1924)*
The Eel*
Simon of the Desert*
Man of the West*
Vive L'Amour**
Kinsey*
He Walked by Night* (r)
Charisma (1999)*
Twisted (2004, Kaufman)
Millennium Mambo**
Tunes of Glory (r)**
Theolonius Monk: Straight No Chaser*
The Phantom of Liberty*
The 39 Steps (r)**
The Aviator (2004)*
The Red Shoes**
Los Olvidados** (r)
Wonder Boys (r)**
Panic in the Streets*
Seance (Korei) (2000)**
Nightmare Alley**
The Machinist*
Manny & Lo* (r)
Indigo (2003)
The Driver
Uzak (Distant)
Foyle's War: The German Woman
The Gleaners and I**
The Jacket*
Koza (Cocoon)*
The Big Combo**
Man of the Year (2002)
The Sea Inside*
Heat of the Sun: Hide in Plain Sight* (r)
Even Dwarfs Started Small**
Frontline: Private Warriors*
Rebels of the Neon God**
White of the Eye
Fargo** (r)
Philby, Burgess and Maclean: Spy Scandal of the Century*
Ulysses' Gaze*
Immortel (ad vitam)
Mike Yokohama: A Forest with No Name*
Dr Mabuse -- The Gambler**
The Americanization Of Emily**
Mephisto (1981)
The Woodsman*
Night Moves (1975)*
Signs of Life (Lebenszeichen)*(1968)
The Devil Thumbs a Ride*
Isaac's Storm (History Channel)
Yeelen*
The Hitchhiker (1953)
Hotel (Figgis, 2001)**
They Came Back (Les Revenants)
A Moment of Innocence (Nun va Goldoon)
The Seagull's Laughter (Mavahlatur)
Danger Man (Disc 7)
Tetsuo: The Iron Man**
At Last the 1948 Show
Cypher
Conpiracy of Silence (1994)
Untitled: Almost Famous -- The Bootleg Cut**
The Trials of Henry Kissinger**
Battles Without Honor or Humanity**
Abouna
Fando & Lis**
Kairo**
Constellation Jodorowsky*
Crazed Fruit*
Shadow of the Vampire** (r)
Memories of Murder
The River** (1996, Tsai)
Z Channel: A Magnficent Obsession**
Kiss Me Deadly** (r)
The 400 Blows*
Story of a Love Affair (Cronaca di un amore)**
Moonlight Whispers (Sasayaki)*
Tokyo Twilight**
Le Boucher
Contempt*
Six Feet Under: Fourth Season (disc 1)
L4yer Cake
Ulzana's Raid
Touching the Void**
Crash* (2004, Haggis)
Punk: Attitude**
Bright Leaves
3 Iron*
Empire Falls (disc 1)
Nobody Knows (Dare mo shiranai)
Whirlpool (1949, Preminger)
Boudu Saved from Drowning*
Brothers* (2004, Bier)
Downfall (Der Untergang)*
Stupeur et tremblemants (Fear and Trembling)**
Odds Against Tomorrow
Billion Dollar Brain (r)
Los Angeles Now* (Independent Focus)
La Captive**
Les Diaboliques* (Clouzot, 1955)
Gate of Flesh*
Bob Dylan: No Direction Home**
Saint Jack** (r)
Family Guy: Stewie Griffin -- The Untold Story**
Land of Silence and Darkness*
April** (1961, Ioselliani)
Off the Map* (2003, Campbell Scott)
Wild Palms: Everything Must Go
Batman Begins**
Hopeless Pictures* (disc1)
11:14
Les Bas-Fonds (The Lower Depths, Renoir)**
Le Trou
Get up Stand Up: The Story of Pop and Protest
Mad Hot Ballroom
Heat of the Sun: The Sport of Kings* (r)
Dominion: The Exorcist Prequel
Travellers and Magicians*
The Bird People of China
Edgar Cayce: The Beautiful Dreamer
Mysterious Skin**
Warning Shot (1967)
The Rage of Paris*
L'Eclisse (The Eclipse)**
Clockwise* (r)
Tsumetai chi (An Obsession)*
Yes** (2004, Potter)
The Hoodlum (1951, Nosseck)
My Forbidden Past
Wheel of Time*
The Fellowship of the Ring** (r)
Heights
The Interpreter (2005)
The River** (1951, Renoir)(r)
Under the Flag of the Rising Sun*
Masked and Anonymous*
Chi-Hwa-Seon: Painted Fire
Of Freaks and Men
Zero Kelvin*
Hopeless Pictures* (disc 2)
The Good Fairy**
Ugetsu Monogatari**
Kiss of Death** (1947, Hathaway)(r)
Spider Forest*
La Promesse** (1996, Dardenne Bros)
The Browning Version** (1951, Asquith)
The Dark Corner*
Winter Kills** (r)
Cockfighter*
The Last Lieutenant
Warren Oates: Across the Border
Vodka Lemon*
Bozo, Gar & Ray: WGN TV Classics
The Boys from Fengkuei**
Kings and Queen**
The Beautiful Country*
Dead of Night** (r)
Happy Here and Now*
La Sentinelle

7:48 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

Utopian fiction & subverting the dominant reality

Steven Shaviro's review of Frederic Jameson's Archaeologies of the Future

In the pages of Archaeologies of the Future, Jameson works his way through the projects and paradoxes of utopian SF. What he finds most crucial in utopian fiction is not its blueprints of a future existence, but rather its negation of the way things are now: Utopian SF posits "the future as disruption." In science fiction we traverse great stretches of space and time; we encounter alien beings, as well as conditions that are radically alien to our sensibilities. In these ways, SF shows us the contingency and changeability of even those things—like money and markets and multinational corporations—that we most take for granted.

8:15 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Monday, January 02, 2006

Books I finished in 2005

Radio Free Albemuth - Philip K Dick
Seriously Funny: Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s - Gerald Nachman
A Complicated Kindness - Miriam Toews
Headhunter - Timothy Findley
Beneath a Panamanian Moon - David Terrenoire
The Prism of Lyra - Lyssa Royal & Keith Priest (r)
The Pythons by The Pythons: An Autobiography
A Life in Movies: An Autobiography - Michael Powell
Godplayers - Damien Broderick
The Death Collectors - Jack Kerley
Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World - Sarah Vowell
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers - Daniel Ellsberg
The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film - Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp
The R Crumb Handbook - R Crumb & Peter Poplaski
Ice Haven - Daniel Clowes
My God! What's Happening to Us? - Lynn Grabhorn
Hour of the Cat - Peter Quinn
The Way the Crow Flies - Ann-Marie MacDonald
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler (r)
Life Interrupted - Spalding Gray, others
Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America - David Wise

No, I didn't read much last year.

8:03 AM - [Link] - Comments ()

Sunday, January 01, 2006

Nice weird art site Cipango [incoming signals]

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WFMU's staffs' best of 2005 lists

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Mothers Against Noise raise a ruckus

They mean it, M.A.N.

Many noise fans will cite many upon many seemingly non-degenerate and/or positive noise musicians recording and performing today. I cant blame anyone for being ignorant about this subject, since noise is a brand new genre of music. Do not worry I will be here to answer your questions and show the light of what is really going on. Many will say even if some of the lyrical content of noise is not offensive, but ultimately it doesn't matter because it is usually effected with a lot of well... effects and you cant tell what they are saying anyways. Then answer me this, if it doesn't matter then why aren't they singing about birds and waterfalls and living in a wonderful world?? Why arent they helping make this world a better place?? I'll tell you why, we dont care about this world and we are hell bent on destroying it.

I hold out the hope this is satire, but I fear not.

10:12 PM - [Link] - Comments ()

Warp Records bleep (download) section is offering an "artists to watch in '06" comp for free

Contributing artists and labels incude Dexter (Clone), Jimmy Edgar (Warp), Mara Carlyle (Accidental), The National Trust (Thrill Jockey) Kero (Detroit Underground), Wisp (Sublight), Battles (Warp), Nectarine No9 (Creeping Bent) and Skeletons & The Girl Faced Boys (Ghostly).

The release is priced at zero: click "Buy Mp3 Release 0.00" to add to basket and hit 'Checkout' on the bottom right. No payment details are needed, just an email address and password from new users, existing users login as normal.

Sign up for their newsletter here.

10:46 AM - [Link] - Comments ()