8Sided Blog

a celebration of sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

Noise Annoys

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You may be familiar with a derisive term said in film circles: homework movies. This phrase refers to influential achievements in cinema that one doesn’t necessarily enjoy but are requirements for students of film history. Your mileage may vary here; some consider Citizen Kane the most obvious example of a ‘homework movie,’ but I find it quite enjoyable.

We don’t need to debate how most of Jean-Luc Godard‘s films feel like homework. Since the mid-60s, his movies have increasingly pummeled audiences with literary references, philosophical quotations, and fiery polemics. Even the most seasoned fans and expert critics of the French New Wave openly admit Godard often vaults far above their heads. I’m no exception.

This begs the question: why keep watching something you aren’t sure you like, much less understand? Watching and admiring while shrugging for explanations opens us to accusations of pretension or bandwagoning. Somehow partaking in inscrutable films like Godard’s is taken as its own performance.

And that’s cool. To insist that everyone, or even anyone, should sit and watch Godard, especially his later films, is a ridiculous proposition. Besides the earlier touchstones, Godard’s movies are of a taste one can’t acquire. You either savor the exercise of watching his difficult cinema or you don’t. No harm, no foul. 

But it’s not like we claim these films are difficult for everyone but us. I mean, I don’t feel superior or enlightened watching Godard’s Film Socialisme. Quite the opposite! However, it does make my brain feel like a muddy automobile subjected to an intense car wash before driving back out into the mud. And the parts connected to my eyes and ears got extra squeegeed. 

As you may have guessed, Godard’s death and a Criterion Channel subscription inspired me to dive into the filmmaker’s infamous later work over the past few weeks. It’s been a trip. I wasn’t sure how to approach this ‘homework,’ but then I read Roger Ebert’s suggestion that the key to later Godard is to succumb to his world: 

One single Godard film seems accidental. But if you see half a dozen, you begin to get a sense of his universe. You see themes introduced, developed, worked out, discarded and then later satirized.

You can’t watch these alongside other movies (or compare them, god forbid) because he aims to rip cinema apart at the seams. I’ve been watching the later films in a row, and I feel like I’m ‘getting’ them by seeing them together, though that doesn’t mean I’m also not frustrated and exasperated. It’s all part of viewing Godard as he lets ‘er rip.

I also think it’s vital to understand all of his films are ‘meta’ — from Breathless on — in that they reflect what he’s wondering about at the time. They’re not autobiographical; they’re the act of someone trying to figure things out and not settling on a worldview. I don’t think Godard is sure about anything in his films, even the bold pronouncements. It’s telling that one can read multiple reviews and essays on, say, The Image Book, and they’ll each tell you the movie is about something completely different. These movies show Godard loudly wondering, trying on ideas to see how they fit, and letting the public continue the discourse. What a fascinating thing. Richard Hell elaborates: 

Godard is willing to do something in a movie just to see what happens if he tries it. He can be boring in the exercise of his full freedom, but you can’t have one without the other, and I want them like nothing else.

As problematic as Godard was, I came away from these last films seeing him as an inspirational figure. He persisted and remained uncompromised until his demise at 91. His work is so hated and hatable, mostly because he didn’t give a fuck right to the end. I mean, Godard inflicted Cannes juries with films so dense and furious and, yes, incomparable that they had no choice but to create a prize for him. 

I talk a lot about punk rock on this blog, mainly in the context of autonomy and a strict DIY ethos. Godard was all that, but he also spit out punk rock in its more identifiable ‘two fingers in the air’ flavor. I’m trying hard to think of any accepted figures of the punk world who walk the talk into senior citizen status. I guess some of the Crass folks are still communally living in the woods, but I’m hard-pressed to come up with any others off the top of my head.

I can’t say I love love love Godard (very few do). And he’s not one of my favorite filmmakers. But I’ve become inspired by my journey through his most iconoclastic work. Just as the punk rockers inspired others to pick up guitars and bash away, Godard’s 21st-century films, made up of barely connected visual and audio collages, have me thinking about making weird little movies. Godard shot footage on a camera phone in Goodbye To Language, so why can’t I? That these films provide an imaginative impulse is perhaps the greatest compliment I can give. 

Note: This post was inspired by and contains parts of a recent exchange on Mastodon.

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The spirit of Godard’s uncompromising nose-thumbing/rules are made to be broken/commercial appeal be damned attitude has thrived in the noisier, improvised edges of the DIY musical arts since the accessibility of home recording. And Drone Bone recalls the early excitement of a time when PortaStudios ignited the garages of suburban noisemakers. Their self-titled exercise pairs Adrian Orange (of Thanksgiving and Adrian Orange and Her Band) and Ashby Mary Collinson for a seat-of-the-pants session recorded in 2007, now reissued by Brooklyn’s Perpetual Doom outfit. Ashby Mary is knocking riffs on the Wurlitzer in a fashion that recalls Suicide‘s repetitions, and Adrian is credited with drums and guitar. This all sounds live and on the spot, but I’m assuming the guitar was overdubbed unless Adrian plays drums and guitar simultaneously (I’m not entirely discounting that possibility).

“Drone Bone was born out of sheer restlessness,” writes Ashby Mary. It sounds like it! Some songs begin with the duo’s conversations as they quickly decide how to begin before barreling right into the racket. The music (and some of you may doubt that designation) is ramshackle and rambling, but the point is the joy of creative collaboration without expectation or preconception. I’m not even sure there was a plan. But there’s a great sense of release in these tracks, and you might find it exhilarating, sort of like how I felt when I first heard Jandek records or Daniel Johnston cassettes in the ’80s. Those fractured vibrations inspired teenage me to rattle a suburban garage of my own, and hearing Drone Bone makes me hopeful that its listeners’ next-door neighbors will not be pleased.

And the Heart Grows Fonder

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My eyes are a mess. You probably already know this. Funny thing: I’ve only been admitted to a hospital once — at the age of 12, I stabbed my leg with a knife while building a tree fort on Christmas Eve — and still have all my organs. That includes my tonsils, my appendix, and even my wisdom teeth. I often joke that I’ll probably get hit with everything all at once, as if my maladies have been biding their time. I couldn’t have predicted that it would all go to my eyes.

I’ve always had an outrageous astigmatism, but in my late 30s, the condition graduated to outright keratoconus. Then there’s this double vision, requiring expensive prism lenses on the glasses I wear in addition to the keratoconus correcting contacts. And now I’m dealing with fucking Fuchs’ Dystrophy. I’ve noticed a haze in my right eye that I first chalked up to foggy contacts. But, of course, I live in the armpit of humid central Florida, where fogged-out lenses are a way of life. But then the haze — now resembling a light gauze — became noticeable without my contacts. This state of affairs also made driving impossible at night, as oncoming cars’ headlights made the gauze in my eye burst into an unattractive light show. 

Thanks to a superb new optometrist, the Fuchs’ was identified. She referred me to a specialist who explained the condition would get much worse in no time at all. The two options were a cornea transplant — sorry, nope, for reasons I won’t go into — or a new procedure that involved scraping the Fuchs’ out of my eyeball. Yikes, but okay, sure.

I had this procedure about a month ago. It went smoothly. Supposedly the surgery is just like a cataract removal (if that’s a helpful frame of reference) — I was awake, somewhat sedated, and didn’t feel a thing. It looked like I was watching a stationary version of the light tunnel at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey as the doctor performed the surgery. 

For the first couple of weeks, my eye felt like an eyelash got trapped on the surface. An awful feeling, especially as this was an eyelash that wouldn’t budge. And half those days, the feeling was accompanied by a faucet of tears. I went through multiple boxes of tissue. I couldn’t read, I couldn’t watch movies, and I could barely look at anything for long.

Now all that is thankfully over, though looking through my right eye is like peering through the bottom of a drinking glass. This fuzziness should fade to normal eyesight in several weeks. And I have to drip exotic eye drops ordered from Japan into my socket four times a day. The drops have something to do with stem cell growth. Unfortunately, they’re expensive and only available in Japan as the procedure performed on me is so new. So I had to order a pack of these eye drop bottles months in advance.

It’s a slow process, and it’s slowing me down. I’m constantly fighting off frustration as I fall behind on projects and work. These past months have felt like a deep pit, from hurricanes creating a wake of chaos to my bout with COVID that turned into weeks and weeks of godawful exhaustion, and then this eye biz. There’s so much I want to do (like post all the time on this blog!), but I feel captured in the sticky web of inconvenience. 

I’m finally prying myself loose. I’m still way behind on my work stuff (and please accept my heartfelt apologies if you’re someone I work with), but for the first time in ages, I’m experiencing motivation. More than anything, I want to write and ramp up my creative output. It’s as if the period of incapacitation has made the heart grow fonder. So I’ve devised plans and goals for this blog that are inspiring. I’ll detail them in an upcoming Ballad of the Blog post.

These months have also been a learning experience and a lesson in not beating oneself up. I’ve had lots of practice with self-blame during these challenges, and I’ve come out the other side more accepting and less debilitated. Anne Helen Petersen had a similar epiphany in today’s Culture Study newsletter, which I highly recommend you read. Ann imagines what her weekend would be like if she had completed all of her work tasks: 

The work would’ve been done. But I’ve already tried that whittled-down version of a life, and it’s not a life at all. It’s a burnout trap, a suffocation, a flattening of self. Sure, I’d have completed all the work, done all the tasks, finished all the laundry. But to what end? And to what future? The next weekend would come, and I’d feel some semblance of control, which I may or may not have been able to carry over into the week. But achieving control is not the same as achieving happiness.

As I advised someone on Mastodon going through a post-COVID struggle similar to mine: “Don’t mentally punish yourself for not being able to get everything done that you think you need to while feeling [exhausted]. I was doing that constantly, and I’m sure it made things worse.” If I gain extra wisdom and a new spark to create that I continue to cultivate, the turmoil of the last several months will have been worthwhile. As a wise person said, “When life hands you Godzilla, build Mechagodzilla.”

This Must Be the Place

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Somehow we’ve made it to 2023, a special moment for those who believe in the 23 enigma. I’m a 3/23 baby, so I probably should believe it more than I do, especially as someone who once dove hard into the lore of William Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson. Now I’m pretty sure it’s all confirmation bias. But there are other reasons to look forward to 2023, as well as reasons to dread a new year with caution. To help hedge my bets, I’m focusing on three personal highlights of 2022 as I hope they’ll set the pace for the year ahead:

Cooking. Way back in 2021, the hot peppers growing in Caroline’s vegetable garden inspired me. I learned how to make hot sauces, starting simple but then graduating to exotica. For example, the ghost pepper pineapple-pear hot sauce was the biggest hit, like nothing I’ve ever tasted. After months of assorted hot sauce concoctions — including some I came up with on my own — I realized that I was now essentially cooking. I’ve always wanted to confidently learn my way around a kitchen but never thought I could. It turns out hot sauces are a gateway drug to cooking! So, last year I embraced my inner chef, learning to cook all sorts of tasty vegan dishes. I’m getting good at it, too. Now I’m at the strange point where I’ve filled my YouTube history with cooking tutorials, the only gifts I’ll take are things like fancy olive oils, and Paprika has become my most used app. Needless to say, Caroline is thrilled with this development. My biggest triumph of 2022, across all categories, is probably the time I made a vegan version of palak paneer from scratch.

Interviewing. I edit podcasts, and one of those is the exceptional Spotlight On interview show. Over time as the editor, I’ve noticed how much the host, Lawrence (LP), has progressed as an interviewer. He listens, shows genuine interest in his subjects, and is empathetic enough to understand where to pull back or move forward in the rapport of the conversation. This observation inspired me to try my hand at interviewing following LP’s technique (which I know he’ll argue is not an intentional technique) as a guide. So I started a blog series of conversations with music-makers and artistic types, focusing on process, inspiration, and the creative path. It’s gone great. I’m surprised at how much I enjoyed doing this series, and, listening back, I feel like I ended up doing okay as the interviewer. Thanks, LP! Please have a listen to 2022’s conversations with More Ghost Than Man, Elijah Knutsen, San Mateo, Jogging House, Innerwoud, Greg Davis, and Ströme. This series will continue into 2023 with more exciting people and insights into what it means to create art.

Social Media. Regular visitors to this 8sided lair know of my “complicated relationship with social media.” As someone who once used ‘zines to “find the others,” interacting with niche pockets of like-minded weirdos on the internet always had an appeal. At one time, these folks were on Friendster, then on MySpace, and eventually ended up on Facebook and Twitter. I gave up on anything owned by the recently rechristened Meta a while back but persevered on Twitter with ebbing and flowing frequency. Now, I don’t want to revisit the changes at Twitter (you know), but near the end of October, I finally decided to give that platform the heave-ho. I still desired an outlet — posting on Twitter was actually a good way to test out thoughts that may end up as blog posts — and a place to meet those others. So, with hesitation, I signed up for Mastodon. I say ‘hesitation’ because we’ve all heard how difficult it is to sign up, how it’s so complicated, and that there are a bunch of freaks on there who yell at you when you don’t put a content warning on your lunch photo. It took me about an hour on Mastodon to learn that none of that is true — quite the opposite, really. And it then took about 24 hours to find plenty of cool ‘others,’ lots of like-minded weirdos, and a community of friendly people who engage with enthusiasm. I’m also experiencing true decentralization for the first time (this ain’t no Web3 snake oil), and I now realize I was missing out on a major component of the Punk Rock Dream. For the first time in maybe a decade, I’m excited about being on social media. As Mr. Byrne once crooned, “I guess that this must be the place.”

Falling from the Clouds

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The Lake During Hurricane Ian

I remember snow in Florida. It happened in a small town outside Gainesville, which, technically, is considered northern Florida. But if you draw a straight line across the Gulf of Mexico, Gainesville is below New Orleans and directly across from San Antonio. So it’s not too far north.

I was a small child, this was probably in the late ’70s, and I was visiting my grandmother’s house with family for Christmas. The astonished call came out — snow! These were ‘snow flurries,’ to be precise. The meager attempt at snow turned into drops of water immediately upon impact. Of course, it wasn’t that cold. But, snow of any kind in Florida? Actually, not unheard of at the time. 

Nowadays, the idea of snow in Florida is the subject of crazy talk. Maybe there are flurries closer to the Georgia border, but I’d bet the reaction would be as if frogs were falling from the clouds. Do you want to know what’s not so surprising? Extreme heat, humidity, and ripe conditions for category 4+ hurricanes. 

Hurricane Ian was a monster hurricane. It was as much a monster as Irma, only five years ago. Both storms were massive and slow — I remember Charly in 2004, which seemed to pass through Orlando in under a couple of hours. Ian stuck around for an entire evening and some of the next day, flooding parts of the city that had never experienced such flooding. And the wind — these may not have clocked MPHs like the violent winds of Irma (that hurricane literally blew my roof off), but Ian’s sustained gusts were no small potatoes. Consider yourself lucky if you didn’t experience these winds.

My home came out relatively unscathed. Despite being beside a lake, I didn’t get any flooding as I’m on an incline. I was without power for three days but treated the situation like a mandatory digital detox. We feasted on veggies from the grill. I kept a big gas generator going. I organized my home office. I finally had time to finish reading The Dispossessed. 

That said, the images of Florida’s Gulf coast — not to mention the aforementioned local flooding — are horrifying and sad. Here are some organizations helping out that would appreciate your donations. And while on the subject of monster storms, the victims of Hurricane Fiona could still use your help, too.

I doubt we’ll get any more snow in Florida, but I’m confident these storms will continue and increase in frequency and power. It’s scary. I’m not going anywhere — if not hurricanes, it’ll be something else — so my options are to stay tense, plan thoughtfully, and maintain the generator monthly. As for Florida, we already see the cracks in the infrastructure, the systemic variety of support for disaster-prone communities, and the stress on this state’s fragile environment. As these storms get meaner and meaner, I’m not sure how Florida will continue to hold it all together. 

Peter Kalmus in The Guardian:

In short, it has been a summer of climate insanity. But even so, this will be, on average, the coolest summer with the least climate chaos for the rest of your life. That is just the nature of trends. It should be terrifying.

Colorfully Aligned

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I was pretty excited to see Chrome featured on Bandcamp Daily. The piece is an excellent overview of the pioneering San Francisco duo, revealing more than a few tidbits I didn’t know. The article is understandably from guitarist Helios Creed‘s perspective (as band partner Damon Edge passed a couple of decades back), and he takes a lot of credit. But there is something to be said about Creed’s spiraling guitar lines and bizarro feedback treatments, sounding like nothing else in the late ’70s — someone that ahead of time was likely the main driver pushing Chrome to the, uh, edge.

Chrome has sadly remained under the radar even though their influence is apparent throughout the last forty years of the freaky-deeky side of rock n’ roll. For example, the Butthole Surfers definitely got their hands on a Chrome album or two in their formative days.

I initially found Chrome in my mid-teens through the “New Age” video (probably seen via Night Flight). I was always on the hunt for weird shit™ to help me escape the confines of life in Central Louisiana, and “New Age” fit the bill. The song — and Chrome’s output at the time — was a remarkable portent. It signaled many things on the horizon, both sonically and culturally. Check the cyberpunk current running through the “New Age” video, which also pays homage to A Clockwork Orange and THX 1138.

Chrome - New Age

Around the time I discovered Chrome, I also encountered Cabaret Voltaire’s Red Mecca. That’s not too far off of a connection — Chrome were, in a way, the American Cabaret Voltaire when one looks at their respective experiments recorded in the late ’70s and early ’80s. And as many accept Red Mecca as a dark reflection on England’s Thatcher years, Chrome’s 1980 album Red Exposure (colorfully aligned!) could be seen as a similar reaction to the national mood that brought the US into the Reagan era.

And listen to Cabaret Voltaire’s “Landslide,” taken off Red Mecca. My favorite DJ in the world will be the one who sublimely mixes this with “New Age” in the middle of a packed-out ’80s night somewhere.

Cabaret Voltaire

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I’m torn. YouTube is a repository of things otherwise impossible-to-find or out-of-print. It’s the only public place where you can hear Kraftwerk’s disowned early albums or watch Keith Levene abuse a Prophet-5 as PIL runs through “Careening.” These things are on YouTube because of fans and super-fans, noting a cultural absence and taking matters into their own hands. But no one’s getting paid, except for YouTube. And maybe also the uploader who unscrupulously turns on the monetization of a vintage work that’s not theirs.1The Chrome and Cabaret Voltaire videos above were uploaded respectively by Helios Creed and Mute Records, so they are welcome to monetize to their hearts’ content. That’s why I’m torn.

But discoveries like The Black Tower make YouTube seem all right. The enigmatically but actually named John Smith is a British avant-garde filmmaker whose work escaped me until I randomly peeped an exchange about The Black Tower on the Twitter machine. From what I’ve recently seen, Smith’s work is minimal but compelling, weaving stories and visual play from things noticed in his immediate surroundings. For instance, the 1975 short film Leading Light looks entirely shot in his bedroom.2Sharp eyes might spot The Velvet Underground. This article in Senses of Cinema digs further into Smith’s ‘familiar-but-unfamiliar’ approach.

The Black Tower is a 23-minute film released by Smith in 1987. The super-fan uploader didn’t monetize this, which is nice — The Black Tower is the sort of thing that should remain free of ads; otherwise, its spell is broken. “Architectural horror” is an intriguing phrase I saw to describe the film. For me, The Black Tower is like a campfire ghost story, except it’s told next to a darkened chip shop in a disused city alleyway instead of a campfire. 

John Smith's The Black Tower

The Black Tower mainly comprises of stationary shots of nothingness and near-nothingness, but this is gripping stuff. And inspiring, too — don’t let anyone tell you lack of budget and gear constrain triumphant acts of creativity. Just get that Black Tower out of your head.

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I often wonder why more artists don’t exploit that a Bandcamp download can contain more than just audio files and an album cover. There’s an opportunity to expand an album, to add GIFs and short movies, PDF booklets, and collections of images. Surprise the listener with digital esoterica, revealed only upon purchase and download.

The concept’s potential is a natural fit for Puremagnetik. This small company is developing unique audio plug-ins for creators while manning an active experimental label on Bandcamp. Ambient explorer Taylor Deupree has released Small Winters through the label, and something new from Taylor is a cause for celebration on its own. Taylor is a longtime master of the is-it-broken-or-intentional style of soundscape as he loops warm tones over crackles and randomly conjured defects. The sources for these tones are often something other than synthesized — on Small Winters, you’ll find a glockenspiel. If you’re into this flavor, Taylor doesn’t disappoint. I’m a fan.

But there’s more in store for those who download Taylor’s latest. The album’s title, Small Winters, is also the name of a DAW plug-in designed by Puremagnetik’s Micah Frank with prodding from Taylor. “Taylor suggested that a custom device might be an interesting way to constrain the album’s sonic palette,” says Frank. “We bounced some ideas back and forth and came up with this concept of a broken Tascam 4-track from the future.” Purchase this release on Bandcamp, and you’ll find a text file bundled with the tracks outlining instructions for downloading the plug-in.

The album prominently utilizes the plug-in throughout, most notably on “Long Winter,” which treats the glockenspiel with percolating layers of static-tinged stereo-enhanced repetition. The result is beautiful; the hard attack of the ‘spiel is softened by reversed effects, low-end ghost notes, and a healthy dollop of artificial tape hiss. An ARP 2600 eventually joins in with hints of a glimmering, subdued melody.

“Long Winter” is followed by a series of shorter tracks with uncapitalized titles like “air” and “tea.” After the set’s preceding magnum opus, these might come off more like mere demonstrations of the included plug-in if the cuts didn’t fit snuggly within Taylor’s body of work. I know Taylor and Small Winters don’t rely on a plug-in for beautiful, melancholic atmospheres. But I can’t tell if this plug-in requires Taylor to come close Small Winter‘s remarkable sound. I’ll have to play with the included plug-in and figure that out for myself.

Unforeseen Circumstances

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It turns out that if you put off replacing aging scleral contacts for a couple of years, they become brittle and might crack as you gently clean them in your hands. Good to know. And that’s why I’m dealing with unforeseen circumstances — meaning, in my present state, I can’t see circumstances for shit. 

I’ve written about keratoconus here a few times. It’s a total bummer. The eyeballs lose their shape, and one’s eyesight gets wacky. As it’s a structural degradation of the eye itself, glasses aren’t too much help. Scleral contacts are your best bet (unless you want to live la vida loca and get a corneal transplant, which I am not wont to do).

The good news is I found a rad new eye doctor on a friend’s recommendation. She has keratoconus, too, which is bad news for her but good news for me. It’s nice to have a doctor who understands your condition and what you’re going through first-hand. This doc is also about 5 minutes from my house. That proximity is a novelty — over a decade ago, when first diagnosed, there were so few eye specialists dealing in keratoconus that I had to be driven (as I couldn’t safely drive) four hours to Miami. I did that almost monthly for a year. And my new doc had to do the same thing at the time.

I saw this doctor yesterday and was thoroughly eye-prodded and iris-scanned to get the perfect fit for my new scleral lenses. I can’t wait to get them. Because right now, I’m legally blind. And I’ll remain this way until the contacts arrive, which appears to happen next Thursday. 

I won’t get into what these things cost. I’ll just say that if you wear ‘normal’ contacts, multiply your price by at least five. But I can’t normally function, easily work, or do much of anything enjoyable without my expensive bionic eyes. That keratoconus is not covered by any insurance plan I know of is another white mark on the chalkboard of health care crimes in the good ol’ USA.

But I can blog, right? Sure! But if you spied into my window, you’d see me holding my phone up to my face, typing on the tiny keyboard with my thumbs. It’s so much comfier on my peepers to do it this ridiculous way than looking into my huge 29″ computer monitor. And watching movies? On my iPad, also held maybe five inches from the tip of my nose. So, what do you have planned for the week ahead? I’ll be holding various devices against my nose.

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I also realized that I hadn’t posted my BNDCMPR playlist for June. So, here it is. As always, this playlist is a selection of fantastic songs I ran across on Bandcamp over the past month. The playlist is shorter this time, but the quality is mountain high. If you dig anything I included, then feel free to purchase the tune. Or, at least, follow the corresponding artist or label on Bandcamp. Enjoy!

The Pomposity of It All

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One of the first bands I was into was Yes (which is why I know a thing or two about Alan White). One could easily find most of their oeuvre in the cut-out bins, so I had all of Yes’s early albums by the time I was 15 — even this one. But soon, punk rock and post-punk reared their shaggy heads. I quickly jettisoned Yes, prog-rock, and anything resembling those to the dustbin.

So, I never really got into Vangelis. The pomposity of it all — I filed him alongside the Rick Wakemans and Keith Emersons of the world. My synth heroes were rarely photographed in front of banks of gear, whether Cabaret Voltaire, Chris Carter, or the more humble practitioners regularly featured in Keyboard Magazine, like Suzanne Ciani. Of course, I dug the music in Blade Runner, but I was just into Blade Runner. Though I watched it multiple times, I only saw it via VHS or DVD on television at home. I considered every part of it satisfying as a whole.

In 2007, Blade Runner: The Final Cut was released on the film’s 25th anniversary. This version wasn’t just another ‘director’s cut’ treatment — the visuals and sound were fully remastered, with the latter updated for theaters with surround sound. At the time of its theater run, I was in Los Angeles, staying with a friend and looking for something to do on a lazy afternoon. My friend told me that a cinema within walking distance of his place was one of the ‘test theaters’ used by the film’s technical team to fine-tune this new Blade Runner version. The movie was playing on that particular screen, and, as the film’s techies optimized the ‘remaster’ in that very theater, this would be one of the best settings in the world to see this latest Blade Runner.

I walked down to the cinema. It was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, and there weren’t many people there. I was able to get the coveted center-but-several-rows-from-the-screen seat. No one sat near me, and, with no snacks to distract me or drinks to inspire a restroom break, I settled in for my first time seeing Blade Runner on the big screen.

The first thing to hit was the opening shot of the city at night, accompanied by that identifiable ‘boom’ sound.1which, btw, I sampled and used repeatedly throughout this track The city and all its lights looked incredible, so clear and gorgeous. I was immediately overwhelmed. But then here comes Vangelis. The plaintive opening theme eases in, and I hear it all around me. The high melodic line seems to float around the theater. The music is so crisp, vibrant, and alive — I’m finally comprehending the accomplishment of Vangelis’s score.

The sum of Blade Runner’s parts does combine into something magical, a synergy that doesn’t often happen in collective art. And it’s no surprise to learn that Vangelis composed the music specifically for the visuals and only in service of what was on screen. As he’s quoted as saying, “My music does not try to evoke emotions like joy, love, or pain from the audience. It just goes with the image, because I work in the moment.”

Of course, Vangelis recently passed away. Thinking about what I missed, I’m planning a deep dive and give a try to some classic Vangelis music that I once dismissed (without hearing, I’ll add). If you’re in the same boat, a good starting place is this memorial and career overview from Alexis Petridis.

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Through the recent Aquarium Drunkard podcast interview with Sasha Frere-Jones, I discovered a new-to-me podcast called Weird Studies. The show’s description: “Conversations on art and philosophy, dwelling on ideas that are hard to think, and art that opens up rifts in what we are pleased to call ‘reality.'” Could I be any more on board after seeing that?

I’ve listened to two episodes so far, and they were both delightfully fun and heady. Of course, I started with the philosophical discussion of Blade Runner. And then I naturally moved on to the episode about Brian Eno’s Music For Airports. So many ideas are shoved in each hour+ that it was a little dizzying to keep up. It’s a podcast that might warrant repeated listenings for episodes on your preferred topics. 

As the discussion of Eno went on, with the concept of ambient music’s context a recurring theme, I was surprised the hosts didn’t mention the story of Eno hearing Music For Airports played in an airport. Unfortunately, the story is anecdotal, relayed by Brian in an interview I can’t locate. Brian told of arriving at an airport for a highly-trumpeted installation he was giving in the city. The album greeted him as he stepped off the plane and into the terminal. The only problem was that it was playing too loud. “They missed the point!” I recall him saying in the interview with palpable frustration. His reaction makes me think of this classic Far Side cartoon, and, in Eno’s version, you’d replace New Age Music’s Greatest Hits with Music For Airports played at top volume.

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While on the subject of Brian Eno, I need to mention the incredibly indulgent box set recently released by his chum Robert Fripp. The Exposures box consists of a stupefying 32 discs, broken down here by John Coulthart, who possesses one of these monsters:

I’m still working my way through its contents: 25 CDs, 3 DVDs and 4 blu-rays; the CDs all run for at least 70 minutes each so these alone provide about 30 hours of music. The box covers three phases of Robert Fripp’s “Drive to 1981”: his debut solo album, Exposure; his Frippertronics guitar recordings, both live and in the studio; and his short-lived New-Wave dance band The League Of Gentleman. All cult stuff in this house, obviously, you don’t buy 32 discs on a whim.

The average price of this thing sits around $170, which is reasonable for all of that. But this is a niche piece — I mean, I’m big a fan of Robert Fripp, but I guess not big enough as I won’t be getting this. I wonder how many Robert’s team has manufactured. But it’s easy to see the future2And the present, if we’re being honest. of physical releases in Exposures. I’m not necessarily talking about extravagant multi-disc treatments that cost a few weeks of grocery money. I’m impressed by the niche aspect, the catering to the hardcore of the hardcore fans with a limited run edition, and you don’t need the discography and gravitas of Fripp to do it. Perhaps you can issue a disc with a limited zine featuring exclusive insights into the artist’s process. Or a cassette that comes in a beautiful wooden box, each individually painted or hand-carved, signed by band members.

The key is creating the myth — drawn from truths and stories — that swirls around your art and serves the listeners looking for entry into those secrets. No pussyfooting!

An Inside Job

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It’s the last day of May, so it’s time to reveal this month’s music recommendations. For each month of 2022, I’m keeping track of the great music I run across on Bandcamp — mostly new but some old, but all new to me — and compiling the songs in a BNDCMPR playlist. May’s selection starts jagged and indie-dubby before giving way to an extended run of atmospheric mood vibrations. The DJ in me can’t resist putting thought into the sequence, so be sure to listen in full, from beginning to end. This one’s an inside job.

Past selections: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4

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musicjournalisminsider.com
#136: Decadence And Disenchantment
Decadence And Disenchantment I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best…
musicjournalisminsider.com
#136: Decadence And Disenchantment
Decadence And Disenchantment I’m Todd L. Burns, and welcome to Music Journalism Insider, a newsletter about music journalism. I highlight some of the best…

There’s some fine commentary in today’s edition of Todd L. Burns’ always excellent Music Journalism Insider newsletter. Todd interviews a few folks who are known to write intelligent things about music in each edition. This time one of these is The Quietus‘s Luke Turner, who has some withering words for his peers who focus on writing about artists that grab the most SEO hits: 

To focus so excessively on corporate pop often designed to feed tech algorithms excludes not just what was always the underground, but also those who 20 years ago would have been able to have a good underground-adjacent career. It’s an old joke that people say we make up the artists in [The Quietus] ‘s top 100 records of each year, but I wish that more publications did deep dives that ignored genre, profile, the established music industry, what works on social media or what they feel they ought to be covering. I would like to see more focus on creative graft rather than pop grift, and more skepticism of consensus. What’s the point of knocking down the hoary and hairy old rock canon only to replace it with a different yet equally boring one? 

Also among this edition’s interviews, TV/podcast producer Greg Heller hits the nail on the head when it comes to why I can’t watch most music documentaries these days: “So often I can feel that the filmmakers want viewers to understand why THEY love these musicians, rather than present who these musicians are to let us decide if WE love them too.” And Greg says he’s working on a documentary series about the “strangest, least likely bands snared in the post-Nirvana dragnet of major label signings.” That sounds like some Butthole Surfers content, so count me in.

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wired.com
This Punk Band Will Definitely Land in Your Spam Folder
It’s a tough digital world out there for a musical group called Viagra Boys.
wired.com
This Punk Band Will Definitely Land in Your Spam Folder
It’s a tough digital world out there for a musical group called Viagra Boys.

The internet age creates additional considerations when coming up with a band or artist name. Usually, that comes down to not naming your band something that’s impossible to have a chance in a Google search on its own, like “Spatula.”1Oops. There are at least three bands called Spatula. But I never thought about names that make the spam filters go into overdrive until reading this piece in Wired:

The misunderstandings began immediately after they formed. “We had a Facebook page, and we were getting all sorts of weird DMs from men all over the world,” says Murphy. “They were like, ‘How much to buy?’ They thought we were some sort of vendors.” And then they’d have the same conversation over and over again. “‘We sent you guys an email.’ ‘No, you didn’t.’ Everything ended up in spam.” Now, clunkily, every promo email from the band promises material from “”V**gra Boys” and then immediately explains “(**= “ia” because spam FILTERS).”

Says the band’s publicist, Ryan Cunningham, “For the past four years I’ve only used that. Their manager, Oskar Ekman, advised me from day one to never write the actual band name in an email. During an album campaign, I check my spam as regularly as my inbox.”

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scientificamerican.com
The Science Is Clear: Gun Control Saves Lives
By enacting simple laws that make guns safer and harder to get, we can prevent killings like the ones in Uvalde and Buffalo
scientificamerican.com
The Science Is Clear: Gun Control Saves Lives
By enacting simple laws that make guns safer and harder to get, we can prevent killings like the ones in Uvalde and Buffalo

Science and facts, with linked citations. It’s essential to know these things, to brace oneself mentally and rhetorically against the gaslighting of being told obvious truths are ‘politicizing’ or ‘propagandizing.’ I doubt this editorial will persuade anyone not already convinced. Still, you and I should stay resolutely aware of the reality (and, yes, horror) of the present situation here in the USA. It’s the only way we have a chance to fight it.

That Word Doesn’t Mean Anything Anymore

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Philip Sherburne Loves to Write About Records
a.k.a. An interview with one of electronic music’s most respected journalists.
Philip Sherburne Loves to Write About Records
a.k.a. An interview with one of electronic music’s most respected journalists.

SR: During the past decade, there’s been a larger reevaluation of pop music and its merits—what many refer to as poptimism—and it’s prompted a major shift in music journalism, especially at outlets like Pitchfork. Do you think that’s been a good thing?

PS: I do in the sense that people are taking seriously styles of music that for a long time were just written off. It’s caused journalists and readers to rethink a lot of assumptions about what constitutes value, and it’s undone a lot of prejudices about women and people of color making music and what styles are valid for critical appraisal. At the same time, when it comes to contemporary pop, what I find frustrating as a reader and a listener is that I sometimes find the discourse to be far more interesting than the music. For many records, there’s not a lot of substance there beyond the fame of the artist, and I don’t think that the critical discourse acknowledges that. Still, it’s hard to generalize, and my opinion probably reflects my own tastes, which are quite experimental and idiosyncratic.

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PS: … if we’re using the word underground to talk about dance music that’s made primarily to fill nightclubs where the business model is based on alcohol sales, then that word doesn’t really mean anything anymore.

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PS: … as the scene has become more diversified, not just in terms of demographics but also in terms of geography and styles of music, I think it’s become harder to do an electronic music publication that represents the breadth of everything and still feels central. There’s been an explosion of musicians, DJ and venues; maybe the answer is to go back to more locally focused publications. That might be a better way to represent what’s actually happening in electronic music.

A few of my favorite takeaways from Shawn Reynaldo’s in-depth interview with veteran music journalist and reviewer Philip Sherburne. All instances of emphasis are mine. The full piece goes up behind a paywall tomorrow so read it while you can (if you’re a paid subscriber to Shawn’s excellent First Floor newsletter then you’ll continue to have access).

We’re Still Statik Dancin’

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Minimal Compact were (are?) a groundbreaking band that were based out of Tel Aviv in their heyday. They released a series of acclaimed albums in the ’80s on the Crammed label that explored post-punk’s funkier, artsier edges. Minimal Compact are probably more influential than you think — ask a few clued-in art punks.

The band sounded the alarm with “Statik Dancin’,” the first track on their debut album, 1982’s One By One. You could say “Statik Dancin'” helped set the template for the DFA/LCD sound alongside Eno’s work with Talking Heads and other triumphs of sonic mish-mashing from that era. There’s more than one unique element to “Statik Dancin’,” but Samy Birnbach’s disconnected but urgent vocal delivery and Marc Hollander’s spiraling bass clarinet solo are most noteworthy. The rhythm line is an electrical pulse, high tempo but locked in. And this guitar is more scratch than notes and counts as part of that rhythm section. I’m positive you could play this at any dance music club without killing the vibe.

Even wilder: a new re-release of the original version (not the respectable Colin Newman assisted 2019 re-recording) backed by a remixed ‘dub’ from none other than Mad Professor. A dub done well shines sunlight on the bones of the source track — it’s the same skeleton but you can now examine the joints. And what joints are these! The bass and drum (and percussion) drive is as kinetic as ever while Samy’s voice and Berry Sakharof’s guitar twirl in the echo chamber. Mr. Professor adds elements familiar even to those who only know his Massive Attack work, and, despite the absence of bass clarinet (maybe it’s hiding in the mix), the whole thing feels like an explosion in slow motion. What a cut.

There aren’t many people producing dubs as tastefully and effectively as Mad Professor. Unfortunately, many contemporary dub versions are either too heavy-handed or sonically timid. I feel like DAW in-the-box automation, for all its advantages, takes the danger out of recording a ‘version.’ Dub is on the fly, an octopus at the controls, pushing buttons and riding faders. Just check out this video of Mad Professor in action. Or how about Adrian Sherwood for something even more intense?

Adrian Sherwood at the controls

Let’s leave the subject of dubs and go back to Minimal Compact — or, more specifically, Samy Birnbach. His post-Compact career has been long and wide, including curating the beloved Freezone series of compilations and his SSR label. As DJ Morpheus, he DJs on radio and club decks and is responsible for one of the best sets I have ever heard. It was at a small club in Moscow, and Samy didn’t beat-mix a single record. The music selection and his sly sequencing did all the work, and it blew me away.

Let’s go back further. In 1996, I released a record on San Francisco’s Mephisto Records called “141 Revenge Street.” The 12″ got around more than I could have imagined, and a copy ended up in Samy’s hands. He got in touch with me (maybe by fax!) and suggested I hang out with him in Miami at the Winter Music Conference. I had no intention to go but couldn’t help but think it would be cool to meet the guy behind the Freezone compilations, the guy behind “Statik Dancin’.” So I popped down to Miami — my first time — and met up with Samy, who seemed to know everyone but spent a lot of time with me. He gave me a lot of advice, encouraged my then fledgling DJ/producer career, and introduced me to people like Carl Craig and Kruder & Dorfmeister. Holy cats, I was hooked.

I returned home with a multi-year supply of inspiration and got to work. I started recording what would become my Sunburn single and the next Mephisto release. Samy released “141 Revenge Street” on SSR and got Glenn Underground to remix it. Then someone bought me a plane ticket for the first time, and I flew to Detroit, where a guy heckled me during my entire DJ set. It wasn’t but another year or so that Astralwerks came calling.

I’m still in touch with Samy. He’s been a trusted constant and friend in this business called music. All these years later, we’re both still statik dancin’.