8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

Expand the Bubble

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In January, I started compiling my Bandcamp discoveries in a monthly playlist. I utilize BNDCMPR technology, allowing songs from everyone’s favorite music platform assembled into an online playlist. BNDCMPR isn’t just a useful alternative to Spotify playlists for turning people on to cool tunes but these compilations also help me remember favorites I’ve run across on Bandcamp.

I just published April’s playlist. It features a mix of brand new music, a few great songs from friends, and a couple of meaningful rediscoveries (R.I.P. David Freel). As always, I put care into the sequencing so listen to the playlist from beginning to end if you’re able. And please check out the full albums and purchase any music that you’re particularly digging.

Need more? Here are my previous playlists from January, February, and March.

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I spent a good part of the weekend cleaning out my RSS feed subscriptions. There are a lot of feeds in there and I don’t think I’m even a third of the way done. I subscribe to a lot of feeds. I like to open my RSS reader (I use Inoreader) and start flipping from the most recent thing that comes up. This gives the experience a random feel to it (and you know how much I like random things) and I’m often finding inspiration from articles and posts I wouldn’t have run across otherwise.

That said, as I audit my RSS subscriptions, I’m saddened but not surprised at how many blogs are dead or inactive. Granted, many of these bloggers have moved on to newsletters (you can follow many of those with RSS, too) but — come on — let’s get back to the beat of the blog!

Subscribing to RSS feeds is the most important part of my gathering and researching process. It’s also how I keep up with my favorite blogs and sites, especially those of friends of mine. Until recently, I kept up with ‘what’s going on’ and potential writing topics through Twitter and social media. Now, with RSS, I get to finely curate the info flow to my interests while keeping things broad enough to expand the bubble, all without the overwhelming noise. And — bonus! — there aren’t any algorithms getting in the way. The web is pleasant again.

Interested? Here’s a great page that explains all you need to know.

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I’m considering posting the week’s media diet here every Sunday. I worry revealing this information will make it seem like I read, watch, and listen to way too much. Please know that I compartmentalize my intake — I have specific times of day for it all and I rarely finish anything in one sitting — so rest assured it’s not like I’m staring at a TV all day.

WATCHING

Shoot the Piano Player (1960) – François Truffaut’s second film is excellent and surprisingly hard-boiled, but also comes off as a little slight. That’s probably because, in Truffaut’s filmography, it’s sandwiched between The 400 Blows and Jules and Jim, two of the best films of the 20th century. I like that the two gangsters in Shoot the Piano Player apparently got into their line of work because they really enjoy meeting new people.

A Separation (2011) – I first saw A Separation a decade ago and can’t believe how hard it still hits in a rewatch. Masterful in every. Single. Way. Here’s a fantastic review of the film on Letterboxd that helps explain why it’s so great.

King Richard (2021) – I’m still getting through last year’s Oscar-nominated films. I spent a small chunk of this thinking Rick Macci was played by Bob Odenkirk under a wig and a bit of makeup. Despite that disorienting delusion, I found this to be standard but enjoyable Hollywood fare. The kids are great as is Smith, even in light of the post-Oscar elephant stomping around the room.

Tokyo Vice – Caroline and I are enjoying this. It’s stylish and fast-paced, and Ken Watanabe is always a joy to watch in action. There are more than a few moments of insufferable expository dialogue (usually my TV-watching kryptonite). And a few of the plot points require putting logic on hold, which is no biggie as the source material might not be that logical either. But it is a lot of fun and who doesn’t enjoy cruising around late-90s Tokyo for an hour each week?

LISTENING

You already know what I’m listening to music-wise if you check out the BNDCMPR playlist that started this post. Other than that, two podcasts caught my ears this week and made my brain whirl.

I really got into this conversation between the author Robert Greene and Pete Holmes on the latter’s You Made It Weird podcast. Holmes is a little hard to take at times (especially if you’re a new listener and aren’t used to his overbearing bedside manner as a podcast host), but Greene and his fascinating interests make everything good. He gets a little into his process and also goes into how a follower of Zen Buddhism could comfortably write books about power and seduction. There’s some life-after-death and ‘time is a flat circle’ type talk, too, so hold on to your hats.

I didn’t exactly get what I expected from the author Emily St. John Mandel on The Ezra Klein Show besides a couple of passages read from her books. Instead, most of this discussion is about time travel and what it would mean if we are indeed living in a simulation. I ate this up, especially the conclusion that we’re already living in a simulation because of the stories we agree upon that control our lives. Heady stuff!

READING

I’m working my way through Salman Rushdie’s Shame. It’s not an easy read! But I’m continuing on as every time I pick it up there’s some gem of magical realism or a gorgeous series of sentences that keeps me moving toward the end.

Spot Lyte On Podcast with Carrie Kania

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A quick plug for the latest episode of Spot Lyte On…, a music industry-adjacent podcast that I co-produce and edit. Host Lawrence Peryer speaks with Carrie Kania, creative director at Iconic Images and former publishing executive at HarperCollins. Unsurprisingly for these two music-heads, most of the conversation is about music — favorite bands, early music memories, favorite shows — but you’ll also hear fascinating reminiscences about living in New York at the end of the 20th century and plenty of insight on the book publishing industry. The episode is available on your favorite podcasting platform or app including our suggestions found here.

Milk Crate of Forgotten Playlists

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The best and truest discourse regarding Twitter’s predicament (and that of its users) expresses the sentiment of just letting it go. This is a hopeful stance, so don’t misconstrue it with surrender or giving up. Folks obsessed with fixing, preserving, or even finding an equal replacement for Twitter are embracing a defective template. Like arguing with Spotify to change its ways, a focus on what’s clearly an unsolvable problem distracts us from creating ‘first-principles’1Yes, I’m cheekily using a term popularized by that billionaire knucklehead. alternatives. Rip it up and start again.

Ryan Broderick in Garbage Day:

I’ve seen arguments on Twitter from liberal users this week saying things like, “Twitter is a public square and the front page of the internet, we must stay and fight the Musk fans and conservatives for it.” lol with all due respect, but why? The main benefit of the internet is that it’s infinite. There doesn’t need to be a public square! And there can also be many! […] Twitter, though smaller than other platforms, still monopolizes our culture more than any other. And very soon it will be owned by the richest man on Earth… But we don’t need to stay there. There’s nothing keeping us there. And I’d argue we can take it further. We now know that centralized feeds are just easy targets for despots and oligarchs (and whatever Mark Zuckerberg is) to capture and control. We need to throw it all out. Make websites and message boards and Discords and become ungovernable. Kill the central feed.

Robin Sloan:

There are so many ways people might relate to one another online, so many ways exchange and conviviality might be organized. Look at these screens, this wash of pixels, the liquid potential! What a colossal bummer that Twitter eked out a local maximum; that its network effect still (!) consumes the fuel for other possibilities, other explorations.

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Brian Eno with guitar

I appreciate Gary Hustwit’s approach to documentary film-making, and his feature-length profile on designer Dieter Rams is a total joy. So, under Hustwit’s steely direction, I’m more excited than hesitant about a documentary on Brian Eno. But will it be generative?

From the press release:

Befitting its subject, Eno will utilize proprietary generative software developed by Hustwit and digital artist Brendan Dawes to provide unique viewing experiences via multiple digital formats, cinema screenings and site-specific installations. “You can’t make a conventional, by-the-numbers bio doc about Brian Eno,” said Hustwit. “That would be antithetical and a missed opportunity. What I’m trying to do is to create a cinematic experience that’s as innovative as Brian’s approach to music and art.”

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Hidden in a Fire Island House, the Soundtrack of Love and Loss
In tragedy, music provided solace during the AIDS epidemic, and newly discovered cassette tapes captured two decades of parties and pain.
Hidden in a Fire Island House, the Soundtrack of Love and Loss
In tragedy, music provided solace during the AIDS epidemic, and newly discovered cassette tapes captured two decades of parties and pain.

This moving NY Times article explores how mixtapes can capture and contextualize historical moments. In this case, a stash of recordings discovered in a former ‘party house’ on Fire Island documents the escape and loss experienced by the island’s community throughout the tragic height of the AIDS crisis. There are many other histories told through hand-designed mixtapes — the genesis of hip-hop and the ebbs and flows of the original rave movement, for two examples. However, these histories are confined to the period from the mid-70s to the late ’90s. Future accounts told through music will take other forms, but it’s not like anyone will stumble across a milk crate packed with forgotten playlists.

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I can’t get enough of this cover version of Black Flag’s “Rise Above” from the French duo Ibeyi. It’s as perfect for 2022 as the original was for 1981. The predictably angry reactions peppering the song’s YouTube comments section miss the point entirely — the fed-up spirit of punk rock is for everyone, no matter the race, nationality, or musical genre. Nobody exclusively owns that.

Imagining Astronauts Overhead

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Early in the morning — 4:00 AM on the dot — I was woken by a deep but distant rumbling sound. At first, I thought the sub-bass rattle was from one of the formidable car stereos often heard rolling through a busy intersection a mile to the west of my place. But there was no rhythmic consistency, so these weren’t jeep beats.

Then I remembered seeing, previously that day, an alert for a SpaceX launch scheduled just before the rumble eased me out of my sleep. Four astronauts were on their way to the space station. 

I live over 50 miles away in Orlando, and, on a cloudless day, I can see the Cape Canaveral launches on the horizon over my backyard lake. It’s one of my favorite things about living here. But I’ve never heard the sound of a launch from here before, much less get woken by one. Perhaps it was the tranquil evening; the lift-off sounds resting on light winds blowing in my direction. I quickly fell back asleep, imagining astronauts overhead.

There’s a moral conflict when awful people do good things. I love spaceflight — I was hooked ever since I gawked over the first Space Shuttle launch from a pier in Cocoa Beach. So, of course, I’m happy that SpaceX has revitalized the rocket industry and gotten more people excited about space exploration. And, tangentially, I’m thrilled that Tesla made electric cars sexy to the point where every major car company is now invested in plug-in vehicles. But the billionaire behind all of this is a knucklehead. What makes him more awful is that he gets all sorts of ‘passes’ because of his money and influence as a perceived genius. 

Furthermore, his stated aspirations with Twitter show he shares a pervasive, toxic idea with other awful people in the monied class: that rich people should be able to exclusively define free speech as something that excludes the financially privileged from consequences.

I’ll keep cheering on rocket launches, though I simply like rockets, SpaceX or otherwise. And my next car will be an electric one. It won’t be a Tesla.

🔗→ Some great thoughts on this topic from Ezra Klein.

On Social Media and Teeth-Gnashing

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When purchasing an item — a pizza, a pillow, or a phone plan — from a corporation that doesn’t share our ethical stamina, it can feel like willfully supporting the opposition. But we often don’t look that deeply into the vile whims of a brand’s owners or, if we are aware, can justify the quick pang of guilt by the low amount of investment. Regrettably, I feel that whenever I order from Amazon. 

Many of us try our best to consciously steer toward products and companies that align with our values, and it’s easier than ever to mine information to guide us. We’re all trying our best in this space — I know I’m doing a lot better than I was a few years ago — but it’s impossible to be perfect.

Social media platforms are a bit different. They’re free, for the most part, so it doesn’t feel like we’re handing over money that’ll end up used for nefarious purposes. But, from another point of view, social media is worse. By participating, we risk adding value to that platform. That multi-paragraph reminiscence posted on Facebook adds value to Facebook. Jazzy cooking tips uploaded to TikTok add value to TikTok. And, I’m embarrassed to say, those snappy one-liners and threads I post on Twitter create some value for Twitter. Not that my one-liners are any good, but many folks post their best stuff on social media and only social media. The value these folks get is negligible, but, in aggregate, the value earned by the platforms is enormous.

My thoughts today are consumed by my always twisty relationship with social media. I’ve been conflicted since the Friendster days. Still, I have always participated, only mildly aware of the value I added to the succession of platforms I frequented. Like you, I used social media to keep in touch with old friends, make new friends, ask questions, share recommendations, and vent. I also used these platforms to promote my music, show what I’m working on professionally, find gigs in faraway cities, and get subscribers to my email newsletter. It always felt like more take than give — social media served me, not the other way around. But I was wrong. Only in the past several years have I realized this deception is embedded in social media’s design. My participation creates value, a notch on a chart at a shareholders’ meeting.

I want that ‘take’ aspect, though. I want to bring people to my blog, email newsletter, and music projects. Social media has its uses, despite the formidable downsides. I’m now examining this question: how can I use social media with the intention of adding as little value to the platforms as possible?

As an experiment, I’m going to step away from Twitter. That doesn’t mean I’m going silent or deleting my account. Instead, I’ll become intentional in what I bring to my feed. Ideally, posts will always contain a link away from Twitter. Most of the time, this link will send you to 8sided.blog. In other words, my feed becomes a signpost to find my blog and other projects. I don’t know yet how much I’ll engage on Twitter — I have many ‘Twitter friends,’ after all — but I’m hopeful I can steer conversations to my blog comment section or email exchanges.

A few years ago, I stopped posting on my Facebook personal page, though I still update the 8D Industries ‘fan page’ with release news. In the spirit of this experiment, I’ll start using Facebook the same way I’ll use Twitter: blog links, project news, and prompts to move any discussion to my blog. I have no idea how that will go — I worry the post comments will tempt me to start monitoring Facebook, and I don’t want to get into that. But, as with Twitter, anything I post will contain a link that goes to a site I own.

Even this little bit still adds a smidgen of value to these platforms. Does the potential of redirecting users to my blog deliver a greater value for me? Am I naïvely imagining some sort of personal ‘carbon offset’ to social media’s harm? The intangibility is frustrating, and, just as I don’t want to increase the profits of that pizza company or the pillow guy, it pains me to think that I’m part of an ‘active users’ stat that shows up in a Facebook or Twitter earnings report.

Maybe I’m putting off the inevitable. Perhaps this experiment will yield nothing but teeth-gnashing and anxious excuses. Something tells me cold turkey is a better option, especially if a particular former head of state gets his accounts back.

I’m giving it a try anyway. That means I’m pledging to write a lot more on this blog. Now that I’m freeing up the mental space previously taken up with concocting snappy one-liners for Twitter, it should be easy. And, believe me, after today’s events, I’ve never been more inspired to write a blog and send out an email newsletter.

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I’ll finish with some quick technical notes. My goal is to never directly go to these platforms. Instead, I will post remotely using Publer (referral link), the best option I’ve found for doing that sort of thing. I’ll use Fraidycat to keep up with the interesting Twitter accounts I enjoy and Nitter to look at any Twitter feeds or posts. For Safari, an extension called Privacy Redirect will automatically go to the corresponding Nitter mirror when you click on a Twitter link.

Posting on the Facebook personal page is more challenging as there aren’t any remote options available via their API. As far as I know, presently, one can only post remotely to a fan/business page or a group. I may have to post and immediately hit the road (I use VPN and tracking blockers). Again, I’m not sure if that will work as comment engagement will be a temptation. If I see comments building to a link I post, I’ll have stock copy-and-paste text for replying, requesting that we take it to the blog comments section. I doubt that will be too effective, but it’s worth a try.

I’ll update you on how this goes. And I’d love to hear what you think. I’ll see you in the comments section.

Let Nico Drive the Bus

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The Velvet Underground

Todd Haynes’ documentary The Velvet Underground is the kind of thing I only dreamed about as a VU-obsessed teenager in the late ’80s. The way I learned about the band was akin to a game of telephone, relying on fanzines and tall tales from older acquaintances. Someone mentioned a girl in my high school was also “into that Velvet Underground you listen to,” so I tried to talk to her, not so much because I wanted to talk to a girl but also because I wanted to talk to someone about VU. There was no one to talk to about them. (She ended up completely ignoring me.)

That’s why, from that perspective, I find it hard to believe this documentary exists, especially with a logo from the largest corporation in the world displayed at its start. And with such reverence — there’s no condescension, no attempts to invite those who don’t care in the first place, no Dave Grohls or Henry Rollinses strategically placed to tell us that “they were great, take my word for it.” 

There’s a lot of talk about the visual style — the split screens, the use of Warhol’s screen tests, etc. — which is refreshingly distinctive. But what really sets the tone for a new type of music documentary is this immediate immersion into the subject at hand and the culture that spawned it. Most striking is the section in the first half covering 56 Ludlow Street, La Monte Young, and Tony Conrad. It’s heady and perhaps difficult if you don’t expect something like this in a rock n’ roll story. And most music docs would have spent just a few minutes on the happenings on Ludlow Street. But Todd Haynes understands how vital that mini-scene was to VU and modern music/art in general, and he doesn’t shy away. It sets the context, something lacking in most other docs (music and otherwise).

I have heaps of bias here, but my love for VU also makes me protective. I procrastinated on seeing this film until recently for that reason. It’s easy to dismiss when the things you treasure aren’t portrayed in a way you find deserving. But I’m overjoyed by this treatment. And all this footage I’d never seen before and all the new things I learned about VU — in my music snob smugness, I didn’t think there was anything left.

This film significantly recharged my fandom — no small feat — and has astonished the 17-year-old in me.

Stray thoughts:

  • I am so curious to hear from those who knew little about The Velvet Underground going in — how convincing is Haynes’ testimonial? Please comment if you’re in that camp.
  • I can’t be the only one who got major chills as the opening title crawl kicked in. The sequence leading up to it was an editing and sonic masterclass intricately designed for maximum chill-deployment in longtime VU fans.
  • I wish Doug Yule had participated (anyone know why he didn’t?). He’s a bit of an enigma, and his contributions to the Velvets’ third album are sadly underrated.
  • I’m now itching for a biopic/road movie centered around Nico driving the band bus.
  • Here’s a fascinating Twitter thread about how The Velvet Underground weren’t as unpopular as the myth tells us to believe.
  • I walked up to Jonathan Richman after he played a show here in Orlando in 1990. Others were talking to him, and he was being friendly (as he is) but also in that “nice to meet you now move along” kind of way that’s understandable. So when it was my turn, I asked, “Jonathan — what was it like to experience the Exploding Plastic Inevitable?” He beamed just like he does when he talks about The Velvet Underground in this documentary. “Oh, man,” he said. “You have NO IDEA.”

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Kenny G

I worked at the Camelot Music in Alexandria, Louisiana, when Duotones and its ubiquitous “Songbird” were released. So, yes, I can remember when I first heard ‘The G-Man’ (a question posed in the unexpectedly fascinating documentary Listening to Kenny G). 

I was still in high school, so I always took the evening shifts. That meant I would be working under one of two assistant managers. One of those managers was obsessed with Duotones and incessantly played our in-store LP copy. Sometimes two or three times in a row. Often even after the store closed while I was mopping or whatever as she counted out the register. That album drove me crazy.

One day, after a few months, the album disappeared. This assistant manager was distraught. She looked everywhere for it. She asked if anyone in the store had any idea where it went. She even made some mild accusations, though there was nothing to back up any suspicion. The album was gone — poof, no trace at all. And as we could only play promotional in-store LPs sent by the home office, there was no more Kenny G at Alexandria’s Camelot.

To that assistant manager: 36 years later, I have a confession. One night when you weren’t working, as I was taking the day’s trash out to the dumpster, I shoved Duotones in the plastic trash bag. The other assistant manager knew — he goaded me into doing it. Nothing personal. I just couldn’t bear to hear that album one more time.

Oh, as far as this documentary goes, I thought it was good. Kenny’s got chops and seems like a nice guy, so I have no issue with what he does. It seems to me that the problem is a combination of other people (and record executives) labeling him as ‘jazz’ (when even he seems to admit that’s a stretch) and Kenny’s love of the spotlight alongside a bit of light trolling (c’mon, he totally gets a kick out of irritating his anti-fans). And this is a documentary where I actually liked the inclusion of critics and academic talking heads who have nothing to do with the subject. Their carefully chosen words of disdain provide the film’s biggest LOLs.

This documentary, and Kenny G’s career, is just a bit of harmless, goofy fun. But I still don’t want ever to hear Duotones again.

Stray thoughts:

  • Kenny’s apparently all for defunding the ‘jazz police.’
  • I love how he hangs out a little bit with Kanye, and now Kenny thinks he will win all the film-scoring Oscars. I guess kooky bravado is contagious.

Calming

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I’m tip-toeing through the day aided by light, calming music. Quiet tones to drown out the world’s turmoil and the grim news-blasts.

I’m alternating between two albums today. The first is the recent RVNG Intl. edition of Flore Laurentienne’s Volume 1, originally released in 2019 by Costume Records. Described by the press release as “the vessel of Canadian composer Mathieu David Gagnon,” Flore Laurentienne is an artful project based upon subtly texturized string and piano compositions. The tunes on Volume 1 are bright and nourishing, evocative of an incoming dawn’s welcome reset. Ranging from the structured beauty of “Petit Piano” to the sparse organ etude in “1991” (with what sounds like bowed cymbals droning tensely at the midpoint) to the kosmiche synth surprise of “Route” — the album feels warm and breathing, like an organism going through different stages of its life.

Mathieu has stated that the interactions of humans and nature (and their effects on each other) inspired Volume 1, so the organic sheen is intentional. Cementing the association is the alias Flore Laurentienne, named after Canadian botanist (and clergyman) Marie-Victorin Kirouac‘s guide to all species indigenous to southern Quebec.

Though the original release of Volume 1 dates to 2019, this new edition contains a fresh piece, “La fin et le commencement.” The song is quite pretty, using a string section and minimal piano to leisurely mimic the effect of a Shepard tone — that is, a musical progression that gives the illusion of a constant rise in pitch.

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The other album I’m turning to today for ‘calmness’ is the soundtrack to After Yang. I saw the movie over the weekend, and though I should rewatch it, I was immediately taken by the score. The music is composed by Aska Matsumiya save for an appearance by the legendary Ryuichi Sakamoto on a piece called “Memory Bank.” 

After Yang by Aska Matsumiya
Listen to “After Yang” by Aska Matsumiya on any music platform – Free smart music links by Songwhip
After Yang by Aska Matsumiya
Listen to “After Yang” by Aska Matsumiya on any music platform – Free smart music links by Songwhip

I recommend playing this album in sequence. However, I’d start with the third track (the video game-inspired “Welcome to Family of 4” is terrific in the movie but devoid of context here), and you’ll find hymn-like melodies and sparkling but restrained instrumentation. Like Flore Laurentienne, the music here has warmth and luminance though Matsumiya’s compositions have a pronounced drifting quality. Even the piano-led songs seem to ‘float away,’ and the stirring “Mizuiro” (featuring múm’s Gyða Valtýsdóttir on cello) is likewise buoyant. As for Sakamoto’s contribution, it says a lot that “Memory Bank” fits snuggly alongside the rest of this score —the song’s strings and piano are a little more pronounced than Matsumiya’s but complement and round out the overall musical intentions with grace.

Thoughts Held Hostage

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As I do the mental strength training to reenter the world of blogging, a war rages on. Once more, my thoughts seem held hostage. Writing through this is an option, but I’m not sure if music recommendations and snarky asides will cut it.

‘Inspiration blogs’ are essential right now — these are the blogs that I look to for a glimpse at how others are managing in tough times, something I mentioned in my guide to blogging. Kottke is a good one to peruse as Jason continues to post about topics ranging from meaningful to frivolous, but not without acknowledging the weighted sadness of current events. Warren Ellis has started blogging again (and a reason for his recent absence should be noted) — his casual but steady approach to blogging reminds me not to overthink the process. And then there’s James A, Reeves’ Atlas Minor, which proves that there’s a lot that’s fascinating and rewarding in blogging about what’s going on in the internal spaces.

This Bandcamp Friday, Support the Music of Ukraine
Today is Bandcamp Friday, and we encourage our readers to support the artists and labels of Ukraine. We’re scoured our resources to find 25 of the best instrumental and experimental…
This Bandcamp Friday, Support the Music of Ukraine
Today is Bandcamp Friday, and we encourage our readers to support the artists and labels of Ukraine. We’re scoured our resources to find 25 of the best instrumental and experimental…

Today is Bandcamp Friday1And I’ll have plenty more to say about Epic Games’ acquisition of Bandcamp soon.. If you’re a fan of the type of music I regularly write about here, you should venture over to A Closer Listen’s list of Ukrainian artists to support. I’m breezing through it as I type this and discovering many brilliant new-to-me ambient/electronic/post-rock sounds.

Here are Ukrainian artists and labels you can support and celebrate – CDM Create Digital Music
There’s never too much music, and never enough attention on independent artists and labels. The reality is that Ukrainian artists – like so much of eastern Europe – often got…
Here are Ukrainian artists and labels you can support and celebrate – CDM Create Digital Music
There’s never too much music, and never enough attention on independent artists and labels. The reality is that Ukrainian artists – like so much of eastern Europe – often got…

Also, Peter Kirn highlighted an expansive spreadsheet devoted to Ukrainian bands and artists to explore. He’s picked a few excellent recommendations to peep in his post.

The Quietus | Features | A Guide To Ukraine-Supporting Compilations On Bandcamp Friday
Miloš Hroch has come up with 11 suggestions for those looking to buy some Ukraine-supporting music on the latest Bandcamp Friday
The Quietus | Features | A Guide To Ukraine-Supporting Compilations On Bandcamp Friday
Miloš Hroch has come up with 11 suggestions for those looking to buy some Ukraine-supporting music on the latest Bandcamp Friday

And, via The Quietus, here’s a list of benefit compilations “for those looking to buy some Ukraine-supporting music on the latest Bandcamp Friday.”

Morning reading: Smithsonian Magazine gives some 20th-century historical context to the war over Ukraine. This article also helped me better understand some of the themes in Come And See, which I wrote about previously. Adam Tooze’s Chartbook newsletter is invaluable in understanding what’s going on in this war and what it means for world affairs. I admit a lot of what ‘The Tooze’ writes about goes over my head, but I have just as many “oh, I see now” moments, too. I’m also working through Tooze’s conversation with Ezra Klein on Klein’s podcast — dense but illuminating stuff. (Not Ukraine related: Klein’s episode last week with philosopher C. Thi Nguyen talking about how games are always present in our lives is a humdinger.)

Come and See

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Come and See film still

Come and See is a Boschian vision of war falling out of a maddening nightmare. It’s a horror movie made all the more terrifying and tragic in that its lessons remain unlearned, its warnings unheeded, its trauma unresolved. Last night, as I watched the film unfold from the safety of my living room, the people of Kyiv experienced their third night of terror. No lessons learned. Devastating.

Here’s a good essay from author Steve Huggins on Come and See which contains this summation of the film’s plot and theme:

The central character of Come and See is Flor, the 14-year-old boy who represents the Russian people. He joins the partisans, loses his family to the Nazis, and then witnesses first-hand the annihilation of an entire peasant village. At the end-credits he disappears into the Russian forest with the partisans. Nothing in the film takes place outside Flor’s immediate experience. We see all the action through his eyes. But is he fully innocent of his own village’s destruction? A dying villager appears to blame him, saying “I told you not to get the gun.” Is Flor willingly complicit; can we read his survival as a form of collaboration? At one point Flor sleeps on the carcass of a dying cow whose eyes roll helplessly in their sockets. Like Flor himself, the bewildered cow takes in everything, but comprehends nothing but the terror.

In his essay, Huggins notes that the film marked a sea change in Soviet/Russian culture and attitudes, foreshadowing the approaching Glasnost era. The piece also shows parallels with present attempts by the Russian state to rewrite history in order to manipulate public sentiment. Again, from the essay:

Aleksandr Shpagin judged Come and See “…the apogee of war as religion.” He is most certainly wrong. To interpret war as religion, it must be imbued with mystical qualities and heroic – if not superhuman – characters. Indeed, Soviet war films of the 1940s through 1960s did just this. Self-sacrifice and fevered patriotism ennobled its participants and legitimized the Soviet experiment. Come and See is the antithesis of these goals.

This observation from Will Stone of 3:AM Magazine rings eerily familiar to the present conflict/invasion:

In terms of the viewer’s emotional upheaval after watching it, Come and See has little to do with what people consider a conventional war film. It is a film about internecine human atrocity, the sudden and brutal loss of innocence, the impotence of the guileless, the appalling rupture of benign rural communities by technologically enabled destructive forces spewing from a poisonous ideology. It is about how men are capable of committing the most heinous acts at the frayed end of a psychopath’s ideological whip and how the stain of unhinged reasoning spreads into a destructively motivated crowd, but also how the determined victim collective produces an equally powerful will to resist the occupier and bring justice or at least survival to the subjected.

YouTube essayist Josh Matthews also inadvertently relates Come and See to the invasion of Ukraine — inadvertently because he recorded these thoughts in August 2020:

This movie is called all over the internet an anti-war movie. I very strongly disagree with that label. Anti-war generally means pacifist or near-pacifist. That is, someone who won’t fight in a war or refuses to take part in a war because war is just too devastating … but I think this movie is actually an anti-invader movie instead of an anti-war movie.

Eli Friedberg of Film Stage describes Come and See in an accurate and lyrical description, noting that nature plays a major role as an innocent but unflinching bystander:

Klimov’s technique, and thus the film’s sense and layering of realities, is intentionally chameleonic, shifting back and forth between cold-eyed realist war memoir and surreal impressionist nightmare–a reverie in which dreams, myths and visions meld seamlessly into the dispassionate facts of history and the conscious artifice of the cinema. In these mesmerizing stretches ambient sound surges and plummets; characters gaze eerily into the camera with shimmering ghostly eyes, uttering anguished cries and otherworldly portents. While not invoked by name, the spirits and customs of East European folklore hang heavy over the film–in sets, in incidental dialogue, in the persistent presence of animals as symbols and messengers. Like Terrence Malick, Klimov presents the natural world and folk culture as a space of prime and savage spiritual order, a transcendental flow violently interrupted by the intrusion of the twentieth century’s industrial war machine with its industrial secular ideologies, a shapeless but terrible behemoth which permits no spirit, faith or love to exist in its wake.

Director Ari Aster notes in Film Comment how Elem Klimov never made another film:

He would never make another film after Come and See, which is just as well. It has a way of making most other films feel utterly superfluous. Has any work ever reflected the adage “war is madness” more powerfully? … As a travelogue of hell, a catalog of horrors, and a single-minded transference of never-to-be-resolved historical traumas, Come and See has not, to my knowledge, been topped. If it ever should be, the result would be unendurable.

Finally, the use of sound and perspective in Come and See are both amazing and you can understand why by watching this video essay from The Cinema Cartography:

Come and See is harrowing but you should absolutely watch it. It’s streaming now on The Criterion Channel, rentable from other digital outlets, and also floating around on YouTube if you do a search (though the video quality there won’t do it justice).

Ballad of the Blog

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Perhaps you’ve noticed that this blog is alive once more, after a long and mysterious absence. My newsletter came to a skidding halt about seven months ago, and the blog’s been eerily silent. The only place you could openly find me all this time was Twitter, which is simply embarrassing.

I wrote about this on Twitter last August with an optimistic tone that, in retrospect, was perhaps jumping the gun a little. Expanding on that thread, I’ll say that I was (and am) exhausted — just like many of you. As COVID-times dragged on and on and on and the vicious news cycle dragged on and on and on, the ennui gathered into mountains. There was nothing I wanted to write about. Nothing in my head, nothing inspiring, nothing exciting to document in the early morning hours. Even my journal, updated almost daily for years, went dark.

Luckily my professional life doesn’t rely on writing, so I had the luxury to stop and wait. Nevertheless, I knew that I was hardly alone in this stifled feeling. And, heeding the advice of those talented enough to write through this malaise, I knew the best strategy was to not stress out about my lack of motivation. The recommended move was actually to lean into it — do other things, find new hobbies, read lots of books, and occupy the brain with something other than the fact that the creative plumbing’s sprung a bad leak.

So, that’s what I did. I shifted focus to my spunky music label, 8D Industries. I learned to make tasty and fiery hot sauces (which became a gateway drug to vegan cooking). I got actively involved with marketing Caroline’s growing Kitten School channel. I spent a lot more time with family as I successfully and safely moved mom to a house next door during a pandemic. And I started getting involved in freelance podcast production.

Several months ago, I was hired to edit and co-produce Andrew Loog Oldham’s Sounds and Vision podcast, and the experience has been a delight. If you don’t know, Andrew is the original manager and producer for The Rolling Stones — as just one of his too-many-to-list-here historical music adventures — and he’s got stories for days. Check out the podcast if you’re even a little curious. It’s a lot of fun. I’d recommend the Elliot Easton (guitarist with The Cars) episode for a starter as it’s got lots of juicy behind-the-music-industry tales.

Meanwhile, the writing bug has finally returned over the last couple of months (along with the music bug, but that’s another story). As arbitrary as ‘the new year’ is as a signifier, it’s still a useful prompt to refresh. And that’s what I plan to do. On the immediate agenda: make some changes to the blog (currently in progress!), start blogging regularly again, and then, once firmly in the saddle, relaunch the newsletter. Voilà. Easier said than done, right? But I’m excited nonetheless, and that’s an accomplishment in and of itself.

I’ll finish this deep gaze into my navel with a few notes about the newsletter. 

First off, I’m retiring Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care. I consider Ringo its own series (in the television sense) and a moment-in-time capsule. I’ll call the relaunched newsletter something else (tbd). It’ll have a different format, but I’ll cover the same genre of topics. 

Also, the newsletter won’t be on Substack. I’m exploring a combination of Sendy and Newsletter Glue to host the newsletter on this site. This change potentially sets up a roadblock of discouragement as it’s complicated (oh jeez I’ve got to figure out what a VPS server is). But I want to learn newsletter self-hosting partly as a self-challenge and also to be able to teach others how it’s done. 

If you’re a Ringo subscriber your subscription will automatically transfer to the new entity once I’m ready to roll. You don’t have to do anything, unless you’d like to unsubscribe, which you can do at any time (including now if you’d like). If you’re not subscribed, go ahead and use the Substack sign-up form found in the sidebar of this site. I’ll add your address for the new incarnation of the newsletter upon launch.

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Another personal update: I released a song at midnight on January 1.

Grottoes is a long-imagined project, revealed as I finally step away from Q-Burns Abstract Message. Yes, the AUDIOTOTEMPOLE EP was always meant as a closing of the door. And Grottoes predates “Touchtones (1997),” the earliest reference on that EP. I tried and failed to start a band called Grotto in the early ’90s after the dissolution of my much-beloved (by us and some others) band Tick Tick Tock. There are too many other bands called Grotto nowadays, so Grottoes it is. It looks mightier written as text that way, so win-win.

The quiet first appearance of Grottoes was a remix for Brighton’s The Self-Help Group and the song “Temple OS” (a fine song in its own right, btw). That one was recorded in mid-2021, during my supposed creative lag, and is the last time I worked on something musical. I hoped this would spark other Grottoes tunes to serve as accompanying tracks for something called “Straw Belle.”

“Straw Belle” isn’t new. I started recording it maybe three or four years ago, and it’s a song that I revisited and tweaked periodically. I settled on a final version at some point in late 2019. I feel it’s one of the best things I’ve recorded. And I held it tight — only about four people have heard “Straw Belle” before today — under the assumption that I’d record a few more songs like it and release an EP. As you probably guessed, that never happened.

After encouragement during a catch-up phone chat with my friend Jeff (the bass player in even earlier attempts at bands), I realized that “Straw Belle” would never see the light of day if I attached it to the loose promise of ‘other songs like it.’ So I decided it should finally come out on its own, and, as this revelation came at the end of 2021, New Year’s Day seemed like a novel release date.

For your consideration, here’s “Straw Belle” by Grottoes. Artwork by Matthew Naquin. Secret assistance from The Imprisoned Wizard. Sounds like group homes, wavering spaces, pangs of crunch, tones from belief, e-bow symphonies. I hope you like it. Please tell the others if you do.

Addendum: The Orlando Weekly‘s Bao Le-Huu wrote about my musical shift to Grottoes and scared a few headline skimmers by declaring me dead.