Thursday, September 28, 2006
Subtle is not for backpackers anymore
I wrote something on Subtle's new record, out on EMI (hello, riches)and Lex Records. Its in the iconoclastic Chicago magazine, Stop Smiling. Read it here.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Beats growing like trees in Switzerland
Bauchamp will never let you down. Or, maybe he will, but his knucklehead mixture of dub, geekbeat and other shit is worth stealing for your iPod.
English departments are so dead
Last night, I was in large Union Square bookstore and stumbled upon an event where the three white dudes who edit the Oxford Book of American Poetry were reading from their work.
I didn't want to ever have anything to do with writing after that. Shit was dumb boring.
French post-punk band!
Paris group, 10Lec6 (pronounced 'dislexics' in France, fool) is one of the shining points of Troubleman Unlimited. I scribbled about their great EP, Join Us, for next month's XLR8R column. Scratchy guitars, fizzy drum machines and a great female vocalist: they're like The Slits, but not wick-wick-wack!
Monday, September 18, 2006
1930's East Village lesbian novel
I just finished reading Djuna Barnes' dense, Modernist and brilliant short book, Nightwood (1936) . In short, the book is about one feeling: jealousy. If you've ever been in love--passionately, madly, furiously--and that person did not value that, that is what this glossy-worded book is about. The novel begins in 1880, but takes place in Paris in the '30s. Robin, the young American girl is the main character who leaves her husband for another woman, Nora. But, Nora is not enough. Soon, she's stolen by Jenny, the young girl who doesn't love herself so steals other people's girls to make up for it. Shaped by the high-minded and linguistically mesmerizing musings of The Doctor, the wise old American philosopher always espousing advice and hating himself, the novel is like none I've ever read. Melodramatic is how it might sound, but it is a progressive, magical impressionistic book that is intense, powerful and loud.
That feeling, the one where it hurts in your chest, two bottles of wine later, it still hurts. Pulsating, like a mute heartbeat. The entire novel is that pulse, stretched out, until the pain dulls.
Comics killed Tupac, mom
Andres, a friend whose an illustrator here in New York, asked me to write a minicomic for him. It's actually going to be two of them, one super short (3-5 pages) and the other one a series of shorts to be done by the end of the year. "Warsaw" was a story I started a few years ago, but I lost. Abandoning what it was about, I was always intrigued by the performance space by the same name that just happens to be down the street from me. Beginning with a ledge, two feet dangling, the story follows a nameless black college professor. I hope to have it finished this week. Then, maybe I can scan it and put it up here for you all to read.
The other is called "The Queen is Dead, Again" and is a bit more difficult. A children's comic for adults, it follows three kids, one with a Calvin Coolidge mask on. That one will be spread out over three issues and hopefully will get published by magical British people or something.
I interviewed Alfonso Cuaron last Friday and that will be up on Blank Screen in the coming week. Saw a brilliant film called A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints with Robert Downey, Jr that should be out in the rest of the country soon.
To my people in Argentina--eat more beef.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Mexican punk director in New York
Alfonso Cuaron is really not 'punk' in the traditional sense, but rather in ethos. The director of Y Tu Mama Tambien and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban will be here in New York tomorrow. I'm interviewing him for Blank Screen, the online film blog magazine thang I'm an editor at.
Yee-haw.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
DJ's get beat up, won't give up records
Last week, I walked by (with the beautiful ladyfriend at my side) McCarren Park Pool to find a sea of 80's kids and ethnic hipsters (Wes Anderson, where are you?) at the Spankrock/Gang Gang Dance/The Rub show, for free. Gang gang dance was great, playing angular rock that freaked people out, confusing most, while the rest just thought it was a bit too non-4/4 for them. Then, whamo! Spankrock came on, brought like 2,000 of their closest friends on stage with them, introduced MIA and Diplo who were buggin' out backstage and made a thousand folks wiggle their feet. Future shock booty bass.
Here are pics that I didn't take.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Novels on pink trees that go pop
Radiohead get hyphy, mom
Psychic TV performs for an entire week!
Throbbing Gristle dudes, slow down. Put your drum machine back in your pants. Genesis and crew will be at Brooklyn's Galapagos starting, like, yesterday, until the end of the week playing films and music. Like, whoa.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Eat records like they were butter
White dude extraordinaire, DJ Shadow has seen the (hyphy) light on his new album. He talks to the dorks at XXL about it here.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
80's post-punk, I miss you
Before we waited an hour to download a song, before Muddy Waters used busy drums, before Thurston Moore wore substitute teacher glasses. I'm listening to more and more pysch-rap these days. And I reviewed this up and coming singer, Alice Smith's new record (listen to "Gary Song") for Vibe. She used to sing in Greg Tate's old improv group and her record is like dancing in purple clouds of LSD juice. I saw Amiri Baraka sing his heart out at the Bowery Poetry Club two weeks ago, celebrating Allen Ginsberg's "Howl". Two days ago, I went to this place and heard two of Germany's best DJ's rip shit up for a few hours. Ellen Allien is way better live than I thought. And Apparat looks like Jonny Greenwood in person. I will post MP3's of the bands I talk about in my XLR8R column here soon. Other people talk about them, too.
I hate New York. Last week, when I saw Ellen Allien, Jamie Lidell was playing on a boat around Manhattan, Final Fantasy was plucking his violin, Feadz and Uffie were playing at the shit-hot Ed Banger party (which is France's dopest label right now, and one of the few keeping me interested in nutso dance beats) and there were tons of VMA afterparties (including one for Talib Kweli near the Hiro Ballroom) too.
Will be writing more here, I promise. Pace, Japan.
