Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Something to go to in Wellington
My friend John Lake is having an exhibition:
He's an ace photographer and it's going to be really really good, I reckon.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
The first Roxy Music album
Michael Bracewell has written a new book on Roxy Music. It's called Re-make/Re-model, published by Faber & Faber (London 2007) and Roxy's sensational, amazing first album gets the book (and book review) it deserves.
Check the essay; watch the videos; buy the book. Wowowowowowow
‘Do the Strand’ on The Old Grey Whistle Test
Unused album artwork for Roxy Music (1972)
I'd never seen or heard anything so clearly made for me and my art-school manqué world-view. The cover, with Kari-Ann Muller in classic 1940s' pin-up pastiche, all pink ribbons and silver platforms, was Big Biba Rainbow Room. The contents covered all the bases: the Warholian ones, the art history ones, the Ladbroke Grove, gay-friends-of-Hockney ones. Of course, Bryan Ferry looked fantastic and, despite all the unbearable cleverness, the music went like a train - plangent sax, driving drums - offsetting Brian Eno's synth weirdness. They played at the Royal College of Art that year and then at The Rainbow, a Low Deco kitschfest in itself. This really was Tomorrow Calling.
Check the essay; watch the videos; buy the book. Wowowowowowow
‘Do the Strand’ on The Old Grey Whistle Test
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
More Pink Metal
Hmmmmmmmmmmm.... how best to feature another track from CJA's Pink Metal.........hmmmmmmmmmmm....
Like this, I reckon.
CJA - Hexperam (5.64 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)Yep.
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Art(-less)(i)ness
Art cards support emerging NZ artistsArt cards are top quality greeting cards featuring the art of young, emerging New Zealand artists. For every card you buy, $1 is given to the artist to help support their careers and enable them to continue to develop their art practice.
Art cards are professionally designed and photographed, printed in New Zealand, fully recyclable and have no unnecessary packaging.
...more...
Finding art in all the wrong places..........
Labels: miscellany, props
Pink Metal
Pink Metal is the name of a recent album by CJA, aka my friend Clayton Noone. It's really good.As sometimes happens, the site I write for asks me to review albums which are put out by friends -- this is never easy. Luckily, to date, they've never asked me to review anything by anyone that I know that absolutely sucked. But regardless, it always makes me a bit nervous and I procrastinated for a while -- 'til eventually one day recently I was washed away in a flash-flood of enthusiasm and got the damn thing written. I'm worried that it's a bit too hyperbolic, but what they hey -- I really, really like this album and I'm so proud for CJA.
Here's the review.. it'll be going up on Foxy Digitalis this week sometime anyway, but I thought I'd post it here as well:
CJA
PINK METAL
PSEUDOARCANA 2xCDR
Pink Metal is a massive double CD-R wrapped in a super goofy garish hand drawn heavy metal style handmade sleeve-booklet. Sound-wise you're looking at 80, 90 minutes of fuzzed-out smashed solo(-ish; the occasional drummer guests) guitar noise slurp-rock jams, synth blurts and acoustic strum-a-ludes, all facing the wall, mumbling into the mic and avoiding your gaze kinda detached/sociopathy.
It's packaged in an oversized thick paper, black, white and purple multi page booklet, adorned with awesome high school-binder heavy metal / Dungeons & Dragons imagery, huge muscled demon warriors, swords and maces, and slain foes laying heaps on the ground, strange fiery aliens, Silver Surfer like creatures firing lasers from their fingertips, spike headed beasts, samurai warriors, cloaked demons, dragons, and growling wolf beasts, ultra violence, and decapitations, skeletons, zombies, ninjas and more (drawn by CJA's brother Richard Noone). All black and white, but with all the text in a garish bright purple, blood dripping metal font. (-- Aquarius)
It doesn't get much more nonchalant than this. Nary much of a consideration is made to the listener; be there or not. Pay attention or don’t. This is CJA's monochromatic, meditative, self-medicated imperturbable strum and blur at its most expansive; at the same time its eclectic compilative sprawl of around 25 tracks is more focused than you'd expect, and probably the closest you'll ever be allowed to get inside the CJA truck.
Pink Metal is the most complete statement of outsider free-form grunge-skuck monochord folkisms and downer distorto-noise conglummery I can think of in the ten or more years since Gate's The Dew Line. It's like lowering a bucket of molasses fug over your head and eyes. It's probably the end of rock. 9/10
PINK METAL
PSEUDOARCANA 2xCDR
Pink Metal is a massive double CD-R wrapped in a super goofy garish hand drawn heavy metal style handmade sleeve-booklet. Sound-wise you're looking at 80, 90 minutes of fuzzed-out smashed solo(-ish; the occasional drummer guests) guitar noise slurp-rock jams, synth blurts and acoustic strum-a-ludes, all facing the wall, mumbling into the mic and avoiding your gaze kinda detached/sociopathy.
It's packaged in an oversized thick paper, black, white and purple multi page booklet, adorned with awesome high school-binder heavy metal / Dungeons & Dragons imagery, huge muscled demon warriors, swords and maces, and slain foes laying heaps on the ground, strange fiery aliens, Silver Surfer like creatures firing lasers from their fingertips, spike headed beasts, samurai warriors, cloaked demons, dragons, and growling wolf beasts, ultra violence, and decapitations, skeletons, zombies, ninjas and more (drawn by CJA's brother Richard Noone). All black and white, but with all the text in a garish bright purple, blood dripping metal font. (-- Aquarius)
It doesn't get much more nonchalant than this. Nary much of a consideration is made to the listener; be there or not. Pay attention or don’t. This is CJA's monochromatic, meditative, self-medicated imperturbable strum and blur at its most expansive; at the same time its eclectic compilative sprawl of around 25 tracks is more focused than you'd expect, and probably the closest you'll ever be allowed to get inside the CJA truck.
Pink Metal is the most complete statement of outsider free-form grunge-skuck monochord folkisms and downer distorto-noise conglummery I can think of in the ten or more years since Gate's The Dew Line. It's like lowering a bucket of molasses fug over your head and eyes. It's probably the end of rock. 9/10
Maybe you should listen to this while you (try to) read my review:
CJA - My Dog's Blue Collar (5.64 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)Yep.
EDIT
There's another track here.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
SNEAKY FEELINGS Send You LP Flying Nun FEEL01
Tired of this game? Still wanna play? Cool.. go and get this, then. Or this. Either will do -- and either way it's one of the greatest albums ever released in this country. (New Zealand, I mean.)Sneaky Feelings - Waiting for Touchdown (2.60 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)It's the Sneaky Feelings' debut album Send You, the one which is oft-ignored and underrated and so on, and scarce as all buggery as well. Apparently it was reissued on CD at some point, but.. well.. nearly 20 years of scouring the New Zealand section and the used bins and ain't never seen it.
To be honest I'm not a particular fan of the Sneaky Feelings -- they did well enough, but they were always more Byrds than Bailterspace. They impressed alright, but never excited like a Verlaines or a Gordons or a Doublehappies would excite. "Poise over Noise" (-- M. Bannister.) But be that as it may, this album is special. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that, in 1983, this was some way ahead of it's time. And I don't know if it's a commonly-held opinion, or even one of those things which everyone knows but which must Never. Be. Said. Aloud... or not... but it seems to predict awfully the sound of the much more highly-vaunted Straitjacket Fits -- especially their incarnation about 10 years later, around the time of the Fits' Melt. I'm blowing smoke out my ass? Well, let's see... the guitar sound, the guitar playing, the guitar figures and motifs, the vocal delivery, the harmony vocals, the compositions -- the key changes, modulations, middle-eights -- (and I could go on) are all heavily reminiscent of the Fits in their prime.
Ah.. well.. but so what. That's not important, and only serves to distract. Nothing should take away from the fact that in terms of progressive power-pop perfection, in this country -- or in any country, frankly -- Send You has rarely been bested.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
The Body Electric: Dreaming In A Life
If you followed my advice, you'll probably be wanting to have a good close look at this as well. It's more awesomeness from early-80s Wellington electro-pop group The Body Electric. (We talked about The Body Electric here, too.) And pretty rare, as well.The Body Electric - Dreaming In A Life (2.69 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)
It's from their 1983 'double-A side' 12" with the almost-as-good Interior Exile as the "AA" side. If Pulsing was the novelty hit in their catalogue, Dreaming In A Life is much more serious. No less catchy, though.
And hurry up, would you -- you've only got until tomorrow.
Labels: music, new zealand post-punk, props, vinyl
Thursday, December 06, 2007
The Body Electric: Pulsing
If you were me, you would be buying this. Because, like, it's an absolute stone classic of early electro. From Wellington. And pretty rare.Why aren't I buying it? I don't really need four copies, ok?
The Body Electric - Pulsing (3.41 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)
I'm feeling so magnanimous, you can have the "dub" version from the B side, for nothing.
The Body Electric - Pulsing (Dub) (3.06 MB mp3: right-click and Save As to download; play using the handy little embedded player below)
Isn't it cute!!!!
Labels: music, new zealand post-punk, props, vinyl
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Something to go to in Wellington (crosspost)
Hinterland IISandra Schmidt
Michael Hirschfeld Gallery (at City Gallery)
10 October — 18 November 2007
...more at the Wellingtonista...
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Bailter space, new
Whoah. New Bailterspace tracks are being recorded, and they're available for you to preview on the band's Myspace page.My love-affair with Bailterspace (and here) is well-known in these parts, and only slightly-less well-documented.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Cameo Appearance
New exhibition Cameo Appearance at Mary Newton Gallery -- featuring work by personal faves David Cauchi and Gary Freemantle -- opens on Tuesday night. (Wellingtonista)
Sunday, June 17, 2007
A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language
If you're not already into the XKCD webcomic, you might consider becoming so at your earliest convenience.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Double J & Twice the T 45 x 2
You should probably look quite closely into buying these:
.. being, as they are, absolute freakin' classic artefacts of New Zealand pop culture.
...
NP: Ornette Coleman and Pat Metheny - Song X (Allmusic): Don't believe everything you read. It's SERIOUSLY underrated and actually a damn good album; I'd go so far as to say it's a unheralded classic of modern jazz. I recently picked up a near-pristine LP copy on TradeMe for a criminally-low price -- I still pee myself a little when I consider what a bargain I got. And as for Metheny -- the "big-haired king of airbrushed jazz-lite" (Peter Marsh, bbc.co.uk) -- why, it's the only thing of his I'll have in the house.
Song X was re-ished a couple of years ago with a pile of other unreleased material from the same sessions -- and to good reviews. (Actually it appears to have undergone the full revisionist treatment: Nils Jacobson, John Kelman, John Fordham, Robert Christgau, E. "Doc" Smith.)
...NP: Ornette Coleman and Pat Metheny - Song X (Allmusic): Don't believe everything you read. It's SERIOUSLY underrated and actually a damn good album; I'd go so far as to say it's a unheralded classic of modern jazz. I recently picked up a near-pristine LP copy on TradeMe for a criminally-low price -- I still pee myself a little when I consider what a bargain I got. And as for Metheny -- the "big-haired king of airbrushed jazz-lite" (Peter Marsh, bbc.co.uk) -- why, it's the only thing of his I'll have in the house.
Song X was re-ished a couple of years ago with a pile of other unreleased material from the same sessions -- and to good reviews. (Actually it appears to have undergone the full revisionist treatment: Nils Jacobson, John Kelman, John Fordham, Robert Christgau, E. "Doc" Smith.)
Friday, June 08, 2007
THE DURUTTI COLUMN - The Return of .. - LP
You should buy this. Go on, you know you want to.... it's only $19.00, and it rules. It really, really does. It's a thing of beauty, an absolute classic....
NP: the last hour or so's playlist:
Manic Street Preachers - Take the Skinheads Bowling
Camper Van Beethoven - Take the Skinheads Bowling
Riz Ortolani - Do It To Me
Manic Street Preachers - We're All Bourgeoise Now
The Teardrop Explodes - Traison (C'est Juste Une Histoire)
Primal Scream - Shoot Speed/Kill Light
Jazzfinger - Fateful Brass Orb
ESG - The Beat
David Bowie - We Are The Dead
Can - Mother Upduff
The Jesus and Mary Chain - April Skies
Idlewild - Idea Track
The Delgadoes - No Danger
De Rosa - Cathkin Braes
Scars - David
Arab Strap - Don't Ask Me To Dance
(mostly all courtesy Manic Pop Thrills)
Also Alex Cobb's new all-Flying Saucer Attack podcast on Foxy Digitalis: Maximum Nodout: A Flying Saucer Attack Special.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
This will be the last time
Look, I don't want to bang on about it, or anything, but David Cauchi has published the text of his address on Sci-Fi and art, on his blog, here.
He has also linked to a recording on Radio NZ of his radio interview with Lynn Freeman the following morning.
...
NP: Celer - pretty much everything I can get my hands on (Last.fm)
listen to a track called 2 Bereft Oversight
He has also linked to a recording on Radio NZ of his radio interview with Lynn Freeman the following morning.
...
NP: Celer - pretty much everything I can get my hands on (Last.fm)
listen to a track called 2 Bereft Oversight
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Five Great Novels - Philip K Dick
You should buy this. Go on, you know you want to.... it's only 15 quid, and it rules.Good god..
+ The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
+ Martian Time-slip
+ Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
+ Ubik
and A Scanner Darkly
How do you imagine that you might ever go wrong?
...
Woot, woot.. Pop Levi tomorrow night.
...
NP: John Cale -- Vintage Violence (Allmusic): His first post-Velvet Underground solo album is easily one of his best. Excellent cover art, too.
Monday, June 04, 2007
Queer by William Burroughs: A Legendary Novel
You should buy this. Go on, you know you want to.... it's only $9.50, and it rules....
David's talk on Saturday afternoon was really good and quite funny. I got a surprise part-way through when a reproduction of one of my own works appeared on the big screen, to illustrate some point or other.
...
NP: Billy Preston -- A whole new thing (Allmusic): Mahalia Jackson, Little Richard and The Beatles' keyboards go-to guy goes... disco. With surprisingly endearing results.
