I've been lax with all sorts of posting. But in a flurry of Gackt catch up, here's the news...

Gackt's video for Ghost - a theme song for the Japanese release of Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles - has a darkly dancey acid pop sound, like a mirror world version of Cher's Believe. Dig the Papa lapped a pap lopped style of group animatronics.

Justified, Gackt's song for Bounty Killer on PS3 has been out for awhile too, sounding basically like indeterminate old Gackt songs - eerie falsetto, crunchy metal and minor major melody - relabeled as one headbanging new meal.

Finally, there's the new track, Journey through the Decade, created for the 10th Kamen Rider series, a typical chocolate era production of growling guitar angst and driving redemption. The video features a dizzying 360 degree rotomatic shot of Gackt on a high platform behaving Gackt-like, with a lycra transmogrified youngster dueling a hollow-eyed samurai suit below in classic live action tradition, but with razor sharp Magic cards flying. I have no idea what Kamen Rider is about, but Gack't giving the lackadaisickal f-you to our psuedo Power Ranger protagonist at the ending seems proof positive our winged auteur has become a man entrenched in his own iconicism, glaring down the paltry effects of his once stunning fireball, and turning with a bugger-it-all and back to our faces.

Or not.

In any case, I suppose it's impossible for an artist to recapture fully the flavors of their own inception. An audience's impetuous demand to Return is something like a death knell, one that needs to be re-recorded in some grander discovery, some bigger persona, or set adrift in some paradigm shift. For now, Gackt's new songs, his ripe voice, aren't overwriting the tape for me. I still have Cains Feel on my memory.

As I remember, last year was really Man World heavy in film (No Country for Old Men, Michael Clayton) with lots of tales involving competitiveness and ego. Since, I didn't write about my favorite movies of last year, here they are in no particular order.

12:08 East of Bucharest - I love love loved this film about parochial folks in a small town of Romania. The first 2/3 of the film is an overview of various residents, a teacher, an old citizen, and a television personality, their lives not demonstrably better since the fall of Communism 16 years ago. On the eve of dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu's ousting, a debate is broadcast at the slipshod local tv studio. The three begrudging "witnesses" cannot agree on the exact moment when the great revolution occurred or what even happened during it, but the callers are skeptical that revolution ever happened at all. Poker face funny.


There Will Be Blood is based on Upton Sinclair's novel indicting the crushing machine of capitalism. The drama is writ large and breathtakingly beautiful by director Paul Thomas Anderson whose treatment of the film is structurally thematic and absolutely true to the nature of the subject. Like the "if you're not with me you're against me attitude" of Daniel Plainview, each image gets a payback through another later one, each perceived misdeed answered with a slap. A fresh struck oil well siphons high into the sky, and later, that same oil rig burns to the ground with a rigorous vengeance. Plainview is a man trapped inside the ambition of manifest destiny, his adopted "son", a symbol of his allegorical soul, tossed to the wayside. In Blood there is nothing but pure American drive. Plainview sees through the two bit players like so much chaff, and he's going to suck them all dry.

For any person drowning in the morass of stifling office politics and material culture, despressed by your plight in life, The Bothersome Man is right up your Brazil watching alley. A man commits suicide and ends up traveling by bus to a blandly surreal place with ubiquitously sleek interiors and a blue-grey company culture. The food has the no flavor and sex is equally bland. This Norwegian satire by director Jens Lien is grotesquely, dreadfully fatalist. If a dose of darkly absurd, understatedly soul crunching humor is just what the doctor seemed to have ordered, then beware, because the movie is surreally unkind to the sensitive psyche.

Some people have the olympics and others have the presidency, Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe have Donkey Kong. I hate to sound so cliche but King of Kong really is a story about human nature. OK, human nature and a bunch of nerdy classic nintendo freaks who happen to be really, really competitive. But, the film is also a portrayal of underdogs making a space in the world for themselves, trying to hold onto that space for dear life, and fighting to be recognized for their achievements, no matter how inconsequential that may seem.

Subtle movies that explore "big issues". That's where the weight of my favorite films of 2008 seem to be thrown. From obvious topics like the Three Gorges Dam to lesser known ones like Argentinean Patrimony, these films seem to teeter in no man's land of fact and fiction. But unlike My Winnipeg, where fact and fiction stand in contrast to each other, or hard sap, like March of the Penguins, these films refashion reality from fictional stories and fictional stories through truth telling so that the greater narrative is eventually seamless, on the verge of crux.

7-8. A moralizing typical film takes the propagandist stance about "issues" and incites a self congratulatory response over our hypocritical bourgeoisie responsibility to solve them. However, neither Encounters at the End of the World or Still Life are satisfied with totalitarian definitions or answers, simplistic views of apocalypse. And both Herzog and Zhangke absolutely refuse to settle into straight pedagogy about the Global Warming Crisis or Destitute Modernization. Rather than dramatizing the Antarctic or Chinese "problem", the directors complicate the ultimate scenario to draw out a universality of underlying hopes and fears. Herzog reintroduces his audience to limits of the human relationship with nature, while Zhangke illustrates a melancholy richness left behind in the wake of undeniable beurocratic desolation, to teeter at the very edge of an awareness, half in and half out of "real life" and yet more "true" than any documentary or dramatization. Through, deft handling, the images meet at some ordinary yet fantastical shore where black and white differences are erased, perhaps instilling perhaps a more fundamental desire to make a difference.

6. On a similar note, The Sun Also Rises, by Jiang Wen, is a fictional, seriously fantastical film about China's uncomfortable relationship with its own cultural and social transformation. Told as an interwoven epic in multiple parts through the lens of three cinematographers, the film reminds me very strongly of Hemingway's book by the same name, where the characters are expatriates in a strange land, lost in haze of debauched hallucination, absurd events occurring from almost nowhere to incur violent reactions. However, in the case of 太阳照常升起, the Chinese are strangers in their own land, and thus the series of surreal displacements become an act of conflicted remembrance for old worlds that barely exist or maybe never did. Jiang Wen plays those interruptions of the Chinese myth as a sense of uncertainty that can never be truly allayed. It is probably telling that images from this film continue to float up from my subconsciousness to haunt me from time to time: a pair of twinkling embroidered shoes, floating on a patch of grass on a glittering river, the wide eyed barely contained hysteria of Joan Chen confronting/seducing/disgusting Anthony Wong Chau Sang in a dank backwater hospital bed, the vaguely Wuxia ghostliness of a gnarled tree twisting through a fog that hides many secrets.

5. Apparently, many critics found The Headless Woman bafflingly cryptic. The unusual style of editing: images with extremities chopped off, shadowy figures out of focus fore and aft, mysteriously off camera chatter, creates disorientation about characters and plot. Who are they? What are the relationships? I found the film dreamy and repressively terrifying because of these omissions. But the purposeful sense of confusion is director Lucrecia Martela's technique of structuring the oblique narrative (Vero, the central character, may have killed a boy with her car) through pure imagery. The direction plays out as visible representation of Vero's inner shock and her willingness to elide any error. Each carefully composed frame is imbedded with importance that builds almost invisibly to the film's topical resolution. In fact, Vero's visual story of trauma and guilt is evenutally reclaimed by a subtext of privilege and class, latent patriarchy and gender. Don't let the heady cinematography and meandering staging deceive you, the film has a story and a reason.

4. Wendy and Lucy is a hard-luck story and an obvious tearjerker about a girl stranded in podunk, Oregon whilst on her big escape to Alaskan salvation. When a series of small happenings play out badly, Wendy loses her best friend Lucy - a cheerful golden yellow mutt - and has to find her again. Clinging to normality with spent perseverance, Michelle Williams, as Wendy, embodies the quiet eloquence of a person's desperate isolation and the indifference of people around her as they live their lives towards dead ends. I admit, I cried harder than any other movie I've ever watched probably, but Director, Kelly Reichardt, earns those tears because the film isn't just a cute weeper, but really a frame by frame account of a person's dissipating self worth. An indie age tragedy. Steinbeck for our recessionary times.

3. On the lighter side, but by no means less important in a year of competently illustrious and agreeably well received comic book Blockbusters (Hulk, Hellboy), the winner is... Iron Man. No contest. "Why not Batman?!" you ask, despite more solid performances, tight storytelling, cinematic beauty and great action coming together in one better-than-those-other better-than-real-dreck superhero movies. Well, despite some glitches, Iron Man has all of the above Plus...

Robert Downey Jr's unconventional yet very convincing take on Anthony Edward "Tony" Stark, a nuanced, what some would say, an even three dimensional character. Granted, you have to like RDJ's riffing and broad physical tics, but I do, so Downey's Stark is believable as a charismatically self involved, emotionally crippled genius that tries too hard, but is a real treat to watch. Honestly, he's a little pathetic. But a "vulnerable super-hero" movie which lets the superhero be Vulnerable? Ding!

Plus = Gwyneth Paltrow's understated, charmingly credible treatment of what is traditionally a passively blank female lead. Her Pepper Pots, neither femme fatale or damsel in distress, brainiac or butch, has a world outside her man. Some forgotten critic (sorry) said Downey and Paltrow in Iron Man heat made probably the best romantic comedy since Annie Hall and I would have to agree. Ding! Ding!

And even though I like the inside of a well organized gun locker as much as the next gal, Iron Man slightly sidesteps the convention of "here's the microscopic super duper ray gun, heatseeking latchhook gizmo, and the new boat/helicopter/bike/mobile". Ding!

Obviously, all these perks of the film are part and parcel of Iron Man's inherent character - he makes his own toys, he doesn't get the girl, he's really an alcoholic - but I think Jon Favreau did a bang-up job turning those quirks into a new look for superhero films.

2. Finally... well, my explanation for this film is a little complicated and goes back to a rousing yet not-very-well-thought-out response to Stephanie Zacharek's review of Pixar's Cars in which she scoffed at anthropomorphized vehicles and tired of Car's "red state-blue state divisions". Now... first off, I would have to argue that anyone who thinks a foodie rat who mind controls a human puppet through some major hair pulling in order to make exacting french bistro cuisine is actually any more HUMAN than a city mouse Porsche with serious Fahrvergnugen, is a little less than exacting, or doesn't know how to operate a clutch, or at the very least, has popped a belt in an uncanny valley somewhere North of La Cienega. Thinking that a machine is cold, hard, emotionless is already to anthropomorphize them. An anti-anthropomorphosization, if you will. I admit that Cars was stretched a little thin, but having done a few Republican cowboy jaunts, I'd have to say that vibe was right on the mark (maybe too many marks but generally on. On that note, I have to yield to Manohla Dargis' discomfiture over racial stereotypes in children's animation films. Did anyone else notice that the short stubby, love making penguins in Happy Feet were Mexican?) And yet, as critics - self proclaimed to stand outside the realm of identity making - who soapbox about automobile sprawl from high castles while extolling 'Where's the Prius?', I'm not sure they have a right to criticize "country values" with their very liberal notion of route 66's colorblindness. Cities and suburbia have The Incredibles. Rodents, after all, have that damnable Ratatouille. Why can't Nascar/Low Rider/Cadillac Records fans have Cars? But I digress.

I believe in the circle of life and that animals have feelings. I grew up with Data as a role-model and Transformers for entertainment. So I might be what realists call an anthropomorphic nut-job. In any case, because of my mental setbacks Wall-E takes the silver medal on this lineup. Wall-E isn't really an issue movie despite minor stabs at the hegemony of the iPod aesthetic, fast-food nation, consumer culture, and the media. Bird balances the Buster Keaton-esque humor, the Space Odyssey references, and the Johnny 5 rip-off, with the "thinky" stuff admirably well. But underneath it all, Wall-E is a pure gem of anthropomorphic wit. The kind that Pixar is famous for. Relatively free of dialogue, the charming love story is one completely made up of tiny zips and zings, physical gaffs and still life moments. There's no way you can't feel for this ragtag collection of little robots, but if you don't, well... you just might be human after all.

1. Despite my reservation about the neatly tied psychodrama of the rushed ending, Kaiba is probably, nay, is definitely the most original anime series in recent memory. With the melancholy soul of Cowboy Bebop and a bubbly anime style that looks too easy, almost crude. Kaiba is hard to describe because most of the joy is a wonky world of objects moving in unnatural ways and behaving surprisingly, even to our already sci-fi, anime laden minds. But this isn't a mecha flick, or just another philosophical inquiry - a la Ergo Proxy. Each episode of Kaiba has a plot, albeit moody and mysterious, but one with definite resolutions. The series never feels the need to completely demystify things for the audience (making the larger story arc an adventure), but leaves plenty of hints on the central motifs of death and memory while opening lots of queries on love and identity. Explaining that Kaiba is both an amnesiac man who has a hole in his chest as well as a memory eating plant that devours entire planets isn't really going to cut it. Telling you that the director, Masaaki Yuasa, produced and wrote the script for Cat Soup may help a little. But I think you really just have to watch the series yourself.

The conceptual shift from scientific to data methodology is also discussed in in modern psychology (as well as the Wired article.) In the mind, dealing with the complexity of life renders "disordered" states which involve mental paralysis or an existential query that force one to give up on scientific proofs in favor of data gathering as a palliative for the human condition. The outcome is a perfection sensual/sensory intake and a "Live on the surfaces," and "Take reality at face value" approach as an alternative to hypothetical or idealogical abstractions. Instead dealing with the unknown is a situationally postmodern though process. No longer the question How? or even Why? But only that "it" (the thing questioned) "Is", which reminds me ironically of certain Christian proofs of God, even down to the idea that a human being cannot control the outcome of such knowing, only live with it's effects. However, statistical views of reality, in prioritizing the interpretation and efficiency of systems, might also hinder imaginative conjecture, the basic quantum by which curiosity or scientific inquiry begins.

"On the philosophical level, both Buddhism and modern science share a deep suspicion of any notion of absolutes, whether conceptualized as a transcendent being, as an eternal, unchanging principle such as soul, or as a fundamental substratum of reality. Both Buddhism and science prefer to account for the evolution and emergence of the cosmos and life in terms of the complex interrelations of the natural laws of cause and effect." -- Dalai Lama

'What the 70s really looked like' goes the tagline for "The 70s Dimension", the idea being that the utter marginalia of a time (the disc compiles inane TV commercials) speaks more truthfully than a run-through of iconic images. The DVD is a release off of Craig Baldwin's label - Other Cinema - and these are indeed the very frequencies of Other Channels, the same broadcasts of memory & archival delirium. Channels, as in changing by remote, heading into an unreliable past left indistinct & disproportionate. Childhood here is diffuse and roaming - a string-section swoon (equally applicable to spy romance or an ad for a furniture sale), might be followed by oscillators and blown bottles (i.e. John Barry *click* John Baker). Fixations of prequel EP Mind How You Go also get a renewed season: those public information films - here the disquieting "Frozen Ponds PIF" - and a lot of Roger Roger style library synths. Probably the most diverse Ghost Box record so far, maybe even the first in a marked departure w/ its Penguin book-cover traded in for a polychromatic 16mm dissolve. What would a widening spectrum imply - examination of a less specified collective unconscious? Or maybe just a later one, w/ a vague chronological drift forward/backwards alongside present time. A speculation is haunting me.

ABN - Still Throwed

From what might be the year's best rap album. Many effective pairings here: electric guitar crunch across glimmering synth, tuneful drawl across rapid-fire flows, elegiac Still masking hostile Geto Boy 'Still' (...waters run deep), Z-ro and Trae - two really rich weathered voices, experience-stained w/ all the varnish peeled off.

Ashanti ft. Robin Thicke - Things You Make Me Do

For anybody who didn't find themselves inexplicably skipping through The Declaration: a modest bit of cooing from the Venusian space-pod subgenre of R&B. Certainly slight (having flashbacks to old Christina Milian ballads here) but I have a hard time resisting. Never mind, ignore this.

Beyonce - Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)

Seemed to go nowhere on first listen, but 'going' ends up hardly the point. Relentless snake-charmer video is helpful because impossible to unsee - Beyonce The Iron Woman plus careening, teetering backing of synth whiplash & engine-that-could up in your face.

Big Boi ft. Andre 3000 & Raekwon - Royal Flush

Heard this on the radio a couple times which was weird. It feels tossed off but in the best way - Akai improvising & casual dart tossing - as if taken off some random mixtape. Andre's verse is also afforded twice the airtime (& memorable lines) to help reassure people like my old roommate who never recovered from The Love Below (*solemn blank stare*).

Bun B ft. Rick Ross, David Banner, 8Ball & MJG - You're Everything

Show of unity - stunning, hair-raising - could've come off as defensive but instead it's about devotion, the pathos behind what it means to belong. "We all different but we all rep the same thang." Production is baroque & lugubrious: choirs, doom bass, spidery keys (not too proud to say I was reminded of this). That Jodeci hook (an unusually intact sample) materializes like some phantom EVP recording - latent lovesickness, make the song cry.

Busta Rhymes - Don't Touch Me

Stodgy fall between stools notwithstanding, Busta's still really adept at stretching his flow through the gears of a beat. Syllables scuttling through every crevice, "Be water, my friend", adaptable motion is his forte. Vast improvement here on "Touch It"'s stiff slash/bust scheme, more organic, slow burning and nimble w/ tension built around the simple removal/return of the snare. Not bad. Gets some A+ verses out of the remix lineup too (Kane, Nas, Game, Wayne, etc.).

Ciara ft. Ludacris - High Price

"Oh" by way of "You Don't Want Drama" or Oh-M-G or Quetzalcoatl-riding banshee bloodbath if that's your thing. Really befuddling, the chorus a mere breathing space between those garish stentorian shrieks (e.g. 'YOU KNOW ME!'). Ludacris's verse splat in the middle is also oddly long (and pretty good) but imbalance seems to be the order of the day.

Keyshia Cole - Heaven Sent

Very pretty and measured ballad. Something about the way that ethereal "sent from heaven" finishes her more sober lines & later just softly persists under a third climactic register (string-section crescendo & all that). Video blatantly highlights stuffy MJB lineage but a little indeterminacy is detectable & it seems to suit her better (is that A Different Me?).

Cheri Dennis - Pretend

Lovely - Cheri patient, optimistic but then caveating in nervous double-time, finally allowing herself to openly pine for her guy. Floodgates over ripplets of descending toms - nice underpinning along w/ that unusually low-key bridge as if she's in contemplation or just out of speech.

Stacey Epps - Floatin'

All glimmering milky-ways & divine reverie - exceptionally unearthly for neo soul type stuff. More permeation of downtempo - see also Solange looking to Zero 7/BOC, Sa-ra, beatsmith names like Ras G & the Afrikan Space Program, etc. Sort of washes over you which is typical but agreeably lush & effortless feeling.

John Legend ft. Andre 3000 - Green Light

Is this the first Outkast-related thing that might actually pass as an honorary drum & bass track (this one somewhere between liquid-funk & boutique labels like Subtle or Covert Operations)? And what kind of criteria is that? Well... the kind that gets me writing blurbs about John Legend songs apparently.

Lil Wayne - A Milli

Undercooked passed off as raw - a Weezy specialty - and nowhere more at home than over this Bangladesh scribble. Forerunning germ - a kooky bit of Kelis filler - left on loop, now breeding and growing smarter each day (vocabulary of four words if we count "Diva"). Boring, as in into the skulls of your children.

Lloyd ft. Lil Wayne - Girls Around the World

Lloyd, new romantic elven androgyne, on a relaxed 90's style groove. Takes its time but not its space - sauntering "thin" break is a welcome relief & the detailing is all twinkly vibraphone and billowing strings. Also Lloyd, heartthrob falsetto on the verge of evaporation, sounds pretty good here. Light flatters light.

Ne-Yo - Closer

"I know her face, I just don't know who you are." Works on two levels, in the club catching a glimpse of some missing encounter, or anywhere at all at the precipice of a desired relationship (4x4 perhaps internal as heartbeat). References to becoming owned & captive but there's a sense that it's an unwitting seduction, that is to say, formulated by him alone. "The more I get, the more I want." He is the one, but in this case so is she.

Scarface - High Powered / Emeritus

Bookends of what may be the last Scarface album. "High Powered" - something like the grandeur of Game's "One Blood" but senior, unconcerned w/ proving itself, distant from the rowdiness of youth but still within earshot. "Emeritus" - the formidable ending note too boss for a chorus - "to the critics analyzing my shit, thinking so-and-so is better, you can suck my dick" plus the final lines are killer but I won't spoil it here.

Termanology ft. Bun B - How We Rock

Termanology's sort of gawky & unconvincing like he's geeking out in real-time over his own multisyllabic rhyme schemes. You, sympathetic listener, are invited to commingle into the geekiness. I have to admit, he is pretty scrappy. Basement Primo beat & a solid cast-against-type Bun B certainly help.

T.I. ft. Kanye West, Jay-Z & Lil Wayne - Swagga Like Us

Hard to ignore the fact that only T.I. sounds up to the task but kind of thrilling anyway. Starts by swooping in and detonating into war-drums - already the sound of an expensive trainwreck - the entire thing swollen, oversized, & half-choking on its own autotune. M.I.A., of all people, floats around as larger-than-larger-than-life rallying cry. "Pay no attention to those men behind the curtain..."

Trina ft. Killer Mike - Look Back At Me

Like the sun, like a flower. Not-so-intimate club (and whip and chain and cattle prod) music. The baddest: Trina's maniacal laughter, the pong-paddle ratatat, those outrageous, uh, screwing fx. Seriously nasty.

V.I.C. - Wobble

Prefer this to "Get Silly" actually - less catch-line but the 'wobble' rhythm is fairly outlandish (i.e. a ringtone of it had me at bar two). Style cues from Idlewild but the whole thing was probably both too specific and dispersed to have really caught on like its crank donk brethren.

Young Jeezy ft. Kanye West - Put On


Rapper once accused of coasting off adlibs now accused of exploiting political/economic climate for self-promotion. The shift is to Jeezy's credit & he does have a knack for blowing things up in scale if not w/ matching resolution. Every puffed up 'AYYY' needs its matching minor-chord IMAX stage ("Soul Survivor", then "Go Getta") so why not a move towards public address? As for Kanye Digital, his new vocaloid thing works well as a timbre - viridian cityscapes & glass - but I still have no idea what he's 'putting on' other than a long face.

THE ADVISORY CIRCLE - OTHER CHANNELS

'What the 70s really looked like' goes the tagline for "The 70s Dimension", the idea being that the utter marginalia of a time (the disc compiles inane TV commercials) speaks more truthfully than a run-through of iconic images. The DVD is a release off of Craig Baldwin's label - Other Cinema - and these are indeed the very frequencies of Other Channels, the same broadcasts of memory & archival delirium. Channels, changing by remote, heading into an unreliable past left indistinct & disproportionate. Childhood here is diffuse and roaming - a string-section swoon (equally applicable to spy romance or an ad for a furniture sale), might be followed by oscillators and blown bottles (i.e. John Barry *click* John Baker). Fixations of prequel EP Mind How You Go also get a renewed season: those public information films - here the disquieting "Frozen Ponds PIF" - and a lot of Roger Roger style library synths. Probably the most diverse Ghost Box record so far, maybe even the first in a marked departure w/ its Penguin book-cover traded in for a polychromatic 16mm dissolve. What would a widening spectrum imply - examination of a less specified collective unconscious? Or maybe just a later one, w/ a vague chronological drift forward/backwards alongside present time. A speculation is haunting me.

BLEVIN BLECTUM - GULAR FLUTTER

Turns out the octopus is drawn by China Mieville who recently wrote of the creature's "taxonomic transgression" in an essay on Weird fiction. Why this choice for sui generis glitch artist Blevin Blectum? Gular flutter is apparently the "pulsation of the upper esophagus in some species of birds in response to heat-stress" & the song titles contain references to birds, feathers, swans, but also snails. It doesn't add up - contradicting or irreducible anatomies, a body left unrecognizable or even imperceptible through dashing diagonals & skewed processing. There's a voice, a violin, perhaps a nanolooping Gameboy and then the rest, none of which sounds purely CPU-generated but all of which is mangled, flipped, stuttered, crunched, elongated, or morphed by Max/MSP-style granular recombination. Tracks develop through restless shifts and scatters, impossible to draw a bead on but still riveting & pursuable. It's an odd record and an odd time for it - released after a four-year hiatus like an abnormal growth from an old antiseptic experiment - "glitch" not as edgy beat-sharpener but as idiosyncratic index of personality (there's a nameless but quietly enduring subsubgenre here perhaps spanning the Blectums, Sonig, Active Suspension, DAT Politics, et al. 'Clicks' never really cut it for them).

THE CARETAKER - PERSISTENT REPETITION OF PHRASES

"Persistent repetition" works on a couple levels - inexorable return of the past (as usual, signified by 30's jazz, Al Bowlly, etc.), but also the Caretaker's own compulsion to produce unending variations on a single idea. The Caretaker - as in, of the Overlook Hotel - makes memory audible, but a deliberately impersonal memory (i.e. not somebody's prom-night set to Chris De Burgh) safely tucked away in the distance so as to appear collective. Name-checks 'The Shining' & its ballroom scenes, but uncanny use of song is a common scary-movie device - Lynchian Roy Orbinson, 'Jeepers Creepers', or 'Room 1408''s forewarnings by way of the Carpenters, to name a few. The releases are difficult to assess because not crafted 'albums' but more akin to spectacles enabling one to "see dead people", the repeating excess (last was a sextuple album) meant to hold claim to memory's permanence over linear timelines. This edition in particular seems to emphasize how songs prolong & reverberate (echoes of dub or Akira Rabelais' Eisoptrophobia) w/ each note hanging frozen in the air for hypothetical eternity. As for those track titles, the jury's still out.

CLARK - TURNING DRAGON

Three tracks in, I was enthusiastically anticipating a severe wall-to-wall assembly line of deconstructed dance music. Then the familiar flooded in - those detuned watercolor melodies splitting the difference between cerebral & sensitive. Initially frustrating but not altogether unwelcome (or unexpected), it's the first in a series of complications undergone by this slightly misshapen set. Clark can be underrated for his ambiguity (stylistic shifts, once 'Chris Clark'). He's received as a minor Warp auteur with a signature less legible or idiosyncratic than those of his peers. Turning Dragon provides a scant program - modestly put forth as a left-over collection of 'danceable' material, title/cover evokes J-cyberpunk but tossed off 'ancient sex position' reference is also plausible. Ultimately, it's not much of a problem or even a skewed asset since elusive/anonymous matches the compiled trackiness of the material (tracky IDM, oxymoronic). The usual 'bedroom' warp and woof - derangement, disruption, detail (championed & maligned in equal measure) - but now contending w/ a larger unambiguous pulse.

DJ SPRINKLES - MIDTOWN 120 BLUES

DJ Sprinkles is an early 90's dance incarnation of Terre Thaemlitz before he moved towards electroacoustic/ambient/avant music (deepness runs between Moodymann & Pauline Oliveros). The return is serendipitous as this plays like smoke clearing from the minimal-deep house tussle of the last couple years: stripped down, a surfeit of subtleties, probably mixes well w/ the Dixon/Schwarz/Cassy line. On the other hand, the narrative is explicitly its own - "House isn't so much a sound as a situation" goes the opening salvo followed by a righteous embittered call to retrace the erase-marks left by forgotten struggles of the disenfranchised. Particular ire is reserved for the deterritorialization of NY club culture by pop vocals, Madonna and other accessibility cash-ins; tacky flash which, in a different scene, might invert as the very sign of local vitality (e.g. UK garage, dancehall, etc.). The case is made for 'minimal' working as a historically specific term - not a "style" or a floating globalized IKEA surface - but a lost rooted vibe, as dreamy or refined as the story went. Situation ends up inscribed in sound as well - "to preserve the full dynamic range of the original recordings this album was mastered without compression..." - again, staunchly withdrawn from the market-ready standard because gentle & spacious. Sleeve by Laurence Rassel - slightly ghastly portraits of jouissance - suggests affinity w/ today's other mournful dance autobiographies (Shedding the Past, Untrue). This is more didactic but more gorgeous.

DOUBTFUL GUEST - ACID SAUNA

Interesting how Planet µ could sidestep the 'IDM problem' & foster burgeoning sounds-of-now (breakcore, dubstep) precisely because the scenes grew sufficiently delocalized. The likes of drill-n-bass are a persistent poltergeist (subtext: cautionary tale against pulverized vitals) but the knot between brutal functionalism and beatnik dissertation only grows tighter. As for the old guard, in the best cases - when everything is an ultra-knowing, studious retooling - rogues (Paradinas, James, Jenkinson, etc) become relics, their siphoning almost ennobled into an act of salvaging. Acid Sauna is Doubtful Guest's debut but she 'still kills the old way' twisting classic acid through the distortions of a (surprisingly dark, wicked) personal memoir. The preference is to unfurl & sear rather than pummel, evoking the stark 303 spirit of Phuture but w/ all the dingy warehouse reverberation & chiaroscuro burnt in. Edges towards gabba at times but a crass affront to subtlety/propriety is 1) refreshing when not the solitary MO, and 2) entirely appropriate - it's "Aciiiiiid!", some raucousness is called for.

FLUTER & DISSIDENT - OCCULTURED BOX

When are you going to let me out of this box? To my mind, something of an unofficial expansion pack to Paradox's "I Get a Kickback" - shades of Pandora as in emanations of virulent evil but most of all, the ensnarement into madness found in Lovecraft. Pulpy (it's not above the moody vocal snippet or the vortex of CG tentacles on the sleeve) but utter ruination remains an etched omen, articulated in offscreen implication & w/ unexpected nuance ("Fluter in Hell" - unlikely title & a more unlikely followthrough). "Only a dancer with 8 legs / drummer with 8 arms, can keep up with this beat" - Cthuloid abundance thwarts the scope of cognition on the floor. Drums like corridors, rhythms, their traversals in attempt to map impossible entireties of space. Finally, "Everything old is new again", the paradox of ancient-beyond or (more fanfictional but no less grandiose): a parallel world's Wormhole back to drumfunk's future in encounter w/ 96 Source Direct. Well, almost that good.

FLYING LOTUS - LOS ANGELES

Trip hop is back? Or it never left if you care to trace the thread from Entroducing to Donuts to the choice between Ghost Dog soundtracks to a widened net spanning the likes of Prefuse 73, Chocolate Industries, or Riow Arai. The distinction of today's beathead seems to be an upgraded electronic circulatory system - cue from Madlib & Dilla sampling Raymond Scott, the cosmic touch of Sa-ra, rave/chiptune-plundering Timbaland, etc. - but digital precision ill-suits the subterranean vibe. Hence, 'wonky' & its claim over the offbeat as corrective to quantized programming, eventually overcompensating, pushing contingency past 'humanization' to the point of woozy meltdown. Los Angeles goes adrift w/ druggy viewfinder in rotoscope - unstable liquefied kicks and distant claps provided as tenuous contours but otherwise an amorphous haze of light and color. Drums are panoramic, melodic snippets sound reversed, scribbles are in oscillation rather than vinyl; there's very little resembling the reliable looping sample or break. That said, texture & THC remain central values along w/ an oblique nod to jazz (a la Jelinek though much is made of Flying Lotus's relation to Alice Coltrane). It's like trip hop.

GANG GANG DANCE - SAINT DYMPHNA

Eclectic but through an alchemy approaching divergent genres like polyvalent sparks of color. There is a guiding light - a kind of generous Dionysian intuition - which aligns drum-circles, electronics, & song along an easy continuum (Yamataka Eye might be a kindred spirit). Sound & rhythm are sculpted - there's a clear amount of studio-care taken - but the arrangements feel free-form, sprinkled, dripped, splashed through a bold will to amorphousness. Audible engagements include house, grime, even reggaeton - perhaps a map of postulated space where post-punk's devotion to dub/world/etc. was a point of view that never fizzled or consolidated. Liz Bougatsos' vocals also stretch backwards - comparable to Siouxsie Sioux but think primarily along the percussive path of The Creatures or the Basement Jaxx collaboration i.e. extensions & windows of possibility over establishment. Had a slight spit-take moment when Ruff Sqwad's Tinchy Stryder shows up to spit some bars & another at the stock "scream" keyboard sound in "Inners Pace" (I can't help it), but the nagging tug of stretching-it works in service of the loose inclusive perimeter. Arts and crafts, affable cheapness, "it's all music" and a small miracle that it doesn't feel too lost or labored.

THE GASLAMP KILLER - I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE

For the weird - no tracklisting but the coordinates should be familiar to the borderline-Pavlovian type of hip hop fan whose ears perk up at the off-kilter. Unorthodox in the sense of Def Jux's various sacrileges (Company Flow appear) but gentler, fuzzier, because more lost in its crosscuts between trip hop bedding (Vadim, Krush) & electronic undercurrents (Oizo, Broadcast re-calibrated for the context). Rap anomalies like Roots Manuva's "Witness" & Edan's psych get fostered under a shelter where they can finally pass as normal, be themselves w/ their chums, etc. Forefathers (as evinced in previous mixes) also lean trippy w/ the roadmap tracing back to krautrock & the early use of analog electronics in bands like USA & Silver Apples. Absence of mainstream tracks semi-conspicuous given the alleged impact of crunk/hyphy on The Wonk (or ask The Outsider), but then again, 'weird' is pretty much every non-rap/r&b fan's way in, possibly calling for a refusal of "Mr. Me Too" & the like for slightly more rarified territory. Surrounding antagonisms aside (purism/otherness and this Snoop filler = proto-wonky, yes?), I think fixation wins over self-consciousness here.

GEENEUS - VOLUMES: ONE

Lovely little line walked here between auteur production showcase and a more representative scene overview (Sceeneus?). I mulled about for an afternoon trying to figure out what 'Yellowtail' reminded me of only to realize it might be the theme to 'Jaws'. Works best mid-mix - bass lurching in from below before the big attack (that amazing discord of cascading synths like a singularly punishing 'game over' sound effect). Jarring stuff but a genuine plurality of modes show up here - yes the dubstep nod & the sinister Green Velvety "In To The Future", but also a portion of female vocals, sensuousness, "Emotions" as in yearning or even unabashed rapture. Mix on disc 2 is as good a summary as any w/ full attendance of anthems & the multifaceted vibe one always hopes to find in a fledgling style. As for 'Funky House' - not JB obviously but would a Fela angle be stretching it? Something other than "2-step retread w/ training wheels" or "Funky?... House?" anyhow.

AKIKO KIYAMA - 7 YEARS

Recourse to 'sound design' in defense of minimal was always a little backhanded: sumptuous surfaces but a minor, indulgent, finally empty pleasure (everybody: "cause that music got no groove..."). Surface & emptiness - elsewhere hallmarks of Japanese culture & Kiyama's music mirrors the austere techno of Fumiya Tanaka & Riou made a decade earlier, as well as the more outre experiments by people like Ryoji Ikeda. Her rather SAW II myspace page (Band Members: frayed fabric, Influences: more fabric, Sounds Like: some fur) attests to a softer focus - still a bit clinical but untidy like cellular traffic or perhaps a more grayscale Cadenza rhizome. Makes sense that she showed up on the recent DE9 mix (M_nus palette - "Ant" like a microcosm of "Bay of Figs") - a very Live anatomy to her track-structures & modulated interwoven strands. Individual fragments are also feasibly interchangeable (notation mostly restricted to mysterious/paranoid semitone steps), but there's a nurturing sense of alchemy here - a rippling blip for a sublow throb, the tickle of a delayed clipping kick - minutiae for days & substantially complementary. Somewhere an astonishing shakuhachi plays over the concréte and I didn't think of "Fizheuer Zieheuer" but Toru Takemitsu. Is it just me?

THE MOLE - AS HIGH AS THE SKY

Five-turntable loop management experiment - "Starchy Root Machine" as the Mole calls it - sounds like the sort of heroic old school science one would exhibit for the case against all things Ableton. This is studio work (SRM is a live-performance incarnation) but also firmly organic - 'The Mole' w/ actual dirt once allegedly used for chance vinyl-skip grooves. More likely here is a load of masking tape marking custom extracts of percussion, bare vocals, or modular synths. Texture & composition bring to mind Motorbass - the by-hand analog touch (recall the turntablism of "Flying Fingers"), compartmentalized space for each ingredient, looping phrases awkwardly abridged for tension but also the musicality of repetition. Lots of faith in the incremental as well, ebb & flow w/ remarkably patient EQ moving through the gradations of a bassline over the course of several minutes. Highlights are many but I especially like how "Alice, You Need Him" makes the least generous case for minimal - "bunch of plip plop" - sound actually pretty great.  

ALEX MOULTON - EXODUS

If there is justice in the world, why couldn't this be The One. Oh Human After All, come answer for your youthful & numerous progeny w/ their piercing thrills and their injunctions to enjoy. A solid link exists between Exodus and Daft Punk except this one threads through the luminosity of Discovery, the sci-fi saga of 'Interstella 5555', & the thoroughly 70's aesthetic of 'Electroma'. Moulton is a contemporary here w/ a heart set in the same yesteryear of Tangerine Dreams & Moroders, Logan's Runs & Barbarellas. He's particularly keen on the faded era of the Album; those bygone days of sweeping journeys and conceptual storytelling (his background is in film). Behold the awesomeness of that cover (credit: fantasy artists Julie Bell & Boris Vallejo) - "Sizzling Galactic Romance" and it's for real, this dance so lovingly stuffed w/ peaks and valleys - dynamics! - & moment-to-moment dramatic cues. A score of electro-grooves, ambient downtime, plus live drumming excursions - ambitious & certainly more expansive than immediate but at the moment I think that may be the righteous path.

PORTISHEAD - THIRD

"You turn myself to me" - a line characteristic of this remarkably bleak album, deadlocked upon the splits and chasms which undermine self-perception; the 'you', maybe a man, but fundamentally a shadowy impalpable outside somehow always there to pull the rug away & shatter all certitude. Aches & ruminates along the lines not of 'what did you mean' but 'what did I mean', a despair of being without any bearings or ways of translating contingency into coherence - the next line "recognize the poison in my heart" suggests only an unwanted or even traumatic truth of oneself as something monstrous. Tempting to think of Beth Gibbons' voice - forever frail & anguished - as a 'pure' expression of such themes, except Portishead remains a very stylized act, if no longer trip hop, then still brimming w/ studio effects, Radiophonic texture and cinema quotes (the Schifrin loop now traded for a synth coda reminiscent of Carpenter or Fabio Frizzi). It's not an unaffected approach & there's particular interest in blurring between the voice & the sounds - e.g. the gasping processed drums in "Plastic", the sunken barbershop in "Deep Water", the mantra-like epilogue, the way the word 'follow' bleeds into eternity on "The Rip" & gets anxiously echoed by a sustained string in "Threads". Presence but denaturalized because tampered w/ or merely recorded (recall Barrow & Utley sampling vinyl-pressed sessions of themselves). But also - "I can't divide or hide from me" - a performance losing to voice, in antagonism & withering away.

PYHA - HAUNTED HOUSE

Extreme unlikelihood of the source - Korean, 14 years old - ends up as an excellent argument for the subgenre. Black metal: universal force of horror, beyond cultural or terrestrial bounds, insidiously possessing any given person of the proper depressive temperament. Similar sort of meditative malevolence as Burzum but where Vikernes' story fell to irredeemable real-world violence, Pyha allegedly mourns for a peace forever lost. It's difficult to tell but cryptic works better for it. Snippets of wartime speeches, snapshots of a nation's shame, Haunted House as in a kind of return-of-the-repressed ghost story - all clues rife w/ historical political resonance but told through the wailing of the abandoned. Tempo is uncommonly slow, crawling, deadened, the production values coarsely lo-fi & stained w/ emulsion grain. 'Peace' in this case is undoubtedly an anarchic pre-lanugage zone, darkly pure, suggesting a teen angst & nihilism that's disturbingly lucid. Is he really who he claims to be? Maybe, maybe not but it doesn't really matter.

SKULL DISCO - SOUNDBOY'S GRAVESTONE GETS DESECRATED BY VANDALS

Connoisseurship of erosion; the dubstep's almost incidental. Skull Disco's totems - sleeves by Zeke Clough - all mythic abomination and coral-like skeletons w/ attendant fuzz of bacterial life. Presumably life as in undeath as well - "Death Is Not Final", each necrotic burble and tick doubling as drums in ritualistic resurrection. Unsettling touches like a tape recorded voice deteriorating into garble and swathes of Basic Channel - signpost du jour for refinement - but here w/ macabre purpose, hovering like the inevitable creep of John Carpenter's fog. As for desecrating vandals (i.e. remixers), 'they were never to be seen again...' which is to say chilly atmosphere wins across the board, leaving vapor trails between the (somewhat) divergent malefactors (Brendon Moller's Force Tracks style microhouse, Pole's renewed dubtronica, DJ Rupture, etc.) Nothing as promising as the Villalobos remixes but the expansion is compelling. The crossroads - 'turning', infecting; crossbones - not final but pretty certain.

TOBACCO - FUCKED UP FRIENDS

The same flourishing retro-synths as parent band Black Moth Super Rainbow but honed in & streamlined across less varied architecture. Drums are now explicitly, exclusively based in hip hop. The Boards of Canada comparisons are warranted, but the tone is less elegiac than lightheartedly dazed & rollicking - more authentically "70's" - w/ sun-baked consistency (or distilled sameyness) throughout. Feels almost decadent to enjoy, like a balm spun from some lost Gemm holy grail, L'Illustration Musicale multiplied by a gold mine of breaks or some other bit of make-believe prescience. All those luxurious timbres - Mellotron flutes, buzzing bass, sparkling bloops - transposing like a sequence of petals in bloom, also bringing to mind the Tomita convert who finds poetry in a sawtooth retracing the steps of a triangle. Wallpaper at the end of the day, I suppose, but what patterns & possibly your favorite colors too. (Final note: a lonely Aesop Rock blips up midway but it just wasn't meant to be).

ZOMBY - WHERE WERE U IN 92?

Similar angle to Burial but as carny instead of melancholic. The gRavediggaz, maybe. Significantly, this generation Dead is too young to have witnessed the consensus peak-time of the continuum. Remnants & mementos are second-hand - cassettes from older siblings, discarded flyers, pirate radiowaves held for ransom. "I was not there." Sound is replete w/ period detail - rave-horns, crude pitch-shifting divas, protojungle breaks - special FX of yesterday, now slightly risible (the vintage vocal-science of old Reinforced tracks once got a spontaneous howl from a friend of mine) but of course, deeply cherished. Elision of the actual experience only serves to heighten the imaginary and missed sense of subcult (be)longing. The step backwards suggests that destination was always disappointment. Credit for use of anachronistic samples (Daft Punk, Aaliyah, Gucci Mane, Street Fighter II) not as punch-lines but as faith in the subsuming power of glorified chaos - phantasy rave forever unmindful or even innocent of the politics of taste. (Extra credit for also producing some blinding 08-in-08 12''s).

NICO NICO DOUGA RYUUSEIGUN

Nippon hype ticker: Fame for 15 minutes to 15 people vs. 30 seconds to 300,000. Influences: invasive banner ads, 2ch memes, twitter updates, animated gifs, RSS feeds, rapidshares of anime OPs, ASCII art, one too many clicks, lolcats, staying indoors. The parody of a parody in an insular vortex of references of references. 8/08, C74 - 35,000 manga/anime/game vendors vs. 500,000 ravenous consumers. "[The game] contains considerably fewer glitches, but, objectively, is still very poorly-made, and virtually unplayable." Virtual idol Hatsune Miku signs to a major & charts at #5 on Oricon. T-pain's Thr33 Ringz reaches #4 on Billboard. At #1 is the 'Akiba-kei' electropop zeitgeist of Perfume* - three seemingly average girls awkwardly declared the highest charting J-techno in history (a record last held by YMO). Japan falls into recession as culture industries wither across the vine. Footage appears of none other than Kamen Rider performing a popular viral dance. Trancecore, breakcore, speedcore, ravecore, J-core, et al. form a 180 BPM+ constellation. Rabid fans give birth to over 9000 remixes & interpolations of songs originally composed for a home-made "bullet-hell" PC game. Ronald Mcdonald gabba edits storm the net. Rockman 9 debuts but Airman remains undefeated. Anonymous subcultural belonging, brainswells of recognition, gasping for air, nice boat.

*worth mentioning svengali of the moment Yasutaka Nakata - something like Donna Summer, Kraftwerk, & Alan Braxe by way of DDR. Could also be described as the sugar to Ed Banger's sweat - same formula of savagely compressed rectangles of distorted bass except here tweaked w/ glitter & J-pop robo-ditties. Trackier material tends to be better (i.e. unbound by the strictures of idol-mastery as w/ his own group Capsule) since the ostensible pop hooks mostly hang like deadweight, 'anthemic' in bludgeon but rather variable for memorability or catchiness. Intermittently dazzling will have to do for now.

Howling through the streets, from the point of view of an anonymous driver, with only a revving car engine as a soundtrack, the film C'était un rendez-vous is shot in one thrillingly long single take. A short made in 1976 by Claude Lelouch in cinéma vérité style, the feat is common today on youtube, often duplicated by like minded speed junkies from the rice-rocket racing set to Ghostrider fans. Since these clips are not so much about destinations as riding, adrenaline freaks and shop heads alike are thrilled to watch like rebels without causes. Such adrenaline usually channels back into man-machine territory, the handicam shaking of a tricked out GTI racing to nowhere standing in for an honest testament to a violent testosterone urge of competition.

In contrast, Lelouche's Truth about the motorway is revealed as something more akin to love and a graceful mastery of time and place. The director's technical skill, his eye for the beauty of the Parisian city, and the barest wisp of a plot make Rendezous, slight though the film is, more than just a throwaway rush. Instead, Rendezvous is a pheremonal rather than a glandular delight of movement, a joy likened inextricably to the seductiveness of romantic danger. Such an affair turns the familiar into an ordeal or a reckless journey into impulsive destiny, but foremost, getting there is as beautiful a moment as having finally arrived.

Jesus! It's Gackt's new single, with video set in a grungy murksome bunker where wacky military repentance occurs and Gackt screams the Lord's name in vain for salvation or perhaps disgust.

For Gackt's inappropriate use of divine cognomen, I quote a sardonic wit who remarked rather dryly whilst I wrote the above description...

"he burrows into the names and delineates the divergent properties of its meaning."

Word.

As in great literature, book art has a self contained logic, one that is personal to the world of the book and the person that creates or inhabits such a world. An "art" book is part recycled fantasy and outsider logics, the resultant landscape imbued with Cornell-esque mysteries ripe for dramatic unlocking. While a certain level of escapism is undeniable, the lo-fi charm and familiarity of a cannibalized book is essentially confrontational when dealing with the acts of interpretation and meaning through the canonical. Artists transform books from one physical state to another, dissolving readable text into new narratives of objectification, content, authorship, etc, that refer to a whole body of literary theory a la Barthe, et al.

Below are literal takes and deconstructed fantasies of books by very different artists.

Literary art remains demurely contained within the spaces of the book bindings. The reveal of pages and their edges is a query of that boundary but also a question about how boundaries themselves can be reinterpreted.

Below, Elliasson questions the fixedness of content, portraying interiority as a perceptibly malleable space, one where the personal space is all void and no wall. A kismet of architecture and english interdisciplinary studies that was my college miseducation.

your house. Olafur Elliasson

Imagination leaps to escape the constraints of the form, bringing the literal page to life.

As curio and dissection piece, the physicality of the object and its content transcends the temporal life of the book, the reclaimed study of the reclaimed artifact being an act of entropy that also one that insists upon reincarnation as well.