End Of Year Albums/Tracks/Artwork/LiveShows/OTHER STUFF 2010

Favourite band this year: Titus Andronicus

Top Ten Records in no particular order because i am fickle and apart from the Monitor, the hierarchy sort of fades between the rest of them. Oops that makes it sound like nothing else matters except the Monitor which is clearly not (entirely) true! I chose all of these because they were all records that, in some small way, had a time and a place for me this year:

Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

Four Tet- There Is Love In You

Abe Vigoda- Crush

Wild Nothing- Gemini

Ty Segall- Melted

Deerhunter- Halcyon Digest

Julian Lynch- Mare

No Age- Everything In Between

Active Child- Curtis Lane

Screaming Females- Castle Talk

Top (12) Tracks:

Well, its hardly surprising!

1. JPNDRDS- Younger Us: This band never fail and this track is like a first boyfriend. At one point i'd say it could even reduce me to tears, maybe at that point when he cheats on you with a girl who doesn't even have every single SY record on CD.

2. Caribou- Odessa: I played this one repeatedly when i went to Wimbledon this year, made the queues a hell of a lot more bearable.

3. Veronica Falls- Beachy Head

4. Mark McGuire- Brain Storm (For Erin): A recent favourite!

5. The Tallest Man On Earth- Love Is All: This is a really beautiful track and reminds me of home movies, being in Australia when i was a kid and all my favourite places there; the smell, the beautiful shades of red on the ground and in the sky.

6. Twin Shadow- Castles in the Snow

7. Ariel Pink- Frightnight (nevermore)

8. Wavves- Post-Acid

9. Fang Island- Daisy

10. Home Blitz- Two Steps: A fun little track which i think is about being scared and pretending you're not i guess.

11. Marnie Stern- Transparency Is The New Mystery: I fucking hate that P4K called this a 'power ballad' even if in jest, but whatever. She's awesome and this is awesome.

12. Sleigh Bells- Crown On The Ground

Favourite Artwork: Julian Lynch- Mare

Least Favourite Artwork: Best Coast- Crazy For You

Favourite Live Shows:

Titus Andronicus!- @ Bodega Social, Nottingham

Of Montreal- @ Academy 2, Manchester

High Society presents: Felix, Les Etoiles, El Heath- @ Bodega Social

Default This covers ATDI/SY/Fugazi/Refused/And You Will Know Us as part of Hockley Hustle- @ Bodega Social, Nottingham

Abe Vigoda- @ Bodega Social, Nottingham

Marnie Stern- @ Bodega Social, Nottingham

Fucked Up and Times New Viking would have PROBABLY made this list, if only those gigs were at convenient times for me when i didn't have work commitments (that's quite funny, really because i NEVER have any work commitments even when i do have work commitments)

Bunch of stuff i've yet to hear, some of which are friends' recommendations:

Sufjan Stevens- Age of Adz (YEP still haven't!)

Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me

Woods- At Echo Lake

How To Dress Well- Love Remains

Delorean- Subiza

Das Racist- Sit Down, Man

Big Troubles- Worry

Little Women- Throat

Rangers- Suburban Tours

Sun Araw- On Patrol

Richard Skelton- Landings

Giant Sand- Blurry Blue Mountain

Gate - A Republic of Sadness

Woven Bones- In And Out And Back Again

Things that should probably have got more listens:

Mark McGuire- Living With Yourself

Zola Jesus- Stridulem

Perfume Genius- Learning

Swans- My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky

Fang Island- Fang Island

Album i have been most baffled by cropping up EVERYWHERE and i'm not sure i'll ever listen to because of this fucking ugly cover.

Earl Sweatshirt- EARL

Hello reader we've reached the end of this miserable journey. I'd liked to know what YOU had on your end of year lists, too! Happy end of 2010!

Mix

Oh, this is new and exciting. My friend posted about 8tracks ages ago, but i've only just got round to posting a mix. All these songs are on a mixtape i made a friend, but they're all stuff i've been enjoying so much off late. It includes my new found love for Burger Records- swiftly making my way through some of their bands, especially Ty Segall and i really like Nobunny as well for the concept.

There's some Abe Vigoda and Ganglians in there too, who i'm seeing in November and hugely excited about. "Crush" is such a great album i totally wasn't expecting it.

They Saw The Waves...That's The Way To Go.

I saw this video a while ago and knew i was going to come to adore this band. "Beachy Head" reminds me of this holiday i went on once with my family in Spain somewhere. We stayed with some friends at a place near the cliffs, and the best moment i remember was looking down to the raging sea and just finding that situation and everything i knew about life sort of hilarious. This band are full of fun and dark moments.

Veronica Falls - Beachy Head from Philippa Bloomfield on Vimeo.

Sorry to have to break this to you, but really, you are nothing. You have no inner life

By Niall O'Brian

"The Viewing Experience"

A few weeks ago, i went to see "Mother" with my friend at Broadway and about 15 minutes or so in, Mike whispered to me "did you realise they've not put subtitles?". It's not really beyond me to not notice things like this, but i have to admit that it is sort of odd that someone had already decided to go and speak to the staff at broadway before i properly noticed that i had no idea what they were saying and still quite contentedly sat there as if i had any clue what was going on. I still believe that i could have watched the whole thing without subtitles, the film itself was quite captivating from the 15 minutes i saw, and rather than daydreaming inside a cinema (i have a problem concentrating on films sometimes) i think i was kind of enjoying it subconsciously for the very reason that i was completely lost in this world of language as foreign to me as the Southern Korea setting, and it wasn't exactly impossible to suss what was happening. For a fleeting few minutes i felt more involved with the film and the concept of it than if i were following the print.

This reminded me of the experience of watching tennis matches without commentary; the commentary is incredibly crucial (albeit pompous and annoying on occasion), and the lack of it when watching live matches (or not having one of those super cool radio gadgets) is something i didn't think i would miss so much -but there was certainly a level of 'consciousness' that i lost without it. What you gain in watching live tennis or other sports is an entirely different mental representation of what is going on and it's peculiar how i remember the least about Wimbledon the past two years when i've actually been there than the years before when i'd watched everything on television. Yet nothing beats watching tennis matches live, and i know that experience can enrich people who find tennis otherwise incredibly dull. However there's elements to watching games through the box that are just as enjoyable to me (and probably to other sports fans), and sometimes it's somewhat of a relief to go crawling back to the television after four days worth of numbing in the heat running from court to court lathered in sun cream and wincing at which way the ball is spinning.

As much as i'd like to sniff at commentary having been accustomed to entrenching myself in match stats for so long i often really don't care about what they're saying (i.e. Peter Flemming; the guy is always an ass about everything) the commentators haven't spent so long in the game playing or otherwise without gaining a tad bit more knowledge than you ;) Like watching foreign films i guess you can easily fail to acknowledge the context and the culture within which it is being communicated which an audience who belong to that language culture would. Invariably, one feels like they have lost out somehow, and indeed they have. Points are often too quick to notice and appreciate things like tactical advantages of a kick serve as opposed to a topspin slice, or how wind might be affecting shot selection without someone pointing it out to you or even how player's previous opponents/slam experience has set them up for the current match. Overall, commentary brings 2D to 3D, and as rubbish as that analogy might seem, it's certainly true of why everyone is falling in love with 3D TENNIS- "a tennis viewing experience like no other....blah blah" as seen on Sky Sports

Though this article is somewhat accurate, i think he under-appreciates how tennis fans will go gaga for anything that brings a new level of visual experience to the game. Tennis fans from what i've experienced are usually also the most embracing of sports enthusiasts and importantly, kids who like tennis are a fantastic market for things like 3D broadcast because generally those kids are absolutely crazy for this sport because of the level of accessibility it provides for them, being able to see their favourite players up close and personal on big show courts...and now in 3D when they can't make it to the show? That is a winning concept.

It's also true that the technical brilliance of professional tennis can never ever be fully known by the viewer, courtside seats are terribly impractical no matter where they are. My friend and i, being the spoilt brats we are, were sitting on centre court seats 2nd row from the front and still complaining that we weren't close enough to see the ball move properly, no one can help 'people like us'. But really, kinetics of the ball spin and placement and accuracy is mind blowing and if anything, i would hope that 3D would allow people to 'see' that more up close and appreciate the game at a different level than before. It's a lot of fun, and i'm pretty embarrassingly tempted by one of these '3D sports pubs', if only i could find an adequate companion to join me. I can see how 3D would be somewhat of a disaster in a sport like football though. Sport aside, without going into too much detail, i really don't like the concept of 3D in films, its as redundant as anything i've ever seen and i am yet to be enlightened as to how it is possibly entertaining after the bewilderment of this new visual dimension wears off.

Moving on, i was super duper excited when Frenchman Gael Monfils got to his first quarter-finals this year at New York. Though, I can't claim he showed any really sparkling tennis during his match against Djokovic, he is one of my very favourite players; awesome guy and a talented athlete not to mention amazingly fun to watch. However, i often wonder whether being a full time funny man is his main priority over actually winning matches......it's startling how Gael though pumped up and ready to go like a Lockheed Blackbird that he is, is still too much of a passive player when he reaches the deep, murky and heavily experienced waters of the Top 5 ATP rankings. Monfils is not a 'naturally' talented tennis player though he is a naturally talented athlete, and often though that seems to be enough to do well on the men's tour in this modern age, players at Djokovic's level can be very tactically aggressive and it takes more to break through at slam level. Even though it suits Monfils to be so charming, I fear that if he doesn't start revamping his boyish, class clown image he will find himself reaching the peak of his career before what is ideal. His roads already been a pretty bumpy one steeped in injury breaks, and his tireless defensive play is something that is becoming a terribly greater weakness than his hamstrings. I think it's time he started reviewing and re-watching his matches with his new coach, Roger Rasheed, to establish a good offensive play that he can stick to against bigger players.

Just to change the pattern of the days

"Dust" by Ujin lee and Tom Edwards

"They'd admire the complexity of his plan, incomplete as it was. It had art and memory. It had a sense of responsibility, of moral force. And it was a picture in the world of their own guilty wishes... Astonish them, create coincidences so bizarre they have to believe it. Create a loneliness that beats with violent desire. This kind of man, an arrest, a false name, a stolen credit card. Stalking a victim can be a way of organising one's loneliness, making a network out of it, a fabric of connections, desperate men give their solitude a purpose, and a destiny"

I'm not sure if i enjoyed "Libra" as much as i did because i haven't completed a book for some time or whether I like being convinced of other people's guilty wishes. I found that sense of reconciliation in Iain Bank's "Wasp Room" as well (i had a conversation with someone about this book recently, really need to re-read it and actually i want to re-read Libra again because i felt short-changed and i could see through more of it if i tried again)....It's somewhat of an escape from morality and purely an insight into personal success, and the ways it can be achieved, told as a rehash of a pub story. It probably wasn't Delillo's intention to have readers feel sorry for Oswald, though paragraphs like the above suggest otherwise. But outside of just being a lonely man seeking a destiny and a purpose, Oswald was a falling man, 'tilting' maybe, and then he found the only way there was to strike a balance, to keep the scales level and you're tempted to feel relief, whether it's for him or something else. Some people just can't deal with lopsidedness. He was terrified, but of what we never really understand and a passive protagonist of what he believes (or what the author believes) as a presence greater than himself, greater than the historian Nicholas Branch. "Ideals", and often political ideals, grow into something uncontrollable, reality makes little sense and it's almost impossible to continue living in the same way; "if the world is where we hide from ourselves, what do we do when the world is no longer accessible? we invent a false name, invent a destiny, purchase a firearm through the mail"........

There's a sense of hilarity that works it's way through the whole book, the fact that the very concept of determinism or destiny doesn't exist for Oswald at all,at least not in the way he thinks it does, as he actively does something to put an end to his deterministic love affair by proliferating everything with interpretation, meaning, context and an overwhelming urge of creativity that he can't resist. I may be naive in saying its all a big guilt trip, but for what? Who is this boy with his hair messed up and his shirt sticking out of his trousers? "And he looked scared, and he looked wild........."

I suppose i know 'just enough' about the JFK assassination, and to be honest i don't really care that much about it, as compelling as it was, because Libra is as good a novel without having any real attachment to those events, just as Lee Harvey Oswald has little attachment to who he really was, he's a construct of a vision of who he really may have been, in history, in fiction, and who he thought he may have been in both.

Libra ends with a perfect restlessness;

"I stand here on this broken hearted earth and i look at the stones of the dead, a rolling field of dead, and the chapel on the hill, and the cedar trees leaning in the wind, and i know a funeral is supposed to console the family with the quality of the ceremony and the setting. But i am not consoled."

Im not sure if i've fully gathered by thoughts on this, maybe i should speak to Playing Pretend as i did borrow her copy (thankssssss). But there we are, life usually ends unfinished, and i have to make a start on Infinite Jest.

Stay Active

Been listening a lot more to "Curtis Lane EP" by Active Child (Pat Grossi) of late. It sucked me in dangerously quick, like how religion can be overwhelming if you've never heard of it before. Luckily you can still enjoy the best of a record like Curtis Lane without having to convert, pray and maintain practise; it's just really really pretty music fusing choral and dark, melancholic synths. It's not hard to imagine beautiful music with that description, but i think it would be difficult to 'get it right' if you were going to try. What i love best about Active Child is that Pat grew up listening to really dirty rap- (his dad used to work for the rap label Priority Records) but he was also in Philadelphia Boys Choir for the better part of his childhood, so little Pat was introduced to and met Snoop, Dr.Dre, Eminem and still ends up playing gospel music. That's remarkable.

Where on earth did the inspiration for songs like "Weight of the World" "She was a Vision" "Wilderness" come from when your favourite records growing up were mostly about cunts and guns. Weight of the World reminds me in a strange way of the title music for Ecco the Dolphin on Sega; a little heartbroken, lonely, but hopeful. Can't say Ecco was my favourite game to play, now that i think back on it, it was highly inappropriate for my age at the time! It's about a lonely, aggravated dolphin who tries to organise his grief stricken existence by travelling back in time through seas of chaos at a very poor level of physical fitness where you have approximately 3 minutes to complete a really difficult underwater maze because of your failing respiratory system which means you always invariably DIE!

Despite all that, I love Curtis Lane, and this video gets across that 'expansiveness' quite well

Active Child - Wilderness from Jheri Evans on Vimeo.

After all the Agitation.....

in fact i think it's just the kind of rude awakening i need.

.....and after all the frantic expeditions to make 3 months of an unorganised life organised, i finally found a moment of peace-about a week ago, a way of sitting still and being comfortable that way. I saw through all that bothered me, all the things i hadn't done or attended to, and somehow i managed to convince myself that it was all dealt with, until today.

The thing about old friends is, they bring up a lot of 'ugliness' that you would rather forget about yourself, but what's worse is when an 'old friend' is actually someone you met not so long ago, and you realise after all this time, since before and even after you met them, when you thought you might have changed.... you're actually just the very same person with the same insecurities that had been slovenly shelved for so long that they almost disappeared- you just found better ways of hiding them. I have one very good friend who sees the best things in me, but also knows what makes me feel exposed and insecure, and i hate that. There's nothing i can say or do, it's just a weird feeling i get when i'm with them like they're eyeballing me, and every small hand gesture or shifting of the eyes to a different point of focus apart from their line of focus is mapped with scrutiny. It's strange, because it's almost as if i hate them for trying to know me, but they still don't 'see' and that's frustrating for me. To (think) they know so much and not know anything at all. My plight in being friends with an emotional stump.

My friend moved city more than a year ago now, and i've realised that they're slipping away, perhaps they're getting older, moving on, finding a job working towards a career, or perhaps our relationship is moving on to a plateau. It's settled, and i didn't want it to- i've just realised. I wanted it to keep moving....but i'm not sure where.

Right now, if i could find some way of being emotionally blind i would take it. I perhaps used to enjoy this sort of self destruction seeped in sentiment, mystery, musing and lust but that is one thing that i have grown the hell out of finally, and i want some calm, no complications.

Perhaps i'll pull myself together soon, i need to, but i'm certainly not wasting anymore time on hopeful operative pretence.

I should basically be given a merit badge after those 4 paragraphs. I am suddenly turning emo, and i'm enjoying it somehow. I'm 'growing' and 'regressing' at the same time! I would rather decorate my personal growth with one of these below.....bit of a scaredy admittedly.

by awesome Tim Forbus

(sorry the feet are kind of gross, but try and look past that)

Ghost in the Machine

Quite a lot recently, i've had this sense of unfamiliarity within my own body, its like a continuous 'what the fuck are you doing?' sense of being which makes me wish i didn't have to associate myself with my Self.

Most of this stems from an extreme detachment, or rather discrepancy, between what i intend doing and what i physically end up doing. It's true a lot of people have good intentions; i used to have intentions too, real ones, like an intention to get into University, get a job, improve my backhand slice, or read 3 books a week.

I've since deteriorated.

I now have intentions like making sure i don't break anything made of glass today. Or, sometimes i have an intention to not get out of my car again because i 'think' i've left the straighteners on in my bedroom. And then i go upstairs, not paying attention, forget why i came back in, i do something completely irrelevant, get back in my car, then wonder if i've locked the front door....and whether i've left the straighteners on in my bedroom. It's a sad state of affairs, and they're not 'intentions' they're just Standards of Sanity, i guess. Thus, my approach to life these days is one of Positive Apathy; why bother thinking about anything when it has no real meaningful effect on what you do, it reaches no further than the thought process itself.

I can only currently describe my feelings as a mix of 'locked in syndrome', phantom limb, being drunk and the relationship the rat and Linguine had in Pixar's Ratatouille. My brain is active but my body is incapable of creating anything beautiful or interesting, i don't recognise my hands when they make a sloppy job out of everything, i find it difficult to pay attention to anything that requires me to sit down quietly and mostly i feel like i'm dealing with a total idiot of sorts.

It's frustrating. What have i become? What was i before? Can i get up from this horrible nightmare.

Meanwhile, this video for Fang Island's "Daisy" strangely depicts a nightmarish version of the Diving Bell and the Butterfly. If you don't get it, watch it again- you'll see. The sense of exclusivity from the world, and how, you quite simply can never physically let people know that hot pants don't suit them.

Fang Island from carlos charlie perez on Vimeo.

2 0 1 0

Every year brings new peculiarities that i look forward to.

Thank goodness for that

Moving Life of the Butterfly Collectors

“Oh fuck it. Just burn all my stuff, just burn everything if it means I don’t need to pack anymore of this shit”.

It’s always been a favourite late night game of mine for a while now- to prepare myself for a fire evacuation by scaling my personal possessions down to just 3 items to take out of the burning establishment whilst everything else gets burned to black ash, never to be seen again- almost like they never existed in the first place.

There is a disturbing sense of catharsis in playing these kinds of games…. Not merely because I give a lot of my possessions a bit too much sentimental value, therefore anything that bears as much of a whiff of re-organisation and re-consideration is mentally harrowing, but also because late nights (always) call for an existential crisis- and this is how I solve them:

By somewhat manically looking through my cupboards, under my bed, through my desk, occasionally venturing out to the rest of the house, through photo albums, cabinets and cupboards, scaling my materialistic nemesis down to just three things to solidify one’s current existence…if that’s even possible- This is a game after all.

I need to ask myself- why do I need these 3 items to last for me, to escape the flame right now? Of course every time I play, I often change my mind about what I would take. The ever-evolving consciousness repositions it’s acquiescent self to any shape or form we wish to take on, seeking peace and perhaps personal improvement.

Would it be the three single most used items in my life? - laptop, ipod and phone. The three most irreplaceable in sentimental value? The three most literally irreplaceable (last photographic evidence of a granddad you never met) ? Or Irreplaceable certificates and qualifications? Do any of these things really mean anything to me and how really is it possible to separate the metalmarks from the swallowtails and decide which ones we really want to keep? After all, they’ve all gathered as much materialistic dust as they can manage, and I wanna spare these redundant sunavabitches the wrath of a burning building.

When I play my little fire evacuation game, and it’s been a hard day I try and make things easier on myself and the items count increases from 3 to as many as I can carry with my bare hands or otherwise a small carry case. All these things came to mind when I was packing for moving house 2 weeks ago, and I also thought about how, if I had to escape in a fire, those 3 items I should take is a hilariously bold move with a room that needs 12 brown boxes to house it’s contents. I might as well stay in and burn.

Moving isn’t anything new to me, i’ve moved 5 times before between continents, but it actually gets harder every time. Growing up in a family of ardent lepidopterists does that to you….My dad has kept possibly every replaced battery once used for his alarm clock, and also, all the pretty letters my mum has ever written him, received through transatlantic travel They were neatly placed inside the brown leather saddlebag he used to carry around. My mum keeps a ‘bottle of love’ I gave her when I was 6- a jam jar with a random assortment of (terrible) paper scrawls. As well as all every doll, or toy horse I loved and betrayed. I keep a conch that I took from a fisherman and sometimes I curl up on my bed with it pressed to my ear, listening to the waves of the shore I stole it from, and willing it to suck me inside. Some things we’ve had for so long, that we can barely remember those memories that used to flap and beat in our minds. Just ordinary things, too, and it’s all the more depressing to see when they’ve long lost their colours and have remained lifeless for years.

I don’t think Materialism is something that should be feared, it’s a way of holding onto life, holding onto our own sense of self and where we belong in this big wide world.

And for that reason, a movie I saw recently “Bunny and the Bull” by Paul King made me smile a few times. Obviously I let my preconceptions about it being made by the Boosh director dull any real expectations. It was indeed highly decorative, and visually rich, but it was also a very sensitive movie, centred on a painfully sensitive character- Stephen, whose life appears dominated by materialism, categorisation, organisation and perhaps OCD, to the point where he is terrified of leaving his own front door to a horribly unstructured world. What a nightmare!

Stephen’s home is wallpapered top to bottom with brown boxes, categorising almost everything he has ever used, owned, touched or produced (he stores his urine). One day when his meticulous daily routine is disrupted, he turns to the items in his boxes to recreate his unorganised past, hidden well from his consciousness through careful organisation of the present.

(This paragraph is a bit of a spoiler for the film so skip if you wish) The core of Stephen’s rather strange past story and strange current circumstances is only revealed at the end of his reminiscence when his bold, charismatic and close friend Bunny dies, leaving poor, shy, sensitive Stephen devoid of the safety and comfort he found through the abrasive Bunny. Were Stephen’s hoards of useless ‘stuff’ representative of his need to fill the emptiness he felt in bereavement? Does it represent a need to stay faintly attached to ‘real life’ through ‘real items’, providing closure through the comfort of knowing that most things can be kept safe and close to us always, even though Bunny was lost. Does it represent a coping mechanism, which allows him to structure his life at his own pace and in his own way than faltering for the unreliability of reality? In the end, Stephen manages to overcome his inner demons and begins to leave his house into the cold, inner city air. If Stephen were real, I would have liked to have asked him at that very moment, which 3 items he would salvage if his house were to burn down right behind him.

I should imagine it would be his scarf, hat and gloves.

It’s how we work- If only we didn’t attach ourselves so deeply to pretty, engaging, yet essentially useless items! They would still have wings, and would have just flown from a burning building. Maybe we’d see them around some day.

Growing some Antlers instead.

It's not my fault really that Nottingham have had some p4k 'gems' in the past few weeks, and thus i am provoked most unfairly to keep these gigs in the blog roll, despite my reluctancy- i am reluctant. i am.....

On Monday night, The Antlers played at the Social....and it was incredible.

It seems we need to start providing bands with some sort of award if their live shows can actually outshine their album/hype mutualism. When i first listened to "Hospice" i thought it was an awesome album, as did probably everyone who bought/downloaded it. I tried my best to ignore the contentious maps of meaning through the inter-webs that crumbled around Pete Silberman's beautifully constructed tower as if it didn't exist- and i couldn't see it falter. I paid no attention to the lyrical density or the fact that albums like this can have real 'concepts'.

...But it became apparent to me on Monday night, that "Hospice" cannot be exclusively phlegmatic on any level- the more you listen to it, the more obvious the hidebound of someone's extremely painful experience, and it's quite frankly, terribly haunting. Not merely because of the emotional burden that goes hand in hand with scenes of illness, hospitals and death that form the bathing fluid of Hospice, but because these emotions can be so probing to even those who haven't fully experienced them.

Death is inevitable, and we all have death anxiety; Irvin D. Yalom (who wrote a wonderful collection of stories called "Love's Executioner and other tales of Psychotherapy") calls it the 'price of admission to self-awareness'. Everything i've realised is down to evolution and telekinesis.... and an extension of such is the way death anxiety works on a collective consciousness. Everyone knows what it is to die, what it means to not exist or to not have someone else exist, to come to terms with the fact that it's a lonely old world and no one person has much of a chance of existing with you forever, no matter how much you love them or need them or want them.

It's also only when we face death that we have the sudden capacity to do remarkable things for others and for ourselves.

'though the fact of death destroys us, the idea of death can save us'

the fact is that she won't survive, the idea is that i keep bedside manners and do the best i can.....which means she can throw the thermometer right back at me if she wants to, she can scream and curse and then apologise as many times over as she wants, she can tell me to leave because she doesn't like my tone, even though i'm only trying to make her smile, but something keeps me standing by the hospital bed.

Peter Silberman's lyrics cut through me like a thousand knives; all of which can be found very neatly presented here

"There's a bear inside your stomach, a cubs been kicking you for weeks, and if this isn't all a dream, then we'll cut him from beneath. Well we're not scared of making caves, or finding food for him to eat. We're terrified of one another, terrified of what that means. But we'll make only quick decisions, and you'll keep me in the waiting room, and all the while i'll know we're fucked and not getting un-fucked soon. When we get home we're bigger strangers, than we've ever been before. You sit in front of snowy television, suitcase on the floor..."

I guess the track "Bear" is somewhat obviously touching on the idea of abortion, but it kinda reminded me about a form of cancer therapy based on 'visual imaging'; an admittedly pathetic sense of self-healing where the patient creates a visual metaphor for their chemotherapy fighting against a visual metaphor for their cancer. I thought of the bear inside her stomach as this wild and growing tumour in her body, and them not feeling scared of finding food and caves was the created sense of boldness they both had in getting through chemotherapy, he mentions making 'all the right appointments' in an earlier verse, and being terrified of one another stands for each others situations; one coping with a terminal illness and the other knowing and sensing the huge loss that is about to present itself, yet somehow the relationship needs to stay together, until it is no more.

You think you can say everything to someone who you know is going away for a very long time, but things just don't work that way, and all you care is that they don't notice how scared you are. I didn't ever intend to cut these lyrics up like this, but they come alive on that album, and whatever it means, the last thing i want to do is vitiate them. But what is this album if it isn't one to rip up? Hospice is so overexposed, it's actually underexposed....you can't understand another person's grief. This is where collective consciousness doesn't work.

I'm scared to sleep i hate my voice 'cause it only makes you angry. I only talk when you are sleeping. That's when i tell you everything, and i imagine that somehow you're going to hear me'.

When i try to move my arms sometimes, they weight too much to lift. I think you buried me awake (my one and only parting gift). But you return to me at night, just when i think i may have fallen asleep. your face is up against mine, and i'm too terrified to speak................

Live and Kicking with Bears and Japandroids

I've been knocked out pretty much all week. Days and days pass me by in bite size chunks; i look through a hole in the wall every morning i wake up, and see two hours in a 24 hour time span. Two hours spent numb after i've dragged my self around, kicking and screaming for so long that i can't even remember why anymore. And at those times of rare animation, it's pretty ridiculous to chew right when you've bitten off a little more than you can physically handle.

This week was different, because this time i was kicking for a different reason- the undeniable pleasure of great live music will always exist, no matter how dead you feel sometimes. I had travelled to Leeds on the Thursday for a mesmerising evening with Grizzly Bear. They came up and had a little taste, a little feel, and looked up at you with their big Grizzly Bear eyes and there was something special there (this is also what the camera crew on BBC's "Life" had said about the giant squid they were filming, i admit it, i plagiarised). ..


Under the blue and green light canopy, and the mock fire flies trapped in glass jars around them flickering their little wings, Veckatimest took on a whole new meaning for me. Ready, Able was astonishingly lovely, my favourite on that album. Cheerleader soared around the ceiling like birds in formation. The echoey vocals on Knife sounded like Romantic yetty calls up to the balcony where i was stood, and not for a second was i deterred by the ridiculous amounts of people that were rammed into Leeds Met Students Union (it's been a while since i've been to a gig this 'big'), and a good few of them were illuminated around the face with mobile elements (Boo).

As if this wasn't enough, the very noisy, very snazzy, very Sai's top 09 list of albums Japandroids were down in Nottingham supporting A Place To Bury Strangers at Bodega Social. After a rather depressing Friday of catching up on 2 weeks of lecture notes, i was almost too depressed to leave my room, but the very thought of missing Japandroids was a little painful- so i paid 8 quid just to see them support, since i'm not really a fan of APTBS.

Unfortunately, the two-piece only managed a 20 minute set, since they arrived late because their van broke down, but those 20 minutes were spit fire. Brian King the guitarist has a ridiculous amount of raucous energy about him; his enviably skinny guy frame in straight cut dark blue jeans jittered around on stage like a nervous cat. He says in his charming canadian slur that they used to think they were the loudest band ever until they toured with APTBS, and then they felt like a couple of girlies...."like your jeans" scoffed a punter, ZIINNNNGGG. Brian was not happy, and gave us all permission to spit on the guy- he was clearly some fat, rigid ugly person jealous that he wasn't sporting such a physique to prance on stage holding a guitar somewhat convincingly.


The Social crowds are always too cool for their own good (as my friend aptly mentioned after the gig), and remained relatively static despite the hysterical dance-worthy numbers in Hearts Sweats, Rockers East Vancouver, Young Hearts Spark Fire & Boys Are Leaving Town. I wasn't ashamed. I paid 8 quid for this god dammit and i'm gonna have a hip shake.

Got a drink while APTBS were on, went up for the last song. Strobe lighting gave me a fit. Loud. It's fucking loud up here. My ears, they're gone.

Light. all i could see was the fucking light- and this is why they cut Japandroids short???! Whatever. I bought their fucking t-shirt.

So anyway, i see drowned in sound did a ridiculously fucked up review of the Post-Nothing record.....no, it is not about suburban numbness, or blank interactions, or the modern Western malaise of personal and social detatchment. It's just not.

The Cooking Life: Titus Andronicus makes amazing culinary transformation- try it at home!!

Have a horrendous morning filled with car clamps and 2 hour social development lectures??

About ready to die when you get home and literally starving into your knees???

Want a satisfying lunch to ease the grievances?

Find that dusty Titus Andronicus album in the corner of your kitchen and put it into that fucking CD player, because it does exactly what it says on the packet- the "Airing of Grievances"

" i'm a hardcore smoothie lover and like my smoothies to have the perfect consistency; smooth, no coagulation between fruit and dairy, light, tasty, with just the right combo of ingredients. Couple that with ricotta and pine nut raviolli and you have a perfect lunch. But its difficult to get a lunch looking and tasting this perfect (well for me anyway) and its even worse when you're running on 2 1/2 hours sleep"

BUT NOT ANYMORE BECAUSE TITUS ANDRONICUS CAN ACTUALLY SOLVE THIS:

I'm telling you, just once, try making anything in the whole wide world listening to that album and it will come out beautifully. I like the album, not love, more like. But those guys are culinary transformers. I am going to write to them and thank them.

Or maybe i just had a lucky day in the kitchen?....naaaahhhhhhh.

Try it out at home by making Nigella's dark chocolate raspberry pudding cake (it's delicious, even if Nigella is um, the opposite)

185g self-raising flour

25g cocoa powder

250g unsalted butter

2 tbsp creme de framboise (optional)

100g caster sugar

100g light muscovado sugar

250g good quality dark chocolate

185ml strong black coffee

and 370ml water

2 large eggs, beaten lightly

250g raspberries

icing sugar, for dusting

1. Preheat goddam oven to 180C, fan 160 gas mark 4

2. sift flour & cocoa, set aside.

3. put butter, creme de framboise, sugars, chocolate, coffee and water in a thick bottomed saucepan and stir over a low heat until everythign melts and it looks smooth and glossy.

4. stir this mixture into sifted flour and cocoa. beat well until all smooth, then beat in the eggs. (dont worry if its runny, it will set, DONT ADD MORE FLOUR)

5. pour into cake tin (i used a heart shaped one :) ) until 2cm thick, then pour on raspberries, and put rest of mixture on top.

6. bake in oven for 40-45 minutes.

7. grunge is what the cake is alllll about, so dont bother making skewer come out super clean.

8. leave to cool for 15 mins and dust with icing sugar, cut into a broken heart if you wish, because broken hearts are more interesting than complete ones...

and it should hopefully come out like this.........

&

No Such Thing as Nosaj's Thing

The first listen i had of Nosaj Thing's album "Drift" was when i was driving down a relatively lonely dual carriage way on a dark afternoon with huge fat rain droplets pelting down on my windscreen. The sky had just about closed up and there was nothing but the stark distinction between wet and dry as i sat in my little car with the hard, starving rain threatening to break through my windows.

"Drift" sounds like that space between the wet and dry, the space that i feel relatively sheltered in but all the while i can feel the tension that builds as the rain gets harder. If i put down my window it will attack me, though i can't help but want to do it anyway.

The hugely exciting openers "Quest" and "Fog" sounds like what would happen eventually if i decided to open my windows and doors to a torrential downpour, and my car was consumed by rain water; dark and dank and delightfully distressing, and me stood in the midst of it, soaking through and through. By the time the glitchy synth action of "Caves" came around i would spiral into a state of mania, not contemplating my actions but reliving the necessity of them in denial.

On the first listen, i could only get up to track 6 and got impatient with the rest of the album- i thought most of the infectious swagger of this record and the 'drops' were already exhausted from tracks 1 to 6 . How wrong i was! Lords the last track "kicks 7 different types of ass" as one person put it on a album review comment on a site i was on earlier.

I do like this video a lot too- "Aquarium" from the Views/Octopus EP.

Good Literature for an Emotional Breakdown...with love from Russia

My struggle with reading for want of a more interesting book each time this summer has got me thinking of the Twentieth Century Russian Literature module i grew to adore in First Year. The module was the most depressing thing i've ever studied (obviously not because i didn't enjoy it) but because the process of falling in love with it required ripping the literature apart tentatively, layer by lamentable layer to it's bitterly sorrowful core. I remember sobbing over open pages the night before the exam, not because of fear of failure, but because it hurt to come to the realisation that through the swathes of surrealism, dark humour and fantastic tales of dodgy science and lovingly fraudulent characters in these books, there lay only (and not so well disguised after all) genuine human suffering.

I think i felt more emotionally destroyed by these books because of the brilliantly submissive style of writing the authors adopted to follow censorship guidelines set by the Soviet government. As a result, everything about the books; the characters, the plots seemed 'unreliable', not because of the author's intention to deceive the reader exactly, but because of the need to reveal as much as possible through as little as possible, which felt slightly abusive. In practical psychology, the individual is easily reduced to a vulnerable state through the realisation of their childhood state. I felt like reading these books did something similar to me, because of the sense of struggle to find and validate the familiar or 'the obvious'.

The module covered some lesser known works of russian literature (as opposed to the Tolstoy or Dostoevsky) in the context of the changes that occurred within the country during the Soviet period.

‘Dammit, i spent five years doing nothing but extracting cerebral appages...You know how much work i did on the subject- an unbelievable amount. And now comes the crucial question-what for? So that one fine day a nice little dog could be transformed into a specimen of so-called humanity so revolting that he makes one’s hair stand on end.....this doctor, is what happens when a researcher, instead of keeping in step with nature, tries to force the pace, and lift the veil’.

I wrote my essay on Bulgakov's relatively under-appreciated 'Heart of a Dog' (the full english translation can be found here) as opposed to his most recognised novel 'The Master and Margarita" (which i actually haven't read yet). Heart of a dog has the 'mad scientist' moniker highly in place as it follows the story of a Dr. Preobrazhensky- a bourgeoisie surgeon with a typical distaste for the proletarians echoed by his ambition to transform a lowly street dog (Sharikov) into a human being- who ironically turns out to be a proletariat who Preobrazhensky must either come to terms with or destroy. As you can imagine the end is inevitable.. It is a relatively simple storyline that Bulgakov builds upon beautifully to allow for worlds of exploration in thematic structure which includes the obvious conflict between the bourgeoisie and proletariats and also class struggle to a Communist utopia in Russia.

Preobrazhensky complains about the carpet being removed from the staircase in his block of flats, by the management committee of soviet communists, he says in anger,

‘Did Marx forbid people to keep their staircases carpeted?’

Being somewhat of a 'scientist' myself, i particularly enjoyed the portrayal of science under the Soviet system in Heart of a Dog. The short comings of science in the novel reflect the short comings of the political system. Not only did the Soviet Union limit the ability of science to improve by restricting the type of research conducted (i.e. genetic research was discouraged in order to culturally isolate Russia from capitalist influence of Germany where genetics was a prime area of study), but also by channelling the obsession with space research and animal experimentation that lead to unethical scientific practise (i.e. Demikhov's two headed dog - also there was a program recently on channel 4 about Soviet Dogs in Space if one is interested)

"There is always a place for heroism in our lives"

"Omon Ra"by Victor Pelevin (full English translation here) was probably my favourite of all the novels we studied, because it epitomises the playfulness of Russian Literature in expressing those strong values of friendship, compassion, bravery, all the nice things that make good adventure stories, yet is a thoroughly harrowing, awesome bit of Russian sci-fi which follows the young Omon, a boy with an aspiration to leave his dull soviet life to be a fighter pilot. Omon's brilliant ability in aeronautics has him unexpectedly accepted into a space program to the moon where he is trained up to be a astronaut. Along the way, Pelevin sensitively presents humanity in a heartless world with a brilliant plot twist. Heart-Breaking:

"all of my childhood dreams about the future were born of gentle sadness native to those evenings that seem to be detached from the rest of your life, when you lie in deep grass by the remains of someone else's campfire, your bicycle resting nearby, the west still bearing purple bands from the sun that had just set, while in the east there are already first stars popping up. I haven't seen or experienced very much in my life, but I liked most of what I have, and I always counted on the trip to the Moon to absorb everything that I passed by in hopes of encountering it again later, to take it in more finally and forever this time; how was I to know that the best things in life are always seen as if from the corner of one's eye? While I was a kid, I often imagined extraterrestrial vistas: stone-strewn planes, furrowed by craters and illuminated by otherworldly light, sharp mountain peaks in the distance, black sky with the glowing coal of the sun and stars around it; I pictured the layers of space dust, many feet deep, and the stones resting motionless on the lunar surface for billions and billions of years - I was for some reason strongly impressed by the thought of a stone being able to remain in one place for all that time, and then I would bend down and pick it up with the thick fingers of my spacesuit. I thought of looking up and seeing the blue globe of Earth above, looking like the school globe distorted by the teared-over lenses of the gas mask, and how this ultimate moment of my life will connect me to all those other moments when I felt myself on the verge of something wondrous and unfathomable"

I should be reading that one again soon.

I wrote about Platonov's "Foundation Pit" in the exam; an account of dystopia set during the first year of the Five-Year plan, evolves around the idea of the Kohlhoz- the complete Collectivization of farms ordered by Stalin and the destruction of the Kulaks (rich peasants) resulting in a horrific famine and death of thousands of innocent people. The plot is straightforward; the peasants are building a 'foundation pit' so as to build on top of it a huge house to accomodate all the proletariats of the world where they can live in peace together, and find 'happiness through labour' away from the destructive world. The peasants are steeped in a hopeless existence glossed with illusions of a empty promise unable to recognise that they stand knee deep in dirt. Yet they 'do it for their children' and use the young girl Nastya as the little hope that they work for, the little girl who represents the new Russia who they are building the pit for. *Spoiler* one can't help but be amused that at the end of the novel the pit serves as a very large grave for the little girl who dies as a result of neglect from the workers, too caught up in their own dreams that they abandon reality.

However, reading this book is a little less straightforward as although from the outset Platonov seems to wallow in crude 'pity for the pitiful', his surreal style of writing (precursor to modern existentialism) about people and their lives rather confusedly, produces words just as futile as the endeavours of these peasants who dig mindlessly night and day for a pit that is forever doomed to be completed. It seems that Platonov has this extraordinary talent for immersing his characters and his readers in emotional angst, stubbornly producing the existence of the suffering peasants in his novel into the mind of the reader ever present now as they were back then.

‘they lay in their empty coffins as if they were cramped little homes, feeling shut in and at peace’.

It is interesting to note that Platonov grew up next to a railway, where his father worked as a railway engineer. It is said that the young Platonov considered the trains as living and breathing machines, which is most evident in the breath of life he gives to his works, especially the foundation pit, where the characters in themselves are represented as hollow, starving, hopeless souls, filled only with pretty passionate pointless words.....It is a great read if only for the writing style but be prepared to get serious, seriously absurd.

I hope to be this enthusiastic about a book again some day. Forster's "Passage to India" almost killed me. I can't start on "Midnight's Children" just yet either.