| |
Sunday, September 29, 2002
Sunday, September 29, 2002
The Polyphonic Spree's album, The Beginning Stages of..., is pretty darn good. It had me checking the inlay for signs of Jonathan Donahue or Dave Fridmann's involvement (the vocals are very reminiscent of the former and the record as a whole has the same ambience as Fridmann's work on See You on the Other Side and Home XIV) and coming away surprised at finding none. Optimism doesn't tend to sell very well; I hope TPS can break the rule. These are big songs, devotionals to the sun, bright-eyed innocence, sweeping singalongs; they wipe the cycnicism away from your eyes for a short while. One negative: the album's last track, A Long Day, hasn't done anything for me so far. Half an hour of heavily-treated vocal sounds repeating over and over again with a few pitch shifts thrown in may well be a useful tool for meditation, but it doesn't really raise any great excitement and only serves to detract from the rest of the record, feeling more like a novelty track than anything else.
The Boom Bip album, Seed to Sun, is also getting a fair amount of play right now. Experimental hip-hop that manages to take a new direction with every track and always sounds totally fresh, stand-outs include the two stream-of-consciousness vocal numbers, The Unthinkable and Mannequin Hand Trapdoor I Remember - the latter being the album's highlight, a track that changes shape just as you think you've got it pinned down and absolutely nails the use of voice as instrument of percussion - and the lush opener, Roads Must Roll - a gentle wave of beats and scratches underpinning a three-note lullaby with exotic, Arabian Nights strings floating in and out of the mix.
The reissue of the older Flaming Lips stuff that goes under the name Finally the Punk Rockers are Taking Acid, by the way, has the ugliest cover I've seen in a long time. Picture four guys sat in a row on a sofa, one in dungarees, one done out like a third-rate Robert Smith clone, one with a purple and blue striped shirt but no trousers and one who looks like a slacker from an Australian soap, circa 1989. Picture the true horror of your idols' early years. There's no proper representation of the original artwork, either, which is a bit of a disappointment.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 22:18
Friday, September 27, 2002
Friday, September 27, 2002
A big hello to whoever linked to this blog after searching Google for, and I quote, "chewing thinking brain history." One question: why?
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 02:18
Monday, September 23, 2002
Monday, September 23, 2002
Bonsai Kitten. Very funny. Very likely to get me in trouble with people for finding it funny.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 00:29
Sunday, September 22, 2002
Sunday, September 22, 2002
How cool is this?
Hippocampus Press release HP Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time with the original Astounding Stories cover art intact. Done right, books really can be beautiful things.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 02:08
Saturday, September 21, 2002
Saturday, September 21, 2002
Thoughts on Stephen Baxter's Origin:Enjoyable enough as a novel in its own right, yet deeply disappointing as a climax to a trilogy. For a time, the chopping and changing between narratives is annoying; just as you find yourself getting drawn into one character�s story, you�re abruptly yanked out of it and inserted into another. Then, as you start becoming engrossed in that one, it happens again. The pacing seems off for a great deal of the novel � the initial events are described with ridiculous haste and absolutely no time is spent on character exposition - although this becomes less of an issue with the introduction of Manekatopokanemahedo and Hugh McCann (the chunk of story dealing with the latter almost having the ambience of a Verne story). Most frustrating, the promised resolution of the Fermi paradox is hugely underwhelming and pretty much given away on the very first page of the book. It�s a cheap cop-out and creates the impression that Baxter suddenly realised that he didn�t have an ending, an impression that�s reinforced by the speed with which he wraps the story up. After so much build up, spread over three novels, a few paragraphs given over to an explanation can�t fail to be inadequate. You�re expecting a big bang, but get given a slightly limp squelch. As I say, enjoyable enough, but� bah. The series' coda, Phase Space, is currently sitting on a shelf waiting to be read. Depressingly, on first glance it seems to be nothing more than a hastily cobbled together collection of short, unrelated stories.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 17:06
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Wednesday, September 18, 2002
Apologies for the lack of updates recently. Everything should be back to normal tomorrow.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 23:43
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
Wednesday, September 11, 2002
The Jet Set Radio soundtracks - what Dee Lite would sound like now if they had the ability to write more than just one decent song, teamed up with 3 Feet High and Rising-era De La Soul and went completely instrumental. Daft samples, tumbling, bubbling basslines and a complete refusal to take any of it seriously.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 13:23
Arse. Amazon.co.jp do ship internationally and it's a damn sight cheaper than searching for US companies that import Japanese stuff and export it to the UK. Note to self: look properly in future.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 02:13
Monday, September 09, 2002
Monday, September 09, 2002
More glue leakage. I've now found the culprit - a split stress ball thingy on the top shelf - but it's too late to repair the new damage, this time to Smog's Dongs of Sevotion, The Fall's The Twenty-Seven Points and an Okeh Records compilation. Damn. I didn't even know I owned a bloody stress ball thingy.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 13:23
Sunday, September 08, 2002
Sunday, September 08, 2002
I'm A C-list Celebrity Whose Career's On The Skids - Get Me Out Of Here!. What was the point of that? I've only been subjected to the last half-hour of the last episode, but Jebus, how is that entertainment? "I've learnt a great deal about myself." You've been in there two weeks, you tossers. You want entertaining 'reality' television? Mix up the has-beens with never-famous general public. Cross Celebrity Big Brother with common or garden Big Brother. Tantrums ensue. I'd watch that.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 21:56
50s paranoia movies! Greatest thread topic ever!
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 01:58
Friday, September 06, 2002
Friday, September 06, 2002
Holy moley... talk about overkill. In a bid to cut down/stamp out gambling in their country, the Greek government have made playing electronic games in public illegal - story here.Finally got the chance to watch The Royal Tenenbaums yesterday. The most surprising thing is that it really is as fantastic as everybody was making out. The one problem that I had with Anderson's Rushmore was that, try as I might, I could never really believe in the Max Fischer character. Possibly more to do with the fact that Schwartzman looks like he's about 30 that any deficiencies in his ability to act. Whatever, it's not a problem that occurs in ...Tenenbaums. No matter how stylised the direction, eccentric the characters or surreal the events, it remains both convincing and engaging. The characters, for all their quirks and peculiarities, are all three dimensional. Listening to the Bright Eyes album, Lifted, or The Story is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground. My first exposure to Conor Oberst - as usual, I've studiously avoided someone because of the hype surrounding them. While it was a tactic that paid off - for a short while, until I buckled - with the astonishingly poor Strokes and Vines albums, I'm thinking that I should have taken the risk earlier in this case. I need more time to fully digest the record, but, after five or six listens, I'm pretty sure it's very good indeed. Some tracks are a mite overblown and overlong and the album could have been more convincing if it was a bit shorter, but I absolutely love the songs False Advertising, Bowl of Oranges, Nothing Gets Crossed Out and Let's Not Shit Ourselves (To Love and be Loved). The deep melancholy of the lyrics may occasionally threaten to overwhelm, but there's a subtle optimism hidden deep inside and the music swoons and sparkles, the orchestration gentle and intelligently employed.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 02:31
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
Many thanks to Miguel for pointing out that a Sperman strip already exists, the creation of one Roberto Fontanarrosa. I thought there must be one somewhere out there; it was like a comic strip take on the Fermi Paradox - "in a world this big, somebody must have created a Sperman character, but, if that's the case, where is he?"
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 12:43
Once again, RatherGood.com make my life worth living, this time with Pavarotti loves elephants and Punk Kittens.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 00:03
|
Losing the fight against mediocrity for the last few years. Fire a volley |
