Monday, May 31, 2010
RIP Dennis Hopper 1936-2010
This weekend saw the passing of an American screen icon (alas, I am not referring to the late Gary Coleman who I fear is the Farrah Fawcett in this mortal coil double feature): Dennis Hopper. He'll of course be remembered for his numerous iconic screen roles and his wild off-camera adventures and misadventures, but to me there are a couple standout performances that I would like to point you in the direction of if you haven't been persuaded by most of the lamestream media's coverage these past few days.The first are of course two of his appearances that you'll probably hear a lot about this week. I am speaking of his star-making directing/co-writing/co-starring turn in Easy Rider and his third act performance as the unnamed photojournalist in Apocalypse Now. Easy Rider was of course one of the defining films of the 1960's counterculture and with its pessimistic conclusion effectively acted as a death knell for the hippies. The fact that Hopper was essentially making what amounted to a documentary about riding around on motorcycles and doing lots of drugs and turned it into a classic is nothing short of a cinematic miracle. On a similar note, his role as the photojournalist, basically an extended cameo, showed the dark places the late 60's went to as the idealist is transformed into a bizarre sycophant and follower of a madman.
Then there's his appearances in genre fare like Speed, Land of the Dead, and of course the goddamn Super Mario Bros. movie. Hopper's trademark intensity served him well as a bad guy in movies like these; even if some of them weren't very good, you could always trust Hopper to deliver a worthwhile performance. He was just fun to watch. Seeing him play Bowser (or rather "King Koopa") in Super Mario Bros. is one of those childhood memories that I always recall fondly, namely because I'm able to say "Holy crap, that was Dennis Hopper!" whenever I get the privilege of talking about that movie. His role as the evil post-apocalyptic land baron in Land of the Dead was one of those classic George A. Romero "the real monster is us" moments and one of the many things right about that movie.
Can we also take a moment to acknowledge the fact that Dennis Hopper was Victor Drazen, the first 24 chief bad guy? It seems almost fitting that he passed the same week that the show did.
And let's not forget the ever-famous "Sicilian Scene" from the Quentin Tarantino-penned True Romance.
But for all time, my favorite Dennis Hopper acting role was him as Frank Booth in David Lynch's classic Blue Velvet. My first exposure to this film was when I was about twelve or thirteen years old. We didn't have HBO and this was before naked ladies were that easily accessible on the internet, so for my kicks I would sometimes hope to come across an R-rated, sex and nudity heavy movie on IFC or the Sundance channel. One night, I was lucky/unlucky enough to get Blue Velvet. Sure the beautiful Isabella Rossellini was naked in it, but it just made me feel bad.
Dennis Hopper as Frank is one of my favorites not just for the fact that he's a great psycho villain to menace Kyle MacLachlan, but for those brief moments of vulnerability he shows when he hears songs such as the title number and this scene.
This scene always cemented my love for Dean Stockwell, and this is before he was Cavil and before I knew the genius of Quantum Leap.
For a movie that explores the dark side of small town America and the darkness beneath the facade of suburban tranquility, the outwardly evil Frank shows that even bad guys, no matter how sick and twisted, might have some small iota of goodness in them.
Dennis Hopper passed this weekend after a long illness and proved that the only thing evil enough to kill him was cancer. That's badass. He will always be remembered in the hearts of movie lovers everywhere, and I know for a fact that I'm going to get a little teary-eyed at next year's Oscar "In Memoriam" montage.
Rest in peace, Mr. Hopper. You didn't blow it. Continue...
Thoughts of an Aspiring Music Snob:
Week 61 - The Knife
Chris is trying to compensate for his lack of musical knowledge by immersing himself in one new artist each week. At the end of the week, he will write up a brief summary of his opinions. You can read about the origin and parameters of this project here.
Electronic music! It's the domain of nerds and dance fiends, of which I confess to adhering to the former group while completely eschewing the latter. The vast majority of music today has been influenced by the rise of synthesizers and other such computerized instruments. But except for Depeche Mode (Week 5) and Daft Punk (Week 15), I've given short shrift to the Music of the Future.
The problem is that, since most synthesizers went from analog to digital in the 1980s, most electronic music has been created for dance clubs. The genre has a long and storied history - from the experiments of Varèse and Stockhausen in the 50s to the early jams of Kraftwerk to the space-age psychedelia of Jean Michel Jarre. But one of the consequences of the Electronic Music Revolution is it's use to create funky, danceable beats. Enter techno and house music.
That sort of music isn't bad if you like to dance, I suppose. But the issue I have is that music conducive to dancing isn't necessarily the most interesting stuff to listen to; rather, it tends to be repetitive and predictable.
This is one of the reasons that I found The Knife so refreshing - their music represents a kind of middle ground between the relentless rhythms of techno on one hand, and the directionless of electronic ambient music on the other. I suppose you could call their music "electropop" or "electroclash." They combine a good pop hook and some catchy songwriting with more experimental electronic sounds.
It ain't for everyone, and there's a chance I found it so intriguing because of my unfamiliarity with current electronic music. But the music was unique and original without being offputting or needlessly experimental. The Knife uses synthesizers and digital effects just like any other instrument - which, in the end, made their music memorable to me.
WEEK 61
ARTIST OF THE WEEK: The Knife
WHAT I KNEW BEFORE: I had seen The Knife on a few "Best of the Decade" lists at the end of last year, which led me to procure their single "Silent Shout." It was good enough that I decided to devote a week to them.
MY LISTENING: I listened to Silent Shout (2006) every day this week, as well as listening to Tomorrow in a Year (2010) three times, and Deep Cuts (2003) twice.
WHAT I LIKED: The Knife's most acclaimed album, Silent Shout, is a masterpiece from start to finish. It's worth listening to even if you hate most electronic music. The duo manages to craft eerie but catchy pop songs, utilizing their digital tools to great effect without ever overreaching. The music shifts from danceable to ambient to pure catchy pop, but in each instance, the electronic effects serve the song - and always with amazing results.
The entire album trembles with an ethereal quality, as if The Knife is broadcasting music from some other world. I found it amazing how such incredibly catchy music can still feel so isolated and alienating. Part of it comes from the amazing vocal manipulation of singer Karin Andersson - from the sinister whisper of "Silent Shout" to the shrill screeching of "We Share Our Mother's Health" to the soft melody of "Still Light," Andersson not only uses her vocal talent to full effect, but utilizes digital vocal manipulation to go beyond what the human voice can do. What should have come across as silly instead highlights the otherworldly quality of the album - Andersson's voice is talented and almost human, but not quite.
The sheer variety of music on Silent Shout is also impressive for what could have been a one-trick album. The title track adequately sums up the unearthly pop aesthetic, but songs like "The Captain," which uses ambient noises for half the track, are contrasted with "We Share Our Mother's Health," a dance song with such amazing beats layered on top of each other that you can't help bob your head, to the old-fashioned singable chorus in "One Hit." Electronic innovators often have a limited bag of tricks, but this is not true with The Knife.
The Knife's next collaboration, Tomorrow in a Year, is a completely different beast, and one that may serve to alienate their audience. Dubbed an "opera" about Charles Darwin and produced in a collaborative effort with German DJ Mount Sims, this album defies easy classification. For starters, it's nothing like the group's previous work - the catchy pop songs have been replaced with ambient noises from the Galapagos and operatic singers wailing selections from Darwin's letters.
The moniker "opera" alone reeks of intellectual pretension, but the album lives up to the title. In a way, it reminds me of Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach, another experimental work dubbed an "opera" that really stretches the limits of the word's definition. Tomorrow in a Year is at first hard to tackle. A ninety-minute work that begins with hisses and garbled natural sounds, crescendoing with the duo imitating bird calls, and concluding with a cathartic anthem of Linnaean nomenclature, nothing of the group's easily digestible catchy tunes remains. But Tomorrow in a Year works on its own terms, if you take the time to digest it. Lie back, close your eyes, and listen to bizarre ambient sounds slowly morph into the electropop The Knife is known for.
A musical metaphor for Darwinian evolution? Perhaps. I do think Tomorrow in a Year deserves to stand aside the best avant-garde works of the post-World War II era. In a completely original format, The Knife manages to pay tribute to one of modernity's most important thinkers and, more impressively, manage to portray the man as both a shrewdly observant scientist, and as a man who stood in awe of the majesty and beauty of the natural world. I can't even recommend any single tracks - it would be like selecting a single aria from a Wagner opera. It just wouldn't work.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE:
In case you haven't figured it out by now, I liked The Knife a lot. That being said, I acknowledge that it's not for everybody. As electronic music goes, it's some of the best that I've heard, and contains a human warmth that a lot of similar music lacks. But if electronic music is not your thing, you're probably going to pass on The Knife - it's not happy music by any means, even if it's infused with a certain amount of mystery.
Ditto with their electro-opera Tomorrow in a Year. The album begins with a weird smorgasboard of ambient sounds and operatic wailing. Tracks like "Epochs" are a good beginning to a work that eventually leads somewhere - but I understand that there are many who will find tracks like these unbearably pretentious and hard to stomach. As much as I disagree, I can't really blame anyone who feels that way.
I haven't mentioned The Knife's sophomore album, Deep Cuts, only because it didn't impress me as much as the rest of their output. Deep Cuts is not a bad album, but it's almost completely pop and dance music without any of the interesting ethereal auras of their later music. Songs like "Heartbeats" or "Listen Now" are catchy on their own terms, but unmemorable to me. It sounds more like stuff that would be background music for a dance club scene in a movie.
FURTHER EXPLORATION WOULD ENTAIL: In addition to their first album The Knife (2001), there's also Andersson's solo album Fever Ray (2009) to explore.
BEST SONG YOU'VE HEARD: "Silent Shout"
Maybe you haven't heard it, but I think it's a pretty good summary of everything good about the group. Just ignore the creepy visuals.
BEST SONG YOU HAVEN'T HEARD: "Colouring of Pigeons"
Again, it's hard to listen to tracks from Tomorrow in a Year divorced from their context, but I think this is a pretty good sample of the mounting conclusion of the album.
NEXT WEEK'S ARTIST: Nirvana
Continue...
Sunday, May 30, 2010
After the Jump: Stimulated Emissions
Subscribe to the podcast via the feed, or find us on the iTunes store!
I just got back from the latest in-person gathering of the Charge Shot!!! editorial team, and as always it was a lovely time. Hey, we even recorded this podcast in person, just for you! Expect a walk-on cameo by friend and sometime-commenter Ryan, and extended commentary from friend and sometime-poster Steph. She educates us about fucking lasers.
Also, we talk about swing music, The Room, the untimely passing of Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper, Apple's run-in with the DOJ, Farmville ice cream, Facebook privacy, Microsoft's upcoming Natal, and more!
As always, thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next week!
Continue...
Writer’s Jukebox – The Cats Are Away…
Another week, another excuse why there’s no real Jukebox entry. And that’s a real shame. I’ve been enjoying this feature, especially how it presents our staff as a cast of characters, not just individuals who take turns posting each day of the week.
That said, some of this cast of characters will be busy this weekend convening in our nation’s capital. The planning and prep for that has superseded Jukebox planning on my part.
So instead of some music picks to read and hunt down, I’ll give you another way to waste away your Sunday. A coder over at Music Machinery has created The Swinger. The code hacks any song by stretching the first half of each beat and shrinking the second half. It’s stupid simple and stupidly genius.
I can’t get enough of it.
Sweet Child O' Mine (Swing Version) by plamere
Every Breath You Take (swing version) by TeeJay
Enter Sandman- the Swing Version by plamere
Around the World - the swing version by plamere
Super Freak by Rick James (Swing version with Echo Nest Remix) by tfine
[thanks, Gizmodo]
Continue...
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
"We Have To Go Back!": A Look Back at Lost
"There was no mythology to speak of in place during the early episodes of the series. We were building it as we went along." - David Fury, Lost screenwriter, May 20, 2008.
"We're still trying to be ... firmly ensconced in the world of science fact. I don't think we've shown anything on the show yet ... that has no rational explanation in the real world that we all function within...nothing is flat-out impossible. There are no spaceships. There isn't any time travel." - Lost producer Damon Lindelof, Scifiwire interview, January 20, 2005.
Unless you were hiding under a rock last week, you're probably aware that the labyrinthine tangles of Lost came to an end after six seasons of mythological riddles. For the past few years, fans have been heatedly debating the show's myriad mysteries, struggling to find some sort of cohesive explanation for every smoke monster, time traveler and four-toed statue.
The finale, like most aspects of the show, was rather divisive. If you were a fan of Lost in any capacity, you probably fall somewhere along the spectrum of "best finale ever" on one end to "biggest copout ever" on the other.
For the record, I adhere to the latter school of thought. But enough blood and ink has been spilled on the Lost finale, and there's nothing worse than a blogger on the Internet bitching about how an episode of television wasn't commensurate with his exact expectations. Rather, now that the show has concluded, I thought it was be interesting to take a look back at Lost as one unified series. The producers have claimed over the years that they had an overarching narrative in place since day one (a claim that I highly doubt, given the quotes I provided above).
But can the show function as one grand narrative? In the last decade, the Internet and DVDs have allowed fans to watch every episode of a television series in order from start to finish, a feat that was difficult to do even back in 2000. As such, television has upped the ante. HBO series are renowned for their detailed and intricate plotting, but Lost was arguably the first network show since Twin Peaks to take the "don't miss a single episode" approach. It is a television series that is serial rather than episodic, demanding that the viewer watch in order, and promising increased payback to those who pay particular attention to small details. It's the perfect kind of show for the Internet age, well-suited for close re-watching and heated discussion on message boards and blogs.
But does the show work as a single unit? Let's take a look at each of the six seasons individually. If you haven't seen the show, there will be some spoilers ahead, but I'll try to be as vague as possible.
SEASON 1
The set-up: A group of survivors from a plane crash are forced to band together on a desert island. Initially concerned with day-to-day worries such as food, water, and escape, they eventually begin to realize that it's no ordinary island. Soon, they are confronted with mysterious radio signals, polar bears, native inhabitants, and an unseen monster. Meanwhile, a collection of flashbacks reveals to the audience the convoluted histories of the central characters.
My take: In later years, Lost always veered too hard toward either mythology or character development. But the first season struck the balance perfectly. The large cast allowed for many different character interactions, and watching the group struggle to work together was just as interesting as the mysteries that were presented. The first season about Lost manages to be ominous without being goofy, and the flashbacks to the characters' past allow the castaways to be interesting and developed in such a way that later seasons would struggle to replicate.
9 smoke monsters out of 10
SEASON 2
The set-up: The survivors have infiltrated a mysterious hatch, only to find that the island had previously been inhabited by some sort of shady research group. As some characters struggle with pressing a button that may or may not prevent the end of the world, others prepare to fight the "Others" - the group of hostile inhabitants also on the island.
My take: This is where the show hit it's first major snag, as many viewers were put off by the "magic button" subplot. This season is very slow-moving, but it does build toward an exciting conclusion, and the setting in the decaying research facilities of an unknown scientific enterprise is rather inspired. Still, the show is beginning to appear directionless, as a long-awaited conflict with the Others leads exactly nowhere, new characters are introduced only to be unceremoniously killed off and the character flashbacks become more and more irrelevant.
6.5 polar bears out of 10.
SEASON 3
The set-up: Several major characters have been kidnapped by the Others, and the group must band together in order to rescue them from a small hamlet of suburban houses(!). At the end of the season, it is revealed that the Others may be hiding from a larger threat.
My take: The first half of the season is atrociously terrible, and is where even the most steadfast fans began to check out. Characters are kept in cages for episodes at a time for no reason. Meaningless mysteries are presented and solved - it is revealed there is a second island nearby, for example. The flashbacks have become completely irrelevant. This season is only saved by the ominous ending, the clever conceit of the finale, and Michael Emerson's inspired portrayal of Ben Linus, the creepy, shifty leader of the Others.
4 DHARMA Initiatives out of 10.
SEASON 4
The set-up: Several characters team up with the Others to fight against a freighter with troops to invade the island. Meanwhile, the narrative flashbacks are replaced with flashforwards to the characters' futures, revealing some surprising future developments.
My take: The writers' strike led to an unfortunately truncated season. Still, this one is fast-paced and full of action, and the introduction of the new characters on the freighter led to some much-needed fresh blood in the cast. The use of flashforwards is also clever and rewards the viewer who pays attention.. On the other hand, the island's mythology is becoming more convoluted with no solution in sight, and many of the original characters are receiving far less screen time, as the writers struggle to find plot arcs for the large cast.
7 Crazy French Women out of 10
SEASON 5
The set-up: A mistake in the previous season has led to the island jumping through time and space. The characters struggle to correct this chronological mishap, and then find themselves stuck in the 70s working for the mysterious scientific research group only hinted at in previous seasons. At the end of the season, it is revealed that two opposing forces have been competing for control of the castaways...or something like that.
My take: This seasons is probably the most fun, although many fans were turned off by the sci-fi elements that no longer even try to disguise themselves. There are some interesting character developments, and the time travel conceit allows us to learn a lot about the island's history without the use of awkward monologues and stilted conversation. No major mysteries are solved, but the time traveling and likable supporting cast are so much fun that it's hard to notice. It's a goofy season, but goofy in a self-aware manner - in Season 5, Lost is just having a good time.
8 Magic Buttons out of 10
SEASON 6
The set-up: The entire island plot has been revealed to be the machinations of two warring brothers - one good, one evil. The characters must band together to prevent the evil brother from leaving the island. Meanwhile, the audience is presented with a mysterious alternate universe where the characters seem subconsciously aware of their lives on the Island.
My take: The introduction of the conflict between brothers so late in the show makes it hard for me to care about this conflict. Previously important plotlines - like the Others - are dropped entirely and never explained. The finale is filled with action and adventure, but the actual stakes are still hidden behind a veil of mystery, so when the characters begin fighting over a mysterious cave with a pillar of light, it's hard to care without knowing what the pillar of light is or what happens when it goes out. Meanwhile, the half of the season spent in this alternative universe is resolved in the most cheesy and lazy of all possible ways. The show ends with dozens of major questions unanswered, and a copout of an ending that practically invalidates the plot of the previous five seasons.
2 Pillars of Light out of 10
In the end, does Lost work as a coherent series? I don't think so. Any individual season can be watched as a unit; indeed, the plotting of each season is very well-done. But though each season has an easily discernible plot arc, the show falls apart when the viewer watches seasons back to back.
For example, the writers could never truly decide what the central conflict was. In season 2, it was the castaways fighting the Others. By Season 4, it was the Others fighting the island invaders. By Season 6, it was the mysterious figure of Jacob fighting his brother. But each previous conflict is left unexplained and unresolved as the writers move on to the next one; the ante is continually upped, but without bothering to clear the mess left behind. It's hard to justify the Others running around barefoot kidnapping castaways on a "List" in season 2 with the Others in Season 4 or Season 6. Each season is elaborately plotted, but an intra-seasonal viewing reveals a large number of plot holes and a basic thematic inconsistency.
Part of this stems from the perils of network television, in which shows are often unaware of how long they have to live or die. One can hardly blame the writers for making up stuff on the fly, or retconning previous developments in order to change the stakes. But part of me wonders if network television was the best medium for Lost. It might have thrived as an HBO series - where shows are given much more creative leeway, and often allowed to conclude even amid struggling ratings.
But I truly think Lost should have been a miniseries, say about 24 episodes or so. It wouldn't have been able to include all the mysteries that the series did, but it turned out that half those mysteries were dead ends and red herrings anyway. Miniseries allow the writers to sit down and plan the entire plot from beginning to end, and that's what Lost needed. The writers proved they could plot an entire season from start to finish - each individual season is wonderfully consistent and self-encapsulated.
Lost as an ambitious miniseries could have not only prevented many of the writing mishaps, but also the casting problems inherent in filming a show in Hawaii. (At least one character had to be killed off because that actor didn't want to live in Hawaii anymore). Instead, spread across six seasons, it was far too easy for cracks to appear in the Lost mythological facade, and far too difficult to craft the show into one sustained story.
Finally, there are Lost fans out there who maintain that it's really a show about characters and not about the mysterious island at all. Besides the obvious rebuttal (why write a bunch of island mysteries at all, then?), there's another reason I don't think this is true, and another reason why I think the show ultimately fails at its goals: the characters on Lost were rarely proactive.
For most of the series, the central characters found themselves responding to one crisis after another. Walt has been kidnapped! Invaders are coming! We're in 1975 now! We have to go back! This makes for exciting, fast-paced story telling. But it also makes for shitty character development, as the characters found themselves taking an entirely reactive role.
It's hard to flesh out characters when all they do is react to one thing after another. Real character development requires characters making their own decisions. The best seasons - Seasons 1 and 5 - found the characters doing just that, having to decide the best choice for themselves. The weakest seasons saw the characters running from one incident to another, not making any decisions so much as simply reacting to what was happening in front of them. The strange island incidents became lazy storytelling plain and simple - shortcuts to get the characters where they needed to be in order to advance the plot. The characters themselves never made any decisions; they were herded into certain situations through transparent deus ex machinas. In the end, much of Lost was simply a bunch of characters running back and forth while Stuff Happened To Them. It was clear that the characters always served the plot, and rarely was it the other way around.
Lost attempted to create a new kind of serialized story-telling, involving interesting characters coping with intricately-plotted mysteries. It didn't succeed, but the attempt was a hell of a lot of fun. A propensity of unexplained phenomena and not-quite-developed characters ultimately prevented the show from achieving what it was aiming for, but I'm glad there was a show with such lofty ambitions on network television - a medium normally reserved for quotidian crime dramas and forgettable sitcoms.
But in the end, I'm afraid I have to chalk up the entire series of Lost as a failure, weighed down by its own grandiose aims, even as individual seasons of the show are successes. It's an interesting, creative, wildly ambitious failure, perhaps even a failure that's worth watching. But a failure, nonetheless.
Continue...
Exit Through The Gift Shop, or The Art of the Hoax
“I’m playing chess. I don’t know how to play chess, but life is a chess game.”
So says Thierry Guetta, the subject of the new street art documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop.
I say street art documentary, but the film’s director, the British street artist Banksy, considers it “the world’s first street art disaster movie.”
And while Guetta is without a doubt the focus of the film, it wasn’t always supposed to be that way. Guetta originally set out to cull from thousands of hours of disorganized footage a documentary about the street art movement, specifically its kingpin: Banksy.
As the story goes, Banksy turned the tables on the eccentric Guetta after viewing the spoiled fruits of the man’s labor: the 90-minute nightmare Life Remote Control: The Movie. For our viewing pleasure, Banksy includes a minute or two of Guetta’s disasterpiece in Gift Shop. Life Remote Control is Koyaanisqatsi overexposed, sped up, unfocused, and tripped out. It’s seventeen out-of-sync projectors playing low-budget skate videos on the same screen from different angles. It’s a reflection of a reflection of a reflection of flaming bag of dog shit.
If it’s real.
You see, Banksy isn’t in the business of creating straightforward work. When he’s not stenciling rats armed with anti-establishment wit, he’s cutting apart phone booths and welding them back together to look like they’ve been murdered. He painted a live elephant to match a wallpapered living room, forcing show attendees to deal with “the elephant in the room.” His infamous art on the Gaza Strip Barrier – a child in balloon-powered flight, a giant pair of scissors cutting out an entryway, people digging toward paradise on the other side – undermine the nature and purpose of the structure. At his best, he deals in subversion or the simulation thereof.
So forgive me if, in the days after my seeing the movie, I’ve become less convinced that what I saw was an actual documentary.
Plenty of others seem to agree. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw wrote in March, “As a documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop is as about as reliable and structurally sound as that house-front with the strategically placed window that falls on top of Buster Keaton.” Jeanette Catsoulis of The New York Times’ believes that “what [viewers] will find is, like Banksy’s best work, a trompe l’oeil: a film that looks like a documentary but feels like a monumental con.”
Faux documentaries are not new. And I don’t mean the mockumentary format championed by Christopher Guest and company. I’m speaking of your Borats, your pre-release Blair Witch Projects, even Orson Welles’ F for Fake – films enhanced by how they blur the line between truth and fiction.
That line must go right through Thierry Guetta’s house – no, right through his brain.
Gift Shop gives us a lot about Guetta to start. He’s a French export living with his family in LA. He used to earn money upselling old clothing as “vintage” (remember this when we get to the part about him selling art). He has (or had) a compulsive need to film everything, which blossomed into him following around and “documenting” local street artists. His cousin, Space Invader, turned him onto Shepard Fairey (yeah, that guy), who then hooked up him with the infamous Bansky.
The events leading up to Guetta’s connection with Bansky seem just odd enough to be true – certainly worthy of documenting. What follows begins to stretch and distort plausibility.
Guetta becomes Banksy’s right-hand man, filming everything under the auspices of a documentary that doesn’t exist. As I said, Banksy forces his hand and the result is Life Remote Control: The Movie. Banksy then encourages Guetta to become Mr. Brainwash, a street artist treading ground stupidly similar to Banksy. In 2008, MBW hires a workshop of prop artists and graphic design elves to churn out an absurd amount of material for an art show he calls “Life Is Beautiful.” LA Weekly covers the massive show. These “works of art” sell for preposterous amounts of money.
Fast Company’s Alissa Walker isn’t buying any of it: “Guetta is the biggest give-away here. His klutzy, bumbling character is blissfully over-the-top and clearly in on the ruse.” His busted English and Palin-esque thought processes may be entirely genuine, but his bio doesn’t jive with itself. How does a father of four leave his shady t-shirt selling business to gallivant around the world with street artists? How does he single-handedly finance the mammoth “Life Is Beautiful” show? And why do we never see him making the art himself?
I don’t believe that Guetta is Banksy. Dude’s too real and too crazy to be that kind of mastermind. But I wouldn’t put it past him to gleefully take part in an elaborate ruse constructed by Banksy and co-conspirator Fairey (who happily endorsed the Mr. Brainwash show). Just look at how much fun he has playing toreador to New York’s futile bull.
But did Life Remote Control ever exist? Did Banksy really discover Guetta because of the Frenchman’s filmic aspirations? Is Guetta actually opening a show in New York or designing album covers for Madonna? Or is he merely a vehicle for more of Banksy’s subversions?
If that’s the case – and MBW’s work is just, as Walker puts it, “Banksy trying not to look like Banksy – then this goes beyond pseudonym. Banksy’s subverted the concept of the artist. And how better to do that on a grand scale than to make a “documentary” about the con man through which you’re delivering your newest work? Work of purposefully “poor” quality, meant to mock and humiliate those foolish enough to pay for it.
Banksy’s mockery permeates what Slate calls “a poisoned valentine to the movement he made famous.” We’re given an hour and a half to guffaw at and cringe in embarrassment for Guetta. To slap our foreheads as he stumbles over his explanation of the Mr. Brainwash moniker or his convoluted Elvis-with-toy-gun painting. To chuckle knowingly as Banksy closes the film by saying, “I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don't do that anymore.”
He’s targeting artists. He’s targeting overeager collectors. And if we’re content to see Gift Shop as a mere documentary, Banksy’s targeting us.
Continue...
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Game Review: Picross 3D
We gamers, we like our guns and explosions plenty. We like our open-ended worlds and our ridiculously contrived stories, our endeavors to create art and our abstract puzzle-platformers, our epic adventures and our goofy courtroom dramas.
Picross 3D, part of Nintendo’s casual-friendly “Touch Generations” lineup, is none of those things. It is, in fact, a puzzle game.
Puzzle games were “casual” games before the casual game zeitgeist was a glimmer in Satoru Iwata’s eye – games like Tetris had everyone from you to your little sister to your mom passing around the Game Boy on long car trips, so it’s no surprise that puzzle games continue to lead the charge in the war to get your grandmother into video games.
Picross 3D is neither action-packed nor thought provoking, but despite this it’s very much worth your time and money, so pay attention.
Picross 3D is a sequel of sorts to 2007’s Picross DS, which was itself a modernized take on Mario’s Picross for the original Game Boy.
“Wait wait,” I hear you saying, “what the hell is Picross?”
Well, my swear-happy friend, Picross stands for Picture Crossword. In the two-dimensional version of the game, you are given a square grid with some numbers listed above it and to the side. The numbers denote how many squares in the line will be filled in. This is probably better described in pictures than words, so:
As you can see, a horizontal line with a number 1 next to it denotes that one block will be filled in, et cetera. It’s an extremely addicting game – finding the one block that makes the rest of the puzzle fall into place can be tremendously satisfying.
Picross 3D takes this basic concept and adds a third dimension – now, instead of worrying about just height and length, you also have to pay attention to depth:
This is how I’ve spent the half-hour before bedtime every day for the last couple of weeks.
You’re given a solid block at the outset, and based on the numbers on the sides you need to chip away until you’ve found the object and completed the puzzle. The bigger puzzles employ “sliders,” which allow you to hide columns of blocks from view and look inside the puzzle.
It’s a little abstract to explain on paper, but the game includes an excellent tutorial level that eases the player into the game – it’s much easier to understand than it seems. There’s also a decent set of demos on the Nintendo Web site that explain the core concepts well enough. Once you’ve got the basics down, you just solve puzzles one after the other until you’ve solved them all. There are tons of puzzles included and even more available for download, so the game should keep you busy for awhile.
The game has a very gradual difficulty curve, and while the puzzles themselves are fairly challenging the hardest part of Picross 3D is simply wrapping one’s head around a three-dimensional puzzle. Every hint you need to solve every puzzle is there, but mistakes are inevitable.
The graphics, sound, and presentation are obviously not the game’s focus, so it would make sense that none of the three are particularly noteworthy. Big, colorful graphics get the job done, and the game’s inoffensive background music is easily turned down in favor of silence or tunes from your MP3 player of choice. Once finished, the puzzle pictures are often animated in charming ways – otherwise, the focus here is all on the puzzles themselves.
Games like Picross 3D make me believe that Nintendo is onto something with its casual approach. At their best, “casual” games neither frustrate newbies nor alienate experienced gamers. The number of games that I can play with my girlfriend is small – best not to talk about what happened when we tried New Super Mario Bros. Wii – but in this one our game saves are always within a couple puzzles of one another. It’s not a particularly ambitious game, but it is a good one, and that’s fine.
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Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Album Review: The Rolling Stones' "Exile on Main Street," Remastered
In the nearly forty years since its release, the Rolling Stones' Exile on Main Street has consumed so much ink that it merits an entry in the music critic's thesaurus:
Exile n. sweaty, coked-up, grimy, sprawling, messy, classic
I wouldn't dream of quibbling with the last, but the release this past week of the remastered version of Exile did lead me to reevaluate the penultimate claim.
The pantheon of "messy albums" is dotted with a few classics and probably many, many more stinkers that have been forgotten. For every London Calling, there are probably a hundred more overlong, pretentious bores. But regardless of their quality, what unites these "messy albums" is a fearless spirit of experimentation and an often schizophrenic display of sounds and sensibilities.
Guided by Voices' Bee Thousand is perhaps the messiest record ever put to tape. Over the course of twenty tracks, Bee runs hints of power pop, noise rock, and archetypal nineties indie rock through the crappiest-sounding boombox you could conceive of. That they do it in under forty minutes makes the whole thing even more head-spinning. I like to think of Bee as the suitcase of a particularly interesting traveler: you'll certainly find some brilliant and revealing stuff inside ("Tractor Rape Chain", "The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory"), but you're also bound to find a bunch of dirty laundry ("Kicker of Elves").
Exile on Main Street is long and full of treasures, but it doesn't evince this same dynamic. The Stones made a career out of aural diversity, hopping drunkenly from genre to genre on an intra-album basis. Sticky Fingers slings blues ("You Gotta Move"), country rock ("Wild Horses"), and cocks-out rock 'n roll ("Brown Sugar") in equal measure. To these ears, the seventy minute long Exile certainly sounds like more, but it doesn't sound different, at least as a record.
But the songs on Exile are, indeed, messy as fuck. The story of Exile's recording has been told and retold, but its sexy, fever-dream glory never really gets old: the Stones, fleeing their home country's absurd tax system, escape to a villa rented by guitarist/human rutabaga Keith Richards. Located in the Côte d'Azur region of Southern France, Nellcôte would be the Stones' home as they banged out some of the nastiest, grimiest, shit-kicking-est rock 'n roll ever heard by a mainstream audience.
Calling the proceedings "unorthodox" is something of an understatement. The band parked their rented recording truck in the driveway and decided to set up shop in the basement. Richards described the place as "very, very murky - and dusty," and certainly not the ideal recording atmosphere. The quivering, inescapable heat didn't make things any easier; musicians were forced to tune and re-tune constantly as the French summer wreaked havoc on their instruments. Richards was probably exaggerating when he said "it kind of looked like Hitler's bunker," but not by much. Despite the best efforts of engineer Andy Johns and producer Jimmy Miller, the sound was nasty and indistinct.
But history has smiled upon Exile, to be sure. From the sweet heartbreak of "Tumbling Dice" to the righteous praise music of "Shine a Light" to the downright Satanic "Ventilator Blues," every inch of Exile is magnificent. Somehow, the clusterfuck at Nellcôte made the record sound that much more legit. After all, the blues and soul artists the Stones so revered didn't get to record their great stuff in state-of-the-art British studios.The vocals may be muffled, the guitar may cut out with alarming regularity, and the fidelity may be outright crap, but the record's a grungy wonder. If you've never spent some serious time with Exile, take this as an opportunity to rediscover one of the greatest pieces of shit ever put to tape. The bonus tracks ain't half bad, either. Continue...
Down in the Treme: Episode 7, “Smoke My Peace Pipe”
Two Charge Shot!!! writers duck into New Orleans for a taste of David Simon’s new show, “Treme.” Hit the jump for their take on Episode 7. Spoilers ahoy.
Rob: None too soon, the "Treme" has found its legs. Prior to now, the series felt like a sense-of-place exercise - it had more flavor that nearly anything ever broadcast on HBO, yet it felt adrift. Now we have some answers - Ladonna's brother, lost in the New Orleans juidicial system following Hurricane Katrina, is dead. Janette's long-struggling restaurant folded, but she has opened up a charming, hardscrabble, genuine-article eatery. Albert Lambreaux's demonstration in a barricaded housing project made him a folk hero. Not only are we moving, we have direction.
Jordan: Creighton's finally started on his book, though he isn't really getting anywhere. Sonny continues to be a dickbag, I think so much so that it's starting to impact Annie's playing. How did you interpret her musical E.D.?
Rob: It's almost like the show telling us her Dutch, piano-playing boyfriend isn't a total jerk. Also, I kind of like that she can't play the fast pace and polka-ish rhythm of Cajun fiddle music. It says something about her character - she's more suited for smooth, sensuous music. Maybe that's my sex drive talking.
Jordan: Ugh...reminds me of that scene from Bruno. Wait, why did you feel like her musical troubles exonerated Sonny?
Rob: He's not exonerated, but for once, we get to see her fail a little. Like the show's more implausible plot lines, it's showing a little balance - Davis never really had a shot at council, and he'll gladly take a get-out-of-jail-free card as a bribe. Creighton, an unwitting mouthpiece of Katrina discontent, is straining under the demands of the American imagination. In short, we're staring to see a TV show emerge from a polemic exercise.
Jordan: I thought the end of Davis' council run was such a cop-out. I really hope Simon's going to continue that plot line, maybe with Davis' political council lambasting him for selling out. Otherwise, that felt mighty anticlimactic to this guy. What'd you think about the Antoine scenes? The death of his mentor didn't hit me particularly hard because I didn't really know who the guy was.
Rob: I know! I felt like a shmuck, standing at the funeral and being like: who's this guy again? For once, the music takes a backseat to the political drama. I mean, this episode's jam-out took place in New Orleans International baggage claim.
Jordan: That's not your fault. The show just didn't tell us much about Antoine's mentor or give us much reason to care about him. I haven't mentioned this yet (for fear of sounding like a broken record), but I still feel like this show ain't going anywhere. I'm glad that they're starting to resolve some of the running plot lines, but they never built up much steam in the first place. I never particularly cared about LaDonna's search for Day-mo and was only moderately moved when they found him dead. I actually found the most disturbing part of that scene (and the whole episode) to be the shot of LaDonna looking around at all the trailers full of bodies. That was a great shot in what, for me, is starting to be a not-so-great show.
Rob: And clever them - as she's hunched over outside the trailers (mobile morgues), fighting off waves of nausea, the air-conditioning units kick into high gear, filling our ears with droning and buzzing. No melody. No harmony. No music. I thought that was a nice touch.
Jordan: Again, the show's full of brilliant scenes. But when Howard Hawks said that a good movie is "three great scenes and no bad ones," he obviously wasn't talking about "Treme." At least not in this reviewer's opinion.
Rob: I, for one, have renewed faith in "Treme." But right now, the show still needs to make the case for a second season. I believe the plotlines have futures; I just can't say what they are. I need a little bit more.
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Listening In On David Foster Wallace, My Favorite Dead Genius
We always remember how we came to read writers we particularly admire. When I first read David Foster Wallace, it was in a book of essays, Consider the Lobster, which I picked up in a bookstore in Rome. I remember very clearly reading “Authority and American Usage,” which is a dry title for a crackling funny and devastatingly smart look at how Americans speak English. I was on a bus, and it was raining, and I thought: I could happily read him describing a doorknob for 10 pages.
Readers should never pretend to know writers through their works. Even bearing this in mind, I came to view Wallace’s essays as something like a friend. I read him because I wanted to hear his voice, not because I was interested in cruise ships, lobsters, or tennis and trigonometry. When Wallace hanged himself in 2008, I couldn’t help but take his loss personally – his body of work, his voice, was now a closed circuit, having a beginning and an end.
Much has been published in his wake, but nothing so extensive as David Lipsky’s Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: a Road Trip With David Foster Wallace. The book is a more-or-less raw transcript of their travels at the end of a book tour in 1996. Lipsky’s interjections, set in italics, are brief. This is a tour of a dead man’s mind. But does it offer insight or morbid miscellanea?
Becoming Yourself is an interesting book, because beyond its binding, it isn’t really a book. A long wind-up provides the needed context: reporting for Rolling Stone, Lipsky linked up with Wallace for the last days of the Infinite Jest tour. As the pair drove, flew and froze in the Midwest, Lipsky grilled Wallace on everything from his life, his art, television, self-consciousness, action movies, drugs, alcohol and Jest, his 1100-page postmodern epic. But beyond that, it’s just Wallace talking. Prior to this, I wouldn’t say I could bear anyone jawing on for more than 300 pages, but Becoming Yourself makes for a brisk, fun read. Wallace gives us an easy ride.
He’s warm, but cagey at first; he’s done journalism (this is after he published the series of Harper’s essays that would become A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again). He knows the game. At his editors’ urging, Lipsky pushes Wallace on his relationship with whiskey, marijuana and black tar heroin; Wallace parries at first, then frankly admits to: a lot of pot in high school, and pills; some acid, also high school; heavy drinking prior to his admission to a mental hospital, though he said he lacked the constitution to be a serious drinker; a little heroin, once.
Wallace commands the conversation throughout. He once tells Lipsky he couldn’t win an argument against the reporter, though that’s hardly true; Wallace easily outbrains his companion, waltzing even when on the defensive (as when discussing drugs). Fans of Wallace’s rambling (but immaculate) prose might be surprised by the informal, jockish cadence to his conversations, dropping heavy dudn’ts and sumthuin’s; they seem somehow to fit his heavy, square frame, and towards the middle of the book, they start thudding out of Lipsky’s mouth, too.
Readers will inevitably sleuth for signs of darkness in Wallace’s words. He tersely tucks them away, but in retrospect, they’re all too obvious.
Discussing his time in a mental hospital, Wallace says he wasn’t “biochemically depressed” like fellow patient Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation. We now know he was, in fact, depressed – call it what you want, but he was medicated, and his 2007 attempt to shake the drug killed him. Watching Wallace skirt his demons (the parts about depression in Jest aren’t “exactly autobiographical;” real depression is “about a quarter mile down the road”) is painful. When Wallace insists he doesn’t want to romanticize depression, Lipsky notes in brackets: “Somehow this is the saddest.”
The best parts of Becoming Yourself are Wallace cracking wise, dropping bits of corn-fed wisdom, enjoying himself. While chiseling the ice off Lipsky’s car: “Don’t lose the scraper. This is my good-luck scraper. A good Midwestern boy develops a relationship with his scraper.” Before an NPR interview, when the radio-journo asks if recording digitally is okay: “So only yes and no answers?” And while watching Broken Arrow, a 1996 action flick starring John Travolta and Christian Slater, as recalled by Lipsky:
"In our theater seats, way up front, slammed against the screen: David a commenting and empathizing audience. His saying “Oh, boy,” when a guy gets thrown out of the train. “Oh jeez” when Christian Slater is going to jump into a railcar. And “Oh boy, oh wow, oh jeez” and then “oh wow” at the end, after Travolta and Slater go hand to hand and Travolta gets speared by a nuclear missile. He winces away from the screen—because he has a slightly soft face, when he winces his cheek kind of folds in. It’s got a lot of lines in it. And then he says, “That was a cool shot at the end when Travolta gets impaled by the thing.” Remember, he likes movies that blow up."
I disagree with Lipsky: this was the saddest. Watching Wallace in a moment of unguarded, childlike ease, gobbling down the sticky, doughy gunk of an action flick in a temple to the very mass-culture he tears down in Infinite Jest, I stopped missing his mind, his prose and the body of work we never got to see; I missed a person, someone I never knew.
Yes, there is a slight ghoulishness to reading Becoming Yourself and relishing Wallace in simple, vulnerable moments. It’s a good companion to Infinite Jest – Wallace is generous in his insights and analysis – but really, you’ll read it for Wallace. You’ll read it because you miss him –and, like the best of his writing, because it makes you feel less alone.
Photo credit: Marion Ettlinger
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Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Legendary Inks Mass Effect Movie Deal
Every few months, movie studio X announces that they’ve purchased the rights to blockbuster videogame Y. A mixture of nerd-rage and skeptical excitement quickly follows.
The rage/worry is not without merit. Film adaptations of games rarely go well. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Uwe Boll’s abysmal resume, that stupid Doom movie, and many others serve as potent examples of game movies gone wrong. And we’ll soon see if the Prince of Persia belongs on this list, as well.
But the big news is Legendary’s recent purchase of the rights to sci-fi mega-franchise Mass Effect.
A few details have surfaced. I Am Legend scribe Mark Protosevich has been tapped to draft the script. Avi and Ari Arad are slated to produce along with Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni from Legendary. And it sounds like the film will deal primarily with the plot of the first game.
Can you tell I’m a little worried about this? Mass Effect, like all of BioWare’s catalogue, deals primarily with choice. The franchise has been built to allow players to carry their characters (more specifically their choices) from game to game, resulting in many players sentimentalizing about “their Shepard” (I’m guilty of this). Few of the game’s most thrilling plot points occur in combat; they hinge on tense conversations and critical decision-making. While I love the Mass Effect universe – I would gladly spend entire games exploring the Krogan and their clans or the Quarian flotilla – I don’t think want to experience it through the eyes of a studio-produced Shepard.
On the other hand, this is the studio that brought us Christopher Nolan’s Batman films.
On yet another hand, they made Clash of the Titans.
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Mascots That Will Give You Nightmares
Last week, I was traveling to and around Philadelphia for work (which was the reason for my absence of a post last Tuesday). While in the City of Taserly Love, I was fortunate enough to catch a baseball game at Citizens Bank Park, the relatively new home of the Philadelphia Phillies. With pretty much every seat providing a good view of the field and the focus directed towards what happens on the field, it's a very pleasant, no-frills ballpark... but with one noticeable blight: the presence of the Phillie Phanatic.
This embarrassing creature is not only an offense to reason and logic; he's also a liability. Despite his place in the Hall of Fame (one of only three mascots currently enshrined) and his title of "Best Mascot Ever" (according to Sports Illustrated for Kids), he is also the most sued mascot in sports: he once cost the Phillies a $2.5 million settlement for injuring a civilian at a paint store event. He also has a history of assault (or, more specifically, being assaulted) and extortion - when ownership of the Phillies changed hands in 1983, the Phanatic's designers sold his copyright to the team for $250,000, more than 48x what the Phillies could have paid for the copyright ($5,200) upon the character's creation five years earlier.
He was relatively benign during the game I saw - aside from rolling all over the freshly-manicured home plate while catching the ceremonial first pitches and stealing the thunder of some middle school dance team that was performing between innings. (He's actually surprisingly graceful considering his 6'5" 300 lb. frame, as evidenced when he shook his groove thing on top of the Phillies' dugout along with a trio of old ladies.)
But the Phanatic, is just the prelude to another terrifying mascot I want to talk about. Hot on the heels of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games, London's PR team has been hard at work developing a relatable and marketable figure to act as the face of 2012's Olympic festivities. Flying in the face of the cute and cuddly mascots created for Beijing and Vancouver, the London top brass decided on the the creepy one-eyed pair of Wenlock and Mandeville. Find out about them after the jump...
Remember the five multi-colored Friendlies (or Fuwa) from the Beijing Olympics? Each one represented one of the Olympic Rings and embodied a specific part of Chinese culture. The coolest gimmick about these guys, though, was the fact that if you took the first syllable (or the second; they're both the same) from their seemingly nonsensical names and put them all together, you get the title of the popular and catchy theme song for the 2008 games: Beijing Huanying Ni (which translates to "Beijing Welcomes You").
Okay, maybe neither the mascots nor the song were all that popular over here in the states. But if you were in China for the duration of the games (as I was, plus the weeks prior), you couldn't turn around without seeing a billboard or a bus stop plastered with these guys' adorable little faces! The folks who planned the Vancouver Olympics followed suit in the cuteness category. Miga, Quatchi, and Sumi represent mythological creatures (a sea-bear, a young sasquatch, and an animal guardian spirit, respectively) from Canada's *cough* storied and unique culture *cough*.Now I'm all for breaking the mold, but seeing as the Olympic-watching public are now used to cute and cuddly mascots, I don't see how these surreal and creepy images will play. Wenlock and Mandeville are two futuristic Cyclopean figures, with stubby arms and legs, dressed in metallic orange and blue, respectively.
Their names have historical meaning: Much Wenlock, a small town in the English county of Shropshire, is widely considered to be the birthplace of the modern Olympic games (founded by Dr. William Penny Brookes in 1850 as the Wenlock Olympian Games). Stoke Mandeville Hospital, located in the English civil parish of the same name, houses the largest spinal injury ward in Europe - and their Stoke Mandeville Games were the inspiration for the modern Paralympic Games.
But nothing about the storied history, which the two mascots supposedly represent, is in any way evidenced by their ridiculous character design, described by the Daily Telegraph as "two parts Pokemon to one part lava lamp." ...Unless they stem from some crazy, opium-induced fantasy by the Much Wenlock's own Dr. Brookes, the "founding father" of the modern day Olympics (he was an apothecary after all). But if that was the case, participants would likely carry more than a torch during the opening ceremony...
Having weird and scary mascots in and of themselves isn't too much of a problem... except they're specifically marketing them for children! (See their ridiculous backstory of how they were formed from the last two drops of molten steel from the building of the Olympic stadium, and were subsequently given life by a magical rainbow.) They debuted them at a school, for goodness sakes! I'm surprised they weren't carted away, along with the whole camera crew.Plus, they were designed so that their eyes (one apiece) could double as camera lenses, for the purpose of marketing Wenlock and Mandeville shaped webcams, etc. So now they want to encourage these creepy figurines to spy on your kids while they're at their computer! I'd be concerned what "magical rainbow" (read: wireless radio command) would bring the mascots to life inside your own home, leaving them free to wreak havoc while you're sleeping.
We have two years until Wenlock and Mandeville's games start, and the people in charge are counting on these mascots to raise approximately 12 million pounds towards the 70 million pound fundraising goal of the 2012 games. Not that I want the folks of merry old England to lose money, but I think it would be best for everyone involved if these two atrocities kept as low a profile as possible, and let the focus be on the athletes and the competition. Because I have a feeling that the more time Wenlock and Mandeville spend on television, the more complaints London will have of Olympic-related night terrors. Continue...
24 in 24 Words: Day 8, Hour 24
Episode 24 - “3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.”
Spoilers after the jump!
Jack goes Mike Tyson. Cherry shudders toward a second Emmy despite Logan stealing the season. No mega twists, no silent clocks. Shut it down.
You can catch up on our concise 24 coverage here. Did we miss something? Leave it in the comments!
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24 in 24 Words: Day 8, Hour 23
Episode 23 - “2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.”
Spoilers after the jump!
Jack's gonna kill Putin. Cherry goes nuts when Mrs. President Slumdog learns the truth. Jack drops Chloe. Jack's got Logan in his eyesights, dawg.
You can catch up on our concise 24 coverage here. Did we miss something? Leave it in the comments!
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This Week on Audiosurf Radio – Relax, Don’t Do It Edition
Take a deep breath. Every song this week rides uphill, meaning relaxing rides most of the way. A quick glance at the traffic counts will reveal, however, that these songs are no slouches. Prepare yourself to be pumped and relaxed.
Urtzi Azkue hails from Nauru, an island republic I’d never heard of before today. The unemployment rate in Nauru hovers around, oh, ninety percent. No wonder people have time to hang around and compose jazz on guitar.
Three British dudes make up universal constructors. They like to give music away for free. I don’t think I know much more than that.
Palermo’s own After Work have an album of mostly original jazz pieces for a quartet of tenor sax, piano, bass, and drums. They’ve got a Facebook page. I’m sure they’d let you be their fan.
Once more: inhale, exhale, relax. Let’s get to the songs.
The Songs
Draw a line in the proverbial sand. Make sure it’s razor thin. Use a leaf or a piece of paper to part the grains. You know what? Just use an actual razor. On one side, put John Mayer’s jazz side, the stuff that proves he’s got chops despite his other songs about high school, bubblegum tongues, and getting high. On the other, put every low key, nameless jazz record you’ve ever heard in a department store (I’m looking at you Sears). Resting on your razor-thin line you will find Urtzi Azkue’s “Last Train.” I don’t know that I could conceive of more innocuous jazz guitar. His silky smooth guitar lacks the edge of a Satriani, but it’s no less fluid and impressive. The bass rumbles in pure tones underneath while a keyboard chimes up above. Oddly enough, the relaxing groove I’m describing drives the track uphill in spite of the massive traffic attack. Navigating the traffic proves difficult when the solos are so distractingly soothing.
I booted up “De Que Manera” half-expecting the Spanish title to be misleading. Would it just be “vaguely inspired” by Latin music without any actual execution? Thankfully, no. Horns appear. There’s some Spanish mumbling. And the whole song’s laid over what I believe to be a samba beat (hardcore ballroom dance fans should feel free to call me an idiot if I messed that up). Again, Azkue cultivates that liquid guitar sound that actually melds well with Latin music (Carlos Santana, anyone?). The individual notes have such tonal purity it’s a wonder they’re emanating from an amp. Another quality this song shares with “Last Train” that I didn’t mention above is the presence of some jazzy, vibrato-less background singing. Think the voices in the excellent 30 Rock theme but subtler. The singers shadow the main melodies without overpowering them. Again, the operative word is soothing. Having heard millions of guitarists like this, I’m not immediately shocked by Azkue’s talent or anything – but it’s certainly the type of music I’d clap for without hesitation in live performance. The execution’s spot on, if a little uninspired.
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I don’t appreciate disembodied female voices telling me to “Just Lay Back.” It’s mildly unsettling. Why does she want me to relax? What’s going to happen to me if I don’t? What if I wanted to stay upright so I could hold a conversation with her? Save a guitar wasting away in the sonic background, “Just Lay Back” has little in common with the Azkue tracks other than moving perpetually hill. This just isn’t a week for sweeping curves or dense tunnels. Sure, some of the traffic’s alright, but each artist checked their intensity at the door. If it weren’t for the occasional punctuation by a vibraslap I’d have succumbed to the siren’s sultry call and drifted off, leaving behind a trail of overloaded columns and squandered high score opportunity.
“Turn Over” is no revolution. It’s a competently performed quartet piece with an entertaining piano solo in the middle. It succeeds by doing exactly what it’s supposed to do; stuff you’d only notice if the group somehow failed to execute what’s expected of a decent jazz ensemble. The group moves tightly through each transition, backing the rambunctious melodies with every twist and turn. The solos – particularly the piano one – move from one idea (scales) to the next (rhythms), exploring each briefly until it’s time to move on. And the 6/8 time signature, while nothing groundbreaking, keeps the head fresh. I wish they’d kept playing with meter as the piece went on. Perhaps I’ve just spent too many Audiosurf weeks in a row bopping my head to techno, but the organic sound of live musicians is so refreshing, particularly the saxophone. I enjoy hearing the air leaking through pads, the reed buzzing in the mouthpiece. Computers can’t do that. Nor can they infuse the track with momentary bursts of speed or light. At the end of the day, the song is nothing special, but the quartet brings it to life.
Author’s Note
All songs were played at least twice on the Pro difficulty using the Eraser and Vegas characters. I’d like to give a special shout-out to Audiosurf user Kenny (whose actual handle contains more weirdo characters than I care to include). Of “De Que Manera” he said, “It makes me think at Africa.” If English isn’t your first language, Ken, good on you. If it is, I hope you’re still in school.
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