The influence that krautrock has had on the music of the last 40 years has not yet been properly quantified or codified; to this day it remains a vague taxonomy of sounds, categories and phonic components that serve as a modern day venn diagram for discourse on underground music. Hip-hop, post-punk, house, noise, techno, psych, [Read More]
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This poem first appeared in a chapbook entitled Tornado Alley. William S. Burroughs For John Dillinger Thanks for the wild turkey and the Passenger Pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome American guts – thanks for a Continent to despoil and poison – thanks [Read More] Belshazzar reads the writing on the wall yet still feasts! If indulging in a massive meal large enough to feed the whole human history of asceticism isn’t quite enough; if you need to cultivate another sensual pleasure to really drive home the orgy of taste; if you are any lover of music whatsoever; or, if [Read More]
“Close the doors, you uninitiated,” begins the ancient commentary (Derveni papyrus) on a poem ascribed to Orfeus. Discovered in 1962, it is said to be Europe’s oldest manuscript. The fragments, as we see, begin with a deterrent. But what reader would stop there? The transgression itself–the walking through the doors–creates the room, the [Read More] Lil Kim Don't Snitch One of my favorite new blogs, HipHlawg, posted a telling cross analysis on drug confessionals and gender expectation in Los Angeles and New York based crack rap. The sacrifices many women make for their male counterparts in trafficking illuminate an often neglected and insidious side of the drug war story. The [Read More] It all seemed a bizarre mystery; a label owner and source of the project (Paul Reynolds), who didn’t want to talk about the Patrick Gleeson’s San Francisco Express recording, musicians who didn’t quite remember it, and a neglected soundscape that stood out as solidly original and experimental for its time. [Read More]
Mi Revalueshanery Fren, Linton Kwesi Johnson‘s latest collection of dub-tongued, impossible-to-read-without-reading-aloud poems, draws from his forty year career, which began in London when he organized a Black Panther poetry workshop. From his earliest to most recent poems, words, which require the oral participation of the reader, are themselves participant in a revolutionary [Read More] In the last hundred or so pages of Infinite Jest, Don Gately, a big, lovable ex-drug-addict living at the Ennet Halfway House, finds himself in a really difficult position. He has just been shot in the shoulder. He is at the hospital, where doctors keep materializing all serpent-like asking if he wants any drugs for the pain. If he thinks the pain is bad now, they say, ha ha, it will only get worse. [Read More]
Miracles are by nature quite natural occurrences. Or as G.K. Chesterton phrased it, “The most incredible thing about miracles is that they happen.” What makes miracles so exceptional is that they often occur in the most commonplace situations: while driving a car you witness a woman walk placidly across the freeway without being [Read More] |
 How Does The Net Affect our Brains? Nicholas Carr and A Glimpse into the DebateIn 2008, Nicholas Carr wrote an influential essay in the Atlantic titled “ Is Google Making us Stupid” ? Since that essay’s publication the use of the Internet and its effect on our brains has become a highly divisive topic which has produced a large spat of journalistic and academic articles in its wake. [Read More]  Sanullim: Mountain Echo PsychSanullim is something of an anomaly in rock history. At a time when vintage rock was dying and new cultural tropes were diversifying the palette of pop music, Sanullim appeared on the margin in a country whose pop music landscape, heavily censored by the authoritarian bureaus of Park Chung-Hee, mainly consisted of traditional trot ballads and dance-pop music. Sanullim’s heavy bass lines, thunderous drums, chromatic fuzz guitar-work, and psych-image lyrics were a revival shock in a system which had gone dormant since the early 60s scene singlehandedly engendered by Korean rock godfather Shin Jung-Hyeon. [Read More]  We are Freak (Rap)By Adri Wong The abstraction of hiphop – sonically & visually – is a progression other commentators have discussed in relation to instrumental/beats artists like Flying Lotus and the unparalleled Dilla. But what of the lyrical persona in the abstract world? Which is to say, in this constantly expanding kaleidoscope universe, what happens to the MC? [Read More]  ‘The Housemaid’ – A Comparison of Two Korean FilmsIf Martin Scorsese had stopped making films after the 90s, he’d still prove an invaluable part of cinema history on the basis of his current film preservation efforts. Scorsese’s World Cinema Foundation, which works to “help developing countries preserve their cinematic treasures,” has gone a long way in preserving and promoting little seen, almost lost films from a wide range of countries. [Read More]  Film Review: The Secret in their Eyes (El Secreto de sus Ojos) dir. by Juan Jose CampanellaThe Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film last year was bestowed onto an Argentine mystery romance; a film that intermixes the pathos of unspoken love and the torture chamber of memory, and parallels these alongside the shadowy contours of law and corrupt politics. As the film frames all these disparate elements within a novelist’s remembrance of a rape and murder investigation that he was involved in as a young attorney in the court halls of Buenos Aires in the early 1970s, it continuously draws analogies to the mercenary political machinations of a dictatorial Argentina. This brilliantly scripted and acted film was written and directed by Juan Jose Campanella, a director who has now catapulted himself onto the international film scene with this minor masterpiece. [Read More]    |
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