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Lacrimosa - (misc)

It's been a long long time since I have listened to this little musical sin of mine, but quite enjoyable. They have made a fair amount of albums by the way.

Might want to try their first album "Anger"; supposedly minimalistic.

Rammstein + Laibach + Marilyn Manson + Smashing Pumpkins

• Die Krupps - "5 Millionen", electronic German hardrock. Catchy
• System Of A Down - "Chop Suey" - YEAH! Too long! Now I want to hear that "they play my hit on the rrrradio!"
  

Pink Martini - "La Soledad" (Symphatique)

At one point I heard it too often, but it is an amazing oldfashioned tango song, with a melancholy melody, an over-the-top voice, reaching for the skies, then again whispering in the gutter.

If you don't hear it too often, it's pretty good for a late Tuesday night..

"The Artist"

Nominated for many things, and indeed a beautiful film.

I loved how they played with watching a black & white film in black & white, making the viewer realize that within a 100 years people will watch us like this.

The dream sequence in which he starts to hear sounds, is amazing in its simple complexity (ok, horrible description, but true). Everybody gets it, yet you could talk about it for hours.

A simple story, but nonetheless well executed. His change in the very last scene, from suicidal to open arms, was a bit fast, too sudden, but it didn't rub me in the wrong way.

"Every drop from rain is a penny from heaven", love it.

They cast her - Bérénice Bejo - well. A lovely face, great expressions.

Wino & Conny Ochs - "Heavy Kingdom"

Clean rock. 3voor12 describes it as "dark, cult, guitars", but only the latter is mostly right.

Not something to listen to for a whole evening, but enjoyable enough for a little while.

aKido - "Undark"

Slow, tranquil, a melancholy Air sound.

• "Kiss of Death" - flowing
• "Thirteen" - much more poppy

Liesa Van Der Aa - "Troops"

Strange, dreamy, very melodious, sometimes building up into a crescendo of music.

With collaboration from DAAU.

Should look into her!

• "Our Place" : haunting

Roberto Bolaño - "Labyrinth"

Short story revolving around the people in a photograph. Characteristic Bolaño writing, very matter-of-factly.

I realize it is impressive to knit together such a story from a mere photograph, but again, just like "2666" (still unfinished) it is a long summing up of activities with hints of people's feelings.

Though they don't need to be written down word by word, the feelings and emotions of the characters are too... shallow? no. too simple? to me. I do not see any change in character and I cannot really care for the story, its plot or its mood.

Margaret Atwood - "Stone Mattress"

Wonderful short about a woman in the autumn of her life who suddenly gets the chance to revenge herself on the guy who raped her after promnight while on a cruise to the Arctic Seas.

That rape, sent away from the small town, slowly working herself up, in a way was the beginning of the strong woman she would become to be, thereby making her rapist indirectly his own murderer.

Really good. Started to analyze it.

Dans Dans - "Dans Dans"

Strange album by Belgium band.

Description: Belgian, psychedelic jazz, drony improvisations, experimental"

• Song "River Man" (based on?) is beautiful
• "Waterpoort" is soft swinging guitars
• "El is a sound of joy" kind of derails to the point of NEXT
• "Misterioso" - softer, enjoyable

Air - "Le Voyage dans la Lune"

Typical air, but more varied than their previous album.

It has wonderful hints to 70's scifi stuff. Nice.

Italo Calvino - "The Baron in the Trees"

"There is the moment when the silence of the countryside gathers in the ear and breaks into a myria dof souds: a croaking and squeaking, a switft ruslte in the grass, a plop in the water, a pattering on earth and pebbles, and high above all, the call of the cicada."

"It should be said that in those days the winters in our parts were mild, and never had the freezing cold of nowadays which they say was loosed from its lair in Russia by Napoleon and followed him all the way here."

"I follow the news, read books, but they befuddle me. What he meant to say is not there, for he understood something else, something that was all-embracing, and he could not say it in words but only by living as he did. Only by being so frankly himself as he was til his death could he give something to all men."

"Ombrosa no longer exists. Looking at the empty sky, I ask myself if it ever did really exist. That mesh of leaves and twigs of fork and froth, minute and endless, with the sky glimpsed only in sudden specks and splinters, perhaps it was only there so that my brother could pass through it with his tomtit's tread, was embroidered on nothing, like this thread of ink which I have let run on for page after page, swarming with cancellations, corrections, doodles, blots and gaps, bursting at times into clear big berries, coagulating at others into piles of tiny starry seeds, then twisting away, forking off, surrounding buds of phrases with frameworks of leaves and clouds, then interweaving again, and so running on and on and on until it splutters and bursts into a last senseless cluster of words, ideas, dreams, and so ends."

I liked it. I wasn't mesmerized by it but some passages caught my eye and held it. It was written in a most easy, eloquent style.

The Twilight Sad - "No One Can Ever Know"

Scottish. A wall of sound in its colour not onlike the Editors. They suffer from the same deficit: all songs sound very much alike. There are some interesting intro's and endings, but the overal body of each song sounds very much the same.

Maybe interesting to see live once, on a festival, when ambling about.

Russian Circles - "Carpe"

Long-stretched soundscapes, inevitably building up to crescendo's only to retreat and reform again.

Interesting. Not unlike Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Crash (1996)

film by David Cronenberg, adapted from a novel by J.G. Ballard.

Amazingly intense. I knew it was a classic and controversial, I am familiar with both mr Cronenberg and Ballard, but I had no idea how gripping this would be.

Cronenberg delivers an amazing story (not a tale) of crash eroticism, and whether it is where I currently live or the fact that I drive, in a disturbing way it got really deep to me. Understand that disturbance can be a good thing.

Howard Shore's soundtrack does a good job of underlining the fringe of society these people live in. They do not care about society's morals or standards, they have deep ingrained fantasies and act upon them.

Hell Girl (Jigoku shoujo)

Seems interesting.

Can be watched online: www.animefreak.tv/watch/hell-girl-english-dubbed-online-free

Lana Del Rey - "Video Games"

Smokey. "Nancy Sinatra thang" triple J descibes her.

Just today read something about her reinventing herself with some backlash as result. I have no idea. I don't care for her cloaked eyes or the languidly resting hand on her bossom.

But this song is fairly interesting though I doubt I'd enjoy a whole album

Mervyn Peake - "Mr Pye"

Bought blindly because of its writer. A little novella of a little man on a mission to bring the light of his "Great Pal" to the island of Sarke.

Unknown to him, his actions have a physical effect on him, and he starts sprouting wings, only to do evil and have them replaced by horns.

It is called a fable on the backside and that it very much is. Now, the bleakness and the dark ominous worlds from Gormenghast or "The Boy" are not here, but his words are beautiful as ever.

Popper - amazing coin operated boy

LA - "the popper capital of the States"

amazing dancing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlDAgZO2ZDM