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Biological machine gun

February 13, 2011 / Debo posted in Thoughts / No Comments

In the alley, the dragon in hand, he approached the blackened nest. It had broken open. Singed wasps wrenched and flipped on the asphalt.

He saw the thing the shell of gray paper had concealed. Horror. The spiral birth factory, stepped terraces of the hatching cells, blind jaws of the unborn moving ceaselessly, the staged progress from egg to larva, near-wasp, wasp. In his mind’s eye, a kind of time-lapse photography took place, revealing the thing as the biological equivalent of a machine gun, hideous in its perfection. Alien.

From “Neuromancer” by William Gibson

On the road…

January 9, 2011 / Debo posted in Books, Literature / No Comments

I started reading Kerouac’s “On the Road”. I sort of wish I’d done this when I was living in the Bay Area. File under “better late than never.”

I prepared to take notes, but I instead found myself just copying quote after quote out of the book. This seems to recapture my feelings about it much better than anything else I could have done. Here are some of my favorites as I arrive at chapter 12.

Somewhere along the line I knew there’d be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.

and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was — I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.

I have finally taught Dean that he can do anything he wants, become mayor of Denver, marry a millionairess, or become the greatest poet since Rimbaud. But he keeps rushing out to see the midget auto races.

They were like the man with the dungeon stone and the gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining.

Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.

I climbed in and there he was, sleeping with his girl, Lee Ann — on a bed he stole from a merchant ship, as he told me later; imagine the deck engineer of a merchant ship sneaking over the side in the middle of the night with a bed, and heaving and straining at the oars to shore. This barely explains Remi Boncœur.

I suddenly began to realize that everybody in America is a natural-born thief. I was getting the bug myself. I even began to try to see if doors were locked.

The one about Remi and the bed is definitely my favorite so far.

Watch out for Lindi Ortega

January 9, 2011 / Debo posted in Music, Toronto / 1 Comment

I’ve seen Lindi Ortega twice now — once at the Cameron House opening for Emma Lee, and then again tonight at a house concert (literally in someone’s living room) where she played many of the same songs.

Holy shit.

Like seriously, for a guy who listens mostly to extreme metal, experimental compositional sludge, and electronic to rave about someone who describes herself as a mix between “Dolly Parton and Johnny Cash”, there must be something going on here.

If you get a chance to see her in concert, do it and bring all your friends, for serious.

lindiortega.com

Thad! (What?) Thad! (What?) Thad! (What?)

December 19, 2010 / Debo posted in Thoughts / No Comments

It’s time to let it go.

(BLACK MADONNA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Kayo Dot – Stained Glass review

November 18, 2010 / Debo posted in Music, Thoughts / No Comments

I’m sitting in the dark here as the last notes of Stained Glass have just faded.

I’ve had the CD for a week now, and I’ve been listening to the 20-minute piece a couple of times a day. I just now decided to shut everything off and _really_ listen to it.

Kayo Dot really has 2 categories of music for me: Blue Lambancy Downward, and everything else. I liked Blue Lambancy Downward, but I _really_ like everything else. I’d say this fits into the latter category.

The first few moments of Stained Glass have this feeling of teenage awkwardness. The lyrics don’t seem to fit the tone, and it sounds like Toby is channeling Death Cab. After this initial (and likely intentional) weird tentative period, the track hits its stride really hard.

Up until the ten minute mark, there are a bunch of different movements and buildups, and then the last half feels thematically similar and sort of drifts off into an airy conclusion.

Stained Glass sounds to me like Hell and Heaven decided to meet up for an evening stroll. Heaven is represented by the stunning variety of chime-y and bell-y sounds that form a rhythmic theme, while Hell is the spooky, raspy square wave sound of the synth. I swear there were parts in the last half that sounded like the synth was playing chunks of the Space Quest IV MIDI soundtrack. It weirded me out hardcore.

I think my favorite part of all of this is how the chimes and bells contribute a feeling of fragility and delicateness that one would associate with a stained glass window. But maybe I’m just projecting what is written on the album sleeve.

As for the lyrical content, well, I’d really like to know where Jason Byron comes up with this stuff. I’ll spend entire verses wrinkling my nose at how goofy it sounds, but the overall effect is really creepy, and every once in a while I stumble across a passage that hits me in the gut. In Stained Glass, I was particularly tweaked by the last couple of sentences:

Remember all ye that though the body falls among the years, it is as a discarded walking staff on the hedgerow beside the Path.

Anyhow, the high-level summary is that Stained Glass is a really interesting overlay of spooky and pretty, and you should try sitting in the dark and listening to it sometime.

It doesn’t look like there’s a digital download version of the album for sale yet, but you can buy the CD from kayodot.net or pre-order it from the Hydra Head store.

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