Pretty Goes with Pretty

Tied & Tickled Trio: A.R.C.

Ooh, I'm excited. I just heard the Tied & Tickled Trio has a new live dvd+cd, A.R.C. I've been eagerly awaiting a follow-up to the phenomenal Observing Systems for three years now. It's one of those albums that I loved when it came out, but maybe didn't think was the best release of its year. Yet all these years later, it is still in steady rotation—something I can't say for many albums. It just never gets old.

T&TT are from Germany, and are actually a sextet. They are a hybrid of jazz and electronica (more the former than the latter), and they do it better than anyone else attempting the same (see Isotope 217, Chicago Underground Duo, Steve Reid & Keiren Hebden, etc.).

All of their albums are available from their label, the excellent Morr Music (also home to Lali Puna, Styrofoam, Ms. John Soda, and a bunch of other great acts). A.R.C. is streaming at their site, so check it out for yourself.

Yesterday's News—Today!

—Great Literary Taunts [courtesy the Elegant Variation]

—Bldgblog had a great interview with the urban critic Mike Davis: part one, part two.

—And speaking of urbanism, here’s one for the architecture geeks: the Landscape Urbanism Bullshit Generator.

—I saw X-Men 3 over the weekend and geeked out about it. I thought it was great, despite the lukewarm/harsh reviews the papers are giving it (I suspect most of these critics did not grow up on the comics, or are too snobby to admit it). More geeks weigh in over at Cinematical.

—Finally, the newest issue of Seed is out now; what are you waiting for? I never thought I’d buy a science magazine on a regular basis—and I still have no urge to pick up any others—but Seed is hands down the best magazine (of any genre) on stands right now. It is such a smart mag. And this issue is the fiction issue, no less.

I Can't Live, I Can't Breathe, Unless We Do It For the Glory of Love

Have you suffered the new single by Angels & Airwaves yet? This is the new band from Tom DeLonge, the whinier of the two Blink-182 singers.  God, but it's the funniest/most horrendous thing I've heard in a long time. For a laugh, check out the wikipedia page for these guys, in which the band claims:

It sounds like it has the conceptual depth of Pink Floyd, the anthemic architecture of U2 but with Tom from blink writing all the melodies.... The music sounds angelic. Every song gives you the chills and you feel like you want to cry but you're conquering the world at the same time. It sounds like stadium rock done by a band that's meant to be the absolute biggest band in the world.

Yeah, sure, Pink Floyd, okay. But on a recent drive to the beach, the song came on the radio and my ever-brilliantly astute wife made the far more accurate call:

What is this, fucking Peter Cetera?

You can go on and on about Bono and Roger Waters all you want, dudes, but I think you've been listening to "You're the Inspiration" a little too much.

Here's another great quote, from their bio on their website:

We would literally shut the blinds, dim all the lights, put Stanley Kubrick's 2001 on the flat-screen TV and take these Stephen Ambrose World War II books, with these two-page spreads of cities burning and people dying, and we'd paste them all over the wall. So on one end of the room, you'd have the endless hope of space, and on the other end you'd have the worst of humanity, and then in the middle, we'd write a love song.

Later, when asked to describe the last sequence of 2001, DeLonge said "You mean the part where Ralph Macchio tries to do the crane kick but his Japanese nemesis doesn't fall for it? Yeah, that was really gripping. There's a really great song that comes on just after that scene."

[thanks again to the Last Plane to Jakarta forums for pointing me to the press release]

The Singer from Odin is All Talk, but Hilfiger is All Action: This Month in Metal!

I’m sure you know, but May has been “Metal Month” over at VH1 Classics. That means lots of metallic countdowns, a bunch of Behind the Musics, and a new four-part documentary, Heavy, airing this week. I happened to catch the first part of Heavy last night, and while it was mildly more interesting than most talking-head shows on VH1, it didn’t offer anything new.

But—and here’s where I make my devil horn hand gesture—to my sheer delight, the channel has also been airing The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II: The Metal Years. The last time I saw this film was on HBO not long after it originally came out in 1988. In other words, I was in 7th grade and was fully under the spell of Motley Crüe, Poison, and the rest. Within the year I’d begun growing my hair, wearing all black all the time, and faux-moshing in my bedroom to Metallica and Anthrax.

Seeing Decline Part II back then was enthralling, just because my adolescent self was shocked that a movie would be made about the music I liked. And of course it didn’t hurt to see Paul Stanley in bed with three hot babes, and the sexy dance competition later on in the film.

Seventeen years later, the documentary was fascinating in a whole new way. It is so much more compelling than Behind the Music or Heavy could ever be, just because the bands don’t get the benefit of mocking themselves in retrospect. Here, they are taking themselves 100% seriously.

Even more fun than watching C. C. Deville say he can’t make this music unless he’s sober, or watching Ozzy Osbourne fail miserably at making breakfast—but not as fun as watching the guy from W.A.S.P pour vodka over his face while floating in a pool, with his mother looking on and only mildly disapproving—is all the wannabe bands that are so damn sure they’re going to make it. Bands like London, Seduce, and Odin. The guys in Odin are the most laughable, as they sit in a hot tub and the singer, Randy O., declares that he'll commit suicide if his band does not make it.

Of course, after the movie was over, I immediately went to the interweb to see if I could find out whether or not he had the Metal Ballz to follow through with it. Of course, no. But I did find this interview, in which Mr. O. has reassuringly not yet risen above self-mockery. The interview—which you really must read—is of the 20 Questions variety, which Randy answered by email just a few short months ago. His response was apparently beyond editing. Here’s my favorite part:

5.  Rate a vocalist 1-10. 1 being a joke and 10 being the shit!
Sebastian Bach = 10++++++++++++++++++
John Bush = 7
Bret Michaels =0
Robert Plant =10
Don Dokken =3
David Coverdale =7
Jizzy Pearl =0
Vince Neil =5
Jimmi Bleacher =O
W. Axl Rose = I WILL KICK HIS FUCKING ASS ANY WHERE, ANY TIME, AXL, YOU WANT A PIECE OF ME AXL, I GOT A PIECE AN I WOULD LOVE TO GET IN THE RING WITH THIS RIP OFF ARTIST/freak show. 10 HE IS A GREAT FRONT MAN BUT HE FUCKING guy RIPED MY ASS OFF I SEEN HEM AT SO MANY OF THE ODIN SHOWS FRONT AND CENTER AND BACK STAGE AS WELL ... I do want to play with slash. And before I die I hope to get that chance.

6.  What rock star deserves a smack in the mouth and why?

AXL. FOR BEING SUCH A DUMB ASS BREAKING UP THE NEXT STONES, LED ZEPPLIN I CAN KEEP GOING.  I WOULD LOVE TO GIVE AXL A SMACK
IF HE WASINT SUCH AN ASS HOLE he would give a little credit to the O man

The man obviously has very complicated feelings about Axl Rose. Surely he’s written a thank-you letter to Tommy Hilfiger this week, after the fey designer delivered Rose some "November Pain."

Metal Month is not over yet. If you haven’t seen Decline Part II lately, or if you haven’t seen it before at all—even if you weren’t a fan of the music—check your local listings. It will be re-aired a couple more times before the month is over.

Gilbert Sorrentino: 1929–2006

Gilbert Sorrentino, an underrated but very influential writer often lumped in with other postmodernists such as Barthelme, Pynchon, et al., has died. [via Conversational Reading]. Sorrentino is well known for his novel Mulligan Stew, as well as a host of others. His son Christopher published the novel Trance last year, which was nominated for a  National Book Award.

Update: Paul Saxton has some audio files of Sorrentino interviews and readings.

New York Design Week

New York Design Week begins today, running until the 26th.  The big gorilla is the  International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Javitz Center from May 20–23. I've been for the last three years and it is always fun to browse around and lust over all the wonderful objects I'll never be able to afford. Additionally there are a ton of ancillary exhibitions and other events happening all around the city. Core77 has the full rundown.

(Meanwhile, in conjunction with Design Week, the newest issue of Artkrush is all about contemporary design.)

Not to be outdone—okay, they're totally gonna be outdone, but I live here now, so I've got to be loyal—Los Angeles has its own design happenings. June 1st, the long-awaited/delayed reopening of the Architecture and Design Museum finally arrives.  It has moved to a new location on Wilshire, right on Miracle Mile, across the street from LACMA. They were originally supposed to reopen last year some time with a Richard Meier exhibit, but better late than never. The Meier exhibit will open in the fall of this year, while the new inaugural exhibition is New Blood: Next Gen—"groundbreaking work of some of LA's most talented new architects and landscape architects"—which will run from June 1 through August 18. The list of participants is yet to be announced—and let's see, there's just two weeks until opening; I hope that's not a sign of the A+D Museum still scrambling to get their house in order...

June 9th, DesignGuide presents "A Night on Miracle Mile," with happenings at LACMA, the Ace Gallery, and A+D Museum. LACMA currently has an Ettore Sottsass exhibition running, and the A+D Museum will have music courtesy DJ Tom Schnable and the Viver Brazil Dance Company. The night begins at 5:30 at LACMA and ends at 11:30 at the A+U Museum. More info at the DesignGuide website.

Animated Math Music

This is pretty neat, courtesy Jim Bumgardner:

This weekend I’ve been playing, once again, with the ideas of experimental film pioneer John Whitney, using both graphics and audio. While Whitney was interested in turning musical ideas into motion graphics, I’m doing the inverse — turning one of his key animation ideas back into music.

…

In this movie, each of the 48 dots is moving in a circle. Each of the dots is on a 3 minute cycle. At the end of 3 minutes, the outermost dot will have moved around the circle once (this dot represents the first harmonic or fundamental). The next dot will have moved around the circle twice (representing the second harmonic). The next dot three times, and so on. The innermost dot moves around the circle 48 times.

Now, imagine these dots are raised bumps on a disc which is controlling a music box, with each bump triggering a note when it passes the zero degree line (a line extending from the center to the east).

Open this page in a new window and listen and watch. Meanwhile, follow this link to read all about just what is going on. It's a trip to watch the notes line up and splash down as a chord. Check the many variations as well. I get a kick out of nos. 11 and 12.

[found this via a post at Last Plane to Jakarta forums.]

Three Things to Consider in Literature: Location, Location, Location

There was a little article in this Sunday's New York Times Travel section, in which a dozen or so authors (including Jonathan Franzen, Mary Gaitskill, Walter Mosley, and others) were asked to name the books that inspired their inner traveler. The article didn't really provide any juicy nuggets by or about any of the authors or the books they chose, but it did get me thinking about my geographical tastes in books.

It’s not something I had consciously considered for most of my reading life. But sometime a few years ago I’d unintentionally read a string of novels set in New York City. I was living there at the time, and I’d quickly become sick of reading about my city, my neighborhood—and in the case of Jonathan Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude, my very block. Living in Brooklyn (home to Paul Auster, Colson Whitehead, Lethem, Gary Schteyngart, and countless others) and working in the East Village (neighborhood of St. Marks Bookshop and the Strand, the KGB Bar, and the Bowery Poetry Club), I was in the thick of the up-and-comers, tagalongs, and also-rans. Reading about New York in these novels started to stink of cliché. If I picked up a new book at St. Marks and saw New York in the jacket copy, I tossed it aside with a sigh. God, but “write what you know” is a bear trap if you’re one of the million recent MFA grads struggling for your moment in the big city.

It didn’t help that, literature aside, I was souring on New York. Too much noise, too many people, too much trash; not enough money, not enough real friends, not enough room to breathe.

So I made my first attempt at finding literature based on geography. I started with California, my home state. Raised in Fresno, I thought it a personal gaffe to not have ever read William Saroyan, or any Steinbeck beyond Of Mice and Men. After that I went international: Graham Greene’s The Quiet American (in Vietnam), Robert Stone’s Damascus Gate (Middle East), Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (India and England).

In the case of these internationally set novels, the locations weren’t places I necessarily wanted to travel, nor did they inspire any new wanderlust. But their exoticism aided in letting me into the fiction. I could give in to the story in a way I was unable to do with the many novels set in contemporary New York, which often stank of posturing hipsterism.

The book that really captivated me the most, though, was Norman Rush’s Mating, one of the best books I've ever read. Set in Botswana, the book is about American anthropologists experimenting with a matriarchal society hidden in the desert. Well, plotwise, that’s what the book is about. But the book really sings when it covers the love and intimacy between the two main characters. It is a novel about love—not romance, not lust or yearning, but love. An intimate and intellectual intertwining of minds and hearts. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that describes love in a more realistic way. Rush’s follow up, Mortals, is also set in Botswana and also takes on similar themes of love and intimacy, and the sort of obsessive cataloging of moments when a relationship falls apart.

How is Botswana related to these themes? I don’t know, exactly. Yet I don’t think Rush’s novels would have been successful if he tried to tackle the same issues within a Brooklyn brownstone.

Rush was also successful in inspiring in me a new minor obsession—literature set in Africa! I tried Russell Banks’s The Darling but it just didn’t take. On deck is Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, William Boyd’s Brazzavile Beach, and the nonfiction travelogue No Mercy: A Journey into the Heart of the Congo, by Redmond O’Hanlon. I’ve heard from multiple quarters that No Mercy is a phenomenal read.

Critics in a Critical Age

ArtsJournal is hosting a one-week only panel blog on the role of the critic in today's webnoisy world. Says moderator Douglas McLennan:

Everyone's a critic. And now that anyone has access to an audience through the internet, our computers have become a cacophony of people with opinions. Clearly not all opinions are equal. Traditionally, the influence of an opinion was closely tied to the venue in which it was published - how widely it was disseminated or how prestigious the publication was thought to be...

With a growing flood of opinions available to all, some suggest that the influence of the traditional critic is waning, that the opinions of the many will drown out the power of the few. But in a time when access to information and entertainment and art seems to be growing exponentially, more than ever we need ways to to sort through the mass and get at the "good" stuff. The question is how? Where is the critical authority to come from?

Some suggest that new social networking software that ranks community preferences and elevates some opinions over others will supplant the formerly powerful traditional critics. So what is to be the new critical currency? Stripped of traditional legitimacies, how will the most interesting critical voices be heard and have influence?

This is a topic that seems to get recycled and rehashed every other month, either in the blogodin (always with a sprinkle of "we're inevitable" superiority) or in the print world (always with a conflicted mixture of jealousy and condescension). The topic therefore wears thin most the time. But ArtsJournal's panel blogs are usually pretty interesting, so I'll be tuning in to see what the fifteen or so online and print critics have to spew—er, say. The conversation began yesterday and will continue through Friday.

David Mitchell Looms on my Horizon

Robert Birnbaum interviews David Mitchell over at the Morning News today. Coincidentally I'm off to the bookstore this afternoon to pick up Black Swan Green, which I've been excited about since it came out last month. I've been holding off on reading it because Readerville will be discussing it all month long starting June 1; I wanted the book to stay fresh in my mind for that discussion. They did Cloud Atlas last year and for a book I thought I really "got," a lot of windows were opened in that discussion. I think/hope the BSG discussion will be equally (if not more) fulfilling since the book will be a lot fresher in people's minds this time around. What are you waiting for?