DOG SHOW HELLO

The long awaited dogshowhello update - news and the like

2010-05-03T13:47:00.003+01:00

Hello hello my estranged dogshowhello-ers! Long time no type, but I do have my reasons - which will be explained below in just a second, but first I want to just thank everyone who has ever read or commented on any of my posts here.

Since starting this blog I have had a little jog of excitement whenever anyone has spoken to me about the dogshowhello - it makes me happy to know that people are paying attention and nice to know that I have a platform to spout my own peculiar brand of rubbish from; so thanks for that!

Onto current business though - in the last few months I've been quite busy offline and am happy to announce that TOMORROW (May 4th 2010) I start my MA in Film Making at the London Film School. Exciting, no?!

As such I'm going to have a lot of creative updates and material to put onto the site - I plan to document the two years of work on this here blog. I'm also hoping to use your feedback in shaping my ideas and work. By making ongoing projects available to comment on I hope to make dogshowhello a much more interactive dialogue with users of the blog having a visable impact on the finished work. (Well, until I decide I know better than everyone else, natch!)

Exciting times ahead!

Thanks again, WOOFs for all,

Sam Sam

found footage music video for "From Stardust to Sentience" by High Places

2010-02-09T13:10:00.003Z

Hello dogshowhelloers! Have I got a treat for you today or what!

From Stardust to Sentience (video by Sam Mildner, song by High Places) from Sam Mildner on Vimeo.

I've been compiling an archive of "found" footage for quite a while now, and this is the first time I've made any of my experiments publicly viewable.

The idea to make a music video came about after I wanted to try cutting sympathetically to music. After this was decided it was a logical step to choose "From Stardust to Sentience" - aside from the fact that I love the song, it has a definite beat, musical variations, and a feeling of nostalgia, which suited the nature of the found footage.

In my original email to the band I outlined the following intentions for the video:

"As for the project, I'm using the title of the song as a key thematic element - however, I feel the song to be not only about the literal birth of the universe, but also consciousness, realization and growth.

As such I'm using joyous, lyrical images and cutting very sympathetically to the music - I hope to open with images of childhood and end with a couple walking off into a mountain range (although this is subject to change!)

The idea being that over the course of the song we have witnessed an individual's journey from (wait for it!) stardust to sentience. YEAH!!!

There's going to be lots of nostalgic childhood imagery, nature, images of flying and ascent, mountains and, of course, high places :-D "

As you will have no doubt seen by now, I stuck pretty close to the original plan, but changed the end section (the couple in the mountains) to the middle section of the song. I did this because it fit my understanding of that moment's emotional core, but also because it allowed me to end the video with the "snapshot" look at a man's life.

After collating the footage I knew that this would be the most affecting way to end the video, a bittersweet look back at life, but whilst still acknowledging that life goes on.

Since I've been working on this video pretty non-stop I don't really have any perspective yet, but I think I'm quite pleased with the result - hopefully you, and High Places, agree!

more exciting posts to come soon!

sam sam

PS. If you would like a better quality version of the video just send me an email :-D

PPS. If you like High Places, you should support them by visiting their blog and buying their albums! Here's some handy links!

animated life - heron tower

2010-02-01T18:02:00.000Z

Hello again dogshowhello-ers! This is a project I was working on whilst I was working at St. Bart's hospital, and created as a flip book (with accompanying text pieces) for my London Film School application.

After having a bit of a rethink I've recreated it as an animated gif - time now loops for infinity, always cycling forwards and then backwards. I think this an interesting way to present this content on the internet, and I hope you do too.

Below the gif is the original explaination and though process behind the piece - perhaps I will one day present it as it was originally intended :-D

Heron Tower GIF Project

Original Project Outline

"Throughout my life I have always been fascinated with film, and in particular the way motion, and therefore life, can be captured in a series of still moments. Resurrection of this dead time was always a thrill to me, so much so that at the age of three my father came home to find his entire box of still photography film used up; on hesitantly paying to process these rolls of film my parents discovered hundreds of near identical pictures of my toys.

As it turns out I had attempted to infuse these objects of cheap plastic with the life I regularly gave them in my mind; on flicking through these photographs one could see the jerking beginnings of animated life – though primitive, there was a form of life on these photographs that couldn’t exist anywhere else except in my mind.

This knowledge of cinema’s ability to control both life and death, manipulate reality into impossible shapes and create entire tangible universes from the embers of imagination has never left me, and is a strong reason behind why I remain fascinated with film.

This Heron Tower art project is based around two things; daily routine and the power of juxtaposed images. As discussed, I have always been fascinated with the way a collection of still images can make conventional space-time logic malleable, and this project is the modern day incarnation of this wonder.

Film’s ability to animate the still is something I have explored in this project by melding it with thoughts of routine. This project came to me after I had recovered from a knee operation and had started walking four miles to, and from, work every day. On my walks to and from work I pass the Heron Tower building project near Liverpool Street station twice every day, and do so at almost exactly the same time each day.

Growing disillusioned with the everyday work routine I found myself feeling stuck in a rut; it was as if time wasn’t passing, but instead repeated the same pattern of events day after day. Heron Tower seemed to echo this thought – even though I walked past every day its building work never seemed to progress.

As an attempt to show that time most certainly was passing I took to standing on the same spot each day that I passed and taking a photo of the building – after amassing several photos I began to see the that time was most certainly going past. Looking at Heron Tower construct itself, and then destruct when flipped the other way, made me both happy and sad.

I was amazed at the way I had captured my own aspect of reality – for the moments I was looking at my real world flip book I was in control of time. Simultaneously however I also felt that this series of photos evoked a melancholic air; it’s tragic that we seldom notice time passing until it is gone, because we are so stuck in the minutia of our existences.

With this in mind I combined the project with a daily list of what foodstuffs I eat and at what time, in this way both the banal and the philosophical juxtapose and communicate the strange experience of working a 9-5 job. I find it fitting that after each identical day I am left with only these two articles proving the previous day actually occurred – I suppose sharing them is an attempt to hold onto this ‘lost’ time.

I hope to display the project as an art installation, but until then I ask that you watch this building tumble forward, then backwards, through time and experience the same feeling I felt when I was three years old and taking photos with my father’s camera."

I hope you found that interesting, sorry it's a lot of text!

sam sam

some photos I've taken over the last year...

2010-01-21T18:02:00.003Z

Hey there my loving dogshowhello-ers! Just a quick update today featuring some photos I've taken over the last year or so. All are unadulterated by photoshop, or any other such editing tool, and were shot without additional lighting.

Although there is was no overt thematic intent behind these pieces I do now see connecting strands of thought between them - after looking at them for half an hour I was acutely aware taht none of them contain people! I don't want to know what that says about me!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy some of them; as always your feedback would be much appreciated!

sam sam (ps. traditional dog photo at bottom of post not taken by me, obviously!)

sam sam

The first section of my novel; entitled Every Time You Lie You Get A Little Bit Better At It

2010-01-20T18:57:00.002Z

Hello all my dogshowhello readers! Thank you very much for your feedback on my last post - I found the experience encouraging enough that I plan to create some more paintings in the near future.

However, I'm here to present something I've been working on for close to a year now; my first novel, Every Time You Lie You Get A Little Bit Better At It. I've had the novel's structure finalized for quite a while now, but actually writing is now becoming quite hard because of the reflexive nature of the book's themes and variety of writing "voices", if you will.

As such I'm posting the first few pages of prose up here so that I'm hopefully motivated into finishing it - by putting this out there I can no longer think of the book as a meerely potential project; instead I have to actually finish it!

I won't offer much in way of introduction to the prose, as there would be little if you were handed the finished manuscript - however, what I will offer is that I am writing a book about books. With that in mind I hope you enjoy the below extract.

PS. I debated with myself about whether to include the purposely rambling Prologue section; this is because although it is importnat to the novel's overall structure it isn't indicative of the novel as a whole. I eventually opted to keep it, primarily because it displays an additional writing "voice", but I do so with the proviso that it will seem very confused and rambling - FORGIVE ME!

(for ease of reading there is a pdf of the manuscript available here, but the text itself is also reproduced below.)

Every time you lie you get a little bit better at it

Prologue

It’s got to the point where I don’t even consider the temperature when I get dressed. I just put on whatever I think I want to wear each day; in that half-asleep-angled-head-toe-stubbing cliché I potter around picking up garments and trying to assess each outfit’s symbolic weighting, colour, geometric compatibility, carefully assessing the role I need (want?) to occupy in the day ahead and...and...

...and then I lose my train of thought and sit at the computer for the third time that moment and idly check the same three websites for news, vaguely hoping for a refresh. Anything; civil unrest over exponential rises in unemployment, a new celebrity death to complain about, an editorial piece on the danger’s of milk to the human digestive system, new colours of obscure consumer electronics. Anything at all, as long as I don’t have to engage with the day.

Eventually, after several permutations of the bedroom cycle I find myself under the gaze of the shower head. The “on” button is pressed, and after several seconds of caveman anticipation...I am so...so...aware.

I feel the crater-like moonscape of my skin overwhelmed by so much rich moisture. Always moving, and flowing, it never feels constant – from moment to moment I feel so many different patterns and drops of water that to mathematically calculate, even a second, of the water’s movement would take hundreds of thousands of years. So much time and potential washed down the plughole with my Pantenne Pro-V. Ha. Chaos theory isn’t chaos if you could spend long enough observing it. Everything follows rules, if only there were someone who could see all of existence, surely they could calculate, not predict, every event that ever will occur. The galactic Petri dish. Other’s thoughts could be “read” through prediction, anticipation of every synaptic movement and chemical reaction to ever occur on this level would effectively allow four dimensional travel within one‘s mind – if only...

The rush of thoughts and feelings is over. I am now fully awake and aware. Sorry about all that rambling, I can never really organize my thoughts when I’m half awake.

It is the twenty-first of February. My name is David Nance. I am here examining my body in the mirror the way I do every morning, wishing that I could be back in bed. I feel that my torso looks more and more like a bad joke every time I accidentally-on-purpose glance at it. Everyday it feels that the shadows grow longer, and I can’t every really qualify what happened to the previous thirty-three years of my life. I work at a book company where the impact I have on the final product is so little that if I were to inexplicably disappear I don’t feel that my colleges would feel the loss; let alone human history.

But, if you’re reading this, it means I’m wrong; after all, no one writes stories about people for no reason...

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Hello reader. Welcome to this book. My name is Every time you lie you get a little bit better at it. This book is about one David Nance.

I know it may seem awfully unprofessional of me to say so, but I’m not sure if I like him. Don’t tell anyone you read that please. We’re all friends here.

David Nance is currently in the thrall of his employment - he is wearing a mismatched suit, his blazer and trousers don’t match, and he is wearing a salmon pink shirt; topping off this ensemble is a brown cross hatched tie. Whether this outfit was intentionally mismatched is something I am unable to ascertain; what is not in question is that it is a vile affront to fashion and common decency. Urgh.

David works at a famous book publishing company (I can’t specify which one, for legal reasons you understand), and he resents his job. His task today is to go through a local hack’s thirteenth iteration of their woefully insignificant novel and check for spelling mistakes. Having overseen the previous versions of the novel David is sure that this task is not something he wants to do, but for the paltry sum of £23,000 a year David is obligated to.

Making matters worse David suffers from acute dyslexia, and, as such, adopts a coping mechanism he learnt many years ago. Starting at the back of the text he checks the final word for spelling mistakes, then the penultimate, then the one before that, and so on. Removing each word from context allows David to analyze each word on its own merit; is it “disapointed” or “disappointed”?

To go through the entire text in this manner will take days.

With this in mind it won’t come to much of a shock to say that David isn’t actually following the above process.

Instead, David is scrawling in a battered old notebook, which he takes great care to shield when his supervisor walks by. God-forbid someone see the awfully irregular cursive he defiles the little green book with.

David’s aforementioned supervisor is a wiry young man called Lars. What with David being almost six years older than Lars, he often hypothesizes that Lars got his job by skulking around the men’s toilets; as irrelevant as it is to this novel it turns out that this assumption was actually not that far from the truth.

David looks back over his shoulder to check that Lars is gone, then swiftly pivots his entire body to face the small green book. What with all the physical attention the movement focuses on the book I feel it prudent to describe it in greater detail; solely for the sake of completion you understand.

In order to accurately do so however, I must first explain how the book came to be in David’s possession; if I don’t do this now it only creates questions later, so please grant me this indulgence.

ASIDE ONE

Working at a book publisher’s has allowed David some opportunities the general public do not have; aside from being able to read the latest [author name removed based on legal advice] novel before its release, of course. This interior position in the literary machine grants him access to the little abnormalities and birth defects that the public is spared. In addition to instances where author’s names are accidentally-on-purpose misspelled to create crude puns, he sometimes finds things which seem to speak through some atavistic physical prose, examples include;

· a shattered spine which, having never been gifted with it’s essential glue, slowly but certainly allows it’s body of text to fall away from it like deciduous leaves; eventually resulting in something which qualifies as a “book” when you consider only it’s facade.

· solid, hard, irregular bodies of matter comprised from tens of thousands of compressed pages. This particular bookish cancer occurs when hundreds of unfinished volumes became jammed in between the rollers of their birth mother, each crushed under the weight of its siblings as they frantically tried to escape their mechanized womb. On closer inspection words could be visually excavated from the Dadaistic maze of curves and punctuation – words such as “age”, “shattered” and the defiant “never” read like transmissions from some ancient primal place before birth.

· rivers of turgid grey slurry, which gave off a heady aroma somewhere between melting plastic and liquidised dreams. The literary equivalent of human cremains it was hard to conceive that once this liquid was thousands of fully finished books, condemned to this fate by page 163’s misprint of “maybe” as “mabye”. This many pulped volumes spoke of genocide on par with the holocaust – the fact this mistake was not noticed due to a failed dyslexic connection in David’s brain made his hands feel stained with the ink of thousands. In his own way he felt he was worse than Stalin.

The small green book which is the subject David’s attention at this moment in time is one of the above bookish abortions; and one which was unique in its print run. David did not fully understand the mechanics behind the book’s immaculate conception, but he knew it was to do with the press’s tolerance settings.

For those not in the know about printing presses (somehow I’m guessing that’s an awful lot of you...) I’ll expand on the process. When a book is printed each page passes through the machine, with each page printed by a piece of apparatus innovatively named a “print head”. Whilst this is all well and good the impact of printing of a page moves the print head a microscopic amount, creating the need to manually “reset” the print head every few days. Obviously, in between these manual resets it is not unheard of for there to be several misprints before the print head falls back into step with the rest of the press – sometimes, once in every trillion or so prints, this even results in a page being completely unmarked.

With this in mind the accidental production of a book in which no one page had ever been marked was a near mathematical impossibility – something David knew and remembered whenever he picked up just such a small green volume, understandably with nervous hands.

“A mathematical improbability; improbable, but not impossible” was how David saw the book now, but back when he first pawed through the volume’s blindingly blank pages he felt as Thomas must have felt when he saw his friend, and King of King’s Jesus Christ appear before him – “HOLY FUCKING CHRIST” just ran across the front of his brain like cheap advertising lights you see in overconfident kebab shops.

When David first stole away with the book he felt as if he should cherish it and protect it from ever being sullied; after all it was pure, virginal if you will. It was not uncommon in those early days for him to sit down and “read” the book from cover to cover, all the while being ensnared in its all consuming nothingness. It was solace. It was everything. It was life.

It was his.

Being a typical homo sapien, and henceforth prone to bouts of unmatched egotism, David eventually made attempts to justify his frenzied filling of the book with his literary seed. David’s flaccid attempts at reasoning such an endeavour centred on one brooding metaphysical notion. He believed he felt the book pulling him, begging him to give it life – after all surely a book’s equivalent of “I think therefore I am” was “I am read, therefore I am”; who was he to denying the book its purpose by leaving it empty? Surely The Book (as he now liked to think of it) wanted to be filled, and who was he to deny something its wish?

In short, he reasoned The Book was asking for it; and he was the man who had what it needed – the ultimate story.

So here we are, with David sitting hunchbacked over his desk, frenziedly scribbling into the small, green, leather print-effect paperback book sitting before him.

END OF ASIDE ONE

With the nature of the book, and the miraculous circumstances surrounding its birth, in mind it is easy to empathise with David’s obsessive protection of the book. His hunched shoulders and erratic head movements spoke of extreme worry; not for being reprimanded for failing to do his work, but for fear of David’s precious secret being discovered.

When David felt absolutely assured that Lars had left the room he pulled out The Book from underneath the one he was supposed to be proof reading. Over the next twenty-five minutes the diminutive green tome could be seen to quiver excitably as David’s hands pressed hard into its pages, the death rattles halting and then suddenly accelerating as David thought up new ways to butcher centuries of literary heritage.

Of course, David considered what he was writing to be the most audaciously prophetic and worthwhile text anyone had ever written; as most people who write books do. “What do I have to say that has never been said before” was the question he strived to answer through his frantic scribbles, reasoning that he could come up with something that no one in the history of human existence had previously – which, when you put it like that, seems highly unlikely.

Nevertheless David continued write in The Book, and with no way to erase his words, wrote in a stream of consciousness style, his language clipped and complex in its simplicity.

Thanks for reading, please do give me some feedback!

Sam Sam

my first paintings in a long time! dog show hello is new again!

2010-01-15T23:50:00.001Z

As I promised in my last post dog show hello is changing, and it's changing into this!!!

And what is this I hear you cry?! Why, dog show hello is now going to be focused primarily on my own artistic output, with the usual media opinions being the croutons to this tasty bowl of proverbial salad.

Obtuse metaphors aside I like to think that having some online output will allow me to receive more feedback and exposure for my work; in the next few days I hope to put up an extract from the novel I've been working on for a year (on and off!), some film proposals and scripts I've been sitting on for years, some photos I've taken over the years.

In short there should be a loads of stuff - whilst I doubt it will all be to your taste there might be the odd thing you like, so overall I think we all win :-D

Anyway, on to today's stuff.

These pictures are cropped details of some bigger pieces I've been working on, using paint in an atavistic fashion - although some brushes were used I also used my fists, fingers, tongue and body hair to create different textures.

I found the entire process rather liberating and, suprisingly, I don't have outright hate for the pieces.

Above piece entitled Mind

Above piece entitled Thought

Above piece entitled Horizon

In retrospect I think the first three came from the same place, with all three making a point of using black and red. In addition to these three pieces I'm including another piece in this post, entitled Rot. If you expand the below jpeg you can see pieces of grapefruit worked into the paint; my thought being that the work would gradually degrade and putrify over time.

Anyway, that's enough of me blathering on for now; hopefully you're going to come back again soon!

Oh and any feedback would be appreciated, but please play nice!

sam sam

news and updates and all those nice things!

2010-01-13T01:08:00.005Z

Hello all! I know I've left you without your doses of dogshowhello recently (I've heard you crying, don't try to deny it!), but I promise that BIG THINGS are on the way.

These delays are due to a few things happening in my life which have forced pretty big retinks - pulling back the curtain of SHOWMANSHIP it's basically that the grant I needed to attend the London Film School fell through at the very last minute... late enough that I had already handed my notice in to the breast and gynecological cancer ward where I was working. GRRRRRRRRR!!!!!

Due to this practically everything in my life has changed, and, as such, my beautiful dogshowhello will change too - expect updates very soon!

I love you all, and can't wait for you to see what I have in store for you - I'm EXCITED!

sam sam

BEATLE-A-DAY!!! #13 - Abbey Road (1969)

2009-11-06T17:00:00.000Z

1. Come Together

2. Something

3. Maxwell's Silver Hammer

4. Oh Darling

5. Octopus's Garden

6. I Want You (She's So Heavy)

7. Here Comes The Sun

8. Because

9. You Never Give Me Your Money

10. Sun King

11. Mean Mr Mustard

12. Polythene Pam

13. She Came In Through The Bathroom Window

14. Golden Slumbers

15. Carry That Weight

16. The End

17. Her Majesty

So here we are. With Abbey Road, The Beatles' thirteenth, and last, recorded album Beatle-A-Day!!! comes to its end.

Oh, but what a way to end.

For me Abby Road is the fab four's definitive statement - whilst the album's A side displays the way the band functions as the musical outlet for four very distinct individuals (the transition from Octopus's Garden to I Want You (She's So Heavy) still boggles my mind!) it is the B side where Abby Road's magic really is.

And magic is certainly what I would call it; with the band practically non-existent at the time of composition it is amazing that any work was produced at all, let alone something displaying the Abbey Road Medley's cohesion, unity of purpose and all round good vibes.

Of course, I'm not saying that musically the Abbey Road Medley is a well considered whole; with it's unflagged tempo changes, sudden moments of silence and reoccurring musical motifs the song is very much that description's antithesis. Instead I believe that it shows the way the band (and in particular John and Paul) were still capable of writing together, with utterly spectacular results.

With The End The Beatles saga comes to its close and in this one short piece the foursome sum up the entirety of The Beatles' recording career. The song features Ringo's only drum solo, and is then followed by three distinct guitar sounds which gradually work together to become one cohesive guitar line. George's guitar is technically minded and displays an intense interest in rhythmical patterns, Paul comes in second and gives the piece an elegantly simple series of licks, and finally John enters the fray with his buzzsaw distortion and emphasis on rhythm over melody.

This majestic showcase of the band's individual talents then gives way to a vocal harmony in which the band declare that "in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make" - a beautifully succinct summation of The Beatles' entire ideological stance. In this one moment I believe Abbey Road would justify it's place at the end of The Beatles' timeline, but almost every single song on the album is equally as good - I even like Paul's addition of Maxwell's Silver Hammer now!

Through Beatle-A-Day!!! I have held firm to my analogy that The Beatles' lifespan mirror's that of a human life, and nowhere else does this ring more true than on Abbey Road. Whilst writing it the lads from Liverpool knew that it would be their last album, and it shows. The album seems to have been designed to be their definitive statement, and it certainly is that - throughout the album their are musical references to The Beatles' entire history. In pulling these together it serves too allow the four to look over their accomplishments and, in an almost existential fashion, attempt to unearth what their existence meant - and in the final line the four nail it.

I find Abbey Road to be a genuinely cathartic experience, and one which leaves me with a tinge of sadness - in recognizing their own mortality The Beatles reflect that thought back into me. Due to its place in history and its musical content I think that Abbey Road is without a doubt the sixth Beatles masterpiece, and something everyone should have in their collection.

To close Beatle-A-Day!!! I just want to say that writing this feature has redefined my relationship with The Beatles, and made me appreciate them all the more; even going as far to declare that they are in all honesty the band with the greatest body of work that I am aware of. There may be more instant music, and even music I listen to more often, but it doesn't change the fact that The Beatles made much of the music occurring today possible, and went so far as to not only redefine music, but the way it is written, recorded and consumed.

If you haven't already these are the six Beatles albums that I think everybody should at least have heard in their entirety as they are the foundation for much that has come since:

1. Rubber Soul

2. Revolver

3. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

4. Magical Mystery Tour

5. The White Album

6. Abbey Road

...and with that we are done! Hope you enjoyed this feature as much as I did!

sam sam

BEATLE-A-DAY!!! #12 - Let It Be (1970)

2009-11-04T22:22:00.001Z

1. Two Of Us

2. Dig A Pony

3. Across The Universe

4. I Me Mine

5. Dig It

6. Let It Be

7. Maggie Mae

8. I've Got A Feeling

9. One After 909

10. The Long And Winding Road

11. For You Blue

12. Get Back

Let It Be was an album I expected to dislike, just because of the place it holds in The Beatles' back catalogue - officially the last released album I resented the fact that The Beatles' final statement would be seen by many to be a regression, albeit an intended one, in musical style.

Luckily for me there are two things which occurred to make me rethink my opinions of the album; whilst the first surrounds the music's release the second concerns the material itself. Firstly there is much more widespread acceptance that Let It Be was in fact the foursome's penultimate release, something which instantly erases any anal doubts I might have had about the way this album seems out of step with the The Beatles' overall career arc.

Secondly, and after subsequent listens, I actually really enjoy the album; this is in no small part due to the fact that it is a completely fails to accomplish its original goal. Paul pushed incredibly hard after the fracticious White Album sessions for The Beatles to begin playing, writing and recording as a band in an effort to get "back to basics" (Paul's words, not mine!). On principal I tend to dislike instances when bands, or artists, attempt to return to an earlier stage in their development - not only do I find it disingenuous, but I also find it unnecessary. If I want to listen to something akin to The Beatles' earlier work I will just put on an earlier release; after all why should I choose saccharine over sugar?

Having not seen the Let It Be film (in which the album's composition is documented) I can't comment on how organic the music's composition was, but listening to the finished piece it seems fitting that it was handed to Phil Spector to master. As a notorious over producer he seems like an incongruous fit for a "back to basics" approach, but in the light of the way the band dissolved during the writing process he seems perfect the perfect choice for a band who seems to have little faith in Paul's original concept.

Musically the album is certainly less eclectic than the White Album's most tangential moments, but it does seem to maintain that album's cleanliness; at no point does the listener ever feel completely overwhelmed in the same way Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band frequently took pleasure in. Having said this, some may cite Spector's involvement as a contradicting this point, but I think that any such cries ignore the fact that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band felt so excessive not because of the number of instruments involved, but the way they all pulled in different directions.

Spector's overblown additions to the release (including choirs, organs and more) don't actually detract from the release for me; perhaps the most obvious moment of their inclusion is during the titular Let It Be and The Long And Winding Road. For me at least, this theatrical bent seems fitting with the materials' sentimental nature, and, as such, emphasises The Beatles' musical work.

Coming to the content itself there are several classic Beatles songs on this release ; for me songs such as Dig A Pony, I Me Mine, Dig It (what a song title! Yeah!), I've Got A Felling and Get Back stand tall with The Beatles' best, and for that I think Let It Be is in fact a damn fine album.

After the Yellow Submarine soundtrack album debacle it's very nice to find a hidden gem in The Beatles' catalogue - I think that Let It Be will now be getting a hell of a lot more play than I ever expected before embarking on Beatle-A-Day!!!

Of course, in comparison to the band's final offering Let It Be looses a great deal of its lustre - Abbey Road, as I will post tomorrow, truly blows it out of the water.

sam sam

DOG SHOW HELLO IMPORTANT UPDATE AND INFO!!! YEAH!!!!

2009-11-04T12:50:00.002Z

Hello there dog show hello and general Sam Mildner fans!

I'm so sorry I haven't been in touch or posting recently, but I promise there is a perfectly good explanation for this * stares at shoes in an embarrassed fashion*. I haven't even been seeing my London friends or housemates as much as I'd like over the last few weeks, but I can honestly say that THIS IS NOW OVER!!!!!!

My absence from the internet, and life in general, is due to the fact I've spent all this time prepping my portfolio and interview skills (ha!) for my application to the London Film School. I was informed that I was granted an interview on the basis of my admission piece (original three minute script, storyboards and general forms), and its just been go-go-GO!!!!! since then. Long story short I had the interview at the end of last week, and received an email on Wednesday evening stating that I had been accepted onto the Filmmaking MA, starting on January 11th.

With this out of the way I'm planning to carry out the big dog show hello plans I hinted at in the last few entries, hopefully making the blog a lot more of a back and forth between readers and myself - I can't stress enough how useful feedback is to me and the blog's general development.

In addition to this I've also uploaded the RSS feed to my facebook account; if you're reading this on there then well done for finding it, but please have a pop over to the real blog if you become a regular reader; it's where your comments will be truly public, your web-traffic gets the blog more noticed, and also where you get to see all the lovely page formatting I do *sigh*!

Just before I go I'd like to direct your attention to my, now sadly ex, housemate's blog Diary of a Shinjuku Thief. Jules writes mainly about film, and is damn good at it so give his blog a glance and a comment or two - I'm pretty sure that he would, just like me (hint, hint!) appreciate any feedback you give him.

That's a;ll for now folks, hope you're all happy peeps!

sam sam

BEATLE-A-DAY!!! #11 - Yellow Submarine (1969)

2009-10-19T21:13:00.002+01:00

Hello! As discussed in my post on The Beatles: Rock Band I have decided to embark on a project called Beatle-A-Day, in which I listen to The Beatles' back catalogue in chronological (recorded) order and post about, surprise surprise, an album a day (Weekends and Wednesdays not withstanding!)

Without further delay let's get stuck in!

1. Yellow Submarine

2. Only A Northern Song

3. All Together Now

4. Hey Bulldog

5. It's All Too Much

6. All You Need Is Love

7. Pepperland

8. Sea Of Time

9. Sea Of Holes

10. Sea Of Monsters

11. March Of The Meanies

12. Pepperland Laid Waste

13. Yellow Submarine In Pepperland

I'll go into my Beatle-A-Day!!! post on this album by stating that after listening to Yellow Submarine several times I'm unsure of whether I should include this in the series of a posts; aside from the confused issues revolving around its classification (is it really a full album?) it just isn't a very satisfying release.

As I am a huge fan of the Yellow Submarine animated movie (along with The White Album it was the other Beatles artifact which was eagerly pushed on me by my parents) the biggest shock from the Yellow Submarine album was that it didn't include all of the songs from the film; the omission of classics like Eleanor Rigby, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, Nowhere Man and With A Little Help From My Friends is simply baffling.

I understand that this was rectified with the 1999 release of the "songtrack" album accompanying the film's re-release, but it still doesn't change the fact that the original soundtrack release is an unmitigated failure.

On the record's A side there are six bone-fide Beatles songs; the problem with this is that of these six only four are new to this release, and of these only two were recorded specifically for this release (namely Hey Bulldog and All Together Now). As such the album's first half seems like a mish-mash of Beatles material from several eras, and its unintended incoherence leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

As questionable as the first side's claim to be a Beatles album is I was most unprepared for what lay in wait on the record's B side...

If you come to the an album branded as being by The Beatles I don't think it unreasonable to expect the album to feature, at best, freshly written material from the foursome; however, at a push I am prepared to accept the band performing others' material (as on the band's earlier works).

What I would not expect is material neither written or recorded by the band. For an album which is widely considered to be the band's eleventh full album I find it disgusting to find that approximately half of its run time is instead composed by the band's producer and then performed by session musicians.

At this point I think it academic to even debate the musical merit of the score, but I will do so just to stick the boot in a little further; it is in no way the worst film soundtrack I have ever heard, but it is also far, far, far from even being a good one. In a film which is effectively sound tracked by The Beatles' own work these symphonic pieces serve more as transitions between Beatles material, and as such don't really have much of their own personality.

In closing I would say that this release would be, without a doubt, the worst release that the normally Fab Four ever put their name to - however I don't even feel vindicated saying even this since I wouldn't even consider it a Beatles release.

As such the best I can muster is the following: don't buy this knock off piece of money grabbing non-Beatles material. Instead either purchase the 1999 songtrack or download the four new songs on iTunes - Hey Bulldog is a rocking song so don't miss out just because of this release's disappointing nature.

sam sam

BEATLE-A-DAY!!! #10 - The Beatles (The White Album) (1968)

2009-10-18T18:19:00.001+01:00

1. Back In The USSR

2. Dear Prudence

3. Glass Onion

4. Ob La Di Ob La Da

5. Wild Honey Pie

6. The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill

7. While My Guitar Gently Weeps

8. Happiness Is A Warm Gun

9. Martha My Dear

10. I'm So Tired

11. Blackbird

12. Piggies

13. Rocky Raccoon

14. Don't Pass Me By

15. Why Don't We Do It In The Road

16. I Will

17. Julia

Disk Two

1. Birthday

2. Yer Blues

3. Mother Nature's Son

4. Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey

5. Sexy Sadie

6. Helter Skelter

7. Long Long Long

8. Revolution 1

9. Honey Pie

10. Savoy Truffle

11. Cry Baby Cry

12. Revolution 9

13. Good Night

The White Album (or The Beatles as it is officially titled) will always hold a very special place in my heart, as it was THE Beatles album of my childhood. Both my parents enthused about it, and I was so intrigued by why this was that it was one of the first albums I recorded to Mini-Disc when I received my player one Christmas morning...*sigh*

At the time I found the album's much paraded excellence rather hard to pin down; unlike Magical Mystery Tour or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band the album does not have any overt structure or tone. This unquantifiable essence made me slightly wary of the album, I understood that it contained some truly excellent songs, but couldn't fathom why songs like Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da would be next to much lighter songs, such as Wild Honey Pie.

Through writing these Beatle-A-Day!!! post though I have a much greater understanding of the album's overall structure; it came at a point of the band pulling violently apart, and as a result is the sound of four band member's very different musical interests combining and conflicting. When you consider the intense pressure on the foursome it is astounding that they created such a sprawling release, which almost seems to serve as a snapshot of all Western pop music released to its date of release.

As with musical styles the album's lyrical focus and tone also have no coherent threads; whilst some are overtly political others exist in the fantasy "Nowhere Land" of The Beatles' mid-period, others speak of other Beatles' songs (Glass Onion perhaps exemplifies this best) and Rocky Raccoon even serves as a narrative set in the deep south - and told with an eager Southern drawl to match.

However, I don't think this lack of direction to be of any detriment to The White Album; in fact I think it to be its greatest asset. Because of it we have The Beatles' most rocking material (Back In The U.S.S.R., Why Don't We Do It In The Road, Birthday, Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey and the apocalyptic, and huge personal favorite, Helter Skelter), their most emotionally affecting songs (Dear Prudence, Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Happiness Is A Warm Gun and Blackbird)...

...you get the idea. I could list almost every single song in such a list, with the result being the same - that you realize that The White Album is one of the most important albums of the century, if not the single most important release. I was originally planning to cover each disk of The White Album in a Beatle-A-Day!!! post of its own, but when I came to write this post I realized that whatever I typed for the second disk would be more or less the same as the first post, just using different examples.

Aside from giving blow by blow descriptions of songs (which seems to me to be a worthless endeavor, if you listen to the songs you don't need me to ineffectually describe how they sound!) I don't see what else can be said about The White Album; as nebulous as it is I think it impossible to make many more sweeping statements about the album's style, conception or reception, and as such anything else delves so far into minutia that it renders itself worthless.

My final statement on the album though is that I believe it signals the end of The Beatles in more ways than one. Aside from the quarrels, disputes and tension it also shows a band becoming more musically expansive than ever before; to the extent that I consider it to be the first album of The Beatles' late period, or to use Beatle-A-Day!!!'s over arching analogy the signaling of The Beatles' ascension to adulthood.

The album has some moments of real darkness and cynicism which seem ill-fitting with the earlier "Love" period, and herald the maturity of the four's musical careers. As such it is unquestionably The Beatles' fifth masterpiece, and a watershed moment in Western culture.

In this context the experimental Revolution 9's statement that "Everyone of them knew that as time went by they'd get a little bit older and a litter slower, but..." resonates uneasily in my mind - did the four know that the end wasn't that far off?

sam sam

BEATLE-A-DAY!!! #09 - Magical Mystery Tour (1967)

2009-10-12T22:03:00.001+01:00

1. Magical Mystery Tour

2. The Fool On The Hill

3. Flying

4. Blue Jay Way

5. Your Mother Should Know

6. I Am The Walrus

7. Hello Goodbye

8. Strawberry Fields Forever

9. Penny Lane

10. Baby You're A Rich Man

11. All You Need Is Love

Before we jump straight into this entry of Beatle-A-Day!!! I think it prudent to explain exactly which version of the release this post will cover. Magical Mystery Tour was released as a double EP, with the subsequent US release adding other singles - it is this US version which is held up as definitive, with the new remasterings using this version. As such it is this expanded edition we will be looking at today, and my lord it's pretty good.

After researching the album's muddled release (and largely negative reaction to the TV film of the same name) I wasn't expecting a coherent release, more so a collection of songs featuring Beatles classics such as I Am The Walrus, All You Need Is Love, Strawberry Fields Forever and Hello Goodbye.

After several listings though I find the release to function as an incredibly coherent release all things considered - after several more I came away with the impression that Magical Mystery Tour is in fact one of my favorite releases by the Fab Foursome.

My reasoning for this is that it works perfectly as an accompaniment to the previous Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band; thematically it continues in the same blissed out vein of drug experimentation, but features a much cleaner and less ornate instrumentation. Songs like Fool On The Hill and Blue Jay Way are no less experimental than the Pepper material, but feel much thinner and, dare I say, more precise.

As with the last few albums it seems fruitless to give a blow by blow description of the release's "best bits", as doing so would result in an explanation of every song on the album. What I will say though is that Blue Way Jay in particular strikes me as one of The Beatles' best works - it's affected vocals, reversed drum samples and dreamlike momentum lend the song a timeless appeal and stands foremost as one of the four's most out there pieces.

All in all Magical Mystery Tour took me somewhat by surprise, and from my revisionist viewpoint deserves to be reinstated as The Beatles' fourth concurrent masterpiece; it is emotionally affecting, exciting and musically deft - to close it's certainly something that you should listen to more often than you already do :-p

sam sam

Wednesday Compilation - 7th October 2009

2009-10-07T21:45:00.000+01:00

Download link will follow at the bottom of the post.

Track 01 04/10/05 Sunday by Fantomas (from Suspended Animation)

Without any doubt Suspended Animation is Fantomas' most unhinged release, and an album which I still find stupidly brutal to this day. This track is actually one of the albums more subdued numbers, but I chose it because it has such an awesome set of riffs in the middle which recall King Buzzo's day job in The Melvins.

In all this is the Fantomas release I find myself returning to the most; after this album everything else (bar Delerium Cordia) feels like a test run for this. The album's precision is even more scary when you consider that they played songs from this album note for note when I saw them live - seriously, one of the tightest things I have ever seen!

Track 02 Gobbledigook by Sigur Ros (from Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust)

In retrospect I was supremely disappointed with this Sigur Ros album, mainly because the whole album did not reflect the genius of this song - as a pre-release song it tainted all subsequent listens to the album with an air of "why can't it all sound like that Gobbledigook song?!"

Oh, but what a song it is. With a drum led forward momentum (and a distinctive hint of Animal Collective) the song is unlike any other Sigur Ros song - at once it is positive, youthful and energetic in a way which sounds brand new.

Listening to the song as I type this I can't help but hope that they return to this sound in their subsequent releases - it really is that good.

Track 03 Remove Your Teeth by Stop It!! (from Self Made Maps)

Stop It!! are one of my most listened bands, a feat which is pretty remarkable when you consider that their output amounts to little more than this 12" and a demo 10". From their pulsing bass lines, unexpected tempo changes and attack heavy guitars Stop It!! create a sound which is much more than just its individual parts - when everything is put together the band are simply the best at what they do.

As for what they do I don't exactly know what to describe it as; I guess it falls into the vague "post-hardcore" bracket, but that seems to do them a grave disservice. In our house we refer to loads of bands as having "Stop It!! esque elements", a much more fitting way to reference their sound I think!

Track 04 100 Years Ago by Tim Hecker (from An Imaginary Country)

Tim Hecker's latest offering is a truly beautiful fuzz of sound, and something I find myself listening to in a surprising variety of contexts. Whilst reading on the bus might seem a fitting time to listen to music like this I also find myself listening to it when I'm doing more energetic activities - getting ready for a NIGHT OUT (yeah!!!!) and getting pumped UP by ambient warmth is an odd, but great experience! Give it a go!

If you like this track you should like the album in its entirety, as it all displays the same good natured feelings - I can see this becoming one of my albums of the year pretty easily.

On an entirely unrelated note, does anyone get the scent of Relayer by Yes in the opening to this track? I can't help but expect that song's guitars to scale in at any second! Damn fine songs the both of them!

Track 05 We Are Water by Health (from Get Color)

This album served as my introduction to Health, and this song has stood out from that first listen a the album's most epic song. What I love about the song is the way it manages to be both huge and yet maintain a palpable sense of forward momentum through its drums.

I've heard that Health are fantastic live, and I'm sorry to say that its an experience I have never had - if anyone is planning to see them soon (I hear they play London a lot) please let me tag along!

Oh and, the section around 3:15 - YES MAYTE!!!!

Track 06 Unusual Cruelty by Agoraphobic Nosebleed (from Domestic Powerviolence (Apartment 213 Split))

Agoraphobic Nosebleed going slow?

As crazy as that sounds it works so well; using Man is the Bastard as their primary reference point the band create what I think will, in retrospect, be regarded as one of their best works. The vocals fit the materiel's more grimy feel perfectly, and Scott Hull's drum programming utilises the drum machines unique properties fantastically - the song always feels to be in danger of collapsing on itself, but the drum programming makes it sound like it rediscovers its legs after a few stumbles.

Damn heavy bass guitar work too - makes you wonder why the mostly mid-paced Agrapocalypse didn't take more cues from this release really....

Track 07 Street Flash by Animal Collective (from Water Curses)

I think this Animal Collective Ep to be unfairly dismissed by many as a stopgap release between Strawberry Jam and Merriweather Post Pavilion - something that I don't think could be more off the mark.

I think that the first half of this four track EP is some of teh finest material Animal Collective have ever recorded, with this song (the EP's second) being my personal favourite. In particular I adore the way the band turn tortured screams into euphoric waves of noise from 3:41 onwards - I can't help but smile and get shivers down my spine everytime I hear them.

I also love the way the song's instrumention is drenched in rhythmical reverb - it gives the whole song a dreamlike context I adore.

Top song!

Track 08 Antagonismus by Yacopsae (from Tanz Grosny Tanz)

Yacopsae aren't a band that let up, and in the follow up to the stupidly brutal Einstweilige Vernichtung they somehow craft an album that is even more extreme - heavier sounds, more stop starts, more whimsical sections.

And they do it all, including the stops (!), live. My god yes.

Track 09 Superman On Ice by 13 & God (from 13 & God)

13 & God will always have a place in my mind as a more sleepy and mellowed out version of cLOUDDEAD - certainly not a bad thing! This song illustrates that song beautifully and uses a string accompaniment to great effect - the song feels really melancholic and earnest.

I love the nasal tone of the vocals, and the lyrics speak in a poetic metaphors that I can't help but get taken in by, all in all just a lovely listening experience to lie in bed to.

Track 10 Against The Day by Land of Kush (from Against The Day)

As you ,might guess from the above album art Against The Day is a pretty eclectic album, with each song differing greatly from the last. I chose the title song for this compilation because it has such a strong melody running throughout the majority of its run time.

Although it may seem like an odd comparison I find the album actually recalls a more post rocky (it's a Constellation Records super group of sorts after all) version of yesterday's Beatle-A-Day!!! entry, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - it features the same counter intuitive instrumentation and songwriting, but somehow it all forms a hugely decadent, dense and syrupy whole.

Highly recommended, check it out!

Track 11 Texas by Dr. Manhattan (from Jam Dreams)

I was drawn to this album by the Deerhoof esque cover art (I kinda get a Friend Opportunity vibe), and the album bears that connection out slightly; in fact it sounds somewhere between The Blood Brothers and The Chinese Stars, with a garnish of Deerhoof style curve balls.

The album has a deliciously camp vibe running throughout, but I actually chose to include one of the more subdued tracks just because I found myself whistling it to myself at six in the morning. The album's punchy production and vocals lend it a poppy sensibility, but this sugar is laced with a more dangerous element - highly distorted and heavy guitars. I know its a bit of a dumb album, but it's such good fun I can't help but enjoy it!

Track 12 Break by Fugazi (from End Hits)

I've had a really strange relationship with a lot of Dischord bands; for whatever reason they never seemed to click with me. Whilst I'm still not a devout disciple it was this album, and in particular this song, which served as my doorway into just why Fugazi are such a fantastic band.

I love so much about this song that listing it all would demolish the song to its individual parts and destroy it - suffice to say I love the way the guitar is actually given room to generate a range of sounds with only one pedal, it really brings home just how silly having 8300 of the things really is.

Also the funky bass lines and vocals make my shake my white booty - in fact I think I'm going to delve further into their work in the next few days...

Track 13 The Lisbon Maru by Fuck Buttons (from Tarot Sport)

I was really apprehensive about the new Fuck Buttons album; through a combination of over listening to the first album and some truly lackluster live performances of new material I wasn't really interested in even hearing it.

I think I was very, very wrong, as Tarot Sport is every bit as good as its predecessor, if not better. The album seems much more mature because even though it uses the same palate of sounds the songwriting has subtly, but meaningfully, evolved.

Instead of just cranking on distortion halfway though a song Tarot Sport displays a more rounded understanding of gradation and allows the songs to reach these "switch on" points in a much more organic manner.

The Lisbon Maru is my favourite song on the album, and when listened to LOUD I'm sure you'll see why; it's epic, emotional and engaging - TOTAL WIN!!!

and that ends the seventh dog show hello compilation!!!!

you can download it HERE

Peace out and speak soon!

Sam Sam

BEATLE-A-DAY!!! #08 - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band (1967)

2009-10-06T12:03:00.002+01:00

1. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band

2. With A Little Help From My Friends

3. Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds

4. Getting Better

5. Fixing A Hole

6. She's Leaving Home

7. Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite

8. Within You Without You

9. When I'm Sixty Four

10. Lovely Rita

11. Good Morning Good Morning

12. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (2)

13. A Day In The Life

Before I re-listened to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band for this Beatle-A-Day!!! feature I always thought of the album as The Beatles' most childlike and dream-inspired album - and whilst these things are indeed still true I didn't seem to previously realise just how experimental the album's instrumentation and melodies are. The album also has some really rocking numbers, and isn't as twee as my younger self used to think.

Considering the leap between Help! and Rubber Soul, and then Rubber Soul and Revolver it would be fair to say that the experimental leap between them grows at an exponential rate - something Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band reinforces. If Revolver was the first psychedelic rock/pop album then it stands to reason that its follow up is so far gone from that template that it become something completely new - to this day I don't really know how I would classify the album as it certainly isn't a "pop" album (in the generic sense of the word).

Aside from the album itself the response to the album really shocks me; widespread acceptance of something this idiosyncratic seems so foreign to me. To think of every man and mother in western civilization bopping along to songs as out there as the dreamy Within You Without You boggles my mind, and is certainly something I can't ever see happening again (for a start, due to the wider range of media available, and numerous other factors).

As for the album's itself I can only describe the whole album as extremely dense. The album features so many layers of experimental effects, vocals and studio effects that it really does take numerous listens to absorb everything that is going on. The eclectic range of instruments used seems to be a direct consequence of the album's studio origin, and often gives each song its own unique flavour; oddly however the album somehow works as a whole.

Aside from the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band musical framing device the whole album works together in a manner contrary to common sense; at the risk of sounding like I'm making a contradictory statement I think that the albums cohesive nature stems from the songs' disparate sensibilities.

By throwing so many conflicting elements together (Dear Rita next to Good Morning Good Morning? Really?!) the album creates a all encompassing feelings of excess and richness. In the same way that each songs' incongruous musical combinations work through sheer bloody mindedness the album stands as a cohesive metamorphic work; although each segment reflects its own aspects they all form a cogent whole when viewed together from far enough back.

In probably the most bizarre analogy I will ever make (and therefore quite fitting for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band!) the album is akin to Frasier's apartment in the TV series baring his name; although it consists of very different items the fact that they are collected together creates a non-pattern of uniqueness, and one which is cohesive precisely because of the lack of a pre-existing relationship between the items.

Ahem...

...and if the fact that the album forces my writing into a tautological Mobius strip doesn't convince you that Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is worth many listens then hopefully the fact that this is The Beatles' third unquestionable masterpiece in a row will.

sam sam

BEATLE-A-DAY!!! #07 - Revolver (1966)

2009-10-05T12:03:00.002+01:00

1. Taxman

2. Eleanor Rigby

3. I'm Only Sleeping

4. Love You To

5. Here There And Everywhere

6. Yellow Submarine

7. She Said She Said

8. Good Day Sunshine

9. And Your Bird Can Sing

10. For No One

11. Docter Robert

12. I Want To Tell You

13. Got To Get You Into My Life

14. Tomorrow Never Knows

Wow!

Even after Rubber Soul's fantastic display of growth Revolver still caught me by surprise; as with Rubber Soul every song is a unique and brilliant, but, if anything there is even more variance offered from Revolver's menagerie.

I think it very telling that The Beatles took their first career break after Rubber Soul; although only a short six months the effect on the foursome is considerable. It seems as if each band member is given space to chart their own musical explorations, but, fantastically, these disparate paths somehow coagulate into a cohesive and impeccably paced musical experience.

Following on in the Beatle-A-Day!!! tradition it is apparent that of the foursome George Harrison in particular, stepping up to offer more to the album more than any other previous. Songs like the sitar laden Love You Too and She Said She Said displaying his experimentation with eastern instrumentation and melodies, the myriad of explorations in guitar texture and effects are present across the entirety of the album. The culmination of the voyage into hitherforeto uncharted tonal waters of Tomorrow Never Knows - a fitting finale to a spectacular album - a song so arresting that my only complaint with it is that it doesn't stretch out across another ten minutes.

Of course, the other three members all demonstrate their formidable musical talents on Revolver - I mention George only because his growth seems to be a touchstone in this series of articles, the same could certainly be done with the other three members.

Likewise picking out particular songs on musical merit would also be a fruitless endeavor - every song on the album is worthy of repeated listens and reveals more depth with every subsequent hearing.

In fact, the only problem I have with Revolver is related to just how forward it feels, and perhaps because of my inescapable revisionist look on The Beatles' career. I first came to The Beatles through my father's insistence that I watch the fantastic animated film Yellow Submarine, perhaps because of the film's drugged inspired saturated colours and feverish images I always associated its soundtrack with Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band.

As such I think Elenor Rigby and (perhaps much morso) Yellow Submarine would fit into the more fantastic setting of The Beatles' next album, the aforementioned Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band. However, aside from that one idiosyncratic quibble Revolver is The Beatles' second masterpiece, and one which is still viable listening in today's musical climate.

In fact so much of Revolver is regurgitated in much contemporary music that the recent remasterings should make many modern bands blush with embarrassment!

sam sam

BEATLE-A-DAY!!! #06 - Rubber Soul (1965)

2009-10-04T00:00:00.000+01:00

1. Drive My Car

2. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)

3. You Won't See Me

4. Nowhere Man

5. Think For Yourself

6. Word, The

7. Michelle

8. What Goes On

9. Girl

10. I'm Looking Through You

11. In My Life

12. Wait

13. If I Needed Someone

14. Run For Your Life

I'm starting to see a pattern forming in Beatle-A-Day!!! - as with Help!, Rubber Soul is my favourite album from the foursome to date.

If Help! was The Beatles' requiem to the first part of their career then Rubber Soul is their first step into maturity, and what a step it is. Far from being a tentative progression Rubber Soul instead leaps into a new musical landscape with a youthful gusto.

Although the album's opener, Drive My Car, would seem only slightly incongruous on it's predecessor (being as it is a clever rocky number) Rubber Soul comes into it's own from Norwegian Wood's first sitar drone. Although it might seem a slightly kitch touchstone I honestly believe that the addition of the instrument is so much more than just an added Eastern twang.

Instead I like to think that it signals The Beatles' expanding musical horizons; the fab four are no longer content to experiment with slightly more introspective lyrics and instrumentation - instead it presents a band starting to think in terms of pure sound.

The song itself is also notable as it contains some of their best lyrics to date, and a healthy experimentation in chord progressions. It's a catchy number which stands even now as one of the band's most affecting numbers.

Rubber Soul also shows The Beatles becoming more comfortable with more openly polemic lyrical content - Nowhere Man and The Word display this most openly, with the later proudly displaying the first instance in which the word "love" is held up as a rallying slogan.

In another continuing theme from Beatle-A-Day!!! the star of the album is unquestionably George's guitar (although Paul's closing bass line on Michelle is also unquestionably deserving of praise). Harrison continues to experiment with rhythm and tone, creating lines which still seem fresh today.

A great example of this can be heard on the county inspired stomp of What Goes On; on first listen my predilection against country music won over, but subsequent listens were drawn to the highly inventive guitar lines on display. If you havnt noticed it before try listening primarily to the variety of guitar tones generated - they differ slightly from phrase to phrase, with an organic range of variance in intonation.

To close this entry I want to definitively state that every song on Rubber Soul is exceptional and contains at least one moment of unadulterated genius. Additionally such moments hint at The Beatles' future trajectory; for example I'm Looking Through You's anarchic organ squeals hint at even more aggressive material to follow - something that is certainly borne out on their next album, Revolver

In short Rubber Soul is The Beatles first true masterpiece. It really is that good.

sam sam

BEATLE-A-DAY!!! #05 - Help! (1965)

2009-09-30T12:01:00.001+01:00

1. Help

2. The Night Before

3. You've Got To Hide Your Love Away

4. I Need You

5. Another Girl

6. You're Going To Lose That Girl

7. Ticket To Ride

8. Act Naturally

9. It's Only Love

10. You Like Me Too Much

11. Tell Me What You See

12. I've Just Seen A Face

13. Yesterday

14. Dizzy Miss Lizzy

Oh my lord... Help! is a damn fine album, and certainly my favorite at this point in Beatle-A-Day's life - it shows the band pulling the folk and country influences present in Beatles For Sale and reforming them into a much more palatable work (in my opinion anyway, don't hate me!) Just see Lenon's more exciting Dylan-esque writing on You've Got To Hide Your Love Away.

Help! also shows the four stretching their musical vision even further through more apparent studio manipulation - the effects on the guitar in I Need You are really quite progressive, even by today's pop music. Similarly the also Harrison penned You Like Me Too Much sounds very modern today; you know, in retrospect I think Belle and Sebastian might like the song a little bit...

The iconic title track dominates the album, but it belies the songwriting complexity present on the rest of the album. Ticket To Ride's experiments with rhythm (on the guitar picking sections) belay the album's modus operandi of intertwining pop sensibilities with exploration of personal musical interests and lyrical introspection.

It's Only Love hints more strongly at drug use than anything else the band had produced to date, but not just lyrically - the musical responses to the vocal line have a distinct semi-improvised and lackadaisical quality which I don't find hard to attribute to marijuana use.

Even though it sounds a bit silly to equate such a thing to a substance I think the very fact one could think that hints at something much more tangible; The Beatles' music begins reflecting the band themselves much more on Help! than on previous efforts. Instead of aping Bob Dylan, as on Beatles For Sale, and speaking their lyrics in his language, The Beatles look to themselves and craft their own way of expressing the sort of feelings hinted at in the aforementioned album's Lenon Trilogy.

The culmination of this is the album's beautiful penultimate track, Yesterday. On Yesterday I can't help but imagine John, Paul, Ringo and George celebrating their musical childhood, but knowing that it has its place - the past. The song feels heartbroken at leaving the first phase of The Beatles' career, but also knowing that they had to grow up and face a more complex world.

Musically the string arrangements and melody certainly display this, but the real kicker is the song's lyrics. Here are a few snippets so you can see for yourself:

"Yesterday,
All my troubles seemed so far away,
Now it looks as though they're here to stay,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly,
I'm not half the man I used to be,
There's a shadow hanging over me,
Oh, yesterday came suddenly.

...

Yesterday,
Love was such an easy game to play,
Now I need a place to hide away,
Oh, I believe in yesterday."

There's no escaping the fact that The Beatles' childhood was over, and their more experimental teenage years had begun - next, enter Rubber Soul and the sitar...

sam sam

Wednesday Compilation - 23rd September 2009

2009-09-23T18:00:00.009+01:00

Download link will follow at the bottom of the post.

Track 01 -Do by Do Make Say Think (from The Other Truths)

This is the first track off Do Make Say Think's new album; as you might have guessed from the title of this song the four tracks are titled Do, Make, Say and Think. The band claim that release is return to writing long songs, but musically it doesn't really feel like a step back at all.

It occurred to me the other day that I actually appreciate Do Make Say Think as much, if not more than their legendary label-mates, Godspeed You Black Emperor; and this song exemplifies why. Although the band vary their musical output considerably across albums their work always makes me have the strangest feelings - in this song it's the bass line section (eventually taken over by the horn section).

When we saw them live at ATP a few years ago I spontaneously burst out in tears, and if this new material is anything to go by I can see the same happening when I see them again soon!

Track 02 - Helter Skelter by The Beatles (from The Beatles (aka The White Album))

I know dog show hello has played host to a little slice of Beatle-mania over the past week (and doesn't show any sign of leaving soon!), but I couldn't help myself with this one - go on, indulge me a little further!

Helter Skelter is one of my all time favourite Beatles songs; it feels vital and fresh even today. I'm finding myself becoming more than a little obsessed with the song's drone-like guitar backing, and don't see any question that it was a song born out of a lot of frustration. You can hear savagery in every aspect of the song, particularly the fake out ending - is there any other moment as FUCK YOU in The Beatles catalog? At the time of writing I honestly think not (although Beatle-A-Day!!! might change that!)

Oh, and if by some miracle you haven't heard the song before prepare to be blown away.

Track 03 - Hard To Reach by Jesu (from Jesu / Envy split)

I've been a huge Jesu fan ever since the Heartache EP, and I've really enjoyed hearing the project grow into something much more than a Godflesh side project. I know that this choice is a polarizing one, but I think of Hard To Reach as a pivotal song in Broderick's musical life, as well as a damn fine one!

I know this is the second pretty long song on the compilation (apologies!), but when considering which Jesu track to include I couldn't not choose this one. Whilst I'm not sure if it is the best one I see it as the point when the project embraced the poppy My Bloody Valentine allusions it first set forth on the Silver EP.

Hard To Reach is a screaming wash of guitars (a-la My Bloody Valentine), coupled with Jesu's processed bass loops and Justin's spaced out vocals; in short it's fantastic. Listen LOUD!

Track 04 - Ef by Lite (from Phantasia)

I've followed Lite since my (now-ex! sob!) housemate lent me their first EP, and it's been a pleasure to see them from a great band into an impeccable one. Lite do math-rock with a punk-like aggression; you get the impression from the songwriting that the band are hungry for even more complex writing and rhythms to gnaw on. Seeing them live played out this theory (no loop pedals, just distortion), but Ef is the true proof.

Although not subscribing to punk's history of sloppiness Lite display a refreshing tenacity, always pushing themselves to craft more and more baroque compositions, whilst still remaining razor sharp.

Think Yes in a knife fight and you have Lite. (Hello Vice-isms!)

Track 05 - An Envoy To The Open Fields by Mew (from And The Glass Handled Kites)

I love all of ...And The Glass Handled Kites, and it seems a shame to pick apart something which stands as a really strong whole, but I've done it dammit!

I eventually chose An Envoy To The Open Fields because I though it typified the ridiculously epic scope of this album, whist still working as a song in its own right. For me the drum and bass guitar production rule this album, and this song works as a really great showcase of how Mew distort poppy melodies into something much more exciting.

If you like this song I can't recommend getting the whole album enough; as I stated before it really does work best as one experience.

Track 06 - All Things To All Men by Cinematic Orchestra (feat. Roots Manuva) (from Every Day)

The Cinematic Orchestra became known to me as a band which had sound tracked the film Man With A Movie Camera, but they really are much more than that, as this collaboration with Roots Manuva shows. I love Roots Manuva's lyrics, but the jazzy instrumentation is what really makes the song for me.

The drums have a really crisp tone, which speaks to the song's seeming preoccupation with precision; the bass tones and horns all feel as if their inclusion has really been considered.

Most of all though I love the way the song let's the instruments have space so we hear notes decay; it makes the song feel very open and expansive. Beautiful stuff.

Track 07 - Turtle Island by Beach House (from Devotion)

Devotion is the only thing I've heard from Beach House, but if it's all like this album then I think I'm going to really enjoy getting stuck into it (after all of this Beatles stuff of course!)

I don't actually know much about this band, apart from than I really like their music, so this probably won't be a very long entry!

I chose Turtle Island to appear on this compilation because it really sums up what I like about the album; it has a really mournful tone, but still feels playful. In particular I love the muffled drum sound, droning bass and ethereal vocals - let me know what you think!

Track 08 - Fatefully by Hot Cross (from Risk Revival)

Hot Cross are a pleasure to listen to, their guitars drip with a well oiled emo-core sass, but they still retain a sense of aggression and righteousness. Some may claim that Risk Revival is too melodic, but I think it suits the band to be in full pop-swagger; to my ears the earlier stuff seem slightly misguided in their attempts to be aggressive anyway.

I chose Fatefully because I used to run on the treadmill in time to it, bouncing up and down in the chorus breakdown and mouthing the lyrics:

"fuck off,
fuck off,
because I DON'T NEED YOU!!!"

Guess I looked like a bit of a peanut, but I loved it every time; so I guess I win!

Track 09 - Powerbook Fiend by Kid 606 (from Who Kills Sound)

I heard this album when I was in secondary school, and it fit the tradition of the time that the heaviest/fastest/most aggressive song on the album always became my favorite - in fact between myself and Robbie Judkins the mid-song sample of "1-2-3-4-5-6 BASS!"became a little bit of a custom in itself.

As for the song itself it doesn't sound half as heavy as I once thought it to be, but it's still great fun and my favorite thing Kid 606 has done - such an awesome ending too!

Track 10 - Satori Pt. 1 by Flower Travellin' Band (from Satori)

My friend Chris told me that Flower Travellin' Band were the first band to cover a Black Sabbath song - the titular Black Sabbath, off the album of the same name - and did so only a few months after the original's release.

With that in mind Flower Travellin' Band's sound shouldn't come as too much of a shock - sabbath with more wails...

...and, surprise surprise, it's fucking awesome!

Track 11 - Emerge by Fischerspooner (from #1)

Fisherspooner really made an impact on me with the amazing video of this song when I was in secondary school, it was easily the most amazingly camp and energetic things I had experienced to that point - what more would you expect from a band which lists their Wardrobe, Design, Photographer, Dramaturgist and Hair Stylist personnel with their musical line up?!

Musically they make some of the coolest electro-clash stuff, and before it became impotent a few years ago; the melody is catchy and fun too. In fact I think I'm going to track down the rest of their stuff and give it a listen as this album is all I've ever heard from them!

(seriously though, if you haven't seen the video check it out here! When his clothes fly off and leave him in his underpants... damn that's good music video making!)

Track 12 - Pick Me Up by Dinosaur Jr. (from Beyond)

Dinosaur Jr. are a great band, and on this album they haven't lost any of their vitality, despite having been at it for numerous years. I chose this song over one of the more classic ones off You're Living All Over Me because I just adore the slow bridge section (around 2:50); every time I hear it I have tingling all over my back and shoulders and feel really emotional...

...and then the lead guitar section...hoo-boy!

Track 13 - The Mob Goes Wild by Clutch (from Blast Tyrant)

Best intro to a song ever.

And loads of great riffs.

End of story.

and that ends the sixth dog show hello compilation!!!!

you can download it HERE

Peace out and speak soon!

Sam Sam

BEATLE-A-DAY!!! #04 - Beatles For Sale (1964)

2009-09-22T18:50:00.006+01:00

1. No Reply

2. I'm A Loser

3. Baby's In Black

4. Rock 'n' Roll Music

5. I'll Follow The Sun

6. Mr Moonlight

7. Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey Hey

8. Eight Days A Week

9. Words Of Love

10. Honey Don't

11. Every Little Thing

12. I Don't Want To Spoil The Party

13. What You're Doing

14. Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby

Recording on Beatles For Sale started only six days after the Fab Four finished recording the previous A Hard Day's Night; with this in mind it's quite surprising at just how fresh it feels in comparison to A Hard Day's Night.

I actually found the majority of the album a pretty hard listen; this can be attributed to the album's generally downbeat mood. Of course, there are moments of levity, namely Rock and Roll Music, Kansas City / Hey Hey Hey (one of my favourites) and Everybody's Trying To Be My Baby; the rest of the album presents a pretty dejected state of mind.

This can be attributed to several factors (don't forget that this was The Beatles' fourth studio album in just 21 months!), but John's increasing reverence for Bob Dylan and folk music is an inescapable factor. Continuing in the vein of the B-side of A Hard Day's Night (see yesterday's Beatle-A-Day), Beatles For Sale sees the band expand their horizons even further from 4/4 rock 'n' roll and explore folksy passages, introspective lyrics and creative instrumentation - in places the band even produce country-style numbers.

With the absurd lack of down time, in which Lennon and McCartney wrote songs, it is perhaps inescapable that Beatles For Sale contains six cover songs - although this dosn't hurt the album's flow at all it does feel like the band could have done much more interesting things given more time.

Perhaps due to these factors, and my embarassing lack of enthusiasm for most things folk and country, Beatles For Sale is an album I can't see myeslf returning to with the zeal I approach other albums in The Beatles' oeuvre. That said the album is most certainly worthwhile from a historical viewpoint, as it sees the band, and in particular John Lennon, grow up a considerable amount.

Of course, if you do like country and folk I'm sure the album is a great work which stands up to repeated listens; if this is you please let me know what you think of it, I would greatly appreciate having the opportunity to hear it through someone else's ears!

Having said that there are several songs on the album I do really like; in particular, Eight Days A Week and Every Little Thing. Perhaps because of the half-dozon cover songs the album does fall into the trap of feeling like a stop-gap until Help!

sam sam

BEATLE-A-DAY!!! #03 - A Hard Day's Night (1964)

2009-09-21T21:58:00.008+01:00

1. A Hard Day's Night

2. I Should Have Known Better

3. If I Fell

4. I'm Happy Just To Dance With You

5. And I Love Her

6. Tell Me Why

7. Can't Buy Me Love

8. Any Time At All

9. I'll Cry Instead

10. Things We Said Today

11. When I Get Home

12. You Can't Do That

13. I'll Be Back

Being the first album of entirely original material by The Beatles points to the fact that A Hard Day's Night may well mark a substantial period of growth for the four - unsurprisingly it is.

From the album's titular opener the album just feels much more organic than anything else The Beatles had done to date - although the songs are all tightly constructed pop numbers they aren't afraid to experiment with structures and tempos.

Likewise the instrumentation grows by leaps and bounds over the foursome's previous two efforts; in particular George Harrison's guitar parts have some really interesting flourishes. If you listen to the guitar on I'm Just Happy To Dance With You it's dramatically apparent that George was very interested in fitting complex rhythms into Ringo's standard 4/4 beats.

Likewise his lead guitar parts really take advantage of the new-four tracked recording process; the clear twelve-string lead guitar on And I Love Her would have previously risked being lost in John's rhythm passages. However, it instead soars over the rest of the instrumentation and, for perhaps the first time, really leads the song and doesn't act as an additional (albeit instrumental) harmony.

I believe this signifies an important shift in The Beatles' mindset - they were considering the studio as a songwriting tool, and not just a way to record live songs; obviously something that would be taken to extremes later in their career.

It is worth nothing that at the time of this album's release the world was well and truly in the thrall of Beatle-mania; not only does the album contain their two transatlantic number ones (A Hard Day's Night and Can't Buy My Love), but the first side of the LP also acted as the soundtrack to their first film, the also titled A Hard Day's Night.

Perhaps because of the film the first side is filled of rocking numbers, whereas the B side instead features some more introspective and experimental folksy numbers - in particular Any Time At All, Things We Said Today and I'll Be Back; all of which stand out, to me at least, as some of the most mature songwriting the band had produced to date.

Far from being a purely intellectual exercise though the B-side also features the bombastic You Can't Do That. The percussion in this song also takes advantage of the aforementioned four track recording process by bringing up some relatively quite conga drumming to the same volume as Paul's sharp cowbell. The result lends the song an underlying air of restlessness and tension, something which complements the insecurities and possessiveness of John's lyrics, in particular:

"Well, it's the second time, i've caught you talking to him,
Do i have to tell you one more time, i think it's a sin,
I think i'll let you down.
Let you down and leave you flat,
Gonna let you down and leave you flat,
Because i've told you before, oh,
You can't do that."

A Hard Day's Night is certainly a great album, and the most progressive album The Beatles had recorded to date - as a result the album stands up to the passage of time a lot better than its two forerunners, Please Please Me and With The Beatles. It sounds more like the band which has become iconic today and is regarded as pretty influential on other contemporary artists, particularly because of George's guitar playing. I can see myself putting songs from this album on even today, and not just for historical value - if you don't want to buy everything The Beatles have done then consider A Hard Day's Night a good jumping on point.

sam sam

BEATLE-A-DAY!!! #02 - With The Beatles (1963)

2009-09-18T19:20:00.000+01:00

1. It Won't Be Long

2. All I've Got To Do

3. All My Loving

4. Don't Bother Me

5. Little Child

6. Till There Was You

7. Please Mr Postman

8. Roll Over Beethoven

9. Hold Me Tight

10. You've Really Got A Hold On Me

11. I Wanna Be Your Man

12. Devil In Her Heart

13. Not A Second Time

14. Money (That's What I Want)

With The Beatles was recorded only four month's after it's predecessor, Please Please Me, and it continues in much the same vein. The Liverpudlian four do however make a few steps forward, with more complex harmonies and instrumentation - more pointedly though is the songwriting.

On With The Beatles I feel that the songs are given more space to breath, with less forced four four beat led forward momentum and more tempo changes. Key to the album is the way pauses are used more; it seems a point is being made in the way we hear notes ring out, rather than being cut short to fit the song's rhythm.

Standout tracks were the album's opener, It Won't Be Long, which has some great call and response vocal patterns in the chorus, Roll Over Beethoven, with its great guitar licks - the song's start is simply awesome, as is the lead guitar section midway through.

The next two songs, Hold Me Tight and You Really Got A Hold On Me, are also really good, the former even moreso though. this is because Hold Me Tight not only features a catchy chorus, but a snare drum led bridge section which feels much more modern than the rest of the album - Ringo is definitely really hitting the drum as opposed to tickling it. The latter is s cover, but also emphasizes punchy instrumentation - its in these little details that With The Beatles differs from Please Please Me.

Finally the album's closer, Money (That's What I Want), is without any doubt the most mature song on the album, and certainly my favorite. The vocals have more of a screamed quality to them, and the song feels more free and rampant than anything else so far in The Beatles career; it even bases all of the song's verses on the aforementioned snare led section from Hold Me Tight. As a side note I think it's worth noting that the backing vocals are almost the same as the ones in the much later Helter Skelter - signs of things to come perhaps?

Again, as with Please Please Me, the album does feel pretty thin compared to their later material, but is fascinating from a retrospective point of view - of course one could read too much into songwriting quirks, but on the whole With The Beatles feels a more confident album than the last, with John and Paul's songwriting staring to creep away from what existed before them.

sam sam

BEATLE-A-DAY!!! #01 - Please Please Me (1963)

2009-09-17T19:54:00.006+01:00

1. I Saw Her Standing There

2. Misery

3. Anna (Go To Him)

4. Chains

5. Boys

6. Ask Me Why

7. Please Please Me

8. Love Me Do

9. PS I Love You

10. Baby It's You

11. Do You Want To Know A Secret

12. A Taste Of Honey

13. There's A Place

14. Twist And Shout

The first Beatles album, Please Please Me, was one I hadn't heard all the way through before; sure I'd heard tracks like Love Me Do, Twist and Shout and I Saw Her Standing There, but most of the material here was new to me.

I also found out that some of the songs on the album are covers, and I guess that makes sense since there were a few tracks which I did think differed in style quite a bit, but overall the album carries the same sound throughout.

On this album The Beatles sound owes a lot to acts like Elvis Presley, but certainly has its own tinges of originality, with the titular Please Please Me containing much more intricate passages and vocal patterns than almost anything else on the album.

The Harrison sung Do You Want To Know A Secret also rates highly in my mind, with the chorus guitar riff sounding like it could come from later material.

There's A Place is another highlight, which hints at much more complex structures with its stop/start sections and choppy rhythms; interestingly the song also contains some lyrics which could almost come from Abby Road-era material, here's a taste;

"There is a place,
Where I can go,
When I feel low,
When I feel blue.
And it's my mind,
And there's no time when I'm alone.

In my mind there's no sorrow,
Don't you know that it's so.
There'll be no sad tomorrow,
Don't you know that it's so."

Pretty enlightened considering that the rest of the album is preoccupied about how much the band love girls, and the way the album's title is a plea for sexual activity!

All in all the album is much what I expected from this period in The Beatles' evolution, but was actually much more charming than I thought it would be; the aforementioned lyrics aside were actually pretty cheeky, and I can see why girls fell for the Fab Four.

The album is cool to listen to in a historical context, as it not only has the cache of being the first Beatles full length, but also hooks very directly into some sections of modern music; in particular modern rock bass lines aren't that different from what Paul was plucking in 1963.

Overall though I think this material would have been much more affecting in its contemporary climate; its influence is so wide ranging that it sounds derivative in places - in actuality though it was probably the origin for a lot of music I'm comparing it to! The album definitely feels "old" now (whatever that exactly means!), but this isn't a necessarily a bad thing, instead of being cutting edge and hip it instead feels old and quaint in a curious way - it's more than just kitsch for sure, but does have an air of false (for me, I wasn't born!) nostalgia around it.

Great fun though! Onwards to With The Beatles tomorrow!

sam sam

Wednesday Compilation - 16th September 2009

2009-09-16T19:54:00.015+01:00

Download link will follow at the bottom of the post.

Track 01 - No Pussy Blues by Grinderman (from Grinderman)

Nick Cave is great, and by that same train of thought it's unsuprising to discover that Grinderman is also top notch stuff. Grinderman is certainly quite distinct to the work Mr. Cave does with The Bad Seeds, perhaps due to the more ferocious edge the album, and this track displays.

At times Grinderman almost recalls Cave's early Birthday Party years; in my mind this is certainly a good thing. What the album, and No Pussy Blues in particular, brings to the table is an air of absurdity; the lyrics are intentionally hilarious and draw an image of a very frustrated man. It's this air of frivolity which makes the moments when the song goes off even more startling.

Win intro too!

Track 02 - Coming To Get You by Six Organs Of Admittance (from Shelter From The Ash)

Six Organs Of Admittance is a project which is constantly evolving, and I think this song illustrates this really well.

Coming off the tenth album, in which Ben Chansley really went towards more of a rock sound, this song is almost a concentrated history of the band's evolution; it starts ambient and new folksy, turns rocky, then distorted and noisy. If you like this song I strongly recommend investigating the rest of their material, as I really like everything I've heard (although the newest album is taking a while to suck me in...)

Also, I just can't help loving this song's apocalyptic vibe - I think HE'S COMING TO GET YOU! ARGGHHHHH!!! (hahaha, it's late...)

Track 03 - Creature by Black Dice (from Creature Comforts)

Having seen Black Dice earlier this year their studio work just isn't doing what it used to - live they were really, really noisy and bass heavy; something their studio work suggests but doesn't always deliver.

Having just been relistening to them the other day I remembered just how much I like this band and just enjoyed the listening experience for what it was... and, fuck me, Black Dice are damn good. I've included a more atmospheric number because this stuff holds up regardless of the gig, and is damn funky.

On a side note anyone else notice how everyone is trying to sound like Black Dice these days? Growing, Fuck Buttons... it just doesn't work either!

Track 04 - Washington School by Atlas Sound (from Logos)

Even after Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel I wasn't expecting this new album; Logos is awesome.

I've chosen one of the more chilled songs (well, they're all chilled I guess...), but I think the album really works best as a whole - just get a copy asap!

I don't think I've listened to the album enough to say if it's better than the previous Atlas Sound, or the Microcastles by Deerhunter, but at the moment it's close.

Track 05 - Cosmonaut by At The Drive-In (from Relationship Of Command)

At the Drive-In have a special place in my heart, and this album especially, as it is them which made me really realize that loud music could also be awesome - I've listened to this album so much that I know it stupidly well, even after not listening to it properly for years I was recently able to sing along to the entire thing at full blast, whilst hungover, in the car with my girlfriend.

Cosmonaut is one of the least played songs off this album, but it always stuck out as one of their best in my mind - of course, Vaya may be a better release musically, but Relationship Of Command will always make me think of being in the third year of secondary school, starting seeing girls for the first time, getting drunk and taking drugs thinking it was really big - generally just awesome teenage fun.

And hell yes it rocks!

Track 06 - Farewell by Boris (feat. Merzbow) (from Rock Action)

Boris and Merzbow are two artists I love, but their collaborations have been both good (Megatone, Sun Baked Snow Cave) and bad (the one with the Yes cover homage), but I actually think that Rock Dream's live set is the best of the bunch.

This version of Farewell, off Pink, really shows how the rest of the album works - Boris songs raw and heavy, with Merzbow just garnishing them with his patented screeching noise. Farewell was always a really strong song in my mind, but this version just makes my spine tingle up and down for almost its entire duration.

Track 07 - The Bloated Pope by The Melvins & Lustmord (from Pigs Of The Roman Emperor)

Following on from Boris & Merzbow we have the American equivalent, The Melvins & Lustmord. Aside from being studio based, Pigs Of The Roman Empire is a very different beast to Rock Dream; mainly it feels more like a collaberation, even though the bands sometimes have entire sections on their own.

I think the main reason for this is the way the album holds together as an album - not just a collection of songs. They all have an air of malevolence and sludgy grind, and stands as one of the heaviest releases, if not by Lustmord, but in The Melvin's back catalog.

As always great art too :-D

Track 08 - Vengeance Drools by Clark (from Body Riddle)

I love this song because it starts in one place and ends somewhere quite different; rather than taking the usual "start quiet, get loud" approach I think Clark goes the opposite way, with the opening almost sounding like a more aggressive Massive Attack, and the end having a much more acoustic feeling.

Of course, that's not to say the middle isn't heavy - Clark certainly drops in some major bass frequencies, but they serve to effect a collapse, not a crescendo. I like a lot!

Track 09 - Things I Did When I Was Dead by No Age (from Nouns)

This song is one of the odder on Nouns, with the rest having much more of a relationship to rock music, but I've included Things I Did When I Was Dead because I think it's a delicate piece which complements the previous Atlas Sound track beautifully.

All I would say is that I wish the song was longer - I could listen to progressions around these ideas for at least ten minutes!

Track 10 - Kallist - Song For Eris by Floor (from Floor)

Considering we had Torche on last week's compilation I thought it was only fitting to put in a Floor song on this one. I chose this song mainly because it makes me think "WOW" everytime I hear it - yes, they do go HEAVY.

Not much else to say about this one, except RIFF RIFF RIFF.

Track 11 - Ray Breakout by Christ. (from Metamorphic Reproduction Miracle)

Apologies for the low quality of this album's art - I just couldn't find a good version online...

Anyway, Christ. , as most of you no doubt know, does ambient stuff and used to be in the same musical collective as Boards of Canada - it shows, but his work has a more glitchy feel to it. Really like this song as it works some really odd sounds into a relaxing piece, good stuff!

Track 12 - Cave-In by Codeine (from Frigid Stars)

Codeing are one of those legendary "sadcore" bands, and I think this song shows why. I think the piece works because it feels so pathetic and simple; in paricular I really like the way the vocals often overstep their beat, just by a fraction, giving the impression that the almost whined vocals
are so scincere that it doesn't even matter if they fit exactly into the song.

The guitar tone is heavy, but slightly cold, making me feel a little uneasy when listening to Cave-In. The effect is such that it has the sleepy quality of painkillers, but has a strain of rabid despertion running throughout - almost as if they know that more painkillers won't alliviate their emotional pain. Man. (haha!)

Track 13 - Revolver a.k.a. Schall Und Rauch by Louise Cyphere (from The La Quiete / Louise Cyphere split 10" )

Nothing to say here apart form the fact that Louise Cypere are one of teh best screamo bands around and this is, arguably, their best release (even though the Shikari split is up there!).

What I will say though is that you should try and get my housemate, Julian Ross, to recite the sample at the start when drunk - it's hilarious to see him stumble over words in an attempt to cram 'em all in so fast!

(joking aside though the song is savage and great!)

and that ends the fifth dog show hello compilation!!!!

you can download it HERE

Peace out and speak soon!

Sam Sam

Videogame EXPLOSION!!! The Beatles: Rock Band (Xbox360, Harmonix, 2009)

2009-09-15T20:11:00.013+01:00

The Beatles: Rock Band is not just a track pack for the Rock Band; it's something much more than that.

In fact, The Beatles: Rock Band is one of the most moving experiences I have had in a videogame recently, and is something I can't recomend enough - in fact I propose that if you only play one rhythm action game ever that you make it this one, even if you don't think you like The Beatles.

From This:

To This:

To This:

The reasoning for this is simple, and, in my opinion, impossible to replicate - the game features one of the most profound and moving narrative arcs that affected me on a level I honestly didn't anticipate. I thought that, as with all the Rock Band and Guitar Hero games, the "story" or "campaign" mode would simply be an excecise in unlocking songs so my friends have free reign to play whichever songs they fancy - with The Beatles: Rock Band I couldn't have been more wrong.

Much of this is owing to the way in which The Beatles' career is presented in its entirety - we travel with The Beatles from Liverpool's dark Cavern Club to their final performance on top of Abby Road studios, and we not only do so through their music, but through the band's aesthetics, the audience's changes in clothing, and their appearance.

In short The Beatles: Rock Band lets us see The Beatles grow up in a way we never could before; we're both inside their band, and without, watching their performances and public personas grow and change. We see the way The Beatles were moulded by pop culture (the early years), then became pop culture (Sgt. Pepper era) and finaly matured and became something different (The White Album, Let It Be, Abby Road) - in short we see the cultural shifts of the 1960s because we experience The Beatles' catalogue in some historic context.

However, I think this may be even too mundane a thought - I see Harmonix's presentation of The Beatles' brief, but prolific, career as a simple and poignant metaphor for life. We are young, happy, idealistic and conforming in our childhood (the early 60s era); free-willed, experimental and naive in our teens (the mid 60s Sgt Pepper); more insightful, but with a tinge of cynicism and darkness, in our mid life (The White Album, Helter Skelter in particular); and finally accepting of our inevitable demise, and having one last look over our lives, before deciding what it is we want to be remembered for (Let It Be as reflection, Abby Road as the definitive statement, and the final rooftop show as an acceptance of the collapse to come).

In choosing The End to, well, end The Beatles: Rock Band is a inspired move on Harmonix's behalf - we are left with a final statement from the Fab Four, which rings true and is a truely affecting when seen as a eulogy of The Beatles:

"And in the end
The love you take
Is equal to the love you make."

However, Harmonix has one final trick, which caught me unawares, and almost made me cry - the games credits. For those who have the game put the credits on and just listen; nothing has ever made The Beatles seem more like human beings to me, and the way the sequence acts as an overview of a friendship and a life is heartbreaking.

For those who don't have the game I won't spoil it, instead I'll make you run out to the shops tomorrow by adding in the game's opening cinematic which beautifully illustrates the band's entire life - if you don't at least smile then you have no soul!

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IMPORTANT NEWS!!!!

As alluded to in the previous post I have a pretty big idea for dog show hello, and, in the light of The Beatles: Rock Band and the re-releasing of the band's newly remastered catalog, I'm happy to introduce you a new feature:

Beatle-a-Day!!!

In this feature I'm going to go through the new remasters in chronological order (by recording date fact-fans!) and listen to an album a day, posting my thoughts every evening!

EXCITING STUFF!

The idea came around after my realization that there were whole sections of The Beatles' history to which I was completely ignorant, something I thought that I should rectify. Tomorrow's Wednesday Compilation will be as normal, but join me this Thursday for the start of Beatle-a-Day!!!

sam sam

an update on posts and all that...

2009-09-14T22:43:00.004+01:00

Hello all!

Just thought I'd explain about the lack of posts this weekend - I was away at a wedding for the majority of it, and, as such, didn't make it to a computer.

Rest assured though I have a few ideas for a really good dog show hello week, with one idea stretching quite a bit further... (I'm sure a lot of you will find it pretty interesting! Just trust me for now!)

Also, I just wanted to thank those of you who are following the blog; even if no one read any posts I'd still be happy just to write, but having some feedback (mostly from people I know, and in person) really makes it all very exciting! If anyone reading the blog doesn't know me off the Internet please get in touch, I'd be interested to find out what you like about the blog, and if there was anything I could change to make it better - thanks in advance!

That's all for now as I'm going to have to get to bed (stinky work tomorrow...), but I promise some really, really good stuff is in the pipeline!

yours,

sam sam

Cinema Trip: District 9 (Dir. Neill Blomkamp, 2009)

2009-09-11T17:53:00.002+01:00

District 9 was a film I had heard quite a lot about before it's release, mainly due to the fact that it was released in the US several weeks before in the UK. I also knew it had ties to the abortive Halo film project (not that the prospect of that really excited me, mind you!) In addition to this I had heard that the film had made back its meager (but only by Hollywood blockbuster standards) budget of approximately $30 million on the first day of US screening. Much like J.J. Abrahams' Cloverfield this was attributed to heavy viral marketing and hype.

Unlike Cloverfield though the film seems to be getting almost unanimously positive media press, with the film even rising to number 44 on the imdb's best rated film of all time. This has been attributed to its "original vision" and the fact that it "follows in the footsteps of numerous allegorical science fiction works." Yep, totally made up those quotes, but they catch the mood of what people are saying!

With all of this expectation heaped on top of it the film had a lot to live up to; something it unfortunately failed to do, in the most spectacular fashion.

To explain why District 9 fails so spectacularly necessitates a brief synopsis, so forgive me whilst I go into announcer mode for a few sentences...

*spoilers follow, but I wouldn't worry about them to be honest...*

The world of District 9 is one which experienced extraterrestrial contact in the early 1990s, when a huge ship appeared over Johannesburg. Human greeting parties were sent, but instead of finding a glorious civilization they found hundreds of malnourished refugees; these were granted sanctuary in the titular District 9.

Rather than being a paradise District 9 is gradually shunned by humans to the point that it effectively becomes a prison ghetto. To relieve these inter-species tensions the government contract a private company to relocate the "prawns" (as humans refer to the aliens) to the isolation of District 10.

The film follows the leader of this operation attempt to fulfill this goal, but he is accidentally infected by some BLACK ALIEN LIQUID (hello x-files...sigh...). As he is gradually turning into an alien his employers, the aforementioned private corporation, want to carry out scientific tests on him, so he goes all Rambo, steals back the liquid (which it turns out was actually alien diesel), makes a 'prawn' friend called Christopher (who leaves earth at the film's conclusion) and ends the film fully alien crafting flowers from tin cans for his insipid love interest.

SIGH.

Right. Hopefully you can see in the synopsis that I found the world concept of the film relatively interesting; it provides me with something we haven't seen in a huge Hollywood blockbuster, and carries with it a pretty depressing air - if humanity is the "best" the universe has to offer then it must really be a bit of a shithole.

So far so ok. The film unfolds as if it was edited from a combination of news footage and a documentary following the film's protagonist, and actually does a pretty good job of creating a believable world without the usual Hollywood bombast - aliens are framed matter-of-factly and lit in neutral sunlight.

My first problem is the film's absurd lack of subtlety; the film honestly should have been called:

District 9: Shhhhhh...don't tell anyone, but its really about APARTHEID!

The film makes this so obviously and repeatedly that it feels not just irritating, but insulting; not just towards audiences' intelligence, but by effectively trivializing events in South Africa. In case you still don't get it though the film even goes as far as to create its very own racist term in the already discussed term "prawn", which is spewed with such frequency and relish that you get the distinct impression that Bloomkamp thought it was really, really, clever.

As unsubtle as this is though it would still just be a bad film if it continued in this pseudo-documentary mode throughout; alas District 9 is not merely bad, but enters the realm of awful from the film's second act onwards. Although Cloverfield was not the greatest film ever at least it was consistent in its verisimilitude of Panasonic and Sony camera-shake; the same cannot be said for District 9 however, which abandons its own conventions with no textual reasoning.

We suddenly start seeing private "off camera" conversations and incongruous scenes which don't feature the protagonist, let alone from any textual camera's point of view. I completely fail to see why a film would set up the conventions of a viewing mode and then abandon them with such lackluster reasoning. My only thought is that the film shedding any connection to reality happens when the film too turns into a SUPER ACTION BLOCKBUSTER. Our thin, nonthreatening protagonist is suddenly transformed into an action superstar, and the film further devolves into putrid, black tar.

The film even goes as far as to ape Iron Man and give the film's lead a gigantic robot suit to beat up the men who were hurting him before. Even the UI looks similar to Robert Downey Jr.'s far superior suit...

Hopefully at this point it has become obvious that District 9 starts out as a stupid film with ideas far above its station, and then devolves from there into sub par 80s style hard action sci-fi. I wouldn't recommend paying to see it, or even watching it for free as it is likely to make you question why the majority of people who see this film think it to be a cinematic masterpiece - seriously, even The Terminator has more interesting subtextual musings.

I'm not even going to go deep into the way the film's subtext is clouded by vilifying Africa's *actual* native black population into shaman worshiping, alien eating, immoral gangbangers. After all would a film which apparently takes a hard look into South-Africa's history of muddled race relations feature a scene in which a black chief demands the (white) protagonists hand be chopped off so he can eat it...

in order to consume his essence...

so he can use alien technology...

on the advice of a gyrating, half nude, mud splattered, teenage female shaman who has her eyes rolled back into her head...

WHILST LICKING HIS FUCKING LIPS!

My oh my. Peter Jackson and Neill Blomkamp should be very ashamed of themselves.

Fuckin' prawns.

sam sam

Wednesday Compilation - 9th September 2009

2009-09-09T20:15:00.000+01:00

Download link will follow at the bottom of the post.

Track 01 - The Great Neurasthenic by Ultra Dolphins (from Mar)

I got Why Are You Laugh? quite a while ago, and loved it so much that when Ultra Dolphins first studio album proper (Why Are You Laugh? was a collection of other releases) came out I jumped on it... but it was nothing like I expected.

In no way is that a bad thing though; Mar is overwhelmed by imagination and experimentation, but doesn't become entrenched in it, instead every song here is undeniably a bone-fide rock song. The song I have chosen, The Great Neurasthenic, is the moment when the album moved from being damn good to a work of genius; just listen to the drums around 2 minutes in - it's so unexpected, yet so damn right.

I can't wait to see what they produce next, if it's anything like the leap from Why Are You Laugh to Mar we're in for something astounding.

Track 02 - Vision's the First... by High Places (from High Places)

High Places were a band I got into by chance after hearing them in a bar one day, and I'm so glad I did because since I got this album I can't help myself trying to force it on just about everyone. The whole album sounds quite a lot like this song; pretty airy, but with short, sharp punches. It's something I enjoy listening to in almost any circumstance and is pretty as hell, in particular I love the vocals and the way they sing accross the music, rather than just complimenting it.

As with Ultra Dolphins I can't wait to hear what they do next, but with a first full length that is already so dense with ideas I think it will be pretty interesting to see if they keep the same sound - frankly I don't mind, I'm listening whatever happens!

Track 03 - Black River Song by Angels of Light (from We Are Him)

Ahhhhh was an album cover ever more appropriate for a blog called dog show hello?

Micheal Gira's fifth Angels of Light release We Are Him may be the most accessible thing he's ever done, and certainly a fair distance from the grime of Swans' at their most hateful.

However, don't mistake being accessible for a lack of depth, as We Are Him is an album of complex instrumentation and still possesses Gira's usual tortured lyrics and musical intent. Black River Song succinctly illustrates the way that the album flirts with poppy melodies, but subverts them into something much more shadowed.

I'm a big Swans fan, and really enjoy (?) almost everything Gira is involved in, but I love this album for being a way for me to communicate what I like about his work to people who normally wouldn't - my mum even had a copy of the album in the car for several months. Seeing a copy of it nestled in a car glove box adjacent to Deep Purple, Bon Iver and *shudder* Justin Timberlake just screams how catchy this album is - even if it isn't happy.

Track 04 - A Million Years by Wolf Eyes (from Human Animal)

Wolf Eyes, as I'm sure you all know, were one of the pioneering new wave of "garage noise" bands, but I think seeing them in that light actually does them a disservice. Although Human Animal wasn't as immediate as Burned Mind (my first exposure to them) I think that I've actually come to like it more.

Burned Mind was concerned mainly with unchecked brutality, whilst Human Animal is a more sparse affair, with lone tortured screams, eerie lulls and slow, agonizing, crescendos. I've included the album's first song on this dog show hello compilation as it always struck me as having a mission statement like quality; it stands up and proclaims its variance to what has come before.

After repeated listens I still find myself shocked and put out by just how savage, yet calculated, this entire album is - if you like this song you should totally get the whole album.

Track 05 - Behead by Lack (from Saturate Every Atom)

When I heard how drastically Lack had changed their sound my reactionary response was one of disgust - Lack were the hardcore band that made Blues Moderne, not an indie band, surely?! However, after hearing this album I totally understand.

The whole album is ruled by the bass guitar, with every strum synced up so precisely with the drums so that it kicks right out of the speakers; and that's just a polite way of saying that every song on the release is as good as this one.

Its a real shame that Lack broke up this time last year, they really deserved some mainstream recognition of this album; perhaps if they did we could be looking forward to their next release and not just relistening to their discography over and over...

Track 06 - Guinevere Of The Ganges by Ginungagap (from Remeindre)

Ginungagap is always Stephen O' Malley plus guests, and on this, the first in Southern records Latitudes sessions, he picked his guests pretty damn well - the great Alexander Tucker is one of them.

The Latitudes series tasked artists with collaborating at the Southern studio and, over the course of two days, recording a full length - with that in mind you might find it odd that I think this one of the best things O' Malley has put his name to, but when you listen to the release it is so evocative that hopefully the claim makes some sense.

I chose this song because it is the closest on the album to having a "riff", not that the others need them, but Guinevere Of The Ganges is the track which stands alone the best. Great music to really get engrossed in, not really much else I can say, just listen to it :-D

Track 07 - Tyrants by Black Mountain (from In The Future)

I love Black Mountain and I love Stephen McBean's other band Pink Mountaintops, but, hands down, In The Future is my favourite release he has been onvolved in. Whilst certainly referential to Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, The Who and Pink Floyd this album also feels modern and not just like an exercise in nostalgia.

Tyrants is probably the best example of this as you can hear all of the above influences in what are almost distinct sections, but by the end of the song everything is pulled into one huge mess of riffs and awesome that it feels like something new.

When THE RIFF kicks in (trust me, you'll know when it hits!) the song transcends any misguided worries about nostalgia and makes me jump around my living room like I'm riding a horse - and THAT is what I want from rock music.

Track 08 - Crazy Naked Girls by Super Furry Animals (from Dark Days/Light Years)

I haven't really listened to the Super Furries since the release of Rings Around The World a while ago (phantom power passed me by, as did the other ones... I can't even remember their names right now!), so hearing this song blew my brain out of my skull, like completely. Instead of being poppy like Guerrilla and Rings Around The World this song is just pure, unadulterated ROCK.

Like Black Mountain's Tyrants the song contains a moment where the song just turns into a riff workout and just becomes totally awesome. Unfortunately this is my favourite song on the album by a fair margin, but what a song!

Track 09 - Three Decades by The Horrors (from Primary Colours)

The Horrors were a band I never really listened to until one of my housemates put this on whilst we were cooking dinner and am I glad he did. Being a bit of a dick I wrote The Horrors off when I saw the promo photos of them as an NME pop band devoid of any real talent (why oh why am I so judgemental sometimes?), but on listening to this album its evident they do have quite a bit.

Sound wise this album sounds like a mash-up between early Joy Division and My Bloody Valentine, and all the goodness that implies. I've listened to Primary Colours a lot since I got it and I don't think thats going to stop anytime soon, it seems like an album I'll keep coming back to.

If anyone has any opinions about the first album I'd be interested to hear them, should I pick it up?

Track 10 - Life Was Real. Vital. Important / Bum Guts by Kidcrash (from Jokes)

Jokes is such a passionate album that you can't help but feel pumped when listening to it (well, I can't anyway!), and all of the album is as great as this song. What I think sets Jokes aside from other melodic screamo stuff in this style is the dense sound that Kidcrash create - its chaotic and exciting, something lacking from some screamo stuff I hear.

Jokes is a significant departure from their first album, New Ruins, which is much more straightforward and melodic, but I hope that they don't stray too far from Jokes with their new album since they currently have a sound that is undeniably theirs, and one which I love.

On a side note Kidcrash are dudes and say you can download everything they have ever done, for FREE here. Just leave a donation, they deserve it!

Track 11 -
Hydraphobia by Insect Warfare (from World Extermination)

October 1st can't come soon enough, we're seeing Insect Warfare play at the Old Blue Last on their last tour and if their recorded output is anything to go by its going to be one of the most brutal grindcore bands I've ever seen.

I chose Hydraphobia because it has a fair amount of build up, but when it goes off it goes o-f-f.

Track 12 - Memphis & 53rd by Minus The Bear (from Menos El Oso)

Minus The Bear a band that constantly astound me; although sharing a guitarist with the deceased Botch their style could not be anymore different.

In fact Minus the Bear were a band I never really used to like that much; for whatever reason it just hadn’t really clicked. It was when I was in the car to ATP a few years ago and my housemate John put the tape on that I really got it – the really clean guitar sound, the delicate feeling the vocals, it totally just made my brain wonder why I wasn’t a fan before!

The “we moved as fast as we could” bit make me shiver, in a good way :-D

Track 13 - Tarpit Carnivore by Torche (from In Return)

Without any doubt the heaviest thing Torche (or Floor for that matter) have ever released, when they hit the so called "bomb string" you certainly know it! Torche were always great, but in my mind this is when they surpassed their previous band Floor - In Return is my favorite Torche release hands down, and this song is a good part of why.

Check out their more melodic stuff for sure, but never forget the power of BASS!

and that ends the fourth dog show hello compilation!!!!

you can download it HERE

Peace out and speak soon!

Sam Sam

gigSPLODE! Electric Wizard at the Scala, London (07/09/09)

2009-09-08T20:50:00.002+01:00

Electric Wizard, oh how I love you. Since their live performances don't come around very often I was delighted earlier this year to see them for the first time; to see them twice in one year is akin to being served Sunday lunch on a Wednesday - utterly surprising, but very welcome and very filling.

On watching The Wizard this time I thought of an analogy which I think encapsulates the impact of seeing them play; imagine experiencing Black Sabbath for the first time in the late 1960s, early 1970s.

The guitar tone would be unlike anything you had previously heard, and the overall wall of sound surely the closest rock music would ever come to the apocalypse - the lyrics' bent toward occultism, depression and drug use would just put a grim little bow on this delightful package.

Fast-forward to 2009 and we're a little bit harder to scare - nowadays everyone loves Black Sabbath and it's not an uncommon occurrence for dads across the nation to embarrass their children by singing "Paranoid" with a knowing wink. Neither would it be surprising to see Ozzy Osbourne on television mumbling and sleepwalking through middle age and family life.

Oh wait, that did happen *sigh*.

So with Black Sabbath now a ultra cute vehicle of fake nostalgia they don't exactly terrify anymore (in fact, they are so adorable that Ozzy even sang the aforementioned "Paranoid" in celebration of the Queen's 50 years as ruling monarch). Black Sabbath aren't the scary sound of bleak hopelessness and end-time musings of 2009 - they're a super influential and damn fine band, no doubt, but they don't resonate in the same way they did back then (before you kill me I'm not saying that this is bad, just different due to huge variance in cultural, and musical, context...)

Just what does this have to do with Electric Wizard?

EVERYTHING!

... just read on!

sorry about the lack of live pics, my iPhone photos came out shit!

You see, each time I've seen them Electric Wizard have been so damn amazing that they have me grinning from ear to ear at the sheer heavyness of the riffs, the groovy nature of the huge riffs, the pulpy subject matter they draw from and the awesome audacity (yes, I typed that!) of calling songs things like "The Satanic Rights of Drugula". It's so over the top that it feels like something special, something excessive, something so great that you send ill-advised text messages to your girlfriend about how "fucking AMAZING!!!!!!" it all is.

(yep.)

Joking aside I think that seeing Electric Wizard now is akin to seeing Black Sabbath in the 1960s; although the music isn't excatly the same the intent is. Wizard are Sabbath if they grew up in the light of the Cold War, Margret Thatcher, 9/11, Pop Idol, the Iraq war(s) and global warning - pissed off, turned up to 900 and with an even bleaker outlook. Their gigs are noisy as hell, dirty and aggressive, the closest I can imagine to the sound of the modern apocalypse...

...just like my mum thought when she saw Sabbath in the 1970s.

So yeah, Electric Wizard were rad, check 'em out if you get a chance.

sam sam

Comic of the Week - Sleepwalk & Other Stories (Adrian Tomine)

2009-09-07T12:00:00.003+01:00

Sleepwalk & Other Stories is, like its name implies, a collection of short vignettes. These stories do not "cross-over" in the Marvel and DC style, with a character from one story entering another strip; no, Tomine's work is much more understated than that. Instead we can see several themes, locations and devices which run through the collection of stories, but most of all there is a feeling which runs through them.

yep, this one page is a complete story, so have a look!

Before we delve further into the content of Tomine's work, I must first acknowledge his storytelling skills and dedication to using different aesthetic choices in different strips. Whilst the majority of the book employs a clean, hard outlined, style there are several deviations from this; likewise the book ranges from high contrast black and white, to monochrome, and several places in between (heavy cross hatching, spotting, etc).

The great thing is that they serve to give each story, and its characters, a unique flavour, but still gives the impression they live in the same world of black and white, regular square panels and consistent lettering - the only differing thing from each strip is the protagonist's perspective and interpretation of that world.

Obviously this shows a healthy marriage between art and writing, with every illustrative choice having tangible thematic reasoning, and, ultimately, creating that aforementioned feeling.

This feeling is one of negative space, and a sense of loss; each story fills the reader with unease for the new equilibrium. These are tales without moral reasoning, instead of presenting stories in the traditional "this event led to this" logic Tomine shows us more what feel like moments of a life, and all the heartbreak and unfinished feelings that go with it.

From a formalistic standpoint Sleepwalk & Other Stories has some incredible moments of economy, where Tomine seems as if he is doing something very profound with very small tools. An example of this is present in Sleepwalk's (both the collection and the story's) second page.

The page is divided into nine regular panels, with the first six concerning the protagonist walking across the kitchen whilst on the phone. The top line of three panels, depicts a continuous space, even across the gutters, with Mark walking from left to right.

Through the convention of time passing between each panel we see nothing spectacular at Mark's appearance in each panel, however, that all changes when we look at the second row of three panels. The conversation shifts and Mark paces backwards from the kitchen's right to left - however, since we read comics from left to right we effectively see Mark walk backwards through time - the destruction and rearrangement of the top three panels continuous space (through the very recognizable backgrounds) makes this realization visceral and unmissable.

However, this would all be for naught if it were not for the reason for Mark to 'travel back in time' - the true genius being that these three panels show Mark being talked into the realization that, yes, he would like go out with his ex-girlfriend for dinner.

Like I said, GENIUS. You should get a copy and have a read!

sam sam

Comic of the Week - Sleeper, Season One (Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, Wildstorm)

2009-09-06T15:23:00.004+01:00

Before I jump into my thoughts on Sleeper I think it's important to understand the lukewarm thoughts I had about the book before I read it, mainly stemming from my lack of familiarity with the WildStorm universe...I promise it does get into Sleeper later though!

Having not really been part of the comic book scene in the 90s (I was a kiddie!) the whole WildStorm thing passed me by. All I saw was some gratuitous bum shots, extremely muscular drawing style and lots and lots of ammo belts.

At least, that was until I read The Authority; I loved Ellis and Millar's work on the series so much that I've recently found myself pretty invested in the WildStorm Universe; although it feels like a guilty bit of a guilty pleasure... after all, do I really need to be reading even more superhero books? (yes, that is a rhetorical question!)

My forays into the WildStorm universe were always Authority based, as they were the only characters I knew, and I wasn't too enamored with the rest of the brand's properties - I particularly disliked the WildC.A.T.s, to me nothing screamed vapid 90s dark and gritty characterization more than them.

All this changed when I started investigating the work of other creators I like in the WildStorm universe, most notably Alan Moore and the Complete WildC.A.T.s (my god that's annoying to type!) volume. Although far from his best work I actually really started to like the characters and, in particular, *SPOILER ALERT* the arc's villainous Tao (not that it actually ruins your enjoyment of the series knowing he is the big bad; in fact it atually makes it that much more fun!)

Finally... we arrive at Sleeper. Having never read any of Sean Phillips / Ed Brubaker's collaborations (Criminal, Incognito) I wasn't that psyched going into Sleeper, even though I knew it featured Tao from Alan Moore's WildC.A.T.s (a character so devious and manipulative that you can't help but admire him).

How wrong I was to not read this book sooner...

The first thing which struck me about this book was Phillips' art style and Tony Avina's colours; as you can see from the extracts on this page the book carries a heavy art style which gives the book an air of Hollywood noir. Considering the book's plot - deep undercover agent is unable to return to his normal life because his only contact is in a coma, so has no choice but to get even more dirty - it is a great synergy between form and content.

Whilst chiaroscuro lighting matches wonderfully with the books tense cat-and-mouse plotting there is another factor to consider... superpowers.

That's right, whilst the book is obstinately a crime thriller it exists wholly within the WildStorm universe, complete with references to The Authority, WildC.A.T.s, Stormwatch and everything connected to them (however, just to clarify, you DO NOT need to know anything about the universe to enjoy Sleeper, the book is so well made that concepts are succinctly explained when necessary.)

On knowing this my gut reaction was to wish the book was more grounded in reality, to better compliment its subject matter; but in actuality I believe it to be one of the book's greatest assets.

Through his employ of superhero bombast Brubaker pulls his masterstroke; instead of dominating the book they complement its vivid range of characters; think of it as noir-plus, in giving crime-literature archetypes complimentary superpowers their worldview is externalized upon the environment and surrounding characters. To give an example of this thought process' implementation I will illustrate it through the book's protagonist, Holden.

As the titular sleeper agent his life is a tightly constructed lie, and, as such, he keeps everyone else at arm's length. He also, at great cost to himself, keeps his double agent status a secret to people in his former life for fear he might involve them in it and hurt them.

All of these character traits are summed up in his power, or as he calls it his "condition"; namely he conducts his pain onto others by touching them. This means he always has to have a physical barrier between him and others for fear of hurting them; although he is immune to pain and most other sensations he is also vulnerable to psychic assaults on his mind - it is obvious to see the analogue between Holden and the traditional noir male who considers himself invincible, but easily trapped by his emotions and loved ones.

Without spoiling the book it is this bombastic nature which results in the personal apocalypse becoming global in scope - instead of threatening, at most, a neighborhood, Sleeper's villain intends to take on the entire world.

Sleeper is a book that does not apologize for the fact it is a comic book, in fact it frequently relishes in all the absurdities that come with it (see the differently coloured and third person narrated 'origin' sequences). As such it uses the medium, and storytelling tropes associated with it (superpowers, banding together of villains, etc) to create the aforementioned noir-plus; however, in retrospect perhaps we should instead call Sleeper's style comics plus noir.

I enjoyed Sleeper so much so that I immediately pre-ordered the book's second season and Brubaker and Phillips' other collaborations; if that isn't a wholehearted recommendation then I don't know what it!

sam sam

Wednesday Compilation - 2nd September 2009

2009-09-03T22:13:00.001+01:00

Sorry that this post is a day late; being back at my job made me only get half of it done last night;anyway it's here now!

Download link will follow at the bottom of the post.

Track 01 - On the Old Mountain Radio by Mum (from Please Smile My Noise Bleed)

I'm a big fan of the newer more band orientated mum stuff, but I also have a place in my heart for the more minimal glitchy stuff; this track certainly fits that bill.

Perhaps because this release is one of those odd between album EPs (three original tracks stretched out to a full length with remixes) it doesn't seem to received much praise or recognition; something I think it certainly warrents. This song is probably the darkest thing I have ever heard from mum, and without a doubt miles from the present release's smiling "If I Was A Fish". From the outset On the Old Mountain Radio recalls, well, an old radio, with muffled child's speech giving way to a melancholic keyboard melody. All in all the track's opening wouldn't sound lost in a sketch from Chris Morris' TV show Jam, or as part of the Silent Hill games' sound collages!

I really like the song's simplicity and minimal nature, it sounds frail and empty in the best way. As much as I like what the new line up is doing I do miss this side of mum; when I saw them love recently I think that every song apart from one was off the last two albums, and it's a shame to just pretend these songs never existed.

Track 02 - The Destruction Most of All by Enablers (from Tundra)

Enablers have been on my radar since I heard Paulie's Days in Cinema (from End Note) on a Neurot compilation cd, and they haven't released a bad song EVER. This new album opens up their sound a little, with the spoken word performances now more energized, in a Nick Cave kinda way (something that played out when we saw them live last year).

It wasn't until we (my housemates and I) saw them live that I realised their guitarist used to be in Swans; he played his guitar so hard that in one strum at the set's end he pulled off all the strings on his guitar. As that implies it was an intense performance...

On a side note I really like the melodic backing vocals in the chorus of this song, they always get a little shiver to run down my spine!

Track 03 - Colossus by Lightning Bolt (from Earthly Delights)

This song was chosen by Lightning Bolt to preview their new album (on Pitchfork media I think), and, after listening to the whole album, I can see why. After an out of character build up the song erupts into a psychedelic mess, all the while underpinned by an awesome groove. If anything it seems slightly less aggressive and more song orientated than previous release by the duo, but in no way is this a bad thing as every track on this album rocks like a bastard.

Lightning Bolt make me grit my teeth and nod my head, even when I'm trying not to; as the name implies this song is H-U-G-E, so put it on and have some fun!

Track 04 - In the Drugs by Low (from Trust)

Following Lighting Bolt is a tough gig anyway you cut it, but Low make it seem easy with their inimitable brand of ultra-sad. This song sticks in my head all the time, so I thought I'd get my own back by getting it stuck in your heads' too :-p

Seriously though I think this song is beautiful and feels very profound ever time I hear it. The vocal harmonies and echo to the drums just create such a mournful mood that I just feel a bit down whenever I hear it... in a good way though!

"I stayed alive while all else died / I held my breath / what could I say / and I closed my eyes like Marvin Gaye, / But now I've had enough..." - sad stuff indeed...

Track 05 - Chair Fight by Todd (from Comes to your House)

Todd are an odd band that can spend a while messing around on their records, but when they get stuck in, as on this track, they can really rip your face off. With a sludgy riff and some feedback they create an awesome chorus section which is simultaneously tuneful and brutal...

...not much else to say on this one except that it's single-minded and ANGRY! ARGHHHHH!!!!

Track 06 - The Future Sound of Music by Ulver (from Perdition City)

Ulver are one of my favorite bands ever, and I think that every part of their back catalog is worthy of praise; from their early Black Metal, to their minimal soundtracks, to Blood Inside's... well... bizarre, bombastic pop I think all of it stands up.

The Future Sound of music is my most listened to song from the industrial-noir inspired Perdition City, and I think it's because every time I listen to it the bass heavy section after the four minute mark just blows me away. The distorted electronic squeals and ultra rhythmical basslines are unlike anything else; if they play this song live when they play London (in October!) I might just have a seizure.

As a side note if you haven't heard much other Ulver stuff I can't recommend them enough; every album is vastly different and all are worth spending a lot of time with.

Track 07 - I Am Nietzsche by Orchid (from Dance Tonight, Revolution Tomorrow)

Orchid are the legendary American screamo band that everyone since has wanted to be. Without much doubt I think I can say that Gatefold is my all-time favorite screamo release, but Dance Tonight! Revolution Tomorrow! is also pretty bitchin' (hahaha!)

In all seriousness I chose this song because it is one of their longer ones, which allows it a bit of a space to breath before it goes off, but also because when it does it's still pretty easy to follow and bang your head to :-D

Also with lyrics like these how can you resist them?

"I make the sounds that you can't/ understand. My fingers, my voice / slide into every orifice. / You (I) own these words. / This is friendship."

RIGHTEOUS! (and right!)

Track 08 - Brahminy Kite by Caribou (from The Milk of Human Kindness)

Caribou were unknown to me until I heard them in the lead up to this year's Supersonic Festival which they were playing. I was shocked I hadn't heard them before because it was right up my street.

This song shows the face of the band from when we saw them play; perccsion led and full of energy. I make a point of saying that because this album, The Milk of Human Kindness, really goes all over the place in terms of style, with some song sounding like this, some like hip-hop beats, and even some ambient tracks.

The odd thing is that it all works when you listen to it in one listen, but some of the shorter tracks wouldn't really work in a compilation context - it's okay though because the song you do get is great, airy fun.

Track 09 - Gore Motel by Bohren & Der Club of Gore (from Gore Motel)

After listing to Gore Motel you will agree that Bohren & der Club of Gore are amazing. Completely unlike what the name conjurers up (cheesy German gore rock/metal) Bohren instead sound more like Twin Peaks style jazz gone even more wrong.

Driven by their oppressive bass guitar and drums they create a pretty minimal atmosphere which sounds, to me, very cinematic (to the extent that I recently included a CD of their newest release in a film proposal). I chose a song off Gore Motel because I wanted to show people Bohren before they added the clarinet player; mainly because I think the clarinet is such a sexy and seductive instrument that it takes the spotlight off the basis of Bohren's sound; the aforementioned drums and bass guitar.

Seeing them live was such an experience; it was actually pretty quiet as they plugged their guitars and bass straight into the PA without any amplification, but because of that, and the fact the lights were almost all off for the set (at their request), it had a hushed and reverent atmosphere. It was oppressive minimalism, if such a term makes any sense!

As a final note I have no idea what the drums are doing when they sound slightly out of time, but I can confirm that they recreated it live to such a degree that it isn't just a mistake. Very unsettling.

Track 10 - They Will Appear by Akron/Family (from Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free)

Akron/Family's new album, Set 'Em Wild, Set 'Em Free, is quite far removed from their other stuff; it's certainly got less psychedelic freak-out sessions than their earlier songs (Blessing Way, I'm looking at you!), but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Instead songs on their new album evolve organically and smoothly - at three and a half minutes this song picks up pace, and continues to do so until the end of the song, but it feels like a natural song progression.

I love all of this album, but the guitar trills towards this song's end swung it for me; they just make me smile :-D

Track 11 - Desert Storm by Gang Gang Dance (from Saint Dymphna)

Gang Gang Dance are another band who, like Caribou, flirt with multiple musical styles on one album. Also like Caribou I think they pull all of them off, but this song is a particular stand out for me.

From the guitar's dexterous opening licks you know that the song is going to go in some interesting places, but it's around the four minute mark when things really take off, with some great "simple but quick" drum parts.

Euphoria is a strong term, but I know I experienced it's purest form listening to this album whilst playing the almighty Peggle with one of my housemates.

Gang Gang Dance are top (and so is Peggle).

Track 12 - Earth by Flower-Corsano Duo (from The Radiant Mirror)

Okay, I'll admit that this isn't the song I wanted to include off this three track album; but given that my desired track, Fire, was twenty minutes long I didn't really think it was appropriate for a compilation.

The track you do have though, the album's first song, is still a corker though, and is much the same as the track I originally intended to include; given that it features the same two instruments, albeit not as frantically played. I love putting this album on when I'm sitting outside in the sunshine with a good book, it's such a feelgood mood these two create that I can't help but feel great when I listen to it. ENJOY!

Track 13 - Untitled 9 by Warhammer 48k (from An Ethereal Oracle)

Warhammer 48k are a band I first heard by chance when a friend described their first album to me as "like Barroness on more drugs". Obviously sold on that description I bought the album and praised it to the high heavens.

With their second album I didn't know what to expect as it looked... well just look at that album art! It screams on thing to me - MORE DRUGS.

Unsurprisingly (!) this is a very good thing, giving the album a wider range of sound and more space to experiment. This song is the final song on the album and it totally feels like it; whilst the entire album feels pretty apocalyptic this song just takes the proverbial biscuit for being nihilistically heavy, especially in the way it ends (and teh way it ends the compilation for the week!)

I don't know what the hell Warhammer 48k get up to as I've emailed them on three occasions asking if they have any plans to play the UK, but I never get anything back. Likewise their linear notes are awesomely nonsensical (a cat jumping in multiple colours anyone?) and info about them online isn't really that available - and I kinda like that. In an age when anyone can wikipedia anyone's mother there's something endearing about a band who don't even have a wikipedia page (trust me, I've looked for it)...

...however, if anyone knows about their plans to tour the UK I want them online right away :-p

and that ends the third dog show hello compilation!!!!

you can download it HERE

Peace out and speak soon!

Sam Sam

Sorry sorry sorry - UPDATE, ALL FIXED

2009-09-03T13:06:00.001+01:00

Sorry!

The below compilation of the week post isn't finished, but accidentaly got published anyway! I'll fix the whole situation when I get back from work though, so just HOLD TIGHT PLEASE!

...sorry again...

UPDATE:

The compilation is now online, with all write ups and all the usual good stuff :-D

ENJOY!

sam sam

DVD fun fun: The Piano Teacher (Dir. Michael Haneke, 2001)

2009-09-01T18:52:00.007+01:00

The Piano Teacher is the first Haneke film I ever saw, and had a pretty profound affect on me. I was told about the film by my English teacher at secondary school, and bought it from HMV later that day (only to return it the next because I couldn't afford to spend the twenty pound it cost!)

When I saw the film for the first time I think I was too young to really understand it; it has always stood tall in my memory as a powerful film worth remembering, but at the time I didn't really understand exactly why it was so affecting. I recognized that it was certainly an unhappy film, but I couldn't fathom just why it continued to stick with me all this time.

And before I go any further let me assert that The Piano Teacher is certainly one of the most overwhelmingly miserable films I have ever seen. Rather than being operatic in its sadness it instead concentrates on a small, petty and personal apocalypse; namely that of the eponymous Piano Teacher, played with precision by Isabelle Huppert.

After re-watching the film again, and with a much greater understanding of film theory now wedged in my brain, I can see appreciate just why the film stays with its audience, and the blame for that falls firmly at the feet of Michael Haneke.

My opinion of Haneke is that his true talent is in his understanding of film form; and it with this in mind that the source of The Piano Teacher's success becomes evident. Throughout the film we are shown both the most banal, and the most intimate, moments of Erika's life; the genius being that we see both through the same cinematic eye. Haneke presents scenes of self mutilation in the same way he does countless piano rehearsals; with an unemotional air of disassociation.

Although the cinematography of these sequences is unquestionably astounding, I instead believe their true power is evident in their meticulously judged sound design.

In a film titled The Piano Teacher an audience expects to hear the rich, reverberation of grand pianos, and a hushed reverence for classical music; however, in typical Haneke fashion, these expectations are undercut to great effect. In a manner which also speaks to the films thematic content, we instead have the aforementioned beautiful reverberation stopped dead in its tracks by cuts to silence, or, more frequently, cuts to the electric hum of modern life (cars, lights, air conditioning systems, etc.)

It is this puncturing of the baroque, the dramatic and the pompous which is at the heart of The Piano Teacher's icily detached success - it doesn't seem to care about sensationalizing Erika's life in current cinematic fashion (through quick editing, close-ups of injured body parts and amplified sound effects) instead letting its sordid events unfold for the audience in an observational mode. This makes them feel more real, and even sadder - the film seems to care as little about Elrika as she cares about herself, instead seeming content to merely catalog her collapses and tragedies.

On reflection I think it is the feeling of emptiness that was most harrowing to my seventeen year old self; the banks of empty chairs, high ceilings, bare field recordings and long takes all speak of a primal void. It is this vacuum which sits at the heart of The Piano Teacher, (both film and character) yet even this isn't what disturbs me most about the film - instead that rests with the audience.

As repulsive as the film is it's also highly compelling viewing; I can't help but think Haneke
is also making a point about us watching the film - does being a captivated audience to such a hollow film say anything about us?

Damn you Haneke!

sam sam

DVD fun fun: When the Wind Blows (Dir. Jimmy T. Murakami, 1986)

2009-08-31T12:43:00.009+01:00

When The Wind Blows has a special place in my heart, along with the majority of Raymond Briggs' comic book work (The Snowman, Father Christmas, The Bear, The Man, Fungus the Bogeyman and especially Ethel and Ernest). However, this film's very existence proved to be quite a shock to me as I didn't even know of its existence until it popped up on my amazon.co.uk recommended list a few weeks ago.

I was given the book at the age of six by my dad, and, even at that age, I understood just how dark and heartbreaking the book was (and no doubt scarred my mind with dreams of nuclear apocalypse for several months, thanks dad!)

For those not in the know the book shows an aged British couple as they follow 1980s governmental guidelines about what to do in the event of a nuclear strike and then, after just such a nuclear bomb hits, watches them succumb to radiation poisoning.

Cheery stuff you no doubt gather.

Above is an extract from the book, and, as you can see from the film still below, the film follows the original source material's aesthetic considerations slavishly . This reverence is indeed a sign of the film's quality and commitment to Briggs' original message - indeed the film even lists Briggs as its scripter.

As you can see from these images one liberty the film makes is in the backgrounds; they are instead molded from what seems to be clay or plasticine. At first I wasn't sure what I thought of such a bold technique, but after seeing the film I can honestly say that it grants the filmmakers many opportunities which would otherwise be unfeasible for a British animated feature.

Most strikingly the film's camera frequently tracks and pans around the house's enclosed spaces, really reinforcing the spatial logistics of the house; something the film arguably does better than its sequential counterpart. This is a very effecting aspect of the film as an audience feels trapped inside the house too - when Jim Bloggs paints out the windows with white paint the claustrophobia is palpable.

Adding to this is the film's second major deviation from the source material, namely using bright, saturated colours instead of the novel's pastel tones. Again, I believe this to be an inspired choice, showing evidence that the filmmakers really understood the differences between graphic literature and film.

As the above image shows the presence of colour is almost stifling (and hence aiding the feelings of confinement within the house, mentioned above), but it also serves to make the pre and post bomb sections of the film feel even more separate.

In the film the post bomb sections seem have a thick layer of gray washed over the frames, so much so that the environments almost approach monochromatic tones at times. In the rare occasions that the first section's saturated colours do burst though we feel the loss the characters continuously attempt to ignore - even if a teapot is still bright it no longer belongs in this world of permanently gray skies and scorched earth; indeed, surely it too will become dark and grim.

However, do not let the fact the film is about the nuclear collapse of society think the film is endlessly grim and gritty. In truth the film is still charming and darkly humorous, with the film's two characters sharing so many warm moments of domesticity that their love for each other feels beautifully understated (and it should - upon the publication of his parents' illustrated biography in 1998, Ethel and Ernest, it became clear that Mr and Mrs Bloggs are in fact Mr. and Mrs. Briggs.)

Being a product of 80s Cold War paranoia the soundtrack to the film, in my opinion (if not my housemates!), perfectly fits the film and gives it a definite timestamp. David Bowie provides the title track, with numerous other 80s luminaries (Genesis, et al) providing the rest; when viewed as a transmission from the 80s I found the score to be strangely affecting, especially in the nostalgic "imagined" sections (I purposely haven't said much about these sequences as they were
one of my favorite parts of the whole film, and I think that to describe them would be to destroy their whimsical nature).

In closing I was surprised not just with the existence of this film version of When the Wind Blows, but I was also blown away (ho ho ho!) by its production values and overall quality (although I haven't touched on it the voice acting was fantastic). I think it stands as a fantastic companion to Briggs' original, and deserves much more recognition, particularly as people continually decry the virtues of British cinema.

Plus you can get it for under a fiver on Amazon. Go on...

sam sam

dog show hello - quick note about rss feeds

2009-08-29T14:53:00.004+01:00

Apologies in advance for the boring technical nature of this post, but here's just a quick note on how you can stay up to date with my blog (and hence make me a smiling man!) without any real effort.

For tech nerds: RSS feeds. I have them, please use them!

For normal people: I'm sure a lot of you know RSS feeds are GREAT! They allow you to see updates from a site without actually going to it; in my Firefox browser (they work in all though!) all I do is click on the dog show hello bookmark in my bookmark tool bar and it shows me the headlines of all the posts in the past few days.

Why is this GREAT you ask? Why, because it means you can easily see all the new articles on a site and pick the ones you want to read without trawling through loads of trash you don't want to see.

To add this blog to your browser could not be easier: just follow the simple steps below:

Click on the 'Subscribe' drop down box and click 'atom' (it's just the feed format, trust me, all will be well!)
Next click on the 'Subscribe' button at the top of the new page.
A box will pop up asking you were you want to bookmark the feed; if you can save it in a toolbar GREAT, if not just save it in the old fashioned dropdown menu.

DONE! Now all you need to do to read articles is click on the bookmark (wherever you saved it) and choose the ones which interest you!

YES!

IN the words of Arnie; (please!) "DO IT NOW!"

sam sam

DVD fun fun: Exterminating Angel (Dir. Luis Bunuel, 1962)

2009-08-29T13:20:00.002+01:00

In this unimaginative column I'm hoping to catch my thoughts on noteworthy DVDs I watch, and the first dog show hello DVD fun fun column is about...

Exterminating Angel (Dir. Luis Bunuel, 1962)

“People always want an explanation of everything. It is the consequence of centuries of bourgeois education. And for everything for which they cannot find an explanation, they resort in the last instance to God. But what is the use of that? Eventually they have to explain God!” - Luis Bunuel.

For those not in the know Exterminating Angel concerns a dinner party where, for no apparent reason, guests are unable to leave. Even though they frequently complain about the fact they can't leave, attempts to exit are always countered; people might make ridiculous excuses why they stay, or sometimes just collapse at the room's open doors. With the film's central conceit in place the audience is treated to the inevitable collapse of societies "best".

Whilst this simple explanation might make the film seem quite thin the opposite is in fact true. Bunuel's dinner party stays true to its own twisted internal logic throughout the film, and its limits are constantly pushed and tested. Frequently this leads to absurd situations, and conversations, which are simultaneously comedic and haunting.

Like the trapped diners the film's audience is trapped in the same infernal game of attempting to define and reason with the events before them; what exactly are the 'rules' of the dining room? If animals can enter is it something to do with the conscious mind? How can electricity enter if the room is hermetically sealed?

Embarrassed, I hang my head and admit that I frequently found myself asking these very questions, and airing my views on the room's logic to my friends. Without spoiling anything, I realized near the film's end that this stern mindset really wasn't called for, and instead should have reveled in the situation's surealist absurdity.

Focusing purely on the film's content though seems like a disservice, as its formal construction works hand in hand with the film's themes. Upon first seeing the dinner party's preperation by dozens of servants we are treated to some very theatrical staging of cast and camera; cameras pan and follow more than they track, but when they do they often maintain the shot's starting directionality and focus.

Some may put this down to budget constraints and dismiss it, but I think it to be an integral part of Bunuel's vision; after all the film echos the dinner party itself, with the bourgeois' cruel theatricality sent back on them tenfold. The lack of dynamic lighting, confined space and uncertainty of time all seem tailor made for theater, to the extent that the film often feels as if it is making a point about the way lives can be trapped in unexplainable patterns of drama and theatricality.

All in all I loved the film, and it has certainly inspired me to get more acquainted with Bunuel's sizable body of work. I don't think the film was a hard watch, and our viewing audience was certainly invested in the film. As such I think the easily graspable nature of the film, its humour, and the obvious points it raises, make it a very accessible film I would recommend to anyone.

(and that is the closest you will ever get to a review on dog show hello - in fact I probably won't ever go this far again! apologies for this time!)

sam sam

Videogame EXPLOSION!!! Prince of Persia (Xbox360, Ubisoft Monteal, 2008)

2009-08-27T21:26:00.015+01:00

Hello dog show hello readers! This segment, Videogame EXPLOSION!!! will focus on games I have recent played, that I think I have something worthwhile to say about. As always I encourage you to comment in the threads below;

dog show hello Videogame EXPLOSION!!! - Prince of Persia (2008, Xbox 360)

Having played all the PoP games (as we will forever affectionately refer to them) since the Ubisoft reboot Sands of Time last console generation I was drawn to, yet still slightly confused by, the need for yet ANOTHER reboot so soon.

Having played the game though I think the change is justified, as instead of aping the Arabian swashbuckling of Sinbad the game now evokes Studio Ghibli's output, and Miyazaki's work in particular.

In case you were wondering I most certainly see this as A Good Thing; PoP echoes Princess Mononoke most frequently, and since the game's thematics sync up neatly with this film I think it is an inspired move. The concepts of dark, wriggling, worm like physical corruption and rejuvenating land seem to have been lifted wholesale from Princess Mononoke, but the similarities do not stop there.

Aesthetically the two share a multitude of similarities (as the above image purports), with even the game's triumphant musical flourishes effectively re-imagining Mononoke's score through Eastern musical scales (sometimes...the game was created for Western palates after all).

Architecture in the Alchemist area of the game also recalls another Miyazaki masterpiece; namely Castle in The Sky. The pastel colored hot-air balloon devices and blue skies all recall the Sky Pirates natural habitat, and the game's protagonist (Flash fact - he's never overtly referred to as a price!) exudes the sardonic charm of the more roguish pirates.

Aside from the riffs on Ghibli the game has one other aesthetic and thematic touchstone; that of Team Ico's Ico and Shadow of the colossus. In addition to the fact that the pairing of the Prince and Elika reflects a slightly more sexed up (and less player-reliant) version of Ico and Yorda (or indeed Ashitaka and San from Mononoke), the game reflects the exploratory and combat light game mechanics of the Eastern game.

I bring these things to your attention not to label PoP as derivative, I instead do it to explain why the game's overall feel appealed to me - because, alas, there were certainly times when the game itself felt more like a chore than fun.

The game is effectively neutered by two elements; its desire to be open to player choices, and its misguided attempts at being successful. To explain the former gripe the game's overall structure must first be explained, so please allow me a second or two to explain .

Effectively the game is a collection of levels which can be tackled in any order, providing that you have the correct powerups unlocked (more on this later). When you arrive at an area the world is dark and covered in 'corruption'. After getting to level's 'fertile ground' via a linear platform series you fight one of four 'boss' characters; after their defeat the earth is healed, allowing you to backtrack and collect 'light seeds', some of which are off the linear path. These 'light seeds' unlock new powerups, which unlock new levels, which let's you collect more light seeds, which lets you....(repeat ad infinitum)

Hopefully this convoluted explanation communicates that after the first few levels the game feels more like a process, rather than a fun game. The problem is exasabated by the fact you can takle the levels in any order; because of this fact there is no building on learned skills, as the game cannot assume you have any previous knowledge on entering an area. As such the game does not have a difficulty curve, instead it has a flat horizontal bar of challenge - if you can do one area you can do them all.

This factors into my latter gripe with the game, namely its desire to be accessible. However, I do not see the game's much criticized lack of character death as any problem (if the Prince ever falls off a ledge, or in combat, his partner, Elika, grabs him and instantly transports him to safety), in fact I think it reduces pointless tedium and frustration, and should be present in many more games of this type.

Instead the Prince's problems come more from his super easy controls and heavy helping of computer assisted jumps and grabs. Unlike the previous reboot platform routs are highly scripted, leading to the game feeling more like an extended quicktime event at times; press B when you see a metal ring, Y when you see a magic plate or the screen boarder goes white, and A whenever you're going to fall off a wall.

Follow those instructions and the game is pretty much done.

As you can see the game has numerous mechanical problems, but I still would not hesitate recommending it to just about anyone as, see this article's start, PoP has moments of outstanding beauty and ingenuity that transcend its problems as a videogame. Instead the game acts as a successful experience, something I now find myself wanting more from a game than polished mechanics or technical prowess.

I cared for the Prince, I cared for Elika and I loved the section after the first set of ending credits (no spoilers here! see youtube if you want!), and thought it was a touching and ballsy move for a mainstream game; in short I really liked this latest reboot of the PoP franchise.

In what I am sure will become an frequent distinction on dog show hello a game can still be a great experience in spite of its flaws; rather than taking an immature viewpoint and judging purely on technical capability I want to look at videogames as a burgeoning art form, and instead look at the way games make us think or feel - in this sense PoP was the perfect choice for the inaugural Videogame EXPOLSION!!! as it outlines this viewpoint perfectly; and hopefully one you echo :-D

until next time!

sam sam

Wednesday Compilation - 26th August 2009

2009-08-26T18:30:00.018+01:00

Hopefully you all know the drill from last Wednesday - basically I post and create a compilation of stuff I've been listening to each week, and you get to listen :-D comments would be appreciated!

Download link will follow at the bottom of the post.

Track 01 - Heartbeats by The Knife (from Deep Cuts)

I don't really know why, but this song makes me smile every time I hear it (even as I writing this I'm listening and smiling, its certainly an involuntary response at this stage!) The song's simple synths and basic vocal patterns present, to me, an air of innocence and fun, thinking only about today and not tomorrow - in short I think of it as a party song :-D

The Knife are a band I really like, but there's something about this song that makes me like it loads more than anything else they've done; for whatever reason the "we were in lo--------ve!" line always makes me have shivers run up and down my spine.

Aside from anything else it makes me think of this new year's eve, which is most definitely a good thing (and one night when I certainly didn't think about how I would feel tomorrow!) THEREFORE The Knife = 100% yes mate.

Track 02 - Haircut Tacos by Pre (from Hope Freaks)

This is the first thing I ever heard by Pre, and I think it's great. Fun, chaotic and full of energy I think Pre would be great live, and I think it's a great shame they didn't play at this year's Supersonic festival (they were on the line-up, but not at the festival). I think this album was produced by Steve Albini, and it shows. The crisp, yet natural, production really benefits the band's sound, and the whole album has the same air of LET'S GO about it.

I think they're from London, so hopefully I'll see it won't take too much effort to see them; I think they would be loads of fun live, and the videos online I've seen defiantly support this. If anyone has seen 'em I'd like to know how it was!

Track 03 - Wings From Spine by Khanate (from When Clean Hands Go Foul)

Changing tack just a little bit here is Khanate. Ever since I first heard them, just before Things Viral came out, I knew Khanate were something special, and not just one of many "doom" bands (even more so than Sunn 0))) and the sixty thousand other O'Malley/ Anderson projects). Every release has offered us something new, and with this final posthumous release I think that Khanate have most certainly delivered something monumental.

Wings From Spine sees all four members all using their instruments to fully immerse the listener in an atmosphere of broken dreams, melancholy and despair; so far so Khanate. The guitar and drums are what makes this song a step above the rest of their catalogue, the guitar is more tuneful and affecting, whilst the drums almost jazz-like outbursts keep listens on their toes. This progressive drumming (particularly the use of the high hat) makes the piece feel as if it was once a normal song, but has been "broken" and Wings On Spine is the sound of its collapse.

"I broke one...because I could." Oh my, Mr Dubin. As always the vocals are primal rage and the lyrics are dark.

Enjoy!

Track 04 - Origin by Mount Eerie (from White Stag)

Following on from Khanate I think this Mount Eerie recording certainly holds its own. Described by the artist as a "sloppy 4 track recording" Origin communicates the same feelings of emptiness and despair as the previous track, but in a much more subdued manner.

I think the sound quality certainly fits the recording, and, in my opinion, gives us one of the best Mount Eerie recordings. From the first line of this song I can't help but feel a bit down, and if you have it up LOUD the bass frequencies absolutely make you FEEL the song.

Track 05 - Time: The Donut of the Heart by J Dilla (from Donuts)

Pumping things up a notch is J Dilla, with one of the best cuts from his epic final album Donuts. For obvious reasons (see here for a full explanation) the entire album does have an air of sadness surrounding it, but this song in particular feels more a celebration of life, than upset over leaving it.

Aside from just being a great song the section where the beat slows to a crawl (and is accompanied by several *ahem* satisfied ladies), just before speeding back up to its usual pace, seems very poignant to me and seems to speak volumes about the way we experience time in our own lives.

Even if you don't agree on that mumbo-jumbo you should at least agree that this song wins :-D

Track 06 - Illegal Dustbin by Squarepusher (from Numbers Lucent)

Coming to us as the 90s rave induced child of the previous band orientated Just a Souvenir the Numbers Lucent EP was a hard release for some to swallow, neither embracing the full band feeling of Souvenir or the electronic elements it purports to draw from.

Despite this I LOVE it, and embrace every one of its camp infused six tracks, with the final one, Illegal Dustbin, as a standout. In particular I love the way that it goes mental about 58 seconds in and just Squarepushers out :-D Even with the more hard edge though it still has a real disco vibe to it and makes me want to d-a-n-c-e!

Aside from anything else we have to agree that the cover art is FUCKING STUNNING!

"ARE YOU DOWN WITH THE UNDERGROUND?" indeed.

Track 07 - The Wolves (Act I and II) by Bon Iver (from For Emma, Forever Ago)

Ahhhhhhh, Bon Iver. Despite being a mainstream super darling Bon Iver is bloody great, and dosen't deserve to be written off without a thought. This song in particular illustrates why he does so much more than acoustic singer songwriter stuff; the song has beautiful flourishes of electronics, drums, train samples, massive harmonies and reversed symbol samples.

Beautiful music that seems frail and soulful is something we don't normally see in the mainstream's eye, so the fact Bon Iver has found huge success should be celebrated, and not treated with suspicion (as I know some people do! I know who you are!)

Track 08 - Horizontal Hold by This Heat (from Made Available)

Yes, the cover to this collection of Peel sessions was homaged by Shellac with 1000 Hurts; there is a reason for that. These recordings were made after the band formed in 1975 - I'll say that again - 1975 - and still seem futuristic today.

I was introduced to this band by one of my housemates (through this song!), and I thought he was joking when he said that this wasn't a new band. One of the most influential bands ever in my opinion, just listen and drop your jaw.

Track 09 - The Point of it All by Fennesz (from Venice)

Fennesz is one of my favorite artists, and I chose this song to feature in this compilation because it gives a doorway into the way he creates his work; you can hear guitars become more ethereal before returning to clarity, in a repeating cycle.

Venice is a great album; every song is music to collapse and relax to, but still maintains a recognizable presence, unlike too much ambient music. This week I heard the Fennesz and Sparklehorse In The Fishtank collaboration, and I must say that blew me away too - I can't believe that I'm going to see him play in a church next month! YES!!!

Track 10 - Asylum (Permenant Underclass) by Dalek (from Absence)

Having never been a massive hip-hop fan I still find Dalek a very rewarding listen, with their noisy beats and overt aggression tickling my excitement nodules into a frenzy. I love the fact that they are actually rapping about something that interests me, and not respect, lifestyle or status of many more sensationalist hip-hop acts.

The first thing that drew me to Dalek was the fact they were on Ipecac, but after listening to their work (and seeing them live - brutal) I'm much more inclined to check out more hip-hop stuff, if anyone has any good recommendations in either this or an Anticon style please don't hesitate to let me know!

Love the last lyric too and totally agree with the sentiment.

Track 11 - Crimewave by Crystal Castles (from Crystal Castles)

Fuck the fact that they are ridiculously beautiful and hip; I can't lie I love Crystal Castles. There I said it. Despite the controversy surrounding their alleged stealing of samples from "genuine" 8-bit artists I can't deny that I think their songs are much more than the sum of their parts.

This song is one of their less noisier ones, which is normally a bad thing, but I really find this song catchy, and the vocal effects might seem a bit cheesy, but I can't help loving them.

All in all a pretty simple song, but for those of you wondering the only lyrics to the song are:

Eyes lit,
I want short breaths,
I found dark eye lids,
Nice breasts,
Like the summer into rough hands.

Yep, I have no idea either (although I'm thinking it might have something to do with a stupidly pretty and probably underage girl being "talent spotted" by a dirty looking hip man in his late twenties. Yep, that might be it y'know!)

Track 12 - Daily Routine by Animal Collective (from Merriweather Post Pavilion)

Animal Collective are one of my favorite bands ever, and with this latest album as their peppiest yet I fully expect them to be a lot of other people's favorite band in a few years time.

This song in particular exemplifies why this album is so good; it has some very spaced-out pop melodies and ties them up with some downright mental electronics :-D I also love the attitude Animal Collective promote - from this albums My Girls to this song (Daily Routine) we can see the way they just want a comfortable life for them and their loved ones, and the chance to break out the repetitive rhythms of daily life.

*cough* at least that's what I read into it.

Also the optical illusion cover art is ace!

Track 13 - A Warm Room by Envy (from Insomniac Doze)

Envy are another band I have a strong affinity for, and, even though their sound has changed drastically over the years, you can always tell instantly their style. Starting out as an epic screamo band and then weaving post rock into the mix one can see the natural train of thought which led them to Insomiac Doze.

However, I believe that this album actually falls flat much of the time, with this final song being the only one which really pulls the post rock/screamo combination off...

...but what a song.

Every time I hear this song I feel shivers go around my entire body, and I can't help smiling.

My oh my, what a strange coincidence to end with the same feeling this compilation started with, it almost seems planned ;-p

and that ends the second dog show hello compilation!!!!

you can download it HERE

Peace out and speak soon!

Sam Sam

Cinema Trip: Inglourious Basterds (Dir. Quentin Tarantinio, 2009)

2009-08-24T17:27:00.015+01:00

Hello all, sorry about the lack of posts over the weekend; it was packed with dog action, breaking cars and social interaction to such a degree that I didn't have time to write about Tarantino's latest cinematic offering.

However, I think that a weekend's worth of hindsight is advantageous to the discussion of Inglourious Basterds (yes, it really is spelled like that!), so without further ado lets get our warpaint on!

As you no doubt know Inglourious Basterds has been an on/off project for Tarantino since the release of his 1997 release, Jackie Brown. I think its long term on/ off status definitely shows when viewing Inglourious Basterds; however, I mean that not as a complaint, but instead as a compliment.

The film's chapter based structure almost seems as if the film's disparate segments could have been written and conceived entirely separately, with only the ending really introducing the characters' storylines to each other. If this sounds familiar to the way Pulp Fiction was birthed (three separate projects merging to become something much wider and exciting) then I think that you will not be surprised to learn that is, in this bearded blogging man's opinion, the film in Tarantino's body of work Inglourious Basterds most resembles.

Although not my favourite Tarantino film, before the release of Inglourious Basterds, (Jackie Brown holds that honour) I think we can all agree that this is A Very Good Thing.

Inglourious Basterds surprised me immensely, as I was hugely mislead by the TV spots to think it would instead be a revenge exploitation flick in the vein of Kill Bill. However, I should have trusted my cynicism gland's reactionary response to the below TV spot as, to my understandable surprise, the film spent its almost all of its entire opening chapter in a one room house whilst two characters (a French farmer and the Nazi "Jew Hunter) discuss (no, that's not a euphemism) three families of missing Jews.

See what I mean? (Incidentally Brad Pitt's character never meets Hitler either, damn tricksy marketing departments!) As much as I liked Kill Bill's gluttony and excess it was very nice to see Tarantino moving a bit slower again, to the extent that one of my less forgiving housemates exclaimed "he's gone and made a proper film again".

Without giving any plot points away the film actually revolves around the premier of (in actuality the Eli Roth directed) a Nazi propaganda film Nation's Pride, which is going to take place in occupied France. In typical Tarantino fashion though, this is only where the film ends; the first half of the film is introducing us to the film's reality, and the characters which inhabit it - it is in these sections the film is really allowed to breathe, and to great success.

In addition to the film within a film Inglourious Basterds has, what seems like, several million nods and winks to cinema. Such corkers include moments such as:

A cinema owner spitting "In France we respect directors" at a Nazi.
A character asking "Since I am in your house I think it polite to ask, but can we switch to English? My French is not as good."[paraphrased] before the characters adopt very convincing English accents.
Use of Ennio Morricone music; Tarantino once described the film as his "spaghetti western, but with World War II iconography".
An archive film explaining the dangers of getting on buses with film prints ("Hop off son!" made us all laugh embarrassingly loud in our cinema seats!)
A British soldier who just so happens to be the author of two film essay books, and an expert on German expressionist cinema.

Although I have detailed a few of these instances I don't feel their revelation as detrimental to the film as, contrary to some critics assertions, I believe the film's cinematic touchstones to be there for a reason; and with the passing of Inglourios Basterds' conclusion we are left with very little questions about what this point is.

One review of the film (which can be read here) states that "th[e] amalgamation of the languages of Jean-Luc Godard and Robert Aldrich provides Tarantino with a pidgin dialect that serves the twisty, self-conscious action very nicely", and this is a point a don't believe I could have put any more concisely. As with all of Tarantino's films Inglourious Basterds is a film about the nature of cinema first, and its subject matter second, and, in my opinion (and I make this distinction, because I fully understand if this is not yours), Inglourious Basterds succeeds as Tarantino's best work primarily because it makes this point in such an unabashed, clear and joyous fashion.

Tarantio effectively screams in this film that cinema is important and special; whilst I already agreed with this sentiment I didn't expect that its revelation would have my housemates and I laughing manically and feeling giddy with excitement, even after we left the cinema.

In short, go see it!

Sam Sam

Comic of the Week: Asterious Polyp (David Mazzucchelli) (week starting Monday, 17th August 2009)

2009-08-20T15:03:00.018+01:00

Dog show hello greets you yet again with another segment I want to make a weekly segment, namely Comic of the Week! DA-DAH!

In this section I won't be looking at recently released single issues since this sort of content is already present on lots of much more established websites. Instead I will be looking at a combination of original graphic novels and trade paperbacks; eventually I intend to have a searchable archive of thoughts on these collected books.

The books I'm choosing will not be from any specific time period or publisher - I read a wide range of content, and I think that a balanced diet really does lead to a healthy life (tell that to my expanding waistline!ha!) As such I won't be surprised if some posts are much more popular than others, but please do consider reading something from outside your comfort zone!

Comments and discussion in the below comments would be greatly appreciated, if you don't agree with me don't hesitate to let me know why!

Without further messing around here is dog show hello's first Comic of the Week!

Comic of the week for 20th August 2009, Asterios Polyp, by David Mazzucchelli (Pantheon Books, New York)

This was probably a bad book to choose for dog show hello's first book of the week, because without any direct comparisons it will be hard to convince you that Asterios Polyp is one of the greatest pieces of art the medium has ever birthed.

For those who haven't heard of the book a little background is in order. David Mazzucchelli is a renowned comic book artist, probably most famous for his iconic work on Frank Miller's Batman: Year One in the late 1980s. Asterios Polyp marks his first book he has both written and illustrated, after a noted absence from the mainstream world of superheros.

The book has received much praise, with most taking it as written that it will clean up at next year's Eisner awards (think the Oscars, but for comics); at present it seems to be doing very well sales wise, and has all the hallmarks of becoming a future classic. As such it is THE hot book in art circles at the moment.

Without saying too much the book starts with the single Asterios alone in his house on the night of his fiftieth birthday, when, after a freak bolt of lightning hits, his house burns down. Without thinking he puts his shoes on, and grabs only three possessions; a lighter, a swiss army knife and an old watch. He then gets a train and bus to a seemingly random small town where he goes into a garage and asks for a job and board. Oh, and the book is narrated by Asterios's stillborn twin Ignazio. Trust me, it makes perfect sense when you read it!

I read the book for the first time in one sitting, at the book's end I actually shed a few tears. I know that some (my housemates in particular!) may find such writing hyperbolic and borderline ridiculous, but I see no reason to shy away from the fact that the book had enormous emotional impact on myself.

And this is something I really didn't expect, given that everything I had heard about the book focused on its more formal aspects; the use of colour, panel layout, drawing style and Mazzucchelli's mastery of graphic storytelling.

Asterios Polyp seems to have a bizarre effect on some writers who have the misguided tendency to do their best to flex their analytical muscles, and spend several thousand words explaining the significance of a certain formal aspect. I believe this" decoding" of Mazzucchelli's work to be a fallacy; in reality the majority of these insights are made by the book's narrator and characters. As such there is little code to acually interpret, instead the majority of these reviews devolve to merely listing and filing examples of these techniques.

The book has, I believe, been designed to be efficient at communicating its meaning; the reader's hand is held throughout the entire book, and, like Asterios' cleanly outlined body, it's stroytelling is efficient and concise. Far from chastising these aforementioned critics for not grasping The Book of The Moment's (and make no mistake, Asterios Polyp is certainly that) subtle inflections I instead applaud Mazzucchelli for creating a book so controlled in its execution.

It is a testament to Mazzucchelli's work that almost everyone I know (and almost all critics) who has read Asterios Polyp has been pushed to make the same intellectual leaps - leaving everyone with not only the same revelations, but with the sense that they got there themselves; of course, in actuality, Mazzucchelli has been subtly guiding the entire experience from within the book's pages.

As an example here is one panel from the book, featuring Asterios and his wife, Hana.

As you can see the book is not exactly subtle, instead it displays its meaning an elegantly streamlined way, as only sequential art can. I will leave the interlectualization of these methods to those much more qualified (for example Scott McCloud's trio of Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics and Making Comics almost read as linear notes for Asterious Polyp, and I highly recommend all three and McCloud's own analysis of the book), and instead focus now on what I think much of the writing on Asterious Polyp has overlooked - the emotional content of the book.

For me, and no doubt for the titular Asterios, at the heart of the book is the relationship he has with Hana. From the masterful seven page sequence in which Asterios removes a cotton bud from Hana's ear we see small cuts from around their relationship, to much the same effect as the famous sex/getting dressed sequence from Roeg's 1973 masterpiece Don't Look Now. (As a side note the above image is one small part of this montage.)

As with this sequence we not only see the way the two love and complement each other, but also we see the Hana through Asterios' eyes; her imperfections are, not only accepted, but cherished and accepted as part of the tapestry of domestic life.

This intense acceptance and closeness speaks to all of us in a language we cannot help but translate into our own domestic situations; when I first reached the book's conclusion I had invested so much of my own life relationships in Hana and Asterios' relationship that when I felt those familiar cathartic tears well up behind my eyes it felt right. I wasn't just crying for Hana and Asterios, I was crying for all of the people I've ever been close to.

That is why this deserves to be Mazzucchelli's first original graphic novel of many - he managed to make me reconsider and look at my own relationships with people throughout my life. I walked out of that coffee shop thinking "Yeah, I suppose I can be quite a prick sometimes, but I suppose its okay because everyone is sometimes. And I guess if things don't come together it isn't the end of the world because I'm still alive."

Seriously give this book a whirl, it's a beautiful package and less than twelve pounds on amazon at the moment, I'll be very surprised if you don't feel inspired to try and make more people read it :-D

Sam Sam

N.B. The update will happen sometime throughout the week as, unlike the dog show hello Compilation of the Week, there will not be a download link to accompany the post, and I figured people wouldn't be so flustered if they aren't getting something for nothing :-p