Recently-Acquired Vinyl LP of the Day #7: Public Image Ltd 'Second Edition'

Today the opposite of tomato is (not for the first time) 'the jagged metal bad life'

Making it another double (& why not?), Public Image Ltd’s ‘Second Edition’ was both their second album & the second-format release of the original & iconic ‘Metal Box’ 3 x 12” single collection, which was an artefact I owned back in its day, thus not requiring the investment in ‘Second Edition’ until now, when it seems it should be another essential component of the vinyl LP collection, & thus it recently came to pass when opportunity presented itself.

I blogged some years ago about ‘Metal Box’ in relation to Simon Reynolds' opinion regarding the format in which music is released playing a part in its reception, with which I concurred & still do, very much so concerning this particular suite of tracks: ‘Metal Box’ was & remains the prime physical object-form via which to experience such remarkable music (even if it's many a long year since I was able to do so), with ‘Second Edition’ somehow diminishing its effect, if only slightly, but crikey the latter is still a damn sight better than subsequent CDs or mp3s – these sounds were made to be heard on vinyl.

(untitled)

As regularly seems to be the case, the Sunday morning shopping stroll presented another pair of examples of 'roadkill' upon different sections of the local double black lines, photographed just as found...





Somehow, the legend 'energy' can only be read as being rather an ironic comment upon the state of something so obviously 'flat out' as the object in question...

Soundtrack:

Whilst processing the above images from camera to PC & then onwards to here, courtesy of Pontone, Simon Reynolds' Eldritchtronica & Wyrd Bliss mixtape: fine stuff &, apart from a little Moon Wiring Club, all sounding new to TOoT.

Creased-Up...

Today the opposite of tomato is 'An Audience of Art Deco Eyes'...& 'Blissed Out'


graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

And so to another diptych drawing of the more neatly, apparently almost deliberately folded examples of aluminium can ‘roadkill’, this time a particularly slimline instance of the form. As ever, there’s something unavoidably Cubist in appearance about such planar reshapings of what one knows once to have been a proper three-dimensional object-in-the-round. For the first time, in taking advantage of an especially fine early morning, the drawing was processed ‘en plein air’, with the lightly-faceted surface of the found object picking up the shifting patterns of light, the drawing thus providing a composite record of such rather than a fixed point as a photographic image would.

Soundtrack:


Moon Wiring Club 'An Audience of Art Deco Eyes'

There’s something going bump in the night, even though it’s still light well beyond 10 pm, & that something is the sound of the Moon Wiring Club’s ‘An Audience of Art Deco Eyes’, being the most recent musical investment: quite how & why it’s taken so long to get around to doing so is a mystery worthy of the strange goings-on in Clinksell itself, the initial instalment of which the album constitutes, preceding as it did ‘Shoes Off and Chairs Away’. The overriding initial impression of ‘An Audience...’ is that it broods magnificently, being a thoroughly engrossing, ‘escapist’ experience in the manner of its successor, with the prevailing atmosphere frequently leavened by a jaunty, capering melodic interlude - like fleeting shafts of sunlight filtering through the overarching canopy of leaves as one is drawn inexorably deeper into the spooky, sinister woods - & snippets of humour.


Again, as may be observed in these illustrations from the CD booklet of various members of the Club, the retro appearance & air of the accompanying artwork complements the music perfectly, creating a rich, multi-layered & rewarding aesthetic; much more may be explored, of course, at the Blank Workshop.


By way of one those strange temporal coincidences, I also took delivery yesterday of a copy of Simon Reynolds’ ‘Blissed Out’, a book I’d been trying to track down (if only at a reasonable price, of course) for years & finally managed to do so from a seller in the US. As a collection of the writer’s earlier work, featuring pieces revised from original publication in the music press, etc (on subjects such as The Smiths, Pixies, Sonic Youth, & ‘oceanic’ rock as the term was coined), I’ve regarded it as an essential addition to the library, such examples having formed my introduction to Reynolds’ style & always compelling, thought-provoking, enlightening & entertaining content, enjoyed from first exposure to: he it was, indeed, who succinctly identified the ‘lovely, wintry sound’ of - in his review of - the Go-Betweens’ ‘Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express’.
It was the estimable Mr Reynolds, of course, who first alerted me to the very existence of the Moon Wiring Club, championing both ‘An Audience...’ & then in turn ‘Shoes Off...’, thus another debt of gratitude is owed. Again, nostalgia might be said to be in the air, but this will be a book to be dipped-in-to & its essays enjoyed anew.
Note the cover design of ‘Blissed Out’, co-done by Vaughan Oliver of 23 envelope fame, very much in the style of many an independent album sleeve of the late 80s/early 90s: a suitable case for some present-day retro appropriation & re-presentation, surely?

A New Painterly Pleasure

Today the opposite of tomato is the Netherlands' major-upset last-ball Twenty20 cricket victory over England: Brilliant Orange!

A recent edition of the newish publication Art World was browsed-with-interest in a local WH Smiths & subsequently invested in primarily for the features contained within on the subjects of the new work of Luc Tuymans and a more general survey of George Shaw’s paintings, the latter being especially necessary given the otherwise scarcity of substantial literature on the artist & his compelling work, which, topical to this year’s overarching atmosphere at TOoT, has often seemed to communicate something of a ‘post-punk’ aesthetic, its intensely-concentrated appearance frequently redolent of the socio-economo-political grimy grimness of the late 70s – early 80s, of hope stilled & dreams thwarted, life quietly suffocated “amid concrete and clay, and general decay” (indeed of ‘nature finding a way’, as it must, of reclaiming derelict buildings, abandoned garages and now-depopulated public spaces – specifically the Tile Hill estate in Coventry, where Shaw grew up).


George Shaw feature in Art World no. 10, April/May 2009

Also, there is undeniably something more expansively Smithsian & broadly English in Shaw’s affectionate aesthetic, in its Romantic tendency to find poetry, something to celebrate, to memorialize, in such unpromising, overlooked subject matter: the particular use of an ever-so-slightly artificial, heightened colour lends some of the paintings an intensity of an hallucinatory nature, the depicted spaces become charged with a dreamlike nostalgia for a past time, vividly remembered with a clarity as from youth. Furthermore, Shaw’s habitual technique using the medium of Humbrol enamel modelling paints reminds one palpably of the personal journey from childhood - &, specifically, one of its consuming hobbies of the construction of Airfix model kits - to adolescence & the discovery of the music (& associated culture) of that contemporaneous post-punk period. Last night, I experienced a particularly sharp pang of recognition whilst reading, in his own interview that closes ‘Totally Wired’, Simon Reynolds’ poignant description of the provincial life (such as that, also, of George Shaw’s Coventry) of such times, isolated in a much-reduced media landscape (when compared with the ubiquitous, remotely-accessible, distance-no-object-or-barrier sources of today), & the vital, essential nature, the sheer nervous urgency, of the vibrant new music scene & its associated conduits of the John Peel radio programme & the ‘inky’ music press (NME, Melody Maker & Sounds), the importance of which could never be overestimated, precious oases in the cultural desert, the scarcity of which created a constant cycle of delay & anticipation in the sating of the desire for access to & reception of such life-saving forces. George Shaw’s work similarly displays a yearning for the memories of times past.


Kees Goudzwaard in Art World no.10, April/May 2009

Having digressed, the real discovery in the aforementioned issue of Art World proved to be the work of painter Kees Goudzwaard. The magazine features a short article & question-&-answer session with the artist, illustrated with a few examples of recent work, enough to intrigue & encourage a more in-depth engagement available via the artist’s website, which features a chronological survey of numerous years’-worth of paintings & 4 substantial essays on the subject of this work, exploring various theoretical issues arising from.
Goudzwaard’s painting practice is particularly fascinating for the position it occupies between absolutely faithful realism-illusionism, & the tradition of modernist abstraction, being primarily the former whilst appearing very much like the latter. Beginning with very basic raw materials of the artist’s stock - coloured & translucent tracing-type papers, & masking tape in the form of either strips or smaller pieces - Goudzwaard constructs maquettes - on various scales from ‘easel-painting’ size to the much larger ones associated with abstract expressionism - composed & built up of various square & rectilinear forms, sometimes tilted on their axes, with subsequent layers creating tonal variations in addition to colour combinations either boldly-saturated or more subdued or near-monochrome. The application of masking tape to fix these shapes & layers results in the explicit statement of grid-like forms, &/or otherwise pieces of tape are used to create surface pattern & detail that, within the general abstract framework of the resulting paintings, might or might not suggest natural phenomena such as flurries of snow or blossom.

From these models – over which he might spend some considerable time (years, even) in the making & reassessing the compositions of – Goudzwaard then produces equivalents in oil on canvas, on a scale of direct 1:1. As the models are objects in themselves – even if their 3D nature is shallow – the subsequent paintings, in their faithfulness to appearances, their transfer of low-relief three dimensions into the two of the flat picture plane, exhibit a trompe l’oeil quality in the tradition of such works as the illusory depictions of pin-boards (from those by 17th century Dutch artists to, for example, John Frederick Peto in the US in the 19th century) or Vija Celmins’ drawings of envelopes & postcards, & also have a relational dialogue with the broader history of Dutch still life painting, with its attention to detail & exactitude, effecting a transfer of material qualities, surfaces & textures, into that of paint. The entire process, from the collaged models constructed of a variety of papers to the subsequent paintings composed of overlapping planar layers – often of great tonal richness & subtlety - & frameworks of explicit linear structures that relate to the horizontals & verticals of the picture edges, also references various stages of Cubism as it developed from the influence of Cezanne to the point from which an artist such as Mondrian was able to absorb its lessons & take them on in order to refine his own rigidly geometrical formal language into complete abstraction (one might say that Goudzwaard’s tonally pale lines of tape are the inverse of the ‘signature’ black scaffolding of Mondrian’s mature style & practice).
The creation & depiction of the grid-like structure – either as emphasised or disrupted to greater or lesser effect by the particular use of the tape – relates to the use of the grid in modernist art to create an ‘all-over’ field that makes explicit reference to the shape of the picture support in the traditional manner & enables the paintings to be read alternately as belonging within the idiom of hard-edge abstraction. The paintings thus enjoy a constant, intriguing state of flux – for all their rigidly structural appearance – between realist illusionism, painstakingly realised, & abstraction, a liberating post-modernist dialogue that gives them a profound complexity & continually enriches their reception.

There’s an interesting relation, too, between Goudzwaard’s work and the compelling paintings of William Daniels (blogged here, some time ago) - again highly realistic renderings of self-constructed cardboard maquettes of famous paintings from the history of art, sharing the practice of producing a contemporary take on the genre of still life, working from objects (already works of art?) created by themselves from simple, cheap, ubiquitous materials. Perhaps, too, my own current body of work & area of interest, the drawings of flattened, low-relief ‘roadkill’ aluminium cans depicted against the ground of the strict linear forms of the (slightly raised) double black lines road markings, with their relation to both still life & certain formal devices of modernist abstraction (albeit monochrome), might share characteristics & concerns with Kees Goudzward’s paintings.

Also, an interesting feature on/with Sonic Youth in today's Guardian's 'Film & Music' section, & even a good review of the new album 'The Eternal', too, with special mention for the fabulous 'Antenna'.

Recycling Art History

Today the opposite of tomato is Blue Soap


graphite & putty eraser/30x20cm

Continuing with the process of 'roadkill' diptych drawings: one intends the dialogue between the two distinct halves to be apparent, in terms of the technique of mark-making & erasure common to both, the whole, despite the obvious difference in finished appearance. An interesting result of the particular drawing process of heavily applying graphite to the surface of the paper in order to achieve a suitably rich darkness of tone is that the resulting metallic, light-reflective sheen corresponds rather pleasingly in a direct physical manner to the nature of the surface finish of the aluminium can, thus creating a satisfying 'object dialogue' between the thing itself & its representation as a drawing (another thing).

The drawing of such an object as the crushed can, plucked, recovered & reclaimed from a contemporary context (where it unavoidably comments, eloquently despite its mute, abandoned status, upon the circumstances in which it exists, of the ubiquity of shiny, designed, branded products & the casual manner in which, consumed, such are wantonly discarded), nontheless seems to reference the history of art in the manner of its featuring in synthesized form multiple facets & views such as might typically occur in Cubism - this particular can, for instance, displaying, simultaneously, within the same flattened plane (actual & pictured), its top, side & bottom &, also Cubistically, a fragment of lettering & logo, a synecdoche of its (brand) name.
Furthermore, & reaching further back in art-historical time, the creases & folds in the buckled, flattened form of the can might also suggest the folds & creases in drapery & flowing, billowing garments, especially silks amongst an array of fabrics, either clothing or falling from the human form, representations of which are ubiquitous in the tradition of Western painting, the technical realization of which being a particular practical illustration of an artist's talents: indeed, such subject matter & resources provided the inspiration for the series of 'white' paintings, entitled 'Phantom', that Alison Watt produced during her 2006 - 8 residency at the National Gallery, illustrating the enduring fascination & challenge of such to artists.

Soundtrack:


Belle & Sebastian 'Push Barman to Open Old Wounds'
The Associates 'Fourth Drawer Down'/'Sulk'
Nirvana 'In Utero'
PJ Harvey 'To Bring You My Love'

And the post-punk obsession continues, largely unabated, finding its most recent expression in the work of The Associates, whose sonic aesthetic remains unique & astonishing still, a mighty & compelling combination of Billy Mackenzie's voice, stratospheric in range, his vocal gymnastics, his lyrical non-sequiturs & Alan Rankine's instrumental inventiveness & the ensuing unconventional, often jarring forms: anything goes, & mostly works, creating such magnificent atmospheres, the wonders of which endure. There really is, or has been, nothing quite like, for but a few examples, the mitteleuropean eerie starkness of 'A White Car in Germany'; the foreboding plod of 'Q Quarters', anxiously looking over its shoulder at what may lurk in the mist-shrouded, haunted, echoing shadows; the (especially) manic 'Kitchen Person' & 'Bap de la Bap'; the dislocated (Cubist?) funk of 'Message Oblique Speech'; the singing-in-the-shower/bath conceit of 'Blue Soap' (perfectly realised in textural terms, with 'Kitchen Person' playing on a background radio) - how could one not smile & sing along to a lyric & conjured image such as "rub-a-dub-dub, me & my dog in the tub" (?!); the grandiose drama of 'No'; the vocal lapse into a Sean Connery impersonation during 'Skipping'; or, of course, the soaring heights of 'Party Fears Two' (somewhat incredible to contemplate now, given its sheer otherness, but a hit single in its glorious day). And how prescient, indeed prophetic, regretfully, proved to be the lyrics of the appropriately reflective, melancholy 'Gloomy Sunday', a title & familiar sentiment within British musical & other culture which forms an interesting link with the post-punkesque aesthetic of Black Box Recorder's 'England Made Me' & its closing, similarly dismal, 'Hated Sunday' (with an honourable mention too for Morrissey, for whom, tragi-comically, every day was like Sunday, of course!)
There's a fascinating interview, anecdotally filling in many a background, with Alan Rankine in Simon Reynolds' essential companion volume to 'Rip It Up and Start Again', 'Totally Wired': the author, in his introduction to the latter, is indeed correct in stating that there is still much to be explored in the subject of post-punk, something I'm beginning to realise too as it looms ever larger, to the point of almost total immersion: how wonderful & revelatory it is to be returning to the music & its makers of the time, of one's youth, such a crucial, formative one culturally & creatively, & discovering so much unchartered depth.

Used Graphite

Today the opposite of tomato is a 'signal of a symptom, soon to be exhausted'

And so, at last, the much-anticipated publication & arrival of Suzanne P Hudson's study of the work of Robert Ryman, titled after the artist's conception of painting, as an experimental activity, as 'used paint'. Having long been fascinated by Ryman's work, as objects & his process, the text is something to be avidly explored without much further ado, but my attention was initially arrested by the book as an aesthetic object in its own right. Linen-bound, this covering is itself ensleeved in a dust jacket of thick tracing-like paper, in the manner of New Order's exquisitely-packaged 'Low-life' LP from way back when (ahh, those really were the days, of the confluence of music & visual art & design...)


As is apparent, a window cut into the dust jacket reveals the linen beneath, & the particular properties of the material's texture & weave, the brickwork-like structure of which is subject to optical effects upon viewing.
A drawing was thus inspired by such a richly compelling aesthetic object, employing & consistent with the fundamental concerns of process & the realization of an allover surface, comprised of - obviously - used graphite, as each drawing, unspokenly, of necessity is. Referencing the model, a windowed sheet of tracing paper was then overlaid to create a drawing-object.


graphite with tracing paper overlay/20x30cm

The original drawing could exist as such, on its own terms, as an example of allover process, of marks made, horizontally & vertically, & the modernist grid...


graphite/20x30cm

Soundtrack:


Marvin Gaye 'What's Going On'
B52s 'Rock Lobster' EP
Tunng 'Good Arrows'
Chris Morris 'Blue Jam'
Young Marble Giants 'Colossal Youth'
Cabaret Voltaire 'Voice of America', 'Western Mantra' & 'Red Mecca'
Portishead 'Third'

Again trawling the collection & becoming pleaantly reacquainted with a couple of classics in the form of 'What's Going On', sublime as ever, & the mighty 'Rock Lobster', its energy, drama, fun & magnificence undimmed by time.
There seems something most appropriate, too, in hearing the Cabaret Voltaire albums of their Rough Trade period, & 'Western Mantra' (post-punk's very own 'Sister Ray') with its effect-laden somewhat degraded, crunchy 'scratched surface' sonic aesthetic, in particular, on cassette, taking one back to the 'C90' days of their release & the habitual, obsessive taping of obscure wonders (very much such as the Cabs) from the John Peel radio programme: the cassette itself (onto which the albums were transferred from their original vinyl incarnations, for the purposes of portability) is a profoundly 'Proustian' object, a relic from another (technological) age, a survivor from a past with which it maintains tangible contact & thus assists in becoming that much less distant.
By something of a coincidence, an initial browse-read of the most recent (essential) book acquisition, Simon Reynolds' 'Totally Wired' - a companion volume of interviews with those musicians featured in the author's earlier history of post-punk 'Rip It Up and Start Again' - has already revealed his thoughts on PiL's 'Metal Box' album, & the fascinating concept of how the physical embodiment of music is an essential component of its reception & fullest appreciation: I too owned the album in its original incarnation, very much an object of desire (at an RRP of £7.45, when most albums cost under £4.99 in its day, it had to be: I, like Simon, had to wait until Xmas to hear it, 'presented'!), the three 12" vinyl discs contained in a metal canister, which gave to the music a palpably metallic quality (not of the 'heavy' variety, although the vibrations of the bass embedded in the grooves of the records most certainly were) & its sense of otherness, that nothing quite sounded like it as nothing else had been presented in such a singular fashion. I concur absolutely with Reynolds when he states that subsequent incarnations of the album - first as a double LP in a gatefold sleeve (in which format a friend owned it) & the later "almost risible to behold" CD reissue (a single disc in appropriately miniaturized can, which really is a pathetic specimen in comparison to the physical, & psychological, dimensions of the original, further evidence of increasingly 'reduced circumstances') - have served only to diminish the nature of the music, & its significance & eerie, compelling power: 'Metal Box' really was music-as-object, & seemingly very much intended to be (the 3 12" discs themselves, with 12 tracks spread over the consequent 6 sides of vinyl, to be played in whatever order & quantity the listener saw fit on any particular occasion, were a deconstruction of the traditional album format & its fixed mode of sequencing the music, for instance).
And now, of course, so much music has no physical form, save, perhaps, for the technology via which it is experienced (which might well be taken for granted, unconsidered, anyway): what happened, where did the art go?!

Man (Almost) on the Moon #3

Today (but not just) the opposite of tomato is 'technically, brain damage'


graphite & putty eraser/20x30cm
original source: 'The Times' 23/06/08 (facsimile of edition dated 21/06/69)

And the third of the 'astronaut portrait' drawings transcribed from the same source & in the manner of the previous examples (see explanation/justification for #1).).

Again, with recourse to what suggests itself to be the original photographic source from which the newspaper reproduction was taken, one is able to appreciate the changes & degradations visited upon it during the various stages of its transition (as in the case of #2, which contains a slightly fuller explanation of the likely process).

Soundtrack:


My Bloody Valentine 'Loveless'
Scritti Politti 'White Bread Black Beer'
Belle & Sebastian 'Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant'

This particular listen to ‘Loveless’ was inspired by a recent post & then a follow-up (dated Thursday 19th June) on Simon Reynolds’s Blissblog, the former in its turn referring to an online review of the reissues of both of My Bloody Valentine’s albums, also including the preceding 'Isn’t Anything', where a most thought-provoking theory is proposed.
The view of the sonic invention & overarching aesthetic of 'Loveless' as “poisonous to the British 'rock' 'pool' for half a decade following its release in 1991” - taking in the guitar-based phenomenon of Britpop - 'inspiring' a generation of bands to merely, indulgently ape its (wall of) sound to a bombastic, formulaic, lazy, (dead) end is something with which I’d concur, having felt this for a long time.
Indeed, going further, I’d argue that 'Loveless' was somehow the album that, essentially, marked the end of whatever 'rock' might be, had been & could ever be, its glorious, brilliant white hot disappearance into the void…of nothing particularly inspiring again: all has subsequently been retro, derivative, second hand, dull - diminished in sonic, sensual thrill & lacking in any real sense of creativity, of invention, of exploration into unchartered areas.

Maybe its just an age thing: my tastes, concerns, requirements from music have shifted, evolved - as one would hope, from experience - but still ’rock’ seems not to have done so in any significant way, as surely it should in order to continue to be of cultural relevance, otherwise new, young listeners are being seriously ill-served by the current, ersatz version(s).
There’s undoubtedly been life in the old guitar as an instrument of passion, desire, emotion, pleasure, inspiration, in the hands of maverick talents such as PJ Harvey & Jack White (Stripes), who largely hark back to an earlier incarnation of the Blues tradition anyway, & I’ve found much to love in the mostly opposite-to-MBV minimalist aesthetic of Low, for instance (at least before they too turned, disastrously, to dull bombast). Perhaps Low, indeed, as the other side of the same coin, were, at their properly inspired best, the true, purified, hushed successors following in the wake of Loveless’s ‘efflorescence & deliquescence’ (to paraphrase the wonderful old Chills' song), the calm after the blissful, self-effacing storm that claimed MBV, emerging wide-eyed, innocent, into the light & stillness, a gentle breath of fresh air, whose own occasional gatherings-to-a-crescendo would yet serve as a fond & poignant reminder of & a portent of what the elemental nature of ‘rock’ could rouse itself to be.
Then again, I’ve also believed, as strongly, that Low were the heirs to the aesthetic of Galaxie 500 - riders on, particularly, the slow train they had set in motion with much of their valedictory ‘This is Our Music’ &, especially, its closing moment, ‘King of Spain part 2’: no reason, of course, why they couldn’t have been both.

I always regarded Spiritualized’s ‘Pure Phase’, of all their output, as being a worthy successor, in some way at least, to ‘Loveless’ (no one album could ever do the job on its own, that much has become increasingly clear over time, as the dust has settled), featuring as it does some of those torrents of sound yet mixing in such fragile, quietly flowing moments as ‘The Slide Song’ & ‘All of My Tears’ (especially as they occur sequentially, either side of the raging blizzard of drums, cymbals & guitar of ‘Electric Phase’, a stormier development of MBV's ‘Glider’), the synthesized interval of ‘Born Never Asked’ & the crackle of electricity in the pregnant pause of 'Let it Flow', separating such essential elements of the MBV sonic aesthetic, the fused textures of ‘Loveless’, into their own discrete spaces, allowing them, perhaps, to breathe a little, apart from what could be the claustrophobic, all-encompassing fuggy fuzz of those astonishing droning edifices - such is their sheer physical presence - of guitar noise, of electricity.

A grave & critical omission, it seems, on the part of those who followed, plodding, in the wake of MBV, was that liberating looseness of rhythm that oft not necessarily powered but, rather, co-existed alongside or could at least be discerned submerged beneath the level of the guitar noise on ’Loveless’, especially on some of its peaks like 'To Who Knows When' & 'Soon', enabling them to flow, float, so sensually.

Ah, mere mention of the names of those…soundscapes, sculpted & burnished: ‘To Here Knows When’ - still astonishing, always, yes - is such an erotic experience, more subtly, less overtly sexual, perhaps, than predecessors such as ‘Slow’ (with its injunctions to lick & suck) & ‘Soft as Snow (but Warm Inside)’, all the more sensual, abandoned, profound for all that, its wordless refrain, breathily-sighing, softly-moaning, repeating & repeating, on auto-pilot, its climax endlessly deferred (a suitable metaphor, too, for the perfectionist working practises of Kevin Shields & non-appearance of any follow-up to ‘Loveless’ - indeed, the constant desire to keep playing with, to keep delaying the moment of closure, might be said to render ‘THKW’ more properly auto-erotic in nature &/or intention), the perfect sonic representation of sensual indolence, submerging under the weight of its own pleasure, slipping in & out of consciousness, that almost disembodied state that precedes the dissolution into orgasm & the cloudburst of pure, sensual, time-space-&-placeless transcendence. Heady & decadent, where could they go from there, really, without becoming a spent force?

Still, there remain few introductory sonic thrills of such viscerality to match the battering, roaring opening salvo of ‘Loveless’, ‘Only Shallow’ (there a misnomer, for one is soon dragged, physically, into the depths of the vortex of noise, wowing in one’s ears & head, there to be crushed under the weight of the sheer heaviness of 'Loomer'), or the insistent swarm of the guitar sound of the yet-deeper vortex that is 'I Only Said' (indeed, one could easily & most appropriately liken the passage through what was, originally, the first side of the vinyl LP version of the album to that descent into Dante’s ‘Inferno’ of Hell, but one so deep that it emerges the other side into something, somewhere heavenly).
I recall suggesting Sol Seppy’s ‘Move’ communicated a similar buzz-swarming charge amongst its dynamic charms - which opinion time has little diminished, in fairness - but, amongst the examples of that artist’s oeuvre to date to reference MBV (mercifully few, to Sol Seppy’s credit-in-diversity), another, the aptly-named ‘Slo Fuzz’, plods (though not without a certain glittering charm) where MBV’s buzzing, crackling, thrumming strum of 'Sometimes' floats, free of gravity, timeless: incidentally, what better sonic accompaniment to soundtrack, as in ‘Lost in Translation’, a speeding, dreamlike, late night taxi journey through the electrically-charged, buzzing, neon-lit ‘floating world’ of Tokyo, especially as fleetingly, ephemerally reflected on the car’s windows, than 'Sometimes' - the coincidence of sound & vision is perfect (& how poignant to hear the new song 'City Girl' during the same film, for all it exists, in comparison to the enduring magnificence of 'Loveless', merely as a tantalizing, souffle-light confectionary, an insubstantial morsel, a taste of what might have been).

For all that one can recognize some of the criticisms levelled at ‘Loveless’ in comparison to ‘Isn’t Anything’ during the course of the aforementioned & excellent review of both, still I feel it, of the two, best manifests My Bloody Valentine’s aesthetic, or at least that for which they were striving - the first album being, rather, altogether too sketchy, unrealised, tentatively exploring the sonic terrain ‘Loveless’ claims as its own & secures, seemingly in perpetuity.

Further to...


Coincidental to making the ‘Man on the Moon’ drawings & posts - & thus recalling not merely REM’s song but, rather, Jim Carrey’s compelling turn as Andy Kaufman in the excellent film of the same title (that somehow transcends the ‘biopic’ genre were it not for the fact that the subject was someone it wouldn‘t be possible to invent, fictionally), fascinating not least for its recreation of many of Kaufman’s performances & alter ego characters (particularly the appalling, monstrous, cabaret ‘singer’ Tony Clifton, magnificently grotesque, a true work of art) within the broader context of their creator’s life story - I watched the recently-purchased DVD of ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’, also, of course featuring Carrey, written by another Kaufman - Charlie - & directed, as is another fondly-regarded cinematic favourite ‘The Science of Sleep’ (cf. this post), by Michel Gondry.
A pleasure indeed to enjoy again the intellectual & visual invention of a wonderful work of cinematic art, working with & across, creatively exploring, the scope of the medium & adding a bit more besides. Utterly convincing performances by the 2 lead actors, Carrey & Kate Winslet (in their respective ways playing against type), as the narrative of their relationship is revealed, unfolding eccentrically from (new) beginning to end to (original) beginning & back again, & all the other members of the ensemble cast & their various intertwining relationship statuses, issues & complications, over the course of a compelling, thought-provoking, thrillingly inventive disquisition on the nature of memory, remembering & forgetting (& how these play such a large part in the sense & construction of ‘the self’ & its place in the world), romance, love & loss, that is poignant & profound & endlessly entertaining: fabulous stuff.

I sometimes feel as though the films to which I’m attracted, & watch & enjoy, employ a pretty concise troupe of actors: in addition to such an example as above, it occurs that Paul Giamatti, for instance, appears as Jim Carrey-as-Andy Kaufman’s co-conspirator Bob Zmuda in ‘Man on the Moon’ in addition to his roles in previously-mentioned favourite movies ‘American Splendor’ & ‘Sideways’: a culturally small world, it seems.