The Associates - Sulk (1982) WEA

One doesn’t enjoy listening to The Associates the way one luxuriates in other groups with the tacky ‘New Romantic’ tagline, that is to say you're not snorting nose candy line dancing with that bird in neon stripes and spandex. This isn't bloody Adam Ant. No, with The Associates you're leaning over that chick in black you just spouted Nietzsche's Death of God parables to. Leaning over to make sure she isn't gone for good. Fucking Junkie. Never mind, actually, you don't listen to The Associates with gals. Not even the blond. That's a bad association. Wrong, you listen to The Associates in solace, in your loneliest lonely. A world apart, when Joy Division isn't cutting it but the cut is needed. The Associates drab and dreary tone forces open ears to closed minds. Sulk is the bleakest album to receive the fallible New Romantic/New Wave genre tags by jerky journo’s seaside. Be weary. Be mystified. Be nihilistic. Be nothing, now. Just blimin’ Sulk.

Young & Tragic

“I wish that we were magic so we wouldn’t be so young and tragic.”

Knowing full well author Louis Lowry’s clampdown on ever allowing her dystopian classic, “The Giver”, to grace the silver screen, children’s science-fiction fans must accept the movie adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go” as the next best thing. Starring Carey Mulligan (An Education), Andrew Garfield (The Social Network) and Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean) unfortunately, the movie itself was not captivating. By the third act it loses all semblance of reality. It frivolously explores the metaphysics of the soul, shows the graphic loss of spleens and all together loses any amusement it spurns in the first act where none of the main actors are present because the viewer observes them in childhood as students of the strict boarding school called Harrow. The story itself however, is incredibly thought provoking. Tracking the lives of three outsiders from grammar school to their final days, it is the perfect blend of British norms of responsibility and class structure with that of Japanese wisdom and emotional sentiment. Although the children are born for the purpose of someone else’s gain (being the eventual donation of their organs in order to preserve the life of the leisure class), throughout the film director Mark Romanek does his best to show these hopeless hopefuls do indeed possess souls. Doomed from the get-go the movie raises issues of love and loss, not being able to acclimate to the outside world after being subjected to such a rigorous regime, subculture as permanence, art as a political action, unrequited love, the struggle to mature, jealousy, deceit, reflexivity and the suppression of emotion, to name a few. In “Never Let Me Go” closeness and community revolve around myth. By not mentioning anything on their predetermined future, the children of Harrow are able to escape from their somber and dreary reality, at first. Although this becomes a burden to most, Kathy H. played by Cary Mulligan, has the most fulfilling life between her and her doomed friends yet somehow maintains a steady head amongst great adversity including losing the only person she loves various times throughout her short life to another girl and then to death. Some may consider Romanek and Ishiguro sick and morbid for only giving their main characters a fleeting glimpse of a fantasy ending. Those who enjoy the film appreciate the anti-fantastical theme the writer and director explore because they feel the outside world isn’t such a happy place either.

I'm Still Here (2010) directed by Casey Affleck

Prefacing his unorthodox documentary as a meditation in self-indulgence, Casey Affleck captures the zeitgeist in a movie that is strictly that. Hoax or not, in 2008 the double Oscar nominated Joaquin Phoenix decided to pack up acting and turn to hip-hop as means for a career, giving up his sanity and civility along with it. Affleck, who happens to be Phoenix’s brother-in-law documents the entire trainwreck in what turns out to be a more probable telling of the demise of Jim Morrison than Oliver Stone’s adaptation in The Doors (1991). Becoming a reality-star outside the guise of a reality show, Phoenix still acts an apathetic prick on Letterman, punches a fan at his own rap show in Miami, and snorts coke off a hooker’s tit. Whether a fictive character or not, these are not fictive incidents and their effects rippled through the press. Nauseating movie-goers feel the film nullified simply because a 2010 clean-shaven and seemingly logic stricken Phoenix told audiences his 2008 persona was a joke, however this does not subtract from the message of the film. If anything, it augments a reality-crazed time when Jersey Shore and I Love New York are cable’s top billing.

Acting sheepish and self-effacing around his professional peers, when in close quarters with his seemingly delicate inner-circle, Phoenix shreds them apart taking out all his accumulated stress and pressure on to the only people there to help him. Audiences can thank Affleck for this mindful manipulation, which deems results better than any reality star could dream for. If this was a show on cable, it would finally surmount to more viewers than the beloved New York and Jersey combined. After defacing his closest friend to the point of public scrutiny, he retaliates by defecating on Phoenix’s head. This is one of many stones on the rock bottom hit by Phoenix in this sentimental journey through an A-list celebrities downfall.

What makes the movie worth watching though is Phoenix’s analysis of himself and his breakdown. Almost predicting his future Aldous Huxley in a essay on leisure stated “the majority of human beings can hardly fail to devote their leisure to occupations which, if not positively vicious, are at least stupid, futile and, what is worse, secretly realized to be futile.” Phoenix’s self-analysis of his futility is by far the greatest quality of the film. Figuring out his place in society, and his inescapable career as a puppet leads him to vomit, rage, and even make snow angels. Despite this bump in the road, Phoenix remains one of the finest actors in cinema and deserves an Oscar nod for this performance.

New Digitized Age v. Old World Press Discussion/Chat

Critics from the legendary Aldous Huxley to the modern marvel Jim DeRogatis have learned considerably from the likes of food writers, impressed with their vocabularies and their ability to turn the necessary into the savory. Mike Sula, food columnist of the Chicago Reader, was the silent assassin in a recent critic roundtable/chat room regulated by Kris Vile who comprised his discussion with press ranging from Chicago’s amateur to elite. Mr. Sula fell somewhere in between.

Treading softly on established ground, Mr. Sula offered comic relief, touched on the importance of awareness of the views and connotations surrounding the restaurants one is reviewing, quoted from Rogers & Hammerstein’s classic The King and I, confirmed the imminent and omnipresent skepticism that all print writers now fear is lurking around the corner: not making a living off their passion, attests to the intimacy audiences have with online civilian journalists compared to those of print and press writers, concurs, jokes, and engages with the most premiere writer in the chat room twice, and leaves the door open for optimism by the end. Overall, Mike’s opinion was not the most beseeching of the crew but his choice words proved him to be a man of the press, a potentially compelling critic who simply wants to stay afloat in a turbulent time for the occupation of his choosing, one in which his favorite interlocutor proposed as “a brief one-hundred fifty year blip in the history of mankind and written communication.”

ple·o·nasm

ple·o·nasm

   [plee-uh-naz-uhm]

–noun

1.

the use of more words than are necessary to express an idea; redundancy.

2.

a redundant word or expression.

I deplore The New Yorker

I deplore The New Yorker. Not just because it is the publication that defines how to be pretentious, and not simply because of the old-world traditions imbued in it’s subscribers, and not because I’m from the West Coast and not for a million other common reasons to detest The New Yorker. Lugubrious and mistaken, I have endured a dinner party in accordance to The New Yorker’s mission and manners. Arranged by those who sit around fancy dining tables that are anything but rectangular and assign their guests to sit apart from their significant other as to produce more salivating and intelligent conversation, these parties are mainly miserable. The old ‘sit apart from the one you love’ trick may be a successful device in terms of increasing awkwardness, (most likely invented by a pot-bellied toffee in a top hat that wrote for The New Yorker) yet these parties don’t alleviate stress or encourage a fulfilling life as New Yorker aficionados dare to believe. Being reminded of mundane societal standards and upper-crest rhetoric is the opposite of what I desire in press.

The infamous journal read by those considered elite employs a section titled, “The Talk of the Town” which really means, “If one likes to be noticed, discuss this!” (A successful format utilized by the indie juggernaut, Pitchfork.com who now have a stronghold over what their acquiescent readers aurally ingest). If one chooses otherwise, they will go on distressingly as the obsolete dinner guest and won’t be invited to Mrs. And Mr. Porker’s next week for the latest bacon gastronomic concoction and Acai power smoothie. I must admit, I thoroughly enjoy the occasional Acai smoothie but can do without all that cheese, peanut butter + bacon bits sandwich that I flushed out my system along with the latest satire on “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and ideas behind why eating whale blubber should be legalized. I can laugh the majority of what the New Yorker has to offer away but I stained my oxford button-up with Acai anti-oxidants while reading Clive James’ curious review on the latest Aldous Huxley biography in which he states the Huxley reader as, “Young, clueless, and longing to be profound.”’ It became evident within the first few sentences that Mr. James has not opened an Aldous Huxley novel since his undergraduate days, or daze, invalidating his entire summation of the late author.

Those that read The New Yorker probably condemn drug use and may see Aldous Huxley as a late Californian idealist whose pursuit of Eastern Philosophy ruined his reputation, however if the review were written before Brave New World was published in 1932, before the author had any connotation with utopias or science fiction, Mr. James would not feel so clueless. This shows a lack of research and an unnecessary bias. Even if much to the chagrin of Jonathan Richman, I become old and dignified I will never subscribe to The New Yorker.

Aphex Twin - Richard D. James Album review by Cancelled

	Dec 01 2009	[Rating26460893]	Aphex Twin - Richard D. James Album (1996)
For the past three months I’ve been recovering from something of a not fantastic acid trip. I don’t wanna use the words ‘bad trip’ directly because it wasn’t all that. Not knowing the potency of the drug – I’d been used to three hits being a ‘good strong’ trip but nothing that was too overwhelming – I took three hits. Pretty soon after (forty minutes) a camera flash manifested itself as a dozen flashes circling my peripherals and creating some very pretty colors. And soon after that (another five maybe) I went to use the bathroom and noticed my sense of smell was totally fucked in that I felt it was too strong and when I pissed I wasn’t sure how my body was functioning and the walls started to contort in wave-like patterns and there were even more colors. And soon after that I wasn’t able to see anything, just hoards of geometric shapes (in this case predominantly interlocking squares in a diagonal pattern) with dizzying colors. And pretty soon I couldn’t open or close my eyes without being overtaken by these patterns and a general sense of being completely overwhelmed and dozens of other feelings which I can’t really convey, although they were in the same neighborhood as fear, disorientation, disbelief, but not as sinister as any of those. My last true cognizant thoughts were 1) I had just eaten way too much fucking acid and should not be in a crowded place like this concert hall 2) I can literally hear every fucking sound clearly and please make it stop and 3) I no longer have any idea what reality is. The last one is not a fabricated faux-LSD thought that people tend to say to prove they’ve taken the drug (I’m being cynical here). That was truly a terrifying moment – for the first time in my life, I had no recollection of what constituted reality or what that even meant. My mind was the perfect shitstorm. Language and the outside world were rendered useless to me, and all I had were terrible thoughts about just who I was, and what can only be described as a proper ego death with the inability to recognize anything of importance in the world, especially me. There were a lot of other similar thought patterns but they’re unimportant for the purposes of this review. And this event left me with some form of mental scarring for the month afterwards, which shaped my thought process into what became the past three months of completely deconstructing myself and trying to find worth in what I do or become a better person and come to grips with all my fallacies and stop hiding who I really am and just fucking give in. Now I can’t say that any of this was particularly bad as I had a lot of unresolved personal issues that this drug did a fine job of declouding and allowing giving me an idea of what to make right, and to hopefully reach from reconciliation with who I am and make decisions about that. It was the first few years of high school all over again and absolutely crushed all confidence I had in myself. But again none of this is bad and it’s better to have an understanding of myself and the world around me rather than go through life wearing that fucking veil. And this leads me to Richard D. James Album. I’ve really liked this thing not just because of its exemplary electronic mastery but because of its chaos, its inability to understand, the fluttering emotions, the inhuman capabilities and how it can escape the flesh to become something that’s not human emotion or anything at all, just whirring sounds and metallic grooves with competing hopeful/ominous feeling while probably possessing neither of those. It is my escape from myself, a different world where my importance doesn’t matter and I can just let it fill up this hollow feeling inside of me, replacing grey matter with machinery and fake smiles with synth lines and insecurity with 10,000 BPM. The greatest album of all time depending on how disassociated I am.

This review by an anonymous rateyourmusic.com user who goes by Cancelled captures the zeitgeist by being the sullen introspect even Michael Cera would feel grim around. Cancelled is a recent high school graduate and his reviews reflect a youth in turmoil, a thinking being who dabbles in love and adapts oddly to the creations around him. He is often intimidated but is always genuine in his perception. Readers get the sense that Cancelled is in pursuit of puppy love, raw love and finds a convoluted catharsis in the music he vociferously injects.

Although our personal taste in music does not match up other than the odd Brian Eno, Joy Division/New Order (which all those who feel alienated relate to, mainly in isolation) I find his personality endearing and not surprisingly, his personal narrative style to be effective. For, in my humble opinion, objectivity is a lost cause and Cancelled never considers it in a word he writes. Like Chuck Klosterman has displayed in innumerable writings this decade, an autobiographical take on the music world is the style most relatable to readers/listeners/consumers like myself. Cancelled is the weary winsome innocent consumer, he’s more a modern Holden Caulfield than a Chuck Klosterman.

In his Aphex Twin review he recalls the perils of being at a concert while on LSD acid trip to describe his affinity towards the album. As inhuman as his experience on such an overwhelming drug could be, he finds Aphex Twin’s Richard D. James Album to be as floundering and parallels the psychotropic wave he so viciously encountered and justifies his bold claim that this electronic frenzy is his all-time favorite.

Well done, my young son.