En ce moment, j’écoute :

1- Mikel Rouse - Funding, Recess, The End of Cinematics, Dennis Cleveland et Failing Kansas. Je n’aime pas la production, les structures répétitives sont irritantes, et sa voix est devenue désagréable avec l’âge, mais j’aime énormément.

Il y a un moment bouleversant/addictif dans “Cutting” sur Recess. “”I Can’t” sur The End of the Cinematics est ce que Hey Jude serait si seulement ça avait été une bonne chanson. Hey Jude, en effet, est une abominable chanson.

2 - “Master of None” de Beach House. Toutes leurs chansons se ressemblent, autant n’en écouter qu’une.

3- Le dernier Jens Lekman. C’est compréhensible que tout le monde n’aime pas ce genre de musique, mais il suffit de faire écouter Sondre Lerche et Jens Lekman pour comprendre à quel point ce dernier lui est très supérieur. Epatant

4- Anne Laplantine. J’en ai déjà parlé.

5- Niobe. J’ai déjà parlé d’elle-aussi. Tous ses albums sont bons.

By chance, yesterday, I came across an album by Dou Wei that I had downloaded a long time ago. It was surprisingly good, so I read a few articles, and I’ve been absorbing myself in Chinese music since. I would have preferred if some Virgil had guided me, but life is a lonely matter.

It can be a lonely matter for your ex to go through. A lot of the time, your ex can at some point give in and generate the initially move which…

Look what I’ve found by googling the expression.

Me:mo - Acoustic View (2007)

Is it fair to compare Whit Stillman with Rohmer? Is it even justified just because they both like to have their characters talk a lot? If so, to the disavantage of Rohmer, for Stillman is by far the wittier of the two. Anyway, Stillman was always on the Jane Austen side of things.

One thing that keeps cropping up is ’ Plays, novels, songs, all have a subtext… …which I take to mean a hidden message or import of some kind. Subtext, we know. But what do you call the message or meaning……that’s on the surface, open and obvious? They never talk about that. What do you call what’s above the subtext?
The text.
That’s right, but they never talk about that.

(Barcelona, Whit Stillman, 1994)

Pay attention, critics of all kind, hermeneutics buffs.

Exaggeration should be used as a tool for analysis, fine fellow practitioners of analysis AND meaning.

Was Rohmer always a filmmaker of the basest sort? He is no De Palma, but the question is still worth asking, though.

like this one: Are there only hacks who write on Pitchfork?

one instance, this review of the hilarious stand-up comedy album by David Cross (really, that guy is brilliant), Shup You Fucking Baby. Utter rubbish. Sentences such as “I’d assume most of us spend a good part of our dayjob hours spotting similarly maddening minutiae, as a salve against the ways it overwhelms us.” are irrelevant.

Good for YOU, though.

Another instance is this interview with Johnny Jewel, the guy behind the Chromatics and Desire (which I rather like, in spite of their obvious, almost consubtantial flaws), in which the interviewers asks the following question:

People often talk about your music in terms of Italo disco and Moroder and Goblin and John Carpenter. But especially on this album, you can hear the influence of experimental composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luigi Nono. Do you think that influence gets overlooked?

No need to comment on that one. Philistines! I’m tired now, THANK YOU. I’ll dispense with the fact of coming up with another obscure, unsung album.

My God, are people pretentious! Perhaps I should leave it at that and shut the fuck up, at least, in the open, defenseless. I know, it doesn’t make much sense. Fatigue.

This Heat - Deceit (1981- that was ranked by Pitchfork Media as the 20th greatest album of the 1980s - thanks to them)

Hell yeah! An Hicks homonym. I knew him before dear old Bill actually. Let’s listen to this!

Dan Hicks and The Hot Licks - Beatin’ The Heat (2003)

One of the best French pop songs of the 80’s, IMO (with “Babacar” by France Gall, a few singles by Indochine, and pretty much all Bashung recorded during this decade). Not to speak of the clip. Rarely I’m being chauvinistic, which means that sometimes I can be - maybe, and in a very benign way. For instance, I’m happy to notice that Anne Laplantine’s music sounds like a better version of Au Revoir Simone (not that it is a very good band in the first place - and what with the French name anyway, damned brooklynese), or Pascal Comelade, without the fucking paraphernalia. Nordheim is truly one of the loveliest records. From time to time, I can be proud of the achievements of my fellow compatriots because I know where they come from. Empathy is easier. Instances that I could cite for the moment are Gérard Grisey and Philippe Auclair (alias Louis Philippe). While I can think of no one else right now, those are only instances.

Annabelle - Fuis, Lawrence D’Arabie (1987)

I realize that I’ve spoken too little of rap on this blog. So here comes Lil B’s last album, and its supposedly bold title. What is more conspicuous in the end is the somewhat hilarious drawback which is to be found in the subtitle. I’m JOYOUS, not an homosexual. Thanks for reminding us, Lil, and for reassuring us so that we can listen to this album with peace in our minds. Thanks also for reminding us the original meaning of the word. The title hints at what is actually a very poppy rap record, not in the least boring, that is, easy on the ears, almost whorishly so (I’m probably exaggerating). The rapping is lazy, but rather ingratiating. It’s an overall JOY, perhaps. Check it out.

Lil B - I’m Gay (2011)

The Sadness of Things -

When you like art, you are always reminded that artists are dumb, which can become quite wearisome. Liking art is a sisyphean endeavor. Making it is, perhaps, a less demanding one. Those thoughts are inspired by something Momus (alias Nick Currie) wrote about Anne Laplantine’s compassion towards Seung-Hui Cho (who spree killed 32 persons) and other fellow sociopaths. I say compassion, but understanding is perhaps a more accurrate word. It’s a pity in a way, because her albums are lovely - among them a collaborative effort with Momus- especially if, like me, you have a soft spot for drum machines. On the other hand, it doesn’t matter whether she’s dumb or not. She seems to be, case closed. As for Momus, I’ve mixed feelings about him. I like a lot of his albums, his blog is rather agreeable to read, and I would like to read one of his books (I would be honored myself if I had books published by Dalkey Archive). That he is occasionally silly cannot be held against him, as well as the fact that he looks like a fucking hipster: he is easily forgiven, since he dresses awfully most of the time, or so it seems. He is lucky, to my mind, because he said things inexcusably stupid such as :”I agree with my former boss at Vice, Gavin McInnes, when he says that disdain of hip subculture tends to come from “chubby bloggers who aren’t getting laid”, people who are “just so mad at these young kids for going out and getting wasted and having fun and being fashionable”.”

some thoughts on what it is to be a hipster that I came across, in the comments that followed the article from which the aforementioned excerpt was taken, are to follow (two stuck out, actually).

And one last thing, it’s normal to feel compassion, but, hey, you know better than me.

Damien Youth, “Brides of the Asylum”, lest we forget him (a cross between Paul Roland and Robyn Hitchcock).

Anne Laplantine - A Little May Time Be (2009)

My future wife might be Chinese, that’s why I need to learn some chinese.

Pel Mel - No Words From China (1981)

It does not really belong here, but this is hilarious stuff, so I felt like sharing it.

I imagine a lot of Stanhope’s appeal lies in the fact that he is some sort of a rockstar, something that is reflected in the titles of his cds. Something to Take The Edge Off, Die Laughing, and especially Burning The Bridge to Nowhere are very alluring as far as I’m concerned. I discovered him in a touching episode of Louis C.K.’s Louie. Or rather, a friend of mine suggested that I should read his wikipedia page. Journalists know how to entice one’s attention, or mine in any event, by calling him “the Most Depraved Man? (in GQ).

I had written something about Corey Dargel’s album, but it was not appropriate, so I BLOTTED it OUT. Read this article instead (I had the occasion to notice it before while googling “Ran Blake”: very good blog).

In keeping with my recent interest in documentaries about criminals sentenced to death, the wonderful songs of Corey Dargel - a mix between Arthur Russell, Stephin Merritt, and David Garland. And why not add “Blue” Gene Tyranny. Fag pop, therefore. Oh, and sorry my homosexual friends, I wasn’t being subjective. It’s just an odd congruence. I don’t know David Garland’s sexual preferences, though. I imagine him  happily married, with a hippie wife.

Forget Burial - and listen to this, real funeral music.

That doesn’t mean this is very good, but sometimes, it’s, hum, adequate.

The Third Eye Foundation - Little Lost Soul

Two days ago I began to watch Louie by Louis C.K., which only gets better and better, and stays the same, in a kind of equanimous fashion (an expression which I’ve just googled, coming across such a sentence as this one :

“The Dutch approach life in an equanimous fashion, coupled with poise and pragmatism; the implementation of ‘My Brothers Keeper’ in civic life: the epitome of…”

Brrrr, this is not the equanimous that I meant. An equanimous guy for instance is someone who is always the same but who grows better as time goes by and the better we get to know him. Now I’m listening to some stand-up comedians. You tell me how bad it is. Is George Carlin funny ? interesting? relevant? Compared to Richard Pryor? Lenny Bruce, Bill Hicks, and some other and younger people? Is Bill Hick’s face a token of his value as a comedian, a satirist, and a human being? All these questions, and other latent ones, merit a thorough examination. To conclude, it’s strange how many comedians die prematurely, as if they were rock stars. And one Lenny Bruce’s joke (a very famous one, seemingly) for the road:

“If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”

(The colors are a little tarnished on this one, but, who cares?)

I can’t really listen to this kind of stuff. Because of the audience, of the laughters. Through headphones anyway. But Arizona Bay may be, hum, “plain cool” as David Foster Wallace would put it. How can one read Infinite Jest without batting thousand eyelashes, seriously? Twenty pages underway…

Bill Hicks - Dangerous (1990)

This fascination with images, patchworks, these cultural scrapbooks all over tumblr, the epidemic fetishism, this is NOT healty, this is definitely UNHEALTHY.

Album covers presently disgust me.

Neu! - Neu! ‘75 (1975)