Abner Jay ‎– True Story Of Abner Jay

"Folk songs tell true stories but terrible stories, Because folk are terrible. Terrible songs make big songs." says Abner a few moments before he starts singing how he likes it when cocaine swims around his brain.

He's right though, folk songs are terrible and depressing because life is terrible for the most part but the best way to heal that is by singing how terrible it is. For some reason it makes you happy, that's the magic of blues. You sing about shitty times but you feel good about it somehow. Abner was a walking one man band playing primarily an electric banjo and drums/harmonic along the side. He plays them so good that you don't even realize it's just one guy behind all this but he is and it's fucking great.

All of his songs give a very melancholic feel, even depressing at times, but everything fits so well you don't even notice how pitch-black the lyrics are at times. His repertoire varies from old covers to some of his own songs as well. The cover songs get his thorough treatment so they become something new as well making this album pretty neat. Whatever he sings he puts his whole soul into it and you can really feel it which makes him one of my favorites really.

Recommended stuff.

Download.

Jumping

Director: Osamu Tezuka
Country: Japan
Date: 1984
Runtime: 6 minutes
Format: .avi

Osamu Tezuka is probably most known for his work on Metropolis and Astro Boy. I won't talk much about him because there's a hefty wikipedia page about him that you can read.

What I will talk about is his series of animation shorts that he did during his career. From what I believe there was a DVD release of those films or something like that but I didn't really check (I got all this from Surreal Moviez). Over the next few months or so (I honestly can't tell how long this "series" of posts will last) I'll be sharing them and offer quick insights. There are also some extra stuff that I'll probably post when I finish with main ones.

The feature for today is an experimental animated journey called Jumping. The title really explains it all and there's not much story here apart from some small symbolism. What's interesting here is the animation, small details and the effect it makes. The camera is always in first person so it might get dizzy at times.

With the animation itself I included the commentary video of how this was all made and so on because things like these require context like that.

Download.

Andrew Hill - Smokestack

I don't know what Andrew had in mind when he was making this album in terms of ideas but to me this is one of the most hard hitting and heavy albums that I have heard in jazz. The main factor why I find this to be so is the presence of two bassists. With that in mind I think you can envision what I mean by saying heavy. With only drums and a piano accompanying the duo this album is very dominant in lower notes. It's brooding, strangely depressing, towering and somewhat manic at times.

The music itself was recorded in 1963 but the album was released three years later. I think it's up to par with every other major release that was relevant at the time despite not being that known or popular. Since free jazz and more free explorations were in the spotlight when this was being made this album as well has very dissonant structures but it's still bound by rhythm for the most part. Andrew showcases us a lot of his musical prowess with plenty of solos and his sound is actually a quite good contrast to the bassists and drums. It's one of his best albums in my opinion and it's certainly my biggest favorite from his discography.

Download.

How it sounds.

Mandingo - The Primeval Rhythm Of Life

I don't have a lot of information about this but I'll share what I know. This was a band that was formed in the 70s that released a couple of albums in that period. It was an offshoot project by some guy called Geoff Love.

The album itself is a wild mixture of African percussion, jazz and primarily funk. Of all things this reminds me the most of some kind of soundtrack. The soundtrack of a movie from the 70s that's about exploration and brutal murder of white people in the jungles, usual shlock things and so on. But yeah, I can't really give out much explanation here. I can say that the music is all instrumental and far more complex than your usual funk stuff. Drums are also excellent in their sound and rhythm providing for some really great moments.

Get this if you like the sound of many drums.

Download.

Shipyarding

Usually I try to abstain from these kind of posts but whatever. Did you know that shipyards are surreal as fuck? Since the beginning of this month I've been an intern in one of the shipyards where I live. The shipyard is really old and there are a lot places that look like straight out of early Fallout games or Half Life 2 coast levels, not to mention all the gigantic machinery that moves around. Also the ships look like they are straight out of some steampunk while they are in the making.

But anyway, today when I got out of my fancy engineering office this just sort of popped up.

Tremble before your metal god inferior mortals! A sludge song could be written about this. It was flailing there like that, waiting probably to murder everyone.

I feel like a child all over again.

Pale Cocoon

Director: Yasuhiro Yoshiura
Year of release: 2005
Country: Japan
Format/Subtitles: .avi/hardcoded English subtitles
Runtime: 22 minutes

Here's another animated short from Japan, a bit newer this time. The story is set in a vaguely explained dystopian world where people live underground with a huge archive of various disconnected and broken information left from previous times that several department process and restore.

The theme of this anime, except for "melancholic as fvck", is memories. Memories and histories of us as individuals and us as a whole. The archives in this world are being less and less interesting to people up to a point where everyone just walks away from them. Memories of things that will never be again are much too painful for them to bear. It will never come back and do we really need to depress ourselves with it? Or should we obscure our failures and leave them behind by dealing with the present. Are distant memories really that important? At which point does collecting and archiving becomes meaningless?

As interesting as the idea of this anime is the relative short length of the film itself kinda hampers the story. It almost feels like it's a pilot episode at times. Maybe it was made into something later on? I didn't check. Despite this flaw it's fairly enjoyable to watch and the atmosphere is projected very well upon the viewer. I just think that it could have been developed a bit further.

Art-wise I can't really say that this is something groundbreaking. It might have been great 7 years ago but today it looks fairly standard. Basically it's a blend of 2D/3D graphics. I'm not sure if anything aside from characters were drawn the usual style. I'm not an expert. I don't know.

Check it out sometimes.

Parts: one and two!

Sun Ra - Life Is Splendid

Yes, I know, I talk about Sun Ra all the time. There really isn't much left to say but here I am again. Every now and then I stumble upon one of his records that I haven't heard and the feeling comes back. The feeling of his music and atmosphere that he creates.

Life Is Splendid is a live performance that was recorded back in 1972 for Atlantic Records. The recordings were destroyed in a fire and they couldn't release the stuff back then or something like that. It doesn't really matter. You have the booklet scanned so you can read about it if you wish.

What matters here is the music and I must say this is one of the best live recordings of Sun Ra that I have yet  heard. This line up features a lot of percussionists and this gives the whole album its charm. The emphasis is on drums and all things that go click-clack. Aside from the amazing atmosphere this album also has perhaps the best version of Watusi that goes on for 7 minutes in a whirlwind of chaos and drumming. Basically on this record you have pretty much everything you could want from a Sun Ra record. There's the classics here and also moments of chaotic space improvisations.

Recommended for fans.

Download.

Glassy Ocean

Time for kawaii ~nyan~ moe things! Or not. Or maybe! Depends on the viewer.

Director: Tamura Shigeru
Year of release: 1998
Country: Japan
Format/Subtitles: .avi/hardcoded English subtitles
Runtime: 23 minutes

Glassy Ocean is a short animated movie from Japan that I think is quite peculiar. To me this is more of a visual poetry than a narrated story. There seems to be two worlds here. One where everything is moving but is black and white, people are small universes (that's at least how I perceived it) and so on but there is also another, parallel, world where everything moves really, really slow. Both worlds are connected via ocean while one side views it as a constant moving thing the other side views it as a field of slow moving green glass. The "story" follows an event that both worlds are able to respectively observe which is an emergence of a whale.

Animations and movies like this usually polarize people's opinions because of its lack of coherence and firm narrative. I watched this a few years ago and didn't really enjoy it despite liking the art but recently I watched it again and now I think I enjoyed much better. I think that book Tarkovsky wrote helped but this is getting a bit off topic. There are a lot of subtle contemplative moments of life that can be observed here and that's probably why I like it so much. The beauty of surrealist art (for me) is that it can be interpreted in many ways and it actually depends on the viewer how it will be perceived. The focus here is more on the beauty and poetry of things rather than telling a strict coherent message. This makes this short film very relaxed in tone and pacing.

This is also a very beautifully crafted animated film with CGI and hand drawn animation. The sea is CG while the characters are hand drawn which gives them a lot warmth and energy. They felt alive and their soothing voices help a lot with this overall relaxed tone. Everything is in this peaceful zen-like state that strangely affects you as well if you're willing to let yourself go for these twenty minutes.

Overall I don't think this is the best thing ever made but I enjoyed it and maybe you will as well, if you're into this sort of thing.

Part one and two.

News, updates, the list could go on...

Hey, so, I have some things to say.

1. To the person who left a comment yesterday (or today?): I accidentally deleted it because moderating comments on an ipod while being shitfaced is a bad idea. I didn't manage to read it so I can't respond. Really sorry about this!

2. The lack of posts is because my main PC is broken yet again. This is due to the fact that I bought a shit SSD and put Windows on it. Now I can't access Windows because the ssd drive malfunctions and can't load drivers (not even in safe mode). Meaning: I lost access to all my stuff and won't be able to access them until the end of the month.

The good news is that I already have stuff uploaded from before but since the names of the zip files are coded I have no idea what is what so currently I'm sorting that shit out.

3. I still have access to movies and anime on my external hard drives so expect more of that as soon as they upload.

4. This is a really neat documentary film about Art Tatum, my favorite pianist. Check it out sometimes.

5. Kids on the Slope was a fun little anime (the romance was a bit cheesy at times though). Watch it sometimes.