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.

This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb - Front Seat Solidarity

Hey, so it's summer. I kinda forgot about that because I've been busy with worrying about finding some place where I can be an intern. But let's not bother ourselves with petty trivia, here's something that I always go back to if I feel sad or down or whatever you call it. I don't know why but folk-punk always helps out, probably in part because of its beautiful simplicity.

Folk-punk, for those who might not be familiar with it, is a basically acoustic punk. No distortion, clean vocals and/or acoustic instruments makes it sound a lot like folk but much more aggressive and fun. It's the best from both worlds in short.

This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb was a band that had a pretty good run but sadly they stopped doing music last year which sucks. This album is probably their best that they did. There's a duo of female and male vocalists, one bass, clean electric guitar and drums which all form one really great mold of musicians with relatively good lyrics attached to the music. All songs are uplifting in melodies (although not all in theme) and they're just long enough that they don't get boring or repetitive. It's great fun if you're in the mood for it. Check it out sometimes.

Download.

Fav. track.

Akihiro Yamada - A Collection of Paintings

Among other things that I haven't posted in a while are artbooks. Well, the sole reason for that is that I've forgotten most of my sources for that. Strangely I still have some artbooks that survived over the years on my hard drives and are unposted. So here's Akihiro Yamadas artbook that is a collection of really neat paintings and sketches.

Akihiro is probably most known for his character designs (which are plenty in this book) that he did for various animes and video games. Probably the most well known are for Twelve Kingdoms. Despite not being the cream of the top he is an excellent artist that really does have a fairly unique style when it comes to coloring. Sure the characters themselves aren't really devoid from the norm of "this is the 90s and here is how characters need to look" but the coloring really brings them a very unique and lively look. Most of the paintings that are here in color are exceptional (especially those themed in feudal Japan) but his more black and white sketches aren't really doing much for me.

Enjoy.

9 Souls

Director: Toshiaki Toyoda
Year: 2003
Runtime: 1h 59min
Format: .avi
Lagnguage/Subtitles: Japanese with soft English subtitles

It has been a while since I posted a full feature movie. Actually it has been relatively long since I posted anything but that's not the point. Two sentences in and I'm already derailing, how nice. And now I'm talking to myself by typing. What the hell brain.

9 Souls is a story about nine prisoners that somehow managed to run away from prison. At first it might be a little overwhelming to follow nine characters but as the story progresses you really get to know them and dislike/like them so it's only momentarily that you'll be lost in this endless barrage of characters. They are all convicts for different reasons but they all manage to stick together by this loose idea that there might be some money hidden somewhere and so they hijack a convenient truck and go on a adventure.

The magic of this movie is that it starts as your usual (but a bit unusual) prison break movie which is followed by a pursuit and so on, you know the cliche. Actually this setting is only the building block for the rest of the movie that has much more to offer. The center of this movie are the prisoners and their lives and what they want to do with it. At moments it's a cheery road trip sodomy and a little later it's a sad story about a doomed restaurant worker. Many stories intervened and held by the common goal of getting away from your troubles. They all try to miserably fit back into society but they ultimately can't because the society itself has written them off long ago. They're trash now, most of them anyway.

Overall this is one of the best movies that I watched this year so far therefore I can't really give it any real subjective analysis but I can direct you to a much better review that might shed some more light on this film if my description is (as usually) vague. Just follow it here.

Links:

One, two, three, four, five and six.