Filed under: Latinos, Music, Rock, Video | Tags: Adan Jodorowsky, Echeck, Estoy Mal, Music, Recent Find
From Adan Jodorowsky, son of auteur and tarot authority Alejandro, is Echek, a tiny portrayal of love’s enchantment. The short’s compact format calls to mind the description of the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations” as a ‘pocket symphony’. It wouldn’t be a stretch to call this a piece of pocket film.
Noting the intersection of film and music in this post, it’s perhaps worth noting that Adan Jodorowsky is a musician and actor in his own right. According to very preliminary research, he’s released records with the band Hellboy and some more under the solo moniker Adanowsky. His film debut was in his father’s 1989 film Santa Sangre, which despite the obvious nepostism, is still not too shabby to claim. And yes, that was him discussing the demerits of a certain female pubic hair style with Adam Goldberg in 2 Days in Paris. (0:55 in the linked clip)
As usual, posts to the blog will continue to be sporadic, but thanks for sticking around. We’re contemplating some possible changes, but nothing certain yet. There’s still the matter of getting out of the grad school application weeds. Stay tuned for updates.
In the meantime, tirado/thrown will be paying attention to Adan’s work. Here’s another short tidbit of Jodorowsky, singing his track “Estoy Mal” (I’m Ill) in the midst of the swine flu outbreak, respirator and all.
Filed under: Latinos, Music, Places to Go | Tags: DJing, Events, Music, Rare Grooves, Sound is Blog
Radio silence could best describe the recent state of affairs here at tirado/thrown headquarters. Your staff has been negligent in its thinking and typing duties, and instead brushing up on high school algebra, cramming vocabulary, and learning strategies to tackle the monster known as the Graduate Record Examination. All this preparation, of course, is in the service of mounting a pending graduate school application campaign in the fall.
However, we’ve managed to cut through the thick wall of static generated by anxiety, study, exhaustion, and the repeated multiple choice questions to assemble some tracks and offer them up for the listening pleasure of the kind people who come to River Gods. On Monday June 29, as a part of the Weekly Wax series, DJ Tirado (yes, of this here tirado/thrown) will be teaming up with fellow traveler DJ Manny to showcase rolas from America Latina and Latino America spanning the decades. Inspired by the efforts of L.A.’s unparalleled Mas Exitos, we’ll be dispatching sounds like descargas, ballads, cumbias old and new, funk, psychedelic, and perhaps some electronic. All of it will come from Nuestra America.
Do come and join us for the dinner, drinks, and beatdowns that River Gods promises its patrons on Monday nights. The fare and the bar’s offerings are outstanding, and the locale is the perfect venue for a listening party. The sounds start at 8 p.m. and go on until midnight. Feel free to hit us up in the comments section for more information.
*Image: Hat tip to Joseph Franko at supersonido.net for the amazing pic. We couldn’t pass up using it for the flyer.
Filed under: Architecture, Ideas, Music, art | Tags: Animation, Architecture, Experience, Music, Sea and Cake, Sound and Vision, Video
Here at tirado/thrown, we heartily anticipate the end of the winter. With the clear light and the cold air, we’re slowly attempting to shed the frozen snow that stubbornly sticks to the ground here in Boston (but not before the upcoming Agamben post, though).
The Sea and Cake’s cover of David Bowie’s “Sound and Vision” is the perfect song for this time of year. They take on Bowie with a blast of cold Chicago air and fashion a tempered interpretation that does not threaten the original version’s excitement and buoyancy.
In an issue of loud paper a number of years ago, The Sea and Cake’s lead singer Sam Prekop professed his love for the work of Mies Van Der Rohe. Lines, glass, light, and steel, Van Der Rohe’s architecture trades in the very basic terms of experience and dwelling.
It’s not entirely surprising then, that the video above marshals high-modern experimental animation to offer a visual expereince well-coordinated with a song that is about experience, broadly conceived: wonder, awakening, anticipation, becoming alive, the senses sparkening and opening to the world. The above video is vitalism wrapped in the guise of a collected, though vibrant, formalism. Here’s to ushering the end of Winter.
UPDATE: A far better version of the video is up on Pitchfork.tv, which I recommend over the video I posted above.
Filed under: Music, Video | Tags: 2008, Anavan, Baltimoroder, Chico Sonido, Crystal Castles, El Guincho, Gael Garcia Bernal, Las Malas Amistades, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, Music, nobody, Rock, Roots of Chicha, School of Seven Bells, TV on the Radio
With the year quickly coming to a close, here’s tirado/thrown’s list of albums/songs/tracks that made their way into regular listening rotation over the last year. While most of the titles below were released in 2008, your dear author/editor cannot pretend to scoop up new records and love them as quickly as a number of people picking up records and writing about them. At times, he wishes he were so adventurous. Be that as it may, the list follows:
- Crystal Castles, Self-Titled, Last Gang Records: A record of 8-bit-inspired madness teetering at the point where self-control and its loss become difficult to distinguish. It is music to the tune of neurons alternately seizing up and firing at various intensities, making shards and blobs of circuitry-toned noise for your pleasure.
- Anavan, Self-Titled, GSL: Manic, tight, post-punk. Danceable and disciplined, this record will mercilessly cut you right down the middle.
- TV on the Radio, Dear Science, Interscope: As close to a perfect album as you can get. Just. Go. Listen.
- El Guincho, Alegranza, Young Turks/XL Recordings: Dense, infectious, rhythmic loops of joy.
- Las Malas Amistades, Jardin Interior, Psychopath Records: The record (and band) I’ve been waiting for to offer Latin America’s response to Sebadoh’s Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock. Not quite new, but it was a 2008 discovery here at tirado/thrown.
- Nobody, Presents Blank Blue: Western Water Music, Vol. 3, Ubiquity Records: Lush, slow burning, deep grooves from L.A. Oftentimes Nobody’s psychedelic arrangements move the music along like fog moving at the boundary between air and water, smoother and cooler than an iced bong hit.
- Chico Sonido, Various Mixes, available at www.chicosonido.com: Outstanding mixes of vintage Latino tracks that just teem with soul. He’s an outstanding selector, and part 2 of a set he recorded for dublab in 2006 is proof. Finding records under pyramids indeed.
- Various Artists, The Roots of Chicha, Barbes Records: Irresistible late 60’s cumbia drenched in reverb-laced guitars. Inspired by the wave of psychedelic cumbia rocking South America (esp. Zizek) as of late, I somehow managed to come across this ancestral document.
- School of Seven Bells, Alpinisms, Ghostly Records: Most of what I read about them invokes the term shoegaze or dreampop, which I find a pretty lazy analogy. Said genres don’t carry a groove or run vocals the way SVIIB’s Alpinisms does deftly mixing the sonic landscapes of Spiritualized and rhythms of late 80s freestyle to entirely original results: earnest, serious, groove-laden, and striving for a level of feeling in songwriting that treads perilous musical territory and comes away glowing.
- Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, Daytrotter Sessions, Available here. There’s a fragility and vulnerability in Robinson’s voice and songwriting that is just arresting. The four songs featured on the Daytrotter sessions are rather magnificent in themselves as well-performed pieces of rock.
- Baltimoroder/Die Young, Cat/Back Around, Dopamine Records: A slick but downright grimy track coming from Boston’s finest DJ, Baltimoroder. It’s much like something you’ll hear him spinning during peak dancing time at one of the many nights he’s a part of.
A few more records from this year were in the running, but in the name of a measure of integrity, they’re excluded them from the list since said author/editor hasn’t listened to them. They are worth mentioning as records that are eagerly awaiting listening:
- Flying Lotus, Los Angeles, Reset, 1983, Warp Records/Plug Research
- Abe Vigoda, Skeleton, Post-Present Medium
- Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, Self-Titled, Say Hey Records
I’ll leave with a little piece of pre-holiday cheer that came my way from tirado/thrown favorite Caro at Sound Taste. It’s Gael Garcia Bernal getting his norteño on in with a rendition of, well, you’ll recognize it, by you know who, as part of an upcoming film, Rudo y Cursi. Judging from the trailer, the song gets its work in. Were I Bun E. Carlos, I would be impressed.
Filed under: Music, Philosophy, Politics, Writing | Tags: Badiou, Benjamin, Julieta Venegas, Kureishi, Mai '68, Music, Sounds, Week in Review, Writing
A quick survey of items summoning bits of time and attention over the last week:
- Hanif Kureishi lobs a salvo against writing programs. Can I add that it’s uncanny how graduate school settings resemble sanatoria?
- Just when I thought Hanif was getting all crotchety for the sake of being so, this post over at Sancho’s Panza starts an open-ended conversation about writing as a profession.
- On writing about oneself for a living: a fitting end to the Emily Gould affair, which kept observers dangling over the maw of the lumpen commentariat’s amalgamation of boredom and rage at The New York Times.
- Further reading on writing: Walter Benjamin’s The Author as Producer in PDF. Another essay, A Short History of Photography is also available for downloading.
- For whatever an anniversary is worth: A difficult appraisal of Mai ‘68 (forty years later), and a take on Alain Badiou’s thought-works viz. humanity’s emancipatory potential, against the reactionary politics that won out in the aftermath of 1968.
- Brief forays into pop musicology: cumbia and reggeaton make rhythmic sense; and this review’s got me stewing. Here’s Julieta Venegas’ Eres Para Mi getting the reggeaton-inflected cumbia treatment from Sonidero Nacional. Have a great weekend!
Filed under: Books, Flaneurie, Latinos, Music, Rock | Tags: cognitive dissonance, crossed references, Flaneurie, graphic design, Intimation, Music, unintended thought provoking similarities, Walking
Walks to my psychotherapist’s office from the Harvard Square train station often yield varied results. If I’m running a couple of minutes late, I’ll charge out of the last train car and storm my way down Massachusetts Ave. in the hopes of reducing the amount of time already lost. Whether I’m barreling through or weaving around my fellow pedestrians in my path, I’m inhabiting a vulgarized version of Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit, concerned with my tardiness, cursing under my breath and thoroughly frustrated. If I’m running on time, I walk briskly and confidently, gathering my thoughts in anticipation of the fifty minutes on the white couch.
But last Saturday I was running early, enough to slow down and think about grabbing a bite for breakfast before heading up to the therapist’s office. It was the rare occasion where I could take in my surroundings and unintentionally indulge in a bit of free association in the process.
The station-to-office trek always takes me past the Harvard Book Store. Its windows display a revolving set of enticements and possible treats for book-lovers or people who just want a good read. But what’s so special about the window? It’s just a bunch of books, right? Sure. Point conceded. But the books showing at the windows somehow push the right button, or get me on the path of re-evaluating my wish list- whether new hardcovers or featured remainders. My favorite window, though, has to be the “Featured Press” window, and I needn’t justify reasons as to whether I’m driven by fetishism or brand loyalty. This is where the accidental flaneurie begins.
Last week’s featured press at the window was Continuum, the UK-based publisher whose strongest fare is consists of scholarly books in philosophy, theology, religion and literature, with some the occasional trade titles and series. The press’ books most prominently displayed at the window were from the critically-acclaimed 33 1/3 series, consisting of texts offering extended treatments of somehow important or influential albums. When I gazed upon the pocket-sized copy of the book discussing Tom Waits’s Swordfishtrombones to get a closer look, my mind’s eye didn’t see the imprint’s triangular logo on the book’s cover,
but that of Mexicana de Aviación, an icon whose impression is the pathway to memories of journeys to Mexico and Guatemala as a boy.
The raw visual similarities in each of logo’s design elements (the ‘m’ at the bottom third of the image and the emphasis on the right hand side of the logos) temporarily scrambled my imagination and thought process. While looking at the covers of these books about ‘great’ records, I got to asking: with the exception of the ‘honoraries’ (aka The Smiths), why aren’t any of pivotal chican@/latin@ crafted pieces tackled in this (arguably indie rockist) canon for rock aficionados? It would not be for lack of available material. Obvious places to start would be Los Lobos’ career-defining opus Kiko or El Vez’s sweeping piece of detourment, Graciasland. These records certainly deserve the 33 1/3 treatment, to say less of a record that, at the time, seemed to have brought mid-90s Mexican rock to the attention of an American listening public. I am referring to Café Tacvba’s searing covers record, Avalancha de Exitos. Indie-philes would also do well to catch a glimpse into the reverse-pochismos of Plastilina Mosh.
Give me a couple of years to listen and research alongside a modest advance, and I’ll think about writing about them all. Or with no advance, I could run a serialized posts on each record and possibly grouse about the cultural and business politics suggested by the selection of titles in the series.
As of this post’s publication, the 33 1/3 series has neither published a piece on a latino-made record, nor do any appear to be planned. While waiting without holding our breaths, here’s a little Cafe Tacvba to keep the home fires burning and the thoughts incubating.
Filed under: Music, Rock | Tags: Jamaica Plain, Music, Neptune, New Release, Noise, Rock, Show
February 19 is the release date of Neptune’s long-awaited album, Gong Lake, on Table of the Elements imprint Radium. From the sound of the first single, Paris Green, they’ve spent their time on many tours and recording sessions honing and fine-tuning their mechanized attack. The quick, reference-laden comparison: it’s a marriage of mid-80s Touch and Go and Dischord post-hardcore officiated by the spirit of Devo.
If anything, Neptune are to be experienced live to appreciate the intensity and craft that goes into what they do with their self-made instruments- robust and intimidating bass guitars, a drum kit made from oil drums, guitars with trussed metal fret boards, and electric triggers activated by home light switches.
They’re celebrating with a show a few days beforehand (Feb. 16th), accompanied by fellow J.P. comrades Helms. These are Powers and Animal Hospital will be rounding out the solid bill. It all goes down Lower Allston’s rock chapel, Great Scott, with festivities commencing at 9:00.
Being ambivalently out of the loop of indie rock life, it’s just refreshing to hear something so exuberant. My first impression of the band was that of a smoothed-out Velocity Girl, with brighter and more reverb-laden guitars, like listening to ‘Crazy Town’ having emerged from the fuzz of early ’90s malaise.
Sonic ‘palate cleansing’ is a pretty apt description for what the Black Kids offer, though the term’s stolen from Jim Mendiola’s thoughts on the Go! Team. Take a gander and listen. We’ll see how they fare after they release their follow up-to their Wizard of Ahhhs EP in April. It’s going to have a rework of, I Don’t Want to Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You, which is below. Get your fix here, too.
RIYL: Velocity Girl, My Favorite, Joy Division, Junior Senior
