Perhaps you have wondered what secret agent Yoon looks like. It’s also possible you’ve spent long clammy nights in your bedsacks tormented by questions about the mystery man behind the lens. Today your dreams come true as the tables turn with me as the photographer while Yoon does his thing. Now a word from our model.
“Hello all you fine people. Drew Yoon here. Firstly, apologies, all you fervent fans of teh Zoetica. We’re digressing from your regularly scheduled blue bombshell for a spicy kimchi break. Unlike the consistently dapper Zoetica, I’m often rather shabby-looking in my obey beanie, t-shirt and generic jeans. However, on occasion, a brother needs to look fly for the ladies, am I right?
“This is a new secret science, to master the emptiness and turn it into something that is filled with sound and visual images.”
– Karlheinz Stockhausen Stockhausen has died, aged 79. Depending on who you talk to, he was either one of the most revered or reviled composers of the 20th century. A student of Olivier Messiaen with little interest in conventional “classical” modes of composition, Stockhausen’s sonic innovations range from the sublimely understated (Mantra, 1970) to the grandiose (Spiral, 1968) to the bombastic and beautifully absurd (Helikopter-Streichquartett, 1993).
Throughout his life, Stockhausen was obsessed with the concept of flight. As early as the 1950s, he was already discussing his desire to “liberate musicians from the constraints of gravity.” He even consulted with recording technicians to see if there was a way to harness performers in specially rigged chairs that could be swung through the studio on ropes. The aforementioned Helikopter Streichquartett was in many ways a culmination of his lifelong dream to see music truly take flight. Many people have said, will undoubtedly continue to say “I don’t get it.” Indeed, not long ago the entire world shouted in disbelief at the aging iconoclast when he dared to refer to the attacks on the World Trade Center as “the greatest work of art imaginable.”
Regardless, even Stockhausen’s harshest detractors can never argue that he was not a swashbuckling pioneer of sound and vision. A relentless seeker, he never allowed the circumscriptions of others to stand in his way. Somewhere in the expansive aleatory of the cosmos, an echo of Stockhausen’s voice speaks with more conviction than ever: “I no longer limit myself.”
Mer mentioned the Roadside Picnic podcast here a few weeks back. Hosted by a gentleman named Joshua Zucker, this podcast’s chewy contents are some of the best brain fuel I’ve had the pleasure to absorb in quite some time. The past couple of episodes were especially fitting with the belated arrival of rain in Angel City, and I must take a moment to reflect.
Each installment has a somewhat melancholy-sounding theme, but I’ve so far found this to be the ideal multi-purpose station. It’s marvelous for letting the sound flood and take over just as well as having it as low ambience while painting, writing, reading, or whatever sinister activity you choose to engage in. I suggest you try the former, first.
Roadside Picnic is a blend of ambient drone, atmospheric distressed instrumental, and occasional vocal tracks. At full volume the experience is akin to drifting through walls of dense noise, sometimes falling into pools of melody and being pierced with emphatic shrieks. Like tuning a radio in a radiation apocalypse; faint signs of life puncturing the static of a scorched world. Listen.
Hey guys, I’m back from my super-secret Coilhouse mission to Belgrade/Ljubljana. I can’t tell you what I did there; I’ll only mention that it has something vaguely to do with stags and light beer. You will love it!
My jet-lagged brains really got a good rattle when I read Abstraction by Shintaro Kago, sent to us by Lucylle. Not safe for work! Don’t click it, mom! Lucylle describes Abstraction as “a short story in manga style, featuring an extremely creative approach to panel division/story continuity.”
I didn’t think I’d like it at first – the first few panels seemed so flat, so sparse, so lifeless. I thought, “this is why I think most manga is so boring.” But before I could finish thinking that sentence, my eye scrolled down to the page and something happened. The panels got weirder and weirder, and began to take a shape of their own. I felt like I’d been sucked into some sort of bizarre, claustrophobic fishbowl of dysmorphia, sex, awkwardness and pain, and most unsettling thing I felt as I kept on reading this was horror at how many of the completely anatomically-impossible, disjointed panels gave me an “oh shit, been there” kind of feeling. Ah, young love.
Musician Carla Kihlstedt never fails to astound me. She’s always got her nimble fingers stuck in multiple pies, all invariably delicious. Right now a Kihlstedt taste sensation I can’t get enough is 2 Foot Yard, her independently produced trio with cellist/vocalist Marika Hughes and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily. Their new album is entitled Borrowed Arms and the title track is as scrumptious a slice of swingin’ dream pop as you’ll hear this year. Click over to 2 Foot Yard’s MySpace page and give it a listen. From their latest press release:
Borrowed Arms is scheduled to be released in the US on March 4th. Help us finish the CD by pre-ordering now and in return you will receive a signed copy in your hands before everyone else. Pre-ordered copies are available for a limited time.
In the spirit of community and paying it forward, we’ll be donating $.50 from every copy of Borrowed Arms sold in the US both to Food Change in Harlem, NYC and to the Canyon School organic gardening project in Canyon, CA to help promote community-based education and awareness of sustainable agriculture and nutrition as well as daily free meals to those in need.
These are people of the highest integrity. I love them dearly. Go say hello.
Internet addict Barbie. Neglected children sold separately.
Okay, who didn’t make their Barbies do obscene things at some point? But The Subversive 11½ Inch Fashion Doll takes it to all new levels of wrong.
The author of the site, alt model Theda B, describes the effort as “awful things I did to my old toys in a fit of boredom” and presents the Mattell-made dolls, dubbed “Bobbie” and “Ben,” in some hilarious, completely un-PC scenarios that draw on politics, illness, subculture, deviant sexuality and criminal behavior. And a good time is had by all! My personal favorites are Pretentious Performance Artist Barbie, Bobbie Christ (or the “I’m Going Straight to Hell” doll) and Trench Coat Mafia Ben. Collect them all!
The site hasn’t been updated in 3 years, which is a shame. It would be interesting to see what kind of new dolls people would submit to the site today. My own contributions would be Internet-Famous Bobbie and Sadistic TSA Agent Ben.
Speaking of the Rolling Stones, here’s a blast from the past that I haven’t been able to chase out of my head for days now, the version of “Satisfaction” cited as one of Mick Jagger’s favorite Stones covers:
It’s hard to believe Devo’s frenetic, herky jerky movements here aren’t a camera trick, but watch live footage from the same era and you realize yes, they really were that tightly wound.
Bless these guys for helping legions of spud children to survive pubescence with some shred of self esteem intact. While I wouldn’t put them in the “What Made Me Weird” category, they certainly helped me feel less awful for being weird. I still have an old Trapper Keeper lying around somewhere with the lyrics of “Through Being Cool” scrawled on it.
Devo’s alliance with the Church of the Subgenius made them cooler in my eyes than any football-throwing Homecoming King could ever hope to be. Their Men Who Make the Music collection of home videos amused the hell out of me back then, but today, some of those skits seem downright prescient, voicing concerns about the sinister manipulations of genetics, food and culture.
Striking image – Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall enjoy a stroll. Hat tip to Jerem Morrow for pointing it our way. If anyone can tell me who shot this, I’d be most grateful. Never too late to gender bend! It harkens back to the olden days, when the Stones posed for this cover photo by Jerry Schatzberg.
I’m not sure how to explain what makes Death Bed: The Bed That Eats so special, or if I should even try. I certainly didn’t know anything about the film when it was first recommended to me (by some hairy-palmed weirdo lurking near the Jess Rollin section of Kim’s in NYC a few years back). Completed in 1977, this “forgotten horror classic” was never officially released. Legend has it that director George Barry had no idea anyone had even seen the picture until he Googled himself and found a bunch of websites raving about it. After 25 years, Cult Epics finally put it out on DVD.
Death Bed is definitely rave-worthy, but again, I’m at a loss to explain why without taking away some of the mystique. Here’s the overview from Cult Epics:
“At the edge of a grand estate, near a crumbling old mansion lies a strange stone building with just a single room. In the room, a four-poster bed waits to absorb the flesh, blood and life essence of unwary travelers…”
I came across Katsuya Terada’s work by pure accident, when I haphazardly discovered that the apartment where I’d been staying in Tokyo was directly underneath Mandarake – a multi-story manga and anime shopping mecca. While shambling disoriented from all the STUFF, through Mandarake’s hallways, I saw a glossy image of a girl staring from beneath a helmet intersected with pipes, tubing and other such hardware. As “WANT” scrolled across my brain-monitors, I was already inside pointing at the display and paying a ridiculously low $40. It was a hard cover edition of his art book “Cover Girls” and I was enthralled.
As I later found out, Terada, also known as Terra, has been around for quite some time working on big projects like Blood: The Last Vampire and Virtua Fighter 2, but it’s still his cover girls that I love most. He renders these women with a sense of humor, young and fierce in spite of their partial nudity. Even the most vacant gaze seems to glimmer. They’re geared up, ready for battle, and remind me of Tank Girl a little. The costuming is a huge highlight; there is so much, often gritty, detail that goes into the armor and headdresses to counterbalance all that exposed flesh! It’s this costuming that really plays with the imagination and engages the viewers, inviting them to create their own backstories for all these characters.
Posted by Zoetica Ebb on December 4th, 2007
Filed under Art, Japan | Comments (8)
