Monday 31 May 2010

Echo and the Bunnymen - Stars are Stars

Saturday 29 May 2010

Crystal Castles - Crimewave




Crystal Castles has with their sound and attitude caught something in their music, which I truly can relate to.

Emptiness, dreams (hope), and more emptiness… Moreover their music actually sounds like something, which has been made in this millennium.

I think Crimewave is a perfect pop tune and one of their best songs. It’s extremely stylish, sexy and fits exceptionally well to Crystal Castles’ visual identity.

Many seem to dislike the fact that you can’t hear what lead singer Alice Glass singing, but I think that’s a very conservative and superficial way to dismiss the song as an aesthetic statement.

The structure of the song is also very special. They have (just) taken the lyrics from Health’s original version and repeated it eight times.
“Eyes lit
I pawn short breaths
A fawn's dark eye lids
But life's breath like a sun against my head”
… a little pop minimalistic master stroke!

Thursday 27 May 2010

The Dwarves - Fuck You Up And Get High, 1990



Tuesday 25 May 2010

Thich Nu Thanh Quang

Sunday 23 May 2010

Marcel Duchamp


(Bicycle Wheel, 1913)

The most fascinating mission behind Duchamp’s ready mades, was to blot out the line between art and reality.

(Reality can be just as artistic as art, and art can be just as real as reality – both things are elements in the same universe.)

I’m not sure if I’m supposed to like their visual appearance, but I think they somehow look really nice. I wish that I could get one of them as paperweight or something…

Friday 21 May 2010

Under Byen - Remix 2 (2004)




Under Byen is a Danish eight piece experimental orchestra, who since their debut album “Kyst” from 1999 slightly has become more and more famous for their very unique contribution to modern rock/pop music.

Lead singer Henriette sings like a whispering Björk, and her sensual voice is supported by a wild and multifarious sound of both modern and traditional percussions, stringed, and wind instruments. Many foreign reviewers compare Under Byen with Sigur Ros, but where the Icelanders are a little new age-like, Under Byen is a more unbalanced experience.

Remix 2 contains remixes of songs from the album “Det Er Mig Der Holder Træerne Sammen” (Danish for “It’s Me Who Keeps the Trees Together”) from 2002. We still hear Henriette’s whispering voice, and the compositions are still very much based on Under Byen’s work, but it’s all crashed into new melodies by different Scandinavian electronic artists.

The album is an interesting experience for people who already adore Under Byen, but for people who haven’t heard the band yet, I will say it’s an excellent introduction to Scandinavia’s experimental music scene.


Tracklist:
1. Xploding Plastix - Det er mig, der holder træerne sammen
2. Mikael Simpson - Legesag/Under Skyen version 1
3. Ilz - Plantage (Torsdagshugo)
4. Mikael Simpson - Legesag/Under Skyen Version 2
5. Jomi Massage - Mission
6. Sofus Forsberg - Plantage (HWok-mix)
7. Waldchengarten - Om Vinteren
8. Puzzleweasel - Puzzleweasel

Wednesday 19 May 2010

Irvine Welsh

Monday 17 May 2010

Curent life/death situation (17 May 2010 - Høng) ---

Just recieved this e-mail some minutes ago:

Hi Peter,

I left you voicemails on both your phones because we have received extremely bad news from Marieke at Accenture.
The project you were going to start on has been cancelled for the complete Scandinavian team!

Due to this it is urgent for you to cancel all your plans concerning your moving for this job.

I can be reached for more details.

I'm very sorry to bring you this bad news....

Best regards,
Zoridza

Seriously. I have absolutely no idea about what I should do now. No money and no Amsterdam...



Heaven knows I'm miserable now...

Saturday 15 May 2010

Waiting for the Bus...

Thursday 13 May 2010

Sam Mendes and Alan Ball's American Beuty (1999) ---




”... because there is nothing worse in life than being ordinary…”

… claims Angela, one of American Beauty’s characters, which she couldn’t be more wrong about according to the theme of the film.

The ordinary contains a beauty that is extremely real, which a semi-psycho character in the film wants to express by filming everything from people’s (and his own) private life to flying plastic bags.

In the scene below he tries to express why he is doing all this videotaping for a girl (the daughter of the main character) he has fallen in love with – an ordinary girl that is dreaming about bigger bobbies.


Tuesday 11 May 2010

Xi Chen---




(Covalent Electron, 2007)



(Perfume, 2007)

I don't know much about Xi Chen, except that she is from China, lives in New York, is generation 1989, and she likes Jesus and Mary Chain. That's also what that I need to know.

Her pictures is a visual explosion of youth, love, and sex, depicted cinematic in a very feminine and sensual way - without it gets girly at all.

I think one of reasons, that it doesn’t get girly, is because of her fascination of rock 'n' roll. Her pictures are eventually incredible raw and many of her portraits are portrayed in painful positions or/and with depressed facial expressions.

Enjoy more of her pictures here.

Sunday 9 May 2010

Beauty = Publin Opinion + The Eye of the Beholder

Friday 7 May 2010

Joy Division - Closer, 1980 ---




I think one of the reasons, why this album is so amazingly beautiful, lays in how Closer starts and how it ends. How it takes me as a listener from one depressive state of mind to another depressive state of mind, without the music lose its strong intensity.

"Can I go on with this train of defense
Disturbing and purging my mind
I count up my duties -
when all's said and done
I know that I'll lose every time"

"Mother, I tried, please believe me
I'm doing the best that I can
I'm ashamed of the things
I've been put through
I'm ashamed of the person I am"
The lyrics in the first five songs contain a lot of frustration, and there are concrete references to lead singer Ian Curtis’ life. While the music is organized a little messy with mechanical sound effects, aggressive drum play, and scratchy guitars.

"Instants that can still betray us
A journey that leads to the sun
Soulless and bent on destruction"
From the sixth track, Heart and Soul, Closer takes a new direction. The sound is still very mechanical, and the lyrics are still depressive, but how the lyrics are depressing is different. It’s not as concrete as the first part – it’s more reflective, which serve to depict Curtis’ depression as a strangely beautiful thing for me as a listener.

After Heart and Soul the album is brought to an end by a famous trilogy of songs called Twenty Four Hours, The Eternal, and Decades - from which the sound also takes a new direction.

"I never realized the lengths’
I'd have to go
All the darkest corners of a sense
I didn't know"

"Procession moves on, the shouting is over
Praise to the glory of loved ones
now gone"
"Weary inside, now our hearts
lost forever
Can't replace the fear
or the thrill of the chase
These rituals showed up the door
for our wanderings
Opened and shut, then slammed
in our face
Where have they been"
The mechanical and aggressive sound is replaced with something very atmospheric. There are careful synth elements, light piano tones, and the soundscape is altogether incredible multifarious. It’s like these three tracks change Closer from being another almost perfect album to be the most perfect album ever made.

Tracklist:

1. Atrocity Exhibition
2. Isolation
3. Passover
4. Colony
5. A Means to an End
6. Heart and Soul
7. Twenty Four Hours
8. The Eternal
9. Decades

Wednesday 5 May 2010

Sonic Youth - Mote, 1990

Tuesday 4 May 2010

John Dove and Molly White ---






What’s the difference between art and design?

(…)

(…)

(…)

Over and over again has the above question been asked, and no one has seriously convinced me about a distinction. Personally I would just say that art is no more than a (useless) word people use to distinct high culture from low culture.

To state an example I guess most people would categorize John Dove and Molly White’s works as design, because they were mass produced on t-shirts and their fans were not seen as fans but seen as customers.

Monday 3 May 2010

My Bloody Valentine - Strawberry Wine, 1987