The Great British Synth Documentary, part 1 of 10.
Czupka Cakis
How you say...
Nov 18
Nov 17
Nov 16
Nov 13
Nov 12
Independence
Gang of Four
You know who I am tired of? Haters. The same people who throw 80s parties reflexively slag on this shit cuz of some lame Rolling Stone review or whatevers 30 years ago and do you know? Yall can just step off.
Eep. I always kind of liked the Sara Lee/disco incarnation of Gang of Four (R’n’B strings against scratch guitar, yes please), and hopelessly defended Hard at the time as a subversive pop move. That said, I was just playing this and Y walked into the room and said “What is that?” in a tone that meant I-don’t-really-care-what-it-is-it-sucks-goat-pizzle. So, acquired taste. But hey, let’s go ahead and re-assess it!
Nov 11
Nov 10
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Comments (View)Trailer Trash Tracys “Strangling Good Guys” (from the No Pain In Pop compilation 2009)
Slavoj Zizek sitting at the foot of Linda Blair’s bed in The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema:
A breakneck guide to the darker strains of cinema, delivered by the star philosopher (I haven’t read anywhere near enough of him to say anything intelligent or coherent but: he kinda, sorta uses Lacanian post-Freudian psychoanalysis (quiet, you) as a launching pad to say surprising and sometimes insightful things) .
Zizek whips through Hitchcock and Lynch and a handful of other films, giving a primer that perhaps covers a bit too much well-trodden ground. I’m two episodes in and thinking that picking apart Blue Velvet or Vertigo for subtextual evidence of shared neurosis is a bit easy, no? I’d rather see him set up with a batch of Doris Day/Rock Hudson films, or Disney, or better yet even, contemporary rom-com. Set him loose on Jennifer Aniston’s oeuvre, see what horrors he uncovers.
Still, it’s very much a fast-paced funhouse ride, with lots of great, disturbing scenes from some excellent movies. Zizek, who is above all a great entertainer, is cleverly inserted into many of the films by the director — as above, where he lectures during the “Your mother sucks cocks in hell” scene from The Exorcist. Good times.
Nov 09
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Comments (View)Beach Boys, Johnny Carson.
The network makes him break his back.
Roedelius and Moebius of Cluster.
The recent BBC4 doc Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany has lots of great vintage sequences, but the best part by far was the contemporary footage of all of these fascinating old fellows, many of them still out in the woods heroically banging away at cement mixers and 70s-era synths. If you’re even slightly interested, you should hunt it down.
