minutiae

Hymns to Uncertainty

Julio — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:00:18 +0000

Translated from the French, by myself from a post by DJ Barney @ La Blogotheque.

Without any worthy reason, this text has dragged out a good part of the year, in a drawer, refusing to come out and celebrate the last album by Animal Collective. One Merriweather Post Pavillion that finally finds itself, against all odds, amongst the discs that I’ve most listened to and loved this year. Thus, there’s much to do: instead of just schlucking it wholesale on a “Best of the Year” list.

It was last year, almost around the same time of year that the new Animal Collective record leaked and let loose a suffocating clamor amongst the blogs. An inevitable broohaha that took the form of a plunged knife into the back of Merriweather Post Pavillion, which we hastily rushed to judge. A much more delicate record that at first glance; hand-made by a group much more sensible than they cared to show.

I came to Animal Collective rather late, between Sung Tongs & Strawberry Jam, but in the end without any regret. The first albums were too entangled in experimentation that hardly ever lasted. Of course, there are some things worth noting, most notably in the beautiful EP recorded by Vashti Bunyan, but nonetheless heavy with ennui.

Feels, Sung Tongs, and then mostly with Strawberry Jam little by little they had been able to draw up another whole geography: one which gives modern pop all its meaning, where guitars are sampled, where machines play the dripping of water like an arpeggio of chords. We get lost in it; one jumps from island to island going boing, and smiling as when you play Super Mario Bros: with enough momentum you could take off in it. Animal Collective went through mountain & mountain to make a trio amongst their desires. Somewhere between the dancefloors and the rhythms of the shoreline.

In this way, Merriweather Post Pavillion is a provisional, yet illusory culmination that refuses to give itself up like any common “record of the month.”

I made the error of seeking out the quasi-instaneous joy that surged from Strawberry Jam from the push of the play button: that electro-organic, varnished pop that made you want to howl along with the choruses flying down a summer road in your ride. At first contact, MPP sounded much more like driftwood, a bit smooth and nondescript. I had a hard time getting to its meaning, impossible to get a grapple hold on.

Was it a caricature of Animal Collective? A redundant work of lesser worth? I hesitated for several weeks, taken by the impression that the (currently) three guys had made themselves more efficient, and by way lost some of their passionate flame. Then, I had to figure out that beyond all cold calculation one had to stop thinking: I liked this record; it opened up, day by day, and took off. It just needed some time to stretch out its legs.

Once the doors were open it was world of sprawling yellow brick roads, where tornadoes whip in a sweet melancholy, of the troubles of Thirty-Somethings (“My Girls,” “Brother Sport”), thwarted by blows of sunny melodies and grainy beats. The floats are still there, but more like a sea breeze that proclaims the earth and its exotic riches.

Animal Collective, and most notably Panda Bear, have never hidden their passion for the Beach Boys, and there is still much of this pop ideal with this last album. Only, the means are not the same, the sense of flighty detachment (even if postured) is far off, and the electronic labrynth that brims from MPP brings us to 2009: generational incomprehension, geographic clashes, the overwhelming quickening of changes…Merriweather Post Pavilion sings hymns but chooses to drown them in an uncertain sonority. As if the record slept with its eyes wide open.

The year comes to a close, and this record is still there for me; I still find in it so much indemnification. It will surely endure the year through.

On coldness

Julio — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:02:20 +0000

Cold Cave

Recently I saw Cold Cave in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles & I’ve been putting much thought into their performance. They were cold and distant. Should the audience have been offended? Should they have recoiled in distaste?

The answer I feel is a bold yes, but not for the same reasons as most would surmise.

Punk rock started as an attack on the ROCK N ROLL status quo. A fast-paced “FUCK YOU” to the establishment. And as all things rebellious, it was recuperated, homogenized, sanitized (save for a resolute underground).

I think that Cold Cave’s coldness is a dark return to that confrontational nature of the early years of punk rock; although they were never at any point as solidly aggressive as electro-punk forbearers Suicide. This detached (yet visceral) performance also reminded me of the anguished put-ons of Xiu-Xiu of which, interestingly, a member of Cold Cave is a former member of.

I also feel this coldness is appropriate since their music is not that of Matt & Kim or No Age. To see them singing about alienation as they hold a smile would ring rather dishonest. Imagine Ian Curtis singing “Love Will Tear Us Apart” with a wide grin? This detachment is almost a mise en abyme of alienation: their intent to express this doubled with an outer reflection of the inside. Likewise, this detachment almost feels like a refusal to be yet another band playing for your money. A refusal to become a commodity: their humanity on display in all its disturbing nature.

The question at hand is: do you, a consumer of music want to pay for that? Is music just a feel-good past time for you? Must all be hyper-palatized? Do you take 3 sugars, 3 creams with your coffee?

i don’t

Julio — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 05:28:23 +0000

…and around this corner

Julio — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:58:54 +0000

a crushing normalcy.

long gray streets creep into the heart.

pragmatic, necessary, boring.

orange night skies…a dull murmor of heavy motors.

the night whispers everything, and the day says nothing.

y aquí te espero.

en esta tumba de lo banal. aquí te esperaré.

(taken from an old blog post. Tuesday, February 15, 2005. unedited.)

Julio — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 03:42:38 +0000

my house doesn’t make any sense.
i pay. i eat. i sleep. i stay.
my house was built before i was born.
i watch. i meddle. i swoon. i don’t pray.

living my time: i grasp. i reach. i tried.
the sun before it rises still is bright somewhere,
out there in outer space.
it burns hot for no one and all.

(written Sept. 3 2009)

champagne laugh

Julio — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:47:55 +0000

amarillo

a escribir. la tarea.
el hecho. la verdad.
santos. heridos.
piel. sabor.
mujer. séptima.
vocina. rasposo.
hambre. aire.
cámara. lleno.
piso. botón.

(taken from an old blog post. Monday, October 09, 2006. unedited.)

le dormeur du carrefour

Julio — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:39:13 +0000

mon ignorance sur le sujet était souligné quand je t’ai dit que c’était vous.
our coincidences made rendez-vous, when I always seemed to run into you.

i live in a world of sudden meaning and passing sadness.
of transient culture and epiphanic minutiae

(taken from an old blog post. Monday, March 05, 2007. edited.)

nil

Julio — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:32:44 +0000

“Are we fallen angels who didn’t want to believe that nothing is nothing and so we were born to lose our loved ones and dear friends one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?”

- Jack Kerouac The Dharma Bums

wasteland

Julio — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 00:22:30 +0000

Connection

Julio — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:15:46 +0000

I think I have finally realized why I tend to be rather irked/bothered by most explicitly *CHICANO* :

I tend to think of myself as being rather singular and un-pigeon-hole-able [but of course this is naive]. I’ve grown accustomed to feeling like an Other even amongst those that expouse feeling as an Other too. For instance, being at a MEChA meeting once in my first year of college brought this feeling on in waves. The notion that we should be united soley because of ethnic origin I began to see was dubious; what I later came to realize is that ethnic origin as a source of affilitaion is a false/invalid affiliation.

A much more profound and useful association/affiliation I’ve found is that found in equally angry/agitated people you meet every day. Those connections are found in shared emotion/feeling/experience transcend the alienation that can be found even within one’s ethnic group. So when I see someone extrapolating a certain behaviour or action as being “so Mexican” it can really irk me. For instance, hitting your kids with a chancla. I know that this seems to be common, but I was never hit with a chancla nor was any other sort of corporal punishment hurled my way. Does this reduce my Mexican-ness?

This is a can of worms which I’ll reprise later…soon…