[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrFKu3xwTlQ]
On 17 May 2007 Anton Corbijn‘s first feature film Control about the life of Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis premiered to rave reviews Cannes Film Festival. The film is based on Deborah Curtis’s book Touching From A Distance about her late husband and the new biography Torn Apart by longtime Mancunians Lindsay Reade (Tony Wilson’s ex-wife) and Mick Middles.
What I Want by Fireball
Just got back from Le Crotoy where the clip above was a summer hit.
I spent two weeks with my children at Le Crotoy, a coastal village in northern France where Joan of Arc was captured before her execution. We had a wonderful time. I caught up on some reading and finished Georges Wolinski‘s Open Letter to My Wife, Being There by Jerzy Kosiński, Theodore Roszak‘s Flicker (extremely boring novel with interesting bits on the American reception of French theory, the love of films and the Cathars), Kronhausen‘s Pornography and the law: The psychology of erotic realism and pornography (no mention of Sade in a work on obscenity?, interesting texts by Poggio‘s Facetiae (placing him on a par with Aretino and Rabelais)). Also stories by de Maupassant (Le Horla, Tellier and Chevelure), and the exquisite Exquisite Corpse by Robert Irwin (a tale of amour fou reminiscent of Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes). I also managed to skim most of Louis Paul Boon’s historical masterpiece Het Geuzenboek (see Fugger bankers family, the Münster Rebellion).
The girls and me watched Maybe Baby, a comic dramatization of a writer’s own life (and the after-effects when his wife finds out) and the first two and a half episodes of Sex and the City, which was somewhat of an enigma to me (Aids not mentioned until episode 3?) because it was both trite and addictive. I sympathized with Mr. Big, at times loathed Carrie, loved Samantha and Miranda and had a crush on Charlotte.
I bought the 2007 sex special issue of Les Inrockuptibles and found La Beauté du Diable by Roland Villeneuve at the local market.
While I was away, Woebot did a Cutting Records thing, Esotika wrote on Hour of the Wolf by Bergman and Lee Hazlewood and Tony Wilson had died. And I was flattered to find that Simon Reynolds had linked to my blog.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRas0im-PVM]
Soldier, soldier (1979) – Spizz Energi
Dedicated to DJ Marieke from Antwerp, who usually plays this after Wire’s “I am the fly, the fly in the ointment.”
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb_ZcfD-NRw ]
I love Youtube bricolage (the art of remixing “found” video clips and music) and while I’m not particular fond of the soundtrack to the clip above (a Brian Eno remix of the Lopez-track from 808 State’s album Don Solaris), I would still like to share it with you for the film snippets listed below. In case your wondering who 808 State are, here is a badly hissing clip from their best track: Pacific. (And here is a clip from The Beloved and “Sun Rising”, at the time a similar outfit to 808 State)
Film credits (not in chronological order): Belle de Jour 1967 Luis Buñuel La Sindrome Di Stendhal 1996 Dario Argento Merlin 1998 Steve Barron Lola Montes 1955 Max Ophüls Siren 2 2006 SCEI Discovery Channel La Frusta e il Corpo 1963 Mario Bava Les Yeux Sans Visage 1960 Georges Franju Pagan Poetry 2001 Nick Knight Blue Velvet 1986 David Lynch Suspiria 1977 Dario Argento Black Narcissus 1947 Michael Powell Possession 1981 Andrzej Zulawski Onibaba 1964 Kaneto Shindô Kumonosu Jô 1957 Akira Kurosawa Sennen Joyû 2001 Satoshi Kon Death Becomes Her 1992 Robert Zemeckis Die Büchse Der Pandora 1929 Georg Wilhelm Pabst Tanin No Kao 1966 Hiroshi Teshigahara Goh-Hime 1992 Hiroshi Teshigahara The Saddest Music In The World 2003 Guy Maddin Faraon 1966 Jerzy Kawalerowicz The Fountain 2006 Darren Aronofsky Solaris 1972 Andrei Tarkovsky Senso 1954 Luchino Visconti Viy/Вий 1967 Georgi Kropachyov & Konstantin Yershov Tristana 1970 Luis Buñuel La Reine Margot 1994 Patrice Chéreau Mulholland Drive 2001 David Lynch Hausu/House 1977 Nobuhiko Obayashi Inferno 1980 Dario Argento Profondo Rosso 1975 Dario Argento Yôkihi 1955 Kenji Mizoguchi
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWL4C7JbOw8]
“Warm Leatherette” is a 1978 single by The Normal, based on J. G. Ballard’s novel Crash.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_p7Ub1NDTVg]
Another Daniel Miller project: Silicon Teens – Memphis Tennessee
Inspiration: Music to read Crash by
Musique du Burundi (1968)
Burundi beat is best known as an appropriated drum style of British New Romantics bands Bow Wow Wow and Adam and the Ants.
The original source of this tribal rhythm is a recording of 25 drummers of the Ingoma tribe, made in 1967 in a village in Burundi by Michel Vuylsteke and Charles Duvelle, a team of French anthropologists. The recording was included on an album, Musique du Burundi, issued by the French Ocora label in 1968. (pictured above)
In 1971 Mike Steiphenson grafted an arrangement for guitars and keyboards onto the Ocora recording for Barclay Records, and the result was Burundi Black, a seven inch that sold more than 125,000 copies and made the British best-seller charts. In 1978, Barclay released a twelve inch version.
In 1981, the track was re-released on Barclay and Cachalot records. This time, Rusty Egan, drummer with the new romantic band Visage, and a French record producer named Jean-Philippe Iliesco recorded a new pop arrangement over the Burundian drummers.
Mike Steiphenson holds the Burundi Black copyright. Adam and the Ants, Bow Wow Wow, and several other bands have made hits with the Burundi beat as a rhythmic foundation. The Burundian drummers who made the original recording are not sharing in the profits. In any case, as the Jamaican recording industry and the Amen break cases have shown, obtaining copyright for a rhythm is a difficult proposition.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6p_WVUZvHLs]
Clear echoes of Faze Action on this Tellier disc, drums courtesy of Tony Allen.
Listen to the second track of the following clip for “Moving Cities” by Faze Action:
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHt8In8CjbU]
If you like Faze Action and Tellier, you’ll like Renaud Paravel
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3BvSRCfxog]
15 Again is the third album released by French electronic duo Cassius. This track “Eye Water” was written and produced by Cassius members Phillippe Zdar, Boom Bass and guest Pharrell Williams. It was recorded in just three weeks in Ibiza.
Original collage by Knalej
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jveW_KFSX4A]
A 1983 album by King Sunny Adé produced by Martin Meissonnier.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDQLgYoCKlE]
Last Night a DJ Saved My Life (song)
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoyB3rTw2Ps]
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxEoU-oE0j4]
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxMqpReA9hs&]
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTpIUTLjv_I]
In our six degrees network this song occupies the interstice between Edie, The Science of Sleep and The Velvet Underground. I watched Sleep and A Scanner Darkly within the space of a couple of days and in a comparison, Sleep was fantastic and Scanner bland. Am I the only one or did Scanner feel like an update of Soylent Green?
