THITH ZINE » SHOW & TELL

The Dark Of The Matinee #1. 5 favorites.

Jason — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 10:15:31 +0000

We were talking with a good friend the other night about movies and it got us remembering some favorites of the art film variety. With tour just ending and the next one still a few weeks away, might be a good time for a movie marathon.

“Badlands” by Terrence Malick.
It’s total genius. The soundtrack, the natural light. Genius. And so simple a story, done 100 times before and since but somehow, never even as close.

the films of Claire Denis
Claire Denis is one of the best living directors. Her eye is amazing and the different types of stories she tells really wide. Actually, there is something in the languid pacing of her films that reminds me of Terrence Malick. They’re subtle and rich in texture while still managing to sometimes get into some really sensational subjects.

“Satantango” by Belá Tarr
Okay. it’s long. Really long. Really, really, really long. And I wouldn’t watch it at home because It would just be too much and slow and everything else would be far too distracting, but if you get a chance to see the Tarkovsky-esque 7.5 hour movie projected and disappear into the black and white world for a day, it’s well worth it. It’s more like looking at paintings than watching a movie. Long shots of people walking in the rain and slowly losing their minds in an impossibly bleak Hungarian landscape following the collapse of their collective farm at the end of soviet rule. So, yeah, if you like the art films, and the length isn’t too terrifying, look for it playing at museum or something somewhere.

“Dead Man” by Jim Jarmusch
Jim Jarmusch is obviously a hero of the underground and someone who just seems like he’d make a fantastic dinner guest. All his movies offer complex examinations of culture clashes but Dead Man always seemed a totally different beast. You can play Pynchon like games of spot the Blake reference and the singularity of narrative makes it feel more novelistic than his other films. One of my favorite things about it is the way it inverts the tradition of the Western by replacing the panoramic with tight and highly contrasted close-ups. In a sense, it looks more like contemporary portraits of the old west by photographers like Edward Curtis than it does a ‘Western’.

“Spirit Of The Beehive” by Victor Erice
One of our favorite beginnings to a film with children running through town shouting, “the movies are coming, the movies are coming” as a mobile projection van arrives to screen Frankenstein. This spanish film from the 70’s is all atmosphere and although very realistic still feels like a dream. It’s all about Anna Torrent. The movie follows the 6 year old actress as she tries to make sense of the world around her following the Spanish civil war. The scene when the two sisters whisper back and forth about Frankenstein… oh brother, it kills me.

“She is still, is not still, still is not still” the Photographs of Bill Henson & DANIELS’ Pigeons

Jason — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:57:24 +0000

When we’re writing songs or working on ideas for things we often keep a lot of reference material most of which is images we find on-line and such. While we were writing ‘Pigeons’ we had kept these photographs from Bill Henson.
More than a few of the tracks on the LP deal with ideas of youth, transience and ambiguity and these amazingly open and suggestive pictures just looked so much like the movie playing in our head.
Funny thing is, we had kind of forgotten about them by the time we made the Pigeons video and although we talked a lot with DANIELS about who the girl in the song was we never mentioned or sent them the images.
But somehow they nailed it.
see for yourself

Radical.

more Bill Henson:

“The Ruins of Detroit” photos by Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre/////“Virgo” Re-Issue of this classic House LP

Jason — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:29:33 +0000

This August, super cool art publisher Steidl is putting out a really beautiful collection of pictures of abandoned spaces in Detroit by artists Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre.

Since the 1960’s, American cities had been going bad. Robert Moses and scores of modernist urban planners experimented on the organism and their failures led to fiscal crisis and the collapse of social infrastructures.
Cities are living organisms. They’re fragile and their relations symbiotic; relying on the people that live inside to keep it whole and growing strong. We live in cities and depend on them not just for our beds but for our inspiration and creative health. If left malnourished the city gets sick or injured.

By the mid to late eighties, decline was in it’s final stages. The golden age of soul, of Motown, of funk and disco was over and an entire generation of kids had already come up afterwards to go popping, locking and inventing new styles that were already dominating the U.S. charts. But some of the kids in places like Detroit and Chicago were growing inspired in absence and they were beginning to make another language. Using recently affordable synths and drums machines to rebuild a new approximation of soul and funk and they did it in gutted warehouses and industrial spaces left rusting. The roots of House and Techno are dug in that rotting of American cities.

///////

Originally released in 1989 and already somewhat late to the Trax party, Vertigo’s self-titled debut is Parliament meets Kraftwerk and still as startling, orginal and alien as it must have been when it first came out.

Eric Lewis and Merwyn Sanders grew up in isolation from the scenes in Detroit and New York. Insular to their scene in Chicago they were little kids playing in funk and soul cover bands before they were even teenagers. The Chicago scene was growing, simple explosive venues stripped of everything but the music pumped to body rattling volume and fuelled on a need to connect and let go. Lewis & Sanders began hanging out in the clubs, at ‘The Warehouse’, ‘The Music Box’, ‘The Power Plant’, where they would listen to legendary dj’s like Ron Hardy or Frankie Knuckles. When they started producing their own music they did it by building out from sketches inspired by their love for the House Music they were hearing on the South Side. “Song ideas, somewhat unfinished in a sense,” says Merwyn on the liner notes. But these are ideas you dissolve into. Lushly romantic layers of synths building atop lean beats and icy hi-hats. It’s intoxicating, the colors vibrant and seductive. It’s also music made before computers, with simple triggers and synths being played by hand and because of it, there’s a certain looseness and a character that kind of went missing in a lot of the dance music that came after. Above all else, you can feel it. It’s physical music stoking the soul.

Ron Hardy at the Music Box in the mid-80’s

The first 12” is dominated by the powerful instrumentals. “Do You Know Who You Are”, “Vision”, “Take Me Higher” This is music from a future church. Gospel chords, inspirational titles; these are good boys hell-bent on defining their own spirit and sound. Airy synths rising higher, the hi-hat cutting against this smoke, while faster hooks play out poly-rhythmically and pads play out like a choir.

By contrast, the second 12 is strict and sinister. “Ride” is a dark cycle of pulsing and swelling hooks swinging around the words, “It’s time to ride the wave, ride with me.” They’re spoken softly and smoothly over and over and the track is simply incredible. As is “All The Time” with it’s sly slapped bass and menacing deep chords.

This is an empty husk of a city. A future space removed of all but brief reminders of the world that was.

“Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes, small pieces of history in suspension. The state of ruin is temporary by nature, the volatile result of the end of an era and the fall of empires. This fragility, the time elapsed but even so running fast, lead us to watch them one very last time: being dismayed, or admiring, wondering about the permanence of things.”
-Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre

Check out more of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre’s work here
Grab “Virgo” here
and see more of the abandoned building of Detroit here

Yoshi Sodeoka-”Let It Be/Bleed”

Jason — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 06:31:46 +0000

Pretty rad
Yoshi Sodeoka’s work explores processes of fracturing and degeneration. His videos and photographic images reformat and disrupt the familiar creating highly stylized new images. In this piece, video footage of The Beatles and Rolling Stones performing ‘Let It Be’ and ‘Let It Bleed’ respectively are re-arranged and spliced to create a simultaneously rigid and chaotic new work.

see more here

LOOK LOOK

Jason — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 05:56:08 +0000

GORY DAYS AND THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART’S DEBUT LP

Jason — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 03:37:04 +0000

If you grew up almost anywhere in America in the staggeringly ignorant days of being a teenager before the internet and were at all interested in bands beyond the regular MTV rotation, what you probably used to do was, get out a pen and paper and send away to the indie record labels for catalogues being sure to include a self addressed stamped envelope.
Many, many weeks later the catalogue would arrive. It was never too big, often Xeroxed or a simple single b/w sheet. Maybe there were a handful of bands you already knew and some that seemed larger than life just because you kept seeing them there in these catalogues or mentioned in interviews. In reality maybe a hundred kids cared about most of these but, in those days, there were no ‘friend counts” or page views and they were mysterious, mythological and known only by what you could figure out from reviews and articles in imported mags from England or the one time you saw that video on 120 minutes at 1 a.m. already dreading the Monday morning alarm clock. And so, you’d read and re-read the catalogue studying the blurb and the picture and the song titles and band names and eventually you’d check the boxes to the record you already knew you wanted taking a chance on two or three other singles you knew next to nothing about and then send it back and begin the wait by the postbox for your records to arrive.

It’s so strangely archaic now; it was so insular and personal. There was no immediacy or rush because you were alone in your development and nobody you knew had heard or seen these records and the anticipation was yours and yours alone. From SST I grew old waiting on Screaming Trees, Sub Pop made me grey waiting for Superfuzz and Bigmuff, Drag City made me hold out for months for Pavement’s first 10′, while Merge let me waste away awaiting Superchunk. I’ve long since forgotten the abysmal failures, the waste of wax singles from absolutely terrible bands but the good ones were prized scalps. It was a time when ‘I knew them first’ status was remarkably inclusive, measured in years not weeks. It was brutal and absurd. No doubt the kids are now more than all right being able to glom the entire history of The Fall or some such in a night grabbing the back-catalogue via wikipedia and few clicks. And the price we pay is of course that blog life has made everything passé three weeks from release. But those of us old enough to remember, do have a certain right to bemoan the miles we walked barefoot and the dues the youth of today take for granted if only because it stunk and we earned it.

The relevance of all this is that a few weeks ago I gave up a Sunday trying to track down The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart debut on vinyl. I went to no less than four NY shops looking for it only to find everywhere was sold out. ‘We’ll have more in next week,’ they all said. ‘Ridiculous,’ I thought annoyed at having to wait for it. And thus, impatient and either forgetting exactly how long mail-order used to take or made wonderfully nostalgic by the few TPOPAH mp3’s I already had to go on, I went home and straight to the Slumberland records site to order it. I hadn’t even thought of doing such an absurd thing since high school and I immediately regretted the decision.

The weeks went by, and I was reminded of the above memories, and then Pitchfork gave the album a huge review and totally like stole any shot I might have at ‘I knew ‘em foist,’ status but now you know what? I totally don’t even care. It arrived today and so, I’m happy to report that indie labels have become far more responsible and prompt in the years since I was made to suffer. A scant few weeks after I ordered it, we’re listening to it on, what to god I hope is, one of the last truly cold nights of this winter.

This record is so brilliantly Vaselines and Jesus & Mary Chain and Shop Assistants and any number of sounds I would have truly flipped on in junior high and high school that it’s almost as if it’s a long forgotten mail-order only just arrived. Not that it’s dated or purely nostalgic, because there is certainly a something new about it all if for no other reason than it’s re-contextualizing of those sounds. But their name says it all. The songs are great, classic ‘Left of the Dial’ hits sounding tinged with melancholia and the hope that maybe this week the new girl will show up in your class, be given the seat next to yours. Romantic titles, love obsessed and innocent, single string solos washed in fuzz, it’s maybe the perfect way to wait out these last heartsick, dark days of winter.

see more TPOPAH here
and don’t it remind you of:

DOUBLE FEATURE-LINDA LINDA LINDA & LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE FABULOUS STAINS

Jason — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:05:11 +0000

In desperate need of finding a singer for the school’s big music show just a couple of days away, three Japanese teenagers recruit a Korean exchange student to front their newly formed cover band. With a stillness and pacing alien to any American movie about high school kids, 2007’s Linda, Linda, Linda is a near perfect slice of teenage life. As they set about practicing, and practicing and practicing, the girls bond around the common purpose and modest goal of having a good show. They work themselves to the bone, get a pep talk from the Ramones in the Budokan, and nearly blow it all when the rains come. It’s awkward and sweet and an amazingly honest account of what it’s like being in a garage band.

In this the final scene of Linda Linda Linda, the girls get their moment of glory at the big show. It’s so heroically good you’ll get goose bumps.

Join The Profesionals. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains (1981)
“we don’t put out.”
Cult film Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains stars a 16 year old Diane Lane and a 13 year old Laura Dern as would be punk icons out on a rain soaked tour. Also staring Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols and Clash bassist Paul Simonon, the film gets enough right in it’s portrait of underground bands to overlook the dated bits. The Shags-like sound of the stains seems an indie phenomenon some 20 years ahead of its time. Filmed with a dirty loose feel that goes well with a cynical and sarcastic anti-establishment view of the â€˜biz’, this ultra-cool film was once abandoned to late night tv and the midnight movie circuit but has just been released on DVD. Rumor has it this is the film that gave the White Stripes‘ their name.

LEAVE IT TO THE AMATEURS. BOYS AND GIRLS, THE LESS THAN ADEQUATE SHAGGS. (1969)
BLESS.

PILLOW FIGHT. ZERO DE CONDUITE. JEAN VIGO.

Jason — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:21:13 +0000

Set to the watery strains of a backward voice and orchestra, a boarding school rebellion ends with this short-breath of a scene where, ”in a storm of burst pillows, a boy flips onto a chair being carried in a slow motion procession of anarchic students.
Jean Vigo’s 1933 film Zero For Conduct might be the first truly great movie about teenage angst. In it, the cruel and absurd demands of teachers are upended while the youth band in solidarity. But Vigo’s dreamlike war of feathers and tin cans were apparently too much for the French establishment who banned the film until 1945 for it’s anti-authoritarian message.

The French censors may have had cause to be so jumpy, the nineteen-thirties were of course an extremely volatile period in Europe, as a world economic crisis deepened, there was a real sense that the established order was collapsing. Fascism and communism had been battling violently to seize power from weakened democracies and monarchies since the end of the First World War. In Berlin, Rome and Madrid, this battle was won by the Fascists as Europe began to arm itself for an even more destructive conflict.

But Vigo isn’t interested in the justifications of any power structure. In his view, all authority is inherently corruptible and abusive and his youthful allegiance is to the those who are trapped beneath the larger systems of imposed discipline. After all, it’s the boys in his film hoisting their flag above the school who would soon fight and die on the nightmarish battlefields of World War II.

Together with his 1934 masterpiece L’Atalante, Vigo made his reputation as one of cinema’s transcendent artists. Both films are elegant, unsentimental and effortlessly simple.

The son of a militant radical murdered in prison, Vigo was tubercular from childhood and his life was lived under it’s shadow. His films were unsuccessful, butchered by inept studio bosses, nearly lost and soon after finishing L’Atalante, he died a tragically young 29.

watch the whole film here.
“To the rear grandfather
To the rear Father and Mother
To the rear grandfathers
To the rear old Soldiers
To the rear old chaplains
To the rear old bags
The performance is over
Now for the kids
The show’s about to begin.”
From the poem ‘HARD TIMES’ by Jaques Praveret