Yuk Bon

Warren Ellis (author of Transmetropolitan and Freakangels amongst other great and freaky shit,) has a podcast of mostly ambient stuff called The 4am. He included “ennui” (aka “that i would find you” aka “sinister chemical wisdom”) in the latest podcast.

Warren Ellis » The 4am: 21 – Sleep Department.

Bad man’s prayer (vox) by yukbon

So last night I hit Grand Central in downtown Miami w/ Cira, met Bunny and Eden for ODDSAC, the Animal Collective/Danny Perez visual album. Ran into Prem and Yasmin on the way in, but they didn’t get in until later. Bunny and Ed introduced us to Emily (not Public Emily #1, Bunny’s Mrs., but another one; electronic musician. Seemed nice, but quiet and disappeared when we got inside.) The merch table had shirts and a poster (that Deakin apologetically said was for display purposes only, as they’d run out.) Producer comes on, says welcome, here’s Danny the director, he says how much he digs MIA and he’s got fam from here and it’s a weird place and here’s a movie to take you to another weird place. (I am paraphrasing.)

It’s probably slightly impossible to classify the damn thing. It’s not a video set to AC music, and it’s not a movie w/ an AC soundtrack. The music’s really bass-heavy in parts, heavy atmospheric and trance bits, acoustic guitar and sudden dynamic shifts, vocals etc. So great. The visuals are chaotic and have a vague series of “stories” or “sections” — they’re more like video vignettes to accompany these soundscapes. The addition of the visuals makes the music less vague and more defined “dark”, imo. A lot of AC’s latter stuff has dark overtones but this makes it more explicit. There were a few things I could have done without — the “water static” scene about 10 minutes in went on too long, I found it kind of grating and boring, but that’s probably my only real complaint. The opening piece, bass-heavy and vocal, sort of like a trance-y meditation

During the Q&A period afterwards someone asks the question I am wanting to ask: “What does ODDSAC mean?” and Danny says “you’ll find out in the morning when the subliminal effects have had time to sink in”, everyone laughs and someone else asks about the equipment (DVX100, final cut pro, after effects,) and someone asks the most insipid question: “how much fun was this to make?” (which is maybe another way to say “I have nothing to ask but would like you to acknowledge that I spoke to you”) — unsurprisingly, it was apparently a lot of fun to make. I’m going to posit that the title is way to conflate the ideas of a jumble of oddness and a sort of nascent strange egg (cf Coil’s “Strange Birds” — “One day your eggs are going to hatch and some very strange birds are going to emerge”, although I don’t think that’s what they were referring or alluding to, I mean that it’s in the similar idea.) Other bits: the Guggenheim installation was apparently much, much harder to do than this (Danny Perez also did that w/ AC), although the dude asking also wanted to know if they had plans to do more work like this (or the Guggenheim thing) in the future, that was left sort of open — Deakin said that Guggenheim thing was a sudden thing they didn’t know about until it was possible; no word on whether they’d do another visual album like this.

At any rate, Danny’s joke aside, I did have a horrible nightmare this morning. Personally very frightening and woke heart pounding and angry and confused, woozy and headache.

Here’s the trailer, doesn’t do it any justice:

If you get a chance, go, it’s fucking brilliant. It’ll be on DVD in June, no non-DVD CD release.

Today breakfast was shakshouka. To wit:

slice/dice 1 onion into a hot pan w/ olive oil, when they start getting translucent, toss in 1 or 2 jalapeños, diced and seeded and 4 cloves of garlic, crushed/diced and then sweat them. Toss in 1/2 tsp of cumin and coriander, grind a bit of pepper, toss in a large can (28 oz) of crushed tomato (whole tomato is OK, but you’ll have to smush them up). let this stew and sweat and evaporate a bit. when it’s roughly the consistency of a thick spaghetti sauce/stew, crack three or four eggs in — one at a time — and gently lay them in, like a poached egg. cover and wait until the egg whites are set. sprinkle feta on top and serve with bread to sop up the egg yolk and the tomato mix. (leftover veggies can go in this fairly easily — i tossed cauliflower in mine)

Ennui by yukbon
I made this using a mixer i got for 50$ via craigslist, my tele, audacity and the onboard mic on my netbook (couldn’t get my mic/cable back from eden in time) last week. Reading Xibie’s words put me in a Jesu mood, but the music that came out was very much not that. But I like it, so there you have it. The Good Witch said it reminded her of Aphex, and both she and Kat thought that the laughing was my voice (it’s a sample), Eden said it reminded him of GYBE! if they were a 1-man-band consisting of the guitarist who didn’t get into the band (uh…thanks ed?).

Strong storms to usher in another frigid week – South Florida – MiamiHerald.com.

IT’S MARCH, WINTER SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE IN JANUARY OR DECEMBER OR EVEN FUCKING NOVEMBER.

Via Warren Ellis, there’s Shane MacGowan and Friends ‘I Put A Spell On You’ in aid of Concern Worldwide’s work in Hait. Johnny Depp on guitar, Nick Cave, etc etc.

Perhaps I should make a different-versions of the same song mix of “I Put a Spell On You” like I did for “Stagger Lee” and “My Funny Valentine”, although my favorite version of “spell” is still Marilyn Manson’s

via My Funny Valentine | yukbon | 8tracks.

via Stagger Lee / Stackalee / Staggolee | yukbon | 8tracks.

could anything be more perfect than this?

William Shatner to say shit as star of Shit My Dad Says pilot | TV | Newswire | The A.V. Club.

YouTube – Animal Collective – Cuckoo Cuckoo Malta Festival 2006.

I don’t know, I kept dismissing Animal Collective for years — too twee, too annoying, too faux-artsy-fartsy. And then I heard this song and I couldn’t stop listening to it, sad chaotic and I didn’t know why; and then I heard “what would I want? sky” and I fell in love with the singalong and “My Girls” is very sweet and bizarro like a male Bjork. But I kept coming back to “Cuckoo Cuckoo”. In the broader sense it’s about losing childhood and sorrow, but in the more specific sense I am pretty sure it’s about a miscarriage. Note the album version has the last verse as “where’s my friend i wanna hold him tight” but this live version it’s definitely “where’s my wife i wanna hold her tight”. The piano part samples are so mellow and ordered — I want to say Chopin but it doesn’t feel sharp enough and I’m too lazy to google it out. Liszt maybe?

How I lost my boy

The king in I died
He kept floating past my eyes
And singing his songs
Life was good now death’s all wrong
Cause you can’t feel a thing
No heart flutters in late spring
You just drift and pray
For sun kissed golden days

And I can’t hold what’s in my hand
Don’t do any good to say this isn’t what I planned
And little kids sliding down the steel park slide
Little kids can’t play with things that have died
Sometimes all I want is one favorite song
And two to three minutes don’t seem so long
And where’s my mom I want to hold her tight
She’s so far away from crowded nights
I’m going cuckoo cuckoo
We’re all going cuckoo cuckoo

He said please stay
You can see me, don’t go away
I can’t see the landscape
Please describe its amaranthine haze
It’s odd where I am
There are people you’re not like them
They just look away
For rain quenched golden days

And my tears quench five feet of lawn
And I can scream, but I cannot yawn
And people gonna come and people gonna cry
He just woke and dreamt and ate and died
Don’t try and erase what you have done
Put your fingers in a mouth and kiss it if it wants
And where’s my wife, I want to hold her tight
He’s so far away from mountain lights
I’m going cuckoo cuckoo
We’re all going cuckoo cuckoo

Pink Mania on Vimeo on Vimeo

via Pink Mania on Vimeo.