LeVautourChronique

Prints!

2012-01-18T20:37:00.000-05:00

My infamous "crazy chicken" design is now available as a limited-edition custom print!

Think of this as the LeVautour equivalent of the soup-can or Obey-giant. THIS is my pop-art manifesto. Get with it.

$10 for a basic, unframed, 8x10 matte or glossy print. Framing options, custom colors, bizarro printing options (I'll find a way to put this on ANYTHING you want...) are totally available, and pricing is negotiable. Get at me.

bernard.levautour@yahoo.com

New LeVautourEnsemble record out now!

2012-01-18T18:59:00.002-05:00

My solo musical outfit, LeVautourEnsemble, has just released our second record, "Machinique Meltdown," on the world-infamous Headhat Records!

Like the first LeVautourEnsemble record, (2010's long-delayed "...whose wings are a dull reality"... as well as Tipsy Cougar's notoriously chaotic 2011 album "Immaculate Conceptions" and a ton of other awesome and awesomely-odd stuff) this one is available to download for FREE/ donation through the "webhat" imprint. Download it here.... now. Because I said so. I mean, it's free, what do you have to lose??

Predictably, this record is an odd one. It's sorta-kinda a concept-record. It's sorta-kinda a response to a perverse challenge (I like challenges). It's sorta-kinda a hip-hop record (?!?) (emphasis on the sorta-kinda). It's sorta-kinda a whole bunch of things that it's really not at all.

As many who know me personally are probably aware, I get a strange sort of thrill from finding new odd-ball accolades for my press-kits ("... like a young CC Deville wielding an out-of-control fire-hose," anyone? "...mystical..."? lol) Well, from this one so far I've gotten an absolute GEM courtesy of Headhat label-boss/ noise-beat virtuoso Adhesiveslipper. (as if I needed MORE reasons to love Headhat to death.) This record, apparently... "has the headiest liner-notes of any record we've released so far." I'll take it! Thanks Dan! (To the rest of you, please take that as a challenge to listen to this record and give it the most out-there review [good, bad, outraged, indifferent, wtf, whatever]. It probably deserves it, and I'd love to hear what you think.)

Since I know that very few people even OPEN the file with the liner-notes in it for digital-downloads, I may as well just post those notes here, give you a taste of what this thing is about, what you're getting your eardrums into with this one....

LeVautourEnsemble- Machinique Meltdown

“Machinic, a word that does not exist, translates the French machinique, the adjectival form of le machin, a gadget, a watchamacallit.”

This footnote from editor/ translator Robert Brinkley’s notations to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s 1975 essay “What Is A Minor Literature?” provides part of the title and a sort of a point-of-departure for this collection of songs and sounds.

This album was spawned as an outlet for a meltdown of various sorts, in the immediate aftermath of a graduate-literature program which found me, by the end of the final semester, deeply immersed in attempting to understand and apply the critical-theory of Delueze and Guattari to a variety of research, writing, and art projects... resulting in a sort of troubling void where Deleuzian concepts such as rhizomatic mapping, deteretorialization, assemblages, “becoming,” and, of course, the ever-elusive “machinique,” acquired vast degrees of personal resonance on many different levels.

The resulting album was initially intended as a concept-record about varying sorts of apocalypses. In its finished form, in many ways it is this indeed... though, in true Deleuzian form, in a far more confusing, meandering, and easily-misunderstandable way than initially intended. You could probably refer to each resulting “song” on this short album as a “Plateau,” (and you probably wouldn’t be entirely wrong)... but I’d kind of prefer that you didn’t.

This album was recorded between January 2011 and December 2011, primarily at the LoftDeLeVautour, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. All instruments, sounds, voices, noises, etc were performed, created, and/ or mutated and heavily manipulated by Bernard P. Provencher LeVautour.

Again, in true Deleuzian fashion, I choose to refuse to explain anything about any track on this album with any further degree of detail within these notations.

Questions may be addressed directly by email, at bernard.levautour@yahoo.com

For a taste of the record, as your download is downloading, and a taste for the accompanying video-footage (If I remember right, there's some sort of video or other for the vast majority of the tracks on this record if you visit my Youtube channel)... here's the intro-track, and the outro-track. Believe it or not, I totally feel that, over the course of the record, the transition between the two begins to make a little bit of sense.

(LeVautourEnsemble- Preface)

(LeVautourEnsemble- Hybrid Eyes)

Pull Trouble news/ updates.

2011-10-16T13:54:00.000-04:00

Thanks to everyone who made the Pull Trouble From the Fire record-release show (AKA "Occupy Dodge Street") in Salem, Mass last weekend amazing. Lots of pictures, footage, etc is still coming in, but you can check out some stuff from my own collection from the night here. (special thanks to Crooked Streets and Harvey Mapcase for making the bill for the night that much more awesome, and Dodge Street for putting it on.)

And, oh hey, guess what? The CD-release event is passed which means... the record is now available! The initial run is fairly small and entirely self-released with no distro or support, so if you'd like a copy, for a mere $5, email me and we'll make it happen. In the meantime, take a listen and download a couple tracks from the album on Soundcloud.

... and now onto the next one. We've got a big show coming up that we're really excited about- We'll be opening for Marco Benevento at The Red Door in Portsmouth, New Hampshire (legitimately, no hyperbole, one of my favorite venues on the planet). This show is part of Marco's 3-week residency stint at the always-amazing Hush Hush Sweet Harlot music-series, and we are EXTREMELY honored to be a part of it.

Thursday, October 27th, The Red Door. 107 State Street, Portsmouth, NH. Doors at 7, show at 8. $17 in advance, $20 at the door.

Advance tickets are now available here. This is a tiny, intimate room for this kind of show, and there's definitely the possibility that it will sell out, so purchasing tickets soon would be a very good idea if you'd like to join us for an amazing evening. If you're coming, or for added details and conversations about the show as it approaches, stop by the event-invite, RSVP, and share it with your friends!

Pull Trouble From the Fire CD-release show (and a fan-made video!)

2011-09-24T02:33:00.000-04:00

My band Pull Trouble From The Fire's CD-release show for our self-titled debut EP is fast approaching! Friday, October 7th, at Dodge Street, in Salem, Massachusetts, with our good friends Crooked Streets and Harvey Mapcase. Be there.

Yeah, that's right. It's a Friday night in October, in Salem. So, yeah, it's going to be pretty insane. You're not going to want to miss this one.

Get details, and let us know if you can make it here.

This is the cover to the forthcoming record. The artwork is by Bill Fennel. Bill also recently decided to make a music-video/ short-film to one of the songs off of the forthcoming record, and did a great job. Check it out, it's pretty neat.

Pull Trouble From The Fire's self-titled debut streaming on Soundcloud!

2011-08-19T01:44:00.000-04:00

We've currently got the entire forthcoming record streaming for free on Soundcloud. AND... two of the tracks are available there for a limited time as free downloads! Take a listen, share with your friends.

Pull Trouble From The Fire, forthcoming self-titled debut. by PullTroubleFromTheFire

Photos from the debut Pull Trouble From The Fire show...

2011-08-05T01:30:00.000-04:00

Shawn E. Dailey is an excellent photographer. He travelled down to Salem, Mass with Pull Trouble From The Fire to shoot our debut set. Check out his album from the night, and peruse his wonderful work, here.

Pull Trouble From The Fire debut-show video-collection!

2011-07-20T01:15:00.000-04:00

Thanks to everyone who helped to make our debut live show a very fun night. Here are some videos.

Intro/ Roach-tree-

Gaslighting-

Long Shiny Black Hairs-

Trainwrecks-

Dead Wait-

Stay Awake (courtesy of Bill Fennell)-

Outro-

Arrangements for the Pull Trouble From The Fire show...

2011-07-12T02:02:00.000-04:00

The show is this Thursday. Like, less than 3 days away. Let's get our situations straight, make sure everyone who wants to go can, and know how we're getting it done.

As of the current moment, it looks like I still have one seat that has yet to be officially claimed in my car. We're heading down early, aiming to leave Portsmouth for Salem around 6, to spend some time in that awesome city, and not feel rushed, prior to the show. Earlier in the day, I will be in Nashua and driving through Manchester. So, if you're off from work that day, and want to tag along, be in touch.

Other than that, I know that several other people are heading down from NH, and I've heard much talk of car-pool options and available ride-situations. Be in touch, I'll put you in touch with some people, we'll make it happen. Consider this an open-thread for ride arrangements.

Also, I'm vaguely considering booking a room in Salem, as a sort of a crash-pad for the NH kids that "accidentally" drink too much to get home that night. A sort of "throw in whatever you feel" arrangement. So, if you're driving down, throw a sleeping-bag or a blanket in the car, just in case.

Either way, be there. It's not that far, and Salem is a SUPER-fun city. It's destined to be a crazy night.

Pull Trouble From The Fire, flyer and event-invite.

2011-07-05T22:16:00.000-04:00

...and check out our event invite on Facebook, let us know that you're coming!

Music updates, part 1

2011-07-03T14:46:00.000-04:00

Big news on the music-front (well, big to me, anyway.)

After a year hiding out in our clandestine studio on the New England coast, my first "real" band in years, Pull Trouble From The Fire, just finished our debut record (as of yet untitled), to be released soon, after a string of phenomenal sessions with Richard Marr at Galaxy Park Studios. It sounds amazing, I promise. Stay tuned.

We have also just booked out debut live show, staying true to our word that this would come as soon as the record was complete. We'll be headlining a show at Dodge Street in Salem, Massachusetts (yes, THAT Salem) on Thursday, July 14th, with Cardinal Law. The show is at 9, it's FREE, and it's "Thirsty Thursday," so, you know, drink specials and shit. Plan to come and get crazy with us. (I'm totally willing to help set up caravan/ convoy/ carpool options from various New Hampshire spots, [as well as possibly going in on a room or something, for those of us who don't have to work too early on Friday], so if you're considering making the trek down, be in touch. It's not that far, and Salem's a super-fun city. [Duh.]) I'm working on a flyer and a facebook event-invite today, I'll post it as soon as it's done.

In other music news, the second record from my solo-project, LeVautourEnsemble, "Machinique Meltdown," is coming along, slowly but surely. I dropped a new video of a track from the record this morning. Check it out.

A Rare Personal Entry... Some Sort of Catharsis?

2011-05-07T23:11:00.002-04:00

I rarely post purely personal essays here.... (this will be my first entry in a while that doesn't feature the "promo-whoring" tag...) but I've had a lot on my mind lately that makes me think that it might be time (and since I assume that a good chunk of my readers are at least acquainted with me personally, this doesn't seem all that out of line.) For some reason I just have a gut feeling that, as a writer, I need to explore and explain my last year a bit. This may be more for my benefit than yours. I don't think that it matter, I just feel that a few words on the matter need to be said.

This blog is, at its most basic level, about exploring my quasi-academic/ artistic interest in identity-construction, post-post-structural-reconstronstruction, whatever you want to call it (I am well aware that only a small handful of my readership has any idea what I mean by this... the rest of you, thanks for bearing with me...) and therefore a quasi-critical examination and sharing of my own projects must, by necessity, factor into what I do here, in some sort of meta-identity-crit way (hence all the "promo-whoring" tags... tangentially, for my academic friends and readers, I should probably make a long-overdue point here that what I mean by "identity-crit" has nothing to do with the contested, controversial critical camp that we problematically call "identity-politics.") Therefore, returning for a moment every now and then to where I'm coming from as it relates more directly to my personal-life doesn't seem to be a terribly large departure.

I've been, off and on, for the last couple weeks, in an odd, spacey, twitchy sort of mood, and I initially couldn't figure out why. There didn't initially seem to be any tangible triggers. Then it dawned on me. Last year around this time, I was in the process of making a series of conscious decisions to step back a bit and try to change the way that I look at things, think about things, deal with things.

Easter weekend of last year, I was presenting a paper at a literary-conference in New Orleans. Academically, the semester had been quite rocky prior to that; I had been having lots of internal arguments with myself, of the "what is our job exactly?" and "to what end?" sort. Personally, it had been a long time prior to that since I had gotten an opportunity to take any time off from my paying-gig waiting tables. Perhaps more importantly, it had been even longer since I had had any sort of "me-time," particularly in a place where I don't really know anyone (a situation that I tend to thrive off of, to clear my head and reassess.) It was a wonderful weekend. More pointedly, though, in all three ways, that weekend became a sort of a turning-point for me. Stepping back from my usual routines, stepping onto the plane, and then onto the streets of the French Quarter, I began to realize that I felt like I was running on a treadmill, physically, mentally, emotionally. Academically, the experiences of the conference certainly didn't answer any of my questions about our scholarly pursuits and goals, but gave me a far more nuanced way of asking myself them, and gave me a glimpse of the giant academic-dragon we were all trying to ride and wrangle like a rodeo-bull. Personally, I realized that my sanity and stability required a more regular exposure again to the invigorating "myself alone in a crowd" stimulus I had thrived on at certain points in the past, but had tried to ignore or forget for a block of years prior, out of various sorts of apparent "necessity." In short, I realized that weekend that quite a few things that I had come to assume to be "necessities" and "priorities" needed to be reassessed.

A few really messy and hectic weeks later, I chose to end a long-term relationship with a live-in-girlfriend the night of my 28th birthday. (Note to self/ word of advice- Do not make life-trajectory-altering decisions on major memorable dates like birthdays. Bad idea. Again, this has been a year of learning-experiences.)

This week, I turned 29, marking off a full year since these events. I'm not going to pull any punches, my 28th year was far from my best. It's been a roller-coaster year, in so many regards... experiments (which didn't all work, by any means) with various new ways of thinking about things led to so many moments of varying kinds of instability, for sure. (Massive props to the people in my life who were there for me and supportive through these times. You know who you are. I can only imagine that I've been pretty difficult at times.)

But, hey, looking back, some good things are coming from volatile times... and that was certainly part of the goal. I completed my Master's Degree in December, with marks that I'm certainly not ashamed of (in fact, oddly, my final semester clocked in my only grad-level 4.0 finish, despite personally feeling a bit of a shit-show and a nut-bag at the time.) In need of a distraction over the last summer, I joined my first functional full-line-up band in quite a few years (Pull Trouble From the Fire), giving up in certain regards on my long-running (mis-guided) attempt to quit making (non-oddball/ experimental) music cold-turkey.... which has provided a great return to something that legitimately makes me happy. One recent weekend, oddly situated within that strange span between Easter and my birthday, I went down to Galaxy Park Studios in Allston, Mass. with that band to work on our forthcoming record, marking my first time recording in a pro-caliber studio since I was... 23? Of course, doing so at the beginning of my 29th year inevitably brought to mind the old cliche about "make it by 30 or hang it up"... which becomes an even more quirky and tongue-in-cheek thought considering that, for the first time I can recall, I'm actually the youngest member of this act and (not to throw anyone under any busses here) the only one who has yet to reach that age. A thoroughly wonderful, stimulating, and revitalizing weekend, for sure. My second record with LeVautourEnsemble, the apocalypse-themed quasi-ironic-hip-hop-ish thing that I intended to bust out really quickly as some sort of post-semester catharsis keeps, appropriately, running into various hang-ups and stalls. That's probably a good thing, in the long-run. On a personal note, I realized yesterday that, after a long string of back-to-back LTR's, this is the first year that I've spent completely (intentionally) single since I was 19? And as much as I can't claim that I was always great over the course of the year at figuring out how to DO that again after an entire decade, a full third of my life, it was totally something that I needed. I feel like I'm on a far better track to figure a lot of things out than I was at this point last year, as much as I can't say I'm necessarily any closer to answers. When are we ever? What are "answers"?

In other words, a full year later, I'm getting my motivation back, and feeling like I'm actually starting to live again. The official end of this very messy year feels like a net-positive change. I'm ready to be functional again, in so many regards.

(ok, ok, my quasi-narcisistic verbal-diarhea ends here. I commend anyone who made it this far into this self-centered mouth-explosion. Thank you. For everything.)

You As You As Man-Consciousness-System

2011-03-14T12:50:00.000-04:00

Last night I finished and posted a new video for another track from LeVautourEnsemble's forthcoming second album, "Machinique Meltdown."

This one comes about as a response to a sampling-duel with Ross Boyd of The Tuna Fish Discrepency, prodded and mediated by Adhesiveslipper of Headhat Records. It's on, Ross. Can't wait to see what you make of this absurdity.

In my contribution to this excellent game, I mashed the wacky sample in question up in a steaming pot of crazy-broth with some robots, kittens, bass, beats, and spirally chaos. Who doesn't like those things???

As per usual (or at least often) with LeVautourEnsemble content, I think a little disclaimer is in order here. Since I've had some issues in the past relating to online censorship of nude mannequins (no, I'm not kidding. When I initially dropped the current logo for this site, among similar images from the same concept/ photo-shoot of Miss Chloe Claustrophobia, I was flagged on several websites by the content-gestapo who apparently can't tell plaster from flesh...), I should probably point out that anything in this video that appears in any way naked is NOT human. Most often it's a robot... sometimes a kitten.

Snazzmobbing

2011-03-07T23:45:00.000-05:00

Got a crazy idea today. Let's get a new phenomenon started. We're calling it "snazzmobbing."

Basically, we're going to get groups of people together, over-dressed to the swanky hilts, and congregate suddenly in places where our snazziness will seem particularly out of place... like dive-bars to drink (presumably poorly-made) martinis.

Obviously, like any attempt like this, it's not going to be much fun without a bit of help. So, if this sounds like fun to you, pass it on. Share this, tell your friends, post a Snazzmobbing-related status on Facebook... and drop the #snazzmobbing hash-tag into your Twitter stream.

Test-run in the New Hampshire seacoast area sometime soon? Who wants in?

Twitter...

2011-03-05T13:34:00.003-05:00

I finally broke down and joined.

Feel free to follow me, @b_levautour.

Pull Trouble From The... OCD Diaries...

2011-02-27T01:05:00.003-05:00

Pull Trouble From The Fire's recent teaser video has been used as a "mood music" sort of soundtrack-clip to an entry on Bill Brenner's very cool and ultra-informative blog The OCD Diaries.

Check out the entry here... and take a read, this blog is really fascinating.

Also, Mr. Brenner has issued a challenge to the band for more content, and we love challenges, so, in due time, we will be more than happy to comply.

(tangentially, I have no idea whether or not this had anything to do with the selection of the video or the issuing of this challenge, but it definitely crossed my mind while reading the blog that there might be more than a bit of common-ground between the subjects discussed there and the tone and content of Pull Trouble's songwriting... we definitely have tended to veer, thus far, toward subject-matter that has to do with quirks of the way the human mind functions... or [more often, rather] has trouble functioning... whether accidentally or not, then... it seems an appropriate match to me...)

(P.S.... baby-step-goals to get back into active music promo- I'm trying to get that video to hit a triple-didgit view-count by the end of the weekend, which would be {by far} the first on the Asbjorn Collective Youtube channel. Help out, share it with your friends? Please? Maybe?)

Pull Trouble From The Fire gets a bit less clandestine....

2011-02-20T21:43:00.005-05:00

Pull Trouble From The Fire, the band that I've been playing with, that I spoke of in the last entry, is making yet more gradual moves to step out from the shadows and become a tad less secretive. (Click on the band's name to check out the Facebook page, and click "Like." You know, if you're into that sort of thing. Which you are.)

We dropped a teaser-video and some photo-content this week.

Enjoy.

{Special thanks to Macalastair Ming of Tipsy Cougar for stopping by our hideout to catch some video-footage and photos at practice.}

Pull Trouble From The Fire...

2011-02-03T20:18:00.003-05:00

Since this summer, I've been playing, for the first time in a very long time, with an actual band, that actually practices, with an actual functional lineup (whoa, right? I know, strange). We've been keeping it pretty well under-wraps up until now (and I'm certainly not going to pull the curtain back all at once)... but the first hints of that band are now on Facebook. Stop by and "Like" us... because you WILL. And you'll want to have the inside scoop as soon as more content starts to drop... I promise.

To be perfectly honest, I had been actively avoiding joining a new "real" band for quite a long time... but these guys approached me at a time when I REALLY needed an outlet, so I agreed to sit in with them, see what they were up to... and, honestly, they turned out to be far too good to not become more seriously involved with. No joke. And as most of you know, I'm pretty damn jaded about most "bands" (hence all the solo/quasi-solo-projects intended to question conventions like "listenability"...This one isn't like that.) Like whoa.

Post-indie, Post-youth...

2011-01-31T21:15:00.007-05:00

{free-form, ramble, random thoughts. Go.}

There's something odd about the various forms of late-'90's/ early '00's "indie-rock." Something that reminds me a bit of the "where do we go now?" in critical-dialogues post- post-structuralism and post- deconstruction? This seems to me to be a bit of an "elephant-in-the-room" right now in the current vogue media-conversation about "what is the hipster"... where does the lethargy, near-fetishistic interest in irony, "lost-generation"-esque nihilistic pompous-non-chalance come from, particularly for the late-20's/ early-30's demographics that most closely fit the stereotypes of that label, yet most fervently hate being associated with it? I'll give you a hint- most of those people, between '97 and '03, were all either playing or avidly listening to some form or another of the "indie-rock" of the time... emo, screamo (before those terms meant what they do now), post-punk, the early-incarnations of "metal-core," melodic-pop-punk... etc. And prior to that? Most of those kids were in punk and hardcore bands in high-school, witnessing the final death-kicks of (the pre-commercially-viable later-incarnations of) those scenes.

I'm reminded of this by quite a few things lately that are unrelated, but tend to weave in and out of each other, nostalgia-wise.

First, there's been a strange superfluity of seminal bands the we all listened to in that era either suddenly getting back together or releasing their first record in countless years within the past couple of months. And there's the constant question at play with all such projects- what SHOULD the new record sound like, when all of the current "hipster" acts are all influenced by your back-catalog, but your "sound" is very conspicuously date-stamped.

I present as example two acts that chose very different answers to this problem.

1) The Get Up Kids are back together. If the handful of tracks that I've heard are any indication, they've taken the "extreme-update" approach-

Sure, this sounds like a whole bunch of what I listen to in 2011. But it certainly doesn't sound like the Get Up Kids... so I'm totally torn on it. There's definitely a bit of the odor of "trying too hard" lingering around this one.

2) The new Bright Eyes record is coming out soon. It's currently streaming in its entirety via NPR- http://www.npr.org/2011/01/31/133278431/first-listen-bright-eyes-the-peoples-key . I'm not sure yet that it lives up to the tall-order tag-line the NPR blurb bestows on it: "This is the best record Bright Eyes has ever made".... but it's pretty good (it always takes me a few listens for a Bright Eyes record to REALLY sink in). And there seems to be a complete indifference to the date-stamp issue here, either in terms of recreating past records (which they certainly don't do) or "updating" too conspicuously or exaggeratedly.

Other things that bring this disconnect to mind include the occasional random flare-ups of sudden nostalgic interest in online content related to an emo-pop-punk band I used to play bass for, called Rusted Tricycle... or that, still, for some reason, regardless of how many projects I've played with since, when I go out at night in New Hampshire, I'm most likely to get "aren't you the guy from Rusted Tricycle?" than any other recognition (If anything, I would expect it to be the high-visibility management position I held with an unnamed adolescent-targetted retail store for years prior to moving to Arizona and going to college, but nope. It's that random band that never toured, never recorded a real album, and broke up ten years ago. Strange.)

(photo via Macalastair Ming of Tipsy Cougar.)

For some reason recently, I had a strange impulse to download a whole lot of old Saves The Day material. I have no idea why. And I'm thinking about throwing a random throwback-emo/ pop-punk track into the middle of my forthcoming ironic-"hip-hop" record with LeVautourEnsemble... just for fun. There's something odd about the music of that time (maybe that time in general?) for us, for sure.

Asbjorn Writing Workshop.

2011-01-29T13:59:00.002-05:00

Do you write, or like reading/ critiquing new writing by others?

Over the summer, I had started up a workshopping group. It was starting to gather a bit of productive steam, and then, due to scheduling issues, the ball was kinda dropped for a bit.

But now, it's back, and I would like to build it to be an even stronger resource going forward.

Interested in participating, contributing, or even just observing? Stop by our facebook group-page and send a request to join the group so you can get into our discussion-boards, where the magic happens (at least initially).

Here's the blurb that I posted on the "Welcome" thread on the group's discussion-board, when I initially set it up, back in the summer, just to give a little bit of an overview of what we're trying to do with this-

"The idea is simple. I want to spend much of the rest of my summer lost in a couple creative-writing projects that I don't have nearly enough time for during the semester. It dawned on me that I was a bit "out of the loop" of one of the most helpful elements of my process when I WAS a more active creative writer- the workshopping group. So, here it is. At least the ground-level, to get it moving quickly. If a different sort of forum would work better down the road, we'll move there. If (ideally) local cells of this group decide to meet up to do some flesh-and-blood round-table work, that would be awesome, and hopefully all tangible meetings will report back virtually for the benefit of those who were a bit out of range to attend.

Here's a quick run-down of the process I had in mind, at least to get started.

Within the next couple days, I plan to make up a sort of generic form for intended submission for critique by the group... sort of a standardized abstract, with questions about your goals with the piece, intended audience, etc... My hope is that a piece of writing pitched as "experimental literary fiction, intended for academic journals" would receive a far different critical conversation on this forum than one prefaced with "I want to finally try to make some cash with my pen. Aiming for Readers-Digest-accessability." Neither (or anything in between) is preferred over the other here... I'm hoping the emphasis is mostly on writing-craft, with a specific focus on helping each other to most effectively meet our own stated goals.

So, the first step to contribute a piece for critique is to complete the form, and post it to a new thread (this can be done before you even begin writing, as just the synopsis and goals for a nascent idea, or in regard to a piece that you've already written that you wish to get feedback through the process of editing of, or anything in between.) Responses from readers are welcome and encouraged to these initial forms, to help both you and your readers better clarify where we're heading. Then, just run with it. Respond to feedback, mutually brainstorm, post fragments or links to complete files. Receive feedback, respond, edit, rinse, repeat. You get the idea.

Know someone who might be interested in contributing? If you think they'd be a good fit, by all means, send an invite. The more the merrier (and more constructive.) A word of warning however (particularly if you're new to the workshop setting)... I am (at least initially) primarily gearing this group toward professionally-minded writers serious about whipping their writing into shape right up into the publication process. This isn't necessarily always an endeavor for the faint-of-heart or thin-skinned... sometimes, for many of us, the most realistically-helpful feedback is also the most brutal and candid. I can't promise, for instance, that anyone on this forum will tip-toe around your potential emotional-investedness in your work... this is all about making our works the best they can be, not stroking each others' egos. With that said, however, hopefully it goes without saying, but just in case... keep the criticisms clean, above the belt, and constructive, folks (i.e., if you're going to tear something up a bit, cite specific examples, base your argument on craft, no cheap shots or vague derogatory statements, etc.) I don't want to have to police this, but I will if it comes down to it."

There are already a hand-full of threads up, and a few pieces posted mid-process... But this would still be a great time to get in on the ground-floor, as a few more active participants would be phenomenal.

In case you missed it... (performance-poetry about translation-acts)

2011-01-28T11:39:00.004-05:00

...one more video, as part of my catch-up of stuff I've worked on since my last post (as I mentioned in an earlier entry, i'm trying to break my return-to-posting promo-dump into a series of smaller, more specific entries this week, and this is one of those)... primarily for those who don't religiously follow my Facebook feed.

This one was another that began as part of an academic project. It's a bit of performance-poetry this time around.

...there might be others that I missed... if you're curious, you can peruse the Asbjorn Arts Collective's Youtube channel, and subscribe if you like what we're doing here.

LeVautourEnsemble Update.

2011-01-27T16:19:00.005-05:00

I'm currently working on a new record with my solo-electronic project LeVautourEnsemble. This one will be called "Machinique Meltdown," and is a follow-up to "...whose wings are a dull reality," which came out this past October through HeadHat Records. (If you haven't gotten a copy yet, it's downloadable for free/ donation- click here.)

I'm hoping that this one doesn't take NEARLY as long to finish. In fact, I was originally shooting for exactly the opposite extreme, to start and finish the record in a single week, right after I finished school... but the week turned into two, and now it's been about a month, I have two songs and a bunch of fragments (which, of course, is still a step in the right direction, since that's FAR more accomplished than in any single month over the course of the ten years I was working on the last one for.)

I decided this one is going to veer a bit more into the hip-hop(ish) direction... because I felt like it. This will also be a bit more of a themed/ conceptual endeavor- a collection of tracks about various sorts of apocalypses.

Here is a video for the first track on the record, "Preface."

Another track, "I Am The Tongue," that will appear on the album was actually originally completed as part of an academic project... but as of now I think that it'll still work-

If anyone out there happens to be interested in dropping a cameo on the new record, by all means, be in touch. I'd love to pack this thing with as many odd-ball guest-appearances as possible.

Also, if you're perversely curious how that "PASTICHE" show that I had alluded to before turned out, peruse the following, at your own risk-

Tipsy Cougar on Headhat Records!

2011-01-26T16:56:00.001-05:00

After much delay, Tipsy Cougar, my noisy indie-electro/ "metro-grime" project, has finally finished and released our album, "Immaculate Conceptions," through our good friends over at Headhat Records.

... and, guess what? It's available right now, to download for FREE/ donation! Click here to get it directly, or here to browse the rest of the excellent stuff in the Headhat/ Webhat catalog!

I was going to explain a bit about this project and the gradual creation of this record, but... Just download it and see for yourself... I think this mess may speak for itself.

Yes, it's supposed to sound like that.

...resumptions... or somethin'... again...

2011-01-24T14:02:00.000-05:00

So it happened again, after saying at the beginning of the semester that I was going to be better about using this blog than I had in previous terms, my posts fell off about mid-way through. Oh well.

But, that's all in the past now. As of January 1st, 2011, I am officially a "Master of Literature"... whatever that means. I want to send some massive thank-you's to everyone who's been supportive over the whirl-wind last couple of crazy years. You know who you are. It's been real... something.

In the meantime, I've taken the first part of January to decompress and re-gather myself... which has sorta kinda almost worked? Now it's get busy, get motivated, get it done time. Ready or not (jury's still out on that one).

And so this starts again.

I'm not going to lie, I've come to sort of hate these "return-to-posting," playing-catch-up sort of posts. So, rather than post a laundry-list of links to all the garbage I've been working on and interested in since my last post (I'm not delusional enough to think anyone actually READS my info-dump entries, anyway... I just feel better to know I threw it out there in case anyone randomly WAS actually interested), I'm going to split it up this time into short bursts of more specific promo-garbage over the next week.

So I'll leave you here for today. Welcome back, and see you tomorrow.

"PASTICHE: an evening of post-modern sound-experimentation."

2010-10-12T21:21:00.001-04:00

Friday, October 22. Manchester, NH. The Jam Factory (next to/ between Raxx on Elm). Be there.

This will hopefully be the first in a series of nights called PASTICHE in Manchester, trying to find a consistent home for the area's experimental music community (right now we're focusing specifically on electronic material, but down the road that will probably be open to interpretation.)

This time around, we've got The Attic Bits, a chiptune/ 8-bit act from the seacoast (if you don't know what that means... they basically "DJ" using modified video-game equipment. It's pretty entertaining (and extremely listenable, and often danceable, for electro-fans, even if you don't pick up on the particular schtick.).

Ross Boyd (frontman of The Tuna Fish Discrepancy, etc.) will be throwing down some electro noise (under an ironically-pompous-sounding moniker that promoter Sadi Khan and I pressured him into assuming for the set {"The Ross Boyd Experience"). To be perfectly honest, I've almost gone out of my way to NOT ask Ross what he has up his sleeve for the night, because I want to be surprised, and I know that it will be epic. (For a taste of Ross doing more electro-ish stuff, T.F.D. released a new record yesterday through Headhat Records, called "Old Haunts." It's rumored to be the last recording in the era of T.F.D. in its pre-full-band format, and features Ross delving into some fun experimental terrain. Download it for free {or donation} here. It's good. Really good.)

And I'm playing a set as LeVautourEnsemble. (now, I'm wracking my brain at the moment, but I believe that, in the 10 years or so I've been recording under that name, this might be the first time I'll perform under the moniker? Weird.)

Here's the thing, though. I don't plan to play any of the songs off of the new record. I know, I'm a stubborn bastard like that. Nope, this is an experimental electro-noise event, not a normal "show." My plan is to drop (with an assortment of junk compiled into a sort of deconstructed-"DJ"-rig) a seamless set of ebbing and flowing sound. I plan to get up to play with a couple lists of beats, samples, noises, etc. that COULD possibly be used, some extremely vague lyric-prompts, maybe some pieces of my poetry to steal lines from, and improvise.

Here's where I would like your help. This is the perfect opportunity to incorporate a bit of crowd-source magic, to make this a surreal and cathartic experience for all. So I have a couple of extremely minor requests.

First... if you come to the show, and I walk up to you with a hand-held device of some sort, and ask you to say something that seems strange to you, please play along?

Second... I want to try to compile a list, between now and the show, of odd requests, prompts, propositions, etc... and try to work as many of them as possible into the set. So, either in comments to this post, the discussion-board thread on the L.V.E. Facebook page, to me directly in email, or on the clip-board I'll have at the merch-booth at the show, send me random ideas of things to make up lyrics about, things to sample (samples must make it onto the list at least a day before the show), etc. Then just show up at The Jam Factory and listen for how I incorporate YOUR idea! Sounds like fun, right?

Third... when you come to the show, bring some junk that makes noise. We'll be throwing down whole-room-style, and you don't want to be left out.

I'm working through some ideas, and talking to some people, about guest appearances, etc... but I'm always open to more suggestions in that regard. Like I said, I'm thinking of this as less "show" and more "experimental {noisy} club-nite-event." So... if you're a visual-artist who wants to set up a projector-screen during my set and show some work? AWESOME! Are you a painter who wants to prop up an easel and create something live while I play? GREAT! PLEASE be in touch. That's the sort of night I'm thinking here... and I need your help to make that happen.

Other than that... just come. If you haven't gotten this idea yet, take my word for it. It's going to be fun. If for no other reason, you get to watch me do my trademark spasm-robot-dance ALL...NIGHT...LONG.

More music...

2010-10-09T12:12:00.001-04:00

First off... As I alluded to in my last entry, after being "in the works" for the better part of ten years, the debut record of my experimental literary-electro project LeVautourEnsemble has finally been released!

To get this thing out, we've teamed up with a great little record-label out of Newmarket, New Hampshire called Headhat Records. The partnership is a really good fit for the project... Since 2001, Headhat's been putting out interesting, experimental, and obscure material, with a refreshing strategy that reminds us of a digital-updating of the D.I.Y. attitude of the cassette-mixtape labels we grew up with.

The record was officially released Monday, 10/4/10, and is available for download now, with album-art, liner-notes, etc, here... and the best part is? It's available for FREE (or optional donation if you're feeling particularly generous and supportive).

Don't forget to browse the rest of the Headhat catalog as well, there's a lot of neat stuff over there.

Also, don't forget to stop by and "like" LeVautourEnsemble and Headhat Records on Facebook!

Other music news...

Check out Pull Trouble From the Fire. I've been making some noise with these guys lately... very exciting stuff, a ton of fun... very interesting things to come on that front I'm sure.

Following up on something else from my last entry, the show that I sat in with The Tuna Fish Discrepancy last month was a ton of fun, and I want to thank Ross and company immensely for the opportunity to tag along and mangle their songs.

Video-footage from almost the entire show is available here...

This is my personal favorite-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0YJFLZlT8Y

In news of other shows upcoming... mark your calendars... Friday, Oct. 22 will be the first in a (hopefully) recurring series of experimental electronic nights called "PASTICHE: an evening of post-modern sound-experimentation" at The Jam Factory (Next to Raxx, on Elm St.) in Manchester, New Hampshire... I will be playing an improvised LeVautourEnsemble noise-electro set, with The Attic Bits and The Ross Boyd Experience. A flyer and more details (particularly some crowd-response prompts to allow YOU to help me make my set as crazy as possible) will be coming in my next entry... hopefully tomorrow.

Catch-all seasons-change plugs-and-shout-outs.

2010-09-07T01:02:00.001-04:00

A very long summer is finally over, and my last semester of my Master's program has begun.

Predictably, I had several blog entries in the cue that I had been trying to get in before summer ended, but that obviously didn't happen. Most notably, I realized I hadn't written any record or show reviews in a while, and wanted to get back to it a bit... more about that later.

This entry, therefore, will just be a truncated collection of plugs and shout-outs that I need to get out before I become completely swept up in reading and research.

First. Most of you (at least those who know me personally, or have read my blog in the past) are probably aware that I haven't played a live-show as a musician in quite a while (at least a few years? Maybe more?). Well, this Saturday (Sept. 11th) that's scheduled to change. And, hey, what way to get back in the swing than with something completely strange, right?

I've been asked to sit in that night with The Tuna Fish Discrepancy. Those good gentlemen were looking to do something a little more... abstract... for their set at this show... and I'm honored to have had my help requested in order to make that happen for them. Basically, I'll be throwing down some noise, on an odd-ball sort of "DJ"-rig.

...and, if we're going to make it a strange and memorable night you don't want to miss, we may as well go all the way, right? So, Nat Ward and I will be closing out the evening by throwing down a very rare sort of tag-team set of live, improvised, free-form electro-noise chaos. You're welcome. Be there.

September 11th. Manchester, New Hampshire. "The Jam Factory," inside Raxx Billiards. 8 pm, 21+, $5 at the door.

Let's see... other news...

Oh yeah. I have finally put the final track on LeVautourEnsemble's "...whose wings are a dull reality," a record that's been in the works for the better part of ten years.... and I'm finally calling it officially finished. Options for its release are currently being discussed, and more details will come soon.

Here's the video for that final track, called "Physical Consent"-

{Disclaimer- This song was composed to get inside the head of a fictional character and scenario. The lyrical content expressed herein does not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or ideas of Bernard P. Provencher LeVautour, LeVautourEnsemble, the Asbjorn Arts Collective, or their affiliates.}

OK, I think that's enough for tonight... part 2 coming, hopefully tomorrow, with the rest of the things I wanted to discuss... but tonight I need to get back to reading Chaucer.

Madcap Recap, Part 2: Transition-periods, Creative-writing, Workshopping-groups...etc.

2010-07-15T16:58:00.001-04:00

OK, so I should really stop posting "to be continued" at the end of entries here. That phrase seems to be a bit of a curse on this blog; the trigger for some of my longer absences from posting, for which I have very little in the way of excuses.

So, where was I? I believe I was recapping a semester (and now half of a subsequent summer) in which I haven't posted much...

Since I left off with some site-housekeeping, it seems appropriate to resume on a similar note. You may notice that there's a bit of a new look around here... I figured it was time. Let me know what you think, I'm still tinkering with it, and there are elements that I'm not sure whether I like or not.

You may also notice, if you had scrolled to the bottom of the page recently, that I finally got around to putting together a new logo for the Asbjorn Art Collective. Again, it was time.

Continuing, then, with assorted Asbjorn news... I'm pretty sure that since my last regular updates, there have been quite a few new videos added to the collective's Youtube channel, from Tipsy Cougar, Civil Vain, The Green Sea, LeVautourEnsemble, my solo acoustic stuff, etc. Stop by, check them out, leave snarky comments that will make us laugh, share the ones you like with your friends.

You may also notice, by the badges on the right sidebar, that there are now fan-pages on Facebook for LeVautourEnsemble, The Green Sea, Tipsy Cougar, and Swords We Swallow. Stop by, check out some audio, and "like" us (well, if you, umm, like us...).

One of the side-effects of grad-school is that my creative-writing work has taken a near-complete hiatus for the last year. (It's seemed increasingly ironic to me lately that there's such a wide disconnect between studying Literature and writing [non-critical] Literature.... and I definitely have some personal qualms with that gap.) Therefore, one of my personal assignments to myself for the summer has been to get my chops back up to where they were prior, resolve some craft-issues that have been sitting on pause, and hopefully have some of my own non-academic work written, edited, and (ideally) ready to be submitted for publication before the next semester starts. To help with this goal, I've been working on getting together a new work-shopping group, with both online forums for critique, and, hopefully, physical meetings, to help our members push each other toward achieving their personal writing-goals. We are still actively looking for members; If you're interested, stop by the Asbjorn Writers' Workshop group-page on Facebook, take a look around, and send a request to join!

My first piece that I'm working through with the group is tentatively titled "Nails... Dig... In," a short work that I've been somewhat snarkily referring to as "commercially viable, gritty, art-house fiction." At this point I'm in the brainstorming stage of my process... to be perfectly honest, due to a particular quirk in the way that I tend to write, what I'm working on right now is putting together a recording of a track that the DJ in a particular scene might be spinning, to help me to better "get inside" the story and the idea in my head... chances are this track will appear soon from LeVautourEnsemble, since such experimental aspects of my writing-process are pretty much the sole reason that that particular project exists.

In other new-music news, Tipsy Cougar is working on a studio-track? That's right, my noisy indie-electro outfit that has stubbornly prided ourselves for a couple of years on our extremely primitive recording techniques (much of our record "Immaculate Conceptions," which we keep claiming is done and then changing our minds, was recorded live with a single mic in the middle of the room, sometimes straight to cassette-tape) finally decided to see what would happen if we actually {*gasp*} record something. What happens? Well, it's not done yet, but so far it reminds me of what it might sound like if Lou Reed, Prince, and Kanye West teamed up to collaborate on a club-banger for hipster electro-DJ's. I might be exaggerating a bit, but I'm definitely not kidding.

On a more personal note, I'm tired of transition-periods. And it feels, lately, like my life is a constant string of them. I moved from Dover last month, and I'm currently staying with family in Manchester until I move in to a new place in Portsmouth in August. I'm living out of boxes and spending more time than I would like commuting to work on the coast. But, if you're in Manchester and want to meet up before I head back out that way and things get hectic again, be in touch.

Madcap Recap, Part 1: Semester's-End-Scribbles, Food For Thought, The I.D. Student, New Orleans, etc...

2010-05-28T14:51:00.005-04:00

It's been far too long since I've posted here. This past semester's been rather hectic. Crazy, even. How crazy? This crazy-

(my paper-writing-process: scribbled on the living-room walls)

This entry, then, will be a sort of haphazard recap of the time since my last post, some lingering thought-fragments, etc, that I'd like to get out of the way before resuming "regular" postings. This will presumably end up being the first in a two-installment series on the topic, as there's quite a chunk of chaos I'd like to cover...

Some food for thought first, from Bruno Latour, inspired by an ongoing dialogue I've been having with another grad-student from a different University...

"Military experts constantly revise their strategic doctrines, their contingency plans, the size, direction, and technology of their projectiles, their smart bombs, their missiles; I wonder why we, we alone, would be saved from those sorts of revisions. It does not seem to me that we have been as quick, in academia, to prepare ourselves for new threats, new dangers, new tasks, new targets. Are we not like those mechanical toys that endlessly make the same gestures when everything else has changed around them? Would it not be rather terrible if we were still training young kids- yes, young recruits, young cadets- for wars that are no longer possible, fighting enemies long gone, conquering territories that no longer exist, leaving them ill-equipped in the face of threats we had not anticipated, for which we are so thoroughly unprepared."

"Is it really asking too much from our collective intellectual life to devise, at least once a century, some new critical tools?"

Just a thought. Ok, then... where to start with the recap? Since my last pre-hiatus entry was a plug for my column at The Interdisciplinary Student, this is probably a good time to point out that I've since added another entry to that site, a bit of a playful deconstruction of the idea of "comparativism" and my tenuous involvement with it, prior to traveling to present a paper at the American Comparative Literature Association's annual conference. (Which reminds me that I never followed up at that site either... sorry Michelle... that's about the point in the term when things got really crazy.)

Logically, that brings me to my next topic. This semester, I travelled to New Orleans for my first literary conference. I was hoping to compile either a photo- or video-blog of my experiences that weekend, but unfortunately my Blackberry decided to come down with an odd ailment halfway through the trip, making this more difficult than it should have otherwise been. Here's a selection of photos that I did happen to capture, however, with brief and scattered caption-commentary-

Yes, I'm a big enough geek to take a picture of my name-badge. It's my first one. So what?

Arrival. The famous Hotel Monteleone, primary venue of the conference, and my Easter-weekend residence.

Royal from Bourbon, in shadows.

The view from the window of my room.

Oh yeah, did I mention I'd never been to New Orleans before?

I have a soft-spot for trellises...

Bourbon Street, predictably blurry at night...

La Fie Verte.

Odd juxtaposition. Holy weekend, Catholic city, notorious street of sin...

The "Literary Traditions" of the Big Easy are, of course, far cooler than elsewhere...

OK, that's probably enough for today... lost-time-recap to-be-continued.

Oh, one last thing, though, a brief house-keeping note- I've been getting a lot of spam comments lately... like junk about cheap generic drugs, websites featuring taboo sex-acts, or links to help me spam others with promo-bot-software. Does this mean my blog's hit some sort of a web-traffic radar? (I doubt it, but that's the best positive-spin I could give it...) What it DOES mean, though, is that I've changed a few minor settings about the way that things are set up around here (as it was, I can't seem to figure out how to delete them.) Most noticeable change is that if you leave a comment now, it will say that it needs to be approved by the admin before it posts. I want to make it VERY clear that this ISN'T in any way an attempt to censor comments here, or because I don't want discussions or feedback. It's merely because I'm tired of checking my phone and seeing that there's more corporate junk littering unrelated threads on my page. My apologies, wish I didn't have to do this... hope you'll understand, dear reader... and continue to communicate with my posts on the comment-threads.

"To Bridge or Wedge the Fault-gap..."

2010-02-23T11:01:00.000-05:00

My second blog-installment for the site "The Interdisciplinary Student" is now up. In this entry, I discuss the crux and confusion of the current/ future place of the humanities in the academic world, and how the term "interdisciplinary" can either become an important component to finding/ building our futures, or a meaningless fiscal/ institutional catch-phrase that merely makes the problems bigger.

Check it out, here.

...a couple quick things...

2010-02-19T01:31:00.000-05:00

My time is limited, since I'm knee-deep in research, so I have to make this quick... but there are a couple brief things that I wanted to point out.

First, you may remember a couple of months ago, provoked by a comment to a prior entry, I dove headlong (at least temporarily) into the heated ongoing debate about the name of the "era of thought" that we currently reside within, and what might come next, with a belated critique of Alan Kirby's 2006 essay "The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond." (follow that link if you don't recall). Well, due (I presume) to the wonders that are Google, another blogger/ artist (with whom I am not personally acquainted) stumbled onto my piece while engaging in the conversation from his own angle. I am flattered to be cited on the reading-lists/ bibliographies for two consecutive entries of his blog, along-side such names as Derida and Lyotard. He has some really interesting things to say on the topic; I strongly encourage you all to head on over and take a read- The Art of John Bittinger Klomp.

Second, I want to congratulate Mr. Macalastair Ming (slide-guitarist for Tipsy Cougar, etc.) for currently having the most views on the new Asbjorn Collective Youtube Channel. One night recently, I really wanted to make some music, but didn't have time... so I challenged Ming to record something weird and post it. I'm not sure that I'd call what he posted "weird," but I would call it "good." Check it out. I'm glad to see there's finally content up on that channel that I'm not in, which is definitely one of the goals. While you're there, I just posted a new acoustic track tonight, and Wes Hopeless stopped by to add some old footage from The Green Sea days in Phoenix. If you're interested in contributing some material to our little odd-ball museum-collection, please be in touch. My friends be warned- I've now discovered that challenging talented people to produce content on short-notice is productive and fulfilling for all involved... so it WILL be happening on a more regular basis.

"The Interdisciplinary Student"

2010-01-25T12:49:00.000-05:00

Michelle Jameson, a good friend of mine from Arizona State, put together a wonderful site of resources, tools, and ideas for students engaged in interdisciplinary scholarship.

The site is called "The Interdisciplinary Student", and can be easily found at www.theidstudent.com.

Oh yeah, and I'm honored to have been asked to contribute a blog-column to this great project.

Check it out.

Great work, Michelle, and thanks again for getting me involved with this.

Some Poetry...

2010-01-21T20:31:00.001-05:00

Larger Constructions: Dedicated to the Influence of Walt Whitman, The Performance-Artist, Not the Poet, Documenting his Projects in Poetry.

I’m like a
Journalist on
Assignment, embedded
With a community
Of Artists,
Made up of
Mirror-reflections
And shattered
Refractions of
One.

Of course, to
Get the inside
Scoop, the
Journalist must
Also be a
member of the
Community, his
assignment part and parcel
Of the projects of the
Group.

And, some more poetry... this time on video, accompanied by live beats... This is "A Trilogy of Poems About Music."

Finishing Projects, tying-up pre-semester loose-ends...

2010-01-18T00:07:00.000-05:00

... or, how many items can I cross off my "I don't have time for this during class so I better get it done now" list in a week?

In my last post, I linked to audio of a song that I had recently completed for LeVautourEnsemble... This week, I finished putting together the video for that track, pieced together out of footage snapped live while I was recording the track, on the webcam of a tiny blue netbook that I like to call the "baby robot." Obviously, there was quite a bit of editing involved here as well... Check it out.

I have also started a new Youtube channel for the Asbjorn Arts Collective. This channel is intended as a sort of evolving museum-collection, a kind of dumping-ground for content from myself, my collaborators and my friends... if you're interested in contributing content, or have material elsewhere on youtube that you'd like me to add to the page's "favorites," email me. The goal is to make this channel into a sort of one-stop-shopping destination for odd, abstract, and interesting videos from artists affiliated with present, past, and future incarnations of the collective. Stop by, check out some videos, leave some feedback, subscribe to the channel.

LeVautourEnsemble... back from the dead.

2010-01-13T04:19:00.000-05:00

Sometimes projects that lay dormant for a while come surprisingly back from the dead.

I didn't see it coming, but in retrospect, my accidental decision to revive LeVautourEnsemble seems to make sense. The project was started while I was extremely busy with schoolwork as an undergrad. I think about things in an unusual way sometimes, so occasionally, when I was working on writing something or understanding a literary-concept, I would need to make some noise, drop a "soundtrack" for the scenario to tape in order to arrive at my "Eureka!" moment. LeVautourEnsemble was my solo-project dumping-ground for the outcomes of such sonic experimentation. The medium was mostly electronic, but quite a bit of other sonic textures slipped through the filters at various times as well.

During the couple of years I took off between degrees, I didn't need L.V.E.. I had collaborators around, and time on my hands. Fun records from both Tipsy Cougar and Swords We Swallow came out of this time. My first semester in Grad.school, however, I was back to the grind, with little of the vague "I'm a musician" time to work with that I had gotten temporarily used to. I still had sounds in my head, though, ideas that couldn't be worked through in any medium but sound. That's just how I work. So I kept a recording-file open on my macbook, and my equipment plugged in and ready to go, and when I hit a road-block, I would open it up, make a bit of noise, and let off some scholarly steam.

I ended up working on one track over the course of a single semester. It's called "Metamorphoses"... it's kind of a sonic and conceptual mess (as the single audible product of an entire semester should be, right?), but I'm fairly happy with it, considering...

So, between a new track that fits succinctly into the initial purpose of the project, and the video that I posted on Christmas Eve that I could think of no better umbrella to throw under, I guess LeVautourEnsemble is back... and my record "...whose wings are a dull reality." WASN'T really "completed" in 2006 like I thought that it was.

The track is available streaming on both Myspace (click here), and on our new Facebook fan-page (click here). Become a fan/ friend/ whatever... and let me know what you think! (Additional audio and videos from the project are available at both sites as well, and I would assume that more will follow. But as you can probably tell, this one's pretty much out of my control at this point.)

Welcome to 2010

2010-01-07T23:30:00.005-05:00

Happy New Years.

I have a break from classes, and yet, so much still to do.

I have little new to write, really (although a whole lot in the works), but I figured I would sign on and share some footage of how the Tipsy Cougar crew rang in the decade at the Swords We Swallow Studios. Sara and I decided that, rather than going out, we would spend a quiet New Year's Eve at home, feel snazzy and drink martinis... then Ming and Dean joined us, which ended up proving that, in the right circumstances, four people can make for the most raging party in town. We ended up rocking out some pretty neat abstract, improvised electro-folk... noise... There are quite a few videos of this chaos floating around the interwebs right now, but this one (although long, I'm sorry) captures bits and pieces of most of them, and sums up the fun (and entertainment) of the evening nicely.

Oh Silent Night: An Agnostic Carroll. Part 2.

2009-12-24T15:26:00.005-05:00

OK, so, picking up where I left off...

What I hadn't realized about the traditional (i.e. "Christian") end of the Christmas music spectrum, listening again for, for all intents and purposes, the first time since I've been old enough to know better, was how incredibly complicated what's actually being SAID in the songs is with any eye at all to current affairs, global-culture, international politics, religious wars, etc.

Listen to the lyrics of conventional carols... "O Little Town of Bethlehem," "Oh Holy Night," "What Child is This," etc. etc.... you know, any of the countless that depict the creche or nativity-scene. Imagine what would happen if a child was born into poverty in a Middle-Eastern Gaza village now making such claims, representing, yet not representing, altering, and redefining one sect or another. It gets pretty messy, to say the least.

Maybe it was just because this sudden exposure to these songs directly followed a report from the BBC World Service that dealt with a lot of these sort of issues. Who knows. Either way, it's troubling, to put it mildly.... especially since the ideological struggles so "peacefully" depicted in these songs represent (in the tangible, non-dogma-based world, free from indoctrinated anachronisms) so much very real bloodshed.

What bothered me the most, I think, was thinking about the sort of individuals earnestly singing these songs (probably without paying much attention to the lyrics, to be fair) at the same time spouting political agendas that take a far more simplistic and narrow tack on such issues (ie, the awkward irony of the American "evangelical-ethics" voter who is also in favor of nationalist/ patriotic imperialism... but there are a ton of other examples as well). There's a "choosing sides" element at work in these songs, when placed in a modern context (that dates back problematically to the same time-period that they depict, and even earlier) that makes me deeply uncomfortable. The idea prevalent in all of these songs that this child in the stable "brings peace" seems particularly awkward, considering the actual history that chronologically follows (and, in some cases, results from) his arrival. Apparently the Christian carolers's definition of "peace" is different (and far more sectarian) than mine.

To boil it down, then... These holiday songs offer a caricature-ish depiction of how the people who most violently advocate waging war against impoverished, radical, sectarian Middle-Eastern peoples also happen to WORSHIP an impoverished, radical, sectarian Middle-Easterner.

Anyway, my intention here wasn't to be a holiday downer. I just figured I'd offer my take on a partial answer to the questions I've been hearing more and more every year (and this year it's like an epidemic); Why does no one seem terribly "festive," and why are many of us becoming increasingly irritated by those who are, because the festivity seems out of place or fake? I think this might be part of the answer... our collective world-view is more and more global each year, and both the capitalist- and religious- mythos involved with the elements that make up the "spirit of the season" seem increasingly disingenuous to the real-life complications of the world that we live in.

The "moral," then? Make the holidays that you celebrate your own. Be "festive," in your own way, for yourself and the people that you care about. Any other reason for celebration becomes far too problematic, and might just leave you advocating something that you may not otherwise, opening a can of worms that has too many angles to effectively "celebrate."

Like I said in the first installment, I'm not exactly your average Bah-Humbug type. Here's a photo of how Sara and I got festive on our own terms at the Swords We Swallow Studios in Dover-

And here's a bit of a "Holiday gift" from me to all of you out there in the interwebz. I dropped about 20 minutes of live improvised electronic music to video the other night... I know, I know, it's wicked long... but I was just jamming and experimenting, so wasn't really keeping track of the time. Bear with the length, and enjoy what you can of it. (unfortunately, some of my favorite moments are closer to the end.)

Wolf, Are You Ready?

Bernard P. Provencher LeVautour | MySpace Video

Because some people were asking when I initially shared this elsewhere, here's the rig I was using for this particular jam-

Let's see... there's a customized toy piano, an odd stringed "harp" thing that I made out of a broken door-chime, a toy record player (for this track I was spinning a record called "Songs Children Sing in France"), an iTouch running some synth and sequencer apps, an old radio-shack mixer, a Zoom Rythmtrak 234, a halloween toy for vocal effects, an old electro-voice ceramic mic, a Sure vocal mic, a Macbook Pro running garage-band synth-pads, some Bose speakers and a beat-up Gorilla bass-amp.

Out of curiosity, if I were to put together some sort of a show doing this sort of thing, with a collection of guest-collaborators (most likely somewhere in New England), would anyone come out to see it?

Oh, and if you like this sort of thing, keep your eyes peeled. I definitely hope to drop at least a couple more before classes start again in January... but hope to not be the only one making noise (hint hint... interested collaborators be in touch.)

Oh Silent Night: An Agnostic Carroll. Part 1.

2009-12-21T00:58:00.005-05:00

While driving home from finishing up my holiday shopping this evening, I reluctantly allowed myself to leave the radio on “the folk show” on NHPR. Not that this would usually be reluctant... but they were playing Christmas music.

Now, I don’t think I’m exactly your run-of-the-mill anti-social bah-humbug type. I tend to think that my usual objection to consciously subjecting myself to holiday tunes is a bit more nuanced and complicated than that, for a few reasons. First, (and probably most pressingly), until my “real” career starts actually paying me, I wait tables. Which means that I’m subjected to the most banal and commercialized version of consumer Christmas music on a daily basis, starting the moment the restaurant opens on Black Friday, straight up until new years. Second, I’m an agnostic, and I don’t exactly believe in the traditionally-assumed benefits of the American style of capitalist consumerism... which puts me in a bit of a dicey situation when it comes to holidays that are based on nothing but a combination of religion and material-consumption. Third, I don’t have, like, want, or understand children. Not to mention, I’m a “recovered Catholic” (about 11 years of parochial education under my belt), raised in a house where, after Thanksgiving, all music HAD to be season-specific. Call it jingle-bell-burn-out. Call it jaded cultural nihilism. Call it whatever you want.

But, now... Christmas is less than a week a way, I have just finished my shopping, in one form or another I still “celebrate” the holiday (for one reason or another that I’d have a pretty hard time trying to rationalize), snow is on the ground... yet I don’t feel terribly “festive,” though for some reason I feel like I should. God knows, I’ve spent enough money that it seems like I SHOULD find a reason to feel “in the spirit” to make it all worth while, right? So... when I get back in my car and, over the course of time I was in the store, public-radio has transitioned from news to Christmas music that falls on the “classier” (or “less-tacky”?) end of the spectrum, this seems to be an adequate compromise between my internal opposites that are annually active during this season.

Problem is... it’s been a long time since I’ve actually LISTENED to Christmas music. I mean, actually paid attention to it.

The last few years, when I was wrapping gifts, or doing something else that required at least the facsimile of festivity, I had a few standby albums that FELT warm and festive, but had enough complications to make their holiday sentiments less-than-deadpan, and thus more comfortable for me. Miles Davis- Kind of Blue. This one’s easy. It’s not even a Christmas record. But it just FEELS like the perfect record for a cold, comfortable night by the fire. No internal compromise required. Jethro Tull- A Christmas Album. I think most of this band is pagan, and nearly all of these tunes have the smirk of such an irony shining through them. Yet there’s a Celtic warmth to the record that makes it somehow appropriately “Christmasy.” Other than that... The Squirrel Nut Zippers, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole... just because I truly enjoy torch-jazz, no matter what season it happens to be.

None of these, however, allows me the opportunity of regularly observing what Christmas music is traditionally “supposed” to be.

And the Frosty’s and Rudolph’s in the restaurants only expressed the consumer end of the equation.

(...to be continued...)

“Sounds like someone recorded their drunk grandpa singing along to a Christmas cd in the bathroom.”

2009-11-06T17:31:00.007-05:00

It seems that everyone’s talking about this years’ release of Bob Dylan’s attempt at a Christmas record. There doesn’t seem to be any middle ground on this one. Journalists seem to love it (with caveats about irony and refreshing awkwardness) or hate it. I’m not going to throw my words onto the pig-pile and write an actual review... but merely muse on the concept a bit. Just take it as a given that my personal opinion of what I’ve heard of the record (I have to be upfront and admit I haven’t heard all of it, but browsing streamed snippets, internet bootlegs and the clips played on various NPR segments have been MORE than enough) falls on the more negative side of the heap. I tend to agree with Phoenix-based musician Brian Kelly (The Twilight Showdown, Borachio, etc.) that “Bob Dylan's ‘Christmas in the Heart’ sounds like someone recorded their drunk grandpa singing along to a Christmas cd in the bathroom.” (via Facebook.) If I thought it SOUNDED like a bad idea, I never would have guessed that it could be WORSE than I expected. But it is.

I have to confess, as a music-snob, that I’ve always been embarrassingly indifferent about Bob Dylan. In general, I have quite a bit of respect for him and like quite a bit of his material, but in small doses. I would never describe myself as a “fan.”

Let’s face it, there’s a heap of musicians out there that are better at writing songs than playing those songs. These are artists whose true value shines best when you hear their songs covered and performed by artists other than themselves. Dylan’s on that list for me... along with Leonard Cohen, Leadbelly (as much as I might personally enjoy both), and Weezer (first two albums only; everything after is garbage when played by anyone). For one reason or another, I tend to even prefer other people knocking-off Dylan’s SOUND and STYLE than hearing Dylan’s original rendition. Sure, I’ll admit to the sacrilege; I would far rather sit down and listen to Conor Oberst blatantly ripping Dylan-isms than cue up an actual Dylan record. And I don’t think that has all that much to do with my age. I just think for some song-writers like Dylan, it sometimes takes the ideas and instruments of others to iron out the kinks, to pull the pearl from the muddy oyster.

Dylan, for me, is a songwriter. And he’s brilliant and influential enough at it that the aspects of his records that I find hard to actually LISTEN to can be taken with a grain of salt most of the time.

But now, with this excruciating Christmas record, he’s taken what he’s good at out of the picture and left us with the rest; we get the muddy oyster-shell, and someone’s already stolen the pearl. This is a SONGWRITER releasing an entire record of covers, standards, classics. Think of how painful the reverse-scenario is... a classic-rock cover-band making the mistake of, after decades banging out recognizable radio-fare, debuting a couple of new “originals” to the drunk crowd that they entertain at the biker-dive. Let’s be realistic; NO ONE wants to hear flat-line, uninspired knock-offs of Credence songs (devoid of the catchy hooks) sandwiched between “I Want to Rock and Roll All Night” and “You Shook Me All Night Long”... and yet that’s what these attempts always inevitably sound like. And the lines at the rest-room and the bar suddenly lengthen at the expense of the dance-floor. Shock.

I don’t honestly know, in retrospect, why I expected this record (which I didn’t even expect to like) to be a bit better than it actually is. When I try to fathom how Bob Dylan doing Christmas songs could possibly NOT suck, the sound in my head sounds more like a Nick Cave or Tom Waits Christmas album than one that Dylan could ever do.

Now THOSE would be records that I would actually want to hear. Sure, they would be just as guaranteed to have their share of queasy, questionable, and cheesy moments... but I have the feeling they would be a whole lot more entertaining.... and at least a bit less painful.

Ealain Ar Son Ealaine (anachronistic credos to reconstruct the creative "now")

2009-10-24T11:52:00.006-04:00

(For a variety of confusing, conflicted, and convoluted reasons that I'll spare you from here, several of my recent research endeavors have been bringing this poem that I wrote a couple of years ago to my mind a lot lately. I thought that I had posted it somewhere shortly after it was written, but a cursory search of google says that I'm mistaken. This piece was one of a pair (drastically different from each other) that I wrote for anonymous submission to an academic poetry journal that I was working for at the time. In keeping with my initial guess, this one was rejected in favor of the other, which was said to be more realistic, grounded, and relatable... which provided further proof of the point that I was trying to make with this one in an appropriately ironic way... which I was obviously greatly amused by.)

The breeze blows in
The experimental surreal
The swirl of my pipe-smoke
The mingling, crumbling,
Crushing of crumpled, living
Leaves, to sway and swing in
Non-notes, artificial harmonics,
To add texture to the silence.

None of this is more real or
Pertinent than the
Dream that I had last
Night... something about
Espionage, switched ID's
In the restaurant where I
Work, in big-backed
Red-vinyl booths with
Pernod bottles on the
Shelves, "Anisette," a smaller,
Softer version, a more
"Truthful" femininity,
Something far more "real,"
If "reality" and "truth"
Could be given more
False "faith." But from that
Draught they've drank enough.

When your footing fails,
And your senses are seen to be
No more than merely what
You sense, "Construction" and
"Conceptualism" render
"Content" entirely inconsequent.

Activity falls to the
Dagger of intellect;
All disciplines would quake and
Cower if they realized that
The ones that prove their
Umbrella could make their
"Important" findings obsolete.

Empirical studies suggest,
Based on what we understand,
The best of the research-
Methods that I have no
More than anyone else,
Or less, the plinking,
Plopping, fizzing, bubbling,
Test-tubes of all the
Chemical concoctions we can
Understand (which are none),
Besides what happens in
Our own heads, concludes,
That this is all that matters.

A false construction
In a dead language,
Of a nineteenth-century
Slogan, fitted around a
"Real life" growling version
Of a giant plaster lion
At the front of an emerald
Building in a city
Built for the construction
Of fabricated grime
Demonstrates this well.

When the activist "realities"
That Gautier and Poe spoke
Out against are demonstrated
By our daily lives to
Not exist, their credos adopt
More fervent strength and meaning.

Anachronistically, of course.
I am well aware of my
Ironies and contradictions,
And these themselves will prove my point.

Dirty Jobs; a retooling of the term for the stay-at-home-circus-set.

2009-10-03T11:31:00.004-04:00

“That’s a pretty
Dirty job, isn’t it?”
I heard a woman a-
Cross the way with a
Vicious case of
Couch-ass say to
The mover as he
Hoisted her hideous
Blue-leather sofa
From a second-story
Slider... And it made me
Think.

What has a “dirty job”
Become? I mean, it
Could be argued that,
In the present condition of
American Capitalism, any time
Green paper or false credit
Changes hands a job is
Being done that is, on
Both ends of the exchange,
Inherently “dirty”...
But that’s an argument for
Another debate, and I will
Thus leave it, for now, in the
Periphery...

As I was overhearing
This, I was knee-deep in
A critical-essay dense with
Requisite references, realizing
That I was about to
Engage in a career as a
Professional Name-Dropper.
Realizing it is apparently rather
Uncouth to begin a piece of
Writing without the required,
However unrelated and irrelevant,
Quotes from Greenblatt, Jameson,
Frye...

I was in the middle of
Thinking aloud, “What the
HELL does that quote have to
Do with this essay?!?” when
My speakers shuffled to a
Song from one of my own recent
Records; that someone had
Lately described as reminding
Him of the cacophony, the
Layers and spirals of sounds,
Of standing in the middle of
An airport tarmac, without earplugs.
(I think it was intended, and
Thus taken, as a compliment.)
And I recalled my meticulous attention
To the texture of the dirt on the
Beat, the cloudy veil to
Mask my voice, and remembered
That this was “dirty” on
Purpose. I had worked hard
To make it such. Ok, then, let’s
Break it down a
Bit.

We work with... words,
And noise, and visual
Images (both tangible,
For their own sake, and
The combined construction of
All or parts of these thing...)
We’ve become, of
Course, compulsive
Multi-taskers, obsessive
Interdisciplinarians...
We are expected, at the
Same time that we,
Even more, expect
Ourselves to be,
Minutely specialized,
While being, at the
Same time, back-
Breakingly diverse...
We all become
Jacks of all
Trades though
Masters of one
Miniscule detail of
How to pull all of those
Together, to
Construct from it
Our individual
Microscopically
Diverse
Niche.

In most cases, our
Parents weren’t circus
Performers. Even when
They might have
Been artists, critics,
Musicians, whatever,
They would never have
Thought to jump
Through the flaming
Hoops we douse
With oil and light
Ourselves.

Can you look at me with
An “honest” twenty-first-century
Face (whatever that might
Mean) and tell me that
These aren’t “Pretty Dirty
Jobs?”

The difference I see,
However, between this and
How that term was used
In the past is that,
Unlike, for instance, the
Garbage-man (except, of course,
That rare yet somehow
Commonplace specimen that
Takes such perverse pride in
The beat-to-shit and disregarded
Stuffed-animals that he tacks to
The grill of his truck)
Is that we REVEL
In the dirt, it’s rather
WHY we do the jobs,
Instead of a hinderance
From holding them, as it
Might be for perspective
Garbage-men.

“Isn’t that a pretty
Dirty job?” the
Woman with the
Couch-ass said to
The mover, as they
Watched me sitting
On my patio, rabidly
Scribbling in the
Margins of my copy of
A cumbersome anthology
Of the complete works of
Milton...

Bernard P. Provencher LeVautour (w/ S.W.S.)- Dirty Jobs (poem)

Summers end, Semesters start... A synopsis, of sorts.

2009-09-21T16:38:00.004-04:00

I realized how long it's been since I posted last by watching the video that was tacked onto the end of my last entry, and recalled that the evening we filmed it, we had spent most of the day at the beach. Now, the leaves on the tree directly opposite my desk have turned red (almost even past the prime of their foliage.)

My first few weeks of grad.school have been very busy. Which I thoroughly enjoy. It feels great to be finally back in school, my limbo-period finally over.

Today, then, between my scouring of critical essays on Milton, I'll just post a brief and scattered laundry-list of assorted topics.

First... in regards to my last entry (about Alan Kirby's "The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond")... apparently the ideas expressed in that essay have morphed, in the years following its publication, from "pseudo-modernism" to "digimodernism." These ideas have expanded quite a bit, and, I'm pleased to say, seem to have rectified many of my concerns with them over that time (as I found out from the author himself, who learned of my posts via Google Alerts [which seems fitting, due to his subject-matter])... He has a new book out called Digimodernism: How New Technologies Dismantle the Postmodern and Reconfigure Our Culture that I'm actually rather excited to read at some point... whenever I might get time to. You can find information on this, and links to the current evolution of these thoughts on his blog, at his website.

In other news... this seems like an appropriate time to look over my list of "things to do before school starts," and see how much of it I accomplished... Or rather, maybe it's easier to start with the things that I didn't, as the list tended to evolve as items were removed from it over the course of several months. So, I never did "get into good exercise habits" as I told myself to do. I never did submit any of my poetry or short-fiction for publication. Although I completed recording records with both Tipsy Cougar and Swords We Swallow, I have yet to package and make available either record as I had planned to. I haven't written the first-drafts to the two pieces of short fiction that I have mapped-out and outlined in my notebook. And I still have 10+ pages of fragments in the "ideas" section of my notebook that I planned to work through and complete (blog-entries, poetry, fiction, essays, visual-art, etc.) that I have yet to.

Obviously being in school again after a couple of years off involves an adjustment... and, partly, that involves adjusting to the idea that most of these things aren't going to get done (or even thought about) until my next break from classes. I'm trying to negotiate with my own mind a bit in terms of creative ways to still get what I need to out by way of music, art, and creative writing... but this early in the semester, I think it's a bit too early to tell how that will work. I'll keep you posted, I'm sure.

In terms of things that I DID end up getting crossed off of the list...

One of the things that had sat daunting me on such long-term lists the longest (if you haven't figured out yet, I'm one of those weirdos who lives and dies by my to-do-lists) was the idea of getting more of my acoustic-tracks recorded. Looking at that list the week before classes started, I didn't have the motivation to deal with the hassles of audio-recording (my thoughts on that process have become increasingly self-contradictory and problematic in the last couple years... it's a love/hate sort of thing, at this point)... so I decided instead to just run video and jam out some songs... and, in one way or another, I had accomplished that particular bullet-point.

So, then... here are a couple video-clips that I recorded in the process. Enjoy.

Bernard P. Provencher LeVautour- Peepers (acoustic)

Bernard P. Provencher LeVautour- Rusted Tricycle's "Cherry Coke"

The Death of “Pseudo-Modernism” and Beyond; A Return From “Critical Realism.”

2009-08-17T19:13:00.003-04:00

(I spent some time tossing around ideas about which of the numerous potential angles I should approach this from… and eventually threw up my hands and started writing, deciding to just run at it bull-in-china-shop style. So, if you’re interested in this debate, please bear with the length of this post, my occasional use of literary/ theory jargon, the possible failures of my attempt to keep this from devolving into a rant at times… etc. If any of this inspires a rebuttal, or ideas of any sort continuing the dialogue, I would LOVE to post them here. So, if you have something to say on this topic, be in touch .)

Ihab Hassan ended his 1987 essay “Toward the Concept of Postmodernism” by saying “One may wonder: Is some decisive historical mutation- involving art and science, high and low culture, the male and female principles, parts and wholes, involving the One and the Many- as pre-Socratics used to say- active in our midst? Or does the dismemberment of Orpheus prove no more than the mind’s need to make but one more construction of life’s mutabilities and human morality? And what construction lies beyond, behind, within, that construction?”

Contrasting these thoughts (which were presented as part of an attempt to define present and future parameters for the term “postmodernism”) with those suggested by Dr. Alan Kirby’s 2006 essay “The Death of Postemodernism and Beyond” that I linked in my last entry, suggests a rather troubling disconnect.

Frankly, the problem becomes that, as much as his cynical observations are often apt, the conclusions that Dr. Kirby draws from these conflict vastly with the prior works of Hassan and his critical peers that defined and refined the genre/ movement that Kirby so bombastically attempts to declare the death of.

The problem is, none of the observations that Kirby makes sit outside, as the changing cultural forces that he insists that they are, of the general parameters of the movement that he’s using them as validation for the disavowal and decease of.

Most solid theories of “postmodern thought” that I have read (including several of those that Kirby cites, in parts that he understandably yet problematically overlooks) leave plenty of room (and even often foresee) the cultural changes that Kirby asserts have rung its death-knoll.

As Hassan says, “Postmodernism implies a movement toward pervasive procedures, ubiquitous interactions, immanent codes, media, languages.” Oddly, if boiled into essential categories, these are all of the things that Kirby asserts as proof that contemporary culture is NOT a postmodern one.

Sure, I understand that there’s a bit of a time-period disconnect here as well. Kirby seems to be extremely willing to admit that our contemporary culture morphs astoundingly quickly, and unfortunately, this quickness proves the larger-scale undoing of his own points. The article that I’m referring to, “The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond,” was published in 2006, and by his own standards, a lot has changed culturally in the three years since then.

Perhaps the most telling demonstration of the changes that those three years have made (particularly in terms of making his own conclusions seem cynical, short-sighted, self-defeating, and, in general, off-putting) comes from his own references to ‘living in a post-9/11 world’ (“pseudo-modernism was not born on 11 September 2001, but postmodernism was interred in it’s rubble,” etc).

In 2006, it was FAR more acceptable (although barely… I’m pretty sure this was pretty close to the final throws of this cultural excuse) to write-off paranoia, surface-level-thinking, abhorrence of abstraction of any sort, over-moralizing, and ‘buckle-down-and-focus-on-“reality”’ sort of thought than it is to admit these sort of sentiments in civilized print (I.e. PhilosophyNow magazine, where the article initially ran) in mid-2009. I’m pretty sure it’s not taboo to think anymore… It’s acceptable again to not sit paranoid that any ideas that seem on the surface-level to lack relevance to day-to-day ethical/ easily perceived trivialities (I.e. the shortsighted assumption that the pop-culture dictates and guides thought, as Kirby is asserting, which is almost entirely negated by observations of any other past philosophical/ critical/ artistic movement… though that’s a whole different can of critical worms) might somehow appear disrespectful to those directly effected by the events of 2001 and the wars that followed, or that the “market economics” that Kirby correctly observes to have become such a cultural and intellectual focal point have dictated that any philosophical or ideological discussion about the relevance, value, or true possibility of “capitalist democracy” is somehow a betrayal to those who have fallen under the tires of the system and are struggling to make ends meet (Did you catch that, too? There’s an odd double-speak that reads between the lines of Kirby’s cynicism… his overall thesis seems laden with this cumbersome implication that it’s doing some grand disrespect to those that have been beat down and silenced by the system to speak out against it or attempt to step outside of it… he’s telling us to sit down and shut up, because that’s what our cultural-moment warrants. This strikes me as typical “post-9/11 world”-style fear-mongering… which of course makes all Kirby’s references to “Big Brother” (the TV show) deeply ironic due to the title of that program’s source-text.)

(Of course, the biggest irony in these claims is that, if the conclusions about our contemporary thought-processes that Kirby’s drawing were true, why would anyone have bothered to read his article?)

In fact, it seems that Kirby’s conclusions present, ironically, a death of this “post-9/11 world” mentality to a greater extent than a “death of postmodernism”… mostly because so shortly after, these ideas seem extremely dated by the various paranoia’s of that (thankfully) short epoch of slammed-shutter thought that litter the text.

I’m not doubting for a moment that there was a brief several-year time-period post 9/11 when we put on the intellectual brakes to focus on the “real”… and Kirby’s article strikes me as a final spasm of that method of thinking. But I feel that that era is over, and artists and critics have seemed to resume progressive/ abstract thinking where the word “real” once again REQUIRES those quotation-marks (as I was attempting to demonstrate with my post on Lady GaGa that inspired this analysis), once again WITHIN the postmodern mindset, rather than in opposition to it, utilizing and toying with the observations that Kirby makes, rather than allowing themselves to be trampled by them into cultural submission.

To be fair, Kirby himself leaves space in his text for the possibility of this transition. “Although we may grow so used to the new terms that we can adopt them for meaningful artistic expression (and then the pejorative label I have given pseudo-modernism may no longer be appropriate), for now we are confronted by a storm of human activity producing almost nothing of any lasting or even reproducible cultural value.” Most present-tense observers tapped into any sort of network of creative thinkers would, I feel, be able to assert in mid-2009 that the “for now” that he refers to here was merely a nasty bout of societal growing-pains which are finally starting to pass. So then would have to be passing the “pseudo-modern” era that Kirby refers to, by his own admission that the term would in this case nullify itself by its own definition. Kirby’s “pseudo-modernism” was intended as a full-stop in the present-tense progress of ideas, but he left open the possibility for it to merge into something more like a semi-colon… with a bit of time, even that device of pause has softened into a set of brackets containing an independent clause, after which we must return to the sentence, the advancement of critical thought, already in progress before this anecdotal interruption.

Each movement is noted by its counterpoint to its predecessor, right? Then Postmodernism (as an always-admittedly loosely-defined and ambiguous phenomenon, as most “movements” are, most particularly in the present-tense) is most easily defined and grappled with in reference to Modernism. Many attribute-lists and sets of comparative points have been critically assembled… to return to Hassan, for instance, and swipe a few examples off of his diagram of this sort, Modernism is represented by “Form (conjunctive, closed)” as Postmodernism by “Antiform (disjunctive, open),” M. by “Purpose” to P.M.’s “Play,” M. by “Design” to P.M.’s “Chance,” “Art Object/ Finished Work” to “Process/ Performance/ Happening,” “Interpretation/ Reading” to “Against Interpretation/ Misreading,” “Genital/ Phallic” to “Polymorphous/ Androgynous,” “God the Father” to “The Holy Ghost,” Modernism’s “Metaphysics” to PostMod’s “Irony,” and, of course, the ever-confusing yet oft-quoted standby, “Signified” vs. “Signifier.”

Contrasting these counterpoints, and then re-observing Kirby’s observations and assertions, it seems to me that nearly all of Hassan’s characteristic examples on the Postmodern side of the chart sound an AWFUL lot like most of the very characteristics that Kirby is citing as the reasons that Postmod is dead and buried. By Hassan’s definitions, therefore, it seems that what Kirby calls the “pseudo-modern” is merely a facet and development of postmodernism, merely one that Kirby (and perhaps much of the culture at the time of his writing) hadn’t quite figured out how to constructively adjust to yet.

Maybe it’s because my vantage-point sits too close to the line Kirby draws in the sand as a “generation gap” (1980). Maybe my age-bracket, those of us right on the cusp of this transition, whose outlooks feature bits and pieces of BOTH generations and can often rationalize aspects of BOTH of the philosophies that he lays out (without contradicting ourselves any more than his own essay does), that I have a hard time viewing his assessments of the way that our contemporary culture has developed as the philosophy-shattering end-game that Kirby sees it as. Who knows. But whether or not Kirby’s stance was pertinent in 2006 or not, between the far more “contemporary” pivotal post-modern texts that he conveniently overlooked in his claim that these are the thoughts of our parents’ generation, his “good-old-days” lamenting about how short “the kids’” attention-span is these days, his assumptions that if corporate pop-media isn’t producing viable thought-products than neither is anyone else, etc, in 2009 I definitely don’t buy it.

“You are the text, there is no-one else, no ‘author;’ there is nowhere else, no other time or place. You are free: you are the text: the text is superseded.”

These last lines of Kirby’s article strike me as humorously RIFE with exactly the sort of post-modern “elusiveness of meaning and knowledge,” “ironic self-awareness,” and “disbelief in grand narratives” that are the same phenomena he’s attempting to say that we no longer participate in.

Maybe Kirby’s text ITSELF is intended as an ironic post-modern meta-text, a game of subversive idea-play INTENDED to undo itself? If so, “The Death of Postmodernism and Beyond” would have made Beckett, Borges, and Nabokov EXTREMELY proud.

(Whew. Ok… I would like to thank IMMENSELY any of you that made it all the way through that one. If you did, you deserve a cookie. By “cookie,” I mean a brand new Swords We Swallow video. Thanks for reading… Enjoy.)

Swords We Swallow- A Broken Note

Welcome to the Intellectual Apocalypse; "Pseudo-Modernism" and Dr. Alan Kirby's Assertions That We're All Irrelevant Now.

2009-07-31T14:16:00.004-04:00

In a comment to my last entry, C. Charles ("xian") Dyer left a link to this fascinating article. Thank you, Mr. Dyer.

It's by Dr. Alan Kirby, from a 2006 issue of Philosophy Now magazine. Dr. Kirby asserted that post-modernism is dead, and that the way that contemporary pop-culture, technology, commerce, and social-dynamics operate have made any thought that goes beyond observational/ critical realism outdated and irrelevant.

I'm well aware that this article is 3 years outdated. But, it's new to me... and now that I'm familiar with Kirby's idea of "pseudo-modernism," three-years-out seems like a pretty good juncture to take a look and assess his predictions, especially since many of his claims are intrinsic upon the idea of how rapidly-changing, ephemeral and transient our culture has become.

For more on this debate on "what comes after post-modernity," I've actually found that (surprisingly) the Wikipedia entry for "post-postmodernism" actually provides a helpful overview (Dr. Kirby's article and nomenclature is mentioned here as well.) I've personally been partial to the ideas of "reconstructionism" for some time, but I tend to view this as an extension and development of postmodern thought, rather than a replacement of or rebuttal to it.

Since my next entry will feature my own response, reaction, and reflection on Dr. Kirby's article, I figured that I should probably post the link before-hand so that anyone who wants to know what I'm talking about can get a jump-start on reading it.

Overall, it's a really interesting read... I understand and agree with many of Dr. Kirby's observations, but I have some definite questions and reservations about the conclusions that he draws from them. (As I scribble all over the copy that I printed out, I'm also starting to get the impression that his own line of reasoning invalidates and contradicts some of the points that he's making [not to mention the fact that anyone's reading it]... but don't we all sometimes.)

What do you think?

Lady GaGa as Post-Modern Identity-Art.

2009-07-17T17:31:00.006-04:00

When we speak of post-modern art, it is commonly understood that elements of pop-culture play an important role. What this role typically involves when we say this is that artists (who are typically functioning (or attempting to function) in certain ways OUTSIDE of the pop-culture, utilize elements of mainstream cultural trends within their work, as components of the pastiche that they employ. Think of pop-culture as a shade of fluorescent paint, not the painting itself that the pigment is utilized to make.

As my girlfriend was recently reading elements to me of the Wikipedia bio for the current ironic pop-princess Lady GaGa, it struck me that a bit of role-reversal within these conventions may be finally coming into play. From what I can piece together from the wiki and some further digging into similar info available on the internet, here’s a brief synopsis, and my analysis of how and why it works-

“Lady GaGa,” A.K.A. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, is first-and-foremost an Artist (and not in the same way that we might off-handedly refer to Britney Spears as a “recording-artist,” rather in the “Fine Art”/ “Conceptual Project” sort of way) She’s trained at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and maintains a “collective” (“Haus of GaGa”- of which she claims “this is my own creative team, modeled on Warhol's Factory. Everyone is under 26 and we do everything together.”) This is decidedly NOT the resume of someone who (like most of her peers) signed themselves away to a talent-agent with a hysterical (and hysterically naive) cry of “Whatever it takes to make me a staaaaar!”

In her own words, rather; "I consider what I do to be more of an Andy Warhol concept: pop performance art, multimedia, fashion, technology, video, film. And it's all coming together, and it's going to be traveling museum show."

For a couple of weeks I had near-constant exposure to “The Fame” and streamed videos of the songs from the GaGa record… not exactly of my own volition, but not quite in a “kicking and screaming” sort of way either… I honestly don’t mind this stuff nearly as much as I feel that I probably should. From the first time that I heard it, the record struck me as conventional, clichéd, saccharine, girly pop (albeit with better-produced dance-beats and glammed-up electro than most of that ilk) of a sort that I don’t usually like…but somehow, this one felt… DIFFERENT. That difference, I believe, is IRONY. By this point I feel like I could write an entire book analyzing the double-entendres in each song and the mixed metaphors and tongue-in-cheek references in each video… but I’ll spare the close-read for now. Suffice it to say, there isn’t a single song on the record or official video released that doesn’t have an undertone or possible translation that doesn’t suggest the sort of pastiche that I’m speaking of. This is something a bit too artistically-serious to be called “spoof,” but a bit too ironic to be taken serious in the context that it’s presented… which presents another layer of irony- this pastiche is far more serious and legitimate than the genre that it takes as it’s subject. Think the way that Don Delilo, Salman Rushdie, Andy Warhol (a name you might have noticed GaGa herself seems quick to drop), or Sheppard Fairey repurpose pop-culture as a facet of their art. This is basically the same idea, but the formula has been cleverly inverted.

The nearest I can gather, “Lady GaGa’s” current public persona was created as a performance-art stunt. She seems to have taken the current media-driven pop-music market as her canvas, and decided that on it she would paint a construction of herself, an intentionally fabricated pop-star.

Let’s face it. They’re ALL fabricated. That’s part of the deal; the entirety of what currently “sells” in that realm. It’s about time that an Artist stepped up and made themself and their identity into the canvas itself, dedicated themself to creating their own identity into a “pop-star” in order to achieve, in a more extreme and all-encompassing way, the points that nearly all dedicated post-modernists, “pop-artists,” and post-post-modernists are intending to make about the world that we live in and the fleeting natures of “truth” and “reality,” by merely referencing or lifting elements of pop-culture, rather than diving right in, as Lady GaGa has.

Pop-culture is no longer merely a shade of paint dabbed on for effect or to make a point. Pop-culture IS the point, but the post-modern point remains the same. The identity is still the canvas, the artist becomes that canvas, the paint is both the artist and pop-culture itself. Lady GaGa seems on a crash course to prove that artists can BECOME the very thing that they’re critiquing (without devolving completely to satire), and this may prove to be the most extreme and compelling way of making this point to date.

That is, if anyone bothers to take notice that, regardless of the surface-level similarities, there’s something decisively DIFFERENT between Lady GaGa and Christina Aguilera.

What IS LeVautourChronique? ( A Mission-Statement, Expanded Scope, and Updated Aesthetics…)

2009-07-07T15:08:00.004-04:00

As my readership begins to gradually diversify a bit, I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been fielding more questions about what the theme and purpose of this website is. I’m aware that it’s not always completely evident from one entry to the next what, if any, is the connection between them…. So, this is probably a good time to establish the ground-rules…

My theme with LeVautourChronique is intentionally and by its nature pliable, but there are definite guidelines, and I feel that thus far I’ve adhered to them fairly consistently. Basically, this is an Arts and Culture blog dedicated to the Poetics and Politics of Identity. Critically, I’m of the belief that all Artists and public figures (and most individuals in general, whether consciously aware of it or not) are actively engaged in a project (or projects) of Identity-Construction, and that for artists this often even goes so far as being a facet of their catalog, one of their primary artistic creations (sometimes even their master-work, the larger piece that all of their other works are merely elements of… I’ve done academic work attempting to assert this about Walt Whitman, for instance.) Therefore, on this site, critique of nearly any element of art, culture, society, myself, my projects, daily life, etc is and has been fair game, as long as it is viewed, observed, and analyzed through this lens.

Now then, over seventy entries in and with those parameters finally clarified, I want to also make it clear that, when I started this site, I never intended to be the sole contributing writer to it in the long-run. My ideas for this site and reasons for establishing it, like most projects, seemed to require to be done in stages, and I think that it’s time to move a small step up that ladder.

So, from this point forward, consider this an open call. Keep in mind the theme just discussed (to reiterate, in a nutshell: An Arts and Culture blog dedicated to the Poetics and Politics of Identity and Identity Construction), let your mind spin, and send me some essays, reviews, musings, guerilla-journalism, poetry, abstract creative writing, whatever. I want it to be known, too, that I’m not only speaking of or to my close friends or frequent collaborators here; this is open to ANYONE if I think that your ideas fit well with what we’re trying to do and say on this site (…although part of me would like to start off with a couple contributions from artists/ writers in my own inner circle that I know and trust, just to test the water a bit [wink wink, get at me, kids.]…)

To get a few potential F.A.Q.’s on the subject out of the way…

Will you get paid for contributing your writing to LeVautourChronique? Yes and no. You will get paid in the same way that I get paid for maintaining the site. For the time-being, therefore, your compensation comes in the form of promotion, readership, networking, the free exchange of creative ideas, etc.

Will contributions published here be limited exclusively to ideas and opinions that agree explicitly with my own? Absolutely not. In fact, a desire for differing ideas is one of the driving forces behind my interest in the inclusion of additional writers. Open dialogue is definitely one of my goals here. Contributions from authors other than myself will feature by-lines, and probably an introductory blurb so as not to confuse my own thoughts with those of others. I will not, however, publish here anything perceived as intolerant, ignorant, or unnecessarily negative, however well you might think that your writing with those traits might adhere to the blog’s theme.

Will I stop posting my own work here once I start accepting contributions? Absolutely not. This will still primarily be my blog, and primarily the online home of my own ideas, reviews, and essays. In fact, you will most likely notice that the next few posts are still my own, as I have a handful in the works and partially written… and that won’t mean in any way that I’ve dismissed the idea of accepting contributions, either.

How do I submit my contributions, or send additional questions, comments, or feedback? The best way is to email me, at bernard.levautour@yahoo.com.

With a newly-clarified mission-statement, and a widened scope for future entries on this site, I think that this is also as good a time as any to introduce a bit of a new look to L.V.C. I am therefore retiring the awkward/ outdated quasi-unintentionally phallic-looking B+W vulture logo (I’ll leave it up until the next post, in case you haven’t a clue what I’m referring to…) and replacing it with a brand new and far more appropriate-feeling logo(the aesthetic tone around here has evolved with the blog, I feel…)…

…which features an image from my portfolio of Miss Chloe Claustrophobia (herself a conceptual-art project pertaining to the theme of Identity-Construction) digitally modified in collaboration with Sara Jane of Alloy Images/ Swords We Swallow / Tipsy Cougar (who is also my wonderful and supportive girlfriend.).

So, stay tuned. Click the “Follow” link at the top of the page. Contribute your writing. Help this site become a home for active, constructive, and creative dialogue. In the meantime, enjoy my rants and rambles more thoroughly now that you hopefully have a better understanding of why I post them here.

Thanks for reading.

-Bernard P. Provencher LeVautour

Dissecting the Idea of “Journalism,” One Admitted Bias at a Time; Civil Vain’s New Retro Industrial.

2009-07-03T14:02:00.003-04:00

Phoenix-based multi-instrumentalist/ Industrial conceptualist Wes Hopeless recently submitted to me a couple of tracks and videos from his current project, Civil Vain (a recent combination, or merger, of the material under that name and a prior outfit called Entropy 33) to take a look at and analyze a bit for him. These are demo-tracks that may eventually find their way onto an as-of-yet unplanned but speculated album project, and feature songs that will most definitely make their way into the project’s live-performance debut, tentatively slated for the fall of ‘09.

Bias alert- Wes is a frequent musical collaborator of mine. Together, we were the two primary halves of the Phoenix-based surreal doom-rock outfit The Green Sea, and since that project has been on hiatus per my relocation to the east coast, we have continued to frequently exchange tracks, ideas, bits-and-pieces, feedback, critique, etc. Therefore, keep this in mind, and take this review for what it is; a bit more informed and subjective than a blind listen, yet still striving to give the material its fair and honest due.

With that out of the way… first, a video.
La Femme Diabla

This song has evolved and been posted in various forms several times, and I’ve been keeping tabs on its progress. Wes’ current songwriting tactic seems to involve constructing gradually in sonic layers, like overlaying various screens over each other on an old-school overhead projector, and in the various versions of the song you can hear the colors and textures of each screen that’s been overlaid. What’s fascinating to me is that with each layer of sound and electronic chaos that Wes adds, the finished product seems to become somehow MORE coherent than the last, rather than less. This most recent video is therefore my favorite version thus far.

The latest recorded audio version of this track, unlike its live-video counterpart, features much more of a build-up, a crescendoed gradual layering; starting off almost sparse enough to recall early Depeche Mode or The Dead Milkmen’s “You’ll Dance to Anything” in an awkward-flashback sort of way, then building into the noisy Industrial electronic layering that the song has since evolved into. Of Civil Vain’s currently available audio material, the four newest tracks are definitely the stand-outs, as it’s obvious that Wes’ project has made great strides recently coming into its own in terms of arrangement, production, and songwriting. Of these four, two are original compositions (“Confession of a Killer” and “La Femme Diabla,” the song just discussed), and the other two are “covers” (“Electric Barbarella” by Duran Duran, and “Chalice,” originally by The Green Sea, which I wrote in collaboration with Wes. I‘ve never written a review of a cover of a song that I wrote before… this seems a bit awkward.).

For the two cover-songs, I’m trying to resist the urge to go back and listen to the original versions for comparison. I haven’t heard the Duran Duran song in long enough that I don’t remember what it sounds like, and it’s been a while since I sat down with the E.P. that we recorded with The Green Sea. More relevant, I think, is taking them in the context of the other two songs. Wes made a smart decision to choose two songs for Civil Vain to cover that sound little like his own writing-style in terms of melody and construction, as it frees him up to focus his attention on creating the interesting noise-landscapes that he does so well, and adding grit and creative production to songs that feature a style different from his own trademark. The way that the vocal-parts and song-structures are created on the original tracks smacks of old-school Industrial; There’s plenty of influence from the tried-and-trues here (Ministry, Skinny Puppy, KMFDM, etc) and Wes’ vocal-style and instrumentation often reminds me of The Revolting Cocks. Civil Vain pulls this off extremely well, but the cover-songs demonstrate refreshingly that Mr. Hopeless’ arrangements are still viable when Al Jorgensen has left the building.

On a personal note, I’m extremely impressed by this solo-take on “Chalice;” Wes managed to accomplish a genre-shift without much more than minor tweaks such as toning down my original hair-metal-meets-doom over-played guitar-part (I think Wes even played it on bass on this version?), translating the vocal part from “dark” to “sinister, ” etc; The song has been transformed enough to fit well into a very different sounding set, while leaving its structural integrity intact.

I just realized that with this version of “Chalice” and Tipsy Cougar’s repurposing of “The Plea of Miss Claustrophobia” (“Miss Claustrophobia’s Revenge,” from the forthcoming “Immaculate Conceptions”), two out of the three songs on The Green Sea’s E.P. have been kept in circulation, which makes me seriously tempted to rework a version of “The Evasive Enigmatic” with Swords We Swallow. We’ll see.

Wes’ greatest achievement with this Civil Vain material, I’m well aware, sounds on the surface like a sideways compliment at best. Let’s face it; What we have here is a one-man electronic act, playing Industrial music peppered with unabashed throwbacks to that genre’s bygone heyday, performing songs that are littered with references to robots, vampires, and creepy, sexed-up murder scenarios. On paper, it seems that if there was ever a precise formula for “hard to take seriously,” this would be it; possibly even rivaling The Cruxshadows in that regard. But somehow, in my biased opinion, Civil Vain manages to steer clear of some of the seemingly inevitable cheesiness lurking in this sort of terrain. As for how he manages this…. Honestly, I’m not quite SURE why it works, but it does. Take a listen. Your guess is as good as mine.

Scatter-Brained Notes, Notes From a Scattered Brain.....

2009-06-26T23:36:00.003-04:00

If you read my last couple of entries, you might have noticed mention of a fairly full-slate of planned near-future entries. You may also be noticing that its been a little while since I posted those last entries. So, here's the deal...

Since I posted those last entries, Sara and I (and thus, Swords We Swallow) have moved into a new apartment/ studio-complex in Dover to get situated on the seacoast prior to starting grad.school at the University of New Hampshire in September. We've done alot of packing boxes, loading boxes, driving, unloading boxes, unpacking boxes, decorating, organizing, working to get the dog accustomed to the new surroundings (and in turn, getting myself accustomed to living with a small furry dog) and then trying to find time and patience to decompress after this. At the same time, I've been juggling two restaurant jobs in two different parts of the state (which means more driving...) and it's probably worth noting that the new one that I've started has caused a bit more anxiety than anticipated in several regards.

Basically, what this all boils down to... is that I have more than a bit of communication burn-out at the moment. I'm well aware that over the past few weeks I haven't been nearly as good at answering my phone, responding to emails, writing past-promised reviews, etc, as I would like to be, and I apologize. At the same time, however, I am trying to allow myself to get it out of my system while I can, before school starts.

I still have several entries partially written, and now that we're settled in to the new place, I plan to start regularly posting them again. Look for a Civil Vain review, a Lady Gaga critique, and possibly an entry on the imminent demise of the restaurant industry as we knew it, as well as several other tentatively slated pieces, in the very near future.

In the meantime, Tipsy Cougar finished the recording of our debut record, "Immaculate Conceptions," before Sara and I moved out of the Cougar Pad in Manchester... Here's a video of the last track that we completed for the record, "Manchester Song," that we filmed while recording.

Tipsy Cougar - Manchester Song

If you've been following the band at all, you probably know that we record completely live, with as few overdubs as we can manage. This particular track was recorded entirely on two-track cassette tape, with absolutely no addition tracks added... and I'm still incredibly happy with the way that it turned out; a personal goal of mine (the video's audio is from the camera's mic, not the album-version). I believe that the video was a recording of the take that we ended up using for the record.

We're currently working on brainstorming creative ways to package and distribute the record, bypassing the conventional music-industry as completely as possible.

Tipsy Cougar is now also on Facebook! Visit us, become a fan!

Swords We Swallow has set up our new studio in a room of our new apartment in Dover... We recorded an improvised track and video after we had set up the equipment, but we've decided not to make it available because, well... after a day off of unpacking, decorating, and setting up equipment, we'd had quite a bit of wine... and that's pretty evident in the quality of the material. We're currently debating about posting edited segments of the film, as it's marginally entertaining... but we're also working on turning the material that we improvised into an actual song and recording a better/ more complete/ less annoyingly "abstract" version.

In the meantime, here's a photo of our new set-up...

More such photos are available for your perusal on our Myspace and Facebook pages.

So, basically... stay tuned, peel your eyes. I plan to post more in coming days.

A Swords We Swallow update.

2009-05-14T09:48:00.011-04:00

A lot has been going on lately on the Swords We Swallow front. (for those that didn't catch past posts about this, Swords is new musical project that Sara and I have been working on.)

Our debut EP, "Bogside Beauty," is almost finished. All of the song-tracks are complete; we're planning to add some experimental noise sort of stuff, devise some creative packaging, and get a copy into your grubby hands.

We're online now in a couple of places. We have a page with audio-tracks for you to listen to on myspace. Head over, take a listen, add us to your friends. For a limited time only, you also have the opportunity to be the very first of our friends to leave us a fun comment.

Also, we have a page on Facebook. Search for us, become a fan, join or start a discussion on our board.

Here are also a couple of videos that we filmed while recording the EP. More of this sort of thing will be coming soon, including a video that we're currently devising for the song "Commodity Trader (This is NOT a bull market)" which you can take a listen to or download now at Myspace. Enjoy, stay tuned for more to come.

Swords we Swallow- Born-On-Date

Swords We Swallow- A Dandelion For Emily

A Message From Our Promotions Department...

2009-05-05T20:54:00.002-04:00

You may have noticed, I added a new feature to my side-bar, with a very similar title to this entry.

Are you a musician, artist, or perfomer who would like to have their work reviewed? Are you looking for quotes for your press-kit? Would you like to find out what critics might think about your most recent work?

Email bernard.levautour@yahoo.com for questions about how to submit your work for review.

A quick perusal of my back-log will show you some examples of recent works of art that I have critiqued. If you think your art (and your promotions efforts) could benefit from such a treatment, let me know, pass the work along, and I'll give it an indepth analysis and be pretty honest about it. If you think that you (or your portfolio) could benefit from this, be in touch.

Obviously, this sort of thing benefits you at the same time that it benefits me. You get promotion, I get readership. I get readership, you get more promotion. Get it? "Readership" and "Promotion" become (and always are and were) overlapping and interchangeable terms. Who can lose?

Plus, I'm always on the look out for new and interesting art (and things to write about and wrap my head around).

Be in touch.

A bit of a personal update...

2009-05-03T01:47:00.002-04:00

I have received my acceptances, weighed the options, narrowed the field, and eliminated some question-marks… I have decided to pursue the first phase of my graduate school education at the University of New Hampshire this fall.

I have registered for classes, and begin in Durham at the end of August, which means a relocation from Manchester (the home of Metro-grime) to the beautiful New Hampshire seacoast. Sara and I have been apartment-hunting, are coming daily closer to figuring out where to reside in the coming months, and will hopefully be moving from the Tipsy Cougar Pad into a new comfortable and creative Swords We Swallow Studios (presumably somewhere in the Dover area… we’re currently leaning toward a complex with an appropriately [if a bit cheesy] Literature-inspired name) by mid-June.

Needless to say, I’ve been pretty busy the last few weeks, what with visits to campus offices, apartment-scoping, searching for a Portsmouth-area restaurant-job… but I’ve still had a couple of entries for this site in the works… one involves an update on Swords We Swallow, with a web-address, audio, release-information, and videos, which I’ve somehow still found some time to put together… and another that pertains to Lady Gaga (pop-music as post-modern performance- and identity- art).

So stay tuned.

Nailing our Cultural Coffin, One Unquestioned Re-categorization and Ill-Assumption at a Time. (Warning- overt doom-sayer over-dramatization follows)

2009-04-16T18:33:00.005-04:00

As much as its not a new thing (in fact it seems lately a bit over-observed and often a trite and empty buzz-phrase), it’s nevertheless been on my mind a lot that, in countless regards, we’re currently residing at a bizarre cultural turning-point. Decisions made and actions taken in regard to the social-structures of our current transitional society are guaranteed to, for better, worse, or just “different,” turn the world that we live in into a place that we wouldn’t have recognized or foreseen five or ten years ago. The current dilemmas and changes (economic, cultural, social, technological, commercial, etc.) that the world is facing could either force us to think more creatively and overhaul outdated systems, thoughts, and ways of functioning that are no longer viable, healthy, constructive, or pertinent… or they could force a tail-spin, as society-at-large continues to blindly rest on the laurels of failed old- and untested new- systems, from which the mass-populous eventually looks around and notices that we are deadlocked into a way of life that makes us irreparably miserable.

I know, I know… I can’t even write these sort of words without a bit of a cringe at the over-dramatization. I’m no doomsayer or garden-variety conspiracy theorist. But maybe it’s time that we consider a bit whether part of the reason that these sentiments make us a bit queasy is that what WOULD have seemed laughable and pompous not that long ago is uncomfortably close to being REALISTIC for the real-life drama-quotient of the present situation.

Whether appropriate or exaggerated, this possibility should prove fodder for our consideration. Increasing our mindfulness of how we live, what we support with our time and money, what information we intake, and how we filter that information into what views and opinions that we choose to subscribe to can be nothing but positive, particularly in a time like this, when nearly every aspect of our collective lives bears some sort of “what’s next?” element.

This is no time to criticize each other for over-analyzing things, for looking at too-broad of a picture, or to even mention the words “You think too much.” We live at a juncture when thinking critically about everyday situations is among the only ways to find possibilities of the positive in impending negativity. Analyzing why we do what we do MUST become a more constant and widespread phenomenon if we are to use trying times as learning experiences rather than long-term detriments. Even if the clichéd synopsis’ of our present situation are overblown, this sort of mindset certainly can’t cause us any harm.

Just one bizarre case in point: A recent Monday’s Boston-area newspapers featured a rather surreal media-squabble story that alarmed me quite a bit. It featured a local football-”hero” and a “super”-model, their henchmen (“security”), and a couple of working photo-journalists (relabeled “paparazzi” for the added drama and stock-image automatic vilification) in a South American jungle-nation. As this story is now about a week and a half old, I’ll just relay a cursory recap in case you didn’t catch it.

Basically, the photo-journalists were commissioned by their employer to take pictures of the quarterback and model’s “top-secret” second wedding ceremony (which was so “clandestine” and “private” that its only purpose was as a media-stunt for a different publication). When the photographers were “caught” doing so by the couple’s “security”/ henchmen, they were basically kidnapped onto the property that they had previously remained off-premise of, and were detained (or attempted to be) there until they surrendered their camera and film. When the photographers refused and escaped, the henchmen opened-fire at them, missing their heads by inches and shattering the windows of their vehicle. (I wish I had have thought up this scenario for fiction… but most workshopping groups would probably have told me it was far too preposterous to be compellingly realistic.)

As you can probably guess from the code-switching in this synopsis, for the purpose of this entry I’m most interested in the issues of semantics and linguistics at play in this story, and how those translate into cultural assumptions and a set of media-based (and consumer-digested) binary codes.

Let’s remove the character stereotypes from the scenario and replace them with other stock images. If the same situation had taken place in the middle-east, for instance, the celebrities and security would be labeled “terrorists.” If they were immigrants in a US city, the headline would have read “mafia-related.” But our current culture seems unwilling to be dissuaded from the general binary assumption that “celebrities= heroes, paparazzi= villains.”

To quote the British rapper Scroobious Pip (from 2008’s Strange Famous Records release “Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobious Pip- Angles”) “I always had the feelin’ I could never be the villain, ’cuz the villain in the films is always backlit.” (for more relevant quotes on similar issues of pivotal semantics, check out the title track to that record, “Angles.”)

The photo-journalists in this scenario were paid to do a job. That job facilitates the celebrities’ ability to do their own job (particularly in the case of the super-model), of which the principle occupation and exorbitant pay-checks are derived from having photos taken of them, and maintaining the public interest (their primary claim to job-stability and commercial viability) that only the media is capable of ensuring. Photo-journalists doing their job facilitate the jobs of celebrities, yet somehow that very same media expects us to believe (and it seems that much of the populace is all too willing to) that the facilitator is somehow (by way of the facilitation itself) oppressing and victimizing the facilitated?

Cue that “what’s next?” element here… If this sort of thing is any indication, those laurels we could choose to rest on are planted in quicksand.

Swords We Swallow; Transparency in Brainstorming.

2009-04-06T16:07:00.003-04:00

In my last post, I mentioned that, per the requests of some participants in our poll to name "Swords We Swallow," I would post the complete list of choices from which the finalists where culled. You asked for it, you got it. I'm so sorry. Chalk this up once again to part of the project of making the art-process a facet of the art itself. A bit of transparency in brainstorming.

Although only one of these names could be selected as the title of the project, we still enjoy many of them that were eliminated early for reasons of logistics... expect to see some reappear in other parts of the endeavor.

Wheatears
Cainandabler
Muddle the Plan
Luck Before Wedlock
Tanner and the Make
Grant Owl’s Facktotem
Twelve Months Aristocrat
Awnt Yuke
The Pet Plagues
Archdukon Cabbanger
Last Past the Post
Firstnighter
Old Fruit
Bogside Beauty
York’s Porker
Moonface the Murderer
Midnight Sunburst
Tight Before Teatime
You’re Welcome to Waterfood
Lobsterpot Lardling
The Ace and Deuce of Paupering
He’s None of Me Causin’
Barebarean
Scuttle to Cover
Salary Grab
Sleeps with Feathers and Ropes
Swayed in his Falling
Vee Was a Vindner
Born Burst Feet Foremost
Easyathic Phallusaphist
Fast in the Barrel
Boawwll’s Alocutionist
Spring Peepers
Ealaine aire san Ealaine
The Immaculate Conceptions
Whose Wings
Swords We Swallow
Old Seabeastius’ Salvation
Saith a Sawyer til a Strame
Buy Birthplace for a Bite
The Crazier Letters
Groans of a Britoness
He Never Has the Hour
Ought We to Visit Him?
Placeat Vestrae
Gettle Nettie
Thrust Him Not
Oremunds Queue Visits Amen Mart
Twenty of Chambers
Weighty Ten Beds and a Wan Ceteroom
I Led the Life
The Following Fork
Drink to Him
I Ask You to Believe I Was His Mistress
He Can Explain
Da’s a Daisy so Guimea Your Handsel Too
Tank and Bonnbtail
Huskvy Admortal
What Jumbo Made to Jalice and What Anisette to Him
Ophelia’s Culpreints
Hear Hubty Hublin
My Old Dansh
Suppotes a Ventriloquist Merries a Corpse
Look to the Lady
Of the Two Ways of Opening the Mouth
Through a Lift in the Lude
Oldsire is Dead to the World
Inn the Gleam of Waherlow
Thee Steps Forward
Two Stops Back
In My Lord’s Bed
Mum It Is All Over
He’s Hue to Me Cry
A Boob was Weeping This Mower Was Reaping
Up From the Pit of My Stomach I Swish You the White of the Mourning
Gentlehomme’s Faut Pas
See the First Book of Jealesies Pessim
The Suspended Sentence
A Pretty Brick Story for Childsize Heroes
As Lo Our Sleep
The Fokes Family Interior
Seen Aples and Thin Dyed
Fine’s Fault was no Felon
His is the House That Malt Made
Divine Views From Back to the Front
Sounds and Compliments Libiduous
Seven Wives Awake Aweek
Buttbutterbust
Many-festoons For the Colleagues on the Green
As Tree is Quick and Stone is White So is My Washing Done by Night
The Honorary Mirsy Earwicker
Showing All the Unmentionability
Jaywalking Eyes
Ten Canons in the Skelterfugue
faunonfleetfoot

Swords We Swallow; an introduction.

2009-03-29T09:09:00.004-04:00

Spring is finally almost here, which means that it seems like an appropriate time to introduce a new medium-blurring art-project from the Asbjorn Arts Collective. Fresh air brings fresh ideas, right?

Swords We Swallow is predominantly a musical project, but with a definite visual-art component, and very possibly some performance-art facets.... and probably eventually also an eclectic DJ tag-team, once we get our unorthodox rigs situated. You all know how much I love to play games of "which part is the art" with my projects.

This little start-up began when Sara Jane and I were working on material for the noisy, experimental electro-rock outfit Tipsy Cougar that the two of us comprise half of. We found ourselves writing song material that didn't exactly fit in with the mission-statement of that outfit, but we liked the songs, and still wanted to put them to use. The music itself has thus-far been less noisy, yet more abstract. There are still electronic elements, but also alot more folk-ish stuff, and quite a bit less in-your-face spasm-danciness and attitude. We plan to record a limited-press E.P. soon... right now we're thinking three songs, five or six tracks. We plan to release these in hand-numbered, one-of-a-kind packaging. Of course, this is all hypothetical right now; we're still in the writing stage. (on that note, if anyone with some simple recording equipment wants to help us to track the E.P. in the coming weeks, please be in touch... an extra ear and someone to man the faders would be fun.)

Anyone who's been reading this blog for a while probably remembers that I have a bit of an ongoing/ recurring project that involves transparency in the art-process; that the process can be art itself. With that intention in mind, I'll submit here a couple such specimens related to Swords We Swallow, in its formative stages.

Some of you may have seen a video that I posted to my Myspace and Facebook pages over the last couple days, billed as a sort of Swords We Swallow trailer. Yes, it's very odd. I like to think of this video as a bit of "spontaneous art," a facet of the art-process-as-art project. This video had initially neither intention nor concept. We were merely trying to figure out how to use a webcam device and accompanying software-program. As we tossed different clips into the clips, we would tweak it to fit into "hey, this looks like..." sort of after-thoughts. We thought that it was amusing, and somehow perversely relevant to the project that we were working on. So, we decided to share. With that said, enjoy the chaos.

In other transparency-related aspects of the project, some of you may have seen a web poll that was floating around recently to help us try to name the new act. We gave you three options, and although all three received scattered votes, Swords We Swallow won by a decent margin (which is good, since that's the one that both Sara and I were pulling for anyway by the time the poll ended.)

Over the course of the polling-process, I had said that the three finalists had been culled from a lengthy list... and a couple people asked to see the rest of the options. I replied to them that most of the others were eliminated for fairly obvious logistical reasons, but that I might post the list at some point just for fun anyway. I think I might get to that in my next entry... the list serves a little bit like a very odd piece of spontaneous poetry.

In other related news, Tipsy Cougar is almost finished recording and compiling our debut demo, "Immaculate Conceptions." We plan to record two more tracks, and then figure out how to get this noisy piece of grimy, throbbing mess into your hands in the most perverse way possible.

A Pair of Past-Related Reviews; Part 4; "You and I... walk by the... sea"; Conclusion.

2009-03-26T11:34:00.002-04:00

While reviewing the new records from Jason Hebert and Cameron Audet, and musing on my own musical projects over the past few years, I noticed some interesting parallels between the body of work that our front-stage trio has collectively produced post-Rusted Tricycle. Both the similarities and differences between all of our musical trajectories are somehow coincidental, or somehow a part of the structure that we grappled off of separately after gaining our footing together with that band. Who knows.

Post-Tricycle, all three of us played in rock bands at one point in time or another that had a certain degree of “commercial viability,” and arguably (these comparisons are inevitably a bit subjective) achieved more of that sort of success than we did during our time with the Trike. After that, we have all recorded and performed with an acoustic project, and have all at least dabbled in one form or another of electronic music. I suppose that, musical trends being what they are (as discussed a bit within each of the reviews posted prior), these latter two could be claimed about most of our musical peers from the emo/ pop-punk scene of that time. I don’t really know. Nevertheless, these similarities seem noteworthy to me, considering how stylistically far-removed both of those formats are from the genre that Rusted Tricycle played.

Looking at the acoustic and electronic music that the three of us have produced independently of one another, it’s all very different, and we seem to all arrive at our influences and reasons for gravitating toward those sorts of music from very different junctures. These differences, however, remind me of a running joke that we had while R.T. was around.

I remember that we used to tease each other a bit that the front-stage trio of the band was accidentally similar in structure to a boy-band, where each member has a different “character,” stereotype, and demographic. Jason was the “indie/ emo” guy, with a flair for more serious and dramatic emotional songwriting and stage-presence. Cam reflected the “pop-punk” schtick, sentimental, light-hearted, and endearingly goofy. I was the “punk-rocker,” appearing onstage with liberty-spikes, Misfits tees, and a more rambunctious performance-demeanor.

As we’ve grown up, both musically and personally, in the time since R.T., the differences between all of our projects in both the electronic and acoustic formats are almost startlingly predictable when compared to an evolving and maturing version of our Rusted Tricycle “boy-band” stereotypes. Jason’s music has been consistently emotionally complicated, multi-layered, and dramatic, with almost epic tendencies at times. Cam has honed his pop songwriting skills, playing soft, catchy music with “pantie-melting” tendencies. My own music has usually veered toward the abstract and avant-garde, conceptually chaotic and intentionally inaccessible to most audiences even remotely “mainstream.”

I don’t want to get into too much of a “nature vs. nurture” argument about how much of both these similarities and differences were derived from our experiences with Rusted Tricycle all that time ago, and how much was just aspects of our personalities that inevitably came to similar conclusions that would have been reached regardless of the time with the Trike. I merely thought that these “Where Are We Now” parallels were interesting, and I figured that I’d share.

The next time you see one of us playing out somewhere, yell for a Rusted Tricycle song. It will either get a laugh, or a scowl with a “damn you, Bernie” attached, which would be amusing either way. Who knows, maybe we’ll actually remember how to play one (I know that I heard a recording of Cam doing a version of “Seashells” not that long ago, and I’ve been known to occasionally bust out “Cherry Coke” when playing acoustic… my favorite was an impromptu version once with cello and synth). Hell, yell for “Slit.” That would be REALLY funny.

A Pair of Past-Related Reviews; Part 3; Armor & Rage.

2009-03-16T21:14:00.003-04:00

Cameron Audet has completed a new acoustic record, which will soon be available under the name “Armor & Rage.” According to Cam, this project also has a full backing-band based out of Boston, and records with expanded instrumentation might very well be coming soon. The current record is called “Pantie Melting Love Songs,” and I don’t have information yet about how and when a physical copy can be procured, but I’m guessing that, if you’re interested, bugging Cam through the project’s Myspace page might do the trick.

I’m not sure that there has ever been a record-title that has so blatantly announced that this reviewer is not in the intended demographic of the music contained therein as “Pantie Melting Love Songs.” I mean, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the title, and I think it fits the music on the record pretty well. But… as you may have guessed (let’s not make assumptions), I don’t wear panties, so there’s not much “melting” to be done on that front (if I DID, for some reason, wear panties every once in a while [no one‘s judging here] I still really doubt that Cam would want any part in making them melt.). Basically, the title makes it pretty obvious from the get-go that this record was not intended for a 26-year-old male who prefers vague, complicated metaphors to honest, sentimental professions of emotion. And he’s got it right. This is a record that is very obviously, and very thoroughly, intended for girls. Since I’m definitely not a young girl, this is, quite predictably, not a record that I could listen to every day for my own personal enjoyment. However, knowing up-front what I’m getting into, I can definitely appreciate it for what it is. As a sentimental record intended for a young female audience, this is a pretty solid collection of songs, and he seems to capture his intentions dead-on.

While I was listening to these tracks and jotting down my thoughts, I was amazed that every time I put my headphones down to step out for a bit, I had the chorus-hook from one song or another stuck in my head. “Pantie Melting Love Songs” turned out, with each listen, to be a FAR more incessantly catchy album than my first listen would have suggested. I’m pretty sure that my girlfriend thought I was losing my mind as I kept singing “I’m wanting to see you… You’re easy on the eye…” as we walked down aisles in the grocery store.

I was initially trying to think of how to write this review by somehow bypassing the almost inanely obvious Dashboard Confessional comparisons. After hearing the songs, my initial thought was that even MENTIONING the similarity would be trite, redundant, and do no one involved much of a service. Lets face it, the post-alternative music market is GLUTTED with former members of indie and emo bands’ acoustic side-projects, the reviews for which always and inevitably (and almost always accurately) contain phrases such as “like Chris Carraba at his whiniest and most melodramatic” or “like Chris Carraba at his most heartfelt and honest.” The Dashboard fan doesn’t ever gain anything from such reviews, because they’re tired of being inundated with knock-offs, and the Dashboard loather doesn’t gain anything from such reviews (besides the red-flag not to buy the record), because they weren’t a fan the first time around.

What I realized the more that I listened, however, was that avoiding this comparison would be just as disingenuous. Unlike many of its ilk, this record, rather than trying to downplay the influence as most of this sort of acts tend to try to do (i.e. let’s throw in a verse that sounds like Conor Oberst; lets toss in some Jets To Brazil-isms or an Eliot Smith rip to show that we’re ’keepin’ it real,’ etc.), Armor & Rage seems to make a conscious decision to fly headlong into this comparison, which seems somehow more respectable. There’s a certain “Yeah, I like Dashboard. So what?” aspect of the songwriting here that’s almost refreshing compared with many similar-sounding acts.

The recording of the record is lush and skillfully produced, at the same time that it is incredibly (and almost startlingly) intimate. The reverb on the vocal-harmonies (all of which are Cameron’s own, and well- composed) is shimmering, without being overwrought or cheesy. At the same time, the degree of sonic detail allowed within the mix is tangibly real, complete with the sort of sounds of fingers on strings and popping of breath that conjure images of the musician performing in a completely empty room of an abandoned old third-story New England apartment (which reminds me a bit of early Ani Difranco… in production only).

Where Cameron does tend to deviate (thankfully) from such unabashed Carraba-isms is in the way that his guitar-parts are constructed. The power-chords-on-acoustic strategy of Dashboard and other such post-indie acoustic “pantie-melting” holdovers is almost completely absent from these songs, leaving in its place moments when the listener might almost start to think he’s listening to an actual FOLK (or at least indie-folk) record. There are even a couple moments when the guitar-work (which is admirably far more attentive at most moments to rhythm and groove than to notes and chord sequence) almost reminds me of certain Dar Williams tracks.

In the song “Take Your Aim,” there’s a moment when a tidal-wave of added backing-vocals break through the mix, at a spot that doesn’t exactly seem to be a climax. Sitting in my apartment alone with noise-cancelling headphones on, the change was so abrupt and forceful that I jumped (physically) out of my seat, and thought that someone was behind me. The most surprising thing was, this continued to happen EVERY time the song came on. I have to admit, part of me enjoys this unexpected moment. If you’re drifting off a bit listening to these songs (which is completely feasible, but not totally a flaw, as Cameron’s sound and songwriting is soothingly consistent throughout), this is a bit of the record that will wake you up and force you to pay attention. I’m definitely personally a fan of aspects like these, but it strikes me as a bit out of sync with the otherwise apparent aim of accessibility evident throughout the record, and thus I get the feeling that it wasn’t quite intentional.

Overall, the stated goal of “Pantie Melting” of the new Armor and Rage record is admirably achieved. This is a stirring set of soft emotional songs, skillfully performed and recorded; a laid-back, listener-friendly pop record, with a ton of commercial potential as such. Cam’s chosen title for the record boldly asserts his awareness of the general truth that it is impossible to make a record that’s equally well-suited to every listener, and, with that in mind, this is most definitely an excellent release for its intended demographic, even if it may not be up my own personal alley.

A Pair of Past-Related Reviews; Part 2; Action and the Red Baron

2009-03-09T00:44:00.004-04:00

In my last post, I had said that I planned to review Cameron Audet’s new record, and then Jason Hebert’s record with “Action and the Red Baron.” I am, however, going to switch the order, and review the Action record today, and presumably tackle the Audet record next, as information-gathering for one entry has taken a bit longer than the other.

Action and the Red Baron is a collaboration between Jason Hebert (“The Red Baron”- vocals, guitar, tambourine, shaker) and Dan Custer (“Action Dan”- piano, bass, turntables, beatbox, programming). As I said before, Jason has previously played with and fronted several bands, including Rusted Tricycle and Theory of Regret. Action Dan produces quite good electronic music under his own name. They recently released a record called “A Dream Awakening,” which is available through CDBaby, iTunes, and Amazon.com.

It seems a requisite part of an indie-rock singer’s recording catalog at this juncture to team up with an electronics-guru at some point, to release a record of vaguely dancy/ vaguely atmospheric emotional techno tracks to cater to the rock-throwback song-structure-and-melody whims of the current electro-hipster crowd. While I have to admit a certain taste-based bias in favor of this format, I also have some critical reservations about the proficiency with which it is often executed, as with most flavor-of-the-minute recording whims that force us to call the motives of its perpetrators into question a bit. Although “A Dream Awakening,” in principle, fulfills many of these qualities, it proves to be a more concisely constructed, and at the same time more diverse, record than many other such experiments.

Throughout the record, one of the easiest things to note is how startlingly crisp the overall production is. I am amazed by how effortlessly the variety of sound-scapes used spin in, out, and around each other. The sonic depth of these songs is immense and cavernous, and the beats are well-varied, atmospheric, and unusually well-suited to the emotional contents of the songwriting.

Jason’s voice opens the track “Still Standing” in a solo tone that is organic enough for the emotional style of the delivery, yet appropriately processed enough to fit with the electronic format of the project (a balancing-act of production rarely achieved in electro-crossover projects). “I was standing at the top of the world when the news came in.” The melody sounds optimistic and downright poppy, until the beats kick in dramatically on the word “in,” proving immediately that Action’s instrumentation is not merely presented as backing-tracks for Jason’s voice, but as integral aspects of the way that the duo intends to convey the overall statement of the song, a theme that is evident throughout the record, and one of the elements that makes the album shine. As the “news” comes in, the mood is shifted on a dime from upbeat to darkly introspective. Even when a guitar part breaks into the mix that by itself sounds downright doom-esque and like it shouldn’t really work, because of the overall tonal coherency of the track, for one reason or another, it definitely does. Some of the vocal-breaks and refrain-repetitions verge closer to Chester Bennington terrain than I ever thought that I would hear Jason doing, but these work surprisingly well, even to those of us who aren’t exactly in Linkin Park’s stylistic demographic.

On the track “Talking Distant Variable,” Jason lets Action Dan take the foreground. With reverb-drenched piano-lines and textural beat-crescendos, there’s definitely a bit of an Air/ Thievery Corporation down tempo vibe going on. Things get a tad muddy when the vocals try to force harder-edged choruses from the depths of the over-arching chill-out-session, with the sudden addition of guitars that are well executed, but a bit over-played and over-stated in the mix.

Like most indie/electronic projects, this record is not lacking for a couple of dancier groove-based moments. The most thoroughly funky track, and the outfit’s most complete foray into indie-dance-electro, is “The Night is Alive,” which is driven by an infectious bass hook and googly-synth modulation, and features a refreshing tenderness that is not often tapped in this format. It reminds me a bit of something in between a more-organic Postal Service and a more-upbeat One AM Radio, with a melody hook that calls to mind the Folk Implosion’s “Natural One.”

“I Am Gone” sounds utterly lush and emotionally rich, in an extremely cinematic way, featuring string-pads that interplay well with piano tinkling and vocal harmonies adeptly manipulated to fade in and out of the bright, breezy (yet lonely) fields of orchestration. This is the track on which I can hear the most evident footprints of Portishead, the band that Action Dan cites first in his list of influences (a reference that I’m personally pleased with, as anyone who recalls related past reviews and fan-geekery I’ve posted may recall).

The record runs the mood-scape gamut. “Phase and Cancelled” features trippy sonic experimentation, and elements of Pink Floyd, Atari Teenage Riot, Collide, Ladytron, and Metropolis Records fodder all come to mind at various moments in the track. On the other end of the spectrum, “In the Distance“, begins with Jason playing a sentimental acoustic song over washes of nature-sounds, building into a solid groove with more of the lush orchestration and soothing vocal textures that these guys do so well, with a bit of a Death Cab For Cutie vibe.

Overall, I can see any of these songs working extremely well on a vast stylistic variety of film soundtracks, and in this regard the record reminds me a bit of Massive Attack’s “Mezzanine.” If for no other reason (as I can’t claim that it sounds terribly similar or bears the same sort of aesthetic) but that the songs off of that record fit in just as appropriately within the myriad of different sorts of films that employed them. As the cinematic nature of its overall sound would require, this record’s moody diversity manages to transcends the somewhat overplayed format that it otherwise might be perceived to fall within. “A Dream Awakening” reminds us of the original purpose of this collaborative trend; if indie-musicians and electro-wizards are doing really interesting things on their own, why wouldn’t a combination of the two prove interesting? On this record, it definitely does.

A Pair of Past-related Reviews- Part 1: You and I, Walk by the Ocean; Back-Catalog, Back-story.

2009-02-22T19:28:00.005-05:00

I recently received a link from Cameron Audet, informing me that his acoustic-project’s new record is complete and currently being released. You may or may not remember Cameron as one of the two singer/ guitarists who fronted Rusted Tricycle, an emo/ pop-punk outfit that I played bass for, the better part of ten years ago. The project that the link featured has existed for a while under the name Audet, but, according to the website, is in the process of being re-titled Armor and Rage.

In recent months, I have heard similar updates from Jason Hebert, the other of the Tricycle’s former frontmen. He seems to be most currently active with a project called Action and the Red Baron, who have also recently released a new record.

By this point, the three of us that comprised Rusted Tricycle’s front-stage trifecta have played with quite a few different projects, and each have a fairly diverse back-catalog, of which our time with the Tricycle provides merely a blip in the far-removed past.

Nevertheless, the Tricycle definitely had its place, and provides an important piece in each of our musical evolutions. And, hey, since returning to New Hampshire last fall, no matter how much time has passed, I’ve received at least a few surprising “I know you from somewhere... Aren’t you the guy from...”’s, about that band, more often than any other from my past.

Reviews of the most recent records from these two of my fellow Tricyclists will follow in coming entries. (Unfortunately, I know nothing currently about the post-Rusted musical careers of Mike 59 or Benny, the two R.T. drummers… do you? If so, be in touch, and I’ll try to touch on that as well.)

Art and Ideas in an Economic Recession.

2009-02-08T21:26:00.003-05:00

Everyone I know seems to be scrimping a bit financially right now. This is probably redundant; something that goes without saying... and it's probably also a fairly obvious assertion that among those affected are "artists," a group who are often labelled and stereotyped as "starving" to begin with.

These artists, however, seem to me to be in a better place to use the economic hard-times as a growth-period: Rather than dollars-signs, the commerce of our trade and the coin-scale of our success is composed of ideas and creativity. These things are not intrinsically tied to economic fortunes. In fact, I think there are gains to be made by being forced to limit our resources, to need to separate our intellectual capital from our fiscal.

This is a great time to change our cultural thought-processes, to finally make the moves away from consumerism that we've been toying with the hypotheticals of for so long. This economic downturn could function as a golden-period of innovation in arts and ideas, particularly if we strive to view our limited expendable incomes not as a factor that constrains our creative outputs, but instead as a factor that provides much-needed opportunities to reassess the way that we think about and engage in creative tasks.

This is a good time to really enact the old credo that's deep in and important to most of our artistic subconsciouses by now; that we learn the rules so that we know how to best break them. This is an ideal time to utilize all the rules that we've learned in order to break those same rules more thoroughly, and in more creative ways, than ever before.

Think: Do I need this tool? How can I do this differently? What less-orthodox medium can I use to make my point more poignantly? What means can I use to get my message out that could attract more attention than the tried-and-true by way of their unusual and un-tested methods?

In the past, the "starving artist" mantra/ cliche usually involved scrimping on food to buy art-supplies. What I'm saying is rather, for the overall benefit of your artwork, and the potential to say something truly progressive and innovative with it, try not to buy conventional art-supplies. Figure out alternatives.

Is it for any reason, besides past rules that you learned as a foundation for your skill set that, if you're a painter, for instance, you need to purchase canvasses to paint on? What else could be used to fulfill the same purpose, but more creatively, and perhaps to the better demonstration of the concept of the piece (not to mention more economically)? I promise, there are plenty of things, and I definitely feel that more artists being coerced to think this way will produce far more interesting art.

As another example, it would greatly benefit most musical acts to re concentrate their attention on creating more genuinely interesting sounds by stopping dishing out unrealistic sums of money to record in pro- or semi-pro studios to make "radio-ready" demos when they're still quite a few rungs on the industry ladder down from radio-play. Adhering to current "professional quality standards" does not always equate to a more listenable (or even more marketable) product. More creative-sounding recordings and noise-making that not only cost less money, but come about because they cost less money??? How can you go wrong? How are we ever going to hear anything new or original again when even the lowest-caliber local bands in any given city pay to record in the same sort of studios which are stocked with same sort of gear as everything on the radio? Conventional machines (which cost money) make conventional sounds (which sound like money, rather than ideas or creativity).

Utilize this tight time-period. Make it your opportunity. Change the way that we think. This is a great opportunity to remove dollar-signs from the creative-exchange, to make the idea-market decidedly and intentionally our own.

The Slow Season, But Cold.

2009-02-05T22:02:00.003-05:00

“It looks like
Summer’s come early
This year,” I mumbled,
Through silver smoke
I can’t discern from
My breath in the cold,
By sub-arctic dumpsters
Behind the mall-attached
Restaurant I work in,
As a coworker and I
Smoked frigid boredom,
Waiting for tables that
Wouldn’t come, reflecting
How similar, though brittle,
It was, to the warmer
Season, the one we expected
To be this very quiet and still.

While waiting to find out where I head next for grad.school, I work in a restaurant that's attached to a shopping mall. Summers are always slow. Last year, this month was still smack in the middle of our busy-season, which didn't end until long after the snow had melted. The last couple of weeks have felt like the summer, in terms of business. I've been trying to put off writing about the current economic situation that we're all grappling with for as long as possible (mostly because I hadn't completely made up my mind if the issue had already been over-tread by the media and blogosphere-at-large, or if the attention has been, and is, warranted because of the all-encompassing nature of the changes in our social-climate). I've had alot of time lately to think about how and why people aren't spending money, while standing around waiting for them to come through our doors and spend the money that, in turn, allows me to spend money. The poem above is a brief musing I jotted down while sitting by the dumpster, grabbing some polluted air... I post it less because of my pride in how it turned out, and more because I felt that it worked as a fitting preface-piece to my next entry, which will feature some musings about the place and potential of arts and ideas in times of economic recession.

Stay tuned.

More updates...

2009-01-27T00:31:00.003-05:00

I updated the look of the site a bit. I also updated my blogspot profile. Both were a bit outdated. Let me know what you think.

Also, as an update to the last update, Tipsy Cougar's lost song-files have been recovered, thanks to a friend of guitarist MacAlastair Ming's named Ben. We definitely appreciate it. I was a little bummed out about potentially loosing those songs, as (intentionally)unlistenable as they might be.

I updated that site a bit as well, including some new images, like this piece of photographic brillaince composed by my girlfriend/ the Cougar's synth-player, Sara Jane.

This image was actually captured (partially) during the same photo-treck that I documented with the prior entry about the Pandora sign. Many of her images of our field-trip are FAR more impressive than mine. I would definitely enjoy her work even if I weren't biased; she has a great eye.

Since I have nothing much else for this entry tonight, I guess I'll leave with a quote...

"Will whatever be written in lappish language with inbursts of Maggyer always seem semposed, black looking white and white gaurding black, in that siamixed twoa-talk used twist stern swift and jolly roger?" -James Joyce, Finnegan's Wake

Playing Catch-up; A Laundry-List.

2009-01-21T22:35:00.004-05:00

As you may or may not have noticed, I’ve taken a bit of a break from posting here. This was partly intentional, and partly not. I apologize to anyone who missed my periodic ramblings over this time.

For those that don’t know, I’m looking to enroll in a graduate-school program next fall. The past couple of months have been crunch-time for my application process, which, in addition to working full-time as a server in a restaurant situated in a mall and juggling family obligations through the holiday season, trumped most other concerns. I can’t thank my wonderful girlfriend enough for how supportive she’s been through this stressful time period. It seemed for the last couple of months that whenever time was set aside for some enjoyment, a link didn’t work, a school’s website had been restructured, one assignment led to another I hadn’t foreseen, the internet connection crashed, or the sky decided to drop white shit. (on which note, the “winter parking ban” in Manchester has proven to be a MASSIVE inconvenience.)

Not to mention, technology apparently hates me, and the laptop that’s seemed permanently attached to me for the past few years decided to let a demon possess and overcome it at the worst possible time; about a week prior to my first deadline.

Now I type on a tiny blue baby-robot which will hopefully hold me over until I’m enrolled in a program that requires greater gadget features. I’m still getting used to the keyboard that’s smaller than one of my hands outstretched.

I had written a blog-entry that I planned to post over that time, but decided to scrap it, as it seemed a bit more personal, emotional and bitter than I had intended. Suffice it to say, it pertained to an experience that I had at a local bar/ music-venue that I was extremely put off with, that seemed disturbingly indicative of the problems I’ve witnessed with the current Manchester, NH art scene. Lesson being, think hard about the establishments that you choose to support, and the business-actions that you actively condone. I, for one, would need an almost unrealistically compelling reason to return to Milly’s Tavern.

Over the course of the time that I’ve taken off, I’ve also not written very much for my personal portfolio. The poetry that I’ve composed has been far more short and blunt than prior (which is ironically a skill-set that I had been meaning to hone anyway), and minimal in quantity, at best. I have, however, written more than my share of Statements of Purpose, Statements of Teaching Philosophy, Personal Statements, extensive essay-question answers, etc, and profuse amounts of edits to academic writing-samples.

I’ve been conducting a close-read of a first-edition copy of Julian Hawthorne’s two-volume biography of his father, “Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife,” as well as attempting to wade through Joyce’s “Finnegan’s Wake” in my “downtime” before my classes recommence.

I’ve done a bit of visual-art work, but not as much as in months prior… I’ve been currently working on a painting for my mother, a bit of a belated Christmas present, which is a bit of a tradition (I gave it to her, unfinished, saying that I would take it back and finish it… which has also unfortunately become a bit of a tradition.) This is what it currently looks like; I hope to finish it soon…

(eventually titled) Portsmouth Minor Triad, sus. Blue.

My electro-rock act Tipsy Cougar has taken a bit of a temporary break as well during this time, but we hope to resume recording our debut EP “Immaculate Conceptions” soon… To be fair, what the group has been working on most lately is figuring out how to recover the MP3 files of our past recordings that disappeared when my computer crashed. One of my New Years resolutions is to be better about backing up irreplaceable files. We did take some interesting Cougar photos on New Year’s Eve, though…

(l.t.r.; Sara Jane, Bernard LeVautour, MacAlastair Ming)

I’ve realized a lot lately about what I want (and what I don’t want) as active elements of my life. This time-period has presented me with many successive learning-experiences that have proved exceedingly positive, overall.

Over the break, I have received some interesting (and somewhat humorous) feedback on a rather outdated entry to this blog. You can read my response to the “anonymous” criticism on my myspace page.

In other news, I thought of an interesting idea when I was in the shower yesterday. I want to print shirts that say “[front] Thank you, Yoko, for breaking up The Beatles. [back] Support the Avant Garde. Reject Pop Music. (brought to you by the Asbjorn Arts Collective)”. Who wants one?

Now, if I could only get a volunteer from the audience to serve as Coldplay’s Yoko… What’s Bjork been up to these days?

Pandora, Revisited.

2008-11-30T08:28:00.012-05:00

Some of you who have been reading my blog for a while now may remember an essay that I posted a little over a year ago, titled "Pandora; The Slow Death of Amoskeag". (For those of you who are newer readers, or didn't happen to catch that one, click here to read it now.)

When I posted the entry, I regretted that I wasn't able to post the photographs that the piece makes frequent reference to as accompaniment to the prose. They were all captured before I had switched my photography primarily to digital, the hard-copies were buried somewhere at the back of an over-crowded storage-unit, and I was posting from Arizona at the time, making it impossible to recapture the image in a more accessible medium (not to mention I was under the assumption that the sign had long since been removed from its haphazard home against the building.)

Since I've returned to Manchester, however, I've been pleasantly surprised to find that the sign still sits discarded in the same spot. Sara Jane and I took a stroll through the millyard recently with our cameras, so I'm now able to add some supplementary images to the earlier essay that had lacked them prior.

Enjoy.

Stay tuned, I plan to post some more of the set tomorrow. The rest of the building is interesting and relevant as well. In keeping with one of the predominant themes of the essay, this is definitely a sort of a study in the interdependence of certain concepts of "beauty" and "decay."

Confessional of Control, In Fragments.

2008-10-15T14:29:00.003-04:00

On NPR, in interview,
Julliane Moore discusses
A character crying at
Forgetting to wind a
Wristwatch in quarantine,
Chaotic dirty mess of
Blindness. The small
Things. The loss of
Personal control. These
Are the things that
Touch us, the inducers of
Emotional panic, as
The larger situation
Rakes on worse and
More severe, we neglect to
Notice, we don’t commence
To feel it until a personal,
Turning, ticking, symbol
Of tiny, systematic
Retained control is
Noticed to have stopped.
The little things. Our
Tenuous grasps on
Tiny fragments of
False control.

I listen to this, as
I drive back from the
Hospital roller-coaster
Bedside of
Watching my namesake
Fade away, to a job where
I haphazardly jot this, where
Every week in the panic of
The weak economy in the first
Industry to be hit they
Forget progressively more
That it’s easier for me to
Find a just as increasingly
Less lucrative job than
It is for them to
Replace me, the increasingly
Fewer competent members
Of their staff. Just before
The actresses interview, a
Report on plans to
Prop up, for the third or
Fourth (at least second
Major) time, an
Economic system that
Was known to
Experts in the field
Centuries ago to
Lack any potential for
Long-term sustainability.
Yet the proposal is to
Dump hundreds of
Billions of the same
False-credit-dollars
Back into it, to
Slightly prolong its
Inevitable and impending
Death and subsequent
Possible reincarnation,
Time-buying transfusions
Ironically administered
To a patient with a
D.N.R. In slow death-beds and
Faulty inflated commerce,
The word “better” should
Be wiped from our
Vocabularies. For it is
Relative to…
What?

The little things. Our
Futile grasps on time
Particles of personal
Control. On the drive back
From a distracting twenty-
Dollar call-in shift the
Cool breeze smacks my
Face from the window as
An enveloping and appropriately
Fall-feeling morose symphonic
Opeth song soothes my
Ears, scorching as a smooth
Flame from my speakers.
My own watch keeps ticking,
As I drive back to wind it,
A winding that I won’t forget
To do, and no foreseeable
Malfunction of machinery
Could cause to stop. The
Little things. Our fragments
Of control. A laptop open
With scribbled notebook
Pages, a loving embrace and
Urge back to my work from
One who understands and
Appreciates my goals. I
Know the time my watch
Keeps, my symbols of the
Fragments of control, to
Keep the bigger picture small,
While focusing an eye always on
The bigger picture, the tiny
Ticking emblems of the
Things that we can control.

Control, the things that touch
Us, make all else “relevant,”
Is “real.” Internalize the watch,
The winding, the ticking,
The goal-structure…
Our tiny particles of…
Control is hope.
Control the control symbol.

Control.

"Skyward Stability; Structure in Stark Shadows and Contrast." 2008

The Passing of a Namesake...

2008-10-09T21:28:00.003-04:00

Rest in Peace, Pepere.

Bernard Gerard Brault
December 31, 1930 - October 3, 2008

You will be missed.

Mirrors and Voices, Part 4: Reconstructing the Fabricated

2008-10-08T00:23:00.006-04:00

(...continued...)

Reconstructing the Fabricated

The concept of Samuel Beckett’s Nohow On begins at a juncture where the author already takes for granted that conventional literary forms have been torn down and rendered unnecessary. He is writing from a post-modern platform that is post-character, post-plot, and post-setting. Even when these elements can not be (or are not needed to be) completely removed, they are relied on as tools rather than as story-building focal-points themselves, as they would have necessarily been in literary moments prior to the one in which Beckett writes. He writes with the confidence that the efforts to tear down these problematic paradigms of the past has already been completed (by both critics and artists such as Borges), making it now his responsibility with this work to reconstruct just as admittedly fallible paradigms in the places where the old ones have been removed. The intention of the three “stories” in Nohow On, therefore, seem to be the construction of an elaborate simulacrum of both “literary form” and “reality” at the same time in the absence that the removal of prior forms of each have left. If it is understood from the point at which Beckett stands at the beginning of the work that “realities” are constructs of representations such as “literary form,” and these representative tools are also themselves constructs, and any prior assumptions of “truths” imbedded in either sides of these representative paradigms are therefore inconsequential, then Nohow On situates itself as a work that constructs new structures where the old ones have been stripped away, with the assumed understanding that the new forms are no more “real” than the ones that they replace.

The first “story” in the work, “Company,” presents an interesting corollary metaphor for the way that Beckett’s reconstruction in the entire work operates. Without giving the reader any more than elusive and extremely slight fragments of plot and setting, and only one extremely undeveloped shell of a character that we are told, in the last line of the work, has been the entire time “alone,” Beckett creates a story-telling format that operates with different necessary elements than these, while at the same time, by way of tools of language that rely on very different constructs, builds hypothetical “tangibles” by using the same sort of elusive and unsecured language. Within this tale, these tangibles are referred to as “company,” characters that are mere figures of language to keep the protagonist from being alone. These creations are built by way of language itself, which, by continually altering viewpoints, constructs a cacophony of voices, members of the “company,” that are no less yet definitely not more closely aligned to traditional “characters” than the one that we are told is alone.

Rather than utilize metafiction as merely an element of the storytelling convention, in “Company” metafiction is among the primary premises of the work, and in this way the piece is allegorical for Beckett’s reconstructionist ideology with Nohow On as a whole. The single “character” is, through language, “devising it all for company” (44). In order to not be alone, he creates, by way of narrative position and tense alterations, multiple voices that create one another. When he creates one, that one will spin off and change the position from which it speaks, thus constructing “yet another still devising it all for company” (44). The voices are the representation of characters; these representations create other representations. Thus, as the need for originals of characters to be represented becomes stripped away, we find that all are merely representations of representations, which, according to conventional story-telling guidelines, would render them to be nothing at all. Beckett, however, demonstrates actively how they are created, and therefore demonstrates that, because we are taking for granted now that conventional characterization is also merely representations of representations and therefore subjective or inconsequential, that the constructs themselves, built on nothing besides their nature as constructs, are the goal of the narration, and by their very constructed nature are viable entities, or at least as viable (or as nonviable) as any other representation. In this way, Beckett demonstrates how he will construct viability for all three of the stories in Nohow On, and demonstrates the point of the work to be the reconstruction of artificial representations that are as close to being as unhindered by “truthful” representations as the author can muster. Just as the “character” in “Company” lays on his minimalist bed and constructs a room full of voices, so Beckett stands on the blank slate of the post-modern critical understanding and constructs, with newly reutilized linguistic tools, his own form of representative story-telling.

Thus, as Borges demonstrates with his mirrors, and countless critics such as Baudrillard demonstrate with their theories of the postmodern, that all concepts of “reality” are representations that have little or no secure foundation, Beckett stands on this footing, in the chasm where the constructs have been torn down and takes the next step. He creates, just as the lone “character” in “Company” creates with language the voices of others to share the room with him, a new fallible reality to fill the gap that has been recently vacated, using as few as possible of the old tools, to rather start a new, and reconstruct false objects for the sake of the objects and their fallacy themselves.

Mirrors and Voice, Part 3: Reconciling the Absence

2008-10-04T20:31:00.002-04:00

(...continued...)

Reconciling the Absence

The frequent question to be asked from this point, of course, is, if all representations are faulty because the represented itself and the act of representation are inherently faulty, where do we go from there? How can questions be answered if both the answer and the questions asked are inherently irrelevant? Many critics seem to have either wanted to stop here, as Derrida, or continue from a different juncture within the old structures entirely, like Jameson. If the same thought-process were to be maintained, however, the necessary next step from the point of tearing down prior “truths” would entail the reconstruction of new Art-based structures within the new-found understanding. Where critics seem to have been rare in asserting the necessity of this step and advocating for it, Artists themselves have taken up the pursuit, and constructed representational worlds based on assumptions that have become understood in the time since Borges’ work on the subject. The later work of Samuel Beckett provides a near-perfect example of the sort of reconstruction required to complete the postmodern project in relation to the problem of representation.

(...to be continued...)

Mirrors and Voices: Part 2, Reflecting the Fabricated

2008-10-02T13:19:00.001-04:00

(...continued from yesterday...)

Reflecting the Fabricated

In Brian McHale’s essay “From Modernist to Postmodernist Fiction: Change of Dominant,” we are told that “the referent of ‘postmodernism,’ the thing to which the term claims to refer, does not exist. (4) Thus, the term is a construct, by the nature of its existence as a linguistic symbol with which to categorize or create, at the same time that the movement, style, or body of work (depending on which context the word is used in) that it is constructed in order to describe, its “referent,” as McHale calls it, is a construct as well. The term is a reflection of the ideas that it is created to describe, but neither the reflection or the source are any more “real” than the other. The categorical term can thus be seen as a mirror, where the representative reflection is limited and altered by the angle from which it is looked into and the confines of its frame. Therefore, since both the room that the mirror reflects and the mirror itself and the descriptive reflection are fabrications (as the mirror reflects things that are not themselves “real”) it is irrelevant to be concerned with the bias or credibility of the reflection, or its nature that lacks credibility as (or by the way of being) “merely” a reflection.

This image of representational reflection operates on several levels in dialogue about postmodernism. As McHale suggests, it applies to the movement’s nomenclature, with “postmodernism” the word serving as a mirror to reflect the room of “postmodernism” the thing. This image also applies to, more generally, the project of postmodernism in relation to conceptions of reality and representation. The mirror in this case is the text, art-form, or chosen form of representation in general, while the room is the world or setting being described, the “reality” being called into question. In this regard, McHale’s essay is in and of itself a postmodern text, merely using the linguistic representation of the movement itself as an example of the way that the postmodern conception of “reality” operates, most specifically its relative representational nature and eventual inevitable irrelevance.

Viewing postmodern representation as a mirror with reflection and subject, the subject itself being a reflection, provides an interesting correlation to Plato’s classic principle of Ideas versus Forms. The mirror provides the “Forms,” the representations, descriptions, and approximations, while the room that is reflected serves as the “Ideas” that, to Plato, are the “real” versions that the mirror reflects. Obviously, the wrench that postmodernism throws into Plato’s philosophy is that, when the ideas themselves are observed to be just as representational as the representations of them reflected in the mirror, the idea that the forms are subordinate to a more relevant set of ideas is torn down, leveling the playing-field and making the allegory of the cave appear more like a hall of mirrors with no definable source for the image, but rather a potentially endless series of reflections.

It is therefore no surprise that the mirror is a common symbol in postmodern works by authors such as Jorge Luis Borges. In Borges’ fiction, the mirror is most often placed in a room with fabricated “realistic” parameters. The room is constructed in such a way that it shares enough commonality with the “realities” understood by the readership that it serves as one layer of reflection, while the mirror is placed in order to reflect this reflection, to draw our attention to the limitless number of layers of possible potential-“realities” that can be caused by representing alternate representations, which, to the postmodernist, is the task that all artists are engaged in. The room is a representation, intentionally altered (or perhaps merely biased by the chosen angle of perception), of the “reality” that Borges understands, which is, in itself, a representation in several regards (perception, perspective, linguistic, etcetera), and the mirror provides a third layer of representation, which can be altered by the angle that it is perceived from, the angle that the light is received by it from, the limiting confines (bias) of the boundaries of its frame, etcetera. By way of the inclusion of this third layer of reflection, we are reminded of the representational biases and alterations of all other layers of reflection that led to this version of the image. The third visible layer of reflection directs the reader’s eye to the idea that the images’ sources are ambiguous, and possibly non-existent. Because it is understood that neither the reflection in the mirror or the image of the room that it reflects are “real,” neither the reflection nor the image are more or less relevant than the other, and biases, limitations, and angles of perception no longer have any effect on the readers’ perception of the “truthfulness” or “credibility.” By the same reasoning, therefore, as all layers of what we perceive as “reality” are subjective representations, Borges is using the mirror to demonstrate how the worlds that he creates in his stories are no less relevant or “real” than the ones that he or his reader lives in; Uqbar is no less relevant than Europe, Bioy is no less relevant than the reader, the author’s speculation about the room that the reader sits in no less relevant than the room that the reader himself perceives from his own sensory biases.

The mirror is thrust in the reader’s face on the very first page of Borges’ short-story collection, “Labyrinths.” The first tale in the book, “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” begins with a description of how a mirror (or, more specifically, a conversation about the conceptual value of the reflective properties of a mirror, in some ways much like this one) aids in the discovery of a fictitious world. The number of levels of “fictive” representation referenced by this symbol are nearly limitless, and staggering. Conceptually, this number is allowed to be so astoundingly infinite by the reflective nature of the mirror itself. The mirror’s ability to reflect (and an assumption that what it creates is “real,” as the heresiarch of Uqbar tells us that “mirrors and copulation are abominable, because they increase the number of men” [Borges 3]) is contemplated in an encyclopedia entry (a reflection/ representation) about a fictitious place (another reflection) created by fictitious characters as a sort of an experiment with the nature of representation (reflection), which is discovered by another set of fictional characters, who reside in the principle “reality” of the piece, which is a reflection of the “reality” that Borges assumes for his readers, which is a reflection of his own “reality,” which only he can represent with whatever sort of biases or angles that he chooses and is the product of the representation of his sensory, linguistic, and cultural perceptions, among other things (all of which are reflections or subjective representations). The mirror offers no way of identifying the source of the reflections, demonstrating the truth of the comment by the “fictitious” heresiarch of Uqbar that the men reflected in the mirror are just as “real” as the men that they reflect, thus suggesting that the heresiarch, although separated by at least four layers of reflection, is no less “real” or “credible” of a relater of information or “truth” than Borges himself is. By this mirror, therefore, Borges demonstrates the postmodern project (and the meaning of the term and artistic movement itself) that he seems to agree with McHale on, that “the referent… the thing to which the term claims to refer, does not exist.” Contrary to the beliefs of Plato, postmodernism asserts that there is no difference between Ideas and Forms, the reflection is not less “real” than the reflected.

a bit of a break... Mirrors and Voices.

2008-10-01T23:32:00.004-04:00

I have taken a bit of a break from my online postings lately, due to the time-constraints imposed by the grad-school application process. I apologize.

To my avid and disapointed readers (*cough*), I apologize.

To tide you over in the meantime, this evening I will begin to post segments of a piece of essay-work that I am currently working on retyping and reformatting for a professor.

This is the first installment in a series, and thus a cliff-hanger; so keep posted.

Mirrors and Voices;
Borges’ and Beckett’s Collective Postmodern Project of Tearing Down and Rebuilding Representations.

Refining the Scope of the Project

To encapsulate a major theme of the Postmodern project, it has been the job of both artists and critics to tear down all that had existed before, particularly as it relates to the idea of representation, and rebuild admittedly false but just-as-plausible representational constructs in the place where structures that were held as “truth” in the modernist and pre-modern eras had been removed. In this regard, critically, far more work has been done in the earlier phase of this project; that of the removing of past assumptions of representational “truth,” than in the latter stage, the process of rebuilding where the first stage leaves enormous opportunity for new Art-for-Art’s-sake initiatives. In terms of the works of Art that participate in the project, however, effort has definitely been made on all sides of the task. In this regard, Jorge Luis Borges and Samuel Beckett represent opposite ends of this spectrum that compliment each other nicely in view of the combined project of the movement. Borges can be seen to represent the beginning of the postmodern process in this regard, the early process of tearing down, by way of the works of art themselves, the constructs of the previously assumed “truths.” Correspondingly, Beckett represents the end goal of the project, the reconstruction, by way of Art itself, of new constructs based on the assumption that the old ones, by this point, are understood to be irrelevant (these new constructs would, therefore, also be irrelevant in any regard but to the advancement of the Art of representation itself). The two authors, therefore, if taken collectively, represent, in many ways, the fulfillment of the postmodern task. Deconstruction is inconsequential if some form of Reconstruction doesn’t follow, and true artistic construction cannot take place without the tabula rasa that early post-modern truth-destruction (both critical and artistic) provides. Borges and Beckett allow us to view how the two can most successfully function together to achieve a coherent artistic (and inherently Art-focused) statement.

...to be continued...

Art for Sale; The Evolution of a "Gallery."

2008-09-02T16:46:00.006-04:00

I have decided to begin offering an evolving online gallery where individuals interested in my visual-art work can peruse, and potentially even purchase, some of my recent pieces.

I've been working predominately with an assemblage medium lately. Most works are 3-dimensional (sometimes drastically-so), and thus, as all photos of the work are taken of the single front-dimension, there is some (sometimes much) detail lost in the photographs. If you'd like a closer or more detailed view, message me; all works are currently on display in the make-shift physical gallery-space that the Tipsy Cougar Pad has become in south-east-downtown Manchester, NH, unless out on loan to other local galleries, which I will note if applicable.

That's right; for the first time in a while, you (yes, YOU) can have one of my conceptual oddities hanging on YOUR very own wall! You know you want to.

This gallery will continue to evolve; I will add pieces as I finish them or decide to put them up for sale and consumption, I will take them down as sold or otherwise distributed. It appears on myspace within a designated album in my "pics" section, in an album of my Photobucket account, and the current entries will follow within this entry and in a similar one on my Myspace blog.

Many of the pieces have peculiar features that aren't evident to the photographic lense (such as being radiantly reactive under black-light, hidden layers of collage-elements that appear better when viewed by naked eye, elaborate concepts behind their composition, etc). If you have further questions about any of the pieces, even just to satiate curiosity, don't hesitate to send me a message.

"The Psychic Dancefloor." aprox. 26" X 31" X 6". assemblage & acrylic. $100

"...ain't shit but ho's and tricks." aprox. 25" X 22". assemblage & acrylic. $75

"Blues in Blip-Beep Minor, Dorian mode (The Intrinsic Seperation of 'Tools' and 'Trade')." aprox. 39" X 25" X 7". $100

"Inebriate." aprox. 10" X 8" X 1.5". collage & acrylic. $25

"Lifeblood, Kineses." aprox. 12" X 12" X 3". assemblage & acrylic. $25

To those who may wonder at this possibly seeming a bit more materialistic or opportunistic with my work than I usually seem wont to be... I'm attempting to save some extra money for grad-school-related expenses, and figured that I would give a shot at utilizing my "talents" (yes, scoffs at that word are welcome) in order to do so. So, if you're thinking that something on display might compliment your hap-hazard neo-bohemian decor-scheme, think of yourself as a sort of patron if you wish, aiding in the education of an eccentric literary scholar. I would greatly appreciate it.

“Fasciinatiion” with flavors of moments past, still lingering on our tongues.

2008-08-27T22:07:00.004-04:00

iFlavors of the minute, at various moments in time, are not intended to last or taste good on your tongue after their moment is gone. Musical flavors of hipster moments, although “indie” and hypothetically less “intentional” from a marketing stance, usually prove no exception to this idea.

When a past temporary flavor happens to accidentally prove its staying-power, however, the critic and culture find themselves at a crux. The very short-lived couture that made the act or work of art so monumentally popular for a time itself provides the basis for discounting the credibility of the act’s bid for longer-term pertinence.

I can think of a fair number of examples of this phenomenon off the top of my head, within the loose walls of “indie” music of the past decade alone. These are records that self-righteous, fashion-jumping hipsters will grumble and cringe to hear someone playing, with complaints of the listener being slow on the uptake or strangling out the last hold they had on a passed and expired moment, but popping in in their own cars when they know that no on else can hear, or getting a pang of guilty joy inside when a dj at a trendy club spins a track as a “throwback.”

The Postal Service’s “Give Up.” Hot Hot Heat’s “Make Up The Breakdown.” Bright Eyes’ “Lifted, or…” Bloc Party’s “Silent Alarm.” The Faint’s “Danse Macabre.” Just a few examples.

With the recent release of “Fasciinatiion,” The Faint has made my mind presently turn to these paradoxes of past popularity, the “where do we go now?” aspect of being a flavor-of-the-minute of a moment past.

After “Wet From Birth,” the decidedly hit-or-miss follow-up to “Danse Macabre,” I wasn’t sure what to expect from the new record. Like so many of these releases that resonate nearly instantly as every-art-scene-kid’s-temporary-new-favorite-band, many of the aspects that made “Danse Macabre” so popular proved either absent or less accessible on “Wet From Birth,” and the fervour of and for the music consequently diminished. (“Elevator,” the follow-up to Hot Hot Heat’s “Make Up The Breakdown,” seems like an accurate parallel in this regard. Both “Elevator” and “Wet From Birth” are solid records in their own right, but both took a few listens to warm up to, and either altered or removed elements of the records that they followed that were important factors in what made those albums so irresistible.)

“Fasciinatiion” definitely does not come off as The Faint attempting to return to their “Danse Macabre”-era sound as a mere attempt at recapturing the pinnacle of their past moment of fleeting-chic. The band has, however, reinstated some of the elements of past records that were conspicuously missing on the last release. For only one instance, some of the poetic lyrical sensibilities from earlier records are added back to the mix, combined with, rather than completely replacing, the jarringly- honest, realism-to-the-point-of-superficiality material that dominated most of “Wet From Birth” (the “I was standing at the merch-booth putting on maaaake-up” moments in the song “Desperate Guys” are only one apt example of this; I was able to warm up to the record much more thoroughly when I began to wonder if the majority of the songs were written from the perspectives of deeply superficial fictional characters, and, whether this idea is right or wrong, I still have a much easier time listening to the album when I assume that they were).

Instead, “Fasciinatiion” is a well-written and exceedingly listenable record on its own; the current stage of evolution of a band with an actual career discography, not merely the hangings-on of a temporary flash in a proverbial pan that the listener was intended to have forgotten by now. The elements of the act’s prior works combine to form the canvas on which the new elements of the band’s progressing sound are placed on top of as collage-elements. The poetic stylizing and incessant, dirty sexual dance-energy of “Dance Macabre,” the electronics-first focus and club-kid social realisms of “Wet From Birth,” and even some of the vocal-melody stylings that the band hasn’t really revisited since “Blankwave Arcade” are all evident here. Rather than being a mere conglomerate of their past catalog, however, “Fasciinatiion” also adds increasing creativity in the skill of electronics production. Compared to the beats constructed for “Wet From Birth,” which seem at times fairly sterile, The Faint’s techno-prowess has expanded tremendously. Another welcome change comes with the sort of dance-beats chosen this time around. The band has this time nearly forgone the pulsing pogo-robot click-tracks that were the accepted rhythm of dance-punk when their first couple of records were released for something more often like hip-hop-inspired grooves that invite a more break-dance-friendly sort of energy, which seems more accurately in tune with the way that the indie-electro movement has progressed around them over the course of their career. There are moments on “Fasciinatiion” when the influence of electro acts that are closer to the current hipster flavor-of-the-minute seem probable. In certain tracks, I hear production reminiscent of the current Brooklyn scene (a couple of songs have a definite LCD Soundsystem vibe to my ear) and some of the dirty-synth clippiness that makes an occasional appearance reminds me of certain tracks by French acts like Justice.

This isn’t to say that “Fasciinatiion” sounds like The Faint is merely band-wagon jumping to get another shot at being part of the current “big thing.” It sounds, rather, like they are coming to terms with developing a recording catalog with a different paradigm of success, one less concerned with regaining their scenester-chic, and more interested in acquiring a longer-term respect and viability. To do so, they have combined on their most recent outing elements that they have learned to be successful for them in the past, along with present-tense influences of an evolving electronic music community.

If thinking about The Faint makes you reminisce pleasantly about their “Dance Macabre”-era height of popularity, and the urgent sexual-scenester-energy that accompanied it, a pleasurable flavor that you enjoyed in a moment past, “Fasciinatiion” offers the best opportunity since then to take another, and possibly a longer-lasting, taste.

In other news... The Stiletto Formal (whose last EP I reviewed in a past entry) have released two new tracks from their forthcoming LP on their Myspace page. Check them out, I like them... they're mighty eclectic, and make me look forward to hearing the new record quite a bit.

My Metro-Grime/ dirty/noisy electro-rock act Tipsy Cougar recently posted two new tracks to our Myspace site as well. One of them is a track called "USOCS," which I wrote about recently on this blog in another past entry. The other is a song that was previously posted as an acoustic track on my solo music profile. Check them out, let me know what you think, and feel free to download the tracks from the sites for free.

“This very deep, dark fault;” The “Gap” Between Constructed Artistic Identities in Murakami’s “Dance Dance Dance.”

2008-07-31T17:06:00.003-04:00

Demonstrations of theories about identity construction abound in contemporary (particularly “post-modern” and post-”post-modern”) Literature. I stumbled on one recently that spells things out in an interesting way, so I figured that I would share.

At a pivotal moment, in the midst of a tense piece of dialogue in Haruki Murakami’s 1988 novel “Dance Dance Dance,” Gotanda, an actor, explains to the unnamed narrator, “I get this gap between me Gotanda and me the actor and stand back and actually observe myself doing shit. I’m on one side of this very deep, dark fault, and then unconsciously, on the other side, I have this urge to destroy something.” This is a problematic phenomenon for the troubled character, who expresses that it “never happens when other people are around, though. Only when I’m alone.”

Through Gotanda’s dialogue admissions in these passages, Murakami establishes a paradigm, and at the same time a paradox, of the ways in which artists (and artistically-minded individuals) construct their identities. By doing so, he also sheds light on the construction of his own novel, as it becomes suddenly apparent that the narrator, who, on a surface level the work seems to be telling the story of, is NOT being portrayed as having a dynamically constructed and artistically-minded identity in the same way that Gotanda and most other characters in the novel do, thus shifting the narrator’s position within his own narrative from subject to something more akin to a Greek Chorus, a mere facilitator of the tale actually being told.

Gotanda’s “gap” is something expressed as a virtual constant for artistic individuals. The artist builds two distinctly separate identities, one for “self as artist,” and another for “self as private individual.” The “gap” is the void left by the discrepancies and differences between the two constructions, which, as one is distinctly intended for public consumption, while the other functions in terms of private self-perception, is why Gotanda points out that the gap is only present, is only something that he notices, “when I’m alone.”

The identity/ construction -free narrator (who is symbolically identified as such by the very act of remaining nonchalantly unnamed throughout the novel) is able to fulfill his “facilitator” role within the work of allowing stories about the gap to be told unencumbered by the necessary problems created by the nature of the constructs themselves (a description of identity, without the sort of foil provided by the narrator, would necessarily be presented within the context of either one construction or other, the intended “public” or “private” personae of the artist relating the self-involved anecdote). As Gotanda tells the narrator in this conversation about murder over beers, “whenever I’m with you, I feel so relaxed. I never feel the gap. You don’t know how precious that is.” Precious indeed, to an even greater extent to Murakami himself than to Gotanda, as the way in which the narrator’s character is constructed provides the precious necessary neutral backdrop on which to make the author’s larger points about personal and artistic identity. The ironies, complexities, and contradictions with which this is done are far too detailed to expound upon completely in a medium such as this. He is a character skillfully constructed for a difficult purpose; he is, in a broad sense, an “artist,” which allows him to empathize to certain degrees with Gotanda and others and come and go effortlessly or accidentally within their lives and social circles, yet, due to the nature of his “art” (which he views as existing in the realm of “commerce rather than “creation” and refers to frequently as “shoveling cultural snow”) he is devoid of the need to think of himself in such a way that requires a construction of an artistic identity. He lacks “the gap,” therefore, because he has built the constructions on neither side of it, and is therefore able to present Gotanda with a surface on which to lay his own bare, and demonstrate a theory on the way that the construction of identities operates for artists.

We are what we create ourselves to be. Just mind the gap.

(Image courtesy of Alloy Images; I am indebted to Sara Jane D'Agostino of that organization for exposing me to Murakami's writing.)

The Politics of an Underwritten Sense of Identity; Three Digits, Four Digits, Four... Dotted Line.

2008-07-17T16:21:00.004-04:00

I’m not usually much for
Outwardly “political” poetry,
But…
Some things have been…
Festering… lately that I’ve
Been having an increasingly
Harder time trying to
Ignore.

My attention is short for
Chosen ideologies based on
Personally biased concerns,
Personally motivated, pay-check,
“Real world” based
Partisan decision-making…
Cries and whines of “isms” based
On “because of the ‘system’
My ends won’t meet so it’s
Obviously the ‘system’s’ responsibility
To make them, to even playing-
Fields, tear down the
Institutions that tear us
Down,” or, just as bad, the
“My vote will ensure that
My dollar’s not going to
That,” with no concern for
Broader philosophy or any
Larger concerns than your
Personal take-home pay.

To quote a wise anachronism whose
Name on principle I
Refuse to capitalize,
“Render to Caesar
That which is Caesar’s”
“In {something vague and
Elusive} we trust” printed
In so many different
Words and symbols
On the fronts and backs of
Bills, and “trust” is
Something that you know I’m
Not one terribly quick to do.
These bills belong to a
System that we’ve
Chosen to participate in…
In theory.

Cue the back-beat backing-track
Break-down as I spin you a
Slide-show.
(Mock me in your mind as a
“Wonder Years” monotone for a
Lecture-like moment) Spin of
Reel-to-reel, “START.”

In order for a “Democracy” to
Function as such, based on the
“Will” of the “people” to
“Choose” their own “freedoms,”
The “people” must have the
“Freedom” to “choose” to
Opt out of said otherwise-
Sham of a “democracy.”

But most of us were
Born into this system,
Tagged with codes of
Threes and fours and
Fours to mark our
Places within, our debts to
Jurisdictions inside
Ever closing in, continually
Smaller sets of borders,
To contain us within the
Laws of our “personal” fiscal
Identity.

I must stress here, you
Don’t need to desire to
Exist outside of the system
For that freedom to be
Active and pertinent.
That “freedom,” however, must
Be constantly conscious
In the way that our
“Chosen” institutions “choose”
To conduct themselves,
And the way that we relate
Ourselves {as now in
Shackles} to them.

This is why I refuse
To wave flags intended
To represent false “freedoms.”

This option has failed,
As we find ourselves
Forced, within our sets of
“Obligations” as “responsible
Adults,” to sign our
Names on lines, scribble
Last four digits in boxes to
Underwrite every aspect of our
“Personal” conduct with the
“Insuring” capital of
Corporate conglomerates,
In case something were to
“Happen” to force you to
“Require” services within the
System built up as
Confining walls of bullion
Blocks around us that few
Humans alive could comfortably
Procure without the
Fiscal net you’ve bought and
Signed for, to reaffirm your
“Choice” to operate within
This “optional” system.

In twenty-six years “my”
“Name” has become
Attached to so many
Various forms of
Account numbers that
The fees would rise
Higher than the national
Deficit were I to
“Choose” to try to close them all.

And you wonder why I’ve used
So many alternate names for how I
“Choose” to represent "myself".

I’m not sure if I would
Personally exercise the option to
Opt-out if I had it,
But it’s integrally important to me
That we regain that
Most essential freedom
To actively choose not to sign
Our names and identities as numbers
On another dotted line.

"Unexpected Situations on a Crowded Street," a preface in poetic explanative expiriments.

2008-07-15T19:51:00.004-04:00

"Beyond superstition, I was aware, in a manner more forceful than anything my academic research had brought home to me, of the extent to which my identity and the words I utter coincide, the extent to which I want to form my own sentences or to choose for myself those moments in which I will recite someone else's. To be asked, even by an isolated, needy individual to perform lines that were not my own, that violated my sense of my own desires, was intolerable." -Stephen Greenblatt, "The Improvisation of Power (Epilogue)"

Unexpected Situations on a Crowded Street, Revisited.

“Cars overturned,
Fists are flyin’,
Houses bein’ burned,
Children are dyin’.”

Full circle…
Riot.
Unexpected situations on a crowded…
Street.
What street?
This street,
That street,
The same

As the space in which we
Make these noises now
Sits a mere block-and-a-half from
That pad we inhabited
When I was a child…
In fact, I can almost see it from our
Grime-encrusted back-window as
I stand now sporting
Straight edge tattoo-work
Chain smoking Specials, sipping
Cloudy Green Fairy and red wine…
Life…
Blood.

To those who think they’ve
Kept tabs on my back-catalogue
So much of this must
Seem a bit strange
So bear with me a bit as I lay myself bare,
I tend to think in some sort of semi-logical trajectory
This makes some semblance of sense,
I swear.

I’ll slit my
{Insert something
Censored here}
For you,
I really will…

This game of performance is a Riot

Leaving faceless idols of divinity hanging
Upside-down from trees,
With banners of perversity
For its own sake,
And so many dead
People from a country that
We all doubted that the song ever
Really had anything to do with…

As the circular nature of this
Riot
Leaves me battling
Myself now,
Pitting what I
Should do against
What I seem to have to…

As after trying to quit
Cold-turkey so many
Times, I pull the
Tourniquet so
Tight again to
Inject “Music”
And “Performance,”
The stuff that seems to
Kill, into my veins with
Rhythmic pulsing pump and
Flow again, banging out
Noise with these people who
Shared the same first ironic
Moronic cult of a “band,”
Performance-art shams,
Devoid of Concept besides
In anachronistic retrospect,
A willing pint we call and
Raise.

As I battle the
Balance of
Sounds I can’t
Seem to cease making
With the words that
Prove my passion,
Squeezing my own
Voice within perversely
Problematic rehashes and
Re-fires of words from the
Past that I put in my
Mouth that weren’t really my
Own,
And try to make them fit
With what I really
Can’t stop needing
To say,
In speech and sounds,
In synthesis.

With this fire,
Raging blue with
Volatile and toxic
Plastic, we
Burn symbolic streets.

“Cars overturned,
Fists are flyin’,
Houses bein’ burned,
Children are dyin’.”

“Cops can’t do nothing’, even though they have those guns,
Youngsters on the sidewalk, glassy eyes turned to the sun.
You stand in amongst the throngs, try to stay alive,
Chantin’ pro-rebellion songs, smothered by the hive.
Ground comes up to meet your head, scattered mates call your name.
You’re gonna be left for dead, playin’ your private/public riot game.”

“Cars overturned,
Fists are flyin’,
Houses bein’ burned,
Children are dyin’.”

{The preceding is a piece of word-collage poetry that I posted on the Myspace blog for my electro-rock outfit Tipsy Cougar, who recently finally started posting some actual "music" to our site. It's intended to serve as a strange sort of preface to the next piece of noise that we intend to post, a drastically divergent reworking of the long-forgotten Moron Cult/ Pseudophonics song "USOCS". This seemed to be an ironically fitting choice for the outfit, as all three active members of the band were at one point or another at least tenuously part of the older act (in fact, depending on definitional technicalities, and at different junctures, Moron Cult was all three of our "first" band.) Thus, I must give credit where it's due and point out that some segments of the above that appear in quotations were originally written by C. Charles ("xian") Dyer of that outfit (while sitting next to me in driver's ed. class, in fact). Also, references and lyrical fragments are borrowed liberally throughout from many bands that I've contributed to in the past (we could make a game of it, if you like... cookies of some sort should go to those among you that can pick out and identify the most...)... This would probably be as good of a time as any to point out that if you haven't taken a listen to what I'm doing with Tipsy Cougar yet, you should. Conceptually, what I'm attempting there in auditory form is very similar to some terrain tread often within the pages of this blog.}