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.
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.)
“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...
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.
(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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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).
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
