Soviet Kitsch

A few clues for latecomers: Several weeks ago... A pile of money... An English class... A house by the river... A romantic young girl...

A season in hell.

I can almost smell the death-like sulphorous odour of exams; while the sun shines brightly outside on the vast canadian "concrete expanses laying fallow in the sun". I dreamt of long summer days, were I dressed in the softest of linen, lounging in a bed - a little sunshine through the drapes, a soft whisper of a wind - and kafka, sartre and black n white pictures of brooding young french actresses in army fatigue, laying strewn on my floor.

It will all come.. until then I share a desk with asians in the library, sipping silently with a hint of cynicism at my earl grey and english breakfast combo tea. One sip at a time.

Corinne: Didn't you hear what he said? Marx says we're all brothers!
Roland: Marx didn't say that. Some other communist said that. Jesus said that!

This blog has been bloody sporadic... which is what you feel like with a mouthful of valium and bottle brimming with obsession.

Anyhow what's on my playlist at the moment.. I think that should be a section I do each time.. yes! I'll make a note of that. Maybe that'll add some rigour and form to this blog...or an excuse for one!
Here you go (albums)

"Se Dice Bisonte, No Bufalo" ~~ by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez (the amazing guitarist for the mars volta - he wrote this album and four others while in Amsterdam. A lot of the staple guest artists including Cedric Bixler are on this one, but there's one highlight: Damo Suzuki from the legendry Can. He features on the song: please heat this eventually - which is also on an ep that was released by omar, but that also includes vocals by damo which are missing on this album track. Anyhow when I am reading my physiology and genetics, this is what keeps me hacking away!!!)

"Volta" THE NEW BJORK ALBUM! ~~~ I got a leaked version for this one off torrents.. and it was substantially amazing. The first song Earth Intruders just sold it to me! Bam! I was like this woman is amazing! The beats are phenomenal.. !!! I'm running low on brain ink right now, but ask me in person and I will blow the trumpet for this one all the way to afghanistan!

Ok... I won't do anymore, because I wouldn't do the bands justice with less than 50 words.

Time for me to turn in with this line from Bande A Part:

My story ends here like a dime novel. At a superb moment, when everything is going right. Our next episode, this time in Cinemascope and Technicolor: Odile and Franz in the tropics.

Mind the Gap

"A revolution isn't a gala dinner. It cannot be created like a book, a drawing or a tapestry. It cannot unfold with such elegance, tranquility and delicacy. Or such sweetness, affability, courtesy, restraint and generosity. A revolution is an uprising, a violent act by which one class overthrows another. " - from the movie THE DREAMERS

...I thoroughly enjoyed that quote and I wanted to cherish it in communion with everyone, as that is the end towards which this blog was created. ...oh I nearly forgot this one.. oh uh..oh here you go:

"I was one of the insatiables. The ones you'd always find sitting closest to the screen. Why do we sit so close? Maybe it was because we wanted to receive the images first. When they were still new, still fresh. Before they cleared the hurdles of the rows behind us. Before they'd been relayed back from row to row, spectator to spectator; until worn out, secondhand, the size of a postage stamp, it returned to the projectionist's cabin. Maybe, too, the screen was really a screen. It screened us... from the world. "

Do I really need to elaborate on this movie... or... or oh you're not even there.. you left.. you lept out of your set to go and somehow procure it, like a medication for the ailement that beguiles the empty theatre of your mind. Let this movie and its images dance before you...for if it were likened to a dance it wouldn't be a waltz...this is the kinda stuff people go wild with on the dancefloor of some run-down club with euro-trash bleeding out of speakers... a couple of teens dancing on acid, high on the lethargic grip of life, allowing them to wallow in euphoric bliss.

The above picture is that of two tickets that will light up my summer!!!
I think I might devote two different posts to introduce the bands.
For the moment I would like to deliberate on the following:

The book you see in the picture... is "THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA". A book which I will devour with intellectual avarice previously unknown to man.

I've read other books by Nietzche, notably "The Birth of Tragedy"... and if his other works are anything to go by... this will definitely not be a cul-de-sac or minor work..but an engaging whirl of philosophy that will change me as a person and allow me to be even more of a self-acclaimed elitist.
They say once you read Nietzsche, you can't live inside the perimeter of a claustrophobic western society..you will flee to the embrace of the wild (actually I just coined that). As Aristotle would say Man outside of a community is either God or Insane. We'll see where I end up! Next stop: Existentialism... MIND THE GAP

Someone say GRINDHOUSE???

Ok! So I saw "Grindhouse".. and let me say it lives up to the genre from which it takes its name. Clockin in at 3 hrs & 11 minutes of gore, testosterone-fuelled car chases, rosario dawson's hard nipples... and rose mcgowan's half machine gun leg (which replaced the half that was bitten off earlier by zombies)..i must say i'm desensitized and aroused at the same time!

Personally I liked tarantino's flicker Deathproof better than rodriguez's Planet Terror. It was penultimate Tarantino... with all his signature images... you know the diner, the dialogues and the close-ups!

The downpoint in the end was that now EVERYONE knows about vanishing point and kowalski and the white 70's dodge. Film geeks and elitists, alike shall shed a tear for this loss to the mainstream. Overall the movie was good... it's a must see.. but it's not going to get the five K's ... OH SORRY... I forgot to introduce the scale by which i'll be going on, on this blog for rating movies and music a like:
KKKKK = excellent/cult-classic (with K signifying kowalski-approved...kowalski being moi)
KKKK = solid flicker
KKK = enjoyable one-time watch
KK = ok... can I be doing something more useful??
K = i'd rather cut myself with a rusty razor from the french revolution

ok people that's it from me ... at 5:04 am ...its my bedtime!

Voxtrottin Through Toronto

Voxtrot - Austin, Texas-based indie-pop five piece band is coming to Sneaky Dees on the 8th of June!!! (can i hear people going crazy on the other side of their computers??) if not ... let me heave a sigh of disappointment, brimming with an undertone of angst, somewhat reminiscent of the blow-up of grunge back in the days of nirvana.

Anyhow I digress...back to the matter at hand.. ramesh srivastava and his band of merry musicians are voxtrottin into 'our' city!
I've put up a video of their particularly raucous number entitled "Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives", which was the sonic starting point for the band's sophomore epic EP!

Just yesterday I picked up their new eponymous album. Contrary to some criticisms a friend of mine had given, I was happily surprised. It seems they have been able to form a delightful marriage between the chaotic bliss of previous EPs and their new found calm reassuring touch. Lilting lyrics abound my friend... this record will consume you and replenish your strength at the same time.

"Listen to the sounds of ringing out around you

These are the cries of the dying beat

Politics of hate you'd never get around to

Blood over brains that we never need

I saw you in the back, studied and relaxed

Fixed in the post like a silent stone

Serenity in tact, it's the feeling that I lack

Life in the floors of a stable home "

- voxtrot - kid gloves

...

Anyhow I don't think I need to further elaborate on how quintessential it is to see voxtrot perform live this June. Put your pens aside critics...this is a band to truly applaud if there ever was one!

survivalism

should have listened to her

so hard to keep control

we kept on eating but

our bloated belly's still not full

she gave us all she had but

we went and took some more

can't seem to shut her legs

our mother Nature is a whore