Blog
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Eastman Kodak Company – 1922 Film Test
“In these newly preserved tests, made in 1922 at the Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, actress Mae Murray appears almost translucent, her flesh a pale white that is reminiscent of perfectly sculpted marble, enhanced with touches of color to her lips, eyes, and hair.
She is joined by actress Hope Hampton modeling costumes from The Light in the Dark (1922), which contained the first commercial use of Two-Color Kodachrome in a feature film. Ziegfeld Follies actress Mary Eaton and an unidentified woman and child also appear.”
George Eastman House is the repository for many of the early tests made by the Eastman Kodak Company of their various motion picture film stocks and color processes. The Two-Color Kodachrome Process was an attempt to bring natural lifelike colors to the screen through the photochemical method in a subtractive color system.
First tests on the Two-Color Kodachrome Process were begun in late 1914. Shot with a dual-lens camera, the process recorded filtered images on black/white negative stock, then made black/white separation positives.
The final prints were actually produced by bleaching and tanning a double-coated duplicate negative (made from the positive separations), then dyeing the emulsion green/blue on one side and red on the other. Combined they created a rather ethereal palette of hues.”
In other words, how the hell did I miss this one?? Stunning. I like how the medium is so new, that the actress is used more as a still-life model akin to the painters of old. Painting with pictures, indeed.
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Review – WOOM – “Muu’s Way”
Rating: 70%
Sara Magenheimer and Eben Portnoy holed up in a barn in Massachusetts in the dead of winter for two months, in what ended up being a bit of a musical cleanse. They went into the barn as Fertile Crescent and came out (re/unborn?) as Woom. The album I am reviewing is a product of this retreat. It is called “Muu’s Way.”
How to describe Woom in a way that actually means anything? I’m so (un)happy you asked me that question. It’s scarcely worth doing a comprehensive sounds-like study here (though Deerhoof, The Acorn, and Cocorosie spring to mind), so in the spirit of the band and their style of songwriting, I’ll do it with a bit of poetic hyperbole:
Imagine, if you will, a beautiful girl beckoning you to come closer. She has a secret, and she is so sweet looking you want to squeeze her. Your ear is close to her lips, you can feel her breath (it smells like mint leaves and sea breeze) and just as she’s about to coo something meaningful into your ear, a car horn blares, and the girl is gone.
Okay here’s a simpler one: “Someone spiked my Shirley Temple,” I cried, “but I can’t stop drinking it. I don’t even drink!”
Woom is a band who does a lot with negative space. So much so that I was surprised to discover the ten track album barely crossing the thirty minute mark. They have the clickety-clack thing down pat. They’ll tap a pencil on a plastic cup to create a percussion bed, no problemo. Sara and Eben run this show with their voices more often than not, after all. Leads and harmonies linger longer than the bleeps.
The staccato nature of the songs also linger, for better or for worse. It is a bit of an anti-momentum LP which doesn’t allow you to let it fade into the background. Which is great if you don’t aren’t seeking full contentment. I personally like holistic experiences, however, and Woom certainly show their under-feathers more than once, giving me hope that this album is the beginning of a continued refinement.
That’s not to say this is a train wreck by any means. But it’s a slippery slope. Cocorosie, for example, haven’t repeated their debut success to date. But with Woom, whenever the train is about to derail into an art college dorm room jam session, they bring us back. “OK… OK… OK…” we hear at one point, as if they knew they were misbehaving.
As we meander through the album (and meander is the best word for it), we hear stories both poetic (“Circle on the surface, black blood on the white snow. It’s coming and coming and coming down, a strange style of voices.”) and literate (“Rafael, pull off the black balaclava. Put your ass down on the sofa. We’ll have some coffee and talk.”). It’s a mix I like, and this from a guy who doesn’t like mixed drinks (see above).
Standout tracks include “Quetzalcoatl’s Hip,” a quirky, seaside hymn about bottled ships and burials including a steel cameo near the end. I can’t help but think the title has a bit of wordplay in and of itself.
“Back In,” plays like an unplugged song The XX might have written if they stopped flirting with one another for more than two seconds.
Lead track “Backwards Beach,” beaches us onto the sandy shore of Woom Island in a wash of electro-sea swells, only to land on a beach haunted by sunny, strummy jangles and palm trees swaying to a sing-song breeze.
“Under Muu,” is a wonderful instrumental worth noting. It really reminded me of something The Acorn might have written and played, and I wouldn’t complain about an all-instrumental album from WOOM in this very tone; it’s excellence incarnate.
“Judith,” ends the album on an experimental note, with bleeps and glass breaks held together by the vocals like a piece of perfume-scented scotch tape. With this closing track, Woom appropriately remind us (and themselves?) who they are, and most importantly who they are not.
Personally, I do like them for who they are. But I want to love them for who they might become. We’ve reached a cruising altitude together, but are you equipped to take us out into space on our next expedition? Until then, I’ll sway and twitch to Woom’s sweet, strange take on music-making, and wander their melodic madness, one clickety-clack at a time.
Mp3. “Back In”
Mp3. “Quetzalcoatl’s Hip” -
Adventures of Rose: The Toilet Monster
She emerged from our toilet to terrorize our home. Her reign of fury ended with a vicious attack on our stock of Cheez-Its. She fell asleep shortly thereafter, and the unsuspecting mother was finally able to confine her to the padded cage we call a crib. When she will return, nobody knows. But everybody knows… she WILL return.
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Sun-Up/Sun-Down Mix
“Sun-Up/Sun-Down” Mix
It’s late in the Summer, I know, but if your hometown is anything like mine, it seems we’ll never see the Fall. So I put together a late-Summer mix, sequenced in such a way as to evoke a time of day evolution, from the dust motes swimming in the early morning shafts of sunlight, to the evening headlights commingling with a sky full of stars, and everything in-between.
01. Cults Go Outside
02. Marina and the Diamonds I Am Not a Robot
03. School of Seven Bells Windstorm
04. Soft Landing Baptism
05. Ratatat Bare Feet
06. The Books Beautiful People
07. Wild Nothing Summer Holiday
08. Mumford & Sons The Cave
09. Local Natives World News
10. Arcade Fire The Suburbs
11. Active Child Weight of the World
12. Phantogram As Far As I Can SeeDownload Mixtape.
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Things I’ve Seen #006
Despite appearances, this was not a homeless woman. It was a young, Brooklyn hipster. There were people standing up because the train was packed. Never accuse New Yorkers of not having big hearts.
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Beyond Beirut, a Soft Landing
For those wondering when new Beirut material might bless your ears, fret not. Paul Collins, Beirut’s bassist has started a new project called Soft Landing. While on a break from touring with Beirut in Brazil, he stole fellow bandmate, accordionist Perrin Cloutier and a friend from college. They spent every waking moment while on break to write and practice.
When all was said and done, they had enough material for an LP, which they recorded in Chicago with Griffin Rodriguez (frontman of Icy Demons). The album is due out this Fall on BaDaBing Records (Beirut, Shearwater, Sharon Von Etten, Damon & Naomi, WOOM, etc.).
I’m happy to share a track from that album with you here. It’s called “Baptism,” and it’s good.
“Baptism” – Mp3
In just one song, we discover a sound very distinct from Condon’s, though not a world apart by any means. There is still an infatuation with international sounds, wide influences, infectious songwriting. They enjoy their instruments and play them well. The music, the writing, it is for real, not extra-cirricular. The music swells and simmers, drums roll forward fervently, guitars wash over us, and everything just feels easy breezy.
Collins holds his own as frontman here, too, though his vim and conviction as bassist for Beirut makes this no surprise. Vocally, I’m reminded a touch of Goeff Farina of Karate fame, which is a good thing. Slightly flat notes (on purpose!) and a quasi-croon floating with an injured wing over the compositional gaps are welcome and distinctive. I like it. Do you?
If this first song is any indication, their self-titled debut should stand on its own in the way Daniel Rossen’s Department of Eagles project succeeded a couple years back. The question will be whether Soft Landing can keep up this prolificness while double dipping in two active bands. I’m sure several multi-act independent artists wish cloning were commonplace, then they could tour in two places at the same time. Imagine that!
Tour Dates:
July 14th – The Rock Shop, Brooklyn
July 23rd – Denver Biennial, Denver
July 30th – Bruar Falls, Brooklyn
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Things I’ve Seen #005
If a commuter cleans a restroom that is out of order, is it ever really clean?
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Things I’ve Seen #004
At first I thought this was a Prada hat. It wasn’t. Then I wondered, “Will this fit me?” It did not.
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Grace Sings “White Winter Hymnal”
Mp3. Fleet Foxes
“White Winter Hymnal” -
Bad Word Pairs #038
“Urinal Cake”
I realize some people may not even know what this thing is, though don’t feel excluded from the party. You can see for yourself it’s still a mighty horrendous merging of words.
For the rest of you, perhaps you can enlighten me as to how a deodorizer that sits at the bottom of a urinal in a public men’s restroom got deemed as a “cake” of all things.
I’m not even going to look up the etymology of it, because the phonetics alone should have overruled whatever lore led to its inception.
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Musical Musings…
Memoryhouse
“The Years”
Mp3. “Lately”If Zooey Deschanel made morning music with Stars of the Lid before she had her first cup of coffee, and she sang without that subtle-but-evident hipster irony I have come to associate with She & Him, you’d have a rough idea of what Memoryhouse sounds like. Of course, they are also totally better than that cheesy metaphor. Wait. What?
Mumford & Sons
“Sigh No More”
Mp3. “The Cave”It’s as though Fanfarlo hired Ricky Skaggs to run back up, and Amy Grant helped with some of the writing (to get the “Faith” bits just right). Of course, this melange sounds awesome, and if you can tolerate (and appreciate) the bluegrass undercurrents, then you’ll enjoy this band. Oh, and they’re not from America! Is that a bonus? I don’t know.
JBM
“Not Even In July”
Mp3. “Cleo’s Song”Imagine Jose Gonzales and Jim James had a baby (it can happen, ask Devito and Schwarzenegger), and this child was raised on Great Lake Swimmers (before they left the silo). The haunting melodies and tragic undercurrent somehow makes this even better than that.
Local Natives
“Gorilla Manor”
Mp3. “World News”A new kind of anthem band. This one eschews instrumentation in favor of barbershop harmonies and mixes mundane lyricism (“The lane next over’s always faster”) with profound delivery (see “Who Knows Who Cares”) to create one of my favorite albums this year.
Josh Ritter
“So Runs the World Away”
Mp3. “The Curse”If Joanna Newsom leased out her patent on wordy songwriting, you’d have two of the tracks from Josh Ritter’s latest album figured out. If you made one of them about a mummy who falls in love with a female paleontologist (“The Curse”), and the other about a Christopher Columbus type searching for a paradise in Antarctica, well then you’d have discovered two of the best songs this year.
The National
“High Violet”
Mp3. “Conversation 16”Pretend you combined all of the previous albums by The National, set the blender to low, then poured your concoction into a drinking glass that was shinier than the one you drank your morning milk in. Oh, and if a close listen to “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks,” doesn’t make you a wee bit weepy, you’re inhuman (subhuman?).
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Things I’ve Seen #003
The best part about this sign is that there’s a $5,000 fine if you eat these crabs. As if getting cancer and damaging my unborn child’s brain wasn’t enough. Gotta love Jersey!
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Many Moments
The art of Peter Funch.
(I feel the need, in this for-instance, to explain that Funch’s images are heavily composited.)
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Bad Word Pairs #036
“Arm Pit”
It’s bad enough our underarms (especially us brutish oafs of the male variety) have odor problems to deal with, but they also have a less-than-flattering moniker to suffer through.
An “arm” is a slightly awkward but mostly benign word. And “pit” on its own is pretty harmless (unless it’s a cherry pit, then it can be deadly).
But when you put the two together, you get a science fair project of a phrase for a body part that already has the deck stacked against it.
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Things I’ve Seen #002
Murray: I get ridiculed all the time.
Bret: Really?
Murray: Yeah.
[in a deep voice]
Murray: Hey, ginger balls.
[in his own voice]
Murray: You know?
Jemaine: That was Bret. He called you that.
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Things I’ve Seen #001
New section. A collection of random images of things that I see out in the every day world. Here we have some sort of downward dog pose combined with some well-placed typography. I bet he can see the type through there.
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HBO Crowns Game of Thrones
Above: Will of the Night’s Watch approaches fallen corpses on the wrong side of the Wall. Image courtesy ©HBO Original Series.
After many months of toiling, speculating, pilot-shooting, and waiting, the news is in; HBO has given a full season order for Game of Thrones, the character-driven epic fantasy series based on the books by George R.R. Martin. Those who follow this blog will be already aware of this project, but the greenlight is great news!
It will likely be a year before we see Episode 01, but by the look of the talent attached to this project, it should definitely be worth the wait.
For more details on the cast of the series, GO HERE.
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Vietnam Tom Conspiracy
There is a video out right now wherein a 67 year old white bearded male and a young black male with corn rows get into an argument, which turns into a shoving match, which turns into a brutal beat down… with the old man as the victor. It is not a video for the faint-hearted, but I had a couple of thoughts.
First, there is something redeeming in seeing an old guy stand his ground and come out on the winning end of the equation, as this is so often NOT the case. However, let us not presume the old man absolved of all wrong-doing. He WAS provoking the younger man in the beginning of the video: “Let’s get back to business; how much you charge me for a spit shine?” isn’t exactly the best ice breaker with a stranger on a bus who already appears to be giving you grief.
He backs off his original jibe and acts naive, as though the younger man was truly offering to shine his shoes (which I find hard for the old man to have believed). What happens afterword is somewhat sad. You have innocent bystanders who would love nothing but to be anywhere else. You have friends of the young man in the back taunting their friend to “beat his white ass!” and who later proceed to take and go through the old man’s beard after he exits the bus.
Anyways, a fight ensues, with a surprising result, and then it ends. And we move on. Right? Well… there’s a second part of the story, and it involves an old guy with a beard named Thomas Brusco (Tommy Slick, Vietnam Tom). There is a man taking credit for the fight who looks like the man on the bus, but I have good reason to believe it is not the same man. Here is why.
First, they have different voices, very different. For evidence, listen to when the guy on the bus says, “Why you being so hostile, man?” He sounds more like Chong of Cheech and Chong than the gravel voiced Tommy Slick. They also are from different walks of life. The man on the bus wears ironed shorts with his t-shirt tucked in and a belt around his waist. He carries an organic grocery bag with him, and has an affinity for keeping his nose from running with a Kleenex. Tommy Slick is a street urchin who smokes and wears semi-gangster clothing, flat billed cap and a camoflauge jacket. He is much more urban than the man on the bus.
Furthermore, when Tommy Slick gave an interview going back over what happened on the bus, his story just doesn’t hold up. It sounds more like he’s just reciting what he saw on the video, using key words from what the camera caught. And there’s a problem with his story. First he relays what is said on the video, that he needed to spit shine his shoes for a funeral on Friday. But later in the interview, he falls apart saying his mama died two days later. So which is it? Furthermore, in the interview he says he is joking with his white friend next to him, but the man on the bus is flanked by a black man and a white woman. Where’s the white friend?
And some of what Tommy Slick has to say is just preposterous. He claims the man he defended himself against was a murderer, and convicted of robbery. That the black man had a knife on him, and that the old man had a knife of his own for protection. I don’t know where you’d put your knife with those shorts on. He said that the man was going to serve 10 years in prison, and another 18 for robbing him. I didn’t see the young man robbing anyone, though his friends did take the old man’s bag to the back of the bus.
I don’t know why I felt compelled to unearth the truth, but trust me when I tell you that the man on the bus is not the same guy pretending to be him in interviews, the man who calls himself Tommy Slick. Whether or not Tommy Slick is the same old man who gets tased at the Oakland A’s game… that’s for you to decide, but I have my suspicions about Tommy Slick, and how he might have gotten his nickname.
I won’t post the video(s) on my site, due to their graphic nature, but if you’re so inclined you can try and learn more about the 67 year old man bus incident.
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Five Song Mixtapes. 007.
“Ohio”
We’ve all heard countless songs about Los Angeles and New York. We’ve gotten our share of songs about Texas, learned how great Chicago is, and listened to songs tell of streets in San Francisco. But I’d like to take this time to pay tribute to one of the lesser appreciated regions of our great country. With that, I present to you five songs written about the Buckeye State… Ohio. 1. Over the Rhine Ohio 2. The Low Anthem To Ohio 3. Sun Kil Moon Carry Me Ohio 4. The Ravenna Colt South of Ohio 5. Bob Miller Ohio Prison Fire
Download Mixtape.
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Owen Pallett & Christopher Cross
Christopher Cross and Michael MacDonald perform “Ride Like the Wind,” together live in 1998. Michael MacDonald covers “While You Wait For the Others,” by Grizzly Bear. Owen Pallett opens for Grizzly Bear at BAM in 2009. Owen Pallett sounds an awful lot like Christopher Cross. I’m… Just… Saying…
