#there's fragments of the film floating around out there but it's a lot of searching

[please-dont-pet-the-okapi]

My favorite is that Fassbinder tried to make a West German adaptation of the original 1961 novel with Angelica Domröse as Katya, but the film was left uncompleted after his death and a lot of what he did film is still unreleased by the studio.

While we're posting about it i think my favourite piece of goncharov trivia is that tarantino wanted to remake it in 2003 with nic cage as goncharov but scorcese wouldn't give him the rights because "he smells like fish"

[fluidsf]

Fluid Label Focus on Crónica 011 Ran Slavin: Product 02 (2004) Reviewed format: CD album released on Crónica I'm back rather early now with the next review in my Fluid Label Focus series on the Crónica label. This time I have for you an early release back from 2004 in the Product series on the label, titled Product 02 by Ran Slavin. This album in the format I'm reviewing features the 15 tracks (of which track 10 is a seperating silent track [Product Silence] on CD as well as an 8 page booklet featuring photography and artwork as well as two texts detailing the Product series concept, the sonic inspiration put into the music on this album by Ran Slavin and an appreciation by label owner Miguel Carvalhais. On the back of the jewelcase you can find the tracklist and album credits. As described in the booklet the Product series' concept is to take the "split" format of the vinyl LP format (two sides featuring the music of a full album) and translate this to the digital format by splitting up the tracklist of the CD into two "sides" (or mini compilations as its called in the text) which both form two seperate pieces of the album. The goal is that these two piece also work together to form one "Product" rather than a collection of seperate pieces forming the album. In the case of Ran Slavin's Product release the two parts forming the album are titled Tropical Agent and Ears in Water. Tropical Agent starts with track 1 Dirty Needles. Dirty Needles features a glitchy sound in which various music samples, vinyl crackle and bit-crushed down pitched mechanical sounds are blended together to create an abstract kind of soundscape or ambience. Indeed Ran Slavin's music on this album is the kind of music that is more like fading in and out of various sonic situations and environments rather than tracks featuring clear melodic patterns or progression. The lo-fi mechanical clanging sounds are the main focus in here for me , as the music samples and vinyl crackle scatter around in abstract manner, the Industrial clanging seems to be a clearer focus point than the melodic bits. A great track to start with, plenty of classic Glitch goodness in here. If You Should is a more subtle, mellow and quiet piece, featuring what sounds like a Middle Eastern string instrument, violin samples and filtered piano samples. Combined with the vinyl crackles and low mechanical sounds the music feels like the ambience of a quiet workshop of handcrafted products late at night as the owner and few employees continue carefully working on their handcrafted objects. Search For Compassion continues the vinyl / Glitch themed sonic signature but with a more drone based ambience. After several choppy vinyl sample manipulations at the start the piece moves forward as a contuous mellow fragmented drone that near the end gets accompanied by high pitched synth notes chiming into the fuzzy cloud of sound. Nice deepness in this one. U Think U Know Who U Are uses a resonator effect to create strong metallic droning percussive sounds. Pretty sharp sounds they are and the piece is a bit more simple in texture than the tracks before but it's still got a pleasant feeling to it and the reverberated ambience at the end gives a nice conclusion to this track. Silent Siren however is a better track, the looping harp samples and shifting low pitched sounds add a kind of mystery in the music that feels pretty cinematic, like people waiting in the living room of their house for something special to happen. Indeed Ran Slavin is in fact an artists in various media, film, video art as well as experimental music, so it's no wonder that his work carry abstracted imaginary storylines within them. The violin melody in the second half of the track is a great juxtaposition with the other sounds in the track that blends sonic images together like overlaying one scene with another on that's half-dissolved. On Guitar String/Empty Streets aleatoric randomized guitar sample melodies float through an ambience of (indeed) streets in field recordings, the guitar string sounds are emphasized quite a lot which adds these mechanic sounds to the mixture. Mysterious eerie droning tones add a strange kind of "foreboding feeling" in an otherwise quite abstract sounding melodic ambience piece, sounds good. Triggers of Violence is one of the louder pieces on the album and features spiky sounding chopped up glitchy guitars and droning resonances in more recognizably melodic patterns (albeit still in one key only). It's one of the more active pieces on the album, freely scattering glitches, recording noise and other artifact sounds around to create a mechanic structure of metallic sound, very nice. Desert Rain sounds quite like its title describes, it's got "rainlike" vinyl crackle loops, that are quite rhythmic as well, sounding almost like percussion. Soft continous droning instrument samples (including guitar) are placed in a pretty deep big space, ghostly washes of sound float through the ambience too and the track has a nice hypnotic Middle Eastern vibe to it. Flat Tire at the Dead Sea features more kinetic glitching guitar patterns as well as quite a lot of cool stuttery sonic manipulations with all sample chops tumbling through the stereo sound field into wide delays as well. A fun piece of abstract music that also features some chops of what sounds like percussion too. Afterwards we have 30 seconds of [Product Silence] and we move to the second half of this Product album Ears in Water. The first track of which is Vista Plain, which is more intense than the tracks before, a wash of fuzzy hissy droning sound and vinyl crackles as well as guitar samples. The drone has rhythmic mechanic looping sound to it and there's a lot of variation in the filtering as well as additional guitar samples in the piece which introduces the rather different sound of the Ears in Water part. Vista Plain is calm in its drone structure but sonically rather progressive with all the manipulation going on. Girl in Water features chopped and glitched vocals by Lin Chalozin Dovrat and sounds a bit more technical in its atmosphere, more futuristic with the choppy short glitch sequences, rather abstract tone sequences and granual style intense sound stretching. Great sound manipulations in here, nice piece. On Untitled #1 you can hear what sounds like little bass as well as a resonating sound, like coming from the inside of an electronic appliance as well as samples from a man's voice. Strange but intriguing sonic experience this is, sounds very alien. Untitled #2 has a more synthetic sounds to it with more synths and technical glitches in it. Starting with quickly chopped samples, high synth effects, reversed bells and more elements situated mostly in the high end of the frequency spectrum the piece slowly moves into an organ like drone and synth percussion gets added as well. This second half becomes quite purely electronic, a nice piece with a different sonic siganture we have here. Great vibe. Final track Piano moves back a bit to the sound of earlier tracks, a fuzzy vinyl sound is within the piano samples though the whole is chopped up in a melodic progression in faster tempo than before. Quite an upbeat and pleasant short atmospheric ending piece to this album. Product 02 by Ran Slavin is a quite varied album of cinematic and often abstract experimental ambiences and atmospheric melodic progressions. The two halfs of the album, in line with the concept of Crónica Product series give the approach to music a nice twist after the first half, enabling the listener to discover the relations between the sounds in the various tracks and the general abstract element of the music allows you to imagine situations and environments conjured up by it. A great listen for people looking for cinematic experimental music spread over various tracks as well fans of more melodic oriented glitch music and vinyl sample manipulations. CD available from the Crónica Bandcamp page here: https://cronica.bandcamp.com/album/product-02

[baesketballers]

Phantom presence

A Halloween special

As commissioned by @haikyuusmiles, posted with permission

Characters: Kuroko Tetsuya, Fem!Reader

He doesn’t know for how long he has been dead—it has probably been so long that he forgets, yet memory is something he finds merely optional, now that he is a wandering spirit. He doesn’t remember his name or how he came to this realm. What he remembers are formed together like a defective ancient tome: some chapters missing, pages torn, cover hardly intact. Sometimes he remembers some of the days when he was alive, only to find that it was not much different than the ‘life’ (if you can even call it that) which he lives presently.

Invisible.

But being a spirit has its perks, he would like to think with optimism. He usually dwells in libraries and book stores where he can spend his time in peace, only mildly inconveniencing the people in charge with the books he leaves open in the haste of him fleeing—he knows nobody can see him, but they can certainly see a book floating back to the shelf on its own, and that would raise a flag. He also likes movie theatres, where he observes and remembers culture through films, though occasionally he would stumble upon lovers amidst their trysts, and it would always remind him of how alone he is.

It isn’t like he is the only spirit floating around Tokyo, though. He met quite a few others, befriended them, even. He would talk to them about being dead, about the purpose of their nomadic souls, about Purgatory. He remembers how it felt like to not be alone, and it was comforting—but then he would look for them at their spot, only to find them gone. Nobody knows or keeps track of where spirits go, so the only conclusion he could draw was that they all somehow found their way to Purgatory.

He doesn’t know how to get there, and neither do the previous spirit friends he has. Yet strangely enough, no fire in him burns at the prospect of the next world, and he decides that looking for it would only be a pointless inconvenience.

Besides, he has always liked observing people.

Hovering in front of an art store, he wonders if it would be too much trouble for the owner if he steals a sketchbook and a pen or two, just so he can doodle in that abandoned warehouse he found—it gets boring at night, and even when he has no physical form, his soul grows weary after using too much energy being active throughout the day. He decides to go in anyway, trailing behind a group of female students seemingly here to buy supplies.

The watercolor aisle is where he first lays his eyes on you, your form squatting to reach for a set of gouache watercolors at the bottom shelf. You look adorable with a pout gracing your face as he watches you compare it with another box of paint in your other hand. His eyes fall on your hair, fluffy, brown, and short, and for the first time in a while he wants to be able to touch again, just so that he can feel the softness of your hair against him.

Spirit or human, he realizes that he begins following you out of curiosity and that it is incredibly rude, but something about you just pulls him in like a magnet, a force invisible even in his realm. He makes sure to give you privacy, though, waiting for you while you go to a restroom or when you eat. He follows the rest of your journey home and finds himself unconsciously whispering “pardon the intrusion” as he enters through your front door. He is exploring the living room when he hears the shower running—it must be you.

He looks at pictures and decorations and wonders how it feels like to be alive: to smell something sizzling in a frying pan, touch a pillow, feel his feet against the solid floor. His senses are warped without his body, reaching extremes where living humans can’t, but diminished when it comes to normal interactions. He can hear the dull thud of a door closing, however, and he follows the sound to find your room.

Not needing to open the door, he passes through it, finding himself in a completely different world—your world. It is colorful, thanks to the drawings strewn across your bed and your soft toys. They are an adorable array of dogs and sharks, and he finds the combination odd yet charming. You have a towel around your neck and shoulders to prevent your damp hair from wetting your shirt. He smiles softly at the display.

That is until he sees you reach into the dresser next to your bed.

Pills—a lot of them, he notes. They don’t seem like they are normal supplements, either. You down them, several at once but not too many, and something cold runs through him. You must be sick. With what, he doesn’t know, but it matters little. He sees you chuck your medicine back into the drawer before plopping onto your bed, grabbing a puppy plushie and hugging it against your chest.

You look tired.

It has been a while since he last felt something akin to sadness, but he realizes that he feels right now for you, even though he doesn’t know your name or what you are going through. If he were human, if he were your friend, he would most certainly reach in for a hug. He knows, though, that he is standing right at the foot of your bed and you don’t even know he exists.

Too close, and his presence brushes over a piece of stray paper on your bed, causing it to slip and fall on to the floor. Your eyes open at the sudden sound, immediately drawn to the paper now resting on the floor.

Then you look at him square in the eyes.

A sensation parallel to a racing heart courses throughout his body and he freezes, gaze locked with yours for a full second before you dismiss it as a coincidence, grabbing your tools from the desk next to your bed to start drawing. He calms down upon knowing that you cannot actually see him, and yet the chance eye contact gives him new sensations he has never felt before—a human acknowledging his presence. A small voice at the back of his mind tells him you know he is there, though he tries to keep hope at bay. He does not want to be attached.

Not wanting to disturb you further, he leaves, but not without remembering where you live.

Throughout the course of the next few days, he visits you every so often as if he were an acquaintance. He knows your name now, your sickness (though vaguely), but most importantly your passion. Sometimes he perches on the headboard of your bed just to watch your draw the day away. Despite his inhibitions, he finds you interesting, and to his dismay, he is getting attached. He knows this by the sense of want that is boiling in his core—the want to exist just so he can talk to you and make you laugh, to be with you.

He passes through your bedroom walls one day to find your face as hard as stone, empty eyes staring into your computer screen. He hovers close, already distraught by your expression, eager to know what it is that bothers you, and he turns cold almost immediately.

Reading has always been his strong suit, especially after spending so much time in the library and book stores, and his clear azure eyes run through digital strings of text on your monitor: it isn’t a long message, merely a paragraph, but the venom lacing each seemingly sweet word is potent. He wonders how someone could mask themselves of their rottenness so wonderfully behind a simple text, and it seems like you think the same. Claiming to be your ‘friend’, no less—he could search for this person and haunt them for life, but that would mean leaving your side. Judging by the look on your face, you aren’t taking it so well. Perhaps you know their concealed intentions, and he is thankful for that.

When you begin to cry, he knows he can do nothing to help, yet he doesn’t stop himself from stroking your shoulders gently as your tears turn into big droplets streaming down your cheeks. Your eyes redden within minutes and he feels a stab where his heart should be at—he doesn’t know if it is caused by the sight of you being so broken or the fact that he can’t help you through the pain.

“It’s okay,” he whispers, his own voice foreign to his ears from having not spoken for so long, “I’m here. Everything will be fine.” He hugs you, arms encircling your shoulders, though when he presses too hard it goes through your body. A few moments after his embrace, he watches as you calm down, cries reduced into sobs and then sniffles, before the waterworks finally stop.

You wonder why it has gotten slightly warm in your room despite the cool fall air outside.

Exactly three days later he feels fear. It shakes with his every thought that has to do with you, which is seemingly all he can think of recently. He fears Purgatory when it comes for him, as it knows no day nor night, taking everyone as it goes—because promises of the next world are nothing, especially when compared to being with you. He fears an eternity of being an audience, observing you as time runs through your life, leaving him to watch you age and die.

He fears insanity from not being able to exist next to you, but it doesn’t stop him from staying close.

The days have been slightly rougher for you, but somehow amidst the medication, manipulation, and malicious harassment, you feel a strange calm wash over you immediately after each tribulation, wrapping around you like a thin blanket. You are convinced that it is just a fragment of your imagination, something you made up to make yourself feel better after going through so much. Just a self-defense system, nothing special, you say to yourself.

But as the leaves turn brown and trees stand bare, whatever it is that has you tranquil feels stronger. You should be scared, but somehow that emotion escapes you even when your rational mind tells you to—the unseen force now has a temperature, after all, and though it is only the slightest bit cooler than your skin, you notice. You are terrified yet instead of having your blood run cold, it courses through your body faster and warmer than it has ever been.

If you were honest with yourself, you would call it excitement.

After your bullies somehow stopped harassing you, you knew something supernatural is in the works. Is your house haunted? You are never really the superstitious type, but that might be the only explanation.

Your Ouija board was delivered to your house in the morning and you waited until dusk to use it (perhaps there is something about the night that makes ghosts stronger?), making sure not to attract the unwanted attention of your parents. The board is surprisingly well-designed, clean and sleek save for the classic rosewood lettering done in dark brown. You have never used one before, you realize before observing the board.

“Yes”. “No”. Letters and numbers. “Goodbye”. It has everything you need to communicate to whoever or whatever it is that has been hanging around you.

While a thousand thoughts run through your mind, he feels a magnificent amount of strength leave his body at the sight of the board. You noticed his presence? How come? It is not as if he dreaded the attention—he does dread, but only for the fact that you might actually see him as a hindrance, which is why you are trying to talk to him. He is scared that you might hate him and ask him to leave.

“Um, spirit…s?” You squeak, eyes darting around the room as you aren’t sure of where to look. You have not done this before and could not be bothered to look it up on the internet. “If it’s alright with you, I would like to t-talk to you. Please.” You have to take a deep breath before continuing.

“If you are here, please answer me.”

The pointer that is resting in the middle of the board on your lap stays still as you stare at it. His breath, though meaningless, turns short and frequent, as if he still needs air to function. His hand extends toward the plastic item, nervously trying to move it. Surprisingly enough, his finger doesn’t go through it, and he can almost hold it in his hand like any living person would. He shudders at the sensation on the tip of his fingers. Perhaps he is becoming more powerful as winter comes nearer?

Yes.

You let out a large exhale, almost unable to process the fact that a ghost just replied you. Something is here, you think, and you should be afraid, but instead you feel the urge to sputter gratitude and questions. Was it watching over you, and why? You swallow the words, though, and instead decide to take it slow while you attempt to calm your rabbit heart.

“…do you have a name I can call you?”

He hesitates. He doesn’t remember his own name.

No.

This surprises you slightly, but you are quick to think.

“I heard that names can be a powerful thing in the mystical realm,” you whisper, “is that why you won’t give me your name?”

The pointer doesn’t move, no matter how long you stare. You are almost convinced that the spirit or whatever it is has left, but you can still feel a presence in front of you. It hasn’t gone, not yet, and somehow the thought helps regulate your breath.

“So that’s a no,” you say again, “may I know why? It’s that—I need to know who I’m talking to… and if I’m going to talk to you again, I need to make sure you’re the same person,” you blurt out, “s-sorry! I mean spirit!”

He lets out a chuckle that goes unheard in your ears while he tries his best to move the pointer around. Thankfully it does not take too much energy, though it does take time.

I don’t know.

You look at the board, stunned. “You mean, you don’t know your name? You… don’t remember?”

The pointer slowly moves across the board. Yes.

“Um, m-maybe I can give you a nickname? Just so that I know I’m talking to you, I mean! I hope you don’t mind…” You trail off.

OK.

You crack a small smile. It appears that the ghost you are communicating with does not come from the 18th century speaking Ye Olde England, and for that you are thankful.

“What do you want to be called?”

The pointer doesn’t move because he is thinking—he feels like he has no name to begin with, and to have someone suddenly ask for one is a little bit overwhelming. He thinks of something short, yet memorable, something that is a piece of him. He doesn’t want you to call him by something that is not him.

K

U

R

O

Exhaling when the pointer stops, you unintentionally nod.

“Kuro… ‘black’, right?”

Yes.

“Well, I suppose it’s nice to meet you, Kuro,” you say, after offering your own name. You mentally admit at how befitting the name is—if this spirit really does follow you around, it would be almost as if it were shadowing you, hence black. Maybe it is its way of letting you know it has a sense of humor as well?

“I—The reason why I bought this board in the first place is so that I can properly talk to you,” you continue, “to say thanks, I mean. I don’t have to say this because you already know, but… these days have been pretty rough,” you murmur, tucking a stray strand of hair behind your ear. “I noticed that whenever I felt down, there’s a comfortable sense of peace that washes over me. I assume it was you.”

“It means a lot to me to know that you are there for me. So… thank you.”

The pointer doesn’t move. You suppose it is too energy-consuming for Kuro to say ‘you’re welcome’, it is over ten characters after all. You sigh.

“So yeah. That’s all I want to say. A-Also, you don’t have to always hang around if I’m being too troublesome. I can take care of myself, I promise.”

No.

“No?”

I’ll stay.

“Alright,” you nod, “so that’s settled. Unless you’re busy, of course!” You curse yourself mentally—how would you know if spirits had business to attend to or not?

No.

You can’t see him chuckle at your relieved exhale—perhaps you are scared of offending him, and he finds it very endearing. Throughout the night, you try to ask simple questions to get to know him better and he feels light-headed from the happiness of being able to talk to you. You have acknowledged his presence, and that alone is more than enough for him.

You talk almost every night since then, and he notices a change in him as the end of the month draws near. The Ouija board pointer is a light item for living beings, but it gets noticeably lighter as each night passes. He is able to wander around the whole day without growing too tired. To you, however, nothing seems to be different except for the fact that Halloween is close, and everybody is getting ready to celebrate the frightful night.

Everybody except you, that is—you have jobs that need to be finished, and the parties they go to are never really your style anyway. After a cozy dinner with your family, you saunter back to your room, eager to finish what you need to finish before probably watching Corpse Bride to end the night. You hum, content with what seems like a solid plan.

Your heart nearly fails as you open the door to your room.

There at the edge of your bed sits a boy with light-colored hair and eyes, staring blankly at one of your drawings as if admiring it. If it weren’t for his complete translucence and a slight glow surrounding him, you would think that he is just another regular boy that somehow found his way into your room and panicked, but you know better. The door behind you closes with a quiet click, and he turns around, looking straight into your eyes.

You look right back at him and he feels like his stomach drops.

“…Kuro?”

He whispers back your name in disbelief: you can see him? How? He hasn’t done anything different in his day to day life to make this happen. He looks down at his own two palms and then back to you—why is it that now he is visible to the human eye? He realizes then that this leaves him little option but to stay within the safety of your room. Who knows what people are going to do to him if they can see him?

“You…” Your first thought is how cute he really looks, though you can’t see everything too clearly thanks to the translucence. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Likewise,” he replies, still a bit stunned. “I don’t know what happened.” And then a switch flips in your head.

“Do you think this could be because of Halloween?” You say, voice low and wary, but only because you don’t want your family to accidentally hear you talking to him. It makes you wonder if other people can hear him too, but Kuro seems to know what you’re doing and makes sure to keep it down as well. “It is a ghastly night, after all.”

“Is it that time of the year?”

“Yes, it’s the end of the month.”

He nods, accepting your assumptions.

“I—have you ever looked at yourself?” You ask, “you look very… normal. In a good way, I mean! If you weren’t, well, see-through, I would think that you’re alive and well.”

“Come to think of it, no,” he answers before floating mindlessly towards your mirror out of curiosity. He sees himself for the first time and there is a strange tug in his chest—you are right, he looks exactly like a living human, and the deeper the realization sinks under him the more painful it becomes. If only he were alive…

“Kuro?”

He snaps out of his thoughts and turn to look at you.

“Are you alright? It looks like you spaced out a bit,” you continue, the worry laced in your voice prominent. He doesn’t answer.

He’s not alright. He wants to cry, but you would think it’s stupid—he wants to be human so that he can be with you. Even worse, you would think it is disturbing, like he is some sort of obsessive ghost, and that is the least he wants: for you to hate him, that is.

“You know you can always talk to me if you want to,” you say, moving to stand next to him. He looks at you with something unreadable in his eyes that makes you want to reach in for a hug, but you don’t even know if it is physically possible. He looks like he is about to say something.

He remembers the spirits he used to know that disappear at random—just like how Death can show up anytime and take any living being back with him, Purgatory seems to be the same. He wonders if he will disappear too. Tomorrow night, or tomorrow morning, or right now. He won’t know until it comes. He wonders if those souls had no regrets before passing on, but by thinking about it, he realizes how he will have one big regret should he be taken, too.

His regret of not telling you how much you mean to him.

“__________-san,” he begins, not quite bold to meet your concerned gaze just yet, “I’m afraid I need to tell you something.”

You stay quiet, not wanting to interrupt him, instead looking hopefully at his face.

“I believe that you are a good person, and you are truly beautiful, inside and out,” he begins, “but while I have watched your daily life it hurts that other people don’t see the same. But what hurts even more is that no matter how much I adore you, I can never really be with you.”

“Kuro…”

“What I really mean to say is, __________-san, I—”

Right before the next word rolls of his lips his vision tunnels and he feels a strong tug at his core, dragging him away from you as the world around him shifts and warps unnaturally. To you, he has disappeared in the blink of an eye, but he can still see you with your concerned and confused face as he travels further and further away, a hand hopelessly stretched out at you as you grow smaller and smaller, until all he can see is white.

“—love you,” he whispers, a tear falling down his cheek.

It’s white, but then everything turns dark before a blinding light flashes again. White, black, white, black is all he sees while a strange, dull sensation encapsulates his whole body. Perhaps he is being transferred to Purgatory, he thinks. He blinks a few times, trying to recognize his surroundings, only to find that the flashing lights dies down to reveal a dimly lit room and the sight of a lamp attached to a ceiling greets his sensitive vision—he registers the pulsing of his head and wonders where he is, until he sees a blurry face hovering above him.

“You’re awake,” the face whispers before dashing away.

That night, in a hospital several miles away from your house, a patient named Kuroko Tetsuya finally regains consciousness after a three-week coma. The first thing he requests from the nurse is a pen and paper.

He writes down the name of a street… and a girl.

[unimportanthistory]

Who am I

Everything around me is evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality - it's all evaporating. I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else. What I'm attending here is a show with another set. And the show I'm attending is myself.

Be careful: everything fades, everything vanishes. Something must remain of us.

My world falls apart, crumbles, “The centre cannot hold.” There is no integrating force, only the naked fear, the urge of self-preservation. I am afraid. I am not solid, but hollow. I feel behind my eyes a numb, paralysed cavern, a pit of hell, a mimicking nothingness. I never thought. I never wrote, I never suffered. I want to kill myself, to escape from responsibility, to crawl back abjectly into the womb. I do not know who I am, where I am going—and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions. I long for a noble escape from freedom—I am weak, tired, in revolt from the strong constructive humanitarian faith which presupposes a healthy, active intellect and will. There is nowhere to go. Except if nowhere is the place you want to go.

But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn’t do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.

I act and react, and suddenly I wonder, ‘Where is the girl that I was last year? Two years ago? What would she think of me now?

I tried to remember. I had the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. I was going mad by ricocheting in between. At times I had no interests. I had no interests in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn't understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go. Suicide? God, just more work. I felt like sleeping for five years but they wouldn't let me.

It begins to seem to me at such times that I am incapable of beginning a life in real life, because it has seemed to me that I have lost all touch, all instinct for the actual, the real; because at last I have cursed myself; because after my fantastic nights I have moments of returning sobriety, which are awful! Meanwhile, you hear the whirl and roar of the crowd in the vortex of life around you; you hear, you see, men living in reality; you see that life for them is not forbidden, that their life does not float away like a dream, like a vision; that their life is being eternally renewed, eternally youthful, and not one hour of it is the same as another; while fancy is so spiritless, monotonous to vulgarity and easily scared, the slave of shadows, of the idea, the slave of the first cloud that shrouds the sun... One feels that this inexhaustible fancy is weary at last and worn out with continual exercise, because one is growing into manhood, outgrowing one's old ideals: they are being shattered into fragments, into dust; if there is no other life one must build one up from the fragments. And meanwhile the soul longs and craves for something else! And in vain the dreamer rakes over his old dreams, as though seeking a spark among the embers, to fan them into flame, to warm his chilled heart by the rekindled fire, and to rouse up in it again all that was so sweet, that touched his heart, that set his blood boiling, drew tears from his eyes, and so luxuriously deceived him!

And so I ask myself: 'Where are your dreams?' And I shake my head and mutter: 'How the years go by!' And I ask myself again: 'What have you done with those years? Where have you buried your best moments? Have you really lived? Look how cold the world is growing. Some more years will pass, and after them will come gloomy solitude; then will come old age trembling on its crutch, and after it misery and desolation. Your fantastic world will grow pale, your dreams will fade and die and will fall like the yellow leaves from the trees. . . . You know it will be sad to be left alone, utterly alone, and to have not even anything to regret — nothing, absolutely nothing . . . For all that you have lost, all that, all was nothing, stupid, simple nullity, there has been nothing but dreams!

I am nothing.

I'll never be anything.

I couldn't want to be something.

Apart from that, I have in me all the dreams in the world.

I see my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Billur, the French translation student, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

I am in my old room once more, for a little, and I am caught in musing - - how life is a swift motion, a continuous flowing, changing, and how one is always saying goodbye and going places, seeing people, doing things. Only in the rain, sometimes, only when the rain comes, closing in your pitifully small radius of activity, only when you sit and listen by the window, as the cold wet air blows thinly by the back of your neck - only then do you think and feel sick. You feel the days slipping by, elusive as slippery pink worms, through your fingers, and you wonder what you have for your eighteen years, and you think about how, with difficulty and concentration, you could bring back a day, a day of sun, blue skies and watercoloring by the sea. You could remember the sensual observations that made that day reality, and you could delude yourself into thinking - almost - that you could return to the past, and relive the days and hours in a quick space of time. But no, the quest of time past is more difficult than you think, and time present is eaten up by such plaintive searchings. The film of your days and nights is wound up tight in you, never to be re-run - and the occasional flashbacks are faint, blurred, unreal, as if seen through falling snow. Now, you begin to get scared. You don't believe in God, or a life-after-death, so you can't hope for sugar plums when your non-existent soul rises. You believe that whatever there is has got to come from man, and man is pretty creative in his good moments - pretty mature, pretty perceptive for his age - how many years is it, now? How many thousands? Yet, yet in this era of specialization, of infinite variety and complexity and myriad choices, what do you pick for yourself out of the grab-bag? Cats have nine lives, the saying goes. You have one; and somewhere along the thin, tenuous thread of your existence there is the black knot, the blood clot, the stopped heartbeat that spells the end of this particular individual which is spelled "I" and "You" and "Billur." So you wonder how to act, and how to be - and you wonder about values and attitudes. In the relativism and despair, in the waiting for the bombs to begin, for the blood to flow and trickle before your own eyes, you wonder with a quick sick fear how to cling to earth, to the seeds of grass and life. You wonder about your eighteen years, ricocheting between a stubborn determination that you've done well for your own capabilities and opportunities... And a fear that you haven't done well enough - You wonder if you've got what it takes to keep building up obstacle courses for your self, and to keep leaping through them, sprained ankle or not. Again the refrain, what have you for your eighteen years? And you know that whatever tangible things you do have, they cannot be held, but, too, will decompose and slip away through your coarse-skinned and death-rigid fingers. So you will rot in the ground, and so you say, what the hell? Who cares? But you care, and somehow you don't want to live just one life, which could be typed, which could be tossed off in a thumbnail sketch = "She was the sort of girl....” And end in twenty five words or less.

And then… Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing. I wanted the whole world or nothing. Just like that, I wanted all of you to myself or none of you at all.

Remember when I told you that I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it. Do you remember your reaction? It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that everyone was forsaking me and going away from me. God I feel sick when I think how vulnerable, how fragile, how bounded I made myself in the eyes of you. I feel sick when I remember I gave you the power to hurt me. Yes, I was infatuated with you. I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren't having any of those.

Maybe, maybe I’m in love with missing you more than I’m in love with you.

No, I don’t love; I don’t love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit. I have the selfish love of my mother. I have none of the plodding, practical love. . . . . I am, to be blunt and concise, in love only with myself, my puny being with its inadequate breasts and meager, thin talents. I am capable of affection for those who reflect my own world.

You’re dissolving. You are all dissolving. This city is dissolving. None of you matter any more. I don't know you, I have never known you and I am very pure. All that wine and those sticky kisses I had and the dirt that settled on my skin on the way back is turning into something pure. Isolation.

I know that if I were mad, after several days of confinement I should take advantage of any lapses in my madness to murder anyone, preferably a doctor, who came near me. At least this would permit me, like the violent, to be confined in solitary. Perhaps they’d leave me alone.

Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through. I record here the actions of optical nerves, of taste buds, of sensory perception. And, I think: I am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence. Of the millions, I, too, was potentially everything at birth. I, too, was stunted, narrowed, warped, by my environment, my outcroppings of heredity. I, too, will find a set of beliefs, of standards to live by, yet the very satisfaction of finding them will be marred by the fact that I have reached the ultimate in shallow, two-dimensional living - a set of values. This loneliness will blur and diminish, no doubt, when tomorrow I plunge again into classes, into the necessity of studying for exams. But now, that false purpose is lifted and I am spinning in a temporary vacuum. At home I rest and play; but in there, where I work, the routine is momentarily suspended and I am lost. There is no living being on earth at this moment except myself. I could walk down the halls, and empty rooms would yawn mockingly at me from every side. God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in it's appalling self-consciousness, is horrible and overpowering.

I am left for a moment alone. Disorder, a broken wine glass on the floor, spilt wine, cigarette ends, fumes of drink and delirium in my brain…

Though the past was no better one feels as though it had somehow been better, and that life was more peaceful, that one was free from the black thoughts that haunt one now; that one was free from the gnawing of conscience — the gloomy, sullen gnawing which now gives me no rest by day or by night.

I grew to feel the tender skin of sensitive child-fingers thicken; to feel the sex organs develop and call loudly to the flesh; to become aware of school, exams (the very words as unlovely as the sound of chalk shrilling on the blackboard,) bread and butter, marriage, sex, compatibility, war, economics, death and self. What a pathetic blighting of the beauty and reality of childhood.

Then I have my old diaries. At nights like this I get the courage to read a few pages. Most are teared into pieces, burned, blowed, flushed… They did vanish, but something did, something did remain of me. And what remained is not the pages, it is me. Perhaps nothing vanishes and the word change is merely a deception. In a certain sense the past is far more real, or at any rate more stable, more resilient than the present. The present slips and vanishes like sand between the fingers, acquiring material weight, only in its recollection. Now and even tomorrow, is nearly yesterday and everything is stupid.

I’m eighteen (even older) now. I want to believe in the word “change”. I want to change. Perhaps my life is nothing but an image of this kind; perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I simply should recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.

[micaramel]

Artist: Justin Caguiat

Venue: Modern Art, London

Exhibition Title: Permutation City 1999

Date: June 25 – August 8, 2020

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Modern Art, London

Press Release:

Modern Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Justin Caguiat titled Permutation City 1999. This is his first solo exhibition with the gallery.

In Caguiat’s large-scale paintings on unstretched canvas or linen displayed in wooden frames, layers of oil and sometimes gouache, pastel and acrylic synthesise into highly detailed patterns which fill and spill out beyond imperfect edges. Now and then, swathes of monochrome washes emanate like filters or planes of light across the surface. From this, landscapes and otherworldly scenes materialise, drifting in and out of legibility, or consciousness.

These are liminal paintings, both corporeal and cryptic. They resist an instantaneous reading, demanding time to decipher, and to search for compositional footholds within their archaic atmosphere.

Caguiat’s idiosyncratic style is informed by varied fields including science fiction literature, the baroque-folk hybrid aesthetic of early Filipino Catholic Santos, 60s psychedelia, les Nabis, Ukiyo-E, urban graphic art and the historical legacy of Manga. In scale and format they can be read like murals and landscapes, and while not narrative, have a reverential or devotional purpose akin to a fresco.

Though suggestive of Romanticism, the paintings are not illusionistic, demonstrating and not concealing their evolution through layers. The transposition of paint – ideas, information, figures and ornament – is fragmented, like the dissolution of memory.

A text of the same title written by the artist accompanies the exhibition.

Justin Caguiat was born in 1989 in Tokyo, Japan. He lives and works in New York City. In 2018 he had a solo exhibition at 15 Orient, New York and his work has been included in group shows at galleries and project spaces throughout North America, in Italy and Switzerland. He has curated exhibitions with themanilainstitute.org and other collectives and is a published poet having participated in readings and performances including in 2017 at the Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland.

    Permutation City 1999

After the outbreak he escaped to the Bay Area with his family. They had left New York and ended up crashing at a former youth hostel in downtown Berkeley an art collector had bought. It was under renovation prior to the shut down and was in the process of being turned into

He traded the collector a painting titled My meat is to do the will of him in exchange for room and board. In one of the rooms, by the side of the bed hidden between the bed frame and the wall he found a journal filled with observations written in fragmented prose, punctuated by drawings. He was so struck by the book that it ended up forming the basis of his work for the next three years, using the drawings as sketches, overlapping composites to layer and erase with paint, building up the surface over time.

He compiled some excerpts from the found journal. Each entry in the book was titled, borrowing each title for each painting.

“Thousand Year Old Laughter” He was a young lad. Discovered a video store carrying a large collection of American and Euro films with religious themes. Other half of the store was SFX Horror. Lurking around the store… the instructions have unfolded a spell Entranced by images of suffering grotesque eroticism Fell into images forbidden the name is not what it appears

This way was truly nothing already it disappeared as smoking trails left by the things made seemingly in desires shape

solitary in fluid sunlight reflecting off store window eyes that unsubstantiated the hollow form revealed another presence. generating heat but not light and melting snow it turned into water, we lived for 16 years in Tokyo.

“Extraction and Compassion” When Grandmother came to visit us from Manila she couldn’t be around the Japanese people. Only once she recounted to my mother the horror of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines

During the massacre of innocents their favorite method of killing was the bayonet The hotels in downtown Manila were turned into rape camps they would take women and girls there after they were forced to bury their children, siblings, and neighbors in mass graves Hospitals were set afire after patients were strapped to their beds Pregnant women were raped and their stomachs were ripped open with bayonets Their unborn children drowning in sunlight streaming in from the broken walls and shattered windows “O you dig and I dig, and I dig towards you, on our finger the ring awakes”

In our apartment in Tokyo she made a room for herself in the closet. She was a devout Catholic, she could speak to spirits

She was the matriarch of my grandfathers second and illegitimate bastard family. Grandfather died when mother was one years old, he played piano for the silent films and was a photographer Mother was the youngest and 13th child. when grandfather died, suddenly they were were poor; he had left them nothing

They lived in a tiny garage and slept on the floor in rows they moved dwellings frequently my Mother often didn’t have enough food to eat. Her first job was cleaning public toilets

In Tokyo people always asked me if my mother was a maid the echo of the occupation evolved with the diaspora after the colonization and military campaigns of the Spanish, Japanese, and Americans The Filipina maids of Tokyo are kind and hard working people

When my grandmother died she left my mother her golden crucifix. My mother later gave the crucifix to me,

and after a year my father kicked my grandmother out and sent her back to Manila

They had a broken television in the room and the picture was in black and white. We would watch TV and my Grandmother was happy and said it reminded her of the past.

“Branches Flower Windows” walking down quiet streets of my Tokyo I love the moss covered cinder block walls and overgrown gardens of ferns, parks and Shinto temples and under the shade of trees everywhere, ponds and streams reflecting viridian glow, small waterfalls and stone pathways. Moss grows everywhere Sleepy stray cats and small fields of dirt and wild grass. The hollows of bushes littered with the skeletons of cicadas at the end of summertime and in every apple lays a fetus curled asleep There is no land more beautiful fields of rice paddies from the train window on the outskirts of the city the wind shakes and branches flower windows personalities whistle out of these sectors of apples that are made to be regenerated

Ever-present crows calling from the trees, pockets of nature surrounded by hyper-evolved architecture and a totalized homogeneity. Animism and fascism are alive and vital here, but now the Japanese are pacifists.

“The Approach of Beauty its Body was Fungible” Starting when I was 13 years old I used to sneak out of my house at night. My older sister was secretly taking LSD everyday and going to school, an exercise in appearing to be normal while her mind pushed against the boundaries of reason I would leave at around 1 in the morning after everyone was asleep. Wandering around, sometimes walking as far as Shibuya or Harajuku or to an unfamiliar neighborhood I would break into apartment buildings and go to the rooftops and sleep there. I sleep in parking lots and in nooks in between buildings, hidden places underneath stairwells and behind ventilators and generators whole lifetimes of how we love the escape Forgotten atoms cradled in sweet music and the laughter of our memory of the buildings dropping seeds

Radiant spheres contain their hidden appearance to take the form of different species in the future Growing variegated subjects decay into a lonely view that the preachers of passion have seen through their vector making melody

meted out in pleasure the lyrics recorder quickly to their passing pain

“Anal Staircase of the Eye Reflected in the Fingernail” They began to sleep walk and hallucinate. Floating above their body: walking around the apartment at night, talking uncontrollably

Its psychotic dream state remember waking up on the floor of the bedroom, The walls and ceiling slowly began to shrink, Shrinking to the point of a needle, the point was a pupil, They were trapped inside the pupil, the pupil was the coffin.

Splash water on their face to wake them up, the knock on the head sent us reeling, I’m relieved to find him sleeping. Its safe to be here while I was dreaming I kept forgetting I am living as todays reflection.

I was watching everything, I was watching my body moving dislocated from its host, I was moving from room to room like a fly on the wall, I was walking and talking like a living doll.

“The Saint is Never Busy” I cry because hes dying, now hes dust an older shade of green across my eyes turns to red dust of the heart. now how to keep out of hell are the wheels that are turning, he used to be so violent but now so enfeebled yet His eye still holds violence, his other eye is blind and He has to wear a diaper

The wheels of the sun its done but dont forget about its shadowy child, For its picture you hate to keep even though it always lives developed the horror of an idea that wears you unrendered, Its been 14 years its paralyzed brilliant doors are locked forever, out of waves of memories life times locked.

He looks old He walks so slowly, he shuffles from room to room compulsively the dementia atrophied brain

He doesn’t remember anything about me. He knows I am his son but nothing else, no memories I am a shadow in the periphery of his mind. My mother hid the kitchen knives just in case

He thinks its the year 1999, a maddening coincidence to the primal year of my reveries.

I came to London and went to see him, who had returned to where he grew up in Wales

Mother sleeps with the house keys under her pillow and a change of clothes and money in case he becomes violent and she needs to escape He threatens her when he doesnt recognize her and she has to hide Crushed by her burden I see it in her face

Of course it wasnt supposed to end like this He refers to himself in the plural. pointing to his head Trapped in the year 1999, wandering amongst the reveries of whose youth?

“The Synthetic Memory Forming” –

  We are in California now. Its peaceful here. New York seems so far away. Here in the Bay Area there are lots of crows, whom I love. They remind me of Tokyo. Our son dances in the sun and in the water an ant to the outsider sea.

We have cut a silly figure against the walls crumbling cake with all our bags A cigarette in my mouth my hat is lost against the orbing sun

the light is confusion. This is my last song you yell across laughing after the pale band where you removed your golden ring. The sun is chasing your tanned skin your fingers fan across the buildings in the sand optical trails waving against their warped angles

“Ive got nothing but reason left behind” Events are tiny earthquakes constantly reorienting the same set of histories but for now every one here is perfect standing dreamlike and frozen under the blue sun

A huge mob of crows, in the early hours of the morning on the way back home, that sent me weighing sleep against a walk around the block I turned away and fled as they knocked over the trash cans, The contents strewn like intestines on the street, nourished by the abundance, crying in unison

When the wandering fire Strikes the heart of stone Will you follow? Will you leave your home? Will you leave your life? Will you take the Longest Road?

Link: Justin Caguiat at Modern Art

from Contemporary Art Daily https://bit.ly/2ZS1Wj9

[stormyrecords-blog]

new arrivals july 20th 2017

lots of used lps this week - kiss, bowie, hendrix, black sabbath. zeppelin. tons of new arrivals in the used vinyl world. a whole new bin of rock records and a whole new bin of jazz records. lots of fun listening for your summer - and all at great prices!! also - this week is the second week of the east dearborn musical event - tunes at noon. full desription and schedule just below the list of this week's new arrivals. items in stock thursday - july 20th 2017 Belfi, Andrea: Ore LP $21.99LP version with download code. Andrea Belfi (born 1979) is an international respected electroacoustic musician and composer. He began playing drums at the age of 14. He studied art in Milan, before becoming involved in experimental music and since 2002 he's been in collaboration with a wide range of artists, currently residing in Berlin, Germany. His new album Ore is released on the new UK record label Float which was founded by Sofia Ilyas, who was previously the label manager at Erased Tapes Records. The new label exists parallel to Float PR, the London based agency dedicated to the promotion of unique artists and projects, and Andrea Belfi is the first signing. Titled Ore, the album places the drums as its centerpiece, while textures are embellished and mutated through electronic manipulations and dark, eerie sonic details. Over the years, Belfi has built a sound-world that artfully combines a modest drum set-up with an equally concise electronics component. He has searched long to produce and refine the acoustic timbres of his music, but has now reached a certain point of fulfilment, courtesy of his Saari drum-kit from Finland. Melded seamlessly with the acoustic elements are a Nord modular and sampler. On Ore, Belfi attains a masterful synthesis of these two sonic realms. Belfi has gained a reputation for his energetic and charismatic performances, both as a solo musician and within numerous collaborations. 2016 saw him tour with Nonkeen, the German three-piece band headed by Nils Frahm. Belfi became an instant highlight following a sold-out gig at London's Barbican Centre, lighting the stage with an impressive and explosive drum solo that became one of the most memorable moments from the evening. "When I started the record I really wanted to find something very direct. I was looking for something very raw, something sonically and acoustically complex. The title Ore actually was suggested by my wife. I had to look up the meaning and loved the concept -- something raw that you can extract, and the refinement into a precious material. It's a very simple metaphor but there's a lot there, you can just put that word out and you don't have to explain too much. You give an input to the listener, and just leave it to the imagination." Mixed by Francesco Donadello; Mastered by Nils Frahm. Mitchell, Nicole: Mandoria 2LP  $29.99Double LP version. "Mandorla Awakening II: Emerging Worlds is Nicole Mitchell's second album for Chicago-based FPE Records. Recorded in May of 2015 at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, it features her longtime collaborators Renee Baker (violin), Tomeka Reid (cello, banjo), Alex Wing (electric guitar, oud) and Jovia Armstrong (percussion), along with new members Tatsu Aoki (bass, shamisen, taiko) and Kojiro Umezaki (shakuhachi). Also in the mix is Chicago artist, scholar and poet Avery R Young, who brings her lyrics to life with visceral humanity. Composer and flutist Nicole Mitchell, once hailed by Chicago Reader music critic Peter Margasak as the 'greatest living flutist in jazz', continues the work begun when jazz visionary Sun Ra and his Arkestra first touched down on Planet Earth and told humanity that space (outer and inner) is indeed the place. As with contemporary Afrofuturist pioneers like cosmic jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington, post-everything beat maker Flying Lotus, R&B cyborg Janelle Monáe and dystopian noise-rappers Death Grips, she uses Afrofuturism as a platform to launch her own, unique vision. Her vast sound often encompasses contemporary classical, globally oriented fusion, gospel, spoken word, funk-inspired groove research and even brittle shards of avant-rock. Mandorla Awakening II collides dualities such as acoustic vs electric, country vs urban, simple vs complex, while also sounding through intercultural dialogue between Black, European and Pan-Asian improvisational languages. The outcome is a creative music suite that blurs musical styles into recognizable fragments that weave a unique sound fabric, where human emotion and the struggles of today swim." O'Malley, S: Dread Live LP $25.992017 limited repress. Stephen O'Malley deploys the second in a trio of documents of his improvisational prowess following his crushing Fuck Fundamentalist Pigs, which was brought forward in tribute to the November 2015 Paris attacks and released in December 2015. The minimalist electric guitar mantra Dread Live was performed at Studio Helmbreker in Haarlem, Netherlands, on September 6, 2013, and recorded by Mathijs Ton, with technical support by the great Tos Nieuwenhuizen, using a hypercardioid ribbon mic with immaculate '70s valve amp backline. The set was programmed as part of the opening of the Dread -- Fear in the age of technological acceleration exhibition at De Hallen Haarlem, curated by Juha van't Zelfde. It renders 40 minutes of Sunn O)))'s O'Malley at his most depressive and heavy and is something akin to a slow-motion baptism by waves of tarry, blackened harmonic distortion, holding the listener under its sinking pressure. How low can you go? O'Malley knows. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton. Edition of 700 hand-numbered copies. O'Malley, S: End Ground LP $25.99Limited 2017 repress. End Ground forms the 3rd and final installment in a series of records documenting the solo prowess of Sunn 0)))'s Stephen O'Malley released on Sweden's iDEAL Recordings. It was performed on electric guitar thru Sunn model T amps, and captured on zoom H4 at Centre Cultural Suisse, Bad Bonn Carte Blanche, Paris, France, on October 18th, 2013. In solo mode, stripped of his usual accomplices and collaborators, O'Malley is no less than an elemental force. His durational meditations absorb and consume with steady-handed wave after wave of charred, sustained, and sub-harmonized chords casting the mesmerizing minimalist practice of La Monte Young into the physicality of Black Sabbath's original, heavy metal die. The A-side/first half of this 45 minute performance features O'Malley tentatively coaxing out languorous riffs which turn the air around him to a pensive, vibrating mush. As the 2nd half dawns he begins to deliver more crushing blows, drawing out and subsiding the chords with a patented, gut-wrenching and vivifying power that transcends rock, avant-garde, minimalism -- all of that -- to awaken dormant senses not usually experienced with other musics or concise temporality. As with many of the most affective heavy drone recordings by Sunn 0))), among others, a modicum of patience is required in order to attain the right state for reception, but once your mind and body are malleable, the impact is deliciously visceral, primal and whelming. Mastered and cut by Matt Colton. Individually hand-numbered edition of 700 copies. O'Malley, S: Fuck Fundamentalist Pigs  2 lp  $31.99 Stephen O'Malley on Fuck Fundamentalist Pigs upon its initial release in December 2015: "On 8 January 2015, the day following the Charlie Hebdo murders in Paris (the city I have called home for the last eight years), I started a week-long tour of Norway. During this jaunt I faced the toxic reality daily of the horrible blossoming events intermittently via television. . . . The Trondheim concert on 9 January (depicted here) happened on a particularly intense day in this timeline... and was personally a true example of the purging power of immersion in music. Through a web of emotions resolving distance, disintegration, the intense power of the moment and the brutal fundamentalist, cultural and psychological aspects behind. . . Like most of us I have also sometimes fallen for the constant baiting toward anger, outrage, paranoia and fear in the daily life, often but not always misdirected, but it is not debilitating by any means. It's clear that as an experimental guitar player I have absolutely no political power (or even ability to articulate in those forms) but it's important to take the opportunity to say 'fuck you' in these situations. To the fascist and fundamentalist movements. To the absurding of the worst sides of monotheistic belief systems. And not only the perpetrators behind these events but also on other sides including the reactive and opportunistic. Those with most to gain are the underlying authoritarians in our own societies who have opportunities to implement and increase their control even further for their gains. The 'security' changes we face in fact may also result in yet further increase in the loss of liberty and freedom. The reactions aimed toward increased separation of cultures, xenophobia, nationalism, and especially racism are highly regrettable. I hope these recordings offer a small sense of solace in the time, even for the few hundred who hear them. . . . For the concert on this record we had a massive backline with beautiful vintage Hiwatt amplifiers, and two PAs (including a Funktion One) in the small venue Blæst, the night hosted by Nymusikk. . . . This record is actually the third part of a trilogy of live solo guitar records we intended to be released on iDEAL during spring 2016." Mastered and cut by Matt Colton; Edition of 700 (hand-numbered) Langhorne, Bruce: Hired OST LP $24.992017 repress. "Classic 1971 Peter Fonda film soundtrack from Dylan side-man & folk scene impresario. Beautifully melancholy score performed with guitars, tonal effects, fiddle, banjo, sitar, and more that evokes high plains drifting, lonesome cowpokes. 'It's The West seen as Purgatory, its characters endlessly moving on, but Langhorne conjures beauty from the pain." -- The Wire. Palestine, Charlemagne: Arpeggiated Bosendorfer + Falsetto Voice  LP $27.99In 1974, Ileana Sonnabend commissioned Charlemagne Palestine to create a limited edition, double LP in conjunction with a performance to celebrate the opening of her new Soho gallery at 420 West Broadway. Charlemagne made several recording attempts, first at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania where they had a Bösendorfer Imperial Piano in their theater. He recorded "Bösendorfer + Voice", "Voice Piece" as well as some Bösendorfer tests, with Mayo Thompson as producer and Kurt Munkacsi as sound engineer. These ecstatic Swarthmore recordings, recorded late at night in the big empty theater space, represented the original elements on which Charlemagne Palestine later created the piano pieces for Four Manifestations on Six Elements (ALGAMARS 004LP, MAGNE 008LP). For more than 40 years since these recordings were made, Palestine never went back to listen to them, but recently on re-listening to these Swarthmore recordings with Alga Marghen, he found several blissful, arpeggiated piano and falsetto voice studies which he feels now deserve to be heard. Included in the Alga Marghen VocSon series, this LP of two previously unreleased 1974 recordings finally see the light of day. Edition of 405. TUNES AT NOONevery thursday at 12 noon in dearborn city hall park at the corner of michigan ave and schaeferone hour of free music - bring your lunch and enjoy some fun in the sun!! 7/20 Lac La BelleLocal musicians Jennie Knaggs & Nick Schillace create music that blends history with the present via accordion, mandolin, banjo, ukulele, harmonizing vocals, and fingerpicking resonator guitar. With their separate experiences learning folk and blues in Appalachia, American roots bind Lac La Belle’s compositions with a heavy thread. For this performance enjoy some of their favorite old time, bluegrass and western swing favorites, alongside their original tunes. 7/27 Detroit Pleasure SocietyDetroit Pleasure Society plays the traditional jazz of New Orleans with a fresh twist and raucous candor. 8/3 Libby DeCamp"Libby DeCamp makes dusty folk and American Roots-inspired music with a lyrical edge and a classic three-piece energy, delivered with a haunting vocal closeness that reaches listeners of all kinds. Sweetly soulful "Broken Folk." 8/10 Michael Malis TrioMichael Malis is a pianist and composer based in Detroit, MI. Malis bridges the gap between original composed, complex material and the spontaneity of improvisation. His trio (piano, bass, drums),   featured on his latest album, has toured in the United States and Canada, and in September 2016, they performed at the Detroit International Jazz Festival. 8/17 Viands "Viands is a spontaneous collaboration between two auteurs of Detroit's underground music scene: Joel Peterson and David Shettler. The music they create is a deep, reflective and fearless alternate-reality keyboard meditation that draws on the pair's broad musical vision to explore new vistas.

[cuban-feminist-that-gives-a-hoot]

Himitsu: The Revelation

Normally, when I finish something, I take a little time away from it to process it before writing about it, see what I remember sticking out, what I liked and disliked, and pretty much keep a solid, if not necessarily objective, head on whatever I talk about.

That being said, here’s my thoughts and, under a cut because spoilers and the like. I’m pretty much going to spoil the end of the show, so don’t go peeking in here unless you just don’t care. :P

Himitsu -Top Secret-: The Revelation, despite the cheap as fuck animation budget it seemed to have, has a good, engaging story, despite the fucking dumb name that’s on the level of Manos: The Hands of Fate. There’s no english dub, so subtitles are the only way one can go for this bastard. Thank The Hylia for still having this anime up for download. Now this anime takes place about five decades into the future, with no exact year specified.

Now, upon first look at any kind of material and reading the summary for it, everyone would probably assume that the Big Seme looking dude in the glasses is the boss and Cutie McUke is the newbie that joins.

...And you’d be absolutely fucking wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong.

Our story starts off with the newbie Aoki Ikkou, arriving on his first day at his new job at the National Research Institute of Police Science’s 9th Forensics Lab or Section 9 as I and everyone else is going to call them because typing all that shit up is a pain. :P

Aoki and the team of Section 9, lead by Maki Tsuyoshi, are responsible for handling a brand new piece of technology called the Memory Reproduction Imaging system or MRI as I’ll continue to call it. The MRI system pries into the brain of a dead person to look in the memories in order to help solve crimes, mainly murders. However, because the memory fragments have no audio, lip reading is an important skill and Aoki is hired to be one of the lip readers and investigators in Section 9. Now, on to the list of our teammates. Because they all primarily refer to each other by their surnames, I’m sticking with that:

Aoki: The newbie. Wears glasses and is the one most unsure about himself while doing his job. Comes from a relatively happy family with a dad (who dies from a stroke early on in the show), a mom, and a sister. Now, I bring up the sister because there’s at least twice where Aoki’s feelings for his sister are... Gah, dude, why?! Luckily, the sister marries someone else (I pray, however, it’s not the cheating cad of a married loser she was banging during the 2nd & 3rd episode) during the middle of the show, so there’s that. He’s one of our main leads and is primarily the viewpoint character we follow. It’s his perspective on shit we see, therefore, get used to him.

Maki: The Director of Section 9 with a damaged past. Maki winds up killing his best friend after said best friend supposedly went insane watching the memories of a deranged killer named Kainuma. It traumatized him to the point that every time that Maki sees Kainuma’s face, he faints. He sleeps with a bulletproof vest on and a hollowed-out bible with a gun inside it. He’s not the most well-adjusted person after everything he’s gone through. Not to mention that part of the reason why he was traumatized by all of that is because he used his discretion as a cop to let Kainuma go, along with buying him some groceries (since Kainuma was stealing food), after Kainuma got busted shoplifting. And Kainuma, in his “kindness”, when he did his murder spree, went after young men that looked like Maki. Yeah, so on top of having to kill his best friend, he also has some major guilt for not arresting Kainuma for the shoplifting charges back then either. He’s our other main character and pretty much without him, you have no story. Also, he’s voiced by Seki Tomokazu, who is pretty much in everything that could possibly be anime yaoi bait heaven.

And now, the rest of the team. They’re supporting members, but each one does have their moment to shine (or die) throughout the show:

Amachi: Amachi is one of the two ladies on the team. Has a kind of sixth sense, but they don’t particularly explain it all that well. Has the hots for Aoki and is empathetic. She’s quite the sweetheart and isn’t, well, you know, annoying. See, most lady characters are written by dudes that, for the most part, couldn’t write a decent lady character to save their asses. She dies in the two-part episode, Search my Body. So yeah, they kill off one of the two ladies in Section 9. Don’t worry, death is equal opportunity here in this anime.

Okabe: The grizzled, older detective that’s often partnered with Aoki. He’s married to a designer and nearly snooped on her phone to see if she was cheating on him. Luckily, she wasn’t, but for fuck’s sake, Okabe, would it hurt to ask her? Like, actually take time to go out on a date with your wife once in a while? Luckily, he IS seen going out on dates with her later on, including on one episode where the staff pretty much has an off-day going on.

Soga: A rather naive, but straight-laced fellow. Has a focus episode involving him getting a crush on this girl who not only wants to be a musician, but also heavily into body modification. Naturally, things between them don’t work out, but it’s still a decent episode. That’s his main shining moment. Throughout the show, he’s primarily seen with Okabe the more and more that Aoki hangs out with Maki, so... yeah. Still, Soga’s a decent guy.

Onogida: He’s what happens when you give Irvine Kinneas brains. Quite the flirt and movie buff, he’s an apprentice of the man that invented the MRI system. He and another dude were the ones responsible for fixing the MRI system after Maki’s friend shot it the fuck up when he went insane. Given that, he dies in the second to last episode. Hey, I did say that death was equal opportunity here.

Sendou: Ahhh, Sendou. She’s the other lady on the team and the other technician responsible for the daily care of the MRI system. However, she was not one of the ones around at the time of the Kainuma incident, so Onokida is technically her senior in that regard. Has Kokoro Film as her ringtone and just for that, I like her already. She’s currently engaged to be married, but her fiancee demanded that she quit Section 9 before marrying. Given what happens in the finale, I guess her fiancee got his wish granted.

Nagamine: Ahh, this dickwaffle. The Vice-Director of Section 9 and general pain in the fucking ass. Is always after Maki’s job and is just a slimy fucknut. Unsurprisingly, he’s a brown-nosing schmuck, but surprisingly is not involved with the bullshit surrounding Kainuma and Maki’s best friend. Nah, he’s just a power-hungry jackass.

The Chief: Maki’s boss and general backstabbing shitheel. I call him that because of the shit that happens at the end. Up until the finale, he’s a seemingly nice guy and supportive of Section 9. And when the finale happens, hoo-boy, you start to hate this fucker as much as Kainuma.

See, here’s the thing about the story of Himitsu: The Revelation: A lot of people really don’t like the MRI system since memories are pried into and shit. Therefore, they’d do anything to get rid of it. One of those dear folks that want it gone is our supposedly friendly Chief. He decides to make a deal with Kainuma. Kainuma wanted Maki to see into his memories, to which the Chief agrees to. Now, part of Kainuma’s schtick is his use of hypnosis (It’s a plot point introduced earlier when a bunch of young boys kill themselves). So Kainuma, before killing himself, creates a memory that would cause whoever watched to go under hypnosis and go batshit insane. However, both the Chief & Kainuma’s plan goes tits up when Suzuki, Maki’s best friend, is the one that watched the memories and under the hypnotic influence, went insane, destroying the MRI system the first time around. We only learn of the Chief’s involvement in it on the last episode, which ends with Nagamine and the Chief both being blown up after the MRI system is shot, again, leaving our survivor count to Maki, Aoki, Okabe, Soga, and Sendou.

Yeah, I pretty much spoiled the end of the anime for you all, but even though I did that, I do still recommend checking it out. It’s amazing how different this anime was, given that everything about this is rather realistic. All the haircolors are relatively normal, there’s no jiggling titties floating about, and there is some discussion about the moral implications of Section 9′s use of the MRI system in solving crime. Also, the violence depicted is pretty brutal, so if anything might potentially bug you, here’s your warning that it is pretty graphic and there is some blood.

...And here I go watching it simply because ALvino did the opening theme song and thinking it was going to be yaoi bait trash. *shrugs* Can’t judge a book by the cover, I suppose. I’m just relieved that the ladies don’t look moe and shit. :P