Down­load: Liars — “Drum Gets a Glimpse”

Red Desert. June 25th @ BAM. It does­n’t even get men­tioned. Anto­nion­i’s first col­or fea­ture is an out of print tri­umph not to be missed. Sick with the ennui that per­me­ates his films, with mis-en-scene to match.

Down­load: Bat­tered — “Obliv­ion Awaits”

Can of worms: opened. Artmetal.html says it all, but then there’s an argu­ment pre­sent­ed in the sev­en ensu­ing pages meant to edi­fy an unfa­mil­iar audi­ence with “intel­li­gent” met­al. It’s a vari­ant of the high/low cul­ture debate, usu­al­ly reserved for sun­der­ing HipHop, or from a “pop­ulist” per­spec­tive, mod­ern art, but applic­a­ble to all kinds of dis­en­fran­chised or out­sider scenes that aren’t com­mer­cial­ly grat­i­fy­ing. The arti­cle imparts a self-sat­is­fied supe­ri­or­i­ty to read­er and musi­cian alike, at once obscur­ing South­ern Lord’s bou­tique nov­el­ty as well as the met­al scene from which they sprang.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Notes on Excepter, Edan, Prefuse 73 and The Coup, Boris and Espers forth­com­ing, as well as com­men­tary on the recent New York Times Mag­a­zine fea­ture on Sunn and Boris.

In re Wray’s arti­cle, see Mike Pow­ell’s thoughts here and George Steele’s there first. Sunn as mys­tique or pas­tiche, char­la­tan or reifi­ca­tion? Whith­er drone?

More reg­u­lar pub­li­ca­tion forth­with. Promise.

As nation­al­is­tic fer­vor gets whipped up in back­wa­ters across the coun­try, we’ve seen the return of the “jobs that Amer­i­cans won’t do” trope. Not only is this patent­ly false, as there are plen­ty of cit­i­zens cur­rent­ly work­ing ter­ri­ble, dis­gust­ing jobs every­where, but it relies on a false sense of how labor mar­kets are actu­al­ly constructed.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Apolo­gies for the extend­ed absence. Late­ly I’ve been fol­low­ing one of The New York Times’ sev­er­al blogs, Deal­Book in par­tic­u­lar. In lieu of access to Wall Street Jour­nal, this offers up inter­est­ing tid­bits per­ti­nent to Marx­ist cri­tique. Every­thing is mon­ey, you see, and there are no exemptions.

Recent nota­bles includ­ed an inter­est­ing look at the art world on the occa­sion of a Picas­so sold at auc­tion for a record price as well as some insight into what’s hap­pen­ing in music own­er­ship and pub­lish­ing rights. Sure­ly this isn’t every­one’s cup of tea, but unlike less pro­fes­sion­al blogs at Philadel­phi­a’s local paper, these are gen­uine­ly use­ful and gen­er­al­ly inter­est­ing to the layper­son. Think of it as my way of say­ing hats off to the late Louis Rukeyser, who entered my child­hood as I watched my father scrib­ble notes care­ful­ly as he spoke.