Down­load: Thom Yorke — “Black Swan”

Thoughts on the book. No, not that one.

Lin­klater does quite a fine job com­pen­sat­ing for PDK’s nar­ra­tive voice, which is as wob­bly as it is unre­li­able. Unlike Wak­ing Life, Lin­klater hews clos­er to pho­to­graph qual­i­ty images, leav­ing any fuzzi­ness to the log­ic that per­tains to drug abuse and the para­noia explic­it in sur­veil­lance cul­ture. Free from ani­mat­ed dis­tor­tions, A Scan­ner Dark­ly con­veys Dick­’s cau­tion­ary mes­sage with­out hav­ing to resort to pater­nal­is­tic cant, more or less.

In short, agency is a fun­ny and dan­ger­ous thing. The role of the State is pre­car­i­ous and some­times crim­i­nal too.

Reflec­tions on the cul­ture wars. It’s just what hap­pens when you put peo­ple who’ve stud­ied labor mar­kets and read Fou­cault and Marx into a retail envi­ron­ment. [via S/FJ ]

More on Lin­klater’s A Scan­ner Dark­ly and Melville’s Army of Shad­ows shortly.

Mean­while, I’m busy with: Dana Spi­ot­ta’s Eat the Doc­u­ment [via Tal­ly Ho Soundsys­tem]; revis­it­ing Thom Yorke’s The Eras­er; select­ed works of Yasu­jiro Ozu.

Via MTV News:

Nick­elodeon will pre­miere a new car­toon cre­at­ed by, writ­ten by, and star­ring Jew­el this Fall. It’ll be called Punk Rock Angel Girl.

In the series, Punk Rock Angel Girl (PRAG) “dis­cov­ers that a big, face­less cor­po­ra­tion called Mega­corp is try­ing to brain­wash the youth of Amer­i­ca to buy things
that nobody would ever need. Mega­cor­p’s min­ions are dis­guised as celebri­ties — but under­neath, they’re actu­al­ly robots, and if revealed as such, they attack.”

“It’s a face­less net­work con­spir­a­cy to make peo­ple stu­pid,” Jew­el said, accord­ing to MTV news.

Jew­el fur­ther explained: “Punk Rock Angel Girl, or PRAG, she’s just a teenag­er. She’s a punk rock­er, but what I call punk rock is get­ting angry with a cause. A lot of the show is about anger as a trans­for­ma­tion­al, use­ful tool. There’s a dif­fer­ence between pent-up aggres­sion that’s ran­dom­ly expressed — that’s just con­fronta­tion­al with no thought behind it — ver­sus pos­i­tive anger, think­ing for your­self and mak­ing tough decisions.”

Punk Rock Angel Girl’s spe­cial pow­er is her rebel yell: “Punk Rock Angel Girl gets a strange sen­sa­tion when she gets angry, a feel­ing like she needs to throw up, which becomes a yodel as a light­ning bolt comes out of her. These ‘Yel­low Yodel Bolts of Ener­gy’ help PRAG tap into her inner reserves of pow­er — but she also dis­cov­ers that every­one has this pow­er with­in them,” MTV News says.

Still no word on whether P.R.A.G. will con­front Gwen Ste­fani’s L.A.M.B.

Cryp­top­sy

Wed., July 19, 7:30pm. $12. With Left to Van­ish, Killing + Decom­posed. First Uni­tar­i­an Church, 2125 Chest­nut St. 866.468.7619. www.r5productions.com

Last year’s Once Was Not marked Cryp­top­sy’s tri­umphant return from a five-year hia­tus. A char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly bru­tal yet instru­men­tal­ly mas­ter­ful album rife with with­er­ing gui­tars, drum­mer Flo Mounier’s relent­less blast­beats and some of the grimmest vocals in death met­al, it proved that not only were these French Cana­di­ans not yet ready for his­to­ry’s dust­bin, but they’re play­ing some of the most dynam­ic, fre­net­ic music of their career. So while bands like Sunn 0))) and Boris have enjoyed main­stream recog­ni­tion and crossover suc­cess, Cryp­top­sy have not. Because despite Once Was Not being a stun­ning come­back, it also hap­pens to be a huge crit­i­cal oversight.

[Philadel­phia Week­ly July 12–19]