Lou Reed - Modern Dance

Some things are better to enjoy in a modified form. For example, without sound or color or simply a soundtrack or vice versa or heavily distorted or from another room or while the refrigerator is humming and the washing machine is drumming and the kettle is whistling and the teeth are rattling. You get the point.

Such is the case with the music video for Lou Reed's song Modern Dance.

I already covered the other Lou Reed music video on this blog and now Youtube recommended me this video, so why not have another about the great one?

Modern Dance is a song from Lou Reed 2000' album titled "Ecstasy". The song itself is a contemplation about going places in a manner of a modern dance composition. Which doesn't say much because modern dance is a mystery and its function in the lyrics is to defamiliarize narrative with an arbitrary detail that sticks out. Over the course of the song, the protagonist mentions options like going to Amsterdam and spending evenings at the Van Gogh Museum. Or Yucatan, "where women are women, a man's a man". Or just falling in love because that's a fine option too.

The video for the song is closely tied to the lyrics and yet it is something completely different. On the surface, it is on the nose mockery of the blatant performance art, but the more you look at it - the more earnest stupid fun it seems. There is no undercurrent - it is just what it is and it is really weird to realize that there is nothing to it except for what is on the screen.

And what is on the screen. There is one and only Lou Reed in a chicken costume, standing in the middle of the stage while two showgirls are doing the job. Lou just stands and stands and endures whatever girls are doing to him. The girls are doing basic walkaround routines. Their costumes adapt to the national symbols of the countries mentioned in the lyrics. So you get a tartan suit, french beret, a sombrero and so on. At the same time, the girls are slowly but surely tear the costume apart, throwing feather away.

In the middle of the video - Lou's chicken suit is cleared off the feather and he sits around like a bag of nutshells. Then we cut to girls preparing the soup - throwing mock vegetables in and mixing the thing with the giant spoon. Then the narrative fragments into the glimpses of tearing the feathers, Lou sitting around, Lou being boiled in the soup, Lou dancing with the girls, being boiled in the soup, being torn apart, dancing, boiled, dancing. Then the song ends, he takes of the chicken head and walks away.

When you watch this with the sound on - it is just there. It doesn't do much because you are focused o the song. But if you turn the sound off - things change. You start to piece together a narrative. The video starts looking like one of those old vaudeville documentations that capture the routine but none of its context. It feels odd, misplaced and incomprehensive.

You see the man in the chicken suit. And he looks really passive. Sometimes he lips a phrase to punctuate the narrative, but for the most part, he is just there. The girls are walking around in, changing costumes all the time, then they start to tear the chicken costume apart because they want to make a soup out of this chicken. The man is still passive and so he ends up in the pot and girls continue to dance because that's what they do.

BSPH: Alan Vega - Ghost Rider

New versions of the old songs are nothing new. Usually, it is a shameless cash-in on one's glorious past, an exploitation of the devoted fanbase. But sometimes an artist manages to subvert the original and reinterpret it in a way that brings a couple of new shades to the original and somewhat changes its substance.

Case in point - Alan Vega's solo version of "Ghost Rider".



"Ghost Rider" is a song written by Alan Vega and Martin Rev of legendary synth punk band Suicide. It was originally released on the band's 1977 eponymous album. Alan Vega had released his version of the song in 1981 on an album titled "Collision Drive".

This version is a slight elaboration on the original with a couple of new flourishes, an expanded lyrics and a completely new sonic aesthetic that somehow manages to fit the theme and the tone of the song even better than the original. It is a weird example of the successful reinvention of the song by its author. The song retains the intensity of the original, but manages to be distinct enough to hold on its own and build upon the original.

In its core, the "Collision Drive" version of "Ghost Rider" is a rockabilly song. Unlike the monotonous solid drum machine grooves slashed by the thudding synth vamp of the original version, "Collision Drive" version is played by actual musician and that brings a completely different dynamics to the song.

The song is rolling with that rockabilly straitjacket swing. In fact, its skeletal primitivist arrangement owes a lot to early The Cramps stuff.

The monotonous stomp of the song consists of the one track mind drums, detuned piano, constipated guitar lines and thumping bumbling bass.

The song starts and ends with the pitch sweeping whopping wailing drone - an allusion to the revving engine. It is joined by 4x4 permabasskick polka dot beat that creates a rock solid groove underlying of the song. The drums are on the offensive in a meat mincing way.

Over the course of the song, the drums are joined by clapping. This brings some reminiscence of the classic Stooges stompers. In a way, it sounds as if the song was submerging into a quicksand substance with those claps.

The bass part is weird. It plays the iconic three note motif so sloppily it merges into a subsonic quakes - it is not as much a bass line as a melodic undercurrent as it is a physical pushing of the song forward with its groove. Funny thing is that at times the bass player gives up on playing the motif and he just plays along some stuff that sometimes sticks out of the tune. This bass combined with morose detached drums creates a beat to behold. It is disjointed and yet it works due to its ferrocious tenaciousness.

The other elements of the groove are manic guitar and honky tonk detuned piano. Both guitar and piano are playing simple two note rambling riff that goes on top of the song as if it was attached to it with a duct tape. They work as a background flashing behind - a sonic wallpaper. They ignore everything that goes on in the song.

The lyrics are slightly expanded with a couple of more phrases fleshing out the title character of the song - The Ghost Rider. There are more references to the Ghost Rider being on fire, swinging the chain and being an utter force of destruction blazing away. No mentions of the blue jumpsuit though. I guess it was out of fashion then. Weirdly enough, the way the lyrics are structured resemble a good old Delta Blues chantey. It boomerangs around - goes for a walk on the theme and then goes back to the central refrain.

BSPH: Oxbow & Marianne Faithfull - Insylum

 "Insylum" is a song collaboration of the American noise rock psycho punk blues band Oxbow and singer-songwriter Marianne Faithful. The song is an interpretation of the classic Willie Dixon song "Insane Asylum". However, it is reworked to the point of being a thing of its own.

"Insylum" was released in 1997 on Oxbow's album "Serenade in Red". The song is punishingly abrasive hard-edged interpretation of the classic blues song spliced with the hard rock reiteration of the blues by the likes of Led Zeppelin.

This song is a great example of a creative use of cliches and subverting them into something else with its own substance. "Insylum" is a Frankenstein monster of the song that seems like a casualty of a transporter accident in "Star Trek". "Insylum" is deformed and barely hangs together. At the same time, the song contains this weird imposing aura. Every second of "Insylum" means it. This song is not a pleasant listen, this song erupts the void upon the listener and makes him gaze into it looking for something nonplush nondescript.

The song stomps its way through with that particularly nasty bone crunching 1-2 step that grows with intensity throughout the verse until it breaks down into a hysteric chorus.

The lyrics of "Insylum" are about longing and yearning in its most brutal and devastating form. In its core, "Insylum" tells a typical story of the relationship falling apart and subsequent attempts to fix it. The catch is that the lover is locked up in the asylum and probably for a reason. Because of that the song slowly morphs from trying to get things back to accepting the reality of the situation.

The song is all about sonically depicting the throes of the protagonist who just can't take it anymore but slowly getting over it. This notion is delivered by an assorted collection of seething sobbing, crying, torturous howling, wailing, bailing, grunts, random sideline snorts, and opaque babble.

The song starts in medias res and then immediately takes a u-turn in an opposite direction. It kinda walks backwards all the time and it creates a sense of suspense - you almost expect this song to stumble and fall apart.

The rest of the dreadful atmosphere is accomplished with a mindful use of blues cliches wrapped into an additional layer of coarse fuzz and tingle. It is a dark-dark song.

The guitar parts are slightly malformed and tremblesome. They play some classic blues lick with an additional deep to the feel, but ut is not as much playing as it is erupting upon the song with its melting lava burning the ground in its way. Then there is a little organ that almost mocks what is going on in the song with its tingling hiss.

The MVP of the song are the drums by Greg Davis. His drum parts are less about constructing a rhythmic backbone of the song as they are all about the suspence, ebbs and flows of tension. The majority of the drum arrangement is a simple 1-2 16th beat that acts that plays waiting game staring contest with the listener until it breaks into a brutal beatdown.

The use of bass in this song is also very unconventional. Dan Adams' bass follows the drums and adds some shiny blacks to the beat. At the same time the bass line is delineating space in which the action is going. It is something like echolocation - flickering contours that may or may not resemble something familiar. If there is a way to depict the monsters produced by the sleep of reason - this is a good example of making it right. The bass line itself reeks of dread. 

The other strange thing about the song is an anticlimactic closure it delivers in the end. Over the course of the song the arrangement slowly devolves into a carnival mockery - it gets ridiculous with its intensity and then it stops as if it was all play. It leaves an unsettling feeling afterwards.

"Insylum" is a master-class in layered subversion of cliches and forging something new out of the old parts. The way it preparates the blues conventions, reinvents its most generic elements and adds the new flourishes to the age old narratives is spectacular.

MFT: THYSELF - Emoji Emotion Tracking Browser Extension

Thyself is a Chrome browser extension developed by Whole Technology Co. This application is one of the most creative uses of emojis in the modern applications. It goes beyond mere gimmickry to being just a handy tool for the cause. The purpose of Thyself extension is to track the user's mood with an assistance of emojis and as a result help to develop a better understanding of one's emotional intelligence and subsequently motivate to improve the quality of emotional intelligence skills.

The idea is that modern life give little to no time to contemplate and comprehnd what is going on emotion-wise. And that takes a toll on the user himself and people surrounding him. Thyself is a kind of very basic tool to analyze the emotional state and find ways to improve your reacting to things and determing your mood. In a way, it is a chance to reflect on how you react to thing and how comprehend how are you feeling.

Over the time, the chosen emojis pile up and you get rather fascinating picture of your emotional dynamics through the day and further. Given the fact that surfing through The Internet and going through life in general is rather underwhelming and at time utterly frustrating and emotionally draining experience - this tool definitily may come in handy at least as a measuring stick.

Here's how it works. Every once in a while (three hours) the user's flow is interrupted by the Thyself tab that asks user to determine his mood with a very straightforward question "How Am I feeling?". Such an extended time periods are intentionally conceived to make user forget about the extension and do his own things long enough only to be caught out of the blue with "How Am I feeling?". This way the answer means more. In addition to that, Thyself's "out of nowhere" tactics are designed to minimize user's ability to overthink the results.

The selection of emojis is broad enough to cover every basic emotional state imaginable. The descriptions are purely practical and you barely if ever even stumble to think which emoji to choose - it comes out very intuitive. Then you can look at the stats on the personal dashboard and see the dynamics of you had emotions throughout the day and further.

I have used this extension for a whole day and it was a fascinating experience. My morning hours are usually very positive and tightly focused on getting into the groove. But then wear and tear kicks in and three hours later I felt like I'm in the full-on grind mode. Three more hours later this feeling got an additional layer of awkwardness and disengagement. I've noticed an unhealthy amount of automatism in my routine. Three more hours later it was all numb final stretch. It was "not ready to give up but not really giving a damn". I have never thought about my day in that manner and it was very insightful.

You can also use this application to build some sort of an emotion description-only time-based narrative. It is a kind of abstraction that let's the reader to fill-in the gaps or identify himself with the emotional layout of the timetable. The reader can build his own stories based on those layouts or channel his own experiences and contemplate about the way certain events affect mood.

Overall, Thyself is a good emotional intelligence tool that gives the most important thing - a chance to reflect and put things into the perspective.

BSPH: Mario Prassinos Automatic Drawings

I feel like there is much more to say about Automatic Drawing beyond what i have already stated in the previous post. So i'm going to write about various approaches to the technique and talk about how different artists are using this glorious technique.

This time it is turn of Mario Prassinos.

Mario Prassinos was one of the youngsters who got swept by the tide of surrealism in the mid 1930s.  An immigrant from the crumbling Ottoman Empire, he was stranger in a strange land from the get go and so embracing the exploratory, boundary pushing attitude of the surrealists was not really bending over backwards to him. He was already alienated, and his perspective allowed his to go even further than the rest.

However, by the 1930s the surrealist movement was getting old real fast. The group slided towards dogmatism, slowly closing in on itself. Breton and folks grew numb of what was going on around them and indulged in retracing same old tricks over and over again. The group was too big for its own good and basically immobile in terms of further aesthetic development as an artistic unit. But as an idea - surrealism still had the flame going.

Due to his youth and relative inexperience Prassinos was more eager to try something different and make mistakes than his older folks. This made one of the more exciting painter associated with the surrealist movement.

His automatic works are particularly interesting. Prassinos way of going applying the automatism was via casual sketching. This is very different from the traditional free styling "stream of consciousness" approach to the technique, practically the complete opposite of automatism, but the combination brought some unusual results.

Sketch drawing is very similar to automatic drawing conceptually. The difference is that you know what you are sketching (at least in some abstract manner) while you have no idea about the eventual end result while doing the automatic drawing. 

What brings sketching and automatic drawing together is that there is no overbearing Damocles Sword weaving over to you to make the things "right". You just do the thing and the fact of that accomplishment contributes to the bigger cause in the form of the empirical knowledge.

The sketch is nothing more than a stepping stone towards the bigger, "real thing". It is more of an exploration of possibilities, a study on the ways of doing things, than a fully-fledged and reasoned artistic expression. It is a throwaway, disposable entity of half-measures and wrong moves.

Similarly, automatic drawing is the expression of the spur of the moment, unbound by the constraints of reasonable utilitarianism. It goes somewhere and it comes around the way it is, because it was made in that particular moment. It is a careless document that conceals "the" and exposes "the the".

Prassinos way of doing automatic drawing is to blast it out in a singular burst. In his automatic drawing he is stomping the road through the thick jungle debris of his mind towards the goal that is ain't exactly real or it is real but it aint' exactly there.

His pieces are bombardments of ink on paper made with strategic precision. He exactly knows what he is going to do, the thing is that his intention is not to depict anything specific but to spend that nondescript notion lurking deep inside in a couple of swift moves. In a way, it is a savage offensive on the mind, a routine of recalibrating the sense.

Above anything else, Prassinos is documening the change that occurs within himself while making the pieces. In a way, it is a dance composition between a hand, pen, ink and paper.

The one where the last man standing is the artist who moves on to the other things changed. 

BSPH: Paul Paun - Infra Black Drawings

A couple of days ago I was having a cup of coffee with my friend, meeting after a long break and talking, among other things, about automatism and automatic drawing in particular. The story goes - she complained about being so taken over by the whirl of the job that she abandoned pretty much every creative outlet she had after she started to work for that company. And now, as she quit that frustrating and draining company and had some rest, she's still so exhausted that even after a while she struggles to get into that particular mood and create anything. 

This is a common problem - creative practice requires consistency and in order to keep it that way - you need some sort of conditioning. Just like doing sports - you need to keep yourself in shape - otherwise your so-called "creative muscles" get atrophied and you need to start all over again from the ground up.

So naturally the conversation took a turn into "why don't you just freestyle and see what happens?" direction with a reference to the surrealist technique of automatic drawing. 

I always viewed automatic drawing a shorcut to jumpstarting the creative flow. You just need to that and that is the only real rule. No overthinking, no attachment, no engagement, just a burst of action. 

As one of the examples of this approach i've mentioned Paul Paun and his series of Infra Black Drawings. 

Take a look:

First, lets explain the man behind the work. Paul Paun is the lesser known part of the Romanian Surrealist Holy Trinity that also includes Gherasim Luca and Dolfi Trost. Just like his cohorts he found inspiration in the dynamic intensity of Futurism and inherent nihilism of Dada. Because of that his brand of surrealism was significantly less wishy-washy and much grittier than the mainstream representation of the movement. His works are warped, mutilated, contorted hanging twisted. The way he constructs imagery is very physical and blunt. Think of The Thing from The Thing.

Paul Paun made Infra-black drawings specifically for the exhibition called "Infra-Black" that opened in 1946. It was a sort of a throwback affair organized by the old pals to remind everything what the real surrealism is all about after the reek and rumble of WW2 was finally over.

It is a fascinating example of an automatic drawing that goes beyond into the unknown.

The series presents a sequences of abstract formless shapes in the state of the flux. This kind of texture was achieved by drawing with wide charcoal - there no clear lines - these are swathes of blackness on the white background pulling in every imaginable direction by strokes short and long, hard and soft. It is disjointed and yet it gells together.

The pieces weren't even drawn traditionally, more like stumbled into the way they are by rolling and tumbling the piece of charcoal on the paper. In a way, the drawings are more thrown together than drawn.

Infra-black drawing are a kind of micro-abysses designed to be looked at. It is very nihilist stuff in a straightforward way. The whole "infra" thing is all about avoiding the obvious, staying elusive, slightly beyind the grasp of cognition but still capable of rumbling the impression. These pieces are not designed to evoke images and don't really point out at anything, but the opposite notion persists. Kinda like Rorschach's ink blots but even more asbtract. There is no real definition behind the drawings - they are what they are.

The drawings are intentionally cut from the casual comprehension and left for either blank staring or blatant indulgence to the apophenic pareidolia. Infra-black drawings seemingly taunt the viewer to think about it by the virtue of being nondescript enough to cause that kind of reaction. It is a cognitive loop, a trap of habit that needs to be broken in order to go beyond.

On one hand, it all seems like a cloud-like formations of steam or smoke with various density and content. One might think what could have caused this kind of formation (my take is that these are flashforward Court Room drawings of the crime scene recreation of the smoke that came from John Baldessari burning his early body work). On the other hand, the smooth nondescript abstractness reminds of the Northern Lights sky phenomenon filtered into a hard black and white. It can go either way, but there is a much more to it if you don't try to comprehend it.

The trick is to resist the temptation to insert your interpretation of the image and treat the drawing as it is, as it was made - a charcoal drawing on a piece of paper. This might be too underwhelming and unsatisfactory - but that's the way it is.

You know the drill - you stare at the abyss long enough and the abyss stares back at you. This occurrence incites that nonplus semblance of a feeling that lurks deep inside and rustles quite a bit before vanishing and leaving a void of known unknown. That's what the great automatic drawing are able to do better than any other form of artistic expression.

MFT: Jack Palance talks about lunch with James Dean

Jack Palance was an effortlessly cool kind of an actor. He could convey an imposing presence simply by hanging around and doing stuff. There was something magnetic about him that his every turn count.

Case in point - this fragment from "On the road with Sammy and Elaine" where Jack Palance simply reminesces on his life.

He starts his monologue in the corn field talking about his early years on the farm subtly comparing the craft of farming with an actor's craft with the difference being that farmer don't need to look anything special, while actors need to have that certain panache and arrange networking lunches with the press and stuff.

He then tells one story from 1955. He was having a lunch at Warner Brothers restaurant in Burbank  with a comedy actor Gig Young and the other actor whose name was James Dean (who was working on a "Rebel without a Cause" at that time).

Jack ordered the meal of the day which was corn and potatoes and chicken. Gig ordered an overly complicated sandwich and double martini. James Dean made a spectacle out of his order - he crossed and uncrossed his legs a couple of times, played a melody on his lips, looked at the ceiling for three minutes and then simply ordered a hamburger.

Then two women came in - one of them was Jayne Mansfield and the other was Pierre Angeli. Jayne had ordered a sandwich and a cup of coffee, while Pierre, who was on the diet at that time, ordered some fruit.

And so, these five actors were sitting together at one table, feeling slightly awkward and stranger to each other. As it turned out a bit later - four of them died tragically at a young age. And all Jack was left to do afterwards is to tell about this little absolutely inconsequential episode from his life while walking through a corn field.

It is funny how this little story resonates on the ground level. We all have moments like this, that doesn't mean a thing but just remain for one reason or another.