I’ve Listened To These Recently… February 24, 2008
Posted by misterbuckets in Reviews.add a comment
…while under the influence of cold, cold days.
Artist: Indian
Album: The Unquiet Sky
Format: LP
What separates Indian from their Chicago metal brethren? Their undying need to scare the living shit out of any mammal within earshot. “No Able Fires” begins unsurprisingly…drawn out feedback and other-worldy groans. It is when, from there, it travels to the deepest, darkest pit and you find yourself compelled but at the same time nauseous. The swirling feedback of despair overtakes until the song finally flourishes in a muddy, uncontrollable forest fire; or what it would sound like from the center of a forest fire while hundreds of people are being burned alive around you.
As the album ascends into the maelstrom of “Dead Weight”, “God of Panic Lord of Decay”, and “Shill”, it is the final two songs that make this unforgettable. “We Can Build You” sounds just as it is suggested in the title: overwhelmingly powerful, forcing a feeling of helplessness over the listener. “Worshipper of Sores” is as disgusting as it sounds. Good disgusting.
Artist: Danava
Album: Unonou
Format: LP
Portland-based, hippieish bros Danava play metal that is equal parts glam, stoner, and prog. Dusty Sparkles (vocals, guitars, keyboards, synthesizers, brass and woodwind arrangements) sports both a falsetto and a nicely cropped set of bangs. The title track and following “Where Beauty and Terror Dance” are a bit boggling at times but also, thankfully, mesmerizing. Side two starts at the lowest point of the record, “A High or a Low”. Luckily, side C’s “One Mind Gone Separate Ways” and D’s bad ass etching cover up any shortcomings. Yep, I’m a sucker for nerdy shit like that.
Artist: Disfear
Album: Live the Storm
Format: LP
Thrash-by-way-of-Swedish-bearded-dudes Disfear return sounding A LOT like they did on their first record, Misanthropic Generation. And, yes, all the songs still sound formulaic and identical, but consistency is important to factor in while all these songs could also stand confidently on their own. The formula works thanks in part to:
-over-the-top-intense production of Kurt Ballou (Converge, Genghis Tron, Old Man Gloom, blah blah blah) in Salem, Massachusetts’s God City Studios.
-They’re Swedish, for chrissakes. Singer Marcus Andersson was in a little band called In Flames.
-the lyrics, “We dream of poison/Of annihilating liberation/We are too young for mercy/We are the revolution” (from “Testament”). Kind of breaks it all down in an easy to swallow capsule of metal.
Fun, party thrash. High-alcohol beer (+8.5%) and lots of cigarettes recommended.
Artist: Silver Apples
Album: The Garden
Format: LP
Yes, this is in fact a new Silver Apples record, though the recordings are old. Kind of. They’re also kinda new. Confusing? Yeah, no shit.
Original drummer Danny Taylor has been in hiding for longer than I’ve been alive. Whoa. To make a long story short, Danny was sitting at home listening to the radio when, during a pledge drive, he heard the Silver Apples ditty, “I Have Known Love”. He gave them money, the DJ (whose name is faBio…ha) was like, “Holy shit, you’re THE Danny Taylor…,” then a reunion and the discovery of all these tapes in Danny’s attic. Drum ideas, demos, etc. Well, Simeon (vocals/programmer extraordinaire) threw some stuff on top of the old drum loops, called them “Noodles,” and released it. It sounds too easy, and it is for them. While some of it lacks the importance and vitality of Contact, they still have something that no one else has. I don’t know what it is, though, so don’t ask me.
To Write is to Wrise Above February 13, 2008
Posted by misterbuckets in Nonfiction.add a comment
…or to be more precise: To create is to find peace.
Artists of all kinds, good and bad, seem to be cocky. Cocksure. (It is a male-centric term, as with everything else in this Latin-based world we live in.) Why is that? Let’s ask Henry Miller:
Strange as it may seem today to say, the aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem. No why or wherefore, no direction, no goal, no striving, no evolving. Like the enigmatic Chinaman one is rapt by the everchanging spectacle of passing phenomena. This is the sublime, the a-moral state of the artist, he who lives only in the moment, the visionary moment of utter, far-seeing lucidity. Such clear, icy sanity that it seems like madness. By the force and power of the artist’s vision the static, synthetic whole which is called the world is destroyed. The artist gives back to us a vital, singing universe, alive in all its parts.”
What the devil?
Well, to put it simply…the world that all enjoy (some more than others) has been made possible thanks to the artist. Whether it be language, society, nature, or simply the fact that the bus comes to pick you up in the morning, everything was constructed by dreamers and creators. Those that have learned, or can live nothing but, the way of the artist create the unseen and unheard (or misheard) gods of this life we call life.
Newton, now widely regarded as the father of physics, was a dreamer. His theories, later proven true (for the most part), were the thoughts of a dreamer, a thinker. Enter Einstein, the father of the universe as we know it, or so we thought (his theories of the space-time continuum and relativity and all that jazz are now being realized as only true inside Earth’s gravity), today. Yes, that’s physics, but, in its own way, also art.
I could easily go off on a tangent on how free-thinkers and dreamers like Hemingway, Led Zeppelin, Henry Ford, etc. are all artists in their own way, but that’s not the point. (I’ll explain that when we meet in a bar.) Why are (most) artists cocksure?
They’ve tapped into a realm others haven’t. They’ve died to the world. Completely. And they are proud.
Again, Henry:
This final reality which the artist comes to recognize in his maturity is that paradise of the womb, that “China” which the psychologists place somewhere between the conscious and the unconscious, that pre-natal security and immortality and union with nature from which he must wrest his freedom. Each time he is spiritually born he dreams of the impossible, the miraculous, dreams he can break the wheel of life and death, avoid the struggle and drama, the pain and the suffering of life. His poem is the legend wherein he buries himself, wherein he relates of the mysteries of birth and death – his reality, his experience. He buries himself in his tomb of poem in order to achieve that immortality which is denied him as a physical being.”
A mindset is constructed where it is seemingly impossible to find happiness or content with the surroundings, the world, the life, however you see it. This takes over, slowly but surely, and, before one knows, everyday things make absolutely no sense. Therefore a new reality is born and in this reality one must remain because venturing outside will result in an untimely death. And the whole point of living is survival, right?
To construct this world in which to dwell the artist utilizes their talents in a way to not only find peace but to also share with the rest of the world what they have figured out. Sometimes people get it, other times, well, no. But it shouldn’t matter.
The only failed artist is the artist that lets others tell them what is right and what is wrong. It goes against everything the artist has known or has constructed.
It is not about acceptance. It is about finding that inner peace, however that may be.
I was thinking about all of this as I sat, elated, after finishing some writing. But then I thought, “Is creating your own realm as a realm of unhappiness and torture really creating anything?” Then I thought, “Yes. I can always give it a happy ending.”
Hurt Love February 2, 2008
Posted by misterbuckets in Fiction.add a comment
1
“I’m in the lobby.”
“Okay. I’ll be right down.” I felt a nervous twist in my gut and sighed as I stared at the wall. My head remained hot where my hands had been supporting it and small beads of sweat had appeared in the valleys of my furrowed brow. Resting my mouth upon my knee, I tied the laces and straightened and brushed my pants clean. The hard hotel bed creaked as I rose. The door was heavy to open and the smell of the hallway polluted my sinuses. I checked my pocket for the room key before clicking the door secure.
In the hallway the fluorescent glow hummed and delighted in its job. The ice machine bubbled and gurgled. A language of manmade machines telling us they’re working. The elevator clicked and hummed, not in a bright, helpful note but a dark and empty one. My eyes spoke to me in the reflection of the mirror opposite the elevator. You don’t have to do this. What about a movie? The doors opened and I stepped in. “L” lit up without a sound and the sandwich doors softly clapped shut. Hum and buzz all around and the sensation of a controlled free fall.
I hate this.
The lobby was bright and bustling. The Easter holiday weekend brought visitors from surrounding states to celebrate in a city that I have tried to escape from since I had a mind and two feet. Luggage carts colored with candied baskets all dolled up to rot a child’s teeth and frazzled parents trying to calm the already sugared shits; every traveler’s distress hushed to an even background noise. Mothers’ fingers licked and wiping chocolate and fathers’ eyes watching the other mothers.
One woman was not a mother, or at least not with her children. Her name was Denise and she stood 5’10”, had a 34c cup, and remained youthful despite her age of 35, old for her line of work. I approached and attempted to seem as commodious as possible.
“Denise?” With hand outstretched and a poor fabrication of a smile, I waited for a response. She looked around the lobby as if she didn’t know where this voice, my voice, was coming from.
“Why did you choose this place?”
“Can I tell you upstairs? C’mon. Let’s go.” Her heels clicked in a professional manor and her smell masked a place I never wanted to go to. An elevator waited with doors open. I watched and apologized with my eyes to the family that screamed, “Hold it,” as the doors closed. “You see, Denise, I live here.”
“Whoa, whoa. I told you I don’t come to private residences, only hotels.” Her apprehension was evident and I had no idea what to say to let her know that I wasn’t going to hurt her in any way. You dumb bitch, you’re going to be hurting me.
“I’m not coming with you to your room.”
“Let’s be fair, honey. It seemed ludicrous for me to pay for another hotel room when I already have one.”
“That makes no sense.” She took out a compact and checked her lipstick. After a few flicks with her pinky nail, she continued, “It’s for my own safety, you understand.”
“Listen, I’m not a creep or anything…I just…”
“No, whatever your name is. Rules are rules.”
“Brian.”
“What?”
“That’s my name. Brian.”
“Well, Brian, I don’t care what your name is and I am not following you anywhere.”
“I was hoping you could rough me up a little, that’s all.”
“Rough you up?” With a ding the doors opened to the fifth floor. “Like hit you and stuff?”
“I guess, yes.” I exited and held the doors open for her to follow. Denise remained with her eyes fixed in wonderment and a mild disgust. “Can we continue this conversation in the room?”
“No, here is fine. So, will you be tied up?”
“If that’s makes you feel better, then, sure. That’s fine. I haven’t really thought through it. This is my first time.”
“First time for what? Spending time with a professional?”
“Yes. I’m an alright guy. Right now I just want to be hit and pushed around a little bit. Punished.”
“Every client of mine is an alright guy, Brady. Nothing wrong with any of them.” She lowered her head and exited the elevator. Our eyes met and she raised her brows insinuating, “Well, battered playboy?”
“Brian.”
“What?”
“You called me Brady. It’s Brian.”
“I don’t care.”
“Okay.”
2
“How’s everything going, man?” Greg’s voice shot a feeling of guilt through my body. As I raised upon on arm, the evidence of my abuse became tangible. Welts and bruises covered my chest and arms and my feet remained tied to the bed.
I sighed, “Fine. Just starting the day, you know.”
“Yeah. It’s finally a little warmer outside. I was thinking we could grab some lunch at that one place you like.”
“Harold’s. Yeah, that’s good. What time?”
“Well, soon. It’s noon.”
The quick motion of turning my head to look at the clock winced my eyes and stopped my breath. Damn, Denise. Damn you, too. “Right. Meet me there in forty-five minutes. Does that work?”
“I’m hungry now. You’re really just starting your day? What did you do last night?”
“I just stayed in. I’m really tired, Greg.”
“It’ll be good for you to get out. Meet me in thirty.”
“Alright. Bye.”
I raised up and whispered, “ouch,” to the demons. Luckily my fingers were not bruised and I unfastened my ankles from their restraints. The tingling in my feet celebrated the return of the prodigal blood and I remained motionless for a few minutes to adjust to the waking life.
Questions followed questions. Where did Denise go? When did I fall asleep? What happened? I shuffled to the bathroom and pissed completely clear. Movement to my left turned my aching head towards the mirror. A note blew in the wind from the heating fan. Blue ink and a graceful hand:
“I think I knocked you out. Took the money you owed me. –D”
I couldn’t help but smile. I moved over to the mirror and gazed at the bruised fighter. Left eye a bit swollen and a fat lip, but all in all not too bad. I felt much worse than I looked. People will still ask, though. Nosy, nosy people.
A quick shower and dressing and I was back in the lobby. The families were gone, sight-seeing or shopping I assume, and it was only the employees and a few businessmen quietly getting through the day. Little of no eye contact and absolutely no concern for fellow man, we all moved in the dance of life. The only person to acknowledge me was the lovely girl behind the front desk. She only did so because it was her job, I know.
“Yes, sir?” She cleared her throat and looked away. I had only been in the hotel a week so we were not on first name basis, but she knew that my face didn’t look like this the day before.
“Any mail for 523?”
She turned quickly to avoid any more unpleasant sights and retrieved an envelope. “Just this, sir.”
“Thanks. It’s Brian.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s my name. Hi. I’m Brian.” She accepted my hand in a wet tissue shake.
“Paula. Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah. I’m gonna be here for a while so I just thought, you know. Well, have a nice day.”
“You too, Brian.”
I turned and smiled. After facing forward I winced again at my body. My poor, broken, puffy body.
The revolving door wooshed a synthetic comb whoosh as the controlled air changed into an asphalt salt air. Horns, jets, construction, yelling – the soundtrack to the outside. The sun was high in the sky and with the warming weather a glimmer of hope stunk up the entire city. A family was returning after a shopping excursion, the bags and smiles reading the names of their favorite stores. Mother and children hurried in while father paid the taxi fare. We exchanged glances as he passed and I motioned the cabbie to hold it while I felt the father’s eyes on my back. After seeing my face, I wondered if he thought about the safety of his family sharing the same building as this rough-looking man. I glanced back after giving the driver my destination and there was no father gawking. Maybe he didn’t look at all.
The sunny streets appeared hot to the touch and the buildings seemed to stretch upward as if just waking. With each bump the cab hit my body answered in a scream. I got what I asked for but was it what I deserved? It seemed so at the time.
