Children, you're going to have to wait for the 2005 Year in Music Review. For one Nico gets to sit until then (which will be apparent when we get there). For another I did a little hipster shopping back in NE OH and I haven't been able to listen to these new discs while at the parents' so I'll run them through the skullbox before I can give the final read (of course neither of these are '05 releases but then the YiMR will focus a bit on statistics of my buying habits). 'course the general rule is that This Is not Burger King: you do not get it your way. This is one of those fascist food dictatorships.

Like Wendy's.

And this is always a weird time: back home, end of year purchases coming in the mail, finding stuff online, and getting gifts. The latter is what happened when my brother was dismayed to find out that I still did not "own" Metallica's Master of Puppets. Growing up with who I did really makes the question of ownership kind of moot. See, Master of Puppets for me is Side B of one of those super-long Memorex tapes that I had crafted from my brother's collection back in '91.

I took that tape everywhere. Track meets, fieldtrips to museums, walking down to the bus stop at the end of the street (where we stood in the doorway of a car dealership while waiting for the big yellow to pull up). Heck, for that reason I still think of that tape's tracklisting is the "correct one". Master of Puppets then starts with "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" followed by "Battery" and the titular track. This is when Metallica was really snapping as a band. Looking at their work on this album (and in Justice) I can't help but thinking James, Lars n' them were almost on a Tool-like tear at this point. The were on these opus length metal tracks without any of the populist compromises of most of their peers. And not just having "the slow jam" but even when it comes to the construction of the songs. There is no Gn'R style jams on here; the digestible introductory track (Metallica would go on later to write "Enter Sandman" however). What about the weird biomechanical grind that leads of "Orion"? Or the three movements of "Master of Puppets" (damn. So much history with that disc. My brother and I have seen Metallica eight times between us and we've never seen them play the last part of this cut. And that's where it goes off on that big riff). Sure, their material might be read as a bit juvenile by some (though the Cthulu Mythos doesn't get enough credit by many) but those same critics listen to often inane abstract moaning and write it up like Basquiat high art.

You can see what Metallica had here that lent them to crossing over. The above is an uncompromised vision but it never tries to couch itself in jargon. Like the best of popular music it is satisfying, it pops at all the right moments. It's hard to find fault in music of this caliber. There's a panacea quality to it, that anyone can find whatever they need to cure their sickness. And there's something interesting about the human condition where we can all feel the themes of covert manipulation and isolation. It hits on all cylinders.

So why didn't I own it? Well, shit, this is sort of a Led Zeppelin IV thing. You've heard it in some configuration or another. The only thing that changes is the specifics in which it came to you and how it lays down in your history.
Deadboy and the Elephantmen is a similar thing with how it lays down through Dax Riggs, Acidbath, local radio and a dozen other bits that I've covered a dozen times before.

Of course We are Night Sky left me a little pissed just because I kept going back to what I thought was their website (it seems there are two and the one I was looking at wasn't updated nearly as much as the other) only to find no new information. It was only when I digested that their management was at fatpossum.com I realized "shit, I should check the Fat Possum website" and sure enough their debut* has been out since October. Fuck! How can I not hear about this? I usually consider myself pretty savvy in terms of music but then this sort of thing slips through my fingers. And for a group who rides on a history of subterranean releases they gotta know the word must get out. (*it isn't a true debut since there was an original Db&tE release that was closer to the collective rock effort of Agents of Oblivion. Now their just a boy-girl combo ala the White Stripes, the Kills, the Ravenettes, etc).

And since I was so jazzed to get this, I had to let myself cool on it a bit like I did with Boards of Canada. I'm reflexive as anyone else and any combination of The Familiar with The New and I'm happy. But then I found myself coming too much from the opposite end, becoming too critical. The sort of bitchy needling that bored couples subject each other to.

At the core of We are Night Sky are the four tracks from the Song Mechanism demo I really liked. Three of those tracks ("How Long the Night Was", "Dressed up in Smoke" and "Misadventures of Dope") are cut and pasted here: same production, hell, probably the same takes. What is different is the cleaner take of "Blood Music" with the guitars pushed up a bit on the mix to give the sort of gothic folk lyrical material ("this is a song called blood") and making it into an accessible A-side. Here they then make a change that just irks me: replacing the doo-wopish ooh-oohs with hooting. If I didn't know better, the choice wouldn't bother me much but I can roll over on my iPod and listen to the original cut. But that's like the cuffs on a shirt being wrinkled when you're going to roll them up anyway.

So how's the rest of the album? More of the same. Which means an extremely enjoyable fascinating juxtaposition of blues death metal material with rock folk conventions. That's what separates Deadboy from what would be their genre contemporaries. This isn't white boy rehash of bluesman standards. Dax gives as he's always given: his operatic Mississippi Delta pretty doom vibrato that sells a poetry that's a icepick love. Bored boys and girls that find their Saturdays filled getting fit with coffins (you know; for kicks). The music has three tempos: the acoustic guitar first gear, the slow rumble of second and the sharp chop of third. So to go with "Dressed up in Smoke" you also get "Evil Friend". "How Long the Night" has "What the Stars have Eaten". Again my bitchiness arises with the seemingly baffling layout of the disc.

We are Night Sky shoots out of the gate with "Stop, I'm Already Dead" which is a perfect summary of what you are going to get: vicodin relaxed pleas for recognition of our mortality combined with peppy yelps. Compared to your new blues/rock combos, the content is both darker and yet less serious in execution.

So then why follow this with the longest and one of the slowest tracks on the album? The track order kind of undermines the tracks and you feel like you're slipping gears on a Lotus. Didn't anyone realize this at Fat Possum? Great albums are 10% good structure. One of the duets demonstrates Dax's opposite has similar vocal and drumming steez as Jack White's (there's one note that hits so flat it just breaks the inertia). But standing back this album is one of those that is most frustrating only because it comes so close to excellence. Few tracks rumble like "Kissed with Lightning". For those familiar, this is exactly what you had hoped for. For those new there's something here that we all like to see. The worst thing that someone might have is to let any cursory reaction guide their opinions.

Metallica Master of Puppets *****
Deadboy and the Elephantmen We are Night Sky ****1/2

It is important to know the end of all things, where they lead. If they have them, their multiple futures. To see where all the strings unravel and to where the strand stops. That which cannot end isn't worth much mention. There is little sense other then to feel your gaze loop along that horizon. That is a useless tautology. But the finite futures; seek them and go there, to inevitability. Life is not lived looking back up the river; the water takes you further downstream, faster, carrying you through... what? See the rapids, though they may crush you, you may grow weak battling the white froth and thin air, and suffocation. It is the direction of all things. Only memory can trace back to the mountaintop. Life is lived there: falling forward through the cascade of water.

Some things, if you let them drop, they fall and embedded into the ground. With their weight they sink, get swallowed by the earth and settle there; take root, poison everything; spread out through the roots of all the many trees and the whole forest whithers with stink. Many lives are estates where the grounds are epics of repeated failure left untended and the whole enterprise is corrupt from the very soil. Between the rot and the place there is no difference.

So I know a girl and she has here *points to a spot over his left shoulder, just about half way between his neck and arm* where there is a scar. Some sort of contusion was cut out from there and so there is now this uneven circular recess; the memory of that moment kept in the tough walls winking out like a pert sphincter. When I pointed at it she reflexively covered it with her hand, told her story and then moved so I could not see it and the topic would drop. I like it, which is difficult to defend. Not because it is a defect and so it pulls her down one rung. Or not because I am aroused and see anything more there than a wound that could not be forgotten. The geography is distinct. My fingers travel down from the nape of her neck and come to a place familiar, known and unlike anywhere else. We recollect: "we have been here." Seen with a touch. Only you.

Another girl, then, and this I think only I've noticed, wears her eyeliner in a way. Her complexion and skin is Mediterranean and so her lashes are dark to go with her eyebrows and waves of hair. And when she pencils her eye, she lets the black line draw out from the side of her eye ever so slightly. An Egyptian eye of a millimeter or two. Her eyes then rest on the checks of her face like the round sun sat at the horizon. Each of her lashes poke like the spokes on a gothic rendering of a star. The last vertical spike of eyeliner completes the unbroken periphery. Yet I haven't told a soul. Not even her. Unawares we silently share this secret. With me sipping on a Newcastle, she talks on the phone.

Imperial Western revisionist history has many casualties in its quest for enobling the Caucasian ideal but no victim more sad than the truth. And while discussions of the true origins of Hellenistic culture, the Jesu Christos or the lineage of the Egyptian Pharoahs are the more popular topics to reveal the whitewashing the past has received, no little amount of work has been done to the most feverently worshipped of the Christian saints:

Saint Nicholas of Myra, the gift giver who every year acts as the corporate icon for the Global Economy's great consumer cash-in, Christmas. In no small irony the same non-Western nations who had suffered under the whip of Western colonialism now gleefully have this jolly old elf insinuate his big fat bloated McDonald's preservative-greased image splattered on every piece of merchandise produced between the months of October and December (January to September are no different; a markdown of 80% is just applied to last season's crap). Saint Nicholas is a lay saint and yet the greatest of saints, the one worshipped the world over in the unification church of the Credit Card that every child of this planet is baptized into in a tidal flurry of prenatal purchasing.

What is most insidious is how this petty stooge for the corporations, Santa Claus, comes from a complex and powerful figure, Saint Nicholas of Myra, who perfectly fit the profit-mongers needs save the one nasty fact that he was a pure-bred asiatic prince, his race as pure as the waters of the lower Nile. This proud black figure who had been locked out of the ivory towers of Europe was then hustled quickly through the backdoors of the Caucasian orthodoxy and emerged as the convenient product marker for the biggest swindle in American history: Black Friday.

1000 BC

First, let us begin with a bit of history. Saint Nicholas was born in 3rd century Myra, at the time part of Byzantine Lycia. Much like any person predating visual historical tools, there are no artifacts of Saint Nicholas other than a rich oral tradition. After he was commodified, the prehistorians of the Vatican created a retrograde history of images where Nicholas was conveniently a son of Yakub, slight pale features that were acceptable among the oligarchy of the Papal states.

Myra had been inhabited by human settlements since prehistoric times up through the first millenia BC where they were assimilated by the Greeks in their Eastern migration from the Myceneae. What historians forget are the very legends of the Greek Hellenes who spoke of exotic dark skinned warriors from the interior of the Turkish penninsula. The legend helped give rise to the female warrior Amazons who made an appearance at Troy as mercenaries. What is more, studies by Nathaniel Merrimonte of Johns Hopkins University has found discriptions of colonies of the indigenous Lycians in records of the Hittities in the 2nd millenia BC! That means a historic Black/Asiatic people existed over a thousand years in Lycia before the Hellenes even arrived! The later conquests by the Turks and Persians only strengthened these ethnic ties and it was only later with the expansion of the Macedonian hordes and the defeat of Darius were the indigenous Lycians dispersed into the larger melting pot of post-Alexander Persia.

Saint Na'akatus

The Hittite empire, fractured by invasions by hordes from all compass directions disappeared by the 5th century BC but its socio-ethnic character preserved in several fragmented Afro-Asiatic nations all along the Eastern coast of the mother continent. One of note, was the Kingdom of Aksum which became a burgeoning trading power up from the Cape Horn all the way to the most distant Persian Gulf coastal states. Common history states that between the years 325 and 328 AD the nation converted to Christianity. What most Western histories discount are the village oral histories of a wizened older man from "a village to the mountains North" named Na'akatus who brought Christianity to the outlying towns of the Aksum empire before finishing his pilgrimage in the capital where the Emperor gave himself to Christ. These same stories give this saint's full name (as per the social norms of the Empire to prefix the given name with where the person was from) as "Mai'ra Li'kan Na'akatus". What is interesting is that the phonemes for the long 'y' or 'l' were not present in the 4th century dialect of Aksum.

So not only was this Myra Lycian Nicholas a Christian holy man from the North, but he could only come from a place where such phrasing existed to introduce it to Northeast Africa!! And even more, the use of "village" was only used in reference to other Asiatic human centers. Later when White colonists began to pillage the mother continent, a totally alien term (the closest English synonym would be "giraffe-boat") was used for the cities the Europeans erected. So not only was Na'akatus from Myra but he was a fellow Asiatic man the color of beautiful ebon!

Even more, the common history has Na'akatus, now very old, wedding the Emperor's only heir, his daughter, and continuing the bloodline of Aksum!

Things get Heavy (12th Century AD to the 20th)

Those familiar with African Christianity knows what that last bit of information means but for the lay out there I'll connect the dots. In the 12th century AD, the Aksum empire was conquered by the Zagwe. However, in 1270, Yekuno Amlak, son of a slavewoman, overthrew the Zagwe king Za-Ilmaknun and founded what would become the foundation of Ethiopia. Some histories speak of an epic struggle not unlike that of Anakin Skywalker, with force powers, light sabers, overused bluescreen and all (although the light sabers were actually more of a short thrusting spear with a wide fat blade. Imagine Shaka Zulu with badass effects. Not those shitty kind from Battle Beyond the Stars). Yekuno Amlak (nee Skywalker), now king, traced from his father, Tasfa Iyasus, the blood of Dil Na'od, the last Aksum king (and blood heir to Saint Na'akatus). I'll spare the (albeit fascinating) details but the history of Ethiopia would continue through to Haile Selassie I, born July 23, 1892. For scholars Selassie is very important as the Christian messiah prophesized and recognized by the Rastafari movement (more familiar to White folk as Rastafarianism, a pejorative to the Rastas). So not only did Saint Nicholas of Myra bring Christianity to Africa, he is also one of the deep sturdy roots of the Solomonid Dynasty and Rastafari! Now one might think that this news would be something to celebrate in the diaspora. But during the same duration, a conspiracy had begun to brew that would see the African peoples stripped of one more of their precious icons.

Meanwhile, Back at the Fortress of Evil

The Vast White People Conspiracy (VWPC) can be traced back to the actions of the Hanseatic League of coastal Germany. One of the first merchantile organizations, the Hanseatic League soon came to dominate trade across the North and Baltic Seas starting with the 13th century AD. Like much of Northern Europe in the middle ages, the Hanseatic states were a tight-assed lot that always found a way to squeeze a dime out of the blood of anyone else (when not mining their own rectal depths for diamonds they pressed from coal). They were also uniformly Christian. Aware of the power of the ancient cavedweller myths of the Norse god Wodan who would reward good little white children with gifts while punishing evil runt crackers with his team of vengeance ravens (one can see similarities to the schlock-goth films, The Crow and Dirty Dancing) , the Hanseatic League saw another business opportunity. The problem was that there would be no way to officially sell a Wodan-Day to the Church (who ran rap in central Europe at the time). Martin Luther was a bit off so they just did the thing that white people are best at: coopting and destroying outside cultures.

One of the Hanseatic council fellows, Werther von Stiermist, at the 1499 Semiannual Hanseatic Conference at the Hanseatic Alpine Ice Fortress remembered a marginally known canonized saint, Nicholas of Myra who was known as the patron of pawnbrokers. "If we can some how take this negro magicman," recently uncovered transcripts show, "and use him in place of our neanderthal pagan holiday, we can get the saps to throw their money away on all sorts of crazy shit! Fruitcakes! Wrapping paper! Who knows where this could end?!"

The plan was quickly accepted, Powerpoint viewgraphs were distributed and the Hanse set about filling their storefronts with jolly redclad (but always Yakub Caucasian) caricatures on the last Friday of the last full week of November. This was corresponded with Unbelievably Low Low Prices that None of Our Competitors Can Beat! and similar paraphenalia to hypnotize the seizing monied white masses of Europe. Only the convenience of the plot would have Americans celebrate their giving of small pox laden blankets to Native Americans on the Thursday proceeding this day (to be known in the Hanseatic memos as Black Friday. The name would stick).

There was one flaw in that the selected holiday, Saint Nicholas Day, was set arbitrarily at December 5th. This was one thing von Stiermist and the rest of the Hanseatic Elders should have seen plainly: there was only a good week of shopping between Black Friday and the holiday! The first few years of Saint Nicholas Day were an absolute failure as parents raced home to their local horse and buggy 7-11 and bought cheap crap from the counter and stuck it (unpackaged no less) under the fireplace for their kids. This was no way to run a VWPC and the Hanseatic League knew it. Luckily they had a solution.

Fukka Da Pope-ah!

Using the latest in evil German robotic technology (which, at the time, consisted of three short men and a complicated series of wood pulleys and leather straps) the Hanseatic League had a little known priest, Martin Luther, "replaced". Their simulacrum in place, Robot Marthin Luther (who accounts would recognize later as looking identical except for a pencil thin moustache) nailed the 95 Theses to the door of Castle Church (the Theses written quickly by a the Hanseatic Committee for Really Evil Conspiratorial Documents) and proceeded to set off the Protestant Reformation.

As Europe erupted, Martin Luther, unnoticed by many, quietly shifted the December holiday from Saint Nicholas' Day ("to avoid worship of a canonized papal saint") to the worship of the "Christkind" on December 25th. This was perfect: the Hanseatic League had a good square month to hype of the holiday and get the cash flowing out of the consumers pockets and into consuming conspicuous goods. The Reformation had additional benefits. The loosening of the Holy See's control over schoolchildren in the North meant that Hanseatic agents could infiltrate classrooms and have the youngsters work on time-eating projects where they dreamed of all the wonderful things their sinister little cracker hearts could and send them rushing home to mommy and daddy to begin a word of mouth terror campaign the likes of which the world had never seen (one could say the Hanseatic League was the original Apple and von Stiermist the original Steve Jobs- no wait. No white motherfucker is even close to being as much of a purple headed dick as that Jobs motherfucker. I stand corrected).

As the warlike peoples of Europe expanded, so did their bale holiday. Spread far and wide to their conquered peoples, selling them the sweet stink of the bottom of colonialism's boot for the next four hundred years.

But little did they know, Justice was coming.

Black Strikes Back

When Haile Selassie was exiled in 1936, it is often written that he spent the next five years in the United Kingdom. In truth, no one was really sure where Selassie was. He had taken a cruise line bound for the Thames but was not onboard when the ship disembarked. Recently uncovered journals by Selassie himself illustrate a truth more strange than fiction.

For some reason, between the coast of Moracco and Spain, Selassie got a great urge to head north. Far far into the Arctic. He spoke of one night waking up and seeing a winter sky and a beam of laser light came down right on his temple and told him he must head to a place he had never been but always remembered. So he stole away in one of the ship's lifeboats and made the arduous trek to the North Pole. Many might say that this was impossible, being that he was just one man on a lifeboat and there was a thousand miles of unforgiving North Atlantic to traverse but, shit, he's the godhead! Tiz Jah ya know! And you can be sure he didn't go overboard without like a ten pound bag of the finest wettest redhaired dadda spliff you've ever had. He's probably like Popeye and shit: took three big tokes and shot off over the horizon, the keel not even touching the fucking waves an' shit!

And so when he got there, Selassie saw this big snowy mountain and it was calling to him and when he got inside, it was like all crystals and shit. You know, like in Superman? But instead of there being the giant floating head of that overrate fatass Marlon Brando in there there was the head of Saint Nicholas (cause, you see, they totally stole that idea from Selassie for the movie because they wanted to undermine him! Don't you seeeee? It. all. makes. sense!). Nicholas told him about where he came from and Selassie finally knew: he was going to save the world from all those big white rich motherfuckers and the VWPC!

Suddenly an army of some really short motherfuckers showed up and told Selassie they were his crew and like they'd always be down for him. And so he had them set out making him a badass fucking ride to do battle with Santa Claus over the skies of Gotham City. But first they fixed up his look with some nice fine red robes and shit. And he didn't go about in no flying sled. It was like the P-Funk Spaceship. I'm telling you: you go back and talk to any of those old Rastas on Jamaica and they'll tell you all sorts of shit about that spaceship. White people would use that Roswell crap to discredit dude but nobody gives a damn about that dorky Fox Mulder and his bigfoot girlfriend shit. No, it was time for action. Selassie would take on the guise of Saint Nicholas, like each of the Ethiopian kings before him, and protect the weak and the helpless from all that was evil and white.

ENDGAME

Selassie set about bringing joy and cheer and stompings to any motherfuckers who got in his way. He and his rag tag crew of Rastas rolling out giant weeklong soundclash jamsessions and then saving people from burning buildings and stuff. One could recount his adventures like it was the Avengers before they started going off into outerspace and running into all those goofy aliens and totally destroying the mis en scene Jack Kirby set up.

The foremost of the Saint's hurdles was the insideous "holiday" Kwanzaa. This "ode to African harvest festivals" is nothing more than a way of majority Western forces to set Asiatic peoples against each other and resigning them to the gutter as they eat themselves alive in another round of Black on Black. Instead of repatriating Christmas back from the Supply-side Theological Corporations, Kwanzaa was designed as fool's gold to neutralize Black nationalism with a goofy holiday that nobody has a damn clue what is going on (like it has candles... but is this Haunakah or something? Hello? Is this thing on? ANYBODY?!?). Saint Nicholas says its like when bank robbers take hostages and put them up in front of the windows so they're human shields. Yeah, it's like that. But the Saint ain't fooled. He's got his spaceship and he's coming for you motherfuckers. So if you here something like a *whoop-whoop-whoop-PSSSSSSSSSSSSGGGGHTTTTTK-THOMP!* you better look busy! Coming to a city near you!

MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS!

So we're approaching the end of the year in music. So outside of some last minute purchases, I'll hack together my year in review which will discuss the statistics I've been keeping about all this shit I've been buying.

A few weeks ago subgeek asked me to take a look at Jackson and his Computer Band who has been generating tremendous buzz in the noiseless ether of the internet and indie mags. I had been recalcitrant for a while just because this schooner makes his own wind but after hearing some nuggets of "Radio Caca" on the Warp Records page and after some nudging I went out to the Sound Garden (in beautiful gentrified Fells Point, Ballmer) to pick it up.

Before grabbing it I decided to take a look around and stumbled, by complete accident, on a Juan Atkins comp, Metropolis Records: 20 Years (1985 - 2005), which completely blew me away because it was put out by Tresor, a pretty reknowned but German label, instead of Submerge, the Detroit superlabel that handles all the Metropolis/Transmat and other seminal Detroit Techno releases. But the Europeans, in their unquenchable effort to catalog such things, beat everyone out of the gate with this two disc necessary release. And I use 'necessary' in all flavorings of the word. If you are interested in electronic music and you aren't interested in chasing down way old vinyl, this is necessary. This covers the whole gamut: from Juan's tentative first steps in the electro funk of Cybotron to his breakthrough as Model 500. There's even little gems such as one offs like Infiniti or 3MB that a real collector would have to scrounge for all in this magnificent collection.

Juan Atkins impact really can't be understated. And this isn't in that "well it was revolutionary at its time but it is dated as fuck" impact that sort of taints all those old hip-hop singles. Maybe Techno doesn't live on the burning edge of The Latest Hotness as hip-hop does (where a rapping style or production can pass out like a fad in three weeks) but there's something absolutely gripping about the work on 20 Years. Perhaps all the future talk was a long term investment that matured better than the short term bonds rap caters in. In an odd choice, the assembly is out of chronological order creating a (probably more appropriate) mix of sounds. This probably helps stave off the maggots with the electro bang-thwump of "Alleys of Your Mind" merging into the delicious early techno of Model 500's "Future". "Vessels in Distress", "No UFO's", "Nightdrive (Thru Babylon)", "Cosmic Cars". Man, Juan did it all. One of the first to hide behind a half dozen faceless monikers (if you want a great breakdown from the source, check out this short feature on PFM). If anyone needs a lesson to what the division between Electro and Techno is, they can just look right here. This might suit a lot of other folks out there with the sort of blanket usage of Electro people use out there. I guess it must have more cache, sound less treaded, classic. I first noticed it in The Beat My Heart Skipped when the protagonist specifically says "Electro" and then obviously plays some disposable House track. And now NME calls Depeche Mode an "Electro pioneer" when they've always walked a very goth pop path. Not to shit on anybody's parade, but it's like calling my 401k doing 20% last year The Real Hip-Hop. It just dilutes the actual thing and makes all these interesting niches generic fodder for journalistic statement.

And 20 Years does a great job of showcasing both the beauty and limitations of the sound. Techno was in ways about more: more complicated drum programming, with the long sustaining synthesizer effects that moved out there beyond the conventions of the R&B roots. Of course Juan Atkins did more than just up the tempo. There's a whole approach and quality that differentiates it. His Techno got tired when it got commodified by others and became just the next hot thing to burn out and throw back onto the street. Here you can see how it preserved, through two decades, and still finds progressions full of excitement.

In our high-impact critical culture, Jackson Fourgeaud, is being set up by the likes of the Wire as the next generation of the same sort of injection. First the modest claims of upsetting French House (understandable after Daft Punk's forgettable release this year) then this month he became the savior of the whole span of electronic music. A bit much for a guy with just one album. Sadly instant history waits for no man. Better to just predict the tectonic shifts and run the print.

Jackson and his Computer Band does quite a bit, but anyone familiar will recognize the geneology. The intro "Utopia" bangs with the classic French passion for soul and blues mixed with the drums and sequences that are best described as lush. Its the sort of paradox where you could have the Gaul sexuality of Air's "Sexy Boy" and have it merge seemlessly with the breakdancing funk of Daft Punk's "Harder Faster Better Stronger". What Jackson brings is an understanding of the currents in glitch and IDM and synchs all these parts up into something fresh. A different producer could take the parts used in "Utopia" and make a pretty standard House track but Jackson seems to run all of them instead through a meatgrinder saw-wave so they appear to stutter by like an image through the slats of a fence. Only seen from a window of a highspeed train does the go-stop collapse into a zoetrope. The skill is evident: where most glitch or IDM is abstract at best and unlistenable at worse, Jackson retains that soul that runs at the heart of French have hold on.

The result is something both unnerving and consuming. "Rock On" has these big bursts that go off at every step of the beat. Like the stage is being rocked at sea and you only catch a glimpse every half second under a strobe. Everything moves with big brassy steps.

Of course I'd point out Arco5, another glitchy French act that has done something very similar. While their work wasn't as brazen as that of the Computer Band, its still on the same trail of French deconstructionism.

But I've come here to praise Jackson, not bury him. Shit, I hate it when reviews get like this. So what stops me from completely falling in love with this release? Well with track 5 ("Oh Boy"), Jackson makes a criminal step of building a song around a story his five year old niece recites. And anyone who has tried to follow a five year old's story can understand how marginally intelligible the result is. Compare that to "TV Dogs" where Mike Ladd's poetry is more able to find the grove of Jackson's complex funk. A sort of Bond theme where the mixer is absolutely attacked. Its just the synch you get when two people understand what goes into a song. "Oh Boy" is a mistake that earns instant skip status as it just never rises above disonnance. Smash generally alternates between an ethereal funk and bombast, with tracks such as "Hard Tits" and "Radio Caca" exempifying both. It's very good. Though it does commit one final sin of having "Radio Caca" contain a hidden 'track' (mostly forgettable blips) that makes it over 20 minutes long (mostly dead air). That's almost unforgivable in this digital age where I don't want to waste my HD space with dead air. Smash shows a lot of promise. But it doesn't annihilate as many conventions as the establishment hopes. That the revolution had been there the entire time and only now they saw it, proclaiming it exgenesis. Well, who's fault is it for their willful blindness? Luckily Jackson and his little outfit shows promise and I'll look forward to what he has in store for us.

"Wait wait wait," you who follow your boy's /. chats with tweezers. "Hadn't subgeek pointed you to Warp's Bleep.com to seek out that Jackson album?"

To which I would answer yes.

You think for a moment and then query, "Well then why were you in Fells Point? Shouldn't you have just downloaded it? You could've had it then! On Demand!"

You're beginning to sound like a Comcast advert.

"Shit- you know what I mean. Right?"

Yes yes. I guess its a bit of philosophy. For one I like discs. I like the collection. There's something impressive about many many albums, all sorts, just lined up together. I like how they all look. Second, I love the Greater Community of music outside the big box retailers. I understand what they (the storefronts willing to showcase a lot of music) bring to us. So I want to do my part for keeping them upright. I buy a good deal of music right?

"I guess you could say that."

So I want to do my part by letting them have my business. And who knows what else I will find? I had no idea Tresor had that Juan Atkins comp out. Sure, I had to deal with the counter guy looking at my purchase and saying "Oh man. This one is- [he holds up the Jackson and his Computer Band disc] AWESOME!"

"Heh. Funny. We always like those stories."

I can understand. There's that social pecking order thing that is absolutely wierd. Like everyone has to show their little hand sign that they are totally Down and With It but they can't be overt about it so they have to play it off real casual like. A wierd off hand remark that demonstrates their Vast Cultural Knowledge.

"Oh yeah?"

And it kills me. Because they can't ever just come upright and say it. Or demonstrate any sort of populist leanings. You can't just have only listened to the Velvet Underground last month and you can't be interested in Nico just because Wes Anderson used a track of her's in The Royal Tannenbaums. And though you'd probably be happy with the soundtrack they've gotta come up with some question like "Do you have that Nico album where Jackson Browne wrote some of her songs?" like its a goddamn episode of Jeopardy and we're all out to stump each other and anyone who goes out on a round gets dropped into a pit of vipers.

"..."

So they say "Huh?" and then it comes up that it's Chelsea Girl and Alex Trabeck is about to pull the lever on them so they shout out something like "That's the greatest fucking piece of music ever recorded in the universe" in some attempt that hyperbole will make up for some supposed moment of weakness only they've gotta couch it in some even deeper bit of trivia like "I think John Cale really introduced her to the harmonium." like how we somehow give a shit and this brings us anywhere closer to a deeper truth on... shit, anything.

"What are we talking about again?"

Buying music.

"So you're going to review Chelsea Girl now?"

Well no. Though I will in a few days. I just wanted to inject this entry with a bit of human interest.

"Oh ok. Like the local news."

I guess. But I brought this up because an album like Drexciya's Lab Rats XL (Mice or Cyborg), the last album from the techno pioneers is the sort of album the guys at Sound Garden or anywhere else wouldn't give a second look. The irony of a more eclectic and fundamental release not getting the jizz bath something more pedestrian would get.

"So you bought this Drexciya album there then."

Well no. I saw it on Bleep but I bought it from someplace in Germany via GEMM, in keeping with my "If I can buy it from a store, I will. Otherwise I'll get it online" manifesto.

"Did you buy anything online?"

Oh yeah. Some old Dataphysix stuff.

"Are you going to review that?"

No I'm going to review this Drexciya disc. But I'll promise to review that stuff later.

"Ok... BTW. Why the fuck is my dialogue written for me?"

Huh?

"My dialogue. All these witty comments in the quotations you are bantering with."

Oh, I dunno.

"Seems kind of odd. You, the author of this entry sort of forcing me, the reader, to what you want to say. Like I would actually say any of this stuff you have me saying here-"

Well maybe. I just wanted to make a point.

"More like a conversation with yourself. Kind of sad really..."

Shit, fine! You want me to review this last disc and then get out of your hair?

"Sure."

Great. So Lab Rats XL (Mice or Cyborgs). From outward appearances, this looks like it's actually a disc by some group called Lab Rats XL (who name all their tracks "Lab Rat 1", etc). But inside it's revealed that this is the posthumous last Drexciya "storm" (much like the Transllusion release from Rephlex).

What is interesting is how cohesive the personality is on this album, even in the absense of final polish (obvious given that two of the tracks are "remixed" by outsiders). This also has some of Stinson's best tracks on here. "Reality Check" has these long sweeps that decay with volume in something both mournful and highly futuristic. The act balances on a pin. The synths vibrate with cursors of communication. The pleasure I've always gotten from these later day Detroit acts is how they don't let the loops off the hook. The loops mutate in slight variation and so perform unique combinations throughout a single track. "Reality Check" has this wonderful coo that warms it way up to you. Similarly "Fruktos" has a deep bottom of bass that sizzles on the tip of your speakers. A part of me is saddened by the loss. Yet another, maybe a greater part, finds comfort in all of this. The sort of future utopia that is beautiful in a way that only your mind can imagine. The Drexciya stuff is less kinetic than what Juan Atkins does as Model 500 but you can see the same hallmarks. An impossible dream ironically from the dead husk of Detroit. It speaks about the great possible of artistic expression. Sadly Lab Rats XL is just 6 tracks and 36 minutes. What it says makes it hard to really call it a coda.

Juan Atkins Metroplex Records: 20 Years (1985-2005) *****
Jackson and his Computer Band Smash ****
Drexciya Lab Rats XL (Mice or Cyborgs) ****

From Em's journal since I, yes, sadly did most of this from memory, I thought I'd share it with those who might not have seen it. "WTF," I said.

Let's break this down SportsGuy style:
 

• Better Ridiculous Arnold Character Name (Commando):
   
  • Commando: John Matrix.
  • Predator: Dutch. Straight and to the point

      John Fucking Matrix. SG would say this was generated by the Madden Name Generator Machine. I think they just gave up trying to explain how this barely comprehensible Austrian is an American so they went for broke and gave him the most outrageous porn star nee soap opera name out there. Up there with Randall Mantooth and the time Jesus changed his name to Shane Chance Steele.

• Better Plot (push):
  • Commando: John Matrix is the retired leader of Team Bad-Ass USA. One by one all of his ex-buddies get knocked off until one day the same baddies come for him in his California mountain retreat (where he spends his time cutting down endangered Redwoods and feeding fawns). They kidnap John's daughter (Alyssa Milano) and warn Matrix that they will kill her in 24 hours if he doesn't kill somebody (the movie really doesn't focus heavily on this point). Needless to say Matrix has to race against time, deep into ENEMY TERRITORY, along with the plucky Rae Dawn Chong (who promises to teach him the secret of making fire), to save her. Many dead bodies are involved.
  • Predator: Dutch is the non-retired leader of a slightly different but no less deadly Team Bad-Ass USA sent into some UNDISCLOSED CENTRAL AMERICAN LOCATION to track down a missing person (the movie really doesn't focus to heavily on this) in ENEMY TERRITORY. It turns out that Dutch and his team of badasses weren't the first and after arriving are slowly picked off one-by-one by some supernatural alien hunter. Dutch is forced to race against time, along with the plucky Carl Weathers, to save his skin. Not as many dead bodies are involved. But there is a gatling gun.

  Really, which is more ridiculous? That there's an evil island dictatorship conveniently, oh, 200 miles off the coast of LA or that a Rastafari spliff-smoking alien is hunting down a rag-tag group of special forces guys in a jungle somewhere? While Predator does a better time trying to be plausible (and using that overrated 'drama' thing), Commando is gleefully inane. A movie involving shooting a police van with a rocket launcher stolen (conveniently) from the back of a gun store and having everyone survive isn't working hard for street cred.
   

• Direction (Predator):
   
  • Commando: Mark L. Lester
  • Predator: John McTiernan

  Though many might not have seen such indie fare such as Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October but who can forget Lester's opus ROLLER BOOGIE?!? No real contest. Lester quickly fell back into the B-film ghetto from whence he came.
   

• Better Sidekicks (Predator):
   
  • Commando: None! John Matrix is like the wind, baby. He runs alone.
  • Predator: Jesse the Body, Carl Weathers, Bill Duke, Billy, and Hawkins.

  Again, no contest. Carl Weathers and Bill Duke is a murderers row of sidekicks but all of these guys are such badasses that they act like a resonance chamber for the totally bulked badassery of Arnold creating a wrathful vortex of complete and utter badassitude. All these dudes are crazy ripped. I hear there were scenes where they're riding around Venice Beach in a droptop Camaro scoring chicks but they cut it. Jesse with that fucking gatling gun, Bill Duke all baldheaded gutting that pig. And then a totally underrated exchange:
   
  Pancho: "Billy. What's wrong?"
  Billy [after some thought]: "I'm scared, Pancho."
  Pancho: "No way, Billy! You. ain't. afraid. of. no. man!"
   
  I love the cadence of it. You absolutely buy that these guys are the realness and they're all about bouncing heads. And they are so well colored in. The touched on backstory of Duke and Jesse. The shuffled into a desk job but covering a dark past of Weathers. The stoic mysticism of Billy with that medicine pouch he fingers meditatively. The bafoonery of Hawkins.
   

• Better Villains (Commando):
   
  • Commando: Bennett (Vernon Wells), Dan Hedaya, Scully, Bill Duke (again!)
  • Predator: some guy in a rubber suit

  Vernon Wells is a Top 5 action movie badguy for me (along with Alan Rickman and Gene Hackman). That he was riding the "It's the 80's and we're totally on coke so, hell, let's go completely apeshit for Australians. Man, that Mad Max isht totally tripped me out!" thing and was coming off of running around with assless chaps from Roadwarrior, Wells takes Bennett to a completely different level. Sure, he had "IS THIS YOUR PARTY?" from Wierd Science but this one he's off the hook. He looks like Freddy Mercury 9 months pregnant and hiding his massive gut with the wimpiest RenFaire chainmail shirt known to man. With that moustache he looks like some reject 70's gay hustler. But he's so tops! I love Bennett!
   
  Matrix [Realizing his ex-buddy Bennett is the one behind everything]: "Bennett! I thought you were-"
  Bennett: "Dead? Sorry to disappoint you, Matrix!" ...
  Bennett: "Tranquilizers, Matrix... I WISH I COULD'VE USED THE REAL THING!"
   
  What, real tranquilizers? When he shouts "JOHN?!? I'LL BE WAITING FOR YOU JOHN!" you think there's a competely different level to their *ahem* working relationship. He then spends the rest of his time yelping, chewing scenery and basically coming down off of a ten week freebase high. Totally quotable and any iota push to either realism or caricature the character wouldn't have worked. Absolutely boss.
   
  Hedeya is icing on the cake. Just watching Carla's ex-husband trying to act like a banana republic dictator is a pleasure in and of itself.
   
  Then there's Scully, the completely sniveling loser of a badguy. It is so delicious when Arnold chases him down and drops his ass off a cliff. The narcotic of wanting to yell out "IT wasn't us! IT was THEM! THE WARRRIEERRSS!" and "WARRIORS COME OUT TO PLAY-EE-AYY!" moves us into a top five pantheon of baddies.
   

• Better Female Sidekick (Commando):
   
  • Commando: Rae Dawn Chong, Alyssa Milano
  • Predator: some chica.

  Sadly there is no female lead bareage so we actually have to focus on something else. The comedy in Commando doesn't stop with the men though. Rae Dawn plays a flight attendant who just HAPPENS to be ok with Arnold taking her hostage and then is HAPPY to help him break out of police custody and then just HAPPENS to know how to fly an airplane so Arnold can keep Hell full of souls. That this is what her career came to after Quest for Fire is a delight. She plays the ditz to a T. And then there's Tony Danza's daughter just as hammy as ever, as if Angela wouldn't let her go to a slumberparty because Mona ate her homework and she got an F (I'm kind of fuzzy on the details of how Who's the Boss? worked). That she's able to outwit an entire army of Central American paramilitaries is priceless. She also seems plausible as being borne from the loins of the Greek God.
   

• Best Arnold Lines (Predator):
   
  • Commando: "Hey Scully? Remember when I said I'd kill you last? I lied!" "Don't wake my friend. He's dead tired." "C'mon Bennett... LET'S PARTY!"
  • Predator: "Stick Around!" "RUN! GO! GET TO THE CHOPPA!" "C'MON! DO IT! KILL ME! I'M RIGHT HERE!!" "NO POWDER BURNS!"

  Ohhhh. This one is almost a push. Both are totally quotable. Serious, freedom, I drop one from each at least once a day at least. In Commando Arnold tried for a little more restrained of an approach. It must have been his Laurence Olivier moment. Compare that to the bellowing of Predator and you can see where this is going. So let's compare secondary character lines. This is what takes Predator to the next level.
   
  Pancho: "You're bleeding! You're hurt!"
  Jesse: "Ain't got time to bleed!"
  Pancho: "You got time to duck?"
   
  Bill Duke: "I. SEE. YOU!"
   
  Bill Duke/Predator: "Anytime!" [Spoken like you've got a reverb on your voice going to 11]
   

• Most Ridiculous Moments (push):
   
  • Commando: The intro cutting trees/feeding deer with his daughter scene. Arnold can smell the bad guys in the wind. Arnold crashing a Porsche into a telephone post and being perfectly fine 2 seconds later. The gun store's "back room". Arnold swinging down the balloon things in the mall. Arnold pushing his truck down the hill and chasing after the badguys.
  • Predator: Carl Weathers in a tie. The gat. Arnold makes a compound bow out of some branches. Arnold makes a maze of death out of some trees. The whole outer space hunter thing. Arnold outrunning a nuclear bomb.

  Really, these are Arnold movies. Nothing can compare to the ridiculous of these two. Ok, maybe Hercules does New York. But what can I say; it was the 80's. Everyone was fat on junk bonds, we were all hazy from the 70's, we can't be blamed for our actions!
   

• Better Kills (Commando):
   
  • Commando: Tauntingly dropping Scully off a cliff. Bill Duke getting a table leg through the chest. After being electrocuted, Bennett getting a pipe thrown through his chest, and steam shooting out of it. Arnold blowing up those buildings with the completely unbelievable dummies out front. I think Arnold also kills some guys with gardening implements in there. "He's dead tired."
  • Predator: "Stick Around!" Arnold pushing the truck off of its axle and into the mercenary encampment where it explodes. Arnold killing the predator with what amounts to a Rube Goldberg device.

  After the initial attack there was less killing in Predator. And in line with McTiernan being an "actual director" and all, the action in that movie is therefore more plausible and riveting. Commando is testosteroporn. It has the bare minimum necessary to make it a "movie" instead of "a random collection of Arnold Scharzenegger killing people gleefully and saying pithy lines".
   

And that's what it really comes down to. If you want the best all around movie, I say Predator. It is so well done, so complete that it escapes mere genre. It is just a good movie. period. Commando, on the otherhand, is the peak of Arnold excess. Sly Stallone needed two more Rambo movies and couldn't even come close to the sexualized carnage of that Commando. It's probably the pinnacle of the Arnold mythos. You can't go wrong with either.

An amazing thing happened yesterday. We got our first snow and when I was walking across campus at 3ish in the afternoon I noticed how quiet it was. There wasn't a single sound out of all of this fine particulate drizzling out of the sky and forming soft piles everywhere.

"It does that," my coworker pointed out, referring to both the snow and the silence. "It dampens noise and you don't hear anything." And that was all true. But our campus is usually a confusion of shuttle buses, backhoes excavating out foundations and the random approach traffic to BWI. Yesterday it was just gray skies, white snow and stillness.

If there was to be a day, I thought driving home, this would be it. The cars piercing through the bubbling stew of too much salt and too little snow. That night, if it was to happen, everyone in the world would just at that moment decide to end their lives and all go about it. Not some mass communicated Jim Jones deathwish but one of those ammonia-strong realizations that no one speaks just suddenly young professionals are turning their trucks off down hills into treebanks, children throwing themselves from their second story bedroom windows onto brick patios and fathers resting their heads on the cold concrete slab of their garages and waiting for the garage door to split the center of their skulls wide open to the air. A cool participation of patience. Car still running, unread newspaper tossed into the trashcan. Waiting. Placing your head in the chamber and waiting.

It didn't happen, but that didn't shake the feeling that this was the last December. All previous had toyed with it: being the last. But each resisted in one way or another, gave out to spring. The new year. But this, this might finally be the last. Each day shorter, shorter still. And then there's no sunlight, just the reluctant pass of a few minutes of twilight. Then blacker still and it's just December forever and the next year doesn't come and finally the season bats its eye and winks out.

I thought of a friend of mine and her brother gave her a call and he said "Why don't you fucking kill yourself already?" And this type of bold Texas-sized statement annoyed her because she really didn't talk with her brother that way, only just the conversations you have out of debt to relations and she told him she didn't give really two shits what he thought and he hadn't helped with finding gifts for their parents' birthdays anyway. They weren't close. "What's the point," she said, "of calling me up with this directive when your life is a recurant disaster; car wrecks in blizzard conditions that accumulate semi-trucks and victims over hours and years?"

And he responded, "Who said I was the bad guy in this movie?" and hung up.

That didn't happen. It was a dream.

You eat what I throw away.

Brown leaves become dappled gray
become scattered white
finally disappeared completely;
and it snows
and snows and snows.

Your black asphalt is
churned slush
over salt
kicked mist into the air
from passing semi-trailer
trucks
Slowed red brake lights.

This isn't traffic, this
is
a processional
Each car
trailing headlights
shoulder to the wind.

New home
welcomes me in
as every,
old or new,
is home
with arms
open.

Roger Ebert goes insane reviewing Just Friends . Metanarrative about how he has to set the stove timer to stay on topic, nonsequiturs about Paris Hilton, her cellphone, sarcastic misquotations of Oscar Wilde, references to IMDB intercut with Truffaut, Rob Schneider, The Ugly Chick, and some onomanapeia. Brilliant.

The first album came out on October 11th. The second, October 18th. Why the fuck am I waiting to talk about them now? Life has gotten busy for your boy. Or he just stopped caring; he gave up, disappeared and now awoke and just continued on as he had, with no notice of how things might have changed.

The New Artistic Direction for any band is always an odd risk: a group, of any musical genre, wants to avoid being pigeonholed. They will tire of the same slight variations, seek emergent sounds and incorporate them into their catalog. Or this might have been What They Always Were Meant To Be. Either poses a difficult quandry for the audience, a very post-modern one. The context is driven by the consumer. They geas their own message upon a band and its signature sound, many times in step with the artist's intent but, several times, without. And yet still there's the range of things that the music is: who you touched, when, where you weren't, all the points in between on the roads drifting ever further from your youth. That's the foundation of Investment. So the risk in the New Artistic Direction is to alienate those fans who rode some rail along your old sound while finding nothing new with where you are going.

Adult. is that way, though I'm having a hard time understanding it. Gimme Trouble is the long-player following the year's earlier EP D.U.M.E. which noted on their transformation from an electro outfit to something very dance punkish with goth undertones. They had already been heading that way. Listening to their earlier singles "Airports and Luxury" or "Pressure Suit" Nicola's vocals are barely in the song. They are flat monotone, hidden behind layers of production. Over time she slowly emerged from the background, getting a more throated sound. What was interesting about her approach was that though it had undergone a metamorphosis, the core was in some indescribable anxiety. It was introvert exhibitionism and was very appealing when combined with the strong electronic thump Adult. applied. Well the sound changed as well, first with bass appearing in Anxiety Always and then the inclusion of Tamion 12"'s drummer on D.U.M.E.. Hell, at first listen, the sound is almost indistinguishable from Tamion. It's Spooky Kids music that is punk in its energy and lo-fi aspects but tempered with a different sort of empathy. More art class than woodshop.

Now this worked on D.U.M.E. because, although the sound had changed, there was still the significant parts from the previous releases: the pent-up tension, the odd subject matter, the instrumental tracks. The closer "Don't Talk" was a redone version of an existing Adult. track. The song writing was tight, it looped about a bit and the instruments were tight.

Maybe that was the benefit of the shorter format. Strung out to twelve songs the new Adult. trades in the inventiveness of earlier releases for a monotony. Sure, "Gimme Trouble" has a nice driving overdriven bassline and tiny drums and 'verbed out guitar. Of course Nicola has taken on her part to yelp a bit to much. It isn't that she's trying to hit a note she can't but has decided having every verse end on a flat note is a cool sound. Instead its a bit grating. Not screaming or yelling but someone TALKING VERY LOUDLY IN YOUR EAR.

Now a bit of this is fine, and the tracks hover around the 3:30 mark but some even then find a way of overstaying their very short welcomes. For one, almost every base line is repeated four by four quarter note bars over and over and over and over. Considering that the BPM never alters, and the percussion is a uniform sort of bland electronic Casio shit drums. Nicola thankfully breaks up her vocal delivery now and then but it means every song has no signature vocal composition to it to differentiate it from the same background. It's odd because at times she has a wonderfully soft voice, the sort you wake someone up with.

So where before Adult. would break things up with some odd electronic tricks, instrumental tracks or wierd concept songs ("People, You Can Confuse Them" is wonderfully off the wall). But now there's none of that. Shit, even D.U.M.E. had that. Tamion's album had that. To get a good grasp of the electronic elements you have to crank the song and then your ear will ring from the nagging vocals and instruments.

And what is so frustrating is that there are some wonderful songs on here. "In My Nerves", "Helen Bach", the title track (all which happen to fall in the same kinda uptempo 100 BPM range). But then Adult. has finally produced songs I can't stand listening to. They are idiotic stupid chirping into analog recording equipment that should have been cut from the reel after the first listen. If the first song I ever heard from them was "Lovely Love", "Turn into Fever" or "Disappoint the Youth" I would make it my personal mission to never hear them again.

This is the first Adult. album that shows an absence of creativity. It is less wierd, less original. They sound *gasp* average, indistinguishible from two dozen other bands doing the same thing. They've reduced their sound, reduced themselves to just a regurgitation of the same 3:30 bit. Damn, how the hell did they make such a nosedive in a short 6 months? This album shows a lack of quality control. Sitting on the best material for another half year, cutting the chaff and recording something new would've made a product easily three times this album's best. And that is a shame: this album's high points are some really funky damn songs.

This is a completely different band and its almost an umbridge of the Detroit ethos to not drop this under a different moniker. Shit, don't most Detroit acts pull out a different name for each 12" they cut? If this was a side project I might be more forgiving but since this album probably means the Adult. I could appreciate is gone (unless Adam and Nicola do some hardcore head-out-of-ass pulling) I'm a bit cold.

Now then, compare Gimme Trouble to Boards of Canada's Campfire Headphase. BoC had taken a similar long divergence from their original sound by working centrally on guitar and drum kits. Or it might be a return to their sound as the brothers have said that their sound had always been crafted out of guitar anyway and it was only then translated into their recognizable warm 70's slideshow sound. That might go a long way to explaining the enveloping aesthetic Boards of Canada always had, one of wilderness retreat isolationist recital. That these men crafted an EP in homage to the Branch Davidians all play to these elements. Where before their albums might have sounded like parts of suburban landscapes, Campfire Headphase sounds in part further off into the forest. It has the construction of a readymade campfire album. Here the kind of happenstance of free range music is captured. The sound is at one time more robotic and yet loose. "Chromakey Dreamcoat" has an almost shoe-gaze guitar chord looped off of a pedal and then worked into the sequence like probably any other synthesized sound. Songs like "Satellite Anthem Icarus" lets the guitar be the rhythm for the gurgling electronic effects to be painted on. The sound is very readymade, without the hazardous frozen sound of music too preprocessed for it's own good. "Satellite" works as a collaborative progression, there is no destined point of arrival, only an accrual of sounds that instead talk about here, the moment.

This album is about the human element. The sound of fingers sliding down the frets are a most beautiful sound, captured wonderfully on "Peacock Tail". There was someone there, at that moment, and it is preserved here as the memories that might have guided it. Campfire Headphase might be acknowledged in a marketing executive summary for being "the one where they started using all the guitars" but you might never notice if you had all the songs played out of order. "Sherbet Head", "'84 Pontiac Dream", "Slow this Bird Down" all sooth with the same dynamics that Boards of Canada has promised. But here come with the strength of a specific time, of a specific moment to be shared.

The best track is "Dayvan Cowboy", offered up on a background fuzzed out guitar that falls through the buildings as an echo for minutes and then there's just this two downstrokes and one up and it stirs me in a certain way. Like an image way up close so you only see the individual flickering pixels and it draws back and back and back and you only see the ocean only to then at a moment find that the face of a boy. You knew him. Then.

As Cam'ron would say: powerful stuff, doggie. The slow trickle away of the album sucks away on the fuel like the aptly titled "Farewell Fire". It is abandoned and it dies out. Disappointing in that there's about 6 minutes of silence that is just sort of unnecessary. There could have been something there.

Boards of Canada crafted an album. It has ebbs and flows. It has signature moments, a defining sound. But it also follows that single ray of light that stabs from the clouds into the eyes of everyone that looks into it. It expands their mythology, not just rehashing it or making a forage to less well mapped places. It's an album that was made and birthed to the world complete.

Adult. Gimme Trouble **1/2
Boards of Canada The Campfire Headphase ****1/2

So the theater was packed but my brother (along with Charlie and Jerri) were able to catch the latest Harry Potter (The Goblet of Fire) on opening weekend. So a couple of caveats: I have never read any Harry Potter book. Personally the enjoyable escapism is fine for movies (which are a passive activity unless particularly muscular in their concepts) but I have much better things to spend my time reading (such as Murakami's nonfiction about the Aum-Tokyo subway attacks). This of course means I can only give marginal detail to the "intention" of the original lit and the final product refracted through the lens of the director. That being said-

• The movie starts off right with all the principals (Harry, Hermione and Ron) heading off to the Quidditch World Cup. In rapid fashion you are introduced to Cedric ("Hey"), Krum ("Look, its the world's greatest seeker!"), and the Deatheaters. All very important characters and all very important to this specific book and all given the bare minimum amount of time to be aware of their existence. This sets the table for this adaptation: they cut out that Privit St. bullshit and went straight into the story. They had to: the HP books are growing linearly in size while the average tolerable movie length is still just about 2 and a half hours. So this means a compromise of telling what is important and keeping it true or telling everything and making bold alterations.
• So the pace of the movie is relentless. As a first time viewer and unfamiliar with the source material, I couldn't for the life of me remember Cedric's name. And he exists in the plot almost expositorially: he is older, he is in the Tri-wizard, Harry helps him, he helps Harry, he takes Cho to the Winter Cotillion, he makes The Ultimate Sacrifice. All important to the story. But I can't tell you one distinguishing thing about him beyond a generality (older, handsome, nice, popular).
• A lot of characters who were important to the arc of GoF were that way: Cho, Krum, Cedric's father, the Crouches. Ok, some were only secondary. The Crouches fall in importance as the annual Teacher of the Dark Arts (interesting color, no depth needed). What house of magic were each of them then? And other than being a cute girl, why should I give two shits about Cho? Especially since Harry then drops his infatuation with her all together in the next book and begins to start rubbing it out to Ginny Weasley?
• Also, they're going to have to replace the actress who plays Ginny. If she is supposed to turn into a witchy woman sex kitten, this girl ain't it. It's about as plausable as that mongoloid who play's Zoey Barlett on The West Wing being a hottie.
• I guess I can feel the creative team's gambit: they gave one scene to Sirius Black, two to Snape (who totally needs more. Fucking Rickman, man! I just rewatched Die Hard last week: "OH GOD! OH GOD PLEASE DON'T KILL ME!" Priceless), three lines to Draco, and his dad. These are your meat and potatos secondary characters. They are the established foils and require no introduction. GoF sort of takes them for granted and they receed into the background, only to appear when necessary to move the plot or as glorified cameos.
• They smartly gave some face time to the main three and Dumbeldore. Such as the budding romance between Ron and Hermione and the ensuing complications or the fatherly mentoring of Harry.
• How I would've solved this amount of content v. time constraint: instead of extending the movie out and covering many individual points, I would've reduced it to the three major characters, focusing mostly from their perspective. Anything that occurs outside of their experience is out, and anything that they are not directly involved in only occur in the background. You want to have Hagrid and Le Femme Gigante fall in love? Have it happen in the back of the frame in several shots. Narrative and dialogue require more than strong structure. Showing them being bashful, falling ever closer in orbits, exchanging glances, then dancing would tell the extact same story while saving them 5 minutes of specialized scenes. All the fans would know exactly what was going on, what was being said and the movie could have focused on the heart of it: Harry and his folks against Voldemort.
• Of course that might not have been the best: the young actors aren't... the best. They don't take anything from the table but their scenes sort of skip the record. Only Ron gasfacing everything from his horrible tux to dancing with Dame Maggie Smith is perfect. Hermione's lopsided grin at the end or her fighting with Ron just never seem to hit true intensity. Nor did the fighting between Ron and Harry. It felt more like a put-on. Radcliffe does two things well though: look scared and look frazzled. Since that's about 80% of the Potter character it works.
• Of course if they followed my advice, they could've spent more time working on the relationships between the three and finding a stronger heartbeat.
• Can Harry finally be not impressed by magic anymore? Him getting giddy and shooting off a "Brilliant" is starting to wear.
• Emma Watson is going to break some hearts. If Hermione's supposed to be a big geek well that never fucking worked. Emma doing this role is akin to trying to ugly up a model in a teen comedy with glasses and a ponytail. Not that anyone is complaining.
• At the heart of GoF is the Triwizard tourney which is absolutely satisfying in all three phases as a complete vision of the fantastic. Sadly they are frustratingly short. Also they seem to be needlessly lethal. Were they going to let Le Cour's sister just die? Harry could've been eaten, burnt, crushed, flattened, or drowned just as easily as surviving. Such behavior in the real world is considered child endangerment, magic or no. It wouldn't make a riveting story otherwise but still, just something I thought about.
• I liked all the other schools but why was Sturmdrang populated with Slavs? Shouldn't there be some Goethe and Schiller references up in that bitch? Their intro dances were a nice character foundations. Still, what would Hogwarts students do if the roles were reversed? Sing "Another Brick in the Wall Pt 2."? Seemed to be a sort of Colorful Natives from a Foreign Land thing.
• Also GoF had a strange sort of affirmative action going on. Suddenly their's Indians, Chinese, more blacks, etc. Of course none of them are in any important role (other than Cho who is just some East Asian eye candy with three lines and a Scotsman accent). Did Hogwarts institute new admission standards? And if I was Ron I definitely would've hit it with that Patel sister. ef oh ex why. Me thinks Rowling got bit by the criticism.
• Jarvis Cocker? Jonny Greenwood? Hmmm. This sort of wink-wink tongue-in-cheek thing never ages well and always comes off as a bit creaky. As a gag it always falls flat. Bodysurfing uptight teachers? What, is this a fucking beer commercial?
• If Draco's dad is a Deatheater why the fuck was he there at the wake at the end? His ass should be hanging from a meathook in Azkaban and a wire tied around his nuts, the other end hooked into a car battery. I mean, that's how we roll in this motherfucker.

Ok, this is starting to come off whiny. I enjoyed this movie. I could enjoy this movie because I was familiar with all the previous movies. GoF is built specifically with that in mind. And for those looking for their next fix of HP, it goes down well, more easily than The Prisoner of Azkaban which was a bit confusing in the plot department. The movie does this by making calculated assumptions about what you know and what you need to know. What is sacrificed is depth. I liked it mostly because I liked the first three. I never felt two ways about Cedric eating it nor about Cho as a person. In part if feels like a lot of setup but I also think it is different to be introduced a character and lose them in the course of 500 pages as compared to a 2.5 hour movie. This level of storytelling you can do with a miniseries or a TV show, you can't with the hard edges of film. Paring down the movie to the core elements (the Tourney, the big three, Cedric, Dumbledore and the lead secondaries) would have made for a more gripping and resonant movie. Still, the one we're given is a good and satisfying investment of your time. Recommended.

Printing is the product of aggregation. Recognizable shapes can be rendered with one pass and the product will be predictably cheap. Finer granularities only appear through repeat passes. A reduction is a print created through the process of cutting down a medium (woodblock, linoleum, a 330 x 499 pixel square, etc.) and laying a fine matte of ink. Each of these is a transcient printblock that will be destroyed in the processes of creating the next reduction. With the print, all that is left is a printblock where there is no color and only black: Here.

So I'm backlogged on albums as people keep dropping new music off on me asking for listens. Some of these albums I've had for over a month and what is a boy to do? Well for one I usually listen to music either A. in my car or B. at work. Well the first means I would need to burn it onto a data CD, which I'm not to hype on doing (because I'm anal and only want CDs by genre) and I'm not going to ride around with my iPod in there. In addition, the kid now has new company in his computer lab. So I'm not able to jam out on my music when even "louder" rock offends his sensibilities. So I'm left in endless loops of downtempo, electro, and IDM. Sometimes he asks me to maybe play something else (because it starts to lull him to sleep) and so I think "So what do you want Seasons in the Abyss or that new Clipse mixtape where they find about fifty million new ways to describe the drug trade?).

This happened when last I was rocking The Man Machine. Kraftwerk? How do you fall asleep to that? Especially when his solution is to listen to Dave Brubeck (zzzzz. Someone get me some Coltrane and Thelonius stat). Kraftwerk is the definition of Le Fwohnk and don't let anyone else tell you otherwise. Beyond Trans-Europe Express, the electro pioneering begins with TMM. Really, so fucking classic. "The Robots"? With that Czeck speak and spell and the synths going off like silent alarms? So completely worth it. And I like how the beat kicks in (with that laser high-hat) and the verse chord is- just- a- bit- slow. You want it to finish up on some eighth notes but it methodically goes on in quarters and maintains like a rubberband. And the album closes with the so completely sampled "Man Machine" which has the great honor of being Double Sampled: first by Fearless Four ("Rockin' It") which was then used by MC Lyte and others. It's such a glorious and exuberant break and you can see how it helped set off all the kids in Detroit. There's an ever so subtle reverb on it that wafts off of it like oil vapor. "The Model" (Rammstein has the honor of having, according to Florian, making the worst cover of this song. This boy likes it), "Neon Lights", "Metropolis". All so great.

But the track I really dig off of here is "Space Lab" which sounds like such an '88 club techno banger it isn't even funny. Someone throws down a toilet effect, peels off a few Kraftwerkisms. Then the track just shoots out of the gate with a somehow furious ambient rhythm. The long lines it draws over the beat is so fucking fantastic. And then in the bridge it has that little dark stab part. Heh. One thing I never got was how people always took Kraftwerk to be this ironic Luddite message where they were composing this contra-technological statement. "Radioactivity is about the dangers of radiation! Autobahn is about the dehumanizing sexualization of industry! Tour De France is about a Masturbatory Jerkoff KillBot Factory in Your Son's Room at Home Right NOW!!!!" To strap such simplistic polemics on Kraftwerk is to both complicate what they do and to reduce the music to idiot-space. Kraftwerk wrote probably the first music for the modern age: though tracing many features to concurrent scenes of rock and R&B, Kraftwerk wrote music both in the 20th century form of pop album signatures while replacing the ancient histrionics of guitar or orchestra with artifacts that could not have existed at any previous time. It was contemporary music, a microcosm of both the rewards and perils of technology. Kraftwerk couldn't just roll up their labs, car their 10 tons of materiel and set it up in a farm. It was wholly dependent. And yet it sounded unlike anything before. It blew doors, levelled cities, rocked a Starter jacket and a kufi before anyone else and still maneuvers through the streets on the clean whitewalls of yesterday's luxury automobiles. It's like that.

Now that sound has found its way back to the innovators. Madlib, as Yesterday's New Quintet, on a less jazz but more funk offshoot, Sound Directions, has this unbelievable song on the album The Funky Side of Life called "A Divine Image". It has this warning radar sort of high electronic point (sort of offputting, like AFX's "Ventolin" but not that bad) and it breaks into this sort of surreal James Brown break with scattering drums, and phantom horn section. The sound reels like a hallucination as yet unimagined. The sort of music that silences everything during a movie's montage and reeks of absolute hazard. Madlib always seems to find something outrageous to do. That he can just wind off these beats and compositions like there's no tomorrow (as a hip-hop producer/MC, as jazz, and here as funk). The album, after a disquieting intro, opens with "Dice Games" a projectile of a cut that leads with an interplay of bassline and horns following with a wonderful bit of a flute break down. That really kind of powdery kind that reads like a bit of conversation. The Funky Side of Life follows this as a sort of blueprint. Affected keyboards, and a bit of bubbling drums ("Wanda Vidal", "Play Car"), smooth cabaret ("Forty Days") or just straight up rollicking hymns (the eponymous cut, and the cover "The Horse"). The only thing about the album is maybe how too even it is. The breaks never really escape the 80-90 BPM range and the feel is a long set that plays after the partially acknowledge local group and before the lights drop and the headliner comes out to a few drum stabs. Once again the frustration of Madlib's artistic ADHD comes out: you get ten wonderful tracks that average about three and a half minutes and never show that last bit of polish or composition to really take the album to the front. Interesting to add to your collection and might spark some conversation but it'll never jump immediately into the front of your conscious.

*****

So what might possess me to buy an album that I already own, that I already have ripped and that would cost me another 14 bucks? Well the fact that the album, when pressed to disc was mixed so low that all of it kind of bled together and never sounded right when played in a list with the rest of the albums. That Martin decided to package the remastered Pigface debut, Gub, with the Welcome to Mexico... Asshole live disc, didn't have much to do with it. Goddamn I love this album. I remember the first time I heard it: getting driven to High School with Joe (who within a year would pussy out on acid, go to rehab and then milk that for the next two years and still be an absolute suck artist) and his mom and we rocked this in her tape deck. Man, we subjected adults to all sorts of shit: hours of night driving with Vulgar Display of Power looped endlessly, you name it. But hearing Gub (and then Fook a few weeks later) totally blew my mind. For one thing I hadn't heard many collaborative albums at the time, I had shit of an idea who Steve Albini was, I was only moderately familiar with the family of artists who made up the get, that it was based around two drummers... most important it fell into a really fascinating time in Industrial. Ahead lay the collision with speed metal and continental electro dance. For a moment everything was suspended at arms length so that the raucus magnetic thunder that eminated from Sheffield hung with manifold possibility. All the different personalities, all the different ways, and something solid created. Consider all the vocalists: the overprocessed howling of Ogre on "Tapeworm" where the tapeloops and effects just bellow out of the instrument of his voice while the the rhythm section has this wierd discintegration going on all about it. David Yow hyperventilating over like forty bass drums on "The Bushmaster". The Bowie-isms of Chris Connelly throughout, the sexual angst of a young Trent Reznor (who would then remix "Suck" put it as a hidden track on Broken and then earn the undying hatred and jealousy of the scene as he blew up), or the loose German ramblings of En Esch. "Tailor Made" has probably the most classic industrial rock vocals on it; Paul Barker sort of yowling angry inanities. But where the song if written three years later would be a wall of pedals and guitars and samples is just a big unbelievably funked-out bass line (Bill Rieflin pulling double duty. His basswork on "Point Blank" is also great). The song has those huge long intro and outro break parts where Albini extrudes the shit out of the drums and it gets that grimy distorted shit we all love. The idiotic "Whoop-whoop-whoop" sample at the end. It's strikingly avant garde and particularly fearless (making the shame of Easy Listening even more disappointing). So much of this album is just fucked up tape loops and drums. And it always seemed to bring the best out of the best of the artist. "War Ich Nicht...?" with the competing drums in each channel that sounds like some Berlitz speed reading of Bukowski. Or "Suck" with that thick acid sort drum effect that appears to slide up walls. Here, the original version has unbelievable restraint with the bassline waiting til the 1:20 mark and then the rewinding film samples. The effect is agonizing instead of short and simple ejaculatory release. Chris Connelly really captured me on this album. Maybe because he has four tracks here, all of them weaving across a spectrum of emotion (the agonizing noise of "Blood and Sand", the smooth cool of "Little Sisters") with the crown being "Weightless" which forms from the start of acquiescence to the state of affairs. He sings sort of sideways, that kind of "I'm not going to let this one get over". The guitar forms these sort of long punctuations. And then there's the indecipherable chorus and *bam* the second verse which is just so goddamn- transcient? He sees something and tries to capture the image with words that do it no justice save the confused overwhelming of senses. Sentiment, is weightless.

Damn. Listening to this and then going back to the poverty of what goes for the scene now just saddens me. Gub is the sort of album that was made with no notions, no ideas of what was to be. It was a gift without ideas of satisfying quota or expectation. No one cared, gave a shit. It was your favorite bands making some shit their label wouldn't let them get away with otherwise. Have one song? Fine. Got some fucked up reels you found at a yardsale? Shit, throw them on there! Oh man, that's twisted! They found this place because they weren't anywhere else. The provisions weren't there for an audience. No net and you let go of the trapeze. At a time I would prefer the wall of guitar, the satisfying progressions, the albums that were all a good standard deviation placed from the mean. But when that one sound would wear on me and I'd tire of it, Gub always reveals something new. Listening you can hear the dozen alternative futures of the early 90's where caution had not yet taken hold. Between the notes there lay worlds untapped.

[As for Welcome to Mexico..., well I listened to it once, thought "huh" and put it back in the sleeve. Really, as a memento it means much more to the participants than the audience. It can go there right next to my The Truth Will Out]

Kraftwerk The Man Machine *****
Sound Directions The Funky Side of Life ***1/2
Pigface Gub ****

Your Saturday night
perfume
Soured into
Faint Pumpkin
Potpourri
That my car
wears
in the morning

With that out of the way, with all we talked about earlier this week, how did Jarhead measure up as a war movie? I'm going to run at this bulleted list style because that's just the sort of guy I am. There are probably going to be spoilers in here so caveat emptor.

• These days it isn't easy to make a war movie, considering how deep the genre is. It's been around forever, done by basically every civilization that's ever existed. In a sort of pomo twist, Jarhead, tips its hat to many of these, overt and implicit: the marines watch Apocalypse Now! and get the credits before The Deer Hunter. Which is odd: I just can't see soldiers sitting down and being mad excited about real headspace movies that kind of take "the war" for granted.
• Of course one of this movie's themes is the sort of extinction of the elite: the best warriors in the best military in the world (being scout snipers in the Marines, you could argue they're the best of the best of the best) and how in our Netcentric Operations world (power to the edge warfighting through information synthesis and having aircraft stop this diddling with our dicks shit and drop some bombs right on people's heads). In this world, the winding tension of basic, of sniper school, and in the endless patrols through the desert is never released.
• Because of that, the movie works best when the snipers are in the desert, battling the anxious boredom before the fighting. This is what separated the Gulf War from all wars previous and is the one statement this movie can make and stand out in the pack of war movies.
• That Jarhead the movie (I assume the book is richer across the breadth of topics) comes off like an executive summary is probably what holds it back most. So where it works the best, during Desert Shield, are short and sort of episodic while never getting the depth that would really take this movie to the other level.
• The marines flipping out, fucking around, playing football in NBC suits, getting cruel twists from home (the above mentioned Deer Hunter video. Those that see the movie will know what I'm talking about), drinking crazy homebrew during Christmas Eve (shades of The Great Escape), the camel patrol, fighting scorpions. All of this really work and the movie glides at this point.
• But its hard to have a boot camp series after Full Metal Jacket and not have it feel second rate. The solution would be to give the scenes more time. But this then cuts down on the ability to talk about the Gulf War. The movie makes the mistake of shoving both parts in and leaving you unsatisfied. It's like two ounces of porterhouse and a part of a lobster tail. Each just good enough to taunt you with what you could've had if you had only done one or the other.
• Camaraderie, again is what will make and break a war movie and though Jarhead has some wonderfully powerful scenes (after the flares snafu, before the final airstrike, under the burning oil wells which is a fantastic piece of cinema: haunting and marks itself on your soul a little bit) you are left wondering where these characters were in the previous scenes.
• By the end we know Swofford, but Troy (his spotter and best friend) or any of the others only really show up when it is necessary for the plot. It gets a bit expository like "This is the time when _______ did _________". It's too convenient. I want humanity, not interchangeable parts. The irony of a war movie is that the uniform and the training is supposed to make the warriors identical. A great war movie brings each one impossibly close. The core frustration of this movie is how little we have about these men. Mendes seems to arbitrarily choose one to make The Point of which ever scene we're in.
• I was thinking of putting Jamie Foxx in that list, but he's an NCO and with Swoff and the rest as the core of the story, he is as he should be: a sort of omnipresent father figure. I would've loved to have more of him, and he damn sure sold the role. I don't know if it will get him a Supporting Oscar though. Let me just say again that I really like Jamie Foxx. He's really fucking talented.
• I also really fucking like Chris Cooper. He shows up, again, and steals each and every scene. I'm also glad the President of the United States (for people who watch 24 anyway) was there. Some great casting.
• I think two passages at the end really should've been the focus of the movie: the scene where the Vietnam veteran Marine jumps on the bus and the closing passage about "Still out there in the desert".
• How that each war is different/the same and that it never leaves the men could've really gotten the bulk of the treatment. The movie never gets to that point until after the first third.
• The movie would've been better served starting in Saudi Arabia and then filling in the gaps through recollection and fine character detail. I think an opening credits sequence from over a Marine's shoulder on one of their patrols through the endless flatness of the desert, no sound except for the clink of gear as the credits silently pop up would've set the table beautifully. You could feel the boredom, the heat, the insipidness of patrolling desert. One long unbroken shot (giving shades of Lawrence of Arabia). The mis-en-scene would've said it all.
• I liked the closing montage, but we were left without any real idea of Troy, which is a shame. I guess that's a summary of the entire film: Mendes has so much material to work with that he was unable to pick and choose and instead gives us samplings across the spectrum (none of which by themselves are a satisfying mean). Jarhead is a good movie, but you can see a great movie peeking out through its edges. For a boy like me that's even more frustrating than a bad movie. A bad movie you can forget, freeing that memory for something else. But a borderline great movie sticks with you, taunting you to examine it for what might have been. Call it the Godfather III effect.

The autumn trees are out
turning the leaves
to gold
Except one:
The shade
of
Black Cherry Red,
your favorite
color.

Well with Jarhead coming out this weekend, I thought I'd take a little time to discuss War Movies on two major axes: first, what makes a war movie and, second, why the hell do I hate Saving Private Ryan and love The Thin Red Line. This is complicated by the fact that the first is a War Movie and the second isn't.

Whowanseekwar

A common misconception is that a war movie is about the war. This is wrong. Apocolypse Now! is a great movie, Top 25 material. It has Vietnam, soldiers, and fighting but it is not a war movie (and, no, it is not because it is an adaptation of Conrad's Heart of Darkness). Meanwhile, A Few Good Men, a courtroom drama about hazing and a cover-up at Gitmo and without a single shot fired in anger, is a war movie.

So how can this be? Simple, a war movie is not about the war, but the warriors. More specifically it is about the culture of warriors, the culture of men distilled by the high contrast of conflict. See, In the Company of Men has all the hallmarks of a war movie, save the actual crucible of self-preservation. You add that, and it's a war movie. A military psychologist would say it is an analysis of combat primary groups. The executive summary is Esprit de Corps.

The Scientific View

If the feminine instinct is tickled by the exercises of Romantic Comedies (e.g. what love is, how women and men overcome adversity and end up in pairs) then a similar masculine instinct, no less social, is theorized by war movies. Military training focuses on PT and MOS sets but it really is about one thing: primary groups. This is the psychological theory of sublimating individual goals with group goals. The interesting trick is to take the core survival instinct (self-preservation) and instill a sense of goals that a group wide. This is why the war in the war movie is so important (even if it is some cold tension as in A Few Good Men): the risk of death. Simple team-building is just a positive sum game, convincing everyone that if we all do our parts (uneven as they may be) we will all get part of the spoils. Individual goals are supported by team goals. As much as we want to bemoan losing our jobs or getting paid less for more risk, pedestrian life is all grays and lacks real definition. And we can indulge our instincts at any moment: the risks get to high we can just walk away and work the window at Burger King. The team is composed of selfish individuals.

For the warfighter, the inverse is actually true: in conflict, the selfish instincts are lethal to the group, and even the individual. Where a fight-or-flight instinct might save your ass from getting stomped in a bar or get you out of a mutual fund, in a war, the individuals only succeed in spite of their instincts. Groups that hesitate, freeze under fire, or break and disperse will be rolled over and swallowed up by a ready opponent. And though fleeing might preserve the individual temporarily, his life is in more danger as the very protection he seeks (the greater society) has crumbled because of his selfishness.

Primary Groups are then unlike teams as they do not generally work via reward-giving, instead by punishment-denial. The idea is to replace "I'm going to die if I don't run" with "I'm going to die if I don't help this guy next to me because he's going to make sure I don't get my ass shot off". This creates a Group Individual where the success might like with one or with many but the failure lies with all. Exclusory rather than inclusory fundamentals in the form of strenuous and detail oriented training and, if need be, group enforced punishment. This is the brilliance of the first half of Full Metal Jacket, though R. Lee Ermy is ruthless and the treatment of Pyle is vicious, the unspoken realization is that it was justified. If this sounds brutal, remember, that's why there's the conflict in the War Movie: the absence of war undermine the very stakes of Esprit de Corps. If you take these movies and strip them of the fighting, then it becomes a frivolous exercise. No one would chose to have a son of a bitch shoot wildly at them. The war has set that down as an assumption: "some son of a bitch is shooting at you, what are you going to do?" The question between active and passive conflict is the fundamental one of A Few Good Men: which predominates, the choice of a civilian becoming a Marine or the Marine's fidelity to his fellow Marines and how this is colored by a hot versus cold war? (Though Pyle might have been a draftee [the draft started in '65; Tet, portrayed in the movie, happened in '68] his selection of the Marine Corps was his own. The Marines are interesting as where other services can try to slot every recruit to their ability, Every Marine is a Rifleman, demanding a baseline standard). Deep thought (beer-in-hand is optional) over the treatment of Pyle versus Santiago is the sort of soul searching that any great art form should hope for. And explains one reason why the war movie is such a great genre. It sharpens and illuminates.

Of course many war movies aren't nearly so critical or bleak. Most take upon themselves the complex rituals of respecting rank versus respecting ability (and how both compete and assist the Group). A recent example is the excellent episode of Band of Brothers "The Breaking Point" where Winters has to choose between enforcing order by supporting Lt. Dike (because the Army isn't a democracy) while battling Dike's own incompetence. The instinct question is raised in a different way as Winters (now a Major) must resist the urge to run to command Easy Company (at the risk of the whole operation to take Foy) when Dike freezes. How the rest of the battle plays out is the sort of things that can only happen in real life (because no one would believe it if it was fiction). Kubrick followed a similar path with the much darker WWI movie Paths of Glory (where incompetent French leadership, to hide their own embarrassment at a failed futile assault, plan to execute three soldiers who "fell back" contrary to orders). This one doesn't have much of a happy ending but it's still very good.

Probably the most popular variant of the War Movie is what I like to call the "Willie and Joe" where the movie in some parts takes focus on the sardonic grunt eye-view: Stalag 17, Hogan's Heroes, The Dirty Dozen, or (one of my alltime favs) The Great Escape. Ok, yeah, so Steve McQueen (eternal badass) was an officer, but the gist was the same: wacky "plays by his own rules" American soldier rubs everyone the wrong way. He does his own thing with complete disregard of the Way Things Should Be Done. This means he has like fifteen brilliant escape attempts and schools around on a Nazi bike in a tee shirt and some khakis making mad jumps over barbwire fences. Of course when it comes down to it, what does Hills do: he escapes only to let himself get caught after mapping out the surrounding territory 5 miles around the camp. Sure they give him the head escape slot, but after finding out the tunnel is about 18 feet short of the forest what does he do? He sets up a signal for when the guards are far from the tunnel and then stays, helping the other airmen to escape. Yeah we knew he was Steve McQueen and probably damn near bulletproof but it demonstrates beautifully the fundamental tension between loyalty to self and loyalty to the group. The chips are down but you don't cash in.

Here we could list off all the great war movies (Platoon, Black Hawk Down, Run Silent Run Deep, Crimson Tide, We Were Soldiers, Midway, A Bridge Too Far, Patton, The Big Red One, Das Boot, Stalingrad, Hell's Angels, Gallipoli, All Quiet on the Western Front, Sergeant York, Fire on the Plains, Five Scouts along with those listed above) but I think most of y'all know where to look. And this isn't even counting films focused on the pre-20th century. Much like the question of love and boys and girls, war is a human condition of infinite variations. These movies are just the tip of the iceberg.

What It is... and What It Ain't

"Now that we've gone this far Mr. Smartass, what isn't a war movie then?" Well a great example is The Deer Hunter. Now this movie is kind of a bridge since the argument can be made that it's first half is a war movie: Bobby D, John Cazale (aka Fredo, the only man who had every picture he starred in win the Best Picture Oscar), John Savage and Bruce Dickinson all show up at the wedding, go hunting and have a big metaphorical experience. This then cuts to their imprisonment and outrageous escape. At this point, where Walken is separated from the others it stops being a war movie. Flat. From here on in it's character studies in a way that would not be out of place in a Chekhov play. De Niro walks around the US, goes looking for Nicky. Nicky gets hooked on the professional Russian roulette circuit. The characters are about the connections they have and lost and seek and yearn for. And there are thousands of novels like this: they are written by Nick Hornsby and Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. The group risk is lost and now it is a question of ourselves.

Now is this a bad movie? Fuck no. But this is like what people got when they went and saw Rules of Attraction expecting another stupid teen movie: not something less or more, but something different (more exactly, something they were not there to see). Expectation is never something we should judge something by. And I guess my hope would be is that folks who see of these great not-war movies realize it and not let the "this isn't a fucking war movie" message turn them off to some great fucking film. In these movies war is either a set piece or a larger metaphor for the individual. However all the conversation (even that between characters) is just meta-narration that could all be an aside by the protagonist. Some others:

Lawrence of Arabia - WWI, some great shit from Tony and Omar Sharif, but it's about Sir Lawrence and that's it. Making it about some wage slave would remove a lot of great cinematography but wouldn't change the underlying theme.

Little Dieter Needs to Fly, - A young German boy grows up to fly for the US in Vietnam, gets shot down and then races to his escape. Harrowing but not a war movie. It's a Herzog character study along the lines of Grizzly Man or the one about the ski jumper.

Downfall - Hitler is usually a good sign but this is really just a recounting of a sick and twisted little bastard's last days. We could call it "Willy Loman if He Was Responsible for 20 Million Deaths".

Along the similar lines, The Thin Red Line is not a war movie. So why do I like it and not Saving Private Ryan?

Ranting, Bitching, Complaining

For one thing a genre doesn't make or break a movie. Like I said above, many people saw TTRL and were furious at what it wasn't. That it came out within a few months of SPR meant that the two will always be inextricably linked. Leaving the theater I remember someone declaring "What the fuck was that?"

But before we get to that, first, why do I hate SPR so much? Well let me call it what it is "One Fantastically Gripping Sequence followed by a bunch of Sappy Implausible and Stupid Conventions". The Omaha Beach landing? Great stuff. It channeled so much greatness: John Ford, Kurosawa's Ran. It made the audience both detached (not specifically tied to any one person) and gripped, confused and pained. You could feel the weight of the whole things, like taking a shoulder of the world from Atlas.

And I'll say that if Spielberg would have kept with that, he would've made a great movie. Shit, he actually did, a whole mini-series (the aforementioned Band of Brothers). The problem with realism in war is that everything else (the characters, the circumstance, and the dialogue) all have to sit on the razor edge of plausible tension. This was easier with BoB as it was an interpolation of actual events. But SPR wasn't just the Omaha scenes. There was another two hours after that. And the problem with SPR is that Spielberg tried to make this War Movie into a Non-war Movie with the Find Ryan sequence.

So why didn't this work? Well because the movie then goes about undermining the very Esprit de Corps it must hang its hat on after the first scenes. It creates an almost junior high level scenario of this bridgehead that Must Be Held At All Costs that is more appropriate for a Rambo movie. This just sets up the entire sequence of disasters including Upham "The Character Who Should Have Been Shot in the Leg and Left Behind and Who, Despite The Manhandling By Spielberg Does Not Redeem Himself", the Nazis being both goofily sadistic and moronic and the final scene which is just *ugh* makes my skin crawl. My problem is that both Upham and Ryan undermine the very fidelis at the core of the war movie. They are alien to the very concept of conflict and are the equivalent of putting a costume on a miniature dog and demanding that everyone talks to it as if it was a real person. The characters are all broad emotion without any real authentic or realistic characterization to hold them up. They are just cheap jury-rigs by someone who hasn't taken the time to draw out characters who fit the role. Upham being drug along has the same effect as the foxy teen in a horror movie walking backwards through the dark hallway to where the killer is: it only exists because otherwise the filmmaker would have to think up something original instead of forcing convention down our throats. The same with the teary eyed scene at the end: all it needed was a sweep of violins and the disembodied heads of Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ben Affleck floating over it to get the Michael Bay generic emotion ending. It takes something complex (the emotions and loses of war measured against the real and pyrrhic victories) and cuts it down to Hollywood hyperbole. The fact that every time I mention I hate SPR people talk about Omaha, as if someone hit them with an amnesia ray on the rest.

Roger Ebert says that Upham is supposed to be our view through the movie as "he sees it clearly as a vast system designed to humiliate and destroy him. And so it is." I think this is bullshit because it supposes that anyone in the audience would have the Milk Duds wiped from their laps, some BDUs thrown at them and be sent in on D-day RIGHT NOW. Upham is a blissful avoidance of the Primary Groups question. He is somehow inoculated from the entire warfighter experience and plopped down in the center of this movie as to be some sort of statement about individuality. The fact that he then has the preposterous "redemption" burns at me every time. I'm sorry but, no. And that Spielberg tries to pull it over on us makes it even worse.

Now at this point, talking about The Thin Red Line seems kind of odd as it isn't a war movie while SPR is. But what I find so interesting is that I suddenly realized it accomplishes everything that SPR tries to do (all without insulting us or giving us easily digestible answers).

See as He Sees

The thing that kills most people about TTRL is its format. It throws about two dozen characters at us, many recognizable faces (George Clooney, John Travolta, Nick Nolte, John Cusack, Woody Harrelson) in and out of the sequence before we can even grasp what is going on. At most we get James Caviezel, Sean Penn, Elias Koteas, Shit, Adrian Brody is in there for a scene as is Jared Leto in a long dialogue-less role. But the movie jumps around not just from character to character but from internal monologue to internal monologue. Out of nowhere a character will narrate. Well, the character doesn't seem to narrate, instead something speaks in his voice. The narration has an erudition, an omniscience that is beyond the simple characters. And many, like Roger Ebert, see this as the Malick trying to impose himself on the material.

Of course just taking such a weird device at face value is probably the worst way to approach things. Especially when it mimics a similar device in Wings of Desire. In that movie, angels move among us, cataloguing our thoughts, feeling our pain, shouldering our weight, observing, but never interacting. Some of the most beautiful scenes in the movie are of the angels walking with characters, listening to the stream-of-conscious, and then to feel as the character feels the angel touch them and their emotional state broaden. These narrations, much like those in TTRL are very meta, very existential and too poetic to be seen as just thoughts transposed to the audience.

Stepping out further, it parallels the Christian theory of Jakob Bohme (his work itself having parallels to Eastern philosophical thought) where reality is the result of God only being able to know himself through subdivision of his infinite whole and through this interpolative mirror, finding answers about Himself. Behmenistic thought has the world in a Gnostic Ouroboros where there is a great creative and a great entropic force. The central thesis of TTRL is of nature at war with itself, seemingly burning the wick as quickly as it weaves it. Much in the same way the positive and negative suck infinitely on each other. What separates this from Taoism is the angelic messengers as a vehicle of knowing, a way for God to communicate with his creation. In this way, the actions that play out in Guadacanal in TTRL are mystically transcendent because the battle itself is God realizing Himself (both as question and as answer). The scenes are then loud signals on the single conduit of all reality hurtling by as indescribable noise. The movie is the moments of His greatest pleasure, those moments that define some sort of omniscient clarity. They are both schizophrenic and parts of a greater truth. The renga of many haiku.

And there's no one scene in the movie I see as being beaten out of the Dumb Idea Jar: Koteas is grateful to go home, Caviezel seeks to die in the place where he is at peace, Sean Penn survives. Each one edging in from the corners of the photograph.

Now all of this could probably happen somewhere else. And fans of Jones' original novel have good reason to be mightily pissed off. But sometimes movies aren't about just the events unfolding. The composition of the shots, like so many strokes of paint on a canvas, draw out the director's vision in high contrast. The war in the movie is the tightening of the murky shallows of our lives, pieced into something that we might learn from and move on.