It’s the blues, but it’s also folk music, C&W and rap. Buck 65 rhymes like an old-school MC, but has the lyrical sensibility of a beat poet and the voice of a grizzled old trucker. His hard-luck tales of life on the downside are backed by dark, country & western inflected hip-hop beats. Of course, this is an oversimplification: there are a lot of different sounds and styles in here.
This was meant to be nothing more than a concert featuring three local Hong Kong singers. But it turned out to be lots of fun, if often incomprehensible, and had more strange, unexpected moments than you could shake a stick at, unless you’re really good at shaking sticks at strange, unexpected moments.
As a nod to the independent pop music scene in Hong Kong (such as it is), the Arts Festival included this show, featuring three local singer-songwriter types performing with a four-piece backing band.
Continue readingThe quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
This fun novel is also a puzzle and a fairly impressive display of linguistic virtuosity. The book is a progressive lipogram – it starts off normally, but its alphabet shrinks as the story goes on. It’s not too hard to write without using Z, but things get more interesting as letters like D, A and even E vanish. We see more and more creative synonyms being used and invented.
This book consists entirely of letters written by the characters to each other. I like the way the sentences are written – the story is set in a land that esteems words and literature above all, and it shows in the way the characters play with language.
With the cute story and clever wordplay, the first half of the book is a delight. A little after this, the author cops out a bit as he has fewer and fewer letters to work with, and it all gets a bit harder to read. The story continues though, as the characters work against the clock to save their country – by solving a word puzzle.
I really liked this film. Affecting performances, likeable (but not too likeable) characters, and lots of funny, strange moments. A pretty accurate evocation of how Tokyo can appear to the newcomer. Ah, those were the days.
I got this jazz saxophonist’s album Rites years ago, so I was glad to finally see him perform with his group. Some say his playing is evocative of vast snow-covered plains, but I think they just say that because he comes from Norway.
Most of their pieces were build from soundscapes made by the four players, with a healthy dose of the extended solos you’d expect from a jazz group. Frequently, during a solo, the other players would chat to each other or wander offstage for a few minutes. But always the flow of the piece remained unbroken.
The percussionist, Marilyn Mazur really stood out – her rack of instruments looked like a huge version of one of those baby’s toys strung across a playpen, and she did seem to have a lot of fun. She was the only one of the four to smile much, and she definitely had more zip, vim and vigour than the other three all put together.
Legend has it that Art Pepper, in the midst of one of his habitual drink and drugs binges, picked up his saxophone for the first time in months and recorded this classic album with Miles Davis’s rhythm section.
Maybe not true, but a great story. Certainly his playing seems pretty sharp, but still you can imagine there was maybe the odd bottle of gin around during the recording. I’m certainly no expert, but this is an album that’s hard to dislike – good jazz standards with a mellow feel, by top players. It’s fun to listen to this and remember that the man who played this pleasant music had a lifestyle that would put Ozzie Osbourne to shame.
Beautiful, yet slightly unsettling, late-night dreamy sounds. Her languid vocals and the Twin Peaksy music just surround me and make me forget about everything else.
This album goes perfectly with a quiet midnight, dim lighting, and half a bottle of red wine. It evokes the disorienting moments of calm when you return home after a long night out. I could just get lost in it.
Lisa Germano used to sing with a group called OP8. They were good; this album is great.
This is a great CD. The Pancakes music is somewhat minimal, and the lyrics tend towards the bittersweet, but I just can’t get enough of these catchy hooks and fun melodies. It’s cute, but not at all too cute.
The Pancakes is a one-woman band: the music shows a great DIY ethic, mostly just voice, synths and guitar with no production trickery at all. It might be a bit lo-fi for some, but it all fits the lyrics and delivery beautifully. And the song Martin has been playing on endless repeat in my head for the last two weeks.
This CD comes with a second CD called Friendcakes, consisting of cover versions of Pancakes songs by other, even less well-known performers. I haven’t yet listened to it because I don’t want to take PCP out of my CD player…
Have they been taking happy pills? This is a pretty upbeat set, with their usual great melodies and naive vocals. So far I have enjoyed it immensely. It may not scale the quiet heights of “If You’re Feeling Sinister”, but I think it’s just going for a fuller sound. And it’s much better than the patchy “Storytelling”.
I am particularly amused that they rhyme “I’m a cuckoo” with “Harajuku”, since I used to live in Harajuku (Tokyo) until a few days ago. In fact, I bought this CD in Harajuku the day before I left. (And got a free badge with it.) Ah, good times, good times.
A fantastic collection of dreams. Most of these short pieces are less than a page long, but they perfectly convey that weird logic peculiar to dreams. It’s amazing how much he packs into such a short form.
I bought this randomly in a used bookshop, in a double edition with the same author’s Wearing Dad’s Head. WDH is similar to Airplane, but does seem to focus rather a lot on the author’s troubled relationship with his overbearing father. The makes the book more personal, but for me, less beautifully dream-like. (Your dreams may vary.)
