Scotland is Smarmy green hues of all sorts, Quiet crescendos of fog, loud angst filled rain, and a legendary music scene. Consider, The Blue Nile, Altered Images, Belle and Sebastian, Orange Juice!, Soup Dragons, Del Amitri, Franz Ferdinand, Trashcan Sinatras, Midge Ure, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Simple Minds, Aztec Camera. I don’t think I need to go further. What’s more is that it’s scene is still churning out New and amazing music. The boys from “We were promised jetpacks” consider the influence of contemporaries like The Twilight Sad, Frightened Rabbit, and biffy Clyro to name a few. Personally I hear, Mogwai, Radiohead, and some vaguely familiar progressions a la Franz Ferdinand. But what is art if we are not affected by it? How can we utilize art if we do not digest it, be changed by it and create more of it after this process? It is natural and it is the progression of things, and it is why we create art.
While Adam Thompson vocalizes and strums rhythm guitar, Michael Palmer yanks the main guitar, Sean Smith generally throbs and changes up the emotive hues of sound on bass, Darren Lackie fills the room with the wondrous thunder of drums. The band’s debut album, These Four Walls, was released in June of ‘09 on Fat Cat Records based in Brighton UK.
Edinburgh fostered WWPJ back 2003. The ’battle of the bands’ competition at the quartet’s local high school, thought to be a charming tale is actually true, the show was taken by We were promised Jetpacks and rightfully so.
The band moved to Glasgow and started playing gigs in more upstanding venues but were underage in Edinburgh. In September 2008, the band supported Frightened Rabbit during their tour for The Midnight Organ Fight. Recently Gaining steam in the U.S. WWPJ toured the United States, with support from Cincinnati-based band “Bad Veins” whom themselves are creating a torrent of musical news with their painterly intros, and the huge emotive vocalizations of one Benjamin Davis. Recently ‘We were promised’ decided to release “Quiet Little Voices’ on FatCat of course…. that song seemed like the obvious choice. it’s their oldest song, and it’s amazingly catchy. The band tenuously adds ’Some radio stations have already started playing the demo’.
Making sure to finish their college exams, WWPJ will soon be giving it a go on summer festivals in the UK, and heralding the arrival of their new record. These ‘not-so- quiet-little-voices’ stand to make a loud clamber over the next year, and they are voices not to be missed.
Who would’ve thought that a movie with a trailer like the original one for “The Good, Bad and the Ugly” would be so good? By today’s standards it’s laughable. Not only that….. hilarious. The movie remains one of the best in film history. Check it out.
Movies you never expected to be good….and weren’t. Like TROLL 2.
THE TTWM AWARD FOR TRUTH IN ADVERTISING SHOULD BE GIVEN TO THE GUY THAT RE-CUT THIS VID, SHOWING THE REAL MARY POPPINS!
Hiding behind that uber-annoying disgustingly phoney attitude is one Scary Mary Poppins! I knew it! How she didn’t creep me out as a kid I’ll never understand. Somehow I fell under her plastic spell. I sang “Spoon-full-of-Sugar” until my tonsils hung out of my mouth! I danced with a dish towel on my head (since we didn’t have any of those keen english shrunken hats), until my mother hid all of the dishtowels so that her foolish nine year old would come to the dinner table instead of dancing round a record player spinning Marlo Thomas and Mary Poppins records all evening pretending to Mary or “That Girl!” When I wasn’t acting like an psycho flying English nanny or a twenty something New York socialite with a boyfriend named Donald,I used a long bamboo stick that I wrestled away from our dalmation, as a tall unbearably untrustworthy umbrella.
No, I didn’t think I could fly, but I wasn’t at all adverse to climbing on the brick wall and jumping over the rose bushes a few times. How I was suckered into that trusk’s phoney little spell I’ll never know. Up until a few months ago, I still carried fond memories of one Mary Poppins from my childhood straight on into adulthood.
Those memories crash landed the night I ventured back to the Dorothy Chandler in Los Angeles, last November to see “Mary Poppins the Broadway show”. The lackluster performances, joyless routines, forced acting and weakly submitted “Joy” given forth by mis-cast lettuce fed actors were the kiss of death for this play.
Mary Poppins is about joy, wonder, fantasy, and happiness no matter what. It’s about how kids deserve fun, adults that respect them and actually play with them.
None of this came through in the “Mary” that was in L.A. recently. None of it! The underlyingly angry and consistently maniacal laughter of the very narcissistic Mary herself RUINED it all!! That actress should be single-handedly punished for ruining my idylic memories of “the cheerful parasolled one.”
I almost cried there in the 12th row from orchestra. Cozy in my semi-plush crushed fabric seat. I could feel my childhood memories actually being sucked straight outta my head ….Perfectly perky Ms. Poppins was quickly stashed out like a dirty little cigarette smashed into an ashtray filled with butt ridden sand.
The new and dark Mary came across nefariously cute. Cute with an air of suscpicion in her smile. Cute in the way that someone is cute because they are up to something. You don’t know what it is, but you know it’s not good. And…though I suspect that was not the director’s aim, Mary was also quite sarcastic.
My nine year old son, later told me that he disliked Mary, ”she was mean mommy!” and “she was hiding something! ” and…” just why was she such a bully?”
Yes, it was true, the play gave great time to Mary’s little quips about how “perfect” and she was portrayed her as quite mean alot of the time…but most of all my kids noticed that there was nothing ’special’ about Mary, she didn’t especially ‘love children’ so what was the deal? The kids were left feeling like ‘why?”why do the children love Mary? and most importantly, “why should WE like Mary?” The writer and director of the play did not build in scenes that built up this feeling. Kids pick up on negativity, even if it’s just in nanobytes, and this play had a huge stream of it just sort of ruining the chi of it all. Mary is about chi. The chi of joy, the revelation of happiness, and how children exude it. And in the original story you connected with Mary, her inner joy and you appreciated her character.
I wanted my kids to enjoy the chi of Mary, to have the same connection that I felt as a child. Children understand that through play, they build friendship, optimism and care for others.
All of this got me thinking… Well, let’s see. Mary: flys, (yes. evil….yes…check! that’s in horror films)..hmmm…..sometimes Mary, shows up in mirrors and not in physical form! Very weird! classifies as certifiably ghostly.. Check again..evil? I would think so! Let’s see…the setting is turn of the century Englad, yes…Everything grey…yes…hmm…foggy…lots of silouhetted people, bells tolling, wet sidewalks, horses clattering feet….yes, scary I would say so……but evil? well…maybe….okay, half a check for that one. Toys moving by themselves? That the stuff of haunted houses! Large items in her carpet bag (items that CANNOT POSSIBLY fit in one’s carpet bag?!)…VERY SCARY!!! I would say that is DEFINITELY otherworldly!
I think I made my point. This is the trailer that would’ve represented truth in advertising for one Ms. Mary Poppins! If not the Mary of yesteryear maybe for the Mary of today!
If ever there was an ethereal place, a place that only existed in our imaginations, it would be…
the world of:Urs-P.Twellmann
Stories of fantasy, deep psychological machinations, intense love and adventure. These are the experiences that Urs-P. Twellman’s environments are made of. Twellmann, a “land artist builds Temporal scullptures that cause one to ‘highly experience’ a beautiful sense of place that is at once totally natural but one hundred percent manipulated by design.
Swiss-born Twellmann collects found woods and other organic materials at each selected site. Very particular with the chain saw, Urs chops, chips, weaves, pounds, threads, files, and bends soft and hard woods. woods into arches, spheres, fitted block from terra firma. Later the completed the artwork is documented with photography. Twellmann continuously creates a tangible-trick-of-the-mind, and then pushes it all back into the earth.
Twellmann’s inspiration comes from a visit to an area that moves him. He sketches ideas and collects organic materials at the lay. The end result, though planned, can end up somewhat of a surprise to even Twellmann himself. Part of the art is letting the art take shape as dictated by the process. Americans have Patrick Doherty, whom is also enraptured by fine organic wood structures and famous for “The Catywompas” and many other structures mainly of twigs and meticulously knitted branches. They are enormous structures of combed woods, sometimes structures that one can walk through. Doherty, bends endlessly, maniacally, nesting stringing limbs into an otherworldly structure. While my sons and I had fun romping through the Catywompus at Los Angeles County Arboreteum at Arcadia California, I realize now Dohertey’s structures have nowhere the grandiosity of Twellmann’s “christo-like” structures of place and time. A wooden ball is made of so many perfectly fitted trunks and chunks. Twellmann is mad with creating entire organic temporary landscapes. Whether those structures be”moment in time” structures that you can sometimes touch, you can always marvel at them or see them after they have been given back to the earth…in photographs.
“My main focus lies on transforming. In this process – where destruction and creation become as one – materials are collected and analysed; they get bent, broken, split and cut to become new forms or are arranged in a different context. The individual process can be long or short, free flowing or troublesome, can be hard physical work and lead through phases of chaos, disorientation and uncertainty – but it has to be a new challenge every time, resulting in expanding experiences and journeys of discovery. While I am interested in all materials, it’s wood in all its variations, conditions and forms I usually prefer to work with,” says Twellmann. All Twellman’s structures are transitory structures, just as temporary as the earth itself.
"Supa-Pat" he has 5 health, 4 power and lightening bolt action, right wing protection and 100% Democracy attack. Intelligence level: Zero. Time to level up!
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger floated a different approach to trimming down California’s bloated prison budget on Monday: pay Mexico to build new prisons and ship off California’s incarcerated illegal immigrants south of the border.
The Republican governor has pushed to house California inmates out-of-state before — but never in a different country.
“We can do so much better in the prison system alone if we can go and take inmates, for instance the 20,000 inmates that are illegal immigrants that are here, and get them to Mexico,” Schwarzenegger said during a question-and answer session at the Sacramento Press Club. “Think about it.”
It’s cheaper to build prisons in Mexico, Schwarzenegger reasoned, and it’s cheaper to staff them there to boot.
“We pay them to build the prison down in Mexico,” the governor said. “…Half the costs to build the prisons and half the costs to run the prisons. That is money — $1 billion right there — that could go into higher education.”
The idea is not a new one. Jim Nielsen, a former head of the state’s parole board and now a state assemblyman, promoted the idea in the mid-1990s. It never happened.
The governor’s office said no specific prisoners-in-Mexico plan is in the works — just yet. “There’s no proposal,” said Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear. “He was mentioning a creative solution we should talk about.”
Conan O’ Brien’s prankish poke-in-the- ribs-of-fat-cat-uber-bully-NBC did make me laugh I have to admit. Spending half a mil on licensing the song “Lovely Rita” by The Beatles for Tom Hanks to walk to his seat to; was shocking to say the least. It was the ultimate “take this job and shove it” act. Conan earlier in the week was hard at work spending the uber-bully’s blood money on The Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” to bring out Adam Sandler in style. After the raw deal that NBC had so brazenly given Conan, I think anyone following the story willfully looked the otherway, chuckling as they averted their eyes. Well the end has come and gone. Conan was given an amazing severance package. On the last day of his tenure Conan did funny, he did serious,(and he meant it), and most surprisingly he propheticlaly exclaimed gratuity.
Conan proved to be the consumate gentleman. Conan has outdone himself again. Watch the video of his last words to the Tonight Show audience.
The Precocious, multi-instrumentality of Micachu and the Shapes is like camping on an English moor full of howling wolves as you dance to a Kraftwerk album with Gavin Friday, Marke E. Smith and Guggi. You’ll need a tour-guide in for this moor party because it’s a bafflingly intricate, yet uneasy place. Walking at night, you feel your feet sink into the moor, tin pans crash, an acoustic guitar rants and a shock of Roux-like hair bounces in and out of the frame. Just aloft you spy Colin Newman stoking a sonic campfire as he types on his iphone. The fire crackles repetitively with a waffle and snap. You are at a zeitgeist sleepover, a tempiscore melding of sense datum. Yes, you are overloaded but in a playful dreamlike state, these things are expected! In fact it feels downright amazing, the music in the background has a restless energy, a crack, a pop. Set against a nefarious groan or the heaving low hum of soft machines, this eclectic pop is tamed by a warm and yet distinctive androgynous voice. That is the sound of Micachu and the Shapes, and it’s not a dream. Micachu (Mica Levi) is tangible! and in a club somewhere tonight playing a vacuum cleaner.
Mica sits staccato, with an unexpected and painterly face. Her voice and demeanor project an element of confident-uneasiness. a careless androgyne, tall with a complex grin, she is an ‘artiste de artist,’ one bringing sounds useful to Dee jays, club-goers and the lucky and hard working denizens of Rough Trade, San Francisco. So far everyone fron Bjork to Beck are calling her one of their “influences.” or at at least “the most un-classifiable pop experimental music existing today.” That’s pretty good when the avant-garde of the uber popular alternative are calling you “one of the lovely bones with which we are collectively building this thing we call popular music”.
Straddling many genres of music at one time, Michachu has got the concept cornered. How does someone play front instruments, sing, and add the sound of a vacuum cleaner along with pops and clacks purposfully (and perfectly) set in time to a thick bumping background track? In my humble opinion the only contemporary rock band able to cross this boundary and do well with so many genres was The White Stripes. Jack White did whatever he wanted, and Meg was the co-ideator / conspirator in those avant experiments that turned into great songs. The only constant was his voice as the music always surprised, swelled and dipped as he wailed and groaned in new and different ways. Experimental, though, it was not. It was exploratory. In Micachu and the Shapes’ type of ‘experimental’, there’s an element of ”I don’t care, I do what I want, what feels right at the time, and by the way… to hell with this ‘image thing”. It seems Levi and company do not ascribe to any specific assemblage of their art, it simply is… “what it is.”
Micachu and The Shapes’ songs arent’ about punching other girls in bars, thanks Lilly, we’ve had enough of that. It was fun in the begining, but now we have to see other people. The female role in new music must get some plaster and lathe ready and quick, because Micachu just ripped that house a hole in the wall.
As Micachu swoons into a neutral plastic bounce, “Golden Phone,” seems to reference her ’style,’ that is, if she could be categorized…
How could they even care it’s a nonsense sound
This sound is everywhere but it can’t be found
Find Nancy fool around and the noise went white
It built the warmth back and there was light
Crimes everywhere yeah, but I don’t want that
Love’s all around yeah, but I don’t want that
Gold in my hair yeah, but I don’t want that
Bring me that nonsense sound and I’ll be back
Well, crushed up bit of stuff, can you pull their ear?
Their legs are far too stiff and they can’t get near
I’ll make this call back to you in a year
Mongrels, this nonsense sound won’t disappear
The song ‘Lips’ explores grime and punk crossover sounds. Not unlike the likes of early Gang of Four, or Wire, Mica and the Shapes sharp and staccato dithering make you wanna get up and dance.
Die, die, die, your lips a big lie
You lie all the time, but you still get by.
You bite your tongue but you don’t comply
Dry your tears away with your tie
You drive that truck but you’re still let by
Drop, drop, drop, your lips a big lie
In ‘Sweetheart’ and ‘Eat your Teeth’ Mica samples and manipulates every squeal and stray breath. She and The Shapes, processes them into pop staccato explosions. In contrast, ’Golden Phone’ is a dirty punk song, breathless and beguiling.
This is the Golden phone, can you ring me back?
Ten mongrels home alone bring the panic back
Sound traveled in the air then they blew it back
The took out all the noise and it all went black
How could they even care it’s a nonsense sound
This sound is everywhere but it can’t be found
Find Nancy fool around and the noise went white
It built the warmth back and there was light
‘Worst Bastard’ is pure punk brilliance; whilst “Vultures” may have the same basic background as Glen Branca’s, “The Ascension” Lesson No. 1″ I could be wrong though. Branca’s wall of sound is exactly the intricacy Micachu uses in their swirling and full soundscapes, and especially on this song. The new Shapes’ album “Jewellery” is on track for album British Album of the year and I’m not surprised. It may have to fight with La Roux’s signature album “La Roux” but they really are different territory.
In “Curly teeth”, Micachu uses a squeaky sound as a background layer and a dissonence that actually works under her defined and short shap vocals. “Curly teeth” does not dissapoint in fact as with other Shapes’ songs, it surprises once again.
I stumbled upon Micachu and the Shapes about 3 months ago via my favorite performance artiste chanteuse Bjork, and in my humble opinion, this unclassfiable band headed up by Mica Levi is channeling the best of electronica, rough wire, punk, avant-garde, pop, and dance. This stateside inhabitant will be sure to see them when they turn up at any venue within 40 miles of me. Even if you just go to see someone use a vacuum cleaner onstage, don’t miss them when they come to town.
