I’ve seen the future and it is big, loud and fast

Ok, check this video of Felix’s Machines lifted from Spykidelic’s Gods of War blog.

Now picture Theo Jansen’s kinetic beach creatures

and this incredible piece from Crown Point in Burnley, England.

Moor roaming giant kinetic instruments are what I am thinking. I’m getting the Meccano out. Is that not the best thing you have thought about all week?

Filed under: Rant , electronica, linkedin, machines, sculpture, sound art, visonary ish, woah

See on the horizon…..

Neurosis are set to release a new studio album ‘Given To The Rising’ on May 7th, their first worldwide release on their own Neurot imprint, with a new track made available on their myspace page.

My initial impressions are that the band have brought back some of the brutality that made ‘Through Silver In Blood’ one of the most ugly things ever put to tape, however after the initial giddy excitement I experienced a mixed reaction to the teaser track.

The outro of resonant and beckoning chimes is an indication that the neurotic (sorry) elements that make the band so potent are going to be present in full effect.

The first four minutes, however, go from bludgeoning ‘Times Of Grace’ era chugg to, effectively, sounding like Mastodon. Well, it sounds like Neurosis, but bands like Mastodon and Isis have popularised the gargantuan aesthetic of the earlier Neurosis records to such an extent that I find myself a little underwhelmed. Admittedly, those two bands have developed their own distinct styles (Neurosis even had a track on “The Eye Of Every Storm” that sounded frighteningly like Isis), but it is the ensuing bandwagon of pale imitations that has left me cold.

Everytime I go back to Kuwait for Christmas I take my family a CD or two of a range of stuff, and my little brother usually ends up taking to a track from it. One year it was Dizzee Rascal’s ‘Fix Up Look Sharp’ , last year it was E-40’s ‘Tell Me When To Go’ ( quite similar tracks, come to think of it). My point being that over the course of the holiday, bless him, he manages to exhaust my tolerance of said song by playing it, singing it and talking about it incessantly.

The Mastodon hype, coupled with every metal scenester’s mutual decision to name their band after a monster of some sorts, albeit from myth, dinosaur book or aquatic encyclopedia (I missed that meeting), has exhausted my tolerance of the aesthetic. It’s a cruel irony that in paying tribute to your heroes one can exhaust their appeal, but, like with my little brother, that seems to be what has happened. He is 13 and has an excuse, I wonder what the ‘avant metal’ crowd have to say for their lack of imagination – and no, putting 0))) after your name on your myspace page does not make you exempt from this argument, you are just a newer model.

That said, here’s hoping the record takes my head off.

Filed under: Music, Rant, Recommended

If we didn’t see it, is he really dead?

I was earlier informed by a good friend that my writing reads like an essay where i’m desperate to hit the word limit, a charge I unhesitatingly acquiesce to.

One man who I am sure never faced such criticism is Jean Baudrillard, who has died aged 77 at his home in Paris. Shit. RIP.

Filed under: Literature, Rant

First Blood

Wearing one’s interests on one’s sleeve has unquestionably always been a prevalent trend amongst folk desperately trying to make sense of themselves amidst the incoherence of the world around them.

With the internet expanding the world’s borders to the point of near obsolescence, and the sheer volume of information available to the curious participant, it is no wonder that some are struggling to emulate the social virility and effortless eclecticism exhibited in one’s labyrinthine myspace profile in their real life encounters.

I choose not to bother.

This blog will hopefully serve as a sleeve of infinite dimensions which will allow my humble three dimensional person to remain aloof and immune to the desire to be everything to everybody.

That way I can concentrate my time in the three dimensional world to do things that hold currency with people that might want to give me currency, whilst still maintaining my indefatigable curiosity for the trivial and arguably credible.

An abattoir of preoccupations if you will; the only difference being that I leave the killing floor with a white collar clean enough to do a powerpoint presentation in.

Here’s hoping it works. I have already spent more time on myself in this ten minutes than in a long while so I begin in a mildly optimistic mood.Meat Mortar

Filed under: Rant