Speed, Glue and Shinki -" Eve" (1971) and how I learned to stop worrying and love Japrock.

Speed, Glue and Shiki's 1971 skull-crushing debut Eve

Dinosaurs fucking: it is brutal, primitive, loud and for those who keep nasties backed up in the somber chambers of the mind: sexually stimulating. The echoes and reptile moans are shifting and widespread, but always abrasive and aggressive, unfurled from the primordial animal gene pool and moving the air molecules with monolithic grunts.

This is what Speed, Glue & Shinki sound like.

1971 saw the advent of the kamikaze Japana- sex, drugs and rock n’ rollers’  debut LP, Eve, and the supersonic obliteration of hundreds of stoned-out teens from the land of the rising sun. Overlooked or underrated this article seeks to revindicate and revitalize the geniality of this recording.

Speed, Glue & Shinki are a supergroup of sorts. Formed in 1970, the power trio amalgamated the likes of the Japanese-Chinese six-string slayer Shinki Chen, hailed as the Asian Hendrix (he wasn’t, of course), Franco-Chinese pretty-boy bassist Masayoshi Kabe (“Glue”) and Filipino drummer and speed fiend Joey “Pepe” Smith. Chen earned his bollocks playing with an assortment of bands in the 60’s , recording the interesting psych-jazz album A Social Gathering with one-shot group Foodbrain and even putting out a solo record, Shinki Chen and Friends while Kabe became the tall, dark and handsome poster boy for the faux-Beatles gritty Group Sounds band(roughly equivalent of Japanese Psych/Beat rock) Golden Sounds and Joey Smith started out as a street-lurking guitarist, playing in various Filipino local groups before switching to drums, ingesting preposterous amounts of amphetamines and getting out of dodge and into the Japanese rock and roll circuit where he met up with Co. They put another record out after Eve: a 1972 self-titled hodgepodge of a record before splitting up due to Smith’s speed-hazed mind and rampant horndog habits.

Speed, Glue and Shinki.

As you might have imagined, Speed, Glue & Shinki borrow their moniker after their weapons of choice: quaffing glue and paint for hours on end and devouring copious amounts of speed. This is the ethical axis of the record: either I’m not taking enough drugs or I’m taking too many of ‘em. The opener: “Mr. Walking Drugstore Man” is a brontosaurus-like blues stomper with Speed Smith howling “Hey Mr. walking drugstore man/ What do you have for me today/ I’ve been feeling so ugly/ I don’t know what to do/ Can you help me (sic)” over his thundering loosy-goosy drumming while Chen’s dirge-drenched guitar wails doubled under Kabe’s swinging bassline before detonating in traditional rock fashion into rolling toms and fuzz-faltering guitar. Smith slithers at the end: “You wanna buy some Speed?”, and indication of the band’s no-bullshit  bastard strut.

“Big Headed Woman” is a dirty-blues ripper that switches on with Smith’s thumping bass drums before cracking into a full-blown sludgy 12-bar standard run. The hydrocephalic tyrannosaurus lady fancies herself king of the castle, smoking all of the guy’s stuff before “balling with another man” during the evening. Kabe’s chromatic and free licks climb up fretboard before the song veers into a masturbatory psychedelic-showoff.

Can’t have your woman being the man, man. And when I say man… man, I mean. like the MAN. “Stoned Out of My Mind” is the following track, a big ol’ “fuck you” to power relations. With squares looking down at a stoned-out Smith, keeping him down, stalking his follicles and checking his package out ( “They keep staring at my long hair, and my gear too”), the track tours through a proto-Stoner grudge riffs before segueing into the the subversive “Ode to the Bad People”,  the swansong for the degenerate, decadent and marginalized thugs of society complete with monolithic pounding skins and whirlwind bass crawls and Chen’s finest moment. “M Glue” is Kabe’s own reinterpretation of an experimental piece chock full of wah- wah bass thumps and thuds with added bits of musique concrete (attempting not to throw the term around) of what seems to be a person brushing his teeth.

The band’s final blowup is “Keep It Cool”, a Zepplin bomb dedicated to a mind-stealing “beibi”. The song crashes and booms (and flutters thanks to Chen’s crybaby guitar filtered solo) before jumping suddenly near the end into an exotic minor scale run and ending abruptly, introducing the comedown of the record, “Someday We’ll All Fall Down”, an soft-spoken acoustic ballad of the imminent nuclear holocaust.

Eve is a mondo-destructive record. The production is as bare and stripped down as the band’s name, it is animalistic and barbaric: just guitar, bass and drums. And lots of it. Like a hammer to the cortex, production is blunt, dry (little to no reverb), and caustic. Levels are backbreaking and feel like they vacuumed everything that wasn’t ball-wrenching out of the formula. What you get is possibly one of the heaviest recordings since the Archduke Franz Ferdinand got shot in the face. The cover fashions three innocent Victorian girls in sailor outfits as the hard-knock brawlers and the gatefold brings the set of horribly typed interpretations of the what the lyrics should sound like (they don’t). The record throws shifts toward the fast and towards the slow, balancing both spectrums with unpredictable twists and turns into the volatile chemical X gunk that these cock-rockers are blowing out of their instruments.

More like Motherfucker, Motherfucker and Motherfucker.

Beneath the veneer of drug binging, the record stands as a challenging agent of subversion. In a time of post-American conservative rule and nascent democratic concepts were taking over from a long-standing feudal tradition, Japan was progressively turning into a functional, non-descript Pleasantville, and drugs are a serious no-no as well as any sense of breaking out. The record is not a copying of hard-rock forms; it is an evolved enfant terrible, cretin and creepy-crawling through walls of substance abused as a means of breaking out. The heat is on, and the need to break out is symptomatic of a global-ailment in an era of Cold-War politics and conservatism. Taking drugs in the band’s narrative is a symbolic ingestion of the hierarchy’s evils an affront and transformation into the Other.

Choose a terrible job, a by the rules life and 2.3 children but what happens when you don’t like the options or worse yet, don’t want to choose at all?Eve embodies the leftover psychedelic and hippy ideology of personal freedom, but incorporates the kick-down-the door narrative of hard-rock. The record is not about opening your mind but using it to fucking tear everything down with crunchy fuzz, meandering basslines and the slipperiest balls-to-the-wall drumming.

The fact that the members are natives to their respective Asian states, the shoddy English lyrics also point to an important and central idea: communication. If expression has no just outlet and rock music was meant to be an expression of individuality, what then when there’s a language barrier? It’s cry for understanding, but like the druids and magicians of old, it is not the word summoned from the hoard that rings the bell, it’s the yearning that resounds. Though you might think that a mongoloid might be slurring the lyrics during the record, the desire for freeing oneself from the paws of the proverbial “ (wo)Man” is translated through its awkwardness and difficulty. And hell, the Engrish just makes ordinarily the lascivious, degenerate and obscene activities of drug taking, woman dumping and cerebral purloining sound really really cool.

When not quaffing drugs, the band enjoy long walks on the beach.

Eve is every parent’s nightmare: a loud, snotty, not-quite-there-yet mysoginist son-of-a bitch junkie rock n’ roll bastard. Hands down one of my favorite records ever. The album is a sniffin’ and snortin’, huffin’ and puffin’ supernova cataclysm of stoned-out-of-my mind rock n’ roll that will melt the soft-centered yolk-shit that is your no-longer-safe brain. Speed, Glue & Shiki are a caricature and excess of a rock n’ roll band should be: it is too loud, too indiscriminate and too subversive, but in this over-brimming, they create such a blistering piece of barbaric rock that cannot go unheard. You might point out traces of Deep Purple or Uriah Heep in them but you cannot trace their sound. The album is a pre-societal warble of the gathering of tribes, summoning the inward tenets of rebellion against fucking everything only through the sacrifice of norms and obliterations of everyone can there be access to the original freedom. These animals were definitely born under the chaotic murmurs of the star and were probably doing bong rips during the nigh of Hiroshima & Nagasaki and collapsing into that good rising sun of destruction.

If this humble servant has not convinced you reader, maybe words from the bard, Julian Cope, might:

“Blues-based funeral dirges about scoring amphetamines ( “Mr. Walking Drugstore Man’), paranoid sludge-trudge proto-metal anthems about taking drugs to avoid straight people ( “Stoned out of My Min”), cuckolded dead marches to cheating women with invitations to them to commit suicide (‘Big Headed Woman’): welcome to the world of Speed, Glue & Shinki.” (257, Japrocksampler) “

In laymen’s terms: this is a fine goddam album. Very goddam fine indeed. Take it or Eve it baby!: Guess I'll have to stone my brain with this. 

The sad state of modern Japanese rock.

"Jersey Shore" and the decline and fall of Western civilization.

Hide yo' kids.

The past millennium has gifted the insatiable threshold that is humanity with a myriad of staggering works of a burdensome genius and heartbreaking beauty such as Shakespeare’s theatrical and poetical oeuvres, Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Caravaggio’s haunting portraits of saints and sinners alike: all of them pieces which summon from the wells of human struggle insight and knowledge. “Jersey Shore” is not one of those works.

Class.

MTV has decided that the human race has not suffered enough since the times of the Egyptian plagues or the Holocaust (by that matter) and thus began transmitting through the sad airwaves the bollocks that is the bedeviled “reality” show. For those who, fortunately, are not in the know, “Jersey Shore” showcases the obscenely decadent lifestyles of twenty-somethings, lucky enough to have won the mad dash towards the egg, co-habiting a beach house in, where else, fabulously droll New Jersey.

If you, gentle reader, could fathom taking the ungodly mixture of testosterone, indiscriminate promiscuity and below-national-average IQ, smothering it with crispity-crunchity gelled hair and dousing it with Jäger shots, then not only do you have the ultimate recipe for regret, but you also get the aberration that is the cast. Meet the main offenders: disgracing the masculine side are specimens dubbed “gorilla juiceheads” (after what this humble servant assumes to be their affinity for muscle enhancing drugs and bananas), who in their natural habitat (clubs, piers, any place where disgrace is to be had) prowl the streets, attempting to court creatures of the opposite kind by flailing their bulbous arms in the air wildly while shouting degrading comments towards the “beibis.” The (un)fairer sex features the likes of nobodies with names such as  Jenni “Jwoww” Farley (as though her booze-addled weekend romper-stompers weren’t excessive enough, the extra “w” should suffice). All of them are boy crazy and all of them are ludicrously tanned (so much so that they are often mistaken for the leather backseat of a 1979 Volvo.)

NOT EVEN FOUCAULT CAN SAVE YOU NOW

But those denizens of the degenerate masses are but proverbial chump change; enter Nicole Polizzi alias “Snooki”. Public enemy number one  Snooki embodies the collapse of the modern mind: departing Logicville towards Depravitytown via Degradation Ave. with a pit stop at Debaucheryburg. Perpetual clubbing and haphazard swapping of alcohol (and bodily fluids) have rendered this specimen with the intelligence of half a bar of soap. She was outwitted by a duck-shaped phone durin the show and the apparatus currently holds the spot as the second most intelligent object in the house, beating Vinny and falling second to the toaster oven. Sadly (or joyously) the only “normal” jobs available  for the cast post-show is either desperately trying to turn Network heads (tricks perhaps?) or working at Romano’s Macaroni Grill, shredding Parmesan cheese with their six-packs.

Parents, hide your kids, because as if this preposterous ensemble was not enough, the third season saw the inclusion of yet another feral child and (thankfully) the walking out on the show of another (preferably towards a knife) intensifying the polemic of actually deciding which building to jump off of. Not only are they growing, but expanding as well, partying in Miami for the second season and threatening the sanctity and mental hygiene of the birthplace of the Renaissance, Italy, for their upcoming fourth season. Before you know it, these “humans” will be taking over your gyms, sleazy nightclubs, Cheetoh-colored women and your last shred of dignity.

 Umberto Eco described "A Shore Thing" as a work of staggering genius.

“Jersey Shore” is a French philosopher’s nightmare: an embodiment of the global economic decadence of the times. If substance consumption and promiscuity are insatiable at the core, what then is left but a taping of the cast members’ spiraling descent towards the void? This obsession with the spectacle of degradation has been going on for too long and the perpetrators are these shows of the simulated “Real” which manage to turn human frontal lobes into mush with the consistency of Campbell’s soup. And here’s the kicker: for the third season’s premiere, more than 8.5 million viewers tuned in (which is more than Burundi’s total population. How did the people of Burundi find out about it is unknown, and how did Burundi end up in the article is also unknown.)

Christopher Columbus should be ashamed of what the New World has offered. “Jersey Shore” is but a symptom of a deeper and underlying spiritual crisis of our times which is exacerbated by people’s obsession with fame. My heart caves in a little when ever I see a person fist-pump. Not only is it sexually degrading, (both towards  male and female codes), but  is also ethno-culturally degrading with the “guido” (a racial epithet for Italian-Americans) narrative giving a terrible name to hardworking minorities across this hemisphere as well as establishing exaggerated beauty standards for impressionable youths. This show has as enough educational value as a weekend of binge-drinking with Billy Carter. Check your local listings to make sure you are nowhere near a television set during the witching hour it comes on. 

and all of America's flagellated  dicks.

  

Campo-Formio's Spooky Fools piledrives the new year into oblivion.

Yes, this is another one. Fuck you.

There is something unabashedly sinister rising through the cracks, crumbling and annihilating any sort of anatomical order. It’s not the sequel to the Christmas Eve shakedown, it’s Campo-Formio’s latest release. “Spooky Fools”, the power trio’s latest extended-play (rocking under 20 mins.) installment to their canon of sonic chaos, is a little demonoid of caustic, and eclectic,  screwdriving rock n’ roll which will stuff you with delectable riffs,  if you weren’t stuffed enough from the holiday smorgasbord. And as if that wasn’t enough, the vinyl pressing ( a 10’ released on their own record label, “Dead Mofongo Records”) will be more than happy to work as a plate.

The record kicks out the jams with “Duende”, a snarling power punch to the gut that starts out unassumingly with instruments syncing up for the barrage, then moving into a manic drive through sweet licks and tight drumming before segueing into a sludgy breakdown. The rest of the track is a juggling act between sinister interludes and more upbeat crashes before finally shifting to an all-out garage-like blow-up. The lyrics epitomize the absurdly relentless challenge of the mythological beastie: “no hay una solución al problema” (“there is no solution to the problem”).

“Orgasmo Pixelado” follows with an angsty opening depicting a scene of marital infidelity. This torturous ( in the “rubs you in a good way” kind of way), angular and mathematical introduction makes a full 180 degrees turn promptly: instead of unleashing the structural violence which is expected out of such a cuckolded rendez-vous, it jumps into the foray of catchy phrases and riffs before transforming into a dreamy hypnotizing movement. The tracks kicks back into a traditional  Campo-Formio pulverizing cakewalk, with chants urging spiritual transcendence over the amorous turncoat maneuver saying “no te rindas mas” (“don’t give up anymore”), “aprende!” (“learn!”) and “tu puedes!” (“you can!”). This potential single represents a maturing of the band’s songwriting: exploring more subtle dynamics, using at their will ferocity with precociousness, textural distortion with chiming riffs.

The second side of the EP is more of experimental nature, exploring the aural tenets which the band is capable of. The first track, “Soundcheck”, is a mutating and evolving study on fuzz and feedback which gets into gear with revving vocals. Pounding drums and  punishing strings grow exponentially in the song (barely reaching the two minute mark) before the distortion caves in on itself, flowing into “The Xibalba Dance Proposal” a Casio-heavy composition (part of a dance piece co-written with Cristina Lugo)indulging everyone with vibrating synths galore. This odyssey into the Mayan underworld moves between the chambers of the spiritual world, exposing the adventurer to the trails of the beyond. The piece gravitates between the onerous and horrible, between a nightmare and a dream.

In terms of production, the record is decadently loud and lascivious. The trifecta-combo is mixed wonderfully. The bass and drums, courtesy of Ricardo Pérez and Diego Bernal respectively, set the foundation to all sound but are not limited to their wallflower demeanor, for they have ample elbow space and moments where they both bop and bump unto colorful and upbeat bass licks and thunderous drum rolls while Fernando Quintero’s guitar and synth playing add extra levels of depth and shining hooks to the savage mix. The vocal duties are split between the string section, complementing the dual singing with a playful relationship of brutality and joviality.

Vinyl pressing, by today’s standards is rare, but it’s slowly and begrudgingly to all tech nuts, making a comeback. The record sports a tasty golden transparent pressing and its cover is a beautiful technicolor bacchanalia (thanks to artists Javier Román) featuring an aging Fool (from the Tarot tradition) trotting on a treadmill-cum-conveyor belt which powers the torture of a cybernaut tied to the machine (while two other cyberpunks await to pummel the poor lad.) The elfish-ears on the mad Fool-doctor make him synonymous with the opening track’s protagonist, working furiously towards a non-existing goal or solution. For those without a record player, fear not, the album comes with a digital download.

“Spooky Fools” is clearly the year’s best local rock production, hands down (if they haven’t yet been chopped off because of the EP’s razor-sharp barrage). Cohesive, multi-facetious and most importantly, it’s explosive. The record takes you, tells you you’re a horrible person, then it’s an “I love you” then it leaves and does its own thing, and what’s great is that you go with it. Now what’s left is for the band to follow up this endeavor with a full-length release to take the stakes to a higher level.

Campo-Formio will be releasing “Spooky Fools” this Thursday at La Respuesta (Fernández Juncos Ave.) alongside the bands Los Petardos, Unidos NO, Tach. De.  The album will also available for purchase as a digital download at www.campoformio.bandcampo.com/album/spooky-fools.

"Spooky Fools" de Campo-Formio embruja las cámaras sónicas, rompiendo cráneos con huesos de cabras.

"Spooky Fools"

Anda peligrosamente las premoniciones de guerra, arrebatando las ondas airosas desde el sur del Trópico de Cáncer y desorganizando la composición física de cada hombre y animal. Seres humanos, esto no  es la bomba atómica resucitada nuevamente en el siglo XXI, es lo nuevo de Campo-Formio.

El trío ha lanzado su tercera producción discográfica como un relámpago chillando por los vientos asquerosos del caribe. El EP Spooky Fools, lanzado bajo su propia casa disquera “Deaf Mofongo Records” continúa el canon cáustico y caótico establecido por estos cretinos, combinando ritmos sofisticados con una mugre distorsionada.

 “Duende” inicia la excursión sónica con un pseudo- principio calmado antes de tirar un cambio hacia velocidades luz con frases azucaradas que súbitamente dan paso a la violencia auditiva de la cual los chicos han sido sinónimos con.  El resto de la canción es una juego a la balanza, gravitando entre ambos extremos antes de romper el espectro con una movida hacia una tormenta de rock n’ roll con una peculiaridad nefasta. El dilema del duende, la rata perpetua, a resumidas cuentas se limita a la ultima línea de la canción: “no hay una solución al problema.”

“Orgasmo Pixelado” es, quizás, una de las composiciones mas interesantes del disco. La introducción de un principio angustoiso cubierto con la brutalidad de infidelidad que hipnotiza con un coraje musical matemático y angular se transmuta y se convierte en algo nuevo, progresando hacia   pasajes mas relajados y lustrosos y finalmente culminando con un ataque ametrallador que deja muerto todo conocimiento de oídos. Las diferentes facetas de la canción añaden varias texturas y niveles de profundidad. Es aquí donde la banda empieza a tirar redes hacia las varias esquinas de los límites auditivos: abrasivo pero todavía capaz de sutilidad. Hasta las líricas cuentan con una perspectiva peculiar y casi surreal: la negación del impulso bestial para obliterar al ser human para poder lograr trascender. Con un corte metafísico el “no te rindas mas” y “tu puedes” que aparecen, imploran la necesidad de superarse pero un contexto dolorosamente absurdo.

El segundo lado del EP se dedica más a la exploración de otros elementos viscerales. Aunque “Soundcheck” puede ser confundida por un clásico Campo-Formiano, en realidad es estudio meticuloso de distorsión y monotonía. Se concentra más, no tanto en terminar la canción o llegar a la próxima frase, sino en lo que puede hacer con la repetición. Explotando con los aullidos guturales, la presión crujiente de las cuerdas y batería, el ruido asume control por el resto del minuto, saturándose con la inundación  de feedback y fuzz. “The Xibalba Dance Proposal”, una colección de viñetas superreales,introduce un favorito de las otras producciones discográficas de la banda: el teclado Casio. La composición es parte de una pieza de baile arreglada y montada con la ayuda de Cristina Lugo titulada “Leyéndola Hasta Xibalba”, en la cual se mueve entre diferentes cámaras del inframundo Maya. La pieza fluctúa entre lo siniestro y lo oneroso, lo pegajoso y pecaminoso y bailotea entre un sueño y una pesadilla.

En términos de producción, el disco es impecable. La composición tríada funciona excelentemente con las bases del bajo, y la batería, cortesía de Ricardo Pérez y Diego Bernal respectivamente, proveyendo un apoyo amplio en los registros mas gruesos (pero todavía teniendo la habilidad y paciencia para resaltar espontáneamente) mientras el teclado y la guitarra, ejecutados por Fernando Quintero, proveen el color a las composiciones. El juego placentero de vocales entre los sicarios de las cuerdas corta muy bien el la producción, compartiendo los deberes de los  coros pegajoso con un toque furioso.

Para los maniacos coleccionista de vinilo, el disco viene en una carátula cubierta por una eyaculación  colorida, gracias al artista Javier Román, representando un doctor decrepito trotando en un maquina que perpetua la tortura de unos cibernautas al otro lado del sobre. Aunque es una alusión al Loco de la tradición del Tarot (“Spooky Fools” eh? No? Jodanse), esta bestia tiene elementos de la primera canción del disco: este duende con orejas nefastas no quiere correr mas pero los vicios lo empujan y no sabe como parar la maquina o el problema. El disco viene en una pasta anaranjada/dorada deliciosamente transparente.

Spooky Fools es, hasta ahora, lo mejor que han sacado los comandantes del rock cretino caribeño, mucho más maduro y mucho más amplio que otras producciones. El EP garantiza partir los  lóbulos cerebrales en siete partes diferentes con los ambos lados de la producción. Campo-Formio ha lanzado la bola con sus ultimas tres grabaciones, ahora lo que falta es un LP  para cementarlos como los malévolos bastardos del rock que merecen ser. Por más sofisticado y complicadas que sean las composiciones, todavía tienen la rabia de los redobles distorsionados familiares y esto solo muestra una cosa: por más que limpies y pulas un perro para una competencia, todavía permanecerá sato.

The Bow Tie: Retaking its Sartorial Crown.

 Though this online portfolio is dedicated to the aural arts, it is also dedicated to shit I like. Continuing this line of logic and reasoning, it is only acceptable to include the most joyous of neckties, the most exuberant of cloth that has come to bracelet the white bone that is our necks: the bow tie. Cheers.

Gets more pussy than a homeless animal shelter.

Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill and James Joyce have, among a myriad of men not afraid to push the boundaries, changed the way humans engage and asses art, politics, and more importantly life and what do these men have in common? It’s not their insurmountable longing to reconfigure the physical and symbolical world, it’s their bowties.

What once was taken as the supreme token of elegance and equanimity is now the silken pariah of fashion cruelty, a destinatario of sartorial abuse: the kid in elementary school who got picked on because he smelled like milk. This neckwear has fallen into ridicule because of its affiliation with conservatism, slyness and creatures of ill-repute but as of late, superstars such as Kanye West and Johnny Depp and fashion magnate Karl Lagerfeld (of Chanel fame) have sported the accessory as a proud badge instead of a burden.

With the resurgence of such a fascinating tie, its elusive origin is piquing the interest of fashionistas everywhere. Interestingly enough, the necktie’s metaphysical glory came not into fruition thanks to a tailor, it was invented out of pure necessity. During the devastating Thirty Years’ War during the 17^th century, Croatian mercenaries visited France to display their alliance to King Louis XIII. Unfortunately for these soldats, they lacked proper cuffs and buttons and resorted to wrapping a loose tie around their neck to keep their collars closed and fend off the unforgiving rain and wind. Louie-boy was impressed by the fashionable gents’ bravery, but he was completely enraptured by their daring neckwear and quickly made it a compulsory item for the upper-classes, dubbing the accessory “Le Cravat” ( French for “the Croatian”).

Mere moments after this pictoral was taken, Sylvia Beach's vagina imploded because of Joyce's bow tie.

Scholars debate whether the bow tie itself evolved from the cravat or if the cravat inspired the short knotted wonder, the only thing that matters is that its power is still among our hands. Combining elegance and formality with a jocular pride, the bow tie blends into any business attire while standing out with poise. It attracts the right attention, commanding at will, but being lethargic about it, not sure if it wants to socialize or stand back like the unashamed wallflower that it is. In a cornucopia of textures including wool, cotton, silk and velvet and the fathomless bounty of colors and styles including: polka dots, plaid, Her Royal Majesty’s Scottish Tartan, stripes, checks and paisley, the bow tie will have its use looking sharper than scimitar.

AKA Cunt Destroyer

The bow tie can smoothen the image of men with square faces, exalt the features of those with a more oval shape. It can disarm the scraggliest of thugs, making them accessible and huggable and can turn the most innocuous of dudes into a man with character. Fortunately, this is not a boys only club: members of the fairer sex have been seen sporting the bow tie with loose flowing blouses, taking on the veneer of the glitz and glamour of the gilded age.  Bow ties with designs go well with solid colors and if you feel adventurous enough, you can add the staple combo of flowers in the buttonhole plus a puff-and-peak style napkin for ultimate aesthetic beauty.

Such an immaculate accessory cannot be complete without the threat of using it in an obscenely awful manner. Make sure thy paws don’t fall prey into a fashion faux pas by purchasing pre-tied neckwear (the internet is valuable wealth of instruction on the slightly arduous process). Beware, the bow tie should be used fashionably and not gimmicky: avoid cartoon characters and colors that are too similar to your shirt, you want to look as suave as James Bond, not as serious as a certain ex-Education Secretary. Making sure the tie does not make you look too gimmicky is difficult, but a certain bon vivant has found it to be infinitely rewarding.

The bow tie is a godsend, capable of molding the complete attire and adding and air of sublime attention. It can literally make the outfit or just make  It can make you look like a dandy when you want to, and determined when you don’t, but more importantly it shows a disposition for inventiveness. It is about infusing a little bit of imagination into everyday life, finding the beauty in knots and more importantly its effect on people: sporting a bow tie is sure to magnetize a wide variety of conversation from all walks of life and it is certain to bring a smile to everyone’s face. Make it tight for formality, or ruffle it up a bit to show a little bit of character and playfulness, this item cradling the neck works great as a gift idea for that special, if not a tad eccentric, someone. Always remember, it used to be that sissies were mistaken for gentlemen, now it is gentlemen that are mistaken for sissies, but I say nay. So gents and dames: don’t be shy, sport a bow tie! 

I am a motherfucker.

Stereolab’s almost break-up not so bad thanks to “Not Music”

“Indefinite hiatus” is a word everyone hates, universally. It’s the overture to breaking up, the “we should take it slow for now” of relationships, television and music and when Stereolab said those exact same words in 2009, everyone started fretting. Regardless of whether they are truly calling it quits or just putting a bluff, the band was “kind” enough to launch a new record as a way of saying “let’s still be friends” in an attempt to calm down us weeping fans, and it kinda works, kinda.

 Not Music is certainly a misleading name.

The Londoners and laid back lounge rockers extraordinaires Stereolab released “Not Music”, a package of unreleased songs from their 2007 album “Chemical Chords” recording sessions, Tuesday on Duophonic Records. This maybe farewell gift by the ensemble is just a little more than an anthology of esoterica by the group; it’s a whirling ditty of pop grooves and robotic rhythms.

“Everybody’s Weird Except Me” kicks off the album, a sing-sung piece pulsing with synth leads, chiming harpsichord and Tim Gane’s  guitar leads alternating with Laetitia Sadier’s entrancing and warbling croons, all of which ride upon the subtle pound of a background piano and ultra-tight mechanical drumming. What follows is an hour-long rendezvous of classic Stereolab tunes: vibrant yet relaxed, seemingly simple yet laden with the soft nuances of a pop aesthetic.

 “So Is Cardboard Clouds” is a lofty electric piece of a tasty driving nature bubbled by analog flutters that hypnotize and ensnare and their “Sun Demon” mixes in the wavering of static with frenetic sunshine melodies but it’s still unafraid of being a playful imp with the clashing of teeny-tiny internal movements. 

The band has not strayed off from their catchy, yet loose, sound which has made them a favorite among long haired listeners and which this album has remained faithful to it like Lassie is to someone stuck between a rock and a hard place. The only qualm with this replication of sound is that it is not as aurally challenging as it was in the past: surprisingly, the bossa nova rhythms found in other classic albums such as “Emperor Tomato Ketchup” and “Dots and Loops” is surprisingly toned down and made transparent (with the exception of the track “Equivalences” which is as close as the album gets to anything south of the Tropic of Capricorn) and the mangy fuzz-drenched crunch is also tamed (“Pop Molecules” getting a little bit out of the clean sounding safe-space and breaking out the feedback, but in small doses) , which might leave some fans with somewhat of a bland taste in their mouths because the vivacity of the band relied on the decadence and excess of noise and pop melody, combined with the “motorik” beats of the krautrockers of yesteryear.

Besides that, Stereolab manages to merge the cold mechanical buzz and crank of drum loops and synthesized instrumentation with the warm reception of traditional rock orchestration with a couple of interesting endeavors. “Delugeoisie” is charmer with its Steve Reich like vicious vibraphone overture to a dreamy and shimmering passage with a tinge of a muzak filtered keyboard. “Silver Sands” (mixed by pysch-rockers Emperor Machine) is one of the pieces that jumps out and sticks: a 10-minute piece buoyant with Kraftwerk heavy analog programming and super-tight percussions juggling and gravitating between NEU! Riffs and 8-bit funk, that will have everyone stomping their feet like a British disco. The album’s closer “Neon Beanbag” (off “Chemical Chords”, remixed by Atlas Sound) is the apt closer, remembering the band’s days of wilder noise and sweet drones through an 8 minute mammoth of recurring beats.

“Not Music” is certainly an album, or at least feels more like a full-fledged record rather than a collection of B-sides, and though it isn’t as visceral as their previous releases the Stereolab magic still resides on the little things, the million myriad collection of sounds and details that give each song a wider depth and sonic palette than merely just, “Oh, you know, that Stereolab song”. Hopefully, “Not Music” shouldn’t be their farewell gift, because it doesn’t feel like the bang they deserve, this albums feels more like the “until next time” record. But for now, this album pleases, and we have to take whatever we can get.

Sound check: MAC opens first sound lab in the island.

All the girls and ghouls of Halloween came out an evening earlier to prowl the angry streets of Santurce, but rest assured that these denizens of the night weren’t seeking to scare the wits out of city walkers; they just showed up to listen to the sounds emanating from a museum.

Last Saturday, the Contemporary Arts Museum (MAC Spanish acronym) unveiled its latest addition: the sonoMAClab, a gallery dedicated to sonic exploration and experimentation and the first of its kind in the island. To commemorate such a momentous (if not underappreciated) occasion, the museum is hosting a series of sound art sessions throughout November, the first of which was a night dedicated to composer/theorist/mycologist John Cage, field recordings and performing arts.

But first, how does a history teacher end up becoming a sonic-savvy aesthete? Well, Andrés Lugo Cruz doesn’t know how, but he sure knows the why of being the lab’s curator. “I’ve always liked minimalist music  and it just seemed logical for there to be  a sounds lab to explore sonic depths,” said Lugo Cruz. “I read up on sound art, sent a proposal, and before I knew it, we have the sonoMAClab.” Headlining other music art experiments such as the “Giratorio de Ekpresion”, Lugo Cruz set out to create an academic space for exploration and music gravitating towards the metaphorical art realm.

Wizzard Cretin Rock

The session kicked off a conference hosted by Prof. Nelson Rivera Rosario on John Cage’s contributions to the aural discipline followed by playback recordings of the likes of Brian Eno, Steve Reich and other avant-garde composers but he real show didn’t start until the first performance by duo René Sandín and Joel Rodríguez with their own brand of bubblegum art pop.Not the Phil Spector produced girl group twang of yesteryear, I’m talking about the literal sound of chewing gum. During the piece, the boys urged the audience to move towards a set of microphone and chew into them, producing a series of gnashing, biting masticating sounds in a stereo-field that would be later fed into and filtered through layers of feedback and modulation. It was a self-gestating piece, having the ice broken by its composers; the crowd flowed into the performance, growing all too aware of the floating harmonic gargle of pink gunk in people’s mouth. Concentration and attention was forced upon the unsuspecting, following the mantras of humming drones, being re-aware of reality through sonic appreciation. The chewing act was a piece in Buddhist contemplation as well as an appreciation of Cage, accepting and taking on the corporeal world but at the same time, destroying the integrity of the self by distorting and disassociating the sources of the pop and biting noises produced.

This piece segued into a dance sequence titled “Leyéndola hasta Xibalba” interpreted by dancer Cristina Lugo and local favorites Campo-Formio. Originally titled “The Xibalba Dance Propsal”, the band composed this piece of courtball trance through the Mayan underworld and had Lugo improvise to the pace of tonal vignettes. Oscillating between the sacrificial priestess of barbaric trials and tribulations and the tarnished beauty of Petroushka’s valentine, Lugo executed and convulsed through the chambers of torment in the Mayan underworld.  A classically trained ballerina, Lugo’s fluidity of joints and discipline over dance and her physical extensions epitomized the brutal human struggle in this realm and the next, shifting and reacting to the change of keys, counteracting the ultra-tight clockwork that is the band’s punishing mix of sinister bass lines, pounding drum rolls and the saccharine/cyanide tasty synth riffs with the bartering of a body freed of restriction, as thought the world had taken step of it. Campo-Formio brought their own brand of cretin rock to a wider artistic spectrum by connecting dialogues between the indian Salomé caught during the apocalyptic upheaval and the electric bards of the earth.  Much more harmonically formal that the previous gum incident, “Leyéndola hasta Xibalba” is not merely a rock n’ roll piece placed in a museum, it’s a collection of surrealistic musical instances discussing with ascendant vaults.

To tie off the evening, Prof. Nora Ponte and the University of Puerto Rico’s experimental music workshop interpreted Cage’s “Radio Music”, conducted by student Ricardo Villalón. The radiophony that ensued juggled between white noise, local news and top of pop charts classics in a sequence of transistor shuffles. “It’s difficult putting this type of music out there, since it’s still relevant even now,” said Ponte, who contextualized the piece in the local scenario, adding the island personalities and the gush of bad love songs sung by reggaeton artists and “rock en Español” faux troubadours.

Many a qualm was overheard saying “these pieces are outdated”, to unbelievers: I say nay. Though Cage’s ethos and temporal background is radically different than today’s, these sound artists have given a different face to compositions, incorporating to our local idioms and Caribbean narratives. Hardly anything nowadays is original, “avant-garde” is a word paraded like child model by its irresponsible parents, but what is still exciting about art (as the contemporary sensibilities tend to point tp) is its authenticity, and what can be more authentic than re-envisioning pieces under the white orbs of devotion that are local eyes?

Surprisingly, this type of soundscapes (of a more curious nature if thou wilt) fathomed well with the crowd. Perhaps it is that this generation is more open and more “epicurious” with its aural delicacies than past ages (in part because of the internet and information), but it’s great to see an interest in a different (yet still challenging) sonic scenario start to rise, especially in an island that has only a handful of truly adventurous musicians. If you’re still not convinced, the sonoMAClab is open to the public to make noise or art throughout this remaining season with activities more aural activities along the way.

For more information on the lab, please visit www.sonomaclab.blogspot.com