Boris and Merzbow ‘Gensho’ Dual Albums

Some Girls Metal.

On March 18, Boris and Merzbow will release another collaboration, only this time it’s not a single hour-long song; it’s two separate albums meant to be played simultaneously. Think surround sound.

While you do have the option of listening to them separately, you’re going to want to be in the right mind frame to listen to the Merzbow album solo — it’s straight-up noise, their specialty.

Stick with me here.

I used to spin The Locust and Melt Banana simultaneously, as an experiment in screeching, squealing, screaming combinations of noise. Listening to preview tracks “Heavy Rain” and “Goloka Pt. 2” at the same time on YouTube reminds me of a darker walk through those days, with the somber summoning of sirens echoing behind a haze of distortion, feedback, and white noise.

It’s doomy and shoegazey behind a curtain of crackling FM tuning, and it makes me curious to find out what…

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Details and commentary on Bare Knuckle Brawl

Art & Crit by Eric Wayne

This is a large format digital painting that can be printed 4 feet wide at magazine cover quality, and 8 feet wide at poster quality. It’s in a style reminiscent of classic American painters such as Edward Hopper and George Bellows, though that wasn’t exactly deliberate. It started as an experiment working in a different approach than my last work, which was extremely methodical and included a fully realized black and white drawing phase. Here I never made a drawing, and just started directly with color. The imagery is loosely based on a real fight I discovered in a YouTube fight compilation. I took multiple screen shots, reassembled and recombined them, invented a background, and reinterpreted them to create my own scene which never occurs in the actual footage. It’s essentially about the eruption of violence, spectator-ship, voyeurism, and contemporary culture at large. It fits within my…

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A thorn in the flesh

MaryAnn Adair's 'Is it art' Blog

Rosaleen Norton aka “Roie” (born 2nd  October 1917  in New Zealand – died 5th  December 1979), grew up in Sydney, and adopted a Bohemian lifestyle and overwhelming interest  in the occult. Her youthful fascination with the occult blossomed into a lifelong passion and this combined with her sexually-charged artwork attracted bitter condemnation from the conservative establishment. Over the years her passion for the occult intensified and this was reflected  in her artwork. Living in the cosmopolitan area of Kings Cross, in Sydney, she led her own coven of witches.

A police raid on an exhibition of her art in Victoria in 1949 saw her charged with exhibiting “obscene articles‘ thus giving her the dubious distinction of being the first woman artist ever to face such an accusation in Victoria. She won the case but in 1952 her book “The Art of Rosaleen Norton” was banned in…

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occulto sampler

the sunday experience

Staying with Boring Machines a little while longer, head honcho Onga also curates the Occulto magazine who it seems have been issuing forth some well-heeled compilations / samplers of their own of late, the latest of which #4 will be getting a more detailed listen in the coming days though not before we’ve had a chance to cherry pick two cuts by way of a starter. Happily eyeing Babau, who if memory serves me right, last appeared in these pages courtesy of a killer release via Artetetra records (who if we remember to – will be getting featured in their own right later today). Anyhow ‘palo majombe’ is a superbly wigged out seven and a half-minute head trip into old school progressive kosmiche, a full on panoramic fringe parter tailored in dream drifting smoking cool soft psych noir ambient curvatures which on first visitations appear to channel the spirit of…

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SUN ARAW

Revolt of the Apes

If there’s anything difficult, perplexing and sometimes puzzling about the music of Sun Araw (and we assert that there is plenty that fits such a description), it certainly doesn’t stem from anything we recognize as mysterious.

Rather, we find Sun Araw to be among the music least indebted to mysteriousness – while at the same time finding it at the very apex of musical exploration and elucidation (and, it should be noted, amplification).

Mystery implies that, despite the cosmic quest inherit in everything burnt by the Sun Araw, there remains something unexplained. Whether it’s last year’s “Ancient Romans” or the more recent, Jamaica-birthed collaborative release with M. Geddes Gengras and The Congos (entitled, “Icon Give Thanks“), we find Sun Araw’s music most explainable, knowable and enjoyable.

What we do find in Sun Araw, however, is music with an almost super-human capacity for not mystery but that close cousin…

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Cranach’s Obsession with Severed Heads

ferrebeekeeper

Every artist has favorite themes which they revisit again and again throughout their life.  Rembrandt painted and repainted his own face as he went from young student to successful portraitist to sad old man. Watteau’s works often feature lovers in the lingering twilight.  Picasso was drawn again and again to the Minotaur whom he painted variously as a beast, a poet, a sensualist, a murderer, and a murder victim.  To some degree each artist can be swiftly summarized by his or her favorite images.  These artistic leitmotifs are the touchstone to an artist’s life and work.  When looking over an artist’s entire canon, one can watch certain themes wax and wane or see how the artist’s favorite subjects overlap each other.  It is rather like the category cloud to the left: except played out over a lifetime and with images only (indeed, when I finally launch my art website you…

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Johnny Palacios Hidalgo (1970, Peruvian)

Juguetes de aquel Aguas mansas y aguas bravas Cazadores y presas Los recuerdos Isabella La pequena flama Bajo el almendro Manto de Eros Renaciendo en los suenos Dandelion Reina Sabila Sabila

Source: Johnny Palacios Hidalgo (1970, Peruvian)

The Invisible Killer: Mist Nets At Chinese Airports

Wild Beijing 北京自然

Any eagle-eyed birder or nature-lover arriving in Beijing by air during daylight hours will be shocked to see lines of mist nets alongside the runway.  Entangled bodies of birds, bats and flying insects dangle pathetically in the breeze, lifeless after having suffered a horrible, prolonged death.  I remember the first time I visited China and, as my plane turned onto the runway and accelerated for take off for the return flight to London, I couldn’t help feeling sad that so many birds would die to allow me to travel in a machine that is essentially a poor imitation of nature’s perfect design.

Birds, bats and flying insects suffer a prolonged, terrible death in mist nets at China’s airports.  This photo of a Siberian Rubythroat caught in a typical mist net in China.

What puzzled me was that I hadn’t seen anything like this at airports in other countries..  There were questions in…

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