You know, as far as Michael Crichton goes...what a hack he was, wasn't he? But when it came to concepts he was second to none, and "Congo" is no slouch, it just happened to be executed by a bunch of hamfisted oafs.
It's still heaps and bounds endless levels of fun, which is to be expected since we have charismatic guys like Tim Curry and Ernie Hudson speaking the dumbest dialogue, but with such sincerity it's impossible for me to hate it.
Is it a bad movie? Oh yeah. Is it a boring movie? Not at all! Absolute guilty pleasure that I'd re-watch whenever I feel bad or whenever I'm in the middle of a hangover.
We all need movies like that.
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Gorilla Mask - Mind Raid - new album from Peter Van Huffel’s skronk trio (Clean Feed again)
With this new release, the long-standing trio looks back on four album productions and nearly 13 years of performing together as a band under the direction of leader and saxophonist Peter Van Huffel, during which time they developed a unique sound and their distinctively wild and energetic approach to music. “Mind Raid” is however the first album created completely collaboratively by the band. During the pandemic lockdowns, the three members of Gorilla Mask came together with the intention of building new conceptual material derived from a more collective mindset. Through an intensive rehearsal process in which the band experimented with a variety of conceptual ideas and musical fragments, they combined these contrasting motifs into workable pieces and vehicles for improvisation, eventually resulting in full “compositions” comprising material from all members. All tracks were edited and mixed by drummer Rudi Fischerlehner with the assistance and input of bassist Roland Fidezius and Van Huffel, as well as the extraordinary mastering engineer James Plotkin, who also put his special final touch on the production of this album. Although this fifth album by GORILLA MASK is highly representative of the pre-established high-energy thrash-jazz sound of this long-standing trio, it is also a gateway to a new era for this band: one that crosses a multitude of genres and brings together the strengths, backgrounds and influences of each band member with equal weight.
Peter Van Huffel alto and baritone saxophones, electronics
Roland Fidezius electric-bass, effects
Rudi Fischerlehner drums, percussion
All compositions by GORILLA MASK
They say batting 1000 is impossible and that no one will ever keep that no matter what.
More so in what you create as not everything will get the same acclimation every single time.
But for only his second movie Jordan Peele is batting 1000 and nobody is minding.
Especially want to comes to a genius premise like this.
Along with her family Adelaide returns to the beach where she significantly experienced a major trauma once she was younger. But as night falls the unexpected happens when the family vacation house is stormed by a series of doppelgängers led by the chilling red, who is a near copy of Adelaide.
This is the only the beginning of thier terror as similar incidents would begin to occur all over the country, leading to a shocking reveal.
Peele is once again ingenious with his mastery of racial ambiguity and twists slowly weaving into the narrative from the outset.
Lupita Nyong’o definitely is scary as the lead doppelgänger. With one of the most chilling voices of the decade. Winston Duke was the big surprise though feeling up the heart with the brute force. Even the kids had thier moments of light in this darkness.
Now we hope that Felicity‘s prediction in arrow comes true and will soon have vintage Jordan Peele movie nights in 10 years.
Sum 22: A family trip becomes a waking nightmare involving tethered doppelgängers In Jordan Peeles sensational sophomore outing.
A little past Valentine’s Day, midway through the winter, we interrupt our regular schedule to present a series of short reviews of albums that have caught our interest in these short, dark anxious days. There’s a posthumous EP from the Thin White Duke, a jangly solo effort from Ought’s Tim Darcy, a study in American primitivism from Joseph Allred, a bit of costume party revelry from Gorilla Mask and a slice of latter day jangle pop from the Courtneys, among others. Contributors this time include Ian Mathers, Bill Meyers, Justin Cober-Lake, Derek Taylor and Jennifer Kelly. Make a cup of tea, turn the heat up and dig in.
David Bowie — No Plan EP (Columbia/Sony)
The headline, of course, is that this the last(!) new(!) material from David Bowie before his death, and that’s true as far as it goes. It’s also true that one of these four songs was already released on ★, and the other three were included both in Bowie’s musical Lazarus and twice on the cast recording of the show (once by the case, once on the bonus disc in the versions found here). But whether you take the stance that this release is essential or deeply redundant, it confirms two things: Bowie still had plenty left in the tank when he passed (whether or not these three songs would have found their way to the album he wanted to make next), and his curatorial instincts were still firmly intact. Whatever work the songs here do in the musical, they would have made for an odd fit with the compressed, keening, weird melancholy tracks that make up ★ and would have been the weakest material there (the majestic, keenly felt “Lazarus” excepted, of course).
That doesn’t make them scraps or afterthoughts, it’s just that they’re more on par with more prosaic material from The Next Day instead. The title track is another in a series of wavering elegies later-period Bowie has been mostly nailing since, let’s say, “Thursday’s Child” in 1999. It’s immediately contrasted with the insistent, grinding guitar of “Killing a Little Time,” a song that is the most conventionally “rock” thing Bowie did in 2016, although the closing “When I Met You” comes close. That last track is mostly notable for being an unusually direct song of love and devotion from Bowie; it’s hard to hear it and not assume it’s about Iman in some part. It’s a lovely note to go out on, and probably more true to Bowie’s existence at the end than the more self-consciously iconic (and tremendously powerful) “I Can’t Give Everything Away;” after all, he was fighting to keep living and working until the end.
Ian Mathers
The Few —Fragments of a Luxury Vessel LP (Two Cities Records)
Fragments of a Luxury Vessel by The Few
Some music falls into the cracks, but that’s where The Few finds space to navigate. The Chicago-based trio of guitarist Steve Marquette, bassist Charlie Kirchen and violinist/vocalist Macie Stewart has ties to both inside and outside jazz traditions as well as song-based rock and their acoustic instrumentation invites folk comparisons as well. Marquette’s Bailey-esque crabwalks on “Do You Still?” and stark harmonics on “Variations on ‘The Truth Is Marching In’” confirm his familiarity with no-net improvisation, but even though the music is freely played it doesn’t conform to any idiomatic proscriptions against tonal melody. And while Kirchen cuts some bold, Mingus-like shapes in the foreground of “Foot Fall,” the flamenco-like guitar flourishes and Stewart’s parallel streams of vocalized and long bowed tones put it in a context where dreamlike flow counts more than swing.
Bill Meyer
Tim Darcy—Saturday Night (Jagjaguwar)
Tim Darcy, the front man from Ought, wields a sharp guitar and a wobbly voice to great effect, channeling the oddball earnestness of Gordon Gano, the woozy pop surrealism of Jeff Magnum. Saturday Night is his first solo album, recorded at around the same time as Ought’s denser Sun Coming Down, but stripped of aura and overtone and guitar effects to reveal a jaunty pop core. (The Ought song that this album most resembles, as others have noted, is “Beautiful Blue Sky.”) Thus “Tall Glass of Water” rips and struts and slashes with pop-punk bravado, while intimating vulnerability in the tremble of the words. “You Felt Comfort” blares more dissonantly (and it’s this one that reminds you of Neutral Milk Hotel), but around a sweet, heartening tune; it’s a rampage with a fetching smile. The song stretch out and grow weirder after the midway point. The title track slips some abrasive bowing into its disconsolate mix, with Darcy muttering “I wish I’d run away sooner…to save time,” but it sounds to me like he got out at exactly the right moment.
Jennifer Kelly
Gorilla Mask – Iron Lung (Clean Feed)
Gorilla Mask strikes a precarious balance of costume party extroversion and dialed-in intensity on Iron Lung. Theirs is pile-driving, peel-out-on-a-dime music that wastes nothing in the way of quarter given to skeptical neophyte listener or avaricious industry suit. Altoist Peter Van Huffel punches, jabs, ducks and weaves from his reed like a jacked-up cousin to John Zorn, riding the tight, pounding metrics of drummer Rudi Fischerlehner and liquid mercury electric bass lines of Roland Fidezius that often also rely on fuzz pedal and delay. “Before I Die” has the sweaty basement door gig flavor Boston-era Vandermark, a head-bobbing backbeat bolstered by detours into Echoplex dub. “THUMP!” divines memories of the sort of circumscript, drain-circling jams that were the purview of SoCal punk jazz pioneers Bazooka while “Crooked” projects Brötzmann-worthy peals of pathos above a pulsing mallets-driven processional. The German power trio proves better suited to the former context as the fire-stoking title track also beautifully and implacably bears witness, but who’s to fault them for trying to beat their chests outside the box.
Derek Taylor
Joseph Allred—Fire & Earth LP (Scissor Tail Records)
Fire and Earth by Joseph Allred
There’s more than one mountain to climb in American Primitive guitar territory, and Joseph Allred favors the holy one. Like Robbie Basho, he totes a 12-string guitar, augments his playing with other instruments and some line-in-the-sand singing, and uses his music to convey mystical and nature-dazzled themes. But he’s no copycat. Instead of feverish exaltation and slack-jawed awe, he expresses humility and a more measurable appreciation for his subjects. And some of his recurrent instrumental effects do not come from Basho’s playbook at all; the blurry tremolo effect he employs on “Holy Blue Window” and “A Waltz for Winter” recalls the early work of James Blackshaw. On two of the album’s nine tracks, Allred sets his guitar aside to play harmonium. “Musica Humana” is so closely recorded that you can hear him hum subliminally along with the melody while his feet work the pedals. It feels as intimate as the thoughts of a true nature lover communing with the divine during a long afternoon walk through the woods. Allred lifts his voice just once, on the hymn-like “Useless Air.” His high quaver is not as easy to embrace as his strumming, but the song’s prayerful quality is of a piece with the rest of the album.
Bill Meyer
The Courtneys – The Courtneys II (Flying Nun)
The Courtneys' aptly named second album has found the proper label, matching the history that the Canadian trio mines for their pop-rock. Flying Nun pillars like the Clean stand as sonic predecessors — there's still a bit of jangle here and a bit of pop and a particular sort of rock that touches on but isn't limited to its late 1980s and early 1990s roots. The group hints at a fuzziness it never quite dips into. At times, particularly in the second half of the album, the Courtneys reach more toward Sonic Youth, but this group never loses a brightness of tone that keeps a pop sound to even its more driving numbers. “Virgo” shows the anxious undercurrent of the band's music and while it hurtles along, it never dips into darker sounds.
That sort of edge keeps the album from leaning too far toward bubblegum. The group writes fantastic melody after melody, a sort of bright punkiness carried by a stream of hooks. “Silver Velvet” is a new teen love anthem, a little goofy and a little resistant, but completely given to its own ends. Like that opener, much of the album is fit to go over well when sung either in a safely grungy club or in a similarly half-cleaned bedroom.
Justin Cober-Lake
Tim Daisy—Red Nation “1” (Relay Recordings)
Tim Daisy [] Red Nation "1" (relay 018) by red nation
It has been a long time since you could just call Tim Daisy a jazz drummer.
Consider the classically steeped themes he has written and the marimba melodies he has played in the ensemble Vox Arcana, or the radio captures that he releases into the electrified environment of Ken Vandermark’s Made To Break; he’s a fully ledged agent of sonic and aesthetic diversity. Consider also that he helps program Option, an improviser’s salon at Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio and runs Relay Recordings; Daisy is an unstinting contributor to Chicago creative music scene, which has thrived despite the soul-corrosion and economic stress of 21st century American disaster capitalism.
Maybe it’s not a total bust to live in these times. In the mid-20th century, it took considerable institutional support for the pioneers of musique concrete to make music that sounds like Red Nation “1.” Daisy was able to make the album in just two days without a single overdub by drumming along with stuck and triggered records and was able to get it from the recording studio to a finished silver CD in just 30 more. Being his own label boss means that his business practices can be as instantaneous as his playing, which synthesizes composition and improvisation into music that is spontaneous, witty and complete. “The Drunken Captain” is anchored by a hard-to-source electronic lurch that vividly evokes the gait of the titular skipper, who miraculously never quite trips over the streams of distorted piano and restlessly searching snare action that crisscrosses his path. And on “Shadows Play” and “Beats for an Owl,” Daisy plays spare and evolving beat patterns around layers of remorselessly rotating sound.
Why red? Daisy isn’t making any sort of political statement, he just likes the color, and sometimes when you’re your own boss you get to do what you like.
