like a strobing light.

aargh, i’m so tired! i forgot university could be so dreadfully draining. classes and homework are killing my energy, so all i do is sleep and read john updike’s novels. reading john updike is, by the way, a very efficient natural remedy for insomnia. after three pages of ‘when i fucked the hippie girl in the back of the volvo station wagon yati yata’, your eyes start to feel very heavy, and you doze off into misogynist wonderland. better and easier to procure than valium! now i’m going to run around in circles and scream ‘WOE IS ME, WOE IS ME, OH, WOE IS ME’. ta!

anyway, some pictures. me, with whiskeytown’s factory girl’s hat:

debauchery:

queenie, doing mysterious things you would rather not see explained:

from the vaults, vol. 3.

Deerhoof – The Runners Four (2005)

deerhoof had been releasing nearly unlistenable records for eleven years before they finally got around to releasing the runners four. if we take a look at their previous two albums first, 2003’s apple o was loud, noisy, and loaded with distorted guitars and monster drums, while milk man, their oh-four effort, was a short, saccharine synth epic about a child-snatching monster, which was a sure sign of aural sadism and schizophrenia. at least the artwork was nice (hannah, i do not want any comments about this, everybody makes mistakes).

the runners four is different, thank god. it clocks in at 56 minutes and twenty songs; the monster drums, horrible cheesy synths and a.d.d. guitars are mostly gone, and they actually started writing songs for this one. ‘chatterboxes’ is the first of a long list of subdued, cuddly songs about loneliness, sung by japan’s secret weapon, the squeaky-sounding satomi matsuzaki. then there’s songs like ‘twin killers’ (monster drums!) about, well, ruthless twin killers, ‘wrong time capsule’ (sugary monster guitar!) about syncopating forwards and backwards; and ‘you can see’ (cheesy synths!) about, well, not being blind after all.

what i’m trying to say is: the runners four was a synthesis of all the eccentric sounds they came up with before, which makes it slightly more accessible and less grating. i would still never take someone to a deerhoof gig or put this album on when there’s people around, but it’s very enjoyable music, the closest to krautrock we’ll get this decade.

their next album, friend opportunity, was chocked up with synths again, and sounds like the closest we’ll get to brazilian rock performed by insane raccoons this century (at least i hope so). ah well… old habits die hard, and at least we’ll always have the runners four to listen to in fits of insanity.

living in an abandoned toy shop with boy bear.

ah, my ID trouble has come to an end! i’m looking at my new, shiny electronic ID as i am typing these very words, and it does satisfy me. ta ra, passports and provisional forms, yay more room in my back pocket!

in other news, school started. it’s going to be okay, i guess, but it’s so depressing.
i had everything i wanted, and now i have precisely nothing. no social life, not that much money, no love-love, well er, nothing at all really. i don’t even have an iPod anymore: it broke down four days after the warranty expired and now only plays in mono (ie. in one ear). thank you apple computer!

i wish i lived here:

or maybe here (i think a secret nuclear bunker would compliment my mood awesomely. come russians, come!):

c’est la rentree avec le petit nounours brun!

school starts in like, 16 hours, eeeee. but on a lighter note, i’ll look like this joyous fluffy monster in ten months (if i don’t resign to my horrible fate of bringing coal to newcastle):

you got yr. cherry bomb…

… but i got my ZITHER!

on a slightly less lyric note, i found out there’s school on monday. OH NOOOO. i just got used to bumming around with plenty of alcohol and agatha christie novels around! maybe i should go on the dole or something, and then write my masterpiece. if (and unfortunately not when) i ever finished that damn Bondage for Dummies, money, fame and a tan 70s porsche would surely be mine. maybe i should get wasted at home and finish the thing, instead of getting wasted outdoors and doing nothing constructive at all.

blech, why do i always look for questionable excuses to get really drunk? the road to alcoholism is more like a short, slippery slope, and i have a bobsled. i shall leave you with these ominous words.

from the vaults, vol. 2.

Stereolab – Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996)

disclaimer: stereolab is my favourite band. they exist in their own sphere of krautrock rhythms, gallic pop, endless drones and 60s lounge, but that’s something you can read everywhere. stereolab is far more than the sum of those parts though; they evolved from a poppy shoegaze band to a colossal genre-bending outfit to making polite electronic music to italian film scores to french disco and back. are you still with us? okay.

emperor tomato ketchup, their best-received album, finds the groop well into their genre-bending phase. they seamlessly segue from explosive krautrock on the opener, ‘metronomic underground’, to french pop on ‘cybele’s reverie’, sun ra-style freakouts on ‘percolator’, noiserock on ‘ noise of carpet’ and various arcane, droning electronic songs in between. it’s not all that remarkable to release an album that’s not much more than a hodgepodge of obscure influences, but stereolab blend all these different flavours to create a sound that’s definitely their own.

a thousand articles have been written about laetitia sadier’s vocals’ delicate interlocking with mary hansen’s counterpoint cooing, and the same goes for tim gane’s craft at assembling a song from ridiculously disparate elements (neu! delia derbyshire’s ‘ziwzih ziwzih oo-oo-oo’! os mutantes!). sadier’s lyrics have often been called marxist; but all they do is consistently expressing the positive nature of humanity, which is singular enough as is.

anyway, emperor tomato ketchup is a very deep and thought-inducing album, starry-eyed in very much the same way a good novel can be transcendent. don’t let it put you off though; these are pop songs, and good pop songs at that!

bop scotch.

me and hannah were walking thru antwerp in search of coffee when these french-speaking schoolgirls went like: YOU’RE BEAAAUTIFUL. i was mildly flattered. hm, at least i’m now in the possession of the new m.i.a. album and paul frank wild west briefs (WITH included tinsel sheriff star), yay! i do not have any post-operative painkillers left though, which sucks, cos i can’t sleep without their desensitizing woozy goodness.

i also found myself in a theatre where they showed a documentary about a malinese tribe last tuesday evening, one of the last places on earth i’d ever suspected to learn more about, but it was mildly entertaining (in a bad way) anyway.

well, at least i’ve taken all the painkillers ‘the hand’ had lying around. ooops, hahaha.

all the aging showstoppers.

this post is horrendously overdue! my apologies. anyway, in august i went to the festival d’aurillac, which is the biggest street theater festival in france. it was quite the experience: a small city bustling with costumed meanies, clowns, furry marionettes, funk bands and go go dancers. some of the performances are free; that is, you give as much as you think it’s worth. you pay a small entrance fee for other, more professional performances (i’d say it’s a well-balanced mix of free and commercial entertainment). aurillac is in auvergne, a fairly backward region of france that’s only notable for its glacial climate; the city is so endearingly retro you have the impression of acting in one of those french 70s b-movies.

anyway, it’s not like i haven’t done anything else since then, but with my remaining amount of free storage on wordpress dwindling, i thought these were some fairly interesting pictures worth posting. enjoi!

this was a performance by a seriously imbecile dutch theatre troupe. they claimed france ‘had no culture’, and this was their way of showing how it’s done in the cosmopolitan netherlands:

me, having my own ideas about the dutch interpretation of culture. no, about the dutch in general:

me and an accordion, which i despise, and me and… a clown. I F—-ING HATE CLOWNS, oh, how i hate them. they are all that’s evil in this world. them and accordions.

well, i hope this batch of pictures has added to your collective merri- and bewilderment. ta for now, dear reader!