Some time ago I saw The Ex play live, supported by some local act called Barnyard Witch. BW seemed interesting, and I would not object to seeing them again. As for The Ex… they were great, but on this occasion I was in the grip of a terrible attack of torpid lethargy and thus not a in position to enjoy them as much as they deserved. Perhaps if I had been seated, and there were servants on hand to fetch me glasses of laudanum.
Anyway, as you know, the Ex are an innovative Dutch punk band who have been on the scene for quite some time now. They have in recent years become very interested in Ethiopian jazz music. Maybe this, or African music generally, started to infect their own sound, with the band's output becoming almost polyrhythmic, despite retaining the normal punk instrumentation. They always give a 100% live and seem to genuinely enjoy playing, which is nice. I did find myself wondering, though, if The Ex would be better if the singer did his stuff in his native Dutch rather than English. I do not know if it is second-language syndrome or the punk mindset, but the lyrics are generally amazingly fatuous and paying them any attention at all made the music seem less interesting.
The Ex are nevertheless a great band, although you probably know this already. I bought a copy of their most recent album, recorded with Ethiopian jazzer Gétatchèw Mèkurya. It is completely deadly stuff, although maybe it is too good. Like with The Ex-Orkest album (on which The Ex played with an orchestra) you find yourself feeling slightly short-changed by seeing just the band on their own. Which is a shame, really, as The Ex's own commitment to polyrhythmic punk makes them a unique live experience.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Living Music 2007 Event 4: Improvisations and Ligeti's "Etudes"
This was in the John Field Room of the National Concert Hall, and was essentially two concerts in one, separated by a long interval in which they fiddled with the piano.
Rolf Hind went first, playing the Ligeti pieces, explaining them as he went along to buy time to rest his fingers. I found them very enjoyable, so much so that I almost fell asleep during them (As you know, I love falling asleep to classical music). I think some of this music might have been Gamelan influenced.
In the interval we met well-known composer Raymond Deane, and he said something about how he finds live concerts quite stressful. I know what he means – I am always TERRIFIED that in the middle of a classical music concert I will find myself bursting for a piss or possessed by an irresistible urge to cough and cough and cough, or that I will go mad and start shouting "VADGEMONKEY!", or my phone will switch itself on and someone will ring me, etc.. This has never yet happened, but one day it might.
Interval coffee meant there would be no sleeping when Simon Nabotov did his stuff. He was an amiably chubby Russian fellow who did a bit of the old jazz improv, combining this with putting stuff inside the piano to add to its funny noise potential. Deadly.
This was also the last thing I went to in this year's festival.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Living Music 2007 Event 3: Big Satan
This was a late night concert in Vicar Street. Big Satan are a jazz three piece led by saxophonist Tim Berne. I often feel like there should be more jazz in my life, and the programme talked a good game about this lot, so I decided to give them a go, letting other people know that I was doing so. I seem to be a bit of a trendsetter, as a surprising number of people came along to this on my "recommendation", though it turned out that some of them had seen the Satan several years ago.
This stuff is bonkers free jazz, played by Tim Berne on sax, baldy French weirdo Marc Ducret on electric guitar and Tom Rainey on drums. Jazz is maybe the one musical genre where astonishing musical virtuosity is a strength rather than a weakness, so it was great to see three musicians as awesome as these fellows going for it big time.
But it was all a bit uncompromising, and the many trend and event people present seemed a bit non-plussed by it all, leading to a steady stream of leavers as the event wore on. There were also a lot of talkers present. Two chattering twunts were sitting near us, but fortunately they left before it was demonstrated to them that if they liked talking loudly so much then maybe they would be better off doing it in adjacent toilet cubicles with their heads rammed down the bowls. I had more ambivalent feelings towards a couple of very drunk people who kept chattering away through the music, as they were plainly very into the music even if they felt obliged to yammer away through it.
All forward thinking people found this music very enjoyable, and many copies of Big Satan records were purchased. However, the wife of one of my pals suggested that while this music was all very well in the live setting, she did not fancy hearing it at home (or ever again). "Pre-menstrual music" was the phrase used. She may have been correct, but this was easily the highlight of the festival for me, and a concert that I do not really expect to see bettered this year.
This stuff is bonkers free jazz, played by Tim Berne on sax, baldy French weirdo Marc Ducret on electric guitar and Tom Rainey on drums. Jazz is maybe the one musical genre where astonishing musical virtuosity is a strength rather than a weakness, so it was great to see three musicians as awesome as these fellows going for it big time.
But it was all a bit uncompromising, and the many trend and event people present seemed a bit non-plussed by it all, leading to a steady stream of leavers as the event wore on. There were also a lot of talkers present. Two chattering twunts were sitting near us, but fortunately they left before it was demonstrated to them that if they liked talking loudly so much then maybe they would be better off doing it in adjacent toilet cubicles with their heads rammed down the bowls. I had more ambivalent feelings towards a couple of very drunk people who kept chattering away through the music, as they were plainly very into the music even if they felt obliged to yammer away through it.
All forward thinking people found this music very enjoyable, and many copies of Big Satan records were purchased. However, the wife of one of my pals suggested that while this music was all very well in the live setting, she did not fancy hearing it at home (or ever again). "Pre-menstrual music" was the phrase used. She may have been correct, but this was easily the highlight of the festival for me, and a concert that I do not really expect to see bettered this year.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Meta: Comments
Is there a way of getting Blogger to show links to posts with recent comments? This is a feature I like in other blogging packages.
I am only asking this because I have recently received some actual comments.
I am only asking this because I have recently received some actual comments.
Living Music 2007 Event 2: Crash Ensemble perform stuff by John Adams and others in Vicar Street
So eh, I failed to take any notes, but I can tell you from looking at the programme that Crash did two pieces by Adams and one each by Michael Gordon and Kevin Volans. I recall enjoying this a lot, particularly 'Shaker Loops' by Adams.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Living Music 2007 Event 1: "The Death of Klinghoffer"
The Living Music festival is sponsored or run by our national broadcaster and about how music is alive. This year it was focussed on the music of John Adams (not present himself), though as with previous years it also covered other stuff. The big change this year was that Jazz has crashed the party and is part of the festival on equal footing with weirdo modernist classical music, something about which the jazzers are very excited. As always there was loads of stuff on but my time is limited so I only went to so much.
The first thing I went to was a showing of a film version of John Adams' opera about the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in the mid-1980s. The Palestinian hijackers murder one Mr Klinghoffer, a wheelchair bound passenger; hence the title. One of my Frank's APA pals was not too taken with the opera when he saw it performed live. I agree with his assessment in so far as I was not really that taken with the music. However, as a film this worked quite well, being a tense narrative of the events leading up to and following Klinghoffer's death.
The film begins with some Palestinians being brutally expelled from a village in what is becoming Israel in 1948, with the son of an expellee becoming one of the militants who carries out the hijacking. After that it follows the course of the hijacking, climaxing in the murder of Klinghoffer in a scene that is genuinely upsetting. The aftermath of his murder is a bit anticlimactic, and is the most "oh get on with it" of the film, with the narrative being a bit slow as it plods to the films end. In case you are wondering, some kind of deal was cut that allowed the hijacking to end, possibly with the hijackers going into one of Egypt's comfortable jails for a while.
One of the things I do not really like about films and suchlike that touch on events in the Middle East is that I can never just enjoy them as narrative. Rather, I have to subject them to a degree of meta-analysis on what kind of line they take on the Palestinian-Israeli issue as whole. This opera provoked some controversy in certain quarters, with various pro-Israel groups condemning it in no uncertain terms. I think they felt it was over sympathetic to terrorists or some such. The film certainly does portray the hijackers as people with the kind of motivations that people have, and I understand that some supporters of Israel are uncomfortable with Palestinian militants being portrayed as anything other than slavering nut jobs. The film did appear to be broadly sympathetic to the Palestinian condition, feeling that they have legitimate grievances (like being expelled from their homes in 1948 and suchlike). However, the film plainly considered the taking of hostages, and more specifically the murdering of a wheel-chair bound man, to be morally repugnant. You could not watch this film and in any sense think "Go hijackers!", or think that the film wanted you to say "Go hijackers!".
I was a bit bemused by the present day sections they sometimes cut to, showing the hijackers now as beardy Hamas types bashing women who do not wear the hijab. Partly it seemed a bit irrelevant to the main narrative, but also it seemed a bit hard to believe that the hijackers would ever be able to live in the Occupied Territories without being exterminated. And the film created a false contrast between the (enforced) hijaby world of the 2000s and the veil-less Palestinian women of 1948 and 1985. I believe that hijab wearing would have been the norm for Palestinian women in all three time-periods, and the idea that Hamas started to enforce veil wearing on a population to which it was largely new is misrepresentation of actual events.
[Aside – since writing the previous paragraph for my homies in Frank's APA, I read in Spy School about how during Intifada 1 Hamas did in fact wage campaign to encourage/enforce hijab wearing, so maybe women in the early 1980s were as veil-free as the film suggests, though I somewhat doubt it]
But of course, this is all largely irrelevant to the opera's musical content, which as previously mentioned I found to be dull and uninvolving, in contrast to the exciting story.
The first thing I went to was a showing of a film version of John Adams' opera about the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship in the mid-1980s. The Palestinian hijackers murder one Mr Klinghoffer, a wheelchair bound passenger; hence the title. One of my Frank's APA pals was not too taken with the opera when he saw it performed live. I agree with his assessment in so far as I was not really that taken with the music. However, as a film this worked quite well, being a tense narrative of the events leading up to and following Klinghoffer's death.
The film begins with some Palestinians being brutally expelled from a village in what is becoming Israel in 1948, with the son of an expellee becoming one of the militants who carries out the hijacking. After that it follows the course of the hijacking, climaxing in the murder of Klinghoffer in a scene that is genuinely upsetting. The aftermath of his murder is a bit anticlimactic, and is the most "oh get on with it" of the film, with the narrative being a bit slow as it plods to the films end. In case you are wondering, some kind of deal was cut that allowed the hijacking to end, possibly with the hijackers going into one of Egypt's comfortable jails for a while.
One of the things I do not really like about films and suchlike that touch on events in the Middle East is that I can never just enjoy them as narrative. Rather, I have to subject them to a degree of meta-analysis on what kind of line they take on the Palestinian-Israeli issue as whole. This opera provoked some controversy in certain quarters, with various pro-Israel groups condemning it in no uncertain terms. I think they felt it was over sympathetic to terrorists or some such. The film certainly does portray the hijackers as people with the kind of motivations that people have, and I understand that some supporters of Israel are uncomfortable with Palestinian militants being portrayed as anything other than slavering nut jobs. The film did appear to be broadly sympathetic to the Palestinian condition, feeling that they have legitimate grievances (like being expelled from their homes in 1948 and suchlike). However, the film plainly considered the taking of hostages, and more specifically the murdering of a wheel-chair bound man, to be morally repugnant. You could not watch this film and in any sense think "Go hijackers!", or think that the film wanted you to say "Go hijackers!".
I was a bit bemused by the present day sections they sometimes cut to, showing the hijackers now as beardy Hamas types bashing women who do not wear the hijab. Partly it seemed a bit irrelevant to the main narrative, but also it seemed a bit hard to believe that the hijackers would ever be able to live in the Occupied Territories without being exterminated. And the film created a false contrast between the (enforced) hijaby world of the 2000s and the veil-less Palestinian women of 1948 and 1985. I believe that hijab wearing would have been the norm for Palestinian women in all three time-periods, and the idea that Hamas started to enforce veil wearing on a population to which it was largely new is misrepresentation of actual events.
[Aside – since writing the previous paragraph for my homies in Frank's APA, I read in Spy School about how during Intifada 1 Hamas did in fact wage campaign to encourage/enforce hijab wearing, so maybe women in the early 1980s were as veil-free as the film suggests, though I somewhat doubt it]
But of course, this is all largely irrelevant to the opera's musical content, which as previously mentioned I found to be dull and uninvolving, in contrast to the exciting story.
Film: For Your Consideration
This has long left the cinema, but one day you will be able to borrow it on DVD or download it from that Interweb. As you know, it is the latest of those Christopher Guest ensemble comedies. Much discourse surround this being the first of them not filmed in what they call mockumentary format. The film follows some movie people as they work on a truly awful sounding family drama called Home For Purim. The picture starts attracting some Oscar buzz and people start thinking that they are about to really hit the big time.
Now, you know the way with A Mighty Wind things moved a bit away from being solely comedic to being about characters and stuff like that? For Your Consideration goes further with this. While it definitely has plenty of chortlesome moments (e.g. whenever Jennifer Coolidge is on screen), a lot of it focuses on the somewhat miserable lives of people for whom the big-time remains perpetually round the corner. Catherine O'Hara's character in particular is all about the miserableness, portraying well the desperation of an aging actor realising that she is never going to do the Hollywood woman equivalent of playing the Dane. The later scenes, where she has had some kind of botox facelift and dresses like Paris Hilton's slappery sister, are particularly grim.
It is curious how "It's not that funny" is seen by many as the knock-down argument against more recent Guest films - not something you could ever use against Inland Empire
Now, you know the way with A Mighty Wind things moved a bit away from being solely comedic to being about characters and stuff like that? For Your Consideration goes further with this. While it definitely has plenty of chortlesome moments (e.g. whenever Jennifer Coolidge is on screen), a lot of it focuses on the somewhat miserable lives of people for whom the big-time remains perpetually round the corner. Catherine O'Hara's character in particular is all about the miserableness, portraying well the desperation of an aging actor realising that she is never going to do the Hollywood woman equivalent of playing the Dane. The later scenes, where she has had some kind of botox facelift and dresses like Paris Hilton's slappery sister, are particularly grim.
It is curious how "It's not that funny" is seen by many as the knock-down argument against more recent Guest films - not something you could ever use against Inland Empire
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Incoming
1. George Clinton is playing in the TriPod place on the 4th of July. I have long thought that Funkadelic's 'One Nation Under A Groove' should become the US national anthem, so I am hoping for bonkers Americana at this, so long as the Hootieship does not accidentally descend.
2. The Gate is showing a production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the famous musical about a murderous barber and the nearby pie shop that assists in the disposal of his victims. I have long been fascinated by this gothic masterpiece of bloody and indiscriminate revenge, and longed for it to be performed in Dublin. And now it is here! The director is Selina Cartmell, who did Titus Andronicus in the Project recently, so I am expecting good things from this.
2. The Gate is showing a production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street, the famous musical about a murderous barber and the nearby pie shop that assists in the disposal of his victims. I have long been fascinated by this gothic masterpiece of bloody and indiscriminate revenge, and longed for it to be performed in Dublin. And now it is here! The director is Selina Cartmell, who did Titus Andronicus in the Project recently, so I am expecting good things from this.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
World's Strangest Railway Found!
It is Volk's Brighton to Rottingdean Seashore Electric railway, looking oddly like something from a Kevin Mills illustration of the Gothic Empire.
Check out the Abandoned Lines and Railways website for more abandoned railway line action. If you have ever been to the Bowlie Weekender or the All Tomorrow's Parties festival (when it was in Camber Sands), you might be interested by the Camber Station, Rye and Camber tramway, a line which once took people from Rye to Camber Sands. Apparently the railway line is now a walk way, possibly the route I took when I walked from Camber Sands to Rye last year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)