Summer Reading and Quickie Reviews

Round One - Done and Done

Bolaño, Roberto. Monsieur Pain - Didn't rock my world like Bolaño usually does. But a fun read, with good surprises.

Perec, Georges. A Void - A novel written in French without the letter E, translated to English without the letter E. Recommended only if the idea of a novel without Es really excites you. I was all wound up about the idea of it, but found the book tedious after the first few chapters. Still, the E-less re-working of Poe's "The Raven" made it all worthwhile.

Richards, D. J. Zamyatin; A Soviet heretic - This was a mistake. I meant to get the book called A Soviet Heretic by Zamyatin. This was a slim little book about Zamyatin - very meh.

Hrabal, Bohumil. Closely Watched Trains - Good. Love me some Hrabal. Now I need to track down the film.

Larsson, Stieg. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - Because a girl's gotta read something on the airplane.

Markson, David. The Last Novel - Still thinking this one over.



Round Two - Aaaand GO!

Nabokov, Vladimir. The Original of Laura

McCann, Colum. Let the Great World Spin

Zamyatin, Yevgeny. A Soviet Heretic

Various. Soviet Short Stories

And I'm still waiting for a haiku collection.

Gristleized

On Tuesday, April 28, 2009, Throbbing Gristle played their third show in New York City at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple.

The opening band, Emeralds, was finishing their set when I arrived, so I navigated through the crowd to the bar to get a beer. The Masonic Temple is in my neighborhood, so I'm predisposed to like the venue, but I was annoyed to learn that in order to buy a beer, I would have to go to yet another table to buy a drink ticket, and then I would have to fight my way back to the bar to purchase a beverage with said ticket. "I know," said the bartender, "It's really annoying." At the end of the obstacle course, I was rewarded with a six-dollar can of Zywiec lager - but it was a big can.

I decided to explore the balcony, where I found a spot to stand that afforded a decent view of the stage and the venue's columns and art noveau ornamentation. Then the house lights came on, and Throbbing Gristle took the stage.

Because the house lights were on, I found myself watching the crowd as much as I watched the band. At first, it seemed that the audience was fairly well-behaved, and I wondered whether people in general tend to be more polite when the lights are on. I noticed one couple dancing near the front of the crowd: a tall, thin man and a petite blond woman. They were the only people dancing as if no one could see them. After the first song, the couple managed to maneuver themselves into the center of the crowd, where they continued to dance with reckless abandon, the man lifting his arms up high. I was glad I wasn't standing behind them. As the set continued, the music became more intense and aggressive, and Arms-Up started trying to push up closer to the front. For the first time, the crowd started to become agitated - I wondered if this was how mosh pits started. Arms-Up was bouncing around like a pinball, he'd push forward and get pushed back, until finally a man turned around and punched him in the face. One, two, three times fast. I inhaled, startled, and looked around to see if anyone else had seen it. If anyone around me had noticed, they weren't showing it. Then it was over, just like that, and Arms-Up had bounced back to the blond woman, she was touching his face as he sagged and slumped. I watched from the balcony, feeling sick, my empty beer can vibrating in my hand.

Maybe I didn't see what I thought I saw. Maybe it's not that big a deal for most people if someone who is being disruptive gets their face punched in. In any case, Arms-Up was subdued for a few minutes, and just when it seemed that he had recovered, the venue's security personnel came into the crowd (everyone around him turned like synchronized swimmers to point him out to the bouncers) and dragged him away. I don't know what happened to the other guy.

The next song was dedicated to "the mentally ill who couldn't be with us tonight," and there wasn't any more bad behavior from the audience. We had the privilege of hearing a new piece, "Gristleizer," which used the Gristleizer effect unit. "Gristleizer" sounded like: Cicadas, wind whistling through bare branches, underwater roar, the laquer crack of billiard balls striking one another, and a howling constant tone ascending and descending in pitch. All of these sounds occuring in independent rhythmic patterns of variable tempo, the amplitude increasing until my ribcage was rattling.

When people really started dancing, they weren't trying to look cool or sexy. They shuddered and flailed ecstatically, and by the end of the final song, everyone is moving. Genesis P-Orridge moved like a puppet in citrus colors (lemon, tangerine, blood orange), the crowd shook, I tapped my foot. The show ended. There was no encore, though the crowd clapped and stomped until the band came out and took a bow together. I went out into the sticky Brooklyn night with stinging hands and a singing head.

Recommended Reading: The Chase, by Alejo Carpentier

The Chase is the story of a fugitive, a member of Cuba’s communist party who is running for his life. He takes refuge in a concert hall where Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony is being performed, and he arrives just in time for the second movement: a funeral march.

Originally published in 1956, before the beginning of the Cuban Revolution, The Chase is a tale of disillusionment with a corrupt left-wing movement, which has become as brutal as the government it seeks to overthrow. It is no accident that Carpentier opens the novel against the backdrop of the Eroica (or “Heroic”) Symphony. This particular piece of music had been inspired by Napoleon Bonaparte and the ideals of the French Revolution, and the symphony’s original title was Buonaparte. However, after Napoleon was declared Emperor of France, Beethoven changed the symphony’s name in disgust. The Chase explores the brutality that accompanies the struggle for power, and the betrayal of the ideals for which the revolutionaries fought. As the plot unfolds, from the points of view of the fugitive and the ticket seller at the concert hall, we learn the extent to which the revolutionaries of the story have lost faith in their cause.

Carpentier renders sensory information in crystalline detail. In the Havana concert hall where the story begins, a rainstorm has forced the crowd indoors. “The moist scents of green poplars and watered lawns” transport the reader to that hot Caribbean night, and we can almost feel the sweat rolling down a woman’s soft back, which looks “as though it were being pressed by a thumb at each shoulder blade.” The sights, sounds, and smells of the concert hall and the city are clear and vivid. On the other hand, the fugitive’s voice is emotional and visceral. His hunger, his dirty clothes, and his terror are presented in a raw onslaught of information.

Review: Efterklang at Mercury Lounge, NYC

Efterklang - Mirador from Rumraket on Vimeo.

The Danish band Efterklang first came to my attention as a recommendation on my eMusic account. I took a listen to the sample clips from their 2007 release, Parades, and I liked what I heard: playfully melancholy melodies, vocals ranging from intimate whispers to belted-out multi-part harmonies, and a broad palette of sonic textures produced by electronic and acoustic instruments. Still, I couldn't commit to buying the album that day...I was interested, but I wasn't smitten.

My second rendezvous with Efterklang was last night, when they played NYC's Mercury Lounge. I missed the first two acts (Oh Land and Shilpa Ray & Her Happy Hookers), but I was just in time for Peter Broderick's solo set. Broderick, a multi-instrumentalist, built compositions of looped samples. He'd play a few bars on guitar - or violin, or piano - and loop it, then play another part over that sample. Most of the songs were sparse, incorporating two or three instrumental layers, but on occasion he built sound over sound to intense effect. Broderick is also a member of Efterklang's line-up for this tour.

Efterklang's live show had some surprises. The elements that I liked from the album were present - the textures, the melodies, the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink instrumentation - but the balance was tipped from the delicate, lovely end of the spectrum over to the noisy, joyful, anxious, hedonistic side. There wasn't any loss of quality control; even the a capella vocal harmonies of Cutting Ice to Snow were impressively tight, and this at the end of the night. But I was most surprised by a phenomenon I have never seen at a NYC indie rock concert before: people were moving and smiling. Leaving the show, I felt happy. So that merits my heartfelt recommendation, and an album purchase, too.

Efterklang is playing a few more shows in North America. Info, videos, and free mp3 downloads are available on their website.


Efterklang - Caravan from Rumraket on Vimeo.