+ also published on the PixelSurgeon website

Let us begin with the ending.

Though the new LCD Soundsystem album, Sound Of Silver, is dedicated to life of the somewhat obscure Dr. George Kamen, if you let your fingers trail up the last page of the CD insert you will see that the band gives special ‘thank yous’ to the Arcade Fire, Hot Chip, Liquid Liquid, Black Dice, Tiga, and !!! (chk chk chk) among others. A quick Wiki search for any of these names will give first-time LCD Soundsystem listeners a bit of insight as to what to expect from the much heralded sophomore release.

Unlike Horrorcore, the failed 1980s hip-hop sub-genre in which the group the Flatlinerz led by RedRum died faster than you could say murder, Dance-punk or Disco-punk, a genre of which LCD Soundsystem mastermind James Murphy is a founder, is more likely to be long lasting. The genre blends danceable tracks (think Anita Ward’s Ring My Bell) with lyrics that incorporate social commentary (which call to mind early U2).

As a pioneer in the very young sonic amalgam of Dance, Disco and Punk Rock, LCD Soundsystem delivers all of these elements with aplomb on Sound Of Silver. Yet it is the Punk Rock element that sets the genre apart from other Electronic/Dance classifications, and on one track in particular, North American Scum, Mr. Murphy seems to channel the ghost of every dead Punk Rocker, peppering the song with a bit of backhanded patriotism while setting record straight about the band’s origin.

“Oh I don’t know, I don’t know where to begin – we are North Americans. And for those of you who still think we’re from Englind – we’re not. No,” James sings. And it seems all star-spangled and Fourth of July until he gets closer to the chorus, “Oh I don’t know, I don’t know where to begin – we are North Americans. But in the end – make the same mistakes all over again! C’mon North Americans. Ah ha! We are North American scum.” Delivered a bit faster and with a tad more angst, this song would be classic Punk Rock.

The rest of the lyrics contained in the liner notes, all penned by Mr. Murphy – who incidentally was a former writer for the sitcom Seinfeld – read like social discourse. But for all of the drum kicks, cowbells, electronic blips, synthesized harmonics, and what on one track sounds like a Theremin, you’d more likely find yourself doing a manic version of the Robot than having a deep introspective moment.

Fans of LCD Soundsystem are thankful that Mr. Murphy, currently a resident of Brooklyn’s famed Williamsburg neighborhood, decided long ago to forgo the level upon level upon level of irony that is currently plaguing Brooklyn rock (though the New York borough is yet to be prolific enough to warrant its own musical genre). He instead delivers earnest, meaningful music meant to be enjoyed while Disco-moshing in dark urban dancehalls.

This creative stance might stem from the fact that Mr. Murphy, who is 37, is somewhat of a musical graybeard. He has three former bands – Falling Man, Pony and Speedking – under his belt; runs DFA with cohorts culled from his early collaborations (namely former U.N.K.L.E. drummer Tim Goldsworthy and Jonathan Galkin); and has an accomplished career as DJ/Producer – all of this before the birth of LCD Soundsystem.

The band could not originally be called a band as at first it solely comprised of James Murphy. But once interest in LCD Soundsystem grew with the release of the first single, Losing My Edge, and culminating in 2005 with two Grammy nominations, Mr. Murphy saw the need for a proper live band and enlisted the help of a few like-minded friends. Today while playing concerts Mr. Murphy is joined on stage by Al Doyle (of Hot Chip) on guitar and percussion, Phil Skarich on bass, Nancy Whang playing keyboards and synthesizer and Pat Mahoney on drums. This frees him up to act as lead singer, delivering his lyrics in a matter-of-fact harmonious style.

Mr. Murphy’s ability to carry songs using his laid back tonal range is also evident on the excelently produced Sound Of Silver. And though not as musically jam packed as the self-titled debut double album, this new disc is magnificent follow-up by LCD Soundsytem worthy of critical acclaim. It is comprised of eight masterful dance tracks that get the adrenaline flowing and the hips shaking, plus the brooding last composition, New York, I Love You But You’re Brining Me Down, that winds the listener down in time to do it all over again.

James Murphy’s musical genius, whether with LCD Soundsystem or at the controls at DFA, will ensure that Disco-punk is here to stay. Now if someone could do something about CafJazz.

+ also published on the PixelSurgeon website

There’s a storm brewing… Or is it just intentional sonic distortion?

In the opening song on their debut album, the lead singer of the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah comes forthright with demands � la the late great James “Get on up/I’m about ready to do my thing” Brown. During that initial track of the self-titled album filled with intentionally amateurish marching band clatter and lyrics that allude to either enlightened songwriting or addled drug use, Alec Ounsworth sings, “Clap your hands… Clap your hands… Clap your hands… And away we go.”

The band’s second release, available through Insound (the online indie rock merchandising website), opens quite differently. Instead of inviting you in, the band sets up a virtual velvet rope. “As you can tell from this first track”, they seem to say, “the album’s not gonna instantly gratify your pop junkie needs – you’re gonna have to work at it a little.”

One critic for the New York alt-newspaper, The Village Voice, fell into a soliloquist state when describing that opening title track.

“The title track off Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s sophomore release …” he said, is “all hand claps and cowbells and jangly guitar—fed through a haze of radio static, like it’s crackling between AM channels on a long drive through the desert.”

Later, while listening to the song, I kept thinking of the imagery this reviewer was able to conjure. Clever, I thought – until I realized that he was aided by the equally poetic lyrics: “Like a siren getting louder and farther away from the energetic kids in the park. Yes that was me breaking glass and pretending to start something big, some new taste. Did you wonder? As my voice went from station to station to station to state.”

My home stereo is equipped with nineties shit-in-a-box speakers, so I was not able to detect the much talked about subtle nuances featured on the album; nor was I able to recognize the iTunes effect (it was reported in the New York Times that the band made use of the prosumer software bundled with Apple’s iTunes product to master a few of the tracks featured on the album). It may have been these missing elements that made me question the band like a 1960s Berry Gordy, “Where’s the hit?”

Some Loud Thunder is an album filled to overflowing with deconstructed pop ballads. You find yourself sort of singing along with the crystal clear lyrics yet fail to process the highfalutin musical composition.

Most critics concur, claiming the harmonic distortions to be a purposeful attempt by the band members to estrange themselves by making an album unpalatable to mainstream audiences. If this was in fact the goal during the production of this record then I congratulate them, for after ten or so listens even I, a consumer with eclectic taste, come away with nothing I can hold onto.

Nothing that is, excepting track number five, Satan Said Dance. It’s an odd song, a different odd than the rest of the album. Is it Brooklyn boogie with its bleeping keyboards? Could it by Philly-tinged funk for its disconcerting back-up singers yelling the chorus? Why is this song on the album? Thank goodness this song is on the album.

At first listen I heaped songwriting praise on these hipster rockers. I thought it to be an ode to that most transmutable vegetarian wheat gluten – pure brilliance. Then on closer inspection of the CD insert I noticed that the word was spelled Satan (the chief evil spirit) not Seitan (the vegetarian meat substitute). How genius would it have been if Seitan had said dance? This minor foible made me like the song no less.

Where the band might have faltered in slapstick song titling, they make up for it in song placement. Satan Said Dance is placed close to the middle of the album’s hump. It gets the listener out of the I’ve had enough mode and into a Hey maybe this ain’t so bad one. The song is packed with enough oomph to hydrate the waning pool of curiosity and have you lap up the rest of the album with gusto.

Some Loud Thunder is one of those albums that you have to be dedicated to. It has to grow on you over a long period of time, like fungi or barnacles – slow but inevitable. It’s the album you would expect from a band that fears being pigeonholed too fast, too soon. A departure from the debut Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and a statement declaring, “Hey fans, we’re not just those guys from that first album. We’re multifaceted, we’re quirky, but we’re still cool.”

Listen to a few tracks from Some Loud Thunder on the Clap Your Hands Say Yeah mySpace page by clicking here.

Since I’ve become a dad, films about babies creep me out, films about poverty are off-putting and violent films make my skin crawl.

Turtles Can Fly is undoubtedly the most creepy, off-putting film that made my skin crawl, but Tsotsi, the Gavin Wood directed film set in a South African ghetto, comes really close.

Tsotsi is the leader of a three-man stick-up crew. After a botched commuter train robbery in which the victim dies a gruesome but silent death, the small posse disbands and Tostsi sets off on his own.

He’s a Robin Hood character that got the stealing from the rich part of his act down, but does not embrace giving to the poor.

For his first solo job Tsotsi, more boy than man, car jacks a woman entering her upscale home. Unable to properly pilot the vehicle he crashes into a pole on a desolate street and discovers that there is an infant strapped in the back seat. And thus begins the saga.

Tsotsi decides to me the dad he never had, but a child himself, he has no experience with infants. He transports the baby in a paper shopping bag, offers a can of condensed milk when the baby cries (which results in ants infesting the bag) and forces a young mother to breastfeed the child at gunpoint.

The ending is predictable, but the body of the film with its surreal cinematic quality, is an excellent, though fictional, portrayal of strife in Johannesburg.

Think Two Men And A Baby starring the favela youth from City Of God and you will come close to the plot and cinematography of Tsotsi.

The event’s stage is a small square of industrial carpeting; the venue, a store in Manhattan’s Flatiron district. The turnout is great and as the in-store gets underway it doesn’t take long for the scene to get ugly.

Fans elbow their way to the front and jostle for space next to the stage speakers while others yell incoherently from the audience. One fan, so enthralled, gives into the urge to get up and run circles around the stage with his arms outstretched turning him, for a brief moment, into a human airplane.

This scene is typical at any Uncle Rock performance.

Though his name might suggest it, Uncle Rock is not one of the erstwhile drug dealers turned gangster-rappers affiliated with the Roc-A-Fella music label. He should also not be confused with Uncle Kracker or Kid Rock, though initial confusion with these entertainers is understandable due to the similarities in performance names.

Uncle Rock makes music for a young, under drinking age, crowd – think Kelly Clarkson followers but prepubescent, or Blink-182 fans but more childish – and he has a blast doing it.

Pixelsurgeon had a recent chat with Uncle Rock who, like most superheroes, has a second secret life as Robert Warren, husband and dad. After the usual pleasantries we began discussing more meaningful subjects: music, mayhem, and manic, pint-sized fanatics.

Dez: I know it’s only and bend on the classic standard-issue first question, but what music can you remember from your early childhood?

Beatles, Janis Joplin, Grand Funk Railroad, Dylan, Arlo Guthrie, Simon & Garfunkel, Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, the soundtrack to Woodstock, Jimi Hendrix, Carole King, Donovan, Carly Simon, Don McLean, the Mamas and the Papas, and lots of AM radio stuff like “Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes”, “Go All The Way” “The Cover Of The Rolling Stone”, “Spiders and Snakes”, “Backstabbers”, “Seasons In The Sun” and “Mandy”.

Do those early memories influence the music you make today, or do you feel more influenced by what’s popular and current?

Indeed it does influence my music. I’m a sucker for a more-hooks-than-a-tackle-box melody and a funky beat. But punk, new wave, garage rock, country, and even disco - all of which I got into in my teens and twenties - inform my work just as much. Some modern flourishes get in there too - loops, samples, and digital chicanery.

What music do you play at home for your son?

My son Jack hears everything. His mom is a music writer and she gets tons of promos and we listen to most of them. There’s lots of classic/alt country in the house, and quite a bit of punk rock. He has started to show an affinity for the latter, but mostly neo-punk-ish like Green Day and The All American Rejects. But he will bust out at the top of his lungs with everything from “My Girl” to music from “The Nutcracker” to the Spice Girls’ “What I Really Really Want”.

In the car he hears lots of Outlaw Country and Coffeehouse (singer-songwriters) on Sirius. And sometimes we play the kids’ channel Kidstuff, which used to be intolerable but has really improved. The Wiggles and Barney and their ilk never did anything for him. He would scream when they came on. But it may have been because his parents were groaning. I think that’s a big influence on really little kids, by the way - the reactions, or lack thereof, of their parents.

What’s your feeling on ‘adult’ music vs. ‘kid’ music? There is all this concern about what kids should or shouldn’t listen to. Profanities notwithstanding, is there really a difference?

Not as much as the marketers would have you believe. Aside from the fact that obtuse navel-gazing, erotic longing and/or profane lyrics are few-and-far-between (but not unheard-of, especially on the playground), I see a preponderance of sweetness in music that is specifically targeted at kids via mass media (just as there is a lot of aggro-music targeted at young boys and men, and adult contemporary targeted at… adults). This stuff sells, obviously.

Whoever cooks up the images and the presentation has done ample research and clearly assumes (correctly, it would appear) that, for kids’ music, parents have pretty narrow expectations and maybe some anxiety about what the powerful medium of music might bring to their little ones’ ears.

I find this fascinating; whereas there is a long tradition of darkness in folk music, fairy tales, children’s lit, poetry, and even Pixar, for some reason the big bucks have not gotten behind modern music with shadowy elements. Darkness is rife elsewhere, from Cartoon Network to reality TV (which lots of kids watch with their folks).

The exception would be Disney signing Dan Zanes - that strikes me as a bold move in a new direction. I think they’re putting out They Might Be Giants, too. But quite frankly, the fact that much of the edgier, all-inclusive music remains at the fringes is not a bad thing. It’s a great time to be making music for which there are few actual hard/fast rules, where you don’t have to worry about competing on megalithic radio stations, and where the technology makes recording and promoting easier than it’s ever been.

I read somewhere that the two things so-called kids’ music can’t address are sex and death, but I wrote a song about The Day Of The Dead (called “Picnic In The Graveyard”) and it’s one of my most popular. Sex as a topic is pointless mainly because kids won’t know what you’re talking about, but also for other, obviously charged reasons. It opens a landscape they don’t yet have the tools to understand, for starters.

Having said that, there are plenty of songs not specifically targeted at kids that kids respond to - be they love songs, folk songs, hip hop - that have lyrical aspects that most would deem inappropriate, but even if the kids don’t grasp the content, they can still be drawn in. I sang along to suggestive songs when I was a tot (”I Want You/She’s So Heavy” from Abbey Road, “Black Boys” from Hair, “Brick House” by the Commodores to name a few) and I had no idea what I was singing about. And I survived.

I picked my son up from a playdate not long after Outkast’s “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below” was released, and the six-year-old kids were singing the explicit version of “Roses” at the top of their lungs. There’s a two-year-old at my job (I’m a preschool teacher) who LOVES James Brown and Gnarls Barkley and Donovan, all of which she was exposed to via her folks. She sings “Sex Machine” but she calls it “Six Machine”. A good song is like a virus - no one is immune, regardless of the song’s marketing, intent, and content.

Take away the images, the videos, the presentation, and the marketing of, say, the Wiggles and Barney and you’d get melodies and beats reminiscent of folk music and classic rock. And if Tom Waits covered “Fruit Salad” everyone would think it was so cool. Barney’s flagship songs “I Love You, You Love Me” and the theme to the TV show are, respectively, “This Old Man” and “Yankee Doodle.” I’d wager that when people make fun of those songs, they’re really actually making fun of the cloying, annoying show, not the song.

Like Dan Zanes - whose “Parades and Panoramas” had some great sea chanties and drinking songs on it - I prefer to call what I do “family music”, or “rock of all ages”, but both of us get labelled as kids’ music anyway. I think it’s interesting that the term “family” has become somewhat pejorative.

Music has become more and more a place to separate one’s self from others, to identify one’s tribe as distinct from another- and that’s big business. I’m not interested in that. I’m more interested in music’s power to bring people together, which is considerable. And I see a need for that now like never before. It seems a no-brainer, but sometimes people are still quite surprised when they come to an Uncle Rock gig and say “Wow. I had fun and so did my kids. Who knew this was possible?” I did. Volume is another thing. Generally, kids don’t seem to appreciate excruciating volume.

During your shows you invite kids up to the microphone. Have your ever been upstaged by a toddler?

All the time. But that’s really part of the gig. It’s not so much about me as it is about what happens to everyone when I play. But I’ve started playing places with actual stages so I’ve been doing less of that. I don’t want anyone getting hurt.

You do a fair amount of superhero songs. If you could create a singing superhero, what would he/she be like?

Captain Courage, but he would be afraid all the time. To bring home the fact that courage is not about a lack of fear, but about accepting, welcoming and overcoming fear.

Speaking of fears, do you ever have nightmares of screaming toddler fans chasing you and you tripping and falling, and then suddenly turning into a giant ice cream cone and the kids trying to devour you but getting giant brain-freezes and then you getting away as they hold their cute, little heads in pain?

Oh. My. God. What a great idea for a song.

Uncle Rock is currently touring metropolitan cities in the good old USA promoting his new CD Plays Well With Others.

+ also published on the PixelSurgeon website

Not coming to a record store near you, is The White Stripe’s new euphonious collaborative musical opus Aluminium. “An album of English interpretations of great American songs, written by a great American songwriter,” hence the spelling (to further confuse Americans three I’s are used for the website either as a reference to Mr. White being the third Jack in his familial lineage, or to the fact that Aluminium has three states of oxidation).

Though there was much low-key industry hype surrounding the album’s release, it was uncertainty I felt as I entered my credit card details in the all too welcoming fields on the website, not sure what my seemingly impersonal purchase would get me. But this is the 21st century after all, the new millennium, where impersonality reigns.

“Aluminium is an album of avant garde orchestral recordings of music written by Jack White of The White Stripes,” I remember the promotional information promising. And on receiving my package in the post, opening it, listening to the first track – rendered into a near perfect theme worthy of the Mission Impossible franchise – I realized that the disc would deliver anything but the expected.

Produced by Joby Talbot and Richard Russell, the orchestral compositions are the sonic opposite of the pared down drum and guitar tracks that have made Jack White’s main band, the White Stripes, one of rock and roll’s it bands.

Never one to rest on his overly creative laurels, Jack White, who also plays in that other band currently creating buzz, the Raconteurs, welcomed the idea of Aluminium, which was conceived, fittingly, while Mr. Russell was listening to his iPod.

“June, Hyde Park, London. Listening to Andrew Loog Oldham’s ‘Rolling Stone songbook’ on my iPod, it’s good, but I wish it wasn’t quite such easy listening,” says Mr. Russell in an online diary entry on the project’s website. “Like a lot of music, it’s best when it’s extreme. I start thinking of the song Aluminum from White Blood Cells by The White Stripes, which is really extreme, it isn’t even a song in the traditional sense, it’s got no verses or choruses, it’s basically a riff which is relentlessly worked over, and it would make sense to me that an orchestra would play it. I decide that I want to make that happen.”

It would also make sense that Mr. White’s representative XL Recordings label would see the artistic, credible and commercial viability of such a project and happily grandfather it under the XL umbrella.

As you listen to the recording, the neurons in your auditory cortex—those sensors in your brain charged with making sense of new aural experiences—begin attempting to figure things out. They tell you that you like what you hear, but you have no visual association, no precedence.

If it were the new Shirley Manson album, on which Mr. White recently collaborated, you’d conjure images of the sultry pale pop singer backed by the members of Garbage. Instead, because the album is so un-Stripesish, your mind creates beautiful little films to which each track acts as a score; films that could be directed by the Wachowski brothers, or Hitchcock, or Mel Brooks. In other words, films similar only in their climactic scale.

The album is bursting with ethereal emotions – anxiety on track one (Aluminum); melancholy on track three (Why Can’t You Be Nicer To Me?); fear on track eight (Who’s A Big Baby?). It’s a perturbatious roller coaster ride filled with instrumental twists and turns, albeit a short one (most songs barely make it past the three-minute mark).

This most passionate response to the music contained on Aluminium was not lost on its collaborative creators. Another diary entry by Mr. Russell: “When Jack hears Aluminum, he jumps up and starts shouting. Meg is quiet and demure, as ever, but then I realize that she’s saying, softly, ‘this is amazing’. Then the song Aluminum segues into I’m Bound To Pack It Up, and I don’t want to look too hard, but I get the feeling that Jack is getting emotional, and Meg wants me to see.”

The only vocals on the disc can be heard at the beginning of track seven, Let’s Build A Home, when a barely comprehensible and tiny voice emotes something to the effect of, “Okay… you gonna sound in that books.” Its inclusion is as baffling as the track’s choppy, quick-paced composition, filled with sinkholes of silence.

Toward the end of album comes The Hardest Button To Button (track nine) which reminds the listener that, “Oh yeah, this has something to do with that White Stripes band.”

It’s the apple that didn’t fall far from the tree with its instrumentation sounding the way you expected the entire album to – like the philharmonic doing Stripes covers. The tune is the only relative disappointment on the album. Yet even so, it is only disappointing when compared to the other nine pieces of “hypnotic, repetitious, enigmatic” musical mastery.

To call this an art project, and not simply a musical one, would not be an overstatement. The disc is packaged with art cards designed by Rob Jones that feature trivial information on the album’s metal namesake (with purchasers of LPs receiving a section of an original silk screen print). And though one card informs you that, “Aluminium is the 3rd most abundant element in the Earth’s crust”, the album, its sonic equivalent, is limited to a pressing of only 3,333 discs (of which mine is number 2,422) and 999 LPs.

I should report that I was somewhat wrong about the impersonal nature of my purchase.

“Thank you for purchasing the album Dez”, read the electronically generated letter included in the CDs postal packaging. “We appreciate your support of the Aluminium project.”

For the price paid (almost £20 with International shipping) I would have been pleasantly surprised if the ‘thank you’ were penned by Jack White himself. But he is, thankfully, far too busy for that.

+ also published on the PixelSurgeon website

THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP {REVIEW}

Love Letter
In his short film La Lettre (1998), Michel Gondry introduces audiences to the socially awkward but lovable character Stephane, a character based largely on the director’s own childhood experiences.

The 14-minute piece is a celluloid snapshot of French adolescence in which a boy, Stephane, receives an inauspicious letter from the object of his infatuation, Aurelie. To Stephane’s dismay, the letter does not proclaim love to him, but instead hints that Aurelie has a crush on his older brother Jerome.

As the film climaxes, Stephane confronts Aurelie at a party celebrating the coming of the new millennium. Pressured by his peers and bolstered by the circumstance, Stephane approaches Aurelie in order to deliver a kiss, but instead his head inexplicably metamorphoses into an enormous 35mm camera and in some freak accident, the Eiffel tower is toppled and damages the building housing the party-goers.

Fast forward ten years or so into Stepahne’s life since that fateful night when things went awry with Aurelie. He finds himself in yet another dire affair of the heart, one that again confuses the audience as to whether or not the scenario is based in reality or exists as a fabric of Stephane’s imagination.

It’s another celebration, this time a publishing party for Stephane’s newly designed calendar – it highlights various global atrocities. Again all of his friends are present, including his new love interest Stephanie. But as Stephanie dances suggestively with a male companion, drunkenness replaces the cranium camera of Stephane’s youth, and instead of the Eiffel tower falling, he does, behind the bar, creating a crescendo that ends the party as he passes out.

This is the premise of The Science of Sleep, Michel Gondry’s latest cinematic opus. It is a long-play theatrical update of Stephane’s adult life in which things have changed, but not necessarily for the better. Stephane, played by Gael Garcia Bernal, is still plagued by his youthful foibles. His overactive imagination has turned his life into a wonderful but schizophrenic mess. Circumstance has landed him across the hall from the apartment of the woman he wants badly to be close to, yet his mental state keeps them far apart.

Stephanie, an awkwardly sultry character brought to life by Charlotte Gainsbourg, is a much more complex character than La Lettre’s Aurelie, who comes with her own melodramatic baggage. Besides the obvious name match, she seems to be perfectly suited for Stephane – she too has quirks she shares with Stephane that would not be considered socially acceptable – but as the film progresses it grows more obvious that instead of embracing the eccentricities that draw them to each other (as Stephane does), Stephanie wants desperately to escape them.

Sadly for Stephane and Stephanie, though surrounded by fantasy, real life proves itself to not be a fairytale.

Reality TV
Many music video directors describe their work as short films set to music. But in the case of Michel Gondry, it would not be unfair to describe The Science of Sleep as a feature-length music video scored by the simplistic but human maladies of daily life.

In the The Science of Sleep, Gondry’s music video genius bursts out of the confines of the televised small screen and settles comfortably in its large screen format. And, thankfully, it looses none of its whimsical splendor.

Forces are at battle in The Science of Sleep: Expectations and actualities go head to head, fantasy and reality duke it out, the past and the present are at odds, the heart and the mind can’t seem to agree and Gondry, as mild mannered and soft spoken a director as he is, finds himself sparring with his own shadow.

The film opens on an episode of Stephane TV, the television show within the movie. The host, Stephane, lets his audience in on the secret ingredients that compose dreams. As it turns out, these items are not a secret at all.

Like a dreamland wizard, Stephane repeatedly dumps varying quantities of everyday items – thoughts (spaghetti), memories (a wristwatch), etc – into a cauldron, all the while stirring until the pot issues clouds of colored smoke, indicating that a particular dream is ready.

Yet no matter how many of these dreams Stephane can concoct, or how quickly he can whip them up, reality always rudely punches its way through. Regardless of the lucidity, liquidity, or literality of the dreams, they are constantly truncated by one of life’s many interruptions – a knock at the door, the pain of frozen feet, robotic beckoning from a childhood toy.

I imagine it must have been a convoluted and emotional experience for Gondry to make this film, simply for the fact that this is a somewhat autobiographical exposé into the life of the man that stays mostly on the business end of the camera’s lens.

Regardless, Michel Gondry is not shy about confronting the nightmares of his youth – whether real or imagined. Hands growing to inhuman sizes, a patriarchal death, subaqueous disorientation, sudden calamity and masochistic heartbreak are all personal subjects Gondry tackles in the film.

One reviewer, after viewing the docu-short I’ve Been 12 Forever (The Work of Michel Gondry, 2003) that had Gondry as its subject, regarded the director’s explanation of his youth as “an extraordinary world where oneirism, memories and childhood have utmost importance.” These experiences not only ring true in The Science of Sleep, they serve as the film’s framework.

Beyond Eternal
With the 2004 theatrical run of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Michel Gondry made up for Human Nature, the 2001 failure that was as horrendous as its young ape-man character.

Eternal Sunshine was accessible, starred funnyman Jim Carey, and, most importantly, was a success at the box office. It was the movie Gondry needed to make in order to prove that the magic of Michel could hold audiences for more than four and a half minutes (the average length of a music video) and pull them into theaters in order to partake in sugary confections both on screen and at the popcorn stand.

The Science of Sleep sees the director making another important career film, the film he needed to get out of his system in order to move forward creatively. In doing so he masterminds a cinematic piece in which characters converse in three different languages and the logic and plot are thrown into disarray.

As evidenced by a few older couples that walked out of the film during the screening I attended, The Science of Sleep, though more earnest than Eternal Sunshine, floats just out of the reach of understanding of mainstream audiences. Yet it is this factor – the hard to get aspect – that makes The Science of Sleep an instant Gondry classic.

The Science of Sleep is a must-see film that intentionally sets out to loose its audience by delivering a plot that constantly seems to be running off of its track. It is a film for anyone who has ever dreamed of defeating the neighborhood bully, ran away from home but only made it as far as the backyard or traveled to far away lands in a vehicle made out of grandma’s quilts.

+ also published on the PixelSurgeon website

Easy Star All-Stars - Radiodread [review]

I started writing this review in the Virgin Megastore café – standing. That is how urgent I felt it was to get my opinions down on Radiodread, the latest rock/reggae fusion experiment from the Easy Star All-Stars.

I felt as if I had discovered one of those secrets that are just too good to keep to myself. The ones I feel the need to run out and publicize.

Not since the infamous Space Monkeys vs. Gorillaz album Laika Come Home had I felt so immediately drawn to an experimental dub album. It took only three tracks at the record store listening station to convince me that it was necessary to cough-up the funds and take this new disk home.

But it was hardly a secret right?

For months before its release I had heard of how the normally aloof Thom Yorke had expressed appreciation for the album; that the Easy Star All-Stars were acclaimed for their previous release Dub Side Of The Moon (which one Rolling Stone reviewer deemed “pretty cool”); and that the accompaniment for the album would be the antithesis of typical Radiohead productions, heavy on the live instrumentation and light on the electronics.

Besides, the album was to feature reggae’s greatest living performers covering Radiohead’s OK Computer. What in heaven’s name could go wrong with that?

Then I got home and listened the album again, and again. And the more I listened, the more my once glowing review lost its lustre. I soon realized that my initial exuberance was premature, for on the most part the album is good, but not great.

“Great” would mean additional appearances by reggae stalwarts such as Mutabaruka or Gregory Isaacs, instead of the relatively unknown Menny More and the known-but-only-mildly-reggae Citizen Cope.

For the album to be truly magnificent it would mean diverting away from the Easy Star All-Stars formula of keeping OK Computer’s musical arrangement and merely adding a bass-heavy guitar line and a piercing horn section; as was achieved on Electioneering featuring Morgan Heritage.

“Greatness” exceeds being heavy-handed on the reverb and echo chamber controls-trols-trols-trols like an early evening sound system operator.

Radiodread does come close to greatness though.

The appearances by Horace Andy (who famously worked previously with Massive Attack), Sugar Minott and Frankie Paul are superb. And Toots and the Maytals transform Let Down into a lock-shaking, leg-skanking jam.

The album’s lesser-known featured ‘all-star’ performers, such as Junior Jazz, Tamar-kali, and Skelly Vibe, add unwanted modernity and youth to an album that’s a cover of another album by one of the most forward-thinking bands of our time. If anything these additions take away from the genuine quirkiness I had anticipated—according to one account the more senior singers had a hard time embracing Yorke’s lyrics—of an album touted as a sonic culture clash.

Regardless, I still like the album. Since I’ve bought the disc I’ve listened to track five innumerable times, allowing Toots and the Maytals to take me to a smoky, late seventies bar in an urban Kingston shanty, a place I doubt Radiohead had envisioned when composing the song.

I have also risked disturbing the neighbors by blasting the dubwise tunes at a ridiculously high volume late into the New York night.

In searching for a way to express the vibe of the album, I kept coming back to a little known Bob Marley track released on an album many years before this one. “Kinky reggae,” sings Bob on the song that carries the same name. “Kinky reggae, uh! Kinky reggae, now take it or leave it.”

The new Easy Star All-Stars release Radiodread is kinky reggae indeed.

+ also published on the PixelSurgeon website