art and geography

dang, i just finished reading the comic of Persepolis last night - it's *really* good, quite heavy going at times being confronted with the amount of persecution and injustice, and one of those books that really opens your eyes to your own ignorance of matters.
It's very much up there with Joe Sacco's Palestine and Art Spiegelman's Maus as political commentary and a personal tour of troubled times and countries.

This morning I tried to start reading Guy Debord's 'Society Of The Spectacle' but have to admit i found it immediately annoying, with such paragraphs as

"To the extent that necessity is socially dreamed, the dream becomes necessary. The spectacle is the nightmare of imprisoned society which ultimately expresses nothing more than it's desire to sleep. The spectacle is the guardian of sleep"

The central tenet i could gleam from it was how society holds illusion in greater esteem over reality, which at first i could accept as something similar to the Buddhist story 'Fingers Pointing at the Moon' whereby people interpret the sign instead of what the sign is pointing to.
However the more i flicked through 'Society Of The Spectacle' it seemed more like it was against all forms of abstraction. Yet, in my mind that is exactly what gives art or life it's meaning - things by themselves are dumb, buildings mean nothing except a pile of bricks, a drawing is merely a squiggle on a piece of paper - its the meaning we imbue in such things that give us context and a sense of history, why we attach emotion and feelings to objects, time and place.
I'm sure it's just me being overly simple - maybe i need to sit down in the pub with someone and have them explain Situationism to me with a more human voice than Debord's!

From all my reading of historical London recently, my reading path has been guiding me towards some psychogeography reading, which should hopefully allow me handle my end of a conversation in the pub with Max or Ruaridh! i've started readin Merlin Coverley's 'Psychogeography' which seems pretty good based on the opening chapter, and looks to cover the origins of psychogeography from Debord (spit!) in Paris during the '50s; retrospective validation in the writings of William Blake, and Thomas De Quincey; and through into more recent work covered by writers and filmakers like Iain Sinclair, Peter Ackroyd, Stewart Home and Patrick Keiller (whose "Robinson in Space" film is astounding - max owns a copy of this and it would often get put on as a surreal backdrop to our house parties or a strange post-club viewing experience!)

Labels: books, comics

Friday, June 13, 2008

mighy praise

Warren Ellis is perhaps the best writer in comics these days, certainly one of the most creative and out-there storytellers, with themes and ideas more akin to those explored by the minds of technologists and contemporary sci-fi writers like Bruce Sterling and William Gibson, than your usual comic book author.
Apart from that, he's very into his music, which is a constant topic of his excellent blog postings.
I sent him over a copy of Funckarma's upcoming Dubstoned EP, and was mightily chuffed to receive an email from him yesterday saying that he loved it, and that he posted this review:.

"It's an evil, lurching, jagged piece of science fictional noise that shoves about eight different kinds of music into a centrifuge in order to spit out a life form configured for life in the last city on earth when the next ice age comes. Or something. Any fifteen second stretch of any one of the five tracks can include hip hop, crackle, 1983 videogame noises, industrial grind and dubstep mutations. It evokes the image of mad scientists doing live mixing with DNA. I like it."

Check out some free Warren Ellis goodness at Freak Angels, a weekly webcomic set in a post-apocalyptic steampunk London. its fuckin' great!
Theres a load of his work to recommend, but some of my favs have been his runs on Hellblazer and the Authority, his superhero stuff Ultimate Galactus, Iron-man: Extremis, some of his own creations like Desolation Jones, Fell, and his recent novel Crooked Little Vein. Check his wikipedia entry for even more info..

Labels: comics, dubstoned, funckarma, reviews, warren ellis

Friday, May 30, 2008

mr Lotus loves his comic books!

Just found this Flying Lotus interview where they briefly touch on his love of comics - http://www.prefixmag.com/features/flying-lotus/interview/18753/ - he mentions 'Y: The Last Man' and Grant Morrison's 'The Filth'. rar! comic books and good music go together like Peggy and Al!

Labels: comics, flying lotus

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

grimm

yar! nice long weekend - the Public Enemy show on friday was excellent fun!
Edan and Dagha were on first, like pretty early - just after 7pm. They have a pretty good stage show, with Edan MCing and DJing at the same time, only using one hand for scratching and cutting the records. Anti Pop Consortium were up next and tho they were okay, i wasn't really feeling them too much. Trying to go for my first cigarette break at that point only to discover they weren't letting anyone outside - "come back in an hour" i was told. waaaaaa!
Kool Keith - fuck!!! he was ace - during the first song tho, he barely said a word with the vocals being played back from the record, so i thought he was gonna lipsync the whole thing, but nah, it was only the first track, and after that he was bounding around the stage dropping all the big Dr Octagon tracks. The Bombsquad were on next and played straightup dubstep for their whole hour, which wasn't doing anything for me - you hear so much dubstep in london, i would much rather have heard new US hip hop, or at least have it mixed up, but just playing dubstep kinda lost my interest. (i heard they were also DJing at DMZ the next night). PE finally was pretty class - i mean it wasn't anything you weren't expecting - they were just 40 year old hip hop icons jumping around shouting out all their old hits, but Chuck D and Flavor Flav were stilling oozing stage presence!
Rest of the weekend was mostly spent indoors avoiding the rain, watching movies and smoking out. Its been a busy few weeks so it was actually super nice to chill out, and with the rain i didn't feel guilty about not going out. I've started working on a DJ set for the upcoming Requirements shows and its coming well.

Arriving at work this morning, there was a package waiting for me which i had ordered from Amazon last week: "Sentences: The Life Of MF Grimm" a comic autobiography of MF Grimm which looks pretty good. I'll have a read tonite and see how it is. Artwork looks ace. I could copy and past a lil bit of his bio here, but easier if you go have a read of his bio at wikipedia which is pretty interesting. I don't know too much about him and only have one album "The Hunt For The Gingerbread Man" which is pretty decent, but yeah, being a comic book fan and a hip hop fan, i figured the book was worth checking out anyhow..

Labels: comics, hip hop

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

comic books and listening

By late evening last night, i ended up lying back on my bed reading Ultimate Iron Man while listening to that Scuba album. Such an excellent combination!

If you're sitting at the computer working, i find it too easy to ALT-TAB to itunes and change track or album depending on whim, which means not giving the music its full due and listening attention. Lying reading comics however, seems to have the perfect combination of having switched your attention off enough to let the album play out, but also still having enough concentration on the music to let it sink in fully.

I've never been a massive Iron-man fan, but recently read Warren Ellis' Iron Man: Extremis, which was incredibly good. I've been a fan of all of the Marvel Ultimate series so far, and finding Ultimate Iron Man in the library, was quite intrigued to pick it up. Not sure how familiar most of you are with the Marvel Ultimate universe? Its the Marvel universe basically updated to Now, with each character being rewritten as if they were just coming out for the first time, and usually with an excellent writer/artist team. The origins are completely revamped and updated, and the Ultimate Iron Man collection doesn't fail to deliver either. Loads of twists and turns and again beautiful artwork.

Today, just received my copy of Hudson Mohawkes' new 12", "Ooops!", ahead of his upcoming Warp release. Its a bugger i missed the launch party here in London the other weekend, heard it was excellent.

Up on the Heatwave blog today, they posted a live recording of Warrior Queen, live in Manchester. Been seeing Warrior Queen out quite a lot these days, usually with The Bug - she's super good live, and this set gives a good taste of it! read and download it here.

Also - just off the phone from the vinyl pressing plant - due my Magnetism test presses next wednesday and full delivery should be soon after, assuming everything is good with the TPs. can;t wait!

Labels: comics, heatwave, hudson mohawke, iron-man, magnetism, warrior queen