All posts by Indy

music, philosophy

>Music that matters is solemn, sacred, severe…

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In a time and age when it’s frowned upon when people take their arts seriously, when irony rules, when the norm is not to care and the attention span of the average fuck up is no longer than three seconds – it is the age of arts, morals and politics in decline – it’s good to know there are still people who are the exact opposite. People who are dedicated, solemn, severe…

As for Oswald Spengler‘s analogy when dividing cultures into seasons, where spring is the birth of religion and where the basics of this culture is being formed, in June 2007 I wrote this about winter: ”Politics is motivated by money and moves through imperialism. Science no longer reaches certainties. There is much cultural confusion. The arts do not speak from or to the soul of the people, but rather follow materialistic fashions with lots of changes in styles, not asking much from neither the artist nor the people. After a moment of atheism the people will turn to a renewal of religion and spiritual faith, based on the religion developed in the spring of the culture.”
Full article here.

For me, music is a way to gain strenght. Not always, but most often.
Here are some songs that move me in different ways. It’s songs that have a certain weight to them, and I guess what they have in common is the stunning dedication to the cause (be it just the music, something of spiritual importance, or whatever), and with that comes a very powerful performance. Many times the lyrics are as important as the music and the visuals. In fact, most of the times the lyrics are what really matters, and when there are no lyrics and the music still moves me, that’s when it really hurts, and that’s when it’s for real. You don’t hear that very often nowadays.

EDITED THIS POST BECAUSE ALL THE TUBES SLOWED DOWN WHOLE UNIVERSE…

Portishead – Roads
40 Watt Sun – Restless
Krister Linder – Vow
Esbjörn Svensson Trio – Seven Days of Falling / Elevation of Love
Low – Lullaby
Griftegård – Charles Taze Russell
Primordial – Empire Falls
Sigrblot -Endtime Communion (excerpt)
Watain – Waters of Ain
Funeral Mist – Jesus Saves

music

>The words of the wicked lie in wait for blood

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Prepare your feeble mind for some seriously genuine black metal where darkness, beauty, filth, hope and betrayal collide – as manifested in every damned religion. Rite is in a way reminiscent of Deathspell Omega, Negative Plane, MGLA, Ofermod and Glorior Belli, but really, Lie in wait for blood certainly holds its own ground. Containing great guitar work, perfect vocals, and a majestic wall of sound that manages to ooze of both darkness and beauty, not copying anybody’s band – at least not intentionally – and leading the way for great things to come, this album is a must have if you’re even remotely interested in any of the above mentioned bands.

Knowing that I’m old, grumpy, orthodox, narrow-minded and very picky about new black metal, I was truly surprised when Rite caught my attention with the very first seconds of sounds. Good thing is when I heard the music I knew absolutely nothing about the band, and I still don’t, to be honest. I know some names, but names are irrelevant, as are labels and other words not put into context. The feeling evoked by the art is everything.

The words of the wicked lie in wait for blood, but the mouth of the upright will deliver them.




Lie in wait for blood on Spotify
Rite on Bandcamp (all songs are available here)
EEE Recordings

politics

>September 11, 2001–2011

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This is the best article I’ve found so far (“best” as in – in my opinion – being fair and balanced):
Imperial Delusions: Ignoring the Lessons of 9/11 by Robert Jensen, journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

[…]
If the new boss sounds a lot like the old boss, it’s because the problem isn’t just bad leaders but a bad system. That’s why a critique of today’s wars sounds a lot like critiques of wars past. Here’s Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assessment of the imperial war of his time: “[N]o one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.”

Will our autopsy report read “global war on terror”?

That sounds harsh, and it’s tempting to argue that we should refrain from political debate on the 9/11 anniversary to honor those who died and to respect those who lost loved ones. I would be willing to do that if the cheerleaders for the U.S. empire would refrain from using the day to justify the wars of aggression that followed 9/11. But given the events of the past decade, there is no way to take the politics out of the anniversary.

We should take time on 9/11 to remember the nearly 3,000 victims who died that day, but as responsible citizens, we also should face a harsh reality: While the terrorism of fanatical individuals and groups is a serious threat, much greater damage has been done by our nation-state caught up in its own fanatical notions of imperial greatness.

That’s why I feel no satisfaction in being part of the anti-war/anti-empire movement. Being right means nothing if we failed to create a more just foreign policy conducted by a more humble nation.
[…]

movies

>Great movies of the 80’s: The Plague Dogs

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>The opening scene of The Plague Dogs (1982) really sets the tone.

A dog being subject to repeated drowning experiments. Outside the thunder roars, the rain comes down hard and a cold wind blows.
This is not Disney.

Two dogs escape from a British government animal testing lab – Animal Research (Scientific and Experimental), A.R.S.E. – and roam the grey and wintry Lake District in search of a new master, or rather, in search of a good human. The facility spreads the rumour that the animals are carrying bubonic plague, so being hated by humans and not knowing how to survive, they decide that they’ll have to ”live by our teeth and kill”.

This is a highly impressive, very realistic movie. It’s free from cool effects (even though the animation work is superb if you’re into old school stuff), kind of slow at times, and most importantly: it’s severely depressing, painful and sad.

Obviously, it still remains an underground movie since it actually has got something to say (something like this: The only way to free yourself from the cruelties of mankind is to die, so when the dogs swim out to sea in the end, they choose death instead of being killed by humans…). People with a short attention span probably won’t like it, and some scenes are pretty rough. It got censored due to graphical content, and only 8,000 copies of the uncut film exists on tape. It’s on YouTube, though.

Even though the dogs’ constant self-pitiness might become tedious after a while, I think the overall darkness and sadness of it all makes up for that. True animal friends most likely will cry when watching. Hell, you don’t even have to be a fanatic animal lover to be touched by this one. Anybody reaching the conclusion that mankind sucks ought to cry every once in a while.

The realism is a huge factor as well in making this a classic movie. Rowf’s fear of water, the death scenes and the dialogue are just a few examples of that.

I come to think of Grave of the Fireflies (a superb movie that everyone should see at least once) when watching The Plague Dogs, not really because they’re both animated films, but because of the depressing mood and the realism. Sometimes, stories like these are told more efficiently in comics and animated movies.

[Snitter, trapped in a garage, is hallucinating about his old home]
Rowf: Snitter! Can you hear me?
Snitter: I’m inside my head now. And it’s where I should be.
Rowf: This is no time for one of your turns!
The Tod: Come on out, ya great fool! Sharp with ye, now, before we’re all caught!
Snitter: I can’t come out. If I do, I’ll go mad again.

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OTHER GREAT MOVIES OF THE 80’s:
Manhunter (1986)
A Short Film About Killing (1988)
Threads (1984)
The Quiet Earth (1985)
The Thing (1982)

movies

>Great movies of the 80’s: The Thing

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A science outpost at the South Pole, winter 1982. Unexplainable madness. Burnt human remains and melted bodies. A heavy storm. Alien mutations taking over and imitating the human body, leaving the few inhabitants scrambling in a paranoid, claustrophobic frenzy as they try to determine who’s infected and who’s not. Darkness descends. Extreme tension. Pretty soon it’s every man against every man – bellum omnium contra omnes – and within them: The ultimate in alien terror.

This masterpiece is like H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness (1936), Alien (1979), The Shining (1980) and Apocalypse Now (1979), all rolled into one.

Reservoir Dogs (1992) and The X-Files got some massive inspiration here as well.

The Thing (1982) has got that lovely, cheesy 80’s feeling, like when the technical aspects of movie making just started to develop into more hi-tech areas, and when people not quite knew how to handle their new tools but used them anyway. The drug-induced social realism featured in many movies of the 70’s is replaced by a bit plastic colours and feelings, quite noticeable stylistically, but also musicwise and how the camera works and moves. It’s like people stopped thinking and let the machines do most of the work. In other words, the 80’s cheese is a bit stiff, but that’s the great charm about these fantastic movies.

None the less, The Thing is probably the most realistic among the ”mainstream” horror movies of the 80’s, or, for that matter, amongst mainstream horror movies over all. There are a lot of eerie scenes. The one where they find the sarcophagus made of ice, for example, or when blood is drawn from each man to determine who is infected… Very creepy! The editing and sound is amazing in these scenes, and the music, the dark heartbeat-like rhythms made by Ennio Morricone, is crafted for worship. Here are the sounds of isolation, paranoia and darkness.

As for the alien, still to this day I think it’s pretty cool. Not as professional as in Alien, but hey… Disfigured corpses melting into each other rule, and that’s a fact.

It’s not all gloom and doom, though. In the beginning, it’s actually quite funny.

The mad Norwegian screaming: ”Se til helvete og kom dere vekk. Det er ikke en bikkje, det er en slags ting! Det imiterer en bikkje, det er ikke virkelig! KOM DERE VEKK IDIOTER!!” (”Get the hell outta there. That’s not a dog, it’s some sort of thing! It’s imitating a dog, it isn’t real! GET AWAY YOU IDIOTS!!”).

The black dude on roller skates: ”Maybe we’re at war with the Norwegians?”

And MacReady, who simply cannot distinguish between Norway and Sweden, yelling ”Hey, Sweden!” as he enters the Norwegian outpost.

That’s funny.

I believe this is the one movie that got me into horror and science fiction in the first place. I remember watching an old grimy VHS copy back in the 80’s, and now some 25 years later, I’ve got this awesome Blu-Ray edition. Both versions are cool, but if I could I’d mix the dirty picture quality of the VHS and the sound quality of the Blu-Ray, making it the ultimate ultimate in alien terror!

John Carpenter’s The Thing is a remake of Howard Hawks’ The Thing From Another World (1951). Sad to say, I still haven’t seen the original, although I own it. I guess I’m pretty stupid.

And now I hear there’s a prequel ready to launch in November 2011. We’ll see how that goes…

Until then:

It’s gonna get a hell of a lot worse before it gets any better.

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OTHER GREAT MOVIES OF THE 80’s:

Manhunter (1986)

A Short Film About Killing (1988)

Threads (1984)

The Quiet Earth (1985)