Supersilent are just about my favourite band of the last 5 or 6 years, and so it was with huge excitement that I unwrapped this DVD and put it into the machine.
Just like the rest of their recorded output, this DVD is packaged and presented in the most minimal way to allow the music every possible space to breathe.
In fact the DVD is minimal to the point of not even having a menu – you put the disc into your player and the film begins. You can scan between songs but that’s all.
I guess this is basically Supersilent’s 7th album with added images.
Made up of 6 pieces of music performed at Parkteatret, Oslo on the 16 August 2004, the film is shot in black & white and is wonderfully evocative.
I remember once trying to explain to someone of just how wonderful Supersilent are and in the end taking them to see the band perform at the Purcell Rooms – an hour into the show they were convinced.
Therein lies the beauty of this DVD – being able to watch the four band members working off each other, Arve Henriksen on a wooden chair centre stage surrounded ominously by keyboards and drums, taking the size of the stage and reducing it to the bare essentials for the band.
Supersilent make improvised music that by turns glows, terrifies, enlightens, excites, but above all fills me with joy. Theirs is the sound of fjords in creation, glacial shifts of noise bursting from contemplative phases of subtle sound.
This release then is the perfect introduction for newcomers to the world of Supersilent and easy access into their live world for those already fans.

Pancake Mountain!

http://www.pancakemountain.com/clip16.html

words cannot do it justice, it just manages to capture all the fun and pain of being in a band and/or involved with music; it is actually pretty inspiring and you look at the bands on the screen and really want to get involved and do that!

And it doesn’t even matter that the band is the Dandy Warhols, it fucking rocks!

Quick Capsule Review: “Sin City”

“The coolest film of the year” it may be, but that doesn’t stop it being a tedious bag of shit. Bring me the head of Robert Rodriguez!

I think this allowed right? A film review?
I was excited about seeing this. I loved Cohen’s film Lost Book Found and the Fugazi Instrument documentary. This is billed as Cohen’s look at consumerism and the mall culture that dominates America. It’s also a narrative piece with actors rather than a documentary piece. With Cohen’s skill for the visual it sounds great – right?
About 45 minutes into this I was unsure whether or not to scream at the top of my lungs or run full pelt out of the cinema. By 100 minutes I wanted to strip off, paint myself red and run through town.
I challenge anybody to watch this film twice. It seems to last about 3 weeks. As an accurate representation of the monotonous, numbing quality of shopping malls it hits the nail on the head. But as a film, fucking hell. It’s my somewhat simplistic opinion that films should either entertain or enlighten and hopefully a mixture of both. Don’t mistake the word “entertain” for “shallow”. I mean, films should engage the audience and get them on board.
By the end of the opening sequence of Chain I had a good idea of what it was about, the angle it was coming from: consumerism = bad. I get it. Everyone in the cinema gets it. I can’t believe there are many people who would flock to a Jem Cohen movie who also like to check out the bargains on a Bank Holiday Monday or who eat at McDonalds. We’re all lefty liberal arty farty types, we agree with what’s being said so now what? Now nothing.
Considering his past work and the way he deals with subject matter this was like a sixth form film project. Sure, it looked amazing at times and the opening sequence soundtracked by Godspeed was phenomenal but there was a distinct lack of any depth in it at all.
The film centres around 2 characters: a young girl living rough and taking menial jobs, always centred around the mall (played by Mira Billotte of the band White Magic) and an Oriental businesswoman who ploughs a lonely path trying to push her business into America. They are both trapped by the world they’re in and even though they come from opposite ends they meet in the same place and live parallel lives.
Film students always make films about the homeless but because they’re so rich and middle class they make a hash of it. They get their mates to pretend to be homeless, or ill or whatever and it’s laughably one dimensional. The characters are like that in Chain. You’re never given a reason for why Billotte’s character is trapped going from mall to mall. You don’t know why she’s sleeping rough. It’s mentioned in passing that she ran away and she films herself for a tape to send home but the character is given such a shallow foundation you can’t empathise with her. You just don’t know whether you’re supposed to like her, feel sorry for her or even what she thinks. Ditto for the businesswoman. Both character’s monologues are delivered in flat, unemotional tones that serve to instantly remove any human feeling you might have for them.
I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking it sounds good because of this and I missed the point. You might be right but like I said, the point is a loose feeling of anti-consumerism and that is it. It’s a 5 minute short at best. It’s not a 100 minute feature.
You fucking sit through it.

I hate Bank Holidays. All my mates are somewhere exotic (Germany, Sacramento, Lutterworth) and I am stuck at home. I thought about buying a mail order bride for the holiday period but the delivery time is 6-8 weeks. I think this all stems from Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind or whatever the fuck that film was called.
I watched it on Thursday and I have been miserable since. Great film though, just don’t watch it if you’ve ever “loved and lost” as they say in the songs.
I’m going to go and play the drums.

Robert Crumb (‘The People’s Favourite Underground Cartoonist!’) on diskant favourite film Some Kind of Monster:

“Recently, I was watching a documentary film about the heavy metal rock band Metallica, and I thought, “Oh my God, the culture is totally fucked!” The film shows scenes of concerts where thousands of young men stand with their shirts off, raising their fists in the air, screaming and cheering to this shrieking heavy metal music. I felt like I’d just arrived from another planet. “What in God’s name is this about?” I wondered. It seemed to be about everybody thinking they’re a rebel, thinking they’re hip and angry against some square culture that barely even exists anymore.”

Taken from ‘The R. Crumb Handbook’ by R. Crumb and Peter Poplanski, 2005.

On Tuesday, Vialka are back playing at Stereo. Hooray!

and…
The Copy Left Film Festival
Free Films in March !
(donations highly appreciated…)

Glasgow University, Mondays 3 PM, Boyd Orr Building
7th – Weapons of Mass Deception
14th – Dr. Stragelove
21st – Land and Freedom
28th – Surplus & Total Rubbish

Glasgow School of Art, Mondays 6 PM, Bourdon Lecture
theatre (architecture building) … please arrive on
time or a bit before so we can let you in the
building.
7th -Brazil
14th – Outfoxed

Strathclyde University, Fridays 1 PM, Graham Hills
Building room 550
4th – Corporation part 1 & 2
11th – Corporation part 3
18th – Weapons of Mass Deception
25th – Land and Freedom

A film column I kept wanting to write but never finished (started) was about Val Lewton’s beautiful, disturbing black & white 40s horror films.

The Seventh Victim is the most intriguing. There’s layers of allusion in there, hints at darker secrets and untold backstory it’s the most morbid and haunting film to not be available on video.

And it’s on telly Friday night. After midnight, natch. Watch it! Guaranteed better than the soft-porn on C5.

There’s loads of films being shown outside of cinemas in Glasgow at the moment. Just for a start, all next week at the Art School (but open to plebs) is Brain Wash, a bunch of undeground-y documentar-y films that are well worth seeing. Surplus I remember being especially good.

Note to Cinema-goers: If a notice on the door says “the temperature in this theatre is slightly lower than usual. We apologise for the inconvenience blah blah blah” please read this is “Our heating is broken and it is snowing outside, therefore this theatre is freezing. Just go and ask for your money back”.

Or you could stay for the film wearing your thick winter coat and mittens while the chill air blows around the large theatre and its 8 occupants. If you’re really lucky you’ll have turned up to watch a film with lots of outdoor scenes in wintertime and rain which will make you feel even colder and which also drags out its plotline so it seems like the film lasts for 4 hours rather than the actual 2. Then see if there’s any feeling in your feet when you leave. Thanks UGC, I love you too.

If it wasn’t that 2046 was such a distracting film then I probably would be £3.75 richer, and warmer, but then I might have never have had another chance to see this on a big screen which it begs for. A time twisting tangled love story, this makes such amazing use of colour, texture and the widescreen format that I kept forgetting to read the subtitles because I was gazing at a bit of wall or pavement which was taking up two thirds of the screen framing the action into the final third. Basically a tale of lost love and the inability to love, switching between the 60s and the futuristic train from 2046 it’s filled with long pauses and lengthy narration and had a similar mind breaking confusion/clarity of Murakami novel. I wish I could have cinema sized print outs of some of the stills to put on my wall and look at. Sigh.