motel de moka

Well I’ve had this post laying around for quite some time now, and I’m utterly ashamed of not being to post more frequently… my workload has been UNBELIVABLE, I’ve had projects over projects, and I recently entered a contest in the museum of art of my city, so I’ve been stressed out on that as well… so at last I have a small gap in my tightly knit schedule and have decided to finalize this loose end.
As some of you may know, it was my birthday a few Saturdays ago and that Gecko you see in the picture there was among some of the gifts… I feed it live crickets, and he(she?) sleeps alot, I’m told they can grow up to 50cms in lenght!
So as you can imagine, that Saturday was full of music, food and wine… I think it’s the closest I’ve been to a Roman party dedicated to Bacchus! Wine, wine, wine, food, food, food, music, music aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand music! All wholesome fun as you can imagine…

I think that upbeat, cheerful music in order, to lighten up my heavy-workloaded day. So these are songs dedicated to my Gecko.

NOTE: The illusion of these songs, only work if you imagina a Gecko dancing to the beats of each song!

~<*)))><

I made this list because I want to have the ultimate generic retro/pop-punk list circa 2006. Somewhere between Clash and the latest Shins album. One list that I can listen to droningly without feeling a thing. To be frank I am kinda over with pop-punk and everything just pass right through my head. The Shins seems to have incorporate everything there is into retro punk without turning it into something else. (eg. Tortoise , ambient/electro rock such as Album Leaf or dream pop even)

Here is my question for you my brave readers: 1. Is the Shins all that? 2. Is it the tail end of 2006 or giving us something new for 2007? 3. Is this retro-punk style even exist?4. Am I the best looking contributor at MdM? more ketchup? What’s your take? Discuss.

“Today’s Household Pop”

1. The Album Leaf - See In You
2. Tokyo Police Club - Be Good (web)
3. Love is all - Talk Talk Talk Talk (web)
4. Tortoise - Some Say (I Got Devil)
5. The Shins - Sleeping Lessons
6. Dirty Little Secret - Hush Your Lips (web)

see also: the Clash, the Shins
image: “Just What Is It That Makes To-day’s Homes So Different, So Appealing“, “My Marilyn” by Richard Hamilton

Image: Matthew Laznicka.

Sentiment is a really difficult thing. How do you express your feelings over something that has affected you deeply for all of your life without seeming dramatic. I had an idea to do a mix of tracks by k. d. lang about a week ago and the mix became something else entirely. I was listening to Dropout by Urge Overkill (again) thinking about how I’ve loved that song for so long without really understanding it’s true significance to my life. For years I thought of it as being about a young girl, all stylized as the perfect waif character, lost in the world. Truth is it very closely describes the life I led for many years. It also struck me how much it applies to so many of my crew, the boys I grew up with, the lost generation of whiteboys who “fucked-out” as we used to say back then. It’s difficult to describe what living under the apartheid government was like. When I think back the best way to describe it would be to say that there was never any air. You could breathe but nothing nourished you. When I was sixteen I refused to register for military service. My entire family was not aware of this and I kept it a secret. If I think about it now my motivation for everything was to get away from things and not towards them. By the age of seventeen I was blacklisted. This was not as significant as it sounds really, it never affected my life. I stayed in school and managed to get into university so I was safe. If I had continued to refuse national service without an official way of getting out of it I would have gone to jail for six years. This fact may be insignificant in retrospect but I honestly wonder now: how did a society that brought up it’s children in that way expect them to turn out if they treated them like that. It got me thinking about Karl. Karl was the older brother of one of my best friends in Primary School. During the BMX years he was our hero. He used to do off road racing and he was really good at it. He was even on a TV drama program for awhile. He was always my benchmark for how to survive within the circumstances we found ourselves. He went to university and studied journalism, I wanted to follow in his footsteps.

On Wednesday night I was speaking to my new friend Eran. He’s busy traveling at the moment, visiting the country of his birth, which is here due to the fact that his parents were working in Jo’burg when he was born. He’s from Israel and in a hardcore punk group. I was interested in what he had done as far as his military service was concerned. He told me that he had served two months in jail when he was younger. I thought that it was quite a strange time period to serve and he explained to me how it works. They put you in jail for two weeks. They don’t tell how long it’s going to be for, they don’t put you on trial. After two weeks they ask you again and so on. Depending on the political situation and other factors your time served is up to the whims of your captors. He was lucky I suppose but to hear him talk about it is pretty heavy. That is basically legalized torture.

The military issue was always an axe hanging over our heads. Two years before I would become eligible to serve in the military, South Africa experienced some of its worst township violence. One of Karl’s friends ended up going to the army around that time. He was an intelligent individual who would skillfully argue against apartheid, in the bravest fashion. Within about eight months of going into the military he came out on leave. He was dating one of my friends sisters at the time. He had become a raving racist. My friends sister was trying so hard to get him back on the ground, like where the fuck are you, what happened. He would tell us what happened, it did not sound good. In the townships they were basically at war. In the process he had learned to hate black people. The constant threat of dying had made him insane with hatred. His girlfriend ended up biting off one of his fingernails during a really violent fight that occurred later that evening. She was pregnant at the time and ended up having a boy called Christopher (named after me, yay!). They never married, she ended up with someone else, a family friend. They had been deeply in love.

The first time I ever smoked Mandrax I was walking with my two drug buddies back to Northcliff corner. They were both a year older than me and about to finish school. They were poor kids whose parents would not have been able to put them into university even if their school marks had been good enough. Alister started talking about going into the army, asking in our lingo if my other friend thought it was inevitable that he would have to go. He was scared. He OD’ed on Wellconal a year later. A few years ago so did Karl. This mix is for my friends, the one’s who did not make it through the wilderness, the ones who barely did and for the rest of us lucky ones. May we never go “there” again.
Both The Oppressed And The Accused

Image: The death of Ken Oosterbroek, 1994.

“Uea!

besOs,
Globuchito González”

One more house/party list. This one follows a post few days ago plus Kahlo’s Globuchito comic character complaining about PoMo condition. I find it hilarious and couldn’t resist making a list out of it. Globuchito is a hypochondriac in the tradition of Almodovar’s movie, mashing up reality and drawing wrong conclusion. What better excuse for making a messy dance list? Middle: E.M.&I. I love how the Dj declares “Welcome to the New Generation” with acid Jazz beat. It captures jazz on standard house beat circa early 90’s mash. So what happens to that project anyway? Inserting more delicate structure to Techno. After acid jazz everything fizzles out and disappear by late 90’s. (see also Fritz And His Jazzcats)

Third Eye Foundation and Four Tet have special place. Their albums from 5 years ago are still half step ahead. Compared it to about to be released RJD2 and Klaxon. The later aren’t as strong in remaking House and IDM. Shouldn’t we get out money back? It’s been 5 years since those early IDM attempt.

Anywho, enjoy the mix.

“ New Generation (Globuchito mix) ”

01. RJD2- Get It
(The Third Hand (promo), 2007)
02. The Third Eye Foundation - Stone Cold Say So
(Little Lost Soul, 2000)
03. E.M.& I. - 3 On 3
(This is Acid Jazz : The Vibe, 1994)
04. Fritz And His Jazzcats - Good Inside
(House of Acid Jazz, 1993)
05. Four Tet - She Moves She
(Rounds, 2003)
06. Peaches - Rock The Shocker
(Impeach My Bush, 2006)
07. Klaxons - Golden Skkans (Erol alkan’s ekstra spektral dub)
(Myths of the Near Future, 2007)
08. Dee-Lite - Love is Everything
(Infinity Within, 1992)
 

see also: Globuchito’s page, There is so much noise
image: Hugo*

Inspiration for writing a post can come in many different ways. Most of the times for me it’s a certain theme that inspires me to write something and to make an accompanying play list. This time however it was the picture above which I found - totally by chance - on Flickr. Ever since seeing it, it immediately inspired me to bring together music that could add to the mystical and fairytale-like atmosphere that’s embodied through this impressive photograph.

The picture was taken by lunaryuna, who photographed her three year old daughter behind their house in the middle of the forests in Ecuador. That’s basically all we know and all we actually need to know about this picture. The imagery speaks for itself; the heavy, vibrant colors of the forest, the soft light that sparsely comes through the leaves and embraces the scenery with a mesmerizing glow of golden radiance, the placement of the girl in the small patch of light. It seems to not just capture a reality in that moment of time, but it in fact creates an atmosphere that goes far beyond that certain moment in time and what’s actually pictured within the photograph itself. Thereby it creates a world of its own.

The play list heavily builds upon old and new folk music. It feels like a natural companion with its mystical undertones and warm, yet ghostly ambiance. The set starts off with Greg Ashley performing a haunted acid-folk tune that’s preceded by the playful yet ominous sounds of a laughing and giggling girl.

The two songs by The Book of AM form the centre pieces of the play list. Their self titled album was recently reissued by Wah Wah Records from Spain in a luscious and beautifully illustrated 112-page book filled with engravings that accompany their music. The album was recorded in the mid 70’s in the woods of Mallorca by a group of likeminded voyagers from different countries and cultures. A true landmark album in the folk-scene.

By including World’s End Girlfriend I’ve tried to explore the eerie ambiance that seems to be lurking underneath the surface of this photograph with the little girl who sits all alone in the middle of the dark forest. The track combines the warm and spiritual undertones of The Book of AM with an almost horror-like setting that could have come straight from an anime soundtrack.

All the other tracks were also selected to build upon the scenery that’s created by the soft and mystical folk tunes of The Book of AM. My personal favorite female singer/songwriter of the moment, Marissa Nadler, seems like a natural fit for this play list. Her beautiful folk songs, often wrapped in sinister murder ballads, create an almost life like recalling of the forest.