From the Chocolate and Cheese-y cover of their punningly-titled debut Blew It Again to the confetti, glitter, and good times of their YouTubed performance footage, Electric Tickle Machine bears most of the markings of a gimmicky joke band. After all, we’ve all been to that show where we saw the crazy band with people in animal costumes dry-humping on stage as a Mike Tyson impersonator shoots fake blood from a Super Soaker all over the audience and the band plays inside a fireworks-spewing van on stage. You have such an awesome time that you buy their CD-R. But when you play it by yourself at home, it just kinda lays there all sad and flat without all the performative doodads and whatsits to distract you from how uninteresting the music is on its own.
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Archive for October, 2009
Sightings: Electric Tickle Machine, “Part of Me”
Monday, October 12th, 2009Horizons: Psych-Related Minor Plot Twist In New Coen Brothers Film
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
Still from A Serious Man, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, 2009.
An Open-Ended Question From An Open-Ended Film:
Imagine, for a moment, that you are Larry Gopnick, the “Serious Man” in the Coen Brothers’ new film by the same name. The time is the 1960’s, and you are a family man and tenure-track physics professor living in an affluent Jewish neighborhood in the suburbs of Minneapolis. You, the Serious Man, believe that you are doing everything right until pretty much everything in your life starts going egregiously wrong: your wife decides to leave you for a family friend, your brother runs into trouble with the law, your 13-year-old son starts stealing from you to buy weed, and a student offers you an exorbitant amount of money for a passing grade (while threatening to sue you) the same week you are up for tenure.
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Body Actualized Control at the Market Hotel: An Interview with the Ubiquitous “Us” Behind North Brooklyn’s first Cosmic Yoga Party
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
When I emailed Jan Rew Midelfort and Etienne Pierre Duguay asking for an interview about the weekly Yoga party they started this summer on the roof of the Market Hotel in Bushwick, I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to get away with just sending over a list of questions. Duguay–one of the venue’s resident promoters, as well as the drummer for Real Estate and Predator Vision–responded demanding that I arrive at 7:00 pm sharp the following Wednesday to participate in the Yoga class myself. Midelfort–also a musician, and one of the most talented psychedelic music DJ’s I know–added that I should bring my violin along, because it would be “awesome” if I could perform a continuous drone during the New Age music component of the event, which happens after the sun goes down. I did not have the chance to get in touch with Aurora Halal, the event’s third core organizer, but I’m pretty sure she would have responded with yet another suggestion encouraging me nix the habit of passive spectatorship that journalists tend to fall back on.
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Rhys Chatham’s Astrological Advice for Musicians: October
Sunday, October 4th, 2009
Visitation Rites is proud to present Rhys Chatham’s astrology column for experimental musicians, which draws on his experience as a composer and a meticulous analysis of the geometrical relationships between the sun and other planets in monthly astrological charts. Have fun reading the predictions for your sign, and do not be fooled by cheap imitations!
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Sightings: Blondes, “Spanish Fly”
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
The first time I caught a live set by the Brooklyn electronic duo Blondes, my mind started flashing with memories of Manuel Göttsching’s disembodied head floating aimlessly atop a vortex of neon pink and purple mist during last summer’s performance of “E2-E4″ at Lincoln Center. This projection–courtesy the Joshua Light Show–formed the perfect accompaniment to the pleasant, glassy-eyed monotony of a simple programmed pattern sounding a million times over–here the famous “E2-E4″ riff–and Blondes’ music leans on a similar logic.
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