Trivia

Eels have a new album out: “Souljacker.” Rock and roll with horns used sparingly. The usual brilliant lyrics.

Oct. 4th at Confed. Centre Library at 8pm. I will be introducing a poet I’ve never read. He is Bruce Taylor. He has also written a book about puppeteering! Admission is free. Nice people get coffee and cookies or something. Muffins, maybe.

If you are a fulltime UPEI student, and have two hours to spare on most Wednesdays, The Cadre will give you twenty five dollars. You will go where we tell you. You will put copies of the paper there. This is entirely legal.

If you can create original graphics that closely resemble elements from cold-war era soviet propaganda posters please let me know. This is a very serious request.

New aioku. Check it. Go.

 

to drink or to sleep?

bruyneel: (3:58 AM) im thinking about getting drunk

Matthew: (3:58 AM) i feel like Dr. Frankenstein except without the big guy made out of dead people

bruyneel: (3:58 AM) we jost wrote a novel together yo

bruyneel: (3:59 AM) just even

Matthew: (3:59 AM) let me finish here. then we can make nice.

bruyneel: (4:00 AM) doesn’t make me like ayou anymore, the writing of the novl together thing

bruyneel: (4:00 AM) not really

Matthew: (4:12 AM) 25261 words. we got us a novel. just.

 

the cat is fine.

So these days I’ve been taking care of my step-mother’s cat while she is out of the province. The cat is a female of the grey and white variety whose only passion in life is aquiring cardboard boxes for her own inscrutable reasons.

Hank, the cat, has not run away. It has apparently been in the house all along, hiding out somewhere. This still does not explain why it has not eaten its food, or more importantly, why the kitty-litter has not been used recently. These are questions for an inquiring mind, and as such I will have nothing to do with them.

Much like Hank, I have not run away. I’ve been on AOV all along. The explanation for the lack of posts is simple: I haven’t been interested in writing anything that fits with AOV, and writing something just to fill a space is bad form. But I have been writing.

Recently:

Continuining coverage of the CFL on Forget
“If you don’t like what you got, why don’t you change it?”
Are You Watching The CanadianFootball League?br /
The still beta Five Feet of Dirt: all original content by myself and Kent Bruyneel, featuring:
31 Days of Kelly Gruber*

* If anyone has, or knows the whereabouts of, a few decent pictures of Kelly Gruber, send them in this direction. And no, I’m not going to add a link to my email address here, because frankly, I think you’ve been coddled enough.

 

Fiona Apple – Tidal – Sony / Work – 1996

sullen girl

“Sleep to Dream”

This is a very different song when you realize the line is actually:

I could swallow the seas to wash down all my pride.

That’s seas and not seed. A world of difference – but still a decent song, albeit certainly not the best on the album. Nice title though.

 

Matmos – A Chance to Cut is A Chance to Cure – Matador (DNA) – 2001

icky scritchy itchy
“Lipostudio . . . And so On” is definitely, without any question, the absolute best song of all time to incorporate samples of an actual liposuction. Check out the extra squooshy liposucking samples about halfway through. Splooshtastic! Of the entire the album, this song is probably the most closely resembling a “traditional” electronica tune. It has the most straightforward beats and lengthy melodies of the album, and is one of the better songs.

A Chance to Cut is a Chance to Cure is super-minimalist, micromanaged electronic noodling, but more fun than that. “Memento Mori” and “Ur Tchun Tan Tse Q” are both incredible, with all kinds of clicks, pops, and all types of itchy-skritchiness. The sound of a drill, apparently boring into the base of someone’s skull, at the end of “Spondee” is absolutely terrifying and relentless. It still occasionally gives me dry heaves.

This album uses some very weird and amazing samples – every song samples from plastic surgery operations. It’s not just the “organic” samples like this used, but close attention to such small details, that makes A Chance to Cut sound very human, and very far departed from the artificial machine-gloss that covers so much electronica.