Record Review: Giant Squid - 'Cenotes' EP

‘Cenotes’ - EP
Giant Squid
[Translation Loss]


Giant Squid’s music is as strange and rare and phenomenal as their namesake. Their works are subtle and nuanced, a delicate orchestration of oceanic sounds dancing lithely with the guitar’s heavy-handed jig. The band’s ecological philosophy deserts their urban surroundings of hometown Sacramento, California, you’ll be more likely to find them roaming a nature reserve or peering into rock pools by the sea.

It is that natural curiosity that shines through their body of work, most noticeably on 2009’s full length The Ichthyologist, where multiple guests leant their instrumentation to Giant Squid’s complex orchestration. Flutes, banjos, violins, cellos, trumpets, oboes, all additions that were explored to their limits and bent to main songwriter Aaron Gregory’s will. The Ichthyologist got them signed; it was that good.

Now Giant Squid return with the EP Cenotes (suh-noh-tees), a comparatively simpler record, the grandiose composition stripped away and no guests are involved. This is Giant Squid spouting their own black and inky concoctions.

Record Review: Saturnalia Temple - 'Aion of Drakon'

First Posted at: No Clean Singing

‘Aion of Drakon’
Saturnalia Temple
[AJNA Offensive]


Have you ever had that dream where it’s really urgent and really important to get somewhere but things are holding you back? Cobwebs, mud, vines, family members, waves crashing down on you; you spend your strength fighting off and fighting through to get to do this really important thing. Desperation sets in and you feel hopelessly lost, the ground elevates around you and then you fall. Then there’s that stomach plunge feeling when you wake up and you literally jerk awake in the smallest moment of absolute terror.

Saturnalia Temple is the deluge of mud that surrounds your knees and forces you into a crawl. They tap that desperation and play on your astral paranoia, they channel the occult and raise their altars and pillars and summon the beasts in the forests. They tether you down, they plunge their knife, then you wake in terror.

HUSH

I find Blogger so restricting at times, it's frustrating that the images are so small because you lose so much lush detail in HUSH's work.

Anyway, HUSH's work is a real show of fine art technicality blended with a whirlpool of graffiti that makes for fascinating street art. The bold, ravelling colours that flourish beneath the cold greys of the detailed portraitures set a perfect balance that juxtaposes but is still great to look at.

Honestly, HUSH is doing something really exciting with this work, and I'm sure to keep a close eye on what he gets up to project-wise.

For more information, check out his website: HERE

A New Year

I'm always astounded when I return to this often forgotten, tiring little corner of the Internet that I call mine. It sits ticking away gaining a frankly unbelievable amount of pageviews that are wholly undeserved. Since (((Hyperpower)))'s carnation there's been over 14,000 visits of which I am wholly thankful for each every one. I hope, like I keep on promising, to fill these pages with more content over the next year, there'll be more art, music and I will probably be using this space as a gathering place of all of my writing that is published on other sites.

But, that's saying and not doing so I'll leave you with a cool tune off a cool record.

Chelsea Wolfe - 'Pale On Pale' off the record Apokalypsis

Clarence John Laughlin

I do regret being so negligent of this here little corner of the internet. But it's mine and I do enjoy it when I pay attention to it.

I stumbled across Clarence John Laughlin a while ago and it came from one of the most unlikeliest sources, from an interview with Phil Anselmo (it's probably not that one) and even a Down song is named after Laughlin's most famous book 'Ghosts Along the Mississippi'.

Reading up on him feels kind of familiar, we share a love of language and, I delusively think, had a large vocabulary, what's more he had early aspirations to be a writer, my current fair now, but then developed a keen interest in photography, same here on all counts. So it is interesting to see this familiarity around his person and his direction of photography.

His photography feels evocative, like an echo of infused memories emerging as one image. It is ghostly, phantasmal even, starker in the grainy black and white.

Join me in buying the prodigious Ghosts Along The Mississippi

See more HERE

And see even more HERE

Love it.

Hey! I've a Photo

Also I have some more HERE. They're super cool so, yeah, GO FOR IT, or don't. Or head here, that's super cool too.

Joan Miro

As you probably guessed it, I went to the Miro exhibition at the Tate Modern today and I went not really expecting much as my father had been before and he didn't get along with it, but I should have guessed he wouldn't go along with a surrealist because that's probably the area of art he is most confused by, but I went in sceptical, but I left a lover. Catalonia's Joan Miro is the man.

I loved how complexly simple his Constellations were, and the vastness of his triptychs, Miro admittedly inspired by the American Abstract Expressionism, my boy Rothko! and bros., the minutely detailed his early works were with form and placing thrown to the wind. Fantastic.

There's only twelve days left of the exhibition, so if you're on the neighbourhood it is definitely worth it.

MORE MIRO

Kate Boxer

So whilst wondering around Shaftesbury with Cherub the Great I encountered a chair on a corner of a street with a pile of the magazine [Evolver], who also have a penchant for parentheses and whirly-gigs, and as I am a fan I snatched one up immediately, because I'm a curious creature and free stuff is normally better and more satisfying than anything that needs exchangement of paper with queens heads printed on them.

I discovered Kate Boxer's work whilst browsing and became immediately intrigued, her animal pictures in print and paint were striking and used big block colours which I do love so, and a bleak, melancholic atmosphere, especially with that serene green background in that top picture up there.

So yeah colour me a fan of Kate boxer, great work. My favourite though, contradicting my love of colour is that snake image, it's strong and bold, composed and writhing, I don't know exactly why, it hits me just right and would love it on my wall.

If you're interested to see more, check out her website, lots of good quality images there

And, uh, more information than just me rambling, is available here

Oh Man....

So, July may not be as fruitful as June was, what with it's singular post, as I'm roadtrippin' down to Rome and then Bloodstockin' when I get back so July may be another neglectful month. However, before I go on the 17th, I hope to put up at least one or two posts about artists that have caught my eye in the meantime.

I don't know why I put that image there, I quite like it but don't know who did it....

Seldon Hunt

Seldon Hunt has a healthy obsession of skulls. An obsession I share. Hunt's work is vibrant, hectic, packed with colour and well, quite skully. The bottom image is of Master Musicians of Bukkake's record Totem One and it's one of my favourite record artworks.


Hit up Seldon's website for more cool prints and illustrations: here.

Richard Serra

Richard Serra's work terrifies me. Huge sheet metal sculptures that loom above and curl around you, his works are expansive and intimidating, they make the viewer, lo the person who is experiencing them, to feel very insignificant. Something grander, something lifeless yet will live forever, something alien. Serra's work is ominous but he is probably my favourite living sculptor.

He also seems to be my kind of guy, in this interview he sums up his attitude as 'I don't give a shit but I care quite a lot.' Which is something I can relate to.

Richard Serra also had some trouble concerning a site-specific work in Manhattan:

'In the early morning hours of March 15, 1989, the culmination of an eight-year struggle between government bureaucracy and the artist Richard Serra took place. Serra's site-specific structure, Tilted Arc,1981, was removed from 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan, despite overwhelming local and worldwide support for its remaining at that site. The General Services Administration (GSA) established a complex arrangement of checks and balances with the selection and commission of this work, but the response from civil servants and others working in and around the Plaza was uncompromising: Tilted Arc would have to go. William Diamond, the GSA's New York Regional Administrator, had recommended (after three days of hearings that seem to suggest a solution other than the one implemented) that the sculpture be relocated, with a panel selected by the GSA and including Serra himself. This ruling outraged Serra. He claimed that because the sculpture was site-specific, to remove it would be the equivalent of destroying the piece. In addition Serra filed a $30 million lawsuit against the GSA to prevent the government agency from removing the sculpture. He cited as his defense breach of contract, trademark violations, copyright infringement and the violation of First and Fifth Amendment rights (Serra, May 1989, 137). Unfortunately, after months of legal wrangling, the courts stayed the original decision, and Tilted Arc was no more.'

You can carry on reading: here, it is truly facintanating.

So, head over here to find the irritating Gagosian Gallery website.

Head here to view with friendly Google.

Quayola

THIS IS SO AWESUM.

Quayola is a visual artist who experiments with video, photography, design and live performance mediums and I find some of his works to be stunning. An emphasis on some mind. A good example is his project 'Partitura', a video of which you can see above.

Partitura is a custom software to generate realtime graphics aimed at visualising sound. The term “Partitura” (score) implies a connection with music, and this metaphor is the main focus of the project. Partitura aims to create a new system for translating sound into visual forms.

I do find this to be incredible, and something I want immediately. We have all experienced the crappy visualisers of audio on our media players and I for one can see no correlation of what is projected visually in relation to whatever I play. It doesn't actually transform the audio, there is no visual actualisation. What is cool is Quayola has seemed to have created something that does generate the audio into something visual.

I always imagine a film that is imbued by music, I always feel music has a story to tell. Sometimes the film isn't always a narrative, sometimes it is just shapes and colour and abstract form, a good example of this is Electric Wizard's 2010 record 'Black Masses' which in my head is a giant black ball of sludge.

I like this a lot, I would buy the 'Partitura' software if I could. I've already watched that video three times.

Hit up Quayola's website to read up on his works, they are very interesting: here

Henri Cartier Bresson

I feel like we've been neglecting great photographers of late and so here is the fantastic Henri Cartier Bresson.

The big thing I love about Bresson's black and white photography is his ability to tell an engaging narrative. His images display emotive stories that are relative to the viewer. Panic, anxiety, loneliness, whilst also able to capture great images of warmth and love.

Bresson held the ability to reveal emotion in an encapsulating black and white photo.

My personal favourite image is the one at the top of the post. A man sharing a moment of loneliness or despair on the step of a pavement with a stray cat, framed by huge forbidding walls. It has it's own melancholic beauty.

I do also very much enjoy the second image, all those children peering down in a curiosity spiral. It too is rather beautiful.

You can check out Henri Cartier Bresson's offical site: here

View more exceptional photographs: here

The Adventures of Tintin

I fucking LOVED Tintin when I was younger, I had all of the books and read them constantly when on holiday. I loved the fantastic yet rooted in reality storylines, Snowy the little fox terrier dog who had thoughts of his own, the vibrant colourscapes like that huge blue sky above.

Georges Prosper Remi, probably more known by his pen name Hergé, is most likely the best known Belgian having written and illustrated the most excellent adventures of Tintin. It is quite fascinating to read up on Tintin's author, who lived through the occupation of Belgium by the Nazis, and at one point of being falsely accused of being a Nazi sympathiser, that the man has an asteroid named after him is pretty neat and is now one of my life's goals. What's more there apparently is an unfinished Tintin comic floating around somewhere entitled 'Tintin and Alph-Art' which would be interesting to see the light of day.

Anyway, I'd thought it'd be cool to honour Hergé by means of a dedicated post, he was a dearly talented illustrator and a genuine auteur. You can engross yourself with Hergé: here.

Hit up the official Tintin website and you can find out about a tour through Brussels where you can follow Tintin, I am excite!: here. It also fun facts too.

Did you guys read Tintin?

(Or Asterix actually, but I mean to have a future post on his greatness too...)

Louise Bourgeois

I feel bad for being so negligent towards (((Hyperpower))) over the past week so I've decided to come up with a good'un for this here post.

Louise Bourgeois has been acclaimed as a key contributor to contemporary art, and nothing is more revealing of her contribution than her awesome 'Maman' (1999) sculpture, which to me is horrifying to say the least. Spiders are goddamn horrible.

The sculpture, resembles a spider, duh, is over 30ft high, with a sac containing marble eggs. The title is French for Mother. Which is interesting considering it's a huge spider taking on the unexpected motherly role.

It is with sadness to report that it is nearly a year since Louise Bourgeois' death at 98, I hope you guys find something interesting about her astounding body of work.

Find some surprisingly good info: here.

And as there isn't a good online archive of her works, Google is your friend: here.