Terminus

From Trevor Cawood. Montreal's Spyfilms.

Glass Candy - Digital Versicolor

Now for something a bit more recent. From New Jersey.


Honkey grandma indeed.

Feeling early industrial, French tonight. . .

As opposed to?


Buzz - Kennedy. French. From a 12" w/ "Picasso" and "Kennedy".


Futurisk - Army Now. 1982. Florida. Not French.


Orchestre Rouge - Soon Come Violence. 1982. (More like post-punk.) See: Passion Fodder.


Honeymoon Killers - Historie a Suivre. Amazing live footage. 1983.


Starter - Minijupe. Swiss, of course. Look at those moves.


End of Data - Sahrah. French. 1983. From Rennes.


Hard Corps - Dirty. Live, 1986.

Pete Shelley - On Your Own

Great animation.

Angel Mine

People who have read 6 Sick Hipsters often ask what "trivia" I made up and which is real. This is something the Annotated 6 Sick Hipsters website will address but here's an example: The whole "Angel Mine" section - banter between Swank (an artist who meets an ill end) and his pal - is based on a very real but really obscure film. Here is some info:

“Angel Mine (which came with the warning: ‘This film contains punk cult material!’) signalled in celluloid the arrival of punk and met with the kind of controversy you’d expect and more. ‘Angel Mine came out of nowhere and caught a lot of people by surprise,’ says Blyth. ‘Twenty years down the track I don’t know whether it’s so controversial. I’ve gone on and become far more middle of the road in terms of my film-making. … Blyth was coming to the end of his time at Auckland University where he had become influenced by European cinema rather than Hollywood as well as the values that went along with the music friends in a band were espousing. ‘We all came from the garage band. I was a garage film-maker. I used an old red Bolex and like the musicians didn’t have any formal education. They just got instruments and started making noises and I got a camera and started pointing it around the room. I thought ‘why wait to get experience?’ Everything was fermenting at the same time. The very first punk concert at Auckland University was raising money for Angel Mine. The thing about the film is that it was shot for $13,000 or $14,000, which meant I didn’t have to go to any of the authorities and have my script fettered. It was an attack on the great suburban dream of New Zealand, the whole focus on ‘get a job, get a house and a mortgage’, a whole philosophy which I guess punk was about questioning. … Despite the low budget and the controversy that followed the film’s release, many critics today, as then, have hailed Angel Mine as a superb piece of film-making.” (Mark Amery, Sunday Star-Times, 12 February 1995)

"There are no bohemians in Angel Mine. The couple, played by Derek Ward and Jennifer Redford, are confirmed city dwellers. In their sterile brand-new Lockwood show-home, isolated in the middle of a Pakuranga subdivision, haven for the nouveau riche, they try desperately to conform to the image of the ideal young couple in the commercials. They are surrounded by the material trappings that the slick advertisements insist are requisites for happiness: yet real happiness eludes them. The phantom doubles or Doppelgangers, dressed in shiny black vinyl suits, represent the physical, sensual, animalistic aspects of the couples' personalities, so effectively subliminated by the mass media." (Diana Ward/Art New Zealand, 1978)

"No locally made film has caused more hullabaloo since the advent of the State-sponsored NZ Film Commission than David Blyth's Angel Mine which premiered in Auckland in November and has since moved to other of the country's main cites. It has been the cause of renewed urgings to the Minister of Internal Affairs Alan Highet to tighten censorship law, and to the Government in general to carefully watch how the taxpayers money is being spent in the new surge towards a developed local film industry. Porn watchdog Patricia Bartlett, in particular, has been assiduous in penning letters to Government leaders and newspapers about what she sees as the degrading content of the film and the use of public money for such enterprises. In fact, Angel Mine, which has been made on a minuscule budget of about $30,000 and blown into 35mm from original 16mm footage, is much more than all the "put down" ballyhoo suggests... What it does is make a particularly strong statement about urban materialism and the corrosive nature of visual advertising in the context of the relationship - sexual and otherwise - of a suburban couple..."- (Mike Nicolaidi, Variety, January 10,1979)

The Annotated 6 Sick Hipsters

Coming soon. It'll be a website, open to additions. Page by page references, etc. Should have it up by April. Have any thoughts, or want to lend a helping hand, let me know.

Williamsburg Courier

Did an interview last night with the Williamsburg Courier. Nice chat, though I may have rambled a bit. (How is it that I mentioned the Lost & Found Times?)Not sure when it will hit newsstands.

Banner

Many, many thanks to Alex Martin for this. Spread the love.

Monaco - What Do You Want From Me?

Peter Hook (New Order) and David Potts, post Revenge. 1997.

Metro NY

Metro NY interview. If you're in the city, pick up a copy.

Title Sequences

Always been a huge fan of title sequences. In 5th gade, my teacher brought in a 16mm reel of Saul Bass credits and I was hooked. This is a nice compliation. Some of these are quite obscure (Dorian Gray) and many I would not have normally considered (Death Machines - love it). Below are some of my favs:


Vertigo


Delicatessen


The Good, The Bad and The Ugly


The Mysterious Cities of Gold (Seriously, how can you resist that song?)

6 Sick Hipsters - Trailer 2

Second trailer for the book. Muchas gracias to PureShot for this. Genius.

Ain't It Cool News

Gothamist

Interview

Paper

Amazon

Pre-order away.

6 Sick Hipsters: Teaser Trailer

6 Sick Hipster ARCs

Hanukkah in November.

Samurai Cop

Priceless.

"No way, his lips are burned."

Shriekback - Glory Bumps

Shriekback's eleventh studio album, Glory Bumps, is both a continuation of lead singer/songwriter Barry Andrews' long-running neo-primitive sound as well as a throw-back to the Shriek's earlier, edgier rock scuttles. Eschewing the programmed percussion that flattened the sound of Shriekback's last album, the brilliant but flawed Cormorant, Glory Bumps is something of a return to form. I say "something" because for Andrews there is hardly a form. Sure, it's not difficult recognizing a Shriekback song -- the funky bass slithers, the turtle-shell percussion, the synth noodlings and doomy washes and Andrew's grave whisper -- but musically Glory Bumps harkens back to the earliest stirrings of the band when they were more experimental forces than proper recording artists. While Andrew's songwriting remains consistent with his later output, this new album shines a light into the deep waters of what most fans may have considered thoroughly explored territory.

The album opens with the anthem, "Hooray for Everything". It's all loud rolling drums and crawling synth revs and it's somewhat similar to Snog's equally satiric "Hooray!!" "The Bride Stripped Bare" is a fierce monster of snarls and quietly disturbing piano interludes that fades out into a grimy little riff. Glory Bump's first real standout track is the impressionistic funeral dirge on acid, "Burying the Bunny." It's New Orleans via Midian and is highlighted by wolf howls and skeletal keys. Andrew's turns up the ghastly humor in lines like "this benediction isn't something I desire/it was a while ago before I felt so sunny/it's all ridiculous to that I am resigned/and that intensity is very, very funny." A real treat. "Bittersweet" is, as the title implies, a quieter affair and it's as close to anything from Big Night Music that the band has come in the past decade. Choice lines include: "raking through some existential drivel/it was grudgingly sublime, perhaps a waste of time." Glory Bumps finest song is the achingly beautiful "Amaryllis in the Sprawl." Like Oil and Gold's "This Big Hush" or Big Night Music's "Underwater Boys," "Amaryllis in the Sprawl" is a languid meditation (Martyn Baker's percussion is just dead on and the didgeridoo is exquisite) with a soul elevating chorus that is begging for some cinematic use. Best listened to driving at night, it's a Shriekback masterpiece. "Mahalia" is a companion piece to Big Night Music's "Running of the Rocks," all barren but beautiful tumbling chorus and driving, jazzy rhythm. This wouldn't be out of place in a spaghetti western. ("It's a deeply satisfying sound/Mahalia.") The title track, "Glory Bumps", is something of an oddity, a one-off. A snide attack on evangelical thumping, it's loud and aggressive and over-the-top. While the lyrics and clever and cutting, the stagy music is just a bit too shapeless to really deliver the goods. Like Cormorant's "Bonehead", "Squanderer" is a funky cutter. Andrew's falls back on his lyrical listing (a trope from the very beginnings of the band) and some of it is quite silly ("I wanna get a lick of the exorcist stick" Note: Barry clarifies that it's actually "ecstasy stick") but the harmonica infused chorus is undeniably catchy. "Devil's Onions" continues the dusty jams and sounds surprisingly like something from late-90s The The. Great key work and some really nice horns over the "golden age" chorus. The album wraps the instrumental "Yarg 7", similar to Cormorant's burbling "Huytfi Dbl Plus" but without the beats.

All in all amazing.

Buy the album at Malicious Damage Records (see link). There is a limited edition Advent calendar/double vinyl release of Glory Bumps with three additional tracks. Here is more info: "...beautifully packaged in a rapture-ready endtime advent calendar, complete with little windows that open revealing all your little symbols of approaching end-of-the-worldness... the vinyl is packaged in a pure white sleeve and can be stored separately while the calendar can be hung on the wall to impress the vicar when he comes round for tea... there'll also be a numbered personalised certificate of authentication signed by the reverend andrews and a malicious damage representative, plus a few other bits and bobs..." Only 100 made so get it while you can.