turner prize 09 fo' shizzle!

Enrico David
My heart sank when I first saw Enrico David's work. There's a super-snotty, measured, illustratively cool quality to his gouaches for sure, but his sculpture is terrible. Looking at the [hi! I'm surreal and also postmodern!] 3d work feels like being told a Steven Hawking joke like it's something new. It's really really boring and really really old and not funny.

Richard Wright
Richard Wright's work is much more refreshing. He paints intricate optic patterns on the walls of the gallery in gold leaf. I think I like the implied narrative here best - the idea that the artist was present in each room for a significant amount of time. It's also enjoyable to see something so hopelessly fleeting and unsaleable. Plus his titles are playfully formal - Untitled, No Title, Not Titled. I'm easily pleased.

Roger Hiorns
Roger Hiorns is probably the most discussable artist, as his 2008 installation, Siezure involved the incredible (yet not forgetting, very Rachel Whiteread) tactic of filling an abandoned south London flat in copper sulphate in order to encrust the entire location with breathtaking crystals. The title is gorgeous, and the piece is clearly moving in its complex physicality, its frozen, natural process. He's a young dude, and is very modern. Like, painfully, crisply, cold morning-ly modern. He'll probably win it.

Lucy Skaer
The only chick on the list is a refreshingly back-to-basics sculptor and sketcher. Her work reminds me massively of Richard Long. A lot of people have talked about the metafictional qualities of her work, which is clearly apparent (Black Alphabet is 26 duplicate sculptures of Brancusi's Bird in Space made from compressed coal dust) but I find the deliberate, bitter monochrome of her work to be quite naturalistic. It's the right side of postmodern and actually the right side of retro for once, as it pays its homage with sincerity.

some cosmic musical predictions

2010 - 2012
Salem and time-stretched space-driven minimalist beats reign supreme. Wonkiness also makes a subtle but valuable appearance. D.I.Y. releases become way more frequent. La Roux dies in a car crash.

2013-2015
'The new silent generation' gradually begin to re-explore nu-metal and later nu-rave as a nostalgic source. People wear those massive curtain jeans for a while. I know.

2016-2017
There is a brief new British invasion in the states, but this falls flat because it is shit. Music becomes fully culturally integrated. Ragga and shoegaze. Music critics look back to 'the golden age of crunk' with nostalgia. Dubstep is indeciferable code.

2018-2019
A new genre quivers on the horizon, as big as punk or hip hop. It looks like a circle and sounds like a square. Everyone wears wrapping paper as it is the new fashion. Drill 'n' Bass has an unexpected resurgence. Andrew Lloyd Webber cuts his dick off in a live performance.

new harmony korine film y'all

If anyone else found Mister Lonely heap big fun but a bit too shiny for what is expected of Korine, then get your lo-fi balls out and pet them to the tune of his latest - Trash Humpers - which looks set to be one huge, glorious WTF.

It's a kind of documentary/NOT AT ALL flick that follows "a small group of elderly ‘Peeping Toms’ through the shadows and margins of an unfamiliar world". It looks totally warped and morally perfect but in a way that will seem bankrupt to the oldies that don't like Korine.

CLICK 'N' SCROLL FOR SOUPER CLIP
(horrible)

salem - piggyhog

More excellence from Salem...

fire boobs

shoegaze special - the swirlies

To celebrate the fact that no one knows when the shit MBV's new album(s?) is coming out, I thought I'd celebrate some other bands that caught the sparks that flew from the fascinating friction between Shields' and Butcher's glorious musical genitals. Basically.

THE SWIRLIES.

They is rad, and bit laak 'em.

Swirlies - Pancake

wet hair

Slimy toy-box music today from Iowa's Wet Hair. Light-hearted (or DARK HEARTED) longsongs that travel far, but only around the garden. Like a child's perspective on grass.

Wet Hair - Crucifix in the Waves

P.S.

Cassie Ramone is so charming. (still)

(OLD INTERVIEW)

arnold schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg, seen here, with vein, was an Austrian - then later American - expressionist composer. He was the reason you had to listen to twelve-tone compositions (each note given equal value - remember?) in GCSE music.

It wasn't until the late twentieth century when Schoenberg started to mix codeine with soft drinks. The chemical was primarily gleaned from cough syrup, and the cocktail took off - especially in the southern hip hop scene - notably in Houston. Schoenberg named the mixture, 'purple drank'. The above photo is one of few that doesn't feature Schoenberg completely fucked on codeine. He is only partially fucked.

Below: Schoenberg's early expressionist work, and then the later 'Chopped 'n' Screwed' collaborative work.

conejo

So I found these guys on Salem's friend branches. I love how music keeps surprising me. Conejo make mono droning instrumentalist minimalism that could be easily set to key super-8 footage that punctuates a scene, whereby the female protagonist is on a lawn outside to the right of a white picket fence, undergoing some kind of metaphysical (and metaphorically metaphysical) change. Like, the colour of her dress would change from dark gold to navy.

Conejo - Heroyn

untitled

I had it.