Enki Bilal — Die Mauer (1982)

Klaus Nomi — The Cold Song (Live in Germany - 1982)

I'm not very fond of Klaus Nomi's synth-opera music, some of it dosen't age very well. But there is a song by him I think is just timeless. It's his interpretation of The Cold Song taken from Henry Purcell's King Arthur opera. The fact that Nomi knew he was dying of AIDS while giving this show (and that it was certainly his last visit in the country where he grew up) makes his performance all the more intense and troubling.

Sunday's idiotic post: Werner Herzog on chickens

Werner Herzog's letter to his cleaning lady

The Sabotage Times has published what is presented as a letter from Werner Herzog to his cleaning lady. The mention "by Dale Shaw" and the total exaggeration of this letter leads me to believe this is a fake. But it's a good, funny fake.

Rosalina. Woman.

You constantly revile me with your singular lack of vision. Be aware, there is an essential truth and beauty in all things. From the death throes of a speared gazelle to the damaged smile of a freeway homeless. But that does not mean that the invisibility of something implies its lack of being. Though simpleton babies foolishly believe the person before them vanishes when they cover their eyes during a hateful game of peek-a-boo, this is a fallacy. And so it is that the unseen dusty build up that accumulates behind the DVD shelves in the rumpus room exists also. This is unacceptable.

I will tell you this Rosalina, not as a taunt or a threat but as an evocation of joy. The joy of nothingness, the joy of the real. I want you to be real in everything you do. If you cannot be real, then a semblance of reality must be maintained. A real semblance of the fake real, or “real”. I have conquered volcanoes and visited the bitter depths of the earth’s oceans. Nothing I have witnessed, from lava to crustacean, assailed me liked the caked debris haunting that small plastic soap hammock in the smaller of the bathrooms. Nausea is not a sufficient word. In this regard, you are not being real.

Now we must turn to the horrors of nature. I am afraid this is inevitable. Nature is not something to be coddled and accepted and held to your bosom like a wounded snake. Tell me, what was there before you were born? What do you remember? That is nature. Nature is a void. An emptiness. A vacuum. And speaking of vacuum, I am not sure you’re using the retractable nozzle correctly or applying the ‘full weft’ setting when attending to the lush carpets of the den. I found some dander there.

I have only listened to two songs in my entire life. One was an aria by Wagner that I played compulsively from the ages of 19 to 27 at least 60 times a day until the local townsfolk drove me from my dwelling using rudimentary pitchforks and blazing torches. The other was Dido. Both appalled me to the point of paralysis. Every quaver was like a brickbat against my soul. Music is futile and malicious. So please, if you require entertainment while organizing the recycling, refrain from the ‘pop radio’ I was affronted by recently. May I recommend the recitation of some sharp verse. Perhaps by Goethe. Or Schiller. Or Shel Silverstein at a push.

The situation regarding spoons remains unchanged. If I see one, I will kill it.

That is all. Do not fail to think that you are not the finest woman I have ever met. You are. And I am including on this list my mother and the wife of Brad Dourif (the second wife, not the one with the lip thing). Thank you for listening and sorry if parts of this note were smudged. I have been weeping.

Your money is under the guillotine.

Herzog.

ANBB [Blixa Bargeld + Alva Noto] — One (2010)

Blixa Bargeld, singer of industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, bassist for many Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds albums and spoken word artist teams up with "glitch" musician Alva Noto. I don't know why I haven't found out about this album earlier! More information at the Raster Noton Label.


ANBB
One
Album: Mimikry (2010)

Karl Blossfeldt: Nature's perfect design

Karl Blossfeldt (1895-1932) was a German photographer, scupltor, teacher and artist who worked in Berlin. He is best known for his close-up photographs of plants and living things. [Found out about this photographer at the everything art related blog]

Photographs inside instruments

Splendid posters for the Berliner Philharmoniker posters. Photography and art direction by Bjoern Ewers. This looks almost like architecture photographs!

Einstürzende Neubauten — Was ist ist (Live 2005)

Einstürzende Neubauten
Was ist ist (Live, 2005)
Song from the Album: Ende Neu (1996)

Waldschattenspiel

Ok, I have to admit it, I'm a bit of a geek, I love board games. I love them even more when the game itself is a nice object. I recently found out about Waldschattenspiel, it seems definitely like a well designed game, with an original idea.

Germans have made themselves a speciality in non-violent boardgames (since World War II of course). They have developed an expertise making cooperative games where players work together with a common objective. Waldschattenspiel is a simple game (5 years and up), to play in the dark, using a candlelight.

The dwarves hide in the shadows of the trees from the wandering light. The burning tea-light (adult player) moves through the dark forest and tries to find the small dwarves in their hiding places. If a dwarf is touched by the light, it is frozen and not allowed to move anymore.

Wings of Desire

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
From Her to Eternity
Album: From Her to Eternity (1984)
Scene from the movie Wings of Desire (1987)

Vision - Aus dem Leben der Hildegard von Bingen (2009)

I took the bad habit of checking movie ratings on imdb. It can be interesting but also very misleading. Some very good movies don't really have such a fabulous rating there (in my opinion at least). Anyway all that to say that I wasn't expecting much from Vision (with a 6,6 rating on imdb) but I was pleasantly surprised.

The movie is the romanced biography of Hildegard Von Bingen, Benedictine abess in the 12th century. I already knew about her musical compositions, but not much about her life. She was a writer, an herborist, an expert in many scientific fields and she had a correspondance with some of the most influential people of her time. She was also having visions (some heavenly, some apocalyptic). Her reputation as a visionary gave her an important credibility with the church, but also with politicians. Historians now believe that she suffered from terrible migraines and the visions were the consequence of her affliction. She is now remembered for her beautiful musical compositions.

The movie is by Margarethe von Trotta, German feminist filmmaker. Obviously a lot of the movie is portrayed in a feminist point of view. A perspective that is very pertinent considering the place women had in the medieval society. The historical retelling of events is very interesting, and seems to be accurate from what I later read. And the main actress, Barbara Sukowa (known for her roles in Fassbinder movies) is very good. Of course there is the mandatory love story, probably fictional, taking place between Hildegard and her novice Richardis von Stade. Unfortunately we don't see much of Hildegarde's visions, it could have been a pretext for beautiful scenes. Instead, the movie is more centered on the historic storytelling of the life of the Abess. My biggest dissapointment is probably with the general atmosphere of the movie, everything seems very... clean, not like I imagine the middle ages.

Kraftwerk live at the MoMA

A lot of the electronic music shows I attended were a deception. Seeing musicians playing with laptops like autistic childs can be boring. Of course, there are some exceptions. And Kraftwerk is one of those exceptions. Seeing them live is an impressive experience. The sound is excellent, the visuals are great and they seem to have fun performing.

The Museum of Modern Art has announced a series of shows by Kraftwerk: Over eight consecutive nights, MoMA presents a chronological exploration of the sonic and visual experiments of Kraftwerk with a live presentation of their complete repertoire in the Museum's Marron Atrium. Each evening consists of a live performance and 3-D visualization of one of Kraftwerk's studio albums—Autobahn(1974), Radio-Activity (1975), Trans-Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), Computer World (1981), Techno Pop (1986),The Mix (1991), and Tour de France (2003)—in the order of their release. Kraftwerk will follow each evening’s album performance with additional compositions from their catalog, all adapted specifically for this exhibition.

Bohren & der Club of Gore — Black Earth

There are groups who follow musical trends, and there are the groups that create a musical genre all by themselves. Bohren & der Club of Gore is the latter. You can find "clones" of Bohren, but none is as good in my opinion (The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble and the Dale Cooper Quartet & the Dictaphones are two of the best).

Since their second album, Sunset Mission (1995) it is safe to say Bohren & der Club of Gore have created a genre: doom-jazz (or dark jazz). A music that doesn't have much common with jazz except the instruments used (saxophone and vibraphone). In fact, the music of Bohren has far more in common with Doom Metal. It's slow, heavy and depressing. Not surprisingly, the quartet is composed of former metal musicians).

Their darkest album, and in my opinion their best, is Black Earth. It is a strange mix of jazz and ambient music. The sound is very characteristic, deep bass, very slow music. In fact, the music is so slow that its unsettling the first times you listen to this album. Black Earth has a sound that evokes the atmosphere of a rainy street at night or a smoke filled nightclub in the 20's. Like the soundtrack to an unexisting film noir movie. It is music for a nightmare, but it never gets violent. I have read many reviews making a parallel with the music of Angelo Badalamenti (especially the Twin Peaks soundtrack). And I must say it is very reminiscent of the soundtrack of a David Lynch movie.

If you take the car at night and have a lot of driving to do, Black Earth is the ideal soundtrack for the road.

Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948) — 3 collages

Elikan (1925)

Bild mit heller Mitte (1919)

Merz 231 Miss Blanche (1923)