Friday, June 6, 2008

conquest of the irrational



Dali's sketch example of the paranoid critical method.. irrationality supported by precise cartesian reality... surrealism isn't chaos, it has a rational crutch- the key is the way the blobby mass is held up against all your instincts...

The Bat's North by North is a classic Flying Nun track, but I've never been able to make head nor tail of what it's about..

The blobby mass which the 3Ds create could draw you into a weird, gothic irrationality, if you're not careful..

The Chills also had a knack for unfathomable lyrics, and I have no idea what Chug's Flowers could be implying. Something about climbing up a mountain for a whole day to kill the moon, or collect some flowers. Or something.

Joyce's Samba do Joyce seems to me to make some nicely odd juxtapositions- Molly Bloom and Carmen Miranda? (You're welcome to provide a precis, EJ)









Kid Koala- Drunk Trumpet.. classic surrealism.. the crutch of technology supporting the irrational- how can you make a record deck sound like a trumpet solo? watch this...


More Flying Nun.. The Verlaines, Bird Dog.

10 comments:

Blimpy said...

Track 4 reminds me of "kill your television" by Ned's Atomic Dustbin, only gooder. How surreal is that>!?!

nilpferd said...

Well surreal. Cheers, Blimpy. I actually don't have much conviction about this playlist having anything to do with surrealism, except maybe the Kid Koala, but I thought I'd take the opportunity to post a few of my fav tunes with incomprehensible lyrics.

steenbeck said...

Nice list, Nilpferd. I liked them all, especially the Kid Koala--amazing. I feel like I should know this, but what's Flying Nun? I like the Chills and the Verlaines every time you post them. Sorry I didn't get a chance to listen in time for dondalization.

I was interrupted while listening because they're doing a fashion shoot in front of my house. I'm thinking of charging royalties for the use of my bricks. Amazingly, I didn't get discovered as the new face of whatever they were selling, but they did take a lot of pictures of Isaac. It's 100 DEGREES F. today!! And they were shooting sweaters. Fun.

nilpferd said...

Thanks steenbeck! Flying Nun is a record label formed in New Zealand at the start of the eighties, here's their own version of their history-
http://www.flyingnun.co.nz/archive_site/archive/history.html
There are a series of clips on Youtube called "Heavenly pop hits" which together make up a fairly critical documentary about the label, with good coverage of most of the important bands. Worth a look too, although at times somewhat unnecessarily provocative. But the music coverage is good.
All of the NZ bands I post here- Chills, The clean, Verlaines, 3Ds, Straitjacket Fits, etc- were signed to Flying Nun. There are other good NZ record labels, but none as big or as diverse as F.N.

I'd definitely get royalties, or at least a free sweater.. in any case take Steenbeck for a walk and try to get in the photos..

steenbeck said...

Thanks, Nilpferd, I'll look further into it. One of the photographers had a familiar accent and I was going to ask if he knew you but it turned out he was Australian. I think the head photographer might have been German, though, so maybe he knew you. He was quite a character, but very friendly.

nilpferd said...

Probably best not to have asked the Australian, I always have the problem when I'm there that I start to mimic the accent inadvertently after a few days, so that it sounds like I'm making fun of them, and I don't think I've gone down there very well. There was also a terribly rude and unfair joke one of our prime ministers told about 30 years ago which soured things somewhat.
The German might have known me, though. I know most of the friendly ones, although they are almost all in Austria at the moment for the soccer tournament.

steenbeck said...

Well, let's see--he was very tall and he was wearing brown pants and had a big camera. Sound familiar? And the australian had his tongue pierced, which Isaac found VEry fascinating.

nilpferd said...

The Aussie sounds like Shane. Tell him he owes me a crate of beer. And it had better not be Fosters.
Not sure about the German. If he had a pigtail, it might have been Jürgen. Becomes very melancholy when drunk. Don't feel compelled to test this out, though.

steenbeck said...

I didn't get friendly enough with them to find out, much to Isaac's disappointment. I let the model change her sweater in my living room and Isaac said, "What's his [sic] name? I want to play toys with him [sic]."

nilpferd said...

Nice line.
You'll have to keep your eye on that boy, though..