v a l l e j o n o c t u r n o

Best Music of the Year 2012- John Talabot

 

Fin, Talabot's classic house and modern music mix has both an urban and knowing sensibility that produces dance all over my body. Nevertheless, a subtle play on what is fast becoming the most creative space for the future.

 

From RA:

Never tell John Talabot his music's cozy. In a recent interview with Juno Plus, the Barcelona-based producer expressed confusion over many of the labels applied to the music that has made him such a presence in electronic music over the last few years—"tropical" being the most obvious. He insists that he always thought of his productions as kind of shadowy. It's an interesting objection because you can hear what he's saying: There's always been a sly melancholy, a kind of sonic withdrawal and itchy discomfort, to Talabot's material that belies the shimmer at the surface.

Regardless of how you view these timbres though—and, clearly, one man's beachbum anthem is another's depressive tearbait—Talabot's been omnipresent in sets, mixes and compilations for about three years now. Across well-caned favorites like "Sunshine," "Matilda's Dream" and "Families" on labels like Permanent Vacation, Young Turks and Spain's Hivern Discs, Talabot's established his own brand of sandy haired electronica that owes as much to the jumpy Balearic strains of fellow Spaniards like Delorean and Hamburg microscopic deep house as they do to the melodic swellings of early to mid-00 heavies like Kompakt and Get Physical.

Marked by his keen sense of songcraft, Talabot's tunes are just as good (if not better) for country day strolls or evening reading than peak night hedonism. And with his debut album, fIN, finally arriving on Permanent Vacation, it's obvious from the outset that he's constructed a fifty-odd minute piece of music as cohesive and narrative-oriented as some of the best electronic full-lengths of the last few years. There are stepbacks and detours—the ambient whirl of "H.O.R.S.E." and the garbled dystopic blur of "Last Land"—that lend moments of sonic reprieve against the album's heartiest tracks. Fellow Spaniard and recent Permanent Vacation standout Pional turns up on the sultry vocal-bent house of "Destiny," with its brief lapses into bell-laced ambience that almost resemble Pantha du Prince, while "Depak Ine" opens with brief night calls—birds, frogs, all manner of cries unseen—before slipping into an eclipse of pitch-shifted vocal blurs and fuzzy synth blurts (surely one of the songs Talabot had in mind when referring to the album's blacker hues).

From The Guardian:

Barcelona house producer John Talabot has a knack for capturing the very specific kind of bliss associated with dancing on Mediterranean beaches at the height of summer. A penchant for rising chords means that all his melodies make you feel like raising your arms and face to the sun. Talabot also has arguably the greatest sense of build-and-release in dance music since prime Booka Shade: ƒin is full of incredible tension-releasing moments, from the extended break in Destiny to the entrance of Missing You's bouncing bass. The generosity of Talabot's sound can also be ascribed to the amount of disparate ingredients he puts to use in service of his aesthetic – particularly the variety of human voices on display. There are wordless chants and bright, optimistic pop hooks; an echoing scream is plucked from a horror film and deposited in the middle of a carnival on Oro y Sangre, while on So Will Be Now, cut-up vocals coalesce gradually and gorgeously into recognisable language. All of humanity seems to be here – and it's busy celebrating being alive.

From Pretty Much Amazing:

The Catalan producer hails from a sound stable saddled with the early moniker ‘Balearic’, named for the collaborations conjured up between he and his Basque country brethren – check out his shimmering remix of Delorean’s “Sunshine,” and his mate from Madrid, Pional’s many vocals on Fin. His oozy, woozy take on ambient house evokes the sun sinking below Barcelona’s rooftops, so effortlessly captured in his EP Families - yet save for the song titles, somewhat surprisingly there’s no Spanish on the album.

But for all the deliciousness and delicacy, the record is interlaced with moments of darkness – something Talabot is determined to cling to. ‘Why am I always tagged as house, or tropical or happy music when I’m making dark tracks? ’, he said in this interview. ‘I don’t understand’.

Perhaps that’s why opening track “Depak Ine” begins in the way that it does, with a haunting jungle-like atmosphere where the skittering hoots and hollers of unseen wild beasts are offset by a pounding rhythmic drumbeat. This seven minute extravaganza fully immerses the listener into the record as layer upon layer is gently spliced together, until all the slivers make up a complex, melodic slice of sound. It’s an method that’s equally well wielded on album closer “So Will Be Now,” that cuts samples of Pional’s vocal with a groovy, bouncy bass and tight finger-clicks.

Better at layering than any fashion editor, is Talabot. In the same Red Bull interview, Talabot admits he likes to sample – ‘it’s something more creative’, and this is exemplified on ”Last Land.” There are sounds you recognize and yet can’t place – it’ll make you gurn in that desperation to identify it – rounded off by a sequence that recalls Arabian Nights, all twinkly bells and twisted synths.

Media Warp

After watching the same clip last night of Richard Engel spewing innaties on the tube that Stephen Walt references in this short piece:

I hardly ever watch network news, but I happened to stumble across this appalling report on NBC's "Rock Center" last night. In this clip, reporter Richard Engel blames this week's anti-American violence on "conspiracy theories" that Arab populations have been fed over the years by their rulers, including the idea that the United States and Israel are colluding to control the Middle East.

It's no secret there are conspiracy theories circulating in the Middle East (as there are here in the good old USA: Remember the "birthers?") I've heard them every time I've lectured in the region and done my best to debunk them. But by attributing Arab and Muslim anger solely to these ideas, Engel's report paints a picture of the United States (and by implication, Israel) as wholly blameless. In his telling, the U.S. has had nothing but good intentions for the past century, but the intended beneficiaries of our generosity don't get it solely because they've been misled by their leaders.

In short, Operation Cast Lead never happened, Lebanon wasn't invaded in 1982 or bombed relentlessly for a month in 2006, the United States has never turned a blind eye towards repeated human rights violations by every single one of its Middle Eastern allies, the occupation of Iraq in 2003 was just a little misunderstanding, and the Palestinians ought to be grateful to us for what they've been left after forty-plus years of occupation. To say this in no way absolves governments in the region for responsibility for many of their current difficulties, but Americans do themselves no favors by ignoring our own contribution to the region's ills.

In short, you want to get some idea of why most Americans have no idea why we are unpopular in the region, this example of sanitized "analysis" is illuminating, though not in the way that Engel and NBC intended.

The Narcotic Effects of Media

From David Bobbitt's  essay on teaching Mcluhan's Undesratnding Media:

The chance to snap out of our numbness, provided by processes of break boundaries or hybridization, is one of several possible antidotes to the narcotic effects of media. McLuhan wrote Understanding Media, in part, as a warning about the effects of media that we are ignoring. One of McLuhan’s antidotes is awareness; by being aware of the effects our media have on us we can be in a better position to counteract them. But that is only the first step. Awareness itself is not enough. McLuhan writes in chapter 31 on television:

It is the theme of this book that not even the most lucid understanding of the peculiar force of a medium can head off the ordinary "closure" of the senses that causes us to conform to the pattern of experience presented. . . . To resist TV, therefore one must acquire the antidote of related media like print. (329)

So one antidote to the numbing effect of a particular medium is to use another medium that has a counter-effect: “When the technology of a time is powerfully thrusting in one direction, wisdom may well call for a countervailing thrust” (70-71). So turn off the TV (or the computer or the cell phone) after some time and read a book or take a walk in the woods. After enough reading, have a conversation with another human being. McLuhan thus is arguing that a “cure” for the effects of a dominant medium or pattern of the time can be a countervailing force in the opposite direction of the dominating force.

Another antidote to technological narcosis is for people to assume the attitude of the artist. McLuhan writes:

The effects of technology do not occur at the level of opinion or concepts, but alter sense ratios or patterns of perception steadily and without any resistance. The serious artist is the only person able to encounter technology with impunity, just because he is an expert aware of the changes in sense perception. (18)

He further claims that the “artist picks up the message of cultural and technological challenge decades before its transforming impact occurs” and so “the artist is indispensible in the shaping and analysis and understanding of the life of forms, and structures, created by electric technology” (65). But by “artist” McLuhan does not mean just the person who formally engages in some artistic endeavor as a profession but the person of “integral awareness,” a point he makes clear when he says: “The artist is the man, in any field, scientific or humanistic, who grasps the implications of his actions and of new knowledge in his own time. He is the man of integral awareness” (65). Thus, the artistic perspective serves as an antidote to media narcosis because it allows us to see the big picture and the interrelationship among things, as well as to anticipate technological changes, and their social and cultural implications, before they happen.

More

Nils Frahm

Nils Frahm – Said And Done (live at Haldern Pop Festival 2010) from Erased Tapes on Vimeo.

Understanding

Can an american understand a Korean?  Really absurd question.

Can an amerivan understand a Dominican? why

Can an american understand a Brasilian? rhythmless

Can an american understand a Mexican? illigal

Can an american understand a Dog? best friend

Can an american understand a war criminal? presidential award

Best War Ever

John Stauber on You Tube

Cable blackout

During this last week our U.S. media has performed admirably monopolizing all air time with an idiotic focus on a ten year old crime featuring a rich midwest family and a young girl. A much more gruesome crime, involving the rape and murder of a 14 year old girl and her family was on the news briefly but even though we know who may have commited the crime, people working for us, it seems there is little interest among our own. Juan Cole has an excellent write-up on the reasons for this paradox:

That is frankly because the victim was not a blonde, blue-eyed American, but a black-eyed, brunette Iraqi. Both victims were pretty little girls. Both were killed by sick predators. But whereas endless speculation about the Ramsey case, to the exclusion of important real news stories, is thought incumbent in cabalnewsland, Abeer al-Janabi's death is not treated obsessively in the same way. In the hyperlinked story above, CNN even calls the little girl a "woman" at first mention, because the US military indictment did so. Only later in the article is it revealed that she was a little girl. The very pedophiliac nature of the crime is more or less overed up in the case of al-Janabi, even as looped video of Ramsay as too grown up is endlessly inflicted on us.

The message US cable news is sending by this privileging of some such stories over others of a similar nature is that some lives are worth more than others, and some people are "us" whereas other people are "Other" and therefore lesser. Indeed, it is precisely this subtle message sent by American media that authorized so much taking of innocent Iraqi life in the first place. British officers have repeatedly complained that too many of those serving in the US military in Iraq view Iraqis as subhuman (one used the term Untermeschen). Where did they get that idea?

Lisbon on Sunday

Vallejo Nocturno 2006 - Sunday democracy

On the day we arrive at 7:30am, we are told by our taxi driver that the party in power will be voted out. They have done nothing during the last 4 years. He believes that Spain is quickly encroaching on Portugal and controlling its economy.

Peter Watkins

Peter Watkins' latest statement on the media, from Media Statement:

Stated simply, the thesis offered by many popular culture scholars is that TV is a positive and democratic source of communication due to the shared language and experience that ‘ordinary' people can enjoy through such widely viewed ‘populist' programmes as soap-operas, game shows, police series, as well as via identification with the characters and issues involved.  

But the premise that popular culture is a truly “democratic” force in society is very suspect, even if only because its PROCESS and FORM are in themselves the complete antithesis of a truly democratic experience. 

The very process of receiving popular culture messages from the MAVM is experienced and known to most people only as coming from within, and entirely framed by, the present hierarchical relationship of the media towards the public - by which I refer not only to the kind of images that appear on the screen but also to the entire social and political interface between the media and its audience. Much of this hierarchical relationship is an invisible social process which constantly surrounds us. 

The invisible framing of this process - and what we subconsciously feel about it - is like a supplementary hidden code, deeply colouring the way we receive all messages from the MAVM. (Part of the invisible hierarchy is the strict editorial control placed by the media on the issues they are prepared to raise with the public, and the members of the community they are prepared to address.) 

Furthermore, the seemingly up-front messages of the media are coded by yet another hidden, background frame - the rigid, hierarchical structure of the Monoform. This special language-form has not only had devastating social consequences, but its compulsory presence throughout nearly all audiovisual broadcasting and cinema production has prevented the emergence of alternative forms of media experience, process, or relationship for the public. 

As I describe here, the dominant forms of media education - the teaching of popular culture, and vocational media training - have largely succeeded in convincing several generations of students that the questions of media process and form and their relationship to ideology are not problems, indeed they are not even issues. One can enter most media classrooms today and find that these concepts are not even vaguely understood. Teachers do not mention them (which raises the question - do they know them in the first place?), and/or they ensure that media students are not exposed to alternative ideas and critical concepts. 

Part of the contemporary tragedy is that the audiovisual popular culture is taught, especially at the tertiary level, as a model to be achieved. Many academics appear obsessed with what they call the “aesthetic pleasures” of the media, and are (or have been) particularly fascinated with TV soap-operas, which have represented a considerable proportion of academic study and writing since the 1970s. 

Media academia devotes a great deal of time to explaining that soap-operas - popular culture in general - are positive, sharing experiences for the audience. Little attention has been given to the down-sides of popular culture, and there has been almost no attempt to critically evaluate its impact on society. 

One of the many devastating aspects of the mass audiovisual popular culture has been its effect of prioritizing the trivial for many people. It focuses on creating massive public interest and attention on the lives of fictional people (in soap-operas), and certain public figures and celebrities.

Twilight Zone

from Design Observer blog

From Design Observer:

Most of us cannot help but be fascinated by the notion of a human redesign, by that magical makeover cocktail — part cosmetic artistry, part surgical intervention — that results in the perfect re-do. Reality TV shows like Extreme Makeover and The Swan and the quasi-outrageous Nip/Tuck target precisely this amped-up fantasy world, feeding that part of the cultural imagination that says you can’t be too rich or too thin. Buried in this notion lies an implicit assumption that — like a cash windfall brought on by a winning lottery ticket — such improvements can’t help but be mirrored by an equally improved lifestyle. While we understand, in the absolute, that beauty can’t promise happiness, the utopian dream of having it all persists nonetheless.

Beauty is, of course, big business in the developed world, and physical improvements — by way of cosmetic surgery, for example — are expensive yet eminently achievable. Breasts can be lifted, eyebrows lowered, teeth whitened, hair darkened, noses straightened, tummies tucked, skin peeled, plucked, bleached, waxed, polished, shaved or bronzed.

For the truly fearless, of course, there’s always Botox.

But such interventions are negligible when weighed against a complete facial transplant — something which, up until recently, resided squarely in the Twilight Zone. While CNN reported on its technical feasability (and moral ambiguity) more than three years ago, it wasn't until recent reports of a controversial face transplant in France that serious questions have emerged: questions of psychological adjustment, emotional forbearance, medical ethics and more. It's spooky and it's scary, yet many critics speculate that, if successful, hard-core beauty seekers will want access to such procedures, in spite of the potential dangers — which include, among other things, tissue rejection and an elevated cancer risk.