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

Interview with Jimmy Lavalle from Feed Me With Your Kiss

From with Jimmy Lavalle re his collaboration with Mark Kozelek, Perils From The Sea:

m: the very first time you heard music by MARK KOZELEK was when & what?
J: Was probably around ’94/’95. Definitely ”Ocean Beach.” I picked up the double 10 inch from my local record store.

m: did you ever dream you might someday record with him?
J: To a certain extent. But not that glamorized. I always thought it would be cool to work with him in some way.

m: the very first time you met MARK was when & how?
J: We met briefly back in ’97, I’d say. He showed up at a show of my old band (Tristeza) to see another band on the bill. I noticed him there and introduced myself. Gave him a bunch of my records I had done by then. Then I was re-introduced to him in 2008 while playing/touring in another band (Magnetic Morning). Josh, the bass player, worked with Mark touring. So he re-introduced us.

m: how did the pre-pro stages of PERILS FROM THE SEA unfold?
J: I got a text from Mark back in Sept of 2011 asking if I’d be interested in writing a song for him to sing on. From there it turned into this. I would write and record the music, then send him the tracks and then he’d track his vocals up there (SF)…..That was how the whole record was made. In the end, I went up to SF to mix the record together.

m: did the album turn out as you expected it to?
J: Not at all! I was surprised every time I heard his vocal. It was never what I was hearing vocally before sending the music. But it was always a nice surprise. I’m really happy with how the record turned out..

m: who called most of the shots? (…..and honesty counts here, haha.)
J: There wasn’t really any shot calling. The music was me, the vocals were him. We’d make some suggestions on each other’s parts, but in the end, we both did what we wanted.

m: in 10 words or less, describe the KOZELEK/LAVALLE working dynamic, please. ok, maybe 20 words…….
J: Quick. Once I got the song idea, I’d lay it out quickly, then he’d lay his vox out just as quick.

m: any plans to tour? if so, with whom would you ideally hit the road?
J: None at all.

m: any plans for a follow-up?
J: None at all.

m: “ceiling gazing” is my new favorite song. (mostly ‘cuz of the SUICIDE-like keyboards that conjure up “ghost rider” & “rocket usa” partly because of the signature MARK KOZELEK lyrics that reside somewhere between ennui & lunacy.) um, what’s yours? new favorite song, that is. (and it doesn’t have to be from PERIL, ok?)
J: You caught the Suicide reference. Well done. I was listening to them a lot through writing this record. Mark had never heard of them. I sent him “Cheree” (always a nice introduction) and he was into it. I don’t really have favorite songs that I play over and over again. From this record, I’m really into “Baby in Death.” I like the drumming I did on it, I like the drum machines I used, I like the chord progressions and I like Mark’s vox. I think it came out really well. I love the anticipation of the arrangement.

m: how come you don’t sing on the album? or am i missing something……
J: I did not sing. I did the music, he did the vox. Simple as that. Meaning, he played NO guitar on the record. “Caroline” and “Perils” are not him on guitar.

m: MARK’s always been a little desolate, at least on vinyl…….do you share in his sense of alienation & despair?  and in his take on manny pacquiao & ricky hatton? (ed. note: trust me folks, this rather random boxing reference is in there….methinks MARK’s a fan of the “sweet science.”)
J: Not at all. I’m really happy in my life.

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But the most unique of all is Perils From The Sea, Kozelek’s collaboration with Jimmy LaValle of the Album Leaf. It’s a set of long, somber songs that melds LaValle’s spacious, orchestral electronic instrumentation with Kozelek’s forthright and world-weary vocals. They’re transfixing, often beautiful, sometimes unsettling.

The collaboration grew out of mutual admiration. Kozelek had seen LaValle play a few times, both in his old band Tristeza and the Album Leaf, and was impressed; and he is a fan, especially, of Torey’s Distraction, last year’s soundtrack album from the Album Leaf, although he confesses he doesn’t listen to much electronic music.

“I had been looking to co-write with someone, and I wanted someone outside of the typical songwriter context,” says Kozelek. “I didn’t want drums or bass or anything that I’ve already done a million times. Jimmy was exactly what I was looking for. I didn’t want to work with a band; I wanted to work with one person who could do many things. Jimmy was the guy, a very talented guy.”

For his part, LaValle has been a fan of Kozelek’s work going back to the mid-’90s. “I really connected to Red House Painters in ’96 when I was forming Tristeza,” he says. “Christopher (Sprague, of Tristeza) and I would stay up all night listening to Songs For A Blue Guitar and Nick Drake records. It really shaped the way I approached playing guitar. Lyrically, I was going through a break-up, too, so I really connected to a lot of songs from that record. I’ve always liked and admired the honesty of his lyrics and voice. Musically, there’s always a beautiful melody happening.”

Similar to the way Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Dntel’s Jimmy Tamborello collaborated on the Postal Service album, Kozelek and LaValle did not work directly together; instead they emailed tracks back and forth. LaValle composed the music in Los Angeles and sent it to Kozelek, who would write lyrics and record vocals in San Francisco, sometimes asking LaValle to extend a track to make room for more verses to complete the story that Kozelek wanted to tell. They didn’t talk in advance to determine the sound of the album, but both were eager to experiment.

“I specifically remember Mark mentioning he wanted to be surprised,” says LaValle. “And I wanted to approach the music differently and uncomfortably, something out of my norm. With the Album Leaf, I just write whatever happens; if there’s room for vocals or I hear them, I add them. With this record, there needed to be space for vocals. So, I kept things simple between just a few synths. I used the same three synths as the foundation of the whole record. With the acoustic songs, I still kept the guitar playing simple.”

- See more at: http://www.magnetmagazine.com/2013/06/03/mark-kozelek-jimmy-lavalle-two-men-and-the-sea/#sthash.CGnsVyyd.dpuf

But the most unique of all is Perils From The Sea, Kozelek’s collaboration with Jimmy LaValle of the Album Leaf. It’s a set of long, somber songs that melds LaValle’s spacious, orchestral electronic instrumentation with Kozelek’s forthright and world-weary vocals. They’re transfixing, often beautiful, sometimes unsettling.

The collaboration grew out of mutual admiration. Kozelek had seen LaValle play a few times, both in his old band Tristeza and the Album Leaf, and was impressed; and he is a fan, especially, of Torey’s Distraction, last year’s soundtrack album from the Album Leaf, although he confesses he doesn’t listen to much electronic music.

“I had been looking to co-write with someone, and I wanted someone outside of the typical songwriter context,” says Kozelek. “I didn’t want drums or bass or anything that I’ve already done a million times. Jimmy was exactly what I was looking for. I didn’t want to work with a band; I wanted to work with one person who could do many things. Jimmy was the guy, a very talented guy.”

For his part, LaValle has been a fan of Kozelek’s work going back to the mid-’90s. “I really connected to Red House Painters in ’96 when I was forming Tristeza,” he says. “Christopher (Sprague, of Tristeza) and I would stay up all night listening to Songs For A Blue Guitar and Nick Drake records. It really shaped the way I approached playing guitar. Lyrically, I was going through a break-up, too, so I really connected to a lot of songs from that record. I’ve always liked and admired the honesty of his lyrics and voice. Musically, there’s always a beautiful melody happening.”

Similar to the way Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Dntel’s Jimmy Tamborello collaborated on the Postal Service album, Kozelek and LaValle did not work directly together; instead they emailed tracks back and forth. LaValle composed the music in Los Angeles and sent it to Kozelek, who would write lyrics and record vocals in San Francisco, sometimes asking LaValle to extend a track to make room for more verses to complete the story that Kozelek wanted to tell. They didn’t talk in advance to determine the sound of the album, but both were eager to experiment.

“I specifically remember Mark mentioning he wanted to be surprised,” says LaValle. “And I wanted to approach the music differently and uncomfortably, something out of my norm. With the Album Leaf, I just write whatever happens; if there’s room for vocals or I hear them, I add them. With this record, there needed to be space for vocals. So, I kept things simple between just a few synths. I used the same three synths as the foundation of the whole record. With the acoustic songs, I still kept the guitar playing simple.”

- See more at: http://www.magnetmagazine.com/2013/06/03/mark-kozelek-jimmy-lavalle-two-men-and-the-sea/#sthash.CGnsVyyd.dpuf

But the most unique of all is Perils From The Sea, Kozelek’s collaboration with Jimmy LaValle of the Album Leaf. It’s a set of long, somber songs that melds LaValle’s spacious, orchestral electronic instrumentation with Kozelek’s forthright and world-weary vocals. They’re transfixing, often beautiful, sometimes unsettling.

The collaboration grew out of mutual admiration. Kozelek had seen LaValle play a few times, both in his old band Tristeza and the Album Leaf, and was impressed; and he is a fan, especially, of Torey’s Distraction, last year’s soundtrack album from the Album Leaf, although he confesses he doesn’t listen to much electronic music.

“I had been looking to co-write with someone, and I wanted someone outside of the typical songwriter context,” says Kozelek. “I didn’t want drums or bass or anything that I’ve already done a million times. Jimmy was exactly what I was looking for. I didn’t want to work with a band; I wanted to work with one person who could do many things. Jimmy was the guy, a very talented guy.”

For his part, LaValle has been a fan of Kozelek’s work going back to the mid-’90s. “I really connected to Red House Painters in ’96 when I was forming Tristeza,” he says. “Christopher (Sprague, of Tristeza) and I would stay up all night listening to Songs For A Blue Guitar and Nick Drake records. It really shaped the way I approached playing guitar. Lyrically, I was going through a break-up, too, so I really connected to a lot of songs from that record. I’ve always liked and admired the honesty of his lyrics and voice. Musically, there’s always a beautiful melody happening.”

Similar to the way Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Dntel’s Jimmy Tamborello collaborated on the Postal Service album, Kozelek and LaValle did not work directly together; instead they emailed tracks back and forth. LaValle composed the music in Los Angeles and sent it to Kozelek, who would write lyrics and record vocals in San Francisco, sometimes asking LaValle to extend a track to make room for more verses to complete the story that Kozelek wanted to tell. They didn’t talk in advance to determine the sound of the album, but both were eager to experiment.

“I specifically remember Mark mentioning he wanted to be surprised,” says LaValle. “And I wanted to approach the music differently and uncomfortably, something out of my norm. With the Album Leaf, I just write whatever happens; if there’s room for vocals or I hear them, I add them. With this record, there needed to be space for vocals. So, I kept things simple between just a few synths. I used the same three synths as the foundation of the whole record. With the acoustic songs, I still kept the guitar playing simple.”

- See more at: http://www.magnetmagazine.com/2013/06/03/mark-kozelek-jimmy-lavalle-two-men-and-the-sea/#sthash.CGnsVyyd.dpuf

Samuel Mockbee and Rural Studio

Hera & Hamid Drake-Seven Lines

From Free Jazz Alchemist on Hera and Hamid Drake concert:

This was for me, and possibly many others, the most awaited evening of this year's festival. Hera is possible one of the strongest units on the scene and it still evolving band, constantly in search of new and exciting. I invite you to check on the blog the review of their 2nd cd "Where My Complete Beloved Is" as well as the interview with the band's leader Waclaw Zimpel. The quartet met with Hamid Drake in Lublin a year and a half ago, the double bill evening ended in a the wonderfully groovy jam session and they immediately hit it off and the idea to work together in the future was born on the spot. The Krakow concert is the day that this idea came to reality and the band presented a new series of compositions that show the continuous development of the musical vision. Trance, hypnotic, the music would shine with the rhythmi propulsation provided by the double drums sets behind, with the polyphonic melodies presented by the double front line, with the stead bass groove, with sharp guitar sound and the drones of hurdy gurdy.

There was something absolutely magical about the performance, complete and total experience of sound, rhythm, melody. Omnipresent, the music would take you in wholly, showing you the paradise world of universal love. I honestly lack word to describe the passionate feeling that the music gave me. Hats off especially to Maciej Cierlinski who just added an entire new universe to the band's music (also the craziest solo of the night, if Jimi Hendrix have played hurdy gurdy, that's how it would sound). It was also the first time I've heard them with Raphael Roginski and his unique sound would enhance so fabulously the constant melodious flow.

To have listened to this band was like to jump into a river, and just keep floating, keep admiring the constance of change around you, and it felt so safe and natural to meet all this with an openess of mind and heart. In the words of Joe McPhee: "fucking amazing".

Henry W. Sullivan's Lacan & the Beatles

Interview with Samuel Mockbee

From Bomb Magazine (Spring 2001):

JH Would you say you have a particular signature style as an architect?

SM Well, to some degree I guess I’ve been pigeonholed as a vernacular architect or a regionalist. I consider myself a modernist and I believe that as an architect I am capable of designing anywhere in the visible universe. But the forms and the shapes I design are derived from looking at outbuildings and connective buildings in the rural South; I’m informed and influenced by that and I’ve reinterpreted it. The shacks and barns, tornado shelters, silos, chicken coops, these big, long warehouses. Those are strong images in my memory. Burned-out houses where all that’s left is the chimney. I’m drawn to anything that has a quirkiness to it, a mystery to it. And I’m real conscious of the weather conditions, heat and shade. It’s the shade down here that we want. You can have a lot of glass on the north and east, but you want very little on the south and west. And if you do use it that way then you have to have big overhangs. I draw the best from the old and incorporate it into materials that reinterpret contemporary aesthetics.

JH You’ve talked about how you like to design honestly, with integrity. What does that mean?

SM I look for a silhouette when I’m doing a building. A certain silhouette that could be interpreted as a composition. Beyond that, of paramount concern is the push and the pull of light and shadow. Shadow and light define form. I’m not overly impressed with people who do floor plans. Anybody can do a floor plan. Frank Lloyd Wright used to say that the floor plan was the generator of the whole scheme. I understand what he means, but I think it’s one of three generators of a piece of architecture. The other two being the section and the elevation. When I’m picturing space, I’m trying to form both an interior and an exterior space. So I think in sections first, then I worry about the floor plan.

JH You think about it in terms of moving from one space to another?

SM I’m choreographing how you’re going through those spaces, how you’re getting from the kitchen to the bedroom. You have to understand the program before you start. You can’t preconceive before you understand the functional part.

JH I like an architect who can reinvent something every single time.

SM Well, we try to. We like to think we can, but we’re all stuck with an individual style, and that’s not bad. Style is part of an architect’s vision. It’s part of the emotion that generates the initial sketch. You can’t preconceive emotion; you sit there and plug into the muse.

JH Can you give me an example of a building that you’ve done or that you’ve worked on with your students—what emotion did you start with?

SM Well, I don’t get to do that with the students because they’re the ones that have to have the emotion. You can put it into position, but then they have to make the moves, and learn how to plug in to get that feel. Once you’re into it, it’s just like a musician, or a writer, or a painter; when you’re really into it, you’re lost, you get a phone call, you can’t hardly carry on a conversation.

JH Okay, so what was the emotion for that house overlooking the Tennessee River, the Patterson House?

SM The site is a bluff that drops off 200 feet. So the emotion came from thinking how you could take advantage of stepping down the different levels and then sketching those sections, realizing that the kitchen, the formal living room and the bedrooms could be experienced on different levels.

JH You were talking earlier about the element of surprise . . .

SM You don’t want to give up your secrets too soon. It’s like the great state of Mississippi, it doesn’t give up its ethereal secrets easily, and I shouldn’t either, because the half-life is longer that way. That’s why abstraction is so strong. You see a Norman Rockwell, goddamn, you get the sentiment 30 seconds into that painting. The only thing you can admire after that is the technical ability. There’s no half-life. But you go to a Pollock painting, and the half-life continues. So you want to keep your secrets hidden, things like how you let light in.

We drive through the half-abandoned town of Akron, low-slung, fog-shrouded. Sambo points out a wedge-shaped shell of an old market.

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Imre Makovekz

From Trieste Contemporanea:

The movement of the Hungarian organic architecture expresses itself through the works of Imre Makovecz, which are based on the theories of Frank Lloyd Wright, Bruce Goff, Herb Green, AlvarAlto and above all on the anthroposophic and eurithmic ideas of Rudolf Steiner. An architecture that rises from internationalist suppositions and sinks its roots in Hungarian traditional culture. Symbols of culture (the tulip which is present in Turkish tradition), animal symbols (the falcon), religious symbols (the moon and the sun), human symbols (windows used as eyes), are utilized and reinterpeted in a new and innovative key. In Hungarian organic architecture, apart from the internationalist root, there is a historical component where the contributions of architects like Kós Károly and Odon Lechner are determinative. The works of Makovecz constitute an element of conjunction and superimposition between modernity and tradition. The shape of his buildings don' t limitate the classical principles of Euclidean geometry, but through a reinterpretation draw from the rich symbolic baggage of Hungarian tradition, pursuing a union between past and present. The utilization of a material particularly familiar in the national panorama such as wood, gives the buildings a traditional apsect, in a modern social context which is in rapid transformation. The call of nature is a constant element in the realizations of this architect: openings surrounded by natural design (shapes of branches and trees), designs of leaves, symbols of life that lead to the most svage aspect of architecture.

Working around the signs and symbols of the ornamental motifs of popular tradition, Makovecz discovers the particular characteristics of simmetry that the spiral generates on the plane and in space, demarcating complementary surfaces, equal and opposing, with asymmetric references that call to movement.

He underlines the relationship that ties signs and concepts, even those forgotten to man's life. A metaphor of life and death in which architecture becomes an instrument of communication and goes beyond traditional stylistic canons.

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Actors

Vallejo Nocturno 2013- ad in Belgium

Rupture

Vallejo Nocturno 2013 - In transit

Tweet Fiction

From Full Stop:

In steps Jennifer Egan. A little more than one year Patchett’s senior, Egan is, at the time of this writing, the last winner of the Pulitzer in fiction. The final two chapters of her prize-winning story cycle, A Visit From the Goon Squad, leave little doubt that Egan shares an end-times view of the fate of literature. But instead of shouting from the sidelines, Egan allows herself to challenge these concerns in her work.

Indeed, earlier this year in the New Yorker’s science-fiction issue, Egan published “Black Box,” a story written in sentences of 140 characters or less. Then, over the course of nearly a week, @NYerFiction proceeded to tweet that story, a dystopic second-person thriller about an android spy posing as a call girl. In turning toward science-fiction and sci-fi forms, Egan is exploring new possibilities for literature in an age when technology and new media are competing for the book-reader’s attention. But even more, Egan’s recent sci-fi excursions expose her not as a writer resigned to the waning importance of literature, but as a literary “luddite” willing to take things to the next level, to begin a sabotage.

*          *          *          *

In terms of plot, “Black Box” is a relatively traditional sci-fi story of human individuality in revolt against a mechanized society. Egan stated in the New Yorker podcast that the unnamed protagonist is in fact Lulu from the outlandish last chapter of Goon Squad, “Pure Language,” and that the events here take place ten years after the end of the novel, in the 2030s. In “Pure Language,” Lulu is the poster-girl of an imagined new generation, a whiz with technology and marketing, steeped in the lingo, and yet with an almost 1950s naïveté: she has no tattoos, she doesn’t use drugs, she doesn’t swear, and her only passion is money (uncommon traits for somebody working for a punk rocker.)

But in “Black Box,” Lulu is radically transformed. We find her working for the government, on the biggest (and only) mission of her life, posing as a call girl so that she can infiltrate an inner-circle of foreign enemies of states. Her wholesomeness has become devout patriotism, and her body has been consumed by the technologies she once mastered: the state has placed cameras behind her eyes, a discreet microphone in her ear, and a record of field instructions in a microchip beneath her hairline. Presumably, the latter is the origin of the tweet-like dispatches that make up the story.

It’s true that writers less-decorated than Egan have been experimenting with Twitter lit since the site launched a few years back, but in “Black Box,” Egan uses the limited and piecemeal nature of the Tweet not just as constraints, but as tonal guidelines for the narrative voice. Whether the dispatches are from Lulu in the field back to headquarters or vice versa remains delightfully unclear. Moreover the second-person imperative tone of the story lends each sentence an aphoristic quality, such that they might be read not as dispatches at all, but as an internalized set of rules about how to be a spy, a woman, and a patriot.

Indeed, a complicated system of authority emerges over the course of “Black Box” as we learn the full extent of Lulu’s devotion to her mission. Just as her body is grafted with machines of espionage, it also becomes a place for grafting gendered expectations: she must wear gold heels, must have tanned feet, must be innocuous, must register as “young,” and must wear a sundress “widely viewed as attractive.” Later, while her “Designated Mate” violates her, Lulu must practice a dissociation technique so as not to appear uncomfortable and break the illusion of being a prostitute. At inopportune times, Lulu’s mind turns to her husband back home, and she must remind herself that he is a fierce patriot and proud of her for undertaking this work.

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Perpetual War

On  Kill Everything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam by Nick Turse a new book regarding the war in Vietnam:

The total deaths in the US military? 58,000. A conservative estimate of total Vietnamese war dead, however, is 3.8 million. Total casualties likely far exceeded ten million. The landscape was destroyed, previous forms of social bonds were often literally raped out of existence. Rape, often of children, often in the most sadistic forms possible, was an institutional practice of war. Those US soldiers who followed orders seemed to undergo a psychotic break with any relationality to any moral code they had held prior. The top brass all escaped exculpation for their crimes.  Many of those actively involved in the planning and execution of war crimes went on to acquire high office, among them former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former Senator Bob Kerrey.

Indeed, while the officer class was caught in the fog of war, for Vietnamese people it was less a fog and more a state of constant physical assault.

Such a state was deliberate. Turse points out that top commanders were evaluated on the amount of Vietcong they killed. But the definition of Vietcong was actively muddled. It quickly grew to encompass Vietnamese people generally. Commanders playing the numbers game — and all of them played the numbers game — applied enormous amount of pressure on their subordinates to produce the highest kill counts possible.

One revelatory moment: “Entire units were sometimes pitted against each other in body-count competitions with prizes at stake”.

The consequences of this predation for the Vietnamese countryside (where the guerilla resistance was for the most part waged) were cataclysmic. While the sociopolitical fabric of the United States was ripping apart at the seams in the ferment of the 60s and 70s, the generals sought and failed to web cohesion and obedience out of a cult of death.

Many, fleeing from the counterinsurgency, went to the cities where it was less likely that they would meet a fiery end. As the countryside was depopulated, the slums grew. Such a rapid urbanization was a disaster. In Saigon, population density swelled to the highest of any city in the world. Describing what is now Ho Chi Minh City, Turse tells us that:

“By 1966 Saigon’s infant mortality rate had reached a staggering 36.2 percent, higher than anywhere else in the country. In the following years, the situation only worsened. Thanks to a nearly thousandfold increase in motorized traffic, the capital became ever more congested, while piles of rotting garbage lay uncollected beneath a pall of smog. Not surprisingly, the urban areas saw a spike in the incidence of endemic diseases, such as cholera, dysentary, tuberculosis, typhoid, smallpox, and even bubonic plague.”

Life under occupation: bleak. The consequence of US government policy: base destruction. The press? Silent.

In particular, Turse details how our central organs allowed the Pentagon to get away with the fiction that the My Lai massacre — widely disseminated through an article written by Seymour Hersh — was anomalous, the result of a “few bad apples”. Despite no evidence that this was the case, the corporate media accepted the Nixon administration’s protestations and actively quashed or rewrote stories that revealed the systemic nature of atrocities in the war in Vietnam. As the war ended, Vietnam disappeared from the media’s imagination, only remembered in the official consciousness as an impetus against conflict abroad.

Five years after the war ended in 1975, the United States was actively complicit in the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero. Seven years later, Marine boots stepped foot in Beirut. Eight years later, the United States was overthrowing the socialist government of Maurice Bishop in Grenada. Twenty-six and twenty-eight years later, the United States began other occupations: two countries rather than one. The impetus, apparently, did not hold for long.

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