5 posts tagged “obsession session”

(Everytime I open my mouth, it's just going to hurt my significant other. So starting from this post onwards I'll say nothing more than a few lines to describe the artist or the song)

Haunting French pop tune from the 60's.

This is the band that has been in my constant winamp rotation for the last two month or so. I have to admit that at first I wasn't that much of a Mew fan when they released their second album Frengers somewhere in 2003 I suppose. Five month (I reckon) after the release of their third album And the Glass Handed Kites, I chanced upon a bulk of their mp3 from all the three album and since then, I never stopped listening to them. I guess my recollection of two month or so of listening endlessly day and night to Mew has begun since late last year. What I liked about Mew so much is that every listen to their song baffles me. You can never be certain the kind of music that they play; the only thing for certain that you can be certain of is that their music is so good, not wanting to listen to it is like refusing sex when you're very horny. It is however not an indication that I have passion for Mew, so much so that I want to make love to them. Okay, now I'm getting somewhere - perverted writing.

I remember that the last time I wrote something about Danish and People Press Play and Michael Learns to Rock. I guess I do feel kind of guilty of not posting on Mew in the first place when I wanted to talk about Danes and everything Danish (barring the croissant thing). It is however an opportunity for me to make an interesting observation that after all the while, I still couldn't shake off that Danish-croissant relationship. It still occurs to me that the first thing that comes into my mind, whenever I mention Danish or the word Danish comes into my mind, I will think of croissant. Automatically, the first thing that pops into my head; food.

I will be gone for a week (almost) for the Trans Titiwangsa trip. The journey to Ulu Kinta on bus will begin at 11:30 p.m. tonight. Wondering if after one week being completely cut off from civilization I would still have this obsession for listening to Mew. Is not like it is that much of a problem - but my girlfriend has started listening to Radiohead. Maybe I will want to persuade her into listening to Mew as well.

When was the last time I watched a good, sensible movie I thought, and I remembered last Saturday where I watched two movies back to back because I was too lazy to do everything else that I have been procrastinating for the whole month. One of the two movies that I watched was Layer Cake which featured Mr. James 'British' Bond Daniel Craig and a host of other unfamiliar faces. Oh, and there was Sir Michael Gambon as well. It was supposed to be a slick, con man world, gun-fighting in the street, fast cars bracket kind of movie but it wasn't as slick as I would have imagined it would be. It was like watching 2Fast 2Furious while having Brahms playing in the background. Or watching wrestling with Michael Bolton as the soundtrack. The other movie that I watched was 28 Weeks Later, which I suspect many of you will realize that it sounds like a continuation to Danny Boyle's delightfully amazing 28 Days Later, in which it is. Although Danny Boyle is no longer the director but he was the co-executive producer (or something I don't remember) which is not surprising that some part of the movie were soundtracked using the same music previously used in 28 Days Later. But no, it doesn't have the 'quite frankly' brilliant Cillian Murphy and Godspeed's epic piece East Hastings in the background, so I consider this movie rotten. Then it came to the part where I have to spend my entire Sunday working on a script that will be staged in three week's time (or was it two I don't know, my mathematical logic really is that bad) and it was suffice to say: I am extremely proud of it. But the thing that I would like to highlight here today is about the script-writing process itself. When I first got the story in my head or somewhere, it was brilliant; it seems brilliant, it sounds plausible, and I thought it was going to be a cakewalk. As it turns out, writing it down on paper was a terribly difficult thing to do and I have to admit that I don't really enjoy it. Because you have to be really anal about every single passing second in the story. So it is this kind of detailing that I hated very much and I was tempted to skip it but I can't because by then my script would have been utterly rubbish. I have managed 14 pages and that should go along fine within the 35 minutes to 40 minutes mark. If I had skipped the details part I'd probably end up with a 1 page script that has a list of characters and a summary of the whole story - even Samuel Beckett didn't dare to do that kind of thing.
Certainly when you write a script, first you have to consider the audience; you don't expect the audience to pay a sum of money for the admission ticket to end up watching a 5 minute long play worthy of a 1 page script, even if that sum of money is actually only RM1. Secondly, you have to consider the audience's level of intelligence and IQ competence; if you have a largely brainless audience like one I have in my university, it would have been utterly easy. In the script, you don't need a plot, you don't need a storyline, you don't need fancy costumes, you certainly don't need to worry about the message of the story because none of them will digest it. The audience here in my university are so devoid of any intelligence you have to chop off one of their leg just to ask them to go to the toilet if they feel like taking a pee. The most clear evidence that you can find (and quite easily) is that a lot of them read Kosmo! and Harian Metro as their daily reading, and they are very fond of Mastika and URTV. Thirdly, you have to consider the audience because as the situation is in my university, although we pride on being the first university in Malaysia to use English as the medium of communication in classroom, you can't employ 'classy' English in the dialogue. Everytime you want to write a word you have to flip through the Thessaurus over and over again just to find that essentially easy-to-be-understood English word just so to make sure that none of the member of the audience got mired in the drift. Yesterday I read this one article in the Pancaindera pull-out in the Mingguan Malaysia and the writer was writing about a new drama serials (or something I don't care) that focus on a 'mak nyah' and how this person is trying to adjust himself so that he can lead a stable life. When asked the actor why did he chose to take on the role, the actor said because of the message, and the writer wrote (something in the line with): "Again with the message thing. Can we drop it." I read it and I was shocked to find out that this writer, as a representation of all Malaysians, couldn't care less about the message, the heavy stuff, the brainy stuff. If really Malaysians ought to be that shallow, I'd rather live in the jungle of Papua New Guinea with the headhunters. So, the audience that I have here in my university are a lot worse I have to say and thus render my and the production's crew and actors efforts worthless, useless, and pointless and therefore: please don't come to our show on the August 13th. If I'm just going to stage a play to a hall filled with no-brainers, I'd better be staging a strip show. That way we don't need a script and waste precious hours doing practice every night, because everything that I have been doing all of this while in Malaysia are just pure rubbish. Nobody will appreciate it - I am truly disappointed and ashamed to be Malaysian.

This is one Dewa 19 track that I'm currently addicted to. Really addictive.

The second feature on my Obsession Session issue is none other than the Lady Day herself, Billie Holiday. Born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915, she has been in my constant playlist rotation for months now. Throughout her 24 years career as a jazz singer, aparently she is more well known for her tumultuous personal life.

The song that I have posted along reportedly had removed the audience of a local club to tears when she performed it during her early years as a singer; all penniless and facing eviction. As far as I'm concerned, the only other song that I know that has reduced audience to tears (and even drove some of them to perfrom suicide) is the song called Gloomy Sunday. The song was composed by a Hungarian self-taught pianist and composer Rezso Seress in 1933 and was marketed in the US in 1936 as "the Hungarian suicide song". Many had dismissed the claim that the song Gloomy Sunday hypnotizes distraught lovers to head straight out of the nearest open window as purely fictional. The crushing hopelessness and bitter despair of the original lyrics by Seress were then translated into English by Sam M. Lewis and Desmond Carter. SInce then many artists had covered this song based on the two translation made by Lewis and Carter. The most famous cover done on Carter's translation are by Paul Robeson (released 1935), which coupled by Carter's relentlessly downbeat lyrics and a dirgelike arrangement, the song has been regarded to be the gloomiest version of all the English-language version.
The Lewis translation on the other hand were first done by Hal Kemp and his orchestra in 1936 but his lyrics were somewhat more mainstream. Then it was followed by Artie Shaw and Billie Holiday. After Billie Holiday did her version of Gloomy Sunday in 1941, the popularity of the song increased greatly. If I'm not mistaken Pa'an used to have a Sarah McLachlan rendition of the song and I have listened to it but I wasn't at all impressed. Maybe if I listened to the original Rezso Seress version then it would have changed my life greatly.
So, the next time you're looking for the perfect suicide-time soundtrack, give Billie Holiday a spin. I guarantee you - if you're feeling down and need something to cope with your sadness, there's nothing like Billie Holiday can do to you (by persuading you to jump out of the nearest window).

Yeah. I thought why don't I categorize my entries into categories. It's easier that way; I'll have one category for new music by new artists or bands, another category for music by artists or bands that neither have I heard of before, and then this - music by artists or bands that I have been listening for quite some time but only now I get/want to share it in this blog. And the artist who have the honor of being the first feature in my Obsession Session is David Gray

Last two weeks I found myself listening back to old David Gray songs, especially the one from A New Day at Midnight. Released in 2002, it came three years after the success of Gray's fourth album White Ladder which was released on his own record label (after being dropped by two record label previously for sluggish album sale reportedly). Although A New Day at Midnight does not receive the same high rating from critics as with White Ladder, I am happy enough to say that it is currently my staple Winamp diet. Here is track #10 from the album, Be Mine. Mogwai, the band from Scotland, was the standard that has been (over)used by many music journalist who seem to possess very shallow knowledge on the post rock/space rock label. The criteria are very simple: if it is instrumental, has no or very little vocal part, involves the use of many different types of guitar effects (even the inventive way of playing the guitar also count), and that the end product does not sound either rock or pop, there is a very huge chance for any band that falls into any/all of those criteria to be labeled Mogwai-ish. Take Damn Dirty Apes for example, the local band from Penang, and Telephony Delivery, which to me, is actually Progressive Math Metal. Or something like it.

Radiohead also falls into the post rock territory (Kid A and Kid B a.k.a Amnesiac perhaps) but luckily they too didn't get the Mogwai labeling treatment. Flying Saucer Attack is post rock and they do at times remind me of Mogwai. Stereolab is also considered post rock but they are a difficult subject. The same with The Flaming Lips, and Captain Befheart. (Oh but Captain Beefheart is way too out there to be post rock I say) Pink Floyd plays a very crucial role in the development of early post rock. Why didn't they use Pink Floyd instead? "Ooh, this Bark Psychosis band sounds Pink Floyd-ish!" Sonic Youth also is a very influential name in post rock. But oh yeah, they can't make any connection between Sonic Youth and Talk Talk. Or Can. But Can is more like avant-garde rather than post rock. The same goes with Frank Zappa. Mercury Rev is post rock right? Spiritualized is post rock. Spacemen3 is post rock. 65daysofstatic is post rock. Harvey Milk can be post rock but they are dangerously singular, awkward, and out of place. Sigur Ros is post rock. So does Youthmovie Soundtrack Strategies, Tortoise, Pram, Seefeel, My Bloody Valentine, From Monument to Masses, The Appleseed Cast, Van Der Graaf Generator, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky, Mono, and Cul de Sac. Heck, even Kreidler can be post rock.

Damn, what am I on about here?

Here's Mogwai's Black Spider, taken from the Zidane movie soundtrack. Enjoy post rock.