SOUNDTRACK: EVANGELISTA-Hello, Voyager [CST050] (2008).
This is Carla Bozulich’s first “band” on Constellation. I didn’t really care for her solo album because it sounded way too all over the map. She has brought in some great musician to rein her in somewhat and it really helps. This album is still loose and wild and uncomfortable and at times hard to listen to and also really cathartic. It feels like there is direction to the madness.
The first song is probably the least appealing. It’s almost a free form poetry slam, but there’s enough incidental music to make it feel like there should be more.–the music doesn’t necessarily follow what’s going on, as if the musicians were told to do what they wanted but weren’t listening to her.
That improv feeling exists throughout the album, but the other songs feel like they have a structure and a melody which really really help. Like “Smooth Jazz” in which the drums keep a loud steady beat which regulates the tempo and makes her screams all the more intense. Or “Lucky Lucky Luck” in which a beautiful vocal melody and backing vocal combine with pulsing bass to make a platform for the noisy guitars. “For The L’il Dudes ” is a creepy string quintet. But “The Blue Room” is a full complex song with a captivating melody and strings that really work well.
“Truth Is Dark Like Outer Space” is a heavy rock song with great distortion, while “the Frozen Dress” brings back the creepy and spooky sounds. “Paper Kitten Claw” reunites those minimal sounds with a mellow melody. It feature the great lyric (and theme) “Every time you see the word never, cross it out.” The disc ends with “Hello, Voyager!” Crazy noises open this 12 minute ramble. Carla sounds like a crazy preacher and by the end it’s just a free form chaotic mind fuck. But in a good way.
It’s not always fun to see where Carla’s mind will take you but in this case the crazy trip is disturbingly fun. Not for the faint of heart.
[READ: May 18, 2014] Munkeeman
This comic came across my desk and I was intrigued by it. I’ve never read a graphic novel published in India (and written in English) before. One thing that struck me about the drawing style was how dark (full of a lot of lines and very little white space) the book was. It’s very busy, demanding a lot of attention. I prefer my graphic novels to be a little more open and less claustrophobic (okay, I’ll say it, more “white”–racist!–meaning I like more white space in the drawings because I find the heavily drawn dark lines to be a little too busy for me). But having said that, I enjoyed this style. The details were always interesting to check out, especially the crowd scenes were Sharma has a lot of fun with background characters (it reminded me of Mad Magazine a bit).
At the same time I was also somewhat surprised at how conventional the story looked. I don’t know what I was expecting–something more decisively Indian perhaps, but this could have come from an underground comic publisher anywhere.
This is all background to say how much I enjoyed this kind of twisted book.
Incidentally Sharma also directed a film called Tere Bin Laden which is a comedy about an Osama bin Laden double and which sounds quite funny. I’m going to have to give that a try if I can find it.
So the book starts with an explanation about Munkeeman–he appeared (for real) as an unseen villain in the Hindi film Delhi-6 (which I’ve never seen). You don’t need to see that movie to quickly learn that there was a villain (the Black Monkey) who is now getting his story told from his point of view. Especially since the prologue fills you in that nobody ever got a full glimpse of him but he was referred to as The Munkeeman.
Then the action comes in, where director Abhushek Sharma (yes the author of this book) is receiving a golden Kela Award for being “The Most Anal Personality of Bollywood.” He is grabbed by Munkeeman who tells him that it will be his job to change the public’s perception of Munkeeman (since he did a good job making that Osama bin Laden film).
And so Munkeeman tells his story. He was originally a mild mannered fellow named Dr Dheeraj Dhalla (if he had friends he’d like them to call him DD) a researcher at a genetics lab. He is working with a scientist called Dr. Akula (really) working on a project of reverse evolution–mixing human and chimpanzee DNA to create a superhuman. But he is pretty much friendless, so all he has is his work. DD is also unhappy because he is living with his half-sister Sayaani. Sayaani showed up on his doorstep right after his father died claiming to be his half sister. She is totally hot (Sharma enjoys drawing her curves) and DD is madly in love with her. And she knows it and uses it against him. Including bringing other men into the house to sleep with.
He is so despondent about this that he asks Dr Akula to do the chimpanzee experiment on him. The Dr is reluctant but DD insists, and off it foes. It nearly kills him, but he now has a button in his chest. If he pushes the button he turns into Munkeeman. But he needs to get back to the lab before 8 hours or he will lapse into a coma.
The upside of this is that when the Dr asked Sayaani for a blood sample (in hopes of reversing the procedure), she had only a 12% DNA match, meaning she’s likely not really his half sister. That’s good news… except that now DD is half monkey.
To make matters worse, DD was following Sayaanit one night because she was clearly mixed up with some really bad guys. They were about to rape her when DD switched to Munkeeman and beat up (and killed) a few of the guys). But she was traumatized by the Munkee and has decided to take up the activist case against him.
Munkeeman tries his best to do good around the city–saving people in all manner of spectacular ways–but because of the initial perception, everything he does is turned against him: Saving a woman from drowning gets a headline: “Munkeeman gropes a Girl Swimming in the City Lake” Rescuing a boy from a fire nets: “Munkeeman Puts a House on Fire and Tries to Kidnap a Boy!”
As the book reaches its conclusion, Sayaani goes on a hunger strike to try to get the police to catch Munkeeman. The voluptuous woman quickly withers away. And DD is torn with giving himself up to save her or admitting the truth to her.
And the story is to be continued in the next issue. I’d love to read it, but who knows if I’ll ever see it, although I see that it did come out in 2012.
Leave a Reply