I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: 0 Tonne Seize [CST bonus] (2016).

0 Tonne Seize is a bonus compilation of three tracks each from Off World, Automatiste and Jason Sharp.  The collection is 41 minutes of music (not too shabby) and came with a pre-order of the three records (and is available on Soundcloud as well).

The first three songs are by Off World and the first two of those are remixes.  The original “Wonder Farm” is dominated by popping drum sounds.  There are some other sounds that go through the track but the base is mostly a kind of slow Asian melody.  The “Wonder Farm (Summer Crop)” mix removes those snaps and percussion entirely.  It focuses just on the music, which I have to say is far more enjoyable without the bangs.  “Primitive Streak” is a slow droning piece, while this compilation’s “Primitive Streak (Silver Mix)” doesn’t sound all that different.  It also removes the drums, and highlights the squeaky synth sounds and the overall drone tone.  It seems to emphasize and de-emphasize different instruments but otherwise sounds pretty similar. The final track  “Lost Meadow” is a pretty, delicate piano based piece with some twinkling of spacey synth notes.  It’s easily the prettiest piece.

The three Automatiste tracks do not quite follow the same naming convention as the actual disc, although the first track is called “Simultanéité 5.” It has slow beats and is basically two-note washes building on top of each other.  “Fragments continus” is a noisy piece with layered thudding drums (like heartbeats especially around the 1 minute mark) and drone noises that wash in and out.   About half way through what sounds like a melody appears amid the din, but it feels like it formed organically around the synths and drums which is pretty cool.   “Le Silence 3” opens with some jackhammer sounding drums and then almost easy listening synths.  The juxtaposition is interesting and by the end the song feels nicely dancey.

The final three songs are from Jason Sharp.  These three are quite different from his album because they really feature the saxophone to a larger degree.  “Plummeting Veins” opens with a heartbeat and some rumbling sax (that sounds like the opening of the Speed Racer TV show).   This track is under 2 minutes, the shortest he’s done by far, and the way the heartbeat speeds up as the sax plays some low rumbling notes is pretty cool. “Hear a Fading Cry” is a much longer number.  The heartbeat is quieter but the sax is much louder.  It sounds a lot like Colin Stetson in the low rumbling and noisy barking that the bass sax can produce.  It ends with some rather high-pitched squeaky sounds that I assume come from the sax, but which I can’t imagine coming from such a bass instrument.  It’s 7 minutes long although it takes almost 2 minutes to really get going.  And it swerves between loud and rumbling and then sort of menacing by the end,  “Ride On Into the Sweetening Dark” is perhaps the most conventional of Sharp’s songs.  It is a series of sax solo lines over a gentle tinkling backing drone.  Some of the solos lead to noisy wailing, but for the most part the line are pretty and jazzy.

It’s interesting how different these bonus tracks tend to be from the actual releases.  I enjoyed listening to these variants to see what else these artists are capable of.

[READ: April 9, 2016] Sardine in Outer Space 6

Sardine is a children’s book published by First Second.  It was originally published in France (and in French) and was translated by Sasha Watson.  There are six Sardine books out.

The inner flap says “No Grownups Allowed (Unless they’re pirates or space adventurers).”  This is the final Sardine book.  And while I didn’t enjoy the first book much, by now I’m sorry to see the series end.

This book also has the fewest stories in it (only 9).

“Umby the Cell Phone” takes aim at kids wanting cell phones but not really needing them.   This story twists things by having the cell phone come to life and be a real jerk.

“Dumbo!” is the most meta story yet.  The comic starts with Doc Krok tearing down the opening title (with Sardine’s face on it).  He wants to make his own book: Dumbo: The book of Supermuscleman and Krok.  But Supermuscleman is so upset that Krok made a mess that he’s not paying any attention to the work that Krok has done.  For some reason, the really clueless Supermuscleman makes me laugh a lot more than the mean one who gets his comeuppance.

“My Eye” was the first story where I really noticed that Guibert’s lines and drawings are a lot cleaner than Sfar’s were–Guibert does Sfar’s style pretty well, but I prefer his cleaner lines.  This one has Yellow Shoulder explaining how he lost his eye.  It’s a wonderful story of carriage races.  But then his parrot is there to tell the truth. The truth is less exciting but much funnier.

“Going in Circles” deals with husbands and wives leaving each other and carousels closing down.  It seems kind of heavy (with married couples splitting for a time) but they make it rather silly and reunite everyone at the end.

In “Moon Pie” they stop at the Moonlight Bakery–the baker who puts the moon in the sky (will it be a full moon pie or a crescent croissant?)  And what would happen if he ran out of flour?

“Robert Putto” is one of the strangest ones in the bunch.  I can’t imagine where the name of this character came from or if it somehow references something?  Robert Putto is the student of Cupid and is trying to practice getting people to fall in love. She tries to get Sardine and Little Louie to fall in love but they just laugh it off.  I love that cupid is drawn as a hippy with long hair an a beard and sunglasses.   Supermuscleman also gets a funny comment: “My mother and father made me and they weren’t in love at all.”

“Robot DJ” is about the Voyager probe and how it contained music from earth.  The kids want to know what this music will be like, so they track down Voyager on its mission and discover that in fact there is Robot DJ on board to keep the music on the disc current.  [To hear what’s really on that Golden disc, check it out here].

“Milk Teeth” involved not the tooth fairy exactly but her helper, the Tooth Mousie.  Supermuscleman thinks it’s Mickey Mouse and hen grumbles, “This comic would be a lot more successful with Mickey in it than it is with that little brat, Sardine.”  The bad guys decide to steal Mousie’s teeth.  And since they are called milk teeth and look like they have udders, Krok proposes they milk the teeth and then sell the milk to kids–and incredibly time-consuming plot if you ask me.

The final story has a message.  Its’ called “Get Lost!” and is all about saving the Earth.  “Your planet may be feeling tired. It’s losing its polar icecaps, it’s skin is dry and chapped, it smokes (with a chimney belching black smoke), it’s nose is stuffed up (all kinds of junk in its nose).”  Now Supermuscleman says, “Planets are supposed to get used up.  Life is short you’ve got to make the most of it.”  Let’s hope that readers take that message to heart.

As I’ve said, I started off not liking the Sardine books so much, but by the end I was really enjoying them.  They have a delightfully European attitude that you wouldn’t find in similar books created by American authors.