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Archive for the ‘Zubair Ahmed’ Category

“Some Instructions” (The Believer, November/December 2013)

Posted in Alexander Waterman, Ann Liv Young, Ant Hampton, Beck, Brian Belott, Brian McMullen, Buddy Wakefield, Christian Bok, Dawn Kaspar, Dynasty Handbag, Fluxus, Funny (strange), George Brecht, Huh?, Jericho Brown, John Beer, K. Silem Mohammad, Lauren Brincat, Luke Dischbeck, Matthew Dickman, Matthew Zapruder, Noah Eli Gordon, Olivia Plender, Sarah Rara, Sasha Archibald, The Believer, Zubair Ahmed on March 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »

beelievrSOUNDTRACK: BECK-“Beercan” (1994).

I beercanhad forgotten how much I liked “Beercan” as a song until I played Mellow Gold again.  It’s incredibly catchy, has some wonderfully weird elements (like the sample of the girl saying “I’m Sad” over flamenco music), and deserved to be heard more.

The B-sides for this single really run the gamut of everything Beck does.  The first track “Got No Mind” is a reworking of “Pay No Mind.” It’s done as a very simple folk song.  The words are largely different and the music is played differently, but the chords are the same.  It’s an interesting conceit to redo a song almost entirely like that.  The second song “Asskiss Powergrudge (Payback ’94)” is just a dirty slow abusive song. The guitar strings are totally muted, just making noise.  The vocals are slowed and sludgy.  And it’s just heaps of abuse.

“Totally Confused” is also on the “Loser” single and is such a pretty, mellow folk song (with Anna and Petra from That Dog singing backing vocals).  And the final song, “Spanking Room” is just a pile of sheer noise and feedback.  It is loud and crazy and goes on for some 5 minutes.  There’s a “bonus” track of which I have learned is called “Loser (Pseudo-Muzak Version).” It’s Loser sampled and played behind some weird keyboard “muzak.”  It sounds like it was done live in a small club.  Really weird.

[READ: February 28, 2014] Some Instructions

This little booklet came with the Believer 2014 Art Issue.  It is called “Some Instructions.”   It is inspired by George Brecht, a Fluxus artist who is credited with creating the written form of performance art (called the “event score”).  Brecht was bored by didactic instructions in art so his creations were utterly open to interpretation.  The example they give is his “Three Chair Events” which is in its entirety:

  • Sitting on a black chair. Occurrence.
  • Yellow chair.  (Occurrence.)
  • On (or near) a white chair.  Occurrence,

–Spring 1961

This is the kind of thing that I think i would have enjoyed in college, being pretentious an d obnoxious, now I realize it is just navel gazing and (in many of the examples below) barely even thought out.  You can kind of see what Brecht was getting at (although why he needed to do more than one or two is beyond me), as a kind of thought-provoking questioning of what we know of as art.  But some of these below are just, well, stupid. (more…)

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Zubair Ahmed–City of Rivers (2012)

Posted in Death, John Keats, McSweeney's, Poetry, Poets, Short Books, Sigur Rós, Zubair Ahmed on April 1, 2013| Leave a Comment »

cityofrivers_cover_FINALstickerSOUNDTRACK: SIGUR RÓS-“Brennisteinn” (2013).

Wsigurhat is that sound?  Low end electronic…noise?  Coming from a Sigur Rós song?  Typically you get a band in the ether, but here’s the band with loud pounding drums and almost glitchy music.  Of course, Jonsi’s voice tells you you’ve got Sigur Rós.  And yet, he’s not singing in his otherworldly falsetto–it seems like an almost human voice.

There’s a very distinctive chorus which is actually catchy in an almost poppy way.  And then, after four minutes, the Sigur Rós of old comes in–Jonsi’s voice soars, and the music reaches for the heavens (but with drums and some crazy sound effects) added in.

And then it grows haunting as the song slows down and distant horns come swelling in, keeping that soundtrack feel that the band does so well.  The video is creepy/cool interspersed with the band playing live.  I love watching them make the sounds they make (there’s a bowed guitar at some point).  I really like this a lot, and can’t wait for the rest of the album.

[READ: March 30, 2013] City of Rivers

I have said before that I don’t really like poetry.  It makes me feel stupid.  This is mostly because I have taken poetry classes and I know what good poetry should be, and yet I see so much poetry published which I think is not very good.  And yet, if it has been published, doesn’t that mean it’s good?  Have I missed something?

I’m not a total old school poetry boor, I don’t need my poetry to be in iambic pentameter, nor does it even need to rhyme, and yet sometimes a lot of contemporary poetry seems like a sentence, not really a poem.  I also suspect that the ascendance of flash fiction has made the ascendance of this flash poetry acceptable too.  Don’t get me wrong, I know a haiku is short as well, but there are lots of constrictions to haiku, whereas some free verse short poems really lack in the substance department.

I am also nonobjective about poetry because of all of the poetry slams that I have witnessed in college and since, in which basically anything is  poem if you e-nun-ci-ate it interestingly (something I doubt Keats was doing).

In an attempt to appreciate new poetry more, I decided to get a few books from the McSweeney’s poetry series. (more…)

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