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. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 