Deeper and Deeper

Evening, cats.


It's Friday and I've spent the day moving heavy boxes. My back and arms ache. I've had more than my share of a bottle of red (Red Truck - not a cab or merlot or zin, just red) like an adult jukebox. I can't push myself to work on a longer, more involved piece I've been putting off, as of late. Instead, I thought I'd share with you the joy that is Adele remixed as part of a Childish Gambino track.


I knew of Adele prior to this, of course. 'Chasing Pavements' had been all over the scene and the soulful young lady had made a name for herself with her old-school voice and intense inflection. I'd been crazy impressed with Childish Gambino from his album Culdesac, his phenomenal mix tapes and his work in comedy. So when he took her ascendant single 'Rolling In The Deep' and cut it up, I was a little confused. I forgot about her career and focused on his...with good reason, I'd argue.

Adele is a voice whose reputation goes far and wide among the popular culture these days. She has such clout from her talent that I felt genuinely sad when I heard that she had to cancel her recent tour and undergo major surgery on her vocal cords/throat. She's the opposite of a flash-in-the-pan - she's an artist who you really get an intense interaction from. Similar reactions stem from Childish Gambino - he's a musician who can't be confined to one simple thing. He's  not just a rapper, or DJ, or singer or comedian, or actor. The guy is insanely talented at whatever he throws himself into. I'd already been blown away by his musical endeavors. So these two forces colliding made something even more amazing.

As great as Adele's version of 'Deep' is, the Childish Gambino remix is more vibrant, more vital. It's a song that brings out different feelings and emotions from it's different dynamics than the original, as if that's not as obvious enough of a statement. Instead of a churning acoustic and plodding backing band we have Gambino setting Adele's unmistakable voice against sparse yet infectious hand claps, getting your mind into the rhythm right off the bat. He wraps her voice around a series of breaks and percussive tones that evoke DIY aesthetics like banging on pipes and sampling overheard sounds. He warps he voice using pitch-shifters and snippets of samples, rearranging the song into a more distilled, aggressive version of itself. When a break appears midway through, Gambino drops in for a verse to offer a response filled with vitriol and defiance. His rapping is a genius example of breaking convention and offering a novel back-and-forth for a kiss-off pop song. It's fantastic stuff.

Don't get me wrong - Adele made an amazing song with 'Rolling In The Deep'. I just find the Childish Gambino version, which I actually heard before the original version, to be a more defining take on the tune. Hers is canon, his is gospel. Hers is the standard, his is the ripper. He tells a story and builds on the world she created. Listen to them both and let me know what you think. 

Treehousing Crisis

Spooky Friday nights!


As I wrote in the piece about South Park and my Halloween indulgences, a yearly viewing of The Simpsons collected Treehouse of Horrors is a tradition in my household. About halfway through October my better half and I will exchange a look and simply say "Treehouse?" Thus begins the marathon of the only spooky stuff she will endure with me, and that's really only because it stems from the Gospel of The Simpsons. It is the ultimate signifier of the season for me. Treehouse of Horror marathon? Halloween is close. Only a matter of days until I end up watching Night of the Living Dead after coming home from a completely overwhelming party.

We both grew up on The Simpsons, watching it evolve from the embryonic phenomenon it was to the cultural institution it is today. One of the first times we ever hung out together, we bonded over a shared love and appreciation of the early seasons - me, being amazed by a girl who got and loved all the jokes, her, a girl way too cool for me and wiling to suffer my boyish enthusiasm. Our shared viewing habits became a bonding thing for the distance we had as a long distance couple. We'd start a DVD at the same time and watch an episode together on the phone, then say good night knowing we were partaking in the same animated lullabies. 

The Treehouse of Horror series were always a special thing for both of us. We both had memories of watching the annual trilogy of terror before trick-or-treating. They were these strange, twisted takes on the world we had come to know and trust as kids. The older I got, the more I loved the freaky takes on the Simpsons universe. Every Halloween as I got older the specials would come into syndication in increasing frequency; more specials were backlogged to be played out on the local channels. I was in heaven. Along with the proliferation of DVDs came the ability to instantly gratify viewing demands - we're spoiled by this now, but at the time it was revelatory. So if I wanted to watch all the Treehouse of Horror episodes back to back, I could. 

Having done this, I quickly figured out that my favorite of the older canon of ToH episodes was also one of the darkest. Treehouse of Horror IV is, in my humble opinion, the darkest and most funny installment in the series. From here on out it felt like it was a matter of diminishing returns. Considering that there are some 16+ installments after this, that's quite the damning statement. I don't mean to impugn the show to that extent; conversely I feel that this episode serves as a high water mark for the series, especially for the Halloween specials. Par example - 'The Devil & Homer Simpson' sees Homer subjected to his personal Hell, courtesy of Ned Flanders. 'Terror At 5½ Feet' retells one of the greatest paranoid tales from the original run of The Twilight Zone. 'Bart Simpson's Dracula' is pure Hammer horror, all, mood and dark substance, only broken by the briefest bits of levity. 

There's some genuine elements of horror in this installment. Homer's trip through Hell is visceral and bleak, despite the well known gag of his infinite appetite. Bonus points for the Jury of the Damned - Nixon, Lizzie Borden, Benedict Arnold, John Wilkes Booth and the starting lineup of the 1976 Phillie Flyers. Bart's ordeal with a Gremlin (not that kind) on a school bus is the sneakiest bit of paranoia fuel, where as a child watching it for the first time (unaware of the Shatneriffic origins) I was terrified of his inescapable situation. His unraveling is effectively disturbing for a cartoon, espically during prime-time TV in the early 90s. The Dracula tale is a bit rote, but the ending, with its inescapability and subtle twist of villians, is spooky, haunting stuff. It gave me the willies as a kid. Now I just marvel at the effective atmosphere and vibe put off by what is (and was) the most entertaining and hysterical show on TV.

That subtle mix of horror and humour is what makes this installment of Treehouse of Horror so engaging. The framing device, which was soon dropped, has nothing to do with it other than introducing the pieces. But even those small bits of writing (inspired by Rod Serling's Night Gallery) are scary and funny. All of the most beloved horror media in the last decades have that mix of humor and horror - Shaun of the Dead, Ghostbusters, what have you. If you don't dig the Simpsons, what's your problem, seriously? If you do, congratulations on being a person. Hopefully this episode can add to your Spooky Month delights.

Warm Fuzzy Viewing Four

I haven't forgotten about doing these.

It's been a while since I've written any Warm Fuzzy Viewings. Not wanting to dilute the content of the site, I've held off until I felt I should contribute to a different section. So how about something that only seems to make sense at night? Maybe it's because it is set during the night, or because I watched them late at night in my parent's basement when I was in high school, whatever the reason - it wouldn't be right to watch it in broad daylight. I'm talking about the Meteor Shower Trilogy, also known as the Lost South Park Movie.

 Originally broadcast as three separate episodes in the summer of 1999, the Meteor Shower Trilogy has the main cast of South Park split up into their own stories. Cartman's story involves his abusive babysitter (and his obsession with the dated misfire that was Wild Wild West) while his mom attends a party at the Marsh's house to observe the titular meteor shower. Stan's episode is centered around the events of the party, where he's sequestered to the basement with a few other kids (including Butters!). At the party, a misunderstanding entices the involvement of the South Park police force, setting up a parody of the Waco incident in 1993. Kenny gets lumped into Kyle's story for an episode about camping and his Jewish heritage that gets weirder and weirder as the plot unfolds. None of what happens is intensely dramatic or of any permanence to the overall mythology to the show, it's just some bizarre and funny stuff. It's all set over the course of a single night, the three episodes occurring simultaneously.

I had wondered, when I saw the episodes ten years ago, if you could splice them all together into a single story. You may or may not recall my adoration of Fan Edits and how they re-contextualize stories with which we're already familiar. See where I'm going with this? Yeah - provided you know where to look on the ol' interwebs, you can find what's referred to as The Lost South Park Movie or The Meteor Shower. It's pretty loose and not to big on overlapping stories due to the way the individual episodes were written but it's still a very cool concept that only makes sense for me at night. I remember vividly the Sunday nights lying on the couch in the basement and howling at these episodes, loving the fact that they all took place over a single night. If you're interested, take a look around the web and see if you can dig 'em up. It's a cool concept. 

Double Down

Sound the alarms! Double post!


I had to throw up a quick note to alert as many people as possible. Plus I figure after two weeks off I can throw the occasional double post to make up some ground, right? Anyway - you want to hear this. It's been all over the music world in the last week, but in case you haven't heard - do yourself a favor and head over to Wugazi to hear some amazing stuff.

The title says it all. Wugazi is simply the best of both worlds - the inspired, cacophonous delta that forms when Doomtree member Cecil Otter and producer Swiss Andy set about laying the vocals of the legendary Wu Tang Clan over the similarly (but more overlooked) Fugazi. It's one of those things that shouldn't be able to exist, yet it works so well. If you've read some of the other articles on this site about mashups and the manner in which our culture re-purposes pre-existing material, you might have an inkling of how mind-blowing I find this to be. Hell, Cecil Otter's solo albums are heady affairs, worthy of their own dissection. But to take some of the most unusual, groundbreaking hip hop of the last 20 years and throw it over some of the most curiously intelligent hardcore - that's some sublime, inspired genius. There was simply no chance for a middle ground here - either be un-listenable or undeniable. To the universe's credit, we go the latter. 

I was lucky enough to snag it before the site crashed, but it may be back up as of now. The free (FREE!) album of remixes/mashups is available now, so if you have absolutely any interest in A - essential hip hop B - high quality post punk C - post-modern music or D - insane jams for the summer...go to Wugazi.com NOW and download it. Before someone's lawyers smell blood in the water. 

Gene Splicer

Evening. 


Way too late to be doing this. See how it gets when you let life happen? Things get re-ordered and priorities get in the way, and suddenly I'm frantically typing up a blog post just to get one up and tallied for the day. In the spirit of a frenzied feeling of harried crossed wires, the theme of today's roundup is posts on Mash-Ups and cultural jams, things that are spliced and resequenced for the sake of art. I think the reason I obsess over this concept is that it expresses the sheer possibility of infinite permutations, that even after a thing is created and labeled finished it can still be reconstituted and put into fresh context to become a new thing with new meaning. Peruse these pieces, won't you?


Kids & Explosions - A look at a fantastic mash-up album that doesn't just pair up songs, it creates whole new pieces.
Simpsons/Futurama Crossover Crisis - Just as good as it sounds, honestly. Two great tastes that go great together.
Chronologically Lost - Why my brain melts at the idea of watching Lost in sequential, chronological order.
Star Wars Xmas Invasion - Nothing at all related to the horrible special you're thinking of. Just look.
Fan Edits - In which I fawn over the concept of new & improved versions of films perceived as flawed.
Jaydiohead - Hipster Gods meet Hip Hop Deity courtesy of Max Tannone.
The Hood Internet - Watch these artists reconstitute the amazing work of Felt via Electro records. As dope as it sounds.
Affiliyated - In which the relentless Doomtree re-grind the slow-burn slow-jams of Gayngs.
Girl Talk - The DJ who crashed the internet last fall with All Day, a sick party album.


See what I meant? All these posts are basically accounts of my brain shutting down over the circular, downward spiral logic of these meta-contextual works of art. Read 'em and weep. My brain is fried. Yours can be too, just read up. 

Mile Stone

Hey kids, what do you know? I'm back in Minnesota and glad to see I brought just a little bit of the warmth home with me. My flight got in just after midnight - consequently I'm dragging today. To boot, this is post number 100. I should be doing cartwheels and lighting off fireworks. Instead, my head's bobbing and I'm thinking fondly of pillows. I got nothing. While I had sworn up and down that today would bring a wondrous return to form, instead it will be just one more slightly truncated post. So what can I evangelize about when I'm feeling so foggy? 

Girl Talk. All Day. 

That's what's up. 

I've talked about mash-ups here at great length, from the artsy compositions of Kids & Explosions to the meta-contextual jokes of the Hood Internet. The golden boy, though, is the massively popular Girl Talk, also known as Gregg Gillis. Gillis has been making music for years, at this point having put out five albums of remixes and mash-ups. His latest salvo, All Day, was so popular and hotly demanded it basically broke the internet when it came out in November of 2010. His site and any other that hosted the album were crushed under the overwhelming surge of traffic seeking a working link. I'm guessing the odds are pretty high that if you're even reading this then you have at least a passing familiarity with this ridiculously talented DJ. Alternately available as either one massive track or 12 separate songs, the album is, in my opinion, even better than his previous release Feed The Animals, even though the All Day hasn't received as high of marks as Animals. 

All Day is (to me, at least) the quintessential party album - it's high energy, full of huge hooks and varied enough to keep anyone's attention for a solid hour. Seriously - the choices Gillis makes when playing Dr. Frankenstein are good enough to just listen to it straight through, let alone putting it on for a ripper with your friends. I love the way it opens, kicking immediately into high gear with Ludacris rapping over Black Sabbath. We can all have a good laugh over the trials and tribulations of the dreaded rap rock but when you hear it done right (as it is several times on this album) it absolutely makes sense. It just takes the right DJ to make it happen. There are some absolutely sublime pairings here, like Jay Z's 'Can I Get A...' rapped over some General Public, the swagger of Jigga unexpectedly complimenting the indie-pop of 'Tenderness'. Even better is hearing Beyonce's infectious 'Single Ladies' sung over the raucous exuberance of M.O.P.'s 'Ante Up'. I don't tire of either if those songs on their own, so cutting them up and stitching them together is like making a sandwich from your favorite foods. Just goodness all around. Some of my favorite mid-90s alterna-Gods make surprise appearances here, as well. Portishead, Spacehog and Jane's Addiction all turn up in hilariously solid ways. There is no cognitive dissonance like hearing ODB rapping 'Shimmy Shimmy Ya' over 'Creep' by Radiohead and actually having it turn out better than one could ever think. There's a staggering array of material Gilllis draws from here, from the Jackson 5 to Bananarama, Rhianna to Toad The Wet Sprocket. This is the kind of excellent remix album where, if you find yourself not enamored with a specific track, you can just wait for about 45 seconds and something awesome happens. I've played it for friends who cried blasphemy over the use of 'Where The Streets Have No Name' only to smile and start bouncing their shoulders at the genius reworking of 'Killing In The Name' under M.I.A. It's nuts. 

Like I said earlier, the reviews for this album weren't as high as previous efforts by Gillis. I have no idea why, though - I think this album is absolute gold, start to finish. There's no lags in it at all, for me. You're getting ready to go out on a Saturday night, getting dressed in the morning, going for a drive on a sunny afternoon, I don't care. You can put this album on and straight up rock out for an hour. There's something so fun about listening to a mashup album and feeling that moment of recognition when you hear something familiar come flying through the ether. There are combinations here that make me laugh out loud every time I hear them. For real, if you haven't heard this yet go over to Girl Talk's site and pick it up. No iTunes this time, kids. I'm afraid the good people in the record business are a little wary about artistic license in this case. I'd write more about this awesome, super fun album but I'm struggling to make cogent thoughts at this point. I'm glad to be back in MPLS, if only for the signs of spring. See you tomorrow when I'm better rested. 

Collabo

Evening!


Another day full of errands and tasks after yesterday, so today's post is, again, truncated. The week coming, though, will allow for a little more proper writing. It's snowing again, of course. It's Minnesota in March, after all. I'm at home, having downed massive amounts of curry in the hopes that the endorphins can counteract the weather's mood killer. Speaking of killer moods, though...


Last month I wrote a post on the amazing Gayngs and their awesome album Relayted. They're still riding high on their acclaim, ready to rock SXSW and (much to my sorrow, as I can't attend) playing their Affiliyated showcase at First Ave tonight as I type this. Due to time and budget I find myself so close yet so far from what is no doubt an amazing show, with member's originating bands playing all over the venue, including the massive Doomtree crew, Solid Gold, Megafaun and the Leisure Birds. For those able to attend, I'm sure it was every bit as awesome as could possibly be. For those like myself, though, there is one small consolation - the free and amazing EP, Affiliyated.

This sick EP is brought to us by Minneapolis deities Doomtree. What the group did is the kind of creative process that fascinates my brain with its unlimited, diverging possibilities. Essentially they stripped the original album, the aforementioned Relayted, and drew straws for the elements laid bare. By drawing at random, different members of the crew took on tracks and rebuilt them from the ground up. It's a great reworking of what was already a phenomenal album. Songs have gone from sexy, subdued ditties to ethereal, ambient beats. Instead of the soulful crooning on the original versions, here we have Sims and P.O.S. spitting new raps over these regrinds. It's still the same moody, gorgeous music, just tweaked and rebuilt by the best damn rap crew around. On top of all this awesomeness, it's free - a token of love from crazy, prolific artists who push themselves on every project. 


I may be bummed out I can't make it to the massive spectacle at First Ave, but having this rad EP makes up for it. All the artists involved continue to blow me away with all they do. SXSW is looking a whole lot better, I can say that much. Do yourself a favor and head over here to pick up the EP.

Referential Humor

Hey kids, what's shaking?


It's the weekend and I'm trying to fit this in around a busy schedule of normal get-it-done-while-there's-time kind of errands, the usual life stuff that gets done as soon as you have time. What that really means is today's post is gonna be a short, concentrated blast of love. To pack the most love possible into it, the subject is a dense, knotted ball of referential music. Mashup time, once again.


If you're not familiar with The Hood Internet you really oughta be. Remix/mashup artists from Chicago, they are best known for taking commercial rap and throwing it on top of indie music. The resulting mix either elates or infuriates hipsters - I can't tell because I honestly haven't had a chance to ask a genuine hipster about it, but then again this is focusing entirely too much on labels. I digress. Point is, The Hood Internet make these great, indulgent mix tapes and put them on their blog totally for free. I've written many times about the wonders of free things on the internet and this is another classic example. So these guys are mixing all this great stuff together, I'm sorting through and downloading it while thinking "This is great stuff for party music, having people over" and I notice one of the smaller or shorter releases they did:

Looks like the duo took the acapella tracks from Felt and put them over the awesome and strange electro music of Tobacco, specifically his album Maniac Meat. It is phenomenal and weird at the same time. Felt, in case you don't know, is the project of local deity Slug from Atmosphere and Oakland's Murs from Living Legends. The two have been making a series of albums together for the last few years as tongue in cheek tributes to celebrities they wanna bed, like Lisa Bonet, Christina Ricci and Rosie Perez. They're both incredibly talented, insightful rappers who have had both critical and commercial careers that establish them as legends in their respective stomping grounds so hearing them together is always great. So when a mashup team who I also love take their vocals and lay them on top of another musician's work we then spiral into a deeper level of Inception-like referential awareness. It's like an ouroboros at this point. The meta-context of the EP is so thick it approaches impenetrability, which amuses me to no end, and yet listening to it, it's just electro-hip-hop. 


This awesome(and free!) EP is a mutli-leveled beast of dance music the could be deconstructed by much smarter minds. I've wondered in the past about how music evolves and how our collective minds influence the direction of culture - I think this is another sign of where we're headed. Like Girl Talk's endless, segueing jams or Kids & Explosion's more ground-up approach, we have artists whose work becomes so causality-focused that the listener's personal history and ability to place context with the presented material becomes wholly ingrained to the experience. It's not just listening to the music anymore, now there is a level of awareness that goes along with it. One could relate it to the rise of cultural memes and how they spread and become jokes about the jokes themselves, like LOLCats, the self-aware schlock-fest Snakes On A Plane or the resurgence of Family Guy after its premature cancellation. Pop culture is eating it's own tail at this point. Good or bad, we're so connected to our own hive mind that ideas reference themselves in ironic or winking ways so fast that a generation gap appears after a point. However, this gap is not strictly based on age but on the effort put forth by the participant. If you don't want to care about it, your experience is much more surface level and straight forward, while connectedness and awareness of the in-joke makes it an endless spiral into meta-context. 


Holy Hannah, looking at all that text, you know what's really apparent? I need to abstain from espresso before I write these pieces. Looks like my mind is speeding up to the point of humming bird status. Instead of making my keyboard burst into flames from furious typing, I'll let the music speak for itself. Head to their blog to download this EP as well as the rest of their awesome mix tapes. Play it while you entertain this weekend.

Circuitous Cuts

To offset yesterday's enthusiastic diatribe on how you should be familiar with Gayngs and their excellent album 'Relayted', today's post will be the converse. The subject for today's breakdown is an artist whose work I will fully cop to being asleep on. Max Tannone, formerly known as Minty Fresh Beats, is a mash-up artist of the finest degree, having crafted some amazingly slick projects in recent years.

Having worked the DJ scene in NY and abroad, Tannone set about creating conceptual mash-ups in a way that is both more inviting, yet trickier in execution. His work involves not just a mixtape in the sense of something to put on for a party, but creating a conceptual album, like he did in his sublime mixes of Jaydiohead. Taking two incredibly talented and revered artists and putting them together is no small feat, especially when they are so intrinsically different. The art-house, obtuse and deeply neurotic Radiohead couldn't be farther from the swagger and driving beats of one of hip hop's greatest, Jay Z. Using plenty of planning and foresight, though, Tannone has fused these artists into an amazingly cohesive unit. Not only do they blend well, but Tannone's creative choices are superb as well. The track 'Dirt Off Your Android' (mixing Dirt Off Your Shoulder and Paranoid Android) snaps with the drums just behind the acoustic riff, but its the way the main, rawk-out riff of Paranoid Android blasts excellently beneath Jay Z's rhymes. It was always a piece of the song I wanted to hear more of and Tannone recognized it for its power, wielding it deftly along the rest of the mix.

Having created these crazy good Jay Z and Radiohead mixes, Tannone set about deconstructing and reassembling one of my favorite albums, Check Your Head by The Beastie Boys. Granted, reworking what is already a phenomenally good album lends itself towards a certain level of success, but it is not a guarantee. I love the original for it's living, vibrant energy and samples, having the Beasties playing their own instruments alongside catchy, heady samples. The vocals are also fantastic here, with the group really showing what they are capable of, having 'found' their definitive styles around the period 'Check Your Head' was recorded. What Tannone has done, in an inspired move, is take the vocals from choice cuts and interpolate them over some of the instrumental cuts on the album, calling it 'Doublecheck Your Head'. The loose rapping of 'So What'cha Want' played over 'In 3s' gives birth to a whole different swing than either track held on their own. The rhythm and syncopation for each has been matched and synched perfectly, to the point that if one had never heard the original album it would be easily believable that these were the straight tracks and not "recontextualized" as he put it. 

That notion is really at the heart of what Max does - where as Girl Talk can make a crazy party mix or The Hood Internet does mixtapes of radio fare over indie, here we have the elusive organic chemistry. Tannone attempts to breakdown the illusion of the mash-up entirely in the hopes your brain interpreters the new creation as the original. When it works (as it quite often does) it works amazingly well. So many of his tracks feel seamless in the best way possible. Just being able to put to diametrically opposed artists like Radiohead and Jay Z together, let alone make them work, is an accomplishment. How many bands could essentially fold an album over itself like The Beastie Boys, like making a calzone by folding a pizza in half? 

To reiterate, I slept on this. I was not even aware of Max Tannone and his FREE releases. I'm making up for it now, though. I only found out about these mixes, and Tannone's mixing of Mos Def and Talib Kweli with Dub and Reggae music, after reading about the Selene project. Based around the movie Moon, it is a fantastic, morose and poignant sci-fi movie about loss and devotion. Tannone took samples and themes from the film and mixed them with Richard Rich's raps to create the EP. Even Duncan Jones, the director of Moon, has given his praise for the project. It's all amazing work. The EPs and mash-ups are simply fantastic. Hopefully you already knew about all this. If not, head over to his site and see what lies in store. 

Of Dubious Legality

Okay, for the first time in what feels like a week I'm doing a legitimate, full-on post. 

Alright, enough stalling - let's get right to it. I'm using today's space to examine a concept I had been aware of yet only looked into in the last year. Something of questionable moral and legal territory. Something which deserves a look, frankly. That something is Fan Edits.

While the idea of alternate cuts by people other than the original productions of movies had gained notoriety as far back as the 70s, the idea of a 'fan edit' first gained major prominence after the release of the controversial prequel to the Star Wars Saga, The Phantom Menace. A professional film editor, who for a long time remained anonymous, set about removing the majority of the (perceived) out of place humor and substantial scenes with kid-friendly Jar Jar Binks, as well as rearranging scenes and dialog in an attempt to improve what many fans saw as a flawed entry in their beloved series. The Phantom Edit, as it came to be known, served as the first widely publicized foray into the field of fans editing major motion pictures as they saw fit. The Phantom Edit had corrected or addressed what many saw as severe flaws in the source material; by doing so it illustrated the potential for 'rescuing' other movies that film buffs felt had strong roots but bore weak fruit.

Surprisingly there hasn't been a downpour of lawsuits and court dates stemming from the wave of edits available on the internet. While a particular high profile documentary about fan edits themselves did warrant a cease and desist from Lucasfilms, in the end it appeared to stem from Lucasfilms mistakenly believing it to be a bootleg copy of one of their own movies. Unlike the distribution of music over file sharing services, these edits don't have the immediate accessibility or convenient file size, let alone audience pool to draw on. Multitudes of web users may want to torrent the new Kanye album, but how many people want to see the Lord of The Rings movies re-cut to more properly match the original story Tolkien wrote in the books? From what I can gather: smaller online presence, less impact on sales and not technically bootlegging. It's just taking a DVD you already own and rearranging scenes or cutting things out, essentially. Most distributors haven't had the desire to chase the community down to close off what amounts to be a minimal amount of damage, anyway.

While I haven't had the opportunity to see The Phantom Edit myself, I have had the pleasure of seeing a particularly interesting edit of the back-to-back sequels to the sci-fi blockbuster that was The Matrix. An absolute shift in zeitgeist for Hollywood, The Matrix became one of the most acclaimed (and consequently, mimicked) movies of the last twenty years. A story of man vs. machine, cyberpunk action and techno bombast, it certainly deserved the praise it received. The simultaneously filmed sequels, The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions, were seen as a matter of diminishing returns, however. Overstuffed and wandering, the general consensus was the sequels either went off the rails or tried to cram too much into not enough. Personally I enjoyed them, flaws and all, for the imagery and philosophic themes the movies explored. But that is an article for another day. Today, I'm writing on how they can be combined to make a more cohesive whole.

The Matrix DeZIONized is an edit that combines the two drawn-out sequels and squashes them into one lean, focused film. The effect is amazing. By removing all of the scenes that take place outside of the Matrix, as well as any material mentioning Zion, the result is a movie that feels more in line with the original. Granted, the entire edit then seems to take place in the Matrix, but that was how most of the story was written anyway, so the editor had to work with what was already laid down. Still, the movie moves along at a much faster clip - action scenes seem much better spaced, plot points come at a quicker pace. Hell, the entire story, what the essential point of the sequels was (besides cash), comes so quickly as a result of proper editing here that the viewer has to ask "Why put in all that stuff about Zion in the first place?" Two movies with run times of 138 minutes and 129 minutes, (almost five hours!) cut down to one movie of 121 minutes. Those numbers alone show how much extemporaneous material was present. 

Watching the edit, the story flows so smoothly that you barely notice the few holes left from the cuts, for example characters not having resolution in the final act, or the odd dialog piece not having a previous reference point. This mostly is a holdover from having seen the original films, but if this was your first time through these two films, one would hardly notice. If you have an opportunity and the means to see this movie, I would suggest you take a look, if for no other reason than to study how much of an impact editing a movie can have. It really is a fascinating work.

I say all of this with the knowledge that my own, unaltered, Blu Ray versions of the movie are due to arrive from Amazon any day now. I can rag on the Wachowski siblings all day long and yet these movies are still near and dear to me. I was absolutely enthralled with them when I first saw them, partly due to never having seen the films and texts that they took inspiration from. I waited to buy them on DVD in the box set due to financial constraints and having other burning cinematic desires. So when I saw the entire series was available on Blu Ray for less than $50, I jumped with no hesitation. So, I plan on watching the beautiful transfers of these odd films back-to-to-back, then check out the edit and see if it stacks up after all. If you do, drop me a line and let me know your thoughts.

Also, check out some other edits out there. I'll be doing a write up in the future on some others, including some interesting extended cuts. I've already covered one, the epic and genius rearrangement Chronologically Lost. The intarwebs is full of possibilities.

Weekend Wind Down

Tonight's post brings you to another tangent of the blog I hadn't really accounted for in its inception. Having felt stymied for material in the last 48 hours, I thought I would share something I did over the holidays and stashed away on my hard drive, being unsure of what to do with it.


Instead of ranting and raving while about some secret obsession or reviewing some media I love, I thought I would use this Sunday as an opportunity to showcase something simple that amused me. Not having the usual wealth of drive and inertia to work with, I'm rounding out the weekend with some light hearted shots of shenanigans. It's a bit of nothing, really, but it's the idea  and execution that make me laugh, so here goes.


Over the holiday season I had the chance to pay a visit to my parent's home in Wisconsin, stately Mole Manor. One of my mother's long-standing Xmas traditions has been to display her Christmas Village collection, a series of ceramic structures  that show the North Pole and its denizens as they ready for the yule tide grind. One of my traditions is indulging in vodka-sodas and poking through boxes of childhood relics in search of...whimsy? I have no idea, but its fun to make my brain go "!?!?!?!" and feel that distant recognition come rolling in. When these two things come together, you have the most recent of my goofy and indulgent art projects. 


Long and short of the idea was to take a box full of Micro-Machines based on the Star Wars intellectual property and set 'em up, diorama-rama style. It's definitely juvenile and silly, but it made me laugh and got a good reaction from mon petit frere, who was also indulging with me, in another excellent holiday tradition. Last year we watched an old, worn out copy of Star Wars on VHS and we marveled at how far we had come to Blu Ray. He remarked how it looked as though George Lucas had smeared Vaseline on the screen. This year, I made my own creation in tribute to Lucas' inability to let a work of art lie untouched. I call it "North Echo Base Pole". Forgive the quality of the images, please, as they were taken on an Iphone 3gs, none of that beautiful Iphone 4 gorgeousness. Regardless, take a look!

The Dark Side of Santa's Village

Santa's Storm Troopers

Better than Tauntauns

Backing Lord Vader

Cheaper Than Elves

Multiple Vaders

Mounting A Defense

On The Front Lines

Santa's New Hope


So there you have the highlights from the Christmas Eve debauchery. Pretty tame but most standards, but I thought you might get a laugh out of it, in lieu of posting any more about material I've already written on. Tomorrow I will return to my usual form, as I've had two full days to give the internal processor a break and recharge the circuits. Stay tuned for more!

Un, Deux, Trois

Nerd alert!

Even the most prolific of us get a case of the brain slugs. Mine is particularly bad today. See?

Yeah.

That bad.

So what I'll do today is simply point you in the direction of something I find to be, as John the Baptist put it, "wicked cool". 

As anyone who has known me in the last six years can attest, I loved the TV phenomenon that was Lost. There was literally no other thing that compared to it. It was its' own fundamental thing, a creation of unique zeitgeist in our modern culture. The common comparisons, although not exactly on target, were to The Stand and Twin Peaks, both of which I have loved. The show is simply one of my favorite things ever and the hole it has left in my pop-culture heart has yet to be filled. No joke, no hyperbole, I genuinely miss the eager, giddy nature of the nights it was on and the mass-theorizing that followed in the morning. I plan on doing more of an in-depth analysis in the future but for now I wanted to highlight a peripheral, or perhaps tangential aspect to the show.

An integral aspect of the hour long drama was the nature of time and its structure as a means of telling the larger story. This was initially done by splitting each episode into the current narrative and a demonstrative or character-revealing flashback to before the island story. As time went on the show (MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR A SHOW THAT NO LONGER IS ON THE AIR) switched to flash forwards and side cuts that intersected with the main story. While ostensibly just a cool way to tell a massive and sprawling tale that was akin the a novel for TV, it created a phenomenon known as 'viewer lock-out' which kept the average viewer from wanting to jump in and pick up the action in without seeing the backlog of episodes, which by season 6 was a whole hell of a lot. 

I was (still am) obsessed with this show and simply cannot say enough good things about it. I honestly feel if you have any appreciation for fictional art in any sense you should give it a chance, if for no other reason than to see one of the most amazing, beautiful (and not coincidentally expensive) TV pilots in history. If you've watched the show in its entirety, and if you're reading this that is a distinct possibility, then I want to fill you in on a very cool secret. 

Ready?

Someone possessing more skill and patience than myself took every single episode and edited them into one long, chronological take on the entire series. Instead of having to check the mind-bogglingly comprehensive Lostpedia for who did what and when, everything is presented as it happened in sequential order. The entire series is cast into a new light as a result. Everything from the beginning to The End takes on a whole new significance as a result. Characters are shown in a new light, actions have more relevance and life-long struggles are made clearer as a result. The effect is uncanny.

Obviously this website and the content hosted there is of....dubious legal standing. The show was a massive hit and made millions for ABC, but what is to be done with its legacy is still up for debate. I absolutely adore this idea. Some fans wondered if this style of consumption would be an option when the entire show was released in a single volume for Blu Ray but it has yet to be done by official sources. I still hold out hope for an official version of this, but fan edits like this are a fascinating source of intrigue for me. If you have any interest I would highly recommend giving a look, even for specific points in the show, to see how they look in new light. A deconstruction like this a shuffling of the deck and a fresh take on what is, in my mind, one of the best works of fiction in existence.

Not to be too hyperbolic.

In The Year 3000

All right, mes amis, today we're going to discuss something that makes my head explode. Strap in, cause it's about to get nerdy in here. 

Ready? 

The Simpsons/Futurama Crossover Crisis. 

Both series are the brainchild of Matt Groening, and being the intellectual property of the same person with vaguely (okay, obviously) similar art styles, a crossover was inevitable. Both Series are/were wildly popular (though Simpsons more so) and had their own lines of excellent comics (see? Told you it would get nerdy). For the Simpsons, it offered an expansion of the universe for rabid fans to devour and catalog. For Futurama it served as a continuing existence after its premature cancellation, before the sublime series was renewed by Comedy Central. Both lines were published by the hysterical Bongo Comics and if you enjoy either series in its TV incarnation I would highly recommend seeing what the transition to print is like. It's often an interesting twist, as it allows for more deviations from the established canons that TV guidelines and censors wouldn't deem acceptable. 

Point of order, here. In my household The Simpsons is gospel. Having been firmly ingrained in mine and my better half's psyche's at the elementary level, it tickled the funny bone in a way that both formed and guided our mutual senses of humor for the rest of our lives. Admittedly the series has waned a bit in recent years but it still is better than almost anything you can throw at it, even on an off day. I recall one of the producers explaining its longevity thusly "How do you stretch a show for over ten seasons? Lower your standards." Sad, but true. It serves as a mental comfort food. I honestly think if some horrible tragedy befell the nation, we would just start a marathon and cook a feast for our friends and family while we burn through the series on a tv in the kitchen. The Halloween themed 'Treehouse of Horror' episodes, which I've written about before, are a tradition for us every October. 

Futurama is more of an oddity. I was sold on the show from the first season, having been raised on a steady diet of Star Wars and Star Trek (and this is the point my future father-in-law forbids the wedding). The in-jokes, the characters and sense of humor, I love it all. It's another one of those things I've written about where it makes me so happy I feel like it was created just to amuse me. Imagine my surprise when my fiancée, who almost never indulges in fictional TV (let alone science fiction, of all things) finds it to be not only interesting but hysterical. The fact that she laughs at anything I do makes my heart skip a beat, and is one of the countless reasons I love her. Funny is funny regardless of medium, and she gets that. So while The Simpsons soldiers on, barely fatigued, Futurama met an untimely end at the hands of Fox, only to be brought back to life by Comedy Central. In the intervening period, though, the most amazing thing happened. 

These two awesome worlds collided. 

How is this even possible, you ask? Conveniently held contracts and friendly lawyers. How it's handled in-universe is a little more tricky, and a whole lot more nerdy (but if you're still reading at this point, you've already accepted that and may actually be interested in how these two distinct intellectual properties collide). It's actually a pretty neat trick. 

The story hinges on the fact that Futurama is, despite its outlandish setting, characters and stories, our universe. In previous episodes of the show it had been established that the Simpsons existed as it did for us (even more crazy, Matt Groening has appeared IN THE SIMPSONS as the creator of Futurama, just to further twist us around). Fry, our lovable everyman, is reading a Simpsons comic, in a wonderful bit of meta-humor. Utilizing a plot device from their phenomenally written 'The Day the Earth Stood Stupid', the Brainspawn, capable of transporting conscious minds into fictional worlds, traps the Futurama crew in the world of the Simpsons comic. After a mind-blowing series of cross-continuity interactions, including Homer and Bender imbibing at Moe's, Lisa and Leela bonding and Fry and Bart causing mischief, the worlds are brought back into balance via the requisite complicated plot devices of meta-awareness and literary boundaries. 

But wait! There's more! 

The wonderful hardcover edition published in 2010 continues the saga in an excellent move. Due to the weakening walls of reality, the cast of the Simpsons is unleashed into Futurama's present day, New New York, 3000 A.D. The two casts must work together to fight off the brainspawn and vanquish various marauding fictional characters back to their respective books, in a display of some of the most absurd, laugh out loud literary jokes I've ever read. I won't spoil the results, but the entire experience is equal parts hysterical, confusing and manic. As such a mash up would be, of course. This volume of comics is an excellent example of what's possible when given free range with ideas, showing how two great flavors go great together. But only in small doses.

I am all too aware of how insanely geeky this whole write up is and yet I do not care one bit. Both of these series are cherished institutions in the annals of pop-culture, and to see them combined in such a fantastic, quality adventure is nothing short of astounding. It's an experience akin to Jetson's Meet the Flintstones, only zanier and with higher standards of production. If you've stuck with me this far, I would highly recommend you seek it out, if only to blow minds at the sight of these two forces combing.

Mash Bros. Brawl

Continuing along the idea of referential culture and pop-mashing, I want to write a bit about something I've been more than a little in love with as of late. Kids & Explosions is a musician whose work is no doubt polarizing. Simple googling of his nom-de-pc will turn up more than a handful of articles making the inevitable comparisons to the massively popular Girl Talk. The main difference, I've been able to ascertain, is that while Girl Talk has masterfully crafted his mash-ups to become a giant party mix that makes revelers say "Aha!", Kids & Explosions' ouvre seems to suggest more of a deconstruction of cherished and personal selections. Instead of taking a hook or chorus or instantly placable piece of history, K&E takes fragments that are less identifiable, less obvious, but more meaningful and in an odd way, more personal. 

The resulting album, S*** Computer, available for whatever you wish to pay. somehow feels more cohesive, organic even, when listened to as a whole. Instead of one massive mega-mix for parties, separate songs are established and realized by a musical alchemy of sorts. As pointed out in this break down Josh Raskin observed several rules for his construction of this album. While it's admirable that rule one was "The songs have to mean something to him" I think the real essence or trick lies in two and three - no effects applied and no pitch shifting what so ever. By breaking down songs and piecing them back together via similarities the original artists never intended, the resulting product is both novel and familiar. It bridges that gap in our minds where we know something and yet are figuring it out. Its as if the entire album exists in that transitional moment of recognition, which is an astounding accomplishment in my mind. It's as though you were falling in love forever, or permanently tasting a new dish with every bite. Along these lines, the music created by adding say, two samples together, creates not just the one on top of the other, as is often the case with mash-ups, but actually touches on a third separate song that until now may have existed, albeit only potentially. The musical equivalent of potential energy, if you will. 


An interesting cheat or caveat to the aforementioned rules is that while there is no pitch shifting to be found, there are deconstructions, tweaks and clear rearrangements. In the first minute of the album it's apparent Eminem's vocals have been chopped up and reordered. What we hear is odd - it feels like you're hearing the song you know, yet because it's in a manner that flips your expectations, as well as over the piano chords of Bryan Adam's 'Everything I Do', your mind again construes it as having been previously experienced yet feeling entirely unfamiliar. The product is thoroughly uncanny. To reiterate what I stated earlier, the feeling of two or more preexisting pieces coming together to create a unique third piece is akin to procreation, which Raskin jokes about in the aforementioned interview with Laura Lanktree. He describes it as songs "having sex" and the results feel suitably organic despite the buzzes and twists. One could guess the title of the album refers to the idea of a hard drive crashing and we're hearing the neurons cross-firing, like HAL in 2001 as it sings 'Daisy' during shutdown.


A further distinction from his Mash-Up bretheren lies in the mood of the album, which instead of being a thumping club banger, is more wistful and even haunting at times. Josh Raskin has made choices and discoveries via his palate that have meshed incredably well. I feel like it serves better as music for a small gathering for cocktails than ripping up a houseparty. Maybe I'm just getting older. OR maybe I'm just playing favorites. To be perfectly honest I didn't even have my ear to the ground. Rather, I stumbles across the album via Popmatter's excellent year-end list of the best free music of 2010. Looking to broaden horizons without breaking any laws (which, given the legal grey area of sampling to this extent is more than a little bit ironic) I checked out their recommendations and was blown away by what I had found. Among the many awesome recommendations was Kids & Explosions.


While the list I linked above is filled with excellent new music, please give a listen to Kids & Explosions, if for no other reason than to hear the future of our modern culture twisting referentiality into a genre of music.