Monday, August 6, 2007  3:00 pm 

ROBOT Trip Towards HUMAN (& we HEART LEE)

About one film that was seen, one that hasn’t yet and one that should be made, and then a sad ending. This is how the story goes:

20Jazzfunkgreats one visited the Duke of York’s on Saturday Night to see Daft Punk’s Electroma. It is a word-less tale about two robots (them wearing those fancy helmets and nicely embroidered leather jackets) searching for humanity, achieving it very imperfectly, surrendering, dying (?). Although some of the people I went with found it boring/frustrating/fell asleep I really enjoyed it, but then I was kind of drunk (had been out for the whole day sitting in the Park and stuff yeah?) and got lost, in the best of ways, inside the infinite ochre landscapes our mechanical heroes, ever so loyal to each other, cris cross looking for something that apparently can only be found in the furnace of oblivion, I didn’t know fire could burn that way.

The soundtrack fits beautifully with the Paris Texas v THX 1138 (maybe Vanishing Point through the key-hole) vibe of the film, like a rug of brown clouds reflecting the earth of the desert in the mirror of the sky, very nice.

Todd Rundgren- International Feel

Todd Rundgren kickstarts the film with the sort of epic horizontal glam take off one would expect from silvery leather clad robots driving a black Cadillac el Dorado towards Humanity, beyond the Event Horizon barrier in an impossible trip which is nevertheless worth taking.

You know how we have been sort of sceptic about the whole coronation of the Ed Banger sound as the greatest thing to happen to dance music since the first burp of baby Roland TB303, or the music scene that got the indie kids dancing for the erm, 15th time, well, yeah, we have been, but credit where credit’s due, the soundtrack for SteaK composed by Sebastian Tellier, SebastiAn and Mr. Oizo (who also directs the film) contains a handful of lovely pieces including this arresting arpeggiated robo-concertina which seems to quote Vitalic’s Polkamatic, we dedicate it to all the Runaway Aibos out there.

Sebastian Tellier & Mr Oizo- Exploites

Follow it up ‘Camera’s Ready prepare to flash’ style with one track that hasn’t been used for an OST quite yet, but then it’s difficult to raise funds to shoot a psychedelic Western whose climax consists of Clint Eastwood having a showdown with Lee Van Cleef’s during a Transilvanian Walpurgisnacht rave. We think it’s a total winner, but the money men don’t seem to trust the psychic powers of our casting team…

Supermayer- Two of Us

Supermayer (i.e. Aksel Schaufler of Superpitcher fame and god of minimalism Michael Mayer) trance the Morricone in Two of Us, crossover minimal // waves of euphoria wash over your body // murderous crescendo dynamics, anticipates Supermayer’s Save the World & should detonate parties all over the summer like say this Kompakt one IN LONDON ON THE 8th THIS IS TOMORROW which our favouritest Allez Allez be putting on, check out that hot Matias Aguayo mix too…

Now, be there & be getting down, tix here.

And let us close with a little post-scriptum, it is with great sadness that we heard, on Sunday night, of Lee Hazlewood’s passing away.

In his obituary in the Guardian , he is quoted as saying ‘Thank God for kids that love obscure things! I never thought anyone would pay attention to those records, and it’s a good feeling. It makes me feel like I really did get to do what I wanted to do‘.

Indeed, thank god for Lee Hazlewood. Now here you have one of the few guys I considered a hero, a big regret I have is not having attended his Brighton gig when he came over a few years ago, oh well, Lee would understand, he taught us a couple of things about regret, didn’t he?

Lee Hazlewood- My Baby Cried all Night Long

He took the archetypical figure of the stranger in a strange town, who perhaps plays around, but then in doing so is only playing himself, trying to keep the silence away, and injected it with that nagging existential suspicion, you know, that some are born to live and die alone, feeling this doesn’t make it any less important to keep trying to be proved wrong, even if it has to be one night at a time.

Jason Molina put it better than we ever could

I’ve been riding with the ghost
I’ve been doing whatever he told me
I’ve been looking door to door to see
If there was someone who’d hold me
I never met a single one who didn’t see through me
None of them could love me if they thought they might lose me

All of this while wisecracking all the way to the grave like someone who knew how to cut deals, fix motors and find stolen cattle, a husky lived & loved in voice, aproaching town from the desert drenched in that reverb & twang Phil Spector ended up nicking, Lee ruled and we’ll miss being in the same world as him, yet we’re sure he shuffled into the darkness with a smile in his dry lips, tickling a grey moustache, so it goes.

Lee Hazlewood- Easy and Me

labels >> Allez Allez, Kompakt, Soundtrack, french stuff

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