Thursday, May 29, 2008  12:32 am 

Each second a snowflake

Put this on your iPod while riding in the London Underground early in the morning, I am sure you can find at least 5 or 6 people in your carriage who could well be thinking the lyrics of this song, their gaits desperate and sunk inside a trap of neon bleak like the antechamber to purgatory. Lives collapsing inside a mechanical structure also collapsing, perhaps a metaphor for the way our society is organised, a constant blitz of which the underground is one of the few respites. However, ultimate escape is impossible, hence these desperate thoughts trailing behind the haunted passengers like threads of ectoplasm.

Suddenly you stumble upon eyes staring at you, someone listening to their ipod, maybe this song, what do they see, what are you thinking?

Anna – Systems Breaking Down

Anna’s ‘Systems Breaking Down’ records a gentle collapse of all structures, financial also if you want to get the original 12”, it has however been recently re-issued in the fantastic Discotech compilation, this is the sound of mascara and tears, a flood streaming black across the pale landscape of a trembling face, lovely music and, oh, so sad.

Photo above by Edward B.

(We hear that that bloated clown Londoners voted to lead them is banning drinking in the underground from the 1st of June, lo! it’s reassuring to know that the biggest problem plaguing the big Smoke is finally being addressed, I’m sure the forces of the constabulary are going to have a grand time enforcing this measure. Maybe you should join our partner in crime Lord Nuneaton Savage and his comrades in a Circle Line bender taking place on the 31st of May, where our betters’ efforts to protect everyone from themselves will be suitably saluted).

Whether or not Oblio are In Flagranti in disguise is now of no consequence because the two identities have grown two separate cyclopean towers of thumping disco on the plains of 2OJFGland and each of their architectural designs is different to the other in a myriad of subtle yet effective ways, with In Flagranti’s morphing into a twisted chrome edifice that mimics the Eiffel Tower if it was conceived and constructed by Cerrone, and Oblio’s tower; a thin glacial pillar stretching to the stars in a bid to return the denizens back from whence they came.

Oblio – More Thieving

Strange things are happening in ‘More Thieving’ from the new Codek 12″. A 1980’s polar expedition is filmed in black and white silence, all slow motion drama as the ground cracks and an assortment of climbing equipment vanishes down the newborn crevice along with a pack of huskies and a few good men. But in a grindhouse cinematic cut, stock National Geographic photography of Pluto’s immense icecaps are recorded, spliced in with water imagery, dinosaurs encased in blocks of ice, and documentary film of the Moon landing played backwards.

Head to IHeartComix to catch more Oblio greatness, then check the 12″ at Juno before it disappears.

labels >> anna, ice, oblio, underground

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