Ive always been a big fan and defender of Brett Easton Ellis, but I can't quite decide if his new book Lunar Park is a hilarious, meaningful hoax or just a pile of self-absorbed bullshit.
Lunar Park is so steeped in the author's own mythology and referential to his preexisting texts that he might as well have sent it out as a newsletter to his fan club or just posted up on his website. Likely he and his publisher Random House are trying to create a sexy multimedia buzz that will appeal to postmodern audiences innured to print. The "controversy" over the book looks to be little more than preemptive marketing made to appear larger than "just a book". The author (who, as a reference, referred to the film version of the book "Fight Club" as a "wild orgiastic pop masterpiece") may be trying to override the traditional program of print to film to web content by creating a publicity bonfire which would engulf his public image and reputation as a writer of meaningful literature.
There's much (perhaps too much) more about this at the obessive "celeblog" Brett Easton Ellis- Not An Exit .
But the real strange stuff is at the official LUNAR PARK website , where you can read the divergent biographies of Ellis and the character of Brett Easton Ellis in the novel. There's a link on there to the website of Ellis' fictional wife in the novel, an actress named Jayne Dennis. The photos of her on the site are, on closer inspection, digital amalgamation of the physical features of a number of famous actresses (it looks like Penelope Cruz's body with Natalie Portman's cheekbones, etc).
Probably the most fun part of the EastonEllis site is the "Exquisite corpse" short story writing contest, where teams of Ellis fans compete in writing stories in his style, line by line, without reading the sentence before. The results are sometimes hilarious and about as cohesive as genuine Easton Ellis prose, stuff like "After i finished vomiting I thought about the sexy barrista down at Starbucks and reached in my pocket for my Colonopin. The Eagles' "Take it Easy" was playing as muzak as I passed the bloodstains on the hallway wall on my way into the kitchen and the pitcher of Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville" brand Margaritas i had blended." or something.

WHITE ANIMAL 2: THE QUICKENING

OK, So after working doubles all summer (4 jobs at once!) I finally have couple spare minutes to work on shit so now it's time for a reinvention of the White Animal brand name. Im not what this will entail but I must thank G and my freind Art for inspiring me with his weblog 3rdarm.biz. Check out the shoutcast for mad Art flavour- you might even catch "Flowers for Mama".
First I have to complete the GNE Excellent adventure site, then I'll be posting more with stories, photos, etc. This may track my movements the next few months from where I am now on the tip of cape cod to Providence, Brooklyn, Minneapolis, and then for G and I's now seemingly quite probable relocation down south with expected stops in Philly, Richmond, and Raleigh on our way to Asheville. Finally then it's the big dip south (this is way everythings heading- south) to Beunos Aires, maybe Uruguay and south Brazil.
Im going to acctually write something about all this soon, but for now if anyone happens to read this in New England this week, me Jason and maybe Andrew are heading to Providence on Saturday to see 13 the God, the new Themselves/Notwist project at the living room. If anyone is around come meet us there.

Cock Rock Disco

After hearing his show on podcast from WFMU I was convinced that the dude known as Donna Summer was some kind of kingpin of this new breakcore/digitalgrind/crazyshit music that only dorks like like you listen to on the computer. He reminded me of that guy you hear on the "Some Old Bullshit" Beastie Boys record who's like "What do we know about partying or anything else?!"-- his name was Summers too wasn't it? Anyway his site httpCock Rock Disco
:// is a great source for this type of wildass music (esp themp3 section
that is rocking the nation of the unemployable and free-time addled

Man, I'm not even going to go into the insane time that I had in catacombs underneath Paris (if you want the full story check G N E Excellent Adventure
g and e excellent adventure), except to feature this link to the music of Cavage records
. Cavage is a diy label run by the graphitti crew FC (Frotte, Connard!, french for "Brush, Asshole", a taunt to the anti-grafitti "cataphiles" who try to remove their tags). Much of the music is recorded underground using pirated electricity. The styles featured range from what the Frenchies so lamely call "text", i.e. folk music, and grimy hip hop that some refer to as Flopcore or something. It is all, like the cataphiles themselves, grizzly, dirty, loud, and very fucking French. Here are some more links to Cavage and FC sites FC site, and FC photos and journal. It's all in French, so dont expect to understand it. word.

We've found the Booty!

I gave up awhile ago trying to find an upload of Diplo's awesome Favela on Blast mixtape to add a link to, but them our girl Emily sent me something even better- a link to this dope collection of rare Baille Funk and Brazilian Hip Hop (link is on the title). There's plenty of it and the quality varies, so check it all out. Download the songs and make your own mix, eff those culture snobs. Seems like this shit is getting a lot of press in the states so maybe we're not blowing anyone's mind with this (I dont know, Im in Barcelona right now and people are so hip theyre probably totally over it, like Brazilian rap came and went with trucker hats in 1995), but at least youre not buying some Audio archivists studious sociological study on CD from Borders.

OK, so I'm an unabashed gay for Vice magazine. I know, it's easy to hate on, but I have to admit that I am squarely in its intended readership demographic. I found something on the viceland website recently that I particularly liked-"Love Kills" a comic from 1990 by none other than Vice editor Gavin MacInnes, a man now probably most famous for making fun of people's clothes, about touring the squats of Europe using connections he got from the back pages of Maximum Rock and Roll. That's right, before all the cynicism and hipster sarcasm, seems like Mr. MacInnes actually believed in some things and talks about anarchist gatherings and demonstrations the way now talks about nice shoes or whatever. The (kind of dirty) style is maybe something like James Kolchaka or even Snakepit zine
, though judging from the timeframe it was probably most influenced by P. Bagge's Hate comics and the like.

our boy Butch from Ashville is quite a versatile nigga- he's played in bands like Sink The Fucker and Resurrectum, printed a zine that consistently didn't suck- Menace, and now he's sent me scans of some of his new paintings. He almost gives you faith in the punk underground. Almost.

Oh shit.. I think I might just have to go completely off the map and hide out in Barcelona for an extra month in order to be there for the Sonar music festival 2005. 2 Many DJs, Soulwax, De la soul, DJ/rupture, MIA and Diplo, mouse on Mars, LCD soundsystem, DOSEONE and Subtle, Edan, Battles, and shitloads more, June 16th 17th and 18th. I think I could swing it.. i could just squat in Barcelona, eat out of dumpsters, and when the time came around, overpower or possibly kill a bouncer to get in and not have to pay 100 euros for the tickets.

Yo, i have never wanted more for a handheld digital recorder as two nights ago listening to the devotional music being made at the little shiva temple by the burning ghat on the Ganges river here in Benares. Every night there's a blackout from 9:15 to 10:15 and this was during the dark hour on a holy saturday night and it was powerful- the bodies were burning and all these men were having a drum circle with candlelight and singing and chanting, ringing bells. Im just beginning to pick up Indian CDs but Im sure I'll go nuts on that before I leave. If you are in the market for "Indian jawns" (as diplo would say), raaga.com
is a good resource- they host all different styles of Indian music, from the latest Bollywood crap, to intense devotional songs to hot old-school bhangra and all that shiiit.

Nevermind the lame Ghost-in-the-Shell-era "Tech" head banner, the "urban travel guide" site GRIDSKIPPER
is one of the best travel sites i've seen- it is published by multiple guest editors, so the entries and recommendations featured can be hilarious, pretensious, pointless, dead-on, etc, just anything different from Lonely Planet and the like.

OH man, these "band photos" the WRANGLER BRUTES (r.i.p.?) sent out to promote themselves are amazing. At first I was like.. "What happened to McPheeters? It looks like he melted." Then I got the joke. Who are these guys anyway? The "lead singer" looks like a cross between Capt. Lou Albano and Grandpa Munster. Wrangler Brutes are the new "classic L.A. style" hardcore band from ex-Born against frontman and sometimes Providence resident Sam McPheeters. This is the same guy who once went on the Montell Williams show and stood up and said that he only dated black women and got the audience to go nuts. Here's an example of the Wrangler Brutality: Shit Search. I says on the site that they are finished, so that's that.

But of course the true monster of last summer's playlists out in capecod world was ROCK THE PARTI by Goldchains I'm pretty positive that I can't approve of anything he's done since, but this song alone should elevate him to the strata of the greatest songwriters of all time. What's the best part..? When he says his "caravan" is going to "head down to Chechnia, and trade drum machines for guns, so the kids can have more fun" or when he lists the things he's done , which include "Inventing marijuana"(!)? Ok here's some live video of the jam being performed but you must get the original in stereo to pump loudly next time you need some motivation.

FUCK OFF WANKERS!!

Call this the "ghosts of last summer" section-- The reigning dancefloor king on cape cod this past summer was undeniably AWOL ONE- well, maybe not him so much as the song Rhythm. He may have been responable for other things more twisted or brilliant, but no one who was down last summer can deny the ass-movement powers of this track.

So if you were anywhere near my house or the O'hara manor last summer, chances are you heard a fuzzy, poppy 70's brazilian song that was a danceparty staple. This song, which joel got from one of his brother's Three Kind of Stupid compilations is by a band called Os Brazoes. Apparantly these guys kind of came and went, but the one pyched-out LP they released has become hot property amongst record nerds. I couldn't find much of their music available for free on the internet, but i did find some DJ sets by some scandinavian DJs who weave so OS Brazoes music into their ninjatune-like sets. here's a one- Set 1, with the set list found here. Word.

Our girl Emily has just scanned a bunch of her brilliant polaroid work onto the SFB site. "Roid Rage" can be viewed here. Keep ya head up shorty!

Check our friend Michael Stuetz's slick photo website for some schooling, yah heard?

While we were in P.R., Jen picked up El Progresso (not the soup) by the Boriqueno MCSiete Nueve (79) along with the Intifada, a side project of the producer Ya'll Zee who also has a solo record out (all available from phantomvox). The shit is pretty nice and was a bit of a relief from the relentless beat of the thugged-out Reggaeton which bumped out of every truck on the street (not that we were hating on that at all times, either). Sorry, but all i could find were cut-off WMA files (goddamn intellectual property standards!) but here are some tastes- Poesia Subterranea by Siete Nueve, Mi Vida by the Intifada and Tek Nologia by Y'all Zee.

Dezaire

The other the thing we discovered and were rocking pretty regularly (especially while working, appropriately) was Dezaire from the island of St. Croix. It's reggae with an outspoken political stance akin to say, Sizzla, combined it with a smooth roots sound and an angelic voice. It's music you can chill to on the beach and still get something meaningful out of. Here's a stream of the albumGracious Mama Africa (you'll need to download Realplayer).

Speaking of Jen and I's strange excursion to the land of coqui frogs, while we were camping on the island of Culebra there was a rainstorm and we ended up holed up with a guy who turned out to be a member of Wooden Robot, the rad multi-intrumental band from MIlwaukee. It turns out Jen was good friends with his roomate back home. Wooden Robot kind took that trend of adding string or other old-timey instruments to hardcore music that was going around a few years ago and just took it all the way. Where those other bands just seemed to be using the unusual sounds and mournful melodies as a novelty, Wooden Robot made that spooky, atmospheric sound their main M.O. which then sometimes gives way to raging thrashy passages. Acctually being trained musicians doesn't hurt either. Check their Wooden Robot flash sitefor more info and streaming music. (the above jpg is on of those exquisite corpse drawings all 7 members of bands did together.. i dunno)