Drooling while Sleeping
As I sit here writing this, I am effectively putting off a paying assignment in order to pull something out of my ass for your benefit (you being the three people who end up reading this). I love writing for this blog as it affords me the opportunity to stroke my ego, create something, blather about music, and get into fights.
Most film people harbor a fairly high level of apprehension for the films of Harmony Korine. I can’t really argue with this sentiment. He is often juvenile at best, and his apparent desire, if not need, to be provocative more than occasionally gets in the way of his actually making something worth a shit. Having said that, I have thoroughly enjoyed some of his work, including the infamous mess, Gummo, but perhaps even better than the film is the soundtrack.
I knew I was in for something tasty when in an opening scene you see the two hillbilly protagonists (used loosely) of the film riding their bikes through a trashed rural town to the beautiful sounds of Sleep’s Dragonaut.
Dragonaut is one of those songs that is so fucking badass that other songs offer to do its homework in order to not get their ass kicked.
I was first introduced to the majesty of Sleep at one of Ramon and Rosa’s killer Christmas parties. Back when they were still throwing these shindigs, these parties were like a who’s who of Houston retards. Members of many of Houston’s best 90’s bands were not only in attendance, but were also well cidered into the next millennium with years to spare.
While being thoroughly amused to the blatantly Black Sabbath oriented sound of Sleep I was approached by Dave Keith, member of the local grunge monster, Bleach Bath. Dave had clearly partaken in an excessive dose of the cider and was giving me one of his drunken looks.
“Hey man, what the fuck is this stuff we’re listening to,” he asked me.
“They’re called Sleep. Isn’t it amazing?”
“Shit. I gotta tell you, I’m having a real strong sense of Sabba-Vuj-De.”
Short, silent pause as we look at one another, and then suddenly both burst into laughter.
“Would that be the sense that you have heard this somewhere before, but originally created by Sabbath?”
“Something like that.”
Another in a long line of reasons why Dave is so incredibly cool.
Dragonaut is a motherfucker of a track. In fact, Dragonaut is the capper on the top of an album that is as monstrous as you would want it to be. It’s also the most derivative album I may have ever heard and still thought was total genius. It’s so good that I would personally sucker punch anyone who tried to argue its brilliance, so just don’t. The album is called Holy Mountain. I used to own it; well I guess I still technically do, but unfortunately for me, Mr. Sparrows o’ Happiness has had my copy for well nigh twelve years now. Holy Mountain, which I would assume is named after Alejandro Jodorowski's amazing film, is the be all-end all Sabbath tribute band. For me, although it is not the first release to do this, it is the genesis of the modern stoner rock sound, post Sabbath. To hear this album is truly like a bad case of Sabba-vuj-de. Around every corner is a riff lifted right out of Tony Iommi's book, but they do it so well that it only adds to brilliance of the whole thing. The whole time I listen to that album, I am constantly laughing at the obvious Sabbath influence, all while getting blown away by how good it sounds. Basically, if you took the members of Sabbath, raised them in California, kept them loaded down with free NoCal weed (like some Humboldt County shit or something), bought them Orange amps, kicked their ass into next week, and then removed half of each band member's brain you would have Sleep. Cut them loose in a studio and you get Holy Mountain. Totally fantastic stuff.
Another essential release in the Sleep catalogue is the album known (depending on which version you have) as Jerusalem, or Dopesmoker. They are essentially both the same record, but while Jerusalem is the original release that was basically a bootleg authorized by the original band members, Dopesmoker is the revamped version, released full-length, and with no edits. This matters because Jerusalem/Dopesmoker is one long, insanely ridiculous track performed at grindingly slow speed with maximum distortion and sleaze. It is completely retarded and I love every second of it. While Holy Mountain was able to both be inadvertently pants-wettingly, and completely capable of blowing you away at the same time, Jerusalem/Dopesmoker seems to sport a knowing, tongue in cheek quality to it simply by the sheer magnitude of its hugeness coupled with lines like “proceed the Weedian, Nazareth.” Nice. It’s as though Matt Pike (later of High on Fire (also fantastic)) is beginning to get the joke. In actuality he would probably kick my ass for saying that since nothing is funny to Matt Pike. It would appear as though the “Weedian” are some sort of chosen-people, out in the desert, nomadically getting all biblical and shit. I know, I know, it’s fucking ridiculous. Don’t you love it though? Yes, the answer is yes.
Enrique Iglesias could almost perform the rest of the Gummo sountrack after the Sleep track and I would probably still like it, but thankfully his mole-laden visage is nowhere to be found. Unless, that is, he plays in a Norwegian black metal band. Not saying he doesn’t, but if he does, I hope he got that Aryan creature Anna Kornikova to play bass. I’d burn churches with those two. It would totally be worth it.
The whole soundtrack is a pretty enjoyable collection of generally fairly obscure death metal bands with the exception of a few huge names. Brujeria, the joke band that also happens to be brilliant is on there with their anthem to killing whitey, Matando Gueros 97. The New York death/grind outfit, Mortician, has a brutal and merciless track replete with blastbeats that sound like they just might live up to the song title (Skin Peeler). There is a handful of nasty if not entirely goofy satanic sludge tracks like the one by New Orleans monsters, Eye Hate God. Drew from Project Grimm (my old band) is an enormous Eye Hate God fan. Their signature is slow, brutal, Sabbath-like riff oriented muck that leaves you feeling thrilled and hopeless at the same time. Rounding out the album is a couple tracks by dramatically different artists whose pieces both sound as though they belong together in this otherwise brutal collection.
First off is Suite No. 2 in Solo Cello in D Minor Prelude by the Russian composer Mischa Maiski. If I had to guess, this is the track that guys put on their extreme metal mix tapes to convince that girl that’s on the fence that it’s ok to blow him because he is really sensitive at heart. I’d like to believe that this worked on Chloe Sevigny who has twice now shown herself to be a most interesting foil to megalomaniacal filmmakers with a lust for overstatement and unintentionally hilarious imagery. No doubt Vincent Gallo promised her the world if only she would blow him, onscreen, at the climactic moment of his generally underrated film, Brown Bunny (the edited version anyway. I can’t vouch for the extended cut; you know, the one that sent him packing from Cannes with the sounds of boos hot on his ankle-booted heels).
Don’t get me wrong, the Maiski cut is truly beautiful, and it is the perfect compliment to the rest of the soundtrack. I just think that if Korine was going to put the sensitive track on there, he should perhaps mix things up just a wee more. Which, I guess, he arguably does by including the last piece I want to mention off this album.
The track in question is Rundgang Um Die Transzendentale Säule Der Singularität by the Norwegian madman, Burzum. Burzum, for those not already in the know, is the stage name for Varg Vikernes, and Vikernes was at one time a member of the Norwegian black metal band, Mayhem. The founder, guitarist and eventual vocalist of Mayhem, Euronymous (who took over after the original vocalist, Dead, blew his head off in a fit of ironic glee), was at one time great friends with Vikernes, but eventually like all things crazy, all hell broke loose. Apparantly, Vikernes felt his extreme – even for Norwegian black metal – views were simply too much for him to tolerate his friend’s homosexuality, politics, views on the “scene,” and whatever else it takes to set those already teetering people over the edge. Vikernes' solution to their differences was to brutally stab his friend to death. In a music scene already well documented for its complete adherance to violence, Satanism, ultranationalist politics, Norse mythology, extreme one-upmanship, and a slavish hatred for the centuries old influx of Christianity into Viking culture that leads to more violence and church burning, Vikernes is still a lunatic above them all. Quite a feat really. Burzum is the name of Vikernes’ band/solo-project. Early on, Burzum sounded like a particularly bleak and frightening black metal outfit with a penchant for creepy aesthetics suffused through a hushed, ghostly wail of a voice. While guitar based, early Burzum is somehow totally unique to the black metal idiom while still operating well within its boundaries. Eventually, as Vikernes became the only actual member of Burzum, the music morphed into electronic soundscapes that are often disturbing without being brash, and also quite impressive in their stark beauty. A fine example of this is the track used on the Gummo soundtrack. And it brings me back to the topic at hand.
Coupled with Maiski, Burzum is a welcomed respite in the maelstrom of pounding heaviness that otherwise dominates the soundtrack. I suppose, or at least hope, that Korine’s use of the Burzum track as a pleasnt couterpoint to the rest of the metal and noise serves as his way of injecting a little humor in the proceedings, but you know, Korine did write the screenplay for Kids after all. Subtlety isn’t exactly one of his strong points.
Then again, he did get Werner Herzog to drink cough syrup out of a women’s shoe in the film Julien Donkey Boy. That alone is enough for me to defend the guy. If only Sevigny had blown Herzog on film too. Oh well, better luck next time.
Before I go, I just have to mention one quick thing. Ever since Ramon mentioned it in his last post, this has been burning me from the inside out like some sort of hyperactive ulcer after a chili dinner.
It’s that time of year once again when the local “alternative newsweekly,” the Houston Press, gets all goofy under the collar for local music and has their music awards showcase. Fair enough. It’s a good way for people to have some fun and see a lot of music, and also a great way for some of the more popular bands in town to hang out and get blind drunk in bars that would never welcome them otherwise. Dandy. But this is where the horseshit idiocy of epically monumental proportions takes over and the Press shows itself to be the soulless turd hive that it so clearly is so much of the time.
Unless this is some sort of huge joke on the Press’s part, they will be closing out their awards showcase this year with a little band called Saliva. I know who Saliva is, but it is admittedly for dubious reasons. I don’t really know why this is, but I have this horrible ability to remember all sorts of horrible things about popular music, horrible, useless things. And when I refer to the music in question as popular, I mean – in the case of Saliva – on the verge of total anonymity. Saliva had a very minor hit about five years ago. It was one of those Three Doors Down type of rockers that makes you want to buy a rock of crack and go beat down that guy at the corner store like you always dreamed of doing if you could just find the balls to do it. Beyond that completely forgettable little number, Saliva’s main assbag is also known for singing a duet with the single greatest fuckweed in pop outside of that Creed douche, Scott Stapp: Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger. It was recorded to go on the soundtrack for Spiderman 2 and it is truly atrocious. People have been killed for less.
That’s who Saliva is, and that’s who will wrap up the awards show into one neat and tidy little package of shit. Nobody likes this band, nobody, not even the fat, sleazy, Vegas crack dealer of a frontman who sings of unrequited love and big manly guns. They are completely worthless on every level, and then to think that some asshole thought it would be a good idea to put these douchenozzles on the end of a local music awards showcase, as if a national act of the lowest order was still somehow more interesting that anything we have to offer here in Houston, is as fucking brilliant as it is arrogant. It’s like telling all the local bands that, “hey guys, we really think you’re all so gosh-darn groovy. In fact, we think you’re all so dee-lish that we want to punch up the show with a little treat for everyone just to show, A) how little we actually think of Houston bands, and, B) how morally bankrupt our sense of humor has to be in order to think we could ever walk in this town again without being sniped from the top of every building. Enjoy your show, Houston! You rock, baby!”
Idiots. May Rusted Shut finally do the do and burn that fucker to the ground. I might go to that show.
On second thought…
Most film people harbor a fairly high level of apprehension for the films of Harmony Korine. I can’t really argue with this sentiment. He is often juvenile at best, and his apparent desire, if not need, to be provocative more than occasionally gets in the way of his actually making something worth a shit. Having said that, I have thoroughly enjoyed some of his work, including the infamous mess, Gummo, but perhaps even better than the film is the soundtrack.
I knew I was in for something tasty when in an opening scene you see the two hillbilly protagonists (used loosely) of the film riding their bikes through a trashed rural town to the beautiful sounds of Sleep’s Dragonaut.
Dragonaut is one of those songs that is so fucking badass that other songs offer to do its homework in order to not get their ass kicked.
I was first introduced to the majesty of Sleep at one of Ramon and Rosa’s killer Christmas parties. Back when they were still throwing these shindigs, these parties were like a who’s who of Houston retards. Members of many of Houston’s best 90’s bands were not only in attendance, but were also well cidered into the next millennium with years to spare.
While being thoroughly amused to the blatantly Black Sabbath oriented sound of Sleep I was approached by Dave Keith, member of the local grunge monster, Bleach Bath. Dave had clearly partaken in an excessive dose of the cider and was giving me one of his drunken looks.
“Hey man, what the fuck is this stuff we’re listening to,” he asked me.
“They’re called Sleep. Isn’t it amazing?”
“Shit. I gotta tell you, I’m having a real strong sense of Sabba-Vuj-De.”
Short, silent pause as we look at one another, and then suddenly both burst into laughter.
“Would that be the sense that you have heard this somewhere before, but originally created by Sabbath?”
“Something like that.”
Another in a long line of reasons why Dave is so incredibly cool.
Dragonaut is a motherfucker of a track. In fact, Dragonaut is the capper on the top of an album that is as monstrous as you would want it to be. It’s also the most derivative album I may have ever heard and still thought was total genius. It’s so good that I would personally sucker punch anyone who tried to argue its brilliance, so just don’t. The album is called Holy Mountain. I used to own it; well I guess I still technically do, but unfortunately for me, Mr. Sparrows o’ Happiness has had my copy for well nigh twelve years now. Holy Mountain, which I would assume is named after Alejandro Jodorowski's amazing film, is the be all-end all Sabbath tribute band. For me, although it is not the first release to do this, it is the genesis of the modern stoner rock sound, post Sabbath. To hear this album is truly like a bad case of Sabba-vuj-de. Around every corner is a riff lifted right out of Tony Iommi's book, but they do it so well that it only adds to brilliance of the whole thing. The whole time I listen to that album, I am constantly laughing at the obvious Sabbath influence, all while getting blown away by how good it sounds. Basically, if you took the members of Sabbath, raised them in California, kept them loaded down with free NoCal weed (like some Humboldt County shit or something), bought them Orange amps, kicked their ass into next week, and then removed half of each band member's brain you would have Sleep. Cut them loose in a studio and you get Holy Mountain. Totally fantastic stuff.
Another essential release in the Sleep catalogue is the album known (depending on which version you have) as Jerusalem, or Dopesmoker. They are essentially both the same record, but while Jerusalem is the original release that was basically a bootleg authorized by the original band members, Dopesmoker is the revamped version, released full-length, and with no edits. This matters because Jerusalem/Dopesmoker is one long, insanely ridiculous track performed at grindingly slow speed with maximum distortion and sleaze. It is completely retarded and I love every second of it. While Holy Mountain was able to both be inadvertently pants-wettingly, and completely capable of blowing you away at the same time, Jerusalem/Dopesmoker seems to sport a knowing, tongue in cheek quality to it simply by the sheer magnitude of its hugeness coupled with lines like “proceed the Weedian, Nazareth.” Nice. It’s as though Matt Pike (later of High on Fire (also fantastic)) is beginning to get the joke. In actuality he would probably kick my ass for saying that since nothing is funny to Matt Pike. It would appear as though the “Weedian” are some sort of chosen-people, out in the desert, nomadically getting all biblical and shit. I know, I know, it’s fucking ridiculous. Don’t you love it though? Yes, the answer is yes.
Enrique Iglesias could almost perform the rest of the Gummo sountrack after the Sleep track and I would probably still like it, but thankfully his mole-laden visage is nowhere to be found. Unless, that is, he plays in a Norwegian black metal band. Not saying he doesn’t, but if he does, I hope he got that Aryan creature Anna Kornikova to play bass. I’d burn churches with those two. It would totally be worth it.
The whole soundtrack is a pretty enjoyable collection of generally fairly obscure death metal bands with the exception of a few huge names. Brujeria, the joke band that also happens to be brilliant is on there with their anthem to killing whitey, Matando Gueros 97. The New York death/grind outfit, Mortician, has a brutal and merciless track replete with blastbeats that sound like they just might live up to the song title (Skin Peeler). There is a handful of nasty if not entirely goofy satanic sludge tracks like the one by New Orleans monsters, Eye Hate God. Drew from Project Grimm (my old band) is an enormous Eye Hate God fan. Their signature is slow, brutal, Sabbath-like riff oriented muck that leaves you feeling thrilled and hopeless at the same time. Rounding out the album is a couple tracks by dramatically different artists whose pieces both sound as though they belong together in this otherwise brutal collection.
First off is Suite No. 2 in Solo Cello in D Minor Prelude by the Russian composer Mischa Maiski. If I had to guess, this is the track that guys put on their extreme metal mix tapes to convince that girl that’s on the fence that it’s ok to blow him because he is really sensitive at heart. I’d like to believe that this worked on Chloe Sevigny who has twice now shown herself to be a most interesting foil to megalomaniacal filmmakers with a lust for overstatement and unintentionally hilarious imagery. No doubt Vincent Gallo promised her the world if only she would blow him, onscreen, at the climactic moment of his generally underrated film, Brown Bunny (the edited version anyway. I can’t vouch for the extended cut; you know, the one that sent him packing from Cannes with the sounds of boos hot on his ankle-booted heels).
Don’t get me wrong, the Maiski cut is truly beautiful, and it is the perfect compliment to the rest of the soundtrack. I just think that if Korine was going to put the sensitive track on there, he should perhaps mix things up just a wee more. Which, I guess, he arguably does by including the last piece I want to mention off this album.
The track in question is Rundgang Um Die Transzendentale Säule Der Singularität by the Norwegian madman, Burzum. Burzum, for those not already in the know, is the stage name for Varg Vikernes, and Vikernes was at one time a member of the Norwegian black metal band, Mayhem. The founder, guitarist and eventual vocalist of Mayhem, Euronymous (who took over after the original vocalist, Dead, blew his head off in a fit of ironic glee), was at one time great friends with Vikernes, but eventually like all things crazy, all hell broke loose. Apparantly, Vikernes felt his extreme – even for Norwegian black metal – views were simply too much for him to tolerate his friend’s homosexuality, politics, views on the “scene,” and whatever else it takes to set those already teetering people over the edge. Vikernes' solution to their differences was to brutally stab his friend to death. In a music scene already well documented for its complete adherance to violence, Satanism, ultranationalist politics, Norse mythology, extreme one-upmanship, and a slavish hatred for the centuries old influx of Christianity into Viking culture that leads to more violence and church burning, Vikernes is still a lunatic above them all. Quite a feat really. Burzum is the name of Vikernes’ band/solo-project. Early on, Burzum sounded like a particularly bleak and frightening black metal outfit with a penchant for creepy aesthetics suffused through a hushed, ghostly wail of a voice. While guitar based, early Burzum is somehow totally unique to the black metal idiom while still operating well within its boundaries. Eventually, as Vikernes became the only actual member of Burzum, the music morphed into electronic soundscapes that are often disturbing without being brash, and also quite impressive in their stark beauty. A fine example of this is the track used on the Gummo soundtrack. And it brings me back to the topic at hand.
Coupled with Maiski, Burzum is a welcomed respite in the maelstrom of pounding heaviness that otherwise dominates the soundtrack. I suppose, or at least hope, that Korine’s use of the Burzum track as a pleasnt couterpoint to the rest of the metal and noise serves as his way of injecting a little humor in the proceedings, but you know, Korine did write the screenplay for Kids after all. Subtlety isn’t exactly one of his strong points.
Then again, he did get Werner Herzog to drink cough syrup out of a women’s shoe in the film Julien Donkey Boy. That alone is enough for me to defend the guy. If only Sevigny had blown Herzog on film too. Oh well, better luck next time.
Before I go, I just have to mention one quick thing. Ever since Ramon mentioned it in his last post, this has been burning me from the inside out like some sort of hyperactive ulcer after a chili dinner.
It’s that time of year once again when the local “alternative newsweekly,” the Houston Press, gets all goofy under the collar for local music and has their music awards showcase. Fair enough. It’s a good way for people to have some fun and see a lot of music, and also a great way for some of the more popular bands in town to hang out and get blind drunk in bars that would never welcome them otherwise. Dandy. But this is where the horseshit idiocy of epically monumental proportions takes over and the Press shows itself to be the soulless turd hive that it so clearly is so much of the time.
Unless this is some sort of huge joke on the Press’s part, they will be closing out their awards showcase this year with a little band called Saliva. I know who Saliva is, but it is admittedly for dubious reasons. I don’t really know why this is, but I have this horrible ability to remember all sorts of horrible things about popular music, horrible, useless things. And when I refer to the music in question as popular, I mean – in the case of Saliva – on the verge of total anonymity. Saliva had a very minor hit about five years ago. It was one of those Three Doors Down type of rockers that makes you want to buy a rock of crack and go beat down that guy at the corner store like you always dreamed of doing if you could just find the balls to do it. Beyond that completely forgettable little number, Saliva’s main assbag is also known for singing a duet with the single greatest fuckweed in pop outside of that Creed douche, Scott Stapp: Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger. It was recorded to go on the soundtrack for Spiderman 2 and it is truly atrocious. People have been killed for less.
That’s who Saliva is, and that’s who will wrap up the awards show into one neat and tidy little package of shit. Nobody likes this band, nobody, not even the fat, sleazy, Vegas crack dealer of a frontman who sings of unrequited love and big manly guns. They are completely worthless on every level, and then to think that some asshole thought it would be a good idea to put these douchenozzles on the end of a local music awards showcase, as if a national act of the lowest order was still somehow more interesting that anything we have to offer here in Houston, is as fucking brilliant as it is arrogant. It’s like telling all the local bands that, “hey guys, we really think you’re all so gosh-darn groovy. In fact, we think you’re all so dee-lish that we want to punch up the show with a little treat for everyone just to show, A) how little we actually think of Houston bands, and, B) how morally bankrupt our sense of humor has to be in order to think we could ever walk in this town again without being sniped from the top of every building. Enjoy your show, Houston! You rock, baby!”
Idiots. May Rusted Shut finally do the do and burn that fucker to the ground. I might go to that show.
On second thought…
Labels: Burzum, Gummo, Harmony Korine, Saliva, Sleep, the Houston Press
