Pictures for Music. Robert Longo, 1979.
- “Cortigiana Dal Velo” from S/T 7" by Onna (1983)
%s1 / %s2
Holy Mountain has gone ahead and done obscure music fans a huge service by reissuing this 1983 single by the Japanese band Onna (also available as a CD with bonus live and unreleased tracks). Maintaining a trajectory somewhere between gloomier ADK releases and the more focused Les Rallizes Denudes/PSF family they create a melancholic acid wave sound that is arresting in its intimacy. The record was produced by the Stalin’s Michiro Endo.
Both the 7” and single are available from the label.
SFGate reports that Clear has gone kaput. The service that simultaneously raised privacy issues and brought a little piece of sci-fi movies to life allowed frequent flyers to bypass post 9/11 security lines in exchange for iris scans and intimate details. Clear shut down on Monday night and is not offering refunds.
Gracia Lam
This illustration by Gracia Lam in the New York Times caught my eye this morning. You can see more of her work here.
My Fantoms
Tapestries, statues, and corpses come to life; young men dream their way into ruin; and Gautier keeps his faith in the power of imagination: “No one is truly dead, until they are no longer loved.”
(⇒ via a journey round my skull)
Tart Cards
Wallpaper sponsored an exhibition of “Type Tart Cards” featuring a slew of designers.
Mike Dempsey’s response and contribution are worth reading.
[this is rad]
Sites of Impact
The Morning News has a beautiful set of photographs of meteorite impact sites from around the world by Stan Gaz.
The helicopter was old and worn and so was the pilot. I wasn’t nervous until we were three thousand feet above Moab, which is all treacherous rock canyons. I turned to the pilot to ask him to lean the machine sideways, and he had fallen asleep! I thought it might be a heart attack and realized it would be hard, if not impossible, for me to land because I didn’t know how to fly and there was no instruction manual. I grabbed him and shook him a bit and he woke up. We landed safe.
Darvaza: The Door To Hell
According to Wikipedia “In 1971, while drilling for natural gas in Darvaza, Turkmenistan, the ground on which the drilling rig was placed collapsed, leaving a large gaping hole exposed with a diameter of around 60 meters. To avoid poisonous gases coming out of the hole, it was decided to let the gases burn. As of 2008, gases in the underground cavern are still burning without interruption. Locals have named the cavern The Door to Hell.”
(⇒ via underground blog (best cross-promotional blog ever?))
Amekaji So Kawaii!
“Alongside the familiar L. L. Bean duck boots, Brooks Brothers shirts and Ray-Ban Wayfarers, there are Filson duffel bags, Gokey boots, Alden dress shoes, Gitman oxford shirts, Quoddy Trail moccasins, Wm. J. Mills canvas totes — to name but a few.”
Apparently, it takes a about 18 months to go from “criminally slept on”to “byword for Americana style in the NYT Styles section.
This is the best part of the article, though:
“What makes today’s prepidemic so fascinating is how it is, surprisingly enough, so Japanese. The look has its roots in the United States, to be sure. But the spirit, rigor and execution of today’s prep moment is as Japanese as Sony.”
This is totally true. Consequently (and with an american-made straw boater tip to Nina), I think rather than referring to this style as “made-in-the-usa/americana/workwear/classic”, we should borrow from the Japanese and just shorten it to amekaji. Here are some sample usages:
“Hey, have you been to the J. Crew Liquor Store?” “Yeah, man, that place is totally amekaji.”
“Have you noticed The Sartorialist has been posting an awful lot of amekaji photos lately?”.
The other thing weird about that first paragraph is that we actually like all that stuff.
For the commute: The Solitudes (formerly Aegypt) in audio book form. Read by John Crowley, himself.
I will never know whether it is a diamond or a coin.
Rhodes
From Cecil Rhodes’ first will:
To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity.
This was later scratched, and in his last will and testament Rhodes established the Rhodes Scholarship.
I think my audience is more women then men, and I tell you what, see, that really makes me feel good— because basically for every woman that comes, you can figure that she’s going to have at least three men following her around
—Bluesman Little Milton, on marketing music
(⇒ via npr/google booksearch)