music promo Friday: Recoil

I only learned about this band because the song "Chrome" was on a Black Swan fanmix.  "Chrome" is an interesting song, btw, and I can see why that person chose it for Black Swan.  Thanks fanmix!  Recoil is similar to Massive Attack, but were founded by a former member of Depeche Mode, and some of their songs (like "Black Box" 2) are way creepier than any Massive Attack song. 

These songs are off their album Liquid.  And the trend of my finding music that I later discover to be somehow inspired by plane crashes continues (started with Rammstein's Reise Reise, whose album cover looks like a damaged cockpit flight recorder), because apparently Liquid is "considered to be a concept album revolving around a near-death experience in 1994. Wilder and his partner, Hepzibah Sessa, were driving in Scotland and a Tornado Bomber hit a hillside in front of them, and two airmen were killed. The idea of the album, especially the bookending track "Black Box", centered around what was going through the pilot's last moments of life."

"Jezebel."  Great, great video (with NiN influences??  I don't know my music video history, it just reminds me of "Closer"'s "infamous" video) and arrangement for a traditional song - we gotta go to judgment and stand trial:

"Supreme," which is basically all in the lyrics.  Which are awesome, explosive, etc.  "She's playing house, he's playing man, and junior is the only one who accepts he's just a child."  And "Says, 'Fatherhood is real cool, and the kid looks like me, so she better not let nothing happen to him or I’ma kill the bitch.'"

"Strange Hours."  Great video:

But this is the promo version.  The version I own is the "alternate version," apparently, and is two minutes longer.  Those extra two minutes are really scary in a David Lynch's Inland Empire way.  I kind of can't listen to it, haha.  Anyway, the alternate version, with the "demonic glossolalia" as a YT commenter calls it, includes the all-important solution to the riddle of this man that kept strange hours: "He had murdered his fiancee.  He sacrificed her for the purity of all mankind."

"Last Call for Liquid Courage," which needs a video, but doesn't have one unfortunately.  I love listening to this one.  It's a trip.  The refrain is simply "One more drink, baby, more drink."

"Black Box (1 and 2)."  This is the plane crash witness confessional song.  It's split into two songs on the album, but this YT user stitched them together.  I actually really prefer the quieter second half, which starts at about 9:30. 

PYM

PYM by Mat Johnson is a whole bunch of awesome (as pgtremblay promised it would be).  It is, basically, the kind of science fiction/fantasy* that I really enjoy and get a lot out of.  That is:

• Well-written.
• Written with passion.  I don't know how to describe this really, I just know it when I see it.
• Overflowing with sharp, biting, often-funny social commentary. 
• Smart.  The whole thing is a sequel and satire of Edgar Allen Poe's rather racist, open-ended fantasy The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and the narrator is a black-but-looks-white literature professor who's just been denied tenure for refusing to go along with the college's pointless Diversity Committee.  The original story features an undiscovered island full of extraordinarily black, blacker than black people, as well as an Antarctica that's home to an extraordinarily white, whiter than white giant.  That's all I'll tell you, because finding out what happens after is the good part - the journey is the reward itself, etc.  PYM is mental acrobatics - not difficult to read, though, and very engaging - but the set-up is mental acrobatics. 
• Not an exercise in authorial wish fulfillment.  I mean, there is a ton of desire and wishing going on, but... the best laid plans, etc.
• Just a little bit wacko = kind of like the endearing quality "whimsy," but a lot less cute and a lot more WTF. 

It's also a lot of fun and occasionally laugh-out-loud funny, most of the way at least (the tone changes near the end).  Mostly this is due to Johnson's evident great talent for voice.  And another thing (I may get flack for this, but whatever...)?  I don't think this could have been written by someone who wasn't black.  Or at least it would have been extraordinarily hard.  So much of it - and I really mean this, it's basically the whole book - is about (the author's take on) being black in America, being black within the social and cultural history of America.

Good stuff.  Wish more stuff was like this.  

* But I'm pretty sure this would get shelved in the "literary" section of the library, despite the, uh, ice yetis involved.