28 days later | never | redux

bagpipe |ˌbagpʌip |
noun (usu. bagpipes)

The bagpipe is a wind instrument used among the ancient Greeks but is known as a Scottish and Irish instrument.
Source: Foster, Ellsworth D. The American Educator (Chicago: Ralph Durham Company, 1921)

Had viral collagists, God Speed You! Black Emperor occupied a space somewhere in Europe between 1969 and 1975, they may well have been tarred with the ugly pointed stick underpinning Progressive Rock. The nomenclature. Compared, uncharitably, to Tangerene Dream, their incestuous tangle is - to my nose - an altogether more appealing blend.

Pardon me while I cough. Uncork the Coedine Linctus.

The bagpipe is a punctured lung. Impaled on congenitally stricken ventricles.

As it is, this Montreal collective make interesting music with an anaesthetic bent. Their "Dead Flag Blues" - to my own ears - reminds me vaguely of Sun City Girls. "Not In My League". Maybe it's the ancestral blood transfusion. A cellular migration. Newfoundland, free church lairs; ramshorn kirks.

The orphaned bone is pallid. Through and through.

Lightly freckled with moss.

Those bagpipes on "East Hastings" convince me just how much cloying sentimentality invades the shallows. The best piper I have listened to is Portuguese, hands down, but here evangelical moribundity prevails.

"East Hastings" is an east to westerly gael, anchored in three parts:

2.1: 'Nothing's Alrite in our Life / Dead Flag Blues (reprise)';
2.2: 'The Sad Mafioso';
2.3: 'Drugs in Tokyo / Black Helicopter'

1998 was the year my first born was conceived.

He is not so old as to be wholly mute in crisis. On top of his game. Just yesterday I bathed the wound on his shin; bandaged his ankle.

School nurses, it seems, have elected to embrace phage therapy. Dispensing with the iodine. The notion of untenable costs.

The puddle water smelled foul. Crawling with pathogens. Opportunistic infections.

"East Hastings" - after surgical intervention - appears fleetingly in Danny Boyle's "28 Days Later". Surrender to sleight of hand, you will almost certainly miss it.


Postscript: < infection detected: contained: antibiotics implemented >


▼ GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR: EAST HASTINGS from "F♯ A♯ ∞" LP (Constellation) 1998 (Canada)

lean pickings on the plains

"at the water's edge". two tepees; four piegan indians.

"In the spring, when the fish were spawning, the natives left their winter camps to build light villages at coastal locations and waterfalls. In March they caught smelt in nets and weirs, moving about in birchbark canoes....

In December when the snows began they recombined in winter camps in sheltered locations, where they built or reconstructed long houses. February and March were lean times. They relied on cached food, especially in southern New England. Northerners had a policy of going hungry for several days at a time. It is hypothesized that this policy kept the population down according to Liebig’s law.
The northerners were food gatherers only."

0:58"

David Thomas: vocals; Jim Jones: guitar, bass, organ;
Steve Mehlman: drums; Tom Herman: guitar, bass, piano: Michele Temple: bass, guitar, organ;
Robert Wheeler: synthesizer; theremin; organ

Produced by David Thomas.

photograph in the public domain.

fancy a game of cards, brushback ?

▼ PERE UBU: INDIANGIVER from "Pennsylvania" CD (Cooking Vinyl) 1998 (US)

▼ PERE UBU: SILENT SPRING from "Pennsylvania" CD (Cooking Vinyl) 1998 (US)

PURCHASE PENNSYLVANIA

salvador kali

"mad hatter" by daniel james harris.

By which time, the pocket watch completely melts.

From Inkblot Magazine:

"Bishop is a splendid acoustic guitarist with a sure touch and an impressive vocabulary gleaned from the Spanish flamenco and North Indian classical traditions with a bit of Belgian Django Reinhardt's gypsy swing jazz mixed in.
For variety he tosses in a Moorish piano fantasia that conjures images of kif-addled cowboys doing sabre dances."

Released through John Fahey's Revenant label.

▼ SIR RICHARD BISHOP: PEDRO'S LAST RIDE from "Salvador Kali" CD (Revenant) 1998 (US)

PURCHASE SALVADOR KALI
SIR RICHARD BISHOP OFFICIAL SITE

doctor βaker

▼ THE BETA BAND: DR. BAKER from "Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos" EP (Regal Recordings) 1998 (UK)

PURCHASE THE THREE E.P.'s
THE BETA BAND OFFICIAL SITE

sonic youth

photography by lesley j. mclaren

It just occurred to me that this album's title is probably in homage to Nick Drake's "Five Leaves Left". Or maybe they just got a roadie to upload a case of Rizla onto their tour bus.

▼ SONIC YOUTH: SUNDAY from "A Thousand Leaves Left" CD (Polydor) 1998 (US)

BUY IT