MATMOS IS KNOWN for glitch-pop albums that are heavy on concept and loaded with musique concrete samples of real-world things: cut hair, body fat, a cow's uterus.
The electronica duo's latest record is called "Supreme Balloon" (Matador) so you might guess the entire work is made up of inflatable-rubber samples and chopped up Diana Ross LPs. Nope. It's a lovely all-synthesizer record, with the only other restriction being that the duo couldn't use microphones.
"It's such a dumb, simple concept that we tried to avoid calling it conceptual, though I suppose technically it is," said Martin Schmidt from the Baltimore home he shares with his musical and romantic partner, Drew Daniel.
The twosome takes turns shepherding its albums, and this one was Schmidt's li'l lamb.
THE PROGRESSIVE BLACK-METAL band Keep of Kalessin was founded in Trondheim, Norway, home of one of the country's leading music conservatories. Yet for the longest time, Keep of Kalessin guitarist Obsidian C. could not find a regular drummer for the group he formed in 1994.
Blame it on the school's dedication to jazz, whose tippy-tappy approach to percussion is the opposite of extreme metal's sharp snare snaps and double-bass-drum roar. That doesn't mean Obsidian has anything against the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's famous music school.
"I actually studied at the music conservatory when I was a lot younger," he said. "I studied four years of classical guitar and then four years of electric guitar. My problem was I never really rehearsed what I should rehearse; I just wanted to play my own stuff."
But the school kept track of Obsidian, and last year Keep of Kalessin was invited to play a collaborative show at the conservatory's jazz festival with the experimental duo Monolithic.
"It has taken some time, but Norwegian metal, and especially Keep of Kalessin, has gotten a very good reputation in the jazz scene in Norway," Obsidian said.
IT IS A CLICHE, and too often a lie, to say that an artist repays endless contemplation. However, for the work of Lynda Barry, the hoary workhorse is wholly apt. (Barry will join fellow alt-comic star Tom Tomorrow at Politics & Prose on Friday)
Barry has several claims to fame, but is known best as the creator of the newspaper staple "Ernie Pook's Comeek." Her latest book, "What It Is," allows Barry to use a much bigger, more colorful canvas, offering a wealth of subtle visual details a newspaper strip can't match.
"What It Is" is a work of mixed media, fusing painting, portraiture, sketches, collage, text, narrative, comics, humor, creepiness, timeless wisdom and endless questions. The book switches between open-ended ruminations on the nature of creativity and art, and more familiar approximations of comics and graphic novels. As is often the case with Barry's work, her stories may seem highly personal and potentially embarrassing. However, in revealing essential oddness, the author strikes a universal chord.
IT MIGHT BE WRONG to credit Tom Tomorrow with single-handedly creating "This Modern World." He couldn't have done it without a host of venal pols and corrupt tycoons, not to mention a clueless citizenry suckled by a bullying punditocracy that renders cogent debate as likely as a moonbat/wingnut love-in.
"The Future's So Bright, I Can't Bear to Look" collects three years of Tomorrow's strip, preserving the outcry of an exasperated, angry, even baffled voice in times that are absurd beyond imagining.
It's a good read, and it's made of paper, so when the lights finally do go out, it'll burn for a little while.
» EXPRESS: Do current crises pose a unique challenge to the weekly cartoonist?
» TOMORROW: My problem right now is I simply can't keep up. I had a whole cartoon about Sarah Palin's rollout that was ready to go, and by the end of the week the entire financial system had melted down and it felt like a cartoon from three months ago.
WHEN BRYAN LEE O'MALLEY first appeared at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda in 2004, his second graphic novel, "Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life," had just been released and hadn't really taken off.
When O'Malley returns to the convention this weekend, he'll have four books from the ultra-popular "Pilgrim" series completed and there is a film in production (which O'Malley unfortunately is not able to speak about), starring the new it-nerd Michael Cera of "Superbad" and "Juno" fame (and he's returning to theater's this Friday with "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist"), and "Sean of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz" director Edgar Wright is at the helm.
Needless to say, when O'Malley makes his way to the Maryland suburb, he'll be one of the favorite creators at the convention, which caters to the more indie-favorite creators of the comic industry.
This year's event features some high profile guests, including Ben Katchor ("Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer"), Jason Lutes ("Berlin"), Tom Tomorrow ("This Modern World"), Raina Telgemeier ("The Baby-Sitter Club"), Lauren Weinstein ("Goddess of War"), Keith Knight ("The K Chronicles"), O'Malley's wife, Hope Larson ("Chiggers") and, making an incredibly rare stateside appearance, Dutch cartoonist Joost Swarte, who's work is recognizable from the cover of the New Yorker.
O'Malley spoke with Express about his comics and the convention.
Continue Reading "Pilgrim's Progress: Bryan Lee O'Malley on 'Scott Pilgrim'" »
WHEN YOU FIRST wrap your ears around the electronica duo Ratatat, it might seem like the Brooklyn-based group's biggest asset is that it has developed a new sound playing only instrumentals. But a bigger claim to fame might just be the fact that Ratatat is achieving fame itself. The band has generated buzz that has eluded other groups that forego vocals, and it now regularly sells out shows, like its September concert at the Fillmore Auditorium and Friday Black Cat gig.
The group conjured its synthfully haunting style in 2004, when guitarist Mike Stroud and keyboardist Evan Mast plugged into a laptop and started a career of furious overdubbage.
Since then, Ratatat has released a trio of acclaimed albums; toured with Bjork, Daft Punk and Interpol; done remixes, and had its music featured in movies and on NPR's "This American Life."
"I didn't expect it to be this popular," admits Mast by phone while on the road. "But I knew we'd hit on something pretty interesting with the first record. It's kind of wild because some of these shows have massive crowds, and people go pretty crazy for it. It's pretty amazing to see that for instrumental music."
"FARGO" AND "NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN" may have all the awards, and "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" may have the soundtrack, but "The Big Lebowski" is arguably the Coen brothers' biggest film of all.
It's certainly the only one with its own festival.
Ten years ago, however, it was a critical and commercial flop: another smart movie about dumb people, a genre the Coens may not have created but have certainly mastered.
Yet "The Big Lebowski" never condescends to its characters, as many of their films do. In fact, the Coens show uncharacteristic affection for the main character, a perpetually stoned and pathologically laid-back bowler named the Dude (played with stoned slyness by Jeff Bridges).
As he bumbles through a Chandleresque mystery involving a wealthy baron and a band of German nihilists ("Ve believe in nuzzink!"), the Dude comes across as a bizarre masculine ideal, his narcotized demeanor almost a zen state.
Continue Reading "A Strike for the Coens: 'The Big Lebowski'" »
WHAT'S IN A GENDER?
Does that which we call Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" seem as sweet when it's done Elizabeth style, aka with an all-male cast?
Though that isn't the only reason to go see David Muse's spin on the young love gone wrong, it amounts to a compelling one. "With 'Romeo and Juliet,' we've all seen 100 productions and have this idea about what it should be," says James Davis, who plays Juliet.
Any slob who sat through high school English knows ladies were prohibited from acting on the English stage until the 1660s. In years since, though, it's been more common to see the fairer sex take on that moody, headstrong bag of teenage angst, Juliet, Davis here imbues the part with freshness and a lack of feyness.
Continue Reading "He Sayeth; He Sayeth: Shakespeare Theatre's 'Romeo and Juliet'" »
"WE ARE NOT a good band for Nebraska," admits Ivan Bierhanzl, contrabassist of Plastic People of the Universe. "We expect to play for the Czech community, but in the Midwest, the Czech community is second or third generation. They want to hear polka, not some wild and crazy band."
The Plastic People strive to take listeners on intergalactic voyages and evoke a swelling orchestra, an idiot savant funk act, a dance party in Europe's backwoods, or a weird, dark rock band with equal verve. That PPU can play Nebraska — or, on Thursday, Arlington — at all is a near-miracle.
The seven-person group, which has gone through countless incarnations and features violin, keyboards and clarinet, in addition to drums and guitars, rose to prominence in Prague during the '60s and '70s, mixing rainy jazz, aggressively dissonant trailblazing and a penchant for The Velvet Underground to forge a still-fresh Bohemian style that, due to its sheer nonconformity, inevitably ran afoul of Czechoslovakia's Soviet overlords.
Continue Reading "Bohemians' Rhapsody: Plastic People of the Universe" »
"HOW DO WE each convince ourselves to act as if we matter, given that there's really good evidence that we don't?" asks photographer Chris Jordan, striking at the heart of activism's biggest challenge. "One over six and a half billion — that's my mathematical significance in the world."
Jordan's also one of a number of big names with artwork in a wide-ranging exhibit of activist art at the Katzen Arts Center. As his contribution to humanity, he makes visual art that shows us our culture's outrageous consumption.
For the Katzen show, "Close Encounters: Facing the Future," he made a photo-mosaic of Barbies, 32,000 in all, that meld into a pair of perky breasts. That large number, by the way, is also the count of breast enlargements performed monthly in the United States.
Continue Reading "Art Raises Its Voice: Katzen Art Center's 'Close Encounters'" »
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