don't touch my pants

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:46:28 GMT

today, totally out of the blue, a new NIN album appeared on the internet - with the title 'ghosts I-IV' - 36 instrumental tracks created over the past 10 months or so, available from a price of $5 up to a premium edition for $300. the site has been comlpetely hammered, but i'm still wavering between the $10 2-cd version and the $75 deluxe version with blu-ray and multitrack files of all the tracks. it won't get sent til april/may anyway.

the wait will give me time to decide; normally i'd just pay for the music the cheapest way as i find most of the packaging ends up on the shelf at my house never touched again. but at the same time, i support what he's doing as a new potential business model for the music industry and any music of his not confined by record company expectations is ok by me. it couldn't be any further from the structured music of year zero (which i loved; but wished for less pop structure and more of the madness from back in the day); and it's refreshing having an almost jam-session/collaborative feel to this stuff. there are shades of aphex twin's 'drukqs'; there are some tracks with an almost middle-eastern feel, but so much of it is like nothing i've ever heard.

he's always been a master of instrumentals, but something about these ones is even more mysterious, more twisted and more like the old spiral-era NIN - completely unpredictable, schizophrenic, tense, raw, and ferocious. some of the songs are piano oriented, melancholy and dreamlike, others are covered with distorted guitar and synth, falling away at moments into something completely different. it's the kind of stuff i hoped for when the news came that he was free of a record contract. i'm still absorbing it all at the moment, but 2 hours of new music for such an amazing price is more than i could have ever hoped.

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:44:06 GMT

it is SO. FUCKING. HOT. it's 35 degrees and it's 8.30 at night. i'm upstairs typing away with my giant computer heating the room like a furnace - however, now that apple finally pulled their finger out, my 15" macbook pro is on its way this week, which means i can use it downstairs in the sweet, sweet aircon. i'm also getting an iphone next week. though i feel ashamed to be a materialist corporate whore, apple stuff is so awesome i don't really care.

im slightly regretting not getting a photo with Belladonna at work on monday. it's not often you get a full fledged hardcore porn star visiting your office, and for some reason i didn't put my hand up to meet/greet and have photo with her. i got one of the posters i created the artwork for signed, but it's not the same! however, she did say she loved my work on her autograph. everyone said how awesome and friendly she is, it's weird when you hear about her being realy sweet then see the content on her site. i think work has completely desensitised me to that sort of stuff though - when you're regualarly seeing dvd covers of trannies ("surprise! i have a dick 6") it's inevitable.

SAVE ME JEBUS

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 06:37:29 GMT

i just finished watching a Cutting Edge special called 'Baby Bible Bashers' (part 1 of 5 below). while not as fire-and-brimstone frightening as something like Jesus Camp, it was still a fairly full on story, following 3 Kids - Terry, Samuel and Ana Carolina (one from Florida, the other from america's south, and Ana from Brazil).

At first you're impressed with the charisma of these kids, how they can play a crowd and recite their beliefs with such confidence, but then you realise that, as usual, it's a case of parents or relatives preening them behind the scenes to present them as child prodigies. They were all preaching from about the age of 3, delivering sermons standing on cardboard boxes to their families or people from their (small) towns. Similar to the situation in Painted Babies, (with over-sexualised 5 year olds dancing with painted on smile as mum claps manically from the sidelines, mouthing every word), the parents are never far away delivering their input and telling off the kids when they get their lyrics/dance routine/sermon wrong, and in one case the father is the manager, starting a line of merchanise including Tshirts, posters and DVD's, and organising photo signings; and telling of his plans for stadium shows.

It shows the power people have to turn someone into an idol - there are church scenes of women with lung cancer being 'healed' and collapsing, shaking to the floor by the very touch of a 9 year old kid. I felt angry watching it - surprisingly not because of the typical extremist Christian message, but rather the way these kids are manipulated by overzealous parents. Pure fear of 'hell' and eternal damnation hammered into them from a young age has turned them into who they are; the parents tell how their child always had the power of god and the ability to preach but it's not long before you see them being told off and put back in line for acting as most young kids do.

The worst scene came at the end, where they travel to NYC to deliver a sermon, resulting in a crowd people screaming at and ridiculing them on the street - the little wunderkid preacher is hiding behind his dad, absolutely terrified and calling for his mum, with tears streaming down his face while his dad prods him to start singing a hymn, solo, on his guitar. The kids are so hopelessly naive, you almost forget that it's all real and not a story. Scary shit.

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 04:13:29 GMT

ahoy

Tue, 12 Feb 2008 07:45:50 GMT

somehow, in a day-off induced frenzy of account reactivations and dreams of bloggy futures, i've reactivated my LJ for the second time in 4 years (perspective : last post was in 2005, about a giant muesli flake). i decided it's time to subject more inane views on the world. time to change that photo too...