Castonguay : Les arts

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Beguiling Beauty

A young damsel and Old Masters await in Naples

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Unexpected Beauty : Serenity Prevails In A Unique Museum In Queens, New York

Saturday, August 1, 2009

Bande Dessinée : Quelques jours ensemble...

Il y a des oeuvres simples et contemporaines qui savent parler de la vie, la parentalité, les responsabilités, le passage à l'âge adulte, le vrai sens des choses au delà de la réussite monétaire sans êtres moralisatrices et cassantes. La bande dessinée de Montgermont et Alcante est un petit bijoux du genre.

Scénariste:Didier Alcante
Dessinatrice-Coloriste: Fanny Montgermont
Editeur: Dupuis

J'ai illustré mon court commentaire à partir du texte et des planches de la dessinatrice.

Note quant au classement de l'oeuvre :

Attention parents : Si cette oeuvre était un film, elle serait au Canada classée 14 ans et plus. Il y a quelques scènes de nudité mais pas d'érotisme explicite mais Xavier fait l'amour avec sa copine dans l'une des scènes puis est vu nu, seul, dans son bain dans une autre. Cependant il y a chez Montgermont beaucoup de pudeur dans la façon de traiter son sujet. Il n'y a rien qui provoque et érotise à outrance : d'ailleurs le sujet de l'oeuvre est d'une toute autre nature.

Attention personnes déprimées et coeurs sensibles : Si vous traversez une dépression, si vous vivez un deuil, ce n'est pas une oeuvre appropriée pour vous. J'ai pleuré pendant la lecture de cette bande dessinée. Certains passages sont touchants et peuvent affecter votre moral si vous êtes fragile.

Amasing Blondel : A Renaissance Revival Folk Group

I was thirteen in 1970 when I heard Evensong. (The musicians were in their early twenty) It was a marvelous discovery in the field of my dreams about the old english countryside. The harmony of the voices, the luth, recorder and crumhorn playing and the naive freshness of the ambiance was something unique and distinct. If I compare Evensong with Fantasia Lindum and England, this is more intimate and the musical arrangements are more direct and basic. This could be the best choice for a purist fan of Amasing Blodel.

Then came Fantasia Lindum like a rare gem, with a more elaborate material. It sounded like a golden sun in a wheat field. This is a thematic album and certainly the greatest on a technical and artistic point of view. The ambiance is rich and flamboyant as inside the baroque paintings and the baroque architecture.

And the last great album of the group has been : England with a symphonic panoramic view about the old England. Here the guitars are replacing the lutes most of the time but the refinement of the sound texture remains the same. This is an open air music, very optimistic and straightforward. This is an arial view of the Old England in evolution, just before the industrial period. The live extract proposed on this YouTube posting comes from the beginning of the England album. But England is a studio album. If you have appreciated Evensong and Fantasia Lindum, you will enjoy England as well.

No English folk music has sounded so naive, pure, giving back the innoncence feeling of childhood since Amazing Blondell. You can't approach this music if you don't have the heart of a child. Oh beautifull songs of Amasing Blondel.

Filmed in Norway in 2004, John David Gladwin, Edward Baird and Terence Alan Wincott are grandfathers but they still sing well and their playing (more slowly) is as gracious on the guitar as it used to be on the renaissance luth. A lace of refinement.

Please, if you like their music, let me know. I would like to share this joy with you.

Amasing Blondel on an excellet Wikipedia dossier :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazing_Blondel

Friday, July 31, 2009

UNESCO - Les Oeuvres de Norman McLaren Inscrites Au Patrimoine Documentaire Mondial

Merriweather Post Pavilion : Animal Collective

At last, I have purchased the Merriweather Post Pavilion which came on the market on January 6, 2009. So as in many occasions, I am the last to critic the production on the net. I have stayed away from the critics, avoiding reading Pitchfork, Metacritic, Slant Magazine or Uncut when I saw this title appear. But I went to YouTube to catch some live performances on some of the titles. So when I came to the listening I could have an instinctive knowledge of the music.

In 2007, Strawberry Jam, has left many questions on my plate because I couldn’t find the primal energy of the group as in Here Comes the Indian, neither the fun and joy given by the simple togetherness of Sung Tongs or the mystical post psychedelic dreams of Feels. So I have accepted Strawberry Jam as an excellent transition album but I was wondering where it was going to lead the group.

Wow : Merriweather Post Pavilion is a summer music album as if you organise a symphonic concert of insects in your garden. Joyfull and full of energy, this is a meta graphical arial view of the biosphere scenery with an injection of panoramic massive oxygene inclusion. If you don’t believe in God you will become a believer after the listening of these tracks. It’s the golden pond over the golden pond. It’s like listening to fairytales stories told by a funny drunken owl who has survived to a typhoon. Every symbols of the inner forces of life are floating in a festive symphony of tones, noises, voices, and rythms.

Merriweather Post Pavilion is an instinctive occasion to dream a little bit during this summer in a world where words like compassion, purity, liberty, and creativity should mean more than what they actually mean. I had not felt an impression of free and fresh creativity like this inside the popular music universe since the creation of Mister Heartbreak from Laurie Anderson in 1984. Of course there has been many moments of enlightment with Coldplay, Arcade Fire, Pink Floyd, U2 and many others but nobody could invite fishes, birds, insects, reptiles, mammals at the same dinner and simply have fun.

Merriweather Post Pavillion is certainly co-produced by Charles Darwin.
Conclusion : if you collect butterflies and are open to listen to something fresher than Michael Jackson casket’s echoes : listen to this cd.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

ManyMental Mistakes

Je suis allé à Montréal aujourd’hui et j’ai eu l’opportunité de rencontrer le bassiste de ManyMental Mistakes,
Vaaan :

Je vous recommande ce groupe au style Post Punk Experimental Psychédélique qui mélange habilement les acquis du No Wave avec les assises du Post Punk. A la batterie on retrouve MJ, à la basse et à la voix, Vaaan, puis finalement, à la guitare et la voix, Evvva

On les associe à tort au style musical de Sonic Youth.

MJ

Sans nier que la période moins commerciale du Sonic Youth du début jusqu’aux années 92 lui ait plu, Vaaan avoue franchement que sa formation s’en distancie beaucoup car d’autres influences tout aussi déterminantes comme celles de David Bowie, Robert Fripp ou Bauhaus qu’affectionne Evvva ou même celles plus variées de l’univers musical fort étendu de MJ, qui écoute de tous les styles, sont tout aussi importantes lorsqu’il s’agit de comprendre la structure de la matière sonore actuelle et l’inspiration du groupe.

Il faut aussi se rappeler comment Brian Eno avait à l’époque élargi l’univers musical en produisant la compilation No New York, regroupant des œuvres des formations DNA, Contorsions, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks et Mars, pour comprendre toute la profondeur des racines de la musique No Wave sans oublier les vibrations des formations du début des années 2000 comme Arab on Radar, Ex-Models et Lightning Bolt.

MJ et Evvva

Enfin il faut prendre en compte le fait que ManyMental Mistakes se situe dans le creuset de la créativité de la musique montréalaise émergente auprès de formations comme Aids Wolf, Ultrathin, Red Mass qui animent la vie musicale des lofts et des salles branchées du Montreal underground.

ManyMental Mistakes travaillent actuellement à un nouveau CD. Vous pouvez trouver leur première production September Sessions chez les disquaires suivants :

- Atom Heart
- Cheap Thrills
- L'Oblique
- Soundcentral

Vaaan

Je vous recommande la page MySpace du groupe en cliquant sur le lien qui suit :

http://www.myspace.com/manymentalmistakes

Enfin je vous invite à la dégustation sonore de Call Me :

Adios : Last Ministry Album.

When the american industrial metal band Ministry has lost Paul Raven who died on October, 20, 2007, Al Jourgensen decided to make an album featuring material that's been culled from Ministry's final tour. The compilation album this summer 2009, recaptures the freshness of the atrocity of the live experience. There is not an ounce of subtility, not an ounce of tenderness, this cd has only one goal : to make your sound boxes melt and break down. This is a music from a ghost who came back to tell you that there can be a kind of hell after death, so please : have a good life. My evaluation for the destructiveness of the beat : 9 on 10. Raised from the death : last Ministry like a near death experience. Enjoy this moment of a testosterone nightmare. A classic in the genre.

Pierre

P.S. I had to listen to 4 Beethoven symphonies to regain my senses after this album. Some may need a blood transfusion or a Mozart cure.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Renaissance For The Renaissance : National Museum of the Renaissance at the Chateau d’Ecouen.

The turreted chateau, built in the 16th century, sits on a hill surrounded by 400 acres of woodland. Even today, ringed by suburbs, it still feels like a fairy-tale castle. It was designed as a hunting lodge for the Duc de Montmorency, right-hand man to kings François I and Henri II. Yet there is nothing rustic about Ecouen. To give some idea of how de Montmorency’s wealth, cultivation and connections found expression here, a portico was added in around 1550 to the castle to shelter Michelangelo’s “Slaves”. The statues were a gift from Henri II, who often stayed there with his Italian queen Catherine de’ Medici. Today the originals are in the Louvre; copies have taken their place.

Betty Goodwin Parcours De l’Ouvre À Travers La Collection Du Musée d’Art Contemporain De Montréal

Du 22 mai au 4 octobre 2009

Betty Goodwin, Beyond Chaos No. 7, 1998
Bâtonnets à l'huile, fusain et impression Chronaflex sur pellicule Mylar translucide
173,5 x 116,3 cm
Collection Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal
Photo : Richard-Max Tremblay, avec l'aimable permission de la Galerie René Blouin