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

Ease and Eagerness 20 June - 25 October 2009


© Julian Rosefeldt, The Shift, 2008
Four-screen film installation filmed on super 16 mm transferred onto HD
01:13:12 min. loop

Planète Parr : La Collection De Martin Parr Du 30 Juin Au 27 Septembre 2009 Au Jeu de Paume


United Arab Emirates. Dubai. DIFC Gulf Art Fair
2007
De la série "Luxury"
Martin Parr
Impression numérique à jet d’encre pigmentaire
102 x 127 cm
© Martin Parr, Magnum Photos / Kamel Mennour

Jeff Koons: Popeye Series 2 July – 13 September 2009

The Serpentine Gallery presents the first survey of a key series of works by the celebrated American artist Jeff Koons.Jeff Koons
Hook 2003
Oil on canvas
259.1 x 350.5 cm
Astrup Fearnley Collection, Oslo
© 2009 Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons
Popeye 2003
Oil on canvas
274.3 x 213.4 cm
© 2008 Jeff Koons

Passengers

Mario Garcia Torres, What Happens in Halifax Stays in Halifax (in 36 Slides), 2004-6. Mixed media installation Dimensions variable Courtesy Jan Mot, Brussels

Stadtstaat. Szenario Für Das Verbinden Von Städten Metahaven


Metahaven: Stadtstaat. A Scenario for Merging Cities, 2009

Also, read in English :

STADTSTAAT. A SCENARIO FOR MERGING CITIES
http://artnews.org/gallery.php?i=4295&exi=15887&STADTSTAAT_A_SCENARIO_FOR_MERGING_CITIES_11_July_12_Sept_2009

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art : SFMOMA

Richard Avedon


Richard Avedon
Twiggy, hair by Ara Gallant, Paris studio, 1968
© 2009 The Richard Avedon Foundation

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Flamborough Sculpture Trail Back To Its Best Thanks To Donations



Read also :

Walks in Torkshire
Flamborough Heritage Trail

http://www.yorkstories.co.uk/yorkshire_walks/flamborough_heritage_trail.htm

Art Lovers In Miami Beach Hope Sculpture Park Spawns Movement


A piece of waterfront city land in North Beach soon will be transformed into a public sculpture park and its boosters are hoping more art venues will follow.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Pink Floyd : Learn to Fly

Pink Floyd : Wish You Were Here

Time : Pink Floyd



Time (The Dark Side of the Moon, 1973), from Pink Floyd, live at P.U.L.S.E; recorded at Earls Court, London, in 1994. Roger Waters, one of the the composers of Time, is not in this show.
Current members of Pink Floyd are: David Gilmour (guitars, lead vocals) • Richard Wright(keyboards, secondary vocals, backing vocals) • Nick Mason(drums, percussion);

Lyrics:

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun,
but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time has gone, the song is over,
thought I'd something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
When I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells.
_______________________

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Inside Michael Jackson's Neverland Ranch

The gates to Michael Jackson's fabled Neverland Ranch swung open to reveal a shell of the fantasyland the popstar had created in his heyday

Email from Ishtiaq Ahmad from the Michael Jackson Memorial


Los Angeles police confirmed today that Michael Jackson's body will be on display as the biggest names in black American music give the singer a superstar's send-off.

Tens of thousands of fans gathered around Los Angeles's Staples Center – the sports arena where Jackson rehearsed the night before his death – for a public memorial show due to start at 10am (1800 BST).

Before then, Jackson family members were due to hold a private funeral ceremony at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in the Hollywood Hills overlooking the city.

But they will not actually be putting the singer, who died 12 days ago after collapsing at his home, to rest.


William Bratton, the LA police chief, said that the gold-plated casket carrying Jackson's body would be taken across town for display at the public memorial.

He did not say how it would get there, but the celebrity news website TMZ.com – which was the first to report Jackson's death – said that it would be taken by helicopter if any safety issues arose.

A total of 8,750 pairs of tickets were handed out to the memorial show after more than 1.6 million fans applied via an online lottery.

The family has already announced that participants will include Stevie Wonder, Mariah Carey, Usher, Lionel Richie, Kobe Bryant, Jennifer Hudson, John Mayer and Martin Luther King III.

Also taking part is Shaheen Jafargholi, a 12-year-old from Swansea, who came to prominence singing a Jackson song on the last series of Britain's Got Talent. The singer was reportedly enchanted by the boy's performance and had lined him up to take part in his ill-fated comeback concerts in London.

As Jackson's relatives left the family home this morning for the initial private service, Mr Bratton said that he had deployed an extra 1,400 officers for the occasion. “This is probably the largest event we’ve planned for since the 1984 Olympics,” he told CNN.

Although the event at the Staples Centre is limited to 20,000 ticket holders, authorities feared that as many as 250,000 people could flood the area just to soak up the atmosphere and glimpse the stars appearing in the service and have asked for fans to stay home and watch on TV.

“We have no idea how many people are going to show up here other than those who have the tickets inside the event inside of Staples,” Mr Bratton said. “We’re not anticipating disorderly crowds -- just anticipating very large crowds."

It was not just Los Angeles that was hit by Jacksonmania, however. The memorial show was to be rebroadcast live in theatres across the United States and fans around the world had made plans to say their own farewell to the singer.

In London, some fans planned to watch the event on a big screen outside the 02 Arena, where Jackson was to have performed 50 comeback shows starting next week. Others said they would watch at home after the BBC cleared the schedule on BBC Two.

The cast of West End tribute show Thriller Live planned to hold a minute’s silence before the curtain. The theatre said it would dim its lights in memory of the star.

Show and Sale Offers 'Vast Perspective' on Aviation Art


Ardell Bourgeois’ Hockey In The Duff, which chronicles how Canadians will play hockey anywhere the climate and conditions allow, is one of 25 paintings featured in the Centennial of Flight show and sale taking place at the Greenwood Military Aviation Museum from July 7-21.

Emily Carr Painting Sells For $2,164,500

Emily Carr's Wind in the Tree Tops

OCMA's Quiet Sale of 18 Paintings Raises Hackles

“Silver and Gold” by Granville Redmond is a classic of California Impressionism, an expert says. Another puts its worth at $1 million. The painting was one of 18 that were collectively sold for $963,000.

Old Masters Challenge Contemporary Art


Old master: Madonna and Child, attributed to Bronzino

Leo Mol, Winnipeg Sculptor, Dies at 94


Artist Leo Mol, seen in earlier years in the sculpture garden named for him in Assiniboine Park, died Saturday at age 94. (CBC)

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

A Revival of 'Ragtime' Set to Return to Broadway


In this theater publicity image released by the Kennedy Center Press Office, the cast from the musical "Ragtime," seen earlier this year at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. The production will open Nov. 15 at Broadway's Neil Simon Theatre in New York.
Kennedy Center Press Office, Joan Marcus / AP Photo