Marginalia – Page 3 – Roy Christopher

December 12, 2013

My Seidr Ginnungagap Review on Reality Sandwich

I wrote a review of Seidr’s new record, Ginnungagap (Bindrune Recordings), for Reality Sandwich. Seidr is one of my favorite bands made up of members from some of my other favorite bands: Panopticon, Wheels Within Wheels, Kólga, and others. These folks make some of the most expansive doom available anywhere in the galaxy.

Seidr

Here’s an excerpt:

Though their name comes from Norse religion, Seidr is as low-key as they are Loki. A subtlety that’s often missing from heavy genres is the mark here. With members from some of my other favorite bands (e.g., Panopticon, Wheels Within Wheels, Kólga, etc.), Seidr is more than a supergroup: They are a collective of seers, mapping new territories in consciousness and the cosmos. Ginnungagap is only their second missive, but it sounds like the product of eons. “A Blink of the Cosmic Eye,” “The Pillars of Creation,” “Sweltering II: A Pale Blue Dot in the Vast Dark,” and the title track churn and smolder like dying stars. This is doom on the largest possible scale.

You can read the whole review over on Reality Sandwich. Thanks as always to Ken Jordan, Faye Sakellaridis, and Daniel Pinchbeck for the opportunity.

October 31, 2013

Mayhem to the AM: Eminem Goes Berzerk

I turned my head for a minute and Eminem dropped this single “Berzerk” from his forthcoming record. The song illustrates everything I love about Hip-hop. It’s not that I miss the era he’s referencing here (I don’t), it’s that he’s referencing things: All kinds of things. Mathers’ use of allusion is masterful, and it’s one of the reasons I study rap in the first place.

Eminem’s sense of humor and of himself is firmly intact. “Berserk” boasts guest shots from and references to “So Whatcha Want?”, Royce da 5’9″, Rick Rubin, Billy Squier’s “The Stroke,” Public Enemy, N.W.A., Kendrick Lamar, Ad Rock, and Kid Rock. It’s a celebration of roots: from rap and rock to the city block [runtime: 4:20].

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More than anything else, Em gets his Beastie Boys on here. Because they, more than anyone else, encompass all of the things going on in this song. Rubin employs his standard formula, which he once described as “reduction” rather than “production.” It’s heard on early LL Cool J records like “Rock the Bells” (1985), Run-DMC tracks like “Rock Box” (1983), “King of Rock” (1984), and the Run-DMC/Aerosmith collaboration “Walk This Way” (1986), and reprised on Jay-Z’s “99 Problems” (2003). But the Beasties’ Licensed to Ill (1986) is the best exemplar. Rubin stripped everything down to just the boom bap: 808s, John Bonham drums, big guitar riffs, and the noises and voices of the boys. The result was resonant and irresistible — and it still works.

The new record, The Marshall Mathers LP2 comes out next week.

October 18, 2013

Lessons of My Wounded Knee

I’ve spent the last month in a leg brace and the first two weeks of it on crutches. The experience has slowed me down in many ways, not all of which were bad. I’m not recommending cracking a kneecap to get reacquainted with reality, but a good jarring of the sensorium might help us all once in a while. As Doug Rushkoff said recently, “Reality is the human’s home turf.” Nothing brings reality crashing back in like crashing into reality.

In addition to my patella, I also smashed my phone. The cracking of its screen left it useless for texting or taking pictures. Ironically, the only thing it will do now is send (provided I know or can find the number) and receive calls. I also haven’t been wearing headphones as my injury already makes me an easy mark. These two things — no texting and no headphones — reconnected me with aspects of my days I’d been avoiding or ignoring.

Also, I’ve had to change up my commute. For one thing, I haven’t been able to ride my bike to work (obviously), which is what I was doing when I crashed. And I haven’t been able to take the train because I couldn’t walk that far on crutches. It should also be noted that there are only a few CTA train stations with elevators. Stairs were out of the question for a few weeks. This put me on a multiple bus-route commute that took me through parts of Chicago I’d never seen.

Possibly the most important factor that has made this an enlightening experience is sociological rather than technological. Collectively we tend to other the impaired among us. That is, there seems to be a clear delineation between the impaired and the normal; however, if one of us is only temporarily injured, we sympathize, empathize, or pity them.

In the month that I haven’t been texting or listening to music and have had a bum leg, I’ve had countless uplifting and informative conversations with people whom I wouldn’t have spoken to otherwise and who wouldn’t have spoken to me for one reason or the other. All of the above has made me feel far more connected than any technology or so-called “social” media.

Speaking of, I posted this on Facebook about a week into my recovery, and I repost it here because it garnered the most response of anything I’ve ever posted on there:

My smashing my knee into the pavement at the origami triangle fold of traffic that is the intersection of Elston, Fullerton, and Damen in Chicago has shoved me out of my comfort zone in several ways. One thing I noticed today on my temporarily revised, much-longer commute to campus is a lot of needless anger: a man walking by the bus stop, angry at his dog for being a dog; a lady with her children, angry at them for being children; people on the bus, angry about being on the bus; the bus driver, angry about the people on the bus; and on and on.

I’m not exactly happy that my right patella is fractured in two places, and I’ve certainly had good and bad days since I broke it, and I’m not better than any of those mentioned above, but I try to smile at everyone, laugh at my fumbling around on crutches, do my work, and generally let others carry the anger.

It’s so easy to be angry, but it doesn’t take much more effort to be pleasant, and being pleasant makes everything easier for everyone.

Getting out of your comfort zone doesn’t have to be quite so uncomfortable, but sometimes being forced is the only way for it to happen. It feels like I needed it.

With that said, a physical therapist saw me out walking with my leg brace on the other day. He stopped and asked me about my injury with genuine and professional interest. He then informed me that a broken patella is the most painful kind of injury, which, he added, is supposedly why it is the chosen punishment for those late on their loan or gambling payments. I don’t recommend getting behind.

August 28, 2013

Herc Your Enthusiasm: Ice-T’s “The Coldest Rap”

As part of HiLoBrow‘s “Herc Your Enthusiasm” series, named in honor of legendary DJ Kool Herc, which consists of 25 posts by 25 critics about old-school Hip-hop tracks, I was asked to contribute one from 1983. That was kind of an in-between year being just after the reign of Kurtis Blow but before Run-DMC became the Kings of Rock. Fortunately, 1983 was the year of Ice-T‘s “The Coldest Rap.”

Here’s an excerpt:

Ice-T’s first single, “The Coldest Rap”/”Cold Wind Madness (a.k.a. The Coldest Rap, Part 2)” (1983) consists of a two-part rhyme-fest of boastful wordplay. The single is backed with “Body Rock,” an electro-dance number that puts in extra work trying to explain what Hip-hop is all about. Past all of the playful posturing and woefully dated structure, one can hear the seeds of Ice-T’s lyrical heyday. His distinctive delivery, his cadence, his occasional turn of phrase, and his gift for innuendo all shine through, hinting at his future success on the mic. “The Coldest Rap” is a player anthem, a party song, a Hip-hop trope that Ice-T would revisit throughout his recording career. The power production team of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, who were then core members of Morris Day’s band, The Time, as well as close associates of Prince, provided the backbone for the track. They stretch out a bit on Part 2, but Part 1 is all Ice-T’s, though the track originally had female vocals on it. “They stripped the girl’s vocal out,” he told Wax Poetics in 2010, “gave me the instrumental, and I rapped over it that night in the studio.” In spite of the single’s inauspicious origins, Ice-T sounds as authoritative as ever, if not as focused as he would become a few years later. “Those were just some rhymes I had in my head,” he said.

So maybe Melle Mel and Kurtis Blow are the most revered and remembered emcees of the time, but Ice-T was in the mix, and he was just getting started.

You can read the whole post over on HiLoBrow. Many thanks to Joshua Glenn for the opportunity and Jeff Newelt for the push.

August 26, 2013

St. Roch’s Logo Design

After the success of my Faith Skate Supply logo, which might be used for something next year (fingers crossed), I decided to play around with one for another business I dig: St. Roch’s Bar in Austin, Texas. My friend and old boss Chris Mullins along with Steve Leninger opened St. Roch’s three years ago under the name “Double Down Lounge.” After a year, they were forced by Double Down Saloon in Las Vegas to change the name. As St. Roch is the patron saint of dogs, and since Steve is from New Orleans, “St. Roch” is the perfect name for their spot. It’s also an allusion to NOLA’s football team, which Steve loves, and his dog Deuce is a regular at the bar (as well as the graffiti on the patio).

St. Roch's patio.

For the logo, I wanted to include not only the fleur-de-lis of the Saints but also some weight in the letters (as opposed to the spindly style I used for the Faith logo). I’m also kind of on an ambigram kick, so I turned the last S around to get the symmetry I wanted. The first run didn’t quite get it there:

After that one, I went back to more pointy serif-things and thicker letters. My final basic design looks like this:

I have been inspired by Taj over at Fairdale to get some tools for these designs. So, as soon as I get my scanner, I’m going to digitize this properly, straighten it up some, and send it over to Mullins.

July 26, 2013

Steve Aylett’s Heart of the Original Project

Steve Aylett is at it again. Science fiction’s best-kept secret, Jeff Lint biographer, and author of such strange beauties as Slaughtermatic (1998), Shamanspace (2002), Smithereens (2010), and Rebel at the End of Time (2013) has a new satirical project in the works. He told me in our 2004 interview from Follow for Now that satire

only works if there’s a scrap of honesty in the reader to begin with, so it doesn’t always work, and the way things are going socially, it’ll work less and less. There’ll be no honesty to appeal to, and no concept of that. There’ll be no admission that there are facts and nobody will even remember the original motive for that evasion — that to deny that there’s such a thing as a fact, means you can do anything to anyone without feeling bad about it. If you tell yourself they didn’t feel what you did to them, they didn’t feel it. To deny you did it means you didn’t do it…. Hypocrisy won’t exist in the future because hypocrisy requires an understanding of honesty as at least a concept. So satire will be a sort of inert, inoperative device which won’t hook into anything.

And it looks like he’s revisiting the idea, though from a slightly different bent. Here’s the pitch for the new project:

“Nothing new under the sun” is an order, not an observation — and one driven by a strange unspoken fear of genuine originality. Heart of the Original is about the professed desire for originality and the actual revulsion toward it, why the same idea is repeatedly hailed as a breakthrough, how to locate original ideas by thinking spatially, why almost any situation is improved by a berserking hen, why obvious outcomes are declared unexpected or “unthinkable,” why history is allowed to repeat, and whether humanity wants to survive — true originality increases a planet’s options. As well as a secret history of where and when certain ideas appeared first, it’s a creativity manual and a rich piece of satire.

As Jeff Lint once put it, “Originality irritates so obscurely you may have to evolve to scratch it.” Check out Aylett’s campaign, and pitch in, if you’re feeling adventurous.

July 22, 2013

Borg Like Me by Gareth Branwyn on Kickstarter

As you know, my interests tend to veer from the high-tech to the underground, from authors to zine-makers, from science to punk. Well, my friend Gareth Branwyn is a bit of both. He’s been an editor at Mondo 2000 and bOING-bOING, as well as at both high-minded WIRED and the D.I.Y.-bible MAKE. He recently stepped down as Editorial Director of the latter and is currently compiling all of his various and important writings into one volume, but first he has to fund the project.

I interviewed Branwyn years ago (2001), and he told me then:

One of the great things about being so bloody old is that I’ve had a chance to experience every flavor of fringe media from the mid-’70s on. I caught the tail end of ’70s hippie media, then the punk DIY movement of the ’80s, then the ’zine publishing scene of the ’90s, and then web publishing in the ’90s.

He’s never left the scene, making his one of the most important voices in (any) media today. Borg Like Me will be indispensable for understanding 21st-century media mayhem. Don’t take my word for it, check out a 25-page sample of the book [.pdf], and watch the video on its Kickstarter page. A worthier cause you’re not likely to find or fund.

June 27, 2013

My Rosi Braidotti Piece on H+ Magazine

My piece about Rosi Braidotti’s latest book, (“Beyond the Body with Rosi Braidotti,” from June 1st, 2013), was picked up by h+ Magazine.

The site describes itself like so:

h+ covers technological, scientific, and cultural trends that are changing — and will change — human beings in fundamental ways. We follow developments in areas like NBIC (nano-bio-info-cog), longevity, performance enhancement and self-modification, Virtual Reality, “the Singularity,” and other areas that both promise and threaten to radically alter our lives and our view of the world and ourselves.

More than that, h+ aims to reflect this newest edge culture by featuring creative expressions of humanity on a razor’s edge where daily life and science fiction seem to be merging.

I’m sure you’ve already read it, but here it is anyway. Thanks to Peter Rothman for spreading the word(s).

June 18, 2013

Faith Skate Supply Logo Design

As I do most summers, I recently visited my parents in Alabama. Inspired by the new socks I got from Faith Skate Supply in Birmingham, I decided to attempt a logo design.

Faith Skate Supply socks

It’s been a while, so I’m kinda rusty. I had tried once before to come up with a black-metal style, ambigram logo for Faith to no avail (see the two thin-lined attempts in the photo below), but something clicked this time around, and I knew it was possible. So I broke out the Sharpies and went to work.

The line through the middle was the first breakthrough, and once I found the complementary lines in the A and the H (see the bottom two sketches above), I knew I had it. Below is the final, raw Sharpie version.

Plenty more could be done to this (e.g., background, color, embellishments, etc.), and a few of the lines need some adjustment, but I stopped once I got the basic concept on paper. Stoked. I think T-shirts and stickers with this on them would be sick.

Oh, I should add that Faith Skate Supply didn’t commission this design from me. It was purely a personal exercise.

May 30, 2013

Frank the Rabbit on Reality Sandwich

The latest Reality Sandwich Top Ten list assignment was “Top Ten Fictional Demigods,” and I chose Frank the Rabbit from the movie Donnie Darko (2001). Not only is the film my favorite of all-time, but Frank is largely the driving force. He’s the animating flood from which the plot spills forth. He also takes the form of a rabbit (well, a dude in a rabbit costume), which is my favorite animal.

Here’s an excerpt:

Though Donnie Darko writer/director Richard Kelly has never copped to it, Frank the rabbit fits the auspices of the pookah legend. In the film, Frank, a young man in a darkly realized bunny suit, guides Donnie, the film’s protagonist, through an alternate present (albeit around Halloween, hence the costume). Cryptically leading Donnie through this aberrant timeline, Frank is out to set things right. I don’t want to completely give away the plot, but it’s a basic Christ narrative, and Frank is the guide, the mentor, the messenger from the future.

Read the full post over on Reality Sandwich, along with the staff’s other picks (scroll down: mine’s at the bottom).