Unrelated

Every website and magazine has trotted out its own Best Of 2008 list and –as usual- the “mainstream indie” squares all cite the same handful of titles (each in a slightly different order) and ignore a ton of exciting new music most people probably missed during the year. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise by now, but it’s still annoying. I’d like to point out/remind folks about some of my personal favorites from the past year that major publications seem to have overlooked:

Zach Hill Astrological Straits

Dense with nonstop fills and twists, this album combines jaw-dropping playing, complex compositions, fierce experimentation, and bursts of fun into something both catchy and overwhelming. [Les Claypool’s guest appearance here is a welcome development as well. It’s good to hear him lending his talents to something edgier than his recent output of boring jams.]

Thee Oh Sees The Master's Bedroom is Worth Spending a Night In

This saw moderate praise from critics, it was somehow NOT embraced as the most infectious (and timeless?) album of the year. The songs bounce along with a giddy garage vibe and sweet harmonies. AND it’s the first Oh Sees record to approach the jumpy energy of their live show. I love it. Pound for pound, this was my favorite release of the year.

Secret Chiefs 3 Xaphan: Book Of Angels, Vol. 9

Trey Spruance, Eyvind Kang, and the rest apply their methods to John Zorn’s Masada tunes. While Zorn’s hand dominates the other volumes in the Book Of Angels series, this is a Secret Chiefs record first. That means the usual cinematic flourishes, Eastern spice, interestingly layered arrangements, and of course impeccable playing. This was the album I was most looking forward to this year (in part because it was repeatedly delayed) and it did not disappoint.

While we’re on the subject! If you’re at all interested in the history of Mr. Bungle, Faith No More, and SC3, I’d highly recommend this recent interview with Trey Spruance. In it he says one of my new favorite things:

"Work only happens to an artist because he loves what-has-not-yet-come-into-being-through-him, and he loves it more than he loves anything else besides God while he works; he works not because he wants to get a genius cookie at the end of the day. Nor is his work a "chore", like rowing a boat to get him to some temporary sense of self-satisfaction at the shoreline, once he is "finished"... the work itself (not the object, just the work) has to be divine artifice; otherwise you really do find yourself reveling in human excrement (like Metallica)."

The Melvins’ Nude With Boots was a great rock record and getting to witness the Dale Crover/Coady Willis two-drummer onslaught in July was one of the best concert experiences I had all year. But for potent ROCK, nothing released this year comes close to the greasy, hairy, spilled-beer crotch kicks on Harvey Milk’s "Life... The Best Game In Town". Every single person I played this for burst into delighted laughter at the same point I still do, when the opening song’s subdued falsetto lines about Christmastime give way to the sudden roar: “WHEN I THINK OF ALL THE LITTLE MOMENTS IN MY LIFE I HAVE DESPISED…!” From there on it’s loud, unhurried, eminently confident, and glorious. This record just ROCKS.

Dragging An Ox Through Water The Tropics Of Phenomenon

Brian did it again. That he’s starting to receive the same glowing attention outside of Portland city limits as he does inside them shouldn’t surprise anyone. Tropics Of Phenomenon stretches further in every direction he reached on Rebukes (and before). The pretty songs are sweeter, the noise breaks are longer and noisier, and the lyrics I’d already memorized from countless shows over the past few years are all newly devastating.

Arrington De Dionyso All Is On, All Is One

This set of free-form ragas for solo bass clarinet /voice is surprisingly focused as Arrington solo albums go. For maximum benefits, I recommend listening to the whole thing in one sitting. If you can make it all the way through, you will have reached the desired trance state by the time the drums finally kick in midway through the last song. And when they do…! As far as I know, this -like much of his new catalog- is only available at shows, packaged in original artwork.

Mugison Mugiboogie

Here Mugison shed the solo-genius vibe that originally drew me to him. [Three years ago, Mugimama, Is This Monkey Music seemed like it was made specifically for me.] But with the more conventional full-band arrangements he manages to reach some admirable ‘straightforward rock’ heights with satisfying dashes of weirdness.

Atlas Sound How I Escaped the Prison of Fractals

Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel got all the attention, but I listened to and enjoyed this EP much more. It's a more concise serving of dreamy, layered, lo-fi pop songs AND it was released for free through Bradford Cox’s blog.

Another rundown of under-appreciated picks from 2008 will follow when I receive Chris' package containing the long list of things it was impossible to download/investigate properly here, Indonesian internet resources being what they are. So stay tuned for that.

Next time, updates will include: Christmas, Exams, and more...!!!

Part Ten

In Which I See A Puppet Show And Behave Like A Ninny Around Dead Things


The rat lay on its side, kitten-sized and still, with a fly licking at its open black eye, just inside the front gate of the house. [A gift from one of the neighborhood's many ugly cats, no doubt.] It was too big and the path was too narrow... leaving the house would mean either moving this thing -I doubled over and made an exaggerated wretching sound at the thought- or stepping over it. (And give the fly a chance to shoot up my pant leg and introduce whatever disease-y bounties he's just sucked off of ratus mortus' eyeball to my nether parts? I think not.)

I knew it would have to be moved. Still, I paced back and forth for a while, laughing nervously in between long, womanish moans. Rats and dead things out in the world are A Fact and I've certainly seen my share since coming here. Call me old-fashioned, but rats at home is still really not OK with me.

I searched the house and soon found an appropriate tool: an old pink mop handle in the kitchen closet. Upon returning to the front porch I experience a brief pang of disappointment that the thing hadn't magically disappeared during the minute I was away. After another brief psyche-up [in which I reminded myself that this sort of business is my job since I am quite literally the Man Of The House] I was ready to approach the... obstacle.

With the mop handle held out as far from my body as possible, I poked gingerly at the rat. Its body was already completely stiff and it rocked onto its side like it was made of papier-mache. With this confirmation that the thing was not squishy or somehow still alive, I drew the mop handle back like a pathetic pink hockey stick and swung, knocking the rat about 18 inches to the right.

Just far enough! Plenty of room! Mission accomplished!

I found an out-of-the-way place near the porch for the mop handle (No no, I don’t think we’ll be having that item back in the house. Burn it! Send it to Hell!) and continued on my way to school. Upon returning home that afternoon I found the rat was gone. We later deduced that Bibi (the landlady’s housekeeper next door who tidies up out front and waters the plants) had probably dealt with it properly.

That evening –as is her custom from time to time- Bibi brought over some treats for us. Cooked bananas and these little tubes of rice wrapped in banana leaves with a ground meat center. No one was crass enough to suggest that the meat filling might have been rodent-based, but the question did come up as we sat munching on the treats: “Do you think Bibi picked the rat up with her bare hands?”

The following photos are from the most recent Paper Moon [local puppet company featuring Carla From Mexico as puppeteer and Carla From Australia as music supervisor] production, (A Short Journey). Colorful strangers meet on a train…

When everyone falls asleep, the Skeleton (a life-sized version of the Horny Skeleton from their previous show) steals some stuff and runs away. When they wake and find their things are gone, the Beggar character (Carla) reveals her Sherlock Holmes hat and magnifying glass and begins to investigate the crime. They eventually catch the Skeleton, he returns their belongings, and Yolanda –the woman in yellow- gives birth:

When we first see Yolanda in her house she is admiring a photo of her sweetheart, the cop on horseback. He re-appears just as she gives birth (on the floor of a train station?).

Note the photos of the birth scene: Yolanda gives birth to a fetus seated atop a slimy little fetus horse. The kids in the audience seem oblivious to the troubling questions this raises about dual paternity.

Meanwhile, Christmas is now just days away. Average temperatures here are still in the 80s and things don’t feel the way they should at the end of a year. Maybe having seasons to help mark the passage of time is more important than I had thought… If Summer 2008 continues for another seven months like some hellish tropical time warp, I will be sweaty and annoyed. As it is, I’m nearly finished with the project that was supposed to be a late gift from Christmas 2007. [Sorry again, folks! I’ll make sure it’s ‘worth it’, I swear!]

Part Nine

Kethoprakin' In The Third World


On Sunday [Was that two Sundays ago? Three? Four??] I send a text message to my classmate Haryonto, asking about the Sunday practice session at Mas Aning [our teacher]’s house. He replies quickly, telling me to meet him on campus ASAP. I do! I arrive in such a hurry that as I speed through a puddle on the road to ISI my bike strikes a bump in the concrete and suddenly becomes extremely difficult to pedal. [In the morning I will examine it and find that while the pedals, gears, chain, and wheels are fully intact, the part of the frame running from the pedals up to the seat has snapped apart. Like a pretzel stick.]

Anyway, I meet Hari, Danang, and some others. We ride motorbikes into the leafy depths of Bantul [the village to the south where I saw the all-night wayang show mentioned here before]. We reach our destination and there are lots of people there. Too many people. No Mas Aning. And a full stage setup.

“Hari”, I say as politely as I can, “Is this the practice? This looks kind of like a show.” His eyes get big and he begins apologizing. Apparently he’s been having girl troubles! He forgot to tell me we were NOT in fact going to a practice session, but were instead going to another all-night show. Whoops-a-daisy!

Since I missed his wayang orang show, I had promised Danang I would see his kethoprak [stilted Javanese theatre] show the following Tuesday. We arrived late after some confusion about the venue (we rode all the way to Rumah Budaya Teman only to learn that the show was happening at Taman Budaya! Classic comedy, that!) we made it in time for the show.

Most of the show involves actors sitting on stools on either side of the stage, having long discussions in Javanese. [Booooooor-rinnnggggg!] However, the battles are pretty cool. And at the end they stab the wicked king in the gut and he fights and snarls right up until the moment he dies. Good stuff.

After the scene shown above (where arrows come flying across the stage from both sides), these archers retreat and the enemy general enters from the right, angrily taunting them. After a few moments, there’s a sharp noise a giant silver arrow flies along a line of monofilament, hitting him directly in the chest.

Once he dies, these women file in on either side of his corpse:

He stands dazedly and they all exit together. With the women and the trailing fabric like a river, it's a really elegant way to usher a character offstage, into the afterlife. Other than that, though, the show was pretty lame.

FINALLY! After some delays and uncertainty, Jeannie, Carla, Carla, and I all get moved into the new house. We agree: it's the nicest (or at least the biggest) house we're likely to live in ever again.

Midway through my moving process [I got it all in five quick bicycle trips!] I finally get a chance to talk to my landlady about how much of the year's-worth of rent I paid for my old place I might expect to get back. As it turns out, that amount will be something in the neighborhood of NOTHING. Because she ALREADY SPENT IT and refunding any of that money "doesn’t fit into her monthly budget."

This is disappointing to say the least, but not a total lost cause. I might see some of that 5 million Rupiah (<$500) again when I am able to find a sub-letter. As of this point, no takers yet.

In a hilarious follow-up to the discussion about responsible money management: I found the most incredible amplifier for Rp. 150,000 (<$15). Its clean tone is horrendously distorted, with weird octave effects. The distorted tone = even MORE. [The ensuing racket is often recognizable as a sound a guitar would/could [never 'should'] make. The message scribbled across the front is an apt one:

To describe the sound of this thing another way, it sounds the way this dead rat looks:

[I was compelled to take this photo a couple months ago, on the street where I now live. FYI: Rats are the #1 roadkill I've seen in Jogja (followed by frogs, then snakes at a distant third), but they're ordinarily found as flattened and sun-baked rectangles of fur. The freshness and sheer volume of materials -at least two rats, by my estimation- were remarkable.]

Anyway, the amp is exactly like that. Two rats' worth of guts splattered across the pavement of your ear. I love it.

Speaking of dead rats! On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have this charming fellow:

More about him soon!

Part Eight

An Eventful Week
First, the obvious: Everyone here is thrilled about the election. When they learn I am American, people now smile big and exclaim "Obama!" Cautious hope abounds.

The feeling that every aspect of “real life” that could conceivably get worse IS getting worse and we have only dim hopes of slowing this (but no hope of reversing it) is something I've taken for granted for a long time. This cautious ‘hope for the future’ business is such an alien feeling... I guess we'll see how things go.

On Friday, fellow Darmasiswa-ers Carla From Australia and Carla From Mexico (and some others) put on a Day Of The Dead-themed puppet show, combining wayang and bunraku(?) styles. It’s entertaining and it reaffirms everything I know about Mexican culture. [The debauched skeleton’s dialogue is limited to: “Tequila!! Tortilla?!! Senorita!!”]

Before the show I learn that the aforementioned Two Carlas and Jeannie from Seattle need a fourth roommate for the mansion they’re moving into. By popular demand, the fourth roommate will be yours truly. We move in later this week! New video tour coming soon.

The next day, a group of us rides to Krakal Beach. It’s about 2 hours’ drive from Jogja, over hills and through villages. While the terrain is nothing like Oregon, the rainy beach drive under gray skies through lush greenery is delightfully familiar. It rains too hard to get any footage of the coolest part of the drive (passing through hills with huge expanses of steppe farms on both sides), but this video should give you a rough idea of how it went.

When we arrive at Krakal, I swim in the ocean for the first time. Gray skies and warm, inviting water… delicious nasi goreng at a beachside warung… one big, affordable room near the beach for the nine of us... Even though Krakal is supposed to be pretty lame as Indonesian beaches go, it is one of the most pleasing places I’ve ever been. Regarding the appeal of tropical beaches: now I get it!

We swim again the next morning before heading home. We all get big, annoying sunburns.

I’ve been slowly working my way through H.P. Lovecraft’s The Thing On The Doorstep And Other Weird Stories for the better part of a year. Most of it is solid, but the unfortunate lack of Cthulhu mythos has kept me from really sinking my teeth into it. Until now, when I discover The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, The Dunwich Horror, and At The Mountains Of Madness back to back at the end of the collection, all superb entries in the Cthulhu canon.

Much of my time reading these stories is spent at a streetside sate ayam (chicken sate) cart. As a result, I've come to automatically associate them with bowlfuls of delicious brown glop and the combined smells of fire, chicken cooking, peanut-y sauce, and exhaust from passing motorcycles. In general these tropical surroundings have been wholly inappropriate for reading HLP, but that blend of odors is right on the money.

Speaking of inappropriate for the climate, I've been listening to Crime And The City Solution’s Room Of Lights a lot. Mick Harvey’s presence accounts for a lot of the mood (mid-to-late-Eighties Bad Seeds, AKA my favorite Bad Seeds era) but drearier, more thuggish and blunt. Strongly Recommended!

Part Seven

Safety First

Slipping and falling halfway down the wet stairs to my room goes better than I would have expected. No injuries, just a nasty scare. [My feeling as it happened was something close to: “Could this be the end of Milhouse?”] Barely a minute later, a hellish racket starts up downstairs. My landlady has summoned a generic workman from out of nowhere to chisel traction divots into each of the concrete stairs. Problem “solved”. (…?!)

When I get to class on Thursday, my friend Danang [yes, that makes him Danang The Dalang] waves me over, hoping I can settle the discussion they are having about English slang. He says: “Justin! What is a… bulonda?”

“‘Bulonda’? Saya tidak mengerti, tidak tahu ‘bulonda’.” (I don’t understand, don’t know ‘bulonda’.)

He hands me his phone, which shows a list of links or web search results (not sure which). The highlighted line reads: Blonde prepares for anal.

“Ohhhh, blonde! That just means someone has blonde-colored hair. Light, you know, like yellow hair.”

“OK”, he says. After a moment he favors me with a conspiratorial grin. “And… ah-nall…?”

Studies are progressing reasonably well. On days when I have classes (or when I can see a local performance) I enjoy a real clarity of purpose for what I’m doing here. The more I learn, the more possibilities I see for wayang elements that would make sense in what I do. Gamelan and karawitan (singing in Javanese, part of dalang performance) are both challenging and rewarding, also full of possibilities. Days I don’t have classes, I tend to wake up and stare at a wall, wondering: “Why did I come here again?" This feeling usually passes when it is replaced by more immediate matters. For instance: "Right now I'm hungry!"

Anyway, this is a video I made while riding around the city on one of those off days.

On a long walk through an unfamiliar neighborhood after a concert, I spy what appears to be a tomahawk fashioned from a jagged shard of glass strapped to a broken-off broom handle, affixes to a lamppost. My mind races: this crude weapon is clearly displayed as a warning to outsiders of which gang presides over the area. Expecting a group of thugs brandishing similar homemade cutters and bashers to jump out at any moment, my natural reaction is to stumble backwards and utter a low, horrified cry -much to my friend Jeannie's amusement.

On closer inspection the wedge-shaped “glass” blade turns out to be a discarded plastic juice bag (with the straw still sticking out of it) hung from the telephone pole that catches the light in an alarming way. It's a relief that we were not savaged by a pack of Mad Max-style brutes, but now there is some concern about whether I am insane.

On my landlady’s recommendation, I attend a modern dance performance at Taman Budaya. An Indonesian dance company has collaborated with a Japanese dance company to commemorate 50 years of friendship between cultures, the theme of their collaborative dance performance is the passage of time or the beauty of life or some other bullshit.

The first part is OK, with lots of impressive feats of strength and flexibility and what I think were supposed to be metaphors. Things take a turn for the surreal during the finale, when a curtain lowers in reverse (is there a technical name for that?) to reveal a giant flower floating above the stage. The dancers wave their arms and gyrate in reverence to The Flower. A bent old man hobbles across the stage behind them. The curtain lowers further to reveal an extravagant drumset:

A man in a toga enters and begins a long drum solo over the preprogrammed beats. The old man hobbles across the stage again. The dancers work themselves into a climactic frenzy. Rose petals pour down from above. The End. The show is a bit indulgent but it has its moments; altogether not bad for a two-dollar show. My interest in Modern Dance is officially upgraded from "Not At All" to "Maybe, If It's Really, Really Cheap".

Part Six

Wayang Mania


After class on Tuesday one of my wayang teachers invites us to a performance in his village. Since it is a weeknight, I quietly assume it will be a relatively short exhibition (maybe 2 hours?) like the ones I’ve seen at the museum on Fridays. And so it is that I show up completely unprepared for the awesomeness of an all-night wayang kulit show.

We meet at the teacher’s house, on a country road about half an hour outside of town. In place of a garage he has an open-walled building with a full wayang screen setup inside, for practice or small performances. We pile into his truck and he drives us further out, to the village where the real stage is set up and people are starting to gather. We eat with him and some of the other performers "backstage" and then take our positions to the left of the screen.

The show lasts from around 8:00 PM until roughly 4:00 AM. It's a grueling eight hours, but despite still not understanding any Javanese, the performance is incredible and and I am able to stay awake the whole time.

I take many pictures. These are some good ones:

One of the sequences toward the end of the show involves a maurauding giant and the hero's noble efforts to thwart him. The hero fires off a magic arrow [Note: themes that keep coming up in these stories: flight, giants, and magic arrows.] that bounces off the giant, no effect. A clown character (the tall one with the goofy pony tail, on the far right below) produces an unmistakably phallic fish which he throws at the giant. The fish/cock flops through the air along the same path the arrow flew. It buries itself in the giant's side, he is killed instantly. The fish/cock has fucked him to death. Here is the aftermath:


One aspect of the show I found particularly inspiring: Between the dalang, the singers, and the gamelan players, there are about thirty people onstage. A handful of others prepare food, set up/tear down the stage, run sound, etc. But at its largest, the audience never outnumbered the people working to put the show on. By the end, less than ten were left (including the wayang students).

One of the most exciting parts of classes has been the teachers' genuine love of wayang. More than anything else, they just have the best time in the world making it and their enthusiasm is contagious. This performance reinforces that feeling; although it might have be modestly attended and no one here is paid much (if anything), it is still clearly considered a successful show. For the performers, that other stuff is secondary to the show itself. [As it should be! Artistic integrity as a matter of course? Sold!!]


On Thursday night we see my other wayang kulit teacher in a wayang orang performance. [Note: Wayang kulit is the play with leather puppets illuminated against a screen. Wayang orang is the play with human actors. Same stories, same music, but with colorful costumes and the performance lasts about half as long.]

This is the open-air hall where the performance takes place:


There is a recurring joke involving this leering demon king's attempts to copulate with the beams:




The climax of an extended fight sequence between a graceful warrior princess and this pack of (apes? demons? giants?) comes when she climbs/leaps in slow motion up above them...


...and then drives a slow-motion punch down into the middle of them, the force of which knocks them away in all directions. [Wasn't that a Street Fighter move?]


Finally, we saw an Indonesian film called Barbi3:

As the trailer indicates, it's standard teen comedy drek, unremarkable except for the fact that 1) The characters in the movie attend President University, which I found hilarious, and 2) the sequence with the old man in the robes was terrifying on the big screen.