YOKO ONO

      There is still a sense of forceful danger to Ono's early records, crystallised in Plastic Ono Band and Fly. When the needle crashes onto the vinyl and Lennon's guitar sparks into action, an incredible freedom flight emerges, which almost kicks Ono into a frenzy of screaming and screeching in retaliation, stretching beyond rock's safe language into free jazz assault. Spread across those albums is an intense physicality and an enjoyment of textured, studio experimentation. More uncontrolled than most of her far more valued contemporaries and less regular than some of the punk rock she was supposed to have been a pioneer of, she later fell into writing songs that weren't as daring or spontaneous but were pretty off the wall and once in a while she'd create something invigoratingly strange and thrillingly catchy. Ono is an outsider, despite her fame and age, she has a much needed arrogance to fight conventional derision and a continuous urge for adventure.
       
      On her collaboration with Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore she explores an unsteady, ceremonial territory which links back to her initial Cage inspired improvisations. Her guttural, harrowing  yet tender voice often setting fearful words against Gordon's sombre intonations. Layers of guitar tones map shivers and drones, ghostly whispers for her to build a waste landscape which sees the idyllic through challenge. There is a feeling that she has been stripped of her positivity and been left to experience a cold emptiness perturbed by strangled notes between the silence. It is sometimes rare for seasoned players to allow an element of worry in their music, an uncomfortable, disturbed concern of where the tunnel might extend. Often arid confrontation can be expected from forms of so-called oppositional interruption, Ono here does not devour chaos but instead seems to internalise it's force, casting a shield with vigilance, armed and amorous.

 

HOLY MOTORS

 The couple sat on wooden chairs in the old library, waiting for the writer to arrive.

 'I wonder what he'll say,' he said.  

         'I don't even know him,' she said.
                        'So your staying with a host family?'
      ' Yeah, they are fresh from Ohio. So I'm not learning much French.'
'I'd sooner get an apartment.'
                   'Why are you here then?'
                 'For the great, inexpensive wine and a music festival that's quite reasonable.'
      'Oh yeah, how could you tell I was an American abroad, I mean I'm not wearing a baseball cap.'
'I can sense things.'
           'Why must you always follow me round Europe when I'm trying to gain independence?'
                            'It's part of the game.'

The biographer turned up but he wasn't quite there yet. He had written a book on his famous cousin who had fled to Paris and an early demise. This was his first trip to France and his view from his hotel window was so fantastic it made him feel melancholic. He'd done the research, told the story from the contrasting viewpoints of the women in his cousin's life; a mother, a wife, a mistress, a sister. Although, when he read the extracts alone and aloud he realised that he'd prefer to publish his own diaries from the early days before they went their different ways to unknown futures.

A guy in a creased white shirt looked at his silver watch and left the room. He walked through the streets to a nearby cinema. Unsure if to watch Loach's La Part des Anges or Carax's Holy Motors he visited the pitch black bathroom and considered the choice before the match was struck. Glasgow would have been too much of a shock. The mysterious Carax presented a magic show, where the central being shifted identities, his dressing room driven by the elderly lady from Eyes Without a Face. He could be anybody with anyone in any situation at anytime in the city; a father, a phantom, a fetish, a dying man. While the limousines were talking, undercover.

Strolling back through the gardens he saw a pretty brunette ardently stretching and holding positions, balancing herself on a stone balcony. Her younger brother sat over there by the blossom tree, on the park bench, humming to himself, engrossed in video games.

CAT POWER

 When I first heard Ruin and Cherokee, the digital singles, I wondered if this was Cat Power's reinvention as a commercial artist. But with time, the songs revealed an unusual dichotomy. On the surface, there was a facade of pop thrills. You could hear a certain excitement, Marshall playing about with subtle dance constructions, moving forward into new, busier realms of communication. However, the themes were in unison with her sparse, past work. A mournful self-contemplation, dancing alone on a nightclub floor, swaying, the traveller, never quite satisfied, searching for the ideal state of being but still rooted in sadness and muffled remorse.

Sun, the album, is curious. Her intriguing manifestation of combining real and electronic instrumentation isn't solid, it's rather dislocated in places and primal as her most vital work often is. What threads the pattern, the emotional lucidity, is the way her voice has that roaming passion of the great soul singers, where everything is personal and universal. The heart cries out with a triumphant empathy in Nothing But Time while Iggy Pop gargles in the background. Yes, she has made edgier records before, descending into the core of love and pain and not all of Sun comes together yet I'm sort of thankful it doesn't. The knock and buzz of wild solitaire, modern designs for her, is met with an inevitable experience and ultimate wish for sublime resolution.

LOTUS PLAZA

The five smoked and sat on the beach. Between toes, dry sand. Throwing sticks, for the dogs. On the mountain was a giant bat, his huge wings caressing the air. They squinted at the sea as the sunlight swirled amongst them. Eight black boats trailed into view, slow, ominous, but of what tale did they tell? A blue canoe with frozen passengers nervously swung back on it's hind legs. Submarines, they were, distant ants, military. A private demonstration. One of the entourage switched on a portable radio. Journey into the unknown intentions of a stranger's smile. This contemplative feeling breezed right on by, you couldn't quite catch what the singer meant, ephemeral yet comforting, someone joked that he was armed with soft rocks.

"Alright folks, let's wrap it up and go for a break," the director said. The actors made their way out of the red gaffer lines stage left, some stretched their legs on ballet bars, others took a damaged elevator to the ground floor, a melody was played on a wooden piano. The green room was stocked with refreshments. But their clothes and their hair had become riddled with wet sand. The rehearsal studio was quiet, an invisible cobweb awaiting life. Pulsating, silent props. An unused laptop dribbled sound materiel. No one here now, an after event.

BLACK BANANAS

Slide one. Tall, striking, walking down the street, big hat over fringe, fringe over eyes. Slide two. Jeans with masking tape, shades, girl says to me, she's disgusting, she hates her audience, yeah, I say, you gotta problem with that. Slide three. Worse for wear here, peroxide, knocking back champagne, dancing, not singing, while the band go through their motions. Slide four. Furred up, hitting it, more beers backstage, she says to the organiser. Cops got in the car, put the blue light on the roof. Walkie talkie says she might be in the gold encrusted arcade, near the casino, on the boulevard, know what I'm talking about, you been there.

Those cats are cooking, Miles might say. But they are frying through a muggy mix. And that mix isn't accidental, keeping you removed, distancing the listener to the funked, metal frayed dynamics. Sure, the call-outs, filth melt guitars, elastic bass and aroma of zonked heat recalls George Clinton's endless empire. Though Herrema's couch empress struts in time to her own distinctive, asphalt ideology. Side A is effortless, not songs, blurred mood. Side B is memory, when the guests left the party.

MARGARET

I am very tempted to write a list of records and movies that I liked or loved but I'm gonna be severe on indulging my pleasures. However, Melancholia has some terrific sequences, the metaphor is potent and Margaret features such an incredible performance by Anna Paquin that I'm frightened to remember it. Jeannie Berlin-where has she been since The Heartbreak Kid?- vital. Also, there is an excruciating scene early on in the film which reminds me of the closing moments of Au Revoir Les Enfants. Scorsese's documentary on Harrison was charming, witty and inevitably, deeply moving.

THE HOWLING HEX

He struggled down the cobbled staircase, on crutches, to the basement bar. Him and his friend sat close to the stage, watching the blues band jam with fresh electricity. They shared a beer while the crazed-faced singer belted and ran through a berserk set list, toxic memorabilia, it made your fingers want to tap on the silver table.

When they returned home, after a yellow glow walk, she greeted them with a smile, then a blush. They felt bashful, as they were more acquainted with her familiar disposition to a soft, glimmering seriousness. She resumed work on a fragmented puzzle.

He retreated to his room, opened a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and put on Hagerty's Wilson Semiconductors. Of late NMH had been quiet, taking a vacation after Earth Junk's Marble Giants ride to the States. Found sometime anyhow to update his wonderfully strange Howling Hex blog, with it's confounding, truly unfathomable and always inspired ruminations on everything from basketball games to the latest television serials. So what is this? Cowboy rodeo with swarms of guitar knots and reverberation, Texas by way of New Mexico, not really linked to the past or the future, refusing to be tuned into the current. His voice, tuneful and persistent, hovering over the cheerful, stark spaces.

Next up, maybe, Royal Jen, Rad Times.