Thursday, April 29, 2004

 

Ta Da! It's a new label



Physical State: sludgey
Mental State: 10 watts
Music: air conditioning (no music in this office I'm in today)
Fashion sense: grey shirt, blue jeans

Brave New Waves' high priestess of cool (and a personal hero of mine) Ms. Patti Schmidt has launched her own new indie label called Ta Da! along with Jeff Waye from Ninja Tune. The first release from this label is the debut from Nanobot Auxilliary Ballet (with Patti herself, Lew Braden and her ex Pest 5000 bandmate Kevin Komoda). As well Montreal new-wave/performance savant The World Provider will also see a release on this new label. I haven't been able to find a website yet for this label but I will keep checking. Bonne chance mes amis!



Tuesday, April 20, 2004

 

Out To Lunch at "The Office"



Physical State: insomniac
Mental State: fuzzy
Music: Labradford - Mi Media Naranja
Fashion sense: black t-shirt, grey sweats

Ok I want to complain (yeah buddy what else is new?). This is a Wavelength review in development I suppose so bear with me.

Recently I watched the first season of the BBC's The Office on DVD and thoroughly loved it. The creation of Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais, it was a wonderful series about the annoying and self-aggrandizing loser of a boss David Brent and his antics as the Slough branch manager of the Wernham Hogg paper company. Brent is everything that you could both love and hate in a boss (love = freedom, hate = stupid jokes among other things). The show was unique to me like a lot of Britcoms are because it's writing was spectacular and witty. Dialogue took the front seat. After seeing the first six episodes I was blown away by how rich this series was with it's characters: The god-like to himself David Brent, the easy-going and humble Tim, the needley, brown-nosing and obnoxious Gareth Keenan, the lovely and doe-eyed Dawn along with a slew of other interesting and idiosyncratic characters. Everyone who's ever worked in an office at one time or another has met permutations of all of these characters to some degree. There's a definite and immediate connection to them. This was one of the reasons I was so enamoured of the show, these people seemed very real while the show was very funny. The sense of real also could be due to the documentary-like nature of the show. The DVD as well had great interviews with Stephen Merchant and Gervais where they seemed to be sincerely talented in being able to riff comedic on the fly. With other cast interviews we got a chance to see how these people are in real life and what they brought to the show. I was in love. I watched the whole thing twice in a span of a weekend.

BUT (and this is a big but), I recently wanted to relive my fondness for Slough that I found in the first series by picking up the second season on DVD (just released this week). My first impression was "Hey someone took away my Office, mate!". Whoa! The second season is such a contrast in quality and depth to the first. Like night and day. Where the first season was tightly written, witty and quite diverse I found season two stale, predictable and tired. David Brent was hilarious when he was commanding the sinking ship of an Office in season one (and what a fun ride). With the addition of a new boss in the Office over David in season two, his jokes and antics seemed pathetic, forced and well past their expiry date this time around. The show seemed to be a showcase for humiliating the Brent character while leaving out a lot of the other characters. This viewing left me feeling a bit bad for David and all the people in the office. It was more like a sad little soap opera than the original ground-breaking Britcom of subtle sarcasm and hilarity. The jokes seemed forced and they relied on cheap laughs this time around where the first had been quick-witted and dynamic. At times I found myself sitting in complete silence with a feeling not unlike watching a favourite pet die (let's not mince words here, eh?. This would tend to be a negative review then really). The characters that I had grown to love from the first season seemed like mere shadows of their former selves in season two. There were no nutty pranks pulled on Gareth by Tim (just the thought of Tim's "you're a cock, you're a cock, you're a cock" in season one makes me hurt with laughter all over). Totally gone. Finito. It was like someone else decided to make their own version of the show while the creators were on holiday, BUT THEY WEREN'T. Its like Stephen Merchant and Ricky Gervais were out to lunch (I felt the same way recently about the last Hal Hartley film, No Such Thing. The "phoned-it-in" syndrome, that "I was robbed" feeling). I seemed to have missed the memo about someone stealing those things away that I held dear about the original series and I was a little disappointed.

So I'd say Series One gets an solid A: shows incredible potential, creativity and comedic intelligence.
Series Two on the other hand gets a solid D: below average, repetitive, pathetic and generally pales in comparison to the first.

You be the judge. Maybe I need to reconsider season two.

What tops it for me is that these guys have been offered a chance to make an American version of the same series (take a great British series and Americanize it = a "sure-fire" hit, ugh). Let's hope that there's more first season in the writing than the lukewarm second one as influence. I still have faith that Merchant and Gervais' will rise again.

Ah but what do I know.

Monday, April 05, 2004

 

Lali Puna, backatcha!



Physical State: leaden
Mental State: shiny
Music: Gary's show @ RadioIndieRock.com
Fashion sense: black t-shirt, blue jeans

Lali Puna, one of my favourite bands have relauched their website to coincide with the release of their new album "Faking The Books" out on April 19. Worth checking out, very lovely. You can also check out the video for Micronomic at their site done by Luis Briceno of Micronomic (responsible for Console and Ms. John Soda videos as well). Looking forward to this.

I have also not done a new show this week for radioindierock but you can check out my first show that I did for them (a rerun if you will). I now realize that I shouldn't talk so much, ha ha. Nice to look back at some of the releases from last year in this show.

The job searching and career advancement goes very slow still but I'm hopeful. I am trying to learn Adobe InDesign and it has some great uses (and I love that it looks and acts like a hybrid between Illustrator and Quark X Press). My next goal is to get onto the web stuff (Flash and Dreamweaver) and get to know that. I've decided that I'm not going down without a fight and some skills in my back pocket. It's going to take time and some patience but I'm gonna do it.

Well that is all for today (very busy with all this). I do hope to return to radioindierock.com soon and I apologize to all of you who are wanting a new show from me (they take quite awhile to put together). Sometimes the stuff that pays takes the front seat to the fun things in our lives. Sad but true. Now if I could just figure out how to make the fun stuff pay off even marginally...


Thursday, April 01, 2004

 

Meow Mix 2: Kittin Came Back



Physical State: groovy
Mental State: hopeful
Music: Miss Kittin Spring Mix 2004
Fashion sense: black hoodie, black shirt, blue jeans

Yes just a week ago I had mentioned that Miss Kittin (aka Caroline Herve) now in Berlin (where all the best djs are based, it seems) had a Fall Mix up at her site. Well she has also added a new Spring Mix as well. So just like the other you just have to cut and paste this url below into your Winamp for another hour of sweet Kittin electro groove. Enjoy:

http://www.misskittin.com:8000/content/MissKittin%27s_Spring_Mix_Original_-_February_2004.pls



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