2023 (April) Tincture Evening Diary

[eerietom]

May contain spoilers! This page is for April 2023; click here for Jan-Mar 2023; click here for 2022.

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Usually, on my “THC tincture evenings”, I watch a video or two, or listen to an album, or both. The following is a sort of diary, mostly for my own reference, and as best as I can remember, a list of the movies and music from such evenings. Links to sites outside of this blog open in new windows. ✽ indicates my first time seeing or hearing the work, or that it’s been so long I didn’t really remember much about it. ↻ indicates a link to other sections of this blog entry.

Date	Title, Director or Artist, Year
04/03/23	Frozen Days✽, Yōsuke Yamashita, 1975 Totally blown away by this album. It’s almost inhuman how these players play, like each one had an extra pair of hands. Definitely going to explore this genre of jazz some more!
	Gagaku performance Since being stoned made me appreciate Noh music, I wondered if being stoned would have the same affect on gagaku, or imperial Japanese court music dating back to the tenth century. I've never been fond of gagaku due to my dislike of the hichiriki, which just sounds like a bunch of wailing kazoos. The performance I watched had some interesting moments, particularly a duet between two flutes, but otherwise did nothing to change my opinion. I’ll stick to Noh!
	Drunk✽, Thundercat, 2017 Also blown away by this album; I don’t think I’ve been this excited by a “mainstream release” since Ua’s 2016 JaPo album.
	Y De Noir II✽, Takami, 1983
	The Andromeda Nebula✽, dir. Yevgeni Sherstobitov, 1967
04/09/23	Water Weed✽, Sabu Toyozumi, 1975 Another Japanese free jazz album. The sounds on the album were so unlike the instruments making them, I had to keep reminding myself that there were no synthesizers or samplers used. An amazing aural journey.
	Original First Album✽, PYG, 1971 I didn’t care for the lead singer’s voice at first; it just seemed wrong for the genre. But later as he sang higher or louder notes, there was an underlying texture that made all the difference. One thing I really appreciated was the fact all the singers actually had to be able to sing, and sing to properly with timing and support. It was refreshing to hear voices that didn’t sound like a teenaged girl rudely awakened from a nap or someone who had been auto-tuned. Some of the harmonies made me think of Clannad. An excellent album.
	Sleaford Mods: Performance at KEXP✽, 2017 My first time hearing the Mods. Surprisingly, it reminded me a little of the music my brother and I recorded years ago, only my brother played electric guitar and our lyrics were more tongue-in-cheek and irreverent, if not downright juvenile at times. See the performance here. And ... I’m going to see them perform live on April 19!
	High-Flying✽, Hiromasa Suzuki, 1976 Only listened to the first three songs. It just didn’t grab me.
	Lounge Lizards✽, Lounge Lizards, 1984
04/16/23	Tetsuo: The Iron Man, dir. Shinya Tsukamoto, 1980 I’d seen this film a couple of times before, but was completely unprepared for the wild roller coaster ride of watching it stoned. It’s a relentless onslaught of rapid fire editing, time lapse, extreme closeups, crude stop-motion animation, and high contrast black-and-white cinematography. It’s almost as if David Cronenberg had made a film with silent era film cameras (except Tetsuo isn’t silent). It manages to be humorous, erotic, disturbing, enticing, and horrific all at the same time. Highly recommended, but definitely not for the squeamish.
	Disco 3000✽, Sun Ra Quartet, 1978 This was my first exposure to Sun Ra’s music, and aside from the use of trumpet and sax, it sounded exactly like a Dynamicaracket album, particularly the first track and a keyboard solo on a later one. Who is Dynamicaracket? I was already working on a blog entry about them which I will post soon, but Dynamicaracket was an experimental band (1985-1994) with two members: myself, and my best friend in high school, Duane Michael Gebo. We recorded about a dozen albums together. In the last several weeks I’ve been listening to them again (all on cassette!) and have begun to appreciate the fact we may have had no formal training and were “diamonds in the rough”, but I daresay we weren’t just a couple of kids goofing around on keyboards. And speaking of Dynamicaracket ...
	Fanfare (side 2), Dynamicaracket, 1988 I haven’t mentioned any of the Dynamicaracket albums I’ve been listening to recently on my tincture evenings, and do so here only because it ties in with the entry directly below. Fanfare was an ambitious album of 26 improvised songs, an A-Z of mythological figures: Ariadne, Bona Dea, Charybdis, all the way to Zu.
	The Cosmic Eye✽, dir. Faith Hubley, 1986 This animated film combines imagery from various indigenous folk arts with what looks like art inspired by the likes of Paul Klee (who is my favorite artist), Wassily Kandinsky, and Marc Chagall. The soundtrack is a mix of dialogue, jazz, and world music. It’s a real joy just to watch and listen to such an obvious labor of love. And some of the shorter musical pieces inspired by native mythologies were not unlike what appears on Dynamicaracket’s Fanfare. The Cosmic Eye is very nearly a masterpiece, and I say nearly because if the movie had ended at around the 40 minute mark, it would’ve been deeply satisfying. Instead, it continues, and as there’s no real plot (not that there needs to be), there’s no further resolution, no climax, nothing to add to what we’ve already seen—it’s just more of the same. The film starts to feel like it overstayed its welcome rather than leaving the viewer wanting more.
	Spirits Rejoice✽, Albert Ayler, 1965
04/20/23 (and 04/21/23)	Read my account on how I celebrated 4/20 here.
04/30/23	The Benny Hill Show, dir. John Robbins, 1972 Episode: “Down Memory Lane”. I know Benny Hill has a bad rap these days, and critics tend to boil him down to little more than a dirty old man who chased half-naked women around on TV, but that’s like saying Joan Crawford was just some woman who savagely beat her kids. And it’s understandable; much of the humor is outdated and inappropriate. That aside, the man was still a gifted wordsmith and entertainer. I’ve often wondered if Hill had been influenced in part by Ernie Kovacs or Jacques Tati. One of the skits that really stood out here was his recitation of poetry in a coarse British accent, in the guise of a younger man with blond hair and in a red military jacket. He is accompanied by an incompetent musical trio. Aside from the poetry itself (one poem concerns a flat-chested woman), I could imagine the likes of Ian Dury, John Lydon, or Jason Williamson (of Sleaford Mods) doing such a performance; the tunelessness of the musicians adds an almost Dada-esque air.
	Various Skits, 1993 Several skits parodying TV genres (soap opera, cooking show, wildlife documentary, sci-fi show, etc.) by Duane Michael Gebo and myself. More information here, under “KDGJ-TV”.
	Danemon Ban: The Monster Exterminator (証城寺の狸囃子 塙団右衛門)✽, dir. Yoshitarou Kataoka, 1935
	Tsuchigumo (土蜘蛛)✽, dir. unknown, 2020 If Spiderman had been created as a Noh drama instead of a comic book, this would be the result. Unlike many Noh plays, which can be quite static (not a complaint), this one is practically an action film as warriors combat an evil spider demon. I cannot use enough superlatives to describe this. Best to see it yourself—watch on YouTube here. There are the usual static moments, but be patient for the payoff of the battle scenes. I also discussed Noh here and here.
	Montreux Afterglow✽, Yōsuke Yamashita Trio, 1976 An even more astounding performance than YYT’s Frozen Days (1975). It must’ve been a marvel to witness YYT playing live, particularly during Yamashita’s piano solos.
	Spanish Flower✽, Tee & Company, 1977
	Horrors of Malformed Men✽, dir. Teruo Ishii, 1969 (Japanese title: 江戸川乱歩全集　恐怖奇形人間) The version I saw was in Japanese with Chinese subtitles, and my Japanese isn’t nearly strong enough to do without English subtitles. Hence, although I knew the basic premise, I can’t really give a proper review. Still, I’ve long wanted to see this film. Visually, certain scenes were as if Juliet of the Spirits-era Fellini had made a horror film. I’m most proud of myself, however, for instantly recognizing who played Jogoro: choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata, founder of Butoh.