Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote

Everyone remembers his favorite childhood-cartoon(s). I grew up in the nineties and we watched a lot of them but my Top 5 were/are most definitely: 5. Scooby-Doo: what the fuck were they thinking of doing 2 shitty movies out of this great cartoon?! 4. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: when I try to think back I really don’t remember that much from the series. I have to check them out again and oh yes, I always was Leonardo! 3. Ghostbusters: this American animation was produced and released AFTER the great Ghostbusters movie from 1984. This is probably one of my favorite franchises ever! 2. The old Tom and Jerry series. I think I don’t have to introduce this one. But my all-time favorite is the incredible 1. Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote cartoon.

Both figures were invented by Chuck Jones, they started in 2 Warner Bros. Productions and were first aired in 1949 and 1952. What I love(d) the most about this series was its famous characteristic traits and distinguished feature: The short animations, with an average runtime of 6-7 minutes, based on a simple and never changing storyline, the exaggerated violence and actions (which even for a cartoon exceeded the boundaries of common sense and physical laws) made this series quite unique and so precious for me.

The failing of Coyote’s  high tech and sophisticated traps and his own incompetence were always marked by “hurting” himself while falling down a huge cliff (it never was the Road Runner who “hurt” Wile E.). Everyone that has seen this cartoon has, though Wile E. was or should have been the villain, at some point secretly wished that this clumsy but likebale being should catch the arrogant and bitchy bird.

Furthermore I’m NOT going to do a social-psychological analysis of the violence in cartoons and the possible impact on the (young) audience’s social development and behaviour but as the subject of medial violence becomes more and more important nowadays, I decided to add, very briefly, a few personal thoughts.

First of all I think that the perception, reception, the understanding and processing of the television and it’s broadcasted comics differ primarily from the actual infant development. I won’t go too deep now (maybe I’m going to write a post based on this particular subject later on) but very young children don’t understand that they are shown pictures. Little children believe that the people, animals etc are actually living in the television and it often happens that they try to communicate with them. I remember one specific happening where I was trying to speak with a magician on the Luxembourgish TV channel (even adult people, mainly men, sometimes try to communicate with soccer players during a match but that’s a different story ^^).

When young children get older and the growth of personal identity gets more and more important they are facing inevitable and vitally significant developmental tasks and social problems and that’s where imagination gains importance. Children sample connections between their self and reality, which then are applied to the real world, or not. I think with the increasing development of a child, there normally is a better “understanding” of the television. Nevertheless this understanding often differs from the grownups. I’ll try to make this clear with the example of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. Most of the adults only see never ending sequences of nonesene physical brutality. I think that this brutality doesn’t play a role in children’s viewing. I even would go further and say that they wouldn’t describe this cartoon as violent, because nobody really got hurt, no blood was shown and in the end everything turned into good. Children pay more attention to the different roles of the characters because “roles” become more an more important in their real-life.

I claim that Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote is a very special and maybe unique cartoon. In most other animations, the young children identify with the “weak”, small character, who mostly becomes a hero because he “fights” or deals with the strong “bad” one (for example: Tom and Jerry). In my particular example children tend to sympathise with the coyote. Wile E. is probably the first anti-hero most children (of my generation) have ever seen or heard of. The Road Runner only plays a “passive” role without any clear character building which makes it difficult for children to relate to.

I want to stop here by reminding that these are only a few unelaborated personal opinions and that I just scratched the surface of this waste subject. Back to topic: Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote makes so much fun and I am still laughing at it, which is a good sign and shows that deep inside I am still a young boy!



Midnight – Farewell To Hell


Midnight‘s “Farewell to Hell” is a unique, true, authentic, raw, primitive, Venom/Hellhammer-esque 1st wave Black Metal Ep with Motörhead, dirty rock and roll and oldschool Punk influences!

This is pure evil and really cool!

Buy the record!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvENCRNKCQo]
P.s. Be prepared for their first full-lenght record: Satanic Royalty. Click me for more information

Tim Hecker – Ravedeath, 1972 & Dropped Pianos

For the last months I unfolded a passion for a music genre that I’d like to call abstract music. Most people tend to define this genre as ambient / drone / whatever, but I prefer to rely on my own definitions of music instead of blindly following trends and assuming new tags on last.fm as my own, for instance.

Montreal based musician and producer Tim Hecker suits the definition of abstract music very well. He’s been the first artist who introduced me to the ambient / drone genre apart from Southern Lord’s finest; Sunn o))).

I remember the time I first listened to his album “Harmony In Ultraviolet” and I was stunned, in a pleasant way. Never had I heard something like that before and it was a thrilling experience to me.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUpA8R01d50?rel=0]

Ravedeath, 1972 follows his “classical” songwriting, if this can be called so. Multilayered soundscapes chased through all possible effects giving enough room to the listener to sink in an imaginary dream world and cancel contact with the here and now. Hecker lifts the sound of conventional instruments to a whole new level and to me he is one of the big players in the ambient league. Pianos, organs, guitars; all mixed and modified to a pleasant yet challenging listening experience; where you do not know if it is a violin or perhaps a saxophone you’re hearing. And you just couldn’t care less, because you’re already sucked into the whirl of this work of art. And that’s what makes this album so special. The songs can wrap you like a warm veil and in another instant hit you on the forehead and make you feel miserably for what you are.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K33Ka4yauQ?rel=0]

Dropped Pianos is the complete opposite of Ravedeath, 1972. I could interpret this album as an homage to the piano, but it’s more. There’s more to it than just a few chords randomly hitten with a lot of hall. It’s the saddening, melancholic undertone of the so called “sketches” which makes this album worth listening to. The ethereal acoustic of the piano gives this album a more organic note, a more conventional approach to “ordinary” music than Ravedeath does, so I can fully recommend Dropped Pianos to all the people who have never heard of ambient / drone music before. It’s easier to digest but at the same time a challenge, because Dropped Pianos could also be described as the soundtrack of the apocalypse. Burning bridges and the metal twisting towards the fiery skyline, people desperately running for shelter and looking for their beloved ones; everything’s held with the eye of a voyeuristic camera in slow-motion. Dropped Pianos is a slow paced listening experience in unsurpassable intimate beauty.

In a society in which musical trends wither within the blink of an eye, new bands having a raison d’être for their hip moment and old bands losing credibility for not evolving during their careers, Tim Hecker is some sort of hero to me. His music does not follow any conventions and is the antithesis to trends and hipsterism.

Who needs arpeggio-laden synths, time signatures, people with fancy Hitler hairdos and trend whores when there’s one man with a laptop who unleashes the fury with minimalism as a big fuck you to the (trends) establishment?

Conclusion: The soundtrack for this autumn, most definitely! Thank you for everything Tim.

Death From Above 1979 – You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine


2004. Two men. One on bass guitar. One on drums. Result: pure insanity. In case you don’t own this album yet then it’s about time! A legal drug you can purchase in every record shop that has the guts to sell this. Or the internet, source of information, stupidity and craziness.

Turn It Out, threatening sounds, and before you realize it You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine has you in the headlock and will throw you through the whole room for the next 35 minutes. And you know what? You like it! You want it to happen! You don’t want it to stop! Inhuman bass guitar violation, aggressive lyrics, no pause, Romantic Rights, “I DON’T NEED YOU, I WANT YOU”, obey! No pause, Going Steady, your head bangs despite the headlock, torture, that bass, pure pleasure, that chorus!

The energy that Jesse Keeler and Sebastien Grainger are able to produce, being just two guys, is just enormous. This is like the danceable kick-ass rock music that makes you sweat and dance in a small cave, undergoing more sweaty and stinky bodily contact than you’ve ever had in your life, and you wouldn’t think of any better place to be, not at all! The album is already in its middle part but your mouth is still wide open. Death From Above 1979 are no computer band, they aren’t clean, and thank god for that. They feel pure and honest when they come around to vandalize your home. Always brutal, full of pressure and sexy.

It sometimes feels like someone paired the filthy Motörhead sound with sexy rock’n’roll à la Eagles of Death Metal. Bass ravishment at its best, you hear it, you feel pity for it, but you certainly don’t want it to be released, au contraire. In case you’ve enjoyed Little Girl as some kind of breathing spell, Cold War will bring you back to reality before the title song knocks you out of your boots. Forget about them. This monster will be in bed right next to you when you wake up, smoking your underpants during Sexy Results, which sounds like pure rock disco. You will beg for the next round.

If there won’t be any more doping substances in this world, then this will be the new stuff!

Recommendations: Tracks 1 to 11.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4siXlLOSW0]

Mayhem – Life Eternal


First things first. I have been listening to Black Metal for a couple of years now, but I don’t give a damn about any kind of scene or about being trve, kvlt, frostbitten or whatever else there is. I do not care about Varg Vikernes’ political views or his world outlook. I do not support fucking church burnings (even though I think that religions are brainwashing institutions which detain people from free-thinking) or stupid murders. I am not a close-minded idiot who rejects everything but Black Metal but damn I love this crazy shit from the early 90ies.

Let’s switch over to the record now. Life Eternal is an EP which contains rough mixes of 5 songs from the great De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas record, which was released back in 1994. After Euronymous was killed, Attila lost all contact with Mayhem and De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas became a bestseller. The only “souvenir” the vocalist had from these times were the 5 rough songs he recorded for himself in the studio. Attila claims that these songs, even nowadays, always bring back strong and dark emotions and that he wants to share his feelings with the fans. After years of fighting for the rights of the record, he released this 3,000-copy limited A5 digipack EP in 2009, in co-operation with Season of Mist and his own label.

What makes this EP so special? There are a few things. First of all it’s the whole getup. The record doesn’t only come in a nice A5 format, it also includes 10 stickers, very rare or even unreleased pictures, letters and lyric sheets. The most interesting about the album are Attila’s vocal performances. He probably already had an idea of how the vocals should sound, nevertheless he tried out different styles and singing techniques in order to decide which one suited best for the different songs and overall atmosphere. It is not always that easy to hear differences between the songs from De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas and the “original” but if you sit down and listen carefully you make clear distinctions.

Talking about differences you notice that Hellhammer’s drums on the Life Eternal EP are much more passive and in the background. I personally don’t like drums which are too present. This record also contains a Funeral Fog drum intro, which was cut out later on the “official” release. Looking at the guitars, I come to a similar conclusion. I like the guitars on the EP more, they are grungier and harsher, which support and underline and even perfect the extreme dark and dissonant atmosphere of Mayhem‘s sound and music.

People often tend to say that the fact of being a legend is larger than Mayhem’s musical accomplishments. With albums like De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas, Mayhem – Live In Leipzig and Life Eternal, they easily convince us of the opposite. This record is pure evil and I don’t care if this release has been put out to profit from the band’s popularity or not. I personally think that Life Eternal is one of the best and most interesting records in the history of the band.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zY9zhTlaMW0]

Dead Dudes in the House


I am sure everybody remembers his first zombie movie. If you were lucky it was most likely Night Of The Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead from 1978 or 2004 or Day of the Dead (1985). Well, my first zombie movie was none of them and you know what? I am still cooler than you because mine was: Dead Dudes in the House! I watched this movie years ago at a friend’s place and since then it doesn’t get off my head.

I have to admit that I forgot about the title for years but most of the scenes were stuck in my head and I regularly asked my friends and searched in forums for it. A few months ago the time had come and I found out the title: Dead Dudes in the House (yeah!!!). This is not a typical movie about the undead like you would expect it from Romero for example. First of all, I have to tell you that Troma Entertainment have their fingers in the pie. So, as the direction the movie is taking is cleared out, I want to tell you a bit about the story.

James Riffel’s movie from 1991 is about a group of teenagers who want to renovate an old house, which one of them had bought. Not knowing that the cheap mansion is haunted, one of the teenagers destroys a tombstone while they are inspecting the “garden”. After having entered the house they pretty soon come across an old Lady which from now on goes on a sadistic killing spree and turns the young people into her zombie army. Why all the agitation? Well, the teenagers destroyed the last resting-place of the woman which made her quite upset.

The story, some times, has a few longueurs and there could have been more gore scenes and blood in it. But I surprisingly liked this crazy story very much and the old lady is still a bit fishy. She actually was the second movie character which, as a “kid”, I was scared of.

First was this one (still creepy as shit):
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36WEn-9zs1U]
OK, back to topic. The actors are shitty but that’s a must in B-Movies and that’s what Dead Dudes in the House actually is: a B-Movie but a really cool, funny and even sometimes a bit scary one. This is the first movie where I hope that somebody will do a remake of.

While writing this short review, I was constantly thinking of a fight between Vera Cosgrove (the old zombie bitch from Braindead) and Leatherbee (the crazy and deranged undead granny from this movie), and I was wondering who would win. Make your bets and tell me in the comments.

P.S. I can’t post a video from the movie but here is an external link:
Dead Dudes in the House scene

Gayniggers From Outer Space

Directed by: Morten Lindberg

Cast: Coco P. Dalbert, Sammy Saloman, Gerard F. Hail

Whoaa whoa whooaaa, first off; chill dudes. This movie is by no means homophobic or racist, hence the movie title. There’s no need to start ranting about the movie or get out on the streets and start looting in utter dismay. Let me please introduce you to this masterpiece.

I remember when I watched this movie for the first time. It was a few years ago, when the blokes from the luxembourgish band John McAsskill  offered me 2 DVDs with a panoply of different trash movies. Me and Luc watched Gayniggers from Outer Space at his place and Luc’s first reaction was: “Eric, if this movie is gayporn I am not willing to watch it any further.” I just replied: “I do not fucking care mate, I’ll watch it anyways!”

Gayniggers from Outer Space is a danish production dating from 1992 which satires blaxploitation, science-fiction and homophobia.

This black and white movie (oh the irony) begins with the tripulation of the spaceship Ringmusculaturus II travelling through space looking for new planets unknown to the Gay universe. The Gayniggers from planet Anus are Captain ArmInAss, Captain B.Dick, Sargeant Shaved Balls and german speaking Mr. Schwul.

When analyzing Earth with their special radars the Gayniggers find out that planet Earth is also populated by female creatures, something they cannot bear; so they decide to go on a crusade to eliminate all the females on Earth and liberate all men from female tyranny. In this, the movie also makes fun about different ethnical stereotypes in which for example Germany is best known for not liking black colored people. Yes, this movie can’t be any more ridiculous and amusing.

One could think that this movie is so wrong, racist, homophobic and whatsoever, but you HAVE to watch it, to notice that it is not meant to be offensive or to be taken seriously. And if you still think that this movie is offensive, notice that the movie was first shown at the Stockholm Gay Film festival in 2006.

I watched the movie before writing this review and it made my day, once again. I would rather prefer this flick as a milestone in homosexual acceptance and tolerance than a shitpile like Brokeback Mountain which couldn’t be anymore pretentious and cliché-overloaded.

So, if you don’t take yourself too seriously and you aren’t too much of a stuck up cunt, please give this piece of art a chance and some credit.

Conclusion: disturbing, but still enjoyable to watch.

Crippled Black Phoenix – I, Vigilante


No new fresh food on my desk, so let’s talk a little bit about one of my favourite albums of 2010. Be ready for a laudation because I haven’t found much to criticize until this day. Started as a project of a collection of many well or less known post-rock musicians, Crippled Black Phoenix seems to have established itself as a truly independent supergroup with their latest album.

So what’s so special about this work? To be short and figurative: you actually can see the snow falling in the Ardennes in 1944 while the world goes down around you when listening to I, Vigilante. Epic probably is the most overused term these days, but excuse me to use it anyway. It is a post-rock concept album which doesn’t continue the line that has characterized post-rock for the last couple of years. Some may call the development boring, or overplayed. It doesn’t really matter.

Crippled Black Phoenix combines post-rock with elements like vocals and speed changes, which sometimes result in a short rock part, making it more receptive. Moreover they created that sound of Armageddon that keeps floating in your head especially during the cold seasons of the year. The more you listen to it, the more you will discover. Be it strings, wind instruments or piano, or be it the lyrics of the songs, turning each track into a little piece of literature in itself. Lots of people have compared this to Pink Floyd, in my eyes this is just one of many influences to find. The warm and melodious vocals (actually way too rare to find in this genre) top this album off. The front singer, Joe Volk, really amplifies the atmosphere, being rigorous, being sad, sometimes being nothing but wonderful.

The intro of track no. 4, Bastogne Blues, just makes you tremble. What comes afterwards is a great and pessimistic song that represents the whole idea of a grand album, although two songs still follow. Personally, I like to end the listening after Bastogne Blues because it is a perfect closure of this musical doomsday. But let’s be complete: Of a Lifetime, the second to last song, surprises with 80s guitars and a female singer, Daisy Chapman. Although it doesn’t really fit, it sticks in your mind and seems to try to deal with the whole story called life.

Let’s conclude with the last track, a hidden one, called Burning Bridges. It is bizarre, humorously, sad and happy. The song is a cover version (originally performed by The Mike Curb Congregation) of the title song of a 70’s comedy/war movie with Clint Eastwood. Compared to Bastogne Blues this certainly is the ironic end of the story. You decide which one to chose.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHCxKy2xWHs]
Recommendations: Troublemaker, Bastogne Blues.