Marco Porsia is currently in the midst of creating the film Where Does A Body End? regarding the truly awesome Swans. He’s put together this brief three minute film to commemorate the final show of this Swans line up which took place earlier this month in New York City.
I’d have to say, after so many years of watching (and loving) live music, Swans are the only band where I was ever struck by the desire – mid-show – to abandon everything and just go watch them night-after-night-after-night. They remain the standard against which I judge a live show: does the set flow? Is this a journey or just a grab-bag of songs? Was it possible to surprise me with the decisions made? Did I hear something new? Did I hear old things anew? Did I lose track of time and space and the presence of others? Did I reach a point of complete surrender to sound and spectacle? Swans.
Currently trying to read more fiction. Two authors in particular are heading up my “what’s awesome?” list. Firstly, Adam Nevill:
He’s a British horror author I’ve followed a while now. His first book was very visibly someone learning as they went – a university/post-university effort but it’s been great to see that develop into such a diverse expertise in how to chill. I loved Last Days for its keen observance of cult structures and the building dread; The Ritual for the sense of being hunted in a believable space; then his most recent works have entered something new. No One Gets Out Alive is the tale of a down-on-her-luck zero-hours girl scratching together enough money to live and forced to take the worst accommodation with the grimmest bottom-feeders, the kind of guys who take advantage of the weak. It’s gift was in making something that is a part of day-to-day life feel more horrific than the imaginary or the supernatural: the way the two realms worked together created something with huge emotional power. Lost Girl was another step out of fantasy and into something closer to home: a world beset by the realities of climate change, in which predating on one’s fellow man is increasingly the norm, in which money provides insulation – again, the weaving of supernatural into a believable context was talented and intriguing.
On a lighter note, the other author I’ve got a lot of time for right now is Jonathan L. Howard:
http://www.jonathanlhoward.com/
I’ve got one more book to go in the Johannes Cabal series. The tale of an amoral anti-hero with a talent for unwitting humour and knowing sarcasm, again and again there’s a turn of phrase that I have to stop and re-read to appreciate how beautifully done or imaginatively written it is. Add on the humour, the depth, the diverse landscape in which everything takes place…I’ve become a big fan. I’m concluding The Brothers Cabal at the moment and enjoying the digressions and diversions (the scene where he lectures the creatures that live in the garden on who/what to eat and not to eat for example.)
Nirvana Legacy 