Author: andrea Page 19 of 72

I love it when familiar or (in)famous faces turn up unexpectedly in new contexts. It happened when KK Barrett of the Screamers showed up as Spike Jonze’s production designer, and it’s happening now with David McDermott and Peter McGough’s new film, Mean to Me, a 12-minute end-of-the-affair noir starring Agyness Deyn, in her acting debut.

You may (or may not) remember McDermott’s immortal harangues from Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party. Exhibit A:

Designed to showcase, as Deborah Harry so succinctly put it, “neighborhood access to your friendly freaks around the block,” TV Party was an anarchic and often brilliant forum for a coterie of artists, musicians and writers just on the cusp of fame (or, in some cases, obscurity).

A TV Party regular, McDermott is one of these true East Village eccentrics. Through his partnership with McGough, he has sought to live entirely out of time, viewing the present as a trap and a dead end. The past, however, is filled with endless possibilities.

Partially underwritten by a number of corporate sponsors, this new project pushes their quietly anachronistic work into a new realm of commercial possibility. Watch the trailer via the New York Times T blog.

COURTESY OF CHEIM & READ

While there’s a hell of a lot of clutter and noise on the internet, there’s also a lot to be discovered. By randomly clicking a link it’s possible to discover (or rediscover) a whole new world.

Like, for instance, A Diamond Age, Atlanta, Ga.-based musician M Leer’s ever-mutating (mostly) solo project. While he’s busy putting the finishing touches on his next record, you’d do very well to download his beautifully-curated mix tapes — very heavy on Technicolor psychedelia and rarities from the glory days of Cinecitta.

Whatever you do, don’t pass up Beguiling the Hours, Leer’s track-for-track tribute to Gareth Williams and Mary Currie’s collaborative project Flaming Tunes.

Williams’ post-This Heat project only saw limited release on cassette in the 1980s. Thanks to Mick Hobbs’ Life and Living Records, it was given a proper reissue last year.

When Leer, a dedicated This Heat fan, stumbled upon an FT bootleg in 2007, he was amazed to discover that the album wasn’t more well-known, even among the cognoscenti.

“What initially grabbed me was that it was in a different place from This Heat, but with a similar cadence. You could tell where it was coming from,” he said in 2009. “Essentially, [it’s] a pop record —a song-oriented, soulful thing.”

Cheers to Dan Selzer at Acute Records for alerting me to this wonderful video of Gareth Williams, filmed in the ‘80s and completed after his untimely death in 2001 by friend Colin Harrison.

“Nothing’s On” and other rarities can be downloaded at Flaming Tunes. (The links are very quietly hiding out on the right, under the photos.)

A Diamond Age, “Raindrops from Heaven” (from Beguiling the Hours, 2007)

Gareth Williams, “31” (demo)

IMAGE: LETTER FROM GARETH WILLIAMS TO MARY CURRIE, FROM FLAMING TUNES

Brighton group Ebsen and the Witch are a rather mysterious lot, all sepia-toned and wintry on their Myspace page. (Which is to say, I know next to nothing about them.) Today they released a limited edition single as part of the newly-reinvigorated too pure singles club—which is reason enough for me to pay attention to them. Reason #2 is a recommendation from none other than producer Mark van Hoen —always a sign of something wonderful going on.

Like the fog, this track tip-toes in on little cat feet. But it gathers in power as it goes along, turning into a storming, fuzz-drenched, JAMC-by-way-of-Phil-Spector-before-he-went-completely-psycho delight. (How I love bands that harken back to the glory days of shoegaze.)

The song’s mix of delicacy and power brings to mind Sian Alice Group, the Cocteaus (all those ringing guitars), with dreamy echoes of Julee Cruise, Beach House. Thematically, this is akin to AC Marias’ “One of Our Girls (Has Gone Missing)” —taking the dramatic ending of The Awakening as a starting point, a new beginning. (Like the book, both songs are melancholy but hopeful too.)

Welcome back, too pure, Kick my ass again with something this great, I dare ya.

Esben and the Witch, “Lucia at the Precipice”

PHOTO BY ANDREA FELDMAN