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Talking To A Dead Queen by Leif Elggren
Talking To A Dead Queen by Leif Elggren
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"He's a Swedish multi-disciplinary artist. I chose that to represent all of my friends, composers and people that I know who make extraordinary experimental work. On one hand it is a drone, and it's a really fantastic drone. It's a copper pipe on a pillar driven by it's own amplification - it's a fantastic sound. The other part is a reading of an autopsy of a Dutch queen when she dies. It's an old autopsy so it's got this great formality: it talks about the 'colouration' of the skin. The poetry is in the age of the language. It's something that's absolutely fascinating but it also has no relevance, all it is is about it. It's a composition, it's a piece of imagination. One could mention 'The Gift' by The Velvet Underground. I remember the first time hearing that and it was split in stereo and thinking: 'God that's extraordinary'. Why do I not always sing my own lyrics? It seems to fit better to me. It's the proof that sometimes it's a good idea not to think about things too carefully. The way things roll is sometimes good. It's a funny thing to Wire, it's not what we thought about, it was a practical solution to a time when we were in need of writing material. I never learned to play the guitar, and it turned out to be an incredible device, this distancing, which threw it into interesting spaces. It gives it a theatrical quality that's not drama theatrical, but theatrical in the same way as you'd have with someone like Pinter, where you'd have very normal speech but because of the context that you put things into, suddenly you have something that's quite peculiar."

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This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
1984 | Comedy

"And then, my fourth one is a comedy, and I was torn between Some Like It Hot, which I love, but my vote went to Spinal Tap, which I thought was more contemporary. It made me feel such an old man, but… One of the things about Spinal Tap — I was doing a documentary [The Long Way Home] about Russian rock and roll in, I don’t know, the late ’80s or something like that, and it was about a Russian band coming — it was around Glasnost when they came across to America to make the record, and it was about Glasnost, and the co-production, as it were, saw the closing of the gap between East and West, as it were. That’s what it set out to be, but it turned out to be a disaster. Not the film, but the whole object of the enterprise, because it split the band up, and the Russian band never made another record. They were completely disoriented by being in the West and all that. So it was one of those documentaries where what you set out to do, you don’t do, and you do something else, which is usually better than what you were going to do. The point of the story is that I showed them Spinal Tap. They fell about, and they couldn’t speak a word of English, but they absolutely got it. It was just, again, the power of the humor and the power of the images, and all this kind of stuff. I mean, we were in common ground — they never understood a word of it, but they were just laughing as much I would laugh every time I saw it. That was a kind of interesting experience for me, to see how universal films can be."

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ClareR (5950 KP) rated The Chalet in Books

Nov 8, 2020  
The Chalet
The Chalet
Catherine Cooper | 2020 | Crime, Mystery
8
7.0 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
The Chalet was a twisty, turny thriller that had me guessing all the way through. I couldn’t for the life of me work out who had been responsible for the death (and at one point I wasn’t even convinced that he was dead!), and I had a list of pretty much everyone in the chalet. My main reason for their guilt was that they just weren’t very nice (I know, I’ll never make a great detective!).

This story is split between two timelines to begin with - the present day and twenty years before. In the present day, two couples are sharing a chalet for a holiday mixed with business. I’ll say this again: these are not particularly nice people. They’re rich, entitled and generally insensitive.

Interspersed with this timeline is that of two couples twenty years earlier. Two brothers and their girlfriends are on a skiing holiday. They’re all Oxford University students: three come from affluent upper class families, and one, Louisa, comes from a working class, single parent family. She is made to feel different at all times - whether this is her own insecurities is never quite clear. Her boyfriends brother certainly doesn’t do much to make her feel welcome. At some point during this holiday, there’s a terrible accident that has an equally terrible effect on characters in the present day timeline.

I won’t say any more about the storyline - I don’t want to be the one to spoil someone’s reading enjoyment! What I WILL say, is that I thoroughly enjoyed this and looked forward to reading it every morning on the Pigeonhole app. It’s a tense, exciting, addictive read - and I loved it!

Many thanks to The Pigeonhole for serialising this and helping me once more, to read my NetGalley books! And also thanks to the author, Catherine Cooper for reading along with us.
  
No Shouts No Calls by Electrelane
No Shouts No Calls by Electrelane
2007 | Rock
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

To the East by Electrelane

(0 Ratings)

Track

"I'm just realising as we're going through them - so many of these songs are about loss aren't they? ‘To the East’ isn’t just straight-up melancholy, it’s a song of hope as well; it might be completely redundant, impotent hope, but there is still hope in there. “She's singing to somebody to come back and that the East could be home, but the whole time you're listening to it you suspect the truth of the situation is that those words will never actually be said. Or maybe that's just the way I'm feeling it, I don't know. Again though, it's a very easy song to empathise with; I really believe the voice that's singing it to me. I don't know whether it's about a personal experience or if they're just imagined characters and to be honest, I don't care. I'm right there with them - I'm feeling it too. “I think either our first or second ever show outside of Britain - I can't remember which - was with Electrelane, in Barcelona at that club, Razzmatazz. It was quite the thrill, to be leaving the country to open up for this band we loved. I was really sad when they split up - again, another loss. I wish they were still performing. I think the last time I saw them was at Field Day in 2011 and they were still so great. They did a cover of 'I'm on Fire' by Bruce Springsteen and it was really something else. “They're one of those bands where you only need to hear a few seconds of any given song to know it's them, which means they've also got that trick of being able to make a cover sound like they wrote it themselves.”"

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Hocus Pocus and the All-New Sequel
Hocus Pocus and the All-New Sequel
A.W. Jantha | 2018 | Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult (YA)
8
6.8 (6 Ratings)
Book Rating
It's a very sad thing when the book you were so excited about lets you down. Such is the case with Hocus Pocus & The All-New Sequel. The book, written by A. W. Jantha is split into two parts.

Then.

Now.

Then is a novelization of the movie which I very much enjoyed. 90 percent of the dialogue is taken directly from the movie while there's just enough added detail to give the characters some new depth and set up for the second half of the book.

Now: the second half of the book, the sequel was...

well, It was disappointing.

How?

First, there's the bizarre jump from third person to first and later second POV.

It just throws you into Poppy's world with minimal backstory on who she is and why we should like her or her friends, Travis and Isabella.

Secondly, the characters are STUPID!

Stupid choices left, right, and, center.

As a writer, I understand there needs to be some way to kickstart the conflict but going to the Sanderson house has danger written all over it.

Oh, let's talk about the Sandersons,

The witches are back in all their evil glory with added sister Elizabeth who turned her back on the family legacy of darkness.

Then there's their mother. Their mother who they could not shut up about. Mother this and Mother that.

All the hype got me excited about Sanderson's sister's flashbacks. Backstory. Entire chapters dedicated to them.

it didn't happen.

I was treated to brief remembrances but no backstory.

Then the Mother who was so hyped up made a one chapter appearance before going kersplat.

WHAT WAS THE POINT??

You don't hype a character that much for them to do NOTHING.

The book gets by on nostalgia alone.

Don't even get me started on the bizarre and unneeded cliffhanger.

Very sad.
  
Antics in the Forbidden Zone by Adam and the Ants / Adam Ant
Antics in the Forbidden Zone by Adam and the Ants / Adam Ant
1990 | Rock
(0 Ratings)
Album Favorite

"Following on nicely from “Just What I Needed”, I went to see my Dad in Florida and he had the 12” of “Stand and Deliver” which had “Beat My Guest” on the B-side. “I was into rap at that time, Run DMC and that kind of stuff, so for a ten-year-old it was ‘What the fuck is this?’ I was blown away. I was floored by the riff and “Beat My Guest” has the ultimate guitar riff, it’s so badass. I was into the make-up as well because I was into KISS too, so I thought that was cool. I was mesmerised by the whole look. “My Dad was always one step ahead of me. I remember being with him in Michigan once, we had this cottage we’d go to with my grandparents and he joined us one year, which was really fun. He was looking in the paper to see who was playing in Detroit - which was two hours away - he found out The Dead Kennedys were playing in some tiny little club and he left to go and see them. “I remember thinking my Dad was the coolest, I was ‘What the hell does that mean? He’s into some weird shit.’ He taught me everything. He spoke to me about music, but he doesn’t play music. I acquired a lot of his records when my parents split up, he gave me that Adam Ant record and I was bawling on the plane. “The next time I went to visit my Dad I’d discovered more Adam and The Ants and I wanted to talk to him about all of these other songs I’d heard, but he was already onto the next thing, which was Devo."

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ClareR (5950 KP) rated Luckenbooth in Books

Feb 14, 2021  
Luckenbooth
Luckenbooth
Jenni Fagan | 2021 | Fiction & Poetry, LGBTQ+
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I love a book that takes me by surprise and is a bit off centre; something a bit different from books found on the bestseller lists (which is where I would hope this will end up!!), or the supermarket shelves. Luckenbooth is one of those books.
Luckenbooth piqued my interest as soon as I saw the cover photo - and then I read the synopsis. How could it possibly NOT appeal to me? I mean, the devils daughter rows to Edinburgh in a coffin to work for the Minister of Culture. I was hooked. It’s not all about her though. The book is split into three sections, each section revolving around three different characters, and we see glimpses in to their lives. There are people from all walks of life: strippers, spies, maids, a black human rights lawyer with a bone mermaid, drug addicts, poets, a medium. These are all people who live on the edge of society (within No. 10 Luckenbooth Close, anyway!), people who have little - and they live in a tenement that has been cursed by the devils daughter.
The stories seem not to be linked to one another, and their only link is the fact that they all live in the same tenement building. I really enjoyed these snapshots, any one of them could have been longer and I would have enjoyed them just as much. This fed my love of short stories though, and I really liked how reality was mixed with the more supernatural elements.
I will have to dig out my copies of Fagans books The Sunlight Pilgrims and The Panopticon, languishing in my Kindle library - this has really made me want to read her other books.
Many thanks to the publisher for providing me with a copy of this book through NetGalley.