Fisher and Tezuka

I have so much love for stores like She Said Boom, Zoinks! and, to a lesser extent, BMV. They all seem to be run in a very similar fashion and totally rock the used book/CD/vinyl realm. Why pay regular price for needle in the haystack books at Indigo (or whatevers) when these places are all needles and employ a serious re-figuring of prices. Check out this book Tokyo Days, Bangkok Nights, for example. I was drawn to it by the awesome cover art, and sure enough the inside is just as beautiful. Unfortunately I found out that the artist, Seth Fisher, whom I'd never heard of before, is no longer alive, despite having been born in 1972. I found that out about him, and little else, from his website, www.floweringnose.com. Check out, in particular, this page of his site, which has some amazing pattern-type drawings such as...


'Tokyo Days' quickly got me much more interested in both Tokyo and Japanese comics (manga). So I picked up a copy of Dororo at She Said Boom yesterday, a 1969 serial by manga-master Osamu Tezuka. He's the guy behind Astroboy and a bunch of other respected Japanese works. While I was perusing the store's graphic novel section I noticed that they had a copy of 'Tokyo Days' for two bucks less than I nabbed it for at Zoinks! Go pick it up. You lucky dude, you.

Kurt Vonnegut's Sweater-Vest

Photos: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
February 12th at Lee's Palace in Toronto



Kip Berman: "This is the biggest show we've ever played!"

Of course it is Kip, you just got famous five minutes ago! The Pains of Being Pure at Heart have stimulated a chain of orgasms across the blogosphere over the past couple of weeks, topped off by a best new music review over at Pitchfork. Although their pseudo fame is sudden, I don't think it's unwarranted; their self title album's got some sweet stuff going on and since you can read about it on a million other blogs, I'll simply leave you to look at these photos and check out the tunes at the bottom. Suffice it to say the band had a really modest stage presence and lead singer/ guitarist Kip Berman's socially awkward excitedness was quite endearing. The short set was well received (the hi-light was a new tune called 103rd) and the Pains (who really seem like such nice kids) bustled off stage, visibly dumbfounded and wondering how their audience got so big.













Photos by: Dave Hurlow, Gabe Kastner, Deirdre Dimitroff

Kurt Cobain's Cardigan
Young Adult Friction

Animal Collection

Alright, alright, alright the new Animal Collective album's pretty good... I said it. This album got out of hand overhyped in my head and when the vinyl pre order arrived I got high, lit some candles made some tea ate some ginger cookies turned the lights down low and cued the record while staring at the cover art. I kind of freaked out though cuz I'm a lightweight and the needle is worn on my record player and everything sounded distorted and some of the the choices they made with the clubby bass are unfortunate... plus that song Bluish? You know you were questioning it on first listen. I spent the next two weeks walking around talking about how much better I liked Strawberry Jam and not really giving it a fair chance.
But I'm reformed now, I've ordered a new needle for my record player, listened to the digital download version of the album through my headphones while sober and found quite a bit to like. Another problem I had was that I had listened to the leaked tracks (Brother Sport and My Girls) way too many times, and these songs act as important bookends in the context of the whole album. This realization has sparked a great deal of conflict in me, as I love downloading leaked preview tracks, but don't want to ruin first listens of albums I love. Looks like I've got some serious soul searching to do. In the meantime, here are a few of my favourite songs from AC's discography (in order of most recent to least), including 'Summertime Clothes', which completes the triumvirate of best tracks on Merriweather in my unesteemed opinion.

Summertime Clothes (Merriweather '09)
Street Flash (Water Curses EP '08)
Purple Bottle (Feels '05)
Who Could Win a Rabbit (Sung Tongs'04)
Slippi (Here Comes the Indian '03)

Strikes Back

Inaugural Comics Post! Yes! Robots battling bass wielding Scott Pilgrim! Also Yes!


Scott Pilgrim Vol. 5: Scott Pilgrim Vs. the Universe came out last Wednesday, and I naturally rushed like a drooling fanboy to the Beguiling ( In Mirvish Village) to pick it up the morning of. There was a small lineup to buy the book and the store manager was leaving to fly to New York for the release party (Bryan Lee O'Malley actually used to worked at the Beguiling, which I guess makes buying his book there a lame source of nerdy pride) so the mood was generally pleasant. Vol. 5 occupies the unfortunate Empire Strikes Back-esque space of segueing the triumphant fourth volume: Gets it Together with Volume six's (probably triumphant) finale. I especially enjoy the parts where Scott describes detailed X-Men plot lines to Ramona... and the robot fights are pretty sweet too. This stuff hits way too close to home to review objectively, I play a ric bass in a rock band, love the X-Men unconditionally and hang out at Sneaky Dee's, so fuck I guess I'm a walking stereotype, at least indie rockish A.D.D dudes with girl troubles living in Toronto will be a well-loved cultural institution henceforth as a result of these books.

As for MP3 content for this post I've come up with a couple things, exhibit a: The song that Scott Pilgrim got his name from by a 90's Halifax rock band called Plumtree that seems to be the female equivalent of Thrush Hermit and partial inspiration of current awesome halifax all female rock band, The Stolen Minks.

Plumtree- Scott Pilgrim

ALSO a song by Bryan Lee O'Malley himself, who records under the name Kupek and releases all of his music for free on his website. This song is from his most recent batch and for some reason I'm quite attached to it (partially owing to the sweet piano riff).

Kupek- Good Book

Furthermore, the good dudes at the Beguiling have gotten me hooked on a Grant Morrison series from the 90's called The Invisibles, about freedom loving radicals who embark on trippy spiritual quests and travel through time in order to defeat the powers of evil who are trying to maintain status quo, enslave humanity and destroy the world. fuck. I just read that back and it sounds really lame... but actually it's really sweet I swear. you can download the first issue here: http://dccomics.com/media/excerpts/1680_1.pdf

Statement

Canada's foremost jazzy, instrumentally, vibraphone heavy collective, "The Hylozoists" put out their third album, L'Ile De Sept Ville, last weekish. This sweet, unassuming, artistic piece of music looks to have been funded by Factor grants, and commissioned by the CBC; seems reasonable no? With track names such as 'Acadia, Acadia', 'The French Settle In' and 'Bras D'or Lakes' (reffering to a beautiful chain of lakes in Cape Breton), you couldn't find a better fit for a government funded arts project!



To the point: it actually says fuck Stephen Harper in tiny little letters in a groove of the trippy topographical map album art. What really amuses me is that someone made something so damn pretty, with almost no conceivable space for literal interpretation and and then wrote such a blunt fuck you message to the Prime Minister of the Country that paid for it right on the front of it.... Amazing! Judging by the song titles and the samples from the last track (taken from Expo 67 celebrations) the underlying theme of this album is Canadian Pride and the richness of the historical spirit of our country. Damn skippy! Another theory is that band leader Paul Aucoin was looking out for his east coast homies Holy Fuck who took the heat over the recent cutting of goverment arts funding. Those East coasters sure love their wacked out instrumental music and their cursing!

Island of Seven Cities

The Hylozoists are playing a free show at Soundscapes Record Shoppe in Toronto, 7 pm this Wednesday