Another shocker in the girls-locker from exponential inferno megalith Roscoe Mitchell. Very alluring splay of figures in the construct of cello (Tomeko Reid), trap drums (Vincent Davis) & stand-up bass (Junius Paul) pretty much guaranteeing dynamism & a colossal range of climates & forms to roam through. Continue reading Roscoe Mitchell Quartet-celebrating Fred Anderson CD:
“What happens when the rich get richer?” so posits the cover of this excellent documentary. Fire up the disc & the first statistics that emerge are
“35 years ago an economic project in the US & UK was supposed to provide a better life for all.
Today, in both countries, inequality is at it’s highest level since 1928”
further observations on London’s aggressive tree reduction/de-greening & public poisoning/herbicide. Continue reading death & dog-shit:
Graveyards! Wonderful havens of respite & nature-cosm’s in the shit-sty that is London. Few people, & a proclivity towards quite as well, just to heap cherries on the icing-wads. Old architecture heaving with character from decades (perhaps even centuries?) of elemental embellishing & beautification, ancient tilting stones, lop-sided from expanding soils wreathed in briars & festooned in ivy all choca’ with wild flowers. Basically, places of peace, beauty & solace amidst the soul braying contagion of this insane car-centric metropolis mishap. Continue reading Rest In Poison!
“The development potential of prime sites, aided by the expedient push for “civilised” urban environments, has put city governments across the country on a collision course with rural China. Nowhere is the face-off more evident than in the conflicts over urban village land, which rankle at the core of all the stories in this book. But these conflicts are ultimately about far more central issues nagging at China’s urban future: corrupt institutions and weak civil society. These may sound like separate concerns, but the following stories show how inseparable they are” Continue reading Dragons In Diamond Village-Tales of resistance from urbanizing China (David Bandurski)
it’s never ever easy reading about contemporary Mexico. Billed as “an indictment of their country’s failings by 7 exceptional writers” .. indeed, keeping up with Mexico’s resident narco/government/military carnage feels more & more like witnessing a total “failed state” scenario as a kind of criminal coup rolls it’s drape ever further. Continue reading The Sorrows Of Mexico
So my friend is being forced to move house (flat)! It’s one of those now ubiquitous “unscrupulous” but probably legal ejections that’s tearing sane minds & lives apart all over London as the residual vestiges of interesting people are expelled from the crapital due to extortionate rents & government solicited land-lord tyranny as part of the Cancervatives undeclared social purging initiative. Continue reading PURGED FOR PROFIT!
Perestroiking like Pinkham! it’s so easy to get hooked on every-day Russo/far Eastern European related reportage & literature. why? well, as Pinkham herself puts it – “My family and friends had trouble understanding why I had fallen in love with Ukraine, a country that most Americans could hardly find on a map, famous only for Chicken Kiev and mail-order brides. Continue reading Black Square- Adventures in the Post Soviet World (Sophie Pinkham/302 pages)
“there are now very few significant interludes of human existence (with the colossal exception of sleep) that have not been penetrated and taken over as work time, consumption time or market time.”
a mordant retaliatory of razor-sharp rejectionist reason & intellectual scold. Professor Crary wields a formidable blade & spares none of our techno-dystopian intentionally incapacitating nightmare’s piss-poor explanations, factual twisting & justificatory tropes from the lacerating edge. Continue reading 24/7 – Jonathan Crary
“whatever the technological advances of modern society – and they’re nearly miraculous – the individualized life styles that those technologies spawn seem to be deeply brutalizing to the human spirit”
One hell of a book! Sebastian Junger will be familiar to many of you as he is bobbing on a geezer of fame. to some – Junger is a bit of a celeb & dismissed as the ultimate embedded bias bitch (being a contributing editor to Vanity Fair doesn’t help these accusations) Continue reading Tribe – On home coming and belonging (Sebastian Junger)