Roll up (and that’s an invitation!)

I’ve been listening to Magical Mystery Tour back to back to back to back for the past few hours. It’s now been permanently burned into my brain. The first side of this LP (I own the CD version) is fucking weird. It might only seem that way because I don’t do drugs. But still… W-e-i-r-d. Also, amazing music. Did I mention I find it eerie?

And here’s my current favourite:

The second half of the album, unlike the first, won’t destroy your mind. The contrast between Paul and John’s writing is striking when you listen to Penny Lane right after Strawberry Fields Forever. The first a seemingly happy-go-lucky song, the second a much gloomier composition. There are some other great singles on the same side. The anthemic All You Need Is Love features a gazillion rock stars on backing vocals. I think I am somewhere in there, too.

Rebuild of Evangelion – 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone

So I just watched the first movie in the Rebuild series. At first I thought I had gotten what I had expected: a prettier, more polished, condensed Evangelion geared towards those viewers who are intimidated by the complexity of the series and just want the story presented in a more accessible way. But by the end of the movie, I had not only rediscovered why NGE is perhaps my favourite anime, but had also developed a strong desire to watch the first six episodes of the original again for the sole purpose of cross-comparing them with the movie.

The visuals are particularly strong. The series was released more than a decade ago and the movie provides evidence that technology has in fact evolved. Also, a presumably bigger budget must’ve helped. The movie looks much more detailed than the series. Various visual effects have been augmented, many of them with the use of 3D. The fight scenes against the Angels – who have also undergone redesigns, some of which quite significant – seem to have been worked upon and expanded, in one case up to a few minutes.

The plot remains pretty much as you remember it from the series, only this time is feels as if someone’s giving you a 90-minute-long synopsis of it, throwing extra bits and pieces in to help you understand it better. The seasoned NGE veteran will immediately notice the events don’t play out exactly the way they had the last time. A character is introduced much earlier compared to the original continuity and in the 30-second preview of the second film that follows the credits we get a glimpse of a new character. These little discrepancies could very easily be hints that this is not a simple retelling of the story, but an alternative story or even a sequel of sorts.

All in all, this movie does a great job of compressing six episodes into a feature film and looking better than ever in the process. Do not expect much more in terms of character development than what you got in the series; on the contrary, some depth is sacrificed in the process of condensing for the big screen – which would really be my only complaint, were I forced to voice one. But this feels fresh enough to rekindle your interest in NGE, or feed your fanboyish hunger for, erm, MOAR more.

Absolutely recommended. Go watch it right this minute. Especially if you’re a fan of Rei.

Showroom Dummies vs the Man-Machine

Photo by mediaeater.

While looking for news on the sudden absence of Florian Schneider from April’s US tour, I came across a very interesting article by Mr. Martin Belam, titled “When does it stop ‘being’ Kraftwerk?”, wherein he debates the existence of a hard core in the Kraftwerk lineup. Are Ralf and Florian essential parts of Kraftwerk, he asks, or is it still Kraftwerk when only one of the founding members is around? And would it still be Kraftwerk without any of them present? What if four random musicians (or one, or ten, or twenty of them) decided to appear on stage and perform Kraftwerk songs?

A brief look back at the history of the quartet reveals many changes in the lineup, especially during the earlier years. This excellent chart summarises the various changes up until April 2008, when, of course, Florian Schneider, a founding member, didn’t appear to perform live. Even Ralf Hütter, the other founding member, had left the group for some time in 1970. And I can only imagine the fans’ surprise when Wolfgang Flür and, years later, Karl Bartos (the other two pieces of the classic, most long-lived and most prolific Kraftwerk lineup) left Kraftwerk.

Ralf and Florian have always been an essential part of Kraftwerk, perhaps even more so than the rest of the members. So the real question is, do people go to Kraftwerk concerts to listen to Ralf, Florian and the gang jam on their synths, or do they just want to listen to their music? Decades under the influence of pop culture naturally prompt one to think the former is the case.

Kraftwerk, notorious for their reclusiveness, have always strived, it would seem, to avoid being identified as pop icons. Their priority is their music, not their image. They aim to detach themselves from their music, or at least those parts of their personalities that are not responsible for producing it and would interfere with its message. And yet, despite their best efforts, the absence of a member sparks discussions and speculation among the fans. Have Kraftwerk ultimately failed in their quest to remain musicians? Have they become the Showroom Dummies they famously describe in one of their albums? And have the fans pieced together an image that doesn’t reflect the group’s intentions?

It’s my opinion that it all comes down to the listener’s point of view. If one considers Kraftwerk a popular music group [the term "pop music" is used in its broader sense in this post], then every fluctuation of the lineup is of utmost importance. Pop music demands that the bond between the composers/performers and their music is sacred and mostly unbroken (with covers, remixes, etc being the exception). Kraftwerk will always equal two spoons of Ralf and Florian, sometimes a pinch of Wolfgang and Karl and perhaps some Fritz and Hennig. Stefan Pfaffe (2008 touring member), is a taste that can’t possibly become part of the Kraftwerk recipe.

But if one is to perceive Kraftwerk as a creative entity whose essence is its music – and a parallelism to composers of classical music might not be that far off the mark – then you’d have no problem listening to that music being performed by other artists. This point of view is clearly the one the musicians themselves choose to maintain, unless of course their apparent aversion to celebrity status is a systematic (as well as successful?) plan to attract even more publicity to themselves, which I highly doubt. Watching Ralf or Florian perform live suddenly becomes a matter of appreciating their skills as performers and paying your respects to them as composers of the music they perform.

The compromise is not that hard to make (at least not as far as I’m concerned): Watch Kraftwerk perform live as popular musicians for as long as they choose to operate under that template, but be open to new interpretations of their work. The originals will always be present in the studio albums. Their music, however, deserves to be (and is) more than pop music.

This, of course, is an extremely multi-faceted issue that involves a range of topics from the concept of intellectual property, to the philosophic division between appearance and essence, to the roots of pop culture itself. I can’t even begin to mention these without feeling they’re way beyond the purpose of this blog post (not to mention my own understanding), so it’s time for some closing words.

A few days ago I read (and scoffed at) someone’s perception of Kraftwerk as an idea. I can now safely proclaim is that if I ever get the chance to watch Kraftwerk live, I’ll be a happy witness of their attempt to break through the barriers of popular music into something greater.

Credit roll at 7 a.m.

I just watched the final minutes of Happy Together for no reason other than to marvel at Wong Kar-Wai’s mastery of the medium. Pixelated and stretched to a square-ish aspect ratio, it is still beautiful, uplifting and melancholic at the same time, capturing a wide range of emotion as only a scene from a WKW film is capable of doing. This is the reason I love cinema.

Link to an ultra-awesome WKW fansite: Chasing The Metaphysical Express

Doom 3: A late review (Part 2)

This is the second part of my review of Doom 3 [aka D3 for the rest of this article]. In part 1 I promised to explain why I am convinced D3 is made of distilled awesome and this is where I do exactly that. I’ve broken this review down to the usual (and very familiar to everyone who has ever read a game review), sections of Story, Graphics, Sound and Gameplay. The first three sections can be found in this part of the review, whereas for the last one you’ll have to refer to part 3.

Warning: TL;DR review ahead