Manafonistas

For Love Can Turn Us Still (FLOTUS) – the wonderful new album of Lambchop is on par with their classics – the subtle electronic innovations intensify their palette instead of reaching for a bigger audience. The album of December. The album for the subversive christmas tree. The album for friends of Frank O’Hara poems. The album for people who love albums they can listen to forever. In one way, and this is no joke, it even supasses SGT. PEPPER. Not one weak track! Or will anybody tell me that „Good Morning Good Morning“ is not rather crappy?!

Going back in time: some of you may have a decent memory about the second Jethro Tull album, the one with the stand-up cover. STAND UP now got THE ELEVATED EDITION, with lots of footage, films and, excellence as usual, Steven Wilson‘ stereo and surround remixes. Even Ian Anderson’s Bach-Bourée can still create a shiver in this new ambience. And the elevated edition is a book, too, full of stunning episodes. 1968, 1969 revisited. Brian Whistler’s tales of the SACD of Weather Report’s TALE SPINNIN‘ would be perfect, too, here (I got it, I heard it, I love it – a rediscovery!), but the comments there have an extra-value, so we leave it in the blog diary for its own good.

And a small change in our third column of monthly appraisals: the term „philosophica“ can from now turn into „psychologica“, „artistica“, „graphica“ etc., dependant on the object of desire. Anybody who has something in mind? Mail your proposal of a review to manafonistas@gmx! The first idea is often the best and will be taken! That is, by the way, the address of the real Manafonista headquarter, 500 miles away from my living place. Otherwise (a quiet bravo for my understatement, please!) my enthusiastic review of the wonderful #42 of MONO.KULTUR incl. the adventurous, spellbinding talk with thrill-seeking SOPHIE CALLE, mastress of Houdini-esque ego-dissolution, will find its place there. (A day later: oh, wonderful, from the backyard of the MHQ, someone went enthusiastic about a book that has a very special, vague, nearly ungraspable topic: MOOD.)

The MANA THRILL PRIZE FACTORY 2016 is offering a fine collection of new thrillers and crime novels beyond mainstream, and Stephen Dobyn’s eccentric, funny, dark, hilarious „IS FAT BOB DEAD YET?“ is such a wonderful book with a beating heart, in spite of all its obliqueness. A thriller that evokes Elmore Leonard and Donald E. Westlake at their best, but adds several layers of absurdity and a narrative voice that suggests metafiction meets a Greek chorus meets Jane Austen …

In our BINGEWATCH TRANCE DECEMBER corner, two series of 2016 take center stage: as different as they are, these legal dramas offer rather dark tales: GOLIATH (season 1), a fresh take on the old John-Grisham school (it’s not written by Grisham though) with fabulous Billy Bob Thornton, and THE NIGHT OF (one season only!), mirroring the neo-realistic grittiness of the „noir“- underworlds of „The Wire“ or „True Detective“, in this case with fabulous John Turturro.

P.S. January 2017 will be the month of promising new works by Brian Eno (purely ambient this time, and, nevertheless, another landscape, another thinking space for sure), Tinariwen, The Necks (on Mego now), Ralph Towner (guitar solo, recorded in Lugano,  release date: February (!) 3rd), and „the fearless freaks“ (watch the documentary!) of The Flaming Lips.

Es ist zu leicht, auf diese neue Ausgabe von Mono.Kultur aufmerksam zu machen. Man bräuchte nur ein, zwei Episoden des Gesprächs zum Besten zu geben. Oder drei, vier kurze Stellen zitieren. Man könnte auch, noch einfacher, die Künstlerin kurz vorstellen, mit Witz, oder im Stil von Wikipedia. Aber ist es nicht langweilig, einfach eine Schublade aufzuziehen, oder den kundigen Animateur zu geben? Wer mit ihren Arbeiten vertraut ist, braucht das alles sowieso nicht, und wird dennoch grosse Freude beim Lesen haben. Jede Ausgabe von Mono.Kultur enthält ein einziges, langes Gespräch, begleitet von Illustrationen, graphisch exzellent aufbereitet. Wer Sophie Calle nicht kennt, wird auf jeder Seite, mit einer gewissen Wahrscheinlichkeit, verblüfft sein, verwundert. Auf Ideen kommen. Im Grunde ist die Kunst der Sophie Calle eine einzige weit verzweigte Gebrauchsanweisung, das Staunen über die eigene Existenz als ständige Option beizubehalten, das Leben als aufregende Versuchsanordnung zu gestalten, abseits selbstgefälliger Avantgardisterei. Kein Wunder, dass sie mit Laurie Anderson bestens befreundet ist. Bevor ich jetzt doch in die Falle tappe, und einzelne Stories anreisse, hier kurz eine unvollständige, entspannte Liste der Angesprochenen, um das Wort Zielgruppe zu vermeiden. Freunde generativer Musik, Zenlehrer, Psychotherapeuten, Alltagsabenteurer, Erforscher von Zufallsprozessen, Verwandlungskünstler, Pataphysiker, die Lesergemeinde von Detektivgeschichten, Julio Cortazar, Ror Wolf, Heinrich Steinfest oder den besseren Büchern von Paul Auster, Anhänger von Schelmenromanen a la Bouvard und Pécuchet, Freunde der Videowerke und Schriften von Bill Viola, alle Menschen, die Songalben von Brian Eno besitzen oder gerne seine Oblique Strategies zur Hand nehmen, jedes Individuum, das sich für Bon Ivers neues Album Twentytwo, A Million begeistern kann. Auf keinen Fall sollten sich folgende Personengruppen dieses fantastische Heft zukommen lassen. Journalisten, die sich darüber aufregen, dass Bob Dylan den Nobelpreis für Literatur bekommen hat, Leute, die Coldplay für eine grossartige Band halten, Menschen mit moralischer Verachtung für Stripteasetänzerinnen, Menschen, die das Album Mensch von Herbert G. lieben, verklemmte Calvinisten, und andere Sapiens, die auf jede Spur von Exzentrik mit Abwehr und dummen Sprüchen reagieren. (Angaben zur Bestellung in comment one.) 

In 1983, the French artist Sophie Calle found a lost address book on a street in Paris. She rang up the people listed and asked about the owner of the book, whom she calls Pierre D. („I will try to discover who he is without ever meeting him.“) She published her findings in a newspaper — to the outrage of the real Pierre, who threatened to sue. Calle agreed to hold off republishing the pieces until after his death.

Pierre died in 2005, and this book is now available in English. I’d foolishly worried that there would be something self-consciously whimsical, something Amelie about the project. But from the outset, Calle’s inquiry is too serious and strange and plain difficult. A few people refuse to speak to her. Others agree to meet Calle, but can’t recall Pierre. The testimonies add up; our quarry comes into focus then blurs again: He lives alone. His hair went white the week his mother died. He has conventional sexual fantasies. He wears ill-fitting clothes, like a clown.

Assembling a personality from these shards is intoxicating, a bit like solving a mystery, a bit like falling in love. But whom are we falling in love with? Is it Pierre? Or is it our guide? The book includes photographs of the people, paintings and places dear to Pierre. The most arresting portrait is of a young woman — could it be Calle? — in profile, hiding her face behind long dark hair, inscrutable to the last.

(Parul Sehgal)