What a delight to talk with Ingo from coffeehouse to coffeehouse, and a record of that chat, a contender for some of our end-of-year-lists, is, for all the good reasons, our album of February, the latest opus of The Flaming Lips. The fun of discussing the magic tricks of the unicorn riders has only been surpassed by the live experience of Oklahoma City’s finest in Berlin.
There is no reason to change the „philosophica“/psychologica“-column for the next month. None of our specialists came up with a proposal of a new adventurous book in these areas – and, by the way, two of us and our dearest readers have now started to make first steps and exercises in the field of lucid dreaming. I will write another text about that wonderful new Eno song of my latest lucid dream – no surprise, it came into being one day after the brilliant Lips concert and other strange „realities“.
Six episodes, each one about thirty minutes long – and there it is, one of the best English TV series of recent years (within the thin line between comedy and drama: Fleabag. A woman, mentally unstable, sexually confused, traumatized by the suicide of her best friend, that might have been the typical stuff of an extremely boring Fassbinder movie in the days of old. But here it is, from fucking Brexit Britain: lots of laughing, shock value, freshness, coolness, blackness. Brilliant!
A totally different atmosphere is revealed in „Bitter Wash Road“, by Australian veteran of crime fiction, Gary Disher. Placed in the middle of nowhere, far away from the big cities, created with great care for the details, told in a slow motion mode beyond all those „pattern-writers“ with their obsession for twists and turns on every page, this novel can easily remind us of the existenzialist tone of Albert Camus novels with their lonesome figures in desolate ladscapes.
And, well, the reissue of the month? Thrill Jockey has made it, on vinyl, 2003’s Glenn Jones debut solo guitar album, incl. a guest appearance of the late Jack Rose: „This Is The Wind That Blows It Out“. Some call it the heritage of John Fahey, or part of the long story of „American primitivism“, but, no doubt about it, it is delivered with virtuosity and a beating heart. (Of course I will play music from this „Langspielplatte“ in my next long radio night in Cologne on Feb. 18th!)
Let’s go back to the beginning and add another telling praise of Wayne Coyne’s psychedelics, by Berto Weis: „Overall, the impact of taking and listening to the pill “Oczy Mlody,” will compliment those who subscribe to the treatment. Those who listen will also have possible side effects such as, satisfaction, joy, anger, melancholy, dizziness, as “Listening to the frogs, hiding ourselves in the trees with demon eyes, here we go again…” let the party begin, time for another dose and another, and another of, The Flaming Lips.