30 Pages Left.

Review of a Book Deferred. 

Ken Kalfus’ Equilateral. 

190 pages in, this book is something.  Sanford Thayer is a driven scientist.  He loves ping pong.  Connect with that much?  Of course you do.  His assistant loves playing too, Miss Keaton.  They play each other.  Totally hot.  Either she wins or the other way around, can’t remember.  Look, it’s an x-rated romp waiting to happen and I would've admired Kalfus for engaging the sexual tension that's there, embracing his instincts, and turning this narrative into an unstoppable ping-pong triggered orgy. Spoiler alert. He doesn't.

Thayer and Co. dig three enormous trenches to form and ignite an incendiary, sanguineous (word I learned 15 minutes ago in the text) triangle in the Egyptian desert to signal to Mars, ‘we can build this triangle thingy, be amazed.’ Naive and superfluous, the task reads very David Blaine meets military industrial complex. Oh, Mars is inhabited based on Thayer’s telescopic visions of Martian-made waterways on the planet’s surface.  And it’s the turn of the century! Steam punk much? 

Much ado convinces readers this project has the financial, scientific, and social ‘go for it’ by the leading terrestrial municipalities.  Half the joy of the novel (all novels I guess) is Kalfus’ painstaking bravura in kidding readers to the triangle’s plausibility.  Another joy lies in engineer Wilson Ballard’s ‘what did I sign up for?  Fuck it I can shoot’ zeal.  Sure to be played in film adaptation by a surly, sand-pecked Russell Crowe. 

The obvious occurs; strikes, perplexing desert imagery, political volleying, Stockholm syndrome, Klaus Kinskisms, and a balance of dialogue and disposition that Roberto Bolaňo could get behind.  30 pages from conclusion, the novel is alternate reality enough to feel like a science fiction dodge.  Wrapping your Equilateral paperback in a Swann’s Way book jacket won’t be necessary this time.  You can kick back, relax, and read a great piece of literature with the oldschool shame of reading a goddamn great piece of literature.  

Courtesies, 

                                                                           The Brothers Rebel.

Audience Now.

 

An Album Requiring Ears. 

Luminarium by Tape.  

Every man at one time or another, on a desert island, with one week’s rations left and utilizing his final hours to secure his own survival must take a coal-burnt stick to a cave wall and stipple his Top Ten Records of All Time.  It then occurs to that man:  “But wait! I have a Top Ten Records of All Time for records-records and a Top Ten Records of All Time for strictly ambient sans words records!”
   

In order to confuse you as much as possible let me put it this-a-way: my record on the latter list that is latter to the latter record of the first record on the list (Eluvium’s Talk Amongst The Trees) is Tape’s 2008 slam dunk (probably containing field recordings of slam dunks) release Luminarium.  Tape are a Swedish Trio, Sweden  an attractive region whether your citing examples for your current research paper about socialized medicine or insert Julian Assange joke here. 

Right, right, so what does it sound like?  Luminarium is a development bath beckoning image.  Everything onboard this recording feels analog, delicately thudding then being scraped away like a steely broth of snow being dealt an umbrella, then shoveled away.  These 10 pieces titter, faint, and coo.  

The mark of truly great ambient works is that their default repetition can stand alone—see cheese—then become compromised (in this case, minimalized) through layering.  Remember Ethan Hawke after his skeletal post-Uma phase, filled out a little, then periodically awkward, but now in award-worthy shit like Before Midnight but also B+ horror, um, The Purge, I guess (full circle anorexia

sentence). Hollywood calls this the Love/Hate Paternal Confusion Death Casting Technique.  Well, it’s nothing like that.

Instead, free association:  Raw harbor.  Turgid aperture.  Stan Brakhage.
There are guitars too, and melodic din, a should-be linocut album cover, without which this record might not receive my: 

Courtesies, 
The Brothers Rebel.

Video Spotlight: Action Bronson - Strictly 4 My Jeeps

I LOVE MONDAYS!!!!! Has the economy collapsed into chaos yet? No????  Fuck Mondays, then.

YO YO YO, it's officially cooling down here in the beautiful state of Colorado, but I know just the thing to get it cranked back up to "please dear god kill me and everyone I love before we spontaneously combust" levels of hotness. Get out your pitbulls and your morbidly obese women because Action Bronson is keeping it very real in this latest video from his newest e.p. Saab Stories.  Go to your local drug dealer and snag it now......... also grab me a pound of roast turkey while you're out, AND IT BETTER BE ORGANIC.

Rebelbros Sunday Sabbath Edition: God's Corner

Hey there, fellow brethren!  We here at Rebelbros understand that the dating game can be a cruel world filled with transvestites and broken condoms, so who better to offer advice than the big man upstairs?  That's right, G-O-D in the mothafuckin hizzzzzouse answering your questions about life and love! Let's get right down to business and see what he's got in store this week with God's Corner!

 Amy

26 years old

urinated on an electric fence at age 7

Dear God,

 Last night I wanted to make things more exciting for my boyfriend, so I told him I thought we should move from holding hands to kissing on the mouth.  He became clearly agitated at this suggestion, and shut down almost immediately.  I tried to get him to talk to me but he just insisted he needed to leave because a new episode of Glee was coming on.  We always watch Glee together!!!  What should I do???

Dear Amy,

 Wow, I thought these questions were actually going to be hard.  Amy, if there's one thing you gotta understand, it's that I created a world rife with unspoken rules and laws.  You made the move and suggested getting more physical, which is what caused this entire mess.  You questioned his masculinity, and therefore he's all like "I'm going to watch this really horrible show tailored to homosexuals" when he's really going to the titty bar and losing his paycheck.  Next time you see him let him whip you across the face with the braided hairs of a stallion three times and I'll think about not sending you straight to hell.

Paul

24 years old

has nightmares about sonic the hedgehog eating his brain

Dear God,

  
I haven't had a girlfriend in a really long time.  I don't like going to the bars, and online dating has been a dead end as well.  I find myself too introverted to strike up a conversation with any woman that I find even slightly attractive.  Any suggestions?

Dear Paul,

What the fuck do you think I created musical instruments for?  Take a good, hard look at guys like Gene Simmons or Keith Richards and tell me I put them on this planet for reproduction.  Learn thirty seconds of "Crash Into Me" by Dave Matthews and then we'll talk.  Until then, go find a goat somewhere and sacrifice it to me for asking such a dumb question.

Diana

36 years old

technically has a tail

Dear God,

  

My family (specifically my mother) is getting insistent that me and my husband should start having a family as soon as possible.  I still feel like my best years are ahead of me and that having kids is probably not going to happen anytime soon, if at all.  What should I tell them?  I think my mom might have a heart attack if she hears we aren't interested in babies!!!

Dear Diana,

  

Now is not the time for jokes.  When I was putting parts on the human body, I didn't look at the genitals and go "oh man, I hope that they eventually get clever and stop using it for procreation and start using it as a happy pleasure center".  You think this is a game?  You think I'm cool with the killing of countless sperm on a daily basis for laughs?  There are little souls in there man, that I created.........and now those souls march in purgatory, unable to help me in my endless war with the devil.  What if one of those dudes was at the final battle and took a demon bullet for me?  Huh?  How about that?  Your child could have saved the lord!  Imagine how hooked up you could have been!  You could have had a $20,000 Dolce bag and your own butler!!! Or maybe you would spawn the Antichrist and send the earth spiraling towards judgement day?  Tell your mother this and see if that calms her down at all.  Good luck!

{That's all for now!  Remember, I love you eternally, but don't piss me off and covet thy neighbor's wife.  There's a reason I made it a commandment.}

The Dismemberment Plan.....Uh......Plan New Album "Uncanny Valley"

Experimental indie rockers "The Dismemberment Plan" made a surprise announcement this morning, officially stating that they are making a new album and giving it the title of "Uncanny Valley". The release date is set for October 15th.

This will be their first new album since their 2001 release, "Change".

Tracklist:

1. No One's Saying Nothing

2. Waiting

3. Invisible

4. White Collar White Trash

5. Living In Song

6. Lookin'

7. Daddy Was A Real Good Dancer

8. Mexico City Christmas

9. Go And Get It

10. Let's Just Go To The Dogs Tonight


Needless to say, this is really good news. I wonder what changes are bound to happen to their music after 12 years apart? Maybe they are just going to record Joe Easley doing a 50 minute drum solo and call it a day? I would buy the shit out of that.

Sigur Rós - Brennisteinn

If you haven't listened to the new Sigur Rós record Kveikur then you have some explaining to do. While still undeniably the same band with Jonsi continuing to make lyrics in the fashion of whatever mystical land of ponies and cotton candy he's from, it's immediately more agressive; brimming with darker undertones than anything they've done in the past. It pays off in making one of their more interesting works in years.  The first song of the new album, Brennisteinn, is evidence of that.

I dig it when dudes/chicks play a guitar with a violin bow though (Jimmy Page ring a bell?  He has nothing to do with this band), so I feel a little bit like I have to like this song for that reason at the very least.  I also like the video because it's in that category of "i'm probably too stupid to get the underlying metaphors but I'll be damned if that yellow smoke doesn't look pretty cool", which is basically every music video ever made. Mariah Carey made some pretty good ones back in the day. Fantasy?  Jesus Christ.......Honey?  HONEY?

I wonder what Eddie Griffin is getting into these days? Oh well, I'm pretty sure I hit puberty at exactly the same time this was released. Thank you 90's MTV, thank you.

Video Spotlight: Princess Music

Check out this killer live version of Wounded Walrus by Denver's very own Princess Music.  We've been down with them for a while and think it's time you got on board as well.  Get out your tiaras and your bell gowns and have a listen!