adventures in fisheye.

i bought a fisheye camera. here is what it does.

lambs anger.

for my film history course at uni i just watched Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog), a short french surrealist film made in 1929 by Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali. have a watch of it here. then when i wikipedia'd it i stumbled across a reference of the films opening scene on the cover of mr oizo's album lambs anger. i looked it up and sure enough, there is ol' flat eric about to get the razor to the eyeball treatment.



then i noticed that pitchfork gave lambs anger 2.9 out of 10. i recon the album is a bit of a masterpiece, so i read the review. now lets step back for a second, cool off, and take a look at the movie 'Un Chien Andalou'. if you've watched it you'll agree its about 16 minutes of disjointed and bizarre ideas following very little plot or linear structure. after all, its a surrealist film, and we know those surrealists are pretty loose dudes. the idea of surrealism is to suprise and shock, to create confusion and unexpected juxtapositions.
i think therefore its fair to say that lambs anger is at least influenced by surrealism, and when the review says the album is "Overblown and frantic, with a surplus of sounds and a dearth of ideas", perhaps thats the point? the last paragraph of the review talks about "a profound lack of communication between adjacent loops" and the "constant feeling of starting over at every one-beat is exhausting, and makes the music seem at once predictable and erratic". that may have indeed been oizo's point, and rather than a negative, perhaps its proof that this album is a perfectly executed example of surrealist electro.
then the reviewer compares oizo to justice, saying that "Justice do tooth-grindingly obnoxious machine-noise anthems right". this is where the art vs. entertainment aspect comes into view. at the time when Un Chien Andalou was released, hollywood was producing movies in a more classic style aimed at making a profit. the surrealists on the the other hand were making movies not for profit but for art.
comparing mr. oizo's lambs anger and justice is in a way like comparing a 1929 hollywood production to a bizarre surrealist film and this is where the review has gone wrong. justice are great, they released an album half full of dancefloor anthems, gained worldwide acclaim, got played in all the clubs and are now endorsing everyones favorite brand of cola. and this is good, i like justice as much as the next guy, but don't be saying that mr. oizo sucks because this isn't the path that he chose. mr oizo makes music as art, justice make music as entertainment, and its not fair to compare the two.
mr. oizo didn't write an album full of justice-esque tracks, because thats not what oizo does. mr oizo wrote an album thats sometimes banging, sometimes bizarre, but always a fucking masterpiece.

pretty fuckin excited.

october 16, 2009. get excited.