Top 10+ Music, Movies, and Visual Art of the Week (2023) - Music Diaries

theredkrayola

I love spirit of Eden and (to a lesser extent) laughing stock, but hex is a contender for worst Scaruffi 8 in my opinion. I second Geologist’s request for an in-depth analysis, if only to understand why you, Scaruffi, and other like minded people rate it so highly. They (bark psychosis) completely ripped off Talk Talk’s style and got all the credit for it (Simon Reynolds credited them with inventing post-rock). Not to mention that Talk Talk were abrasive and intense whereas Hex often sounds like background muzak. And even Oasis would be embarrassed to write a line like “I just came to watch you smile/It’s gonna work out anyway”. Hex may not be the worst Scaruffi 8, but it’s definitely the most “easy listening” and saccharine of all the albums he rates that highly. Not to mention quite derivative of Talk Talk (and he values originality)

AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

TiggaTrigga wrote:

Your quick thoughts on the greatness behind the following paintings?
-The Kiss (you seem to REALLY like this one)

The Kiss:
Highly original masterpiece of symbology (Klimt is among the most original visual artists of all time)

Highly complex and profound rumination on the divine, on sensuality, beauty, sexuality, conflated with death

Gold leaf and gold sprinkles serenade the painting everywhere giving it a very striking, glowing and divine beauty, referencing much religious art of earlier periods

A complicated resurrection and rumination on the past: "The use of gold leaf recalls medieval gold-ground paintings, illuminated manuscripts, earlier mosaics, and the spiral patterns in the clothes recall Bronze Age art and the decorative tendrils seen in Western art since before classical times. The man's head ends very close to the top of the canvas, a departure from traditional Western canons that reflects the influence of Japanese prints..." (Wikipedia)

The draughtsmanship of Klimt (his sense of line, the way he draws, the way he colors and shades the skin) is, itself (look and follow it closely) an expression of the "feminine experience" but through the want and eyes and seduction of man (the sense of line, carefully erotic and curving, but also palpable physicality, of its flow) AND "the precipice or harbinger of death" (its sickly tenuousness of line/form, the morbid shading and color or pallor of the skin).

The gold surrounding, above their heads, acts as a halo, consecrating the lovers and their act

Their upper bodies and hands emerge from the gold as if two separate dimensions (one the physical, one the metaphysical) giving the painting an unusual tension between 2D and 3D

Their bodies merge as one with little distinction of where one begins and where one ends (only the designs indicate). They are "one".

The circles and spirals are a symbology for the feminine while the rectangles/square shapes are masculine. Where some of the spirals pass and merge into the man's figure, and some of the rectangles/squares pass into the woman, they symbolize interchange, merging, the sexual act

When the circles/spirals reach out beyond the woman on the "halo blanket" extended around them, they seem to represent an elevation to the divine (reaching the metaphysical through their love and the sexual act)

Their combined positioning and stance is erect, phallic

The man clenches her face as if he is her salvation, and she "swoons" into ecstasy (and allusions to death as a simultaneous consequence)

It is ambiguous whether she is truly accepting his kiss or whether he is overpowering her to deliver it (especially ambiguous by the way she grabs his hand and swoons her head. Is he physically turning her head already in place and accepting him, as it first appears, or was she turning away from him and then he held her from moving and kissed her?).

Their collective "pose" has strong allusion to Egyptian art. Also, the couple are wrapped and encased in each other, an allusion to mummification, death, eternity (mummification was believed to help someone reach the afterlife following death).

The couple is on the precipice of a cliff, her feet dangling over the edge, her curled toes not just a reflection of her imbalance and being on the verge of death, but also an allusion to orgasm

The cliff is a dreamy and sparkling grassy meadow that is painted with a child's "daydreaming" eye. Some sprinkles/circles of gold have fallen or merged into the grass. Her triangular (shawl?) of her dress (?) fall down into the grass from her (on the right), merging with the meadow (a further symbol of ecstasy/orgasm). Flowers are growing from the woman's hair and as a wreath around her neck, and less so of the man but in his hair too. The couple is arising out of the grass as if they are an outgrowth of nature, a highly complex and profound symbology of erotic and sensuousness, renewal, rebirth, resurrected into a merging of man, woman, nature, consecrated into the divine.

To the sides of them are dream-scapes of gold, cascading down all around them. They are overwhelmed by the ecstatic and the divine, all else is lost/forgotten/replaced by the metaphysical realm of their experience (no backdrop, no indications of "where" they are, no perspective). Again, a highly complex metaphor for Klimt's parallel between sex and the divine (and death as divine, sex and love beyond the grave, beyond logic and practical considerations of one's life...)

Looking closer, these dream-scapes of gold are not random, but an "abstract expressionist" symbology of man merging into the woman in an entirely divine state (metaphysical, spiritual, beyond their bodies): Paralleling the thousands of cascading sprinkles/circles are (underneath these), countless gold-painted squares/rectangles that are fading into the abyss, the man and woman becoming entirely one with each other.

The three figurative/scenic levels of the painting are a metaphor for the cycle of birth to growth, to adulthood and the peak of life, to death and eternity: the soft, childlike naivete and growth of the grassy meadow of the cliff, a metaphor for birth and childhood; next, the fusion of man and woman that "grows" out of this, its firmness and solidity not just a sexual symbol but also for adulthood (and the fusion of man and woman being a peak of life experience, the firmness of the whole the peak of growth); and finally, the dream-scape surrounding and beyond them, representing death, the after-life, eternity, and the religious experience, which to Klimt is the one and the same as the sexual experience when man and woman unite completely.
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AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

geologist wrote:

Understood, and your points have helped me out as well. I'd be very interested in a more in-depth analysis of these works and Rock Bottom, whenever you get around to it.

Thank you. More than likely I would revise and update my Rock Bottom analysis well before those. The RB update is definitely one I've wanted to do, and almost have several times. I just have a lot of catching up to do on Paintings and Classical that tends to take precedent over any additional time that could otherwise be devoted to putting together such analysis. But I really should update the Rock Bottom one ... and put together a Doors s/t and VU Nico one (both long promised, and could prove useful even though the they are so famous and familiar among serious music listeners).
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homelessking

Which version of Piper do you prefer, the mono or the stereo version?

AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

homelessking wrote:

Which version of Piper do you prefer, the mono or the stereo version?

I would have to listen to them back to back to really decide, but I may lean towards mono on this one. I don't have any notes as to why but I recall thinking it sounded a little more natural (as if it was intended that way). However, the stereo panning can be of interest as well, so I'm not totally locked in on saying the mono is definitively the best.

Overall, a very well recorded album in the sense that it sounds so physical, characterful and palpable regardless of volume level. Back then the instrumentation tended to sound far less "processed".
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TiggaTrigga

AfterHours wrote:

I would have to listen to them back to back to really decide, but I may lean towards mono on this one. I don't have any notes as to why but I recall thinking it sounded a little more natural (as if it was intended that way). However, the stereo panning can be of interest as well, so I'm not totally locked in on saying the mono is definitively the best.

Overall, a very well recorded album in the sense that it sounds so physical, characterful and palpable regardless of volume level. Back then the instrumentation tended to sound far less "processed".

I've never listened to the mono version, as I just assumed mono was "inferior" to stereo for music. I will say though that Interstellar Overdrive had a great impact imo due to stereo panning, especially right when the main melody starts coming back in after the free-form jam.

homelessking

There's actually a great deal of details lost on the stereo version. The mono version sounds a lot more musical too. Every now and then I still feel bothered when listening to the stereo version because of the weird instruments panning

TiggaTrigga

@Afterhours, did you ever share your thoughts on Irises by Vincent Van Gogh?

AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

TiggaTrigga wrote:

@Afterhours, did you ever share your thoughts on Irises by Vincent Van Gogh?

No -- not sure I'll have the time (maybe...). But -- even if I don't -- what I said about Wheat field with Cypresses should lead (not exactly but without too much trouble) to being able to evaluate Irises.
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TiggaTrigga

Have you ever viewed Monet's Rouen Cathedral (this particular one: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collectio...h/437124)? Thoughts on it? The link makes a good point about how the textured brushstrokes convey the aspect of sculpted stone.