Manafonistas

„Gosh, what a movie. Terrific, but I had weird dreams afterwards“, she said, „had to dance the crazy vibes away with my favourite Smoke record.“ Seijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill is a very 1960s metaphysical thriller, a cult item treasured by connoisseurs as the kind of film that – for all its delirious craziness – could even be a truer product of Japan than the higher artefacts of Ozu and Kurosawa. It is an erotic and dreamlike pulp noir, and its disdain for any sort of conventional plot infuriated the director’s employers at the Nikkatsu studio. Jô Shishido is Hanada, a hired killer with a sexual fetish for the smell of boiled rice; a bungled job brings him into mysterious contact with Misako (Anne Mari), a woman who hires him for three hits. He becomes obsessed with her, and finds himself in a duel with the legendary top killer, the No 1 (Kôji Nanbara). The obvious comparisons are with Melville’s Le Samouraï or Godard’s Pierrot le Fou – this film holds up against these perfectly well – with hints of John Boorman’s Point Blank and Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner. It is, however, closer to Luis Buñuel in its gleefully disquieting insistence on sudden horrific closeups: the glass eye removed from the skull, the bullet hole, the bleeding head in the toilet bowl. Where Godard had his jump-cut, Suzuki has his disorientating ellipses, his sudden dreamlike time-slips. Genuinely fascinating and bizarre. (out now on DVD/BluRay)

 
 
 
Durch Michaels Blogeintrag und seine Moderation in der „Radionacht Klanghorizonte“ zu Michael Nauras achtzigstem Geburtstag neugierig geworden stelle ich gerade fest dass der Shop der Wochenzeitung DIE ZEIT einen sechs CDs umfassenden Ueberblick ueber „das schillernde Werk des deutschen Jazzpapstes“ mit „Stunden voll Swing“ bietet.

 

 
 
 
Anfang September veroeffentlicht Harold Budd ein neues Album, „Jane 12-21“ dass — der Titel besagt es schon — als Fortsetzung der Arbeiten auf seinem Album „Jane 1-11“ zu verstehen ist.

It’s simple. I broke out and broke back to my earlier days: A triangle of risk, improvisation and joy – as I say, very simple. My rules to myself were: No plan, no notes, no ideas, no microphones; except for Jane 1 I stuck to it. My other rule – the most important one – was: At least one piece per day, finished, mixed and not to be revisited again. Jane 7, 8, 9 were done in one day … Brad Ellis was my guide through this: An untiring day, ready to go again … To quote a letter to me from Mark Tobey: … „It fell off the edge of my brush.“ (Harold Budd)