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Geof is a guest dj again for our Brazilian-music-only podcast this week like harpies tearing at Gabe’s flesh, but a beautiful tearing at the flesh. Oyvind Fahlstrom was born in Brazil, although ethnically Swedish, and the author for this week’s segment of Book You. Geof and Malcolm tell of their fond memories from Brazil, as well as the seedy underbelly neither one had anything to do with, but have learned much of through the wonder of such films as City of God, and of course, the next episode of Twilight at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies. The steam radiator was invented to heat greenhouses, but Malcolm finds the negative association of the term greenhouse gasses unfortunate. Also, Gabe’s Guide to Goiter Removal.

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He comes from outer space to subjugate the human race, his name is… Skullface!

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Who is this new face? Geof is the guest dj for the week. Bed-wetting is discussed, and Gabe describes potential scenario involving crystalized tears. Be glad Gabe never owned a gun, Malcolm has to learn to love the machine, and Gabe admits he would never date anyone who ever knew Frank Sinatra. Are we in the cold part of hell? Geof says it is like riding in a giant marshmallow made out of wicking fabric. There’s murder, and then there’s jail, and there’s love in both of them. This week for Book You, Gabe reads from The Book of the Courtier by Baldesar Castiglione to ring in the new administration, the inauguration being this week of course, which is very exciting. Obama is a Chicagoan after all. Also, Mutable Sound’s first official product is to be released on February 14th, Good or Plenty, Streets + Avenues, by old friend Animal Hospital, and also in the next month, the 965 page book, A Survey of My Failures this Far, by Gabe himself. Gabe’s Guide to Good Vibes is this week, in which he tells you how to have fun without actually having fun, and of course episode ten of Twilight at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies. Listen to Gabe loudly crunching corn chips.

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Where is the astral plane? If you have an answer to that question, please feel free to email us at mail@mutablesound.com. It is not titular. Jason Allen, is once again a guest, and on Book You, this week Gabe reads the introduction to a treatise by Giordano Bruno called Cause, Principle, and Unity. Burned at the stake as a heretic in 1600, Giordano Bruno was very influenced by Hermes Trismesgistus according to Frances Yates, though Hilary Gatti tells a different story, while in another story altogether, i.e. episode nine of Twilight at the Lady Jane Grey College for Little Ladies, a dark cloud has consumed the school, and what has happened to Archibald the Professor of Arcane Knowledge? Jason recommends yelping beavers to be used for sound effects afterwards, while Gabe wants to discuss occult cinema, but no discussion of occult cinema can occur without discussing Jodorowski’s Holy Mountain, which none have seen, so instead they talk of Santa Sangre. This leads to a discussion of gnosticism. This leads to another question. Are there any heavy metal bands called, Pantheon? Gabe talks about zen and anti-zen. Who’s going to join Gabe in falling apart out there in listenerland? And speaking of lands, we forgot to announce, “The Greatest Taste Around,” by Negativland.

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Pavol Janik, was born in 1956 in Bratislava, where he also studied film and television dramaturgy and scriptwriting at the Drama Faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (VSMU). He has worked at the Ministry of Culture (1983-87), in the media and in advertising. President of the Slovak Writers’ Society (2003-07) and the Secretary-General of the SWS (1998-2003, 2007 – ). He has received a number of awards for his literary and advertising work both in his own country and abroad. The below poem was originally published in the Indian literary review, Kritya.


NEW YORK

In a horizontal mirror
of the straightened bay
the points of an angular city
stabbing directly into the starry sky.

In the glittering sea of lamps
flirtatious flitting boats
tremble marvellously
on your agitated legs
swimming in the lower deck
of a brocade evening dress.

Suddenly we are missing persons
like needles in a labyrinth of tinfoil.

Some things we take personally –
stretch limousines,
moulting squirrels in central Park
and the metal body of dead freedom.

In New York most of all it’s getting dark…

The glittering darkness lights up.

The thousand-armed luster of the mega city
writes Einstein’s message about the speed of light
every evening on the gleaming surface of the water.
And again before the dusk the silver screen
of the New York sky floods
with hectolitres of Hollywood blood.

Where does the empire of glass and marble reach?
Where do the slim rackets of the skyscrapers aim?

God buys a hot dog
at the bottom of a sixty-storey street.

God is a black
and loves the grey color of concrete.

His sun was born from himself
in a paper box
from the newest sort of slave.

(Original Slovak translated by James Sutherland Smith)

We are all about the sound of the future, here in the first week of 2009, and the last year of the ots. Did anything happen in the ots of the 1900’s? Perhaps something epic will happen in the next decade, like Armageddon as the Mayans predicted. That would be awesome, but focusing on more mundane matters, the question for this week is, How do you spell that? We do got a new president and a new depression, and welcome to Jason Allen once again. Gabe wants to know how Jason feels, and Jason wants to know why he’s being questioned, that he’s a good-feeling person. If only we had some pig in here, Gabe would go cut its throat.

Gabe reads from The Futurist Cookbook, for the weekly segment Book You! Gabe does some impromptu analysis of Jason, suggesting that perhaps Jason’s psyche might perhaps be waxed, and whether perhaps there is something beyond the warm well-waxed fuzziness within, which apparently resembles a five-dimensional hyper-cube. This is a subjective fact according to Jason, while according to Joseph Campbell, people aren’t looking for the meaning of life, they’re looking for the experience of being alive. Gabe tries to get his cohorts to hone their mouth muscles through various tongue-twister exercises. The most idiotic thing yet, says Malcolm. That and also, we forgot to announce song, “Nah mix nah mingle” by Lady Saw.

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Conspicuous consumption? I think not.

Friend of Mutable Sound, Joshua Glenn, has recently released a book entitled, The Idler’s Glossary, with Canadian publisher, Biblioasis, in which he explores idleness from every angle, with a comment concerning The Situationists here and Hannah Arendt there, he runs the gamut from playful to informative. Throughout, within the confines of his premise, that what he’s offering us here is an amusing glossary of arcane and everyday terms to denote the idle, he has created a very powerful critique of the work-a-day world. From Aestivate and Flazy, to Labor and Dissolute.

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