The Hills Have Eyes

Dir: Alexandre Aja (2006)

For too long, whenever I would wax lyrical about fantastically addictive eye-crack The Hills (which is a regular occurence with me, sister), the response from bemused 20-somethings would be ‘The Hills Have Eyes?’ I would then have to clarify that, no, the everyday Hollywood travails and tribulations of Lauren, Audrina, Whitney et al, have nothing to do with innocent city folk being brutalised and cannibalised by nuclear-radiated mutants. To the chagrin of many, admittedly, but here we are.

Anyway, I’ve been going through something of a horror phase recently (and I’ve been watching scary films. Hahaha, right?), including the work of one Robert Q. Zombie. I even made references to The Hills Have Eyes in my writing on House of 1,000 Corpses. So I figured I’d better see it. I really want to see the original, but I’m currently trying to get films from last decade watched, so I plumped for the remake. There is something quite charming about how visceral some of these modern horror films are. And it’s nice to see how the genre varies nowadays, from the gorefests of later Saws and Hostels, to the more subtle charms of The Strangers and (hopefully, not seen it yet) [rec]. How’s that for a jinx?

So yeah, The Hills Have Eyes got watched by me. Today, in fact. Not the best thing to watch on an afternoon, perhaps, and certainly not one for eating a pizza in front of (joining Saw III on that particular pantheon). But it’s good. Weirdly for a modern-day massacre flick, it starts really slowly. There is exposition for days (not literally), and the meandering in the desert made me think I was watching a cut-price No Country For Old Men. Lots of desert, as you may reasonably expect, I guess.

What I liked about this one is the justification for everything: the characterisation is solid to a surprising degree. The family of victims doesn’t just end up in the desert; they’re no a bunch of annoying punks like in House of 1,000 Corpses. See, the crazy petrol station man has a stash of something illicit, and he thinks the ex-detective and the familia are on to him. So he directs them to a ‘shortcut’ to California: the eponymous hills, with their eyes. He’s a bit like Ho1kC (is that the correct abbreviation?)’s Captain Spaulding, but with infinitely less charisma. But yeah, every time someone goes somewhere, or does something, it’s for a reason. The film may not be original (an obvious negatory there), or especially well executed (it’s not), but it’s logical.

Well, it’s as logical as a film about a society of nuclear-testing offspring living in already inhospitable desert can be. For some reason, when you have kids after nuclear testing has gone on in your village, your kids all look like Sloth from the Goonies. It is the slightly lax make-up that hurts the sense of threat the film attempts to pervade. What is supposed to be a Blair Witch/The Strangers/1000 Corpses vehicle for utter helplessness becomes a Troma-tastic comedy horror romp because, while the race of neo-Sloths do unspeakable things to people, they look funny. And that’s not too scary. Actually, it could be more scary. But not in this case.

As I was saying, the characterisation is solid. Despite initially being a gallery of archetypes, the victims of the piece are pretty well fleshed out, especially the smarmiest of all: the cellphone salesman. Bah gawd, he’s a demmycrat! He don’t believe in gunnin people down! They took our jobs! But, despite the now-traditional middle class scepticism of the danger at hand, the series of events he has to endure sees him turn into a white collar being of vengeance and catharsis of a degree not seen since the heyday of Ash, star of the Evil Dead trilogy. I’m not saying he’s anywhere near as cool as Ash, nor that Aaron Stanford is as iconic as Bruce Campbell. I’m therefore not saying his chin can kill, nor that his one-liners are a patch on Ash’s. No. I’m not saying that. But bloody hell, you end up on his side in a massive way; if you don’t, I fear for you. He’s vaguely reminiscent of Paddy Considine, actually.

To sum up, then: it’s good, but not great. Worth a watch if you like your horror. It’s gratuitously gory, but strangely touching in places. Thankfully not touching in strange places. That’d just be weird. Emilie de Ravin, what was in Lost, is good, but has a weird American accent. A baby gets snatched, but it’s not hers. That’d be a right coincidence. As per usual in the horror films (and pretty much any film, for that matter), everyone can take way more damage than they should. But hey, it’s par for the course. It doesn’t really drag at any point. And whoa: it leaves the door open for a sequel.

Well I never.

Harvey Milk – Harvey Milk (a.k.a. The Bob Weston Sessions)


Hydra Head (1993/2010)

Following critical acclaim of Harvey Milk‘s latest album Life… the Best Game in Town (2008), current home, Hydra Head, has gone into the archives for this new/old album. Originally recorded in 1993 by one Bob Weston, these recordings never officially saw the long-playing light of day. Until now. The band is known for being somewhat curmudgeonly, and this proto-debut is fittingly nasty and strangely disconnected. Not for the ‘Milk the youthful exuberance of early spotty Metallica or grinning Slayer.

It’s classic sludge – true sludge, of a bygone era – which means that deep within its shroud of brutality is a real sense of melancholy. People think of the term ‘sludge’, with regard to rock music, and they think of bass-heavy, booming rock, that’s not as sharply-mixed as more typical heavy metal and hardcore. But real sludge goes beyond the superficial, past the guitar sound of the Mastodon or Kylesa of today. It’s music of the most direct lineage from the progenitors, Black Sabbath. Sludge is not about heaviness as personal empowerment: the Darwinian strength through aural brutality espoused by Pantera, Hatebreed or early Rollins Band. Sludge’s heaviness is the unbearable weight of the world wearing on you.

‘Merlin is Magic’ has the snaking, heavy, guitar melodies of late Black Flag, at that point where their early, frenetic, assault had given way to the more philosophical frustration of the Henry Rollins era; guitarist Greg Ginn only too happy to take his guitar to similar places. But after the relative brevity of ‘Merlin is Magic’ and the more up-tempo ‘Dating Pressures’, we arrive at the ten-minute ‘My Father’s Life’: proper badboy sludge that really lets you know what the genre’s about. It begins slowly, quietly, as though it’s a ballad. And then that massive, fat, guitar smears itself all over the mix, a walking melody line like a tramp trudging shit into your house.

As is the way with pacing on this kind of rock album, that epic is followed by a couple of short, faster tracks (‘fast’ sludge not being far off vintage punk rock in pacing and delivery), before more meaty fare is served up, in the shape of ‘Jim’s Polish’ and ‘F.S.T.P.’; together, they are as long as 5-6 of the shorter songs on the album combined. Maybe I’m biased, but its on these longer compositions that a band like this can really show you what they’re made of.

‘Jim’s Polish’ (whether it’s about a can of Glade or the fact he’s a compatriot of Stanley Kowalski is not made crystal clear) is an exercise in insistence. It settles initially into a single note, repeated over and over, drilling into your brain like Chinese water torture. It eventually develops into a fine display of sauropod-scale riffery, switching tempos from slow to slower, but the sheer agitation of that opening segment is glorious. Throughout, Creston Spiers bellows like a wounded bear. Sometimes he’s aggressive and blustery, but at other times his roars are strangely affecting, like a much filthier version of Crowbar’s Kirk Windstein.

This album is not a shining example of elite modern recording or production techniques. It was left unreleased at a time, within a scene that wasn’t magnificently recorded (certainly not for CD) at the best of times. So, where even your Griefs and Buzzov*ens didn’t quite equal The Orb or Underworld for 1993 production values, this Harvey Milk set is poorly produced. In all honesty, such murk is really a virtue. You can hear the muddy guitar, tree-trunk rhythm section and pained vocals, and that’s all you need from this. It pays to be lo-fi in this game.

While the Bob Weston sessions aren’t as advanced as either the ‘proper’ debut My Love is Higher Than Your Assessment of What My Love Could Be (1994, where some of the better songs here eventually ended up), or the belated breakthrough Life… The Best Game in Town, it’s a fitting snapshot of a great band in chrysalis. It’s also a fine example of 1993 second-tier sludge, below the real monsters offered up by Neurosis, Eyehategod or Dazzling Killmen. One for ‘Milk completists, then, while we wait for the proper new album. That should be an ugly beauty.

Jaga Jazzist – One-Armed Bandit


Ninja Tune (2010)

Half a decade after the gorgeous What We Must, Jaga Jazzist finally return with a band album. Lars Horntveth did recently release an album of his own, the forty-minute song Kaleidoscopic. And he was involved in the second National Bank album, in 2008. But it’s not the same: you hear something as life-affirmingly perfect as All I Know is Tonight (a cruel edit, I must add), and you naturally want more Jaga. It’d be nice to think Shining‘s leader, Jørgen Munkeby, threw the gauntlet to erstwhile bandmate Horntveth, as both bands’ albums have been released at the same time. That theory is yet to be confirmed, sadly. After such a long time away from the game, and with such a lush album to follow, it’s interesting to see what this Norwegian nonet have to say for themselves.

After ‘The Thing Introduces…’, a preface so slight as to nearly not exist, the title track spoils us with almost too many sonic riches. It goes through so many changes of mood, tone and instrumentation that you imagine it might soundtrack one of those TV shows whose title sequences show the cast members’ different personalities. Maybe if you ran the Desperate Housewives theme (a real highlight of Danny Elfman’s career, its arrangement is pretty mind-boggling for such a brief piece of music) over the Thundercats visuals you’d get a real-world example of what this song is about. It’s like Henry Mancini stepped out of cryogenic suspension in search of a modern equivalent of Charade or Arabesque to soundtrack.

‘Banafleur Overalt’ is classic Jaga, in as much as it recalls the last album’s sense of lake surface-serene beauty without overly troubling one’s aesthetic sensibilities. It’s the kind of chilled-without-being-bland thing that fans of early DJ Shadow or Cinematic Orchestra tend to love, while also turning off the people who’d rather a bit more grit in their life: it could be accused of being background music by those more churlish than your reviewer. Besides, the rhythm section really fires it up about halfway through, taking the song on a joyride before returning it to its more careful owners, Horntveth and the keyboardists.

Rather more earthy is ‘220 V / Spektral’. Despite the similarity of nomenclature, it doesn’t really sound like anything off Squarepusher‘s Just a Souvenir. Clarinet drifts up like smoke signals in the right speaker while electronics stew away in the left, before electric guitar texture adds grain to the mix. As the sonic picture fills, everything suddenly drops out again. That punchy rhythm remains as buzzing bass and crystal-sharp clarinet take centre-stage. Maybe this binary is what the title is referring to: a song of two halves in which noise and clarity, electricity and ethereality coexist. Similar is the shimmer of ‘Toccata’; waves of piano sparking over and over, like Philip Glass and Trent Reznor dropping Es and re-fixing the latter’s ‘La Mer’, as booming brass and breakbeats gradually take over.

The trick Horntveth and co. hide up their collective sleeve, and the main detail that differentiates it from What We Must, is this sting in the record’s tail. ‘Prognissekongen’ echoes the title track in as much as it assaults you with change after change, but each time returning to a familiar phrase to keep the composition grounded. Everyone has their own riff, and plays it at the same time, but it all seems to fit. ‘Music! Dance! Drama!’ is the popcorn percussion of Prince‘s ‘Sign ‘O’ the Times’, paused and stretched out into a frozen moment, before the band realises the tape’s stuck and get to work cranking up the machinery for another dose of magic.

Concluding piece ‘Touch of Evil’, despite the name and occasional guitar riffola, doesn’t sound all that malevolent. I’m not sure Jaga can do. It is suggested by the respective bands’ current cover art, but it is becoming ever clearer that Jaga Jazzist and Shining seem to have a yin/yang relationship, however unintentional. The darker and more brutal one gets, the other is equally more pleasant, but no less technically astounding. It’s almost like a martial arts film. It may be another half-decade until the next album, but there is enough here on which to feast for a while. I just hope that, if Jaga are the yin to Shining’s yang, the bands never reach a state of quiescence.

Random play

Today was another of those days when the portable music player just seemed to be fantastic at DJing for me. Granted, it was yours truly who actually populated the thing with music (from scratch, since the great iPhone 3.13 upgrade debacle), but the boy done good. Oh, according to Google Docs, ‘debacle’ is not a word. Suggest the accent then, you nincompoop of a virtual office suite. as time has gone on, I have developed a taste for the faster side of music. Energy music, I call it, where upbeat pop, grindcore and punk rock can all meet quite happily as long as they all energise me. Be Your Own PET, Andrew WK, NOFX, Melt-Banana, KoxBox, Kelly Clarkson: me not bothered.

So I banged on a bunch of energy music for this most recent playlist refresh. Ke$ha went on, as she’s clearly my thing of the moment. Her album has only been out for a few weeks, and she has already entered my top ten most-listened for the last 12 months on my last.fm thing. Yes, I am hooked on her album. So she made it on. I have also been rocking the thrash for a while now. Technically a few years, but only in the last annum have I been rejoicing in the newer offerings from the sub-genre. Stalwarts such as Megadeth, Testament, Overkill and Sacrifice have all been bringing it in a big way. So I banged on some Sacrifice, Testament and Overkill.

And, because they’re related in the big tree of heavy metal, I also included some grindcore (Agoraphobic Nosebleed: Altered States of America; Discordance Axis: The Inalienable Dreamless; Gridlink: Amber Gray) and metalcore (Strife: In This Defiance). Funny thing about metalcore. It was one of the coolest things going in the mid-late 90s. Strife split up (or at least went on a long hiatus), Earth Crisis went a bit pump, Integrity made their name even worse by adding a ‘2000’ on the end, and I stopped paying attention. Next thing I know, the scene has been listening to a lot of Swedish death metal and ‘metalcore’ is a dirty word. Strife, though; there was some lean, brutal, metallic hardcore. I’ve been meaning to revisit Gothenburg-core of late, though, so who knows.

I’ve also put some music that mixes the thrashing and the punking, like Slayer‘s Undisputed Attitude (their best, fastest, heaviest and most aggressive album), and the ever-present Propagandhi. And Captain Ahab and Genghis Tron, who mix the electronics with the rocking to fantastic effect. Oh, and I have a Blink-182 album on there because it’s energetic and great (Enema of the State). So, with that fine-tuned lot, I walked home from work in random land. That was the method of playback, not the area in which I work. Hoping for some Slayer, the first song was… Slayer! ‘Spiritual Law’ epitomises that album’s efficient approach to delving into hardcore punk’s history and pulling out exhilaratingly modern-sounding rock. But not really ‘rock’: this stuff is way angrier than Reign in Blood, and it’s a decade later!

Given grindcore’s fondness for songs brief and numerous, I got a lot of DA and AN. But strangely no GL. Surprise surprise, The Inalienable Dreamless tracks (including the bostin title track) were better than the ASA ones. But hey, I’m a grindcore heathen who prefers Agorapocalypse to AN’s older stuff. Soz. I also got a choice selection of Propagandhi – ‘Rock for Sustainable Capitalism’ and ‘Name and Address Withheld’ (two of the finer songs from their magnum Potemkin City Limits opus), which was nice. The thrash veterans reared their heads for some weirdly modern-sounding material: ‘The Devil’s Martyr’ and ‘For the Glory Of’ really stood out. The one Strife song I got, ‘Force of Change’, really energised, but the real treat was saved for the home stretch.

If you have the time or inclination, play these songs in this order:

Slayer – ‘Mr. Freeze’
Discordance Axis – ‘A Leaden Stride to Nowhere’
Genghis Tron – ‘Greek Beds’
Discordance Axis – ‘Sound Out the Braille’
Blink-182 – ‘The Party Song’

It works so well, and I’d never have thought of putting them in sequence. We begin this run with another of those concise blasts of precision hardcore brilliance from the California thrashers. Then, the DA track lets us know how far extremity came in four years. It’s an epic for the album, clocking in at over four minutes, and it complements the fury of the Slayer track perfectly. Six years on, Tron hits us with a slice of cybergrind that is rare for them in that it kicks in instantly. While it sacrifices DA’s finesse for sheer volume it’s nevertheless a fine example of the band. (An even better example would be ‘White Walls’, so get that listened.) As though this were a considered compilation, DA return with the far briefer ‘Sound Out the Braille’, to provide both an accidental bumper and happily coincidental thematic coherence. After less than a minute, that rage is replaced by… a man swearing under his breath. It’s Blink-182, to provide comic relief and a dynamic swing. I must add, though, that this is probably the fastest Blink song I’ve heard. While it’s very silly, it’s also really good, and rounds out this set of songs quite nicely.