Month: December 2011

As 2011 comes to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

of Montreal’s music is hard to define, given it changes more often than frontman Kevin Barnes’ sequined and feathered outfits during a live show. One album might be heavy on the drum machine and synthesizer, while another showcases Barnes’ best high-pitched Prince wail with more traditional strings and percussion. The Atlanta band boasts a prodigious body of work; in a decade and a half, Barnes and Co. have churned out 10 albums, eight collections and 29 singles and EPs, including their most recent effort, thecontrollersphere (Polyvinyl). Barnes and of Montreal’s two art directors—wife Nina Barnes (a.k.a. geminitactics) and brother David Barnes—will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Kevin: I can’t stop listening to Sufjan Stevens’ The Age Of Adz & the All Enlightened People EP. It has become an obsession I don’t want to end. A pure and gritty, beautiful and painful listen. Mr Stevens stabs me directly in the heart, bringing my own pain to the surface, yet I want him to twist the dagger deeper—and for eternity. I guess because it feels more like a joint suicide than murder, and anyways, we always rise together, martyred and vindicated. Most of the songs run in a length of at least three times the amount of the average pop song, but they never get boring or tedious. Somehow these compositions/productions speak directly to that quadrant of our brains that divines the infinite in the most minute and voiceless elements of our human condition. He is a singular creature, he gives us so much to chew on, and he is without context. What more can one ask for?

Video after the jump.

As 2011 comes to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

This week’s release of Her Space Holiday‘s 10-track, self-titled album marks the end of the one-man musical project that Marc Bianchi started back in 1996. Fittingly, HSH’s final album is also the first on the Austin-based Bianchi’s No More Good Ideas label. While he has some live dates set to support the LP, the genre-defying musician mostly plans for the album to be the closing statement from HSH, who over the past decade and a half has also remixed tracks by the likes of R.E.M., Bright Eyes, Elastica and the Faint. Bianchi can now add MAGNET guest editor to his already-impressive resume, as that’s what he’ll be doing all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Bianchi: Some people may not be aware of this—or have simply forgot—but the public library rules. Almost everything I have mentioned over the past week can be found in your local branch. And if they don’t have it on hand, they can have it shipped there from another location. I know that this seems like an archaic resource compared to the internet: “Why take the time to go to the library when I can download a ripped
copy of In The Realms Of The Unreal off of some file-share site?”

Because some things are much more satisfying when you have to put in a
little effort to get them. Go to the library, and say hello as you walk in. Look at the bulletin board for upcoming events. Walk the aisles. Flip through a book. Connect with being a student again. Have a conversation with someone who is browsing through the same section you are. Mutual interests lead to mutual respect. In a lot of places, the library is the entertainment industry of the community. As well as the only place where certain folks can have access to a computer. Which as we all know is becoming more and more essential to being a part of modern society.

My life is filled with books and movies and records. I have read the words of great authors. Heard the music of world-renowned composers. I have seen the films of top-notch directors. All for free thanks to the public library. Fuck yeah, library. Fuck yeah.

Anything can happen at the library!

Video after the jump.

As 2011 comes to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.

This week’s release of Her Space Holiday‘s 10-track, self-titled album marks the end of the one-man musical project that Marc Bianchi started back in 1996. Fittingly, HSH’s final album is also the first on the Austin-based Bianchi’s No More Good Ideas label. While he has some live dates set to support the LP, the genre-defying musician mostly plans for the album to be the closing statement from HSH, who over the past decade and a half has also remixed tracks by the likes of R.E.M., Bright Eyes, Elastica and the Faint. Bianchi can now add MAGNET guest editor to his already-impressive resume, as that’s what he’ll be doing all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Bianchi: I read a lot of Charles Bukowski in my late teens. After poring over a couple novels and volumes of poetry. I noticed the name John Fante more than a few times. I eventually took the hint and purchased Wait Until Spring, Bandini from a little used bookshop in my old hometown. After devouring the novel in one sitting, I instantly went out and purchased the rest of the Arturo Bandini saga: The Road To Los Angeles, Ask The Dust and Dreams From Bunker Hill.

Years later, I was having dinner with a friend, and she was talking about how much she loved the Bukowski novel Ham On Rye. I asked her if she was familiar with Fante’s work. She said she wasn’t and asked what his writing was like.

“You know those rare Bukowski moments, the ones between all the fucking and drinking, the horse races and all the talk of a world gone mad? Those poignant bits that keep him endearing no matter how much of a bastard he was seconds earlier?”

“Yeah.”

“Well that is every line of John Fante’s writing.”

Video after the jump.