Wrasslin' with Ryley Walker: Mirror Of The Lowlands EP

Out of interest and practice I am going to share things I watch, listen to, and read. Could be a line or two or more. Unstructured, no pressure or deadline. Perhaps it will inspire a longer reflection. But it seems more constructive for my creative outlet and my mental & spiritual health at large. 

Ryley Walker is an artist who has pushed an arbitrary threshold I had placed on the indie guitar scene. Since Golden Sings That Have Been Sung, my first listen to Ryley, his ability to make the circular seem horizontal and self-driven approach hooked me. He can drone while playing a singer-songwriter standard like Jackson C. Frank's "Blues Runs the Game" or accomplish the latter while delving into the former. From 'Sings' onward, I've almost unconsciously followed the artist's collaboration and DIY output, which inspires and appeases and tells a lot about the mystique of his art. A person who intimately knows his influences and confronts them, a simultaneous embrace; he churns out unique and diverse music. A guitarist who seems to be both self-critical and gracious to himself, he advocates for the common good through his medium of choice. His  compositions are proof that we are to take him seriously, but not too seriously. Perhaps the Sensei of how to wax on a joke, and wax one off, I learned not to dwell on Walker's social media shenanigans. The comedic and snarky posts seem to be a buffer for the purgatory found in the self promoting marketing grime one has to do for oneself in the indie kingdom. Taking them as by-products of that uncharted territory, I am drawn more to where the light and grace of Ryley transcends in his music. But it must be said, his social media guile seethes creativity, permitting him to unleash his craft on the fretboards for the humble masses. 

Equally playful and contemplative, The "Mirror Of The Lowlands EP" is a collection of short stories on 6 string. Allow your turtle walking self to be flipped on its back. Keep those legs pumping, because the trip is sonorous and interactive; hinting at the classical, ambient, folk, drone, field recording and jazz microcosms. Don't tap out when wrasslin' with Ryley.

Reviews, comments and/or reflections on music that has been a part of my re-birth as a listener. A log of the slow pick-me-up transition from the darkness of passive listening and hoarding practices of binging on free RAR zipped files, to a more deep and active listening. A log of this tangible effort of purging my capitalist-consumerist drive to listen to it all.

"Heaven is Life" - Manfred Kirchheimer's 'Stations of the Elevated'

Out of interest and practice I am going to share things I watch, listen to, and read. Could be a line or two or more. Unstructured, no pressure or deadline. Perhaps it will inspire a longer reflection. But it seems more constructive for my creative outlet and my mental & spiritual health at large. 

Stations of the Elevated  by Manfred Kirchheimer 

Manfred Kirchheimer sequences the zeitgeist of a New York (city) and her outskirts nearing the end of the 60s. A nostalgic jaunt through film, soundscapes, and music. Dubbed with a symphony scored by train tracks, cars, screeching rails and jazz. It discusses all this in a dialogue with the graffiti and billboards that are visual protagonists during the first half of the film. They peek into the viewers soul and demonstrate their power. Hovering over the train carts and their eclectic passengers, the film deploys camera shots to speculate the shunt through the angular scaffolds and elevated tracks, winding between sky scrapers, perplexed amongst foliage, or stammered by the omens of the factories that watch them pass by. Manfred uses all this to console the viewer, spurring a desire for city tramping. But it also engenders a nausea as it depicts the social, political, and economic visuals of the nascent deterioration of the façade of a healthy, prosperous and dream granting nation.

Shots of trees and peripheries, juxtaposed with the cityscapes behind the tracks drive the score into a higher plane than just simple urban noise and pollution dossier. Oddly settling and soothing at times, perturbing in others (specifically around minute 18 the camera stills on a corner apartment that looks gutted by fire, the train goes by reflecting in a stranded shard holding strong and faithful in the window’s pane). The sounds, the speed of the train, and the heinous proximity between the train tracks and building, once and possibly still shelter from the elements for human life, delivers a message with strong visual and audible testimony.

The film is not all cityscape, Charles Mingus, and graffiti appreciation. But it's important to note that the montage of images and sounds allow Mingus to transcend his blatant wink to public transport and NYC love in “Take the ‘A’ Train”. He collaborates with Kirchheimer, synthesizing a visual and audible exegesis on urban U.S. American society. 

These visuals do depend on the graffiti tags on train cars that exclaim both city misery and glory.The eschatological yelps of "earth is hell", "shadow pushers", etc. and the “creationist aphorisms” (DiTrolio, Stephen)  like "Heaven is Life". 

Throughout Kirchhheimer’s film, the cacophony of screeching metal with breaks of Aretha Franklin’s voice and  the strolling Mingus bassline, the ruin in the graffitis may outweigh the worship of the urban predicament. The last 20 minutes or so, segments ping pong between advertisements, projects in the South Bronx, pastoral countryside coexisting with a prison, factories, and the slithering ubiquitous Lexington Ave Express. Never has a prison appeared so profanely quaint.

The shots of sentinel smoke stacks that puff out smoke, personify the the US American Industrial atrophy. Without shifting much in style and frame duration, the film builds its energy as the critique becomes ever more visual and audible all the while pressing deeper, below the two-dimensional billboard grins and olive skin tones that dominated the first half. Waving grass in the foreground brushes the landing planes behind it, and the boldest perceptible critique takes to task the superfluous militarization of Empire. Stripped of its securities and power-fear mongering, it is epitomized by a shot of a junk yard being held guard by a 1960s tank that is dilapidated, defenseless, and eye-carrion. 

As Aretha belts out contrast and real talk, she graciously crossfades into Mingus and a jazz band accompanying the sundown. They both bring the film just short of full circle- the trains diurnal shift  ending- preparing for their near phantasmal nocturnal run.