Last week, Daniel Lopatin announced a new Oneohtrix Point Never album, Again, which is set for release on September 29 via Warp. Today, he’s shared the first single, ‘A Barely Lit Path’, which was recorded with the NOMAD Ensemble and an orchestra conducted and arranged by Robert Ames. Freeka Tet, the experimental artist known for his work with Amnesia Scanner and Aphex Twin, directed the song’s accompanying video, which you can check out below.
Again, the follow-up to 2020’s Magic Oneohtrix Point Never, was described by a press release as “speculative autobiography” and “‘an illogical period piece’ where memory and fantasy converge to form something entirely new.” Its cover artwork is a sculpture created by Matias Faldbakken, conceptualized with Lopatin, and photographed by Vegard Kleven.
Maria BC has signed to Sacred Bones, which will release the Bay Area artist’s sophomore LP, Spike Field, on October 20. Two songs from the album, ‘Amber’ and ‘Watcher’, are out today. Check them out below, along with the cover artwork, tracklist, and Maria BC’s newly announced UK and European tour dates.
Spike Field follows Maria BC’s 2022 debut album Hyaline. “I had a very strong tendency to want to destroy any previous version of me,” they explained in a statement. “I wanted to erase the memories of anyone who knew me more than a year ago. It’s the effect of shame.”
Speaking about ‘Amber’, Maria BC said: “Make the mirrors windows” – this line sums up the whole song. I’m reaching out to you so that you might draw me out of myself, out of fear and self-scrutiny, into connection and desire. It’s a love song.”
Of ‘Watcher’, they added: “On ‘Amber’, the lyrics are about reaching out to receive connection; here, the lyrics are about anticipating that gesture and preemptively reaching down in recognition, like, ‘I see you’re in pain, I’m here for you. I’m sorry it’s taken so long.’ But unlike in ‘Amber’, that moment of connection never comes. You can’t wish someone’s pain away. You can bear witness to them, but validation can’t undo the past. You have to hold it together, and hold them. It’s difficult. Sometimes you run out of words, like in this song, which opens with this grandiose angelic choir and then just kind of…trails off.”
1. Amber
2. Watcher
3. [ A backlit door]
4. Haruspex
5. Return to sender
6. Tire iron
7. Daydrinker
8. Tied
9. Still
10. Lacuna
11. Mercury
12. Spike field
Maria BC 2023 Tour Dates:
October 25- Portugal, Lisbon, ZDB
October 26 – Belgium, Brussels, Botanique
October 27 – Netherlands, Amsterdam, London Calling
October 27 – UK, London, MIRRORS Festival
October 29 – UK, Bristol, Crofters Right
October 30 – UK, Glasgow, Glad Cafe
October 31 – UK, Leeds, Headrow House
Nov 1 – UK, Manchester, Soup Kitchen
Nov 2 – UK, Brighton, Mutations Festival
Nov 3 – UK, London, Rough Trade West
Sofia Kourtesis has shared a new single, ‘Vajkoczy’, taken from her upcoming album Madres. The track is named for Peter Vajkoczy, the renowned neurosurgeon the LP is dedicated to. “My muse, my hero, the world should have more Vajkoczy,” Kourtesis said in a statement. Listen below.
Will Butler and Sister Squares have put out a new single from their forthcoming self-titled album, which is out September 22 on Merge. It follows previous entries ‘Long Grass’, ‘Arrow of Time’, and ‘Willows’. Check out a lyric video for it below.
“This is one of the ‘dream songs’ on the record,” Butler explained in a statement. “Emotion in dreams; dreams in reality; tired and confused. ‘Stop talking; there’s nothing to say’; not sure if it functions as a dismissal ‘Stop!’, or as a sign of love ‘You don’t have to say it; I already know’; I think, like a lot of communication between people who love each other—a little of both? Like, this song is full of fear; someone expressing fear to their partner, and the partner being like, ‘There’s nothing to fear, and also, shut up, quit being crazy.’ That’s not exactly it, but there’s something of that here.”
Katy Kirby has signed to ANTI- Records, marking the announcement with a new single called ‘Cubic Zirconia’. It’s her first new music since her debut album Cool Dry Place, which came out in 2021. Check out the song’s Emma Montesi-directed video below.
Kirby shared the following statement about ‘Cubic Zirconia’:
I’ve been trying to write this song for nearly four years, but it only came into focus for me when I fell in love with a girl for the first time. It’s an attempt to say something that I don’t think I’m smart enough to articulate outside of the song – something about how much I admire when someone is unembarrassed of being explicit about the cosmetic and aesthetic choices they make for themselves. Why wouldn’t you love the little tricks of their trade – the way they wear makeup, the clothes and mannerisms that make them feel safest and most themselves – why wouldn’t these little tricks be the most endearing artefacts of their inner essence? If you loved someone, why would you not love those choices? It’s an honour to get that close to someone – close enough to see how they construct the image of themselves with which they move through the world as best they can (as we all do). Why wouldn’t that be enough?
Cubic Zirconia! A lab-grown diamond. A salute to whatever the world looks down on as “artificial” – even a defence of artifice. It seems like naturalness is not only a dangerously vague and subjective concept, but that whenever those concepts get invoked, the invoker is almost invariably being manipulative or even malicious. Insofar as the line between authentic/fake, natural/unnatural, organic/synthetic artificial/genuine is hopelessly thin. Insofar as it’s a line that shifts constantly and doesn’t seem to be in anyone’s interest except the people who’ve decided that they’re the most qualified to draw that line. What a useless concept. What an extremely suspicious concept to leverage in assessing someone’s worth. What a sanctimonious little scam!
After much love for the PRX, Tissot has unveiled an unlikely entry to their portfolio— PRX Digital. The timepiece measures 35mm and 40mm, coming in black, silver, and gold variations. The prices for the watch vary from £310 for black and silver and £395 for the gold variation.
The PRX Digital features a Swiss-made DGT-2040 Quartz digital movement and mirror sapphire glass, enhancing its retro-futuristic look. The watch will include a 4-year battery reserve.
TTT have proudly unveiled their latest watch titled The Spinning Beach Ball. Currently priced at $229.00, this eye-pleasing piece comes with a grey leather strap that aids in pushing the focus on its unique dial. The spinning beach ball dial represents moments of transition, the promise of what’s to come, and delivers a playful design for watch aficionados or people looking for something less traditional.
The piece has a Japanese Miyota 2025 Quartz movement with a mineral glass. Moreover, the case is 39mm in diameter and is made from 316L stainless steel.
Japanese filmmaking is known to have begun as early as 1898—two years after the motion picture came to the Land of the Rising Sun with the importation of Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope1—and in a short span of time became adopted as a propaganda tool for the country’s military ambitions. During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, the newspaper Asahi Shinbun called upon cameramen to shoot films imbuing “the minds of the young with a military spirit” while live commentators called benshi encouraged audiences to cheer “banzai!” whenever soldiers appeared on screen.2 Three decades later—after Japan’s annexation of neighboring lands such as Manchuria and the Korean peninsula—Prime Minister Makoto Saito established the Film Control Committee to hone cinema’s “entertainment-propaganda function.” In 1935, he passed legislature that outlawed “insulting the national policy, the military, or foreign policy,” promoting in their place movies championing “the brilliance of the Imperial Way.”3
Many filmmakers, even those with no outward interest in military policies domestic and abroad, were influenced and manipulated by this sea change. In the early 1920s, a young camera assistant at Shochiku named Yasujiro Ozu joined the army reserves—hoping status as a part-time soldier would help avoid the draft4 and thus only wrench him from his beloved set job for the occasional training session.5 For a short while, this proved successful; graduating to the director’s chair in 1927, he shot thirty-seven films over the next decade, performing military duties intermittently. But by 1937, Japan’s expansionist agendas in Asia had escalated into the Second Sino-Japanese War. That September, Ozu received a conscription notice summoning him to the front.6
At the time of the 1937 draft, Ozu—together with Tomio Ikeda and Takao Yanai—had finished a script titled There Was a Father, which the group decided not to pursue shooting until the former’s return.7 Dispatched to China, Ozu witnessed numerous battles and atrocities—including the Rape of Nanjing in 1938—and often expressed interest in making films about the wartime experience. “[I]t is my determination to take in all the sights of the battlefield,” he told a Tokyo Asahi correspondent in December 1937, “and, if I come through this alive, make some sort of movie in service to the national cause.”8 Such a project never materialized after his July 1939 return, however, despite his vocally criticizing unrealistic war films and novels by people who’d never experienced combat. Ozu’s not contributing to the genre might’ve stemmed from moral qualms (as film critic Hideo Tsumura speculated following an interview wherein the director admitted to having become “anxious” about filmmaking)9 but more likely derived from expanded control over motion pictures.
On March 6, 1939, the government passed the Film Law—modeled after Nazi Germany’s Spitzenorganisation der Filmwirtschaft10—to actively tailor cinema in accordance with national policy. In September 1940, as resources dwindled, studios were ordered to limit their annual productions to less than forty-eight pictures,11 and censorship became so strict that one director requested on-site consultants to gauge what he wasn’t allowed to shoot.12 While war films were aplenty, those presenting Japan’s overseas actions with nuance—e.g., Fumio Kamei’s Fighting Soldiers (1940)—were scorned by the government. The same was true of movies set on the home front, the most favorable of which depicted homogenous patriotism. Having given up on a battle drama, Ozu proposed a “New Years comedy” called He’s Going to Nanjing, later renamed The Flavor of Green Tea Over Rice.13 That project went unmade after the Censorship Office of the Home Ministry denounced the script as “Occidental” and lacking “martial spirit.”14
Reasoning also that “sarcasm or satire” was ill-suited for the times’ political climate, Ozu directed the straightforward Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941), which concludes with a matriarch and two of her children moving to occupied China. After the film received Kinema Junpo magazine’s “Best One” prize and attracted so many spectators that Shochiku entertained plans for a sequel,15 Ozu returned to the script he’d worked on before the draft. As penned in 1937, There Was a Father was an uncomplicated drama about a single parent and his son, but its framework was workable as a patriotic home front movie. Film historian Tadao Sato notes in his book Currents in Japanese Cinema that father-and-son dramas accommodated the censors’ portrait of Japanese domestic life during the war. “The father in the home was a microcosm of the emperor in the nation: as the emperor was the embodiment of virtue, so each father should be a small model of virtue.” (Even though such a presentation, as Sato further explains, “was hardly the case in reality, as often mediocre fathers took advantage of this heaven-sent authority to play the tyrant at home, alienating their children.”)16
The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941)
Perhaps to increase the odds of script approval, Ozu made changes playing into what historian Tony Rayns describes as “fidelity to Japan’s wartime ethos. Besides promoting the cardinal virtues of loyalty and obedience, it teaches that every man should be content with his role in society, however modest, and should find fulfillment in doing his best.”17 In the original 1937 screenplay, the father (Chishu Ryu) and his young son (Haruhiko Tsuda) travel to the city of Ueda on a social call; they make the same trip in the 1942 revision, albeit to visit their ancestors’ graves. In both scripts, the pair, after the son’s matured and begun adult life in a community separate from his parent, meet at a public bathhouse; the son (Shuji Sano) expresses interest in relocating so they can live together again. However, whereas the father consoled his progeny in the original scenario, his counterpart in the finished movie, despite wanting them to be together, unleashes a vocal tirade about not shirking one’s current responsibilities.18
Other scenes are subtler when endorsing national ethics. Early on, the father, then employed as a junior high school teacher, takes his pupils on field trips to Mount Fuji as well as imperialistic/militaristic sites such as the Imperial Palace and Yasukuni Shrine. During these excursions they pose before the Great Buddha statue in Kamakura (Japan’s Buddhist establishment had emerged as a proponent of the war effort).19 Most noteworthy, though, is a scene wherein the son visits his father in Tokyo, hair shorn into a crew cut, declaring he’s passed the army’s physical exam.
The film doesn’t nauseatingly harp on these elements. Ozu admitted to having become weary of films that “forgot entertainment and [… preached] to no purpose,”20 and at its core There Was a Father remains a recognizably Ozu parent-child drama with dominant themes of loss and disappointment. By drama’s end, the father has passed away, and his son ruminates not on upcoming military duties but on their having spent less time together than hoped. (The depiction of a child reluctant to leave a one-parent household and the parent obliged but likewise reluctant to see them leave points to postwar Ozu masterworks such as 1949’s Late Spring and 1960’s Late Autumn.) Nonetheless, the familial subject matter and fleeting nationalistic elements won over the censors: There Was a Father received a Bureau of Information award as an excellent national policy film.21 For those same reasons, it was re-edited when Japan surrendered in 1945 and the victorious Allied Powers, led by the United States’ General Douglas MacArthur, assumed control of the nation’s media.
Tasked with banning nationalism, imperialism, and militarism from Japanese screens during the American Occupation of 1945-1952, MacArthur’s staff replaced existing censorship policies with their own—in addition to confiscating pre-1945 pictures and, if necessary, adjusting them for re-release. The latter practice is plainly evident in There Was a Father, with scenes that stop rather than conclude (i.e., the father being asked to recite a poem at a class reunion; the scene cuts off just as he’s about to speak) and moments wherein characters’ posture suddenly change mid-shot (indicating problematic lines or gestures had been edited out). At the same time, the film exemplifies the Occupation authorities’ inconsistency regarding their own regulations: not removed were shots of Mount Fuji (deemed such a nationalistic image that the volcano was seldom allowed on screen—except in Shochiku’s logo—for several years), dialogue referencing Yasukuni Shrine, and of course mention of the son prepping for military service. Still, There Was a Father, which Ozu counted among his three favorites—the other two being Late Spring and Tokyo Story (1953)22—has long existed in fragmented form.
Until recently, that is. 2023—the 120th anniversary of Ozu’s birth and the 60th of his passing—has already been an exciting year for fans of this director. In months previous, restored copies of Record of a Tenement Gentleman (1947) and The Munekata Sisters (1950) debuted at the Cannes Film Festival; news also came out regarding discovery of additional footage of 1929’s short comedy A Straightforward Boy. And on August 22, NHK announced that this year’s Venice International Film Festival will host a restored print of There Was a Father—with scenes originally axed by the Occupation censors. Among the reinstated footage is the above-mentioned poetry scene (likely cut because of rhetoric about feudal loyalty to the nation) and a closing sequence wherein Japanese civilians sing to war-bound soldiers.23 With good fortune, this longer version will receive international home release, allowing Ozu fans to discuss the “new” material and the historical context behind them.
Works cited and further reading:
Dym, Jeffrey A. “Benshi and the Introduction of Motion Pictures to Japan.” Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 55, no. 4., 2000, p. 510
High, Peter B. The Imperial Screen: Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years’ War, 1931-1945. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003, pp. 4-5
Ibid, pp. 52-5
Richie, Donald. Ozu: His Life and Films. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977, p. 199
Rayns, Tony. “The Only Son: Japan, 1936.” The Current, 13 July 2010
I Lived, But… A Biography of Yasujiro Ozu. Shochiku Co., Ltd., 1983
High, p. 351
Ibid, p. 181
Joo Woojeong. The Cinema of Ozu Yasujiro: Histories of the Everyday. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017, p. 139
Hirano Kyoko. Smith Goes to Tokyo: Japanese Cinema Under the American Occupation, 1945-1952. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992, p. 15
High, p. 294
Ibid, p. Xv
Ozu eventually used this title on a movie made in 1953, though only a few plot threads and scenes were retained in an otherwise brand-new story. Source: Bordwell, David. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988, p. 280
High, p. 173
Joo, p. 128
Sato Tadao. Translated by Gregory Barrett. Currents in Japanese Cinema. New York: Kodansha International, Ltd., 1982, p. 126
Rayns
“There Was a Father.” Ozu-san. http://a2pcinema.com/ozu-san/films/therewasfather.htm Accessed 26 August 2023
Rayns
Joo, p. 129
Bordwell, p. 292
Richie, p. 235
“Ozu Yasujiro’s 1942 film ‘There Was a Father’ restored.” NHK World-Japan 22 August 2023
Vito Schnabel Gallery, the beloved art gallery, will exhibit Zachary Armstrong: New Work in their New York gallery on 43 Clarkson Street. The exhibition will run from the 13th of September until the 28th of October.
As part of this exhibition, the artist will present a new body of work that reflects his inventive multi-medium practice, including paintings, sculpture reliefs, and an installation of ceramic lamps and carved wooden sewing machines. These objects show Armstrong’s technical innovation and his uninhibited, idiosyncratic use of imagination and memory to connect with the viewer.
Zachary Armstrong’s recent solo exhibitions have included presentations at GNYP Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium (2023); Tilton Gallery, NY (2022, 2018, 2016); Faurschou Foundation, New York, NY/Beijing, China (2022, 2021); and quite a few others.
Last week, Mannequin Pussy announced they’ve bought back their masters from their former label, Tiny Engines, and launched their own imprint, Romantic Records. Today, they’ve released a new single, ‘I Got Heaven’, their first new music since 2021’s Perfect EP. It was produced by John Congleton and comes with a video directed by Mason Mercer and Anthony Miralles. Check it out below, along with the band’s upcoming tour dates.
“‘I Got Heaven’ is a song intended to merge the sacred and the profane and to serve as a reminder that we are all perfect exactly as we have been made and that no one gets to decide how a life should or should not be lived,” Marisa Dabice explained in a statement. “Heaven is here on a planet that gave us everything we needed to survive. Heaven is in the plants and in the water and in the animals who we share this world with. Heaven is inside of me and inside of you. The weaponization of Christianity for political means, for individual profit and power, as a tool to intentionally divide us is one of the greatest threats to our modern world and a threat to our ability to find solidarity through love. To allow the hatred and the violence and the noise to rise is to reject our sacred purpose as individuals, which is simply to love.”
Mannequin Pussy’s most recent LP, Patience, came out in 2019. Last year, Dabice appeared on a remix of Dazy and Militarie Gun’s ‘Pressure Cooker’. A press release notes more new music is “on the way soon.”
Mannequin Pussy 2023 Tour Dates:
Sep 7 Los Angeles, CA – Hollywood Palladium *
Sep 8 Tempe, AZ – Marquee Theatre *
Sep 9 Albuquerque, NM – El Rey Theater *
Sep 10 El Paso, TX – Lowbrow Palace *
Sep 12 Houston, TX – House of Blues *
Sep 13 Austin, TX – Emo’s *
Sep 15 Atlanta, GA – Center Stage *
Sep 16 Tampa, FL – The Ritz Ybor *
Sep 18 Asheville, NC – The Orange Peel *
Sep 19 Nashville, TN – Brooklyn Bowl *
Sep 21 Louisville, KY – Louder Than Life *
Sep 22 Mckees Rocks, PA – Roxian Theater *
Sep 24 Worcester, MA – Palladium *
Sep 26 Washington, D.C. – 9:30 Club *
Sep 27 Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Steel *
Sep 29 Columbus, OH – The King of Clubs *
Sep 30 Chicago, IL – Concord Music Hall *
Oct 3 Lawrence, KS – The Granada *
Oct 5 Denver, CO – Summit *
Oct 6 Salt Lake City, UT – Soundwell *
Oct 10 Seattle, WA – Neptune Theatre *
Oct 11 Portland, OR – Wonder Ballroom *
Oct 13 Santa Cruz, CA – The Catalyst *
Oct 14 Anaheim, CA – House of Blues *
Oct 23-27 Miami, FL – Coheed & Cambria SS Neverender Cruise
Nov 17 San Juan de Alicante, Spain – Magic Robin Hood
Nov 18 L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain – Primavera Sound Weekender
Nov 19 Lisbon, Portugal – ZDB
Nov 20 Porto, Portugal – Maus Hábitos
