"A Monster Calls" A novel by Patrick Ness (with illustrations by Jim Kay)

When the monster called after midnight it was completely unexpected. As unexpected in fact as the appearance of this extraordinary children's novel by Patrick Ness on the bookshelves. Based on an original idea by Siobhan Dowd and with the help of the truly magnificent expressionistic illustrations of Jim Kay, Patrick Ness has managed to create a book that is both frightening and emotionally charged. He adeptly balances different genres of traditional storytelling with difficult subjects and concepts such as childhood, truth, dealing with serious sickness and loss, pain, guilt, confronting and eventually overcoming your worst nightmares and fears by finally finding that inner strength which makes the difference in times of trouble and adversity. 

This is a powerful and exceptional book that will equally touch children and adults. When you read it as an adult, you re-establish the connection with that atrophied part of yourself, that lost forgotten time when you were a child and the world was very much defined by the power of your imagination. It re-awakens memories that made you stay up at night when all the grown-ups were fast asleep. Memories that had to do with your struggle to understand the adult world that you found yourself in. A world that was so unimaginatively lucid when compared with the world that you knew and understood. That was the time when your antennas were still up there receiving and transmitting below all grown-up frequencies. They had not yet been brought down to be "serviced and adjusted" by adult considerations according to society's norms.

The beautifully haunting graphic work of Jim Kay contributes a lot in giving an almost definitive gothic visual appearance to the written word, pulling you into the dark recesses of Conor's mind. These images are almost archetypes that will not be forgotten after you close the book. They existed in the past and they will continue to exist. The Monster is a pagan giant, a wicker man stuffed with the sum of all your fears and the darkness that you refuse to confront. His roots and his branches will tangle your soul and will not let you put this book down. I challenge you to try...

Listen to:

Electric President - Monsters

"Treacle" by YouYourself&i. A serious claim to the Indie throne of Canada

It was late in the evening and I was still trying to understand what went wrong with this kid. You see Daniel Gélinas from Montreal was not supposed to do all these things. This was not the way things were planned for his future… Good grades at school, clever kid, had fine prospects. A bright career all lined up and ready for him. What’s wrong with a nine to five white collar job? Nothing, I say. Nothing! Be useful to society my boy and think of the security in these times of crisis…  And what does he do? He throws everything out of the window … “I prefer not to”. What kind of Bartleby answer is that? Was it a nervous breakdown? He didn’t show any signs of losing the plot before but… there he is now in abandoned schools and derelict basements, recording scratches, cat hisses and songs. What happened?


I wonder if his so called friends at school are to blame. Friends at that age can throw you in the dark alleys of juvenile delinquency.

Look at these shady characters that helped him self-produce his new album called “Treacle”. No wonder…. And instead of just making a song or two, a single or, ok, an EP as a hobby without neglecting his career, no… he records a double album of music in the making. Music adrift in unchartered waters. Unfinished yet complete, coming from a cry to a whisper and going from a bang to a whimper. Music that can be found in-between chords, under the floorboards, flowing naturally or being dragged out into the open raw for all to see. Daniel Gélinas constantly dives in the fresh undercurrent of experimental ideas and resurfaces with strange turns of lyrical phrase and musical structure. Juggling between French and English, his songs have a strange capacity to Velcro into your head. 

But make no mistake about it. This is no syrupy music. This is certainly “treacle” in its dictionary definition of “antidote to poison”. To the “static mainstream poison” that we listen to every day on the radio, antidote in the sense of cleansing, or in the sense of the 'Drink Me' potion that shrinks Alice in size making her slip into a different world. 

Where does all that leave us with Daniel? Well, you make choices in life that YouYourself&i have to live with. Make the choice and listen to a couple of tracks from the album right here. But this is uploaded just to wet your appetite. The real trip is the double album "Treacle I & II" by YouYourself&i which is available to download for a minimal price following the link below:

The site of Daniel Gélinas and YouYourself&i

It should be noted that all the graphic work for the album was done by Daniel and his bunch of merry men and women from Montreal. 

The making of "Treacle"

When you buy the album, you therefore actually hold in your hands a limited edition lovingly handmade piece of indie history in the making.

Listen to:

YouYourself&i - Basement Heroes

YouYourself&i - Preludes 

The Boxers of George Bellows

George Bellows (1882-1925) was an american painter who managed to capture in his work the birth of the modern era in the United States at the turn of the past century. Is it possible for an artist to paint not only what he sees but go beyond, capturing something larger than life? Something that becomes not just a picture but a definitive imprint of a bygone era? The distilled spirit of an age, the "zeitgeist" of say, the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th? The answer is yes, if one looks at the work of George Bellows. Take for example his painting "Cliff Dwellers", depicting life in the ever sprawling neighborhoods of New York City dominated by tall, intersecting appartment blocks connected by washing lines. No skies and no horizons. Children are left to play in the street and the hustle and bustle of everyday life is so vividly portrayed that you cannot resist being drawn into the painting. Your eye travels in the picture, panning and zooming like a camera lens. After a while your imagination starts to fill in the gaps.You almost feel a strange nostalgia as if you were there once, lived among these people, shouted and cried and heard the noise of the tram passing by. George Bellows was eager to show how this world of industrial turmoil changed the urban landscape and how it affected the everyday lives of the common people. With a kin eye for detail and a talent for capturing the dynamic essence of a live, moving composition, he was the right man at the right time. 

Nowhere else is this more evident than in his paintings of boxers. Prize-fighting boxing at the time of George Bellows was illegal. It took place in seedy, underground joints hidden behind false brick walls that would slide open to reveal a noisy, smoke filled backroom, filled to capacity by a raw crowd, in a betting frenzy shouting, drinking and gesticulating around the ring. Often, the violence inside the ropes would spill over into the audience. Sometimes the cops would receive information and they would raid these places. Panic would then set in and the crowds would run to get away, leaving the two boxers up there, by themselves, oblivious of what is going on, up there, continuing to exchange the blows in front of the cops after all the crowds have cleared out and the only thing left are their hats, the odd shoe and broken bottles on the floor...     

Painted in the chiaroscuro style from the spotlights directed towards the ring, the boxers are caught in the thick of the action and even though they are off balance at the moment of defending or delivering a blow, they strike a perfect compositional balance by the perfect symmetry and complimentarity of the action. This is a brutal, head on collision dance. Their strained and blood stained muscles shining in the spotlight, their faces a blur or rather literarly a pulp, they are locked in combat in a fight that is a fight for survival.    

A noisy, passionate, deformed, ugly crowd follows closely the boxing match absorbed by the action. Painted with thick strokes, some faces could very well have been drawn by Honoré Daumier a little bit earlier at the other side of the Atlantic ocean. You get a glint of an eye here, a hideous mocking laugh there, all teeth shining. The blood red color of the boxers can be found also in some of the faces in the audience. They are an integral part of this brutal scene, tainted in red by their enthousiasm, anxiety, anger and anticipation as the match reaches the crucial minutes before the bell. With the sound of the bell some people will have gambled away their whole life. With the sound of the bell, the men in the tuxedos smile and money changes hands. 

 

With the sound of the bell you realise that you are in a gallery looking at a George Bellows painting. Then again, you get the impression that your clothes have a faint smell of cigarette smoke and alcohol and that your ears are still buzzing from the roar of the crowd when the referee started the countdown. A countdown that has lasted almost a hundred years...