CURRENTLY READING :

I would like to say that in the middle of the tons of crap that french press have to offer these days, there's one monthly title which deserve my interest since i first bought it, month after month ; after a pretty cool life, L'oeil Electrique is ready to die.

i don't remember many magazines talkin about things/people who was/were miles away from the usual overexposed other common shit. Blanquet, Crumb, Emmanuel Guibert, Le Dernier Cri, Nancy Huston, Willem, Robert Piccamioglio, Winshluss, Cizo & les Requins Marteaux, Jochen Gerner, and many many really good indy messiahs interviews, musical journeys, or politics writtings were the classic content of this magzine.
uh ? quite sad ? don't wait ! buy the old issues here ! and grab the final issue in a few weeks...





...want some good books ?... aahhh ?... wanna some ?...



"La vie et les opinions de Tristram Shandy", Laurence Stern, french translation from Tristram publisher... also some french info here.



"Barefoot Gen", Keiji Nakazawa, french translation from Vertige Graphic... some (not recent) interview here, and read here too for more cool stuff on this japonese masterpiece.



"Erasure", Percival Everett, french translation from Actes Sud publisher...



"Corps a corps", Gregory Mardon, Dupuis (Aire Libre) publisher...



"the Book of Illusions", Paul Auster, french translation from Babel publisher...



"Black", another comics anthology, courtesy of the work of Italian Coconino and French Vertige Graphic...

...more soon. 8)

+ + + 8)

DICTATOR-CARDS:

Dictator-cards are played by 2 or more players. The aim is to win all the cards from your opponent(s).
All cards are distributed evenly among players. Each player puts his cards unseen in a pile in front of him with the image side downwards.
Flip a coin to decide who begins.

PLAYING

1 Each player draws the card on top of his pile
2 The player who has the initiative looks at his card and determines which category his card is strongest in (ex. Ruled number of years: 43)
3 All players call their value in the chosen category. The player with the highest number wins, and gets the cards in play. He places the collected cards in the bottom of his pile, and gets the initiative.
4 Repeat until a player has beaten his opponents by getting all their cards
If two or more players have the same highest value in a round, there is WAR. These players draw the next card in their piles and name the value of the SAME category as before. If a player runs out of cards during the war, he keeps playing his last card. This is repeated until someone wins. The player who wins the war collects all the cards that were laid down, and gets the initiative.
If you lose all your cards, you are out. The game ends when one player has all the cards.
The types of RULE rank like this, strongest first:
Stalinism, Despotism, Tyranny, Fascism, Cannibalism, Nazism, Military Dictatorship, Dictatorship, Barbarism, Marxism, Islamic Fundamentalism, Emperor's Rule, Kleptocracy, Mooching
Have fun!
- courtesy of the awful other mailing list's very own Ben. thanks Ben ! 8) -

HAPPY MONDAY (part. 2)

- so-called living encyclopedias of the comics medium should try Harry Morgan's "Principes des litt?ratures dessin?es", a really huge book published by l'an 2, which gives strong analysis and comments about the situation of our favorite medium through its different stages or evolution.
pretty complete and full of details, this book is a kind of following of Morgan past and present work he currently publish online, and it's a must read for all of you people, who can't handle anymore with this classic "but but but... arent' comics for childrens ?" point of view...

of course, it's in french, and, something who surprises me a little bit, Harry Morgan really does deeply and on a "rightfully written" mode into this book, far away from the friendly tone he use on his site (still on his website, he got some cool links too). anyway, great reading, really.




- while we're on the french speaking topic, some infamous guy from Lyon sent me some cool interview from last week 's main man, aka Buck 65.
sooooo The Old Man was on stage in Dijon last week, and well, even if it wasn't his best live ever (i saw him twice, it was surely more surprising, but i definitely prefered it...), he just rocked the casbah, which as usual for a Dijon gig, was boring, bored and full of zombies.

damn people from Dijon. if you're looking for pretentious and fucking demanding audience, come around here. Buck 65, however sick, did eveything he could do with his strong voice tones register, and his furious abilities on the turntables but it wasn't enough for them... some fuckers behind me were complaining about the slow average tempo of the gig ; i tried to ask them if there was a minimum for it, but haven't got any answers aside "come on, this ain"t speed enough for having fun" ; so i told them to buy a dog and go listening to some crap hardcore in the first free party they found, but the fuckers (cause they were, of course) didn't find it funny... anyway.

sure it was quite slow, but this is actually parts that i loved in this show. Buck 65 delivers tons of words, thousands of sentences that really don't need velocity for being great. his construction of sentences are coming from another lyrical land, and really, the guy got charisma ; sure, it can't help to seduce people who, for the major part, don't dig english. but he also speaks a little bit french, and i had a real fun seing him doing his "que je t'aime" moment, some classic real-piece-of-crap-french-pop-song that nobody could imagine hearing on this very gig. really funny too was his explanation of Mick Jagger's moving methods, which is a routine he does pretty much nowadays but which is incredibly funny. you must see him for this too. 8)

and the music ? well, i'm still on the same point of view than before : even if Talkin'Honky Blues is a good album, i'm definetely more on his less "folk/blues" shit, a la "The Centaur" or "Language arts", "Vertex" environments. but definitely, the man got taste. 8)

HAPPY MONDAY.

- do you know Vista Le Vie ? interesting post-beatz complete with guitar, mellow atmosphere, fender Rhodes and blackilistic electro done on Protools, Vista Le Vie released a few weeks ago some interesting piece of work on F-Communication.

and do you know Jeff Soto ? this guy who's loving graffiti, and who's currently painting on wood pieces, among many others works (which includes among others stuff for The Village Voice, Morrow Snowboards, Esquire, Spin, Monkey Skateboards...) and he also did Vista Le Vie's record sleeve.
it's a tiny world we're living in, uh ?

whoaaa :


uhhh ?



- a few weeks ago, i had one of this nostalgic moments (remember, you probably read it, arf), going home and re-listening these mid-nineties La Funk Mob huge tracks, just before Zdar and Boom Bass began doing other shit, but other shit hopefully good and also good for their bank account ; now there's this soon-to-be released unrealesed forgotten tracks (the bad seeds), and Chronowax is delivering some mix from the parisian duo.


- YESSS ! if everything''s fine, my good friends Ed (aka the Horse), Alcor (aka dj Casual Gangsta Cuts) and me (aka, uh, nevermind...) will go see this little guy , live near us next sunday. i'm glaaaad. cool beans. 8)

CUCKOO !

Belle & Sebastian fans or not, this is quite cool, and maybe you'll win some trip to scotland, heck, are you really asking for more ?

I missed dj Vadim & Russian Percussian friends for their latest gig in paris, and guess what ?
"I am sorry you didnt make it because the paris show was perhaps our finest show ever in france. it was so good and the crowd was packed and went crazy, really crazy not like a typical parisian crowd at all." arrrgghhhhLLLL. next time, hopefully...


thanks to Julie from NightSystem.com, pretty cool music-and-live link indeed... 8)

COUNT 'TILL 10 AND THEN...

concrete posts in the very near future (read : this weekend) about :

- la nuit des lutins, some short movies festival happened in besancon last friday. great pieces, some a little less, but as usual, a great time.

- buck 65 liiiiiive in dijon yesterday ; the show was quite cool, the guy got the same full presence as usual, and he's a real nice guy, too.
have you ever seen him doing his "mick jagger's little window" routine ? ohhhh, so fuuu-nny. great guy. stop downloading his stuff NOW, buy it. 8)

- interest in your usual virtual places, or what can you wait from people that you meet from same interest numeric fields ? i recently notice a few details about what happened when you wait maybe a little bit more about people that you met in this www crap world. I took a little bit of distance, thought about it, and it quickly felt like people ain't always what you think they are, really (or is it what you wish they are ?).
which is nothing but logical, when you think that "real life" people can always suprises you... can you really wait something of people you don't really know apart your commun topics ? anyway.

- which doesn't mean you cannot spend some times and some nice places... did you check all of these links in the left bar ? uh ? go on, take a seat, take it easy...

oh yeah. did you notice that you can post comments for each post on this blog ? yeah ? uh ?... and you don't care ? hmmm. ok.
have a nice week, we'll speak more after this weekend. peace out there.

TONITE RADIO SHOW.

Manu Mezgo and Alcor (and Fred Snork, too) were part of the mess we did tonite on the Radio Campus Dijon waves. cool evening, nice tunes, etc...
good vibes indeed ! thanks to Manu right there :



it mades me regret even more my weekly radioshow from way back in... well, enough. here's the shit i played tonite :

defcon 5 "good bye (feat blue)"
canvas "illinois" (nacopajaz)
g. litter "seoul 88" (lifesaver)
lamb "trans fatty acid - kruder and dorfmeister mix" (mercury)
bonobo "super 8" (true thoughts)
jeru the damaja "war (accapella)" (ashenafi)
roy ayers "brand new feeling" (bbe)
galt macdermot "ripped open by metal explosions" (killmarnock)
dynasty "adventures in the land of music" (solar)
leroy hutson "it's different" (curtom)
S.O.U.L. "Tell It Like It Is" (reedition harmless)
that's how it is core "bald head" (that's how it is)
silky spearman "i'm a good woman" (crazy cajun)
archie shepp "i know 'bout the life" (black saint)
new sector movements "penny dropped" (main squeeze)
feetwan "w4aMC" (plate)
ty "wait a minute (dwele mix)" (big dada)
jazzanova "intro" (jcr)
dj hekla "akimbo" (planet mu)
kid 606 "xanopticon bizarre" (meow)
prefuse 73 (outakes from "extinguished", warp)
bit meddler "frustum" (planet mu)
andre gurov "are you listening ?" (electro caramel)

stupid one (the chief of the stupids, a senior stupid, aka Alcor) behind little stupid (just a junior stupid).


and while this time, other stupids really, really needs to get another job. 8)

MERCI MATTHIAS. 8)


thanks to Matthias from a mailing list of eastern frenchs freaks, here's one of the illest stencils i'd ever seen.
yes, the original fucker who did the art of this original TTC's first album inside cover (on Big Dada) is Kid Acne, and yes this stencil rules.
it's early in the morning, i gotta work.
bye.
oh yeah, and dont' miss some giant killing radio show with the bunch tonite on radio campus dijon. heavy ill boogie alllll niiiiittttte long, with, along others, Mezgo, Alcor and myself. 8)

BOURG LES VALENCE 2004... ah ah ah, excuse me. it's just the name who makes me nervous... well. nevermind. 8)



another edition of THE rendez vous of what the comics french scene's got to offer nowadays : all this so-called "new scene", which means in fact real authors which real art to give away.

the greatest among the greatests, Edmond Baudoin, Jean-Christophe Menu, Lewis Trondheim, with loads of unmissable artists : François Ayroles, Pierre Wazem, Pakito Bolino and the Dernier Cri crew, Nicolas de Crecy, Simon Hureau, Yann Degruel, Ricard & Gaultier, the Jouvray bros, Marc Pichelin...
I'll personnaly try to not piss on myself while trying to catch some of my favorite artists such as Craig Thompson, Frederik Peeters, Noyau or Anna Sommer, or to tell how i love the art of people of Andreas Kundig, Jonathan Larabie, Alex Baladi, Lucas Methe (thanks again fred...).

where ? uh... hum... Bourg les valence BWWAAAHAHAHA, France.
when ? March 2004, the 12 to 14.
who ? all the artists listed above, and the bunch of passionate friends who'll go there too. which means probably loads of trouble... 8)

and while we talk about pictures, here some moving versions of geeennniiiiusssss Kim Deitch's work.
The brilliant author recently had a french version of his work under the title "une tragedie americaine", thanks to Denoel editor... 8)

TONITE IN PARIS !!!

oups i almost forget to talk about tonight's gig not-to-miss...



dj vadim and his usual bunch of beatfreaks are back in town, once again.
nice beats, great vocals, presence and best out-of-cliche hip hop around...

where ? Nouveau casino, Paris
who ? dj Vadim, Yarah Bravo, dj Woody, Blu rum 13. whouuh ! cool bunch indeed.
be there, or, uh... well, you got the point. 8)

HIPHOUSE SHOW, NEARLY RIGHT NOw.

once again my ol'pal Alcor let me play some shit in his weekly Hiphouse radioshow, and it can be of some interest for you only if you live near Dijon, eastern France... Well, wait ! somebody told me that this very radio station is also available on the web !? cool beans.
anyway, here's the tracklisting of my miniset, between 2 drum'n'bass sessions courtesy of Alcor :

- l'atelier "bean dogs" (institubes)
- tes "new new york (5" version)" (lex)
- viktor vaughn "change the beat" (sound ink)
- jeru the damaja "war" (ashenafi)
- kid 606 "da bird" (meow 59)
- vast aire "why'sdaskyblue ?" (chocolate ind)
- aesop rock & mr lif "11:35" (def jux)
- the 45 king "the 900 number" (tuff city)
- madlib feat. medaphoar & ahmad miller "please set me at ease (hip hop mix)" (blue note)

oh yes, there's not only abstract and blunted hip hop or instru freakquencies shit in your life, lucky people.
Nice guys from the Lykill record label just released two 5 inches, one of some of Piano Magic guy under the nick Textile Ranch, and another one from disturbed freaks Velma.
guess what ? after only a few days, the first one is already on heavy rotation on french radio campus, thanks to Iastar, and is in the ten first places of the weekly chart. talk about hype. all this from guys who read the same bullshit as me in this damn morning train, shit... 8)