FILM REVIEW - RELIC (2020)

 

 

 

When is a horror movie not a horror movie? When is a ghost not a ghost? When a haunted house story is an allegory for Alzheimer's and dementia. Relic is the directorial debut of Australian screen writer Natalie Erika James and it's a gripping, emotionally jarring journey through the trauma of watching a loved one be consumed by the loss of self and identity that happens when old age crosses over into irreversible mental decay. 

 

Relic brilliantly adapts the classic horror trope of the haunted house into the gut-wrenching nightmare of watching a loved one slowly losing their grip on reality and bringing you along for the ride. Throw in the complications of strained familial relationships and the stakes become that might higher and the cost of the tragedy that much more visceral. All of this is rendered with intricate sensitivity and detail by the trifecta of a cast, representing three generations of the female side of this family struggling to cope with the matriarch's slide into darkness. 

 

The atmosphere that drenches this film from start to finish has you feeling like you're part of the mold growing out of the walls in this old house. It's a home that's losing its cohesion, becoming increasingly unfamiliar, alienating and claustrophobic while, at the same time, seeming to "get bigger" as the sense of confusion takes over. The pacing of it also manages to alternate between hypnotically static stretches, where it seems to lean into a Lynch style sense of suspension of time, and more frantic sequences, particularly as it ramps into a climax that leave you grasping for the couch cushions as the walls close in. 

 

It's a truly haunting story, made even more heartbreaking because of the emotional resonance that so many of these scenes leave behind. There's a lot of sophistication in this story telling and it's all matched by a visual attention to detail that brings it to life in a way that'll stick with you well after the credits have rolled. 

Damn impressive. 

 

P.S. The sound design and score is amazing to boot with some fabulously textured music and atmospheric sounds giving it that extra sense of depth.

DAVID BOWIE - STATION TO STATION @ 45

 

January 23 marks the 45th anniversary of the release of David Bowie's 10th studio album, Station to Station, released on this day in 1976.

With Ziggy Stardust seeming like a distant memory by the time of this release, Bowie was firmly in the grip of his "Thin White Duke" persona and the epic cocaine habit that accompanied it. Bowie was so out of it at the time of this recording that he, and much of the band, remembered very little of its production beyond the distaste for Los Angeles and the belief that ""The fucking place should be wiped off the face of the earth". That decadence and indulgence, however, didn't stop them from creating one of Bowie's most seminal and significant albums.

Musically, it continues along the path of "blue eyed soul" that had been forged with the previous LP, Young Americans, but there were the seeds of intense experimentation being planted here that would set David's trajectory directly into the Brian Eno produced "Berlin Trilogy" throughout the remaining years of the decade. The core band of this album would also remain intact throughout this period as well with bassist George Murray, guitarist Carlos Alomar and drummer Dennis Davis.

Conceptually, the album is preoccupied with David's favorite muses of the era such as Aleister Crowley and occultism. Bowie was also involved in the filming of Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth and the character created for that feature became a central inspiration for his Thin White Duke persona, which Bowie described as "a hollow man who sang songs of romance with an agonized intensity, yet felt nothing — ice masquerading as fire". The persona has also been described as "a mad aristocrat", "an amoral zombie", and "an emotionless Aryan superman". For Bowie himself, the Duke was "a nasty character indeed"! Bowie became so possessed by the role at the time, with the help of the drugs, that he was often criticized for his close brushes with fascistic tendencies. Personally, he was a mess and deep into delusion and paranoia, with fantasies of witches stealing his semen, secret messages from The Rolling Stones and an irrational fear of fellow Crowley enthusiast, Jimmy Page. It's no wonder he'd flee to Berlin after touring the album to dry out and get his head on straight.

Despite all of the chaos and madness surrounding the times, we're still left with an incredible artifact of Bowie's genius, which even in the midst of his madness at the time, still managed to shine through and manifest an album that stood as a beacon for the emerging "new wave" of the late 1970s and still holds up today thanks to its unassailable song-craft and musicianship.

CHRIS & COSEY - TECHNO PRIMITIV @ 35

 

 

Celebrating its 35th anniversary today is Chris & Cosey's fourth studio album, Technø Primitiv, released on January 24, 1986, by Rough Trade Records in the UK, EU & Canada (and eventually Wax Trax in the US in 1990).

While their previous LP, Love & Lust, had shown some movement towards a more "pop" friendly, mainstream sound, Technø Primitiv firmly placed itself on a footing clearly aiming for accessibility as opposed to the extreme experimentalism and confrontational styles of earlier C&C work or their prior incarnation as half of Throbbing Gristle. Technø Primitiv made no bones about offering up catchy tunes and toe tapping beats and it set the tone for their course throughout the next decade. At least that was the case as far as material released under the Chris & Cosey banner. They'd continue to maintain a foot in the avant-garde via their alternate creative outlets such as Conspiracy International.

Of the pop friendly C&C albums released during this period, Technø Primitiv stands as my personal favorite, with a solid set of compositions and the use of state of the art (for the day) electronics. In fact, it was those cover photos of their gear which tapped into my own techno-fetishes as I clocked more than one piece of kit that I had in my own arsenal or at least had access to at the time. Seeing and hearing things like the Roland TR-707 drum machine in action when I had one sitting in my living room created an instant empathy with the album and it influenced more than a few of my own compositions at the time. And, while some of those sounds may show a bit of their age when I listen to it now, the album always brings back special memories of that time and the creative energy it encapsulated.