It's been four years since the double EELS album BLINKING LIGHTS AND OTHER REVELATIONS. If that album was about the human spirit, the new EELS album HOMBRE LOBO is about animal instinct. "I wanted to write a set of songs about desire. That dreadful, intense want that gets you into all sorts of situations that can change your life in big ways," says EELS leader Mark Oliver Everett, aka E.
"I didn't want to write a bunch of blatantly autobiographical songs about a lonely old indie rocker, so I thought it would be more interesting if it came from this character," says Everett, who now sports a beard even mightier than the one grown during the release of the 2001 EELS album SOULJACKER. "Maybe the way people have been looking at me on the street colored who this character would be."
"I was thinking 'what happens when the young 'Dog Faced Boy' (of the SOULJACKER album) grows up?' -- He tries to function in society. But he can't get past the fact that he's still likened to an animal," Everett says. "I was thinking about where he goes from there as he gets older, and it occurred to me that the best a dog faced boy could hope for would be to grow into something that can just squeak by in society with some semblance of dignity. I figured the best he could do was to become a dignified old werewolf."
Alternately tender and terrifying, HOMBRE LOBO features twelve songs from the point of view of a hirsute man enraptured by the beauty of his muse, and frustrated by his desires. Sometimes our anti-hero is melancholic, wishing only for a look his way ("That Look You Give That Guy"). Other times his instincts overtake him with bloodcurdling howls ("Fresh Blood"). And sometimes he can only celebrate the infinite beauty he desires ("In My Dreams," "Tremendous Dynamite").
"It's about the beginning. About what kind of shape you're in when you're alone and you don't want to be alone. What steers you to want to not be alone. The desperate need to connect. And if you're isolated, that can be a real predicament," says Everett. "Sometimes your instincts become unbearable." As he sings in the song "My Timing Is Off":
Believe it or not We Don't have a choice in matters of the heart Just gotta be brave enough To love and let yourself be loved
Impossible b.v. has been founded with the concrete aim to re-invent and re-start production of analog INTEGRAL FILM for vintage Polaroid cameras. Therefore Impossible b.v. has acquired the complete film production equipment in Enschede (NL) from Polaroid, has signed a 10-year lease agreement on the factory building; and has engaged the most experienced team of Integral Film experts worldwide.
Onwards from akqa on Vimeo.via highsnobiety. Artist James Jarvis worked on an interesting new film project, entitled “Onwards”. One of his characters is featured in the short movie, running in a non-linear environment.
“I had become interested in the idea of characters that were less referential and more iconic and abstract. I particularly wanted to do something with a potato-headed stick-man that I had been drawing at that time. The film was inspired by certain personal experiences in running – a favourite run over Blanchland moor in Northumberland, being attacked by a crow in Singapore – and also by the transcendent, almost psychedelic experience of the simple act of running.
Rather than a marketing project inititated by Nike, the film was something proposed and produced by myself, and as such I hope represents a much more equal collaboration with a brand.”
I’m from a minority nation submitted to a flag that I don’t feel, but they say it has to be mine. With this the concept of a meaningful flag changes completely and becomes a symbol of oppression. Because of this, I don’t like flags in general. For this reason the idea of creating one was personally very challenging. A flag for the idea of global citizenship, free from any establishment or language.
First I thought that a flag can’t achieve this project. It has too much symbolism in itself. It shouldn’t be a flag. But maybe, it should be a flag that doesn’t need to be a flag. It needs to be a kind of spirit that people all over the world know and understand in their own way.