Outlands Ecoplex cinema: Golden Plains Festival 2009
I Need That Record! The Death (or Possible Survival) of the Independent Record Store...
Straight from the US for its Aus premiere at GP, Brendan Toller’s guerilla doco’ laments the lost & beloved indie record retailer; more than 3000 disappeared in that country within the space of 5 years. Peopled with a cast of righteous brothers & sisters - Noam Chomsky, Thurston Moore (SY), Ian Mackaye (Fugazi/Minor Threat), Mike Watt (Minutemen/reformed Stooges), Lenny Kaye (Patti Smith Group), Legs McNeill (punk) etc etc – knocking their lobes together on whyfor this storefront species became so endangered...
“Broken music marooned with ghost-ship transmissions...”
Most ambitious project yet from this experimental musician & instrument builder (Cooper) & his crew of all-around ratbags & ace characters. The skipper’s new caper is a landlocked metal ‘boat’ with home-made instruments built into the decking panels: springs, strings, percussion & electronics... pirate shortwave broadcast from the rigging, and films projected into the sails. Ahoy, idiophones!
Rod Cooper – skipper/maniac, Dale Chapman - electronics, John Jacobs - radio navigation, Riky Metisse Merlow – automated sound sculpture, Anthony Magen – organised noise, Michael Prior – disturbances, Hugh McSpeddon & Richard Oremek – signals/projection, Gab Carazo – general hand http://www.pool.org.au/users/the_vessel_project
The Drum Buddy Show
By way of celebration the great man & his gal’s appearance for GP09... “Rock, noise & electronic experiments finally took a trip to dance class”: a pre-Katrina infomercial for Quintron instrument of choice & patented invention, The Drum Buddy! This 5 oscillator, light-activated, mechanically-rotating drum machine is the direct link between the human hand and sheer electronic voltage! Taped live (in front of a studio audience) at the Spellcaster Lodge in New Orleans’ 9th Ward, this classic late night infomercial transports you from the classroom of a local high school to the stage of a late-night rave. Starring: Quintron, Miss Pussycat and her puppets, MC Trachiotomy, the Drum Buddy Dancers, and legendary R&B recording artist Ernie K-Doe. Hosted by Bob Global and Rebecca Simms for Midwest International Industries; directed by Rick Delaup.
Yes: special. The Mu-Meson Archives has been the legended epicentre of Sydney underground culture for several decades (plus). Home to Jay Katz & Miss Death is a warehouse/cinema/venue abulge with fringe film insania. Finally! At last! We have brought them back to Melbourne; please make them welcome for their Ecoplex premiere! Then peel your peepers for this wig-flipping program of freak-film insania... You will see:
choice cuts from their Freaks, Geeks & Almost X-Rated Peeks: a no-attention-span collision of excerpts from insane films, senseless adds, demented educational films, weird public service announcements and much mucho more...
an unpredictable (& unforgettable!) journey through that most horribly-obscured of all celluloid ghettos: the informational film. Drawing from their extensive private collection, this survey of "social guidance cinema" explores the extreme outer-limits of: christian dating ethics - workplace hazards - perils of driving - ordnance disposal -those perverts roaming your neighbourhood - personal hygiene - and much much more!
an episode of the Phoenix5 TV series (1969 Melbourne production conceived as “the AustralianStar Trek”) with the dodgiest robots ever broadcast at a unconvinced audience... A computer made of light switches? Youbetcha!
some films are best enjoyed in their trailer format, and the Archives has collected a range from the most bizarre international titles... Experience the wild world of world-wide cinema with highlights from the Turkish Exorcist, the Italian Jaws, the Brazilian Star Wars, the Indian Dracula etc etc etc
clips from their collection of rare music documentaries, and a head-spinning trip into the murky world of Para-Politics, Conspiracies and UFOlogy...
Welcome aboard, Space-brothers and –sisters!
Transworld Travelogue - Live Cinema Performance by Jean Poole
(you may remember Jean from such previous Ecoplex live-AV scenarios as ‘Around the world in 80 minutes’, GP08)
Load up on supplies, lie back on the grass, and let that screen become your spaceship windshield for an intergalactic journey to distant stars ( and back - we don't want you to miss the next act ). Underappreciated Flying Objects along the way, may include, bootlegged Super Heros (badly green-screened by filmmakers in Mexico, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Turkey ( of course! )), Will Oldham high on a trampoline, a Mike Munro paper mache mask ( as used in Jon Safran's banned Australian TV pilots ), a 21st century German cannibal, Lucky People Centre, musical prostitutes, animated turntables, fighting gorillas, and a Soviet Union cosmonaut who returns to earth to discover the U.S.S.R. has been dismantled. In-flight zentertainment for the 90 minute journey will include video karaoke, animated interludes and a condensed history of musical cinema. BYO anti-gravity boots. &: plus a whole bunch else (yes!)
Rituals of the Captured Moment Feature-length monsterpiece of outsider-vision by Nylstoch. Probably the most destroyed film ever made in Aus. Not for the puny-lobed...
Helmethead
Rod Cooper & Anthony Magen
“Semi-visible mental furniture of the ‘helmet-head’; a literal dream-screen...”
Expanded cinema performance insania from this experimental musician & instrument builder (Cooper) & all-around ratbag/landscape architect (Magen).
Continent hopping cinema under the stars, slowly spanning the globe with weird and rare clips, animations, tv snippets, instructional videos, internet oddities, edits, remakes and remixes all cobbled together live with a microphone, audio effects unit, laptop, dvd player and video mixer. Expect karaoke sing-a-longs, E.T. in the Middle East, custom animated overlays, South American psychedelia, live overdubbed sound effects, commentary & soundtracks, perverse Japanese TV gameshows, live video remixing and effects, Star Trek as reimagined by various cultures, skateboarding monkeys, banned Australian TV, wrestling octopi and all kinds of crowd participazioni~!
PLUS: the usual garbage sandwich of idiot cinema (that only a mother could love)
(difficult to tell from the photo: but that screen is a little more than 8 metres wide, by around 6-&-a-half metres high... and some 36 metres distant from the caravan annexe/biobox...)
audio transcriptions are from deleted vinyls and licensed live recordings only. if you believe a posting is infringing your copyright, kindly alert me and i'll bring down the offending item.
Rod Cooper & the Vessel crew prepare for launch
testing my new data projector at twilight: Zbig Rybczinski's I Can't Stop
digging on Quintron & Miss Pussycat
Rod Cooper & the Vessel crew prepare for launch
testing my new data projector at twilight: Zbig Rybczinski's I Can't Stop
digging on Quintron & Miss Pussycat
