< resources >
ZINE WORLD #20
($4.00 US/$5.00 CAN/$6.00 WORLD ppd from Zine World / PO Box 330156 / Murfreesboro, TN / 37133-0156 USA. Web:
www.undergroundpress.org)
Let's cut to the chase. In my opinion
Zine World is essential reading for anyone interested in zines and/or freedom of speech. This issue contains articles on media-created perceptions regarding the war in Iraq (say it ain't so!), the possibility of an "intelligent mail system" in the not-too-distant future and a number of stories concerning censorship, "zero tolerance" policies and other damaging goings-on in America's public schools. America is a country that force-feeds its kids shit from day one and then, when they regurgitate just the tiniest bit of it, punishes them for it. Well, anyway... Under a cover by Cole Johnson there's also an amusing article by Christoph Meyer (
Twenty-Eight Pages Lovingly Bound With Twine) about a worlds-colliding co-mingling of zine kids and a crocheting club. Oh, and a well-done comic (of sorts) by Jim Sumii about his family's internment in a World War II camp for Japanese-Americans in Arkansas. Let's see, what else... Oh, right, reviews – over 300 of 'em – of zines and mini-comics. Come on, just order the thing already.
< recordings >
LIKES...
by Dani Siciliano
(
!K7 Records, Available Now)
Review By Tim O’Neil
There have been many memorable rock & roll wives, but there have been precious few with the kind of genuine and unmistakable talent that Dani Siciliano has in spades. Admittedly, Matthew Herbert has always presented himself as one of the more cerebral and perceptive personalities in house music, so it comes as no surprise that he picked well when he married Ms. Siciliano.
If you’re familiar at all with Herbert’s music, then you will have heard Siciliano’s voice: soft and lilting yet surprisingly powerful, capable of registering playful warmth and timorous melancholy almost simultaneously. It has certainly served Herbert in good stead to have Siciliano’s distinctive voice so intimately connected with his own music. Here, Herbert repays the favor by collaborating with his wife on a number of her own tracks. His trademark sounds – his delicate and intricately structured jazz-influenced sound collages – are certainly well represented here. But, significantly, the sound that defines the album is not Herbert, but Siciliano. Her collaborators rally to her, informing but not forming, shaping themselves to fit her voice, her words and her songwriting. She has pulled off the impossible task of somehow managing to define a vivid artistic identity fully and completely through collaboration.
Much as with Herbert, Siciliano’s unique approach to songwriting uses technology to blur the lines between acoustic and electronic. Familiar sounds unfold in unfamiliar ways. Voices blend with soft drumbeats and echo across long stretches of contemplative noise. Listening to
Likes... is hardly an abrasive listening experience, but there is still a sensation of transgression, of borders being breached, of the conventional divisions that separate discrete genres being overwhelmed by the ingenuity of enthusiastically eclectic performers.
Siciliano even manages to remake Nirvana’s hoary “Come As You Are” into something truly beautiful, transforming the bestial simmer of the original into a luxuriant cabaret number – complete with swooning jazz band and shit-hot upright-bass. Again, Siciliano finds a way to make the commonplace exciting, injecting notes of mature regret and pathos into a defiantly and definitively ingenuous composition. You’ll never hear it the same way again.
It’s a testament to Siciliano’s talent that “Come As You Are” is nowhere near the best song on the album. It’s a subtly masterful achievement, not so much a bold statement of intent as a mature reiteration of plain fact.
[ Link to this review ]
