Bill Millin, 88 - Piper Played on D-Day - Obituary

From NYT:

"LONDON — Bill Millin, a Scottish bagpiper who played highland tunes as his fellow commandos landed on a Normandy beach on D-Day and lived to see his bravado immortalized in the 1962 film “The Longest Day,” died on Wednesday in a hospital in the western England county of Devon. He was 88.

The cause was complications from a stroke, his family said.

Mr. Millin was a 21-year-old private in Britain’s First Special Service Brigade when his unit landed on the strip of coast the Allies code-named Sword Beach, near the French city of Caen at the eastern end of the invasion front chosen by the Allies for the landings on June 6, 1944."

They can't raise $125,000 for a statue of this guy? COME ON.

Binoche's plan to take on Tehran

From the Guardian:

"Oscar-winning French actor Juliette Binoche could have settled for Hollywood stardom. Instead, she is putting the spotlight on human rights injustices in Iran 

Actor, poet, painter, dancer: these are all real-life roles that Juliette Binoche has performed with varying degrees of success or, at least, recognition. But this year it is as a human rights campaigner that the 46-year-old Oscar-winning star of The English Patient has drawn perhaps most headlines. 

Just recently hers was one of the celebrity names attached to the international appeal to halt the stoning to death of Mohammadi Ashtiani, the 43-year-old Iranian mother found guilty of adultery. Ashtiani had already been lashed 99 times and held in prison for five years, after confessing under torture to having affairs with two men. 

Binoche was not the only actor to defend Ashtiani (Emma Thompson, Colin Firth and Robert De Niro also put their names to the campaign), but she was probably the one from whom the authorities in Iran least wanted to hear. As things stand, the woman who made her name in films including The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Three Colours: Blue and Chocolat looks highly unlikely to be receiving any cards from the ayatollahs this Eid. 

Beginning with the Cannes film festival in May, where she won the best actress award for her performance in Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy, Binoche has exploited her global renown to bring attention to the arbitrary and often barbaric justice system of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

It started when she broke down crying during the press conference for Kiarostami's film. What prompted her tears was the news that Kiarostami's countryman, friend and fellow filmmaker, the Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who was meant to be a judge at Cannes, had commenced a hunger strike in Evin prison in Tehran.

The scene was all the more powerful because Binoche has long had a reputation, particularly in France, for being aloof and rather unemotional. The daughter of two Parisian actor-directors, Binoche started out working for auteurs like Jean-Luc Godard, and over her long career she has continually resisted the stereotypical romantic roles for which her exquisite features seemed to have been moulded. 

Nor has she been any easier to pin down beyond the screen. While it's known that she has a 10-year-old daughter by the French actor Benoît Magimel and a son by a professional scuba diver, and that in the past she has had relationships with the actors Daniel Day-Lewis and Olivier Martinez, and the directors Leos Carax and Santiago Amigorena, Binoche is quite guarded about her private life, and often conceals her thoughts and experiences behind airy generalities. 

Yet her demonstrative display at Cannes did what any number of well-meaning press releases might have failed to achieve: it grabbed the attention of the world's media. Binoche had met Panahi, a leading light of the Iranian new wave, in Iran. He was imprisoned, along with his wife, daughter and friends, apparently because he had been planning to make a film about the Green Revolution, the reformist movement opposed to the repressive theocratic junta that runs Iran.

It's thought that Binoche's close working relationship with Kiarostami, had led her to take a personal interest in his homeland. And the compliment appears to have returned by Iranians. 

'Iran is very special,' said Binoche during Cannes. 'I've visited several times and we're closer than we think… We think of Iranian women as the property of men; chained up in the kitchen. But they know all about films and books and music. I was in a street in Tehran and all of a sudden I had five women in burqas chasing me, totally black from head to toe. And they knew all about me and had seen maybe five or six of my films.' 

She expressed her sympathies with Iranians, and specifically Panahi, when she went up to collect her best actress award at Cannes wearing a strapless white dress and a sign bearing the imprisoned director's name. Shortly afterwards, Panahi was released by the Iranian authorities, and many observers, particularly in France, attributed the decision in part to Binoche's actions. 

Binoche was keen to play down the political significance of her intervention. 'Doing a film with [Kiarostami] is already political, so I don't need to add more. Your consciousness should be in the choice of the work.'

Instead, she preferred to highlight the humanitarian and, in particular, artistic merits of speaking out. 'We need artists and intellectuals to have different views on our lives,' she said. 'I believe that artists should have this specific role, because they can influence the way we think.' 

On occasion, however, Binoche's 'different views' have erred on that side of excessive difference sometimes referred to as plain bonkers. Three years ago, for example, while promoting a film entitled A Few Days in September, directed by her then boyfriend, the Argentinian Santiago Amigorena, she outlined her conviction that the CIA and the US government were involved in the 9/11 attacks. By way of an endorsement for this view, she sought the opinion of an Iranian ambassador. 'I went to see [the ambassador] at the time and he said of course it's true.' 

In other words, she not only helped foster the most pernicious and idiotic conspiracy theory of our time but appeared to be labouring under the belief that an ambassador for President Ahmadinejad's government – which actively promotes Holocaust denial – was, of all the world's diplomats, some kind of arbiter of truth. 

Times and movies change, though, and so too, it appears, has Binoche's respect for the Iranian regime. Following the international publicity that Binoche helped to generate, and the widespread condemnation of Iran for its cruel and unusual punishment of women, the Iranian authorities changed Ashtiani's death sentence from stoning to hanging. In an effort to cover its tracks, the regime then terrorised Ashtiani's lawyer into exile and broadcast a murder confession by Ashtiani, almost certainly secured through torture. 

Responding to this latest abuse of human rights by the Iranian government, Binoche recently put her name to a letter written by Bernard-Henri Levy, in which the French philosopher and activist accused the Iranians of 'blatantly lying', called for Ashtiani's immediate release, and argued that her case was symbolic of the 'freedom and dignity of thousands of others'. 

In a sense, it doesn't take much to sign a letter, but that should not necessarily detract from Binoche's small but symbolic protest. Along with her co-signatories, she has refused to accept the idea, common in some radical circles, that there are cultural exceptions to basic human rights. She has targeted the Iranian regime, while maintaining solidarity with the Iranian people. And she has shifted her focus from conspiratorial fantasy to real-life inhumanity. 

Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK director, believes Binoche's contribution has made an impact. Her stand on Iran this year, she says, 'has definitely added to the international campaign to demand human rights in the country. There's no question that a well-timed intervention from the likes of Juliette Binoche can really give a boost to the work of human rights defenders around the world.' 

When La Binoche – as she is known in France – was young, her pretty sweetness earned her the nickname of La Brioche. And evidently it didn't just refer to her looks. 'As a child,' she once recalled, 'I would dream about uniting people across the world. If you could do that through film, can you imagine how wonderful that would be?' 

Uniting the world is a tall order, but this summer La Brioche has made it look a piece of cake. Not through her screen roles, as well acted as they may be, but her lead in supporting rights. 

Certified Copy opens on 3 September"

Another reason, if I needed one, to love La Binoche.

Herman Leonard, Photographer, Dies at 87 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

From NYT:

"Herman Leonard, an internationally renowned photographer whose haunting, noirish images of postwar jazz life became widely known only in the late 1980s, died on Saturday in Los Angeles. He was 87.

Mr. Leonard never set out to document the birth of bebop, though he wound up doing just that. He was simply a young jazz lover whose camera gave him entree into the many New York clubs — the Royal Roost, Birdland, Bop City — whose cover charges he could not afford."

Jazz could not have asked for a better chronicler.

Lost BBC period drama of Anna Karenina found starring Sean Connery

From The Daily Telegraph:

"The British public will get the chance to see Connery in an adaptation of one of the great classics of world literature for the first time in 49 years when Anna Karenina comes out on DVD next month.

The prestigious BBC version of Tolstoy’s heavyweight novel was made in 1961, the year before Connery became an international star in Dr No. And Connery, who is 80 next week, played the dashing Russian count Alexis Vronsky, Anna Karenina’s lover.

It was an ambitious, big-budget drama for its time, made in black and white and lasting about two hours, and it helped establish the BBC’s reputation for quality literary adaptations. It was broadcast once on BBC in November 1961, when Britain had only two television channels, and then the recording was stuck on a shelf to gather dust."

Fascinating. This will make the queue, especially as Anna Karenina is one of my favorite novels.

PICASSO'S MIDAS TOUCH

From Intelligent Life:

"Picasso had the Midas touch and knew it. He also knew it meant not only riches but trouble. “If the things I really love—water, the sun, love—could be bought, I’d have been ruined long ago,” he once said.

Even from the grave he still has it. In May his painting of Marie-Thérèse Walter sold for more than $106m—the highest price ever for an auctioned art work. Midas is still making trouble. All the carrying on about Picasso's colossal prices feeds the belief that everything he touched reveals his genius. As a result, it gets harder and harder to look at one of his works and actually see it.

In early summer when I heard that “Picasso: the Mediterranean Years (1945—1962)” was about to open, I decided to skip it. I didn’t feel like trekking across London to King’s Cross to see a parade of glittering “masterpieces” worth multiple millions. Yes, his biographer, John Richardson, was curating and the site was the glamorous Gagosian gallery. But, no, I’d had enough. Fortunately, my husband, who is not a cheerleader by temperament, or even the artist’s greatest fan, did go and kept asking, “Have you seen the Picasso yet?” This week I finally went. If you are within striking distance, don’t miss it. The show, on until August 28th, is a joy. read more »"

The whole thing's well worth reading and isn't much longer than the excerpt provided here. I understand the writer's reluctance, feeling much the same before seeing Picasso's exhibition at the Met. Like him, I was also glad I did see it, if only for the drawings, unfamiliar to me and therefore, a real revelation. (I saved this note initially, though, for the quotation, which I am sure will provide an epigraph to some poem at some point.)

Sally Laird obituary

From Guardian Books:

The writer, journalist and translator Sally Laird, who has died of cancer aged 54, once likened Russia, in an article in Prospect magazine, to an 'impossible' lover to whom she was helplessly drawn. The writing she published testified to this love, but was also driven by a formidable intellectual curiosity. Voices of Russian Literature (1999) contains interviews with 10 contemporary writers, including Lyudmila Petrushevskaya and Vladimir Sorokin, whose work she translated. It is an exceptional book, scholarly yet intimate. Robert Chandler, a fellow translator, wrote of it: 'I know no book that presents a more nuanced picture of Soviet life in the post-Stalin years.'

Sally had an extraordinary ear (she was a first-rate musician) and a gift for languages, making her an outstanding literary translator. Petrushevskaya's The Time: Night (1994) and Immortal Love (1995) were, according to their author, written with the urgency of someone on a bus who needs to get to her destination fast. Sally caught that bus – and Petrushevskaya's unique voice. She also unswervingly translated Sorokin's ambitious first novel, The Queue (1988).

Sally was born in Barnet, north London. Her parents were New Zealanders: Shirley taught classics and John was a BBC producer. He was a man of twinkling charm, an original thinker and raconteur – Sally took after him.

At Camden school for girls, she founded a magazine, Bias, and when she was 15, the Guardian published her critique of a GCE multiple-choice English exam (Tick Off for Tedium). The article must have left the examiners squirming with its confident assertion that there is more than one right answer in literature – as in life. She started in journalism as she meant to go on: her wit was never a garnish, it was part of her argument.

I met Sally at Oxford University, where she edited the student magazine Isis. She graduated with a first in Russian and philosophy from St Anne's College in 1979. As part of the course, she spent a year in pre-glasnost Voronezh, 300 miles south of Moscow. Her letters describe the oddity of having your roommate spy on you. In 1979, she won a Harkness scholarship to do an MA in Soviet studies at Harvard. The broadcaster Bridget Kendall remembers that 'Sally's commitment to Russia was about integrity, looking for writers who stayed true to themselves.'

In the early 80s, Sally worked for Amnesty International and, in 1988, became editor of the magazine Index On Censorship. In 1990, she was appointed director of the Central and East European Publishing Project, a foundation devoted to assisting independent publishing and translation initiatives in the countries of the former Soviet bloc. Sally played a leading role in conceiving the Central European Classics series, presenting major 19th and 20th-century fiction in English translations, published by Central European University Press.

In 1989, she married Mark Le Fanu, a film historian. When he was offered a post at the European Film College, she moved, in 1993, with their daughter, Sylvia, to Ebeltoft in Denmark. This was to be Sally's second love affair with a country – calmer than her first. She became fluent in Danish and set up a translation company, Absolute English, improving many a Danish thesis in the process.

Sally was a virtuoso at friendship. She had such appetite as a person – for good cakes, conversation, Bach and Dorset ('the landscape to which I'm most deeply bound'), where she spent childhood holidays. She was a staunch walker and swimmer, disappearing into the freezing Danish sea without a backward glance. She could get to the emotional and intellectual heart of things in a trice. Yet for all her serious-mindedness, Sally took a delight in absurdity. As a child she created a world presided over by her beloved but pompous bear, Bruin, and an entire language – bear Latin – called 'Eugrisy'. In an unfinished memoir, she explains its 'elaborate alphabet complete with rules about the number of curls bears of different ranks were allowed to add to each letter'. She also drew witty portraits of her friends as bears.

In 1999, Sally revisited Voronezh and, as another Prospect article reveals, received – on return – this email from a Russian friend: 'Good day, dear, gentle, clever and unforgettable Sally. After you leaving Voronezh there was a sad. But we'll never forget our dear meetings. It was the real happiness.' The sentiment is shared by everyone lucky enough to have known her.

She is survived by Mark and Sylvia.

•Sally Ann Laird, writer, journalist and translator, born 2 May 1956; died 15 July 2010"

The wit that's never a garnish, Russian literature as "impossible" lover, the broken English from a Russian friend's e-mail; the frightening preciosity--the best obituaries are an admixture of writer and subject, and this is no exception, less an appraisal, or even an appreciation, and more like an act of loving ventriloquism.

Carola Hicks obituary

From Guardian Books:

Art historian and biographer, her work infused large, iconic subjects with new life

Carola Hicks, who has died of cancer aged 68, was a glamorous academic and a serious populariser of art. She created something new in the world of contemporary biography, writing the life stories and afterlives of iconic works of art such as the Bayeux tapestry and the stained-glass windows of King's College Chapel, Cambridge. She swept the dust off old masterpieces, explained their cultural contexts and infused them with life for a new public.

Her first book to reach a wide general audience was the acclaimed Improper Pursuits: The Scandalous Life of Lady Di Beauclerk (2001), a gripping account of an 18th-century aristocrat, an earlier Lady Diana Spencer. This Lady Di defied convention: she abandoned her husband, the second Viscount Bolingbroke, for a secret liaison with Topham Beauclerk, concealed her illegitimate child, divorced, remarried and earned her living by becoming an accomplished painter. Carola's biography illuminated 18th-century artistic life and exposed the consequences of transgressive behaviour by women.

Her next book, The Bayeux Tapestry: The Life Story of a Masterpiece (2006), was the first of her innovative biographies of works of art. Carola brought fresh insights to this medieval strip cartoon and instrument of political propaganda. Most groundbreaking was her investigation of the afterlife of the Bayeux tapestry: its rediscovery by 18th-century antiquarians, its survival though the French revolution, its reinvention by the pre-Raphaelites, its skewed interpretation by over-reachers from Napoleon to Heinrich Himmler.

She followed this success with The King's Glass: A Story of Tudor Power and Secret Art (2007), which Radio 4 serialised as its Christmas book of the week. As Henry VIII's queens disappeared, they were erased from the stained-glass windows of King's College Chapel. When he replaced orthodox Catholicism with his own Supremacy and Reformation, the glass was adapted to reflect this, too. The magisterial images were made by immigrant craftsmen handling tiny pieces of luminous glass. 'This book is in part a hymn to their light, with glass of beryl and amethyst, sapphire and emerald … in miniature the story of the nation,' Peter Ackroyd wrote of it.

Born in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, Carola was the daughter of actors, David Brown and Margaret Gibson. After her father died on active service in North Africa in 1943, Carola was brought up by her mother, who continued her stage career. Carola was educated at the Lady Eleanor Holles school at Hampton, Middlesex, and then at Edinburgh University, where in 1964 she took a first in archaeology, and was one of the stars of the department.

True to her thespian inheritance, she played Olivia in Twelfth Night on a student tour of the Highlands and Islands. During one exploit, she and fellow actors constructed a Loch Ness monster out of hessian, wire and newspaper and faked a sighting, reported in the national press. After acting in repertory and television, Carola returned to Edinburgh and gained her PhD, in 1967, on 'the animal style in English Romanesque art'.

She worked on Reader's Digest and Woman's Own and for the Council for British Archaeology before becoming a researcher in the House of Commons library. Carola said you could always tell what MPs were really like by the way they treated their staff. She met her future husband, the lobby journalist and now fellow author, Gary Hicks, in the Strangers' Bar. They married in 1969.

She worked at the British Museum on the account of the Sutton Hoo Ship Burial, whose three volumes were published in 1975, 1978 and 1983, before becoming a research fellow at Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge, in 1978 and writing her first book, Animals in Early Medieval Art (1993). For several years from 1984 she was curator of the Stained Glass Museum at Ely Cathedral. She became a fellow and director of studies in art history at Newnham College, Cambridge, where for more than 20 years she taught as she wrote, in a lively, accessible style that combined erudition with enthusiasm.

A keen gardener, amateur photographer, ice-skater and botanic drawing student, with a lifelong love of theatre, Carola was witty and irreverent, wrote wickedly funny articles for the Literary Review, and especially enjoyed Biographers' Club events. Days before her death she had almost completed Girl in a Green Gown, a 'biography' of Jan van Eyck's enigmatic portrait The Arnolfini Marriage.

Six months ago, Carola was diagnosed with cancer, which she faced with clear-eyed dispassion. She died at home, stylish to the last, with a red rose from the garden on her pillow. She is survived by Gary and their children, Colette and Toby.

• Carola Margaret Hicks, art historian and author, born 7 November 1941; died 23 June 2010"

I don't know anything about her, and not much about art history, but hers seemed a rich and lively life, the obituary sprinkled with many a telling detail. The juiciest (and the one that prompted me to star this) is the red rose.

I'd love to read her book on the Bayreux tapestries.

Making It Up, Penelope Fitzgerald

From "The Mozambique Channel"

"She'd never had a conversation like this before. Not with a man. Part of her was embarrassed; another party was excited, all keyed up. It was as though she'd stepped aside from her ordinary, everyday self and become someone else.

[...]

And then he did this thing. He put his hand over hers. He wrapped it round hers, so that she felt the warm size of it, and her own fist curled beneath. The warmth seemed to rush through her whole body; she'd never felt anything like this, she didn't know what it was that she was feeling. It was as though she had discovered another sense, one of which she had known nothing."

From "The Battle of the Imjin River"

"He was twenty-one. He was interested in social justice, the music of Mahler, Newcastle United, girls, books, and argument. He had been reading his way through the Newcastle Central Library since he was fourteen. He played rugby, cricked, and the violin. He was a member of the Labour Party, the Youth Hostel Association, and the Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society.

He owned a bicycle, a violin, a gramophone, three Beethoven symphonies and two of Mahler's, the Concise Oxford Dictionary, the complete works of Evelyn Waugh and eighty-nine other books, a compass, a map of the Lake District, and not much else."

From "Comet"

'The thing is that she is disappearing. Penelope. I have to struggle to remember her. I can see her face, hold it for a moment, and then it dissolves. Other times, I can't see her at all. But I have all these snatched scenes in which she features. I am there, she is there, Egypt is there loud and clear. And occasionally, I hear something else she said. The way words hang in the head for ever.

[...]

'But the other thing is--what I remember best is how it felt, back then. How I felt. Those moments of euphoria. They don't come so thick and fast, fifty years on. But they leave an aftertaste, believe me. You sail into the horizon, when you're young--you're unstoppable, and it's always going to be that way.

'And I was in love. Well, we've all been there--most of us, anyway. Well-trodden ground. But that doesn't make it any less--unique. Does it?'

"The Catcher in the Rye" film version – should it happen?

From CS Monitor:

"The Catcher in the Rye" as movie? Some fans go on hoping, while others are horrified."

To many fans, the mere idea of J.D. Salinger's classic "The Catcher in the Rye" being turned into a movie seems wrong. After all, didn't protagonist Holden Caulfield very clearly state: "If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies. Don't even mention them to me"?

Skip to next paragraph

But since Salinger's death in January of this year, speculation has been brewing. While Salinger definitively shut the door on the idea in his lifetime (he once wrote to a movie producer that “Holden Caulfield himself, in my undoubtedly super-biased opinion, is essentially unactable”), he did also add in the same letter that he might think of "leaving the unsold rights to my wife and daughter as a kind of insurance policy."

I am sure it will get made, but no. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't have even been written, but whatever, it was. If they do make it, Wes Anderson should do it. He's been channeling Salinger his entire career, particularly the Glass family.

Wed. Morning reading Laura Bush's Biography - m4w (Southbound Redline)

"I was hungover and wearing sunglasses, consumed by my luggage. You were facing me blond, cute, and fresh at such an early hour. And while it's not typical for me to see a beautiful young woman on the train most of them are not reading Laura Bush's biography. My first impression was a bit disdainful but then my curiosity kept running and I wanted to know why. What is the draw of the story of this woman's life. I kept thinking to myself what kind of person reads this book, goes out of their way to get this book? Well whatever kind of person it is I want to know. If I ever see you on the train again I will approach you and demand an explanation. Hopefully someone reading this knows a young blond woman who rides the red line who is currently enthralled by the life of our former first lady."

to every adorable girl i fall in love with on public transit... - m4w (chi) 23yr

"i wish it wasn't creepy to tell you how adorable you are."

What lies within.... - w4m

"I was always of the mind l'existence précède l'essence, but I can also see how the law of attraction is always at work. Open to discussion, tomorrow ?

Together, I would love to experience 'Intense Aliveness'."

The Graduate, Cute. - w4m (Chicago) 21yr

"Young Man,

I do need to be taken care of! But, people have tried and it is known that I am difficult to care for. I’m glad you got home okay. When I was young, like you, I was stranded at Paddington station (London) because London Bridge station was bombed. I had no money on me (coins or cash) and had no way to get back to my place, so I’m standing there and this woman says to me, “I’m a weird magnet, honey. Are you a weird magnet too?” Well, yes I am! And, to this day I am. So, she took me out for coffee and then she took me out for drinks. She was on vacation and she said I would entertain her for the day. After hours and hours of drinking, I announced that I would walk home. People protested and gave me money, told me which buses to take and I made it home. Everyone that helped that day told me, “Its okay dear, help someone else in need one day.” So, I always do. Good luck to you in all that you do. Strangers are the best!

Molly"

crossed paths, Mahler and flip-flops - m4w (Millenium Park) 34yr

"You sat down next to me in the pavilion and then we ended up chatting for a few blocks on the way westward after the performance on Saturday night. You ride a scooter and have stitches to prove it, and you come from out East. I do remember your name, but won't post it here. You were quite charming not to mention rather lovely. I enjoyed talking with you and in hindsight I wish I would have taken that left and kept walking and talking instead of turning right and heading back North. I'm such a guy that way. I had the right idea, just 30 seconds too late, and by then you were gone.

I know it's unlikely that this will ever reach you, but you never do know. If it does and if you'd care to chat a bit, perhaps to pick up where we left off, shoot me an email."

Sunset Junction: Pollyn's electro-pop is blossoming with adventurousness; Nosaj Thing remix premiere

From Pop & Hiss:

"Pollyn is a three-piece, except when the act is an eight-piece. The lineup swells during live performances, which are difficult to describe because they create a sort of coherent chaos that's almost pointless to pick apart.

Genevieve Artadi wails wraith-like, wrapping a moody melancholy into Adam Weissman's frenetic but funky beats. Guitarist Anthony Cava delivers spare guitar lines in the key of Liquid Liquid, whose music the group has previously remixed. Horns add equal parts celebration and sadness. Backup singers buoy the potentially downbeat into the uplifting.

Their influences are similarly tasteful and shambolic. The beats resemble an afterword to the Mo' Wax and trip-hop textbook, so much so that Weissman was once tapped to contribute songs for UNKLE. The syncretic mix of unexpected sounds mirrors the Gorillaz, without resembling the act sonically. Unsurprisingly, the band also remixed Damon Albarn's cartoon project. You might hear a little Blonde Redhead, a little Portishead, but neither are really accurate comparisons.

In the wake of releasing its debut album, last year's 'This Little Night," Pollyn has issued a trio of remix EPs that capture the act's eclecticism and songwriting flexibility. This year's "Still Love" found white-hot dubstep producers Debruit and Blue Daisy reworking the title track -- while Sid Roams, best known for working with hard-boiled Queens rappers, contributed something fit for sub-woofers stashed in the trunk.

Pollyn's forthcoming and final remix record, "Shake Out the Other Way," finds the group working with artists including gangsta rapper Freddie Gibbs, underground hip-hop idol Exile and Stones Throw-signed disco-fusionist James Pants. Perhaps the highlight comes from Nosaj Thing, whose "Other Side" validates every ounce of acclaim thrown his way in the last year.

Amounted together, it illustrates why the band is the meeting point of the blunted beats emanating from "The Low End Theory" and the dulcet pop that regularly pops up on KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic," where the band did an in-studio last September.

In advance of the act's 5:05 p.m. appearance Saturday at Sunset Junction (at the Fold Stage), Weissman spoke with Pop & Hiss about the EPs, the band's forthcoming record and its history.

How did you guys come together in the first place?

I'd been making beats for a while, but really wanted to do something with a singer. I recorded a bunch of stuff with another singer, but she didn't live in L.A. I was working with [Cava] at the time, and he mentioned that his cousin sang. His cousin was Genevieve [Artadi]. She was 17 at the time and had never sang before, but we got together and recorded and then did our own thing over the course of 10 years -- went to college, got jobs, etc. We all matured musically and then when the time was right, we finished an album.

The first album is essentially two and a half years of collected material that we whittled down to 11 songs. And in the course of the process, we got to do remixes for the Gorillaz, Liquid Liquid, Buffalo Daughter, Death from Above. It was a weird time for the industry when we started recording. We had a manager who floated the idea of getting us a major label deal and money for equipment, but it all fizzled. We got tired of outsiders telling us to 'make it more catchy.'

What's the status of the new record?

It's called 'Living in Patterns,' and we’re really psyched about it. It’s a step away from the down-tempo electronic stuff we've done previously. It's a lot heavier with more percussion. It's Afrobeat influenced without sounding anything like Vampire Weekend. It's still moody and sounds like us, but with faster tempos and funkier bass lines.

What led to that evolution?

We're big Talking Heads fans, especially 'Remain in Light.' We've been listening to a lot of Afrobeat, especially the Analog Africa compilations. We've also been listening to the Creatures records, which was a band that Siouxsie Sioux formed with her drummer. They had a globe and they would spin it, and wherever it landed was the continent where they would record their album.

We're trying to free ourselves up and a lot of that comes from performing with a live band and being able to utilize them properly. Now when we write songs, we take into account that there will be eight of us on stage. When we wrote the last record, we'd never played onstage with a band.

How did you decide on who you wanted for the remix record?

I try to curate them like my dream remix project, factoring in who I can get to. I like the last one that's coming out on Aug. 31, the most. It's the most cohesive. Strangely enough, the Nosaj Thing remix was the first one that we had discussed doing, but it took him a while to finish it because he was so busy. When we were doing the live show, I had to learn Ableton and Jason [Nosaj] was actually the one who showed me how to use it.

-- Jeff Weiss

Pollyn will appear at Sunset Junction street fest, in Silver Lake between the 3700 and 4300 blocks of Sunset Boulevard and the 4000 to 4200 blocks of Santa Monica Boulevard. Pollyn is set to appear at 5:05 p.m.Tickets will be $20 at the door but are available online at a small discount.

Download:

MP3: Pollyn-'Other Side (Live)'

MP3: Pollyn-'Other Side (Nosaj Thing Remix)'

Photo credit: Pollyn"

This track is awesome, and they sound like an interesting act all around. I'll have to track down their album.

Dear L. - m4w

"Sorry, but I lost interest in you. You were not enthusiastic enough, and far too ambiguous. You said you were interested, but didn't act like it. I don't have the time to wait for you to show some excitement and act out on your claimed 'interest' in me, and I don't want to. You may still have a chance, if you were to suddenly ask me out for a change, or make it clear (through action, not random texts) that you want to see me again. But I don't see that happening.

I know we went out only one time, but it was an amazing date, and we both had a great time. We both agreed on that. But the way you've been since is just uninspiring. I've heard enough maybes in response to my asking you out. I've had enough of feeling like you either think I'm just going to be sitting around here forever, eternally patient and waiting for my next chance to see you, or that you simply don't have the balls to tell me you don't want to see me again, even after I had basically given you the perfect chance to break that news to me.

It's sad, because I think you're attractive, funny and very talented at certain things, and you made me feel very good (especially the way you laughed at my jokes so much). We probably could have made a very good couple, but now we'll never know."

Frank Costanza Visits Astoria

'You're saying you want a piece of me?'

From Gothamist:

"Who doesn't love a nostalgic visit to their old neighborhood? Who hasn't been curious about meeting who lives there now? A couple months ago, the New Yorker took Christopher Walken to his childhood home in Astoria for such a trip, and last week, the Daily News took actor Jerry Stiller there as well. But Stiller, who played Frank Costanza, originator of Festivus, on Seinfeld, was going to visit his TV home, the brick house on 37th St. that was used for the exterior shots of the Costanza residence. And Stiller decided to do a stop-and-chat.

Stiller had never visited the home before, and was only there to pose by the house as part of a series on historic places in Queens. There he met Jack and Bessie Lopipero, both 84, the long-time residents of the house, who were flabbergasted and delighted by his unexpected visit, greeting him at the door: 'Hey, Costanza's father!' The three spent an hour talking fondly. Bessie said, 'This is the happiest day of my life. You really made my day.' Later on, Stiller told the News, 'This is probably the best thing I ever did in my life.' But what the hell does that mean??

Perfect, perfect, perfect. Sometimes I forget how fantastic a show Seinfeld was and then I see a clip like this. Yes, Curb is, at its best, phenomenal--and the best comedy on television, though 30 Rock is often close--but Seinfeld was more consistently excellent.

Anna Wintour Chooses Sunglasses Over Wine

From the Cut:

"Anna Wintour is a singular creature in publishing in so many ways. She floats among the drab, gray cubicles in her very office-y Condé Nast offices, always impeccably attired, perfectly groomed, and very professional, but completely anti-office. Of course she probably also doesn't spend many mornings feeling like she has a head full of cement, in her clothes and body glitter from the night before, wondering if she really danced with that person, and if she really ate food from Taco Bell, and why she has an oblong bruise on her arm. She is that rare sort of editor who doesn't drink, according to Jerry Oppenheimer's unofficial biography, Front Row. Wintour mentions alcohol in a new interview with Opening Ceremony owner Humberto Leon:

HL: What is your favorite store in New York that is no longer open?

AW: There was an oculist on Prince Street that had great sunglasses and is sadly now a wine store.

She also said that 'of course' she reads fashion blogs, but notes 'we're not competitors.' She goes on to admit that she has an iPad, but doesn't say she avoids being seen with it at Sunday picnics at the cost of looking like a yuppie that keeps electronics instead of gluten and pets in the house.

Anna Wintour Interviewed by Humberto Leon [Opening Ceremony]

Read more posts by Amy Odell

Filed Under: wintour wonderland, anna wintour, humberto leon, opening ceremony"

I love sunglasses, don't get me wrong, but over wine? Another reason Anna Wintour is lame. I like the word oculist, however. Is that really used by anyone else?

Swell Season Pays For Counseling For Fans Who Witnessed Suicide

From The Vulture:

"After a man committed suicide during the band’s concert in California last week, the duo - who starred in the movie Once - will be paying for grief counseling sessions for the fans who watched the 32-year-old jump from a roof covering the outdoor stage. A spokeswoman for a Palo Alto-based counseling center said the band had paid for four group counseling sessions which any of the estimated 1,900 audience members may attend for free. [AP]

Read more posts by Josh Duboff

Filed Under: the swell season, music, terrible things"

I read about the suicide over at Pop & Hiss, but didn't blog it. This, however, I couldn't resist. I love Swell Season--though I never have seen Once--and I love this gesture.

Bon Iver’s New Collaboration Is Great Despite Not Having Anything to Do With Kanye

From The Vulture:

The last time we checked in with Justin Vernon, the young fellow who records as Bon Iver, it was due to a crazy little rumor that he’d be appearing on the new Kanye West album. The truth behind that rumor, by the way, ended up eclipsing our wildest imaginations. Here’s just a sample of Pitchfork’s interview on the subject: “A-Trak was out there, Nicki Minaj. Just a bunch of uber talented people and everyone was really nice and chill and just working on Kanye's record. I was literally in the back room rolling a spliff with Rick Ross talking about what to do on the next part of a song.” Ahhhh!!! Wait, okay, why are we talking about this? Because Vernon’s latest track is out, and it is a collaboration with Thomas Wincek's All Tiny Creatures (Wincek is also in Collections of Colonies of Bees, the band which Vernon joined for the Volcano Choir project). So put aside for a minute that one day, perhaps in the not too distant future, you’ll be hearing a Ross-‘Ye-Iver song — and then enjoy the excellent “An Iris.”

All Tiny Creatures - “An Iris” (Feat. Justin Vernon) [Stereogum]

Read more posts by Amos Barshad

Filed Under: right-click, bon iver, justin vernon, music"

"Ahhhh!!!" is right. Listening to this now.