tom moody

Hellboy review from 2004

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hellboy

found this thing I wrote in the comments to my old blog; still viable now that the movie is cable fodder:

Good morbid, del Toro touches--I don't think we'll be forgetting the Nazi ninja surgery addict with the clockwork heart anytime soon. But if I see one more movie with a big energy monster about to "break through into our world" and cause a narrowly-averted apocalypse, I'll...

Hellboy has two narrative trajectories--both simplistic, because it's a Hollywood movie--which converge with the sprouting of his horns at the end. He's been filing them down to nubs to "blend in" with humans and because he's in love with a human woman. She has been flirting with a cute FBI agent and Hellboy's been spying on them jealously. His bad father Rasputin kills her and promises to revive her if Hellboy will open the gates of hell. When Hellboy sprouts horns, they are the monster rack worn in his new role as gatekeeper but also the cuckold's horns. Suddenly, as he is preparing to let the Squid Monster through the Portal, he hears the voice of his good father, John Hurt (saying what exactly I don't remember because this dumb movie is already fading fast), and for the greater good of humanity Hellboy abandons his promise to "always protect the girl" and chooses to stop the apocalypse. At this point he snaps off his horns in anger--a good visual. And because it's a Hollywood movie, there are no consequences to Hellboy's choice--he saves the world AND the girl mysteriously revives and declares her love for him. Thus does the logic of Greek Tragedy succumb to the logic of the Five Script Doctors.

"Wonky Wank Variation"

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"Wonky Wank Variation" [mp3 removed - this track can be heard on Bandcamp]

This was already a pretty dumb riff so I added "Mo Tucker drums." A kick and two snares alternate and one of the snares adds a beat unpredictably. The hats come and go and feature what I believe is a flam paradiddle but I could be wrong. (It's not two handed but there is a 1/32 "grace" note between groups of four 1/16 notes.)

"Broomlike"

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"Broomlike" [mp3 removed]

This initially made me think of minimal techno guy Mark Broom because of the bass line. But after adding twice-filtered 303ish squiggles, a canned drum loop (RMV Machinedrum), and a house chorus it wasn't very Broomlike.

Notes on Morton Subotnick's "Until Spring" (1976)

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A 29 minute piece that Subotnick describes as an audio sculpture, divided into two parts in the vinyl version.
Modular analog synth and 8 track analog tape.
Clean recording--all the elements can be heard and "seen" in the stereo field.
Pre-recorded snippets arranged in time and also across the space of the 8 tracks.
Both dimensions are depicted in drawings on the sleeve--curlicues, arcs, hatch marks, and elongated > and < signs, in a kind of cloud as well as the 8 track "staff." The overall dynamic: alternating slow and fast passages; a thinning and thickening of sound. The elements, or snippets, include: A staccato wap-wap-wap that speeds up to a high purr and pans slowly or rapidly in the stereo field. Slow hums building into a rapidfire sequence of boings (with varied attack/decay envelopes). Some low-pass filtering of these segments. Lawn mowers in the distance and summer sprinklers right next to your ears.