A bit of an audiobiography, somewhat a haustory, but, effectually, nothing more, nor less, than biorhythmic record of discursive synchronicity…
Fundamentally: this is the nook of the book where real-time (albeit finite) record of Gaga’s anthology (since stellar genesis occurred, within some capacity, on a Radio City Music Hall stage in 2009) is haused.
The Lady’s a zeitgeist. I’m a writer who finds the performance of celebrity-music-artist-as-art-form fascinating. Zeitgeists live the contemporary human experience. Scribes capture said traverse and translate it for record of that native culture. So, this is the corner of the alcázar where evidence of said colloquy between zeitgeist artist and scribe audience resides… if only for the sake of sheer curiosity at how such an oddly specific enigmatic collaborative scenario exists.
That said: Nine years going and, even still, I couldn’t really tell you where or how this began, or when/if it will end (sometimes a story has no end), but that’s the fun for a writer in and of enigma pop culture: just write out the dossier until there’s nothing left to say.
Thus said: saddle up highway unicorns, rocket number rhythms and rhymes; freedom in the music kids… without further contextual confusion, and/or ado:
Biorhythmic : Gagavision :: Linguistic Projection of What Could Be Anything
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The De-Brief: VMAs 2009
[E]xecuting this completely abstract symbolic exaggeration of everyday celebreality – art. … Edie said of herself something that resonates so deeply with Gaga tonight, ‘If you just listened to what I had to say, it was sane; but if you just looked at me, you wouldn’t bother to listen. And none of them did. G*d it was a nightmare.’ There isn’t that futility with Gaga, but the atmosphere is quite apparent. Performance artists live their art – completely. The world is their canvas – truly. Where the art succeeds, the artist suffers, but it is for the sake of art – even if only for art’s sake; in terms of performance: she is genius…
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Haus of Gaga w/ Alexander McQueen’s Plato’s Atlantis: “Bad Romance”
Pop done right is the perfect, seamless, organic blend of art, advertisement, culture, society, beauty, ugly, intimate, and universal; GaGa is a one-woman renaissance…
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The Monster’s Midnight Train to Georgia: Monster Ball, Fox Theatre
Monster Ball is built upon a forced perspective; but with one like Gaga, within that parallel universe, the rigidity of her forced perspective allows for the creative mind of a monster to roam and wander endlessly in a world all their own. There’s plenty to say about Monster Ball, but for a proper delve, the words have lost meaning in and of themselves. So, take a look through my lens, and let’s get unconscious…
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Icon Aughts :: Lady Gaga & Kanye West: Fame Fatales
Gaga is only three years old, but her creator was as integral to Pop Art – within this or any decade – as her creation – if only because of the masterpiece she made…
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CinéMusique: Ballets Russes Italian Style (The Shortest Musical You Will Never See Again)
Brilliant concept (trailer as the short film), beautiful cinematography, production, and execution make for a well-crafted, well-courted work of contemporary marvel…
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Union Jacked: BRITs 2010 de-brief and recap
The pure tangibility of said manifestation, and the prerequisite: that inherent insatiable need, to touch and feel that reciprocated echo, to make an artist crash and chaotically create; the very definition of said Fame Monster. The BRITs also saw the baptism of The Haus’ bouncing baby band-that’s-better-than-yours: Emma. The future sound – if Emma is any indication – will be something old and new, something electronic and blues, something with dark bass riding along symbiotically with white keys… something dope.
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Cherry-Cherry-Boom Jailbreak :: CinéMusique: “Telephone”
[S]end Gagaloo off to see the Wizard, the Wizard of HBO Presents: Oz; it’s Pulp Fiction turned Pop Fact. Welcome to the GrindHaus of Gaga…
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Thinkpieces, Vol. 1: Lady Gaga
Gaga is that rare hybrid of both an astute artisan and a masterfully mad scientist. She has pervaded every aspect of the public arena by publicizing and personifying hidden-in-plain-view taboos in order to establish a general perspective – her life’s work is to make the clandestine commonplace, because the status quo is skewed. Lady Gaga treats culture as her canvas, and the social landscape as her science lab. Yet even as she acts as a perpetual fusion of such overarching dichotomies, she does so from behind the veil of the familiar face of a twenty-something New York doll; and thus is why she is the paramount regenerator of a lost generation…
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THE DROP: M.I.A. and Lady Gaga – Where’s the Beef? An analysis…
Brass tacks: M.I.A. and Lady Gaga are a theoretical tandem, they share a Pop iconography. They both represent the future of music from the Sri Lankan hood to the Haus. Point/Counterpoint: for every question NME posed, and every response M.I.A. gave, Gaga has been posed a similar – if not, identical – question, and below are her answers: verbatim. Before you pick a side, let this be your guide, a little Pop primer that gives reference points and poses the biggest question of all: “So wait, where is the beef?”
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The Drop :: CinéMusique: “Alejandro”
Gaga isn’t looking to inherit a throne, so much as she is actively acquiring and building a kingdom. … Take a Pop artist with infinite resources – an endless well of Pop knowledge, a vast expanse of socio-historical references, an increasingly limitless scope of reality – pair her with a photographer who breathed life into Madonna’s live renaissance and you get GagaKlein – if Pop was Power Rangers, GagaKlein is Titanus… times three. That’s not the point though, the point is to make a point: globally, this is Gaga saying incumbent institutions are based on superiority and submission – whether it’s gender a la “Bad Romance,” or orientation a la “Alejandro” – that inequity is the apocalypse. Gaga’s world is an alternate universe: as much as the institutions within the system hold the fringe elements subjected, the individual at the helm can be their salvation. This is her manifesto. She is legend to her tribe, and this is their Kingdom. Gaga didn’t ask the world to like her, she told them to pay attention – and said scape obliged, flaws and all. While, one one hand, she is officially having the most fun not playing games with the industry right now, she is also on a clear mission. “Alejandro” will stand as the point at which the skeptics were warned for the last time: in the face of early fame and its barrage, this icon was not broken, she was just a baby – but a child no more.
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BlinkkPiece :: SHOWStudio’s “The Fashion Body: The Left Eye”
Where we once watched Sir Atlas shrugged, we now get a glimpse at the life of Lady Atlantis shuttered – from the all-seeing eye of the micro-chipped shoulder…
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Front Row Seats, Backstage Pass :: Fame Kills: Starring Kanye West and Lady Gaga
[W]hy on Earth would two of the most spectacular entities of all limit themselves to an arena any less prominent than the globe? Last year the greatest show you couldn’t believe, became the famest show ever conceived – and just as swiftly became the most famous show never to see the light of day – only to become the most glorious mourning, and the most infamous show money could never buy #itsallhyperboleuntilrealityhits …
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re:code.FM, Vol. 21: The Fame
The Fame is nothing more and nothing less than a perfect Pop debut through and through. Visceral, catchy, panoramic, reflective, progressive, chock full of hit singles, formidable filler, and fun; foreshadowing or foreboding depending on how you look at it – and yet, so very simple. The Fame is merely a skeleton, and the beats are nothing more than an atmosphere. In Britney’s wake we saw a sea change … Gaga’s voice is the fuel behind The Fame. She gives life to the beats, as much as she injected the joie de vivre back into Pop’s consciousness…
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Biorhythmic: The Fame Monster [Work Tape]
[W]hen the facade breaks, and The Fame falls out of place, said artist recoils; patiently waits with the monster, channels and revisits her deepest self, before the rebirth and her genesis return…
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All of The Lights :: Lady Gaga & Kanye West: Soular Eclipse
Gaga’s self-led crusade through the limelit world of garage glamorous existence. We transitioned with her from the creation of The Fame to the company of The Fame Monster, as she embarked on her Persephonic romp through Pandora’s made world. Then we saw 2010: the year of the monstrous descent, where Perstefani slipped beneath the surface to reign in subterranean delight…
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Polaroid Grey Label: “… because I see myself living in GL20”
[I]n a world of #picsoritdidnthappen – where you don’t live unless it’s on film, where you are what you wear, where the USB is your aorta… when your scape and soul exist solely in the seen scene, your point-of-view has evolved into the “Polaroid You.” Grey Label: see yourself living in GL20 … while the blind shall perish…
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BlinkkPiece: “Animal (Jungle Claws)” Demo
[S]top-and-go staccato, deep bass and synth strobes, effortlessly paralleled instrumental and lyrical dialogue – unconventional, but highly communicable viral beats … simple lyrics, systematic delivery, monotone repetition, subtle steady escalations with increased definition, elemental and enveloping everything, omnipresent voyeur/exhibitionist vantage…
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31st Century Schizo Girl : “Scheiße (Mugler / Anatomy of Change Mix)”
Lady Gaga has solidified her sonic aesthetic and social impact – and they are one in the same. This is industrial music, this is the sound of the everymonster building something greater than themselves. This is the remix as the wemix … This is whatever it takes to bring some sense of community to a fragmented group of displaced anybodies. Literally the propaganda, literally the pulse, literally the panoramic breadth to create whatever she wants – two years later, the Fame Monster wants nothing more than for you to free yourselves and make the world your own black pearl…
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Now Prosing: “Born This Way”
It’s great – just as great as it was when you made sure it was the great you wanted; but at the same time this is so not – everything without context is a lie. So, like the lunar sun, the proper release eclipses all former anything: it paralyzes the preconceptions and false perceptions. Even after getting all of the fragmented pieces – “Born This Way” is brand new; more importantly, when given the context of its own self, reflecting the character of its own creator: it’s true.
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CinéMusique: “Born This Way”
What artists do wrong is they lie, what critics do wrong is they try; I’m not going to try and pretend I know every conceptual reference here, nor analyze from a detached place of fault-and-fact finding – this isn’t about Pop cheat sheets and checklists… I’m just going to riff on what I know for me, and what I see … Basic natural elements converge in the paralleled universe of a dark boogie wonderland’s black-tie pre-bacchanalia… And at the core of the video is not the critique – this is bigger than a book, this is more evolved than encyclopedic attribution, this is the qualitative collection of Pop culture quantified. Veiled in confusion, fueled by the same morbid curiosity which breeds public fear, inexplicably necessary and innately true, discussed, dismissed, and openly displayed in public view… drenched in black, rewriting history for the vindicated victims; “Born This Way” queens the night: capstoning the coldest, bleakest, palest period with all eyes on the magnificent march ahead.
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Now Prosing: “Government Hooker (Mugler Mix)”
Lady Gaga and the Women’s Fashion scene have much in common – shock of all shocks – both are cultural staples, highly-controversial for debated social impact, relevance, and substance – undoubtedly founded upon the vapidity of what they appear to be – but at the same time focal because of their intangible cultural influence: the ability to shift moods, mentalities, trends, and behaviors on both personal and public planes. So, in the midst of heightened mainstream recoil and simultaneous reign, nestled in Paris Fashion Week upon anti-scene designer Thierry Mugler’s women’s wear presentation as the stage; naturally, Lady Gaga emerges as the sonic second-coming of the Sans-culottes – pants, politics, and pop, tears and hegemonic fears on tap: Á votre santé, Watergate…
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BlinkkPiece: “Born This Way (The Country Road Version)”
Gaga lyrically leads and follows the Glitter Road, humming a universal tune, still distinctly Americana at the core… You’re at a bar in Austin crooning at a piano… settled in the back sit Los Hermanos Azules… Fernando on planked boards, hints of Roberto linger along the hazy guitar riffs intertwined with wailing harmonics, while steady rich bass and rasped snare pace along, as Alejandro the mellow magician remains shadowed behind a three-piece kit… the stars at night, sheen deep and right, in the heart of soulful tresses…
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Put Your Palms Up Sunday: “Judas”
Betrayal runs through the track like bad romances through the veins of the Haus madam. There is a betrayal of comfortable pop song structure, the assault on the eardrums, the screams and distortion, the chord progression into further confusion… but beyond the beast beat of the hit-and-miss lies the betrayed beat of the hidden miss… However, that very intuition, that very flaw and imperfection of empathy against conventional “righteousness,” is what makes the woman that much more human… as she battles for the right to freely choose conventional “wrong,” the knowledge and pursuit brings her that much closer to the divine. Some day in the future tense… the catharsis won’t be defined by the association to the sinner or savior… the single will be an independent entity… and inevitably – she will always get the last word…
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CinéMusique: “Judas”
[A]s she literally writes herself into history, and weaves herself into the Classics; the rebirth of culture through humanism – an evolved human versus, and vindicated through, the death of the mass celebrated, and the self, through the human condition. This constant perpetuation of life, death, and rebirth is as much a piece of human social history as it is the focal point of Gaga’s cinematic anthology… “Paparazzi” where she resurrected to avenge her own death and slay her murderous boyfriend, “Bad Romance” where she roasted her master bedside suitor, “Telephone” where she dropped the world #serialandrepetitiveSundayMassmurder, “Alejandro” where she once again became the slain martyr, “Born This Way” where she emerges reborn – albeit a badder free bxxch than from whence she began but reborn nonetheless; and, of course in between birth and death we have life – where we find Gaga just wylin’ cuz she young… just dancin’, pokerfacin’, with the beautiful dirty rich free ones… Gaga is becoming a self-contained circle of life #priderock As far as stories go, tis the long endured tale of the hidden miss, forever the victim of her own compassion… as in the end she alone perishes for her inability to quell her own passions; because she cannot kill the demons of her human nature, the angels of her better nature cannot live…
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Like Blood Flowing Through the Veins of Bad Kids :: SonicScapes: Born This Way
The warrior queen weds herself in the midst of darkness on the silhouetted lunar half; as she marries the darkest depth of nocturne’s cyclical descent, in that very night, she weds her plight, her own demons – and in that, so she unleashes the good. She comes that much closer to her own divine… Beneath it all though, Born This Way is Gaga’s Sermon on the Mushroom; like the caterpillar – Alice’s mind-nourishing nemesis, her own personal hookah-smoking Socrates – this is the Lady’s extended way of asking you to ask yourself: “O… R… U…” Look yourself in the mirror, because you are a superstar and you were born this way – good enough to eat #tearsontap…
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CinéMusique: “The Edge of Glory”
People get so used to Gaga going HAM on their heads; that said, we have taken her core, most raw self, for granted. We forgot “Just Dance,” we overlooked her Bitter End, we lost the beautiful dirty rich one in the midst of the bad romantic – we dismissed the electric kiss… and in that we took her humanity and most basic stripped down self for granted. We became greedy for the glitz and glam and the higher and higher, we wanted that divine exalted one – always. We took the majesty of a Pre-Maternal New York Doll for granted: but she didn’t…
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… and the curtain called Monster Ball
Two years, over two hundred shows later… The Lady Incubating closes the casket on the monster rendezvous, and welcomes a rhythmically routed rebirth…
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CinéMusique: “Black Jesus † Amen Fashion” (Mugler SS12 Womenswear)
Sometimes you can’t… sometimes you can’t reiterate properly… sometimes you can’t compress the perfection of creation… sometimes you simply fall to your knees… and bask … and from those depths… your lids open… your eyes focus from just beneath the brow… your crown no longer bows… your porcelain grin clenches from beneath pursed lips… sometimes the heart… it feels so black… sometimes salvation resides in that…
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CinéMusique: “Marry the Night”
This video brings us back to the beginning. Classic Gaga, tailor-made indie-style instant cult classics. So many memes, so many beautiful nuances… so much noir – so much polyamorous monogamy. Forget about The Fame, or its Monster… leave the dial tone for Alejandro… this is the beginning, and yet simultaneously the future. Again, Gaga is her own gauge… constantly creating a time and space void of twain. The vignette, the interspersed dialogue underscored by classically crafted soundtracking, like Miles Davis of the modern video, making the most of the negative space… golden silence on the quicksilver screen… From The Fame as a starting point, to the death and rebirth of said Monster and Mistress, there is no hyperbole with Gaga – only materialized mythology… Mourning the death of futility in the wake of self-fulfilled prophecy: oh, how merry…
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The Parisian Throne [Work Tape]
[T]he metamouthpiece, the supernatural scribe, she who writes into fruition the human capacity to transcend the physical world in an unyielding move toward ascension; on the other, “The gospel of Gaga, as told in Born This Way, goes something like this: ‘Humanity will be dxxned by its own self-doubt until Gaga delivers us with the might of her music…’’’
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FAME: it is the New Black
[T]hat which holds the essence together… that most liberating sweet, that most supreme sap, that undeniable product of double double – triumph, prestige, toil and trouble – that route to reign emerged from the tireless hustle of those ninety-nine bees forever caught in the trap… immortal libations, Olympic initiation, that most eargasmic siren song, drops of divine knowledge from the celestial heavens, the nexus of that passage between nirvana and terra nova, the sun god’s tears on tap for Pharaohs to absolve all material fears… purifying, deifying, that immortal link betwixt and between art and science… the incredible, edible soul of the renaissance…
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CinéMusique: “Applause”
After two years, a few hundred days, of introspection, isolation, elevation, and sensory deprivation … it’s safe to say that whatever ARTPOP is as an album, is exactly what she wants it to be – and that’s the threat, both to her and the everyone else. There was, and is, so much riding on Applause… applause can, will, and does make and break those who were once recognized as unbreakable – if not, unfathomable… untouchable. And it is that detachment that moreover defines the idols… you can’t touch them, and that’s why they are revered…
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BlinkkPiece: “THE GLASS HOUSE”
“I am—Stefani is—a perpetually tortured artist. That’s why I changed my name. I can’t be her in public. She would be a mess…”
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#POPCANONS The Anatomical Zeitgeist No. 8, Est. 2013
For a woman who is known for not wearing pants, ARTPOP follows suit by existing as its own. The decay of the pop star is nothing more than the fallen veil of mortality in motion toward immortal transcendence – and evolutions involve apparent descent…
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Vinyl Cut Prose: “Swine,” Live at SxSW
[E]xistence of the living gold mine … the reality that human traffic runs through vinyl, video, and grapevine … that spectacular misery is of industrial design … the surrender in silence, the deafening void, the sadness… the sadness… the lament and suffocating isolation of that human capital demise … that behind the lids are empty exes where once haused Tiresian eyes.
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CinéMusique: “G.U.Y – An ARTPOP Film”
I suppose the only way to take this one sonically is through the sounds of an autobiography… at this point in my pop literary career with a one said Lady, certain signatures will emerge at some point within each piece – namely: each release being #theanthem, each release “solidifying this time and space voice of twain,” and autobiographical points of reference expounding on the sheer cosmic Pop of said beat drops. #postoculus #postpop This time, will be no different #letsdelve
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On Coup d’eGas and the Ides of March… #roselandfuneral
I don’t know what ARTPOP means for anything but I can’t shake the feeling that whatever it will inevitably become started long ago, is in continuous present perpetuation, and will be simultaneously happening in increasing measure well into the future… that being said: it could be an ongoing Shakespearean three act play #byanyotherfame – but then again, I never know what any of this means #medianmode
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Lyrically Speaking: “PARTYNAUSEOUS”
If I were to blinkk this #IF … I would mind vomit, wax and wane mental poetics about how this is the manifesto… this is removing the incumbent industry model from the creative connection between high art and pop culture… this is Blackout 2.0 – mistress muses and the new media…
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Fifteen Minute Transcription: Cheek to Cheek
[A]long those invisible currents only the audible architects can manage to manipulate with their coursing lyrics and lifted crescendos… For a girl who doesn’t wear pants, who dons only the holiest of stockings… and for a gentleman who watches an industry of beat-backed four-letter woes, where he once wailed infinite rhythms of legendary prose – anything goes. What’s old is new, and what’s new is never lost, just hidden beneath the aura of pop culture…
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… and the curtain called artRAVE
[A]n HD deep-tech-haus disco diamond in the cuff to fill said otherwise void… love art dance fashion cosmic sublime suspended in time… still travelin’ just dancin’ round the world… suit up, get down, paws pilot – enjoi. …
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Vinyl Cut Prose :: CinéMusique: EAU DE GAGA – A FILM BY STEVEN KLEIN
[F]lights of fancy and fights of fantasy … masculine … feminine … rocket number nine blast off to the Martian … Hephaestus in the bath haus … Aphrodite perched upon the partition…
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“The Hills Are Alive” … with The Sound of Muses
In the midst of her own shadow she emerged greater than her former self, time and time and time again… When she hit that stage, everyone in that room remembered what it was like to be creative and young; to see and to feel and to hear and to experience… nothing but limitless possibilities as to what you could conjure, what you could manifest reality, in this beautiful world of ours. The hills are alive tonight, and every night, so long as music survives…
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Vinyl Cut Prose :: Be Scene: “I Want Your Love” (#TFWSS16)
“‘Bad Romance’s bigger, badder, bolder older sister, the one who apprenticed under Baudrillard, and eloped with Josephine Baker one artful midnight in the city of lights – that older sister,” genes and jeans, harlows sprawled along quicksilver silkscreens, poetry in motion, paucity exposed gilded within, break beats, parisian heat, always Paris with artpop stars, bars and brilliance, every motion masterpiece a time and space void of twain…
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Ciao Manhattan… Sunset Genesis in the Living Lens: “Perfect Illusion”
“Perfect Illusion,” as the lead single of a comprehensive record album, is the first law of universal dynamics: the Law of Mentalism; the all is mind, the universe is mental. read: this life and this record are your perfect illusion, so… perfect the illusion and manifest mental reality #FREEYOURMIND Mathemagical, isn’t it? #itsallmakebelieveisntit ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ …
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Vinyl Cut Prose: “Million Reasons”
[A]shes to ashes and dust to dust… the sound of this, the tone and the timbre, the running theme and message, is nothing more than ashes to ashes and dust to dust: between those strings, beneath that terrestrial percussion, within the rhythms of those human vocal chords…
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BlinkkPiece: “John Wayne” [Work Tape]
Hollywood corpses, technicolor torches, muscle cars, and glorified blaze-bound stars: Gagakerlund’s back with another sonicscape of cinematic audiobiographical bombast…
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The Nativity, The Passion, The Pascha Pop Soul of “The Cure”
So, “The Cure.” I guess, broadly, briefly, it feels like… surrendering into the unknown abyss after a forty-day desert trek, only to find… that the hard-fought rock bottom was but a bridge, all along, before that luminous cloud rocket number nine…
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