Simian Substitute Site for November 2024: Michaël Borremans: The Monkey

MONTH END PROCESSING FOR OCTOBER 2024

Books: An update on our audiobook progress. We finished off the Rick Wakeman book I was telling you about two months ago, and it was enjoyable enough, apart from a couple of passages that were very much Of Their Time. ("Oh, Rick's talking about visiting Japan. Don't do the voice DON'T DO THE VOICE yeah, he's doing the voice.") And we're sticking with music now, thanks to A History Of Heavy Metal by Andrew O'Neill - read, inevitably, by the author, who brings a stand-up comedian's informality and timing to the job. If you've been paying attention, you'll know that O'Neill started off doing this a decade ago as an hour-long solo show, which mutated into a ninety-minute performance complete with backing band. This material was then expanded dramatically into a book that takes O'Neill nearly eight and a half hours to read aloud. You don't need to already be a metalhead to enjoy it, though: O'Neill's careful enough to give you enough background for it to work as a genuine history of the genre ("Chapter One: Roots, Bloody Roots [c. 40,000 BCE - 1969]"), while still managing to get in plenty of in-jokes for the fans ("SIT DOWN, LARS!"). It's the sort of music book that makes you wish the author had put together an accompanying playlist, and thankfully they have. It's informative, it's funny as hell, and it looks like it's got a sequel in development.

LFF: Obviously the main thing occupying our minds this month has been the London Film Festival, and our final thoughts on the 2024 fest will be turning up here shortly. But while you're waiting for that, here's a bonus: there was enough interesting music in the films we saw this year to justify a Spank's Audio Lair playlist in its own right. Well, almost enough. Ideally, Audio Lair playlists should have ten tracks on them, and I'm a little disappointed that one of them here has to be the ultra-manipulative score from the Christopher Reeve documentary to make up the numbers. Ideally, I'd replace it with some of the music from Ellis Park, but that hasn't been released yet, so I've had to go for the one cue on Super/Man that doesn't have the subtext Start Crying Now. Anyway, these ten tracks are taken from the soundtracks of Pauline Black: A 2-Tone Story, Emilia Pérez, Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story, Watership Down, One To One: John & Yoko, When The Light Breaks, Maria, The Room Next Door, Architecton and Piece By Piece respectively, complete with YouTube links for those of you who don't believe in Spotify. (If you don't believe in YouTube, then I'm afraid you'll just have to go to the record shop and spend around a hundred quid.)

Music: Awkwardly, this is the point where I have to not recommend an album to you, which disappoints me greatly. I can't remember exactly where I first encountered Australian funnyman Tom Cardy, just that it was a link to the audio of a song of his called Business Man. Have a listen. Fun, isn't it? It's typical of what Cardy does, telling stories with wild twists and regularly inappropriate language. Digging around a little more, I found a whole pile of videos he'd made, almost all in the same style: formatted for social media in 9:16 aspect ratio, rapidly cutting between him playing all the instruments in what appears to be his living room, and with all the lyrics on screen for you. So when he got around to releasing an album, I was all ears. However, ears aren't enough for The Dancefloor At The End Of The Universe: the songs are so overloaded with instrumentation and vocal effects, it's virtually impossible to hear the lyrics, which are kind of the main reason why the songs exist in the first place. It feels like this is a recent development, when compared with the clarity of Business Man - as if the video versions of the songs are now the main focus because they have the words on screen, and the audio version is more of an afterthought. Ah well, at least the videos still work: as we've just come out from the other side of Halloween, maybe Red Flags is a good example to show here.

In the meantime, your Simian Substitute Site for November 2024 is The Monkey, the official site for a book of paintings by Michaël Borremans which "showcases seventeen paintings that reveal his interest in exploring surface and artifice. Borremans portrays mysterious sitters—including the titular monkeys, which are glazed toy figurines—and depicts enigmatic scenes that simultaneously invite viewers in and keep them at bay." We're all too late for his exhibition that took place in London earlier this year, but you still can catch a selection of Borremans' work if you happen to be passing through the Netherlands over Christmas.

This month: well, we really do need to get the LFF Wrap Party nailed down, and there are a couple of bits of travelling that I should talk about. However, we seem to have got ourselves booked in for a ridiculous amount of activity in November, and that's even compared to the twelve consecutive days of movies we've just had. So let's just see what actually makes it onto the site, shall we? Comments, as ever, in the box below.