Araya

Alicia Pantoja and I just completed a feature for WNSR on Margot Benacerraf.

You can listen to it or download it at newschoolradio.org

Here's the write-up: Alicia Pantoja and Martin Lynch present a feature on the Venezuelan filmmaker Margot Benacerraf, including an interview with the director conducted this past October. Benaceraff’s most famous film, Araya (1959), is a tale of a town off the coast of Venezuela whose inhabitants had been engaging in the same practices of salt mining, a difficult and monotonous labor, for nearly four hundred and fifty years. Her film documents the lives of the Arayans in the period of a day.

Edited and Produced by Alicia Pantoja and Martin Lynch 

"Lasting Moments"

"Lasting Moments" Tape [90 minutes]

Experimental Mixtape / Audio Collage


Side A

Side B


"When I was small...
I was a cowboy...
I shot at Indians...
When I wasn't a fireman!"

This is another audio collage / mixtape effort following my work with "Channels", "Unsubstantiated" and "Aluminum Riding". This one was recorded as a live mix using three tape players and a keyboard, all of which were sent into a small mixer, which then sent the sound into another tape player to be recorded.

Side A is mostly darker, atmospheric tracks, many of them from experimental or electronic musicians, while Side B is made up more of pop and rock songs. The pacing of either side is very different - on Side A, there is a lot of space between the songs (a la "Channels" and in some parts of "A.R.") where I toggle between the two tapes of soundbytes, whereas on Side B, the "breaks" are for the most part shorter and by the second half of Side B, most only utilize one tape.

I think following "A.R.", with this mixtape, I tried to continue to ask questions of "boundaries" - what are the boundaries between what is socially permissible or "ordinary", and what is extra-ordinary or deemed as existing outside the sphere of what is acceptable. Sometimes, this is attempted with subtlety (i.e. Martin Landau's song followed by a disturbing sermon later on that refers to the "Texas Rangers") and other times I try to execute it much more overtly (Charlton Heston in "The Planet of the Apes" or Liza Minelli on Daytime TV). I noticed, too, in listening to this again, there is a very clear preference to a feminine voice in this tape, as opposed to a masculine one or a balance of the two - over and over again, between the songs and sometimes during them, we find women discussing their daily routines, expressing themselves to someone they feel they can confide in, and even recording an audio diary. I think one of the reasons why I preferred women speaking or acting over men is well, first, because it's more intriguing to me, as a man. And second, as a film student and someone who is trying to write screenplays, I often struggle to understand the perspectives behind the choices of the women in my scripts, so I think in some odd way, I was trying to put these voices out there so that in turn I might better hear them when listening.

For those who are interested, I am more than happy to make a copy of this cassette tape and send it to you.



Here is the playlist:

[Side A]

1. Cluster - "Hollywood" - Zuckerzeit (1974)
2. Catharsis - "Poemes Du 17 eme Siecle" - Les Illuminations (1971)
3. Ian Boddy - "Sundance" - Integration ICR (1983)
4. Pi Corp - "The Dirge" - Lost in the Cosmic Void ('73-'76)
5. Anar Band - "Side 2" [Excerpt] - s/t (1977)
6. Decibel - "Orgon Patafisico" - Contranatura (1978)
7. Rimarimba - "California + Guitars" - In the Woods LP (1985)
8. Gino D'eliso - "Track 3" - Il Mare (1976)

[Side B]

9. Aquelarre - "Yo Sere El Animal, Vos Seras Mi Dueno" - s/t (1972)
10. Roky Erickson - "Creature With The Atom Brain" - I Think of Demons (1980)
11. Jorge Mautner - "Olhar Bestial" - Para Iluminar A Cidade (1972)
12. Karamoko Keita - "Gnani Magni" - Super Sound SS-87 (198?)
13. Limonada - "Pasteles Verdes" - s/t (1970)
14. Os Novos Baianos - "Caia na Estrada e Perigas Ver" - Caia na Estrada e Perigas Ver (1976)
15. Topić, Dado i grupa Tajm - "Kad jednom odkrijem čovjeka u sebi" - Kad jednom odkrijem čovjeka u sebi (1973)
16. Catherine Ribeiro & Alpes - "Paix" - Paix (1972)
17. Jean-Claude Charlier et Son Orchestre - "Tarzan, L'Ami Des Elephants" - Sssh.... (1983)
18. Colin Potter - "Hear" - Here (1981)


[Below is a very nice video of Karamoko Keita]

Roger Moore at 50 - Episode #9

'Roger Moore at 50’ broadcasts bi-weekly and brings you the best in psychedelic, folk-rock, regional, prog-rock, acid-folk, avant-folk, funk, disco, space disco, proto-disco, ambient and early electronic music made between 1972 and 1985, from Sao Paolo to Berlin, Paris to San Francisco, and much more. Expect artists such as Congreso, Lo Borges, Grupo Raizes, Can, Satwa, Kaarst, Hamilton Bohannon, Gino Soccio, Droids, Manu Dibango, Organum, Brian Aspro and Kraftwerk, among others. The show also features guest artists and on-air interviews.

You can STREAM the show at newschoolradio.org
or DOWNLOAD it here

Last show of the semester…everything but the kitchen sink for this one, including a fresh cut from a Tim Sweeney show back in August, some weirdness from the UK, and a Blind Faith cover by a psychedelic outfit from Rio. Thank you for listening.

ARTIST – SONG – ALBUM (YEAR)
1. Love of Life Orchestra – “Beginning of the Heartbreak / Don’t, Don’t” (Tim Sweeney Edit, Live 8/16/09 at Sunday Best) – Extended Niceties EP (1980)
2. Yellow Magic Orchestra – “Taiso” – Technodelic (1981)
3. Hoelderlin – “I Love My Dog” - s/t (1975)
4. Ernan Roch – “The Train” – Le Onda Pesada De Ernan Roch Con Las Voces Frescas (1972)
5. Beto Guedes, Danilo Caymi, Novelli & Toninho Horta – “Meio a Meio” – s/t (1973)
6. Steven Cooper – “Key West Afternoon” (Excerpt from Side A) – Key West Afternoon (1986)
7. Musical Janeens – “Glen Miller & His Contemporary…” – Bouquet of Steel (1980)
8. This Heat – “Cenotaph” – Deceit (1981)
9. George Garside – “Tranquil Dominion” – New Land (1986)
10. Pelican – “Come My Way” – Uppteknir (1974)
11. Sound Factory – “Can’t Find My Way Home” – s/t (1970)
12. Los Jaivas - “Indio Hermano” – Todos Juntos (1972)

Programmer: Michael Lonsdale
Engineer: Doug Bleek

Lonsdale #2

I've been here for one week now. Maggie feels comfortable enough to leave me responsible for the shop all day, sometimes, today she was gone at lunchtime and I have not seen her since. I thought I'd be more anxious here, instead I grapple with loneliness. I spend a great deal of my time thinking about the play, actually, which is probably not a surprise, since we only have about a month and a half left before the show, not to mention all of the shit I've had to go through to make this happen. Of course it comes up in the everyday here, too, or I find it because I'm so consumed by it, I await the arrival of my Athena and suspect her in the guise of visitors to the stand. Maggie is no Athena, if anything I feel like Telemachus and Maggie is sometimes like Odysseus and sometimes like Penelope.

Maggie is grateful, I guess, that I came here. I am grateful, too, I have to admit, for something that has begun to stir in me which doesn't when I'm not away like this. I think she knows it and tries to encourage me, yet she's barely around, busying herself with new friends and adventures, when she knows that I know that's not "it" for her either. Some of the best moments for either of us are when we are together and alone. The second day I was here I was shaky from shit sleep and an even stupider hangover and that morning she woke me up to watch the sunrise, and then she began to teach me about the shop and how to make each of these sandwiches. They do grow most (almost all of it) of the ingredients locally, she's even taken me to some spots where they grow mushrooms, cabbage, pickles, leek. There were moments that morning and have been some since where things have been perfect. Sitting indian-style on the sand, I watched her finish cooking peppers in a melt over the fire, her small, worn, pretty hands at work, I suggested she lift it higher away from the fire to cook it slower and she did, I watched her and made jokes every once in a while, and she would smile, and I would then look up the shore and see the top of a tree I had never seen before even though there are not many trees along the coast, anyway I'd see it for the first time, and fill up with admiration for it. That tree had been there all the while and I had only discovered its secrets now.

I wish Maggie could see the play. She inspires me without knowing it. In two days I'm going away alone to travel for the weekend. Then I'll be back and fly home shortly after. Who cares if her new friends are silly, anyway, she's doing what she wants to be doing right now, for that reason I give her more credit than...well, I give her the most credit, my love for her explodes, my respect for her, my appreciation of her. There's even a television here, by the way (!) Too bad I despise television and never watch it back in the States anyway, but there's some weird movie channels, and actually I found "License to Kill" was on yesterday morning. I remember when I took my nephew, Shaun, to that movie, it wasn't so long ago (he was 7 at the time, but his parents assured me it was okay for him to see an action movie). When we came out of the movie, Shaun said something to me which I had been thinking about for most of the second half of the film, he told me after Bond got his license revoked in the movie, he was worried that he would just go back to having an ordinary life, and no one would be there to save the world anymore. He added that he was relieved when Bond did come back as 007. I always liked Tim Dalton as Bond, regardless of how short his stint was, he has a look that is different from the rest of them, Connery, Moore, even Lazenby, it's that, Dalton seems serious, he seems hurt or that he carries something within him that the others didn't have to. Whether he could act or not is almost immaterial, because his appearance is powerful, it moved me to watch him sometimes. One last thing - this from Colin Potter.