Time Space and Matter

44″ X 27″ Acrylic on Board

Album

TVMALSV

Band
Cocksure

Metropolis

By Doktor John

Lovers of old-school industrial who are waiting for a modern, novel reinterpretation of their genre will find TVMALSV by the irreverent band, Cocksure, to be right up their proverbial alley. Brainchild of Chris Connelly (KMFDM, Ministry, Pigface, Revolting Cocks) and Jason Novak (Cracknation and Czar) with guest appearance by Richard 23 (Front 242), this nine-track album contains all the elements they are listening for and more.

From the first cut, “Skeemy Gates,” to the pseudo-reggae finale, “Cokane in My Brain,” listeners are served up a techno-industrial slurry of mesmerizing rhythms and distorted vocals serving up cheerfully aggressive rap at various cadences in a matrix of organized, sonic chaos.

Echoes of the ancestor bands appeal to and entice the fans of Ministry, Front 242 and especially Revco, but Cocksure takes the audience a couple of steps further with a harsh, industrial-strength version of the rap style associated with hip-hop. Nasty topics, hoarse and rapid-fire vocals are suitably wedded to relentless mechanical beats and occasionally melodious background noise.

Dictionary.com defines “cocksure” as “overconfident.” The Urban Dictionary offers a more vulgar definition. I’m sure Connelly and Novak self-identify with both.

Combichrist
April 5 2014
Theater of the Living Arts

By Doktor John

Philadelphia PA

Atlanta-based aggrotech band, Combichrist performed at the Theater of the Living Arts on Philadelphia’s famous South Street, the third stop on a 28 city U.S. tour that will cross the country and end up back in the deep Southeast in May.

The opening act, William Control, did an admirable job of warming the crowd. Exhilarating and bizarre, William has an eccentric presence, dressed and groomed like a Jersey Boy at the height of the Four Seasons reign in the 1960s, wearing a snug shirt-and-tie, vest and sporting a perfect pompadour, totally discordant with his satanic persona and demagogic style. The image was subverted by the glimpse of tattoos sneaking up his neck above his starched collar and beyond the French cuffs of his sleeves. His take on music was totally weird but entertaining. His on-stage antics were casually mind-boggling, as he violently swung the microphone cable, vehemently chain-smoking and exhorting the adoring, predominantly female, crowd of fans to chant vulgar and evil slogans along with him. The beautiful blond Ash Costello in a black vinyl miniskirt joined him for a couple of songs. William Control’s performance and many of his songs like “Only Human Sometimes,” “Strangers” and “Razor’s Edge” were disturbingly unforgettable.

At around 9:30 pm and after a considerable pause, the theater went dark, the video screen lifted and an orchestral fanfare with a heavy martial groove filled the air. Toward the end, the band members took their places. The ominous, British-accented and robotic voice that is the introduction to “We Were Made To Love You” commented in flat, emotionless tones,” We love you…now die.” Terrifying in a hideous, red-illuminated, full-face mask, Norwegian native and frontman Andy LaPlega burst on stage, his harsh and raspy voice screaming the main theme of that track from the new 2014 album, “We Love You.” The crowd, who, at that point, remained stationary, took up its venomous mantra of “Hate, disorder, love, destroy”.

The relentlessly driving “Today I Woke to the Rain of Blood” and “Blut Royale” charged the audience up, and soon a violent, but comradely mosh pit broke out in the center of the horde. The venue staff was exceptionally accommodating, allowing the dancers free reign as long as no one was being seriously injured. A “girl pit” spun off with one statuesque brunette who discarded all inhibitions as she led a small crowd of punkish beauties who made up a significant subset of the spectators.

The set list in general went back and forth between entries from the new “We Love You” albums and their classic favorites such as “Throat Full of Glass.” One exception was “No Redemption” a classic guitar metal piece that is the soundtrack from a video game.
The melodious “Denial” offered a slight respite from the relentlessly driving, punishing style of most of the other songs. The track “What the F… Is Wrong With?” eloquently posed that perennial question — that all of us have asked — in the form of a rousing anthem that is from an album of a similar name. Sixteen songs made up the main body of this breath-taking show.

The final song, “Love is a Razorblade” ended the set, but the enthusiastic crowd demanded more, so the band returned to the stage to perform “F… That S…” and “Sent to Destroy,” which together captured the quintessence of Combichrist’s “Techno Body Music.” Lovers of this kind of hard-edge, mean-spirited style of music couldn’t possibly have asked for more.

Webster Hall
Feb 14, 2014

by Doktor John

This was a very special Valentine’s Day for lovers of industrial music. The object of their love, Skinny Puppy made this a most fulfilling holiday to a sell-out crowd of their fanatical metropolitan area followers.

The audience was surprised with a somewhat earlier-than-expected, 8:50 PM start. The eerie and somewhat hard-to-recognize strains of the rhythm-less “Chloralone” accompanied the advent of light on the stage and the entrance of frontman Nivek Ogre in the first of several horrific costumes he would don for the show. The music transitioned seamlessly into “illisit” in which SP accuses this of being “the criminal age.”

The backdrop and the performers were flooded with a crazy-quilt of broken, animated lighting that was disorienting and hallucinatory. A model of a slender canine appeared in silhouette on the stage and would later serve briefly as stage prop.
“Village” from the “Handover” album and the classic “The Choke” from the 1985 “Bites” album followed, then back to “Weapon” for “plasicage” and “wornin’.” A screen on stage ran LED figures displaying the rapidly-growing national debt at $55 trillion and mounting while images of electronic circuit boards, disasters, chaos and op-art flashed behind the stage performers.

“Deep Down Trauma Hounds” from the 1987 “Cleanse Fold and Manipulate” album provided a welcomed return to the classics as did their all-time favorite, “Warlock,” the uniquely cadenced, compelling and mesmerizing hit from the “Rabies” album.

The show continued in the same vein, alternating cuts from the current “Weapon” with such classics as “Hexonxonx,” “Pasturn” from “Mythmaker” and “First Aid.”
The stage performance included Ogre’s simulated cutting himself with a large dagger. An audience member invaded the stage and was quickly subdued and ejected. Ogre donned a hideous, expressionless mask and hood, vaguely resembling a nightmarish version of Death from Ingemar Bergman’s movie, “The Seventh Seal.” After performing “Solvent,” he bid “Thanks to New York!” and disappeared briefly. Upon return the encores included classics “Far Too Frail,” “Glass Houses” and the wonderful “Smothered Hope” before concluding with “Overdose” from “Weapon.”
Webster Hall

Throughout the concert, no effort was spared as Ogre donned, now a furry costume, then a hazmat suit, another terrifying headdress or two and poured himself and drank a tall glass of some repulsive, phosphorescent blue-green liquid.

As always, Skinny Puppy was magnanimous in the generous and unbounded efforts to please, entertain and shock their zealous and loving fans, for whom this will always be a Valentine’s Day to remember.

Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (1815 – 1852) Mother of the Modern Computer

She was born born Augusta Ada Byron, and is now known as Ada Lovelace. She was the daughter of legendary romantic figure, Lord Byron. Her brilliant talents in the fields of mathematics led to her association with fellow mathematician Charles Babbage who had written on something he called “The Analytical Engine.” Between 1842 and 1843, she translated an article by Italian military engineer Luigi Menabrea on Babbage’s “Engine,” and completed a monumental set of what she called “Notes” containing an algorithm considered to be the first computer program.

Hypatia 2013

Acrylic on canvas board 20 X 30″

This 4th – 5th Century philosopher/mathematician investigated and taught the geometry of cones, and by extension, ellipses, parabolas and hyperbolas. She was head of a Plato Academy in Alexandria and a defender of the famous, but ultimately doomed library of that historical center of classical civilization. She too, was doomed to be murdered by a mob of anti-intellectual monks, but her service to mathematics, to civilization and to the status of women is eternal.

Myke Hideous Photography Exhibition
Oakside Manor/Cultural Center Belleville NJ
Dec 11, 2013

by Doktor John

Multi-media artist and renowned local figure, Myke Hideous hosted a wine and cheese opening of his photography exhibition at the beautiful and historic Oakeside Cultural Center in Bloomfield NJ for the month of December. Widely known in the NY/NJ area and formerly prominent as a musician with a significant following, Myke left the music scene in 2008, devoting himself to the study of nature and photography.

His interest in photography and film development follows a family tradition which he has pursued since his teen years.

Ever a bird and animal lover, he has extensively photographed the local population including eagles, owls, sea-birds and denizens of the meadowlands. Captured with his top quality and ultra-fast lenses, these were among the most strikingly beautiful pieces, whether the subjects were seen serenely perched or in graceful flight. Extreme close-ups of insects shot in “macro” mode were among the most fascinating.

Landscapes and architectural icons that make up the collective unconscious of us who inhabit north Jersey were rendered monumental and mystical when treated with Myke’s visionary style.

Practically everything shown at the exhibit was shot with Canon equipment, either a Rebel, a 7D or lately the 5D Mark III. As an active member of the Audubon Society and a volunteer at the William McDowell Observatory, he has access to the $150,000 telescope through which he shoots celestial objects. One such on view at the exhibit was a stunning, close-up of a quadrant of the moon.
Myke’s involvement in the visual arts goes back at least as far as his career as a musician. Besides film, Myke has worked in drawing, painting, sculpture, furniture and clothing design, installation, found-art assemblage. This background serves his efforts with a camera very well, having developed his eye for composition, detail and novelty. To no one’s surprise, the enthusiastic crowd of attendees and collectors had Myke applying “sold” stickers on his framed works nonstop for much of the evening.

Suicide Girls/ Blackheart Burlesque

Gramercy Theater
New York, NY

Nov. 19, 2013

By Doktor John
New York, NY

The appearance of this performance troupe, fielded by the organization Suicide Girls, was the 30th stop on a 2-month tour covering most sizable cities in the USA. For those unfamiliar, SG is a website-based and online community of exhibitionistic young women, almost all of whom are stunningly beautiful, extensively tattooed and pierced. The organization likes to think of itself as “beauty redefined.” SG are so far out and beyond women’s lib, that they are blissfully uninterested in —and blatantly disrespectful of— the conventions of both feminism and of society’s traditional rules for women. Female sexuality is the core theme of SG, and there is an admitted undercurrent of bisexuality that runs through the group’s culture.

Katherine Suicide, official voice of Suicide Girls, came on stage sporting fire engine red tresses (on the website she appears with very different and various hair colors) to welcome the audience in her slight British accent. Have you noticed? Nothing is more suggestive of wanton decadence and sexual libertinism than a British accent. Besides addressing the audience and charging them up, Katherine made a frank appeal for photographers in the audience (who isn’t one now?) to provide free promotional advertising for the show and the website by inundating the various social networks with pics of the goings-on, and she offered a few free subscriptions (which entails unlimited, members-only viewing) to the website for those selected by the backstage judges.
Choreographed dances involving the same 3 or 4 girls resembled nothing so much as a cross between traditional 20th century burlesque and the kind of antics you’d see in any go-go bar today. There was a lot of rolling the head around with hair twirling that highlighted the wildly unnatural coloration of the extra-long tresses which all the dancers seemed to sport.
DJ Mel Clarke played rock tunes with a heavy drum-and-bass style, few of which were recognizable hits with the exception of Marilyn Manson’s “Beautiful People” and the 1966 Sonny & Cher antique, “Bang Bang My Baby Shot Me Down.” The eerie sci-fi wail of a Theremin served as accompaniment to mistress-of-ceremonies Katherine’s striptease act.
Performers started each routine in skimpy outfits but sooner or later stripped down to g-strings, tattoos and an X in black-tape on each breast. They were often barefoot or shod in socks or flats or sneakers, never high heels.
Some skits had them wearing gorilla masks, helmets, facemasks, barbarian style bikinis and a Batgirl cowl, making loose and incomprehensible reference to Planet of the Apes, Star Wars and Game of Thrones. One lanky, lime-haired beauty named Razzi lugged around a bottle of Jack Daniels on stage throughout the night, taking swigs now and again, and sometimes spray-spitting the whiskey out over the front row spectators. The performances in general were more athletic than esthetic, loosely choreographed, pointless and surprisingly tame. The girls were certainly gorgeous to gaze upon, but the look was hippie-natural rather than glamorous. These were not the Rockettes.
As is often the case, things come full circle. Thus, in their attempts to shock and titillate or simply for lack of imagination, the SG/Blackheart Burlesque skin-show finds itself treading trodden trails. Some of the music and much of the show itself drew heavily from—not your father’s—but your grandfather’s burlesque—peek-a-boo fan dance and all.