Author Topic: RIVER OF CRIME (Project of the Week for 27th of February)  (Read 527 times)

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moleshow

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RIVER OF CRIME (Project of the Week for 27th of February)
« on: February 27, 2017, 02:41:07 pm »
zaggin on yall with this one. go hog wild.
« Last Edit: April 27, 2017, 12:07:10 pm by moleshow »
"All our lives we love illusion, neatly caught between confusion and the need to know we are alive."

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moleshow

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one thing i must say about River of Crime is that it deserves more attention than it gets... the stories, especially.

i notice that folks tend to say that the instrumentation is what makes it shine. i disagree!

the stories really sorta freak me out, honestly. in a good way! i was, for some reason, shocked to find out that the crimes talked about in the episodes were real things. i don't have much to say about the actual episodes, strangely enough. they sort of speak for themselves. the narrator is quite the fascinating individual, though. his obsessive tendencies are fun to consider when observing themes in Residents works. generally, if a narrator is present and telling us of an experience or experiences, there is generally something that they fixate on.

this seems to really start with God in Three Persons and kind of goes on from there... like in Freak Show, Bad Day on the Midway, Gingerbread Man, briefly on Demons Dance Alone, Animal Lover, Tweedles!, Voice of Midnight, The Bunny Boy, even in the RCB trilogy!

but the narrator here has a peculiar relationship with his fixation. not only does he believe that crime is drawn to him, but his life has been spent with crime coming closer and closer to him. his friends (and presumably his family) are all criminals, or connected to crimes. yet he himself is not a criminal.  his obsession is not a delusional or misguided one, i'd say. out of anyone, he is perhaps the most justified in his fixation!

the whole project is another instance of trying a new format just to try it. while not everyone will or should agree, i think they did a good job with it. it's a yes from me!
"All our lives we love illusion, neatly caught between confusion and the need to know we are alive."

CheerfulHypocrite

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Prince Rupert's Castle is almost at the highest point in Liverpool. It is, as local apocrypha has it, that Prince Rupert laid siege to the now vanished Liverpool Castle. In 1888, Everton Football Club adopted the Castle - actually a Gaol - as the symbol of their Football Club. Meanwhile, not a half mile down the road, Spring Heeled Jack appeared on the rooftop of Saint Francis Xavier's Church in Salisbury Street. A demonic presence with something of technology and something of pandemonium about it. Indeed Spring Heeled Jack has been the subject of Internet Radio or Podcasting

One of the big problems of radio storytelling is the need for many voices. Voice Of Midnight achieves more with substantially less story than The River Of Crime. Which is a shame, The River Of Crime has the potential to become a criminologists The Golden Barge By Michael Moorcock but it fails. The River is an outstanding analogy that Moorcock uses as exposition for a very human hero, Tallow. Tallow ruins the lives of everybody he meets. The River Of Crime does no such thing.

Instead, The River Of Crime is an experiment. Like many experiments, it fails. The Spring Heeled Jack stories are polished and have a completeness that The River Of Crime does not achieve. There are too many loose ends. The notions of collecting crimes, of crimes being attracted to a person, of crimes being a river are all powerful and yet, The Residents fail to build anything of these. Which is compensated for by a veneer of American, 1950's Pop Culture.

The truth is that The Boy Who Collected Crimes declaring It was the best day of my life is the kind of cultural exuberance that River of Crime needs more of. True, The Residents created an online community event and experimented with new physical distribution methods, but those achievements vanish behind the ordinariness of the final product. Which is what The River Of Crime is: a product.

The music is professional and tight. It does not wander off into the cul-de-sacs of The Commercial Album or explore tonality as Fingerprince. It is a professional performance with a polish and a definite feel of walking on, performing, walking off. There is nothing broken or open to speculation in the presentation. Like the Narrator all of the loose ends have been gathered up and filed and sorted. It is The Residents' equivalent of an advertising hoarding.

Each Episode is too self contained. Wrapped inside the competence of great musicians doing great music and the Narrator doing his part. It sounds like someone was working for a living. Great work if you can get it; but, work. Which, apart from the new means of online distribution and the videos at the Museum Of Modern Art.

One of the big problems of radio storytelling is the need for many voices. Voice Of Midnight achieves more with substantially less story than The River Of Crime. Which is a shame, The River Of Crime has the potential to become a criminologists The Golden Barge By Michael Moorcock but it fails. The River is an outstanding analogy that Moorcock uses as exposition for a very human hero, Tallow. Tallow ruins the lives of everybody he meets. The River Of Crime does no such thing.

Instead, The River Of Crime is an experiment. Like many experiments, it fails. The Spring Heeled Jack stories are polished and have a completeness that The River Of Crime does not achieve. There are too many loose ends. The notions of collecting crimes, of crimes being attracted to a person, of crimes being a river are all powerful and yet, The Residents fail to build anything of these. Which is compensated for by a veneer of American, 1950's Pop Culture.

The truth is that The Boy Who Collected Crimes declaring It was the best day of my life is the kind of cultural exuberance that River of Crime needs more of. True, The Residents created an online community event and experimented with new physical distribution methods, but those achievements vanish behind the ordinariness of the final product. Which is what The River Of Crime is: a product.

The music is professional and tight. It does not wander off into the cul-de-sacs of The Commercial Album or explore tonality as Fingerprince. It is a professional performance with a polish and a definite feel of walking on, performing, walking off. There is nothing broken or open to speculation in the presentation. Like the Narrator all of the loose ends have been gathered up and filed and sorted. It is The Residents' equivalent of an advertising hoarding.

Each Episode is too self contained. Wrapped inside the competence of great musicians doing great music and the Narrator doing his part. It sounds like someone was working for a living. Great work if you can get it; but, work. Which, apart from the new means of online distribution and the videos at the Museum Of Modern Art leaves very little to recommend The River Of Crime. A marvellous concept that simply avoided becoming something of the graveyard by being in the right place at the right time.

It is not a bad thing. The five episodes are enough. Like the twelve episodes of Fawlty Towers. The sheen. The finish. The competence. It is all too good. Unlike the stumbling thuds of You, Yes Yes Yes which manage to be more than their parts, The River Of Crime is a potboiler that falls towards the centre instead of floating beyond. The sounds are no longer building blocks of tape cutting but the digital cut and paste. The effortlessness of trying something new because technology allows it begins to show.

Unlike The Voice Of Midnight where the story grew, The River Of Crime is a story that diminished. Hiding behind the music. Which is not the worst thing to happen. But I like stories. Stories that are bigger than the distillation of It was the best day of my life. Stories that seep into the landscape only to emerge again later. Which never really gels with The River Of Crime. Perhaps a few dozen more listens might make it all fall together. Perhaps.


« Last Edit: March 05, 2017, 09:45:44 am by CheerfulHypocrite »
Not altogether reliable for facts.
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moleshow

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OLD TALK ^
---
NEW TALK v

"All our lives we love illusion, neatly caught between confusion and the need to know we are alive."