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Inaugural Rue de Fleurus with Rick Moody in DC | TOMORROW NIGHT!

Rue de Fleurus 6-27-13 Event Banner

 

The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, a literary and arts journal housed at The Johns Hopkins University, M. A. in Writing Program, is pleased to announce our new Rue de Fleurus Salon and Reading Series. Our debut event will be on Thursday, June 27th, 2013 at The Foundry Gallery off Dupont Circle. Our featured reader will be Rick Moody. Free and open to the public.

The Rue de Fleurus Salon and Reading Series with Rick Moody

VENUE CHANGE

The Doctor T. J. Eckleburg Review, a Literary & Arts Journal Housed at The Johns Hopkins University, M. A. in Writing Program
is pleased to announce we will hold our Rue de Fleurus Salon at

Foundry Gallery

1314 18th Street, NW, Washington DC, 20036

(One Minute Walk from the DC Hopkins Campus off Dupont Circle)

Dupont Circle Map, Hopkins Campus, Foundry Gallery, Parking, Hotel, Local Eats

7:30 PM

Free and open to the public, wine and light food will be served

Please RSVP

 

Rick MoodyBorn in New York City, Rick Moody attended Brown and Columbia universities. His first novel, Garden State, was the winner of the 1991 Editor’s Choice Award from the Pushcart Press and was published in 1992. The Ice Storm was published in May 1994 by Little, Brown and Company. A film version, directed by Ang Lee, released by Fox Searchlight in 1997 and won best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival. His collection of short fiction, The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven was also published by Little, Brown, the title story winning the Aga Khan Award from The Paris Review. He has received the Addison Metcalf Award and a Guggenheim fellowship. His memoir The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions won the NAMI/Ken Book Award, and the PEN Martha Albrand prize. The Diviners won the Mary Shelley Award from the Media Ecology Association. His new novel, The Four Fingers of Death, was published in 2010. His short fiction and journalism have been anthologized in Best American Stories 2001, Best American Essays 2004, Best American Essays 2008, Year’s Best Science Fiction #9, Year’s Best Fantasy, and, multiply, in the Pushcart Prize anthology. His radio pieces have appeared on The Next Big Thing, Re:Sound, Weekend America, Morning Edition, and at the Third Coast International Audio Festival. He is also a musician. His album Rick Moody and One Ring Zero released in 2004. As part of The Wingdale Community Singers he plays and writes lyrics. They have released two albums, the most recent of which is Spirit Duplicator (2009). He has taught and lectured at NYU, Bennington, Yale, and the New School. He will be guest-lecturing this summer at The Johns Hopkins University. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

richard peabody 1976Richard Peabody is the author of a novella, three short story collections, and seven poetry books. He is a native Washingtonian and teaches fiction writing at Johns Hopkins University, where he received the Faculty Awards for Distinguished Professional Achievement and Teaching Excellence. He is also the Beyond the Margins Above and Beyond 2013 Award winner for his outstanding service to the Washington, D.C. literary community, and he is Eckleburg‘s Patron Saint of Indie. He is the founder and co-editor of Gargoyle Magazine and editor of twenty-one anthologies including Mondo Barbie. His collection of short stories, Blue Suburban Skies, is out from  Main Street Rag Press. Read “Maraschino Cherries,” an excerpt from his collection, Speed Enforced by Aircraft (The Broadkill River Press, 2012).

Something Happened by Chas SchroederChas Schroeder’s body of work explores the intersection of pastoral, urban, and ultimately diaristic sentiments. Employing mixed media and text to reveal the aesthetic possibility inherent in subjects ranging from game animals to misogyny to advertising to colonialism to love, no subject is out of the range of his sincere and deeply curious toying. His signature style is marked by the purposeful use of acrylics, wood, found objects, vibrant spray, stencil work, collage, street techniques and perversely rendered figures (both animal and human) in a fashion that seems to address the anxieties and wonders of modern American life in it’s most exuberant forms.

LibreChap1Tim Wendel is the author of Summer of ’68 (Da Capo), Top 10 choice by Publisher’s Weekly. High Heat was a New York Times editor’s choice. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Weekend, Washingtonian, National Geographic Traveler, Huffington Post, GQ and Esquire. He teaches at The Johns Hopkins University, M. A. in Writing Program where he is a writer in residence.

moustache Annie Terrazzo has been creating mixed media and trash portraiture for almost 10 years and has sold over 400 works in that time. “Detritus”, Annie’s recent artistic endeavour and is made completely out of newspapers and vintage magazines from around the world. Originally from Colorado, she studied art with her family of jewelers and plein air artists and then moved on to study graphic design and portraiture in San Francisco. Since then, she has devoted her time to capturing the current depreciation of newspapers and found paper, making fun of it, and preserving them. Annie travels the world collecting newspapers and doing exhibitions, but Los Angeles will always be her home.

craveKareem Rizk, born in Australia, is a collage artist, illustrator and designer, currently living and working in Copenhagen, Denmark. Media include collage, acrylic, oil pastel, pencil, solvent transfers and acrylic transfers. The work is highly textured and often multi-layered with a nostalgic and weathered quality. Exhibitions include solo shows and group shows in Australia, US, Canada, UK and Europe. Rizk’s work has been published in numerous art magazineTim s and books and his work is held in private collections worldwide.

Peter Cardamone A Ride Through BaltimorePeter Cardamone is a Baltimore-based writer and artist working in intermedia and film. “I always think that poems can fall easily into the cracks of movies where they just show the world around the characters whether beautiful or despondent and that is why Baltimore is the perfect place tNicoleo film.”

DanaLittle-So_Shadows_Speak-so_shadows_speakDana Little currently lives (and, incidentally, writes and creates) in one of Baltimore’s basement apartments that Micfeatures exposed piping and black mold.

NicoleIdar-_The_Green_Parakeet's_Tale_-page_10_shot_92-103 Nicole Idar, author of “The Green Parakeet’s Tale,” is a Malaysian writer now based in Washington DC. She is the recipient of a Cafritz Fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and an Undiscovered Voices Fellowship from the Writer’s Center in Maryland, and is the founder of Asian Arts Live, a new reading and performance series that will debut in DC in the fall.Ch

Amir_Shahlan_Amiruddin-The_Green_Parakeets TaleAmir Shahlan Amiruddin, illustrator of “The Green Parakeet’s Tale,” is a new media artist and founder and Creative Director of One Eye Fish Studio, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Amir’s first animated short film “Tanggang” won first prize in the Best Animated Short Mixed Media category at the 2011 Lumiere Digitale Animation Festival in Pune, India.MM

Michael_Shattuck-Charlie_Devoured_ReducMichael Shattuck is a Baltimore City native and currently resides there. His work has appeared in Short, Fast, and Deadly and Outside In Lit & Travel.

Lisa_AnnDulin-No_Sweet_Songbird-bio_pic_bwL. Ann Dulin is a Midwestern-bred writer living in Baltimore with aspirations to short film and audio media, and a drive to explore taboo.

Disembodied V MediumRae Bryant is a writer and intermedia artist working in photography, collage and film. Her work has been exhibited in Washington DC and New York. Her short story collection, The Indefinite State of Imaginary Morals, released from Patasola Press in 2011. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, StoryQuarterly, McSweeney’s, BLIP Magazine, Gargoyle Magazine, and Redivider, among other publications and have been nominated for the Pen/Hemingway, Pen Emerging Writers, and Pushcart awards. She earned a Masters in Writing from Hopkins and has taught in the writing program as well as the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa.  She is represented by Jennifer Carlson with Dunow, Carlson & Lerner Literary Agency.

punkrockmatt

D. J. Uncle Matt was born and raised in L.A., where his mother, Dominatrix Sheree Rose, introduced him to the Punk scene and L.A. music and arts scene. Matt studied film at the University of Oregon and in Barcelona, where he taught English and lived the expatriate life. He has written, produced, filmed and/or directed feature films, shorts, music videos, and worked as assistant camera on Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, a Sundance Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, and L.A. Film Festival awards winning documentary. Matt lives in Washington D.C., where he is a filmmaker/screenwriter and hosts the bi-weekly radio show, Uncle Matt’s Two-Hour Shower.

 

& MORE….

Rue de Fleurus Salon and Reading Series

The Rue de Fleurus Salon and Reading Series takes its name from Gertrude Stein’s famous Paris residence where she conducted her expatriate salon including luminaries such as Fitzgerald, Joyce, Hemingway, Matisse and Picasso.

 

 

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MEDIUM COOL | Review: My Bloody Valentine, MBV. The wait is over after 22 years, and not a minute too soon…

Before this review goes any further, let’s reflect: It’s February, 2013. After years of hype, rumors, heartbreak, internet hints and untimely server crashes, you just opened a review of a new My Bloody Valentine album.

Now that’s unbelievable!

Kevin Shields, the mercurial mastermind behind My Bloody Valentine had left a generation of obsessive fans holding their collective breath, wondering if any new MBV music would ever see the light of day, well the wondering is over. The way it went down is now part of the legend. The band pulled a savvy marketing technique that’s becoming more and more common: the sudden announcement. Similar to Radiohead’s In Rainbows initial suprise release, out of nowhere on  Saturday night they announced that they were dropping MBV, their first new album in almost 22 years, on their website. Millions gave up their Saturday night plans. #MBV took over twitter and eventually outdid the Superbowl hashtag. Apparently the internet is full of aging music nerds and their offspring who share the same interests and taste in music. This is a comforting thought.

However, when the album finally did appear to download, just before midnight on Saturday, the band’s redesigned website immediately and repeatedly crashed, or refused to accept payment, causing an enterprising person in Indiana to try to involve the US president himself. “The My Bloody Valentine website isn’t working and there’s a new record on it,” read a petition filed on the White House website. “We the people hereby petition the Obama administration to make it work again.”

When the website finally started uploading those magical mp3’s to everyone in the wee hours of Sunday morning, the real challenge began. Tackling the follow-up to the band’s critically beloved, impossibly unique masterpiece, 1991’s Loveless—A  landmark achievement that: cemented the shoegaze tag in the musical parlance of our times; birthed the phrase “swirling guitars” from Kevin Shields’ buzzing, sawing, shrieking, reverb-drenched, eerily tremolo-ed Fender Jazzmaster; showed young musicians how to not utilize a recording budget after nearly sending the band’s label, Creation Records, into bankruptcy; and oh yes, once stood as the band’s final—and (to many) perfect—musical statement. It would be impossible for Shields and Co. to outdo Loveless. Thankfully to their credit, MBV doesn’t try to do that. An album like Loveless is a once in a career accomplishment; MBV sounds like Kevin Shields has accepted this fact while maintaining

At the end of the day, Shields promised us a new My Bloody Valentine album, and finally, we got one. Although he might have been off by a few days (or years, depending on how you look at it), it’s incredible that a band so removed from its definitive statement has released something so true to what it set out to do. My Bloody Valentine successfully followed up a decades-old classic with MBV, an album that stands as confidently, beautifully and masterfully composed as its predecessor. And if you had any questions about it being over-hyped, remember this: Shields might not be great with dates or calendars, but a quick blast on a home stereo will prove he’s unbeatable in the studio.

MBV, track by track:  MBV  is a three part act: there’s the classic beginning which starts out with the swirling guitar fuzz and melodic beauty one would expect from a Post-Loveless My Bloody Valentine, the surprisingly surprisingly mellow and dare i say danceable interior, and the third act, a completely futuristic, alien sounding sonic head trip , most likely the drum and bass influenced  helicopter orgasm section Kevin Shields has mentioned in rare interviews.

Act I: The Classics

She Found Now

This begins the album off where Loveless ended. No volume could be appropriate or do it justice. Muscular without being outright industrial, it harnesses My Bloody Valentine’s natural knack for hiding melodies under so much hopeful haze. Drums here keep a pulse and do nothing more. This is a perfect beginning. Simple yet strong this is My Bloody Valentine’s legacy fulfilled.

Only Tomorrow

“Only Tomorrow” continues down this path. Compared to “She Found Now” it turns up the fuzz a little bit. Yes it is large but manages to feel somewhat touchable. The drums are more prominent. Parts of the distortion feel completely satisfying like “Thank Goodness You’re Here”. Noise continues into the third track.

Who Sees You

This is one of the best, most vicseral tracks on the album. This in person would mean an extremely physical experience. Listening to it on anything feels overwhelming. Almost industrial in nature My Bloody Valentine sounds completely foreign. Few bands could pull this sort of thing off. Machine music as run by humans would be a good way of describing it.

Act II: The Cool Down

Is This and Yes

Oh cool they threw in a Stereolab track. That was nice of them. Now this makes sense why they’d throw this in after the previous three (heavier) tracks. Yet it goes on too long to be considered an interlude. Guitars are hidden. A purely keyboard-reliant My Bloody Valentine is the result. Enjoyable but different from what they’ve done in the past.

If I Am

Continuing with the lighter touch for the sweet center of the album, they at least bring the guitars back. Now the drums are more prominent too. Still the keyboard is in the background keeping track of everything. It is strange hearing the keyboard get that much attention. Still it delivers on being a mellower track with a nice Beach Boysish melody and finishes with a great psychedelic outro.

New You

Debuted at a recent London show this track was originally known as “Rough Song”. MBV pivots on “New You” in what has to be the clearest and catchiest song they’ve ever put to tape. The general opinion seems to be that it’s one of the album’s strongest. There’s no denying that it’s immediately satisfying and totally hummable. Established and neophyte remixers will no doubt stumble over themselves to drop the first remix of the track.

Act III: Drum and Bass

In Another Way

Gnarled guitars begin. The amount of noise overwhelms at first. Drums are sped up. This is one of the three songs with a more drum and bass inspired rhythm. What makes this the best of the drum and bass inspired is their use of multiple patterns. Occasionally everything syncs up. Every time that happens it is fantastic. My Bloody Valentine runs wild on this one. It is the freest and most ambitious moment on the record.

Nothing Is

Five seconds of eerie silence and then, bam!! we’re confronted with the nastiest sounding song on the album: a harsh, saw-toothed riff splutters into life mid-flow, out of nowhere, and continues in the same vein for the next three-and-a-half-minutes. “Any minute now,” you think. “Any minute now this great, stomping build is going to detonate into something entirely unexpected.” It doesn’t, and it’s all the greater for it: just a no-frills assault on the senses that ratchets up the tension without ever giving you the rush of release, and instead just actively takes the air out of the balloon of your expectations.

Wonder 2

Kevin Shields’ crowning achievement on MBV, and the proof that MBV is still relevant is unquestionably “Wonder 2”.  The track is an amalgamation of some of the most vigorous elements in the band’s catalog – Ó Cíosóig’s crashing percussion on “What You Want”, Butcher and Shields’ twin crushing guitars on “Only Shallow”, the so-called “holocaust section” of “You Made Me Realise” – into six furious minutes of melodic cacophony. It’s a perfect ending to an album that builds in tension as it unfolds its layers slowly, and if they ever get tired of closing shows with the indescribable monolith that is “You Made Me Realise”, “wonder 2″ would handily fill that slot. While it’s not too surprising that a MBV album closes with a song that sounds like a whale crying into a reverb-drenched subway tunnel, it’s a perfect way for Shields to show that for all of the album’s time spent in development hell, he knows what elements of his signature sound to not mess with, and that m b v is truly the singular work of the Irish visionary who disappeared into his own myth in 1992.

 

 

punkrockmatt

Medium Cool takes its name from the 1969 film titled Medium Cool by Haskell Wexler, notable for its cinema vérité technique and fictional/non-fictional content.

D. J. Uncle Matt was born and raised in L.A., where his mother introduced him to the Punk scene and L.A. music and arts scene. Matt studied film at the University of Oregon and in Barcelona, where he taught English and lived the expatriate life. He has written, produced, filmed and/or directed feature films, shorts, music videos, and worked as assistant camera on Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist, a Sundance Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, and L.A. Film Festival awards winning documentary. Matt lives in Washington D.C., where he is a filmmaker/screenwriter and hosts the bi-weekly radio show, Uncle Matt’s Two-Hour Shower.