Waterfront Property (Adam Wilcox)

photo by Richmond Lam

Waterfront Property Vacances Tragique
Waterfront Property Gaywave
Nayobe It's Too Late (Waterfront Property Remake)

I guess it's a function of my updating this blog during the day that the music I DJ and listen to while going out is so poorly represented here. Consequentially, I think I'm giving short-shrift to fine and talented local musicians (as well as friends) like CFCF, the Night Trackin' kids, William Saman and Heidy Pinet at Movement, and other young Turks who are rescuing house music from fluo-brimmers types (or maybe they've already rescued it and that phrasing dates me) for the benefit of us all.

Case in point, the subject of today's post - Adam Wilcox, the Pride of Pointe Claire, a Leo, and as sociable and clubbable a fellow as one could home to come across, brings one of my favourite new developments in local music in recent months, Waterfront Property. At only 2:20, Vacances Tragique hints at Wilcox's prowess in the studio, his ability to craft a pitch-perfect homage to those strangely compelling New Order album instrumentals. Gaywave is a darker, crispier and brassier gift to genre-naming with swashes of Italo and Lindstrom-esque tempos. Obviously, Wilcox is equally at home plotting for the dance-floor as he is for the very distinct pleasures of home-listening. And finally, with his re-working of It's Too Late, Latin freestyle also-ran Nayobe has never had it as good. And all that from a chance meeting in a dollar bin.

All that said, I'm sure that you'll hear a lot from Waterfront Property in the coming weeks and months, and from sources larger and more reliable than me. Enjoy!

Missing Screenplay, Men With White Hair, Norwegian Producers

"But, what is it, what does it mean, to be loved by the French?"

Diskjokke Staying In
Lindstrom Another Station (Todd Terje Remix)

This week's episode of Bored to Death (the HBO series' third, titled The Case of the Missing Screenplay - coincidentally also the working title of Transformers 2) featured bit parts from film director Jim Jarmusch (loved by the French, subject of a documentary screening at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema), a timely Roman Polanski joke (the writing of which would have pre-dated the director's most recent troubles in Switzerland, where he's currently being held without bail - thank you, Zeitgeist!), a mixed bag of Jungian & Freudian psychotherapy, and Oliver Platt as the editor of GQ and rival of Ted Danson's George character. Now that the big American cable channels have decided to embark upon becoming broadcasters of sometimes culturally relevant and well-written (if not that, at least well-meaning) fare, their core, traditional audience of horny teenage boys* might feel left out. Sensing the (wanton) need, Bored to Death gave us a gratuitious display of the breasts of Trieste Kelly Dunn's Sophia character to entice that core constituency. She'll return for the sixth episode. For the trainspotters who got all enthused by the Young Marble Giants in the first episode, this week's episode features Flott Flyt by Norwegian Diskjokke (Joachim Dyrdah) from his Staying In album, and not to be confused with other Norwegian producer Lindstrom. (Diskjokke had previously remixed Lindstrom's Breakfast in Heaven, though.) Above you'll find two tracks so you can compare.

Is Bored to Death funny? It's what you'd expect, which isn't a bad thing - it's mannered and it's more drama than comedy, which is fine. It's enjoyable. It doesn't try to be overly clever. Californication, which also is about a struggling alcoholic writer dealing with the aftermath of his failed relationship tries to be both clever and crude, and only succeeds in the latter.

Expecting that I'd get my weekly ration of guffaws and big laughs from Curb Your Enthusiasm's highly-touted Seinfeld reunion turned out to be a mistake - talk about one boring snoozefest. I guess it's a sign of cultural relevance and success that the tidy little dialogue trick that Seinfeld introduced to the world ("Is that a testament?" "It's a testament!" "Testament?" "Testament!") is such a standard trick in the toolkit of lazy teleplay writers everywhere, because it was really, really, really boring. Mamet-speak and Sorkin-droid, as suffocating as they can be, aren't this limited. It might be interesting to have the Seinfeld characters caught in a lengthy, looping Terry Riley-like interaction, ("Testament?" "Testament!" "Testament?" "Testament!") trapped by their own inability to escape, as each repetition becomes, as in Nietzschean eternal recurrence more and more meaningful, man. Next episode, maybe?

If you're in the US, you can catch all three episodes of Bored to Death back to back tonight on HBO starting at 9pm, or just download the torrent from EZTV, this time without the nasty HBO logo overlay.

Addenda: HBO has green-lighted Bored to Death for a second season.

*And let's be clear, the audience for HBO's Bored to Death (which it's aware of and plays off of) is a variation on that niche: horny boys in their mid to late 20s who haven't quite grown out of certain juvenilia.

This Is What Europeans Do, This Is How They Are.

Vangelis Let It Happen

Vangelis Let It Happen (Beatfanatic Remix)
Lindstrøm & Solale Let It Happen
F.R. David Words

Vangelis' Let It Happen is a blissful, dreamy proto-Balearic song from his third album, Earth, (1973) with a bass-line that wouldn't be entirely out of place in an Air France song. Vocals were provided by F.R. David, who would score big with the pleasantly pleading Euro-synthpop song Words, also available above.

Beatfanatic's remix turns it more into a Still Going-style sitch: layering it with four-on-the-floor disco beats and letting the bassline carry you through an 8 minute expansion from the original. Don't hold his poorly chosen moniker against this Swedish boy ("I am your BEAT MASTER!" "I'm gonna cook up some funk in my groove kitchen!" "Take a trip through my rhythm garden!").

For his Late Night Tales mix (released in July 2007), Lindstrom tweaked Let It Happen into a darker and more sinister affair, the expansive original is now a constricted straight-jacket of a song that pops and stutters with a hammering bass-thump instead of our beloved bassline and decaying acid arpeggios... The vocals are provided by long-time collaborator Christabelle Solale If the Vangelis original calls to mind Meditarranean islands, Lindstrom's version is the musical equivalent of driving your 1980 Ferrari 308 GTSI in the abandoned city centre of Tokyo at night, during a rainstorm.

Grab Demis Roussous' version from the always amazing American Athlete blog. The gargantuan Grecian chanteur began his career in the psych-group Aphrodite's Child along with Vangelis and went on to greater, schmaltzier fame as a solo performer and, memorably, a birthday boy terrorist hostage to Lebanese hijackers in 1985. Mr. Roussos has a new album out in February of next year, two songs of which you can preview on his Myspace page.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is a Sex Symbol.