I
The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, November 5, 1996 -..U
A
IECORDS
tinued from Page 10
the inclusion of an organ and turns psy-
chedelic.
60 Ft Dolls have kept the interest of
the fickle U.K. press through their sin-
gles and intense touring schedule.
While 60 Ft Dolls' sound immediately
recalls that of The Jam, their sound is
influenced by them rather
Wn derivative. These
guys aren't copy-
cats, they just
apply the same
p op - p u nk F
s o u n d .
"Supernatural
Joy" is a good
economical
purchase and if
you like this EP
Lugh then be-
red for their
debut album due
out this coming j
January.
- Philip Son
sound effects. After that, Falkner gets
down to some butt-kickin' with the
album's best tune, "Miracle
Medicine," an ode to the joys of
codine.
Falkner slows things down for the
next few songs, which fall at the
album's major weak point - the mid-
dle tracks blend together a bit too
much. At times, the lyrics are also
slightly weak; Falkner has a tendency
to avoid real emotion and
stick to easy "alterna-
tive" lyrical cliches.
But who really
cares when the
production is
so gorgeous?
t h r o w s
everything
he learned
at Julliard
into every
" track, cre-
ating a
dense
aural
land -
scape
Jason Falkner
Jason Falkner
*esents Author
Urtknown
Elektra
Entertainment
Jason Falkner
makes the kind
of progressive
rock music that
people who hs-
tfn : to progres-
*d rock would
not buy. They
would not buy this
album because it's
good. Damn good.
"Jason Falkner
Presents , Author
Unknown" can only be
referred to as a "labor of
love." The 28-year-old for-
r guitarist for Jellyfish
ote, arranged, recorded Jason
and produced the entire the Ro
album by himself, then
handed it over to Elektra who are sell-
ing it to you, the consumer, at a 98-
percent profit. Thank God for capital-
ism, 'cause the result is a consistently
catchy, sometimes beautiful, some-
times rockin' and / or rollin' set of 12
original songs. It can be enjoyed by
fveryone from Baby to Great-
andad with "I Live," an XTC-fla-
vored pop ditty complete with hand
claps on the off-beat and cool spacey
Kenny Lattimore
Kenny Lattimore
Columbia
**
Columbia recording artit Kenny
Lattimore has already made a few rip-
ples in black music with the rather up-
tempo songs "Never too Busy" and
"Just What It Takes." While OK, these
are not the type of cuts wlich makes
one a star, let alone a legend.
Fortunately for Lattimore, a number of
other songs on his debut, self-titled
album give signs that Lattimore has yet
to reach his peak.
Of particular interest are the LP's
slow songs. "All I Want" is a good
example of the kind of budding R&B
maturity Lattimore possesses. Granted,
his voice isn't the best out there, but if
Montel Jordan can make it big with the
cornish "This Is How We Do It," then
Lattimore deserves the benefit of
doubt. Other slow songs that you
should peep are "Always Remember"
"For You" and "Forgiveness.' A good
fact about Lattimore's singing is that,
while he constantly deals with the issue
of love and relationships, his songs
don't sound like carbon copies of each
other. Each one is unique in style,
sound and subject matter.
Interestiigly enough,
perhaps Lattimore's
best sang is, in fact,
also the fastest of
the 12 songs on
the disc. For
some inexplic-
able reason, I
have become
addicted to
"41y." The
rafrain is way
too catchy to
ignore. "I'll give
you joy and so
much happiness,
love. and tender-
ness. No girl, you
can't resist." The
way these two lines
are sung must be heard.
Lattimore's no Luther
Vandross; he still has some
work to do. Still, this debut
ht at LP is a good start with
many solki songs. Of
course, they could proba-
bly have been made better with a few
more vocal lessons by Lattimore. It
doesn't do much good to have back-
ground singers who sound better than
the lead. But I'm patiently awaiting
Lattimore's sophomire release -
that'll probably be the- tell-tale source
of Lattimore's deservig of the R&B
world's attention.
- Eugene Bowen
See RECORDS, Page 12
Art, nature
come together
In mesmenzing
Butoh dance
By Stephanie Glciman
Daily Arts Writer
The entire universe can be contained within a stage. Sankai
Juku, Ushio Am-gatsu's Butoh performance group, con-
sumed Power Center this weekend with a world of heightened
human emotion amidst a setting in which nature and art
merge and humanity humbles itself to larger forces.
Butoh, begun in post-World War II Japan as a reaction
against tradition :and Westernization, sought to break all
boundaries of established dance. Performers began to unearth
taboos in their actions of showing the bottoms of their feet
and touching their navels. Darkness, entropy, imbalance,
multiple personalities, especially the demonic personality -
all of these ideas are still explored in this movement form that
digs into the subconscious and continues to question and
express the human condition.
So simple, so !pyre, yet its spirituality is beyond complete
human comprehension; Sankai Juku's performance gives a
sense of a wori greater than the physical. Everyone can
relate in some a&'pect, for who is not a note within the uni-
versal rhythms of our cosmos? "Yuragi: In a Space of
Perpetual Motion," Amagatsu's newest work for five male
dancers, is an hour and a half of consuming intensity, con-
centration and naovement stemming from the deepest part of
soul.
Inspired by tlie lack of attention to our own bodies - how
we wake up each morning and forget that each organ takes a
unique position within our biological system, and how bodies
try to resist gravity yet fail because gravity always exists -
Amagatsu and his dancers explore on stage the body's rela-
tionship to eartha and that which is above and below it. They
do not act like tbey know something that eludes the rest of us.
Continually serching, they come to no conclusions, rather
they remain caught up in the circles of
the universe.R
The dances, bald, painted com- R E
pletely white with a powdery paste, ; .
wearing only simple white drapery,
are bodies neat completely beautiful.
They go through a metamorphosis in
which the inner body sometimes tries
to escape. Red splotches drip from
their ears and toes. They imitate animals - turtles, fish.
Humans lookig beyond the human. They shuffle through
1,000 pounds -of fine sand covering the stage floor and 13
plexi-glass diazs hanging from the ceiling which they some-
times rock and jostle, creating celestial hiccups in their
staged univer~se.
The aesthetic of the stark statue-like dancers, carrying
themselves vith controlled power against a black nebulous
background deming to extend back for eternity echoes the
ying-yang of'the cosmos. The bodies, utterly present in their
heightened state, yet minuscule within the setting, know
they are alitve, yet realize that they are only elements like
clouds, sky tnd fish. This often comes out in codified Butoh
gestures sucih as torsos thrust to the heavens, hands mimic-
I,
A Sankal Juku dancer performs Ushhlo Amagatsu's "Yuragli
In a Space of Perpetual Motion."
king lotus flowers and the "silent scream," mouth pursed
open in an agonizing look, face to the sky, as if swallowing
the universe.
Butoh dance perpetuates the principle of art and nature as
one being and "Yuragi" is no exception. Two live rabbits, rest-
ing atop pillars in two corners of the stage, an installation by
artist Natsuyuki Nakanishi are part of the universe through
which the dancers glide. Amagatsu's opening and final solo
occur under the downstage pillar. He
moves on the earth as the rabbit rustles
V I E W through the air above his head. They
Sankai Juku coexist, yet neither can predict the
actions of the other.
Power Center Amagatsu's positioning of himself to
Nov. 1 & 2, 1996 begin and end the piece in the same
place on stage conveys the important
image of birth, rebirth and the circular-
ity of life. The dancers work with circular formations often,
echoing the shape of the hanging discs. Throughout the seven
different sections of "Yuragi," the discs are lowered and
raised, suggesting the movement of the heavens. The dancers
themselves manipulate and rock the large circles, allowing
them to gently sway with their natural rhythms. In an espe-
cially powerful solo, Amagatsu dances center stage around
one disc at his knee-level. He and the heavenly structure are
spotlighted, while the other discs remain many feet above his
head.
Amagatsu leaves us with the image of a finger pointed up
to the sky. "Yuragi" captures the essence of heaven and earth,
but cosmic life will be in perpetual motion, beyond Sankai
Juku's standing ovation.
Falkner opens for Suzanne Vega tomorrow nig
oyal Oak Music Theater.
that the clever among us would deem
"ear candy."
The album ends, predictably, with
an "A Day In The Life" knockoff titled
"Untitled." OK, so a lot of the album is
predictable, overblown and slightly
pretentious. Frankly, I don't care.
Sometimes predictable, overblown and
pretentious are just what the doctor
ordered.
- Jeff'Dinsmore
A "I~'ZEN mis U NEW - m,-A