I did not notice when I wrote about some video's for the band His Name is Alive last month, and named some older songs - that HNIA had a new recording out. I was on a Kray Brothers bend at that time. The new record is called Xmmer [not xxmer as iTunes had it last week], which was released in mid September
His Name Is Alive :: Michigan's Finest. Andy Fm is handling vocals these days. How can you dislike a record that has songs like "How dark is your dark side?"
There is a video for one of the new songs come to me. Compared with the Kray videos, which were asiduosly grey in scale, this one is at the very least more colorful
MySpace.com - HIS NAME IS ALIVE. And it ends about as well as a story can end (your common - boy lost from land meets island story). Building up terra firma from out of our mouths. Apparently this is how worlds are made. Best use of the cut-out form since Matisse or even South Park. At the moment I'm only responding to this song through the visuals, music and sound textures. I will take up the lyrics eventually as a second step (who is it you're shooting at?)
I think I especially like having the snake as hero of this tale, a flood narrative, which seems to be hinting a possible native American origin. The snake tends to get a bad rap in literature. Metaphoric overuse as poisoner and tempter. Would be bitters of small boys the Riki Tiki Tavi's of the world are declared to protect. Rarely are they allowed just to be earnest critters of the earth. Yet reading between the lines of the various flood myths they are always on the bus. Aside from the larger bird who was misused (something of a management issue there) and the snake, the other animals: Fox Rabbit Ox Toad, and the small bird seem rather useless. In comparisom to the terristrial beasts who were collectively at a loss, nothwithstanding eventual heroism, the beasts of the sea seen swimming along, just go about their business; eating and being eaten. Prey and prawn (wait, is that how that works?)
Looking back at it I suppose there might have been a bit of natural subtext to HNIA showing up in Metafilter last month. I don't mind this at all. I don't regard this the same way I regard realising too late that nearly any topic being discussed in the Washington Post is there because of some groups full and carefully planned agenda. There really is no such thing as news. I never figure this out, I only fall, hook line and sinker, every time.
I don't mind being a news consumer, even as I recognise that the information provided is not often empowering so much as simply more product. But, I don't like the feeling of being had for lunch. Consumed in the cycle, by agenda setters and media platforms undisclosing of the vested interests and their schedules. A school of small fish steered towards the correct limited awareness. Prey and prawn (is that how that works?)
