The record player uses a carrier and dock outfitted with a magnetic and auto-calibrating control system which carries the LP into thin air as it is playing music. a self-running record player shaped in the form of a red sphere, contains a needle, amplifier and speaker, spins around the record, bringing the music to life. the sphere that plays the vinyl was technically influenced by the ‘vinyl killer’, currently the world’s smallest LP player that has a built-in motor, amplifier and speaker.

It’s Happening Now

She got a nice write up on sfgate.com here and Fecal Face paid her a studio visit and I highly recommend checking that feature out to get a good sense of what an awesome person she is and why I and many others adore her. Remember how I complained that I want more science-fiction with a feminine touch? Alexis has done that before:

Her stuff keeps getting better and better and I’m proud of her. If you can’t make it, you can check out the set of her new works on her flickr.

//opening scene in Sam Peckinpah’s violently symphonic western The Wild Bunch

For the record, I personally think Kathryn Bigelow’s movies so far have been god awful (Point Break & Strange Days, anyone?). And it wasn’t until I looked up her filmography recently that I found out that she was involved with that lame & pretentious Twin Peaks-rip off back in the day on ABC called Wild Palms which starred Jim Belushi. Yeah… JIM BELUSHI! It was so bad that I remember it clearly. One episode appalled me because it wasted use of licensing the Supremes’ Love Child for some second rate David Lynch atmosphere.

Anyway, back to Bigelow. She is one of those women directors who frequently works in genres like horror, action and science-fiction where I think has a lot of meaningful & intellectual potential, but then she always blows it with some cornball heavy-handedness and/or bad casting choices. I would really, really love for a woman director to achieve commercial success in approaching these typically male dominated genres with a feminine hand. it would be inherently more interesting/engrossing, not to mention make the studios tons of money by appealing to the other demographic.

That said, her Top 10 Favorite Action Sequences list recently is so on point and inspiring. Her list reminded me that the sniper scene in Full Metal Jacket = instant anxiety attack for me. Holy crap, I get goosebumps just thinking about it, that’s how powerful it is. And The Wild Bunch scene is one of many big reasons why I felt compelled to buy that Sam Peckinpah shirt at Lost Weekend Video. She knows her stuff and the trailer for this new Iraq movie is fooling me into thinking this may be her first really good movie, even with that terrible terrible name. (Sidenote, I think that Three Kings movie with Ice Cube, Wahlberg and Clooney back during Desert Storm might be one of my favorite Iraq movies. Seriously)

Anyway, i may need to come up with random lists of my own as I have a compulsion where I like taking random shots of things that appear on my tv screen. Here’s a sampling. Don’t even try to make sense of it, it’s more poetic out of context:

Classic records lost in time and format, re-emerged as Pelican books.

A chance recording by astronauts on the International Space Station has captured the moment a volcano explosively erupted, sending massive shockwaves through the atmosphere.

Fortuitously, the International Space Station was flying overhead at the time, and managed to capture this spectacular image of the ash-cloud tearing through the atmosphere, sending clouds scattering in its wake in a perfect circle.

I saw Shellac play at the Great American Music Hall last Wednesday night. Steve Albini is still an amusing asshole, Todd Trainer is still a freak and Bob Weston still solicits questions from the crowd between songs while Albini tunes the Travis Bean guitar strapped to his waist like it was a tool on a utility belt.

One highlight question to Weston, probably joking, was “How often do you use your Pro Tools rig?” It prompted the response “I don’t own a Pro Tools rig, my friend,” which made the audience giggle. Albini and Weston are two renown recording engineers who are still very much Nazis when it comes to being hardcore analog loyalists. Albini who has only recently caved in to the pressure of having a digital set-up in his Electrical Audio studios refuses to use it himself or even talk about it. Other questions from the crowd were gear related as one guy asked “Where’s the Harmonic Percolator?”, referring to a rare distortion pedal that is now holy grail material for hardcore audio nerds thanks to Albini championing it. This was truly the nerdiest/fanboy rock show ever but highly satisfying and cathartic for someone who had a very stressful day at work (AKA me). Going to this show alone and being one of the very few women there kinda made me feel like a perv.

Anyway, I don’t know why I feel this is worth mentioning, but Albini repeatedly did these pump fake b-ball moves towards the audience during “A Minute” but in a really intense and straight-faced serious manner. I was dying of laughter and really wish I got video. Here’s some other video instead

If it seems at all weird that I like this kind of dark and depraved rock music, here’s an old disclaimer post I made about Shellac in 2007