Gattaca

I remember seeing Gattaca around when it first came out & liking it fine.  I think it was the first sci-fi movie to really give me hope for the genre doing something serious (I hadn’t re-seen Blade Runner or Alien as an adult at that point & I generally think of The Thing as a horror movie & while I love Starship Troopers (which came out the same year) it’s more of a fun movie than a serious one).  But oddly there isn’t much I could remember about it.  I know it’s dystopian & I assumed it was Philip K Dick (it’s not) & I remembered it having interesting lighting.  The main thing I remembered though was this girl I was going out with at the time got all hot & bothered by Jude Law & got mad when I referred to him as “the gay dude” (it ends up I guess he’s not gay, just British).

Re-seeing it, wow, this is a different film than I remembered.  I didn’t remember at all that Ethan Hawke is there doing his coffee shop intellectual narration like he did in Before Sunrise.  I haven’t quite figured out how I feel about Ethan Hawke, I generally avoided anything with him back in the 1990s but the things from that era I’ve seen relatively recently (Before Sunrise & Great Expectations, even the Precinct 13 remake) seem fine.  I guess back then I saw more coffee culture intellectuals than I run into now & so I found that stuff way more annoying than I do now & that pretty much seems to be the character he always plays.  I also didn’t remember the first third of the movie before Ethan Hawke is impersonating Jude Law & why he was impersonating him in the first place.  I really forgot a ton of plot points that I am not sure if I should give away in case somebody might re-watch it that has also forgotten them.  So I guess what I’m saying is “spoilers.”  So the murder investigation… I was 100% sure that it was done by Uma Thurman because she was also an illegal impersonator & I was shocked that she wasn’t an impersonator nor the murderer.  I also feel like I wasn’t paying attention because I didn’t realize the one cop was Ethan Hawke’s brother until the reveal.  I did like that there wasn’t a happy ending romance wise (because I believe Ethan Hawke will die before the end of his trip in space) & I was surprised by Jude Law incinerating himself.  This movie is pretty solid & I don’t know why it isn’t put up as one of the top ten sci-fi movies (or at least top twenty) in a lot of lists & instead seems to be drifting towards obscurity….

Cavity "Somewhere Between the Train Station... and the Dumping Grounds"

Twenty year old me bought this album when it came out in 1997 and it's safe to say it blindsided me like the rusty grill of a garbage truck. And that's kind of how this record sounded... like rust. Grimy, filthy rust covered guitar strings, drums and even throats belting out a melding of hardcore and stoner rock that sounded just a little different from all the other "sludge-core" or "doom-metal" or what have you that I'd been listening to around that time.

For some reason about five years ago I went through one of those purgings of my cd collection that people do from time to time and I got rid of a lot of stuff. Probably about 150 cds. I was streamlining. I was growing up. I was going through a mid-life crisis. Whatever happened I ended up with about a third of my cd collection intact. Over the ensuing years I've honestly not missed hardly any of them... but for some reason earlier this year I started thinking about Cavity. I mean, this was the band that inspired me to pay great homage (read: totally rip them off) by writing many guitar riffs in the vein of what I'd heard on "Somewhere.." for the band I was in during the late '90's-2000. They had floored me, inspired me and rocked my effing socks off. And now I missed them.

Well, living in Dayton, Ohio I of course had no options to buy the cd in person unless I drove about an hour to Columbus or Cincinnati... so I did just that. I went to a couple of record stores in Cincinnati with the singular purpose of finding this disc (or vinyl--I didn't care which)... all to no avail. So I hopped on the internet (during worktime of course) and ordered me a brand spanking new copy for around $15 and waited for it to arrive... wondering if it could possibly be anywhere near the sonic greatness I fondly remembered it as.

Now, let me just preface this by saying that although back when I first heard Cavity I was also really into slower softer music like Low and Dirty Three and Edith Frost... nowadays I'm way more so. I find myself listening much more to bands and aritists like Sun Kill Moon, Clem Snide, and Damien Jurado who most would call "sad bastard" or "sleepy-time" music (they of course are right... but that doesn't make me like them one teardroplet of artsy fartsiness less) than to Slayer or Sepultura (both of whom I also love dearly). That said, I opened up my new copy of "Somewhere..." and put it in the player.

Within seconds my head was banging and I was singing along like I was twenty again. This thing totally destroys... it's like if you locked early '80's Black Flag in a room with nothing but their instruments and the first four Black Sabbath albums (and of course some rations... I mean c'mon, we're not gonna be totally inhumane to the Flaggers are we?) for a year. This is what that would sound like. It's sludgy and heavy at times but mostly it's grindy blood boiling hardcore that makes you want to destroy something. Not in a malicious way though... more like when you watch one of those time elapsed videos of something in nature rotting away... it just feels natural. And so does this disc. Eleven tracks that singe and decay right there in your cd tray like some sort of burning robot made out of junk cars with frayed wires protruding from every crevice. Like I said earlier it's the sound of rust and filth the entire length of the disc.
And as if that's not enough there's a hidden track done in a way unlike I've ever seen (or at least yet discovered) again where you pop in the disc and rewind track one to reveal an entire live show before the track starts! How sweet is that?!?

Anyhoo... check 'em out. Cavity from Florida. Sadly they disbanded years ago (after putting out 4 or 5 albums total) and their sound changed a bit along the way ("Supercollider" ,their next release and probably my favorite of their discography, is similar to "Somewhere..." though cleaner and musically more mature and "On The Lam" was their last and smoothest sounding album although it still delves into the feedbacky rawness of their previous releases on occasion). After thirteen years this thing still holds up to be an amazing record and one that I definitely won't make the mistake of selling a second time despite any financial or space issues. If you have any interest in stoner metal and punk rock give this thing a listen.