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Fw: a strange internet VN sighting
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----- Forwarded message from jansy@aetern.us -----
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2005 19:00:05 -0300
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello <jansy@aetern.us>
----- Original Message -----
From: Jansy Berndt de Souza Mello
To: don barton johnson
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 12:04 PM
Subject: a strange internet VN sighting
I was researching Joyce´s Haines character in Ulysses ( and VN´s comments )
using the internet. Then I came across something quite different, related to
another "Haines" but with a critical reference to Nabokov and Ulysses. This is
a world of coincidences and this one seems rather neat!
I selected bits and pieces to situate the reference and marked the reference to
VN in bold:
Luke Haines & The Auteurs
Das Capital: The Songwriting Genius of Luke Haines & The Auteurs
[Hut; 2003]
Rating: 5.1
I doubt that most artists enjoy selecting their greatest hits for a package like
this. More often than not, these collections are forced by market necessities,
imply the end of an era, and lead to inevitable bifurcation between fan
favorites and the label's idea of a hit. Imagine, then, the enormity of such
undertaking for a songwriter whose shtick involves both unflagging
self-admiration and utter contempt for labels, marketing, colleagues and fans.
I'm talking, of course, about the UK's Luke Haines, the leader of the defunct
Auteurs and, with John Moore, the creator of the minimalist-pop project Black
Box Recorder. Evidently facing a contract obligation to ransack his old band's
four albums for a hits package, Haines found a conceptually flawless way out:
He rented out a symphony orchestra and proceeded to re-record eight of Auteurs'
songs in nauseatingly grand, mellow-gold arrangements that most definitely do
not have to be heard to be believed.
Das Capital: The Songwriting Genius of Luke Haines and the Auteurs is a primo
Situationist stunt. From the title on down, it concerns itself purely with the
sound of money.
As any piece of conceptual art Haines claims to despise so, Das Capital is
primarily valuable as a conversation catalyst. As a piece of self-assessment,
it's useless: Haines' liner notes bring to mind Nabokov's Strong Opinions,
wherein Vladimir Vladimirovich spares a couple of kind words for Joyce, but
only for Ulysses. Haines operates in a similar mode here. He assigns his albums
short captions ("my second masterpiece") and stars (most get five out of five),
obliterates any suggestion of collaboration within the Auteurs, and blurbs a
remix album by µ-Ziq thus: "Remixes by some kid from Wimbledon for L500. A lot
of money for a teenager. Never listened to it myself. Went on to sell well in
America. 100% of the publishing goes to me."
Paired with the deliberately subpar stuff on the album, the braggadocio becomes
suffocating: What we appear to have on our hands is a spoof of the very notion
of quality. I would never recommend a living soul to purchase Das Capital
----- End forwarded message -----
