Episode 142: The Music of the Spheres: On Jóhann Jóhannsson's "Last and First Men"

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 15 Mar 2023 10:30:00 -0400

Jóhann Jóhannsson was one of contemporary cinema's greatest score composers when he passed away in 2018 at the young age of 48. Last and First Men, his enigmatic directorial debut, was released shortly after in 2020. Based on a novel by the same name by the British science fiction writer Olaf Stapleton, the film offers a sustained meditation on the prospect of extinction, the eventuality of humanity's disappearance from the comos. In this episode, JF and Phil discuss the images and sounds of the film as they flicker and swell against the backdrop of nonbeing that envelops us all. The conversation touches on the idea of beauty, Brutalist architecture, modernism, and futurity.

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REFERENCES

Jóhann Jóhannsson, Last and First Men
Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, SNL character
Spomeniks, Yugoslavian monuments
Olaf Stapleton, The Last and First Men
Woody Allen, Hannah and Her Sisters
The Last of Us, television show
Ray Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction
Weird Studies, Episode 2 on Garmonbozia
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize Speech
Weird Studies Episode 139 on Art Power
Numenius, Platonist philosopher
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, What is Philosophy?
Jia Tolentino, “The Overwhelming Emotion of Hearing Toto’s “Africa”
Weird Studies, Episode 110 on “The Glass Bead Game”
D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Episode 137: Brute Force: on Sunn O)))'s 'Life Metal'

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel — Wed, 14 Dec 2022 11:00:00 -0500

What Evil Dead 2 is to the Baroque, Sunn O))) is to Brutalism. Or more like: if the likening of Evil Dead 2 to the Baroque felt like a stretch in episode 136, the brutalist bona fides of Sunn O)))'s drone metal are incontestable. In this episode, their 2019 masterpiece Life Metal frames a conversation touching on 20th-century avant garde music, the tactility of sound, the metaphysics of the Kickass Riff, Aztec aesthetics, the virtues of impermanence, and of course, the sublime beauty of brutalist buildings.

Listen to volume 1 and volume 2 of the Weird Studies soundtrack by Pierre-Yves Martel
Support us on Patreon
Find us on Discord
Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau!
Get your Weird Studies merchandise (t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.)
Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop

REFERENCES

Sunn O))), Life Metal
Theatre of Eternal Music, musical group
Daniel Albright, Panaesthetics
Brian Eno, Imaginary Landscapes
John Wray, “Heady Metal”
Nyarlathotep, Lovecraft character
Byung-Hul Chan, The Philosophy of Zen Buddhism
Fred Wilcox (dir.), Forbidden Planet
H. P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness
Godfrey Reggio (dir.), [Koyaanisquatsi](imdb.com/title/tt0085809/)

Weird Studies - Episodes Tagged with “Brutalism”

Episode 142: The Music of the Spheres: On Jóhann Jóhannsson's "Last and First Men"

Episode 137: Brute Force: on Sunn O)))'s 'Life Metal'