Hello and hurrah, it’s a brand new week and I have the honour of kicking it all off for you.
I imagine by now the February blues have begun to overwhelm you; you have realised there are whole days of monotony separating you from now and the glorious possibilities of a free weekend and that must be frightening. Your morning coffee was not as sweet as the one which you lazily enjoyed yesterday, your morning meeting has presumably dragged on for far longer than necessary and you’re beginning to wonder how you wound up at this job you loathe.
So, feeling pumped?
Don’t worry. I have the cure. Sort of. If you like this kind of thing. If not, this song could tip you over the edge. If you do fall on this side of the fence, don’t worry, follow the final link in this post for a pick me up.
I’d like to caveat this introduction however and explain, before you judge me, that today’s post is kind of wanky. Not in the sense that, for example, Piers Morgan is a wanker and thus could be described as a wanky human being, but in the sense of ‘I’m a semi-pretentious twat’.
Last week I was shown the film La Haine, Mathieu Kassovitz’s stylized social commentary detailing the lives of three young men the day after a riot, sparked by police brutality, engulfed the estate in which they live. I won’t tell you any more about the plot, but simply implore you to watch it this week if you have a spare evening. I’ll only warn you that it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, being a French indie film from the early 90s, with subtitles and shot in black and white (I told you I was going to sound a little wanky before the end of this post…)
One scene sums up Kassovitz’s approach to telling this would-be grim tale. Rather than focusing on the scars the recent violence has left on the estate, which are ever present nonetheless, Kassovitz constantly attempts to let the colour of life on the estate shine through despite it’s apparent bleakness.
As Cut Killer’s Assasin de la Police remix blares out over the oppressive cityscape, the audience is witness to an impossibly optimistic sentiment, that however depressing and downtrodden life may be there are those that will improvise and reinvent, making the best of a bad situation. And, uh, also that guys who scratch over massive speakers while overlooking a 1990s Parisian estate with a backwards snapback on – and do so in black and white – are fucking cool.
The remix in question samples seven songs in total (for a full list see the end) but in the main blurs together two songs which have no right to function in tandem, KRS-One’s Sound of the Police and Edith Paif’s, Non Je ne Regrette Rien. The result is awesome and has stuck with me since seeing the film for the first time last week.
I hope you enjoy it and, if you get a chance to see La Haine, that you enjoy it, too.
For all of you who don’t enjoy gritty black and white social dramas, and whom I’ve pushed over the edge into the February abyss with my choice in song, fear not, I have not forgotten you: try this on for size and hopefully it will liven up the start to your week.
Love love love, Zac x
(Three loves, aren’t you all ever so lucky).
Full sample list a.k.a ‘a list of fucking tuuuuuunes for you to enjoy’:
Edith Paif, Non Je ne Regrette Rien
