(cover photo by Sean Brackbill)

We’ve been touting the March 8 release of ‘Smoke Ring For My Halo’ for several weeks, but at present find ourselves in a no-caffeine-necessary frenzy over the sudden availability of the album’s 2nd MP3, “Jesus Fever”

Kurt Vile – Jesus Fever [192kbps mp3]

‘Smoke Ring For My Halo’ is now available for preorder on LP/CD ; we’re offering a 15% discount on each prior to release date.

In about ten days’ time, we’ll be revealing Kurt’s spring tour plans.

Doubt continues to evaporate around the assertion that Perfume Genius is one of the most significant new voices in songwriting and performance.

Further evidence here, on “Dreem” – a bonus track from the recently-released special edition of Learning (buy it here) – brought to us by our friends at Yours Truly:

Yourstru.ly Presents: Perfume Genius “Dreeem” from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

Provided that were a real thing, perhaps. But Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan will, indeed, be the first Matador artist to take part in any radio promo in 2011. A mere five days into the new year, Ira will take to the airwaves at WNYC to chat with host John Schaefer in a segment entitled “The Art of the Set List”. Sure to be discussed will be Yo La’s upcoming tour dates and the fascinating Wheel of Wonder/Mystery/Confusion/Something that will be present during all the gigs on this run. Tune in to gain a behind-the-curtain glance at the YLT set list decision process at 2:30PM on 93.9FM or click on over to WNYC’s website for your inside look.

Though I’ve already used this space to sing the praises of Zack Carlson & Bryan Connolly’s “Destroy All Movies : The Complete Guide To Punks On Film”, our extended Xmas break provided me with additional opportunities to get stuck into this impressive reference manual.  There’s amazing factoids and brutal critiques on almost every page (the turgid Arye Gross college radio star vehicle, “A Matter Of Degrees” is dismissed as “the emotional trials of a guy who looks like he’s been in school longer than Archie”) and best of all, many introductions to cinematic sludge only the insane or truly obsessed would already know about.

Case in point, 1998′s kiddie film. “The Purple People Eater”, described by Connolly as “the strangest E.T. rip-off of them all” (and this is coming from a man undoubtedly familiar with “Mac & Me”). “Is this the only film based on a novelty song?”  Well, that depends whether not you consider C.W. McCall’s “Convoy” a novelty song. But either way, it might be the worst film ever based on a novelty song. In addition to the cast mentioned in the above trailer, “The Purple People Eater” also features a pre-”Dougie Howser” / “Starship Troopers” Neil Patrick Harris, a pre-parental flipout Thora Birch, and inexplicably, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who might have the weirdest filmography of any professional athlete not named Todd Zeile.

Granted, the prior version was pretty cool, but we’re far more pleased with the new sleeve for Kurt Vile’s forthcoming ‘Smoke Ring For My Halo’ LP/CD/digital album (March 8, 2011). More news about this hotly anticipated album coming later this week…

Triumph of Life 7″
“It’s pretty much just a picture of a bird (the extinct Black Mamo) but then when you look closer you see that what makes the picture and the bird significant is the flower it’s standing on, whose petals are perfectly formed to fit this bird’s beak, and no other. This holds with the syncretic message that most FU songs are about, our ‘anti-dualism’ vibes.”
 

The Chemistry of Common Life LP
“If you look closely you can tell that its not just one image, but a composite of about 35 different shots lined up on top of each other, which is why you have some people and cars overlapping, and explains the relative brightness of the sun, and the lens flare everywhere. The shot is supposed to represent the main idea behind the record, which is the unity between culture and nature, and the idea that the literal source for all human culture and life is the sun. Even though the title is taken from a 19th century book on wild mushroom identification, what it means for the album is how everything that’s cultural about our lives has its source in nature and science, and that there really isn’t a divide between the two spheres.”
 

Baiting the Public 7″
“Probably my favourite sleeve that we’ve done. This was only our third 7″ release. The front image is meant to be a metaphor for what we thought we were in punk, and what punk was in the world (we were really into punk at that point) – a pack of rats running over a proper looking young woman in bed.”
 

“The inside was more to the heart of what this record was about, which was more or less a tribute to the Actionists, a radical art group in 1960s Austria. The inner picture depicts one of their ‘events’ which is basically a naked man aiming a naked woman at a roomful of people. The Actionists, along with the Situationists, who were another big ‘influence’ of ours at the time, were admired because of their blatant attempts to challenge and shock rather than pander to their audience.”

Much more on Looking For Gold.

This green curry chicken was astoundingly spicy. I can go deep with the heat but this took it to a new level for me. Despite that it was really delicious – and texturally deep as well, the crunchiness of the red bell pepper offsetting the creamy Thai eggplant and the meatiness of the chicken.

The recipe comes from Su-Mei Yu again, but with a lot of changes (hers is for meatballs with different vegetables), so I’ll give it here in full.

First make the green curry paste. In a heavy mortar and pestle, pound:

9 minced garlic cloves in 1 tsp sea salt
15 minced bird chiles
1 tbs minced cilantro roots and stems
1 tsp minced galangal
1 minced stalk lemongrass (green parts and hard outer layer removed)
1 tsp grated kaffir lime zest
2 minced shallots

Slit lengthwise and soak in large bowl warm water with 1 tsp salt:

3 fresh jalapeno chiles
1 fresh guero or poblano chile

After 15 minutes, de-seed the chiles underwater, pat dry, cut into 1/2-inch chunks, and blend in food processor until pulped. Squeeze pulp in cheesecloth and reserve the chile juice in a bowl. Take remaining chile pulp and pound into the curry paste.

Roast and grind:

1/2 tsp caraway seeds
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/4 tsp white peppercorns
1 tbs coriander seeds

Mix the above with 1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg, and pound the entire dried spice mix into the curry paste.

Finally pound 1 tsp fermented shrimp paste into the curry paste.

To prepare the coconut cream and milk:

Put 4 coconuts into a 425 degree oven for about 20 minutes. Remove, cool, and then whack them around the center seam with the back (blunt edge) of a cleaver until they split in two. Remove the flesh, peel any brown spots, cut into 1-inch pieces and put into a heavy-duty food processor. Pulse and blend for 30-60 seconds, then blend for another 1 minute until pulpy. Add 3 cups warm water and blend for another 30 seconds. Remove mixture to a bowl and massage the meat 89 times. Press the resultant pulp through a very fine sieve and refrigerate the result. Add another 5 cups warm water and massage another 89 times. Press resultant pulp through a very fine sieve and refrigerate the result separately from the previous bowl. After about an hour, remove both bowls from refrigerator and skim off the hardened coconut cream on the top of each bowl and put into a third bowl. Combine the thin milks.

Curry ingredients:

3/4 cup green curry paste (as above)
3-4 tbs reserved chile juice (as above)
1 cup coconut cream (as above)
3 cups coconut milk (as above)
2 tbs fish sauce
1 tbs sugar
5-6 kaffir lime leaves, torn
5-6 fresh green bird chiles, halved lengthwise
3 lbs chicken thighs and breasts, skinned, boned and cut into 1/4-inch diagonal strips sliced against the grain
2 large red bell peppers, seeded and sliced into 1/4″ diagonal strips
8 golf-ball sized Thai eggplants, sliced into eight pieces each
1 cup fresh Thai basil leaves

In a large saucepan, bring the coconut milk to a boil over high heat. Turn heat down to medium, and skim off the coconut cream that rises to the top and remove to a 12″ skillet.

Add the 1 cup of coconut cream to the skimmed cream in the skillet, along with the green curry paste over high heat, blending well, and fry until boiling. Lower heat to medium-high and cook, stirring, until the oil separates. Add the coconut milk from the saucepan along with the reserved chili juice. When the mixture begins to boil, add the fish sauce, sugar, kaffir lime leaves and fresh chiles. Mix well and add the chicken.

Continue to stir and fry until the chicken is browned all over, about 5-6 minutes. Add the bell peppers and the Thai eggplant and cook until the chicken is done, about another 7-8 minutes.

Very important: at this point, taste for balance of seasoning. It is essential that sweet, salty, sour and spicy are balanced. Add sugar or salt to balance as necessary.

Transfer to a serving bowl and garnish with the Thai basil. The dish may be served hot or at room temperature.

I served the curry with jasmine rice and a salad of pineapple and crispy dried shrimp. The salad is extremely easy to make:

First, cut a fresh pineapple into 1/2-inch chunks and place in a bowl.

Second, heat a quarter-cup of vegetable oil over a high flame until extremely hot and dump in 4 tbs dried shrimp. Deep-fry these for 30-45 seconds. Lift shrimp out with a slotted spoon and set to dry on a plate with paper towels.

Finally make the dressing:

1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 cup fish sauce
2 tbs palm sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar

Heat all of these in a saucepan utnil the salt and sugars are dissolved. Remove to a bowl and allow to cool. Add:

1/2 cup fresh lime juice

Stir well. Combine pineapple with fried shrimps and pour dressing over to taste. Garnish with Thai basil if desired.

Subtitled “heavenly chicken stew” in Su-Mei Yu’s now out-of-print Cracking The Coconut, keang gai faa is emblematic of older Thai cuisine. Its base is what Yu calls “Big Four Paste,” a pounded mash of cilantro roots, garlic, salt, roasted ground white peppercorns, and roasted ground coriander seeds. Using your big granite mortar and pestle, you pound another four cloves of garlic and ten bird chiles into the paste, and fry that in vegetable oil. Into the fried paste goes a chopped-up whole chicken to brown, followed by fish sauce, water and mashed-up lesser galangal or kra chay (I substituted ginger). Slivers of Anaheim chile go in towards the end, and the dish is finished with chopped arugula leaves for bitterness (the original calls for fresh whole chile leaves, but those don’t exist around here).

Serve on jasmine rice.