Jason Pierce
Jason Andrew Pierce is an English musician. The frontman and sole permanent member of the band Spiritualized, he co-fronted alternative rock band Spacemen 3 with Peter Kember from 1982 until 1991, he has worked under the name J. Spaceman. In between his work with Spiritualized and Spacemen 3, Pierce has been active with a network of free jazz players and improvisers, collaborating with acclaimed artists, including Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Dr. John, Primal Scream, Daniel Johnston, Yoko Ono among others. Pierce was ill with pneumonia in 2005. Both his lungs had filled with liquid, the 5'11 musician's weight plunged to seven stone and his heart stopped beating twice. In 2006, Pierce released his first solo album, Guitar Loops, a limited release on Coxon and Wales's Treader record label. In 2006, he composed the original score for an art installation called "Silent Sound" by British artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard; the live performance at St. George's Hall in Liverpool was recorded and released as a limited edition signed and numbered CD.
A second performance of Silent Sound took place in 2010 as part of the AV Festival, at Middlesbrough Town Hall. A second limited edition numbered CD was released. Between 6 and 8 February 2007, Pierce performed in a series of benefit concerts for the HOPING Foundation for Palestinian children, he provided some of the soundtrack for some of Mister Lonely. In July 2008 Pierce sat down for an interview with NPR before a concert at the 9:30 Club in Washington DC. Both the interview and the concert can be heard on the NPR website, he released a collaboration with Matthew Shipp entitled Spaceshipp on the Treader label in 2008. Pierce has worked on various solo projects, including the remixing of singles by LFO, Global Communication, the 22-20's, his song "Lay It Down Slow" was used for the finale of the hit US drama series Prison Break. In an early 2012 interview, Jason mentions he had been under chemotherapy during the recordings of the 2012 Spiritualized album Sweet Heart Sweet Light, he does not specify the diagnosis for this treatment, but he jokes about it, saying that these are drugs he does not recommend to anybody.
In 2015 he played guitar on the Ariel Pink song "Dayzed Inn Daydreams". Jason now lives with two children in the East End of London. Spacemen 3 Spiritualized
The Haçienda
The Haçienda was a nightclub and music venue in Manchester, which became famous in the Madchester years of the 1980s and early 1990s. The Haçienda opened in 1982, despite considerable and persistent financial troubles survived until 1997—the club was supported by record sales from New Order; the Haçienda is associated with the rise of acid rave music. The former warehouse occupied by the club was at 11-13, Whitworth Street West on the south side of the Rochdale Canal: the frontage was curved and built of red brick. Before it was turned into a club, The Haçienda was a yacht builder's warehouse. Conceived by Rob Gretton, it was financed by the record label Factory Records and the band New Order along with label boss Tony Wilson, it was on the corner of Whitworth Street West and Albion Street, close to Castlefield, in the centre of the city. FAC 51 was its official designation in the Factory catalogue. New Order and Tony Wilson were directors of the club. Designed by Ben Kelly, upon recommendation by Factory graphic designer Peter Saville, upstairs consisted of a stage, dance area, cloakroom, cafeteria area and balcony with a DJ booth.
Downstairs was a cocktail bar called The Gay Traitor, which referred to Anthony Blunt, a British art historian who spied for the Soviet Union. The two other bars, The Kim Philby and Hicks, were named after Blunt's fellow spies. From 1995 onwards, the lower cellar areas of the venue were converted to create the 5th Man, a smaller music venue; the name comes from a slogan of the radical group Situationist International: "The Hacienda Must Be Built", from Formulary for a New Urbanism by Ivan Chtcheglov. A hacienda is a large homestead in a ranch or estate in places where Colonial Spanish culture has had architectural influence. Though the cedilla is not used in Spanish, the spelling "Haçienda" was decided on for the club because the cedilla makes the "çi" resemble "51", the club's catalogue number; the Haçienda was opened on 21 May 1982, when the comedian Bernard Manning remarked to the audience, "I've played some shit-holes during my time, but this is something." His jokes did not go down well with the crowd and he returned his fee.
A wide range of musical acts appeared at the club. One of the earliest was the German EBM band Liaisons Dangereuses, which played there on 7 July 1982; the Smiths performed there three times in 1983. It served as a venue for Madonna on her first performance in the United Kingdom, on 27 January 1984, she was invited to appear as part of a one-off, live television broadcast by Channel 4 music programme The Tube. Madonna performed "Holiday" whilst at The Haçienda and the performance was described by Norman Cook as one that "mesmerised the crowd". At one time, the venue included a hairdressing salon; as well as club nights there were regular concerts, including one in which Einstürzende Neubauten drilled into the walls that surrounded the stage. In 1986, it became one of the first British clubs to start playing house music, with DJs Mike Pickering and Little Martin hosting the visionary "Nude" night on Fridays; this night became legendary, helped to turn around the reputation and fortunes of The Haçienda, which went from making a consistent loss to being full every night of the week by early 1987.
The growth of the'Madchester' scene had little to do with the healthy house music scene in Manchester at the time but it was boosted by the success of The Haçienda's pioneering Ibiza night, "Hot", an acid house night hosted by Pickering and Jon DaSilva in July 1988. However, drug use became a problem. On 14 July 1989, the UK's first ecstasy-related death occurred at the club; the police clampdown that followed was opposed by Manchester City Council, which argued that the club contributed to an "active use of the city centre core" in line with the government's policy of regenerating urban areas. The resulting problems caused the club to close for a short period in early 1991, before reopening with increased security the same year. Haçienda DJs made regular and guest appearances on radio and TV shows like Granada TV's Juice, Sunset 102 and BBC Radio 1. Between 1994 and 1997 Hacienda FM was a weekly show on Manchester dance station Kiss 102. Security was a problem in the club's latter years. There were several shootings inside and outside the club, relations with the police and licensing authorities became troubled.
When local magistrates and police visited the club in 1997, they witnessed a near-fatal assault on a man in the streets outside when 18-year-old Andrew Delahunty was hit over the head from behind with what looked like a metal bar before being pushed into the path of an on-coming car. Although security failures at the club were one of the contributing factors to the club closing, the most cause was its finances; the club did not make enough money from the sale of alcohol, this was because many patrons instead turned to drug use. As a result, the club broke as alcohol sales are the main source of income for nightclubs; the club's long-term future was crippled and, with spiralling debts, The Haçienda closed definitively in the summer of 1997. Peter Hook stated in 2009; the Haçienda lost its entertainments licence in June 1997. The last night of the club was 28 June 1997, a club night called "Freak" featuring DJs Elliot Eastwick and Dave Haslam; the club remained open for a short period as an art gallery before going bankrupt and
OK Computer
OK Computer is the third studio album by English rock band Radiohead, released on 16 June 1997 on EMI subsidiaries Parlophone and Capitol Records. The members of Radiohead self-produced the album with Nigel Godrich, an arrangement they have used for their subsequent albums. Other than the song "Lucky", recorded in 1995, Radiohead recorded the album in Oxfordshire and Bath between 1996 and early 1997 in the historic mansion St Catherine's Court; the band distanced themselves from the guitar-centred, lyrically introspective style of their previous album, The Bends. OK Computer's abstract lyrics, densely layered sound and eclectic range of influences laid the groundwork for Radiohead's more experimental work. Despite lowered sales estimates by EMI, who deemed the record uncommercial and difficult to market, OK Computer reached number one on the UK Albums Chart and debuted at number 21 on the Billboard 200, Radiohead's highest album entry on the US charts at the time; the songs "Paranoid Android", "Karma Police", "Lucky", "No Surprises", "Airbag" were released as promotional singles.
The album expanded Radiohead's international popularity and has sold at least 7.8 million units worldwide. A remastered version with additional tracks, OKNOTOK 1997 2017, was released on 22 June 2017 to commemorate the album's twentieth anniversary. OK Computer received widespread critical acclaim and has been cited by listeners and musicians as one of the greatest albums of all time, it was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year and won Best Alternative Music Album at the 40th Annual Grammy Awards in 1998. The album initiated a stylistic shift in British rock away from the then-ubiquitous Britpop genre toward melancholic, atmospheric alternative rock that became more prevalent in the next decade; the album depicts a world fraught with rampant consumerism, social alienation, emotional isolation and political malaise. In 2014, it was included by the Library of Congress in the National Recording Registry as "culturally or aesthetically significant". In 1995, Radiohead toured in support of their second album The Bends.
Midway through the tour, Brian Eno commissioned the band to contribute a song to The Help Album, a charity compilation organised by War Child. Radiohead recorded "Lucky" in five hours with engineer Nigel Godrich, who had assisted producer John Leckie with The Bends and produced several Radiohead B-sides. Godrich said of the Help Album session: "Those things are the most inspiring, when you do stuff fast and there's nothing to lose. We left feeling euphoric. So after establishing a bit of a rapport work-wise, I was sort of hoping I would be involved with the next album." To promote The Help Album, "Lucky" featured as the lead track on the Help EP, which charted at number 51 after BBC Radio 1 chose not to play it. This disappointed Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, but he said "Lucky" shaped the nascent sound and mood of their upcoming record: "'Lucky' was indicative of what we wanted to do, it was like the first mark on the wall."Radiohead found touring stressful and took a break in January 1996. They sought to distance their new material from the introspective style of The Bends.
Drummer Philip Selway said: "There was an awful lot of soul-searching. To do that again on another album would be excruciatingly boring." Yorke said at the time: "We could fall back on just doing another miserable and negative record lyrically, but I don't want to, at all. And I'm deliberately just writing down all the positive things that I see. I'm not able to put them into music yet and I don't want to just force it."The critical and commercial success of The Bends gave Radiohead the confidence to self-produce their third album. Their label Parlophone gave them a £100,000 budget for recording equipment. Guitarist Jonny Greenwood said "the only concept that we had for this album was that we wanted to record it away from the city and that we wanted to record it ourselves." According to guitarist Ed O'Brien: "Everyone said, You'll sell six or seven million if you bring out The Bends Pt 2, we're like,'We'll kick against that and do the opposite'." A number of producers, including major figures such as Scott Litt, were suggested, but the band were encouraged by their sessions with Godrich.
They consulted him for advice on what equipment to use, prepared for the sessions by buying their own equipment, including a plate reverberator purchased from songwriter Jona Lewie. Although Godrich had sought to focus his work on electronic dance music, he outgrew his role as advisor and became the album's co-producer. In July 1996, Radiohead started rehearsing and recording OK Computer in their Canned Applause studio, a converted shed near Didcot, Oxfordshire. Without the deadline that contributed to the stress of The Bends, the band had difficulties, which Selway blamed on their choice to self-produce: "We're jumping from song to song, when we started to run out of ideas, we'd move on to a new song... The stupid thing was that we were nearly finished when we'd move on, because so much work had gone into them." The members worked with nearly equal roles in the production and formation of the music, though Yorke was still "the loudest voice" according to O'Brien. Selway said "we give each other an awful lot of space to develop our parts, but at the same time we are all critical about what the other person is doing."
Godrich's role as co-producer was part managerial outsider. He said that Radiohead "need to have another person outside their unit, e
Drone (music)
In music, a drone is a harmonic or monophonic effect or accompaniment where a note or chord is continuously sounded throughout most or all of a piece. The word drone is any part of a musical instrument, used to produce such an effect, as is the archaic term burden such as a "drone of a bagpipe", the pedal point in an organ, or the lowest course of a lute. Α burden is part of a song, repeated at the end of each stanza, such as the chorus or refrain. "Of all harmonic devices, it is not only the simplest, but also the most fertile."A drone effect can be achieved through a sustained sound or through repetition of a note. It most establishes a tonality upon which the rest of the piece is built. A drone can be vocal or both. Drone can be placed in different ranges of the polyphonic texture: in the lowest part, in the highest part, or in the middle; the drone is most placed upon the tonic or dominant. A drone on the same pitch as a melodic note tends to both hide that note and to bring attention to it by increasing its importance.
A drone differs from a pedal point in degree or quality. A pedal point may be a form of nonchord tone and thus required to resolve unlike a drone, or a pedal point may be considered a shorter drone, a drone being a longer pedal point; the systematic use of drones originated in instrumental music of ancient Southwest Asia, spread north and west to Europe, east to India, south to Africa. It is a key component of much Australian aboriginal music through the didgeridoo, it is used in Indian music and is played with the tanpura and other Indian drone instruments like the ottu, the ektar, the dotara, the surpeti, the surmandal and the shankh. Most of the types of bagpipes that exist worldwide have up to three drones, making this one of the first instruments that comes to mind when speaking of drone music. In America, most forms of the African-influenced banjo contain a drone string. Since the 1960s, the drone has become a prominent feature in drone music and other forms of avant-garde music. In vocal music drone is widespread in traditional musical cultures in Europe and Melanesia.
"Drones are not uncommon in primitive music, but neither are they characteristic of it." It is present in some isolated regions of Asia. Drone is the term for the part of a musical instrument intended to produce the drone effect's sustained pitch without the ongoing attention of the player. Different melodic Indian instruments contain a drone. For example, the sitar features three or four resonating drone strings, Indian notes are practiced to a drone. Bagpipes feature a number of drone pipes. A hurdy-gurdy has one or more drone strings; the fifth string on a five-string banjo is a drone string with a separate tuning peg that places the end of the string five frets down the neck of the instrument. The bass strings of the Slovenian drone zither freely resonate as a drone; the Welsh Crwth features two drone strings. Composers of Western classical music used a drone to evoke a rustic or archaic atmosphere echoing that of Scottish or other early or folk music. Examples include the following: Symphony No.
104, "London", opening of finale, accompanying a folk melody. Beethoven, Symphony No. 6, "Pastoral", opening and trio section of scherzo. Mendelssohn, Symphony No. 3 in A minor, opus 56,'Scottish' the finale. Chopin, Mazurkas: all five contain a drone. Berlioz, Harold in Italy, accompanying oboes as they imitate the piffero of Italian peasants Richard Strauss, Also sprach Zarathustra, Introduction: the opening grows out of a drone effect in the orchestra. Mahler, Symphony No. 1, introduction. Bartók, in his adaptations for piano of Hungarian and other folk music; the best-known drone piece in the concert repertory is the Prelude to Wagner's Das Rheingold wherein low horns and bass instruments sustain an E♭ throughout the entire movement. The atmospheric ostinato effect that opens Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which inspired similar gestures in the opening of all the symphonies of Anton Bruckner, represents a gesture derivative of drones. One consideration for composers of common practice keyboard music was equal temperament.
The adjustments lead to slight mistunings. So, drones have been used to spotlight dissonance purposefully. Modern concert musicians make frequent use of drones with just or other non-equal tempered tunings. Drones are a regular feature in the music of composers indebted to the chant tradition, such as Arvo Pärt, Sofia Gubaidulina, John Tavener; the single-tones that provided the impetus for minimalism through the music of La Monte Young and many of his students qualify as drones. David First, the band Coil, the early experimental compilations of John Cale, Pauline Oliveros and Stuart Dempster, Alvin Lucier (Music On A Long Thin Wi
Gospel music
Gospel music is a genre of Christian music. The creation, performance and the definition of gospel music varies according to culture and social context. Gospel music is composed and performed for many purposes, including aesthetic pleasure, religious or ceremonial purposes, as an entertainment product for the marketplace. Gospel music has dominant vocals with Christian lyrics. Gospel music can be traced with roots in the black oral tradition. Hymns and sacred songs were repeated in a call and response fashion. Most of the churches relied on hand clapping and foot stomping as rhythmic accompaniment. Most of the singing was done a cappella; the first published use of the term "gospel song" appeared in 1874. The original gospel songs were written and composed by authors such as George F. Root, Philip Bliss, Charles H. Gabriel, William Howard Doane, Fanny Crosby. Gospel music publishing houses emerged; the advent of radio in the 1920s increased the audience for gospel music. Following World War II, gospel music moved into major auditoriums, gospel music concerts became quite elaborate.
Gospel blues is a blues-based form of gospel music. Southern gospel used all tenor-lead-baritone-bass quartet make-up. Progressive Southern gospel is an American music genre that has grown out of Southern gospel over the past couple of decades. Christian country music, sometimes referred to as country gospel music, is a subgenre of gospel music with a country flair, it peaked in popularity in the mid-1990s. Bluegrass gospel music is rooted in American mountain music. Celtic gospel music infuses gospel music with a Celtic flair, is quite popular in countries such as Ireland. British black gospel refers to Gospel music of the African diaspora, produced in the UK; some proponents of "standard" hymns dislike gospel music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, with historical distance, there is a greater acceptance of such gospel songs into official denominational hymnals. Gospel music features Christian lyrics; some modern gospel music, isn't explicitly Christian and just utilizes the sound.
Subgenres include contemporary gospel, urban contemporary gospel, Southern gospel, modern gospel music. Several forms of gospel music utilize choirs, use piano or Hammond organ, drums, bass guitar and electric guitar. In comparison with hymns, which are of a statelier measure, the gospel song is expected to have a refrain and a more syncopated rhythm. Several attempts have been made to describe the style of late 19th and early 20th century gospel songs in general. Christ-Janer said "the music was tuneful and easy to grasp... rudimentary harmonies... use of the chorus... varied metric schemes... motor rhythms were characteristic... The device of letting the lower parts echo rhythmically a motive announced by the sopranos became a mannerism". Patrick and Sydnor emphasize the notion that gospel music is "sentimental", quoting Sankey as saying, "Before I sing I must feel", they call attention to the comparison of the original version of Rowley's "I Will Sing the Wondrous Story" with Sankey's version.
Gold said, "Essentially the gospel songs are songs of testimony, religious exhortation, or warning. The chorus or refrain technique is found." According to Yale University music professor Willie Ruff, the singing of psalms in Gaelic by Presbyterians of the Scottish Hebrides evolved from "lining out" – where one person sang a solo and others followed – into the call and response of gospel music of the American South. Coming out of the African-American religious experience, American gospel music can be traced to the early 17th century, with foundations in the works of Dr. Isaac Watts and others. Gospel music has roots in the black oral tradition, utilizes a great deal of repetition, which allows those who could not read the opportunity to participate in worship. During this time and sacred songs were lined and repeated in a call and response fashion, Negro spirituals and work songs emerged. Repetition and "call and response" are accepted elements in African music, designed to achieve an altered state of consciousness we sometimes refer to as "trance", strengthen communal bonds.
Most of the churches relied on foot-stomping as rhythmic accompaniment. Guitars and tambourines were sometimes available, but not frequently. Church choirs became a norm only after emancipation. Most of the singing was done a cappella; the most famous gospel-based hymns were composed in the 1760s and 1770s by English writers John Newton and Augustus Toplady, members of the Anglican Church. Starting out as lyrics only, it took decades for standardized tunes to be added to them. Although not directly connected with African-American gospel music, they were adopted by African-Americans as well as white Americans, Newton's connection with the abolition movement provided cross-fertilization; the first published use of the term "Gospel Song" appeared in 1874 when Philip Bliss released a songbook entitled Gospel Songs. A Choice Collection of Hymns and Tunes, it was used to describe a new style of church music, songs that were easy to grasp and more singable than the traditional church hymns, which came out of the mass revival movement starting with Dwight L. Moody, whose musician was Ira D. Sankey, as well as the Holiness-Pentecostal movement.
Prior to the meeting of Moody and
NME
New Musical Express is a British music journalism website and former magazine, published since 1952. It was the first British paper to include a singles chart, in the edition of 14 November 1952. In the 1970s it became the best-selling British music newspaper. During the period 1972 to 1976, it was associated with gonzo journalism became associated with punk rock through the writings of Julie Burchill, Paul Morley and Tony Parsons, it started as a music newspaper, moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s and 1990s, changing from newsprint in 1998. An online version, NME.com, was launched in 1996. It became the world's biggest standalone music site, with over sixteen million users per month. With newsstand sales falling across the UK magazine sector, the magazine's paid circulation in the first half of 2014 was 15,830. In 2013, the list of NME's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time and the way it was conceived was criticized by the media; the printed magazine NME was relaunched in September 2015 to be distributed nationally as a free publication.
The first average circulation published in February 2016 of 307,217 copies per week was the highest in the brand's history, beating the previous best of 306,881, recorded in 1964 at the height of the Beatles' fame. By December 2017, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, average distribution of NME had fallen to 289,432 copies a week, although its publisher Time Inc. UK claimed to have more than 13m global unique users per month, including 3m in the UK. In March 2018, the publisher announced that the print edition of NME would cease publication after 66 years, leaving it as an online-only title. NME's headquarters are in Southwark, England; the brand's current editor is Charlotte Gunn, replacing Mike Williams, who stepped down in February 2018. The paper was established in 1952; the Accordion Times and Musical Express was bought by London music promoter Maurice Kinn, for the sum of £1,000, just 15 minutes before it was due to be closed. It was relaunched as the New Musical Express, was published in a non-glossy tabloid format on standard newsprint.
On 14 November 1952, taking its cue from the US magazine Billboard, it created the first UK Singles Chart, a list of the Top Twelve best-selling singles. The first of these was, in contrast to more recent charts, a top twelve sourced by the magazine itself from sales in regional stores around the UK; the first number one was "Here in My Heart" by Al Martino. During the 1960s the paper championed the new British groups emerging at the time; the NME circulation peaked under Andy Gray with a figure of 306,881 for the period from January to June 1964. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were featured on the front cover; these and other artists appeared at the NME Poll Winners' Concert, an awards event that featured artists voted as most popular by the paper's readers. The concert featured a ceremony where the poll winners would collect their awards; the NME Poll Winners' Concerts took place between 1959 and 1972. From 1964 onwards they were filmed and transmitted on British television a few weeks after they had taken place.
In the mid-1960s, the NME was dedicated to pop while its older rival, Melody Maker, was known for its more serious coverage of music. Other competing titles included Record Mirror, which led the way in championing American rhythm and blues, Disc, which focused on chart news; the latter part of the decade saw the paper chart the rise of psychedelia and the continued dominance of British groups of the time. During this period some sections of pop music began to be designated as rock; the paper became engaged in a sometimes tense rivalry with Melody Maker. By the early 1970s, NME had lost ground to Melody Maker, as its coverage of music had failed to keep place with the development of rock music during the early years of psychedelia and progressive rock. In early 1972 the paper found itself on the verge of closure by its owner IPC. According to Nick Kent: After sales had plummeted to 60,000 and a review of guitar instrumentalist Duane Eddy had been printed which began with the immortal words "On this, his 35th album, we find Duane in as good as voice as ever," the NME had been told to rethink its policies or die on the vine.
Alan Smith was made editor in 1972, was told by IPC to turn things around or face closure. To achieve this and his assistant editor Nick Logan raided the underground press for writers such as Charles Shaar Murray and Nick Kent, recruited other writers such as Tony Tyler, Ian MacDonald and Californian Danny Holloway. According to The Economist, the New Musical Express "started to champion underground, up-and-coming music.... NME became the gateway to a more rebellious world. First came glamrock, bands such as T. Rex, came punk....by 1977 it had become the place to keep in touch with a cultural revolution, enthralling the nation's listless youth. Bands such as Sex Pistols, X-Ray Spex and Generation X were regular cover stars, eulogised by writers such as Julie Burchill and Tony Parsons, whose nihilistic tone narrated the punk years perfectly." By the time Smith handed the editor's chair to Logan in mid-1973, the paper was selling nearly 300,000 copies per week and was outstripping Melody Maker, Record Mirror and Sounds.
According to MacDonald: I think all the other papers knew by 1974 that NME had become the best music paper in Britain. We had most of the best writers and photographers, the best layouts
Harmony Korine
Harmony Korine is an American film director and screenwriter. He is best known for writing Kids and for writing and directing Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy, Mister Lonely and Spring Breakers, his film Trash Humpers premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the main prize, the DOX Award, at the CPH:DOX. In 2019, Korine directed his first project in The Beach Bum. Korine was born in Bolinas and raised in Nashville, the son of Eve and Sol Korine, his family is Jewish. His father was a tapdancer and produced documentaries for PBS in the 1970s about an "array of colorful Southern characters"; as a child, Korine watched movies with his father, who rented Buster Keaton films and took him to see Even Dwarfs Started Small in the theater. Korine reminisces, "I knew there was a poetry in cinema that I had never seen before, so powerful." As a child, Korine changed his name from "Harmony" and went by "Harmful," as he thought it made him sound tougher when he got into fights. Korine spent his childhood in Nashville, attending Hillsboro High School before moving to New York City to live with his grandmother.
Korine spent some time living with his parents in a commune, which helped to inspire the commune setting of Mister Lonely. As a teenager, Korine frequented revival theaters, watching classic films by John Cassavetes, Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alan Clarke. In an interview with Bruce LaBruce, Korine mentioned that he studied Business Administration in college. Other sources state that he studied Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University for one semester before dropping out to pursue a career as a professional skateboarder. Korine was skating with friends in Washington Square Park. Impressed, the photographer asked him to compose a script about skaters and to include in the plot a teenage AIDS experience. Korine told Clark, "I've been waiting all my life to write this story." Within three weeks, Korine wrote Kids, a film about 24 hours in the sex and drug-filled lives of several Manhattan teenagers, touted as a realistic viewpoint of youth in New York City during the AIDS crisis.
Kids received mixed reviews, but due to its NC-17 rating, few audiences saw the film upon its debut. However, it has since become a significant cult film. Among others, the film features Chloë Rosario Dawson in their first movie roles; the film, while controversial, jumpstarted Korine's career. This put him into contact with film producer Cary Woods who budgeted about $1 million to produce Gummo, Korine's personal vision. In 1997, Korine wrote and directed Gummo, a film based on life in Xenia, Ohio, a town devastated by a tornado in the early 1970s. Forgoing conventional narrative, Gummo embodies sketches written by Korine, hence the nonlinear, fragmented events over the course of the film capitalizing on the obscure. Much of the cast was found during preproduction where it was filmed in Tennessee, of all those who appeared in the film, only five were experienced actors; the film is notable for having unsettling bizarre scenes, as well as its dreamlike soundtrack, which strengthens the disconcerting atmosphere.
It features "an eclectic soundtrack including death metal and Roy Orbison. It premiered at the 24th Telluride Film Festival on August 29, 1997. During the screening, numerous people left during the initial cat drowning sequence. Three months Werner Herzog called Korine to give praise to the film overall the bacon taped to the wall during the bathtub scene, he told The New York Times, "When I saw a piece of fried bacon fixed to the bathroom wall in Gummo, it knocked me off my chair. A clear voice of a generation of filmmakers, taking a new position. It's not going to dominate world cinema, but so what?"Although a majority of mainstream critics derided it as an unintelligible mess, it won top prizes at that year's Venice Film Festival and earned Korine the respect of noted filmmakers such as Gus Van Sant, among others. Its stature has only grown since, gaining a cult classic status as a shocking and experimental film "unlike anything you've seen in a while – maybe ever" – and that "if you're the kind of person who claims to be frustrated by the predictability of commercial filmmaking, a rare opportunity to put your money where your mouth is."In 1998, Korine released The Diary of Anne Frank Pt II, a 40-minute three-screen collage featuring a boy burying his dog, kids in satanic dress vomiting on a Bible, a man in black-face dancing and singing "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean".
It utilizes some of the same actors and themes as Gummo, can be considered a companion piece as the film utilises footage that didn't make the final cut of Gummo. The film "further disgusted critics" and solidified his status as a notoriously shocking and experimental director. Julien Donkey-Boy, released in 1999, included a signed Dogme 95 manifesto. While it broke a number of the movement's basic tenets, Lars Von Trier lauded Korine's ability to interpret the rules creatively; the story is told from the perspective of a young man suffering from untreated schizophrenia, played by Ewen Bremner, as he tries to understand his deteriorating world. Julien's abusive and arguably hypersensitive father is played by Werner Herzog. At one point, Korine was to play the son. Like Gummo and Kids, it too has since become something of a cult classic, a go-to film for those seeking cinema that is, as Roger Ebert said in his three star review, "shocking for most movie
