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FINAL FANTASY

I’ll start this out by saying I had a really unusually intense experience with playing Final Fantasy 3 about 700 years ago on SNES - extremely long and engaged gameplay, awesome music for MIDI, shockingly well-developed characters and the unusual proto-steampunk fusion of magic, science and fantastical sensibilities that so characterizes my current love of well-done Japanese fantasy. I was like REALLY obsessed with the game. There was a whole world of easter eggs and secret side missions and hidden characters and spells found and explored easily enough with the early advent of the internet (this was one of my primary uses for it, along with like making/having friends and secretly learning about gay stuff).

Anyway. Just the whole setup of the game, the look, the style…I still love it! Squaresoft went on to build an enormously popular franchise of similarly-styled RPG video games, but the best of their ilk have always been Final Fantasy - whether or not FF3 (actually considered FF6 in Japan) is the best of the games is certainly up for debate - many of them are awesome and technology has obviously come a long way since the 16-bit days, so the sound and visuals they can use to push their stories has evolved rather enormously. But it will always be my favorite because of how struck I was by the scope of their imagination and how well the story was told.

But I’m actually dominantly coming back to that memory because the interest immediately piqued my curiosity about the Owen Pallett Final Fantasy. The title of the record I bought was He Poos Clouds, a reference to the protagonist Cloud from Final Fantasy 7 (the only one on Playstation 1 I managed to skip out on) and apparently unpacks the 8 different schools of magic under the rubric of D&D - I am not familiar with what precisely these schools are. But the combination of the name, the concept, his Canadianism AND the fact that he does orchestration and writes string arrangement for bands like Beirut, Grizzly Bear, Arcade Fire and Hidden Cameras TO NAME A FEW…brought my fandom to quite a head.

Strangely, I managed to go 6 months to a year without really listening to the album, in spite of my curiosity about it. I think because it starts so quietly and is so dominantly instrumental, it was easy to underestimate the enormity of the landscape and soundscape he creates. I think I finally listened to the it all the way through after he shocked the music community by winning the (to THIS Canadaphile at least) mega-prestigous Polaris Music Prize in 2006. It’s a huge deal because it’s awarded by the Canadian government and HELLO it’s Canada they have one fucking million good bands per capita. I knew the record was really striking a chord with me when I hit ‘Song Song Song’ toward the end of HPC - arguably the best song of the album - a gradual movement toward a rather epic swell of strings…for some reason I keep on finding these really lo-fi versions of the song so I am not even gonna try and link to it (get the album, suckas!).

My interest in him has been re-revived after I found out he was queer when I was perusing the online archives of badass publication BUTT MAGAZINE and found out not only that detail but read this rad interview with him in the pages of the 18th issue. Not only is it a cool interview, but it’s done by Ed Droste, lead singer of Grizzly Bear and fellow indie rock queero. I love BUTT (gigglesnort) and their endless insight and for creating a whole new world of a gay community that I actually feel a part of and curious about - they have excellent interviews with everyone from AA Bondy (Hidden Cameras), Slava Mogutin (artist, hottie and first person to receive American Amnesty based on being persecution of homosexuality) to rad filmmakers like John Waters and Gus Vant Sant. And obviously, lots of hot pics and essays. Their blog is also really good. < /buttlove >

Back to Owen…his traditional sensibility (he is a classically and thoroughly educated violinist) makes him an unlikely star of, let alone award-winning member of, the indie music community. It is the insight of his songwriting I think that makes it really special and worth listening to and not just classic music (sorry yall but I got prejudice against that…siddown and read some Dickens to that shit if you wanna but not my style).

I love that in spite of the mega-cache of his collaborations, he still really felt passionate about pursuing his solo work. And that it’s so good. I think part of the regular delay in the intensity with which I embrace his work is based on having been so burned by queer chamber pop before…I was so in love with the first Rufus Wainwright album, especially because of it’s total unique atmosphere, the perfection of its production and its connection with the beginning of my embrace of my queer identity. Each subsequent album stepped further and further away what was so great about the first - an unclassifiable blend of opera, pop, 60s-70s folk and mad dollops of je ne sais quoi. While Rufus has moved away from this blend and instead is focusing on highlighting each element individually, Owen is keeping STRONG and I would even say improving….look at this music video for Horsetail Feathers - he’s widening the scope of his style to something of a more early 20th century lounge jazz to great effect if you ask me:

So yeah. I’ve really been enjoying his stuff and listening to waaay too much of it and now to conclude I’m going to link to this downloadable collection of some of his excellent cover work! Including FANTASY by Mariah Carey - GAY CARDIACS FOR EVERYONE! It’s kinda good and I just love the Fantasy/Fantasy and that he can use a loop pedal to create the Tom Tom Club beat as well. I just read recently that he has another full-length album coming out sometime between fall and year’s end, I believe…I can hardly wait! Um, it’s really hard to not close this with more gushing about Final Fantasy 3, but I think I overloaded myself on dat shit at the beginning.

UPDATE

I was finally able to track down an interview with Owen where he lays out the 8 different types of magic from Dungeons and Dragons and what each song on He Poos Clouds corresponds with (with two exceptions).  They are:

The schools / songs are as follows:
Abduration – “Arctic Circle”
Illusion – “He Poos Clouds”
Conjuration – “This Lamb Sells Condos”
Necromancy – “If I were a Carp”
Enchantment – “I’m afraid of Japan”
Evocation – “Song Song Song”
Divination – “Many Lives -> 49mp”
Transmutation – “Do You Love”