James Ferraro (USA)

Toilet Toad T.V. Overdrive
live-media
world premiere
in collaboration with Bozar Cinema / Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels, curated by Xavier Garcia Bardon

James Ferraro is without doubt the most incredible hair ever seen at Netmage in eleven years of activity. One of the strangest, as well, contradictorally coherent, adored and detested in the musical and visual panorama of the US underground. Ferraro has worked for over a year on one film, Toilet Toad T.V. Overdrive, finally presenting it at  Netmage in preview. How to define what we have seen up to now, let alone his imagination in general? Perhaps hypnagogic pop, whatever the hell else? Perhaps. Even with that, we’re not sure.

James Ferraro is half of The Skaters (unforgettable live on Cinema Vampire by Roland Lethem in 2008, with Spencer Clark), possibly half of Lamborghini Crystal, and another half again solo musician who also runs New Age Tapes dealing with a variety of names (all of which best represent their musical worlds: Newage Panther Mistique, Acid Eagle, Demon Channels, Liquid Metal…) in obscure, impossible-to-find productions and disparate formats (VHS, CDr, tapes…). The opportune definition of hypnagogic pop, fruit of the inventive mind of David ‘Volcanic Tongue’ Keenan, fully embodies this, if by hypnagogic pop we think of an ambient new age schizoid and diseased, of atmospheres ranging from screams of wandering figures to stoned country songs, together with eccentricities equal to the noble musical tradition of Hanna & Barbera, silly video games, the most radical circuit bending and remnants of the primitive cut’n'mix television of travellers on acid.