What the Hell is Christmas on Mars anyway? ;,«:..:«: Sint is falling, temperatures are plummeting and all across the Lower Mainland, drivers are leaving their brains at home for their workday commute. The time has come to go chop down the biggest tree you can find and jam it in your living room and wait for an imaginary obese man to scramble down the chimney and leave presents for all the good girls and boys. All your relatives are waiting to have the same ten minute conversation with you: “How’s school?” “What are you grades like?” “Do you have a girl/boy friend?” “Are you gay?” Uhnnn. It’s sick and maybe even borderline sadomasochistic. This Christmas, the boys from a little Oklahoma psychedelic rock band I like to call the Flaming Lips are giving us something a little different to help us get into the Yule spirit. Started in 2001, Christmas on Mars is Wayne Coyne’s (frontman and guitarist) answer to such musical masterpieces as Tommy, The Wall or Thriller. The only difference is COM was made with a complete lack of anyone resembling a real actor and no real budget to speak of. All “actors” in the movie are either band members, family members or random people with some loose association to the band. The film tells the tale of Major Syrtis, a.k.a. Steven Drozd (band multi-instrumentalist and composer), and the first Christmas on the newly- colonized Red Planet. The good Major is organizing a Christmas pageant to celebrate Christmas and the first- born Martian child’s coming into the world. Child-like whimsy and heroin flashbacks ensue. Most space or science fiction films have the look and feel of that generation’s imaginings of the future. For example, the original Star Trek was the 1960s version of the future, Star Wars was the 1970s version and /, Robot and others are today’s image of what we believe the future will be like. Christmas on Mars could be viewed as the thoughts that a group of 10- year-olds have on what our world will be like in the coming millennia. These same 10-year-olds would also produce and direct the film. Christmas on Mars is not a conventional film and it was not conceived in the normal way, much like baby Jesus. Wayne Coyne’s original idea was to make a portion of the film, show it to an audience while performing the score live, get feedback from the audience and edit the film accordingly. Did I mention The Flaming Lips is a psychedelic rock band? Insert dirty hippie jokes here. This could be part of the reason the film took eight years to make. This movie could not be made without incredible music and the soundtrack is nothing short of fantastic. To clarify, the Flaming Lips are unbelievable but they are not for everyone. The music is psychedelic rock, their live shows include bubbles, people dressed up as Teletubbies and a crazy ass light show. If you are interested in any of the above, you will enjoy Christmas on Mars. Kanye's latest reveals a side of him we never Ie listened to some bizarre and unexpected albums in my life, but 808s & Heartbreak, Kanye West’s new album, just might be one of the most bizarre and unexpected. But there’s no doubt that it’s also one of this year’s best. With his world tour just recently ended, and his last album’s final single (“Champion”) just now fading from the airwaves, Kanye West isn’t going take any time away from the spotlight. But this isn’t the same old Kanye. What makes this album an oddity is its heavy use of digital effects, such as auto-tune voice effects and a special drum machine called the Roland T-808. That’s right, he named his album after a drum machine. Hey, I told you this was going to be bizarre. 20 expected By Mark Fisher To be fair, that drum machine is on every damn song and probably put in just as many hours into this album as Kanye himself did, if not more. These and other studio effects, plus the art design, give this album a strong futuristic feel, which hasn’t been or heard on a mainstream hip-hop album for a long time, and probably never done this well. Over the past year, Kanye’s life has been changed by two hard-hitting and heartbreaking events. The first of these was the death of his mother, Donda West, in November 2007. He second was his breakup with longtime girlfriend, Alexis Phifer. If you’ve been following Kanye’s career, you’ ll be quite familiar with both of them. On all of his previous albums they both played a big part, his love and adoration or both of them was infectious and brought his mega-ego down to Earth. It’s sad to listen to “Hey Mama” from 2004’s Late Registration or “Never Let You Down” from 2004’s The College Dropout, which had the lyrics, “Nothing sadder than the day my girl’s father passed away/ So I promised Mr. Rainy I’m gonna marry your daughter/ And you know I gotta thank you for the way that she was brought up...” In fact, it was incredible to realize that 808s & Heartbreak is the first album by Kanye in which neither of them are mentioned explicitly. But that doesn’t mean Kanye has moved on; both of them are obviously quite fresh in his mind, as the gloomy and heart-wrenching songs on this album demonstrate. Kanye’s emotional state is obvious from the video for lead single “Love Lockdown,” which shows him sulking around an apartment while visions play in his head, or from his emotional performance of “Heartless” at the American Music Awards. On “Welcome to Heartbreak,” Kanye compares being rich and lonely to someone with a full family life, and it’s one of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard. Is this really the same guy who wrote “Good Life” just a year ago, which was basically three and a half minute celebration of himself? Even his guest stars get into the soul-searching act. Lil Wayne in particular does impressive work on “See You In My Nightmares.” Starting off the song singing about the pain of breaking up with someone you love, Lil Wayne proceeds to carry most of the song and shows a range of emotions—sadness, anger, spite, and fear—that capture the pain of a loving relationship turning into hate. “See You In My Nightmares,” however, also displays the album’s biggest weakness, which is the over-use of the auto-tune on some songs. On this song it’s particularly annoying as it makes it hard to tell when you’re listening to Kanye or Lil Wayne. The song’s final official track, “Cold Winter,” ends the album on the saddest note of all, with Kanye rapping about being alone at 4 a.m. on a cold night and asking, “Will I ever love again?” It’s amazing to hear this coming from Kanye West. The ego that made him famous is almost completely gone here. It might come back, this may be an aberration after a life-changing year that will take Kanye a long time to get over. Or it may be part to a larger trend that’s evolving in male hip-hop acts. Jay-Z’s and Usher’s most recent albums both had themes that drew heavily from growing up and leaving the “player” lifestyle behind. Kanye seems to be taking the next step down that path. It-will be interesting to see where the trend goes from here.