Include Me Out

CD Shoppe Shock Purchase - Slipping Away With Johnny Dankworth

2012-02-02T08:07:00.000-08:00

I went into a shoppe and bought a CD today. I did, honest. I don't know what came over me, other than to say it was a 'Oh, what the hell' moment, arrived at after a couple of minutes' consideration regarding all things concerned, those being a) money, of course, a whole £10, b) the potential for pleasure in a compilation of Johnny Dankworth tunes split into two discs, one called 'Big Screen Entertainment', the other, 'Home Entertainment', c) the question of whether I wanted to 'support' the shoppe, because every purchase of this kind today feels like an act of charity in the name of a virtually extinct breed, d) Fuck these record companies and their moaning about file sharing - yeah - fuck 'em, 'cause, you know what? I've spent a lot of money down the years...I've helped pay for record company fat cats' limos, yachts, homes, coke habits and so on - now they're moaning about me getting music for free, and fuck the FBI too. My gen should be given music. We should all have special passes, keys to the kingdom of all music in honour of all we've done to uphold the industry. I bet a lot of people were shocked to find out that Megaupload bosses were fat cats too, with millions stashed away, but what did we expect them to be, weedy geeks living on welfare whilst they provided the means to get free stuff for everyone with a computer?

So I bought the CD. I even read the sleeve notes on the bus coming home, that's how much of a novelty it was. Or, how much I wanted to pass the time, during which, I might add, someone's cell phone notified it's owner of a call by playing the sax riff to a Sade tune, the name of which escapes me now although I recognised it at the time. For two minutes back in 1983 I've a terrible suspicion I thought she was all right, and how's that for a confession? You have to understand that we were swept away by Jazz and anything 'jazzy' that charted and Sade was just about 'jazzy', and looked good, and it didn't matter that she wasn't fit to wash Sarah Vaughan's knickers. If I were a Catholic I'd have been to confess about this by now, but as it is, I can't, except to you, so do you forgive me?

Johnny Dankworth was Jazzy, in case you didn't know. He was English, and would sometimes crop up on the telly with his missus, Cleo Laine, who sings. They were Jazz UK, performing that kind of Jazz that wouldn't upset the audience of a Les Dawson show. Johnny was knighted, and later, Cleo was made a dame, and as you know, there's ain't nothing like a dame in Jazz other than Cleo, as far as I know. She crops up a few times on this comp, most notably singing 'Let's Slip Away', 'Thieving Boy' and 'Life Is A Wheel'. All-in-all it's a good time selection of sounds that swing, mostly in a 60s fashion, when TV shows had themes that were just great and groovy. Any comp containing the theme to 'The Frost Report' is OK with me. Also (don't worry, this isn't shaping up to be anything like a track-by-track review) there's 'Two Piece Flower' and 'Off Duty', both of which are almost enough to convince me that Brits could match their US counterparts, almost, but I am biased, and take some convincing in that area. Still, if Joe Harriott had lived long enough, he should have been knighted too. On the whole, as far as I can tell, it's far wiser to knight Jazz musicians than bankers because, after all, they're unlikely to cause a recession at a later date. I've made some small contribution towards sustaining the consumer industry now, and feel very smug for having done so even if it means giving money to Universal.

Juste Avant La Nuit (Just Before Nightfall) - Claude Chabrol 1971

2012-02-01T10:13:00.000-08:00

It's hell being bourgeois in a Claude Chabrol film. You might be married to a fine-looking woman like Stephane Audran, and live in a swish modernist pad on the outskirts of Paris, like Charles Masson in this film, but still, it's hell. You're forced into sadomasochistic sex by your lover, and one session ends very badly. So begins the descent into the depths of despair. Every shadow holds doubt and, ultimately, every door is closed except the one marked 'Last Exit'. Morality and justice are non-existent. All you find are perverse forms of forgiveness and acceptance when what you want is punishment according to the rules of civilised society. But you're too cowardly to go to the police, and too racked with guilt to rebuild a life with a devoted wife. There's no priest to confess to, no salvation in religion. Working from the novel by Edouard Atiyah, Chabrol films the dark heart of life without hope and murder without clear motive. There are no answers. There is no meaning to even the worst of crimes. Ultimately, there is only the desire for sleep...

Real Detective Magazine

2012-01-31T10:05:00.000-08:00

Pin-Up: The New Black Widow

2012-01-30T10:16:00.000-08:00

Fantastic comic No.41 1967

Shuffling With The Music Machine & Writers Who Have Not Influenced Me

2012-01-29T09:51:00.000-08:00

The machine will choose. I'm incapable.
Click the shuffle on...

Stop Looking At Me! - Dennis Michael Tenney
Tape Loop With Rhythm & Bass - Kid Baltan
Border Cop (Opening Titles) - Stanley Myers
We Travel The Spaceways - Sun Ra

I've written about shuffling music before, but cannot remember where. If I had a memory that good, I might be a machine.
Paul Morley writes a lot about Lou Reed's Metal machine music in Words And Music. Morley is not a writer who has influenced me. Other's writers who have not influenced me:
Lester Bangs
Julie Birchill
Richard Meltzer
David Meltzer
Philip Larkin
Nick Kent
Kevin Pearce
Alistair Fitchett
Simon Reynolds
Greg Tate
David Toop

Factors - John Baker
Chippewa - John Zorn
The Witchdoctor - Ennio Morricone & Bruno Nicolai

I return from a charity shop hunt empty-handed, saying to myself 'That's the way it goes sometimes'. Two weeks ago I found series 1 & 2 of The Wire, £3.99 each, having mentioned it to a friend at Work the day before, which either cast a lucky spell on me, or simply made me conscious of it and subconsciously on the look-out. Tomorrow I intend to discuss Pierre Henry on vinyl with a view to finding some in a charity the next day. Except, it doesn't work like that, unfortunately, and besides, he'd having nothing to say about Pierre Henry. But he could say something about Henry Winkler as The Fonze, since his heart is sprayed with American graffiti in the form of a love for The Beach Boys, Phil Spector, Springsteen, Ray Charles etc. But I don't want a copy of Happy Days on DVD, should such a thing exist.

The machine continues to choose...
Laptevinmera - Pan Sonic
Closing Crawl - Jerry Fielding
Children of the Corn - Jonathan Elias
Incredible Melting Man - Arlon Ober

Except it doesn't choose, does it? Surely there is no pondering involved; no consideration of mood, or desire to hear anything. But if the machine could ponder and decide, I suppose it could do so in a nanosecond. It plays...
Modulus - John Zorn
of the hundreds of tracks it could pick, why Zorn again? Can it really be in the mood for John Zorn?
It plays...
Klangexperimente - John Cage/David Tudor
By now I am convinced it is choosing what it knows I will enjoy, rather than one of the tracks that I've yet to delete. I'm waiting for it to pick one of those, just to have the satisfaction of erasing it and creating more space on my hard drive.

S.O.S.Z2 - Peter Hamilton...
Only the machine would put them together...electronic avant-gardism and swinging psichedelico.
The machine has yet to chose a track that I can provide a YouTube clip of - it's being elitist and awkward, and I cannot stop until it does as I wish.

Atlantic - Tom Dissevelt
Photo Injector - Dopplereffekt
Memory 45 - The Caretaker

At last...

Living All Your Life - Anna Hawley Searles (ed) (Allyn & Bacon 1953)

2012-01-28T01:53:00.000-08:00

Mayan Temples - Sun Ra 'live' in Detroit

2012-01-26T11:41:00.000-08:00

Here's a fresh upload from your favourite rambling amateur media archaeologist

It's from the 28-CD Transparency box set, 'The Complete Detroit Jazz Center Residency'.

Sexton Blake Union Jack Omnibus (Greyfriars Press 1972)

2012-01-25T09:11:00.000-08:00

I found this hardback last week, a snip at £3.50. Five issues of Union Jack are reproduced in their entirety, along with one Detective Weekly. Union Jack, a story paper, ran from 1894 until 1933. Detective Weekly ran from 1933 until 1940.

James Kirby, The Caretaker - Downloading (The Past)

2012-01-24T10:01:00.000-08:00

Most net-savvy people out there will have downloaded entire careers in an hour or two. Do we listen to all we download? Is it about having everything? Does too much availability of an artist’s work leave us confused about where to start listening? Is easy access to an artist’s work slowly blunting our desire or ability to connect with it?

- James Kirby (The Caretaker)

We follow James Kirby into the ballroom of the Overlook Hotel, Stockport, where he is the caretaker during the winter recess (winters are very harsh up North). He orders a drink whilst an orchestra materialises in ghost form, shimmering, transparent, playing an old Swing tune. He drinks up, leaves the room, goes into another and sits at his mixing desk until a woman enters with a tray of sandwiches and a hot drink. He rejects her offer, grows increasingly psychotic, telling her 'When you hear this sound' (he presses a few buttons) 'That means I'm fucking working!' She flees, trembling. Later she returns when he is elsewhere and plays back what he's been creating. All she hears are the words 'All work and no play make Jack a dull boy' over and over...

Do we listen to all we download? Or are our memories capable of retaining so many files? The Caretaker remembers things for us, delivering snippets of old music which we may not even have heard before...and it returns, as memories often do, in distorted, fragmentary forms.

It's fitting that someone who once embraced file-sharing, but has now turned his back on it, should deliver past music as a broken entity, corrupted by time, made impure by technology. Through the digital domain, either on disc or, yes, file, his music spreads further than was ever possible before. Perhaps he would rather it remained elusive and demanded more effort and attention on behalf of the buyer, although he once gave it away.

We photograph everything according to whim and store the images. How many snapshots in time and place remain dormant on hard drives, never to be looked at again? Kirby has a point. Be it music or images, saturation frequently prevents proper connectivity.

This is a time of panic amongst avid downloaders as one storage facility after another bows to the law. Right now many will be grabbing what they can - everything must go! - before the next store closes. Yes, people hoard for the sake of it, but in the light of the clampdown, many will now be examining what they have. Suddenly files become more precious. Uploaders are going to find new ways to share, and the will to do so, coupled with people's desire to hear obscure music, means other methods are necessary.

The Caretaker's 'Repetition Of Phrases' shares a disc with Gino Marinuzzi's soundtrack to 'Planet Of The Vampires' in my collection. I can't recall why I put them together, but it is not an unsuccessful marriage. I can imagine Kirby working wonders with Marinuzzi's orchestral sketches. Copyright lawyers, meanwhile, wage war with 'vampires' who they fear may suck the very lifeblood (royalties & other sources of cash) out of the entertainment industry.

Kirby's latest work, 'Patience (After Sebald)', is a continuation of his mission to remake musical history. In this case, Schubert's 'Winterreise' (1827). The song here certainly does not remain the same, the voice being altered beyond recognition, rendered as barely human sound. Classical music has long been appropriated, often resulting in cheap attempts to marry beauty and the beats. Kirby's immersion in memory and sound, however, ensures that the grace and poignancy of the original are retained.

Essential Caretaker music: Theoretically Pure Anterograde Amnesia

An Arduous Task

2012-01-23T09:51:00.000-08:00

Perfect Gifts For Hippies, Buckminster Fuller, Olympic Trousers - Playboy Jan '68

2012-01-22T04:14:00.000-08:00

Collage: Tom Daly

Artist uncredited

Order now in time for the London olympics

Mosaico Psichedelico Compilation

2012-01-21T03:27:00.000-08:00

Prime instrumental Italian psyche. Favoloso!

Listen hear

She Hates Housework

2012-01-20T10:09:00.000-08:00

From 'Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes In 3-D!'

Michel Magne, Kindle Burning, The Artist & Inappropriate Laughter

2012-01-19T08:57:00.000-08:00

Right. Think. Come on, dammit!
Trouble is, I'm distracted by Michel Magne playing 'Planetes Et Foret', from his 1978 album 'Elements No.1: La Terre'. The track is a strange fusion of grand(iose) piano awash with, and at the same time being strafed by, synths. It's a strange album altogether, being a blend of Indo-New Age late-Prog bordering on the bland but remaining onside through subtle arrangements and unpredictable electro hits. I shoulda been a professional music critic, eh? Maybe not.

But I wanted to write about something else, and music snared me, as it does if it's good. Now that the album's finished, perhaps I can. Perhaps I cant...

Tim Footman wrote recently that he'd acquired a Kindle. I ribbed him about it. You may have been given one for Xmas. Should anyone present one as a gift to me, I'd accept politely, feign gratitude, and see if it burns. Not that I'd ever get one as a present because LJ knows me better; she knows how often I struggle home with a bag full of that old stuff, paper, printed pages bound up in the art, good or bad, of a designer.
Design is one of the reasons books beat Kindle - the most obvious one. After all, how can a Kindle compete with this. It can't, and doesn't try. Instead, it relies on the medium being the message, a message which says 'This is modern, ergo, so are you'. To be Modern, as in consuming every popular gadget made, is to display a willingness to partake in Modern Life, which in turn demonstrates that you are not an old Luddite living in the rear-view mirror world.
Kindle-reading suggests to me the kind of person who not only loves gadgets, but didn't give much thought to the aesthetics of book design. After all, most popular literature does not come bound in great art. Most of it is crudely designed, or to put it another way, designed in a simple fashion because the main purpose is to tell the reader the title and author. To those for whom 'airport novels' aren't just for holidays, the Kindle makes a kind of sense. All it does is carry the words.
Tim's a smart cookie, though, and I'm sure he'll be reading Baudrillard on his.

Watching 'The Artist' last night, we found ourselves in front of four inappropriate laughers (or idiots, as I prefer to call them) who obviously had IEED (Involuntary Emotional Expression Disorder). As you may have noticed, it's not uncommon in cinemas. Luckily, the film was so good as to remain unspoiled. If they do not technically have IEED, they definitely have an inability to understand what they're watching, which again, is common amongst cinema-goers, and one of the reasons I stopped attending years ago. Mobile phones, talking, and generally idiotic behaviour have long plagued film-lovers, which begs the question: what are those arseholes doing there in the first place? To which I can answer: they are the prime audience for films made with idiots in mind, naturally. Which is not to say that all action/entertainment-based films are idiotic, but that they allow for numbskull viewers by battering them with noise, employing rapid edits and, of course, lacking intellectual or aesthetic depth.
The laughers were primed early by the comic dog and light-hearted nature of the film, but their poor minds were unable to cope with the contrasting moods and emotional subtlety that followed. The best example being when Valentin finds Miller in his dressing room caressing herself with the sleeve of his jacket. A scene that was momentarily comic quickly shifts, along with the actors' expressions, to something more poignant, almost tragic, and is matched by Ludovic Bource's superb soundtrack. But even as the orchestra mirrored the emotional content of the scene, the laughers kept laughing. Duh.

TTFN

Chemical Nuptials - Max Ernst

2012-01-17T08:37:00.000-08:00

1947 - 1948

Electronics Without Tears - F.C.Judd (Public Information)

2012-01-16T08:05:00.000-08:00

First Daphne, now Fred, another name to add to the roster of revived sonic revolutionaries from ye olde England of Amateur Tape Recording magazine and fanatical dedication to tinkering with sound, as well as actually inventing such things as the Oramics machine and in Fred's case, the Chromasonics system. Its this dedication to boffinry that cracked the Enigma code, you know. Fred was a radar engineer during the war; the sonic bleeps might have inspired his interest in sound.

In the studio: ring modulators, tape recorders, mixers, filter circuits, a keyboard, which Fred assures us 'will play tunes', but he's not some old square who's going to practise anything like a tune on it - oh no! Fred uses it for 'making sounds' - yes, that's how advanced he was - sounds like those on 'Mysterioso', which as you can guess from the title, perfectly fits the bill as far as the modern love of Haunting Music goes. Along with that we have 'Spooks', 'Ghosts' and 'Maniac Laughter', all of which, thanks to Fred's treatments, are brief but wonderful improvements on mere BBC sound effects tracks.

Fred & Daphne

'Let's see what we can do with a loop and electric guitar' says Fred before the track, 'Broken Guitar'. He brilliantly deconstructs that most treasured instrument of teenage Pop - he's hipper than that, daddy-oh - so hip that he's making the future of electronic music. Witness 'Voltage Control 2', which wouldn't sound out of place on an Ekoplekz album.

The collection's littered with examples of the sound of things to come from the likes of The Focus Group, Jon Brooks and the rest of that crazy gang for whom early English eccentricities in electronic music are such a source of inspiration. 'Voix Angelique' is a particularly fine example. Brilliant work by Public Information.

A Yin Yang Diet, Gultskra Artikler, Stalker & Soho Lit

2012-01-15T09:27:00.000-08:00

Me, me, me, me ME!

I just looked at a blog post that was all about the blogger – no surprise there – but he didn’t half go on about his musical career. It must be of interest to someone, but I didn’t stay long.

So, I went to the supermarket today. Thrilling, eh? Nothing interesting happened, unless you can call being able to buy two packs of Go Ahead! Crispy Slices (49 calories per slice) for the price of one interesting – which it isn’t to you, obviously. To achieve yin yang I also bought a chocolate éclair, although I don’t think eating both is what dieticians mean when they talk about a ‘balanced diet’.

Musically, I’ve been consuming Gultskra Artikler’s ‘Galaktika’, a very fine album in the modern IM mode, where they’re very much in the same Zone as fellow Russian Edward Artemiev. Note to self: watch ‘Stalker’ again soon. I recently read the book, ‘Roadside Picnic’ by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky, which inspired ‘Stalker’. Tarkovsky changed a lot, changed virtually everything except the essential mystery of The Zone, and in doing so, made a far great work of art. In the book there’s much wheeling and dealing with artefacts gathered by stalkers who, with names like Bob The Gorilla and Pete The Scab, sound like pulp mobsters. It could have been filmed in another way entirely, as a sci-fi action movie by William Friedkin, with Gene Hackman as the troubled stalker. It would have been truer to the book, but not as visually sumptuous or enigmatic as Tarkovsky’s masterpiece.

Terry Taylor’s ‘Baron’s Court All Change’ was another recent read. In Zone 1 of London’s transport ticketing system (tenuous links, I’ve got ‘em!), Soho was/is also a place for wheeling and dealing, along with lashing of smut, and in the 50s, when this was written, breeding ground of a young bohemian bunch. Yes, it’s all that Jazz and smoking stuff that made Art Blakey records sound even better. Taylor was the model for Colin MacInnes’s anonymous hero of ‘Absolute Beginners’. That is a far superior novel to ‘Baron’s Court’, and will always be the best on the subject, but as a cultural document of the time and place Taylor’s novel is worth a look.

I’m currently lost in the labyrinth of the Navidson household. There’s your clue. I’m sure some of you will now know what I’m reading.

TTFN

Raiding The 20th Century with DJ Food & Paul Morley

2012-01-14T00:38:00.000-08:00

Bless UbuWeb. I was only alerted to the existence of this mix because they included it in their Top 15 this month. It evolved after DJ Food first aired a mix on XFM (well, I wouldn't be listening to that station) in 2004. Kev then read Morely's book and got him to read some choice parts for a new, extended mix. UbuWeb's recent tweets suggest that the Stop Online Piracy Act proposed by 'Hollywood's favourite Republican', Lamar Smith, should be taken very seriously. Well, I'm ignorant regarding the technicalities of the issue, but as y'all know we need the Net to be free from shackles that prevent us from being able to hear what would often otherwise be lost musical treasures. The mix is a brilliant history lesson dedicated to (whilst demonstrating) the art of sampling, cut-ups and other forms of sonic adventure.

Raiding The 20th Century

DEMDIKE STARE CRASH SCARE! & Fred Judd

2012-01-13T09:46:00.000-08:00

It's that time of year when we're all waiting for The First Great Album. Lest you think me completely stupid, that is The First Album Which You As An Individual With Your Own Taste Really Enjoy - something like that. Perhaps I'd never make a good tabloid headline writer. 'DEMDIKE STARE CRASH SCARE!' There's one The Sun will no doubt use on their showbiz page when the van Sean & Miles are touring Sweden in swerves to miss a moose and ends up in the ditch. 'TRYP-DITCH!' would be even better.

Whilst eagerly awaiting the dynamic(?) duo's next release on CD, the first hit of 2012 will be 'Electronics Without Tears', the Fred Judd comp on Public Information, which I've yet to hear, but for us lovers of ye olde electronics it's unmissable.

A Well-Known Friend Slightly Altered

2012-01-12T08:45:00.000-08:00

Scan for viruses. A hearse passes me on North Rd with
no cars following other than those waiting to get past -
a corpse with no family or friends.
The Love-Death Thing. "Oh, the bloke with different coloured eyes"
(woman taking my money for
'Bowie In His Own Words'). 'Come On My Skeleton'..
...........'The most fearful of monsters
is the well-known friend slightly altered' (Kobo Abe, Inter Ice Age 4)
shglksjhglskdjfgh. The Zone. Three 5p pieces (found in the back
of my draw at work). 'No likey, no lighty'. TRAIN YOBS SET
DOG ON TV ROXANNE.
'We should not worry about how many people
can already understand or hear what is happening'. (Stockhausen)
The bricks of my house will outlive me. 'Lots and lots of cheese flavor
Many, many uses
Tangy and delicious
Right size
Convenient packages
Popular price
Everybody loves cheez-it!'
Consume/Create/Consume/Create/Consume/
Create/Regurgitate. Diplassiasmus.
Morricone: 29 albums, 300 songs. The Anatomy of
Melancholy. Ego is
not a four-letter word. All The Things You
Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother.

Something Kind Of Urgh

2012-01-11T10:11:00.000-08:00

It was pure chance that lead me to listen to Girls Aloud. What else could have caused the self-inflicted misery? This morning I just happened to get in the same lift as the girl holding up her MP3 player, inadvertently showing me that she was listening to a song called 'Something Kinda Oooh'.

It's rare to get a peek into someone else's sound world. I was curious, and yes, we know what curiosity did; in this case, it probably killed a few brain cells. Being culturally astute I reasoned that a title like that wasn't going to turn out to be a piece of avant-garde electronic music, or Free Jazz. So I Googled it. Worse still, dear reader, I played the track, by Girls Aloud. Yes, it serves me right, I know. But I didn't play it all, only about a minute, which is more than any sane person would endure, I admit. Despite the clue in the title and despite knowing that most people listen to absolute garbage I was still disappointed, which must mean that somewhere deep inside I'm an optimist.

Below is a new upload. I've put it onto my MP3 player and intend to watch out for that girl in the future. I'm going to make sure I get in the same lift as her and show her what I'm listening to. I hope she'll be as curious as I was, and Google 'Timesteps' in the hope that it's a Pop sensation.

The Invaders - Dam of Death - Jack Pearl (Whitman 1967)

2012-01-10T09:29:00.000-08:00

Brain Salt

2012-01-09T09:27:00.000-08:00

What I Know About Boys - Louis Redmond (Hanover 1952)

2012-01-08T04:40:00.000-08:00

'Once a day, a Boy begins to act as if he has just been reading one of the more poisonous philosophers. He sees through everything. He hates everybody. Anything you say, or fail to say, is wrong. In dealing with a Boy in this condition, the impulse to throw him away should be resisted. Instead, he should be fed. This will restore his optimism for twenty-four hours. Do not, however, make the mistake of telling him "You're just hungry" - especially after the Boy has reached maturity. If there is anything a man hates, it is to be told, while cruising along nicely on a Dim View, or right in the middle of a sad epigram, that he is Just Hungry.'

Afro Noise - Cut Hands

2012-01-07T02:17:00.000-08:00

One I missed last year but was alerted to it by the new release of vinyl editions, the 'long-awaited vinyl editions', according to Boomkat. Why anyone eagerly awaits vinyl after the event is a mystery to me. Vinyl is such hard work. You have to get up, walk over to the record player, lift things like the record, and the stylus arm. Not that I'm lazy or anything. The only vinyl I value are LPs like this, or this. Cut hands is Whitehouse noise merchant William Bennett's solo project. I read that there are even some Whitehouse tracks on here. Perhaps 'Bia Mintatu' is one of them since it's more Noise than percussion. I've never heard a Whitehouse track, and reading about them, I don't want to. It's a simple formula, adorn tribal percussion with electronic sheets of sound. But it's very effective, akin to what 23 Skidoo did all those years back. The sound of Bennett's life in the bush with ghosts of heavy industrial manufacturing has a certain muscular charm. The efforts of others to marry Afro with hi-tech fall prey to the quest for finely-tuned precision, thereby sterilising the product. But Bennett creates something more brutal and earthy. And for my money, that makes it far more interesting.

Sights & Sounds of '68 - Stereo Seduction

2012-01-06T08:49:00.000-08:00

22 followers

2012-01-05T09:47:00.000-08:00

Ghosts On Magnetic Tape. Winter wind moaning
through the bark bones of naked trees. Coffee gone cold.
Microwave. "I've met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my
time but you - you're twenty minutes" (Jan Sterling to Charles Tatum
in Ace In The Hole). Trouble with living in Camden Town: Amy
Winehouse in every cafe & bar - press-ganged into
mourning the death of The People's Pop Princess. They say
that when a highbrow meets a lowbrow walking along Broadway,
soon the highbrow he has no brow, ain't it a shame?
And you're to blame. What kind of man reads Playboy?
Crackle of vinyl. 'The public is neither stupid nor intelligent.
No one knows what it is. Sometimes it surprises, usually
it disappoints' (Jean-Luc Godard). The rich are just
poor people with money. 'The Amazing Magic Robot Always
Give The Answer'. "It's more Jazz than Jazz!" (LJ on II B.S. by Mingus).
Elektronische Mythen. Add to dictionary. Rapidshare. So Who Owns
Death TV? A girl racer in lycra flies past me on her bike as I cycle
to work - I wish her luck. I seem to be a verb. 22 Followers.
27 Followers. 122 Friends. What's on your mind?

The Project, Biometry by Der Zyklus & The Life of The Blogger

2012-01-04T09:48:00.000-08:00

The Project

Drexciya: Journey Of The Deep Sea Dweller 1 - Arne Nordheim: Electric

2012-01-03T09:47:00.000-08:00

It's been a very Drexciyan day, by which I don't mean I've been to Positron Island, or mixing with Mutant Gillmen, and as the New Year starts it wouldn't be good to be Drifting Into A Time Of No Future. I have, as you've probably guessed, been listening to the newly-released compilation 'Journey Of The Deep Sea Dweller 1'. To say it's good would be an understatement, to say it's The Best Album Ever would be overstating things and so, summoning all my critical and literary powers, I'll boldly state that IT IS BRILLIANT. But if you know Drexciya you'll know that. If you don't, I suggest you take a trip on Doctor Blowfin's Water Cruiser and, er, dive in.

Another form of Deep, Arne Nordheim's 'Electric' album, consisting of 5 tracks recorded between '68 and '70. There are more ideas in 'Polypoly' (1970) alone than most artists manage in a lifetime. By 'ideas', I mean components, perhaps, or simply imagination, since Nordheim's sonic universe is profoundly creative, having as he does a world of sound at his disposal, to splice and dice according to his muse. Chants, a baby crying, transistorised voice, a crow (?), a crowd, gunfire, breaking glass, military command, orchestras, rocket blast, a child coughing...an amazing tapestry tied together by electronic sound. It's like tuning in to life on earth from a distant planet. Listen Hear.

Sinatra Gets A New Stereo (1968)

2012-01-02T01:16:00.000-08:00

Carry On Screwing & A Happy New Year

2012-01-01T00:50:00.000-08:00

LJ and me spent most of New Year's Eve screwing, and we intend to start 2012 the same way, so I don't have much time to post today. Yes, there's another chest of drawers to assemble. Well, at least we're beginning the year constructively.

What a year that was! I wrote a ground-breaking work of fiction, Chelsea won the Premiership, Sun Ra came back to visit me one night and revealed the secrets of the universe, money poured into my account and Include Me Out was generally recognised by leading cultural critics (and Simon Reynolds) as one of the best blogs around - phew! Or did I only imagine it all?

Resolutions? I've made a few. I have two new projects in the pipeline and will be starting them very soon. A long work of fiction and another blog. By 'blog' I simply mean using Blogger to host the project. These may impact on the frequency with which I post here, or not, depending on how I manage my time. How do we manage time? As Rip Rig & Panic once said, it is a 'trick of the mind' after all. When Chelsea are winning 1-0 with only extra-time to play those minutes feel like hours. When we need time to 'stretch' it invariably shrinks. I'm sure you've noticed this. If not, consider me a wise man. You are probably five-years-old.

Excuse me, it's only 8am. Another resolution: MUST NOT TRY TO WRITE WHEN MY BRAIN IS ASLEEP.

Thank you for reading this blog. It will continue to be a repository for various things which interest me. Hopefully our interests will coincide sometimes.

I appreciate you regular readers (both of you) for remaining loyal. And to those visitors looking for information about courgettes, I offer my apologies.

TTFN

The Love-Death Thing - Thomas B. Dewey (Pocket Book 1971)

2011-12-31T00:43:00.000-08:00

Lost in the unreality of Hippieland, California...

'His mournful brown eyes shifted in embarrassment.
"Sounds like a sociology lecture, doesn't it?" he said. "But it's basic to the thing. The point is, the hippies are no less corruptible than any other bunch of people, regardless of their basic philosophy, which in the beginning was certainly more good than bad." '

Interplanetary Music Mix

2011-12-30T10:01:00.000-08:00

A mix to match the series. It also runs chronologically.

Interplanetary Music by Timewriter on Mixcloud

Miles Davis As A Chiptune

2011-12-29T02:25:00.000-08:00

This being the Silly Season I thought I'd offer you a chiptune rendition of 'So What' from the one Jazz album that regularly gets listed amongst 'All-Time Classics' along with 'Pet Sounds' and, you know, other Rock/Pop Masterpieces. I used to think that was a disgraceful sign of ignorance on behalf of critics back when I was a Jazz messenger who believed there should be at least 48 other Jazz albums in an All-Time Top 50. But I'm over that phase now, and don't care if they omit 'The Shape Of Jazz To Come' or 'Time Out', for instance. Despite the small nagging voice which says 'This is blasphemy' I do like this version. The whole album, with various contributors, works well, if only at bringing a smile to my face. It came out a couple of years ago, and the producer got into a lot of trouble over the cover art, which you can read about here. The story makes me think he's Kind Of Nuts, or just Kind Of Unlucky, but I thank him for adding a silly and in some ways sublime element to my holiday.

Interplanetary Music - 20 Essential Albums Part 4

2011-12-28T07:35:00.000-08:00

The last leg of the journey. I hope you've enjoyed it, and possibly made new discoveries along the way. If you think I've missed any vintage IM classics feel free to suggest them by Commenting.

16. Zero Time - Tonto's Expanding Head Band (1971)

The sound of The Original New Timbral Orchestra is impossible to resist. Cecil and Margouleff's first album is a classic and would be perfect if not for 'Riversong'. But for that they must be forgiven. As I'm sure you know, they also worked with Stevie Wonder on a few albums, including 'Innervisions', which is one of the Greatest Albums Ever Made and always will be.

17. Cosmographie - Bruno Menny (1972)

A special upload just for you. You see how much I care? You need this album if you have any interest in electro-acoustic-tape composition of the cosmo-sound kind. Of course, he could have called it anything, but the music does undoubtedly create an atmosphere akin to being adrift in space whilst all manner of objects float by, such as abandoned capsules, grandfather clocks, dead robots and tourists from Planet 3.

18. Outer Space - Vaclav Nelhybel (1974)

Nothing here lasts longer than 1.35. It doesn't need to. Evoking the golden age of the Radiophonic Workshop, with simple arrangements for synth and piano, Nelhybel perfectly captures impressions of 'Space Meteors', 'Star Clusters' and 'The Pulses Of The Universe' in a style that's naive, almost child-like, and all the better for it.

19. Cosmos 2043 - Bernard Fevre (1977)

This has a light feel which frequently veers towards Pop but Fevre keeps on the right side of the line and, crucially for the period, avoids going Disco as many others did. It took me a while to warm to this but since I have it creates the ideal mood for when I'm entertaining in my rocket-fuelled space-age bachelor pad.

20. Biomechanoid - Joel Vandroogenbroeck (1980)

Ending with the big bang that is 'Biomechanoid' this, despite the date, is absolutely spot-on IM. Other-worldly sounds, perfectly-pitched ambience, piano, menace, imagination and 'Interstellar Insects', of course. And is 'Biomechanoid' not a great title? Somehow a 'Plastic Gnome' got involved, but hey, it's Joel's album and if he wants a plastic gnome in amongst the 'Dark Plasma' and 'Asteroids' he can have it.

Santa Takes A Trip To Mars

2011-12-24T03:27:00.000-08:00

Moon Pool & Dead Band plus Ekoplekz

2011-12-23T07:21:00.000-08:00

Do androids have nightmares about electric sheep? Having fallen asleep in the corner of a trashy club on a distant planet whilst the DJ plays mutant Disco with worn-out needles over a fucked-up sound system this is what they’d hear. It’s that good. Nate Young and Dave Shettler (s)mash up the dance floor good and proper on this brilliant album (untitled, by the way). With Moroderesque rhythms, motorik madness and muffled bass, this last dance at the dystopian disco is a devilish delight.

Another Album of the Year: Memowrekz by Ekoplekz. I couldn’t see 2011 out and not mention this masterpiece of raw rhythm and noise by the hardest working man in show business....heh-heh. Prolific, and producer of pure quality, Nick Edwards is rightfully got the recognition he deserves this year.

Classical Music Quiz Shock! Albums of the Year & The Complete Electronic Music of Iannis Xenaksis

2011-12-22T08:24:00.000-08:00

When I tell you that last Sunday I found myself taking part in a classical music quiz with other dinner guests you’ll think me a right posh git, but regular readers will know I’m actually as common as muck.

Anyway, a guy had compiled snippets from classical pieces and we had to name the composer or symphony. I got one right, amazingly, after geographical prompting from the quizmaster – Sibelius? – yes! I felt as chuffed as when I get a question right on University Challenge, which is rare, and if I do it usually relates to music. It goes something like this: the brains are played a Miles Davis tune, and after much deliberating one of them tentatively suggests ‘Louis Armstrong’ – ha!

It’s a given that the brains will know classical music, and they usually do, but on other genres they’re pathetic, unless Radiohead are involved. Oh, and The Smiths, because the swotty buggers never left their bedrooms during the 80s, certainly not to go clubbing, and so they foolishly support the idea of hanging the DJ, any DJ. All that’s probably changed now that they have Grime nights at Uni.

Now, I know you’ve all been gagging to hear what my Album of the Year is because my opinion matters so much. Well, it’s Music For Thomas Carnacki by Jon Brooks, an outstanding musical interpretation of the 'The Gateway Of The Monster' by William Hope Hodgson which features Carnacki, ‘the famous investigator of ‘real’ ghost stories’. An exceptional album, yet it didn't make The Wire’s Top 50 ‘Releases of the Year’. What? I'm hitting town with a spray can to write ‘Justice For Jon Brooks!’ on every wall.

Number One in The Wire chart is the James Ferraro album which, as Tony Herrington explains on their blog, was only voted for by seven out of sixty electors. He also explains the process of democracy at work. If I ran that mag and Ferraro’s album came out on top I’d rig it to show otherwise. I mean, people take this kind of thing seriously, and it looks as if The Wire itself has voted the album as The Best. Christ, have you heard it? Tony jokes that we might ‘think it’s the worst record Dave Grusin never made’, which sums up my opinion.

My Archive Releases of the Year are ‘Miles Davis - Live In Europe 1967 – The Bootleg Series Vol 1’, and ‘The Oram Tapes Vol 1’.

In the spirit of Xmas by way of regifting, which in this case is not the same as passing on a dud, I’m offering you one of the best online ‘gifts’ I’ve received this year. It’s THE COMPLETE ELECTRONIC MUSIC OF IANNIS XENAKIS and you can get it here. A mother (down)lode, for sure, but totally worth it, even if it causes your computer to groan under the weight, as mine did.

Wild Is Love - Nat King Cole (1960)

2011-12-21T08:59:00.000-08:00

I hit a rich vein of vinyl in a charity shop yesterday and this is one of the albums, a totally lush design package featuring a booklet, which these images come from. The lyrics are by Dotty Wayne, music by Ray Rasch, and Nelson Riddle arranged what is a concept album on which Nat talks and sings us through the whole merry-go-round of love. 'There are hundreds of thousands of girls in the world' sings the male chorus, 'At the picnic, in the phone booth, at the racetrack!' - oh yeah! Girls, in the late-50s, you can't beat 'em. Girls in the 60s too, of course, except hippies. Girls now are rubbish.

The Wonderful Story Of You - Benjamin and Sidonie Gruenberg (The World's Work 1964)

2011-12-20T09:03:00.000-08:00

Originally published in 1960. Illustrations by Lee J. Ames

Useless - Honeywell Kitchen Computer 1965

2011-12-19T09:42:00.000-08:00

Feeling quite useless today. Such days are always annoying because, unlike people of old who always needed to be doing something essential (hunting, cooking, farming etc), I have enough leisure time in which to do something. I tried watching more of 'Inception', but got bored. I listened to music. And I adopted the domestic version of the thousand yard stare. Well, it wouldn't be the military one, would it?

In keeping with a days of uselessness, I present the Honeywell Model 316 Kitchen Computer, complete with 4K of memory and a built-in chopping board. It stored recipes, and cost $10,600. Number of orders taken by Neiman-Marcus: zero.

Stellar Attractions - Out-Of-This-World Xmas Gift Ideas - Playboy Dec 1967

2011-12-18T03:43:00.000-08:00

Stuck for ideas? How about a two-foot knight's armor beautifully hand-crafted in Spain? More space race culture from an era when all things could be made intergalactic and 'groovy'. I've handed the magazine to LJ in the hope of getting an Omega GT. Fingers crossed.

Parmesan Cheese & Bernard Parmegiani

2011-12-17T01:10:00.000-08:00

I like to think I've made my mark, culturally-speaking, by being the first (and last) writer to twin John Cage with courgettes. It's no great claim to fame, perhaps, but in the absence of a masterpiece in Art or Literature, it will have to suffice.

That post still attracts visitors who Google 'courgette', much to my amusement. Imagine their disappointment in finding an avant garde composer instead of either recipes involving courgettes, or more information about what is probably the best-known member of the species Cucurbita pepo (although the pumpkin is a strong challenger to that title). It is also called a zucchini, from the Italian, zucchina.

'Courgette' is a French word, and Bernard Parmegiani was born in Paris, but his name is strikingly similar to the Italian for parmesan, Parmigiano-Reggiano. I know nothing about Permegiani's parentage, or his personal life, but I can tell you that he joined the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) in 1959, and worked for French television in a studio, along with Xenakis.

I can also tell you that there's a 12-CD box set called 'L'Oeuvre Musicale', which includes his major works from 1964 to 2007. Regardless of it's current value, you should buy it if you have any interest in musique concrete and electro-acoustic composition. It would be the soundest musical investment you will ever make, providing as it does a lifetime's-worth of deep listening, the brilliance of which can only be truly appreciated in time, a considerable length of time. That is if, like me, you are constantly distracted by an endless supply of other music. I'm still discovering new elements to this great man's work.

So there we have it; parmesan and Parmegiani. I do apologies for the lack of content regarding parmesan, but if you came looking for that, hard cheese.

Stockhausen vs Rothko - Fight!

2011-12-16T10:15:00.000-08:00

In ‘Fear Of Music’ David Stubbs takes 137 pages to tell us ‘Why People Get Rothko But Don’t Get Stockhausen’. I can do it in 6 words: ‘One involves music, the other painting’. That’s that sorted out.

Why People Get Rothko But Don’t Get William Burroughs: one involves painting, the other words. Words in themselves should not be hard to ‘get’ but with Bill, as Art Blakey said when someone accused Wayne Shorter of sounding ‘like scrambled eggs’, it’s the way he scrambles them.

Painting vs music, painting vs literature. A painting will win every time if the colours are pleasing, especially if there aren’t too many colours involved. It’s easy on the eye.

Crucially, and I don’t know if Stubbs mentions this because I haven’t read the book yet, a painting can be looked at it 10 seconds. Stockhausen’s music takes a little longer, although that may be the average time it takes people to decide it’s rubbish.

Stubbs suggests that there must be ‘a genuine desire on the part of a great many of them (Tate Modern punters) to come and see some avant garde visual art’, ‘to give up their precious afternoons’. Call me a cynic, but I think he’s wrong there. For starters, Tate Modern is on the tourist itinerary, up there with The London Eye, Tower Of London and Amy’s wine house (which is just ‘round the corner from me and I see tourists having themselves photographed outside her gate every day. Funny how she never popped ‘round for tea...I guess she didn’t know I was so close).

Secondly, I don’t buy the idea that the masses have grown to love avant garde art, but that the big names have been implanted into the mass consciousness via posters and postcards. This has been going on for decades. Today’s cultural iconographic images and slogans take hold as fads promoted by producers who know how to market their product. Besides that, if Kate Moss was photographed wearing a Stockhausen t-shirt you just know that it would also be worn by fashionistas across the world within a month.

Tate Modern has done a great PR job on the back of Pop Britannica and all that. It satisfies a need to believe that London is still Swinging. It’s still officially ‘cool’. And it’s so easy to walk around until you’re knackered, at which time you can go get some food and drink. Some of the works may theoretically demand as much effort as ‘Mikrophonie’, but unlike the music they’re easily passed over with a glance.

Avant garde music simply cannot be packaged in the same way as art, although, thinking about it, wouldn’t sound cards be a great idea? They could sell them in galleries and bookshops. A postcard, with a Rothko on the front, which you can hold to your ear and listen to ‘Telemusik’.

What I’d really like to see is a sound gallery dedicated to Stockhausen, Schaeffer, Sun Ra, Varese etc. A sexy pavilion, all modern and Cool, with great food. Oh, and in each room dedicated to an artist, along with their music, all the original albums on the walls, manuscripts, photos etc. Yes.

Perhaps London isn’t quite as hip as that, and neither are the masses who flock to see Rothko.

Interplanetary Music - 20 Essential Albums Part 3

2011-12-15T09:09:00.000-08:00

We enter the realms of library music, with the far more cerebral and 'serious' Mr Subotnick also in the mix, although as regular readers will know, I take library music as seriously as anything else when it's as good as 'Futurissimo'. I uploaded 'Space Talk' and 'Interpianeti' specially for this series. That's how much I love you. I'm sure the feeling's mutual.

11. Lunar Probe - Various (1967)

There are two versions of this knocking about; a ten-inch and the one I have, which contains 26 tracks. I found it in digital 'space', which seems appropriate. The ten-inch is harder to find than intelligent life Out There. 'Old Timey Spaceship Race' is 42secs of madness, whilst longer tracks such as Francois Bayle's 'Andromede' and Nino Nardini's 'Le Danse le Cosmetes' are just fantastic. The latter sounding like a primitive transmission from a distant galaxy, as much of it does, being simple but incredibly atmospheric sketches in acoustic and electric sound.

12. Silver Apples Of The Moon - Morton Subotnick (1967)

I feel I no need to say anything about this. So I won't.

13. Musique Pour Le Futur - Nino Nardini (1970)

An amazing album in every way, delivering on all fronts from brain-raking synth drama to easier celestial charms which hark back to the 50s. And the underwater birth of Drexciya in the form of 'Decouverte Lunaire', I like to think. You probably won't.

14. Astrofisica - Various Artists (?)

First-rate Italian library excursion into the outer reaches of the audio cosmos.

15. Futurissimo - Egisto Macchi (1971)

A work of genius in IM. Electro-orchestral brilliance.

The Oram Tapes Volume One - Daphne Oram (Young Americans)

2011-12-14T09:19:00.000-08:00

Forty-four new tracks from the oast house sound lab where, thanks to the photos on the sleeve, we can see our Daphne at work, twiddling knobs, working the tape machine, and even cueing up a record in a twin deck situation – it’s all so modern, so crazy! And incongruous, not only that she, she had the nerve to operate in the domain of dome-headed male boffins, but that she looked like any housewife of the time. Still, what else was she going to look like, a beatnik?

Ah, Daphne, mystery woman of magical electrickery...she deserves a biography, surely, but that aside, more information regarding the tracks here would have been a bonus. As it is, there are only dates on some tracks. No matter, what is here will definitely satisfy fans.

With an archive of over 400 tapes to dig through, it’s no wonder the Young Americans team took two years to choose these. What wonders there are to behold, especially the long tracks such as ‘Oxford’, weighing in at over 12mins-worth of menacing pulsation contrasted by gentle, ambient tones. And ‘Manchester 2’, with its concrete creaking, sampled operatic vocal and ominous effects. But what do the titles signify? It sounds like these towns have been invaded by B-movie aliens, or ghosts of the Victorian industrial age coming through the ether to merge as electronic babble.

There is another theme in the form of ‘Hospital’, involving a woman breathing heavily, the clatter of instruments, and a shimmering electronic lullaby accompanied by a crying baby. And ‘Birth’, with its distorted voices, the sound of a car pulling away, and a woman breathing as if in ecstasy rather pain. Treated by Daphne, these field recordings take on a very strange atmosphere, and you can’t help wondering how many more she made.

These really are Daphne’s dark materials, chosen no doubt for that very reason. Not that the compilers felt the need to pick what suits a modern audience, I’m sure. Fans of this kind of thing are going to love it anyway, and anyone seeking simply ambient electronic music may find much of it hard to swallow.

Many tracks are excerpts, and as such, this compilation serves to tease as much as it satisfies. It’s as if Oram’s being given the ‘bonus material’ treatment without any official, full releases of her soundtracks or work for the theatre. Included here is part of the soundtrack to the 1961 film, ‘The Innocents’, which has never been released to my knowledge. And a large slice (12mins), thankfully, of ‘Hamlet- Youth Theatre’, one of the darkest pieces on the whole compilation. The label promises more to come, but will any of these works as a whole ever be released?

She can be heard discussing her sounds on some tracks in that wonderfully plummy voice – ‘These pure tones which are going to be recorded now...’, and talking about ‘the hydrogen spectroscope’. The inclusion of Daphne-at-work pieces is understandable, although like jokes, once heard they offer little other than technical data for geeks. It’s precious time which could have been put to better use.

The patient ones amongst you will wait for the CD early next year. Otherwise, do the British economy a favour and splash out in time for Christmas. It’ll make a change from The Pogues, or Phil Spector, although the rest of the family might not approve. And if you’re religiously inclined, you can pretend that ‘Birth’ is all about little baby Jesus.

Archive Release Of The Year. No contest.

On Nothing

2011-12-13T09:25:00.000-08:00

I once wrote an essay called ‘The History Of Nothing’ in an English lesson at school. I’m sure it went down well. I don’t recall the teacher’s response. I don’t recall anything I learnt at school, except to avoid the bully who went ‘round grabbing kid’s ties and using the same clenched fist to hit them under the jaw. It was that kind of school.

Nothing happened this afternoon. I’m in the bunker...neither door bell nor telephone rang.

I changed Scribble Electric (see tag above) to Dynamic View. I expect Nothing will happen as a result. A couple more visits, perhaps. Well, that would be Something.

Viewing my life positively, Nothing happening is better than terrible Somethings happening, such as illness, an accident, bad news etc.

Nothing comes to mind right now.

Making A Cult Of Myself & Other Things...

2011-12-12T08:32:00.000-08:00

Fuelled by coffee laced with brandy the intrepid blogger sets of on an improvisational voyage...

I was thinking (yes, that’s the noise you heard) about the blog this morning, and how I might spend more of this week rambling in an improvisational fashion rather than posting scans from my book/magazine collection or whatever. After all, I give you material, but what do you give me, you ungrateful swine? Then blow me (that’s a figure of speech here in the UK, and probably elsewhere, NOT a request of a sexual nature, although...) and then spookily, I get a comment relating to that very thing.

(Pause)

Downton Abbey, The X Factor, Will Young, Come Dine With Me...

I’m trying to get more readers.

Kindle, Immortals, Little Mix, Stone Roses, Eurozone, Wayne Rooney and...um...Christmas...

I’m thinking that these words will attract visitors...like flies to shit...

Not the type of visitors I want, though...

Nietzsche said ‘You would multiply yourself by ten, by a hundred? You seek followers? Seek zeros!’, which is all well and good but he wasn’t a blogger, and if he was, I’m sure he would change his mind.

To be ‘followed’ as a blogger is something of an honour, I reckon. I have 26 followers, and find that quite amazing – that what I’m doing is liked well enough by some to be worthy of following. I think it’s enough to form a cult of some kind, although I’m not sure what kind of cult I want to create. And I’m damned sure I don’t want you living with me in a compound. The feeling’s probably mutual. Mind you, cult leaders have a knack of persuading followers to share their wives with them, so, maybe I’ll rethink...

I have enough on my hands with one partner, but I guess a cult leader doesn’t bother too much with the complications of a normal relationship. He probably leaves the toilet seat up in a very carefree manner and would laugh if one of his women suggested they go to Ikea. Me, I have good excuses not to go. It’s too far, we don’t drive, and it’s full of stuff I’m not interested in. The latter’s not a valid excuse for LJ, but sometimes you have to be honest. Not that it always helps in a relationship. Last night I visited my favourite whore, smoked crack, played a Will Young album (which she doesn't know I own), lost a fortune at poker and, worst of all, ate the last piece of chocolate in the house, and she hasn't discovered that yet. Don't tell her (about the chocolate, I mean), otherwise I'm in deep shit. She thought I was here watching telly.

I hope you’re taking all this in. The kind of wisdom I impart can’t be found anywhere else...not in these words exactly, because the wonder of this scribbling game is just that, the unique configuration of letters each of us welds together with a tap of the key to hopefully express our true selves.

Yet as I’ve said before, you can’t be self-conscious in the writing game, especially blogging. I’ve confessed a few things to you in the past...about what a sad bastard I am, with no friends, no style, no class and no education and so on. I might go back and delete all that; recreate myself as a clever bastard with finely-tuned taste. After all, it’s easy to appear to be clever with Google to hand.

I was thinking about clever bastards the other day when considering the Dome box set and how I was ignorant of them until a few weeks ago. I thought about those writers who seem to know about all that’s worth knowing in music. Like David Toop. Clever bastard. I don’t know how he does it. For starters, he probably paid attention at school, which enabled him to write very well in later life. Then he spent years investigating everything from Hip-Hop to Japanese Improv. Somewhere along the way he’s managed to read a lot of books and make music. Bastard! I do envy him. In a way. In another way, I think ‘Hell, I AM SOMEBODY!’, to nick a famous phrase from black civil rights protesters in 60s America. There’s a famous photo of a marcher wearing a placard with the legend painted on it. I might make one for myself and walk up and down Camden High Street. Why not?

Going Underground With Dome, Rip Rig & Panic & Dave Brubeck

2011-12-11T02:32:00.000-08:00

I was going to write about the band, Dome, because Editions Mego have released their complete works in a big black box, but then I thought otherwise. I thought ‘I didn’t listen to Dome back in 1980 and don’t have much to say about them today’.

I was going to call the post ‘Welcome To The Pleasure (Of) Dome’, but decided not to, mainly because they’re only partly pleasurable, and those parts are not large enough to justify a title like that. The best parts are when they stop ‘singing’ and work with tape-drone-synth alone.

Still, it would make a nice Xmas present for someone. Not a Will Young fan. Not that you would know a Will Young fan, of course, being a person of great taste who applies the same criterion to friends as you do to culture. The urban myth says you’re never more than six feet away from a rat in London, and judging by Will’s sales figures I think the same must apply to one of his fans.

You may know a Will Young fan, of course. We can’t really filter out friends with naff taste because they may prove useful in other areas such as knowing how to fix your computer, or fix your head by offering a sympathetic ear and good advice when your head’s in a bad place. I know that now, whereas when I stopped talking to friends with naff taste years ago, I didn’t. I now have no friends.

When Dome were finishing their first album, The Jam were No.1 with ‘Going Underground’. I was waiting, in limbo land after Punk and, I might add, after Funk too. Even Parliament were about to become extinct with the release of their last album, ‘Trombipulation’.

For a while, in the late-70s, I was enjoying the Punky-Funky-Reggae party held by the likes of Parliament, The Clash and Culture. But by 1980 all that was on the wane. I was waiting for Jazz, as it turned out, which appeared on my radar (cue chorus of ‘Ha-lleluiahs’) with for formation of Rip Rig & Panic and the emergence of a scene that celebrated them and the source of their name. Things weren’t all bad in 1980, though. Blondie, Dexy’s Midnight Runners and The Specials were all having pop-tastic hits.

I was going underground, literally, a couple of years later, in a Leicester Square basement club called ‘The Hot Sty’ run by members of Rip Rig & Panic. It was painfully hip, as you can imagine, although their record choices were not all obscure. They played Michael Jackson and Duke Ellington, for instance. Well, one of those is massively popular. The other is massively popular amongst a minority, the size of which I cannot calculate. How many people in the world like Jazz?

I was in a clothes shop yesterday in St Albans and they were playing Dave Brubeck. It made me feel so good that I almost bought some trousers. I complimented an assistant on his taste. He was easily in his 60s and dressed in a smart, Cool, casual fashion. He told me Brubeck was in fashion now because he was being used on an advert. LJ asked if he’d seen the film, ‘All Night Long’, in which Dave turns up at Dickie Attenborough’s party. He recalled it after a minute, joking that I we didn’t look that old. I struggled to think of a way to tell him about YouTube and DVDs, but thought better of it. Then he asked me if I was a Jazz fan, or just a fan of Brubeck, which is quite a strange question when you think about it. Afterwards I realised that he considered the idea that I might only know Brubeck because of his apparent trendiness. How you can like Brubeck but not many other Jazz legends is a mystery to me, but hey, life full of mysteries, isn’t it?

Miles Davis & Juliette Greco

2011-12-10T02:01:00.000-08:00

Be Realistic - Demand The Impossible - The French Resistance 1968

2011-12-09T09:16:00.000-08:00

Miscellany: The Day So Far, Sonny Rollins, Simple Thinking.

2011-12-06T08:57:00.000-08:00

I like to play classic electronic music quietly and pretend that my computer is singing to me.

&&&

The day so far:
* listening to Josef Anton Reidl, Francois Bayle and Else Marie Pade, mostly.
* chatting on Facebook.
* waiting for the postman to deliver the Daphne Oram vinyl
only to see him walk straight past the house,
then remember that Boomkat delivers by knackered pigeon - bastards.

&&&

Asked a friend what he was listening to. He said 'Alfie' by Sonny Rollins. I prefer the shorter version. Here it is...

&&&

Talking Politics the other day at Work and how easily the left and 'liberals' rose to the bait laid by Jeremy Clarkson but my work colleague wasn't having any of it - scowled - cursed Clarkson, understandably, but as someone who likes to wind others up I thought he'd get the joke. My tuppence-worth evolved into a speech about not understanding old mindsets like Left and Right in the modern world. Nobody thinks in clear cut, neatly divided, idealogical ways, surely? The nature of banter amongst politicians on TV is dictated by party lines, but we are free of them, aren't we? Or do those aligning themselves with one side conveniently ignore contrary thoughts or beliefs which occur to them? Surely the world and more importantly our minds are more complex? Or are they that simple? When I'd finished saying words to that effect, he said 'Getting a bit deep, aren't you?'

Tape Recorder For Playboys, Writers' Thoughts On Creativity & more - Playboy, December 1968

2011-12-05T08:42:00.000-08:00

Become a big hit with your playmates. Great Xmas gift idea, this. Tapes are very fashionable, so I hear, and probably have been for at least ---- years. But being deeply unfashionable, I wouldn't know.

Those crazy Neatniks. Still, girls go for a well-groomed man, you know, as opposed to a hippy. A bowl of popcorn and guitar lessons...they know the way to a girl's heart (knickers) those Neatniks.

'The King'? A swipe at Elvis, perhaps. Oh to have seen Frank at Ceasars Palace...

Mmm...oiled-walnut speakers. 'A cassette, unlike a record, never warps, scratches or wears out'. Right.

On creativity. 'Those who are able to emerge as creative individuals owe it to their stubborn, steadfast devotion, their complete unswerving dedication to their chosen role' - well said Henry.

Finally, great illustration/design for a feature by Arthur C Clarke on 'superintelligent computers'. The black and white image is a card flap containing the continued text on the back. Turning it reveals the full colour image.

Plumbing The Shallows and Playing Hopscotch With Nicholas Carr, Julio Cortazar and Brion Gysin

2011-12-04T02:28:00.000-08:00

In his article for The Atlantic Carr famously asked: Is Google Making Us Stupid? It works on the assumption that most users were smart to start with. I know I'm not, so what have I got to lose?

So I'm reading his book, The Shallows, which extends the essay idea into a longer analysis of how the Net changes our brains, which used to be thought of as machine-like and fixed in their ways from an early age, but are now confirmed as being 'plastic', malleable.

But I'm also read Brion Gysin's 'The Process' , which William Burroughs claims is actually about 'man's condition in the Space age' whilst telling the story of one man's adventures in the desert.

Then, yesterday, I picked up 'Hopscotch' by Julio Cortazar, which I've been meaning to read for a long time. In the preface Cortazar says it mainly consist of two books, the first of which can be 'read in a normal fashion' ending with Chapter 56. The second starts with Chapter 73 and you follow the sequence as indicated by the chapter number at the end of each one. he then offers a list of all chapters in the correct order 'in case of confusion or forgetfulness'. Clear? I was immediately taken by the opening chapter (73), especially paragraph 2, which opens:
'How often I wonder whether this is only writing, in an age in which we run towards deception through infallible equations and conformity machines. But to ask one's self if we will know how to find the other side of habit or if it is better to let one's self be borne along by its happy cybernetics, is
that not literature again?'

If the Net hadn't made me dumber than I was when I started using it I might fully grasp what Cortazar is saying there. Regardless, I love the phrases 'conformity machines' and 'happy cybernetics'. I am now tempted to read the novel.

Gysin, as (accidental) inventor of the cut-up, would surely have applauded Cortazar's idea that a reader may hop around within the covers of a novel; especially if the suggested route was abandoned in favour of random chapter selection. He may well have even embraced the idea that we surfers ingest a multitude of information in our daily lives to the point where content form a kind of cut-up reading experience. Then again, he might think us all idiots for not being able, apparently, to concentrate for long enough to absorb more than a couple of hundred words at a time.

We may well, as Carr suggests, have 'numbed an essential part of our self' through regular engagement with the online world. I'm not sure which part, though, because it takes intelligence to recognise and understand what's going on in our heads. And as I said at the beginning, I'm rather stupid. And I'm distracted by Cortazar and Gysin whilst trying to read 'The Shallows'.

Gysin said 'We are here to go'. It seems a fitting statement for the mouse-brained era in which we are always on the 'go' from site-to-site. For fear of supplying you with too much text to absorb (I know you have an itchy mouse finger), I hereby give you permission to go.

The Reversal Of The Overheated Image - Marshall McLuhan 1968

2011-12-03T01:00:00.000-08:00

Playboy, December 1968. This text should be readable once you click on it since I've removed the Light Box function. If not, let me know and I'll try to improve the scans. Once again, McLuhan is spot on with his predictions. We are indeed all 'hunters' on the Net in this 'feed-forward' age. Mind your media...

'The information theorists are fond of pointing out that the telephone book contains no information. There are too many data and no patterns. In the electric environment of fast-changing, total-field information, a fixed point of view is as useless as a speciality...Electronic man becomes a hunter, a prober once more. He begins to live by "feed-forward," not "feedback." '

Film Music - Vladimir Ussachevsky

2011-12-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

The Net's been doing my head in today. The accumulative effect of spending so much time online is starting to take its toll. You probably know the feeling. So I'm going to make what will be a Herculean effort to reduce the amount of hours I spend staring at this screen. It'll be worse than giving up fags, I predict. One obstacle is the amount of music stored on this computer. By needing it on to listen I naturally surf at the same time. I know I'm far from alone here, so I wonder if there's a WUA (Web Users Anonymous) for sorry-looking, anaemic individuals ready for a 12-step programme to get them off the computer...

Meanwhile, here's an album of film music, soundtracks to 'No Exit' and 'Line Of Apogee'. It's a high point in electronic/tape atmospherics for film.
Listen Hear

Interplanetary Music - 20 Essential Albums Part 2

2011-12-01T09:15:00.000-08:00

Phase 2, travelling further along the strange celestial roads of IM. Here we begin to chart purely electronic and tape music. Technology advances, allowing music-makers to take giant steps in the name of mankind's mission to explore new sonic territory.

6. Rocket Number Nine - Sun Ra (1960)

This was later reissued as 'Interstellar Low Ways'. Space philosopher and musician, Sun Ra is IM's greatest exponent and if you've yet to begin exploring his universe this is a good place to start.

7. Musique Electronique Du Cosmos - Jean-Jacques Perrey (1962)

Enter the electronic space sound age. This is only TV and radio background music, which is fine by me. Over the years I've come to prefer a one-minute 'throwaway' library piece to most Wagnerian voyages to Synthtopia (hands up guilty Germans). Despite the inclusion of daffy tunes like 'Barnyard In Orbit' most of it consists of brief sketches that stick to the IM theme in a consistently fine manner.

8. Dr Who At The BBC Radiophonic Workshop - The Early Years Vol 1 (1963-'69)

Mostly Brian Hodgson's work on this compilation. The early years were the best. They normally are.

9. The Inside Of The Outside / Or The Outside Of The Inside - Who Are They? Where Do They Come From? Why Are They Here? - George Engler (1965)

Recorded in Area 51, I suspect. Who is Engler? He has no online profile. Multi-instru-mentalism of the highest order, all in glorious lo-fidelity. Electro-acoustic-tape brilliance.

10. Raumpatrouille - Peter Thomas Sound Orchester (1966)

Progressive Pop for space cadets. Amid all the Swinging sounds it would be easy to lose sight of Thomas's brilliance as an imaginative arranger of Jazz, Electronic and Easy elements. This music for the TV series still holds it's value four decades on.

If You're So Rich, How Come You Ain't Hip?

2011-11-30T08:02:00.000-08:00

After watching ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’ on BBC2 last night I’ve decided to become a Cultural Guru. The programme featured ‘wealth gurus’ such as Robert Kiyosaki, author of ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’, which has sold millions, thus continuing Kiyosaki’s seemingly unstoppable ability to make money.

I’m writing a book that’ll be called ‘If You’re So Rich, How Come You Ain’t Hip?’ It will outline my programme which guarantees cultural wealth. On the TV programme wannabe millionaires are seen high-fiving, hugging and chanting mantras. I won’t be encouraging those who attend my seminars to hug or give high fives, but chanting will be part of the necessary steps. Chants such as ‘I am not rich but I do appreciate the genius of Charlie Parker therefore I am richer than morons with supercars who don’t’ and ‘I have little money but I will never sell that which enriches me such as my Jacques Demy box set, unless I need to eat, in which case I might’. It’s too early to have worked those out properly yet. But there will be loads which have to be said every morning.

Becoming culturally wealthy takes time, just as becoming a millionaire does, but at least you won’t have to learn about property investment. There are many cultural ‘advisors’ on the Net in the form of bloggers and journalists writing introductions to Suicidal Drone music and the like, but my programme will offer so much more.

My seminars will cost £600 to attend. If you think that’s a lot, tough. If you can easily afford it, you’re probably a rich bastard who needs to attend because your vocational ambition has nullified all opportunities to engage with life-enhancing culture. I’m not saying all the rich are devoid of taste, but look at the examples around the world. After my programme, you’ll sell that ugly house, all those shitty supercars, and probably even your wife who, let’s face it, is a bimbo that wouldn’t know Miles from Steve Davis. If you’re a married woman, you’ll get rid of him for the same reasons.

Follow me.

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of cultural bliss, but there is hope. Give me your money and I will spend it wisely on such things as signed editions of William Burroughs books and El Saturn LPs on vinyl.

This way to cultural enlightenment.

Cultural wealth ensures a degree of contentment you never thought possible. It enriches your mind, the most valuable possession you own. Culture need not cost the earth if you follow my programme, which will contain the addresses of the very best charity shops and file-sharing sites. Chapters will include ‘Aesthetic Appreciation And How To Develop It’, ‘Don’t Join The 99% - Why They Are Mostly Wrong In What They Listen To, Watch & Read’, ‘How To Be Hip, Not A Hipster’, and ‘Be An Outsider, Because Like Nature’s Bountiful Treasures All The Best Things Grow Outside’ – something like that. I haven’t fully developed these yet, of course.

You Can Create and Consume.

Creation and consumption are not mutually exclusive. You will need to consume culture to understand what others have done so that you may develop your own voice. I will be giving specific instructions on how to start your new life as a creator. Believe me, to paint, film or write is life-enhancing, regardless of whether you sell anything. Even blogging is better than doing nothing. Look at me. I started this blog two years ago and readership regularly gets into double figures.

You cannot buy good taste.

It’s said that all artistic appreciation is subjective. This is bollocks. There are standards, and you will learn them. They are not ‘rules’, but simply guidelines towards learning what is Right and Wrong. Once you have studied the guidelines, you will be on your way to understanding what I mean. It’s not that I don’t know what I mean and cannot explain, but that I have no intention of telling you right now otherwise you won’t buy my book or attend my seminars.

Finally, the superiority you will feel once culturally enlightened will be a reward that renders financial wealth insignificant. Trust me. I know. You will pass huge houses and instead of envying the owners pity them for their taste and cultural paucity. You will see the rich dining on fine foods in fancy restaurants and be thankful that you feast on that which nourishes your soul. It’s true.

Trust me. I am your cultural guru.

The Process - Brion Gysin (Panther 1973)

2011-11-29T09:03:00.000-08:00

Stay Asleep (Regression Volume 2) - Nate Young

2011-11-28T09:28:00.000-08:00

Ol' wolf eyes is back. Couldn't resist that. Barry White and Nate Young...what do they have in common? Nothing other than Young claims to have seen people having sex at a Wolf Eyes gig and many have done the same, I would think, if only in their heads, at a Barry White gig. Women, of course, because to my knowledge BW is not a Love God to men, which is not to say that many a man has not formed the beast with two backs whilst playing (not listening to) a Barry White album - dirty rotters. I've never liked the idea of playing music whilst shagging, let alone having Wolf Eyes melt your brain with their sonic mess at the same time. Here, though, Nate offers an alternative to the nihilistic Noise of Wolf Eyes, just as he did on the first volume. That did, however, contain traces of his work with the band, whereas this is more restrained, refined. As he said in a recent interview: 'I am focusing on technique and structure more than visceral aesthetics.' This is all studied technique and simple structuring that works brilliantly. Yes, less is more, and the finest of touches in the mix make for a minimalist study in stereo dread. First listen I thought nothing much happens but the mood is fantastic. Several plays later, I realise that nothing much happening is a great alternative to the full-on scream of aural terror. 'Stay Asleep' is the sound of footsteps getting closer...things that murmur in the night...unidentifiable noises...wonderful.

Interview

This is my upload of a track from the first 'Regression' album.

Tragic Facebook Friendship Scenario

2011-11-27T08:23:00.000-08:00

‘Scuse me whilst I chat to my imaginary friend – you.

I’m a sad bastard an' no mistake, as I said to one of my Facebook ‘friends’ a few hours ago. My notifications have hit an all-time low. I get no messages. And whatever I post gets little attention. Christ! – am I that unpopular? Probably. I’ve got just over 100 ‘friends’ and that sounds like a lot to me, but then, I’m imagining it’s 1991 and friends are people I meet in bars and clubs. I don’t even have many of those.

I have friends on FB who have hundreds of friends. What does that mean? That they’re constantly engaging with hundreds of people every day? No, of course not. It means that FB is a livelier experience for them, I suppose.

I have FB friends who engage with me more than some that I’ve actually met. This can only mean one thing: that having met me they like (or ‘like’) me less. I am a sad bastard. I must be unlikable. Tragic, isn’t it?

I have FB friends who don’t use FB much, because they have lives, presumably; the kind that entail going out, and being with the family. I should get out more. It’s a wide world out there, waiting to be explored. So I hear. I went out yesterday, to buy a ‘paper.

I grow old, I grow old...I shall wear my trousers rolled...and step straight into slippers without properly ensuring that my heel is covered, shuffling ‘round the bunker in a dressing gown like an old fart, mumbling to myself, quoting Burroughs (and T.S. Eliot, if you like). And when not wearing slippers, looking at them with their flattened back, which symbolises a form of laziness and reminds me that my father did the same. So I’m turning into him. We all know that we turn into a variation of our parents eventually. He did not read Burroughs, though. Or listen to obscure library music. And so on...

There’s no way ‘round it, you lose friends as you age. Many have moved out of the city. Many have bred (don’t they know there’s a population crisis?). Some simply disappeared, no longer contactable by phone, gone before the rise of the social network. I’d look them up on FB but they’re all called Jones...and Smith, so you can imagine the problem.

It’s not news but I’ll say it anyway, FB does as much to damage the notion of friendship as it does enforce it by fostering an almighty illusion. I’m sure you’re aware of this. FB ‘friends’ represent something, but also nothing more than the willingness of others to have FB ‘friends’. They represent a social mirage which, upon closer inspection, does indeed seem to disappear. It’s no good entering the social network carrying the old baggage of beliefs that friendship is a valid connection between two people. My experience tells me otherwise. But as I said, I’m a sad bastard and that’s my problem.

Now, unlike my status in the world of social networking, the bread I’m making is on the rise. So I’ll say farewell.

TTFN

Interplanetary Music - 20 Essential Albums Part 1

2011-11-26T13:44:00.000-08:00

OK space mates, strap yourself in for a trip along the interstellar highways and byways of cosmic sound. These are some of my favourite albums devoted to the Far Out, futuristic and intergalactic. No Funk or Techno here because I wanted to limit the field despite believing Herbie Hancock's forays into Space Jazz to be utterly fantastic. No Hip-Hop or contemporary Sci-Fi-inspired sounds either. There are many albums from the 50s on which the theremin was the sole indication, sonically, of Other Worlds, but fantastic sleeves aside, the music rarely exceeded anything but Easy Listening. In some cases (Les Baxter), that was great, but I've concentrated on the works that really utilised new musical technology, on the whole. Since there's no Number One in terms of The Best, I've worked chronologically. I'll be posting 5 at a time. We have lift off...

1. The Day The Earth Stood Still - Bernard Herrmann (1951)

Expert application of the theremin as extraterrestrial voice with orchestration ranging from subtle to strident representations of catastrophe and menace. Artistry in Space Sound, as opposed to merely supplying music for movies. If Klaatu came back today, I'm sure no-one would listen, although if Obama has seen the film, he might. I'm sure he has seen the film. Come back Klaatu!

2. Forbidden Planet - Louis & Bebe Barron (1956)

Electro-music geeks can salivate all day over the Barrons' use of individual cybernetics circuits. It was the first totally electronic soundtrack. It's not just one of the best because it was the first, but because the conversion of images into sounds that truly were part of a brave new world of...er...sound. The film supposedly referred to Shakespeare's 'The Tempest', but never having read one of Will's plays, I wouldn't know.

3. Song Of The Second Moon - Tom Dissevelt & Kid Baltan (1957)

Originally released as 'Electronic Music' but reissued under this title in '68 when, presumably, the company felt that the world was ready for it, being more attuned to Space Vibrations. The changed U.S. titles such as 'Moon Maid' and 'Sonik Re-Entry' are, let's face it, more space race sexy than 'Drifting' and 'Whirling'. 'The Visitor From Inner Space' is much better than 'Vibration' too. Way ahead of the game (the game being electronic Pop complexities in frequently rhythmic modes), avant-garde melodic maestros, I salute you.

4. Fantastica - Russ Garcia (1959)

This combines the Easiness of 50s-era domesticated Space Dreams with forward-looking electronics courtesy of Liberty Records co-founder Theodore Keep. His contribution to 'The Monsters Of Jupiter', 'Water Creatures Of Astra' and 'Red Sands Of Mars' help make this a stand-out album of the time. It's Les Baxter-style Space Exotica but none the worse for that.

5. Man In Space With Sounds - Attileo Minneo (1959)

I covered this album here so I won't say more about this classic example of Futuristic Optimism for a golden age that never came. Minneo's music is a highly advanced blend of eerie ambience and radical arrangements.

Street Theatre Of The Absurd

2011-11-25T10:05:00.000-08:00

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face - Albert Camus

Space Escapade - Les Baxter

2011-11-24T10:04:00.000-08:00

Look at the astronaut – ‘Here’s to outer space – cheers!’. That’s moon juice they’re drinking, by the way. To be precise, a cocktail of liquids extracted from beneath the moon’s surface.

When this album was made in 1958, the pesky Reds had already launched Sputnik the year before. The Space Race was on, but from the comfort of their armchairs, American citizens could spend ‘Saturday Night On Saturn’ courtesy of Les Baxter.

Ah yes, dreams of outer space...swirling stars and mysterious planets to be explored...space maidens...with coils of wire sticking out of their heads...those are receivers which allow them to tune in to the cosmic vibrations of Space, by the way.

You see, Space may be filled with evil aliens bent on ruling Earth by zapping the White House or snatching bodies, but that’s no reason not to crack open the moon juice and celebrate the brave new world of Space exploration, especially when your accompanied by foxy girls with pink and yellow skin wearing calf-length boots.

This Space Escapade begins buoyantly with ‘Shooting Star, which you may wish upon as you fantasise about one day going there on a Space Cruiser. It’s all zippy strings and bouncy percussion – yes, Space is an Exotic realm, naturally. The ‘Moonscape’ is one suited to lush strings, being a beautiful, calming environment, not hostile at all. Hold on, here comes ‘Mr Robot’, a chirpy, somewhat comical fellow, who walks in a jaunty manner. He’s a lot of fun, and he’ll do household chores too.

Space travel may not have quite worked out this way. But in 1958 the fantasy was still very much alive. If we close our eyes and listen to Les, we too may dream of space maidens and moon juice...

Thus Today Survival Is Reduced To Consumption - Raoul Vaneigem Comic Strip

2011-11-23T09:53:00.000-08:00

The Revolution Of Everyday Life (Full Text)

The Doomsday Fun Book (The Wadebridge Press,1977) - Satire From The Ecologist

2011-11-22T08:08:00.000-08:00

Avant-Garde Jazz & Avant-Garde Cars - Playboys Nov '67 & Aug '68

2011-11-21T08:57:00.000-08:00

You may not expect to find an article praising the likes of Albert Ayler and Sun Ra in Playboy, but in November 1967 they offered their sophisticated readership an overview of 'far-out jazz'.

August 1968...I want an 'Astro-Vette'...

Never Any End To Paris - Enrique Vila-Matas (New Directions 2011)

2011-11-20T03:45:00.000-08:00

The broad passageway that joins fiction and reality is cool and well-ventilated, and the air within blows about with the same natural ease with which I mix biography and invention.

- Enrique Vila-Matas

I can pay no greater tribute to an author than to announce that I read his book. This may sound odd to you, an avid reader, perhaps, who regularly begins to read a novel and continues until the end.

As I said to a woman over dinner last night: ‘I finish, perhaps, one in ten novels that I start’. Her blank expression in response to this admission did not surprise me. People often respond that way when I admit my problem with fiction. After all, it is a kind of problem, is it not? I do find fiction problematic on a purely personal, rather than theoretical or analytical basis. ‘I’m very fussy,’ I said to the woman. I struggled to condense my attitude to literature so as not to ruin our enjoyment of the salmon. She told me she belonged to a book club, to which I responded by saying I could never read anything foisted upon me by a stranger. The chances of it being an enjoyable exercise were remote. The odds, I might say, would be longer than ten-to-one, since that derives from books of my own choosing. One-hundred-to-one would be an optimistic estimate.

This is the second Vila-Matas novel I’ve finished, which makes him my favourite contemporary author. You will have noticed, if you’ve spent any time perusing this blog, that William Burroughs is a favourite of mine. I was once asked if I actually was him when buying Ted Morgan’s biography in an Oxfam shop. As if the idea that I would be buying my own biography is not odd enough, that I should actually be William Burroughs boggles my mind. All this based on an old photo of Bill on the front cover. I wasn’t even wearing a trilby at the time.

Vila-Matas as the first person narrator of this novel claims to bear a resemblance to one of his heroes, Ernest Hemingway. So convinced is he of this that he goes to Key West in Florida to enter a lookalike competition, from which he is thrown out for bearing no resemblance at all. This is a running joke throughout the novel.

I suppose this is a ‘novel’, although the style in which Vila-Matas tells the ‘story’ is such that it convincingly suggests autobiography. To confound us further, he also presents it as a lecture, but unlike authors keen to dazzle the reader with meta-textuality (I may have made that term up) Vila-Matas is admirably readable.

Vila-Matas did actually stay in Paris with the writer and filmmaker Marguerite Duras as his landlady, just as he describes in the book, which tells of his years as a writer struggling to complete his first novel. One of my favourite passages relates to the use of dialogue in fiction. He questions its validity, despite Hemingway’s mastery of the art, and whilst in a cafe looks around and sees that people are actually talking to each other. ‘However, this second certainty didn’t change things much. All these people engaged in dialogue surely voted for the right-wing politician Giscard d’Estaing and, what’s more, there was obviously nothing poetic about them, they were overwhelmingly vulgar, and what they were saying probably was as well.’ He returns to his garret and cuts out all but three essential pieces of dialogue.

This book is filled with ironies, and is in part about irony itself. But when he speaks of what it is to be a struggling author he can also be genuinely poetic, if tinged always with some ironic distance. Here is another great passage: ‘If I were really a writer, I’d try like Rimbaud to create all the celebrations, all the triumphs, all the dramas. I would try to invent new flowers, new stars, new flesh, new languages.

If I were really a writer, I would be absolutely modern. And when dawn came, armed with a burning patience, I would enter splendid cities. If I were really a writer, my days would go by in a very different way. If I were really a writer...’

If I were you, and you have not read Vila-Matas, I would start right away.

More Vila-Matas on the blog here.

Volts' Concerto In DC Minor - A Robot Joins The Monkees

2011-11-19T02:33:00.000-08:00

The Cautious Bachelor - Sarel Eimerl (1960)

2011-11-18T09:10:00.000-08:00

She couldn't grow a beard?

Everything Going Blank & 'Reality Gates' by Steve Birchall

2011-11-17T10:04:00.000-08:00

I was going to write today today but...er...

Though I will say that this Steve Birchall album is well worth getting. Listen Hear.

Expensive Hi-Fi Gear Deserves A Place Of Its Very Own - Ideas For Modern Living 1974 Style Part 2

2011-11-16T08:58:00.000-08:00

Yes, by popular demand (who am I kidding?) - the second and final (I know, tragic isn't it) part of 'Ideas For Modern Living 1974'. What better environment in which to listen to Simon & Garfunkel? And look at that bathroom. Part 1 is here.

The Joy Of Crusty Old Books

2011-11-15T09:47:00.000-08:00

‘Don’t buy too many crusty old books!’ says LJ, as I’m about to leave the bunker. She does so with a smile, but is only half-joking, being the sensible one who concerns herself with savings, pensions, health, and always carrying a brolly in case it rains...

Crusty old books...but they bring me such pleasure, these pages from the past...bound words from bygone eras...some are almost 100 years old! Some have heavily creased spines where so many hands have held them, hands which may now be no more than bony digits buried in a box 6 feet under the earth...but once...once they too turned these pages. Under the light of a lamp they left their DNA there...and if I were to romanticise, I may even say their spirit...some essence of themselves...

Who marvelled at the design of The Book Of Bond back in the swinging 60s? A youth, besotted by 007...who dreamt of driving an Aston Martin DB III, complete with reinforced steel bumpers...

Who left his prints on The Blue Book Of Crime way back in the 1940s? A future criminologist? A detective, perhaps. He would read that an American Bureau of Identification office is ‘Clean, with Plenty of Light and Fresh Air’, and that ‘many advantages and benefits go with this profession: Steady employment; good pay with regularly monthly salary checks; two weeks’ vacation each year on pay’ etc. ‘Remember, this work is free from danger’, the book tells him. Well, perhaps that deters him if the thrill of danger is what he seeks...

If only books could talk...imagine what they have seen...the marriage break-ups, fights, passions and poverty, joy and sorrow...in so many rooms, in so many faces they have seen time do its work, etching lines around the eyes gazing down at them...

An apparently fragile pulp paperback has the last laugh...Burlesque Girl by Orrie Hitt is now 53 years old, yet it has survived to tell its tale of Valerie London, ‘Miss Rotary of Springville and Miss Resort land’, who ‘took a shot at the big money the night she peeled off her clothes ’...it has outlived a few of its readers no doubt, and it will outlive this one...

Well, I returned empty-handed today, save for a cauliflower. And they, as you’ve probably discovered, hardly make for good reading. LJ, however, will find it more satisfying than another crusty old book...

File Sharing Is So Passé

2011-11-14T09:20:00.000-08:00

Erkki Kurenniemi - Recordings 1963-1973

2011-11-13T01:56:00.000-08:00

Wiki:

Erkki Kurenniemi (b. 10 July 1941 in Hämeenlinna, Finland) is a Finnish designer, philosopher and artist, best known for his electronic music compositions and the electronic instruments he has designed. He is considered one of the leading early pioneers of electronic music in Finland. Kurenniemi is also a science populariser, a futurologist, a pioneer of media culture, and an experimental film-maker.

Kurenniemi completed the majority of his instruments, electronic compositions and experimental films in the 1960s and ‘70s. Between 1962 and 1974, he designed and constructed ten electronic instruments and studio devices when he was working as a volunteer assistant at the Department of Musicology at the University of Helsinki, and as designer at Digelius Electronics Finland Oy, founded in 1970. In addition to the Musicology Department, Kurenniemi also worked as assistant and senior designer at the Department of Theoretical Physics from 1962 to 1973. Kurenniemi earned a Bachelor of Sciences degree in 1968.

He subsequently worked as a designer of control systems for industrial robots at Oy W. Rosenlew Ab (1976–1978), and as a designer of industrial automation and robotic systems at Nokia’s cable machinery division (1980–1986). He also worked as a specialist consultant and Head of Planning at the Science Centre Heureka in Vantaa, Finland (1987–1998).

Kurenniemi received the Finland Prize of the Ministry of Education and Culture in 2003. In 2004, he was elected honorary fellow of the University of Art and Design Helsinki.

Superior bleepnoisetapesonic structures on this compilation.

The album: Listen Hear

Miscellany: Lalo Schifrin, A Royal Family, Pinch & Shackleton, One Blog Floating In Digital Space

2011-11-12T02:17:00.000-08:00

A Lalo Schifrin tune from the album, 'There's A Whole Lalo Schifrin Goin On' - I have a whole lotta love for Lalo...

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A Royal family that I do support...

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Pinch & Shackleton sound like explorers, and some would say that they are, sonically-speaking. I've played their album a few times now and with each listen it has come and gone without any of the tunes attracting my attention. Furniture music for post-Dubstep modernists?

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Ah, the internet...a universe of infinite possibilities...so many blogs, like stars in the vastness of night...the more we look, the more we find...and here is mine, a capsule drifting in digital space...and I am the pilot...like Major Tom...but nobody wants to know whose shirts I wear...

The World's First Cartridge Tape Recorder!

2011-11-11T08:43:00.000-08:00

Playboy, May 1968. Whilst French students were revolting, Akai revealed the world's first cartridge tape recorder, and as you know, literary revolutionary William Burroughs made great use of tape recordings. Here is Brion Gysin talking about that. Meanwhile, whilst students attempted to shape the future, Botany '500' man models the 'wave of the future' in sports clothes, although I'd like to see him surf in that gear. Talking of the future, this issue featured a short story by J.G. Ballard ('The Dead Astronaut'). Ballard, and Playboy, what a combo. I think the Honda ad illustrations are especially fine.

I Met Jean-Paul Sartre Before The Day Went Downhill

2011-11-10T09:29:00.000-08:00

Today started well then went downhill. I don’t know why ‘downhill’ should be synonymous with a worsening day, although, yes, it’s obviously better to be ‘up’ than ‘down’ in the common usage of those words, but regarding hills, in my experience as a cyclist, going down them is much preferable. As a rambler too.

You see I was high on James Blood Ulmer’s ‘Tales Of Captain Black’ album early this morning, having reacquainted myself with it after many years, when I should have paid heed to Mark Twain’s suggestion that ‘if you eat a frog first thing in the morning that will probably be the worst thing you do all day’. But from the summit of James Blood Ulmer I was destined to go ‘downhill’, not rapidly, but very slowly. In fact, I didn’t start going down until around 1 this afternoon because the morning was good.

First I met Jean-Paul Sartre at the Renoir café in Kentish Town. Inside they were playing Billy Holiday whilst I sat out at a table swilling nicotine down my gullet with a good cappuccino. I didn’t close my eyes, but instead went into a reverie based around the absurd notion that it was almost chic to be sat outside a cafe called The Renoir whilst they played Jazz, almost, because Kentish Town is not similar to La Rive Gauche, in case you didn’t know. But it became Paris of the 40s in my mind, and along came JPS. I said ‘Bonjour!’ He said ‘Toutes le actions humaines sont equivalents et elles sont toutessur le principe vouee a l’echec’ (‘All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure’). He can be a miserable bastard. I bought him a coffee. He said he’d met Charlie Parker recently. Parker said to him: ‘I like your playing very much.’ Ha! Can you believe that? JP tinkles the ivories now and again but I don’t think that’s what Bird was referring to. Then he told me that Juliette had introduced Miles Davis to him. Show off. Then Simone (de Beauvoir) came along, saying to him ‘Viens salaud paresseux que nous avons un magazine a editer!’ (‘Come on you lazy bastard we’ve got a magazine to edit!). And off they went. And I came back to reality, which was Kentish Town, me alone at the table – Charlie Parker, JPS, Simone, and Miles all dead.

Still, I went on to scour the charity shops having bought the latest edition of The Wire – still feeling good, despite not finding much. Came home, read some of The Wire, then...and then...a kind ennui began to creep over me...a paralysis, if you will, whereby I spent time checking Twitter and Facebook, realising that my friends were not saying much, and I had nothing to say...so I thought I’d watch a film (‘Made In U.S.A’), but the DVD-playing facility refused to work. Try again. Nothing. Try again. Nothing. And the nothingness, or to be precise, the black screen interrupted only by the faintest of flickers, seemed to mirror the state of my mind in which there was nothing but blackness with faintly flickering ideas which never really fully materialised.

So the day passed. And darkness fell.

I wish I’d eaten a frog to start with.

A Tale Of Two Jukeboxes - Boomkat & The Green Man Pub, Aylesbury

2011-11-09T09:35:00.000-08:00

Album reviews using the Boomkat Jukebox facility...

Intrigue & Stuff - Leyland Kirby
Kirby specialises in elegiac titles such as 'Sadly, The Future Is No Longer What It Was' and (as Caretaker) 'An Empty Bliss Beyond This World', making 17hr long ambient works based on the ballroom scene in 'The Shining' to express his total isolation from mainstream culture and in the process becoming a one-man Grateful Dead for the new electronic era. He probably has a beard too, a long one, which proves he was growing it way before they became fashionable. Track 2 is surprisingly perky for him, and for that I like it. But only in the context of his mostly sonmanbulistic oeuvre.

Replica - Oneohtrix Point Never
This was reviewed in The Guardian. That's how With It they are. Like Kirby, this character has never touched either my emotional or intellectual bone, accepting that no such bone exists. The title track features a mournful piano designed to evoke the Essence Of Melancholic Contemplation Whilst Waiting In The Queue At A Supermarket Checkout, I think. 'Up' features an incredibly annoying loop of someone saying 'Up'. I'm bored now.

Time's Arrow - Prurient
Ooh, a Martin Amis reference. Some geezer telling a story. Music. More music. Oh christ, now he's shouting and you can't make out what he's saying. Sort of 'hardcore' electro' noise. I'm not going any further.

Redsuperstructure - Robert Lippock
Starts promisingly...spooky ambient minimalism...'Nycyle' is a bit 'glitchy'...so is 'Sugarcubes'...forward...mmm...forward...is that it? You know, this may not be the proper way to get the measure of masterpieces which take more than a minute or so to unfold from relative simplicity to vastly complex structures of power and significance...but I think I've got the measure of this album and doubt that it contains such tracks. Next!

D.o.A. The Third And Final Report Of Throbbing Gristle
Abstract. Some geezer shouting like Prurient. Another one talking, and swearing. 'Dead On Arrival' is good, though. Now I'm speeding through...'Wall Of Sound' - what a racket! Phil Spector will be turning in his prison bed. 'We Hate You'! A bloke screaming how much he hates 'you', or 'us'. I don't think this mob has much of a future. They have a legendary past though. Yes, I'm aware of TG. I like and dislike their stuff in equal measure. I think there's a Holy Church of Psychic Porridge in Scunthorpe, a bit like the one in honour of John Coltrane in 'Frisco. They scream 'We hate you' from the pulpit whilst watching horror and porn on VHS. I must go sometime.

The Falcon And The Pod - Atelecine
Who's this then? A bloke just said 'Fuck me' - ooh! American Suicidal post-New Wave Electro-Punk junk, like, they're really wrecked, you know? Reading the blurb, I see that there's a 'mesmerising clarity' in here somewhere. It's bloody horrible, and not in a good way.

That was stupid idea, I know. It benefited neither you nor I. In fact, it made me quite depressed.

You know, I'm old enough to remember real jukeboxes. They were machines that held seven-inch singles. You put money in, selected what you wanted to hear, and as if by magic the arm picked it out, the needle dropped and the whole pub could find out what you were into. Isn't that amazing? I used to work with a guy who chose the music for his parents' pub, The Green Man in Aylesbury. You can see what was happening on the little flyer to the left. That was one hell of a jukebox. I'm tempted to compare the digital version with the real one, but that would be stupid. I go misty-eyed recalling the old communal experience of choosing 'London Calling' or 'Stepping Razor'. The downside was that it also held 'Stairway To Heaven'. As you can see, the 2 Tone thing was kicking in to live alongside classics like 'Tumbling Dice'. I'm sure Throbbing Gristle appeared too, but don't recall them specifically. Those days of energy generated by tribal allegiance (plus alcohol and pills) seem as ancient as the birth of Rock 'n' Roll. Well, taste and technology move on (you noticed?), and I couldn't have imagined that one day I'd be sat at a computer (a computer!) using a digital jukebox. It sounds very space-age even as I write, and so does much of the music featured on Boomkat. Unfortunately, some of it also sounds like a bad impression of Suicide. Music doesn't always change for the better. You may have noticed that too.

The Holy Barbarians - Lawrence Lipton (Four Square Paperback 1962)

2011-11-08T09:44:00.000-08:00

I featured the hardback here, which is far superior, but seeing this I couldn't resist it, especially at £1.49. The good thing about this beat-en up copy is that it looks like it might have travelled in the back pocket of an aspiring British beat circa '62 as he waved bye-bye to mummy and daddy with just a duffle coat to sleep in whilst dreaming of being Jack Kerouac but after five days looked homeward because it rained too much and motorway caffs just don't have the glamour of diners and there were no big rolling trains to jump into or Jazz joints to discover. I was going to hit The Road once but got as far as the door when Mum said 'D'you want a cuppa tea before you go?', and I did. And that was the end of that.

John Zorn - In Case You Didn't Know

2011-11-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

There will always be independent artists, there will always be some freak that says, “This is not right, I’m gonna do it my way.” There will always be experimental music. There will always be people who wanna listen to it. But I just don’t see them taking over the world, you know? Maybe when I was 22 years old I thought we were gonna take over the world, that this was the real music. But now that I have a perspective and I’m 46, 1 look back and I say, “Look at the his tory.” Look at thousands of years of how it’s been and how people are manipulated and how greed functions in our society. - John Zorn

JZ is something of a hero 'round here. I even forgive him his trousers. I've had a Zornological afternoon, and as is usually the case when delving into his musical universe, my mind's reeling from the diversity and dazzling brilliance of much of what he's done. Like Sun Ra, his is a creative cosmos, the totality of which is almost impossible to fully explore. But you can spend a fascinating few hours trying. From minimalist electronic experiments to speed metal, chamber music, rockabilly, surf, blues, jazz, noise and on, he's got to be the most eclectic cat in town. I mean, sometimes I wonder if he has time to do anything else, his output is so enormous. Can you imagine him getting a girlfriend? Perhaps he has one. I don't know and shouldn't comment. Wearing those trousers, I don't reckon his chances much. If by chance you've never heard a John Zorn album, I recommend starting with Film Works III because it offers a good taster of various styles. My favourites include The Bribe and The Big Gundown but that's because I'm also a fan of film noir and Morricone. The more adventurous amongst you might try Cobra: Game Pieces Vol II. As a regular IMO reader, I know you're pretty adventurous musically, aren't you? I know you have great taste too, which leads me to think you must be into Zorn, and I'm probably wasting my time but, you know, strangers might wander in here looking for something new...strangers for whom Zorn is an unknown entity, perhaps. If you're one of them, I hope this leads you on a mind-boggling musical trip. I've learnt almost nothing over the years, but one thing I have learnt is that it's wrong to assume that 'everyone' appreciates certain great artists, and I don't mean because they should , but that it seems logical, allowing for taste, of course. I'm still surprised, though, when someone expresses total ignorance of Kenyon Hopkins, but that's another matter.

Here is a site you might want to visit for more Zorn.

And there's a great recent interview here

The Third Person. Fiction?

2011-11-06T07:56:00.000-08:00

‘A foot is a foot, a mile is a mile, as smile is smile is a frown turned upside down’, he wrote in his notebook, without knowing why.

He then reasoned that to write without too much aforethought was liberating, and a lack of ‘sense’ didn’t matter because there is far too much sense written in the world, by which he meant words that make sense, even if the reader does not agree with the sentiment.

He had the notion to write a book of nonsense, but who would want to read that? He thought about all the manuscripts in brown envelopes in cupboards and draws filled with words he had typed and concluded that it made little sense to keep them for all they did was mock his efforts to become a novelist, without saying a word (for words cannot speak in that sense).

Yet the words made a mockery of his desires, anyway. Those were old desires which, when alive, could be mocked. But in death, they exist only as a memory.

He drank more tea, rolled a cigarette, looked out the window at all the windows opposite and wondered what people were doing behind them. Perhaps they were watching TV. They may be arguing, making love, reading the Sunday paper, cooking, sleeping (even though it was 2.30 in the afternoon).

What did other people do with their time? The possibilities he had thought of were, he reckoned, the most common, therefore the most likely.

He stared at the net curtains of the top window nearest the break in the row of houses. He imagined a teenager sat at his computer, clicking between the pages of his first novel (1^st draft) and the internet...battling the distraction, and losing, because the novel was proving too difficult.

He was stuck, and unsure of the validity of his central character, a young writer living in Camden, who struggles to write because he cannot concentrate in a world of distractions.

He gets up from his desk, walks into the bathroom, urinates, looks in the mirror, and tells himself that the fictional character must be different from him in several important ways, otherwise the novel will be boring because he has done little in his nineteen years. Then again, he tells himself, it is not so much about the character and what happens, or has happened, to him, but the style in which he describes everything. His style will be fresh, innovative, daring and different to that of run-of-the-mill (albeit successful) novelists.

He goes back to the desk but does not sit down. Instead, he turns, goes into the kitchen and makes himself a cheese sandwich with spring onion and mayonnaise, telling himself that having eaten it he will knuckle down and write.

He walks to the window and looks down. Across the road he can just about make out the man in his room, the man he often sees sitting at his desk, staring at a computer, which is invisible because it backs against the wall, but he has seen the man’s face illuminated by it at night when he only has a dim lamp on in his room.

He can see the man in his sub-basement room because he has blinds at his window, and often leaves them open at night.

He wonders what the man is looking at on the internet. Perhaps he is also a writer. It would be strange, he thought, not only to be living opposite another writer, but to be able to watch him at work. The chances were slim. He was probably just surfing the ‘net.

The man is not writing a novel, of course (what a foolish enterprise!). He is writing his blog. He prefers the immediacy of it to the arduous task of making up characters and having them do things for thousands of words only to be filed away and forgotten about.

It is not the kind of blog where he talks about his life, though. No, he had no intention of doing that. He preferred to give the world images, or review music and film, or impart his wisdom on various other subjects.

He was quite aware, however, that he was not particularly wise, and only ever talked of his wisdom with a sense of irony, especially to himself, because he thought he knew himself quite well, and was modest about his talents.

Then again, who does really know themselves or what they are truly capable of? Is everything not relative? He was wise compared to Jack but not as smart as Jill, and so on. Yes, that was the case.

This particular afternoon he had been stuck for ideas about what to put on his blog. He had looked at various books and magazines and thought about discussing Art Pepper but was not happy with any of those. So he began writing about himself in the third person and found it liberating in the same way that writing nonsense in his notebook had been.

He wrote about a man writing nonsense in his notebook then wondering about the validity of nonsense before contemplating all the manuscripts of novels he had written. And so he went on writing about what people across the road might be doing, imagining one of them to be a writer struggling with his first novel.

Finally he returned to the man imagining all this and described the liberating feeling of writing in the third person, because he was that man, a man trapped in a loop of describing himself as another man who acknowledged that he was the subject before going on to describe the situation again.

He was a man writing himself into a cycle which had no end. He had lost himself whilst being outside of himself, and if you should happen to walk down that road in Camden Town I am sure you would see him still sitting there at his computer, writing about the man writing about himself as another person.

Miscellany: Voix, A New Life, 'Hausu', The American Dream

2011-11-05T10:17:00.000-07:00

Year: 1970
Artist: Egisto Macchi
Genre: Electro-Psychestral
You might ask: Do I really need another download?
Answer: In this case, YES.
Listen Here. (74MB)

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'Hausu'. Dir: Nobuhiko Obayashi. 1977. Wiki. Saw this at a friend's film club on Weds night. Fascinating, funny; full of ideas, cinematic trickery and magical images.

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'The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination Watergate, Vietnam...' - J. G. Ballard

But oh how I love illustrations like this...

Album Cover Of The Week: Music To Remember Her - Jackie Gleason

2011-11-04T10:56:00.000-07:00

'Surreal' is an overused word, but this image of disembodied beauties floating against a backdrop of blurred lights strikes me as a supremely dream-like and, yes, surreal image. Classic Easy from Gleason which I picked up a few months ago for a quid.

A Reformed Hippie Writes - Playboy Ads & Fashion April 1968

2011-11-03T10:02:00.000-07:00

A word about the Hathaway shirts ad and how the eye patch became a fashion accessory. Legendary ad man David Ogilvy saw a photo of the US ambassador to Britain, Lewis Douglas, wearing one in a photo after a fishing accident. He bought some and took them along to a shoot for Hathaway in 1951. The wearer was George Wrangell, not a handsome young model, but an ex-Russian baron who Ogilvy thought would lend distinction to the product. He would feature in the very successful campaign, and Hathaway's sales rose between 1950 and '69 from $2 million to $30 million dollars per year. The eye patch novelty was born.

What Would Sun Ra Do? - Occupy Space

2011-11-02T02:51:00.000-07:00

The Absolute Like - Sun Ra

This their 'life' is a comedy of errors

For it is human-life

That graces the roles that people play

And the play never ends

It never really begins to be

Producers produce

Plays but play and people unknowingly act their parts

Like willing puppets...absolute upon

a string

Puppet by puppet upon a string.

Occupy Site, St Paul's cathedral, London

The Enchanted Forest - Hans Malmberg & Gunnel Linde 1966

2011-11-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

An absolute treat today. Feast your eyes on the magic of Malmberg's photography.

The double page spread didn't come out too well, but being a hardback this is the best I could do and I thought it worthy of inclusion despite that. Anyway, hope you enjoy these images.

Dispel Dances - Anstam (50 Weapons)

2011-10-31T10:33:00.000-07:00

They're dispelling something here...I'm not sure what...perhaps the notion that modern electronic music must be either 'intelligent', ie complex home listening, or 'dance floor-friendly' (you know what that means). Either way, this is big, meaty, bouncy album that carries the weight of what you want from butt-shakers (did I really say that?) with a lot more going on in terms of arrangements and ideas. With the big bursts of cheesy quaver strings on 'Handsome Talks The Talk' come thundering drums, cymbal breaks and all manner of mixological shenanigans (yes, shenanigans, I've been wanting to write that for ages). Many influences, but thankfully no absolute genre-bound numbers here. 'I Shouldn't Even Be Here' sounds like a title to suit anyone who's been in the wrong club, and it starts as a sluggish, distorted beat before gradually taking off at a brisk march towards a kind of ecstatic triumph that's still tinged with dread. They programme a mean break, one strong enough to carry a tune and constitute it's core, on 'In The Bull Run'. Boomkat compares the piano on 'Statical' to Keith Jarrett, but I don't know which of his albums they've been listening to, and it doesn't matter because any reviewer of a modern electronic album who can shoe-in KJ is all right by me, even if it isn't appropriate. Can I mention Bud Powell, just for the hell of it? They end on a Schaefferesque note, in which there aren't many notes at all, but lots of silence, and what sounds like the non-silence of a record running in music-less grooves. Just fine, that is. Oh, and an electric bass gets a look in, a lovely touch on 'Watching The Ships Go By'. File under 'Post-Shackleton Next Level Prog Beat..er...whatever...but don't quote me, please.