Art Zine: Out of Nowhere now available!

You can read more and buy it here

Art: Monk's Mood - Tribute To Thelonious Monk

RTomens, 2017

 Three art works from a series I made in honour of Thelonious Monk. The music is taken from his tune, Monk's Mood.

RTomens, 2017

RTomens, 2017

Vispo/Art/Children Of Alice/The Seeds

Where have I been? Nowhere much.
What have I been doing?
This....

...and that...

...you can see some artworks of mine over here

Meanwhile, in the world of music, how about that supergroup of James Cargill, Roj Stevens (Broadcast) and Julian House? Supergroup? What am I talking about? There's not a double-neck guitar or permed hairdo in sight, as far as I know. Still it's a 'super' group, isn't it? Maybe not. Anyway, the pooled talents of Children Of Alice in theory should make a great album...and to my surprise, have. I say 'great', although the common tropes (admittedly mostly created by House) of the haunty thing are well-worn by now. That said, Children Of Alice is still a charming trip down the rabbit hole of magical absurdities that's skillfully stitched together and skips around the toy shop of sounds designed to evoke funfair horror and frolics.

In the Oxfam shop this morning, browsing through the 50p CDs, I thought 'There must be something here' - there had to be something...I wanted some new music...come on (flick-flick)...so much music I cannot bring myself to pay even 50p for...it seemed ridiculous, but there it was, proof that of all the hours of recorded sound packaged up and presented (having been rejected) before me it was all useless...nothing but a parade of has-beens, never-beens and never-should-have-beens...not even albums I once owned but lost enthusiasm for....and there are plenty of those. Anyway, here are The Seeds...

Collage / Boris Hauf - Clark / Iancu Dumitrescu

Commodities, RTomens, 198-

More art here

***

New speakers for the new PC - thing is, playing Boris Hauf's Corona from the Clark album, I don't know if he's built distortion into the sound or the speakers are rubbish - 'DUFF!-DUFF! DUFF!-DUFF!' If you read this, Boris, let me know. Really, they cost a whole £25. And as this track goes through nuclear meltdown towards the end I'm slightly worried as to which it is, the speakers or him.

Well, whatever, at first I thought 'OK, clean Techno generic, fairly good' but playing it over the last few days my opinion is changing towards 'Techno generic but twisted just enough to make it interesting'. I like the clean minimalism, which is the overriding impression, but that's ignoring the distortion mentioned above...and the storm of electro-static washing over Mind Tapes, which really takes it to another level and, as it progresses, creates the impression of being whipped up in a sonic tornado. Non-Stop Flight's crackle and persistent brain-phasing texture, which barely allows the subdued beat to take hold, is also nicely done. Clark is rising in my estimation with every play. It's reissued by Shameless.  

***

I'm going to see Iancu Dumitrescu and Ana Maria Avram at Cafe Oto on the 27th - yes, I'm actually having my slippers surgically removed in order to traverse the mean streets of London, at night, which is quite some effort on my behalf I can tell you. The book, Cosmic Orgasm, is highly recommended if you want one about him. I don't think there are others to choose from. I bought it on a mad whim whilst browsing in Housmans a few months ago, based on nothing more than faint recollections of what his music is about and no idea whether any resided on my hard drive...you know what it's like, these days, the plasticity of our brains being what it is, our minds are constantly being re-shaped by multitudinous input from The Screen....that's my excuse anyway.

Turns out Dumitrascu is a brilliant composer - you may already know, but since buying the book I've been catching up. He is also deeply into philosophy and theory but finds that attempts to expand on ideas by talking to musicians about them doesn't work, they 'simply stiffen up'. He tells them to forget what he was talking about and gets better results. The same could be said for listening to his music. One may know, or learn about, phenomenology or the Pythagorean monochord (!) but my total ignorance of either does not hinder my appreciation of his music. Like the players, I find it more helpful to relax, be open-minded and free from intellectual baggage. This approach suits my basic inability to grasp anything much beyond the bare facts of life, such as having to get up every morning, sleep at night and maybe do a few things in between.

Still, I'm looking forward to hearing them both, as Avram puts it, 'solicit the maximum force of the performer' at Cafe Oto.

Here To Go: Column One

So after this concert Column One will cease to exist - bad news, but I'm assured there will be new projects in the future. Meanwhile, savour the artwork by Robert Schalinski, presumably, for the final show. His collages have featured in many booklets and flyers for Column One and I'll be sharing some of them in the near future.

Punk: periodical collection

Edited by Paul Gangloff, featuring discussions with Stephan Dillemuth, Martijn Haas, Dominique Hurth, Eleonor Jonker, Gee Vaucher and others on zine-making, distribution and the ethos behind them. Very good book this, with some superb images made especially for the project.

'Stephan Dillemuth: One thing I think is important about these publications is that they serve a certain purpose, there’s a need to make them and there is a certain context for that need – that’s important. A lot of publications today are not made anymore out of need, but just to make money with advertising and for that they need “content providers”, that’s what writers and artists became. Service industry serves the manufacturing of redundant information, in order to generate revenue with advertising. There is no other inner need, no inner drive, no other purpose behind it and that’s also visible in the design, no simplicity, no directness, just packaging and hollow inside.'

Visit any zine fair today and you'll see a lot of material that's all 'packaging and hollow inside', despite being personal and handmade rather than to 'generate revenue with advertising'. For some, small press is on a par with cake-making and other crafts, hence it's popularity. The political or cutting-edge art aesthetic is largely missing. It's as if makers long for the old ways (of production) in this age of technology, but use them to create little more than pretty, vacuous product. 

The obvious difference today is that the overriding spirit of the era from the 70s to mid-90s is absent. The politics of living then (on the dole, protest, rebellion), fuelled in part by music was of it's time. Today, 'protest' or artistic rebellion is more likely to take the form of memes that clog your Facebook wall...oh, and those petitions. And Tweets, of course. Hardly substitutes for hand-crafted images and stapled pages which you can hold and feel in more ways than the purely physical. Punk: periodical collection is freely available in PDF form, but having the book is better. Read more and buy it here. 

Book: Unnatural: techno-theory for a contaminated culture

Charity shop find - edited by Matthew Fuller, this 1994 production absolutely belies it age, as you can see, but that's good and besides, doesn't everything? Mostly. Desktop production after Xerox zines saw the old feel lost but felt like a zingy new medium for cutting-edge cottage industrial types. Unnatural reminds me of how things looked for small press products, including zines, in the mid-90s. So now it appears dated, or evokes nostalgia, depending on your age. Cybernetic mutational anarcho-hybridisation was also very much a hot topic, what with this computer thing visible on the brave new horizon and it's threat of viral infection of the mind (phew, thankfully that didn't happen...did it?). Great work here from Graham Harwood and Mark Pawson along with others...

There's No Limit - Mark Pawson

ALL NEW GEN - VNS Matrix

Lies - Graham Harwood

Vispo/Collage / Intersystems / Novels: opening lines / Two LPs To Look Out For

In Plain English (detail) 

full picture & two variations over here

***

Canadian 60s space-age lo-fi art cosmonaut collective Intersystems'

3 LPs now on CD with booklet if you can afford the package -

which I can't - but it's sound stuff - funny sounding stuff made from

story-telling/nonsense, concrete, DIY electronics bereft of typical

late-60s hippy-dream drift & more Dada/minimalist raw

visionary sonic happening - yeah!

***

Opening lines from novels selected in order of appearance (left to right) on the shelf where the latest acquisitions are put...

A couple of days later Pinchot phoned.

My father's name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Peter.

Everything is changing.

Go, traveler.

Rattle, gurgle, clink, tinkle.

***

finally...

outstanding albums to look out for in February

(by which time I know you'll have forgotten but...anyway)

Aphelion - Ipek Gorgon

Drawn With Shadow Pens - Yves De Mey

both are Include Me Out approved

TTFN

Collage / Do Anything You Wanna Do / Lemmy's Dead

They Said It Couldn't Be Done, R.Tomens 2015

................................................................................................................................they say anything can be done if you put your mind to it - bah! - we know that's rubbish..........but you've got to try.........
                                                                                                                                        anything
anything you really want to do, that is..............trying to do anything you don't want to do is really hard....like shopping for food which, when you think about it, should be something you want to do but I find today's supermarket climate difficult to face...........the feeling that I'm being ripped off impossible to avoid......'Only £1' Yes? Is that a bargain? I don't think so............

blah, blah, blah

listening to Stockhausen, that's something I wanted to do half an hour ago

so I am

this...

                                          inspired by his forthcoming appearance as Composer Of The Week on Radio 3

starting Mon Jan 4 & tomorrow, New Year's Day, they're broadcasting Hymnen at 20.30 so that'll be a fun way to celebrate the start of 2016, won't it? well, not everyone's idea of fun, true.............

............................some of my old school friends are dead & so is Lemmy................you may have heard..........his mush has been all over the social network as everyone mourns...............including the mainstream press, who have to get in on the act as if they spend the rest of their time celebrating the wayward, hedonistic, individualistic FUCK YOU lifestyle rather than constantly telling us what we should & should not eat, smoke, drink whilst generally promoting the bourgeois values & material things that chain half the nation to working more than is good for them & making the other half feel inferior because they don't own perfect teeth, houses, nice cars etc or go on fancy holidays........................but Lemmy's dead! Oh no! what a rascal he was! we abhor his lifestyle in reality & would hate to be stuck in a bar with him because he actually stands for everything we hate as a lifestyle but.................Lemmy's dead......(sniff, sob).......................arseholes.............

TTFN

Art Prints For Sale

This is a screengrab of the FB page where you can find all the prints and details.Those not on FB or with Paypal, another buying option will be available soon so watch this blog. Failing that just contact me here for any info.

Collage: The Biggest TV News / Mince Pies From A Stranger

R. Tomens 2015

***

In other news this week...

I was given two mince pies

by a guy delivering them in

a van, the rear door of which

was open, as I told him when

we stopped at the traffic lights and, 

having assured me the door was OK, 

he offered me mince pies, holding up

 the cardboard box, saying what sounded like

"Me-e-e-npi-i-i!"

twice

because I couldn't understand him 

until

he picked one out with a grin, which prompted me to reach through the window

and take it before he offered another, saying "Very good me-e-e-npi-i-i!" so I

took that one too, placing it delicately alongside the first, in my pannier, by which

time the lights had long since turned green but we didn't care, being too busy 

exchanging favours, grinning at each other as I noted his beard and complexion, 

wondering if he was a Muslim, perhaps on a goodwill mission and, 

in this instance, it certainly worked 

because they were the best 

mince pies I've ever eaten.

Fruit Cup magazine, 1969 (Beach Books)

Bought this on eBay a few weeks ago. One of many interesting small magazines of the 60s. The Hippies weren't all bad. The collages reminded me that Punk zines weren't the first to past up images in a casual, seemingly random fashion.

Buying Stuff / Collage / Drexciya

I've been buying stuff...well, you have to justify Work somehow, don't you? So we buy stuff. Some people buy cars, houses, clothes for the kids and other important adult goods but I buy books, music and films. They give me as much pleasure as kids are supposed to without asking for money or needing your guidance through life. OK, they don't look after you when you're old but being a crazy beatnik I'm living for now and every day's filled with wild spontaneity, Jazz, poetry, bongo-playing and painting...

Bella Tarr's a bastard though. I love and hate him. He's the new Bergman, isn't he? If Bergman ever was the standard reference point for jokes about suffering/enduring art house film in order to appear intelligent, which I think he was. Or I imagine he was. Sátántangó is 419 minutes long. I gave up big books years ago but film's different. Even an epic of this size can be digested relatively quickly...in, say, 419 minutes...over a period of six months though, knowing me. So there it was for a fiver; irresistible. All four items only came to a tenner. Perhaps you can buy some kids' clothes for that...but they grow out of them...and I've yet to fully grow into Béla Tarr so he's good value for my money.

***

A collage by LJ. It's called 'Firecracker'. She paints too. Her work is here.

***

The Clone label has released more Drexciya. You probably knew that. If you didn't, you don't like the music. That's OK, I won't hold it against you. If we all had the same taste it would be boring, wouldn't it? Politicians, sports people, the bloke on the supermarket check out, your doctor, everyone else in the office...all raving about the new Drexciya record. You'd turn on the radio and hear Parliament, Pierre Schaeffer, Horace Silver, Lee Perry, Drexciya, James Brown, Roxy Music, Daphne Oram etc all bleedin' day. Meanwhile, Black Sea (Aqualung Version) starts so well that I've restarted it several times already today. The rest isn't bad either. Unknown Journey XI exemplifies what that Detroit techno bloke said about being stuck in a lift with Krawfwerk and Bill Clinton...I think it was Bill. And the Aqualung version of Wavejumper...go wiggle!

Collage / Cut-Up / Pierre Boulez / Life On Screen

***

i remember the conversation about the 

                                                             powerlessness of the artist in society 

                                                                   i know that publishers don't care much

                                                                   whether people read books just so long 

                                                                   as they buy them 

                                                           'he's dead,' she said flatly. 'i knew it.'

                                                           'knew it?'

                                                           'well, I dreamed it.' 

                                                    these detourned images are not only decapitated (authorless)

                                                    but, as a cut-up, montaged fragments, they also

                                                    metaphorically represent a body in pieces.

                                                      'we rise and descend like ghosts,' panted the leaves

                                                       in their successive service.

(Jarry, Rumney, Fuller, Raymond, Stracey) 

***

"It at first reduces you," Cage said, "to a nearly total absence of comprehension."

***

YOU'RE AT THE END OF THE LINE. 

PATIENCE? 

NO, TIME. 

MOVE ON. 

LIFE ON SCREEN

           

Collage: Here's The Secret (detail)

Full picture here

Collage: Horrible Odor

"I'm a big fish in a little pond."

"Are there any other fish in it?"

"No."

Collage: Together At Last!

"On the internet."

"What?"

"Too many pictures!"

"And nobody remembers any of them."

Semina Culture - Wallace Berman & His Circle

Republication of the book that accompanied an exhibition in 2005 about Wallace Berman and his circle of friends, the title comes from his Semina art-book-zine ('57-'64). There are brief biographies of the people involved and examples of their work. Like the Beat scene itself, it looks very much like the early days of many things now taken for granted as 'underground/alternative' culture. Post-war art-making, poetry-writing folk living the flip side of the comfy nuclear family all-American dream/nightmare. Whilst some, such as Dennis Hopper and Allen Ginsberg (featured in Semina) rose to fame in different ways, Berman stayed beneath the radar - too 'alternative' and eclectic in his vision, perhaps, and too busy doing his thing to worry much about 'making it'. 

Semina Culture - Wallace Berman & His Circle 

Untitled, 1963

Mz. Bell, Jean Connor, 1969

Untitled, Bobby Driscoll, 1964

Berman by Edward Hopper

Untitled, Dean Stockwell, 1963