Colin Webster vs Tape Loops / John Sladek

Improvising to tape loops may sound implausible, or rather, contrary to the spirit of Improv, but who cares about that, eh? Not you. So here's saxophonist Colin Webster doing just that and the combination of his chops and repetitive sounds works very well. You can almost hear Webster thinking 'What shall I do with this?' in the unaccompanied sections, which adds to the intrigue. Being capable of creating many varied sounds from his horn, Webster has no trouble finding the 'right' tone for each loop (well, perhaps he did, but the released versions all succeed).

On impulse I called in Daunt Books today to see what sci-fi they had. I asked the girl if they had a section for it, she said they didn't because they 'specialised in travel'. "What about space travel?" I asked..."I know," she replied, almost smiling...

Bought this John Sladek collection the other day, having decided to read more science-fiction. The genre has promised more than it's delivered as far as my needs in recent years are concerned. Those needs have changed since I started reading sci-fi a long time ago, of course. 

After the early-teen experience of space adventures I progressed to the biggies such as Asimov and co.. It wasn't until the late-70s and discovering William Burroughs that my view of the genre changed completely; in short, he ruined it regarding everyone else, except JG Ballard, who I still rate highly and read regularly. That's no coincidence considering Ballard's opinion of Burroughs despite their very different writing styles.

Burroughs even gets a mention on page 79 of this Sladek collection from a stoned character trying to get to Morocco. Published in '68, the first novel, The Reproductive System, reflects the era in a good way rather than a 'dated' fashion, covering paranoia, anti-authoritarian, secret agent, science-gone-mad cynicism in the spirit of adventure that reminds me of both Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius and Wilson and Shea's Illuminatus! Trilogy. So far so good and since I will finish it that's a recommendation from someone who's a serial non-finisher (life's too short, isn't it?)

TTFN

Back Into JG Ballard / Janek Schaefer's Inner Space Memorial (for JG Ballard)

Mmm...what to read?...go to the shelf in the hallway...JG Ballard - The Complete Short Stories...yes! Just about manage to get it down without damaging my back - it's a beast...1189 pages...all of which I know I haven't read but there's no marker in it so...where did I get to? The stories are presented chronologically, which is great....The Terminal Beach from '64? (page 589) - I know I've read it, but...trouble is the spine is creased all the way, so no clues there...you know what? I'll start from the beginning. Yes. I will, in 1956 with Prima Belladonna...so I did, last night (you want to know what else I did last night? Mind your own business)...it's a brilliant tale of musical plant mutations and a mysterious woman...but you know Ballard's brilliant and this book is essential. My copy is the Flamingo one from 2002 but another has since been published.

Here's a great tribute to Ballard by Janek Schaefer...

New Worlds Magazine No. 213 feat JG Ballard's 'Mr F Is Mr F'

After the post about the recently published New Worlds book, here are some pages from my copy of issue no.213, 1978. J. G. Ballard's Mr F Is Mr F was written in 1958, according to the editorial. This, however, was the first time it was published. You can read about Ballard's early experimental work here.

Don't lower your mask until you have another mask prepared beneath

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

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...

Life In The Post-Literate World - Featuring Martin Amis And Other Literary Dinosaurs

As I told Tim Footman this morning, post literacy is where it’s @, although I was joking, more or less. Just as he writes that his ‘only creative impulse is to leach moderately amusing photos from other people’s Facebook posts’ I too have felt stuck in a similar ‘loop of post-literacy’. My main urge recently has been to post scans from magazines - well, with as many Playboy magazines as I have, you would too.

   The lapse in ‘non-literacy’ is surely a result of our times - yes, I blame other forces rather than my own  creative inertia.  I blame Twitter and it’s 140 character rule. I blame Facebook for allowing comments but largely encouraging one click of approval.

   One day the only option will be to choose a thought, concept, philosophy, text of any kind, and click on it instead of writing anything yourself. I guess there already is; it’s called plagiarism. Even emails feels as if they’ve been consigned to the dump where letter-writing has long resided.

   Yet there’s supposed to be a boom in self-publishing (Kindle, of course, not old-school paper!). As for the blogging boom (whenever that was), it appears to have evolved into a full-throttle race to compile the funniest, strangest, most interesting images from the present to the much-loved Past. Retro sites appear to be an irresistible force, there being so much documentation in the form of book/LP covers, photos and film from that ‘foreign land’ where the sun never sets, and we all speak the same language: Nostalgia.

   Novels are still being written, and presumably more than a few people are interested in who won the Man Booker prize. The Guardian recently produced a guide called ‘How To Write Fiction’, the best thing about it being Geoff Dyer’s introduction in which he stakes a claim for freedom. ‘Feel free to dispute or ignore everything in this introduction or in the articles that follow’, he says. David Hare’s idea that ‘The two most depressing words in the English language are ‘literary fiction’ is used, which Dyer backs up by saying ‘literary fiction does not set a standard that is to be aspired to, it describes a habit of convention that people – writers and readers alike – collapse into, like a comfy old sofa’. Hear, hear! But tell that to everyone attending the various ‘Guardian Master Class’ events, featuring Sarah Dunant, Toby Litt and a host of other groundbreaking anti-Literary Fictioneers. Tell Guardian readers who pay for a Writing Workshop holiday in Tuscany (free wine and food).

   Did Joyce, Burroughs, B. S. Johnson and David Markson write in vain? Yes, because most of us prefer that comfy sofa to the cutting-edge (very uncomfortable indeed!).

   Kathy Acker can shout ‘make it new!’ from her grave, and J.G. Ballard can turn in his, mumbling, again, that ‘we’re just drowning under manufactured fiction’. No-one is listening, no-one cares. The asteroid that’s big enough to wipe the beast called Literary Fictionaurus off the face of the earth has yet to arrive, and should you dream of such mass extinction, don’t hold your breath.

   Amis, Rushdie, Roth and Angelou (literature’s answer to Crosby, Still, Nash and Young, surely, if they ever read together, which is unlikely) along with rest, are asteroid-proof . Literary Fiction is the gold standard which all wannabes aspire to, unless J. K. Rowling or Tony Parsons are the role models. It’s not an option, it’s not even a genre, it’s the anti-genre because the rest is ‘genre fiction’. These Greats are beyond genre (yes, I know Amis dabbled in Crime) because the calling of The Author is to define and describe Life for us all, to make manifest in characters the very essence of what it means to Exist – oh yes! And which reader, in their right mind, would pass up on the chance to learn all that in 200 pages?

   Talking of pages, it really is time to close this one. I have talked for long enough; far too long for the post-modern blogging era. I’d hate to be thought of as old-fashioned, you know.  Next I shall post some nice pictures. Now, where are those Playboy magazines?

I Am Scientifically Proven To Be Musically Perceptive

Since I scored so highly (see left) in the BBC's music test I hope you will now take me seriously when I talk about music because it’s now been scientifically proven that I’m 99% spot on. Well, when it comes to memorising melodies, noticing the difference between tunes played, whether a bleep is in time with the music, and being able to put genres together by hearing a one-second soundbite...those were the tests in that category. If you fancy taking it, the soundbite tests are fun, but the questions are rather boring. One asks if Lady Gaga is a) a genius, b) very talented, c) quite talented, or d) not talented. There’s a subsection in which you can type your own one-word appraisal. I wrote ‘C*nt’...which may explain the missing final per cent. OK, I made that up.
   Some questions related to watching ‘live’ music. I scored low there because I haven’t been to a gig in years and have little interest in seeing bands. I’m not sure why...perhaps because having seen such bands as the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Ornette Coleman, Art Blakey, and Aylesbury’s The Sore Willies (1978) I’ve been spoilt. They’re tough acts to follow, especially The Sore Willies, who I almost joined until the guitarist discovered that I couldn’t learn two notes on bass guitar, therefore falling short, by one note, of the musical ability required. If you’re musically perceptive you may be able to guess the type of music they played by the name and era. That’s right, Jazz-Funk.
   A lot of books have been written about music and psychology, as well as the science of what goes on in our brains whilst listening. I’ve been tempted to buy a few, but have’nt bothered. It’s science, innit? And I have no ability to comprehend anything scientific...other than Ornette’s ‘Science Fiction’ album and the works of J. G. Ballard which, as you know, aren’t really scientific...sometimes quite medical, yes. I read a lot of science fiction before the term ‘hard science’ started to be applied to certain novels. I’ve tried a few and, yes, you guessed it, never finished them. I’ m not interested in someone’s speculative physics, although I admire their ability to bullshit in a pseudo-scientific manner, kind of.
   I thought of devising my own musical test. It might go something like this:

K-tel’s ‘The Return of Super Bad’ is one of the best compilations ever created: True/False
99% of musicians alive today are not fit to be in the same room as a Miles Davis album: True/False
Sweep (Sooty’s mate) has sung with Herbie Hancock: True/False
Sun Ra is from Saturn: True/False
Ten seconds of Bernard Parmegiani is worth more than everything Aphex Twin has done: True/False
Radio 1 should be removed from the airwaves: True/False
Rock’n’Roll is dead: True/False
Drum’n’Bass is dead: True/False
There are no truths or falsities regarding musical taste: True/False

That’s enough of that.

Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics

Listening to Dopplereffekt’s ‘Hyperelliptic Surfaces’ it strikes me as a perfect soundtrack to Italo Calvino’s ‘Cosmicomics’, which I’m currently reading. A hyperelliptic surface is just the kind of place the book’s narrator might live at some point. As you know, it’s a surface with an elliptic fibration over an elliptic curve. It might strike you as odd that anyone could live there, but then Qfwfq (yes, that is his name) inhabits many points in space and time throughout the stories. Calvino’s cosmological tales regarding life, the universe and everything are a totally unique vision, imbued with warmth and wit.
   Here’s an excerpt from ‘All At One Point, set at the time when all matter was concentrated on a single point.
   ‘There was also a cleaning woman – ‘maintenance staff’ she was called – only one, for the whole universe, since there was so little room. To tell the truth, she had nothing to do all day long, not even dusting – inside one point not even a grain of dust can enter – so she spent all her time gossiping and complaining.’
   These brilliant stories, like Ballard and Burroughs in different ways, render most sci-fi novels dull and meaningless by comparison.

Music For Real Airports - The Black Dog

Back in ’89, when Black Dog were breaking beats, they cut a track called ‘Ambience With Teeth’, which wasn’t ambient music, and nicked Stevie Wonder’s keyboard riff from ‘I Wish’. Now, this new album fulfils the promise of that title.

   Perhaps this is a dig at Eno’s fluffy ambience, the dreamy nature of which could considered less appropriate post-9/11. That’s not to say I think that Ken Downie and Richard and Martin Dust have made a statement regarding today’s potential for terror in the skies. Yet, as the title states, this take on the airport experience does reflect reality and there’s something of the dread, rather than the dream, about it’s generally sombre tone.

   When they do use beats they’re underpinned by dark drones as if to mirror both the thrill of high-powered propulsion and the fear it can induce. ‘Future Delay Thinking’ exemplifies the idea that the inherently futuristic concept of modern flight is tinged with dark foreboding – as if we might ask of all this technology “It’s a thrill, but is it right?” When Eno painted his sonic portrait of the airport, those good old days of flying were, for most of us, terror-free, and guilt-free regarding the environment.

   With titles such as ‘Wait Behind This Line’, ‘Sleep Deprivation’ and ‘Strip Light Hate’, you get the message. Arriving at the sombre beauty of ‘Wait Behind This Line’, I begin to see airport regulatory control as a symbol of state/social control in some way. Whatever the intent, it makes for an intriguing listening experience, and not always as predictable as each title suggests. You might expect ‘Delay 9’, for instance, to translate into anger and frustration, but here the dreaded message is interpreted with a poignant reverie featuring strings and background chatter.

   Black Dog have travelled a long way from breakbeat and techno to arrive at a place that’s not easily categorised musically, which suits the neither-here-nor-there nature of airports perfectly. It is ‘ambient’ but also edgy, just as to fly can be exciting and dull.

   Airports may be, as JG Ballard suggested, ‘gateways to the infinite possibilities that only the sky can offer’, but Black Dog echo the earth-bound experience, whilst still allowing our imagination to fly free.

The Driver (Walter Hill, 1978)

Did the reading of the Dinos brother’s Bangwallop (s)mash-up of Ballard’s Crash subliminally prompt me to buy this film?

It has one of the greatest soundtracks never written in the form of wailing cop car sirens during the first chase.

Isabelle Adjani’s big brown eyes are as seductive as chocolate (70 per cent cocoa). She delivers some of her lines so woodenly that I wonder if a deliberate somnambulistic state is being evoked. Are we somehow enticed into her dream?

The Driver has no name other than ‘The Driver’. He is as quick on the draw as Leone’s Man With No Name. Is this a spaghetti Western rewritten for the modern urban industrial landscape of wide open streets and factories?

The Driver speaks just 350 words, apparently. The Detective says a lot more. The Driver is silently hip, The Detective, mouthy and corrupt. Does this film argue the case for Zen-like wisdom over verbal excess?

The film both idolises mechanised machismo and revels in its destruction during the wrecking of the Merc in the underground car park.

Is The Driver also a machine? Is he an automaton...the movie idol reduced to no more than a name, a face without expression, a voice without emotion?

This is a film without heroes, without heart or soul.

Is this film as a mechanical process?

The Driver earns big money but instead of leading the high life inhabits seedy rooms with only country music on a transistor radio for entertainment. Perhaps the songs of love and loss say what he is incapable of expressing.