Psychogeist - L.P. Davies (Mayflower 1966)

It's been a while since I posted a good book cover so here's one from 1966. 

It's actually a good read too but finding more of his work will be a matter of pure luck in charity shops by the looks of it. 

Little is known about Davies, an English author, although the scarcity of details combined with his subject matter (sci-fi, fantasy, conspiracy, mind games) no doubt make him a cult author.

There's some writing about him here and here. 

She Sells Phonograph Records: Streaming Music 1920s Style

From Popular Science, 1920.

Advanced record-selling techniques here, and one sure way to avoid free(down)loaders.

I wish I'd thought of this during the days of the recorde shoppe. I could have phoned up Black Market in Soho, for instance, and asked to hear the new 4hero 12". Do you think they would have been as obliging as the woman in the photo below?

In a hauntological time warp frame of mind, I like to imagine she's playing the prospective buyer a new album by The Caretaker. James Kirby's Selected Memories From The Haunted Ballroom fits the image perfectly...

Nate Wooley/C. Spencer Yeh/Audrey Chen/Todd Carter - NCAT (Monotype)

From the Monotype website

Why has this LP not been reviewed?
This LP has not been reviewed because?
                                                            It's noisy. The wrong kind of noise.
                                                            It features vocals, screaming, not songs.
                                                            It's "avant-garde" (should that description be locked in quotation marks? If so, why? Perhaps because the author fears it will dissuade potential listeners from giving the album a chance. Also, because he questions the validity of the term in the same way musicians in the 60s questioned "Free Jazz". Yet labels are handy, and Avant-Garde signals a refusal by artists to submit to musical orthodoxy).
                                                            It's not easy to write about music which does not conform to the rules of common genres (although this author realises that someone, somewhere, who is more conversant with avant-garde music than him, could do so with reference to the history of electro-acoustic recordings in an intelligent manner as befits her/his education, which would probably be more impressive than his).

(break)

Fact:

Nate Wooley - trumpet
C. Spencer Yeh - violin
Audrey Chen - cello
Todd Carter - mixing

(break)

The first three artists being musicians, albeit avant-garde ones, which means that to many ears they are not real musicians at all, played concerts whilst in residency at STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam. Recordings of these were sent to Todd Carter, who set about playing the role of Teo Macero working with Miles Davis, i.e., cutting and remixing the music...far more radically, even, than Teo cut Miles...

...here, Carter is more akin to Pierre Schaeffer, perhaps. A digital equivalent? Except that whereas Schaeffer reconfigured relatively conventional acoustic music (along with the sound of trains etc), Carter worked with improvised acoustic sound. This made his job:
                a) easier because there were no formal patterns in rhythm, or melody and harmony to disrupt: or
                b) harder because spontaneously improvised music is already like an aural cut-up.

(break)

Hey, Nate, C, Audrey, Todd, what are you like?

Like the best nightmare you ever had, one which stimulated you to the point of orgasm whilst simultaneously piercing your throbbing heart with icy terror.
Like high-voltage Edgard Varèse conducting sawmill machinery.
Like walking through a shock corridor packed with imprisoned insane patients playing instruments freely.
Like a soundtrack to a sci-fi film in which creatures more terrifying than the Alien stalk astronauts before disembowelling them with razor sharp tongues, then eating their brains, raw.

Lest the wrong impression is given, it must be stated that this is, above all else, a beautifully crafted arrangement of sound, as opposed to a continual Noise manifesto. It is meditative,
                                                                                                          cacophonous
                                                                                                          and musical.

Yeh's violin-playing, as with Ornette Coleman's use of the instrument, already expands the sonic possibilities before being transformed again by Carter's post-production. Whilst the altered acoustic sounds rattle your ears, the electro ocean of sound rises and falls, consumes, and creates a bedrock.

The sound clips below only give a taste. Consuming the whole product is necessary in order to gain full appreciation and highly recommended.

Monotype

Collage: You

20 Of My Favourite Soundtrack Themes

I'm enjoying BBC Four's Sound of Cinema: The Music that Made the Movies. 
Being such an arbiter of good taste and world-renowned blogger, people are always asking me what my 
favourite film soundtrack themes are but I've resisted listing them until now.
I could have opted for far more obscure examples, such as an electronic score to an unreleased Polish
sci-fi B-movie from 1967....or Artemiev's work for Zerkalo...   
But I wanted to show you that, despite being a blogger of note, highly regarded film critic and someone
who's actually read Moby-Dick, I can climb down from my cultural ivory tower and exhibit taste which
quite common folk may agree with.  
So here are 20 themes that are popular with me...                                                                                                                                                

Just The Tickets: Art Blakey, The Art Ensemble of Chicago & Charlie Haden

Jazz ain't dead, it just smells funky, as Frank Zappa almost said. 

Sorting out stuff in the room today I came across a diary and in it were stuck these tickets from gigs I went to in 1987.

Yes, nineteen-eighty-f*cking-seven...that lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-ong ago.... 

Before you were even born, perhaps, but don't tell me, I feel old enough as it is. 

Old enough for what? 

Reminiscence, 

nostalgia, 

peering down the time tunnel to nights such as these, when Jazz still felt alive and important.

Though, you know, what we were looking at were the few remaining examples of a dying species (Jazzias Legendarius).

There were more around then than now, now that Time's taken it's cruel toll...

What the hell, who wants to live forever, except those idiotic Fame dancers, and they deserve to die...

Art Blakey at The Electric Ballroom, Camden, London.

And the message still came across loud and clear after all his years spreading it.

What? 

The Word/Sound of Jazz. Powerhouse preaching of the highest order.

There was no Holiday For Skins when Art was around....

Every time the urban bushmen visited England we were there, staring in disbelief at the stage jaws on the floor ears wide open.

Lester Bowie in his white coat, calling Doctor Jazz.

It was the Art Ensemble of Chicago!

There, before our very eyes!

Funky Afro New Orleans Future/Past/Present and correct. 

Jazz was a liberation of sorts.

From Work and other worries.

From everyday life conformist expectations and so forth.

You know what I mean.

Punk liberation, Funk liberation...

...whatever sets you free for a while....

Senking - Capsize Recovery (Raster-Noton)

Released to commemorate the recovery of the Costa Concordia ocean liner, I think, although perhaps not...

Do you ever get that Senking feeling? I do. It's like bathing in molten lead and an equal measure of your favourite Radox blend, that good. Although, actually, molten lead wouldn't make a nice bath no matter how much bubbly you added...

Jens Massel's music as Senking assaults your sense whilst also assuaging them; the preponderance of bass wobbles your intestines in a totally seductive manner. 

As you may know from previous albums such as Pong and List, Massel loves his bass and has his sound all worked out. I should say, his approach to sound, because when you listen properly you realise that Capsize Recovery isn't the same ol' sound all over again. If anything, he may have refined it. He's moved on, but further into his sound as opposed to away from it. 

On Tiefenstop he even adds a merry little melody which plays out nicely in contrast to that bass and the skittering ghost of D&B percussion. Talking of D&B, the chopper blade rhythm of Enduro Bones is reminiscent of Deep Blue's Helicopter Tune from '93, without being a rip-off.

Actually, D&B flavours, distilled and applied judiciously, stalk the whole album. 

Bass-in-yer-face methodology is common as muck and fine for a cheap thrill, but Senking works on a more sublime level, and as such, deserves your attention.

Raster-Noton

Musical Plumage

I present Betty Hutton in a fantastical vision of musical headwear for a 1945 General Electric radio ad, cleaned up for your delectation. Don't say I never give you anything...   

Factory Floor - Factory Floor (DFA)

Arthouse Acid attack?
Hipsterbeat?
Minimal chic?
Mindful mindlessness...

Back to thinking of nothing.

I love this album at the moment. It's so in the moment? I dunno. Very trendy, I suspect.

Factory Records, factory floor conveyor belt repetition - they should play this to Japanese workers every morning to accompany their exercises...

I didn't want to like this. Rephrase: I didn't expect to like this half as much as I do.

I like it because it's empty and full of life
           because the production is so clean
           because it reminds me of ESG and freaky Disco on Ze Records
           because it motivates me to move around the bunker tidying up.

Some say it's a work of post-Punk anti-Funk. Like being stuck in an elevator with Kraftwerk & New Order?

Others say the repetition grates after a while, which misses the point.

The way this chap dances...the singular focus on movement and Pop art patterns makes it a great video. If Andy Warhol's factory made music and videos today...

Hey, Gabba Gabba: Clubbing And The Ghosts Of Good Times Past

Sunday morning, 8 a.m. - I'm in my slippers and woollen cardy, sipping tea. Meanwhile, wrecked youths are no doubt roaming the streets zombie-fashion after a night spent clubbing.

I grow old, I grow old...I haven't rolled out of a club in years...

Reading Clive Martin's piece in The Guardian yesterday I had to remind myself that I'm Past-It, therefore don't know or understand what's going on in clubland.

This line stood out:

   'The sad fact is that clubbing in the UK is no longer the preserve of the hip, the alternative, or even the hedonistic amongst us.' 

'Ah', I thought, 'here's someone who knows what he's talking about', just because Martin's opinion matched those of this ex-clubber who'd fallen into the old trap of thinking his were the best of times. Those of us who've swapped the dance floor for the sofa tend to seek solace by aggrandising our past. Perhaps we do in order to cope with the loss of our younger, more exciting lives.

Martin continues:

   'It's a tragedy, but one that says more about the establishments than the people. A lot of clubs in the UK barely fit their trade descriptions, instead acting as nothing more than pubs that stay open past 1am and play loud music. Legally they're nightclubs, but they seem to fulfil little of that halycon rave dream of community, euphoria and cool promised to a generation raised on Human Traffic and tales of the Haçienda. Instead, they're basically modern saloons, where the punters wear Superdry rather than Stetsons, and they're seemingly just as dangerous (even if, because all the tumblers are now plastic, you stand slightly less chance of being scarred for life because of your haircut than you used to). Other clubs seem more neutered than their rough-and-ready predecessors. Bouncers have credentials, DJs have degrees and club owners have responsibilities. They're basically Pizza Expresses with retinal scanners on the door. This doesn't make anything any safer, however; it just makes it less interesting.'

Good writing, but talk of 'that halycon (sic) rave dream of community' set alarm bells ringing. To me the new Summer of Love smacked of futile Hippy idealism spouted by the media and get-rich-quick (usually middle-class) promoters. Oh, and those E'd off their faces, of course. Still, at least Rave put the politics of Dance back on the agenda during it's fight for the right to party in a field.

I followed the article's link to the Vice site and watched this:

It made me cringe almost as much as the Primark riot mentioned in my sheeple shopping post. I had to laugh too, though. Gabba always sounded like a mindless/pointless genre. Actually, I thought it was history by now, but like every other club genre it seems it just won't die.

'I don't think about nothing.'
The double negative.
Why think about anything? It's a waste of time!
Of course he thinks about something. He just doesn't waste time thinking about nothing.

What would I have said to a journalist outside a Disco in the mid-70s?
'I'm here for the birds. And the music.'

In the mid-90s, whilst part of this club, I could see the blandification of club land creeping up and swallowing it whole. Combine the 4/4 regimentation with Superclub clones and a phenomenon was born which ensured that clubbing certainly was no longer the 'preserve of the hip' or the alternative to anything. A few fellow troopers like us soldiered on but we could never win that battle. There are no victories in this square world, only gestures of defiance. Clubbing, like Glastonbury, is nothing more than another cog in the mainstream pleasure machine, signifying nothing more than the sorry lack of imagination on behalf of the masses.

The dear masses. They always get what they want. The industry is eager to serve them.

At least the Gabba-Gabba-Hey mob appear to be there for the music, even if it only makes sense when their brains are mashed by chemicals. How nihilistic! They are the Blank Generation, minus a brilliant anthem such as this. Do they have anthems, and do they sound any different from all the other tunes? 'Tunes'? You know what I mean.

When House and Techno rose to prominence, like Disco, they prompted fogey fury at the lack of 'tunes' and furthermore, lack of 'real instruments'. Gabba goes further (harder! faster!) making most Detroit classics sound as romantic as Rachmaninov.

This is the Failed Banks Generation, whose response to economic collapse is to fink of nuthin and get fucked-up. That rings a bell. Punk proffered the same response to the grim, grey world of grown-ups. Hasn't every youth movement? Rock n' Roll, Mods (albeit by utilising the financial rewards offered by the adult world), Hippy and so on. Behind Punk, though, there was a historical tradition of Anarchist/Situationist thought, if anyone bothered to explore it. OK, most didn't.

Revolt into style; is it possible? Part of The Clash's appeal for me was their style, the pose, the paint splash fashion and sloganeering. A few years earlier, us Funkateers paved the way with plastic sandals and mohair jumpers. Those pre-Disco years are now rendered invisible in the garish glare of the Saturday Night Fever glitter ball. Funk had long gone overground but we revelled in the B-Side anthems of black music such as Gil Scott-Heron's The Bottle and James Brown's There Was A Time, just a couple that spring to mind.

What were we rebelling against? What had the square world got? Work, Politics, Donny Osmond. No point pretending we meant anything, ma-a-a-n, driven only by a desire for style, the perfect beat...and birds.

Gabba is so blank it renders attempts to apply 'meaning' totally futile. Isn't that the point? 'Think about nothing'. Don't theorise, don't explain. The full-on BPM soundtrack pummels notions of 'meaning' into dust. The response to economic decline is 'AAAARGGGGH!', not even Rotten's snarl, or style, or wit backed by Machiavellian Malcy's hi-falutin political pranksterism.

Gabba is a riotous response to the sheeple's nightclub soundtrack but like theirs it offers nothing more than escape from the drudgery of everyday life. In the 70s, we too were living for the week-end, although Funk and Disco sometimes supplied social protest and commentary in the process...

Most of us UK honkies may not have been dissecting those lyrics, but subconsciously they had an effect. We may not have wanted to watch news items, or read about black America's problems, but we sure as hell loved dancing to musical broadcasts about them.

Perhaps my best club is an imaginary one, where sharply dressed punters dance to a different drummer and find time to discuss interesting things. I like to imagine there's a club scene happening today which involves a sense of sartorial style, radical dance music, attitude etc. Places that 'they' don't know about, where youths gather to share a sense of rebellion against all the moronic drudgery around them. Oh, and also to dance, naturally.

The Terminal Pool

 In honour of J. G. Ballard, whose influence, if it existed at all, I only realised retrospectively.
Terminal Beach or pool...another myth from the near future, part of a series I created this year.

Top Shop Bottom-Feeding With The Sheeple

Warning: mild ranting ahead...

Watching sheeple in a shopping frenzy on TV the other night was depressing experience - woe is the world, the West, the West End of London at least. BBC Two's Robert Peston Goes Shopping, Addiction showed the extent to which some people are consumed by consumerism, the Primark riot  epitomising all that's pathetic about the sheeple's craving for cut-price crap.

I say make everything more expensive to starve them into submission. Submitting to what, though? The fact that they don't need most of the crap they buy and they'd be better off basket-weaving, baking cakes....even making Art...

Shops are the holy places where sheeple seek solace from the misery of their everyday lives in the form of cut-price salvation. Buy, buy happiness. We're all consumers, craving relief from the spiritual void where 'meaning' and 'belief' in something supposedly once existed. What else is there? God? Worship Philip Green, Top Shop's boss, instead. His retail group isn't called Arcadia for nothing - it's offering utopia, if you've got the cash.

Peston's programme partly covered the 'boom years', when everyone's credit cards got swiped to open the doors of the magic kingdom promising endless material goods. Typical of a business journalist he made no effort to explore the deeper meaning of all this. That would be too difficult. It would lead to the inevitable conclusion that Karl Marx was right about 'excess and immoderation' - sheeple of the world unite, you having nothing to lose but your chain stores. Change too many minds in this matter and the economic system collapses - we can't have that.

Like you, a person of Taste and Refinement, I'm immune to the lure of low-cost clothes and low-life desperation to look like a celebrity. We appear to be superior beings, you and I, as we mute all the ads on telly and shun material dependence for...er...something better. What is better? Anything's better than being a moron who's willing to trample over other morons to get the best deal. But hey, that's capitalism, eh? That's capitalism graphically illustrated as the sheeple succumb to the lure of pointless goods that will only give them momentary pleasure.

Thankfully I don't have loads of cash to fling around, otherwise I might be a fat Tory in a fast car and huge house. Or I might just own Merzbow and Throbbing Gristle box sets, which I'd house in a music room, right next door to the library. Actually, I don't think even wealth would inspire me to buy the Merzbow box set, which I see has sold out at Boomkat - well, there's people with money and a taste for Noise - who'da thunk it?

Come the revolution pianos will be as cheap as Primark t-shirts and equally desirable to the sheeple. Come the revolution Artist's materials will be as cheap as Top Shop fashion wear...but then The Kids would dispose of canvases and oils just as quickly, probably.

We're on a fast spin cycle of consume and reject, a bulimic binge on bargain goods. It has to end somewhere. We're in an economic recession, so roll on the good times when more of us can work to buy our way into a state of bargain bin heavenly bliss...

Popular Science Magazine, Early-60s, China

Collage: Take Us To Your Children!

Rene Hell - Vanilla Call Option (PAN)

Hey, kids, welcome to Hell and some hip new sounds for the electronic In Crowd, of which you are undoubtedly a member. For all I know, avant antics of this kind may be fashionable. You know what? I suspect they are in some quarters of LA, but let's not allow that to put us off.

Is this a golden age for new electronics? Maybe. Look around...Rashad Becker, Yves De Mey, Seth Nehil, Shapednoise...name your favourites. If there's a defining pendulum of current Good Taste it seems to be swinging towards the outer limits of sound, but there isn't and I'm only wishing it was so.

The name 'Rene Hell' sounds like a) a teenage rampage Techno DJ, b) a terminal Doom Ambient artist, c) master of Thrash Mechanics (that's a genuine genre, honest). Guess what, he's none of those. He is, though, a man of many aliases (Abelar Scout, Marble Sky, Secret Abuse and Impregnable), all of which you can have fun finding out about if you have a few spare hours. His real name is Jeffrey D. Witscher which, er, I reckon he'll revert to one day when he's old(er), bearded, grey and embarrassed to be known as Rene Hell. Or not.

Past albums have displayed numerous influences, especially Philip Glass's brand of minimalism along with the multitude of other electronic pioneers whose siren songs have lured each generation. The fact that the Stockhausen squad exists warms my heart. Yes, of course his name's been dropped many times over the years, but few manifestations of hours spent absorbing Kontakte come close to the great man's work.

Ah, the anxiety of influence, no artist is truly free of it. But to be inspired by the legends can only be a good thing. Better still, as with Vanilla Call Option, the artist might shrug free from the burden of influence to forge something close to a singular vision. I'm guessing, though, that the likes of Francoise Bayle and Francis Dhomont  make up a considerable portion of Witscher's listening (Le Kitchen Map). He's still polishing Glass on Var Len. Titles such as This Is Chess and The Chess Sickness tell of his passion for the game, as does the deep thinking that obviously went into making the album. That or I'm mistaken and he cobbled it together one afternoon, which seems unlikely.

When asked about the album a while back he said: 'It may be a more difficult listen but I think it’s interesting.' (interview). That's true according to how finely-tuned your ears are. Whilst much of it tests your ability to entertain high-pitch twiddling, more immediate kicks come from Unpack;glue, with it's backdrop of torrential rain acting as a sheet of sound upon which Hell can scratch sound. Kalashnikov Uzi is a very impressive exercise in tense acousmatics dissolving into a simple, plaintive piano before building intensity levels again.

Yet as he's proven on previous releases, he's capable of working in many styles and Merci Cheri stands out as a fuller, orchestral sound, albeit a time-warped orchestra reworked by Pierre Schaeffer.

This album will prove too 'difficult' for some but should be of interest to those with open ears.

PAN

From The Terminal Symphony album...

RIP Dick Raaijmakers

I'm not normally one for tributes but Raaijmaker's death on Sept 4th prompts me to post this because his music's given me so much pleasure since buying the box set below. If you're the last person on Earth with good taste not to own it, make amends right now. If you love electronic music you won't be disappointed. Even recommending feels like a stupid thing to do because it should be in the bunker of every right-minded trooper in the battle against mediocrity. I don't know what that means, but I'm not deleting it. 

Full details and some tracks here on the Basta site.

Biog here. 

Banabila & Machinefabriek - Travelog (Tapu Records)

Appropriately, since I've just been out of the country, Travelog by Banabila & Machinefabriek (Michel Banabila and Rutger Zuydervelt) is getting an airing and mighty fine it sounds too. Having lived with it for a few weeks it's grown and grown, perhaps because there's something old-fashioned in the sound. I mean that in a good way. I mean, amid the electronic elements are touches of percussion and bass, along with tropical samples, and those in the wrong hands can sound like old farts trying to be modern. 

It's an ever-shifting landscape, as befits the image of flight. White fluffy clouds give way to sandstorms of static and the pulse of a Los Angeles inhabited by Rick Deckard. Narita is ambient in the Eno travelogue sense, whilst Debris is a black hole of static noise which despite being edgy displays the fine touches evident throughout the album. 

Just when I think I've got a sense of everything this album has to offer, new layers emerge upon listening again. That's what I mean by 'old-fashioned'. Banabila and Zuydervelt have made a piece of work with great care and in a world where frequently shallow Darkness and trendy Noise come easy, that's a good thing.