Wednesday 30 April 2014

Chicago Seed Magazine Covers



Seed was an underground newspaper launched by artist Don Lewis and Earl Segal, owner of the Molehole, a local poster shop, and published biweekly in Chicago, Illinois from May 1967 to 1974; there were 121 issues published in all. These are some of my favourite covers, namely ones that aren't in the typical Hippy visual style, although some show traits. The spacey ones are great, the skull too; more resonant of space-age futurist retro style and as such, atypical of Hippy. The sunflower cover reminds me of the Sex Pistols line - sunflowers in your dustbin/ruins. You might like to play this track by Chicago band The Flock whilst browsing. A good mix of Jazz and, er, that other thing...what's it called...Rock, that's it. Pretty funky too. 









Tuesday 29 April 2014

Stewart Lee In The Toilets and Sleaford Mods On Stage at the 12 Bar Club


So I'm in the 12 Bar Club toilets talking to comic genius Stewart Lee about Improv legend Derek Bailey. I'd zipped up and stepped back when he did the reverse, thus allowing me to take full advantage of his vulnerability. 'Now seems like an appropriate time, Stewart, ' I said. He started laughing before I could finish. 'To commend you for answering questions on Mastermind about Derek Bailey.'


Our bladders emptied, we stood by the sink as he told me the best thing about that was listening to Bailey for two weeks solid in preparation, during which time he concluded he was a genius. Bailey, that is, not himself. Then I played my trump card, saying I'd appeared on stage with Bailey. Stewart asked what instrument I played. 'Turntables,' I announced, feeling terribly modern. After all, to say 'saxophone' or 'drums' would have been far too traditional. He asked where and I told him, adding that it was nominated as one of the '60 concerts that shook the world' by The Wire magazine. Top that, Stewart Lee! Oh, you might have numerous comedy awards but I bet you'd love that one. All collectors are frustrated musicians, aren't they? Except me. As I told someone on this night, I couldn't even make it into bad Punk band formed by friends back in '77.

I forgot to ask Stewart what he thought of Sleaford Mods. But I knew he'd enjoyed them because he'd stood close to me through the whole set, bobbing to the beats at one point. I later saw him talking to beatmaster Andrew Fearn at the bar. It's fitting that a comic star (cult) with good musical taste should be there. After all, Sleaford Mods aren't without humour. Fans laughed as much as they cheered and chanted choruses throughout the set. Jason Williamson: court jester in the kingdom of the blind, sporadically walking like an Egyptian when the mood takes him. On stage he's totally wired, pacing around the perimeters, standing to stare down the followers, frantically rubbing his hair back to front before another verbal salvo. All the time Andrew Fearn in that Rambo t-shirt, hands dug in pockets, or vaping.

Jolly Fucker, Jobseeker, Tied Up In Nottz, A Little Ditty, Tiswaz were all dished out, much to the crowd's delight. I was at a 'Rock' gig. It felt weird. It felt like a Rock gig until Sleaford Mods crushed the idea like an empty beer can and threw it back in my face. 'I used to be in bands, fuckin hated it' is a line on their Bandcamp page. I used to go and watch Rock bands, now I fuckin hate the idea. Rock has not spoken to or for me for many years. Now it seems that a lot of Rock fans want to cuddle Sleaford Mods. It puts them in a strange position. They're not the first to rail against the arena they find themselves in, but few can be misfits to the extent the Mods are.

All types want a piece of them, from Rockers to supposedly righteous SWP types. Everyone has an angle on them, a box to shove them in, but Sleaford Mods really escape any net cast by would-be categorisers and claimants for their cause. In my improvised piece based on their new album, Divide and Exit, I referred to Mark Fisher's review in The Wire. It's not that I hated it, just that the last line struck me as missing the point. The point being that there isn't one, no easy definable one anyway. OK, I know that Fisher has a political agenda, based on what I'm not sure, so he wants a 'new political project' that will answer 'the questions that Sleaford Mods pose'.

I won't try to answer for Jason; I don't know what he's asking. I know what he's saying, some of the time, but a lot of it is a wind-up, a put-on, banter, madcap humour along with frustration and rage. The points made about fucked-up Britain are obvious, but never offer answers, or even detailed descriptions. He raps about what he sees and has seen, on the street and in his head. Their brilliance lies in that individual vision. Fisher wants a 'project' that will address the problems and I would hope for the same if I had any faith in Politics and politicians.

Meanwhile, I'll enjoy riding on the back of the bus with Sleaford Mods.

Monday 28 April 2014

Aggro




Violence is on the decline? A 12% fall in the number of people injured in serious violence across England and Wales last year? Are the men of GB going soft?! Next they'll be drinking sensibly and always eating whilst they do so like the mainland Europeans with their sophisticated way of going on at night. I've scoured France, Germany, Italy and Spain for the heart-warming apocalyptic vision of blokes battering each other whilst mini-skirted birds sprawl in gutters filled with lager and vomit - to no avail. All I've seen are youths talking over food, or not even drinking, with their bloody scooters parked up. And girls mostly well-dressed, not even thinking of showing their big tattooed backsides (that have swallowed g-strings) to passing cops, ambulances or film crews - useless!

I don't know. It can't be true. I grew up with violence on a regular basis. As a young teen at the local disco, which was actually a boxing ring with added music and dancing, there was always a scrap. Skin, suedehead, smoothie, greaser; it didn't matter where you were at, sartorially, it was where you were from. In the sticks they still acted as if the tribe in the next village might raid yours one day, steal your stash of slaughtered deer and rape your women. They probably would.

Trips to a disco on their turf was perilous. Watch your back. Are they eye-balling us? Luckily, we had village elders (late-teens) to protect us. I was always well-armed. Well, actually, it was my legs that saved me, being good at covering ground fast. That's why I ran for the school. I trained outside discos and on the playing fields. It's no coincidence that this got made...


Skinhead girls weren't to be messed with, either, not with those steel combs tucked in the top pocket of their two-tone jackets. I saw two go at it once. It was mayhem. Chairs and glasses flying everywhere.

Slade, reggae, Gary Glitter - half that music was made to match disco bloodshed, so it seemed. Some cashed in on us big time...


What did I know as kid who only craved a new pair of brogues whilst dreaming of birds, downing booze and dancing? Nothing. I knew football matches were an ultra-violent show on a spectacular scale. Safe in the stands next to my Dad, I'd watch it all happen at Stamford Bridge, home of my beloved Chelsea FC.

But I grew up, took a few knocks and by the time I got hospitalised in the early-80s I had long realised that violence was a terrible thing. That tragic first resort of the flying fist (or worse) unleashed by desperate, dissatisfied working-class youths; it sickens and saddens me now.

Once upon a time I felt the same anger, despondency and frustration borne of failure to realise one dream, or even have a dream worth pursuing. No hope. What are you going to do? Get pissed, destroy. You've got no ideology to fight for so you punch someone who's in the same boat. You keep on punching and kicking until you get too old, then you turn and punch yourself, every night, in the guts, your fattening guts, because the glory days are gone, the disco's over, the lights are on and you like yourself even less than that dodgy-looking bird you were dancing with when the music stopped.

Well, using selective memory as a sieve, what's left are golden years, partly because of all the aggro, along with the music and clothes. Violence livened up my otherwise dull life, just as it does for some today. I only hope that in years to come less and less young men feel the same when they look back and that 12% figure keeps rising.

Sunday 27 April 2014

IBM Collage


Weightausend - WEIGHTAUSEND s​/​t EP (Haunter Records) / Beneath - Vobes EP (PAN)


Two (skull)cracking EPs, both delivering the right kind of machine-tooled intrigue that combines rhythmic imagination with meticulous rigour. 

Weightausend's trip into the dub arena on The Cage triggers loving memories of Black Ark classics whilst being unmistakably Now. The same is true of W Modulate, exploiting space-time between your ears, eschewing overload and excessive trickery. We slip into the void between percussive reverberation and get carried on a brief concentration of beats before the final spaces re-emerge. Heith's remix of Untitled has beefed-up beats plunged into fog yet still creating forward motion through the ominous murkiness, and Morkebla reshapes W Modulate with added vocal samples and extra dread.






Ben Walker as Beneath cooks up yah brain on his Vobes EP for PAN, proving the label's ability to draw the best out of producers. It's a superbly sculpted stepper's delight that supplies prime cuts of diced 'n' sliced rhythms for modern metal heads; crisp and kaleidoscopic but with a kick. Occupy is Photek-like but still distinctive. The Devil's in the details and Walker's thorough twist on contemporary modes leaves it's mark. Like Weighausend, he deviates dubplate methodology on One Blings brilliantly. The deep bass pressure on Stress 1 will make your subwoofer bulge but it's the wealth of sonic riches on all tracks that make this a stunning set.


Thursday 24 April 2014

Valerio Tricoli - Miseri Lares (PAN)


Deliberately forgetting every reference to instrumental causes or pre-existing musical significations, we then seek to devote ourselves entirely and exclusively to listening, to discover the instinctive paths that lead from the purely "sonorous" to the purely 'musical'. Such is the suggestion of acousmatics: to deny the instrument and cultural conditioning, to put in front of us the sonorous and its musical 'possibility''.
                                                                                                                                        - Pierre Schaeffer

Few of us can totally escape the effects of cultural conditioning. Even a determined refusal to comply is a reaction to it. Valerio Tricoli's Miseri Lares requires the devotion to listening championed by Pierre Schaeffer. Theoretically, in an age when so many listen via ear buds, this should be easier than ever before. We are no longer tied to 'phones that were the size of half a melon and in turn needed to be connected to the record player. This is a blessing for those who wish to hear richly detailed music, but for most it will not have changed their listening habits, only increased the impact of trademark sound elements in mainstream genres.

Ambitions to make radical variations of common forms such as Techno or Ambient are not scarce, although few truly cross the border from genre specific traits to the great beyond. Bound by what they know or were raised on, artists operating left of center can rarely escape the magnetic pull of that core.

Thankfully, PAN has its cake and eats it. It releases variations on rhythm machine themes and records like this. But what is this like? Musique concrète is one reference point, Tricoli manipulating the Revox tape recorder. Acousmatic music is another. Precise definitions of that may be elusive yet in Miseri Lares there is something of the attention to sonic detail found in work by prime exponents such as Francois Bayle and Bernard Parmegiani. Tobe Hooper and Wayne Bell's outstanding soundtrack to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre may be another influence, such is the atmosphere of dread created by Tricoli via unknown sound sources.

But this album is much more than just another Horror film soundtrack homage. Tricoli exploits the unknown musically and psychologically. He nudges the listener towards that closed door at the end of the corridor, or to look behind that red velvet curtain beloved by David Lynch. Words in Italian and English are carefully woven into the work, including texts by Dante and Guido Ceronetti, as well as H.P. Lovecraft and Tricoli.

The sound of a trap door swinging open on La Distanza is more unsettling than the loudest scream. A door is knocked, then thumped and slammed shut. Briefly, on Hic Labor Ille Domus et Inextricabilis, we hear something like a deep sea diver's breathing. That would be fitting. Not the heavy breath of fear, but the finite supply of air in these very deep waters. Not that Tricoli applies common modes of pressure, the clichés of brutal noise or drilling synths. Parts of In The Eye of The Cyclone consist of near or total silence and as in much of the record what we do hear is indefinable.

By refusing to supply the obvious Horrorcore sonic thrills Tricoli has generated a profoundly unsettling soundtrack to whatever we imagine may be happening. His use of techniques pioneered by tape and studio masters of old, twinned with the subtle appliance of modern science, make this a stunning piece of work.


Wednesday 23 April 2014

Gil Evans & Arnold Schoenberg In The House




Two good vinyl finds yesterday. The Schoenberg was only a quid. Mind you that's more than most people would pay for him. I don't blame them. It's a right racket. No tunes. The painting is by Gaetano Citeroni. No, I'd never heard of him either. The record was pressed in 1962. 


The Gil Evans is from 1959. Have I mentioned Cool recently? Gil made an album called out Of The Cool the following year. He never got out of being cool. On this he's arranged Django which, as created by the Modern Jazz Quartet, is the coolest track ever recorded. Gil does it justice.





Tuesday 22 April 2014

The Top 10 Coolest Record Labels Of All Time


To name a list 'The Coolest' anything is absurd, of course, but this week-end The Guardian, as part of it's record label feature, presented The Coolest Labels Of All Time. Yes, it's pointless arguing about a list, but then, that's partly their function, is it not? It doesn't say who created this one but presumably it was a handful of their music 'critics', you know the kind; they think Footwork is cutting-edge and inhabit an anti-chamber of Hell in which post-modernity, irony and the pressure to give modern Pop culture credence present terrible dilemmas.

One glaring absence is Blue Note. I mean glaring. You don't exactly need an encyclopaedic knowledge of Jazz to know that it was the coolest of the genre, therefore should have been first on everyone's list. But I'm ignoring the fact that Jazz probably isn't 'cool' in their world. Not even in their hip-by-numbers pseudo Cool world. For the artwork alone it should qualify, never mind the one or two decent artists they signed.


Island is included for it's reggae breakthrough, although it strikes me they're only thinking of how Bob Marley was sold to the Rock crowd. In my experience, a greater number of white working class youths were dancing to Trojan records. It therefore has a greater claim as a label that 'brought reggae to the UK' than Island. Perhaps it doesn't count because it's impact was on working-class kids, not middle-class Rock fans suddenly taking reggae seriously.

Stax is in over Motown, due to it 'breaking down racial barriers'. With more hits to it's name, surely Motown did this to a greater extent. If Motown's Pop formula isn't considered 'black enough' to be as 'cool' as Stax, the idiots don't understand that the very presence of so many black stars in the limelight broke down barriers. Besides, Motown had Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, both of whom, as you probably noticed, made decent albums too.

Atlantic should be in there. Too big? Too corporate? Here are some artists who were on the label: The Modern Jazz Quartet, Mose Allison, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane and Ray Charles. Are you arguing now?

They chose Warp and R&S in the electronic music area. It's a close contest but UR is far cooler, darling, carrying as it does that whiff of danger, political anger and futurist ethos from the ruins of post-industrial Detroit.

Sub Pop is in because to these ex-grammar school hacks grunge was 'cool', so they thought, or heard. Perhaps it was, but not in my world. I bought a Mudhoney album once, though.

Anyway, here's my list, based on fact rather than personal taste:

Blue Note
Chess
Motown
Atlantic
Trojan
UR
Metalheadz
Evidence
INA-GRM
PAN 

Sunday 20 April 2014

Depth Charge, Shelfie, Hoovering No U Turn


Easter. What you goin' to do? Roast dinner at The Colonel Fawcett, that's what. 
Eat an egg, of course. 
Look out the window at the rain. Leaves in the garden getting into top gear green mode, seemingly exploding from the branches as I watch.
Play some music such as this, Lust, by Depth Charge, who I turn to roughly every other month and never think 'Oh, it's not aged well'.





LJ's piano and two of her collages. She's learning How Can I Be Sure and tried to get me to sing it. That didn't happen.



Shelfie.



Bank Holiday house cleaning's a tradition, isn't it? So, time for some hoovering. Fierce & Nico's Input sucks the dust from your ears. A prime example of the 'hoover' bass line (as it was known back in 1886) is heard on this ancient artefact. It used to send us crazy. No U Turn twelves were always a big event. Now you can buy them starting at £1.48 on Discogs. There's something sad about that, although I don't know why, exactly. It's not as if the price now is going reflect it's musical value 18 years ago. if that was the case, it would cost about...(puts little finger to his mouth Dr Evil style)...$1,000,000!



Thursday 17 April 2014

Odds 'n' sods: Feminist Art, I Am Monet, The Great Depression & Sleaford Mods

L-R: Cay Lang, Vanalyne Green, Dori Atlantis and Sue Boud
Posted this yesterday on Facebook thinking I could just name the women involved and that would be enough to signify that it wasn't the work of some nasty male Photoshopist. Then I covered myself by adding that it's part of a photo shoot by a feminist Art group. The way Lang's hair lays over the C indicates to me that it's an original photo but you know how clever some people are at manipulating images.

What famous artist are you? Yes, another one of those answer-questions-to-find-out-who-you-are quizzes. Lately I've been Wes Anderson, 'a major music nerd' and now Monet - Monet! Christ, I'm more boring than I thought. Damn that quiz. I wanted to be Duchamp, maybe, if he's one of the answers. You know how things are shaping up if you answer honestly. Just give all the 'rebellious' answers if you want to fool yourself that you're a rebel. Perhaps you really are. Perhaps Monet was. I rebelled against learning anything at school and I'm not about to stop now...


Ignorance is bliss. A guy I used to work with would come in all smiles and pretty much stay that way the whole day. He was an idiot. I was miserable. If only we could have fused together to form a happy soul who hated what capitalism was doing to society. That's a contradiction in terms, I suppose. 'You're just too hip to be happy', said Gene Hackman in David Mamet's Heist. That would have been a perfect riposte for my work colleague whenever I snarled at him.


I never turned to drugs, legal or otherwise, during the Great Depression (roughly the first 10 years at Work). At least Punk Rock said some of what I was feeling...



I once dreamt of a career opportunity in music, as a journalist. Years later, I didn't regret not getting one. What does a band with principles do when bigger labels start sniffing around? Take the money and run? By principles I mean a healthy mistrust/hatred of the music biz and what fame does to musicians. Would success spoil Jason Williamson? I suspect they're getting offers. 'Slam dunk with a concrete record deal...it's bound to sink'. I'm going to see them 'live' in London soon. The trouble is, I'll have to put up with three other bands unless Sleaford Mods are on first and I doubt that. They're the reason the night has sold out. It'll be like waiting for the Chelsea game on Match of the Day and having to suffer Stoke vs West Brom, Fulham vs Aston Villa and Sunderland vs Hull City first...only worse...




Tuesday 15 April 2014

from the book: Buñuel! La mirada del siglo


'You're going to love this', said LJ, sat in a chair in the St John's Wood Oxfam shop. So I went over, amazed that she'd found a great book. She's not the book finder general 'round here! That's my role, mainly because it's me that goes out looking. If she came with me every time I'd have far less books because she'd try and enforce common sense on me by saying 'Do you really need that?' And 'You've got enough Art books already!' Also 'You haven't read half the books you've got'. Which is true, and this one will not be read for sure since it's in Spanish. It's split into sections such as Art and films featuring skulls, religious iconography, nudes and eyes; key surrealist visual influences/elements of Buñuel's films. Good work LJ.










Monday 14 April 2014

Bruno Nicolai - Tutti i colori del buio (Finders Keepers)


Bruno Nicolai fever breaking out in the bunker. Oh Bruno, how my heart soars at the sound of your film scores. Rome, Lake Como, spaghetti, Michelangelo...La Dolce Vita...Dolcelatte...Sophia Loren...of all the wonders your country has given the world your music is their equal! If you lived today I would catch a plane to your house and speak sonnets in praise of you from beneath your balcony...by moonlight...honest...

You can see that he brings out the romantic in me. But hold on, aside from the trillion top class, string-soaked and heart string-tugging film themes he has written he also made amazing, dark experimental music. This he has in common with his fratello musical Mr Ennio Morricone. Some might say he is as Tony Bennett is to Sinatra in that respect.; prince and king. Except neither sing. And that would do him a disservice.

The track Medium alone proves how capable he was of concocting a nightmarish atmosphere, the kind, in fact, that puts most contemporary, clichéd efforts to shame. Then there's Insidia, which ramps up the psycho tension before breaking out into a cool Jazz-drum driven archetypal Giallo theme complete with Herrmannesque strings. Alessandro Alessandroni plays sitar, even solo on Evocazione, but imbues it with a kind of bluesy, funky feel when he gets into his own groove. Brilliant. Propiziazione is another high point, but there are no lows. It's pretty much a perfect fusion of rhythm and radical orchestration that gets horror music fans high on frantic piano and nerve-jangling violins.

For other sides of Nicolai, ie more Pop, Romantic and Funky, there's a great 72 track Nicolai comp here

Sunday 13 April 2014

Bass Clef - Raven Yr Own Worl (PAN)


Self-confessed 'dubstep exile' Ralph Cumbers plays his BugBrand Modular system, blowing sonic bubbles in your ear; a pure pleasure to behold. Less the phuture, more the past remixed. Whether the Raven of the title is intended as a pun on Ravin' or not, echoes (literally) of that era abound in happy chopped hand-clapping, even whistles. Current listeners are more likely to be dancing in their heads than in muddy fields but either through experience or historical digging the references will be familiar. Synth lines wiggle in and out of focus, bolstered by choice bass lines, all artfully done, if not quite turning Acid into Art. There's enough detail to reveal fresh components after several rewinds.



Thursday 10 April 2014

Writing, writing, writing...


writing wrongs
writing wrong is OK
write?

I've written since I learned to write.

Unlike a lot of people I carried on beyond the point of just writing Xmas and Birthday cards, or the occasional letter of condolence or application forms. That was writing before the social net was thrown over everybody with a PC. Then people started writing again. And we could all see how well or badly people wrote.

Like a kid given a build-it-yourself space lab containing every actual component in miniature - wow! I've got to do this! The masses began writing, writing, writing. Comments - inane, absurd, aggressive, puerile, stupid Comments below articles and YouTube clips which, when you read, you wish home computers had never been invented.

Facebook writing - it's easier to just hit the Like button! So people do. But some try to write. Why not? Just because they can't doesn't mean they shouldn't. Democracy in action! The heartfelt comments regarding the loss of a pet, a friend's illness, the death of a celebrity - tragic. Moving in their innocence. No witticisms.

Meanwhile the male of the species sees this writing in public medium as a means to show of his prowess, his knowledge, his wit, his intellect - look how smart I am, world! It's what most men do instead of club each other to death. We have to prove our virility somehow.

Writing, writing...I wrote stories as a kid whilst my family watched TV. I wrote in my room when I finally got one - long letters typed on my first machine, impersonating Kerouac, badly. Remember writing letters? Perhaps you're old enough. I wrote letters to girlfriends in London and waited for returns to drop through the letterbox, seeing them on the carpet there - what joy? One used to send letters doused in perfume, sometime cuttings of her hair inside the folded paper. That now seems like an old age of romance compared to emails modern lovers might receive, or private messages on the network.

I wrote fanzines. I even wrote novels, if they can be called that in an unpublished state. Now they sit on paper packed into big brown envelopes stuffed into a cupboard. I will never read them again but can't part with testimonies to a time when I was so optimistic, hard-working and deluded, probably. I even took a writing course in the late-70s. How To Plot. And so on. It took me years to learn to lose the plot. Then I was free. Then I joyfully worked with text, calling myself a 'text worker' instead of a 'writer'. Moving other people's words around was much more fun than making up the same words in a different order to try and create a story.

A novel? How passé! I've always enjoyed other people's novels, though. Let them do the work - entertain me. Beckett, Burroughs, Greene, Chandler and so on. Now I can read without wishing I could write like that. Bliss.

Now I can write here on this blog. The common advice is to 'write what you know'. That's rubbish. Blogging is freedom. which may not always lead to anything of interest to anyone. But the writer will have hopefully enjoyed herself. Even if that post amounted to an outpouring of grief. Therapy. Writing can be that. It can be anything. Like Art. Except, by it's very nature, writing non-fiction, commonly, then, known as 'fact', is supposed to 'make sense'. Supposed to convey cohesive thoughts. Yes? No. Let writing be. Applaud nonsense. It means something to the writer, doesn't it?

There's too much common sense in the arts. You know it. Perfectly composed pictures of mundane subjects. Perfectly written and produced songs expressing nothing much in a totally unimaginative way. Yes, I applaud certain kinds of perfection. a Motown classic. Debussy. Whoever. But the quest for perfection and only achieving competence (the by-product of those who aspire but lack imagination or talent) is what deters so many would-be creators. Take a writing course? Go away. The goal of the pupils: create more mediocre novels to join millions sitting in WH Smiths. But at least they're published! Yes. The world is full of totally mediocre product. It sells. It's what the majority of the people want. Isn't it? The mediocre is magical to them. They wonder how novels get written - it's a magical process! No. It's not. It's laborious and methodical and reads like it was.

I have written enough now.

If you exist, rather than being just a figment of my imagination. Goodbye.

Wednesday 9 April 2014

What's On Your Mind?


prawns (which he's cooking)

the £10 note thrown onto his desk in the office by a disgruntled Arsenal fan who'd bet on Chelsea FC not qualifying for the semi-finals of the Champions League

Bruno Nicolai, whose Marquis de Sade album he had just purchased, thinking 'What the hell, I'm ten  pounds richer than I was yesterday'...


Helm, who he was listening to as he wrote...


...it's not proper music, is it? what's music & what's noise? who's to say? 

how do you know someone's working class? their TV is bigger than their bookcase (a cruel joke he'd recited to a friend last week-end during a discussion about what he could not remember). he is working-class. & there were times in his past when he was almost ashamed to say so - then he told himself that if more working-class people came out of the closet there would be less shame in it because some of those who did so might own bookcases that were bigger than their TVs. so the nasty stereotype of proles being uncultured in the sense of not only watching & reading shit would be challenged. though, he thought, the day would never come when it would disappear...

what is Art? no! no that old question.
what is digital Art?

'Images For Digital Art' (Google)


here's something he made....



...is it Digital Art? is it Art at all?

he thought all this, then remembered the prawns & went to finish cooking them...

Tuesday 8 April 2014

Memory Fails


he had 15 minutes to post something so he thought he'd improvise
on what?
where's the start?
there wasn't one so he started by stating a simple fact

then he paused

no, mustn't think

so he went on typing....
then stopped to look at the screen...

he'd just finished Georges Simenon's The Engagement, suspecting that he'd read it before whilst remaining unsure even as he reached upwards of forty pages
once finished he checked and found he had read it by looking on the blog - yes - he'd even written a little review - now he worried about his memory...really...was it that bad?
so many books over so many years...
books forgotten, unfinished, never started, read and forgotten...

passing a bookshop that day he noticed the window display of reprinted Maigret novels and the sign saying they were all to be reprinted - that's good - but he had only read one or two in the series, considering Simenon's other novels to be so much better, so much more worthy of republication and praise.

he walked on into the Oxfam shop, followed immediately by the ageing Irishman who always goes in asking for tapes. he marvelled at the patience of the assistant who kindly told him, as he probably does every day: 'Sorry, we haven't got anything for you' - where he would have screamed 'FUCK OFF! WE DON'T HAVE ANY FUCKING TAPES FOR YOU! HOW MANY MORE TIMES ARE YOU GOING TO COME IN AND ASK THAT?' after the tenth time of asking. then he cursed himself for being impatient and failing to display tolerance towards the mentally impaired.
besides, wasn't he mentally impaired in some way?
forgetting he'd read a book?
not just any book, but one which he had enjoyed so much?
memory fades...failing to serve...



Friday 4 April 2014

Electrode - Martial Solal Joue Michel Magne (Cacophonic)


Michel Magne scores, Jean-Claude Vannier debuts as arranger, and Martial Solal runs riot on piano - a winning combination. Magne's Musique Tachiste, the Cacophonic debut last year, was a gem, and this is just as good.

Solal may be the solo star but Vannier's strings share the spotlight as they carve angular, atonal, occasionally dissonant shapes between which he flexes his fingers. Sustained upper-register violins, exotic Eastern-flavoured accents mixed with new classical modernism colour the canvas on which Solal paints his abstract action. His career as film composer was kick-started by Godard with Breathless and like that film this album is a distinctive, kaleidoscopic affair of jump-cut scoring, or New Wave orchestration.

Organique epitomises much of what's on offer, fusing cinemascopic brass in a leftfield bluesy manner until midway when it leaps into action as a trio piece augmented by soaring, swooping strings. Similarly, Clair-Obscure starts in a stately neo-classical mode before evolving into Jazz in waltz time and finally the trio let rip. Far from being a simple structure though, this masterpiece weaves much else into the score, such as brilliant solo passage by Solal and ever-shifting orchestral moods.

Air Liquide is as close to tradition as this album gets, aping a familiar Jazz structure which allows Solal more room to play, but the score remains defiantly modernist. Solal's expertise in fluent post-Bop expression constantly sparks life into the otherwise studious, artful orchestration and as such, is a perfect foil to that.

Full respect to Finders Keepers for offering this to an audience that will hopefully be open-minded enough to appreciate it. It does mean a thing even if it ain't got that old-fashioned swing.


Thursday 3 April 2014

Charles Cohen - A Retrospective (Morphine Records)


Perhaps you don't have a record player. In which case, you will not have bought Morphine Records' three-LP Charles Cohen retrospective from last year. That's the only good reason I can think of for not owning them. You may be of the young generation for whom a turntable is not a natural purchase, but a quaint retro buying experience on which to play either expensive reissues or second-hand albums from a the vast dog-eared historical selection in your local vinyl emporium.

Being old, I have a turntable, of course, but more than that it is flanked by the first speakers I ever bought in 1976. Yes, the Wharfedales live on, monuments to my history of buying vinyl. Which is not to say that should I suddenly become rich I would not invest in speakers the size of tennis balls which do a better job. I'm assuming such things exist. Just the other week I stopped to stare in a hi-fi shop, somewhat surprised that they still exist. In fact, I could not recognise half the futuristic technology on display.

I spoke about one of those Charles Cohen releases here. I had intended to review them all, but time slipped by and I forgot, even though the music was not forgotten. Now that it's all presented on two CDs non-turntablists have no excuse, unless CD players have been made obsolete by MP3 files. That's possible. It's also quite possible that today's young generation have MP3 players wired into their brains from an early age and can hear music from computers the size of matchboxes just by looking at files and commanding their implants to 'Play' by either saying the word, or thinking it. I have a similar internal system, the memory jukebox. Unfortunately, I have trouble controlling it and frequently have to endure snippets of awful Pop songs from the 70s.

Charles Cohen is in full control of his Buchla Music Easel, a magical instrument which he mastered long ago, manipulating it to produce everything from joyful Pop to lengthier introspective pieces such as one of the bonus tracks here, Conundrums. The other, Slow Blue And Horizontal, is a seductive piece of tranquil exotica. Whatever mood he's in, or setting his sound is designed for, Cohen is rarely less than captivating.



Wednesday 2 April 2014

Your Seven A Day Cultural Diet


The recent report suggesting that eating five fruit and veg a day may not be enough and seven would be better may well be true but is ridiculously optimistic. I hereby suggest a different kind of diet; one that will nourish your eyes and ears. You may also increase your fitness levels by dancing to Serge Gainsbourg, if you wish. Or, if you prefer, simply lounge on the sofa in a smoking jacket, smoking. 

The examples below are by no means the only ingredients for a healthy lifestyle. It may be supplemented by many other artists who will do you good. Most inhabitants of the planet may be poisoning themselves with cultural junk (no Lady Gaga on these premises, please, or outside, or anywhere I can see you), but you, at least, can set a good example. 

My diet provides a healthy balance of music, film, literature and art but be warned, too much Laurel & Hardy may result in your sides splitting. Whilst there is no such thing as too much Daphne Oram, I recommend a mixture of products by the following. You may even combine some by staring at a Hannah Hoch collage whilst listening to Bernard Parmegiani - it's highly recommended! 


Daphne Oram

Serge

Mr Parmegiani

His Holiness Jacques Demy

Hitch

Stan & Ollie

Holy Moholy-Nagy

Hannah

El Hombre Invisible

Georges Simenon

Feed your ears...with peas, chicken and salt peanuts...




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