WOEBOT

What a very strange outfit Holy Ghost Inc were! They first drew media attention in a very early Mixmag magazine feature on Intelligent Techno along with Mixmaster Morris, The Future Sound of London and Earth Leakage Trip (!) This was before WARP's canny yet elegant re-packaging of The Aphex Twin, The Black Dog, Autechre, B12, Speedy J and Richie Hawtin in the Artificial Intelligence series. Poor old Holy Ghost Inc though, they really missed the boat. It took until Tresor released a couple of their LPs "The Mind Control of Candy Jones" (1996) and "The Art Lukm Suite" (1997) for them to escape internal exile on their own label. If I remember those LPs were well received but fell through the cracks.

Quietly Holy Ghost Inc managed to put out a whole brace of classics which were, seemingly oblivious of their over-arching label identity, adopted by hilariously disparate scenes. Perhaps most improbably their foray into deep house "Walk On Air (Sun and Moon mix)" was picked up by David Mancuso and became that hallowed thing, a "loft classic", even going so far as appearing on Nuphonic's brilliant 2nd box-set compilation dedicated to enshrining Mancuso's vision. And it gets weirder, none other than Sven Vath was the most celebrated champion of the drone-Techno masterpiece "Mad Monks on Zinc" although it was also played to death by the London Techno Jocks Andy Weatherall, and "The Colins" (Faver and Dale). Given the generic breadth to this music that this already suggests, I suppose it's nothing short of remarkable that "Nice One Boy!", "Magnet" and "Psycho Missus" were staple choons on the Ardkore-dominated pirate airwaves.

This might imply that there was a stylistic breadth to their work. Not so! Each of these different tracks were but subtle tweaks on their sonic blueprint. Some are "heavier" the beats accented with harder breaks, some are "warmer" scored with piano riffs and featuring vocals but they all share similar sonic signatures, most notably stroboscopic riffs (often chopped-up vocals). However, What's instantly recognisable about Holy Ghost tracks is their extremely unusual feel for space-time. They appear to be more blank-eyed, more focussed on the infinite horizon than any other electronic music of their era, even their break-beats obey gravity. "Minimal" might be a misnomer given the hefty punch of these tracks, but they do succeed into tapping into that oneiric trance-like state independently of whatever mix they're embedded into, and usually it's "in the mix" that you'll find such states fostered. Only the Basic Channel tracks, which were released later, managed to cultivate the same atmosphere. Given their washing up on a Berlin label I suspect that Germany was listening closely.

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:36 AM | Permalink

In 1992 Miami's Murk records blew up. Everywhere you went all manner of DJs were playing their records. At Techno club Pure I remember Derrick May caning Interceptor's "Together". House DJs like MAW and Junior Vasquez, catering for a scene just warming up to soft lushly emollient textures (Deep Dish and Wamdue were just around the corner), flipped over their belting-raw analogue b-lines and brittle punchy drums. Allegedly the Progressive House scene also embraced the records. Not only were their tracks rough, they managed to pull off the difficult feat of simultaneously sounding expensive. Murk was the aural equivalent of a Hummer.

The voices on Coral Way Chiefs "Release Myself", Funky Green Dogs from Outer Space's "High Up" and Intruder's "U Got Me" weren't those of saccharine divas or weedy geezers. Anonymously tagged as George Pugh or Mark M, but more often than not not even listed on the label, these were vocals in the grand tradition of disco. Closest in quality to those of the Loretta Holloways and Darryl Pandys of this world, the kind that people unfavorably compare with the beyatch Madonna*, these were voices with grain: worldly, sleazy and wide-girthed. Paired with Ralph Falcon and Oscar Gaetan's superbly hooky bass-lines and their quirky taste for samples (the 40-foot tall Manu Dibango on "Some Lovin" the ESG "Moody" riff on "Reach For Me") and the results were gigantic.

Murk busting out of Miami was the key to their misfit status within Dance Music. Apparently the duo fell back on their imaginations when it came to making House music, they'd never visited the Warehouse of The Paradise Garage. Succeeding in much in the way that Southern Hip-Hop did early this decade by sounding fresh by merit of getting it slightly wrong. House wasn't supposed to be this raw.

*who ironically they ended up remixing upon personal request...

Posted by WOEBOT at 12:23 PM | Permalink

Simon Reynolds made the single most perceptive remark made about the spectacularly intense evolution of dance music through the 1990s. Actually he might have been talking more specifically about Hardcore and Jungle, but YES, the journey was more interesting than the destination. Or indeed the destinations, because that's what we have with today's practically static genres. I'm finding Funky House interesting in 2007 because, as I said a couple of months ago, it seems content with the vaguest generic specification.

Musicians go on about not wanting to be pigeonholed. In the past I would tend to think to myself, c'mon kids, get with the program, but there is a balance to be struck. In its defense, generic music is never purposeless. It aspires to be listened-to and to be cared about. It can be made sense of within a field of music, and can be enjoyed for its own particular nuances within that field. However it seems like finally the whole world has grasped this fundamental truism and metaphorically-speaking we are left with a few big walled cities on a barren plain.

I hated Fungle, the music by Squarepusher, Spring Heeled Jack and Plug. Its claims of "outdoing" Jungle seemed hilariously wrong-headed. But over the last couple of years it has been the Dubstep fusions which have been most entertaining, not the real thing. The sublime tom-tom techno of Shackleton, Mordant Music's radiophonica and Various Productions deliberately ill-fitting "un-urban" chansons have bucked the trends for art music feasting on the body of utilitarian dance, by actually excelling their host.

Dance music in that decade was moving so fast sonically that more than a few entities were able to hitch a ride as fellow-travellers without there being a need to haul them out of the train. There was so much noise, so much flux, that if a record had a 4/4 beat people generally didn't ask questions. This week starting tomorrow I'm going to briefly focus on four of those entities.

Posted by WOEBOT at 06:16 PM | Permalink

I started listening to a lot of Donovan's music earlier in the year. I found a copy of the "Hurdy Gurdy Man" LP, and given how beastly I was about him here, I suppose it's surprising I picked it up.

"The Hurdy Gurdy Man" (Germany 1968)

The LP is a start-to-finish treat. Poised at the succulent junction of Pop, Folk and Jazz it is blessed with Donovan's preternatural knack for crafting catchy hooks, yet is at once decidedly un-poppy and beguilingly over-cast. The story of the song "Hurdy Gurdy Man" could be a microcosmic study of the pitfalls of the man's career. It's a defiantly heavy tune. Donovan's quivering phrasing of the lead vocal is twisted, even unhinged. It's one of the classic encapsulations of the souring of the hippy vibe, its drums are utterly savage (indeed are all the drums on this remarkably Hip-Hop-friendly LP), and yet it ends up being appropriated my Nigel Planer of 80s comedy act the Young Ones, Donovan seemingly complicit in his humiliation. There's not a bad track on the record, which is strafed with droning harmoniums, break-neck beatnik tabla (the Celtic Fringe weaving into the North African continuum) and brightened by John Cameron's (later of "Kes" notoreity) chamber-jazz orchestrations.

On one level Donovan's career was a disaster. His discography must be one of the most fractured ever, unlike that of his contemporaries The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, who managed to release commercially-tangible coherent LPs. Working with producer Mickie Most, who was famously disdainful of anything but the 7", Donovan compounded the chaos by endorsing different versions of LPs for the US and UK ("Mellow Yellow" for instance was combined with "Sunshine Superman" on one LP in the UK), in the case of "From A Flower to a Garden" putting out two LPs in a box-set replete with engravings and then allowing Clive Davis to split the double into two discreet offerings, an acoustic and electric set with them being released independently on its tail. The "Hurdy Gurdy Man" LP itself wasn't even available in the UK! The three records I've chosen here the ones you want.

"Mellow Yellow" (USA 1967)

You might shirk a little when you hear "Mellow Yellow", like I do, it's too cheery and has been used on too many adverts. But did you know it was orchestrated by Most's man, and soon-to-be Led Zeppelin bass-player John Paul Jones? The rest of the LP though is delicious. My personal favorite being the porous, almost electronically-abstract, "Sand and Foam" in which a seemingly incapacitated Donovan reflects, like a mottled mirror, the bleaching sunshine of Mexico. It contains one of my favorite lines ever: "Grasshoppers creaking in the jungle of the night, microscopic circles in the fluid of my sight". It's a shame that his previous years LP "Sunshine Superman" isn't better really, it falls prey to whimsy, though the title track is scorching. I'm almost ashamed to admit I first knew it as a Husker Du song.

"A Gift From A Flower to a Garden" (UK 1968)

Donovan's masterpiece is "From A Flower to a Garden". Talking to John Tobler he makes some serious claims for the packaging itself, supposedly it employed revolutionary printing techniques and was (by Donovan's account) the first box-set. I'm not sure to be honest, I can't believe neither Classical music (which exhibited a great fondness for the format) nor Moses Asch at Folkways didn't pip him to the post. Notwithstanding this the first "electric" LP is fabulous, sounding less like a period-piece than almost anything other I've heard recorded that year. "Mad John" must surely have been covered by The Happy Mondays?* "The Land of Doesn't Have To Be" is like riding a beam of sunlight, its organ ravishingly solarised; Donovan's vocal tics throughout are endlessly fascinating. "Wear Your Love like Heaven" is, well, just plain groovy. The acoustic LP, billed as songs for children, is lovely too, and certainly not different enough to merit being hewn off.

In recent years Rick Rubin tried to pull off "the Johnny Cash effect" with Leitch, but to no commercial avail. Donovan did the maddest thing at the end of the 1960s, jumping on a plane to Thailand and dropping-out with unnerving recklessness. I suspect he permanently lost touch with his muse at this point. Apparently his fleeing fucked up a tax dodge which his accountant had constructed for him, and effectively cost him a million quid. Lennon didn't really "drop out" did he? Next time you see archive footage of Donovan with The Beatles at Rishikesh, or escorting Dylan round London, don't scoff. I've come to the realisation that his queer manner, what comes across as supercilious arrogance, is but an awareness of his divine talent.

*Shaun Ryder married Donovan's daughter.

Posted by WOEBOT at 10:56 PM | Permalink

The last in the current series of WOEBOT.tv is now up. "Last in the current series" is code for "never say never"- it's been a lot of fun to do, but unbelievably hard work. Around episode two I thought, oo-er, I've really bit off more than I can chew with this. I decided at that moment that twelve episodes would stretch me to breaking point. Six seemed like a very respectable compromise, and I set about trying to define what the footprint of a commissioned series would be with just six shows: A smidgen of theory, some retro-fetischism, an interview with a hot artist, a bit of musical tourism, a seasonal survey and a tour of someone's record collection.

As far as getting the show commissioned, I haven't really girded my loins and tackled that yet, however (and I can't believe there's much harm in telling, and I do so more out of trying to keep face, out of self-justification rather than pride) I have had the same people behind Dub-plate Drama rep the series to one of the chiefs of Music at Channel 4. I'm not sure what's happening with it right now, but in many ways I feel that even getting that far is pretty good, it feels like that was my best shot. In these instances one's not supposed to be subdued, the idea is to glow with self-promotional confidence, but I can't believe I'll have any luck.

I did have some disappointments in the course of the show. It was pretty sad not to be able to get more than a phone interview with Juana Molina; I mean! Also, I had an entire show, a feature on the club Love Saves The Day get flushed down the loo. I had some footage I shot at the night, the opportunity to use some really nice photos, co-opertion with the team behind the night, but I really needed an interview with David Mancuso to seal the deal. Without it there just wasn't a film there. Mancuso actually agreed, but at the last minute, I think either on the day, or the night before, decided he didn't want to do it. Part of it is the fact that people (and perhaps especially musicians) are extremely reluctant to get in front of a camera, the other was that I just didn't have any clout. At this juncture I'd like to extend my most heartfelt gratitude to Keith for agreeing to do the last show. He really didn't need to bother.

Finally, I'm a bit short of cash (winks), and this is duplicating what I put in the email mailout, but if you've enjoyed the series perhaps you'd like to buy a T-Shirt? I'm chucking in a FREE DVD with all the shows on it at high-resloution.

Posted by WOEBOT at 05:59 PM | Permalink

I'll have to confess that my Animal Collective groupie credentials were beginning to wane. I thought they'd let Arcade Fire mess with their mojo on "Feels" and actually Panda Bear's "Young Prayer" was the last thing I picked up from the camp. But given the mind-boggling power of "Person Pitch" I'm happy to admit I've stalked Noah across most of the western hemisphere.

No he doesn't actually know me, but I've thrust myself on him on a number of occassions. I first bumped myself into them at this set they did in the Rough Trade store in May 2003, blimey that's four years ago! I'm re-upping that bit of video here.

Later that year I inveigled my way into the playback party for "Here comes the Indian", once again accosting Noah. I also confess to ogling other celebrities at this event. Then a year or so later I shamelessly thrust myself at him at a gig they were playing at in Shoreditch. "Hi Noah! It's me!", "Er, have we met?" I've yet to camp outside his house and go through his rubbish, but at this rate anything is possible.

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:13 AM | Permalink

Buy Panda Bear's "Person Pitch" here. When you've listened to it 100 times download this mix.

-

Tracklisting:
The Linden Singers and the New World Show Orchestra: Jericho
Duke Ellington: Caravan
The Mighty Sparrow: Rope
Van Dyke Parks: Your Own Comes First
The Beach Boys: Let Him Run Wild
Eden Ahbez: Eden's Island
Putiki Youth Choir: Kau Rongorongo
Harry Hosono: Honeymoon
Julee Cruise: Rockin' Back Inside My Heart
Wally Badarou: Vesuvio Solo
Aksak Maboul: Scratch Holiday
Mouse on Mars: Stereomission
Blackbeard: Reflections
cLOUDDEAD: Unknown
David Fanshawe: Crucifixus
Les Troubadours du Roi Badouin: Kyrie
The Beach Boys: Hymn

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:08 AM | Permalink

I've been wanting to post these for ages! Not terribly much to say about them. Did you know that WOEBOT probably gets linked more because of the images I put up than for any other reason? I think that's quite nice really. I put up bigger and better sleeve shots than anyone else, and (sticks out chest) I'm proud of it.

Er, what should I say about these? The greater proportion of these I picked up in Paris. This series of LPs are without a doubt the best collection of Concrete (Avant-Garde music even?) available. The production is richer and more beautiful than their predecessors The Silver Records. There's a couple I'd still like to get yet, Jean Schwarz's "Symphonie" (which Gwen promised to get me...but failed miserably) and now Ivo Malec's "Sigma".

The Bayle is exquisite, it may seem offensively pedestrian of me to say, but it's almost ambient in its leanings. Parmegiani's "Dedans Dehors" is my personal favourite, perhaps less impressive than "De Natura Sonorum" but ravishing and fascinating, it's one of the only Avant-Garde records you could imagine playing to small children and them being engaged by it. The Mion was the first one I had, off Gwen in 1996, I subsequently tracked down and read Henri Michaux's book of the same name which I bought a translation of from George at Shakespeare and Company in Paris. George's daughter Sylvia Beach had translated it and we had a little chat about that. Chion's "Requiem" is supposed to be the square root of the Nurse With Wound records, Michel Chion is an interesting character, he wrote a very good book about David Lynch.

Posted by WOEBOT at 02:39 PM | Permalink

Yay. This is a bit of a fun. A whole catalogue of record covers and records (and a few CDs and cassettes as well) made by "artists".

The first problem being that the images are too small.

But its full of top scholarship, like this sleeve Salvador Dali did for onetime jazz journalist Jackie Gleason.

There's quite alot of this sort of thing. Monochromatic art gallery edition artwork. But Hermann does belong in here rightfully doesn't he!

But then it veers towards this stuff. I mean, Phillip Corner is a Minimalist musician, but does that necessarily make him an artist? And Joey Ramone wasn't?

And this, I mean, lovely cover and groovy band, but what on grounds does this merit inclusion?

I've never seen this one before! There are hundreds of moments when I thought Schraenen was going to miss something and he didn't. An impressive proportion of these are included.

This Andy Warhol sleeve for Diana Ross is too delicious.

Raymond Pettibon gets a look in, but maybe not a whole load of other auteurs of the record sleeve....because at the end of the day that's what he is. But I quibble!

It was nice to see this by Scottish Musician and Artist Alan Davie, a show of whose I saw a long time ago on Sauciehall Street.

Posted by WOEBOT at 03:35 PM | Permalink

I'll try and brief because these things can be boring. You've got all the famous Krautrock records, where do you go from there? I started researching this about six months ago, on a mission to show how German Prog was indivisible from what we know as "Krautrock" but I ended up confirming to myself the value of that seemingly arbitrary category.

Can, Faust, Neu!, Amon Duul, Popol Vuh, Ash Ra Tempel, The Cosmic Jokers; these bands really do embody what is most special about German music of the 1970s. All I've been able to do is discover how some tendencies, the influence of Folk music and crucially of Jazz are more important to the picture than the traditionally Rock-ist view would allow.

AR Machines: IV

AR Machines is the vehicle of Achim Reichel, who used to be in Germany's Beatles clones "The Rattles". This is probably his finest record. There's a similar tone on this to the muzzy-folk big-beat of Faust on "So Far". Indispensable.

Broselmaschine: Broselmaschine

Peter Bursch has a reputation as an excellent acoustic guitarist. He's written a famous teach-yourself book for the instrument. This was his band's debut, and along with Emtidi's "Saat" and Hölderlin's "Hölderlins Traum" is one of the "legendary" Kraut-folk LPs on the Pilz label. This record does get a tiny bit blanched-out, a bit derivative of the British Folk Revival, but something like "Gedanken" has enough in the way of bad-tripping on the Rhine, of wilting flowers, to fascinate. Nice.

Brainticket: Cottonwoodhill/Psychonaut

I'd been put off this for years by assuming it was that essentially unavoidable thing: German Prog (Triumvirat, Passport, Wallenstein). Actually it's deranged blues-rock; heavy without ever rocking-out, intensely structured, never devolving into improvisational whimsy. If it wasn't cloaked in Gong-like garb it'd be a front-runner for inclusion into the premier league. Great.

Floh De Cologne: Fliessbandbaby's Beat-Show

I've always wanted a Floh De Cologne record! Thanks to Gareth Cherrystone's excellent wide-ranging Krautrock article at FACT, I got my pointer. Gareth nails its attraction with a description of their "great repetitive riffs", clearly a bunch of politicos seizing guitars for propagandist aims, they nevertheless churn out great bierkeller pfunk. Groovy.

Kosmische Sampler

Bit of a cheat seeing as how it's a sampler of famous Kosmic stuff on the Ohr label: Popol Vuh, Klaus Schulze, Ash Ra Tempel and Tangerine Dream. But it's this archival concision of having just these "top boys" (so many Krautrock compilations are sullied by the addition of crap rock like Jane), and the ability to hear the Kosmic music manifesto spun out across the work of these four bands that makes this such an exquisite document. The packaging is an utterly beguiling re-tool of Escher as well, the gatefold sleeve opening out into a four page booklet. Yum.

Agitation Free: Malesch

Michael Hoenig and the boys' Egyptian road-trip. I've remarked before how the budget travel industry grew out of the expanded horizons of hippy culture, anyway the Germans have always been prodigious travelers. In India, besides the natives, I mainly came across Germans and Australians. There's but the very slightest influence of Egyptian music on this though, some snatches of ethnographic recordings, a smidgen of percussion. It's headphone tourism I suppose. Some lovely riffs here though, like it's successor "2nd" it's at its best when the band is in Quicksilver Messenger mode, like on the fab title track for instance. Nice.

Hans-Joachim Roedelius: Durch Die Wuste

The Roedelius cult, honorable initiates being electronic music guru Jon Leidecker and label boss Seb Morlu, have it that this is one of the man's greatest solo efforts. It's a mixed-bag of driving rock, synth and drum work-outs and ambient interludes, that perhaps hasn't quite arrived at the low-key as modus-operandi of his later stuff. On the plus-side the variety is engaging. Not bad.

Xhol Caravan: Electrip

If you skirt the origins of Krautrock, more often than not you'll find practitioners involved in Jazz. Jaki Liebezeit was a member of Manfred Schoof Free-Jazz quintent, and Mani Neumeier and Uli Trepte (the square root of Guru Guru) were in swiss pianist Irene Schweizer's Trio. This excellent Xhol Caravan LP, often described as Proto-Kraut, comes on like an electrified version of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five", all weird shuffling near-Chamber-Jazz riddims. Brill.

Yatha Sidhra: A Meditation Mass

This is a revelation, I was stoked to be able to score an original vinyl copy with the LP's name die-cut from out of the gatefold cover, revealing an illustration from the Tibetan Book of The Dead, right there a delicious mash-up of Pop Art and hippy spirituality. On first few listenings this glid right past my ears, but slowly the tom-toms acquire a totemic weight, the flute (again from within the Jazz idiom) becomes grave. It slowly dawned on me that this melancholic, metronomic music is precisely the sound Neu! would have made had they not been fired up on amphetamines. Fantastic.

Embryo: Rocksession

My LP doesn't have its cover unfortunately. I don't have any other Embryo LPs, there's a good history at Gnosis and a nice fan's perspective at this guy's site. What one's listening to is the interface between the heavyweight German Jazz/Fusion label MPS/Saba and German rock. Like Embryo, characters such as Niagara's Klaus Weiss and Wolfgang Dauner (who would probably be in here if I liked his stuff) also straddle the divide between German Jazz and Rock. I suppose the equivalent axis in Britain is the Keith Tippett/Soft Machine nexus. To be honest I don't know what all the fuss is about with this band. OK they have chops, and I'm sure there are breaks to be sampled here, but unlike something like Hatfield and The North who really made electric Jazz their own, this doesn't have any atmosphere. Pleasant enough, I suppose.

So, yeah, there it is.

Posted by WOEBOT at 05:29 PM | Permalink

This is something I've always liked actually! The titles at the end say Position Normal did the music. Chris said he'd be up for it, but by the time I'd finished the clip the landscape had changed. This was commissioned by a channel in the UK called Trouble, they were after ideas for a series for kids, so "Party Animals" ("Friends"-meets-cuddly-toys) was my idea. In retrospect it seems an utterly misplaced concept, more like programming for the 1950s, I mean where are the crack dealers?

Posted by WOEBOT at 09:24 AM | Permalink