WOEBOT

Photos.

Here is a selection of photos from our trip. Click on the images to go through them. These were taken by Ed Maw aka Bismillah Raxmani Rahim of Inglistan. Above are Mike (in a choice Clubhouse T) and Bouba striding out in style. Apologies for the sheer horror induced by any photos of me.

At the time I was really wrapped up in this insane project and missed alot of Senegal itself. Ed's very patient, observant and sympathetic to boot. Also it's important to observe that we weren't staying in the Carlton Dakar. We ate and kipped with our very gracious hosts in mud-houses and communal squats.

Tomorrow to wrap things up we've a little discographical style piece, with a spotlight on Chicago.

***CLICK ON THE PHOTO TO START***

QuickTime.

Before you can watch the documentary you'll need to download QuickTime 6. I use QuickTime professionally in a Windows environment and it performs amazingly. It's been called the jewel in Apple's crown, and for my money it's the greatest Multimedia architecture there is. If you want to get the best out of the web, be it streaming video, watching Flash or handling mp3 files (and I know there are still people about who are shy of this stuff) forget Realplayer and Windows Media Player, there's no better facilitator than QuickTime. And it's FREE! Advert over.

The download and install is a doddle. Don't be afraid, almost everything is done for you!

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The Main Feature.

The film itself is a 30MB file. That's large, but not preposterously so. It's 25 minutes long, so that file size is a miracle of compression. The way I managed to make it so small is to only have the frame-rate at 1-per-second. It's quite like watching a flip-book (La Jetee-style!), though the sound streams constantly. I think it works really well.

Available for Download here.

Echo.

".....welding and regeneration will be the pattern for African art. Many of the foreign influences that have penetrated Africa will be incorporated into a new form of black African art. This form of initiation may be deplored by those with deep-seated conservative or racialist tendencies, but far from resulting in a bastardised and damaging modernism, we believe this mutation will breathe new life into African art and will demonstrate the triumph of humanism and universality over esoteric sterility." Francis Bebey.

In July 1993 I took a Techno Sound-system to West Africa and made a documentary. We weren't necessarily the first to pull off this "stunt", to this day I hear (what might be urban myths) of raves in Ethiopia, parties in smashed up Mosques, and also more "bread'n'butter" reports of Fatboy Slim touring South Africa. Not forgetting to omit stories of Africa's own Acid-house parties, mention of which we came across in Dakar. But this project was orientated by a thorough concept AND we filmed it. The trip was supposed to be a means of exploring a whole host of ideas. Was there any connection between African music and Techno? How far had the diaspora travelled from it's source? Was African music always going to be viewed in the West's eyes as traditional? Could African youth identify with the machinic alienation of Techno? How would Techno be appropriated outside of it's usual Socio-cultural structures? Would the music wither without a context? Was "electronic technology" viable in a hot and humid climate? Was there a future for a (poly-rhythmic) West African electronic music? A Would it matter that we were a bunch of white kids? Would the venture degenerate into a "Heart of Darkness" style nightmare? Of course lurking behind these questions more important ones.

The transatlantic ping-pong game is well documented. Check Paul Gilroy's hard-thought text "The Black Atlantic." From Malian Griots to Delta Bluesmen. From Blue Note Jazz to figures like 1950's Senegal's Dexter Johnson. From West African Drum patterns to James Brown's locked groove back to Fela's top-heavy horn sections. From Manu Dibango's disproportionally massive influence on Disco to Africa's own sea of Disco. From Sunny Ade's shimmering Juju to Talking Heads' echoated funk. From Bob Marley's afro-centric posturings to Sonny Okosuns. In fact, in the 80's more Reggae records were sold in West Africa than anywhere else in the world. The signal splitting and refracting each time, becoming engulfed in a noise impossible to divine. We're not even touching on the Latin-to-African continuum which was strong in Senegal with Etoile de Dakar's pioneering Mbalax, an Africanised spin-off of Cuban music. The current becoming more one-way in recent years as Africa absorbs Dancehall and Hip-Hop while less artists from the West look to it for inspiration (though Ibadan and The Masters at Work?). Not that there isn't a bounty of forms ripe for transfiguration. It was possible to view the cod-primitive posturing of Techno (see Hardfloor's "Yeke Yeke" remix), and in the case of Detroit it's rhythmic pizzazzz as having subtle echoes of African music, but was the connection tenuous?

Tenuous? Not that it mattered if it was! Part of the fun was the stark polarity of what we were suggesting and it's heretical element. How dare we sully African music? Nowadays in the West the worlds of Techno and African music are not as distant as they once were. Carl Craig is remixing all kinds of world music. Talking Loud are producing boxes of Fela Kuti. The African reissue project has been spearheaded by (er...now defunkt) labels like Nuphonic and Strut with their roots in Acid House. In fact Techno is pretty acceptable qua "music", whereas back in 1993 it was still struggling to separate itself from its hooligan brother Ardkore, still saddled with the drug-noise tag (wink). When it came to arguing for Techno's artistry (we don't consider this...once we did) with the World music community, you should have witnessed the pitched battles fought, hour long bloody phone calls with intransigent World music academics.

I'll give all credit to David Toop. His Post-Colonial Fourth-World Hybrid Techno-Pagan Global Futurist Top 20 Chart in The Wire, Issue February 1992, planted the seed. He was also incredibly generous to this deeply obnoxious 22 year-old, and opened his address book to help us getting the ball rolling. Toop had been down this road before himself, having released ethnographic music on his Quartz label and having produced with Musa Kalamulah music by "African Connexion", who dabbled with similar notions. In the very involved pre-production stage I spoke with: Sue Steward (horrified by the idea); Lucy Duran at SOAS (even MORE horrified by the idea); Ricky Steens, Fela Kuti's awesomely laid-back manager (no problem BUT don't go to Nigeria you'll wind up dead); Jumbo Vanrennan, head honcho of Earthworks, the genius behind "The Indestructible Beat of Soweto" compilations (go to Senegal they're open to outside influence there); Simon Booth, fresh from producing Baaba Maal (hey we played some musicians The Orb and they really dug it...); Journalist Richard Scott, an authority on World Music just back from a field trip in West Africa (sceptical and confused as to what I was up to, but not forbidding). Under my own steam I contacted The British Council in Senegal (cough, spies), The Prince's Trust (who gave me a hundred quid!), Real World (who told us to bugger off), and Simon Frith (who said the "traditional" construction of African pop was a straw-man which people didn't really believe in any more, fair cop guv). No-one would give us any money for the project, so I had to fund it myself.

The logistics of the documentary were incredibly involved. On top of coordinating interviews with Manu Dibango, +8, Baaba Maal and Derrick May (the first time I interviewed him, I said thanks, left and on the motorway home, decided to check the tape, "OH NO! NO SOUND!" and had to crawl back and beg for another audience which I eventually gained a week later).....on top of coordinating interviews I had to organise clearance with The Senegalese Minister of Information, find a "Fixer" in Dakar (the eminent Salif Ba), get together a Sound-system and generator (rented on false pretences from various Hire Shops) crate them up and send off. In Senegal we had to wrestle with 3rd World beauracracy, me imploring the Head Customs Officer on my knees, after three days of being turned away from our impounded system, to let us have it for (ahem) the good of mankind. I had to get us on Dakar FM too.

The crew! Think I'm nuts? You don't know this lot. The core two were Kieron Cresswell, here starring as "Dancer" (Bez-style-role) and some combination of Guru and cheerleader. Kiki had just been released from prison in Norway for importing a suitcase full of Qat into that country, a mildly intoxicating stalk you chew which my mates were all mad keen on for a while. As for Dr."Mike" Lever, who is my wife's brother-in-law, we'll have to skirt closer to a politic silence seeing as how he's now a well-respected GP. Mike is a larger-than-life character, a one-man party, stalwart of the legendary Edinburgh club "Pure" and sometime DJ at "Wave" (Pure's ambient room) and blessed with a supernatural third ear, a true feeling for sound. Mike was our DJ, I would occasionally pick up the slack. People laughed at me when I told them who was coming. Joining us mid-way through this boys-own adventure came my very close friend Ed (just in time to stop the whole thing falling apart if I remember; DJ Mike about to marry a Gambian woman), a more balanced kind of lunatic and now working to help Immigrants settle in the UK. You'd conclude that he had a serious emotional investment in seeing the project worked fairly for our African mates. An artist of the highest calibre on Wednesday you'll see Ed's beautiful photos of the trip.

We linked up with artists Bouba Diarra and Waya Badji very early on. These two mavericks came to our first club night in Dakar, and swept consecutive events behind them. Bouba was a charismatic pugnacious singer, now living in Denmark, who had looked after Vanessa Paradis on her visit to Dakar. Waya his lovely gentle side-kick. These two steered us through the whole project, took us to EXACTLY the right places. It wasn't all plain sailing, Bouba was as big a hot-head as me. When we'd reached the Casamance region, a week in, we had the most enormous falling-out, I can't even remember what it was about. We said we wanted rid of them, they demanded we destroy our footage. We ended up down the police station industrial-tribunal-stylee, swearing and cursing at eachother (me in fractured nonsensical French). The senior police-officer listened patiently to them and us. He sat back and told us in the calmest friendliest manner imaginable that we were just kids, and we should go forth and have fun. The air cleared instantly, best-of-mates!

Bouba and Waya took us to stay with their family in Ziguinchor, and there we played a youth club (under-10s go totally mad to Steve Poindexter), a marsh in the day-time (in the middle of nowhere, a crowd gathered, we're shut down by the army in a Tank, apparently in a war-zone) and best of all in the tiny village of Adeane (lit by our van's lights the whole village raving). Back in Dakar we threw a street rave which we flyered (two days spent sitting in the Police Station waiting to be granted permission, live people brought in in millet sacks). In fact we sailed fairly close to the law ourselves, endlessly puffing on African bush (struggling to get high on it ha ha!), at one Gambian border-post Bouba was arrested and mid-scuffle he slipped me the gang's weed, cue heavy breathing on my part and much ham-acting as I dumped it behind their building. At the next customs barrier Ed stole a Baaba Maal matchbox right from under the guard's noses. A night broken-up at rifle-point in a Dakar Night-club. What were we thinking! The street-rave was storming too. Nuff mind-bogglingly-great Michael Jackson dancing from the locals, who ALWAYS formed a ring and took it in turns to dance in the middle. That's African-style, none of this mob frenzy, tremendously well-organised, cleanly re-appropriating our events.

The feeling of sheer ecstacy I had when I had everything in the can, words cannot describe. The thing was I knew precious little about making a documentary. There's no lights, no set-ups, any POVs are purely fortuitous. If you knew how mannered the art of making a documentary is you'd laud anyone EVER making them seem fresh. It was shot on Hi-8 (pre DV) and edited on a linear SVHS suite (linear editing an art-form to work, you grasp the added dimensions of the genius of Lee Perry, all that punching levels in and out, twisting knobs with your teeth etc.) In short it's woefully amateur. I'm a Broadcast Graphics Professional these days (ooh!) and was toying with the idea of re-editing the source footage, putting on slick graphics, tinkering, but there's no getting away from the fact that you can't see Baaba Maal properly, or that with Manu Dibango we only had a C90 tape-recorder or that all the tripod-shots wobble etc etc etc. But I think it stands up fine (Dogme-ahoy!), and the encoded version which you'll see on Tuesday works really well, you have to imagine how poly-dimensional the dancing was, but that's no bad thing. There's SO MUCH sheer joy and youthful up-and-at-em in-your-face spirit to it. It only cost $4,000 to make. That's NOTHING in the grand scheme. And while only about 20 people have ever seen it and MTV practically laughed in my face when I showed it to them and The Wire resolutely ignored me (story of my life), it got me a job for 2 years working for Ridley Scott (Jake his son loved it), Alex Knight of Fat Cat bowed to me in a street once, and it was a total gas to do. I hope you enjoy it.

Fax.

Richard X: “Presents His X-Factor Volume One” (Virgin)

Richard X bathing in the light of a thousand flashbulbs. Puffy calling in production favours. This a producers LP like B.E.F's "Music of Quality and Distinction, Vol. 1" or Timbaland's "Welcome To Our World." Now styling himself as a Jam/Lewis for the Noughties. X calling in a cast of bonafide celebs: Kelis, Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, and er Tiga; but more intriguingly the cheap UK reality TV cast-offs of Pop Idol and Pop Stars, Liberty X and Javine, Pop-groups (then) on the decline, The Sugababes, even Flying Lizards ("Money") veteran Deborah Evans-Stickland.

This where my heart warms to his strategy, the bootleg king (“Being Scrubbed”, “Dancing with Numbers”) genuinely in love with the abandoned and rejected, delighting in reconfiguring the tainted as glamorous, toying with the conceptual boundary twixt garish and Vogue-cover. Even the most glamorous delights, Kelis singing the SOS Band’s “Finest” rubbed up bootleg-style against Phil Oakley’s “Electric Dreams”, have echoes of the gutter. “Finest” notorious in the UK as the shiver in the spine of Foul Play’s “Finest Illusion”, interestingly also a copyright battlefield. This angle suits him well everywhere but on the two Evan-Stickland tracks which “succeed” in recontextualising Deborah as mildewed debutante. Their “Walk On By”, I skipped.

The "X" sound wrenching rubber and chrome-piston perfection. For neophytes (who dem?): sonic signposts like early Ultravox, The Human League "...", Imagination and Mtume's "Juicy Fruit" might be helpful. Certainly worth investigating.

The tension is killing me!

Is it gonna be my truncated 1,000,000 word Junior Boys review replete with personality shots of the JBs by David Bailey and an artist-sanctioned DIY online mix kit?

Am I gonna film myself giving out free mp3 CDs outside the Oxford Street HMV in a crocodile suit with a "TWANBOC Recommended" Placard?

Have I attempted to redesign The Pillbox's graphical interface? (Aw where IS Ian?)

Only time will tell.....

Dis(s)claimer.

Before next week, which may be the defining one of this blog, I thought it was imperative to clear the decks.

I swear I'm not blogging to rub other people's noses in my face. I've found that for all the promises of belonging to a community with which we're lured into buying music, very little is delivered. Quite the contrary, the deeper one goes into music the lonelier an experience it becomes. All I've tried to do here is communicate how I feel about music, and actually I've found sharing what I have picked up to be a great larf. I'm not a great writer and I'm not THAT funny.

Somehow I believe I'm supposed to apologise for being an intense character, or for being narcissistic, or paranoid, or writing too much, or writing too regularily (so uncool); well screw that, I'm making no apologies. I can examine my conscience and report that I'm entirely happy with the spirit in which I've presented the blog thus far AND how I've dealt with emails in relation to it (every email answered), AND how I've behaved on meeting my fellow bloggers (keep on blogging dudes!), which is I believe to be one of honest unpatronising generosity.

Finally I'd like to give a BIG big up to everyone who's enjoyed coming here. Peace, and I hope you enjoy next week's offerings :-D

”The Real Deal” Indian Music Part Two.

One look at the horror that is Putumayo Music is enough to put anyone off “World Music” for ever. The imagery for one, the “happy” naïve illustration is excruciatingly dreadful. The label deals music in a less sophisticated manner than we’re sold exotic fruit. We’re supposed to imagine the artists lounging in the back of a pick-up truck with a dog with a handkerchief round it’s neck, or laughing round a beach barbecue while extra-large ladies in batik hats gyrate in tie-die sarongs, paper lanterns lilt in the sea-breeze, rastas pluck acoustic guitars. No beggars. No chemical factories. They’re particularly keen on “musical journeys” so we get Starbucks-friendly collections like “Gypsy Caravan” and “Millwall to Mombassa” (OK I made that last one up). It’s vision of Reggae stretches between Ziggy Marley and Lucky Dube. The hellspawn of Putumayo also handily encapsulates everything everything “World Music” has become and I’m not even gonna start teasing that term apart. The “Putumayo” flavour is discernable everywhere, from The Rough Guide’s Introductions to World Music (they may contain excellent music for all I know) to Stern’s own label stuff (once again just a superficial swipe at “naff marketing”) to the Real World Releases (just plain guff in this case).

I’ll confess I’m hard to please, the recent Virgin Records series tried to aim at the street/hipsters (artists lit with red and blue lights) but didn’t entice. The only recent World Music series I’ve fell for has been “Ethiopiques”, but that’s just reissued old stuff. However I’m convinced it could be done well, and pitched just right. OK on the surface this might seem to be an issue of packaging, but it’s also where to “put” the music, who to associate with it, and crucially who to record in the first place. I find it frustrating to know there is a whole universe of utterly intriguing music blocked out, just because one middleman panders to another and to another. All dem underground Nigerian geniuses re-wiring Casio keyboards, dreaming of other galaxies; forever out of our reach.

It’s this same cloak of nonsense which has come to swathe Indian music. Admittedly Indian Classical music is a cussed inflexible entity thousands of years old. Indeed to frame it within a particular time, the 60’s and 70’s, which I guess I’m doing here, is total rubbish. In fact, you’d do as well to prepare yourselves to hear a lot of crap in this piece because I’m not even one hundredth the authority on Indian music that I ought to be. For starters I know (almost) NOTHING about the musical systems, that’s musicological shit as far as I’m concerned. Furthermore the connoisseurship within this music is preposterously deep. Hip-Hop has a way to go, believe! There’s an unyielding structure to what is deemed superb which mimics the centuries-old intransigence of the music. Holy Cows all over the shop. I tend, surprise surprise, to like the more “unorthodox stuff”, which within the realms of scholarship could be read as “that beneath consideration.”

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This from 1955. Yehudi Menuhin introduces Ustad Ali Akbar Khan to the USA, where it came out, I think on Angel records. The liner notes are quotes from an article by Menuhin on Indian Music from The New York Times. This record was the one that was La Monte Young’s first exposure to Indian music. By all accounts it blew his tiny mind. The “famous” passage (I say “famous” but I know of no-one else who’s tracked down this record in connection with this anecdote) features Menuhin introducing Shirish Gor’s Tamboura, which for a few moments plays on it’s own, without the Sarod or Tabla. If you don’t know, the Tamboura is the instrument that provides a constant underlying drone, a perfect circle of sound. The Tamboura sounds extremely like an electric current passing through the air, rising and falling through a cyclical frequency like the sound of a computer processor or the phasing of shortwave radio. This sound transported La Monte Young to his childhood experiences of resting atop giant Gasoline Storage Towers (inadvertently inhaling their intoxicating fumes) and tripping out to the sound of High-Tension Stepdown Transformers. The experience to be later remapped onto Opium and Minimalism.

But also an interesting record in that it points to the problems record companies would have/create in presenting this music to “The West”, signaling too the importance of characters like Menuhin and giants like Alain Danielou (behind all the UNESCO recordings) would have in bringing this music to foreign ears.

This my favourite volume from the *AMAZING* Anthology of World Music~North Indian Classical Music UNESCO recordings which you can buy here and is about the best whistle-stop guide you can get of the music. Particularly incredible off this is Bismillah Khan’s gamma-ray shenai. For a wholly organic music, this stuff can sure as hell sound electric. Unfortunately, you’re immediately confronted with one of the pitfalls of presenting this stuff abroad. Too often the music is framed within the structure of ethnomusicology. One has to root around on the original vinyl pressing to discover who the heck the instumentalists are. See this as well:

From 1954 on the French BAM label. No indication of musicians names. That's sorta dodgy.

This from 1952 on Folkways (scratches head, crikey I had no idea this one was THAT old) curated by Danielou again, with the emphasis on the broader picture rather than the individuals in practise. This is where I admit I’m frequently swayed into buying this stuff (dirt cheap usually) by the covers…..

…..Like this one’s on Ocora. Gold print onto cloth! A scratchy recording like the previous two, but a lovely “objet.”

And finally in the ethnomusicology bracket this:

Which is stunning, and which I’m offering a download of at the bottom. In this instance from the folk end of Indian Music. Play this back to back with The JB’s “The Grunt”. Featuring, again invisible on the liner notes by esteemed musicologist John Levy, Bismillah “Darth Vader” Khan. If you’ve a checked “Music In The World Of Islam” series by Jean Jenkins and Paul Rovsing Olsen then you’ll know of the musical continuities stretching from North India right across to Morocco. In the light of that its not TOO far-fetched to draw parallels between this and James Brown’s stuff. OK I’ll admit it’s a bollocks theory.

Now I’m going to endeavour to split things up into groups. First up Sitars.

Ravi on Deutsche Gramophon. Mmm not a big fan of the Rav-ster. Don’t like the sitar as an instrument that much. With the strings I prefer the sound of the Sarod, which is bassier.

Though this tremendous. Delicate and gourgeous. Bought after checking a huge pile of these records, and falling for it’s sound. Don’t bother looking for duplicates of these, just trust your ears and make your own discoveries.

Last bit of Sitar action. What an amazing cover! I saw Vilayat Khan the other day play the concert for Gujarat in London. It was a virtuoso, if incredibly demanding, performance. He’s a bit old now in truth.

This on Sarod.. Quite lovely. While I was busy damning any allusion to trans-islamic music the sarod on this sounds mighty like some kind of flamenco-tinged guitar. It’s a corny reference but some of the twists of the melody on this are reminiscent of Ry Cooder’s pedal steel on Paris, Texas. Like I said, naff reference point, but in spite of Cooder’s atrocious pedigree (he’s the Putumayo kid…I HATE the Buena Vista thing) I like that soundtrack. In a record store in Granada in Spain I found a treasure trove of (not-for-sale) trans-islamic records with lovely field recordings from Afghanistan amid LPs like “Concerto por Aranjua.” This record could have been in there.

While we’re still in the conventional frame, check these Vocal records:

In which seasoned dudes go “Aaha ahaaa ahhhha aaaaaha aaaaaaaahha”, and wave their right hand meaningfully in the air. The Bhimsen Joshi (which I got in San Francisco) by far the best. Though points too Gulam Ali Khan for the period screen-print and to Munawar Khan for his shades. Nuff Respek! The link here between Bhimsen Joshi and Pandit Pran Nath…..

..…being that both are of the Kirana school of vocalists. While Pran Nath’s record (on Douglas) was in the “Routes to India” chart, this is here because it’s a purer record than the other. La Monte and Marian on Tamboura here, and as you might expect it’s high in the mix. Pran Nath on heavy form. Really stunning recording, though the “authorities” say the alap (intro) is far too long and generally damn it as a fake. Oh well!

However it’s often the less acceptable, less classically sanctioned forms of Indian Classical music which are the most attractive, and that’s NOT JUST to non-westerners. Case in point being this:

A three way summit with the greatest “eccentric practitioners” of their instruments. Shivkumar Sharma on Santoor (a struck dulcimer), Hariprasad Chaurasia on Flute and Brijbushan Kabra on Guitar. This is really nice and was massively popular in India. It was something like the greatest-selling Indian classical record EVER. In consequence it’s relatively easy to track down a copy.

Sharma is absolutely brilliant, and the Santoor’s sound is just so sublime. I’m particularly fond of the latter which, seeing as it’s Ocora (this time props in effect), must still be available.

Onto other “non-official” instruments, the Sarangi, which is something like a viola.

Ram Narayan is the accepted master of this instrument. I have a whole slew of his (Hey I’m not showing you ALL my Indian records!), but this other one by Ustad Nathoo Khan particularly bewitching. The Sarangi snakes around the Tabla. It’s a very dark miserable sound. Very forbidding.

Of course the Shenai, Bismillah Khan’s instrument is deeply unorthodox. Here he is in a stunning duet with Prof. V.J.Jog, one of my all-time fave records ever this. Sounds like an open-air recording, crickets meshing with the Tamboura as Shenai and Violin (!) mimic eachother. Actually karnatic lore suggests that the Violin may have originally been an Indian instrument.

And finally, the Flute. The don of which is NOT to my mind Chaurasia but:

Pannallal Ghosh. And if you like your Tamboura mixed high check out the amazing track in the download pack. This is mind-blowingly great music. I sent Jon Astronaut this on CD and he LOVED it. So dig! And note the deeply “exotica” flavour of that second record cover!

Oh and this dude plays flute too:

But not very well.

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It’s always struck me as weird that this music doesn’t have a currency at least as strong as say that of Jamaica or West Africa in the West. BTW “Routes to India.” If you’re looking for “deep” contemplative music, something to run alongside the subterranean streams of Electronica, then with Indian Classical music you’re sorted. The music is elegiac and sweetly uplifting, even divinely fulfilling. Recovering from the scariest trip of my life (the point at which I vowed, successfully, NO MORE DRUGS!) At that time listening to Dub Reggae threatened to suck me into another aspect. It was L. Subramaniam’s violin playing and Pannallal Ghosh’s flute, so squarely and honestly expanded, open to the infinite spiritual horizon, that gently grounded me, without denying the logic of trans-dimensional experiences. Woah!

I visited India in 1991. I even went to and stayed in Rishikesh where The Beatles came to be with Maharishi Yogi. Seeing the Himalayas rise vertically from the flood-plains of the Ganges in a train. Mostly listening to Can.

(THERE)--->(HERE)

A few more thoughts about the London_vs_Provinces thing.

Interesting to map it onto other countries:

Jamaica:
Roots Reggae famously the rise of the country boy. Treasure Isle/Early Studio One very metropolitan Kingston-centric but the innovations which blew Reggae wide-open came from the country/provinces: Lee Perry, country bwoy number one, though practising in Kingston. Burning Spear, though he voiced the tracks for the "Presenting" and "Rocking Time" LPs at Coxsone's another true provincial, indeed with "Marcus Garvey" and "Man from the Hills" he returned to Willie Lindo's studio in Ocho Rios. Also the hardcore Rasta communities perched in the Blue Mountains saying up yours Babylon. Lloyd Bradley good on this.

Germany:
Krautrock not just globally "decentric" but recall that Faust retreated to a barn in Wumme to record their mind-melting classix. I'd foreground here the need for creativity to not be blanched in the white-hot energy of the city. Which leads me to wonder if the provincial is by definition the square-root of the "Bohemian" (with all it's attendant suggestive overtones of the free-range and alien)

Brasil:
The creative wave of rootsy Brazilian music of the seventies was anti-Rio. Milton Nascimento was a proud native of the Minas Gerais region and Gilberto Gil of Bahia. Both did work out of their respective regions too.

The USA(?):
Dom Laruffa had this to say as whether the same applied to the US:

"As regards USA, whatever may be said to afflict US music, it certainly is not NYC hegemony. Look first at hip hop, East Coast, West Coast, Altanta, New Orleans, Memphis, St Louis.

Then look at dance music, Detroit's still a center, Chicago's still a center, Miami still has its own thing, New York-Philly house music (even if majorly trapped in the past), the left coast scene...

Then consider indie rock, bracketing the merits of the music (which as we know is damn near meritless), you have NYC, Seattle, Detroit, San Franciso-LA, Wash DC, Boston, Chicago, Memphis, all of which operate as centers..."

Oh OK!

Indian Extra.

Gaz Lom says "(Eric) Dolphy's "Improvisations and Tukras" from 1960 just flute, tabla, tamboura." is definitely worth inspecting."

Marcus Rephlex says: "Bit harsh on the Joe Harriot tho' Imo - the great thing about that is it has this Indian stuff in it but it's could very well be the music to Paddington Bear* or something like that... it's english music of an era thru and thru!" LOL, same applies to all the KPM/Library strain of Indian-flavoured music.

I'd get a comments box, but couldn't rely on anonymous cretins not leaving vicious remarks in it. Though presumably now I'm languishing in Coventry I'd get no comments whatsover :-D

Forgot to mention Paul Horn's "Inside", him playing echoey flute inside the Taj Mahal. Part "World of Echo" precursor/part daft musical tourism. And about a zillion other things :-(

All this stuff seem totally anachronistic? Maybe with the Missy "Get UR Freak On", Erick Sermon "React", Bollywood/Egyptian Riddim thing it is rearing it's head again; though the flavours (Tabla/Sitar/Dhol/Tambura/Voice) now empty signifiers. On the other hand (in relation to giving the "fake" props) does that make any difference?

Part Two next week. I'll endeavour not to be TOO boring.

Outside the Green Belt.

Simon's arguments for London's centrality while compelling seem to come with a whole slew of caveats:

1) Coventry and Bristol are actually NOT provincial cities but "London-esque" by merit of their strong ethnic mix. (Such sleight of hand, Oh Master!)

2) We're asked to only consider the time-span 1990 till the present. I'm firmly of the opinion that the 50s/60s/70s/80s are still firmly on the horizon.

3) We're told that folk with any talent move to London as soon as they're aware they've something to offer. Luka also hammers this point. This is NOT true. These artists often move to London when they're knackered creatively. Certainly true with AGCG's, Simon's case history. It's ALWAYS their work out of the metropolis that generates the original spark, the distinctive flavour which would bleach away in London. Aphex in Cornwall. Tricky in Bristol.

4) We have to ignore the fact that whether or not Jungle was concieved in London or not, a huge proportion of it's talent came from outside the capital.

I love London. I've lived here for 9 years, though maybe not forever henceforth. It provides an insanely intense feedback loop of a life, but it sure as hell aint the be-all and end-all of the UK. The very best culture comes from resistance, from standing still and saying "I am here." This applies to global culture too. Think Krautrock. The argument I'm positing isn't about political-correctness. It's ironic that that is what I like in UK Garage, and yet all you lovely folks in the USA and Australia maybe (caution here) like it because it's "exotic." I wonder if you'd like Dizzy Rascal if you lived in Stratford? Cos let me assure you Grime is as ordinary and ugly as mud. Certainly none of the trendies round here like it.*

It fills me with a weird mixture of sadness and anger that people are so quick to damn the "little." If I was in a small city I'd do my own thing, set up my own club night, foster a small gang, patch the ill-fitting connections, do my best. That's what we did in Edinburgh with the club Tribal Funktion, and hey look it got a mention in "Trainspotting" (eternal pride). Why let the local be burnt out in the glare? I don't get it, surely we should be cheering from the sidelines?

*apart from me of course.

"Routes to India." Indian Music Part One.

"You know the Sufi story that when God created the body, the soul didn't want to go inside. The soul could see that this was going to be a trap, it was going to be in this cumbersome thing and it was a life of hardship from there on. So God used music to lure the soul into the body. And the reason God did this is that the soul did not understand why it had to take the body and come to earth. The reason the soul had to enter the body and come to earth is so that it could study music, because sound is capable of presenting the most perfect model of universal structure....." La Monte Young Interview in Halana 1995.

Now breathe out. Forget about it. It's either hilarious or profound. It's the deeper, more colourful imagistic spin on the whole "atomic/musical vibration is the very substance of the universe" shtick. Makes no difference if you believe it or not, though often those who do wear flares on their flares. It's JUST a theory of theorising after all. Just an opinion.

India is a long way away. Go there in a plane and you're still not there. All those millions of people breathing the same air as you, walking the same earth, yet look them in the eye, and they're fixed on something wholly alien. What's it all about? What is that essential spark which unites them and you? If you knew what it was you'd be a step closer to knowing what it means to be human. Though plenty of people chose to take the Indian belief system as a given and work their way backwards. Get fixed up with a Guru, bosh in a few sitars. The two aims aren't mutually exclusive though synthesis/deeper-understanding seems to produce the more powerful music.

This piece is a preamble to Part 2 (Indian Classical music). This is "Routes to India" cos I'm going to try and take you there, to "The Real Deal". We're going to follow the lines of flight the myriad points of exit which lead to Indian Music proper, and consider what was going on in the minds of these voyagers.

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The explosion of interest in the music of the far east is usually dated from Debussy being confronted by Javanese Gamelan at the 1889 Paris Exhibition, the influence filtering into works like "Prelude A L'Apres-Midi D'Un Faune." Gamelan has an inordinately huge impact on Classical Music, also via figures like Benjamin Britten, Colin McPhee, Henry Cowell and John Cage. Gamelan got the gig in the 20th century to represent "the other". The newly opened LSO concert hall (beside my house) even has a Gamelan Room! I went to a rehearsal, expecting, well, Gamelan, and got a bunch of cast-offs from the third violins in a dopey facsimile of traditional garb. How embarrasing! Even Chinese music gets bigger props via Bartok's "Miraculous Mandarin." I can't think of any examples of Indian Music influencing Western music much before this: (though I'd be delighted to be proved wrong)

Yusef is a real trooper. He was a former Sun Ra alumni, you'd expect Ra to have picked up on Indian Music, as a rule he's first through the gate for EVERYTHING. Indeed the track "India" appears on Sun Ra's Super Sonic Jazz (1957), though maybe that's in the vein of languid lower-key romp, a bit of typical Ra kitsch, a "title" rather than any kind of exploration. Lateef, on the other hand, can claim a core interest in 3rd World music, still plugging away at it. He's now termed a "New Age" artist (meaningless marketing babble but also the heading under which he won a Grammy in 1987 for "Little Symphony"). In short we'll give him the credit. This from 1961, loveliest track "The Plum Blossom" played on a (er...um...) Chinese Globular Flute.

Yeah we're coming to Coltrane. This LP from 1963, which has always enjoyed a shadowy reputation thanks to successive generations of Ra-adulation. The Duke in his later years took the self-appointed role of global ambassador for Jazz. It's INCREDIBLE that he, during these tours, managed to touch base with both Count Ossie & The Mystical Revelation of Rastafari in Jamaica and Mulatu in Ethiopia, giving both crews the Ellington "thumbs-up." This LP has more than a little touch of the Exotica to it.

Here I'd defer to David Toop's excellent book of the same name. Slightly glossed over at the time, and maybe not packing the punch of "Ocean of Sound" (yeah YOU try and follow that!), it bequeathed us with at least two useful concepts. Firstly that "Exotica" was in many ways a convenient marketing umbrella for musics which wouldn't fit to easily in other categories. Hence something Like Eden Ahbez's deeply musical "Eden's Island", a utopian beatnik fantasy and Tom Jobim's widescreen "Matita Perê" get chucked in the bin, and are subsequently tarred with the "Hawaiian-shirt-Suburban-Barbecue" brush, when their progeny is infinitely more complicated. Secondly, and this sort of contradicts the last point, Toop suggests that the "fake" is as valid as the "real". In enjoying first-world music that is influenced by the 3rd world this is a profoundly liberating tool. Bored shitless by the insistently authentic fusions of Frederic Galliano and Banco de Gaia, yeah right you guys are "for real", well sweat not, cos the inauthentic is just as valid and just and subsequently influential on the source as the inauthentic. Valid like Panjabi MC's Knightrider samples. Inauthentic like "My Life in the bush of Ghosts." I'd refer you to this on Thursday May 6th

Why were all these Jazz musicians listening to Indian Classical Music? Certainly there was an element of fascination with the musician's virtuosity, an interest in the open/closed model of Indian music (improvisation within a structure) and filtering through Beatnik literature a curiosity in Eastern thought. But I reckon, and here I go AGAIN making sweeping suggestions about Afro-American culture (whiteys-in-conference pt.2), that in addressing Indian Culture, which was clearly on a par, if not more sophisticated than the Western Classical tradition, they might transcend the cultural restrictions imposed on their own "funk"/"jazz", the denigrated/abused music they practised, ever struggling for the recognition of it's artistry and validity. Beyond this there is the issue of attempting to reach for one's own inner humanity, by seeking the common elements across cultures. Coltrane nothing if not a searcher. "India" here from 1963.

Menuhin a "searcher" too. This 1966. A wonderful man. Maybe the only to be able to go head-to-head as an Instrumentalist with Ravi and not come out looking daft. Shankar, in case you didn't know, believed in the sub-continent itself to be the "living embodiment of Hindustani music." Like his music or not (not, in my case), as far as the authorities of this music reckon, none can test. Of course there's a Shankar/Phillip Glass record too, Glass consistently insisting his experience of transcribing Shankar's parts in late 60's Paris was the fundamental inspiration behind his chosen path. Minimalism alone in trying to ingest Indian Classical Music, to use it's forms as tropes, not it's instrumentation and tuning as colours.

Standing in here for The Beatles's "Tomorrow Never Knows", fruit of George Harrison's 5-minute sitar lessons with Ravi, The Stones's "Paint it Black" and the legion of Raga Rock Psych Punk renegades. Worthy of a mention too Peter Seller's "The Party" (groan). Indian music on the worldwide stage. Easy to dismiss, though Monsoon's Sheila Chandra (last through the gate as far as I'm concerned) had a strong Beatles twist to their harmonies. BTW earlier comments re:The Inauthentic. Maybe the closest Hendrix came to Shankar was the Monterey Pop Festival on 1967. Shankar's fee was ENORMOUS apparently and he got paid before he went on stage. He HATED the other acts.

Impressively early offering in 1967 from Joe Harriott and John Mayer. Possibly the first example of session with both Jazz and Indian musicians. The results are fairly patchy, the rhythms clumsy, the other LP they recorded together maybe better, though "Acka Raga" is charming. Needed to left in the oven longer. Ananda Shankar "Streets of Calcutta" etc

This incredibly rare. Jazz from India, so the other side of the coin to the "Indo-Jazz Fusions" of the other record. In contrast a quite stunning record in parts, I kid you not, heavily reminiscent of a pre-amplification Led Zeppelin. My friend has another LP, "Jazz meets Raga" which he found in Geneva, once again Bombay studio-time freed up for maverick Indian Beatniks, sitars played like guitars, still quite brilliant. Hilariously the line-up reads all Indian names on both records with the exception of a "Tony D'Casta" on drums. Who the hell is he? Heavy-scented.

It all took off in the seventies, largely in part to this nutter Pandit Pran Nath, La Monte's assumed guru. Pran Nath spent his formative years becoming part of the Kirana tradition of singers, involving years and years spent naked living in a cave, you guessed it, singing. I've included this record in this "Routes to India" line-up because, while it's less of a "fusion" than the one he recorded with La Monte and Marian (though that pure in intensity), it's released on Alan Douglas's label. Douglas was the cosmopolitan hipster behind records by The Last Poets, Lightin' Rod, Eric Dolphy, John McClaughlin and Jimi Hendrix (Doriella Du Fontaine). Pran Nath taught Charlemagne Palestine, Terry Riley, Jon Hassell, Don Cherry, Lee Konitz, Rhys Chatham, and Henry Flynt amongst others. Only La Monte seemed content to put up with this cantankerous old bastard, to wipe his nose with enough devotion to earn the mantle of pupil. Though Pran Nath had endured FAR worse in his quest to become a singer. Of all Western musicians Pran Nath only had respect for Coltrane, La Monte's offering's usually sniffed at (mild praise for "The Well-tuned Piano", ha ha).

Pran Nath's other dedicated pupil. This marathon organ work-out on the Shandar label pursuing India over the course of 4 sides. In fact Steve Reich being the only one of the "Big Four" Minimalists NOT to claim influence from India. He chose West Africa. There's no getting away from it, and it amazes me how little mention of made of them in the blog circuit (I don't touch anymore since......well that's my excuse!), but DRUGS play an important factor in the cult of India. I know for a fact that La Monte has a "steady" opium habit, indeed detractors say (scandalously) that much of the Dia Foundation grant went on keeping him and Marian stoked. Marijuana too. I'll bet Terry Riley smokes a hell of a lot of pot. How on earth would you play repetitive organ like this ALL NIGHT otherwise? How would you listen to it all night? It's probably the biggest single tourist attraction that continent has, and why it was number one destination on the Hippy Trail.

These together. Lurking Gurus ahoy. McLaughlin's Sri Chimnoy. Alice's Swami Satchdiananda. All parties quite clearly bonkers. Chromatic soupy Bollywood orchestras on the one hand, insanely over-played Tablas on the other. Approach with caution.

Not all 70s "Indo-Jazz" vomitous. Don Cherry forged a trans-global synthesis that aimed at understanding and imbibing the essence of disparate World Musics, building a "fusion" (terrible word to be saddled with) of intrinsic character. However stop short of Codona (and all ECM for that matter), though I saw Cherry in Glasgow in 1993 and he was a joy. Moki plays Tambura on this record, better yet is Cherry's AMAZING "Brown Rice" LP (not included here cos the cover aint so pretty and homespun). "Malakuns" off that LP the living shit, as powerful and intense as this...

...to which legend Badal Roy contributed tabla for "Black Satin." Terror on wax. Not much to be added to what Lester Bangs said.

This a fascinating document I picked up in Amsterdam. Baba Ram Dass was Timothy Leary's "second-in-command", author of "Be Here Now." It's interesting here to join the dots between Leary's philosophy (and if you haven't read the amazing "Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream" get thee hence) and India, where obviously Ram Dass washed up. This record by a Bhagavan Dass (some relation or clone?) features a quote from Ram Dass on the cover: "This is what I mean", the record sporting the same TERRIBLE caterwauling that issues from La Monte's "The Black Album", these white dudes sure sound like wrinkly frogs. Lines too from Leary to Rolf Ulrich Kaiser to this crew...

...and this lovely Indian-ate offering. The German node on the network.

Who has lost a lot of attraction in recent years through over-exposure but who still to my mind is a very worthwhile character. Did you know that "My Life In The Bush of Ghosts" started as a three-way project between Eno, Byrne and Hassell. Hassell brushed aside (discontent) by Byrne. So here we represent. In fact this from 1983 may be the final acceptable outpost of Indian-influenced music in the West. The diaspora begins to make it's mark on Western Culture itself? I can't find the time for your Trans-Global Undergrounds and your Asian Dub Foundations and your Talvin Singhs (in spite of the Sun Ra tie-in). Maybe I should be more opened-minded, maybe these older "fusions" get my approval purely as a result in the gulf of years, maybe THEY seemed goofy at the time.

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Curry. There, I said it.

Coming Next Week: Part 2: "The Real Deal"

Grime and Punishment.

First up respek to me for being the first to use that strap-line and REALLY milk all the attendant overtones out of it. More in our trademark vein of parochial opinion from "my man" Ambrose White:

"holy crap if you are into checking out russian pop, you need to check out Yana Kay. shes not russian, but estonian but she hooks up with the russian garage massive (?!).......... and produces pretty crap garage tunes.

finally for a (now old) funny hardish house tune check akula 'kislotnii people'. banging!"

Ambrose has promised to fill me in on the Moscow Garage scene when he gets back from hanging with the massiv-ski. Is that East enuff for ya!

From Siberia with Love.

Saw a friend today who's just got back from Siberia. Seems my "vision" of ecstacy sweeping Mother Russia isn't all fantasy.

Apparently there the radio plays a cocktail of Adamski, Snap and Abba. My friend, who was visiting a shaman, said she also heard the Fast Food Rockers being caned non-stop. "McDonalds! McDonalds!" I love that tune!

Better still a taxi driver gave her a tape of the latest thing (well she IS a bit foxy!) See the artists's mugshot above and draw your own conclusions. The home-grown house scene is big in Siberia, tracks are FULLY melodramatic with nuff phonetic english: "Oooh Baby I lov you!" Who'd have thunk it!

Flex Records, Jump Up and me me me...

Something at Technicolor got me thinking. Jess asserted that Gerald never appeared to get his dues. He even invoked my lurve for Juice Box. I didn't leap into the fray because I didn't REALLY agree, but there was a kernel of truth in what he had to say. I'd suggest that Gerald didn't get the kind of blanket media coverage Goldie got in part because he seemed to the media to be old hat (no hat was older than Goldie!) but mainly because he was based in Manchester.

It's that old London-centric problem. UK Garage IS London, with the freak exception of crews like Laid Blak from Bristol, while Jungle was a nationwide phenomena. Many of the major labels were dotted across the country: Formation were in Leicester, Full Cycle were from Bristol, Juice Box were in Manchester and Flex were in Huddersfield. The London-centric bias of the media is a drag and something pan-UK culture warriors have waged war against for aeons. Flash on that Post-Punk sampler: "Hicks from the Sticks" and it's impassioned anti-London rhetoric. Often the best this country has to produce comes from the parishes throwing London 2 fingers. We're here, and we're gonna do our own thing, screw you. The Specials in Coventry. LFO in Sheffield. Postcard in Glasgow. Black Sabbath in Birmingham. The Soft Machine in Canterbury. And all their attendant scenes.

Actually my experiences of raving "back-in-the-day" were often outside London. I saw Rhythmatic in St. Pauls in Bristol busting out da bleep and bass (Mugged at gunpoint too! Well it could have been a concealed carrot but I wasn't about to argue!), I heard Dominator caned at Moss-side in Manchester, I saw Derrick May in Bath in 1990 (spooky), I raved incessantly at Pure in Edinburgh, open-air raves in Yorkshire, Terry & Jason in Glasgow etc. I was at that age when you just trucked around and fucked about (aah!) Being stuck in London is a drag actually. When I've enjoyed Auspicious Fish, it's been through Nick's (less swaggering) evocative descriptions of lingering on the Dawlish seafront with his mini-disc or getting a parking ticket at a nature reserve. Glad the photo's gone mate ;-) London-centricism is just the first wave of the effect of the USA sucking all the life out of UK culture. It's the first step towards homogenisation.

While I think Gerald got a pretty good crack of the whip, one geezer who I thought got next to no props at all was L Double. So it's kind of heartening to see that he's got a show on 1Xtra. Not that I'm endorsing the current Drum'n'Bass scene ya get me! This mini feature makes no claim to being comprehensive but these are among the best tunes which that crew put out. Starting of course with Unique 3:

Classic record. The Theme up there with Ability II's "Pressure" and LFO's "LFO" in the Bleep'n'Bass terrain. I root for the Original Chill Mix (not the Rob Gordon edit) which is propelled by that distorting morphing filtered bassline. And what a sweet cover. Loads of spirit! That's the kind of crap illustration which warms my heart.

More ham-fisted techno. But that's the point of this stuff. It's crude. It's not got the multi-tracked breathless drama of Detroit. It's base and heathen. As I type this, the rave-style horns kick in ha! I hear you fellas! Once again BASS in full effect. Rolling!

Urban Gamelan fer'real! A chopped up Italo-House Piano. None of the L Double stuff is particularly tuneful or hummable. I'm not about to make up breathless claims for it's gorgeousness, in a way for instance many of the Juice Box records have sumptuous lavish harmonies, but it's incredibly fascinating for it's obtuseness, directness and unearthliness. Wiley's stuff springs to mind as a very strong comparison.

Presumably the deal with London ran it's course.I remember mags like i-D (which once used to have good writing about music) complaining about the surplus of Bleep'n'Bass, surely the first rumblings of the media onslaught against Ardkore. L Double presumably on his own. This from 1993 not very good, though check the nutty/loony/mental cover and great titles like "Drugtalk '93". Every cloud etc.

Flex records springing to life in 1994 with this one. Marcus Intalex's classic. This is quite oooooh gourgeous. I love the (squares hands like a film director) BRANDING of this label. The Flex logo really captures the mechanical cold avowedly futuristic bent of the music. Shades of Giger. Very k-punk!

The Dubster is an awesome Cutty sampling monster choon! The Jump-up revival which is happening apace across "the-crew-that-used-to-be-drill'n'bass" Vibert/Paradinas (who angrily thumbed the 94 bin in front of me at the Soho M&V a few years back) as well as with the new Ragga-Jungle mix CDs issuing from the Indie-tronica axis have left me a wee bit puzzled. It's not that it ain't AMAZING music (viz the new Remarc reissue) but wasn't everyone on board at this stage? Weren't we all, them included, fully-fledged consumers of the stuff by this point? Why then the all-too-sudden retro turn-around? Am I missing something?

When this record came out I went to see Roni Size and L Double play a tiny club off Regent Street called "Ah London Someting". It was brock out, which you'd not expect for a central London club. People were going mad! The race ratio was about 90% black. This was at the time when there was a massive influx of interest in Ardkore from (gonna have to be careful here) mainstream black UK culture. When Jungle was tearing it up at the Notting Hill Carnival. Definitely one of the three best nights of music in my life. Guys jumping in the air throwing off 3 metre-long trails of flame from their lighters (you wedge a pin in the nozzle). Sexy gals. And the most pulverising all-encompassing body-numbing BASS. Totally dread. Roni (circa "The Warning") at the peak of his powers.

This came out soon after, which for my money is alongside Dillinja's "The Angels Fell" the best on Metalheadz. I was mad about Metalheadz early on (up to Hidden Agenda) I had even had a Metalheadz logo cut into my hair. What a twat! (ha ha) Cut to Richard "Big Beat" Fearless laughing AT me at a dinner party over this (humorously-delivered) anecdote . (Coo aren't I dropping names today!) I don't care. Loving music's not about being "cool". I remember Fabio giving it the nod though!

Great. Stop-start G-Funk sample. Lurking Reese bassline. Gunshot ricochets. Amen drums leaping into the fray. Booyacka! Then the think drums on top. Polyriddim©!

I'm a sucker for a 10". I have another of these I couldn't find. The hastle it involves digging up tunes for these specials! I have ABSOLUTELY NO FILING SYSTEM WHATSOEVER you might be surprised to know. Tried it once, bored the living shit out of me. Martin Denny will rub shoulders with Fred Locks until such time as them get shuffled around/hooked-out. Anyway, great track.

Which brings me to this (and "The Shit" to follow) which are just STUNNING. It's always nice to see artists actually get BETTER. Not "mature" but actually come closer to incandescence. This track covers every square inch of available flesh with ice-cold goosebumps. I'm gonna break into Dillinja's house NOW and put it on his sound-system. TEARING! From that time when Jungle's drums were it's calling card now they're flaccid/lite/fail to engage. This track opens with a tabla! Then a Leviticus-style "swaying" harmony loop. The drums take off. It's very linear, like those late-ish Philly Blunt tunes (Firefox and Glamour Gold) and also fast like them, before the rhythmic tabula rasa that constituted Tech-step. It grips you and won't let go.

And look at that picture disc. Both sides presented here. (Quick everyone get the FBI labs on that stretch of white wall, where does this Ingram-feller live? Bust down his door!) BTW earlier comments about the Flex phuturistik aestetic.

"The Shit" indeed! Less psychedelic than The Rider, and later, so things are being stripped-down and cleaned up about. Still, this is AWESOME 1996 Jump-up.

Feedback.

Got a spicy email from my transatlantic sparring partner Mr. Dan Setzer of Acute records which sheds more light on the "Flock of Seagulls or not?" theory: "maybe not Ron Hardy, but I've heard other late 80s chicago/detroit mixes that were very euro-centric, there was one that a friend has, I need to copy, which was Mickey Mixin Oliver in 87 or 89 and featured predominately white European acts ranging from Modern Romance's Everybody Salsa to Anne Clark's Our Darkness, mixed in with a bit of early house and techno." And of course, what of Electrifying Mojo, who's credited with playing a lot of European stuff? However, there's no getting away from Ron Hardy's centrality.

Reynolds has said: "I found the most fantastic Derrick May quote the other day while looking for something else, it was totally anti-Kirk's version in that Derrick said Detroit was totally inspired by and a continuation of English and European synthpop!" What can I say! The pressure is on Simon to produce the evidence!

Also I've just completed a hefty review for the NYC Free Press of the (hilarious) Be Music reissue. Be Music being New Order's productions of other folk and 52nd Street sound queerly like Big Fun-era Inner City.

Thanks to Kirk for being such a sport. I like his angle, and there's a lot to it.

Back to the Future!

Great to hear the k-punk and Blissblog discussion about the sixties. Mark and I were having a similar conversation when we hooked up the other day, which revolved around Bob Dylan. Mark was pretty dismissive of those records (Bringing it all Back Home/Highway 61 Revisited/Blonde On Blonde). I think he thought they were stuffy, irrelevant and classical. I did understand, I mean this kind of geetar-folk is probably the antithesis of everything k-punk stands for.

However, when these records came out they were modern. Even if we choose to put them side-by-side by the Music Concrete "massive" I don't think it negates their veracity and freshness at the time. I think the Warhol/VU/Dylan axis; all leather trousers, dark-glasses and amphetamines is extremely potent. You might not want to slide Dylan in with The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, The Velvet's, La Monte Young and Harry Smith but he was there. He was profiling in NYC, hanging with Andy, going round to Allen Ginsberg's appartment to see Harry Smith (who famously REFUSED to come out of his bedroom to meet Dylan, Ginsberg tearing his hair out - echoes here of gutter Cynic philosopher Diogenes refusing to get out of the box he was sitting in when Alexander the Great dropped by, telling Alexander his shadow was blocking out the sun, Alexander confiding to his courtiers afterwards "If I was to be one man other than myself, it would be Diogenes.") Certainly the folk crowd didn't want anything to do with Dylan, and maybe that was Smith's line, though I'm sure he thought it'd be more fun to be intransigent. Dylan was a bad bwoy. While I'd make no claims that these records were pungent with cultural possibilities, to my mind they're still charged with poetry and life.

How did I end up back here? That "Retro Rock TM", (see Stone Temple Pilots, The Doves, White Stripes) is still working it's way through the possibilities of music like Dylan with pathetic faithfulness doesn't diminish the power of the original "original" creative act. Obviously a band like the Velvet Underground (like it or not Paul Meme) are still, if not bursting with vital influence, then a little pungent. Favour the Avant-Folk scene or not, offerings from outfits like Tower Recordings are as modern and exploratory, if not as Grime, then as most Electronica. The whole Concrete thing I did here should make it pretty obvious that skronky synthesiser music aint exactly an invention.

I'd like to return to something I was talking about ages ago, which if I remember rightly people raised one eyebrow at, though SURELY explored somewhere rigorously (by a grown-up for goodness sake!) if not in Philosophy then in the shadowy realms of esoteric literature: "I theorised then that the true timeline, as opposed to the mysterious illusory one which makes up the progression of our day-to-day lives is the line which stretches between UNKNOWING and ENLIGHTENMENT. Unknowing here is the true past, and enlightenment is the true future." If you've read Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 you may remember how when the alien life forms examine humans they see not distinct beings with two arms and two legs and a head, but centipedes. Centipede's which are physically linear amalgams of Grandfather/Grandmother/Father/Mother/Son/Daughter. Maybe it's because FAMILY (in the Italian sense) is such a dominant theme to my life that I can vibe with this, but consider your ancestral identity and question, am I really ANY DIFFERENT from them, am I not just the expression of the coordinates mapped out in the genes of my parents. Are we really "getting anywhere"? It's significant to Vonnegut's approach that the "aliens" came from space, not (then) confused by the diurnal and seasonal rotations with which we delineate our existence. My wife would disagree with me with this static time notion, she's a scholar of Bergson, his elan vital is still forward-flowing, though Bergson rails against the facile dimensions of clock time. He famously explained away Xeno's paradox, which is the conundrum you face when "measuring" an athlete's movement along a stretch of track; the last metre at 25mph; the last centimetre at 25mph; the last millimetre at 25mph - the dude never crosses the finishing line. Anyway I'm not equipped with the proper tools to talk about the theory, unlike someone like Mark Fisher. I'll just sound like a wacko ;-D

HOWEVER, I've always thought the way music works backs up this "vision", THE PAST AINT HISTORY! In this sense "Enlightenment" (and thats where I come unstuck, who's to say what is "Enlightened"?) always constitutes the future, and is from time to time stretched a little further forward. In the same way the the past (unenlightenment) is pushed back by Justin Timberlake and Mike Batt. This version of time has it's pasts, presents and futures dispersed across the range of history. The whole terrain pocked with wormholes and quicksand.

“Cool As Ice”: The Be Music Productions 1983-85 (LTM Records)

Flicking through the liner notes to this record on the LTM label I came across a comment from Tony Henry of the band 52nd Street referring to his underground hit: “Cool As Ice doesn't have a colour to it. That's the best thing about it, that it could have been done by a black or a white band." Cough cough YOU WISH mate! But therein lies the charm of this collection of single produced under the auspices of the 4 members of New Order, the collision of lofty aspiration with reality. All these tracks smack of handbags on the dancefloor, girls with preposterous haircuts sipping babycham and pub discos with mirror balls. These tracks play the underground to Human League, Heaven 17 and ABC’s limelight fandango. The “Be Theme” itself (worked up by Peter Hook) like the soundtrack to a very low budget war movie.

52nd street’s antique electro, whilst sounding like it was recorded in basement in Oldham with egg-crates on the walls, sounds eeirily p-reminescent of Kevin Saunderson’s Inner City collaboration with Paris Grey. On ‘Cool as Ice” they aim for frosty hauteur and yet come over like supermarket assistants. That’s cruel though they’re not alone in frustrated cosmopolitan yearnings, Quando Quango’s “Love Tempo” springs to life on the same conga intro as Arthur Russell’s Treehouse/Schoolbell though it’s quickly transparent they’re more Pigbag than Jellybean. But Mark Kamins ended up producing them! And their Mike Pickering eventually convinced the public with M People (same “tack” deeper foundation cream).

Marcel King’s “Reach for Love” is allegedly Shaun Ryder’s fave factory track and yet Marcel (a low-rent George Benson) sounds like Pitman’s enchanted uncle. He’d never afford Simon Lebon’s yauct. He’d have killed to make a video! Even pastier (aw bless!) is Life’s “Tell Me” with its ghastly, deeply naff, trilling vocals.

What Scot, and former Josef K singer is doing in Manchester is a mystery. Hear him wailing on “The Only Truth”: “The only truth any more are the words I sing in this song...”, you’re gonna have to work on your lyrics bro’. The synth line has a bagpipe timbre. The outro a spaghetti junction pile-up of melodies. Egg on your cake?

It’s not all affecting desperation. Section 25’s “Looking from a Hilltop” (incidentally the mix you want) was HUGE at the Paradise Garage. Propelled by a truly startling Acid bassline. EPIC written all over it, monotonous in a manner quite unlike most jump/edit electro. No cuts here but fading interplaying textures. Also interesting are Les Disques de Crepuscule’s Thick Pigeon and their clubfooted “Babcock & Wilcox”, and Nyam/Nyam’s “Fate/Hate” unflustered by the twang of his Mancunian accent, rolling Morodor stylings (proto-Mondays).

Captain Kirk.

Kirk Degiorgio chats to me.

Blogger wet it's pants about posting this, so it's not on the main page. Sorry.

(Insert/Extract/Eject/Insert/Burn/Eject/Insert/Tag/Label/Box)

Since last July I've been copying my friend Steve Caruana's CDs. I've just finished. These CDs are his rips of his entire 7" collection of vintage Roots Reggae. This numbered about 3,000 singles, though you'll find this figure varies every time I quote it. He sold them (groan) before it was a lucrative thing to do. Steve isn't bothered. He's pretty oblivious to material concerns. He backed the collection up on VHS too! Ever heard of this? Well VHS has a fat receptive bandwidth. Imagine that, piles of VHS's with no images on them, just Reggae. At the moment Steve is in Africa (this from an email 2 days ago): "Just back from Benin, off to Burkina Faso after the big yam festival here." He's been building mainframes in Togo. Also picked up Malaria out there. The only thing you need to know about Steve, however, is that he has impeccable taste.

I thought these CDs constituted a real resource* (Steve baffled). I mean 75% of this stuff has never been issued on anything other than on subsequently deleted yard 7"s. Half of it are Dubs, as Steve always records the Version/B-sides. My plan was to copy each and every one of the 150 strong collection onto new CDs and ID tag each track. Many of these CDs are over 10 years old and showing it. Uniformly the most painful labour has been struggling with discs reluctant to give up certain tracks. This can take hours. By the process of tagging not only will a PC/Mac recognise the CD when it's inserted through Gracenote/CDDB but also I will be able to rip the whole collection as mp3s/AACs with track info embedded in them. I've been torn over whether to share this stuff. Another friend has been keen I give him the whole collection and dump it on his FTP server, thereby making it freely available to the world to download. Then I read this from the liner notes of (my own copy) of Sylford Walker and Welton Irie"s "Lamb's Bread International", Sylford's wonderful LP for Glen Brown's South East Imprint (reissued by Blood & Fire): "It wasn't until 1989, when Glen Brown secured a four album deal with UK independent Greensleeves Records, that Sylford's songs finally saw their first album issue, a decade after they were recorded. Sanachie also issued the set 'Lamb's Bread' on CD that year. Sadly it failed to sell enough during the period of the contract and remaining stocks were sold off cheaply as 'cut-outs.' A tour planned to promote the set never materialised; thus a disillusioned Sylford Walker remained on Gold Street, where he continued to eke out a living for himself, his wife and their three children, by selling roots drinks and juice to his fellow ghetto-dwellers." Which came like a bucket of cold water. So actually I'm not sure WHAT I'm going to do with this set. I've been toying with the idea of giving some reasonable-sized donation to a Jamaican charity, just for the pleasure of copying the tracks, but that's just a load of sentimental bollocks, and would probably be swallowed up by inefficient bureaucracy. Having said all this I WILL be offering up copies of the collection to one or two lucky (deserving) parties.

Check these randomly selected examples for the kind of intense labour the tags have taken me per CD:

No comments on the music here I'm sorry to report. That'll come later.

Not always helped by Steve's spidery handwriting:

The next, though smaller, task (sigh) is to rip the fuckers. The question being mp3 or AAC. (As it goes in the shampoo ad) Now for the science. AAC is the new Dolby created standard that will supercede the mp3 standard. Currently it's used in all DVDs, and people with golden ears (not like old deffo here) say it equals CD quality, yet the file sizes are tiny. What's the point in ripping this huge valuable resource to mp3s, a soon-to-be-superceded standard? I tried to discuss this and other matters on the iTunes board chez Apple. But sadly went about it in the most obnoxious manner imaginable (in fairness to myself I didn't realise I was going to upset people) I just got carried away with *THE MISSION*, demanded to only speak to the finest minds and greatest authorities (shielding own eyes- OH NO! WHAT WAS I THINKING?). So if you want to have a giggle at my expense and see me suffer at the hands of a succession of worthies then go to Apple>Support>Discussions>iTunes Music and watch me writhe. I'd link you directly, but since my last rant I've "hung-up" and not gone back. Fear and shame. Actually I was quite startlingly obnoxious (titter). Jess, former frog prince of ILM, would have been proud of me! On the other hand, if I hadn't been such a fu**ing modest mouse my entire life, I might have achieved something.** Nah, I take that back, I'm a lucky man! To return to the subject in hand (ahem) I think I'll go the AAC route. Winamp have a plug-in for the format already, and supposedly there are more and more players on the market that work with it, not least the iPod. If you have a suggestion DO PLEASE email me!

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*Me data fetish! Nah!

**These online scraps REALLY haunt me. This to amuse you: The morning after my Spizzazzz fight the doorbell rung at 8 A.M. I thought (cold): It's that eCrunk, he's not a Geology Student he's a bloody 7 foot tall gangster from Hackney with a 6 pack like 50 cents, a slum computer wizard, and he's come to break my arm. So I answer the telecom (clear firm, but unrestrainably posh) "Hello." No answer. Then I flash (deeper terror): Christ he's gonna email me, and he's gonna say. "8 A.M. Sunday. We know where you live loser!" Apparently Eden thinks that (deep down) I love all this confrontation, trust me I don't. Or at least I don't think so.

Oh no more Avant-Garde Records!

Firstly I should like to apologise for any emotional damage inflicted by that piece. Think for a minute what a VERY sad individual I must me.....aaah you're feeling better already! Secondly, and more seriously, apologies for waving these discs under your noses with nary a downloadable mp3 pack in sight.* Please note much of this music is very much available on CD, and forget the vinyl fetish thing with Music Concrete, cos it sounds BETTER on CD, crackle hiss and hum totally screw up the experience of this music. Your first stop should be here. Iannis Xenakis's "Persepolis" is often described as the greatest work in the series and that's on CD, as is Luc Ferrari's "Heterozygote" which is also one of the most important. Apparantly "the just released Teige mix (of "Persepolis") on the 2 CD Editions RZ Xenakis set" is even more dynamic than the original 8 track Phillips version. As for Parmegiani, his best work comes later on the INA GRM label (don't start me...) and "De Natura Sonorum" is THE ONE, if you can't get it at Recommended, try here.

To give y'all a window of hope Marcus at Rephlex: "...got the Pierre Henry "Variations for a Door and a Sigh" for $3", though (titter) that strains the patience a bit that one (you can get it on CD) AND his "...mate picked up the Prospective 21 siecle box set for about $11 in this shop in Greenwich." Bastard!

Jon came back with some extremely generous comments. He's got a photo of Don Bolles with his silver discs which I look forward to seeing. I was particularly pleased that Bolles had the same reaction to the Les Percussions Strasbourg, in fact I punched the sky and said "Yes!" Seeing the link to Ed Maurer's superb bit of research brought me down to earth with a bump though, not least because I missed it myself, which considering that I used Mr. Maurer's work to back up the Shandar thing I did on January 14th was pretty goofy. I've contacted Ed and hope I can contribute a sleeve image or two for his site. Great too that Simon had furnished Julian House with the Henry's Voile D'Orphee/Entite/Spirale cover for his forthcoming book on record covers as:"Possibly my favorite album sleeve" (Preening self in mirror): "Looking good!"

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I'd like to round up with a few other bits and pieces which are of relevance to that piece, and I've tried very hard to keep on subject; not just bosh up a load of sleeves and congratulate myself for my sound investment.

1. Xenakis: Polla, Ta Dhina, Akrata, Achorripsis.

Not an electro-acoustic work. Included here for two reasons. Firstly to signal the existence of quite another INCREDIBLE series of Avant-Garde music, EMI's Perspective Musicales. I have only this record from that collection. Secondly, to draw attention to it's sleeve design, which is the one aped by Sonic Youth in their Avant series.

2. Luc Ferrari: Und so weiter, Music Promenade.

This IS an electro-acoustic work. It's great. Once again another themed Avant-Garde series. This time on the Wergo label. I have the Bo Anders one too on vinyl, which Jim O'Rourke reissued on CD for Dexter's Cigar (excellent). Curiously this sleeve design has been copied too, but I can't remember who by...

3. VA: Response: Electronic Music from Norway.

A collection on the Limelight label (I knew I had another of theirs). Does exactly what it says on the tin. Pieces here by Nordheim, who "represents" on the Electronic Panorama, Janson and Fongaard. Once again available on CD.

4. VA: Panorama of Music Concrete.

A 1950's British compilation on London records (Ducretet Thomson). $10 in Frocester in Gloucestershire. Right now $320 at the Music and Video Exchange, it's partner Volume 2 priced as high. Am I sounding pleased with myself? Maybe a bit. Though there's a lesson here. Marcus found his pieces in Truro in Cornwall. Small towns people!

5. Pierre Henry: Mouvement, Rythme, Etude.

Ooh what a pwetty cover! Mentioned in passing in the piece Henry on Phillips but NOT on the Silver Series. This, which I found in Belgium, also available on CD.

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OK I'll shut up now.

FOUND!

Which rack?

The Silver Records.

I can't help but compare this current "blog-a-peligo" with the early days of Acid House. Then one might have Fabio, Richie Hawtin, Judge Jules and The Mover all on the same bill. Look at my current micro-gang: a philosophy lecturer, a poet, a few music journalists, me an animator. It's a wonder we're sharing the same page. Frankly I'm amazed that someone like Luka is even faintly interested by what I've got to say, it must appear to be sheer goggly-de-gook to him most of the time and completely boring. Flash on that classic situational comedy skit where the dog watches the family: "Blah blah blah blah BISCUITS blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah WALKIES", Luka must read TWANBOC thus: "Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah WILEY blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah WRONGLY QUOTED MC." And yet I've noticed a few fellow record-collector geeks firing up their own ventures. Believe you me there's very few crew who are at the coalface like this represented online, and quite alot who (maybe more interestingly) digest culture with the aplomb of the media-savvy. Historically only this chick springs to mind, and in classic record-collector-autist fashion she failed to reply to my emails.

So now the goons are coming to the party I thought it was time I did a bit of the old bollocks-on-the-table. Let all you kids snapping at my heels know what you're up against. Which is an absolute disgrace because the records I've chosen to perform this nasty trick with are among the most important documents of the 20th century. It's a brittle knife-edge this record-collecting lark. I was admonishing the Furry Embryo for calling me a "hipster" the other day, because, and this is the essential drive behind Ian's (non-)attack on me, viewing culture within the frame of what's fashionable is spiritually bankrupt. There is no crime greater than to digest what should be nourishing and transformative as chips on the casino table, and yet so many of us teeter on this tightrope. Though that's not something I'd feel entitled to say if I was being paid to write it. He won't necessarily thank me for pointing this out, but Reynolds' championing of Ardkore and Rave culture was an attempt to give value to what only "people who couldn't be expected to know better" valued. To understand what no-one believed in, on it's own terms, without patronising it in the process of it's recontextualisation. That's a mean feat. Though in a weird (utterly predictable) twist, he succeeded in making it fashionable, when that was the precise inverse of what it was. It was genuinely SCARY, terrifyingly OUT-OF-CONTROL and anathema to the dominant values of the middle-classes and the media. People were paying silly money for these records before interest subsided in Ardkore. tWist informed me he sold his collection in the nick of time. For the record I paid about $8 a pop for most of mine. Often less. Reynolds' I know was a great $5 12" harvester.

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Various Artists: Electronic Panorama.

Certainly the most valuable record I own. At a time before the current economic crisis, when I was earning (what now appears to be) crazy money, I paid about $150 for this, which was an absolute steal. A friend sold a copy of this to The Chemical Brothers for $650 in 1996. I reckon I could comfortably sell it for about $1,000. It's the record-collector's equivalent of an Edward East Clock or a Gainsborough. It's the holy grail of electronic music. I recently read a mini article, a discussion with Andy Votel, who was boasting that he'd recently flown all the way to Poland with the sole intention of picking up a particular obscure soundtrack which (and this amused him greatly) he bragged at only having listened to ONCE. What a berk! I couldn't swear that I listen to this everyday (ahem) but every couple of months I take it out and give it an aural fondle.

All this music crackles with intelligence. Evincing the quickness and edginess of characters brimming over with sparkle. The box is a head-to-head of the four major electronic studios of the day; the GRM of the ORTF (Paris), The University of Utrecht (Netherlands), Radio NHK (Tokyo) and The Warsaw Radio Studio of Experimental Music (Poland...) and frankly once you've heard it you'll wanna dig a huge hole in the ground and fill it with with your Nurse With Wound and Autechre (et al.) records. Somehow no other experimental electronic music comes near this stuff. On a similar note I recently read Autechre going on about how they didn't think Stockhausen was "all that" and my lip curled. SHUT UP you dweebs! Go fiddle with your multi-tracks and leave the dude alone. If you had any idea of the gargantuan scale of the work involved in making this music! The slav-ish blinding toil these tape-edits constitute. Go on (you total saps) hit that "Avant Garde" Cubase preset and act all superior. There's a whole other dimension to this of course, the reason this music is so super-humanly powerful and unexpected is that it emerged from the ravaged psyches of the second world war. This is particularly true when you're talking about Stockhausen (here only in spirit) and Xenakis; the former whose mother was murdered by the Nazi's for being "insane" the latter who lost half his face fighting in the Greek Resistance movement. These people are drawing on emotional resources the scale and depth of which you can't even imagine.

Disc one is the cheese. Frankly the French have it. Parmegiani's "Ponomatopees II" is a dizzying seething swathe. A pile-up of snatches of speech folded and sliced, extremely influential on later INA_GRM alumni like Phillip Mion. Parmegiani was very much Pierre Schaeffer's protege, and as such he works close to the spirit of Musique Concrete. If you don't know it (and apologies if you do) the celebrated "essential moment" of Music Concrete came when Schaeffer cut the sound of a bell being struck from a recording, leaving only the sound of it's ring. The whole idea is right there, decontextualise a real-life sonic event and impel the listener to listen to it on it's own merits. Parmegiani's later work explores this sound-as-sound idea with breath-taking power. Also, and this EVERYONE should hear, Francois Bayle's "Solitioude" (1969) which the composer describes as such: "Irreverent movement, in spite of a series of light genuflexions (to Duke Ellington...Boris Vian...the Soft Machine)". To my mind it is the defining text for the Student Riots of the previous year, featuring elements of the sounds of the street battles of that confrontation and, get this, guitar parts provided by David Allen (The Soft Machine, Gong etc). In fact the Bayle and Parmegiani recordings, the latter of which is: "inspired by...some of the vocal ravings of pop singers" should dispel the lie that this music is in anyway an ivory tower undertaking.

The Japanese disc has, as one might expect, a more contemplative yearning. Toshiro Mayuzumi's "Mandara" has these flitting dragonfly in a swamp fx, and the tone is markedly less strident. Listenable even ;-) I also like Makoto Moroi's "Shosanke" which: "is a suite of six variations on a trumpet sound traditionally associated with the Buddhist "Ceremony of Water" It's amazing how the symbolic possibilities inherent in electronic music are seized on so early in the day. Decade after decade we run across the same themes, usually peaking from time-to-time as demand for "depth" in electronic music varies. For example you can hear scant evidence of these characteristics in Grime, though I'd argue Wiley's tracks are picking up on it, particularly the whole frozen wastes shtick he's peddling. Actually Erik Davis's "Techgnosis" book was pretty good on the mile-wide currents running between the esoteric and electronic music. The contemplative, the other (via 3rd world music and elements thereof) the occult, the convergance of high and low culture. It's all here.

The Warsaw and Utrecht crews also have a good bash. Krzysztof Penderecki's "Psalmus" (1961), the only purely electronic piece of his I'm aware of is splendid. Gabba fans take note, ha ha. Huge 2mm gaps punctuated by gloomy passing icebergs. Arne Nordheim also contributes a track. (I'm having real fun with this!) Of the dutch lot Koenig is "firing on all cylinders."

Bernard Parmegiani : Violostries.

The historic Avant-Garde eh! Gawd bless 'em. What a funny bunch of cranky old men! If I'm feeling at all low, I like to dig out these records and have a giggle at their lovely chops, their 3/4 inch thick lab spectacles, the abundance of all manner of facial hair, little pointed goatees, thick well-clipped beards, unkempt eyebrows spiralling off into the third dimension, those distant fixed gazes, that pipe akimbo, their wonderful seriousness and earnestness. Compare their benign troubled looks to those of the wave of the nu-electronic avant-garde. No don't, it's almost unfair! Those mean pinched expressions, ergonomic haircuts, clipped nostrils, arrogance, carefully-chosen foot-wear, the cloying allusions to street-awareness in their lean garb.

A friend of mine sees Bernard Parmegiani in the street in his neighbourhood from time to time. Apparently he looks like Hornblower bill in his nautical blazer and blue and white striped top. Smoking a generous pipe. I embellish; clutching a baguette and a copy of Le Monde. "Violostries" is from 1964 and is scored for solo violin and four channels. It's a deeply crass comparison but think "Strings of Life". Right from the outset with those stabby striations (I kid you not) and the wonderful deep repeating phased bass line. This record with the original green label spotters!

I implore you to find Parmegiani's "La Creation du Monde" or better yet "De Natura Sonorum" or better yet (well DNS is the accepted classic, but I have a personal fondness for this) "Dedan-Dehors" They're all available on CD.

Francois Bayle: Jeita.

If you look hard for these records, and France is the place naturally. You'll still find the occasional one or two, though quite a number are a bit dodgy. There's LOADS I've passed over, freak-out organ recitals at Notre Dame, endless records by Les Percussions de Strasbourg which you'll see all over the shop and incline to the dull. This however is an utter gem. Once again a purely electronic score, it's a soundtrack for the then recently discovered Lebanese Jeita Caves complex. A son-et-lumiere for the deeply twisted. As you might imagine for the composer of a(nother) piece called: "Espaces Inhabitables", Bayle was interested in the transportative architecture of sound, it's 4th dimensional attributes, unlike most site-specific sonic installations however (yawn), he's still impelled to take the listener somewhere. It's subtitled meaningfully "Murmur of the Waters" and thats what we have in this exquisite piece, synthesised drips, gentle spilling equibriums and aquatic fluctuations all amidst the cavernous yaw of echo. Ambient innit.

Francois Bayle: Various.

Cool!

Pierre Henry: Apocalypse de Jean.

What with "les jerks" his celebrated work with Michel Colombier (the man ALSO behind Serge Gainsbourg's "Histoire de Melody Nelson) you might be tempted to think Pierre Henry the joker of the pack. Not so, not so. While his "Mouvemente Rythme Etude" (also Phillips) is charming and technically stunning his work on the Prospective 21eme Siecle series is 'ard as nails. I'll confess to knowing next to nothing about the label itself. I've done a bit of nosing around, but can't find anything. Nothing too on the sleeves which are clearly classics of period design and match the beautiful but stern metallic music housed within. I'll wager there's some tie in with Varese and Xenakis's installation at the Pavilion Philips de l'Exposition Internationale de Bruxelles (1960), which I think I'm correct in saying was housed in a specifically designed Le Corbusier building, which drew on his pupil Xenakis's understanding of the qualities and possibilities inherent in concrete and which was summarily demolished after the fair. Nothing on the label in Roger Sutherland's excellent and comprehensive book "New Perspectives on Music" either.

Henry was a pupil of Boulanger's and Messaien's and it's clear as Pimms there's more than a smattering of Oliver Messaien's troubled catholocism to his work. Particularly in "Apocalypse de Jean", which is by some margin the scariest record I own. Surely a more fitting soundtrack to 9/11 than Enya? While slightly marred by Jean Negroni's overly sincere voiceover, in, er, French, there are some stunning passages to this: the rasping strident "Revelation"; from the "First tribulations, the Seven Seals and Seven Trumpets", "The Four Horses", notably the chillingly controlled overload of "The Black Horse"; "No wind on the earth" (I mean, these titles!); and from "Cataclysms II", "The third part of the sea became blood." On the cover shot, Henry looks like a cleric.

Pierre Henry: Le Voyage.

Not silver! Though squarely from the series. What do you think I am? Made of money! Though look here some greek chap is selling the original on eBay, a very few drachma for this great record which I routinely see for $240. I saw a wall of these silver records in New York as a matter of fact, not very good ones, all for $260 a pop, yikes. Buy buy buy! Actually the American 60's label this is on, Limelight, is a very interesting source of re-issues. I've seen a cool-looking Indian LP on it too. "Le Voyage", based conceptually on The Tibetan Book of the Dead (the occult etc) is "a trip", and it's clear why this quite hippy-ish imprint should choose to license it. Ambitious stoner material... Like Apocalypse to Jean it's an horizontal record. Unlike those of, say Xenakis which are so vertically arranged as to be threatening to topple over.

Various: Xenakis/Berio/Maderna/Kagel.

I was really sad when Xenakis died. If you get the opportunity read Nouritza Matossian's Biography of him. It's the most wonderful book which I can unreservedly recommend to ANYONE at all. After completing it a few winters ago I almost left the house for good. And that's the kind of intense character Xenakis was. Other people value "Persepolis" (one of the other silver records) highly which you can now buy on CD. I'd also rate "La Legende D'Eer" incredibly highly. "Orient Occident" on this is a real bruiser, once again (like Stockhausen's "Telemusik") strong 4th World elements.

Les Percussions de Strasbourg: Americana

The best of their records. Nice version of Varese's "Ionisation" which succeeds in not making it sound like Gershwin (where many other versions fail). Good Cage track too.

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Well, you'd be lucky to find any of these at even halfway decent prices these days. But keep you're eyes peeled for a glint.

I never thought he had it in him.

Paul Auster here, hope you like my rudimentary drawings. Big shaat aat to all the post-punk crew.

***CLICK THE IMAGE AND KEEP CLICKING***

Please allow me to introduce myself.

Now that Luka has discussed his position a bit, I thought I'd take the opportunity to fill you in on where my head's at. To file a kind of half-term report if you like. I'll try and be brief.

I was really flattered by the recent Wire thing. Less for where it was and for it's scale (let's be honest a few lines in the back of a jazz mag) than for who'd written it. I've had "glowing" press before for other of my projects and I'm still no nearer to converting any "talent" I have into money to buy Lulu a proper rattle. That makes me view publicity with suspicion. For the record my stats have only marginally improved since that piece, though I did score 1,000 downloads in one day for that last mix.

Which brings me to my next point. "1,000 downloads! Gee that's quite alot Matt, you must've got a fair few emails!" 2 actually. That's sad. And I've not enjoyed the recent scraps. And the nerdosphere can get quite claustrophobic. I'm under no illusion that I'd be an even bigger fool (than I already am) if I expected ANYTHING AT ALL for doing this blog. As Kodwo Eshun pointed out it's a gift economy. The act of blogging is effectively one of potlach.

On the other hand it serves to amuse me enormously. I've made some first class "mates-for-life"** who I couldn't have hooked up without it. I've had the opportunity to go head-to-head with the great thinkers. I've got a micro-job out of it (review gig). My wife thinks it's good for me too, which might come as a surprise to Simon, who's always gently chastening me for wasting time on it. Apparently I'm better humored, though she views me laughing at my private jokes with a mixture of infuriation and tenderness.

My animation course has now finished. I always scoff when I hear Luka on my case for writing about music (or whatever the hell it is I do here) when I should be doing comics. I'm actually drawing all day most of the time. Right now I'm pretty exhausted, less by the blog than by balancing college, work (which has been OK) and looking after the wife and baby. I think I'm a pretty dedicated father. Where do I find the time? Er, well I don't watch TV and I don't socialise much. Don't worry I'm not about to start on the details of my personal hygiene. There is a chance I might get a job off this course, big open day on Friday. If not, well there are plenty of other things in the pipeline.

I'm definitely going to be ploughing on to complete a year on this. You'll probably guess by the density of what I'm putting out (something The Wire piece has made me more concious of...wouldn't it be nice to prattle and link) that I'm not going to be able to sustain it forever. Well that was never the plan. It's January 11th 2004 or bust. Thanks for dropping by. I hope you enjoy it. Stay tuned for some more fantastic high jinx. There's some mutha's yet to come.

Various Artists: Newtown (AI 2003)

Since Warp’s “The Pioneers of The Hypnotic Groove” (Warp 1991) the label sampler has been the handiest and most pleasurable way of digesting electronic music. Many of the shortcomings of the single-artist post-Techno LP are remedied. The necessary genre hopping required to sustain interest levels is undertaken by artists best suited to their chosen diversions; the label itself provides the project’s aesthetic glue. Recent classics of the form include Schematic’s “Lily of the Valley”, Carpark’s "Wanna buy a Craprak?" and Kompakt’s 1-5. London’s AI records have just released what may be an addition to this hallowed clique in the “Newtown” sampler. Tracks range from the stop-motion hip-hop and spoilt textures of ADJ’s “Mashup”; to Andy Freer’s smack house epic “Super Galaxo” which rides the Basic Channel signature sound over stun bass and racing hi-hats. From Claro Intelecto’s “Delete”, post-Detroit Techno with it’s Man Parrish handclaps closing a sweet ping-pong riff, bass undertow and re-doubling drums; to Joe’s “Capiolani” 2 cms of rolling nu-electro with it’s nicely spliced phrases and pneumatic low-end. While it’s misleading to reflect on the geographical location of the label (a collection of artists from round-the-western-world), this ear hears the funky electro edge which tends to characterise UK Techno (we’re “Clear”-ly back in “The Temple of Transparent Balls”). Only smatterings here of the infinite loops which define the stark vistas of “Europe Endless’s” Micro-House.

Various Artists: Teutonik Disaster 2 (More Rare and Rockin’ German New Wave Punk and Funk 1977-82) (Gomma)

Conventional interest in German musik leapfrogs the eighties focussing on what Ian McDonald (RIP) called “Krautrock” and the 90s wave of Arty electronica produced by the Mille Plateaux rhizome. New Wave Germany produced heaps of stunning acts: DAF, Les Liasons Dangereuses, Les Vampyrettes, Pyrolator, Der Plan, Einsturzende Neubauten, all fruits of Conny Plank and Trio (Yes! Yes! Yes!). The uber-hip Gomma label, who brought us the Anti NY compilation, here serve up their second instalment of lost tracks from this era, an unapologetic mixed bag of Electro, Neu Wave and the odd bit of bierkeller pfunk bound together by gothic austerity. I was amazed how little interest was generated by the first compilation which included INCREDIBLE tracks like The Car-Men’s “Schlaraffenland” (atonal sex kitten atop clipped funk) and Exkurs’ “Natur” (Blixa Bargeld in motorik setting rasping and wheezing). Same gripes apply about the second volume which sports a total dearth of information about the tracks which (almost*) sparkle with equivalent lustre. Highlights include the phonetic English and huffing drum machines of Instant Music’s “My Boy”, (Young Marble Giants trapped in a corridor) and Camilla Motor’s “Gefahr Im Tivoli” (jack boot on the wrong foot). This music is the conceptual twin to the great NYC No Wave rock experiment, you’ll not find icier chops anywhere outside a butcher’s refrigerator.

*buy Volume One!

The Massive.

Heronbone
Danger! Danger! High Voltage!
Blissblog
Count yourselves lucky.
The Pillbox
I'm a HUGE fan of Ian's.
k-punk
Linktastic!
Emerald Daze
(shaking head) Jim, Jim, Jim. Don't let that young squirrel at Heronbone come between us! Where were you at the Desi Bash? I asked you along! Where's your frigging email link? You live about 2 minutes from me! Sort your fin out and drop by! As I'm sure Jim would agree, being a hipster is an unpleasant side-effect, like hair-loss.
Eden
The man with the 20 year plan.
Worlds of Possibility
Jon's new shack. Watch him with that discus now!
Forcefield
Marsel's *ACE* Detroit site. Just realised I sold my copy of Inertia's "Nowhere to run" (groan).
tWist
Iain's looking for 3 records: "Ash & Vern's 'Squeeze' (early Tearin Vinyl release), 'Plight of the Innovators' (early Smooth release - Basement sublabel), and Swift and Zincs 'Musical Box' (dunno the label but it's a 92 release)" Anyone who finds them is duty bound to surrender to them at low cost.
Keith
Number one stop on the Grime ring-road.
Skykicking
Tim.
Technicolor
The web needs Jess.
I Feel Love
More of a glossy mag than a weblog.
Minima Moralia
OK so where's the comments on my Detroit tape? This applies to all the crew who got it.
Paul Meme
Boss.
A Time for Fear
I've been a slouch linking Olly up (almost no music chat). I'm a regular reader.
Some Disco
Scott on his chaise-longue.
Job de Wit
Job "The Winner" de Wit's Radio show.
Andy Kelman
Andy's been teaching me Micro-house. He's now at...
NYPLM
...who got decent props off the genius Eshun.
Dr. Smile
Pick up thy stethoscope and skank.
Bass Nation
Ardkore Mix 4 at Marky D's right now.
Dave Howie
Who should probably write a bit more for all the props he gets.
Verlaine79
Hot addition.
The House at World's End
Robin deserves nuff respek for services rendered. Nice to see he's a home of his own now.
COM
The Dadster.
Phenotext
Nathalie. Shouldn't worry so much. She's ace.
Spizzazzz
Massive props to this lot as always. Especially to e and Missy, who is possibly my fave writer on the net. Stylin!

***Timberlake Disclaimer***

There's been some kind of (mass)debate going on about Justin Timberlake at the moment. I really didn't want to get involved, I mean what's there to say frankly, and actually thought you(s) could do without my opinion on the subject. In spite of this (sighs) I made the mistake of sticking my oar in and putting up a micro-post which I then casually deleted (undergoing a minor crisis-de-blog at the moment).

I've read this and this and this and this and this and you'd think that was enough written on a subject. None of it, however, chimes with my own "feeeelings".

As for Sacha Frere Jones, well I can't help but think that he's tieing himself in knots, trying to understand how his beloved Neptunes got involved with this lame twat. The equation goes like this, the Neptunes are (were) great and they want to work with JT so there must be some kind of value to his work. I mean why settle on Timberlake to back up his "all rock critics* are lame-outs" spiel? Why not Ricky Martin? And that, my friends, as I'm sure some alec smarter than me has pointed out, negates his whole attack. Timberlake is endowed with the trapping of cultural acceptability anyway, argument null and void. Dare to differ, stick up for some real dross!**

To explore this Timberlake thing a tiny bit more (cos the last thing we need is clever talk about fairly clever pop music, hey presto we're back in the Madonna-ology institute). I dislike Timberlake because he's such a wetto. He's not got the courage of his convictions to do something even vaguely transgressive with his sexuality, though he's clearly trying SOMETHING. He's this (obviously mature bloke***) pimping his good looks playing a pwetty boy. I think I like Darius more, he's a real man! I hate Timberlake's fake ass Michael Jackson rip-off. The music is deadeningly limp (it's POP get a proper tune!) Watch him on MTV and he has such a dearth of charisma it's like his videos "lack". Well you might think that's interesting (mmwah mmwah destabilising the conventional product) but actually I think the truth is simpler, he's one fifth**** a pop-star.

He's pants.