After much soul-searching and thought, I decided that, all things considered, the tiny handful of tracks I recorded solo using just some basic instruments, effects machines and my iPhone as a rudimentary recording device merited to be uploaded on Soundcloud.
The name of my solo project, which will at various stages incorporate (hopefully) video, sculpture, performances and music, is FRAYED.
Having uploaded 4 tracks, I quickly realised they seemed to work well together as a whole, a demo EP if you will, which I have named Forgotten. I hope you enjoy.
Forgotten by Frayed (London)
Ideally, I'll one day be able to record these with better means, and press a CD or something as an official release. Until then, Soundcloud is the first gateway into the FRAYED world.
A manifesto on the ethos and thought process behind FRAYED will be appearing here shortly!
- JPhimister, February 2011
Wednesday, 23 February 2011
Sunday, 6 February 2011
January on my iPod!!
Having resisted for so many months whilst all around me sneezed, fainted and farted their way to their sick beds, I've been mightily pissed off to have this week succumbed to a bastard of a cold. Predictably with me, it's not been enough to beg off work, but being so bunged up, feverish and exhausted that I didn't have enough strength to even have a wank meant that more strenuous activities like continuing to write my film script, prepare my video/sound art projects and practice my violin have equally been neglected. Arses!!
On the plus side, it gave me plenty of opportunities to listen to new music, which I have done in abundance.
Cinema-wise, I've had a ball as well. Apichatpong Weerasethakul deservedly won the "Palme d'Or" at the Cannes Film Festival last year, for one of the more peculiar and beguiling films I've seen in recent years, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Its screening at the wonderful indie Prince Charles cinema in Leicester Square (which came complete with live piano as we took our seats!) was a chance for me to rediscover my love of big screen viewing, something I do less and less, given prohibitive London ticket prices. Uncle Boonmee is almost impossible to describe and explain, being an oneiric, ghostly exploration of regret, love, death and memory, traversed by references to Thai mythology and ghost folklore. Weerasethakul's camera drifts or sits, observing the characters with impassive compassion, even as dark, troubling or downright bizarre events immerse themselves into their lives. Throughout, the director maintains a dreamlike balance between pointed reflections on generational disparities or environmental issues, and a wistful sense of oddball humour. Perhaps best of all is the droning score, the depth and static beauty of which, like the wondrous photography of rural Thai forests, serves to enhance the pensive, philosophical beauty of this remarkable film. I'm aware that I have done nothing to really explain what Uncle Boonmee is about, but then it's not a film you watch so much as one you allow to wash over you and permeate your senses.
Sean Penn's deserved success as one of Hollywood's best male actors tends to occlude his achievements behind the camera, something which may be put to rights somewhat by Into The Wild (2009), his interesting biopic of wanderer Chris McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp. McCandless was a young graduate with the "world" (at least that of his parents) at his feet, but who donated all his money to Oxfam before setting off on his own across the States, finally ending up in Alaska. Penn's film expertly captures the motivations and intensity of this singular young man, as well as the breathtaking landscapes he crossed on his date with destiny. Most of all, there are interesting vacillations in the way McCandless deals with his feelings of isolation and solitude, from reveling in the freedom they entail, to fear and loneliness. There's also surprisingly often decent -and apt- music from Eddie Vedder, of lame-ass former grunge losers Pearl Jam. There is drama and reflection aplenty, but at times Into The Wild drags a bit, whilst the dime store philosophies delivered by voice-overs feel a bit laden to me. But for all that, it's a touching film, and one that gives an intriguing look at one of the many flip-sides of the American dream. Oh, and Emile Hirsch, as "Supertramp", is excellent.
More frustrating was Pitfall (1962), by Hiroshi Teshigahara. His second feature, Woman In the Dunes (1964), is perhaps one of the greatest films ever made, but Pitfall felt a bit heavy-handed in its exploration of themes of exploitation of workers in post-World War Two Japan. As in Woman In the Dunes, the music, courtesy of Toru Takemitsu, is monumental, and there are moments of violence, drama and poetry that are startling and wondrous, but ultimately Pitfall remains a tasty-but-slight amuse-bouche leading up to its superlative follow-up.
Finally, after so much heaviness and contemplation, it was nice to kick back with some good old vintage horror, in the form of Wes Craven's classic A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). I personally felt that Scream was a crock of bird dung, and was not much impressed with Last House on the Left either, so Craven's reputation as a horror master always struck me as undeserved. Except with A Nightmare on Elm Street, because it is a bona fide masterpiece of atmosphere, menace and thrills, with a wonderfully caustic sense of humour to boot. In the deliciously sinister Freddie Krueger, Craven succeeded in creating a true horror icon, and the early scenes of the film, in particular, as he stalks his victims through nightmarish back alleys and into his industrial lair, are terrifying. Craven never matched this film, and sadly Freddie became something of a silly figure as the sequels and spin-offs piled up.
Musically, most of my time -and indeed psyche- has been given over to what may just be the ultimate in elegiac musical bliss: MINIMALISM. I realised around Christmas that I was severely lacking in knowledge of true experimental music, so duly binged out on the likes of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Morton Feldman, John Cage, Iannis Xenakis and Cornelius Cardew. And, ultimately, this drew me full circle, rocking up as I did on the shores of a number of giants whose experiments in drone and sustained tones were already familiar to me, but into whose oeuvre I've now pitched myself headlong: La Monte Young, Tony Conrad, Eliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros, Catherine Christer Hennix, Charlemagne Palestine, Terry Riley, and so on. In fact, surely the experience of seeing Palestine live, complete with mystical chanting and wall of drone noise, was a major catalyst, and I will in the very near future be adding my appraisals of his Strumming Music masterpiece to this blog.
But for now, if I may, I will be concentrating on three monstrously huge works of musical art by the first three minimalists I mentioned: Young, Conrad and Radigue, simply because, through their sheer enormity (in duration terms), and the analogous way I discovered them, have led them to become interwoven, at least dialectically, in my head.
For many, La Monte Young is nothing less than the inventor of minimalism. Such pronouncements could be debated ad infinitum, but it has to be recognised that he has been the foremost theorist and proponent of the processes of minimal music. And, from a popular music perspective (for that remains my background, no matter how much I love the avant-garde), the influence of Young is undeniable, all the way up to modern-day acts like Eleh and Double Leopards. After all, it was Young who, through his creation of The Dream Syndicate drone band, along with Conrad, Marian Zazeela, Angus MacLise and John Cale, laid the foundations for drone in "rock" music, with Cale and MacLise of course going on to found The Velvet Underground.
I shan't dwell at length on the history of La Monte Young, or minimalism, but Branden W. Joseph's excellent book Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage is a great study of the art scene of the sixties that gave birth to both artists' creations. The precocious and super-confident Young was a pivotal figure in taking the notions explored by John Cage and applying them in new ways, especially the audience/performer relationships and Cage's revolutionary approach to contemplating sound. Comparing Young's music -notably his experimental written scores- to the art of sculptor Robert Morris, Joseph highlights the notions of "transgression" and "transcendence" that Young would attain (or try to) through sound and performance.
This is not "transgression" in a rock sense ("Hendrix's guitar playing was so controversial, maaaan"), but in the way that Young, like Cage and Morris before him, deconstructed the relationship between artist and audience, in net distinction from much of the contemporaneous art scene. Young's approach to sound could be seen as almost confrontational, with its emphasis on sustained tones and volume, and this would be the main shift from Cage's approach. This may explain the attraction his music has often had for rock artists.
Perhaps the summit of La Monte Young's musical exploration is his magnum opus, The Well-Tuned Piano (released on CD by Gramavision in 1987). As a piece, it takes immense patience to get through, not because it's difficult or boring, but simply by its length - it clocks in at a whopping 5 hours! Also, Young's approach to this most traditionally musical of instruments is some distance away from the instantly melodic works of, say Beethoven, Nyman (latter period) or Mahler. Young's fascination since the 60s with traditional Indian music, which focused on tones rather than notes, would culminate with the notion -developed with Conrad and Cale- of "just intonation", and The Well-Tuned Piano is Young's attempt to apply this to the piano. It's simply a triumph, as Young's smart tunings help him circumvent the sharp attack of the piano, essentially turning it into a drone instrument. At times, he hammers away at the keys with virtuoso speed, with such shifts in tempo seeming almost random. The effect is that the quickly accumulated notes meld into one another, much as Alvin Lucier's voice does to itself on his seminal I Am Sitting In A Room, creating an otherworldly wall of hazy sound.
And, as with pretty much all of La Monte Young's works, the listener's relationship to the music is key to its success. How does one approach 5 straight hours of just listening? You can get up, do something else, and this in itself changes the listening process. Depending on where you are in relation to the source of The Well-Tuned Piano, the experience of it is different. Or you can allow yourself to drift into it, to remain inert and attentive, to just listen. The experience of it will therefore be different. It's the physicality of Young's music that makes it so infinitely rewarding. And by making this, and other works like Dream House, so uncompromising, so transgressive, he forces the listener (and this was his most radical shift from Cage, who had a more "peaceful" approach) to engage with the music on some physical level. If you do, there is a chance it will have a transporting effect. Which I guess would count as transcendence.
As stated, any exploration of the art of Tony Conrad is tied to that of La Monte Young, but the reverse can also be said. Conrad introduced Young to the likes of Stockhausen, and it was together that they established the notions of "just intonation" (along with John Cale) that they would both take to unparalleled heights.
Tony Conrad is one of the most interesting figures of the American avant-garde, perhaps precisely because he is so elusive. His history is a "minor" one, as Branden W. Joseph puts it in Beyond the Dream Syndicate, though this is in no way a negative thing (read the book - it's too long to explain here). Julian Cope has described him as "hardcore", and whilst he comes across as a pleasant, friendly chap in interviews, Conrad's single-minded commitment to the muse of extreme sonic immobility surpasses even La Monte Young's. On the wonderful Outside the Dream Syndicate album he recorded with German band Faust in 1972, Conrad's violin is a phantom-like presence, hanging statically over the monolithic grooves of Faust like an ectoplasmic eagle, its constant drone being nearly terrifying in its remorseless refusal to conform to classic notions of melody or harmony. Outside the Dream Syndicate is one of my all-time favourite drone/rock records, and they would take it to even more unrelenting levels some twenty years later when they performed "On the Side of Man and Womankind" for about an hour live in London's Queen Elisabeth Hall. But that's another story, of course...
Regrettably, much of Conrad's collaborations with Young, notably as part of The Dream Syndicate, have been kept under lock and key by Young, the source of a rather unfortunate dispute between the two men. But if you can track down a copy of The Theatre of Eternal Music vol.1: Day of Niagara, possibly the sole existing document of the MacLise/Zazeela/Cale/Young/Conrad line-up, you will be able to testify to the supremely focused music the group played, suffused with rock'n'roll attitude but also a singular awareness of the avant-garde. Were it not for the subsequent releases of John Cale's New York in the 1960's compilation (Table of the Elements, 2004) and Conrad's monstrous 4-disc set Early Minimalism, Vol.1 (Table of the Elements, 1997), we might only have hearsay to base our appreciation of what they (and specifically Conrad) were achieving in the mid-60s.
Early Minimalism is easily as visionary and unrelenting as The Well-Tuned Piano, if not more so. For, where there remains a spirit of musical expertise in La Monte Young's piece, Tony Conrad displays a concerted desire to go beyond all common notions of musicality. All 4 pieces feature his strident, distorted violin and, as on Outside the Dream Syndicate, his deconstruction, nay, destruction, of everything music had theorised the violin should be makes for an almost alarming first listen. There is a violence and obtuseness in the way the bow see-saws across the strings, only marginally made easier when other violins chime in, as they do four minutes in to the second piece, "April 1965". Again, the listener is shaken in his or her approach to the music, the durations (the album totals nearly four hours) and embracing of sustained tones and even atonality immediately call for a reflection on how we, as listeners, are to engage with what we're hearing.
In Beyond the Dream Syndicate, Branden W. Joseph opposes the political stance of minimalism, notably that of Robert Morris, with the Utopian vision of Cage. Minimalism, by returning to a Dada-era organisation of power structures, was very different from Cage's almost anarchic, but slightly "hippy" (for lack of a better word) theory of art existing without such conflict between the various players of the artistic and political world. Emerging in the sixties, minimalism was ultimately tainted by the strident political and social context, from the Vietnam war to the Paris riots, establishing a dialectical relationship between artist and audience, and even artist, audience and "establishment" (be it the art one, or something greater). In this context, the screaming, atonal screes of Conrad's violin make perfect ideological, as well as artistic, sense.
Again, the ultimate reaction can be to turn Early Minimalism off, or move away (acts of audience interaction themselves, and possibly more likely than if listening to The Well-Tuned Piano), or you can dissolve your very id into the maelstrom. The sensation I have always got from listening to Conrad is that, whilst Young may hold the recordings of the Dream Syndicate in his vaults, it is Tony Conrad who has taken its essence out into the realms of contemporary and popular art (see his seminal film, The Flicker). Could The Dream Syndicate be all around us, at all times, were we just to allow ourselves to hear things differently?
To my knowledge, any association between Conrad and Young, and French composer and drone master Eliane Radigue, is minimal. And yet, her three-hour-long opus Trilogie de la Mort (1998, XI Records) seems to be suffused with the elegiac and transcendental atmospheres that make Early Minimalism and The Well-Tuned Piano so singular. The major difference (apart from the technical, of course) could perhaps be described as "spiritual". As mentioned, a major influence for Young and Conrad was the meditative classical music of Northern Indian, and there are echoes of sitars and tablas in quite a number of their productions (this embracing of Indian music would have a significant influence on underground American music, even more so than post-Beatles psychedelia, with acts like Sir Richard Bishop and Six Organs of Admittance quite obviously displaying similar interests). Although I think it is evident that Eliane Radigue also was aware of Hindustani raga, a much bigger influence on her life was Zen Buddhism, something she discovered and embraced in the mid-seventies.
As such, Trilogie de la Mort may just be the most accomplished musical evocation of the "Bardo Thodol" (aka The Tibetan Book of the Dead) ever recorded. Her son, Yves Arman, was killed in a car accident in 1989, and in 1991 her guru Pawo Ninpoche also died. These losses, along with her ongoing exploration of Buddhist themes, appears to have been the catalyst for this trilogy. Radigue, formerly a student of musique concrete pioneer Pierre Schaeffer, had long been at the vanguard of electronic exploration, and some of her early works are masterpieces of synthesizer music, using now-obsolete Buchla modular synths. Already, in the sixties and seventies, having moved to New York from Paris, she showed an affinity with the local minimalist scene, her long, gradually unfolding pieces being directly influenced by La Monte Young and Pauline Oliveros, but with a conscious desire to move away from any form of "traditional" instrumentation (no matter how experimentally-used) and focus on electronics. Indeed, apart from Oliveros, I don't think anyone has managed to create such grandiose statements of the power of slow-burning electronic drone.
Which brings us to Trilogie de la Mort. By the late 80s, Radigue was experimenting with the titanic analogue ARP 2500 synth, and it's the warm tones of this machine that lend Trilogie its singular atmosphere. Starting with the opening piece, "Kyema", the drone seeps into the listener's consciousness, almost as if it had always been there, an all-encompassing cocoon of sound. As with most minimal music, what is immediately remarkable is the stasis of "Kyema". Any variations in tempo are minimal; instead, Radigue focuses on shifts in pitch and tone, creating subtle pulsations that flutter in and out of the corners of perception. The second piece, "Kailasha" features more acute pulsations, a subtle injection of tension and drama that feels like the ebb and flow of an invisible river. If you close your eyes, this is music that will envelop and surround you, the depth of the tones meaning you no longer really hear the music so much as actually feel it. This of course makes sense in the tantric context of Radigue's Buddhist faith, and the notions she explores of cycles of life and death herein.
Trilogie de la Mort, being more peaceful and contemplative through its incorporation of Zen Buddhism, is a step away from the more "transcendent" minimalist drone embraced by Young and Conrad. The transcendence of The Well-Tuned Piano and Early Minimalism comes from the way they force a rethinking of the listener's relationship to the music and its performance or recording. Radigue's music is more instantly accessible, its flow more meditative and detached. But, like the other two masterpieces, it also takes its time to unfurl, and the listening experience is defined by the duration and "immobility" of the music. At its core, however, lies a beating heart and, delicately enveloped in warm layers of sound, that heart's quest to deal with human tragedy.
Minimalism, as an artistic discipline, has, like drone in a wider sense (drone rock, folk-drone, etc), been deemed obsolete many times. But its strands are tied to the dual posts of ancient traditions and avant-garde creative and philosophical thought, meaning it continues to reinvent itself, ultimately attaining that most inevitable of statuses: timelessness (the recent output of Eleh, coupled with the rediscovered majesty of Catherine Christer Hennix's The Electric Harpsichord are good examples of this).
Though if you needed any further proof of this, the music of those Indian masters who, as I mentioned, paved the way for much of the musical philosophies that drove La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela and Tony Conrad, is required listening. Foremost among these was Pandit Pran Nath, whose influence has been hailed and heralded by Young and Catherine Christer Hennix (who dedictaed The Electric Harpsichord to Nath) with superlative effusion. And even a cursory listen of his simply-titled Ragas (1971, Shandar) immediately reinforces the importance of this mystical figure in the development, not just of many of the spiritual, religious and philosophical tenets that drove early minimalism, but of drone music as a whole, from Young and Hennix right through to the American Primitive of Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance and John Fahey and even noise and ambient acts such as Vomir or William Basinski. Pran Nath's main instrument, as opposed to, say, Ravi Shankar, is the voice, which immediately evokes Young and, mostly, his wife Marian Zazeela, whose sustained gargle traverses albums like Dream House (Young actually played tambouras on this album, whilst we have Zazeela to thank for the austerely arresting cover art). Nath's voice is deep, held in the throat, overlaying the minimal backing of sitar and tabla with a warm blanket of ecstatic chanting. The mind immediately thinks of Tuvan throat singing or Buddhist chanting, but there is a deliberate stance from Nath not to marry his vocalisations to the music, to allow it to hang, like Conrad would do with the violin, over the mix like a ghostly presence. He is more directly spiritual, of course, than his Western disciples (except maybe Hennix and -indirectly- Radigue), but like them suspends the notions of music as entertainment on the way to nirvana. It's blissful and spiritual, but above all, it's been hearing how this album (and his many others) has echoed through the decades, refracted by modernity, divergent cultures and technology, that has been one of the great pleasures I've garnered from this belated discovery.
As I mentioned in my last post, 2010 was a great year for music, in my opinion, and my "Top 30 albums of 2010" list clearly reflected this. But one thing I hate about such lists (apart from their obvious redundancy), is that you always discover records about a month too late that should definitely have featured, even though they came out in the relevant year! Always! And such is the case of the next two albums I'm going to hail, both of which would have been top 10 shoo-ins had I heard them before I finished my list.
First up is Waving Goodbye, by San Francisco-based artist Sex Worker (Not Not Fun, 2010). This is the vehicle for the man behind the provocative moniker, Daniel Martin-McCormick, to use music as a way of exploring the dark and unsavoury aspects of the sex trade. And so what we have with Waving Goodbye (a very potent and immediately evocative title) are 6 eclectic and offbeat electro-pop tracks that disturbingly evoke the shadowy world of lost souls, grimy violence and dangerous sex that so many women around the world are forced to inhabit, all in the name of satisfying the basest instincts of men. The opening track, "Tough love" perfectly sets the tone, and is also the album's standout piece, as a loping drum machine beat and snaky, melancholic synth lines set an infectious groove over which Martin-McCormick scream-sings in a distorted, agonised falsetto. It's a nightmarish vision of violent, exploitative "love" (read: sex), as his voice literally seems to rip asunder under the weight of the horror he appears to be actually witnessing, as if he's some unfortunate pop singer forced to serenade a bunch of greasy, noxious johns in a run-down brothel. More "relaxing" is the unusual and surprisingly apt cover of Corona's 90s pop standard "Rhythm of the Night", where infectiously bland grooves and banal lyrics become a world-weary paean to lost innocence. The rest of the album follows a similar Jekyll-and-Hyde formula, between deliberately tired and defeated jazzy pop and Ono-worthy primal screaming set to bursts of fierce electronic noise. Closer "Honeymoon Babylon", with its driving, but muffled, beat, and lamenting vocals, feels like an expression of defeated hope, a sense that, maybe things could get better, but Sex Worker doesn't really believe it. Waving Goodbye is a powerful and ferocious statement, and one that I urge all to tap into quickly. Like the women Daniel Martin-McCormick empathises with so much, this album feels like it may evaporate into the night at any time, never to be heard from again...
In January's summary of 2010, The Wire magazine ran an interesting article by Joseph Stannard about the resurgence of "horror movie culture" in modern "alternative" music. Pointedly -and correctly- deriding the "Splatter pack" torture porn of unimaginative twerps like Eli Roth, Stannard noted that many bands, notably among the drone/horror scenes, and on the Not Not Fun roster, were returning to the sense of gritty terror and -this is key- awe that defined the second golden age of horror, i.e. the seventies. This decade gave us on the one hand, in America, dusty, grimy, faux-realistic horrors like The Texas Chainsaw massacre, specifically in this context its found-sound and effects-laden score; and on the other, in Italy, the baroque excess of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, who sonically were defined by their association with bombastic prog rock bands like Goblin. And it is to these sounds, the clinks and clanks of vintage American horror, or the swirling atmospheric synths of Suspiria or Inferno, not to mention a dashing of creepy, Wicker Man-inspired British psych-folk, that acts as varied as Hair Police, Demdike Stare, Ensemble Economique, Skullflower, Umberto and Black Mountain Transmitter have turned, with arresting results.
One particular album Stannard mentioned that tickled my fancy when I read about it, was the official, self-titled debut album of Hair Police's Mike Connelly's solo side-project, Failing Lights (Intransitive, 2010). Connelly's comments on the American midwest/deep south border zone he hails from (he's from Kentucky, setting for The Evil Dead, incidentally), and the far-off, isolated farmhouses he would see whilst driving down dark roads, picturing the evil that seemed to lie behind the locked doors, really for me summed up the attraction of horror cinema of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre variety, so I was excited to hear how he had translated that eerie menace into music. Perhaps sensibly, he has eschewed the broiling roar and hysteria of Hair Police for a calmer, more elusive approach, focusing on shimmering acoustic drones, industrial clanks in lieu of percussion and throbbing bass lines. Starting with the heavily reverbed bell chimes on "Moon of the first hunt" to set an instant tone of menace and disquiet, but refraining from all-out explosions of noise (therefore foregoing his trademark rasping vocal howl), Connelly creates a work of perfect poise and tension. On "Revealing Scene", swathes of near-silence are punctuated by windy layers of drone before staccato bursts of electronic glitch soar into earshot from the distance, dissolving back into the ether to be replaced by more frenetic noise. Each piece segues seamlessly into the next, but whatever malaise is driving this album, Connelly never lets it be properly discerned, even on the righteous, epic closing track "The Comfort Zone", which features unhinged vocal snippets (including oppressive heavy breathing) and pulsating bass synth throbs, and basically acts as an 18-minute summation of all the creepiness that went before it. The music is cinematic, but twisted, like Toru Takemitsu's scores for Pitfall and Woman in the Dunes, never demonstrative, always suggestive, and it's all the more troubling for it. Failing Lights is a remarkable achievement, again cementing Connelly's place as one of noise music's foremost sonic explorers.
Amusingly, amid all these synths and distorted violins, I really have of late rediscovered my love for that mainstay of popular music: the guitar. Of course, it never went away, and nary a week goes by where I'm not reduced to simpering tears by the sound of someone tearing their own heart-strings out via the six on their axe, be it Neil Young, Funkadelic's Eddie Hazel or Derek Bailey. But the guitar in all its forms has fascinated me this month, and I've found myself traveling back in time to discover some of the older, less heralded masters whose ground-breaking work has been key to how the guitar has been used in popular music over the decades. I'm of course referring to folk and blues. There are too many of these great pioneers to mention, from classic figures like Hank Williams, Nick Drake, Robert Johnson, Elmore James to more "recent" legends like John Fahey or Bailey. Then there are the slightly forgotten figures, among my favourites of whom are Lightnin' Hopkins, the Texas genius and the man I'll hail here: Son House.
Eddie James "Son" House jr was born in 1902, so by the time his fame really peaked thanks to the "British Blues Boom" of the sixties, he was an old man, and one who'd already known real poverty, the coming-and-going of fame and appraisal, and, most of all, been to prison for murder. It's this tumultuous life that defines his first real debut album, Father of Folk Blues (1965, Columbia). He delivers the 9 songs in a creaking, worn voice, something which lends added emphasis and realism to the often troubled, doom-laden lyrics of tracks like "Death letter", "Louise McGhee" and "Preachin' Blues". Father of Folk Blues feels earthy and impossibly real, and for an imaginative European lad like me, it immediately paints a picture of the Deep South, all dusty tracks, rickety old houses and corn fields swaying in summer breezes. It also has a darker undercurrent of religious fervour, segregation and poverty. For one man to be able to translate so much using just his gravelly voice and basic, expressive guitar picking and slide, is remarkable, even if such cliches probably say more about me than Son House!
The capacity for music to evoke not just emotions, but also mental images (or memories) of landscapes and physical realities has always fascinated me, even if the images are second-hand stereotypes like the ones I get when listening to a lot of Delta blues music (see above).
Much more nebulous is Landings (2009, Type Records - them again!), by Lancastrian musician Richard Skelton. The North-West of England has seemed to offer a rich vein of influence for artists of the introspective type of late (Demdike Stare, in particular), its windy moors and depressed towns seemingly haunted by a multitude of beautiful ghosts. This feeling is particularly strong on Landings, on which Skelton juxtaposes wispy field recordings taken out in the wilderness of the Pennines with achingly beautiful strains of bowed guitar which are overdubbed over each other to create a phantom orchestra. Many have highlighted the resemblance to the "Holy" compositions of Estonian composer Arvo Part, but this music is more abstract, less "composed", therefore bringing it more in line with Tony Conrad's violin than anything orchestral by Part. What is most remarkable is that, whilst the trace elements of the field recordings are detectable throughout, this album is in all ways dominated by the ambiguous, emotionally resonant warbles of the guitar strings; yet for all that, Landings' attachment to, and origination from, the landscape that sculpted Skelton's vision, resonates as clear as if it were a poem dedicated to said fens, moors and furrows. As such, there is a distinct feeling of the artist as lost soul (something accentuated by the knowledge that Skelton's wife Louise passed away in 2004, and that his output has since been dedicated to maintaining a "communication" with her through music and the landscape they once shared), and there is a bleakness and desolation that is inseparable from the warm drones and delicate sounds of wind and rain. Landings is a modern masterpiece of minimalism, so I've almost come full circle here; but it's rich emotional palette easily sets it apart from just about every other drone release I can think of.
Potentially the closest musical cousin I can think of for Landings would be Fly, Fly My Sadness (1996, Jaro) by Angelite & Huun-Huur-Tu, which represents an association -and a marriage made in heaven- between Bulgarian all-female vocal group Angelite, and renowned Tuvan throat singing outfit Huun-Huur-Tu. Obviously, the use of sustained string drones instantly reminded me of Richard Skelton's work, the traditional instruments favoured by Huun-Huur-Tu having that same buzzing, melancholic quality that characterises the guitar work on Landings. There is also a powerful emotional resonance on Fly, Fly My Sadness (what a title!), the contrasting vocals -high-pitched and airy from Angelite, deeper and more resonant from the Tuvans- blending and swirling around each other to really tug at the heart-strings (even though I have no idea what they're singing about!). But beyond these powerful attributes, what really stands out is the way this music conjures up visions of scenery and landscape in the mind. I was immediately reminded of Peter Strickland's wonderful film Katalin Varga (2009, available on DVD from Artificial Eye), and its panoramas (set in Romania) of ancient forests and wind-swept mountains. This music feels ancient, a tradition handed down across generations, and thus intrinsically linked to the lands (Eastern Europe and Asian Russia) that created it. Steppes, forests, dark old towns, deserts, snow-capped mountains: all dance freely across the mind's eye as these voices creep into your brain, and it is the capacity of Fly, Fly My Sadness to not only trigger an emotional response, but also to power the imagination, that makes it as special as Richard Skelton's more academic work of art.
And what of Keiji Haino in all this? I hear you ask. After all, he's been my be-all and end-all muse ever since I saw him at ATP, right? Indeed, if anyone thought they could get away without a Haino reference, they're going to be sorely disappointed. I may have been listening to enough minimalism, "world" music, free jazz and drone to fill a lifetime, but in the weeks since he ripped my soul to wondrous shreds on December 6th, Haino has never been far from my ears. It's as if I can't do without him...
I was particularly fortunate to finally be able to get my mitts on a slew of highly-regarded Haino releases, from the slightly underwhelming, folky and eclectic Affection (1992, PSF), to the bonkers and excessive hurdy-gurdy drone on The 21st Century Hard-y-Guide-y Man (1995, PSF), via the demented and noisy blues-from-Fushitsusha freakouts Execration that Accept to Acknowledge (1993, Forced Exposure) and The Book of Eternity Set Aflame (1996, Forced Exposure). All of which are, even Affection, key documents of the wild talent of Keiji Haino.
But undoubtedly the best discovery of this already outstanding bunch was the ridiculously-titled "C'est parfait" endoctriné tu tombes la tête la première n'essayant pas de comprendre quelque chose si tu te prépares à la décision d'accepter tout compris / Entre en toi-même cela se résoudra (2003, Turtle's Dream), hereafter referred to as C'est Parfait! If ever anyone needed proof that there are no limits to the inspiration and willingness to experiment that drive Keiji Haino, this is the -sadly very rare- album to track down. Supposedly, this is a live recording, but if so he has obviously sampled, overdubbed or pre-recorded his voice, given the way vocal lines are layered on top of one another. And this is as good a place as any to reiterate that Haino is one of the most incredible vocalists that has ever existed. Whether he is mewling in a high-pitched fashion, sounding like an androgynous ghost trying to communicate with the living, or ripping his vocal chords asunder with guttural, rasping roars, he always pushes his voice to the extreme, and the results are overwhelming. Of course, as with the Tuvan throat singers and Pran Nath, I have no idea what he's singing about (and with a title like the one this album has, I doubt I'd really be able to make sense of the lyrics if I did!), but sometimes words are superfluous to the actual appreciation of pure, unfettered emotion laid bare. His uttering is alternately sexual and terrifying, and always instantly arresting. And the way he mixes the different vocal lines together, like so many coiling snakes, is astounding.
In addition to the vocals, the only other instrument used appears to be a drum kit, or an assortment of modern and traditional percussive instruments, but if you think this will be a mellower record than Execration that Accept to Acknowledge or his work with Fushitsusha, simply because he is leaving the guitar and synths to one side, you'd be mistaken. So very mistaken! If anything, the percussion gives Haino even more leeway to go bonkers, and the image in my head is of the tiny, mane-haired man leaping from one set of skins to another, bashing at them like a wild man before moving on again, along the way stopping at one of several microphones to bellow, moan or shriek almost incoherently. Of course, Haino is a lot smarter and erudite than that image suggests, and this is a very intelligently constructed piece, with each instrumental break and vocal interplay carefully thought out in the grand tradition of avant-garde composition and free improv. But for all that, C'est Parfait remains defined by the manic energy and unrelenting sonic devastation Haino unleashes. It's one of the most wonderfully scary albums I own.
Re-reading all of the above, I'm staggered at how long this has got. And yet, I have only evoked the tip of the cultural iceberg I've been trying to scale this month. I should mention the lovely live show put on by David Hoyle at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern on January 27th as part of his Lives residency. I was largely unfamiliar with the work of the man behind The Divine David, and his combination of performance art, acerbically witty comedy and post-drag dressing up was a tasty treat on a Thursday night. It was intellectually challenging, but above all, it was fun, which should always be highlighted given the po-faced nature of so many art shows. I even ended up on stage at one point, and had a portrait done of my penis in the toilets! Weird times. Special mention must go to former 80s Goth icon Rosie Lugosi, whose poetry readings and stand-up centred on her recent battle with cancer. Witty, self-deprecating and defiant against the disease, she encapsulated the word "inspiring". All in all, it was a lovely demonstration that "gay culture" does not have be limited to gormless twinks shrieking at vapid reality stars in Heaven.
And in music, I could talk of my adventures into "American Primitive", the neo-folk of Sir Richard Bishop, Six Organs of Admittance and John Fahey. Albums like While My Guitar Violently Bleeds, Dark Noontide and Fare Forward Voyagers (Soldier's Choice) have never been far from my ears this month, nor have the dark European equivalents of Current 93's The Inmost Light, the wonderful reissue of Sand's dark-folk/Krautrock masterpiece Golem and Tenhi's Maaaet. And my absorption of the blues was not limited to Son House, as I mentioned. From an all-encompassing Robert Johnson compilation to 2009's remarkable modern blues classic New Ways to Pay Old Debts by former Harry Pussy guitarist Bill Orcutt, I've been well and truly breathing in the dusty vibes of deep, dark Devil's music. Speaking of which, also discovered this month was the creepy compilation Okkulte Stimmen: Mediale Musik - Recordings of Unseen Intelligences 1905-2007, which features 30+ "real" recordings of ghosts, exorcisms and other odd and occult curiosities. Not for the faint-hearted!
And of course, I've not left the worlds of noise and metal far behind, still relishing in the sonic assaults of acts like The Cherry Point, Werewolf Jerusalem, Jesu, Gnaw Their Tongues, Demons and Hair Police. Free jazz as well, with lovely discoveries in the form of John and Alice Coltrane's 1968 collaboration Cosmic Music, and the work of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. And then there's been all that avant-garde music I barely touched upon! Jesus...
Well, that's what February will be for, I guess. So, until next month's eclectic mix of spiritual folk, raw blues, fierce noise and sonic experimentation, not to mention films by Lars Von Trier, Lucio Fulci, Jack Smith and Derek Jarman, it's adios, and keep those turntables spinning, those iPods whirring and those concert venues bouncing!
Peace. JPhimister
-February 2011
On the plus side, it gave me plenty of opportunities to listen to new music, which I have done in abundance.
Finally, after so much heaviness and contemplation, it was nice to kick back with some good old vintage horror, in the form of Wes Craven's classic A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). I personally felt that Scream was a crock of bird dung, and was not much impressed with Last House on the Left either, so Craven's reputation as a horror master always struck me as undeserved. Except with A Nightmare on Elm Street, because it is a bona fide masterpiece of atmosphere, menace and thrills, with a wonderfully caustic sense of humour to boot. In the deliciously sinister Freddie Krueger, Craven succeeded in creating a true horror icon, and the early scenes of the film, in particular, as he stalks his victims through nightmarish back alleys and into his industrial lair, are terrifying. Craven never matched this film, and sadly Freddie became something of a silly figure as the sequels and spin-offs piled up.
Musically, most of my time -and indeed psyche- has been given over to what may just be the ultimate in elegiac musical bliss: MINIMALISM. I realised around Christmas that I was severely lacking in knowledge of true experimental music, so duly binged out on the likes of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Morton Feldman, John Cage, Iannis Xenakis and Cornelius Cardew. And, ultimately, this drew me full circle, rocking up as I did on the shores of a number of giants whose experiments in drone and sustained tones were already familiar to me, but into whose oeuvre I've now pitched myself headlong: La Monte Young, Tony Conrad, Eliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros, Catherine Christer Hennix, Charlemagne Palestine, Terry Riley, and so on. In fact, surely the experience of seeing Palestine live, complete with mystical chanting and wall of drone noise, was a major catalyst, and I will in the very near future be adding my appraisals of his Strumming Music masterpiece to this blog.
But for now, if I may, I will be concentrating on three monstrously huge works of musical art by the first three minimalists I mentioned: Young, Conrad and Radigue, simply because, through their sheer enormity (in duration terms), and the analogous way I discovered them, have led them to become interwoven, at least dialectically, in my head.
For many, La Monte Young is nothing less than the inventor of minimalism. Such pronouncements could be debated ad infinitum, but it has to be recognised that he has been the foremost theorist and proponent of the processes of minimal music. And, from a popular music perspective (for that remains my background, no matter how much I love the avant-garde), the influence of Young is undeniable, all the way up to modern-day acts like Eleh and Double Leopards. After all, it was Young who, through his creation of The Dream Syndicate drone band, along with Conrad, Marian Zazeela, Angus MacLise and John Cale, laid the foundations for drone in "rock" music, with Cale and MacLise of course going on to found The Velvet Underground.
I shan't dwell at length on the history of La Monte Young, or minimalism, but Branden W. Joseph's excellent book Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage is a great study of the art scene of the sixties that gave birth to both artists' creations. The precocious and super-confident Young was a pivotal figure in taking the notions explored by John Cage and applying them in new ways, especially the audience/performer relationships and Cage's revolutionary approach to contemplating sound. Comparing Young's music -notably his experimental written scores- to the art of sculptor Robert Morris, Joseph highlights the notions of "transgression" and "transcendence" that Young would attain (or try to) through sound and performance.
This is not "transgression" in a rock sense ("Hendrix's guitar playing was so controversial, maaaan"), but in the way that Young, like Cage and Morris before him, deconstructed the relationship between artist and audience, in net distinction from much of the contemporaneous art scene. Young's approach to sound could be seen as almost confrontational, with its emphasis on sustained tones and volume, and this would be the main shift from Cage's approach. This may explain the attraction his music has often had for rock artists.
Perhaps the summit of La Monte Young's musical exploration is his magnum opus, The Well-Tuned Piano (released on CD by Gramavision in 1987). As a piece, it takes immense patience to get through, not because it's difficult or boring, but simply by its length - it clocks in at a whopping 5 hours! Also, Young's approach to this most traditionally musical of instruments is some distance away from the instantly melodic works of, say Beethoven, Nyman (latter period) or Mahler. Young's fascination since the 60s with traditional Indian music, which focused on tones rather than notes, would culminate with the notion -developed with Conrad and Cale- of "just intonation", and The Well-Tuned Piano is Young's attempt to apply this to the piano. It's simply a triumph, as Young's smart tunings help him circumvent the sharp attack of the piano, essentially turning it into a drone instrument. At times, he hammers away at the keys with virtuoso speed, with such shifts in tempo seeming almost random. The effect is that the quickly accumulated notes meld into one another, much as Alvin Lucier's voice does to itself on his seminal I Am Sitting In A Room, creating an otherworldly wall of hazy sound.
And, as with pretty much all of La Monte Young's works, the listener's relationship to the music is key to its success. How does one approach 5 straight hours of just listening? You can get up, do something else, and this in itself changes the listening process. Depending on where you are in relation to the source of The Well-Tuned Piano, the experience of it is different. Or you can allow yourself to drift into it, to remain inert and attentive, to just listen. The experience of it will therefore be different. It's the physicality of Young's music that makes it so infinitely rewarding. And by making this, and other works like Dream House, so uncompromising, so transgressive, he forces the listener (and this was his most radical shift from Cage, who had a more "peaceful" approach) to engage with the music on some physical level. If you do, there is a chance it will have a transporting effect. Which I guess would count as transcendence.
Tony Conrad is one of the most interesting figures of the American avant-garde, perhaps precisely because he is so elusive. His history is a "minor" one, as Branden W. Joseph puts it in Beyond the Dream Syndicate, though this is in no way a negative thing (read the book - it's too long to explain here). Julian Cope has described him as "hardcore", and whilst he comes across as a pleasant, friendly chap in interviews, Conrad's single-minded commitment to the muse of extreme sonic immobility surpasses even La Monte Young's. On the wonderful Outside the Dream Syndicate album he recorded with German band Faust in 1972, Conrad's violin is a phantom-like presence, hanging statically over the monolithic grooves of Faust like an ectoplasmic eagle, its constant drone being nearly terrifying in its remorseless refusal to conform to classic notions of melody or harmony. Outside the Dream Syndicate is one of my all-time favourite drone/rock records, and they would take it to even more unrelenting levels some twenty years later when they performed "On the Side of Man and Womankind" for about an hour live in London's Queen Elisabeth Hall. But that's another story, of course...
Regrettably, much of Conrad's collaborations with Young, notably as part of The Dream Syndicate, have been kept under lock and key by Young, the source of a rather unfortunate dispute between the two men. But if you can track down a copy of The Theatre of Eternal Music vol.1: Day of Niagara, possibly the sole existing document of the MacLise/Zazeela/Cale/Young/Conrad line-up, you will be able to testify to the supremely focused music the group played, suffused with rock'n'roll attitude but also a singular awareness of the avant-garde. Were it not for the subsequent releases of John Cale's New York in the 1960's compilation (Table of the Elements, 2004) and Conrad's monstrous 4-disc set Early Minimalism, Vol.1 (Table of the Elements, 1997), we might only have hearsay to base our appreciation of what they (and specifically Conrad) were achieving in the mid-60s.
Early Minimalism is easily as visionary and unrelenting as The Well-Tuned Piano, if not more so. For, where there remains a spirit of musical expertise in La Monte Young's piece, Tony Conrad displays a concerted desire to go beyond all common notions of musicality. All 4 pieces feature his strident, distorted violin and, as on Outside the Dream Syndicate, his deconstruction, nay, destruction, of everything music had theorised the violin should be makes for an almost alarming first listen. There is a violence and obtuseness in the way the bow see-saws across the strings, only marginally made easier when other violins chime in, as they do four minutes in to the second piece, "April 1965". Again, the listener is shaken in his or her approach to the music, the durations (the album totals nearly four hours) and embracing of sustained tones and even atonality immediately call for a reflection on how we, as listeners, are to engage with what we're hearing.
In Beyond the Dream Syndicate, Branden W. Joseph opposes the political stance of minimalism, notably that of Robert Morris, with the Utopian vision of Cage. Minimalism, by returning to a Dada-era organisation of power structures, was very different from Cage's almost anarchic, but slightly "hippy" (for lack of a better word) theory of art existing without such conflict between the various players of the artistic and political world. Emerging in the sixties, minimalism was ultimately tainted by the strident political and social context, from the Vietnam war to the Paris riots, establishing a dialectical relationship between artist and audience, and even artist, audience and "establishment" (be it the art one, or something greater). In this context, the screaming, atonal screes of Conrad's violin make perfect ideological, as well as artistic, sense.
Again, the ultimate reaction can be to turn Early Minimalism off, or move away (acts of audience interaction themselves, and possibly more likely than if listening to The Well-Tuned Piano), or you can dissolve your very id into the maelstrom. The sensation I have always got from listening to Conrad is that, whilst Young may hold the recordings of the Dream Syndicate in his vaults, it is Tony Conrad who has taken its essence out into the realms of contemporary and popular art (see his seminal film, The Flicker). Could The Dream Syndicate be all around us, at all times, were we just to allow ourselves to hear things differently?
As such, Trilogie de la Mort may just be the most accomplished musical evocation of the "Bardo Thodol" (aka The Tibetan Book of the Dead) ever recorded. Her son, Yves Arman, was killed in a car accident in 1989, and in 1991 her guru Pawo Ninpoche also died. These losses, along with her ongoing exploration of Buddhist themes, appears to have been the catalyst for this trilogy. Radigue, formerly a student of musique concrete pioneer Pierre Schaeffer, had long been at the vanguard of electronic exploration, and some of her early works are masterpieces of synthesizer music, using now-obsolete Buchla modular synths. Already, in the sixties and seventies, having moved to New York from Paris, she showed an affinity with the local minimalist scene, her long, gradually unfolding pieces being directly influenced by La Monte Young and Pauline Oliveros, but with a conscious desire to move away from any form of "traditional" instrumentation (no matter how experimentally-used) and focus on electronics. Indeed, apart from Oliveros, I don't think anyone has managed to create such grandiose statements of the power of slow-burning electronic drone.
Which brings us to Trilogie de la Mort. By the late 80s, Radigue was experimenting with the titanic analogue ARP 2500 synth, and it's the warm tones of this machine that lend Trilogie its singular atmosphere. Starting with the opening piece, "Kyema", the drone seeps into the listener's consciousness, almost as if it had always been there, an all-encompassing cocoon of sound. As with most minimal music, what is immediately remarkable is the stasis of "Kyema". Any variations in tempo are minimal; instead, Radigue focuses on shifts in pitch and tone, creating subtle pulsations that flutter in and out of the corners of perception. The second piece, "Kailasha" features more acute pulsations, a subtle injection of tension and drama that feels like the ebb and flow of an invisible river. If you close your eyes, this is music that will envelop and surround you, the depth of the tones meaning you no longer really hear the music so much as actually feel it. This of course makes sense in the tantric context of Radigue's Buddhist faith, and the notions she explores of cycles of life and death herein.
Trilogie de la Mort, being more peaceful and contemplative through its incorporation of Zen Buddhism, is a step away from the more "transcendent" minimalist drone embraced by Young and Conrad. The transcendence of The Well-Tuned Piano and Early Minimalism comes from the way they force a rethinking of the listener's relationship to the music and its performance or recording. Radigue's music is more instantly accessible, its flow more meditative and detached. But, like the other two masterpieces, it also takes its time to unfurl, and the listening experience is defined by the duration and "immobility" of the music. At its core, however, lies a beating heart and, delicately enveloped in warm layers of sound, that heart's quest to deal with human tragedy.
Minimalism, as an artistic discipline, has, like drone in a wider sense (drone rock, folk-drone, etc), been deemed obsolete many times. But its strands are tied to the dual posts of ancient traditions and avant-garde creative and philosophical thought, meaning it continues to reinvent itself, ultimately attaining that most inevitable of statuses: timelessness (the recent output of Eleh, coupled with the rediscovered majesty of Catherine Christer Hennix's The Electric Harpsichord are good examples of this).
Though if you needed any further proof of this, the music of those Indian masters who, as I mentioned, paved the way for much of the musical philosophies that drove La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela and Tony Conrad, is required listening. Foremost among these was Pandit Pran Nath, whose influence has been hailed and heralded by Young and Catherine Christer Hennix (who dedictaed The Electric Harpsichord to Nath) with superlative effusion. And even a cursory listen of his simply-titled Ragas (1971, Shandar) immediately reinforces the importance of this mystical figure in the development, not just of many of the spiritual, religious and philosophical tenets that drove early minimalism, but of drone music as a whole, from Young and Hennix right through to the American Primitive of Ben Chasny of Six Organs of Admittance and John Fahey and even noise and ambient acts such as Vomir or William Basinski. Pran Nath's main instrument, as opposed to, say, Ravi Shankar, is the voice, which immediately evokes Young and, mostly, his wife Marian Zazeela, whose sustained gargle traverses albums like Dream House (Young actually played tambouras on this album, whilst we have Zazeela to thank for the austerely arresting cover art). Nath's voice is deep, held in the throat, overlaying the minimal backing of sitar and tabla with a warm blanket of ecstatic chanting. The mind immediately thinks of Tuvan throat singing or Buddhist chanting, but there is a deliberate stance from Nath not to marry his vocalisations to the music, to allow it to hang, like Conrad would do with the violin, over the mix like a ghostly presence. He is more directly spiritual, of course, than his Western disciples (except maybe Hennix and -indirectly- Radigue), but like them suspends the notions of music as entertainment on the way to nirvana. It's blissful and spiritual, but above all, it's been hearing how this album (and his many others) has echoed through the decades, refracted by modernity, divergent cultures and technology, that has been one of the great pleasures I've garnered from this belated discovery.As I mentioned in my last post, 2010 was a great year for music, in my opinion, and my "Top 30 albums of 2010" list clearly reflected this. But one thing I hate about such lists (apart from their obvious redundancy), is that you always discover records about a month too late that should definitely have featured, even though they came out in the relevant year! Always! And such is the case of the next two albums I'm going to hail, both of which would have been top 10 shoo-ins had I heard them before I finished my list.
In January's summary of 2010, The Wire magazine ran an interesting article by Joseph Stannard about the resurgence of "horror movie culture" in modern "alternative" music. Pointedly -and correctly- deriding the "Splatter pack" torture porn of unimaginative twerps like Eli Roth, Stannard noted that many bands, notably among the drone/horror scenes, and on the Not Not Fun roster, were returning to the sense of gritty terror and -this is key- awe that defined the second golden age of horror, i.e. the seventies. This decade gave us on the one hand, in America, dusty, grimy, faux-realistic horrors like The Texas Chainsaw massacre, specifically in this context its found-sound and effects-laden score; and on the other, in Italy, the baroque excess of Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci, who sonically were defined by their association with bombastic prog rock bands like Goblin. And it is to these sounds, the clinks and clanks of vintage American horror, or the swirling atmospheric synths of Suspiria or Inferno, not to mention a dashing of creepy, Wicker Man-inspired British psych-folk, that acts as varied as Hair Police, Demdike Stare, Ensemble Economique, Skullflower, Umberto and Black Mountain Transmitter have turned, with arresting results.
Eddie James "Son" House jr was born in 1902, so by the time his fame really peaked thanks to the "British Blues Boom" of the sixties, he was an old man, and one who'd already known real poverty, the coming-and-going of fame and appraisal, and, most of all, been to prison for murder. It's this tumultuous life that defines his first real debut album, Father of Folk Blues (1965, Columbia). He delivers the 9 songs in a creaking, worn voice, something which lends added emphasis and realism to the often troubled, doom-laden lyrics of tracks like "Death letter", "Louise McGhee" and "Preachin' Blues". Father of Folk Blues feels earthy and impossibly real, and for an imaginative European lad like me, it immediately paints a picture of the Deep South, all dusty tracks, rickety old houses and corn fields swaying in summer breezes. It also has a darker undercurrent of religious fervour, segregation and poverty. For one man to be able to translate so much using just his gravelly voice and basic, expressive guitar picking and slide, is remarkable, even if such cliches probably say more about me than Son House!
The capacity for music to evoke not just emotions, but also mental images (or memories) of landscapes and physical realities has always fascinated me, even if the images are second-hand stereotypes like the ones I get when listening to a lot of Delta blues music (see above).
And what of Keiji Haino in all this? I hear you ask. After all, he's been my be-all and end-all muse ever since I saw him at ATP, right? Indeed, if anyone thought they could get away without a Haino reference, they're going to be sorely disappointed. I may have been listening to enough minimalism, "world" music, free jazz and drone to fill a lifetime, but in the weeks since he ripped my soul to wondrous shreds on December 6th, Haino has never been far from my ears. It's as if I can't do without him...
I was particularly fortunate to finally be able to get my mitts on a slew of highly-regarded Haino releases, from the slightly underwhelming, folky and eclectic Affection (1992, PSF), to the bonkers and excessive hurdy-gurdy drone on The 21st Century Hard-y-Guide-y Man (1995, PSF), via the demented and noisy blues-from-Fushitsusha freakouts Execration that Accept to Acknowledge (1993, Forced Exposure) and The Book of Eternity Set Aflame (1996, Forced Exposure). All of which are, even Affection, key documents of the wild talent of Keiji Haino.
In addition to the vocals, the only other instrument used appears to be a drum kit, or an assortment of modern and traditional percussive instruments, but if you think this will be a mellower record than Execration that Accept to Acknowledge or his work with Fushitsusha, simply because he is leaving the guitar and synths to one side, you'd be mistaken. So very mistaken! If anything, the percussion gives Haino even more leeway to go bonkers, and the image in my head is of the tiny, mane-haired man leaping from one set of skins to another, bashing at them like a wild man before moving on again, along the way stopping at one of several microphones to bellow, moan or shriek almost incoherently. Of course, Haino is a lot smarter and erudite than that image suggests, and this is a very intelligently constructed piece, with each instrumental break and vocal interplay carefully thought out in the grand tradition of avant-garde composition and free improv. But for all that, C'est Parfait remains defined by the manic energy and unrelenting sonic devastation Haino unleashes. It's one of the most wonderfully scary albums I own.
And in music, I could talk of my adventures into "American Primitive", the neo-folk of Sir Richard Bishop, Six Organs of Admittance and John Fahey. Albums like While My Guitar Violently Bleeds, Dark Noontide and Fare Forward Voyagers (Soldier's Choice) have never been far from my ears this month, nor have the dark European equivalents of Current 93's The Inmost Light, the wonderful reissue of Sand's dark-folk/Krautrock masterpiece Golem and Tenhi's Maaaet. And my absorption of the blues was not limited to Son House, as I mentioned. From an all-encompassing Robert Johnson compilation to 2009's remarkable modern blues classic New Ways to Pay Old Debts by former Harry Pussy guitarist Bill Orcutt, I've been well and truly breathing in the dusty vibes of deep, dark Devil's music. Speaking of which, also discovered this month was the creepy compilation Okkulte Stimmen: Mediale Musik - Recordings of Unseen Intelligences 1905-2007, which features 30+ "real" recordings of ghosts, exorcisms and other odd and occult curiosities. Not for the faint-hearted!
And of course, I've not left the worlds of noise and metal far behind, still relishing in the sonic assaults of acts like The Cherry Point, Werewolf Jerusalem, Jesu, Gnaw Their Tongues, Demons and Hair Police. Free jazz as well, with lovely discoveries in the form of John and Alice Coltrane's 1968 collaboration Cosmic Music, and the work of Rahsaan Roland Kirk. And then there's been all that avant-garde music I barely touched upon! Jesus...
Well, that's what February will be for, I guess. So, until next month's eclectic mix of spiritual folk, raw blues, fierce noise and sonic experimentation, not to mention films by Lars Von Trier, Lucio Fulci, Jack Smith and Derek Jarman, it's adios, and keep those turntables spinning, those iPods whirring and those concert venues bouncing!
Peace. JPhimister
-February 2011
Friday, 28 January 2011
Addendum to 2010
Greetings one and all! Or one and one, depending on how many people end up reading this. Could be loads, could just be me and my mum (you'd better, mother!).
2010 turned out to be quite a stonking musical year for me, really. I was recently going over my much-lauded (if I do say so myself) list of "Obscure alternatives" (it's here, if you wanna check it out: http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Phimister/obscure_alternatives__unsung_masterpieces_and_underappreciated_gems) and was rather startled at how many albums from 2010 (and 2009 and 2008, it must be said) feature on it. So, blessed with too much spare time and a limited imagination, I've been pondering this matter at some length...
Of course, it's possible that, as I'm a bit richer now than in 2002 (when I was a cash-strapped and booze-drenched student), 1995 (when I was twelve) or 1978 (when I was a basically just a dirty thought at the back of my Dad's mind), I can buy more music, so it makes sense that I would uncover more things I love by virtue of mass spending. But, thanks to internet downloading (of the legal kind!), and the mass-consumption of music that is par-for-the-course in this day and age, I think the sum total of 2010 albums I have bought of late is pretty emphatically eclipsed by those of just about any seventies' year. So, I don't think I buy more albums now than in previous years, and if I do, they're unlikely to all be recent ones, with acquisitions of the last few months ranging from albums released in 1959 to a wealth of sixities, seventies, eighties and nineties records.
What does seem more likely is that this wealth of great "obscure" albums in 2010 is a reflection of the state of the music industry these days. The market these days is saturated with, essentially, three types of rather generic music. There are established pop genres that have become so narrow as to blend into one another, namely dance-pop (Spears, Rihanna, Madonna, Gaga, etc) and r'n'b/hip-hop (take your pic of any mouthy, mysoginistic rapper duetting with a scantily-clad female croonerette). Then there are supposed "indie" "rock" bands who actually are picked out and formatted to look and sound exactly like one another by record execs (occasionally, a VERY well-established "mainstream" rock veteran, such as U2, Bon Jovi, Clapton or Blur gets an airing if the label thinks they've stumbled onto a hit). Finally, we have the tinny, mass-produced arse gravy spewed out by reality TV, usually involving a bit of the above or, if the "artist" (quotation marks very much necessary) is ugly, syrupy slow-paced piano-and-strings ballads in the showtunes style (see Boyle, Susan).
The net result is that real creativity is pretty much stifled. The odd out-of-leftfield emergence (such as Sigur Ros or Arcade Fire) hardly papers over the fact that the extreme majority of modern musical output is samey, formulaic and unadventurous, geared towards sales and audience ratings rather than quality. Luckily, thanks to the internet, and the remarkable persistence of proper independent record labels, exciting and creative music continues to exist and, just maybe, flourish. But the fact is that this happens essentially on the fringes. Occasionally, a new and innovative musical genre, like dubstep, gets a lot of mainstream press inches, but rarely does this convert into real sales unless the music is watered down to its most inoffensive level (although, oddly, "inoffensive" in pop can involve gross attitudes to women and gay people, but that's another debate). So, as the noughties make way for the twenty-tens, the simple fact is that the best music, whilst eminently accessible, is set to remain on the margins of musical culture for quite some time.
So, what's my point, other than what a fucking mess the music industry is? Simply that, if I look at the above list, had some or most of those 2010 albums been released in the seventies, I'm pretty sure they would have been big news. Probably released on major labels. Someone like Toro Y Moi even has "hit-maker" written all over his music. Nineties audiences would have lapped up Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's dreamy haze-pop (or hazy dream-pop), and I'm pretty sure Sun Araw and Rangers would have delighted post-punk Britain (they get quite a few of their influences from there after all). But in 2010, bereft of auto-tune and banal lyrics about mobile phones, shagging or fast cars, their ripples are restricted to those who can be bothered to let their ears drift a bit further from what MTV/Channel 4/Sky/ITV/BBC1 long enough to pick up on what wonders are being dreamt up in the shadows.
In the seventies, even meone as currently fatuous as Santana cooked up wondrous records of inventive, forward-thinking rock music (as I mention in the latest edition of my radio show, "Noise in the Ether"). Neil Young drifted into seriously dark areas whilst still being released by Warner/Reprise, Lou Reed was a superstar exploring harsh noise and awkward proto-punk, even Bowie delved into oddball Krautrockian funk on Station to Station. Again on a major label. Some of the stuff released to big sales and/or mass acclaim in the sevenries and eighties (Joy Division, The Stooges, MC5, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Television, Japan, Gang of Four...) was easily as weird and eclectic as anything I've put on the above list from 2010 (ok, maybe not Vomir).
Of course, even then there was fluff (Bay City Rollers, anyone?), and Metal Machine Music got slaughtered. But the fact remains that until the complete commercialisation of the music industry sometime in the mid-eighties, record labels and artists were still taking risks and engaging in something loftier than churning out temporary money-spinners. And to be honest, even a lot of the lightweight pop back then was more memorable and creative than it's current equivalent (T.Rex and The Human League would wipe the floor with Bieber and Susan fucking Boyle - and we're talking number one hit bands here!). I'm grateful that great and innovative music is still getting made against the odds, but when the most exploratory popstar out there in the world is Kanye West, you know there is something fucking wrong with said fucking world.
So a massive shout out to Failing Lights, Flying Lotus, Sex Worker, The North Sea, Richard Skelton, Nadja, Leyland Kirby, Burial, The Field, Demons, Hair Police, Philip Jeck, Kayo Dot, Boris, Kevin Drumm, Ilyas Ahmed, Benga, Kevin Drumm, Ben Frost, SUNN O))), and all the other geniuses of the last 5-10 years who have been operating in the shadows of the masses, creating great music just for music's sake. Hey, maybe it's better this way (Crosby, Stills and Nash showed in 1974 the detrimental effect of massive wealth on creativity) - the music remains the focus, not the payola. Fuck the masses, I guess. If anyone, even a teenager, is fucking retarded enough to slobber over Justin Bieber or the Jonas Brothers or Katy Perry or Alexandra Burke, they really don't deserve to have their ears serenaded by beautiful music. 'Twould be a waste. And yes, I know we're supposed to give more leniency to teenagers, and I was a musical catastrophe aged 14, but I swear it gets worse with every passing generation; at least I also like the Who, as well as Scatman John! And don't get me started on the massive offence that is failed X Factor contestants filling up gay clubs like Motorhead would a biker bar - sometimes we are our own worst enemies.
I urge anyone reading this to ignore the fact that I sound like a prig and race to iTunes, or Amazon or your local -preferably independent- record store to pick up anything by any or all of the above-mentioned acts. I swear that whatever you choose will be infinitely more rewarding than whatever MTV or Radio 1 are currently spinning. Of course, if you actually DO read this blog, you probably know all these bands already. Still, I can hope a retarded 14-year-old has stumbled onto this page by mistake...
Peace - JPhimister x
2010 turned out to be quite a stonking musical year for me, really. I was recently going over my much-lauded (if I do say so myself) list of "Obscure alternatives" (it's here, if you wanna check it out: http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Phimister/obscure_alternatives__unsung_masterpieces_and_underappreciated_gems) and was rather startled at how many albums from 2010 (and 2009 and 2008, it must be said) feature on it. So, blessed with too much spare time and a limited imagination, I've been pondering this matter at some length...
Of course, it's possible that, as I'm a bit richer now than in 2002 (when I was a cash-strapped and booze-drenched student), 1995 (when I was twelve) or 1978 (when I was a basically just a dirty thought at the back of my Dad's mind), I can buy more music, so it makes sense that I would uncover more things I love by virtue of mass spending. But, thanks to internet downloading (of the legal kind!), and the mass-consumption of music that is par-for-the-course in this day and age, I think the sum total of 2010 albums I have bought of late is pretty emphatically eclipsed by those of just about any seventies' year. So, I don't think I buy more albums now than in previous years, and if I do, they're unlikely to all be recent ones, with acquisitions of the last few months ranging from albums released in 1959 to a wealth of sixities, seventies, eighties and nineties records.
What does seem more likely is that this wealth of great "obscure" albums in 2010 is a reflection of the state of the music industry these days. The market these days is saturated with, essentially, three types of rather generic music. There are established pop genres that have become so narrow as to blend into one another, namely dance-pop (Spears, Rihanna, Madonna, Gaga, etc) and r'n'b/hip-hop (take your pic of any mouthy, mysoginistic rapper duetting with a scantily-clad female croonerette). Then there are supposed "indie" "rock" bands who actually are picked out and formatted to look and sound exactly like one another by record execs (occasionally, a VERY well-established "mainstream" rock veteran, such as U2, Bon Jovi, Clapton or Blur gets an airing if the label thinks they've stumbled onto a hit). Finally, we have the tinny, mass-produced arse gravy spewed out by reality TV, usually involving a bit of the above or, if the "artist" (quotation marks very much necessary) is ugly, syrupy slow-paced piano-and-strings ballads in the showtunes style (see Boyle, Susan).
 |
| A freaking out Neil Young in 1976. Hard to picture Alex Turner going this mental |
So, what's my point, other than what a fucking mess the music industry is? Simply that, if I look at the above list, had some or most of those 2010 albums been released in the seventies, I'm pretty sure they would have been big news. Probably released on major labels. Someone like Toro Y Moi even has "hit-maker" written all over his music. Nineties audiences would have lapped up Jefre Cantu-Ledesma's dreamy haze-pop (or hazy dream-pop), and I'm pretty sure Sun Araw and Rangers would have delighted post-punk Britain (they get quite a few of their influences from there after all). But in 2010, bereft of auto-tune and banal lyrics about mobile phones, shagging or fast cars, their ripples are restricted to those who can be bothered to let their ears drift a bit further from what MTV/Channel 4/Sky/ITV/BBC1 long enough to pick up on what wonders are being dreamt up in the shadows.
In the seventies, even meone as currently fatuous as Santana cooked up wondrous records of inventive, forward-thinking rock music (as I mention in the latest edition of my radio show, "Noise in the Ether"). Neil Young drifted into seriously dark areas whilst still being released by Warner/Reprise, Lou Reed was a superstar exploring harsh noise and awkward proto-punk, even Bowie delved into oddball Krautrockian funk on Station to Station. Again on a major label. Some of the stuff released to big sales and/or mass acclaim in the sevenries and eighties (Joy Division, The Stooges, MC5, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Television, Japan, Gang of Four...) was easily as weird and eclectic as anything I've put on the above list from 2010 (ok, maybe not Vomir).
Of course, even then there was fluff (Bay City Rollers, anyone?), and Metal Machine Music got slaughtered. But the fact remains that until the complete commercialisation of the music industry sometime in the mid-eighties, record labels and artists were still taking risks and engaging in something loftier than churning out temporary money-spinners. And to be honest, even a lot of the lightweight pop back then was more memorable and creative than it's current equivalent (T.Rex and The Human League would wipe the floor with Bieber and Susan fucking Boyle - and we're talking number one hit bands here!). I'm grateful that great and innovative music is still getting made against the odds, but when the most exploratory popstar out there in the world is Kanye West, you know there is something fucking wrong with said fucking world.
So a massive shout out to Failing Lights, Flying Lotus, Sex Worker, The North Sea, Richard Skelton, Nadja, Leyland Kirby, Burial, The Field, Demons, Hair Police, Philip Jeck, Kayo Dot, Boris, Kevin Drumm, Ilyas Ahmed, Benga, Kevin Drumm, Ben Frost, SUNN O))), and all the other geniuses of the last 5-10 years who have been operating in the shadows of the masses, creating great music just for music's sake. Hey, maybe it's better this way (Crosby, Stills and Nash showed in 1974 the detrimental effect of massive wealth on creativity) - the music remains the focus, not the payola. Fuck the masses, I guess. If anyone, even a teenager, is fucking retarded enough to slobber over Justin Bieber or the Jonas Brothers or Katy Perry or Alexandra Burke, they really don't deserve to have their ears serenaded by beautiful music. 'Twould be a waste. And yes, I know we're supposed to give more leniency to teenagers, and I was a musical catastrophe aged 14, but I swear it gets worse with every passing generation; at least I also like the Who, as well as Scatman John! And don't get me started on the massive offence that is failed X Factor contestants filling up gay clubs like Motorhead would a biker bar - sometimes we are our own worst enemies.
I urge anyone reading this to ignore the fact that I sound like a prig and race to iTunes, or Amazon or your local -preferably independent- record store to pick up anything by any or all of the above-mentioned acts. I swear that whatever you choose will be infinitely more rewarding than whatever MTV or Radio 1 are currently spinning. Of course, if you actually DO read this blog, you probably know all these bands already. Still, I can hope a retarded 14-year-old has stumbled onto this page by mistake...
Peace - JPhimister x
Tuesday, 25 January 2011
RADIO GAGA
Just to give my ego an airing, the second edition of the radio show I do with my friend and guitarist Chris, 'Noise in the Ether', is up on Samurai FM's website:
http://samurai.fm/meakusma/meakusma-pres-noise-in-the-ether-2-2
We're not very fluid with the talking (although we're better than on the first one, I swear!), but I think the music (which is all that really matters, really) is cracking, and nicely varied, from jazz courtesy of Henry Threadgill, to heavy drone and doom in the form of Gate and Burial Hex, via the avant-pop of Broadcast and the experimental drones of Stimmhorn and Tony Conrad. Plus proto-punk from Yoko Ono, Pat Metheny freaking out on guitar, The Durutti Column's post-punk bliss and psychedelic rock from Santana.
http://samurai.fm/meakusma/meakusma-pres-noise-in-the-ether-2-2
We're not very fluid with the talking (although we're better than on the first one, I swear!), but I think the music (which is all that really matters, really) is cracking, and nicely varied, from jazz courtesy of Henry Threadgill, to heavy drone and doom in the form of Gate and Burial Hex, via the avant-pop of Broadcast and the experimental drones of Stimmhorn and Tony Conrad. Plus proto-punk from Yoko Ono, Pat Metheny freaking out on guitar, The Durutti Column's post-punk bliss and psychedelic rock from Santana.
Hope you enjoy!
- JPhimister, January 2011
Friday, 7 January 2011
2010 IN REVIEW
Well, fuck me, another year is done and dusted.
Having recovered from a suitably stressful, alcohol-drenched and exhaustingly delirious New Year's Eve bash, I guess the time has come to look back an eventful and interesting year, the first in a brand new decade. I believe there was a time when new decades heralded great excitement and anticipation at wonders to come. Not anymore, as the world appears to lurch from one crisis to another and panic grips the inhabitants of just about every country (in the UK, it would appear that snow is the primary cause of said panic, for some reason). Woo fucking hoo! I mean, it's a sad year when the announcement of a Royal wedding, some shite about X Factor and the arrival of Tron in 3D cinema are deemed the most exciting bits of news worth passing around.
There were some things worth smiling about. America's vile discriminatory law "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", which banned LGBT people from serving openly in the military, was finally repealed. Those Chilean miners got rescued in what looked like a vertical equivalent of the Central Line at rush hour (of course, this is only good news if you ignore that the reason they got stuck miles underground in the first place was because of the gross safety violations of their millionaire employers, but hey, let's be jolly!). Oh, Jeremy Hunt got called something more deserving on morning radio via the hilarity of his name. And, um, er, Jedward's first album tanked pretty much everywhere outside Ireland. Tanked being a relative term of course, sadly...
No, let's face it, 2010 was a stinker. Notwithstanding the never-ending parade of earthquakes, floods, storms, terrorism,, loony dictators (the indefatigable trio of loopers Kim Jong-Il, Robert Mugabe and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, plus some creep in Belarus), wars and gormless celebrities (the "Cunt of the Year" award will be split, I think, between Jordan, Ann Widdecombe, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Simon Cowell) that filled our screens with despair, terror and disgust, there was also the underwhelming British election, which delivered no definite result before the country was handed over to a bunch of Thatcherite rich kids hell-bent on ripping apart our public services for ideological reasons whilst mewling the words "we're all in this together" before slithering back to their multi-million pound homes. I don't think anyone thinks the deficit shouldn't be tackled, but the bloody-minded way the coalition (hello? are you there, LibDems??) are going after the poorer and weakest members of society, whilst ignoring -nah, sucking the arses of- tax dodgers and the bankers who got us into this mess in the first place, borders on the insane.
And of course, when some students and school kids rightly took to the streets to protest the excessive hike in tuition fees (coming from France, the idea of loading kids with debt to get through uni is baffling to me), they were first unceremoniously kettled and bashed by the police and then duly demonised and sneered at by the right-wing media, whilst spineless Nick Clegg tried to pretend he hadn't sold them out during the election. Still, the whole sorry mess had the unexpected effect of making me less nostalgic for my bygone early-twenties, so keep up the good fight, youth of today!
Could be worse, though - we could be in America, where big business has strong-armed even St Obama into a corner, causing him to whittle his stimulus package to the point of pointlessness and crippling his attempt at giving all Americans the chance to get something as basic as health care. This lunacy has seen the rise of a particularly un-grassroots grassroots movement (the Tea Party), whose Fox News-fed absurd rhetoric would be laughable were it not for the fact that idiots like Glen Beck, Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin are actually protecting the interests of a few very rich people whilst pretending to defend the numerous poor. But the Democrats' ineffectiveness and spinelessness (not to mention the fact they themselves are in the pockets of bankers and billionaires) have allowed this craziness to spiral, leading to the Republicans -some of them downright bonkers- winning back the House.
At the centre of much of this bogus far-right shift, in both countries, lies the slime-ball Rupert Murdoch, whose media stranglehold in Britain is set to increase thanks to Jeremy (C)Hunt, our gormless twat of a culture secretary.
But culture remains, and, for all Hunt's slashing of a sector that actually makes £2 for every £1 it spends, it's been pretty amazing in 2010. Susan Philipsz became the first sound artist to win the Turner Prize. Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for the much-lauded Unclie Boonmee Who Remembers His Past Lives, bringing the under-appreciated world of Thai cinema to the global stage, and, perhaps most-hilariously, this year's attempts at preventing the Cowell-backed X Factor song to be Christmas number one was a brilliant take on John Cage's seminal "silent" piece 4'33". Predictably, it failed to do the job, but at least it got a bit of mainstream light to shine on avant-garde music. I was also pleased with The xx's triumph at The Mercury Prize.
I also got the chance to see some wonderful exhibitions in 2010, from Sophie Mann's ghostly photographs at The Photographer's Gallery, to the Hell's Half Acre exhibition in the tunnels under The Old Vic, via the Tate Modern's wondrous show on surveillance and voyeurism and Florian Hecker's "sound sculptures" at the Chisenholm. Modern art is still alive and well, and there are loads of great works to be (re-)discovered.
It wasn't all joy, of course. Beyond the spending cuts and end to the UK Film Council, we also saw the deaths of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson, Ben Keith, Pete Postlethwaite, Mick Karn, Captain Beefheart, Ari Up, Howard Zinn and J.D. Salinger, among quite a few others. The passage of time remains so very cruel.
But there were also great concerts, such as Keiji Haino, Emeralds, Cluster, Charlemagne Palestine, Philip Jeck, The Dead C and John Butcher all illuminating the Godspeed You! Black Emperor-curated All Tomorrow's Parties festival at Butlin's in December. The Canadian post-rockers displayed marvelous taste with their line-up, as did Matt Groening six months earlier, when he brought Toumani Diabate, James Chance, Deerhunter, Konono No1, Boredoms and The Residents to the venerable holiday destination.
I was also hugely fortunate to see the last-ever Throbbing Gristle gig, at London's Village Underground, before Genesis P-Orridge quit the band and 'Sleazy' this mortal coil. They were truly astounding, having continued to evolve since their provocative early days, delivering a set that was expansive, forward-thinking and impossibly loud. Speaking of loud, the Second Layer-organised noise extravaganza at The Grosvenor in Stockwell, featuring Vomir, Voltigeurs, Filthy Turd and The Rita was an experience in volume, aggression and sonic transcendence I am unlikely ever to forget. Other great gigs included Ben Frost at The Luminaire (RIP to a great venue) and a wonderful show by Merzbow at XOYO. All these shows actually demonstrate the number of great concert venues in the capital, and it's worrying that the economic conditions are starting to take their toll.
But the music endures, and 2010 saw genres like hypnagogic pop (H-pop) come of age and breach the mainstream, whilst noise, dubstep and electronica seemed to be in a state of flux, as artists and labels questioned how to innovate, develop and branch out in new directions.
So, without further ado, here's my list of the top 30 albums of 2010:
1. Philip Jeck - An Ark For the Listener (Touch)
Predictably, having been one of the highlights of ATP, and a consistently excellent composer and artist, Philip Jeck delivered an absolute masterpiece, perhaps his greatest work yet on CD. Inspired by poet Gerald Manley Hopkins' work The Wreck of the Deutschland, an ode to 5 nuns who perished at sea, An Ark for the Listener is a dense, wistful album, where Jeck's broken down turntable explorations and avant-garde, droning synth melodies create a rich, mysterious and oblique tapestry.
2. Ensemble Economique - Psychical (Not Not Fun)
Dark and cinematic, Ensemble Economique's exercise in giallo-style horror soundtrack mixed with dub, hip-hop and avant-rock, was one of the most ambitious, challenging and atmospheric H-pop releases of the year. Perhaps it's the dire economic and socio-political climate, but the influence of horror movies loomed large in 2010, and this was a great example of an intelligent, musical use of this influence.
3. Eleh - Location Momentum (Touch)
Deep listening in the Pauline Oliveros sense of the word, the music of mysterious drone artist Eleh is as hard to pin down, assess and comprehend (in the traditional sense) as the individual who creates it. Anonymity is key to Eleh's aesthetic, but the core beauty resides in the dense, minimalist and hypnotic nature of the music, as listless wave generators and stripped-down synth lines contort, fill and caress the ether.
4. Demdike Stare - Liberation Through Hearing (Modern Love)
The excellent Mancunian duo continued their exploration of arcane and sinister textures and references through hypnotic synth patterns, warped dub and wispy electronica. Liberation Through Hearing is the second installment in a bewitching (the word is apt) trilogy that has cemented Demdike Stare's position at the forefront of British hauntological music.
5. Yellow Swans - Going Places (Type)
Tragically, this is Yellow Swans' swansong, but it may be their best album to date. Reining in their harshest tendencies, they delivered an expansive, cinematographic masterpiece of noisy drone, its mournful synth lines adding depth to the crunch and grind. The result? An elegiac and haunting addition to the noise canon.
6. Oneohtrix Point Never - Returnal (Editions Mego)
Much more consistent and unified than previous releases, Returnal is Oneohtrix Point Never, aka Daniel Lopatin's arrival on the big stage and he delivers big time. As well as his new-age-tinted excursions into synth-heavy electro-drone, with hints of Tangerine Dream and even Vangelis, which on Returnal are even more compact, yet emotionally-charged, than before, he also opens with a blistering noise-drone freak out that was as astounding as it was unexpected.
7. Hype Williams - Untitled (Carnivals)
Blurring the lines emphatically between hip-hop, art-pop, dance, dubstep and even disco, Hype Williams are a mysterious London-based duo whose eclectic debut is like a weird, half-dreamlike, half-nightmarish trawl through nocturnal streets with the iPod set to shuffle. Hysterically over-the-top, it nonetheless preserves H-pop's initial spirit of ambiguity and nostalgia, whilst remaining resolutely forward-thinking.
8. Vomir - Renonce (Crucial Blaze)
After a decade of genre cross-pollination and soul-searching, noise was returned to its harshest, most abstract form with the emergence of Harsh Noise Walls, and French artist Vomir's Renonce is the perfect, hour-long demonstration of the sub-genre's capacity for sonic assault and sensory deprivation. As much a sound/art experiment as it is an album, Renonce is overwhelming, terrifying and, ultimately, hypnotic.
9. Forest Swords - Dagger Paths (Olde English Spelling Bee)
Olde English Spelling Bee emerged in 2010 as one of the record labels for hypnagogic pop, and Dagger Paths was probably the company's stand-out release. Though short, it perfectly encapsulated Forest Swords' oblique combination of brittle, nocturnal dub and haunting post-noise atmospherics.
10. The Dead C - Patience (Ba Da Bing!)
The New Zealanders are veterans of the noise/avant-rock scene, and each release of theirs is an event in itself. Patience sees them pushing out into free-form, improvised drone-rock, with extended guitar workouts and monolithic rhythm patterns evoking krautock giants like Ash Ra Tempel, or the unrelenting sub-metal of Skullflower and Les Rallizes Denudes. Pure rock at its best!
11. The Black Dog - Music for Real Airports (Soma)
It may be a rather unfair rebuke to Brian Eno's seminal Music for Airports, but this remains an essential album, a troubling concept album about the soullessness and emotional alienation of airports. The synth melodies are dark, the sound effects cold and subtly jarring. A nightmarish sonic trawl through an airport, between endless queues, unhelpful staff and deserted waiting lounges, its claustrophobic atmosphere was almost unrivaled in UK electronic music last year.
12. Rangers - Suburban Tours (Olde English Spelling Bee)
Highly praised, Rangers' debut is a seminal piece of hypnagogic pop-rock, a reverie depicting sun-bleached suburban eighties' neighbourhoods, portrayed with a mixture of nostalgia and disgust. Latter day power pop of the Black Star variety is refracted through wobbly vocal effects and subtle inflections of jarring post-noise to create a beguiling and ultimately catchy gem of an album.
13. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Love Is a Stream (Type)
Shoegaze music is pretty much dead these days, weighted down by the shadow of My Bloody Valentine and the unjustified savaging by critics back in the day. By California-based musician Cantu-Ledesma has updated the genre almost single-handedly here, stripping back the excesses of those 90s bands to focus on the emotions and the drone. Blissful and hazy, Love Is A Stream takes the spirit of shoegaze, but blasts it into the post-noise age.
14. Sun Araw - On Patrol (Not Not Fun)
Sun Araw (Cameron Stallones) has long been at the forefront of the H-Pop scene, and here takes his awkward, wobbly neo-psychedelia into darker territories with On Patrol, with its futuristic neon cover and Blade Runner ambiance. Dense and peculiar, the music on On Patrol features acid-drenched guitars alongside clunky synth patterns and distorted, mashed-up vocals. Dub and psych never sounded this great together.
15. Neil Young - Le Noise (Reprise)
In the midst of all these youthful explorers of noise and fucked-up pop, Neil Young stood like a statue to the old guard... and delivered an album of noise and fucked-up pop! With help from producer Daniel Lanois, Young created a brief solo album where his aged voice and grungy guitar were double-tracked and looped over themselves to create a ghostly folk-metal orchestra. He still refuses to fade away, but has a way to go before he burns out, by the sound of things.
16. The North Sea - Bloodlines (Type)
Who would have thought power electronics would be back in 2010? Actually, with noise music getting more and more coverage, even on the Pitchfork website, over the last decade, maybe it shouldn't be much of a surprise. Whatever the case, Bloodlines is a dark, frightening and enveloping canvas of sound, steeped in arcane lore and heathen noise.
17. Rene Hell - Porcelain Opera (Type)
Modernising old-fashioned analogue synth drones was not just the domain of Oneohtrix Point Never, as former noisician Jeff Witscher, aka Rene Hell unleashed his paranoid, icy vision on this fabulous debut. Any of Daniel Lopatin's warmth and nostalgia are stripped away on Porcelain Opera, replaced by crackling, minimalist drones and shuddering percussion.
18. Indignant Senility - Plays Wagner (Type)
Evidently inspired by The Caretaker's approach to deconstructing old vinyl, Indignant Senility nonetheless created a singular, haunting (and haunted) work, using ancient recordings of works by Richard Wagner and ladling on the effects and the haze to deliver an album of dense, nocturnal drone.
19. Pan sonic - Gravitoni (Blast First (petite))
2010 was a good year for veteran electronic duos, with Autechre and The Chemical Brothers also releasing new (and, in Autechre's case, well-received) albums. Pan Sonic trumped the lot though with this brilliantly unceremonious swansong album, in which thundering club beats were allied to vicious power electronics, proving that whilst time may have dampened their desire to continue the Pan sonic brand, it did nothing to halt their creative spark.
20. Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma (Warp Records)
His Los Angeles album was among the top records of 2008, and Cosmogramma will always pale by comparison. But, despite its boundless ambition that takes in just about any genre imaginable, from free jazz to freak rock to dubstep, it still maintains that typically Flying Lotus talent for scattered, ruthlessly infectious beats and tunes.
21. Toro Y Moi - Causers of This (Carpark)
"Chillwave" may be one of the dafter genre names I've heard of late (alongside "glo-fi"), but for all of acts like Toro Y Moi's taste for cheesy MOR influences and disco-inflected soft rock, there's no denying Chaz Bundick's knack for catchy pop tunes, glorious post-Beach Boys melodic hooks and lush vocal performances.
22. Scuba - Triangulation (Hotflush)
Dubstep is, if I admit it, somewhat on the wane, as new acts embrace garish funk and glow-in-the-dark bleeps and bloops to try and come up with something new. But Scuba reminded all of the glory of vintage garage/dub, effortlessly evoking Burial or Kode 9 whilst retaining a unique new voice with his darkly urban electronica and thumping beats.
23. Darkstar - North (Hyperdub)
If dubstep was struggling to maintain its voice in a constantly-evolving world, Hyperdub once again showed the way by signing artists that explored fresh and innovative ground. Darkstar are the perfect example, their synth/programming-heavy electronic pop bearing hints of eighties synth-pop, but above all carrying a post-modern, despondent vibe of romantic urban alienation, somewhere between Burial's nocturnal haze and the bright lights of Human League-esque dance.
24. Salem - King Night (IAMSOUND)
Another new genre reared its head in 2010, "witch house", but, unlike "chillwave", this is actually remarkably tricky to define, as walls of glorious synth noise (a la M83) are offset by jerky dubstep beats and murky sub-sub-Spaceape vocal murmuring. The mix is uneven at times, but with King Night, Salem announced themselves as a band to watch this decade.
25. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today (4AD)
The H-pop craze propelled maverick Californian hippy Ariel Pink straight into the limelight, and he responded with his best album, and his first on a major label and with a backing band. Rather than water down his oddball sound, it enhances it, as glorious pop tunes are jostled and jarred by unusual tempo shifts and bizarre nonsense poetry lyrics.
26. Emeralds - Does It Look Like I'm Here? (Editions Mego)
They were much better live but Does It Look Like I'm Here is a cracking album, more concise and focused than 2009's What Happened?, and featuring several breathtaking melodies and passages of lush electronic drone.
27. Excepter - Presidence (Paw Tracks)
Excepter are probably unique, and their music is suitably undefinable. They may be friends of indy faves Animal Collective, but there is something darker and more troubling about Excepter's sprawling, heavily-improvised post-noise electronica. Presidence is overlong, but worth persisting with.
28. Actress - Splazsh (Honest Jon's)
Splazsh was The Wire's album of the year and, whilst I (evidently) won't go that far, I still think Actress displays here that he is one of Britain's most forward-thinking, adventurous and inventive producers, his intelligent mixture of just about every post-drum'n'bass dance music pointing the way for the coming years.
29. Ikonika - Contact, Love, Want, Have (Hyperdub)
Hyperdub continued to push into new fields of post-dub-inflected music and, like Darkstar's North, Contact Love Want Hate was a much less sepulchral effort than previous Hyperdub classics like Waiting for You or Untrue. But Ikonika's infectious, dancefloor-tailored dub-like tunes, with their flashy video game influences and ramshackle beats, demonstrated that the London-based label are still forerunners when it comes to following the pulse of UK dance.
30. Automelodi - Automelodi (Wierd)
Unabashedly retro, Automelodi's debut harks back to a time when analogue synths and self-consciously romantic lyrics dominated the airwaves, but does so with a verve and zest that are remarkably fresh and exciting. "Buanderie Jazz" remains one of the song's I listened to most in 2010.
So there you have it: 30 excellent -in some cases phenomenal- albums that contributed massively to making 2010 a year worth experiencing. In addition, I've picked out 5 compilations/reissues that all came out last year, and are, in each case, nothing short of wondrous. From the experimental noise and glitch of Kevin Drumm to Thomas Koener's minimalist dark ambient soundscapes, via Charlemagne Palestine and Catherine Christer Hennix's inventive and delicately minimal avant-garde compositions, and the mind-melting, psychedelic noise-rock of the best Rallizes Denudes album, these are all fundamental, marvelous and heart-stirring releases, and quite literally essential.
1. Kevin Drumm - Necro Acoustic (Pica Disk)
2. Charlemagne Palestine - Strumming Music (Sub Rosa)
3. Les Rallizes Denudes - Blind Baby Has Its Mother's Eyes (Phoenix)
4. Catherine Christer Hennix - The Electric Harpsichord (Die Schachtel)
5. Thomas Koener - Nunatak/Teimo/Permafrost (Type)
Special mention has to go to Type Records, who really were the dominant label for me in 2010. Not only did they release a plethora of great albums last year, but I also discovered past gems, such as then-teenage wunderkind Khonnor's proto-hypnagogic pop gem Handwriting, the masterpiece Landings by drone/field music composer Richard Skelton and label founder Xela's In Bocca Al Lupo. If their output is anything as exciting in 2011, then Type will be the record label to follow.
So, for all my grievances, 2010 will ultimately be marked by a sense of musical hope, as great albums and gigs lifted me above the murk and the despondency. To crown it all, I finally started making my own forays into the world of music creation and appreciation. This blog continues to take up much of my time, and I'm hoping to promote it to magazines and journalists in the hope of developing it further. Better still, my good -and brilliant- guitarist friend Chris Gehlen and I recorded the first (and hopefully not the last) edition of a new radio show, called Noise in the Ether, which went out on Samurai FM. Here's the link, and I hope you like what we have to say and the music we present: http://tinyurl.com/35onq86
Finally, Chris and I recorded our first session of free improv/post-punk and are hoping to develop our ideas further this year, hopefully with gigs and an album. And I have even made my own forays into solo noise music creation, with some rough recordings to my name.
So fuck it! We can stick it to those c*nts who think art, music and culture are luxuries fit to be chopped and dismembered to satisfy anti-liberal, lowbrow, corporate ideologies. The art and music worlds took some hefty hits in 2010, yet still delivered several moments of beauty and genius that all could benefit from. Even when it starts eating itself, society will always need serenading to sleep at night. To paraphrase Neil Young, long may we run.
Bring on the new year...
- J.Phimister, still lost, Jan. 2011
Having recovered from a suitably stressful, alcohol-drenched and exhaustingly delirious New Year's Eve bash, I guess the time has come to look back an eventful and interesting year, the first in a brand new decade. I believe there was a time when new decades heralded great excitement and anticipation at wonders to come. Not anymore, as the world appears to lurch from one crisis to another and panic grips the inhabitants of just about every country (in the UK, it would appear that snow is the primary cause of said panic, for some reason). Woo fucking hoo! I mean, it's a sad year when the announcement of a Royal wedding, some shite about X Factor and the arrival of Tron in 3D cinema are deemed the most exciting bits of news worth passing around.
There were some things worth smiling about. America's vile discriminatory law "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", which banned LGBT people from serving openly in the military, was finally repealed. Those Chilean miners got rescued in what looked like a vertical equivalent of the Central Line at rush hour (of course, this is only good news if you ignore that the reason they got stuck miles underground in the first place was because of the gross safety violations of their millionaire employers, but hey, let's be jolly!). Oh, Jeremy Hunt got called something more deserving on morning radio via the hilarity of his name. And, um, er, Jedward's first album tanked pretty much everywhere outside Ireland. Tanked being a relative term of course, sadly...
No, let's face it, 2010 was a stinker. Notwithstanding the never-ending parade of earthquakes, floods, storms, terrorism,, loony dictators (the indefatigable trio of loopers Kim Jong-Il, Robert Mugabe and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, plus some creep in Belarus), wars and gormless celebrities (the "Cunt of the Year" award will be split, I think, between Jordan, Ann Widdecombe, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Simon Cowell) that filled our screens with despair, terror and disgust, there was also the underwhelming British election, which delivered no definite result before the country was handed over to a bunch of Thatcherite rich kids hell-bent on ripping apart our public services for ideological reasons whilst mewling the words "we're all in this together" before slithering back to their multi-million pound homes. I don't think anyone thinks the deficit shouldn't be tackled, but the bloody-minded way the coalition (hello? are you there, LibDems??) are going after the poorer and weakest members of society, whilst ignoring -nah, sucking the arses of- tax dodgers and the bankers who got us into this mess in the first place, borders on the insane.
 |
| Guardian cartoonist Martin Rowson on the coalition |
Could be worse, though - we could be in America, where big business has strong-armed even St Obama into a corner, causing him to whittle his stimulus package to the point of pointlessness and crippling his attempt at giving all Americans the chance to get something as basic as health care. This lunacy has seen the rise of a particularly un-grassroots grassroots movement (the Tea Party), whose Fox News-fed absurd rhetoric would be laughable were it not for the fact that idiots like Glen Beck, Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin are actually protecting the interests of a few very rich people whilst pretending to defend the numerous poor. But the Democrats' ineffectiveness and spinelessness (not to mention the fact they themselves are in the pockets of bankers and billionaires) have allowed this craziness to spiral, leading to the Republicans -some of them downright bonkers- winning back the House.
At the centre of much of this bogus far-right shift, in both countries, lies the slime-ball Rupert Murdoch, whose media stranglehold in Britain is set to increase thanks to Jeremy (C)Hunt, our gormless twat of a culture secretary.
But culture remains, and, for all Hunt's slashing of a sector that actually makes £2 for every £1 it spends, it's been pretty amazing in 2010. Susan Philipsz became the first sound artist to win the Turner Prize. Apichatpong Weerasethakul won the Palme d'Or at Cannes for the much-lauded Unclie Boonmee Who Remembers His Past Lives, bringing the under-appreciated world of Thai cinema to the global stage, and, perhaps most-hilariously, this year's attempts at preventing the Cowell-backed X Factor song to be Christmas number one was a brilliant take on John Cage's seminal "silent" piece 4'33". Predictably, it failed to do the job, but at least it got a bit of mainstream light to shine on avant-garde music. I was also pleased with The xx's triumph at The Mercury Prize.
I also got the chance to see some wonderful exhibitions in 2010, from Sophie Mann's ghostly photographs at The Photographer's Gallery, to the Hell's Half Acre exhibition in the tunnels under The Old Vic, via the Tate Modern's wondrous show on surveillance and voyeurism and Florian Hecker's "sound sculptures" at the Chisenholm. Modern art is still alive and well, and there are loads of great works to be (re-)discovered.
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| Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson |
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| Emeralds at ATP, December 2010 |
I was also hugely fortunate to see the last-ever Throbbing Gristle gig, at London's Village Underground, before Genesis P-Orridge quit the band and 'Sleazy' this mortal coil. They were truly astounding, having continued to evolve since their provocative early days, delivering a set that was expansive, forward-thinking and impossibly loud. Speaking of loud, the Second Layer-organised noise extravaganza at The Grosvenor in Stockwell, featuring Vomir, Voltigeurs, Filthy Turd and The Rita was an experience in volume, aggression and sonic transcendence I am unlikely ever to forget. Other great gigs included Ben Frost at The Luminaire (RIP to a great venue) and a wonderful show by Merzbow at XOYO. All these shows actually demonstrate the number of great concert venues in the capital, and it's worrying that the economic conditions are starting to take their toll.
But the music endures, and 2010 saw genres like hypnagogic pop (H-pop) come of age and breach the mainstream, whilst noise, dubstep and electronica seemed to be in a state of flux, as artists and labels questioned how to innovate, develop and branch out in new directions.
So, without further ado, here's my list of the top 30 albums of 2010:
1. Philip Jeck - An Ark For the Listener (Touch)
2. Ensemble Economique - Psychical (Not Not Fun)
3. Eleh - Location Momentum (Touch)
4. Demdike Stare - Liberation Through Hearing (Modern Love)
5. Yellow Swans - Going Places (Type)
6. Oneohtrix Point Never - Returnal (Editions Mego)
7. Hype Williams - Untitled (Carnivals)
8. Vomir - Renonce (Crucial Blaze)
9. Forest Swords - Dagger Paths (Olde English Spelling Bee)
10. The Dead C - Patience (Ba Da Bing!)
11. The Black Dog - Music for Real Airports (Soma)
12. Rangers - Suburban Tours (Olde English Spelling Bee)
13. Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Love Is a Stream (Type)
14. Sun Araw - On Patrol (Not Not Fun)
15. Neil Young - Le Noise (Reprise)
16. The North Sea - Bloodlines (Type)
17. Rene Hell - Porcelain Opera (Type)
18. Indignant Senility - Plays Wagner (Type)
19. Pan sonic - Gravitoni (Blast First (petite))
20. Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma (Warp Records)
21. Toro Y Moi - Causers of This (Carpark)
22. Scuba - Triangulation (Hotflush)
23. Darkstar - North (Hyperdub)
24. Salem - King Night (IAMSOUND)
25. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today (4AD)
26. Emeralds - Does It Look Like I'm Here? (Editions Mego)
27. Excepter - Presidence (Paw Tracks)
28. Actress - Splazsh (Honest Jon's)
29. Ikonika - Contact, Love, Want, Have (Hyperdub)
30. Automelodi - Automelodi (Wierd)
So there you have it: 30 excellent -in some cases phenomenal- albums that contributed massively to making 2010 a year worth experiencing. In addition, I've picked out 5 compilations/reissues that all came out last year, and are, in each case, nothing short of wondrous. From the experimental noise and glitch of Kevin Drumm to Thomas Koener's minimalist dark ambient soundscapes, via Charlemagne Palestine and Catherine Christer Hennix's inventive and delicately minimal avant-garde compositions, and the mind-melting, psychedelic noise-rock of the best Rallizes Denudes album, these are all fundamental, marvelous and heart-stirring releases, and quite literally essential.
1. Kevin Drumm - Necro Acoustic (Pica Disk)
2. Charlemagne Palestine - Strumming Music (Sub Rosa)
3. Les Rallizes Denudes - Blind Baby Has Its Mother's Eyes (Phoenix)
4. Catherine Christer Hennix - The Electric Harpsichord (Die Schachtel)
5. Thomas Koener - Nunatak/Teimo/Permafrost (Type)
Special mention has to go to Type Records, who really were the dominant label for me in 2010. Not only did they release a plethora of great albums last year, but I also discovered past gems, such as then-teenage wunderkind Khonnor's proto-hypnagogic pop gem Handwriting, the masterpiece Landings by drone/field music composer Richard Skelton and label founder Xela's In Bocca Al Lupo. If their output is anything as exciting in 2011, then Type will be the record label to follow.
So, for all my grievances, 2010 will ultimately be marked by a sense of musical hope, as great albums and gigs lifted me above the murk and the despondency. To crown it all, I finally started making my own forays into the world of music creation and appreciation. This blog continues to take up much of my time, and I'm hoping to promote it to magazines and journalists in the hope of developing it further. Better still, my good -and brilliant- guitarist friend Chris Gehlen and I recorded the first (and hopefully not the last) edition of a new radio show, called Noise in the Ether, which went out on Samurai FM. Here's the link, and I hope you like what we have to say and the music we present: http://tinyurl.com/35onq86
Finally, Chris and I recorded our first session of free improv/post-punk and are hoping to develop our ideas further this year, hopefully with gigs and an album. And I have even made my own forays into solo noise music creation, with some rough recordings to my name.
So fuck it! We can stick it to those c*nts who think art, music and culture are luxuries fit to be chopped and dismembered to satisfy anti-liberal, lowbrow, corporate ideologies. The art and music worlds took some hefty hits in 2010, yet still delivered several moments of beauty and genius that all could benefit from. Even when it starts eating itself, society will always need serenading to sleep at night. To paraphrase Neil Young, long may we run.
Bring on the new year...
- J.Phimister, still lost, Jan. 2011
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