news about Retromania's foreign editions and the American first-time release of Energy Flash
Retromania
* the French translation is published by Le Mot et le Reste Éditions on February 9th as Rétromania: comment la culture pop recycle son passé pour s'inventer un futur. I will be in Paris for the launch 2/20 to 2/23, details about the presentation on 2/20 to follow soon. * the Spanish edition is being published in April by Caja Negra Editora as Retromanía: la adicción de la cultura pop a su propio pasado.
* the German edition is published in October by Ventil Verlag.
* in other Retromania news, the US edition has gone into its fourth printing, while the UK large-format edition, now sold out, has been replaced by the smaller, cheaper B-format with a new cover Energy Flash
Energy Flash is issued in its expanded/updated form in America in May via Soft Skull. Because the original Generation Ecstasy was an abridged version of the UK edition, this is the first time it's been available here in its full-length form; it also has the 40 thousand extra words, covering developments in the 2000s, that were added to the UK-only 2008 anniversary edition. More information here and news about events TK.
Thursday, February 02, 2012
really is a terrific record, kudos to Trunk for making it available again - more information here
Wednesday, February 01, 2012
reminds me of this
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
tickling my fancy
got a piece on the Fred Judd and Daph Oram archival issues in the next Frieze
would have bunged this solo project by Radiophonic mainstay David Cain in the Frieze-r if i'd known it was coming -- sterling archeology by the indefatigible Jonathan Trunk Esq
and this one too ( although it doesn't quite fit, being American, plus Suzanne Ciani shortly after the bleepy early phase captured on this CD headed into outright New Age)
new collection of essays by the great Mark Dery, out April on University of Minnesota Press, foreword by the great Bruce Sterling
last year was the first year in years when i didn't have a Ghost Box LP in my end-of-year... that Advisory Circle album never quite clicked me with i must admit... wondered sometimes if maybe just maybe JB done spread himself too thin (three great Cafe Kaput releases in rapid succession end-of-2010/early-2011) but in truth As the Crow Flies probably just hit me at the wrong time... i will go back to it.. at any rate this new Belbury P gets me back on the GBox program... a new, "live"-r sound, with guitar and what sounds like real drums and a real-seeming sense of space. yet also quite techno-y in places
and here's an interview with Jim Jupp at FACT on the "mood board" that makes up the new record (think ploughman's lunch meets Turkish psych) plus a Belbury Poly mix
got a piece on legendary photographer/Basement 5-er Dennis Morris and John Lydon's Jamaican Holiday in early 1978 in the next issue of Another Man magazine -- this is a photobook from his days as court photographer at Gunter Grove
often thought how striking it is that so many of the great "British" singers and musicians -- John Lydon, Lennon/McCartney, Morrissey/Marr, Van Morrison, Kevin Rowland, Elvis Costello, Ian McCulloch -- are actually Irish. Well here's an interesting book on this very topic and the "double consciousness" that Morrissey caught so plangently with the title "Irish Blood, English Heart" (if not the actual song, which is pretty nothing-y)
The Bad Music Era gets its day! Let's get down to Work (to borrow a genre-coinage off Mr Kid Shirt). Trevor "Playgroup" Jackson inches into the mid-to-late Eighties with this double comp of Goth-dance, Cold Wave, EBM and dancefloor oriented second-wave Industrial. (And he's not alone, not at all: Blackest Ever Black/Raime, Prurient/Vatican Shadow, Gatekeeper, Perc, et al). How weird to find oneself, in 2012, grooving to the Executive Slacks!
Monday, January 30, 2012
"why so glum, chums?"--interesting piece by Ryan Diduck for The Quietus on "The New Bleak" aka "hypnagothica" and its relation to recent political/economic/environmental traumas
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ talking of dark things, Valerio Mattioli, who writes for LaRepubblica tells me that there is an Italian counterpart to hauntology that was recently covered as part of an article in Blow Up (sort of Italy's The Wire) on contemporary Italian occult psychedelia. The journalist Antonio Ciarletta, says Mattioli, enumerates its ingredients as: "local folklore, the popular spaghetti cinema of the 60s/70s (especially mondo movies, giallo, spaghetti westerns, cannibal movies etc), even Catholicism, and a typical 'Italian vibe' all around.... Many of the musicians openly mention composers such as Piero Umiliani, Ennio Morricone and basically the whole Italian soundtracks/library music school".
"To me," continues Mattioli, "what’s interesting in these bands, is that their kind of hauntology avoids the eerie and pastoral feeling of the English counterpart, as well as the pop-cheesy attitude of the American hypnagogic pop. On the contrary, their music is blatantly dark, esoteric and sometimes bloody, actually reflecting the 'sun & violence' culture which – despite the clichés – is a commonplace here. Of course, there’s the homage to a popular imagery which is deeply rooted here, and that somehow reflects the Italian identity better than your typical Venice postcard. But it’s also like saying that memories often can be nightmares, especially if you live in a country which is half Europe/half... well, Italy. Kind of Sergio Leone/Lucio Fulci induced nostalgia...
"When you go back with your memories to the contemporary Italian golden age – to say, the 60s of the Dolce Vita etc – you can’t escape the ghosts of that same era: terrorism, urban favelas, corruption and so on. Even the big masterpieces of the Italian literature, TV and cinema typically deal with such atmospheres - they're always bloody, violent, excessive. Somehow, the bands analyzed by Ciarletta are here to remind us that the Italian good old days (when future seemed possible) were a very depressed place, and that the present is filled with those ghosts.
"It also comes quite natural to understand this trend as a reflection of the current feelings among many Italians: we perceive our country as a declining glory with no future at all; and economic crisis, crime and political warfare create a sort of Late Empire atmosphere..."
Bands operating in this zone include Cannibal Movie, Donato Epiro, In Zaire, Orfanado, Spettro Family, Heroin In Tahiti [Mattioli's own band], and on the "more 'pagan-catholic folklore' tip", Mamuthones and Father Murphy . TheAwayTeam/Polysick are "a sort of modern Piero Umiliani" with projects lined up for 100% Silk, and Planet Mu. "Needless to say: all these artists form a sort of family, they’re all friends and do stuff together, they share projects and labels etc."
An example of what Mattioli dubs "Mondo-cannibals":
Mattioli calls this sub-category "spaghetti wastelands" (love it!)
and this is Father Murphy, who I saw in Pistoia last year
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
terrific controlled rant from mnml sggs's PC on "comfort house" (and by implication all music-as-comfort-food* scenarios), inspired by two mixes suffocated by politesse and the feeling of having "heard it all before’":
"it could have been mixed 12 years ago and not sounded any different. In fact, if it were mixed 12 years ago, it would be very likely to sound exactly like it does. I've been thinking about this for some time, and I've decided that it really matters. Making a mix from 2000 in 2012... it matters. Well, it may not matter to you. But it matters to me... For me there is something unbearably complacent at work in the decision to make this mix in 2012... This weird over-reverence that makes you want to desecrate things you love and care about... is this how punks felt?"
