Sunday, May 16, 2004
Anybody out there happen to know if Normal Position, perpetrator of the intriguingly titled album Rave Killed The Romance, is in fact Position Normal? Apparently the record's got lots of children's voices sampled on it which sorta convinces me it must be those guys...
Neologist supreme Philip Sherburne has a go at coining some terms for that anxiety-of-missing-out music-fiend syndrome
And Tiit Kusnets has a couple of cool suggestions:
"cornuconstipation"
"the harrasment of riches"
although they're more re. the excess of supply/backed-up-with-yer-stacks/audio-bloat sensation than the anxiety per se
And Tiit Kusnets has a couple of cool suggestions:
"cornuconstipation"
"the harrasment of riches"
although they're more re. the excess of supply/backed-up-with-yer-stacks/audio-bloat sensation than the anxiety per se
Wednesday, May 12, 2004
feeling
various artists, fuzzy boombox v. 2 (fuzzybox)
greg davis, curling pond woods (carpark)
areal records/various artists, bi sneunzehn (areal)
the mountain goats, we shall all be healed (4AD)
charalambides, joy shapes (kranky)
the caretaker, we’ll all go riding on a rainbow (V/Vm)
makes me think of seances for some reason -- eerie, sort of position normal from beyond the grave, no solid form whatsoever, just tenebrous emanations
stone love, new years eve, 03/04 (yard tape)
sandoz, digital lifeforms redux (mute)
nao wave, post punk from brazil (comp, label tba)
dna, dna on dna (no more records)
martina topley-bird, anything (independiente)
good to hear that shortcake-crumbling-in-the-mouth voice again. She’s got a slight lisp, hasn’t she -- I never noticed that before. lisps rule.
matthew dear, backstroke (spectral)
D12, world (shady/interscope)
Killer tune: “american psycho II”. And the single of course.
Petey pablo, "freek-a-leak"
Lil jon produced chip off the usher ‘yeah’ block, right down to the teknoriff that could be da hool/rave creator at their most effectively massive-pandering
M83, dead cities, red seas & lost ghosts (mute)
Killer tune: “noise”. apparently influenced by tangerine dream although not apparent on this track. but definitely a reference point to note down for this year's Uberhipster Index (oh yes, it's annual, believe)
dj dara, the antidote (breakbeat science)
hakan libdo, clockwise rmxs ep (shitkatapult)
!!!, louden up now! (touch and go)
it’s all about the drum sound. pure groove, everything else is superfluous
really feeling
ivan smagghe presents death disco (eskimo recordings)
most exciting mixcd I’ve heard in many a moon and apparently this isn’t even his best mixcd. Killer tune: kiki, “luv sikk”. almost enough to re-engage me vis-a-vis dance culture! kind of what i thought archigram would sound like. dramatic, boombastic, somehow symphonic.
MarkOne/plasticman/slaughter mob--grime (rephlex)
The return of faceless techno bollocks. The thing about this stuff, the reason I can see it might actually gain ground on the pirates and with the massive, is a/ the danceability and uptempo NRG b/ the dependability. See, stuff that has vocal and lyrical content, when it’s mediocre, it’s a helluva lot more aggravating than mediocre instrumental/tracky stuff. Something about average MCing with samey lyric content (that overdose of guntalk/misogyny thing simon silverdollar was complaining about a while back), it’s really fucking grating in the way that samey sublow/croydon sound just isn’t. somehow the verbal element really rams the impoverishment of imagination right in your face. At the same time--and everybody knows this, don’t they?--when you compare each style’s highest heights and absolute peak exponents, the MC stuff (proper grime, as commonly understood in other words) is just a whole level above the tracky stuff. “Hard Graft” (here excellently reversioned as “industrial graft”) was one of my faves last year but you compare it with “boys love girls” or “birds in the sky” and it’s like….. nah. The return of vocals (songs, song-fragment, MCs, whatever) is THE defining post-rave paradigm shift from circa 1998 on -from 2step to folktronica to green velvet to electro/nu-wave to (some) microhouse to grime to… -- and I don't seem much sign that’s about to change any time soon. (although the radical defacialisation-as-intensification shift as in the birth of acid house etc would be even more radical in today's supaceleb culture than it was in '88 i spose). but back to croydon sound and Grime -- as faceless techno bollocks secondary tier biznis goes, this comp is most defintly ruff. good on headphones, good in dark bass-dense confined clubspaces.
the eternals, rawar style (aesthetics)
untaggable -- hints of various post-s (-punk, -rock --there’s some links to tortoise in terms of past drummers, who engineered the records in the studio etc), of the loopier side of hip hop/trip hop (maxinquaye's weirder, more swordfishtrombones-y side), maybe even the faintest hint of 2-Tone at its most filmic (more specials, dammers going loco in the studio) … sometimes the elements don’t quite gel but all the more enjoyable in a not-quite-get-your-head-around-it way… I know that singer/keyboarist/sampler-controller Damon Locks is a fan of basement 5 AND funboy 3 which seems germane somehow although they don’t actually sound anything like basement 5 and only a tiny bit like funboy 3. Killer tune: “bewareness”
Richard h. kirk earlier/later (mute)
lives up to nick gutterbreaks praise, esp. the second disc of early days stuff. and worth the price just for the front cover --photo booth pic of kirk as a teenager looking like this sort of glam kid gone feral/reverted to hippie -- bowie meets peter the wild boy
twista, “overnight celebrity”
still don’t care for the sentiments overmuch, but what a production, that violin lick, luvvit
nina sky feat jabba, "move your body"
this year’s Lumidee? (except it’s sung in tune) [sorry didn’t mean to reopen that wound]. sonixly this is like.... ooh, luscious jackson meets bleep’n’bass meets diwali (except less frantic). vocally it’s sexy without being self-demeaning inna pole dancing styleee or self-goddessifying inna insufferable froideur/hauteur beyonce-stylee, just this wonderful understated confidence and… not even sass, just self-possession… and it’s a song for and about the girls
colder, again (output)
killer tune: “where”. a brilliant update of gang of four but in a much more post-electronica studio-sculpted way that really kinda shows up some of the more literal resurrections of the andy gill guitarsound these last few years
ruff sqwad, pirate show april (?) 04
new brand flex, pirate show apri (?) 04
desi desi desi
no messing about here -- full-on, straight to the pleasure centres, ruthlessly entertaining, and very very shiny. Well they’ve been blinging it for centuries, the indians, haven’t they.
david sylvian/ryuichi sakamoto, “world citizen” (samadhisound)
totally ambushed by this one--it’s a straight up, totally plainspoken, direct to the jugular let’s-not-mince-words-shall-we protest song about everything that’s happened since 9/11 that then goes into a sort of utopian plaint -- sort of "Imagine" for Wire readers, which sounds vomitous admittedly, EXCEPT the music’s not really avant and the production’s nothing like what you’d expect (hard to see where sakamoto’s contribution resides and it’s nothing like that last sylvian album which I never managed to get into i must shamefully admit), no this is sort of lush AOR/studio-folk, almost like tracy chapman for a post-compression era (i'm not making this sound very enticing am I?) totally radio-ready, you could imagine it being a big hit if any station in this country had the guts to play it. I dunno, if anybody else sang this maybe it would totally bypass me but the idea of David Sylvian being so affected by the events of the last couple of years and emerging from his little cloud of serenity up in vermont or wherever it is and feeling like he just had to speak out… I found it really touching, and the "world citizen” concept is a lovely trope to base the whole song around. In some weird way it’s like a musical parallel to the Pillbox. Anybody else, it might seem hectoring but in his still suave-voice, "world citizen" works.
sorta kinda feeling (a bit)
the beta band, heroes to zeroes (regal/astralwerks)
there’s something wrong with this record but enough of what used to be right (mainly persisting in the vocal melodies and great time-capsule-from-1966 singing) to make you not quite ready to give up on it. hate records like that! I’ve not got the space for lingerers! the closets are chockablock
not feeling
radio 4, stealing of a nation (astralwerks)
c.f. the sylvian record, except this time I didn’t tear up…. One certainly shares their concern, feels the rage, and appreciates the fact that a neo-postpunk group’s actually trying to supply some actual, like, content and political edge, but… to be brutally honest it all comes over a bit midnight oily. The vocals remind me of big audio dynamite or even jesus jones; the production is overslick, like their aim is to be the Linkin Park of neo-postpunk, and (unlike !!!) the un-swinging groove isn’t punk-funk, it’s dance-rock -- subtle difference, but the chasm between gang of four and INXS resides therein.
various artists, fuzzy boombox v. 2 (fuzzybox)
greg davis, curling pond woods (carpark)
areal records/various artists, bi sneunzehn (areal)
the mountain goats, we shall all be healed (4AD)
charalambides, joy shapes (kranky)
the caretaker, we’ll all go riding on a rainbow (V/Vm)
makes me think of seances for some reason -- eerie, sort of position normal from beyond the grave, no solid form whatsoever, just tenebrous emanations
stone love, new years eve, 03/04 (yard tape)
sandoz, digital lifeforms redux (mute)
nao wave, post punk from brazil (comp, label tba)
dna, dna on dna (no more records)
martina topley-bird, anything (independiente)
good to hear that shortcake-crumbling-in-the-mouth voice again. She’s got a slight lisp, hasn’t she -- I never noticed that before. lisps rule.
matthew dear, backstroke (spectral)
D12, world (shady/interscope)
Killer tune: “american psycho II”. And the single of course.
Petey pablo, "freek-a-leak"
Lil jon produced chip off the usher ‘yeah’ block, right down to the teknoriff that could be da hool/rave creator at their most effectively massive-pandering
M83, dead cities, red seas & lost ghosts (mute)
Killer tune: “noise”. apparently influenced by tangerine dream although not apparent on this track. but definitely a reference point to note down for this year's Uberhipster Index (oh yes, it's annual, believe)
dj dara, the antidote (breakbeat science)
hakan libdo, clockwise rmxs ep (shitkatapult)
!!!, louden up now! (touch and go)
it’s all about the drum sound. pure groove, everything else is superfluous
really feeling
ivan smagghe presents death disco (eskimo recordings)
most exciting mixcd I’ve heard in many a moon and apparently this isn’t even his best mixcd. Killer tune: kiki, “luv sikk”. almost enough to re-engage me vis-a-vis dance culture! kind of what i thought archigram would sound like. dramatic, boombastic, somehow symphonic.
MarkOne/plasticman/slaughter mob--grime (rephlex)
The return of faceless techno bollocks. The thing about this stuff, the reason I can see it might actually gain ground on the pirates and with the massive, is a/ the danceability and uptempo NRG b/ the dependability. See, stuff that has vocal and lyrical content, when it’s mediocre, it’s a helluva lot more aggravating than mediocre instrumental/tracky stuff. Something about average MCing with samey lyric content (that overdose of guntalk/misogyny thing simon silverdollar was complaining about a while back), it’s really fucking grating in the way that samey sublow/croydon sound just isn’t. somehow the verbal element really rams the impoverishment of imagination right in your face. At the same time--and everybody knows this, don’t they?--when you compare each style’s highest heights and absolute peak exponents, the MC stuff (proper grime, as commonly understood in other words) is just a whole level above the tracky stuff. “Hard Graft” (here excellently reversioned as “industrial graft”) was one of my faves last year but you compare it with “boys love girls” or “birds in the sky” and it’s like….. nah. The return of vocals (songs, song-fragment, MCs, whatever) is THE defining post-rave paradigm shift from circa 1998 on -from 2step to folktronica to green velvet to electro/nu-wave to (some) microhouse to grime to… -- and I don't seem much sign that’s about to change any time soon. (although the radical defacialisation-as-intensification shift as in the birth of acid house etc would be even more radical in today's supaceleb culture than it was in '88 i spose). but back to croydon sound and Grime -- as faceless techno bollocks secondary tier biznis goes, this comp is most defintly ruff. good on headphones, good in dark bass-dense confined clubspaces.
the eternals, rawar style (aesthetics)
untaggable -- hints of various post-s (-punk, -rock --there’s some links to tortoise in terms of past drummers, who engineered the records in the studio etc), of the loopier side of hip hop/trip hop (maxinquaye's weirder, more swordfishtrombones-y side), maybe even the faintest hint of 2-Tone at its most filmic (more specials, dammers going loco in the studio) … sometimes the elements don’t quite gel but all the more enjoyable in a not-quite-get-your-head-around-it way… I know that singer/keyboarist/sampler-controller Damon Locks is a fan of basement 5 AND funboy 3 which seems germane somehow although they don’t actually sound anything like basement 5 and only a tiny bit like funboy 3. Killer tune: “bewareness”
Richard h. kirk earlier/later (mute)
lives up to nick gutterbreaks praise, esp. the second disc of early days stuff. and worth the price just for the front cover --photo booth pic of kirk as a teenager looking like this sort of glam kid gone feral/reverted to hippie -- bowie meets peter the wild boy
twista, “overnight celebrity”
still don’t care for the sentiments overmuch, but what a production, that violin lick, luvvit
nina sky feat jabba, "move your body"
this year’s Lumidee? (except it’s sung in tune) [sorry didn’t mean to reopen that wound]. sonixly this is like.... ooh, luscious jackson meets bleep’n’bass meets diwali (except less frantic). vocally it’s sexy without being self-demeaning inna pole dancing styleee or self-goddessifying inna insufferable froideur/hauteur beyonce-stylee, just this wonderful understated confidence and… not even sass, just self-possession… and it’s a song for and about the girls
colder, again (output)
killer tune: “where”. a brilliant update of gang of four but in a much more post-electronica studio-sculpted way that really kinda shows up some of the more literal resurrections of the andy gill guitarsound these last few years
ruff sqwad, pirate show april (?) 04
new brand flex, pirate show apri (?) 04
desi desi desi
no messing about here -- full-on, straight to the pleasure centres, ruthlessly entertaining, and very very shiny. Well they’ve been blinging it for centuries, the indians, haven’t they.
david sylvian/ryuichi sakamoto, “world citizen” (samadhisound)
totally ambushed by this one--it’s a straight up, totally plainspoken, direct to the jugular let’s-not-mince-words-shall-we protest song about everything that’s happened since 9/11 that then goes into a sort of utopian plaint -- sort of "Imagine" for Wire readers, which sounds vomitous admittedly, EXCEPT the music’s not really avant and the production’s nothing like what you’d expect (hard to see where sakamoto’s contribution resides and it’s nothing like that last sylvian album which I never managed to get into i must shamefully admit), no this is sort of lush AOR/studio-folk, almost like tracy chapman for a post-compression era (i'm not making this sound very enticing am I?) totally radio-ready, you could imagine it being a big hit if any station in this country had the guts to play it. I dunno, if anybody else sang this maybe it would totally bypass me but the idea of David Sylvian being so affected by the events of the last couple of years and emerging from his little cloud of serenity up in vermont or wherever it is and feeling like he just had to speak out… I found it really touching, and the "world citizen” concept is a lovely trope to base the whole song around. In some weird way it’s like a musical parallel to the Pillbox. Anybody else, it might seem hectoring but in his still suave-voice, "world citizen" works.
sorta kinda feeling (a bit)
the beta band, heroes to zeroes (regal/astralwerks)
there’s something wrong with this record but enough of what used to be right (mainly persisting in the vocal melodies and great time-capsule-from-1966 singing) to make you not quite ready to give up on it. hate records like that! I’ve not got the space for lingerers! the closets are chockablock
not feeling
radio 4, stealing of a nation (astralwerks)
c.f. the sylvian record, except this time I didn’t tear up…. One certainly shares their concern, feels the rage, and appreciates the fact that a neo-postpunk group’s actually trying to supply some actual, like, content and political edge, but… to be brutally honest it all comes over a bit midnight oily. The vocals remind me of big audio dynamite or even jesus jones; the production is overslick, like their aim is to be the Linkin Park of neo-postpunk, and (unlike !!!) the un-swinging groove isn’t punk-funk, it’s dance-rock -- subtle difference, but the chasm between gang of four and INXS resides therein.
Tuesday, May 11, 2004
Jon at Worlds on music overload and being a bit backed up with yer stacks:
"When that happens, I run and hide, and contemplate employing someone to listen to the music I own, reporting back to me on its good and bad points, on whether it’s something I’d dig. Sometimes I think we all need someone like that. Sort of music pre-digestion, if you will."
Word! Hear hear! What that man said! If only!
On a related topic, an email-ee called Karl asked me to coin a phrase to describe an emotion familiar to many readers I'm sure:
"a type of anxiety over the amount of fantastic art, music etc out there, the
fact I have missed out on so much, the thought that potentialy my favourite
track is only out there..."
as i told him practically my whole life exists within the penumbra of that anxiety! (although having a kid has a remedial effect--combination of not enough time/relearning how to live in the now). not just records but books too. at any rate i've been scratching my head but can't think of a good term. Any ideas?
"When that happens, I run and hide, and contemplate employing someone to listen to the music I own, reporting back to me on its good and bad points, on whether it’s something I’d dig. Sometimes I think we all need someone like that. Sort of music pre-digestion, if you will."
Word! Hear hear! What that man said! If only!
On a related topic, an email-ee called Karl asked me to coin a phrase to describe an emotion familiar to many readers I'm sure:
"a type of anxiety over the amount of fantastic art, music etc out there, the
fact I have missed out on so much, the thought that potentialy my favourite
track is only out there..."
as i told him practically my whole life exists within the penumbra of that anxiety! (although having a kid has a remedial effect--combination of not enough time/relearning how to live in the now). not just records but books too. at any rate i've been scratching my head but can't think of a good term. Any ideas?
Friday, May 07, 2004
Talking of Sheffield folk, Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh would be turning in their graves (if they were actually dead) if they knew about this:
London's newest night launches at the most exciting venue in the capitol, bringing the thrill, the glamour and the enchantment of seductive entertainment.
Welcome to PENTHOUSE AND PAVEMENT
At Egg this Saturday, the cream of clubland can anticipate a line up they've only dreamt of, with unique surprises, a live element, and a DJ line up that will leave London's glamourati begging for more...
The Terrace with Too Big for the Penthouse
Pumping US House
Rob Marmot (Dusted)
DJ Marble (Penge)
Hoxton Whores
Al Jay & Vinyl Richie....
"Glamourati"?!?!?! Blewaaaaghrrghghghgh....
London's newest night launches at the most exciting venue in the capitol, bringing the thrill, the glamour and the enchantment of seductive entertainment.
Welcome to PENTHOUSE AND PAVEMENT
At Egg this Saturday, the cream of clubland can anticipate a line up they've only dreamt of, with unique surprises, a live element, and a DJ line up that will leave London's glamourati begging for more...
The Terrace with Too Big for the Penthouse
Pumping US House
Rob Marmot (Dusted)
DJ Marble (Penge)
Hoxton Whores
Al Jay & Vinyl Richie....
"Glamourati"?!?!?! Blewaaaaghrrghghghgh....
Very nice piece by Nick Gutterbreakz on the Richard H. Kirk Earlier/Later Unreleased Projects Anthology 74/89 (Grey Area Of Mute) CD which is out anyday and which I'm panting to hear. I'm not quite as obsessive about Cabs-related output as Nick but not that far behind him. And weirdly it's quite a recent development. I really liked the Cabs at the time, had a fair few things by them, some vinyl, others taped off friends. And there were certain tracks like "Black Mask" and "Sluggin"/"Secret Agent Man" and swathes of Covenant that really stood out for me. But I wasn't like an obsessive fan by any means. But now, I dunno, through doing the book or something, in these last three years, I just really fell in love with the Cabs--as Sound and as Spirit-- to the point where I want all of it, the juvenilia and solo side project marginalia.... last year, if Methodology: Attic Tapes had been a new release it might have beaten out even Dizzee as my year's favorite listen (was amazed how little love that record got in the critpolls and blog roundups, praps most people didn't actually hear it?) ... yeah I really feel Nick's Kirkmania.... cos there's just something that imbues even the scraps and half-finished stuff... Something heroic about Cabaret Voltaire. Culture warrior bizniz innit.
PS. still looking for 1980's Disposable Half-Truths....
PS. still looking for 1980's Disposable Half-Truths....
Talking of obsessive record collectors, I wrote this talk "Lost In Music: Obsessive Record Collecting" and delivered it at the first EMP conference a couple of years ago. And now it's reappeared, in a much longer mix, in the EMP #1 anthology which is just out on Harvard University Press. This Is Pop: In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project , edited by Eric Weisbard. An excellent collection. And there's an event next Thursday around the book at the New School in NYC (details below), I'll be making a rare PA along with some of the other contributors, but instead of doing the bleedin' obvious and talking about pop desire, glocality, authenticity, constructions of "the real" or any of that bollocks, this is a showcase of our other talents--Daphne A. Brooks, for instance, is a gifted juggler, Geoffry O'Brien will be doing some fire-eating, Eric Weisbard will be sawing Ann Powers in half, acrobatics from Kelefa Sanneh... you get the picture. Fun for all the family. Children welcome.
THIS IS POP
Thursday, May 13, 7:00 p.m.
$5, Free for students.
Tishman Auditorium, The New School, 66 West 12th Street, NYC
Discussion with guests: Daphne A. Brooks, Robert Christgau, Garry Giddins,
Chuck Klosterman, Geoffrey O'Brien, Robert Polito, Ann Powers, Simon
Reynolds, David Sanjek, Kelefa Sanneh, and Eric Weisbard. Presented by the
New School Graduate Writing Program.
TICKETS: By email to: Boxoffice@newschool.edu
or by calling The New School Box Office at
(212) 229-5488. For information, call (212) 229-5353, or email to:
specialprograms@newschool.edu.
THIS IS POP
Thursday, May 13, 7:00 p.m.
$5, Free for students.
Tishman Auditorium, The New School, 66 West 12th Street, NYC
Discussion with guests: Daphne A. Brooks, Robert Christgau, Garry Giddins,
Chuck Klosterman, Geoffrey O'Brien, Robert Polito, Ann Powers, Simon
Reynolds, David Sanjek, Kelefa Sanneh, and Eric Weisbard. Presented by the
New School Graduate Writing Program.
TICKETS: By email to: Boxoffice@newschool.edu
(212) 229-5488. For information, call (212) 229-5353, or email to:
specialprograms@newschool.edu
Thursday, May 06, 2004
It's on blud
Berkhamsted and Hemel Hempstead traditionally have an adversarial relationship. But when a threat comes from outside--like, for instance, Aylesbury--emnity gets forgot and Dacorum Council* unity prevails. Seeing as I'm "local," MurdaMan from Hemel Def Sqwad has stepped up to the mic to do battle. This goes best with a certain
Purple Haze riddim.
M. Woebot loves Desi, Desi
Man got lotsa rekkids, rekkids
He'd go without food
To buy vinyl, that dude
His wife she be bitchin'
'Bout vinyl addiction
Domestic affliction
From basement to kitchen
"Obsession not healthy
Get rid of some LPs
I'm sick of the dust, see
Old covers so musty"
M. Woebot loves Desi, Desi
His house is real messy, messy
Rare records are strewn
'Cross the living room
On Woebot he natters
About obscure platters
Nuff knowledge he scatters
On riddims and chatters
Enthusiasm infector
One serious collector
Afro-doc director
Accomplished selector
M. Woebot loves Desi, Desi
His house is real messy, messy
They've run out of room
Got too many tunes
Really appropriately
And kinda symbolically
First met him in M&VE
Not sure how he recognise me
Single Column pic in Melody?
Camden branch, 94 probably
Chasing ardkore and so was he!
Through email got friendly
Sent his comics across the sea
My favorite was "Record Thief"
Veiled autobiography?
Thought “there but for God's Grace goes me!”
M. Woebot loves Desi, Desi
His house is real messy, messy
Likes music that's rude
With avant-yob attitude
Animates and draws cartoons
Hunts down bare rare grime tunes
An expert on Norse runes
Blows up Lulu's balloons
M. Woebot loves Desi, Desi
Man got lotsa rekkids, rekkids
He'd go without food
To buy vinyl, that dude
In related news, God's Gift is now on the case doing a remake called "Tribute to 32 Bloggers"
* FACT: Dacorum once had the highest homicide rate in the U.K. And they say I'm not "street" enough to write about Grime...
Berkhamsted and Hemel Hempstead traditionally have an adversarial relationship. But when a threat comes from outside--like, for instance, Aylesbury--emnity gets forgot and Dacorum Council* unity prevails. Seeing as I'm "local," MurdaMan from Hemel Def Sqwad has stepped up to the mic to do battle. This goes best with a certain
Purple Haze riddim.
M. Woebot loves Desi, Desi
Man got lotsa rekkids, rekkids
He'd go without food
To buy vinyl, that dude
His wife she be bitchin'
'Bout vinyl addiction
Domestic affliction
From basement to kitchen
"Obsession not healthy
Get rid of some LPs
I'm sick of the dust, see
Old covers so musty"
M. Woebot loves Desi, Desi
His house is real messy, messy
Rare records are strewn
'Cross the living room
On Woebot he natters
About obscure platters
Nuff knowledge he scatters
On riddims and chatters
Enthusiasm infector
One serious collector
Afro-doc director
Accomplished selector
M. Woebot loves Desi, Desi
His house is real messy, messy
They've run out of room
Got too many tunes
Really appropriately
And kinda symbolically
First met him in M&VE
Not sure how he recognise me
Single Column pic in Melody?
Camden branch, 94 probably
Chasing ardkore and so was he!
Through email got friendly
Sent his comics across the sea
My favorite was "Record Thief"
Veiled autobiography?
Thought “there but for God's Grace goes me!”
M. Woebot loves Desi, Desi
His house is real messy, messy
Likes music that's rude
With avant-yob attitude
Animates and draws cartoons
Hunts down bare rare grime tunes
An expert on Norse runes
Blows up Lulu's balloons
M. Woebot loves Desi, Desi
Man got lotsa rekkids, rekkids
He'd go without food
To buy vinyl, that dude
In related news, God's Gift is now on the case doing a remake called "Tribute to 32 Bloggers"
* FACT: Dacorum once had the highest homicide rate in the U.K. And they say I'm not "street" enough to write about Grime...
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
MC MC combines two of my favorite things--rock criticism and alternative history (as in The Man in the High Castle, Bring The Jubilee, Pavane, etc) with this witty speculation on what would have happened if Joe Meek hadn't topped himself. Hope this becomes a flourishing micro-genre of sf-meets-popcrit. And Danger Mouse and his ilk get on the case to actually make these parallel universe albums...
Monday, May 03, 2004
The grim backstory to NASA REWIND. DB shouldn’t have to walk away from throwing a great party so horrendously out of pocket. I’m just staggered he managed to play such a terrific set under the circumstances. Jason Jinx is organising a benefit event for DB, which will A/ be a blinding party B/ be a chance to show nuff love and respeck to this founding father of the US rave scene and since-day-one crusader for hardcore continuum bizniz in this country. If you’ve enjoyed DB’s deejaying over the years, the events he’s organised, mix-CDs like History of Our World, Breakbeat Science, etc, you really should come down and suppor the event, plus you'll be having a great time into the bargain. Further details to follow when they’re sorted.
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
the love affair between bloggs and grime
"Socially, structurally, politically": that?s how Woebot defined a secret proximity between bloggaz and grimesters. The first and third words there I wasn?t totally sure of, but the word "structurally" kept on niggling in my mind. "Structurally" seemed to hit some kind of nail on the head. Yeah, yeah, at the level of deep structure, a blogger and a grime MC basically are--if not the same, then doing the same thing.
Lemme lay down the contours of this deep structural affinity as starkly as possibly first, then elaborate later.
1/ post-media operators/narrowcast transmissions/niche audiences
2/ discourse = 50 percent "things on my mind" + 50 percent pure verbal exhibitionism
3/ ego-driven
4/ collectivity/cameraderie/cliquishness/incestuousness versus feuds/spats/battles/takedowns
5/ scenius/peer pressure dynamics
6/ code/crypticism/slanguage/ideolect
7/ cultural practice that spins around locality/globality tensions
8/ amateurism versus professionalism
1/ post-media operators/Narrowcast transmission
Well I'll bet some of the smaller pirate shows have listener figures roughly the same per show as the total weekly hits for some of the bigger bloggers. Of course they don't actually know how many people they're reaching (whereas bloggaz do) so without that reality check they can get all swollen up on the grandiosity of imagining they're broadcasting to the whole of London and surrounding counties. But I bet you for a lot of the shows "just 4 U london" boils down to a few thousand people. (When you look at the incredibly poor record sales for this music it's easy to imagine grime becoming more and more like improv and other kinds of free music--where most of the audience consists of fellow performers). But even with the reality check of the weekly sitemaster report, there is a latent grandiosity to blogging because there isn't actually any physical limit to how many people could tune in. (And of course some bloggs are radio stations of a sort--Wadio Woebot. Bet this becomes more and more common).
2/ "things on my mind"/verbal exhibitionism
Some bloggers, like some MCs--you think "God, if they didn't have this outlet, they'd explode!". As for "verbal exhibitionism"--eas it Luka who had a riff about blogging being a performance, the cultivation of a persona? The self amped up. self-revelation as theatre.
If you belong to an oral culture, a post-literate literati, then having your own pirate show basically is like having a blogg. It's your outlet, your valve for venting.
3/ "ego driven"
....and (sad but true, I'm not happy about it by any means) testosterone-driven also
4/ collectivity versus feuds
both related to testosterone of course: brothers in arms versus brothers at each others throats. (The highly active comments box as a cipher perhaps).
5/ scenius/peer pressure
That's what it all works on, MCs, bloggers--competitivity-- in the best, healthiest, most creative sense. When it's on, everyone raises their game. And there's cycles, times when it goes a bit slack, and then suddenly it's on again, and you can tell people are sparking off other people.
6/ code/crypticism
People complain: it's so incestuous, I don't know what they're on about half the time? It's all about cracking a code innit. (Reading the inkie music press when it was good used to be like that, stumbling through a foreign land, until you learned the discursive landmarks, the running jokes etc. And that's what bloggs are like, that aspect of the old music press isolated from the other more workaday (news, gig pages, interviews) aspects and amplified several times, appealing to the same minority audience (probably around 8 percent I reckon) who bought the music press for those proto-blogg reasons rather than the workaday news/reviews aspect).
7/ locality/globality
Apparently there's some new groovily ghastly cultural studies term that covers these ambiguities-- brace yourselves people!--"glocal". Yuk!!! 'S true though. Grime is yet another pirate continuum music that's tuned into vibrations from all over the Black Atlantic but the end result is totally attuned to the very specific audio-erogenous zones of da London massive and therefore not very exportable. In pirate stations case, it's literally local-- the broadcast range is limited and the territorialism has shrivelled down from London as a whole to specific postal districts in the East, or in the case of Phuture Grime plasticman-style that patch of godforsaken terrain between Croydon and West Norwood (where I once lived for a year so I know whereof I speak).
In the case of bloggs, of course, it's kind of the opposite: something that is geographically distributed but that achieves coherence through certain shared obsessions.... a set of obsessions and a range of ways of approaching and talking about them that creates a fuzzy overlap gray zone where we "meet". (I'm talking about this particularly 'hood of the 'sphere obviously). Certain basins of attraction that have caused a disparate (but not that disparate) array of discursive agents to gather in "one spot". That really is "glocal" because what it is, it's a kind of post-geographical localism: a parochialism of sensibility. So for instance Jon Dale and Tim Finney are at the fucking opposite end of the planet to me but there's a real sense in which we are "neighbours". (So that banging sound on the ceiling, Jon, is me complaining about the free folk, "give it rest mate, eh?!").
8/ amateurism versus professionalism
DJs and MCs actually pay to play on the pirates. It's potlatch culture, giving it away. Free entertainment. Same with bloggs. K-Punk, just to pick one example, is basically running a one-man micro-magazine that's better than most anything you'd likely pay money for in papers or magazines.
I bet professional radio DJs, producers etc have the exact same half-threatened/half-condescending attitude towards the pirates that professional (nonblogging) journos have towards bloggers.
And far from bloggdiscourse being all highfalutin' and spiritually bow-tied, it is of course a good deal of the time a kind of theatricalized vernacular a la Grime.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
So. There is this mirror image, reflected narcissism thing that must surely have something to do with the love affair between bloggs and grime.
Now did I just write "between"?
Of course the glaring thing is the utterly one-way, non-mutual nature of this "affinity". I mean, to say, if in some deep structural sense there's this reversibility--they're bloggers and we're MCs--then some sort of reciprocity ought to be in order, don't you think? Mean to say, I must have written many thousands of words on Dizzee by this point, you'd think he might at least devote 16 bars to the subject of me! Luka, there should be a fucking MICRO-GENRE of grime lyrics about him. After having that lovely appreciation penned on him Sticky should name a new riddim Silverdollar. Or better still get Simon Sez to do a new song called "Simon Sez" about what the other Simon actually says.
The more I thought about this disparity, the more it began to rankle. Eventually, I rung around and managed to dredge up numbers for most of the top boys. Fucking impossible trying to get hold of Wiley, his mobile's ringing off the hook. Same with most of the big guys. The ones I did get hold of were either, "blogg?! What's that then?" or I got the brush-off, none too politely I might add. Finally I got hold of DT-Eye from K2 Family, who've been keeping a bit of a low profile since the 2002 success of
"Bouncing Flow" and "Danger". I explained to him what a blogg was, how they'd been showing nuff love to Grime all this time, and he was like, "fair play, see your point". Eventually, after a bit of cajoling, he said he'd give it a go, cos it was a quiet weekend. I said just use my links bar, skip around a bit, check out the scene, whatever you can come up with, it would be much appreciated. Good for morale and all that.
When I called DT-Eye up this morning, he'd come up with some verses, and said they'd work best on Wiley's new Torvill & Dean riddim, or at a push, with some finessing, on the dubstrumental of "Danger". Here's the thing though--and I was a bit put out cos he doesn't even like Grime that much-- they're about Marcello!!! Apparently CoM and TNM, that's what really caught DT-Eye's imagination, the human element. Plus he said, that Gail, she sounds fit. So here they are anyway--he rapped them down the phone, you have to imagine them in a kinda choppy, staccato sing-song flow. And leave off the "t"s at the end of words.
MC flex best
On shorter texts
Closely inspects
David Essex
Views on Roy Wood perplex
Works for NHS
Hails from Inverness *
Longer texts can vex
Focuses on auteur
More than he oughta
Myths he'll debunk dem
Precisely pinpoints punctum
Barthes crossed with Gambaccini
His mama cook great linguini
Knowledge encyclopaedic
Style belle-lettristic
And memoiristic
(Thinks Petridis a right prick)
Tight with his links
Thinks
Junior Boys stinks
Likes
Improv a lot
Friends
Again with Woebot
Dates a gyal called Gail
Receives bare email
From Man Like John Cale
Loves Robert Wyatt
Just
Don't
Try
It
So look--it's not great, but it's a start, right?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
* not actually true. I don't know where he came up with this one. Poetic license?
"Socially, structurally, politically": that?s how Woebot defined a secret proximity between bloggaz and grimesters. The first and third words there I wasn?t totally sure of, but the word "structurally" kept on niggling in my mind. "Structurally" seemed to hit some kind of nail on the head. Yeah, yeah, at the level of deep structure, a blogger and a grime MC basically are--if not the same, then doing the same thing.
Lemme lay down the contours of this deep structural affinity as starkly as possibly first, then elaborate later.
1/ post-media operators/narrowcast transmissions/niche audiences
2/ discourse = 50 percent "things on my mind" + 50 percent pure verbal exhibitionism
3/ ego-driven
4/ collectivity/cameraderie/cliquishness/incestuousness versus feuds/spats/battles/takedowns
5/ scenius/peer pressure dynamics
6/ code/crypticism/slanguage/ideolect
7/ cultural practice that spins around locality/globality tensions
8/ amateurism versus professionalism
1/ post-media operators/Narrowcast transmission
Well I'll bet some of the smaller pirate shows have listener figures roughly the same per show as the total weekly hits for some of the bigger bloggers. Of course they don't actually know how many people they're reaching (whereas bloggaz do) so without that reality check they can get all swollen up on the grandiosity of imagining they're broadcasting to the whole of London and surrounding counties. But I bet you for a lot of the shows "just 4 U london" boils down to a few thousand people. (When you look at the incredibly poor record sales for this music it's easy to imagine grime becoming more and more like improv and other kinds of free music--where most of the audience consists of fellow performers). But even with the reality check of the weekly sitemaster report, there is a latent grandiosity to blogging because there isn't actually any physical limit to how many people could tune in. (And of course some bloggs are radio stations of a sort--Wadio Woebot. Bet this becomes more and more common).
2/ "things on my mind"/verbal exhibitionism
Some bloggers, like some MCs--you think "God, if they didn't have this outlet, they'd explode!". As for "verbal exhibitionism"--eas it Luka who had a riff about blogging being a performance, the cultivation of a persona? The self amped up. self-revelation as theatre.
If you belong to an oral culture, a post-literate literati, then having your own pirate show basically is like having a blogg. It's your outlet, your valve for venting.
3/ "ego driven"
....and (sad but true, I'm not happy about it by any means) testosterone-driven also
4/ collectivity versus feuds
both related to testosterone of course: brothers in arms versus brothers at each others throats. (The highly active comments box as a cipher perhaps).
5/ scenius/peer pressure
That's what it all works on, MCs, bloggers--competitivity-- in the best, healthiest, most creative sense. When it's on, everyone raises their game. And there's cycles, times when it goes a bit slack, and then suddenly it's on again, and you can tell people are sparking off other people.
6/ code/crypticism
People complain: it's so incestuous, I don't know what they're on about half the time? It's all about cracking a code innit. (Reading the inkie music press when it was good used to be like that, stumbling through a foreign land, until you learned the discursive landmarks, the running jokes etc. And that's what bloggs are like, that aspect of the old music press isolated from the other more workaday (news, gig pages, interviews) aspects and amplified several times, appealing to the same minority audience (probably around 8 percent I reckon) who bought the music press for those proto-blogg reasons rather than the workaday news/reviews aspect).
7/ locality/globality
Apparently there's some new groovily ghastly cultural studies term that covers these ambiguities-- brace yourselves people!--"glocal". Yuk!!! 'S true though. Grime is yet another pirate continuum music that's tuned into vibrations from all over the Black Atlantic but the end result is totally attuned to the very specific audio-erogenous zones of da London massive and therefore not very exportable. In pirate stations case, it's literally local-- the broadcast range is limited and the territorialism has shrivelled down from London as a whole to specific postal districts in the East, or in the case of Phuture Grime plasticman-style that patch of godforsaken terrain between Croydon and West Norwood (where I once lived for a year so I know whereof I speak).
In the case of bloggs, of course, it's kind of the opposite: something that is geographically distributed but that achieves coherence through certain shared obsessions.... a set of obsessions and a range of ways of approaching and talking about them that creates a fuzzy overlap gray zone where we "meet". (I'm talking about this particularly 'hood of the 'sphere obviously). Certain basins of attraction that have caused a disparate (but not that disparate) array of discursive agents to gather in "one spot". That really is "glocal" because what it is, it's a kind of post-geographical localism: a parochialism of sensibility. So for instance Jon Dale and Tim Finney are at the fucking opposite end of the planet to me but there's a real sense in which we are "neighbours". (So that banging sound on the ceiling, Jon, is me complaining about the free folk, "give it rest mate, eh?!").
8/ amateurism versus professionalism
DJs and MCs actually pay to play on the pirates. It's potlatch culture, giving it away. Free entertainment. Same with bloggs. K-Punk, just to pick one example, is basically running a one-man micro-magazine that's better than most anything you'd likely pay money for in papers or magazines.
I bet professional radio DJs, producers etc have the exact same half-threatened/half-condescending attitude towards the pirates that professional (nonblogging) journos have towards bloggers.
And far from bloggdiscourse being all highfalutin' and spiritually bow-tied, it is of course a good deal of the time a kind of theatricalized vernacular a la Grime.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
So. There is this mirror image, reflected narcissism thing that must surely have something to do with the love affair between bloggs and grime.
Now did I just write "between"?
Of course the glaring thing is the utterly one-way, non-mutual nature of this "affinity". I mean, to say, if in some deep structural sense there's this reversibility--they're bloggers and we're MCs--then some sort of reciprocity ought to be in order, don't you think? Mean to say, I must have written many thousands of words on Dizzee by this point, you'd think he might at least devote 16 bars to the subject of me! Luka, there should be a fucking MICRO-GENRE of grime lyrics about him. After having that lovely appreciation penned on him Sticky should name a new riddim Silverdollar. Or better still get Simon Sez to do a new song called "Simon Sez" about what the other Simon actually says.
The more I thought about this disparity, the more it began to rankle. Eventually, I rung around and managed to dredge up numbers for most of the top boys. Fucking impossible trying to get hold of Wiley, his mobile's ringing off the hook. Same with most of the big guys. The ones I did get hold of were either, "blogg?! What's that then?" or I got the brush-off, none too politely I might add. Finally I got hold of DT-Eye from K2 Family, who've been keeping a bit of a low profile since the 2002 success of
"Bouncing Flow" and "Danger". I explained to him what a blogg was, how they'd been showing nuff love to Grime all this time, and he was like, "fair play, see your point". Eventually, after a bit of cajoling, he said he'd give it a go, cos it was a quiet weekend. I said just use my links bar, skip around a bit, check out the scene, whatever you can come up with, it would be much appreciated. Good for morale and all that.
When I called DT-Eye up this morning, he'd come up with some verses, and said they'd work best on Wiley's new Torvill & Dean riddim, or at a push, with some finessing, on the dubstrumental of "Danger". Here's the thing though--and I was a bit put out cos he doesn't even like Grime that much-- they're about Marcello!!! Apparently CoM and TNM, that's what really caught DT-Eye's imagination, the human element. Plus he said, that Gail, she sounds fit. So here they are anyway--he rapped them down the phone, you have to imagine them in a kinda choppy, staccato sing-song flow. And leave off the "t"s at the end of words.
MC flex best
On shorter texts
Closely inspects
David Essex
Views on Roy Wood perplex
Works for NHS
Hails from Inverness *
Longer texts can vex
Focuses on auteur
More than he oughta
Myths he'll debunk dem
Precisely pinpoints punctum
Barthes crossed with Gambaccini
His mama cook great linguini
Knowledge encyclopaedic
Style belle-lettristic
And memoiristic
(Thinks Petridis a right prick)
Tight with his links
Thinks
Junior Boys stinks
Likes
Improv a lot
Friends
Again with Woebot
Dates a gyal called Gail
Receives bare email
From Man Like John Cale
Loves Robert Wyatt
Just
Don't
Try
It
So look--it's not great, but it's a start, right?
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
* not actually true. I don't know where he came up with this one. Poetic license?
Sunday, April 25, 2004
DizZE Miss Lizzy
Like a lot of Penmaniacs I totally bought the whole ZE thing at the time, and in a literal sense bought a fair amount of their stuff. And promptly sold it eighteen months later--well I kept Mutant Disco, for “Me No Pop I”, “Bustin Out” and “ Wheel Me Out” plus the I.Penman sleevenotes natch (shamefully not included on the recent reissue, although Kevin Pearce does a neat job)-- but I shed those first two Kid Creole albums and have never once regretted it, except in the last year, for research reasons more than aural pleasure. Even had a Cristina single or two. But for some reason I never checked out Lizzy Mercier Descloux at the time. And then about a month ago her Mambo Nassau turned up in the mail courtesy of Forced Exposure along with a bunch of ZE comps and Was (Not Was)’s debut album and a W(NW)remixes thing (now their stuff’s a mixed bag to put it mildly, “Wheel me Out” and the more aberrant-jazzed stuff like “Oh, Mr Friction” and “It’s An Attack” still sound quite cool but the rest of it…. well let’s say “Walk That Dinosaur” casts this huge reverse shadow over it, a pleasure-shrivelling pall), but anyway back to Ms. Descloux--I’ve been meaning to write about Mambo here for weeks. Cos it’s a revelation. Sensational stuff. Something like a New Pop version of 4th World: Claire Grogan meets Jon Hassell. Sonixly/ridmaticly, the melange is Dubfunk + AfroPop + French-artpop. A pentangle of territory whose five sides are Tom Tom Club, My Life In The Bush of Ghosts, Nightclubbing, Your Cassette Pet, and Les Ritas Mistoukos. (I swear the first three came to mind before I looked at the press release and saw it was recorded in Nassau at Compass Point under the good graces of Chris Blackwell and that her band included Wally Badarou [a Woebot fave lost 80s auteur, session keyboard guy at Compass] and also even a studio engineer called Steve Slanley who’d worked with Grace Jones and would go on to work with Tom Tom Club). Killer tracks for me are “Sports Spootnicks” (“Contort Yourself” meets “Hello Hello Daddy I’ll Sacrifice You”*) and “Payola” (Material if they somehow were The Go Gos). Inventive but joyous. Wonderfully frisky, flirty, feisty, fizzy with life.
And then I hear she’s dead. Just died in fact. Been struggling with cancer for a while. How sad. And how weird to have music you’ve just fallen in love with suddenly ghosted like that.
RIP LMD.
* okay that one’s a bit gratutiously arcane: last track on Bow Wow Wow’s See Jungle lp, a sort of Jungian bossa-nova
Like a lot of Penmaniacs I totally bought the whole ZE thing at the time, and in a literal sense bought a fair amount of their stuff. And promptly sold it eighteen months later--well I kept Mutant Disco, for “Me No Pop I”, “Bustin Out” and “ Wheel Me Out” plus the I.Penman sleevenotes natch (shamefully not included on the recent reissue, although Kevin Pearce does a neat job)-- but I shed those first two Kid Creole albums and have never once regretted it, except in the last year, for research reasons more than aural pleasure. Even had a Cristina single or two. But for some reason I never checked out Lizzy Mercier Descloux at the time. And then about a month ago her Mambo Nassau turned up in the mail courtesy of Forced Exposure along with a bunch of ZE comps and Was (Not Was)’s debut album and a W(NW)remixes thing (now their stuff’s a mixed bag to put it mildly, “Wheel me Out” and the more aberrant-jazzed stuff like “Oh, Mr Friction” and “It’s An Attack” still sound quite cool but the rest of it…. well let’s say “Walk That Dinosaur” casts this huge reverse shadow over it, a pleasure-shrivelling pall), but anyway back to Ms. Descloux--I’ve been meaning to write about Mambo here for weeks. Cos it’s a revelation. Sensational stuff. Something like a New Pop version of 4th World: Claire Grogan meets Jon Hassell. Sonixly/ridmaticly, the melange is Dubfunk + AfroPop + French-artpop. A pentangle of territory whose five sides are Tom Tom Club, My Life In The Bush of Ghosts, Nightclubbing, Your Cassette Pet, and Les Ritas Mistoukos. (I swear the first three came to mind before I looked at the press release and saw it was recorded in Nassau at Compass Point under the good graces of Chris Blackwell and that her band included Wally Badarou [a Woebot fave lost 80s auteur, session keyboard guy at Compass] and also even a studio engineer called Steve Slanley who’d worked with Grace Jones and would go on to work with Tom Tom Club). Killer tracks for me are “Sports Spootnicks” (“Contort Yourself” meets “Hello Hello Daddy I’ll Sacrifice You”*) and “Payola” (Material if they somehow were The Go Gos). Inventive but joyous. Wonderfully frisky, flirty, feisty, fizzy with life.
And then I hear she’s dead. Just died in fact. Been struggling with cancer for a while. How sad. And how weird to have music you’ve just fallen in love with suddenly ghosted like that.
RIP LMD.
* okay that one’s a bit gratutiously arcane: last track on Bow Wow Wow’s See Jungle lp, a sort of Jungian bossa-nova
Friday, April 23, 2004
I hold in my hand a copy of Seks Isyanlari. I was a bit flip in tone in my first post about this--mainly cos I was a bit bemused and stunned by the whole thing--but actually having a solid book brings home that it's actually quite heavy. Somebody took the trouble to slog through Joy's and my tome and translate it into Turkish. The publishers, Ayrinti, stand to lose a fair bit of money. Below is some information on books being banned in Turkey--a surprisingly common practice, and not just for "obscenity" or insulting the Turkish people (really not on our agenda back in 93 when we wrote the thing), but for political reasons too. Ayrinti seem to have a lot of run-ins, they do a fair bit of edgy material--last year they got done for translating a work by de Sade (who we reference in the chapter that also has Peter 'Childrape and Nazi Genocide's Cool' Sotos of Whitehouse infamy in it, I wonder if that set off the morality squad's alarm bells?). Joy found the following on some website, I think the writers' rights organisation PEN. Apologies
for heisting it wholesale.
"Charges of 'insulting the morals of the people'
Sex is another issue that has increasingly given rise to lawsuits. On March
19, 2003, a trial opened at the Istanbul Penal Court of First Instance
against Omer Faruk, the owner of the Ayrinti Publishing House, and Kerim
Sadi, a translator, for publishing and translating respectively a Turkish
edition of the Marquis de Sade's Philosophy in the Bedroom (Yatak Odasinda
Felsefe). The two are accused under Article 426 of the Turkish Penal Code of
'insulting the morals of the people'. In 2002, similar charges were pressed
against Nermin Acar for her translation of La Terreur dans la Boudoir, a
French novel by Serge Bramly that is based on the work of Marquis de Sade.
Acar has also faced charges for her translation from French of Alina Reyes'
erotic novel, Lilith. The legislation prohibits all work with frank sexual
content and takes no account of whether the writing has literary merit. "
Book bannings in Turkey
"At present, PEN has on its records over 60 writers, publishers and
journalists who are on trial in Turkey solely for the publication of their
writings and who face heavy penalties if convicted. In 2002 alone, 77 books
were reported to have been banned... There are likely to be many more cases
than PEN has been able to record. The confiscation and banning of a piece of
writing is a major obstacle to the practice of free expression and is
censorship in its most direct form. International PEN has called on the
Turkish authorities to review once again all legislation that allows for the
penalization of those who write on or publish issues that are not in accord
with the views of those in authority, and to remove from Turkish law all
remaining impediments to the practice of the right to freedom of
expression."
- International PEN's Oral Submission to the United Nations Commission on
Human Rights, meeting in Geneva at its 59th session, March 17 to April 25,
2003
At any one time, PEN is aware of several cases of authors and their books
falling foul of Turkey's broad battery of legislation inhibiting free
expression. A recent example was the works of author Mehmet Bayrak, whose
three-volume book Kurdish Music, Dances and Songs published in September
2002 by Özgür Gelecek ('The Free Future') publishing house - was reportedly
confiscated on the orders of the Ankara State Security Court. The order
claimed that the volumes had infringed Article 312.2 of the Turkish Penal
Code because they 'in their current form oppose the unity of nation and
state. Furthermore, their content partitions the population into different
races thereby inciting hate and hostility.' Another book by Bayrak, Kurdish
Women - From the Past to the Present, was similarly confiscated. In its
February 17, 2003 letter to Turkey's Minister of Justice, PEN stated its
belief 'that the banning of these books is aimed at suppressing views on
Kurdish issues that do not comply with those held by the government.'
Other recently banned books and journals have included:
a report from the Center for Asia Minor Research in Greece entitled
Migration, Forced Departure of Anatolian Greeks from Anatolia (accused of
being an 'insult to Ataturk');
Anatolia: from Multiculturalism to Uniculturalism by Aytekin Yilmaz, which
has been accused of 'insulting the nation' by infringing Article 159 of the
Turkish Penal Code;
several journals of the Communist Party for being 'propaganda for an illegal
organization.'
These and other examples demonstrate that the book bannings and trials
against authors are usually initiated either when Turkey's multi-ethnic
community is explored, especially if the government's policies regarding the
many ethnicities living within its borders are criticized, or when the
authors espouse left-wing political ideology, such as views which are deemed
'Communist'. In both cases, PEN believes that the government has nothing to
gain from such bannings, and that allowing a variety of different opinions
to circulate freely will not undermine Turkey's security. On the contrary,
only by allowing free expression on such matters can the many historic
tensions within the country be eased.
Ragip Zarakolu: in the forefront of the campaign against bannings
Ragip Zarakolu, a publisher at Belge Publishing House (which among other
titles, has published Ömer Asan's book, The Culture of the Pontus ) is one
of the main campaigners against these book-bannings. Zarakolu has himself
faced charges - in fact he is seldom off the WiPC's case list. For instance,
on July 15, 2002, he was brought to trial under Article 312 of the Penal
Code for an article entitled 'The New Racist Attacks in Turkey', in which he
delivered a critique of ultra- nationalism. The trial continues. Meanwhile,
Zarakolu continues to protest against book-bannings, and publishes many
titles knowing that they may well fall foul of the law.
In a statement that he made on behalf of the Publishers Union of Turkey at
the 2002 Frankfurt Book Fair, Zarakolu acknowledged the support of the
international community. He painted a picture of a steady increase in the
number of bannings and legal cases. According to him, in 2000, 20 books from
14 publishing houses were banned or indicted; in 2001, 42 books from 23
publishing houses were banned or indicted. He later reported that by the end
of 2002, the annual figure had risen to 77 books, with 38 publishers and 57
writers finding themselves in the dock. The cases sometimes dragged on for
more than a year, so that the number of books subject to legal proceedings
at any one time could number over a hundred.
Zarakolu noted that how the books fared in the courts was 'dependent on the
personal tendencies of the jurists'. Some gave 'more tolerant or more
intolerant judgments'. Conservative tendencies in the system had given rise
to more cases against writing on sexual issues. However, discussion of
minorities still led the field in provoking lawsuits. He cited interviews
with guerrilla leaders, histories of left-wing parties, discussions of human
rights abuses and police accountability as being topics that writers
broached at their peril.
He urged the international community to campaign against these assaults on
freedom of expression. 'The support of the world's community of publishers
has given us courage and endurance,' he said. While legal preparations for
entry into the European Union are afoot, he suggested, the time to press
forward with the campaign is ripe.
for heisting it wholesale.
"Charges of 'insulting the morals of the people'
Sex is another issue that has increasingly given rise to lawsuits. On March
19, 2003, a trial opened at the Istanbul Penal Court of First Instance
against Omer Faruk, the owner of the Ayrinti Publishing House, and Kerim
Sadi, a translator, for publishing and translating respectively a Turkish
edition of the Marquis de Sade's Philosophy in the Bedroom (Yatak Odasinda
Felsefe). The two are accused under Article 426 of the Turkish Penal Code of
'insulting the morals of the people'. In 2002, similar charges were pressed
against Nermin Acar for her translation of La Terreur dans la Boudoir, a
French novel by Serge Bramly that is based on the work of Marquis de Sade.
Acar has also faced charges for her translation from French of Alina Reyes'
erotic novel, Lilith. The legislation prohibits all work with frank sexual
content and takes no account of whether the writing has literary merit. "
Book bannings in Turkey
"At present, PEN has on its records over 60 writers, publishers and
journalists who are on trial in Turkey solely for the publication of their
writings and who face heavy penalties if convicted. In 2002 alone, 77 books
were reported to have been banned... There are likely to be many more cases
than PEN has been able to record. The confiscation and banning of a piece of
writing is a major obstacle to the practice of free expression and is
censorship in its most direct form. International PEN has called on the
Turkish authorities to review once again all legislation that allows for the
penalization of those who write on or publish issues that are not in accord
with the views of those in authority, and to remove from Turkish law all
remaining impediments to the practice of the right to freedom of
expression."
- International PEN's Oral Submission to the United Nations Commission on
Human Rights, meeting in Geneva at its 59th session, March 17 to April 25,
2003
At any one time, PEN is aware of several cases of authors and their books
falling foul of Turkey's broad battery of legislation inhibiting free
expression. A recent example was the works of author Mehmet Bayrak, whose
three-volume book Kurdish Music, Dances and Songs published in September
2002 by Özgür Gelecek ('The Free Future') publishing house - was reportedly
confiscated on the orders of the Ankara State Security Court. The order
claimed that the volumes had infringed Article 312.2 of the Turkish Penal
Code because they 'in their current form oppose the unity of nation and
state. Furthermore, their content partitions the population into different
races thereby inciting hate and hostility.' Another book by Bayrak, Kurdish
Women - From the Past to the Present, was similarly confiscated. In its
February 17, 2003 letter to Turkey's Minister of Justice, PEN stated its
belief 'that the banning of these books is aimed at suppressing views on
Kurdish issues that do not comply with those held by the government.'
Other recently banned books and journals have included:
a report from the Center for Asia Minor Research in Greece entitled
Migration, Forced Departure of Anatolian Greeks from Anatolia (accused of
being an 'insult to Ataturk');
Anatolia: from Multiculturalism to Uniculturalism by Aytekin Yilmaz, which
has been accused of 'insulting the nation' by infringing Article 159 of the
Turkish Penal Code;
several journals of the Communist Party for being 'propaganda for an illegal
organization.'
These and other examples demonstrate that the book bannings and trials
against authors are usually initiated either when Turkey's multi-ethnic
community is explored, especially if the government's policies regarding the
many ethnicities living within its borders are criticized, or when the
authors espouse left-wing political ideology, such as views which are deemed
'Communist'. In both cases, PEN believes that the government has nothing to
gain from such bannings, and that allowing a variety of different opinions
to circulate freely will not undermine Turkey's security. On the contrary,
only by allowing free expression on such matters can the many historic
tensions within the country be eased.
Ragip Zarakolu: in the forefront of the campaign against bannings
Ragip Zarakolu, a publisher at Belge Publishing House (which among other
titles, has published Ömer Asan's book, The Culture of the Pontus ) is one
of the main campaigners against these book-bannings. Zarakolu has himself
faced charges - in fact he is seldom off the WiPC's case list. For instance,
on July 15, 2002, he was brought to trial under Article 312 of the Penal
Code for an article entitled 'The New Racist Attacks in Turkey', in which he
delivered a critique of ultra- nationalism. The trial continues. Meanwhile,
Zarakolu continues to protest against book-bannings, and publishes many
titles knowing that they may well fall foul of the law.
In a statement that he made on behalf of the Publishers Union of Turkey at
the 2002 Frankfurt Book Fair, Zarakolu acknowledged the support of the
international community. He painted a picture of a steady increase in the
number of bannings and legal cases. According to him, in 2000, 20 books from
14 publishing houses were banned or indicted; in 2001, 42 books from 23
publishing houses were banned or indicted. He later reported that by the end
of 2002, the annual figure had risen to 77 books, with 38 publishers and 57
writers finding themselves in the dock. The cases sometimes dragged on for
more than a year, so that the number of books subject to legal proceedings
at any one time could number over a hundred.
Zarakolu noted that how the books fared in the courts was 'dependent on the
personal tendencies of the jurists'. Some gave 'more tolerant or more
intolerant judgments'. Conservative tendencies in the system had given rise
to more cases against writing on sexual issues. However, discussion of
minorities still led the field in provoking lawsuits. He cited interviews
with guerrilla leaders, histories of left-wing parties, discussions of human
rights abuses and police accountability as being topics that writers
broached at their peril.
He urged the international community to campaign against these assaults on
freedom of expression. 'The support of the world's community of publishers
has given us courage and endurance,' he said. While legal preparations for
entry into the European Union are afoot, he suggested, the time to press
forward with the campaign is ripe.
This here didn't peeve me quite as much it did Matt Woebot or The Stelfox--if only cos it's such a daft caricature of blogdiscourse (most of which is pretty colloquial INNIT). The thing that IS offensive is the condescension to the hardcore Grime fans. They might mangle the Queen's grammar and use patois and sling slang and misspell words (deliberately, though, often), but surely it's OBVIOUS that the level of literacy in the better grime (or hip hop, or dancehall) lyrics is staggering? And therefore by implication and by definition the fans have extreme verbal skills. They're probably not bookworms (although that's just an assumption--for all I know D Double E's got library cards and overdue books all across East London) but they don't need to be--this is a post-literate literati, a voracious oral culture sucking in and chewing up stuff from across the mediascape. With a lot of these lyrics, the sheer comprehension skills needed to follow the twists, spot the allusions, and unravel the compressions, is staggering. You need skill to actually even ENJOY this stuff, the sheer linguistic sport of it. And that suggests to me that the people who are into it, the kids for whom it's their life, must be really sophisticated. When you read interviews with Dizzee and Wiley, they come across as very perceptive and insightful. What the Americans call EQ or emotional IQ, these guys score pretty high. I'd also venture that without having to read the Guardian or New Statesman or political blogs, the grime kids are probably pretty sussed in their grasp on what's fucked about the world. In that sense "street knowledge" is as good (or better) an education as reading Fredric Jameson or some Routledge primer on late capitalism, postcolonialism etc etc. So yeah, as Matt concludes, tweak some of the words, translate a bit between jargons and idiolects, and you'll find that the bloggaz and the grimesters are speaking the same language. Gutterlectuals unite, down with middlebrow!
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