ardchive fever (back from the dead)

An actual archive, this time, dedicated to rave culture and electronic dance music, and administered by a mate of mine who is issuing an open call for donations of flyers, music, and memorabilia/ephemera of all kinds. The press release/mission statement can be found here.

radio from the other side

(hosted by the fellows behind look around you)

(tip of the hat to ian hodgson)

woebot mix of ambient jungle c/o FACT

plus

chiming tardily with recent-ish synth talk, vintage vid of synth wizardess suzanne ciani(this via mimaroglu blog)

vivid and touching tributes to sWells from Stubbsy, Studsy, and sundry ex IPC sorts, c/o the Quietus

a cheeky chuckle

a jet of cold reason


a sharp swift thought

some meta matter



at last, the music

RIP Steven Wells

tribute from colleague james brown

swells swatting stroppy whippersnapper

WHEN MATES MAKE BOOKS

latest instalment in an irregular series occasioned by the large number of friends who've got books out this year



Borderline, this one. Not really a book, yet not quite a magazine either. A collaborative venture between Faber & Faber and Domino Records, Loops is a twice-yearly periodical of music writing, deluxely produced on paper stock nicer than any book I've ever had out, and at 224 pages longer than any music magazine I can think of, even some of those really fat Forced Exposures or Melody Makers from the Seventies with special pull-out sections reviewing new instruments, amps, etc. Borderline, then. But the debut issue of Loops is crawling with mates, starting with co-founder/co-editor Lee Brackstone, who's my editor at Faber, and continuing with several of the contributors: Anwyn Crawford a/k/a Fangirl / Aloof From Inspiration, with a piece entitled "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun?" about the construction of and projection towards teengirl taste in rock criticism; Matthew Ingram surveying music technology and the sonic state-of-art; Geeta Dayal, offering an amuse-bouche for her Another Green World book due this autumn on Continuum, here looking at the parallels between Eno-in-the-kitchen and Eno-in-the-studio. Oh yes, and if you can be mates with yourself, then I should mention that I'm in it too: "Sonic Fiction... or, If This is the Future, How Come the Music Sounds So Lame?" is the first of a two-parter about science fiction and music, with this instalment looking at s.f. movie soundtracks.

And I'm hoping more mates will be contributing in the future.

Other highlights from Loops Issue 01 include: Hari Kunzru's "Twice Upon A Time (Listening to New York): Reflections on Moondog", Sam Davies's "Not Bad Meaning Bad... but Bad Meaning Good: Hip Hop and Susan Sontag's 'Notes on Camp'", Amanda Petrusich on blues 78s collectors, and Rob Young's "Hearken to the Witches Rune".

Loops is out July 2nd, 2009.

surprised nobody else's mentioned this, but what is up with the look Moritz Von Oswald is rocking in the photo shot for his Wire cover story?



and then in the spread itself:



und der piece de resistance



I've been to Germany and Austria a few times and the neck scarf thing is this very Germanic type look you will see fairly often ... but usually on middle aged ladies

a personal appreciation of Ian Loveday a/k/a Eon by Louise Gray

Q: Is a quadraphonic LP (specifically the Quadradisc format used by companies like Elektra and Nonesuch) going to sound okay when played through a regular stereo system? Or will it sound like how it looks through the wrong prescription pair of glasses?

RIP Ian Loveday a/k/a Eon

spice

inner mind

fear: the mindkiller

basket case

Ingram dropping further science re. soft synths -- not once but twice

still tittering over the title of this Zone Styx post on doomcore and its parallels with various stripes of terminal metal

doesn't the original Black Sabbath Greatest Hits have a Hieronymus B picture on the front? (answer: no -- see end)

i wonder why i so vastly prefer the gloomocore to black metal? must be its residual, negative-image relationship to E culture, the cold rush

talking of which the Mover seems to have returned from his long exile in the land of dairylea

^^^^^^^^^^

and another interesting post from Styx, drawing a parallel between writers workshops as mutual inhibition milieux with the way that mnml keeps itself on a leash

it probably works this way in lots of music micro-cultures: a sort of collective self-policing system where subtle administerings of approval and disapproval keep everyone cleaving to subtlety/restraint.... that safety zone where non de trop always teeters on the edge of non de script

especially when that peer-review homeostatic system is then enmeshed with a narrative of music having lost its way, "true people"

detroit techno and deep house true-pathers and pedagogues are an obvious example

backpackerland too

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Bosch-core slight return:
the triumph of death, this painting's called

stop press/erratum: actually that's bosh, it's not Hieronymous B, it's Pieter Bruegel the Elder who painted it (Rowan informs me)

my latest Guardian blog, on the cult of Dilla

very interesting in-depth interview with Owen Hatherley by Rowan Wilson re. modernist militancy at ReadySteadyBookyWooky

RIP Hugh Hopper

here's a very nice mix by Moon Wiring Club at Bleep43 (the music goes on being excellent even after the Ian Hodgson podcast bit is over with... there's a technotronica track featuring voices that I'm pretty certain are sampled from THX 1138--anybody know what this track is?)

late hate

Kek W says:

"Actually, I Hate Throbbing Gristle"

(mainly for them reforming)

"It also goes without saying that I Hate Jack White. I Hate The Manic Street Preachers. etc, etc.

"I Hate Nick Cave.

"I Hate PJ Harvey.

"I really Hate My Bloody Valentine.

"And in the last few days (a strange one, this) I've Come To Hate Tom Waits."

Zone Styx Travelcard points out there actually is an update of the "You're gonna wake up one morning and know which side of the bed you've been lying on" T-shirt

To which Airport Through The Trees has a droll (yet also bleakly disquieting) twist...

Going against the grain, a young American by name of Kevin H suggested:

I hate "hate"

on a bunch of grounds: that it's "so easy dismissing and despising and being bored" and also "does the world need MORE?" and further, "most of the stuff we 'hate' we don't engage with thoroughly enough to be able to intelligently take down or understand what others see"

I tried to explain how it was this (mostly) British polarised-vision thing that kind of went back to the weekly music press and to the illiberalism and anti-tolerance of punk, I cited Morrissey's Viva Hate and Paul Weller's "knowing that someone in this life/loves with a passion called hate"... but I forgot to mention Julie Burchill's famous "Rock's Rich Tapestry" singles column, the one with this "my mind ain't so open"-style oration at the start about how she was proud to have blinkers and to only care about the Sex Pistols and Motown and how she didn't give two shits for Rock's Rich Tapestry (no, it was famous: in those days a music paper singles column could actually be talked about, an influence--on bands as well as writers)

Still I thought he had a point, Kev, in a way, maybe a brief burst of positivity is called for. Here goes...

I Love Micachu and the Shapes

I Love Ralph Lundsten's Gunnar Pa Lidarande and Erik XIV

I Love Electric Warrior

I Love In Treatment

I Love Summer Hours

I Love Ernesto Neto's anthropodino

and a relapse

I HATE Root Canal

talking about post-disco, a piece by andy beta on an ace-sounding comp of early8ties nyc by dmitri & idjut boys

caution: you are now entering a theory zone

or you will be if you click on this link to the fifth in a series of reflections inspired by the recent hardcore continuum seminar in London, this one something of an epic and bearing the title Masculine Pressure. Like its sister piece from ten years ago, this comes with footnotes.