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)
(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)
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
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Monday, June 22, 2009
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.
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
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
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
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)
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)
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
very interesting in-depth interview with Owen Hatherley by Rowan Wilson re. modernist militancy at ReadySteadyBookyWooky
Tuesday, June 09, 2009
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
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
Monday, June 08, 2009
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.
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.