Hirnlego Ghosts

From The Wytch Machine...

Max Richter's Infra

There's a scene near the end of Koyaanisqaatsi where the camera lingers on one single, tumbling piece of rocket debris, falling in slow motion towards the earth, pulling time alongside it, falling, falling, about to burn...

Well, the new album 'Infra' by Max Richter dropped into my mailbox last week from the sweet and sound people at Fat Cat and, well, I was reminded of this scene almost immediately, not so much the music - though Philip Glass does creep around the edges, occasionally - but the atmosphere... music for falling... a softer, more benevolent version of the Laura Palmer 'falling in space' speech in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me...



It starts in clouds of radio static*, whorls of sound, dipping in and out, the sounds sliding over each other like Autumn Cannibals... there's a touch of everything in there, echoes of Gorecki, even of Michael Nyman circa The Piano but burst through with the slow fog blasts of Nurse With Wound's Shipwrecked Radio series... there's Pauline Oliveros style drone pieces in here but they're mostly shot through with beautiful piano and cello... the kind of Cello that is evocative there's even little stuttering chunks of almost techno that crumble suddenly to reveal crystal clear piano motifs...

beautiful, beautiful stuff...



*Maybe I need to think about a post about the radio / static as instrument; thinking Chaostrophy, AMM...

Reading Festival 1989 (2)

Day two. A whole day's drinking, preparing for The Pogues. Woke up with a face full of mud and ringworm twenty minutes after they finished. Missed every band.


From The Wytch Machine...

Lieutenant Ghosts

From The Wytch Machine...

The Devilled Dogges of Babba Combe

From The Wytch Machine...

Reading Festival '89 (Day One)

I only went to Reading once. Glastonbury was my thing. But a recent twitter torrent (well, a twitter twinkle) of nostalgia beans from various people about Reading 1990 kickstarted hardly ever dormant (i.e. formative) memories about Reading the year earlier... I found this and, well, the retroscending began....

This is why events unnerve me,
They find it all, a different story,
Notice whom for wheels are turning,
Turn again and turn towards this time

I mean, look at this bill (okay, the Sunday's a bit crap, except for The Pogues) and imagine you're a 17 year old slightly left of centre indie kid. The whole Industrial tangent aside, lots of my favourite bands came to Reading that year; the schoolyards of Yeovil were ablaze with rumours... Reading was going to be different this year, something had happened, the metallers had been defeated, we were taking over...



Obviously, all this has to be imagined through the gauze of Thunderbird (Tundy), Kestrel Super, Moroccan Black/Red Stripe(?), Autumn Gold Cider (for sophisticated afternoon drinking), Lambrusco screw cap wine - white n red = rose, badly rolled cigarettes (I smoked only for effect then, and the effect wasn't very impressive, it has to be said):

Well, I had Drill Yer Own Hole etc but, really, I was too excited about seeing Spacemen 3 to remember much about Gaye Bikers On Acid. They were probably okay. I can't remember them being much better than that. It didn't matter. It was a good background to drinking in preparation for the Spacemen.

Now, Spacemen 3 were a big deal in 1989. No, really. Their 'fucked up children' t-shirts were everywhere (I wasn't allowed to wear mine; my Mum disapproved and I sold it to a friend who didn't even come - wanker). Back home, we'd prepared for this by betting my mate's sister £2 that she couldn't mime the guitar all the way through Revolution... she forgot it changes just at the end and lost the bet. We had at least £2s of Tundy to play with, even before we'd got there.

What'd (you say you'd) find
Then come, come, come
Get the hell inside
You can close your eyes
Well you might as well commit suicide

They didn't play much from the then new album but we pushed down the front and waved floppy fringes into each others faces. Then they played Revolution and I tried to get my third eye opened, just to give it a bit of an airing...

My Bloody Valentine next. They'd just gone good. We were still a little cynical, to be fair; most of us had seen them in their jangle pop guise and, though we liked the new direction, we felt it wouldn't last...

It's not raining yet, but somebody is encased in mud and blood; more than one person looks like Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood.


That Petrol Emotion? Nah. It's gone. I spent a little time arguing with t-shirt sellers instead. I'm not sure that the Swans t-shirt I was trying to buy was altogother there, it seemed strangely insubstantial, quite literally lacking in substance, in matter... "It's just the Tundy!", I hear you yelling but, believe me, this was a point of some various principle and, at 17 years thin, I had plenty of time to start the ethical ball rolling - the t-shirt seller had enough facial hair to throw me into doubt; I still possessed a pink cassette of The Pistol's Never Trust A Hippy and I just wasn't sure that this guy's pineal gland was entirely on the level...

I didn't buy the t-shirt. Convinced myself it would disappear anyway.



Picture stolen from Reading Museum

Tackhead were on, or rather not on. People were wondering around on stage but the sound was blown almost from the off. This has a huge disappointment; I'd dragged at least a couple of friends to the middle of the crowd with the promise of bodyshaking bass, cementer mixers thrown into the mix, collapsing new buildings, wraparound sound...

In a garden in the house of love
Sitting lonely on a plastic chair
The sun is cruel when he hides away

Instead, one of the Sugarhill Gang played a frankly mental guitar solo; sort of a bass line on the top strings and and a guitar line on the bottom. I can't remember the rest of the set, except that I strained my neck trying to see what Adrian Sherwood was doing.

Then Swans, rain, Swans. Immense. Barefoot Gira. Folk-sludge as heavy as hell. Rain. More rain. "Let it come down." An Invocation. Hair and feet. A wailing Jarboe. The air thick with... horsehair? I can't quite place that thickening... it's like being in Asia...

Thread worms on a string
Keeps spiders in her pocket
Collects fly wings in a jar
Scrubs horse flies
And pinches them on a line
Ohhh...

There's no justice I can do to Swans. They were utterly intense. The sky's had to open, just to release the pressure. The Burning World album might have been regarded as a little lightweight at the time but on stage it's so... immense

The thing I remember most is that no one is talking. The field empties a little with the rain but those who stay, stay silent.

This was like bumping into Nietzsche in a Caspar David Friedrich painting and arguing about the structure of the world.

Some Of Us We Run From A Shapeless Form
And Some Men They Hide From A Howling Storm
Now I Will Wander Through The Falling Flames
And I Will Drown In The Burning Rain
Sha La La La La La La, Let It Come Down

This gig is one of reasons this blog got started, one of the reasons that I thought music was worth writing about - take a little trip back to the Dog Days of 2004.

I don't remember anything about The House of Love.

But hold on a second
I smell burning
And I see a change
Comin’ ‘round the bend
And I suggest to you
That it takes
Just five seconds

The Sugarcubes were at their most shambolic. I'd seen them before in a cramped London venue and they'd been an intense thrash of pop, this time Einar had the arse and was yelling and trumpeting through all the best Bjork bits... a little petulant, if truth be told, a band not quite at ease with sliding this far up the bill... The Sugarcubes could have been perfect pop, could have transcended things - this time they chose not to.

I down the last of the Tundy. The Sugarcubes are at least a great drinking band - like CSS are now. Maybe they weren't all that shambolic, maybe I've simply dislocated myself a little with fortified wine.

New Order sobers me up a little. In fact, a lot. I can't afford to be this sober. I'm camping with several other teenage boys. I don't want my olfactory systems to be reconnected. It's gonna break my bank to get drunk enough to sleep.

New Order are one slick unit. Everything note perfect, pristine. It could be a CD. A laser-disc. It's hard to tell whether or not they're even actually here. It could be a ruse, a rupture, a con. I've always liked the idea of New Order more than most of their music; it doesn't seem live at the best of times and this performance is... well, you can hum all the tunes, you can sing a long, you can even dance, a little but... there's something a little soulless about them on record and live this is even more apparent...

I'm gonna have to start trawling the beer tents... night is drawing in.

Shuggie Otis

Well, Aht Uh Mi Hed has been smoothing it's way around various i-things since it appeared on Skins a few years back but I didn't realise what a dude this guy was.

I mean:



Yeah. You know it.

Shuggie Otis - Me and My Woman

Shuggie Otis - Purple

Shuggie Otis - Slide Guitar

Shuggie Otis - Bury My Body

Shuggie Otis - Sweet Thang

Ring-a-ding-ding.

Apparently he played bass somwhere on Hot Rats. Least that's what they say here.

Frank Zappa - Peaches En Regalia

Actually, I'm not sure I like anything by Frank Zappa, except Ich Bin Maroon (which is apparently actually called Once Upon A Time and which was once sent to me in the middle of a mixtape full of NWW and Coil and Skullflower and Laibach bits and gave me the goosing giggles) but you get my point. Good covers.

Pink Priest

Came across these guys here or there, probably here.



Okay. So I've only heard one track: Vultures Circling Weird Carcasses. It's a good one. It's made me think there might be more out there.

Like an overdriven Fennesz, or a Fennesz more in love with, say, The Stooges than The Beach Boys. There's lots of noise, pink and otherwise, and lots of drop-out, the sound just sliding away... like it.

There's identifiable guitar and tinned drums, sped up and stolen from the early Palace albums, little specks of colour here and there, little yelps...

Everything's smeared as hell. Well soiled.

I like it. It sounds faraway. Mythic. I like the way it doesn't feel the need to gooooooooooo onnnnnnnnn; it's immediate, in it's way, less reliant on narcosis or psychedelia... it's mushroom music for the ADHD Generation...

Go find these folks or go here or here.

The Versatile Henry Mancini

Picture stolen from this little treasure trove, where you can probably steal the album too

I hear the word 'versatile' and it's only ever about sex. It's an unsure word, plenty of slippage. I don't know what we're supposed to imagine that Henry can do... Can we use him as an occasional table, a water pipe, a way to stop motorists speeding through villages?

I want to use him. I do. I'm gonna use him in just a minute, before I get into the shower.

I'm gonna Pink Panther him up.

And then I'm gonna have a crack at that Reynols interview thing, also on here.

This Mortal Coil: Dreampop Supergroup 4

New This Mortal Coil album on the way from 4AD, tracklist and artists as follows:

1) See Emily Play (Pink Floyd) Vocals by Scott Walker and Matt Berninger, music by Serena-Maneesh featuring Efterklang

2) The Dreamer Is Still Asleep - accappella mix (Coil) Vocals by Justin Vernon and Ariel Pink

3) Tattoo (Siouxsie and The Banshees) - Vocals by Bradford Cox, music by Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffitti featuring Noah Lennox

4) L'hôtel particulier (Serge Gainsbourg) - Vocals by Annie Clark, music by Gang Gang Dance and Efterklang

5) Kansas (Wolfgang Press) - Vocals by Ariel Pink, music by Haunted Graffitti featuring TV On The Radio

6) I Feel Love (Donna Summer) - Vocals by Anni Rossi and Annie Clark, music by Serena-Maneesh featuring Efterklang

7) Thief (Can) - Vocals by Elvira Nikolaisen, music by The Big Pink featuring Gang Gang Dance

8) God Only Knows (The Beach Boys) - Vocals by Matt Berninger, Annie Clark, Anni Rossi, Ariel Pink, Scott Walker and Elvira Nikolaisen, music by This Mortal Coil.


Can't see how this could be anything but fantastic.

Ariel Pink's 4AD Graffitti

I like that Ariel Pink's on 4AD now. Don't know why. I guess the smears of sound that characterise the Ariel Pink sound seem to fit happily in the little snug recess of my brain that used to amaze over old 4AD record sleeves, wondering what the hazy girls in the 23 Envelope artwork would look like in the flesh, without the fuzz or the glaze or the soft focus...

Now, of course, I just have a tendency to impose soft focus on everything; not wanting to look too, er, clinically at the world, not intending for anything ever to have too much clarity, in case I turn into a worried Lancome or Oil of Olay model.

They didn't ask.

And Haunted Graffitti must have come from looking at the 23 Envelope typefaces mustn't it? I can't think of a better description for all those roccocco curls and skews and frazzled perspectives...

V23 was the visual representation of the mistaken empathy of many a young, earnest, overcoat-wearing, Mary Chain-haired carrier in the 80s... A visual poem, mirroring the scrawl at the back of your roughbook, mirroring the posh signature you're still trying to develop, in the hope that one day someone will ask you to write a cheque...

I'm glad Ariel Pink is on 4AD. I don't know why.

English Heretic

"We listened, sideways up, by the star-dogged moon...."

The Wyrd Tales album by the eccentric English Heretic stable is keeping train journeys sane at the moment; it's an odd, almost startling, piece of evil whimsy; taking Hauntology at it's literal word, seeing nasty faeries and ancient rites everywhere. It's similar in places to Moon Wiring Club but with the hip hop replaced by shiny little tambourine shakes and processed churns. I like the fact that despite the very explicit occult leanings, it doesn't always go where you expect it to - the music is often freakishly upbeat and, well, happy as a naked butcher, pretending to be a witch. No Lustmord demons here; this is savagery before the sun goes down, while it's still filtering through the trees, making leaves into fractals. And I like that it's unafraid to be silly. This is the Devil's work, no doubt, but it's also music for the devil worshippers who are worrying whether their robes are truly colorfast...

And it makes the trawl through Pewsey a delicate, occult experience...

Recommended. Though I'm not so keen on the accompanying book, or at least the stories in it. Still, a box of some delight.


From The Wytch Machine...

Someone Somewhere...Cracksdown!!!

One of several new versions of the Cabs' classic "The Crackdown", by 'thinking-man's diva' Billie Ray Martin. I picked this one cos the video is more in keeping with the spirit of the original (and features a guest appearance by a very craggy-looking Mal near the end) though each version seems to suggest another shade of meaning, a new way of interpreting, which even applies to Mal's opening 'quote': the original recording has barely dated in terms of its methodology, structure or lyrical concerns. Now, how many other electronic records from 1983 can make that claim...?

(Aaah, don't worry about it, love, you just stick to yer "Hits Of The '80s" nostalgia-fest. Ultravox. Howard Jones. Nick Kershaw. The 'official' history.)

(Note to Loki: You did not write this in your sleep. I'm still popping by occasionally until such time as you decide to crackdown on those pesky 'contributors'.)

Haint

Found this because of this.

House By The Cemetery

From The Wytch Machine...