Mega Mystery Band

Digging into the inbox for the first time in ages. Fluff and nonsense, mostly, with a few gems curdling to the surface (more later, perhaps) and also this:



It doesn't the matter that the music is a bit. Or that this will end up as a. Or even that the idea itself returns yet again and will bite it's tail until.

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>

(please let the truth not be revealed, let the identity founder, let whoever it is just slip silently away; at least, let it have due course, let the prosaic truth turn up when)

...

This Hardy Boys mystery is irrelevent, a nasty little retrovirus - I don't want to find out who the MMB (though wouldn't it be great if it turned out to be Maurizio Mufti Bianchi?) are, but I like the idea of pretending to be them. More things like this should happen, I think. The internet's easy giving is killing this kind of mystery: even being able to buy Power Electronics et al killed it for me a little.

As Martin Beyond The Implode says in the comments there:

"...if anyone wants to preserve any mystique about early Whitehouse, whatever you do don't watch the Come Org video...."

But still, I like the idea of everyone pretending to be everyone else. Before the internet it seemed very possible that those people you were seeing up there weren't really who they said they were. Images couldn't be tracked down easily. I went to see Autechre and Orbital and there was no way to tell if it was them, or just some lackies with a CD player, an echobox and a shuffle function...

In fact, it didn't matter if it was them or not...

Aphex kind of killed that, of course; made the face central, put himself about, made things Rock... but until then, the anonymity was everything, which lent itself to sampler as pirate, sample as unmarked pirate gold: the anonymity was the music and had to be. When Richard James said "I don't use samples" (can't find the source of this, maybe he didn't say that) it was a anti-revolutionary retrogressive act, a Rockist uplift, a return to the old days...

But back to MMB, it reminds me a little of a silly dialogue (followed up by an email conversation) I had with Terre Thaemlitz in the letter pages of The Wire...

See here, for the letters...

I wrote that because it ought to be true. That was 2004, now it really ought to be true.

I wonder.

Maybe we need a partial media blackout. Stop any information leaking out. You can see where Burial was going with this and you should have shivered at the hungry pack, hunting the poor sod down.

Make your next release a release.

A Radiophonic Weekend

Yes, it's been a long time since I posted on this blog, but this is an event that needs to be pimped far and wide.

I'll be there because (a) I live in Bristol and (b) I'm performing at the event, but also because (c) Dick Mills will be there (yes that Dick Mills, the one who did all those farty laser gun noises on those old Dr. Who episodes you used to watch) and (d) so will David Cain (yes, that David Cain, the one who made this record). Delia will be with us in spirit.

C'mon dad-bloggers, no excuses now. Your generation needs you...

Rene Hell Flicker + Moonlighting

It gets better...

Keep with it...

Rene Hell "{e.s. des Grauens in fifths}"

Also, some accidental moonlighting at Blissblog, as part of the rock-kissed gitttttarrrrrr solos/quirkings that's been going on for a little while over there... though clearly I missed that The Buttholes kicked the whole thing off...

Unrelated Paradox

On my way to work...



From The Wytch Machine...

Xylitol

Loving the latest Xylitol double 3", one of my favourite things released so far this year. It's not a remix album. It's a reimagining. It's a remix album in the same way that Aphex Twin remixed Nine Inch Nails on Further Down The Spiral i.e. it's not a remix album. It sort of is a remix album, even though I don't generally like remix albums (that Neubauten one put me off forever). It is maybe perhaps isn't.

It's varied but it's more or less all wonderful... though see here for a review of a track (not saying which one but you might be able to guess) by my wife (she's right, and i like it because it sounds like that...)

Lots of unusual suspects here, all on top top form: Nochexxx, Kek in Intangible mode, Belbury Poly, Pete Um, Woebot and many others...

Highlights: The NWW circa Rock N Roll station snare tumbles w/added Groove Is In The Heart bounce; the odd choirs, violin scratches and Cosey Cornets; the glacial kosmische melting soundtrack; the ever-so-slight Trance touches; the snatches of detourned Krautrock - a little feathering of rock era Kraftwerk added to the lunatic electo fizz; the stuttering vocals, eating themselves whole; the gentle Radiophonic loping; the supremely mental rapping; even the pops and crackles between the lines of some of the more superficially straightforward tracks...

sleevnotes, gutter press ramblings from Martin, photographs (apparently, I can't see any!) by Nina Power...

The 2 x 3" format is a slight bit annoying but I'm guessing this is either a) a deliberate attempt to engage the listener with the music by forcing them to confront the lack of symmetry on the 'sides' or b) a consequence of someone winning the 'shed load of 3" CDs' item on eBay...

Still, I've already listened right the way through four times and I can't think of many recent albums that I could say that about.

Tiny little moments of genius lie here.

Kraftwerk at The Johnson Hall

Kraftwerk played my old home town Yeovil? OK, so I'd have been 3 or something so didn't go but still... Kraftwerk played Yeovil.

Visions Of The Future

Africa Hitech

Well, never too sure about some of my old mate Mark's Africa Hitech stuff... the futurenowspeedgarage thing has never been my sack... but this one pushes some good buttons. It's a little Shangaan, I think...



Found via Slutty's Fringeings

Mati Klarwein

Yeah


Miles Runs The Voodoo Down




Labradford - Grate



Nick Drake - Pink Moon

Twins Of Evil Ghosts

From The Wytch Machine...

Psychic Ills

Old news now perhaps but absolutely loving this motorfed, spazzling of an EP...

Faustbits sounds half good again (people keep telling me about this album or that track but Faust often seem pointless and directionless and old-fashioned these days), whole-good, immense and kraut, depth-defying - more like this please.

Gibby Haynes reworks like The Jack Officers never stopped happening (in fact, like they ought to have sounded and didn't). This makes to completely spazz but remains restrained, Jet Li in Unleashed, just before the shit is about to hit the fan... That said, restraint is Butthole-based; it's not the restraint of most people... Someone get Gibby some more time on the remix desk. Someone send him some Panda Bear tracks...

Juan Atkins does something I'd listen to again despite not being club-bound. Model 500 always bawed me; fundamentally impressive but thin, groovey but not relentless enough... But this... this is what I want him to sound like.

This clubs similar remix projects over the head, sucks the life out of them... Psychic Ills never sounded so good...