Drift Of Signifieds

This is a woozy, slurred, drugged up/out slice of unsettling gothic dub ( I reject the hauntological tag; it's haunting, yes). I like the way it seems to slow down the more you listen to it (maybe it does), like someone ever-so-slowly lapsing into a coma (maybe it is). Reminds me a bit of that David Tibet / Steven Stapleton thing where =wheezy hospital sounds sort of ache against the song, rubbing its bones. The video reminds me of a collapse of the William Hartnell / Tom Baker Doctor Who credits too, which is absolutely right.

Drift Of Signifieds

The Drift of Signifieds remix of the IX Tab track In The Blake Midwinter is here (it's quiet, but it's good)

Suzanne Ciani & The Problem Of Primary Teaching

Available via the ever reliable Finders Keepers. Almost everything they've released is worth a look and they do cheapo compilations too.

Because I've been listening to the inspired lunacy of Music Minus Music (great title, great music for bouncing on a bed with a two year old, great music for shuffling to work, waiting for your morning body to unfold) which is almost exactly half silly / half sublime (and each part of the silliness is sublime and so on...) I've been re-investigating Suzanne Ciani.

Now, I've heard of her and heard her before, she's someone I've been (The) Wired to listen to before but never really got - I think I heard the wrong things, went scurrying down the wrong holes because the stuff I heard only made sense in a retro awe kinda way (cf lots of the Radiophonic Workshop stuff, of course) rather than because of any actual Form or content it might have had. It sounded like the kind of thing I might want to like, especially if it was done by an, er, lady... and she had nice bouncy hair like Delia Derbyshire and...

...the joke is not a joke; the presence of female electronic composers (or any composers beyond the go-girls-go rattle of The Runaways and their descendents) is an unsettlingly dense issue - people still continually comment if girls are even at the kind of gigs I tend to go to, as if as Plato rapped: 'beauty was a visitor from another world' (I doubt he was talking about girls) but then almost immediately feel bad about making those kind of comments, as if there's a new form of sexist rubicon to cross (there is but I'm guessing no one really knows where it is)

Electronic music is laughingly still in a similar, but opposite, position to Primary Teaching, which is even more laughingly in the same position its always been in: we need desperately some vague sense that a gender balance could be maintained in the real world , as a simple matter of fact as opposed to merely being temporarily addressed by dabblers and dilettantes - I tried to be a Primary Teacher years ago, lasted about a year, scurried to the warm arms of FE teaching.

Trying is key, I think... and, though the electronic world doesn't seem particularly macho in it's current manifestation - I've yet to meet the Henry Rollins of Post Radiophonic Electro-drone Gristle, of Hauntology, of Chill Wave et al - there's still that sense, more or less palpable, that girls are somehow different (not girls?) if they happen along with this geeky thing (it almost requires those little hats with flaps - we've all got them! - and beards and jackets with badges and unkempt hair and... well, you see my point...) or else they are appendages and afterthoughts, inspired by their artful boyfriends (and this kinda crap been going on forever), or else they are simply suffering all these ridiculous and undanceable bleeps and drones and whooshes because they are lovely people and maybe later one of these guys will actually take them dancing or remember to come off the modular synthesiser and start playing with them...

I'm not sure where I'm going with this (not sure where that modular synth metaphor was going, seemed like it was heading to some dark dark places). I'm glad I'm not a proper writer, can simply derail this... I'm not sure I'm being at all consistent here, or even that I want to be... I think those NLP patches I bought are starting to bleed into my brain.

I think the point I'm trying to make is exemplified by this piece of video, that I pilfered from here (which also has some other great Suzanne Ciani clips). Peter Ustinov's opening line is fantastic too. In fact, it's all fantastic:



So I bought some Suzanne Ciani stuff and it's really good... like a Raymond Scott where you can't see the joins. And she's hotter than Daphne-

No.

Oliveros & Humanity

I'm not even sure it's appropriate to suggest I quite like Pauline Oliveros but a 12 CD set coming soon from Important Records is something to treasure, I think even if you never listen to it. Even if you would never consider listening to it, you should like that it exists. These kind of things make me proud to be human. When Oscar Wilde said "All art is quite useless", this is the kind of thing he meant.

Prince Rama Re(tard)mix Review w/ Transglobal Underground

For those that really can't be arsed with all the arsing, there's the proper review here.

"Rest in Peace”, the opening track of the latest Prince Rama album opens with a slightly strangulated House howl, the kinda thing you might have gurned circa 1990 (where were you?), which is then savagely dismissed without a thought; a discarded, non-devotional whore… the drum rumbles begin and then the Dead Can Dance Indian sweeps and suddenly we’re deep into what might be a psychosexual memory of Sinbad movies… a primary imprinting on chiffon and chant and painted ladies inside golden pots, concealed by red smoke… I should be clear, this isn’t intended as a slight… I’ve been playing this album a lot, perhaps because I’m imprinted that way too…

...you are too...

...especially if you think you're not...

...or maybe you're looking at this and thinking: I don't know a single bit of A Clockwork Orange argot; I'm not from your world, pops...

...I've never heard of Leela or the Tight Fit...

In which case; I'll try and explain.

No punctuation, or at least no full stops…only accurate way to understand where this record is coming from… it’s breathless dandyism, artful sabre-tossing and ultimately a little melancholic because the sounds of the east appropriated here (or rather, churned over; this isn’t a Transglobal Underground-style appropriation) are the sounds of Holly/Bollywood’s understanding of the east pre 9/11, when it was exotic and tameable… when no one was even thinking about atrocities or Hassan I Sabbah…when the evilest Arab you saw was Tom Baker in full-make up…

...actually I think I'm getting the odd sniffs around the internet (OK, so far just Jonny Mugwump) that Transglobal Underground might be due a comeback and surely now in the midst of MaybeRetromania (not read that book yet so I'm not really sold on the premise) this would be a perfect time for one of those timeless/utterly time-dependent shaggy Club Dog bands to make their comeback... the music definitiely has never gone away (found different beats perhaps, but not that different beats) and, actually, I find it hard to think that Transglobal Underground in particular could go away, being less a band more a condensation of a certain time, a few uncertain spaces... for you, this could be (INSERT Megadoggish drug-binge here), for me it's aligned to Brighton, sometime early-to-mid 90s where I saw Transglobal Underground and where the whole Eat Static inspired psytrance was about to lift off... in just a few days ethnic drones would be smeared over everything... right then, you could only look back and see, what? Monsoon?

(though you could of course blame Coldcut and Ofra Haza; odd how few picked up on this, or how long it took for everyone to align)

So... Prince Rama.



…it’s not all Sinbad (a lot is Sinbad); “Trust” starts off with an airplane drone and then add voices that sound like they’re trapped in another room before building into some cargo cult version of Gary Numan circa Cars, with some added flourishes from Danielle Dax…

I hear a version of She... the Rider Haggard version... unfilmed but out there...

…the Dax references continue into “Incarnation” which may be a soundtrack to a James T. Kirk honour duel on some far off Essex planet* while “Portaling” starts somewhere inside a mountain during the heart-sucking scene of Temple Of Doom and then sort of detours into handclaps and, bizarrely, pub rock-soul circa 1974…

<<< I've read reviews since writing this and they seem to know about Prince Rama (art school Krishna commune )... and it seems like the associations, these pretty little stabs at meaning that I make, are only semi-appropriate but...

Fuck it; I'm getting more and more annoyed with research-based reviewing. Occasionally, I give a shit about the context of a band (or what they meant to say) but mostly I don't; with this kind of brainfizzing confection, it's all there, it's in the open, there's nothing that re ---- search could bring to the party... >>>

Hectoring over...

You’ll get a lot of fun out of this record; its brain is grimy enough to past muster with all the Pocahaunted TDK fetishists but its bones want to be in the middle of a Bollywood set; lip synching and twirling imaginary balls of bird fat… it has colour, has odd breadth (and odd breath)

But almost no punctuation.




*This phrase was in the original review but I wrote it so long ago I'm struggling to remember what I meant by Essex Planet... it could be a typo but then I don't believe in typos so I must have meant something by it... perhaps I was thinking of Essex quarries (in all senses of the word, or two at least), perhaps it was just one of those sniping non-sequiters that I occasionally shovel into my word piles just for the steaming hell of it... I'll get back to you on Essex planet,,,

High Wolfings

High Wolf is a little brain worm.

Been listening a lot to High Wolf, stands out in an overloaded crowd of dronescapers and murkrakers

(seriously; there's so much of this stuff... used to be you managed to track down a few Zoviet France LPs, maybe some HNAS cassettes, the odd track on a compilation of amplified washing machines and scratches; now you can live a lifetime of drone, a futility of slipped discs)

But High Wolf transcends the genre, I think; a lighter touch, more wholly psychedelic than the Ferraro(adkillers) contingent; less in thrall to the sources of the samples and loops, more deranged by the looping itself; the lightly propulsive power of the everloops and the ever-so-sleight of hand gearshifts...

And the tones are generally lighter too; less stomach sucked-in blackness, more pushed out lightbeams, digging right at your brains... sparkly, even.

Maybe, it's just me.

Anyway, there's a bunch of stuff up at the Winged Sun Records bandcamp site, including a little slice of High Wolf from the Japan Tour CDR; listen and then pay what you will...

If you're in the US then High Wolf is about to tour there and are apparently hooking up with likeminds along the way - Robedoor, Magic Lantern / Super Minerals, Plankton Wat, Sun Araw, Starving Weirdos, L.A Vampires, Deep Magic and many more...

These collaborations are always hit and miss but I'd imagine when they hit it's going to put the mental in transcendental...

Avey Tare - Down There

...this is drunken slurr.

beached boys.

...thick

jaunty even, in dark parts.

(music that makes you want to attenuate the lyrics)

Real words but wordless...

suffocatingly intense joy.

...a death eater.

that bar scene in Fire Walk With Me?

only Laura lives and builds a house near a lake.

Avey Tare - Lucky 1

H kr Fm 1.3

From The Wytch Machine...



...Never re-edit blog posts, never check for relevance or spelling or, urgh!, facts... but I'm going to reverse engineer these, send some thoughts back through time...

You'll have to click the photos to get the full effect.... The Wytch Machine seems to like only to post the left side of the photo, the Left Hand Path...

At times, Kek looks a little like Masonna, I think... the way he's grappling with that thing in his mouth, it's like a man grappling with ectoplasm or electrical currents, like his body itself is wired for sound...

They're not making a racket though... this is often quite beautiful stuff... the Farmer's beats are wrought in iron...

Psychedelic Iron >>>>>> Butterflies...

Ha ker Fa rm 1.2

From The Wytch Machine...



...you hear a lot of bands who seem to be wreathed in noise... this band really is... wreathed is perfect... noise circles the beats, occasionally strangling them, occasionally letting other voices through... I saw this performance mostly through video... through a little screen that concentrates the eye... flipping from one to another... it's a perfect way to intensify the experience* especially when....

(is that a cow with it's head psycha-dela-melting?)

there's no crowd... where the fuck has everyone gone? This little event is gonna have to scream like hell to get noticed.... and it's a shame that more people aren't here to see this because, to my ears, this is very listenable.... the young dubsteppers at the College could dig this... there's easily enough to grasp onto... more say than the excellent but amorphous Ice Bird Spirallings that Kek used to do...

I know, I know... mates etc... but I really liked this stuff... get a CDR to us, guys!

I filmed the whole set - but there's 23.23 of perfect stuff, i think; well, perfect is probably not the right word. Not sure about stuff, either. Not sure it's as tangible as that...There's 23.23 of Ghosts using Machines. I hope they'll put it up somewhere...


**Sorry if the footage I shot for you guys was a little shaky.... kept forgetting to not bob about... some of them beats are funky...

Hacker Farm 1.1

References? Well, I heard a fair bit of Coil about the edges, the way the beats slid in and out... anyone who knows me knows that that's about the greatest compliment I could give. Also some of the more abstracted dubstep - I'm thinking a solarised Actress, of the top of my head. There's spirals of a lighter Merzbow... certain hint of the East around the eyes... one thing that kept recurring as I was filming them - this is the most unAmerican music I've heard.... no idea where that comes from... but this seems rooted in either the Far (South) West or the Far East (Anglia* and Japan)

Doesn't matter... could only be misleading... references aren't what this is about... this is it's own reference and will remain that way....

Though Farmer Glitch was talking about spending time in Hong Kong so...






*not sure where that came from... never even been to East Anglia (or any Anglia) but there's something, well, indistinct about it in my imagination... and this music could curl beautifully around the edges of an abandoned munitions testing base, looking out over the sea...

From The Wytch Machine...

Colleen-ing

Keep hearing Colleen on soundtracks, through windows, in other people's lives... Missed her somehow in my life; an artist I think I feel I should know better. Who's to tell? All the stuff I hear sounds great, is that representative?


Even to me, this feels more like a Tweet. Mixed Mediatosis.

Colleen - Summer Water

Colleen - The Heart Harmonicon

Lost the will to separate. Perhaps temporary.

'Francis likes to talk' - Watson on Crick.

Maybe Colleen is here too, alongside Dawkins on Genius of Britain. She is getting everywhere.

Colleen - The Golden Morning Breaks

I can't write without italics. Not sure why. Or rather, think i know but would prefer to look away. Will return to this maybe. Always return.

Curse this rotten Wytch Machine.



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...

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.

Autotisticking

Been listening to Autotistic, in amongst the mire - it's an intense listen, all on it's lonesome, frazzling, blessed and burdened (in all senses of both words) by echo, lots of echo, echoes of echo... a sustained Acid trailer in sound...

I'd play it in stages, I really would... it literally get on your nerves when you play 2 or 3 tracks together... I don't mean this as a bad thing.

It's a kind of spirit dub but not the one you're thinking of if you've heard that term before... a kind of dub where the guitar slews slip and slide against one another, where little frozen shapes of feedback are found and then thrown to the winds... there's a lot of air here but it's difficult to breathe, like hanging your head out of a fast moving car...

It works for me better as a sideways glance, slipping inbetween other things; sounds perfect between some crystalline techno, a sliding scale between the beats... my favourite tracks - Slum Plastics, Milky Moan - have an odd sense of rhythm that seems to exist behind the music...

Somewhere, in the middle of roaring air and ebb and flows and clusters there's a sample or something of a voice saying something like: 'Are You Okay?' and it's a perfect sample, a perfect expression of the psychedelic gouging that I'm sure is at the heart of this record...

I have just played 4 tracks straight though so I could well be imagining that voice.

Seriously, play this between things; you'll thank me for it.

There's a few mp3s here, if you'd like a little skoot...

Colour Sound Oblivion (again)

Mental.

The Skull Defekts (attacked by Rats)

NOTE: For some reason this post has been attacked by a virus that adds lyrical flourishes from the ever-popular, hardcore punk band (Charged) GBH . Apologies for this.



The memory lingers on when you were the same as us.

Well, these guys appeared from the pages of the latest Bad Acid magazine, which feels (and reads Three months old a child) like it picks up a little of the slack left over from the demise of Music From the Empty Quarter,

City baby, city baby, city baby attacked by rats.

...minus the techno and still you lived off love and fuss 'dance' and with a few added grammarslugs and spelling lapses.

Residing in a squalid place, I haven't heard much and haven't dug around that much yet but so far The Skull Defekts seem to wander through all kinds of blasted (it can't be too much fun) terrain: there's psychedelia here, from tubthump and krautrock grinds (elements of the kind of exploded Judas Priest tracks that Circle were putting out there a few years back) to elements of the the electronic razzle / Kosmiche style drones of recent H (A mutant at the age of one) word bands.

Your brain is getting eaten away by the rat living in your skull.

They are also suprisingly good at the more or less straight rock of Blast First era Sonic Youth et al... whilst still occasionally dipping into pure, heckling, noise...

A human rodent cabbage.

Okay, I've heard maybe 5 tracks and they all sounded a little different. I'm not really sure where these guys are now or where they're coming from / going to... they may have broken up by now, or eaten each other...

They may be outside right now.

It's hard to think a tiny thing can do that much damage.

Vluba Tunes

Yeah, Vluba... A Ruined sound; occcccasional voices like deeply scratched wood. There's maybe lots of stuff like this, lots of drone and grist and mill and krautrock moans but, I dunno, Vluba seem a little more... entrenched? I'm sure loads of people mean it but these guys/girls/whatever really mean it... there's no other reason for some of the musical decisions they seem to make, at least on the stuff I've heard... YES, I mean this as a good thing... i hate realness, authenticity makes me come over in a postmodern rash but when it's applied to Vluba, when it means that they really can't sound any different, I'm thinking.... yeah...

There's some squeaks that come in.... you'll see what I mean, the second side of



About half way through....when you think it might start coming over all Vibracathderal Orchestra or even attempt something some full-pelt Kraut's Corpuscles... then in come the creaks and the squeaks.... mocking....

You'll see...

Vluba give off an odd feeling. A not right. Unheimlich.

But don't get me wrong. There's nothing inherently creepy about the sounds, least not to anyone even vaguely driven by drone.... this isn't Lustmord or Burial Hex creepiness... more the creepiness of the abandoned office block, the empty room with a child's toy at the edge of the carpet....

It's their choices, I think. The sounds they put together.

I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe I've gone and it's coincided with my going, made some associative tangles that I can't unknot. Maybe tomorrow I'll be back again and this will make no sense and Vluba will just be another cosmic no-thing, a blip, a thing worth dropping or not mentioning. In which case, I apologise. Maybe I'm leading you down some bad tracks here, maybe these trails won't be worth your while... God Knows I've followed some bad 'uns in the past. I mean, I guess 20 Jazz Funk Greats has been a favourite of mine since it first came out and those fellahs describe things so well the music only occasionally matches up to their fantastical vision of it... they hear better than me... much better...

But....

There's definitely something about Vluba.

Something.

I'm sure.

...you'll see what i mean...

before my endless qualifications and my hesitancy rolls me up...

The Pyramid Album (Side 1)

The Pyramid Ablum (Side 2)

Sourced from the ever-wonderful depository of soft and shiny things at The Tanzprocesz Internet Archive... found, in label form, here

Have yourself a Merry Merry Christmas...

These little beauties will be just in time for Christmas...

Inner-VIew W/Julianna Barwick

...second* in a series of inner-views with random artists whom I think might be the future... long-scale guesses, open-asks, shrills and tidings - sweeping up detritus from the aether regions, old hands swapping with new faces...

Your music strikes me as very 'benevolent'( see here for what I mean by that); is it designed to be?

I've heard from a lot of people that they find my music very relaxing, chilled-out, meditative, etc. I saw on itunes the other day that 2 kids said that 'florine' helped them get through finals! I'm not aiming to make peaceful or zen'd-out music- it all kind of comes out the way it wants to so i guess most of them are slows jams- i'm a pretty relaxed, daydreamy, easy-going person so maybe that's why it sounds the way it sounds. If it takes people to a dreamy place when they listen then i'm really happy about that.

There's a clear similarity to certain kinds of religious, choral music; is this a conscious influence?

Totally. I grew up going to church 3 times a week and we sang a
cappella. Beautiful, beautiful hymns with layers and layers of vocals and
even some quirky 'fun' ones with clapping and female vocals and male
vocals taking turns, and back and forth. this undoubtedly informed my
musical tastes. Later I was in choir in high school and then an opera
chorus so I was always acquainted with the human voice and what it can do
in a choral setting. I just love the sound of many voices coming together-
especially the swells of emotion in most hymns and choral pieces. the
church i sang in when I was a kid was a cavernous space that supplied a
beautiful, echoing, ringing reverb that also has stuck with me. I try to
achieve that kind of sound in most of what i do.

I've never seen you play but I'm curious how your stuff translates to a live setting...

it's just me on stage, with some stuff, building the loops one at a time - usually just singing. It can take close to ten minutes sometimes to
end up with the 'song'. It's starting with the spare, lone vocals and
builds to a choir of sound - of sorts.

Are you going to play in the UK anytime soon?

Would love to but no immediate plans as of yet. spring?

For the sake of the techie geeks that read this(you know who you are) could we have an equipment / software list? You use a Loop Station don't you?

...sure do - i sing into a shure mic (sm58)- into an effects pedal (helicon voice tone create- the only pedal i could find that was made specifically
for voice and that has reverb, delay, and tons of other effects, all in
one), into a roland rc-50 loop station - you can build 3 loops at a time
and fade in and out, and that's it. i've been known to use an electric
guitar occasionally, keyboards, a triangle, and some other things (even a
brian eno iphone app---yes), but 90% of the time it's just me and singing
and the equipment.

Care to name some musical influences?

...aforementioned church music, bjork, thom yorke/radiohead, panda bear/animal collective, boy choirs (i've seen the american boy choir, vienna boys choir, and the boys choir of harlem live- so amazing)-- there are tons of musicians/groups that i love but as far as influencing me - those take the cake.

Anyone you'd like to collaborate with?

...any of the above, antony, nico muhly, bill callahan, black dice, film scorers, city center, laurie anderson.

What about non-musical influences? Films? Books? Which book do you think you could soundtrack effectively?

...almost as influential, but not quite, as my experience singing in church,
was seeing the film 'empire of the sun' when i was 7 or 8 in the theater.
the song 'suo gan' has played a pretty important role in my life - i love
it so much. and the rest of the soundtrack has gorgeous choral music that
i have always been smitten with. i think aesthetically 'the virgin suicides' is one of the most beautiful films-- lots of kubrick, too - visually, he made my favorite films, hands-down. I, like everyone else, am a huge salinger fan. i could completely
visualize all of his books in my mind - like no other author- so wonderful.
my favorite book, though, is probably 'the fountainhead' by ayn rand. i,
for better or worse, love the idea of an individualistic mindset. doing
our best, making yourself better - i loved not only the story but the
themes in the book. that being said, i'd love to score a new version of 'the fountainhead' and a close second would be the short 'a perfect day for bananafish' from salinger's 'nine stories'.

Is ambient a dirty word? It always seems like it is.

...it connotes ugly things. but there's a lot of beauty in the 'ambient'
world.

Are you interested in scoring an actual choir?

YES. someday. yes.

Are there any forthcoming projects that we should be aware of?
i'm working on the next record, will have a song featured in the
forthcoming 'esopus 13 CD' (esopusmag.com), have a project going on
kickstarter.com to try and put the florine ep on vinyl
(http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/928045737/florine-ep-on-vinyl-limited-edition),
lots of shows stateside soon and everywhere else for spring.


Did I read somewhere that you've done some remixing?

Yes, i was asked by the people at XL to do a remix for radiohead's
'reckoner' and jack penate's 'tonight's today'.


*You must remember the Weird Tapes Inner-View?????

William Basinski's Face (2)

William Basinski has entered the fray in the comments boxes here; and he offered a link to the real mid 80s Basinski:



His main site is here.

Cheers for the link....

William Basinski's Face

William Basinski and a young Nick Cave

This is exactly what I was thinking. William Basinski's face is all wrong.

Not at all like i imagined... I guess I had Philip Jeck in mind; a face that was suitably crepuscular, a face borne from dust and late-night cheap studio space... didn't imagine Clint Ruin / Jim Thirlwell circa 1987 to be staring out at me...

This cannot be William Basinski...

I had the same with Joanna Newsom - i was convinced she was an old fisherwoman, a dry-haired, blockboned old woman, dragged from the depths or found in some Woody Guthrie backwater... and then when pictures started to emerge even the sound started to change...

This musical form of prosopagnosia might be everywhere... a completely different listening experience from situations where you see and hear at the same time... a beautiful lack of congruence...

For contrast, I can remember sitting around with friends imagining Bjork and getting it more or less exactly right... and doing the same for Blixa Bargeld, that Neubauten scream somehow forming a soundwave of his Skeletor / Ivan Lendl cheekbones like a pin-art howl...

Pic of Nic and Jim stolen from here