5th Dimensional Paper Cups

OK. Me, the Hacker Farm boys and maybe Kemper Norton... surely we ought to do a promo identical to this as part of an anniversary (can't think what of yet) celebration? Release a single to go along with it? I know you Hacker guys are kinda busy undermining the mainframe and cutting off the toes of Google and Kemper is psychosurveying the nooks and grannies of Cornish Death Mounds but... C'mon. Maybe a songcircle and dance routine? Draft some local munkins to paint the backdrop, blend in some subliminals, add some fuzz, a bit of smoked bracken and 'is this the kind of mould you can lick?' attitude and... well, it'd have to be a hit wouldn't it?

Do they still have hits?

Hacker Farm - Precog

Well, you knew it was coming:

The Philips Pavilion

Image via here

I dreamed the Philips Pavilion survived and appeared at the roadside, deepest Somerset. It was just there, an anti-Shard. Inside, all kinds of electronic mangles and sprayed sound - the sound sprayer (yes, literally) was shaped like one of those Russolo machines, only sort of crossed with an umbrella (the operator called it Mary Poppinson) and wouldn't let anyone else play it. Things got sort of mixed up with the opening of Jamie and the Magic Torch:



and, after that, all I remember is me and Kek and Steve (you'll know 'em as Hacker Farm) and 2ndFade trying to get at the instruments before the thing was demolished again by guys in diggers and dumper trucks.

I wish Xenakis was there, he'd have sorted the fuckers. I reckon Xenakis was pretty hard.

Hacker Farm - UHF

You know I know Hacker Farm; they are comrades without arms; part of the body... you know I'll like UHF, see things reflected in its mirrors... you know I'll get it because it is part of where I am and these fine people are part of an accidental conglomerate (IX Tab is subsumed by Hacker Farm, which is now not just Hacker Farm and, post-Wire interview, indivisible from the hole).

I also know that Hacker Farm aren't for everyone. To paraphrase Lautreamont: not everyone can savour this bitter fruit with impunity.

And that's the point.

Which is why I feel the need to take an issue with Rob Young's review of UHF in the recent edition of The Wire which, perhaps accidentally, savagely misses the oppositional stance of Hacker Farm even when, more or less, mentioning it as part of his review.

I think he likes it but that's not relevant. In some ways it would be better to dislike it - UHF courts dislike, expects it - because that final passage, where Rob sort of offers advice to the boys, comes across as not merely patronising but also as a political assault, an attempt to codify what Hacker Farm do in terms of the accepted. Now I realise that suggesting the (great) work of Raime and Emptyset might somehow be regarded as the status quo is absurd; they are clearly plowing their own furrow but still, in those slim lines that suggest Hacker Farm adopt the 'abyssal dynamics' of those two it's difficult not to read 'If Hacker Farm weren't Hacker Farm then people could embrace them more easily, some space could help us digest; there's just too much information...'

Which misses the point because that is what they are about. I'd imagine this recording, if anything, is cleaner and more spatial than they'd originally intended; it's likely to get more noisy (noise is information, information is noise) in the future, not less... they are really not going to adopt those dynamics because they are, at least in part, about opposing those dynamics (I know for a fact that they are fans of Raime but that doesn't mean they are the same as Raime, or can be slotted in beside them neatly).

I don't know... I'm ranting; it was a throwaway comment, it means nothing; they probably don't care but I do because it seems like a generalising move, an attempt to reconfigure something from here to there; they live in different worlds to lots of the music they can ostensibly be compared to (they live in different worlds to my music and I've seen the same places they've seen, our timelines are more or less homogenous).

For what it's worth, there's no reason anyone should get Hacker Farm - I'm sort of amazed at the response to their work (not as much as I'm amazed as the response to mine!) - I'm not even sure I get them most of the time (UHF can be exhaustingly dense; I was listening to it in the snow the other day and it felt like all the snow at once) but it does stand alone, it is singular, it does not have the dynamics you'd expect (and sometimes it doesn't have the dynamics you need).

But...

Rant over.

Pop Up Museum (w /Hacker Farm)

This is happening in my birthtown so it'd be rude not to turn up. I'll be tinkering along with the Hacker Farm guys at some point on the 22nd in my IX Tab guise (actually, I'll be in the my 'me' guise)... adding another layer of dead-eyed colour and psycheDelia to their buzzing thoughtfrosts...

i.e. I might play some tunes, if I can find any.

Hacker Farm @ Worlds Unknown

The boys are back in town.

Taunton shivers.

I'm a bit late and a woman in the audience already has both hands over her ears; she looks bewitched, maybe feeling those old ghosts come back to haunt her. Dark planetary voices digging at her bones. I take a few photos but then get told off by the woman on the door, herself a haunted replicant, a pink pearled twin set of malign benevolence...

The Steve Engineered video backdrop works perfectly in this context, this blackened cube of the Brewhouse's Studio; music and video morph and break apart; that could be a cow but it might be a Green Man, perhaps the Green Man...

Odd things are moving on screen. Things that shouldn't move.

I've seen these guys play out a few times now and each time there's wonders. They work in a kind of odd harmony, with potential chaos and crackle that should fall apart but doesn't. It's a minor miracle that this collection of wire and plastic and homemade petrol can synths (noisy little fellah) doesn't tip over into mere drone. Steve's (Farmer Glitch) a calm beat technician, dragging remarkable grooves (yes) from his machines; Kek's (the Kidshirt) an almost elemental wraith, hovering on the brink of suggestibility and small (mushroom) t trance, no more so than when playing his strange sawn off baby vuvuvela and winding tendrils around the room.

Real
Music
Comes
Out

And in their second set, playing with the guy who arranged this evening (playing clainet - i think, and toy thigh bone, a mini bullroarer and saxophone) there's a long slow beautiful track that sounds exactly like a lost Coil song from the New Orleans sessions. Lovely piece of music; I hope they've recorded it.






The collaboration worked well; an album as H(acker) Bilk Farm can't be far away...

In fact, Hacker Farm's music would work with most other genres and musicians because it's sponge-like. It's almost phagocytotic, engulfing but not disarming. It's music that can build a quiet storm around other music without denying or destroying. People should be queuing to collaborate with these guys. Hacker Farm music, despite the 'junkshop shaman' press and it's implications of cider-quaked West Country hermeticism/solipsism, seems a resolutely social music...

Which kind of makes it ironic that I had to dash off. Would've loved to stay for drinks. But...Sick baby syndrome at home. RT calling. Great to see you both again. We'll catch up later.

From The Wytch Machine...

Hacker Farm - Poundland

Perhaps not fully available yet but here's a place to start snuffling.... There's also this little slice of the olde worlde, which has other stuff... maybe more on this later, the floppiness will need another headbubble to get around.

Poundland wreaks tiny little havocs. Electronic ape gulps, scales and scrapes; all shrouded in deep echo... Lots of tracks start like they're dying.

West country voices occasionally drift up - voices you don't hear often, ghosts of Holloway (Ian and the prison)... there's hidden tinkles and micro melodies that never quite reveal themselves... the hi-hats sound like aerosol sprays... this sounds like music from a country that's just discovered electricity, is still in it's thrall, is wondering if nature could ever tame such a beast...

I know their equipment: the close-miked toys, appendages, shower caps, broken machines... and it does sound like all of those... Steve keeping the beats just in check, Kek flinging himself softly at piles of pure matter... but this is more, er, musical than you might expect... these guys aren't altogether sane or altogether willing to compromise or altogether but... you get the feeling this is a great group, that they've found a way to stitch their two approaches together...

You want superficials? TG is an influence, of course and a lot of this - the violins, the shudders, the leftover electronics and drums; but this is X-TG, none of the Gen(eric) egoings... there's a hint in one section of a West Country version of Peter Christopherson's solo contribution to DOA, for instance... The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death...



Some of it sounds like being inside a giant Zardoz skull; with weapons replaced by cornstalks, sweet wrappers, puffballs...

It's music for a Riddley Walker boar hunt (we're going on a boar hunt, we're going to catch a big one, what a beautiful day; we're not scared....)



Except....we're too fucked to spear, we're rooting for vegetables, snuffling for hallucinogenic fungi alongside the bird squawks (these birds feed on badger carcass)... we're fogfucked, we're wandering...deep in the wud... and there's a glimmer, somewhere up ahead, it's a man with, God, he.... those mirrors, they are blinding... He... shit, he seems to be kicking what looks like a... No... Christ...

Did I say I liked it a lot?

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...