FEBRUARY TOUR
starting February 16th I’m on tour, with events in Norway (Bergen Kunsthall; Oslo’s By:Larm festival), England (Critical Beats in London; Off the Page festival in Whitstable) and Paris (launch of the French edition of Retromania)
NORWAY
February 16: BERGEN
Talk on retromania + recreativity
Time: 6-30 PM
Location: BERGEN KUNSTHALL, Bergens Kunstforening, Rasmus Meyers allé 5
more information
February 17: OSLO By: Larm Festival
Conversation about Retromania with Audun Vinger + Q/A
Time: 3 pm
Location: Ragnarock conference room, ground floor, HOTEL ROYAL CHRISTIANIA, Biskop Gunnerusgate 3 PB-768 Sentrum, Oslo
More information
FRANCE
February 20–22: PARIS
February 20: Soirée Rétromania, a/k/a RETROMANIA ! Réflexions sur la pop culture à l’heure digitale. A presentation to celebrate the launch of the French edition by Le Mot et le Reste. Discussion with Etienne Menu (journaliste musical), Jean-François Caro ( traducteur) and Guillaume Kosmicki (musicologue et dj).
Time: 6-30 PM
Location: POINT ÉPHÉMÈRE, 200 quai de Valmy 75010 Paris (telephone: 01 40 34 02 48)
Cost: entrée libre
More information
U.K.
February 23: LONDON
Critical Beats #3: Innovation and Tradition
I’ll be joining Tony Herrington, Lisa Blanning and Steve Goodman for the third in a series of panel discussions co-hosted by The Wire and the University of East London and looking at aspects of electronic dance music and club culture as they manifest in East London and beyond. Mark Fisher was scheduled to participate but had to withdraw owing to circumstances beyond his control, so Lisa B has stepped in to replace.
Time: 7.30 pm
Location: Circus 1 at STRATFORD CIRCUS, Theatre Square, Stratford, London E15
Cost: £5/£3
Information and tickets: 0844 357 2625 or
here
February 24 to February 26: WHITSTABLE
The second annual Off the Page Festival: a weekend of panel discussions, screenings, talks, and debates on sound, music, and music criticism co-hosted by The Wire and Sound And Music, with contributions from Linder Sterling, Dave Tompkins, Jonny Trunk, Rob Young, Chris Cutler, Vicki Bennett, Gavin Bryars, Evan Parker, Kiran Sande, and others.
Saturday February 25: I’ll be giving a talk about the work of David Toop.
Time: early afternoon (details TK)
Location: THE PLAYHOUSE THEATRE, 104 High Street, Whitstable, Kent.
Cost: £40 for a weekend three-day pass; £20 Saturday pass.
More information on tickets and the full schedule of events
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
they're back!
this sounds like a record from 1991
"unique rap-rave group from South Africa" says Dave, rap-rave = hip-house right?
i love it, i'm looking forward to hearing Ten$ion
but it sounds like a record from 1991
i find this.... eerie
even so, it sounds more modern than Adele, just as tracks by Pitbull/ LMFAO /Flo Rida et al sound more modern than Adele - if there's going to be throwbacks, i'd rather this stuff be in the charts, because it's throwing-back less far into the past than Adele-type music does -- 20 years rather than almost half-a-century
actually, what really perplexes is this
the fact that those kind of Belgium-in-91 riffs still sound quite modern
modern-ish as opposed to modernist
this sounds like a record from 1991
"unique rap-rave group from South Africa" says Dave, rap-rave = hip-house right?
i love it, i'm looking forward to hearing Ten$ion
but it sounds like a record from 1991
i find this.... eerie
even so, it sounds more modern than Adele, just as tracks by Pitbull/ LMFAO /Flo Rida et al sound more modern than Adele - if there's going to be throwbacks, i'd rather this stuff be in the charts, because it's throwing-back less far into the past than Adele-type music does -- 20 years rather than almost half-a-century
actually, what really perplexes is this
the fact that those kind of Belgium-in-91 riffs still sound quite modern
modern-ish as opposed to modernist
hipsterhouse in San Francisco - the monthly party Haçeteria
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2012/02/lost_in_the_night_haceteria_ke.php
not just Detroit Techno and Acid House - they play New Beat and Italo too
http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2012/02/lost_in_the_night_haceteria_ke.php
not just Detroit Techno and Acid House - they play New Beat and Italo too
mnml sggs's PC on two good aspects of 2011, first of them being collaborations
this struck me as wonderfully nuanced assessment of where music is at: the bounty of harvesting a crop, or crops plural, that were sowed long ago
"Several of these collaborations produced exceptional, if unsurprising results. A lot of them were my favourite records to actually listen to. Again, this is unsurprising, given that we’re dealing with well-established projects and, well, middle-aged dudes and dudettes who’ve really nutted out their approaches to sound. This is why, fundamentally, I think of the best of these as culmination records, recordings that cash out a bunch of ideas that have been kicking around for the past decade or more. But/so: not that exciting, really. And also, you know, I really hope that each is kind of the ‘last one’ in its sequence or series. For the sake of transformation. Culmination, then conclusion, then... rip it up, and start again. To continue on these trajectories would be to court the trage-comedy of true repetition. Add in more time, and you’ll endup with farce, if Woody A is to be believed. But being careful, culminating collaborations between people who really, really know their shit, these records are also very satisfying, if you give them your full attention. Repeat: they are amazing to actually listen to."
the second good aspect of last year was mixtapes, and he provides some examples/links to favourites - a couple of which i'd heard and would also recommend highly -- Moon Wiring Club at FACT, Mark Van Hoen at Pontone. And I must have missed the Endless House Foundation one, i'll have to check that out and the others recommended.
Mixtapes = "a feast" as PC says, but then again since their provenance trawls so far and wide and so atemporally, you might say that they too are a banquet based in harvesting crops planted long ago
this struck me as wonderfully nuanced assessment of where music is at: the bounty of harvesting a crop, or crops plural, that were sowed long ago
"Several of these collaborations produced exceptional, if unsurprising results. A lot of them were my favourite records to actually listen to. Again, this is unsurprising, given that we’re dealing with well-established projects and, well, middle-aged dudes and dudettes who’ve really nutted out their approaches to sound. This is why, fundamentally, I think of the best of these as culmination records, recordings that cash out a bunch of ideas that have been kicking around for the past decade or more. But/so: not that exciting, really. And also, you know, I really hope that each is kind of the ‘last one’ in its sequence or series. For the sake of transformation. Culmination, then conclusion, then... rip it up, and start again. To continue on these trajectories would be to court the trage-comedy of true repetition. Add in more time, and you’ll endup with farce, if Woody A is to be believed. But being careful, culminating collaborations between people who really, really know their shit, these records are also very satisfying, if you give them your full attention. Repeat: they are amazing to actually listen to."
the second good aspect of last year was mixtapes, and he provides some examples/links to favourites - a couple of which i'd heard and would also recommend highly -- Moon Wiring Club at FACT, Mark Van Hoen at Pontone. And I must have missed the Endless House Foundation one, i'll have to check that out and the others recommended.
Mixtapes = "a feast" as PC says, but then again since their provenance trawls so far and wide and so atemporally, you might say that they too are a banquet based in harvesting crops planted long ago
Friday, February 03, 2012
BOOK NEWS
news about Retromania's foreign editions and the American first-time release of Energy Flash
Retromania
* the French translation is published by Le Mot et le Reste Éditions on February 9th as Rétromania: comment la culture pop recycle son passé pour s'inventer un futur. I will be in Paris for the launch 2/20 to 2/23, details about the presentation on 2/20 to follow soon.
* the Spanish edition is being published in April by Caja Negra Editora as Retromanía: la adicción de la cultura pop a su propio pasado.
* the German edition is published in October by Ventil Verlag.
* in other Retromania news, the US edition has gone into its fourth printing, while the UK large-format edition, now sold out, has been replaced by the smaller, cheaper B-format with a new cover
Energy Flash
Energy Flash is issued in its expanded/updated form in America in May via Soft Skull. Because the original Generation Ecstasy was an abridged version of the UK edition, this is the first time it's been available here in its full-length form; it also has the 40 thousand extra words, covering developments in the 2000s, that were added to the UK-only 2008 anniversary edition. More information here and news about events TK.
news about Retromania's foreign editions and the American first-time release of Energy Flash
Retromania
* the French translation is published by Le Mot et le Reste Éditions on February 9th as Rétromania: comment la culture pop recycle son passé pour s'inventer un futur. I will be in Paris for the launch 2/20 to 2/23, details about the presentation on 2/20 to follow soon.
* the Spanish edition is being published in April by Caja Negra Editora as Retromanía: la adicción de la cultura pop a su propio pasado.
* the German edition is published in October by Ventil Verlag.
* in other Retromania news, the US edition has gone into its fourth printing, while the UK large-format edition, now sold out, has been replaced by the smaller, cheaper B-format with a new cover
Energy Flash
Energy Flash is issued in its expanded/updated form in America in May via Soft Skull. Because the original Generation Ecstasy was an abridged version of the UK edition, this is the first time it's been available here in its full-length form; it also has the 40 thousand extra words, covering developments in the 2000s, that were added to the UK-only 2008 anniversary edition. More information here and news about events TK.
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
tickling my fancy
got a piece on the Fred Judd and Daph Oram archival issues in the next Frieze
would have bunged this solo project by Radiophonic mainstay David Cain in the Frieze-r if i'd known it was coming -- sterling archeology by the indefatigible Jonathan Trunk Esq
and this one too ( although it doesn't quite fit, being American, plus Suzanne Ciani shortly after the bleepy early phase captured on this CD headed into outright New Age)
new collection of essays by the great Mark Dery, out April on University of Minnesota Press, foreword by the great Bruce Sterling
last year was the first year in years when i didn't have a Ghost Box LP in my end-of-year... that Advisory Circle album never quite clicked me with i must admit... wondered sometimes if maybe just maybe JB done spread himself too thin (three great Cafe Kaput releases in rapid succession end-of-2010/early-2011) but in truth As the Crow Flies probably just hit me at the wrong time... i will go back to it.. at any rate this new Belbury P gets me back on the GBox program... a new, "live"-r sound, with guitar and what sounds like real drums and a real-seeming sense of space. yet also quite techno-y in places
and here's an interview with Jim Jupp at FACT on the "mood board" that makes up the new record (think ploughman's lunch meets Turkish psych) plus a Belbury Poly mix
got a piece on legendary photographer/Basement 5-er Dennis Morris and John Lydon's Jamaican Holiday in early 1978 in the next issue of Another Man magazine -- this is a photobook from his days as court photographer at Gunter Grove
often thought how striking it is that so many of the great "British" singers and musicians -- John Lydon, Lennon/McCartney, Morrissey/Marr, Van Morrison, Kevin Rowland, Elvis Costello, Ian McCulloch -- are actually Irish. Well here's an interesting book on this very topic and the "double consciousness" that Morrissey caught so plangently with the title "Irish Blood, English Heart" (if not the actual song, which is pretty nothing-y)
The Bad Music Era gets its day! Let's get down to Work (to borrow a genre-coinage off Mr Kid Shirt). Trevor "Playgroup" Jackson inches into the mid-to-late Eighties with this double comp of Goth-dance, Cold Wave, EBM and dancefloor oriented second-wave Industrial. (And he's not alone, not at all: Blackest Ever Black/Raime, Prurient/Vatican Shadow, Gatekeeper, Perc, et al). How weird to find oneself, in 2012, grooving to the Executive Slacks!
got a piece on the Fred Judd and Daph Oram archival issues in the next Frieze
would have bunged this solo project by Radiophonic mainstay David Cain in the Frieze-r if i'd known it was coming -- sterling archeology by the indefatigible Jonathan Trunk Esq
and this one too ( although it doesn't quite fit, being American, plus Suzanne Ciani shortly after the bleepy early phase captured on this CD headed into outright New Age)
new collection of essays by the great Mark Dery, out April on University of Minnesota Press, foreword by the great Bruce Sterling
last year was the first year in years when i didn't have a Ghost Box LP in my end-of-year... that Advisory Circle album never quite clicked me with i must admit... wondered sometimes if maybe just maybe JB done spread himself too thin (three great Cafe Kaput releases in rapid succession end-of-2010/early-2011) but in truth As the Crow Flies probably just hit me at the wrong time... i will go back to it.. at any rate this new Belbury P gets me back on the GBox program... a new, "live"-r sound, with guitar and what sounds like real drums and a real-seeming sense of space. yet also quite techno-y in places
and here's an interview with Jim Jupp at FACT on the "mood board" that makes up the new record (think ploughman's lunch meets Turkish psych) plus a Belbury Poly mix
got a piece on legendary photographer/Basement 5-er Dennis Morris and John Lydon's Jamaican Holiday in early 1978 in the next issue of Another Man magazine -- this is a photobook from his days as court photographer at Gunter Grove
often thought how striking it is that so many of the great "British" singers and musicians -- John Lydon, Lennon/McCartney, Morrissey/Marr, Van Morrison, Kevin Rowland, Elvis Costello, Ian McCulloch -- are actually Irish. Well here's an interesting book on this very topic and the "double consciousness" that Morrissey caught so plangently with the title "Irish Blood, English Heart" (if not the actual song, which is pretty nothing-y)
The Bad Music Era gets its day! Let's get down to Work (to borrow a genre-coinage off Mr Kid Shirt). Trevor "Playgroup" Jackson inches into the mid-to-late Eighties with this double comp of Goth-dance, Cold Wave, EBM and dancefloor oriented second-wave Industrial. (And he's not alone, not at all: Blackest Ever Black/Raime, Prurient/Vatican Shadow, Gatekeeper, Perc, et al). How weird to find oneself, in 2012, grooving to the Executive Slacks!
Monday, January 30, 2012
"why so glum, chums?"--interesting piece by Ryan Diduck for The Quietus on "The New Bleak" aka "hypnagothica" and its relation to recent political/economic/environmental traumas
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
talking of dark things, Valerio Mattioli, who writes for LaRepubblica tells me that there is an Italian counterpart to hauntology that was recently covered as part of an article in Blow Up (sort of Italy's The Wire) on contemporary Italian occult psychedelia. The journalist Antonio Ciarletta, says Mattioli, enumerates its ingredients as: "local folklore, the popular spaghetti cinema of the 60s/70s (especially mondo movies, giallo, spaghetti westerns, cannibal movies etc), even Catholicism, and a typical 'Italian vibe' all around.... Many of the musicians openly mention composers such as Piero Umiliani, Ennio Morricone and basically the whole Italian soundtracks/library music school".
"To me," continues Mattioli, "what’s interesting in these bands, is that their kind of hauntology avoids the eerie and pastoral feeling of the English counterpart, as well as the pop-cheesy attitude of the American hypnagogic pop. On the contrary, their music is blatantly dark, esoteric and sometimes bloody, actually reflecting the 'sun & violence' culture which – despite the clichés – is a commonplace here. Of course, there’s the homage to a popular imagery which is deeply rooted here, and that somehow reflects the Italian identity better than your typical Venice postcard. But it’s also like saying that memories often can be nightmares, especially if you live in a country which is half Europe/half... well, Italy. Kind of Sergio Leone/Lucio Fulci induced nostalgia...
"When you go back with your memories to the contemporary Italian golden age – to say, the 60s of the Dolce Vita etc – you can’t escape the ghosts of that same era: terrorism, urban favelas, corruption and so on. Even the big masterpieces of the Italian literature, TV and cinema typically deal with such atmospheres - they're always bloody, violent, excessive. Somehow, the bands analyzed by Ciarletta are here to remind us that the Italian good old days (when future seemed possible) were a very depressed place, and that the present is filled with those ghosts.
"It also comes quite natural to understand this trend as a reflection of the current feelings among many Italians: we perceive our country as a declining glory with no future at all; and economic crisis, crime and political warfare create a sort of Late Empire atmosphere..."
Bands operating in this zone include Cannibal Movie, Donato Epiro, In Zaire, Orfanado, Spettro Family, Heroin In Tahiti [Mattioli's own band], and on the "more 'pagan-catholic folklore' tip", Mamuthones and Father Murphy . TheAwayTeam/Polysick are "a sort of modern Piero Umiliani" with projects lined up for 100% Silk, and Planet Mu. "Needless to say: all these artists form a sort of family, they’re all friends and do stuff together, they share projects and labels etc."
An example of what Mattioli dubs "Mondo-cannibals":
Mattioli calls this sub-category "spaghetti wastelands" (love it!)
This is an example of "Italian gothic":
(Spettro is Italian for "spectres", right?)
"Exotic libraries":
"Bloody folklore":
and this is Father Murphy, who I saw in Pistoia last year
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
talking of dark things, Valerio Mattioli, who writes for LaRepubblica tells me that there is an Italian counterpart to hauntology that was recently covered as part of an article in Blow Up (sort of Italy's The Wire) on contemporary Italian occult psychedelia. The journalist Antonio Ciarletta, says Mattioli, enumerates its ingredients as: "local folklore, the popular spaghetti cinema of the 60s/70s (especially mondo movies, giallo, spaghetti westerns, cannibal movies etc), even Catholicism, and a typical 'Italian vibe' all around.... Many of the musicians openly mention composers such as Piero Umiliani, Ennio Morricone and basically the whole Italian soundtracks/library music school".
"To me," continues Mattioli, "what’s interesting in these bands, is that their kind of hauntology avoids the eerie and pastoral feeling of the English counterpart, as well as the pop-cheesy attitude of the American hypnagogic pop. On the contrary, their music is blatantly dark, esoteric and sometimes bloody, actually reflecting the 'sun & violence' culture which – despite the clichés – is a commonplace here. Of course, there’s the homage to a popular imagery which is deeply rooted here, and that somehow reflects the Italian identity better than your typical Venice postcard. But it’s also like saying that memories often can be nightmares, especially if you live in a country which is half Europe/half... well, Italy. Kind of Sergio Leone/Lucio Fulci induced nostalgia...
"When you go back with your memories to the contemporary Italian golden age – to say, the 60s of the Dolce Vita etc – you can’t escape the ghosts of that same era: terrorism, urban favelas, corruption and so on. Even the big masterpieces of the Italian literature, TV and cinema typically deal with such atmospheres - they're always bloody, violent, excessive. Somehow, the bands analyzed by Ciarletta are here to remind us that the Italian good old days (when future seemed possible) were a very depressed place, and that the present is filled with those ghosts.
"It also comes quite natural to understand this trend as a reflection of the current feelings among many Italians: we perceive our country as a declining glory with no future at all; and economic crisis, crime and political warfare create a sort of Late Empire atmosphere..."
Bands operating in this zone include Cannibal Movie, Donato Epiro, In Zaire, Orfanado, Spettro Family, Heroin In Tahiti [Mattioli's own band], and on the "more 'pagan-catholic folklore' tip", Mamuthones and Father Murphy . TheAwayTeam/Polysick are "a sort of modern Piero Umiliani" with projects lined up for 100% Silk, and Planet Mu. "Needless to say: all these artists form a sort of family, they’re all friends and do stuff together, they share projects and labels etc."
An example of what Mattioli dubs "Mondo-cannibals":
Mattioli calls this sub-category "spaghetti wastelands" (love it!)
This is an example of "Italian gothic":
(Spettro is Italian for "spectres", right?)
"Exotic libraries":
~~~ THEAWAYTEAM - TWILIGHT: DRUMS IN THE FOREST ~~~ from AAVV on Vimeo.
DONATO EPIRO - La Vita Acquatica from Planeta on Vimeo.
"Bloody folklore":
and this is Father Murphy, who I saw in Pistoia last year
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