On Music

A friend has asked for musical recommendations, what I've found/discovered/uncovered/dug out of some greasy bedsit in cold hard suburbia. I was all set to do some sort of listy thing but then, on reflection, it got me thinking of where I am on music these days...

Buggered if I know.

The utter fantasticalness of the net is that I can, on a whim, listen to anydamnthing I want to at a moments notice. However, this has its downsides- for one, there's just so much bloody stuff to listen to. I have eschewed  mainstream music in its entirety, and this includes many acts that would usually be classified as 'alternative' - a label I long ago considered irrelevant - a label that has become so comodified that it includes virtually everything even remotely left of field - I cannot say when was the last time I listened to music radio station, on the odd time I've had to endure such my suspicions have largely been confirmed. Total 100% regurgitated facile elevator music. I sometimes wonder if I have turned into that generation who, as a lad, would condemn my music as unmitigated bollocks - but I don't think so, Max Bygraves remains a long way from my playlist.

So, in the quest for musical genius - and yes, it is still out there, I do not, and will not subscribe to the stupified  'All the good stuff has been done, maaan' mindset that many 'musos' subscribe to as they plunk out yet another crusty cover. I have resources, and I shall reveal a few.

First up the NBT radio show is an indispensable source of new, groundbreaking  acts. Martin intersperses each show/stream of largely undiscovered gems with good solid oldies - not your 'Oh here we go again ' yawners, but carefully selected to underscore and enhance the newer stuff. Be it rock, folk, electronic or just plain eclectic, it all gets a whirl and is a damned good launch pad for missions of further exploration.

There are several podcasts that I constantly return to Phantom Circuit is one, featuring a goodly chunk of experimental, electronic and just plain odd music with interviews with featured artists.

Belbury Radio is another favourite of mine, presented by the chap behind  a band called - Belbury Polly, again oddly experimental stuff, a smattering of unusual classics and choral pieces. Very much in the Hauntology vein of music that I have grown to admire this year- haunting stuff that invokes odd memories drenched in reverb.

One of my favourite artists in the Hauntology vein is The Caretaker.
An aside, Hauntology is not to be confused with Witch House, Witch House is Trip Hop pt2 or sometimes lets-slow-house/ebm-down-to-16rpm-and-call-it-a-genre..

Author/writer Warren Ellis does a superb podcast thingy on occasion, the most recent one, Spektrmodule2, can be found  here.

Of sites I frequent/subscribe to regarding music:  Dying For Bad Music is a must, for music at its most eclectic, some of it can be, er, really 'bad', as in spotty yoof in bedsit wif casioplayer, spoons and a tape recorder - though out of such, greatness comes on occasion.

It was on DFBM that I discovered my favourite band of the year - Motorama.

I have had two definite directions that my musical preferences have gone over the last 18 months, one is folk and folk rock. In my misspent yoof, I developed quite a liking for bands such as Steeleye Span and they've always lurked in the background, their albums finding their way onto the turntable. My predilection for all things gloomy, embeded in Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnymen did sort of sidestep around the obvious Goth-by-numbers of Sisters/Rosetta etc and found a home in the dark folk of Current 93 and Death in June, which, then guided me back to folk in its rawest form, rediscovering the Wickerman soundtrack this year put me on a whole new quest. Blogs like Wheel of the Year have helped with some absolutely fantastic folk/dark folk/psychfolk compilations -as well as some pretty awesome almost classical album links.

My other musical direction is into Drone. Drone covers a wider expance of music than one would think, from the Doom metal of Sun (((O))), through electronica and ambient soundscapes (Drone does actually feature as an element in a lot of Folk music- so there is a link there). Outstanding examples can be found at Droning Earth with again, some well put together compilations available.

 Greats for me in the Drone arena are artists like Anji Cheung, A Death Cinematic and Good Weather For An Airstrike -all available on Bandcamp, another site that I've found indispensable, with many acts offering their work for free or for a small fee (or for what you feel the music's worth). An interesting wee thing I discovered is that Good Weather For an Airstrike started out as a project aimed at nullifying the effects of tinnitus, a condition I have that is slowly worsening (a hereditary condition I've been told ) from the prolonged ear ringing I suffered after many a club night or gig to inability to bloody follow conversations in a crowded venue to a constant buzz that worsens with fatigue/illness. And oddly, I find some drone to do just that-cancel it out.

Outstanding albums/artists over the last year, new and old, a list:

Motorama-Alps, also look up their earlier ep's all available on their site.
Anji Cheung-Ghost of Dead Lords and Ritual
The Wickerman Soundtrack
Vor Der Flut -(Hommage An Einen Wasserspeicher) various artists featured in a water reservoir emptied for renovation- the best natural reverb ever.
Tim Hecker-Rave Death
William Basinski-92982
Good Weather for an Airstrike-As we're Both Just Standing Still
Pye Corner Audio Transcription Services-Black Mill tapes Vol 1
The Caretaker-An Empty Bliss Beyond This World
Forseti-Erde
Little Kid - Logic Songs
Birdengine-The Crooked Mile
Eyes Like Mirrors - Crusades
A Death Cinematic-Preternatural
Kemper Norton-Libraries Act

David Bowie...

My first introduction to Bowie was the Aladin Sane album, or at least, my first conscious introduction. Someone has brought the album to school and was flashing it about. I'd heard the music before, I think I recall having liked Space Oddity but wasn't really aware of  'Bowie' until I saw the cover of Aladin Sane.
I recently picked up an old biography of David Bowie at the charity shop a week or so ago - by one Chris Charlesworth. Written in 1981, it was amusing to read, 30 years later, a persons account of the rise of Bowie and his, in 1981, almost retirement after his mercurial rise to fame in the early 70's.
The Seventies - perhaps its then because I transformed from a pre-teen kid to an angsty young man within that decade that I see it as an incredible period of change - and growth. It was, my time of appreciating and discovering life and, almost as a parallel, music transformed from besuited mop-tops, through rock, glam, pop and by the end of the decade, punk and post-punk. I had it all! I don't believe we've seen the like since.
David Bowie epitomises the Seventies in my mind.  The beginning of the decade saw him a whistful, naive figure who by 1974 was a rock phenominon, sparking glam, soul, punk and new romantic. What artist today has the ability to totally transform themselves, as Bowie did from the idol Ziggy Stardust to the crooning Young American and then on to the bleak dystopian vision that was 'Low ' over a period of a couple of years? But, I think, it was helped by his outlook, he eschewed fame and was not willing to compromise, not willing to create fodder for his audience. Reading the (short) biography, fame very nearly did kill him, but he was able to rise above it - or rather, skim beneath it.
So, consequently I've been listening to loads of David Bowie this week...My favourite album remains Hunky Dory, followed closely by Low, Ziggy Stardust and more recently Heathen. I wasn't keen the soul period of Young Americans, though I now thoroughly appreciate his mindset behind it  . Apart from, I think, one really miff album in the Eighties - Tonight, Bowie's albums have all been good.

Good night.

That Seventies Show

Way back then, pocket money didn't go far and even when the paychecks started rolling in R150 didn't go that far either (though, at 35c a beer at The Swan and the NME at 25c it weren't all bad). Still, shelling out for a record album was not something to be sniffed at (haha still isn't) and of course, it was the imported stuff that counted, local pressing were well crap most of the time. I still managed to spend a goodly chunk of the paypacket on music.  There was a popular photographic/electronic chain, Etkinds, around back then and at some stage they had come up with the idea of having a stand of vinyl deletions in their stores at around a Rand a platter, loads of crap but with a bit of diligence I would afford myself the prize of finding something off my usual beaten musical track. My first introduction to the likes of Rick Wakeman (Six Wives of Henry VIII), Can, Amon Duul and Faust (I distinctly remember passing up a copy of the untitled Faust album on clear vinyl through not having just a few cents more...) and others was afforded me by these racks of gems.
Some of the finds I gleaned back then have fallen by the wayside, either 'borrowed', lent out (then forgotten) or swept away by other misfortune.

I stumbled over this blog site - Orexis of Death recently (a Russian site?) and have been able to relocate some of  those lost slabs of sound, and found that these were not stand alone albums, damn, I love rediscovering seams of  music...Swiss band Toad up there one of 'em (about 5 other albums available!). Trolling through Orexis' pages I am reminded of how much bloody great music has been produced (yes, yes, crap stuff even more so) swept aside by what is deemed 'popular' by the music moguls of time past and present. Actually, as with Toad its criminal how many acts were ignored because they were not within the British/American axis. In so many cases stuff coming out of Spain, France, Italy, Japan, Argentina etc etc etc was in many ways so much better, if only through innovation and without the entrenched sound of UK/USA swamping out the music. Production may have been more polished, more professional , though I deem overproduction to be a heinous crime and in so many cases merely glosses over stuff with a lets-make-it-sound-like sheen suitable for the masses...

Rock on!!

All That Jazz

Nope, I'm not a jazz fan, not at all, however I really appreciate music played for the sheer joy of playing it. Here we are, 8 in the morning, 3 cats laying down a spontanious jam at the Gautrain entrance at O.R.Tambo. No audience, 'cept a few sleepy security gaurds, and these guys are tootling away, smiling, vibing, hell, my morning mood disapates on a melody...

Back downstairs, the sound of the trumpet resonates beautifully through the concourse, usually made nigh unbearable by bloody vuvuselas at the moment.

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Bullets From the Belfry

I have to use this thing more-it has value...

Henceforth those that read it will be regaled by my doings on the podcast I host.
That's Bullets From the Belfry, by the way. We're up to episode 8, after a wee break due to technical problems on the German side.....

This cast has only 4 artists, but good ones indeed..First up on the show is a band called Apteka, from Chicago...not to be confused with a Polish group a few years ago with the same name. This Apteka describes themselves as psychedelic rock, I would compare them with Serena Maneesh on one side, perhaps a more spikey early My Bloody Valentine on the other. excellent tunage ranging from the rocky The Sheet to a more winsome If You Were Here (both featured on the podcast and downloadable from their site). They have a furious touring schedule and this polish shows on their tunage. Oddly enough they haven't an album out yet....get a move on lads!!


Next up on Bullets 8 is a young chap from Pretoria, AnDroidgeny is his projects name and as the name suggests, expect a sleazily robotic techno-fused sound. There's a lot of ebm/idm/techno originating in Pretoria at the moment, projects like Cyvergence and Nul for example, are certainly a help getting me over my disdain for most things 4x4 beat driven and dance-floor orientated. Bullets 8 features two tracks from AnDroidGeny, Little Girls Are Evil and Blood Addiction , both designed around a Pied Piper call to the kind of sweaty hedonism The Henkie (AnDroidGeny) likes to create in his club events.



The Funeral and The Twilight are more my style, infusing a post-punk sound with heavy dollops of American Gothic, the vocals snaking through the songs, snarling and shrieking in places, telling tales of despair, society..well, life really. The vocals bring to mind the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce of Gun Club fame and Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds as does the music, a howling swampy brew best served with the moonshine of your choice. The two tracks on Bullets 8 are the rocking Down By the Sea and the (deceptably- till the howling starts ;-p) mellower I Have Returned To You. Again, nothing relaesed as yet but all their songs are downloadable from their Myspace site.




Last up on Bullets From the Belfry 8 is an industrial project from Switzerland, Blue Screams of Death. Now I have a beef with 'industrial', or rather what passes for the genre today (dance floor fodder-blah). Blue Screams revives my interest in industrial by making it experimental, innovative, thinking music as opposed to lets-get-the-kids-on-the-floor with monotonous beats and gutteral German lyrics (ooh, sooo daaaangerous!). Blue Screams of Death use found objects, drones, musical intruments (in interesting ways) and voice to build soundscapes dark and massive, brooding and moody.Involved in the project is one Martin Jacklin, poet, singer and writer. Martin is involved in several musical projects, some of which I hope to feature on future episodes of Bullets. I've included The Great Machine is Dead and Farewell to Your Arms as a mere sample of what Blue Screams of Death is about.

fishcakes

Well, after successfully deleting the comment i was working on!!

anyway, as you were, or I was, rather...

I said, time flies, working on the Bullets From the Belfry thang (where loadsa good music's going down, btw)amongst other things. Getting the old comic/cartoon muscle going with redrawing Mr C Visser's Hunters storyline..here's page 2 for your perusal: see right....................


Otherwise, I'm sitting, sulking, nursing a soggy case of bronchitis..moan, moan

remake remodel

or something.....
Seems i'm missing out by not utilizing the blogsphere!! Everyone's doing it (and it's good for you!!) - even me?!?!? er, here,
which goes hand in hand with my podcast (whhooo, more netsploitation): and even newer but something that will develop with vim and bile ...
Do I hate music? No, I love it, but I despise the shallow bog it has mutated into...

Sorry, back to here..seems I can , as others, put up my measly artistic endevours that spew from my pencil from time to time - as I am currently, as it were, contractless, I am not in the habit of the diligent scribble, but who knows, perhaps by bunging stuff here it may inflame the fitful spark of creativity to workable heights and I can get in an extra six-pack on occasion..

Here for example, a friend posted a link on a forum I subscribe to and I thought of a local connotation for the situation....


I'll do some more when the wind blows in the right direction....or I'll dig through the debris on my desk and find some previous situational malarkey...

Er, oh look, I have a blog...

When did I sign on for this-says here January 2007!!
Good grief, the things I do in a daze!
Now, what should I do with this????
*ponders*
I could do music, 'cept there are huuuundreds of other, already established ones.....that I riffle through endlessly and all updated furiously - do these people have a life??? I'm glad they don't - gets me more really obscure music to frighten visitors with....







OK, here are some pictures I took at the Pavement Special Magazine launch at the Boho last Thursday...Mathew Fink, the guitarist/accordionist/performance artist of the excellent Jim Neversink - my favourite South African band..





Then over here we have the One Night Stands - a tad newer to the scene than Jim but I've got me eye on 'em....nice!! Sooooo glad they're playing their own songs now!!