The I in M.I.A is Mathangi

We have new product from Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam, better known by her stage name M.I.A. Mathangi was released late 3 days ago on 1 November 2013 after lots of stops and starts. It is now streamed online via YouTube. In a review for Vice.com, Ayesha A. Siddiqi states; M.I.A. is "sampling all the nonwhiteness of her global south palate. She doesn’t just traffic in Otherness, she revels in it". I totally get where Ayesha is coming from, and going to. The readership of Vice.com are the ones that need introducing to the global south. But I think describing M.I.A as part of the view from the palisades of Williamsburg is missing the fact that she is the window. Maya is bringing the noize and making it better for everyone.



The world M.I.A is reporting back from for the readers of Vice.com is so further on from what Ayesha terms "writing nursery rhymes for post-colonial angst", which she covers with a simple label: "diaspora". But the sins of origin live on in the scattering of souls across a map of borders and barriers, passports and facial identification.



In the audio of M.I.A we are moving through the sound window with the true migrators. The clandestine and digital of a global movement that are throwing their bodies against the walls of Europe, Riyadh and the Rio Grande and at the same time reading newspapers on free wifi in Singapore between shifts and begging on trains with an iPhone in the pocket in Stockholm. Against this movement, race is the post-state default of identity in the fragmenting USA. Post-colonial angst comes with passport stamps and the domestic staff sleeping in the garage. What M.I.A is giving us is a celebration of possibilities not a reflection of failures. This celebration is a fountain of original content beaten out on pirated software and broken instruments, the chaos and broken chains that inspire the likes of Vice.com. But such an organization cannot become part of this culture because that would destroy the barrier that makes exchange possible. So when Ayesha writes "The packaging doesn’t undermine the message; it is the message," this applies as well to the media pyramid that delivers "worldtown"  to the masses amid the meltdown of the reality they are always trying to second guess.  if you doubt this reading just witness the loss-of-context by Vice in Jihadists or Boredom? The Choices Aren't Great for Syria's Kurdish Refugees where civil war just seemed to happen -  sans the redrawing of the Middle East since 9/11 by the present Imperial Power.




I like to think I am part of this inevitable meltdown. I grew up a white male in a black country located in Asia (Australia). I latched on to the first global movement of transience I could find. Back in 1995 this was the Rainbow/Rave Coalition that recruited the disenchanted from all social classes and gave them a seasonal trail that stretched from Tasmania to Varanasi to Stockholm to Rio. Today this vision has been diluted in the west by the hipster herd. The voice of the anti-WTO riots of 1999-2001 was its political high water mark.



But today, if one steps ahead of the crowd, made possible by such windows as those created by M.I.A, then one can access and even participate in a growing culture of true Worldtown. Welcome to the post-state planet.

Consumption and Distribution of Audio Culture in the Global Online Marketplace

I know this is regressive, but I still love it. The Black Angels, Don't Play With Guns (fuzz and thunder)

"Marginality is today no longer limited to minority groups, but is rather massive and pervasive; this cultural activity of the non-producers of culture, an activity that is unsigned, unreadable, and unsymbolized, remains the only one possible for all those who nevertheless buy and pay for the showy products through which a productivist economy articulates itself. Marginality is becoming a universal. A marginal group has now become a silent majority" Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life p. xvii.

Online streaming of music is becoming the normal mode of consumption in many communities. Streaming removes the accidental element of finding music that was present with Mp3 blogs and once upon a time, record shops. Even the Forced Exposure catalog allows you to mix and match. On programs such as Spotify there are recommendations for similar music, based on record label classification -  in other words holding you pretty much in the structure determined by the companies that are taking 70% of proceeds on the service.

Streaming services like Spotify were always an attempt to find a business model that could function to the satisfaction of the labels in the infected climate of what was supposed to be 'post-Pirate Bay' marketplace, following the conviction of the three main players behind it. It was the publishing companies, studio owners and major record labels that wanted the Pirate Bay stopped and for a model to be introduced that would continue a capital flow in a market dominated by the Internet. Spotify founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon were in the right place at the right time. This does not solve the problem of artists not making money or "the showy products through which a productivist economy articulates itself".

“We’re punks because we’re restless,” Ek said recently. “We’re punk but in a positive way. What we’re about is trying to build something for the long term… Our mission is to bring all the music to every single person on the planet.” What would this entail, bringing "all the music to every single person on the planet”? It would basically lock us into a muzak-style delivery system where blandness is added to every note.

If all the music is available, what about the music that is not? There will always be music that is beyond the reach of easy delivery (thank goodness!) such as that brought to us by musicologist Christopher Kirkley who has put out two albums of Saharan cell phone music, under his excellent label Sahel Sounds. Mr Kirkley has to travel, and search and work for this music to be more accessible for more people. If it was otherwise, the music would not be the same as it is today, a voyage into the far sonic realms that bring the mind into a new experience. This still relies on the Internet, but it does so with a Do It Yourself (DIY) aesthetic that runs true of many folk cultures and genuine marginal communities, such as the Punks of 77.


Punk was about finding a relevant form of musical expression for what (mostly young) people where experiencing in the hard times of 1976-78 (as is depicted in this contemporary German documentary looking at the first wave of punk/anarchist culture in London in 1977). Today the online streaming of music is the same business as always just under a different brand name.  “We’re back to the same revenue levels as during 2004, and if the development continues in the same way we’ll be back on turnover similar to those during the “golden days” of the CD in just a few years,” says Universal Music Sweden’s MD Per Sundin.

Recently in The Guardian, former front-person with Talking Heads and leading figure in the second-wave of (New York) punk David Byrne made some dire predictions on how unlimited streaming of music will effect music culture. 

"The inevitable result would seem to be that the Internet will suck the creative content out of the whole world until nothing is left. Writers, for example, can't rely on making money from live performances – what are they supposed to do? Write ad copy?"

As an artist of some success I understand that Mr. Byrne sees the money problem with Spotify as the cornerstone of culture and growth. However I do not think the money problem is where the real danger lies in a service that desires to deliver "all music to everyone".  Streaming music will suck creative content out of the world because could well be the world. It will determine the perimeters for cultural expression. This brings me to my next point.

 Here's to the Future
"Bob Dylan is endlessly cited in discussions of innovation, and you can read about the struggles surrounding the release of Like a Rolling Stone in textbooks like The Fundamentals of Marketing (2007)."

This weekend I discovered two bands that on first listening to I am surprised I liked so much. The Black Angels and Thao and The Get Down Stay Down are two United States, (presently) West Coast acts that do their thing so very very well. The Black Angels have refined the late 1960s fuzz garage guitar sound with psychedelic overwashes to a degree one could have only dreamed of back in the day when we huddled around the latest import release of the Nuggets series (1984-89). The Black Angels revive the instruments (original Rickenbacker guitars,  effects boxes, keyboards...it must have cost a fortune), the images (psychedelic posters include the image of Nico as their logo) and the hippie trippy lifestyle with lyrics like

I hear colors running through my mind
I can feel it dripping in my eyes
I see colors ancient spectrum lives
In through me they enter, make me shine
So bright.

We could be in San Francisco without the conflicts and causes. The music of The Black Angels is exciting the first time your hear it. But I have found after a listening a few times it sticks in your head, but does not give anything new, and it follows a very predictable pattern.

Thao and The Get Down Stay Down are an equally brilliant, super-tight, folk-noise outfit that present poetic songs that soar and swoop on par with classic examples of the genre (Incredible String Band, The Band, The Carter Family, Bob Dylan and more). This is talent, no doubt about it. But it is technical talent  that is well presented and easy to consume. Thao creates quirky videos where she expresses her hipster self ("Thao arrives for the first day of rehearsals with the Get Down Stay Down prepared for anything...except music" - ha ha....because its not just the music, its a life and remember please avoid panic buying).

Similarly if you consider an artist such as Larkin Grimm, we have a timeless attitude to the production of music. When I saw Larkin some years ago, I felt she was channeling Buffy Sainte Marie. I suspect this is a general sense of nostalgia for these and many other contemporary acts (Thinking First Aid Kit etc). Those that take us back are those getting the major promotion. What about the distasteful Robin Thicke, who brings a 1960s gender politic with him, and he even looks and sounds the part as well.

When we listen to these acts that draw so heavily on some of the past high points of mass musical consumption are we paying for the museum? Is this consumption are the streaming services becoming more like the museum of music, in an attempt to get us back to "the 'golden days' of the CD". If this means forcing people to listen to the same music they were listening to in 1989 (CR-R was marketed in 1990), then that is what the labels seem willing to do. I believe this is what will kill real original creativity. Not ready availability, the creation of a mass minority, to evoke de Certeau again from my opening quote, and a resulting softening of edges and a mixing of styles for the purposes of marketing. It becomes a question of collecting a certain number of cultural signifiers and you have a 'edgy' act, as is refelected in (the serious I think) comment from the below video:

banjo? check
gang vocals? check
bearded man? check
groundbreaking.

However, I will continue listening to Thao and The Get Down Stay Down and The Black Angels as what they do is great, I would even say they are reassuring in these uncertain times (that is the idea I suppose). But I am worried we will see more culture that uses old tools, old tunes, old structures old images to reach present-day paying (trapped?) audiences. While more contemporary art forms and creative movements (such as remix) are forced offline and underground. This is a mass conservatism that does not have renewal as part of it structure. It recycles on and on and on edlessly (like a copy of Mojo Magazine). There is no change. I believe a lot of Indie labels share this gloomy perspective as they attempt to find a niche with some degree of originality in a hostile market. In the streaming world the DIY of classic punk is replaced by senseless name-dropping that means an image is as about as deep as the rebellion becomes, and associated renewal, goes by the wayside. Attitude is replaced by lifestyle, and hope by ambition. This says nothing about the times we live in today.

Thao and The Get Down Stay Down - We The Common (Live)

Keijo: WHNZ:57:WAMAWA

 

The Blues as the expression of a coherent poetics, or the ‘theory’ or how one can explain the meshing of technique with ideas and images, is based on a limited set of principles. “Midnight Truth: Billie Jo relates the bitterness she feels over her Ma's death, her father's indifference and the dust”. In The Blues these principles include the reconciliation of supposed opposites; repetition and variation, improvisation and planning, dialogue and monologue and progression and stasis. These principles all meet in the music of Keijo, with a perpetual memory tuned to The Blues eternally at play.

In the music of Keijo dissonant forms communicate with each other; a wailing guitar is surrounded and given fresh meaning from a mass of insect-like pulses xylophone from deep in an imagined summertime forest. Attention to low-fi recording techniques gives a blues harp the scratchy wail of a treasured field recording, while drums and diaphragm-mic vocals bring the listener to some lonely railway siding in the mean summer of 1935. “Out of the Dust: Billie Jo sneaks out in the middle of the night with a little money and a little food.” It’s all the same in the temple of sound. It is not about either/or, it is about the balance and harmony of each part, growing and forming a single auditory space. The shadow and the shake, repeated cycles of sounds that expand outwards into improvised landscapes of color and light. “Gone West: Billie Jo has been on the train for two days. She's burned up and frozen.” There you find the moment of your own listening. It is there that time collapses and everything is true and everything is permitted. But nothing is real.

Keijo produces here seven tracks of transportation. We go beyond time, here there is but the sound and how it hits you. This is tinder dry journey folk wandering out of the woods after hard seasons to take their chances on the road or the coast. Where travel and starvation are better than hanging on to hope and having nothing change. By learning the tempo of your own foot fall the heart can be stilled to a relaxed pace and the air becomes easier to breathe. The Blues becomes the rhythm of your body and you are healed; to the earth is born a true one.

Shine on.

James Barrett (aka Nada Baba)

Stockholm Sweden April 2013.

www.soulsphincter.com

A tribe Called Red: Free Album of Conscious Raising Tunes

I am very busy at the moment, racing to have thesis finished by the first snow fall. But here is some excellent tunes for the chilly months ahead. A Tribe Called Red describe themselves as:

We're an all Native American DJ crew from Ottawa Canada. We remix traditional Pow Wow music with contemporary club sounds.

Ottawa-based Aboriginal DJ crew a Tribe Called Red have had a banner year, from the Polaris Music Prize long list recognition of their self-titled album to the ongoing success of their Electric Pow Wow parties in the nation's capitol. From side stage at the Mad Decent Block Party, DJ's NDN, Frame and Bear Witness explore the importance of the Pow Wow and the fun of a big outdoor show.

KEXP: KEXP Live Music Highlights 2012

Seattle’s KEXP deliver a mix of some of their best sessions from January-February 2012, featuring local and international artists and bands.

Sandrider, a hardcore trio from Seattle, preview their self-titled debut, released on Good To Die Records.

London’s Veronica Falls play their shimmering 2010 debut single ‘Found Love In A Graveyard.’

Portland warehouse band Blouse preview their self-titled debut with ‘Into The Black.’

Minneapolis punks Banner Pilot play ‘Isolani’ from their third album, 'Heart Beats Pacific.'

Welsh indie superstars Los Campesinos! Play ‘By Your Hand’ from their newest album, "Hello Sadness,” recorded live at The Neptune Theatre.

Quasi is an indie trio formed in Portland in 1993, comprising ex husband and wife Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss and bassist Joanna Bolme.

Seattle lo-fi folkster Bill Campbell (AKA Thee Midnight Creep) plays ghostly autoharp-driven tunes.

Laura Gibson is a Portland-bases folk singer and songwriter. ‘La Grabde,’ is the title track from her 2012 album.

13-piece Seattle ensemble Orkestar Zirkonium count funk, punk, klezmer, and Eastern European and Indian styles among their influences. Check out their rambunctious drum-and-brass from KEXP studios.

Detroit band Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. deals in sublime indie-pop.

Seattle singer-songwriter Damien Jurado plays adventurous psychedelic folk.

Gruff Rhys-collaborator and Welsh psych-pop songstress Cate Le Bon plays ‘Falcon Eyed,’ the opening track from her recent solo album ‘Cyrk’.

The Eternal Word Horde of a Master Musician

The Antipodes Bite Back

In 1983 The Birthday Party called it a day. Not that many people noticed that one of the most harsh and discordant post-punk bands had disbanded. The Birthday began in the early 1970s with school friends Nick Cave and Mick Harvey and the final line up coalesced around 1978 with Tracy Pew and Roland S Howard. Just the names alone give you some image of the band following its own path cut through an undergrowth of urban decay, body disassociation, psychosis, biblical horror and Baudelaire intoxication.

To my mind The Birthday Party represent a high point in Australian post-colonial culture. There is little that is referential in the body of work left to us by them in regards to the antipodean largely pan-European culture of white Australia. I see the theater of Bertolt Brecht and Dada and its roots (Rimbaud, Lautréamont) as possible inspirations for the songwriting and performance of The Birthday Party. However works such as Nick the Stripper leave one wondering what the hell was going on in St. Kilda in 1981.

While Nick Cave has made his mark on the world of music since The Birthday party dissolved, I have grown more and more interested in the work of the recently deceased Roland S Howard as I get older. Nobody played guitar like Howard, who seemed to turn it into a weapon, stabbing out out into the air with vicious chords that somehow crystallized into strange rainbows of color he invented himself. This is the aural equivalent of absinth.

A documentary has been made about Howard, "Autoluminescent Rowland S. Howard" (2011). 

Synopsis: From myth to legend Rowland Howard appeared on the early Melbourne punk scene like a phantom out of Kafkaesque Prague or Bram Stoker’s Dracula. A beautifully gaunt and gothic aristocrat, the unique distinctive fury of his guitar style shot him directly into the imagination of a generation. He was impeccable, the austerity of his artistry embodied in his finely wrought form, his obscure tastes and his intelligently wry wit. He radiated a searing personal integrity that never seemed to tarnish. Despite the trials and tribulations of his career, in an age of makeover and reinvention, Rowland Howard never ‘sold out’. With recent and moving interviews, archival interviews and other fascinating and original footage, AUTOLUMINESCENT traces the life of Rowland S Howard. Words and images etch light into what has always been the mysterious dark.

Imogen Heap on Earth Day

The above images are taken from the live Web stream of the performance by Imogen Heap for Earth Day. I was impressed I must admit. The reactive gloves were the interface for Imogen's musical software. The 25 cyclists in the video (shot in the Roundhouse in London) powered the event. Nice job.

DJ Mutamassik "Take The Hit"

I cannot recommend highly enough DJ Mutamassik. This is track #1 from Mutamassik's 2010 LP, "That Which Death Cannot Destroy" The full album is here. This album cannot be bought or sold. All instruments (Cello, Drums, Mazhar, Keyboard, Turntables) & tracks performed, produced & engineered by Mutamassik at G.G.S.S./Rocca AlMileda Studio. 2010 Special guest vox & asst. engineer: Meroe Amade' Memphis Video: G. LOLI

MUTAMASSIK(meaning Stronghold, Tenacity in arabic) is a producer, dj, artist, pioneer of SA'AIDI HARDCORE & BALADI BREAKBEATS. RELENTLESS RHYTHMS FROM THE PAN-AFRABIC IMMIGRANT SOUND SOURCES. AFROASIATIC MOKKASSAR in addition to transcendental sonic experiments. Darq Matter Qubti Funq Punq Demm Baroque Melanqol Met'al Martial SA'AIDI ARABIFIED SWAMP MUSIC FROM THE RUSTBELT+++ Has performed extensively throughout U.S., Africa, Middle East & Europe. Press includes: The Village Voice, The Wire, Le Monde, African Sun Times, New York Times, Bidoun, The Fader, Newsweek (Arabic edition), American Society for Engineering Education, XLR8R, etc. "This is inhuman, brutal, awesome breakcore." Derek Walmsley - The Wire "Mutamassik's pounding Egyptian hip-hop breaks...are serious, sacred, steadfast marching music for the new international breakbeat generation." Ron Nachmann - URB "Dans un melange d', d'electronique et de hip-hop, Mutamassik s'engage dans la reconstruction des . Arabesque, melopees de minarets se croisent dans un magma de sons urbains, structures par d'impressionants alliages rhythmiques." Veronique Mortaigne - Le Monde "Highly regarded post-techno DJ..." - Mtv News " "Before the sounds of the Middle East became de rigueur sampling materials for hip-hop, Mutamassik was exploring ways of fusing various sounds and styles into a compelling, challenging whole, shards a-flying all the while.”

Centrum Sonic Lecture 4: Laurent Fintoni - A Boom Bap Continuum

Centrum Sonic Lecture 4: Laurent Fintoni - A Boom Bap Continuum
19.00 Sonntag, Januar 22 2012

Description

Centrum Gallery Berlin presents Laurent Fintoni Sonic Lecture entitled A Boom Bap Continuum, which looks at the evolution and mutation of hip hop's 'boom bap' sound aesthetic from 1999 to 2009 and beyond. Exploring the sound's early mutations in the 2000s via the work of people like Dabrye, Machinedrum, Prefuse 73 and El-P through to the work of people like Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawke, Ras G and Mike Slott. Using a chronological backbone, music selection and newly sourced input from some of the early pioneers, the lecture will show how terms like trip hop, glitch hop, IDM and later wonky were ultimately often attempts at pigeon-holing boom bap's mutations into more comfortable boxes and how its sonic evolution was influenced from the soul and funk of the 70s to electronic music, rave and video games which led to its revival and continued popularity. As Laurent says: "A Boom Bap Continuum seeks to trace what I see as the fascinating evolution of hip hop's most enduring sonic aesthetic and how it was influenced by technological evolution, cultural and geographical mutations as well as hip hop's original ethos of 'do what you want with what you have."

Please RSVP to david[@]centrumberlin.com. 

Lecture starts at 7pm, please arrive by 6.45pm. 

www.aboombapcontinuum.com/
www.centrumberlin.com/
www.centrum-berlin.blogspot.com/

Azzddine Ouhnine

Visit Azzddine Ouhnine's Site At
http://marocaudio.com
For More Music

Trying to find information about Azzddine Ouhnine is difficult. He has made a record with Bill Laswell, so he is not exactly unknown. But biographical details, apart from him being Moroccan, Married and Muslim, there is not much about him. His music, however, speaks for itself.

Where I go for music:

Mp3 Blogs

http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com/

http://musicformaniacs.blogspot.com/

http://hippy-djkit.blogspot.com/

http://ravensingstheblues.blogspot.com/

http://www.gorillavsbear.net/

http://lysergia.blogspot.com/

http://freealbums.blogsome.com/

http://www.neural.it/sound/ (from the same people who do the wonderful mag; http://www.neural.it/


The Best Radio stations on the web

http://resonancefm.com/ (run by the London Musicians Collective, always excellent)

http://wfmu.org/ (you may know WFMU, amazing station, they run the free music archive; http://freemusicarchive.org/)

http://www.4zzzfm.org.au/ (from hometown Brisbane)

http://www.2ser.com/home (from Sydney)

http://www.rrr.org.au/ (possible the best radio station in Australia)


My recommended downloads

http://www.delicious.com/didgebaba/Download

Take it easy

Happy Birthday John

John Lennon would have been 70 today. Shame he is not here to celebrate.


John Lennon at 70? An artist's impression.

Um River Joik

Krister Stoor performs a joik from 1912 about the Um River in the north east of Sweden.

Music for Wednesday

Create a MySpace Music Playlist at MixPod.com

I Love Wooden Veil

The Wooden Veil Awaits



Wooden Veil: Gravity Problems by Hanayo

Wooden Veil is a Berlin-based art group formed in 2007. Inspired by the shared hauntedness of their respective homelands, they combine elements from forgotten and misremembered traditions to create a microcosmic world which only Wooden Veil inhabits, complete with its own symbols, clothing, food and shelters. Performances, installations and videos are characterized by an expansive wardrobe of ritual dress, and the creation of shrines, relics and talismans used to create music.

The group consists of artists Marcel Türkowsky (also a composer, founder of Snake Figures Arkestra, Cones, Uuhuu, collaborations with Datashock and Christoph Heemann), Hanayo (known for her solo work as a photographer and singer, collaborating with the likes of Christoph Schlingensief, Merzbow, Red Crayola, and Kai Althoff), Christopher Kline (Valkenburg Hermitage, †, Night Music, and Soft Peace), Dominik Noé (member of krautrock legends Lustfaust), and Jan Pfeiffer (Songs For Rocks, Soft Peace, Purple).

To understand:

Hold right hand, cupped near right ear; turn hand back and forth slightly with wrist. Bring left hand to opposite eye with the second finger pointing in the direction one is looking. With index and thumb of right hand, form an incomplete circle, space of one inch between tips; hold hand towards the earth, then move it in a curve across the heavens and back toward the horizon.

moon & hamburg wooden veil

"The music of Wooden Veil is at once chaotically ritualistic and curiously precious. From all indications it would seem that the Berlin-based collective have gone to great lengths to reach this dichotomy. Maintaining the project as a way to create a unique world that only Wooden Veil inhabits, the group's performances bring together symbols, clothing and rituals that are to be regarded a part of this world. Borne out of half-remembered traditions and etched in the fringes of culture, the music seems tribal through the eyes of a post-catastrophic modern man. Pieces of a once great culture slip in but it seems that much of their sound inhabits a forced forgetfulness, both innocently and ferociously using the remnants of instrumentation to create a new life in music. Among the pound of drums, the scorch of drones and the wail of frightened voices some beautiful moments emerge; alive but tenuously testing to see if, how and why that's possible." Raven Sings the Blues (includes two Mp3s)


WOODEN VEIL
s/t
LP/CD
Download
"Belonging to a world that is at once pre-millenial and post-apocalyptic, Wooden Veil’s music is the drumbeat of an ancient yet technological past channeled through the sounds of a post-human race. Masked and costumed, the players invoke a musical force as a shaman would a ghost. Collecting rhythm like wind collecting a storm, Wooden Veil gives grand form to noise – they make it an event. Drums, drones, harmonies and screams clamor in their songs, erupting now and again into a plainsong that rings just long enough for a melody to take shape, before it dissolves back into sonic entropy."
- Carson Chan, Program – Initiative for Art + Architecture, Berlin

"Playing like a semiotic mist, Wooden Veil approach their performances as handmade, patchwork quilt-like structures with emphasis on showing the lines of assembly, sewing together mythologies, traditional song, craft, ritual and acoustics."
- Steven Warwick (Heatsick, Birds of Delay)


Gloom Across the Ice

Wooden Veil on MySpace

Viral SymphOny

01-viral-symphony2

02-viral-symphony-2nd-mvt-murmurin2

03-viral-symphony-3rd-mvt2

04-viral-symphony-4th-mvt2

05-post-mortem2

Total time 1h 40mn
Composed 2006-2008

Joseph Nechvatal: sound sources & synthesizer
Matthew Underwood: sound processing
Andrew Deutsch: sound processing
Stephane Sikora: programming
Jane Smith: voice (recorded 1985)
Kevin Harkins: synth on 4th Mvt & PostMortem

“A founding member of the Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine, Joseph Nechvatal (b1951) famously curated two noise compilations for Tellus in 1986 and 1988. He composed an opera called XS: The Opera Opus (1984-5) with Rhys Chatham. His visual and sound works since then has been concerned with ‘viral’ techniques, ie: computer-assisted complex structures, heavily processed material, unwanted input corrupting the media and a general self-annihilation of the artist as composer/painter. The computer is summoned to create the art in the same way the Golem was raised by Rabbi Löw to create the myth. Viral Symphony’s First Movement was published on CD in 2006 by The Institute for Electronic Arts. The rest of the symphony is derived from this 1st Mvt in variously processed textures. The 2nd and 3rd Movements include the voice of Jane Smith reading from Ovid’s Metamorphosis, an apt metaphor for a Symphony dealing with permanent mutability, in as much as the perpetually morphing sound particles are used as the very structure of the work. While the 1st Mvt is a cornucopia of noisy, aleatoric electronic debris in the ‘garbage in, garbage out’ tradition, the remaining movements are more ambient affairs in which compositional mystery and sonic restraint create tension and captivates the listener. It seems the electronic sounds were refined after the nth re-processing and when reaching the 4th Mvt it’s become a mere distant static. The processed vocal parts sounds like early radio transmissions, and I personally envisionned Ezra Pound on conversation on Italian Radio or a BBC broadcast during the 1930s, while he was working on his 2 radio operas. In the last 2 movements, the input of Kevin Harkins on Midi sounds brings a neo-gothic touch to the music thanks to his endless cello and piano arpeggios. PostMortem is the most poignant part of the Symphony, its processed sounds slowly recessing in the background leaving room to sadness and emptyness. PostMortem appears for the first time on the web thanks to the generosity of Joseph Nechvatal. The very nature of the Viral Symphony indicates there will be additional movements soon and the ‘Complete’ set is presented as is, prior to further re-processing.”

Extra demos of Joseph's new project, Viral Venture (working with composer Rhys Chatham) are available here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRvoMEzua_k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3dlXV3K2C4

Text from the excellent Continuo

A word From the Brothers

PacificSoma and Ikuisuus present -

Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood – ‘Grass Openings’

Full-length CD edition of 500 in hand stamped, gatefold sleeves

$18australian postage included within Australia

$16us postage included for the rest of the world

After numerous CDs, CDRs, cassettes and LPs, Brothers of the Occult Sisterhood have established themselves as one of the many lights in modern improvised outsider music. Their latest offering, ‘Grass Openings’ sees them continue down this winding path of intoxicated trance derangement. Drawing heavily from psychedelic, jazz and weirdo traditions to create a unique form of mutant sound.

US, Australian and Asian sales contact mymwly@hotmail.com

European sales contact orders@ikuisuus.net

Good Morning World!!!!!

Can, Mother Sky (1970)

Monday Morning Music

The John Spencer Blues Explosion: Talk about the blues