Wire Mire Linkage 25/02/2009

Simon Reynolds on the Hardcore Continuum at FACT Liverpool (via Fact Magazine): http://www.factmagazine.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2028&Itemid=28

Dumbing Down or Dumbing Up?: http://simple.wikipedia.org
From the simple entry on Capitalism "Most people agree that capitalism can only work if the government keeps people from stealing other people's things. If people could steal anything, then nobody would want to buy anything." Oh yes.

The Savage Pencil on automatic at the Atlantis Bookshop in London: http://www.theatlantisbookshop.com/

A very flashy, arty and colourful web stalking project. Sick and dirty: http://www.mrscoryarcangel.com/

Source: Music Of The Avant Garde, 1968 – 1971: http://www.pogus.com/21050.html

Allan Moore on superheroes, adaptations and the Watchmen: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/17-03/ff_moore_qa?currentPage=all

the elliptical thought cycle of hearing a familiar reggae rhythm

1. that bassline, that's familiar... yeah, this is one of the true foundation tracks of reggae. Now, what the hell is it?
2. [hint of melody comes in] OK, yeah, that's how the verse goes... so, if I can just remember the chorus, I'll be able to figure out the track...
3. [hums vocal line to self] Ah yes, this is the one.... so the chorus goes something like...
4. "Jah is the light and foundation...."/"Down here in Babylon... "/"Africa... here I come...." Argh that doesn't narrow it down at all!
5. Return to step 1.

Adventures In Modern Music 12 February 09

My Adventures In Modern Music show from the other week is available for download at the On Air section of the site. There's a great mix from the Mississippi Record Label on there. Or rather, the mix might not be great, but the music – raw gospel, blues, African and East Asian stuff – certainly is.

Sample sale

For those who, like us, have been cold rockin' the Beastie Boys' reissued Paul's Boutique – a big influence on The Bomb Squad, I believe – it's worth checking out this sample resource for the album.

I haven't looked into it deeply yet, but the sheer density of the samples, and breadth of the styles referenced, is fantastic.

Lost And Found Dept

Great to see Steve Beresford and John Butcher last night at my local pub, The Birdcage in Stoke Newington. They were playing with percussionist Will Connor for new monthly art/music night, The Lost And Found Department.  

After a short trio set, which I missed through tardiness, each performer played solo. Butcher was on jazzy form, inflecting lilting melodic phrases with flutters and overtones before pelting the crowd violently with jagged squawks. Glad to see the cosiness of his surroundings did nothing to dilute his performance.  Beresford was hyperactive behind his table laden with gadgets. Using a variety of sound sources, incl. Walkman, sampler and a little touch-pad synth he controlled with a pen, he cycled through ideas quickly.

The three then took it in turns to play in duos: Connor & Beresford, Beresford & Butcher, Connor and Butcher. Connor took the everything-but-the kitchen-sink approach to percussion, playing a CD rack, a BBQ hood, assorted pots and pans, jam jar lids, bubble wrap…and proved eminently versatile, adapting as comfortably to Beresford's flighty bubbling as to Butcher's hard angles. Finally the trio were reunited, bringing the night to a close in noisy, triumphant style.

Upstairs At The Birdcage is a beautiful, intimate space – plush and comfy like the smoking room in a Victorian gentleman's club (I imagine) – and Lost And Found Dept is a class act to be sure. I'm looking forward to the next instalment.  

True Riches

I was wondering what kind of reaction there would be when the ICA decided to shut their live art/new media department last October. Along with the closure, ICA director Ekow Eshun wrote an email explaining that the art form lacked "depth and cultural urgency" (if you can define what exactly the multimedia/interdisciplinary art form of live art & new media is). Is Eshun correct in saying that live and new media arts aren't relevant enough for the ICA to put its funding into, and that anyways it'll be covered by the ICA's other events and exhibitions? Who knows... But there are more delicate ways to put it.

If he had just closed the department with a tight lipped "sorry, no money" explanation or any other standard bureaucratic obfuscation, that would've still been upsetting for the live/performance/digital/inter-multi-etcetera-disciplinary artists losing out, but possibly any backlash against the institution and director may have dwindled away like, well, arts funding. In any case, Eshun was straightforward about his reasons and ended up angering a lot of people. Live artists/performance artists with a predilection towards public exhibition can be counted on to embrace direct action and self organisation with zeal, maybe even flourishing under duress... And so it's good to hear that True Riches, a project created by Rotozaza and Forced Entertainment is attempting to re-establish the live art and new media department without the ICA.

Looking through the programme, it's hard to tell where the events are actually going to take place and if there's been any collaboration between the now independent department and its former home; there's lectures scheduled to take place in the ICA bar, performances in the exhibition spaces and the unlikely flooding of the small cinema. It'll be interesting to follow True Riches through their year long programme and see if they're successful. If so, maybe Eshun has actually provided the cultural world with a brand new institutional model for the current economic situation: make people angry enough and they'll do it themselves. Or else it's simply a premonition of what's to come.

Adventures In Modern Music 05 February 2009

Our latest Adventures In Modern Music is now up for your delectation. Hosted by, erm, me, it includes tracks by Black Dice, Beastie Boys, Dat Politics, Woebot, Mr Oizo, Goodiepal and more... Tune into Resonance FM next week (12 February) at 9.30pm for the next installment

Doppler In Effekt

The most exciting live event of the year so far – Dopplereffekt's live London debut this saturday night. They resurrected electro in the mid-90s, and recently have been writing electronic eulogies to particle accelerators. The most singular electronic artist of the era, for me...

DIY Radio

It's interesting to find pirate radio stations popping up throughout Simon Reynolds's essays on the Hardcore Continuum (which we've been posting on our site as part of The Wire 300) and how important they are for disseminating music that's too quick/difficult for mainstream media to keep up with or handle. In a timely way then, I ran across this video guide on how to build your own low powered radio station, via the free103point9 blog (a NY-based arts radio organisation) from Radio Free Berkeley. I suppose now that podcast technology is fairly common and easy to use the thought of building your own analogue radio station from scratch can seem exhausting if not pointless... Still, maybe broadcasting via the radio spectrum can beat the internet for a feeling of specificity to a place/scene, something that sometimes gets filtered or flattened out through the ease of the Really Simple Syndication of iTunes/Blogger/YouTube/MySpace technology...


How To Make a Radio Station from Free Radio on Vimeo.

Guitar Craftsman

Keith Rowe and Fred Frith are perpetual reference points for The Wire – two figures who turned the electric guitar on its head (or more accurately on its back). While such techniques aren't exactly mainstream these days –  the only tabletop or laptop guitarists from the hit parade who spring to mind are either Nashville Country types or Canadian blues guitarist Jeff Healey – the history of these anti-technique techniques does hang heavy over newer practioners. I imagine those who take a tangential approach to the instrument days get heartily sick of being constantly compared to Rowe and Frith – and rightly so. The tabletop guitar approach can, sometimes, be in danger of being fetished as much as the loose-strapped guitar-slinging style.

Weirdly refreshing, then, to watch the video vignettes sent to me by American guitarist Morgan Craft. Because of the visuals you can't see what he's doing with the guitar, and it leaves your mind free to wander without the shadow of previous technicians hanging over it. Apparently, it's done live with no overdubs, and is genuinely otherworldly at times. For all I know, he's doing the whole lot with his foot on the monitor through a Marshall Stack, but I kind of doubt it.

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Adventures In Modern Music 29 January 2009

The Wire's Resonance FM show last thursday was presented by Edwin Pouncey, with tracks by KTL, Khatate and many more, plus a guest mix by the excellent British label Singing Knives (home of Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides, The Hunter Gracchus, Stephanie Hladowski, Directing Hand etc). Full tracklisting and download is available in the On Air area of the site now...