Sdtrk: ‘Judy is a punk’ by the Ramones

A number of months ago while on my daily route to work, I’d noticed a storefront on westbound 12 mile that specialises in gardening, historical landscaping, and the like. They listed in bold lettering on one of their windows what their specialties are, and I’d noticed that one of their services is the design of follies. Now, a folly, if you’re not familiar with it, is a structure that serves no true purpose except for ostentatious decoration. They’re usually either towers or monuments; some can be castles or gardens. Interestingly enough, the Wiki entry lists North Korea’s legendary non-existent building, the Ryugyong Hotel, as a folly, which stands to reason.
Personally, I can’t say I’m very knowledgable about follies, and my architectural/cultural interest in them isn’t as intense as all that 20th century Modern stuff that I love, but follies are kinda ace. The premise is fantastic and idiotic all at the same time. ‘I’m an addle-brained gout-riddled baron with too much money, and I’m going to build a fanciful tower on my estate so that my name lives forever. FOREVER!!’ *flings turkey leg at nearest wolfhound, bursts into long, discomforting laughter* The closest thing we have to that nowadays are mausoleums, and decorative as those can be, their purpose is pretty clear-cut. With a folly, it’s more like, ‘I built it because I could’.

So as I’d said, I pass this place on a regular basis, and one morning recently I’d noticed there was a bloke in a t-shirt at the drafting table, clearly visible from the road, at work on a design. The astonishing thing was this was at a quarter to eight in the morning.
Seven-forty five in the AM, and you’re in there, sketchin’ up follies?? Has there been a sudden upswing in folly demand, the likes of which haven’t been seen since 18th century England, that I somehow managed to miss? I mean, apart from the Millenium Dome, that is?

If you’re becoming more and more rabidly curious about follies, you can check out The Folly Fancier, which is where I first learned of the phenomenon. Ahh, Internet.

Unrelated: To my own shame, I’d like to point out that I’m 35 years old, and I still haven’t heard Kraftwerk’s ‘Autobahn’ in its entirety. Or ‘The Man-machine’. Or ‘Trans-Europe express’, for that matter. In fact, I really haven’t heard most of their backcatalogue, with the exception of Computer world (had it on vinyl), Electric cafe (had it on tape) and Radioactivity (had it on Cd). But not having heard all of ‘Autobahn’? That’s actually something to be ashamed of

Sdtrk: ‘F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E’ by Pulp

So I’ve got Merzbow’s six-Cd boxset, Houjoue, right? Being a card-carrying fan(atic) of the music genre known as Noise/Power-electronics, I’d thought, ‘o lovely, you can’t go wrong with six disks of disparate dissonance!’ Well, perhaps you can. Believe me, I’m more disappointed than the rest of you.

My obsession with Masami Akita, aka Merzbow, can be traced back to 1993. I was in a band called Dole age (Smiths fans will get the reference), along with my best friend Sean, his future wife Sherilee, and Adam, a bloke we met at our local anime club. We were keen on alternative music, particularly Industrial and Shoegazer, so naturally we Frankensteined the two in order to make our own sound. As Throbbing gristle had disbanded in 1981 and weren’t making any more releases, and we were waiting on My bloody valentine’s followup to their epic Loveless*, Adam had a go into looking into other types of music, and the natural progression from Industrial was Noise. He picked up a disk entitled Great American Nude/Crash for hi-fi by someone called Merzbow, which we were pronouncing ‘murzboh’ until we discovered about a year later that it’s pronounced ‘mehrzbau’, after the series of related works by Dadaist Kurt Schwitters. I borrowed the Cd for *coughs* an indefinite period, and I fell in love, noisy love. This was my first true exposure to the whole Japanese Noise scene, and it was shredding my mind, and to some extent, my ears.

At this point, I should probably attempt to explain Noise to the uninitiated. Noise as a genre of music is funny, cos by nature, Noise isn’t music. It strips out, or alters, conventional signposts such as rhythm, melody, and vocals, and replaces them with whistling feedback, staticky white noise, and a large amount of dissonance. Also, whereas Noise distorts music using guitars, drums, turntables, or specially-built instruments, the sub-genre Power-electronics (as famously pioneered by the UK group whitehouse) is characterised by the use of overprocessed synthesisers, tone generators, and, well, electronic equipment. It’s definitely an acquired taste — busted speakers and a ringing in the ears is normal, don’t be alarmed — but it’s pretty ace cos 1) it’s very unique and unconventional, and 2) it’s a purer form of artistic expression. Wow, that sounded really pretentious. But basically, as I put it to someone recently, Noise is what you get into when you’re looking for something more harsh than Industrial…
Noise-rock, on the other hand, sucks. Too much rock, not enough Noise, in my opinion. I cannot endorse it.

One of Masami’s favourite musicians is Sun Ra, the avant-jazz ex-pat from Saturn, and one of the objectives of Merzbow is to produce at least 500 releases, much in the same fashion of Sun Ra’s (literally) hundreds of self-produced records. To date, he’s released around 300; this includes vinyl, cassettes, and compact disks. There’s Pornoise 1Kg, a 5-cassette boxset from his early period; there’s the infamous Merzbox, which is fifty Cds and a passel of other goodies, all for $500 USD; and there’s other ephemera for the more obsessive segment of collectors, such as the Merzcedes, which is a copy of his Noisembryo release, sealed forever inside the dashboard Cd player of an actual Mercedes 230 that would play on Repeat whenever the car was turned on. Rare item GET! Really, though, my only problem with Akita-san’s Grande Masterplan is that sometimes it’s a case of quantity over quality; which, if your goal is 500 releases, is practically unavoidable…
Example: back in the late Nineties, I’d bought Metalvelodrome, his first Cd boxset. Four disks of well-crafted dissonance compiled in 1993, that to this day, continue to level me each time I hear it. When I bought my copy from local area esoteric bookseller Book beat, I was chuffed. I remember playing it for a couple of weeks straight, especially disks one and two (‘Morbid Dick’ remains a personal fave), and loving every minute. The pieces were dynamic, which is the quality that brings Merzbow’s work above a lot of the Japanese noise artists. Don’t get me wrong; I loves me some Masonna, and some pieces by C.C.C.C., but the majority of Noise performers, Japanese or otherwise, can sound a wee bit samey-same, although it’s not for a lack of trying.

Over the years, like any decent artist pushing their own personal antelope, he’s gone through different periods of different styles. The late Eighties up to the first half of the mid-Nineties was his noise collage period, wherein he would combine overdriven sound loops with field recordings (tape recordings of ambient sounds, such as city streets); then followed his Junk electronics phase, which saw him run self-built instruments, like that metal box with the amplified springs played with a contact mic, through a shit-ton of effects processors; in the late Nineties, he bought a couple of analogue synthesisers and used them as instruments and processors. That was my least-favourite of his periods, as it veered dangerously close to prog-rock, and almost every Cd he made during that era, I sold shortly after purchase. In fact, I was pretty soured on Merzbow until about late 2001, which was the beginning of his laptop period, and with Amlux and Hard lovin’ man, my noisy prodigal son had returned with a noisy vengeance. Which brings us to now.
The original dynamism he had when he first began relying on his laptop is what swung me towards listening to him again: the tones vary in colour and texture, they’re always crisp and distinctive, and they move with speed. But then, you’ve got something like 24 hours – A day of seals, his four-disk boxset from 2002, and I… well, I can’t honestly say why I’m still keeping my copy, as it’s not doing a whole hell of a lot for me. I can’t say there’s a total lack of dynamism in most of the pieces, but it develops at such a tectonic rate that it’s just not holding my interest. Unfortunately, Houjoue is rather like that as well… in its own fashion, it’s almost like Masami’s take on Motorik, as the pieces go for several minutes. Granted, I enjoy a bit of the old soundtrack auf Autobahn now and again, but I believe Merzbow is best when it’s an out-of-control blast of sonic atavism. I mean, anyone can produce a drone, but creating a track that rockets along at 200 mph, slicing wildly as it goes… that takes talent.
Plus — and here’s a personal thing of mine — I’m not too keen on Noise pieces that go over the ten minute mark. Honestly, the trick is to make it so good and interesting that I don’t notice it’s gone over ten minutes (see any of the tracks on his Mort aux vaches – Lokomotive breath release, or the title track from Electric salad). But if there’s not a lot of changes, my finger’s gonna be creeping towards the Next Track button, which is a bad sign. It seems to me that Masami’s pieces are getting longer and less mercurial in sound — I can only hope that this is simply another phase he’s going through.

The end equation is that Merzbow will always remain one of my favourite artists, but even the best artists have lull periods — look at New order’s Republic™, for example. Just don’t listen to it, for god’s sake, as it’s no good for anyone. Besides, I’ve heard excerpts from Merzbear, and read reviews saying his Coma Berenices Cd is supposed to be quite ace. Don’t call it a comeback, he’s been here for years?

*We’re still waiting, by the way

Technorati tags: Noise music, Industrial music, Shoegazer, Motorik, Merzbow, Masami Akita, My bloody valentine, Throbbing gristle, Sun Ra, Masonna, Cosmic Coincidence Control Center, New order

Sdtrk: see below

So yeah! Still moving. I’m actually typing this from my parents, where there’s a functioning Interonet connection…
We’re about, err, 60% done? That’s not including the ‘arranging things where we want them’ phase, so this will be a Work in Progress probably until the end of the month. How did you spend September? they will ask. Our answer: Moving shit around and sweating like New York waiters.

In the meantime, I’d like to share this with yü: Driving around today, I was listening to disk one of New order’s ‘Substance 1987’. It had been a number of months since I last heard it, and I was utterly floored again as to how unbelievably good The perfect kiss (track 07) is — it’s either my favourite, or my second favourite song by them, I’ve not decided which. The video for it (FAC 321 in the Factory records listing) is rather good too. Directed by Jonathan Demme, the man behind ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ and other feature films, it’s an austere affair that fits perfectly in with the early days of the band’s ‘anti-image’, as it’s simply Bernard, Hooky, Gill and Stee performing the song in a practise room. This video was particularly notable for me, as when I first saw it,
1) I had no idea that the band members switched up their instruments during the song
2) I’d never seen a sequencer in ‘action’
3) Peter Hook is a fucking Bass God
and 4) seeing Gillian simply confirms why I find English lasses into New wave so very very lovely. Yum.

So with that in mind, please enjoy the full 10.38 version of The perfect kiss.

GILLIAN YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU

Sdtrk: ‘Liebeszimmer’ by DAF

First Ian Curtis, then Martin Hannett, then John Peel, and now Tony Wilson? This is looking extremely grim.

Tony Wilson: Driven by music and Manchester
Former Factory Records boss Tony Wilson, who died at the age of 57, kept up his two major passions until the very end

By Cole Moreton
Published: 12 August 2007 | The Independent

Tony Wilson was a twat. The poster for the film about his life, 24 Hour Party People, said so right under a picture of his face.

Actually it was comedian Steve Coogan, who played the founder of Factory Records and the Hacienda nightclub in the semi-autobiographical movie. But Wilson approved the image, saying: “I found it very funny.”

Abrasive, acerbic and well aware of his own legend, Wilson would have laughed, too, at some of the more fulsome tributes paid to him yesterday, after his death at the Christie hospital in his home city on Friday night, aged 57. Pop stars and politicians alike praised a man who remade Manchester, crediting him with inspiring a cultural renaissance that began with the post-punk sound of Joy Division and resulted in a confident modern city.

“He had two driving passions,” said Stephen Morris of New Order and Joy Division. “One was the music and the other was the city that he lived in. In later life he was a campaigner for devolution for the North-west. I strongly suspect this was so that he could become Prime Minister of Manchester.” Hacienda regular and writer John Harris said Wilson showed Mancunians that they did not have to leave, and “sowed the seeds of the cultural regeneration of Manchester which has now come to pass”.

But Wilson knew that his abrasive, fast-talking personality got up some people’s noses. “People have treated me with contempt,” he said in his last television interview. “Quite rightly.”
the rest of the article is here

Without Tony’s forward thinking, Punk wouldn’t have gotten as big of an audience in Northern England, and without Punk, there would be no Post-punk, and without Post-punk, there would be no Joy division, and tracing the many myriad lines of influence Joy division’s made on music would be far too detailed for me to get into. Cliched as it sounds, Tony Wilson had a huge influence on the music culture of Northern England, and put Manchester on the map as far as the starting point for hundreds of bands.

Not since Sex pistols manager Malcolm McLaren had there ever been a band manager as ‘rock star’ as the rock stars he supported. We’re gonna miss you, mate

Sdtrk: ‘Big foot (Mix 2)’ by Merzbow

As far as feature films, 2007 is lookin’ sharp, I’d say! At least, as far as films I want to see — your mileage may vary.

Recently I’d picked up the latest issue of MOJO magazine, as Zip Gun tipped me off that they had a sizable article on my favourite band of all feckin’ time, Joy division. I’d made mention last year about ‘Control’, the film about Ian Curtis and Joy division, but according to both the article and the film’s website, apparently it’s due in the theatres sometime this year, which has me five kinds of excited.

Control – part-financed by Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore – has, it seems won some important fans. The surviving members of Joy Division saw a preview on November 28th, reporting to Mojo that they “very much approve of it and will be backing it 100%”. “Initially the group were disinterested in the film, but at the same time were intrigued and wanted to get involved,” says [producer Orian] Williams. “When we first met them backstage at a gig in Liverpool in 2005, Bernard said ‘Just have some fun with it.’ We did and the finished movie is amazing.”
quoted from this article

Another rather nice aesthetic touch is that director Anton Corbijn has filmed ‘Control’ in black and white, which is entirely appropriate. You can check out a segment from a Dutch news programme (it’s subtitled) where they interview Corbijn here on the Tube of You.
Hearing that not only is Corbijn creating this — with the blessing of the other 3/4ths of Joy division — but it’s based off of the book ‘Touching from a distance‘, which was written by Ian’s wife, Deborah, is quite reassuring, as letting Hollywood getting its grubby little hands on a story like Ian’s would be sacrilege. But then, a band like Joy division wouldn’t even register on Hollywood’s radar, thankfully…

The other one that has my interest level at Maximum Pique would be ‘Factory girl’. I think it was a little over a year ago when I’d first heard mention of this; it’s a movie based on Andy Warhol’s most beautiful and doomed superstar, Edie Sedgwick. Supposedly, production was held back for a bit due to various factors; one of them being that Bob Dylan was miffed about Hayden Christensen’s character (who’s based on Dylan and named either ‘the Musician’ or ‘Folk singer’, depending on what you read) as he and his lawyers believe the film infers that he was responsible for Edie’s death. Not only that, David Weisman, the director of her fictional-but-not-really film ‘Ciao! Manhattan’, apparently has issues with the film, and interestingly enough, Lou Reed, Edie’s friend during the Silver Dream Factory years, is quoted as saying that the screenplay is ‘one of the most disgusting, foul things I’ve seen – by any illiterate retard – in a long time‘. Lou is often cranky. Hard to imagine, but it’s true!
It’s pretty well established that among other reasons, Dylan was one of the presiding factors in causing Edie to leave the Factory crowd. Edie was repeatedly cast in several of Warhol’s films, but she — along with other Factory members — would often have to chase Andy down in order to get paid for their time, and Edie thought she’d be better off in the non-underground film circuit. Dylan just happened to visit the Factory at the right time, and persuaded her to leave.
I’ve never liked Dylan. He’s a mutterer, and I don’t like mutterers.

Personally, I was hoping they’d cast that luscious wee Keira Knightley as Edie, but going by the pictures, Sienna Miller makes a rather good Dopplegänger. Surprisingly enough, Guy Pearce seems to make for a good Warhol as well. As long as it reasonably sticks to her life and history, I’ll be happy…
Interestingly enough, Edie died of a barbiturate overdose exactly one year before and one day after my birthday. ‘Factory girl‘ is also due in the theatres sometime this year

Technorati tags: Joy division, Ian Curtis, Anton Corbijn, Edie Sedgwick, Andy Warhol, Factory girl

Sdtrk: ‘Follow me in suicide’ by Pankow

On rare occasions, I still purchase vinyl LPs and the like, in order to maintain my indie cred. *barely stifles giggling* I recall a day about five or so years ago, I had been wandering through a Salvation Army store in Royal oak, and I’d found a copy of ‘Whipped cream and Other Delights‘ by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, over in their desperate-looking record section. It was actually in rather good condition, which was made even more appealing by its seventy-five cent pricetag. Soon afterwards at another thrift store location, I had spotted three more copies of that same album. It seemed too weird of a coincidence, and consequently, that holiday season I half-jokingly told my mates that I was going to buy everyone a copy of ‘Whipped cream and Other Delights’. Now I regret not having done so, but I’m sure if I go looking again, I’m fairly certain I can scare up some copies.
On the other hand, this bloke’s kinda taken things to extremes.

One Hundred Copies of Tubular Bells

On the 8th of February 2003, I decided to collect 100 copies Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells on second hand vinyl. For the next three years, I bought every copy I could find. The collection was complete in March 2006. […] But of course, Tubular Bells is music. What would 100 copies sound like when played together? The music was once perfect, then fractured into a million reproductions, each now decaying. Can we put the pieces back together again?

Going by his detailed acquisition records, the most he paid for a copy was nine quid, or just over $17 USD. For ‘Tubular bells’??
Playing all of his copies simultaneously would be rather ace, though. Kinda reminds me of what someone had once said about the Hafler trio: the best way to hear their records is to play three different releases on three turntables simultaneously. I approve!

Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard ‘Tubular bells’ in its entirety. I suppose that if this bloke ever gets his performance underway, I don’t think anyone will need to hear ‘Tubular bells’ ever again