Sunday, September 30, 2007

Paul Brody - For The Moment


from Tzadik website:

Paul Brody is a talented composer/performer based in Berlin. Touring Europe for several years to enthusiastic audiences, his band Sadawi has developed into a razor sharp ensemble, one of the very best to mix jazz with traditional Jewish music.
His third CD for Tzadik is his best yet and features special guests Michael Alpert and John Zorn on selected tracks. Ten sparkling original compositions featuring dynamic solos, catchy melodies and driving rhythms by a fresh voice inNew Jewish Music.

Label: Tzadik
Cat. #: 8118
Format: CD
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
01 - Warsaw (04:56)
02 - Too Low (06:07)
03 - Bartoki (04:28)
04 - Serendipity (04:23)
05 - Sit Down (03:34)
06 - Good-Bye For Jetzt (03:23)
07 - Dukovinia (04:06)
08 - For The Moment (03:17)
09 - Pure As A Teardrop (02:56)
10 - Guitar (04:10)

Links:
Paul Brody
Tzadik

Saturday, September 29, 2007

Carsten Nicolai - Fades


from Raster-Noton website:

Fades is video installation for a specifically designed environment. ultra fine sprays of mist are introduced into a space in which the white light of the projection manifests itself. these fades move in synchrony to the sound creating a variety of shapes and structures based on linear and logarithmic wave modulations.
The main focus does not lie on the image projected, but on the light beam itself, which becomes a three-dimensional sculpture. similar to the essence of music the visual vocabulary of fades establishes a kind of universal language that is able to communicate what is outside of our usual systems of understanding.

The book compiles a number of stills from the source movie of fades along with some installation views and the text inside the black box by daniel klemm. the dvd includes the source movie of fades as stereo or 5.1 version.

Label: Raster-Noton
Cat. #: R-N 84
Format: DVD
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
01 - Fades (13:19)

Links:
Carsten Nicolai
Raster-Noton

Friday, September 28, 2007

Literature: William S. Burroughs (1914-1997)


Date Of Birth: February 5, 1914, St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Date Of Death: August 2, 1997, Lawrence, Kansas, USA

William Seward Burroughs II was born 5 February 1914, in St. Louis, Missouri, into a world of relative wealth and comfort from the profits of the Burroughs Adding Machine Corporation.
His grandfather, after whom he was named, was the inventor of the adding machine.
At 8 years of age, uses his first gun, writes first story, "The Autobiography of a Wolf." Refuses editorial advice of parents to change autobiography to biography.

When Burroughs is 13, he discovers the autobiography of Jack Black, You Can't Win, and becomes enamored of the outlaw, underground lifestyle.
Black introduces him to the idea of the being a member of the Johnson Family. First published in the John Burroughs Review in 1929. A short essay entitled "Personal Magnetism".
He considers it an early attempt at debunking control systems.
Sent to Los Alamos Boys School in New Mexico. Later claims the only thing he learned there was a hatred of horses.
He is graduated from Harvard in 1936.
In New York, 1939, cuts off left little finger.
Shows it to his analyst at the time, who takes him to Bellevue.
Burroughs tells a psychiatrist there that he did as part of "an initiation ceremony into the Crow Indian tribe".

In the Summer of 1942, moves to Chicago, takes job with A. J. Cohen, Exterminators. "I go into an apartment and I know where all the roaches are," he later claims.
Moves to New York the next year. Befriends Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lucien Carr and David Kammerer around this time.
On 13 August 1944, Lucien Carr kills David Kammerer in self defense. Kerouac and Burroughs are arrested as material witnesses because they did not initially report the murder.
Later, they collaborate on a novel based on the events, And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks.
It was rejected by several publishers at the time and has never been published.
Burroughs meets Joan Vollmer. Along with Ginsberg and Kerouac, they begin experimenting with drugs and extreme behaviors.
Meets Herbert Huncke around this time. Kerouac introduces Joan to Benzedrine inhalers, to which she soon becomes addicted.
Sometime in 1946, Burroughs injects himself with a morphine Syrette. Discovers junk ecstasy, begins addiction.
In the midst of junk despair, Burroughs has a vision of a cocktail waitress bringing him a skull on a tray. "I don't want your fucking skull," he says. "Take it back!"
Moves in with Joan, they become lovers. Joan tells him that he "makes love like a pimp."

In April of 1946, Burroughs is arrested for obtaining narcotics through fraud. Joan is committed to Bellevue for acute amphetamine psychosis. Burroughs attempts to rescue her from New York. Convinces her to move to East Texas with him. Huncke eventually moves in with them.
All three live in a small house near New Waverly, growing marijuana and laying low.
On 21 July 1947, William Burroughs III is born.

Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady visit in August of 1947. The Burroughs' move to New Orleans in 1948. Kerouac and Cassady visit, as immortalized in On the Road.
Burroughs is arrested in New Orleans for possession of drugs, elects not to stand trial, moves family to Mexico City in 1949.

On Thursday the 6th of September, 1951, at a desultory party, Burroughs suggests that he and Joan do their William Tell act.
Joan balances a highball glass on her head, turns her head to one side, saying, "I can't watch this- you know I can't stand the sight of blood."
Burroughs shoots and hits Joan in the side of the head, killing her.
Later he states: "I am forced to the appalling conclusion that I would never have become a writer but for Joan's death."

Burroughs travels to Columbia in 1953 to find the entheogenic vine Yage, meets Richard Evans Schultes, who councils him about the plant. Writes to Ginsberg about his experiences, which are later published as The Yage Letters.
In 1954, Burroughs moves to Tangiers, Morocco. Introduced to Paul Bowles. Meets Brion Gysin, who becomes a pivotal catalyst for Burroughs.
Begins initial forays into unleashing his word hoard and deeper addictions to junk. Kerouac, Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky visit him in 1956. Kerouac helps Burroughs to organize the "routines" that would later become The Naked Lunch, the title from a suggestion of Kerouac's years before.

Early in 1958, sick of Tangiers, he leaves to stay with Ginsberg in Paris. Meets Maurice Girodias of Olympia Press, who decides to publish The Naked Lunch in 1959.
Moves to London in 1960.
Back in Tangiers in August of 1961, with Ginsberg and others, meets Timothy Leary who gives them all mushrooms. Burroughs doesn't enjoy the experience, saying: "Urgent warning. I think I'll stay here in shriveling envelopes of larval flesh... One of the nastiest cases ever produced by this department." Writes prolifically and lives nomadically throughout 60's, returns to New York in 1974. He has not lived in the US for 24 years. Meets James Grauerholz, who becomes Burroughs' life manager, helping him to organize and publish his writings. Burroughs' son, Billy, dies in a ditch after a hard and lonely life on 3 March 1981.

Burroughs moves to Lawrence, Kansas with Grauerholz. In May of 1982, Burroughs is inducted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
Died on 2 August 1997 of a heart attack in Lawrence, Kansas. He was 83 years old.
(Popsubculture)

______________________________________

Bibliography:

(Novels)
  • Junkie (1953)
  • Queer (Written 1951-3; Published 1985)
  • Naked Lunch (1959)
  • The Soft Machine (1961)
  • The Ticket That Exploded (1962)
  • Dead Fingers Talk (1963)
  • Nova Express (1964)
  • The Last Words Of Dutch Schultz (1969)
  • The Wild Boys: A Book Of The Dead (1971)
  • Port Of Saints (1973)
  • Cities Of The Red Night (1981)
  • The Place Of Dead Roads (1983)
  • The Western Lands (1987)
  • My Education: A Book Of Dreams (1995)
(Stories And Novellas)
  • Valentine's Day Reading (1965)
  • Time (1965)
  • Apo-33 (1966)
  • So Who Owns Death Tv? (1967)
  • The Dead Star (1969)
  • Ali's Smile (1971)
  • Mayfair Academy Series More Or Less (1973)
  • White Subway (1973)
  • Exterminator! (1973)
  • The Book Of Breething ("Ah Pook Is Here") (1974)
  • Snack... (1975)
  • Cobble Stone Gardens (1976)
  • Blade Runner (A Movie) (1979)
  • Dr. Benway (1979)
  • Die Alten Filme (The Old Movies) (1979)
  • Streets Of Chance (1981)
  • Early Routines (1981)
  • Sinki's Sauna (1982)
  • Ruski (1984)
  • The Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse (1984)
  • The Cat Inside (1986)
  • The Whole Tamale (C.1987-88)
  • Interzone (1987)
  • Tornado Alley (1989)
  • Ghost Of Chance (1991)
  • Seven Deadly Sins (1992)
  • Paper Cloud; Thick Pages (1992)
(Non-Fiction)
  • The Job (1969) (With Daniel Odier)
  • Jack Kerouac (1970) (With Claude Pelieu)
  • The Electronic Revolution (1971)
  • The Retreat Diaries (1976)
  • Letters To Allen Ginsberg 1953-1957 (1976)
  • Last Words: The Final Journals Of William S. Burroughs (2000)
  • Evil River (2007)
(Collaborations)
  • And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks (1945 - Unpublished) (With Jack Kerouac)
  • Minutes To Go (1960) (With Sinclair Beilles, Gregory Corso And Brion Gysin)
  • The Exterminator (1960) (With Brion Gysin)
  • The Yage Letters (1963) (With Allen Ginsberg)
  • Brion Gysin Let The Mice In (1973) (With Brion Gysin)
  • Sidetripping (1975) (With Charles Gatewood)
  • Colloque De Tangier (1976) (With Brion Gysin)
  • The Third Mind (1977) (With Brion Gysin)
  • Colloque De Tangier Vol. 2 (1979) (With Brion Gysin And Gérard-Georges Lemaire)
  • Apocalypse (1988) (With Keith Haring)
(Film Collaborations/Cameos/Videos)
  • Burroughs - The Movie (VHS) (1985, Giorno Poetry Systems)
  • William S. Burroughs - Commissioner of Sewers (Dir: Klaus Maeck) (1986)
  • Kerouac (Dir: John Antonelli) (1987) (Cameo)
  • Towers Open Fire (VHS) (1989, Mystic Fire Video)
  • Drugstore Cowboy (Dir: Gus Van Sant) (1989) (Cameo)
  • The Naked Lunch (Dir: David Cronenberg) (1991)
  • My Own Private Idaho (Dir: Gus Van Sant) (1992) (Cameo)
  • The Final Academy Documents (2002)
  • Thee Films 1950's ~ 1960's (VHS) (Temple Records)
(Recordings)
  • Call Me Burroughs (1965, The English Bookshop) (1995, Rhino Word Beat)
  • The Nova Convention (1979)
  • Nothing Here Now But The Recordings (1981, Industrial Records, Ir0016)
  • Abandoned Artifacts (1981, Fresh Sounds Inc)
  • You're The Guy I Want To Share My Money With (1981) (With John Giorno And Laurie Anderson)
  • Laurie Anderson - Mister Heartbreak (1984) (Burroughs Speaks The Lyrics To The Song "Sharkey's Night")
  • Laurie Anderson - Home Of The Brave (1986) (A Sample Of Burroughs Intoning "Listen To My Heart Beat" Is Incorporated Into The Song "Late Show")
  • Break Through In Grey Room (1986, Sub Rosa)
  • The Doctor Is On The Market (1986, LTM Publishing (Les Temps Modernes))
  • Smack My Crack(1987)
  • Uncommon Quotes (1988, Caravan Of Dreams Productions)
  • John Giorno - Like A Girl I Want To Keep Coming (1989)
  • Material - Seven Souls (1989)
  • Dead City Radio (1990, Island Records)
  • Millions Of Images (1990, Singles Only Label) (With Gus Van Sant)
  • The Elvis Of Letters (1991, Tim/Kerr Records) (With Gus Van Sant)
  • Ministry - Just One Fix (1992) (Burroughs Speaks The Lyrics To The Song "Quick Fix" And Created The Cover Art)
  • The Black Rider (1992) (Musical Co-Authored With Tom Waits And Robert Wilson, Sings On "T'ain't No Sin")
  • Spare Ass Annie And Other Tales (1993, Island Records)
  • The "Priest" They Called Him (1993, Tim/Kerr Records)
  • Vaudeville Voices (1993, Grey Matter)
  • Words Of Advice For Young People (1993, Island Records)
  • 10%: File Under Burroughs (1996)
  • VV.AA. - Songs In The Key Of X (1996) / In Time: The Best Of R.E.M. 1988-2003 Bonus Disc (2003) (Burroughs Records His Vocal Over An Instrumental Version Of R.E.M.'S "Star Me Kitten")
  • La Révolution Electronique (Crash)
  • The Best Of William Burroughs From Giorno Poetry Systems (1998, Mercury)
  • Stoned Immaculate: The Music Of The Doors (2000) (Burroughs Reads Poetry By Jim Morrison Over Music Provided By The Doors On The Track "Is Everybody In?")
  • Real English Tea Made Here (2007, Audio Research Editions)


Call Me Burroughs (1965,1995)







Break Through In Grey Room (1986)







Uncommon Quotes (1988)








Dead City Radio (1990)








The Elvis Of Letters (1991)







Spare Ass Annie And Other Tales (1993)








The "Priest" They Called Him (1993)







Selections From The Best Of William Burroughs From Giorno Poetry Systems (1998)






The Best Of William Burroughs From Giorno Poetry Systems (1998)







Real English Tea Made Here (2007)








Three Allusive Tracks From Break Through In Grey Room (2009)




______________________________________

Links:

William Buys A Parrot (1963)
Bill And Tony (1972)
Antony Balch & William S. Burroughs - Towers Open Fire (1963)
Ghost At N°9 (Paris) (1963-72)
The Cut-Ups (1966)
Thanksgiving Prayer

______________________________________

Password: interzona23

CoH - Strings


from Raster-Noton website:

Strings is primarily an attempt to reconcile the aesthetics of digital sound with that of the more traditional music instruments and to enrich the respective domains with the qualities of each other. in a larger scale, the album targets the stereotypes in today's perception of music, trying to smooth out the borders between academic and popular, traditional and contemporary, serious and amusing - all in favour of music. the choice of instruments follows COH's own experience in music: from years of piano lessons as a child, through playing in a heavy metal band during teenage, further to the recent years of work in the area of digital sound and composition.

Label: Raster-Noton
Cat. #: R-N 85
Format: 2xCD
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
1-01 - Part I - Sidereal As If Not - I.I - Piano Tranquillo (08:03)
1-02 - Part I - Sidereal As If Not - I.II - Andante Facile (06:00)
1-03 - Part II - No Monsters No Rock - II.I - Mezzo Forte Passionato (06:11)
1-04 - Part II - No Monsters No Rock - II.II - Vittorioso Calando (06:55)
1-05 - Part III - Euphrates III.I - Spiritoso, Con Amore (11:40)
1-06 - Part III - Euphrates III.I - III.II - Devoto Maestoso Al Fine (06:50)
2-01 - SU-U (16:59)

Links:
CoH
Raster-Noton

Jerry Johansson - Next Door Conversation


from Vital Weekly # 591:

Although it says Jerry Johansson, his 'Next Door Conversation' is not a solo work. Johansson is a guitar player and composer, but after hearing George Harrison on the sitar, he was hooked to that instrument. His latest CD is a work for sitar, santour, tambura and string quartet. I am sure to tell you I am not at all qualified to write about this CD at all, since I have a black hole when it comes to classical non-western music. I think.
Perhaps this bears no relation with traditional Indian music? I don't know. Two long pieces of swirling notes in a sort of middle eastern style, with plucking on the sitar and santour. Actually I quite like it for what it is. Kitsch perhaps? High art? I am not able to tell, and luckily I don't care that much either. I like to take things face value. Do I like this? Yes I do. Fine.
(Frans de Waard)

Label: Kning Disk
Cat. #: KD038
Format: CD
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
01 - Next Door Conversation Part I (27:14)
02 - Next Door Conversation Part II (25:39)

Links:
Jerry Johansson
Kning Disk

Robert Ashley - Now Eleanor's Idea


Robert Ashley's Now Eleanor's Idea is a quartet of short operas based on the notion of a sequence of events seen from four, different points of view. At the same time, each opera is an allegory, like Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, for an individual's self-realization within the context of a major religion found in the United States.
Improvement takes its imagery and plot from Judaism, Foreign Experiences from Pentecostal Evangelism, eL/Aficionado from Corporate Mysticism, and Now Eleanor's Idea from (Spanish) Catholicism.

The inspiration for these works came specifically from four sources: the work of the historian, Frances A. Yates (1900-1983), whose specialty of interests included the influence of Kabbalistic mysticism on the birth of modernism and scientific philosophy in Italy in the 16th century (as a result of the expulsion of Jews from Spain during the Inquisition); the writings of Carlos Castaneda (and the arguments about him as a writer and about the intentions of his work).

Label: Lovely Music
Cat. #:
Format: 2xCD
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
1-01 - Change (22:04)
1-02 - The Miracle Of Cars (22:03)
2-01 - Questions and Answers (21:58)
2-02 - The Song (22:26)

Links:
Robert Ashley
Lovely Music

Sun Ra - Toward The Stars (Pioneering In 1955-1956)


A compilation of Sun Ra's pioneering mid 50s work in Chicago - key years in Ra's evolution that find him taking familiar styles of the time, from doo wop to bebop - and sending them into the stratosphere on a vessel that's all Ra!
All of the tracks are from 1955 and 56, and most appear to have been previously released on CD, but it's still a fine and richly varied demonstration of Ra's range during a couple of key early Saturn years in Chicago!

Label: Cherry Red
Cat. #: fivefour19
Format: CD
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
01 - Spaceship Lullaby (02:21)
02 - Can This Be Love (06:04)
03 - Call For All Demons (05:15)
04 - Future (02:53)
05 - Sun Song (03:40)
06 - Lullaby For Realville (04:45)
07 - Urnack (03:48)
08 - Demon's Lullaby (02:36)
09 - Piano Interlude (01:55)
10 - India (04:51)
11 - Advice To Medics (02:049
12 - Kingdom Of Not (05:34)
13 - El Is A Sound Of Joy (03:59)
14 - Dreams Come True (03:06)

Links:
Cherry Red
Sun Ra

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Sandro Perri - Tiny Mirrors


from Constellation website:

Tiny Mirrors incorporates elements and sensibilities - albeit in subtle hues - as diverse as Vanguard-era Skip James (and his weary falsetto), post-tropicalia Caetano Veloso (the compositional twists), and the 60s-era axis of hybrid songwriters like Tim Buckley, Tim Hardin, Harry Nilsson and Fred Neil (whose "Everybody's Talkin'" is covered here, re-cast as a rumination on the 'epidemic' of second-hand experience).
Perri's simultaneous guitar and kick drum playing is complemented by the cracked wah guitar of labelmate Eric Chenaux on several tracks, with brass, reeds, woodwinds, keys and percussion filling out the arrangements, courtesy of regular bandmates Ryan Driver, Marcus Quin and John Jowett.
A handful of other Toronto players contribute on drums, trombone and cello.

Crucial to the album's sound is the fact that Perri gave up much control to the group dynamics, allowing some of the arrangements to develop out of the players' natural tendencies towards improvisation. "Love Is Real", for example, set to a fluid and amorphous backdrop of heavily phased 'neo-soul', was altered substantially by Chenaux's rhythmic re-configurations, while "Double Suicide" (of which the original version has not yet seen proper release) is presented here in an alternate form. Anchored entirely by drummer Blake Howard's in-studio restlessness, the original gets transformed from a brooding slow-burner into a strangely fractured bossa nova; a tricky polyrhythmic delight. Ending the record is a re-working of the lead-off track "Family Tree", here renamed "Mirror Tree" and consisting of only the core band, sans Perri altogether - a testament to the group's interpretive power.

Overall, Perri strikes the perfect balance of sophisticated writing (melodically and as a lyricist) and, with the help of his band, deceptively effortless, relaxed, unconstrained performance. These songs abound in subtle texture and flourish, and the burbling swirl of instrumental work is a through-line to his earlier recordings as Polmo Polpo, where a similarly simmering brew of interweaving melodies yielded such an original and seductive take on 'electronic' music. Perri brings the same originality, warmth, energy and intelligence to his eponymous singer-songwriter work; Tiny Mirrors pulses and froths and lounges and glides with inimitable ingenuity, genuineness, substance and style.

Label: Constellation
Cat. #: CST 047
Format: CD
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
01 - Family Tree (03:36)
02 - City Of Museums (03:06)
03 - Double Suicide (05:49)
04 - The Drums (03:27)
05 - Everybody's Talkin' (04:50)
06 - The Mime (04:18)
07 - You're The One (04:38)
08 - White Flag Blues (04:43)
09 - Love Is Real (04:30)
10 - Mirror Tree (02:39)

Links:
Constellation

Fred Frith & Evelyn Glennie - The Sugar Factory


from Tzadik website:

Dynamic and astonishing music from two of the world’s greatest musical pioneers, this is another special project from multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser Fred Frith who has been bravely crossing musical borders since the early 1970’s.
These remarkable duo sessions were recorded during the filming of Thomas Riedelsheimer’s exquisite documentary Touch the Soundabout Scottish virtuoso percussionist Evelyn Glennie. Combining the unpredictability of an improvised first encounter with the magic of studio composition, this is music of another dimension, highlighting the power and sensitivity of both players.

Label: Tzadik
Cat. #: 7623
Format: CD
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
01 - A Route Of Wolves (07:43)
02 - In The World To Change The World (07:54)
03 - A Rag Of Colts (04:13)
04 - Scuttlebutt (06:07)
05 - A Cast Of Hawks (07:55)
06 - Walls Are Loosening (15:05)

Links:
Fred Frith
Evelyn Glennie
Tzadik

Houle Parker Delbecq - La Lumière De Pierres


Delbecq and Houle had often discussed expanding their collaborative concept to include a third person, so in 2005, when composer Michel Frigon invited them to perform at his Innovations concert series in Montréal with Evan Parker, they seized the opportunity to record this new trio formation.
The result is something very special. Collectively these musicians inhabit a highly distinctive sound world and their sonic explorations bring us some of the most exquisite, intricate and beautiful music one could ever hope to hear.

François Houle (clarinets)
Evan Parker (tenor saxophone)
Benoît Delbecq (prepared piano)

Label: Psi/Emanem
Cat. #: psi 07.02
Format: CD
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
01 - Stone Through Sunlight (18:04)
02 - Moonlight Through Stone (16:44)
03 - Stone On Stone (10:55)

Links:
Evan Parker
François Houle
Benoît Delbecq
Psi/Emanem

Alexander Turnquist - Apneic


Alexander Turnquist’s "Apneic" has been realised with the use of a 12 string acoustic guitar, an antique balalaika, Boss sp-303 dr. sample, and a laptop...

Label: Kning Disk
Cat. #: KD039
Format: CD
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
01 - Idle Nightmare (06:14)
02 - Electric Lines (23:00)
03 - 130 (05:42)

Links:
Alexander Turnquist
Kning Disk

His Namelessness Is Legion - That Night She Emitted A Different Silence


from Vital Weekly # 591:

No rhythm on the foreground, but lots of guitars, treated on the computer. Microsound bumps into ambient and industrial music.
Densely layered, at times noise based heaviness, digital clicks and droney. The odd thing is however at the end, with '...And The Quick Kill The Dead', with has vocals (sounding a bit like Edward Ka-spel), and could almost pass on as a popsong. Very nice release.
(Frans de Waard)

Label: Mahorka
Cat. #: mhrk054
Format: File, Mp3
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
01 - A Field Trip With Dr. Hoffman (12:58)
02 - Altamont (32:59)
03 - ...And The Quick Kill The Dead (08:24)


Links:
His Namelessness Is Legion
Mahorka

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

WZT Hearts - Threads Rope Spell Making Your Bones


from Vital Weekly # 594:

The name should be pronounced as Wet Hearts, but written as Wzt Hearts. We don't know why. It's a four piece band with the odd line up of Mike Haleta on 'circuit bend guitar pedals, laptop, guitar, tapes', Jeff Donaldson on 'commodore 64, bi-tone guitar, mixer', Jason Urick on laptop and Shaun Flynn on drums and vocals. That is an odd combination.
Whatever vocals it might, they are surely well transformed beyond belief. What to think of the music? It's surely a combination that is unlikely if you see it written: microsound meets krautrock, anyone? But more microsound than krautrock. Laptop rock? Psychedelic microsound?
The element of improv, of surprise is important for Wzt Hearts, but it surely could have used a bit more editing. At times it seemed to me they were searching a bit too much for a sound and things went on too much.
But then on other moments they were more spot on, direct and even funny at times. I must admit that despite some flaws in the music, the odd combination of drums, guitar, 'vocals' on one hand and the electronica on the other which makes this curious meeting quite a nice one.
(Frans de Waard)

Label: Carpark
Cat. #: cprk40
Format: CD
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
01 - Hassler (06:39)
02 - Lava Nile (03:46)
03 - Jeep Uzi (02:32)
04 - Spell (04:29)
05 - Hearth Carver (03:24)
06 - Den (05:46)
07 - Viszla (07:51)

Links:
WZT Hearts
Carpak Records

VV.AA. - Free Zone Appleby 2006


The acoustics of Ancient Space and Chris Trent's engineering sensibilities bring an international combination of some of Evan Parker's favourite musicians in a full programme of open playing.

Musicians are:
Paul Lovens (drums)
Rudi Mahall (bass clarinet)
Evan Parker (saxophones)
Paul Rutherford (trombone)
Aki Takase (piano)
Alexander von Schlippenbach (piano)
Philipp Wachsmann (violin, electronics)

Recorded in Ancient Space, St Michael's Church, Appleby on 30 July 2006.

Label: Psi/Emanem
Cat. #: psi 07.04
Format: CD
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
01 - Favourite Fruit Trio 1 [EP/PW/AVS] (04.34)
02 - Favourite Fruit Trio 2 [RM/AT/PL] (09.14)
03 - Favourite Fruit Duo 1 [PW/AT] (03.47)
04 - Favourite Fruit Quartet [PR/EP/AVS/PL] (12.05)
05 - Favourite Fruit Duo 2 [RM/PW] (09.23)
06 - Favourite Fruit Trio 3 [EP/AT/PL] (08.39)
07 - Favourite Fruit Trio 4 [PR/RM/PW] (06.52)
08 - Favourite Fruit Duo 3 [PR/EP] (06.58)
09 - Favourite Fruit Trio 5 [PR/PW/PL] (11.46)
10 - Favourite Fruit Duo 4 [AVS/AT] (04.41)

Links:
Psi/Emanem

Bark! - Contraption


The second CD by the trio of Rex Casswell (electric guitar), Phillip Marks (percussion) and Paul Obermayer (samples).
Bark! take their group virtuosity to new areas, creating beautiful jagged, sharp edged textures propelled by some of their tightest, strangest, most powerful rhythmic designs yet. James Brown meets the spirit of Modernism!

Label: Psi/Emanem
Cat. #: psi 07.03
Format: CD
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
01 - Polaris (8:37)
02 - It's a Life (2:47)
03 - Gyre (5:23)
04 - Snout (6:10)
05 - The Diver (3:10)
06 - Below Zero (6:12)
07 - Spanners (3:45)
08 - Mr Pointy (5:22)
09 - Decompression (2:27)

Links:
Psi/Emanem

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

fORCH - Spin Networks


Recorded at the SWR New Jazz Meeting in December 2005, is the first release from an ongoing project in which FURT is expanded into an electroacoustic octet with a unique collective sound, where vocals, instruments and electronics coalesce into a dense but transparent vortex.

Label: Psi/Emanem
Cat. #: psi 07.05/6
Format: 2xCD
Release date: 2007

Tracklisting:
1-01 - Fokt III (31:45)
1-02 - Volume (07:03)
1-03 - Temperature (08:30)
1-04 - Solution G (09:54)
1-05 - Nekton (13:51)
2-01 - Plankton (19:48)
2-02 - Solution H (09:28)
2-03 - Pressure (10:17)
2-04 - Fokt II (36:01)

Links:
Psi/Emanem

Literature: Philip K. Dick (1928-1982)


Date Of Birth: December 16, 1928, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Date Of Death: March 2, 1982, Santa Ana, California, USA

He was born prematurely, along with his twin sister Jane, in Chicago on December 16, 1928.
His father was Edgar Dick, his mother Dorothy Kindred - from her maiden name came Dick's middle initial.
Jane died six weeks after her birth, a loss that Phil felt deeply throughout his life. As time went on, Phil came, with whatever justice, to blame his mother for Jane's death. His relationship with both of his parents was decidedly difficult, and made only more so when they divorced when he was five years old.

Sister Jane, his mother, and his father served as models for many of the characters who would populate Dick's fictional universes in the decades to come. In particular, the death of Jane - and Phil's traumatic sense of separation from her, an experience common to many twins who have lost their sibling - contributed to the dualist (twin-poled) dilemmas that dominated his creative work - science fiction (SF)/mainstream, real/fake, human/android.
It was out of these pressing dualities that the two vast questions emerged which Dick often cited as encompassing his writing: What is Real? and What is Human?

Mother Dorothy retained custody over her son, and they eventually settled in Berkeley, where Dick grew up, graduated from high school, and briefly attended the University of California in 1949 before dropping out.

Starting in seventh grade, however, Dick began suffering from bouts of extreme vertigo; the vertigo recurred with special intensity during his brief undergraduate stint. In his late teens, Dick later recalled, he was diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia - a label that terrified him. Other psychotherapists and psychiatrists in later years would offer other diagnoses, including the one that Dick was quite sane.

Leaving aside medical terminology, there is no question that Dick felt himself, throughout his life, to suffer from bouts of psychological anguish that he frequently referred to as "nervous breakdowns." His experience of these was transmuted into fictional portraits, most notably of "ex-schizophrenic" Jack Bohlen in Martian Time-Slip (1964).

In a 1968 "Self Portrait" he recalled the moment of discovery of the genre that would ultimately set him free to write of the complex realities of his own personal experience:

"I was twelve [in 1940] when I read my first sf magazine…it was called Stirring Science Stories and ran, I think, four issues….I came across the magazine quite by accident; I was actually looking for Popular Science. I was most amazed. Stories about science? At once I recognized the magic which I had found, in earlier times, in the Oz books - this magic now coupled not with magic wands but with science…In any case my view became magic equals science…and science (of the future) equals magic."

This is not to say that Dick read only SF during his coming of age years. On the contrary, he was an omnivorous and devouring reader, taking in Xenophon's Anabasis, Joyce's Finnegans Wake, the French realists such as Stendhal, Flaubert and Maupassant - all this and much more by his early twenties. Dick gave credit to the American Depression-era writer James T. Farrell, author of Studs Lonigan, for helping Dick see how to construct the SF stories that he sold in such numbers to the SF pulps in the early 1950s.

And even though Dick never lost his yearning to be accepted by the literary mainstream, he always regarded it as a kind of treason to deprecate the SF genre he grew up on and flourished in. As he wrote in 1980, two years before his death:


"I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards. Okay, so I should revise my standards; I'm out of step. I should yield to reality. I have never yielded to reality. That's what SF is all about. If you wish to yield to reality, go read Philip Roth; read the New York literary establishment mainstream bestselling writers….This is why I love SF. I love to read it; I love to write it. The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It's not just 'What if' - it's 'My God; what if' - in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming."

From age fifteen to his early twenties, Dick was employed in two Berkeley shops, University Radio and Art Music, owned by Herb Hollis, a salt-of-the-earth American small businessman who became a kind of father-figure for Dick and served as an inspiration for a number of his later fictional characters, most notably Leo Bulero in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (1965), who, in the memo to his employees that serves as the frontispiece to that novel, gruffly affirms the human spirit:

"I mean, after all; you have to consider we're only made out of dust. That's admittedly not much to go on and we shouldn't forget that. But even considering, I mean it's a sort of bad beginning, we're not doing too bad. So I personally have faith that even in this lousy situation we're faced with we can make it. You get me?"

Three Stigmata, which deals with a terrifying Gnostic-style demiurgic invasion of earth by means of the eerily permeating hallucinogen "Chew-Z," so fascinated Beatle John Lennon that he considered making a film of it.

In the early 1950s, with the helpful mentorship of SF editor and Berkeley resident Anthony Boucher, Dick began to publish stories in the SF pulps of the era at an astonishing rate - seven of his stories appeared in June 1953 alone. He soon gave up his employment in the Hollis shops to pursue the economically insecure career of an SF writer.

In 1954, Dick later recalled with humor, he met one of his SF idols, A. E. Van Vogt, at an SF convention, where Van Vogt proceeded to convince the neophyte writer that there was more money to be made in novels than in stories. Henceforward, Dick's rate of production of SF novels was as remarkable as his story output had been. At his creative peak, he published sixteen SF novels between 1959 and 1964. During this same period, he also wrote mainstream novels that went unpublished, much to his anguish. To this day, it is his SF work for which Dick is best remembered, and justly so.

After a very brief failed first marriage in 1948, remarried four times - to Kleo Apostolides in 1950, to Anne Williams Rubenstein in 1959, to Nancy Hackett in 1966, and to Tessa Busby in 1973. There was one child born in each of the latter three marriages -respectively, his daughters Laura and Isa and son Christopher. During his lifetime, Dick was regarded with respect by SF fans and fellow writers, though his sales never came close to matching those of the most popular SF writers of his era such as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert.

Dick received the Hugo Award in 1963 for The Man in the High Castle, which tells of a post-World War II world in which Japan and Germany are the victors and the continental United States is roughly divided between them. In devising the plot, Dick employed the I Ching on several occasions and also integrated that divinatory text into the narrative itself - marking its debut in American fiction.

In February and March 1974, Dick experienced a series of visions and auditions including an information-rich "pink light" beam that transmitted directly into his consciousness. A year after the events, in March 1975, Dick summarized the 2-3-74 experiences that would pervade his writing for the final eight years of his life:

"I speak of The Restorer of What Was Lost The Mender of What Was Broken."

"March 16, 1974: It appeared - in vivid fire, with shining colors and balanced patterns - and released me from every thrall, inner and outer.

"March 18, 1974: It, from inside me, looked out and saw the world did not compute, that I - and it - had been lied to. It denied the reality, and power, and authenticity of the world, saying, 'This cannot exist; it cannot exist.'

"March 20, 1974: It seized me entirely, lifting me from the limitations of the space-time matrix; it mastered me as, at the same time, I knew that the world around me was cardboard, a fake. Through its power of perception I saw what really existed, and through its power of no-thought decision, I acted to free myself. It took on in battle, as a champion of all human spirits in thrall, every evil, every Iron Imprisoning thing."

There are those who are eager to create a "Saint Phil" who emerged from this experience. In that regard, it is wise to remember that Dick himself always bore in mind what he called the "minimum hypothesis" -that is, the possibility that all that he had undergone was merely self-delusion.

On the other hand, there are those who regard Dick as a charlatan who foisted upon his readers a pseudo-mystical revelation fueled by mental disorder. But surely a charlatan is one who insists on the seriousness and accuracy of his claims. This Dick never did. One has only to go and read VALIS (1981) to find a piercingly knowing humor in Dick's portrayal of himself as Horselover Fat:

"…Fat must have come up with more theories than there are stars in the universe. Every day he developed a new one, more cunning, more exciting and more fucked."

Those who insist on the "truth" or "falsehood" of Dick's experience of 2-3-74 are missing the central point: that those experiences provided him with the means to explore, with integrity, insight, and humility, the difficulties of making sense of any spiritual path in a relentlessly secular and cynical Western culture in which even apparent revelations can be instantly repackaged as popular entertainment.

Dick died on March 2, 1982, the result of a combination of recurrent strokes accompanied by heart failure. In a 1981 entry in his Exegesis (an extensive journal he kept to explore the ramifications of 2-3-74) Dick wrote as focused a self-assessment of his aims and talents as a writer as can be found in any of his journals, letters, essays, and interviews:

"I am a fictionalizing philosopher, not a novelist; my novel & story-writing ability is employed as a means to formulate my perception. The core of my writing is not art but truth. Thus what I tell is the truth, yet I can do nothing to alleviate it, either by deed or explanation. Yet this seems somehow to help a certain kind of sensitive troubled person, for whom I speak. I think I understand the common ingredient in those whom my writing helps: they cannot or will not blunt their own intimations about the irrational, mysterious nature of reality, &, for them, my corpus is one long ratiocination regarding this inexplicable reality, an integration & presentation, analysis & response & personal history."

One can readily imagine this passage having been written by Franz Kafka in his diary. And it is among the great fictionalizing philosophers of the twentieth century - Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Samuel Beckett, Rene Daumal, Flann O'Brien - that Dick's place in literary history lies. His uniqueness in this lineage is all the greater for his ability to have created great works in the broadly popular SF form. Dick remains compulsively, convulsingly readable. He is the master of the psychological pratfall, the metaphysical freefall, the political conspiracy within a conspiracy within a conspiracy. He is - as much as any contemporary writer we have - an astute guide to the shifting realities of the twenty-first century.
(Lawrence Sutin)

Bibliography:

(Novels)
  • Solar Lottery (1955)
  • The World Jones Made (1956)
  • The Man Who Japed (1956)
  • Eye In The Sky (1957)
  • The Cosmic Puppets (1957)
  • Time Out Of Joint (1959)
  • Dr. Futurity (1960)
  • Vulcan's Hammer (1960)
  • The Man In The High Castle (1962)
  • The Game-Players Of Titan (1963)
  • The Penultimate Truth (1964)
  • Martian Time-Slip (1964)
  • The Simulacra (1964)
  • Clans Of The Alphane Moon (1964)
  • The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch (1965) (eng.) (it.)
  • Dr. Bloodmoney, Or How We Got Along After The Bomb (1965)
  • Now Wait For Last Year (1966)
  • The Crack In Space (1966)
  • The Unteleported Man (1966)
  • The Zap Gun (1967)
  • Counter-Clock World (1967)
  • The Ganymede Takeover (With Ray Nelson) (1967)
  • Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? (1968)
  • Galactic Pot-Healer (1969) (it.) (it.)
  • Ubik (1969) (eng.) (it.)
  • A Maze Of Death (1970)
  • Our Friends From Frolix 8 (1970)
  • We Can Build You (1972)
  • Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said (1974)
  • Confessions Of A Crap Artist (1975)
  • Deus Irae (With Roger Zelazny) (1976)
  • A Scanner Darkly (1977)
  • VALIS (1981)
  • The Divine Invasion (1981)
  • The Transmigration Of Timothy Archer (1982)
  • The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike (1984)
  • Radio Free Albemuth (1985)
  • Puttering About In A Small Land (1985)
  • In Milton Lumky Territory (1985)
  • Humpty Dumpty In Oakland (1986)
  • Mary And The Giant (1987)
  • The Broken Bubble (1988)
  • Nick And The Glimmung (1988)
  • Gather Yourselves Together (1994)
  • Lies, Inc. (2004)

(Short Stories)

1952 "Beyond Lies The Wub", "The Gun", "The Skull", "The Little Movement"

1953 "The Defenders", "Mr. Spaceship", "Piper In The Woods", "Roog", "The Infinites", "Second Variety", "The World She Wanted", "Colony", "The Cookie Lady", "Impostor", "Martians Come In Clouds" ("The Buggies"), "Paycheck", "The Preserving Machine", "The Cosmic Poachers" ("Burglar"), "Expendable" ("He Who Waits"), "The Indefatigable Frog", "The Commuter", "Out In The Garden", "The Great C", "The King Of The Elves" ("Shadrach Jones And The Elves"), "The Trouble With Bubbles" ("Plaything"), "The Variable Man", "The Impossible Planet" ("Legend"), "Planet For Transients" ("The Itinerants"), "Some Kinds Of Life" ("The Beleagured"), "The Builder", "The Hanging Stranger", "Project: Earth" ("One Who Stole"), "The Eyes Have It", "Tony And The Beetles"

1954 "Prize Ship", ("Globe From Ganymede"), "Beyond The Door", "The Crystal Crypt", "A Present For Pat", "The Short Happy Life Of The Brown Oxford", "The Golden Man" ("The God Who Runs"), "James P. Crow", "Prominent Author", "Small Town", "Survey Team", "Sales Pitch", "Time Pawn" (Expanded As The Novel "Dr, Futurity"), "Breakfast At Twilight", "The Crawlers" ("Foundling Home"), "Of Withered Apples", "Exhibit Piece", "Adjustment Team", "Shell Game", "Meddler", "Souvenir", "A World Of Talent", "The Last Of The Masters" ("Protection Agency"), "Progeny", "Upon The Dull Earth", "The Father-Thing", "Strange Eden" ("Immolation"), "Jon's World" ("Jon"), "The Turning Wheel"

1955 "Foster, You're Dead", "Human Is", "War Veteran", "Captive Market", "Nanny", "The Hood Maker" ("Immunity"), "The Chromium Fence", "Service Call", "A Surface Raid", "The Mold Of Yancy", "Autofac", "Psi-Man Heal My Child! ("Psi-Man" And "Outside Consultant")

1956 "The Minority Report" , "To Serve The Master" ("Be As Gods!"), "Pay For The Printer", "A Glass Of Darkness" (Magazine Version Of "The Cosmic Puppets")

1957 "The Unreconstructed M", "Misadjustment"

1958 "Null-O" ("Looney Lemuel")

1959 "Explorers We", "Recall Mechanism", "Fair Game", "War Game"

1963 "All We Marsmen", "Stand-By" ("Top Stand-By Job"), "What'll We Do With Ragland Park?" ("No Ordinary Guy"), "The Days Of Perky Pat", "If There Were No Benny Cemoli"

1964 "Waterspider", "Novelty Act", "Oh, To Be A Blobel!", "The War With The Fnools", "What The Dead Men Say" ("Man With A Broken Match"), "Orpheus With Clay Feet", "Cantata 140", "A Game Of Unchance", "The Little Black Box", "Precious Artifact", "The Unteleported Man"

1965 "Retreat Syndrome", "Project Plowshare"

1966 "We Can Remember It For You Wholesale", "Holy Quarrel", "Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday" 1967 "Return Match", "Faith Of Our Fathers"

1968 "Not By Its Cover", "The Story To End All Stores For Harlan Ellison's Anthology Dangerous Visions"

1969 "The Electric Ant", "A. Lincoln, Simulacrum"

1974 "The Pre-Persons", "A Little Something For Us Tempunauts"

1979 "The Exit Door Leads In"

1980 "Chains Of Air, Web Of Aether" ("The Man Who Knew To Lose") "Rautavaara's Case", "Frozen Journey" ("I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon")

1981 "The Alien Mind"

1984 "Strange Memories Of Death"

1987 "Cadbury, The Beaver Who Lacked", "The Day Mr. Computer Fell Out Of Its Tree", "The Eye Of The Sibyl", "Stability", "A Terran Odyssey"

1988 "Goodbye, Vincent"

Essays:

1955 "Pessimism In Science Fiction"

1964 "Naziism And The High Castle", "Drugs, Hallucinations, And The Quest For Reality", "Tips For The Beginning Writer"

1965 "Schizophrenia & The Book Of Changes" "Pessimism In Science Fiction"

1966 "Will The Atomic Bomb Ever Be Perfected, And If So, What Becomes Of Robert Heinlein?"

1968 "Anthony Boucher" "Self Portrait"

1969 "That Moon Plaque"

1972 "Notes Made Late At Night By A Weary SF Writer", "The Android And The Human"

1973 "The Nixon Crowd"

1974 "Three Sci-Fi Authors View The Future", "An Open Letter To Joanna Russ", "Who Is An SF Writer?"

1975 "The Evolution Of A Vital Love"

1976 "Memories Found In A Bill From A Small Animal Vet", "The Short Happy Life Of A Science Fiction Writer", "Man, Android And Machine"

1978 "If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others"

1979 "The Lucky Dog Pet Store", "Scientists Claim: We Are The Center Of The Universe" 1981 "Universe Makers...And Breakers", "Predictions", "The Tagore Letter"

1982 "How To Write Science Fiction"

1985 "How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later", "Warning: We Are Your Police" (Plot Outline)

1987 "Cosmogony And Cosmology"

1988 "PKD's Blade Runner: 1968 Notes On How To Film Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?"

1992 "Joe Protagoras Is Alive And Living On Earth" (Plot Outline), "The Name Of The Game Is Death" (Plot Outline), "The Different Stages Of Love"

Letters:
  • The Selected Letters Of Philip K. Dick--1974 (Published In 1981)
  • The Selected Letters Of Philip K. Dick--1975-1976 (Published In 1992)
  • The Selected Letters Of Philip K. Dick--1977-1979 (Published In 1992)
  • The Selected Letters Of Philip K. Dick--1972-1973 (Published In 1993)
  • The Selected Letters Of Philip K. Dick--1938-1971 (Published In 1996)
Verse:
  • The Above And Melting (1966)
  • An Old Snare (1966)
  • Why I Am Hurt (1966)
  • My Life In Stillness: White As Day (1983)
  • On A Cat Which Fell Three Stories And Survived (1987)
  • Hey, Dumb Little Girls (1988)

Films Based On PKD’s Works:
  • Blade Runner (1982, Dir. By Ridley Scott, Based On: “Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?”)
  • Total Recall (1990, Dir. By Paul Verhoeven, Based On: “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale”)
  • Confessions D'un Barjo (French) (1992, Dir. By Jerome Boivin, Based On: “The Confessions Of A Crap-Artist”)
  • Screamers (1995, Dir By Christian Duguay, Based On: "Second Variety")
  • The Gospel According To Philip K. Dick (2000) (DVD) (VHS). Documentary About Philip K. Dick
  • Impostor (2001, Dir By Gary Fleder, Based On: “Impostor”)
  • Minority Report (2002, Dir. By Steven Spielberg, Based On: "The Minority Report")
  • Paycheck (2003, Dir. By Richard Linklater, Based On: "Paycheck")
  • A Scanner Darkly (2006, Based On "A Scanner Darkly")
  • Next (2007, Dir. By Lee Tamahori, Based On "The Golden Man")
Links:
Philip Kindred Dick
  • Philip K. Dick - Complete Stories 1 - The Short Happy Life Of The Brown Oxford And Other Stories
  • Philip K. Dick - Complete Stories 4 - The Minority Report And Other Stories
  • Philip K. Dick - Complete Stories 5 - The Eye Of Sibyl And Other Stories
  • Philip K. Dick - The Book Of Philip K. Dick
  • Philip K. Dick - The Shifting Realities Of Philip K. Dick
  • Robert Crumb - The Religious Experience Of Philip K. Dick
(pwd: interzona23)