Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides

This onetime Lyon based duo's new album on Chironex "Blew in the Face" is another late contender for album of the year, along with Blood Stereo's "Your Snakelike King". Both of these are excellent. More on them a little later.

A nameless name

Have been making some of my first sample recordings over the last few days - as in one minute of midi sounds meets birdcall whistle and whispering etc - I clearly have a long way to go before I have any finished tracks. There's a lot to learn and I imagine that at some point I'll have to think up a name for my project. I'd be interested in hearing about how other musicians came up with names for their bands and projects.

song inspires video inspires poem

I haven't been adding much to this blog at all lately, but I'm sure I'll be bursting with further ideas soon enough. I really hadn't written much creative at all lately, until - out of the blue this afternoon, I came up with the beginnings of a poem loosely inspired by this video which you may well have seen before, but if not it is a very cool one - one of my favourite music videos ever. A poetic response seems more appropriate than a review kind of one in this instance. The video is an interesting response to the song. It's cool how different things on the same or similar subject can sit side by side.

Ghosts of Sweden's past

Here's another video from the Swedish band Ättestupa. I have been listening to their new 12" "1867" which is available from DNT. It is really brilliant and I'd really like to write something about both it and their other full length album which I included in my best of the year selection, though that one may actually have came out last year, but that's a mere detail. The holiday season has seemingly brought out the writing bug in me.

Fricara Pacchu, Lal Lal Lal and sampled music

Fricara Pacchu
Just Giggin'/Massimo's Megamix tape
Tanzprocesz

Lal Lal Lal Festival 3 tape
Lal Lal Lal

A double tape review this time. The first is from Fricara Pacchu - Kevin Regan's (member of Avarus and Maniacs Dream) solo project. The first side is kind of synth poppy and post-punkish stuff - shorter songs. The second is a side long mash up of all manner of instrumental pieces ranging from rock and punk to snatches of exotica and other styles. It is very much a free for all of samples from all over the place. I recognized Cat Power and My Bloody Valentine amongst it. I'm sure there are plenty of others. There was some boring piece in our local sunday paper the other week about how Girl Talk is some kind of revolutionary in using samples from here there and everywhere. Pacchu does it very well and no doubt with more sense of humour and style, not that I've really listened to Girl Talk so I shouldn't be the judge. On an unrelated note, the copyright laws regarding downloading music are apparently changing here in NZ. I don't think it's a particularly good thing. Sure, artists deserve credit, but tying music up in red tapes isn't doing anyone any favours.

The second tape in question is the Lal Lal Lal festival number 3. It was a huge dissapointment to read that the label is finishing up, but great to see that they will be starting a new one and other endeavours. The label has released so much amazing stuff, I wish I'd come across it sooner in a way, but plenty of the releases are still available.

Side A of the tape is very party friendly with post-punkish, synth and dance orientated experiments from Finland's Semimuumio (Jaako Tolvi), Suohumala (Antti Silvekoski) and Fricara Pacchu and UK based Neil Campbell's wonderful project Astral Social Club. It demonstrates something of the range of underground music coming out of Finland and its links to other countries.

Side B is an appropriate tribute to the label as it is a track from Pylon - the duo of Roope Eronen and Tero Niskanen who began Lal Lal Lal back it 2001. Pylon are noisier and darker than Avarus. It's great to hear something from them as their only records are impossible to get hold of.

Great summer listening!

Me & Yoko

US Girls
Me & Yoko 7"
Not Not Fun

When I did my best of 2009 selection, I didn't include any singles - if I had to choose one this would be it. Megan Remy has released a number of excellent recordings under the US Girls moniker. Her second full length on Slitbreeze, entitled Go Gray is due out early next year.

This 7" is short but very sweet. The A side is the title track "Me & Yoko". It opens with a found spoken word sample before moving into a skeletal guitar distortion with vocals wafting in and out of the hazy gray distance. It is very rough around the edges and you wouldn't want it any other way.

The B side sees Remy conjure the ghosts of rock and pop in a lonely, empty room somewhere. It's dark, there's nobody else around, but there's this music. It's noisy and achey and quite beautiful.

In other words, recommended.

Happy holidays, readers!

More Nabokov

Have been a bit of a lazy blogger on this blog lately - busy with this and that. I just wanted to mention this post on Nabokov on HTML giant. This post posits the idea that Nabokov isn't an author who is popular with the "indie lit crowd". I wouldn't know about that, but as I'm sure I've mentioned I'm a huge fan of his novels, though I haven't read them all yet. I really liked what someone said in this post about how "instead of facing off with the world’s horrors, he tries instead to reach for something magical that can only, if even then imperfectly, be accessed through art". Facing off with the world's horrors is an important and intereting thing to do in writing, don't get me wrong, but I think I will always have a certain place for the idea of "magic" in writing. Oh, and the videos are well worth watching too.

Wooden Veil

Looking forward to hearing this new album by Berlin based group Wooden Veil. It sounds very intriguing and Dekorder are one of those labels where it's almost guaranteed to be good. Label owner Marc Richter also has a new album out on Type called Alphabet 1968 which sounds interesting too. Some longer posts coming up later. For now here's a video from it:

Sunday Evening

This Sunday's video selection is drawn from the album selection in my previous post:

Is this it?

Best albums of the decade lists critiqued by Simon Reynolds here.
Pitchfork's list. While I'd jump up and defend those White Stripes albums at any time - I do think there have been so many interesting albums this decade not on these lists - significant, important, obscure, essential, weird, throwaway, surprising, baffling, monumental, subtle and brilliant ones. The pictures above are one of my possible takes on a top ten albums of the decade - all very subjective, though there are plenty of others and other things which are not even albums which may well have been just as important to me.

Queen of the autoharp

The autoharp won out for this evening's recording session - it may not be the instrument de jour but I'm in good company. I had been looking for this completely crazy but quite fabulous picture of Kukkiva Poliisi with an autoharp and here it is.

Ville Leinonen & Islaja

Gotta uphold this semi-regular tradition - can't wait for the new Islaja album, whenever that's coming out.

A fashion diversion

Has been awhile since I did a fashion related post - it's something that will appeal to some readers and not to others - such is the way of blogging. In addition to my vintage clothes obsession I have been also admiring the vintage inspired work of New Zealand designers such as Auckland based Harriett Falvey whose clothes I just came across recently and Island Bay based Emma Wallace who has the Emma label which I've been a fan of for awhile. I've got the blue dress.

exhibitions/gigs/vinyl

Looking forward to seeing what's around Dunedin when I go there soonish - Blue Oyster, None and so on are interesting. Not to mention vintage clothing galore at Modern Miss.

Closer to home there are things by John Wiese and Stink Magnetic happening. Ghost of Tapeman has a new 7'' coming up - I love the little ep I have of his. I'm king of torn between a lo-fi surfish guitar thing or the multi-instrument acoustic/electronic/experimental mess with my own music making - I may end up doing a bit of both.

On Translation

An inteverview with Johannes Göransson. The things he says about translation are quite refreshing. For him, a text isn't some ideal that is untranslatable. The gaps between one language and another are an interesting space.

I like this little passage: "No, I don’t have an ideal reader. They should just be different. There are different ways of approaching it. I’m really interested in, I like the textures of languages, but I’m also really interested in secrets and acrostics and strange messages you might find in there, so... There seem to be two parallel readings – one person might have this insight into things way beyond me, who can find messages in the relationships. But also I think there is something to be said for a sensual, textural reading. And part of what I wanted to do with including all the Swedish in Pilot is that, if you don’t know the Swedish, you could read the Swedish and it might change your English."

With that last sentence I thought a bit about my own experiences of enjoying listening to songs in other languages without knowing the language and kind of being able to pick it up in some kind of loose way, just knowing a few words. In a way it can work in a similar way with writing in English - you can approach it in a more analytical or a more sensual way, the latter kind of revelling in the way words sounds and so on.

The Original of Laura

Well I finished that Kate Bernheimer novel, The Complete Tales of Merry Gold. I think it's a really great book. Though I initially thought her an unlikeable character, I ended up rather liking Merry by the end of the novel. It is a compelling portrait of a character, but also interesting from a formal point of view in it's use of fairytale motifs and so on. Lovely.

I also just got Nabokov's The Original of Laura. I haven't read it yet and I know there has been a lot of controversy surrounding it's publication, not least of all the presentation of the book; but if you're interested in his writing you should take a look at it.

It is quite interesting to come to this book after just finishing Pale Fire a little while ago. This book is Nabokov's equivalent of John Shade's "backyard auto-da-fé".

Having a sneak peek, I like how the text disintegrates toward the end:

(Don't read on if you don't want the last two pages!)

"Thinking away on(e)self
a mel(t)ing sensation
an envahissement of delicious dissolution (what a miraculous appropriate noun!)

aftereffect of certain drug used by anaest(hesiologist)
I have ne(ver) been much (interested) in navel"

and then on the last index card:

"efface
expunge
erase
delete
rub out
wipe out
obliterate"

Have you ever been tempted to destroy a manuscript or piece of writing? I've been tempted - but some kind of misplaced loyalty always stops me from doing so! - besides those things are interesting to look back on. I'm too much of a collector/historian, I guess.

Here's what The Guardian have to say about it.

Advent-ure

Came across this very cool advent calender with poems as opposed to chocolates - I really like the Shakespeare sonnet mix-up. One to check on the days before Christmas!