Nightwalks

I have to go out to clear my head to prove to myself that there is life beyond these four walls. I've had such a lovely day today. Then I got home and then circumstances beyond my control brought me down. I read a little, then one of my roommates came home. After a brief discussion, we decided it was time to watch the final episode of Blake's 7. It was better than I expected. I am still in shock. It will take a while to recover from that one. A nice emotional shock sometimes proves cathartic in its own way. Blake's 7 is truly one of the great Sci-fi series. Now its over and I need to escape for a while. Possibly walk around in the cold and observe. Possibly walk around in the cold and listen to the recent Robert Wyatt album "Comicopera". I need to feel what its like, to observe the horizon line once again with the sky above my head. I don't need to meet other people.

I just need to experience space once again.
Tomorrow let the cycle begin again anew.

Karlheinz Stockhausen - composer, born August 22, 1928; died December 5, 2007

Good obituary in the Guardian UK and another from the CBC
and in Le Monde (with YouTube clips).

UPDATE: an Introduction and remembrance of Karlheninz Stockhausen, as published in the Guardian UK.

A Zed and Two Naughts - this Saturday at the MFA in Boston

More information on Peter Greenaway's film.




Once again:

A Zed and Two Naughts dir. Peter Greenaway
playing at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts - Saturday, December 8, 2007 at 3:40pm

WZBC - Playlist - Nov. 23 2007 - "Off the Cuff"

Fri Nov 23rd 2007 7.00pm–10.00pm
Like everything else, times are approximate. Spinitron and this station are not liable for errors or omissions.

Christina Kubisch “Homage With Minimal Disinformation” from Five Electrical Walks CD
Opto “5.10 a.m.” from 2nd CD ALBUM (hobby industries www.hobbyind.com 2004)
Gas “Nach 1912” from Pop Ambient 2007 (Kompakt www.kompakt-net.de 2006)
Barbara Morgenstern “eine verabredung” from Raumschiff Monika
Bertuf “Ecotone” from Bucolique Vol. 1 CD COMP (Arbouse Recordings)
Robert Wyatt “A.W.O.L.” from Comicopera (Domino 2007)
The Durutti Column “the eye and the hand” from The fruit of the original sin
Dream Makers “Helen's Song” from From Brussels with Love CD COMP
Tuxedomoon “ninotchka” SINGLE (Les Disques Du Crepuscule 1982)
L'ensemble Raye “Un Square au Printemps” from Comme un pinson dans l'eau LP
Hans Appelqvist “wanxian - tank att himlens alla stjarmor” from Sifantin och morkret
Wim Mertens “Let him go” from Shot and Echo CD ALBUM (Les Disques Du Crepuscule 1992)
Robert Wyatt “A Beautiful Peace” from Comicopera (Domino www.dominorecordco.com 2007)
Gnac “Examples of Bad Driving” from The Arrival of the Fog
Les Hurleurs “Chrysantheme” from ciel d'encre
Young Marble Giants “Brand - New - Life” from John Peel Session 1980
Young Marble Giants “Final Day” from John Peel Session 1980
Locust “Folie” from Morning Light CD ALBUM (R&S Records 1997)
The Durutti Column “party” from The fruit of the original sin
Mark Tranmer “scoop of ice cream moon”
Robert Wyatt “On the Town Square” from Comicopera
The Montgolfier Brothers “All My Bad Thoughts”
Wim Mertens “Wandering Eyes” from Shot and Echo CD ALBUM
Steven Brown “Sous quelle etoile suis-je ne?” from a tribute to polnareff CD COMP
Fabio Viscoglisiosi “rumbubble” from fenomeno (Microbe www.microberecords.com 2007)
Lilacs “Young and Supernatural” from Crooning on Venus COMP
Nine Horses “birds sing for their lives” from Money For All
The Lost Jockey “Matters of Theory” from the fruit of the original sin
Jay-jay Johanson “Mana Mana Mana Mana” from Whiskey CD ALBUM (BMG Sweden 1996)
Chessie “the firefly” from Night Owls CD COMP (Deluxe www.deluxerecs.com 2001)
Mark Van Hoen “when tomorrow comes” from playing with time CD ALBUM (Apollo 1998)
The Hafler Trio “alternation, perception & res” from A Bag of Cats CD ALBUM
Christina Kubisch “Security” from Five Electrical Walks CD ALBUM

O a beautiful song

I had a dream a friend was singing
It was a beautiful song
her voice was pure and cute

I've been away too long

Last weekend went fairly well, at least during daylight hours. Night was spent at home reading and wondering, hoping the house would stay quiet a little longer. I suppose there is little to say at the moment. I've been out of practice. I've been busy worrying about other things and not this. That will soon change. People still listen and actually enjoy it from what I can tell. It may be a small contribution but it helps me to partially justify this mess--as if that were what was needed. It is a short week, I imagine a few long days at work and then quiet for a bit. I look forward to such things.

Penguin Cafe Orchestra - Live at Union Chapel 2007

PENGUIN CAFE

Tuesday 11th December - Wednesday 12th - Thursday 13th December
08:00 PM


performed by musicians of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra

Penguin Cafe, the brainchild of the late English composer and multi-instrumentalist Simon Jeffes, play pastoral, playful music that grabs hold of the imagination and the spirit. To mark ten years passing since Jeffes' death, the musicians of the Penguin Cafe Orchestra are getting back together to give two concerts on Tuesday 11, Wednesday 12, and Thursday 13 December at Union Chapel, a venue Simon loved to play.

Tickets: £20 adv + booking fee

Doors Open: 7.00pm

*******************************
UPDATE:
Concert as reviewed by John L. Walters in the Guardian UK.

Upcoming Events - in Massachusetts

A few things of interest I've noticed coming up in the next few days:
Tonight at the Middle East in Central Square, Cambridge

November 8th at P.A.'s Lounge, Somerville:
Thursday - Nov 8 2007
Ponies in the Surf
Castanets
Deer Tick
Tigersaw
Age Restrictions: 18+
Doors Open: 8:30PM

This weekend Popfest! New England is going on at the Sevens in Northampton.

Sunday Night (11th November) at TT the Bears in Central Square (my counterpart from New Zealand), David Kilgour, is playing.

Tuesday Night (13th November) at PAs Lounge in Somerville:
WZBC & Radio Khartoum Present...
Windy Smiles (w/Mem. Reports/Carlisle Sound)
The Hepburns (Wales)
Anthony Rochester (Tasmania)

That's all for now.

regading CONTROL

Things I enjoyed about CONTROL:

1. the black and white photography

2. hearing 'warszawa' in the background when Ian chats with Annick
(it made me want to listen to LOW by David Bowie, which I haven't done in far too long.)

3. the general experience of the film fit the subject

Varvalia Lodenko (Excerpt)

A brief excerpt from Jordan Stump's translation of MINOR ANGELS by Antoine Volodine.

12.

Varvalia Lodenko

Varvalia Lodenko laid down her rifle, took a deep breath, and said:
'Oh mindless men! Oh spineless women!'
'Before us lies the land of the poor, a land whose riches belong only to the rich, a planet of flayed earth, of forests bled ash-dry, a planet of filth, a vast expanse of filth, oceans that only the rich can cross, deserts polluted by the playthings and blunders of the rich, we see before us cities whose keys lie in the hands of the multinational mafia, circuses whose clowns are controlled by the rich, televisions devised for their entertainment and our stultification, we see before us their great men standing high atop a pedestal that is nothing other than a barrel of bloody sweat shed by the poor, or yet to be shed, we see before us the glorious stars and all-knowing celebrities, who, for all their much-vaunted dissidence, never once express any opinion that might in any way undermine the long-term strategies of the rich, we see before us their democratic values conceived for their own eternal preservation and our eternal inaction, we see before us the targets they have singled out for our loathing, always subtly, with an intelligence far beyond our folk-understanding and with a gift for duplicitous language that obliterates our poor-folk wisdom, we see before us their fight against poverty, their assistance to the poor, their emergency aid programs, we see before us their free distribution of dollars to keep us poor and them rich, their dismissive economic theories and their ethic of hard labor and their promise of universal riches to come, in twenty generations or twenty thousand years, we see before us their omnipresent organizations and their agents of influence, their spontaneous propagandists, their infinitely expanding media, their heads of family scrupulously faithful to the most luminous principles of social justice as long as their children have a guaranteed place on the right side of the scales, we see before us a cynicism so well oiled that the merest allusion to its existence, condemns you to a place of invisible marginality, close to madness, far from any drum, far from any follower, I stand before all this, in an empty land, speaking words that expose me to insults and condemnation, we stand before all this, which by rights should stir up a worldwide tempest of rage, a pitiless surge of extremism, ten decades at least of pitiless reorganization and reconstruction by our own rules, free of all religious logic, free of the financial logic of the rich, outside their political philosophies, without a second thought for the howling of their final watchdogs, before all this we have stood for hundreds of years, and still we have not found the way to plant insurrection, at the same time and on the same date, in the minds of all the billions of poor folk to whom it has never yet occurred, how to make it take root and finally flower. Let us find the way to do this, then, and let us do it.'
Here ended Varvalia Lodenko's speech.

Minor Angels
Antoine Volodine
Translated and with a preface by Jordan Stump
Published by University of Nebraska Press
Hardcover
2004. 166 pp.
978-0-8032-4672-0

Control - in Boston October 26!!!

One Week Only!
Starts Friday, October 26 at the Kendall Square Cinema

Director: Anton Corbijn

Cast: Sam Riley, Samantha Morton, Craig Parkinson, Alexandra Maria Lara, Joe Anderson, James Anthony Pearson, Toby Kebbell, Harry Treadway, Andrew Sheridan, Robert Shelly

MPAA Rating: R

Run Time: 2hrs 1min

Release Year: 2007

Country Of Origin: UK

Repairs

I've been absent, I suppose from all this. I generally observe and keep myself busy with reading-- all the films I want to see are foreign and undistributable in this country. What else is new? Most fixed points stay right where they are pausing for adjustment as the earth turns on its axis. A plum situation if you ask me. I'm trying to keep my mind as focussed as possible and entertained, is that the right word? There always seems a fine line between happiness and pleasantries and abject humiliation. I tread it carefully-- one defines one's inner vision.

James Blackshaw - Tonight in Boston

from the most recent non-event update:

Wednesday, October 10. 7:30pm. $8.00.

End of an Empire Presents:

James Blackshaw (Tompkins Square, Important Records)

plus Black Forest/Black Sea (Secret Eye)
and Eli Keszler (Red Horse, Jandek)

Mills Gallery
Boston Center for the Arts
539 Tremont Street
Boston (South End)
617.426.8835
http://www.bcaonline.org
Show starts promptly at 7:30pm and is all ages.

BIO:

Performing and recording since 2003, James Blackshaw's name is frequently mentioned alongside the likes of Jack Rose, Steffen Basho-Junghans, Sir Richard Bishop and Glenn Jones as one of the most foremost modern pioneers of solo acoustic guitar music. Now at the age of 25, Blackshaw, an untrained musician born and still residing in the suburban environs of Greater London, draws as much inspiration from early religious music, South-Asian folk music and composers such as Arvo Part, Simeon Ten Holt, Steve Reich and Charlemagne Palestine as he does from John Fahey, Robbie Basho and the early Takoma Records roster, constantly breaking boundaries in what could be conceived as a somewhat limited medium. In his part improvised and part written songs, Blackshaw makes expert use of Eastern and Western scales, chord changes reminiscent of European classical music and incredibly intricate fingerpicking patterns to make a sound that is both challengingly minimalistic, yet warm and approachable to anybody who might hear it, with a rare sensitivity that conveys both immense beauty, hope and sadness.

"In recent months, 24-year-old UK guitarist James Blackshaw has burst fully-formed onto the folk underground, his remarkable talents already seeming at peak maturity... Blackshaw has established himself as an instrumentalist of astonishing grace and delicacy, seeming as though he's gobbled and digested whole the primitive folk canons of Takoma and Vanguard. Relying primarily on 12-string guitar, Blackshaw's intricate creations web together Robbie Basho's wayfaring mysticism, Ben Chasny's soft-focu sed acid tongues, and the rustic fantasias of Sandy Bull... Blackshaw is able to differentiate himself through his exotic lyricism, stray pan-ethnic flourishes and pure unmasked virtuosity." - Pitchfork

http://www.jamesblackshaw.com/
http://www.myspace.com/jamesblackshaw
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=James+Blackshaw

Upcoming End of an Empire Shows:
November 2: Alasdair Roberts, Charalambides, and Heather Leigh Murray at the Nave Gallery
November 13: Tiny Vipers and Alela Diane at Venue TBA

For more information on End of an Empire go here.

Upcoming Non-Events:
October 12 (this Friday!): Local Experimental Music Showcase IV with Tim Feeney & Vic Rawlings, The Human Hairs, and Max Lord at Studio Soto
October 26: Julien Ottavi (France), Seth Cluett, and Mike Bullock at Studio Soto
November 10: Tatsuya Nakatani and David Stackanas at Studio Soto

matters of theory

I'm barely coherent now waiting for things to begin. What happened of late? I've been going out more, perhaps not enough. The last book I read was "In Patagonia" by Bruce Chatwin-- it made me wonder if a friend had that in mind before heading South. Some nights of interest are starting up here locally with more of a Sixties vibe to them-- they might be regular events for me, much like in the mid-nineties. Its better than waiting for the right bands to come around. A couple of screenings to report on shortly to ease the pressure of wondering what to do next.

I finally saw "30th Century Man", the new documentary on Scott Walker. The team behind it did a really good job at revealing a driven, enigmatic figure. I like how the film focuses on his creative life than his personal situation. The broad range of interviews from luminaries such as David Bowie, Brian Eno, Jarvis Cocker and others really brought a sense of immediacy to the project.

I still have various publications to sift through now. Perhaps something will come of this.

Another note: I'll be on the air this Friday-- with the new music as always.

Lightning Strikes - new Jay-Jay Johanson

Lyrics to one of Jay-Jay Johanson's forthcoming songs (courtesy of his myspace page):

Lightning Strikes:
I CLOSE THE CURTAINS
WON'T LET THE DAYLIGHT IN
PUT OUT THE CANDLES
POUR ANOTHER GIN

AND WHEN THE LIGHTNING STRIKES
THE THUNDER'S NEVER FAR AWAY
AND YOU'RE THE LIGHTNING LIKE,
I'M THUNDER ON A FOGGY DAY
OR SO IT SEEMS. or so it seems

DARKNESS APPROACHING
GUESS THERE'S A STORM BREAKING IN
RAINDROPS INCREASING
STRONGER GETS THE WIND

AUTUMN BROUGHT SHADOWS
MY DAYS OF MOURNING ARE THRU
GONE IS THE SORROW
THE WAY MY LIFE HAS GROWN

WHEN THE LIGHTNING STRIKES
THE THUNDER'S NEVER FAR AWAY
AND YOU'RE THE LIGHTNING LIKE,
I'M THUNDER ON A FOGGY DAY
OR SO IT SEEMS. or so it seems

CHORDS ON MY PIANO
FADING AWAY IN THE ROOM
THE TICKING OF A CLOCK OR
IS IT A METRONOME

AND WHEN THE LIGHTNING STRIKES
THE THUNDER'S NEVER FAR AWAY
AND YOU'RE THE LIGHTNING LIKE,
I'M THUNDER ON A FOGGY DAY
OR SO IT SEEMS. or so it seems

Last Night's playlist - wzbc - "off the cuff"

"off the cuff" (NCP) with George 09.21.2007 07:00PM to 10:00PM

07:09PM Christina Kubisch "Zeitlupe" from "The Hidden City" (CD) on Sub Rosa
07:12PM Skanfrom "Confused Machines" from "Hand Picked Fragments"
07:15PM Lawrence "Superpitcher - Happiness (Lawrence Remix)" from "Lowlights from the Past and Future" (CD) on Kompakt
07:25PM Tuxedomoon "Some Guys" from "Solve Et Coagula" on Cramboy
07:35PM Gnac "The Arrival of the Fog" from "The Arrival of the Fog" on LTM
07:38PM Fabio Viscoglisiosi "fenomeno" from "fenomeno" on Microbe
07:41PM Rothko "Zurich Trains" from "Bucolique Vol. 01" on Arbouse
07:46PM David Kristian "sound absorber" from "music from the mermaid room" on Wikkid
07:57PM The Lost Jockey "matters of theory" from "the fruit of the original sin" on LTM
08:03PM Winston Tong "Dream Assassins" from "Theoretically Chinese" (CD) on LTM
08:08PM Gudrun Gut "Sweet" from "I Put A Record On" (CD) on Monika Enterprise
08:13PM Alva Noto "Prototype N." from "Clicks + Cuts" on Mille Plateaux
08:19PM Nine Horses "birds sing for their lives" from "Money For All" on samadhisound
08:28PM The Passage "Drugface" from "Seedy"
08:32PM Droids "Rennaissance de l amour" from "l'age d'analogue" on hobbydeluxe
08:40PM Zazou/Bikaye "Binagwe" from "Guilty!" on Crammed Discs
08:45PM Fabio Viscoglisiosi "Gymnasium" from "fenomeno" on Microbe
08:47PM Gabrielle Lazure "Children's Tale" from "From Brussels With Love" on Les Disques Du Crepuscule
08:54PM Hans Appelqvist "tank att himlens alla stjarnor" from "Sifantin och morkret" (CD) on Hapna
09:00PM Mark Van Hoen "put my trust in you" from "Touch 25" (CD) on Touch
09:05PM Jay Jay Johanson "Breaking Glass" from "the long term physical effects are not yet known" (CD) on EMI
09:08PM The Names "music for someone" from "The fruit of the original sin" on Les Disques Du Crepuscule
09:10PM Francois De Roubaix "Pour Qui Pourquoi?" from "Dernier Domicile Connu" (CD)
09:13PM The Durutti Column "weakness and fever" from "The fruit of the original sin"
09:18PM Acetate Zero "a picture you can't flash" from "VA: bucolique vol 01" on Arbouse
09:22PM Holger Czukay "Ode to perfume" from "On the Way to the Peak of Normal" (CD) on Mute
09:42PM Desormais "Devant et Dessus" from "climate variations" (CD) on intr_version
09:48PM Marcus Schmickler With Hayden Chisholm "Infinity in the shape of a Poodle" from "Amazing Daze" (CD) on Hapna

Tomorrow Night - River Gods

I'm DJing this Thursday at River Gods near Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts 125 River Street:
WZBC Presents

Countdown from 10-11:
Our favorite tracks from our favorite discs of July

Plus 2 Featured DJs:
8:30 - 10: George with a lively journey composed of quieter
electronica and indiepop happiness.

11-1: Justin with an emphasis on ambient krautrockish sounds.

Tonight's Featured DJs from WZBC 90.3 FM:

George hosts a program on WZBC every Friday from 7-10 p.m. The
program is called Off the Cuff: An investigation into the anxiety
created by the pressures and loneliness of modern life.

****************

I hope to start a little bit early-- we shall see.

Excellent "Control" Article

Katrina Onstad looks at Anton Corbjin's "Control" in her article Ode To Joy.

Official site.

untitled

1. She's oceanic - but she's not listening

2. She crossed a field and never came back

3. I close my eyes to escape from memory

Control Party - Photo exhibit - in Paris