Outer Tumbolia

Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica

2012-01-08T05:50:00.000-08:00

I must admit to only really giving Oneohtrix Point Never any sort of attention because of this

The fact that Daniel Lopatin could take such a ridiculously maligned fragment of music and honestly and completely unironically tease such immeasurable beauty out of it indicated to me a sonic alchemy: The ability to turn shit into gold or at the very least, to successfully polish a turd.

His use of pitch shifting, speed control and looping of short samples, while not new techniques were employed in such a way so as to forge a new path of psychedelic discovery as if parallel plateaus from the recent pasts were accessible when the grain or texture of these signifiers became more apparent.

The analogue synth, arpeggio dominated work from his official releases of Drifts and Returnal tended to paint in broader strokes, carving out infinite vistas, with the latter indicating the beginnings of a more digital world.

While his work with Joel Ford in both Games and Ford & Lopatin has placed some of these 80’s fetishist constructs into a more pop song context with varying successes sometimes erring on the side of self-parody, Replica, at least on the surface, appears to offer a best-of-both-worlds: That of the OPN rigorous compositional ear and synth drone and the echo jams of corporate identity as mantra.

Things start off as business as usual with Andro - the type of OPN track that shares some similarity with a certain type of Boards of Canada vignette – mostly due to the presence of similar analogue hardware. But while BOC are more likely to invoke a hash warmed feeling of head nodding familiarity Lopatin is always aimed directly at the heart of the sun towards wide-eyed wonder.

Only by the third track, Sleep Dealer are his intentions made clear as he imagines a new kind of steampunk where certain technologies have effectively stagnated alongside others accelerating onwards. A nanobot swarm awakens, each with their own archaic operating system boot-up chimes, forming a perfect segue into the digital Balinese monkey chant of Remember which in turn perfectly sets up the stately piano of the title track and 1st side closer. Piano should not be too much of a foreign instrument in the OPN universe after being employed with devastating effect on the reworking of Returnal’s title track in collaboration with Antony Hegarty. It is equally affecting here, together with some beautifully complex synth articulations and modulations, like some mechanistic search for sentience.

Deliberate or not, the rather chilling similarities of the album cover with a rather more famous Escher self-portrait and therefore, by association, to the work of Douglas Hofstadter, do no disservice to this album’s vision.

Naussau takes things in a rather pointillist direction verging on the annoying where Lopatin takes a rather incongruous collection of samples and forces them to submit to his composition's internal logic, or is that the listener who is being forced? There are some interesting similarities with some of the work of Books, Nuno Canavarro, Robert Ashley as well as the musique concrete hip-hop of El-P.

Submersible revisits more classic territory and then both Up and Child Soldier initially jar with their aggressive cut-and-paste assaults. The latter being marginally more successful in that it molds its beauty out of its own established internal logic rather than somewhat apologetically retracting its initial statements in favour of more serene sounds. Vocal “ah’s” and clipped phonemes over more familiar synth drone terrain of closer Explain round off this series of tracks that should be regarded as a triumph and indication that Lopatin appears far from exhausting his sonic palette or ideas.

Possible Worlds - Microcosm / Macrocosm

2011-10-02T11:43:00.000-07:00

The Tenant

2010-11-07T04:56:00.000-08:00

Roman Polanski's The Tenant (1976) is equal parts hilarious and terrifying. It tells the story of a new tenant (played by Polanski himself) in an apartment previously occupied by a woman who has recently committed suicide. It soon becomes apparent to the man that the other lodgers (as well as the physical building itself) are conspiring to drive him insane and towards suicide, as they had done to the previous tenant.

Not only does it bare a strong resemblance to Polanski's own Rosemary's Baby but also Abel Ferrara's (who also cast himself in the lead) Driller Killer. Perhaps the biggest debt is owed to it by David Lynch, who's Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive show strong traces of The Tenant in their DNA.

Phillippe Sarde's perfectly adequate soundtrack went straight through me upon first listen. It wasn't until it made an appearance later, albeit in reworked fashion that it really caught my ear.

What is essentially a fairly smooth jazz pop-rock reworking of the main theme opens the composition up beautifully - deemphasising the orchestral density but maintaining the harmonic complexity, the spartan drums given a perfect rush from subtle dub effects - all in service of a serene yet unsteady, and uncertain minimalism. Perhaps a foreshadowing of some of Radioheads (amongst others) later works - where both jazz and orchestral concepts compete within a rock idiom?

A Body Double

2010-09-13T05:17:00.000-07:00

I had a lot of fun watching Brian De Palma's Body Double the other night. It serves as very nice companion piece to his 1981 film Blow Out. (which itself nods knowingly at Antionini's Blow Up amongst other films) Both serve as a love letter of sorts to the very mechanics of film and film making. Whereas Blow Out explores the medium of sound and sound recording as it pertains to the moving picture, Body Double focusses on the jobbing actors, extras and stand-ins working within the B-grade or horror movie genres, while successfully and comfortably occupying both categories itself.

A suitably sleazy soundtrack is provided by Pino Donaggio (A De Palma regular). Its synth arpeggiations, ambient keyboards, airy vocals and reverbed vibroslaps perfectly accompany the seduction and voyeurism taking place on the screen.

What is particularly stiking is its similarity to Felt Mountain era Goldfrapp and how wonderfully these sounds were repurposed by Will Gregory and Alison Goldfrapp to soundtrack their unique alpine wonderland.

Letters II

2010-06-06T12:18:00.000-07:00

To his parents

Rome, 24 June 1831

... I went to Tivoli last Saturday, at two in the afternoon, in the middle of the dusty heat. There were two of us. We got three quarters of the way there but then felt exhausted and hailed a passing carriage. It's fifteen miles from Rome to Tivoli. we arrived at half past eight, and the next morning got up at four and went staight off exploring. I've never seen anything so exquisite: the waterfalls, clouds of powdery spray, the smoking clefts, the fresh cool river, the cave, the innumeral rainbows, the olive groves, the hills, the country houses, the village - the whole thing is enchanting and unique. The people there are very handsome, but they beg even more than they do in Rome; only, their begging hasn't the unpleasantly debased quality of the Romans'. They do it quite brazenly - they name the sum they want and laugh as they do so, as if it were a joke between you. Some young men and women aged between twenty and thirty, who were harvesting and saw us go past, shouted out: "Hey, sir come on, give us half a paolo (five sous), baiocco (one sou), what's it to you?" ...

The evening before last, I felt some emotion for the first time in our convent. There were four or five of us sitting in the moonlight round the fountain on the little staircase which leads to the garden. We drew lots for who would fetch my guitar, and as the audience consisted of the few fellow-students whose company I can bear, I did not need any pressing. As I was beginning an aria from Iphigeneia in Tauris, M. Carle Vernet appeared. After a couple of minutes he began to weep and sob out loud, then he fled into his son's drawing room, crying out in a choked voice: "Horace, come here!" "What is it, what is it?" "We're all in tears". "Why, why, what's happend?" "M. Berloiz us some Gluck. Oh, how right you are (turning to me), it's overwhelming. You know, you're a melancholy man, I understand you, I do, there are people who -". He couldn't finish. But no one laughed. The fact is we were all moved. I was in the mood, it was night, I felt quite free from anxiety beneath that resonant porch, and I let myself go as if I had been alone...

Hector Berlioz

A Selection of his Letters

Selected, editted and translated by Humphrey Searle

Gollancz

1966

Théorie du signal et transmission de l'information

2010-05-16T13:02:00.000-07:00

All images:

Vibrations and Waves
AP French
Chapman and Hall
1971

Outer Tumbolia in Richard Haslop's Best of 2009 List

2010-05-05T04:58:00.000-07:00

Richard Haslop, he of the insightful record reviews during the 80's in South Africa's only legal girlie magazine, SCOPE, has made his 'Best of 2009' list available. Ok, that's not a fair introduction at all but it was the first time I came across his name and SCOPE did open my eyes, er ... introduced me to a couple of hard to track down muscial gems in an otherwise bleak cultural desert of top 40 80's radio pop.

Richard continued to educate the masses on radio on SAFM's now much missed Roots to Fruits show where all manner of indie, jazz, americana and africana got a rare airing and is also a contributer to online 'zine Perfect Sound Forever where he exposed, to a larger online community, the likes of Not Even the TV and Kalahari Surfers.

Amongst entries for BLK JKS, Califone amd Tinariwen, here's what he had to say about Outer Tumbolia and Strung Like a Compound Eye coming in at number 34.

"One of the few givens in any South African music year, other than the fact that, by and large, it’s likely to disappoint most people listening outside a fairly narrow box (it’s a lack of opportunity to hear what’s worth hearing, unless you know someone who knows where to find it on the Net, and who to find, that causes this, rather than an absence of anything worth hearing), is that pretty much anything Cape Town experimental guitarist Righard Kapp releases, on whichever is the latest of his impossibly obscure imprints and no matter how limited the edition, will be worth getting, and getting into.

2009 was no exception – Kapp’s own ‘Strung Like A Compound Eye’ makes a terrific fist of what are broadly the three strings to his musical bow, namely the fine acoustic guitar instrumentalist, the ever inquisitive sonic investigator and the affecting songwriter, none of which ever quite ends up where you expect it to.

Ramon Galvan is a likeminded soul who used to be in the excellent Blackmilk; his refusal to be pinned down stylistically, his unwillingness to treat his wonderful voice as a conventional rock instrument and his lively musical imagination have led to a kind of quietly compelling, meticulously wrought, unexpectedly addictive folk/jazz/chamberpop artsong hybrid that keeps serving up surprises."

http://kaganof.com/kagablog/2010/05/09/richard-haslops-albums-of-the-year-2009-3/

This is expected to be published in print over the next two issues of Audio Video Magazine.

Speaking of 'Africana' it was particularly thrilling to see Pieter Hugo's photographs of Konono No.1 in the April 2010 edition of Wire Magazine.

A more fitting marriage of photographer and subject I cannot imagine!

Letters

2010-04-27T05:25:00.000-07:00

To the Publisher Pleyel

La Côte-Saint-André, 6 April 1819

Sir,

I have several pieces of music of my composition which I wish to have engraved. I am therefore writing to you in the hope that you will be able to realise my ambition. I would like you to take on the publication, with full rights, of a medley for six solo intruments on selected airs, the instruments being flute, horn, two violins, viola and cello. Please be good enough to see wether youc an do it, and how many copies you can let me have. I would be greatful if you would be so kind as to reply as soon as possible telling me how long it will take you to engrave it, and whether it is necessary to register the parcel. I have the honour to be your obedient servant.

Hector Berlioz

Pleyel replied with a refusal on 10 April: Berlioz had already written in similar terms on 25 March to the publishers Janet and Cotelle, with the same result.

Hector Berlioz

A Selection of his Letters

Selected, editted and translated by Humphrey Searle

Gollancz

1966

A Coat of Arms

2010-04-20T11:21:00.000-07:00

A Coat of Arms
A sea of snakes
A crown of knives
One for each mistake

This eagle is a buzzard
so run and tell your mother
This lion is a Griffin
Stabbing through the ribbons
I hear the souls descending
Coat of Arms is neverending

A Coat of Arms
A sea of snakes
A crown of knives
One for each mistake

The Viola in My Life - Morton Feldman

2010-04-10T06:49:00.000-07:00

Feldman often spoke of his intention to create in music the sonorous equivalent of the 'flat surface' present in the contemporary American painters whom he admired and knew so well; in particular Mark Rothko and Philip Guston. Throughout his music, there is an awareness instrumentally and texturally of composite sound. The role of instruments is to contribute unique timbres for the sake of unity. Seldom is Schoenberg's concern for 'hauptstimmer/nebenstumme' (primary voice/ secondary voice) evident. For this reason the viola's relief against other instruments in The Viola in My Life is remarkable.

The search for a musical flat surface led Feldman to explore very subtle differentiations in speech and the interactions of intruments. This is one reason why his music is quite soft; it is only at low dynamics that seemingly contradictory timbres (as in False Relationships and the Extended Ending) can achieve a union. He was fond of the expression "room noise" which are the ambient sounds made by and during music performance, when describing his orchestration. Feldman's percussion writing in particlar, like the drum and timpani sounds in The Viola in My Life 1, is a form of room noise not unlike Ive's concept of 'shadow counterpoint'

Nils Vigeland

Excerpt from Liner Notes to Morten Feldman's The Viola in My Life

New World Records

Charcoal & Soda

2010-04-05T02:05:00.000-07:00

Charcoal and Soda

Can you believe,

We are older?

The only thing I ever got from you

Was a camera

And two large shells

(bullet shells)

It's not that you owe me something

You don't owe me something anymore

As the light rushes in

As the fire gushes out

He was a photographer from Angola

Breathing Egypt in

Through charcoal and soda

www.24.com coverage

2010-03-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

No Rest was one of a number of featured South African artist MP3's on www.channel24.co.za. last week.

What they said:

"Reclusive singer songwriter gives avant-folk rock fans their fix with this abstract impressionist guitar and thumb-piano filtered tone poem off his bewitching debut solo album, Outer Tumbolia."

I guess I need to get out more!

http://www.channel24.co.za/Content/Music/Player/760/b203e5b30c624d43af03eb3be55814c1/19-03-2010-09-41/Ramon_Galvan_-_No_Rest

http://www.channel24.co.za/Content/Music/Mp3/Archive

Super Legs

2010-03-21T09:52:00.000-07:00

Super Legs

I've got super legs
On super feet
They take me where
I need to be

And all my teeth
They talk to me
Tell me to 'shush!'
And when to speak

But there are secrets
That they keep
Well that would be
The genius of teeth

'Doh!

2010-03-14T11:51:00.000-07:00

Being somewhat on the periphery in terms of involvement on a project involving shadow puppetry,

Blackmilk Music video for 'Kimono Dragon'

and then to a lesser extent on one involving the proto-stop-animation of a mutoscope,

'Girl & Rabbit' short film

I think I can take part in the collective slapping of palm on forehead after seeing this beautiful marriage of the two concepts into something delightfully original and bewitching.

Dialogue by Kumi Yamashita 1999 Light, Motor, Styrene, Shadow

Although strictly speaking not constructed as flip-books, I can't help imagining an asynchronous flipping of these 60 installations would make for a wonderful aleatoric ambient soundtrack somewhat akin to György Ligeti's Poème Symphonique For 100 Metronomes.

Speaking of ambient soundtracks, watching these anonymous profiles baring their most intimate secrets keeps reminding me of the misheard whispers of Robert Ashley's Automatic Writing

Dead Brine

2010-03-07T04:28:00.000-08:00

Dead brine,
You know I need it

A rich wine
From a lake I brewed it

Crushed the 'rushes
And the mud
And the sick of the ducks
And the tears that I get
When the words come out

I tilled it, father
And I muddled it, mother
We're not getting any younger
No you don't
No you don't

Oh black basin
To quiet things down
It precedes conversation
On the things that matter
So I take some with me
In a flask for drinking
But the dead floats upwards
It's what my lips are kissing

I tilled it, father
And I muddled it, mother
We're not getting any younger
No you don't
No you don't

On and on
I took to swimming through
On and on (the sentry)
Pulled me back to shore
It's a deeper well
It's a sad farewell

(I paint a picture 'cos it's real)
On and on
(I choose a fiction 'cos it's fair)
On and on
Why don't you sing me something
Just a tune then we're something
Or just a word.

Then and Now II

2010-02-28T06:03:00.000-08:00

The JEW'S HARP or Jaw's harp is widely distributed among primitive and civilised peoples. At its simplest it is a strip of bamboo cut in the shape of a comb with only one tooth; when made in metal, the tooth or tongue is a separate piece soldered to the frame. In each case the instrument is set between the player's teeth, and the mouth cavity amplifies the sound made by plucking the free tongue of the "harp." It is essentially an instrument for the player's pleasure, being hardly audible to anyone else.

Plate 133 152 Plates from Bonanni's 18th Century "Gabinetto Armonic" Antique Musical Instruments and their Players 1964 Dover Publications N.Y

Daniel AIU Higgs interview and performance with Jew's Harp

Refillable / Recargable

2010-02-21T06:14:00.000-08:00

If ever I fall

You catch me

It's not a reflex

You catch me

If I come out fighting

You dispatch the winning blow

Oh, the price you paid

All the drinks you bought

I wish they were

Refillable

Oh, the price you paid

All the drinks you bought

I wish they were

Refillable

It's such a crime

All the drinks you bought

I didn't think to go outside

and check on the supplies

Is this one mine?

I'm never really sure

I'll grab another from the pile

Its inexhaustable

Oh, the price you paid

All the drinks you bought

I wish they were

Refillable

I'm building a tower to a fat man

With a fat wife

They're fat lined

And super kind

When the bough breaks

The words I speak

Are a fat whine!

I'm building a tower to a fat man

With a fat wife

They're fat lined

And super kind

When the bough breaks

My cradle speak

Is a fat whine!

And a tendril out of nowhere

It keeps me alive!

Ask me and I'll tell you everything

One small window to discover everything

I'll explain my hate,

Explain it away

Refill my cup

And I'll tell you anything!

Soap & Skin - Lovetune for Vacuum

2010-02-14T10:01:00.000-08:00

Soap & Skin - Lovetune for Vacuum

Soap & Skin is the musical alter ego of 19 year old Austrian, Anja Plaschg. Although comparisons with Nico are unavoidable due to her very germanic vocal delivery and her use of European classical musical styles within her songs, her compositions are a lot more concise and focused.

Essentially Lovetune for Vacuum comprises of piano based songs augmented with Warp-like laptop textures, synth, strings and Anja Plaschg's vocals; sometimes amassed, sometimes very naked, making a virtue of their flaws and limitations.

The opening Sleep makes Plaschg's intentions clear. Its confessional, confrontational and stark tone playing with atonal, and hushed elements drawing the listener into the minutiae, only to fire a gorgeous bunch of ugly at you for getting too close, while the very pretty Cry Wolf with its clockwork-like elements, nursery rhyme melody and playful vocal processing beats Sigur Ros at their own pastoral game.

An influence worth discussing is that of Xiu Xiu. Like Jamie Stewart, Plaschg wields her vocals in a way that is both tender and embarrassing. Something similar to Stewart's popular style of vocal ejaculation such as the one in fan favourite I love the Valley OH! gets an airing on album highlight, the fable-like Spiracle. This is particularly evident and impressive in live renditions of the song. Elsewhere her use of synth noise, angry blasts of recorder and whistle and physical unmusical textures within a song exposes the influence further.

Similar in title though not in sound to Xiu Xiu, Mr. Gaunt Pt 1000 gives way to Marche Funèbre which is composed mostly of clipped orchestral samples and imagines a nightmarish meeting of Coil and Enya!

On DDMMYYYY Plaschg perhaps gives in a little too much to one of her influences, Autechre, but the results are very pleasing.

Brother of Sleep closes the album with a pleasant albeit innocuous sounding lullaby, but sinister textures right upon closure indicate that everything is not always as it seems

Arrowhead

2010-02-07T06:43:00.000-08:00

Its not clear
What Mr Winter wants
I'm pretty sure
What he wants, he gets

I pushed the middle
And you pressed the metal
And we made an arrowhead

Yeah, I pushed the middle
And you pressed the metal
And we made an arrowhead

But the rod's all but rotten
And I've simply forgotten
How to attach it anyway

A limber rod
So show your stuff
You're pretty quick
Are you quick enough?

Do do do do

I pushed the middle
And you pressed the metal
And we made an arrowhead

Yeah, I pushed the middle
And you pressed the metal
And we made an arrowhead

But the rod's all but rotten
And I've simply forgotten
How to attach it anyway

Magic IV

2010-01-31T06:20:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, most magicians try not to lie. they resist not out of any particular morality or an effort to compensate for their deceptions. Audiences anticipate lies from magicians, and tend to challenge their statements. A lie often works against the deception, so the performer will often avoid making statements that invite challenges or plant dangerous suggestions. If a magician starts his routine by holding up a glass and saying "an ordinary, everyday, unprepared drinking glass," it sounds preposterously dishonest. Isn't every glass ordinary? Why would he say this glass is unprepared? How could it be prepared? Once the audience begins thinking along those line, they might wander dangerously close to the truth.

Because of this, when magicians give accounts of their own tricks, there is usually a code to what they will say as well as what they won't say. If a listener is aware of the code, there is a lot that is revealed by a magician's statements. A performer will invariably dance around dishonesty, rather than embrace it, indulging in a series of tiny untruths, not big lies.

Hiding The Elephant

How Magicians Invented the Impossible

Jim Stein Meyer

Arrow Books 2005

Hip Gnosis and Haunting of Interster

2010-01-21T08:39:00.000-08:00

In the early 1980's, one of apartheid-era South Africa's ripostes to the cultural boycott imposed by the rest of the world on them was an investment in homegrown entertainment. An attitude of "whatever we are missing out on, we can do better" combined with a significant financial injection produced a number of films and television series with relatively high production values. The heights of which, are still being rescaled in some ways. The lifting of sanctions and the subsequent rescaling and reallocation of the previous financial investments as well as the access to a wider and richer international media has also called for a recalibration of so-called international standards versus the perceptions of yore. All the while South Africa strives for an identity and a best relative fit in terms of production for those stories yet to be told.

One of those productions was a television series called Interster. This was very much in the vein of Gerry Anderson's science fiction series of the 60's and early 70's featuring marionettes, such as Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet. Set in a future Cape Town, South Africa (who had and still has no real space program to speak of) Interster was an inter galactic space trading company the apparent de facto centre of an international earth defence. No reference whatsoever is given to any super power nations as fortress South Africa alone defended all against a ruthless alien enemy.

While the older Anderson puppet shows were used as a template, some other ideas seem to have been pilfered from the more recent Buck Rogers in the 25 Century TV series. Characters like the robot Piki seem a direct lift from Buck Rogers own Twiki and the female protagonist Lydia and paternal Professor Zed are also both eerily familiar. Technologically, Interster was understandably a good decade ahead of Anderson's marionettes, employing Apple II computer controlled servo-puppetry and silicon rubber based skins as well as a wig maker credit! Somehow in it's search for realism and life like appearance the characters stumbled on their servos, trundling awkwardly into the dreaded Uncanny Valley.

Comparisons can certainly be drawn, in a fairly superficial way, with the musical hauntology concept mapped out by Simon Reynolds and others, as Interster does have a number of old-timey soundtrack delights:

Wide-screen analogue synthesizers scream out upon a bed of urgently strummed acoustic guitars punctuated by the dramatic dull thud of syn-drums during the title sequence.

Halcyon synth pop sounds perfectly canned and subtly piped out while the Interster staff relax in white, silken robes at the local nightclub Astra (which is alarming fitted with an intercom to receive orders from headquarters).

'Switched on Bach' turned up to 10 on the speed dial scurries around in the offices of traitor Dr Gorman's asteroid lair, all bedecked with fish tank and Beethoven busts, perfectly mirroring his calculating yet manic evil genius. All very 'Nintedo-esque'

Elsewhere, incidental music, often just warm, unstable analogue tones made even more irresistible by the noticeable billowing and aging due to the 'wow and flutter' of the original tapes, could often be mistaken for a Boards of Canada interlude.

Certainly, these are all good examples of the type of musical fodder employed by the aforementioned Boards of Canada and other similar artists in their musical re-imagined past and memory of an expected future.

However, deeper still than the music or quaintness of the future world is the menace or 'haunting' and this is where Apartheid-era South Africa's persecution complex takes center stage.

Firstly, our protagonists are not entirely sure who their real enemies are. Is it the humanoid but racially ambiguous Krokons, or is it the treacherous and self serving Dr Gorman, and what affiliation does he have to the so-called "freedom fighters"?

In fact there is in one episode a rather disturbing conversation between two of our heroes on the subtle differences between "freedom fighters" and "terrorists" and mention is made to a more universal objective treatment of these terms by the "Interplanetary League", who have also condemned Interster's cold war with the Krokons.

At this point, it feels as if for a brief second the fabric of 'Planet South Africa' is about to rupture and the producers could not quite decide whether they were making a piece of propaganda for children or an altogether more subversive bit of media.

Small hints at hidden agendas are quickly dispelled when you look at a number of far less subtle signifiers:

A lead character called Buks de la Rey

Spaceships directly referencing the Impala jets, as if to reassert the might of the South African armed forces.

Contact is made during another episode with a powerful sentient being, a giant hydrogen atom, the apparent physical manifestation of a radio active planet's consciousness (much like in Solaris) . This entity deems the South African earthlings more worthy and just than their enemies, the Krokons. This somehow manages to reinforce South Africa's nuclear program while at the same time displaying their righteousness in the eyes of a superior being or deity.

Interster's haunting comes from its history and its future. Not just the time in which is was made but the future it imagined for South Africans: Paranoid, persecuted, isolated and alone in the universe.

Happy Hunting...

All images taken from video stills from various Interster episodes Series 1 Part 1 viewed through an Educo(tm) diffraction lens and photographed with a Ricoh digital camera

Interster is available for purchase here

EDIT:

Great article here with screencaps, links to video clips

Outer Tumbolia in Isolation Blog's SA Albums of 2009

2010-01-15T04:26:00.000-08:00

Outer Tumbolia made it onto Isolation blog's list of favorite South African albums of 2009.

This blog is maintained by Lloyd Gedye, a music writer from Mail and Guardian

This is what he said:

"This debut solo album from Ramon Galvan is a grower, that has many treasures for the patient listener"

Righard Kapp's Strung Like a Compound Eye also makes the list as well as offerings from BLK JKS and Dear Reader amongst others.

http://isolation.tv/archive/2010/01/14/2009-in-south-african-music.aspx

Outer Tumbolia CD and Digital Purchases

2010-01-04T05:01:00.000-08:00

Happy 2010 to all.

A couple of commercial announcements

Outer Tumbolia digital sales:

distribution via Believe Digital

with sales and/or streaming via:

PLAY.COM

Rhythm Online Music Store

Emusic

Amazon

Gucca

Napster

Deezer

Physical CD sales online at SETCOM

Available at the following stores

The Book Lounge

Mabu Vinyl

EDIT: Copies also available at Other Music NYC

Magic III

2009-12-29T06:41:00.000-08:00

Magicians tend to focus on deception as if it is the essence of their skills. It's an attitude often reinforced by audiences who have learned to expect very little from magic acts. If a magician manages to fool his audience, most accept that he has done his job - just as if a juggling act is great because the performer didn't drop any balls or a singer is wonderful because she didn't hit any clinkers. With the expectations set so low, most magicians are happy to descend to them.

Like many other kids I probably became interested in magic for misguided reasons, wanting to learn various tricks because they imparted secrets and hoping these secrets might award me a special status among my friends. In books of tricks the recipe is specific - here's the effect and here's the method - implying that executing and concealing the secret is always the ultimate goal of the exercise.

The magician David Devant wrote:

At the risk of offending many proficient conjurers, both amateurs and professionals, I make bold to state that magic does not consist in a few so-called secrets, which can be mastered by any intelligent person within a few hours. To say a man who can show a few tricks is a conjurer is about as absurd as to say that a man who can recite "The Merchant of Venice" by heart is an actor.

I regard a conjurer as a man who can hold the attention of his audience by telling them the most impossible fairy tails and by persuading them into believing that those stories are true by illustrating them with his hands or any object that may be suitable for the purpose.

If magicians have unfortunately come to view their art as deception, they must recognise that used car salesmen , advertising executive and politicians are also artists of deception. In fact, there's not very much art in a pure deception, the big lie or exaggeration. It's true that, at times, magicians might require something just this simple or bold. But usually the deception in a magic act is the negative element, the hole in the middle of a performance. The performance is a sort of inadvertent dance around this hole, with the hope that each spectator will be coaxed to slip through it.

The English landscape painter John Constable once insisted that his art "pleases by reminding, not deceiving." It's the same with magicians. The real art is in the subtle touches of reassurance that surround any deception and disguise it as a positive thing. With a gesture, a suggestion, a feint or a contrivance, the audience is convinced that they are watching a genuine wonder. Great magicians aspire to creating this temporary fantasy.

The end result becomes a little work of theatre, a play with a simple plot that exists on a fairy tale level. The fantasies of a magic show can often be appreciated in everyday life: causing someone to disappear, becoming someone else, acquiring the ability to escape or walk through a wall. The play might be seconds long or be elaborately written to include a full story.

Hiding The Elephant

How Magicians Invented the Impossible

Jim Stein Meyer

Arrow Books 2005

SUI Studios Recording 19/12/09-20/12/09

2009-12-22T03:03:00.000-08:00

"Oh yeah, give it to a bone yard..."

"The minor left is all the difference made"

"I am a passenger"

"Enough to raise the roof"

A very big thank you to Dan at SUI Studios for making these sessions so extremely effortless for us

"As the smoke rises up"

(a minute after this photo was taken this ancient keyboard emitted some actual smoke!)

Magic II

2009-12-15T06:42:00.000-08:00

Posting the excerpt from Hiding The Elephant (a book that communicated far more to me than a few magic trick spoilers, and manages to come off as part mystery thriller, part historical document, part love letter to a bygone golden era - all the while reminding one of that which is important in terms of performance and process) a couple of weeks ago, dislodged a memory that I had not accessed for some time:

I must have been eight or nine and a new kid arrived at our school. He was gangly and shy but with a very generous heart and great sense of humour and we seemed to hit it off straight away, as we shared some similar interests. The clincher was his hobby in magic!

I had recently acquired a book of magic tricks and was putting together a small repertoire. I had also received a magic set as a Christmas present from my parents. Unlike the simple homemade gimmicks I had built from the magic books I had read, the magic set came with great promise. All the tricks were housed in a cardboard box with glossy finish, showing top hat, silk scarves and interlinked metal rings and all the various other accoutrements that signified a 'real' magician at work. The interior was a different story altogether. Just like those pictures of hamburgers on fast food menus when compared to the actual edible artifact, the contents of the box of magic tricks were undersize, cheap looking and altogether disappointing. At least half the tricks in the box were ones that I knew already and the other half were cheap plastic gimmicks that could not stand up to the most surface of scrutiny. There was at most one decent gag in the whole bunch; three different lengths of rope that are transformed in three identically length pieces of cord. It required the most practice, relied on no custom gimmicks and was easily the jewel in a rather shabby crown. Still, some of these cheap plastic trinkets did somehow seem to provide me with at least a modicum of authenticity.

I just didn’t get it

My new found friend was to provide me with one better: a father who was a bona fide magician! I remember the first time I saw him. He had come to pick up his son from my house and was wearing shorts and a t-shirt and slops. He wasn't very mysterious, but then he was only a part time conjuror, you see. I think he was a chartered accountant during the day. My friend was having a birthday party soon at his house and the entertainment was to be his father's magic show. This is where he would surely transform into a more believable magical character?

Again, I was disappointed as he stood in front of about 30 other kids in a warm suburban Saturday afternoon again attired in the aforementioned t-shirt, shorts and slops while he ran through his sequence of tricks, sometimes including his wife in on the act for the more large scale illusions like the 'zigzag lady'. It was ok, nothing I hadn’t seen before elsewhere but I felt that he was holding back and that there was some arcane magic that we just weren't ready for.

I just didn’t get it

One afternoon at my friend’s house, while thoroughly bored we went outside and I asked what was in one of the spare rooms in their house. This was a spare room where his father kept all his old magic gear from years back and he (my friend) was not allowed inside and had never ventured in.

"You're kidding right?"

My powers of persuasion were obviously pretty good or my friend had just been waiting for an excuse and the right partner in crime to come along because we very quickly decided to make getting onto that room our little project for the afternoon. Whether we sourced a key, pried open a window or squeezed in through burglar bars, I cannot recall but we managed to get into the room without raising any alarm or breaking anything. I guess a lot of rooms that look pretty impregnable are quite easy to into (or out of) if you put your mind to it.

Inside was where our friendly neighborhood magician was hiding the goods. The room was literally bursting with the stuff of real magicians. Different colored silk scarves big enough to wrap a small child in tumbled out of half open chests, splayed walking sticks showing off their concealed bouquets of plastic flowers, top hats, different sized foam balls strange jugs emblazoned with rabbits and dragons and other signifiers of authenticity littered the entire room. Neither of us knew where to look first and just stood frozen trying to take it all in.

I eventually got on all fours to try getting a closer look at some of the prepared playing cards lying on the floor and noticed a file of old yellowed books on magic under the couch. I carefully lifted one up and began scanning its yellowed pages. Inside were tricks I’d never seen on any stage let alone in any book, now all forgotten, save for one explaining how to rip an entire phone book apart with your bare hands.

Eventually we had to leave and take care that nobody would learn of our intrusion. We each decided to take a small memento that would not be missed. The books and the silk scarves were tempting but were sadly off limits. In the end I opted for a small card containing transfers of a rabbit in a hat that could be put on various boxes water jugs and cones. Just something to communicate that you really meant it, that you were serious about this whole magic thing.

I never used them, just placed them in the box with the rest of my magic tricks hoping they would act as a talisman of some sort and just raise the overall class of the stash somewhat as they had belonged to a real magician.

I just didn’t get it

The following year my friend moved town, I watched David Copperfield on television flying across the Grand Canyon towards a singing Bonnie Tyler and promptly packed my box of tricks into storage for good.

I now perform feats of misdirection for my small dog using nothing but a ball

He seems genuinely astounded.

I think I finally got it.

Happy Hunting...

'I Will Rise Up' on Other Mother Podcast

2009-12-08T11:20:00.000-08:00

Ramon Galvan's song 'I Will Rise Up' is available streaming on Other Mother Podcast Episode 4

Along with tracks from Us Kids Know, Sticky Antlers and others

Previous podcast have featured Givan Lotz, Ampersand and Kidoddoom.

Visit Other Mother Website here to find out more about them

Magic

2009-12-03T07:12:00.000-08:00

Magicians guard an empty safe.

In fact there are few secrets they possess that are beyond the capacity of a high-school science class, little technology more complex than a rubber band, a square of mirrored glass, or a length of thread: When an audience learns how its done, they quickly dismiss the art: "Is that all it is?"

The real art is how the rubber band is handled with the finesse of a jewel cutter, how the mirror is used or concealed precisely, how a masterful performer can hint at impossibilities that are consummated with only a piece of thread. Magicians understand the careful interactions of secret and performance and have learned to appreciate the art for these subtleties. But casual observers, eager to diagnose the gimmick, or solve the deception, focus on the uninteresting part and are quickly disappointed, the same way that one can always turn to the final pages of a mystery novel.

The success of a magician lies in the making of a human connection to the magic, the precise focus that creates a fully realised illusion in the minds of an audience. the simple explanation is that seldom do the crude gimmicks in a magic show - those mirrors, threads or rubber bands - deceive people. The audience is taken by the hand and led to deceive themselves.

Jean Robert-Houdin was famous for the opinion that a magician is actually just "an actor playing the part of a magician". It was an especially important decision in separating the loud mountebanks on the street corner making balls appear and disappear beneath three metal cups from Robert-Houdin's elegant Parisian deceptions. Today it servers to remind us that a magic show is a piece of theatre, and the Frenchman's analogy can be extended: A magic effect is a short play that simulates a supernatural occurrence. Like any real play there are characters and a developing plot. There is a progression, or an arc, to the action. There is a surprise and a resolution, which not only completes the audience's expectations, but builds upon them.

Just as no actor would attempt to walk on a stage, instantly begin crying, and expect to move an audience to tears, no real magician thinks that a performance consists of flapping an Inverness cape and - poof! - causing a lady to disappear. It only works that way in comic books. A great magic performance consists of a collection of tiny lies, in words and deeds, that are stacked and arranged ingeniously to form the battlement for an illusion. It's a delicate battle of wits - an audience that welcomes being deceived, then dares to be fooled, alternately questioning, prodding and surrendering. A great magician always seems to play catch-up to their thoughts but secretly must stay two steps ahead - not only solicitous and anticipating, but suggesting.

Hiding The Elephant

How Magicians Invented the Impossible

Jim Stein Meyer

Arrow Books 2005

Post Rock Community Outer Tumbolia Album Review

2009-11-25T08:15:00.000-08:00

Ramon Galvan is a featured artist on Post Rock Community music blog

There is is also a review on the blog for Outer Tumbolia

"Each song is a new trip to new targets"

"a voice which reaches every cell in your body"

"postrockish arrangements, tones à la A Silver Mt. Zion, jazzy percussions, melodicas, cellos, glockenspiel, electronic elements and many many more..."

The Last Hunters

2009-11-19T11:18:00.001-08:00

But Rose, who goes to sea to study the northern stock, said, "Fishermen are seeing many strange things that are a sign things are not right." The cod have been reaching sexual maturity younger and smaller. Undersized four-year-olds are spawning. This is not surprising. When a species is in danger of extinction, it often starts reaching sexual maturity earlier. Nature remains focused on survival. But Rose also said cod were seen spawning in water temperatures of minus one degree Celsius. Cod are supposed to move to warmer water for spawning. Fishermen keep reporting aberrations, such as fish in an area where they have never been before, or at different depths, or a different temperature, or at a different time of year.

Perhaps even more disturbing, Rose's studies have concluded that the northern stock has stopped migrating. The stock had normally followed a 500-mile seasonal migration, but rose believes that after 1992, the survivors came inshore and stayed. He does not know the reason for this but speculates that bigger, older fish were the leaders and are no longer there to lead. It is also possible that cod migrate because they need food and space for spawning. With the population so reduced, this is no longer necessary.

Whatever steps are taken, one of the greatest obstacles to restoring cod stocks off of Newfoundland is an almost pathological collective denial of what has happened. Newfoundlanders seem prepared to believe anything other than that they have killed off natures bounty. One Canadian journalist published an article pointing out that the cod disappeared from Newfoundland at about the same time that stocks started rebuilding in Norway. Clearly the northern stock had packed up and migrated to Norway.

Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is the natural world, and then there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is part of evolution. If cod and haddock and other species cannot survive because man kills them, something more adaptable will take their place. Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works in nature does not always appeal to us.

Cod

A Biography of a Fish That Changed the World

Mark Kurlansky

Vintage 1999

Happy Hunting...

Ingredients

2009-11-08T04:51:00.000-08:00

The cast in order of appearence on 'You Flossed the Stars'

when to steer's uncertain

and all objectivity is gone

the only thing to do is run

you want it all you flossed the stars

when to steer's uncertain

and all objectivity is gone

the only thing to do is run

you want it all you flossed the stars

ooooh!
er er er er

aah!

boom boom boom
in his purse he has supernovae

research has shown this is nearly over

Happy Hunting!

With Mouth Wide Open

2009-11-05T08:32:00.000-08:00

The hero, Gadus morhua, is not a nice guy.

It is built to survive. Fecund, impervious to disease and cold, feeding on most any food source, traveling to shallow waters and close to shore, it was the perfect commercial fish and the Basques had found its richest grounds. Cod should have lasted forever, and for a very long time it was assumed that it would. As late as 1885, the Canadian Ministry of Agriculture sad "Unless the order of nature is overthrown, for centuries to come our fisheries will continue to be fertile."

The cod is omnivorous, which is to say it will eat anything. It swims with its mouth open and swallows whatever will fit - including young cod. Knowing this sports fishermen in New England and Maritime Canada jig for cod, a baitless means of fishing, where a lure by its appearance and motion imitates a favorite prey of the target fish. A cod jigger is a piece of lead, sometimes fashioned to resemble a herring, but often shaped like a young cod.

Yet cod might be just as attracted to an unadorned piece of lead. English fishermen say they find Styrofoam cups thrown overboard from Channel-crossing ferries in the bellies of cod.

The cod's greed makes it easy to catch, but the fish is not much fun for sportsmen. A cod, once caught, does not fight for freedom. It simply has to be hauled up, and it is often large and heavy. New England anglers would far rather catch a bluefish than a cod. Bluefish are active hunters and furious fighters, and once hooked, a struggle ensues to reel in the line. But the bluefish angler brings home a fish with dark and oily flesh, characteristics of a midwater fighter who uses muscles for strong swimming. The cod, on the other hand, is prized for the whiteness of its flesh, the whitest of the white-fleshed fish, belonging to the order Gladiforms. The flesh is so purely white that the large flakes almost glow on the plate. Whiteness is the nature of the sluggish muscle tissue of fish that are suspended in the near-weightless environment at the bottom of the ocean. The cod will try swim in front on an oncoming trawler net, but after about ten minutes it falls to the back of the net, exhausted. White muscles are not for strength but for quick action - the speed with which a cod, slowly cruising, will suddenly pounce on its prey.

Cod

A Biography of a Fish That Changed the World

Mark Kurlansky

Vintage 1999

Interview in Argus

2009-10-28T08:23:00.000-07:00

Expanding the musical horizon October 28, 2009

By Atiyyah Kahn

Righard Kapp and Ramon Galvan are two greatly underrated names on the local music scene.

While not at all similar in sound, they do pose a challenge to anyone comfortable with the idea of "easily digestible music".

Kapp has been playing in bands since high school. Best described as a perfectionist and a conceptualist, he is recognisable by playing a right-handed guitar upside down.

He co-ordinates the annual improvised music festival, On the Edge of Wrong. His earlier musical forays were in ambient guitar music, but he became interested in looping guitars, effects and noise. Once settled in Cape Town, Kapp joined The Buckfever Underground.

On his album Strung Like a Compound Eye, Kapp focuses on acoustic guitar compositions, with a cross-pollination of concepts with artists Ross Campbell, Marcel Van Heerden, Toast Coetzer and Lee Thompson. It is co-produced by producer-engineer Dirk Hugo, whom Kapp compliments: "He really pushed me on areas I needed to work on. He is able to understand abstract concepts and put them into a concrete form."

Galvan is the ex-keyboardist and vocalist for Blackmilk. On hearing his album Outer Tumbolia my reaction was not unlike stumbling upon a secret treasure, as I imagined him hiding in some lair making music in a room full of toys.

His MySpace page describes his music as "guitars trying to sound like kalimbas". Galvan is a self-taught guitarist and has been involved in music since school.

Blackmilk started in the '90s, after sharing a flat with members from Lithium. Galvan says: "I picked up the synthesiser and we made a lot of noise, then we went our separate ways."

The idea of a solo album came about in the early 2000s and Galvan says: "After Blackmilk, I thought about doing something less noisy; more intimate. I taught myself guitar and fiddled around with things like kalimbas and put together a body of work."

Galvan writes songs on guitar, but uses many other instruments - a chandelier, a whistle, a bulbul tarang, an auto-harp and a kraakdoos - to which he shrugs, saying: "Collecting weird instruments is part of my hobby."

Tumbolia refers to the "the land of dead hiccups and extinguished light bulbs". Galvan explains: "It's a reference to where dreams go to when you wake up. There is a sparseness to the album. Some of the songs are strung together with skeletons or ghosts of songs."

Both artists are signed to the Jaunted Haunts Press label, which is headed by Kapp, who also does the artwork for the albums. They spare me a bitch-session about the difficulties of being independent artists and are surprisingly positive about their songs not standing much of a chance of radio play.

Kapp comments: "Radio is a very specific kind of format. They wouldn't playlist it."

In their own ways, these two provide a challenge to the listener, something many musicians don't concern themselves with.

Kapp says: "I think the conversation about challenging music is yet to be started, as there are tons of musicians creating music like this."

Ultimately, it's about educating one's ears and Galvan and Kapp's albums are a good place to start.

http://www.tonight.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=348&fArticleId=5221239

Also 'Trying to Tell (Summer House)' sample stream available on channel24.co.za

The former front man from avant SA rockers Black Milk channels Scott Walker's Drift on this delicate existential blend of arcane folk and bludgeoning menace. Off his debut solo album, 'Outer Tumbolia'.

Folk II

2009-10-22T11:15:00.000-07:00

Folklore definitions vary from country to country, epoch to epoch, scholar to scholar. The American Standard Dictionary of Folklore and Mythology alone offer twenty-one of them. All of them concur that folklore is developed and transmitted by 'the people', but neither dictionaries or professors agree on a meaning of the term that would be the same everywhere, leading Arnold Van Gennep to remark: 'What's the good of worrying about where folklore begins and end when we don't even know what categorises it?' Out of his vast experience, the best the great Belgian folklorist could suggest is that the difficulty is lessened by the kind of intuition scientists acquire though practice, so that just as a numismatist can tell true coins from false from their rough and soapy feel, the folklore specialist may 'instinctively' tell the authentic folk creation from, say the vaudeville song sung in the same company. Fortunately, intuition is not all that is left to us. Still, if musical folklore is a science, experience shows that it is subject to sudden caprices and its delineation is very hard to fix. In 1954, after long discussion, the International Folk Music Council adopted this definition:

Folk music is a product of a musical tradition that has been evolved through the process of oral transmission. the factors that shape the transmission are: (i) continuity, which links the present with the past; (ii) variation, which springs from the creative impulse of the individual or the group; and (iii) selection by the community, which determines the form or forms in which the music survives.

The term can be applied to music that has evolved from rudimentary beginnings by a community uninfluenced by contemporary or art music and it can likewise be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten living tradition of the community.

The term does not cover composed popular music that has been taken over ready-made by a community and remains unchanged, for it is the re-fashioning and the re-creation of the music by the community that gives it its folk character.

Folk Song in England

A.L. Lloyd

Lawrence & Wishart Ltd 1967

Keeping good company on the wire(less)

2009-10-17T04:26:00.000-07:00

Playlisted on Pseu Braun's show on 16th Oct on WFMU with the likes of Atlas Sound, Robert Wyatt, Tickley Feather, Sun Araw, Mika Vainio, Dodos and the post This Heat, Flaming Tunes!

Playlist online

Update: Bob W's show played 'No Rest' on same day

WFMU-FM is a listener-supported, non-commercial radio station broadcasting at 91.1 Mhz FM in Jersey City, NJ, right across the Hudson from lower Manhattan. It is currently the longest running freeform radio station in the United States.

The station also broadcasts to the Hudson Valley and Lower Catskills in New York, Western New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania via its 90.1 signal at WMFU in Mount Hope, NY. The station maintains an extensive online presence at WFMU.ORG which includes live audio streaming in several formats, over 8 years of audio archives, podcasts and a popular blog.

Also made an appearance in-studio, some months back on The Unhappy Hour on Bush Radio 89.5 FM. Righard Kapp and me both. We chatted with Toast who was DJ-ing that night, performed live on-air with our acoustic guitars, played some tunes off our respective albums and played songs from our own favorite CD's. Righard played some Tortoise and Andre Van Rensburg and I played some Linda Perhacs and Francis Bebey, but more about him another time...

Folk I

2009-10-16T09:36:00.000-07:00

What are we to understand by 'folk'? A whole nation, with or without minorities? A single class (the lower class)? A section of that class (country workers)? In those parts of Western Europe and America where class distinctions, thought real enough, are rather blurred, some people, specialists as well as amateurs, have taken 'folk' to mean the nation, all classes, upper, lower, urban, rural, regardless of social, historical or spiritual differences. This was the view of German romantics of the time of Goethe and Herder and with modifications it has gone in and out of fashion several times since (in America at the moment it is rather 'in'). It is a permissible view in the attenuated sense that we are all bearers of some sort of folklore, if only in the form of the dirty story, apparently an indestructible type of oral 'literature'. The trouble is, such a prospect extends too easily to a boundless panorama going beyond all reasonable definition, so that in the field of song for instance any piece that has passed widely into public circulation is identified as 'folk', especially if one can pretend it somehow expresses part of the essential character of the nation. Thus, Silcher and Heine's 'Die Lorelei' is exhibited as folk song, likewise 'The bonnie bank o' Loch Lomond' (words and tune by a Victorian aristocrat, Lady John Scott), Stephen Foster's 'Old folks at home', and more recently with even slenderer titles, Bob Dylan's 'Blowin' in the wind'. To say nothing of Pottier and Degeyter's 'Internationale'. By this time we are not far from the vague contours suggested by Louis Armstrong's dreary axiom: 'All music's folk music: leastways I never heard of no horse making it.'

Against this broad and hardly manageable 'popular' view of folk song as national song is set the restricted picture offered by several scientists of musical folklore who follow Bartók in considering the term 'folk song' to be synonymous with peasant song, and who maintain that no other part of the nation but working farmers and farm labourers are true shapers and bearers of traditional verse and melody.

It is worth considering how Bartók came to this opinion for his conclusions are paralleled by those of Cecil Sharp, though Sharp's are by no means so firmly based. As a very young man Bartók was among those who thought that national music and folk music were one and the same. In 1896, while he was still in his teens, Hungary celebrated it millennium in a fever of nationalism that lasted for several years. Kodály has described the time. Everything was to be Hungarian not Austro-German: Hungarian words of command in the army, a Hungarian coat of arms on every post office, a Hungarian anthem to replace Haydn's Hapsburg hymn. he young Bartók wore Hungarian costume, then back in fashion, even on the concert platform. In his search for a Hungarian style of composition freed from German influence he was attracted to the verbunkos idiom of of the gypsy orchestras imagining, as Liszt had, that this was folk stuff; whereas in fact the repertory of the gypsy bands is principally made up of fanciful treatments of tunes composed from the mid-nineteenth century onward by educated amateurs of aristocratic or bourgeios birth; and though this kind of light popular air is often taken for Hungarian folk song, the real thing is vastly different, as Bartók discovered when he set off with his long-horned Edison recording machine to collect peasant songs in the Szekely-Hungarian villages of Transylvania

Folk Song in England

A.L. Lloyd

Lawrence & Wishart Ltd 1967

Then and Now

2009-10-08T12:30:00.000-07:00

This is a notion of Kirchner's to demonstrate an acoustical effect. A metal bar is suspended by a thick gut string held to the ears. The sound of the bar being struck by a metal rod should seem to the hearer like the tolling of a very large bell.

Plate 145 152 Plates from Bonanni's 18th Century "Gabinetto Armonic" Antique Musical Instruments and their Players 1964 Dover Publications N.Y.

'A PICKET FENCE DOES NOT HAVE TO LOOK EVEN. IT CAN BE UNEVEN JUST AS WELL. WHEN IT IS UNEVEN, THE SOUND WILL BE MORE INTERESTING WHEN THE NEIGHBORHOOD BOY COMES BY TO DRAG HIS STICK ALONG THE STAVES.'

"Once I found a stone that was brown, irregular and very smooth. It was heavy, and looked a bit melted. I remember showing it to a wise, old, bearded rock-hound pastor from Morristown, Minnesota. Reverend Zimmerman's house and life were filled to overflowing with interesting stuff he had collected in his lifetime. When he saw my brown stone, his bushy eyebrows twitched, He looked at me and said 'Son, this is a meteorite - a star' That stone became special to me and I carried it around to surprise all my friends. I was the boy with stardust in his pockets."

Reinhold Marxhausen grew up in the 1920's and 1930's, the son of a pastor and one of eight children in Vergas Minnesota. He played the musical saw, he played water-tuned bottles, and he found piano lessons boring. He carried stardust in his pocket.

After military service, followed by degrees in art and biology, Marxhausen took a teaching position at Concordia College in Seward Nebraska, where he remained until his retirement in 1990. It was in 1962 that he first began to work with sound objects. "It was a boring Saturday at the sculpture studio; no plans for the day," he recalls. "I found a door knob on the table and welded some wires on one end just for the fun of it. I placed the door knob to my ear and strummed the wire on the opposite end."

"WOW."

Since his discovery, Marx has made a wide variety of sound sculptural forms, and he has developed the door-knob idea in two main directions. One form consists of objects with exposed, external spines. some of the most successful have been his manual walkmans, (below) made like a pair of headphones, with spines sticking out from the metal ear pieces and sometimes rising from the over-the-head connecting piece. They make a stereo concert of lovely sounds, on a minuscule one person scale.

The other form is a small, chunky, metal object, fully enclosed, with no hint of what is inside. Sound comes from within when you shake or rock it, audible only when you hold it close to your ear. What is in there? Marx is not telling.

The objects are just pocket-sized and, recalling the meteor of his childhood, Marxhausen has given them the name Stardust. He makes them as plain in appearance as can be; they look like worn and dirty stones. There's a Marxhausen message in his having put so lovely a sound in such a homely thing.

Gravikords Whirlies and Pyrophones

Bart Hopkin

1996 Ellipsis Arts

Galvan Trio Live at Obz Theatre 26/08/09

2009-10-04T06:08:00.000-07:00

Click on images to enlarge

Photos: Alryn Culwick

Strange Loops

2009-09-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

Bach Canon forward and reverse on a Mobius Strip

Strange Loops

An Eternal Golden Braid

Miscellaneous Links

2009-09-17T07:27:00.000-07:00

An article online in Die Burger culled from an interview with Righard Kapp and Ramon Galvan shortly before both the launch of their respective albums Strung Like a Compound Eye and Outer Tumbolia

"Eintlik is ons die twee skaamste dudes in die wêreld"

Elsewhere, Righard is interviewed and reviewed on www.mahala.co.za on his album and the other Jaunted Haunts Press Releases.

"And of course what ties the artists together is an uncompromising dedication to their creative vision."

Music blog The Glass Forest reviews Outer tumbolia here

"This album is nostalgic and modern in one breath - timeless, true, emotional."

"The minimalistic sound of the guitar added by trumpet or other instruments and the dramatical voice lie in front of you like a wide carpet reaching beyond the horizon."

Gosh!

No Rest

2009-09-14T12:14:00.000-07:00

No Rest

A sense, calling jest
To see
A note to remind me

No Rest
Too fast here
No Rest

Monographs,
Are all in shreds
Troops have fled

No Rest
No Rest

Promise me

A Real Peach

2009-09-12T03:32:00.000-07:00

Recent surveys reveal that a significant number of consumers prefer crunchy peaches bred to have a hard, cargo-truck friendly exterior. Most of us have never tasted a good peach, let alone a downy pastel orb bursting with sweet nectar when plucked right from the tree. As Marshall McLuhan pointed out, we've become so removed from reality that we're starting to prefer artificiality. Part of the reason we think fake is fine is the narrow selection. Turgid peaches aren't even sold in supermarkets, mainly because they can't be shipped. Ken Slingerland, a peach breeder for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, positively loathes juicy peaches. "They squish all over your face," he told me. "We believe that consumers would rather have a peach that's like a nice crunchy apple. Everyone has their preference, and the texture I like is 'crispy.'" Another farmer I spoke to referred to industrial peaches as "plastic Kraft dinner fruit created by dead brains."

Perhaps the crunchers believe the only alternative is mushy, insipid peaches. But peaches exist that are light-years better than anything we're being sold. Some growers refer to those as "chiropractic fruits," because they're so juicy you need to bend over when eating them. But maybe you'll like crispy best too. As a new peach campaign asks: "Are you a Cruncher, Leaner, or In-betweener?"

If you haven't, try a real leaner peach before making up your mind. As David Masumoto, farmer and author of Epitaph for a Peach, writes of the variety grown on his family's land: "Sun Crest is one of the last remaining truly juicy peaches ... so juicy that it oozes down your chin. The nectar explodes in your mouth and the fragrance enchants your nose." Juiciness doesn't mean that the fruit is totally soft; on the contrary, texture is very important. According to stone-fruit expert Andy Mariani of Andy's Orchard in Morgan Hill, California, should have "pleasant resistance," a firmness that yields to sufficient pressure. Only after our teeth force through the cell walls should the fruit open its floodgates. "It can be an almost sexual experience for some people," says Mariani.

The texture and flavor of Mariani's Baby Crawford peach is a kaleidoscope of sweetness, acidity, some astringency - pure peach ecstasy. "It looks hard, but melts in your mouth. It just oozes nectar," he says. Masumoto, blown away after tasting the Baby Crawford, acknowledges that its even better than the Sun Crest.

I tasted enough Baby Crawfords to go dizzy when I visited Andy's Orchard in the summer of 2005. The following year when I called Mariani to check in on the peaches, he sadly informed me that heavy rains and warmer than usual weather had destroyed the entire crop. "The search for the perfect peach is elusive," he said. "It's good for a moment, then a few days later it's gone. Its hard to grow. Nuances in humidity and temperature over one night can drastically affect quality." No wonder growers use any means at their disposal. The fact that fruits ever make it to us is almost heroic.

- From The Fruit Hunters
A Story of Nature, Adventure, Commerce and Obsession

Adam Leith Gollner

Tim Friese-Greene - 10 Sketches for Piano Trio

2009-09-06T08:46:00.000-07:00

Tim Friese-Greene

10 Sketches for Piano Trio

As part architect of a large proportion of Talk Talk's body of work which included the groundbreaking Spirit of Eden as well as the grand consolidation of Laughing Stock, Friese-Greene's new album is an enticing prospect. The pot is further sweetened by the involvement of Phill Brown who engineered the aforementioned albums as well as former Talk Talk singer Mark Hollis's sole solo (sans TF-G) project.

While Hollis sought to further refine the latter day Talk Talk blueprint by using only acoustic instruments (The band's initial culling of sound sources had expelled all synthesisers after making Color of Spring) and upping the woodwind quotient, with songs that were thought through but not overworked, TF-G had taken a more maximalist approach in more pop and loop based compositions in his solo capacity as Heligoland until now.

The arrival of an album of 'sketches' with a basic lineup of piano, drums and bass hinted at something that may lean closer to Hollis's eponymous conclusion. While both at times resemble forms borne of improvisation, TF-G's is the altogether more 'jazzy' affair. This is due both to the absence of a more rock or folk orientated guitar presence that may create the necessary ambiguity of style as well to the piano chord voicing and phrasing employed. Described by TF-G as a series of improvised sketches where piano parts were then overlayed with bass and drums by himself using the hindsight of the initial form, these songs are pleasing for their immediacy and their brevity. It is really this compactness that severs their connection with the jazz idiom, not relying on any establishment and repetition of phrases or themes, and solos.

If anything I am reminded to a very stripped down acoustic version of Tortoise side project Isotope 217 who also appropriated jazz and funk styles in aid of their more structured post rock forms.

It is also this brevity that is perhaps this album's undoing to some degree. Without the necessary space and time for development and risk there is little life left in these pieces once the thought is completed. Much like the photo of TF-G in the liner notes showing him, back to the viewer, recording piano in a small makeshift studio space where he and his instrument are vying for space with assorted junk including a child's inflatable boat, the songs are at times too constricted by a simple set of parameters and a fairly singular goal.

Better Late Than Never - Drum's Not Dead

2009-09-01T08:30:00.000-07:00

When this album was released in 2006 I was not listening to a lot of new music and tend to have a knee jerk reaction towards critical darlings. On a whim I recently purchased Liars' Drum's Not Dead. Here is a review:

Liars have diverted Boredom's krautrock inspired symphonies to the sun from Super AE and Vision Creation Newsun and funnelled them down an altogether darker, danker tunnel to blend further with the bruised instrumental protest postpunk of This Heat and the more whimsical dub goth of the likes of Bauhaus.

What is arguably a rather weak attempt at a concept album in terms of subject matter, if nothing else, does indicate to the listener to consider the collection of songs as a whole. This is further bolstered by the near perfect suite-like sequencing, timing and variety of songs over its 47 minutes. This alone sets the album apart from the current mp3 obsessed market. Liars have also provided the album in a total of 4 separate formats: audio only and 3 different album length video treatments. While serving as part making-of-documentary, live footage and assorted hotel room hijinx, these videos again guide the listener to immerse themselves for the long haul.

The near perfect opening trifecta of drum dominated tunes segue smoothly into one another and are a masterclass in less-is-more arrangement aesthetic. Skeletoned by simple but effective primal and martial drumming, additional elements (vocal shrieks, snake charmer falsetto, droning guitar) are artfully added, blended and removed so as to provide constant variety without losing economy. The glue to Drum's recipe is often the addition of heavily affected drums, either distorted or reverbed so as to render them almost unrecognisable, as a separate instrument within the mix.

By the time the album centrepiece, It Fit When I was a Kid is reached several hills (mountains?) of drum barrage and plateaus of guitar drone nirvana have been traversed. The tom roar and gormless vocal chant led song, strangely reminiscent of mid 90's Massive Attack dread paranoia, gives rise to a beautiful coda of organ and keening Robert Wyatt type vocals, whose melodic ideas
are again subtly referenced on the following track. A series of more disjointed, but captivating song sketches, studio experiments and tone poems usher in the final third.

Thereafter, the effected drums make an energetic and welcome return this time sounding like they are powered by pistons instead of humans. Drum and the Uncomfortable Can especially coming off like a distant cousin of Einsturzende Neubaten's 'ZNS'.

Closer, The Other side of Mt Heart Attack carries all the throw-away sentimentality of Bauhaus's 'Crowds' and is suitably cobbled together to not come off too precious but to merely serve as a small celebration for getting through Liars' epic mind fuck.

Liars have made rock 'n roll great and mythical again without resorting to tired swords and sorcery cliches.

The Rupture

2009-08-27T01:47:00.001-07:00

The Rupture

When its cold and dark
I'll field forests
Twos cum in forests

When we're old and gnarled
I'll seek mountains
With wider passes
For turning round

Bitter cold
The first freight, nervous
And similar the ice-breaker

To break this blanket white
And sail on through the night
Or a sign for turning round

The Rupture

When we're young
We'll run circles 'til they come and fetch us
Or carve our names any place they let us
Disguising all our features given
Now I carve a path back home,
to whittle down my feathers
I'm embarressed:
Got a headdress full of daggers

What became of you?
Did you cum at all?
Did you learn to swim when you waded in?

I put these thoughts aside
I'm thankful for the ride
Until the time that we decide

The Rupture

And grey might be
The only shade on sunshine
I see graze the ground
And as grey silvers on,
I told you that I loved you and I never lied

The singer skipped a whole verse
A chasm super wide
A proper bridge would splinter
A banquet would be meager pickings

Did you honestly think you had to read between the lines?
There wasn't enough space to fit whats unsaid in a rhyme
So just be cool and focus on more pleasurable times
And only know I loved you and I never lied

Happy hunting...

Avant Folk Myths

2009-08-25T02:02:00.000-07:00

Gavlan Trio will be performing Wednesday 26 Aug '09 at around 9pm.
We will be playing a short set of songs mostly from 'Outer Tumbolia'

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=109154979148

Press Coverage for Jaunted Haunts

2009-08-21T09:22:00.000-07:00

Press coverage for Jaunted Haunts in Design Indaba Magazine

Independent music producer, subterranean screenprinter, illustration maniac, guitar anarchist, poster activist and improvisational upstart, Righard Kapp recently released four albums on his garage label Jaunted Haunts Press. Besides the reissue of Ella Joyce Buckley’s For Astrea, the long-awaited release of the Buckfever Underground’s live album Limbs Gone Batty, and Ramon Galvan’s debut album, Outer Tumbolia, Kapp also released his own album, Strung Like A Compound Eye. Simultaneously summing up all four albums and his visual prerogative, Kapp describes his album as “an argument for the broadening of aesthetic horizons in a time when variety, though technologically feasible, is remarkably absent from our prescribed media diets”.

http://www.designindaba.com/news-snippet/jaunted-haunts-press

You Flossed The Stars

2009-08-19T07:51:00.000-07:00

You Flossed The Stars

When to steer's uncertain

And all objectivity

Is gone

The only thing to do is run

You want it all

You flossed the stars

You want it all

You flossed the stars

In his purse he has supernovae

Research has shown this is nearly over

Outer Tumbolia - Mail & Guardian review

2009-08-17T12:01:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since the South African music scene has heard from Ramon Galvan, the former vocalist and keyboard player from the avant-rock band Blackmilk. Great news then, that he has a debut solo album out on Righard Kapp’s Jaunted Haunted Press and it’s amazing too.

Outer Tumbolia is an album filled with delicate off-kilter emotional outpourings that at first listen can come across as emotionally draining. However, I found that with every further listen, my heart warmed just a little more to his songs of loss and longing.

While Galvan’s vocals remind me of Antony Hegarty, without all the grandiose pomp, the music consistently reminded me of John Cale’s work.

Luminarc which, features Kapp on guitar loops, is a gem of a song, while The Rupture which, features Galvan on kalimba, music box and melodica, is an album highlight too. However Galvan saves the best for last, an incendiary collaboration with Benguela drummer Ross Campbell on its dramatic closer No Rest, where Galvan croons along to the Kalimba, while Pierre du Plessis delivers waves of feedback and Campbell offers up some jazzy percussion.

Get this immediately and catch Galvan on a national tour with Kapp and Benguela soon.

http://isolation.tv/archive/2009/08/17/ramon-galvan-outer-tumbolia.aspx

http://www.mg.co.za/article/2009-08-18-electronica-to-world-music-via-rock-and-blues

Bulbul Tarang

2009-08-11T12:42:00.000-07:00

The instrument that I am playing in the picture above is a Bulbul Tarang, which means "waves of nightingales". It sounds like anything but a nightingale, in fact its other name, the "Indian Banjo" is perhaps a rather crude but more apt description in terms of what it sounds like.

In Japan, a similar instrument exists called a Taishogoto, while the German Akkordolia operates in a similar manner.

Like the autoharp it is an instrument often used by the more untrained musician and in the bulbul's case also by the elderly in large ensembles as a form of occupational therapy. Having said this I have observed footage displaying amazing virtuosity on both the autoharp and bulbul, but for the novice player they do offer fairly instant gratification.

It consists of a fretboard of multiple strings usually tuned to the same note or octaves of each other. There are also lower drone strings that do not get fretted by the rather ingenious key operated fretting mechanism that changes the pitch of the main strings to provide a melody.

This particular instrument came into my possession through a good friend who spotted it in a junk shop and instantly thought of me and my fondness for odd sound making devices. The problem was that it was in pieces and without a name or description. Whatever parts there were, were incomplete.

The first clue was a little piece of paper still attached to the box showing a rather faint diagram of what the instrument was meant to resemble.

Using this and the resources on the Internet, within a couple of weeks a few links were found which provided a name to the instrument and some vague descriptions of how it worked. The crucial bit of information around how the keying mechanism worked, however, remained elusive. There were only a handful of resources sites compared to the many videos and websites that have cropped up since and a series of emails between me and a seller of exotic instruments stopped dead when he discovered I wasn't actually interested in buying anything from him.

The second important lead was when I received an email from a musician friend of mine who knew of my dilemma in rebuilding this instrument and informed me that he had spotted something similar at an acquaintance's house. I abruptly got this person's contact details and paid him a visit.

This guy was a true collector of stringed instruments and I was given a fascinating tour of his collections of zithers, psalteries, guitarras, banjos and yes, there in the corner was a bulbul.
This one was slightly different in that it contained only 3 melody strings, but crucially the spring operated keying system looked very similar.

He very kindly allowed me to borrow his instrument for a couple of weeks so I could carefully take it apart and take some detailed photos and notes. The elegance and simplicity of the key, spring and pivot rod design struck me as so intuitive that I really should have worked it out if there weren't so many original parts missing. Most of these were quite simple to fashion from wire, wood and metal pins.

The final hurdle was the manufacture of the actual keys. There are supposed to be 21 keys but only 7 were present in the odds and ends that I was given. These were quite hardy hand cut metal keys (I suspect this instrument had already been repaired at least once or at least an attempt had been made - to add to the confusion) and I did not want to get into hours of hacksaw and metal file work in order to manufacture the remaining keys, so it was very fortunate that another friend of mine recommended a company that did metal cutting to specification using water jets. I was able to convince them to do the job for a pittance as they could see I was not going into any major mass production manufacture enterprise.

After a few weekends and a ton of assistance from my father, who is far more coordinated than I am and very capable in realm of DIY, it was ready to play. It's a little creaky and some of the keys stick a little but it is really sweet sounding.

It is great to overdub melodies with and the droney-ness of the sound combined with a little reverb really sits well in a mix. You can hear it overdubbed on the songs 'Luminarc' and 'I Will Rise Up' on my album 'Outer Tumbolia'. We have also fitted a guitar pickup to it in order to use it live. I am currently using in a more upfront manner making it a more dominant part in some of the newer material I am writing.

I'll end off this post with a video of a combined bulbul and autoharp performance. If not the most virtuosic performance, it certainly is the most endearing

27 chord autoharp and two Taisho Koto's used in performing Robert Wyatt's 'Alifib'

Grade by Grade

2009-08-10T07:02:00.000-07:00

Grade by Grade

Chrome Molybdenum
Was my first metallurgy lesson
Someone stuffed and loaded
A gilded craft to get to heaven

Grade by Grade
Grade by Grade
Grade by Grade

How long! How long?
How long! How long?
Before I put my moon boots on?
How long? How....

Grade by Grade

Images taken from "Future World" by Peter Goodwin 1979

The Other Lars

2009-08-05T04:59:00.000-07:00

I have always reached some sort of impasse during recording and instinctively started pissing about with odd instruments and various other strategies to try un-paint myself out of a corner of my own design.

Complete and utter mistrust in all things Eno have prevented me from even considering using his self styled set of studio tarot cards. On the other hand, my often blind admiration of all things Von Trier made me think a bit about his Dogme 95 rules for film making and how they may better suit the purposes of music making and recording.

I suspected that they would certainly be a lot more pragmatic than the annoying self help guide for bored multi millionaires on their day off from saving the planet.

So here are the original Dogme 95 rules with a hopefully analogous rule for recording:

(This is a work in progress)

1. Filming must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where this prop is to be found).

Recording to be done on location. If a particular instrument (eg. piano) is necessary, a location must be chosen where this instrument is found

What are we trying to accomplish here? We really want to get on with the job don't we? If you want to record in a castle so you can hammer on the portcullis then it would be wise for it to be quite an important part of the song and album. Lugging a pipe organ into the castle to then do overdubs is not an option here.

Band most likely to suffer under these constraints: Led Zeppelin

2. The sound must never be produced apart from the images or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being filmed).

Consideration must be taken when overdubbing. Artificial (electronic) backdrops to be added as an afterthought is forbidden unless 'played' live as an additional instrument

I would stop short of outlawing multi-tracking and insisting that everything should be recorded once with all instruments played together recorded by a single stereo or mono microphone.

We're not trying to record live albums here as that would be like filming a play (Dogville?) although one could well argue that listening to a live album beats the socks off watching a filmed play.

3. The camera must be a hand-held camera. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; filming must take place where the action takes place.)

Microphone placement should be limited to within reasonable range of the instruments being captured so as to obtain a fair balance between direct sound and more ambient sound signal.

This rule is a little vague. I think we should be all for using the natural reverbs of the environment unless after three hours of searching you decide to capture the sound of the piano from within the kettle in the next room. C'mon! Hit record!

4. The film must be in colour. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut or a single lamp be attached to the camera).

The use of effects to color the natural sound in such a way as to render it unrecognizable is forbidden

So many people would be left sound-less to adhere to this rule. Sorry Fennesz.

5. Optical work and filters are forbidden.

Post processing of audio is forbidden. Artificial reverbs are not allowed. Natural rooms acoustics should be utilized if any. Rules 4 and 5 are pretty similar.

Audio engineer friends always repeat the adage: “If it sounds good it is good” this should said after you have listened to the sound coming from the instrument through the microphone and out of your speakers. Not several days and effects processors later.

6. The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)

Superficial sound that merely colors or decorates a piece of music should be avoided.

Sorry Brian.

7. Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say that the film takes place here and now.)

How long and hard did you hunt for that harpsichord and what are you going to do with it?

Lyrical themes should relate to a plausible present - again stopping short of exclusively non-fictional themes

Yup, let’s hear it for the overwrought confessional.

8. Genre movies are not acceptable.

Pure pastiche is forbidden. Genre contrivances unless the musicians operate from a particular idiom should be avoided. See the bit about the harpsichord ... hmm and the castle.

Sorry Beck.

9. The final picture must be transferred to the Academy 35mm film, with an aspect ratio of 4:3, that is, not widescreen. (Originally, the requirement was that the film had to be filmed on Academy 35mm film, but the rule was relaxed to allow low-budget productions.)

Ok, we're going to be rigid here. Final mastering should be to magnetic tape.

This way you will have a real 'permanent record' of the final product.

10. The director must not be credited.

The producer must not be credited

Yes Brian - this ones for you.

I think what I like most of all about Dogme 95 is the confession that often appears in the film credits. This is where the director discusses and explains his/her transgressions. This doesn’t disqualify the film from being considered a Dogme 95 film - very few have adhered 100% to the rules. It has, however, resulted in a number of amazing films.

Mysterious Object at Noon

2009-08-03T07:15:00.000-07:00

Filmed on grainy black and white 16mm, Apichatpong "Joe" Weerasethakul's 'Mysterious Object at Noon' is part documentary and part stream of consciousness experimental cut-up involving chance narratives and "exquisite corpse" methods used to string together a plot.

And it is this plot, rambling, yet enthusiastically told by various local Thai people who one would neither call amateur actors nor subjects of a documentary, that serves as a springboard into one's own subconscious and unconsciousness. An almost infinite number of departure points are served up in this manner, ranging from a tantalizing negative space between adjacent leaves on a tree to a hauntingly naïve performance on a bamboo reed mouth organ. There is a sense of a very personalized travelogue or a release on the Sublime Frequencies record label made visible.

I Will Rise Up

2009-07-30T10:05:00.000-07:00

I Will Rise Up

If it be for certain
I will rise up

And if it's something that we don't know
I will rise up

You give me the gift contagious

And I will rise up

You were supposed to call my name out loud!

Outer Tumbolia Free Download

2009-07-28T03:31:00.000-07:00

My new album can be downloaded here:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/dizn2qjwejn/Ramon_Galvan_Outer_Tumbolia.rar

If you like it - tell your friends

You can consult the Jaunted Haunts Press page in the links section of this blog if you are interested in buying the CD to get the real artifact with beautiful limited edition handprinted artwork courtesy of Jaunted Haunts Press label head, Righard Kapp.

This is how

2009-07-27T07:26:00.000-07:00

This is how

Your hands are so inviting
I want to wrap them round my face and throat
This is how I want to go

The second wind has blown its charms
If I said "Stay!"
You know?
With nothing left
This is how I want to go

I want to

This is how I want to go

With these hands
I would work around
The curve
With these hands

I will clasp around
Firm!

Lay this body down
Lay this body down

Don't talk for anyone
Done, talk for anyone

Discern this grip is right
Discern this grip is right
I can see it in your eyes
I can see it in your eyes

Discern this grip is right
Discern this grip is right
I can see it in your eyes
I can see it in your eyes

that this grip is just right

With these hands
I would work around
The curve
With these hands

I will clasp around
Firm!

Now I've said too much
You have broken rank
When you heard the words

That hurt

So much!

Sucker punched

2009-07-24T12:10:00.000-07:00

I was filled with wonder and small pangs of jealousy when I first saw this video:

Damn, what a cool idea!

I would much rather live in an alternate universe where the use of the vaccum cleaner in pop music production is as ubiquitous as the use of Auto-Tune is in ours.

With these hands

2009-07-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

Unused - Outtakes for album artwork

Images from 'First Aid To The Injured' St John's Ambulance Association 1939

Luminarc

2009-07-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

Luminarc

I dunno why, you come this night

Tomb of rock

I dunno why we're bound in this life

Tell them all it wasn't me
tell them all it wasn't me aha!
Luminarc

I dunno why

When the metrics of the noble hour
That pluck the sweet strings
That sing the sweet things
We risk the bee stings
To find the finer flower
And drink the sweet things

I'm finally full

Untimely full

Chang, You - the annotated lyrics

2009-07-20T09:17:00.000-07:00

Frames from Tintin in Tibet and one from The Blue Lotus that inspired the song

Chang, you

Chang, you

Chang, you

Chang, you...

On a lonely Alpine horn, I call you

With a restless open scrawl, implore you:

Chang!

Intersecting lines receding

I'm the only one believing

Tender lend my life

Be care what you wish for
I might levitate outta here

Be care what you wish for
I might levitate outta here

Chang, You!
Chang, Coo-ee!

Chang, You!
Chang, Coo-ee!

Happy hunting...

Women of the Dunes (1964) - Hiroshi Teshigahara

2009-07-17T09:26:00.001-07:00

From the close-up photography of the ever shifting and all pervasive sand to the limitlessness of the dunes and the terrifying sound world provided by composer Toru Takemitsu. This film demands you experience its riches on its terms and at its (at times slow) pace.

In a remote coastal village set amongst dunes, an academic entomologist arrives, butterfly net at the ready looking for rare beetles. Shots of ant lions lying in wait hint at his fate.

He is tricked into seeking shelter for the night in one of the village houses, owned by a women, at the bottom of a sandy pit. He then discovers that he is now trapped there with her and becomes part of a superstitious, rutualistic nightmare where he must play the role of both prey and hunter.

Chang, You

2009-07-16T03:33:00.000-07:00

Chang, you

On a lonely alpine horn, I call you

With a restless open scrawl, implore you
Chang!

Intersecting lines recede.
I'm the only one believing

Tender
Lend my life

Be careful what you wish for, I might levitate outta here

Chang, You!
Chang! Coo-ee!

Hergé, his first wife Germaine and Zhang Chongren in 1934

Trying to Tell

2009-07-14T09:46:00.001-07:00

Trying to Tell (Summer House)

There's a 'before...'
There's a 'before you'

Stay, stay
Summer house

As I scrub your face from my mind
I walk the long road for the last time
The trees are now like cemetery Cyprus

The path, a hazy tunnel
'Cos the summer cycles

If I would turn back now
I would surely kill you

These thoughts they can inspire
That’s what I'm trying to tell you

Stay, stay
Summer house

Luft

2009-07-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

Luft

First lift
Now I'm cursed with it
Pursed lips sent you on your way

Could we just white out
This
Could we just bide our time?

Don't wanna go,
But this lake of fire keeps pushing me up higher

Still wanna burn,
But I don't

Don't wanna go,
But this lake of fire keeps pushing me up higher

Still wanna burn,
But I don't

How dare you

So I started new ways
Each in its own self styled limbo

And the things fall into place

Waiting with my arms akimbo.

For Starters

2009-07-12T03:19:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, when my wife's state of health was involving me in a lot of expense, but there was still some hope of its improving, I dreamed one night that I was composing a symphony, and heard it in my dream. On waking next morning I could recall nearly the whole of the first movement, which was an allegro in A minor in two-four time.... I was going to my desk to begin writing it down, when I suddenly thought:

"If I do, I shall be led on to compose the rest. My ideas always tend to expand nowadays, this symphony could well be on an enormous scale. I shall spend perhaps three or four months on the work (I took seven to write Romeo and Juliet), during which time I shall do no articles, or very few and my income will diminish accordingly.

When the symphony is written I shall be weak enough to let myself be persuaded by my copyist to have it copied, which will immediately put me a thousand or twelve hundred francs in debt. Once the parts exist, I shall be plagued by the temptation to have the work performed. I shall give a concert, the receipts of which will barely cover one half of the costs - that is inevitable these days. I shall lose what I haven't got and be short of money to provide for the poor invalid, and no longer able to meet my personal expenses or pay my son's board on the ship he will shortly be joining."

These thoughts made me shudder, and I threw down my pen thinking:

"What of it? I shall have forgotten it by tomorrow!"

That night the symphony again appeared and obstinately resounded in my head. I heard the allegro in A minor quite distinctly. More, I seemed to see it written. I woke in a state of feverish excitement. I sang the theme to myself; its form and character pleased me exceedingly. I was on the point of getting up.

Then my previous thoughts recurred and held me fast.

I lay still , steeling myself against temptation, clinging to the hope that I would forget. At last I fell asleep, and when I awoke all recollection of it had vanished for ever.

- From the Memoirs of Hector Berlioz taken from Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks