Monday, October 31, 2005

food fight

p0g O

Capt America Loves Spiderman

Plank and Coltrane

(5)-->(8) zeppeli

fahrenheit 452

sitcom verisimilars

verisum

...¬ t.atkinson.s.reich.j.pastorius+/-

stand up

squailing
they tried their hand
a hand each in fact
a finger each in fact
there were ten or so
ten to a man
each with a role
each with a cause

indicating
they marked it all out
by marking, by saying so
an issue each in fact
from the usual array
conceived as
received as
the only fucking way

Sunday, October 30, 2005

fabular fabular

.

.

.

termini

brit summer time aloofly-so
cobalt-blue canopy
tricks with lighting fixtures

as if to illustrate
...

a spreading chestnut tree
we sold you
you sold we

601

jasper johns
sold on ebay
for twelve pounds
including postage

termini

bedsit verisimilars

termini

Friday, October 28, 2005

foyer ambience

[sic]ing up
Derrida beach, USA
lecturn-like, dislike
praise indeed, in deed
Destroyevsky
Missile of tough love
Iraqi airspace
Irani airspace
NY NY Nnnnnnnnnn Y
a coded note
a coded note

Thursday, October 27, 2005

atol

parson's egg

Poet Peter Reading was born on 27 July 1946 in Liverpool, England. He worked as a school teacher in Liverpool (1967-8) and at Liverpool College of Art where he taught Art History (1968-70). He was Writer in Residence at Sunderland Polytechnic (1981-3) and he won a Cholmondeley Award in 1978. His collection Diplopic (1983) won the inaugural Dylan Thomas Award. Stet (1986) won the Whitbread Poetry Award and he was awarded the Lannan Award for Poetry in 1990. In 1997 he held the Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia. The collection Marfan (2000) was inspired by his tenure as Lannan Foundation Writer in Residence in Marfa, Texas, in 1999. His recent collections of poetry include Faunal (2002). His Collected Poems: 1997-2003 was published in 2003.Peter Reading is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He lives in Ludlow in Shropshire.

sounding brass

claustraphilian stendec

LM53ULE

cold-fused

delian truth about pointing

Hello Mark.
Thanks for giving my material your time; glad you seemed to like it. The Radiophonics reference is well-made. I am a fan of Delia D et al; and find the whole Radiophonics thing rather moving, even heroic. I like the boffin overtones and the surgical, painstaking way they used tape. Was unaware, though, that a perceptible aesthetic indicator would shine through to my own work. That's fine, of course, though. Obviously the two pieces are somewhat different in a general sense. Meat Sheet is aiming more toward what I am drawn to these days; the more muscular, KCrimson-esque Hurlements is what murmurists used to be. The PFloydish real drums that steam in halfway though give me problems these days. But that was who I was working with then; and that was how he played. In the communistic social experiment that was murmurists then it wasn't appropriate to offer structuring commentary to others. It was live and let live - as an ideological and practical imperative. That has it merits; everyone is a stakeholder; and, politically, I like that idea. Now, though, I'm wanting something with the same degree of internal equality but with more direction aesthetically; the latter achieved by being more fussy re personnel at the outset. As a member of the audience at yours and Rhodri's performance at Pyramid, it looked to me as if you have that: a kind of e.s.p., a kind of interpersonal ease. I've had that previously with a guitarist years ago. I know what it feels like to be on the same wavelength, and to produce music/art which testifies to that. So, that's the challenge now!
Best wishes, Anthony

trace infirm

ante-factual ante-christs on logic hunt

factory dracula

iterative common size viz david toop

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

dodecaphoneousRONNIE.JAMESraDIOhead

lochrian drizzle

Scott Walker Live on TCM

Some plastically-saddened quasi-t.riley says, insists, bays-out, "...please, sirs, madams, in Cm..."; then, revisting, revising, quasi-r.waters-style professional pessimism, with voice b-b-b-breaking, adds, "...in Cm9...just Cm9, over and over, long-windedly, extendedly, fixedly, endlessly, as some final statement, a resource for all the wounded of the world, a song, a symphony, a celebration of the vast, inexhaustibility of self-pity. Dig this as an ur-capitalist wallpaper; different shades, different prices. One size fits all; shrink to fit. All others will grow into it.

picasso reverses

Tuesday, October 25, 2005

the dodo was asking for it

incantation.i will burn you dead.dedication.all you can eat.i know your sound.elegiac.tangle of thorns.orbitesque.head wound illustration.street scenery.... aria.FUNtobeDEAD.
sliding grace, slides
as if by common-cause
as if by, by-the-by
a killing street
a killing ground
slides into view
I have to tell you I had held her hand all the while, though, annotating a painting I made not of but about my family. “Artists are shits”, I would often add.
figure of speech was now, then, by my painting it, a figuration, figual. It is, more exactly, by my painting it out of me, painted out of me. It is left with writing to write it out of me.
autobiographical device
useless as general communication
some then ascendant literati:
Sartre this; Foucault that; Heideggery, Hegely-Pegely, decanting Kant, d d d Derrida. Endless; youthfully endless, youthfully hopeful in being so; as if such foreign schemes could be made to play meaningfully and diagnostically upon a picture of strangers. From behind that frosted glass, I thought such concepts could be heard and understood in some friendly but serious commitment to understanding itself

for ingenious remaindermen at philosoph

teratophobes in misophiland (part-scale)

so-called Dovonian Mode

A Bb Db Eb F Gb Ab A

food, medicine, energy

a subtrist

flat, like the sun

ISBN: 0141014741

SET LIST

1 id-rid
2 onomatopoetry
3 heating by metaphor
4 isoseismal
5 cro-magnon 45
6 three stooges b'jesus chowder
7 nec plus ultra
8 gallows on the moon
9 little stand

peterreading.TATKINSONer/...+/- Kitaj

litl mis mimesis
eat heart out
monkey c
monkey do do
eno beano
d d derrida d d
... dot dot
effing dot
bring and buy

dandruff of the orator

evagatory

Sunday, October 23, 2005

symbol antic

Saturday, October 22, 2005

pistols' last gig

elastic/roj, dialectorian (grace to grace)

Very nice of you to say so, Roj. Really glad you enjoyed the black philosophy on my blogbog. It's an outlet for my offset. I like this new country; just fellwalking in it at the moment, but plan to build. Best wishes Anthony----- Original Message ----- From: *** **********To: 'Anthony Donovan' Sent: Friday, October 21, 2005 11:59 PM Subject: RE: ¬... [sic] good on yer fella. that’s hot stuff. you clever bastard. you’ve caught my interest for sure. you a scary dood. I always thought “my mate dov, a doctor? nah, he’s my mate dov. you really are. Nice one. I read every word, and am blown away. good stuff, and I’m with you. I would like to think I’m an honorary murmerist. I’ll be sending you the latest comfy album soon, for your perusal.. I expect you could savage it, but please understand it is done with love; and I can’t recall a time we ever played together individually. speak soon bud. keep up the fantastic work -----Original Message-----From: Anthony Donovan [mailto:a.donovan7@ntlworld.com] Sent: 20 October 2005 07:33To: Roger LitherlandCc: Jack MartinSubject: ¬... [sic] http://murmurists.blogspot.com

Thursday, October 20, 2005

symbol antic

decimal cezanne



  • god saved the queen ¬
  • the rest was code, being read by Old Mother L Ron Hubbard, over VCS3 flatulance, played by Meat&PotatoMondrian. because because because because of the wonderful things he does

cock in a frock

ouroboros

ambrosian/diegesic/apocrine

不晓得美丽的 什么时候再来光顾这里,伊说伊想念我,恩,我也想念伊呀! 伊好吗?伊在上个夏天结束之前,结束了原来的生活,新的生活过得是什么样子呢? 只能在伊的侏罗纪公园里间或嗅见伊的气息,如今也只零落着尘土的痕迹。 学校的生活伊喜欢吗?真的要整日泡在书本里,伊能够忍受 吗 伊是有满腹的才情,不知向谁倾吐;伊是有一腔的爱情,不知向谁泼洒。

... ... ...

Building//How to pushPerspective /
Ideology no less: communality vs individuation
Horizontal collaboration / heirarchical devices
agreed schemes
lo-fi
small sounds
environment
hammer horror

acataleptics' theme

tri

¬cecil court
¬phillip street
¬powis square

.^..'~

to our right we see ........................................................ dodecaphonia; or else some cartoon polity, a prog-elvis, with r plant helium voice on a lightly-distorting fender cecil rhodes, as glitch-defoe, as dada radiophonics on kuwait-shaped farmland. s/he brandishes hammer horror nephilial sexual faint, admixed with wooden stakes through a wooden heart. his/her skunk deoderant stains the cross of fun.

dogeatdogeatdog

heidegger gets the girl

thigmotropist undersing

red guitar/grey wedding dress, fizz as mondo somambulistics, inchscape, territory. sheep count reveals disintegration poses amongst the oven fodder. goliath leaves the avengers; urlocution, munition, and a petrol-sinking ballot box; format, etherealising; hardsports; miscegenance as 666.1 - a tide pool, or fahrenheit 452. this rat brain experiment becomes a goya-device, previewed only in the documentorial spaces of termini hitleral. Ka-boom ... ka-boom ....... ka-boooooom

oligarch

chris magic-marker(w)punkprog inserts, ad hoc, lovingly

dead hen at Ipatiev House

[sic]

view from helvellyn

s pistol facsimilisations

Lovely to hear from you; and many thanks for sharing the Stravinsky stuff with me, and for taking the time to type it all out. Hope you saved it or sent to others in order to maximise efforts! Glad it touched you deeply. Very important to remain moved and passionate. Hence, the following lengthy email! I'm nothing if not a f****** tryer, mate! Never lost that get-up-and-go! From my old fine art/art historian ears, the determinations in and the impetus for Stravinsky's words are classic, high Modernism - as one would expect, him being a high Modernist! One can find the same stuff coming out of visual artists of the same period like, say, Wassily Kandinsky, in order to theoretically franchise a move toward Abstraction in visual art; whilst retaining a toe or two in something spooky, immutable, eternal, spiritual, human, grand. So, it's Strav being mindful of progress and retention of deep strains of human endeavour - remaining faithful in so doing to Baudellaire's Modernism as a conflation of the strident/transient and the eternal. IE: good to be cutting edge, but better if one is that with a convincing attachment to past glories. Picasso and Duchamp in art; Cage - I would argue - in music fulfill this criteria. For me, it's Cage; though his music, in and of itself, leaves me for the most part cold. It's what he said that was so rich and life-affirming, forward-thinking, liberating. A great book - though visual art-based in essence - is the Charles Harrison and Paul Wood edited tome, Art in Theory. I have it titled as Art in Theory: 1900-1990, but I think it's just been updated and reissued. St. Helens Central Library reference will carry it most likely. This is mostly visual artists and those commentating upon visual art, but the stuff inside goes way beyond that, in mapping in fantastic detail the concerns and drives of the time period covered. It's composed of hundreds of essays and fragments and the editorial intros are wonderful. Harrison is our best art historian, in my opinion; and he works in an art group which was early into Conceptual Art called Art and Language, so his knowledge is tactile, participant-observational. It's that methodology which gives what he says so much resonance and power. Strav will most likely be in there; and an anthology of this kind helps to put stuff into perspective. Modernism was very rich; it still believed in progress; unlike now's collapse into irony and top-sheeting pastiche (I like my inclusion of top-sheeting!). Modernism is my bag; but gotta live in the here and now...or else: mental illness! I'm really glad you read as well as play, create. It's important to be doing research via both methods. I believe in that. The alternative is sophistry, autism - the ideology of our times! That's why I've always craved working in a group, as opposed to alone. I like the dialectical approach. Improv is eminantly dialectical; it has to be. And by a series of personal refinements, I'm getting to think more and more that it is a lifestyle choice, a politics, a wholesale method of perception. Had a jam with local types last week - and it was, to make an important distinction, a jam, not improv! Too loud. Too rock-tinged BeBop. I was invited back, but declined. I am looking for something brain-driven rather than bollox-derived. My days of competing with other people for aural opportunities by buying ever-louder amplification are way gone! And these guys are older than me! They thought what they were doing - because it was plug in, see what happens stuff - was avant, experimental. To me, it was f******* Hawkwind! What kind of laboratory is that?! Experimental! - more like ill-conceived, amorphous, lazy bullshit - lots of effects-laden din, no listening. So many solipsisms in a big stone barn! Individuated together! (You can see I'm having fun with my polemic; but it's all true!)

as above, so so below

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

guts of the thing

Here's a proper reply! Busy last night, as it was my birthday! Thanks again for your interest, and enthusiastic reply. Really, it is people with positive energy I am seeking, so that was great to see in your email. Where, please, did you spot my notice? I've posted murmurists stuff all over, so it would be informative to learn where you learned of my project. Also, where are you based? I'm in Northampton, in case you don't know. The project I'm advocating - which I call 'murmury', and the band itself 'murmurists' - carries on in a sense from things I've been involved with for years. I've only recently moved into Northampton, from Warrington in the North West. There, I was part of a functioning art group, called murmurists. That version of murmurists had several people involved at different times, doing different things. It was basically an improvised thing. We went into a rehearsal room and made it up as we went along. In that sense - and to give you an idea of what kind of thing resulted from such encounters - the material was in the area of soundart, soundscapes, electronica, freejazz, experimental, plunderphonics, circuitbending, and so on. We used guitars, keyborards, electronics, effects, cd players, md players, tape, dictaphones, radio, computers, real drums, electronic drums, PSIIs, woodwind, voice.... all kinds. I personally play six and four string basses (sometimes 'prepared', which I play conventionally and unconventionally, using techniques I've devised over years of playing); keyboard (though I'm no real keyboard player, as such; it's more a sound source); voice (though I wouldn't class myself as a singer!); electronics of different kinds, including lots of processing for my basses; so-called laptronics, programming, messing with software etc., but not to make dance music. I also play guitar - and am looking to incorporate this into my musicmaking. Similarly, I've been designing a 20 string homemade instrument, which I am going to build and aim to use. I've taught bass and guitar. I know my theory, and how to write songs. I've done lots of that in the past. I am, though, looking to continue the move beyond rock forms and devices - that is, rock-type structure, tonality, etc. I want to make something original, more challenging. I am ambitious! Though I have ideas, I'm looking for others with ideas and energy of their own, to contribute equally, so that the result belongs to all involved. I've led bands and played in bands led by others. There is nothing, though, like being in a band where everyone in it has an equal stake. That's the ideal; and it isn't to say that everyone has to be equal in all departments. That's unlikely, and possibly even unproductive. Best, though, if everyone strives equally in an overall way. Does this ethos sound good to you? But, murmurists isn't just a musical thing. I'm an artist, too - a visual artist, that is. I make artworks; I've had exhibitions; I've curated them. That's my academic background, too - fine art degree, then a doctorate in art theory. In that sense, and for that reason, I get my inspiration from the world of music and its theories and that of art and its theories. I make films, too - though that's a recent thing with me. I also write - prose, theory, kinds of scripts, titles, etc. I am looking to put all this stuff together into a single project called murmurists. What I am looking for are others who are or another who is into what I am into, and who has the energy to pursue such a project. Is this you?

Porno Adorno & Grievance Dave Mignon, Sonorities Festival, 2005

decaf bjorknutrino, attic, 2005

JG Power-Ballard

JG POWER-BALLARD
classwar karaoke
Northampton, UK
2005

small print

CHRIS MARKER, PAUL MCCARTHY, KING CRIMSON, GILBERT&GEORGE, CHRIS MORRIS, JAM, RADIOPHONICS, ELECTRONICA, FREE JAZZ, MUSIQUE CONCRETE, SOUNDSCAPES, FIELD RECORDINGS, MICROTONAL, ATONAL, SURREALISM, DADA, PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY, QUARTERTONAL, INDUSTRIAL, LOOPS, DRONE, ELECTROACOUSTIC, CUT-UP, PSYCHODELIA, PUNK, PROG, AMBIENT, CIRCUIT-BENDING, 50S SCI-FI, HAMMER, LUGOSI, SAMIZDAT, ZINE ART, POST ROCK, ENO, DUCHAMP, JAGA JAZZIST, DERRIDA, DE SADE, POE, GREIL MARCUS, BOWIE’S GOOD STUFF, ALAN SILLITOE, JOHN CAGE, FLUXUS, NAM JUNE PAIK, LA MONTE YOUNG, KITAJ, SCOTT WALKER, POLANSKI, GODSPEED YOU BLACK EMPEROR!, BARK PSYCHOSIS, FOUCAULT, CREMASTER, STEVE REICH, EARLY FLOYD, ZORN, NAKED CITY, EVAN PARKER, DEFOE, PATRICK KEILLER, CRONENBERG, WOODY ALLEN, PETER READING, SIDNEY LUMET, KUBRICK, THE FALL, RUSH’S GOOD STUFF, MIKE LEIGH, THE DAY TODAY, BRASS EYE, BLUE JAM, ON THE HOUR, HUMAN REMAINS, PEOPLE LIKE US, SPACED, BLACK BOOKS, EXTRAS, JOSEPH CONRAD, SPIKE MILLIGAN, VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR, THROBBING GRISTLE, EARLY SABBATH, ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG, BILL HICKS, KAFKA, CHARLES LAUGHTON, DOSTOYEVSKY, ARGENTO, ART & LANGUAGE, RED CRAYOLA, FREE FOLK, POLIAKOFF, PINTER, EARLY PIL, ARTAUD, BLACK MOUNTAIN COLLEGE, MINIMALISM, SYMBOLISM, TURNTABLISM, DAVID HARVEY, TERRY ATKINSON, JOHN HYATT, THREE JOHNS, EARLY VIC & BOB, BUTTHOLE SURFERS, BIG BLACK, E.P. THOMPSON, LEGITI, DEREK BAILEY, JOSEPH BEUYS, NIC ROEG, RICHARD LESTER, ADORNO, TROTSKY, POPPER, ENGELS, MARX, IAIN SINCLAIR, BORGES, KOMAR & MELAMID, RUNE LABEL, STEVE SWALLOW, KILLING JOKE, JACO PASTORIUS, ALFRED JARRY, IONESCO, PROJEKCTS, LAURIE ANDERSON, PLUNDERPHONICS, CONSTELLATION LABEL, ECM, SOUND POETRY, BRITISH NEW WAVE FILM, FRENCH NEW WAVE FILM, DOGMA, HANS HAACKE, KEITH TYSON, HANS RICHTER, IRVIN KLAW, MARTY FELDMAN, MAX ERNST, MAN RAY 20S WEIMAR, VICTOR LEWIS-SMITH, BRICOLAGE, COLLAGE, PASTICHE, APPROPRIATION, AGIT PROP, COLUMBO, SITUATIONISTS, LETTRISM, COBRA, ARTE POVERA, OUTSIDER ART, MAIL ART, JASPER JOHNS, JULIAN COPE’S GOOD STUFF, MERCE CUNNINGHAM, KEITH ROWE, PAUL MORLEY, JOHN SAVAGE, SIMON REYNOLDS, PAUL STUMP, MARVEL, IAN HAMILTON-FINLAY, JURGEN HABERMAS, HAPPENINGS, LUCY LIPPARD, PAULA REGO, DAVID SHRIGLEY, WITTGENSTEIN, POP ART, TOD BROWNING, JARMAN, PASSOLINI, ANTONIONI, WENDERS, BANK, RAY JOHNSON, ROBERT WYATT, ALEX CALLINICOS, CHRIS SQUIRE, TARTAN TERROR, MIROSLAV VITAS, DAVID TOOP, VARASE, ED WOOD, MANET, T.S. ELIOT, NAGEL, NEIL YOUNG, CRASS, L.M.C., BEACH BOYS, CONCEPTUAL ART, MAUSS

Thursday, October 13, 2005

In answer to wouldbe-neo-BeBoper

Had tech probs with email, so apologies for late reply this end. Appreciate your busyness - same here. Volume not as much of an issue as I seem to have indicated. More space in the din; less continuous; less of a jam. That's my thing. Miserable oldgits is fine; I'm a big boy now. But atmosphere IS important; as important as the playing, as a creativity-promoting element. Unclear re your workshop comment. I've ran lots and atmosphere is important there, also. I'm all for getting down to it, and for cutting out the shite; but I had only just met you all! Surely some chat wouldn't have broken the rules! I'm combative, dialectical by nature - so I have little problem in standing my ground; but the kind of improv and improv situation I desire to make gets its charge from flowing in similar directions - like, to simplify, a kind of communism; rather than constituting itself as a kind of aural fight; like so many arguments - like so many capitalists trading stocks on the stock exchange floor! I'm being pithy, I know, but the difference is an ideological one; it is a difference in outlook. The stock exchange floor scenario feels dated to me, now. I love McLaughlin and his ilk for what they wrere and did. But - as an apt, familiar-to-you distinction - take the seeming internal fights of a Beefheart composition, with its supposed disjuncture, supposed hesitation, supposed disharmony etc. Because the thing is so meticulously-constructed it flows together in a kind of unity, as a radical reworking of unity itself. It doesn't disipate its energies by being overly individualistic in its internal structure and outward effect. That, for me, was Beefheart's contribution as a 20th Century composer. Meanwhile, if one takes the form of that seeming internal argument aesthetic and uses it as a means to free up players in a group situation, you get chaos; but, generally, not interesting or sophisticated or radical, new forms of chaos, but tried and tested, dated forms of chaos. The worst jams are that, for me: however many people in a room, playing individually together. That had its time as a viable method for serious players. At bottom, I like conversation, to speak as well as to listen. That, in brief, was the subject of my doctorate: reciprocity. My wish now is to apply that ideal to group improvisation.
Regards, Anthony