Eno-Ob-Scene-O, Cafe Abdab, 2006

sign-writer

Porno Adorno, with unknown, Cafe Abdab, 2005

gg00, Cafe Abdab, 2006

Pie Dinner, Cafe Abdab, 2006

Tart Ersatz, Cafe Abdab, 2006

Jape Clogger, Cafe Abdab, 2006

J.G. Power-Ballard & Soutine Routine, Cafe Abdab, 2006

Betty Page-Turner, Cafe Abdab, 2006

Xy Satie, Cafe Abdab, 2006

variousing

Cheers Dave. Good to hear from you. My mate, Gym Nasium, is a nice addition to the general bourgeois life I lead, yeh! I haven't got around to using any of the torture equipment just yet, as I'm too unfit to do anything on them but give myself a charlie horse. So, it's been swimming, the spa, steam room, sauna, lots of showers. In a few months, I'll feel good, I know it - as you say, it takes a while to reap the rewards. No different from building mental muscle. Nina Hagen is a genuine site, from the looks of things. There'll be others. Wolf Eyes are on there. There's heaps of US garage trash, mate. ************************************** You sent the Dr. Who stuff before. Thanks. Did chuckle. Look forward to the material you are sending. Hope some of yours, Bill's, and Noel's stuff in there. Fred Frith I do like. I'd be glad to get copies of anything like that. He does have a Gnarly toughness at times, then he can be bluesy, ambient. It always sounds on the edge of not quite making it, though. That's a favourite concept of mine in toto, as you'll know. Similarly, Laurie Anderson I like. So, please do copy me stuff of interest. Much appreciated. In return, I'll send you DVD of film I'm making. It'll be 45 minutes, complete with soundartwork soundtrack. I have about 32 minutes thus far. It's probably going to be called GEDDY LEE HELIUM VOICE. But, I was email chatting with Roj last night and got into reminding myself about Sinking the Belgrano: Our Lives as Machine Parts. The footage I have really fits that idea - of course, I do just turn over the same obsessions, anyway! The plan with the film is to use it when we play live. * has a DVD projector, so that's possible. I've got my head around the film-making stuff now and have decent, easy-to-use software, too; so I am putting efforts into this area. In retrospect, I did the groundwork with all those jpegs on the blog. Now it's time to get those moving; make those horror films! Take it easy mate. Best wishes, Anthony

Porno Adorno, Cafe Abdab, 2006

indissociations, misdirectives, meaningfulness, brio

variousing

Cheers Roj. * son, * - who is a drummer, singer, and producer - was kind enough to furnish me with lots of top-notch *. I have lots now; still the small matter of getting to know how to use the blessed things, however. I haven't made anything with that stuff yet. The prettysoundartworks - la! - that I have finished and published/circulated were made with the frankly shite * and, the last one, with the, useable but limited, *. These are both intuitive devices; so there's ease-of-use but crudity in equal-measure. In the end, one has to learn the new instruments like the old ones if one wants sophisticated results. Having said that, though, those pieces have a certain rustic charm and immediacy, as early efforts can do. I think 'Onement' has something; and it's nice the way 'Around the Sickbed' turn in on itself after a few seconds. I think eventually, I'll produce something acceptable. Your closing comment, 'new medium for the future', references something Brian Eno said on The Culture Show about an integrated, undifferentiated DVD as artwork, being the new step. Weirdly, that was my idea behind the 'Sinking the Belgrano: Our Lives as Machine Parts' film and sound thing I made with Dave's help toward the end of my time up North. I wanted the sound to function not as a soundtrack - and thus, logically and perceptibly separate/separable from the images; but as part and parcel, intertwined, integrated, intrinsic. There would be images, sound, artwork, and my usual quasi-fictitious concept around that, the array of characters, allusions, suggestions, associations. I've had this notion of an artwork called Sinking the Belgrano since about 1990, whilst on foundation in St. Helens. I did things in and around it on my degree, and kept it as a part of what I did whilst on the PhD. You're younger than me, so you might not know the reference in enough detail to see how it relates to its subtitle: Our Lives as Machine Parts. Basically - and with a cheeky reductivism, I have to say, and I'm paraphrasing, too - when Thatcher sunk the Belgrano during The Falklands War in 1982, probably illegally, she assured her place as British PM for the 1983 election. After that landslide - beating Michael Foot, and beating the whole idea of Labour as a Socialist party in essence - Thatcher really got into changing Britain into that 1980s mammon monster. Thus - albeit reductively: Sinking the Belgrano: Our Lives as Machine Parts. The artwork I conceived of was basically an improv session Dave and me did up in Wigan; with visuals Dave shot at my suggestion at work, in *, during the nightshift, on a low-grade camera, which added aesthetically to the whole thing actually. The rough thing Dave put together after I moved up here works really; and if we'd've worked on it some more it would have been interesting, I feel. The soundtrack was a bit unsuitable, in retrospect; but Dave's visuals are right on the button. They capture that dreamy, tedious nightshift thing; and - as a metaphor - kind of ape the way Britain sleepwalked into Thatcherism. The idea won't go away, too! I reference it on the blog; so it is still topical! Oh, and the cover I made for the Dave package had pictures of Thatcher and another Tory politician (possibly Keith Joseph) on the front. These where monochrome, photocopier quality. Each had horrid blue eye shadow and lurid red lipstick magic-markered on, punk-style! Thatcher was labelled 'Anthony Donovan' and the other was labelled 'David ********'. Nasty! Very eye-catching! Best wishes, Anthony

Xy Satie & Decaf Bjorknutrino, outside Cafe Abdab, 2005

J.G. Power-Ballard, Soutine Routine, & Ergo Shortform, Cafe Abdab, 2005

333

Porno Adorno, Cafe Abdab, 2006

Pie Dinner, Cafe Abdab, 2006

variousing

See you list interests in Si_Comm and in Rhodri Davis. Saw the latter with Mark Wastell, at Pyramid, in Warrington, 2005 (or late 2004). It was, to say the least, pretty amazing. They managed to make very small music that was nonetheless very frenetic; which is quite rare, in my experience. Never once did it explode; it remained contained; but not like, say, Morton Feldman. Their minimalism was frantic, violent even. Si_Comm is a friend, who lives down the road. His brand of minimalism is different again. There is a good deal of variety in this field. The band I am in, murmurists - though not minimalist per se - does have this element to it. The soundartworks posted on my myspace page are just me, playing with Nero Wave Editor. Nothing special; and the first things I made with that software. Just experiments. The visuals which surround some of murmurists' activities can be found on the blog. Best wishes, esoterian24skidoo

Grievance Dave Mignon, Porno Adorno, & Decaf Bjorknutrino, outside Cafe Abdab, 2006

piss rays. riding the scree. incidentae. crossed-out crosses

Tesco Extra, Northampton, UK (detail)

.

Jape Clogger, Cafe Abdab, 2005

Decaf Bjorknutrino, Cafe Abdab, 2006

601

Xy Satie, Cafe Abdab, 2006

reduce churchill

CHUCKNORRISDANCER

.....*

reduce churchill

variousing

Is not corny, I reckon; as I know what you mean. I grew up in a town - a hell of a place, literally! So, urban is all I really know - despite hundreds of walks up mountains! I like some pastoral, rural, music - but I, like you, thrive on the raw energy of impulses like punk's urbanism. I like discord, aggressive playing, confrontational attitudes etc. - so long as they are backed up with intelligence and ideas, with sound politics, and are ultimately constructive. I like the Modernist project, is one way of looking at it. I like its preoccupations with difference, making strange, with moving forward, iconoclasm. Punk was and is part of that; maybe the last part, before the fizzle and collapse into Postmodernism. Certainly, I would want murmurists to reflect and include that. The film I've made so far definitely does; and the electronic nature of our sound, though varied, indicates our wish to connect with such themes. A recent contact of mine has been a guy doing contemporary pschogeography - basically, wandering around, in his case London, in an artful, Situationist-style vie to rewrite the map. Films like Robinson in Space, London, Sans Soleil, and London Orbital, and books like Heart of Darkness and The Postcard, do something of the same. I like this material; I like its attitude. I have it in mind when I'm creating what I do. McLaren's early work - a film about Oxford Street - played with such notions. Savage posits this as a key precursor to Punk. I agree. Against the backdrop of Prog's pastoralism, Punk emerged like Pop Art did against the backdrop of Abstract Expressionism; announcing, in its own way, 'this is tomorrow' - nihilistically, as 'no future in England's dreaming', and being concerned with so-called real-life, urbanism, as opposed to the rarefied fantasising of pastoral Prog. In essence, I like and respect both attitudes, as having something to say; in essence, I like both, in tandem, as a kind of ProgPunk / PunkProg. That, for me, is the good stuff: Godspeed being a good example. If you can set up the Chewbacca gig - excellent! Again, thanks for your commitment to murmurists. Like you, I don't intend to spread myself thin. I'd rather invest my efforts and time into what I really want to do. I think we have something worth building upon, and I'm a hard-worker by nature, and will put the hours into murmurists - creatively, and in order to network our material. Best wishes, Anthony

reduce churchill

Chuck Norris

Xy Satie

J.G. Power-Ballard

Eno-Ob-Scene-O, Cafe Abdab, 2005

Soutine Routine, Cafe Abdab, 2005

Tart Ersatz, Cafe Abdab, 2005

ding dang, but for a cross of fun

Pie Dinner & Xy Satie, Cafe Abdab, 2005

Eno-Ob-Scene-O, Cafe Abdab, 2005

din of poses, strut down. timed-out. TIMED-OUT

variousing

Just to say, * called around the other night - left your software; which I have loaded onto my laptop. I've made about 32 minutes of film with it - intended for back-projection at murmurists gigs, if we all like it. The film has a soundtrack, but it can be muted for gigs. The images range from footage of the actual Sun going round, crowds of faces whiting-out and melding into other faces, two people talking, and yobbos drinking, to still images - often dropped in for a split-second - of faces from my blog, some recognisable/famous faces, bits where the whole thing just goes one colour, red, white, black, orange, blue, etc. My idea is that the projected film will light the room as well; so it'll go red, white, etc. The basic feeling is that of unease; kind of like a horror film. My favourite terrain. For Sporadicfest, we have 45 minutes - so I'm aiming to make film of that length. I'm thinking in terms of three definite movements of 15 minutes approx. each. Maybe we could structure our improv around these timings, as we discussed previously. * had the idea of starting with something aggressive, loud, and full - getting away from the usual quiet improv beginnings. This might be fun! We kind of look like a rock power trio anyway - with guitar, bass, and drums! I like this idea; especially if we suddenly stopped after about 30 seconds! Perhaps we could repeat the same kind of thing at the beginning of each 15 minute patch? Anthony

variousing

Thanks S. I subscribe to The Wire myself, so received my copy a couple of days ago. Wonderful to see the Scott Walker interview, and to get a taster of The Drift. Certainly Rob Young's citations of Eliot, Pound et al are, in Walker's case, valid - as devices for illuminating Walker's own multi-textual, multi-voiced approach. Walker is - as logically follows - situated firmly within that Modernist tradition himself. That's what takes him away from most current music, even its supposed loftier peripheries. One can only speak of him in the same breath as Eno (for artist engagement, seriousness, and variety), even Ivor Cutler (for poetry, esoteria, personal singularity), perhaps King Crimson (for attempting to extend the Prog project - a Modernist project in essence). Tilt took a little from Peter Gabriel's third album, in some of its colours and attitudes; of course Rhodes and Gilblin played with both Walker and Gabriel, so there's that crossover anyway. Gabriel III is still a very good album, to my mind; though I never listen to it. Unlike Walker, however, Gabriel moved away from the possibilities offered on that album, toward the mainstream, musically, and toward the centre, as a personality, a kind of post-Prog national institution, in some ways - being involved in the Millennium Dome, for god's sake! Gabriel's influence is huge, though - helping to bring World Music into the mainstream. But, for me, Walker's tenacity and singular commitment is, firstly, more artistically interesting, and is, in its clarity, more productive in terms of originality, of moving forward, of invention, of making strange - the engines of Modernism. I doubt Walker is a recluse in the lumpen sense; he just isn't a populist. As he said during The Culture Show interview, there's already enough of that stuff around. There is something to be said for Gabriel's approach, though - in attempting to square the Prog/Modernist impulse with populism. It's just that, inevitably, that hybrid smacks of dilution, not concentration. That 'shaving down' approach Walker talks of is, in the end, a much more powerful way to make art. It would be good to think that The Drift is not his last album. Cheers, Anthony----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------From: Scott Walker : 30 Century ManDate: Apr 23, 2006 2:51 AM http://www.thewire.co.uk/current/story2.php Big article with some great photos by our brilliant Director of Photography Grant Gee - have to buy the magazine to read it, but well worth it - a great interview in which the man himself offers up some welcome clues to some of the songs on his new album The Drift, which, need it be said again, is a monolithic masterpiece. Cheers, as always - S

QRTrr tone firm fodder

kith-cake.. digital daylight, superimposed ethno / trade apes on trading floors. Iran-wise

variousing

My word, I had not realised the length of time you spend in this site's bulletin boards, supposedly - as you seem to think - putting all the little people right on moral and intellectual issues; correcting them on all manner of things. As you say, you 'live for' intellectual discourse, philosophy. For sure you do - at least as you define them. Quantity belies only one kind of application, however; quality belies another. You are profilic in the former; but grandly lacking in the latter it seems. The evidence is there, in those boards. Your ability to grab the wrong end of the stick is simply stunning. You hit upon one part of something someone says, amplifying it, in order to make some tentative, over-egged point, in a hollow self-interested, bullying commitment to a depleted, simplistic quasi-dialects. You moderate on an uninvited basis; a big fish in a little pond. You abandoned our discussion because your limitations came up and bit you. Of course, you'll confect some kind of excuse; groping for subjectivity, emotion; ditching the 'living for discourse' in so doing, but retaining it anyway, as a badge to brandish, but without substance. If I had known how much you seem to enjoy putting people down, I would have taken off the kid gloves during our exchanges. Do some more reading; ideally, please do some more thinking - especially before opening your mouth or tapping your mistaken, ill-conceived, and corrosive invective into your computer. Additionally, please drop the tedious footer '...Find stable partners, not a stable of partners...'. Cheap poetry doesn't always reveal hidden truths; pithy isn't always smart. I am actually attempting to help; though I find your activities distasteful.

re. Scott Walker

Cheers. I'm sure you're right about The Drift. The interview in this month's The Wire (received this morning) indicates the same, and was a lovely surprise. Walker is out on his own, for me. I find it tedious and annoying that he is treated so much as a quaint oddity -because he's a supposed recluse, and his music, in being 'difficult'/'challenging', is somehow reducable to the level of curio. He really is far more valuable than that. A song like The Cockfighter (to my mind the best on Tilt) is not only a harrowing piece of art, it is extraordinarily beautiful, dramatic, and magnificantly human. The passage 'I have a green light...' is a real moment - sonic, poetic, open-hearted, constructive, inclusive. Then, as it descends into a reworking of the song's obtuse, atonal, Hammer Horrorific, whitenoisy intro, the contrast is stalk and intelligent, on the one hand, and almost comic, certainly blackly-comic, on the other. Scott baying at the moon... And then the dull drum thud of Bouncer See Bouncer; and the sunshine of its middle-section... Nothing compares. His albums take 10 or 11 years because they are crafted, considered statements. I listened to Tilt every day for the rest of the 90s! Almost everything else sounds childish after it. Again, thanks for the work you are doing on your film. I cannot wait to see it. Best wishes, AnthonyPS: It was good of you to accept my invite. My myspace sites are pretty formative at present. A fuller picture of what I do art-wise can be gleaned from http://murmurists.blogspot.com

Pie Dinner / Grievance Dave Mignon

Not depicted: Glenn Branca, The Hafler Trio, & c.

Eno-Ob-Scene-O, Cafe Abdab, 2006

lateral 666

Xy Satie, Cafe Abdab, 2006

structure to follow, mate / plus: an alphabet of allocations, asmeared

Pig Ignorant, Plot, Wigan, 2003

classwar karaoke machine

part of an equation

J.G. Power-Ballard / Soutine Routine

erase |.#/,

potlatched, mordant frames

over the texted mound, giddy up, giddy down

nanologue / derm / volte-facer

no wave Glenn Branca, as dots, as dashes

variousing

Cheers * Yeh - perhaps, as you suppose, it was somewhat freer and easier during the early 1970s. Certainly, there was a spirit to that time which is a lot less apparent now. There are pockets of beautiful and honest invention out there today, however, and the internet makes it easier, and possible, to locate these, and thus to build a kind of community from the diaspora. In fact, I do wonder how I ever met anyone years ago, pre-internet! Word of mouth was all there was, and that makes for a fragile little world. Email can create strong bonds, in making communication easier; including file-sharing. It has to be social. It has to be fun. It has to feel like a group, an economy, against that cold mainstream freeze. Improv provides that, and it's my main musical interest at the moment - and the only one I'm keen to pursue at the moment, too. I get ideas and schemes for composition, but, for now, I'm looking to explore the happenstance and indeterminacy of improv. And I don't mean jamming - vamping along on an Em or similar, or just playing 'separately together' with others, in an undifferentiated din. I'm keen to increase attention to detail, and to avoid strategies and forms associated with rock music. Yet, even if it was in some useful way freer and easier back then, one cannot take anything away from the fantastic invention of those times. Originality is still hard-won, whatever the climate. I'm sure you agree. For me, stuff like Jaco, Derek Bailey, Miles Davis' good stuff, Cage, Satie, Morton Feldman, etc. is just genius, period. This all gets added to all the time, of course. THE major musical event for me in the foreseeable future is Scott Walker's next album, The Drift, released next month! First since Tilt of 1995. Recently, I heard part of Symphony No.10 by American composer Glenn Branca. Amazing! Terse, dense layers of orchestration. Never heard anything quite like it. There are some soundartworks of mine on www.myspace.com/esoterian24skidoo - four in total. These are just fragments of experiments; nothing too serious; mostly me feeling my way through some software. They have their charms, though. Best thing to give you an idea of what I'm doing at the moment, though, is just too large to email - as it's a 25 minute DVD. Send me your address and I'll happily send you a copy. Thanks for your interest. Best of luck with your project. I don't envy you trying to obtain funding! Hope they stump up the money! Regards, Anthony

Lee Lifeson-Peart, Cafe Abdab, 2006

classwar karaoke machine

visual by-product / notions of a NORTHERN BLOC

Grievance Dave Mignon / Ronnie-James RaDioHead / Pie Dinner

Lee Lifeson-Peart / Eno-Ob-Scene-O

[reluctantly] poverty is overrated

Ilko-Bilko, Cafe Abdab, 2006

drive-by, eats roadkill / deeper voice than george takei