Boing Boing Video: The Throbbing Gristle Interview

Somewhat related: I found this great YouTube playlist of JG Thirwell rewarding.

We propose to acquire the rights to digitally duplicate and store THE BEST of every record company’s difficult-to-move Quality Catalog Items [Q.C.I.], store them in a central processing location, and have them accessible by phone or cable TV, directly patchable into the user’s home taping appliances, with the option of direct digital-to-digital transfer to F-1 (SONY consumer level digital tape encoder), Beta Hi-Fi, or ordinary analog cassette (requiring the installation of a rentable D-A converter in the phone itself . . . the main chip is about $12).

All accounting for royalty payments, billing to the customer, etc. would be automatic, built into the initial software for the system.

The consumer has the option of subscribing to one or more Interest Categories, charged at a monthly rate, without regard for the quantity of music he or she decides to tape.

Providing material in such quantity at a reduced cost could actually diminish the desire to duplicate and store it, since it would be available any time day or night.

Monthly listings could be provided by catalog, reducing the on-line storage requirements of the computer. The entire service would be accessed by phone, even if the local reception is via TV cable.

Techdirt: Did Frank Zappa Come Up With A Business Plan For File Sharing In 1983?

(via Richard Metzger)

“It has long been well established that gospel music was one of the main ingredients in the original rock ‘n’ roll stew. Yet it must be emphasized that the particular gospel style that most influenced the founders and forefathers of rock was as much on the fringes of the musical mainstream as the religious views of groups like the Millerites were from the norms of biblical interpretation. Everyone knows, for instance, that Elvis was in large part formed by gospel and that gospel music is a significant part of the Elvis canon. There is a vast difference, however, between the style of gospel upon which Elvis drew to help create the rock blueprint and the gospel records, based within a more mainstream tradition, he made later in his career.“How Great Thou Art” is not a rock ‘n’ roll urtext; the premillennial musical expressions of sects such as the Holy Rollers is.

In his definitive biography of Elvis, Peter Guralnick tells the story of how Elvis and his girlfriend Dixie would sneak out of their all-white “home” church during Sunday service in order to experience the ecstatic service of the black church down the street. There, Elvis would have heard Reverend Brewster, whose sermons were also broadcast on the radio, deliver the apocalyptic “theme that a better day was coming, one in which all men could walk as brothers.” Yet even if Elvis did not pick up on that message, which is doubtful, it is obvious that he was directly influenced by the “exotic” and ecstatic music of such soul stirrers as Queen C.Anderson and the Brewsteraires, the church soloists. His first audiences did not fail to make this connection.”

(via Pop Matters)

“Over the recent Christmas season, my 21-year-old deejay nephew flipped through the large collection of vinyl LPs from the sixties, seventies, and eighties now shelved in our basement. Many is the time when I have privately cursed that collection, hauling heavy boxes of vinyl up and down steep flights of stairs on moving days. But my husband steadfastly refused to sell or pitch out anything—from the Dukes of Stratosphear to the Stranglers—and now I’m rather glad that he did. We now have a miniature museum of sound from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, complete with original shrink wraps and a few Andy Warhol covers.

But what will future generations – particularly future archaeologists—make of the hundreds of thousands of tons of vinyl recordings that our civilization pressed in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? I expect most of you have seen that clever Pepsi commercial set in the future, where a middle-aged archaeologist leads his Pepsi-drinking students through a split level ranch house as if it were a Roman villa, and is unable to identify a dusty glass bottle of Coca-Cola. What will future researchers make of our record collections?”

(via Archaeology Magazine)

(Related: “Digital Needle- A Virtual Gramophone” by Ofer Springer)

It seems so long ago now. But just under five years ago, London’s nightlife found itself at the center of a seismic cultural explosion that still reverberates around the U.K indie-verse today.
As with the psychedelic scene based around the UFO Club in Tottenham Court Road and the punk movement’s Soho HQs The Roxy and The Vortex, it involved a small group of movers’n’shakers taking control of the pop apparatus to create something new, exciting and—whisper it—revolutionary.

For a short while the fat-cats of the British music business—a dismal alliance of promoters (tell me, have you ever seen a skinny one?), lazy managers and idea-free labels—were on the back foot, and oh, what pleasure it was to be alive to see it and be involved in it. In its place? A new form of night-time activity, where gigs could take place on a bus, a subway train or even, at one memorable soiree in Regents Park, up a tree, and the old ways—not least the capitalist chicanery of (yawn) advance credit card bookings—could go swing.

Ever since The Stone Roses had attempted to subvert the medium with their gig at Spike Island in 1990—deemed a failure by anyone who hadn’t actually been there—promoters in the U.K had ensured that any free expression amongst bands was brutally clamped down upon. At many venues—not least the once-prestigious The Rock Garden in Covent Garden—young bands were even forced to endure a “pay to play” policy which meant they had to cough up £50 before they could even get on a stage. Worse, it was an unspoken rule that if any band dared go beyond these preset boundaries, there would be hell to pay.

Full Story: Arthur Magazine

Download mp3 from Cult of Zir

See also:

Technoccult TV: Cult of Zir interview

Technoccult TV: Cult of Zir performance

Those who remember Sheffield United in the top half of the old Division One or Clockwork Orange the first time round will know the name, maybe experienced the sound or even have fallen under the spell of revolutionary post punks Cabaret Voltaire.

Kora! Kora! Kora! is not the new album by Cabaret Voltaire but a cut-up and clubbed-to-pieces collage of key cuts from the platinum-selling debut album by the Maori dub phenomenon called Kora. You’ll have to wait a bit for proper new ground-shaking Cabaret Voltaire stuff. Richard H Kirk, the Cabaret Voltaire originator and mainstay has resurrected the name. Hallelujah!

Shiva Records is humbled to be able to exclusively announce that the seminal, electronic, art-rock experience from Sheffield known as Cabaret Voltaire is poised to inflict audio-visual carnage across designated areas of the world and its solar system once again.

There will be no pop records. No comeback rock gigs. No steel city tours. In fact… there will be no pop, just art.

All Disinformation is currently classified. But it appears that the UK population will need to head towards the London and Edinburgh regions next spring to catch the fireworks. Europe will see some bright lights in the fall but you country folks out in the US and Japan may have to wait until 2010 before the fan truly hits the shit.

The first physical sign of the return of the Audio Visual Avatar can be witnessed by all in January 2009 when Shiva Records release the first new work by Cabaret Voltaire since 1993, an incredible re-working of key tracks from the debut album by Kora, Shiva’s awesome Platinum- selling, chart topping Kiwis… it’s like Bob Marley & The Wailers meets… well, Cabaret Voltaire.

Full Story: side-line.com

(via OVO)

“Just when it appeared that George Lucas had finally laid to rest his epic saga of Jedis, Wookies and Ewoks, he has announced that Star Wars will return as a stadium experience. The Times has learnt that Lucasfilm has authorised Star Wars: A Musical Journey, a retelling of the story that will combine excerpts of the film with live orchestral accompaniment. Diehard fans may dream of Jedi Knights serenading Jabba the Hutt and C-3PO singing “Don’t cry for me, R2-D2” but they are likely to be disappointed. Producers for the show, which will have its world premiere in Britain, emphasised that although actors would be used to narrate the story, it would not be a stage musical.

The production, which condenses more than 13 hours of film into 90 minutes, will be more like a classical music concert performed in front of a cinema screen, 27m (90ft) wide. The audience at the 17,000-seat O2 Arena in southeast London will watch key scenes from the film as 86 musicians from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra play extracts from John Williams’s score. The composer has reworked the music for the show, which will take place on April 10. Other shows may follow, depending on demand.”

(via The TimesOnline)

“They cannot perform in public. They cannot pose for album cover photographs. Even their jam sessions are secret, for fear of offending the religious authorities in this ultraconservative kingdom. But the members of Saudi Arabia’s first all-girl rock band, the Accolade, are clearly not afraid of taboos.

The band’s first single, “Pinocchio,” has become an underground hit here, with hundreds of young Saudis downloading the song from the group’s MySpace page. Now, the pioneering foursome, all of them college students, want to start playing regular gigs — inside private compounds, of course — and recording an album. “In Saudi, yes, it’s a challenge,” said the group’s lead singer, Lamia, who has piercings on her left eyebrow and beneath her bottom lip. (Like other band members, she gave only her first name.) “Maybe we’re crazy. But we wanted to do something different.”

In a country where women are not allowed to drive and rarely appear in public without their faces covered, the band is very different. The prospect of female rockers clutching guitars and belting out angry lyrics about a failed relationship — the theme of “Pinocchio” — would once have been unimaginable here. But this country’s harsh code of public morals has slowly thawed, especially in Jidda, by far the kingdom’s most cosmopolitan city. A decade ago the cane-wielding religious police terrorized women who were not dressed according to their standards. Young men with long hair were sometimes bundled off to police stations to have their heads shaved, or worse.”

(via The New York Times. h/t: Professor Hex)

Drone on Myspace

(via OVO)

Turns out Sleazey’s new project, Threshold HouseBoys Choir, just played in Boston.

Just walking along the street, I am constantly struck dumb by the beauty of a piece of rust on an old gate, or the purity of the sound of a blind beggar singing for his supper, or the chord made by three competing air-conditioners. I think that most people filter out those kind of things from their perception of life, by necessity — to avoid going mad from the overload. In doing so, they miss a whole mind-blowing, extraordinary world of joy.

All I have always tried to do is share my joy, that joy, with other people. Unfortunately, to see these things and not go mad myself, I have had to filter out different things, such as where I put my glasses, or what day it is, or whether I have spilled noodle-sauce on my trousers. ,-)

Obviously the Mellotron used tapes to reproduce the sound of real instruments, and backings, and the Fairlight was invented (it seems to me) to do the same thing, only digitally and with more tools for composition and manipulation. But I was using one of the first Apple IIs ever made on stage with TG, before the first Fairlight even left Australia, to reproduce all kinds of sounds and “music concret” – I never understood why these wonderful toys should only be used to put a string-player out of a job.

“Look what I can do with the sound of a Polaroid camera, or some teenagers first gasping ejaculation, or the sobbing confessions of a young murderer or mercenary, or the regular thump and hiss of a life-support machine!” I thought. How much more power and meaning do those sounds have, than a not very clear reproduction of a French horn playing a B flat? For me, it’s a no-brainer.

Full Story: Tiny Mixtapes

(Thanks Trevor)

Previously: Video for Peter “Sleazey” Christopherson’s first post-Coil project: The Threshold HouseBoys Choir “A Time of Happening”

“When Ry Cooder and I got to El Mirage Dry Lake, it was 110 degrees and heading to 117, hot enough to cook your head inside your hat. The Mojave Desert in daylight will cut the gizzard right out of you, Tom Joad once said, which is why the Okies crossed it at night. I put away the map and Ry pulled the S.U.V. through the gate and stopped. The gravel road fell away below us and vanished into the bone-white lakebed. The mirage was working: a shoreline shimmered wetly in the distance, made of bent sunlight and sand.

El Mirage Dry Lake sounds like a place one step away from nonexistence, but it’s about 100 miles north of Los Angeles, out among the Joshua trees. It’s not far from Edwards Air Force Base, in the Mojave’s military-paranormal sector, where secretive government installations lie low among the jackrabbits “‘ a land of spy planes, space aliens, off-road vehicles, sturdy reptiles and people with freaky desert habits, like racing vintage hot rods on dry lakebeds. It is, in other words, a critical stop on Ry’s California trail.

Ry Cooder “‘ the rock and blues guitarist, roots musician, record producer, songwriter and composer “‘ is a son of Santa Monica who has spent nearly 40 years exploring all corners of the musical planet, like a sharp-eared extraterrestrial on a lifelong voyage of discovery. (His two-CD career anthology, released last month, has a perfect title: “The U.F.O. Has Landed.” ) But even that barely covers it “‘ it’s strictly from his solo albums and the haunting scores he wrote for films like “Alamo Bay”  and “Paris, Texas.”  If you add all the records he has made with other musicians, like Gabby Pahinui, Flaco Jiménez, Ali Farka Touré, Mavis Staples, the Chieftains and, most famously, the Cuban all-stars of the Buena Vista Social Club, you can only wonder where on earth he could go next.The answer: his own backyard. Ry’s latest project may be his strangest and most ambitious. It’s a trilogy of concept albums, plus a short novel, that resurrects a lost California of places and people that Ry, who is 61, remembers from growing up in the 1950s. It was a dryer and poorer place then, but rich in things he likes, like simplicity and ingenuity, good musicians, cool cats and hot cars. Time and neglect have bulldozed most of it into oblivion.”

(via The New York Times)

Nolon Ashley, aka Cult of Zir, talks about his music, Portland, the OTO, and the Voudon Gnostic Workbook.

Great series of articles on possession and the artist.

“In a beautifully written and highly interesting recent post on his interview with Mark Stewart for The Wire, Mark K-Punk writes:
“…one link between the post-punk trio I wrote about in the July issue (Stewart, Mark E Smith, Ian Curtis) is channeling. In order to get at what is at stake in so-called psychic phenomena (and its relationship to performance and writing), it’s necessary to chart a middle course between credulous belief in the supernatural and the tendency to relegate any such discussion to metaphor: being taken over by other voices is a real process, even if there is no spiritual substance. (…) Hence another take on the old ‘death of the author’ riff: the real author is the one who can break the connection with his lifeworld self, become a shell and a conduit which other voices, outside forces, can temporarily occupy.“

(Posts on Possession 1-7 via Documents)

A new Psychic TV album will be released October 20th. They will also be performing live in NYC November 9th.

Album announcement

Concert announcement

Experimental musician Cult of Zir (aka Nolon Ashley) is joined by Uxepi Ipexu, Meghann Rose, and Ms. Jointz for a performance at Pocket Sandwich in Portland, OR 7/11/08.

Concert footage by Daniel Rafatpanah.

Elements of the Machine-Man-Drum and Phillip K Nixon Egregiorian factions have merged to bring about an uncompromising auditory assault. These agent/operators will build and present “YOU ARE GOD, GUARD YOUR MIND” - an interactive ritual based on building a synthetic Godhead out of the participatory audience by firing off arrays of lightwave & audio sigils in a stream of auto-gnosis generation via remote interfacing with the biological specimens on hand during this ritual/projection of PKN hyperstition & MMD Temple constructs into 11th dimensional reality structures and programs. They’ll be combining cutting edge technomantic tools like EEG sensory, Radionic Tonality, MIDI utilizing Local Area Networks, and more traditional memes such as Cutups, Noise, and Circuit Bending — Be Aware: this archetypal form sampling will emit reality reshaping radiation fields.

Ikipr (of Machine-Man-Drum) writes:

EEG Driven audio assaults the Godhead/Participant, tempering and strengthening his fortitude and divinity. This is achieved through the feedback loop interaction of the user and the expansive multilayered software backbone. Sorry if I look uninteresting/uninterested in this video, I am busy making minor tweaks to it’s mixing for performance. Due to the somewhat random nature of the software algorithms and the use of EEG as a control interface, the song pretty much does what it wants off of your brainwave data.

Aleph 9

Philip K Nixon

(via Dark Roasted Blend)

Step up New York’s Immortal Technique. The heir to Dead Prez and Public Enemy’s revolutionary legacy, dude bust onto the scene with the Green Lantern-helmed ‘Bin Laden’ four years ago and hasn’t let up since. With the critically lauded The 3rd World mixtape just out, most artists would be touring TV stations. Immortal Technique, by contrast, is off to Afghanistan to build an orphanage.

“It’s a medical clinic and an orphanage for children that have been involved, and whose parents have been involved in the violence in Afghanistan,” says a weary sounding Tech down the phone from his native Harlem. “For those that have been orphaned by a conflict that’s lasted for… God knows how many years. I’m going out there. I’m obviously not gonna be able to administer the entire project, but I feel like it’s essential to be involved. The aspect of media coverage is essential. I joined with the human rights organisation Omeid International to facilitate this. I get lots of programmes shown to me. I could choose to do this, or choose to do that, and this particular time around I wanted to do this. The need came from the same place that all my music came from. It ain’t like I decided to reach into another part of myself, it’s just a natural progression. It’s a little bit of weight on the shoulders, but it’s something that I welcome because it’s something I know needs to be done.”

Full Story: The Quietus

(via Zenarchery)

J: You, Manson, you are a symbol. You always wear make-up, no-one knows who you are… Christ is a man who became a symbol, you are the opposite. You are a symbol who is in the process of becoming human. When you say �Eat Me, Drink Me’, you prove your love for the world. You offer yourself… you are food for the vampire cannibals. That’s what I feel. Talking about you personally: you are a mythology, but back to front. Each new era needs new mythologies…

M: I completely agree. You understood that so much better than anyone… yes.

J: To express ourselves as artists in the world, we can no longer destroy it. It is ourselves that we have to destroy.

Full Story: End and End

“When Tallan “T-Man” Latz was 5, he saw Joe Satriani playing guitar on TV. “I turned around to my dad and said, ‘That’s exactly what I want to do.’” Three years and countless hours of practicing later, 8-year-old Tallan is a blues guitar prodigy. He’s played in bars and clubs, including the House of Blues in Chicago, and even jammed with Les Paul and Jackson Browne. He has a summer of festivals scheduled and has drawn interest from venues worldwide.

And what, you might ask, would a kid not even in the third grade have the blues about? The state of Wisconsin for one, and some possibly jealous older musicians for another. An anonymous e-mail sent to state officials complained that Tallan was too young to perform in taverns and nightclubs because of state child labor laws. His booking agent even got an anonymous letter threatening her with death if she keeps booking him.”

(via The Chicago Tribune)

(Talan “T-Man” Latz playing at the Steel Bridge Songfest)

“Heavy Metal in Baghdad is a feature film documentary that follows the Iraqi heavy metal band Acrassicauda from the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 to the present day. Playing heavy metal in a Muslim country has always been a difficult (if not impossible) proposition but after Saddam’s regime was toppled, there was a brief moment for the band in which real freedom seemed possible. That hope was quickly dashed as their country fell into a bloody insurgency. From 2003-2006, Iraq disintegrated around them while Acrassicauda struggled to stay together and stay alive, always refusing to let their heavy metal dreams die. Their story echoes the unspoken hopes of an entire generation of young Iraqis.”

(via Snag Films. “Heavy metal in Baghdad” site. Acrassicauda’s MySpace)

(See also: “Heavy Metal in Baghdad: Masters of War”)

“I’ve always been both a metalhead and a total fantasy geek-possibly the two most powerful formative influences on my teen years were Metallica and J.R.R. Tolkien. There exists a deep and occult connection between heavy metal and fantasy fiction, one that surfaces both obliquely-Spiked wristbands! Album covers that could double as Wheel of Time book jackets! Fire!-and overtly, as in the legacy of metal songs explicitly inspired by fantastical literary sources.

After the jump, check out a few of my favorite heavy metal songs inspired by fantasy novels. And I know I’ve forgotten a few, so add them in the comments!

Iron Maiden - ‘To Tame a Land’

Pretty much the entire Iron Maiden catalogue of powerfully narrative songs could be considered part of the classic fantasy canon. But special mention has to be made of ‘To Tame a Land,’ off Piece of Mind, based on the Dune novels. And they’re really not kidding with these Dune references, which are serious and deep-this is Bruce Dickinson singing, as a fan, to other fans:

It is a land that’s rich in spice
The sandriders and the ‘mice’
That they call the Muad’Dib.

He is the Kwisatz Haderach.
He is born of Caladan
And will take the Gom Jabbar.”

(via Suvudu. h/t: SF Signal)

thunderheist - jerk it (contest cut) from thatgo on Vimeo.

(via Changethought)

“It could only happen in New York. Where else in the world would people queue around the block for a seedy-looking jazz club, to hear the performance of a man best remembered for having invented the musical broomstick, whose fingers are so arthritic they can hardly move, and who is still pumping it out every Monday night at the age of 93?

But then, the weekly Les Paul show at the Iridium Club, a basement joint on Broadway that looks as though it was set in aspic some time in the 1950s, is more than just a performance. It’s a pilgrimage, where fans of 20th-century American music and lovers of the electric guitar - Paul McCartney, Jeff Beck, and Keith Richards among them - come to pay homage to the great man. Richards bluntly summed up the aura of the man when he said: “We must all own up that without Les Paul, generations of flash little punks like us would be in jail or cleaning toilets.”

Like his close collaborator, Leo Fender, Les Paul is best known for the electric guitar he created. If the Fender Stratocaster is the edgy workhorse of the rock industry, the Gibson Les Paul was and remains its elegant rival, its richly varnished mahogany body and oyster-shell fingerboard adding a touch of class to a rough-hewn affair. But there’s much more to Paul than a lump of wood with a cherry-burst finish: he’s also a consummate musician who, despite the arthritis which has reduced him to the use of just two fingers, is still able to spark a flame in much younger performers.”

(via The Guardian)