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You are currently browsing the blog archives for the month Oktober 2015.

Archives: Oktober 2015

 

 
 
 

Composed in the aftershadow of SUNN O)))’s most recent successes in immersive collaboration – the group having worked with Scott Walker on Soused, and Ulver on Terrestrials in 2013 and 2014 – and also from the broad and influential wake of their epitomic Monoliths & Dimensions, Kannon emerged both independently as a conceptual entity and with roots in the legacies of those projects, yet was fully realized years later in 2015. The album consists of three pieces of a triadic whole: „Kannon 1, 2 and 3.“

2015 22 Okt

Radio on

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Während meiner Abwesenheit in Holland überließ ich Gästen meine Wohnung. Ich habe überall Radiogeräte aufgestellt, die alle auf Deutschlandfunk eingestellt sind. Alle Frequenzen waren verstellt worden. Ich hörte mir die neuen Sender zwei Tage lang an und jetzt bin ich davon überzeugt, dass der Deutschlandfunk zurecht unser Staatssender ist. Welche Radiosender hört ihr denn (auch im Ausland)?

„Not only a deftly realised, enchanting meditation on time and its vagaries, the record is effectively a celebration of what we, as time’s denizens, are able to accomplish within it. Living life bravely, it suggests, should be our primary concern, despite the loss inherent in our very existence, whatever the obstacles lying in wait for us, however daunting it can often feel. These are startlingly beautiful, fiercely inventive songs, couched in the metaphysical, touching on the universal, born from a deeply personal place. Conveyed with sincerity, warmth and the musicianship and deep love of language and storytelling that sets – has always set – Joanna Newsom apart, Divers is a colossal achievement.“ (excerpt from James Skinner’s review in drownedinsound)

Like short stories forming a non-linear but narratively cohesive whole, the eleven songs on Divers travel from war zones to the wilderness, from a darkened coastline to a comfortable cottage in the hills. Their protagonists may be alive or dead, they may be ghosts or babies just born. Newsom is the omniscient but shifty narrator, speaking in an „I“ that both inhabits her characters and stands a bit apart from them, showing them up. Her deepest concerns are about the perils of fixing meaning. Like that other cultivated innocent, William Blake, Newsom senses a godlike mystery at the heart of the imaginative process and recognizes its parallel in the entropy of nature, what she calls, at the album’s climax, „the nullifying, defeating, negating, repeating joy of life.“ (npr)

2015 20 Okt

„Book of Ways“

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Wo war sie? War Halloween schon vorbei? Hatte sie nicht eine Kuerbissuppe angeboten, die woanders besser schmeckte? Wer sagte zu ihr: Geh den Floetenspieler von Hameln in Suedamerika suchen! Wer wies auf das Korsett von Madonna hin, das man vorne oeffnen konnte? Welche Alchemie-Toene waren das, die zu beidem verfuehrten? Sie spuerte den Boden unter ihren Fuessen weggleiten. Sie bewegte sich wie auf Wasser, war sie auf der Lethe? Durch den Nebel erkannte sie Plastikrohre oder waren die aus Holz? Ein kopfartiges Gebilde, aus dem Saiten wuchsen, riefen magische Klaenge hervor … Sie naeherte sich den fremdartigen Instrumenten. Stand da Philip Glass … ? Wie tief diese Musik in sie hineinging und sie doch federleicht machte. Jetzt stand sie blattnah vor dem Geschehen. Da stand eine Frau, ein Mann und dort noch ein Mann.“ Unglaublich, habe ich Euch endlich gefunden: Ihr seid UAKTI, Ihr seid BACH.“

 

 

Dies ist einer der drei zur Debatte stehenden Kriminalromane. Wer irgendwann im Eric Ambler-, Patricia Highsmith- oder Dashiell Hammett-Lesefieber war, erinnert sich an das ganz alte, und das moderne Design der Diogenes-Bücher.

 

2015 18 Okt

Time Falling Apart

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„As with Scott Walker’s late music, the results are songs with the effect of completely immersive, living and breathing worlds, each with their own internal logics, dynamics and (often bent) laws of physics. It’s a pleasure to be allowed to wander through them — and none more so than the title track of Joanna Newsom’s ‚Divers‘ itself, where an underwater world’s cool synthetic glow is pinpricked by harp notes that catch like sunlight on the ocean surface. Space appears to distort as the song’s story of distant love progresses, with the narrator sinking ever-further from the sun’s glow amid torrents of piano and woodwind, until finally she dissolves into pure sensation, lost entirely to the passing of time.“ – Rory Gibb in an excellent review (The Quietus) of Joanna Newsom’s forthcoming album „Divers“ (Drag City) 

„Most artists on their fourth album settle into atrophy, or at least comfort, Newsom delivers such complex, nuanced music, filled with arcane constructions, that she is only her own yardstick. (In a recent interview about Divers, David Longstreth cited The Milk-Eyed Mender as one of the reasons he quit college: „[What] am I doing here if someone is already out there making music like this, on this level?“) Her consummate craft is a given; what surprises every time is her ceaselessly renewing sensitivity for life’s vicissitudes and the fantastic ways she finds to express them. Divers is not a puzzle to crack, but a dialog that generously articulates the intimate chasm of loss, the way it’s both irrational and very real. Nothing will stem the fear of a loved one’s death, which western culture does little to prepare us for until the very end, but by pulling at the prospect of mortality from every angle, Newsom emerges straighter-spined, and invites you to stand alongside her.“ (Laura Snapes in another impressive review in pitchfork) 

2015 18 Okt

Dub steps

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And it’s funny because your image of a city never really is anything like the reality of it. Having an opinion about a city you’ve never visited would be like having an opinion about a record you’ve never heard. But any city with an airport named for the footballer George Best has to be a cool place. Belfast, cool place. Belfast, beautiful city. The pubs in the Cathedral Quarter, Jesus, you could be on a film set. Great bars, great beer. Near those pubs, this mural:
 
 
 

 
 
 
My favourite church is St. Mary’s Epsicopal Cathedral in Edinburgh. I don’t know why, for the Sacré-Cœur it ain’t. Anyway this cathedral in Belfast is totally great. It is slightly austere despite the generosity of its architecture.
 
 
 

 
 
 
And the train to Dublin is a big expensive-looking bastard that is almost like the Eurostar (but only costs 16 Euro). And getting off the train at Dublin Connolly is a million miles better than arriving by taxi from the airport. Especially at dusk. And you have no mobile data and need another currency yet there is no passport control. No Google maps, no problem – getting lost in unfamiliar cities is one of life’s big fat joys. Time passes, streets and streets of life walk by. Familiar but unfamiliar. You give up trying to guess where you’re headed and ask someone for directions.
 
– Excuse me, I’m looking for Great Denmark Street
– Great Denmark Street, Great Denmark street. Yeah. You see that stupid big fuckin‘ thing over there?
– Ha, yeah. I didn’t know it existed until now*
– Fuckin‘ stupid big thing. Head there, turn left and it’s five minutes up the road
– Thanks
– Take it easy
 
*I looked it up. The locals call it „the stiletto in the ghetto“ as well as „that stupid big fuckin‘ thing“. I am reliably informed by a well-known search engine that its official and slightly grander title is the Monument of Light.
 
 
 

 
 
 
Digression one: The Marlboro packet in Ireland says „Déanann caitheamh tobac díobháil thromchúiseach duit agus do na daoine mórthimpeall ort“ and I’m like, ahh, fuck off. In Magyar you were all like “ A dohányzás blah blah blah“ you big ride ye.
Digression two: Slideshow, seaside town, Coca-Cola football radio radio radio radio radio…
 
 
 

 
 
 
And I love that bit of some cities where the river cuts ‚em in two. A border/non-border. Düsseldorf and the Rhine, Glasgow and the Clyde, LDN and the Thames, Paris and the Insane, Buda Danube Pest. Liverpool and the Mersey. Dublin and the Liffey. Like most city rivers, the actual water looks mucky as fuck. But whoever or whatever made the cosmos made this, and that must be a good sign. Day and night.
 
 
 

 
 
 
And it was the cosmos that made this. Copyright, The Universe.
Digression 3. Megastructures in space.
And when there’s airports whose architecture is poetry, we’ll have music for fuckin‘ airports. No headphones required.
 
 
 

 
 
 
And then you’re back in Glasgow, suddenly, and you see this and you smile. (And And! And…)
 
 
 

 
 
 
Reference alphanumeric material:

James Joyce, Ulysses
Robert McLiam Wilson, Eureka Street
WB Yeats, Down By the Salley Gardens
 
Reference audio material:

Stiff Little Fingers – Alternative Ulster
U2 – Promenade, MLK, Shadows & Tall Trees
The Cassandra Complex – What Can You Say?
Pierce Turner – The Sky & The Ground
John McCormack – She Moved Through The Fair
Microdisney – Money For The Trams
Fatima Mansions – Only Losers Take The Bus
Van Morrison – Did Ye Get Healed?

2015 17 Okt

After hours

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NEULAND“: The Gurdjieff Ensemble & Levon Eskenian   / Tigran Hamasyan & Yerevan State Chamber Choir  / Eivind Aarset / Flanger  / The Schwarzenbach /   Julia Holter / Masayoshi Fujita // Lloyd Cole  / King Midas Sound & Fennesz  / Food (VÖ: 6. November) / Sons of Kemet / Johan Johansson / Laura Halo  // „NAHAUFNAHME“: HUBRO SPECIAL with Erland Dahlen,  Hakon Stene,  1982, Splashgirl,   Hilde Marie Holsen & Frode Haltli // „ZEITREISE“ : Hans-Joachim Rodelius DURCH DIE WÜSTE / Niagara NIAGARA  / Conrad Schnitzler GRÜN  // Marc Hollander ONZE DANSES POUR COMBATTRE LA MIGRAINE  / Paul Desmond FIRST PLACE AGAIN / Richard Hawley: HOLLOW MEADOWS  

2015 17 Okt

Siebzehn Zehn Fuenfzehn

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Woran liegt es eigentlich, dass vermutlich durch die zwischenzeitlich darueber hinweg gegangenen Jahre etwas verklaerte Urlaubserinnerungen an eine Fahrt mit der Kastenente nach Griechenland, wo dann auf der Fahrt hin und zurueck und auch im Urlaub selbst nur das Album Street Legal von Bob Dylan gehoert wurde, mit einem weisen Nicken der Umstehenenden goutiert werden und meine eigenen, nicht weniger verklaerten Erinnerungen an einen Urlaub in Hessen, kurz hinter Bebra und Bad Hersfeld, wo den ganzen Urlaub ueber das „Arrival“ Album von ABBA gehoert wurde, mit einem leichten Kichern der Umstehenden kommentiert wird ?


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