Manafonistas

 
 

 
 
 
Recordings are strange things. Documentation of a bygone moment that becomes a reality of its own. An artefact, filled up, wadded and weighted with tons of listeners’ projections it sometimes even succumbs to. The Aboriginals had their songlines, vocalizations, songs triggering mental maps connected to walking tracks in vast landscapes. The vocalization led them on the track, kept them on track. One was real by way of the other. The other way round thus.

Every recording – with its own kind of tracks – is an act fixing sounds for memory and remembrance but listening is in the best case an act of vicarious (re)creative imagination by the listener. The artefact recording gets de-reified, momentaneous again. Through listening and listeners recordings become objects of desire, of remembrance, of joy and sorrow.
 
 
 

 
 
 
By listening to a recording the very moment can be elongated, soaked by perceptions of new realities, associated with new sounds etc.. And nowadays we are able to dissolve it all again and again by remixing. In the old days you had variation by establishing new styles. Nowadays you have infinite remixing, rebuilding of fluid forms (until the form is thinned and exhausted). Arve Hendriksen has demonstrated the circle in his collected work box Solidification. The evasiveness and infinite reverberation of sound as a consequence of great, striking forms, their ongoing reoccurrence, their return.

„Anthology box set containing 7 hard-to-find and critically acclaimed albums, released on labels such as Cantil, Opal and All Saints. The box includes: ‘The Serpent (In Quicksilver)’ (1981), ‚Abandoned Cities’ (1984), ‘The White Arcades’ (1987), ‘By The Dawn’s Early Light’ (1991), ‘Music For 3 Pianos’ (1992) ‘Through The Hill’ (1994, with Andy Partridge of XTC), ‘Luxa’ (1996). Also includes 76 page book compiling interviews and essays about Harold’s work from writers such as David Toop, Mark Prendergast and Mike Barnes.“

 
https://soundcloud.com/experimedia/rashad-becker-traditional
 
 

„I keep coming back to Rashad Becker’s Traditional Music For A Notional Species Vol 1, again and again. It has to be my favorite of the year, hands down. Next is Interpretations On FC Judd. And I loved Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement’s The Plant With Many Faces/Folklore Venom, which I’m treating as a double album. Simon Fisher Turner’s Epic of Everest deserves mention, as does Rene Hells‘ Vanilla Call Option. I love the Wanda Group’s releases, and Mika Vainio’s Kilo ought to be somewhere in the top 100. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds were great, and I still don’t understand the appeal of Factory Floor, its seems like such a dud to me.“ (Raylan Wang)

I asked them at one point – because their record was so anti-punk and different to the fashions of that era – what they were, for example, listening to in the time before the creation of their masterpiece, and they answered, nearly unisono, that they were listening to Brian Eno’s „Another Green World“ without end, on and on and on, so to speak.

Imagine you had the chance to listen to any album in history before anyone else. What album would you listen to, and who would you bring along to listen to it with?
 
For instance, Wired.co.uk would listen to Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells with Steven Hawking — a perfect blend of epic soundscapes and mind expanding conversation.
(source: www.wired.co.uk)
 
I would invite Brian Eno to listen with me to the one record, „Colossal Youth“, of the Young Marble Giants, and convince him to produce a second album of the band which would also mean to become (for the time of studio work) a fourth member of the group, playing vintage synthesizer and singing (not only background vocals) along with Allison Statton and Stuart Moxham. (M.E.)
 
„My ideal album would be Caruso’s first recording. And i’d bring him along to listen to it. Why? Because at that moment recordings were truly bleeding edge technology. And to be able to experience Enrico’s feedback on „being recorded“ and to be able to listen to himself for the first time.“ (K-Milo)   

This poem could be a burner
But around 4000 words are missing
In my performance
I needed them (so bad) to kick
The wrong ones out
To describe yesterday’s journey
Of hearing „Colossal Youth“ live
After half a lifetime of hearing it
On record

O, let’s try this exclamation,
O, the music so simple
(Not simple at all)
Sometimes (between two verses)
I went lost on Memory Lane
Surface-scratching
(No surfaces at all)
I am not an idiot calling it
Digging-deep (though that it was)

Falling at least

Wenn der Tempo mit dem Jukebox-Man wieder kommt 

Meine Erst-Bestückung der Wurlitzer-Jukeboxen liegt nun auch schon wieder fast sieben Monate zurück (Gregor öffnet seinen Plattenschrank Nr.41), höchste Zeit mal ein paar Platten auszutauschen. Die Musik, die der Jukebox-Man im Koffer hat, auf den Tempo packt und nun im Winter zu den ausgesuchten Kneipen bringt, stammt in der Regel aus diesem Jahr, es gibt nur wenige Ausnahmen. Eine dieser älteren Platten, die ich zwingend in einer Wurlitzer sehen wollte, wäre die kürzlich an dieser Stelle erwähnte Wiederveröffentlichung von Musik des CAN-Gründungsmitglieds Irmin Schmidt. Unter dem Titel Villa Wunderbar wurde da eine Platte zusammengestellt, die, wäre sie 2013 erschienen, sicherlich unter meinen 10 besten Platten des Jahres rangieren würde. Und da ist noch eine ältere Platte, die ich zwingend in den Plattenkranz einer Wurlitzer einordnen möchte und das ist die von Tim Hecker, Ravedeath 1972. Die Vorstellung, das Stück In the Fog: I-III würde in einer Wurlitzer Jukebox 2100 von 1957 in einer etwas lausigen Kneipe eines weitläufigen Busbahnhofsviertels wählbar sein, ist doch umwerfend.

Und noch eins: Wenn der Juke-Box-Man zwanzig Titel mitbringt und in die Boxen einordnet, muss er sich zwangsläufig auch von zwanzig trennen. Hier aber zunächst die zwanzig neuen Musikstücke. Und immer noch gilt: die Auswahl hätte nichts mit einer Best-of-Hitliste zu tun, wäre natürlich auch nicht wirtschaftlich motiviert, orientierte sich vielmehr an dem, was der Jukebox-Man selber gerade gerne an diesen bestimmten Orten hören würde und sich wünschen würde, dass man Freude an genau dieser Musik hätte:

1. Interpret / Album / Titel des Tracks
2. Quercus: Absolutely Brilliant Prophets of Doom
3. Quickbeam: Quickbeam One to hold
4. Mark Kozelek & Jimmy Lavalle: Perils from Sea Ceiling Gazing
5. Tindersticks: Across Six Leap Years Marseilles Sunshine
6. Mazzy Star: Season of Your Day Lay Myself Down
7. Kacey Musgraves: Same Trailer Different Park Silver Lining
8. Nick Cave: Push the Sky Away We No Who U R
9. James Vincent McMorrow: Cavalier Cavalier
10. Harold Budd: It´s Steeper Avalom Sutra  Near the Roses (For David Sylvian)
11. Shearwater: Fellow Travelers Ambiuity
12. Chris Schlarb: Psychic Temple II Bird in the Garden
13. Dave Metthews: The Music Is You – A Tribute To John Denver Take Me To Tomorrow
14. Glenn Jones: My Garden State Going Back to East Montgomery
15. Simone Dinnererstein & Tift Merritt: Night Still Not Home
16. Nina Simone: To be free – The Nina Simone Story Funkier Than A Mosquito’s Tweeter
17. Tim Hecker: Ravedeath 1972 In the Fog: 1-III
18. Irmin Schmidt: Villa Wunderbar Le Weekend
19. Irmin Schmidt: Villa Wunderbar Rapido de Noir
20. Mark Lanegan: Imitations Mack the Knife
21. Max Richter: The Last Days On Mars Lost in Space

…und, naja, trennen würde ich mich schweren Herzens von

• Big Mama Thornton: Hound Dog
• Kate Bush: 50 Words for Snow
• Robert Plant & Alison Krauss: Your long journey
• The National: So far around the Bend
• My morning Jacket: El Caporal
• Muddy Waters: Mannish Boy
• Al Steart: On the border
• Bears: More left out
• Nick Howard: Days like these
• Regina Spektor: Small town moon
• The Avett Brothers: February seven
• Paul Buchanan: Mid Air
• King Creosote: Give it up
• Charles Lloyd: Ne Me Quitte Pas (If You Go Away)
• Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man: Show
• Mark Knopfler: Cleaning my gun
• Hector Zazou & Björk: Visur Vatnsenda-Rosu
• Antony and the Johnsons: Hope there´s someone

Fave Films 

1) Prisoners
2) Mud
3) Inside Llewyn Davis

Fave Series

1) Broadchurch
2) Top of the Lake
3) Homeland (3rd Season)

Fave „Non-Thriller“ Books

1) Richard Hughes: Orkan über Jamaika
2) Urs Widmer: Reise an den Rand des Universums
3) Jess Walter: Schöne Ruinen