w a l k i n g i n d r e a m s . . .

the following tracks are from the forthcoming unsong project ‘a blue rose for black bob’.

all tracks are inspired by the work of david lynch; however, no Lynch films or soundtracks were sampled to make these recordings. anyone familiar with previous unsong output (yeah, right) will notice a marked difference in the new material, a greater attention to rhythm, even musicality, as befits the remit of the project and inspiration for the pieces; however, as per usual,  none of these tracks exhibit any conspicuous musical technique or talent.

created for sale at, play at, and use in promotional material for, the double r club.

…
…
‘i love you in fire’ (appearing on the showreel for this year’s twin peaks uk festival)

‘click your fucking fingers’

‘somnambulatin”

‘a pretty girl is like a threnody’

You (not) the living…

 

very late in the day for a tribute, i know, but i think i’ve been stymied by just how much i don’t like this whole ‘everyone who has ever meant something to you artistically is dying’ thing. unforgivably childish as a reaction but there you are. anyway, seemingly out of the blue, peter ‘sleazy’ christopherson is no more. it’s difficult to quantify just how big a loss this is to the world of electronic music, or just how many incredible releases this man had under his belt (as part of throbbing gristle, psychic tv, coil and more). for me coil were always the gold standard of the industrial / electronic / experimental, whatever you want to call it. they clearly seemed not to give a shit what others expected of them, they did what the fuck they wanted when they wanted. this is a rule to live by as any kind of artist. the following quote from kafka seems to sum up their m.o.: 

“don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”   


excerpt from ‘in my head a crystal sphere of heavy fluid’ – by peter christopherson
(not coil as stated) from the v/a cd  foxtrot)

so first jhon balance, now sleazy, are dead. and yet simon cowell walks the earth; “i swear, it’s not a world of men.”

thanks to jon, and to matt, who he persuaded/cajoled/threatened into trekking out to photograph sleazy’s resting place and tribute in a bangkok temple:

more pics here.



n a v e l g a z i n g a n d s t o c k t a k e

so, it happened.

i am a 40 year old man.

i m p o s s i b l e .

impossible not in a literal way of course, and not in the way of suggesting that it’s so highly improbable. it’s not like i’ve lived the life of an unremitting daredevil, nor have i submerged myself in excess, whether of the flesh or of the chemical. in fact, comparably, i have been really quite chaste (though more due to disinterest than disapproval of any opposing stance). no, it feels impossible to be 40 because of the great myth of the aging process: that one day you’ll feel like an adult.

i have spent the vast majority of my adult life without gainful employment, and the minority engaged in what would be a stretch to refer to as a ‘proper job’. this choice of mine to remain ‘apart’ in this way has certainly cost me, certainly financially, and has probably left me somewhat socially retarded. now this could, i suppose, be seen as evidence of a single-minded iconoclast and fearless social adventurer, or indeed the reader might be forgiven for thinking that this is the role i am casting myself in by telling you this; but it isn’t. the truth is that many people pursue the things i have pursued and still hold down regular jobjobs. i think my refusal might have more to do with my inability to do things by halves, or in fact sensibly. but there you are.

despite what might be discerned, i suppose, as successes, success on my terms and with regard to things i would wish it for, has thus far, to a greater extent, eluded me.

i am proud of several things i have achieved/created, none of which has earned me any money 
a t   a l l , not that pride and payment have anything to do with one another.

things of which i am proud (acknowledging that pride is supposedly a ‘sin‘, whatever that means, and enjoying this list all the more because of this):

# i have written three novels, all of which remain unpublished (unpublishable?); and yet i’m half way through my fourth. it seems to have become what i do.
# many years ago i wrote and performed a one-man show, which, while it gained good reviews ate money like a fat man in a cake shop.
# despite my  u t t e r  lack of  a n y  musical skill, i have made ‘musics’ of which i am proud.
# though (thankfully) childless, i have had a vasectomy.
# as a (not socially) mature student i completed a degree in creative writing, receiving a first, finishing in the top 50 students of the university.
# i co-created rective, a club which never failed to make a loss, and yet we kept going for an amazingly blinkered 5 years, enjoying (almost) every second.
# i co-created the double r club, which bizarrely has been an unprecedented success.

in my years on the planet i have broken an arm and a foot, the former in youthful misadventure and the latter in ill-conceived anger. since i was born i have not been hospitalised. i have my tonsils. i have my appendix. i’ve had kidney stones (arguably the worst pain i’ve ever experienced) and i have a “tight lateral-band”, which gives me a dicky knee.

i have lovely parents, a fact which shows its value more and more the older i get.

i have a girlfriend who is so much better than it could be reasonably argued i deserve. though i did a very good job of nearly fucking it up early on, she makes me laugh and amazes me on a regular basis. she’s stronger than me,  
f a r better organised and more focussed. at times i am, against her, not unlike a cardboard cutout.

while unwilling to call myself a ‘lucky’ person i think that, on balance, mostly good things have happened to me during my time on the planet. which is nice.

despite this i have spent a great deal of time angry.

the best lesson i’ve learned, though sometimes it appears i’ve retained this knowledge less than others, is to pick my battles. “mellowing with age” seems like a kind way of saying acquiescence; of being cowed. which i don’t think i have been, i believe i have merely refocused my ire. but then perhaps this is merely self-delusion.

i am often selfish. i am a self-adsorbed individual though, i think, rather than a self-centered one. empathy can be a struggle but it’s there, i just think i’ve done a good job of keeping it in its place.

“are you good or bad you ask yourself…” goes the the the song, but i’m not sure i ever have. not sure its even an interesting or meaningful question. i once sat around drinking with colleagues who both admitted they had done very bad things to certain people that they were ashamed of, and not only wouldn’t they reveal the name of the person they did it to, they wouldn’t even detail what they’d done. they asked me if i too had such a story to contribute but the fact is, i said, i don’t judge myself that way. why bother? as with empathy, guilt is there but if you can’t keep it in its place where does that leave you?

whether that’s any way for a 40-year-old man to think i have no idea, but there you are. or, in fact, here i am.

” a s e p i a v i s a g e y a w n i n g i n t h e s c u m . . . “

“suttree turned up a tinted photograph of a satin lined wicker-bound casket with flower surrounds. in the casket a fat dead baby, garishly painted, bright fuchsia cheeks. never ask whose. he closed the cover on this picturebook of the afflicted. a soft yellow dust bloomed. put away those frozenjawed primates and their annals of ways beset and ultimate dark. what deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh. this mawky worm-bent tabernacle.”

-from suttree, by cormac mccarthy

[ s o u n d o f k l a x o n ]

i g n o r a n c e i s s t r e n g t h .

yes of course  it’s all utter bollocks but i’ve decided to take this particular comparison. i may even put it on my cv.

who do you write like?

” m a n w i t h t h e w o r l d ‘ s l o n g e s t p u b i c h a i r , m e t t h e w o m a n w i t h t h e w o r l d ‘ s l o n g e s t f i n g e r n a i l s … “

“…they made the world’s worst fairy tale”

apparently plans are afoot for them to visit europe… quite,  q u i t e  excited.

in other news, a documentary is available concerning their first incarnation:

t h e e v e n i n g r e d n e s s i n t h e w e s t

“notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings.”

“the truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.”

“and the answer, said the judge. if god meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? wolves cull themselves, man. what other creature could? and is the race of man not more predacious yet? the way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. his spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. his meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day. he loves games? let him play for stakes. this you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? aye. and again. with other people, with other sons.”

“it makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. war endures. as well ask men what they think of stone. war was always here. before man was, war waited for him. the ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. that is the way it was and will be…. war is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. war is god.”

-from the blood meridian, by cormac mccarthy

 

(i’m re-reading this for the second time within a year. it’s just that good.)

c a m e r o n ü b e r a l l e s ?

the bloated toad of brown is down but not out. not yet.

and so, it would appear that the masses are, yet again, drawn inexorably to anything bright and shiny; and in politics there is nothing brighter, or shinier than the promise of change. spurious change it may be but the very word holds within it something that requires no measured weighing of the facts, no examination of policy or intent. it’s the sociopolitical version of ‘out with the old in with the new’.

change was powerful enough to get a black man elected in america, i would argue a very positive thing indeed, but it’s influence over populations is not an exclusively moral one. the tyranny of change is instead utterly blind. look at the idolatry that was laid at the feet of shit-eating-grin blair.

the allure of change lies in the concept itself and exists in a parallel world to that of logic, a world where the motto is ‘this isn’t working, try the polar opposite’; where the only thing of value is the about-face, the 180◦. the eternal promise of the utopia within the u-turn.

at the time of posting there are more tory wins than there were in the time of kinnock. the hounds are howling on the horizon and the foxes are getting nervous…

time, people, to get the blues.

s o c i e t y d o e s n ‘ t o p e r a t e

“society doesn’t operate because we love everybody. society operates through sanction, through forms of collective control, through hierarchy, through the imposition of controlled forms of mass hysteria. y’know, so the novels that persuade you in the idea that everybody is intrinsically loveable are pulling off a confidence trick, as are the moral systems that delude people, you  see it time and time again laurie and you know it’s true. people’s capacity for empathy with people who are outside their immediate social matrix is remarkably small and it doesn’t matter whether you call on this through- you validate it through evolutionary psychology, or you pull up stanley milgram’s experiments at yale or whatever it is, or the genocidal impulse that seems to exist in humanity, these are true facts. the thing is that people will hear these arguments and they’ll say ‘yes but you know, we’ve got to aim for something better than that’, but what would that world be like in which you empathised with six and a half billion people? what would the world be like if you felt the pain of the two hundred and fifty thousand people who were rubbed out in haiti a few weeks ago? what a strange place it would be.”

– will self, in conversation with laurie taylor