Have you ever reached out for something that was so tangible as to be almost in your grasp… that you realized you had to let go of what you were holding on to – to be able to reach even further out towards the object of your interest? The letting go is reminiscent of limbo, weightlessness, and uncertainty; that ‘far away, so close’ feeling.
Oh how I love the plentiful emptiness of Michael Nyman.
Steven Hall, whom I first met in 2000, is now on MySpace, under the moniker Buddhist Army. So am I, not as Jahsonic (somebody had beat me to it) but as MetaSoul. The similarities do not end there. We both feature his brilliant track — and also the favorite track of Steven’s mother — ‘Volleyball’. Click one of our spaces to listen.
One can easily recognize Steven’s guitar as the guitar on many a Arthur Russell track. Here is Steven Hall’s profile at Discogs.
‘Volley Ball’ sounds like nothing else I’ve heard in a while but to give you an idea it’s similar to:
Update: Steven notifies me that he doesn’t want to “take all the credit for the Volleyball song. Daniel Wang programmed and recorded the beat with that relentless bell–I used it readymade–I liked this beat so much I used it for another song that appears on the same live concert cd–“Go For The Night” which is one of only two songs that Arthur and I ever wrote together.”
Tired of being reminded by other magazines that the best albums in the world were made by The Beatles, Beach Boys and Rolling Stones? So was The Wire magazine. In 1998 they polled their writers to come up with a guide to 100 records that should have ignited the world’s imagination, except that everyone else was fiddling.
Here is the text and here are the scans.
I quote the Arthur Russell (World of Echo) entry by LG (Louise Gray?) and the one on Lee Perry (Revolution Dub) by WM ( Will Montgomery?) because both feature highly in my personal fave list:
One of the least-honoured links between disco and the avant garde, Russell, a cellist whose experiments were too much for the Manhattan School of Music, was making connections between the formats as soon as he hit New York in the mid-70s. Though not his first release, World Of Echo – for solo cello, voice, effects and electronics – encapsulated many of his ideas for loose-limbed music that kept curiosity at its heart. Echo remains an extraordinary record: sonar rhythms and melodies drift through various layers of sound and meaning, like a metaphor for the unconsciousness. Russell, who died in 1992 from AIDS, is remembered for his disco singles – “Kiss Me Again”, “Is It All Over My Face“, “Go Bang”, the latter resurrected by Todd Terry’s “Bango” – and co-founding Sleeping Bag Records; but this record, categorized as just plain weird when it was released, should be re-examined closely. LG
Lee Perry’s “Yehol Evol” – B-side of a tune called “Honey Love” which ran the vocal track backwards over the backing track – had served notice as far back as 1967 that the producer was prepared to take his music beyond the bounds of the merely sensible. Besides some wildly eccentric vocals, Revolution Dub, from 1975, contains material completely foreign to popular music – snatches of television dialogue. I am Doctor on the Go”, proclaims Perry to a chorus of canned laughter, and so on. The collision of the British sitcom with the rhythm from Junior Byles’s aching “Long Way” took reggae into retaliatory culture-shock experimentation. Also, this album had some of the most potent dubs ever recorded by Perry. There’s the ultra-heavy version of Bunny Clarke’s “Move Out Of My Way,” the rock-hard reworking of Jimmy Riley’s take of Bobby Womack’s “Woman’s Gotta Have It”; and a juddering dub of “Bushweed Corntrash”. Fierce and funny. WM
It was a hot afternoon
Last day of June
And the sun was a demon
The clouds were afraid
One-ten in the shade
And the pavement was steaming
Betty said she prayed today
For the sky to blow away
Or maybe stay
She wasn’t sure.
Derrick May discusses ‘ Strings Of Life‘, one of my favourite pieces of black music.
Moodymann plays Gil Scott-Heron’s ‘We Almost Lost Detroit’.
The Rapture plays ‘House of Jealous Lovers’.
LCD Soundsystem plays ‘Losing My Edge’.
Via Andrew at gmtPlus9 (-15) comes an MP3 of “Cavern” (from the Optimo EP, 99 Records 1983 .mp3 audio 05:20), a track by Liquid Liquid. See also here, where I explore the sample history of the track. Dennis Young recently sent me his latest CD Shadow, a radical break in style with his early eighties work with Liquid Liquid. Shadow has bits reminiscent of singer songwriter Tom Waits and post-punkers Echo and the Bunnymen.
Dennis Young on Shadow:
“All of the songs were written around my acoustic guitar & vocals. Most of the songs have a dark rustic quality with the addition of violin, bowed dulcimer, accordion, electric & bass guitars, & various percussion instruments to enhance the mood of the songs. Special thanks to Tom DeStefano & Kevin Booth of “Firedog Studios” for the great job of mixing & production. Also, special thanks to the other thirteen musicians including David Axelrod, Jon Francis, Stephan Eicher, & Sal Principato to name a few. “
Word has just got in that hip hop producer Disco D has taken his life at only 26. Always sad, this kind of news. Here is one of his productions for 50 Cent. Shayman fought manic-depression for much of his adult life.
Dave Shayman (aka Disco D) was found dead this morning of an apparent suicide. He was 26 years old.
The Michigan-bred, New York-based producer—who was best known for his work with 50 Cent — began his career at the age of 16 in the college town of Ann Arbor, MI. Having discovered the then unnamed Detroit ghettotech scene via artists such as DJ Assault and DJ Godfather, the still in high school Shayman dove head first into the music scene, scoring his first residency at age 17, at Ann Arbor’s The Blind Pig before he could even legally enter the venue. He began releasing music soon after signing his first record deal before graduation with Bad Boy Bill’s Muzik/Mixconnection label. —URB.com
“Music is the essence of Romanticism,” says Colin Wilson in Private Passions interviewed by Michael Berkeley on BBC Radio 3’s about his taste in music. He adds that Nietzsche wanted to be a musician but then decided against it because it would have been too dangerous for him.
Via Stephen’s This Space who admits being a bit ashamed embarrassed of having read so much Wilson.
Some more quotes from this programme:
“You can’t put philosophical ideas into music, the only thing that interests me.”
“Ritual in the Dark is a novel about a sadist, and I used Prokofiev as a leitmotif because it was a dark piece of music.”