Author: andrea Page 20 of 71

In Dennis Potter’s classic mini-series The Singing Detective, characters frequently, and without warning, burst into song, channeling the sounds of the past in order to put an optimistic (and often ironic) gloss on a dark present.

As with Potter, the playful, sometimes eerie sound collages of British groups Broadcast, the Focus Group, Moon Wiring Club and Belbury Poly conjure up an alternate reality—an eccentric, occasionally unsettling combination of cold war dread and boundless optimism.

Belbury Poly’s Jim Jupp (also co-owner, with House, of record label Ghost Box International), pinpoints the off-kilter sound as the precise juxtaposition of “ancient and modern, or the cosmic and the parochial.”

Less a full-blown genre than a state of mind, “hauntology” (as it has been dubbed by Simon Reynolds) mixes such far-flung influences as early analog electronica, musique concrete, library 78s, Italian film soundtracks and old newsreels into something wholly other yet quintessentially British in flavor.

Studio maverick and musical (brico)lagist Raymond Scott is also revered, as is twisted folk from the 70s (Wicker Man and Valerie & Her Weeks of Wonders being particular touchstones), as well as sultry echoes of Tropicalia and other 8-track exotica.

Taking a cue from Scott, collage is the primary form, with sounds sampled from thrift-store finds, dusted off and given new life. Vocals are generally not sung, but intoned, with a bit of radio static for extra verisimilitude.

There’s a tinge of sci-fi to be sure — “the future is now” — mixed with nostalgia and the desire to recapture the idea of community in a pre-digital age, using digital tools as the medium. (These songs are preoccupied by yearnings for a pre-lapsarian, pastoral world; the Brutalist architecture embodied by the New Town movement is simultaneously revered and reviled, as is the very concept of Suburbia.)

Take, for example, Broadcast & the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age (Warp), a new maximalist extended player from Broadcast in collaboration with Julian House, the like-minded mastermind of the Focus Group. This collagist kaleidoscope plays out like an album-length socio-ethnographic séance, sprinkled with quasi-historical references and half-remembered voices. True to its title, the resulting spectral sounds seem to emanate from an imagined future.

Oddly, American band Dymaxion was among the first groups to really hit upon this sampladelic, largely instrumental style.

Like Kurt Schwitters, this short-lived but fantastic band were expert at culling beauty out of junk; their retro-futuristic collage aesthetic consistently yielded surprising, devilishly catchy results. Their 1997 track “Haunted Radio” (written for a marvelous one-off Vesuvius compilation called Spooky Sounds of Now) could be a thesis statement for the ghostly sounds to follow. Their posthumous singles compilation, 4+3=38.33, may still be available from Duophonic. (Dymaxion principal Claudia Newell has begun posting new music on her blog, Maison Atomisée).

Oakland, California duo Crawling with Tarts pre-dates Dymaxion by a number of years, taking an abstract, musique concrete approach. Their two-song suite Grand Surface Noise Opera is composed for two turntables and uses “surface noise as a binding element” (to quote co-composer Michael Gendreau). It’s also about building narrative, layering voices and tonalities to create mood and to shift meaning (both linear and non-linear). In a 1999 interview, the Gendreaus traced the piece’s origins back to England, specifically, a record store in Portobello Road…

Broadcast & the Focus Group, “Love’s Long Listen-in” (from Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, 2009)

Dymaxion, “I-Man Transport (from 4+3=38.33, 2002)

Crawling with Tarts, “Grand Surface Noise Opera No. 3 (Indian Ocean Ship)” (fromOperas 3 & 4)

IMAGE BY IAN HODGSON AKA MOON WIRING CLUB, FROM THE BLANK WORKSHOP

Things have gotten quiet around here (again!). I’m just back from a restorative week-long jaunt to the UK, where I saw my friends Scarce play a triumphant show (more on that a bit later), visited friends in London and Oxford, and generally had an amazing time.

While in the UK I missed by a hair’s breadth a new dance from Michael Clarke, who frequently drew inspiration from the Fall’s music for his choreography. His troupe even collaborated with the Fall on a ballet —the score of which turned into the Fall classic I Am Curious Oranj. (You can watch selections on YouTube, beginning with this cheeky adaptation of “Spectre vs. Rector.”)

I adore Mark E Smith’s way with words, even if half the time I have no idea what he’s even saying. “New Face in Hell” is one (of many) I’m still working out — piecing it slowly together like the world’s most complicated puzzle. The song unfolds with amazing verbal dexterity, unspooling like a John le Carré spy thriller, dense with paranoia. “A prickly line of sweat covers enthusiast’s forehead as the realization hits him…”

While not every MES song works as a densely layered short story, many do, rewarding repeated, careful listens with “a-ha!” moments of clarity. (And confusion, too, but working through it is part of the fun.)

Fellow blogger Jon Underneathica must have a better handle on translating Mark’s splenetic rantings, and he’s turned it into a fun game. I give you Underneathica’s Mark E Smith Mix n’ Match.

Hours of fun! Collect all twelve! Let’s see, there’s the Peel Session version, the Brix Years, the Step Forward Years, the Brownies Blow-up Years, the post-Reformation Years, etc. etc.

The Fall, “Psykick Dancehall” (from It’s the New Thing! The Step Forward Years, 2003)

THE GLORY DAYS OF ROUGH TRADE (WINDOW DISPLAY, RT EAST) // PHOTO BY ANDREA FELDMAN

Dean & Britta
13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests
RISD
October 3, 2009

A Walk into the Sea
Esther Robinson, director
T. Griffin, composer
2008

Unspooling in slow motion, Andy Warhol’s screen tests exert a strange kind of hypnotic allure.

Documenting the Factory superstars, as well as the hangers-on, artists, writers, musicians and infamous acquaintances that were pulled into Warhol’s orbit, the films collectively stand as a poignant elegy to the lost innocence of the 60s.

Made between 1964 and 1966, roughly 500 exist. Filmed with Warhol’s 16mm Bolex, each film runs two minutes, the length of a single reel. Slowed down to four minutes, every blink, sly smile and hand gesture takes on a curious gravity.

A single tear tracks agonizingly slowly down Ann Buchanan’s cheek, then hangs, suspended, like a jewel.

Lou Reed, looking very Street Hustler behind enormous shades, swigs aggressively from a Coca Cola.

Square-jawed, blond Paul America evades the camera’s gaze until he finally cracks up, smiling broadly.

Doomed Freddy Herko —the Judson dancer who sailed out an open window in 1966— looks anxious and drawn as he sullenly drags off a dwindling cigarette.

In her memoir, Swimming Underground, Mary Woronov (one of the 13) cannily notes that Warhol’s screen tests are remarkable because “you would see the person fighting with his (or her) image —trying to protect it. …After that it slips and your real self starts to show through.”

Encapsulating that sense of self in flux must have posed a challenge to Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, the married duo who record as Dean & Britta. Looking to give the screen tests new life, the Andy Warhol Museum commissioned them to compose a soundtrack for a select group of 13.

(As principal songwriter for Galaxie 500 and Luna, Wareham’s music has effortlessly channeled a Velvet-y vibe for years. He must have seemed like a natural choice.)

The result, as it played out live last night before a packed house at RISD, was powerful —as sweet, funny, sad, desperate and ridiculous as the subjects themselves.

Mixing originals and covers, including Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It With Mine” (written for Nico) and a furious version of the recently unearthed Velvets gem “I’m Not a Young Man Anymore”, the score perfectly captured the hazy, narcotized momentum of the scene.

The instrumentals had the most frenzied energy. “Silver Factory” (for Billy Name) was shimmering and thunderous, like a wave cresting over and over. A Luna instrumental, “The Enabler” (re-titled “Herringbone Tweed”) fit Dennis Hopper’s test to a tee, its swaggering, low-end twang a perfect corollary to his glowering presence. (He breaks character halfway through, reverting from tough to goofball.)

The most languid, dreamy songs were paired with the most tragic figures, like the aforementioned Herko or poor, haunted Ingrid Superstar, who disappeared from her upstate NY home in 1987, leaving behind her false teeth and fur coat. And who could forget luminous Edie, who died of a drug overdose in 1971?

Danny Williams was another Factory casualty. Warhol’s live-in boyfriend for a time, he worked as a film editor for the Maysles and designed the lighting for the Velvets’ Exploding Plastic Inevitable traveling show.

In 1966, after a grueling (and emotionally taxing) tour with the VU, Williams drove home to the Cape to see his family. Late one evening he borrowed his mother’s car to go for a swim. He was never seen again.

Thirty-five years later, his niece Esther Robinson stumbled across a treasure trove of her uncle’s extraordinary black and white experimental films. Intrigued, she set out to solve the mystery of his disappearance. The result is the documentary A Walk into the Sea (2008).

Brooklyn musician T. Griffin composed the film’s soundtrack.

Working with collaborators Catherine McRae and Bruce Cawdron, the three set up in Williams’ old house, put microphones everywhere and let the sounds of the sea and surrounding woods lend their own haunting naturalness.

Of the process, Griffin writes, “I wasn’t dumb enough to try to sound like the Velvet Underground. But I knew they’d be hovering in the background somewhere, along with the Jaynettes and LaMonte Young.

“Esther was looking for music just at the edge of hearing, something that signaled the music swirling around NYC in 1966, but was impossible to place. Suggestive, not descriptive. We wanted music that sounded like a yellowed newspaper, like a rusty set of keys.”

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………13 Most Beautiful is on DVD from Plexifilm; you can buy it from the Dean & Britta store. A Walk into the Sea is available from Shiny Little Records. You can find the film at Amazon.

STILLS: ANN BUCHANAN, FREDDY HERKO, EDIE SEDGWICK [© THE ESTATE OF DANNY WILLIAMS]

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Dean & Britta, “Herringbone Tweed” (Live) (from 13 Most Beautiful…, 2009)

The Velvet Underground, “I’m Not a Young Man Anymore” (Live at the Gymnasium)

T. Griffin, “In Silver” (from A Walk into the Sea, 2008)