Music & Gigs
Live Underground: The Crypt, London, Sunday 17 July
Sunday 17 July, 7.45pm for an 8pm start
The Crypt, St Pancras Church, Euston Rd, London
With, in order of appearance:
* Disinformation
* Indigo Octagon ( Leila Sayal, theremin & Mark Pilkington, electronics)
* The Stargazer’s Assistant (David J Smith, percussion, and David Knight, guitar)
Entry is free but space is limited: please email mreks@camdenplayers.co.uk to reserve your place
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Invisible Polytechnic: In C, ICA 6 May
The second of the ICA’s music events suggested by Nathaniel Mellors features performances organised by Junior Aspirin, the record label co-founded by Mellors, Andy Cooke and Frieze’s Dan Fox.
The first part of the evening will be a performance of Terry Riley’s In C. The piece will be performed by Invisible Polytechnic, a loosely classical ensemble with world and experimental music influences.
In C was written in 1964 and is one of the major works of 20th century classical music. Riley, along with Steve Reich, Philip Glass and La Monte Young was one of the founding fathers of minimalism – a musical movement away from the clutches of over-cerebral serial music of the 1950s, embracing repetition, process and consonant harmony.
The second part of the evening sees Socrates That Practices Music performing their new album Further Conclusions Against an Italian Version (BAT). They have been compared to Bauhaus and A Certain Ratio, but more recently Socrates would be better described as a two man metagoth outfit who use samplers, synths, guitars, and drums to explore the occult, shire horses, legal wrangles, and less than confident gardeners.
Junior Aspirin Records will release Invisible Polytechnic’s recording of In C, and BAT, the new Socrates album, on the night.
Tickets are £5, doors at 7.30pm
Book here
More on Junior Aspirin
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English Heretic Princess Anne LP
Using found recordings, a research group from English Heretic have reconstructed the attempted kidnap of Princess Anne by Ian Ball. On the evening of March 20th 1974 Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips were returning from a charity film event in support of The Riding For The Disabled Association, when their limousine was held up along the Mall, by Ball. Eventually tackled by police officers, Ball was arrested. In May 1975, Ball was convicted of attempted murder and kidnap. A diagnosed paranoid-schizophrenic, Ball still remains in detention under the Mental Health Act.
Read more about the project and buy the picture disc LP over at English Heretic
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Watch Alexander Tucker’s new video
Thanks to everyone who came along on Friday to Weirding Modules at the ICA – it was great to see so many readers, listeners and friends, and a perfect launch for Journal 4. We’ll be uploading some photos of the performances shortly.
Anyone who enjoyed Alexander Tucker’s set might like to check out this new video for the song ‘His Arm Has Grown Long’ from Alex’s new album on Thrill Jockey Records, Dorwytch. It’s a kind of shapeshifting shamanic yeti monster tale that suits his hypnotic music very well.
Alexander Tucker – His Arm Has Grown Long from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.
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Weirding Modules : 15 April, ICA
Friday 15 April 2011, from 7.30pm
Tickets £5 book here
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall, London, SW1Y 5AH [map]
The first of three music events in association with artist Nathaniel Mellors that reflect his musical influences and personal interest in live performance. This is also, in effect, a launch party for our new titles. Strange Attractor Press books will be available on the night at significant discounts.
Weirding Modules features live transmissions from the Strange Attractor universe including:
Alexander Tucker Decomposed Orchestra
Transcendent, blissed-out otherness from the celebrated Thrill Jockey / ATP guitarist and friends.
Alexander Tucker - cello, guitar and fx
Paul May – drums
Karl Brummer – sax and horns
Frances Morgan – violin
Amal Gamal Ensemble
Heavy kosmische sounds from this veteran improvising supergroup comprising members of Alabama 3, Coil, Cyclobe, Guapo, Shockheaded Peters and others
Karl Blake – bass
David Knight – guitar
Gavin Mitchell – tapes
Orlando – keyboards
David J Smith – drums
Stephen Thrower – synthesiser
Raagnagrok Allstars
An expanded lineup of the improvising, psychedelic deep space drone duo, pictured above
Zali Krishna – electric sitar, guitar, percussion, oboe
Andy Letcher – Breton pipes
Paul May – drums
Nathaniel Mellors – bass
Mark Pilkington – synthesisers, chimes
Plus the Master Musicians of Raagnagrok
and live circuit-bent video mixing from Raymond Salvatore Harmon
DJs Frances Morgan (Time, Morgen & Nite, Plan B, Strange Attractor) & Woebot
Tickets £5 book here
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SA Salon: Haunted Soundsystem
The latest Strange Attractor Salon season begins this Thursday, 10 March 2011, at London’s ICA with Stephen Grasso talking about voodoo on vinyl – his presentation is now sold out, but to give you a taste of what’s in store, he’s the incredible Exuma (left) with Dambala.
Stephen’s full length essay ‘Haunted Soundsystem’, on the vinyl legacy of the African magico-religious diaspora, can be found in Strange Attractor Journal Four, published on 14 March. Order direct from SAP and receive a special set of postcards featuring artwork from Joel Biroco, Julian House, Ali Hutchinson and Arik Roper, and a bookmark.
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Arthur ‘Bull Tongue’ columns online
The good folks at Arthur magazine have posted what looks like an entire run of Thurston Moore and Byron Coley’s Bull Tongue columns up on the Arthur blog – you can start wading through them here. As Arthur readers will recall, the Bull Tongue columns were one of the musical highlights of the mag, with Moore and Coley commenting upon a huge and arcane selection of the underground music and culture currently on their radar. Exhaustive, sometimes cantankerous and frequently very funny, Bull Tongue is an invaluable archive of some of the more out-there record releases of the last decade.
Currently on hiatus from print, the Arthur online presence if nonetheless alive and well, with new music, writing, and archival material going up all the time. I’ve also been enjoying their new mixtape (which appears to be named after a line in Roxy Music’s classic ‘Editions of You’?).
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Xylitol Music Played by Other People
£8, 2x mini-CD
Hand-made sleeve and disc art
New, exotic electronic musics sourced from the recordings of electro-kosmische artist Xylitol:
CD ONE features WOEBOT, UM, BELBURY POLY, THE ASTERISM, KEK-W and the ORCHESTRA INTANGIBLE 73 and SCULPTURE
CD TWO features A.J. HOLMES AND THE HACKNEY EMPIRE, OMMM, NOCHEXXX,MISSHAWAII, NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS, RADIO 9 and DRIFT OF SIGNIFIEDS
Released, as with previous Xylitol releases, across a set of two 3″ mini cds, each painstakingly packaged in a unique custom multi-level sleeve with inserts, small bits of paper, photographs, etc to make for a very special, limited edition.
Featuring audacious sleevenotes from Martin C (Woofah ‘zine / BTI.RIP blog) and sinister / uncanny photographic inserts by Nina Power.
For a taste of unadulterated Xylitol, check out 2009′s ‘Ghost Office’:
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Cult of the Black Virgin
Presenting the second audio working from Magick Concrète:
Cult Of The Black Goddess is composed from recordings made by Andy Sharp at the mountain monastery of Montserrat, near Barcelona. There are two sound sources that have been manipulated: the Boys’ choir singing The Virolai, and the Christmas Day Mass. The Virolai is the anthem of the Black Madonna, venerated at Montserrat. It begins with the words “April rose, dusky lady of the mountain chain”. We are reifying this track on the Feast of Imbolc (1st February). Imbolc belongs to St. Brigid, one of the aspects of the Triple Goddess. Also known as Candlemas, the day has long been celebrated as The Feast of Purification of The Virgin.
Read more about the recordings here
Download the track here (MP3, approx 16 minutes)
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SAVD: Circuit Blasting
Strange Attractor vs DisinformationADAADAT CD EP, 27 mins
27 minutes of lo-fi, high-voltage thrills!
‘A bit of a departure for the ADAADAT label, this collaborative project between sound art project Disinformation and the editor of the Strange Attractor journal, Mark Pilkington sounds akin to the kind of uncompromising experimental laptop noise you might find on a Mego release. The aesthetics of this music particularly bring to mind the likes of General Magic or Farmers Manual, being characterised by a granular distortion and severely destabilised use of stereo channels (the third, untitled track is pretty much all about the left speaker, for example). The music on this release doesn’t stem from any sophisticated homemade algorithms however, but rather the practice of setting up a strong electromagnetic field in close proximity to a toy electronic keyboard. This rather destructive practice yields fascinating results, with some beautifully mangled, involuntary circuit spasms. At times the results are outbreaks of unleashed digital noise, but more often than not there’s a surprisingly sophisticated and intriguing outcome that preserves evidence of the toy keyboard’s recognisable sonic characteristics. Excellent.’
Bookmart
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