July Sound Garden

Thanks to everyone who came down to WWW last night. It was lots of fun. We really enjoyed taking over the lounge. Next month we are back at our usual home Orbit. You can expect the same as always - quality music for relaxing and plenty of friendly faces. We'll be having some guests in July, but you'll have to come down to find out who they are. Details for the party are:

Sound Garden - July party

Sunday 22 July 2012
16:00 - 23:00
Bar Orbit, Sangenjaya
FREE

Residents: David Dicembre / Jelomu / Chris + guests

Keep an eye on our twitter for more info. Hope to see you there!

Morphosis tracklist

Rabih kindly put together a bit of a tracklist for his recording from Panorama Bar. As you can see, he played an impressively broad and inspired selection of records.



In no particular order:

Untitled dance of the resonance
Pink Floyd - a Saucerful of secrets [Fame]
Metamono - Metahaze [Ho.hum]
Stinkworx - Swfysu [Indische Buurt]
Conrad Schnitzler - Live 72 [Further]
Enema Syringe - Därför Måste Jag Försova Mig [Ufo Mongo]
Madteo - Dooom Basrelief [promo]
Sunn o))) meets Nurse With Wound - Ash On The Trees [Ideological Organ]
Keith Fullerton Whitman - Issue Generator (for Eliane Radigue) [Editions Mego]
Jack DeJohnette - Picture 2 [ECM]
Untitled drum pattern
Hieroglyphic Being - 1763 MHZ [promo]
Ben Vida - Ssseeeeiiiiii [PAN]
Metasplice - Bohrium Slunk [Morphine]
Sohrab - Transition [promo/Touch]
Aardvark - Tengenan [Skudge]
Ekoplekz - Neutronik [Public information]

Thanks again to Rabih for sharing this amazing session with us.

mnml ssgs mx fnl - morphosis

At a time when techno and house music feels like it is choking from everyone being so conservative and constantly playing it safe, we really need people like Morphosis. His music - especially when playing in a live setting - throws caution to the wind. Thinking about the way he plays reminds me a bit of the Swedish chef from the Muppets. But that is not right - there is much more method to Morphosis' madness. The man most definitely knows what he is doing. Where he differs from many of his peers is that he is more willing to take risks, he will experiment, he'll put together sounds and records that shouldn't make sense and see if they work, and he is not going to slavishly follow trends or expectations. This does not necessarily mean the results are going to alienate the listener - check his excellent album, 'What We Have Learned', for an example of how this approach can be channeled into something accessible and workable on the dancefloor. But when Morphosis starts playing, he'll push you, he'll challenge you, and don't expect him to compromise. And this is one of the reasons why we love him.

This recording is the first hour of Morphosis' DJ set to open the Delsin night at Panorama Bar in May 2012. And it is worth keeping this context in mind when listening to it... Before moving things more directly towards rocking the dancefloor, he spent the opening segment of his set pushing and pulling the crowd. And the results are special. He creates a bold, powerful set that educates, engages and enlivens you all at the same time. For PC and myself, this is precisely what we need more of - music that expects more than passive acceptance, music that demands your attention. Quite simply, what the ssgs want is 'more fucked up chaos' and this is precisely what you get from Morphosis. Beautiful, exciting, entertaining, fucked up chaos. Or as Rabih would say, 'pure madness'...



For more info about Morphosis, check his label hompage and his artist page at Octopus Agents. 'The TEPCO Report' EP on Morphine from earlier this year is a beauty, as is the new remix EP on his Redose sublabel, with reworks from Dozzy and Hieroglyphic Being. The next Morphine record is a very exciting one, coming from the previously unknown Metasplice and is on a roughly similar vibe to the Container LP on Spectrum Spools last year. We have talked here before about the kind of exciting links and fusions (real and potential) along these lines, with 'outsiders' from the noise scene and elsewhere making more techno orientated records. It is interesting, and perhaps not very surprising, to see Morphosis being one of the people to lead the way in exploring these possibilities... Our great thanks to Rabih for providing us with a recording that gives such a clear demonstration of what we would like to hear more of in contemporary techno and house music. Enjoy.

when present is past, and past is... past?

PC:

really feels like new music is ending:

boomkat physical product newsletter 15 june

the number of re-issues, re-discoveries, and 'amazing lost classics' just continues to burgeon.

---

chris:

i have been thinking about this... and it is cool, but what i don't like is that there are not many people who are then using these re-discoveries creatively. how can they help us rethink about music now? not everything demdike does is spot on, but at least they are trying to do that. it has to be about more than just playing cool forgotten 80s records...

---

PC:

exhausted/exhausting post modernism.

There is no vision of the future.

Even commitment to modernism now strikes people as romantic, and/or has to be re-asserted reactively in relation to the strictures of pastiche and nostalgia.

I think 'media' in the broadest sense have a huge role to play here.

Think of the time/space involved.

'Nommos' spends years as a virtually unknown and genuinely neglected masterpiece; now we just DL it, and it circulates, and in six months everyone has eked all its energy out, and they're already on to Jean Piche or whoever the next 'one' is.

People really are music 'users' now, I think. They squeeze the juice out of recordings like juice out of a prima, then they dump it for the next one.

'Cos there's always a next one.

Thus there's no time for reverence.

We know how to escape this, but for most people it's so much easier to be lazy.

'here's three hours of svreca'

(can you imagine how monumental a 3 disc DJ mix would have been in the 90s, and how much people would have pored over it?)

'hey, can we have FLAC?'

...so this is the thing: people are madly trying to find scarcity.

They are mining and mining and mining until they bring up something 'rare'.

But because of the way media circulate as files, nothing is rare, as soon as it is in circulation.

But if you keep it out of circulation, you can't collect social and symbolic capital from knowing about it (before others).

So you put it in circulation, but in doing so, you squeeze it and empty it out.

The only solution is not to record...

...but then no one knows about you...

...what a weird confluence, no?

chris:

one thing about nommos, though, is i am not sure how it became 'known'. i guess sharing on a blog for obscure music led to a quiet repressing.

but

it didn't get a proper repress. it got a dodgy unofficial one. it used to be on discogs, but it appears they have even removed it.

so because it was a dodgy repress this meant it escaped the boomkat mailout which always attends every special repress... and so we all missed it, we were not informed about this 'must have' 'limited edition' 'lost treasure' from 'the archives'. except for a few people who hunted it down, or discovered it by chance, either on discogs or in stores. and for the rest of us, it remained forgotten.

BUT...

boomkat strikes back! how did this repress become more 'known'? raime had it in their top 10 chart for 2011. where? yep. at boomkat. and so the circle is complete. at least until the next 'unearthed gem'.

---

postscript: about two hours after this conversation, i (chris) made an order through boomkat. of the seven purchases, two were reissues. one was described as: '...the result of almost two years spent trawling through the archive in an attempt to piece together a coherent document of one of the most pioneering and genuinely experimental characters in electronic music history'. the other: 'incredible archival electronic experiments recorded in 1984-1987'. time to start squeezing again. at least until the next mailout...

Svreca tracklist

Here is the tracklist for Svreca's immersive mix. As PC said, so much is about the way he plays the records, and the narrative he constructs. If you haven't got the mix yet, I really recommend downloading it and putting aside 200 minutes:



Fumio Hayasaka - Interlude
Thomas Köner - Tiento Para El Alma
Ben Frost & Daníel Bjarnason - Unbreakable Silence
Eleh - Woven Over
Roly Porter - Giedi Prime
Haswell & Hecker - Kanal GENDYN (extract)
Esplendor Geometrico - Japo (Andreas Tilliander Remix)
Ekoplekz - Dromilly Vale
William S Burroughs - Burroughs Called The Law
Pogrom - Pogrom 4
Harmonia & Eno - By The Riverside (Appleblim & Komonazmuk Remix)
Senking - Black Ice
Various - Untitled
Raime - The Three Chambers Of Our Entities
Popul Vuh - Cobra Verde (Mika Vainio Remix)
Svarte Greiner - Baandspiller I Solnedgang
Atom ™ - Winterreise
Miles - Primer
TV Victor - 130509 (Tobias Freund Edit)
Onmutu Mechaniks - Phospor (Norman Nodge Remix)
Pole - Silberfisch (The Mike Huckaby Synth Remix)
Morphosis - Impulse
Wincent Kunth - Promise
The Traveller - A100
Peter van Hoesen - Axis Mundi
Function - Inter
Cio Dor - Wasserkraft
Rrose - A, With All Faces Bleached Out
Edit Select - Surface To Air (Lucy Remix)
Surgeon - As You Breathe Here Now
Sandwell District - Feed Forward Test Session (Recorded Live In Berlin - 23/10/2010)
Abdulla Rashim - Untitled From Asayita
Factory Floor - A Wooden Box
Wincent Kunth - Sinking
Sigha - How To Disappear
Shifted - Telic
Abdulla Rashim - Untitled From Weldiya
Battles - Inchworm (Silent Servant Remix)

The next in the mx fnl series will be dropping shortly.

Summer dreaming on 23/6

This coming Saturday 23 June we are taking Sound Garden from its normal location and moving it to WWW. We'll be providing the soundtrack for most of the night in the lounge at WWW for the next Frue party, which features Demdike Stare (live) and Terre Thaemlitz (DJ) in the main room. In the 2nd room OSG will be covering a few hours (while we are dancing), but for the rest of the night, it'll be myself, David Dicembre, Dave the silent ssg and Jelomu providing the beats.

The first Frue night in March with Svreca was one of the best parties Tokyo has seen in 2012, and I am really looking forward to this one. I have been hearing some excellent reports about Demdike Stare's live show, and Terre can always be relied upon for a quality DJ set. WWW is a relatively new venue with interesting potential, and great sound, so the basic ingredients are present. Hope to see you there. More info at Frue, basic details are:

Frue presents A Midsummer Night's Dream
Saturday 23 June at WWW
Main: Demdike Stare (live), DJ Sprinkles, Inner Science, Yusaku Shigeyasu
Lounge: OSG, Sound Garden DJs

And if you are looking for something to do before the Frue party, I am also going to be DJ'ing at an ambient / chill out party on the Saturday afternoon / evening at Solfa in Naka-Meguro. It is a nice little club with good sound. Glad to see more events like this taking place. I think I shall be doing a set with warmer synth sounds for this party. Well, that is the idea at this stage...

The lineup and rest of the details are in the flyer above, and for more info check Re:ception, as well as the facebook event page.

Looking forward to playing at both of these parties. Glad summer has finally arrived in Japan. Time for some fun!

Bee Mask in Melbourne, today! (ssg reterritorialization alert)

Hello queens, drones, workers and other personae within the colony,

just a very quick one for all the Melbourne livin' peeps, to either inform or remind:

Bee Mask is playing in Melbourne this evening at Gasometer, with David Shea and Angel Eyes.

Tickets/info is available here and here. Venue opens 7.30pm... I think this is one to get there early for. Unless something has changed radically, Gasometer does pretty good Mexican.

I'll be there doing my bee dance, hope to see some of you. Chris' music is seriously some of the most powerful and interesting out there.

If you never checked it, have a listen back to our ssg special.
For me this is one of the exciting gigs of the year so far.

mnml ssgs mx fnl - svreca

Ssgs have been blessed over the years with some incredible generosity of spirit: on the part of the listeners and readers, who have indulged my (PC's) word play and manic punctuation, as well as really given the many great mixes their due. And, of course, when we do consider the mixes ssgs have hosted, we need to think more than anything about the generosity of spirit of our artists, the people who take the time and energy to actually put all this music together for 'us', wherever and whoever we are. In a (first) world of divided attention, interrupting distraction and hungry/needy/content monsters, many of the mixes we've presented require you to suspend yourself, to enter into them, and just go with the flow. This is the challenge and the reward: you can accumulate folders full of mp3s like there's no tomorrow (and perhaps there is); you can tab browse and hyperlink yourself into a paralysis of reference…(but what will you have learned?) but really, the greatness of the medium, here, what's amazing about long mp3 mixes, mixes that CDs can't do (don't forget that) is that you have to really sit down and listen to all of it, in its entirety, from start to finish. Give yourself to it, and it will give itself to you: this is how I would frame what Svreca has done for us.

Chris and I have been pestering Svreca for a mix for a while now. To look at his tracklists (as on this still amazing mix of his from 2010), on first glance he sits in the sound spectrum played by, well, a lot of post-Sandwell techno cats. But first glances and tracklists can be very misleading. And Svreca is really doing something else with this material - I would really maintain this. The tracklisting and programming just has that little bit more care and thought in it, and I can't help but think his ear is exceptionally good, better than many. But it's the way it plays out in the mix that really makes Svreca excellent, for me. It sounds redundant to say of a DJ that he or she is intuitively rhythmic (it should go without saying): nonetheless, Svreca is outstandingly good at building pace, maintaining momentum, but also keeping a live, looseness to his mixing. He can also really throw it down. It grows and builds in a way that is spry, but also can be very powerful in a supple way that is often surprising and effortless. We love Svreca's approach and think he should be regarded as one of the DJs to really have arrived in the last few years with his own 'something to say' and his own inimitable way of saying it.

You need to take your time with this one… put the kettle on, make a cup of tea, but also consider reserving for yourself a 'phone a friend' function, and maybe having a bottle of something much, much stronger on hand for when things really start to get monster… you'll know what to do.



Tracklist to follow. For more information on Svreca, check his booking page at Apelago, and for his label, there is the Semantica homepage and bandcamp. Thanks to Enrique for the time and effort he put towards creating this mix.

PCA

Pye Corner Audio has been getting some well deserved attention due to Tape putting out 'Black Mill Tapes Volumes 1 & 2' on vinyl. Volume 3 is available through bandcamp and equally worthy of purchase. In addition to these releases, I have found myself returning to this live recording of PCA from February 2012, which is just as enjoyable. It also works as an excellent introduction, if you haven't yet heard anything from PCA. Well worth a listen.

   Live At The Outer Church February 2012 by Pye Corner Audio

I'd post this tomorrow as a 'Sunday Sounds', but I'll be travelling, so here it is a bit early. Just consider it some appropriate weekend listening. More soon.

mnml ssgs mx fnl - donato dozzy

This may sound strange to readers in the northern hemisphere, but every year in June I go to ground. It’s the log cabin feeling, a desire not so much to hibernate as to really hunker in my bunker, settle in my own private log cabin.

Over the past three years or so, this yearly inclination has been cast in relation to music in general, and house and techno in particular. I keep wanting to get back beyond the contemporary, behind what I’d taken my archive to be: somehow the inclination to hunker down typically goes hand in glove for me with a desire to get to the roots of the music. And this has been intensified by the fact that, as we just announced, Chris and I have decided to end our mix series for good.

What are the roots of house and techno? We know the stock answers; I know they’re not good enough. We have to go further, think harder, look a bit deeper.

Two and some years ago, I speculated about this: house/techno might emerge and take place in relation to a space; it might take place in relation to a tradition, whether rooted in hedonism, worship, or ritual; or it might take place in relation to a social context… these days it seems we’re desparately trying to locate and stake out spaces and traditions, but of course a key part of the reason for this, what motivates it, deep down, is that the social context is dominant. And the dominant social context is the internet. And the internet is dominating and overdetermining the spaces and the traditions, soaking them up, para-siting them, to the point where electronic music is just something, maybe, you download and comment on. Then I read this piece, and found out that, well, it's happening to another 'industry'...

I think I can speak for many of us when I say that this is something a bit sad, something that gives you the sense that ‘there is no one to talk to’, nowhere to go. But it’s moments like these when we do hunker down and take stock, reflect, and try to re-locate spaces and traditions for the music we love so much. These are also the moments where inspiration, where new movements, really come from.

Dozzy has offered us this mix as a way to do that. It’s a way to get back something or get back to something… was it something we ‘had’? Was it something there ‘was’, or was it just something we remember? All Dozzy said was:

‘voodoo forever’

Our deepest thanks to Donato for putting this together for us, as well as the other mixes he has contributed to mnml ssgs over the years.

MX FNL

After approximately 4 years of doing mixes we will shortly be bringing them to an end. It is time. When we did our first mix with Bvdub in April 2008, we announced our intentions in the following terms:

"What we are trying to do is to showcase artists that are really exciting and interesting us. The point is not just to slap a mix up, but for this series (like the blog as a whole) to be a medium for promoting DJs and producers that we feel people should be listening to. The mandate we've given to those that have agreed to do a mix is simply to express themselves and their music: to use the mix to tell us who they are and what they are about."

We identified two things we hoped to do: (1) introduce new sounds and names, and (2) present mixes that have a timeless quality to them.

On the whole, we feel that we have managed to stay true to our original intentions. We certainly exceeded all our expectations with what we hoped to do with the mixes. During this time we have been incredibly lucky to present a diverse array of interesting, exciting and high quality mixes across a relatively wide spectrum of music. We have been very fortunate to have contributors that have constantly put in considerable time, effort, love and care into creating special, lasting mixes. We have also benefited greatly from an audience that has trusted our judgment, and has been willing to follow us in the different directions we have gone with the mixes. And none of this would have been possible - at least in the way it took shape - without the ongoing support of official.fm. We have been working with official.fm almost since the beginning, and they have helped us tremendously. In that time, our mixes have - in total - been downloaded more than 592,000 times (according to official.fm stats). For us this is a really amazing figure... We are incredibly grateful for official.fm's unwavering support and provision of an excellent service that has allowed us to share all of these mixes with you. We wish them the best of luck with the launch of their new platform. While we will be finishing the mixes, we plan to keep the archive online and encourage you to revisit the diverse range of mixes we have had over the years. We stand by all of the mixes we have presented, and we hope that collectively they might serve as a worthy document and resource that reflects one interpretation of electronic music between 2008 - 2012.

In the coming 2-3 weeks we will be presenting a series of final mixes from a number of old and new contributors. Each mix - and the person that made it - we feel talks in important ways to what we have tried to do with the mixes we have hosted on mnml ssgs, and where we think electronic music is - and crucially - should be headed. Normally we space the timing of our mixes out a bit more, but these will be presented in relatively short succession. We strongly encourage you to spend time with these final mixes. Each deserve considerable attention, and all reward multiple listens. We leave them as the final statement of what we have tried to do with the mixes we have presented on mnml ssgs.

We would like to again express our deepest thanks to all the artists that have contributed mixes over the years, and to all of you for listening. We will post the first of the final mixes in the coming days.

PC and Chris

Rødhåd tracklist

If you haven't checked our most recent mix from Rødhåd, perhaps seeing the tracklist might entice you to do so. A quality contribution that is worth spending time with.



01. 00.00 : Likjuvarnas Natt by Rasmus Hedlund (from the Album "Främjande av Ljud" released on Ljudverket 2010)

02. 04.09 : Untitled by Thomas Köner (from the Album "Nunatak Gongamaur" rereleased on Type Recordings 2010)

03. 07:32 : Untitled (from the LP Compilation "I Remember The First Time I Heard Your Voice" compiled by D*I*R*T*Y Sound System 2010 not on Label)

04. 10:27 : Muistetun palaava taajus by Ø (from the Album "Oleva" released on Sähkö Recordings 2008)

05. 13:45 : Moogetique by Klaus Schulze (from the Album "Bodylove" released on Island Records 1977)

06. 17:11 : Industrial and Provident, We Unite to Assist Earch Other by Jóhann Jóhannsson (from the Soundtrack "the Miners Hymns" released on FatCat Records 2011)

07. 18:54 : The Sophic Putrefaction by Infinite Light Ltd. (from the Album " Infinite Light Ltd." released on Denovali Records 2011)

08. 22:41 : New Beginning (Tidal Darkness) by Deaf Center (from The Album "Owl Splinters" released on Type Recordings 2011)

09a.27:55 : Patina II by Tim Catlin & Machinefabriek (from "Patina" released on Low Point 2011)

09b.32:30 : Come into the Garden by Nick Drake (from Family Tree released on Sunbeam Records 2007)

10. 33:58 : Killshot by Ben Frost (from the Album "by the Throat released on Bedroom Community 2009)

11. 39:18 : Resonating Red by Yves De Mey (from the Album "Counting Triggers released on Sandwell District 2011)

12. 42:41 : Fagjazz study for 12 mode sources and 6 additions (remixed by Terre Thaemlitz) by John Cage (from the Sampler "Enjoy the Silence Vol.2 compiled by Toshiya Kawasaki released on Mule Electronics 2011)

13. 51:21 : Monophaser 2 by Alva Noto (from the Album "Xerrox Vol.2" released on Rasta Noton 2009)

14. 54:36 : Teh Meh, Teh Meh by Dadavistic Orcestra (from the Album "Dokument.02" released on Dust Science Recordings 2011)

15. 58:49 : The Waterloop by Simon Scott (from "Traba" released on Immune Recordings 2010)

16. 61:24 : Butterfly Caught by Massive Attack (from the Album "100th Window" released on Virgin Music 2003)

Back soon with some very serious heat...

Saturday Night Fever, some time later...

Tony: Mr Fusco, can I have an advance?

Mr Fusco: Payday is Monday.



  

                   

Tony: I know, but every place else

pays on Friday or Saturday.



  

                   

Mr Fusco: And they're broke on Monday. Booze,

whores, pissing away their money.



  

                   

This way you've got money all week.

You can save for the future.



  

                   

Tony: Fuck the future!

Mr Fusco: No, Tony, you can't fuck the future.



  

                   

The future catches up with you, and it

fucks you if you haven't planned for it.



  

                   

Tony: Tonight is the future, and I'm planning

for it. There's a shirt I have to buy...



  

                   

Mr Fusco: Sorry, Tony. No exceptions.



  

                   

Tony: Just wait until you need

an advance, bigshot!

Chill out on Sunday!

It has been a while since our last party, but Sound Garden is happening again this Sunday 3 June at Orbit. Our special guest is one of the resident DJs of The Labyrinth, Hiyoshi. He perfectly embodies what our chill out party is about, and we are really happy he will be joining us. We are looking forward to catching up with everyone and enjoying some quality ambient sounds. The details are:

Sound Garden - June party

Sunday 3 June 2012
16:00 - 23:00
Bar Orbit, Sangenjaya
FREE

Timetable:

16:00 - 17:45 David
17:45 - 19:30 Jerome
19:30 - 21:15 Hiyoshi
21:15 - 23:00 Chris

I don't know what the others are playing, but for the final slot I am preparing a set of 90s deepspace ambient. Looking forward to it...

And while on the topic of ambient music, the Black Dog have kindly made available a beatless version of 'Witches Ov'. I've played this one at Orbit before actually, I think it is perhaps my favourite Black Dog track. I strongly recommend downloading it:



Anyway, for those in Tokyo, please come down and join us on Sunday for what is sure to be another fun evening!

ssg special - Rødhåd

Image: Sara Clarke

On my last few trips to Berlin I have been asking people there about what local DJs they rate. A name that kept being mentioned was Rødhåd. After seeing him play, I quickly understood why. Admittedly it is not the easiest name for us Anglophones to google, but I have a feeling Rødhåd is a name that we will quickly be getting used to... He is part of the Dystopian crew, which have been developing a strong reputation for quality techno events in Berlin. And while it is powerful, driving techno that Rødhåd is perhaps best known for, his tastes are much wider. When I saw him in Berlin last year, he played twice the same day at Berghain - first a house set in the garden, then a slamming techno set in the main room. So the man clearly has range. And with his mix for us he is showing another side of his musical palette. If you are interested in his dancefloor techno, you'll have to check one of his other mixes online, as this one is more introspective and downbeat. It is a personal, sincere mix, and one that is well worth spending some time with. It feels true to the Dystopian aesthetic (or at least what I understand it to be) but does so in a way that perfectly fits in here at mnml ssgs. PC and I are big fans of this mix and it is a pleasure to host it.



Tracklist up next week. Dystopian is branching out into vinyl, with the first release coming soon from Rødhåd. Keep an eye for that. For more info about upcoming gigs, Rødhåd's RA page is the best place to check, and there are some other mixes from him on the Dystopian soundcloud. Big thanks to Rødhåd for the mix. Enjoy.

This Terror of Silence is Golden

A few weeks ago I watched a soft-focus puffpiece on Tetsuya Wakuda, what a great guy he is. I am depressed that we live in an age of celebrity chefs and their acritical adulation and emulation by a whole culture of anxious, insecure aggressive suburbanites with eating disorders evincing symptoms of narcissism, but nonethless, Wakuda said something that is admirable. He does not have background music in his restaurants – because that is disrespectful, to music and to food. I wholeheartedly agree.

My DJ friend described his 'triangle' theory of love and hate.

Triangle of Love (in theory): venue owner hires DJ -> who plays music the punters love ->who spend heaps of money at said venue

Triangle of Hate (in practice): venue owner hires DJ (so far so good) -> who plays music the punters hate or don't get or can't hear properly, at which point ->they bust up with their iPods, demanding to hear their favourite music, then complain about the shitty music and stroppy DJs at said venue, on the internet.

A few weeks ago I was at a restaurant. Weirdly for 2012, the DJ was playing house. He was playing Herbert, actually. Dr Rockit. There were no acoustic tiles, there were hard surfaces, and the room was full of boozed, red-faced, well-fed middle-aged Australians with big watches and jowls and huge, huge glasses of red wine. Of course they were all talking so loudly. What's music for? Is it for this? We couldn't hear each other round the table; we couldn't hear the music clearly; we couldn't hear anything. The food wasn't good enough to distract us from this. Is this what we want? What was I supposed to be paying attention to in this space? Or was everyone supposed to be paying attention to me? It reminded me of the following quote from DF Wallace, from The Pale King, a novel where (this is not really a spoiler) said author concludes that he who is not terrified of boredom is capable of almost anything:

“To me, at least in retrospect, the really interesting question is why dullness proves to be such a powerful impediment to attention. Why we recoil from the dull. Maybe it's because dullness is intrinsically painful; maybe that's where phrases like ‘deadly dull’ or ‘excruciatingly dull’ come from. But there might be more to it. Maybe dullness is associated with psychic pain because something that’s dull or opaque fails to provide enough stimulation to distract people from some other, deeper type of pain that is always there, if only in an ambient low-level way, and which most of  us spend nearly all our time and energy trying to distract ourselves from feeling, or at least from feeling directly or with our full attention. Admittedly, the whole thing’s pretty confusing, and hard to talk about abstractly ... but surely something must lie behind not just Muzak in dull or tedious places anymore but now also actual TV in waiting rooms, supermarkets’ checkouts, airports’ gates, SUVs’ backseats. Walkmen, iPods, BlackBerries, cell phones that attach to your head. This terror of silence with nothing diverting to do. I can’t think anyone really believes that today’s so-called ‘information society’ is just about information. Everybody knows it's about something else, way down” (85).

Not least of all silence.

Austere Anti Austerity Measures: a few good .zips, containing the possibility of sound and music

How do we 'get' music, in the sense of it actually reaching us? This good piece on RA the other day reminded us of the physics and physicality of sound, as well as the things we tend (not) to pay attention to: acoustics are really important. So is not being off your face. And yet we go to clubs with bad acoustics, and get off our face... hmm...

One of the things I love about sound is its physicality, the way your body responds. We're sensorily set up to apprehend sound directly, in the way that we just can't for, say, time: we need to wear a watch to remind us how humans socially measure duration by splitting it up so we can crash economies through hot speculation... and arrive for wage labour on time… but your ears, and your body, they have this incredible and direct experience of sound waves. The meat in you responds. Sound is phenomenal.

But sound and music are different, though inseparable. Music is also always-already social. Think of language; think of culture. It takes place in a given context that gives it sense and significance – and that *means* something. Of course the final music-effect has to reach you via a signal chain, which these days with most of the music we prefer is massive and complicated, predicated on all kinds of recording, archiving, and replay technologies, all of which mediate and translate the physical into the digital and back. But at the other end, we still have to interpret it, using 'hi fi equipment' that's millions of years old. That which was intended to warn us of predators and help us communicate can also allow us to enjoy Eleh. This is the paradox of the sound of music: its power comes from something directly physical, unmediated, phenomenal. But its final form – what we hear, as we hear, as it reaches us – is complexly mediated and totally dependent on our forestructures and skills of interpretation, our understanding and our ability to use it to actually give our attention to it, to, you know, listen.

The weird thing about music these days – one of the weird things – is how something so physico-social, something so spatiotemporal, has, in circulation, become so fucking abstract, so deterritorialized.  Over the years on ssgs I've talked at length about the side effects of what's happened as our archives have been transformed: from piles to files. How do you navigate the datasea without panic, ennui, anxiety, boredom setting in? One way would be through curation. Another would be to stop pigging out on downloads...  But/so curation might also have to contain a bit of austerity, if you know what I mean. Not the kind the sadomonetarists intend to administer to the weak... Just give you enough so that you can do the rest. Notes as instructions to something flatpacked, but something that isn't quite IKEA or Lego. What I mean is, that the person enabling the sound and/or providing the music, they've still got to give the potential listener some work to do, something to work out.

The following is a set of notes I gave a friend when he asked for some new music, on a relatively small capacity memory stick. The challenge here was to give him something he could relate to, something that wouldn't confront him as data, something that he could move into, relate to as music, with the hope he might also experience it directly as sound, be possessed by it. Stick his head into the memorystick, earbuds into a bassbin. It might be something to think about; this is how I might describe the following to someone who is, kinda, outside the ssg archive, but still a listener.  In any case, these are some recordings that deserve your undivided attention, that you should chase up. I'm not gonna give you hotlinks, because, you know, you have to get active. You have to do some work. This would be the first act of interpretation.

Nommos: Craig Leon was a famous producer in the NY underground in the late 70s. This is his solo synthesizer stuff. To me this is like the Shellac of synth. Early 80s?! And nothing sounds like this…

Wrk, Wrk Wrk: HTRK - these guys set out to make something. And they made it. It sounds exactly like it does. The coldest, bleakest, but also rawest album I've heard in ages. I mean, it's more or less the void you stare into when you really look at New Weekly.

Iko 83 - crazy and very engaging synth pop from '81. Like Kraftwerk's aesthetic, Devo's irreverence and attention to pop culture, and something else uniquely French Canadian perhaps. Learn the melodies and sing along: gonadotroposynthesis!

The Garden: John Foxx's second solo album. Incredibly well produced and diverse, this is a very wholesome and complete album. Spend some time with it. It's a lot to digest. And it's all in the details. Great lyrics, too.

Mark Hollis' post Talk Talk album. People say it's the most intimate music ever made. As if anything could fall apart at any moment. Fragile, tender.

Oren Ambarchi's most recent and most 'pop' album, but also has a 30+ minute guitar slowbuilding freakout track.

The OST from the Solaris remake, from the same dude who did the OST for Drive, which is also awesome, apart from that heinously bad 'real hero' song. A Winged Victory for the Ebbing Swoon.

Andrea Belfi is a percussionist from Italy who has developed these really weird ways of doing and micing up drums. This album on Lawrence English's Room 40 is very 'small' and self contained, but the more I listen, the more I love. Reminds me a bit of early Pluramon. 'Small and perfectly formed'. Can't recommend this one highly enough.

Talk Talk's ?best? album. Well, if you love this, Get Laughing Stock. Same band as did 'Life's What You Make It', then they made this. Astonishing for the time. Some say it's the first post rock album, but this is retrospective. I mean, it's actually post synthpop and pre noise/math/post rock. Proto. But again, like a whole genre of music that never got made apart from this (see also the Mark Hollis album)

Victrola -  Italy in 1983. Like Albini meets Italo Disco meets Factory Records sound. But there's a real unique energy on this EP. It's so bittersweet, and just keeps on building and trucking (the title track). And get this: this is the *only* thing they did. Ever.

Technodelic was the first retail CD, the first album to be made using almost entirely samples/samplers. And the sound design for 1981, fuck. And the songwriting is great. Ai rabu YMO.  If Tokyo is 80s future, this was Tokyo in the early 80s. And this is where Sakamoto started, too…

ssg special: Rene Hell presents "a large house full of beautiful furniture, a library & many other rooms revisited" – tracklist

• La Monte Young “Sunday Morning Blues” with “The well Tuned Piano”

• Alva Noto “Haliod Xerrox Copy 6”

• Robert Ashley “In Sara, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women”

• Ryoji Ikeda “Op. 1 [for 9 strings] II”

• Michel Redolfi “Immersion Partielle”

• Idea Fire Company “Life of the Party”

• Pascal Comelade “Good-Bye Wyatt Hat” {as damaged mp3}

• Atom TM "Mittlere Composition No 1"

• Steve Reich “Six Pianos”

• Hecker “Speculative Solution 2”

• Roberto Cacciapaglia “Sei Note In Logica, Part II”

• Ryuichi Sakamoto “Hibari”

• Stephan Mathieu "Promenade"

• The Lost Jockey "Phrase Book"

• Philip Glass "In the Upper Room: Dance II"

• Yasunao Tone & Hecker "Man'yo #36-37 / 750654 Zero Crossing"

• Tiago Sousa "Walden Pond's Monk IV"

• Sean Mccann & Matthew Sullivan "An Unknown Gentleman"

• Wordless Orchestra performs William Basinkski's "Disintegration Loops"

Ssgs re-presents: Carsten Jost and Lawrence, Betalounge, 2002

Ten years. It seems extraordinary to me that it’s a decade this year since I first heard this set. I even remember where I was: I was in Cybac, an internet cafe – remember internet cafes? – in Shibuya, which was in that building opposite Tokyu Hands that stands near the corner of Inokashira Dori, that has the shop selling cheapo hip-hop clothes. In that building or maybe one next to it that’s been demolished. Somehow everything in Tokyo feels like it’s been demolished or I seem to recall I was there and it was scheduled for demolition, then I go back there and it’s still thronging and kicking. Nakano Sun Mall. I loved the set so much I stayed online from start to finish, long, long after I'd emailed everyone...

Ten years. There are mixes that sit with you, that stay with you. For me this is one of the few best, and its importance is threefold. The first is obvious and biographical: this was a set that stitched Cam and I together, Cam the co-founding ssg who went somewhere, who is presumably in London. Then I discovered how much Chris loved it, too. We’ve told one side of the story of ssgs elsewhere. I can’t say that this mix enabled ssgs in the way other contingent encounters and shared passions did, but if there is one set that perfectly captures the spirit of that time and the spirit of the music we all loved, this is it. And this connects to the second thing, which is that this mix captured a moment in time for Carsten Jost and Lawrence. But maybe they didn’t quite realise it? I don't know... There is so much fluid energy here, so much promise, and the mix just totally brims with all these wonderful selections, which get worked out in the interplay. We know what happened, and some of you will know my mixed feelings about that (I think it's still worth reading what I wrote about it in 2008 [in that my assessment was correct], the recent piece is just an angry afterthought to dead loss), but right here, with this, they hit it, they did something incredible and unrepeatable. To the third point: I don’t think this mix is just significant for Chris and I and Cam and David and Peter. I want to say that, fundamentally, this mix might be important. This is one set of connected moments where minimal – which was really what was *actually* interesting in European electronic music of the last decade – really found itself. All artistic expression involves finding a way of ‘speaking’; there’s a whole language here. And it still speaks, to me at least. But is kind of an abandoned language now. Why did the people involved stop speaking in this way? I understand that it got boring and bad or whatever, but I think it’s odd and a shame that one might find comfort in derivative decontextualised ‘deep’ house (3D), when really, what you have here with this set was and is an audacious and genuinely European form of new electronic music, one that contained and expressed all these directions and possibilities, one that had a unique energy, colour and bittersweetness. That's the thing, why it's important. It's not just a generic sound or fashion they downloaded. They developed their own syntax and vocabulary and tone - more than anything, tone - and they spoke well and spoke in their own voices. All this has been abandoned...? I don't know, I wonder... ...I make it available to you in the hope that, maybe, you can start speaking with it again? Or just listen...

Ten years. Fuck. We had posted this mix once before, but with a megaupload link. So many dead links. Another piece of collateral damage from the decade whose signature is collateral damage. When I think back... so much has been defaced and vandalised in the world since then. Other things have grown and developed in interesting ways. Here it is then: ten years. Not for nostalgia, but - I hope, I trust - with the right kind of reverence (the kind that has no reverends): my absolute respect to the time, place, memory and significance of this set, which still hits you right where it hurts.

Carsten Jost + Lawrence, live @ the Betalounge, October 5, 2002

Mohn

A couple of interesting and impressive albums have just come out, and these will shortly be getting a lot of attention. In particular, I am thinking of the Shackleton and Actress albums. I'm still making my mind up about the latter, but the former - and especially "Music for the Quiet Hour" - is a truly astonishing album. Mr. Shackleton has done something pretty special right there... But here I want to focus on another album, which might slip under the radar, even though it is by some big names, and happens to be very good.

Mohn is the new collaborative project between two Kompakt heroes, Jörg Burger & Wolfgang Voigt. They are responsible for a classic ambient techno album [Las Vegas] as burger/ink, and of course, Herr Voigt had a few solo contributions to the genre with his seminal GAS project... Working together again, with Mohn they revisit ambient techno and have produced a very worthwhile album.



Perhaps a good point of comparison is the Voices from the Lake album, which also draws heavily on '90s ambient techno for inspiration. Mohn is of a similar high quality, but the presentation and sounds are a bit different. It lacks that progressive, fluid continuity that defines the VFTL piece, but like the best of the ambient techno genre, there is a shared balance between groove and atmosphere. And one of the defining features of the Mohn album is the (re)appearance of that classic Kompakt charm, something which the label and its artists have unfortunately largely lost. But there definitely is an element of schaffel on Mohn... Perhaps this is the reason why I like the album so much: it is warm, friendly, inviting. It has a bit of that old Kompakt magic that I sincerely miss...

Mohn is not particularly innovative, it is certainly not going to blow your mind. Saying that, the track above - "Ebertplatz 2020" - is very special and the clear highlight. Overall, Mohn is a lovely album and something that I have been enjoying thoroughly. Don't let this one slip under the radar, it is worth your time.