DISCREET MACHINE MUSIC
Life after the lists; Back to university and into the 80s (featuring the Starjets, Crass).
Post-punk, electronic music and the Sheffield scene (featuring They Must Be Russians, the Human League).
Music and anti-music (featuring Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, Suicide, Naked City).
Breadth of listening, and CDs in the car (featuring David Bowie, Earth).
Black metal (featuring Dead, JRR Tolkien, Varg Vikernes).
Music versus noise (featuring TS Eliot, Kurt Schwitters, Merzbow, J Mascis + the Fog).
Brian Eno’s Discreet Music and Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music.
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…they included amazing photorealist montages by artist Gee Vaucher with their records…
This image was included as a fold-out poster with the single ‘Bloody Revolutions’. It mixes and mocks the Sex Pistols/punk, the Queen/royalty, the Pope/religion, Justice/the law and Margaret Thatcher/politics.
For a comparable but earlier take on photomontage, see the work of the anti-Nazi artist John Heartfield.
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…an eye-catching logo that looked like a cross, a swastika, a union jack, and a snake eating its own tail…
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…They Must Be Russians used slides of World War II for some of their songs…
The sleeve image uses part of ‘Grief, 1942’, a harrowing photograph showing the aftermath of a German massacre of around 7,500 Russian Jews in Kerch, Crimea. The Soviet authorities consistently referred to the victims of these killings as Russian citizens, downplaying Nazi anti-Semitism in order to further their own nationalist, anti-fascist agenda.
The details below from the 1979 cover of the single 'California Uber Alles' by the Dead Kennedys highlight the power of the right to offend, which is part of the right to freedom of expression, which is protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Imagery like this was, and still is, controversial. And so it should be, whether it's making a serious political point or is little more than brattish attention seeking.
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…unfortunately, the track that followed ‘Nagasaki’s Children’ was a short, up-tempo number…
Originally released in 1956, ‘Nellie the Elephant’, has been recommended for use in CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation), and in tests exceeded ‘That’s The Way (I Like It)’ by KC and the Sunshine Band in effectiveness. More recently, the preferred songs have been ‘Stayin’ Alive’ by the Bee Gees and ‘Another One Bites The Dust’ by Queen.
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…the package that arrived contained about 40 home-recorded cassettes…
The 40 or so cassettes are piled up on the dining table in the shape of a taula: a tall vertical stone with a smaller horizontal stone placed across the top. They are found on the island of Menorca, where we had just been for a holiday. ‘Taula’ is the Catalan word for ‘table’.
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...number 540 ("Millions Now Living Will Never Die" by Tortoise), which I still have...
…“Kühe In ½ Trauer”, which I unspooled and used along with a Bach cassette, an Action Man and a piece of plywood to make a cassette collage…
This was part of a series called Meus Corpus, which I produced a number of years ago. To find out more, click here.
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…Varg Vikernes (aka Count Grishnackh, aka Burzum)…
On the left, Varg Vikernes as Burzum. On the right, Varg Vikernes as Varg Vikernes, at or around the time of his imprisonment either for murder or, subsequently, for possession of firearms and explosives. He is now considerably older and heavier than this, and lives in the French countryside with his Aryan wife, his Aryan children and his weapons. You can experience his Thulean monologues on YouTube.
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…the inscription on the One Ring…
Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
ash nazg thrakatulûk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.
(One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them)
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…Merzbow the noise god: I saw him, I heard him, I felt him…
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...Merzbow in a good mood, Merzbow in a bad mood: how would you know the difference?...
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…the front cover…
…the back cover…
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…La Monte Young…
Where Merzbow might be a noise god, you could perhaps refer to La Monte Young as a low-key deity of minimalism. So low-key he never appears in public, doesn’t do interviews, and has released next to no material. Many of his works are performances of extremely long duration: slowly-changing drone pieces that can last for hours and hours and hours, for example.
I’ve stood outside this door on Church St both times I’ve visited New York, with the intention of going inside, climbing the stairs and paying a visit to the Dream House. From what I gather, it’s a room or maybe more than one room, bathed in purple/magenta light with continuous, immersive drones of different frequencies coming from speakers in various locations. As you move around, the tones you hear change constantly.
Or so I’ve been told. The first time I went, it was closed due to illness; the second time, there were concert preparations underway. Maybe next time I go it will be open.