The Monroe Transfer

I just listened to a live session on Resonance FM of my friend Rhiannon and her band called The Monroe Transfer (that's the UK one not the rubbish US pop punky or whatever one). Lots of swelling strings and building drums. I would very much like to go see them when they play soon in London, they have two gigs coming up. I may be able to go but if I do I will only get snatched time with sister as she is sooo busy with studies. Still at least she is enjoying it, she is learning lines at the moment.

The Monroe Transfer

Also on the show were some peeps from Bristol that I feel ashamed I hadn't heard before since I only live down the road and two of them run a record label there 58 Records . They are called Rasha Shaheen and Joe Volk and having looked at the 58 Records site it appears they put on nights called PLUG:58 to advertise and support local music and arts. Well the band on the Hello Goodbye show were called M-A-L-E and have two members Rasha Shaheen and Annette Berlin. Both sing and Annette plays drums whilst Rasha plays guitar. There are enough links there for y'all to be going on with so check em out. I'm going to have some lunch now so TTFN.

Anger!!!!

Those stupid speaking emoticons are REALLY annoying! Anyone else? Everytime you go onto page with an ad for them you get "You make me blush" or "Bite me!" or "I'm counting down the minutes until I see you again". This type of stuff, like the text with stupid images of stars or hearts around it for Messenger, makes me incredulous that anyone could actually think they are cool or worth anything other than petitioning the creators to cease and desist immediately on pain of death for polluting all our mental environments. Still I suppose these are the same people that buy the crazy frog ringtones. Gasp! Humanity is so easily swayed.

Dappled Leaves and Sunburned Hands

Ah the Cube! What fun. Yesterday evening I saw Sunburned Hand of the Man in an evening of what could only be described as pure theatre. The night saw a selection of projects by members of the musical collective including a performance piece and culminating in an ecstatic performance by Suburned Hand themselves and the showing of a 22 minute 1968 psychedelic film by Ira Cohen entitled "The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda" rescored by the group. The whole evening was compered in a humourous and unprententious manner reminiscent of something that may have been seen at the commune in "Easy Rider". Obviouly these guys are heavily into the communal organisation thing popularised in the 60s but perhaps with a little more financial savvy, though still seat of the pants stuff. Another highlight for me was the music provided to listen to by Keith Wood (music under the name of Hush Arbors). I got to listen to a recording from vinyl to CD of the solo album of John Phillips (from the Mamas and the Papas), sun drenched, drug inspired simple tales of woe but with a comforting feeling.

First up were Bridge of Trust a slow building compote of subdued noise combining delicate guitar, violin and synthwork. It was performed seated or hunched on the floor with rocking movements bringing to mind the comfort and muffled sound inside the womb (based on my memory of those fateful 9 months anyway ;-)).

Then Mark Orleans played under the name the Ozone Layer described as "New Orleans crossed with Katrina...cold black heat inside his heart". After an amusing false start with getting the Line 6 delay pedal to work the piece consisted of looped out of tune piano, warped tape voices with lashings of whistles and recorder and plenty of onstage humping segueing into some searing picked guitar action. The next song was a bluesy, jokey number written the night before "from a pile of vomit" entreating us to "lick the falcon".

After this came The Clear People, a hilarious Pythonesque collection of battered samples, clattered mike stand legs, bells and muttered cartoony vocals. "I can't come to Christmas dinner, I'm so high...SURPRISE!"

As you may have gathered from my intro comments I am a big fan of Keith Wood and his Hush Arbors project . He's a really great guitarist and my toes were a tappin on the back of the seats at the hard, bluesy, folky stuff he came out with. I only wish he'd played more.

Man Cry was built up throughout the evening as being a descent into the darker side of the soul and then undercut when it came to it. It consisted of a series of cards with put downs on them being read to the members of the troupe in turn. Each member sat on a chair, received their news and then cryed and bemoaned their fate before having water thrown on them. It was a funny experience and though something of a sending up of serious thespishness it did have something of a truth of emotion to it.

When Sunburned Hand came to play it was a wondrous droning, noisy, throbbing, chaotic thing of beauty. All swopped instruments, climbing about the stage with an organic, oil in water like back projection adding to the slow burning nature of the set. I think everyone there was agreed it was a great job and the addition of the rescored film screening afterwards was the icing on the cake. The film had a real sense of claustrophobia with a motley cast of performers representing partially mythical characters and partially Oriental denizens of an opium den. Face paints abounded as did colourful costumes, the unwrapping of indeterminate parcels and funhouse mirrorlike image distortions. This gradually gave way to the protagonists finding themselves outside where they danced ritually around in a sunlit field. It is difficult to give an accurate description on only one viewing as the imagery is so dense it requires repeated watching, something I intend to do as it is apparently being released on DVD with the troupes rescoring. The rescore itself was suitably meandering and contained a number of oriental sounding instruments and occasional flicks of a lighter as the opium pipes were lit. Apparently the original score for the film was by early Velvet Underground drummer and poet Angus MacLise and it contained lots of heavy drumming. It is available to buy on CD so hunt it out if you wish. All in all a fantastic evening, left me feeling good inside.

Sunburned Hand Slideshow

Sunburned Hand of the Man website

On a more personal note my friend John from Swindon was there but sadly had to run off before the end as he had to catch the last train back. Damn that public transport!! Also this morning I went for a great walk down by the river in the woods and heard some woodpeckers tap tap tapping on the trees. I took some phone pics and present them here for your delight and delictation.

Branches

Shadows

Building

Fume!!!!

I am angry!! Angry angry angry!!! Stuff gets lost and breaks, it does this to annoy me personally! Or thats how it feels. I am tired of wanting to do stuff and it taking many times as long as it should or breaking entirely.

I made red cabbage today for first time. I put many many spices in as told but I feel it didn't quite come out how I wanted it. Still the mash was good. Have also been reading more about html to prepare me for web designing, whoop de whoop! Am listening to a Classical genre mix up on iTunes...at mo it is Wendy Carlos. Feeling tired, my HEAD is tired you hear me?

Oh yeah and other things annoyed me today like Tessa Jowell and the still unfinished Wembley stadium refurb.

Snowy and the Human Swiss Army Knife

Hey hey folks, here is a pic of the snow that just came down today. It has been alternating between snow and sunshine, heavy weather! Just missed getting caught in it when I went for a walk earlier. Got a good look at a buzzard on the walk. I was sitting at the top of the cliffs and saw it rise up on a thermal, wheeling round and round, climbing above the cliffs into the sky and away. Could clearly see its underside markings and the shape of wings and tail. I'm sure one could see a lot just sitting there for a while with binoculars. I also want to try and find the sandstone contact in the woods down there. It is supposed to be between the upper jointed Limestone that forms the cliffs and the lower more massive Whitebrook Limestone but I've never actually seen it. Also was only a couple of feet from a robin singing away on the cliff top. Tried to film him with phone but quality was crap. Shame as if I'd had video cam could have zoomed in really close and seen his hairy nostrils.

Well actually I wanted to post a bit about the book I am reading, it's very thought provoking so far (three chapters in). It's "The Prehistory of the Mind" by Steve Mithen and is about the evolution of the modern human mind and the development of art, science and culture. He is an arcaeologist who apparently went to art college but has been a Research Fellow at Cambridge so nice mixed background. He is just getting onto his theory now, which appears to be a kind of synthesis of the ideas of foremost psychologists. He has been describing the difficulties in trying to establish how the mind works in that it appears so integrated with information and ideas being shared around and used extensively in analogy and metaphor. Looking at the way hunter gatherer peoples interact with the world around them today it seems clear that they conduct their tasks holistically without keeping separate tasks compartmentalised as the theories of evolutionary psychologists such as Leda Cosmides and John Tooby would imply. But all this is me simply summarising the first few chapters. He also mentions the "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" quote, which basically means if you look at an animal growing up it goes through similar stages as it did in its evolution. So he is going on to wonder how it is children think and talking about some theories in which the child first uses a generalised learning "programme" to acquaint itself with the world (using similar methods to learn language and symbols) but the mind becomes modular in its organisation. The basic problem seems to be a way of reconciling specific individual skills or intelligences with the generalised way in which elements are used to cross fertilise disciplines, the use of analogy from one area of knowledge to elucidate another. Well we shall see what he covers further into the book but I really wanted to write about this last night when my mind was whirring.

I can't exactly remember what it was that I wanted to write down, but it was roughly to do with wondering how people from hunter gatherer cultures interact with themselves and each other when transferred to a situation such as one we find ourselves in. In other words how do say, American Indians or Australian Aborigines function in a modern city environment disconnected from the land and where people do not have such a strong connection with one another. Putting aside the accusation of drinking and gambling which is often made to both the groups I have mentioned as this is I believe due to the way society has stigmatised these people and taken away their rights. But how do these people who regard a multitude of elements within their own landscape and environment as interlinked and multi-representational; regard objects within our society. After all we can find similarities in our behaviour where an apparent transference of these mental functions occurs, our reverence for the technological such as televisions and our modern day crucifixes and portable oracles, mobile phones. But of course my comments here are slightly flippant and surficial as such relationships are much more complex than I have made out. The mobile phone for instance could seem due to the way people hold it in high regard, panic if they lose or misplace it, as analogous to a totemic symbol such as a crucifix. However it has a function as a communication device and as such is a kind of cybernetic extension of the body, an addition to such means of interpersonal communication as face to face conversation, or letter writing. But I often wonder if the apparent "showering of gifts" upon mobile phones, giving them new covers, ringtones and pictures is somewhat akin to the behaviour of many people towards the household pet. These behaviours seem to be connected to those briefly mentioned by Mithen when he discusses a child lavishing attention on a favourite doll. In some ways more so as the mobile like the doll is essentially an inanimate object, however once again the issues are more complex as since we can communicate with ones we love on our mobiles, even now with video on some phones, that a mobile seems perhaps an intermediate form between the animate and inanimate. One can certainly imagine a person of even a few hundred years ago perhaps believing a mobile phone to be some kind of magic or divine artefact.

I could probably go on in this vein but perhaps if I read more I will have more insight, though I doubt he will deal with artefacts. I may be wrong there though as he is an archaeologist. In other news the PC I bought has finally given up the ghost and I can't really be bothered to even try and fix it any more. It just makes me angry and depressed (I'm glad I carried on writing this as it cheered me up or at least refocussed my mind) so I shall salvage what I can from it, sell bits and just concentrate on saving for a Mac so I don't have to worry about all this shit anymore. Bah!

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Two Weekends of Music - Part One

Bit of a double header this one, being as it is the true and accurate account of two weekends of veritable music in diverse and interesting settings about the metropolis of Bristol. I can't be arsed to talk like this for the rest of the blog. Oooh that just reminded me of how my mum used to think for ages that when I said "I can't be arsed" I was saying "I can't be ASKED", tee hee. Anyways I am writing about last Sunday and yesterday.

Last Sunday was the Osaka Happy Noise Tour (or something like that). My friend Tom put them on, was a load of crazy Japanese noise music people and a couple of guys from the UK. Was at a place called Native down a side street in Bristol near the old market. I came over to Bristol in the day and helped Tom pick them up and sort out the sound system etc. They had lots of fun on their laptops, all iBooks or Powerbooks bar one and when we met them in a cafe they were on the net through the WiFi hotspot, mmmm techy! So we took them to Tom's gfs house and they hung out there whilst we went and grabbed the PA stuff and then we had to get them all down to the venue in a taxi and we took the PA in the car. Actually was lots of fun setting up the system, would like to do some more gig making, but hopefully with more people next time! There were so few at the gig, probably cos twas a Sunday and raining and maybe cos Native is a little TOO tucked away. But no matter the guys were all superb and lots of fun.

Ove-naxx made some funky crash sounding stuff with some speaking over the top "My music is shit...kind of!"

Distest DJed up some crazy mashup stuff with some more poppy stuff and did some scratching.

Maruosa waved his hair bout alot and played metally electronic stuff whilst shouting.

Gulpepsh did some great beatboxing and singing of Mario tune for one.

Horatio Pollard made loud hurty noises and some that sounded like floating in the stars using Max MSP to play samples

Germlin made mashup Shitmatesque tunes and danced around like a an epileptic.

Doddodo played last and was as good as last time we saw her. She played cute and noisy stuff through phrase samplers and climbed around a bit and waved her arms like she was conducting a mini orchestra. Everyone danced.

After writing this I have decided to add the second lot of photos about yesterday as a second post, simply cos the pics took up lots of space. So see you in a sec, bye for now!

Two Weekends of Music - Part Two

And so to yesterdays crazy noise fest at the Junction in Bristol. AIDS Wolf were the main draw but lots of other bands played too, so many I can't remember them all (that may also be the alcohol). Alice came to visit this week from Wednesday to Saturday. We had lots of fun playing dominoes and Scrabble, but now I have no one to play dominoes with, sadly! So Saturday she and I took the bus to Bristol she went off to hang with Nikki and I went with Andy, John Scott and Farrow to the Junction. We missed the first two bands (one of whom were Fuck Buttons which was annoying) but there were plenty more to be had.

The first band making noise with matching T-shirts, how sweet!

These guys made lovely slow noise with contacts mikes on cymbals and later...a floor tom!

Orion Arm doing their thang. They were great, melodic, noisy... and shouty.

I thought this guy was Tim Harrington at first, but sadly no. I would have loved to see Les Savy Fav again. Still had a nice line in nude drumming and hairiness.

Here is Team Brick enjoying himself with a cup of coffee. He didn't play he just came to watch.

And here is one of me taken by the lovely Stacey, I think its quite good. Perhaps impromptu would be an accurate description.

And there you have it in a largeish nutshell, the highlight for me was Orion Arm and whoever the guys with all the pedals were. Actually there are loads more pics of some of the other bands, one has got a tasty GREEN cab and amp in it. All in all I think it was a bargain for 6 quid, a day of lots of good music. In retrospect perhaps I shouldn't have drunk so much but then, I blame Andy and the Swindon posse. They are the worst influence I know. Ah I am listening to Orion Arm now check out their myspace page Orion Arm. That's definitely enough computery stuff for today I need to sleep. Bye for now XX.