Marinetti

Good morning. It looks like Albie Thoms's film Marinetti, which has great music, is now streaming on Ubu. Psychedelic Australia.

Sounds of Today and Tomorrow

That rare thing, an interesting American/Canadian (?) sound effects record. Bugged-out microtronics mixed with field recordings, and an audiomontage composed entirely of clock sounds. I was going to just post the electronic cues, but as I listened to this the other day I thought how much it sounded like a mix-tape from the future. Nice record to cue up and then wander into the other room, make some tea, finish the chapter you're reading, etc.

Happy birthday Trish!

GLAQJO XAACSSO

New patten album. Video by Jane Eastlight.

Paper Faces

Michael Grater, Paper Faces (1968)

Blood and Roses

Watched Blood and Roses the other night for the first time. Beautiful, beautiful vampire flick. Best WTF dream sequence ever. If you are in the states you can stream it on Netflix. Otherwise a copy is available here. (Also, Jon Brooks: there is a Dieter Rams record player at 9:40 in pt. 1)

Reynold Weidenaar

Squiggly technicolor links and bridges for advertising, à la Eric Siday or Raymond Scott. You have to dig a little, but there is weirdness to be found here, oh yes. More info about Weidenaar here (scroll down to "commercial spots" on the left).

listen

Music in Practice

Paul Farmer, Music in Practice (Oxford UP, 1984).

Pop Montreal

So the Pop Montreal festival starts tomorrow. I looked at the schedule -- there are about a million bands playing and I have only heard of maybe two or three of them. Montreal folks, are there any local bands I should check out?

Stigma

This is lovely and creepy. With thanks to Unmann-Wittering for introducing me to it.

Masks

Chester Jay Alkema, Masks (1971).

Persephone

A music and movement record for the classroom. I had forgotten how good the story of Persephone is. How she was kidnapped by Hades and dragged down to the underworld. How her mom Demeter holds the Olympic Games to find the fastest runner to save her. How the rescue is going well until Persephone eats three seeds of the pomegranate, so that she has to return to the underworld three months a year (I'm probably getting some of this wrong). That's a whole spectrum of emotions for me kids to process.

Sun: Creativity and Environment

Music education forever! On we go with Trevor Wishart's book/broadsheet Sun, which presents instructions for guerilla music projects meant to bring art-making out of the classroom and museum and into actual communities and lived environments. These games sound really fun. Some favorites: emerge from the city in all directions and dismount your bicycle at an agreed meeting place. Invert your bicycle, sit down behind the back-wheel and play delicate harp music on the spokes. Then remount your bicycle and dissolve into the city in different directions. Or: meet in a wood or thick undergrowth after dark. Decide on a number of small and fairly quiet noise-makers, each of characteristic timbre -- e.g. metal snappers, small brass bells, penny whistles, etc. Give each participant one instrument (wrapped, so that they don't know what it is) and make sure there are at least two of each type of instrument. Disperse into the farthest corners of the wood and hide yourself. Play your object intermittently and NOT LOUDLY. By listening to the sounds in the wood, search out the other person playing the same object as yourself. On finding your partner, reveal yourself and begin to play a duet. Outstanding!

diretube

Simon Reynolds's recent piece on Ariel Pink has sent me in search of 80s and 90s Ethiopian pop videos, one of the many pieces in the Ariel Pink sonic puzzle. Totally fascinating article, which directed me among other places to DireTube, Ethiopia's version of Youtube. Treat yourself and spend some time perusing the "Ethiopian Oldies" section. Pretty much every video is great, but here are some of my faves.

Speaking of Ariel Pink: I was thinking that Requiem-era Arthur Brown and basically everything on Martin Newell's Songs for a Fallow Land would round out an Ariel Pink pre-history mixtape really well. Brown's "Falling Up" sounds like it is straight out of Before Today. Sleazy and poppy!

The Retreat Singers in Stereo

Reet

Rustic Estonian work songs and lullabies as imagined by a 1960s teenager with a guitar. I love this album. It's certainly sad enough. Each little wooden box of a song opens to reveal the story of a rural life lived rightly but tragically -- the lovelorn shepherd, the hayfield laborer under the heel of her feudal master, etc. The song lyrics read like scripts for miniature black & white allegorical films in the vein of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, films where restless teenagers buck against village customs and start toying around with modern ideas and music they hear on the radio... Reet Hendrikson has a lovely voice and is a damn fine guitar player. There is something about the Estonian way with rhythm and melody that keeps you off balance in the nicest way. Whatever it is it works well with these little nuggets of sorrow Hendrikson throws at us. Anyway enjoy. This has been my album of the summer but now that there's a chill in the air it seems to be even more relevant.

Electronic Music for Schools

Richard Orton, Electronic Music For Schools. 1981. Free-thinking British music pedagogy out of York. Top photo shows Hugh Davies wearing cool sweater, playing the Springboard Mk III. It has magnetic pick-ups like a guitar. In the 2nd photo we have Linda playing a composition called "Creepy dance music" on the banjophone, intended for herself to dance to.