Bits 'n pieces

Nice record for a lazy Saturday afternoon playing with toys on the floor. Love this kind of faux naive, hall-of-mirrors style sound. Classic British library music from The Regency Line.

Doordarshan

Down at Mass MOCA on the weekend. Sinjin loved the Sol Lewitt rooms.

The Art of Learning Through Movement

Anne and Paul Barlin, The Art of Learning Through Movement (The Ward Ritchie Press, 1971). Joyce found this today at an estate sale! Two records in the back sleeve.

My beautiful wife Joyce, truly my better half. She has had an extremely eventful year and has somehow managed to finish her book on top of it all. I'm so proud of her! She just sent in the final manuscript last week and is now able to do fun things like pick out cover art. Time to celebrate!

Enid Marx / Margaret Lambert

Margaret Lambert and Enid Marx, English Popular and Traditional Art (1946). Really great book of art from English broadsides, chapbooks, tinsel pictures, Valentine docorations, earthenware, toys, pub signs, metalwork, etc. "It is the art which ordinary people have, from time immemorial, introduced into their everyday lives." Enid Marx is Karl's cousin!

Early English Keyboard Music

plastic moonrise

LIMITED EDITION TAPE AND POETRY ZINE OUT NOW!!!!

Peggy Angus

Happy weekend all. I'm enjoying these images of tile and wallpaper by designer Peggy Angus. Such an inspiring life lived through art. These are all hand made -- you can find a lot more images online. She designed tile for Carter and Sons of Poole and some of it was used in school exteriors and interiors after the war. For a long time she rented a shepherd's cottage in the Sussex Downs where she hosted gatherings of artists and friends. It was called Furlongs. There is a very covetable recent book about her life made by Incline Press. She used to like to sing folk songs and this book features a CD of her talking and singing Raggle Taggle Gypsy O. Brilliant!

K. Leimer

K. Leimer, A Period of Review (Original Recordings: 1975-1983) RVNG INTL. Need this. Beautiful early tape experiments from self-taught Seattle visionary.

Nothing Music

-- And he found you something? this bass player?

-- No well yes sort of indirectly, he said he wanted to help me out and sent me to a place over on the West Side where they said they wanted some nothing music, three minutes of nothing music it's for television or something, they said they had three minutes of talk on a track or a tape they needed music behind it but it couldn't have any real form, anything distinctive about it any sound anything that would distract from this voice, this message they called it, they...

-- But of all things how absurd, paying a composer to...

-- Yes well they didn't, I couldn't do it I mean, they were in a hurry they would have paid me three hundred dollars and I tried and all I could, everything I did they said was too...

-- And that's hardly what I meant, someone being paid not to play who sends you somewhere to write nothing mus...

-- Well what do you think I...! he caught one hand back with the other, -- I'm sorry I, three hundred dollars all I could think of was that concerto of Mozart's the D-minor, that's more than he got paid for the whole series and I couldn't even...

-- But I think it's marvelous, that you couldn't write their nothing music? I mean just because you can't get paid to play Chopin or even write music that's...

William Gaddis, JR (1971). With thanks to my friend Eddie Vazquez for sharing.

Girlfriends

We watched Claudia Weill's Girlfriends a few nights ago. Cool late 70s NYC art world feminism, very down-to-earth and funny. Greta Gerwig says this was a big influence on Frances Ha. Here's the VHS dub that I saw (hard to find!)

Rhyme & Rhythm

Been playing this record for my boy and he seems to like it. Beautiful version of the Britten cuckoo song from Moonrise Kingdom. I pinched this from a blog a long time ago but I can't seem to find it now -- hope it's OK to repost now. Hope everybody had a lovely Mother's Day!

RHYME & RHYTHM

The House That Jack Built

Going to be a super cool show on British folk art at Tate Britain this summer. I so want to see this, but we won't be in Europe this summer. This looks like a can't-miss show. The first image above, a straw sculpture of King Alfred by master thatcher Jesse Maycock, is going to be there!!! The second image, also probably in the show (I'm guessing), is an early 19th c. collage made of leftover fabric by a tailor, George Smart of Frant. There will be maritime paintings by Alfred Wallis as well. The last two images above are some favorites of mine by Wallis -- what is that lion doing there?

The Soundcarriers

Out soon from Ghost Box records, the brilliant new Soundcarriers album Entropicalia. I really love this record. Been a fan for a while but I think this one is really special. All the baroque popsike we've come to know and love from the band but this time shaggier, louder and southern hemispheric, with nods to Quarteto Em Cy and longer, somewhat darker consciousness-expanding freakouts. My son likes it. Record drops May 20 but pre-order now. Fantastic design by Julian House and (full disclosure!) liner notes by me. Check Julian's mind-melting video for 'Boiling Point' below!