reactivate the sediments - horsemouth in theory

once upon a time horsemouth wrote theory.

having been in a fantastically unsuccessful anarcho-punk band, and following its demise, he'd become interested in the social function of music. later this was to spread to art as a whole and how capitalism made use of this impulse, at the start horsemouth was mainly concerned with jacques attali's book noise (or bruits  as it was in the french), a book that put music and noise at the heart of human activity (where many musical enthusiasts like horsemouth believe it to be) rather than at the periphery.  when attali briefly surfaced at the ICA horsemouth saw the chance for his first article. he'd made friends with some people at mute and they published it (horsemouth wishes to thank you all).

of course the main advantage of writing things is that you get to see your own ideas down on the page and this helps you become clearer about them. with horsemouth however, as something of an erich von daniken type autodidact, this has taken some time. again writing this may help him come to terms with it once again and see what remains unfinished.

LOST IN TRANSLATION  09 Sep 2004.

soon there will be the 10th anniversary (horsemouth may well return to the article to see how it has faired). having surfaced at the ICA attali released a remixed (copy and paste) and expanded (to take in mp3s and napster) 20th anniversary version of bruits. as horsemouth hesitates to point out this was in french a language at best reads imperfectly (and at worst understands not at all). nonetheless this did not stop him from writing a review - he'd already read most of it in english and the bits that weren't in the first edition were reasonably straightforward and not densely theoretical.

horsemouth's basic position then was that attali did not understand his own theory - one in which the current form of music (and its political economy) prefigures the future form of the wider political economy. this he derives (in part) from claude levi-strauss but also from theodor adorno's philosophy of modern music. (it is an idea ghostwritten by adorno into thomas mann's doctor faustus). it is an idea of music as prophecy. frederic jameson, in his foreward to the english edition of bruits - noise, makes this a continuation of marxist debates about the relationship between base and superstructure. horsemouth's (somewhat over-literal reading of these things) got him his foot in the door.

FIRST CUT IS THE DEEPEST  12 Oct 2006

next up was horsemouth's review of ben watson's book derek bailey and the story of free-improvisation. to write this horsemouth sat on the town beach in valencia for the month of august reading watson's book and adorno's aesthetic theory  back to back. horsemouth is writing better but he relies on writerly habits to get him an ending. it was dan fox’s appreciation of derek bailey in frieze magazine (March 2006) as a  ‘kind of relational aesthetics for music' that gave horsemouth the stepping stone onto the then fashionable area of nicholas bourriaud's relational aesthetics. horsemouth was initially delighted to find a whole world (art magazines) where aesthetics was discussed as if it mattered - only to move rapidly to disgust at the contrast between the claims made for art and its actually existing political economy of it.

ZOMBIE NATION  10 May 2007

here horsemouth got to write in a consistent way about the convergence, as he saw it, of relational aesthetics, attali's theories and web 2.0 technologies (the first and last of which horsemouth would confess to understanding imperfectly) and elias canetti's theries of the crowd. underpinning all of these was adorno's pessimism which led horsemouth to see some hopes for resistance in the figure of the zombie. following on from bourriaud horsemouth began to investigate ranciere (and as a result althusser). the article is too long, it is cooking with too many elements and again has no real ending. it makes it into mute's proud to be flesh  compilation - horsemouth is very proud.

he should (of course) revisit these themes now that they are re-emerging from under the credit crisis.

EXODUS 11 Jul 2007

here horsemouth reviewed claire bishop's collection of writings on the social production of art participation. this was very useful in sorting out his own thinking on the matter - he argues that bishop is re-aligning herself with ranciere's position but that this will do little to help her develop her work. (horsemouth should hurry up and read her subsequent book to see if he was right).

CRISIS IN THE VISUAL SYSTEM  01 May 2008

horsemouth tries to settle accounts with (the hurriedly read)  ranciere and althusser. he's still relying on reincorporation to finish his writing off for him. it's probably the culmination of his writing and yet again it's too long and too poorly structured. in truth behind all of this (and his review of participation) is derrida's spectres of marx, strangely crossed with hillel schwartz's the culture of the copy, it is his hidden.

HUNGRY GHOST  26 Feb 2009

this one, a review of artist steve mcqueen's film about the hunger strikes hunger, works quite well - but there's a stage-y quality to some of the writing (horsemouth doesn't succeed in fully displaying how narrative is used to mislead people because he's too busy (mis)leading people)   - horsemouth was initially uncertain about taking this on but his editors instincts or intelligence were right - there was a lot for him here.

RUMOURS OF WAR 26 May 2010

horsemouth was a little hesitant about taking on this one also (but he said yes anyway) - a double review of steve goodman's sonic warfare and of mattin (and anthony isles)'s noise and capitalism - this was probably a bit to much to chew on at one go, and besides many of the contributors the second book were friends. horsemouth was a little disappointed with steve goodman's book (and to his shame he let it show), he failed to engage with what was new in the book (as the wire did). horsemouth largely benefited from being made to read deleuze and deleuzian accounts of music but he was wrong to focus on this is in his review to the extent that he did, it was not where goodman was going. it suffers from horsemouth's continued attachment to attali's theory - one that would focus on the economics and production of music and to musical form (if attali knew how to do this). while (n advice) horsemouth carefully  wrote the bailey/ watson review to avoid conflict (and it is better because of it), in this case he did not (and this he regets).

............ horsemouth does not draw a line under it all the credit crisis arrived to reposition economy at the heart of things (again) and horsemouth overcame his isolation (a little) enough to realise that to do this properly he would have to do a lot more work (and indeed there were people better placed than himself to write this)

.... but the above marks the start of an attempt to reactivate the sediments (one to which he will return).

the arc of opportunity and the gentrification of dunwich

a gentrification supernova will hit newham (allegedly), an arc of opportunity sweeping down from stratford, through canning town and out towards the campus of east seaside towns municipal college. meanwhile former plague pit islands (with former mental hospitals where lobotomies were performed) near venice will be leased out to help pay italy's debts. furthermore despite repeated sightings of the horror even sleepy dunwich appears scheduled for re-molition (like demolition but with a coffee shop). as horsemouth remarked (following benjamin - or was it kracaeur - it was benjamin) -

"even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins.” 

horsemouth fumes and rages - by pure chance recently he was drunk in a pub discussing the relevance and usefulness of the term gentrification (glass, hamnett et al), the first drinker did not think gentrification was a very useful term as they found it difficult to pronounce, the second averred that they had never heard the term before today in their lives but, having heard it they thought it might be useful. he has to add that the pub was not in hackney (where the only topic for conversation is the closely related property prices) but the dock tavern near the excel center. however when having left horsemouth turned back to wave goodbye to his fellow drinkers he discovered it was in fact a ruin (having been demolished to make way for a land bank).

joined in the harmonium (celestial harps)

here it's a grey morning but with signs that it may get better. no sign of the mouse last night (but then horsemouth did have the doors to his room closed and things shoved under the jamb). horsemouth has made clear to the mouse that it is not welcome - he should buy some inhumane traps today just in case it doesn't take the hint. and perhaps borrow a cat.

yesterday horsemouth went to chateau bremen (well ok first they drove up to the lake listening to the latest mixes). first they recorded an extra line of backing vocals and mixed the werewolf (but at the end of the day they concluded they may have turned howard's backing vocals down too low and may have to turn them back up again). they then mixed silver raven (a tricky one this- there's an instrumental verse but no real solo to go on it, there are many elements, it requires careful mixing to get the best out of what's on tape as it were). as the session was winding down horsemouth then spent some time recording a fauxharp ukelele part (to follow the fauxharp guitar part) and then a drone for father death blues, he topped it off with a meandering (because uncertain, because he does not play keyboard well) fauxharmonium part following the main melody. father death blues, as played by ginsberg, sits between western church music and indian music (joined in the harmonium), horsemouth is trying to move it in the direction of celestial harps. as a final thought they applied an eq to the voice (to hide the limitations of horsemouth's singing). howard may do some backing vocals. they've bought a new organ and are just waiting for it to come, they will then use it to add another drone - hopefully this will be enough to save it.

they then adjourned to the murder mile (howard remarked that this time it did not seem to be infested with ponces but horsemouth noted that instead it was infested with children, horsemouth suggested a running track round the main drag of the pub, howard a climbing frame outside - the unassuming famous singer from a famous band was there also, howard spotted him). after a restitutive three pints they returned and drunkenly listened through to the day's work, the tracks from the last two weeks and the best tracks from the band's work last summer. they have to make some choices about what sounds first rate and what's an also ran. horsemouth (of course) loves it all (as a parent would love a wayward child), other people may be inclined to be more critical however and so it is necessary that the track be beautiful and well behaved (to mix metaphors).

monday horsemouth and howard are back to work - the musicians will go into storage. it's a short term, hopefully they will be back to the musical endeavours soon.

'a town without intimations'

horsemouth is very taken by albert camus description of oran in the introduction to his the plague (red cross I think it was - no british heart foundation - lewisham - two pounds fifty, when horsemouth got it home he discovered that he already had a copy - undisclosed charity shop 25p, but by then he'd started reading it... and anyway this just gives him a duplicate copy for disbursement). the reading of it goes smoothly and quickly (like camus' early stories that horsemouth read recently), it's like a j.g.ballard or defoe's journal of the plague year, or the opening set up of the decamaron or the opening set up to artaud's theatre and it's double, or foucault on the social discipline necessary to overcome the plague. (anyway it goes quickly p.84 so far)

it even opens with a quotation from defoe's robinson crusoe,

 'it is as reasonable to represent one kind of imprisonment by another, as it is to represent anything that really exists by that which does not!' - robinson crusoe's preface to the third volume of robinson crusoe. (there are of course several games being played here).

further to this horsemouth has also finished ronald blythe's account of an east anglian village akenfield which is truly great - he ends it by interviewing a gravedigger (who wants to be cremated and his ashes thrown straight up into the air). horsemouth may have to find another copy to give to is parents.

this morning horsemouth trammed it to lewisham and wandered from there over blackheath and down through greenwich. the sun shone and then it pissed it down. by the time horsemouth was home it was sunny again. for the next 4 days horsemouth works, and then similarly for the next 3 weeks, and then what?

portraits of curious characters

ok horsemouth did not go out to record store day - he went and recorded instead.

artisan lapsteel guitar, zoom recorder, cheap sm58 copy microphone, 
recording either silver raven or sorrows of tomorrow. on the sofa 
- the 'bad taste' country guitar (cheap hummingbird copy). 
detroit arts festival t-shirt and remaining hair model's own.

he played a backup guitar part for the instrumental verse on silver raven and a slide guitar part for it - they will probably pull out horsemouth's backing vocal for this this bit (just to give the tune some variation). horsemouth has been a little scared of the lap steel after getting a good take out of it first time (on sorrows of tomorrow) and then never again subsequently - fortunately he seems to have broken that jinx.

they also had a go at recording sorrows of tomorrow - horsemouth put on an acoustic slide guitar part (tuned daddad to avoid that pesky major to minor thing) and a pedalling octave bass part (d and a) on the lap steel creating something of a shuffle beat for it. it was all sounding too busy at the end but by pulling it back to just the ukelele and the vocal and the shuffle beat (and then judiciously adding other elements only as and when required) horsemouth and howard think it can be saved. you may have to wait a few days to hear the result of these endeavours - howard may try borrowing a keyboard and adding it to some of them.

'he don't even break the branches where he' s been and gone'

so horsemouth has listened to a documentary on the critics group a ewan macoll attempt to raise standards of folk song performance by means of the theories of stanislavsky and laban, by considering the meaning of the song and the position from which the song is sung, and how the singer can connect the words with his or her own experiences to change the emotion with which the song is sung (and have the conscious technique to be able to alter and control the singing voice to match this). of course the primary technique of the group is workshopping, performance and critique, and of course it become a cult, ending badly and explosively with accusations of theft of the equipment and the tapes of the crit sessions.

so howard asked, how would horsemouth think about this in terms his recent recordings for the musicians of bremen?

neither the werewolf nor silver raven are sung from the perspective of anyone in the drama - the singer of the werewolf is neither the werewolf, nor his human counterpart, nor someone who merely suspects he might be the werewolf, nor an assistant of the werewolf, but merely an average countryperson noting the phenomena - the critical line is 'he don't even break the branches where he' s been and gone' , (well ok his absence from the narrative must give rise to suspicions that he is the werewolf but it's no more than that). it is less stanislavsky and more tarkovsky, it's an experience of being in the woods, of a slight dissociation. cat power's version is in there, she is the werwolf 'tear(ing) off his clothes' (but not really), this is obviously her motive line, so is michael hurley's (but being a boy it's a bit less PC). horsemouth does not feel comfortable with this conflation of sex and violence and so has cut this line, though it remains the motivating pleasure in listening to the song. he sang it first in the projecting style of a first person actor (think johnny cash), then in a slightly more impressionistic 'dab' style (if we are thinking about the voice as gesture) - it is melodrama (in a term that macoll would use as a term of abuse). it's more mack the knife brecht and cabaret than method acting- certainly gentleman john is more this, a character sketch of a miscreant with no moral improvement intended.

silver raven is even more problematic - from what perspective could you see the silver raven flying beyond your dreams? the song is about exceeding a merely human point of view and yet the song repeatedly asks have you seen the silver raven like a sideshow barker (it's kind of have you ever been experienced an invitation to a carlos castaneda ethnomethodological glory). the only perspective it make sense to sing it from is a gods-eye-view one. (it's kind of a jonathan livingstone seagull cosmic country song). just as the scene was the forest, the scene is now the desert.

in blue crystal fire however we are directly the celebrant of the mystery, the song takes us into the soul of robbie basho dancing with deer with silver antlers.

none of these songs is strictly a folk song - none tells a tale, there is no protagonist within the drama who could sings it really, there is no 'I' who is 'drawing water from the well' noticing (distractedly) that it's spilling over on the grass. melodrama is a perfectly acceptable form of drama (practically all johnny cash's songs are of this sort - I taught the weeping willow how to cry- there's a man in black persona that is performed, and it is accepted as such.

father death blues at least is clearly sung from the perspective of (ginsberg) the son - he has a message for his father that death is not to be feared, we are surrounded and united in the family of death, dead mothers, aunts and uncles rising up out of the floor and getting on with everyday tasks in a strange combination of buddhism and the mexican day of the dead. everything is beautiful despite and because it already has death in it. ginsberg moves it further out into abstractions teacher death, genius death, suffering, ignorance until he returns to his father and to himself pronouncing himself cured of grief. (secretly horsemouth is horrified at the cold-bloodedness of his treatment of his father, the oedipidal revenge in this).

in singng bright phoebus horsemouth is simply the lover who is in love for the very first time precisely at that suspended moment when language turns into poetry. horsemouth likes this game.

history of the siege of lisbon blues

strangely jose saramago's history of the siege of lisbon gets a reference in john jeremiah sullivan's the ballad of geeshie and elvie in todays new york times - we are in the world of the collectors and archivists (harry smith, alan lomax being the only names horsemouth recognises) - and we are in this world with a desire to wrestle the lone voices on the recording down from the aether into photographs, birth certificates and surviving family members.

a young researcher placed with an old archivist just happens to have kept photos of documents after it 'doesn't work out' , one clue leads to another and we are with the surviving family and their stories. at one point our author worries that a document has been faked - like the history of the siege of lisbon where the editor of a boring conventional history decides to insert a not - the crusaders decide not to stay to help the portuguese retake lisbon from the moors. now make a history out of that says his boss.

maybe the history of the siege of lisbon is a clue here, perhaps we are being sold a pup, misdirected. horsemouth can't help reading it as a betrayal of trust, as a scam, and to what end, with photos (and family accounts) of the singer in later life we are really no closer to the mystery of the voice on the tape, or even of the guitar notes, as soon as they were recorded they split off and became themselves, this is what music does, the singer achieves a strange kind of immortality by lottery, of what gets saved from the wreck of ephemeral life by archivists and collectors. in publishing an account of this world the article has done us a favour.

a necessary corrective to a pastoral idyll

last night horsemouth read lillian hellman's introduction to anton chekov's letters but then started in earnest on ronald blythe's akenfield his account of a suffolk village, this was later made into a film staring local people - kind of like moi, pierre reverte...except without the murders, horsemouth has the press release from 1975 about it he found safely tucked away in the book.

the first story properly told in akenfield is of leonard thompson, a farm labourer, despite his brother dying in the boer war he joins the army in march 1914 just to get off the land and is delighted when war breaks out in august. he puts on weight in basic training because he is being fed properly for the first time and not worked to death, 'it literally happened. it is not a figure of speech' . at harwich 'we were bursting with happiness. we were all damn glad to have got off the farms' . at the dardanelles on the beach they find a marquee tent, inside that are the rotting bodies of the dead. they take and lose and retake hill 13 to the turks, by the end of it only 3 men of the 60 in his unit at harwich have survived. after gallipoli he was sent to france, he survives the somme but is taken prisoner after arras, in clogs in winter they dig the keil railway, many prisoners die. on november 5th 1918 some mutinous german sailors arrive and free them advising them to go and pick potatoes in the fields. he eventually makes it back to the village. some things have change for the better - there are unions and a wages board, but in the summer of 21 there is a drought, the corn act has been repealled because the government doesn't want to pay the subsidy, it descends into years of poverty and persecution before the union can be re-established again in the thirties.

horsemouth thinks this is a necessary corrective to a pastoral idyll that is portrayed as preceding the first world war as if everything was ok until then.

duck island park

taking advantage of a day off horsemouth wandered up through the salt marshes to duck island park - now the housing development for the uber-rich with a rather nice park attached recently opened by some royals. as the average flat decreases in size (to the point where it would be illegal to rent it to social tenants or even rabbits) it is good to see where all this saved space is going - into recreating tellytubbyland in what was once a mephitic swamp/ working warehouse area/ site of the largest purpose built housing co-op in western europe (clays lane -now demolished)/ place where umpteen raves were held. here and there are old sets of concrete steps that have survived the reclamations and cast iron victorian bridges painted appealing colours (and then closed off). horsemouth liked it enormously and will be making his way up there again when the sun is a bit more reliable.


years ago horsemouth read an article about the lower lea and about joan bakewell's support for an arts space to be based there - the people illustrated by little schematic stick people engaging in activities like ping-pong and making movies, these he then crossbred with the glorious shiny computer rendered images of jolly multicultural consumers enjoying the tellytubbied spaces of the soon to be opened olympic park. horsemouth replaced the computer generated consumers (in his illustrations) with the (now strangely less cybernetic and controlling) schematics - allowing these semiotc ghosts to haunt the proposed olympic site - today he went up to the former olympic site to hunt for these schematic creatures. everybody milled about having fun, except for one nervous dad who would not allow his son anywhere near water, but sadly everyone looked much like their architect standard illustrations, sadly there were also no semiotic ghosts that horsemouth could detect, simply a well layed out tellytubbyland gradually shading into walthamstow marshes.

after being denied entry into that space for so long it as if it has been spontaneously and magically appeared and given to the nation.

paperback writer / 1066 blues ( a pair of walking boots and a season ticket)

last night horsemouth went out to the bookgroup. this morning he has a bad head (but not too bad - he has plenty of time to treat it with paracetamol and asprin and caffeine berfore he works). many people were there it was good to see you all.

horsemouth took up his c.s. lewis science fiction trilogy and managed to part with it, he lent out the david grubb (the agapemonians, the memory diary, the movie of his life that was seemngly never made), margueritte duras's the lover went quickly. horsemouth returned with only a spare copy of voyage to venus, he brought back,
 jerome k. jerome's idle thoughts of an idle fellow,
 angela carter's the magic toyshop,
 pierre boisard, camembert,
 and mute, underneath the knowledge commons.

 max slipped the xenophobe's guide to the english into his bag so horsemouth will have to work out how to dispose of that.

paperback writer was a book review show in horsemouth's childhood, various writers would bring in various books they wanted reviewed. (yes the theme music was by the beatles) if horsemouth remembers correctly it was presented by the in our time fellow melvyn bragg. once, and again this is if horsemouth remembers correctly, angela carter was on, the book she had chosen was the whip and fladge classic the story of o, this was during feminist times, but also there was something sadistic in itself in making writers discuss a book about sadism, masochism and piercing in a manner suitable for a tv audience (at the height of the influence of mary whitehouse too). horsemouth watched entranced.


angela lansbury was prowling the neighbourhood yesterday - horsemouth does hop this is not the start of some arty gentrification thing - but, like eyore, he suspects it is.

1066 blues ( a pair of walking boots and a season ticket)

a tape has emerged of john fahey (and dr. demento) interviewing son house. son house sounds healthy and sober with a stronger voice than in his later years. much of the discussion concerns the origin of the name of charley patton's charlie bradley’s 1066 blues - this turns out not to be about the norman conquest of britain at all but about the times of local trains coming out of memphis (charlie bradley was the train driver - people on the route liked the way he blew the whistle).

outside it is rainy and grey and a bit rubbish. yesterday horsemouth went up to the nearby seaside town of hackney (it is hard to imagine the seaside towns tramway being memorialised like charlie bradley's train), he and howard (the musicians of bremen), worked on some new songs and played through some old ones - they plan to do some recording over the easter holidays. horsemouth, as howard pinted out, has cunningly ensured that he can survive on less money to permit him to work less and so have time to make his art/ music/ write whatever... the problem is that he is too lazy and disorganised to do so. it is a fair criticism.

horsemouth and howard have grown sick and disgusted by the murder mile (their hackney local) while nicely decorated and with good beer it is in fact infested with ponces, and it's getting worse, now they strut around like they own the place (which in fact they do). the musicians of bremen will be returning their custom to at the sign of the owltopus. one of the advantages of horsemouth's less than salubrious neighbourhood is that it is quite ponce resistant by virtue of being less than salubrious, utterly boring and a just little dangerous. this will however not be enough to save it from the flood tide of money rapidly sanitising this city. soon horsemouth and the local psychotic trash will be rinsed out to the suburbs - horsemouth will get a pair of walking boots and a season ticket.

march's books

read
damn good advice - gerorge lois,
hunger - knut hamsen,
the ministry of pain - dubravka ugresic,
memories, dreams, recollections - marianne faithfull,
reveries of a solitary walker - rousseau,
(started) emile or education - rousseau

bought 
uncle's dream - dostoyevsky,
the iron heel - jack london,
the hearing trumpet - leonora carrington,
letters - tolstoy

borrowed
a graphic guide to hegel

scrying the skies with seventies council buildings

for horsemouth the sun sets behind the block opposite - it is four stories high (two maisonettes) with a 3 story corner at either end. the sun has precessed round, travelling through the barrow of the block, to emerge (just before it sets) at its northernmost end - the sun appears to have made this change suddenly while horsemouth was 'away' or inattentive.
the sun should now shine directly through onto horsemouth's bookshelves illuminating an area for study.

 after the summer solstice (and around the time of the autumn equinox) it will retreat back behind the block again bringing sunsets forward in the teeth of daylight saving time - but horsemouth does not want to think about that now.

 for horsemouth the towers of the island are too far south to interfere in this operation and the towers of the stare mesto (or old town) too far away, a railway line and a playing field hold back the
encroaching residential towers.

 later he goes to play music (hopefully) - he may have to check out the travel.