may booklist

read

you are not a gadget - jaron lanier

green history (part) - derek wall

letters - anton chekhov (reading currently)

dr. bloodmoney - philip k. dick

to the end of the world - blaise cendrars

elite theory (part) - author forgotten

tales of hoffman - e.t.a. hoffman (reading currently)

read a little of...

blue lantern - colette

(intro to) arthur pym - edgar allen poe

bought

shadow line - joseph conrad 

akenfield - ronald blythe (duplicate copy)

strange visions (basket of light)

horsemouth was recently asked what his influences were.

in musicians of bremen it's much less about his influences than howard's (many of which are more recent than horsemouth's), there are influences in common, you can see this in one of the cover versions that horsemouth has brought to the band - allen ginsberg's father death blues - but on the whole horsemouth supposes the trick is not to find a song where the current version is amazing (why they have chosen blue crystal fire and silver raven) but to find one where it isn't fullfilling its full potential - live and learn.

there is one record that has had a key influence on horsemouth's 'folk' direction...

in the valleys of south wales in the 1970ies nestling between the moody blues in search of the lost chord  and the beatles blue album in horsemouth's parents record collection was basket of light  by pentangle. it had a gatefold sleeve in a distinctive brown (like led zepellin II known to fans as the brown bomber), a  photo of them onstage at the royal albert hall has been recomposed so that they are doubled and floating  above the circled tiers of opera boxes with their orange curtains. inside is the tracklisting, a brief description of each of the songs ('learnt by bert from neighbour's children in somerset', 'written on a 74 bus from gloucester road to greencroft gardens on an early spring day'), and black and white photos overexposed and close cropped that make them appear more bohemian and arty than they actually were (they were infact a notorious pack of drinkers). 

it was the particular lightness and space of the acoustic instrumentation that made it stand out - the double bass of danny thompson and the drumming of tony cox, the shifting time signatures and accents that keep the songs on their toes - that and the astonishing clarity and purity of jacqui mcshee's singing. this is probably the element of the band that horsemouth likes the least - but it's sparingly deployed, broken up by two group sing-alongs and three duets  (in particular bert jansch's singing voice is pleasingly un-dulcet and sits really well against mcshee's). one can imagine what pentangle would have sounded like if they'd had a harsh voiced singer. 

much of the record is made up of band compositions - bluesy, aimiable tunes given a bit of oomph by danny thompson's bass and their cover of the jaynetts 'sally go round the roses'   (for example, or springtime promises a notting hill feelin' groovy). what  is interesting is how few of the tunes are actually 'folk' tunes - slightly less than half - 'lyke walk dirge', 'once I had a sweetheart', 'the house carpenter'. 'the cuckoo'. all these are well known tunes from the folk revival scene played by other artists and in pretty much their standard forms. four songs deal with supernatural events 'lyke walk dirge', 'the hunting song', 'the house carpenter', arguably light flight itself ('strange visions (pass me by)'). it is in the middle 8 of these songs that the magic occurs - where a change in instrumental or vocal texture takes the narrative wordlessly on.

one reason is that it's hard to achieve transcendence through bluster (through mere volume) as it is often achieved in rock music with acoustic instruments - it's on a more human scale, it takes more thought.

horsemouth never quite found this elsewhere, pentangle never quite found this form again (though they had losts of good moments but also more than their fair share of underwhelming noodling). horsemouth never really found this in the incredible string band ,or fairport or the rest of the english folk scene, perhaps in the odd record he hears it, in katie cruel, in silver raven.  

but if it doesn't yet exist it remains to be made. 

march 9th. 40 martyrs and 10,000 skylarks

'i am of the opinion that real happiness is impossible without idleness.' - a. chekhov (who also wrote the list that serves as a title)

the great freedom is beginning (though the weather is not giving horsemouth cause for hope). if horsemouth had his act together he could be away for months. but it's true he does feel lighter and more cheerful already, despite the fact that there are still small things to be done at work.

the front cover of the selected letters of anton chekhov shows him with a small daschund type dog but following his trip to sakhalin (far east prison island of the czars - as written up in his book the island) chekhov returns by sea calling in at hong kong, india and sri lanka. it is at the last that he acquires a mongoose - he seems fond of it (though he worries it will attack and kill his dog - or vice versa). later he describes it as a 'rascal' in a letter to his family. the poet tom shapcott has written about it - like foucault's pendulum or the pope's rhinocerous the historical person and the possessive is just too prefect (chekhov's mongoose).

it is the animal spirit of the book - intelligent and flexible and with sharp teeth. of course when chekhov returns from sakhalin bunenin the critic suggests that he goes back there.

graverobberyintheseasidetowns

the sky above the estate was a grey gradient fill stolen from an e-commerce website. the real life second life avatars were up early and off to work not even trying to teach each other that amazing new dance step. meanwhile  two unemployed actors familiar to viewers of yugoslavian tv in the 70ies laboured digging up bodies from the estate graveyard. having had their full compliment of innoculations as children and by virtue of being cheap they were eminently suitable for this work. later they would transport the body by shopping cart across the seaside towns turning them in to a theatrical impressario/ community artist with access to freeze drying machinery (who would shortly be opening a show called 'mummies of the east end'). the rain fell. it was important to work quickly, only once the archeology had been done could the wrecking begin.

- I knew him.

-You did not

- I say we get the head off rather than disturb the gas pipe

- won't it come?

-no

-give it a pull

there was some pulling some tugging a schlorpp sound

a pause

there was some half-hearted chopping with the spade. then it stopped. 

- he's been here a long time 

- hmmn

- aren't those adidas?

the bodies were to be treated with respect (the site manager was clear about this) - they were to be wrapped in polythene and the skip was to be lined with polythene also.

chop went the spade

- someone must have a spare head

chop

-hmnn

- quit using that phone and give me a hand

- a hand 

a pause

'unparalleled (im)material plenty with a low standard of living'

last night horsemouth dreamt he was squatting in north west london (when he went for a wander outside there were mountains and a pavement coffee shop). the flat was large and concrete-y but horsemouth couldn't seem to find all the doors because strangers kept wandering through. horsemouth had a lot of kipple - he should really think about reducing it down if he's going to cart it about with him in his dreams.

 hipster as hunter-gatherer

 'unparalleled material plenty with a low standard of living' says marshall sahlins of the lives of hunter-gatherers in the green reader horsemouth has (featuring eroded attica - plato on soil erosion). of course the compensation for our security-lite employment prospects is that we can download/ stream or otherwise consume tons of cultural product for free and even produce it ourselves (good morning horsemouth writing again I see). it is not (as jaron lanier argues against the share -and -share-alike pay nothing digital economy) that the top of maslow's pyramid becomes blocked to us because we can no longer make a living (or at least not yet) but that it becomes more availiable as compensation for the menial nature of our various employments - think of all the people you see fiddling about on their phones during downtimes at work these days (only the homeless have time to read books).

there's a definition (somewhere in the wikipedia hipster entry) of hipsters as being more interested in what money does than in money itself - horsemouth thinks it would be good if that relationship could be so simply renegotiated. horsemouth voluntarily opted for a life where he made less money than his parents where he did not have a career, where he worked part time - in general he subscribed to the artist critique of capital, and, for his sins, capitalism has responded creating entire generations in this image.

ah well the job at tescos awaits when horsemouth is old and arthritic.

yesterday horsemouth mostly slept -off and on - he went down to the riverside (east india dock) to watch the proud owners out dog walking (poodles have such horrible feet). he's been reading anton chekov's letters (one of a line of doctors who are after hours scribblers - bulgakov, leonid tsypkin). lillian hellman, in her introduction, almost spoils it by making him sound too sensible (this is not what we read russians for! think of gogol, dostoyevsky, we read them because they howl so well) but fortunately she's right chekov is an agreeable character. 

 'I do not like my little book at all. it is a hotch-potch, a disorderly ragbag of feeble essays written at the university, slashed by the sensors and editors of humorous publications... had I known that people were reading me.... I would not have had the book published.'

wang kok kok. takak batok (old skulls)

----here is an old post from 5th may 2011---------

horsemouth has discovered the major problem with the headhunting project - old skulls, lurking in the rafters, the warriors who killed them and so derived the magic power for the tribe are long dead but the skulls are still in the house needing to be placated, they aer the nuclear waste of the headhunting business. this is a bad deal for subsequent generations of headhunters - how do they solve this? - they move. they build a new house elsewhere (without mentioning it in the old house) and then one day they light a large fire and leave. after a few days the fire goes out and the skulls notice they are cold 'where have all the humans gone?' they ask,'and the roof has fallen in', 'let's look for them' ... but the rain has obliterated their tracks. how did headhunting start? a frog advised the warparty wang kok kok. takak batok - the last part of which means cut the neck.

bring me the head of alfredo garcia

horsemouth is a very dense creature (in the south wales meaning of the term - meaning stupid) he had not associated his reading of alfred c. haddon's head hunters: black, white and brown with his watching (last night) of bring me the head of alfredo garcia ) surely a guide to the many practical problems facing headhunters. he's still digesting. part of the pleasure of haddon's book derives from the fact that the european anthropologists were going around measuring everybodies heads with calipers (the better to determine their intelligence), conversely there were also ghost headhunters - come to collect heads to form the foundations of government infrastructure projects. a similar idea (that it is good to build on skulls) can be found in the discussion of london bridge is falling down by the opies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iona_and_Peter_Opie).

horsemouth is reminded of the scene in murnau's tabu when there is a montage shot of money being paid and bills for debts being presented with the word 'tabu' superimposed over them - it is money's undecideable character (good as money bad as debt) that enables this. these notions of tabu and fetish enter, his use of virgil's aura sacri fames - 'the accursed thrist for gold' translates only one side of this division.

folk (revivalists) and hippie (nazis) getting it together in the countryside

Sean has been in touch;

'In your blog you recently referred to my comments on the impact of the 1914 on the rural class struggle, which it occurs to me could be misinterpreted. I would like to take this opportunity to make it clear that I do not actually condone inter-imperialist warfare.

Two further points on folk revivalists and hippies getting it together in the countryside -

1. They remind us of the bourgeois holiday makers in the scene from Deliverance http://youtu.be/mpL0Q2OSRwQ - the local yokels are amusing,"give 'em a dollar".

Good on the local proles for their refusal of political economy and not taking it lying down!

2. Consider the cover pic of the Earth Covers Earth lp, in which various post-industrial east London squatter geeks (most of 'em more likely to get a feature in Searchlight than the Wire) strike a pose reminiscent of the classic ISB pic on the back cover of Hangmans...  (both covers can be seen together here). Current 93 and Death in June were, of course, well ahead of the curve, reviving "acid-folk" back in the 80s (at a time when Pentangle fandom was still the love that dare not speak its name, as Horsemouth is doubtless aware) thus providing us with a cautionary tale about where all this stuff leads...

Electric Eden is noticeably silent about DIJ, even though they are a perfect fit for all that "visionary albion dreaming" nonsense.

We might note that Shirley Collins recorded with C93.... (Having said all that, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should admit that I really like Earth Covers Earth...how embarrassing.)'

3. From Electric Eden - " But the naïve freshness of vision which bought it into being began to wither under the darkening skies of the new decade...reflected in the rise of the new urban underground of Mick Farren's Deviants, Hawkwind etc etc Angry Brigade blah blah, blah"

So, ignoring factual inaccuracy - the Deviants were actually one of the first underground bands, but tend to be written out of accounts of the period as, not being beautiful people, they don't fit the script -  behind all the cosmic nationalism, theres that old boomer chestnut the end of the sixties as the end of innocence; or, put another way, after '67 the bloody proles started to get restless. Basically, the same line as the Daily Fail - it was all strikes in the early 70s that ruined everything dontcha know. No wonder Young tries to incorporate notorious strike breaker (and warmonger) Winston Churchill into his pantheon of far out anglo-dudes.

ps. Meant to add - liked Sorrows of Tomorrow a lot. A touch of  Comus in the guitar?'

the recording angel and the forgotten

just a quick post - bbc weather says it will be sunny this morning (before clouding over) so horsemouth needs to get out the door. he's been reading the jaron lanier (dreadlocked computer scientist and author of 2010's you are not a gadget - barbican library sale 30p) - as lanier notes we fit ourselves to the computers (because we're smart and flexible and they're dumb and inflexible), similarly, as evan eisenberg (the recording angel) or michael channan (repeated takes) or jacques attali (noise)or even theodor adorno would note, we've fitted music to our notation and to our recording devices and to our society and its ideas of production. 

there is, as usual when people struggle to find the elusive quality of consciousness, a musical metaphor. lanier takes against MIDI, he takes against notation as well, pointing out that south american indian flute music was only noted down (and so fitted into the notation system of the conquerors) in as far as it was 'nice tunes', not in response to the sonic  idiosyncrasies of the instruments themselves and their 'non-standard' tunings  (we may add that the social function of the music was not noted down by time-travelling anthropologists/ ethnomusicologists either).

lanier takes against web 2.0 - where we atomise our very selves into their searchable database - and then they aggregate it as if we had no individuality - the data wants to be free - the data doesn't want anything, it is we who want. he favours the earlier more idiosyncratic era of the web, when everybody had a homepage with flashing text and animated gifs etc. and all hand coded. but for horsemouth web 2.0 brought back that easy self-publishing (after dreamweaver and ever more complex html had taken designing web pages out of the hands of the interested amateur). and this aggregation up to a higher level, lanier is suspicious of it, arguing, against the wired enthusiasts, that people don't really know what they mean by that. but in a way, horsemouth supposes, as propaganda, it is a digital hegel, lifting things up and making them more spiritous legitimises the lower (and more messily material) layer. 

just as sound recording broke the immediate connection between sound and action and made it reproducible (putting many live musicians out of a job but also giving them access to their work in a new way) so keeping blogs etc. (or even just writing stuff down) changes our relationship with our thoughts (and makes them reproducible). of course (with the world wide surveillance) the nsa get a look, and the google advertising algorithm  - move along nothing to see here - but then soviet dissidents, gogol,  just about everybody from the earlier age were burning manuscripts when they thought they'd been indiscreet.  

few photos exist from horsemouth the punk years this was because few photos were taken, people didn't want to leave any evidence lying around - now horsemouth is pleased when such photos turn up. there is a campaign to allow people to be forgotten. if horsemouth were to go 'on the lamb' now he'd have to forswear the internet (the pattern of searches would be the same), he'd have to forswear his supermarket, or at least a loyalty card (the pattern of searches would be the same). these days horsemouth is harmless and law abiding  (truth be told he was pretty harmless back in the day - and only marginally less law abiding).

ok bbc weather promised him sun - horsemouth is off out.

friends, romans, countrymen... you know the SP...

ok friends, romans, countrymen... you know the SP... lend me (and by extension the musicians of bremen) your ears on this fine sunny sunday evening and listen to just two or three of our finished set of 17 songs and crucially let me (or howard) know what you think of them as you go along, or even message us after, or comment directly on the track (you can do this on soundcloud you know). anyroad - we need to pick the ones that we will be releasing - so please listen, hopefully enjoy, and then pick your favourites. 

signed, 

horsemouth X.

variations on austerity

horsemouth is listening to robbie basho live at sinclair auditorium, leo kottke studies with basho then records a track called easter, it's a pretty thing basho admits, basho was revenged  in a track called variations on easter. even among the bearded writers of steel-stringed guitar soli there is envy and jealousy driving innovation.

yesterday afternoon horsemouth got that good sunlight into his flat, he read the copy of the ft left by his drop on thursday (still no stock worth picking) - the losses of 2008 have been made up (by whose labour?) and it's as if they never happened, except for the recommendation of austerity for the poor, strangely that's not over. and yet even more strangely the amount spent  by the government (out of taxation) on housing benefit to people in employment , the subsidy just to enable the workers to pay their rent, will soon stand at  5 billion a year. surely, in a 'functioning' economy,  this should be covered out of the workers wages paid by the capitalists? - and who benefits from this subsidy? the owners of the property (the rentier class) and the owners of the businesses (who get to pay less wages). of course nothing is so dangerous as being in bed with the government relying on their money and policy. it only takes some bright policy wonk to notice that a certain policy would be popular (even if actually unworkable) for it to be implemented with catastrophic results for the plebs and the low level rent seekers - take a look at the bedroom tax. 

... and then there's those zero hours contracts taking the risk out of employment (for the capitalists) - you've seen on the waterfront- pushing this risk (the need to get enough work) onto the employee. of course the new communications technologies make this easier, the  new spirit of capitalism  (being flexible and all that shit) migrates down the foodchain in a strange kind of race to the bottom as capitalism moves to shed what is unwieldy and inflexible to be a perpetual start-up,- or is it, isn't it just farming out the risk (whilst keeping a tight grip on the reward).

basho has a song based on a navaho chant  moving up a-ways about how spirit moves on up through the soil and the plants and the animals and the humans 'to the sun, we are one',but that isn't what's going on here.

'a curious document this journal'

the second character in unforgiven years by victor serge (daria) keeps a journal;

 'a curious document this journal, whose carefully chosen words sketched out only the outer shapes of people, events and ideas, a poem constructed of gaps cut from the living material, because - since it could be seized - it could not contain a single name, a single recognisable face, a single unmistakable strand of the past, a single allusion to assignments accomplished... no expression of torment or sorrow (this was for the sake of pride), no expression of doubt or calculation (for the sake of prudence), and nothing ideological, naturally for ideology is the sludge at the bottom of the pitfall... the construction of this featureless record, similar to a thought puzzle in three dimensions turned entirely towards some undefinable and secret fourth dimension, had furnished her with an exhilarating occupation...'

april's books

read

 camembert - pierre boisard - book group - free

akenfield  - ronald blythe - one pound - probably horsemouth's book of the year so far

english traits - ralph waldo emerson - one pound (versus)

letters from england  - voltaire - at brother's while babysitting

the plague - albert camus - two pounds fifty

the unforgiving years - victor serge - two pounds fifty - amnesty hammersmith

to do list

letters of anton chekov - ed. lillian hellman - halcyonandon - one pound - introduction read

emile - rousseau - halcyonandon - one pound (some progress)

magic toyshop - angela carter - book group - free - as yet untouched.

escape into olomec time

horsmouth has been dreaming of escape - it required the carefully timed crashing of two vans so as to fake the death of one of the protagonists (before the patrol returned). for some reason a mid-period freddie mercury was there with a white switchblade (most stylish). 

the reason for this dream is probably horsemouth's reading of victor serge's unforgiving years, andy says he has read 3 other victor serge novels, horsemouth might have to as well, this one is pretty damn good. the war has ended - the narrative has taken us from stalingrad to dresden (carnage carnage carnage) now the survivors are hiding out in the mexican desert in olomec time. 

this is probably horsemouth's last 'full' week of work - there was a bank holiday monday, he doesn't have to work this morning, he has his normal wednesday off (he knows he's not going to get a lot of sympathy here). 

sean braved the transport hell that is the east of the seaside towns (and their vital infrastructural improvements that will benefit us all) to come and visit - things proceed with life offering up some resistance. in an email he said the following,

'particularly enjoyed the Akenfield/pastoral idyll post. Yes, 1914 war was a great step forward for the rural workers - Horsemouth is current front runner for the feral prole counter-intuitive revisionist theory of the year award.

Seriously! You put the finger on what irritates me about the vogue for all that hey-nonny-no nonsense; like, in that Electric Eden book theres a whole bit where Shirley Collins goes on about the tragedy of how the whole "folk tradition" ended in 1914....Yeah, there are no "folk" outside of quaint rural English villages, which weren't actually quaint at all, but were in fact so shit that even moving to the city to be a factory worker or a soldier on the western front was preferable. Fuck 'em, and their "get off my land" countryside bollocks.'

earlier horsemouth was over at howards (and then a quick pint in the murder mile) the musicians of bremen working season may be over, they need to top and tail the tracks and send a few of them off for mastering (it does make them sound better), they also need to select the strongest tracks and ask themselves if they should be spread out over a range of genres or clustered round one particular sound... and then they need to go and play live. it's been a while.