a man out of time (reactivate the sediments)

it is the 5th anniversary of the first snatch foster band gig.

1990 or so - horsemouth was in a band called bush house in hackney. horsemouth is playing guitar, nick was the stand in bassist for a number of gigs when andy was away and earlier had taken the band up to RAK studios (where he was working as tape op) to record their first few tracks. later horsemouth would share a house with nick.

2009 or so - horsemouth moves back up  to stoke newington and meets his old friend nick on a bus - horsemouth records 4 songs round nick's (two of which make it up onto myspace partie de campagne  (a long slide guitar piece) and picardy -  though with picardy horsemouth adds iona playing recorders and oboe round hers).



meanwhile  the snatch foster band 

nick also wants to play his songs  live. it seems (to horsemouth) an attempt to recreate new wave, to explore what was interesting and distinctive about that genre - to reactivate the sediments.. after trying out on guitar horsemouth decides it would be more fun if he played bass, and gets rust in on 2nd guitar. horsemouth reasons that rust is much more into indie guitar than he is, plus he's worked on songs with rust and knows that rust can play and has a whole rack of incomplete songs that would probably sit in better with nick's stuff than horsemouth's stuff.

with clive (the drummer)they play 4 gigs in the space of two years 2010-2012, they are mostly playing 3 nick's songs 3 green letters, dave now though there's some work (about 5 minutes) on doing the devil song with the band or in doing versions of some of rust's songs, they do a version of gentleman john and once (at the christmas gig) they do a version of in the bleak midwinter. 

horsemouth enjoys playing bass (and would gladly do it again) - but it often left him with blood blisters on his bass-playing finger.

Gig List
27th November 2010 - Hope and Anchor Islington

11th December 2010 the Victoria Queensbridge Rd. with the Santa Belles (a gertrude side project) - a drummer-less gig.

31st July 2011 downstairs at what used to be The Three Crowns/ Bar Lorca (best gig)

winter 2011/12 Islington (just by the tube - downstairs again)

horsemouth diidn't play bass on any of their recordings - they also played some covers,  elvis costello's (could you still love) a man out of time (which pretty much is the band in a microcosm), andy partridge's young marrieds,  and from the 3rd gig onwards wire's outdoor miner (great fun to play live).

at iona's birthday party in 2012 horsemouth, with rust playing guitar sings 3 songs -golden hair (by syd barrett and james joyce), gentleman john (by himself and rust,  with nick singing a backing vocal), and the devil song (written by his good self). and that (as they say) was that.

nick continues to write and record as does horsemouth. clive still plays. of rusty horsemouth knows nothing.

horsemouth ass button - his most used words on facebook decoded

of course (as friend london happy dance hastened to point out) most of the words from horsemouth’s posts on facebook are actually not horsemouth’s at all but from nuclear war by sun ra (it’s a long song it counts disproportionately).





this is what horsemouth has gained for parting with all his account details (he feels so sullied). fortunately -as you know horsemouth is largely a fictitious character.


ah data data data

and ah photographers and their ethics - there was good (ethical) taking of the photographs of people without their consent for the purposes of categorisation (of the mad for example, of criminal types revealed through the bumps on their skulls and by their ugly criminal features) and there was bad (unethical) taking of photographs for the purposes of classification. of course now we know better (so that’s alright then).

ah data data data next week you will have been subjected to nine whole years of horsemouth’s blogging and willful self-exposure on various platforms largely alibied as an attempt to promote his music. horsemouth suggests you cut out the middlemule and listen directly to his music. alternatively you could write an app to continue posting on social media in horsemouth’s already existing pattern and the same for all your friends - in fact who is to say that this has not already happened.

psalm for a revival (death sun)

horsemouth is listening to maddy prior and her daughter rose kemp talking about music and people singing. he’s listened to all of the second part and a little of the first part of the documentary - he recommends it. (he wishes he could work out a better way of sharing it with you).

maddy prior grew up in blackpool (but like many of horsemouth’s generation or earlier she hurried to get rid of her regional accent - you can hear a hint of northern in there) before moving to st.albans.



rose kemp has made doom metal records - an electric guitar is ‘something for the voice to rail against’ , she talks about ‘being praised for feminine attributes’ on the folk scene ‘didn’t you sing sweetly’ etc. and not enjoying it. maddy prior sings a vocal on a doom metal track with a guy from earth - her daughter on a folk track (but with an electric guitar on there). they've both made music and taught making music so their conversation is full of the detail and the grit that comes from that.



‘you don’t necessarily agree with what they’re saying, it’s just that you’re sort of shining a light on the issue’ says maddy of folk lyrics. four loom weaver features (stick in the wheel do a great version - as do maddy prior and june tabor which horsemouth would share with you if embedding weren't disabled hint hint). four loom weaver is quite the austerity anthem. there's also a tune called fanny blair which horsemouth will have to look up.



horsemouth thinks they work because they tell a story - and because there are always different ways of reading stories, always telling details.

‘narrative art is dead, we are in a period of mourning’

so said pasolini.

at least according to the film review horsemouth has in front of him (abel ferrara does pasolini with willem dafoe - whoda thunk it?).

horsemouth has been a bit knackered of late and is finding it difficult to think (or emote, or say yes to projects) - a period of mourning, of drawing in his forces, would probably suit him. he should reread the freud essay on mourning again - it’s a good one (horsemouth has to admit freud does write well - unlike jung and rank - horsemouth is tempted to say they write like bitches - even anais nin (rank’s friend who would take him out dancing in harlem) is compelled to admit that rank writes so badly that no-one can get interested in his ideas. it is surprising how much less compelling jung’s prose is than his art - his art is at least decently crazy.

the hero raised by the half-man half beast rises again - rank noted this, machiavelli noted this. the hero must be able to connect with his animal nature.

horsemouth has been shrugging again, getting rid of tasks - a babysitting, an extra beach-side donkey rides portage event. he’s tired - under the previous dispensation he wold have got a week of reduced bookings round about now - instead he’s got to clump on towards some distant finishing line in december. ah bless the cosmos - work has just cancelled for today - horsemouth will lounge about and read.

tonight horsemouth probably (energy levels permitting) jams with andrew minty. they should get a set list together. of course horsemouth works much less than many of the schmoes in this city it is only his over-attachment to the work that causes it to be tiring - if he could just adjust his perspective on it he’d be fine.

(on) the origin of rhymes, songs and sayings (in defence of an unfashionable theory)

in the pedestrian subway we found one of the former olympic mascots - confused and distressed
(photo by max 'crow' reeves).

the reconfiguration of the city continues and has moved on into the imagination (always already its true home).

the greenwich foot tunnel appeared first as a submarine (horsemouth has often said this), but reality (in its tunnel-ness) kept intruding. the sonar pinged, the international youth cleaned, engineered and passed messages, the locals - the male on the north shore, the female on the south became ‘local characters’ the tunnel sundering their love.

then it was a video game (no - find a younger term - like a game you might have on your phone) the audience were rendered active - turned into the walls of the tunnel facing away from the action forbidden from turning round to see what was happening. others back to back walking crabwise (the famous sidewalk) attempted to use the tunnel (obeying the keep left signs) while avoiding the demon cyclists in the dark (with ones the red lights on their heads). those struck by the cyclists had to join the walls - but this was not so much an experiential plea for safe cycling (cycling being an activity banned in the tunnel - as it is on pavements and more observed in the breach) as a frank admission of the joys of dangerous cycling and dodging and the city, a joy that made the very walls themselves want to turn round to watch (but this was forbidden and yet they did nevertheless).

it could have been a beckettian dialogue between two characters tied together awaiting the attack of the demon cyclists (flan o’ brien/ bruno shultz even) but the youth want things reconfigured as interactive, as games. the role of cyclists could have been played by the audience with a debrief afterwards ‘and how did you feel?’ ‘it was fun’. this was not an ethnomethodological breaking of the rules to see what they really are but a post-structuralist play of the joys of disobedience. but the reconfiguration is flawed it does not rise above an escape into fantasy, a wish to run and play. isn’t it a fair reaction to a city rapidly turning from a place mad, bad and dangerous to know into an airport departure lounge, it is difficult to respond strongly to a city that has already become a serviced area.

tuesday night horsemouth witnessed an unscripted cycling/ pavement user disagreement ‘fucking bastard! idiot!’ yelled the smaller man, ‘come on then. right now.’ said the bigger one. the smaller one wanted it but the sensible bit of his brain knew he had to walk away.

over at st. dunstan (st.dunstan in the west presumably - maybe not) two with recent birthdays were declared the red or the white king or queen - battle commenced between their followers for red or white balloons - just one balloon would have created a game of violence (murderball anyone?) but many balloons created much joyous squeaking. there was (as there always is now) a video - a video of warfare - but no one was watching. they were having too much fun.

over at leadenhall shrouded women silently rehung meat on hooks in some re-enactment of history surrounded by diners, over at kensal rise cemetery the dead rose up and talked (thornton wilder?). we were given monopoly money and invited to circle the edge on the silver mandala that centered upon a clock - people complained that the market was no longer a real market, that it just offered shallow consumerism, that places were being turned into non-places. but isn’t the real sin of capitalism not that it is boring but that it is busy re-impoverishing us to make up for its own crash and that it will do so again and again for as long as we let it.

over at chelsea the gilded youth had celebrated the end of dia de muertos, they had rocketed tate britain, the casualized culture workers walked in across the scorched parade ground. the gilded youth had had a firework display but for nine grand a year they weren’t going to come the next day and clear up after themselves.

in the library horsemouth found a copy of jean harrowven’s origin of rhymes, songs and sayings - oranges and lemons say the bells of st. clements, shoreditch has grown rich. as a child horsemouth once witnessed a game of oranges and lemons in a nursery playground in llansamlet - but even by then (early 70ies?) the children were only doing it because horsemouth had asked.

dia de muertos and the unmourned death of the small buy-to-let landlord

it’s a misty blue morning - horsemouth stayed in last night - the spirits of the departed besieged the building (and let off the odd firework). horsemouth (with his blinds drawn) missed the visits of the ghost children. later (perhaps) a visit to a cemetery.

lord eccles’ on collecting goes well, he gives good advice on book collecting, or indeed of starting and maintaining a collection of any sort, he advises a one-in-one-out strategy, of setting out a fixed sum to fund acquisitions that must be replenished by selling some lesser valued items in the collection. lord eccles is in spain in the 30ies - ecclesiastics, with an eye on the troubles endured and the troubles coming, are selling off their treasures. madonnas are smuggled out of convents in the coffins that accompany the sick to the hospital.

horsemouth has said he wished the government would inflict the 1 % rent cut for the next four years equally as they do on social landlords as they do on private landlords. but they may have in fact done something harsher by removing large chunks of the tax relief on mortgage interest payments for buy-to-let landlords (and removing the 10% wear and tear write down they are allowed on rental incomes whether or not they do any repairs or not).

of course the most likely result of this will be rent rises for the existing tenants, or owners ‘improving’ properties and then letting them out at higher rents, or smaller buy-to-let landlords selling up (to bigger buy to let landlords most likely). outside of london (where there is still plenty of housing stock) charging tenants more will be difficult as tenants can move to such cheaper property as still exists. in london it will further drive out the poor and have a disproportionate effect because fully 1/4 of the lending is for buy to let properties and fully 1/3rd of private rental properties are on buy-to-let mortgages. the national landlords association thinks tenants will pay an extra 2.6 billion in rent - about 70 pounds a month more on average rents (so more again in london).

it may (however) bring more properties to market and in classic government fashion there may be more rule changes to come round ‘incidental’ buy to let landlords - of course none of this bites fully until 2020. but the ‘direction of travel’ is clear. 

2020 - this seems to be becoming a bit of a crunch date.