troy town

in the white goddess robert graves writes of mazes - he finds the same design (of the labyrinth of daedalus) preserved in the dance troy town and at bosinney in cornwall as at the dublin national museum (on rocks from the wicklow hills).


just as southern baptist preachers lay biblical time over present time (‘and it rained and it rained’) so graves lays classical time over the dark ages and the times before and over the now.

elsewhere fictional universes are being brought into communication - but what about if you were a character from another novel wandering around inside one of these trying to find the characters from your novel. 

horsemouth has diverted from utopia to reading into unknown england 1866-1913: selections from the social explorers (ed. peter keating) - disguised in rags james greenwood spends a night in a london workhouse (8th jan 1866). later in low-life deeps he witnesses a fight between a midget and terrier staged for money among the miners of hanley.

arnold bennett does not believe him;

‘the only man who stands a chance of getting his teeth knocked down his throat here is the ingenious person who started the celebrated legend of the man-and-dog-fight at hanbridge. it’s a long time ago, a very long time ago, but his grey hairs won’t save him from horrible tortures if we catch him.’ 

there is a certain crossover between the worlds of derek raymond (the crust on its uppers - the impecunious posh fronting gambling dens for the richardsons) and that of michael moorcock (new wave science fiction, genre hackwork editing and writing at the lower ends of the london literary scene). it is in Kyril Bonfiglioli (art dealer, book dealer, editor, author) - whose birthday is today incidentally (harry smith''s too).

the krays were out looking for bonfiglioli  onetime and ‘braced’ the young michael (in a bookshop naturally). at a party once he pulled out a pistol and chased everybody about (a very derek raymond to have happen).

noahversary

help horsemouth celebrate the noahversary one year since howard and horsemouth (aka musicians of bremen) recorded noah.




they’d started writing it in 2014 by bibliomancy - horsemouth had tried out a 3 verse demo version of the song at his gig at cafe bohemia in december and then on this day last year they had a crack at recording it properly. (as soon as school holidays and such permitted).

the key ingredient was probably the addition of the resonator guitar (as pictured) and recording the song in sections to a click track (something horsemouth is normally good at but on this occasion he struggled with). the icing-on-the-cake was saturating the solo guitar part with lashings of echo and delay (it’s just horsemouth noodling about really).

horsemouth had had a go at recording a guide vocal (which was a little croaky) and eventually managed to double track a reasonably tuneful take. howard then recorded backing vocals for the choruses.



horsemouth has a fairly stripped down version - howard has recorded an extended version with an additional verse and more bells and whistles on an epic scale.

horsemouth dreamed of flags and events and cunningly designed CD covers (in the land of green ginger)

the cover of the last CD that horsemouth was involved with putting out was a pile of junk. (it was a good photo of a pile of junk, nicely filtered in yellow, and the junk was interesting). when horsemouth was in a band (and at long last they had a record) the band decided they didn’t want it to have a cover (and so indeed it was). horsemouth still has a few in his cupboard. perhaps CD covers are lowly enough and humble enough to contemplate as home designed artworks (3 pixels bleed round the edges etc.). perhaps they are easily enough produced to be ‘folk’.



last night horsemouth watched the hull set  the land of green ginger - a couple fail to get it together driven apart by economics in alan plater’s 70ies play - the watersons sing throughout. the land of green ginger is the name of a street in hull old town (but the characters never manage to find it). a bbc presenter type on the train on the way up  (RP rather than regional accent) says it was also the name of a fantasy land of satisfied desires (kind of like the big rock candy mountain and other peasant paradises of the full stomach variety).

it was a sproatley smith song that got him there.


a friend is wondering why it is now that we are organising history walks - it is because the world we grew up in is now sufficiently far away and impossible for it to be properly historical. today is the anniversary of the birth of balzac.

conversely this lead horsemouth on to another of plater’s 70ies plays gangsters which spawned several series of ‘race relations’-spolitation mahem as crews of various ethnicities run the gambling, drugs, prostitution, illegal immigration, and protection rackets of birmingham. (horsemouth used to stay up late to watch it - it was entirely unsuitable). it was perhaps an attempt to make use of hindi film tropes in a social realist setting. there was insatiable demand for it (similar to shameless - sorry that's as recent as horsemouth's cultural references get) which led to its creative team tipping it over into self-parody (the series ended with a kung-fu touch of death, the writers filmed getting the manuscript typed up at an indian typing stall in india somewhere with an audience, at the very end the script pages are thrown up into the air over the heads of the crowd).

another era ends - horsemouth is on the move up into the hills and water margins of liangshan.

lazy sunday afternoonzah (takoma records)

horsemouth is up and about and shuffling round the flat. it is sunny but cold. (some friends were out camping last night he does hope they were ok). he has the balcony door open. later he will re-arrange the balcony to render use of the limited space more efficient (he bought a bag of fertilizer yesterday the better to hide his composting activities - all hail the worms). of course he is probably moving soon-ish but still.

he’s had a soap powder box leakage so he should vacuum that up at some point (maybe). he’s had his coffee, a few slices of bread and now he’s on to the tea. the nasturtiums are doing well (especially the ones that self-seeded in the guttering). he’s reading the ask by sam lipsyte (thrown out books pile by front door of block - downsizing residents - free) - funding and donations grunt at a university has an outbreak of unfortunate honesty to an arts student and is fired - then gets hired back (maybe) to facilitate a donation from one of his richer college friends. it’s decent so far. it benefits from the correct feel.

DJs Uncle Jeff and (Cousin) Cal Huss provide an in-depth examination of John Fahey and the label that he started; Takoma Records.

                          inspired by the version of in christ there is no east and west that starts this a friend was bemoaning their lack of progress on the guitar. horsemouth is considering having another push on the ‘learn to play some john fahey’ front - there’s plenty of fahey tab about, and even video lessons of the old curmudgeon teaching you the more straightforward ones.

so far horsemouth has only unconsciously and/or imperfectly borrowed from fahey. horsemouth is aware that he’s a bodger - no longer interested in fiddly guitar playing but more interested in singing and doing just enough to enable this.


horsemouth was very taken by this song by the takoma released homegas (straight out of a rural commune in indiana).

ok - balcony rearrangement done (festering food waste food for the worms hidden). maybe some beans to go in later. in a bit - a wander.

huntington ashram monastery day

on this day in 1969 ron carter, rashied ali and alice coltrane recorded huntington ashram monastery. horsemouth will play it later on today.

horsemouth is just back from denise’s (cancelled babysitting mission). there was some guitar playing (in fact horsemouth was dragooned into changing the strings on denise’s guitar (the green one) - a nice new set of martin strings with a wound-g. he played denise the steve earle, jackson c. frank’s blues run the game, his ‘new’ songs. horsemouth and denise have survived twenty years in the same job (how unplanned was that) and perhaps a few years more in the same city.

last night horsemouth was round andrew minty’s (some guitar playing some drinking some listening to metal some tarot cards). he is therefore a little tired today. and the sun is shining which the weather report said it wasn’t going to do (aaargh!)

... and the sun is shining in horsemouth’s subconscious but there is a journey to be made.

robbie basho and the paramusical ensemble

ok grey day (so far). bbc weather said sun. but then it is, to mix superstitions, friday 13th in a monkey year.



so horsemouth has discovered yet another basho collaborator lurking in the basho archive - allain ribback - drone guitarist (and enthusiast for paramusic) who basho met in new york whilst preparing for his first album seal of the blue lotus (by going on a huge roadtrip).

'from toronto, robbie took a bus to new york and spent three days and nights, sleepless, looking for a place to stay. finally, he was rescued by a fraction of French painters who traded him bed for board. robbie worked the basket houses in the village until he was fired for being non-commercial. at the same time he fell in with allain ribback who was working with paramusic. 

a short and perhaps unjust description of the idea behind the music is: a group of nonprofessional musicians intensively play together until they achieve a music which is expressive of the group as a whole. robbie did some work with allain and the black lotus - hymn to fugen was recorded during this period.... The financial assistance gotten from ribback kept robbie alive for two weeks and enabled him to return to the west coast. '
(from robbie basho archive -http://www.robbiebasho-archives.info/en/rb_spots.html)

as basho writes in his sleeve notes for  seal of the blue lotus;

‘ black lotus - hymn to fugen a blackwash painting of tonalities in the realm of the black lotus. I am aided by wodden organ, drums and templebells. I am also very indebted to allain ribback on drone guitar. he made these pieces possible. fugen is the goddess of the lotus sutra, of charity, of gentleness. this is a hymn of deep spiritual passion rising and falling and finally rolling on the carpet of the clear with the aid of sweet bhikshu bells.'

here paramusic is the name of a movement rather than the usual use in musicology as part of paramusical describing the connotations etc. of music (the things involved in music that are not directly music).

horsemouth has found out little about this movement so far - he has unearthed a performance by the paramusical ensemble comprising of four severely motor-impaired patients (significantly some ex-musicians) and a string quartet at the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability, London, on 17 July 2015 using brain monitoring equipment to participate in a piece for a string quartet designed by eduardo reck miranda.

Paramusical Ensemble from cinema iloobia on Vimeo.


interestingly his researches (a few poorly thought out google searches) also threw up a most attali like book the sense of sound: musical meaning in france, 1260-1330 by emma dillon, focusing on charivari and carnival - music/ noise making as protest (following bakhtin) - in this it is more like michael channan’s work than attali’s.

digital + spirit + storm

here  you see a very excited horsemouth 

with one of his drum and bass heroes digital.

for many years (ok roughly from 1993 on until about 2003) horsemouth was completely besotted with drum and bass.

his first introduction to it was dj hype’s drum and bass selection volume 3 mixtape (well no ok - he’d heard it coming out of people’s cars in hackney), he listened to the first track until the drop and was then so amazed by the chopped up breakbeats he rewound it and started listening to it all over again.

friends took him down to metalheadz and from then on (fueled by pay from his job) he was off - movement, the end, renegade hardware, grace, whatever the liquid drum and bass night was called, whatever dylan’s night was called, whatever T-AK’s night was called...

hence horsemouth was very excited to hear of a mixed dubstep/ techno/ drum and bass afternoon and evening for free in brick lane.

horsemouth met dave webb up at the gig early on but sadly at a certain point in the evening the venue started requiring photo id to get in leaving three of horsemouth’s friends stranded outside. by this time dave and horsemouth had been seduced by sub-bass (and having various cartilagenous bits of their bodies rattle) and so stayed (gentlemen please forgive him). the three un(der)documented ones found a party in the end. dave and horsemouth on the other hand stayed and spent a small fortune on beer (at pub prices - that is to say five pounds a pint).

producing or dj-ing on his own digital’s tunes are full of spinbacks, horns, rave stabs, sirens and lashings of ugly menacing bass. this makes them great fun - usually digital and spirit (aka phantom audio) were exactly the same but with a single beautifully textured ambient sample over the top. horsemouth can’t recall ever having seen spirit playing out on his own before (but then he doesn’t have any clear memories of seeing digital play out before although he must have). if anything, this time, spirit’s set of tunes was even uglier.

the night was rounded off by dj storm - it was good to see her smiling away as she delivered fresh doses of bass and ugliness clearly still enjoying it after all these years.

horsemouth thought he might have forgotten how to dance (it has been so long) but not a bit of it.

sweet earth flying / eleven light city weekend

recorded may 6/7th 1974 (that’s the thing about jazz albums - they’re recorded on specific days - it makes them easier to celebrate).


 horsemouth goes for a wander.  he ‘should’ have been out last night to one of max’s poetry things (but he shuffled round the flat and had a bath instead).

 horsemouth should agree to go out to a few more things. he generally enjoys himself when he goes out - and gets anxious about not going out when he doesn’t.

 ok time for a wander.

end of month round up for april (a little late)

gigs 

• electronica in new cross 
• folk synthesis in peckham, 
• stick in the wheel at the folk cub in walthamstow 

books 

• mill on the floss and essays by george eliot
• allen ginsberg biography - barry miles
• anna kavan
• paul bowles - stories 
• introduction to pascal's provincial tales
• silence and christian history - diarmard macculloch
• the invention of morel - adolfo bioy casares, 
• introduction to the white goddess by robert graves 

films 
zatoichi 15 

events

sean visited, beers with andrew minty, falafel with work mate, coffee with friend, beers with marike, basho accompanists and collaborators research, scammed by mendicant, myk's singles party, wander round to hermit park then wander out with john down lee, beedle coram shop leaving party.