may 2018 gigs, books, films, events

gigs

1. lankum 
2.  adrian sherwood, ADF, steve 'interesting' davis 
3. cuban drummers by the river

 books

• felix holt - george eliot, 
• aleksandr blok biography, 
• whatever happened to modernism? - gabriel josipovici, l
• aocoon - lessing, 
• the gide journals, 
• a little of fredric jameson’s archeologies of the future. 

 films dead the ends, cops, schonberg documentary events darsavini's birthday, dave's birthday, release of musicians of bremen volume 3

album released - night night

so horsemouth and howard have released musicians of bremen volume 3 - (somewhat chaotically on horsemouth’s part) initially just streaming and as a download, later as a physical CD. he apologizes if there’s any confusion. about 40 or so people have so far responded (clicked like, interested, left conversations, asked where the gigs will be, reposted the link etc.).

horsemouth is pleased. it feels good (and a little like an anti-climax). to celebrate the clouds opened and there was a humongous (though brief) rainstorm. howard still has time to serve at school (and then he’s away on holiday) meanwhile horsemouth will go out and try to get some gigs to play the tunes out/ try to sell some physical CDs. they’ll organise an official release party for later in the summer. he has set the release date and time of the CD to the precise moment of the solstice (the better to align it with the heavens) and send it on its way.

of course now that he can stream it over the internet rather than listen to it direct from his own hard drive, he is listening to it more and with increased intention. for horsemouth the crucial moment was when it came back from mastering - it just sounded much tougher and more focused, much more consistent, like a ‘thing’.

when the faun met alice, funeral music, her hair like some glittering gold, let all mortal flesh keep silence were guitar instrumentals horsemouth had worked out before (two of which he had recorded before with nick lacey - thanks nick - and which he and howard re-edited/ remixed). it feels good to get them out and done. 

slaibh na mban has wanted to record for ages (since he first hear denise singing it on a recording made by graham), howard wrote and sang the second set of lyrics. the devil horsemouth wrote ages ago (thanks to peter holmgren for playing bass on it at short notice). satan (your kingdom must come down) horsemouth learnt off a willie nelson record (well off youtube really), worldes blisse is a 12th century miserabilist anthem from edward lee’s music of the people.

serpent(S) and on the banks of the susquehanna were improvised/ semi-improvised at the end and start of the sessions respectively by horsemouth and howard together, with banks (the last song on the album) they just set up the mics and started the recording device (no rolling tape these days). thanks to john clarkson for the loan of the harmonium and the melodica (key to the sound of the album). next time we’ll get the omnichord on. of course now that it is released horsemouth can see what people make of it.



today is the birthday of harry everett smith - visual artist, experimental filmmaker, record collector, bohemian, mystic, and largely self-taught student of anthropology. besides his films, smith is widely known for his Anthology of American Folk Music, drawn from his extensive collection of out-of-print commercial 78 rpm recordings.

[O]dyssey

'It is very nearly impossible... to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.' - james a. baldwin

‘... 1832, the zadkiel of that time had predicted that the electrical condition of the clouds in the political hemisphere would produce unusual perturbations in organic existence.’ - in george eliot, felix holt: radical.

yesterday horsemouth went up to howard’s (chateau bremen) to discuss the cover design for the CD and to check through the text - it all looks good. they also need to launch it on bandcamp. (and at some stage they will need to play some gigs to properly launch it).

meanwhile... er. they went up out for a pizza (a rare treat) and then er.... up the pub.

initially they were thinking it was too hot to be drinking but then (sad to relate) the beer (and in particular a few whiskey and coca-colas) convinced them. the music held them there too - a tribe called quest, mf doom etc. for horsemouth peoples instinctive travels and the paths of rhythm, the later low end theory and the jungle brother’s done by the forces of nature were part of a second flowering of hip-hop, genius records made when it was possible to sample old funk and jazz records (and then get ron carter in to play bass on it). a little later again digable planets, the fugees...


now, of course, horsemouth feels remorseful. he really can’t afford to do this ‘day in the pub’ thing and so after this weekend coming (field day) he will be knocking it on the head for a bit (well at least until the leigh folk festival, oh ok there’s also stick in the wheel and the unthanks in barking before that). mid-july he’s off to cork when he will be comparatively sober (howard is off to oz).

eliot takes us back in time - and through space as well, the space of the journey, a space that will teach us - O (instantaneous travel as if by vacuum tube) will teach us nothing (but an Odyssey will).

‘joyfully I accept this strange book...’ (on agricultural workers, long-bearded arians, beer froth...and much else...)

‘and why not get drunk sometimes, since life has turned out the way it has: there are moments when knowing something terrible and tragic comes quite close and a keen wind blows through the soul; and others when ‘life is so light, so very light’’ - kuzmin

blok has been playing away (bad lad). but his actress girlfriend is too smart for him (‘joyfully I accept this strange book...’) and will not be caught. meanwhile he has crashed and burned his relationship with his wife (but at least he’s stopped her running off with bely). bely, ah bely, he’s finally managed to fall out properly with bely.

blok on bely - ‘I understand nothing about you and never will, and nor will anyone else.’

bely to blok - ’In view of the ‘complexity’ of our relations I liquidate that complexity be breaking off relations with you (except for chance meetings, greetings in the street etc.). Don’t answer. All the best...’

today horsemouth swears he will finish off reading the aleksandr blok biography. (he’s just done it - it finishes off with the kuzmin quote. he’s sad it is over and willingly read volume 2 right now). he will swerve reading the bluffers guide to blok he has (gerald pirog) and probably go straight to the holiday reading (freya stark or the like).

horsemouth has wasted time (and valuable sun) writing some inconsequential paragraphs on yet a.n.other ‘liberal’ thinker beset by ‘political correctness’ and ‘marxist censorship’. having read it for one horsemouth only wishes to high heaven that the marxists were sufficiently in power to censor things. fuck people don’t half write some terrible prose (and there’s no saving people from the stupidity of their followers). he could have stocked up on the george eliot (felix holt: radical - 70p for example) but it is heavy fare and he really should institute a ‘one-in-one-out’ policy round here.

‘what will we do when we have no money?’

so horsemouth is back from lankum gig midweek (and very good it was too). cheers mike and lou (and everybody else including _____ mike - who horsemouth hasn’t seen in the best part of 30 years). as a gig it was pretty near flawless - open with the hit, keep on ringing the changes, waterson’s style harmonies, a harmonium.

horsemouth has work today (so he headed home early when the gig had finished). one of the regular beggars approached (he’d tried horsemouth before the gig too) and horsemouth gave him the thoroughly dishonest sorry mate - no money and open handed shrug barely even thinking about it. once home sten regaled him with the evenings tale of aggressive begging by the posh - ‘yeah but what have you got for me?’ responded the youth when rebuffed by a (for once) literally penniless sten. sten evaded nimbly and posh but impecunious turned his attention to the solitary girl at the bus stop and began with the same aggressive routine.

later a friend of sten’s enabled a switching of roles and for sten and horsemouth to see it from the other side (horsemouth confessed that he has never done any begging) - having once done some begging sten’s friend remarked, you feel bad, and the people just walk by you pretending not to see you, but necessity compels you.

horsemouth has a plan to lend/give lou pete seeger and bob reiser’s carry it on - an anthology of radical songs (much more her thing than his) and his copy of 100 songs of toil. he’s just bought the sheet music for six rumainian songs (by bartok) and some scott joplin rags - that should be enough to keep him busy for a while. he’s also learnt the chords to death don’t have no mercy - and is trying to work out the best key to sing it in. soon horsemouth will finish up for the year (and then he will have no money). worse still he won’t have work to distract him.

bientôt sur cet écran (incomplete meaning)

so here we see horsemouth in may 68 when he was part of a maoist groupuscle (and spoke french). he took part in a documentary filmed by celebrated director jean-luc godard who, with his film crew lived in the ‘commune’ for 6 months and ended up leaving with horsemouth’s then girlfriend (the somewhat babyfaced one on his right). she said size didn’t matter (turns out it did).

jean-luc noticed that horsemouth was employing a number of teaching techniques and structured the film (and many of his subsequent films) round them. jean-luc was particularly taken by the posters horsemouth used to make to help render his ideas clearer to himself. not mind-maps as such, but more focused down onto individual sentences, trying to reveal the structural similarities between sentences, laying them out in space to dramatise the relationships involved, leaving gaps for the student to replace the object or subject of the sentence (horsemouth would then quiz them on the changes this would bring). jean-luc would take photos of them at each stage of their production (horsemouth couldn’t understand why he was so interested in them). 

other teaching techniques woud be used - situations would be dramatised - in a kind of, what we would later call, boal’ian forum theatre. louis, in particular was clearly interested in all of this, and indeed claimed to have invented it. at one point louis got horsemouth to read from one of his essays, but horsemouth didn’t understand it and got frustrated and reverted to maoist sloganising before the paragraph was over.

of course horsemouth got to meet all of jean-luc’s friends - louis althusser, elie faure, his little mate etienne balibar (lovely fellow), the outwardly friendly (but somewhat cold) michel foucault, there was a whole crew of them really, macherey, ranciere, jacques lacan’s son in law... though they didn’t always agree and horsemouth would sometimes have to ask them to leave if the conversation got too heated. ranciere and louis were always going at it (in a strange normalien kind of way - frankly ranciere showed so much irritation with the whole set up you often wondered why he was there (but he did take copious notes).

others were round less frequently - alain badiou would spout sartre and everyone would look away (horsemouth heard that he’d changed later and gone all mathematical), marguerite duras was busy with a reading group - she invited horsemouth to it (but she was somewhat older and he didn’t fancy her so he didn’t go). frankly horsemouth was only there for the chance to chat up women.

of course this gives the lie to anyone who suggests that jean-luc took all his ideas from guy debord. in girum imus nocte, can dialectics break bricks etc. horsemouth hasn’t thought about this stuff in years - painful memories - like many who survived the intense self-criticism of the maoists he was, as improv drummer chris cutler put it, walking wounded - it was not until the 90ies that (faced with the continued rightward turn of french politics and and the renegade philosophers who supported it - glucksman et al.) that horsemouth became nostalgic. he looks forward with some trepidation to going to see the movie redoubtable - someone must have spilled the beans or written a memoir or something, for there it is, bientôt sur cet écran, horsemouth’s life on screen.

and still the paragraph louis had him read bothers him;

‘I look back, and I am suddenly and irresistibly assailed by the question: are not these few pages, in their maladroit and groping way, simply that unfamiliar play El Nost Milan, performed on a June evening, pursuing in me its incomplete meaning, searching in me, despite myself, now that all the actors and sets have been cleared away, for the advent of its silent discourse? ‘
jean luc seemed bored but then as soon as horsemouth started speaking he began filming.

if you are reading this anna please get in touch.

'strange things happen on a friday night...'

horsemouth and sten (and a friend of sten’s - michael) went out to see adrian sherwood play (er. and that well known magma and krautrock fan steve ‘interesting’ davis, asian dub foundation, and, horsemouth presumes, some ex-members of rip rig and panic, pigbag or one of those). thanks for the squeeze andy.

later (as part of his dj set) sherwood played a verion of john holt’s strange things (a u-roy talk over?) - possibly one of the strangest reggae records ever recorded. sample lyric ‘but I’m just a wandering sheep, a wandering sheep on this island’.

horsemouth walked most of the way back chatting with a dude from a guardian company out in romford in essex - romford is the place to be (romford romford) - he was friendly and enthusiastic about possibilities out there at the bitter end (now rebranded the better end).

thursday (after an abortive work mission) horsemouth walked to the whitechapel gallery to watch ben’s film dead the ends for the second time - it is (of course) all there (again) - this time horsemouth spots the isidore isou dedication, he spots the shift from tranche one (the cultural re-cycling of capital -biba etc.) to tranche two (the time machine of debt). there are even spinners of the the bird / the cage - the bird in the cage type. 

to prepare he’s also watched a bit of ben’s can dialectics break gravity - which starts with a piece of georges méliès le voyage dans la lune wheras dead... has a piece of la sortie des usines lumière à lyon.

at the first moments of film there was a chance for film to be different from the narrative cinema it has become, there was a possibility of misreadings which we are all, by long exposure, trained not to see.

ben gave a little talk before the showing (which horsemouth thinks was a mistake) better to have a discussion after when people have formed their opinions unassisted. horsemouth didn’t hang around for a chat in the bar after.

they’d reached the cinema by means of walking through the gallery - there was a giant birdcage, on his way back out horsemouth noticed something moving... in the trees ... the birds. on his walk back home he noticed a sparrow sitting in the middle of the road - he wondered if it was fake - but no it flew off. this morning a long discussion online.

does anyone still own a CD player?

so the track order is decided for musicians of bremen volume 3.:

•  satan (your kingdom must come down) - a gospel blues, slide guitar, harmonium, some clapping and stomping, vocals duet 
• when the faun met alice - slide guitar instrumental solo 
• funeral music - slide guitar and sound effects instrumental duet 
• sliabh na mban - guitars and harmonium, vocals by denise ishaque (part i), howard grange (part ii) trio (i) and duet(ii) 
•  for micol finzi-contini - slide guitar instrumental (with ukulele fanfare) basically debussy's la fille au cheveux de lin (but on slide guitar) solo 
• worldes blisse - 12th century dirge - guitar harmonium vocals duet 
• let all mortal flesh keep silence - hymn nylon strung guitar solo (some groaning) 
• the devil - guitars vocals duet (double bass by mr. peter holmgren) 
• serpent(S) - ukuleles guitars melodica throat singing clapping and stomping whistles duet 
• pantisocracy (on the banks of the susquehanna) - guitar and harmonium duet 

 horsemouth pronounces himself very pleased - cover design? probably this one.

all tracks recorded at chateau bremen by horsemouth and howard excepting let all mortal flesh keep silence and funeral music, edited and sound effects added by horsemouth and howard, both original recordings by nick lacey. denise ishaque's vocal recorded by her in her kitchen in  carrigaline, county cork.

 ps. But does anyone still own a CD player?

books/ gigs/ films/ events april 2018

books

Laocoon: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry (lessing), under the volcano - malcolm lowry (start and introduction) plus introduction to 'dark as the grave wherein my friend is laid' and a few letters from selected letters, in hyperspace - fredric jameson (essay lrb) a biography of sabine-baring gould,  'the narrow road to the deep north' - matsuo basho

gigs none

films giallos - eye in the labyrinth, tenebre, italo-horror - kill baby kill (mario bava), elysium, the hills have eyes, TV - salamander/ homeland / the city and the city, the wickerman remake,  two johnny cash movies 'walk the line' (joaquin phoenix) and 'the man, his life, his music' - documentary (actually last month this last one but don't worry about it)

events johnny visits, denise visits, john clarkson visits, horsemouth visits his parents, does nothing for may eve, visit to william morris museum with howard