his emollience robert jenrick... (and his consort, the concept of natural justice)

 from 'I advance masked'. in many ways (and it's not his fault) andy summers neutralizes what is interesting about fripp's playing. like on this track he provides those wet flanged/ chorused 80ies chord clusters (while fripp gets on with the soloing). at other times they alternate - fripp gets on with the minimalism while summers solos. still it's a good record. good for a rainy day.

starter for ten... the concept of natural justice...
BUZZ. (jenrick, st.john’s) ...

several months after the event robert jenrick has showed up in person with a form of words to reveal why he was quite right to bilk the poor people of tower hamlets out of 45 million.

but it is strange he didn't do so at the time.

strange that the concept of ‘natural justice’ didn’t trip lightly off his tongue when he was first invited to discuss the matter.

how then did this brave man of principle handle it? most strange. he sent a small child to parliament to take some bullets for him.

horsemouth has been doing some research on the concept of natural justice (now that robert has mentioned it). ok ok - he’s looked it up on wikipedia.

‘In English law, natural justice is technical terminology for the rule against bias and the right to a fair hearing... The basis for the rule against bias is the need to maintain public confidence in the legal system. Bias can take the form of actual bias, imputed bias or apparent bias.’ 

now robert’s initial ruling was sent aside on the basis of apparent bias - that the decision was bent (actual bias) is very difficult to prove so instead another test is used apparent bias. for there to be apparent bias it merely has to look bent e.g. your party taking a donation from a property developer and him getting let off 45 million pounds of levies on one of his projects. this is indeed what happened and it certainly did look bent,
‘While the term natural justice is often retained as a general concept, it has largely been replaced and extended by the general "duty to act fairly".’

so that’s alright then but never mind because roBENT jenrick is acting resolutely and decisively to remove these kinds of levies upon future projects (to permit the continued increase of luxury estates and to ensure the eventual extinction of housing for the poor, if not their actual extinction through high levels of covid exacerbated by overcrowding).

there is however a sense that that time (the time of commercial property and luxury appartments) has already gone - if you can work from home who needs the office? who can be bothered with even a short commute to the office? what will these buildings become? probably housing - the slums of the future.

 ‘the sun doth rise in the eastern skies’ the day before yesterday (later on) horsemouth went for a walk (the rain helped keep the people down). earlier he prayed for rain to get him out of doing the watering (it rained - yay). he will nip up the allotment in a bit to make sure everything is ok (and then wander around some more).

howard is trapped in phone hell but musicians of bremen have a release schedule with recordings ready to go but they find themselves a bit knackered and out of sorts when it comes to doing the promotion. it does no good to focus on the chiseling of types like robert jenrick. it’s just annoying rather than helpful. on the other hand one has to admire the economy of his legal advice.

live from the cloud forest 2020 - changes in the structure of political compromise

horsemouth is live from the cloud forest. it is a grey day and he is up early. today rain (says the forecast). to read he has brought the essential frankfurt school reader (so he can continue to think about where we are at politically), art, mimesis and the avant-garde by andrew benjamin (if he gets round to it - because he thinks the themes might relate and he’s had it sitting round for a number of years now), and women by bukowski (because he just rescued it from a book recycling pod).

if there is no united subject:object of history (the working class), the people formed by history who can change it, then what? this is horkheimer’s problem - and he gives 'the most abstract of all possible answers: a moral appeal by the isolated theorist'.

yesterday horsemouth babysat (a wander round victoria park in the sunshine a visit to the cafe) and then wandered home. on the way back he bumped into minty and martin at one of the cafes on chatsworth road, the cafe was just shutting up so they chatted briefly (how was everybody, how little sense government facemask regulations made), horsemouth wandered up towards lower clapton with martin and then back to his.

then a remove to the forest for some cat-sitting. (horsemouth does like to make himself useful if only to cats and children). 

horsemouth has begun on the essential frankfurt school reader (urizen books 1978) a decent sized housebrick of a book in a fetching green. adorno-benjamin-horkheimer (the founding fathers) together with the lesser known pollock, kirchheimer, lowenthall, and the successors marcuse and fromm. paul piccone does a great introduction and andrew arato/ eike gebhardt do good introductions to each of the eras. so far horsemouth is in the foundational era - horkheimer’s the end of reason, we have left the era of bourgeois liberalism and the individual and the reason they possess (founded on an economic liberalism, free trade etc.) and are entering the era of the mass society and a monopoly capitalism, where what is left of an individual’s reason is spent trying to survive, and become wholly twisted in that cause.

the frankfurt schoolers looked around them at the world of the 30ies - at fascist italy, nazi germany, soviet russia, and even at the US new deal and saw economies driven to ruin by unfettered capitalism and the state stepping in and taking over whole areas of economic life in order to ensure capitalism’s continued survival. and this, we may note, is not unlike the current situation.

this is the take home message of horkeheimer and kirchheimer (his changes in the structure of political compromise details how this actually worked in nazi germany) and pollock’s initial essays. for adorno all subsequent drivel about entrepreneurship, creative destruction, disruption, privatisation is just nostalgia for vanished varieties of agency.

but is this actually the case? horesemouth would probably compare it to boltanski and chiapello’s the new culture of capitalism that points not just to the continued survival of entrepreneurialism etc but in fact its intensification post the 1970ies (at least in management cadre training literature). this they see as an attempt to deal with the problem of recruiting a cadre of managers both for the larger state managed enterprises but presumably also for the smaller boutique businesses existing in the interstices of the monopolised economy. 

piccone’s opening essay sees part of the frankfurt schools founding genius as recognising that the economy had changed since the days of marx and that this was the motor of changes in consciousness.

in the past the future used to be better deadpans the austrian comic valentin. but what if we are in an oscillatory but stable system of fetishisation of entrepreneurialism/ actual rescue by state capital? free market ideology/ nostalgia ridiculously continues to be active despite the post 2008 state bailouts and the necessary measures against coronavirus, there is a perpetual enthusiasm about the new technology. of course the consequence of the necessary measures against coronavirus (and presumably the necessary measures against climate change) push us in the direction of state monopoly capitalism (and the consciousness necessary to survive under it).

anyway - horsemouth will reread (and then he will read some more). there’s a bit in minima moralia where adorno discusses the nostalgia for entrepreneurialism as a symptom of monopoly capitalism. horsemouth will try and dig that out.

while there is evidence of schmitt and benjamin having read each other it is good to see the frankfurters thinking on this moment (as in changes in the structure of political compromise surely a very schmittian thought).

being on the edge of a forest the air is humid and warm. hidden behind the wild flowers on the kitchen window is a damp meter. horsemouth has boiled a kettle for coffee so currently it shows ‘open a window’. he is surrounded by art, things are cleverly arranged to maximise space (it is very pleasant). there was just a pied woodpecker at the bird feeder and horsemouth thinks that’s a nuthatch.

in normal years horsemouth would ‘hit’ the second hand and charity shops of the neighbourhood and do some serious browsing (previously he’s had good hits with a thelonious monk compilation and on the corner by miles both for a quid) but these are not normal times, they are only new-normal times).
 the sun shone. there are plenty of guitars here should horsemouth find the music point and start. keyboards also. if it’s going to rain he’s probably excused watering duties on the allotment until tomorrow. at some point he will go for a wander and, if there are no witnesses, a jog.

when the time comes to act - act!

the night before his gig at sinclair auditorium in 1978 (the anniversary of which is tomorrow) robbie basho played four songs at the deli natural restaurant, cedar rapids, iowa (july 21, 1978). here he is singing "omar khayamm country" a song that was never featured on any of his publicly released albums.

horsemouth has been out sunbathing and this has cheered him up. he has been waiting for problems to solve themselves and reading umberto eco and jean-claude carriere’s this is not the end of the book. he was a little uncertain about reading it so he started reading the chapters in reverse order (it seems to be working).

it’s an amiable book where two old duffers (known for their interest in books) talk about books.

in the sun, on the decking in the back garden, with the odd seagull cry, it is like the seaside.

eco and carriere answer questions such as ‘what will happen to your book collections when you die?’ (this is the last chapter in fact). but this is a bigger problem for your average book-loving schmo rather than your published author. your published author can give his carefully curated collection to a university or a museum or a library, your average schmo is threatened with his life’s collection (all those good friends) going in a skip (or at best off to the charity shop to be distributed to the four winds a purchase at a time).

of course a similar question would arise should horsemouth decide to (re)move from the seaside towns (not that his library is carefully curated you understand). there are the gothics, shading into the decadents and such like; there are the russians (the poles etc.) - but what about russian decadents?; there is all that theory (the frankfurt schoolers versus the normaliens), there are the french 19th century novelists and their relay race across the century - balzac handing off to flaubert, balzac and hugo at the start, zola and maupassant at the end; then there are the books on music (as pointless an activity as could be wished for).

his music collection is much reduced. except for his own music (that he has kept close). the CDs get played (some of them). the vinyl stays in its sleeves and in its boxes. the cassettes are long gone (most of them). when the time comes act. meanwhile...

‘prostitutes and bandits are our fans. with them, we are pals'

so wrote yesenin in 1922.

horsemouth first heard the song in italian. ok so there’s an original version of the song chanson d’un malandrin in french, the lyrics lifted from a translation of a russian poem by yesenin, wikipedia gives the english translation of the russian as 'confession of a hooligan'.

malandrin, nom masculin . sens 1 . voleur, rôdeur, brigand, vagabond douteux, qui semble dangereux. personne qui s'approprie, qui prend le bien d'une autre personne. sens 2 . histoire. membre d'une bande de pillards, de criminels. ces groupes ont effrayé la France au XIVe siècle.

er. so badman really.

at first horsemouth thought it was a ghost, an artefact of translation. the original poem (in french) is called chanson d’un voyou - but badman/ hooligan it is. it's a great  title and fits with yesenin’s fan base, and it is the title of the anthology from which the poem is taken.

horsemouth is often on the lookout for songs to sing in other languages. he’s found the lyrics in french. (and yes it is sufficiently gangster), he finds angelo branduardi's version a bit mannered (as a friend notes angelo doesn't sing like a maladrin, a brel or gainsbourg version would be better). horsemouth prefers it where umberto grillo sings it.


meanwhile most strange.

horsemouth (under his human name paul helliwell) gets a one line mention in this - imaginal machines: autonomy & self-organization in the revolutions of everyday life by stevphen shukaitis. this is from when he wrote things (like way back in 2007). horsemouth thinks the quip that shukaitis likes was actually josie's (from an editorial email).

horsemouth should probably get a friend to blag him onto academia.edu so he can separate his career from the paul helliwell who helped found the OSS and was paymaster for the bay of pigs (and various other helliwells involved in risk modelling). at the very least it would be nice to see where his thoughts have landed. 

horsemouth was never really convinced he had much to say - he begins as an orthodox adronoian (his entry point was music via attali) and is gradually dragged out onto the terrain of art and the internet (which was wreaking great changes on the musical commodity in the late 90ies early 2000s).

as to his style, essentially horsemouth would attempt to write to the word limit, constantly re-writing the sentences in an attempt to get the argument clearer and more concise - eventually this pressure would either produce the diamonds of aphorisms or at very least the sentence would start emitting neutrons and kill off the weaker sentences round it. he has a defect in that he’s overly partial to the joke.

horsemouth enjoyed the reading and the writing (and the manic states these produced where he was convinced he could see the argument). eventually he spreads himself too thinly, the crash comes, the conjuncture having writ moves on. he still reads theory (from time to time) and writes it up (here) to remind himself that he has read it but it lacks the necessary focus and pressure of publication to get it cooking. 

horsemouth has finished watching les compagnons de baal written by (and staring) jacques champreux and available in a mixture of french and italian versions (so he didn’t understand very much of the dialogue). curiously the physical comedy of it was better suited to italian.

champreux, good looking girl and trusty sidekick fight an evil luciferian conspiracy in a dr.who in back and white style. perhaps back to belphigor now (a ghost haunts the louvre) but it was a bit dull (despite featuring juliette greco) and even less comprehensible. (once again horsemouth wishes he’d put more effort into his french).

release schedule (more french horror)

yesterday howard came up to visit - they went for a walk upon the common, howard announced he was hungry so they went for a bag of chips (the first horsemouth has had since lockdown). they then sat outside on the front doorstep (er. drinking beer).

they discussed a digital release schedule - it goes a little something like this,

•  18/07 first ‘single’ 
• 01/08 ‘album’ - with live ‘gig’ enabled by the new technology. 
• 15/08 ‘EP’ of covers 
• 29/08 final ‘single’ 
• september/ october etc. various electronicas from howard’s past. 

at various points between these howard will be off on holiday.

horsemouth continues with his investigations into georges franju’s nuits rouges described, in terms approved of by the writer, as a gentle parody of fantomas. our super-villain has a mask, a secret identity, a disguise (as an old lady who runs a needle and thread shop in a run down parade of shops seemingly in the middle of some wasteland), a secret underground lair (full of office workers in gimp suits), a female accomplice in a cat suit, a plot about the hidden treasure of the templars.

there’s not just the movie - its extended rooftop fight scenes with gayle hunnicutt filmed in belgrade because it was cheaper to get the sets built there- or so it seemed until the serbian crew ran off with the 35mm film stock forcing the director to complete with blow ups of the 16mm fim stock they’d been shooting at the same time for the tv series.

ah the tv series l'homme sans visage - 8 episodes (horsemouth has found four online).

the money wasn’t there to film fantomas in period costume with high production values (like franju and the writer jacques champreux wanted) so they made something like the avengers - a 60ies romp. of course it all sounds much better in french.

there are a number of genius franju set pieces - the rooftop fight, a pack of knife weilding robot men advance in unison. later this kind of kitsch becomes irma vep (vampire - get it?) - a parody not just of early film serials but also of cineastes wanting to re-make them.





horsemouth is continuing with his french horror serial investigations - les compagnons de baal and belphigor . it’s all very 60ies doctor who (cheap as chips with lots of talking).




jacques champreux on the right;

 'les compagnons de baal est une mini-série française en 7 épisodes de 50 minutes en noir et blanc réalisée par pierre prévert. elle a été diffusée du 29 juillet au 9 septembre 1968 sur la deuxième chaîne de l'ORTF....'

you may have noticed horsemouth has not commented on politics in a while - because there is none. there’s the ongoing mismanagement of covid, there’s the blue-collar workers being trooped off to their doom in the death factories and death-trains (like the robo-men above) and meanwhile the white collar workers and managers ‘work from home’ and contemplate moving to bermuda, or barbados, or perhaps the countryside. but if we wear masks it will all be ok won’t it and everything (well not quite everything) can go on as just before.

driven (paradise is now)

the latest musicians of bremen release is in fact four songs of electronica from a duo howard was in (grange and bell) in the late 90ies. the duo also played as part of a group in improv settings as 46000 fibres.

it is the the first track that does it for horsemouth - driven (though maybe he will warm to the others as he goes on, see he’s already warming to track 3 - proper). it has that soundtrack thing that horsemouth likes, like from a horror movie about a beach holiday gone wrong - slow descending bass, electric piano, a high violin-like melody line. you see horsemouth could imagine this as a musicians of bremen tune with electric piano and melodica. there are of course similarities between how howard makes music now and how he made it then.

ex track - has that future electro feeling (two one swordsmen?) itchy percussions, an insistent (for insistent read repetitive) keyboard motif.

proper has another nice ominous atmosphere - a sustained pad (like a groaning harmonium or organ), a slightly unhitched heartbeat rhythm, a talk box will persist in talking (kind of like the side guitar in persia when you get to hear it), and there’s a rising horn chant, league of gentlemen/ jon hassel style harmonised stabs.

scarper has that fried 2nd gen thing going on - dancehall style distortion (the bug, rephlex that sort). physical impossibilities of sub-bass. it sounds like the snare rattle is made by the unpeeling of sticky tape. tremendous tensions.

all have that post-rave anxiety thing, not quite fully out of the door into electronica and art music (but on the way). musical sounds dissolve in distortion and return.

howard says: 'one thing to note. they were all improvised live, no overdubs, no coming back to tidy them up. what you hear is what we played. on proper you can certainly hear the influence of miles davis' big fun.'


slightly earlier horsemouth is enjoying his 15 seconds of (sampled) fame, his brush with electronica - he plays on crow road by pressure of speech, he impersonates crows on the electric guitar (inspired by adrian belew) and pays a bluesy side guitar part. he’s on his way out of music. horsemouth doesn’t return to it until 2002. horsemouth enjoyed his sojourn among the machines (howard did too, clearly).

50 years of summun, bukmun, umyun

recorded at A&R studios, new york city, July 1, 1970. lonnie liston smith – piano, cecil mcbee – bass, clifford jarvis – drums ' I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD.'

horsemouth is awake. he has a blocked nostril, itchy eyes and is suffering from puffy face. he must be up slightly ahead of his body clock. he has a slight tickley cough (hopefully it’s just a cooler weather cough and nothing modern)

yesterday he was up and about and off to aldi but when he got there there were queues (ok ok there was a queue). he decided his need for a bargain was outweighed by his desire to avoid humanity while they are (possibly) infectious. he bought a few bottles of beer from the off-licence opposite and returned via the fields.

horsemouth is nearly done with john gray’s black mass (aka. won’t someone listen to the intellectuals).

following on from summun bukyun umyun, more pharoah sanders

a fragment has come to light of alice coltrane and her children. this film was during 1970; three years after the death of john. the 16mm color film print is a short documentary made for a segment of national education television's black journal television program.