Charley Says...

in a little while (well at 11) horsemouth goes to work (under the new online dispensation). before that almost certainly breakfast (porridge, toast, marmalade, tea). it's not raining but it's grey skies and the temperature has warmed up (it should be about 7 celsius). 

he works twice today. he's checked out his route to work for the first one (he should do so for the second one).

phew horsemouth has worked. now he's knackered.

he also answered some email questions for an interview. perhaps he could share some of the answers with you.

Q1. what is your story as a musician?

well horsemouth really wanted to get a band together since he was about 15 but he didn’t manage it until 1990. basically he was trying to invent brooklyn afrobeat 10 years too early (and in the wrong place) - so that went nowhere. the singer went off to become the actor noma dumezweni. 

he played guitar on Lush 3.1 by Orbital (if people remember them)… and then (defeated) he gave up for a few years. when he came back he decided it was just for the fun. in the co-op he met howard, they collaborated on two CDs of music by co-op members (there were always lots of singers and players in the co-op), and then started making music as musicians of bremen which is still ongoing. 

peter holmgren played bass on one of the songs, and later on horsemouth played a gig with him at the housing co-op hop and a few years later he played a gig there with enza on vocals as well  (as peter, paul and enza).why paul he has no idea. 

Q2. you two (enza and horsemouth) collaborated (along with catastro / fille) on the film the fall of the house of fitzgerald. tell us about the project, your motivations, what you wanted to achieve with it?

horsemouth thinks enza wanted to mourn the loss of her flat, the kandinsky mural she’d done, and other artworks,

kandinsky was a part of various russian art movements but he also lived in germany and was a part of dada and later taught at the bauhaus. while we tend to remember these art movements in terms of the artefacts that left behind and their manifestoes they also had a history of performance practice, of doing performances to complement/ extend / bring to life their static works of art. horsemouth supposes that was one part of it. 

filmwise there are those kenneth anger and sun ra type films, where they are dressed up in costumes doing strange pseudo-magical things. 

finally horsemouth supposes there was mr.benn. basically it was just a game of dress up, it cheered us up during lockdown. thanks once again to former co-op member catastro/fille for filming it, editing the results and for the use of her music. without her it couldn’t have happened. thanks to the other musicians also. 

3. Where do you think housing is on the current political agenda? 

nowhere. worse than nowhere. 

horsemouth thinks (personal opinion) the tories see social housing as just warehousing potential labour voters. so why bother? but the other parties are not much fucking help either. they won’t be building anything like enough social housing to make a difference to the low-paid. nobody is coming to save us, we have to help ourselves, because, as the single homeless, we are on our own.

4. Do you think the housing situation in London is likely to change as a result of the pandemic?

with the ‘working from home’ revolution cities have got a problem. it means less people will want to live there so more property might be available (both short-life and to buy) and so rents and house prices will probably level off a bit. the gentrification will die back. 

looking into his crystal ball horsemouth thinks that probably the government will offer the commercial property sector large sums of money to convert the empty offices into rabbit hutch sized homes (jenrickvilles), and at some point there will be a fire… 

in 1985 there were about 2 million less people in greater London than there is now and there was still a housing crisis.  the cause of the housing crisis is capitalism.-

5. Do you see your futures as staying in London? 

as long as horsemouth has work and the rent is cheap(ish) he's staying. The fun will come back when the covid goes. If the work goes horsemouth would probably leave the city and live somewhere cheap and coast it until his pension, brexit has fucked the idea of retiring to the south of Europe (somewhere sunny). 

quick fire questions 

- who are horsemouth's heroes?

Gerrard Winstanley, Alice Coltrane, Malcolm X, Theodor Adorno, Karl Marx, Harry E. Smith.

- what was the last record you listened to?

it’s all youtube now. (marion brown ‘bismillahi 'rrahmani 'rrahim’ with harold budd on celeste and little bells). 

- the last thing you read?

balzac ‘A country doctor’.

- favourite london building?

knock it down and build social housing.

- best caf in east London?

horsemouth can’t afford to eat out anymore (even if there wasn’t covid). (Curry Hut)