a friend was just asking about recovering old notes from out of the maw of history (well facebook) - look horsemouth has just managed to see a note of his (from a day that is not today) for the first time in at least a year. (what's it called? the last post (hardcore will never die).) interesting. apparently there is a way of searching activities by date (who knew).
horsemouth is back from a babysitting gig early doors and so has put the coffee on and started blogging.
a name popped out of conversation - steve goodman. now, once upon a time (a long time ago), horsemouth wrote theory and he wrote reviews, and he wrote a rather uncharitable review of steve's book sonic warfare, he was stretched a little thin (it was a double review) and was attempting (and failing) to assimilate a lot of deleuzian thought on music (and on theorising) in a hurry. horsemouth has always felt guilty about this because steve was friendly and helpful every time horsemouth met him.
what was the consequence of this review? well steve went on to successful careers in music and academia. andrew mcgettigan (who horsemouth had taken a sideswipe at in the second part of the review) went on to a successful career in academia (and wrote excellently on university funding).
so, other than a few bruised egos, no major harm done.
so what got horsemouth's goat? well basically it was the end of the utopian phase of theorising inspired by rave and its descent into a dystopian register. horsemouth had been caught up in the early enthusiasms of this wave - erik davis's cross-fertilisation of deleuze's difference and repetition and african poly-rhythm being used to theorise breakbeats, thoughts on bass frequencies hailing the body directly inspired by barthes' the grain of the voice, and a general enthusiasm for deleuze - mark fisher, nina power, kodwo eshun, the CCRU.
to be fair everybody he met at the time was friendly and helpful. (except for mark fisher who horsemouth found distinctly grumpy). horsemouth was delighted to find a world where music was taken seriously.
but by this point horsemouth was falling out of love with this early assemblage people had made to theorise rave, he thought it was theoretically weak and a poor response to both the original theorists deleuze, barthes etc. and to the collective experiences of the people involved in the scene. but to be fair steve goodman was heading out of it also (but into turbulent flows and media ecologies and dystopian registers).
(of course the fact that something is a poor response is not necessarily a problem in deleuzian thinking. a response can be poor and yet still productive.)
later there was a similarly theoretically poor application of derrida's work as hauntology.
horsemouth failed to respond to what was new in goodman's book (this he regrets) and he should have taken greater care with the tone of the review.
it was a mis-step and the last thing he wrote for publication (publication). everything else he wrote for mute he is happy to stand by. the funding for mute was cut everybody had to focus their attentions on building contacts to ensure the magazine's survival. people got sucked back into the world of work and in 2008 the credit crisis came along and then the student struggles (and then in 2020 the pandemic came along).
horsemouth transferred his attentions back to making music (musicians of bremen) and to blogging (publication but not publication). he dropped out of connection with that world but writing that stuff was very good for him, it focused his reading and his writing in a way that blogging doesn't.
yesterday was bandcamp friday (again). horsemouth has finished his coffee (wait let him check the pot - nope there's still some left - inspiration or at least this blogpost, will continue for a while longer).
word seems to have popped on his laptop (which is an interesting moment). horsemouth guesses he can write everything in notepad, lots of things will be attached to emails and can be previewed, hell a lot of it actually exists on paper. wednesday horsemouth delivers a speech (he does hope it goes well). he has no idea what he will get up to over the weekend. yesterday a walk on the marshes with TG and then in the evening (pre-babysitting) the blood on satan's claw (from whence the tag line unearthing forgotten horrors).
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