the recording angel and the forgotten

just a quick post - bbc weather says it will be sunny this morning (before clouding over) so horsemouth needs to get out the door. he's been reading the jaron lanier (dreadlocked computer scientist and author of 2010's you are not a gadget - barbican library sale 30p) - as lanier notes we fit ourselves to the computers (because we're smart and flexible and they're dumb and inflexible), similarly, as evan eisenberg (the recording angel) or michael channan (repeated takes) or jacques attali (noise)or even theodor adorno would note, we've fitted music to our notation and to our recording devices and to our society and its ideas of production. 

there is, as usual when people struggle to find the elusive quality of consciousness, a musical metaphor. lanier takes against MIDI, he takes against notation as well, pointing out that south american indian flute music was only noted down (and so fitted into the notation system of the conquerors) in as far as it was 'nice tunes', not in response to the sonic  idiosyncrasies of the instruments themselves and their 'non-standard' tunings  (we may add that the social function of the music was not noted down by time-travelling anthropologists/ ethnomusicologists either).

lanier takes against web 2.0 - where we atomise our very selves into their searchable database - and then they aggregate it as if we had no individuality - the data wants to be free - the data doesn't want anything, it is we who want. he favours the earlier more idiosyncratic era of the web, when everybody had a homepage with flashing text and animated gifs etc. and all hand coded. but for horsemouth web 2.0 brought back that easy self-publishing (after dreamweaver and ever more complex html had taken designing web pages out of the hands of the interested amateur). and this aggregation up to a higher level, lanier is suspicious of it, arguing, against the wired enthusiasts, that people don't really know what they mean by that. but in a way, horsemouth supposes, as propaganda, it is a digital hegel, lifting things up and making them more spiritous legitimises the lower (and more messily material) layer. 

just as sound recording broke the immediate connection between sound and action and made it reproducible (putting many live musicians out of a job but also giving them access to their work in a new way) so keeping blogs etc. (or even just writing stuff down) changes our relationship with our thoughts (and makes them reproducible). of course (with the world wide surveillance) the nsa get a look, and the google advertising algorithm  - move along nothing to see here - but then soviet dissidents, gogol,  just about everybody from the earlier age were burning manuscripts when they thought they'd been indiscreet.  

few photos exist from horsemouth the punk years this was because few photos were taken, people didn't want to leave any evidence lying around - now horsemouth is pleased when such photos turn up. there is a campaign to allow people to be forgotten. if horsemouth were to go 'on the lamb' now he'd have to forswear the internet (the pattern of searches would be the same), he'd have to forswear his supermarket, or at least a loyalty card (the pattern of searches would be the same). these days horsemouth is harmless and law abiding  (truth be told he was pretty harmless back in the day - and only marginally less law abiding).

ok bbc weather promised him sun - horsemouth is off out.

friends, romans, countrymen... you know the SP...

ok friends, romans, countrymen... you know the SP... lend me (and by extension the musicians of bremen) your ears on this fine sunny sunday evening and listen to just two or three of our finished set of 17 songs and crucially let me (or howard) know what you think of them as you go along, or even message us after, or comment directly on the track (you can do this on soundcloud you know). anyroad - we need to pick the ones that we will be releasing - so please listen, hopefully enjoy, and then pick your favourites. 

signed, 

horsemouth X.

variations on austerity

horsemouth is listening to robbie basho live at sinclair auditorium, leo kottke studies with basho then records a track called easter, it's a pretty thing basho admits, basho was revenged  in a track called variations on easter. even among the bearded writers of steel-stringed guitar soli there is envy and jealousy driving innovation.

yesterday afternoon horsemouth got that good sunlight into his flat, he read the copy of the ft left by his drop on thursday (still no stock worth picking) - the losses of 2008 have been made up (by whose labour?) and it's as if they never happened, except for the recommendation of austerity for the poor, strangely that's not over. and yet even more strangely the amount spent  by the government (out of taxation) on housing benefit to people in employment , the subsidy just to enable the workers to pay their rent, will soon stand at  5 billion a year. surely, in a 'functioning' economy,  this should be covered out of the workers wages paid by the capitalists? - and who benefits from this subsidy? the owners of the property (the rentier class) and the owners of the businesses (who get to pay less wages). of course nothing is so dangerous as being in bed with the government relying on their money and policy. it only takes some bright policy wonk to notice that a certain policy would be popular (even if actually unworkable) for it to be implemented with catastrophic results for the plebs and the low level rent seekers - take a look at the bedroom tax. 

... and then there's those zero hours contracts taking the risk out of employment (for the capitalists) - you've seen on the waterfront- pushing this risk (the need to get enough work) onto the employee. of course the new communications technologies make this easier, the  new spirit of capitalism  (being flexible and all that shit) migrates down the foodchain in a strange kind of race to the bottom as capitalism moves to shed what is unwieldy and inflexible to be a perpetual start-up,- or is it, isn't it just farming out the risk (whilst keeping a tight grip on the reward).

basho has a song based on a navaho chant  moving up a-ways about how spirit moves on up through the soil and the plants and the animals and the humans 'to the sun, we are one',but that isn't what's going on here.

'a curious document this journal'

the second character in unforgiven years by victor serge (daria) keeps a journal;

 'a curious document this journal, whose carefully chosen words sketched out only the outer shapes of people, events and ideas, a poem constructed of gaps cut from the living material, because - since it could be seized - it could not contain a single name, a single recognisable face, a single unmistakable strand of the past, a single allusion to assignments accomplished... no expression of torment or sorrow (this was for the sake of pride), no expression of doubt or calculation (for the sake of prudence), and nothing ideological, naturally for ideology is the sludge at the bottom of the pitfall... the construction of this featureless record, similar to a thought puzzle in three dimensions turned entirely towards some undefinable and secret fourth dimension, had furnished her with an exhilarating occupation...'

april's books

read

 camembert - pierre boisard - book group - free

akenfield  - ronald blythe - one pound - probably horsemouth's book of the year so far

english traits - ralph waldo emerson - one pound (versus)

letters from england  - voltaire - at brother's while babysitting

the plague - albert camus - two pounds fifty

the unforgiving years - victor serge - two pounds fifty - amnesty hammersmith

to do list

letters of anton chekov - ed. lillian hellman - halcyonandon - one pound - introduction read

emile - rousseau - halcyonandon - one pound (some progress)

magic toyshop - angela carter - book group - free - as yet untouched.

escape into olomec time

horsmouth has been dreaming of escape - it required the carefully timed crashing of two vans so as to fake the death of one of the protagonists (before the patrol returned). for some reason a mid-period freddie mercury was there with a white switchblade (most stylish). 

the reason for this dream is probably horsemouth's reading of victor serge's unforgiving years, andy says he has read 3 other victor serge novels, horsemouth might have to as well, this one is pretty damn good. the war has ended - the narrative has taken us from stalingrad to dresden (carnage carnage carnage) now the survivors are hiding out in the mexican desert in olomec time. 

this is probably horsemouth's last 'full' week of work - there was a bank holiday monday, he doesn't have to work this morning, he has his normal wednesday off (he knows he's not going to get a lot of sympathy here). 

sean braved the transport hell that is the east of the seaside towns (and their vital infrastructural improvements that will benefit us all) to come and visit - things proceed with life offering up some resistance. in an email he said the following,

'particularly enjoyed the Akenfield/pastoral idyll post. Yes, 1914 war was a great step forward for the rural workers - Horsemouth is current front runner for the feral prole counter-intuitive revisionist theory of the year award.

Seriously! You put the finger on what irritates me about the vogue for all that hey-nonny-no nonsense; like, in that Electric Eden book theres a whole bit where Shirley Collins goes on about the tragedy of how the whole "folk tradition" ended in 1914....Yeah, there are no "folk" outside of quaint rural English villages, which weren't actually quaint at all, but were in fact so shit that even moving to the city to be a factory worker or a soldier on the western front was preferable. Fuck 'em, and their "get off my land" countryside bollocks.'

earlier horsemouth was over at howards (and then a quick pint in the murder mile) the musicians of bremen working season may be over, they need to top and tail the tracks and send a few of them off for mastering (it does make them sound better), they also need to select the strongest tracks and ask themselves if they should be spread out over a range of genres or clustered round one particular sound... and then they need to go and play live. it's been a while. 

reactivate the sediments - horsemouth in theory

once upon a time horsemouth wrote theory.

having been in a fantastically unsuccessful anarcho-punk band, and following its demise, he'd become interested in the social function of music. later this was to spread to art as a whole and how capitalism made use of this impulse, at the start horsemouth was mainly concerned with jacques attali's book noise (or bruits  as it was in the french), a book that put music and noise at the heart of human activity (where many musical enthusiasts like horsemouth believe it to be) rather than at the periphery.  when attali briefly surfaced at the ICA horsemouth saw the chance for his first article. he'd made friends with some people at mute and they published it (horsemouth wishes to thank you all).

of course the main advantage of writing things is that you get to see your own ideas down on the page and this helps you become clearer about them. with horsemouth however, as something of an erich von daniken type autodidact, this has taken some time. again writing this may help him come to terms with it once again and see what remains unfinished.

LOST IN TRANSLATION  09 Sep 2004.

soon there will be the 10th anniversary (horsemouth may well return to the article to see how it has faired). having surfaced at the ICA attali released a remixed (copy and paste) and expanded (to take in mp3s and napster) 20th anniversary version of bruits. as horsemouth hesitates to point out this was in french a language at best reads imperfectly (and at worst understands not at all). nonetheless this did not stop him from writing a review - he'd already read most of it in english and the bits that weren't in the first edition were reasonably straightforward and not densely theoretical.

horsemouth's basic position then was that attali did not understand his own theory - one in which the current form of music (and its political economy) prefigures the future form of the wider political economy. this he derives (in part) from claude levi-strauss but also from theodor adorno's philosophy of modern music. (it is an idea ghostwritten by adorno into thomas mann's doctor faustus). it is an idea of music as prophecy. frederic jameson, in his foreward to the english edition of bruits - noise, makes this a continuation of marxist debates about the relationship between base and superstructure. horsemouth's (somewhat over-literal reading of these things) got him his foot in the door.

FIRST CUT IS THE DEEPEST  12 Oct 2006

next up was horsemouth's review of ben watson's book derek bailey and the story of free-improvisation. to write this horsemouth sat on the town beach in valencia for the month of august reading watson's book and adorno's aesthetic theory  back to back. horsemouth is writing better but he relies on writerly habits to get him an ending. it was dan fox’s appreciation of derek bailey in frieze magazine (March 2006) as a  ‘kind of relational aesthetics for music' that gave horsemouth the stepping stone onto the then fashionable area of nicholas bourriaud's relational aesthetics. horsemouth was initially delighted to find a whole world (art magazines) where aesthetics was discussed as if it mattered - only to move rapidly to disgust at the contrast between the claims made for art and its actually existing political economy of it.

ZOMBIE NATION  10 May 2007

here horsemouth got to write in a consistent way about the convergence, as he saw it, of relational aesthetics, attali's theories and web 2.0 technologies (the first and last of which horsemouth would confess to understanding imperfectly) and elias canetti's theries of the crowd. underpinning all of these was adorno's pessimism which led horsemouth to see some hopes for resistance in the figure of the zombie. following on from bourriaud horsemouth began to investigate ranciere (and as a result althusser). the article is too long, it is cooking with too many elements and again has no real ending. it makes it into mute's proud to be flesh  compilation - horsemouth is very proud.

he should (of course) revisit these themes now that they are re-emerging from under the credit crisis.

EXODUS 11 Jul 2007

here horsemouth reviewed claire bishop's collection of writings on the social production of art participation. this was very useful in sorting out his own thinking on the matter - he argues that bishop is re-aligning herself with ranciere's position but that this will do little to help her develop her work. (horsemouth should hurry up and read her subsequent book to see if he was right).

CRISIS IN THE VISUAL SYSTEM  01 May 2008

horsemouth tries to settle accounts with (the hurriedly read)  ranciere and althusser. he's still relying on reincorporation to finish his writing off for him. it's probably the culmination of his writing and yet again it's too long and too poorly structured. in truth behind all of this (and his review of participation) is derrida's spectres of marx, strangely crossed with hillel schwartz's the culture of the copy, it is his hidden.

HUNGRY GHOST  26 Feb 2009

this one, a review of artist steve mcqueen's film about the hunger strikes hunger, works quite well - but there's a stage-y quality to some of the writing (horsemouth doesn't succeed in fully displaying how narrative is used to mislead people because he's too busy (mis)leading people)   - horsemouth was initially uncertain about taking this on but his editors instincts or intelligence were right - there was a lot for him here.

RUMOURS OF WAR 26 May 2010

horsemouth was a little hesitant about taking on this one also (but he said yes anyway) - a double review of steve goodman's sonic warfare and of mattin (and anthony isles)'s noise and capitalism - this was probably a bit to much to chew on at one go, and besides many of the contributors the second book were friends. horsemouth was a little disappointed with steve goodman's book (and to his shame he let it show), he failed to engage with what was new in the book (as the wire did). horsemouth largely benefited from being made to read deleuze and deleuzian accounts of music but he was wrong to focus on this is in his review to the extent that he did, it was not where goodman was going. it suffers from horsemouth's continued attachment to attali's theory - one that would focus on the economics and production of music and to musical form (if attali knew how to do this). while (n advice) horsemouth carefully  wrote the bailey/ watson review to avoid conflict (and it is better because of it), in this case he did not (and this he regets).

............ horsemouth does not draw a line under it all the credit crisis arrived to reposition economy at the heart of things (again) and horsemouth overcame his isolation (a little) enough to realise that to do this properly he would have to do a lot more work (and indeed there were people better placed than himself to write this)

.... but the above marks the start of an attempt to reactivate the sediments (one to which he will return).