'of the degree of neglect this book has caused our families, the less said the better' (unrecorded history)

Entr’acte · “ ”[sic] Tim Goldie/Daniel Beban: 32 tracks from SLAKES (E145)

horsemouth importuned by cats wakes up and descends the ladder from the attic.

yesterday a quick visit to the allotment and then wander over to south woodford. most of horsemouth's watering will have been done for him by the rainstorm last night.  the ginger talking cat cannot come in and has now returned to hanging around the bird feeder looking murderous. (horsemouth puts its chance of snaffling a bird at exactly zero). 

over at south woodford the oxfam over the bridge was shut. horsemouth tried the charity shops near the station and returned with a collins pocket guide to wild flowers (one squid fifty). from the introduction he gets the degree of neglect quote. the spine is a bit faded and the corners a little dented but overall it is in good condition (he looks at it as a bookseller would - now to sell  some books). 

strangely it is the e.m. forster bio that is holding horsemouth's attention. (literary confession - horsemouth hasn't read any e.m. forster). 

war, pestilence, famine, death update

the coronavirus continues (but at an acceptable level of death). horsemouth is virtually the last man in a mask on public transport. brexit continues. the refugee crisis continues. the war in the ukraine continues (100 days plus). horsemouth guesses stuff still goes on in syria, is that a famine in ethiopia? 

global warming continues (driving many of the above processes). 

labour now claim to be 'the true party of patriotism and the best of british values'. horsemouth thinks this is bollocks on many levels. at a minimum you can't out-xenophobe the tories and, in truth, why would you want to, horsemouth is unconvinced that the road to socialism lies in pandering to people's outdated notions of empire and their love of bunting. 

what about the music then horsemouth? 

well horsemouth thinks a number of tracks will come out well from the recent recording sessions with howard and they could have an online release and a slightly different CD release with many of the tracks from the humming. horsemouth is very proud of that track in particular.

last night horsemouth watched stalker (it does go on). right now he's listening to tim goldie and daniel beban's 32 tracks from slakes.  

to love and be loved in return

horsemouth saw the abyssinians  at a hackney show on hackney downs in 1989. it is only today that he realised this is a version of nature boy by eden ahbez. at the time he was a bigger fan of abendigo (shadrach, mishna and abendigo). 

yesterday was bandcamp friday but horsemouth and howard were not around to solicit your purchase of their recordings instead, having taken the train to chingford, the plan was to be up in epping forest (wandering around in nature). 

when howard arrived he was hungry so he got a menemen for breakfast (horsemouth had a latte just to keep him company) and then they set off. eventually having circumnavigated half of the 8 shaped route they lay about in  the sunshine on a hill before  they retraced their steps (roughly 6 miles all told).  they returned to chingford and caught the train to walthamstow for a post walk pint (or two) up in the village (a point equidistant between where horsemouth is staying and howard's railway station in queen's road). 

horsemouth tramped home (up the hill and past the neighbours' yappy dog) and lay around before going to bed early. 

it is for this reason that he is up so early (having been woken by feline importuning). 

before bed he hunted around for clips from pink floyd/ barbet schroeder’s film la vallée / obscured by clouds which is kind of like the beach (youth go off in search of paradise/ it all goes pete tong). apparently miquette giraudy (of gong and steve hillage fame) worked on it. 

today grey skies and possible rain (rain later for certain). horsemouth should get on with reading the life of napoleon. horsemouth will nip up to the allotment to make sure the plants in the mini-greenhouse have been watered and to lift some rocket. 

p.s. horsemouth has checked the sue ryder lottery (he didn't win anything). 

'one must above all do as others do' - the sheep of the panurge

the sheep of the panurge do the thing that lemmings are supposed to do - when one falls over the cliff the rest of them jump. horsemouth is doing his best to avoid any mention of jubilees or such like. 

at the moment it is greying over but bbc weather shows a very pleasant day for horsemouth's visited area (it is showing him those big smiley sun logos and temperatures north of 20 degrees).

yesterday horsemouth had two encounters with napoleon - the first was in henri beyle (stendhal)'s a life of napoleon (sue ryder one squid plus a one squid lottery ticket - remind horsemouth to check it later today).  napoleon returns from elba, he is feted by the peasants and the poor. he goes before his army tempting the enemy to shoot him down sweeping up all before him. 

'the editor has done no more than make a collection of those sentences which seemed to him to be to the point' - stendhal, preface to a life of napoleon. 

later on napoleon appears in terry gilliam's the time bandits - he is interested in the punch and judy show and small people, he is obsessed with his height. he has lost interest in conquering italy. (horsemouth once owned a copy on VHS cassette).

at the allotment he met a very pleasant austrian woman (a friend of  D and C). he did some watering and then he headed off into town.  up at the allotment some rotters have been fly-tipping building waste out at the top gates. the allotment holders have to pay to have it cleared and/or clear it themselves. they were most grumpy. 

the plan for today is to go for a walk round epping forest with howard (starting at chingford). after the weekend howard is back to the grind, D+C return

last night there was a double bill of val lewton/ jacques tourneur films on tv - I walked with a zombie and cat people, but horsemouth failed to watch them, instead he watched more of outlaw bookseller and bookpilled as they wrestle with the inchoate beast that is science fiction and then time bandits. towards the end of june there's the leigh on sea folk festival and the anniversary of the release of the humming. 

barking road recreation ground (some felicities and infelicities)

horsemouth is up in the cloud forest. he has his coffee. he has fed the cats. the sun is shining into the tree canopy. 

yesterday he hung around the house and then walked down to walthamstow queen's street to get the train over to barking and thence east ham to visit howard. he arrived early and so spent a little time in a park (barking road recreation ground).

back at howard's they dived into mixing and editing the songs from the recent horsemouth recording campaign. 

the earlier edits can be heard over at musicians of bremen's soundcloud page. 

something's on your mind is probably the keeper from the session. but as horsemouth noted when he sang it 'there's probably a verse too many'  in that he repeats the second verse. horsemouth couldn't really see a way to alibi that and so decided it would be better to edit out his first attempt at the second verse and go with the second attempt instead. horsemouth was hoping there would be some felicities if they were laid side by side (particularly with the singing and the electric guitar part) but it just sounded confused. he layed down a track of him singing the main vocal over again to thicken it up.  job done (onto the next one)

jai guru. to horsemouth the main task was to edit out the bits where he was singing out of tune (to spare his blushes). howard on the other hand really wanted to drop the song down in its mid section. horsemouth wanted to rescue the second guitar but really the main thing should be to stay with the main 12 string guitar (anyway - he looks forward to hearing this mix). they succeeded in dropping it down in the middle and getting in an earlier fade at the end.

howard said he would probably re-record jai guru from scratch but horsemouth doesn't think they have time to do that. 

at some point in the middle of this they paused for a fried egg sandwich and a cup of tea (cheers howard). 

they listened to you and your sister but they couldn't find anything to do on it and so moved on. (ok there's a crunge on the guitar at one point but it's probably unfixable as horsemouth was singing and playing at the time).

having worked through the low hanging fruit they decided to get on with the more complicated stuff and the harder decisions. wondrous love they are probably going to junk. horsemouth was not singing well on the day/ they missed out the most important verse 'as I was sinking down...' 

murder ballad (aka. getting away with murder) they stuck some distortion on the vocal to make it a bit tougher and turned all the backing vocals and percussion (including horsemouth impersonating ivor the engine) back up and then chopped it so it was only playing when horsemouth was doing the backing vocals. (it's starting to sound good). 

no name resonate horsemouth is probably going to rename guitar peace for pier marton.  it's a guitar instrumental with a track of the resonator guitar playing the main theme  and two tracks of 12 string (probably panned hard left and hard right). it's probably just a matter of getting the sounds right (and removing the odd infelicity) 

if you have ghosts and  sometimes our dreams horsemouth thinks need keyboards (or harmonica and maybe the banjolin), high rise strutters' ball he thinks is pretty much fine as is (a few nips on the fake trumpets), hear us o lord is deeply problematic and may be another one for the junk pile. 

at this point horsemouth and howard decided to call it a day and nipped out for a quick pint at the pub with pizza before horsemouth headed off to his brother's house for dinner. after dinner he wandered back and fed the cats and watched a film on joe bussard (early recorder of john fahey, record collector and radio station operator) before bed. 

this morning. the cats laze in the sunshine. horsemouth plans breakfast and then a trip to the allotment to make sure everything is watered. later a journey off into walthamstow in search of second hand books.  

by correspondence (at some point the rest of time will become available)

horsemouth has decamped to the cloud forest. he's just run off some giant ginger talking cat from just outside the cat flap (enabling the cats, having ate breakfast, to make an exit). 

it is five years since horsemouth acquired the roderick paesold p.90 classical guitar. paesold are famous for making violins but they didn't make the guitars (that's just some badging and copyright thing). 

yesterday horsemouth went out for a walk with his friend (and former gertrude guitarist) ayesha. they discussed the pandemic, lockdown, absent friends, their living in london timelines and the overall politics. 

horsemouth notices that he is a bit focused on the moment of lockdown (at some point the rest of time will become available).

and at some point last night horsemouth wrote down the phrase 'by correspondence' - it was from a science fiction novel written by two authors who never physically met (everything being done by 'the mails' as such things were done before the rise of the internet). 

today (hopfully) he goes to finish off the latest tranche of recordings with howard (but if they don't they don't there's always friday). horsemouth thinks they should pad out 'the album' with some projects left over from previous sessions. he's not convinced by all the recordings of the songs  they have achieved. 

he had a look at the post tyrannousaurus rex career of steve 'peregrine' took (bounced from the band for wanting to do his own songs). before that he was looking up energy efficiency measures. 

the weather says grey all day then some sun in the afternoon/ evening maybe. 

books/ films/ events may 2022 (no gigs)

books

- steppenwolf (herman hesse)

- isle of the dead (zelazny)

- hallucinating foucault (patricia drucker)

- the black monk/ the peasants (checkov)

- canal dreams (iain banks)

- the empty space (peter brook)

- the FT weekend for two weekends, and one copy of the observer new review.

- jodi dean, same as it ever was? nlr sidecar, 6th may 2022 on neofeudalism 

films

- alice in wonderland (1966 jonathan miller and ravi shankar, and a film of them working on the music)

-  steppenwolf 

- the killers (siodmak)

- the blue gardenia (fritz lang) 

- the short night of the glass dolls (aldo lado 1971)

- terror: infamy (series bbc2)

- the threat (kinji fukasaku 1966)

- le mura di malapaga ((1949 rené clément) 

- dinner with andre 

- puzzle (aka. l’uomo senza memoria 1974 giallo duccio tessari)

- h.p lovecraft horror podcasts (the case of charles dexter ward, the whisperer in darkness, the shadow over innsmouth)

- will be wild podcast (populism)

- FT podcast

- the hermit of treig

- first five episodes of blake's 7

-  RKO series episode on the mccarthy witchhunts and val lewton and the film noirs. 

-  philip k. dick documentaries

- ingmar bergmann documentaries

- outlaw bookseller various vids, robert silverberg and philip k. dick's valis. 

events

fourth anniversary of volume 3 celebration. the fall of the house of fitzgerald shown at the renaissance festival. lots of walks.  john visits. walk in epping forest. althea mcnish exhibition. horsemouth's hi-fi dies. vangelis dies. triple negative release new download and cassette.

blue gardenias and palagandan salamanders

how bored was horsemouth yesterday? he mopped the kitchen floor and the downstairs hall that's how bored he was. 

in the evening horsemouth watched a film noir - the blue gardenia by fritz lang. it being fritz lang there are nice shots and nice touches. the three women live in a bungalow together - they share the rent, they offer advice and support, the men (by comparison) are wisecracking, perfidious and out for themselves. 

with the war women moved to the big cities in search of war work in the armaments factories, after the war they were displaced into telephonist and typing pool jobs. in one of the socially conscious RKO noirs, tender comrade by edward dmytryk , the girls work in an airplane  factory (rosie the riveter style). the women are seen working out that they could afford a better apartment if they pooled their rent. ginger rogers later appeared before the house unamerican activities committee saying that she had felt uncomfortable with the leftwing bias of the movie - this led to the blacklisting of the writer dalton trumbo.

the film is driven by a similar misogynist  tension as in the gialli. that the women have a measure of economic independence and control over their sex lives (and some solidarity from other women) is seen as troubling. there is the worry about the breakdown of social norms and gender roles (expressed as a concern about the 'safety' of the women). unlike the gialli the solution here is not to murder the women. 

today horsemouth goes for a coffee and to look at some art with ayesha (morning - the weather is looking better). he should get in a wander round with TG at some point. he's away to the cloud forest this evening.  

wednesday afternoon he may be finishing off some recording with howard. about half of them horsemouth thinks are done excepting a few nips and tucks. the other half he thinks need additional recording, one track he thinks is un-saveable (wondrous love). whether they have time to do that is another matter.  he's casting his thoughts about to see if there is anything they have recorded before that can be brought back. 

wednesday evening he's off for dinner with his brother's family.