It is a glorious summer evening and tomorrow is Christmas which sounds like a joke but is actually true. Always a difficult and complicated time of year - my family seems to be managing extremely well.
The Chotto Matte myspace page is up and has a couple of samples from our last rehearsal at GM studios. All recorded on my trusty zoom H4 so the quality is good but totaled like a car crash on a country road as the sun chases away the night. if you wanna take a look then go to:
http://www.myspace.com/chottomattemusic
I wrote some poetry on the train today and no one wanted to hear it when i dropped in to work so i'll post it here and if you hate it you can keep your stupid opinion to yourself.
it clicks and it clucks, the echo of a thousand brooding ducks,
He wore a long short wasn't she waving when they were,
Pickles eaten pixies poke and play amongst my fur,
the sun is gone the moon is grey a finger finds the crux,
yet i still hear the echo, of a thousand brooding ducks.
There. Whatever. Maybe i'll use it as song lyrics one time. Write your own and tell the world you pigs!
I think Chotto Matte will be playing again on the 22nd of January at the Glasshouse (51 Gipps St Collingwood) so i'd love it if you could trot on over and sniff the flowers. It will be weird to play again after a month rest... but i think it will be good to sit aside and return to the place we found before and make our broken toys do talking.
Have a safe and happy Christmas or whatever you celebrate. I don't buy gifts since i hate shopping for other people. I guess it is a good excuse to get together and have a lot of food and drink and forget about other stuff if you can. For some it is a cruel reminder. My cd burner is broken and there are some important people i wont see tomorrow. The distance and the tides keep us apart. I weep for that.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
You make me wanna take drugs.
What a week and what a year. And there is still 2 weeks to go. And last night Alex and i went to a sabbatical Christmas party at the Horse Bazaar and there were many artists playing their noise - i wont say "for" the audience... not even "at" the audience. They were making noise and an impressive crowd of young hip groovies congregated at the scene to pay witness to anti-musical establishment in its current guise. I recall going to see Danmatsuma, back in 2000, before noise was in with the groovies. Back when vehement distortion and object sounds would send a pub crowd scuttling, whole pints of beer left as relics of a once inhabited venue. Danmatsuma were banned from every venue they played - i guess Melbourne just wasn't ready for that kind of stuff... but the kids were gonna love it.
Aside from enjoying being a part of the who's who of local noise and experimental shit - i think we took a few lessons home with us. For starters, and perhaps this is my theatre background talking, it is very easy for musicians of any type to loose sight of the fact that people have come along - in this case paid - to see them do what they love doing. Some of the artists looked like they loved what they were doing. There was a girl in a white dress writhing away as she provided vocals. She looked like she was into it - at least. And then there was a pretty hardcore display of drumming from Rob Mayson (who i was friends with in primary school). But something was lacking and i'm not sure what it is. Anti-everything punk derivatives can make a point of being disrespectful and i am glad that there is music that does that... but i found it difficult to maintain my attention while the musicians were "playing" last night.
I used to think that the brain might shut off when accosted with overwhelming and brutal sound. That, as a self defence measure, the mind would put up barriers - as one goes into denial during or after traumatic violence. But i am not so sure. I was watching and listening and trying to focus and i kept thinking of things to say to my friend. There was no real impulse to leave... i just wasn't that interested in what was happening on stage. I don't know why some music seizes my attention immediately, any more than i know why some paintings demand one's full attention the moment they present themselves. Certain sculptures, photographs and performers immerse you in their form and offer no release. After witnessing the profound presence of Goya, Velasquez and Picasso, i can honestly say that great works have haunted me for days after the experience of their intimacy. In contemporary music, Ben Frost held me by the frontal lobe for a sustained 45 minutes this time a year ago. Ollie Olsen has made me want to dance when i thought my brain was leaking out through my nose. Eye from the Boredoms is always full of suprises and when i feel like relaxing Thomas Koner and DJ Olive lull my imagination in before painting delicate images and nudging my soul.
But the stuff last night... didn't really affect me so much. Some nice ideas and some nice sounds. But it all sort of seemed like that naked plinth at a 1st year VCA exhibition, inviting the observer to make what they can of an empty packet of crisps in an art gallery. Here is a sound, or a whole bunch of sounds - all at once - you do the math. Yeah... nah... To get on stage, whether you want to challenge the conventions of that stage or not, demands a genuine gesture of communication. It demands an honest moment of giving. Little was offered to me last night. Little was taken. As i walked down Lt Lonsdale Street, a young dude in tight black jeans swaggering with the poise of disabled pigeon asked/declared "that was great music right?" Right... it might have been the constriction on his abdomen, or his insecurity hiding like a vesuvian zit behind three strands of hair. When i said i wasn't convinced, he loped off into the night. Even the determined consumer seeks, desires in fact, affirmation.
The night before was the final group rehearsal for Chotto Matte. David goes north to be with family for Christmas, while Alex and i will spend the season with our respective tribes in Melbourne. We all continue to lay the foundations for our new baby. The next performance will most likely be on a Thursday in mid/late January. The 22nd i think... I have provided the last recording we made at the head of this entry. It starts kinda glitch electronica before building and droning and descending into a flat out rock jam at the end. You may notice that the bass is really dominant and that the vocals kind of disappear a bit. This was unintentional and something we will keep in mind for the next time we are adjusting our levels.
If i don't see you before, have a great Christmas and New Year. I look forward to whatever correspondence we may have in the near future.
Regards,
Benjamin
Aside from enjoying being a part of the who's who of local noise and experimental shit - i think we took a few lessons home with us. For starters, and perhaps this is my theatre background talking, it is very easy for musicians of any type to loose sight of the fact that people have come along - in this case paid - to see them do what they love doing. Some of the artists looked like they loved what they were doing. There was a girl in a white dress writhing away as she provided vocals. She looked like she was into it - at least. And then there was a pretty hardcore display of drumming from Rob Mayson (who i was friends with in primary school). But something was lacking and i'm not sure what it is. Anti-everything punk derivatives can make a point of being disrespectful and i am glad that there is music that does that... but i found it difficult to maintain my attention while the musicians were "playing" last night.
I used to think that the brain might shut off when accosted with overwhelming and brutal sound. That, as a self defence measure, the mind would put up barriers - as one goes into denial during or after traumatic violence. But i am not so sure. I was watching and listening and trying to focus and i kept thinking of things to say to my friend. There was no real impulse to leave... i just wasn't that interested in what was happening on stage. I don't know why some music seizes my attention immediately, any more than i know why some paintings demand one's full attention the moment they present themselves. Certain sculptures, photographs and performers immerse you in their form and offer no release. After witnessing the profound presence of Goya, Velasquez and Picasso, i can honestly say that great works have haunted me for days after the experience of their intimacy. In contemporary music, Ben Frost held me by the frontal lobe for a sustained 45 minutes this time a year ago. Ollie Olsen has made me want to dance when i thought my brain was leaking out through my nose. Eye from the Boredoms is always full of suprises and when i feel like relaxing Thomas Koner and DJ Olive lull my imagination in before painting delicate images and nudging my soul.
But the stuff last night... didn't really affect me so much. Some nice ideas and some nice sounds. But it all sort of seemed like that naked plinth at a 1st year VCA exhibition, inviting the observer to make what they can of an empty packet of crisps in an art gallery. Here is a sound, or a whole bunch of sounds - all at once - you do the math. Yeah... nah... To get on stage, whether you want to challenge the conventions of that stage or not, demands a genuine gesture of communication. It demands an honest moment of giving. Little was offered to me last night. Little was taken. As i walked down Lt Lonsdale Street, a young dude in tight black jeans swaggering with the poise of disabled pigeon asked/declared "that was great music right?" Right... it might have been the constriction on his abdomen, or his insecurity hiding like a vesuvian zit behind three strands of hair. When i said i wasn't convinced, he loped off into the night. Even the determined consumer seeks, desires in fact, affirmation.
The night before was the final group rehearsal for Chotto Matte. David goes north to be with family for Christmas, while Alex and i will spend the season with our respective tribes in Melbourne. We all continue to lay the foundations for our new baby. The next performance will most likely be on a Thursday in mid/late January. The 22nd i think... I have provided the last recording we made at the head of this entry. It starts kinda glitch electronica before building and droning and descending into a flat out rock jam at the end. You may notice that the bass is really dominant and that the vocals kind of disappear a bit. This was unintentional and something we will keep in mind for the next time we are adjusting our levels.
If i don't see you before, have a great Christmas and New Year. I look forward to whatever correspondence we may have in the near future.
Regards,
Benjamin
Sunday, December 14, 2008
The beginning of Chotto Matte
I am crashing like a plane into a mountain - the last few days have been epic and i am not apologising if i drop my usual poetic voice. Chotto matte performed at the Glasshouse on Thursday and it is now Sunday and on Friday i would have said i had not experienced such extreme ecstasy since 2004 when i directed a very powerful production of The Women of Troy. That show and this show are strangely linked - there is something in the experience of performing that seizes my central nervous system and sets pulses of electricity coarsing through my entire body. But i've been on stage plenty of times and rarely do i get this overwhelming rush - this time, like the other time, felt like a moment of enacted transformation. Not only did i get up and get lost in wild and dangerous improvisation - my being was snatched up and seized by unseen entities with madness at their finger tips. My body became a microcosmic theatre of impulse, desire and will to power. These elements may be ubiquitous, but rarely have i come so close to the orgiastic moment of transcendence, never have i known such intimacy with the void. Self was swallowed in flame and i danced upon the ashes. We could have gone all night, had the ending never found us. But, of course, there are points of rebuttal.
We would all agree that at points the music became thin, or lost its momentum, and due to some quirks and misdeliveries in the playing. Friends who came said that there were some issues with the music that were probably due to our approach, stature and occasions of insecurity. I hope that these issues will be overcome as we continue to work and experiment together. But one fact was made blistering clear - this is perhaps more of a personal than a group observation - that we not a band playing songs - we are a group engaged in a ritualistic performance of shamanistic proportions. As Dave built layer upon layer of thick tribal drumming and Alex drove that gattling gun bass, the sound rocketed further and further in its wild and heady ascensions, and i felt my body would explode or burst into flame - that some divine presence had seized my limbs and wanted to make every molecule of my being scream with terror. The pure liveness of the event - the intensity of improvised performance - houses a strange and ephemeral display of intimacy and discovery between three very different artists. The collision of expressed emotions and colours within the whirring miasm of the moment often seemed to teeter on self annihilation. With each decay crumble and fall it seemed we had taken a small step back from the brink of insanity. Performing a meditation on psychosis, we conjured unconscious and uncanny spirits, inviting all present to become consumed in the frenzy.
A further and astute observation was the length of the piece. We performed for exactly one hour - which is a long time when the performance is so full on and violent. Many punters had to leave early because the spasmodic paroxysms and attempted self harming was just too much. I guess it is better to leave people wanting more than to burn them out and leave them exhausted.
What else can be said? It was great fun and if i can do more of that and less of everything else i will be a very happy man. I started reading Pauline Oliveros on improvisation, sound art and philosophy, and an article on multi-tonal singing. I want to immerse myself yet deeper in this thick and wonderful theatre of sound and movement. I started emailing festival coordinators and friends in the music industry - i need to do this on stage and so much more often than every now and then. If there is self destruction lurking in the viscous burning of candles, then i crave that extinction - if it offers a means of self overcoming - then i want that extinction.
Since Thursday i have been full of joy until today when i feel like my legs are brittle water soaked twisties and my head is full of pop corn. If i could sleep a little better i think tomorrow will be great. I look to Alex and David, hoping that in our dialogue, our friendship some minute, detectable essence of the experience may be felt. We debrief, but we know that moment is gone. We can only shift our gaze to the passing time. And weep for that.
I have a recent memory of ecstasy - now i must grieve for its passing. But with all the fibres and vicissitudes of my body - i thirst for more.
We would all agree that at points the music became thin, or lost its momentum, and due to some quirks and misdeliveries in the playing. Friends who came said that there were some issues with the music that were probably due to our approach, stature and occasions of insecurity. I hope that these issues will be overcome as we continue to work and experiment together. But one fact was made blistering clear - this is perhaps more of a personal than a group observation - that we not a band playing songs - we are a group engaged in a ritualistic performance of shamanistic proportions. As Dave built layer upon layer of thick tribal drumming and Alex drove that gattling gun bass, the sound rocketed further and further in its wild and heady ascensions, and i felt my body would explode or burst into flame - that some divine presence had seized my limbs and wanted to make every molecule of my being scream with terror. The pure liveness of the event - the intensity of improvised performance - houses a strange and ephemeral display of intimacy and discovery between three very different artists. The collision of expressed emotions and colours within the whirring miasm of the moment often seemed to teeter on self annihilation. With each decay crumble and fall it seemed we had taken a small step back from the brink of insanity. Performing a meditation on psychosis, we conjured unconscious and uncanny spirits, inviting all present to become consumed in the frenzy.
A further and astute observation was the length of the piece. We performed for exactly one hour - which is a long time when the performance is so full on and violent. Many punters had to leave early because the spasmodic paroxysms and attempted self harming was just too much. I guess it is better to leave people wanting more than to burn them out and leave them exhausted.
What else can be said? It was great fun and if i can do more of that and less of everything else i will be a very happy man. I started reading Pauline Oliveros on improvisation, sound art and philosophy, and an article on multi-tonal singing. I want to immerse myself yet deeper in this thick and wonderful theatre of sound and movement. I started emailing festival coordinators and friends in the music industry - i need to do this on stage and so much more often than every now and then. If there is self destruction lurking in the viscous burning of candles, then i crave that extinction - if it offers a means of self overcoming - then i want that extinction.
Since Thursday i have been full of joy until today when i feel like my legs are brittle water soaked twisties and my head is full of pop corn. If i could sleep a little better i think tomorrow will be great. I look to Alex and David, hoping that in our dialogue, our friendship some minute, detectable essence of the experience may be felt. We debrief, but we know that moment is gone. We can only shift our gaze to the passing time. And weep for that.
I have a recent memory of ecstasy - now i must grieve for its passing. But with all the fibres and vicissitudes of my body - i thirst for more.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
rehearsal for loss
Summer has arrived and not without a few last squeals of protest from his sun starved doppelganger - each icy breath thinly laced with a perfume of finality. It has been a time of climatic extremes and, it would seem, we are all feeling it. The schizophrenia of shifts, tidal flows, ductile accumulation and release. Smoke signals seemed to show me the way and with indecisive lethargy i maybe missed my moment. The clouds part and fruit is offered - but rarely am i hungry and too often am absorbed in the arrangement of stones, the earth and her artifacts, gelling my gaze to the monument, the stream, the sand. For what does one look to heaven if not to know in his bones the wonder and unimaginable excess of is his own mind, his own home? I look up, and feel my earth cry out. Oh my soul, if you will not cry out and give voice to your purple melancholy, then you will have to sing - oh my soul.
It is a Saturday night and i sit on my room listening to Leonard Cohen, that insatiable Buddhist, Suicide and Scott Walker. These friends inspire a dumb reflection of heavy voicelessness - why bother? why set to the stone when these most profound and insightful brothers of the overman have held, caressed, indeed, set to flame the very soil i wish to see drifting under foot - today we listened to Godspeed at a minor place and i realised that i am not even a pawn on the chessboard of creativity - perhaps a checker, unfortunately displaced upon the oak face where i am only strange and a stranger - lost and outcast - one who cannot move, only sit befuddled, impotent as the majestic royalty perform their grand manouver, graceful and sublime. Were i a knight, i would steal so many glances and wash your souls with my own tears. But i am not the mouth for your ears - how can i begin to sing when i cannot yet hear with my eyes?!
These thoughts and feelings come cascading like the waves of a migraine - i would speak further of my thirst for inspiration - i look around and see so many of the same 26 - 35 tide and i sink aside and wonder what have i to show for my time? And my answer is the same as all others - "nothing". For no further can i carry my debaucherous bacchant cries than the other can tug his own house - this treacherous screaming dancing is the earth cracking to swallow bricks and mortar. And so i think about what i have done and would i do it different and the answer is the same again and again for was what it was as what is now is what i will and will forever will it. There are things i might have done and been but could never suspend my disbelief because what was the only true path - i let them scatter, as burnt ash and the dust of moth wings.
Oh my heart, it was you i followed into the sea, and held my breath and swallowed the sun. Diving deep and drinking my fill, you held up my head and i knew my god dancing on the shimmering tide. Oh my heart, it was you that led me by the hand through gorge and gully, to the frozen ridge and wind swept peak; your gentle grasp, unyielding on my shoulder. Your mountain will, with clear precision, gave my stride to ground. Oh my heart, it was you i let persuade me to the forest, where the wild cries of maenads made my terror shriek and shudder. We lost ourselves and danced on, deeper and deeper, until the nectar oozed from the quivering flesh - until the clutching branches tore the silver sky and stars moons planets rushed out, a vortex of light and limbs. It was you, oh my heart, when i fell upon my knee and wept to know myself, you showed me darker nights and burning passion, the demonic whirl of ecstasy. I could not raise a finger in protest when we fell upon ourselves, lost in laneways and terrified of traffic lights. I followed you and did not doubt, oh my heart - these labors of love, these trials tests and the teeming frenzy of obsession. Thoughts, dreams, ideas - all frolicked for my fancy, delicate and beautiful as the flames consumed them. Oh my heart, it was you compelled me towards the stage that i might dance and scream and find myself splinter footed stomping on rickety wooden boards. It was you, oh my heart, that has held my head and arm and always led me on. I shall follow you, oh my heart, into the dead of night once more, again and again, onward and onward. Oh my aching heart.
Chotto Matte will be performing with affiliated rock lords, Forms of Fiction, at the Glasshouse, 51 Gipps St, Collingwood this Thursday the 11th of December - it is a free gig and we have no idea what to expect. It is all improvised so the songs will be brand new. I am terrified. I can't wait. Things sort of kick off from 9pm but i doubt we'll be playing before 10ish. Come down and stroke a beard with us.
Ben
It is a Saturday night and i sit on my room listening to Leonard Cohen, that insatiable Buddhist, Suicide and Scott Walker. These friends inspire a dumb reflection of heavy voicelessness - why bother? why set to the stone when these most profound and insightful brothers of the overman have held, caressed, indeed, set to flame the very soil i wish to see drifting under foot - today we listened to Godspeed at a minor place and i realised that i am not even a pawn on the chessboard of creativity - perhaps a checker, unfortunately displaced upon the oak face where i am only strange and a stranger - lost and outcast - one who cannot move, only sit befuddled, impotent as the majestic royalty perform their grand manouver, graceful and sublime. Were i a knight, i would steal so many glances and wash your souls with my own tears. But i am not the mouth for your ears - how can i begin to sing when i cannot yet hear with my eyes?!
These thoughts and feelings come cascading like the waves of a migraine - i would speak further of my thirst for inspiration - i look around and see so many of the same 26 - 35 tide and i sink aside and wonder what have i to show for my time? And my answer is the same as all others - "nothing". For no further can i carry my debaucherous bacchant cries than the other can tug his own house - this treacherous screaming dancing is the earth cracking to swallow bricks and mortar. And so i think about what i have done and would i do it different and the answer is the same again and again for was what it was as what is now is what i will and will forever will it. There are things i might have done and been but could never suspend my disbelief because what was the only true path - i let them scatter, as burnt ash and the dust of moth wings.
Oh my heart, it was you i followed into the sea, and held my breath and swallowed the sun. Diving deep and drinking my fill, you held up my head and i knew my god dancing on the shimmering tide. Oh my heart, it was you that led me by the hand through gorge and gully, to the frozen ridge and wind swept peak; your gentle grasp, unyielding on my shoulder. Your mountain will, with clear precision, gave my stride to ground. Oh my heart, it was you i let persuade me to the forest, where the wild cries of maenads made my terror shriek and shudder. We lost ourselves and danced on, deeper and deeper, until the nectar oozed from the quivering flesh - until the clutching branches tore the silver sky and stars moons planets rushed out, a vortex of light and limbs. It was you, oh my heart, when i fell upon my knee and wept to know myself, you showed me darker nights and burning passion, the demonic whirl of ecstasy. I could not raise a finger in protest when we fell upon ourselves, lost in laneways and terrified of traffic lights. I followed you and did not doubt, oh my heart - these labors of love, these trials tests and the teeming frenzy of obsession. Thoughts, dreams, ideas - all frolicked for my fancy, delicate and beautiful as the flames consumed them. Oh my heart, it was you compelled me towards the stage that i might dance and scream and find myself splinter footed stomping on rickety wooden boards. It was you, oh my heart, that has held my head and arm and always led me on. I shall follow you, oh my heart, into the dead of night once more, again and again, onward and onward. Oh my aching heart.
Chotto Matte will be performing with affiliated rock lords, Forms of Fiction, at the Glasshouse, 51 Gipps St, Collingwood this Thursday the 11th of December - it is a free gig and we have no idea what to expect. It is all improvised so the songs will be brand new. I am terrified. I can't wait. Things sort of kick off from 9pm but i doubt we'll be playing before 10ish. Come down and stroke a beard with us.
Ben
Saturday, October 18, 2008
my god dances on smoke
I think we were in Granada, or perhaps it was when we were still in Maroc. It is unclear, exactly, when i decided to face the fact that my travels had a looming conclusion. As i relaxed the jaw and allowed my teeth to sink into that abrasive reality, there were ideas that oozed and made it possible to swallow. Though i knew not then that they were simply ideas and that the wisdom of experience would brush aside the optimistic design of child-like folly. The road thought and the road walking bear almost no similarity - but perhaps we need the fancy to free our leaden feet.
"I think i will go home after i've seen Paris." When was it, when did that final abhorrant thought crystalise in the smoke? It doesn't really matter, i suppose. But if i could have taken that dry and detached voice of reason by the lips and tugged them till the teeth were forced to cry - what a smile to behold! Into the mountains we fled - and found the solitude of hawks and ibex.
And now it has been some months since my return and the delicate quivering smoke-wreathed notion that it would be okay to return to Melbourne because that is where i am in touch with artists and musicians and an income and opportunities and good coffee - then i could work and create and swim out to an idea bobbing as a buoy and drown in the luscious giddy ecstatic of creation. And it would have been all singing and shows and writing and swimming and diving and blissful deeper and deeper - where the gentle nudge of rays would please the flesh and the delicate glow of anenome may delight the eye. And what presents when the event steps from behind the smiling frame of horizon?
Just a great brooding existential mess laden with junk and wrecked potentialities. For so long nothing has happened and then the full moon in Aries brought fire and frenzy and maybe i have it whittled down to three strong possibilities: but they keep changing and that's just because i do.
Should i tow this life direction line a little further, or no? Suffice to say a decision is on the agenda and buggered if i know which one to "make".
But i recently watched a documentary about Scott Walker. For those who are unfamiliar, he was a member of the 60s pop group, the Walker Brothers, who was in it for the rush and whirl or creativity. So he did a whole lot of stuff and got away from pop music and has since become one of the most compelling sound makers of the past 40 years. The writing is tight, brimming with existential surface tension, entwined with darkly poetic atmospheres that alienate and terrify. But that is only one or two of his many recordings. What stayed with me, however, was his insight on the creative process: for he is a man who will live in the forest someplace and write absolutely nothing, nor even look at a guitar, for 5 6 7 years - as long as it takes, until that voice comes to him. Inspiration can never be forced - and we have no way of knowing when it will come, if it will come. For Walker, it has to find him - he just has to be ready.
As usual, i think about everything in terms of my own experience, and this revelation was of great comfort. The challenge then becomes to nurture a bit of yin, be patient and stop trying.
Last night i went to see My Disco at the Tote. My ears are still singing with the hexagonal hypoxia that can only follow a thunderous encounter with noise rock music. Having seen My Disco support Battles last year, I was familiar with their reductive, minimal and mechanical assemblage of basic instrumentation. But unlike so much "minimal" and forgettable electronica or "art" rock, My Disco display the thought, attention to detail and passion that perhaps define good performance. While watching them, i was struck by the marriage of tight, intricately arranged music with an electrifying stage presence. It would seem a mistake, however, to assume that the two things are mutually exclusive in this case. Rather, My Disco embody a particular performative atmosphere through which they become agents or vessels of their own sound. Through absolute immersion in the execution of their craft, My Disco achieve the ritualistic air of a Buddhist monk attending to his rock garden. And their devotion to form makes them extraordinary to look at. Refined, focused and meditative, My Disco do not gently invite the listener to ponder the space between carefully placed movements - rather, they invoke a charged corridor of violent imaginative equations. By stripping music back to ultra simple two-note structures, these artists have excavated the ruins of a labyrinth. The ears twist with relentless inquiry - walls of sound emerge and dissolve - the minotaur, forever brooding at its center. Who knows - this math rock stuff might be the key we've all been searching for. Inspired and reassured, i wandered off into the night.
The last few gigs i'd been to were bitterly disappointing. Which is perhaps why i haven't been writing for a while - i was just too depressed. The Lucky Dragons and Mount Eerie at the Triple RRR space... hmmm. It might have been great if i'd been sitting on the electronic carpet that made instruments of the audiencee - just for the novel fluff. But i thought they were rubbish. They don't really make any of the music live; they just sort of flop and flarn about like a couple of sick and startled greyhounds. Ah! And the last piece of music involved two parts: the dancing bit, which they executed like wok tossed severed noses, and the second bit, which involved members of the audience disclosing a compliment to one of their neighbours at predetermined moments. What condescending tripe! The quasi-religious atmosphere of their hippy love circle seemed little more than a comic cartoon redraw of the psychedelic pituitary stretches of that hazy time none of us can remember. Is it fashionable to be limp and lope like the geeks might have a clue? Has hip become a victim of some strange muscular dystrophy, decayed and destitute? The kids love "noise" cos you don't have to break a sweat - but i find this celebration of the meek a pathetic alternative to the sadisfactions of television couch life.
What really hurt (like the $25 door charge wasn't enough) was the myriad of voices feigning amazement in the doldrum week that followed. Doldrums! Because such a farce would not tear a wake upon the sea! It is disturbing to hear musicians and performers harping on about how "amazing" the Lucky Dragons and Mount Eerie were. Yeah, look i'll make a concession here: Eerie was ok - his songs are nice and he writes well - but he picks his flowers with a self deprecating air. If you're going to sing about the agony of mortality and rage at death, then do it like your life depends on it. I felt little passion from his songs - as i felt no passion in that sterile crowd of children with mouths gaping wide. But the Dragons? The only energy i could detect was the rage inside of me as their condescending hippy cultisms wafted about the room. And don't be thinking it was the sound or some nuance pushing me out of my comfort zone. I have their album and i like it. But i was deluded to think they might actually create some of those sprawling percussive environments, and electrify the room with an engaging presence.
And then all these local artists sing praise to them - and i sit and wonder if maybe the problem is me, that i just don't get it. I mean, some of the celebrants are signed musicians who tour nationally and get big crowds along to their events - they are "creatively successful" according to the criterion and boxes ticked.
But i think i have figured it out: These people are in a scene - they embody constituent members of a world that depends on its parts in order to justify its own existence. Art has always struggled to be important. The same can be said for academia. And because they're all in this weird little boat together, it is in their interest to portray the other as "amazing", for by extension they make wonder of their own work. You are, there for i am. Decartes ol boy, didn't they have pop music in your day?
And i just stand here with a broken glass in my hand waiting for someone to smirk so we can all just piss ourselves laughing at this big ridiculous joke. Like any of this means anything! But then i go and see something like Zond and My Disco and it is well thought out, rehearsed, powerful and affecting - and my hands began to shake as the words rushed to the finger tips.
Oh creative force! You may not come today - but i shall be waiting here, always ready to rush upon the fire, and find my god, dancing on the smoke.
"I think i will go home after i've seen Paris." When was it, when did that final abhorrant thought crystalise in the smoke? It doesn't really matter, i suppose. But if i could have taken that dry and detached voice of reason by the lips and tugged them till the teeth were forced to cry - what a smile to behold! Into the mountains we fled - and found the solitude of hawks and ibex.
And now it has been some months since my return and the delicate quivering smoke-wreathed notion that it would be okay to return to Melbourne because that is where i am in touch with artists and musicians and an income and opportunities and good coffee - then i could work and create and swim out to an idea bobbing as a buoy and drown in the luscious giddy ecstatic of creation. And it would have been all singing and shows and writing and swimming and diving and blissful deeper and deeper - where the gentle nudge of rays would please the flesh and the delicate glow of anenome may delight the eye. And what presents when the event steps from behind the smiling frame of horizon?
Just a great brooding existential mess laden with junk and wrecked potentialities. For so long nothing has happened and then the full moon in Aries brought fire and frenzy and maybe i have it whittled down to three strong possibilities: but they keep changing and that's just because i do.
Should i tow this life direction line a little further, or no? Suffice to say a decision is on the agenda and buggered if i know which one to "make".
But i recently watched a documentary about Scott Walker. For those who are unfamiliar, he was a member of the 60s pop group, the Walker Brothers, who was in it for the rush and whirl or creativity. So he did a whole lot of stuff and got away from pop music and has since become one of the most compelling sound makers of the past 40 years. The writing is tight, brimming with existential surface tension, entwined with darkly poetic atmospheres that alienate and terrify. But that is only one or two of his many recordings. What stayed with me, however, was his insight on the creative process: for he is a man who will live in the forest someplace and write absolutely nothing, nor even look at a guitar, for 5 6 7 years - as long as it takes, until that voice comes to him. Inspiration can never be forced - and we have no way of knowing when it will come, if it will come. For Walker, it has to find him - he just has to be ready.
As usual, i think about everything in terms of my own experience, and this revelation was of great comfort. The challenge then becomes to nurture a bit of yin, be patient and stop trying.
Last night i went to see My Disco at the Tote. My ears are still singing with the hexagonal hypoxia that can only follow a thunderous encounter with noise rock music. Having seen My Disco support Battles last year, I was familiar with their reductive, minimal and mechanical assemblage of basic instrumentation. But unlike so much "minimal" and forgettable electronica or "art" rock, My Disco display the thought, attention to detail and passion that perhaps define good performance. While watching them, i was struck by the marriage of tight, intricately arranged music with an electrifying stage presence. It would seem a mistake, however, to assume that the two things are mutually exclusive in this case. Rather, My Disco embody a particular performative atmosphere through which they become agents or vessels of their own sound. Through absolute immersion in the execution of their craft, My Disco achieve the ritualistic air of a Buddhist monk attending to his rock garden. And their devotion to form makes them extraordinary to look at. Refined, focused and meditative, My Disco do not gently invite the listener to ponder the space between carefully placed movements - rather, they invoke a charged corridor of violent imaginative equations. By stripping music back to ultra simple two-note structures, these artists have excavated the ruins of a labyrinth. The ears twist with relentless inquiry - walls of sound emerge and dissolve - the minotaur, forever brooding at its center. Who knows - this math rock stuff might be the key we've all been searching for. Inspired and reassured, i wandered off into the night.
The last few gigs i'd been to were bitterly disappointing. Which is perhaps why i haven't been writing for a while - i was just too depressed. The Lucky Dragons and Mount Eerie at the Triple RRR space... hmmm. It might have been great if i'd been sitting on the electronic carpet that made instruments of the audiencee - just for the novel fluff. But i thought they were rubbish. They don't really make any of the music live; they just sort of flop and flarn about like a couple of sick and startled greyhounds. Ah! And the last piece of music involved two parts: the dancing bit, which they executed like wok tossed severed noses, and the second bit, which involved members of the audience disclosing a compliment to one of their neighbours at predetermined moments. What condescending tripe! The quasi-religious atmosphere of their hippy love circle seemed little more than a comic cartoon redraw of the psychedelic pituitary stretches of that hazy time none of us can remember. Is it fashionable to be limp and lope like the geeks might have a clue? Has hip become a victim of some strange muscular dystrophy, decayed and destitute? The kids love "noise" cos you don't have to break a sweat - but i find this celebration of the meek a pathetic alternative to the sadisfactions of television couch life.What really hurt (like the $25 door charge wasn't enough) was the myriad of voices feigning amazement in the doldrum week that followed. Doldrums! Because such a farce would not tear a wake upon the sea! It is disturbing to hear musicians and performers harping on about how "amazing" the Lucky Dragons and Mount Eerie were. Yeah, look i'll make a concession here: Eerie was ok - his songs are nice and he writes well - but he picks his flowers with a self deprecating air. If you're going to sing about the agony of mortality and rage at death, then do it like your life depends on it. I felt little passion from his songs - as i felt no passion in that sterile crowd of children with mouths gaping wide. But the Dragons? The only energy i could detect was the rage inside of me as their condescending hippy cultisms wafted about the room. And don't be thinking it was the sound or some nuance pushing me out of my comfort zone. I have their album and i like it. But i was deluded to think they might actually create some of those sprawling percussive environments, and electrify the room with an engaging presence.
And then all these local artists sing praise to them - and i sit and wonder if maybe the problem is me, that i just don't get it. I mean, some of the celebrants are signed musicians who tour nationally and get big crowds along to their events - they are "creatively successful" according to the criterion and boxes ticked.
But i think i have figured it out: These people are in a scene - they embody constituent members of a world that depends on its parts in order to justify its own existence. Art has always struggled to be important. The same can be said for academia. And because they're all in this weird little boat together, it is in their interest to portray the other as "amazing", for by extension they make wonder of their own work. You are, there for i am. Decartes ol boy, didn't they have pop music in your day?
And i just stand here with a broken glass in my hand waiting for someone to smirk so we can all just piss ourselves laughing at this big ridiculous joke. Like any of this means anything! But then i go and see something like Zond and My Disco and it is well thought out, rehearsed, powerful and affecting - and my hands began to shake as the words rushed to the finger tips.
Oh creative force! You may not come today - but i shall be waiting here, always ready to rush upon the fire, and find my god, dancing on the smoke.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Two old men in a tower
The last week has been a bit strange. Odd encounters, chance meetings, an apathetic atmosphere. Twas to be expected after such a great weekend. Outdoor sorts talk of a natural high... they rarely mention the natural low.
Last Sunday i went to Maximum Arousal at the Toff in Town to see DJ Olive play an ambient set. Olive was right to suggest that his delicate tapestries of sparse, melancholic spaces, populated by rich and luscious drones may induce sleep. Some audience members lay down on the floor, to allow the gentle waves to wash over them - as we sat there in the darkness, most eyes closed, i thought a tiny flower pierced the flesh and found it blooming on the forehead. Sequences of audible light slowly spiraled outward as digital fireflies - as insectoid beings powering their flight with liquid screens upon their backs. So was the aggregate of images in this quantum of perception. Each arrangement of colour wriggling hence from the cocoon, pushing upward, fluttering upon the air, sizzling and smoluldering, becoming vapour, sinking on the screen. The set was deeply engaging, deeply relaxing - a sedative without sedating. The dreamy disassocia of a ketaminous sea - a tide letting the floor closer, now further away. At a moment somebody coughed, and i thought my foot had met the sand. My eyes flickered open and all the sky and the stars rushed in - then i was back below the water - now closer, now further away.
When it was over i looked at my friends and said that was great. We were all smiling and amazed by the beauty of an artist who understands the value of restraint. There were two other acts, but i shall not discuss them here.
Since then it has been a week of strange errors - nothing "bad" has happened... but the optimism that accompanies the first promises of Spring has passed (so soon), and now we oscillate between cold night and the heady warmth of jasmine and cherry blossoms. People go crazy at this time of year - Winter is finally over and we all put on shorts and get excited because Summer is coming. Spring promises beaches and beers, surfing and psychedelia, parties and playmates. Yet summer rarely delivers. Did we all have one really amazing summer? Do we fall under the delusion that the warmer weather shall come baring the same idyllic memories, again and again, floating over the ocean, wreathed in ecstasy, pulsing with irresistible music? Or do we somehow collapse all the moments of wonder from all our summers in to one big super amazing summer and momentarily imagine they were all like that and that there is no reason the next one won't be? How did one little moment, when we fell in love and kissed the sun and danced till we fell over and over and over, expand into a season?
Other pessimists have expressed their wariness about Spring and her promises... so perhaps this year we will be pleasantly surprised. We can only hope.
To get in the mood, i've been listening to the Boredoms a lot. They were a huge presence in my summer of 2000/2001, and have sort of always been in my head ever since. I met EYE once, at a Sonic Geometry party (nostalgic sigh). He offered to take me to Disneyland when i went to Japan the following year - "Mickey Mouse is very psychedelic."
Which may have had some influece on the recording i've posted this time around. Alex rang me while in the park - i went to his place and we set up a bunch of junk around the microphone. Listening to it now, it sounds like Statler and Waldorf (from the Muppet Show) took some acid and went on a string animated rampage - the chef desperately trying to slow the carnage by throwing utensils into the fray... of course, that only accounts for a few moments in the piece. A lot of the time it is just a sparse arrangement of weird percussion, chimes, a recorder and some voice. It was a lot of fun, as usual. I hope you enjoy it.
Regards,
Ben
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Don't look back
The above recording was made this morning - i was just singing some opera stuff and got involved and thought i'd plug the zoom into the mac and see what i could do, improvising and stuff. It took me a while to figure out that once you attach the zoom to a computer it becomes an audio interface - whatever that means. But after not being able to make it work for a bit, i must have figured it out cos the little meters were thrusting forward each time i scratched the cool metal gauze.
To enrich the experiment, i played with some "garageband" loops, a field recording from Rishikesh, and also contributed live effects with some glass and a vial of Chinese herbal tablets. It runs for 13 minutes and consists of three distinct chapters. It was one of those things - i just kept doing and laying down stuff and then pushing 'record' again and in an hour i had this piece and it is the first thing like it i have ever done and so it seemed like a good idea to post it here. So one day when i'm still looking up at the night sky i will know that i climbed these stairs and hundreds of others on the way.
Keep your mind sharp and your heart open. Now... write just one true thing -
To enrich the experiment, i played with some "garageband" loops, a field recording from Rishikesh, and also contributed live effects with some glass and a vial of Chinese herbal tablets. It runs for 13 minutes and consists of three distinct chapters. It was one of those things - i just kept doing and laying down stuff and then pushing 'record' again and in an hour i had this piece and it is the first thing like it i have ever done and so it seemed like a good idea to post it here. So one day when i'm still looking up at the night sky i will know that i climbed these stairs and hundreds of others on the way.
Keep your mind sharp and your heart open. Now... write just one true thing -
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