Crazy! Small world. Thanks for reading my little rant.

I already told you this one you forgetful bastard:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/quietus_prod...op_396x612.jpg

Oh yes; of course! Now I fully remember. Forgive me - I am notoriously forgetful. I'll have to explore it further.

Thanks again!

Hauntology is a topic we've been discussing in another music group, so I'm happy to see it come up here, too. The idea of a "false nostalgia" created by music is fascinating to me, though I've never experienced the phenomenon.

Awesome - WFMU just shared that Atlas Obscura published a feature just yesterday called, "Inside the World's Best Collection of Unintentionally Funny VHS Tapes" with this hilarious short!

A Holy Grail... free of charge.
 

This will only be a micropost, but the news is too amazing not to share.

A good friend tipped me off to a used record collection in town this morning so I took the chance and drove down to check it out. Mostly disco and jazz comps, nothing I needed, until I spotted one oddity among them.

This is the 1970 first US pressing of Parliament's debut album, Osmium on the Invictus label.

I have the Argentinian pic disc boot and got George Clinton to sign it for me, but never expected to find the original pressing, let alone in a garage.

I hadn't hit the ATM yet so I asked the owner how much cash I should take out.

He said, "just the one? Ahh, just take it. No charge."

First press PFunk debut for free. I can't believe it.

https://i.imgur.com/Thk6XKfl.jpg

I live for stories like this! :)

Update, please. This hellhole needs your intelligence.

Thanks, Zhanteimi! I hadn't planned on posting anything as there is a lot going on in my life right now, but I could resist honoring your humble request so here's a little something I put together for you.

Cluster: Shaping the Sound of Germany

https://i.imgur.com/8LAjE0xl.jpg

Moebius, Roedelius, and Plank, who performed together as Cluster, were each instrumental figures in the krautrock scene whose influence cannot be overstated. Between the three of them, they had their hands in the composition and/or production of over 300 albums of ambient and experimental electronic music that defined the German scene throughout the 1970s.

Hans-Joachim Roedelius has produced 115 releases to date with a new soundtrack pending. One notable work is his earliest recording finally issued in 2008 - Live at the Zodiak – Berlin 1968 which is a rare surviving example of work from the highly-influential West Berlin live music venue, Zodiak Free Arts Lab.

Conny Plank contributed to 122 albums during his lifetime, including influential releases by Kraftwerk, Can, Cluster, Guru Guru, Harmonia, Eno (for the 'Berlin Trilogy'), Neu!, La Düsseldorf, and other major figures in krautrock.

Dieter Moebius was another principle artist of the scene. Moebius studied in Brussels and Berlin where he met Roedelius and Conrad Schnitzler to found Kluster in 1969, and later Cluster and Harmonia with Michael Rother of Neu!. Moebius is connected to 65 releases I'll outline below.

I'd previously compiled a similar extended discography for the 178 releases by Tangerine Dream and its associated members’ solo projects, but this archive seems like it will offer a more dynamic range of sounds and shall make for most rewarding listening.

[Blogger's Note] My apologies here - I'd prepared a hierarchal roster of the extended discographies of each of the figures named above and spent a good hour attempting to teach myself how to translate the indented list into BBCode. Evidently, a list of this particular format does not lend itself to BBCode but I didn't want to deprive my readers so I've saved it as a shared Google Doc for anyone to peruse if they wish.

You can read it here. Cheers!

Thanks! I've added a couple Cluster albums to my wishlist just now.

Hey man, thanks for introducing me to So Wrong They're Right, it was a really cool watch!

I got to talk with Roedelius a couple of years ago.
We talked about Harmonia and got off on a funny story about Klaus Schulze and other stories.
Got an earful about his early days with the Hitler Youth that he was forced to be a part of
and learned about his life as a masseuse and other adventures. His solo pieces for a long time
have been a bit new-agey for my taste, but he still leaves many pleasant musical memories
of other kinds that stretch back to the early 70s.

Immer wieder rauf und runter
Einmal drauf und einmal drunter
Immer wieder hin und her
Kreuz und quer, mal leicht, mal schwer

Thank you so much to anyone who takes the time to enjoy my little journal.

Zhanteimi, make sure you grab Eno Moebius and Roedelius' After the Heat LP featuring one of my all time favorite tracks - "The Belldog."

Windsock, delighted that you dug the flick! :)

Rostasi, the myth, the man, the legend. How do you have personal contacts with every figure I cite? Firesign Theatre, The 8-Track Museum, and now Cluster and Schulze? Simply stunning!

Well, some are personal contacts, but only in just a superficial way really.
I mean, Roedelius was performing and giving a talk and afterwards I just introduced myself and we got talking -
that’s pretty much it. If you’re enthusiastic about (meeting) someone, then people are usually drawn to that if you
appear genuine and they’re not snobbish and all that ... and there are others that are intertwined in the music/art
activities that I’m involved in that show up in various ways, but that just comes with a profession, I guess. Nothing legendary.

Music To Entertain By
 

I briefly touched upon this project while it was a work-in-progress in my remark about Silence in the Museum Musica thread but it has finally come together!

As a result of my social proactivity this year, I've been entertaining and have been using my living and dining rooms for the very first time. I quickly came to realize that I needed to incorporate a sound system into the front half of my home. I scored a great deal on one of my favorite model vintage amps reconditioned by an expert in vintage audio on eBay and now my entire home is filled with music! I just love providing a pastoral sonic space for my guests to enjoy while they paint, read, and write.

The vintage receiver and tower 3-way speakers are patched into my home server and gracefully ornament my living room, foyer, and dining room with beautiful dinner jazz and music for quiet, cozy afternoons and evenings by the fire. It’s no audiophile setup by a long stretch but it suits my needs for ambiance splendidly. I may add another turntable down the line.

It's been such a joy to entertain this season! <3

https://i.imgur.com/5wNZwJ7l.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/wKTJJFLl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/QabJDWyl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/O9fwcajl.jpg

I need you to shop for me.

Nice and cozy!
I used to have elaborate setups, but I'm so happy to have wireless audio now.
I can set up sound installations throughout the house using Sonos speakers.

Your pad is looking ever swankier by the day, dude.

What a cozy setup conducive for all manner of artistic / expressive pursuits! Well done.

Thank you, everyone for all the positive feedback! I love having a space to make my own. And being able to share it with guests is all the more satisfying.

Joyicity: A Beautiful Treasure for My Home!
 

Note: While this entry is not music-related, the news was just too exciting not to share, so I am including it in my journal out of pure joy.

Words cannot express my excitement at what has come to pass. As all my friends know, I adore James Joyce and particularly Finnegans Wake and have been collecting Joyce rarities for some time.

Last summer my journey brought me to the Second Reader Bookshop, owned and operated by a local Joycean scholar and a fellow of the Poetry Collection at The University at Buffalo, home to some of the rarest and most exquisite Joyce manuscripts. In his shop, I beheld a framed print of a Joyce-themed play by the local Irish Classical Theatre called Nightmaze. I loved it and asked if I could have it at any price but the owner smiled and said it was a treasure with which he’d never part.

But I didn’t let that stop me. I looked up the Audience Services Manager at the Theatre and inquired about the artwork, and she provided me with the contact info of the original graphic designer who conceived all of the Theatre’s promotional materials over the years. I reached out to him and was surprised to receive an immediate response.

The artist, Michael Gelen of Inkwell Studios shared that he actually favored another portrait of Joyce he’d designed for the award-winning one-man play celebrating the life of Joyce titled, Joyicity. Excitingly, it was the first show ever produced by the Irish Classical Theatre Company in 1990 at the former Pfeiffer Theatre on Main Street so there is some real history here!

“Joyicity,” the word, is taken from Joyce’s final novel, Finnegans Wake, and is laden with puns and multiple meanings –Joyce: joyousness; city: Joyceness, Joyce’s city etc.--and comes from his version of “The Ant and the Grasshopper,” expressing the extraordinary joyfulness of the little singing insect, just as the creation of art is joyful for Joyce, and Joyicity is a celebration of that joy, and its creator Joyce, and his city, Dublin.

Gelen generously offered to reprint the artwork without the advertising text so as to just depict Joyce in portrait, at any size I wished, complete with matting, at an incredibly reasonable price. He even signed the print for me! I was overjoyed at the opportunity to display such a wonderful piece of Joyce and Buffalo history in my own home!

Here it is - framed handsomely in my living room beside the fireplace. JOYICITY! <3

https://i.imgur.com/6hd40Fkl.jpg

I like the art style, though I don't care for James Joyce.

Celebrating the Season
 

It's been a magical Christmas so far. I've attended a Solstice soiree, met a new intellectual peer to share musical passions, as well as the great pleasure of meeting a long-distance friend for some holiday company and esoteric antiquarian gift-giving. We took a trek up to see the Falls in their wintry glory, I visited several delightful Christmas parties, and tomorrow, I've been generously invited to attend a cozy Christmas brunch at a small gathering of beautiful and inspiring friends.

To mark the holiday, I'm quietly ringing in the new year indulging in two of the most hauntingly beautiful drone recordings ever committed to vinyl. Time stands still when you play these records, and sometimes that's all you need.

"I simply feel that they are making the most important music of the 21st century." - Ivo Watts-Russell - 4AD label founder

Here at last are ...and Their Refinement of the Decline and The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid. 6LP holy grails of tranquil solitary stillness.

Happy holidays, my friends. <3

https://i.imgur.com/7Nbbea4l.jpg

Congratulations on your ostentatious aural bath in the Austinites
Stars of the Lid warm, soothing waters.
You might be interested in my new acquisition.
Hope you had a good holiday (you said you did!)

What a great keepsake! I was similarly tempted to pick up both the Eluvium ‎– Life Through Bombardment Vols. 1 and 2 box sets and The Books - A Dot in TIme vinyl box set each showcasing their complete works and each issued by Temporary Residence Ltd. I still might but I'm planning a lot of traveling in the coming year so vinyl is taking a back seat for a bit.

Happy holidays!

https://i.imgur.com/xcyYzfHl.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/DAcLu6Il.jpg

It's The Simple Things
 

It's the simple things in life which bring us the greatest pleasure. I was generously gifted this vintage Yamaha CR-840 receiver back in high school by a dear friend. It was manufactured between 1979-81 (my birth year) and has faithfully provided me with beautiful sound all these years.

Of course, periodic maintenance is required for a 40-year old amp and four of the switches/selectors/dials had built up quite a bit of static. So this morning, I picked up a bottle of Deoxit, opened the amp and gave it a good cleaning, (admittedly my first time performing the task), and now she's singing beautifully once again.

A $7 solution for a life-long source of joy. #buyvintage

https://i.imgur.com/tPHRSNxl.jpg

I'm curious about the older gentleman in the photo reclining while playing guitar.

Thanks for asking! That is a frame of the four surviving photographs of my late father. I lost him to cancer around 2008. He was a guitarist and vocalist and initiated me into vinyl by bestowing his collection upon me when I was in high school. He also bought me my first guitars, (a Squire and a metallic blue Ibanez, and later a 12-string Fender), and encouraged me when I started my first band.

Definitely an influential figure in my life.

A Look at Ethan Hayden's 33 ⅓ Book on Sigur Ros’ ( )
 

https://i.imgur.com/wuFHdail.jpg

Ethan Hayden is a linguistics expert, composer and performer who received his Ph.D. in music at the University at Buffalo, US. I had the pleasure of attending one of his performances of his work, "…ce dangereux supplément…" in April of 2015. The work is a set of phonetic studies for voice, video, and electronics in which Hayden makes a wide range of vocal sounds, none of which are coherent expressions of any known language. After the event I blogged most enthusiastically:

Hayden is a fitting author to tackle Sigur Ros' ( ) album for an edition of the popular 33 1/3 book series. The parenthetical album is sung entirely in the nonsense Hopelandic language created by the members of Sigur Ros.

So what does one write about an album with no discernible theme or statement? And how would one begin to describe the nonsense sounds of the Hopelandic language? Over the course of 150 pages, Hayden expertly addresses these questions and presents both a critical analysis of Hopelandic and a philosophical perspective on the recording itself. The book adds a fascinating critical dimension to the album and aims to help listeners approach the recording with a greater sense of understanding.

At the outset of the book, Hayden endeavors to outline the fundamental principles of language and nonsense.

From 1: Nonsense: Language and Meaning (pp13-16)

And Hayden never shies from the metaphors inherent to the album.

From 1: Nonsense: Vaka

The rest of the chapter delves deeper into the nuances of language and communication, and the rich contextual history of nonsense. Hayden touches upon onomatopoeia, Aristophanes’ satirical parody of Socratic philosophy, the Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti's subversion of language and semantics with his asyntactic and echolalic parole in libertà, and Fortunato Depero's “onomalingua.” He also visits Susan Sontag's essay, “Against Interpretation,” Scheerbart's 1914 work, Glasarchitektur, Hugo Ball and the Dada poets’ mystically incantatory lautgedichte, and Schwitters’ reading of Ursonate (later sampled by Brian Eno for the 1977 track, “Kurt's Rejoinder.”) Hayden briefly examines Tolkien's “glossopoeia” language-creation and other science fiction constructs like Dothraki, Na'vi, and Klingon.

Later segments of the chapter explore the musical xenoglossia, echolalic phonosymbolism, and phono-erotic lyrics of the French progressive rock band, Magma, Burroughs’ critique of language through glossolalia, and how Hopelandic contrasts to each of these. In closing the chapter, Hayden describes Hopelandic as, either “a quasi-echolalic xenogloss with phono-erotic tendencies or a glossolalic vocalise producing nonsense from the innermost roots of language,” and calls it “welcoming, even celebratory.” “In the end, all that we are left with is the excess of non-semanticity, the concrete material of Hopelandic itself: voice and melody.”

2: Voice outlines the critical significance of voice over other sounds of the natural world.

Another psychoanalyst - Julia Kristeva is introduced, noting the dialectical tension between voice and meaning and the opposing elements of the symbolic and the semiotic. “Nonsense,” he explains, “aims toward purely semiotic expression.” Hayden offers Carroll's classic Jabberwocky as outlining the contours of meaning - a semantic silhouette.

After addressing the question of whether or not music can bring sense to nonsense, Hayden returns to the album and examines “Samskeyti” - the record's one voiceless song. He describes the Sonic texture and progression as a cyclical, circular logic and how it evokes a sense of stasis: “beautiful, elegant, and ultimately uneventful.” And when visiting “Njósnavélin,” Hayden quotes Simon Reynolds’ commentary on the modus operandi of post-rock:

Though Hayden notes that, instead of dispensing with voice, Sigur Ros “magnifies it, exploding out the residue until it becomes the essential substance of the music. The Hopelandic voice is not a mere texture; it is not simply a dash of color tinting the ambience. Instead, it is the embodiment of ( )'s music, its very corporeality.”

3: Space opens with a quote from Pauline Oliveros who said, “Any space is as much a part of the instrument as the instrument itself.” Hayden notes that Sigur Ros initially intended for the album to be recorded in a decommissioned NATO tracking base on a mountain in Iceland, but that they found it too ice-ravaged to be usable. Instead, they opted to record at a space in the town of Mosfellsbær containing an emptied swimming pool. He explains, “The pool's high ceilings allow for a very resonant space” contributing to the expansive sound of the record. Hayden points out that the musical properties of each song enhance this effect, such as the bowing of Jónsi's guitar, the music’s slow tempos, and the long durations of each piece.

4: Hope

The final chapter frames the hopefulness of ( ). Hayden presents the failures, caveats, and imperfections of the world's languages, their inconsistencies, sources of miscommunication, and the quest of man to reclaim our original (or to construct a new and more perfect) language. He notes that Sigur Ros lacks the apocalyptic sensibility of their post-rock contemporaries and instead “lean more on the jubilant, celebratory, and the inspiring” and that while ( ) may be the darkest of Sigur Ros’ output, that the music remains fundamentally hopeful. Hayden takes great care not to over-interpret (and thus compromise) this work. “Perhaps the best approach,” he suggests, “is not to interpret it at all. To do so tries to bring the album into the very real it resists as a work of art; to do so would be to force it to name the Name. Perhaps gaps are most useful to us when they are empty, as there is so little in the world that is empty.”

Hayden closes with a brief but poetic and philosophical afterward, titled, “).” He highlights the importance of emptiness, and of play for play's sake. His final words are the most potent of the entire text:

Befittingly, just like Sigur Ros’ album, Hayden's text serves as an important reminder in this postmodern world to stop and just enjoy the beauty of art, and of life, itself.

It sounds good but it also sounds like he just wrote about whatever the **** he wanted to write about.

:laughing: Fortunately, that's a liberty one has when writing for 33 1/3. But I'm a sucker for the stringing of seemingly unrelated things into an intricate network of organization and creating (a semblance of) order from chaos, so this was right up my alley.

He's certainly demonstrated his proficiency on the subject of nonsense. (And that's actually a compliment in this circumstance.)

The old meme applies to both the author and to myself.

https://i.imgur.com/sXdXD0ul.png

You know that I love organizing data. In fact I spent my day off yesterday digging up a 2010 proprietary music database system, recovered an old process guide I'd authored to force it to work in a Linux environment, grappled with several years of software evolution and virtualization, and rebuilt the DB from scratch with my current dataset.

It was a purely nostalgic exercise - I'd have to dust off an old :CueCat barcode scanner to enter all the LPs I've purchased in the last four years if I wanted to include my physical media, but the antique system is a simple DB ill-suited to collections over 100,000 entries and really doesn't meet the needs I've developed to represent the data relationally. I just enjoy a challenge.

I'm still working on the better 3D visualization effort I mentioned recently, but am having some trouble putting together the right syntax for a shell script that will compile a CSV of all track metadata including semicolon-delimited multi-genre values and complete file paths. That's what I'll need to import into Gephi and really make this happen.

https://i.imgur.com/buQITsw.jpg

(I suppose that, in a way, Hayden and I are quite alike!) :)

Thanks so much for reading my ramblings month after month.

Amazing!

In the pre-Christian religion of the Irish Celts, the goddess Brigit is patroness of
poets and prophets. Brigit has traded physical eyesight for poetic insight; she is
typically portrayed as partially blind or possessing only one eye. Brigit is the
bestower of poetic gifts: the fire in the head (that is at once perspicacity,
acuity, and "associative mania"), mnemonic skills, the knowledge of mythology,
and the ability of Dark Tongue. Her feast day, Imbolc (forty days after the
winter solstice), celebrates gestation and birth, her poetic gifts, and a return of
light and vision.

The prophets and priests of the pagan Irish were thus associated with Brigit,
who shared with her votaries the gifts in her possession. Occasionally Brigit
selected a special emissary, marking him through the same sacrifice she
underwent: eyesight for inner vision. Brigit's chosen prophet is mystically
identified with her and with the rites of gestation and birth performed on her
feast day. James Joyce, mythographer extraordinaire, exhibitor of astounding
mnemonic skills, speaker of the Dark Tongue, possessor of associative mania,
became partially blind from the years of sacrifice required for Finnegans Wake.
Brigit's holy day of birth, Imbolc, is February 2—the birthday of James Joyce
himself. James Joyce sincerely believed he was a prophet and priest assigned
the enormous task of introducing a new religion to the West. According to Joyce,
Finnegans Wake, in its most fundamental sense, is the sacred canon of this religion.

from: Wake Rites: the Ancient Irish Rituals of Finnegans Wake, by George Cinclair Gibson

I seriously cannot love this post enough. Thank you so much for sharing this juicy knowledge with me!

“His Master's Voice”: Celebrating My Father's Memory and My Love of Music
 

I'm so, so excited to share a new addition to my home! I had a fun idea, did some research, and had great success.

I’ve always had a warm fondness for the “His Master’s Voice” Nipper painting and RCA logo. My late father had a tiny shadow box ceramic dog paired with a vintage 1:12 scale miniature gramophone authentically modeled after the Victor M phonograph. I've kept them front and center at my music workstation for all the years since his passing.

I got curious and started looking around at full sized 1:1 scale antique Nipper statues. They were produced between 1911 and the early 1930s and I found one I absolutely fell in love with for sale online. Here is a century-old large chalkware official RCA Victor “Nipper” based upon the legendary painting, for which I was able to find a complementary full-scale replica of the 1911 His Master's Voice Monarch Model V gramophone bearing the original RCA Nipper emblem.

I purchased a Thomasville writing desk so Nipper can listen intently on display in my dining room front and center of my tasseled stage curtains which frame him handsomely. This iconic figure is a celebration of my love of music and recording history and will bring me great joy every time I look at his adorably inquisitive little face. <3

https://i.imgur.com/j5gbzE0l.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/tK9b8O0l.jpg

Here’s the 1:12 scale miniature of my father’s which inspired the project.

https://i.imgur.com/sa2AJrGl.jpg

Love it, it turned out beautifully!

Thanks so much! It was indeed a labor of love. Simple pleasures!

Drone Adventures in PaulStretch - Music for Airports Reconstructed
 

OpenCulture recently posted a feature on a SlowMotionRadio's stretched and slowed interpretation of Brian Eno's seminal ambient album, Music for Airports transforming it into a 6-hour meditative drone. But as the track was a YouTube link, it was pretty much useless if the listener wanted to be able to do anything on their device during the 6-hours of playback. Ripping audio from YouTube results in low-bitrate audio so I reconstructed the 6-hour drone myself in Audacity. I figured if I was going to reproduce it from scratch I may as well use the highest quality source so I opted for the lossless DSD 2004/2009 remastered edition by Simon Heyworth of Super Audio Mastering of the original 1978 album and stretched it to the same target duration of the 6-hour video.

The result was vastly different from the YouTube version, due to both the lossless quality and my opting for the remastered source. The attack and decay of each note are vastly more dynamic and nuanced whereas the low-bitrate YouTube video is more of an auditory haze. Perhaps some will prefer it that way, but I was keen to try my hand at the task and am pleased with the results.

I've exported it as both archival FLAC and as a high-bitrate 320CBR MP3.

Here’s the YouTube version which inspired the project tonight.

There used to be a super slow version of Miley Cyrus Party in the USA on youtube

so slow there was no way to tell it was human vocals just walls of wailing tones

I love that song as a pop song but stretched like that so it became a long atmospheric ambient composition that worked very well

I felt like it was the beauty of the song expressed in a different way

the spirit was the same but transformed into a ghost

but they took it down - I can’t understand why they would take it down


What harm could it do?

There's basically a new industry of copyright snitching where people or companies will partner with labels to report and take down harmless videos that the labels weren't hunting for to begin with.