innerspaceboy

Following the acquisition of the final four Underworld multi-disc super-deluxe box sets for my archival project, I found that my collection had outgrown its space in my record room and I wanted a storage solution which would blend seamlessly with my vintage decor. I took careful measurements and trekked to my city’s antique mall and found a large antique wooden crate the exact dimensions (to the very inch!) that I was hoping to find.

It’s a perfect vintage solution to house my collection of nearly eighty Underworld releases! The sturdy wooden crate features weathered stamping for 120lbs of (Ben) Franklin brand sugar. Here it is in my home, fitted appropriately beneath a framed promotional print of my favorite album by the duo.

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innerspaceboy

I'm admittedly a latecomer to this seminal and influential work, but it's better late than never. And it's thrilling to know that despite my exhaustive hours of daily music surveys and research that there are still reflective, beautiful gems still waiting to be discovered.

And so it is with Talk Talk's 1988 LP, Spirit of Eden. The album is critically-lauded as a progenitor of the genre which would come to define the decade that followed. Wikipedia's article on Talk Talk's co-founder and songwriter, the late Mark Hollis calls attention to the fact that, "While they were commercial failures in their own time, these albums have come to be seen as early landmarks of post-rock music."

Two quotes from Hollis resonated deeply with my own philosophies of music and composition. In an interview with Danish TV, 22nd February 1998, Hollis said:

"Before you play two notes, learn how to play one note. And don't play one note unless you've got a reason to play it."

And in an interview with BBC Radio 1’s Richard Skinner around the release of their next album, Laughing Stock, Hollis adds:

"The silence is above everything, and I would rather hear one note than I would two, and I would rather hear silence than I would one note."

Wikipedia's entry for Spirit of Eden offers some insight into the album's composition:

The album was compiled from a lengthy recording process at London's Wessex Studios between 1987 and 1988. Often working in darkness, the band recorded many hours of improvised performances that drew on elements of jazz, ambient, blues, classical music, and dub.

But it was the praise-filled Pitchfork article on the album which inspired my first-listen, where the album was rated a perfect 10/10 score. The lengthy article offers a much-deserved contextual examination of the album and a few key remarks caught my attention:

In interviews, he would point to Miles Davis and Gil Evans’ orchestral jazz masterpiece Sketches of Spain, or the zen experiments of John Cage, or Vittorio De Sica’s avant-garde film The Bicycle Thieves as touchpoints for his inspiration.

...

The thrill of this music is the same thrill of listening to some of the great works of jazz, classical, and pop: the soul of Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way, the obtuse landscapes of Morton Feldman, the production and patience of Brian Eno. Today, this coming together of spirit and sound still feels like a radical and mysterious feat of popular music.

This was unequivocally an album I needed to hear.

And The Guardian described the album as a blend of "pastoral jazz, contemporary classical, folk, prog rock and loose blues into a single, doggedly uncommercial musical tapestry" which would be labeled "post-rock."

Whatever label one elects to apply, this is an exquisite specimen of sound-art, and warrants repeated listenings on reflective winter evenings such as this.

And a dear friend and ambient composer offered an insightful remark on the album, saying, "What especially impresses me is how fluid and organic it is in evading any traditional sense of ‘rock music’ at all -- and this is especially apparent in much of the soft dynamics. Any sense of music at all is almost not there, as if the music is on the verge of dissipating into silence."

RateYourMusic files the album under the categories of jazz-rock, chamber jazz, art rock, and chamber music, and its user-base charts the album as #2 for its original release year, hot on the heels of Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation. And the site offers no shortage of poetic descriptors of Hollis' style, calling it "atmospheric, passionate, peaceful, religious, introspective, meditative, lush, soothing, spiritual, bittersweet, lonely, sparse, sentimental, pastoral, soft, ethereal, melancholic, progressive, calm, uplifting, and hypnotic."

Hypnotic indeed. I immediately tracked down a copy of the UK-issued 180g 2012 remastered edition with a companion 96kHz/24bit stereo DVD. It's the perfect soundtrack to usher in the spring.

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OccultHawk

I think I’ve fully established how deeply I love Sonic Youth but I’ve listened to both of those albums many more times than I have Daydream Nation.

All three are unassailable though

Laughing Stock stirs up something in me that’s deeper than I usually think I go. Even after many many listens it’s still startling how good it is.

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innerspaceboy

Not a formal review - just a quick update. I’m sitting down for a first listen to the culmination of a 15-year collaboration between Brian Eno and his brother, Roger - Mixing Colours released yesterday on Deutsche Grammophon.

The reviews have been mixed so far, but most of the negative reviewers are simply miffed that it isn't "groundbreaking," while PopMatters called it, "a Celebration of Contemplative Slowness." That's fine by me - I'll happily take another double-LP of The Pearl or Apollo.

A few tracks in... I'm digging it.

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innerspaceboy

I have a decent collection of novelty records, from the first "break-in" 7-inch, Buchanan and Goodman's "Flying Saucer Pts I & II," to a fish-head-shaped picture disc of Barnes & Barnes classic, "Fish Heads," to the full-scale replica of "Weird Al" Yankovic's accordion housing vinyl remasters of his entire 40-year career in the industry. (I even had the good fortune of getting Dr. Demento, himself to sign my 1953 debut 10" of Songs By Tom Lehrer!) So when I discovered that the hilarious Bongos, Bass, and Bob had put out a record featuring many of my favorite Demented hits, I tracked down a copy right away.

The band recorded one album with Penn Gillette and produced by Kramer in 1988 titled, Never Mind The Sex Pistols, Here's Bongos, Bass, and Bob (What Were They Thinking???) on Jillette's label, 50 Skidillion Watts, (written out as 50,000,000,000000,000,000,000 Watts Records), Catalog # 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,003.

The album includes favorites like:

● Oral Hygiene
● Walkin' in the Park
● What's Your Name, Babe?
● Clothes of the Dead
● and Thorazine Shuffle (a cover of the single by Modern Entertainment)

The album is a comedic mishmash of genres, including folk, world music, country, jazz, rock, doo-wop, punk, and calypso, as well as lo-fi, noise, and avant-garde musical styles.

The trio is a self-proclaimed "speed Mariachi" band composed of Penn Jillette on bass, Dean Seal on bongos, and Rob Elk on guitar. Several tracks were featured on The Dr. Demento Show, and an alternate sans-Jillette take of "Oral Hygiene" recorded under the name "Mr. Elk and Mr. Seal" was featured on WITR's Friggin Here radio show in the 90s. It also appeared as track #2 on Dr. Demento's Basement Tapes Volume 01.

I'd spent those halcyon summers painstakingly taping 27 weeks worth of broadcasts of Friggin Here and entering the complete set lists into a word processor to print on my dot matrix printer, (this was 1995 after all), so it was a real treat to claim the songs I so fondly remembered on wax.

It's offbeat, humorous, and original stuff.

From Allmusic:

And Wikipedia notes:

Rutlesriki.fandom.com adds that the group also recorded a cover version of The Rutles' "Number One" for the tribute album, Rutles Highway Revisited, released in 1993.

Of "Thorazine Shuffle," G Zahora writes:

Zahora closes their review noting:

There's an incredibly exhaustive write-up on the record archived on Popsike here for anyone interested, which includes transcripts of articles on the album from Playboy in 1996 and the rest of G Zahora's album notes.

Related projects of note include John S. Hall & Kramer (Hall is the vocalist from King Missile)'s Real Men LP and Captain Howdy (Penn Jillette w Kramer) who produced "The Best Song Ever Written" b/w "Dino's Head" which I own on 45. But Bongos, Bass, and Bob remain a stand-out favorite from the best of the Dr. Demento era.

There is a playlist of a vinyl-rip of the album on YouTube, though a few tracks are cut in the wrong places, (track 2, “Clothes of the Dead” for example is mistakenly cut short at a moment of silence before the final chorus which resumes at the beginning of video #3). Still, it provides a taste of the comedic madness and irreverence of this record.

Vinyl Rip Album Playlist on YouTube.

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innerspaceboy

I’m delighted to announce the completion of an historic archival project at Innerspace Labs!

When I was a young man growing up in Rochester, NY, I routinely spent my weekends tuning in to the city’s comedy/novelty radio programme titled, Friggin’ Here. The show was broadcast on The Rochester Institute of Technology’s radio station, WITR 89.7FM in the 1990s. Friggin’ Here filled the comedy void of not having The Dr Demento Show in Rochester and featured many local and regional comedy artists who went on to national acclaim on Dr Demento’s show. And during the time these episodes were airing, co-host Devo Spice made it to #1 on The Dr Demento Show with his hit, “South Park Junkie,” recorded with his band, Sudden Death, and landed Dr. Demento's Funny #1 of the Year three times in the years that followed. This was definitely a piece of history that deserved to be archived.

I taped 27 of the shows in my basement studio in the mid-90s, and recently considered the possibility of digitizing and making those recordings available online for fans around the world to revisit and enjoy. Tragically, despite my painstaking efforts at organization, I was unable to locate those old cassettes. Undeterred, I reached out to the members of an online community celebrating comedy music and inquired as to whether or not anyone else had recordings of the local programme from my youth.

As fate would have it, Devo Spice and a few of the show's guest artists were members of that community, and the administrators tagged them in response. Astonishingly, I received a reply that Devo Spice had personally taped nearly all of their shows during his participation with the programme. Not only that, but he had wisely positioned the deck in the station’s studio with the signal going to the tape deck before it went out over the air, so the sound is as good as it can be! Best of all, just two years ago he had sent those very tapes to a friend named Dr Don who performed the laborious task of digitizing over 97 hours worth of analog audio content. Unfortunately however, the co-host had stored the resulting digital audio on a since-failed PC, and retrieving them was an undertaking.

There were a few weeks of baited breath, but at last he responded confirming that the tracks were safely recovered and he transferred the files to me. Examining the library, I found his tapes were vastly superior to my own home-taped cassettes. I ran the files through a spectral waveform analyzer and verified that they had been ripped using the Hydrogenaudio “Insane” preset of -b 320 - a constant bitrate of 320kbps, which is the highest possible audio compression standard for MP3 and is demonstrably indistinguishable from lossless audio. Evidently, Dr Don took every measure to ensure the very best quality for his digitization process. There is audible aging to the cassettes, themselves but every effort has been made to preserve them as best as possible. And in addition to the superior pre-broadcast sound, where I had omitted selections, (whether they be duplicate songs or just tracks I didn’t particularly fancy), the co-host’s archive was nearly complete with all shows unabridged from his years with the programme.

I immediately went to work analyzing the audio data, tagging, and uniformly-formatting the library. Once they were prepped for a satisfactorily archival standard, I embarked on the task of uploading each broadcast to The Internet Archive and attaching each programme’s track list and relevant metadata. After the entire library was uploaded, I drafted a summary and submitted a request to The Internet Archive to format the set as an official Collection. With that request now fulfilled, the archive is readily-accessible for listeners around the world to enjoy. It’s a small but important way for me to give back to the artists who filled my teenage years with laughter.

For those curious about the origin of the show’s title, Devo Spice provided the details on his official website’s biography at Devospice.com:

Check out the completed archive collection here!

https://archive.org/details/friggin-here?tab=about

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OccultHawk

You know, this might be a grower but I kind of doubt it. The songs do rely on melodic themes and I don’t think they’re very engaging, frankly.

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innerspaceboy

Just a quick check-in today. I’m grateful to have received an incredible gift this weekend of several UK import KLF and related singles from a wonderfully generous friend who was thinning out their personal record collection. He knew that no one in the city would appreciate them more than I. With the new titles added, it seemed fitting to take an updated photograph of the collection to date. Here’s what I have so far, including Drummond’s Silent Protest deck of cards, (the tiny black item toward the lower right), a rare first-edition of The Manual, the Stadium House Trilogy VHS, and several titles from the exquisite Recovered & Remastered series, (highly recommended!)

My KLF collection now comprises 45 physical LPs, CDs, books, and other ephemera. The digital portion of my KLF library includes 164 albums, EPs, and other releases totaling over 109 hours of music and 93 films clocking in at 19 hours of rare video footage and interviews.

I understand that there are collectors with far larger KLF libraries, but I’m pleased with what I’ve built so far. Special thanks to my very generous friend!

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innerspaceboy

Today I’ve proudly reached a milestone with my Brian Eno collection. In addition to the dozens of art prints, books, lithographs, 85 digital releases, and other miscellanea I’ve acquired, I’ve now successfully built a sizable library of most major releases issued in the vinyl format by the artist.

While there are still a number of bootlegs and collaborative efforts, as well as titles from Eno’s catalog originally issued in the 90s now being released for the first time on vinyl, my library comprises 40 of his best-loved works totaling 64 discs of content, including the highly sought-after Music For Installations 9LP limited edition box set.

This feature will showcase the most noteworthy elements of my collection to date. I’ll begin with the LPs, themselves. It was quite a challenge to photograph 40 12” multi-disc releases all in one shot, particularly without photographer’s lamps and other equipment, but I’ve done my best using the trusty digital SLR I received from my family when I first started art college twenty-two years ago.

Here are the LPs:



Next, for some art, here is the “Electric Love Blueprint - A History of Electronic Music” theremin schematic created by the Dorothy design collective. The infographic “celebrates over 200 inventors, innovators, artists, composers and musicians who (in our opinion) have been pivotal to the evolution of electronic music, from the invention of the earliest known sound recording device in 1857 to the present day.” Of course, Brian Eno’s name appears typeset in the largest point size of any pioneer cited among the layout.

The 60 x 80 cm art print is printed with metallic silver ink on 120gsm Keaykolour Royal Blue uncoated stock. It was gifted to me by a dear friend and hangs proudly in my listening room.



Next is a limited edition oversized promotional art print for Eno’s 77 Million Paintings exhibition at Moogfest in 2011.



And just for fun, I had a t-shirt printed up with the art from one of the most influential early Eno solo albums, Before and After Science.



I also made sure to track down an original UK pressing of that very album specifically for the large lithographs exclusive to that edition painted by Peter Schmidt. I had the lithographs professionally framed for my dining room.



I also secured both original and remastered pressings of Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks. The Extended Edition includes the For All Mankind bonus LP and I was among the first 250 to order which got me a handsome 42cm x 59cm poster of the Apollo cover artwork which I had framed as well.



I was similarly inspired by Eno’s pioneering ambient effort, Music For Airports, so I prepared a framed print of the sheet music of the album’s score.



To be continued momentarily…

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innerspaceboy

Continued from pt 1…

Then there is the DVD collecting Eno’s experiments with film, Thursday Afternoon (1984) and Mistaken Memories of Mediaeval Manhattan (1981)



I’ve previously shared my excitement when I learned that Eno had collaborated with one of my other musical heroes, Karl Hyde of Underworld. I framed the pair of postcards included with their two album releases.



There was also an art print included with original pressings of Eno and Hyde’s first collaboration, Someday World, which I’ve framed in my listening room.



And while working as a designer, I independently produced a 24” x 24” oversized PVC-mounted vinyl print of a graphic I designed mapping a chronology of all of Eno’s creative works both as an artist and as a producer. Here is a web-friendly downscaled copy of the artwork with a magnified sample of an area of text.



Of course, what Eno collection would be complete without an edition of the Oblique Strategies oracle deck?



And finally, here is my library of thirteen books examining the mind and the art of Brian Eno. It was great fun compiling them all, including a copy of Eno’s own diary, A Year With Swollen Appendices.



That is the collection to date. I know that it is far from complete. My research reveals an additional 14 vinyl releases far more rare than anything I have and nearly 2,600 releases with Eno named in the credits, but I made sure to collect all of the titles which were of great significance to me, personally.

Thank you for permitting me to share my love for great music. Eno and his work are an unparalleled inspiration in my life.

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