John Cage & David Tudor, 1963.

An incredible film of Cage and Tudor shattering notions of what music can be:




...and this Q&A from after a performance of Empty Words in 1978 is full of inspired wisdom:


John Cage 1978 from Larson Associates on Vimeo.

Transfiguration of the Oracle

Stockhausen Lectures

Never have I seen someone elucidate so eloquently about music or creativity. Based in science as well as spirit, Stockhausen's ideas are rock solid and fully hold up under scrutiny. While I was very aware of his importance and I had heard a few pieces and read about him, the genius of Stockhausen remained illusive to me until I heard him speak about his ideas. I cant recommend watching all the videos below all the way through enough. For the uninitiated there is a 48 min documentary titled Tuning In that serves as a good introduction. It intersperses his music with segments from the series of seven lectures he gave in English in the UK in 1972 and 1973. Also below are two of the lectures themselves (the rest are on youtube). The first is a clear, concise breakdown of the Four Criteria of Electronic Music: what it is actually is and how it functions, direct from the pioneer himself. He details the creation of his piece Kontate and discusses many of his most important discoveries. It's fascinating, educational, funny, insightful and mind expanding; absolutely essential viewing for anyone remotely interested in taking electronic music seriously. Below that is a three hour talk about his composition for two pianos and ring modulators titled Mantra. The manner in which he explains this universal piece makes it so one doesn't need to know how to read music to understand the concepts at work. He shares some especially revelatory wisdom during the QandA in part three, the final moments are powerful and moving.
So there we are.

FOUR CRITERIA OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC:







MANTRA:







TUNING IN:

Psychedelic mix for Perpetual Dawn

I recorded a mix for Tigerbeat6's Jodorowsky themed Perpetual Dawn party. In their words: "An Unbelievably fine crafted deep mix spanning the outer-most 
realms of freeform electronic soundart experimental psychedelic ambient drone noise electroacoustic and so on and so forth."




(I didnt make the mix with that filmmaker in mind but after submission it was titled after the name of the party)

Tracklist:
Nocturnal Emissions - Sealing a Phase 
Francis Dhomont - Le Flux Des Sons 
Ulf Bilting & Zbigniew Karkowski - T Tex
Rashad Becker - Dances 1
Maja Ratkje - Acid
LST - Lewd Strewth Truth
Killing Sound - Eight Methods
Wolfgang Voigt - Rückverzauberung 6.2
Alvin Curran - Canti Illuminati 
SPK - In Flagrante Delicto
This Mortal Coil - FyT
Black Dice - Trip Dude Delay
Oake - Nihnin ned Bargund
SPR - Concubine
Chris Watson - El Divisadero The Telegraph
Time Machines - 4-Indolol, 3-[2-(Dimethylamino)Ethyl],Phosphate Ester: (Psilocybin)
Nurse With Wound - Soliloquy for Lilith
Pauline Oliveros - Horse Sings From Cloud
Vanessa Amara - King Machine
Nocturnal Emissions - Blended Senses

1991: Zbigniew Karkowski Interview

Absolutely incredible interview with Karkowski. The ideas he enacted are fully explained here.

Nurse With Wound - Salt

A deeply enveloping drone journey not to be taken lightly.

Nurse With Wound - Salt

The Dark Peace: A Tears Of Joy Mix

A compilation of unreleased or forthcoming music on Tears Of Joy. For stream or download.

Concrete ambient bass meditations, enlarged big room rhythm exercises, fluff-era acid workouts and consciousness-around-the-horn abstraction work.

Mixed in North Hollywood October 30th, 2014.

Intro (Cries & Whispers) 

City Illusion - Vineland (Live For Each Moon Dub) 

Live For Each Moon - The Settler 

Romeo - TB1 

T.E.A.L. - Membrain 

A Private Realm - Refuse to Conform 

Three Baskets - Initiation 1 

Rinpoche - Acid with Leslie & TK 
Snake - Kind of Upset  
Live For Each Moon - Paper Champion

T.E.A.L. -- Coffins EP

After 12"s from A Private Realm and Rinpoche, P-Lord affiliated label Tears of Joy have released their third record. This one introduces techno experimentalists T.E.A.L. You can hear the entire record record here and purchase direct here. Or it will be in the usual shops next week. Features artwork by Nick Barbeln of Clipd Beaks. Released in an edition of 217 with digital to follow. The video for the track Skulls is below.

A Few Notes on SPK

Some of the best music to ever emerge from Australia was undoubtedly created by SPK. They have one of the more confusing discography's to work through as many releases have various covers for each pressing, different versions of the same song with the same name or no names at all, often different names of the band for each release and even two different versions of the band entirely. It was mainly based around Graeme Revell who was the driving force and sole continuous member during their 10 year existence. He moved to London relatively early in the SPK lifespan and the remaining members, notably Neil Hill (committed suicide at age 28, his wife Margaret Hill died 2 days later from anorexia), still put out music under the banner as SoliPsiK (the ultra rare See-Saw 7"). There were many collaborators throughout the years, the other consistent being Revell's wife Sinan Leong, who appears on most releases and also appeared on a few classic Nurse With Wound albums.

There were three main phases of the band, the first being the early industrial noise material up until 1983 which is arguably their strongest. These very earliest recordings were intense punk inspired songs often creativity utilizing a wailing EMS synth in the background.  Those early 7"s were collected onto side one of the essential compilation Auto De Fe:



The B side to Auto De Fe, recorded in 1981 (as opposed to the late 70's) sits perfectly between their noise and dance periods:



The first proper full length (there were multiple live cassette releases and bootlegs) was Information Overload Unit (under the name System Planning Corporation) that was recorded while Neil Hill and Revell were working in a Sydney mental ward- the album deals with insanity and contains field recordings they made of patients. It's an noisey experimental masterpiece of the highest order, predating much of that kind of music:



After that was Leichenschrei, a very dense, amazing industrial classic by anyone's measure. It's a timeless recording- find it, buy it. Next came an incredible EP under the name SepPuKu:



After 1984 came the comparatively commercial period that spawned the dance classics Metal Dance, Junk Funk, Breathless and more, though I would venture to say, while still awesome, this is the weakest of their output. A few years later came the neo-classical ambient world music excursions that evolved into Revell's current film score career. The highlight of this era would be the Zamia Lehmanni Songs of Byzantine Flowers LP that is a groundbreaking mix of world musics and dark ambient textures, the pinnacle being the hauntingly beautiful single In Flagrante Delicto:



The obscure album Revell made up entirely of insect sounds, The Insect Musicians, is worth noting as well.

A totally amazing band, I recommend spending a few months or years exploring their catalog.

Records in 2013

ALBUMS

Alberich - Machine Gun Nest Cassette Works Volume 0



Authentic modern industrial delivered with an intensity rarely captured in music. Two of the tracks already appeared on his Psychology of Love LP but they are two of the best tunes ever released on Hospital Productions. Absolutely essential. Play loud. "Album of the year" by a long shot.


Georgia - Asemic Club

Georgia ASEMIC CLUB: Needle Teaser from Georgia on Vimeo.

An (other)worldly collection of instrumentals presented as a well conceptualized LP on one piece of vinyl. (There were too many unwarranted double LPs this year so it's nice to have a record to put on and not have to get up every ten minutes). There's a healthy variety of sound sources here; guitars, drums, rhodes, odd field recordings- the closest comparison I can come up with is later period Sun City Girls. For me, this is an essential companion to all the heavy recordings mentioned elsewhere in this piece. Comes with an amazing B&W newspaper poster.

Felix K - Flowers Of Destruction



Drum&Bass reinvented for 2013. A record full of properly psychedelic atmospherics and nasty dubbed out rhythms. Buy this 3x12" from his label Hidden Hawaii while you still can.


FFH - Make Them Understand



Raw savagery from FFH. Extreme noise mixed with poetic lyrics about bad things. If you like power electronics or angry musics of any sort find this and play it as loud as you can. They only made 114 copies but as of this writing there's a few for relatively cheap online.


Alexander Lewis - A Luminous Veil



Another amazing year for Blackest Ever Black. I didn't have enough money to buy everything they released though I did mange to acquire a few and this is my favorite of the bunch. There is a spontaneity to the arpeggiated synth blasts of noise that I find very listenable and each subsequent listen proves more rewarding. And, of course, the Cuts Hands stuff on BEB and Downwards is essential listening. The Gnod tape was great too.

Other LPs worth mentioning:

Nurse With Wound - Xerography
Nurse With Wound - Silver Bromide
Virile Games - Wounded Laurel
Vakula - You've Never Been To Konotop
Pharaohs - Replicant Moods
Factory Floor - Factory Floor


SINGLES

Paula Temple - Colonized



My favorite track of the year. Exciting, engaging, relevant techno. Temple is taking the form and doing something new with it. The Perc remix is a bit boring but the other two songs are mind blowing. The live sets she uploads to Soundcloud were my soundtrack to driving around Los Angeles this year.


Joe Claussell - Project Residue Part 1: Eno (Melodic Dub)



We are two releases deep into Joe's new series and they are both outstanding. The Melodic dub of Eno is the most techno track I've heard him make in a long time and the second 12", Underground Battle in Babylon, is an epic 16 min piano soundscape. You can get both these stamped 12s dirt cheap direct from his label. Timeless music.


Rainforest Spiritual Enslavement - Refuges From Black Magic 



This mix of rainforest recordings and dark ambient sounds was the perfect warm up to every set I DJed this year. It's also really great home listening. This was by far the best RSE release this year, the sound quality is much higher than the two Hospital LPs. The Bed of Nails 12" is nice but not quite as nuanced as this. It's probably the best thing Dominick Fernow made this year, though Prurient's near total conversion to dance music, Through the Window, was interesting as well. Also, When You Are Crawling by Vatican Shadow is the the best stuff from that alias since his classic debut on Bed of Nails.


Aquarian Foundation - Mystery Track from Silent Teaching EP



Great year for Brian Not Brian's Going Good label out of Brixton. All three releases thus far have been solid. The record pictured is by the Vancouver, Canada group Aquarian Foundation- the 12" on their own Mood Hut records is excellent too. The newest Going Good record is equally as strong- Anom Virus's lengthy EP is all acid squelching and lush pad work.


Gorgon Sound - 2x12"



Bristols' Young Echo collective put out a lot of strong material this year, my favorite was probably this: Kahn & Neek's grime influenced dub project Gorgon Sound. Four monstrous dubs that sound incredible on a proper sound system. The Dubkasm mixes are dope too. Along a similar line, the annual Kang Super Sound 7" on Sex Tag Amfibia is worth looking into as well.


Rrose - Waterfall (Birth)



Crazy tripped out techno with amazing tension. A very serious track on a proper system.


Also...
Jay Daniel - No Love Lost
Oake - Nihnin Ned Bargund
Objekt #3
Joey Anderson - Above The Cherry Moon and Sky's Blessings
Valentina - Wolves
Romanonthy - Ministry of Love (Andre Crom Rework)
Dusky - Nobody Else
White Material - Problems
Zsou vs The Velvet Season & the Hearts of Gold - Wild Honeyz

Peter Sotos - Victims

An unsettling piece from underground author Peter Sotos' Buyers Market album from 1992.

A Private Realm

We just released an experimental techno record I made with Olivia Arthur called An Omen From No Man's Land under the name A Private Realm. You can buy it at Juno or in various Japanese shops. The vinyl is an edition of 164 with silk screened cover art depicting Vienna Actionist Gunter Brus performing ANA in 1964. There is also a DVD in an edition of 100 we did with Tim Hicks with accompanying visuals dealing with the subject matter at hand: Child Brides, Endless War and the Horrors of Psychedelia. You can get that at Tim's website and you can check out the first piece below.

Zbigniew Karkowski

     Out of the thousands of performances I have seen over the years, it is one by Polish electronic musician Zbigniew Karkowski’s that has made the most impact.  

     The scene: Recombinant Media Labs Compound, Hunters Point, South San Francisco, circa 2003/2004. The Compound was a space located on a desolate abandoned Navy ship yard. The land lay in the shadow of Candlestick Park that had been deemed uninhabitable due to a high toxicity in the soil that the Navy had left. We were instructed not to drink the water when there. Inside the one unaccompanied dilapidated building on the site was a tiny studio/control room overlooking a bigger space equipped with a 16.8 surround sound system with a performance area in the middle of the room. The speakers were arranged in a circle, 8 above and 8 below. RML was run by a character named Naut Humon (pronounced "Not Human") who apparently re-christened himself after a particularly heavy LSD trip in the 70s. Humon had used the space for decades as a research lab for his industrial music project Rhythm & Noise. RML and its record label, Asphodel, was generally the hub of all things weird in experimental music in San Francisco at the time. Most of the artists that played at the Compound used software my friend Peter had designed for the space that enabled one to spatialize the sound, meaning to bounce sound from speaker to speaker around the room: horizontally, vertically and diagonally; a technique first developed by Karlheinz Stockhausen. While rare to find such a system to play on, especially in 2003, Karkowski would forgo it to take his own approach on this particular night.

Those that knew had packed the room to hear the Polish visionary and were standing in a circle surrounding him. Karkowski had existing on the fringes of extreme new music for some time. After studying composition, sonology and computer music at various institutions he settled in Tokyo in 1994. He had composed for orchestra, chamber and opera but was largely concerned with the raw energy and power unleashed by sound at high volumes. Karkowski always worked entirely experimentally and experientially. I was standing behind him. The way I remember it, the music was basically one huge electronic tone emanating from his computer that got louder and louder and louder as it went on until it totally engulfed every part of your brain and body. Think about the deepest bass you’ve heard at a dance club, concert or rocket launch and multiply it by 16 and have it coming at you from every angle non-stop. This was beyond music and into the realm of pure sound, pure vibrational energy, a shamanic force being conjured from deep within the void. He was using a very old, beat up Macintosh that had code cascading down the left side of the screen and a mysterious black box on the right side. I don’t know if he was running Supercollider or MaxMSP but it was some kind of code he had written himself. This was, without a doubt, purely electronic music. The computer screen kept blacking out - I’m not sure if that was because it was old or because he was maxing out the processing power, he had to continually, violently, slap it to get it function, trippy colors would shoot across the screen when he did. As the music got denser he kept smacking the Mac and yelling at the engineers “louder, louder!” It was earth-shatteringly loud already but he was getting authentically upset that they wouldn’t turn it up. Over the sound Peter would try to gesture to him that he would blow the speakers if he turned it up more but Karkowski wouldn’t listen. He continued to intensely stare straight into the screen or scream for more volume. The engineers refused and it got so intense at one point I thought a fight would break out. All of this while 100 or so people are shoved into this tiny room perched on a forgotten wasteland while the heaviest sound ever was blasting away. I have no idea how long this went on, not long. The energy in the room surpassed any hardcore rock or punk show, was more transcendental than any rave, more enlightening than any new music masterwork and ultimately more exciting – and beautiful -– than anything I had seen before or since. Eventually Karkowski got mad enough he slammed his computer shut, stopping the music, and stormed out of the building. All I could think was “wow”.  I had never heard of the guy before but I came away from that performance with a new hero.

    Zbigniew went on to collaborate with RML in the following years but he Compound closed shortly after that. RML now occasionally takes its show on the road doing a version of the old system, with more video incorporated, called Cinechamber. No recording ever will reproduce a Karkowski live experience but he has some amazing releases nonetheless.  For extreme noise there is the “ALBUM” release with Peter Rehberg under the name POP (Product Of Power). In 2005 he released a sweeping 40 minute epic titled One and Many. You can buy that along with his new piece for cello and computer called nervecell_0 at Sub Rosa. He takes a subdued, heavy approach on the LP Choice Points for the Application of Force. There is also an amazing set of releases with Tetsuo Furudate called World as Will, of which you can hear the piece Mix White below. It’s a Karkowski composition from World as Will 3 performed by the Zeikratzer orchestra in Switzerland in 2004. If you know of any music that sounds more apocalyptic than this please let me know.  Finally, if you want to dive into the man’s mind here is an essay he wrote titled The Method Is Science the Aim Is Religion.

     UPDATE: Karkowski died December 12, 2013 after being diagnosed with cancer 10 weeks earlier. Apparently in his final days he took a canoe up the Amazon in search of shamanic healing and "his final wish, if the treatment failed, was to be left in the jungle to be eaten. No ceremony, no grave."

Prurient - Live

A particularly intense performance by NY noise master Dominick Fernow.  New York, 2006.

SPIRITUAL PEACE: A MIX

For those that enjoy the darker side of electronic dance music. A mix of industrial, experimental, techno and new beat.

SPIRITUAL PEACE




Tracklist:

Coil - The Restitution of Decayed Intelligence II
Blawan - His Daughters
Cut Hands - Krokodilo Theme
X Marks the Pedwalk - Solitude
Bronze Age - Modal Ingenuity
Regis - Blood Witness
Vatican Shadow - September Cell (The Punishment)
Iueke- Tape 1
Maggi Payne - Flights of Fancy
Joy Orbison & Boddika - Moist
Karenn - Lime Wash (Barrelled)
Bigod 20 - Body to Body (An Afternoon of Aggression)
Zsa Zsa Laboum - Something Scary (Instrumental)
Airplane Crashers - White Rabbit
Muslimgauze - Ensan Entehari
Cindytalk - Disintegrate...

John Cage - Four Walls

Here we have an excerpt from a piano composition by John Cage, written for a Merce Cunningham dance play that was performed once in August of 1944. No recording, script or program survived from the performance- just the score. Cage wrote the music to be played by another performer and the recording here is by Richard Bungler in 1979. For me, the piece hangs heavy with the burden of world war, in full swing at the time. But Cunningham’s play was apparently about a dysfunctional family. The piece runs over an hour and is mostly solo piano played in the diatonic scale (white keys only) with a short vocal phrase in the middle. I find it to be excellent music to play loud in the dark on a rainy night. I have combined the final six scenes that comprise Act 2 to make one 25 minute long file that quietly builds in intensity before the final devastating minute. Enjoy, this is a master at work.
Click to download or stream below.
Four Walls Act II Scene IX - XIV



Cunningham and Cage in the 60's.

John Frusciante - Enter a Uh

I’ve been meaning to post something by Frusciante since I started this site, as he is one of the few songwriters I can fully get behind. His lyrics are always intriguingly tripped out and his body of work is second to none. His 2001 LP To Record Only Water For Ten Days is one of my favorite records of all time. But here I am posting the first song from his 1997 experimental masterpiece, Smile From the Streets You Hold. Famously pulled from the shelves when Frusciante sobered up from his heroin and cocaine addiction, this album is essentially a series of prayers to the gods of intoxication. Indeed, videos of him in this phase are pretty heavy. The LP is full of incredibly powerful songs straight from the mind of a creative madman- this is quite possibly the greatest musical document of addiction ever recorded. He screams, yelps, sings and smokes his way through one of the most diverse and musically satisfying albums I’ve ever heard. The raw intensity of his voice will make your spine tingle. Within the dementia are some very beautiful songs performed with such intense emotion it’s astounding (John Frusciante - More). It belongs in the canon of crazy psychedelic solo albums like those of Syd Barrett and Daniel Johnston… Highly recommended if you can find it (this CD may have recently been bootlegged as I am seeing copies pop up here and there. For the last 15 years it was extremely rare…)
Click the link to download or stream below.

John Frusciante - Enter a Uh

Film Review : Enter The Void

Gaspar Noe’s groundbreaking visionary masterpiece takes us where no film has gone before. The film centers around the heavy psychotropic chemical Dimethyptamine, a drug used ritually for ages world wide by everyone from curious intellectuals to South American tribesmen. The fact that Gaspar is putting such an important yet underground practice on the world stage for the first time is a monumental achievement in itself. DMT can be extracted from naturally growing plants or made in a lab. When you smoke it, it is one of the most powerful encounters of any sort one can have- just ask anyone who has done it. It's indescribable but something like a serious dimensional trip to the inner realms of consciousness- all ecstatically displayed in fractal beings growing around you as you melt through them. The drug also is stored in the frontal lob of the human brain, and it released a little when you sleep and a lot when you die. That is why it has such mystical qualities. Many say the DMT is trip the death experience. And that is what Mr. Noe’s film is about, among other things, - the relationship between the psychedelic experience and death. Enter the Void. Is the Void life? Is the Void death?

The story contains two major DMT trips: In the first, already high on acid, the main character, Oscar, smokes some alone in his room and for a good five minutes the film drops into the most incredibly realistic hallucinogenic visuals I have ever seen- outside actually smoking DMT or dropping acid. An extremely deep song by Coil plays over this sequence. Note: This film demands to been seen in a theater for the full effect. The second trip is later when Oscar dies and DMT is released from his brain. That is a very disturbing scene as we hear Oscar thinking his last thoughts as he dies. Here, as he has the DMT death trip, Noe launches the cinema into blinding and blinking white lights slowly morphing into unrecognizable forms..... really, really, far out shit. From then on we follow Oscar around as he flashes back to what led up to his killing- up until he sees himself die again. He then becomes a spirit or god or ghost floating above the neon lights of his seedy Tokyo neighborhood where he looks down upon the aftermath of his death. The ghost/spirit POV technique allows for some seriously mental camera work- soaring over the city, swooping into and out of rooms full of psychedelic lighting that the characters inhabit. As we travel through the wormholes of his mind we also peer into defining moments of his past, which after a while creates a otherworldly yet somehow personal cinema. And because this may possibly be the DMT trip he is having before he dies, there are all sorts of subtle and not so subtle tripped out flourishes in every detail- that I, personally, found mind blowing. This is stuff we have never seen in cinema before. I won’t go into too many more details but there are stories within all this, and the end brings things full circle yet keeps the themes open to interpretation.

There are some great dance party scenes when the characters are on MDMA that really evoke what it can be like to be high as fuck in an intense club. If you’re thinking this sounds like a trippy hippie movie, think again- there are some seriously dark hellish moments in this film. We get abortion, exploitation, grief, agony, car accidents, senseless killing, and one seriously bad trip. While all this is obviously not for everyone, this film really spoke to me at a deep level.

Noe has created an entirely original film, a near impossible task these days. I think those of us that have had similar experiences to what Gaspar is communicating in the film will have their brain blown open and any one else with artistic sensibilities and a stomach for experiential experiments will love this too. Oh yeah, the credit sequence is the most bad ass you will ever see. And the soundtrack is one long experiment ambient masterwork with music by the aforementioned Coil, as well as Zbigneiw Karkowski, Alvin Lucier, and Throbbing Gristle. Not only is Enter the Void the first film to deal with psychedelia in a serious manner but it is also a beautiful and relevant meditation on the greatest of all mysteries, death.

Album Review: Hard Boiled Wonderland

Vijay Anderson is an Oakland based drummer that has been a staple of the Bay Area new music and jazz scenes for the better part of 15 years. He continuously gigs, performing multiple shows a week for years on end. He often performs with legends like John Tchicai and Vinnie Golia, as well as his well worn posse of jazz cats that includes John Finkbinder and Darren Johnston. I have had the privilege of hearing him play numerous times- sounds ranging from all out improvised noise chaos (with the short-lived project Musical Genius with Lynn Johnston) to a set of tender and faithfully rendered jazz standards. After performing on countless albums as a side man, Anderson has just released his first album under his own name. The album is improvised; the instrumentation: drums, clarinet, sax, guitar, and vibraphone. The music is straight from the heart and is pretty damn far out. These guys aren’t afraid of any sound, any direction, any feeling: Drums rumble as horns squeak. Feedback reverberates through amped up souls. Spiraling lines march in circles of mania. Melodies form shapelessly and wander in to the realms of pure thought as sound. The record is Hard Boiled Wonderland. Buy it here.

A selection from the album:

March at the End of the World

Batwings (A Liminal Hymn)

Here we have one of the deeper, heavier tunes that I'm aware of- Batwings (A Liminal Hymn) by Coil from 2000. The first half of the song is about Sir Thomas Browns 16th Century tract Musaeum Clausum, which is, from what I understand, a catalog of different books and objects that never existed. Appropriately, the second half finds John Balance in his world, singing in a language all his own. A song so serious it was played in part near the end of Balance's funeral, a man whose artistic life was essentially a mediation on death and otherness. Ripped from the LP by Musick to Play in the Dark 2.

Coil - Batwings (A Liminal Hymn)

"There is no guilt, there is no shame."