Simon Reynolds – Page 4 – { feuilleton }

A playlist for Halloween: Hauntology

Flyers by Julian House for tonight’s Ghost Box event at Mono Cafe Bar, Glasgow.

It’s a tradition here to post some recommended listening each Halloween. This year there’s an embarrassment of riches with five listings chosen from the multitudes at Mixcloud. Hauntology is the theme, not Jacques Derrida’s spectral musings but Simon Reynolds‘ deployment of the term to define the music produced by artists on the UK’s Ghost Box label—Belbury Poly, The Focus Group, The Advisory Circle, Pye Corner Audio et al—and their allies delving into similar areas: “folklore, vintage electronics, library music and haunted television soundtracks”. I’ve been plugging the Ghost Box people for years but going by Mark Pilkington’s recent introduction to the sub-genre some still find this information to be news.

All the following mixes feature Ghost Box tracks, with the Ghost Radio mix being almost solely derived from the label’s releases. All the mixes are a year or so old apart from the Samhain Seance which was posted at the weekend. I’ve been playing these round the clock for the past couple of days, enjoying the way one playlist bleeds into another. Given the choice of only one I’d pick Samhain Seance, a great selection and very adeptly sequenced. Among the highlights there’s a lengthy extract from the occult-themed TV serial I mentioned yesterday, Children of the Stones, which had a superb vocal score by contemporary classical composer Sidney Sager. The Aethereus Mix also features Sager’s score, and opens with a warning from The Stone Tape which has even greater resonance today: “It’s in the computer!”

(Note: I corrected some of the track credits.)

The Aethereus Mix by Soulless Central Radio

The Box Of Delights by Roger Limb
Ecneuqes Rorrim by Pye Corner Audio
The Unseeing Eye by Malcolm Clarke
Cheyne Walk by Jon Brooks
Manège by Jaques Lasry
Children Of The Stones by Sidney Sager
Chocky by John Hyde
A Year And A Day by Belbury Poly
Willow’s Song by Paul Giovanni
Saturn by Neu! [What? This isn’t Neu! It’s a piece by an American artist, Neue.]
Variation 19 by Andrew Lloyd Webber
House Among The Laurels by Jon Brooks
The Ghost Of John by Kristen Lawrence
Double Trouble by John Williams
Windfall by Dead Can Dance

Fantasmagories by Timewriter

Funerailles Des Vampires by Acanthus
Hypnosis by Atrium Carceri
The Moonlawn by Belbury Poly
The Giving Of The Grape by Blood Stereo
Enferissimo by Camille Sauvage
Dream Music by Jonathan Elias
Evaparizione by Ennio Morricone
Spellbound by Creed Taylor
Sequenza Psichedelica by Piero Umiliani
Fantasm by Bernard Fevre
Funeral Organ by Fred Myrow
Uomini Al Bando by Bruno Nicolai
Lucifer Rising by Jimmy Page
Black Mass by Mort Garson
Spookies by James Calabrees
Forest Of Evil by Frank Reidy & Eric Allen
Hell House by Brian Hodgson & Delia Derbyshire
Raven’s Lament by The Haxan Cloak
Voodoo by The Natural Yoghurt Band
Lost World by Moran Russell
Falling by Delia Derbyshire
Sang Pourpre by Igor Wakhévitch
Untitled by Vladimir Ussachevsky

Ghost Radio by elevatoresque

Activate The Poacher by Moon Wiring Club
The Willows by Belbury Poly
Sundial by The Advisory Circle
The Third Eye Centre by Mount Vernon Arts Lab
Hey Let Loose Your Love by The Focus Group
Mind How You Go by The Advisory Circle
Ghost Radio by Moon Wiring Club
Owls And Flowers by Belbury Poly
Civil Defence Is Common Sense by The Advisory Circle
Inside Shoebox Garden by Moon Wiring Club
Albion Festival Report by The Focus Group
Erosion Of Time by The Advisory Circle
Opening Leaves by Moon Wiring Club
Meditation On Nothingness by Roj
Feldspar by Mount Vernon Arts Lab
Nuclear Substation by The Advisory Circle
Far Off Things by Belbury Poly
Plant Room by Mordant Music
Jam Jar Carnival by The Focus Group
Everyday Electronics by The Advisory Circle
They Are In The Room With Us Right Now by Roj
Wool Book by Moon Wiring Club
Post Apocalypse Listings by Mordant Music
From An Ancient Star by Belbury Poly
Fire, Damp And Air by The Advisory Circle

The Insomniacs Almanac by Melmoth The Wanderer

While London Sleeps by Mount Vernon Arts Lab
So Run Down by The Caretaker
Moondial (Theme) by Unknown
The Bane Tree (intro) by (Episodes From) The Field Bazaar
Sorcerer by Ataraxia
The Black Drop by Mount Vernon Arts Lab
In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country by Boards Of Canada
Of Grace And Providence (Remixed) by The Caretaker
The Voice by Brian Hodgson & Delia Derbyshire
The Wicker Man by Paul Giovanni
Children Of The Stones Theme by Sidney Sager
Legend Of Hell House by Brian Hodgson & Delia Derbyshire

Samhain Seance by The Ephemeral Man

Twins Of Evil (extract)
Forest Of Evil (Dawn) by Demdike Stare
Blackthorn Winter by Sproatly Smith
The Harmony Programme by The Focus Group
Sulphur by Cyclobe
The Power Of The Witch (extract) Rare BBC Documentary
Another Witch Is Dead by The Eccentronic Research Council
Blood On Satan’s Claw (intro)
Disorder by The Haxan Cloak
Black Blind Light by Moonstone
Denned Earth (Decay And Rebirth) by Ruhr Hunter
Children Of The Stones — Episode 3 (extract), soundtrack by Sidney Sager
Strung Like Lights At Thee Printemps by Godspeed You Black Emperor
Grim Reaper by Teen Suicide
The Globe Inn by The Future Kings Of England
Halloween 3 (ending)

Previously on { feuilleton }
• A playlist for Halloween: Orchestral and electro-acoustic
• A playlist for Halloween: Drones and atmospheres
• A playlist for Halloween: Voodoo!
• Dead on the Dancefloor
• Another playlist for Halloween
• The Séance at Hobs Lane
• A playlist for Halloween
• Ghost Box

Creel Pone

One of the many surprises for me about Enter the Void was finding recordings by electronic composer Jean-Claude Eloy mixed into its droning soundscape, namely extracts from his 1979 album, Shànti. I’d been listening to this a week or so before watching the film after having downloaded a large quantity of obscure electronic releases on the bootleg Creel Pone label.

Flowers Of Evil (1969) by Ruth White.

The Creel Pone project by Keith Fullerton Whitman began with the intention of reissuing in a limited form 100 albums of electronic or electro-acoustic music dating from the period 1947 to 1983 (or 1952 to 1984 according to the label seal); The Analogue Age, in other words. Most of the albums were long out of print, and few had ever been available on CD when the project began although some have since had official reissues. The recordings were transferred from vinyl then burned to 50 CD-Rs per album, each release coming in a CD-sized facsimile of the original cover. Simon Reynolds wrote a piece about the label for The Wire in 2010 but I first encountered the releases a couple of years earlier via an acquaintance who was one of the collectors trying to accumulate the entire run. The run finished some time ago so the reissues themselves will soon be as difficult to find as the releases they made available, hence the recourse to mp3, and this cache of almost the entire catalogue. I haven’t listened to everything there yet (iTunes tells me this would take 2.2 days, non-stop)—and I find my patience often runs out with tape-collage electro-acoustic compositions unless I’m in the mood—but some of these albums are so good, the Thomas Köner-like Shànti among them, you have to wonder why they were overlooked for so long. A few of the uploads have tracks missing, and they’re all variable quality, but you won’t find this amount of Creel Pone material anywhere else in a hurry. (There’s also no guarantee they’ll be there for long so don’t complain to me if you’re visiting this post after they’ve all been deleted.)

Musique Pour Le Futur (1970) by Nino Nardini.

Discogs has an incomplete catalogue listing. Several of Jean-Claude Eloy’s albums are now available on CD. Gil Mellé’s excellent soundtrack for The Andromeda Strain was given a limited CD release two years ago but is out of print again. For some recordings it seems, the struggle to reach an audience is a continual one.

The Andromeda Strain: Original Electronic Soundtrack (1971) by Gil Mellé.

Pythagoron (1977) by Pythagoron™

Reflecting On The First Watch, We Uncover Treasure Buried For The Blind (1978) by Cellutron & The Invisible.

Shànti (1979) by Jean-Claude Eloy.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Enter the Void
• Cristalophonics: searching for the Cocteau sound
• The Avant Garde Project

Main aesthetics

Hydra-Calm (1992).

It’s always good to find a group of musicians who not only make the kind of sounds you like but also package their work effectively. Having read the Quietus interview with Robert Hampson last week I was going back through the catalogue of Hampson’s 90s group Main and thinking again how well the design of their digipak singles and albums complemented their music. Main evolved out of an earlier rock outfit, Loop, and the earliest Main productions still bear some trace of the trancey Loop approach to rock structures. The first Main album, Hydra-Calm, was released on Situation Two, and comes packaged like the first album from Faust, with an X-ray of a skull on a transparent sheet replacing the X-ray fist of the German group.

Dry Stone Feed (1993).

With a move to the Beggars Banquet label a year later, a different design approach was adopted which set the template for nearly all the Main releases during the 1990s. An outfit (or person) named Avida is credited with Main’s design, with the name being adjusted on various releases to Avida Design, Avida Formations, Avida Hydroforms and Avida Iceforms. The decision to dwell on varieties of texture matches the evolution of the group’s music from arrangements of guitar, bass and drums to abstract and increasingly minimal fields of sound; in this respect, Deliquescence was a perfect title. Hampson and co. created their sound fields by subjecting guitar noise to unspecified sampling and effects processes. When Simon Reynolds invented the term “Post-rock” to describe some of the musical developments happening in the 1990s, Main always seemed to be exemplars of the term, they really did go from being a bona fide rock band to a group pushing sound far beyond anything to do with rock music at all.

Firmament (1993).

The photos used by Avida Design start out as shots of TV screens or computer monitors then range through the natural world with close-ups of rock formations, lichen, wood grain and underwater ice. The typography is nearly always Copperplate Gothic (or a sans serif variation) printed in metallic silver ink. The most satisfying release for me was the Hz set of six CD-singles released from mid-1995 to 1996, the last of which came with a box to place the singles in and a booklet containing symbols which relate to each disc. Hz is the peak of their output, and although it was later released as a double-disc set I prefer the box.

Anyone looking for these releases today can find copies for sale at Discogs.com. Robert Hampson is still active, his site is here. A few more Main covers follow.

Continue reading “Main aesthetics”

Everything old is new again

Thomas Negovan.

Music journalist Simon Reynolds has been garnering attention over the past couple of weeks with his new book Retromania, an exploration of the thriving revivals and resurrections in the musical world and an examination of what this may mean for the future. There’s an astute discussion along these lines between Reynolds and Colin McKean over at The Quietus (and it is a discussion for once, rather than the more usual Q&A). The debate is a pertinent one but seems a little insular in its focus on music alone, and pop music in particular. Other creative disciplines have been dealing with questions of influence and originality for some time, they only seem pressing concerns in the musical world because so much music from all nations and eras is now available, and pop as a form is still relatively young.

In addition to the rear-view mirror approach to musical creation, there’s another side to retromania in the present fascination with antique musical instruments and recording equipment. The Cramps once declared that they preferred valve amplifiers because valves “turned the music to fire”; amps containing silicon chips, on the other hand, deadened the music by routing it through pieces of stone. There’s a lot of this attitude around at the moment (organic analogue versus inorganic digital), not least the persistent fetish for analogue synthesizers which dates back as far as 1995 and the Node project. That said, you’ll have to work hard to find anyone pursuing a retro aesthetic with greater determination than Thomas Negovan, a Chicago musician intent on releasing a 4-track EP which has been recorded directly onto wax cylinder using an 1894 Edison recording machine. Negovan and co. plan to release the recording on vinyl (with no digital technology used in the transfer), and also release a single on wax cylinder, a medium which they say hasn’t been used in this way since 1924. They still need some funding so there’s a Kickstarter page for the project here, and more details about Mr Negovan’s music over at his MySpace page.

Lastly, and quite by coincidence, The Wire‘s website has been running Antique Phonograph Portal links this week, including mention of a wax cylinder preservation project at the University of Santa Barbara. Go here, here and here for further details.

Update: Jay reminds me that he wrote a piece for the LA Weekly back in 2003 about the ongoing interest in music of the past.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Obsolete formats continued
• Old music and old technology

Weekend links 11

Panneaux decoratifs (1900) by Manuel Orazi at NYPL.

• Ghostsigns: “a collaborative national effort to photograph, research and archive the remaining examples of hand painted wall advertising in the UK and Ireland.”

• Golden Age Comic Book Stories posts some Alphonse Mucha.

• Voyage Fantastique – An illustrated guide to the body and mind at A Journey Round My Skull.

• The gallery of the International Exhibition of Calligraphy.

• Trevor Wayne Pin-Up Show, a new photo collection of the tattooed Mr Wayne which includes photos and a foreword by Clive Barker.

• Phallophonies, a gallery exploring the penis in religious art. Related: “Churchgoers are outraged over a crucifix in a Catholic church that they say shows an image of genitalia on Jesus.”

• Hollingsville: “Expect live and unscripted wanderings around voodoo science parks, examinations of cities as battle suits and thoughts on pods, capsules and world expos.”

• Phantom Circuit #33 is a Ghost Box special featuring an interview with Jim Jupp (Belbury Poly) and Julian House (The Focus Group). Related: Ghost Box films at YouTube.

• Eldritchtronica and Wyrd Bliss, a mixtape by Simon Reynolds.

• Avant garde music and cinema meet at The Sound of Eye.

• Make your own newspaper with Newspaper Club.

• Drawdio: A pencil that lets you draw music.

• Yoko Ono collects rare books.

• KittehRoulette.

• Song of the week: The Four Horsemen (1972) by Aphrodite’s Child.