The Kinks – { feuilleton }

I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (1928) by Charles Demuth.

• “Reading the new edition in 2021, I’m struck by his dismissal of CD-ROMs, of VR, of interactivity; how he anticipates contemporary debates about algorithmic bias…his prescient exhaustion.” Sukhdev Sandhu reviews Brian Eno’s diary for 1995, A Year with Swollen Appendices. Meanwhile, Eno himself says “Artists like me are being censored in Germany—because we support Palestinian rights.”

• “Kink is often pathologized in popular culture: it’s shamed, used as a punchline, and, on the whole, relegated to the margins of desire.” Greg Mania interviews R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell about Kink a collection of new stories about unorthodox desires.

• “This album is the king of hauntology. From where I’m sitting, I’m going back to the past, listening to an album imagining the future, imagining the past.” Tom Herdman on the fabulous Time (1981), a science-fiction concept album by the Electric Light Orchestra.

Cavafy, the ultimate Alexandrian, gave us an Alexandria that was already not quite there in his own lifetime. It kept threatening to disappear before his eyes. The apartment where he had made love as a young man had become a business office when he went to revisit it years later; and the days of 1896, of 1901, 1903, 1908, 1909, once filled with so much eros and forbidden love, were already gone and had become distant, elegiac moments that he remembered in poetry alone. The barbarians, like time itself, were at the gates, and everything would be swept in their wake. The barbarians always win, and time is hardly less ruthless. The barbarians may come now or in a century or two, or in a thousand years, as indeed they had come more than once centuries earlier, but come they will, and many more times after that as well, while here was Cavafy, landlocked in this city that is both the transitional home he wishes to flee and the permanent demon that can’t be driven out. He and the city are one and the same, and soon neither will exist. Cavafy’s Alexandria appears in antiquity, in late antiquity, and in modern times. Then it disappears. Cavafy’s city is permanently locked away in a past that refuses to go away.

André Aciman on the poetry of Cavafy and the Alexandrias of memory

• DJ Food on the package design for The Superceded Sounds of…The New Obsolescents, which uses a similar foil card to the “Héliophore” stock used by Philips in their cult series of electroacoustic compositions, Prospective 21e Siècle.

• Onlyou by Can, is “A relaxed studio session, recorded on a mono taperecorder in 1976 at the Innerspace”. Released in 1982 on a 34-minute cassette sealed inside a can (geddit?), and limited to 100 copies.

• Olivia Rutigliano ranks 45 films containing prison escapes. I’d put the Bresson at number one but otherwise, yes.

• “…some kind of future unrealised time…” Mix of the week is a mix for The Wire by Muqata’a.

• RIP Christopher Plummer. Never mind the musical, watch him in The Silent Partner (1978).

• At Ubuweb: short films by Erkki Kurenniemi soundtracked by his own electronic music.

• New music: Neurogenesis by Robert Rich.

• Kinky Boots (1964) by Patrick McNee & Honor Blackman | David Watts (1967) by The Kinks | The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight (Dominant Mix) (1984) by Dominatrix

Carnaby Street circa 1967.

Continuing the psychedelic mega-mix based on Jon Savage’s list of “100 mind-expanding masterpieces” (see this post). The second of the six mixes is where British psychedelia is in full swing after shedding its R&B/Mod/Freakbeat origins: what was black-and-white a year before is now blazing colour. There’s much I enjoy about US psychedelic music but I’ve always favoured the British variety. The sound of US psychedelia is less adulterated than its British equivalent, and even the later examples are often little more than country or folks songs with suitably dreamy lyrics. The gravitational mass of The Beatles so overwhelmed the UK scene that the experimentation at Abbey Road was endlessly copied and refined by the younger groups, some of whom—like Pink Floyd and The Pretty Things—were working in the same studio with the same engineers.

It’s the adulteration of the sound that I enjoy, the audacity of recording an orchestra at great expense then feeding the result through a phaser, as Nirvana (UK) did on Rainbow Chaser. (See next week’s mix). The Who’s Armenia In The Sky is an excellent example of studio pyrotechnics. Pete Townshend had complained that some of The Beatles’ arrangements were slight so this song can be regarded as his riposte. At the end of the mix the Fab Four fire back with I Am The Walrus.

Everything here dates from 1967, and as before the listing is roughly chronological bold type indicating the selections from the Savage 100. Given the choice I’d take See Emily Play over Mathilda Mother—the former being a particular favourite—but Savage’s choice works very well as a melodic come-down after the cosmic racket of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. David McWilliams’ one-hit-wonder is an odd choice and not especially psychedelic but once again I defer to Savage’s selection. The Kinks are also notable by their absence although they never adopted any of the studio trickery that might have spoiled their exceptional songwriting.

UK Psychedelia, Part Two by Feuilleton on Mixcloud

The Fairytale — Guess I Was Dreaming (An obscure single that can be taken as being about dreams, drugs or both.)
The Rolling Stones — We Love You
The Small Faces — Itchycoo Park
The Jimi Hendrix Experience — Radio One
The Jimi Hendrix Experience — The Stars That Play With Laughing Sam’s Dice
Pink Floyd — Mathilda Mother
Traffic — Hole In My Shoe (Their other great psychedelic single.)
The Who — Armenia In The Sky (The Savage 100 has Relax but this is much more tripped out with surreal lyrics flying through squalls of backwards guitar.)
The Herd — From The Underworld
Svensk — Dream Magazine
Dantalian’s Chariot — Madman Running Through The Fields
Kaleidoscope (UK) — Flight From Ashiya
The 23rd Turnoff — Michaelangelo
The Hollies — King Midas In Reverse
David McWilliams — The Days Of Pearly Spencer
The Idle Race — Imposters Of Life’s Magazine
Eric Burdon & The Animals — San Franciscan Nights
The Troggs — Love Is All Around
Family — Scene Through The Eye Of A Lens (Savage has Me My Friend from their first album. This substitute is a mini-epic that was their first single.)
The Accent — Red Sky At Night (Their only release, and a song that turns up on many compilations.)
Simon Dupree & The Big Sound — Kites
The Pretty Things — Defecting Grey
Tintern Abbey — Vacuum Cleaner
The Beatles — I Am The Walrus

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Listen to the Colour of Your Dreams: Part One
• What Is A Happening?
• My White Bicycle
• Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake
• Tomorrow Never Knows
• The Dukes declare it’s 25 O’Clock!
• A splendid time is guaranteed for all

Tag: The Kinks

Weekend links 555

Listen to the Colour of Your Dreams: Part Two