Dr. Strangelove

I have just finished watching the DVD of Stanley Kubrick's  "Dr. Strangelove starring Peter Sellers.Filmed in monochrome , it is a black comedy on the manes of war and the eagerness of war hungry men to start a nuclear Armageddon. Funny and frightening, and just as relevant today as it was then.

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Midnight Electronica

For the post-midnight music i have chosen a classic slice of eighties pop-orientated electronica, rather than the avant-garde or academic variety , both of which i enjoy. Giorgio Moroder was the producer of those Donna Summer disco hits, and he also did this soundtrack music for Midnight Express, the title track.

Choo choo. Enjoy.

Plunderphonics

Following on from the previous post, i have been reading a music book by Simon Reynolds called Retromania. I have come to the section on sampling. Sampling is that hauntology between a DJ or mixer and the dead weight of vinyl.There is a ghostly demarcation between what was once recorded and then becomes a ghost in the machine,since all recordings are capturing a past moment that is not the present.

One such plunderer of recycled grooves is John Oswald, famous or infamous for his CD Plunderphonics, which he use to distribute freely making no commercial gains from it.

The Plunderphonics album containing twenty-five tracks, each using material from a different artist. In 1990, notice was given to Oswald by the Canadian Recording Industry Association on behalf of several of their clients that all undistributed copies of Plunderphonics be destroyed under threat of legal action.

Oswald said "I wasn't selling the disc in the stores, so I let listeners tape it off the radio for free," explains Oswald, who paid for the production and manufacture of the CD out of his own pocket. He receives no royalties or financial compensation for airplay. Brian Robertson, president of CRIA says, ``What this demonstrates is the vulnerability of the recording industry to new technology...All we see is just another example of theft."

Oswald received notice from CRIA's lawyers demanding that he cease distributing Plunderphonic as of Xmas eve '89. "They insisted I quit playing Santa Claus," Oswald observes.

He describes that a plunderphone is a recognizable sonic quote, using the actual sound of something familiar which has already been recorded.

So here is one of the tracks from Plunderphoics, which did see a reissue in 1996 , based on a Michael Jackson tune called Dab.

Enjoy

Folding The Dead

John Oswald after the debacle with Plunderphonics made an album called Plexure in 1993.  Arguably it was his most ambitious composition to date, it attempted to microsample the history of CD music up to that point (1982–1992) in a 20 minute collage of bewildering complexity.

From 1993-1996, Oswald worked on and released Grayfolded, a 2-Disc set commissioned by the Grateful Dead consisting of pieces created from over 100 performances of the song "Dark Star". Oswald initially created and released disc 1, "Transitive Axis", which contains a 59 minute 59 second work in 9 movements. Feeling that there was more territory to explore, Oswald worked on disc 2, Mirror Ashes, which is a composition in "6*" movements. Once both discs were complete they were packaged together with extensive liner notes and a "visual time map" of the sources used in the compositions.I had this CD once and regret ever having sold it. Anyway, here is one of those tracks from the album, and this section is called In Revolving Ash Light.

Enjoy. 

A Rainbow Morning

From the 2 CD set Plunderphonics John Oswald's take on Judy Garland and a short track  called Rainbow.

Also, another re-jig of another famous tune which he calls Way.

Enjoy.
Oh and it is raining at the moment so might see a rainbow later.

Roswell

Thinking about Grey's Anatomy series the other day i was trying to rack my brain where i have seen Izzie (Katherine Heigl) before so a quick check on Wiki gave me the answer. Of course another favourite series of mine, Roswell.

Would love to see all the episodes again.

Found Stuff

A few items picked up in charity shops today, another good deal.



.. and a few CD's -

Enya - A Day Without Rain (WEA)
Sade - The Best Of Sade (Epic)
Carl Orff - Carmina Burana , Berlin Philharmonic, Ozawa (Philips)

The cider festival has finished at Spoons. Will be doing a list in another post of those ciders that i have tried.

Musical Entropy

Scottish duo Boards Of Canada specialize in the hauntology of music, by creating old-timey and elegiac atmospheres through the use of treatments suggestive of decay, wear and tear and entropy. They use analogue treatments and smudgy textures into an eerie miasma redolent of fading old photographs. Their debut on Warp in 1998, "Music Has The Right To Children"  shows a faded old  photograph on the CD cover with faces bleached out due to exposure to the elements. The music has a similar feel. The track i have chosen from this is "An Eagle In Your Mind". -

They took their name from the nature docs produced by  Canada's National Film Board that they watched as kids

Enjoy.