![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Scotch monsters
Mar. 26th, 2004 03:05 pmI spent yesterday making a sort of mittel-Asian cover of the Cheburashka theme song, to be unveiled at the Momus show at tonight's Sonic Pop Allnighter (10pm, SloMo Bar, 34 Brunnenstr. Berlin Mitte, U-Bahn Bernauerstr. U8 line).
In the evening I went with Aya, Anne, Xavier and Eric to an event at NBI: Softl Music co-owner Andres Franz Krause teamed up with Paul de Jong of The Books for some laptop / cello action. Paul was particularly great during a solo cello spot, improvising with hawklike seriousness, a sort of pomo Paul Tortelier. In person he proved very friendly and interesting. He seemed to know my work. I told him The Lemon of Pink was the best record released last year, and gave him a copy of Oskar Tennis Champion. Andres gave me a new CD on his Softl Music label, 'Scotch Monsters' by Alejandra and Aeron, founders of the Lucky Kitchen label. I played it as soon as I got home, and have been playing it ever since. It's one of those records that at first listen seems to have almost nothing on it, just a few scuffles and hisses, but becomes an enigmatic, charismatic and spooky cloud of ambient sound that soon draws you into its subtle depths. There are indeed ghosts and monsters at large here.
'As an artist couple Alejandra and Aeron work in the dynamic yet much underestimated field between documentary, narrative, sound and music,' says the Softl Music blurb. The CD, in a handmade sleeve, documents an installation called Revisionland that was presented at The Changing Room in Stirling, Scotland in 2002, curated by Diskono:
'In an English garden' (what, in Scotland?) 'buried mushroom-shaped speakers in the soil played a version of the work on this CD. "Scotch Monsters" includes the sounds of 16 Scottish spirits. In Scotch myth, people are sometimes warned of the presence of monsters by the particular sounds they make.'
Alejandra and Aeron provide a guide to Scottish monsters which I suspect is totally made up:
The Dunters are supposed to live near the English border. When their deep thumping sound grows stronger and faster, death and misfortune are approaching. (This was often related to the sabre rattling of their kleptomaniac neighbors to the south.)
The Red Caps are red-eyed dwarves who stain their caps red with the human blood pouring through battlefields. They also foretell disasters by making a noise like the beating of flax.
The Knuckleavee is one of the most fearsome monsters. It has a huge wobbly head held up by a rubbery neck. But it gruesomely has no skin, making the inner workings of its body visible and audible. When he comes walking out of the sea to find victims, he makes an awful roaring sound that can be heard for miles.
The Gray Man lives in the mysteriously calm summit cairn of Ben MacDhui. His presence is identified by a high pitched sound sometimes called the "Singing".
Something else that is Scottish and concerns The Other is my brother's new book on Routledge, Difference by Mark Currie. Mark has kindly dedicated the book to me and sister Emma. On page 86 he remarks:
'Sometimes minor differences seem socially more significant than major ones, according to the logic of Freud's 'narcissism of minor differences'. It certainly seems true of personal identity that one is more likely to abhor people very similar to oneself than those very different, perhaps on the grounds that one's individuality is more threatened by similarity than difference. We might also be tempted to despise in others the qualities that we most fear in ourselves, creating them as our opposite when they are among our closest relations. This confusion, of minor differences with opposition, seems to operate as a structural principle as much in the family unit as in international relations.'
Well, I don't know about the family unit, but it certainly does go some way towards explaining an article in Pravda entitled 'Post-Soviet Asian Republics Kill Their Own Citizens with Mines':
'Post-Soviet Asian countries keep breaking off relations with each other, although they were considered friendly nations just a short time ago. Furthermore, one may say that those countries do their best to become as much separated as possible. They are even ready to arrange mine fields on state borders.' Ah, for the lost solidarity of the good old days when everybody hated Moscow!
In the evening I went with Aya, Anne, Xavier and Eric to an event at NBI: Softl Music co-owner Andres Franz Krause teamed up with Paul de Jong of The Books for some laptop / cello action. Paul was particularly great during a solo cello spot, improvising with hawklike seriousness, a sort of pomo Paul Tortelier. In person he proved very friendly and interesting. He seemed to know my work. I told him The Lemon of Pink was the best record released last year, and gave him a copy of Oskar Tennis Champion. Andres gave me a new CD on his Softl Music label, 'Scotch Monsters' by Alejandra and Aeron, founders of the Lucky Kitchen label. I played it as soon as I got home, and have been playing it ever since. It's one of those records that at first listen seems to have almost nothing on it, just a few scuffles and hisses, but becomes an enigmatic, charismatic and spooky cloud of ambient sound that soon draws you into its subtle depths. There are indeed ghosts and monsters at large here.
'As an artist couple Alejandra and Aeron work in the dynamic yet much underestimated field between documentary, narrative, sound and music,' says the Softl Music blurb. The CD, in a handmade sleeve, documents an installation called Revisionland that was presented at The Changing Room in Stirling, Scotland in 2002, curated by Diskono:
'In an English garden' (what, in Scotland?) 'buried mushroom-shaped speakers in the soil played a version of the work on this CD. "Scotch Monsters" includes the sounds of 16 Scottish spirits. In Scotch myth, people are sometimes warned of the presence of monsters by the particular sounds they make.'
Alejandra and Aeron provide a guide to Scottish monsters which I suspect is totally made up:
The Dunters are supposed to live near the English border. When their deep thumping sound grows stronger and faster, death and misfortune are approaching. (This was often related to the sabre rattling of their kleptomaniac neighbors to the south.)
The Red Caps are red-eyed dwarves who stain their caps red with the human blood pouring through battlefields. They also foretell disasters by making a noise like the beating of flax.
The Knuckleavee is one of the most fearsome monsters. It has a huge wobbly head held up by a rubbery neck. But it gruesomely has no skin, making the inner workings of its body visible and audible. When he comes walking out of the sea to find victims, he makes an awful roaring sound that can be heard for miles.
The Gray Man lives in the mysteriously calm summit cairn of Ben MacDhui. His presence is identified by a high pitched sound sometimes called the "Singing".
Something else that is Scottish and concerns The Other is my brother's new book on Routledge, Difference by Mark Currie. Mark has kindly dedicated the book to me and sister Emma. On page 86 he remarks:
'Sometimes minor differences seem socially more significant than major ones, according to the logic of Freud's 'narcissism of minor differences'. It certainly seems true of personal identity that one is more likely to abhor people very similar to oneself than those very different, perhaps on the grounds that one's individuality is more threatened by similarity than difference. We might also be tempted to despise in others the qualities that we most fear in ourselves, creating them as our opposite when they are among our closest relations. This confusion, of minor differences with opposition, seems to operate as a structural principle as much in the family unit as in international relations.'
Well, I don't know about the family unit, but it certainly does go some way towards explaining an article in Pravda entitled 'Post-Soviet Asian Republics Kill Their Own Citizens with Mines':
'Post-Soviet Asian countries keep breaking off relations with each other, although they were considered friendly nations just a short time ago. Furthermore, one may say that those countries do their best to become as much separated as possible. They are even ready to arrange mine fields on state borders.' Ah, for the lost solidarity of the good old days when everybody hated Moscow!