Orange Random A La Veneziano
Jun. 20th, 2004 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus
I woke up at four in the morning. My iBook was propped on its side beside me, playing a truly scary piece of music. For a moment I was frozen. I seemed to recognize the sounds in the piece as fragments of sounds I'd been working with, coming from inside the computer; echoes of recent files replayed at random by some sort of ghost program, some digital poltergeist. It was bloody spooky, something between music and non-music. The result sounded like nothing I'd ever heard, so I decided to record it. That way, I'd have something to play the digital exorcist when I took my iBook to be purged of its demons. Well, soon the piece of music ended, and on came a friendly voice telling me it was 'Treetops' by Brooklyn experimentalists Black Dice. I realised that I was listening to Mixing It through RealPlayer (I'd fallen asleep listening to Night Waves, the nightly Radio 3 arts review programme, and Mixing It follows the Friday edition). Going on Rilke's maxim that 'beauty is just the first glimpse of terror we're still just able to bear', I've decided that Black Dice is where beauty is currently located.
Another place beauty is currently located is the new album from Shobo Shobo star Hypo, 'Random Veneziano'. The Fat Cat Records press release for the Black Dice album could apply to Hypo too: 'symmetry and chaos playing off against each other... as influenced or inspired by visual arts as they are music'. Random Veneziano is the fidgety, bizzaro-baroque artefact that Oskar Tennis Champion would have been if my old-fashioned songs (damn their coherent narratives!) hadn't got in the way; 'Random Veneziano' is lushly cheap pop chopped and changed, re-invented in a Dadaist dream, its architecture all Caligari-like. It's a plastic labyrinth, a random Venice in which pop Minotaurs can wander, lost, listening to New Order demos and My Bloody Valentine vocals, enjoying the Memphis furniture and the superflat 1980s-period Ashley Bickerton-style 'confusing yet commercial' surfaces.
I sing on one track on 'Random Veneziano', but the mp3 below isn't it: it's a demo Anthony Keyeux (who is Hypo) sent me when he was working on the album, which I then hacked about a bit and turned into a song for fun. Consider it as buyhypo'snewalbum-ware: if you like it, buy Hypo's new album.
Perfecto mp3 4.56 MB
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-20 03:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-20 05:14 am (UTC)GO BUY HYPO ALBUM NOW.
ah Black Dice..... ;)
A.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-20 05:54 am (UTC)Timecode
Date: 2004-06-20 06:53 am (UTC)I think it's far superior to your contribution to the comparatively traditional "The perfect kill".
And yes, Random Veneziano is where beauty is located...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-20 07:03 am (UTC)A load of bullocks
Date: 2004-06-20 08:00 am (UTC)I've grown convinced that Momus is exhibiting real signs of the bio-psychological syndrome known as Munchausen-by-proxy, aesthetically and culturally infecting his fan-base.
Shh... no one else read this, please:
So how did you know, Momus, that I am currently obsessed with Minotaurs? In fact, my latest fiction is all about a Theseus-like writer-manque (perhaps not unlike someone very close to myself) lost in an Alexandrian library-like maze, following a trail of books written by and strewn by the beast himself. In the end the narrator is so infuriated by jealousy over his more accomplished rival that he wants to kill the Minotaur more than the Minotaur ever wanted to kill the narrator. Last lines: "Curse the Athenians. Curse Apuleius. Curse The Children’s Illustrated Concordance to the Hellenic Myths. Curse Fellini. Curse Picasso and curse Borges, too. We shall never meet, my lover the Minotaur and I." (Certainly this isn't about the relationship between wannabe artists and their idols, is it?)
In eXile, the Yearning Zealot
Re: Timecode
Date: 2004-06-20 08:07 am (UTC)'E's locked in the Eiffel Tower
Guarded by two gigantic ducks
Becuase 'e is too tough, too tough'
Re: A load of bullocks
Date: 2004-06-20 08:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-20 08:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-20 08:57 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-20 09:44 am (UTC)i saw them live once...it hurt my soul.
but hopefully their new stuff is good.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-20 05:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-20 08:14 pm (UTC)I am about to purchase Random Veneziano based on the strength of this (representative?) sampling.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-20 08:28 pm (UTC)Re: A load of bullocks
Date: 2004-06-20 09:14 pm (UTC)Genius Envy?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-20 10:04 pm (UTC)I would like to mention also that I do not consider your output to be mediocre (not consistently, at any rate); I meant only to propound that your success has been (an outcome which isn't necessarily prejudicial!), with the exception of Japan. I certainly didn't mean to disparage you. In any case, you have always been on the right side of oblivion. I merely meant to quiz on whether you wished for more than that or not.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-20 11:46 pm (UTC)I hope that your despair towards your attachment to narrative is feigned, Nick, because I am likely not alone in thinking it to be your main strength as an artist. Sound sculptures may always have a place, but I am of the mind that music will always serve as a vehicle for telling stories, whether they be verbal or tonal. "Summerisle" comes to mind as a good example.
W
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-21 02:20 am (UTC)wolf eyes...
Date: 2004-06-21 06:40 am (UTC)Toryspelling? Torytilting!
Date: 2004-06-21 07:51 am (UTC)By the way, that was brilliant, Chas.
eks hui ssett
(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-21 09:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-21 10:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-06-21 02:30 pm (UTC)