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imomusI was reading a lovely blog post by Emma, Joe Germlin's squeeze, entitled This Must Be The Place. Accompanied by a picture of someone looking happy in a toilet, it's about what the Japanese call ganbaranai -- not going for it (slogan, by the way, of the eco-friendly Slow Life movement). It's about coming to the realisation -- the decision -- that you don't need any more money, that this place and these people and this standard of living is all you need. "Going for it" would involve too much compromise and ultimately just bring us into contact with people (in the words of Tao Lin) "talking about jet-skis and expensive handbags or something and we would feel alienated".
I think this is an incredibly important realisation to have, and statement to make. It underpins a lot of life in Berlin, for a start, and it's what distinguishes Berlin from cities like New York and London, and it's what people inevitably talk about when they arrive here from those cities (it's what Michael Portnoy and various Piratebay Swedes were talking about last night at Forgotten Bar Project, for instance). But it's also an aesthetic decision, a decision that shapes sound if you're a musician and form if you're a plastic artist. As an aesthetic decision -- the decision to go your own way, make your own sound -- it's a hugely liberating moment too.
"When Aids Wolf came to Glasgow a few weeks ago," Emma continues, "we took them for brunch and I asked Chloe what she did before she did Seripop full time. She did a shitty Admin job and Yannick was a video technician at an art school. I was happy to get to ask someone who in my mind is doing incredible things, what it is they did to get themselves going. I need that reassurance when I look at my bank balance and try to work out if I have enough £££ in there not to cave in to temping or other equally awful things."
I didn't know about AIDS Wolf, and set about educating myself about them. The first thing I discovered was the video my friend Eric Mast (E*Rock) made for Spit Tastes Like Metal:
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I like the signifiers, musical and visual, here. First musical thing I thought about -- it's that guitar sound -- was Captain Beefheart (another person who decided pretty early on not to go for money, that "this was the place" -- in his case, the Mojave Desert). Then, perhaps, Yximalloo, who also seems to exist outside commercial structures. Visually the references were to "the colour movement", a term I use to describe people who squeeze the maximum amount of colour, often jarring colour, into what they do, and to The Boredoms.
These references are basically hippy ones, and AIDS Wolf have touched on a hippy archetype in their promo pictures, which feature them leading an idyllic life, naked in the forest. The Beefheart connection is confirmed in their Wikipedia page, which sees them quoting the Captain's description of his music as the sound of "a squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag".
I guess I also thought of Deerhoof, listening to AIDS Wolf, and maybe of Mu, although Mu are more housey. What I didn't think of, because I'm not really a noise aficionado, was people like The Locust, apparently a big influence on them, and a bit too cartoony and Superhero-ey for my taste, like a noise version of Devo. I suppose I identify more readily with naked Canadians (AIDS Wolf are Montrealers with French accents) than Americans (The Locust are from San Diego) in Marvel costumes, which always seem a bit fascist and puritan.
AIDS Wolf (who blog here, and who yield zero results in a Pitchfork search) took their name from a piece of graffiti in an Ohio backyard. Apparently it referred to an urban legend about AIDS-infected wolves coming to the city and biting housepets, which could then infect their owners by licking them. The band had a ferret stuck in their wall at one point, and when they heard it scratching, they'd say "Oh no, there's the AIDS wolf!"
The way AIDS Wolf's music achieves its results with structure and dynamics and colour rather than tonality, melody or harmony made me think that this is pop music coming up against / coming up with what serialism came up against / with in 1912 or so. And just as many conservatives to this day hate serialists like Webern and Berg and Schoenberg, so they'll hate AIDS Wolf and Yximalloo and others who compose with dynamics and structure, but not harmony and melody.
Something else AIDS Wolf remind me of is the Stiff Records Akron Ohio compilation, from 1978, and the squirt of basic, essential weirdness it injected into the indie charts that year. And I guess outsider bands like Half Japanese and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. This is music you only tend to make when you decide "this must be the place". It's also arty music, music that loves art, made by people who love art. AIDS Wolf's singer, Chloe Lum, loves Fassbinder and Eric Rohmer (who also happen to be pretty much my favourite directors). She even named this song after Fassbinder's "Chinese Roulette":
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Chloe and Yannick Desranleau describe themselves as self-flagellating Catholics, and during the day run Seripop, a Montreal art unit and print shop known for colourful, scrawly posters, books, record sleeves and screen prints. It's a world I can see fitting with the Staalplaat / Le Petit Mignon culture here in Berlin, a world where post-materialist values and the true spirit of indie meet, a happily inventive state of mind, a fusion of colour and sound. I guess this -- and that -- must be the place.
I think this is an incredibly important realisation to have, and statement to make. It underpins a lot of life in Berlin, for a start, and it's what distinguishes Berlin from cities like New York and London, and it's what people inevitably talk about when they arrive here from those cities (it's what Michael Portnoy and various Piratebay Swedes were talking about last night at Forgotten Bar Project, for instance). But it's also an aesthetic decision, a decision that shapes sound if you're a musician and form if you're a plastic artist. As an aesthetic decision -- the decision to go your own way, make your own sound -- it's a hugely liberating moment too.
"When Aids Wolf came to Glasgow a few weeks ago," Emma continues, "we took them for brunch and I asked Chloe what she did before she did Seripop full time. She did a shitty Admin job and Yannick was a video technician at an art school. I was happy to get to ask someone who in my mind is doing incredible things, what it is they did to get themselves going. I need that reassurance when I look at my bank balance and try to work out if I have enough £££ in there not to cave in to temping or other equally awful things."
I didn't know about AIDS Wolf, and set about educating myself about them. The first thing I discovered was the video my friend Eric Mast (E*Rock) made for Spit Tastes Like Metal:
[Error: unknown template video]
I like the signifiers, musical and visual, here. First musical thing I thought about -- it's that guitar sound -- was Captain Beefheart (another person who decided pretty early on not to go for money, that "this was the place" -- in his case, the Mojave Desert). Then, perhaps, Yximalloo, who also seems to exist outside commercial structures. Visually the references were to "the colour movement", a term I use to describe people who squeeze the maximum amount of colour, often jarring colour, into what they do, and to The Boredoms.
These references are basically hippy ones, and AIDS Wolf have touched on a hippy archetype in their promo pictures, which feature them leading an idyllic life, naked in the forest. The Beefheart connection is confirmed in their Wikipedia page, which sees them quoting the Captain's description of his music as the sound of "a squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag".
I guess I also thought of Deerhoof, listening to AIDS Wolf, and maybe of Mu, although Mu are more housey. What I didn't think of, because I'm not really a noise aficionado, was people like The Locust, apparently a big influence on them, and a bit too cartoony and Superhero-ey for my taste, like a noise version of Devo. I suppose I identify more readily with naked Canadians (AIDS Wolf are Montrealers with French accents) than Americans (The Locust are from San Diego) in Marvel costumes, which always seem a bit fascist and puritan.
AIDS Wolf (who blog here, and who yield zero results in a Pitchfork search) took their name from a piece of graffiti in an Ohio backyard. Apparently it referred to an urban legend about AIDS-infected wolves coming to the city and biting housepets, which could then infect their owners by licking them. The band had a ferret stuck in their wall at one point, and when they heard it scratching, they'd say "Oh no, there's the AIDS wolf!"
The way AIDS Wolf's music achieves its results with structure and dynamics and colour rather than tonality, melody or harmony made me think that this is pop music coming up against / coming up with what serialism came up against / with in 1912 or so. And just as many conservatives to this day hate serialists like Webern and Berg and Schoenberg, so they'll hate AIDS Wolf and Yximalloo and others who compose with dynamics and structure, but not harmony and melody.
Something else AIDS Wolf remind me of is the Stiff Records Akron Ohio compilation, from 1978, and the squirt of basic, essential weirdness it injected into the indie charts that year. And I guess outsider bands like Half Japanese and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. This is music you only tend to make when you decide "this must be the place". It's also arty music, music that loves art, made by people who love art. AIDS Wolf's singer, Chloe Lum, loves Fassbinder and Eric Rohmer (who also happen to be pretty much my favourite directors). She even named this song after Fassbinder's "Chinese Roulette":
[Error: unknown template video]
Chloe and Yannick Desranleau describe themselves as self-flagellating Catholics, and during the day run Seripop, a Montreal art unit and print shop known for colourful, scrawly posters, books, record sleeves and screen prints. It's a world I can see fitting with the Staalplaat / Le Petit Mignon culture here in Berlin, a world where post-materialist values and the true spirit of indie meet, a happily inventive state of mind, a fusion of colour and sound. I guess this -- and that -- must be the place.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 11:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 11:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 12:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 12:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 12:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 12:38 pm (UTC)fast and bulbous
Date: 2008-07-13 12:40 pm (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cut_%28The_Slits%29.jpg
And this!
http://www.ear.fm/Encyclopedia%20B/Bow_Wow_Wow.htm
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 12:44 pm (UTC)If you like the color, design, and hippy dippy thing, there are bands who actually make current music who have similar or better aesthetics.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 12:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 12:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 12:52 pm (UTC)I don't mind you knocking the band with your "pioneer snobbism" (trailblaze, move on, decry), but hit us, at least, with some names from the bleeding cutting edge! F'rinstance?
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 01:00 pm (UTC)I really have no idea what's cutting edge these days. Most of the "arty" bands I see are in tiny rooms with 10 people and it's a bunch of beardos doing the color/nature thing but either with polyrhythms or 'spiritual noise'. It's a strange time out here.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 01:05 pm (UTC)Tillmans 1992
McGinley 2003
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 01:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 01:17 pm (UTC)The hipstery noise stuff I see is usually just graphic designers or something who start a band with friends, make Cluster 77 style sound-color scapes, and have whatever design style is in fashion against the wall; like, late 80s Memphis school style graphics. Honestly AIDS Wolf is like off the radar... the naked in the woods thing just seems like the zeitgeist now, and I dig whatever gets people into nature.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 01:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 01:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 01:32 pm (UTC)But that's not why I'm writing:
"I suppose I identify more readily with naked Canadians (AIDS Wolf are Montrealers with French accents) than Americans (The Locust are from San Diego) in Marvel costumes, which always seem a bit fascist and puritan."
I was very surprised to read this from you, since I thought you'd be sympathetic to the theatrical and admittedly phoney posture of The Locust (here's one of them at the Jerry Springer show, in case anyone hasn't seen it yet, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uqdw8wXqpA4 ). It goes in the vein of taking hyper-realism and the absence of meaning in modern life as their cultural legacy and build from it. As one of the japanese super-heroes in Grant Morrison's comic book Final Crisis says: "All my life I've waited to be a gimmick. The transformation of Man into Merchandising! Spirit into toy!"
It's more honest to just admit it, than to pose as modern hippies like MV & EE, who are actually just fetichists posing as something they couldn't be, because that time has passed.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 01:45 pm (UTC)A way of defining if you're a post-materialist is to pick of these four the two that matter to you most:
1)Maintaining order in the nation
2)Giving people more say in important political decisions.
3)Fighting rising prices
4)Protecting freedom of speech
Being a post materialist means "giving high priority to values such as individual improvement, personal freedom, citizen input in government decisions, the ideal of a society based on humanism, and maintaining a clean and healthy environment."
Apparently, if you picked 2 and 4 youre a post-materialist. If you picked 1 and 3 youre a materialist.
How exactly is maintaining order in a nation and fighting rising prices outside of the post-materialist philosophy? What if your desire to keep prices down stems from concern for the poor? What if your idea of "maintaining order in a nation" is fighting social injustice?
Another thing about post-materialism is that you could be a billionaire living in a solid gold castle and still class yourself as post-materialist, because it's your social attitudes that define you as a post-materialist.
That's the problem with post-materialism -- it defines when someone starts to think "ethics are at the forefront of my mind", but it doesn't mention anything about how rich someone has to become first before they stop caring about money. It doesn't mention any quantifiable measures of ethical behaviour. I could be a gas guzzling, wealth accumulating hyper-consumer and as long as I believed ethics was the most important thing to me, I could come join the post-materialist party.
Post-materialism is bogus.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 02:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 02:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 02:22 pm (UTC)Richard Layard tried to quantify (http://imomus.livejournal.com/175376.html) the precise point at which that occurred. It's a difficult thing to put a figure on, because happiness is relative, but Layard quotes John Helliwell, who "has estimated that increases in average income only raise average happiness in countries below around $15,000 per head". If you're earning more than that per annum, then, more money will not make you significantly happier.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 02:28 pm (UTC)i like those promo photos, but i'd like them much more if they'd show that posing session turn into a cute little orgy.
i think, kites (http://www.loadrecords.com/bands/kites.html) (christopher forgues/c.f.) does pretty great neohippie noise music that sounds contemporary enough for me, while angus maclise had to be re-discovered, so he's "young" to me, too. and both make me want to hear more charlemagne palestine for some reason, who's not hippy, but timeless. as is beefheart. whose paintings are ok, but i wished he'd do music again (the same way i hope a certain "momus" won't stop doing what he's best at); the wire etc. loved his olde "magic band" reuniting, with john french doing a scarily close pastiche of the captains voice, but hearing that gave me very uncomfortable chills, like looking at a lovely prepared meal that emanates a foul smell ...
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 02:28 pm (UTC)"In 1987 I decided to leave my own business, and for four years I didn't come into the office. I travelled from country to country on an extended adventure exploring the world and myself. I would make the occasional phone call to the office to see how things were going and eventually returned to London in May 1991.
"When I returned, both the music and the structure of the music industry was rapidly changing. It seemed that the huge multi-national corporations had decided that the way to now break new acts in the UK was through the 'indie' network. The independent charts, which I had helped initiate way back in 1980, had become invaded by records released by labels that were either financed by, or even worse, owned by the multi-national corporations. The word 'indie' had become a marketing word that was banded around and had absolutely nothing to do with either the original intention of the chart, or even the meaning of the word."
"The attitude of the acts was also fast changing. No longer were they willing to build their career over time, over two or three albums; success, both creative and financial was wanted fast."
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-13 02:29 pm (UTC)