Haus of the dead

[imomus]

I'm appearing tonight (Wednesday) in conversation and concert at a conference in the dramatic Cold War gull-wing building, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Tiergarten, Berlin map).



The event -- which is free -- is called Recording Angels - Audio Poverty 1 and it starts at 7pm with a DJ set by Ekkehard Ehlers (the organiser, and a great musician). It continues at 8pm with a panel discussion in which we look at the ethics of ethnic music archiving, and continues with a 45-minute Momus set, starting at 10pm, comprising "embarrassing and poorly-recorded" material from my teens, refurbished from old cassette tapes.

I've made a little 16-minute podcast for you today in which I kick around some of the themes that'll come up in the discussion (which is in English, by the way) and give you a two-song taster of the concert.

Recording Angels podcast (mono mp3 file, 15mins 47secs.)

As I explain in the podcast, the theme I don't want to discuss tonight is copyright. The themes I do want to discuss are things like being your own ethnomusicologist in search of your own lost tribe, and how the ultimate recording medium might be death itself -- the dark underpinning rationale of every archive.

Comments

[idletigers.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Didn't Ekkehard Ehlers do a kind of electroacoustic blues album, that sounded a bit similar in places to your own Mr Ulysses?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Bingo! It's called A Life Without Fear, and it came out on Staubgold in 2006. Ekkehard gave me a copy of it last week, saying "You don't have a copy of my masterpiece?"

It's pretty good -- a glitch take on the blues. Actually, when I talk in the podcast about incorporating bits of the ethnomusicological archives out at Dahlem, Mr Ulysses is one of the songs I have in mind. There are wax cylinder ghosts in the background of that one!

[(Anonymous)]

Perhaps the redux version of "I Can See Japan"?

Yours Ashley Andel

[(Anonymous)]

What a voice! one of the most identifiable anywhere. I assume you're playing the guitar on this one? This sounds like Nicky, even Poison Boyfriend - in which I remember your chords really carrying the earlier records.

Hope to see you live one day.

[williamsharkey.livejournal.com]

I get a kick out of your insistence that death is the ultimate archival medium. It happens to be the most original and controversial thing you mentioned. And you apply a strange debate technique - don't defend it at all. Like Johnny Appleseed, a seeder not a farmer.

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

Oh wow wow wow, The Distance is just about perfection for me. You can hear the progression from your Innermost Thoughts tape. The textures are a bit like sonic burlap/ hobo-gear/ blurry colors/ windy winter skies/ wood smoke and mare's tails.

or better yet, from Pnin --

"The accumulation of consecutive rooms in his memory now resembled those displays of grouped elbow chairs on show, and beds, and lamps, and inglenooks which, ignoring all space-time distinctions, commingle in the soft light of a furniture store beyond which it snows, and the dusk deepens, and nobody really loves anybody."

-N

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, that's in there!

[(Anonymous)]

Momus, have you seen Moon, the movie directed by Bowie's son?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't. I will at some point, though. And in a cinema, I think. I haven't been to one of those places in years! Do they still exist?

godot

[telemeister.livejournal.com]

and how the ultimate recording medium might be death itself -- the dark underpinning rationale of every archive.

Ha! Well put, young sir. And how many of us might be willing to admit as much? We would look pompous, as if we are announcing that there is an importance to our "work" that will, in some way, be of benefit to those who are here when we've slipped away from under their noses. This benefit may be just a casual enjoyment of our music/writings/political viewpoint/pumpkin recipes or a life-changing experience of them.

Or one could be honest and say "these paintings/songs/treatises/photographs are my life, enjoy or ignore as you wish."

BLA BLA BLA

[(Anonymous)]

BLA BLA BLA BLA BLA! sorry to say this,
but better attend a seminar the the medienwissenschaftliche
institut of the HU, than listen to cool DJs with sonorous voices..

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I assume you're playing the guitar on this one?

Yes, I just played it yesterday! What it has in common with a lot of that old stuff is that it often does a "schizoid" thing with the majors and minors in the arpeggio. Every third time, say, it might hit an incongruous major note in a minor arpeggio, or vice versa. Or there'll be other anomalies in the fingering, deliberately left in to add "fascination" or oddness. I think I like chordal ambiguities the same way I like thematic ones.

[(Anonymous)]

"embarrassing and poorly-recorded" = fabulous!
will you be recording these re-recordings?

DC

Death

[thetemplekeeper.livejournal.com]

I very much agree with your idea of the recording format as being like death; it reminds me a little of (dare I say it?) Hegel's idea of architecture as frozen music, in the sense that recorded music is a series of frozen points of time through which the listener can move backwards and forwards, hearing different parts of the same monolithic structure.

I think one great advantage of recorded music over live is that it allows repeated experimentation, both simultaneous and revised; and this allows the musician to really journey through their ideas, far beyond the maybe improvised point at which they first appeared, and so to express a more complete vision. And the great danger of recorded music is, I think, commercial risk: as you are usually completely cut off from your audience when recording, it's impossible to know what they will tolerate or respond to, so a lot of musicians have a tendency to stay within safe boundaries... And just to recreate favourite, done structures, too, of course.

Hmm. I think this is a long-winded way of saying "yes, I like the simile between death and music, and that's sometimes how I feel, too." There's also something sacred about certain recordings (e.g., a forgotten favourite track from your childhood, or a recording of moments in your childhood, when you can hear the ghostly voice of your much-younger father, and so on).

PS

[thetemplekeeper.livejournal.com]

I also like Flanders and Swann's idea, following Hegel, that music must therefore be defrosted architecture. Don't know how well that works, but I like it.

Re: Death

[imomus.livejournal.com]

And the great danger of recorded music is, I think, commercial risk: as you are usually completely cut off from your audience when recording, it's impossible to know what they will tolerate or respond to, so a lot of musicians have a tendency to stay within safe boundaries...

Does this follow, though? Surely that barrier between creator and audience allows a certain self-indulgence and experimentalism which the live confrontation doesn't? I tend to think of records as more experimental than live performances. If you think of recording artists who experiment on record, they're less likely to play those compositions in the populist environment of a concert hall. Fear of beer bottles!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I won't be, but I know the HKW will be archiving the results.

[vikinggreeneyes.livejournal.com]

"raise your voices" so softly sung\spoken sounds secretive...When a teenager did you have to secretly make music?

[(Anonymous)]

that's where i saw it! it was the first time i'd been to one in a good while, as well

Re: Death

[thetemplekeeper.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying conservatism necessarily follows - after all, as I wrote above, recording work can take a musician on a real journey of discovery; however, I do feel it is a great risk, informed by fear.

And I agree with you about experimentation up to a point, but then again - if you get a chance, check out the video below of David Thomas performing in Berlin (sorry, it's quite an old recording now, but that and my brother, Stanley Forbes, debuting his song "Two Girls, One Cup" in a pub full of working-class drunks were the main examples in my mind when I wrote my earlier post): it's a great example of what can be achieved live; and I do feel I'm missing a lot by merely watching a recording of it.

All best wishes for the event tonight, and the sale of your novels,

Simon

Re: Death

[thetemplekeeper.livejournal.com]

...Another way of saying this, a way which comes from my experience as an actor and director, is that fear during a live show can galvanise and dynamise in a way unmatched by recorded formats. This fear of beer bottles can be sublime, and lead to sublime results; it doesn't have to inhibit.

But I don't really think we're disagreeing.

Best wishes,
Simon

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Not so much then, more when I had to live in thin-walled boarding houses in London.

[(Anonymous)]

Serious apologies for suddenly changing topics here but this is the website I come to often because the replies seem smart and always on the "outside" of things

Mr. Momus- I went to a photo cafe In London when I was there because of you and spent hours drinking tea at a long table. It was so great

I will be in Munich in a week. Anything you could suggest that is a favorite?

-Ron Harwood