Horns

I find myself with less time to write and, worst of all, think these days. Or maybe I just lack the inclination. Or the ability.

In short: I'm dying.

As if the words on this blog or any other weren't already desperate scratches at the edges of mortality and loneliness, now I can't even be bothered to pretend.

Anyway, what I mean is, the rather neatly composed and thoughtful (not my words*) micro-essays haven't been flowing of late so I think I'm going to start utilising this blog to share music. Something I find comes naturally and easily. When I remember.

Where I can, I'll fit things into some sort of logical/impulsive grouping and say something interesting about them. Otherwise, I might just post a track without comment.

*My words

Horns

Horns are much maligned. They invariably ruin dance tracks and loads of people (/lesser species) hate jazz. Why? It might be something to do with their ostentation. There's no burying them in the mix - they're shrill and clear and vocal in their range - and I think this offends some people. They're so fucking chirpy.

On the contrary, horns can, of course, be all sorts of other things - from the percussive, rumbling tuba of Oren Marshall to the swirling, scattered saxophone of Stockhausen's Spiral.

Here are two recent things - from brass veterans - that do great things with horns. The first is from John Butcher. The piece I'm thinking of is at the end of this radio show - it's called Hamon from his Nigemizu recording. The sax isn't too high in the mix here, because there is no mix. It's just John frantically squeaking notes that veer in and out of the sonorous and the dissonant. It's busy and disorientating and beautiful.

On the other hand, here's something much less sweaty and frantic, but no less brilliant, from Jac Berrocal in cahoots with David Fenech and Vincent Epplay. It's a new release from Blackest Ever Black and, as the label continues to surprise and diversify, so it continues to improve. Being ostensibly an old school trumpeter's album, it seems far removed from the disquieting clatter of Cut Hands or Vatican Shadow. But there are obvious continuities - BEB have re-released classic Ike Yard cuts and Berrocal played with No Wave / Post-Punk royalty like Lizzy Mercier-Descloux and James Chance.

The trumpet is here weaved into a smudged soundscape of distant shouts and buzzing electronics, with a foregrounded sparse guitar line. It's like some sort of No Wave Western.

I'll have something on Overdrive, Repetition and...stuff in the coming days.

Masterchef Recipe Ideas

Idea 1

For her starter, Pernicious is cooking black mermaids covered in mustard.

Her main consists of chargrilled elephant bladder with confit oesophagus, a train ticket puree and Coors Light jus, accompanied by breaded glove on a bed of Brita-filtered marrowfat peas.

Idea 2

Delacroix is cooking a handful of earthworms, marinated in safety pins with chervil and linseed, 

boiled in One Coat gloss emulsion from B&Q, and served with loaded dice, ground horse teeth and confit of the nipples.

To start, he’ll serve corn on the cob flung out of an upstairs window, onto a watercress and West Wing box set salad.

Idea 3

Allspice is constructing some meat steps, with a tweed bisque, a dead skin tuille and Pocky bannisters.

Idea 4

Orrery is cooking a fennel insurance scheme, marinated in a cervix and cement reduction, served with diced porcelain, salted benefit claimants and a hot crab.

For dessert, he'll whisper quietly into your ear while spooning individual skittles into your mouth.

Idea 5

The population of Winchester is cooking a large bat in between two heated tube train doors, served on a teleported onion, Pogs three ways (melted, whole, blessed), and suspicious fish eyes, all drenched in an imaginary jus with silly croutons.

For dessert, the entire town will perform Les Miserables with home-made shortbread.

Idea 6

Slippery Pete is ignoring his parents’ advice, while fishmongers perform an ancient fertility ritual, a dirty boy rolls freshly dug beetroots across a lubricated surface, and Jenna Jameson plays drums.

For the main course, he’s constructing a scale model of the Dorchester hotel out of Hydrogen molecules and serving it on a slab of reformed ham.

Idea 7

Everyone you know and love is projectile vomiting into an airing cupboard, while Ringo Starr narrates porn through a loud-hailer and Jilly Goolden maintains eye contact with your Dad. To accompany, they’ll be breading golf balls and driving them from the 9^th at Gleneagles, served on a bed of dead kestrels.

For dessert, you can’t look directly at anyone you speak to for the rest of the week, with custard.

Best of 2014 Part 2

James Hassall Best of 2014 Part 2 by James Hassall on Mixcloud

As promised, here is part 2 of my 2014 underwear drawer.

Part 1 was a more sombre affair (listen to it here), full of melancholy tunes, eerie electronica and avant-garde noise. This creature brings together a bunch of last year's more dance-floor friendly lingerie, including some amazing second-hand tights from Bourbonese Qualk and Liaisons Dangereuse.

It's mostly machinist techno and no wave from the likes of Silent Servant, An-I and Kangding Ray but there's also a squirt of rock 'n' roll panties from Perfect Pussy; some day-glo electro knickers from Maria Minerva and Peaking Lights; downbeat garters from Swans and Tony Allen; and misshapen sports bras from Actress and Hieroglyphic Being.

Sniff them, hold them close, think of your loved ones.

I played a lot of this stuff at various Kling Klang nights throughout the year, so you may recall some of the musty odours and unsightly stains if you were in attendance.

As with Part 1, the mix closes with my absolute special favourite little pink pants that make my bum look good. Shackleton's Freezing Opening Thawing never failed to excite, with absolutely no VPL.

Here's to 2015.

Kiss me.

Best of 2014 Part 1

James Hassall Best of 2014 Part 1 by James Hassall on Mixcloud

Good morning 2015.

In place of an end of year list, here's an end of year mix.

This is part one (of two).

Do you like dust? Have you ever licked a battery? What does the sound of a helicopter mean to you? Empty submarines, spiders on keyboards, the light on your laptop blinking.

The mix is punctuated by excerpts from Marc Baron's Hidden Tapes, a fine collage of unearthed cassettes, and ends with a track from The Lowland Hundred's astonishing self-titled release; it sounds like a dream about Robert Wyatt singing in the Welsh countryside, and it's one of the most beautiful things I've heard in years.

There are also some noisy bits from Valerio Tricoli and Stefan Jaworzyn, nice songs from Peter Escott, Dean Blunt and Amen Dunes and a reissued gem from Woo.

Electronics are provided by Alessandro Cortini, Hands and Ron Morelli, among others, and there are even more things that I haven't mentioned (that you might recognise).

Keep your nips peeled for part two, which will be full of funky, dancy, sexy stuff - a lot of which has been making people smile/bleed at Kling Klang this past year.

A brilliant year for new music, as this selection hopefully testifies.

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I'll sort a tracklist out soon

The Most Out-of-Date 'Record of the Year' this Side of J-Lo's Ass

Sorry.

It's nearly the end of two thousand and fourteen (FUCK) and I thought about writing another top 20 records of the year list.

And then I remembered that I didn't actually finish last year's.

So here's the top 5:

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5. Haxan Cloak - Excavation
4. Julia Holter - Loud City Song
3. The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
2. Tim Hecker - Virgins

1. Oneohtrix Point Never - R Plus Seven

Daniel Lopatin keeps delivering, and on R Plus Seven there’s a real sense of him trying to do something more consciously important and high-concept than previous releases. The album is more cohesive – texturally – and more overt in its groping towards grandiose sentiment in a strange and disorientating digital environment.

The album features Lopatin’s definitive jittery structure that applies on both the macro and micro scale; clipped, repetitious vocal samples that dart about the mix are woven into a fabric that never quite settles in one place. A consistent mood is achieved from extremely fragmented components – the mark of excellent abstract art of any stripe – and our listening experience is one of almost constant tension and surprise.

Inside World, for example, prods at us with really strange synthetic vocal ‘ahs’ that seem to meander and peter out, before a sumptuous string line, backed by lush digital hiss, bleeds in and – just as we’ve adjusted to its relative calm – gives way to another series of bubbling, stop-start samples. The experience borders on frustration, but it keeps the ear focused and re-contextualises every little thing we hear into a singular revelatory moment.

The aesthetic is akin to James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual in its hyper-digital glossy sheen but the irony is stripped away to reveal some genuinely beautiful moments of euphoria, melancholy and sensuality. Zebra threatens to burst into a hands-in-the-air house track at any moment but becomes subsumed in a cascading barrage of synth layers and, once again, tantalisingly rejects the economy of set-up and pay-off for a more complex and jarring arrangement that revels in the diverse qualities of synthetic sounds.

There’s a conscious religiosity/spirituality in the effects that Lopatin utilises – uplifting choral vocals, hypnotic church organ pieces – and this feels entirely appropriate for the strange magic at work in this album. Lopatin has allowed the music to cover extraordinarily wide ground in its aural symbolism and, therefore, unlocked a sense of infinite complexity, primitive humanity and revelatory wonder in the journey through brief flashes of experience and sustained, elegiac, hymnal passages.

In utilising a truly odd combination of new-age meditation sounds, commercial muzak gloss, synthesised baroque horns, religious harmonics and jazzy erotica, Lopatin has possibly created something of a definitive album that plays on the still unknown nature of the relationship between ultra-consumerism, hyper-connectivity, spirituality, nature and humanity.

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I had only written the review for Oneohtrix Point Never's deserved winner, so there it is. I won't bother writing about the others; I ain't gonna waffle on about records that are a whole year old now. We've moved on. Andy Murray won.

Look ahead to a shimmering future with hundreds more end-of-year lists and global tragedies.

Who will it be this year?

Kanye?

Tay Tay?

Bill Maher and guests are so wrong on Gaza

Bill Maher and his guests should be ashamed of their horrible portrayal of the Israeli bombardment of Gaza on Realtime (19.07.14 – view the full episode here).

As a proviso – I’m intending to criticise the show’s particularly awful moments and not attempting a balanced assessment of all the guest’s points. There is, of course, truth in their criticism of Hamas; I’m pro Israel and pro Palestine, but this ‘debate’ was particularly one-sided and bizarre for something outside of Fox News.

Some of the misinformation and opinions presented were bordering on offensive – to my intelligence, not my sensibilities. I like Bill Maher, I like the show. Consider this a friendly reminder.

Absurdity No. 1: Israel ain’t that bad

Maher begins by suggesting that Israel is actually demonstrating restraint in its invasion by not simply destroying Palestine:

‘Israel has the opportunity to kill way more, and they do not. It seems like they are victims of the soft bigotry of high expectations.’

This is ridiculous. And delivered with that little look that Maher always has on his face when he’s done a nice sentence. Israel has the opportunity to kill way less, and they do not. If Israel was purely defensive in their military operations in Gaza, then over 800 civilians would not be dead.

Plus, the international community would undoubtedly not allow Israel to commit full-scale genocide or decisive ground invasions, so they are not as free to ‘kill way more’ as Maher suggests; they get away with what they can (which Hamas does too).

Absurdity No. 2: Jews are superior

After opening with this interesting angle on Israel’s ruthlessness, Maher asks why it is that ‘Israel wins every war’ and, hence, ends up killing many more Palestinians than it suffers Israeli casualties.

Shockingly, he puts it down to the amount of Nobel prizes Jews have: ‘A big advantage to team Hebrew’. This not only implies that Arabs are inferior, which is pretty dangerous ground, but also overlooks a pretty significant fact: the unwavering support and monumental financial backing of the world’s largest military superpower.

Does Maher really think Israel’s ‘atheist’ (!) scientific community gives it the edge over oppressed, destitute, isolated, barricaded, sanctioned and blockaded Palestine? Maybe it’s got something to do with the fuckload of weapons and money they get from the US.

Absurdity No. 3: Gaza isn’t occupied

Next, one of Bill’s guests, Jane Harman – a former Democrat member of Congress – points out that ‘Israel doesn’t want to be in Gaza’ and that Gaza hasn’t been occupied since 2005, implying that Palestine has no claim to being oppressed and, therefore, enacting ‘resistance’.

That’s a nice line for apologists to repeat as it suggests that Gaza is actually a free, independent state since Ariel Sharon ‘disengaged’ 9 years ago but it masks the truth. Occupation is a legal designation and, by many accounts, Gaza is far from unoccupied. The UN has noted Israel’s ‘effective’ control of Gaza by way of:

1. substantial control of Gaza’s six land crossings
2. control through military incursions, rocket attacks and sonic booms, and the declaration of areas inside the Strip as “no-go” zones where anyone who enters can be shot
3. complete control of Gaza’s airspace and territorial waters
4. control of the Palestinian Population Registry, which has the power and authority to define who is a “Palestinian” and who is a resident of Gaza.[1]

Palestine is definitely not a free, independent state with no legitimate gripes.

This is a particularly pernicious lie because Harman, as a high profile politician who is presumably aware of diplomatic history and international law, must know that calling Palestine an unoccupied territory is contentious at best and completely disgusting at worst.

Absurdity No. 4: Israel’s military action is wholly defensive

Harman goes on to say that ‘the purpose’ of this current incursion, the purpose, is to take out Hamas’ tunnels and missile launchers. The shelling of schools and hospitals, alongside the UN’s suggestion that war crimes may have been committed, completely undermine this argument.

This is disproportionate, psychological and inhumane warfare, whether you think some level of Israeli military action is justified or not.

Plus, just two days ago the US posted the only NO vote on a motion in the UN General Assembly to set up an independent inquiry into Israel’s potential human rights violations. This would suggest that the US is not entirely confident that the result will be in Israel’s favour or, as a Washington State Department spokesperson put it: ‘[the US] will stand up for Israel…even if it means standing alone’[2] – a more candid admission of blind support.

The Times of Israel suggests that the US didn’t back the motion because it was one-sided and doesn’t mention Israeli deaths or Palestinian attacks, but that’s not true; sections 3 and 4 explicitly include condemnations of Israeli civilian deaths.

Once again, Israel is disproportionate, ruthless and murderous in its ‘retaliation’ to Hamas attacks and American apologists claim the military action is purely defensive before vetoing any UN action. This happens all the time. I put ‘retaliation’ in scare quotes since the 3 Israeli deaths that apparently sparked this conflict were actually preceded by 2 Palestinian deaths at the hands of the IDF that went unnoticed.

If Israel’s behaviour isn’t completely inexcusable, then its justification is at least questionable, while Maher’s panel doesn’t even discuss the possibility that targeting civilians might be problematic or that Israel might not have carte blanche to eviscerate whole communities.

Absurdity after absurdity after absurdity

There are more hilarious/disgusting distortions in the programme and this is only a short 15 minute segment.

Palestinians are referred to as ‘professional refugees’ who are used ‘as a symbol of propaganda’ by Jamie Weinstein, senior editor of the Daily Caller, and trusty Jane Harman claims that the million and a half Arabs living in Israel are ‘treated as Israeli citizens and afforded democratic rights’. I don’t even need to rebuff this Ministry of Truth bollocks.

It is amazing (or perhaps, sadly, not) that this passes for acceptable debate on US television. You’d expect this shit from Jamie Weinstein, but Bill Maher is apparently a liberal/libertarian and Jane Harman is a Democrat; not that I expect Democrat politicians to express pro-Palestinian sentiment, but at least not to resort to Bill O'Reilly levels of bull. 

Realtime is a show for the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert demographic and, while I don’t expect members of the American political elite to be wearing Keffiyeh’s, I was shocked by the way this level of extreme rhetoric went unchallenged (I suppose Maher’s audience are the most sycophantic and clap-happy morons around) and elementary falsehoods were fired around so rapidly.

I’m no scholar on Israel-Palestine and nor am I a hardened pro-Palestinian, but I recognised much of what was said by apparently educated and knowledgeable pundits as heinous.

We will not see peace between Israel and Palestine until the US allows it to happen, and the US won’t allow it to happen while this sort of self-censorship abides. At least Maher recognises the Israeli gag placed on the whole of America’s political class at the end of the segment, but he, unfortunately, seems to be wearing it too.

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[1] http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/8807/is-gaza-still-occupied-and-why-does-it-matter

[2] http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/24/headlines#7246

Berlin

Berlin

It’s a great word, visually. It feels composed.

With a proud B followed by a subtle curve, formed by the peak of the l, sloping into in.

Austere and romantic, assertive and seductive – Berlin.

  

Berlin is great art.

It’s not effusive like Paris or rarefied like Vienna, but elegant and tragic; its absurdist logic imbues the steely exterior with an intoxicating poignancy. It’s turgid with potential energy – the echoes of horror; restrained tears; austere concrete veined with graffiti arabesques (matte neon, dulled vibrancy); serious fun.

Muffled kick drums, silver noise, beautiful bludgeon, concrete flowers, murdered gypsies in as-far-as-the-eye-can-see park, white sun, a flash of gold at the edges.

The tears are brought on by beauty, by spectacle, by death, by love, by endless possibility.

Hedonism is no vacuous escape here – it’s meaningful immersion.

That sunset orange stays long.