POD ACADEMY

The Bike Cemetery in Winter 2012

 My podcast, Return to the Bike Cemetery, is now available on www.podacademy.org
 there's some other very good stuff on there too, including a talk from a historian of smell, an ethnomusicological discussion of the music of the BayAka people, and a discussion of  manifestations of economic thought in cultural products. It's a very pleasingly heterogenous collection.

My piece is the first in a projected series of three programmes that will take different levels of interpretation (or degrees of generality) and angles towards the Bike Cemetery. They will all be equally preoccupied with sound, though; how it can evoke a space, or series of them, how it can internally dislocate a space (especially when broadcast to somewhere else), and its temporality - that is, its passing, which is of course the precondition of its stubborn or uncanny return (say, in the use of delay).

A rough outline might go: Bike Cemetery - empty space (as in Claude Lefort's image) - sovereignty of subject (bourgeois liberal democratic) - sovereignty (as in Karl Schmitt's version of decision) - exception and example, and the spatial relationship that both categories necessitate - Bike Cemetery - waste ground - "waste" in terms of time - metaphors of "natural" growth/accumulation - the responsibilized subject - "unnatural" growth/stasis - the welfare state and its characterisation by the likes of Charles Murray - "addiction" as trope, to benefits or (for the state) to debt - addiction as perpetual return (to same place) therefore antithesis of neoliberal models of growth or statehood - the stuttering, repetitive inscriptions at the Bike Cemetery.

I realise that the outline just given might seem confused, fragmentary and a bit dry, but I am going to do my best to make it a coherent trip through some contemporary obsessions. I think that the audio essay form can do this well. 

HERE IS THE EP - HEAR

SCHULD - DSFGMNT/BNKRPS - 001-15

Clear evidence of the detrimental effects of sleep deprivation - at Super Woofer yesterday

So the promised album became a five track E.P, though all the tracks are relatively long...But nonetheless it has appeared and made its debut in the world yesterday at the SuperWoofer audio fair. It was a lovely event with lots of cool stuff going on - though I have to say I wasn't all there myself; I had to do an all-nighter Friday to get the covers done. But what did I experience through a fog of near hallucinatory tiredness was highly enjoyable. Many thanks to all who stopped to chat, listen and a big thanks of course to all that bought one. It may not be apparent in the picture, but I was (and still am) buzzing that I'd actually got it done.

The tracks are (though not necessarily in this order on the CD):

In The Fifth Year parts 1 & 2
History Will Be My Judge
July 2015
The Chariot

The cover artwork is, as promised hand-printed by myself. It is comprised of lino and foam cuts made by me. The imagery is drawn from the track The Chariot - which was very nearly the title of the release, but for a variety of reasons, one of which was the relative ease of carving 6 letters as opposed to 10 and another was the content which seemed to focus on shame but in the more nuanced sense that the German word has; of wrong, blame and accusation as well. Hence Schuld.

So here's some pictures - click on image for full-size slideshow:

Front cover - foam print on gatefold card

Cover - front and back. Foam, rubber letterpress and lino cut on gatefold card (yes the fly and horse are in The Chariot as well

The Faecal Sword - lino cut on gatefold card (you'll have to listen to the track) and the label - lino cut and letterpress on paper

Label - lino cut and letter press on paper CD label

Inside cover

 If you want one - and I can't see why anyone wouldn't - it's available from me, £5 + p&p. Just email me and I'll stick one in the post. I will be setting up a DISFIGMENT/BANKRUPSEA website that will have future releases on it. There will be future releases, rest assured. I will also stick a sampler on soundcloud - it'll be linked here, of course - cos I suppose it is possible that you might want to hear what it's like.

ALBUM/E.P. RELEASE ON 1 AUGUST 2015

The title/logo of my new imprint. Text from the Bike Cemetery.

A very slight and oblique clue about the album - could be title or dominant trope

On Saturday 1st of August, I will have a table at the SuperWoofer sound fair (1-11pm, free entry) at Matts Gallery 42–44 Copperfield Road, London E3 4RR.

I will be flogging a newly released CD of tracks that are unavailable online with a lovely hand printed cover. It will be the launch of my new imprint (logo at the top of the page).

It's more guitar heavy - though admittedly mostly one or two chords, so no heroic virtuosity - than anything I've posted up here. Two of the songs deal with places - one directly with a real place and the other a fractured allegorical origin tale of a place. One evokes a journey by car. One is a recontextualisation of an  intelligence-insulting political cliche much bandied about. 

It's comprised of stuff I've had lying around on my computer for a number of years and have sort of tinkered with on and off, that now seems ripe for an airing. It's partly about exorcising some of my old (post) punk ghosts, and partly about how these are fucking great tracks that should be heard.

All going well, there will also be a companion CD of experiments and oddments that are more abstract but hopefully as rewarding. I don't know what sort of cover that will have. I also don't know yet which will be the E.P. and which the album.  I have also made a booklet of image/text treating of the Bike Cemetery that simply needs printing - if I get that done it'll be available to buy at the event too. It all depends on available time/energy/money.

So come along if you can, gentle reader, and buy some top quality noise and poetry; or just come and say hello and have a drink. It promises to be a great event in any case.

You can get the CDs after the launch direct from me as well, just write and we'll sort it out. 

PERFORMANCE WITH NICOLA WOODHAM TOMORROW EVENING - 20/07/15 18:00hrs

Video still courtesy of Nicola Woodham 2015

If any of you are in the South East London area tomorrow - or even east London, what with the very effective overground connection that now exists - and you fancy seeing and hearing some psychedelic noise performance, come along to Goldsmiths College, 3rd floor of the Ben Pimlott Building. Check out the installation that will be open before 6 - and the rest of the MA fine art shows beforehand whilst you're at it.

I'm accompanying the great Nicola Woodham in her vocal piece Garg. She will be using a costume and effects pedal on her voice and I'll be playing noise guitar and some percussion through a space echo and synth. Feedback and resonance will abound.

RETURN TO THE BIKE CEMETERY

Here's my contribution to the Critical Waves research podcast project. It was broadcast, amongst others, on Resonance FM yesterday evening.
The entire programs are archived here and here and are well worth a listen in their entirety.

I enjoyed making this so much that I'm thinking of putting more of my research into sonic form and uploading it here, so listen out.

CRITICAL WAVES RADIO

Detail from the Bike Cemetery, before it was defaced.

The first entry on here is a podcast that I made about the Bike Cemetery in Hackney Wick, now sadly, but perhaps inevitably, defaced, though some of the others are well worth a listen, too. Sonya Dyer, James O'Leary, Jo Coleman and Arthur Keegan-Boles' caught my attention, either via their subject matter or their execution, whilst they all are worth a listen (I have just spent an enjoyable evening doing exactly that).

Attentive readers might have noticed that I credit the Bike Cemetery Band or Bike Cemetery Brass in a lot of my recordings. They are named after this site, or rather, what this site was. The header to this blog, the fetching animation which scrolls the incantation "WOLF VANISH" across a zinc or aluminium strip going across a thoroughly graffitied wall, is taken from the Bike Cemetery as it was - obviously, sans animation. The podcast was made for the Critical Waves project, which is to encourage academics to find ways of making their research pod or radio-friendly (or at least amenable).

There are two programs on resonancefm to come, scheduled for Tuesday 23rd and Tuesday 30th June, 8-9pm, where some of the podcasts produced for this project will be played and discussed, mine amongst them. Tune in if you're around, or listen later online.

PERFORMANCE ART FACTION BOX SET

I have just had an essay published in a box set archive of texts and performance documentation by the ever-brilliant Performance ]S P A C E[, who champion the sort of performance work that struggles to find a home in our current dispensation. The box set is purchasable and well worth it (I will add a link to shop when I can find one), and a virtual copy can be perused here.
I performed at the launch last night, held at Live Art Development Agencies' place in Hackney Wick, providing me with an ideal context to pour anathema on hipster street artists and the area in general, combined with some thoughts on Jean Genet. I'm editing the video of it now, and it will be up in the next hour or two.

NEW TRACK - WALKMAN DUB

Just done an hour or so ago. The "Walkman" bit of the title is a reference to the sound of the beat (made with a '70s home organ beat emulator) which I then put through a reverb loaded with an impulse response made from walkman over-the-head style headphones - from the outside of them, obviously. I love that sound, although it was always irritating to hear on the tube or bus. It is now somewhat a thing of the past, because earbuds don't leak in the same way.
I hoped that the whole thing has something of that '90s feel, like a twisted nod to the likes of  Enigma (who were truly horrible), with their liturgical choir sounds and programmed beats - "chillout" bollocks for the end of history. I've been thinking a lot about the '90s lately, a "low, dishonest decade" if ever there was one.There may be more on this..

INVISIBLE NOISE MUSEUM

Short notice, I know; but for anyone living in London who fancies a free night out in the damp cellars of the Pumphouse Educational Centre in Rotherhithe, there is this. There will be noise, lots of it, from

KALLA
Neofung + Cao
MusicaDispersa
Grottie Locket aka Malixie Boomshed
Becky Fury
A Raja's Mesh Men
Breakfast Man
Oliotronix
Richard Crow
Robin Bale
PHLGM
THE FLESH GALLERY ( A MODERN ART EXHIBITION )

That's the line up so far, I imagine there will be additions.

It starts at 7pm. Here's the venue. It's free to get in

Short walk from Rotherhithe tube/underground.

DYBBUK SPEAKS

Some work from a project with Nicola Woodham - a drone/noise ensemble called Dybbuk more stuff will be forthcoming here.