Espers – Page 2 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 120

• More Nabokov: The University Poem by Vladimir Nabokov, translated by Dmitri Nabokov and read by Ralph Fiennes. And Breitensträter – Paolino, a short story from Nabokov’s Russian period that’s only just been translated into English.

• More LSD: “For decades, the U.S. government banned medical studies of the effects of LSD. But for one longtime, elite researcher, the promise of mind-blowing revelations was just too tempting,” says Tim Doody.

• More Marker: The Guarded Intimacy of Sans soleil by Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Revolutionary Cinema of Chris Marker by Patrick Higgins, and Chris Marker’s Faces by Brian Dillon.

• “A private realm, not easily penetrated, from which emerged music that would give rise to so much of the music we know today.” Guy Horton on Kraftwerk’s Kling Klang studio.

• A narrative from the swamps of Borneo: BLDGBLOG on the mephitic enigma of London’s sewers.

• At Coilhouse: The Incredibly True Adventures of Gerda Wegener and Lili Elbe.

• “What some people call idleness is often the best investment,” says Ed Smith.

• Book cover design: Rick Poynor on Pierre Faucheux and Le Livre de Poche.

• Metaphysical psychedelia: Erik Davis on Rick Griffin: Superstar.

• Diamanda Galás discusses her 13 favourite albums.

• Rudy Rucker’s Memories of Kurt Gödel.

• The Men of the Folies Bergère

• Olympics or gay porn?

• Smoketography

• The songs of bowhead whales | Another Moon Song (2009) by Espers | One Thousand Birds (2012) by Six Organs of Admittance.

Weekend links 33

Blue Sky Noise (2010) by Esao Andrews.

• Franz Xaver Messerschmidt is the first exhibition in the United States devoted exclusively to the 18th-century sculptor. Related: an earlier post about the artist’s work.

• How are the team behind War Horse planning to follow up their smash hit? With a gay love story performed by puppets. Related: Achilles (1995) by Barry JC Purves.

• More great posts at A Journey Round My Skull: Czechoslovakian Expose VI and Black Cradle of Bright Life, fifteen works by the Macedonian artist Vangel Naumovski (1924–2006).

• Top 10 Anti-Gay Activists Caught Being Gay. Related: “Fuck your feelings,” in which columnist Dan Savage gets righteously impatient when a correspondent complains. As Savage says, people who use their faith as a stick to beat gay people contribute to an atmosphere of intolerance in which kids are bullied for being gay (or appearing to be), or transgender, or merely different, and kill themselves as a result. Over the past couple of weeks there’s been an upsurge of US media attention to the most recent suicides; Savage inaugurated the It Gets Better project in order to help. Also related: God Loves Poetry.

Meigh (2010) by Esao Andrews.

• Antony Hegarty enthuses about Shoot Yer Load, one of the scurrilous 12″ singles released by my Savoy colleagues in the 1980s. Antony and the Johnsons have a new album out, Swanlights, on Secretly Canadian.

• When the future of music was a rainbow hued parabola: book designer John Gall collects old synthesizer manuals.

• Fantastic Memories (1944) by Maurice Sandoz, illustrated by Salvador Dalí.

• Urban optometry: life as a London crane operator at BLDGBLOG.

• Today is 10/10/10 which means it’s Powers of Ten Day.

• These New Puritans: a band like no other.

• Art Nouveau: a virtual exhibition.

• Diaghilev: Lord of the dance.

• Flaming Telepaths (1974) by Blue Öyster Cult; Flaming Telepaths (2005) by Espers.

Automates Ki

Following the post last week about the Gamelatron, Masha left a comment referring me to the similar, if less harmonious, Automates Ki systems of Canadian composer Maxime De La Rochefoucauld who describes his constructions as “musical robots activated by inaudible frequencies”. He also says:

Ki is a japanese concept : roughly, it is the invisible vital energy that makes things move. I use this word as an allegory for the energy that animates my automatons. The listener and spectator only hears and sees the consequences of this vibration. In this context, my Automates Ki are “spokespersons” for the vibration instead of invented musical instruments, since to build them I use previously created instruments gathered from various countries.

For several years I have worked on a system of my own invention that animates the automatons, producing a music centered on percussion. The Systeme Ki™ transforms inaudible low-frequency modulations into an acoustic phenomenon.

The Automates Ki comprises a speaker joined to a musical instrument. A pliable firing pin is set on the speaker. The firing pin, when animated by the vibration of the speaker, hits the acoustic instruments (drums, cymbals, strings instruments) in an oscillating manner.

There’s a website devoted to these works, and a MySpace page, but the best appraisal can be had by viewing some of the composer’s YouTube clips.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Gamelatron
• Metronomes
• Cristalophonics: searching for the Cocteau sound
• Max Eastley’s musical sculptures
• The Reactable
• The Ondes Martenot

The Golden Apples of the Sun

The Golden Apples of the Sun, the first release on Arthur Magazine‘s Bastet label has been one of my favourite compilations of recent years. Golden Apples was/is one of those landmark music anthologies that appear from time to time and seem to fix a moment perfectly as they capture a sudden flourishing of new music, in this instance the emergence of folk/acoustic/post-Old Weird America bands and artists. Devendra Banhart is one of those artists and he compiled the anthology and produced the cover art. The first pressing sold out but it’s now being reissued and you can order a copy here.

This is more than a compilation–it’s expertly sequenced and paced, like one long, slow flow of a particularly rich vibe. Liner notes are by the artists themselves, paying tribute to each other, all handlettered by Devendra, who also provides artwork on cover, back cover, sleeve, tray and the disk itself.

“Essential.” — Mojo, September 2004

“Sparkling.” — The Wire, July 2004

“8.6 (out of 10): [Its] sprawling landscape presents a persuasive case for the depth of a scene that seemingly sprung up (like mushrooms) overnight.” — Pitchfork, July 8, 2004

Track listing:
1. Vetiver (with Hope Sandoval) – “Angel’s Share” (from the “Vetiver” LP)
2. Joanna Newsom – “Bridges and Balloons” (from “The Milk–Eyed Mender” LP)
3. Six Organs of Admittance – “Hazy SF” (previously unreleased)
4. Viking Moses – “Crosses” (from “Crosses”)
5. Josephine Foster – “Little Life” (prev. unreleased home recording)
6. ESPers – “Byss & Abyss” (from “ESPers” LP)
7. Vashti Bunyan & Devendra Banhart – “Rejoicing in the Hands” (from the “Rejoicing in the Hands of the Golden Empress” LP)
8. Jana Hunter – “Farm, CA” (prev. unreleased)
9. Currituck Co. – “The Tropics of Cancer” (from “Ghost Man on First”)
10. White Magic – “Don’t Need” (from the Drag City EP)
11. Iron and Wine – “Fever Dream” (from “Our Endless Numbered Days” LP)
12. Diane Cluck – ” Heat From Every Corner” (from “Macy’s Day Bird”)
13. Matt Valentine – “Mountains of Yaffa” (prev. unreleased)
14. Entrance – “You Must Turn” (prev. unreleased home recording)
15. Jack Rose – “White Mule” (from “Red Horse, White Mule”)
16. Little Wings – “Look at What the Light Did Now” (from “Light Green Leaves”)
17. Scout Niblett – “Wet Road” (from “Sweet Heart Fever”)
18. Troll – “Mexicana” (from “Pathless Lord”)
19. CocoRosie – “Good Friday” (from “La Maison de Mon Reve”)
20. Antony – “The Lake” (from “Live at Saint Olaye’s With Current 93”)

Previously on { feuilleton }
• So Much Fire to Roast Human Flesh
• Summer of Love Redux

Harry Smith revisited

Harry Smith in the middle of the Twentieth Century with some of his drawings.

The first European exhibition of work by artist, writer, filmmaker, collector, Kabbalist, ethnographer…okay, polymath Harry Smith, opens today at the Reg Vardy Gallery, Sunderland. The exhibition runs from 2nd May–8th June 2007. In addition, there’s a companion exhibition, Harry Smith Anthology Remixed, at alt.gallery from 8th May–30th June. Among his many accomplishments, Smith compiled the landmark Anthology of American Folk Music and the latter showing features 84 musical and non-musical artists responding to each of the 84 songs which comprise that collection.

Heaven and Earth Magic (1962).

Harry Smith: Hobbies and films

2nd May–8th June 2007

Reg Vardy Gallery
School of Arts, Design, Media & Culture
University of Sunderland
Ashburne House
Ryhope Road
Sunderland
SR2 7EF

Reg Vardy Gallery is proud to host the first European exhibition devoted to Harry Smith’s films and hobbies.

Smith, who died in 1991, was a polymath of the highest order. With his coke bottle glasses, slight hunchback and long, bony tobacco-stained fingers, Smith dedicated himself to a life of seemingly infinite interests. He collected Seminole patchworks and painted Ukranian Easter eggs. He was a leading authority on string figures (such as the ‘cat’s cradle’) and made a study of the underlying principles of Highland tartans. He recorded the peyote songs of the Kiowa Indians and in a project entitled “Materials for the Study of Religion and Culture in the Lower East Side”, made vast live recordings of traffic noises, children’s jump-rope rhymes and city birdsong, as well as the drug talk of junkies and the death-rattles and prayers of hobos in Bowery flophouses (where he himself lived in poverty for some time).

He was one of the most influential figures in avant-garde film, developing new and ingenious methods of animation, and he collected thousands of folk records which later formed the basis for the work he is best remembered for—the Anthology of American Folk Music—the seminal collection of early music recordings that was in a large part responsible for triggering the folk music revival of the 1950s and 60s.
George Pendle

This exhibition includes a variety of Smith?s eccentric ethnographic collections, or what he called “Encyclopaedias of Design” such as string figures, Pysanky (Ukrainian Easter eggs), early sound recordings, and a range of his hand-painted, stop-motion and collaged animations such as Early Abstractions, and Late Superimpositions. The exhibition will also include documentation of Smith?s paper airplane collection. This unusual and rare collection is comprised of hundreds of paper airplanes found by Smith on the streets of New York City from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. This exhibition of the hobbies and artistry of Harry Smith has been organised in collaboration with the Harry Smith Archives and Anthology Film Archives, New York. George Pendle writes for Frieze, Cabinet, and the Financial Times . His most recent book Strange Angel (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005) traces the life of the eccentric rocket scientist John Whiteside Parsons. Both Parsons and Harry Smith were heavily involved with the occult fraternity—the Ordo Templi Orientis.

Harry Smith Anthology Remixed

8th May–30th June

alt.gallery
61/62 Thornton Street
Newcastle Upon Tyne
NE1 4AW

The exhibition brings together the work of 84 leading artists and musicians, who have been invited to make a visual artwork in response to 1 track each from the groundbreaking music release the Anthology of American Folk Music. The Anthology was edited by seminal New York artist, musicologist and experimental filmmaker Harry Smith, and first published by Folkways in 1952.

The Anthology is comprised entirely of recordings issued between 1927 (the year electronic recording made accurate reproduction possible) and 1932 when the Depression stifled folk music sales. Harry Smith used the new LP technology to create an unbroken sequence of songs, divided into three colour coded sets, which represented three elements: air, fire and water. The Anthology is considered to be one of the most important collections of information in modern society, creating a folk canon and contributing to numerous folk revival movements.

This exhibition aims to create a new visual collection of the Anthology, to continue the collective history and revival of the work, as seen through the eyes of contemporary visual artists and musicians. The exhibition includes artists from the Europe, Japan and the US reflecting a diverse and exciting range of practice including: visual art, outsider art, comic book, design, craft and illustration.

Exhibition curated by Rebecca Shatwell. A specially commissioned essay by David Keenan accompanies the exhibition and can be downloaded here.

Harry Smith Anthology Remixed includes work by: Dave Allen, Jonathan Allen, Diane Barcelowsky, Marcia Bassett, Eric Beltz, Hisham Bharoocha, Jesse Bransford, Vashti Bunyan, Jelle Crama, Jaron Childs, Rob Churm, Marcus Coates, Karen Constance, Christian Cummings & Jed Lackritz, Dearraindrop, Arrington di Dionyso, Graham Dolphin, Bill Drummond, Jorn Ebner, Espers, Peter J Evans, Yamataka Eye, Jad Fair, Feathers Family, Kyle Field, Alec Finlay, Devin Flynn, Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, Luke Fowler, Chris Graham, Susie Green, Doug Harvey, A Hawk And A Hacksaw, Rama Hoffpauir, Dan Howard-Birt, Zoe Irvine, Rich Jacobs, Juneau Projects, Seth Kelly, Jeffrey Lewis, Linder, Derek Lodge, Lone Twin, Robert AA Lowe, Ant Macari, The Matinee Orchestra, Maya Miller, Gean Moreno, Heather Leigh Murray, Michael Nyman, Dylan Nyoukis, John Olson, John Orth, Paper Rad, Mike Paré, Plastic Crimewave, Dave Portner, Devin Powers, Adam Putnam, The Rebel, Ginnie Reed, Clare E Rojas, Chris Rollen, Arik Roper, Giles Round, Royal Art Lodge, Mathew Sawyer, David Sherry, Ross Sinclair, DJ Spooky, Andre Stitt, Philip Taaffe, Vernon & Burns, Daryl Waller, Flora Whiteley, Michael Wilson, Simon Woolham, Andrew Jeffrey Wright, C. Spencer Yeh, Yokoland, zoviet*france

• The Harry Smith Archives
• American Magus: Harry Smith—A Modern Alchemist

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Meshes of the Afternoon by Maya Deren
• Jodorowsky on DVD
• Jordan Belson on DVD
• The art of Arik Roper
• Wallace Burman and Semina
• The art of Cameron, 1922–1995
• Kenneth Anger on DVD…finally
• Ten films by Oskar Fischinger
• Lapis by James Whitney
• The art of Harry Smith, 1923–1991
• La Villa Santo Sospir by Jean Cocteau
• Expanded Cinema by Gene Youngblood
• The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda