The Failed NASA Experiment

Maximum Head Rush Arousal by The Lows And The Highs Records on Mixcloud

I’m going to throw two words at you that may just make you want to hurl Marmite covered rotten apples at me or run and hide until the boring, pretentious art-wank is over. ‘Drones’ and ‘Improvisation’.

Once upon a time, when cool dudes would hang around Warhol’s gaff, jack up on amphetamines and listen to Dylan or the Velvets, hipsters would look to the likes of La Monte Young. An extremely important and highly regarded avant-garde (another word that sends shivers down the spines of some) composer who took great influence from jazz and Indian music and fed them into classical training, mysticism and expanded musical theories. Both Jazz and Indian music feature improvisation as a mainstay of performance and Indian music especially relies on underlying drones. Young utilised advanced tuning systems and slowly evolving repetitions and is generally recognised as the first minimalist composer.

You can’t really dance much to La Monte Young but you can’t really dance much to Puccini’s ‘O Mio Babbino Caro’ which is an achingly beautiful and affecting piece of music that’ll set yr hairs on end and trigger sonic chain reactions reconnecting emotional cores to the decaying flesh hanging from our bones.

So, taking in musicians such as La Monte Young, if drones and improvisation can trigger thoughtprobes and sonic awakenings in bands as influential and far-reaching as as The Velvet Underground, Brian Eno and Spacemen 3 why are they a little bit scary now?

 European Free Improvisation probably has a lot to answer for. Some is good and some is bad. Some is incredibly tedious and pretentious and as such it gets a bad rap. Someone like Derek Bailey will polarise audiences. Personally I dig it but can understand why many wouldn’t.

Anyway, why the diatribe? Well here’s a mix-tape I’ve just made. I’m pretty stoked about the next gig we have arranged for the end of the month. Some awesome musicians and some deep experimental vibes.

For some reason La Monte Young kept cropping up.

Fist up will be R. Seiliog which is Robin from H Hawkline (amongst others) in solo guise. It sounds almost like an 8-bit La Monte Young via Krautrock legends such as Kluster. Drones and loops elevated with cheeky little melodic jaunts and pops.

Then it’s Soundings. A solo project of Bristol’s Ben Moon of Forest Creature (released on Blackest Rainbow who is also home to Acid Mothers Temple, Hush Arbors, Voice of the Seven Woods…) I’m not quite sure what to expect but electronic freak-outs hailing from a remote island inhabited by Animal Collective, Black Dice and Fuck Buttons where zoned out third eye synths meet hypnotic, minimalist, dance-floor death spasms?

Deas & Denton specifically note La Monte Young as an influence. They’ll take in some pretty extreme sounds via Pan Sonic and even bits of Throbbing Gristle too. They’ll hit you pretty hard with some intense electronic music but in some Stockholm Syndrome like fashion, you’ll thank them for it afterwards.

Finally we’ll have the duo of David Birchall and Andrew Cheetham. These guys (along with Adam Denton above) met as part of Rhys Chatham’s G3 ensemble. Chatham started life as La Monte Young’s piano tuner and is probably most famous for his Guitar Orchestra’s. Expect some Free Improvisation but the kind that comes at you via rock music as an expression of freedom and revolution. 

Enjoy the mix, let me know if it stills make you want to run and hide and please do, if you’re in the area, come and support these musicians at The Gower Pub on the 28th November.

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http://rustytromboneofgod.co.uk/post/12495745222/the-rusty-trombone-of-god-presents

Swn was massive fun this year.

We put on gigs as ‘The Rusty Trombone of God’ and we had Friday night in Undertone all to ourselves.

His Naked Torso played a wicked, noisy, stop/start, scunge-primative set.

They were followed by UltraHumanitarian with the sexiest moog I’ve ever seen in real life producing synth and drums prog/kraut explorations. The first part of the set was quite searching and as such covered a lot of ground until really honing in on some zoned out vibes.

Team Sports broke with tradition and played in the stage area. The sound was a little less ambi-sonic as a result but I think I may even have preferred this very direct and powerful performance over what I’ve previously seen them do. The drums really kicked ass and the subtle dimensions of Ian’s electronics (not laptop as the festival programme would have you believe) really came through over Jimmy’s sublime cello work. Can’t wait to see them play in a cave next Sunday (http://www.stefhancaddick.co.uk/new/frederick-j-fredericks/).

Last up were Ashtray Navigations. Phil Todd’s a bit of a legend within certain musical circles (the one’s we’re trying to encourage in Cardiff) so I was super stoked to finally see them live. Exactly what I expected. Terms like chin stroking come up as though it’s a bad thing. It was contemplative of the moment utilising drones and freeform expression to suggest something deeper and more immediate than the traditions of western music recognises yet without just going ethnic to compete. We live in the modern world and these distinctions don’t really mean much anymore (or shouldn’t) hence the importance of such musical explorations.

Special thanks go to Seth from Bang the Bore (http://www.bangthebore.org/) for playing in both UltraHumanitarian and Ashtray Navigations, driving said bands down from Leeds and back, co-organising the whole shebang and being a swell guy.

Further special thanks go to Ned of Was Ist Das? (http://www.wasistdas.co.uk/) who came down to spin the decks with an insane blend of art rock, psychedelic noise and broken cosmic music.

The rest of Swn involved too much drinking and it was great to see old bandmates in Little Arrow again, be pleasantly surprised (on paper it’s not my bag) by Winter Villains, finally see Strange News from Another Star and spend a lot of time at the Shape stage enjoying the awesome tour-de-force of Them Squirrels, Truckers of Husk, H Hawkline and Sweet Baboo.

I also got to play as Gentle Friendly had to pull out. I was gifted with the accompaniment of nearby church bells just as I was getting going with some bowed cymbal and wobbly guitar schtick which turned it into one of my best (well for me anyway) solo gigs as The Failed NASA Experiment. Thanks Mark, Lee and Emma!

Wonderful mix of noise gtr and wailing sax - http://boomkat.com/vinyl/305641-paul-flaherty-bill-nace-an-airless-field

My favourite Magik Markers rekkid (‘The Lighter Side of… Hippies’ is wicked) - http://boomkat.com/vinyl/175202-magik-markers-balf-quarry

H Hawkline’s latest - http://shaperecords.co.uk/order.html - (though I listened on Bandcamp. Must get a vinyl off of Mark ASAP).

Also, this is worth a read - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/walesmusic/2011/09/the-cabinet-maker.shtml

after the itunes nuke here’s some of the music i’ve consumed.

two days ago i didn’t listen to much. i however saw that thought forms have some new tracks up on atp’s soundcloud (not the best of starts to getting away from music on the computer but i previously did a collab project which involved charlie from the band so there was a real world connection).

yesterday i woke up stiff and did some stretches listening to a blind lemon jefferson cd rod lent me years ago. good way to start the day.

i followed that with a stuckometer cd sturat arnot gave me when hard pan trio played. pretty nasty stuff. tom described it as sounding like prison sex. only 2 tracks but they cover so much territory it sounded like more.

i also heard some early mixes of truckers of husk’s upcoming album which’ll sound rad when it comes out on shape.

i’m trying a little experiment.

i’ve ditched my entire itunes library. it was something like 180gb or 56 days worth of downloaded, bought and ripped music.

inevitably, much of it was, shall we say, illegitimately obtained. i’m not really that interested in the murky waters of music piracy for now.

i’m interested in how my relationship to music has changed.

a few years back i spent a long time finding new music through blogs and all that. i went on somewhat of a downloading frenzy. i also became concerned by file quality and lossless formats to the extent i re-sourced many albums in flac format before getting frustrated with itunes lack of flac support and converting it all to alac. to actually find stuff in such a large library i found myself organising the wealth of mislabeled crap and devoted large chunks of time to these worthless endeavours.

meanwhile much of the actual music went un-listened too. one doesn’t have the time to wade through that much music, one’s relationship to it was more that of a librarian maintaining order and ultimately it was far more rewarding to bring out old favourites from adolescent times.

i mean jeez… looking at that ‘list’ of music (regardless of coverflow) is one of the least inspiring activities!

i had a massive cull, deleted loads of stuff i knew i didn’t want anymore but still, it made no real difference.

after reading amanda brown’s recent article in the wire - http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/7267/ - i decided drastic measures were called for.

i loaded up itunes, selected everything and hit delete. about 4 minutes later and trash emptied all my music is now gone.

about 8 years ago i was flat broke following a ruined relationship. i had no income and was back at my parents. the only real asset i had was a fairly sizeable record collection so i sold it all. it was a really emotional thing to do and i still remember longingly the ciccone youth album i used to own or a complete dinosaur jr discography amongst sun ra and throbbing gristle plates.

this time round i felt nothing. absolutely nothing. i’m kinda disturbed and surprised by that. i have no sense of loss what-so-ever.

in order to re-connect myself with the music i love i’m gonna try keeping a little listening diary on this here blog.

i don’t promise it’ll be complete or accurate. it is but a mere experiment.

It’s been a little quiet on the NASA front, too much time’s been taken up with yajé and Rusty Trombone etc.

I’m pleased to announce a live date in September. The split EP should be ready in September too so expect to see a bit more of me.

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