MMVII LOOKBACK

it’s that time…

British contemporary art magazine Frieze asked me to write an essay on the year in music. Results can be found in the Jan-Feb issue on newstands now (or soon), and it’s viewable online.

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my Top 10 List for WFMU contains RealAudio links, functioning as a kind of dispersed soundtrack to the above piece.

tonite’s radio show can be listened to. Expect a few killer Low Deep tracks (see below), an exclusive remix by Sonido Martines, new tunes by DJ C, The Bug, Michelle, and – always – more.

My OiNK piece is being translated to Italian and will be republished soon, details on that as they come. I’ve been busy doing heaps of writing for various ‘real’ publications — expect a wave of articles in 2008. Plus a followup to the OiNk post soon here on MuddUp!

The Low Deep instrumentals album is gorgeous instrumental grime and grime/r&b hybrids, showcasing his distinctive take on time and melodic orchestration. Self-released, purchase links on his myspace.

i first heard ‘Straight Flush’ years ago and was floored. happy to say that a handful of cuts are as good as that or even better… this mp3 wont be up for long. seems that, outside the grime scene, folks aren’t checking for Low Deep, which is too bad… i could see him making serious waves in the mainstream R&B world:

Low Deep – Never See Me Fall

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57 VARIETES SUB BIGAMIST

Karlheinz Karlheinz, one composers who helped shape a western at his home in Germany. He was audiences.

Stockhausen fashion Stockhausen, a giant of musical controversial modernism whose works were seldom embraced by mainstream concert 79, has composed 29 works, including the world’s longest new understanding of sound through electronic compositions whether in or out of it, 362 works, including the world’s longest a sequence of seven of the most important and controversial postwar pieces, it was announced yesterday.

Prolific, opera, Licht. 79 at the age of one for every day of the week. The 362 work lasts hours. he composed

METALLIC VIBRATIONS & GOOD APOCALYPSE MEDIA THEORY

Didac writes gently and poetically on distortion in Timbuktu, en español. i’ll find time to translate this.

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From Iowa (an equally exotic location), Anne distorts gentlemanly poetics and launches a thought-raft into the future, the grubby future //

A few days ago, Turkish friends in Berlin shared 6 gigabytes (!) of carefully selected Turkish & Balkan music with me. The hard drive folder was labeled For Repture by a guy whose name I couldn’t spell, either. Cross the Bosphorus, letters slip.

might as well dive in… with badass saz player Arif SaÄŸ. Here’s some breathtaking youtubery. The stately saz incandescently played on a prosaically irreal stage-set as the TV screen clocks Istanbul’s unchanging temp.:

the saz already resonates with telltale metallic soul. Plug it in, amplify — fx pedals optional — and you’ve got electro saz.

Arif SaÄŸ – Bahi Sabah from the Lambaya Puf De CD

NOTE the little blue arrow-thingy!! You can now use this Flash-player to preview MP3s before downloading.

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good apocalypse media theory (the sheep look up):

The idea that the poem of the future is a poem written by a programmer with her machine is an extension of the fantasy of the eternal life of the ephemeral stuff of first world living: fossil fuels, reliable power grids, stable climatic conditions, liberal democracies.

The poems of the future are more likely to be carved into junk-plastic rafts by refugees fleeing viral epidemics on wasted seas.

For my poem of the future I plan to lay out a pattern of trashed computer monitors, creating a pixellated vision of a poem from broken/not broken screens, and as the wealthy flee plagues and terrorist attacks in their private airplanes they can see this poem of the future from the sky they own.

Programmers and their machines do not create the poems of the future, they create the poems of the present. This might also be said of the lesser poetic technologists, those who google sculpt or employ social software for generative results, those who work in flash or code or photoshop or garageband.

-Boyer, Odalisqued
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HAPPINESS IN A MUG OF WARM TEA

He was fanatic for green tea.‭ ‬In particular a Chinese brand whose name translated to‭ “‬Proud Countryside‭” ‬which,‭ ‬unfortunately,‭ ‬was sprayed with American-manufactured pesticides,‭ ‬pesticides containing trace amounts of a known carcinogen‭ ‬–‭ ‬this is why the U.S.‭ ‬was pushing them on China‭; ‬in‭ ‬2003‭ ‬they became illegal to sell to American farmers so the factories simply exported‭ ‬–‭ ‬which would later give him an operable brain tumor,‭ ‬manifesting itself as acute memory loss and an aversion to commas‭ ‬or any sort of pause in his speech or writing. This made for a mesmerizing damaged monotone,‭ ‬words evenly spaced,‭ ‬devoid of intonation,‭ ‬even when excited,‭ ‬even when shouting in anger,‭ ‬which he did more often now that nobody noticed.

For even then he sounded like a robot on heroin.‭ ‬Word got around.‭ ‬People started to pay good money to hear him read Anaïs Nin books.‭ ‬B‭ = ‬O‭ = ‬R‭ = ‬E‭ = ‬D‭ = ‬O‭ = ‬M reserves a stab at the sublime.‭ ‬Back and forth,‭ ‬back and forth‭ ‬–‭ ‬but it’s hard to live in a world where you know exactly what will cause your cancer or disease.‭ ‬He didn’t then,‭ ‬in his tea-drinking days,‭ ‬and this is what explained his happiness.

FOUR CANDLES: a Mudd Up! Holiday Tale


Four candles burned. The ambiance was so soft, one could almost hear them talking…

The first candle said, “I am Peace!” “The world is full of anger and fighting. Nobody can keep me lit.” Then the flame of Peace went out completely.

Then the second candle said, “I am Faith!” “I am no longer indispensable. It doesn’t make sense that I stay lit another moment.” Just then a breeze softly blew out Faith’s flame.

Sadly the third candle began to speak. “I am Love!” “People don’t understand my purpose, so they simply put me aside. They even forget to Love those who are nearest them. I haven’t the strength to stay lit.” And waiting no longer, Love’s flame went out.

Suddenly…

A child entered the room and saw the three unlit candles. “Why aren’t you burning? You’re supposed to stay lit til the end.” Saying this, the child began to cry. Then the fourth candle answered, “Don’t be afraid, I am Hope!” At that moment someone in a nearby apartment started banging the wall with what sounded like a hammer. The candle said “while I am still burning we can re-light the other candles.” The banging grew louder.

With shining eyes, the child took the candle of Hope and lit the other candles. Then a fifth candle materialized. “I can’t feel my fingers” it said. Then the fourth candle tipped over. It shared its flame with the curtains, saying, “Try to night on fire!” “Love has seen so many bad things. How can you learn to be a candle in a downpour?” And waiting no longer, the fifth candle’s flame grew bright.

Smoke filled the room and the child could no longer see. The wallpaper started to make a horrible crackling noise.

The child doesn’t flinch. He’s transfixed by Love’s flame, which has spread to the walls and grown up around him like responsibility. The flame offers to take him to a world of steadiness whose heavy maternal vibe oozes Freudian comfort. A place where the very idea of injustice is unthinkable. The child smiles, eyes lit as if by batteries. Faith says, “Isn’t my whole thing about the notion that it is spiritually beautiful and even necessary to believe in something you can’t see or touch?”

Outside, the wind pushes dead leaves across a cold earth where people stagger home with unwrapped packages. Their foreheads closed. The Mayor fingers a tiny wax-paper package stamped with a blue scorpion. His package. His office.

Each person at home. Each home as lonely as a person in a hospital room with a stranger snoring beside them. A cockroach scurries up the wall on at least eight spider-like legs. Bugs! “Made from chemicals, brass, plastic cables.”

“… need Faith” says Truth to Love, troubled at the thought that Faith hasn’t said anything since the child grabbed Hope and lit it like a cubist Xmas tree or a rainbow of ice cubes thrown up in the air and frozen. Suddenly the hammering stops. Conversation freezes. Awareness spreads that the door has been forced open. By what? After a tremendous crash there is nothing. So quiet! No candle dare speak. Someone throws open a window. Smoke billows out. The child stops coughing. The candles soften. One can almost hear Hope say “We need Faith,” to Love, to combat a forever silence.