Author Archives: cherry bomb

broadcast and the focus group investigate witch cults of the radio age (2009)

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“The entire album is an exorcism of an dead universe. Nothing can stay together here. It’s hauntology as a pasture of incidental tones and half-ripped photographs. The video footage is unable to focus. The lens’s view is eternally obstructed. The wild blurs of compounded biographies come off like a fever dream of a memory play.”  – Timothy Gabriele (12 November 2009). Broadcast and the Focus Group: Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age – PopMatters.

“i’m inspired: i cannot understand hate”: ray chikapa phiri 1947-2017

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sisgwen's avatarsisgwenjazz

“Songs as truthful as a dream/flow as steady as a stream/A stream of knowledge and of pain…”

Ray oldIf any words summed up the work of Raymond Chikapa Enoch Phiri, who died of lung cancer on Wednesday, aged 70, in his birthplace, Nelspruit, it was those. They come from the 1986 song he co-wrote with the Ashley Subel: Whispers in the Deep (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy9QPjUkvvM) – a song that became one of the decade’s anthems of liberation, and lives still.

Phiri’s Malawi-born father, “Just Now” Phiri, was a guitarist, and that family history gives the lie to all the xenophobic myths that cringe before colonialist borders. Migrant workers just like ‘Just Now’ built the economy, and fattened capitalist profits with their sweat. But they also built South African culture and music through the sharing, swapping and inventing of ideas that took place in hostels, shebeens and backyards. The king of instruments…

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mondo grosso – ラビリンス (labyrinth) (2017)

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In my daydreams I am sometimes this girl.

Starring：Hikari Mitsushima

Creative Director：Nozomu Hayashi (HAKUHODO DY MEDIA PARTNERS)
Director：Takeshi Maruyama
Producer：Yuki Miyamoto (HAKUHODO PRODUCT’S)
Director of photography：Chigi Kanbe
Assistant Director : Yuzuru Tatebe
Planner：Motoki Uno (HAKUHODO)
Hair & Make-up：Sayuri Yamashita (3rd)
Stylist：Babymix
Stylist assistant：Mana Iwanami
Choreography, Dance Inspired by Jillian Mayers

(English Subtitles by Junko Otsubo）

NEW ALBUM「何度でも新しく生まれる」
2017.6.7 Release
2017.6.6 Digital Release

http://www.mondogrosso.com/

Behind the scenes:

john o’donohue – for one who is exhausted (2008)

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When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The tide you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.
___
from ‘To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings’ (Doubleday, 2008).

Thank you, Michelle, for sending this to me.

姚莉 – 春天不見了 (c. 1940)

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Yao Lee – Spring is Gone… The deterioration of the film stock here is poetry.

From Wikipedia:

Born Yáo Xiùyún (姚秀雲) and raised in Shanghai, Yao began performing on the radio in 1935 at the age of 13. When she was 14, she recorded her first single with Yan Hua (嚴華) called “New Little Cowherd” (新小放牛, Xin xiao fang niu). After being introduced by singers Zhou Xuan and Yan Hua, she was signed to Pathé Records when she was 16 in 1937, and the first record she released with the label was “Yearning for Sale” (賣相思, Mai Xiang Si).[1]

She married Huang Baoluo (黃保羅) in 1947 and ceased performing on stage to devote time to her family. Following the Communist seizure of power in China in 1949, popular music was considered ideologically suspect and Yao fled to Hong Kong in 1950 to continue her singing career there. In addition to releasing hit records, beginning in 1955 with the film 桃花江 (Peach Blossom River), she often acted as a playback singer for movie superstars. Many of the featured songs would also become popular. She stopped singing in 1967 upon the death of her brother but took an executive position with EMI Music Hong Kong in 1969. In 1970, she returned to performing and travelled to Taiwan to perform there for the first time and sought unsuccessfully to sign Teresa Teng to EMI for the Hong Kong market. She retired officially in 1975 but remained supportive of singers such as Wakin Chau.

smog – i break horses (peel sessions, 1997)

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Bill Callahan: ‘Spend a night with an owl and you’ll see more blood than sleep. A song like “I Break Horses” has often been misconstrued. Some people tell me, “Ah, I get it– we are all murderers under the skin!” That’s not it. I don’t give a shit about people’s dark sides. I wrote that song to help a friend try to understand how a guy she had a one-night stand with could possibly not return her phone calls the next day or ever again. There is also a lot more going on with that song, but that was the impetus. It is rooted in Good.’
(SOURCE)

living next door to alice (in W-LAN) (2010)

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off with her head

i’m never really here
never really not here

this is the in-between
where we un-appear
in the web of day to day
it’s the back alleyway
that sucks us in

mind that gap, gal, you say,
it’s no zero-sum game.

ja-nee
it’s a dirty crack habit
but i’m not paying, pal!

i’m chasing that rabbit
i’m hunting that quark
i’m ripping, unzipping
tumbling through the dark

i’m pulled, i’m polluted
the vertigo’s heady
the jostling vacuum
blaring and unsteady

warrens of voids
streaming past
screaming future
endlessly new
have i seen this already?

uh-huh, it’s not pretty
these blown-up dead pixels
no taste, so not witty
they stink like nothing

on earth

in asunderland
nothing rots

i’m always here, not-here
it’s off with me ’ead
when bored, i bore deeper
through holes yet unread

i need more; drop a fresh tab

hop a window

and i tiptoe
past the daemon
with a keygen
while it snores
unlock the door

to

another tube flickr-ing
twittering, bickering
low resolution
there’s no revelation
there’s no revolution
just revaluation
search optimisation
and too many shares

i spin rumpelstiltskins’
straw dogs into gold
using worm-riddled troll jam
i scavenge ‘twixt threads

i needle this grey gunk
i snip it to shreds
i bump and i juggle
grind bones badly bred

i flip and i giggle
i slough off my shame
i slurp it up, spew it out
flooding the drain

logged in or logged out
i have no real name
if I do it is M.U.D.
and i’m out of my death

and where is my body?

my own flesh and blood
it sleeps with the ‘fiches
not holding its breath

see, it doesn’t do digital
it keeps crashing
so it’s chained to the terminal
wired to the grid
with a stay of execution

logged on or logged off
the haunted dimension
buzzes in my marrow
drowns out my dreams
howls me back
out of bed
out of the car
out of the street
from the supermarket
from the sunset
from supper
in a stupor
on my phone
into my inbox
unto my outbox
onto the blog

*welcome to [UR(hel)L]*

you can’t turn off a never-present stranger.

(2010)

alice1

holly herndon – chorus (2014)

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Holly Herndon / Akihiko Taniguchi – Artist / Video Director Statements

Holly Herndon: “So much of Chorus was constructed by spying on my own online habits. It felt fitting to invite Akihiko, who I had been spying on online for a long time before my approach, to contribute the visual treatment of the piece.”

Akihiko Taniguchi: “I was interested in exploring the textures of daily necessities and the embodiment / physicality of the computer and Internet. One of the most striking contemporary images is that of the desktop capture, which is seen commonly on YouTube as part of software tutorials. I like the shots of desktops that are poorly organized and ‘lived-in’.

Referencing one of my earlier pieces “study of real-time 3D Internet”, I considered how it corresponds to the personal environment outside of the screen and how particular it is to my identity and my friend’s identities. I asked several friends to photograph their desktop environments and then rendered these images with custom 3D software, shooting video by moving throughout this virtual space. This video is a collection of records of life of friends and their Internet environments.”

Herndon: “I love the idea of depicting the mundane and quotidian in high definition, and how evocative and individual each of these spaces are. Thinking about intimacy and the laptop is familiar territory for me. I’ve also been thinking a lot about privacy, particularly in light of the ongoing revelations regarding the NSA, which add a more sinister sub-narrative to Akihiko’s piece.

The most crucial conversations happening in technology at the moment focus squarely on our work space, our email, our iSight and our smart phone, and how much we can honestly claim those spaces to be ours at all in an era of indiscriminate and imperceptible surveillance.”

___

In this audio-visual talk recorded at Ableton’s Loop summit for music makers in 2016, Holly Herndon describes the role process plays in her creative vision. Drawing on her experience as a recording artist, her studies at Mills College and Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, Holly discusses the conceptual frameworks surrounding her process-based composition methods. Using audio and video examples from her recent work she reflects on how government surveillance, internet age aesthetics and collaborations with Mat Dryhurst, Metahaven and others inform her mission to capture the ‘sound of now’.

And here’s an interesting interview from 2015.

james baldwin and margaret mead – a rap on race (1971)

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“In honor of the release of James Baldwin: I Am Not Your Negro documentary, we’ve decided to share the rare audio version of the classic conversation between Margaret Mead and James Baldwin from 1971. Long out of print, original LP sells for 3 figures. Courtesy The Charles Woods Collection. For educational purposes. No rights given or implied. Feel free to comment/share/subscribe. Share original link whenever possible.”