Save Our Sounds

Having had a good year-long break from blogging, I thought I’d pop by to share with you something I came across the other day – the BBC World Service’s wonderful Save Our Sounds initiative. The aim of the project is to create an online audio archive of the world in sound, and users can upload recordings and listen to others’ using the Save Our Sounds map.

Listening to Kate Arkless Grey’s recording of the bustling sounds of traders and snake-charmers at the Djemaa El Fna in Marrakech, Martin William capturing Cuba from the backseat of a taxi and Liz Blessing’s recording of a Brooklyn street,  I’m being reminded of places I’ve been or getting a sonic preview of places I might want to visit. It’s travelling on a budget - I instantly smell, feel and visualise.

Some of the Save Our Sounds recordings have little or no geographical relation per se, such as the sound of Julia Longacre sharpening her pencil in Portland, Oregon. Others are very specific, exemplified by Brad Fidler who has captured helicopters flying overhead in Los Angeles as news broke about the death of Michael Jackson. Then there are the endangered sounds and Guy Delauney’s recording of the chanting monks in Phnom Penh. It’s a soundbite that might cease to be anything but a soundbite if the Cambodian government’s wish to keep Buddhist monks off the streets becomes a reality. No written document could ever do the sound  justice, and the recording becomes an integral part of history.

Talking about field recordings – sound recordist Chris Watson has been off my radar until I did some research for an album  review of Norwegian ambient artist Biosphere’s Wireless Live at the Arnolfini, Bristol. Turns out Watson recorded the performance. Reading up on Watson I not only (re)discovered the marvel of Micro-Phonies (Watson’s a former member of Cabaret Voltaire), I also dipped into his wonderful field recordings, more specifically his Weather Report from 2003.

Putting on an album to actively listen to nature is, quite obviously, different to physically experiencing the same sounds. Being at the scene, there are bound to be distractions. You might choose to ignore them, but chances are that instead of listening to the rain, you’ll be faffing around trying to find an umbrella. Instead of listening to the bees, you’ll be busy waving them away from the ice cream you’re trying to enjoy on a hot summer’s day. But with the sounds on their own, removed from their respective visual companions, it’s easier to hear that a waterfall or musk deers running across a field are in fact music.

I’m digressing. What I wanted was to encourage whoever stumbles across this blog to visit the Save Our Sounds page. Listen and upload and make the World Service’s sound map a rich experience. For now, and for times ahead.

Sacred samples?

Beatmakers spend hours of crate digging searching for obscure releases with sample potential. And spending an equal amount of time are those dedicated to sourcing the samples once they’ve been made into beats and released.

On Last.fm there are groups searching to expose these carefully selected snippets, and lists of original samples used by various beatmakers on various albums keep appearing online – to some beatsters great annoyance. Madlib, possibly one of the most exciting beatmakers at present and the man behind Quasimoto, Jaylib and Yesterdays New Quintet, recently requested the removal of a page revealing the original tracks he used on Madvillainy, claiming the post would ruin him as an artist.

I understand there might be a certain risk involved if the samples haven’t been cleared, but if paperwork hasn’t been dealt with prior to release, that’s a risk you take. Or is Madlib just trying to protect his sources?

Surely Madlib and others should be pleased about instilling a hunger for discovering new music in people, making sure that old tracks too good to be forgotten escape precisely that destiny. Thanks to compilations of the original samples from J Dilla’s Donuts and MF Doom’s Operation: Doomsday, I’ve discovered Atlantic Starr, James Ingram, The Deele, the fantastic Only One Can Win by The Sylvers, and realised that I should probably give Dionne Warwick’s stuff a second chance.

Why be so protective and possessive about one’s music? If you don’t want people to interact and respond, maybe it’s worth thinking twice before releasing it in the first place.

Top 5 gigs ever – so far…

…in no particular order.

Live performances nowadays are often hyped. Since the record industry started locking horns with illegal downloaders, live shows have become bands’ main source of income. Hence people tour a lot and, judging by many of the gigs I’ve been to over the past five years, play on autopilot. Which, in my book, is far away from the purpose of live music. If you wanted to hear a band run through their album note for note, you might as well save the ticket money and turn up the volume on your stereo instead.

This list is made up by artists and bands who have made an effort. Who, by performing live, have taken their music to new levels:

1) D’Angelo at the Quart festival in Kristiansand, Norway 2000

I’ve never been too fond of festivals – mud, crowds, a lot of waiting around having to listen to annoying bands to secure a good spot for the ones you’re really there to see – but when I heard D’Angelo was checking in at Quart touring his second studio album Vodoo, the cons couldn’t keep me away. The Vodoo-themed appearence of the band, the crazy, kick-ass versions of the songs, the jams, the moves, the sweat and D’man’s powerhouse of a voice – after the gig people were so blown away they were on the ground laughing, words being completely inadequate to describe the experience.

2) Rilo Kiley at Shepherds Bush Empire, London, UK 2007

Nothing is off-limits for Rilo Kiley. Double guitars, latin rhythms and ‘I love you’s – if it sounds good, they’ll put it in their music. Prior to this gig they had just released Under the Blacklight and oozed of self-confidence about their new material. Jenny Lewis, coming across as a young Stevie Nicks, sang for all the girls and their heartaches on top of smooth chords in an interesting set that varied between electric and acoustic.

3) Essex Green at Checkpoint Charlie, Stavanger, Norway

Essex Greens’ tunes are simple, charming, and shrewd. At Checkpoint they brought these qualities into their performance, musically and visually, leading to a no-frills, cut-through, and authentic experience. Just good people making good music, and one of those gigs you walk away from feeling inspired and full of belief in music and mankind (they just seem so nice!).

4) Daedelus at the Luminaire, London, UK 2007

People who slip in an ironic smirk when they talk about lads with laptops should go see Daedelus and be deservingly face-slapped. Daedelus doesn’t do much but fiddle with buttons and layer samples and beats, but the feeling, the guts, the elegance and the sophistication is in the way he combines them. I was sweating by the end of it.

5) Herbie Hancock at the Malecon in Havana, Cuba 2001

I’d been travelling Cuba with my friend, and after a month we reached Havana. We were tired and full of impressions, and when our hostess said there’d be a ‘famous American piano player’ playing in the streets that evening, we unenthusiastically strolled down in lack of anything better to do. Malecon was crowded, and I could just about glimpse that someone was positioning themselves behind the keys. When I heard the opening notes of Chameleon I could hardly believe it. It was a crazy experience, and Mr Hancock delivered a mighty fine set together with a full salsaband line-up.

Robert Rauschenberg – Pop Art and Neo Dada

Sometimes art has an immediate appeal. Steinbeck’s East of Eden had me captured from line one, the same goes for Debussy’s angelic soundscapes. There’s no need for analysis, but plenty of enrichment to be found if you do.

Robert Rauschenberg’s (1925-) art can be added to this list. Art fanatics will argue that non-provocative art is no art at all, but Rauschenberg’s compositions and choice of colours offer satisfaction and contentment without losing its power. They’re beautiful works to be admired per se, not relying on provoked connotations. If my memory serves me right, this is entirely in touch with Rauschenberg’s intentions, particularly in his early years, and is the thought behind his White Paintings (1951). By painting and exhibiting white canvases, he attempted to remove his work from all narrative and context, inspiring contemporary composer John Cage to write 4’33” (1952) – a piece where musicians perform 4.33 minutes of silence.

Rauschenberg was in many ways a pioneer in his field, always pushing for new definitions. My favourite story is when he was invited to participate in an exhibition at the Galerie Iris Clert in 1961, where artists where to create portraits of the owner Iris Clert. Rauschenberg’s contribution was a telegram sent to the gallery, reading “This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so”.

 

It’s Christmas…

…and ’tis the season to be jolly. Well, if you’re having problems getting into the Christmas spirit, I hereby share with you my no-fail remedy that will have you shopping for a tree, buying Christmassy wrapping paper, whipping up puds and thinking about your friends and family with extra fondness in no time – a Wham! fix. No probs, it’s the least I could do.

Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth

It’s always a big event when a new contribution to the Tate Modern’s Unilever Series is announced. The idea is brilliant – giving an artist free reign in the enormous Turbine Hall on the gallery’s ground floor. So naturally, when Colombian sculptor Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth opened this October, I headed for London’s embankment.

Salcedo is familiar with large-scale projects. For the 8th Istanbul Biennial in 2003, she filled a gap between two houses with 1600 wooden chairs. At the Tate, she has carved out a gigantic crack in the cement floor that stretches from one end of the hall to the other.

As installations usually do, the crack comes with an array of symbolism. The big divide, segregation, separation, racial indifferences. The word Shibboleth in itself means, “a peculiarity of pronunciation, behavior, mode of dress, etc., that distinguishes a particular class or set of persons” (source: dictionary.com).

Still, standing in the Turbine Hall surrounded by school kids trying to stick their feet into the crevice, the installation seemed utterly pointless. And as I followed the snaky gap from one end to the other, it struck me that the big fuzz surrounding every new Unilever Series installation is due to Olafur Eliasson’s The Weather Project from 2003/2004. The gigantic artificial sun was a huge hit with Londoners and tourists alike, and people would pay multiple visits to the Turbine Hall to have their sense of proportion shaken up by the big yellow disc at the far end of the room, and to spend time in the soothing light it provided. None of the other artists have managed to create the same public stir, and for a reason. Bruce Nauman’s speakers montage, Rachel Whiteread’s towers of white boxes and Carsten Höller’s spiralling slide were all dull contributions in comparison. Yet we all continue to hurry along for every new Unilever launch, hoping for a potential Eliasson experience.

The only clever thing about Salcedo’s Shibboleth is how it’s been designed. Angles are unnaturally sharp hence look very constructed, which in turn could be interpreted as social and cultural divides being man-made. Apart from that, Shibboleth isn’t particularly fascinating or, considering the space, overpowering. Nor is it irritating or provocative. It’s just a very, very big crack.

George Orwell – part writer, part tramp

It’s pure joy reading English writer George Orwell’s (1903-1950) work. He has a wonderful, simplistic and very economical way with words, which makes all his prose, points, and puns extremely succinct and to the core. Being a journalist, he favoured clear and concise English, and detested when people used big words thinking it would make them appear clever. In fact, this issue got to him so much, that he wrote an essay about it in 1946 called Politics and the English Language – an entertaining piece of writing, and highly recommended reading.

Orwell is probably best known for his novels Nineteen Eighty-Four, the almost prophetic tale about an extreme big brother society, and Animal Farm, a satirical criticism of the Stalin regime. Lesser known, perhaps, is Orwell’s account of his life as a tramp in Paris and London in the late 1920s, early 1930s. Orwell was from the ‘lower upper middle class’, as he preferred to call it, and had no problems paying for his own food and housing. But he wanted to investigate the conditions of the poor and deprived, and concluded that the best way to obtain such knowledge accurately, would be to familiarise himself with the homeless’ lifestyle first-hand. So for a period, Orwell voluntarily became a tramp, and published his recollections in 1933’s Down and Out in Paris and London.

In many ways the book made Orwell a pioneer for New Journalism, a style of writing spearheaded by journalists such as Tom Wolf and Hunter S. Thompson in the 1960s and 70s, where one of the key aspects was for the journalist to go to great lengths in order to absorb himself/herself fully in a subject matter. Many would argue that for an outsider to step into a ‘new’ society for a short period, and afterwards claim to know what that particular society is all about, is impossible and utter nonsense. But that’s a long discussion, and a whole other blog in itself.

What I wanted to share, however, and the reason for writing this little piece about Orwell, is an excerpt from Down and Out in Paris and London. Orwell’s writings are always saturated with clever observations, but this is one of my absolute favourites:

“Is a plongeur’s [dishwasher and kitchen assistant] work really necessary to civilisation? We have a vague feeling that it must be ‘honest’ work, because it is hard and disagreeable, and we have made a sort of fetish of manual work. We see a man cutting down a tree, and we make sure that he is filling a social need, just because he uses his muscles; it does not occur to us that he may only be cutting down a beautiful tree to make room for a hideous statue.”

- George Orwell -

“We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free.” – Bill Hicks -

Stand-up comedy is a tricky genre. Unless you arrive at a formula that shrewdly balances social commentary, stupidity, edginess, tits-and-arse humour, topped off with a remarkable stage presence, people will laugh at you for the wrong reasons. Or worse, they won’t laugh at all.

Watching stand-up comedians, many seem to come from the same kind of upbringing as the tonedeaf people who have been tricked into auditioning for the X-Factor by their mum, who for some reason believe that her daughter is the next Celine Dion. Just because you’re able to crack up the winos in your local pub, doesn’t mean you’re born to hit the big stage. See, pretending to fart is funny, but only for a minute. Even man-tits jokes wash out after a while.

“The worst kind of non-smokers are the ones that come up to you and cough. That’s pretty fucking cruel isn’t it? Do you go up to cripples and dance too?” – Bill Hicks -

With Bill Hicks it’s a different tale. Mixing intelligence with dark comedy, Hicks did what so many comedians seem to be afraid of. He talked about what mattered, be it politics, wars, the powers of marketing, religion, homosexuality, gun culture, etc. He refused to be held back, and his 1993 performance at the David Letterman show was consequently pulled as it allegedly collided with the CBS’s Standards and Practices.

Hicks was born in Georgia in 1961, and was at age 17 already a hit-performer at the Comedy Workshop in Houston, Texas. He had a great career, but a short life, and died of pancreatic cancer in 1994, 32 years old.

But, as with all great artists, their work lives on. And Hicks’s acts have become more and more relevant with time. History repeats itself, and Hicks’s sharp criticism of President George H. W. Bush, Saddam Hussein, the Gulf War and other significant events that took place during Hicks’s heyday, are just as applicable now.

“Go back to bed, America, your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed America, your goverment is in control. Here, here’s American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up, go back to bed America, here is American Gladiators, here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on the living in the land of freedom. Here you go America – you are free to do what well tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!” – Bill Hicks –

Hicks was an outcast. A sophisticated, raving mad, angry political commentator, who made people think about important stuff while wetting their pants. Truly one of the most important and brilliant stand-up comedians that has ever been.

“I’m gonna share with you a vision that I had, cause I love you. And you feel it. You know all that money we spend on nuclear weapons and defense each year, trillions of dollars, correct? Instead – just play with this – if we spent that money feeding and clothing the poor of the world – and it would pay for it many times over, not one human being excluded – we can explore space together, both inner and outer, forever in peace. Thank you very much. You’ve been great, I hope you enjoyed it.” – Bill Hicks –

James Dean as seen by Dennis Stock

I’m fascinated by James Dean. East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, they’re not fantastic movies, but by adding talent, quirkiness, good looks, and bundles of charisma, Dean’s performance alone has established these films as some of celluloid history’s absolute highlights.

It is through my Dean fascination that I discovered the American photographer Dennis Stock (1928-). Stock followed Dean around for a while, eternalising the many aspects of the young actor’s character.

Of course, Stock’s portfolio comprises more than just Dean. Stock followed the hippie movement in the 70s, and later moved on to explore urban architecture and nature photography.

But my favourites are by far his many atmospheric pictures portraying iconic Hollywood stars and renown jazz musicians from the late 50s and 60s. And the James Dean portraits, well, they are in a league of their own.

S(isters) W(ith) V(oices)

Some songs have a certain effect on me. They make me jump up and practice funky dance moves in my living room, while grinning hysterically and singing along really loudly.

I’m So Into You by my favorite 90s girl-group SWV fits into that category. I remember taping this song from the radio and listening to it non-stop when it first came out in 1992. Then I bought a discman, and my tapes where hidden away in a cupboard somewhere. And, shame on me, I forgot about SWV until listening to the GTA San Andreas soundtrack. And thank heavens for GTA, because this is a song to be treasured!

And the video – just fantastic. It’s so prototypically 90s – the styling, the colours, the moves, and the fact that it contains scenes that make no sense at all. I mean, what are the fencing costumes midways all about? Superb.