Nice 'tache...

My Dolar presentation notes now up on Vocalities blog

My notes about Mladen Dolar's essay 'The Metaphysics of a Voice' from A Voice and Nothing More are up on the Vocalities blog now. It's tentatively titled 'The phony schizophony and Derrida’s questionably founded phonocentrism'.  I'd really like to hear others thoughts on the subject so get in touch. Also, please bear in mind that this is the text I used for a presentation so if it's a little casual in places that's why.

Vocalities Blog + Fourier + Bussoti

Last year there was a blog for the Vocalities lectures. Soon I hope to get logins for this an anyone who would like to contribute can just ask me for an invite. There is already a lot of thought provoking content on there from last years group- so take a look. Also I'll probably be posting my notes on Mladen Dolar's "The Metaphysics of the Voice" from A Voice and Nothing More there.

Also - notice I changed the title picture? I felt the equalizer gif was a bit annoying, so instead there is an image of Charles Fourier's phalanstere - just to reflect the communal premise of this blog...

I'll sign off with some random Sylvano Bussotti for a cold dark night - I'd like a book of all his scores!

Pre-ramble for Vocalities - Mladen Dolar, Voices, Echos, Signifiers & Actions

Just read through Mladen Dolar's essay "The Metaphysics of a Voice", if I wasn't so pushed for time I'd go back and read it again, one of the most fascinating and enjoyable essays I've read for ages. It's left me pondering upon so many questions. Is The Wilhelm Scream an action turned into a word through repetition and mixing? Is sound, when it breaks from musicality (text, logos) action? How can we trace the dichotomy of the scary masculine, fatherly Shofar trumpet and echo's flutey musical feminine teasing into contemporary sonic modes of praxis? AND despite the engendered genesis of these two trains of thought why does fear or apprehension result from both? How can these be utilised in order to vivisect the dragged out DJ Screw murmurs of famous rappers? Or warps labels metallic contortions of vocal samples or james blake??? Also - can one use the story of echo and narcissus to interpret the reverb soaked post-productions of Witch House???

Paleonymic Resonance Diagram

I thought I'd upload a diagram I used in my essay, I've probably tried to explain this strange paleonymic notion of mine a few times to any poor soul who asks about my essay...but yeah can't beat a bit of pseudo-science. Mobius strip monday...

Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg: 'A World of Glass' at Camden Arts Centre

Me and Baiba saw A World of Glass  (Nathalie Djurberg with Music by Hans Berg) at the Camden Arts Centre yesterday (there is a great review by Nathan Budzinski in the Wire 334 December issue, p18, Cross Platform: Sound in other Media). It felt like a very heady, enveloping cocktail. Liquid clay danced across two opposing screens, between which tables of cryonic semi-transparent ornamental frankensteins loomed and vibrated and tempered the glassy and icy chinks of Hans Berg's music. Glass, Ice, Melted Clay and Sound. Film, sound, material, space and light.

The perceptual affect of the materials left me dwelling upon my own reading of the work. The frosty mutant ornamentation loitering between the screens was not glass, nor ice, but actually a plastic (polyurethene I think) used to to fill moldings taken from such whimsically domestic assemblages. Nonetheless, I still fell for it's disguise; in a darkened room with bass filling the air I didn't want to breath on the shapes for fear of melting them. I also grew acutely aware of how Hans Bergs music was 'interacting' with the space and the objects in such space. The bass felt worrying, as if a delicate frosted thimblesque 'thing' may trip under it's weight and damage it's beautiful self. The high pitched 'tinks' and 'chinks' pierced the projector lit room with tenacity and my mind wandered onto rather geeky trains of thought concerning the resonance of such sounds within the glassy tabletop forests. I left with questioning how much of the experience was mediated by my own projection of the the material and spacial properties around me, to what degree did the fantasy of glass, ice, air and water shape my experience of the work?

Nathalie Djurberg's films were magical and enthralling, the horrific, dark fables of "vulnerability, desire and suffering" reflected, in an almost off camber mode of conceptual convergence: the brutal materiality of nature. Anthropocentric situations were subverted and negated through plays of primal desires, depictions of harrowing survival instincts and fleshed out enquiries of prey-predator dynamics.

The juxtaposition of knowing (or loaded) sensory mediators (the dark space, the glassy objects, the ice cavern sounds etc) and the gory claymotion explorations of life and materiality at it's most natural, brutal and base - essentially a de-anthropothizing of the viewers materiality concepts  - created a profound tension.

Cool things in the wire

There are a few cool things in the wire this month (the December issue). Carey - "Modern Love are gearing up for a quadruple LP set of unreleased Daphne Oram material, due before the end of the year, with a CD release to follow in Janurary". AND: Mark Fisher is to get "vacuum sealed inside an Entr'acte release. Monologues 1, the first in a new series of 'audio publications' from the label, features Fishers discourse on "The Poor And The Proletariate"...". Spinn and Rashad do the invisible jukebox (I'm listening to loads of Juke at the moment, especially lil jabba's Swisha). Autechre, Shackleton, The Bangs and Works mixes, Sunn 0))) etc are also reviewed... yeah, a little too excited by the wire this morning... i'll sign off with Autechre's "Arch Carrier" to accompany all this fevered fandom:

Wire Radio, 'Rewired 27 October 2011'

Thought the first post could be something fun, namely a link to a nice mix on The Wire radio: linky (tracklist here too).