Music on my iPhone right now

Bernard Sjazner: Superficial Music
Cabaret Voltaire: The Voice of America
Carlos Perón: Impersonator I
David Bowie: Low
David Bowie: Heroes
David Sylvian: Secrets of The Beehive
Ennio Morricone: Duck You Sucker OST
Ennio Morricone: Once Upon A Time in The West OST
Giorgio Moroder: American Gigolo OST
Haunted Weather: Music, Silence and Memory - compiled by David Toop
Human Audio Sponge (aka HASYMO): Live in Barcelona
J.A.M: Just A Maestro
John Zorn: The Big Gundown
Jon Hassell: Earthquake Island
Liliental: Liliental
Liquid Liquid: Slip In And Out of Phenomenon
Lost Jockey: Professor Slack
Luciano: Fabric 41
Master Musicians Of Jajouka: Apocalypse Across The Sky
Mikey Dread; African Anthem
Nico: Frozen Borderline
Ø: Oleva
Patti Smith & Kevin Shields
Pandit Pran Nath: Raga Cycle: Palace Theatre, Paris 1972
Radiohead: In Rainbows (Expanded)
Rombery Homicide Division (self made Michael Mann soundtrack)
Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda
Sigur Ros: Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Serge Synthesizer Volume One - Synthesizer Demonstration Record
Tangerine Dream: Thief OST

YMO 2008

"I was the ideas man" Hosono


"I was the populariser, the communicator" Takahashi


"And I did the theory" Sakamoto

On one hand I am happy that YMO are back, because now I can read things like this new interview from The Guardian and can see pictures like the above from their June show at the Massive Attack curated Meltdown Festival in London. Also I can look forward to their new single out next month. But sadly one thing I cannot do is attend a YMO concert. Why ? Because US promoters are ASLEEP. :(

Northern Lad

Mark E Smith the front man of Manchester's notorious long-running post punk band The Fall is a typical Northerner, he doesn't give a toss what people think and constantly takes the piss. Now he's written a tell-all book - well as close as he'll come to telling all.


Here's an extract

Twelve going on 60 - that's what people used to say about me: a 12-year-old wanting to be a 60-year-old man. I couldn't stand music when I was that age. I hated it, thought it was vaguely effeminate. Music to me was something your sisters did.

And I couldn't stand my sisters. Sometimes in the school holidays when my mam and dad were at work, I'd be looking after five fucking girls: my three sisters, this adopted kid, and another whose parents were abusive to her. This was late the 60s or early 70s, and they'd have been about four or five at the time.

I devised this thing called "Japanese prison camp". I'd make them sit in this room under a table with a big cloth over them because the air force might be coming. I'd be the Japanese guard. "You can't go out. You must stay under there," I'd tell them. Then I'd shut the door, say I was going to the bridge on the River Kwai, have some pop, go out with my mates and, half an hour before my mam and dad came home, I'd return, saying, "Japanese prison camp is now over."

If they escaped, the punishment would be "No lemonade." They used to love it. Throw sweets under the cloth. Good laugh.

They always remember it, my sisters, when they get a bit pissed: "We remember Japanese prison camp. You don't fool us, you pop star." And my mam's going, "What's Japanese prison camp?" Today, we'd probably get investigated by the social services.

Anyway, my three sisters all had posters of Cliff and the Osmonds over the house. I was more into causing trouble, forming gangs and things like that. I used to have a few - Psycho Mafia, the Barry Boy gang. We'd fight other gangs. It was quite interesting; there used to be Irish gangs and Orthodox Jewish gangs. But the Psycho Mafia was a real melting pot, and I was the vice-president.

If there was somebody from another gang on the same paper round from another newsagents we used to set his papers on fire. Or put notes inside saying, "Piss off missus - your paper boy!" Things like that, little things.

We had a camp in St Mary's park, Prestwich - a little tent behind some trees, where we'd put knocked-off Kit-Kats and Lion bars, and copies of Playboy; made a lot of money flogging porn mags, selling them to the suckers behind the bike-sheds. The Irish lads would be like, "Who the hell wants to look at some woman with no clothes on? I can see it every day with me sister." But the fuckers would still buy them. We used to sell it per page. But Playboy was quite literary in those days, so some kids would say, "Have you got them four pages of Playboy?" And the front page would be a Playboy bunny, and the other three pages an interview with Norman Mailer: His Life in Question, or Hunting and Fishing in Nevada. Sometimes we'd even substitute it with pages from Woman's Own - some romance story.

I feel deeply sorry for a lot of kids nowadays. They're missing out on things.

As for school - Stand grammar - I never really liked it. By the time I was 14, my main ambition was to get out. I just wanted to sign on. Couldn't understand these lads and girls who wanted to stay around and be told what to do. I just wanted my own place. You could do that then - sign on and live - but not now. I started writing around that time as well, when I was 14, 15. I wasn't particularly influenced by anybody, just used to write short stories and little pieces to amuse myself.

I spent a lot of time in the library. Solitude. I was living in a small house with six or seven other people. It never bothered me much, really, but if I'm doing anything, I need room.

The thing about school was, I couldn't get my head around any of the prescribed books - The Hobbit, for instance. The master used to read us The Hobbit - can you believe it? That's all we used to talk about - small men in holes. We had a protest about it, against him. He used to room with JRR Tolkien, and that's all he'd ever talk about, his days with JRR. The prefects actually backed us up; because we were saying, "This is supposed to be English literature and we're reading this shit, this fairy story, when we're supposed to be reading Shakespeare and medieval poetry."

Another thing I objected to was the way they tried to tell you which university to go to, or, if you didn't want that, they already had a job worked out for you when you were 13 or 14. For instance, I was a two-O-level boy who was supposed to go and get a job in Kendals department store or, if not that then go and work in the civil service or the army. Unbelievable.

I started smoking when I was about 16. I don't think you need it really before then. I couldn't see the point to it. We used to write our names on walls and garages with Capstan Full Strength cig-ends. They were that strong, like black chalk - better than a pen.

I took acid before I had a packet of cigarettes, though, at 15. I was on acid before I even had any pot; pot was for hippies. I had no problem with the acid because it was proper LSD. I remember my sister giving me a copy of I Can Hear the Grass Grow by the Move - a second-hand copy. And I listened to it on acid. Couldn't believe it - knocks all that other psychedelic shit into touch.

If anything, I was doing acid to get away from the cider clubs and the sherry clubs. Kids of about 14 used to nick their mam's "British Sherry" and be sick all over the house. You could tell where they lived by the drink and vomit stains on the carpet.

My ambition at the time was to get a flat, take drugs, and not work. But I needed to be earning. My dad never gave me any money. I used to go to work on plumbing jobs with him in the summer holidays. Everybody else would be out playing or doing whatever, and I'd be cleaning toilets and drains out. I remember sweeping up and hearing the Move and the Kinks on the radio; good education.

My dad was very tough: a hard-case. Not in a violent way, but mentally. It must have been hard for him. I appreciate it now, though. He reminds me of the copper in Life on Mars, the Gene Hunt character. Characters like that were quite fair-minded in their own way. I'm not saying they're a perfect type, just that they have a lot of instinctive common sense. You see dads nowadays, always hanging around their kids. It's ridiculous. It's more about them than the kids, their ideas. My dad worked all day and he'd be out at night. But that's how it was in those days.

When I was on tour in the early days I used to ring my dad up and ask him to collect the mail, and he'd be like, "What are you doing?"

"I'm in Germany."

"What you doing there?"

"Doing very well."

"You must be mad."

Because he saw Germany as just a load of old women walking round with sticks and a load of rubble; still thinking it's 1946.

"Is this what it's come to?" he'd say.

I used to love it. I'd tell the other fellows and they'd go, "I'd cry if my father said that to me."

I couldn't afford to go to college; went for about three months but I never had any money. Looking back, I never liked college anyway - I educated myself better. But my dad was good like that. His philosophy was: "Look, if you've got a fiver in your pocket on a Friday night you're made." Real English working class - what you once thought of as a handicap comes in really useful later on when you're down on your luck or the band's got no money. I'll never forget that.

Fred, my grandad, was another pragmatist. He had a big plumbing shop in Salford near Strangeways prison on this green hillock. Eighteen apprentices. His idea of a good time was reading a book on plumbing, on how to dispose of shit.

He'd stand outside Strangeways and recruit ex-prisoners, get them making lathes and pipes. At the time they were recruiting for the army and he'd say, "You've got a choice - you either go to Ireland or you come with me."

I bump into them when I'm in Manchester sometimes - fellows who are about 55. They just come up and say, "You're Fred's grandson, aren't you?" and I'll be thinking, "Oh fucking hell. What are they going to say now?" But they're really complimentary - they say things like, "Your grandad met me outside Strangeways one Wednesday afternoon, and he turned my life around." Different times then, different people, unlike the ungrateful musicians I employ.

They say that there's a generation gap: you're not actually like your mam and dad, you're more like your grandfather or grandmother. In this respect I had more in common with my grandad than I did with my dad - just hiring people off the street. If they go, they go, if they don't, they don't. I'm not really bothered where people come from. Mind you, I don't understand why everyone makes such a big deal about where they go, either. The other members of the Fall came, they saw, they fucked off, and now I no longer see them. I find it all very boring, to be honest.

One of my first jobs was at the docks in Salford as a shipping clerk. They were much more free and easy. I was 16. People were great; I was working with dockers and shipping agencies. At the time it was incredible: big ships coming in from Canada, Nigeria, Ghana, full of fruit. I enjoyed my work. It was better than being at college. Got to see all sorts of people - Yanks, Nigerians, all wanting a pint as soon as they'd got off the boat - but I had to clear them, make sure all their insurance was all right.

In a strange way, I'm still very clerical about most things I do. I suppose I'm still in the Fall because it forces me to make something of myself, which in its own way is a very desk-job attitude to have. It's probably why I record so much. If it wasn't for the Fall, I'd be at home right now trying to motivate myself to write, but probably doing every other thing possible not to write. Fucking around with this and that. Going to the pub. Watching TV. It's that old writer's dilemma. Unless you're forced to work, you find yourself cleaning out the backyard as an excuse. I used to write in my lunch hour, jot things down. The docks gave me the time to do that.

But it's a good thing the Fall did happen because I got fired by this dickhead; got fired because I was a bit late. I'd been late a few times, but they'd just got this new management. Things were changing. Three-day week, candles on your desk ... One day there's no boats from Nigeria. All of a sudden it's machine parts from Germany. We're part of the Common Market now, so the dockers were mooning about, all miserable, blaming I don't know who.

I remember having a distinct feeling that this was all going to collapse around me. One minute I'm in the office doing imports and exports, going to work in my shirt and pants, normal-like, the next there's these twats there in Rod Stewart suits, running the fucking company. But they had this old accountant there, about 70. I'll never forget him: Trevor. He was like Rumpole. Smoked a pipe. He'd been in the Royal Navy, and he was always telling me: "Get out, Mark, get out now. You're too intelligent for this job."

He used to follow me to the toilet, asking me why I was still there. He was looking after me.

The new bosses came in like New Labour - a total overhaul. It all changed - the whole office - and eventually it all closed down. But I'd got the push long before. I knew it was coming: they'd always be getting me on my time.

I didn't mind being on the dole. I had a lot of time on my hands as a result. Other people went to university, but I read books, smoked cigs and looked around most days. It's good to have a period like that in your life, when you're not being forced to think like others. Don't get me wrong: I had my fair share of dull days and my diet wasn't the most healthy, but I read a lot of good books and wrote a lot, most of which found its way on to our first LP. I didn't think of it like that when I was writing, though. I just felt an urge to write.

If you're a cod-psychologist, I guess you could trace most of the Fall's output back to this period, to the wilderness years, the dole days - back to young Mark laying the hard foundations for the rough and brilliant years that he hasn't yet seen!

I never felt better than anybody, though, never felt superior, in that sort of arrogantly artistic way. That's why I never really liked John Lennon. He seemed very arrogant. It was all about being an artist with him - the living part was secondary to his stance. I think it's more important to be a man than it is to be an artist.

To certain people you've got to be a bit poetic, or a bit aggressive. They have their image of you - and I play up to it. But it's a protection, a screen. I can pull it out when I need it, because with some people you do need it. It's hard enough to draw breath some days, never mind with some daft scourge wanting to infect me with his shit. And invariably it's a bloke. It's funny, because with people like that, who feel the need to really press themselves on you, you can see the lad they were 20 or 30 years ago in their faces. They're disappointed with the way they've handled those years. Fuck all to do with me. I don't get it a lot but when I have, I've just pulled out my other side, the malevolent Mark side. That's always been enough to see them off.

Come the mid-70s, I was sharing a flat in Prestwich's Kingswood Road with my girlfriend, Una Baines. I wasn't in love with her, but you're stuck when you're on the dole - nowhere to go. We lived at the back of the mental hospital where Una worked. Biggest mental hospital in Europe; serious mental patients. I'd invite patients in for a cup of tea. Sit them down, play them some rock'n'roll, a bit of telly. Sometimes I think I did more good than all the nurses put together. They'd go out all cheerful.

Prestwich was quite a going place at the time. You could go in the Wilton, or the Priest's Retreat as it's called now, and you could get anything you wanted - acid, dope, anything. People talk about there being a lot of coke around now ... they should have seen it then.

The Fall just came about, really, with four of us holed up in that flat, doing our thing. Martin Bramah was the singer because he had the looks, Tony Friel was the bass player, I played the guitar and Una had the keyboards, once she had saved up to buy them. As far as I was concerned, it wasn't about trying to get our pictures in some paper or magazine or other - like it is with a lot of bands nowadays - it was because of sounds, of wanting to make something, to combine primitive music with intelligent lyrics. The punk scene had just started, and when I first saw the Sex Pistols at the Lesser Free Trade Hall in '76, I thought, "My lot are not as bad as that. We're better. We just need a drummer." So we got one in: a little bald man from Stockport called Dave.

A lot of people have lumped us in with punk, but I've never aligned myself with it. I didn't want to be part of a scene, never have. And I knew it wasn't going to last. Once that quick statement was over, most of the main players couldn't handle the fall-out: they were like a bunch of shell-shocked army majors stuck in time, endlessly repeating their once-successful war cries. When you're dealing in slogans like the Clash and the Pistols, it's hard to keep that shit fresh.

When the Fall played live it was: attack! People at the back of the room would be like, "Whoa! What the fuck is this?" Quite confrontational in a way ... But the songs were more like short stories; unlike every fucker else, we didn't just bark out wild generalisations. It was hardly surprising that nobody liked us.

We played all sorts of places, but used to get a better reception in youth clubs - kids' clubs. You go to a punk club in Middlesbrough and there'd be 20 strapping guys with their hair all stuck up - weekend punks, we used to call them - spitting at you all the time. But we always thought on a different level from the punks. What carried us through was the strength of the music - that's how we won people over.

To be honest, though, it wasn't a happy time. I've never been matey with musicians, even then. I think that's where I got off on the wrong foot. I'd had enough of gangs at school. That's where they get upset. Musicians don't like it if I spend time with other people, non-musicians. But who wants to hang around with the group all the time anyway? You spend enough time with them on the road, for fuck's sake.

Check out how thick his accent is in this wacky clip of Mark E Smith reading HP Lovecraft and now for some classic videos of The Fall.











And to close a new classic Mark E Smith as Jesus on the BBC comedy Ideal

Last week at Sonar

Wish I could have been in Barcelona for Sonar last week - "Mad" Mike Banks and Jeff Mills reunited to present for the first time ever a live version of their "militant", "pioneering" and "advanced," fifteen year old, long defunkt X-102 project. This totally one off show saw them present a new version of their classic album "X-102 - Discovers The Rings Of Saturn" (which was created with Robert Hood). The multimedia presentation also included the latest images of Saturn, obtained by the unmanned Cassini-Huygens space mission. Here's some crappy low res BS you tube video because there doesn't seem to be anything else out there coverage wise. It's shocking really, legendary event and no documentation ?? What is it with the world we live in ? Why is Black electronic music not taken as seriously as other forms of music ? I should be able to google this event and find more than this ... and while we are on the subject why isn't this kind of thing booked here in America where the music was birthed, grown and inspired ? After 20 years of living in America it is still shocking to me that the best and bravest American talent has to get on a plane to be appreciated.

RZA on the Ferry

Chess playing, Staten Island dwelling, Sci-Fi Hip Hop making RZA selects a soundtrack for a ride on the STATEN ISLAND FERRY (NY Magazine)

Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes: “Wake Up Everybody”
I remember listening to this as a little kid. I was really poor, and this song made me feel like there was hope.

Peter Brown: “Do Ya Wanna Get Funky With Me”
This is for when you’re heading to the ferry—I used to ride the dollar van, now I walk or ride the bus.

Andrea True Connection “More, More, More”
Listen to this when you go to the concession stand.

Force M.D.’s “Tender Love”
The ferry can be a very romantic place. Take it up to the third deck, you might get lucky and see a pretty woman sitting there alone, right when you pass the Statue of Liberty.

Eric B. & Rakim “My Melody”
This is for the hip-hop side. In the old days of the ferry, there were guys hustling loose joints downstairs. I can see me back then, getting my smoke on, listening to Rakim.

Run-DMC “My Adidas”
There was nothing like coming back to Staten Island fresh with your new Adidas on. I loved Adidas, and shit, I felt so cool when Run-DMC made this song.

Silver Convention “Fly Robin, Fly”
This reminds me of standing outside at the back of the boat, watching the bubbles blow up, seeing the pigeons fly up, maybe throwing them some food.

Paul Simon “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover”
When the Wu-Tang got popular, I would ride the boat just to get serenity. This is a song that I advise people to listen to. “Hop on the bus, Gus.” Now, he didn’t say get on the Staten Island Ferry, but that’s another way to do it.

Wu-Tang Clan “C.R.E.A.M.”
You gotta represent Staten Island. Also, it’s how to prepare yourself for New York City. This city’s all about the money.

Elton John “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”
As the Wu-Tang Clan, we needed to get off of Staten Island to find our real life. We used to meet on the ferry on our way to see Russell Simmons. Me and Ol’ Dirty got arrested on the ferry three or four times. I remember fighting cab drivers. Fighting Brooklyn niggas. Hitting on somebody’s girl, and then her boyfriend comes.

Odyssey “Native New Yorker”
This is when you’re approaching Manhattan. I really feel the Yankees, the mustard—I really feel New York when I hear this song.

McFadden & Whitehead “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now”
Now you get off the boat, you’re on your way to the real world. You should have this idea in your head—ain’t no stopping us now.

Don't get your hopes up of bumping into RZA playing his iPod on the Ferry - he doesn't take the Ferry anymore - he moved to LA LA land last year to get closer to the movie industry and start work on his first feature film "The Man with the Iron Fist."


Here he discusses his feelings about Chess to Martin Turrenne

"We have a problem in America, and definitely in the black community, of spontaneous reaction to situations without proper calculation. Chess is a game of calculation, it’s a game of analytical thinking and strategic planning. You’ve got to think two, three, four moves ahead. If brothers had that thinking in their life, maybe they wouldn’t end up dead or in jail.”

look no further

Check Eno's incredible VC3.

Freaky

You better watch out.

Liquid and more Liquid

Another reissue of possibly one of the greatest bands to ever emerge from NYC - Liquid Liquid - is the works "Slip In And Out of Phenomenon" features previously unreleased studio tracks "Lub Dupe," "Spearbox," "Sank Into The Chair," "Outer," and previously unreleased live cuts "Where's Al" "Groupmegroup," "Sank Into the Chair," "Elephant Walk," "Setmeonmyown," and "Not Again."



Sadly there is no US release for this - it'll be out on May 19th on Domino UK. There's also no news of when the 7 or so tracks they recorded for DFA will be released.

I asked Sal about this a few months ago and the rumor is they might play live again ! Fingers crossed - their show at Knitting Factory a good few years back was one of the best shows I seen in over ten years of living here.

Read a feature on Liquid Liquid from Fact Magazine and check out Sal Principato from the band talking to Red Bull Music Academy

Dixon

One of the nicest guys and best producer/ DJs in house music today - DIXON - interviewed over at Resident Advisor

Neu

My friend Mike Rubin's fantastic in-depth story on Neu can be read at the Daily Swarm - Mike actually visited the idiosyncratic and press-shy Germans in 2001 while researching a SPIN story on the long-awaited CD rerelease of Neu!‘s albums.

Minimal Hood

Robert Hood explains the development of minimal techno to RA-

RA: did minimal techno - as evidenced by (your classic albums) "Moveable Parts," "Internal Empire," and "Minimal Nation," all of which were released in 1993/94 - come about by accident or design?

"I would say it was by design, I had minimal ideas before I even learned how to turn on a drum machine. Around '92, everyone was just grabbing onto technology, everyone was big on tone generators. Rave was everything in techno then, you know, the gabba sound and stuff. I wanted a more humanistic approach. So I just focussed on what felt good to Robert, and not what the latest trends were. I knew it was the chordy, organistic, really stripped down minimal sound that was natural for me, so I embraced it and went for it."

Music Institute Detroit

"I really hurt, because I had the experiences when I was 18 of the Music Institute, which was like the Paradise Garage and Ron Hardy's club all in one, in Detroit. And kids don't have that these days." Carl Craig

On The Ranch with Riley

Question : Basically tell us who you are.

Terry Riley : Well I guess my music came to prominence around one piece called 'In C' which I wrote in 1964 at that time it was called 'The Global Villages for Symphonic Pieces', because it was a piece built out of 53 simple patterns and the structure was new to music at that time. No one had done anything like this before were you just had a piece built all out of patterns and the first concerts of 'In C' were kind of big communal events where a lot of people would come out and sometimes listen or dance to the music because the music would get quite ecstatic with all these repeated patterns. Although repetition is a major force in music it was never used in this way before. So, essentially my contribution was to introduce repetition into Western music as the main ingredient without any melody over it, without anything just repeated patterns, musical patterns. In the nut shell that was my own introduction into the world of western music.

Q: What were you doing before 'In C' came out?

T.R : I was working with Anna Halprin's Dance Company. I was working with tape loops, sort of primitive technology. This was in the late 50's early 60's. I was using tape loops for dancers and dance production. I had very funky primitive equipment, in fact technology wasn't very good no matter how much money you had. Everything was mono. Using these machines I would take tapes and run them into my yard and around a wine bottle back into my room and I would get a really long loop and then I would cut the tape into all different sizes and I would just run them out into the yard and I would record onto one machine just sound on sound. I would build up this kind of unintelligible layer, almost like some of these things you have been playing. It was like primitive sampling. I would take things like Junior Walker and his All Stars and would cut it up and play it backwards and stuff like that. Out of doing all that experimentation with sound I decided I wanted to do it with live musicians. To take repetition, take music fragments and make it live. Musicians would be able to play it and create this kind of abstract fabric of sound.



Q: What kind of instruments were you playing at this time?

T.R : I was mainly playing piano.

Q : Your first record was called "Reed Stream"

T.R : That was on an old organ harmonium that I had a vacuum cleaner motor blower blowing into the ballast's. The vacuum cleaner motor kind of had a drone, so I played along with that. Talking about the all night concerts, I did some of the first all night concerts back in the 60's with this little harmonium, and I also had saxophone taped delays. I was asked to do the first all night concerts. I did a solo all night concert which started at 10:00 at night and ended at sunrise. People brought their whole families and they had their sleeping bags and hammocks. It was in one of the big rooms in art college. It started out a career for me doing all night concerts which I did for a couple of years.

Q: How did you prepare for these all night concerts?

T.R : I really didn't have a plan, I just went in and started playing. one of my specialties was to be able to play for a really long time without stopping and I would play these repeated patterns for hours and hours and I wouldn't seem to get tired. I guess I have a lot of energy. Throughout the evening I would be recording these long saxophone delays and about four hours into the concert, if I wanted to take a break I would just play back the saxophone. And a lot of people didn't even wake up to know the difference because a lot of people just slept all night.

Q: I heard in a lot of your concerts you used lights shows?

T.R : I traveled with an artist, Bob Benson, he used to have strobe lights and we built these mylar screens. He was a painter essentially. His paintings were stretch color fabric on canvas, then he started stretching reflective mylar. Sometimes I would have troops of girl gymnasts doing cartwheels during the night shows just as a passing. Then we would have these mylar things so the audience would see themselves and they would see me. They looked quite distorted because the mylar, as it bends, distorts the reflection kind of like the mirrors at the circus.

Q: When people talk about minimalist music the lineage seems to go ( according to media ) La monte Young, you, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and I was wondering when you first came across La monte what went on between you. I know you've played concerts together, I always got the impression that the influence went both ways.

T.R : Well, he was certainly a big influence on me when I met him, he was the freakiest guy I have ever met in my life. I met him when I went to school in Berkeley. He was in one of my classes and we struck it off as close friends from the beginning. I think he was a much more sophisticated musician. He had lived in Los Angeles and been a jazz musician, and I was coming out of the sticks of Northern California and I hadn't heard nearly as much music as he had. He has a superb conceptual sense about music, I think his sense about music is what spawned minimalist music, even though he didn't do it the way Glass and Reich, who where more inspired by me because of the repetition. La monte's idea was just to have this one big form that was just long tones, I think that was the real essential heart of minimalist music.

Q: How were those pieces live?

T.R : He wrote one for me, that I've never performed yet, but maybe I will someday. It was where I was supposed to push a grand piano into a wall and keep pushing until the wall fell down.



Q: Could you talk a little about your encounters and development of your relationship with Pandit Pran Nath?

T.R : I met him through La monte Young. La monte had brought him over in 1970 and La monte had been one of the first people in America to recognize how great he was. He had been underground figure performing in India on the radio. He wasn't considered by the Indian public at large as one of the great superstars, like Ravi Shankar. But in effect, he had all this great knowledge of Indian classical music and really performed it in a true sense. I had been interested in Indian music and I actually started studying Tabla before I met him. I was sort of going in that direction because my own music was very similar to Indian music. When I met him [Guruji] he said 'You must become my student.' So I said, 'OK.' I cried the first time I heard him sing. He hit some bell in me that had never resonated before. It was so moving I wanted to go back to India with him right away and start studying with him. I had already done Rainbow in Curved Air and had a big record on CBS. I was launched to have a long career and then I just dropped out and went to India. So I just went to India to study with Pandit, and he said no you have to do your own music too.



Q: Tell us about the music-theater piece you are working on now?

T.R : It is based on the works of Adolf Wölfli. He was a Swiss peasant who was born around 1864 and had a terrible childhood. He was neglected, his father was an alcoholic, he was a ward of the state, his mother died when he was very young and he was sent out as a hireling around the farms in Switzerland. He wandered around Switzerland like this for about thirty years as a laborer and stuff. Around the age of thirty he was caught molesting a young child in a cradle. He actually had been involved in other cases before too and had been put in jail because of one of them. But when he was thirty, they had diagnosed him as schizophrenic and was put in a mental institution, and spent the next thirty-five years almost in solitary confinement. In this mental institution and after about five years he started drawing and he had the most incredible ability to draw and conceptualize art considering he had never been to art school and knew nothing about what was happening. He was a very visionary artist. His art is always about vision of something. One of his hallucinations he said people would visit him and tell him what to draw and then they would argue about what he should draw and then he would argue with them. But he turned out thirty thousand or something drawings and stories about travels through space, travels throughout the earth, places he had never been too, because he spent his entire life in a mental institution. He described New York and Canada in great detail and gave them really fantastic names, with great plays on words. When I first discovered his art, it was like a revelation. I had never heard of him, I couldn't believe it, he was such a great artist and nobody ever heard about him. But now outsider art is beginning to get known. After I saw Wölfli's work, I wanted to do some piece on him because he really set off something in me when I saw it, I felt like I had to deal with it. First I was going to make it purely a musical piece and then it looked like it had to be a theater piece because a lot of Wulfi's writings are so imaginative and his words are so imaginative, I thought they had to be spoken in each piece so we sort of developed this woven fabric of music and narrative dialog. We would mix it all together with video images and slides. Then the actors were speaking and telling stories.

Q: Are the words sung or spoken?

T.R : Some of them are spoken and I've written some songs for the scripts. Some of them are in German and others are in English. Some of the ones in German are just based on sounds which are really interesting, they are not even sounds common to Germany. They are sounds Wölfli had made up. You know there is this language of schizophrenics called Glosserlallia which is a secret language that only they understand.

Q: So schizophrenics can talk to each other in this language?

T.R : No, they can only talk to themselves. Most of them have many people dwelling within themselves, and they all speak Glosserlallia. They probably each have their own version of the language. I found that to be fascinating though. The big part of art and music is imagination. The thing that grips us is imagination of the artist, and schizophrenics are some of the most imaginative people. It makes you wonder what is the real heart of art and music. What are we really trying to get at? I think what happens to them, their ordinary filters for reality somehow open up. They experience things we can only experience in very altered states, but they experience this all the time.



Q: Did you see music in Wölfli's pictures, and did you develop themes to certain pictures?

T.R : I did. A lot of his drawings also have music notations in them. He developed his own system of music notation and no one has ever been able to decipher it. It is very cryptic and enigmatic notation. When I saw a lot of those I really thought it sounded like great music just looking at it on the page although I would never know how to decipher it, so I decided to compose music just in a spirit of what he is doing. I wanted to write music that was influenced by my studying his drawings. So I spent a lot time this summer just gazing at the drawings. The music has come out kind of interesting, it almost sounds like music that could have been composed in the 30's and 40's around the time he lived. I haven't really wanted to do anything modern. It's general substance is older sounding.

Q: What are your thoughts on where the world is going?

T.R : It is important that we are coming up on the millennium because what I am experiencing, just being one person out of billions, is the feeling of acceleration. I experience this through my contact with other people. Everyone seems to be in a kind of accelerated time mode that is beyond their own control. Acceleration is finite, I think according to some laws of physics. It seems like we are moving towards something, some kind of point and it is probably going to be an important point in our development or dissolution. That is what everybody seems to be thinking. We are either going to dissolve as a human race or we are going to break through into a new understanding of what it is to be a human being.

Q: So what part is music going to take in this transformation?

T.R : This morning I was practicing raga, and at one point I was singing a long tone and I became very peaceful and still. I thought this is really the highest point of music for me is to become in a place where there is no desire, no craving, wanting to do anything else, just to be in a state of being to the highest point. Then you get a little meditated, you get to a place that is really still and it is the best place you have ever been and yet there is nothing there. For me, that is what music is. It is a spiritual art. It is a form to that place. There are many ways to do that, many kind of ways to get there. Music can also be a sensual pleasure, like eating food or sex. But its highest vibration for me is that point of taking us to a real understanding of something in our nature which we can very rarely get at. It is a spiritual state of oneness. For me, it is the reason for doing music because you are always trying to get there, but we live in this big cloud of illusions, so we sometimes go about it in the wrong way. We think music as being as a highly skilled activity, virtuosity. To me it's important that you achieve the state. Listening to music is as high as singing or playing it. If a great singer is singing and you think gee I would like to sing like that, you are being foolish because you are listening to the thing you really want anyway, so why think you want to do it. It is the thing, the thing itself that is really important. Although I have a personal greed about playing music, I really enjoy the tactile thing of playing an instrument, but I'm coming from back in 1935, when that was the way you made music, there was no other way to do it, so I have a lifelong habit of doing music this way. But if I was 20 years old today, I might not have that orientation, I would probably be out sampling music like everybody else.

Interview conducted at Terry Riley's home - Shri Moonshine ranch (California near Nevada) - October 1995

Check out the new Terry Riley album - The Cusp of Magic

Hannett discography

Finally a bloody good Martin Hannett discography . Here's a few of the classics therein

Oum

This brings back memories of my father and his old wooden cased, valve transistor radio when I was an infant.

Master Musicians of Jajouka

I have found both inspiration and transcendence in the music of this small Moroccan hill tribe for many years now. I was first introduced to their music around the age of 18 and have been listening to them ever since. My most memorable experience was listening to their music in Brion Gysin's Paris flat opposite the Pompidou Center while looking into his own personal dream-machine for over an hour. An experience I will never forget. This is the Bachir Attar led section of the musicians live in concert in Portugal last year. Mind blowing.

Tonight we celebrate Ikue Mori

Very excited to go see NYC / Japanese electronic musician Ikue Mori tonight at The Japan Society. I've actually been listening to a lot of her music for the last six months, mainly because of her very distinct and skillfully unique way of handling drum machines and digital devices. Tonight's concert will feature Mori's acclaimed solo over silent films by Maya Deren in its U.S. debut, plus Mori performing with two of her main collaborations: Phantom Orchard with harpist Zeena Parkins and guest percussionist Cyro Baptista; and the electro-acoustic trio Mephista with Sylvie Courvoisier (piano) and Susie Ibarra (percussion).

Here's a cool interview with Ikue from this weeks Time Out.

Is There Life After Marriage ?

Eeenglaand iz a bitch !

Great story on legendary reggae poet Linton Kwesi Johnson who released his first album Dread Beat an' Blood with one of my favorite UK dub producers of all times, Dennis Bovell at the helm, way back in 1978. Keep fighting LKJ ! The UK is still seriously dodgy but it's people like LKJ who make it interesting.

best album cover of 2008 so far ?

my vote goes to John Zorn's "The Dreamers"