Top 10

For as long as anyone can remember popular criticism has been reduced to making lists of "the best" of a certain genre, year, artist, etc...

I personally have nothing against this, but it seems to be taken a little to liberally by most publications (electronic and otherwise) lately. Pitchforkmedia has a new top ___ list every month, and as history will tell us, overkill devalues the original product (to speak in blatantly capitalistic terms.) So I will never (I hope) release a "top" whatever list of anything, I'll say that I like things, or what I interpret things as, but you won't see a top ten list coming from this face, nope.

The format of the top ten list seems to function in popular culture as a sort of canonization of material. Let's take Pitchfork's top 50 albums of the year lists. They tell readers, from an authoritative source (an authoritative source being anything someone is reading to learn about something new to them, in this case music) "these are the best albums of the year, one must enjoy them." This, I suppose, is what criticism boils down to anyway, the canonization of texts (or documents) but this is such a dumbed down version of criticism that it results in pure drivel. Albums are taken not of someone's own accord, but on someone else's, a so called "authority" and I'm sure this relates to capitalism in it's purest form somehow, I just have to finish thinking through it before I bring that 'round.

To Be Continued...

Ken Jacobs, Sunn O))), Martin Arnold, and Steve Reich

Recently, a re-imagining of culture, and really of semiotics in general, has been much on my mind, by way of various approaches to audio visual representation.


Ken Jacobs
Ken Jacobs is a film maker who, using found footage, shifts the focus and context of the images and brings things, before unnoticed, into plain sight. This includes, but is not limited too:
Backgrounds
Extras
The Physical Screen Itself
and more


Sunn O)))
Sunn O))) is a group, led by Stephan O'Malley, who record for Southern Records. They play excessively long metal songs, in which one chord is frequently sustained for lengthy periods of time. This creates room to explore each chord individually, and takes them out of the traditional context of the metal "riff."


Martin Arnold
Martin Arnold is a filmmaker from Austria (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) who takes small portions of "classic" cannonized films and stretches them in a way, repeating the smallest movements over and over, thereby putting them in a whole new context. (if you have the chance to see a print, please do)



Steve Reich
Steve Reich is an experimental musician and composer, often lumped in (whether fair or not) with the "minimalist" "movement" of the late fifties onward. In the sixties he made several tape loops of speech, which repeated over and over, much as the films of Arnold, but more freely, as if the sentences took on a life of their own.

HOT SHIT!

Haven't updated in awhile, I done been film makin, wedding attendin, all around poppin and lockin.

Speaking of films, did you check out ICE? you should've. I probably should've mentioned this before it happened.

In other news, I missed the show last week due to projects, and missed Girl Talk, Dan Deacon, and, in another town, mutha f-in JANDEK!!! due to extreme forgetfulness/poorness. I'll be a better blogger, promise.

Damo Suzuki is possibly coming in to the studio on thursday. You like Can right? No, not the alluminum, the band. Can? Yeah? at the Picador, Thursday night. Not Can, but part of it. He's worked with others, like Acid Mothers Temple and the Jehovah's Witnesses. The last one isn't a band, it's the real thing.

Fire in the Hole!

xoxo
erik

New Stuff

So for the past year or two this has simply been a boring rehashing (in text form) of shows, no more!

I'm hoping to update it more regularly (as my schedule permits) with tidbits of the goings on and inner workings of experimental music and cinema (as they seem to hold similar testaments and demographics) around the iowa city area especially, but anything else important (or not at all important) that pertains is fair game as well. And, as Muybridge always said, "peazizle out homies, word."

Back... in black...

So then, (in)organic is back. your favorite noise/electronic/everything but the normal show is back on sunday's at 9 p.m. In coming weeks I'll have good stuff, be sure to check back. also, be sure to check for updates to the blog as I'll be posting maybe more regularly than in recent semesters! Keep it real world, keep it peaceful. I'm not a hippie, I swear. I am, however a level 12 wizard.

3-21-07

Springtime! Back from spring break, where I got tons of new vinyl, all weird to the max.

Hour 1: 9:00 p.m.

1. Phil Niblock - Parke's Altered Mood, aka, Owed to Bird, from the Touch Records release Two Three
2. Edgard Varese - Octandre, as played by the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, and conducted by Arthur Weisberg, I don't know who these people are, but damn you if you don't know Varese
3. Michael Fakesch, I:Omec, from the album Marion, one half of Funkstorung, from a very rare LP, incidentaly, I used to live in Marion, crazy!
4. Goodiepal - untitled track from untitled 7", see this man right f'n now.
5. Merzbow and John Weise - Free Piano, from a by mail colaboration
6. Sunburned Hand of the Man - Hoof Trip, from a single, I caught their show in Texas last week, any band that starts a set by screaming "I am not a machiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine!" is alright by me.
7. Coughs - Quinze Trous (15 Holes) from Secret Passage. This is not relaxing, not at all.
8. Jackie-O-Motherfucker - Celtic Sea Captain, from America Mystica, it carries over into...

Hour 2: 10:00 p.m. aka the witching hour

...still Jackie-O-Motherfucker
then...

1. Magik Markers - Inverted Belgium, live chaos from... Belgium. use your head, c'mon, that's easy to guess!
2. Jac Berrocal - Cafe Motzart, from the compilation Six Sequences Pour Alfred Hitchcock
3. Sir Richard Bishop - Jaisalmer, from the Improvika LP, he will be playing at the Picador in May with Animal Collective, sweeeeeeeeeeet. More info on this is forthcoming.
4. Marissa Nadler - Mr. John Lee Velveteen Rose, from The Saga of Mayflower May, I named a snail I found Marissa after this album. I found two snails, the other one was named Led Zepplin, as a tribute to the gods of rock. \,,,/
5. Josephine Foster - Die Schwestern, from the album A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing aka Ein Wolf im Schafspelz
6. Motorhead - Ace of Spades live in Hammersmith, get yer devil horns up...

3-8-07

It's almost warm!

Hour 1:

1. Jan Jelinek - Happening Tone, from the Tierbeobachtungen EP
2. Tim Hecker - Blood Rainbow, from the Harmony in Ultraviolet album, released last year on Kranky
3. Mystic Fugu Orchestra - Book Of Splendors, from the Zohar album, a John Zorn project on his own Tzadic label
4. Microstoria - Slap Top, from the classic glitch album Init Ding
5. Monolake - White II from the album Momentum
6. Modul - Shift II, from the Archiv 1.1 compilation
7. Farmers Manual - a selection from the Frankfurt Frequenzen Installation
8. Michel Chion - Requiem Dies Irae (1973) taken, yet again, from the Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music, can't recommend it enough.

Hour 2:

1. Nurse With Wound - Shattering Man Falling, from a recent album, Drunk With The Old Man OF The Mountains
2. Current 93 - A Song for Douglas After He's Dead, from the album Thunder Perfect Mind
3. Biosphere - Birds Fly By Flapping Their Wings, from the album Dropsonde
4. Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid - The Sun Never Sets, from the album, Tounges, to be released soon, but not soon enough
5. Pan American - Lights of Little Towns, from the album Quiet City
6. Keith Fullerton Whitman - Fib01a, from the album Playthroughs
7. Harry Partch - Cloud-Chamber Music, from The Harry Partch Collection: Vol. 1
8. John Wiese - 8.27.03, Portland, from Magical Crystal Blah
9. Cul De Sac and John Fahey - Our Puppet Selves, from the album Epiphany of Glen Jones

a good introduction, or 16mm film strip madness?

I don't know why it's in three pieces. Does anyone know where I can get a print or video of this... cause... it kind of blew my mind.

WOW!

This... is... amazing!

2-28-07

Hour 1:

1. Nobukazu Takemura - Kepler, from the album Scope
2. Otomo Yoshihide - Anode 1, from the album Anode
3. Peter Brotzmann Group - Alarm Pt. 2, from the album Alarm
4. Zbigniew Karkowski - Execution of Intellegence, from the Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music, Third A-Chronology, 1952-2004

Hour 2:

1. Yasunao Tone - Wounded Man'yo #3-67
2. Jan Jelinek avec The Exposures's - Music To Interogate By, from the album La Nouvelle Pauvrete
3. Panda Bear - Untitled track, track 2 from the Comfy in Nautica single
4. Philip Jeck - Nelson Surfs, from a Touch records online sampler
5. Vibracathedrial Orchestra - live at Brooklyn free 103, September 2003, from Pontiac Lady
6. William Parker - Sonic Animation, from the Iamaphotographer compilation