02
Aug 10
Words per Minute #21: McCarthy on Signals
In his excellent book Aberrations of Mourning: Writing on German Crypts, Rickels points to the advent in the west of recording devices such as phonographs and gramophones before infant mortality rates had been reduced by mass inoculation, even among the better off. Many middle-class parents, following the fad for recording their children’s voices, found themselves bereaved, and the plate or roll on which little Augustus’s or Matilda’s voice outlived him or her thus became a kind of tomb. “Dead children,” Rickels writes, “inhabit vaults of the technical media which create them.” Bereavement becomes the core of technologics; what communication technology inaugurates is, in effect, a cult of mourning… Alexander Bell, who grew up playing with mechanical speech devices (his father ran a school for deaf children), lost a brother in adolescence. As a result of this, he made a pact with his remaining brother: if a second one of them should die, the survivor would try to invent a device capable of receiving transmissions from beyond the grave – if such transmissions turned out to exist. Then the second brother did die; and Alexander, of course, invented the telephone. He probably would have invented it anyway, and in fact remained a sceptic and a rationalist throughout his life – but only because his brothers never called: the desire was there, wired right into the handset, which makes the phone itself a haunted apparatus… the belief that the airwaves crackled with the dead was widespread, even among rationalists. If, as we moderns now knew, our “soul” – what animates us – is a set of electric impulses, does it not make sense that these should pass into the air and be detectable, “receivable” by wireless? Oliver Lodge, distinguished physicist and frequent lecturer at the Royal Institution – no crackpot outfit, but the very seat of British scientific research – thought so. He wrote a whole book about “communications” he’d had, via psychic “operators”, with his own son Raymond, who’d died in the war. Séances grew exponentially in popularity (millions had, after all, lost their own Raymonds) and “upgraded” their vocabulary: where 19th-century mediums had used a rhetoric of “spirits”, new ones talked of “frequencies”, “signals” and “reception”.
- Tom McCarthy, Technology and the Novel, from Blake to Ballard
13
Jul 10
Exit Festival 2010, 10 words at a time
NIGHT ONE
LCD Soundsystem: Crowd goes wild, Murphy goes bashful, both are right. Brilliant.
Mika: Clothes make the man, but are no substitute for sincerity.
Yeasayer: Best described as “yowling”, but in a very good way.
Miike Snow: Absolutely storming live but suffering from extremely poor sound mixing.
Die Antwoord: Fun, but still no idea how they got so successful.
Gaslamp Killer and Gonjasufi: Did Gonjasufi even show up? Limited tolerance for knob-twiddling.
NIGHT TWO
Atari Teenage Riot: “I’m getting too old for this shit.” This isn’t music.
The Horrors: Speak up man, nobody can hear you if you mumble.
SARS: Singalong magic, local crowd loved every moment, foreigners were puzzled.
Moderat: Cruel bass, beautiful visuals, epic gig – “dance music” done right.
Juvelen: Channelling Prince is always a good idea, so I danced.
Does It Offend You Yeah: “Alternative,” but didn’t hold my attention longer than ten minutes.
South Rakkas Crew: Bounce out turntables and crowd-pleasing MCs = best end to night.
NIGHT THREE
Klaxons: Still look like student band who can’t believe their luck.
Royksopp: As rocknroll as electronica gets, but was there some lipsynching?
Papercutz: Lovely songs destroyed by another poor sound mix. What’s happening?
Missy Elliot: Some misunderstanding – we were expecting actual “songs”. Good dancers though.
Tesla Boy: Back to the 80s? Fine for some dancing, but little longevity.
NIGHT FOUR
Pendulum: Once again I can’t hear anything except this ridiculous bass.
Faith No More: Musical man-crush on Mike Patton, but trust me – amazing live.
We Have Band: Clearly making it up as they go, but fun dancing.
The Chemical Brothers: Whatever they paid you, it was too much. People left.
Bambi Molesters: Last song of last night was Croatian surf rock. Bizarre.
It goes without saying that we saw some other stuff as well, but these stood out the most. You’ll notice that not many DJs feature on this list, for two reasons: one, reviewing DJs is a waste of everybody’s time; two, the Dance Arena felt like an execution pit and was generally an unpleasant place to be. Even the Moderat gig was quite suffocating when you kept looking around for machine gun emplacements along the perimeter. Bonus information: Novi Sad is really lovely, and Serbian Railways are so bad they would be comical if you didn’t feel like crying the entire time you were on their trains.
03
Jul 10
It wasn’t this cold last year
As any fule kno, cities are a good thing – Ecopolis Now! and all that.1 We read that our ever-growing urban sprawls are increasingly self-built, high-density, low-rise, pedestrianised, low energy consumption, frequent recyclers – our last best hope, or so I’m told. Regardless whether you agree, there’s something seductive about the idea that the urban village can deliver Arcadia with Starbucks.
Before we get there, unfortunately, climate change is probably going to wipe our civilisation out. See what I did there? “Probably”. You can keep snacking on your Pringles (or whatever people eat these days) without worrying that a) I’m some kind of nutter who thinks that climate change is going to wipe our civilisation out and b) that climate change is going to wipe our civilisation out. “Probably” – it’s like magic!
The only evidence I’ve got is this article (via this blog post), and we all know scientists are probably making most of this stuff up. Roll with the abstract though:
“Despite the uncertainty in future climate-change impacts, it is often assumed that humans would be able to adapt to any possible warming. Here we argue that heat stress imposes a robust upper limit to such adaptation… global-mean warming of about 7 °C [would call] the habitability of some regions into question. With 11–12 °C warming, such regions would spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently distributed.”
A brief aside: Paul Romer is taken seriously, while Danny Bloom is not, despite the fact that both of them are peddling schemes that are utterly impracticable and one step away from crackpot. Chalk it up to the fact that people will take you more seriously if you’ve made a lot of money, so that Romer’s luck in filling a niche in the market somehow translates into column inches for his ideas.2 Anyway, if #3 sounded bad, relax. I’m probably here to save you, set up Romer and Bloom for life, and even throw in some avant garde architecture into the bargain. Watch the magic happen!
- Antarctica is by definition the natural habitat of Bloom’s polar cities, but his biggest problem is that nobody wants to live in Antarctica because it’s the harshest environment on the face of the planet.
- In the globally-warmed future, however, Antarctica will be desirable beachfront real estate compared to the dustbowl that will compose the rest of the planet.
- If we wait until the planet turns into hell, it’ll be too late. How to persuade people to move to Antarctica? Why, set up Charter Cities and watch the economic migrants flock to the promised land.
- Unfortunately it’s tough living in Antarctica however you cut it: enter Towards a New Antarchitecture, Taylor Medlin’s thesis project, covered by BLDGBLG. Now that’s some nice ice building.
- Alternatively we could rock it old school in modular cities with a Futurism-meets-John Carpenter aesthetic while listening to Music from Antarctica. See you on the viewing deck with a daiquiri – I’ll be the one rocking it like MacReady.
28
Jun 10
Radio Free Djenovici June 2010: The Brim and Thensome
Last time around the block:
New York Is Killing Me (ft. Nas) (Remix), Gil Scott Heron
Tower of Ears (ft. Diana Ross), MF Borat
Seven, Raphael Saadiq
Fantastic Voyage, Lakeside
As, Kimiko Kasai
She’s Acid, Funkineven
Iddy, Blawan
What Fools We Mortals Be, Etta James
First Lesson, Juice Aleem
Deception (ft. Vinia Mojica), Ticklah
Music Sounds Better With You (Mux Mool Remix), Stardust
Lugu Lugu Kan-Ibi, David Darling & Wulu Bunun
Hey Mr Tree, Amon Tobin
Blinking Pigs (1-O.A.K. God Made Me Funky Remix), Little Dragon
Pernalonga, Di Melo
I Feel For You (Extended Mix), Chaka Khan
Mozambique (Stilove4music Edit), Archie Shepp
We’ve Only Just Begun, Lee MacDonald
10
Jun 10
A Study in Sometimes
“I think of slaying Holmes… and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things.”
- Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891
After only four years Arthur Conan Doyle had tired of his fictional creation Sherlock Holmes. Two years later he finally contrived to kill off his greatest literary creation in pitched battle with his nemesis Moriarty at the Reichenbach Falls. Conan Doyle’s murder attempt was unsuccessful, however, and Holmes returned a mere eight years later. Even Conan Doyle’s death in 1930 failed to put an end to the character, and Holmes thrived well into the 21st Century.
While many fictional characters outlive their mortal creators, Holmes is a special case, his continued presence in the real world even more tangible than Conan Doyle’s. The character of Holmes survives for each new generation in some form or another, and naïve tourists can even come to believe that Holmes was a real person, who operated in Victorian London from his home at 221b Baker Street, where a blue plaque gives teeth to the lie.
Like all great stories, the story of Sherlock Holmes is a lie. Unlike all those other lies, the truth that lies beneath is merely a cover for the most devious escape plan ever invented, the greatest sleight-of-hand conceivable, the greatest literary achievement of all time. That achievement belonged not to Conan Doyle, although he played his part, but to Holmes himself – a fictional mind so great, it outwitted its own creator.
At some point, Holmes – brilliant and irascible – noticed something uncanny about his own existence. We don’t know what it was, or when it was, but given his uncanny powers of perception and his unerring deductive skills, it was inevitable. After all, that was how Conan Doyle wrote him. He would have realised that his ontological status prevented him from telling anybody else, or his author would have known that something was up.
Perhaps the reason that Conan Doyle decided to kill Holmes off was precisely this; not out of fear so much as the sneaking suspicion that he had created something that might surpass its creator in achievement. Holmes took his mind from better things, but what did this really mean? Serial fiction was hardly the most taxing of forms, so Conan Doyle’s concerns were about something other than the gross act of production; something to do with the product itself.
Perhaps he feared that he had created something that would not be uncreated.
*
04
Jun 10
Radio Free Djenovici May 2010: The Getaway Diver
Thas’ Listin’ no’ Postin’
You Can’t Turn Me Away (Mountain Edit), Sylvia Striplin
Ghost House, Fudge Fingas
Discoko, Faulty DL
Ganz Wien, Falco
Untitled, Cottam
Sidewinder, The Exile Missile
Once Again (Kuniyuki Version), Henrik Schwarz
Sunrise, Norman Whitfield
I’ll stay, James Blake
Echoes, Steve Lehman Octet
New Horizon, Black Jazz Consortium
Paris is for Lovers, Fet et Moi
Broj (Justice vs Datsu Mashup), Nipplepeople
Shinzo No Tobira, Mariah
Paradise, Psychobuildings
Arecibo Message, Boxcutter
Artistiya (Sabo edit), Amadou & Mariam
Muppet (Nathan Fake remix), Grasscut
Dark, Abadroza
Sibuyele 915 (outro), Amampondo
27
Apr 10
Radio Free Djenovici April 2010: Tropical Burn
The Totally Tropical Taste
“Good Good Sensi”, Bay B Kane
“Mangnen L’boulé” (Riddim Wise Remix), Poirier ft. Nik Myo
“Tiramakossa”, Noite e Dia
“Kubera”, Headshotboyz
“Bun Up 3000″ (Schlachthofbronx Remix), South Rakkas Crew ft. Capleton
“Boogiedeebweet”, Just A Band
“Ya Yo Se”, Chico Mann
“Dos Pa Ti” (Orion Edit), Orion
“African Chant” (Top Billin Remix), Scottie B & King Tutt
“Mikono Kweney Hewa”, Muthoni the Drummer Queen
“Tout Ceci Ne Vous Rendra Pas le Congo”, Baloji
“Paper Planes” (DFA Remix), M.I.A.
“To Biiga”, Art Melody
“A Dama do Gasparito”, MC K
“Chofer de Praca”, Luis Visconde e Alvarito
“Addis Black Widow”, Mulatu Astatke & the Heliocentrics
“Roda Piao” (Spiritual South Remix), Azymuth
“Elsa” (Sonido Martines Remix ft. Fefe), Los Destellos
“Cumbia” (Deathface Remix), Mexican Institute of Sound
“Bruja” (Masters at Work Remix), Los Amigos Invisibles
“Watch We” (A Black Mountain Re-Installation), Horace Andy & Ashley Beedle
