Jackie Under My Skin

Far and away my favourite band right now is Jackie O Motherfucker who I saw last night at Cafe Oto in Dalston in East London (the bit right next to North).
Cafe Oto is a fairly new venue, a space that it is just the right size for sonic exploration to a receptive audience (capacity about 200) and a great sound system. It has an excellently peaceful, thoughtful vibe and an authentic Japanese kitchen. I will definitely return to check out other acts there.
JOMF embody the spirit of music for me. Emotional, experimental, at times abrasive, at times melodic, celebratory, plaintive, melodic, all of these things. They create a wall of sound or perhaps more appropriately an ocean of sound. Within this ocean are recognisable pockets of sound - folk, country, shoegazing, psychedelic, prog rock, punk, funk. But the overall effect of it is uniquely JOMF. As every Renoir painting is, no matter what Renoir had originally intended to paint, uniquely Renoir (what's the name of that phenomenon, silent audience?)
Powerdove was the first support with her beautiful voice, mastery of acoustic guitar (though slow it was some Paco de Lucia shit and so different to when someone just strums) and genuine feeling. The audience was (mostly) humbled into a reverent silence. She and we were all naked together in a warm, shining, gently humming, softly smelling way.
Then came one of the JOMF guys in a solo project. I forget the name. Distorted-sounding blues, kind of raggedy and shouty but pretty good. Reminded me of the electronic and shouty Suicide stuff.
JOMF then came on. They're often described as a 'loose collective' so I don't know how representative this line-up was, but from the closeness of the music I heard that night to the recorded works, I would guess pretty close. They had an assortment of instruments, pedals and assorted bits of technology cobbled together like an piece of found art. You could tell this collection of shit has quite organically grown to its current jumble over the years. At first - and again at several times throughout the set - the band (except the drummer) tested, probed, whispered to and fiddled with their gadgets like stoned scientists, always tweaking that sound a little more JOMFwards.
JOMF is, I guess, pretty much Tom Greenwood. Gangly, nerdy, big glasses in a blue baseball jacket, he limboed before two microphones tied together, dropping occasionally recognisable lyrics into the ocean of sound. Meanwhile the previous solo act was on bass, another dude on dreams (real drums though there was some looped shit happening too) and another was on slide guitar, though he switched to a guitar which he held upside down on the ground to get some floor vibration sounds(?) The slide guitar sound works so well in this context, like the faint strains of a country station dropping into some weird interference as you take a romantic night drive over Arizona highways. Lynchian and Wendersian road movie imagery abounded in my mind during the set. They played about three 'pieces' within which they drifted in and out of recognizable 'songs' from their oeuvre.
It was an astonishingly good concert. I realise my mind has been opened by drug use, exposure to weird music and no doubt some genetic predelictions too but I really think they're one of the greatest bands of all time. The music manages to be ambient and rhythmic at the same time, new forms and new sonic experiences are constantly dropped into the mix.
'Writing about music is like dancing about architecture' So apparently said Frank Zappa and I tend to concur. However, JOMF hit the heights for me and I feel beholden to show my appreciation and spread the word.
Footnote: On my way to a friend's barbecue the next day I was walking around Hammersmith where I saw a very tiny stage set up in front of the Lyric theatre there. A four piece comprising members of The Holloway Brothers, Coomassie and The Egg were playing the funkiest, weirdest, wickedest jam which sounded like 5000 Light Years From Home crossed with the jam bit of Riders On The Storm but more upbeat. Fucking awesome. There was a guy attached to a 12 foot puppet running around with some kids for awhile but it was mostly just me (under my umbrella) in the audience. Disgraceful. If I was running things I'd put some good-trip drugs in the Hammersmith water supply.

On 90 Day Jane

So some of you have probably heard about this blog called 90 Day Jane which has been causing a lot of commotion amongst the sunlight dodgers. It was apparently a blog by a woman planning to kill herself in exactly 90 days. Recently she revealed it to be an artistic statement and she says she's going to take it down tonight. So for posterity here is her last comment and conclusion about the project and my own comment which I was unable to post and where I've started to wax about my own personal philosophy.

EDIT : I suppose she took it down earlier and the hyperlink above is actually someone else who's posted the whole blog.

''90DayJane is a personal art piece about me. It was meant for me and (what I ignorantly thought would be) a small number of people who might find it on BlogSpot. It is the result of me tapping into the darkest part of myself and seeing where it led.
What I have written and filmed, at its core, is from a place of truth. I am the girl in the videos. I have great disappointment with my generation and its obvious obsession with celebrity culture rather than their fellow man, thus the former Chuck Palahniuk reference.
I wanted this blog to be about personal discovery and truth. But the correspondences I have received have taught me more about those qualities than I could ever express. 90DayJane has become its own entity and has influenced me. In fact, it has changed my perspective as a human being.
I feel a massive sense of responsibility to my art, but more importantly the readers of this blog. My closeness to this project must have made art seem like reality to many people. That is not a reaction that I expected nor can I morally justify. This is why my project, 90DayJane, will be taken down in the next few hours.
90DayJane was meant to mirror the tragic figure, Christine Chubbuck. Newscaster Christine Chubbuck committed suicide in 1974 by shooting herself in the head live on air. She was very vocal about her depression to those around her and gave every indication of her exact intentions leading up to the event. Sadly, no one reacted or helped Christine and those left behind could only ask "why".
Her story both inspired and terrified me because I can truly empathize with her rage and even her isolation. I wondered how Christine's life and subsequent suicide would play out in our time. Would the internet be yet another place of isolation to her or an escape? If she remained vocal about her intentions would anyone bother asking "why" or even noticing before the fact? Would the reaction (if any) of the public change her intentions?
I thought this mirror might reflect the isolation everyday people feel and the lack of true human connection on the internet.
It is my feeling that the internet is the best and worst example of human interaction. This was painfully proven to me by reading every comment and every email. I believe I owed that to everyone. I know we all saw the dark side of the reactions in the blog comments. There was so much hate, immaturity and apathy. But, I truly wish everyone could see the beauty and honesty in the emails; many people feel like Jane (me). People have been more real and heartfelt than I thought was possible. I owe them a debt of gratitude for showing me the difference between people's reactions and their true feelings. I understand.
I do want everyone to know that I accepted no money for 90DayJane despite multiple offers from television, film, books, etc... I will not release my identity and I ask not to be contacted for any type of promotion. I want only for the people who wrote to me to know that I hear them and feel the same way. Your emails touched me so much. Please, share your thoughts with someone in your life or express them in a positive way''

Wooodenelephant's response...

I think artists are as much a part of society as stockbrokers or people who build roads. They're not good or bad - just a part of things.
This was an interesting project that caused a lot of people to consider things they normally would not.
Most people have responded using the language most prevalent in the 'user-developed' Internet (I know that's not the official term but I can't remember what is) - language that is overtly agressive, cynical and negative. But we are all used to this.
I read a quote from Javier Bardem on Imdb who said that 'We are so scared about talking about death that we are letting people die in silence. It is good to talk publicly'
I think this is right. Death should not be a taboo. Death is part of life. No, death is life. They are the same thing, viewed from different ends of a straight line. Incidentally, it is true to say 'we will never die' if you believe that at the moment death begins you will cease to perceive. There will never be a moment when you are perceiving death. Therefore you will only ever perceive life. Your time will end but it is not true to say you will die. There will only be the last moment you will be alive, which is still 'living' and no more 'dying' than any other moment of living. It is just closer to the end of the line.
But what is time? Another illusion. Just a measurement. Monday is not really Monday just because everyone calls it Monday. It actually is one revolution of the Sun. The thing we call the Sun etc etc etc etc... (Edit: Scientists, spot the deliberate mistake!)
I imagine those who talk themselves into suicide will often experience that moment as a realization they have been very stupid. I believe the meaning of life is to sleep, eat, fuck, shit etc. In short, to do. Its stupid not to.
That's why depression is rightly defined as a disease as it makes our bodies do something stupid - though its psychological rather than physical. I am lucky enough not to be depressed but I recognise that I was for much of my adolescence. I survived and it has helped teach me to rationalise my way out of negativity - which (in my understanding) is also the end result of cognitive psychology. The key is acceptance. I don't have the patience or the goodness to convince a depressed person that the key is acceptance - though there are people around who try.
Anyway, Jane, well done for making people think a little deeper about what life really is - something we can rarely even begin to grasp (in the rich world, anyway) as we are distracted by so many illusions - for example language, the rules of society, the hypnotic effect of the TV and Internet (which robs us of so much real life), information systems and the mental construct of memory we call 'the self'. Without these illusions (and also perhaps the reality of being part of an overpopulated world) I do not believe people would be so ready to part with life. Life is a purely subjective experience whose ultimate reality can never fully reveal itself.
Sartre (and doubtlessly others too - I am no authority on philosophical history) said we can never fully know ourselves nor can we fully know what is outside of us. We can only ever know a combination of these two things. One can never be distinct from the other for us. Life is always a combination of two unknowable things, then. So its this purely solitary, subjective experience that we find ourselves in, in our secular society.
Incidentally I find it impossible to be completely secular. I've experienced things that rationalists would say were only my psyche applying a logic to random events. But then I believe we come down to semantics (the meanings of words and what we associate with them) - and one man's mysticism can be another man's rationality.
I also believe all atheists and believers are essentially the same. Atheists believe there is nothing outside of the Universe we know - matter, anti-matter, whatever. Believers (at least some of them) believe there is something outside of the Universe we know ('God'). As we can never know the believers' something or the atheists' nothing, they seem to be different ways of looking at the same thing; Something outside of what we know and can perceive is, by definition, exactly the same as nothing. We just think about the same essential mystery in different ways.
It is surely beneficial to have faith in something that can help us, if we can overcome our rationality to have that faith (and many would like to but cannot, I realise). Saying this, I personally believe all organised religion to be a kind of hysteria (very well controlled but hysteria nonetheless) though I fully respect it helps other people and I try to keep an open mind.
In conlusion, think life can be a real cunt sometimes but it can also be fucking amazing. I sympathise if you've had more of the former than the latter (or even none of the latter) but I say keep throwing the dice.

Complete Pacific Jazz Small Group Recordings - Art Pepper

http://www.divshare.com/download/2242639-b87

Parts 1 & 2

http://www.divshare.com/download/2258149-a07

Parts 3 & 4

http://www.divshare.com/download/2258867-9e5

Parts 5 & 6

This was ripped from vinyl at 320kbps (not by me, found it awhile back on E•Mule). I’m a bigger fan of later Art but its still nice stuff. It seems to be largely unavailable so I thought I’d provide this one for y’all.

1.Tynan Time
The Route
Sonny Boy
Minor Yours

2. Little Girl
Ol’ Croix
I Can’t Give You Anything But Love
The Great Lie
Tenderly

3. Picture Of Heath
For Miles And Miles
CIA

4. For Minors Only
Minor Yours
Resonant Emotions
Tynan Time

5. Diane-A-Flow
Zenobia
What Is This Thing Called Love?
A Foggy Day
Popo (alt)

6.Popo (master)
Didi
Powder Puff
Bunny

As regular readers will have noticed, my blogging activity has waned of late. Whilst I fully intend to keep this blog open for business for the foreseeable future, I will probably never again be quite as active as I have been at times over the last two years, through my discovery of the anti-intellectual factoid's soakingly wet dream Imdb to the filesharing programs and torrent downloads of Emule, Soulseek and Azureus to the Brownswood forum and 'social networking' monoliths Myarse and Cuntfacebook and with the discovery of sharity blogs and the maintenance of my own humble blog you see before you.
I have developed a theory on the Internet which I share with anyone unfortunate enough to be having a conversation with me. Television, which I removed from my existence with some decisiveness a few years ago, is quite succinctly referred to as the Idiot Box. Trying to find anything of dramatic interest in the formulaic soaps and cop shows I used to watch - or even to laugh along with the nudge wink irony of the inevitably gay scriptwriters of this drivel - became an increasingly futile task and indeed made me feel like an Idiot (and don't even get me started on the flabbergastingly rancid shit that is reality TV). Once I realised that there was actually not a man jack but only my own rabid octopus (or 'self') making me fidgetedly sit through hours of this insulting turd, I got the damn thing largely off my back (only to be tempted back to the fold for choice cuts like Sopranos, Curb and DJ Rory B ft MCs John F & John B).
If you've ever seen John Carpenter's They Live, it is an interesting expeeriment to replace all the shop and advert signs with the words 'BUY' or 'EAT' etc (as the main character does when he dons the special sunglasses in that highly allegorical low budget sci fi gem). Indeed should you escape the Idiot Box, the evil corporations (interesting tangent - anyone who rails against corporations these days seems to set off a trigger in the listener that all is not well with the speaker and he has 'problems') have another cornucopia of entertainment - which also requires you to stay seated and stare into a very bright square of light, typically for several hours - for you.
I would like to officially christen this the Nerd Box. As the TV makes Idiots of us so does the computer make not Idiots (after all, we choose the media we are exposed to) but Nerds of us. To whit, I used to get high and listen to jazz. Now I am discussing it in forums. I used to hang out with my friends. Now my Cuntfacebook zombies bite them. I used to chat up girls (after many of my neuroses and I went our separate ways after several years of symbiosis). Now I watch porn. Hey maybe I could find a girlfriend through the Int... FUCK THIS! I will not confirm the predictions of sociologists (who are only pseudo-intellectuals like me but with the drone-like ambition to apply their mind to one of society's unquestioned 'disciplines' - psychology, economics etc) that we'll all be making social connections and finding our partners on the Net. It might be harsh and unfriendly in the 'meat markets' (and for sure the music's worse - can someone please do humanity a favour and kill the Black Eyed Peas and remove every single visual and audio trace they ever existed. Oh and that talentless arse Jay Z too) but I'd rather meet someone there (EDIT: or of course the female's meeting of choice ''meeting through friends'' - the conformity of it makes me choke on my own bile) than discussing Art Blakey reissues with some chick who'd have to be mental anyway let's face it (not sure what is the evolutionary / genetic principle of this but the sexes have completely differently tuned ears). That said I'm still open to overtures from DJ Celine and Aubert Delphine. Anyone physically dope, intelligent with English not as their first language is in with a chance. I say going back on what I've just said and only half-joking about it as well.
Anyway, where will I go now that I've turned my back on the Nerd Box? Conventional wisdom says take to travelling or hiking with the appropriate brands (Eastpak) and upload my photos onto Flickr.
My music tastes will remain as broad as ever, but I plan to engage with music more in the 'real' world rather than plunder the infinite Borgesian archives of fascinating experimentation, virtuosity and combinations thereof which are provided by my blogging brethren at superhuman pace. This is of course not to say I will not dip my toe into the waters now and again to see what Bacoso at Orgy In Rhythm (a consistently amazing source and nostalgically important to me as it was the first sharity blog of its kind I ever found) or Joski at my new favourite blog Merlin In Rags (stuffed to bursting with authentic and dope U.S. roots & blues music).
I have massive mp3 archives which I add to in progressively smaller increments but I am sure I will continue to upload periodically (I always like Peel-like surprises to come through on the shuffle so will continue to plunder for diverse commuting soundtracks) so it will be worth checking back at least on a monthly basis. Also its nice to have this blog established and present so I know there's some kind of audience for my rants and recommendations. Recommendations from other blogs are likely to become rarer but choicer of course.
Stay weird.

Image is 'Pierre' by Jean-Joseph Sanfourche

On My Music Listening History

I've uploaded some mixes by Dave Mothersole for Brownswood's Olly which I'll also be sharing with you here shortly. I got a bit carried away with the write up and I've written a very tangential piece about my music listening history so I'm posting it separately.

Olly's a house fan who got into Gilles but I'm the reverse.

When I was 15 I was listening to an eclectic but almost completely organic mix of music including Teenage Fanclub, The Smiths, Louis Armstrong, Gene Krupa and doo wop groups. One of my best friends was fanatical about The Prodigy, which I used to constantly mock him for, as I didn't consider electronic music 'real music'.

Go forward a couple of years. My first live music experience was witnessing the live force that was The Prodigy during their tour leading up to the release of The Fat Of The Land. Though I was impressed, it did not convert me to electronic music in my home listening.

John Peel was always a constant force in my musical development since the age of 13. I went through several long periods of not listening to his shows because of the more abrasive death metal or industrial tracks which, frankly, scared me! However his taste in crackly vinyl and unsung acoustic / organic talent would draw me back in. He used to drop the odd classic now and again too. His show was the first place I heard the magnificent psychedelic folk jam A Sailor's Life by Fairport Convention which is still one of my favourite tracks of all time.

After Britpop, electronically inclined artists like The Verve, Primal Scream and Black Grape had started to infiltrate my musical universe. Somehow Kowalski by Primal Scream or the nightmareish Setting Sun by The Chemical Brothers (with Noel Gallagher on vocals) were acceptable where The Prodigy or (God forbid!) house music were not.

In this spirit of open-mindedness I began to listen for electronic nuggets on Peel and started making a tape of my kind of dance music. I think I still know where it is and if I ever find out how to convert cassette to mp3 I will upload it. I still remember the names of some of these tracks as I asked for them at my local Our Price. I was not really aware of the new realms of musical obscurity I had reached. One was Danke Radio by Blanche. Another was Suspense by Trend. They both (incredibly) have listings on Discogs.

Meanwhile, I continued to get into organic music. Two of my favourite bands at this time were The Flaming Stars and Jack, both London groups, who I discovered, respectively, through Peel and GLR's Gary Crowley. I was also getting Melody Maker every week at this point. I reflect now that I could've met some fantastically dirty indie girls at this point. Sadly it wasn't to be and I was destined to spend years being turned down by girls who liked wearing pink and listening to R&B.

The single day which most changed my outlook on music was sometime in late 1997 when another friend suggested I listen to a DJ on Kiss FM (the London dance music station - so I would've made a disgusted face at him then) called Gilles Peterson. After two or three shows (sadly untaped) I realised this was not only a new musical world but a new musical universe. as Gilles often says he likes to join the dots between genres. And indeed he did, dots between folk and jazz, Latin and garage, Afro and psychedelic, jazz and rock... A little bit of everything. A musical cornucopia. 'Essential music for your ears, your ears, your ears...'

This experience was followed by another more powerful a couple of weeks later when I went with the same friend and two others to see Gilles playing live at a night called That's How It Is at Bar Rumba in London's Shaftesbury Avenue. I don't know if the music or people were more significant - it was the combination. Truly multi-racial, truly cosmopolitan crowd. Mind-bendingly fashionable Japanese youth, thirtysomething, broadly grinning, jazz dancers, outrageously camp househeads and young stoners like us all in the mix. I think we went back the very next week. Those 3 or 4 early visits and their tunes have melded into one for me but there's a few tunes I tracked down which will always be special for me from those sets.

Stars And Rockets - Peter Thomas.
I think Gilles was messing with the speeds on this because I thought it was ultra phat instrumental hip hop. Turned out to be recorded by a German big band in 1967 a I found out when I got one of my first vinyls - his compilation with Rainer Truby, 'Talking Jazz III'

Retro and Live At 237 - Peshay
Seminal tune of this time was of course Roni Size's Brown Paper Bag but I have fonder memories of these stormingly jazzy tunes by Peshay. They still sound pretty much unique today.

Cosmic Gypsy (Toshio's Remix) - United Future Organisation
I tried and tried to buy this tune. Last year I almost creamed my pants when I found it on EMule. It takes the flamenco guitar which opens the original tune and extends it with drums and eventually Josh Wink- style beeping. The version I did find is only four minutes long but I remember Gilles playing it for ten minutes. Or maybe it only seemed that way. But I think he was probably looping the opening. And a couple of the old jazz cats (people who remember Dingwalls etc) started stepping and shuffling on the empty floor dancing to inaudible drums. There was something of a frenzy by the end of this mighty and underrated tune. But I remember laughing at my friend during those long beatless guitar passages! What I still didn't know was that I was having my entire understanding of music changed forever.

Song In The Key Of Knife - London Elektricity
Admittedly this has dated less well but in 97 / 98 it sounded awesome. An explosion of organic jazziness and drum n bass rhythms, soaring strings and twanging double bass. Plus some mental flute action refrencing War's 'Low Rider' - or 'the Marmite advert' as we knew it then.

Samba tune - Jazzanova(?)
A 'faster and faster' samba tune which popped up a couple of years later as a remix of Max Sedgley's 'Happy'. I much prefer the original. I felt Gilles played it to sort the men from the boys on the dancefloor. I was a boy.

As always with such things, this vibe didn't last and we started to attend sessions where we didn't get the same feeling. And the Rumba's drug policy changed. Party over.

Saw Gilles at the Big Chill 99. Great set, big crowd pleaser, but it had already become more about the Radio 1 show than the music. Caught him a couple of times at big venues like the Barbican and Herbal. He was playing 'All Winners' selections both times and I hate to sound like a hater but I prefer to hear a fresh mix every time. Plus he was doing a PA which made me mentally search for the fast forward button (!)

My next big club experience was seeing Liam Howlett and DJ Die at Fabric in 99 / 2000. This night I took ecstacy for the first time. I don't take any drugs any more for simple health reasons but I'm no moraliser. They can be absolutely brilliant. And that was the night I understood dance music. It wasn't about image or brand loyalty. It wasn't about anything you could buy or own - other than the moment. It was about being alive and experiencing being alive. Experiencing being alive, experiencing having a mind and a body and a sex drive and hands and lips and a shirt like they were all brand new things. All this was expressed by the rhythm. The interaction of random and deliberate, man and machine, soundsystems, time, space, dusty samples and tribal rhythms. And I didn't have to search for the beat. The beat found me. And I still dance that way, when the music reaches me, tapping my pockets and snapping my fingers.

I only remember one tune from that evening - Dub MPLA by Tappa Zukie remixed by Subsonic Legacy. Dubby vocals with big bouncing bass and dub horn blasts.

I didn't take ecstacy too much but got heavily into weed. My listening tastes continued to branch everywhere - Coltrane, Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, Things Fall Apart by The Roots, early Bob Marley, Autechre, an EP by DJ Food called the Quadraplex EP, The Three EPs by The Beta Band, Mocha Supremo by Buscemi, Nedi Myra by Bjorn Torske and a high turnover of new vinyl and cds (thanks to the Student Loan Company).

Hungry for new sounds, I obsessively taped a number of radio shows including Gilles, John Peel, Radio 3's Late Junction, Solid Steel and Now Is The Time (new jazz not nu jazz) on London Live, One World, Breezeblock (though it clashed with Solid Steel - though I sometimes used my parents' stereo!) and various people who passed through Kiss on Sunday evenings like Tom Middleton. But I was sure there must be something else worth seeking out on Kiss amongst all the crappy hip hop and house. And then one night I found Dave Mothersole.

And here my musical world changed again. Great house did not need to be jazzy, dubby or soulful. It could be pure machine music but still as deep, intricate and expressive as fuck. Dave gradually took over my walkman. The purity and seamlessness of his sets started to make Gilles and Solid Steel seem like waffling schizophrenics with ADD.

And, now that I'm into house in general, I still maintain there's something very very special about Dave's mixes. He seems to put more dedication into the progression of his mixes than anyone I've heard. His mixes cover many bases of house music - progressive, tech house, deep with a bit of acid and electro - but there's always something a bit special about almost any of the records he drops. The man has an impeccable ear for the music and his selections and mixing richly deserves to be heard more widely. I'll be honoured if the next post helps towads that.

Peace and respect to all the artists, musicians, producers and DJs doing it for the music!


Let the journey continue!!!


Image is 'Greenwich Village' by Judith Rothschild.