Moon Wiring Club, The Jayston Mix

Moon Wiring Club, The Jayston Mix

Oh! A new mix by Moon Wiring Club from a wonderful new discovery, Pontone, an excellent independent music site. Coinciding with the release of their new album, A Spare Tabby At The Cat's Wedding, an album released as a 2-part vinyl and CD coupling, Moon Wiring Club venture out of Clinkskell to share some more self-confessed silliness in a mix dedicated to English actor Michael Jayston.

Ian Hodgson's output as Moon Wiring Club takes us on a creepy and somewhat confusing adventure into the imaginary world of Clinkskell, home to Gecophonic Productions and a host of unusual characters. Through the website, full of texts and illustrations painting a picture of this lost and timeless place, and a series of recorded releases and mixes, Hodgson invites us into an imaginative fictitious place filled with references to the past, occult explorations and pop cultural borrowings from the '70s and '80s.

Initial rummaging round the Pontone archives also turned up mixes by Clark, kpunk and Mordant Music.

Gig: Patten, Arch M, Forest Creature & Kaleidoscope DJs, 18th June, The Woodmill, London

Click to enlarge.

A fundraiser at one of South East London's newest studio and gallery complexes, The Woodmill. Expect glitches, beeps and lush, off-kilter electronics from Patten, Arch M, Sheffield's Forest Creature, Kaleidoscope DJS and more.

Cory Arcangel, Drei Klavierstücke, op. 11 I, II and III, 2009

Cory Arcangel Drei Klavierstücke, op. 11 I, II and III 2009

In Cory Arcangel's Drei Klavierstücke, op. 11, the artist has remade experimental atonal composer Arnold Schoenberg's piece of the same name (translation: Three Piano Pieces) 100 years after the piece was written out of videos of cats 'playing' pianos that he found on YouTube.

Discussing the piece on his website, he says that the piece was inspired by the increasing similarity of YouTube content to his favourite art videos - stating that the videos there increasingly surpassed those of his favourite artists. He also said that it was "Probably [his] proudest "net" moment ever as it wz featured on Cute Overload."

Be sure to read his page on the piece. He lists the videos used, tells you exactly how he made the piece (even offering the code he wrote for you to use to try something similar) and allows you chance to listen to a specially made comparison piece which plays the cats in the left speaker and the recital by Glenn Gould that he based the piece on in the right.

If you want more on his work, watch this lecture, and be sure to check out his website and YouTube channel.

Kid Koala

A truly mesmerizing bit of turntablism from Kid Koala.

Moon Wiring Club, ASDA The Music

As a follow up to my recent post about The Wire's Salon Series at Cafe Oto, I thought I'd let you know about this fantastic 2-part mix by Moon Wiring Club.

Delving through retrograde electronics and synth sounds seeped in the fuzz and distortion of the ancient TV sets I remember from watching Channel4 Schools programs in primary school, the mix is laden with samples taken from the television of yesteryear, the music reminiscent of theme tunes and jingles of 70s, 80s and 90s prime time.

You can download the mix and some lovely cassette-tape artwork absolutely free from here.

Image from djfood.org/.

The Wire Salon Series at Cafe Oto, Dalston, London

The Wire Salon Series

Cafe Oto

18 - 22 Ashwin street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL

First Thursday of each month 8pm, starting 1st April 2010

Tickets £4 on the door only

Next month sees Cafe Oto begin a series of salon-style events revolving around thinking and talking about music, presented by experimental music magazine The Wire. The series promises readings, discussions, panel debates, film screenings, DJ sets and the occasional live performance.

April 1st : Revenant Forms: The Meaning Of Hauntology

The first event in the series, Mark Fisher (K-punk), Adam Harper (Rouge's Foam) and Joseph Stannard (The Outer Church) will discuss the essence of the spectral, uncanny qualities of much contemporary audio, from dubstep to hypnagogic pop and beyond.

The night will also include screenings of a number of short films by Julian House (Ghost Box, The Focus Group), which feature soundtracks by Broadcast, Belbury Poly and others; a live set by Moon Wiring Club; and eldritch vinyl interludes courtesy of Mordant Music.

May 6th : Sonic warfare: The Politics Of Frequency

For the second event in the series, author Ken Hollings (Welcome To Mars, Destroy All Monsters) and Steve Goodman (Kode9, Hyperdub), author of Sonic Warfare (sample chapters here), discuss the uses and abuses of sound and noise in policing the urban environment, by the military-industrial complex, in the era of the soundclash, and beyond. Plus related films, DJs and other participants TBA.

John Cage, Water Walk

John Cage
Water Walk
1960

John Cage performs Water Walk on popular American TV Show I've Got A Secret. Exhibiting an unusually light-hearted approach, Cage introduces and plays a composition on a water pitcher, an iron pipe, a goose call, a bottle of wine, an electric mixer, a whistle, a sprinkling can, ice cubes, 2 cymbals, a mechanical fish, a quall call, a rubber duck, a tape recorder, a vase of roses, a seltzer siphon, 5 radios, a bath tube and a grand piano.

Chritian Marclay & Others Live In London This Weekend

Steve Beresford's Birthday

Cafe Oto

18 - 22 Ashwin street, Dalston, London, E8 3DL

Saturday 6th March 8pm

Tickets £8 adv/£10 otd

Following last week's post, I have just read that Christian Marclay will be playing live as part of Steve Beresford's 60th birthday celebrations at Dalston's Cafe Oto this weekend.

The line up will feature the following:

Christian Marclay on turntables, Veryan Weston and Tania Chen on pianos, Lol Coxhill and John Butcher on saxophones, Satoko Fukuda on violin, Ute Kanngiesser on cello, Guillaume Viltard on contra bass and Steve Beresford on piano and electronics.

Expect an atonal celebration of all things free and improvisational.

Christian Marclay

A mini documentary, a video work and some links to performance documents by Christian Marclay.

Marclay emerged from 1980s New York's experimental music and performance scene. Developing turntablism in parallel with, but entirely separate from, Hiphop artists such as Grandmaster Flash, Marclay's approach is abstract and more inspired by experimental and avant-garde music than soul and funk breaks. Preoccupied with the cracks, pops and skips as much as the recordings on his records, he puts his records and turntables through some unbelievable abuse. Perhaps none quite so severe as in this piece though.

Here's another relic from the UbuWeb archive,

This video features a 15 minute performance on 3 turntables and a range of samplers, and interview in which Marclay discusses a number of his most famous pieces including Record Without A Cover and Guitar Drag (below). The presenter is a little bizarre, but Marclay explains his thoughts on his work and methods eloquently.

Guitar Drag 2000
14 minutes

This video, an audio and visual document in which Marclay ties an amplified guitar to the back of a truck before driving around the town of San Antonio, Texas, is rich with cultural references; Fluxus performance, incidental music, rock'n'roll stage-trashing and road movies are all apparent. More specifically it addresses the racially-aggravated murder of James Byrd Jr. who was dragged to his death behind a pickup-truck in 1998.

If you're left wanting more, there's another performance from 1989 here.