questionnaire pour Libération (2020)

What is the first record  you bought in your youth with your own money ?

Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Do It Yourself, 1979

Your favorite way for listening to music ? (MP3, CD, vinyl, radio for example) ?

Radio – London pirate stations in the 1990s,  listening to rap or classic rock in the car in Los Angeles today.

The last record you bought?

Last vinyl was Some British Accents and Dialects (BBC, 1971). Last digital was Beatriz Ferreyra, Echos+ (Room40, 2020). 

Where do you prefer to be when you are listening to music?

I like to be doing something that occupies me physically but leaves me mentally open to the music – in the kitchen, cooking, is ideal.

A mascot/favorite record to start the day with ?

Sacred, “Do It Together (London Massive)”, 1992

Do you need music for work or do you prefer silence ?

Usually I’m listening to what I’m writing about, but for pure acceleration as the deadline approaches, hardcore rave and jungle tapes that I made off pirate radio in the early Nineties maintain my pace and sustain my spirits.  

The song you feel a bit ashamed to listen to with pleasure ?

I don’t feel shame about liking anything, because – through solipsistic logic – I conclude that if I like it, it must be good. But if pushed, I would admit that enjoying “Rock You Like A Hurricane” by the Scorpions feels slightly embarrassing.

The record that everybody likes and that you despise ?

I can’t think of a record that everybody likes – there’s always a contrarian these days who’ll say “this is overrated”. I’m actually struggling to think of a record I despise. Panic! At The Disco’s “High Hopes” is fairly horrific, but I’m sure many would agree with me.

The records you need to survive on desert island ?

I made it records plural because it’s too hard to pick just one. Miles Davis, In A Silent Way. Joni Mitchell, The Hissing of Summer Lawns. John Martyn, Solid Air.

What cover art would you frame at home like a piece of art ?

Electronic Panorama, a Prospective 21e Siecle series box set released by Philips in 1970. I don’t have it framed but the silver metallic box is displayed on a shelf in our living room.

Your best memory of a concert ?

Daft Punk making their US debut at the Even Furthur rave in the wilds of Wisconsin, 1996.

Do you go in a club to dance, listen to music on a big sound system, to chat up… Or you never go in the clubs ?

I used to go to clubs and raves all the time. But now hardly ever. When I went, it was to dance and to do certain other things people at raves do. But also increasingly I went as a participant-observer, the use the anthropologist’s term. To read the living text of the crowd, decode the rituals.  

What is the record you share with your significant other in your live ?

Too many, but among the core shared favorites are Pixies, Cocteau Twins, Aphex Twin, A.R. Kane, Fleetwood Mac, Saint Etienne, Omni Trio, Orbital, Ultramarine.

The track that makes you mad with rage ?

I cannot think of one at the moment. There are tracks that make me rage with madness, in a good way, i.e. Dionysian frenzy – The Stooges’s “TV Eye”, Beltram’s “Energy Flash”, Future’s “Fuck Up These Commas”.

The last record you listened to over and over again ?

Thin Lizzy, “My Sarah”.

The band you wish you have joined ?

Often the bands that do great things that I’d have been thrilled to be involved in creating also have nasty internal struggles and a long periods of misery and decline. So I will say the Wilson Sisters, a very short-lived conceptual outfit started by friends of mine, with whom I did the Oxford pop journal Monitor. But I had moved to London so missed their one and only  recording session.

The piece of music that makes you cry ?

The Smiths, “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”. Runner up: Kraftwerk, “Neon Lights”.

Do you know what drone metal is ?

Sunn O))) ?

Quote the lyrics of a song you know by heart ?

The whole lyric? I’m not sure I know every last word in this, but I know most of it. This is just one bit:  “Why in the world are we here? Surely not to live in pain and fear. Why on earth are you there? When you're everywhere, come and get your share. But we all shine on, Like the moon and the stars and the sun, And we all shine on. On and on and on and on.” (“Instant Karma”, John Lennon)

Name three of your favorite songs ? 

Sly and the Family Stone “Everyday People”, Foul Play “Open Your Mind (Foul Play Remix)”, The Sweet “Ballroom Blitz”.

Cultural Striptease

(done in 2010) 

Your first cultural memory?

Probably The Beatles ("Yellow Submarine"). Unless we count British children's TV shows like Andy Pandy and Pogle's Wood.

The song where you would like to inhabit?

The second (subaquatic idyllic) section of John Martyn's "I'd Rather Be The Devil", but I'd need to have gills instead of lungs.

A song you are listening obsessively on your iPod? (do you have one?)

I do have an iPod but hardly ever use it. The last song to obsess me was Black Eyed Peas's "Boom Boom Pow" which came out in summer 2009 but which I only heard this month -- that got several replays on YouTube.

An embarassing (or dangerous cultural) pleasure?

I can't think of anything that embarrasses me. 

I suppose I am ashamed of how much time I waste watching junk TV -- cooking shows, reality-type pseudo-documentaries, "Best Interior Design/Next Top Model" type contests. There really are so many better things I could do with my time.

 

The song/movie which changed your life (a quote from it).

Sex Pistols, "Anarchy in the U.K."--no specific line, but the excessive demand in the song and Johnny Rotten's performance left me with excessive, unrealistic demands in terms of what I expect from music (world-shaking impact, breath-choking intensity)

A recent album/book/movie/author that you consider your personal discovery.

In the era of webbed music and hyper-hipsterism, it is very hard to be first on the block with a new group, or a new anything. Generally I am happy to pick up on things a little bit after the "new thing" hunters get there.

Things your children should read, listen and see?

The Wind In the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.

Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony.

The Railway Children.

 

If I say television: is there a sitcom or something unexpected you can’t stop to watch at?

Peep Show.

 

Music: the playlist/soundtrack of your life, in 5 songs.

The Slits, "So Tough"

My Bloody Valentine, "Slow"

Orbital, "Chime"

Omni Trio, "Renegade Snares (Foul Play Remix)"

Ariel Pink, "The Ballad of Bobby Pyn"

 

The ringtone you have on your your mobile phone, now?

The standard one it comes with.

 

What do you think of people who obsessively wear earcuffs while walking or other?

It's not how I would choose to live. I don't like to be insulated from the outside world. I was never a big fan of the Walkman and the only time I use my iPod is on long train or bus journeys, or late at night when I want to read while sitting on the sofa (rather than attached to the stereo via headphones).

 

A quote from a song to tell someone: you love him/her; you want to leave him/her. And a song (quote) to convince someone to stay with you?

"It's only me/Who wants to wrap around your dreams"--Fleetwood Mac, "Dreams"

"Lovin’ you...isn't the right thing to do"--Fleetwood Mac, "Go Your Own Way"

"I can still hear you saying/You would never break the chain"--Fleetwood Mac, "The Chain"

 

Your relationship with new technologies: do you have a Blackberry/iPhone, you are an email addict, what’s your opinion about Facebook or similar?

No Blackberry, no iPhone, only shaky command of my mobile phone to be honest. Email, addicted, yes of course. Facebook--coming up with clever comments on stuff is too much like work for me. I'm on it but I hardly ever update or leave anything comments. Twitter is another step in the ephemeralisation of everything: I can remember magazine articles and music paper record reviews from 30 years ago; I can remember certain blog posts and online essays from 7 or 9 years ago. But do people remember a Tweet for more than a day?

A stupid thing that you cannot stop to do online. Or a digital gaffe.

Saving articles and blog posts "to read later". "Later" never comes and I have a folder called Reading Matter with a couple of thousand files inside it.

Have you read books on kindle or some e-readers?

No.

What you would have want to learn to do in life?

Practically: Drive a car (I've just moved to Los Angeles so this is essential). Play a musical instrument. Learn how to make beats. Learn how to beat-match as a deejay.

Existentially: Be more patient. Waste less time.

 

What did you learn from a book/movies/music about: sex?

There's no substitute for hands-on experience.

 

Do you read magazines?

Yes, but not as much as I used to.

What did you save/hated of our last ten years culture, the so called Noughties, Anni Zero.

Love: Music's inexhaustible capacity to come up with the unexpected, the revelatory, unknown pleasures (Dizzee Rascal, Animal Collective, Ariel Pink, Ghost Box, Vampire Weekend...). Blogging as a rebirth of music  journalism.

Hate: The effect on the internet on my attention span, which is shot to pieces (see above, about magazines). The wars and the propaganda machine that attempted to justify them. Still waiting for the future/the 21st Century to start, the first ten years just seem like the Nineties continuing. Twitter as the slow erosion of blogging

A word that you love. A word that you hate.

Joy

Root canal

Were would you go for a “cultural” tour? 3 places

Places I've never been -- Tokyo, Bombay, Beijing.

If you would have to write an autobiography, what could be the firts line? And the dedication?

 I will never write an autobiography. But the dedication would be "For Jenny and for Joy".

50 Favorite Songs

 (for an Italian publication, 2009)

 

The Eyes  --  "When the Night Falls"

The Beatles  -- "Strawberry Fields Forever"

John's Children -- "A Midsummer Night's Scene"

We The People -- "You Burn Me Up and Down"

The Byrds -- "Everybody's Been Burned"

Pink Floyd -- "Paintbox"

The Doors - "The Soft Parade"

Love -- "You Set The Scene"

The Stooges  - "Ann"

Scott Walker -- "Boy Child"

Miles Davis -- "Bitches Brew"

The Rolling Stones  - "Moonlight Mile"

Roy Harper -- "The Same Old Rock"

 Black Sabbath -- "Iron Man"

John Martyn -- "I'd Rather Be The Devil"

Roxy Music  -- "If There Is Something"

Al Green -- "I'm Still In Love With You"

Can -- "Quantum Physics"

Kevin Ayers -- "Decadence"

Robert Wyatt -- "Sea Song"

Faust -- "Jennifer"

Neu! -- "Seeland"

Max Romeo -- "War Inna Babylon"

Television -- "Marquee Moon"

Sex Pistols -- "Bodies"

X Ray Spex -- "Let's Submerge"

Ian Dury -- "My Old Man"

Kraftwerk -- "Neon Lights"

The Slits -- "So Tough"

Public Image Ltd -- "No Birds Do Sing"

Gang of Four -- "At Home He Feels Like A Tourist"

Fleetwood Mac -- "Sara"

Michael Jackson -- "Rock With You'

Scritti Politti -- "PAs"

Talking Heads -- "Seen and Not Seen"

The Associates -- "Party Fears Two"

The Blue Orchids -- "Low Profile"

Meat Puppets -- "Two Rivers"

The Smiths -- "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out"

Nitro Deluxe -- "This Brutal House"

Public Enemy -- "Public Enemy No. 1"

My Bloody Valentine -- "I Believe"

Orbital -- "Chime"

Joey Beltram -- "Energy Flash"

Aphex Twin -- "We Are the Music Makers"

Omni Trio -- "Renegade Snares (Foul Play Remix)"

New Horizons - - "Find the Path"

Daft Punk -- "Digital Love"

four favorite riffs

Not actually my four absolute favorite riffs (Lord alone knows where I'd start with that) but four of my favorite riffs, commented on for The Wire's Greatest Riffs feature of  2004 

KING SUNNY ADE -- “Eje Nlo Gba Ara Mi”, “365 Is My Number/The Message” (from Juju Music, Mango, 1982), “Synchro System” (Synchro System, Mango, 1983)

 The riff so good they used it thrice. Actually, that’s an underestimate. This twangy, twinkly rhythm guitar figure, mostly likely played by Ade himself, is all over The Best of The Classic Years compilation of 1967-74 material (notably “Sunny Ti De” and “Ibanujde Mon Iwon”), and I’m told it recurs throughout the man’s vast discography. Whether it’s creative thrift or a Zen-like exploration of the infinite inflectional possibilities within a few chords, who knows? In any given track, this crisp crinkle of scintillating Afro-funk serves a double function, operating as both audio-logo (this is KING SUNNY ADE you’re listening to) and intensifier, its flecked flicker tightening the surface of the music until it’s as taut as a drum skin.

NASTY HABITS--“Shadow Boxing” (31 Records, 1996)

Nasty Habits is the alter-ego of deejay/producer Doc Scott, one of jungle’s under-sung pioneers, and “Shadow Boxing” contains the most gloriously doom-laden and ponderous synth-riff in that genre’s history. Scott’s from Coventry, so it’s tempting to think he must have accessed the heaviness of this sluggish, scowling riff from the harsh West Midlands environment in the same way Sabbath did with “Iron Man,” “War Pigs,” and the rest. More likely, though, is that in the early Nineties Scott had his head rearranged at Coventry’s Eclipse raves and ever since then he’s been chasing down his own ultimate version of the miasmic “Mentasm” noise-riff, as heard on Joey Beltram’s early R&S tracks and Belgian hardcore anthems beyond counting. Beautiful and ominous like a cloud of poison gas looming on the horizon, “Shadow Boxing” is the culmination of a life’s work. Something drum’n’bass as genre most likely will never surpass.

RESILIENT--"1.2" (Chain Reaction, 1996) 

There’s probably any number of fabulous riffs strewn across the discographies of the Basic Channel/Chain Reaction label-cluster (Maurizio’s “M6” and Monolake’s “Index” spring immediately to mind). But “1.2” by the enigmatic Resilient takes the BC/CR approach of miniaturising the riff to the limit. Riffs exist at the intersection of melody and rhythm, the mnemonic and the physical, and the Chain Reaction aesthetic in part involved seeing just how reduced (in terms of notes) you could make a pulse before it became purely percussive, just another beat. I’m not even sure there’s notes as such in “1.2”, it’s more like this spasming ripple of texture. It’s as if Resilient has conducted an archaeology of house music in order to uncover the primordial geocosmic vamp at the genre’s core. The first half of “1.2” consists of a tectonic shudder, a tidal current, that’s so contourless it’s at the very threshold of memorability. Then roughly six minutes in (you do tend to lose track of time) it abruptly shifts gear to a more rapid flicker of amorphous radiance. At which point, the sensation of spongy amniotic suspension quickens to a flooding bliss, overwhelming enough to get your eyes rolling back in your head. You start to see why some wag* dubbed this genre “heroin house”.

KRAFTWERK--“Ruckzuck” (Kraftwerk 1, Philips, 1971) 

Given all the other choices available in the Kraftwerk oeuvre--the regular-as-carburetor pulse of “Autobahn”, the poignant heart-flutter vamps of “Neon Lights” and “Computer Love”, the eerie synth-shivers midway through "Home Computer"--it probably seems slightly perverse to pick the very first song on the very first album. Especially as the killer riff is played on a flute, not a synth. But the whole essence of Kraftwerk’s sound/feeling/Geist--serene urgency, Zen as the art of motorik maintenance--is distilled into Florian Schneider’s rasping flute lick. Or flute licks--at various points, it’s double-tracked so that Schneider is jamming with himself, the staccato patterns dovetailing to funky perfection. Flutes are usually a ghastly idea outside classical music, but here the instrument rocks--indeed, it’s hard to think of another instance of a woodwind being used to such percussive and propulsive effect. “Ruckzuck” is the missing link between Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians and Area Code 615’s “Stone Fox Chase”--i.e. that harmonica-driven theme tune for The Old Grey Whistle Test. * "some wag"--Not sure but I think it was actually Kevin Martin who coined the term "heroin house". Nuff respeck.

ambient faves (2016)

votes for the pitchfork ambient list  

(with my blurbs for charting albums below) 

1/ brian eno - on land

2/ brian eno & harold budd - plateaux of mirrors

3/ aphex twin - selected ambient works vol 2

4/ seefeel - polyfusia

5/ laraaji - day of radiance

6/ Steve hillage - rainbow dome music

7/ cluster - II

8/ manuel göttsching - e2-e4

9/ brian eno - discreet music

10/ aphex twin - selected ambient works 89-93

11/ fripp-eno – (no pussyfooting)

12/ david sylvian - gone to earth (instrumentals disc)

13/ david bowie - low (side 2)

14/ mixmaster morris - flying high

15/ the orb - adventures beyond the ultra world

16/ edgar froese - aqua

17/ klaus schulze - mirage

18/ ralph lundsten - cosmic love

19/ seefeel - quique

20/ brian eno - music for airports

might have included if i'd heard them then

ernest hood - neighborhoods

k.leimer - music for land and water

michael turtle - phantoms of dreamland

arnold aard - electro-sonnances

ron nagorcka - loveregana: music from a tasmanian forest

knud victor - ambiances / images

kankyo ongaku compilation

angel rada  - upadesa

runners up/edge cases (e.g.with song element)

hugo largo - drum / meddle

spacemen 3 - playing with fire 

ar kane - 69 

eno - another green world

eno - before and after science

oneohtrix point never - rifts

budd / fraser / guthrie / raymonde - the moon and the melodies

other contenders

zoviet france, moon wiring club, focus group,ingram marshall, catherine christer hennix, jon hassell, thomas koner, huerco s, celer, dolphins into the future, orphan fairytale, cocteau twins,global communications, ann southam, other eno / budd / cluster / harmonia / laraaji / fripp-eno / seefeel, kwjazz, laurie spiegel,the caretaker, roj, ryuichi sakamoto, nik pascal, virginia astley,matsuo ohno, michel longtin,craig kupka, david pritchard 

Aphex Twin, Selected Ambient Works Volume II (Warp), 1994

With Selected Ambient Works 85-92, Richard D. James established “ambient techno” as a viable concept rather than a contradiction-in-terms.  But soon this serene offshoot of banging ravefloor music became its own New Age-y cul-de-sac.  Bloody-minded as ever, for his early ’94 follow-up, James switched from chill-out to chilling: ominously featureless soundscapes woven from abstract textures and eerily fixated pulses. Gone, for the most part, were those lovely Aphex melodies shimmering like dew-drops on a spider web. The project’s forbidding aura was intensified by the absence of track titles: all 24 tracks were identified only by texture-swatches (such as lichen or weathered stone) as if to deliberately exacerbate the listener’s sensation of being lost.  There was beauty here still, but of a peculiar and unsettling kind: the opener, for instance, modulates a voice into a baby-talk squiggle, then ripples it through hall-of-mirrors echo.  James trailed the project – which proved as influential as its predecessor had been, with similarly mixed results –by talking about the inspiration he’d drawn from experiments with lucid dreaming: techniques that allow the sleeper to steer the storyline of a nocturnal adventure. True or not, the effect of this music feels exactly like being inside a dream – not necessarily idyllic, more like the kind whose strangeness haunts you long into your waking day. 

Brian Eno, Ambient 4: On Land (EG), 1982

The climax of Eno’s supremely fertile New York period, On Land is ironically an attempt to leave – psychologically - the very city in which he’d produced so much astonishingly innovative work.   The working title Empty Landscapes reveals just how oppressive Eno had come to find Manhattan’s hyperactive bustle. Drawing on inspirations from film (Fellini’s Amarcord) and art (Pierre Tal-Coat’s pastoral paintings) Eno was above all working from personal memory: faded impressions of the unpopulous East Coast of England where he’d grown up. Some tracks are named after places (Leek Hills, Dunwich) he’d frequented as a child, while another (“Lantern Marsh”) gets it title from an evocative name he’d seen on a map. Aiming for “a nice kind of spooky” and a “feeling of aloneness,” On Land pushes much deeper into abstraction than Music For Airports: Eno drastically processed the instrumental sounds until unrecognizable and wove in natural-world timbres such as stones and frog noises.  The glinting, amorphous result has barely any ancestors in music. On Land was a deeply conceptual project: Eno wrote 25 thousand words of notes to articulate what he was trying to do and invented a three-speaker system that listeners could set up to intensify the feeling of sonic engulfment.  But On Land ultimately works on a purely emotional level: a heartsick 34-year-old expatriate mentally prepares himself for the homecoming that will follow in a few years.  “On Land” is only a missing consonant and a shifted vowel from “England”.

 

Laraaji, Ambient 3: Day of Radiance (EG ) 1980

Serendipity was in full effect the day Eno strolled through New York’s Washington Square Park and came across Laraaji playing his plangently chiming autoharp.  The actor-musician had already released one album, 1978’s Celestial Vibrations,  but the note inviting him to make a record that Eno dropped into his busker’s hat gave Laraaji access to a much larger audience.  Born Edward Larry Gordon, Laraaji had explored the concept of cosmic music for some years using electrified and adapted versions of the zither and hammered dulcimer. He believed that these and similar metallophonic instruments like gongs induced a trance state that broke down the self’s boundaries and unloosed the bonds of Time.  Not that the first side of Day of Radiance is relaxing, exactly:  “The Dance” seems to flood your mind with almost-painful brightness. But the flipside’s two-parter “Meditation” gently unspools folds of glimmering texture in a slow-motion cascade.  Although Radiance was a career highpoint, Laraaji would record a bunch more wonderful albums (including Flow Goes The Universe for Eno’s latterday label All Saints). The fact that Laraaji’s other main occupation is working as a laughter therapist reminds us of the higher purpose – at once practical and mystical – behind Radiance. This is music for healing and making whole.