May I once again draw your attention to the transcript of 'Scotland's Secret Shame' from BBC's Panorama back in 2005. It was actually produced by my 'brother-in-law' and I am sure that if he was to do a follow up now absolutely NOTHING will have changed!
Brion Gysin (1916 -- 1986) was a painter, writer, sound poet, and performance artist born in England.
He is best known for his discovery of the cut-up technique, used by his friend, the novelist William S. Burroughs. With the engineer Ian Sommerville he invented the Dreamachine, a flicker device designed as an art object to be viewed with the eyes closed.
It was in painting and drawing, however, that Gysin devoted his greatest efforts, creating calligraphic works inspired by the cursive Japanese "gras" script and Arabic writing. Burroughs later stated that "Brion Gysin was the only man I ever respected."
In 1934, he moved to Paris to study La Civilisation Française, an open course given at the Sorbonne where he made literary and artistic contacts through Marie Berthe Aurenche, Max Ernst's second wife. He joined the Surrealist Group and began frequenting Valentine Hugo, Leonor Fini, Salvador Dalí, Picasso and Dora Maar. A year later, he had his first exhibition at the Galerie Quatre Chemins in Paris with Ernst, Picasso, Hans Arp, Hans Bellmer, Victor Brauner, Giorgio de Chirico, Dalí, Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, Man Ray and Yves Tanguy.
On the day of the preview, however, he was expelled from the Surrealist Group by André Breton who ordered the poet Paul Éluard to take down his pictures. Gysin was 19 years old. His biographer, John Geiger, suggests the arbitrary expulsion "had the effect of a curse. Years later, he blamed other failures on the Breton incident. It gave rise to conspiracy theories about the powerful interests who seek control of the art world.
In 1954 in Tangier, Gysin opened a restaurant called "The 1001 Nights", with his friend Mohamed Hamri, who was the cook. Gysin hired the Master Musicians of Jajouka to perform alongside entertainment that included acrobats, a dancing boy and fire eaters. The musicians performed there for an international clientèle that included Burroughs. Losing the business in 1958, the restaurant closed permanently and Gysin returned to live in Paris, taking lodgings in a flophouse located at 9 rue Gît-le-Coeur that would become famous as the Beat Hotel.
Working on a drawing, he discovered a Dada technique by accident. This initially evolved from some discussions with Burroughs about techniques of writing and from the 'tape to the wall' approach Burroughs used for writing/editing "Naked Lunch." Gysin, always intent on turning painter's techniques directly into writing, brought the "cut-up" technique into being and this experiment dramatically changed the landscape of American literature.
With Sommerville, he built the Dreamachine in 1961. Described as "the first art object to be seen with the eyes closed", the flicker device uses alpha waves in the 8-16 Hz range to produce a change of consciousness in receptive viewers.
In Later years...
He also worked extensively with noted jazz soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy.
He recorded an album in 1986 with French musician Ramuntcho Matta, featuring himself singing/rapping his own texts, with performances by Don Cherry, Elli Medeiros, Steve Lacy, Lizzy Mercier Descloux and more.
As a joke, Gysin contributed a recipe for marijuana fudge to a cookbook by Alice B. Toklas; it was unintentionally included for publication, becoming famous under the name Alice B. Toklas brownies.
A heavily edited version of his novel, The Last Museum, was published posthumously in 1986.
Made an American Commander of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1985, Gysin died a year later of lung cancer. An obituary by Robert Palmer published in The New York Times fittingly described him as a man who "threw off the sort of ideas that ordinary artists would parlay into a lifetime career, great clumps of ideas, as casually as a locomotive throws off sparks"
The Ache is the first in-house release from our newest crew member Natasha Kmeto, showcasing a bold and frankly amazing new direction for the accomplished artist. After several years of creating progressively more advanced music, Natasha has arrived to deliver what is easily her best work to date, an ambitious foray into beats, bass, exotic samples, analog synths, and immaculately crafted textures, with her voice covering the entire affair like hot butter. The feel is hardly cluttered, though, and could possibly be our cleanest and most R’n’B inflected release to date, a shining example of what she’s got us calling “futuristic soul.” In contrast to some of our other material, The Ache is a lot like something you might hear on the radio, except about a dozen steps ahead, exactly where the music on the radio should be.
Credits
Released 14 February 2012 All original tracks written, produced and recorded by Natasha Kmeto in Portland, OR. Mixed and mastered by Chris Green Album art by Alex Kmeto Photo by Carly Birkey Catalog Number GEM011 www.natashakmeto.com www.droppinggems.com (Thanx Audiozobe!)
Dory Previn, the US singer and composer who collaborated with former husband Andre on two Oscar-nominated songs, has died in Massachusetts at the age of 86.
Born Dorothy Veronica Langan in 1925, she began as a lyricist before finding success as a solo artist in the 1970s.
She married Andre Previn in 1959 and worked with him on the theme to 1967's Valley of the Dolls.
After he left her for Mia Farrow, she recorded such albums as On My Way to Where and Mythical Kings and Iguanas.
According to the New York Times, her difficult childhood, divorce from Previn and bouts of mental illness informed her music.
The six albums she released in the 1970s were confessional and confrontational.
Beware Of Young Girls, a track from On My Way To Where, directly addressed Mia Farrow's role in the break-up of her marriage.
"Beware of young girls, who come to the door, wistful and pale, of twenty and four," she sang.
"She was my friend. She was invited to my house," the lyrics continued. "She admired my wedding ring".
Her death on Tuesday at her Southfield farm was confirmed by husband Joby Baker, a Canadian actor she married in 1984. Soul-bearing
Dory was born in New Jersey in the 1920s and, after school, attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
She worked as an actress and a dancer until she began writing songs and landed a job at film studio MGM, where she was assigned to work with Andre Previn.
They married in 1959 and were nominated for their first Oscar two years later, for the song Faraway Part of Town, which featured in the film Pepe, starring Mexican comedian Cantinflas.
The pair were nominated again two years later, this time for Second Chance from the Robert Mitchum film Two for the Seesaw.
Outside of cinema, the pair wrote independently for the likes of Doris Day and Jack Jones, while Sammy Davis Junior and Frank Sinatra recorded some of their soundtrack work.
In 1965, Dory Previn suffered a nervous breakdown and was briefly institutionalised, but she continued to work.
This period produced one of her most successful works - the soundtrack to kitsch classic Valley Of The Dolls. The album spent six months in the charts, and the theme song was a top 10 hit for Dionne Warwick.
Following her divorce, in 1970, Previn received a third Oscar nomination for Come Saturday Morning, a song she co-wrote for Alan J Pakula's debut feature Pookie.
Award success came at last in 1983, when she received an Emmy for co-writing the theme song to TV show Two Of A Kind.
Jarvis Cocker is among the modern musicians who have taken inspiration from Previn's soul-baring lyrics.
The Pulp frontman mentioned her in his 2011 book Mother, Brother, Lover and chose her song Lady With the Braid as one of his Desert Island Discs in 2005.
@'BBC'
