Friday, 16 March 2012

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(Thanx Mark!)

♪♫ St. Vincent - Cruel/The Party (HiFi Bar Melbourne 14/03/12)

(For sasayoceanosin!)

Squarepusher Manifesto

Some people would say, in looking at my career, that it betrays a confused musical standpoint; optimistically it is termed unpredictable, more derisively it is said to be self-cancelling, in that within the wide aesthetic range in the work, one part contradicts and undermines another, resulting in something akin to the mixing of all the different paints on the palette. This is an important point to realise: I take no refuge behind standpoints. This has manifested itself as part of my fundamental creative aspiration- to see across as opposed to seeing from.
At first, there needs to be the presence both of a view rooted in inherited opinion, effectively treated as transparent and assumed to be inherently correct, and a will to play with that view, to endlessly distort it and to ultimately be prepared to destroy it. A kind of simultaneous faith and critical ingenuity are required as, without the latter one is bound to a reverential repetition of received wisdom, and without the former ones sparks quickly die away once the entrenched standpoint is supposedly vanquished.
To make a lethal attack on, say a musical standpoint, that standpoint must first be loved, understood and accommodated before it can be assailed, and this problem is exemplified with much youth culture that seeks to destroy its perceived antithetical enemy simply by contradicting it. It is not enough to behead your enemy, they must first be invited in and made to feel welcome in order to be comprehensively destroyed i.e. they must be in some way incorporated.
This process should seem familiar as it is the time honoured way of dissipating polarised energy away from musical movements: by making them popular. What I am doing is turning this system on its head: instead of incorporating isolated views into mainstream equivalents, for the sake of destroying culture in the name of the corporation, I incorporate isolated views into my standpoint, indeed to the point of seemingly cancelling out a coherent view, for the sake of destroying culture in the name of the individual. In this sense I advocate completely respect-less exploitation of all forms available, as this is the only road that could possibly render an individual immune to being dissolved into mainstream castration, insofar as the music industry as it stands feeds most happily on artists with discrete viewpoints:identity-cults can only be effectively generated from one dimensional personalities. Personal identity must be entirely subjugated and rendered formless in order to have any sort of freedom in our era.
A common error is mistaking contradiction or negation of a consensus view for freedom; this leads to phenomena symbiotic with mainstream culture and equally poisonous i.e. movements who identify themselves exclusively with a cynical commentary on the mainstream. This is a dustbin for so called artists: diametrically opposed to the mainstream, they are still very much obliged to march to its tune, or of course its inversion. Being conscious of the fallacy in their claim of independence, the views always deliberately remain self-contained, and just as a surfeit of cultural control gives rise to overweight smug cretins, an almost total absence of it gives rise to the revolting snide dinginess of the eternally subjugated. The lesson is that no punks have yet been punk enough - rejecting and negating the mainstream just as quickly becomes subsumed in its own poisonous cliches, (thus often becoming eligible for mass production).
It is essential for any creator to want to negate and to reject, but this has to be coupled with a consummate understanding of the phenomena one seeks to reject. Otherwise, not understanding the language of negation, the object of the negating will misunderstands what is being shouted at it, and carries on regardless. I have learned to see inside every musicians head because, in order to prevent myself from being fully incorporated into any musical ghetto, I have to incorporate every musical ghetto into myself. I aspire to make music useless as a commodity i.e. a prop for the identities and personalities of the mindless; and if this is all that music constitutes in our era, then to maximise every conceivable parameter until it completely destroys itself.
Via Acrospective

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Meet the Pandrogyne: The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge is best known as the godfather of industrial music - specifically, as the founding member of Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, and Thee Majesty. But long before DJs and record-collectors sought out his (nowadays) highly-prized vinyl, P-Orridge first established himself as an artist who thrived on challenging the boundary between the sacred and profane - including ejaculating in front of an audience of uptight British art patrons in a performance piece.
A friend of the late William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge was an early practitioner of the "cut-up method," using sound instead of the written word as raw material. P-Orridge has always been an ever-changing chameleon whose appearance often reflects his current creative process, and lately, he's been using his own body as a canvas - applying the cut-up method to his very own flesh and blood by undergoing a series of cosmetic surgeries, including breast implants. His daring and provocative project blossomed from his deep love for Jacqueline Breyer, otherwise known as Lady Jaye. Although she was 19 years his junior, Lady Jaye was an old soul who became P-Orridge's muse, collaborator, and wife - before her untimely passing from natural causes in 2007 at the age of 38.
It's easy to dismiss P-Orridge's admittedly strange endeavor as overly weird or extreme. To some, the artist has simply been "turning himself into his late spouse." But after seeing the The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye by filmmaker Marie Losier, it becomes obvious that this kind of critique of P-Orridge's long-term project is missing the facts. P-Orridge hasn't been turning himself into his dead wife. Rather, long before Lady Jaye "left her body," as P-Orridge says, the two sought to merge themselves into one being, something P-Orridge has termed the "pandrogyne." (Watch the Pandrogyne Manifesto for more about this fascinating concept.)
The depth of P-Orridge's frightening brand of genius is both difficult to grasp and nearly impossible to describe. Enter The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, a captivating documentary, moving love story, and profile of an artist that boldly examines the consequences of a profound romance and the precarious nature of artistic impulse.
Tanja M. Laden @'Pop Curious'

More photos and videos

Interview with Andrew Weatherall

Is there any one record that you’ve released that you feel most encapsulates what you’re about or that is your favourite one?
I really like on the Dixie-Narco EP, the Primal Scream EP, there’s a cover of Dennis Wilson’s ‘Carry Me Home which I really like. Its back to the death ballad theme its very epic. I got a woman to play a double bass with a bow and it’s just a really ghostly, otherworldly record which I always come back to. Not just because of the ways it sounds but because of the memories. We did it in Memphis and when I hear it I can smell Memphis, I can picture Sun Studios. I can picture being back at Graceland walking around. We went there in autumn so it had an even more faded glory than it does anyway and made the whole experience all the more wistful. That whole feeling of Memphis in autumn is encapsulated in that track.
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Via As You Are Magazine