Wednesday, 8 June 2011
Chechen Strongman's New Toy
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RePost: Freida Abtan
I am truly indebted to Weescoosa for introducing the work of Freida Abtan's 'Subtle Movements' to me.
She is a multi-disciplinary artist and composer living in Providence, Rhode Island who has played with, and created visual shows for bands such as Nurse With Wound, and has presented her sound and visual work at festivals across Canada. Having completed Bachelor’s degrees in both Computer Science and Fine Art, she is currently completing her Master’s degree in Electroacoustic Composition at the Université de Montréal. Her first album subtle movements is available on United Dairies, it is a mesmerising journey though I must admit that I have to agree with Brainwashed unfortunately, when they say that the album as a whole doesn't quite gel together due only to the fact that certain tracks could last much longer than they do as they seem to be samples from longer works (and how often do you say that?)
I would be interested in hearing more of her work and if anyone can point me in the direction of her self released CD-R's I would be really grateful.
Frieda Abtan
She is a multi-disciplinary artist and composer living in Providence, Rhode Island who has played with, and created visual shows for bands such as Nurse With Wound, and has presented her sound and visual work at festivals across Canada. Having completed Bachelor’s degrees in both Computer Science and Fine Art, she is currently completing her Master’s degree in Electroacoustic Composition at the Université de Montréal. Her first album subtle movements is available on United Dairies, it is a mesmerising journey though I must admit that I have to agree with Brainwashed unfortunately, when they say that the album as a whole doesn't quite gel together due only to the fact that certain tracks could last much longer than they do as they seem to be samples from longer works (and how often do you say that?)
I would be interested in hearing more of her work and if anyone can point me in the direction of her self released CD-R's I would be really grateful.
Ground Control to Major Tron
Short documentary about the man behind Melbourne's iconic street act the "Sonic Manipulator".
Filmed and edited in a day as part of the 15/15 International Film Festival, the film went on to win best documentary and best editing. It was also recently invited to become a part of the Australian National Film Archive.
UPDATE: Watch the doco HERE
Real Fake Art: A Gallery of China’s Copy Artists
China produces 70 percent of copies of famous masterpieces for export to North America and Europe. The fastest copy artists chug out 30 paintings a day. In his series Real Fake Art, photographer Michael Wolf took portraits of professional artisans next to the Lichtensteins, the Van Goghs and the many disproportionately giant Mona Lisas mass produced in this fascinating, multimillion industry, timeless classics and contemporary art blockbusters alike. A painter stands shyly by her Francis Bacon in an alley. A sharp looking gentleman holds a Gerald Richter canvas copy, similar to his Sonic Youth Daydream Nation cover. As a series, the project explores the interplay between the Chinese tradition of artists copying master works to develop their skills and the capitalist structure that makes it lucrative. Check out some of our favorite individuals in our gallery.
Francis Bacon’s Study After Velazquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X (1953)
Featuring a copy of Chuck Close’s Self-Portrait (2004-2005)
Featuring a copy of Gerhard Richter’s Two Candles (1982)
William S. Burroughs - Is Everybody In?
William S. Burroughs reads poetry by Jim Morrison over music provided by The Doors on the track 'Is Everybody In?'
Extended Mix 'Vietnam Never Happened' after the jump
Coming soon...
Shane from 'Memoires of a Heroinhead' has a new venture...
Posting will begin within the next few days...
Check it out
Producers Series #13: Martin Rushent
It seemed fitting for us to run Martin Rushent next in the Producers Series due to his untimely passing this week. For a lot of people he opened the door to electronic music by taking synths to Top Of The Pops and beyond, and was, in many eyes an out and out genius. Play loud.
Download
@'Test Pressing'
@'Test Pressing'
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
Syrian blogger Amina Abdallah kidnapped by armed men
I am Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari’s cousin and have the following information to share.
Earlier today, at approximately 6:00 pm Damascus time, Amina was walking in the area of the Abbasid bus station, near Fares al Khouri Street. She had gone to meet a person involved with the Local Coordinating Committee and was accompanied by a friend.
Amina told the friend that she would go ahead and they were separated. Amina had, apparently, identified the person she was to meet. However, while her companion was still close by, Amina was seized by three men in their early 20’s. According to the witness (who does not want her identity known), the men were armed. Amina hit one of them and told the friend to go find her father.
One of the men then put his hand over Amina’s mouth and they hustled her into a red Dacia Logan with a window sticker of Basel Assad. The witness did not get the tag number. She promptly went and found Amina’s father.
The men are assumed to be members of one of the security services or the Baath Party militia. Amina’s present location is unknown and it is unclear if she is in a jail or being held elsewhere in Damascus.
I have just spoken with her father who is trying to locate her. He has asked me to share this information with her contacts in the hope that someone may know her whereabouts and so that she might be shortly released.
If she is now in custody, he is not worried about being in hiding and says he will do anything he can to free her. If anyone knows anything as to her whereabouts, please contact Abdallah al Omari at his home or please email me, Rania Ismail, at onepathtogod at gmail dot com.
We are hoping she is simply in jail and nothing worse has happened to her. Amina had previously sent me several texts to post should something happen to her and we will wait until we have definite word before doing so.
Salamat,
Rania O. Ismail
Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces Of A Man
Small Talk At 125th & Lenox (Flying Dutchman 1970)
Even on arrival, GSH presents something of an anachronism - and yet being out of step is the source of his power, the sign of his integrity. Presenting his verse as casually overheard Harlem breeze-shooting, he welds a soft spoken freejazz intensity to the radical clarity of Greenwich Village Old Left folk-coffeeshop, American demotic poetry. But folk and the Old Left are dead, as are Ayler and Coltrane; and Harlem and poetry may be dying. Opt out disillusion, shaped by shutdown, rules: if politics is the Art of the Possible, the limits of this Possible - pushed way out in the mid 60s - are now contracting. King and the Kennedys are gone, Vietnam never ends, Nixon has been elected to roll Civil Rights back. Committed first and last to the classic rad-lib notion that rigorous thinking and precision journalism can seize the times and talk things better, Small Talk foregrounds the first two stages of Agitate, Educate and Organise. Poetry rather than pop, jazz rather than rock, for small rather than mass audiences, time now rather than recorded, displaced, repeatable. (MS)
Pieces Of A Man (Flying Dutchman 1971)
Small Talk fired volleys of radical invective into multiple, prototypical targets - institutionalised racism, hypocrisy on Capitol Hill, the divisive, Black-Not-Black aspirations of the Afro-American bourgeoisie. The word was right and exact - but its constituency was limited by the context (high-rap monologues over distant drums). Pieces unites GSH with Brian Jackson, and brings in Johnny 'Shaft In Africa' Tate to orchestrate backing tracks that meld soul, jazz and funk, to instantly ratchet Gil's outreach towards the Black American underclass - his rightful audience. "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" is edgy, urgent proto-funk - drawing you into the lyric and a disgusted assault on the Brothers who watch TV while the struggle rages in the streets below. Much of the rest of the album is downbeat - low, mid-tempo Blues framing some of Gil's most trenchant reflections. "Save The Children" insists on political and economic security for future generations, the title track details a personal history of pain and regret that is almost unbearably poignant and "The Prisoner" turns the opening track's direct address into the special pleading of a man crumbling from too many years of ghetto oppression - a harrowing, emotive plateau whose call for communal self-help and awareness remains undiminished. (NW)
Free Will (Flying Dutchman 1972)
High elected politicians had rendered paranoia not merely respectable, but quite literally necessary to understanding a day's headlines ("NIXON BUGS SELF" The New York Post). Reflective soul-jazz dominates the first half of Free Will, the mood flipping swiftly into all-acoustic percussion discussion, Gil rapping out against No Knock and other police crimes against the Black community. Hubert Laws provides this first half with suitably piping, paranoid flute; the set begins hyperactively urgent with "Free Will" itself, groove courtesy Prettie Purdie on drums - when the acoustic personnel take over, the force of the music is greater, but not much. This sense that we're still in the same world, that a music which can quite happily be called 'fusion' can inflect rage and suspicion quite as capably as the most focussed bongo fury, tells all that needs to be told - the Conspiracy Theory of History has never really been alien to any sector of Black cultural production. Fusion was also once a fiercely radical possibility and the point - in "Ain't No New Thing" - where Gil suggests that the next white rock band might as well include Lyndon Johnson for all it means to African Americans, is a sharp rejoinder to the view that musicians like Laws are sell-outs. (MS)
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Metaphor is the new weapon in the 'war' on terror
At first sight it looked like an April Fools' joke. A branch of the US intelligence service called the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) announced that it would be pouring millions of dollars into a "Metaphor Programme". "Perhaps it's a red herring," observed a colleague, entering into the spirit of the thing. But then we remembered that the US intelligence establishment doesn't do jokes, on account of it comprising lots of smart folks whose sense of humour was surgically removed at birth. So I read on.
"The Metaphor Programme," said the solicitation (ie call for research proposals) from IARPA's Office of Incisive Analysis (I am not making this up), "will exploit the fact that metaphors are pervasive in everyday talk and reveal the underlying beliefs and worldviews of members of a culture. In the first phase of the two-phase programme, performers [IARPA's intriguing term for researchers] will develop automated tools and techniques for recognising, defining and categorising linguistic metaphors associated with target concepts and found in large amounts of native-language text."
Ah! So it's computational linguistics on steroids. But why would US spooks suddenly develop an interest in an area that has hitherto been the preserve of humanities scholars? The answer has to be that they now hoover up every digital communication across thye globe, but lack the capacity to extract meaningful information from the resulting torrent of data. Given the scale of that torrent, the only way to analyse it is by using computers. The problem is that while computers are good at processing data, they're hopeless at understanding it.
Which is where metaphor comes in. The spooks' conjecture is that understanding how humans use metaphors might provide an efficient way of extracting meanings from messages. So the project's goal, says its programme manager, Heather McCallum-Bayliss, is to "exploit the use of metaphorical language to gain insights into underlying cultural beliefs by developing and applying a methodology that automates the analysis of metaphorical language".
Dr McCallum-Bayliss's presentation explaining the project makes fascinating reading. "Understanding the shared concepts and patterned behaviours of a culture is a significant challenge," she writes, "because cultural norms tend to be hidden. Even cultural natives have difficulty defining them. Having a system that could discover and structure cultural beliefs and perspectives would be valuable to novice and seasoned analysts alike."
An intelligence analyst, it seems, "needs to know the worldviews of the various cultures that she deals with. She presents a cross-cultural problem to the Metaphorical Language Analysis System to gain an understanding of the contrasting perspectives of the parties involved. The system offers two capabilities to the analyst. One will show cultural contrasts in the metaphors used for abstract and social concepts: Life is a Game vs. Life is a Struggle. The second will present a structured representation of the metaphors that expose insight into the views and goals of the protagonists in the situation."
Analysis of McCallum-Bayliss's presentation suggests that it owes much to Metaphors We Live By, a celebrated book by George Lakoff, a linguist, and Mark Johnson, a philosopher, which argues that metaphor is not just a device of the poetic imagination but something that is pervasive in everyday life. Our ordinary conceptual system, the thing that determines how we think and act, is, they believe, "fundamentally metaphorical in nature".
The inference is that if you understand how people in different cultures use metaphor, then you will have gained insights into how they think, and how they view the world. In their book, Lakoff and Johnson demonstrate this by conventional linguistic analysis. The hunch that is driving the IARPA project is that it may be possible to automate this kind of analysis.
At this stage there's no way of knowing if the hunch will turn out to be a pipe dream or a potentially sinister reality.
What's interesting is that serious people are apparently willing to pour large amounts of money into exploring it. But its audacity fits well with IARPA's declared mission to invest in "high-risk/high-payoff research programmes that have the potential to provide our nation with an overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries".
The agency says that it is determined "about taking real risk", that it is not looking for "quick wins", "low-hanging fruit" or "sure things" and that "failure is completely acceptable as long as "results are fully documented". Coming from a government organisation, this is fighting talk indeed.
But most of all, it supports the theory that there really is no such thing as "useless" knowledge.
The thought that their work might one day fuel the "war" on terror will have generations of literary scholars revolving in their graves. And that's a metaphor too.
John Naughton @'The Guardian'
"The Metaphor Programme," said the solicitation (ie call for research proposals) from IARPA's Office of Incisive Analysis (I am not making this up), "will exploit the fact that metaphors are pervasive in everyday talk and reveal the underlying beliefs and worldviews of members of a culture. In the first phase of the two-phase programme, performers [IARPA's intriguing term for researchers] will develop automated tools and techniques for recognising, defining and categorising linguistic metaphors associated with target concepts and found in large amounts of native-language text."
Ah! So it's computational linguistics on steroids. But why would US spooks suddenly develop an interest in an area that has hitherto been the preserve of humanities scholars? The answer has to be that they now hoover up every digital communication across thye globe, but lack the capacity to extract meaningful information from the resulting torrent of data. Given the scale of that torrent, the only way to analyse it is by using computers. The problem is that while computers are good at processing data, they're hopeless at understanding it.
Which is where metaphor comes in. The spooks' conjecture is that understanding how humans use metaphors might provide an efficient way of extracting meanings from messages. So the project's goal, says its programme manager, Heather McCallum-Bayliss, is to "exploit the use of metaphorical language to gain insights into underlying cultural beliefs by developing and applying a methodology that automates the analysis of metaphorical language".
Dr McCallum-Bayliss's presentation explaining the project makes fascinating reading. "Understanding the shared concepts and patterned behaviours of a culture is a significant challenge," she writes, "because cultural norms tend to be hidden. Even cultural natives have difficulty defining them. Having a system that could discover and structure cultural beliefs and perspectives would be valuable to novice and seasoned analysts alike."
An intelligence analyst, it seems, "needs to know the worldviews of the various cultures that she deals with. She presents a cross-cultural problem to the Metaphorical Language Analysis System to gain an understanding of the contrasting perspectives of the parties involved. The system offers two capabilities to the analyst. One will show cultural contrasts in the metaphors used for abstract and social concepts: Life is a Game vs. Life is a Struggle. The second will present a structured representation of the metaphors that expose insight into the views and goals of the protagonists in the situation."
Analysis of McCallum-Bayliss's presentation suggests that it owes much to Metaphors We Live By, a celebrated book by George Lakoff, a linguist, and Mark Johnson, a philosopher, which argues that metaphor is not just a device of the poetic imagination but something that is pervasive in everyday life. Our ordinary conceptual system, the thing that determines how we think and act, is, they believe, "fundamentally metaphorical in nature".
The inference is that if you understand how people in different cultures use metaphor, then you will have gained insights into how they think, and how they view the world. In their book, Lakoff and Johnson demonstrate this by conventional linguistic analysis. The hunch that is driving the IARPA project is that it may be possible to automate this kind of analysis.
At this stage there's no way of knowing if the hunch will turn out to be a pipe dream or a potentially sinister reality.
What's interesting is that serious people are apparently willing to pour large amounts of money into exploring it. But its audacity fits well with IARPA's declared mission to invest in "high-risk/high-payoff research programmes that have the potential to provide our nation with an overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries".
The agency says that it is determined "about taking real risk", that it is not looking for "quick wins", "low-hanging fruit" or "sure things" and that "failure is completely acceptable as long as "results are fully documented". Coming from a government organisation, this is fighting talk indeed.
But most of all, it supports the theory that there really is no such thing as "useless" knowledge.
The thought that their work might one day fuel the "war" on terror will have generations of literary scholars revolving in their graves. And that's a metaphor too.
John Naughton @'The Guardian'
Al Qaeda's Toughest Task
But does cutting the head off the snake really matter? Can't they just be replaced by the next militant waiting in the wings?
Not so easily. Although the consensus among experts is often that the deaths of such tactically and ideologically important leaders do not destroy groups, their loss does have an effect. Kashmiri's death will not herald the end of violence in Pakistan or the threat to the West, but it will reduce al Qaeda's capacity to strike. Long-standing warrior leaders are important figures in the ideological clash against groups believing themselves in a millenarian struggle. Bringing the big men down will help accelerate their groups' demise.
Leaders like Kashmiri, who lost a finger and an eye in the Afghan war against the Soviets, are able to provide inspiration through their biographies. His time as a fighter in Afghanistan and Kashmir gave him connections across groups and networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and gave him a reputation as a fierce warrior leader. He built this personal narrative and connections into a formidable network operating under the name 313 Brigade, in reference to the 313 companions who fought alongside the Prophet Mohammed at the Battle of Badr, and was named by Masri as the leader of al Qaeda in Kashmir. He was also clearly effective in providing direction to terrorist cells, as shown by his suspected involvement in the May 22 attack on Karachi's naval base (his latest attack on the Pakistani state), strikes in India coordinated from his base in Pakistan, and his ambitious plan to attack newspaper offices in Copenhagen...
Continue reading
Seun Kuti out with Fury
His father was Fela Anikulapo Kuti; he was a king and president at the Kalakuta Republic.
Being Fela’s (last) son confers royalty on him; the royalty of the Afrobeat dynasty that has refused to fade away in the consciousness of the people who either loved or hated the man, Fela, his ways, his message and his music.
All that he was and ever wanted to be is being amplified on stages across the world with the Broadway show.
Fela was unarguable the most vocal and the loudest musical voice of his generation.
If you grew up and survived on a good ration of ‘Unknown Soldier’, ‘Zombie’, ‘Beast of no Nation’, ‘Shuffering and Shimilling’ and the countless hits that Fela created while he was here, you might want to wean yourself of those staple and listen to the new sound of Afrobeat a la Seun Anikulapo Kuti.
From Africa with Fury: Rise, the title of Seun’s second studio release speaks volumes. But you have to wait and listen to it contemplatively to make a decision for yourself whether dropping copies all over Libya will fuel or bring a solution to that country’s uprising like Seun suggested in a recent interview: “You want to help African people – why don’t you stop African rulers from stashing their wealth in your countries? I think a better way for the British and U.S. governments is to load their planes full of my albums and drop them on Libya.”
The album is a call on compatriots, African compatriots, to rise against the forces that enslave Africa. You will even hear names like Mosanto and Haliburton. You will hear chorus lines like “our ears don full for your words, our stomach still empty” in direct reference to the empty promises of the politicians who are full of words but with little action.
While I sat in the living room of his house off Allen Avenue, Ikeja, a call came in from a certain “big man” who wanted Seun to perform at the grand ball for the president after the inauguration on May 29. Fela’s son refused. “If I go, I will embarrass them and they would have to pull the plugs off the sound and hurry me off the stage. Besides, I think it is a ploy by the Presidency to put money in everyone’s pocket so as to silence them.”
With Seun, Afrobeat has not lost the activism and the thrust to speak up for and on behalf of the masses. He said “Afrobeat is not selfish music.”
Seun has stripped his own Afrobeat off the elaboration and multiple movements of the Fela era and rendered it playable for radio in five/six minutes so that the message can be spread far and wide.
But the horns and the brass still ring through in distinct tones and riffs and melodic phrases to remember. However, it must be said that this is Afrobeat for the modern age or should we say that Afrobeat has found a truly youthful voice for the new age ensuring that you did not see its requiem at the death of its originator.
Brian Eno produced the seven-track album, which was recorded entirely in Brazil.
I personally wanted to see the striking strokes of Lemi Ghariokwu again on an Afrobeat project and Seun Kuti granted my wish with the album sleeve design – a colourful silhouette of Seun breathing into his saxophone and the titles of the track from the album as graffiti on the silhouetted impression of a son who has finally become a man with a voice that will not be ignored in the coming years.
Dafe Ivwurie @'Nigerian Daily Independent'
Classic Albums - Screamadelica (Primal Scream)
Primal Scream's seminal album Screamadelica was released in 1991, and synthesized the band's rock 'n' roll roots with the dance culture of that time; for many, the album's sound and imagery came to be regarded as quintessential symbols of the acid house era, perfectly catching the spirit and mood of the early 90s.
Using rare archive footage and special performances, this film tells the story of Screamadelica and its hit singles and dance anthems Loaded, Movin' On Up, Come Together and Don't Fight It, Feel It. From the formation of the band in Glasgow to winning the first-ever Mercury prize, the band members explain the record's inception with insights from main producer Andrew Weatherall, Creation Records founder Alan McGee and many others involved with or inspired by this joyful record.
Screamadelica both defines a generation and transcends its time, and is a true Classic Album.
‘Father Forgets’ (W. Livingston Larned)
Listen, son: I am saying this as you lie asleep, one little paw crumpled under your cheek and the blond curls stickily wet on your damp forehead. I have stolen into your room alone. Just a few minutes ago, as I sat reading my paper in the library, a stifling wave of remorse swept over me. Guiltily I came to your bedside.
There are the things I was thinking, son: I had been cross to you. I scolded you as you were dressing for school because you gave your face merely a dab with a towel. I took you to task for not cleaning your shoes. I called out angrily when you threw some of your things on the floor.
At breakfast I found fault, too. You spilled things. You gulped down your food. You put your elbows on the table. You spread butter too thick on your bread. And as you started off to play and I made for my train, you turned and waved a hand and called, “Goodbye, Daddy!” and I frowned, and said in reply, “Hold your shoulders back!”
Then it began all over again in the late afternoon. As I came up the road I spied you, down on your knees, playing marbles. There were holes in your stockings. I humiliated you before your boyfriends by marching you ahead of me to the house. Stockings were expensive-and if you had to buy them you would be more careful! Imagine that, son, from a father!
Do you remember, later, when I was reading in the library, how you came in timidly, with a sort of hurt look in your eyes? When I glanced up over my paper, impatient at the interruption, you hesitated at the door. “What is it you want?” I snapped.
You said nothing, but ran across in one tempestuous plunge, and threw your arms around my neck and kissed me, and your small arms tightened with an affection that God had set blooming in your heart and which even neglect could not wither. And then you were gone, pattering up the stairs.
Well, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding-this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.
And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!
It is feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is nothing but a boy-a little boy!”
I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.
ViaWell, son, it was shortly afterwards that my paper slipped from my hands and a terrible sickening fear came over me. What has habit been doing to me? The habit of finding fault, of reprimanding-this was my reward to you for being a boy. It was not that I did not love you; it was that I expected too much of youth. I was measuring you by the yardstick of my own years.
And there was so much that was good and fine and true in your character. The little heart of you was as big as the dawn itself over the wide hills. This was shown by your spontaneous impulse to rush in and kiss me good night. Nothing else matters tonight, son. I have come to your bedside in the darkness, and I have knelt there, ashamed!
It is feeble atonement; I know you would not understand these things if I told them to you during your waking hours. But tomorrow I will be a real daddy! I will chum with you, and suffer when you suffer, and laugh when you laugh. I will bite my tongue when impatient words come. I will keep saying as if it were a ritual: “He is nothing but a boy-a little boy!”
I am afraid I have visualized you as a man. Yet as I see you now, son, crumpled and weary in your cot, I see that you are still a baby. Yesterday you were in your mother’s arms, your head on her shoulder. I have asked too much, too much.
(For Spaceboy! XXX)
Reading by Dale Carnegie
Reading by Dale Carnegie
For Those About To Rock The Boat
"We got talking and they said yes there were some certain songs that worked and certain songs that didn't in terms of an actual change in the behaviour of the sharks.
"I started going through my albums and AC/DC was something that really hit the mark.
"Their behaviour was more investigative, more inquisitive and a lot less aggressive - they actually came past in a couple of occasions when we had the speaker in the water and rubbed their face along the speaker which was really bizarre."
@ABC Australia
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