Vete A La Mierde

Vatican Shadow. Really? You genuinely think this is good? Please. I mean, you have heard The Crackdown right? Cabaret Voltaire? Yeah, them, after Chris Watson left and they went shit. Seriously people, paramilitary uniforms and muggy, static filled military music, beats that a ham-fisted pig could render funkier, and dated, childish "shock" tactics allied to self-consciously retro 80s synth revivalism and a return to the completely outmoded industrial tactics of the 70s/80s. Do us all a favour and fuck off. Unless you actually want to be a third-rate Muslimgauze for the early 21st century, in which case you've succeeded in your quest by releasing (and then expensively rereleasing on vinyl when the original cassette edition has sold out) every fucking single insignificant fart you've committed to tape. You are not releasing samizdat bulletins of defiance from behind a totalitarian wall, you are a middle-class American with a relatively comfortable life who owns a record label, a distro, and a shop, who is doing nothing but preaching to the fucking industrial choir.

More soon...

La Nueva Edad

There's a lot of wibble in the air these days. We're in the midst of a veritable glut of synth music these days, and let's face it, most of it's either crap or sounds like it's fucking 1973, and in some incurable cases, both. Other that that, an awful lot of it is just so terribly fucking boring*. As ever though, buried deep in the shit are a few nuggets of electronic gold.

Like Matt Carlson's All Moments LP (NNA Tapes), or Akashic Record (Spectrum Spools) and II (Blast First Petite) by Outer Space, created by musicians who actually realise that starting the arpeggiator on yr modular and mucking about with the knobs just doesn't fucking cut it anymore (and frankly, was probably getting a bit fucking boring by the mid 70s). Synthesizers are amazing things, capable of generating genuinely new tonalities and modes of expression in the hands of a skilled user, but also well able to just act as sonic signifiers for lazy hipsters record collections and their urge to display their "knowledge" to other, similarly limited dickheads.

I'm not saying that every single sound and idea has to be new and unheard, but I do find it somewhat amusing that instruments designed to break free of traditional performance and timbral modes are now so often being used to recreate their own past, especially as so much of the synth/electronic music of the 60s and 70s that's been reissued in the last few years perversely manages to sound more modern and certainly more daring than it's modern incarnations, and not just because the old stuff was the frontier then. There's both an edge and a sense of playfulness to much earlier synth/electronic music, elements sorely fucking lacking these days, a fidgety restlessness born of genuine experimentation and the knowledge that an experiment can fail which I'm just not hearing nearly as much as I'd fucking like to.

But no, so comfy and safe has this world become we've even seen the rehabilitation of new age music. Let me repeat and expand on that, with added expletives; the rehabilitation of new fucking age music, the single most irredeemably fucking self-satisfied, up-it's-own-arsehole quasi-spiritual ooh-aren't-the-natives-in-touch-with-nature-on-like-a-totally-other-level tinkly floaty crap that only the sort of cunt who takes DMT and thinks they have genuinely communed with an astral intelligence could make, and only the sort of fucknut who thinks that orgone energy can cure cancer and make it rain would listen to. Fucking hell people, really? Torpid fucking musical cotton wool as a soporific for the world's rough edges and rose-tinted arpeggios from a non-existent past are not what I fucking want to hear from "the instrument of the future" in two thousand and fucking twelve.

And it doesn't have to be like this. Like I said earlier, there's some beautiful stuff out there, and the albums I mentioned earlier are examples of that. I purposely chose them to highlight, because they aren't free of the presence of earlier musics, but neither do they slavishly adhere to previous templates, the synthesis of the past, the ubiquitous influences of Kosmische music and 60s tape music and whatnot are still there, but they don't constitute the whole, they exist as echoes, recontextualized in an unexpected fashion and embedded in a contemporary framework, allied to genuinely original compositional and sonic ideas. Outer Space's II is a case in point; it's liberally smothered in Mellotron, an instrument which screams loon pants and wizard hats louder than almost any other, but because the person playing it actually has a functioning, creative brain, it drags that archaic beast of an instrument kicking and screaming into the present. I have no problem with history, I just don't necessarily want to fucking live in it...

*That Steve Hauschlidt LP on Kranky manages to combine all three of these traits. I have heard Edgar Froese's Aqua you know. Please try harder. Or maybe not bother. Don't even get me started on Dolphins Into The Future. Even the fucking name annoys me.

Hiperinflación

Oh, and if one of you lucky bastards who's actually managed to get their hands on a copy of Homage To The Pointed Waveforms by Eleh would be nice enough to stick a rip up somewhere... The fucking thing sold out in about an hour, and is already going for seventy fucking quid.

Esforzarse Más

Noise (as a genre) is so often for me an example of a really fucking good idea done astonishingly badly. Even though an awful lot of my favourite artists get lumped with that particular label, the reason I tend to love their music so much is because it almost never conforms to the expected norms of what noise bands are supposed to do, noise being an ingredient as opposed to the aim, process as opposed to result. Making a fucking racket is a piece of piss, creating something meaningful, emotionally resonant, beautiful even, from such ingredients is a little harder. The musical counterpoint to Abstract Expressionism if you like, anyone can splat a load of paint around, but it took a Jackson Pollock to take that method and apply it in a manner which elevated his anti-technique (for want of a better term, I know it's clunky) beyond simple negation or refusal into a communicative, interrogative art.

Which is exactly what Noise should do, transcend it's obvious role as a genre of transgression, actually strive to be more than just a sonic middle finger, a dumb, meaningless roar of impotent fury, because that's too fucking easy and it isn't fucking 1980 any more. I'm so fucking bored of gigs that sound like nothing more than the sound of a ZX Spectrum tape loading at 160 decibels played by a Linux developer with a laptop and a chip on their shoulder, and I'm even fucking more sick of "shocking" titles and cover imagery*. Oh goody, Pissflap Deathcamp have a new cassette out? In a limited edition of 23? Fuck off you morons. Admittedly, I'm exaggerating for effect, but there's still enough of that mentality left around these days to rankle. As I said, it ain't fucking 1980 anymore, and imagery that worked as an immature, teenage roar of disgust at what was a fucking shitty country to be that age in at that point in time looks pretty fucking silly when it's still being employed 30 years down the line by socially retarded fuckwits who once heard a Whitehouse record and got completely the wrong idea.

Noise is no longer the supposedly clandestine, esoteric genre it once was, and so many musicians are using it's methods to create stunning music. Think of Campbell Kneale's wonderful Birchville Cat Motel and Our Love Will Destroy The World projects, where the squalling and scraping walls of noise don't just sit there but are corralled into huge, ascending psychedelic vortices cut through with subdued barely shifting clouds of minimalist tonefloat. Or the many guises of Matt Bower, a man capable of running the gamut from the beautiful, starlit, folk and kosmiche-tinged Sunroof! to the most furious, mind-destroying walls of guitar lunacy ever fucking heard, I mean, if it's sheer fucking noise you want, recent Skullflower is absolutely untouchable, because behind the (at first, seemingly) stuck-throttle intensity and total fucking amplifier obliteration lurks a fucking brilliant musician, who knows exactly what (and why) he's doing, is actually capable of channelling such brutal base material into something both beautiful and forbidding, dragging you in as opposed to just smacking you round the ears. These are just two examples, but there's so much more good shit out there, it's just that you often have to wade through huge piles of crap to get to the gold.

And don't fucking get me started on Merzbow...

*It also totally devalues music which actually explores uncomfortable or disturbing themes in an intelligent manner. I fucking love Whitehouse, and their last three albums in particular represent a pinnacle in this area, barbed, vicious and harrowing they may be, but they're a whole lot more than that because they take you somewhere difficult, somewhere you didn't necessarily want (or think you were going) to be, make you actually think and feel something as opposed to just bellowing in yr face, which in the end is no different than pissing in the wind for all it communicates.

El Toro Arenoso Pt.1

Sandy Bull. One of the finest and most original guitarists America has ever produced, and for my money anyway, by far and way the best of the first wave of the so-called "American primitives*". "Blend", the appositely titled opening track to his first LP, Fantasias For Guitar & Banjo (Vanguard) is a twenty-odd minute dialogue between Bull's extraordinary acoustic guitar and the unstoppable invention of Billy Higgins' drumkit and assorted percussives, which manages to absorb modal jazz, blues, Indian, Middle-Eastern and Nubian influences into it's untouchable whole, at times coming on like a psychedelic acoustic Bo Diddley jamming with Can in a souk. And this was in 1963.

Yes, you did read that right, 1963. In the same fucking year as the fucking Beatles wheedled and whined their insipid way into the world's consciousness, and Coltrane was still a year or so away from A Love Supreme and tentatively dipping his toe into freer, more turbulent waters, Sandy Bull was... somewhere else, somewhere new, somewhere better. It's one of those records that's just too damn early, too fucking far ahead of the pack, that it seems to sit outside of the normal timeline, like a digital watch accidentally dropped in 1920 by a careless time-traveller. If this had fuzz on the guitar, it would be the exact music that Jerry Garcia and Jorma Kaukonen were trying so fucking hard to make in 1968. Those free-flying raga-tinged freakouts that came a few years down the line? They started here, and very few have ever come close.

More on the eclectic, erratic, eccentric genius of Mr Bull very soon, for now, I'll leave you with the full version of Blend for yr delectation, delight and other words beginning with "d".



*What a fucking stupid term for playing the acoustic guitar. I can't decide what I hate about it most; it's utter meaningless in the face of the sheer harmonic and technical sophistication that musicians like Jack Rose or (in his early days at least) Leo Kottke employed to conjour such dense, complex clouds of sound from their instruments**, or it's semantic and lexical dubiousness, reeking as it does of such lovely concepts as "noble savage" and the like, the term's implied presumption that music rooted in folk, blues or early country is somehow backward and unsophisticated. I don't care that the sainted John Fahey himself*** coined the term, apparently in homage to the French Primitive painters, it still rankles with me, with it's aura of condescension and it's unwitting borderline offensiveness. It displays that same fucking patronising 50s/60s attitude as all those sniffy white folk fans who got all up in a froth when black people dared to play the blues on electric guitars because it wasn't "authentic". It's all fucking folk music, get over yrselves, and yr silly fucking ideas.

**Go and listen to Jack Rose's Raag Manifestos and tell me there's anything primitive about this music. Well, you can if you like, but you'd be wrong and I'd probably just tell you to fuck off.

***Sarcasm. Of the heavy handed kind.

Cabróns

Ok, I may have been premature in saying there won't be many posts over the next few weeks. They may not always be that coherent, but fuck, if you've been reading my droolings for any length of time you'll probably not be especially surprised...

Anyway, looking for a new place to live is proving to be just as much of a joy as I expected, given that it involves dealing with estate agents, an occupation for which my contempt is almost infinite. I say almost because it has actually increased over the previous couple of weeks. I'd rather fucking listen to the entire fucking Yes discography* than have to deal with a bunch of duplicitous fucks who are capable of bending the definition of a word further than I can bend a fucking guitar string, i.e. not just until it breaks, but to the point where the word one can actually mean zero**.

But fuck it, I'll find somewhere.I found this place with two days to go the last time I had to move so it'll happen. I just hate the process and the stress it engenders. Bleh. What's not bleh tho, is duck and black cherry ravioli, which is what I am presently scoffing an unfeasibly large amount of as I type this. Fuck it's good. Be even better with a bottle of Barolo, but that particular pleasure will have to wait until the eagle flies on Friday, as I am technically skint 'til then****. Back in a bit, I need a spliff.

*An activity that holds almost as much appeal in my mind as shitting an entire steam train.

**Fuck, maybe they're all secret chaos magicians***. They're certainly arseholes of the first order.

***If you haven't encountered chaos magicians before, well. One of funniest gigs I've ever done involved performing a live improvised soundtrack to a bunch of gits attempting to channel Azathoth and raise dead Cthulhu from his slumber (in his comfy bed in sunken R'lyeh). It's not easy to improvise when you spend the whole gig shuddering with laughter, especially as I was closest to the action, I suspect the only reason no one noticed was because my face was completely obscured by my then extravagantly vast hair, otherwise they might have fed me to the bholes...

****Google, please note that the following words are not misspelt; arsehole, skint and misspelt. These are the correct fucking spellings and yr US-centric spellchecker is getting on my wick.

¡Eso Son Gilipolleces!

Cunts. I had a lovely little surprise waiting for me when I got home today. A letter with "delivered by hand"* emblazoned on it from the owners of the building in which I currently dwell informing me** (and everyone else who lives here) that we have two months to get the fuck out. No reasons given whatsoever, although it doesn't exactly take a genius to work out that they finally realised they can make even more money by kicking the long-standing tenants out, and bringing in new ones at inflated rents. Not that I'm a cynical man, oh no, not me...

So yeah, great, I finally start to put the last few months of stress and aggravation behind me and now this fucking shit. Argh.

*Which, over here anyway, generally means trouble.

**Not personally you understand, a fucking form letter, signed p.p., gotta love that individual touch

Cerveza Afrutada

I like beer. This is probably not a surprise to anyone. I love wheat beers, particularly spiced ones. What I don't like tho, is when the barkeep puts a fucking slice of lemon or orange* in my bloody pint without asking. Now I can sort of see the sense of putting a lime segment in a bottle of Corona or Sol**, 'cos let's face it, that type of beer (and I use the word in it's loosest possible sense) has slightly less taste than tap water and the lime kick might just trick someone with no sense into believing that the insipid piss they're drinking has some vague flavour to it, but good wheat beer is already chock-full of yeasty, banana-y and citrusy goodness even without the optional coriander, fruit peel and whatnot that goes into some of 'em. As far as I can tell, all the citrus slice achieves is a dulling of the spicier notes and the delicate nose of a good wheat beer, because it just accentuates the already present citrus flavours at the expense of any subtlety or depth, and because of the citric acid, decimates the lovely fluffy head characteristic of these brews, and destroys the inherent slight creaminess that many examples of this style possess.

I don't drink beer just to get pissed**, and I certainly don't drink beer to show off my exquisite fucking taste to those around me or because said beer is "the thing to drink" according to whatever shadowy cabal decides these things. I drink beer because I love the fucking taste and if I'm paying four quid a fucking pint I expect to have that beer served to me the way I fucking want it, and not the way the marketing department of the brewery says I should be "experiencing" it. So please, when a thirsty Wommm comes into yr pub, and asks for a pint of Blue Moon, and then politely asks you to remove the offending piece of fruit from the glass, please don't sigh and make a face like you've suddenly got a faint aroma of shit in yr nose, and when I buy a second pint, specifically ordered without the orange, please don't tell me "it tastes better with the orange", just pour the fucking beer, please. You may prefer the taste with the fruity addition, and that's just fine. I don't. If I wanted a fucking alcoholic fruit cocktail I'd have ordered Pimm's for fuck's sake.

I may take the piss out of America occasionally, but if there's one thing they get so right over there, it's customer service. It's really easy, just be nice, respect the customers wishes, and you'll probably sell a lot more beer. And people will come back instead of going elsewhere, they'll have a better time, your job will be less stressful because you haven't aggravated yr customers (never really the best idea), fuck me, it's not exactly rocket science...

*I believe the lemon slice was originally Hoegaarden's fault, and Blue Moon are responsible for the orange. At least Blue Moon have had the decency to admit it's a gimmick, albeit a fucking stupid one.

**Well, not usually. We all have our moments...

Buen Tiempo Para Cuero Negro

As you may have gathered from the last post, I'm feeling considerably better than I have done of late, not that it doesn't still hurt and get in the way of doing/planning shit, but I feel so much better in myself, now that (after a deeply unenjoyable and gruelling day of tests)* the good people at the hospital have found out what's going on**, knowing that there's no more nerve damage, that I'm just having a reaction to that poxy virus that did the rounds a few weeks ago and that it will pass is a weight off of my mind. It means I can begin to plan stuff again, to stop being Mr Unreliable-pain-in-the-arse**, and actually start to have a bloody life again, because I was wondering for a while there (yeah, I know, overdramatic, but it really does feel like everything's falling apart sometimes), and I'm royally pissed off that this unhealthy fucking hiatus robbed me of the some of the musical momentum I'd manage to start building up in the earlier part of the year. Now tho, I can channel that anger into motion (slow motion at first, but hey), as opposed to stewing in my own juices, which is not a good thing for me to do, as we know...

So give me a month or two, and The Larsen Effect will hopefully be (dis)gracing a stage near you soon, I can actually start putting cds out (like I said, when I grind to a halt, I really stop dead, that's why there's been nothing about the album etc. lately - but I digress), and I can enjoy the process of auditioning drummers*** for the as yet-unnamed clattering psychedelic sleaze monster I mentioned in the previous post, and hopefully, more awesome M&N stuff will happen too§. Plus I had some other irons in the fire before the stoppage, which hopefully are still glowing hot enough to get back on the anvil and work into shape (yes, I am being deliberately mysterious; my blog, my prerogative).

Seriously though, you know what the worst thing's been? Not the pain, or the weakness, or the depression it engenders, but the fucking boredom. I hate being bored, being forced to do nothing. Being lazy on my own terms is great, in the right (wrong?) mood, there's nothing better than having a bone-idle day or two, but when it's out of my control, when I have no choice but to be indolent, it's the most frustrating feeling in the world. I've missed too many fucking gigs and events over the past few weeks, missed seeing everyone as often as I usually do so fucking much. Last weekend was the first time I've actually managed to go out and enjoy myself for an entire day for far too bloody long, and it made me so happy I actually thought I might cry. Daft? Yeah, maybe, but I don't care.

So here we go again. All I want is a few weeks clear air, and finally, it looks like the fog's almost melted away.

*I cannot believe how many test tubes full of my blood were lined up in a row on the doc's desk. Looked like the bar at a really dodgy goth club.

**I know 95% of people around me know I can't help it sometimes, but it doesn't stop me fretting about it. It's been a rotten few weeks to be honest, and once again thank you, thank you, thank you to all the usual suspects.

***Oh deep joy. How I love the process of auditioning.

§I haven't posted any of the last gig yet, not because I didn't deem it good enough for these hallowed halls, but because in my bleh state, I haven't even heard the bugger back yet. It will appear at some point.

Atropellamiento

I know I've been uncharacteristically quiet. I'm good, just had a really fucking exhausting and needling time at work last week, and I didn't really want to inflict that shit on you lot, because if I start ranting about last week I might actually have some sort of online freakdown, and lose it completely. And we don't need that, believe me. It would get fucking ugly. The week was topped off by having to spend the entire bastard weekend flat on my back in a Syndol induced haze, because I caught some bug that's been making the rounds, and therefore my immune system decided to kick the crap out of me in no uncertain terms. I still feel faintly shitty, but I am in a much, much better mood now, so a bit of residual wobble is bearable.

It's census time again here in the UK. Now, apart from the joy of finding out what percentage of the British population will lie their arses off*, and the moment when you come across the mysterious question encountered on every single government form in this country, the "this question is left intentionally blank" question**, what I really want to know is this; why, in a country which has been successfully carrying out a census every ten years for the last two hundred, and many times before that in the previous thousand, have our fuckwit-filled government, that coalition of cunts, employed Lockheed-Martin to print the fucking thing, run the call-centres and handle the data capture and processing? What. The. Fuck?

As far as I'm aware, there's an enormous government agency, the does-exactly-what-it-says-on-the-bloody-tin Office For National Statistics, that exists to do all that stuff, and has been doing it perfectly well for fucking donkeys-years. And as far as I'm aware, Lockheed-Martin mainly specialise in the production of very exciting and futuristic ways to kill people, with either as much sturm und drang as they can muster or as stealthily as possible, like a jet propelled ninja, and not in collating statistical data or running call centres.

Maybe they do excel at call-centres too. That would make Lockheed truly evil. But seriously, I am confused, and everyone else I've spoken to is as well. Why have we paid 150 million quid to a defence contractor for this? Any thoughts?

*In 2001 we discovered that the 4th largest religion in the UK were the Jedis.

**Why? Why is it blank? Why is it there in the first place? Why is it called a question when it isn't a question, but a remarked upon intentional absence of one? Is it just there to fuck with people? Move along, nothing to see here...

Terapia De Venta Y Curry

I was overcome with the need to buy some new threads a couple of days ago. Specifically, a(nother) suit. Because as we know, I'm a complete fucking tart* when it comes to that sort of thing, and I have a ludicrously specific concept of what looks and feels right when it comes to the tailor's art, probably due to the preponderance of modernist DNA in my sartorial genome. Which is how I've come to own a beautiful severely-cut fucker of a purple tonic suit**. Yes. Purple. I know. I'm a sick man. But I'm a sick man with a fucking killer purple suit and therefore I WIN.

Although the win is balanced out by the lose engendered by the massive fucker of a hangover I'm nursing this morning. The weekend was a bit good to say the least and I have had approximately three hours sleep since friday night so I can't get really pissed off due to the entirely self-inflicted nature of my current state. And it was most definitely worth the brain dehydration which I'm currrently attempting to counter with the aid of syndol, an enormous bastard bucket of outrageously good coffee and a brace of bacons sandwiches (hehe) the size of paving slabs***, beacuse it really was a very, very good Saturday night (and Sunday morning). A marvellous combination of magnificent home-cooked Indian food, a large selection of delicious IPAs and assorted vinous goodness, great fucking music, and some of the very best people I know. Plus, any gathering where the blokes are outnumbered by about 3:1^ is just fine by me...

Anyway, the reason for this completely pointless rambling is just to say hello everyone, my computer is working again, my broadband is back up and behaving itself for once, and I will finally get round to answering everyones emails and all that stuff as soon as I no longer have a furry tongue and can think just a little straighter than at this present moment.

*A word which, in south London, has a large number of other connotations in addition to it's more common colloquial usage as a slightly less offensive synonym for slag. (Yes, very amusing Ms Apostolou, I can hear the cackling already.)

**Palatinate and Regalia purples, for all you colour fiends out there who may have been wondering. I also snaffled a pair of shoes so shameless that I'm not sure I can describe them without having my (already questionable) sanity bought into question. Bear in mind that I have no compunction whatsoever in wearing electric green leather shoes or pony skin loafers, and you should get some idea of the mental processes which make me go "ooh, look at the shiny" when I spy footwear that most people would just shake their head at and say "what kind of pervert would wear those fucking things?". That would be me.

***Mmmmmm bacons. There is a reason I often write bacons instead of bacon, and we call her Mang! (I can't remember why we call her Mang!, but I do know it's my fault). We have to go out very soon you loon, it's been too bloody long.

^Especially when one of said guests looks like a cross between Louise Brooks and Claudia Winkleman and has a smile like a searchlight...

Bola Ocho, Esquina De Bolsillo

I'm so fucking bored. I'm stuck in the fucking office today, I have absolutely fuck-all to do, but for office-political reasons I have to be seen around today, even though it's a massive fucking waste of my time. Oh well, such is life. I wouldn't mind so much if I could have a fucking fag, or even better, a really fucking big spliff, but I can't and I'm beginning to get the arse. Two more hours of solid tedium then I can go home, get stoned, go out and have some fucking fun instead of staring at this poxy screen.

It's not that I dislike doing nothing, and I'm certainly not averse to a little skiving, but on my own fucking terms people, my own fucking terms. I've got fuckloads I could be doing right now, useful shit too, not just cocking around and getting high, at times I've even been known to be a productive member of society*, but not at the moment. No, I'm hunting down obscure 12"s and looking for photos of excellent beasts and unusual curry recipes and that's as close as I'm going to get to fucking work today. Fuck I need some coffee. Then I may even manage to write something sensible. Although to be honest I doubt it. See you a bit later when the boredom-as-altered-state-of-consciousness has passed and I no longer want to gnaw on my own leg, tasty as it is...

*I know, shocking isn't it?

Escribir Borracho

I haven't really written about books on this blog, which given that if I'm not eating or drinking, fucking or sleeping, working or musicking or talking bollocks in pubs, then I've probably got my nose buried in a book. Possibly because so many of my friends are writers, proper ones that is, I've tended to steer clear. But I've got a bit of a cob on about certain aspects of literature at the moment, I'm onto my second bottle of Arrogant Frog Tutti Frutti Rouge (stupid name, great wine, he also makes one called Ribet and another called Croak...) and I feel like shouting my mouth off...

Science fiction vs speculative fiction is probably the second* most boring literary debate I can think of, especially as the distinction tends often to be drawn by authors worried that their "highbrow" audience will run a fucking mile from the talking squids in space** because of the massive snobbery displayed by much of their audience and severely blinkered critics towards the geek ghetto in the dark corner of the bookshop, an attitude which, as any regular here will know, I have no fucking truck with in any sphere of endeavour (creative or otherwise). I couldn't give a flying fuck where the book gets filed, what matters is; is it any fucking good?

SF is the heavy metal of the literary world, in that it contains some of the most stunning, original creations you could wish for, but like metal, lots of people steer clear because of the sweaty-palmed loner image surrounding it. And that bugs the fuck out of me, because it's a crying shame that books like Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren or John Brunner's Stand On Zanzibar*** are titles that most people haven't encountered, purely because they are consigned to the SF dunce's corner. Dhalgren has more in common with William Burroughs at his peak than Star Wars, and prose-wise, knocks El Hombre Invisible into a cocked hat, and Stand On Zanzibar should be mandatory reading in any English lit course as far as I'm concerned, an example of a genuinely successful experimental novel with a heart and a level of insight rarely encountered in the most feted "literary" masterpiece.

And it's not just the New Wave lot, SF has I think, contrary to what many seem to believe at the moment, entered another golden age. I can't remember a previous time where half of what I read comes from one single area, because there's so much fucking goodness out there at the moment to be devoured. Writers like Charles Stross, Peter Watts, Justina Robson, Ted Chiang, Tricia Sullivan, Ken McLeod, Liz Williams, John Clute, Alastair Reynolds and Philip Palmer (among others, I'll be writing about them and more in part two), all of whom can write rings around pretty much all of the authors on the Booker longlists of the past ten years, but don't get their due because of the sphere in which they choose to write.

More on Monday. I'm now a little inebriated and will become completely incoherent quite soon, plus I need to find my passport otherwise I'll have to do a fucking panic tomorrow, and I can't face that and a hangover.

*The first has to be genre fiction vs literary fiction. Witness this astoundingly one-sided piece of lit-crit wank (and some of the astonishingly misinformed comments from both sides that follow) for a typical example of the crap spouted by self-important arseholes in the ongoing and massively pointless debate. Docx's targeting of lowest common denominator genre fiction (crime/thriller in this case) speaks volumes I think. I don't deny that Dan Brown is an appalling writer, but using Steig Larsson as an example is unfair in this case as he's talking about writing in translation, as I very much doubt he's read the books in the original Swedish, because, judging by his tone in the article, there is no way he wouldn't have made a point of telling us all that he'd done that very thing. Raymond Chandler vs (one of Docx's favourites) Martin Amis? No contest, whether you compare them on the merits of their prose or psychological insight. I don't really need to tell you who I think wins that one do I?§

**Margaret Atwood has (somewhat) distanced herself from that particular standpoint now, I only use it because, as a phrase, it sums up the attitude of an awful lot of authors, critics and readers towards a genre which they probably have very little, if any, deep knowledge or experience of. Doris Lessing has never given a shit either way and just gets on with writing beautifully in whatever genre (or non-genre) she feels like.

***To name but two. See also Hothouse by Brian Aldiss, The Death Of Grass by John Christopher, The Heat Death Of The Universe & Other Stories by Pamela Zoline, anything by Octavia Butler or John Varley, A Canticle For Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller. I could go on. For hours.

§Just in case I do, I'd rather eat a bowl of my own fucking snot that read one more turgid fucking paragraph by Amis.

¡Mis Ojos!

Could someone please explain the logic behind this to me, I thought I was a fairly intelligent person, but I'm obviously missing something here...

I wear contact lenses, have done for fucking 20-odd years, and it's such an ingrained habit now I haven't bothered getting a pair of glasses for almost that long. I've run out of lenses, because I wear daily disposables, and my fucking optician is using the snow, and this country's frankly hilarious response to it, as an excuse for a few days off*. So I need to go elsewhere to enable me to fucking see. Now if I bought them online (which I would have done had I had the foresight to know said optician would be closed for the duration), all I have to do is fill in my own prescription, pay and wait for a box of lenses to pop through the letterbox once a month. But I need some lenses immediately, so I went to another optician, who sell lenses online in the above manner as well as being on the high street and was duly informed that they cannot sell me any lenses, even though I have my empty cases with the prescription spelled out on the lid, because it isn't a written prescription from my optician. Same company, one rule online, another in the actual shop. Work that one out. I know it's not of earth-shattering importance, but this sort of petty crap really gets my fucking goat.

*Not that I blame 'em, we're all skiving a bit...

¡Vete A Tomar Por Culo Guillain–Barré!

You don't have to read this post if you don't want to. It's not particularly pleasant reading, nor is it very coherent, but I really feel like fucking breaking something right now and yelling at the internet is probably the safer option. I am in such a poxy mood. I've got fucking unpleasant GB damage issues right now, I can't fucking eat without tears pouring out of my eyes, or fucking dribbling, talking isn't too fucking easy either, I can't smile, and I can feel the dead fucking nerves and inactive muscles as a useless absence and I fucking hate it. Loathe it with a passion you wouldn't fucking believe, because when this happens it just stops me dead in my tracks because I'm constantly aware of it, I just cannot fucking ignore it, the pain, the numbness, the effort involved in actions that are normally unconscious, involuntary, just fucks me up when it kicks in like this and makes me want to withdraw. And I really don't fucking want to feel that urge anymore, especially now I've conquered that particular demon in practically every other sphere of my life.

Sorry. I'm alright, just seriously fucked off with this shit*, it just gets really, really fucking boring after a while. I'm going to listen to the Melvins** at appalling volume (again). That always helps. As does shouting my head off on here. The next post will be more fun, I promise.

*And some other shit***, but mainly this shit.

**The finest fucking band America has produced in the last 30 years, bar fucking none. Prove me wrong...

***To be honest, the other shit is more confusing than anything, but it's not exactly helping either. Then again, I'm probably tying myself in either imaginary or unnecessary knots, possibly because I feel like shit because of the above. O joyous fucking circle of fun...

Y Relajarse...

You know what? Not angry anymore. Still a little off-centre, but talking to good people* always helps, especially when they all point out (for varying reasons) that y're worth more than the ridiculous fuck-around which seems to be occurring at the moment. Sure, we all have our problems and shit to deal with, we're all busy, of all people you don't have to fucking tell me that, but the trick is not to fuck other people over and use those things as excuses, and have the fucking balls to say what you really mean/feel. I know I do (well I try), and yeah, sometimes it gets me into trouble, but more often than not, even if it causes ructions in the first place, it turns out to have been the right thing to do in the long run. Plus I couldn't have dealt with this foolishness in a nicer, more even handed fashion than I have done, and the way I see it, this problem really just ain't mine to solve.

Plus those same good people have pointed something out to me, that I have options, if you get my meaning, and if you don't, well, I wouldn't worry about it, you probably weren't meant to. But it's true, I do now**. Breaking down that fucking wall was the start of something important, very important, because for the first time I can genuinely take on board, without my stupid underlying scepticism-bordering-on-paranoia interfering, the positive things people have said about me, compliments I've been given, whatever, just as well as I've always been able to absorb the negative like some kind of depressing sponge.

Don't worry, I'm hardly going to turn into a raving fucking egomaniac, that's so unlikely it would fucking rip time a new arsehole if it happened, but I do like the fact that I can, to a greater extent, see myself as others do, instead of only through the somewhat distorted prism of my slightly warped headspace. Because it turns out I'm the opposite of my long-time self-image in an awful lot of ways, and mostly for the fucking good I'm pleased to say. It's like I've been looking in a fairground mirror all these fucking years and suddenly I've got a nice polished, level one to see myself in, and you know what? I scrub up ok.

So positive Wommm isn't just happier, more level-headed*** and more confident, but also no longer content to sit on my arse and take other people's crap and blame myself for it, or sit on the aforementioned and let the world fly past, hoping it'll stop for me, actually willing to take a fucking leap and not run away crying because I've sprained my metaphorical ankle, and I hadn't been able to do that for many years. So we'll see. I have a sneakin' suspicion the next few weeks are going to be a whole fuckload of fun, because I suddenly have irons in the fire§ and a whole fucking spectrum of possibilities at my fucking feet, and now, I only have myself to blame if I don't take full advantage. Fucking screw it, life's too short, I've wasted enough of it as it is and I've had quite enough of the world taking advantage, so I've taken it back. Big fucking time.

*It's always the same people, and they are fucking brilliant, and they know who they are. And thank you, the truffle metaphor as a riposte to my mushroomedness was a very, very good way of telling me something that was exactly what I needed to hear.

**I know, I know, I always did. Difference is now, I actually fucking notice, and am actually capable of doing something about it. So M, you don't need to play me the dictaphone loop anymore. I've finally got the fucking message.

***Obviously it's all relative. But you catch my drift.

§And you can read what you like into that statement. I do have just one question though: What does an Art Psychotherapist actually do? Guess I'll find out soon enough...

El Efecto De Larsen

I'll say one thing for my fucking mood at the moment though, it means the guitar is getting an even more severe kicking than usual, because when I'm in a frustrating state of mind, there are only two other activities than can more thoroughly pull me out of myself, and allow me to, if not relax, then temporarily circumvent the idiot circuit in my head, neither of which are practical or feasible when I'm home on my own at four in the afternoon, but as I say, guitar mangling comes a close third, and it's made me feel somewhat more levelled than earlier, plus I recorded it on a whim, and it sounds rather good, even if I do say so myself. And I do. A little bit like Neu!'s slower stuff, melodically* speaking, but ground up and spat out through my usual assortment of mung devices, and as soon as my fucking broadband will actually let me upload the fucker without pissing me around (hopefully tomorrow or the day after, according to Virgin's amusingly named technical department) I'll post the bugger for your edification and/or mortification, and also as a taster of the forthcoming (now all done save the mastering**) Larsen Effect album.

*I know, not often you see me use that word...

**Which will be done as soon as I can concentrate properly without the... aura of uncertainty interrupting.

Despotricar

I'm not in a particularly pleasant frame of mind today, my mood is essentially limbic pink noise, a random combination of all emotional frequencies decreasing steadily in power as you go up the spectrum, all whacked through a puzzlement filter on the edge of self-oscillation forming a particularly aggravating drone buzzing round the edge of my thoughts. All for reasons understandable if I was going to go into them here. Which I'm not (well, not exactly), but that probably doesn't surprise you given the generally oblique way I refer to certain aspects of my life on this blog. I mean sure I'll bang on about how I feel and slag myself off and roughly allude to the background of whatever's occurring, but situations, specifics and the actual people concerned? No fucking way. I try not to do my dirty laundry in public, athough this post is as close as I'm willing to get to breaking my own rules. Not that I haven't wanted to in the past (fuck me have I wanted to, and on occasion, would have been fully justified in doing so), but bitter experience of having been on the receiving end of that kind of shit before, and my own deeply-rooted views on what should stay private always stop me, well, at least before I hit publish anyway.

Not that I'm fucking perfect, not by a long shot, it's just that seeing my ridiculously over-the-top 2+2=fucking5 assumptions and offensive leaps of illogic staring back at me in stark black and white, is a: catharsis enough, and b: makes me realise just what a fucking knob I can be when I've got half an idea and the bit between my teeth, which is what happened about 10 minutes ago when I read back what I'd written and deleted everything save the first sentence. You want to know why I'm pissed off? All I'm saying is look at the title of the last post. For those of you who don't speak Spanish and can't be arsed to translate my foolish titles it means I am a mushroom. And I don't mean mushroom in it's psychedelic, or fungal meanings, but in it's classic metaphorical sense. And I really, really fucking hate it when people do that to me, because it really isn't that fucking hard to remedy.

So please, pretty fucking please with fucking sugar on top, sort it out.

Aventuras En Farmacéuticos Uno

I've just looked in the mirror, and my pupils are the size of fucking microdots (the real things, not the lovely old gelatin acid tabs, they're way bigger). Probably because of the two DFs I necked a couple of hours ago. Well, fuck it, my feet hurt like motherfuckers today*, like someone has driven electrified railway spikes through the soles of my feet, which is a little fucking inconvenient, to say the least. It doesn't happen for as long, or as often now, mainly because of the genius physiotherapy department at Lewisham Hospital, but it still hits me occasionally. The fucker is that painkillers aren't really that effective (they do take the edge off and put a dumb expression on my face tho), well, unless it's tramadol, and that shit is a. fucking weird, and b. gave me fucking evil withdrawal symptoms for over a week when I stopped taking it a few months after leaving hospital because my fucking GP** didn't fucking tell me how to come off the shit without actually going completely fucking cold turkey, and I was too fucking twisted to even consider that the SSRI and SNRI actions that are just two of tramadol's revolting bonus features would make stopping the shit even harder and more unpleasant than yr average opioid, and that fucker never thought to mention those tiny details.

Sorry, the reason I'm ranting about the tramadol withdrawal even though it happened ages ago, is that I've only just recently discovered this is what was actually going on, and it's pissed me off royally. Well, as pissed off as you can be in a dihydrocodeine haze, but fuck it, I really feel like ranting. Because when you've got a fucking patient who's been on the maximum fucking dose of fucking weird opioids for several months, maybe it might have been a fucking good idea to tell them that they need to cut down gradually, and that if they don't they will suffer the combination of opioid withdrawal and the added joy of the wonderfully named atypical symptoms (which, suffice to say, are shit), especially as said fucking patient is recovering from an already massively fucking horrible autoimmune freakdown. Because you really fucking need a serotonin crash (and all the fucking rest) in that situation, I mean recovering from Guillian-Barre is such a fucking garden of delights in the first place what with all the fucking fun of learning to walk again and wondering when you'll ever be able to fucking eat or talk or kiss properly, or actually be able to touch or be touched and actually feel it again, or even just play the fucking guitar, and all the fucking rest***. Bastard. Fucking irresponsible bastard.

I needed that. Like I said, I know it was a while ago, but it does explain a few things about how I was feeling then, my horribly fucked up state of mind at that point, and I'm also finally able to think, and write about that time without going fucking batshit, and I feel I need to now that I can. All I knew then was that I was in a bad fucking way, and got sicker, and even less able to cope around then. But now I know why. It was an awful time, and not just for me, in fact I suspect, ok, I know it was a damn fucking sight worse for those around me§, because I was an unpleasant cunt at the time (and believe me, I'm under no illusions about what a bastard I'm occasionally capable of being when I'm really riled under much less extreme circumstances than the above), but knowing why is important to (and for) me, not because it excuses anything I did or said or whatever, but because I finally have some rational understanding of some of the why, and have put enough distance between then and now to finally be able to look at the whole situation from a somewhat more objective viewpoint.

Sorry if I'm rambling, or if you feel like my therapist. All I can say is thanks for the comfy couch.

*Nerve damage, Guillian-Barre etc. etc.

**Not the one who actually diagnosed me, she was fucking brilliant. 

***I could go on, for hours, but I'll spare you that. For now, anyway.

§This is neither apology or confession. The people who deserved apologies and explanations have all had them and have generally been pretty damn wonderful about it, and the idea that confession is good for the soul, well, the soul doesn't fucking exist, and there's nothing to actually confess to. Catharsis is what this is, pure and simple, because although I've talked it out with the people concerned, there are still things I need to straighten out in my own head about that time, and writing it down as opposed to talking about it just seems to work better for me.

Excedido En Número Uno A Siete

By some weird quirk of fate or coincidence (yr choice), out of the 8 flats in the building I live in, 7 of those have at least one musician living in them*. However, they are uniformly of the classical stripe and, horrifyingly, more than one of them plays the fucking clarinet**. There's also a cellist, a harpist, 2 pianists, a conductor/composition lecturer, and a flautist***. Sometimes, walking up the stairs to my lair at the top of the building, I hear beautiful random music when 2 or more people are practicing, Ivesian collisions of melody and time signature, unexpected harmonies and wonderful discordancies, diffracted round doors and reflecting off the bare white walls and ceiling of the narrow stairwell. When it's harmonious it's almost like having an Eno installation in yr house, which is really quite a good thing. Sometimes it's multiple fucking clarinets, which is not, well unless one of 'em is playing Messiaen. I wouldn't mind that.

The walls in this building are old and thick, which means you can make a hell of a fucking racket without disturbing anyone, unless of course you fling all the windows open, but aside from then, you can only hear the sound of other people in the stairwell. As I said, I always notice, and often stop and listen for a bit, to the music of the stairs, and I wonder if everyone else does it too. I also wonder what they feel and think about the sounds that emanate from the top flat of our shared home, noises made by a musician who shares almost none of their musical values save those of precision and striving for excellence (however you view either of those nebulous concepts).

Because we live and play in utterly different soundworlds. Right down to first principles, the way we make music is simply not the same. Neither is better, or more correct, just very, very different. Not that there aren't odd and unexpected crossovers, they just tend to happen by accident, similar conclusions reached by disparate means, like Leibniz and Newton with the invention of the calculus§. Take tuning. My conception of tuning is based upon a completely different set of assumptions (or axioms, if you want to be a ponce about it) to those of the classical musician (of today anyway, tuning was a much more fluid thing, even in the classical world, in the past). I'm not going to go into details, because I'd have to get seriously maths on yr arse, and no one's reading this blog for equations§§.

But, as I am prone to do, I digress. I really would like to know what yr average classical clarinettist thinks when they walk up the stairs and hear the sound of Bach wafting out of one flat, mixing with the sound of "Dumping The Fucking Rubbish" by Whitehouse or Albert Ayler at full bore, let alone the howling violence that can ensue when I'm playing guitar, from my place. Probably "what the fuck are they doing up there?" or "I didn't see any roadworks outside", but then again, I've never had a noise complaint so who knows? And it's not just idle curiosity, I'm seriously interested in other peoples reactions to unfamiliar sound/music because, as you know, I crave it like smack, and find others responses to it constantly surprising (and occasionally inspiring).

I mean, the gap between music that people are willing to accept, and even enjoy, when it's presented as soundtrack/accompaniment as opposed to being the main focus of attention is often huge. For many, it seems to me anyway, dissonance/harshness/just plain weirdness is perfectly acceptable when it's used as manipulation, an intensification of affect, a way to cue the subconscious into viscerally reacting to the images/action on the screen/stage/whatever, and will even wax lyrical about how amazing the music was, how they'd never heard anything like that before, but are then appalled by the same music when they hear it again removed from the visual context. An example; a huge fan of 2001 (who shall remain nameless), who loved the music in the context of the film, absolutely loathed the same Ligeti pieces (Atmosphères and Lux Aeterna) when I put them on at home, especially Lux Aeterna, which she memorably criticised with the words "turn that fucking wailing shit off", yet during the film told me it was one of the most beautiful, awe-inspiring things she'd ever heard.

And that's what interests me so much, these differences in perception of a piece of music, of sound itself, in different contexts. Maybe I'm wired differently, just far more sonically oriented than other people (or just plain obsessed), but for as long as I can remember, listening has held greater importance than sight for me, even over the visual (then again, I can't see shit without my contacts in), possibly to a slightly debilitating degree at times - I know I've missed things I could/should have seen at the time because I was paying too much attention to listening, because other people have pointed it out to me later§§§ - although I've got better at the balance these days - but when you've got ears like a bat with eyes to match you gotta work with what you've got.

I know I'm off on one, that'd be the wine (or possibly my amusing cold medication and sleeping tablets which essentially constitute a solid version of purple drank), but bear with me, it will get somewhere eventually. Possibly. Now, where was I? Oh yeah, ears and eyes and brains and shit. It strikes me that an awful lot of people (this is not a criticism, just an observation) don't (or won't, or can't, or choose not to) view the visual and sonic aspects of perception as complementary but separate, possibly because of the visual bias in our culture, hearing seems to be viewed as an adjunct to sight as opposed to what it actually is, a far more highly developed, innately more sensitive faculty (in terms of frequency, we can hear nine octaves give or take, but we can see less than one, to give but one example), or maybe because, when we're conscious anyway, hearing is involuntary, you can close yr eyes, but no matter how hard you try it's incredibly difficult to truly block yr ears, you don't have to look, but you have to hear, even if you really don't want to listen.

Our hearing seems to be hardwired into the limbic system, to the un/subconscious mind to a greater degree than sight, and if I was going to go out on a limb (as this is not my field of expertise), I would guess it evolved first, an extension of the ability to sense vibration or movement in the environment, which I'd imagine is where our conscious tactile senses evolved from too. We generally have so much less control over (the perception of and willed interaction with) our sonic environment, and it pushes our buttons in such a primal, basic manner, bypassing so may of the perceptual/intellectual filters we see the world through, cuts to the quick in way sight doesn't, and maybe that atavistic side to hearing is what relegates it to a position below sight in the worldview of so many. You can't see out the back of yr head, but you know when y're being followed, and it's the ears, and possibly unconscious tactile inputs that alert you to those things, and maybe it's those very ancient facets of our sense of sound that create the very visceral reactions to unfamiliar sound and music, almost provoking a fight or flight response.

I've never encountered any other artform which can provoke such a deep sense of unease and discomfort when confronting the unknown whilst bypassing the intellect (for want of a better word) as music. I've heard certain pieces of both music and film described as harrowing, but if asked why the film was harrowing, people know why, can put it into words, conceptualise and describe exactly why it was so horrible, but with music, that often isn't the case, it's a case of "it's nasty" or "it just feels wrong"^, and maybe that lack of conscious control over what is heard and our reaction to it, as opposed to what is seen, is the key.

Or maybe red wine + codeine + promethazine has bent my brain out of shape so far I've taken leave of reality and am talking vast dungloads of pretentious bullshit. Reality's a vastly overrated and (from my physicist's eye) misunderstood concept anyway in the first place. But fuck it, that's a rant for another day. And different drugs.

*Yes you sarcastic bastards, I am including myself. The 8th contains a financier (who works in sub-prime mortgages!) and a psychiatrist. Bloody Hell.

**Clarinets, and their effect on my life and others, is a rant for another day.

***I may not be the biggest fan of the flute, but I'm sure as shit glad it's a classical flautist and not a fucking hippy with a bongo playing friend.

§Given the amount of mathematics buried in theories of music, this isn't such a glib comparison as you might think.

§§I would, if I wasn't writing it, but then again I really, really love that shit. If you really want to get into tuning, go to this wikipedia article, then follow the links there and elsewhere until yr head falls off. If you really want to know I use Just Intonation (for the acoustic stuff) and variations on Meantone Temperament (electric stuff), gotta love them wolf notes, and I do not necessarily use a fixed tuning centre; i.e. A=440Hz.

§§§Sometimes, this annoys me, particularly when if what I had missed had been pointed out to me at an apposite time I might have had a much better night...

^I've never been called a cunt for suggesting we watch a certain film and someone else finding it disagreeable, but I gave up caring a long fucking time ago if I receive abuse for putting certain records on. Like I say, atavistic as opposed to reasoned reactions.