6.25.2010

Black Circles


Harry Smith, Tree of Life (details), (1954). Mixed media on board. Photograph by Jordan Belson of the lost original.

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O., Blues Pour Bible Noire
Steve Gunn, Jadin's Dream
Sun Araw, Harken Sawshine

6.16.2010

Retroengineering



The Rinspeed Yello Talbo is a Swiss sports car produced in association with Dieter Meier and Boris Blank of the eclectic electronic group Yello. The car has nostalgic design clues, being based on a 1938 Talbot-Lago 150 SS by Figoni & Falaschi and has a 5.0 V8-engine with automatic box.

6.15.2010

Savage Memories


Ira Cohen, At the court of the Golden Emperor, the Majoon Traveler and Lady Firefly appear in the Hall of Unconscious Magnetism, 1966-70


The beauty of the singing with its trancelike montage effects, together with the combination of mystery, quiet humor, and above all, the incessant interruptedness that creates the particular quality of the shamanic seance, are guaranteed to provoke not one, but many colliding and conflicting meanings of key words and phrases such asprimer tribu. What he is referring to with this invocation is both the znjieles and also sacha gente-meaning the spirit-people of the forest wilderness. It is the magic of the wild and of savagery which provides the thread connecting time and space, the savagery in the prehistory of Christianity and civilization, connected to the savages in the forests of the lowlands below.

The shaman goes on to say that this first people or first tribe are like the mayores, or our esteemed seniors, masters, and ancestors, who took yagb long before us. It is they whom, he says, he conjures up in his mind when curing and divining. The examples he gives are two lowland shamans who died three or four decades ago-the Siona shaman Patricio and the Coreguaje shaman Miguel Piranga. It is as if by what that other doctor of the soul (psyche), Sigmund Freud, termed the process of condensation and displacement in the work of dreams and in the construction of jokes, that the spirits of such dead lowland shamans, or, rather, their fame and repute, collapse centuries of time into compacted nuggets of magical meaning, empowering highland curing ritual.

Yagé itself, the master remedy, grows only in the lowlands and is (according to my shaman friend from Sibundoy) intrinsically connected with the ancient people. "They lived in the monte and wandered there:' he says, "planting remedies and jag&. You go there and hear someone singing. There is singing there. All, all the visions are there, singing. Singing. Singing his song, the song of yagi, no? And then you exclaim, 'There wanders a kuraka [shaman]!' "

Michael Taussig, History as Sorcery, in Representations, No. 7. (Summer, 1984), pp. 87-109

Islanders part. 3


La rencontre de Valensole, 1965

Tame Impala, Island Walking

Sacred Geometry


Gerhard Richter

Phantom Band, Latest News
Zazou & Bikaye, Mangungu
King Crimson, Elephant Talk
Massacre, Legs
Chrome Hoof, Sea Hornet
Turzi, Bogota

6.14.2010

Soft as Snow but Warm Inside (Soft Power vol. 3)


Miami Vice series finale, "Freefall".

Turn the volume up, drive slow. Put your dark sunglasses, and preferably a flanel costume. Slowly bang your head, and listen to the sound of this "Soft Power" volume 3 selection of synthetic tracks: the landscape becomes more contrasted, the road softer, the trip straighter. Here it is, cold and ecstatic:

Tangerine Dream., Love on a Real Train
Jan Hammer, Crockett's Theme
John Carpenter, Wake Up
Russ Ballard, In the Night
Hall & Oates. Out of Touch
Ariel Pink, Can't Hear my Eyes
Arsenal, Rondo
Oneohtrix Point Never, Nobody Here
Matrix Metals, Tanning Salon Part 2 repost

(To be played in this right order for full effect)

6.12.2010

Exotica Weirdness Classics



The Traces, Je t'aime moi non plus
The David Fanshawe Ensemble, Boobams
Vichan Maneechot, Dance Dance Dance
Sakarin Boonpit, Pee Lah
Courtney Melody, Ninja Mi Ninja

6.11.2010

It's back



Ilyas Ahmed, As Another
Richard Youngs, Fen Flowers
Cromagnon, Crow of the Black Tree

6.06.2010

Oceanic

Jumbo Jellyfish Dubbed 'Big Red'

Just a few miles off the California coastline, scientists have collected a strange new species of jellyfish. Four thousand feet beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean, water temperatures hover around a chilly 37° Fahrenheit, and the tiny sparks of bioluminescent life forms provide the only light. In this dark, cold world, scientists have discovered a strange new predator - a gelatinous, blood-red jellyfish that can reach up to three meters in diameter.
Named Tiburonia granrojo (Spanish for big red), this massive jelly is particularly unusual because it lacks tentacles, which most jellies use to catch their food. Instead, Big Red has between four and seven thick, wrinkled arms. Although the new jelly has been spotted nearly two dozen times, scientists have only been able to collect one Big Red specimen so far. This specimen - a small juvenile - has been added to the Invertebrate Zoology collection at the California Academy of Sciences, where it will be further studied.
There are still many questions to be answered about Big Red, including how it reproduces, how it eats, and what it eats. Unlike many transparent jellyfish, the red pigment in Big Red's dome prevents researchers from peering into its stomach to see what it had for lunch. However, one of the most important questions has been answered - the DNA samples collected to date confirm that Big Red is not only a new species, but part of a new sub-family of jellyfish.

Marc Barreca. Fish Culture

Stellar Om Source, Ocean Chain Letters

Intrusion, Under the Ocean

Hector Zazou, Ocean Of Sound (With Laurie Anderson)

Dolphins Into The Future, Observations Through The Halocline Of The Worlds 9

Tim Blake, Synthese Intemporel

Brian Eno, The Big Ship

Oneohtrix Point Never, Ships Without Meaning

Belbury Poly, Seed Ships

6.05.2010

Pyramodal Muzak


Malcolm Cecil in T.O.N.T.O.

T.O.N.T.O. (The Original New Timbral Orchestra) was the world's first multitimbral polyphonic analog synthesizer, and was designed and built by Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff, a pair of Grammy winning musicians/engineers/producers/sound designers. It's a Series III Moog modular synthesizer, which Cecil expanded with modules from Moog, Arp, Oberheim, and others. It was used by Stevie Wonder on several albums, and is also heard on records by Quincy Jones, Bobby Womack, The Isley Brothers, Gil Scott-Heron and Weather Report, Steven Stills, The Doobie Brothers, Dave Mason, Little Feat, and Joan Baez.

Above all, T.O.N.T.O. appears in Brian de Palma's 1974 masterpiece Phantom of the paradise, sad theatre of Winslow Leach's robotic despair.



Cecil and Margouleff created in 1971 the Tonto's Expanding Head Band :

"Once upon a time, Tonto represented the cutting edge of artificial intelligence in the world of music - Robert and Malcolm are the mad chefs of aural cuisine with beefy tones and cheesy timbres, making brain chili for those brave enough and hungry enough. Consequently, back in the cultural wasteland of the Midwest, the release of Tonto's Expanding Head Band was an inspirational indicator for starving Spudboys who had grown tired of the soup du jour. It was official - noise was now Muzak, and Muzak was now noise. So with Tonto "riding again" and the orb-of-sound resurrected, expect a healing. The masses are asses who need Tonto's glasses. Lookout, here comes Tonto!"
Devo's Mark Mothersbaugh

Here is their first LP :

Tonto's Expanding Head Band, Zero Time (1971)

See also The Swan Archives

6.01.2010

Ecstasy


Kid Creole & The Coconuts, 1981

Kid Creole & The Coconuts, You can't keep a good man down (Greedit)

Enjoy the dance moves in the original version, excerpted from Kid Creole's 1983 movie There's something wrong in Paradise :