White Hills; An 'act of resistance'.

Photo by Chris Carlone.

I'm sure you have noticed that in late capitalism much of mainstream culture, including music, is the tarted up results of market forces and the commodification of all things, it cannot help but be bereft of meaning and over arching purpose, it has nothing much to say and no idea where it is going; it operates as a social anaesthetic. In contrast White Hills are a band with purpose, vitality and a desire to communicate their concerns on political and social issues.

Formed in 2005 by Dave W. and Ego Sensation White Hills' music is variously described as Space Rock and /or neo-psychedelic and like Hawkwind during Bob Calvert's phase their music includes social-political comment. Their 2011 album 'H-p1' was the first part of a trilogy looking at structures of control and power with 'So You Are...So You'll Be' (2013) 

exploring the individual's agency within those structures (1). While the new album 'Walks For Motorists' (2015) does not complete the trilogy it does continue the vein of social comment so when White Hills kindly agreed to an interview rather than ask about musical styles and production it seemed like a good opportunity to explore these other facets of their music.

Q: Picasso wrote about art washing away the dust of everyday life from the soul (2). Is that something you would aim for with your music, that it would wake people up?

EGO: I think, in general, music and art allow us to transcend the drudgery of everyday existence and move towards a higher consciousness.

DW: I agree with Ego. Art has always been a way for me to dive within myself and ponder issues big and small, whether personal or societal. It has always been  a vehicle of enlightenment for me in some form or another.

That said, everyone exists within their own reality. All is internalized differently from one person to the next. How I feel is how I feel.  I don't write for others, I write for myself.  Creating is a cathartic process that does wash away the dust of everyday life from my soul.  I don't feel that my purpose on this earth is to wake other people up. I can only be responsible for myself. I think the majority of our fans are people who are looking for something more than the insipid bland music of the day. They are thinkers. A thinking mind is a questioning mind. A questioning mind is an active mind. An active mind leads to action. Action leads to change.

Q: We live in a physical and social world that is shaped by and for the elite-is your music a comment on that, an alerting of people to it or an act of resistance against it?

DW: I am merely a viewer, listener and thinker. What I internalize comes out in the form of my art. When such topics are approached within our music it tends to be very abstract. It's not pointed or dictatorial.  It is the listener whom decides what they see within it and what they take away from it.

EGO: Our existence as a band, and as the people that we are, is a peaceful yet assertive act of resistance. We write music we believe in that comes from our hearts. It's not manufactured after testing public opinion, staying up to date on the newest trend of the hour with the intention of selling as many units of it as possible. My point is that when anyone acts from their gut- according to their conscience and true desires, they immediately become revolutionary in a society that values false appearances, catch phrase headlines, insipid internet popularity contests and E! Entertainment News.

Q: Do you think making the hidden 'visible' is an important aspect of art?

DW: Yes, I do think that is an important aspect of art.  In my opinion, people who create true art are making the hidden visible. Whether the artist chooses to be direct or abstract with getting their message across that doesn't matter.  Art should make you think. The rest is just bland drivel to numb your mind.

Q: I was fascinated to read that 'H-p1' was in part ,at least, a response to the capture of the US Government by corporate power and the one dimensional top down narrative that blocks space for discussion (3). What aspects of that situation were you confronting on 'H-p1'? Is that a situation you see improving in the US or do you think the corporate state is now established? If so, how do you see the situation being rectified?

EGO: H-p1 explores the rabid consumerism that corporations have infected society with by creating cheaply-made, quickly out-dated, disposable products and the imbalance it creates within the world. To my knowledge the situation is only getting worse in the United States. Corporations seem to have free reign to violate all kinds of laws without ever suffering repercussions. They can even freely and legally hire lobbyists to persuade politicians to rewrite laws in their favour.  Money is the only thing that seems to talk in this country though we all have to listen to a load of hypocritical bullshit from the politicians.

I think the system can only be rectified by people turning to a more community based way of doing business- in smaller groups. Corporations initially sold themselves to people by offering them better deals. For instance, Walmart had a technique of opening 2 of their stores on either side of town and then after crushing their local competition, they'd close one of the stores. In New York City, a huge string of corporate pharmacies have opened over the past 10 years. They used to offer discounted prices over local competitors, though now that a lot of the competition has disappeared and people have made a habit of shopping at these stores they can raise their prices without losing the business. People believe they're getting a better deal- either because of force of habit, misleading advertising, tricky marketing techniques or just mistaken beliefs/myths about a big corporation being able to offer you a better deal. We need to stop supporting businesses we don't believe in. We need to buy less and buy right: shop somewhere local and pay a bit more for better quality. We also need to think less about buying stuff and more about connecting with our communities in a way that benefits everyone- for example creating community gardens, forming a childcare share group or a local business owner's association to help encourage everyone's success.

DW: If you take profit away from the corporate structure, it will not have the power it does now.  We as individuals have the power to choose where and how we spend our money. If each and everyone of us thought about that and what we are supporting when we purchase something I think people's buying habits would change. If we get the money out of the corporate hand(s) and support local small businesses the paradigm of power will change.

Q: Corporate capitalism’s most brazen trick is to try and pass itself off as natural, attempting to convince us that no other world is possible. The Situationists wrote about this in 1950s/60s referring to it as ‘the spectacle’ (4) — Society and culture dominated by a seamless representation of a capitalist version of the world via the media, state and corporations, the oppressed internalising those values and any dissent marginalised or co-opted. 'So You Are...So You'll Be' considered the individual's response to this situation-what conclusions did you reach?  

DW: 'So You Are…So You'll Be' is a meditation for one to think about how they personally fit into this paradigm. As I mentioned before I'm not here to tell people how to think, I merely ask questions and let all who are willing to listen make their own decisions.

There is an underlying theme to "So You Are…" and that theme is change. What is different now from years past? Have we as human kind really changed over the time we have existed? I'm not talking about technological change I'm talking about a higher consciousness. We believe ourselves to be at the top of the animal chain, but we are the only animal on the planet that does not live within harmony with it, so are we really as intelligent as we think we are?

The conclusion I came to is that things really don't change. Technology may advance, but we as the human race keep on running around the same circle. There is always an elite that manipulates the masses and keeps them down. When the masses feel empowered they simply take down the elite power structure and the process starts all over again. So You Are…So You'll Be.  I do think that humans have a greater capacity for change, however there needs to be a massive shift in the collective conscious for that change to encompass a new way of existing where we live within harmony with all and we finally see us as an integral part of the universe, not the 'end all' being stuck with in it. 

Q: You mentioned that the new album, 'Walks For Motorists', contains social comment and context, could you expand on that?

EGO: The title itself is a comment on how people come to define and pigeon hole themselves. It came from a Welsh visitor guide of the same name that was produced in the late 1950's/early 1960's when it was popular to be a "motorist". Obviously we all have a variety of roles in our lives that we can define- we're pedestrians when walk down the street, we're consumers when we go grocery shopping, we're fans when we attend a concert. No big deal- it's the tedious specificity of our language. The problem comes in when people use words with agendas to define themselves and as a matter of pride or psychological cohesion refuse to consider the complexities of issues. For example, voting for a politician simply because they belong to the party we belong to rather than really examining the person and their views. The danger in the US is there is always some politician blabbering about "family values" to push through some piece of legislation that doesn't have anything to do with so called "family values". But for a huge group of people in the country, the term "family values" is very powerful- so often they look no further than the catch phrase.

The song "£sd or USB" offers an open ended question to people. What will you choose to use to tune into the world or completely drop out? Lately when I walk around New York, especially Brooklyn, there's a lot of iPhone zombies roaming the streets. They stare at their screens while blocking sidewalks or cluelessly walking out in front of traffic. It's as if they can't be away from the screen for a moment- they might miss a text, lose their way on the map, miss out on someone liking their photo. It's worse than crystal meth! But the phone isn't the problem, just in the same way that drugs aren't the problem. People are the problem! So many of us seem to be missing out on the desire and willpower to evolve. Technology is growing so fast and creating so many amazing possibilities for improving our lives and our consciousness- but why is it that so many people use it to just check out mentally, bully others, obsess on old lovers, and consume? We all have the capacity to do much better.

Q: We live in societies that encourage us to derive our self identity from consumption, which I think you addressed on 'H-p1' (1) -how do you counter that? John Holloway argues that our sense of self should be sourced in our collective efforts to improve situations, in acts of collective creativity and community (5).

EGO: The sense of having purpose is lost on many people and contributes to a society of psychologically twisted, confused and/or medicated people that have forgotten how  to be useful members of the community. People are so concerned with making money- because it is necessary! Not once has my landlord excepted my musical ability or goodwill in exchange for rent. But from my personal point of view, the optimum goal in life is to spend your time creating something of value to yourself and others and to be able to survive (eat well, have a roof over your head) doing so. I think the problem starts when we go beyond providing for ourselves and just get greedy- valuing money over all else. That's why in the music business it's hard to find a supportive record label. The current model is to sign up a band that has some buzz and then if they don't deliver profit almost immediately to drop them. It's like day trading and it doesn't allow for an artist's growth or anything interesting that's not instantly "trending". It banks on people's lack of focus fostered by looking at too many fucking links on the internet under the guise of becoming "better informed". Many neurologists have done studies that show that focusing on too many items at once weakens the power of the frontal cortex. I think all of us that have a computer and/or smartphone know this from experience. We might turn on the computer to work on an interview, then remember we need to send an email, then while opening up the browser remember to search the internet for an answer to a technical question and suddenly hours have passed by with seemingly no real positive action.

The first real way I learned to counter lack of focus and resist the urge to over consume was through practicing Bikram yoga. It's a very disciplined practice done in a hot room 40º C (104º F) for 90 minutes and it involves focusing on your breath and learning to find comfort and stillness regardless of the heat. You learn to go from maximum effort to complete stillness from pose to pose and you learn to resist the urge to wipe away sweat, drink water or let your mind wander. The practice really helped me identify how consumption is usually a psychological pacifier: I feel sad or inadequate so I'll buy some new clothes or a second cup of coffee. I've learned to think about my purchases in a different way and better understand the difference between NEED and WANT. Ultimately all suffering comes from WANT, of which materialism encourages an endless supply: a newer this, a faster that, bigger, prettier, etc. You have to learn to find contentment now and always- on the day you lose your job, on your wedding day, in the sweltering heat, in the blistering cold and on a perfect sunny cool day. Nothing from the outside can bring you that contentment if you don't cultivate it within yourself.

I like how John Holloway refers to "cracks in the rule of money". These are the things that a thinking person sees in the world that give a burst of hope. It can be music you hear that touches you in a way you can't really explain, a group of people that gather together to protest, or walking through a forest and noticing the beauty of the trees. Sometimes we're get so stressed out about money that we forget it is truly meaningless. I seriously doubt anyone on their deathbed regrets not making more money.

Q: Nic Endo has on her Twitter page that "There is purity in noise, which can serve as a very direct way of communicating emotion..." (6). Is White Hills music sometimes a transposing of emotion into sound or more conceptual? Would you see it as the musical equivalent of abstract art, the transposing of ideas and concepts, experiences and emotions into another form?

EGO: White Hills' music is always a transposing of emotion even when we consciously decide to create something conceptual. Much of our work has started from a simple riff line that has grown organically through playing it live, allowing the separate instruments to take root or bloom as inspiration takes them. I think music and dance are the purest and most powerful languages we have on earth. They allow for a more universal expression of real truths about existence that we can all relate to. Words often confuse meaning more than clarifying it.

Q: Some artists find their work is more complete live-in the interaction of band and audience-does the live setting bring an extra dimension to your work?

EGO: Playing the music live in front of an audience creates the potential for magic and spontaneity.  Dave's guitar work on much of the material changes from show to show and I think he often feeds off the energy of the audience so that no two shows are ever the same. There's also something powerful about the artist actually showing the audience the music. It becomes a more active experience for everyone. The audience is never really passive in the way that someone listening to music at home or on headphones is. Your eyes dart around the stage checking out the drummer, the bassist, the guitarist, the singer. You notice new things: the melody that you thought was a guitar is actually played on the bass, the bass player is a chick! who knew?, the guitarist uses a combination of effects pedals to create crazy sounds you might have thought were synthesizers. There's a whole new layer of information that embellishes and enriches the experience of listening. As a player, you can watch the audience and literally see when your music is moving people.

Q: In March this year you released 'I Remain In' on a 'God Unknown' split with Mugstar, how did that come about?

DW: We've been friends with Mugstar for quite some time now. Jason and I have been speaking about doing some kind of split together since both our bands appeared on the Trensmat singles collection celebrating the music of Hawkwind.  When Jason approached me about starting up God Unknown, he asked if I would be interested in having WHITE HILLS be one of the releases with Mugstar. I didn't have to think about it at all, I agreed right away. 

Q: How about your own evolution! Over the period you have been writing lyrics and music has the subject matter changed as well as your own understandings? What cultural resources (writers/thinkers/musicians/etc) have you drawn on, and been influenced by, as people and musicians? 

EGO: Here's a small list of some of the people that have in some way inspired, influenced or moved me: Gilda Radner, Bob Fosse, Jim Henson, Nick Cave, Siouxsie Sioux, Albert Camus, John Waters, Jimmy Page, Pedro Almodovar, Amy Sedaris, Lucas Samaras, Dostoevsky, Fritz Lang, Exene Cervenka, Spaulding Gray, Peter Sellars, Wayne Coyne, Albert Einstein, Freddie Mercury, Iggy Pop, Marilyn Monroe, Robert Wilson, Salvador Dali, Werner Herzog and a million others I'll remember tomorrow and wish I listed.

DW: Buckminster Fuller has been a big influence on me. What a different world we'd live in if the powers that be of his time put into actions his ideas and inventions. Writers; Hunter S. Thompson, Aldous Huxley, Voltaire, Jospeh Campbell, Italo Calvino, Albert Camus are so many others .  Musically I've always been drawn to artists/groups that push the boundaries of what is normal at the time. People like John Cage, Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis to bands like PiL, Einstuzende Neubauten and Throbbing Gristle. To be honest there are so many bands, artists, writers and philosophers I could name here it's numbing.

As for my own art, I've always been one that explores what some might see as heavy issues. It's what draws me to create and what keeps me sane. In my early stages of writing, I was more pointed, forceful and opinionated within the subject matter. Now I find my work to be more conceptual and abstract. Why I'm not sure. It's just how I see the way my process, and it's end results, has developed.

Massive thanks to Dave and Ego for their time, insights and wisdom.

Bibliography.

(1) Terich, J. (2013) 'w: White Hills' http://www.treblezine.com/interview-white-hills/

 

(2) http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4673-art-washes-away-from-the-soul-the-dust-of-everyday

 

(3) Hewitt, B. 'BBC Review' of 'H-p1' at http://www.amazon.co.uk/H-P1-White-Hills/dp/B004XKBCMS/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1431020800&sr=1-1&keywords=h-p1

 

(4) Debord, G. (1968) 'The Society of the Spectacle'. Black and Red, USA.

 

(5) Holloway, J. (2005) 'Change the World Without Taking Power', Pluto Press, London and New York.

 

(6) https://twitter.com/nic_endo 

Orlando; 'Far Out and Fantastic'

Photo by Kathy Coleman.

Orlando is the musical identity/project of multi instrumentalist Cathy Lucas who adopted the name from a Virginia Woolf novel about a gender-bending dreamer who lives for 500 years! In March 2014 she released 'Earth Moon Earth and Other Round Trips' a split tape with Tom Furse and in March this year came 'Play Time', again a split tape, with Tomaga on Ram Tapes. On this Orlando sounds like the offspring of a 60s Sci-Fi soundtrack and a 70s Cinema advert but live as a full band it feels like you could be witnessing the rebirth of (a very danceable) Flower Power! Cathy is also involved with the School of Hypnosis, an East London collective that re-interprets minimalist pieces at living room parties. They are also preparing a self penned piece 'Sonic Tides' for Station to Station at the Barbican on Sunday 26^th July. Ahead of playing Dalston Music Festival she kindly agreed to an interview.


Earlier this year Orlando and Tomaga released a split cassette 'Play Time: Music for Video Games' on Ram Tapes-how did that come about and what was the concept behind it?

 

I find there is a special kind of beauty in music that stretches out beyond itself, into some other world, implying it, but not fully revealing it. That’s why I love soundtracks so much, and library music generally. There is mystery there, inviting you in. Part of it is the sounds – far more interesting and un-identifiable than other genres.

 

So for the cassette music I start with a piece of music I like – in the case of MFVG it was Theme for a Telepathic Amphibian – and that inspires the concept. All the other music was written around that, as a soundtrack for videogames that have never been made. I had been talking about doing a RAM tape with Tomaga for a while – we were just waiting for the right idea that would click for both of us.

 

For the Round Trips tape, the song Earth Moon Earth became the first chapter in a story about escaping to the moon, enjoying a newfound freedom, but then eventually getting home sick and returning to Earth. Tom interpreted ‘Round Trips’ differently, creating slowly evolving loop-based music on his modular.

You've just done a July tour of Italy-how did it go? Do you find playing live brings an extra dimension to the music?

 

The last 3 months have been a transition from Orlando being my own solo project into becoming a band. By playing live, it has gradually become the sum, or maybe more than the sum, of it’s members, sprouting heads and spreading out beyond the songs. Although the home studio stuff will always be there in parallel, for our most recent recordings (still unreleased), we went into the studio to record as a band. The tour of Sardinia was our first and really helped to solidify the group. A bit like bootcamp, but with sunshine, beaches and high quality cheeses.

 

What sort of response have you been getting to the album?

 

The most common response is “I don’t have a cassette player.”

For people who are unaware of your musical past can you run us through it, you were part of Fanfarlo weren't you...?

 

I played a lot of music as a kid without hearing much recorded music beyond a few tired Beach Boys cassettes. My family was musical but not that into the culture of music. I got into records as a teen – mostly 60s and 70s rock and pop – and wore flares and flowery shirts, but growing up in Brussels suburbs that turned out to be quite a solitary pursuit. I got my first real education as a member of a psych-folk band called Tanakh in 2004. The guy Jesse Poe had moved over from Richmond Virginia to Italy where I was living. He showed me so much stuff – introduced me for the first time to the idea of violin in a band with stuff like Dirty Three and Ghost, but played me all kinds of music for the first time, experimental, jazz, soul, folk…

 

When I moved to London I played in various different bands, picking up a bit of this and that, mandolin, keyboards, singing, musical saw. My main squeeze Fanfarlo took off a bit in the states so we toured a lot, and I had so many incredible experiences with those guys. But by the time I was getting serious about recording and production, that was winding down and Orlando was taking shape. I wanted an antidote to the world of serious pop and industry pressure, to indulge myself with something far out and fantastic. And I also wanted to learn the craft of recording, reconnect with music making in a new way and follow something through from sound wave to cassette deck. I started the Association for the Re-Alignment of Magnetic Dust (RAM), a small tape label, as an outlet for that. Each one split with another artist because...why not?

Is there a sense of continuity between Orlando and what you have done before or does it feel like a fresh start?

 

Orlando feels like a definite break from the past. I’ve always been involved in other people’s visions, and continue to play with various groups, and produce other artists, which I love, but Orlando feels very personal, separate from all of that.

 

What are your plans? How do you see Orlando developing?

 

We’ve just been in the studio with Malcolm Catto recording some tracks. The aim is to get an EP out before the end of the year and work on an album for next. RAM will continue to put out quality collaborations with like-minded artists on limited cassette.

 

At a gig in February you were playing keyboards with The Oscillation, is that a permanent arrangement?

 

Yes, although The Oscillation has finished touring until the next album is released in 2016 while Demian works on his solo release.

 

What musicians have you been influenced by?

 

Too many to count. But Gary Wilson, R Stevie Moore, Bruce Haack and Todd Rundgren are all home recording heroes of mine. Nothing beats a party for one down the rabbit hole with all your gear. That is freedom! Then I’ve got very much into the sound of 60s and early 70s library records (Umiliani/Zalla, Roger Roger, Ruscigan, Nardini, Libaek, Subotnik, Marletta, Perrey, Casa, and many more…). These are so mysterious and inviting to me, and also so free because of the way were made – fast and furious. It gets me into the mindset of recording as a daily practice and process, rather than just a means to an end. But to be honest the biggest inspiration comes from the people that I work with directly. The members of Orlando: Valentina (To)Magaletti, Phil MFU a.k.a. Man From Uranus, Susumu Mukai a.k.a. Zongamin and Elliott Ardnt are a constant source of wonder in how they interact with their instruments. Tom Furse is an insatiable workaholic, font of technical knowledge and voice of reason. Malcolm Catto, who is producing our current set of recordings, keeps it very fucking real. And they all have excellent record collections. What more could I possibly ask for?

 

 For some magical library sounds check out the 5^th Wave Radio Show by Phil MFU https://5thwaveradioshow.wordpress.com/

And also Tom Furse’s forthcoming Southern Library compilation on Lo Recordings

http://www.lorecordings.com/release/digs/

 

 

'Austerity' is Class War Waged by the Rich.

Image by Yvonne Forster.

I haven't been on many A to B marches over the last few years due to doubts about state sanctioned protest but I managed to get down to the Anti-Austerity Demo on June 20th in London, and was glad I did. The part of the march I was in was made up of a wide mix of people and groups; gay people (with a LGSM banner!), straight people, Unions-lots of Firefighters-Green Partyists, disabled people, women against domestic violence, students and lots of 'independents'. They were older people, younger people, parents with children, kind of like wider society really. What we were protesting against has become euphemistically known as 'Austerity' but is really the further implementation of Neoliberal economics disguised as a response to a financial crisis enabled by...neoliberal deregulation of the financial sector.

The hallmarks of neoliberalism are individualisation, an ideology of free markets, deregulation, small state provision (for the working class, though not for corporations), privatisation (the transforming of public goods into private property) and a continual dismantling of workers rights and protections-in short authoritarian capitalism. It was first implemented in the USA and UK under Reagan and Thatcher in the late 1970s and 80s but also became the dominant ideology of the IMF and World Bank in the 1980s and 90s and was imposed on countries struggling with debt in the Global South, these impositions were known as Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). Some years later it became obvious that the Nett result for these countries was economic stagnation or regression. However SAPs and neoliberalism were not failures from the perspective of the elite because neoliberalism is the politics and economics of class war; the disempowering and impoverishing of the working class and the further empowering and enriching of the elite or capitalist class. This impoverishing/ enriching includes the capture of public goods and services by capital (corporations) which is always in search of something new to turn to a profit. The Tories are a front for corporate interests, a party of the rich and powerful, financed by the rich and powerful, that is why at the same time as pleading poverty they gave tax breaks to the rich and sold off the publically owned EastCoast mainline rail service that was generating a profit and the Post Office that had recently started making a profit. Privatisation is not about efficiency it is about capital/corporation's insatiable desire for new areas to invest in and to make profit from.

In her book 'The Shock Doctrine' (1) Naomi Klein comments that neoliberals will use crisis/catastrophes-either natural or man made- to further impose their agenda, David Cameron and his government did just that. Using the financial crisis of 2008 they, with the help of the corporate media, span a story of how 'austerity' was necessary. Sadly a populace used to receiving their information via a generally right wing media accepted the narrative rarely bothering to seek out alternative voices or explore the history of neoliberal imposition.

'Austerity' is really the continuing of, and possibly the completion of, the neoliberal project to dismantle the social democratic model set up post WWII- a model that included welfare provision, social housing, worker's rights and attempts to restrain inequality. The neoliberal Tories as the political representation of the interests of capital have always been opposed to the social democratic model and now see their chance to finish it off.

When right wing corporate newspapers enthusiastically support a political party you can be sure that party is not going to serve the interests of the large majority of a populace but that simple point seemed lost on the British public-or maybe it wasn't. Maybe that is why the Tories only got 36% of the vote and 25% of the possible vote. Maybe at the start of this next 5 years of Tory rule the British public are realising that they are being subject to the economics of class war and are starting to wake up?

Bibliography.
(1) Klein, N. (2007) 'The Shock Doctrine; The Rise of Disaster Capitalism', Penguin Group, London.        

  

Blank Editions-a labour of love.

Image by Ross Adams.

The 2012 film 'Good Vibrations' is set in the late 1970s/early 80s and follows the life of one Terri Hooley, a Belfast record shop owner who suddenly becomes aware of the new vibrant punk scene in Ireland. Having had his eyes opened to the raw talent and excitement of an underground music scene going on all around him the entrepreneurial Terri records and releases singles by various bands from the area, the most famous being 'Teenage Kicks' by The Undertones. At the core of the film is a 'regional' record label facilitating a new surge of creativity. Fast forward 35 years and two of the most exciting bands I've seen recently, Tomaga and Housewives, have had recent releases on Hackney record label Blank Editions, the brain child of David Blanco and Will Shutes. After a recent gig at The Shacklewell Arms David kindly agreed to an interview.

Q: David, you are both busy people! Will co-wrote a book on Syd Barrett and is now running a publishing house, Test Centre, with a partner and I think you run a design house, originalblanco, could you say a bit about that- the sort of stuff you do?

A: Yes, I do design most days, I run dsblanco.com which is essentially my freelance practice. I work with quite a broad range of people from small start ups, record labels, publishers and do day to day design at Blank Editions.

Q: How did you and Will get together and what made you decide to set up Blank Editions?

A: We met through mutual friends who played in a band we were both really into called Electricity In Our Homes at a Sticks show in Hackney around October 2011.

We are both record collectors and enthused over local bands like EIOH, Hatcham Social, Factory Floor, S.C.U.M, The Horrors, Neils Children, Flats, Disconcerts, bands that were all connected through friendships and had created a community by playing in each other's bands and producing each other. Most of them resided in pretty much the same neighbourhood…we thought this needed to be documented in a beautiful tactile way.

As we began discussing the label and its potential output we found ourselves constantly referencing the very first Electricity In Our Homes E.P that Brandon Jacobs from Neils Children put out on his Modern Pop label in 2008, 'The Shareholders Meeting' E.P. That one record started it all off really, it was incredibly inspirational to us. People were asked to pay in advance for a share of the record, thus becoming a shareholder. You paid £5.00 upfront and you received 0.5% of the 200 records pressed…which equated to 1 record.

We used that one record as a focus for the kind of music we were interested in at the time and the way the actual record was promoted and released as a blueprint for the label.

Right from the start we were both initially interested in documenting off shoot projects from the members of local bands who we really liked. This led into doing the solo record we did with Charles Boyer from EIOH and initiating The Solo Series.

Q: What would Blank Editions mission statement read like?! What role would you hope it will fulfil?

A: To simply document a local and thriving undercurrent, to help illustrate that there is a great community of artists and musicians local to us who are creating really special things and to produce beautiful editions that document these recordings.

Q: The two bands I've seen that have releases on Blank Editions-Tomaga and Housewives-are quite different but both have a dynamic experimentalism and a desire to play with musical form. Is that what attracted you to them? What aspects are you looking for in a band to issue something by them?

A: We were introduced to Tomaga by our good friend Tim Garratt ( Moon Zero) who has produced, recorded and played on several Blank Editions releases ( COP, Niqab, Joseph Coward, Ted Milton, Housewives ) through his recording studio The Moriaki Skyway. Tim was kind enough to recommend Tomaga to us, we fell in love with their debut LP 'Futura Grotesk' straight away and thought they would fit perfectly  into what we were doing with the label. Tomaga’s approach to “ambient” music is unique and so brilliantly realised, their live act is just as engaging as listening to them at home and it wasn’t long before we were writing them to offer a recording. Tom and Valentina are two of the nicest people we have had the pleasure of collaborating with too, which is always pleasant.

We were already really into Housewives, we had bought the tape that Faux Discx had put out in 2013 and it was hands down one of the best things we had heard in a long time. When Tim Garratt wrote to us introducing Tomaga he also told us he had recently recorded two tracks with Housewives, once we heard them we wrote to the band and offered them a 7” straight away of the back of these two songs and without seeing them live. Tim had worked with them so the connection was there and fortunately they turned out to be really nice people too. Tomaga and Housewives in our opinion are two of the best bands playing ambient, industrial, post-punk, experimental music right now, the recent Housewives 7” launch show with Moon Zero and Mphahlele was truly great.

A connection to an existing recording we have released is always something we look for when releasing something new, most things are introduced to us by people we have already released so we fortunately find ourselves often surrounded by things we want to approach as opposed to the other way around, although we do welcome demos and of course are interested in hearing things that are not just from London.

Q:  Blank Editions includes both 'The Solo Series' and 'The Blank Tapes' Do they have different functions?

A: The Solo Series is purely to facilitate solo recordings from people in bands we really like, It’s not really surprising that these days most bands have members recording vast amount of material on their own at home or in studio set ups, this was of great interest to us as one sometimes find this kind of unreleased material to be the most fruitful and beautiful with its own personality that isn’t necessarily tied to a release or any sort of formula. The Solo Series packages these recordings into a 2 song limited edition one time pressing 7” in a handmade sleeve, as of mid 2015 we have released 6 singles in this series with more being discussed

The Blank Tapes services both bands and solo artists experimental work, development work, demos and small run E.Ps, the nature of this series is quite lo fi and fairly spontaneous in its approach, the recordings are normally sessioned in one or two days and as cassettes are made in very small runs, they are pretty low risk plus quick to turn around, it works as a perfect format for these kind of recordings to be released in. The newest sub catalogue, The Blank Community will be completely open-ended and simply be a platform to document material from bands and artists we both love, we hope to edition publications, super small run recordings, albums and other items not completely related to “music” through this platform too. We have just recently released the debut 7” from Housewives under this umbrella.

Q: What made you decide to go for cassette and vinyl as mediums?

A:  I guess they are just formats we find beautiful and collect ourselves we simply wanted to release items that we would want to own.

Q: I was surprised to see you have a couple of releases by ex-Sonic Youth member Thurston Moore! How did that come about!

A: Thurston moved into our neighbourhood in 2012 or so and we kept seeing him around. One day we invited him to the launch we were hosting for the Douglas Hart's solo 7” which fortunately he was going to anyway, we asked him at the launch whether he would be interested in contributing to The Solo Series which he was. He then approached us to release the 'Sun Gift Earth' tape later that year which was Inspired by the comet-chaser Rosetta.

We hope to release more material from both Thurston and Douglas sometime soon.

Q: You and Will have been running Blank Editions since 2011-are you happy with how it has gone so far? What are your plans for the rest of the year?

A: Very much so, we run the label daily in some sort of capacity, but its very far from being a full time job. We have some really great things lined up, we have a new cassette coming out in July by Charcoal Owls and a few other things that haven’t been solidified yet. Hoping to do more stuff with Housewives and Tomaga and also a duo called Mphahlele, Tim Garratt has a few things he is working on too which we are excited to hear. We are busy with lining new things up, its a really good time for this sort of thing. It has been really good fun so far and has solidified many a new friendship which is always nice. We simply want to keep documenting things as and when they happen and make records and tapes you would want to give to your grandkids.

 

Thanks to David and Will-for more info on Blank Editions visit blankeditions.com.

 

 

Cultural Resources and Neoliberalism.

Image by Yvonne Forster

So despite only about 25% of the electorate voting for them the Tories got the single biggest percentage of the vote (37%) and we have 5 more years of Tory Government, they hope to bring us more cuts to social provision leading to more poverty, more disempowering of Unions, a vague Anti-Extremist Bill, less taxation for the well off and possibly a new British Bill of Rights written by the Tories instead of those tricky internationally recognised Human Rights much loved by foreigners...  

Since the late 1970s Neoliberal capitalism/politics has reconfigured institutions (governments, schools etc), individuals and society into its own image. Capitalism’s most brazen trick is to try and pass itself off as natural, or ‘god ordained’ in a bygone era, attempting to convince us that this is how it is meant to be, that no other world is possible. The Situationists wrote about this in 1950s/60s referring to it as ‘the spectacle’ (1) — how advanced industrial societies are represented to themselves by the elite, so effectively that the oppressed internalise those values, those views. Society and culture dominated by a seamless representation of a capitalist version of the world via the media, state and corporations (1), where any dissent is marginalised or co-opted. Gramsci referred to something similar as 'cultural hegemony' (2). The hallmarks of neoliberalism are individualisation, an ideology of free markets, small state provision (for the workers, though not for corporations), privatisation (the transforming of public goods into private property) and a continual dismantling of workers rights and protections-in short authoritarian capitalism. Coupled with this is the phenomena known as 'post modernity' which includes the 'death' of the meta-narrative and at times a retreating into ethnicity and nationalism as sources of identity in the face of capitalist globalisation (3). All this has created a constructed, mediated environment/society that is anxious, alienating, individualised, competitive, commodified-with wage labour and individualised consumption promoted as the highest goal .

An essay written last year commented that some sociologists 'believe that we construct our sense of self, of self identity from the cultural resources available to us. That is in order to construct a version of ourselves that is understandable and intelligible to ourselves and others we draw on the representations, roles and social signifiers around us, configuring and modifying them to construct a sense of who we are both for ourselves and (others). Many of these cultural resources-conventional gender roles, nationalities, etc- are top down products of a nation state capitalist system and these cultural resources will perpetuate roles, identities and social structures that serve the status quo and reactionary relationships'(4).

Many, possibly most, people in the UK imbibe a daily dose of right- wing press including the abjectification of 'othered' groups and a few hours of 'spectacle'-game shows, food contests, programmes about the well off choosing new houses, dramas, soap operas etc. Often these programmes represent the working class as poorly educated, divided, bogged down in domestic problems. When did you last see a working class character in a contemporary drama who was 'sorted', self educated and politicised? Most TV appears to be written by the privileged reflecting their view of the working class-unfortunately many have internalised these offensive, belittling representations.

If individuals do draw on cultural resources to construct themselves and the 'cultural hegemony' of neoliberalism has created a society and media where the cultural resources readily available are an expression of a neoliberal worldview-including a disempowering view of the working class- then how is it possible for the working class to wake up and break free of both being constituted by neoliberalism and helping constitute neoliberalism? They are not going to hear an alternative narrative or come into contact with a creative progressive vision from the top down, the elite like things as they are. The Labour Party is now Tory-Lite, berating itself for not coming across as more business friendly in the last election and The Green Party is too small and poorly funded to compete in a 'first past the post' system with either of the two big parties.

There would appear to be -unsurprisingly-no alternative to grass roots organisation, activism and education (to cite a Noam Chomsky 'tweet') in constructing alternative cultural resources and political narrative.

On the distance learning website Futurelearn (5) there is a course 'The Secret Power of Brands' (6) which includes the idea of a Venn diagram in which one circle contains the felt needs of your target group, the other circle your organisation's attributes-in the overlap of the two circles are the aspects of your organisation that meets those felt needs, the aspects that the organisation needs to communicate (6). Obviously this is to do with businesses but transposable to other spheres. In an online article 'The Left Can Win' Pablo Inglesias of the Spanish Podemos party-that emerged from the Indignados movement- makes the point that the Left needs to communicate in a language that people understand about things that people are bothered about, that there has to be a tie up between what we are talking about and what people are experiencing or we are irrelevant while having the correct analysis (7).We need to disrupt the top down dominant discourses that people read and hear by listening to people and talking with them about the things that matter to them in a way that alerts people to the misleading, elite-serving, disempowering narratives they have been given and instead empower people to engage and create change. The disrupting of the top down discourse by the introduction of new ideas, new perspectives into the narrative is essential for effective resistance to hegemony (8).  

Similarly a recent 'Red Pepper' article/interview with Podemos member Eduardo Maura comments that the Left needs to have a better grasp of "class compositions and identities" (9) which are far more complex and fragmented than before the neoliberal era, and to have a better understanding of people's lived experiences so that it can communicate effectively (9). Podemos seems to be a political party that is closely aligned with progressive grass roots movements, it has managed to embed itself in local communities with many local branches as well as using social media/ the internet extensively in order to enable involvement and participation in discussion and decision making for as many people as possible (9). This model of a movement with multiple access points so that people with busy fragmented lives can get involved in a way they can manage has to be taken seriously as for many people an initial involvement that includes conferences, reading lengthy books and protests may be a bit too much.

In Scotland last year the 'Yes' campaign was a diverse movement that included many on the Left (10) and while the 'Yes' campaign failed to win the vote their grass roots model of campaigning seems to have been very effective at engaging people in local, community based discussion and participation.

All of the above examples are peculiar to time and place, in circumstances different to our own but they do give us clues as to how the Left/anarchism could engage more effectively with the world around us- exploring how anarchism answers the felt needs people have, listening to people and their concerns and then trying to give them a better analysis of the causes of their problems in a language they understand, having a localised and online movement that has multiple points of access so that people can learn, understand more clearly, engage and participate in a way they can manage. It will almost certainly be a bit messy and include mistakes but the need for a clearer, more effective communication of radical Left/anarchist politics is paramount.    

  
Bibliography.

(1) Debord, G. (1968) 'The Society of the Spectacle'. Black and Red, USA.

(2) Thomas, M. (ed)(2012) ‘Antonio Gramsci: Working-Class Revolutionary’, Workers’  Liberty, London

(3) Bowman, M, Herbert, D. and Mumm, S. (2001) Religion Today: Religion and Society in Religion Today: Tradition, Modernity and Change. Course Introduction The Open University, Milton Keynes.

(4) 'Constructing the Self' http://musicculturevision.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/constructing-self.html

(5) www.futurelearn.com

(6) 'The Secret Power of Brands' UEA https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/the-secret-power-of-brands

(7) Inglesias, P. (2014) 'The Left Can Win' 12-9-2014 https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/12/pablo-iglesias-podemos-left-speech/

(8) Hill. S. (2013) Digital Revolutions; Activism in the Internet Age. New Internationalist Publications Ltd. Oxford.

(9) Dolan, A. (2014) 'Si se puede' in Red Pepper, Issue 199, Dec/Jan 2015, Socialist Newspaper (Publications), London

(10) 12) Shafi, J. (2014) 'Another Scotland is-still- possible' in Red Pepper, Issue 199, Dec/Jan 2015, Socialist Newspaper (Publications), London.






   

 

Santa Semeli's Birthday Show-the nearest I'll get to the Cabaret Voltaire.

Photo by Roger Eaton.

Santa Semeli's Birthday Show at The Macbeth on 27 April was an event that managed to combine the Dadaist's love of the absurd, modern progressive Rap and a set by Santa Semeli and the Monks showcasing just how far they have come in a few months.

Maybe it was the venue, maybe my own preoccupations but watching The Euromen felt like the nearest I will ever come to realising what the atmosphere and content of the early Dadaist events at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich* must have been like! One man claiming to be Icelandic was wearing a small Viking helmet, a Nordic jumper and shorts, another older man who seemed to be Polish was wearing a t-shirt and too baggy Y-fronts. They introduced themselves as The Euromen and then proceeded to give a child like enactment of a Nordic legend about a Hero, a bridge and a Shape Shifter. This was narrated in English by the 'Icelander' and translated for any one who spoke Polish but not English by the older man-it was utterly bizarre, amusing and absurd in the best sense of the word. Later they re-emerged to give a curious interpretation of Miley Cyrus' 'Wrecking Ball' video- fortunately my view was obscured.

Next up was rapper Sean Dean. My knowledge of Rap is poor, I love 'The Message' by GrandMaster Flash and I like what I've heard of Public Enemy (are they Rap?) but to me Sean Dean sounded as good musically as the Rap I hear on daytime Radio 1 and lyrically he was interesting and intelligent. His set included songs dealing with spiritual struggle, childhood memories, addiction-I couldn't see any reason why he shouldn't do well.

"It's my party and I'll...sing if I want to" If you are in a band and you decide to have a birthday gig, it is only right that you play, and Santa Semeli and the Monks did! I saw them towards the end of last year on a weekday near Kings Cross and despite it being a quiet evening they were good, interesting, and intriguing. They have come on in leaps and bounds in a few short months! Their song writing is brave and diverse and has resulted in an exciting collection of work that, while being coherent, contains plenty of surprises as they veer between Rock and European avant garde. They chose tonight to premiere three new songs  ('Hypocrisy, FMT, I'm Your Queen) which added to the overall strength of their set. The Monks would be an excellent band whoever was singing but in Semeli Economou they have an exciting front woman with a great voice who draws on her Drama training to communicate the songs in a powerful way. Sounding like 'Cabaret' rewritten by Nick Cave and an early David Bowie (the latter due largely to Gaspar Hunt's excellent keyboard playing) they are a band who explore the human condition and are certainly worth checking out.

As Birthday parties go this will be one I remember!



For extra info on SSATM check out www.santasemeliandthemonks.com and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Semeli_and_the_Monks


Bibliography.
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada#Zurich

Tomaga; Making the familiar unfamiliar.

Photo by Antonio Curcetti.

 

 

Tomaga is comprised of multi-instrumentalists Valentina Magaletti and Tom Relleen. My first experience of them was live at Corsica Studios last year, their set was a mesmerising collection of sound sculptures-cum-music, fluid, rhythmic, organic. Seeming to ignore any genre delineation their music has been described as "darkly psychedelic, elusive and deeply imbued with images – as though they have set some curiously unsettled, surreal dreams to music"(1). With a new album coming out and a tour supporting Wire coming up they were kind enough to agree to an interview. 

You are both part of The Oscillation- is that how you started playing together or had you worked together before? How did the idea for Tomaga emerge?

We have been playing together for quite a while not just as part of The Oscillation, also touring and recording with other artists. Even if we like heavy psych and stoner rock we have never felt musically complete exploring just that musical genre. Tomaga began as an experiment in which all of our thoughts and emotions about music can collide with less attention to musical boundaries. We haven’t got a clear idea of what we want this project to sound like. If we have anything we have ideas about what we don’t want it to sound like, so really it is more like a mental state, or some kind of radio station of the unconscious, in which sunny days, rainy afternoon and long, long nights translate themselves into sounds via an endlessly changing collection of instruments.
  


You both play with a range of musicians-do these different collaborations have an ongoing effect on the way you play and approach music?

We like to think about it like a big dysfunctional family. We live surrounded by musicians and artists and we wouldn’t be able to achieve anything without this constant feedback and exchange of works and ideas. We have always been big supporters of what come out from musical communities, from La Monte Young’s, to Sun Ra, to Gnod this togetherness always delivers interesting results. Moreover, it reduces the cancer of the ego of many musicians out there who spend their creative talent getting too stuck into themselves. Making music should be about the divestment of the ego and submission to expression. When this is achieved it is like therapy from modern life! 
  


The second Tomaga release 'Futura Grotesk' came out last year and you have an album coming out this April on Blank Editions. Is the latest album a continuation of the style of 'Futura Grotesk' or a new direction? How did the ideas for this album take shape? 

We have a tape release on Blank Editions out on the 15th of April. It is a collection of works recorded at the same time as 'Futura Grotesk'. We spent a few days listening back to hours of material left from these sessions and thought that there was a lot of good stuff that would have been great to put out somehow. David Blanco contacted us asking if we were interested in a collaboration so we undertook a mammoth editing session and and created “Familiar Obstacles”. We are happy that Tomaga will release on Blank Editions, alongside the likes of Thurston Moore, Ted Milton, Yuki Tsujii. The label has a great aesthetic, as does it’s sister label Test Centre. It was a natural home for Tomaga music.


How did the recording processes for the two albums evolve? Were they similar or different? Is it a balancing act between improvisation and structure?

As mentioned above the process was the same. We have regular improvising sessions, mainly in studios in east London, and from these some material is created fully formed, whilst other’s begin from a tiny element that we like, that we might change and distort and build something new on top of.  We spend most of or time building a sonic environment to improvise in, so there is a tension between improvising and the limits of the sonic world that we have put ourselves into.
  


 When you play live do you aim to replicate the studio recordings or use them as a 'launch pad' to work out from? How much of a part does the immediate environment-the audience/ building- play?

We were really surprised at first on how much we both gained from the live show! It is something that shaped up itself so naturally in a form that neither of us rationally planned or schemed. After the first few shows we became aware of the power of the project and we started to work around this new creature. It is surely bigger than its parts. It sounds different every time. We practice a lot and we bring some structures from the recordings but the audience and the place play a big part.
  


 Nic Endo has on her Twitter page that "There is purity in noise that can serve as a very direct way of communicating emotion..." (2) is Tomaga's music a transposing of emotion into sound or more conceptual? 

We agree with Nic Endo’s statement about noise, and would equally apply it to improvising on another instruments, such as drums. Tomaga is our way to transpose our various emotions, of boredom, rage, fragility, joy. It acts as a way of expressing them, non-linguistically, so it is a bit like therapy or something. Or self-defense, a way of translating the world and getting something off our chests! 

Later this month (April 12-24) you are playing The Lexington and touring with Wire-how did that come about?

We jammed a few times with Colin Newman and Matthew Simms from Wire and became friends before starting working as Tomaga. When the record came out they liked it and invited us to tour with them. We feel incredibly honoured to support such a British institution! I still remember the day I bought my copy of Pink Flag.
  


What cultural resources (writers/thinkers/musicians/etc) have you drawn on, and been influenced by, as people and musicians?

They say that creativity is copying from many different sources as opposed to plagiarism that is copying from a single one. I guess we are privileged enough to be able to spend our days immersing ourselves in readings, exhibitions, listening, hence we are constantly influenced by everything that gives us space, and so making a list is very hard, but here goes, in no particular order: Egisto Macchi, Werner Herzog, Hannah Hoch, Brutalism, The Necks, David Foster Wallace, Delia Derbyshire, Brodsky and Utkin, Brothers Quay, Terry Riley, Marlene Dumas, Palmbomen, Chris Watson, This Heat, Charles Cohen, Roberto Cacciapaglia, Aperol.

Thanks to Valentina and Tom for interview.

You can find out more about Tomaga and hear some of their extraordinary music here https://tomaga.bandcamp.com/ 
Their new album 'Familiar Obstacles' is out soon on Blank Editions http://blankeditions.bigcartel.com/product/tomaga-familiar-obstacles


Bibliography.

(1) http://julietippex.com/roster/tomaga/

(2) https://twitter.com/nic_endo