Twittering Machines

From the lovely little Hanuman Books series, this is a 4″ tall, 49 page treatise by Jean Genet on Rembrandt and the loss of ‘self’.

…Rembrandt no longer denatures the painting by trying to merge it with the object or face that it is supposed to represent: he presents it to us as distinct matter that is not ashamed to be what it is…

…But Rembrandt had to recognize himself as a man of flesh -of flesh?- rather  of meat, of hash, of blood, of tears, of sweat, of shit, of intelligence and tenderness, of other things too, ad infinitum, but none of them denying the others, in fact each welcoming the others. And I need hardly say that Rembrandt’s entire work has meaning -at least for me-only if I know that what I have just written is false.

and eventually = more of these:

Enjoyment, Illusion and the Audiophile

Hi-fi’s ultimate goal is the enjoyment of pre-recorded music in our homes. As unlikely as it may seem, hi-fi hobbyists are embroiled in endless debate over the finer points of this enjoyment. Some of the most popular and ongoing include; do cables matter, do all amplifiers sound the same and are LPs better than CDs. And there are hundreds more. Just read any hi-fi forum on any day of any week. With such a seemingly simple purpose, musical enjoyment, why so much discord and disagreement over the means to that end?

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96-98 St. Marks Place. No googling this time…

A different pic, as a hint:

Yeah, that was quite a hint, I could have come up with something more subtle…

BabyCharles
BabyCharles

Whip out your check book and buy this record! Let me clarify – only if you like Deep straight-forward Funk. Dionne Charles can rip some soulful vocals and the rest of the babies are, as their website says, “simultaneously tight but loose, heavy but soulful and dirty… yet beautiful” while laying down some “Chicken-fried grooves”! Each track ups the anti over the last in terms of ‘oh fuck I can’t sit still’ ness. Infectious dance-inducing funk, par-tay music supreme. I feel so….groovy…I must have tripped over this as a result of Jonathan’s soul links?

Nina Simone (sort of)

Bizarro: I picked up this sealed! Nina Simone LP for $3.99 at good old Vintage Vinyl in Fords, NJ. From the liner notes:

Nina is accompanied by the Village Allstars a musical aggregation which boasts some of the top jazz names in America, names that cannot be mentioned because of contractual commitments with higher priced labels.

But that’s not the bizarre part – Nina Simone is only on 2 tracks. The others feature a deep-gravel-voiced male jazz/blues singer and the recording quality goes from acceptable – sounds like Nina’s tracks were mastered from a dirty LP – to underwater to OK. On Buckingham Records…

Bizarro #2: I picked up another copy of London Zoo by The Bug ’cause they had it priced at $14.99 when it sells for $40-something (triple 180gm gatefold LP).

Funkadelic
Tales of Kidd Funkadelic

Funk: this gem was hanging on the wall – super clean and super funky.

Walter Kitundu is now a genius. He builds musical instruments using turntables instead of pickups as the acoustic/electric interface. When he plucks a string on his phonoharp, the resonance is transmitted to the guts of a Technics 1200, and the cartridge sitting on the vinyl converts that resonance to electrical impulses.

Another great resource for ideas, entertaining descriptions and sound clips from a nice eclectic selection. Many oddball reissues of obscure stuff plus used LPs and a Bargain basement. Here’s what they say on their MySpace page:

Our prices are rock bottom (check around!), our postage rates are shockingly low, and we go quite a bit out of our way to bring you the obscure, the underrated, and the just plain fucked up. We also make a point to be entirely unsnooty, so you can expect attentive, efficient service in arenas both mystical and practical. 

We often read about a successful hi-fi in terms of how ‘real’ it sounds; how close it comes to making you believe you’re listening to live musicians as opposed to a recording. In many cases, these same people support DBTs and measurements as useful tools in determining a component’s performance. My question is – How do you measure an illusion?

This month’s Invisible Jukebox in The Wire features Makoto Kawabata of Acid Mothers Temple…I really enjoy this feature and this month’s is a good example of why. The Wire describes Invisible Jukebox:

Each month we play a musician a series of records which they are asked to identify and comment on – with no prior knowledge of what they are about to hear.

While some are better than others, they are all at least interesting. Kawabata is very interesting.

“I tend not to listen to music from tropical climates. I’m not that interested in rhythm. Music from colder climates seems to have a harsher edge. That’s what I prefer to listen to.”

Beyond these insights into the musicans, the Jukebox typically features lots of music way off the beaten path. Here are some examples from Kawabata (he got all these within seconds);

Stockhausen “Telemusik”
The Monastery of Gyuto “Tantra Dit De ‘Assemblee Secrete”
Rosina de Piera e Martina “La Chanson De La Fileuse”
Gong “Master Builder”

And some he didn’t get right off the bat:

Ohkami No Jikan “Thin City Part 2″
Catalogue “Khomeiny Twist”
Afrirampo “Otokotachitoransu”

Various Artists
Last Kind Words

Mississippi Records hits another one out of the park. Last Kind Words compiles 14 tracks recorded between 1926 and 1953 from lesser and better known artists.  I wouldn’t call this music blues or gospel or country but roots music where you can hear elements of all these styles and more…Just great music.

I bought mine from 50 Miles of Elbow Room located in NYC and a seemingly great resource for free jazz, blues, gospel and old-time music. Recommendation courtesy of Mr. Halpern. Excellent find. I bought 2 other LPs which will end up here soon.

Ali Farka Toure
The River

Ali Farka Toure was from Mali, descended from the ancient military force – Arma and the only child in his family out of 10 to survive infancy. Slow, repetitive, minimal and sparse, you can hear where the Delta got some of its feel – “the DNA of the blues”. Toure recorded a CD with Toumani Diabate and one with Ry Cooder and I’ve been listening to his music for years. But to hear him on LP is like the difference between this LP cover and a black and white version. And there’s something about the way he hits those strings that makes even a single repeated note somehow meaningful and packed with emotion. You cannot teach someone to do that.

I plan to buy every single Ali Farka Toure LP I can find. eBay Dibs! (I’m watching the self-titled LP on eBay now). I picked up The River from 1990 at PREX for 6.99.

The gulf between real and replay is as deep and broad as it has ever been, and a taste of the real now and again, like the flavor in a tomato that has never felt the dulling breath of the fridge, is the crucial touchstone that keeps us all from dissolving forever into an endless spiral of Amanda McBroom.