Gogol - Dead Souls

This time around I'll leave the words to an extract from Gogol's Dead Souls – a quirky, eccentric, evocative and eloquent tale of a scheming stranger, Chichikov, that arrives in a provincial Russian town to buy up the souls of dead peasants. This is one of the many fine character descriptions:

“When Chichikov glanced at Sobakevich out of the corner of his eye, he was struck on this occasion by his strong resemblance to a medium-sized bear. To complete the resemblance, his tailcoat was exactly the colour of a bear's coat, the sleeves were long, the pantaloons were long, and when he walked he let his feet fall here, there and everywhere, and was constantly treading on other people's feet. He had a fiery-red complexion, such as you see on a copper five-kopeck piece. It is well known that in this world there are many such faces, over whom nature has not taken any great pains when it comes to the finishing touches, has not employed any fine tools such as files, gimlets, and the like, but has simply hewn them out with full swings from the shoulder: one swing of the axe and there's the nose; another swing and there you have the lips; she gouges out the eyes with a huge auger, and, without any fancy trimming, she pushes the end product out into the world, saying: 'It lives'. It was just such a rugged and marvellously rough-hewn countenance that Sobakevich presented: he held his head more down than up, he did not turn his neck at all, and because he could not turn it, he rarely looked at the person he was talking to, but instead at a corner of the stove, or at the door”.

Stills from the Silver Pyre live visual archive

So, here are some stills of an ever morphing video piece that has at times accompanied our live show, made with Michael Lansdell.

Local Images

Here's some faded images from the light boxes of the local section in the finely antiquated Bristol Museum.

Smeatharpe

      Come on ye olde Rave up          

William Faulkner - Absalom, Absalom!

A tale with Biblical parallels and Biblical proportions. A rise-and-fall story of Thomas Sutpen and his quest for wealth and respectability - wealth through an ostentatious estate and plantation 'acquired' from a local native Indian tribe and built by a group of black slaves and a French architect, and respectability through marrying a local merchant's daughter who will give him a son, his heir, and a daughter. Tangled up in Faulkner's burly and almighty streams of consciousness, which spit out spectral and visceral characters among a strong sense of time and place, are tales of origin, bloodlines, and birthright, of race and society in the South in the 1860's. Sutpen's own origins and subsequent plans and designs, his realization of a society that can be built on material worth. The bloodlines of Sutpen's heirs, his renouncement of his son, borne to him by his first wife of mixed race, and this son's desire for the acceptance of his own heritage, for his father's recognition. This is a book that wholeheartedly reaches down into murky waters to grab hold of what human greed and human worth really mean.

“Sutpen's trouble was innocence. All of a sudden he discovered, not what he wanted to do but what he just had to do, had to do it whether he wanted to or not, because if he did not do it he knew that he could never live with himself for the rest of his life, never live with what all the men and women that had died to make him had left inside of him for him to pass on, with all the dead ones waiting and watching to see if he was going to do it right, fix things right so that he would be able to look in the face not only the old dead ones but all the living ones that would come after him when he would be one of the dead.”

V.S. Pritchett – Essential Stories

Acute and visual observations of everyday people and situations, exploring themes such as marital breakdowns, family relationships, religion, war, random everyday incidents and characters. Pritchett has a real knack for unearthing and animating his characters through razor-sharp visual descriptions and impressions of features, habits, emotions and expressions, galvanising them through unfolding events in
which humour and pathos are delivered with perfect timing. These stories often deal with eccentricity and absurdity in various levels of society, whether it be undertakers, chartered accountants, christian scientists, clerks, or drifters, and what is striking is Pritchett's ability to scratch away under the surface of normality, under the surface of drab everyday existence, to reveal glimpses of what is really going on, or to infer what will or might happen.

Taken from “The Sailor”

“He was lifting his knees high and putting his hand up, when I first saw him, as if, crossing the road through that stinging rain, he were breaking through the bead curtain of a Pernambuco bar. I knew he was going to stop me. This part of the Euston Road is the beat of men who want a cup of tea or their fare to a job in Luton or some outlying town.

“Beg pardon, chum,” he said in an anxious hot-potato voice. “Is that

Whitechapel?”.

Abandoned Communities

Left is an image from the abandoned communities website.
It maps places engulfed by the industrial revolution, abandoned under Government order during the second world war, or left hanging off the cliff edge from rapid coastal erosion.

Below is an image of Liverpool's Anglican cathedral and the last house standing.

www.abandonedcommunities.co.uk

Henges

Etched into the landscape and sitting exposed through the layers of the ages, the henges of the British isles are like brandings of a lost identity. 

Gathering places, places of worship, astrological tools, whatever they were, spending time around one makes you view the lay of the lands and settlements surrounding them in a different way. Piecing together a network that exists as a ghost behind the roads, villages, towns and cities we travel and gather in now.

Charcoal Kilns

Silver Pyre - Live Outing

Halldor Laxness - Independent People

Not sure how this little (or big) beauty passed me by for so long. Once digested, Halldor Laxness' Independent People certainly doesn't flitter away into ambiguity easily, carving out its distinctive narrative through oft-exquisitely descriptive, and sometimes harsh, prose. In a nutshell it is the story of Bjartus, an Icelandic sheep farmer, and his struggle for financial and spiritual independence for his family and flock. This book is epic in the true sense of the word and unravels in timeless expanses, intermingling Icelandic folklore, mysticism, seasonal cycles and rudimentary family life in the sometimes bleak and harsh landscapes. Many similarities with Hamsun's Growth of the Soil.

“SLOWLY, slowly winter day opens his arctic eye. From the moment when he gives his first drowsy blink to the time when his leaden lids have finally opened wide, there passes not merely hour after; no, age follows age through the immeasurable expanses of the morning, world follows world, as in the visions of a blind man, reality follows reality, and is no more – the light grows even brighter”.

TOTEM

Psychic ills - Frkwys vol.4

This is a pretty fine remix package. Juan Atkins, Gibby Haynes (Butthole Surfers) and Hans Joachim-irmler (Faust).
To pull these diverse big wigs together is a shot of inspiration thats really nice to see.
Psychic ills, are a psych band from New York that sound in the vein of Amon Duul, Popul Vuh and that whole Kosmische earth rock ting.................. more or less.
Each track is signature to the sound of each of the remixers, but as a whole it leaves the impression that it could be a release by one artist. Good show.
Read about Frkwys here : http://www.factmag.com/2010/05/10/label-profile-frkwys/
and Psychic ills here : http://psychicills.com/

Seefeel - Faults, the old and the new

So, Seefeel return, thats exciting. Been listening to the new 'faults' ep for a few days now, and after an initial reaction of 'oh christ, why is there the need the spatter this with bass,' its grown on me, and made me revisit Quique.

Saying that I still have a bit of a problem with the bass on 'faults'. There seems to be a culture at present of maximising the dynamic range on electronic music which gives it a very sheeny digital feel.
It doesn't give you enough space to pay attention to the little details, doesn't seem like a dancefloor killer, so i don't get the point?
But turn the bass down a pinch and you can appreciate a few of the signature kaleidescopic loops that unfold throughout, the vocals are pretty too. Thats what was good about Quique. Will probably win some new fans though........

Jeff Mills - (Millsart) Humana. Our Man From Havana

Mid-90's detroit par excellence from the hallowed and prolific Jeff Mills. Great examples of pure sounds that strike a perfect balance between atmosphere and rhythm - percussive techno with a sense of space. Yes.

T.V Performances

Monday means a Rock n a Rolla

Ecstatic Music Of The Jemaa El Fna - Sublime Frequencies

Spent yesterday evening listening to this recent acquisition, reading Paul Bowles' stories, and re-firing my memory of a trip from north to south Morocco I made in 1994.

These recordings are rough, fast and metallic, capturing the smouldering intensity of evening time there.

The Jemaa el fna is the central market square, and ancient meeting place in Marrakesh.
I remember arriving in the afternoon, getting a steaming tiled  room in a riad, with the main courtyard spilling forth the heady fragrance of jasmine. Everything, including me, was dripping from the heat of the day.

The Medina, where the Jemaa el fna is, is fortified by pink earthen walls, and long palmed boulevards run along its outer from the newer parts of the city. 

If you get a view down onto the square from a cafe above, as the evening draws in, you can watch and listen to the gathering activity, through a shroud of smoke rising from the cooking pots.
You get a view of the labyrinthine bazaar off the square and beyond, south to the coppering hues of the Atlas mountains.

Being in the square is immersive. Snake charmers, magicians, drummers, dancing boys, and the eye stinging miasma of goat and spices cooking. Don't know how it differs now, being on the low cost airline route, but these recordings certainly re-animate my fond memories.

Earth; Sleeve Art and Music

Earth - Hex; Or Printing in the Infernal Method.
Not my favourite of the modern earth records (the bees made honey in the lions skull is a beauty), but the photos used in Stephen O'malley's artwork sit a treat with the Earth sound.
Fully creating an impression at the dawn of modern America.

Ori Gersht

J G Ballard - The Crystal World

Ballard, an old favourite. Noticed these two kicking around together, they seemed to fit.
This is one of his earlier books, generally viewed more in the Sci Fi bracket. The Max Earnst painting on the cover is perfect. Its a precursor to my favourites like Crash, High Rise and Super Cannes.
Its the start of Ballard repeating the idea of a central character becoming ensnared and seduced by a world of intrigue, oddity and corruption. Basically the military are trying to hide an area of jungle where all life is rapidly crystallizing.
Feels very much like some of Joseph Conrad's stories too.

By day fantastic birds flew through the petrified forest, and jewelled crocodiles glittered like heraldic salamanders on the banks of the crystalline river. By night the illuminated man raced among the trees, his arms like golden cartwheels, his head like a spectral crown...................

Paul Bowles - Midnight Mass

One of the finest short story writers, novels such as Let it Come down are pretty cracking too:

re-occurring themes of wealthy 'liberal' westerners immersed and at odds with an exotic, savage North Africa.
Of communities, the desert, superstitions, folklore and corruptions.


From 'Mejdoub' -

A man who spent his nights sleeping in cafes or under the trees or wherever he happened to be at the time when he felt sleepy, wandered one morning through the streets of the town. He came to the market place, where an old mejdoub dressed in rags cavorted before the populace, screaming prophecies into the air. He stood watching until the old man had finished and gathered up the money people had offered him. It astonished him to see how much the madman had collected, and having nothing else to do, he decided to follow him.

The Beginning

Amidst the formidable fear of global hysteria, thanks to a pointless character named pastor terry jones, and a fevered press, we wait for a 911 bell to toll, not without a feeling of foreboding that the average person is a lunatic...........

hence i begin my jaunt into the blog realm, aiming to provide little more than gentle thoughts and cultural vintages.

The bits and pieces posted up here will probably be a mixed pot of general bits i like and things that influence and inform Silver Pyre's music.

Here are some pics to set the scene, and preempt, that at some time i must wax about WG Sebald......