Godalming

Mirrors remixer extraordinaire Belbury Poly's split single homage to quiet Surrey town Godalming, with Mordant Music on the flip, is yet another bewitching piece of pastoral wonderment from the Ghost Box label.

Read about it here: http://blog.normanrecords.com/2010/09/09/4-study-series-03-welcome-to-godalming-by-belbury-poly-mordant-music/

Buy it here: http://ghostbox.greedbag.com/buy/study-series-03-welcome-to-godal-0/

This came out a while ago but I'm not pretending this is a fresh up to date hot off the press music blog. All I do is gather intriguing snippets of cultural shrubbery here that's all.

A choice selection from Chris Carter's 1980 tape release, The Space Between, has been re-released by Glasgow's Optimo, on vinyl for the first time ever. For the gear-fetishists out there, this recording is notable for featuring the 808 drum machine for the first time.

http://www.optimomusic.com/releases.php

Le Voyage

I was in Snooper's Paradise one day, around a year or so ago, and I found this absolutely wonderfully looking record by Pierre Henry:

It is from the "Philips' Prospective 21e Siècle" series, which was started in the sixties to promote experimental music. Every record in the series is housed in a different, stunningly beautiful silver foil sleeve, and I cannot tell you how much I want the entire collection. Taken as a whole, maybe the best example of record sleeve design ever?

I can't vouch for any of the other records personally, though there are some heavy names in there, but the music on "Le Voyage", which is conceptually based upon the Tibetan Book of The Dead, is incredible. Pierre Henry explored the very sound of sound, and you just don't hear sound like this now. It is physical, malleable, it sounds like it is literally burrowing in to your head. It's disturbing.

Ogle over more pictures and hear more about these so called "Silver Records" here:

http://www.woebot.com/movabletype/archives/000545.html

Incidentally, Woebot's is a particularly great music blog, full of frequently hilarious musings. Here's a link to a two part guide to Indian music and its legacy that I found there:

http://www.woebot.com/movabletype/archives/000520.html

http://www.woebot.com/movabletype/archives/000529.html

Yellow Plastic Raygun

"If one asks 'why are we here?' Well, I think the answer is obvious. We are here to remember things. We are memory."

Here's the recent experimental film winner of the Los Angeles Downtown Film Festival, "Yellow Plastic Raygun":

Yellow Plastic Raygun from Cima on Vimeo.

For more, visit http://www.camouflagelenses.com/

Got this today. Lovely elecronic grooves on Soul Jazz...

http://www.souljazzrecords.co.uk/releases/?id=9989

genre of one... Man from Uranus

For a free online archive of bizzarre music from this man;

head over here: http://www.manfromuranus.com/albums.htm

Leper King Of Jerusalem

The story of King Baldwin, Leper King of Jerusalem, is a great one, and too obscure for its own good. Read about this remarkable man here:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tiBNJTrWRR4C&pg=PA28&lpg=PA28&dq=joseph+cummings+king+baldwin+leper+king+of+jerusalem&source=bl&ots=hf6RSGLOPY&sig=2GB6kWZQ4l57c4SMvueQN3nMbWo&hl=en&ei=ttmQTJ_dNIL_8Abh3uCoDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Or if you prefer a shorter, more abrupt style of historical accounting, duly alight here:

http://www.badassoftheweek.com/baldwin.html

Incidentally, the google books link is to the entirety of a publication called "History's Great Untold Stories - Obscure Events of Lasting Importance", by Joseph Cummings.

Mr Julian Cope

Rock Musician, author, antiquary, musicologist and poet. The one and only Julian Cope.

Doing away with culinary nostalgia

Before you tuck into your next homemade Shepherd's Pie, take some time to read this article, taken, originally, from the esteemed journal Gastronomica:

http://www.utne.com/Environment/Fast-Food-Culinary-Ethos.aspx

Regarding the yearning for wholesomeness that preoccupies many these days, this interesting essay questions the notion that "fresh", "organic", "natural" food is something valuable that we are reclaiming from our past, rural selves. It posits the claim that this food ethic is based on an imagined history; a false idyl of pre-industrial virtuousness.

But is it wrong to yearn for goodness? Of course not. Just don't pretend the past is somewhere you would want to take dinner.

Tangerine Dream eat your heart out.

Pere Ubu is like a cup

Theatre of Patterns...

Not professing to have read much of this exhaustive website, I was intrigued enough to delve in and found this demonstration of dynamical pattern formation in acoustic feedback systems...

http://www.davidddunn.com/ToPF_Samples.html

All this business lead me to recall an interesting read...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0749386061/ref=asc_df_0749386061793381/?tag=ciaouk-books-21&creative=22110&creativeASIN=0749386061&linkCode=asn

It's easy to descend rapidly in to the vortex of infinity from here on in. Have fun.

I Wish I Was Homeward Bound

The Arcade Fire's new interactive video is a wonderfully creative use of modern technology. Go home and arouse some childhood emotions here:

http://www.thewildernessdowntown.com/


P.S this takes up a lot of processing power, so close all your other applications.

Caught By The River

Here's a link to one of the best angling/beer/music websites around, Caught By The River:

http://caughtbytheriver.net/

This website has become a totem to the joys of life, describes as thus by its authors:

"a place where people could eulogize about the things that made the working week bearable – books, records, art, nature, angling, drinking, even cake baking... ...an unshackled, uncynical torrent of enthusiasm. Here was our modern take on something hardwired in as part of punk rock culture, only this time the patron saints were Roger Deakin, Chris Yates and Chris Watson rather than Joe or Johnny"

What are you waiting for?

Spaghetti Carbonara

Moving on from aural nourishment... if you have eaten a Spaghetti Carbonara in England recently, you may well have had a grim experience involving the slurping of a plate of of sloppy spaghetti swimming in cream, bacon and mushrooms. Nothing could be further from the glorious truth of the matter. The real Carbonara is consisted of toothsome home-made pasta with a rich lotion of egg yolk, pecorino cheese, and the cured pig's cheek known as guanciale stirred through it whilst hot. No egg white, no cream, and no mushrooms! It makes for a divine dinner.  


Making cured pig's cheek is a faff, but cheap. If you are so inclined, you can find out how to do it here:


http://freedomway.co.uk/Recipes/Guanciale_Frame.htm

Tom Dissevelt & Kid Baltan

 And here's some alleged Acid House from 1958...

Chris De Burgh

Expect most will have seen this, but if there is anyone who's not, good news, for this melancholic loop taken from Chris De Burgh's "Lady In Red", is enough to make even Bill Bailey glad the song ever existed.

Suum Cuique

Fans of heavy analogue electronic sound, you are cordially directed here: 


http://boomkat.com/vinyl/329042-suum-cuique-midden


...the perfect soundtrack to a lonesome descent into the abyssal realm of your subconscious.