Friday, May 02, 2008

Friday Downstreams (Its May! Its May! Come out to Play!)


May and much to offer this week for downstreams. Films, audio, texts, images, animations, and combinations. Plus an anniversary for it was 40 years ago today:


A look at the events and some of the causes of the uprising in France in the Spring of 1968. Unfortuately, there is no mention of one of the driving forces of the uprising both before and during the revolt - the Situationist International. For more information check out the writings of the Situationists themselves.

The Beginning of an Era
May 1968 Documents
The Joy of Revolution
The Society of the Spectacle
The Revolution of Everyday Life
Enrages and Situationists in the Occupation Movement

The Herald Tribune has a plethora of front pages and time lines from the days when the Paris streets were closed to traffic. In a related area a estate agency has opened in London for squatters with many fine propeties available.

Dorble.com
Your music your way. Listen to and download music for free! Listen to and download music for free. No signup and no fee ever...enough said. Check it out and voice your opinions by commenting!

UbuWeb - 365 Days Project (2007) star trek bloopers audio
The back liner notes state, these bloopers were rescued from old reel-to-reel audio tapes from a "Hollywood garbage can" and sold to a Star Trek collector... only after they created this album to cash in! The rest of the liner notes detail the entire process of what "Fifty-five apples, take one" mean, why several of these tracks are painfully similar, and other info.
What you get are 58 different bloopers and outtakes from four different episodes from the third and final season of "Star Trek". For those "Trekkies" out there who want to know which episodes, they are (in no particular order) "Whom Gods Destroy", "The Way To Eden", "Let This Be Your Last Battlefield", and "Turnabout Intruder".
Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) states at the end of Side 1, "there's some rather strange activity taking place here." That line from an episode perfectly capsulates this album.
Listen as the crew flub lines, assistant directors yelling "BEEP" to fill in the now famous phaser sound effect, Shatner swearing, space hippies singing, Scotty "playing football" on the bridge (?), a rather "delirious" Dr. Janice Lester that sounds awfully X-rated, and the final lines Nurse Chapel (Majel Barrett - the future Mrs. Gene Roddenberry) ever uttered on the show.
If you're a casual fan or a rabid "Trekkie", you'll find this a "fascinating" listen. Live long and... oh, SHUT UP!

GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE: The MetalKult Interview
As a founding member of Seventies avant-garde acts Coum Transmissions and Throbbing Gristle, the English-born Genesis effectively laid the groundwork for what would become industrial music. (Quite literally, as Throbbing Gristle reportedly coined the term when they formed their Industrial Records label.) Make no mistake, without Gen there would be no Nine Inch Nails, Ministry or Marilyn Manson.
In the Eighties, Genesis founded “hyperdelic acid house” group Psychic TV, with whom he went on to explore psychedelic head music and occult spirituality (the roots of which stretch back to Genesis’ childhood and his grandmother who was a medium). Psychic TV’s latest record, Hell Is Invisible…Heaven Is Her/e was released this past June on Sweet Nothing records.
Over the years, Genesis’ creative orbit has crossed the paths of many influential artists, including beat writers William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, psychedelic guru Dr. Timothy Leary, industrial supergroup Pigface and Japanese noise band Merzbow.

Kamau Amu Patton
The website of Bay Area-based video and performance artist Kamau Amu Patton, whose work uses and often reassembles traditional African imagery and costume in order to explore the formation of modern mythology, African-American identity, and popular culture. One of the best website introductions I have seen.

Albert Hofman: LSD - My Problem Child
At the age of 102 years, Albert Hofmann died peacefully last Tuesday morning, 29th April, in his home near Basel, Switzerland. Still last weekend we talked to him, and he expressed his great joy about the blooming plants and the fresh green of the meadows and trees around his house. His vitality and his open mind conducted him until his last breath.
He is reputed to be one of the most important chemists of our times. He is the discoverer of LSD, which he considers, up to date, as both a "wonder drug" and a "problem child". In addition he did pioneering work as a researcher of other psychoactive substances as well as active agents of important medicinal plants and mushrooms. Under the spell of the consciousness-expanding potential of LSD the scientist turned increasingly into a philosopher of nature and a visionary critical of contemporary culture. (Via GaiaMedia)

UbuWeb Sound :: Audio By Visual Artists, TELLUS 21
They are all here; Beuys, Russolo, Duchamp, Schwitters, Brecht, Huelsenbeck plus more.

UbuWeb Sound: Tellus #24 - Flux Tellus
Twenty nine peices of sound art. Sound as in noise, not as in "of reliable character".

Steve McLaughlin
the online works of the guy who did The Complete Beatles in One Hour mix. Vidoes. audio, texts.

Continuo’s weblog
Avant rock contemporary european electronic field recording french jazz optosonics radio art sound art spoken word. Downloads galore.

The Wooster Group - Rhyme 'Em To Death
Rhyme 'Em To Death reconstructs the trial from Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame from a new perspective, that of a minor character - the goat. The trial of the goat, a postscript in the Hugo novel, has been extended and enlivened with actual transcripts of 15th-century trials in which animals were persecuted as witches. Video effects alter the 16mm black and white film images, as if the remnants of a lost film had been discovered and pieced together by a video freak who attempted to faithfully reconstruct a lost art - the aural world of the goat, the distorted rantings of the court room, and blurred sound effects combined with a musical score drive the narrative to its tragic conclusion.

La Monte Young
La Monte Young, editor "An Anthology of Chance Operations" (1963) [PDF, 35mb]
La Monte Young Marian Zazeela "Selected Writings" (1959-1969) [PDF]
Notes on Continuous Periodic Composite Sound Waveform Environment Realizations
Dream Music [Notes... from Aspen 8][Dream Music from Aspen 9]
La Monte Young and Charlotte Moorman in UbuWeb Sound
La Monte Young in UbuWeb Sound

Tellus: Twenty seven cassettes and CDs from the Tellus series 1983-1993.
Launched in 1983 as a subscription only bimonthly publication, the Tellus cassette series took full advantage of the popular cassette medium to promote cutting edge music, documenting the New York scene and advanced US composers of the time - the first 2 issues being devoted to NY artists from the downtown scene. The series was financially supported along the years by funding from the New York State Council of the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Obviously, the Tellus publishers (visual artist and composer Joseph Nechvatal, curator Claudia Gould and composer Carol Parkinson, director of Harvestworks from 1987 on) never considered running an underground publication, rather envisaging the cassette medium as an art form in itself. A quite unique point of view at a time (the 1980s) when many self released cassettes blossomed through mail order or trade between artists, and when the cassette milieu was promoting DIY technique, even anti-art as a motto. The Audio Cassette Magazine never indulged into amateurism, their releases always focused, well researched and aptly curated. From the start, the founding members deliberately aimed at raising the profile of their cassette releases, sending issues to US public libraries and museums, for instance. The Tellus team launched the Harvestworks Artist-In- Residence Program along the cassette series, to promote independent artists’ projects and provide them with a professional recording facility, named Studio PASS.

Tellus 'The Audio Cassette Magazine' was in activity for 10 years (1983-1993), witnessing the digital revolution taking place in the new media arts. Some points of comparison can be established with the Toronto based MusicWorks Journal and cassette, launched 1978, or with the ROIR cassette only releases of various musical styles, from Flipper to Lee Perry to Einsturzende Neubauten, launched 1981. Tellus published audio art, new music, poetry and drama, exploring musical spheres as diverse as avant-garde composition, post industrial music, NY no wave, Fluxus music, heirs of Harry Partch, avant rock, sound poetry, radio plays, tango, electroacoustic music, etc.

Ben Franklin Airbath: Philadelphia FMA sampler (mp3s)
Half way down this page of Mp3s from Philadelphia sounds is Fursaxa with many beautiful tunes available:
Fursaxa
After playing in bands like UN with Marcia Bassett (Double Leopards), Tara Burke began her solo project Fursaxa at the turn of the century. Taking a page out of Philadelphia's Ambient Consortium and the Bardo Pond school of acid-folk space exploration, Fursaxa also brings to mind elements of religious music, from church choirs to raga drones. Burke employs guitar, casio, Farfisa organ, accordian, dulcimer, effected vocals, drums, bells, flutes, and the kitchen sink without ever losing her otherworldly focus. Fursaxa was one of the highlights of Terrastock 6, in Providence's huge reverberant Pell Chafee Performance Center, and also sound great in these fine locations:

Fursaxa - Tyranny (mp3) Recorded 3.28.02 at the Mercury Lounge, NYC, available on Amulet from Last Visible Dog
Fursaxa - Circle Moon (mp3) Recorded 3.29.02 at the Khyber Pass Phila PA, available on Cult From Moon Mountain cdr


Fursaxa live on Irene Trudel's show broadcast 4.28.03 on WFMU :
Fursaxa - Dragonflies are Blue and Silver (mp3) live on WFMU 4.28.03
Fursaxa - Moonlight Sonata (mp3) live on WFMU 4.28.03
Fursaxa - Tuvalu (mp3) live on WFMU 4.28.03
Fursaxa - Renoun (mp3) live on WFMU 4.28.03

from Kobold Moon, newly released on Burke's own Sylph label, which just arrived in this morning's mail:
Fursaxa - Kokopelli (mp3)
Fursaxa - Saxalainen (mp3)
Fursaxa - Song of The Spindle Berry (mp3)

Thank you and enjoy May!

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