E
Dedekind Cut
Benoît Pioulard
Kill Alters
Jay Daniel
The Caretaker
Crying
Eli Keszler
Helm
Jung An Tagen
pinkcourtesyphone
Bisk
MX-80 Sound
Lorenzo Senni
Oliver Coates
Slapp Happy
Henry Cow
Bully Fae
The Limiñanas

 

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E Great Light
‘Thalia Zedek has one of the most enduring and distinctive voices in modern rock music — a voice like no other — that can be heard in her work with some of the most groundbreaking underground bands, from Uzi and Live Skull to Come. Since 2001, Zedek has been making music under her own name, releasing a string of critically acclaimed albums. Thirty years in, Zedek is as active as she has ever been. She recently started the new rock band E with Jason Sidney Sanford (Neptune) and Gavin McCarthy (Karate).’ — Thrill Jockey

 

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Dedekind Cut Fear in Reverse
‘Squarely speaking a “drone album,” it would be wrong to speak of $uccessor without mentioning the baggage with which it slogs along from various stops in grime, plunderphonics, and New Age. “Maxine” incorporates the same synth string and vocal samples as most of Oneohtrix Point Never’s now-treasured vapor classic R Plus Seven, though the point doesn’t seem to be pastiche, but rather a lushly shallow, shallowly lush space of reprieve. Where the aptly titled “Conversations with angels” kind of barely happens, suspended like a wind chime caught in a tape loop, other cuts like opener “Descend from now” happen like hell, sharpening distant crescendos into bubbling, airy leads and strings.’ — Will Neibergall

 

_____________
Benoît Pioulard Anchor as the Muse
‘The peculiar title of Benoît Pioulard’s latest album gives the impression that it could be some kind of best-of collection. It isn’t, but The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter could stand in as a succinct summation of Thomas Meluch’s charismatic melding of dream-folk, field recordings, and sandwashed atmospheres. The completion of The Benoît Pioulard Listening Matter has been trailed by poignant timing and tragic coincidence. Meluch’s first album for Kranky, Précis, was released ten years earlier, nearly to the day. His brother, for whom the record is dedicated, passed away on the same day that it was finished. Listening Matter’s mood is not easily read. Its pleasure and melancholy are both wary. Meluch being a photographer as well, several of his Polaroids serve as the album art. There’s surely some reflection of the music to be drawn from the cover image; a fish eye mirror on a dark weathered wall, offering a detached and bent view of a beautiful day.’ — Pop Matters

 

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Kill Alters D20
‘Bonnie Baxter is a New York musician who has thus far been best known for her moody electronic pop project Shadowbox, but she’s lately taken a very dark turn with her newer project Kill Alters. Their debut tape, released by Godmode, is a raw, almost traumatizing listen—clear touchstones include but are not limited to industrial, glitch, and harsh noise—and the project’s sounds and images are largely culled from audio and video tapes recorded over the course of decades by Baxter’s mother.’ — Dangerous Minds

 

______________
Jay Daniel $hake It Down
‘The tools Daniel uses to create are relatively simple: lots of acoustic percussion instruments, various keyboards and synths, a tried and tested Akai drum machine, a couple of samples and loops (tasteful, secret) and, most importantly, a clear sense of history. Broken Knowz is rhythmically and emotionally astute in the way lots of Detroit’s great electronic music is: not loud, forceful or brashly innovative (though plenty fits that bill in the 313, too), but with quiet comfort in its creative tensions. The tensions form the music’s soul, and on Broken Knowz, Daniel has post-techno soul to burn.’ — npr

 

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The Caretaker Childishly Fresh Eyes
‘Embarking on the Caretaker’s final journey with his first release in four years, Everywhere At The End of Time sets off with the familiar vernacular of abraded shellac 78s and their ghostly waltzes to emulate the entropic effect of a mind becoming detached from everyone else’s sense of reality and coming to terms with their own, altered, and ever more elusive sense of ontology. The series aims to enlighten our understanding of dementia by breaking it down into a series of stages that provide a haunting guide to its progression, deterioration and disintegration and the way that people experience it according to a range of impending factors. In other words, Everywhere At The End of Time probes some of the most important questions about modern music’s place in a world that’s increasingly haunted or even choked by the tightening noose of feedback loops of influence; perceptibly questioning the value of old memories as opposed to the creation of new ones, and, likewise the fidelity of those musical memories which remain, and whether we can properly recollect them from the mire of our faulty memory banks without the luxury of choice.’ — boomkat

 

_____________
Crying Premonitory Dream
‘The bittersweet truth about music this overpowering and rich is that I can’t honestly tell you if I’m still going to be listening to it in a year. Pop fades like all things, and we seem to consume (and dispose of) music more ravenously now than before. Time shapes us and changes us, and we can’t always take the things we used to love with us as we step forward into the unknown. But Beyond the Fleeting Gales is a reminder of that urgency that we need in music, that need to feel both powerful and fragile at once, to thrash ourselves to the beat of a song with the full knowledge that soon it will all be over. It’s pop music at its most all-encompassing, dripping with earnest feeling that doesn’t feel forced, but rather constructive and undemanding. Beyond the Fleeting Gales is a genuine and unpretentious promise from Crying that they are here, and so are we, and together we can save the world, even if it’s just for a moment.’ — Sam Goldner

 

______________
Eli Keszler & Helm Boiler Room Live Show
‘Some pretty enthralling live sound manipulation taking place between PAN’s Helm and Eli Keszler: serious virtuoso drumming fed through analogue gear.’ — Boiler Room

 

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Jung An Tagen Das Fest Der Reichen & Zweite Schicht
‘Jung An Tagen is the primary music act operating inside the Virtual Institute Vienna. 
By using substractive synthesis and sampling techniques Jung An Tagen builds aleatoric arrays, repetitive figures & polyrhythmic moirés circulating around distinctive timbres and haptic fragments, resulting in a vision of morphing movements between high energy and zero gravity states. 
Due to the synaesthesian nature of the VIV, Jung An Tagen is bound very closely to a specific visual grammar and is intertwined with video art, even though the performative settings are usually reduced to music only.’ — Editions Mego

 

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pinkcourtesyphone New Domestic Landscape
‘The ongoing project by Los Angeles-based sound artist Richard Chartier (b.1971) sends you a new coded message of sumptuous distant drones and glacial orchestral heartrendings. Poised and polished slow motion pulsations tug at your emotions (but only a portion of them). For those listeners desirous of the output of The Caretaker, Angelo Badalamenti, William Basinski, and other such dark wistful wonderment. Pinkcourtesyphone is dark but not arch, with a slight hint of humor. Amorphous, changing, and slipping in and out of consciousness, operating like a syrup-y dream and strives to be both elegant and detached.’ — Editions Mego

 

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Bisk Slippin’
‘Frankly, there are few details regarding Bisk’s background that are yet made available to the public. We hear he’s from Walthamstow, in his early twenties and that he made Don’t Piss It Off! over the summer just gone. His rhymes have implied that he was previously incarcerated. Stinkin Slumrok claimed they were friends in school during an interview with Bearded Magazine. From the beginning, ‘Don’t Piss It Off’ is an eery listening experience. This is partly due to the disconcerting, enigmatic nature of Bisk’s rhymes, but mainly because of the dark, brooding instrumentation Formz used throughout the projects 12 track entirety. A diabolical mixture of rhythmic jazz chords and headbanging boombap tempos, the project is a demonstration of Formz’s productive abilities as much as it exemplifies Bisks lyrical finesse.’ — WORDPLAY

 

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MX-80 Sound Uh Oh
‘An entire genre of music might be called “hidden-treasure rock” and it would be made up of those bands that, when you stumble upon their albums in record store racks, you feel like you’ve won a prize. MX-80 Sound is the epitome of this idea. Their albums are the kind you pull from the stacks and ask your friends if they own anything by them, “because you should.” Julian Cope once wrote that he “suspected” MX-80 Sound was a main influence on bands like noise-rock luminaries Sonic Youth, and one can hear where he’s coming from by sampling any of their first three albums — 1977’s Hard Attack, 1980’s Out Of The Tunnel and 1981’s Crowd Control. All three overflow with off-kilter melodies, scorching, angular guitar riffs and trance-inducing rhythms, creating the kind of arty, guitar-heavy noise that would find its way onto radio waves under the “alternative rock” banner years later.’ — KQED

 

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Lorenzo Senni Win In The Flat World
‘Senni finds all the thematic material he needs in one of electronic music’s most maligned genres: trance. His early albums were forays into glitch and ambient, but with trance, Senni sought the ecstatic in isolating that music’s builds and breakdowns. He excludes the elements where most listeners would find pleasure centers of such music, in its bass and drums. Like Heatsick with his Casio and Aphex Twin’s own rabbit hole plunge with the Cheetah MS800, Senni maniacally deploys but one keyboard for all of his sounds, the Roland JP8000. As he told Fact last year, “if I had to approach trance music, I had to have that synthesizer.”’ — Andy Beta

 

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Oliver Coates ‘Love’, by Mica Levi
‘Oliver Coates mixes things up. A fine classical cellist who collaborates with Jonny Greenwood and Massive Attack, who reworks music by Squarepusher and Boards of Canada, his website lists Pierre Boulez next to MF Doom. He’s of a generation of composers and performers whose horizons take in indie, electronica and folk as well as contemporary classical music, all of which chimes happily for those of us whose listening habits do the same.’ — The Guardian

 

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Slapp Happy & Henry Cow A Worm Is At Work
‘Desperate Straights, a collaboration with British avant-prog band Henry Cow, was Slapp Happy’s third official LP. The band’s first record, Sort Of, had been completed with assistance from Faust, while their second, self-titled album (later released as Casablanca Moon), was originally recorded for Polydor but then scrapped and re-recorded when the band signed to Virgin. Those first two Slapp Happy records were soft pop for eccentrics, informed by British Invasion rock, Dylan, and hints of European cafe music. Desperate Straights was a slightly different story. Though “pop” in a basic sense, its songs were more closely related to Weill and classical art-song than contemporary pop. But don’t get the wrong idea: Although Henry Cow members Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, John Greaves, and Tim Hodgkinson contribute greatly to the baroque sound of the record, Moore and Blegvad’s songwriting steal the show.’ — Dominique Leone

 

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Bully Fae Elevator Pitch
‘Bully Fae is a musical act comprised of stand-up comedy, poetry, dance, and music, that tells a story about abjection, seduction, addiction, and queerness. The project began as an accident. Inspired by an urgency to document ideas in real time, I bought a voice recorder with the intention of describing my thoughts on art and my plans to make it. As I began my auto-dictation process of talking while walking, my interest in this device evolved; it’s musicality i.e. the meter of words and the beat of my steps composed what sounded more like song or poetry than marginal commentary. This method of making became my dominant method. It is the construction site for language that informs an interdisciplinary practice; a way to design performance without a predetermined mission and a receptacle for emotional waste products. Bully Fae’s incantations conjure images of prosthetic limbs locking themselves into a system, being burned alive by an audience, being possessed by performance, and becoming incorporeal. The music itself is experimental electronic beats. They are composed with everyday noise, percussion, and cinematic effects and are arranged to syncopate under my locomotive chatter/rapping/reading to create an uncanny symmetry. The title “Defy A Thing To Be” comes from a poem by a friend, Amanda Horowitz, and captures perfectly the myriad spirit of the project.’ — BF

 

__________
The Limiñanas Dahlia Rouge
‘The Limiñanas are like a French Raveonettes in a way – only with Gainsbourg and Suicide/Stooges as main influences instead of the Ronettes and Buddy Holly. Or maybe a Stereolab in scuffed cowboy-boots and dressed all-in-black, playing a Franco-American motorik, Serge with Marty Rev…. well, kinda…. They’ve been around since 2009 and this is fourth proper album. Half-spoken/half/sung vocals, some male, others female, some in French, some in English. This really is a beautiful, faultless album if you like French pop and sunglasses-after-dark cool.’ — Louder than War

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. A heads up that I won’t be here tomorrow. Well, technically I will be in the form of a resurrected post from my old, murdered blog, but there won’t be the usual talky p.s. The reason is that Zac and I are training away from Paris to Bas Normandie to do an initial day of location scouting for our new film. But please feel free to comment and stuff today and tomorrow because I’ll be back in full with a new post and a catch-up p.s. on Thursday. ** H, And good morning to you. Yes, I’ll try to find those scrapbook posts and see if I still have the materials to restore them. My favorite Angers are, hm, probably ‘Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome’ and ‘Kustom Kar Kommandos’. Thanks about the scissors. It was fun putting it together. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Yes, my roommate is talking with the bank to see how it can be done today. Kris Kidd’s stuff does look very intriguing. Huh. I’ll do a rangy search for his videos and things today. Cool, thank you! Yes, I’m very happy to say that my old friend is very into reconnecting and catching up! I’m quite excited! We’re going to figure out a Skype talk this week. He’s in California. Also, he knew my dear late friend and muse George Miles as we were all good friends back then, and I’ve been wanting very, very much for years to talk with someone who knew George since I’ve lost touch with everyone who did. That’s momentous too. So, yes, it’s all very happy-making. My yesterday didn’t go as planned either because fiber optic cable was being installed in Zac’s apartment building so the residents there can finally have fast internet, and I guess that process took eight hours, so we’re meeting to go over the script this morning instead, and yesterday I just worked and did email and stuff, nothing momentous. I hope everything is okay with your grandparents. And I’m glad you at least got to work on your scrapbooks. That’s big. Did today work out well for you? It’s freezing cold and raining violently here, but I’ll figure something out. ** David Ehrenstein, I wish! ** Kyler, Hi. Well, yeah, if you’re going to do something, do it, or something like that, I reckon. I’ve never actually walked on rue des Ciseaux. Huh. I really should. When it stops raining. ** Steevee, Ah, your ‘Roma’ review, excellent, I’ve been looking forward to that. Everyone, Fellini’s awesome film ‘Roma’ has been restored and released on Blu-Ray, and Steevee has written about it, and that’s your cue to click. ** _Black_Acrylic, Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, ‘À l’intérieur’s’ directors, have ‘Leatherface’, a ‘Texas Chainsaw’ prequel with Lili Taylor upcoming. I’m curious. ** TomK, I can’t cut in a straight line either. There are people who can? You might have just explained my retreat into the written word too. Yes, my old friend wants to reconnect! I’m very happy! I’ve had Deleuze here and there in posts not specifically about him, but never in the spotlight. I would dearly love and treasure a Deleuze post, if you want to make one. Would be great! Thanks for the proposal, Tom. ** Jamie, Je mais! That’s French for ‘but I’. Hey, buddy. It was with you that I began mulling over doing a scissors post, and, gosh darn it if I didn’t end up doing that! For better or worse. I’ve been good. Working, low-keyish otherwise. The apartment hunt is ongoing. I have to set up a French bank account to be able to rent a place, and that’s a snag that I’m trying get through at the moment before the hunt continues. I’m so sorry you’ve been bluesy, even though I like that word. I hope your exciting meeting today breaks the spell. Oh my God, you can bet I’m interested in Chocolate Happyland, and I know nothing about it, so at least much of today is now scheduled out as I madly search the internet for all traces of it. Wow. I’m liking the winter a lot, although today winter is being drowned in a heavy rainstorm, and I’m not completely wild about that. Tell me about the meeting and everything else, if you don’t mind. Lots of love right back to you ** Joakim, Hi, Joakim! Oh, there’s something sad to me that Emo has gotten to the point where it’s a subject of costume parties, but such is progress. I can’t even remember the last time I saw a real Emo in Paris. There used to be squads of them. Okay, that photo of the pre-Emo party lunch is so great that, ultimately, I guess it’s okay that Emo has largely become a thing confined to lonely small town kids. Such style! Everyone in that photo looks good enough to eat! I don’t know what an orbital piercing is, but that term is very cool, and I’ll find out. Oh, wow, thank you so much for the offer of a flat! That could really help. I’m seeing Zac in about an hour, and I’ll mention that. We love Bon Bon Land. You must go! The park’s nasty cartoon character thematic is really fun, and they have some excellent, quite unique rides. If nothing else, Zac and I will drag you there whenever we come up. Oh, have you ever met or come across Paul Hameline? He’s in Zac’s and my film, and he has become this kind of giant fashion model/’it’ boy since then. He used to go to Copenhagen a lot, and I told him to watch out for you because you guys should meet. He’s awesome. I don’t know if he still spends a lot of time there. It’s wonderful for me too to have you here and get to talk. It’s a serious boon, my friend. Have a lovely today and tomorrow. ** Misanthrope, Yeah, but it didn’t get nominated yestertday for a Golden Globe, so how good can it be? I do like the Jesus and Mary Chain. ‘Psychocandy’ is up amongst my all time very favorite records. And I like ‘Automatic’ too, yes. They’re putting out a new album, as you might know. I’m kind of wary of that. I’m glad I didn’t include Scissors Sisters too. I can’t stand them, and they were swarming every scissors search I made, yuck. Glad LPS is on his feet, and just in time! ** Morgan M Page, Hi, Morgan! You must be happy to be at the finals point of schooling. When I was a kid, my parents did not at all like that I wanted to be an artist. They wanted me to do something seriously money-making. So they forced me to take a test based on my aptitude that would supposedly tell me what profession I was meant to go into. I think they were hoping for, you know, lawyer or doctor or something. But the test said that the profession I should go into was social work. After that they gave up and let me become an artist, ha ha. Well, tomorrow we’re officially starting the film work by location scouting. So, it has begun, and my next months will be heavily occupied with the preparations. Have a fine day! ** B, Hi, man. Ha, I’m glad the post accidentally hit the spot. I’m so sorry about the break up. That stuff is so hard even in the best of circumnstances, But I’m glad you’re back into enjoying and planning the future. That event in Astoria sounds cool. Tell me more about it when the time comes, if you don’t mind. I am a great fan of Agnes Martin and Kerry James Marshall. I saw the Agnes Martin retrospective when it was at the Tate in London, and it was sublime, and I caught the Kerry James Marshall show at the Met Breuer when I was in NYC last, and it was fantastic. I look forward to your review! Thanks! Everyone, B has reviewed he retrospectives of the great artists Agnes Martin an Kerry James Marshal that are currently up in NYC, and I highly recommend that you check in on his always greatly interesting thoughts. Here. I hope you like the Meredith Alling book. I’m good, really busy, as usual, I guess, but with with very welcome things., Take care, buddy. ** Chris dankland, Hi, Chris! Thanks, man. Yeah, blog post making is definitely fun. A ton of work, but it’s so educational. It’s like home schooling or something. Ha ha, ‘i will rape you with scissors’ in IMAX 3D, totally. Thanks for the vine. It looks insane at a glance, and I’ll absorb it in a sec. Everyone, chris dankland contributes Snip Snip Hoe to the Scissors Day, and the Day isn’t over until you include his contribution. You’ll see why. No, I don’t think I’m going to decorate for Xmas, Mostly because I’m in the process of having to move, and it makes me sad, and I think if I put love into this place that I’m going to miss so much, it’ll just up the sadness. Have a super swell day! ** Right, I made you a concert of some music and visuals in some cases. I hope you will attend. It’s a good show. Like I said, the blog will see you tomorrow, and I will see you on Thursday.

 

A Brief History of Mauve Zone Recordings

I began recording music in the year 2000, initially under the name Death Head Moths, then shortly later Sypha Nadon: my initial sonic inspirations were Nine Inch Nails and Throbbing Gristle, hence my decision to focus solely on experimental electronic music, created primarily on a computer. But for many years, I had no real outlet for this music of mine to be heard. This situation changed in the year 2005, when my friend (and fellow musician) Ilya started up a netlabel (entitled This Plague Of Dreaming) at the Internet Archive. When he first began this netlabel he was in need of acts and, having heard some of my material previously, offered to release some of the recordings that I had done under the Sypha Nadon name. I took him up on the offer, and 2005 saw the release of my Enter Horus EP and an LP entitled 11 Chants for Russolo! I ended up doing one more release for Ilya, the Threnody for Zumb Zumb LP, which appeared in November of 2006. By this point I was in a state of feverish musical activity and was coming up with many other ideas for future albums. Not wanting to clutter up my friend’s netlabel, I decided to create a netlabel of my own. And it was that train of thought that led to the birth of Mauve Zone Recordings (also initialized as MZR for short).

When creating Mauve Zone Recordings, some of my initial inspirations (aside from This Plague Of Dreaming) were other indie record labels I had admired over the years, namely Industrial Records (home of Throbbing Gristle) and the Come Organisation/Susan Lawly (home of Whitehouse). Wanting to give it an occult glamor, I decided to nick the ‘Mauve Zone’ terminology from the writings of Typhonian occultist Kenneth Grant, who defined the Mauve Zone thusly in his 1999 book Beyond the Mauve Zone: “Mauve Zone: a loaded term signifying the region between dreaming and dreamless sleep, which has its analogue in figurative expressions such as the Crimson Desert, Desert of Set, Voids beyond Daath, etc. It is the state which dawns beyond the abyss that separates phenomenal existence from noumenal Being.” To further add to the mystique, I conceived of an alter ego named Arthur Limbo to serve as the label’s founder and official propagandist.

 

Arthur Limbo, Founder of Mauve Zone Recordings

 

Although I came up with the concept for the netlabel in late 2006, it wasn’t until the following year that MZR became a fully operating entity. February 19th, 2007 is the historic date that MZR appeared at the Internet Archive, and on March 6th, 2007, MZR released its very first album. This was Rise Horus Rise, and the band behind it was Boy Destroyer, a fake industrial/power electronics supergroup that I created for the occasion. I will now reprint the original liner notes/press release:

“Mauve Zone Recordings is pleased to announce the release of its first digital bullet, Rise Horus Rise, which is in turn the grand debut of noise supergroup BOY DESTROYER. This supergroup is composed of the following individuals:

Ray Pissed (Vocals and Lyrics). The lead singer for underground punk rock band Ricin, which has released many bootleg singles and is currently signed to Fireball Records, where they are recording their debut album, Drunk on the President’s Blood. Their live shows are legendary.

Isabelle Ducasse (Noise Guitar/Feedback). Isabelle Ducasse is best known as a “Feedback Artist,” world-renowned in the avant-garde community for her sonic sculptures of noise. Speaking of noise, she’s also the noise guitarist for the noise-drone band Deathdrone, who last year released the now-classic (and impossible to find) EP Drone Moon Headache.

Sypha Nadon (Rhythms). The cryptic Sypha Nadon is best known for his releases on the esoteric This Plague of Dreaming netlabel, namely the albums 11 Chants for Russolo! and the more recent Threnody for Zumb Zumb (not to mention the Enter Horus EP). Currently planning an EP for late 2007/early 2008.

From the liner notes: This is sacred racket, pure fucking aggression, punk noise of the highest order Thelemic Anarchy The conquering child manifested in this Aeon as ultra-noise music to immolate yourself to A symphony heralding the downfall of the right-wing reign This is a campaign, it has nothing to do with art BOY DESTROYER is a three piece group who are violently uncompromising both musically and lyrically while possessing a new sense of direction in the spectrum they have very little in common with the current crop of electronic bands and this album should not be confused with such

Keywords: Punk Rock; Noise; Power Electronics; Thelema; Horus; Kaos; Anarchy; Wild Boys; Industrial; Brutalisim

Track listing:

1. Welcome to the Machine (4:55)
2. War (4:49)
3. Spill Blood (1:53)
4. Intellectual Punk (5:09)
5. Raped by a Deer (3:56)
6. Rise Horus Rise (5:20)
7. Human Lab Rats (4:39)
8. We Hate You Conservatives (5:12)
9. Retail Hell (5:28)
10. Electro-Sadism (5:07)
11. Scream (For Terror) (3:56)
12. Boy Destroyer (10:00)

Total running time: 60:31

Recommended for fans of Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, Sutcliffe Jugend, Wolf Eyes, Crass,
Big Black, Foetus, and other sonic trouble makers.

Says Isabelle Ducasse: “Boy Destroyer declares war on civilization, on society, on reality itself. We will destroy anyone who gets in our way. We’re interested in chaos and anarchy, Uranian poetry, Apollonian Beauty and Dionysian Homosexuality. The world isn’t ready for Boy Destroyer. Too bad for the world, but it had it coming anyway, smug bastard.”

Says Ray Pissed: “I had to change my vocal style a bit for this one, as it’s the first noise record I’ve ever sang on. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. Seriously, though, this is some intense shit. Hardcore with a capital H. Total punk rock, just not rock & roll.”

Says Sypha Nadon: “The edge or stick some crush see baby not insect.”

 

* * * *

 

Following the release of the first Boy Destroyer album, MZR began releasing various Sypha Nadon anthology releases. When I first began the netlabel, it was my intention that it would initially function as nothing more than a depository for my Sypha Nadon albums, my albums recorded under other aliases, and for Cat Band archival releases (The Cat Band was a band created by my younger brothers back in the 1990’s… some of you may recall a Cat Band Day that I created for this very blog a few years back, in 2014 or so). But a few months after I began MZR I thought it would be pretty cool if I could get other artists involved as well, to at least give the impression that MZR was a record label of some sorts. The first album to appear on MZR that wasn’t a creation of my own was an album entitled Hard and Evil by our very own Thomas Moronic (the date of this album’s release was June 30, 2007). In the years that followed, a few other people contributed albums to MZR: mainly The People’s Tongue, Bryce Clayton Eiman, Michael Karo, and T3. But for the most part, MZR has mainly served as an outlet for my own musical projects, obsessions and fetishes: Sypha Nadon being the primary one, followed by Boy Destroyer, and also Zyklon Vagina, James Champagne, Cadaver Synod, and Death Head Moths.

When MZR first began, during its first year or so, I desired for it to have a kind of seedy, unpleasant image. Inspired by how Throbbing Gristle and Whitehouse would often use questionable/disturbing imagery of little girls in their lyrics/album art/promotional material, I decided it would be funny to have MZR to do the same, just with boys (naturally, this all tied in with the homoerotic William Burroughs inspiration/influence as well). This can be seen especially in the early Boy Destroyer albums and the first issue of TRANS/MISSION. By 2008 I had grown a little bored with this tactic so I began restyling the label as a sort of cryptic occult-obsessed secret society. When MZR first began I classified it as the musical branch of the Necronomicon Transhumanism Society, the latter being a website I had created around 2005-2006. In September 2008 (no doubt inspired by Grant Morrison’s Batman R.I.P./Black Glove storyline that was ongoing at that time) I came up with the concept of the Dark Tentacle, a sinister umbrella organization made up of the Necronomicon Transhumanism Society (the philosophical branch), Mauve Zone Recordings (the musical branch), Black Dulia Press (the literature/publishing branch), The Sodality of the Holy Shadow (the religious branch), The Final Church of the Zumb Zumb Apocalypse, The Ghooric Order of the Shoggothian Nuns, The Cultus of the Locusts, and so on and so forth. This led to the first of many grandiose and bombastic press releases at the MZR blog, such as the following:

“We would like to tell our dedicated listeners that recently Mauve Zone Recordings was purchased by the Dark Tentacle. This will not change our present direction or ambitions.

Mauve Zone Recordings is now the musical branch of the Dark Tentacle, just as the Necronomicon Transhumanist Society is the philosophical branch, and the Sodality of the Holy Shadow is the religious branch (more on this later). Coming soon will be Dark Tentacle Publishing, our literature and publications branch, whose purpose will be the distribution of Neo-Goth Narratives.

We would also like to welcome aboard our Insect Trust a new member: Dr. Gargoyle. A mastermind at sound experimentation, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and Induction Trigger Phrases, he’ll be hard at work on the ultra-secret Project Noir, which will be released to the public next year.

More details to come.

The Insect Trust:
H.P. Lovecraft: Our Spiritual Founder
Arthur Limbo: MZR founder and owner
James Champagne: Art, Production, Text, Promotion
Sypha Nadon: Mauvian Symphonist
Dr. Gargoyle: Science, Sound Experimentation
The Fabulous Mr. Meaningless: Dada Muse
The Booda Carrot: Our Godhead”

 

 

On October 28th, with great fanfare, the Dark Tentacle website was unleashed on an unsuspecting world. It was a short-lived triumph, as a week or so later my computer suffered a catastrophic crash, which resulted in the loss of many files that I was unable to back up. This led to a somewhat sheepish announcement on November 25th, 2008:

“The Dark Tentacle website is no more. With all of the computer problems I had, the original files I had for the pages I had up already were lost, thus making it impossible to edit (even though the site remained online). Even more galling, I lost the original HTML NTS pages, so almost all of the documents I had related to the NTS are gone (with the exception of some of the artwork and a few text documents). So I cancelled the site today. Probably for the best, really… trying to run 4 “secret” societies had become kind of a pain in the ass, to be honest. I still want to have an MZR website up one day, but it seems that now is not the time. I’m trying to simplify my life as it is right now. And it kind of makes sense to bring The Dark Tentacle to an end around the same time that the Black Glove storyline on Batman comes to an end.”

Some other notable dates in the history of MZR:

3/20/2007: The release of the first issue of TRANS/MISSION, the official newsletter of Mauve Zone Recordings (for more info on TRANS/MISSION, see the end of this article)

4/23/2007: On this day I created the official MZR logo, which features a photograph of Luigi Russolo posing with one of his Intonarumori devices.

 

the official Mauve Zone Recordings logo

 

For the curious, this is what the MZR prototype logo looked like:

 

 

9/26/2007: On this day I unveiled the official Mauve Zone Recordings blog, which still exists to this day (see “Links of Interest” section below).
12/22/2007: The release of the second (and final) issue of TRANS/MISSION.
10/28/2008: The release of A Dream as White as the Death of a Seagull, the first compilation album put out by MZR.
10/31/2009: the release of the netlabel’s one (and only) eBook, James Champagne’s Grimoire (eventually deleted when the book was published for real in 2012).

 

Our Latest Release: Beyond The Mauve Zone [MZR040]

Early on this year I realized that MZR had reached its tenth year of operation. To commemorate such a historic milestone, I decided that a number of albums should be released. First there was the re-release of the label’s very first (and long out-of-print) LP, Boy Destroyer’s Rise Horus Rise, in a deluxe edition meant to celebrate its ten year anniversary. Along with all 12 tracks off the original album, it also featured tracks from the Wild Boys EP, and a PDF/booklet containing the album’s original liner notes, lyrics, and other ephemera. Then on June 17th there was the release of Selected Ambient Twerks, the second Sypha Nadon “greatest hits” collection. The following month saw me releasing an album of all MIDI music entitled Second Report, and it was the first album I recorded under the Death Head Moths name since the year 2000. A few months later saw me releasing an album under my own name, this album being Experiment XX. However, all this was mere build-up to MZR’s 40th release: Beyond The Mauve Zone, the label’s second compilation album (and a sequel to 2008’s A Dream as White as the Death of a Seagull).

Track listing for MZR040:

1. Orchestra 23: Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman (Intro) 3:37
2. Boy Destroyer: Leonardo 4:38
3. ▼RIL Y▲: We Are The Void We Worship 8:08
4. Cadaver Synod: Five Billion Years of Hell-Engineering 5:52
5. The People’s Tongue: Shooby Laboof Propulsion 2:09
6. Thomas Moore: Sling 9:09
7. James Champagne: Beyond the Mauve Zone 7:19
8. Orchestra 23: Intermission 2016 1:54
9. M. Karo: Tiempo Peligroso 7:47
10. Zyklon Vagina: Bass Decay 3:19
11. Bryce Clayton Eiman: My Heart is a Muscle the Size of Your Fist 4:27
12. Death Head Moths: Eraser (Polite) 2:29
13. Sypha Nadon: Melenkurion Skyweir 4:28
14. Orchestra 23: Dark House (Outro) 3:37
15. Mystery Guest: The Grand Feline-ale 3:19

Total Running Time: 72:15

Although I’ve designed the album covers for a great majority of MZR’s releases, it’s very rare that I draw any of the art by hand (the exception to this rule are the first 3 volumes of The Cat Band anthologies, all of which I personally illustrated). Therefore, as a way to acknowledge the special nature of MZR040, I decided that I would illustrate the cover art by hand, the result of which may be seen below:

 

the front cover art of MZR040

the back cover art of MZR040

 

The back cover of the album utilizes the Steffi Grant illustration that appears on the back cover of her husband Kenneth Grant’s book Beyond the Mauve Zone, further modified by myself (namely, I added the rainbow filter, the text, and the MZR logo).

Beyond The Mauve Zone may be downloaded/listened to for free on the MZR page at the Internet Archive, the link of which is below:

https://archive.org/details/MZR040

 

The Future of Mauve Zone Recordings

There was a period of time earlier this year where I was thinking that maybe Beyond the Mauve Zone would be the last MZR record (the title of the album itself even hints at that notion). After all, I have been working on this label for 10 years now, and 40 is a nice number. But eventually I decided to maybe keep things going. Obviously, the label has had its lulls: though 2007-2009 were very busy years, there were only 2 releases in 2010, 2 in 2011, none at all in 2012, and only 1 in 2013 and 2014 (indeed, there is a two year hiatus between MZR026 and the release of MZR027). Yet 2015 saw 6 releases (granted, mostly Sypha Nadon archival material), and this year has seen 6 as well. I do see it going on another small hiatus in the future, as it’s become a distraction from my writing career. And yet, I do hope to have at least one new release of my own come out in 2017, and I’m toying with the notion of once again opening up the label for submissions (it has been closed to submissions for years now). The last 2 years the label’s pretty much been flooded with Sypha Nadon products, and I think greater diversity is needed to keep MZR from becoming creatively stagnant. I guess what I’m trying to say is this: if you’re a musician and you think your work would be a good fit for MZR, feel free to drop Arthur Limbo an e-mail at mzr777@gmail.com. Obviously I’m in no position to offer cash as MZR is entirely non-profit, but one could say the honor of being part of this illustrious family is payment enough!

 

Mauve Zone Recordings: Discography
(all cover art designed by James Champagne except where noted)
Below each album listing is a link to the relevant Internet Archive page, where each album may in turn be listened to/downloaded.
Key: album #/artist name/album name/catalogue #/release date/format

1. Boy Destroyer: Rise Horus Rise [MZR001] March 6, 2007 (LP)
DELETED (later reissued in a deluxe edition as MZR036)

 

2. Sypha Nadon: Universe A: Distant (Anthology 1) [MZR002] April 13, 2007 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR002
(This archival release was later made redundant by the far superior recording MZR030)

 

3. Sypha Nadon: Universe B: Closer (Anthology 2) [MZR003] April 13, 2007 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR003

 

4. Sypha Nadon/Zyklon Vagina: Malkunofat Disko [MZR004] June 8, 2007 (EP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR_4

 

5. Thomas Moronic: Hard and Evil [MZR005] June 30, 2007 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR005
(cover art by Sian Macfarlane)

 

6. The People’s Tongue: Sonny Bono’s Favorites [MZR006] July 7, 2007 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR_6
(cover artwork by ????)

 

7. Bryce Clayton Eiman [MZR007] September 6, 2007 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR007
(cover art by Bryce Clayton Eiman)

 

8. Bryce Clayton Eiman: Mono [MZR008] November 3, 2007 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR008
(cover art by Bryce Clayton Eiman)

 

9. The Cat Band: Anthology Vol. 1: The Early Years [MZR009] November 29, 2007 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR009

 

10. The Cat Band: Anthology Vol. 2: Cat Forever [MZR010] November 29, 2007 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR010

 

11. The Cat Band: Anthology Vol. 3: Cat Band’s Greatest Hits [MZR011] 11/29/07 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR011

 

12. Sypha Nadon: The Black Omen Soundtrack [MZR012] January 28, 2008 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR012
(the soundtrack to a non-existent computer game: perhaps my favorite SN LP)

 

(MZR013 Cover Art Lost)

13. Boy Destroyer: Wild Boys [MZR013] March 2008 (EP)
DELETED (though the majority of its tracks may be found on MZR036)

 

14: Various: A Dream as White as the Death of a Seagull [MZR014] October 17, 2008 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR014 The historic first MZR compilation album. Cover artwork by Erik Visser.

 

15. Sypha Nadon: Universe C: Beyond (Anthology 3) [MZR015] February 28, 2009 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR015

 

16. The Cat Band: Anthology Vol. 4: Off-White [MZR016] April 24, 2009 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR016
(cover art by Tom Champagne)

 

17. Bryce Clayton Eiman: Sex in Heaven [MZR017] May 18, 2009 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR017
(cover art by Bryce Clayton Eiman)

 

18. Sypha Nadon: The Nightmare Factory [MZR018] June 17, 2009 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR018
This was the first Sypha Nadon “greatest hits” album.

 

19. Sypha Nadon: Our Lady of the Flowers of the Red Night [MZR019] June 28, 2009 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR019

 

20. James Champagne: Grimoire [MZR020] October 31, 2009 (eBook)
DELETED
(you can buy it though: https://www.amazon.com/Grimoire-Compendium-Narratives-James-Champagne/dp/1608640388)

 

21. Boy Destroyer: Socialist Boy Scouts [MZR021] December 4, 2009 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR_21

 

22. M. Karo: Funky Afternoon + The Slow Fish Remixes #1-5 [MZR022] 12/19/09 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR022

 

23. Sypha Nadon: Orheculegenias [MZR023] August 14, 2010 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR023

 

24. T3: Frag Out! [MZR024] October 29, 2010 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR_024

 

25. Sypha Nadon: 4NIC8 [MZR025] August 22, 2011 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR025

 

26. James Champagne: Halloween Time [MZR026] October 17, 2011 (single)
https://archive.org/details/MZR026
(cover photograph courtesy of my mother)

 

27. Sypha Nadon: Litch [MZR027] December 1, 2013 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR_027

 

28. Sypha Nadon: Canadian Atheist [MZR028] November 11, 2014 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR028SyphaNadonCanadianAtheist
(along with The Black Omen, one of my personal favorite SN albums)

 

29: Sypha Nadon: First Report [MZR029] January 20, 2015 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR029

 

30. Sypha Nadon: Distant [MZR030] February 8, 2015 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR030

 

31. Sypha Nadon: Decadence [MZR031] March 6, 2015 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR031

 

32. Sypha Nadon: GAP [MZR032] April 1, 2015 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR032

 

33. Sypha Nadon: Society of the Spectacle [MZR033] May 2, 2015 (2xLP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR033
(to date, MZR’s only double album)

 

34. Sypha Nadon: Monolith [MZR034] August 13, 2015 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR034

 

35. Cadaver Synod: The Great Filter [MZR035] February 8, 2016 [LP]
https://archive.org/details/MZR035CadaverSynodTheGreatFilter01AbstractHorror

 

36. Boy Destroyer: Rise Horus Rise Deluxe Edition [MZR036] April 9, 2016 [LP]
https://archive.org/details/MZR036
(ten year anniversary reissue of MZR001 + select tracks from MZR013)

 

37. Sypha Nadon: Selected Ambient Twerks [MZR037] June 17, 2016 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR037
This is the second Sypha Nadon “greatest hits” album.

 

38. Death Head Moths: Second Report [MZR038] July 4, 2016 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR038

 

39. James Champagne: Experiment XX [MZR039] October 9, 2016 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR039

 

40. Various: Beyond the Mauve Zone [MZR040] , 2016 (LP)
https://archive.org/details/MZR040

 

TRANS/MISSION

 

Shortly after the release of the first Boy Destroyer album, I decided that it would be pretty neat if my label had an official newsletter. After all, Industrial Records had had their Industrial News, while the Come Organisation had their Katas. With this in mind, I created TRANS/MISSION, which became the official newsletter of Mauve Zone Recordings. Initially my goal was to have one every two months, but that seemed like a lot of work so in the end I decided it would maybe be one every 4 months (though I eventually dropped that idea as well: yeah, I’m lazy). The first issue of TRANS/MISSION (released 3/20/2007) was chiefly devoted to Boy Destroyer, and it was 23 pages long. The second issue of TRANS/MISSION came out later on that year, on December 22, 2007, and it was twice as long as issue 1. A third issue was to have been dedicated to The Cat Band, but it was never created. Because Mauve Zone Recordings has never had an official website, people who wanted to read TRANS/MISSION had to download it from my Necronomicon Transhumanism Society website. But when I suffered my big computer crash in 2008, I ended up losing all the HTML files associated with the NTS website, and thus no longer had TRANS/MISSION files on hand either.

For many years I despaired of ever being able to lay my eyes on TRANS/MISSION again (I had never even had the foresight of at least printing out physical copies). But then, on November 18, 2016, I did a Google search for “Mauve Zone Recordings Transmission” and to my surprise saw that on October 22, 2008, our very own Dennis Cooper had uploaded the PDF of the entire first issue on the Scribd website! It can be viewed/downloaded here: https://www.scribd.com/document/7448278/MZR1

Sadly TRANS/MISSION #2 seems to be forever lost to the mists of time. I forget most of the content but I do know that it featured 3 long interviews (with The People’s Tongue, Thomas Moronic, and Bryce Clayton Eiman), along with further Boy Destroyer lyrics. If anyone reading this has a copy of this PDF on file, PLEASE contact me ASAP. You have no idea how desperately I would like to re-read that document!

 

Mauve Zone Recordings: The Failed Projects

Although MZR has seen the release of many albums, there have been just as many albums that have never seen the light of day, for a number of reasons. Here is a list of a few such projects.

THE JAMES CHAMPAGNE SOLO ALBUM: mentioned as far back as the first Boy Destroyer interview, I initially intended to have a solo album released under my own name during the first year of MZR (on my birthday, June 17, to be precise). Alternately known as James Champagne 1 or Imagine the Music, this album was apparently finished but unreleased because it was deemed subpar (I say ‘apparently’ because I don’t recall finishing it, but the MZR blog says otherwise). Two tracks recorded for this project, “Worm Food” and “Vow of Violence,” would later appear on the Sypha Nadon/Zyklon Vagina Malkunofat Disko EP, with Zyklon Vagina given credit for the tracks. It would not be until October 9, 2016, that I would release a full-fledged album under my own name: Experiment XX (itself an album that I had initially recorded under the Sypha Nadon name back in the autumn of 2009, yet for some reason held off on releasing).

THE ROSS GELLER EP: mentioned in the first Boy Destroyer press release was this project (set for the spring of 2007) that I never bothered to actually carry out: there was an episode of the TV show Friends where the Ross Geller character torments his friends with his experimental/ pretentious electronic music: the idea was I would record the few songs they show him playing and release it as an EP.

BOY DESTROYER: SEXY TERRORISM LP: Initially Boy Destroyer’s second album was to have been an EP entitled Disobey! As I worked on it in 2007 it gradually got longer and longer, until it became a full-fledged LP entitled Sexy Terrorism. Then in March of 2008 I decided to abandon it and just went back to my original idea of doing an EP (which became MZR013: the Wild Boys EP). Sadly I no longer possess the unreleased tracks for Sexy Terrorism.

ANTOINE ET AMELIE: longtime readers of this blog will need no introduction to the greatly missed Antonio Urdiales. Back in 2007 Antonio and I were in contact with each other constantly and he was very interested in MZR. Being a fan of his music I commissioned him to do an album for MZR (under his band name Antoine et Amelie). In the spring of 2007 he told me that he had locked himself in his closet/recording studio to do the album, and that he was apparently in contact with “beings from outer space!” In later e-mails he informed me that the album was done, that all that was left to finish was the artwork. But as the months went by this album was never delivered, and I gradually got tired of asking Antonio how it was going, so I eventually just dropped it. One of my big regrets was that MZR never got to release an Antonio album… I wish I could have heard what it was he was working on for me at the time, but I have no doubt it was brilliant.

THE CONGO LP: for some bizarre reason I thought it would be funny to create an album composed entirely of samples from the much-maligned 1995 film Congo. Though two tracks were created for this novelty record, they were lost forever in the aforementioned computer crash of 2008. Kind of a shame, they were pretty amusing from what I recall.

ZYKLON VAGINA: probably the most ambitious of the many failed MZR projects. In 2007 I came up with the idea of my netlabel “discovering” and releasing some long-lost albums put out back in the 1970’s by an obscure Industrial band known as Zyklon Vagina (an obvious spoof of Throbbing Gristle). I came up with the track listings for 4 albums, invented fake biographies of the 4 band members (I recall one of them was named Nigel Semen-Cornflakes, a parody of Genesis P-Orridge)… at one point I even planned on adding entries to these fake records on discogs to create a sense of myth about the project… in the end though my habitual laziness kicked in and I abandoned the project, though I did record one Zyklon Vagina album in May 2007. Entitled Zyklon Jubilee, it featured a total of ten tracks, and was something of a spoof of the most cliché industrial/power electronics album you could imagine (cue samples of Hitler, Charles Manson, songs with names like “Auschwitz Medical Experiments,” “Silling Castle” and “Nazi Disco”). I decided people might not get the joke behind the project so this album was never released, though 4 tracks did make it on the Malkunofat Disko EP, which was a split with Sypha Nadon (the 4 tracks being “Worm Food,” “Rape Machine,” “Viscous,” and “Prelude to Mass Slaughter,” though that latter track ended up being attributed to Sypha Nadon). Since then, Zyklon Vagina has only manifested on the two MZR compilation albums.

BRYCE CLAYTON EIMAN: THE BISEXUAL IS THE MAGIC NEGRO OF THE BEDROOM: this was a 12 track album mailed to me by Bryce Clayton Eiman many years ago, that I had planned on releasing at some point but for whatever reason never did. I would still like to release it one day: I re-listened to it for the first time in years a few months back and thought it sounded really great. Maybe a 2017 release?

PERICHORESIS: In 2008 the MZR blog made mention of an upcoming Sypha Nadon album to be entitled Perichoresis, which would be released in 2009. I have no information as to what became of this project… no doubt it was most likely never even started, though. In another blog entry I also make mention of Sypha Nadon working on an album entitled Funeral Music for Horselover Fat, which also never seems to have been finished.

THE CAT BAND VOLUME V: it was always my intention that there would be five Cat Band anthology albums, with the fifth volume being a recording of the Cat Band’s final live show (which was taped back in 2002). I still would like to release this one day, I’ve just dragged my feet on it, primarily because it’s not exactly the band’s most shining moment.

TAKIN’ IT ALL OFF: the softcore 1987 film Takin’ It All Off was the first “dirty” movie I ever saw, and a few years back I had the idea of releasing a soundtrack for it on MZR. The idea was to record the film, cut it up into individual tracks, and just release that. But though this project was completed, in the end I decided not to release it, perhaps for copyright reasons. Though who knows, maybe I will put it out there one day, just for the lulz.

 

Links of Interest

https://archive.org/details/mauvezone&tab=collection
The Mauve Zone Recordings Internet Archive page.
http://mauvezonerecordings.blogspot.com/
The official Mauve Zone Recordings blog.
https://archive.org/details/tpod
The This Plague Of Dreaming Internet Archive page.
https://www.scribd.com/document/7448278/MZR1
PDF of the first issue of TRANS/MISSION.

 

*

p.s. Hey. The blog’s lucky streak this week culminates in this weekend-long celebration of the author, music-maker, and net label honcho James ‘Sypha’ Champagne’s raucous and unique, 10 year-old Mauve Zone Recordings. James has put together a characteristically fascinating and thrills-packed guide for you, and it’s your golden chance to both get acquainted with this amazing project and score any titles you might not already have. Luxuriate accordingly please, and please give as much of your undivided attention to James and his efforts in your comments as you can, thanks! And biggest up and gratitude to Mr. Champagne! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David. Yes, I think Gus even included Clarke’s ‘Elephant’ among the extras on the DVD for his own ‘Elephant’. ** Bill, Hi. Sounds about right from what I’ve heard and would expect from Arnold’s film. I don’t know Francesco d’Orazio. I’ll change that. Nice that you’ve managed to see as much stuff as you have. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Yes, apparently it’s pretty serious and unusual. The free transport is a nice consolation. I’m from LA, so I’m more than used to being engulfed in smog, but not when it’s cold and wintery outside. Very strange. Yeah, I consulted with French friends yesterday, and setting up the French back account with a year’s rent is apparently what one has to do in my situation. If you’re an artist who makes money in odd, random ways and don’t have a regular job with regular paycheck receipts to provide, you’re considered distrustful. Anyway, so I have to set up the bank account and asap somehow. Oh, how did the work with your photo/video ideas go yesterday? That’s exciting! You’re always doing really interesting projects and things. It’s cool. It’s inspiring. My day was another one where not much ended up happening that wasn’t just me typing at my laptop. Today I’m finally, definitely seeing some art and meeting/working with Zac on the film and having dinner with friends, so the outdoors will at last get more than a glimpse of me, ha ha. I hope you have a fantastic weekend, and I’m of course curious to hear about it. ** Joakim, Hi. I know, right? About Milo. Trippy when that happens to your friends. Obviously, it’s a great thing, but it also feels like a really dramatic change and kind of eerie. That might just be me. I never eat sushi in Paris because everyone I know says that you can’t get good sushi in Paris even though that kind of makes no sense at all given that there are many hundreds of sushi places here and, surely, a few of them are good. And it’s expensive here too. But sushi is one of those foods that always seems massively overpriced no matter where you get it. Especially vegetarian sushi, which is the only kind I can eat, obviously. But then that might just be some built-in American thing because American food is usually served in giant portions. I’m rambling, sorry. Is your school right in the center of Copenhagen? I only know the very center of Copenhagen. Like, how close is it to Tivoli? Have a super sweet and all around great weekend! ** Steevee, Yes, indeed about Clarke. You’re not the first person to express bewilderment at the unavailability of Clarke’s films in the US. Steve Polta of the great SF Cinematheque said basically what you did on my Facebook feed this morning. I’m glad you enjoyed the post, thank you. Like seemingly everyone, at least on your side of the pond, I was a latecomer to his work too. ** _Black_Acrylic, Well, thank you very much for occasioning the post. Without you, I probably would have foisted more theme park rides on everybody or something, ha ha. Dude don’t let the overview post stop you from doing a ‘Penda’s Fen’ post if that idea and desire pan out. I would be thrilled and welcoming. ** Armando, Hi. Yes, I’ll pass on your congrats to Michael, of course. They had the baby in Italy, so I probably see them or the new Salerno in person for a couple of weeks. Well, yeah, old artists can definitely deliver. I mean Godard’s ‘Adieu au language’ might be my favorite of all of his great films, for instance. Okay, I’ll try to remember to let you know when there’s a Paris gig for Gisele’s and my work that’ll happen when I’m here. I totally understand your frustration with the publishing and agent process. It’s almost always very difficult, and it can make a writer feel very powerless. Unfortunately, that thing where a publisher says they’ll get back to you soon and then don’t is not unusual at all. All you can do is keep trying and also trying to stay as tough-skinned about the broken promises and rejections that happen as you can. What you’re going through happens to a lot of new writers, maybe the majority. That doesn’t make it easier, but there’s not much you can do about it other than staying diligent until you get a break. ** James Nulick, Hey. Well, apparently the hassles I’m having to get apartment are standard fare. So, I just have to do my best to fulfill the obligations. Like I said up above, the system is set up for ‘normal’ people who have regular jobs and a provable steady income, not for artists whose money comes in an irregular way. I have to find an apartment, so I will. No choice Thanks for the commiserating. ** Morgan M Page, Hi, Morgan. Yeah, Clarke’s work is very strong. Very worth getting to know. You can watch a few of his films in their entirety via the post, although, obviously, youtube is not a great way to see anything that’s lengthy and that matters. Oh, the French theater director I work with all the time, Gisele Vienne, plus my buddy Zac and I have submitted a proposal plus a partly completed script for a 3-episode TV mini-series to the French/German TV channel Arte. Kind of a strange, funny, bleak thing about a female ventriloquist and her dummy, whom she treats like a real person. That’s to make a complicated story very, very simple. Arte is apparently very interested in it, and we’re supposed to get a thumbs up or down on December 20th. So we’re anxiously awaiting their verdict. Take care! ** Sypha, Ah, the man of the 48 hours! Hi, James, and thank you a ton! I’m so sorry that your mom is going through that grief. That’s tough. It’s interesting how people can have such importance in your life even from great and even technically impersonal distances. ** Jeff Jackson, Hi, Jeff. Thanks, man, about the post. Good, no, great about their interesting and surprising response to ‘Novi Sad’. And that’s cool about that guy’s intrigue with ‘ZFE’. I like his reaction to it, of course. It’s kind of even ideal. Thank you for telling me that. I am an admirer of Susan Howe’s poetry, yes. She’s very, very good. I haven’t read her most recent books, but I would like to catch up. I definitely would recommend you try her poetry. She’s pretty consistently excellent, so you could start kind of anywhere, I think. ** H, Hi. Thank you for coming in. No, I’m past whatever trauma I was going through about the Google thing. Yes, I think Xmas is going to mostly pass me by this year too. It’s fine. Looking at Paris all dressed up for the holidays is enough for me. Have a fine weekend. ** Okay. Mauve Zone Recordings is calling to you. Heed its call. See you on Monday.