Since 130701 Record’s inception on 13th July 2001 (hence the name) scores of releases have encapsulated the label’s experimental ethos, as recently referred to by FatCat’s Dave Howell as ”people using classical instrumentation in progressive ways”. Hauschka, Jóhann Jóhannsson, and Dustin O’Halloran certainly do just that and along with label compatriot Max Richter they are world leaders among a generation of composers in their 30s/40s continuing the stripped-down, innovative classical mantle of elders Arvo Part, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass.

Starting this evening in Amsterdam, the Transcendentials Tour takes Hauschka, Jóhannsson, and O’Halloran on an eight-day European trip. All set to be spine-tingling shows, UK audiences can choose between two dates, May 21st in Manchester and this Friday at London’s Barbican.

(L-R) Hauschka, Dustin O'Halloran, Jóhann Jóhannsson

Although the three composer/performers share heart-wrenching and cinematic sonic sensibilities, each artist also offers something different. With his albums, Lumiere and Vorleben, O’Halloran has penned arguably the most graceful compositions of the three men. Jóhannsson extra edge comes with his epic layering of instruments, as put to brilliant use in his brass-heavy score for Bill Morrison’s film, The Miner’s Hymns. While, in addition to his compositional talents, Hauschka’s rhythms and craftsmanship stand out, the latter quirk typified by his “prepared piano”. One wonders if the Barbican’s Steinway will be kitted out with ping-pong balls and other oddities?

To accompany the events FatCat are also releasing the Transcendentalism EP. Compiled of new recordings or arrangements from the touring artists the record offers an excellent acoustic mirror to the live excitement. Listen on the player below.

Transcendentalists Tour Dates:

15 May – De Duif, Amsterdam, Netherlands – Tickets
16 May – Heimathafen Neukölln, Berlin, Germany – Tickets
17 May – Ancienne Belgique, Brussels, Belgium – Tickets
18 May – The Barbican Hall, London, UK – Tickets
19 May – Cork Opera House, Cork, Ireland – Tickets
20 May – Sugar Club, Dublin, Ireland – Tickets
21 May – Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK – Tickets
22 May – Café De La Danse, Paris, France – Tickets

In exchange for signing up to their mailing list a 130701 sampler can be download for free at: www.130701.com

A wonderful look at one of London’s prize music venues. Directed, filmed and edited by David de la Peña.

www.vortexjazz.co.uk

Compiled by Decks and the City‘s Melissa Bradshaw (with assistance from Mr Beatnick + Zainab Jama and sisters), the mix is a musical revelation comparative to when Mulatu Astake first struck a chord.

The selection of 100% Somali songs possess kwaito-ish 80s/90s charms. Broken beats brilliantly pitter-patter aided by Casio keyboard skits and vocals with rich cadence.

A pity I’ve no idea who any of the artists are, all info appreciated.

Robinson, too, is the name of the character in Keiller’s films, an eccentric and increasingly erratic Berliner who moved to London, attracted by its vibrant music scene and its reputation for political radicalism. Robinson embarks on seemingly aimless journeys, first around the capital in London (1994), and then widening their circumference in Robison in Space (1997) and Robinson in Ruins (2010).

London, the first film in this series, takes place in 1992 against a backdrop of a fourth successive Tory government and a capital city whose public space is gradually being eroded by the incursions of private ownership, as this extract from the film spells out quite explicitly.

Robinson in Ruins also takes place at a crisis point in history. Filming begins in the immediate wake of the financial crash of 2007. The original pitch to the Arts Council, who funded the film, was going to be that the film intended to save the world from imminent global catastrophe. By going for a walk.

If that sounds like obfuscation or casuistry, rest assured it’s not. The act of walking, in the tradition of French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud who like Robinson exiled himself in England in the 1870s, in fact serves as a chance to diagnose ‘the problem of England’.

For Keiller it’s the country’s landscape that offers clues to what has gone wrong. Visiting sites of political and historical interest around the country gives Keiller the ammunition to elaborate a position about free market economies and the privatisation of public space.

In a swirling narrative of arguments, confluences and serendipities, Keiller revisits the site of the 1830 riots in Oxfordshire and the 1596 Hampton Gay anti-enclosure revolt, early manifestations of capitalism in malfunction, and precursors to today’s anti-capitalist movements. He also visits secret British military installations sold out to private companies, joining the military to the monetary in a narrative about the erosion of the public commons. I’m reminded of Rosseau’s famous line in the Origins of Inequality: ‘The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society.’

The effects of capitalism, for Keiller, are ingrained on the landscape. In the Tate exhibition there’s a video of a tattered plastic bag snagged to a tree branch, beside a motorway road barrier. The camera stays trained on the bag, blowing in the wind, while cars race by at 70mph, not only oblivious to anything but dotted lines ahead, but as if somehow they’ve missed the entire point.

This collection of exhibits that Keiller has assembled at the Tate are in many ways companion pieces or research notes to the film. There’s a meteorite that fell to earth in 1830, the same year as the revolutions that shook Europe. There are colour-saturated Andreas Gursky photographs, including that well-known image of the Chicago Stock Exchange. There are Situation maps of Paris. There’s a newsreel video about the Anglo-Persian oil company, the precursor to BP, accompanied by notes about the coup d’état in in 1953 orchestrated by the British after Iran nationalised its oil industry. There’s a tiny JMW Turner gouache called ‘A Historical Subject’. And a close-up projection of lichen, slowly growing on a motorway road sign, a recurring image in the Robinson in Ruins film.

It’s an arresting image, and what cinema theorists might call an ‘image-thought’. It seems to point to two things. On the one hand, the blind force of nature in a planetary battle against the relentless logic of capitalism. And at the same time it’s a clarion call for us to be pay a little more attention when reading road signs. At critical junctures throughout history, the right direction is not always the most clearly signposted.

Patrick Keiller The Robinson Institute is on at Tate Britain till October.
Two excellent articles on Robinson in Ruins – one by Mark Fisher for Sight on Sound and one for the Guardian by Owen Hatherley.

Tate website
Patrick Keiller’s website

Any cooler-than-thou adolescents, convinced of their unimpeachable good taste or their innate musical gifts, and looking to launch themselves on a career in music would be well advised to skip books like Everything You Wanted to Know About the Music Business or the Music Industry Guide 2012 and instead avail themselves of a copy of Jennifer Egan’s novel A Visit From the Goon Squad.

It won’t tell you how labels allocate points on an album, where to record a demo, or why managers deserve 15% of their artists’ pay cheque, but it does build up a big picture of this incestuous, craven yet endlessly fascinating business spanning some five decades, from the burly days of the American punk scene in the late 1970s (“The hippies are getting old, they blew their brains on acid and now they’re begging on streets corners all over San Francisco”) to some putative point in the early 2020s. By then, the moribund music industry’s primary market is schoolchildren or even toddlers who download music with handsets called ‘pointers’, which if things keep going the way they do, seems like a pretty accurate picture.

Each chapter is told from the perspective of a different character, and the story jumps between decades like Scott Bakula in Quantum Leap (or Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, which provides the epigraph for the book). The cast includes a high-flying record producer who works on the forty-fifth floor of a Manhattan skyscraper, a washed-up guitarist who now mops floors in a high-school, a sound mixer turned reluctant digital marketer, a group of teenage friends in San Francisco who’ve formed a band called the Flaming Dildos, and a kleptomaniac personal assistant. Two other chapters follow a high-flying PR and a lumbering broadsheet journalist who, though they don’t work in music per se, have what might be described as ‘transferable skills’.

In an interview with Mother Jones magazine, Jennifer Egan said she didn’t have a very strong relationship to the music industry before embarking on the book. “As a journalist, I have wanted very much to find a way to write about the music industry, and it’s been frustrating to me that that’s never worked out. Now I feel sort of happy, because this ended up being my way to be able to do that.”

With A Visit From the Goon Squad she’s successfully brought to life the sometimes sympathetic, more often tragic, and always hilarious personalities that the industry seems to attract, if not give shape to. From those exuberant, impressionable teenage years when everything seems so full of possibility, and when music plays such a big part of their lives, it follows them into their careers marked by gradual disillusionment, artistic sacrifices and fragile compromises.

In some ways, it’s a book about the decline and fall of the recording industry, or that out-dated, vertically integrated model that’s been hollowed out by piracy. An industry, moreover, that’s shown to be almost completely morally redundant. And the insecurity that besets it reflects the insecurity at the heart of America. For A Visit from the Good Squad is nothing if not a post-9/11 novel, exposing the frailty of a secure way of life that’s come to an end. Only fleetingly does Egan touch on Generation Y, “the postpiracy generation for whom things like ‘copyright’ and ‘creative ownership didn’t exist”, in a virtuosic final chapter.

Benny Salazar’s indie label, Sow’s Ear, with vague echoes Nirvana’s record label Sub Pop, has outgrown its two-storey converted coffee warehouse in Tribeca and now sits in a tall glass building in mid-town Manhattan. He had “worked tirelessly, feverishly, to get things right, to stay on top, make songs that people would love and buy and download as ringtones (and steal, of course) – above all, to satisfy the multinational crude-oil extractors he’d sold his label to five years ago. But Bennie knew that what he was bringing into the world was shit. Too clear, too clean. The problem was digitization, which sucked the life out of everything that got smeared though its microscopic mesh. Film, photography, music: dead. An aesthetic holocaust! Bennie knew better than to say this stuff aloud.”

How the different members of the Flaming Dildos, children of the San Francisco punk scene, each resolve their original relation to this non-commercial, anti-establishment music, how their teenage rebellion plays out in their grown-up years, will dictate the shape of their lives. And the fact that they’re forever bound to those few songs capable of bringing “rapturous surges of sixteen-year-old-ness” will ultimately leave them as has-beens, as a new generation brushes them aside.

Egan ends the novel with a vision of the world in 2020 – not entirely unrecognisable from 2012, it must be said. In the character Lulu, we have the unmaking of the traditional music industry. She is the ultimate networked worker –“paperless, deskless, commuteless” – who laughs at the old generation’s resistance to being bought out: “I mean is a person who sells oranges being bought? Is the person who repairs appliances selling out?”

A Visit from the Goon Squad touches on so many aspects of the media industry that it would be hard to enumerate them all here. Whether it’s the comeback concert of a washed-up old star, a board meeting at a music label, the exec’s predilection for young PAs, the band recording their sophomore album, the fatuous journalist writing a feature story (“I don’t want to hear about Kitty’s new movie; I couldn’t care less and neither could you, I know; her prattle about the challenging role and the trusting role she had with her director”), Egan really has the measure of her subjects.

And what’s so remarkable is how even amid all this vanity and deceit, these compromises and self-contradictions, music still has the power to cast its glow over an entire generation. On all this, and much more, Egan is a brilliant observer. And if you still want to go into the music business after reading this, you’ll probably have a head start over your peers.

Their recentish 3rd birthday party was one of many special nights they’ve organised and today they’ve released footage and photos from the night to promote this Friday’s event.

As the week’s end becomes the weekend you can join Eglo regulars plus Lady Blacktronika and many more at Corsica Studios, South London.

See below for full info.

 See you on the dancefloor.

Bonus nostalgic links:

Eglo meets Bilal review (July, 2010)

Eglo focus in SHOOK 006 (August 2009)

Fred Perry SubSonic Live in February was road-blocked for Andrew Weatherall and friends. This time it’s the turn of Greg Wilson to take charge, and what a night he has in store. Revered as one of the UK electronic scene’s original and defining DJs, Greg was responsible for bringing electro-funk to the seminal Wigan Pier and Hacienda nightclubs as far back as the early 80s – and needless to say we all know what followed. Greg’s Reels Of Steel set is where he adds incredible visuals to his set and it’s a first for London, having road-tested the concept at Bestival and Glastonbury last year. This will be a set that’s as pioneering visually as it is sonically. Get on board for the ride.

For Greg, appearing on the same bill as Afrika Bambaataa, exactly 30 years on from the release of his seminal ‘Planet Rock’ is a dream come true. ‘Planet Rock’ is widely regarded as one of the 20th century’s defining recordings, setting the tone for the oncoming electronic dance revolution, whilst helping take Hip Hop global in the early 80s. This was a true hybrid, its impact, influence and inspiration an absolute game-changer. He has written this excellent piece on his blog in anticipation of Friday’s performance. Come and witness the legend and his MCs first hand in intimate surroundings.

Southport Weekender’s resident eclectic selector Gavin Kendrick will also be spinning in the main room, and he has compiled this blistering mini mixtape to accompany the event, titled ‘Love To Bam’.

Track List
Express of Sound feat. Afrika Bambaataa – Funky Weekend
Afrika Bambaataa – Mind Control (Danmas Remix)
Afrika Bambaataa feat. King Kamonzi – Dark Matter
Afrika Bambaataa – Planet Rock (Back To Basics Mix)
Afrika Bambaataa – Got That Vibe
Afrika Bambaataa – Just Get Up And Dance
Afrika Bambaataa – Soca Fever
Afrika Bambaataa feat. Mustafa Akbari – Just A Smoke
Afrika Bambaataa – Bell-E 2 Bell-E
Afrika Bambaataa – Shake Pop ‘N Roll
Afrika Bambaataa – The Godfather of Hip Hop
Afrika Bambaataa – All I Want
Shango – Zulu Groove
Afrika Bambaataa & James Brown – Unity
Afrika Bambaataa & Family – Sho Nuff Funky
Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force – Planet Rock
Props to Nardwuar for the interview snippets used throughout the mix.

All this for £5? Really?

Subsonic has been an integral part of the Subculture website reporting on the best of emerging international talent. SubSonic Live is the live manifestation of the concept and is a welcome addition to the London calendar through 2012. The bi-monthly event showcases emerging international talent and legends across 3 stages.

So, come and be part of it. Fred Perry – Subsonic Live.

Goods inwards? Is that what it said above the entrance? Whatever it was it seemed to fit as an industrial welcome to the high, high-ceilinged E8 warehouse.

Sold out, with 800 or so punters inside, the huge complex was divided in to two spaces.  The main room housed dBridge with Exit Records affiliates, Dub Phizix and Amit, plus old friends, Doc Scott, Calibre and Marcus Intalex.

Room two allowed for a freer (and occasionally house-orientated) sound, offering respite from the jam-packed main space. Inside dBridge’s Autonomic associates Jon Convex (Convex Industries/Instra:mental) and Consequence led the way.

On the dancefloor a usual dnb vibe ensued with a blend of buoyant moods, aggressive outbursts, and much interfering with people’s rave space. All to a tidy high-tempo soundtrack.

Stepping in at late notice for Loxy, Amit rendered a terrific (Ableton?) live set, weaving tracks from his recent Exit Records 10″s with big tunes like his Suicide Bomber hit. He also amusingly adamantly rejected a reload despite the cries of the crowd, dBridge and Justyce on the mic. Good to see the overly-used convention dismissed.

Dub Phizix’s Marka and Fracture’s Get Busy roused expectedly raucous responses, two of a few songs that have proved popular with 90s-born ravers of late, prompting new audiences to attend such events.

Typically, Calibre played a superb set of his own productions and, as always, his as-yet released tracks are a top prospect. His usual partner with rhymes DRS also wittily held it down.

Before Marcus Intalex  and dBridge’s advertised Jungle set we had to head out, our Easter-weekended aged frames needing to bed down.

Hackney Downs Studios proved a quality venue for the night and a definite improvement to previous spots for ABoC nights, Cable and The Arches [is it Arcadia now?]. Sound-wise we had no complaints, the Funktion-One rig loud enough to feel in your ribs without being abrasive on your eardrums.

The next A Bunch of Cuts event is due in August at the same spot and well worth getting a sweat on at. Monitor Broken & Uneven and/or Exit Records for exact info.

Like dBridge did, we’ll leave you with this one.

Photos by Daddy’s Got Sweets from RA.

Wait for the close ups of the kitty.

Thunder thunder Thundercat. (Interview over at Life+Times)