itchy
THRUST
30 Apr 2008
TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA
Okay, so the latest installment of my on-line column for FACT is up and about, sipping soup in its dressing-gown. This time I'm zoom-focusing in on the sound of True Sheffield Black Psychedelia and the wonderous Frequency Thirteen label. So a big thanks to Skul and Troll for taking the time to talk to me and for sending me some fabulous CDs that certainly rank amongst some of the best stuff I've heard in recent months. Top blokes, and 666 hails to ya both! (And kudos to Brad for tiltin' me towards their releases)
Here's one that slipped thru the article - I'm not even sure if this is out yet, or what's happening with it - but "Culture is not your friend (Parts I- III) " by Dukkha is great and here's some of my wayward thoughts on it...
Tonal hummm. "Part One" is Fripp and Eno's "No Pussyfooting" after it's been taken to the saw-mill: rough edges and tiny splinters instead of that gooey walnut-whip romantism that Bob n Bri useta peddled; for a pair of so-called early-70's cocksmen they sure were a pair of softies; a coupla red wine n candle merchants, if yeh ask me. For someone who once 'boasted' of making "music as ignorable as it is listenable," much of the E-Man's back-catalogue sure is smeared in a creamy layer of sentimentalism. Bloody failed art-student! Anywaaays...
Thiiis has the texture of tree-bark or small pieces of metal swarf sat in a recycle-bin, oily yet sharp to the touch. An old power-tool partially decommissioned. Love the way it slowly acretes mass and momentuum; an old lorry slowly rolling dn hill with the handbrake (and the radio) still on... after a while it rolls off and becomes part of the landscape, muffled by the surrounding hills, and is replaced by slow-twistin' chimes that seem to hover in some artificial void - the sound of someone's uncle dying: abstract and minimal, yet oddly poignant: incidental music from a film about fog...slow-roiling cloud of volcanic ash; mushroom-cloud footage reviewed by a roomful of scientists, one of them smoking a cigarette, lit by the flicker of an 8mm projector, oblivious to the irony...
Dissolve to "Part Two" (uh, are those quotes necessary? I'm no longer sure...) and the layer'd guitar tones stretch-out like the Elongated man after a quaalude binge...this is warm and restful, like a in some salt-heavy inland-sea... hisses intrude like someone's just opened the sluice-gates...flutter, ripple and drone: I'm thinking of that little weir at West Bay...
Later: tiny tiny emerge ever so slowly, breaking the surface of the water w/ the bearest of ripples; shallow domes emerge from within a Cocteau mirror; a miniscus in reverse.
The disturbances become more prominent; a sense of vague unease gathering in a rural community. Seagulls circle overhead while I listen to this - dipping and wheeling around the smokestacks - a starnge gun-metal grey cloud floats at the same speed as the music, trailed by a narrow cirrus finger of vapour in the shape of a hook: a cloud with its very own anchor...
Paper bats flutter past; a gramophone-player winding-up.
This is the soundtrack to mercury poisoning: not smooth and semi-liquid like the metal itself, but music that comes complete with jagged microscopic snags and slivers of hook-like digital static (just like that cloud, but instead they swirl ever inward; metallic currents clogging up yr bloodstream and yr thought-processes...) that catch and tug at yr skin, yr cells, yr sanity. Sound (and meaning) are viewed at a distance - a slow promenade of information detached from context, bleached of meaning. The Ominous becomes your friend.
Later still: I'm haunted by generators - their fluctuating tones and submerged inner rhythms are rattling me enzymes, messing w/ me metabolism - AC current made manifest here, methinks: the sound of electricity made whole, played by a musician who thinks he's playing, but is actually being played...the inner buzz-tics of micro-biovoltages are making themselves heard via a guitar. Those FX-pedals are powered by ambient static leaking from yer shoes...
It's gets a bit heavy for a while. My daughter wouldn't like this. D.O.R. clouds assembling overhead, cracked by arcs of arcane blue lightning...it's like standing inside a turbine or listening to Sammy Hagar on a walkman while taking that Boat-trip into Niagra Falls. R2D2 comms-chatter; Asteroid Miner loading from a cassette-deck while 8-bit Manganese Birds tm ascend a morbid staircase... and still the wheels of industry continue to turn.
An ancient riff trieds to climb out of a theme-park mining-accident...(I've written before about how some music needs suspension of disbelief from the listener- how it needs you to cheer it on, to help imagine how it's meant to sound...sometimes you just need to reach up towards the music or to stoop down and help it up...I get so pissed off w/ this attitude of passive acceptance; sometime we need to meet things half-way, to make an effort...)...now, it starts sounding hairy, an emormous furball of hair climbing up the the throat of a massive cat...a brief reference of the original soundtrack to "Frankenstein", but played on a guitar clogged by fuzz and hair...
When the keyboards finally come in, it sounds so wonderful...like Burzum playing in a church in space that's slowly burning up on re-entry...then we hit cold, fresh air and everything sounds so clean and open, limitless and untethered...
...and so we drift into "Part Three" and the ghost of Klaus Schultz plays a spectral colour-note organ, downpitched and adrift: '72 Kosmische a'swirl, icecream tones shifting and coalescing: "Traummaschine" rebuilt for a post-digital age...
29 Apr 2008
Dry Mist (part 4 of 4)
The King sits on his throne with an amber tiger tooth around his neck. “I look forward to your performance tomorrow very much.”
“There will be no theatrics involved, Your Highness,” says the Diplomat. “I’m as tired of those gutterpunks as you are. If it wasn’t for this one agent they would have been eliminated months ago. I just don’t understand him. Hard to kill what you can’t comprehend.”
“I’ll take care of Kaph. I have to admit I didn’t want to touch him at first – the kid leaves spirits on the ground in a puddle. But I got it figured out. It just took me a while to learn how to deconstruct an aura, that’s all.” Kaph walks in silent and transparent. “Honestly, in all my years in power I never understood rebellions like these. What’s the purpose of it? What do they want? We mind our own business. Sure we’ve killed their men but only the ones trying to start conflict in our territory. They don’t even live on our land, for Christ’s sake; the fuckers come from Penumbra! What do they want?”
“A fine question, Your Highness. And one that will be put to rest with the extermination of their kind tomorrow.”
“I anticipate its slumber. I suppose any strong nation will have its opposition but we really must work to suppress that of mere terrorism.”
“Amen,” says the Diplomat, toasting the King on his elevated chair. As they plunge into their drinks Kaph moves in for the kill. So they think they’re wiping us out tomorrow? he thinks. Watch what happens as I infest the King’s faculties and deprogram this Diplomat down to neutrality. Start sliding in my own men, eat through the Vide apple from the inside-out…
Then Kaph hesitates – but what is our purpose? The Vides never interfered with us until we started trying to spring a leak in them – and isn’t it men trying to control other men’s lives the thing we’ve based this whole conflict on? – and with every soul I extinguish, what does that make me? – but he shakes his head, remembering his objective, and approaches the King.
Kaph stands face to face with Montée and breathes deep. Here goes, he thinks.
– I can see you –
Kaph stands rigid. He heard the voice as if it came from inside his own head, but it sounded exactly like the King.
– Don’t fool yourself, Mr. Martin. We’ve known about you since you dodged execution. You’re getting way too cocky for your own good. Goodbye –
Kaph turns and starts to dissipate. An orange beam shoots out of the tiger claw around the King’s neck and hits Kaph in the back; the whole room lights up like a fire and all Kaph can see through his eyes are kaleidoscope interpretations of the once lucid scenery. He sways down to the ground like a leaf and incinerates upon contact with the floor. His aura sits in a dense puddle waiting to evaporate.
.nothing twice. -as words- (For Tictac)
incremental decrease
i lower my aggresive lip
to study the compound standard
of my lakeland views.
mirrored twofold
the blind water diarys events
with the grey nuances of bland sky
the isolation of tao.
28 Apr 2008
Dry Mist (part 3 of 4)
“They’re killing us by the handful,” Kaph says. “Disgracing the leftovers too.”
“But we got you, Kaph. They can’t touch you.”
“Maybe not, but I can’t touch them either. I crawl around on invisible legs but if I were to throw a punch I’d slip right through, you know what I mean? I can evade but I’m only as strong as that. No one ever won a war strictly on the defense.”
“You’d be surprised, Kaph.” Rip shuffles the molecular deck of cards in front of him and splays them across the table. He drops a finger on the king of spades. Kaph studies the card and realizes it’s animated; the spade lifts out of place and implants itself in the king’s heart. “We got a plan to foil Montée. Don’t know why we haven’t tried it before. You’re gonna dig into his body. Easier to burn down a fort from inside.”
“I know why we haven’t tried it before. Montée knows about me, Rip. He knows what I do. I’m sure he already suspects me for that stunt I pulled last night. I can’t just waltz into him. He’s gonna have his defenses, Rip, he’s the king. Come on, don’t drop me between a rock and a hard place.”
“Cough your way out, it’s what you do best. This is war, Kaph. We gotta do what we gotta do. You think you can walk on cake the whole time?”
“Not war so much as liberation.”
“Call it what you will.”
Kaph sighs. “You lose me, you lose the only agent you got. The Vide’ll clean you out of here with a hose.”
“We won’t lose you! It’s foolproof!”
“In what sense? You don’t know the King’s defenses.”
“Cuz there ain’t any to know, Kaph, I promise you. Just do it. Honestly, man, this is the best scheme we’ve hatched so far, and you’re down on it?”
“The boldest – not necessarily the best. My instincts are quivering here, Rip.”
“You’ll pull shit like that corpse stunt and you won’t do this?”
Kaph shakes his head. “Whatever. I’ll do it. Your loss.”
21st Century
21st Century Programme
16.15 -16.20 - Chairs Welcome
Introduction to holistic risk factor stratagem and museli.
16.20 - 16.40 - Rick in Hypertensive
More blood than pressure.
16.40 - 17.00 - Reducing Strategies within 'Time Bomb'
Participation, Procreation, Procrastination.
17.00 - 17.15 - Panel Discussion
Faculty, Facility, Faulty and beyond.
27 Apr 2008
colour of bruises
Venus in polyester / slender white fingers tipped with flaked nail polish the colour of violent bruises / tattered roadside porn / scuffed and folded / disintegrating / the corpse of a hare hollowed / eyeless / gazing bleakly black orifice… an explosion of curves barely covered by a t-shirt / I sit in the mcdonalds and eat their meat candy / dip crisp spikes into a paper ketchup bucket / meeting eyes / opaque perfected make-up / magazine gloss / annihilated faces / unshaved / unwaxed / under the table scratching for a sheathed straw… my jeans chromosomes are all wrong / flapping like lateral flares / but the other pair hangs just right / ah that extra inch makes it just right / white patterned stockings and a bag of hearts / heading for pocklington… chunks of bunker concrete / reinforced / rust spikes out / gouges scenery… the urinal in poxlington contains a gorgeous decay / gunk and growth / paint hangs in spiked cobwebbed slabs from the ceiling / the steel sluice burnished with piss lichen / no need to wash your hands and to think the grammar school just a couple hundred yards away…
20 mayfair please / he pushes a gem studded rectangle into his earlobe / after school the screams on the bus / I hope I won’t be molested by nubile fingers / torn apart / eaten / shat out / dwelled upon like a painful conversation / a constellation of plump buttocks gathers in sportswear / hair pulled back / silver rings loll from ears / but easily detached in order to garrotte a member or two of the communist french resistance / it is yorkshire / it is the fatal stench of… of the bbc trying to make britain big in small rooms / such a copious landscape and limited...
Hand imprinted by rubber / a happy aspect and linear impressions in the palm / immaculate fascistic violins spawn scission / the soporific pains / the emasculated fountains that spout an ignorance of fast food and yet can’t cook / more comfortable with their tractors harvesting food / the 11:27 from where the dog shits behind it’s notice board prison / from where the ammunition passes through / strapped down / in metal cases and clearly labelled / I fill an underused bin with boredom bottles / smoke down my skin in ages / in pregnancy harm and inhibited gasps / blood boards the number 10 to rattle along under big skies / underneath thin clouds burnished by the half moon / a screaming white stiletto piercing a waterbed / beautiful gaps in forward teeth / sheaths of thin rubber ruben thighs / tight / circulatory restrictive hoops / ribs / pendulums marking time in erectile tissue / blood strewn hope / hungry veins / happy veins beneath a tan synthetic / a calf muscle bulges and nervous laughter erupts across a volkswagon driven by people in stripy pyjamas…
Wholesome / smell of wood smoke / meat and children’s voices / the rush of exercise / boots made for occasions / close cropped hair / giggles / runs a finger along a blade / meaning it’s sharp / it can cut / yawning throats swallow down indigestible conversation / buses / weather / acknowledgement / pristine urinals / mirrors to remind you of your animal act / unless of course you like yourself / dogs that cock a snoop and then a leg at a lamppost / trickles across pavement / runs the seams of gasworks’ tarmac / water board tarmac and council tinkering / makes a puddle next to squashed chewing plastic / moulded by molars / / in the village sheep and drunks bleating / / a gripe / an empty paradise lays off its fleeced and worn uniforms / its replica ss daggers collect dust in their plaggy grips / its repetition of pleasure caresses a piercing / a tattoo / make believe eyeliner / impossibilities account for most suicides / the country road speckled with discarded fuel canisters / benson / hedges / mayfair superkings and the lubricating cans / used images and diapers / looking for spots / to hit that spot / pop it / puss oil tween forefinger and thumb…
Dry Mist (part 2 of 4)
Kaph ducks a manhole at midnight and drops through the street. The sewers stink of decomposition and moss peels off the walls like crusted blood. He cuts through conduits that open up to a larger chamber, where he finds a man in a subtle blue jumpsuit fading into his surroundings. Molecular playing cards spin in front of him like jets. “Kaph,” says Rip with a grin, “been waiting for you all night. What you got for us?”
“I saw the prison field, man. Not a pretty sight. Torture yard, the execution of innocents. They had me bundled up tight and the executioner comes up to me and says like the Vide asshole he is, ‘Which noose you wanna go down in?’ They had ‘em in all different colors and stuff, tryin’ to be cute I guess.”
“That’s the fuckin’ Vides all right. What’d you do?”
“I told him I didn’t see how one could be better than any other. The asshole holds up a studded collar and says ‘Then I’ll pick.’ So I spat myself out. The wind carried me around the city until I could find a new body to flood. How do you like it, by the way?”
“It’s alright. Doesn’t really suit you. Where’d you find this one?”
“Trying to pick up whores in the red zone. Standin’ there like an awkward teenager. I penetrated the eyeballs just for fun.”
“Well, we’re workin’ on somethin’ to utilize your ability. One thing the Vides don’t got on their side is an aura. What’s the plan tonight?”
“Scope ‘em out, throw ‘em for a loop. Express myself. I think confusion is generally the best softening agent.”
“Agreed. The more bizarre the aggressor, the harder he is to defend against. Don’t let them think we forgot them. I’ll see you tomorrow, Kaph.”
Kaph leaves his shell behind and blows out of the manhole in soft velvet wisps. He flutters towards the sky and spreads out over Penumbra City like a cloud; shifts over abstract skyscrapers, glass cubes connected with long steel cylinders, lofts made of garnet. A field of grass blue like a Caribbean ocean. He leaves Penumbra and drifts over Vide land, where he sees familiar imperial buildings and condenses into a young boy walking alone.
After penetrating the young Vide body he follows a crowd into the King’s fortress. Ancient Chinese architecture bamboo roofs and paper-thin doors. They surround an empty swimming pool about forty-five feet long and fifteen feet deep.
King Montée calls for silence and gestures to the man beside him. The man pulls a lever and several doors swing open in the pool; corpses file out moaning entranced in deathbed state and walk towards the center.
“Isn’t it beautiful!” the King calls. “Gutterpunk corpses reanimated! This is the result of trying to terrorize our land!” There is a wave of applause. Kaph studies the corpses and realizes he recognizes one from his time in the execution yard – a Vide insubordinate who told Kaph about a failed attempt at murder on an official, which brought him swift to the gallows – the corpse resembles the man enough to catch his attention but looks like he’s been dipped in a garbage disposal.
Then Kaph stands and jumps down into the pool, knees buckling against the impact. Never can be sure what condition a body will be in, he thinks. He stands in the center of the corpse-vortex with arms outstretched, watching the Vide faces drop to raw fear and disgust.
He breathes deep and exhales – his spirit slips out of him and he hovers momentarily over the empty body he just vacated, watching the corpses claw through its flesh. A well of viscera sprays across the pool floor.
Three August Suns
Warm winds tremble a single leaf. The sun hovers with a fierce composure. Its heat causes ripples on the surface of the world. A light dust coats things. Rocks. Plants. Trees. Thoughts.
Forever and a day this is how life here has been. A drought of uncertainty in a wealth of assurances.
26 Apr 2008
Dream Beast
using only a surgical knife
sealing wax
and arcane artifice
they removed the cerebral cortex from the infant child
and by merging it
with
the hollow husk of a cetacean
and some albatross feathers
they created a manequin of sublime and remote nightmare.
they had no name for such
a creature
and named it not
for it was delightful to work but frightening to watch
but by casting it
soft
in dappled shadows of dusk
they implemented a new
and terrifying beast of gargantuan and robust dream.
the dream beast.
another me
this could be another me.
see the man down there with his suit and polished boots?
this could be another me.
all confidence and cock-a-hoop bravado.
feeling this world shift cold glass to chrome with all the emotion of a cactus. i still recall those tender days when the monkees fell about and television didn't reward the talentless.
and the hope and hearts of humankind lay in the hands of children with flowers in their hair and foolish dreams in their rolled up reefers.
this could be another me.
not traped within these cold confines that limits imagination and brings my days to a close, a life of chasing paper.
i could dream.
i still dream.
and in my dreams i dance with the ghosts of tomorrow who hold me close, in arms verdant fresh and strong, and spin the dance on polished floors down mirrored walls where silver cobwebs hang and trophies watch from lichen lintels the passing of my thoughts.
but who will hold me when the spotlight fades? when my childrens faces retreat from me?
the door will close.
the light will cease.
a failing of wings and cloudless mumbles of goodbye.
such a waste when summer trips into the fallen leaves.
crumbling brickface.
ivy marks the windowsill where lovers once would climb.
and in the garden there is a pond and in the pond a statue stands but the fountain has gone dry.
i'm rambling now
but let me ramble for what harm can it do?
see the man down there?
a shriveled husk of once-a-go whose children used him like a slide, a climbing frame for them to bridge.
arms will grow to jelly and the spine will twist as wire but the darkness doesn't scare me just the missing of them all.
this could be another me.
maybe i could make a deal with god?
cheat the fates and bone collectors as i thumb my nose and skip away with all memories and loved ones still with me.
this could be another me.
the man who like all men fears the unkown.
separate
fruu.mp3
lowlay.mp3
guu.mp3
crybaby.mp3
all together
ssa.mp3
all together fasterr
does.mp3
Dry Mist (part 1 of 4)
Kaph Martin stands on a black mountain staring the executioner in the face. His focus remains only on the groan of sky as clouds blot out the sun. The air around him seems to tremble as he remains perfectly calm.
“So you’re one of them,” the executioner says. “Gutterpunks – or do you have a name for yourself?”
“No names, no organizations. We are men from Penumbra who have taken to the underground to escape all traces of arrangement and the essence of which the Vides are made.”
“What’s so wrong with the Vides, huh? Or organization, for that matter? I think the majority of people would agree that it’s worth what we ask to sacrifice – independence from all forms of law and order – for the protection and additional freedoms they get back.”
“Not me. I won’t rest until every human on this planet is free. I suppose the term you’d staple on me is ‘anarchist’, though that’s not the half of it.”
“Well, I’ll take special pleasure in offing you,” he says. “But it’s that agent you got, Kaph Martin, that we really want. Gotta give it to you, it’s hard to catch a guy when you can’t see his face. Or does he even have a face?”
Kaph smiles, cloaked by another man’s flesh. “Only in the naked soul. The face you will see him in belongs to someone else – perhaps, one day, that face will be your own.”
This clearly shakes the executioner. “Alright, let’s get this over with. For all I know, Kaph could be you.” He opens a chest filled with ropes. “Which noose you wanna go down in?”
strangels
your sea
reek i
so tropic time
has bridled
us both
call it bursting
clouds we
lie face
to face
rolling the blackberries
of our tongue
*
we spent
that whole
vacation
unpacking
each others’
dialogue
in the hollow
of the wine
dark sea
our words
lashed angels’
backs like
kisses.
Why Yellow Submarines were allways really blue. [in progress]
Singing frogs in a telephone booth
play the tune for old shark tooth
The violent octipus dances gleefully
as Waldo's now searching for uncle steve
The Lying Squid sleeps under rock bottom
Telling truth to only men behind you
Angelic remedies of how to get to heaven
Give direction to mars without a begining
She wishes she never met you
and goes on about drinking the flu
I now see the reasoning behind the world
You are who you are
but you are never you
and that's why Yellow submarines
were allways really blue.
'Patience'
25 Apr 2008
knock knock
i got your mother in my pocket; ventrilloquising her with my ugly thumb
ithyphall ithyphall ithyphall
24 Apr 2008
Numbers to bridges
cleverly fractured arguments form ideas among the surgeon: As value disappears, perhaps lingering too close for being owned as the weather. Clouds grace my drink. For the first time in the day I consider my carbon output then decide to sit down next to the window, for better view of th concrete. In turn, I inhale a better world. But find myself swimming against the current of the room. The air is 85% nonchalance. If I was to die now, conforming to a cycle, my energy would feed contradiction. Her voice echoes ever haunting my every crossword puzzle. Consonants form my stance against- celebrities. Constant sex. My every Ecstasy carefully placed on turntables without the middle. A somewhat warped stereotype; that I reach her facing East. Numbers pilled against worship ignoring space in order to reach conclusion. Intrusive ideas invade us like video games with more meaning. Collect pieces of fracture among the deformed ideals_Mutated sense survived the collision, all we owed left.
Consider the machination of his flesh; intense:how it coincides. Collisions against him and her existence; as leverage: Polarized:: Making etiquette a quiet distance. An acquired ordeal, is justice. All else files. An imagination pointing west; suggestive of profits with excess fat into opposite sex: Ideally_I do all the talking. Idle: I delete all fifths. Intense, as the machination of his flesh. How it collides is against all. Which (is) her. Existence. As covered, firstly.
Signatures revolve around appliance/Ink as applied/ appropriately fenced in orbit. Perhaps this, my next freight_ Distracted by the baby_ Exploited sense of remembrance. All else follows through the shaped sound of stained renditions like the third option: spoken from the point of view sharp enough to take a stab in the dark and draw blood from his hidden agenda. Like clockwork. Global laps around hunger, with bleach as incentive, we are all invited. Including terror from beyond the decimal in the scope. The disassociate behind a name comes clean as easy as soap. Stumbled upon a burial ground as though dowsing with practiced instruments. we play the souls of the dead. Building railroads through the forgotten trespasses of our purpose. Transposed against indigo, a glowing field, burnt by my best wishes to survive. this I've collected as a dance absorbed by my flesh mirrored in the path of teardrops. She catches. I'm thrown out of orbit, by degrees that couldn't raise the situation above temporal. In in stitches. Side stepped chords from tunes hummed to provide hope from despair. When the voice of God invades you and rapes your dreams past death. When Buddha is in the way. All else follows, or, numbers to bridges. Clouds to coal.
Images
Images
Images
I might Just. If I could only--ask.
Imagine this space as us.
All else follows. All else flows in no logical fashion. My dreams react as shrapnel in the garbage of nothing - timed against the machinations I was born to strip into. Begging. Begging. Begging. Ignore the change they refuse to throw and collect the souls in their strides. Yes, we walk badly. Twice malfunctioned as a process before noon. Still searching for a more appropriate fracture to warn the doctor.
mothers pocket (syphon of syphilac)
mother wanted to worm albert, her hubby and scrinch, but albert wasn't having any of it and ran off with maude the next door neighbours poodle. tail raised and wan as a bucket of prime meat.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
