noisefromthevoid

“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dream. Wandering by lone sea breakers, and sitting by desolate streams. World losers and world forsakers, for whom the pale moon gleams. Yet we are movers and the shakers of the world forever it seems.” - A. O’Shaughnessy

follow that calling - 9pm Tues April 29th in the VOID..

go to 90hz.org to listen and chat or use the flashplayer below..

[another selection from the musical vaults of my youth]

here’s a couple of tracks from Psychic TV’s 1982 ‘Force The Hand of Chance’ album which i was given as a gift sometime way back then..

I could probably write pages about Psychic TV, their eccentric frontman Genesis P.Orridge, and his previous band Throbbing Gristle due to their mad innovations in the world of electronic music, as well as their highly unconventional attitudes and lifestyles, but I’ll do my best to keep it simple.

Over the years Genesis has had his finger in many musical pies - from the psychedelic 70’s thru to punk rock, industrial music, acid house and much more. And even though he’s responsible for coining the term “industrial music” way back in the 70’s his musical output has been far too diverse to be categorized beyond very loose terms like “innovative” and “experimental”. It certainly has very litle in common with today’s bland and predictable incarnations of “industrial music”.

His interest in magick, ritual and other more esoteric spiritual, philosophical and artistic realms got him written off by many in the mainstream UK press as a nut-job, in fact he was branded the “evilist man in Britain” in the early 90s and was forced into exile as a result of bogus and trumped up indecency charges. As a result of being “on the run” Genesis ended up in California where amongst other things he worked on projects with psychedelic guru Timothy Leary, and even made a track with our old friend Markie from Wicked called “Kondole 3″. When i dig out my copy of that collaboration I’ll post it for you..

Genesis has long since put his troubles with the law behind him and now lives in New York. He’s still as eccentric as ever, and performs regularly with the most recent incarnation of his band - Psychic TV 3, as well as with Throbbing Gristle occasionally. I don’t really follow their more recent projects but I do regularly play old Psychic TV and Throbbing Gristle trax on my VOID show. Alot of the early stuff is ahead of it’s time and IMHO still sounds fresh and interesting up against the best of todays electronic music. Even if you’re not a listener of my VOID shows you may recognize the “OV Power” track from some of my live dj sets in the past..

so listen and enjoy -

Psychic TV - No Go Go.mp3

Psychic TV - Ov Power.mp3

This is the song Midget Submarines..

by Swell Maps..

Who were Krautrock influenced avante garde DIY punk pioneers. They formed in 1972, put out their first record in 1976, released a couple of studio albums, and a couple of compilations, then split up in the eighties. You can hear there sound in so many other ‘punk’ bands who followed after them. There releases also included a bunch of experimental ‘ambient’ music, long before the genre even existed..

Midget Submarines - 1979

The paradox of hedonism: When one pursues happiness itself, one is miserable; but, when one pursues something else, one achieves happiness..

9pm tonight in the VOID..

go to 90hz.org to listen and chat, or use the flashplayer below..

1988. House music at it’s peak? Who knows or really cares..

Let’s just enjoy it for what it was. And if in the process we happen to skip over most of of what passed itself off as ‘house’ music during the 20 years since then, well I for one aint gonna complain. Quality over quantity aint a bad mantra to live by, is it?

listen and enjoy Marshall Jefferson presents The Truth - Open Your Eyes.mp3

Released on Big Beat Records - 1988..

this is ‘KUKL’..

they were an Icelandic post-punk band that included a young Bjork in her pre-SugarCubes days..

They released 2 albums on the anarchist punk label ‘Crass Records’ including the track in the video below, and I was fortunate enough to see them live in concert 1984 along with anarcho-punk pioneers Flux of Pink Indians. I clearly recall Bjork’s unique and wildly expressive voice, and phenomenal stage presence, but it wasn’t ’til I met her in person at a squatted acid-house party in London in 1990 that I also recognized her as the singer with KUKL..

I’m gonna post some of their edgier stuff in the future, but for now here’s a youtube clip of them performing ‘Anna’..

enjoy

This week I’ll be joined by special guest Alona..

She’s a local dj and crate digger who I originally met through Cosmic Jason and Travis - so if you enjoyed their eclectic selections in the void then you’ll love her refined musical edge. You can also find her HERE on her own radio show and blog Lovenoodles.

So tune in this Tuesday April 15th as we ignite the fuse of musical expression & emotion, and blast off into the colorful VOID..

go to 90hz.org to listen or use the flashplayer below. And I’ll be in the chat while Alona’s spinning so join me there if you dare. Remember to register in the 90hz.forum to gain access to the chatroom..

[another selection brought to you from the musical vaults of my teenage years]

Picked this up when I was 17. I loved it and hated it at the same time. From the Brown Reason To Live EP, Released on San Francisco’s own Alternative Tentacles label during it’s heyday. These guys were seriously off the wall. Calling them psychedelic punk pranksters is an understatement..

But anyways the track “Hey” still tickles my fancy, even after all these years. Enjoy..

Listen - The Butthole Surfers - Hey.mp3

I originally posted the trailer for this movie on here a good while ago. Last night I finally got the chance to see the whole thing..

I was especially hyped to see it because of the era it’s set in - Thatcher’s Britain. An era in which I, like the characters in the movie, grew up and came of age. I’m not gonna pull punches, it was generally a period of widespread alienation, cultural desolation, and divisive politics as the right-wing conservative government of the time not only fought an unnecessary war with Argentina, but also fought an underhanded class war with it’s own people - the “enemy within” to quote the prime minister Margaret Thatcher at the time. I’d say it was not unlike the McCarthy witchhunts of the 50’s here in the States, but it was now the late 70’s and the enemy wasn’t a small number of ‘commies’ and ‘pinkos’, it was a whole class of organised working people.

I remember it all so vividly: joining the dole queue as unemployment soared to 1 in 10 of the population, while the government destroyed industry after industry and instead pandered to the newly emerging yuppie culture. Of getting organised to fight back, for instance going door to door through my neighborhood and panhandling on the street with buckets, to collect food and donations for the country’s coal miners, who at the time were on strike fighting a painfully long, drawn out and ultimately losing battle with the Thatcher government..

But politics aside - it was also a time when youth culture was thriving. Punks, mods, skinheads, new romantics, greebos, goths and all kinds of subcultures came and went at breakneck speed, all overlapping each other, along with their associated music, styles and attitudes. This film focuses almost exclusively on the skinheads - the mostly working class white kids who reacted (in part at least) to the middle class hippy culture of the 60’s by for instance cropping their hair off instead of growing it long, and wearing their jeans tight and tucked in their boots instead of loose and flared.

Those original skinheads were also heavily inspired by Jamaican culture & the rude boys and girls who had brought ska and rocksteady music to the shores of Britian during the post-war boom of the late 50’s and 60’s. Unfortunately over time the skinheads gained a reputation for being extremely violent, nationalistic and racist, but this movie focuses mostly on the original skinheads who were a different breed. The movie does however still deal with the issue of race, quite bluntly and violently at times, but it does so authentically, not in an over sensationalized or glamorized hollywood way like some other movies I wont bother to mention.

And watching this film I could relate - as a teenager I grew up in a mostly working class white community where a majority of the kids my age were aligned with either rude boy or skinhead culture. And although the skinheads I knew weren’t particularly interested in politics or racial aggravation, there were still other right-wing skinheads & agitators aggressively flyering and recruiting outside our school gates whenever they felt like it. It was scary back then - at times anyways - especially being into punk rock, constantly wondering I was gonna be attacked for being different. But like most folks I made it through relatively unscathed, and a little wiser and stronger to boot.

And I have to say this movie really nails the mood, feel, and look of those times. The music, the clothes, the run down council estates, the overgrown and abandoned buildings, even the old World War II relics littering the beaches, as they did where I lived. I watched the whole movie without taking my eyes off the screen, entranced like I was in some kind of time warp, the various characters so often reminding me of old friends, even down to the smallest details like their facial tattoos and vicious humor..

And I cant help but add that this movie, along with the memories it invokes stands in stark contrast to my first experience bumping into a gang of Bay Area skinheads on Haight St way back when I first moved to San Francisco. For a moment that afternoon I thought I was gonna get the sh*t kicked outta me, but they turned out to be the mellowest, friendliest and cuddliest skinheads I’d ever crossed paths with in my life. Ha, ha.. They may have adopted the look of working class England in the 70’s but they certainly hadn’t lived it. And with that in mind I hope that they or anyone else for that matter who finds themselves drawn to British culture and style finds time to see this movie. It’s beautiful, funny, poignant, harsh, sad and moving, in a way that captures the truth of those times, and the truth of growing up white in working class Britain..

As a kid I was rarely teased about my unusual name. And considering I attended mostly traditional working class schools where fist-fighting, bullying and vicious teasing were as commonplace as pimples, I clearly got off easy..

But there was one name my friends briefly branded me with, after she got a song to the top end of the British music charts - “Lena Lovich”. As a result of that short-lived but annoying name calling I’ve always felt a certain connection with her and her crazy braids, and I’m glad to say she made a couple of decent post-punk tracks along a path of mostly pop-induced musical quirkiness. So here she is - Jeno (oops, I mean Lena) Lovich! Enjoy..

not the first time I’ve posted something re; Delia Derbyshire and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, but it inspires me that this talented woman was looping beats when I was still a twinkle in my parents eyes..