is it is it is it: September 2009

Der Zauberberg again

This book is the reason I went to Davos in Switzerland and stayed in an ex-sanatorium. I read it last year, it took me months, as there's quite a few long sections involving very drawn out political and philosophical arguments between two of the characters, which I found a struggle to get through at times. I have a kind of lock in my mind that doesn't let me skip bits when reading. Even if I manage to do it I find myself going back after half a page to fulfill my obligation. this must have been inherited from my mum, who taught me to play Scrabble and solve cryptic crosswords and is equally as pedantic as me.

The story is of a young idler from Hamburg who visits his consumptive cousin — resident of an alpine tuberculosis sanatorium — planning on staying three weeks, but ending up staying seven years. The Magic Mountain deals with the concept of time, how we humans perceive it, and also of the body and its construction and fallibilities. This paragraph (click picture for readable version), beginning "as he lay there above the glimmering valley...", struck me when I first read it and has haunted me since. Hans Castorp, the novel's protagonist with nothing but time on his hands, has been exhaustively studying human physiology and at the same time falling obsessively in love from afar with Clavdia Chauchat, a Russian fellow patient (who I could only picture as Tatjana Patitz, the 90s supermodel, something about the "Kyrgyz eyes" that Castorp goes on about). It amazed me the way this paragraph manages so deftly to shift from the almost abstract and completely universal workings of the body's cells (Humanity) to then travel physically outwards and narrow the description down to one particularly beautiful formation of cells (Her). Castorp just can't shake Clavdia from his head, every thought he has metamorphoses into her.

So because of all this I journeyed to the Alps to sit on my balcony, pretend I had tuberculosis and take in the air. I'm still not quite sure what the GAS album of the same name (Zauberberg is Magic Mountain in German) has to do with the book, but it made a perfect soundtrack to the train journey up the 1500 vertical metres to Davos Platz on a narrow gauge, tugboat-like train. Once I'd got there I had a short walk to the Schatzalpbahn, a funicular railway that took me up the final 300 metres to my hotel, this place.

Home

I have returned, feeling optimistic, refreshed and inspired.

Newish mix

I listened to this the other day on the train between Wurzburg and Frankfurt and surprised myself for liking it all the way through. I was going to post it when I made it, but didn't as the ending is the same as another old one. This was inspired by Ravé Trois and starts off low-slung and woozy, goes a bit mongy, mutates into something somewhat savage with some classic Nitzer Ebb and finally calms down with plaintive melancholia and bleeps.

Speedy J & George Issakidis — Sculpture 1986
Kassem Mosse — No Peace No Love No Unity
Blagger — Strange Behaviour (DJ Koze remix)
Margaret Dygas — Invisible Circles
Levon Vincent — Invisible Bitchslap
Jack Master — Bang The Box
Nitzer Ebb — Join In The Chant
Fanon Flowers — Acid Kush/Kush Drums
D'Marc Cantu — No Control
Master C&J — Dub Love
Cassy — Night To Remember
Sweet Exorcist — Test One

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Postscript. I just realised there's an invisible segue in here: Margaret Dygas' Invisible Circles into Levon Vincent's Invisible Bitchslap. Covert operations indeed.

I might buy myself a pair of these rude Moncler puffa wellies

Went for a walk today

I want to come back next year, would anyone like to join me?

Rest cure

My tuberculosis is feeling better by the day.

Landquart to Davos Platz

I'll return to this post, when I've gathered my thoughts.

Zurich to Landquart

I was listening to this beautiful record as I left Zurich, and it appeared to be creating the world around me as the train moved forward. It's an almost ambient album of orchestral and choral pieces, which flow into each other like landscape. The shimmering droney passages were the Zurichsee through the hazy light and with each swell and crescendo the cloud was burnt away a little more, revealing the earth thrusting higher, the foothills becoming lushly forested mountains.

Bavarian bredren

I just spent three days in Würzburg with family. This is my cousin Lukas, he's a DJ at Labyrinth, the biggest alternative/punk/metal club for miles around. I went along on Friday with him and his brother Matthias. It was 2 for 1 night so we got royally fucked up on pilsner and schnapps. I recommend it for a good night of trinken und tanzen. He even played some Fugazi for me.

Frankfurt

Frankfurt skyline from the train looked like Omnicorp's plan for New Detroit in the original Robocop.

Distinguished colleagues, dead music writers' brides — I apologise

Detroyer's Dan Bejar is forever teetering on edges of things, without ever quite toppling over. His voice is a nasal whine or yelp that's almost annoying; his (almost overly) literary lyrics are incredibly verbose, self-referentially cryptic tales of "a life in art" and complicated women (that he makes sound wonderful) but they're always compelling, even when you have no idea what the fuck he's on about; and the band can almost go too far into glam rock, but always manage to rein themselves in. A blog I used to read called Said The Gramaphone had a link to one track they called the gateway to Destroyer — I'd heard the band's name before and was always intrigued by reviews, but they were right about the song, it had a perfect mixture of being instantly rewarding, but I felt I needed to know much more about it and Destroyer — it was Farrar, Straus and Giroux (Sea Of Tears) from Streethawk, A Seduction, which unfortunately is not a concept album about a crime-fighting talking motorbike. This one, Rubies, is my favourite at the moment.

I remember buying it on vinyl, and listening to it for the first time really loud whilst looking at the cover. The photo got me thinking that he looked like he had a good life, sitting there all intellectual with his beard, full bookcase and cute girlfriend. I was about to express this out loud, but looked aound me, saw my full bookcase and my beautiful girlfriend standing in the doorway, and decided to shut my mouth. It's like a slightly budget version of Bob Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home.

Berlin round-up: Cassy

Last Sunday I finally got to see/hear Cassy play at Panorama Bar in Berlin. Her productions (especially the two releases on Perlon) are just lovely - like bleached skeletons of old Chicago house records. She manages to squeeze real melancholic emotion out of what are virtually just three or four elements, repeated and slightly tweaked over eight minutes: the wonderful sounds of old Roland drum machines, all metallic handclaps and warm kickdrums; a 303 bassline; the barest of melody and her own plaintive voice, usually used as a motif, but occasionally singing a full song.

Anyway, she's one of the residents at Panorama Bar, the smaller upstairs room of Berghain, a big dark techno club in an old powerstation. The doors open at midnight on Friday and Cassy was on at 6pm on Sunday, which is when I arrived. I'm pretty sure I was the only person there who'd had a good night's sleep, a lie-in and a steak for lunch. I heard (and danced to) three hours of her set, and she played some good records, but it was all very banging and nothing came close to the subtleties and depth of her own recordings, which was disappointing, but then I wasn't sleep deprived and off my face, like everyone else. I suppose it's the same problem I talked about with Richie Hawtin, producer versus DJ, patience versus impatience. I left at 9.30pm had a beer on the way home and went to bed, it all felt quite civilised.

Berlin round-up: Surgeon

Arrived in Berlin on a Wednesday night, didn't do much, just hired a bike and mooched about a bit. Friday night saw me have a couple of beers at various bars and then go to the club Maria Am Ostbahnhof for a night called Electrodes & Wires. Got there about one but there wasn't much happening, just some bloke playing overly aggro techno so i sat and had another couple of Astras. T++ did a live set at 2, he's a name I know, but not really his music. It was good, Berlin techno minded dubstep, so I started my solo disco dancing to his set. It's a pretty big place but never got overly busy, which is fine by me. I just found a dark corner and got into it.
Surgeon was up next, the first I heard of him was his remix of LFO's Nurture on the Warp 10 year compilation (i just realised that's 10 years ago as they've just released the 20 year anniversary stuff... Time flies), it's a great track but most of his other productions have been a bit too heavy for me, I've never made it through one of his mixes, such as the one pictured above, but theres always something I like about them so I thought I'd see how it worked on a big system. It was as punishing and physical as I expected, but really supple in its rhythms and sounds, switching lightfootedly between boom boom boom 4/4 industrial techno and more complex dubstep beats, and then back into psychedelic acid workouts. Very good indeed, but still definitely not home listening music. As he describes himself on his entertaining blog "I play music at people". My body admitted defeat at about 5 and I weakly cycled back through the dawn to Friedenau, only getting lost once.

Funny that I come to Berlin and end up in a club dancing to a dude from Northampton.

Ritter Sport

Food of the gods.

Berlin: Thomas Demand

I went to the big Thomas Demand show at the Neue Nationalgalarie, it was very good, but I'd seen all but one or two new ones before. The captioning system was tackled in a nice way: instead of the normal wall mounted caption, there were glass topped display cases near each piece, with a book open on a particular text, relevant to each photograph. One paragraph struck me in particular, talking of the future of memory, how there soon will be no employment that requires the worker to have any memory, as all information will be digitalised and archived in this public Google-cloud.
This picture was taken a few days earlier, during the hanging. I had my greasy nose pressed up against the beautiful Mies van der Rohe windows, admiring this rude bit of Festool hardware.

Berlin mystery art

An on-street vitrine containing a minature version of itself, with no explanation. And no-one had broken it.

Berlin: half a building

Helmut Newton Foundation

It appears that the ghost of Helmut Newton has been taking pictures of my wife.

Helmut Newton's wheels

Berlin GS's

Sassnitz to Berlin

Electrelane were always one of those bands on the periphary of my knowledge - I'd see their name in articles and listings but never really get the urge to explore their sound. The vague impression I did get was they were a bit of a poor (wo)man's Stereolab so I stayed away.

For some reason, I think it was a link on a mail from Too Pure, their label (also home to the mighty Scout Niblett, hence me being on the mailing list) that offered a free track from their most recent album No Shouts No Calls. The track was To The East and I loved it as soon as the vocals started. I got all their stuff to hear how it really was, without my ear blinkers on. Their first couple of albums are mostly instrumental, and not that interesting to me, but there's something really wonderful about the vocals on these two later records, their voices are slightly flat, untrained and nonchalant, absolutely English. The song Enter Laughing is the pinnacle of this, the nuances of pronunciation and intonation are so evocative to me.

Memories are conjured up of the girls I fancied when I was in sixth form: unawarely beautiful South London middle class girls with cheeks like Braeburn apples and bedrooms full of crap self printed black and white photos, Klimt posters and the perpetual fug of joss sticks attempting to cover up their Marlboro Lights habit. I'd make them sensitive mixtapes and go to the New Cross Venue to watch bands with them, but never quite be able to convince them to kiss me. Strangely they all seemed to disappear when I started at art school — my particular favourite apparently got heavily into feminist performance art and went to live in Odessa. We exchanged waves a few years ago on Old Street, me on the 55 and her on a bike. She was still a beauty.
I forgot to say — Electrelane decided to go on an "indefinite hiatus" as soon as I belatedly discovered them. Typical.

Finally finished the fucking Flounder

The book that is, and to celebrate I ate one (the fish, that is) on an extremely apt Baltic harbourside. Unfortunately the debris was whisked away from my table before I could get a picture as evidence.

I found the book fascinating, as a study of gender politics through the ages, a history of Pomorshia, the potato in central Europe (the Prussians were apparently deeply suspicious of them) and a very witty, entertaining and thought provoking read.

There's one idea Grass explores, about the notion of fatherhood, that in Neolithic times, a matriarchal society kept its reign by witholding the knowledge of sexual reproduction from the males of the tribe, rendering them powerless. There was no concept of fatherhood, only motherhood, so the men had no real role to play in society and were kept virtually as children, until the talking flounder imparts his knowledge on one particular fisherman anyway. Interesting...

More highly desirable beachfront property opportunities

Innit!

A big stretch of beach on Rugen is backed by endless derelict DDR era holiday complexes, which look more like prison blocks, everyone seems to just ignore them and carry on as usual with their nakedness.
I've never seen a truer statement. Oh hang on, what about the Dewey Decimal System? Or the Snowplough system?

Naturism in mural form

I had glorious weather on Rugen, so I spent my time on the beach and in the jellyfish infested sea, along with schools of naked, leathery middle aged ex-East Germans. That's me with the drawn on penis.

Sassnitz is home to a big Matrix fan

Amazing

An inner tube vending machine outside a bike shop.

Clandestine R&D

You surely must be unaware that two of bicycling technology's giants (and my favourite sponsors) have pooled their research and development budgets to produce this secret weapon. It is astride this beautiful machine that I, Jan "Der Kaiser" Ullrich, shall return from retirement to finally show that imperialist schweinhund Armstrong just how strong I am, by winning the 2010 Tour de France. With it's 7 gears, 3 brakes (2 caliper, 1 hub), and superlightweight aerodynamic construction, I have managed to shave 30 seconds off my 15km TT route from Sassnitz to Ostseebad Binz, on the island of Rugen, my secret training ground near my hometown of Rostock. Of course I have to firstly thank Bjarne who is delighted with my progress and is confident of my victory, but final honours must go to Campagnolo and Pinarello for their masterwork, the Camporello.

Rostock to Sassnitz

A very rewarding album. Cryptograms by Deerhunter, it's really good to listen to on the plane as well. Droney noise pieces interspersed with shoegazey pop and krauty rocking out. That is all. I may add to this if and when I feel more expansive.

Hamburg to Rostock

I listened to a mix called In Clouds by this Koln based DJ, Cio d'Or. It's a bit slower and more dubby than usual for her, she plays quite psychedelic, deep, driving techno and her mixes have become real favourites of mine. I discovered during my second day in Hamburg that she'd played the night before in a really nice tiny club called Golden Pudel (poodle). That pissed me right off, as I would have been about 500 metres away at the time, having a beer. I've never heard her play in the flesh, though according to her website she's coming to London in November. Cio is one of the many amazing artists I've been introduced to by mnmlssgs, so thanks to Chris and the others for that one. There's usually more mixes on Cio's website as well (Polarlicht 22 being my favourite). Get thee stuck in.
Download In Clouds

Kunsthalle Hamburg

Saw a superb Sigmar Polke show yesterday, focussing on his work from the seventies. I've always been well into his paintings, but what made the exhibition so much more fascinating was all the context. There was a wall size display case full of contemporaneous record sleeves, flyers, underground comics (one called Middle Class Fantasies looked very funny) and the like, most of which were new to me, and I was poring over all that for a good half hour. Also what I found very inspiring was the group aspect of his work, Polke and his friends would swap stencils and images so recurrent motifs would emerge across a few artists' output, there was no insularity at all, something I am very guilty of.

A room was given over to beanbags and projections of super 8 film from one of the Dusseldorf gang's trips to New York, with a looped soundtrack of stuff like Here Comes Success and the Anglo-German version of Heroes, probably one of my favourite pieces of music ever. Also really interesting was the performance based things they got up to, lots of big parties with saucy seventies german art girls doing knife throwing acts and onetime members of Kraftwerk doing erotic shows. Looked like a right laugh.

Osnabruck to Hamburg

I'd been travelling all day and hadn't seen a hill since I left England, so after another couple of chapters of The Flounder I needed something to absorb me and provide some sort of narrative to make up for the lack of interest out of the train window.

I love the production and backing singing on this album, especially the children on Last Year's Man.

Ooh what to do, not a sausage to do

Amersfoort to Osnabruck. Heavy skies and Brian Eno as we enter the utopian vision that is Deutsche Bahn.

Rotterdam to Amersfoort

Whilst listening to Konigsforst by GAS, I changed on to a train that was already on the platform. When it lurched into movement I was travelling backwards. I got all deep and likened myself to Wolfgang Voight, looking backwards into the European classical tradition, whilst the muffelled kick drum of the train was propelling me ever onwards. Or some such shit like that. Anyway, during track five, we pulled into Utrecht, and just as the album's mood changes and an air of hope breaks through the dense atmosphere, we pulled out again, back the way we came, with me looking forwards into what was to come. It was nice.

Holland

Speeding through the Netherlands a couple of metres off the ground, I couldn't shake an image from my childhood out of my head. A black and white cow on a raft or barge is floating along a Dutch canal, and passing under a red swing bridge. It's from a book, but I can't dredge up the title or story...

You're never alone with the Dirty Three

I thought Lowlands would be apt for the first leg of today's journey, Antwerp to Rotterdam in the rain. I love it when the Dirty Three calm it down a bit, this never really rises above a funeral pace. It's all skeletal chords, death rattling drums and the beautifully plaintive violin. It's miles away from their raucous live shows, and the first album of theirs I bought.

My friend Sarah had played me some of their music one evening while sat outside her shack on the Murray River and I was instantly taken. Back at home in the days of napster I randomly downloaded a track - it was Wheels, from this album, and it's fucking amazing, especially when the tension is broken by a heartbreaking chord change at 1.30.

I once read a great Nick Cave essay on "The Lovesong" and he goes on about lovesongs having to be marbled with a somewhat masochistic pain to really move you, well this album's first six songs (I use the word loosely, as they're all instrumental) are the perfect example of that truth.

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