CONSEQUENCES is now available iTunes & all digital outlets with mixes by: Blank & Jones, Harlum (aka David Harness and Chris Lum), Eric Kupper & The Timewriter, and is a featured release & the featured video atMAXI, the online hub for DJs and the club community.
FEMMEBOX says: "If our viewers are fans of anything even remotely classified as downtempo or 'Trip Hop', they’re sure to enjoy this slow and sultry love song out on Daou Records. The lyrics are suggestive and the visuals are nothing short of invigorating. Fans of Portishead, Massive Attack, Artemis and Divasonic take note…"
We live in a great time to be making music! Technology is freedom!
Poetry, sound & music for 'Weird Tales for Winter', a collective radio series curated by Jonny Mugwump for his Exotic Pylon radio show on Resonance 104.4 FM
Emergencies & Disasters, by their very nature, catch us by surprise. The most we can do is be prepared for the unforeseen. Take a few minutes of your time to read this report, it might just save your life one day, or the life of someone you love.
What is a great song & what makes a song GREAT....?
It's about transformation, it should tell a story, present its own unique, unmistakable & unshakable reality; it should provoke, insinuate itself under your skin & reveal "the secret ranges of the voice" as Colette writes in Vagabond
There are many layers & facets to a good song: what is a great song & what makes it GREAT?
Alex said: "A great song has claws, or fingers, or tendrils that work their way inside you, grab hold, and never quite let go."
Benjamin said: "That is a good definition...somebody i met recently said that they felt it was a kind of abuse to use a song repeatedly to bring back an emotion."
Words, music, melody. These 3 components constitute a song. Complexities arise with the addition of the human voice which communicates manifold layers of emotion, intimacy or distance, intention, implication, urgency or nonchalance.
'Fever Ray', the voice behind The Knife, uses all the weapons at her disposal to relay various messages through her voice: angst, regret, hope, refusal. She can be accusatory and self-deprecating all in the same breath. Brilliant, beautiful, caustic, commanding.
Lyrics:
When I grow up, I want to be a forester
Run through the moss on high heels
That’s what I’ll do, throwing out boomerang
Waiting for it to come back to me
When I grow up, I want to live near the sea
Crab claws and bottles of rum
That’s what I'll have staring at the seashell
Waiting for it to embrace me
I put my soul in what I do
Last night I drew a funny man
with dark eyes and a hanging tongue
It goes way back, I never liked a sad look
From someone who wants to be loved by you
I’m very good with plants
When my friends are away
they let me keep the soil moist
On the seventh day I rest
for a minute or two
then back on my feet and cry for you oooh oh
You've got cucumbers on your eyes
Too much time spent on nothing
waiting for a moment to arise
The face in the ceiling and arms too long
I wait for him to catch me
Every once in a while, I read a book that reminds me of the importance of words, language, and communication. There's a shared communion in the reading of any book, a partaking of another person's experience, be it fiction or fact.
I'm half way through 'The Idiot Boy Who Flew' and I find myself purposefully slowing down, as I do with the books I love, in order to fully digest Reid's language, a combination of casual and poetic. Reid achieves a glorious and effortless eloquence which is sweeping me along as I turn the pages.
As the cover suggests, I feel embraced and transported. With each finished chapter, I feel as though I've been to the places Reid so lovingly shapes and articulates with his words, fueling my wonder and imagination with every turn of every page.
Will Thomas - of 'Dive Index' - produces another infinitely beautiful song featuring Cat Martino. 'Burn Their Bodies' is today's top tune on KCRW:
"Dive Index is a collaborative down-tempo electronica project based in New York City and spearheaded by Will Thomas. Their latest recording, The Surface We Divide, features Joseph Arthur and Cat Martino, who sings on Today's Top Tune, "Burn Their Bodies." Download here
The new Dive Index album The Surface We Divide
Check back in for announcements of Will Thomas' remix of 'Heart of Wax' featured on the upcoming release of the JOE SENT ME 'Moonshine Mixes' -
"On previous outings, vocalist Vanessa Daou has danced the rhythm erotica with words from Erica Jong and yin/yang. On the new Dear John Coltrane (Daou Music, OMWCD15, 41:48), Daou and producer/instrumentalist/husband Peter get warm-like-dat with a 10-song meditation on the life, times and (personal) meaning of the Master. From the languid fervor of "Passed" ("While the Freedom Train was reaching critical mass/The Trane just passed.") to "Trane Tripping"'s dreamscape shuffle, as JB said, "Da grooves is there."
Suzanne Anker Rorschach Series, (2004) rapidprototype sculpture, plaster/resin 5.5" x 5.5" x 2.5" each
Beauty, breath. Suzanne Anker's artwork pulses with a life-force that emanates from within. Symbols, mythology, biology, teleology - all are themes that are intricately woven into the matrix of her work where meaning unfolds, unravels - in the way that thinking does, in the way that feeling does.
In butterfly in the brain, Anker's rapid prototyped Rorschach Series, the black 'splotches' play upon our collective as well as individual psychologies; they are at once familiar and foreign, analytic and spontaneous. Her works intimate that there is a code that underlies everything, yet their fractured, fragile, messages betray their will - or the artist's - to convey meaning. Magnificent, fascinating, terrifyingly and beautifully distancing. The door to understanding is opened, and before us, another door.
Impromptu sculptures made by students of Suzanne Anker's
Digital Sculpture class following my lecture/discussion "Degrees of
Freedom", an analysis of the language of Dance as it relates to
Sculpture:
There is a feeling of resignation, a feeling at the same time of refusal. Post modernism has brought us to the precipice of blandness, where even outrageousness suffers from banality. Here, looking over this abyss, there is a feeling that we are missing something.
"Can it be that Gaga represents the exhausted end of the sexual revolution? In Gaga’s manic miming of persona after persona, over-conceptualised and claustrophobic, we may have reached the limit of an era..."
We now accept simulation and imitation as fertile ground for artistic expression where once this would have been seen as lacking the necessary quality of authenticity, Kandinsky's inner necessity. Artists of the Postmodern age proudly take refuge in places that artists of the past would have been ashamed to go. There is a lack of definition, a plurality of styles. There is a shamelessness that has become acceptable, even, arguably, essential.
Our critical lexicon has changed: we accept what to previous generations would have been anathema to their artistic sensibilities: simulation, appropriation, co-optation, gentrification. We have reached a point where we view art in terms of economic as opposed to aesthetic value, statement of style as opposed to Truth, means to an end - fame, notoriety - as opposed to an end in itself.
Alison Pearlman talks about how the "reduction of reference to style" of art here, and its how pluralism made works of art vulnerable to misappropriation: how the commodification of art works has led to their diminished import. But does wearing a T-shirt of the Mona Lisa diminish our appreciation? Or, does our once-removed possession of her (as symbol, as myth, as masterpiece) bring us closer to genuine connection & communion with her?
Cindy Sherman addresses themes of (mis)appropriation, reproduction, (re)presentation, fragmentation, (de)mythification, denotation, (self)promotion, (self)realization. Critics of the past would have had us believe these are tricks, devices that fool the eye and this, once gleaned, should result in a reduction of pleasure. But instead of "growing weary of the song" our pleasure and wonder, it seems, grow along with our respect - Respect for the multiplicity, the plurality, the layers of meaning that have been so shamelessly borrowed, appropriated, indeed, sometimes stolen.
What we sense from Lada Gaga is an urgent need to express the Outrageous, the Untoward, the Unfettered, the previously Unimagined. Like Erica Jong's Isadora Wing & Stieg Larsson's Lisbeth Salander, she has energized, re-contextualized, and denuded her physique to create a new kind of sexuality, one that we, perhaps, don't yet have the language or vocabulary to describe or deconstruct.
While I agree with Paglia that we are seeing the death of the Sexual Revolutionas we have come to know it 1 - and that Lady Gaga symbolizes the flame-out of its star-burst - it's just as possible that what she signals is the spark, albeit almost imperceptible, of new one.
"The internet, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, websites, iPad, iPod, podcasts, digital video and who knows what else. What do they all mean for the poet qua poet? For Poetry? Is it still pretty much where the Gutenberg press left it? Is Poetry technology-proof? In our fearless ongoing quest to exploit other people’s wisdom on poetry-related subjects, we are posing ten questions to a group of illustrious contemporary poets on this topic. This week’s responder is Collin Kelley.
7. Technology is enabling poets today to take poetry off the page in ways that were previously inconceivable. Either comment on this piece by Tom Konyves or provide a link to and comments on a different piece of work that uses technology to take the poem off the page.
CC. Most computers now have the ability to make a sound recording, which is uploadable as a podcast in a matter of minutes. I started doing that on MySpace four or five years ago. Sites like YouTube and Vimeo (which doesn’t have nearly as many content restriction as YouTube) has turned anyone with basic knowledge of editing software into a filmmaker and many poets are creating videos for their work and posting it around the Interwebs.
Poets are collaborating with artists and musicians to move their words off the page and into different arenas. Poet Steven Reigns has created installations of his work and created photography exhibits that incorporate words and images. Musician and poet Vanessa Daou created an interactive website that allows the user to hear, read and cut and paste her words into new forms"
01. Ferry Corsten – Visions of Blue 02. Jes - Ghost (Lime Chill Remix) 03. Guru Josh Project – Infinity 2008 (Steen Thottrup Remix) 04. Blank & Jones - Heart Of Wax (with Vanessa Daou) (Original Mix) 05. Bobina feat. R Kenga – That’s What I Did For You (Sensorica Remix) 06. The Grid – Flotation 07. Lange – Home 08. Cosmic Gate feat. Aruna – Under Your Spell (Original Mix) 09. 4 Strings - Catch A Fall (Breakbeat Mix) 10. Marco V – Coming Back (Nic Chagall Remix) 11. Parker & Hanson – Aim High, Shoot Low (Instrumental) 12. Armin van Buuren - Sound Of Goodbye (EDX's Indian Summer Remix) 13. Alan Connor - Sun Went Down (Simon Sinfield Remix) 14. Tiesto vs Cary Brothers – Ride (Tiesto Remix) 15. BT – Rose of Jericho (BT’s Deus Ex Machina Mix)
"My dad always used the phrase "Joe sent me", it was the old password to get into illegal bars and speakeasies and the implication was that you were gaining access to the illicit, and therefore rather seductive, world on the other side of the door.
Vanessa Daou's breathy, sexually-fueled electronica offers an entry to that kind of world. Her music oozes sensuality, suggests forbidden pleasures, and promises a very enjoyable, safely hedonistic time indeed where the lights are dim and the outline of entwined bodies writhe in slo-mo.
But there has always been more to New Yorker Daou than just purple sexuality: she has a poetic sensibility and her albums often include spoken word (whispered word) pieces over a soundbed of soft electronica. Here on Hurricanes she weaves a fragmented narrative of uncertainty and confidence, masculine and feminine, and of the power of giving oneself to love over a bed of distorted keyboards and ticking percussion.
But mostly here are aural signifiers of sex and sensuality with images of beds, "all the pleasures of the tongue", love among the litter, hot skin, and a speakeasy where the password is "sin".
These images, imagistic songs and narratives taken together address existential issues, the nature and dangers of the emotional life, all wrapped in warm, hazy, jazz-influenced grooves and tone poems where a soft saxophone weaves a melodic line line (Love Lives in the Dark), angular drums keep you on edge and electronic keyboards lull you gently.
Daou's music is hypnotic, European in consciousness with a steamy Latin quality. It's quite something."
"They say that the voice of a woman can be enough to soothe both the savage beast in man, as well as serve as proverbial nails on a chalkboard.
Nowhere has this been more true over the years than in music. My own relationship with women in music over the years has been, well let's just say that as in life, it's been complicated.
The first time I can remember falling in love with a woman's voice was when as a pre-teen boy I first heard Grace Slick sing "White Rabbit" with the Jefferson Airplane. Even though I nary understood a thing that Grace was talking about with all her talk about pills that made you either larger or small, there was still something about her sweet, yet seductive voice that made me really want to fall down that particular rabbit hole.
Even so, I would grow to develop a certain love/hate relationship with the various women of rock over the years as I grew older. For every Janis Joplin or Aretha Franklin who were able to touch some unrealized yearning deep within my soul, or for every Ronnie Spector who was able to light the flame of innocent, unconditional romantic love — there would be those angry feminist singers who could just as quickly extinguish it.
...
When it comes to pure out and out eroticism, no one has ever communicated this as perfectly as Vanessa Daou did on her tragically slept on, Erica Jong-inspired album Zipless.
And this is the point where I guess I apologize for taking you through a personal mix-tape of my own fantasies.
But hell yeah. Damn, would I like to get with a girl like this:
On the other end of Vanessa Daou's pure sexuality, lies the innocent pre-"Cloudbusting" romanticism of Kate Bush. Before Kate got corrupted by the eighties New Wave of weird chicks like Lene Lovich, this was the "Dorothy in Oz" sort of girl every guy dreams of."
jonny mugwump talks to the New York based songstress about speakeasies, rave culture and the poem/song divide
"A collaboration between the New York-based Vanessa and her then husband Peter with words adapted by Vanessa from Peter's aunt, the pioneering Erica Jong, Zipless is a beautiful trove of sublime erotic electronic pop with strong elements of house and jazzy melodies. And as anybody who loves pop music knows, there can be more subversiveness in the space of a three minute adrenaline shot of pop than in vast swathes of the avant-garde. The almost surreal intimacy of Vanessa's voice and delivery (like Dali's melting watches, every vocal shape seemed to take on a slight alien quality) coupled with the intense sexuality of the lyrics and the accessibility and ingenuity of the music made for an entirely unique hybrid. Vanessa and Peter had previously released the highly innovative Head Music as The Daou, had worked with NuGroove and had had a huge club hit with a Danny Tenaglia mix of 'Surrender Yourself'. Originally released independently, Zipless led to the duo being signed to MCA and Vanessa toured with the legendary recently departed Guru and Jazzmatazz.
The follow-up album Slow to Burn saw her negotiating her way out of her own big label contract for a life on the independent margins where she could retain control. Cut to 2009, with a succession of always morphing productions exploring a weird ambient hinterland between ambient pop, jazz, soul and electronica, Vanessa returned after a hiatus, polymath-like moving into multimedia production, dance, computer coding and the release of her first self-produced album Joe Sent Me. "Joe Sent Me" was the coded phrase used to gain entry to speakeasys at the height of prohibition-era America and her latest work is both more sonically sophisticated and spacious yet also more dreamy. Each album has always had a loose kind of thematic concern but Joe Sent Me is different, creating a gently strange portal between now and then, constructing a distinctive world of its own but without sacrificing the depth of insight into what makes a heartbeat.
Perhaps it's not immediately obvious but I've always thought of your music as being quite surreal, primarily (until the current album anyway) due to your vocals. The voice is so intimately placed in the mix so that's completely inside the listener's head, and it puts me in mind of the beautiful paradox of the microphone and people like Frank Sinatra where a vocal can sit clearly on top of music that would otherwise completely obliterate it.
Vanessa Daou: When I first started singing, for me, it's this weird communication between a singer and a microphone. It's this object that is conveying your voice but the experience of being in a sound proof room singing a song, it is surreal - you're cut off from the music that's being played in your headphones and singing in to this object. Right from the offset, well, I had to work out what the relationship was with this object - the microphone - so I visualise it as an ear. I'm singing into an ear and I still carry that image with me now when I sing, never forgetting that I'm not singing out to the air but that I'm singing into somebody's ear who will be receiving my...message. This relationship, I don't know if it's a metaphysical thing that every artist goes through, but it's very profound."
It was during my tour for 'Zipless' opening for 'Jazzmatazz' in '95 that I got to know Guru - His extreme intelligence & exceptional talent was ever-present, he was fearless with his voice & creative vision. An immense loss to lovers of Jazz, Hip-Hop, Poetry, artists everywhere.
The New York Times & All About Jazz have solid pieces on his life, career, & achingly beautiful written letter to fans, friends, and loved ones.
Ben Williams @Codesignal streams his in depth 2009 interview here with the legendary Jazz-Rapper pioneer.
In November '09, I heard/saw Collin Kelley read from his new novel 'Conquering Venus' at The Tank in Manhattan. The intimacy of the space provided a perfect setting for the tenor & spirit of the novel which takes place, largely, in a Hotel room in Paris and the apartment of a woman the protagonist befriends to whom he finds himself irrevocably drawn. It is in these rooms where secrets are both withheld and revealed, where hearts come apart at the seams as soon as they are stitched up again.
What is withheld, what is revealed, this is the crux of Venus' seductive allure. Historically, the female body, once unclothed, is observed, critiqued, demystified, devoured. But the fact is, no matter the setting - whether in nature, in bed, on a pedestal or in a highly stylized room - the female nude, stands in contrast to whatever the surroundings. Artists have explored the potentialities of this contrast since the first [European] female nude was painted.
The female nude continues to fascinate, frustrate, and awe, this is especially true in this age of virtual - and therefore intangible - culture. The 'Storybook Burlesque' attested to this is their provocative set of 'literary burlesque' performances which punctuated various authors' readings at The Tank.
The Concretes' cover of the Rolling Stones' 'Miss You' provided the soundtrack to one of the standout performances. The pairing of Burlesque with Rock 'n Roll is a natural one: a certain illicit delirium sets in while listening and looking. The combination of the literary with the 'lewd' has traditionally chagrined as many as it has charmed, as the history of banned books, for instance, has proven.
There have been numerous Novelists, Poets, Philosophers, Artists, and Singer-Songwriters who have tackled the dual-natured subjects of the physical body with the philosophical and psychological - Anaiis Nin, Henry Miller, Erica Jong, Ovid, Sappho, ee cummings, Simone de Beauvoir, Dominique Aury, Michael Foucault, Camille Paglia, Marina Abramovic, Leonard Cohen, PJ Harvey - and who among us hasn't wondered why, given that we are all born naked, is the subject of nudity so unyieldingly taboo?
The good news is, nudity's taboo nature seems to be a code that's written in the matrix of our psyches and physical selves, and will forever provide fodder for Artists, Thinkers and Theorists. It could be argued that our very existence depends on this attraction to the female nude's forbidden essence.
There will always be those who oppose the presentation of unclothed and exposed flesh in all forms - and while exploitation is the dark side of all things taboo - the female, nude, in all its raw and uncensored forms, goes to the core of our freedom's expression.
So, back at The Tank, what struck me so powerfully about the Storybook Burlesque was, simply, the fact that in this day and age of touch-of-a-button triple-X virtuality, the female, nude, is still oddly taboo.
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