Oh boy oh boy oh boy, I got a huge blast from the past today. Last week I ordered from Amazon.uk a CD copy of a little record I used to own, which I grew up with and spent most of my late teens absolutely fascinated by; "Leichenschrei" by Socialistisches Patienten Kollectiv or SPK. This record is a little beauty; the title translates to "corpse screams", an accurate picture of the audio content - a mad rush down a dismembered-body stuffed bolt-hole to HELL. All your latter day "dark music" and experimental-noise pretenders know nothing compared to what is on this record. Forty-three (43) minutes of pure aural noise assault, a bad acid trip accompanied by the incidental soundtrack to a 18th century battlefield surgery set in a dysfunctional iron foundry run by lunatics, and visualised for a dispassionately narrated US Army medical description of the results of torture. There are is little in the way of compromise here; nothing remotely resembles pop music, all is non-stop assault. Released in 1982, this record is the forerunner to a long history of industrial music that was to follow; dark noise experiments, experimental synthesiser music, "EBM", it's all here. More focussed than fellow "industrial" music luminaries Throbbing Gristle, less prone than that group to psychedelic noodling, and a thousand times as bleak, one gets the impression rather than a bohemian carnival of insanity that TG managed to project, SPK's music is the very embodiment of the insane.

Track listing

1. Genetic Transmission
2. Post-Morten
3. Desolation
4. Napalm (Terminal Patient)
5. Cry from the Sanatorium
6. Baby Blue Eyes
7. Israel
8. Internal Bleeding
9. Chamber Music
10. Despair
11. The Agony of the Plasma
12. Day of Pigs
13. Wars of Islam
14. Maladia Europa

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 31 August 2005 20:03:06 #

The Tribal Mind - 40 Mass Media Moments That Changed Australia (Registration Required).

David Dale, writing in his SMH column The Tribal Mind and copying a list of "100 mass media moments that changed the world", in British magazine Uncut, has listed the "40 Mass Media Moments That Changed Australia. There are some very predictable media moments there but a couple of omissions that I think are critical in their absence.

First up and most glaring, how can this list contain 'Bandstand' without 'Countdown'?!

I don't even remember Bandstand, being born in 1965, but Countdown was a standard feature of TV in the 70s and 80s. Countdown stands as a monolith over the entire late-1970s, early-1980s national music culture of Australia! Many many bands came through that mill which connected the individual city pub rock scenes with a national audience and introduced many successfull acts to the national stage. E.g. INXS, The Models, The Reels, The Sunnyboys, The Church, to name a few and to avoid the boy-bands like Sherbet so beloved of Molly Meldrum. And even on the world stage; for example the way that Meldrum pushed acts like Abba, Blondie, and Madonna, and although they may have been successful regardless of this exposure, I think that Molly's unashamed fandom of these acts and their ensuing Australian chart success probably ensured their international impact was greater than it would have been.

The other big ommission from this list would have to be the beginning of "Rage" back in 198?. Until this point, Generation-X late-teenagers and early 20-somethings like myself who had outgrown Countdown had no really quality late night TV music to watch at 3am when we came home from the Trade Union Club or wherever we were that night; but Rage not only filled this gap but got rid of the annoying presenter personality cult and played a lot of quality and obscure music to a very willing audience. Rage changed our expectations as to how music TV worked with the excellent mix of new and classic music long before Channel[V] and MTV came along with to fill it up with celebrity-based reality TV and car-makeover shows and derivative pop R&B and neo-"emo"-punk nonsense.

Here's two media moments - this time in radio.

1. The start of 2JJ with Skyhooks' "You just like me cos I'm good in bed", and;
2. The nationalisation of JJJ.

The first event marked the moment of birth of a truly great Sydney institution introducing a lot of really interesting music to Sydney's adventurous radio listeners, and the latter because it was the beginning of the slow death of the very same radio experiment, through which it still suffers a slow and agonising death today. Remember the all-day show/festival "The Works" that they used to put on once a year? What about the "Fuck Tha Police" episode?

As for bands themselves, why include Men at Work in this list and leave off many other worthy contenders? If you were to pick influential Aussie rock let's start at the beginning with Johhny O'Keefe (see also RAGE, which still features to this day as part of it's theme music, Iggy Pop covering JOK's song "Real Wild Child").

Or how about the Easybeats, the success of which bankrolled the songwriting team of Vanda and Young, which enabled them to produce and record such luminary acts as AC/DC. And not to mention the Bee Gees who are one of the biggest selling rock/pop acts of all time? How about The Saints - one of the world's first punk bands to release a single and a highly influential one at that. The punk revolution started a new musical journey that still affects music today. Or INXS which despite their recent embarrassing TV escapades nonetheless were in the 80s one of the biggest rock acts on the planet! Although the really big media event there perhaps is the death of Hutchence.

Anyway, overall David a reasonable effort but it needs more work!

Update: As David Dale kindly indicated below in the comments, the updated list is available online, as are the readership's comments on the original list. Well done David!

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 30 August 2005 20:38:59 #

A great profile and interview in the SMH with one of my favorite bands of the last 10 years, The Dandy Warhols. Their last album was gorgeous, looking forward to the new one. Odd kind of harmony (smh.com.au).

This high-quality 192kbps mp3 of Desmond Tiny's Dub is the mastered (by Ant Banister) version that's appearing on the forthcoming Clan Analogue compilation Clan Analogue In Version. An electronic dub that still retains its rootsy feel, with sampled textures and a smooth yet melancholic synthesiser melody.

TO DOWNLOAD: As usual, click the "attachment" link on this entry if you are viewing the HTML web page - or use a podcasting client RSS feed of the blog to get automated downloads of any new music placed on this website. See www.ipodder.org for more info about podcasting and podcasting clients.

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 25 August 2005 23:11:45 # Attachment

"The Boys Next Door", the original version of the band "The Birthday Party", featured as members, Nick Cave, Mick Harvey and Phil Calvert from their high school days. After this time the band added their schoolfriend Tracey Pew on bass and Roland S. Howard on guitar. This line up was the mainstay of both bands for most of their career.

The Boys Next Door had a minor hit in Australia with the song "Shivers", which also featured on the Dogs In Space soundtrack (the film starring Michael Hutchence documenting the Melbourne "little band" post-punk scene of the late 1970s).

The first album, was released in Australia on Channel 7 records (who licenced it from Missing Link Records). In Australia at least, the album, featuring the songs Mr Clarinet and The Hair Shirt among others, was titled "The Birthday Party" (a Harold Pinter play), and the artist was "The Boys Next Door", as I can verify from my personal copy of the LP and verified by the offical website;

Originally credited to Boys Next Door. 1982 rerelease has a different cover, and doesn't mention Boys Next Door anymore.

1. Mr. Clarinet
2. Hats On Wrong
3. The Hair Shirt
4. Guilt Parade
5. Riddle House
6. The Friend Catcher
7. Waving My Arms
8. The Red Clock
9. Cat Man
10. Happy Birthday

Phil Calvert (drums) remained a member of the band until 1982 just before the "Bad Seed EP" when he was unceremoniously dumped from the band.

Tracey Pew (bass) sadly died in 1986 from complications due to epilepsy.

Read more...

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 25 August 2005 0:16:38 #

Recent track listing from last.fm ((all times are GMT))

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 24 August 2005 18:21:43 #

This track, 'Falling' by Now Zero, an old band of mine dating from 1990 to 1993, is from the Volition Records compilation, 'High', released 1992. Credits: "Written Lawler/Steel/Mcphee. Produced and Mixed by Scot Art. Thanks to Paul Bolger Jason Gee and Chris Basset." Recorded and mixed on a Tascam 688 8-track home studio cassette multitracker. Vocals by Simm Steel. This was one of the first tracks we ever wrote in the studio at the Palmer Street squat. Midi sequencing on an MC500 and analogue sequencing with an MC202.

Update: sorry for the truncated version of the file in the previous entry. This version is untruncated.

TO DOWNLOAD: As usual, click the "attachment" link on this entry if you are viewing the HTML web page - or use a podcasting client RSS feed of the blog to get automated downloads of any new music placed on this website. See www.ipodder.org for more info about podcasting and podcasting clients.

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 24 August 2005 16:55:31 # Attachment

http://www.publicdomain4u.com/

Lots of good old blues tunes here, plus others that may be worthwhile listening to. This music is in the public domain (copyright expired). (Via email from Steve Scott)

Interesting series of blog posts around the traps recently on DRM technology and the seemingly in-built wrongness of the enterprise.

First up over the weekend, Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, told an interesting little story on his blog. He was visiting a media company and its executives were asking him to support their watermarking initiative. His response was illustrative;

Rather than provide a response in the room, I turned a question back to him. First, the network you're supposing will deliver a movie to a theater or a camera to a file server is the same network I'm presuming will run throughout your datacenter. On the internet, it's tough to distinguish a feature length movie from a data warehouse application (bits is bits) - so would your datacenter folks support the tech industry certifying content behind your firewalls with a digital watermark? In running business systems?

But even more illustrative was the response the media company gave to him;

On the former question, related to DRM in the datacenter, he said he'd run it up the flagpole with his IT folks and get back to me.

After a few days, I got a response. He'd spoken with their CIO, who dismissed the relevance of my proposal to manage all digital assets under the same scheme. "You'd have to start by proving I've stolen something."

Well, duh. Media companies are crapping in their own nest in one. They can't even see what their own executives can tell them. People hate being treated as criminals when they are not.

On that very note, Tim Bray of Ongoing fame (and also of Sun Micro) wrote an entry today about DRM. He mentions the Schwartz article, but more importantly links to a Cory Doctorow talk to the Microsoft research unit. Full of interesting ideas, I found it hugely enjoyable and I can only urge you to read all of it now. I certainly hope someone at Microsoft was listening to him.

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 23 August 2005 21:25:04 #

A cheery, slightly crazed and bouncy little dancehall influenced number from the Nerve Agent In Dub EP. I really quite like the up beat and quirky nature of this one. The instrumentation on this track is mostly Clavia Nord Modular and Korg ES-1 sampling drum machine, with a bit of Yamaha QY700 'gs' synthesiser doing the piano sounds as well as controlling the sequences.

TO DOWNLOAD: As usual, click the "attachment" link on this entry if you are viewing the HTML web page - or use a podcasting client RSS feed of the blog to get automated downloads of any new music placed on this website. See www.ipodder.org for more info about podcasting and podcasting clients.

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 22 August 2005 21:34:35 # Attachment

Via Duncan, via meta-filter - Bob Moog, pioneer of electronic synthesis, has died after a brief illness (since March).

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 22 August 2005 14:54:35 #

'The Caution', another Now Zero track, is on disc two of the 1992 Volition Records compilation 'High'. Credits: "Written by Lawler/Steel/Mcphee. Produced and mixed by Scot Art and Stewart Lawler. Edited by Robert Racic for dB Productions." Vocals by Simm Steel. Now Zero was an attempt at electro pop; we performed this material around Sydney venues 1990-1993.

TO DOWNLOAD: As usual, click the "attachment" link on this entry if you are viewing the HTML web page - or use a podcasting client RSS feed of the blog to get automated downloads of any new music placed on this website. See www.ipodder.org for more info about podcasting and podcasting clients.

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 21 August 2005 22:28:17 # Attachment

This track is called 'Observatory Hill Dub'. It is based on Augustus Pablo's 'Up Warrika Hill' - can you tell that Augustus Pablo is my favourite dub artist no? The mix and possibly the arrangement in this track are not complete, it's only a rough mix for the time being, and I'm still working on the arrangement (if you've got any advice or feedback - even 'you suck' - please dump it in the comments of this blog entry). I originally put the skeleton down for this track some months ago when I did a whole batch of reggae rhythms for my use later. I have been steadily learning as many dub/reggae basslines from the 'classic riddums' as they say, and recording them or transcribing to keyboard parts.

TO DOWNLOAD: As usual, click the "attachment" link on this entry if you are viewing the HTML web page - or use a podcasting client RSS feed of the blog to get automated downloads of any new music placed on this website. See www.ipodder.org for more info about podcasting and podcasting clients.

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 21 August 2005 10:04:39 # Attachment

A big start at the "Bowery" in Ann St last night littered with too many Moscow Mules and interesting new people to meet. A pity they just wouldn't sell us jugs of the stuff, as we were sitting out the back celebrating Emily's 27th birthday with frequent trips to the bar. Met her fellow writers and photographers from the magazine she writes for as well as plenty of other nice people too.

Then we ran off to this tiny little venue where we saw a promising band called something like "Cold Spoon Conspiracy" (although they do need a better name). They play rock with high pop sensibilities, not a massively original concept but pretty tight in their execution and they might get somewhere with it I think. A terrible PA really prevented from hearing the vocals properly but the band itself was tight, in control and pretty interesting. The venue was very intruiging, a small shoebox on Ann St in the same building that the old IMA was in. No bar (byo only) trashy flouro lighting and graffitti all over the walls with a totally shite PA -- made me reminisce about the old warehouse gigs we used to put on in Sydney all those years ago. When such spaces where possible there.

I also saw one song from a band called "Oh Belgium" but they sounded like a poorly recorded outtake from a P.I.L. session so we left them to it (as also being past midnight the bottle-o had shut) and abandoned the place for the 'Depot', a large club upstairs in Brunswick St with plenty of space to move around and just the sort of no-bullshit nightclub that Newtown really needs. Emily got us in on the door and the DJ - a fellow we had met earlier at the Bowery - played a bunch of retro rock, glam, electro and punk to a room full of sweaty twenty somethings (and us distinctly not anywhere near twenty-somethings).

Brisbane nightlife is nowhere as bad as I imagined it.

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 21 August 2005 1:07:04 #

Back on the air after the move to Brisbane on the account of Lisa scoring a good job at the University of Qld. The old "My cummerbund fell in the toilet" title has been scrapped in favour of "The horse, he sick" -- a name once used by one of my favourite Sydney sound artists, friend, and bloody genius, Ian Andrews.

I intend to focus the blog on music, new and past, that I stumble across. My own music is offered for download directly off the site or via a 'podcasting' client such as iPodder or Nimiq.

Although I ported some of the content over to the site, the old URLs to the blog are cactus as I simplified the site layout somewhat. The RSS feed is http://modular.autonomous.org/music/rss.xml and the html site is http://modular.autonomous.org/music/

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 21 August 2005 0:35:31 #

Thanks to Simon Brown's excellent Pebble Blogging Software, 'The horse, he sick' (the blog formerly known as 'My cummerbund fell in the toilet') now supports the RSS 2.0 enclosure tag, which I will be using to podcast new original music from Victor X-Ray, and some historical pieces as well from earlier in my discography. Mainly, the podcasts will be in the Victor X-Ray Audio System category.

If you want to know more about podcasting, I suggest you visit ipodder.org or visit the podcasting group at yahoo. Point your iPodder or equivalent software at the following feed URL: http://modular.autonomous.org/music/categories/vx/rss.xml, and it will automatically download any new Victor X-Ray material that I place on the site, ready for you to listen to when you get up in the morning (or whenever).

If you don't have podcast client software installed you can just click on the 'attachment' link on this entry. If you are reading this from a news aggregator of some type that doesn't support enclosures, visit the blog entry to get the link.

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 21 August 2005 0:17:19 # Attachment

This is the original mix of Alien Jungle Planet. It appears on disc 2 of the Clan Analogue compilation Cognition/Three CA025, and the limited edition EP V-Type Nerve Agent. Mixes of this track are also on the album G-Type Nerve Agent and on the ABC 'Sound Quality' compilation "Approved for export". The original mix still is one of the best songs I've written, and the mix is very cranky - a sickly Victorian-era carnival ride interpreted wrongly and left to die on an Alien Jungle Planet.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Welcome to the Alien Jungle Planet.
We apologize for the inconvienience.
Please wait to be seated,
for the Alien Jungle Planet.

This is your Captain speaking.
Do not panic.
Please hold for an operator.
Do Not Cross The Line,
in the Alien Jungle Planet.

Your call is important to us.
I'm sorry Madame,
Please forgive me.
Call Now Our Operators Are Waiting,
at the Alien Jungle Planet.

TO DOWNLOAD: As usual, click the "attachment" link on this entry if you are viewing the HTML web page - or use a podcasting client RSS feed of the blog to get automated downloads of any new music placed on this website. See www.ipodder.org for more info about podcasting and podcasting clients.

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 21 August 2005 0:11:37 # Attachment

This track is called 'Melodarimbic Internationale'. It is based on Glen Brown & King Tubby's 'Melodica International' - I have written two solo melodies on a Melodion (similar to Augustus Pablo's Melodica) and a synthesiser marimba, which is the source of the altered title. My friends tell me this track sounds like some sort of French Dub (hence the Internationale) - probably due to the melodion sounding like a cheap accordian (both, like the harmonica, are metal reed instruments). This mix is a better mix of this track from the 'Melodarimba International' version from last month (now deleted). This track will appear on the forth coming Clan Analogue compilation, "Clan Analogue In Version".

TO DOWNLOAD: As usual, click the "attachment" link on this entry if you are viewing the HTML web page - or use a podcasting client RSS feed of the blog to get automated downloads of any new music placed on this website. See www.ipodder.org for more info about podcasting and podcasting clients.

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Posted by Autonomous Organisation on 20 August 2005 23:58:54 # Attachment