Showing posts with label Records. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Records. Show all posts

Saturday, 7 February 2015

He's dead, Jim...


Well, you would be forgiven for thinking that, given the recent inactivity on this blog. I've had a few distractions, and then I had a chat with my old pals from Mounds and Circles about our shared interest in the original Star Trek TV series, and found I had been press-ganged into a new project, What Is Brain?  Come and check it out.

We're going to revisit all 79 episodes and hopefully review them in an entertaining fashion. For the record: we are NOT Trekkies and we will be as disrespectful as necessary! There are plenty of good things about the old Star Trek, especially its dafter moments, but we will show no mercy when it becomes tedious and dull.

I used to enjoy the series when it was regularly shown by the BBC in the 70s and 80s but have absolutely no interest in any of the subsequent films or Next Generation spin-offs. I have owned three pieces of ST merchandise in my life, only one of which remains:

1. A model of the USS Enterprise that fired yellow plastic discs. I think I got this for my 6th birthday. I thought it was brilliant, though soon lost the little shuttle craft that came with it. Now missing, presumably lost in space.

2. A replica of a communicator that someone gave me in my early twenties. It reminded me of a cheap electric shaver and fell to bits just as quickly.

3. The picture disc of the soundtrack for the pilot episodes (pictured). The cheesy quality of picture discs is entirely appropriate for such recordings.

One to beam up.







Tuesday, 14 October 2014

Art Rock

Records by Artists, 1958-1990
Giorgio Maffei
Viaindustriae, Foligno, 2013

Catalogue from an exhibition held at the University of Bologna last year. I like the idea of artists making music. I have no idea of what most of these records sound like, though some of the Tristram Carey has been released by Trunk Records, and recordings of Henri Chopin's excellent poetry and electronics are around. 

I like to project possibilities onto the remainder: Joseph Beuys' motorik krautrock outfit; Jean Dubuffet and Asger Jorn's free jazz combo; Brion Gysin's trance project; Yves Klein's Kind of Blue... The Blue Album... Eine Kleine Klein Musik...