Rorschmap London

Google Street view meets the Rorschach. Super patterns, nice new way of looking. Check out booktwo.org, where they're from. 

The (Not So) New Aesthetic

David Semeniuk, Landscape Permuation 1 (2010)

I say not-so-new because the New Aesthetic, in January 2013, has been around for a little while. The SXSW panel discussion which blew the idea wide open took place in March 2013, and James Bridle started the New Aesthetic blog a year or more before that.

There's plenty of debate about what the New Aesthetic stands for and means, and how much it's worth as a concept, but Bridle kind of describes as looking at things with new eyes - the eyes of all this new technology. Think google maps, CGI, the obligatory pixels.

The idea on paper sounds clever enough but once you take it down one or two roads of practical manifestations it starts to get Twilight Zone interesting. And once it gets personal.. even more so, obviously.

Say we're taking the New Aesthetic to be the new boundary, often-crossed, permeable and sometimes hard to see at all, between technology's view of the world and our view of the world. I say new boundary, but only as new as the internet and internet culture, really. Once the internet began gaining momentum, we were using it to represent and see the world in a way only the internet, or cyberspace, could show it. How does our technology see the world which then feeds back into the way we see the world? What kind of world are we shown, how is our world different - visually, emotionally, any way - for this perspective which literally did not exist twenty years ago?

There's googlemaps, and the way we interact with the world through that lens. By interact, I don't just mean see, the most interesting part is how we invest emotionally in the world we are seeing through technology. A personal example - I had the sudden idea to look up the house I lived in from ages 7 to 9, which is in Houston Texas. I've not been back, and - up until seeing it again - had only memories to recall it with. I expected to feel emotional or excited at seeing it, rather it was a somewhat disappointing American suburban house, which looks smaller to me today than it did to me as a child. Interacting with the world and my past memories through a screened technology, and the emotional impact of the technology.

I don't know, this is all coming out quite clumsily, which is fine. I'm probably putting more of an emotional spin on the NA thing than it actually has. Went to see Mark Leckey screening at the ICA last night and it's really started me thinking about all of this again, he talked loads about the emotional power of the object, and the kind of subconcious dream world which the internet acts as. I'll put something up about his films (his newer films have an clear pre-occupation with these same issues, framed slightly differently perhaps) and what he said - which was really interesting - over the weekend.

David Semeniuk, Landscape Permutation 2 (2010)

Juergan Teller for Celine AW12

Not a new thing but it's just so stunning. Shot by Juergan Teller, model Daria Werbowy. Textured structured understated beautiful.

Video for Mind Over Mirrors - Memorander

Easing into the morning with this.

 

Chromatics Live at Heaven

Gig stereotypes. The relentlessly snogging couple, the out-of-tune singalonger, the tall person with a hat who stands right in front of you. They were all there last week at the Chromatics Heaven gig but heaven knowns (groan) even they couldn't detract from the shimmering, amazing performance.

For one far-too-short hour, the room was awash in the Chromatic's brittle shimmer and wistfulness, and Ruth Radelet's voice sounded in-cred-ible live (although that's a bit lost in the videos of the gig, sadly).

Their first few tracks were more like tasters than full blown songs, really short and bare bones riffing. A few tracks in and it shifted to longer, bigger, more emotive, more magical, more more more. You know, (in the headiest tradition of gig cliches), it was like a journey. A really superb, gorgeous journey.

High points were definitely Kill for Love, Night Drive, my favourite In the City. The opening bars of their cover of Neil Young's Into the Black set off shouts of joy from around the room. Incidentally, are the Chromatics the world's best cover band? Their cool italo vibes and understated vocals work wonders on songs that were pretty damn good to begin with. Their version of Bruce Springsteen's I'm on Fire aches with cold desire and Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill becomes an unforgettable,  monumental electronic love song.

Johnny Jewel from the band organised their latest album, Kill for Love, onto a single Soundcloud (below), which is very thoughtful. Night Drive and In the City are also ESSENTIAL LISTENING. (imo, more so than Kill for Love - just saying).

Out of Date Record Review - Marcus Mixx & FIT

So this record came out on Detroit's Fit Sound in April but I only got it a month or two ago. It's just so damn good I still fancy writing about it.

The Marcus Mixx track, Salut the Noise with a Laugh, is unsurprisingly a mix of raw house beats & cowbell (classic Mixx) and cheerfully unhinged vibes. Opening with a straightforward enough sounding stab, things quickly unravel as video gamey bleeps and weirdness starts undulating all over the place..and then.. and then.. the laugh starts. Yes, the sampled man's laugh that dips in and out of the track adding a bit of  One Flew Over the Cuckoos nest to an already pretty odd track. The beats are ace, the production flawless (read, raw and direct) and the samples and weirdness absolutely spot on. Happy days.

The FIT track has a way different appeal. Totally, utterly hypnotic and more than a little bit sweat lodge, it shares the raw hewn sounds of the Mixx track and has more than a hint of Oasis Collaborating vibes. A simple looped builder which creeps up and up and up and takes you back back back to the source. SERIOUSLY HOT.  

Listen to clips at the Fit Records distribution site, there's a pretty defunct looking Fit Soundcloud if you're interested, and don't forget Marcus Mixx's INCREDIBLE youtube channel.

Professor Genius - Hassan (That's right - MORE L.I.E.S.!)

Disclaimer - this review was originally written when the Hassan album was due to be released, pressing problems have pushed it back almost a year so it's great it's finally arrived, I'm a bit lazy so I've only quickly updated the below so apologies if it's out of date.

Hassan I Sabbah was a 13^th century Persian warlord, leader of an army of skilled assassins notorious for their daring and murderous antics. He lived in a mountain fortress and inspired slavish devotion in his followers by offering them the key to the kingdom of heaven – a paradise full of drugs and girls, naturally – if only they would follow his every heinous command.

Anything named after such a man clearly has a lot to live up to. Thankfully Hassan, the first album by Professor Genius (Italians Do It Better, Disques Sinthommes and THISISNOTANEXIT), is a synth-laden bit of homegrown exotica with some mesmerising stories to tell. It’s a spell-binding swirl of textures and contrasts, shot through with distinctly middle Eastern motifs and drone-like krautrock atmospherics.

The album opens with Hassan 1, an ambientish number that feels like an awakening. It tip toes up and down arpeggios and emits shimmery noises that sound like stars as it checks its capacity for cosmic utterances hasn’t been diminished. The album takes its time in drawing itself up to full height but certainly by half way through the layers of texture and percussion have developed into something fully FULLY captivating.

Multi-layered middle Eastern percussion sits below swirling, to-die-for synth soundscapes which conjure up the northern lights, secret orders and exotic mysticism. The effect is intoxicating, especially on the later tracks such as Alamut where far below, powerful waves of bass throb with lazy menace. On other tracks like Dream of Skin, reedy, metallic melodies dominate, pulsating with droning insistence as buzz and feedback provide shifting backdrop to the cinematic sounds. The whole album is awash with vibrating, hypnotic tones and streams of noise, layered and drawn into self-contained worlds ordered with exotic percussion. Banks of keyboards declare their uneasiness as eerie melodies loop above cloak-and-dagger synthetic landscapes. Somehow, this is an album which  soothes and menaces in equal degrees.

A big departure from his previous releases, this album sees Professor Genius move into cinematic imaginings of very specific and evocative character, time and place. In that, its fairly unique among synth-based music, which is so often stretching for the future or looking back with a nostalgic idealism. And for the still new-ish (ish) label LIES, it’s also a real depature, testament to a breadth of vision unhinted at by their typical holding pattern of strong releases from analogue house producers such as Legowelt, Steve Summers and Maximillion Dunbar. Looking forward to the forthcoming L.I.E.S. American Noise compilation!

PS. Don't forget to check out the remixes: