Taken with a mobile phone and altered by hand.
01/31/2008
07/08/2007
A Hart To Saint Annie
Kurisu
They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change.
Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542)
06/19/2007
Who Stole The Black Dog?
Dear Warp Records,
The cheque is in the mail... A derivative ditty, just for fun.
Kurisu
Kurisu
09/13/2006
Helvetica Black Interview
White like Frank Black is - Helvetica gives it some brolly
The name behind the enigmatic Response Series finally comes forward.
Helvetica Black attended the same high school as Simon & Garfunkel, Burt Bacharach, and the Ramones, but insists there's nothing musical in the campus water.
"It sounds really cool but it was still high school, not Rock and Roll High School," she grumbles.
"I was into music before I went there and don't feel I was into music any more or less when I left the school. My family was always moving because of my father's job, so I didn't go to school in Forest Hills for all that long. It was hard to make friends at first, so I settled for becoming good buddies with my musical equipment and my cat."
While the other students eventually warmed to Black, her time alone allowed her to become increasingly proficient on a variety of instruments. She had already been playing drums for years when she acquired her first guitar and a cheap synth from a second-hand music store. Inspired by the modern DIY ethic of stoner champions like Ween, she initiated the Response Series, recording numerous tape only albums.
"To be honest, most of those early ones went to friends," Black says.
"I did send a few out to record labels, but at that stage I didn't have much of an idea of how the industry worked. Once I did get an idea, I decided I didn't want to be a part of it. From that point, I concentrated on distributing the tapes around New York City, and through the network of friends I'd built up around the U.S."
Black's cassettes began appearing in some very strange places, as she and her friends "semi-hid" hundreds of copies of each tape around New York City and beyond. They sent them to friends in other cities and even other countries, where the same kind of event unfolded.
"It was one giant Easter egg hunt, in a way. We were like the parents, and the kids were the people of the city who found the tapes," smiles Black.
Starting in 1992, the first cassette in the Response Series was entitled Shambolica, a ragged reinterpretation and extension of Primal Scream's watershed Screamadelica LP. Black explains her choice;
"I'd just started sneaking into clubs - mostly industrial music places. Because I was into drumming I'd always found myself drawn to industrial stuff. I guess I was a bit of a musical snob back then, because I shut out a lot of the other music people were writing about and talking about. I'd been hanging out with this group of Anglophile boys and they got me in to a Primal Scream gig. Even though I wasn't initially drawn to the music, the fact that there were thousands of people there with those pudding bowl haircuts and striped t-shirts made me realise there were things happening that I hadn't been aware of."
"Once I listened a little more closely, I found parts of the music that I really related to. The Response Series was really born out of that - of me taking the parts I liked and extending or remodelling them, to the point where the finished product was unrecognisable from the original. It was beyond something as basic as a remix. It was a reaction to the music that rarely went in a similar direction to the original. Most times it went way out into left field," she laughs.
Black feels that the Response Series falls somewhere between the remix and the cover version, similar to Internet and white label mash-ups.
"I think it's a great situation that's occurring today, where as soon as something comes out, like a new Missy (Elliot) track, there are mash-up versions of it popping up on the Internet almost immediately. It goes back to the 1950s and '60s thing of people covering other artists' tracks within a very short space of time. Back then that was completely acceptable, expected even. The notion that a song is strong enough to stand up to that kind of repeated reinterpretation is something that really appeals to me."
As for her motivation in choosing an (until now) anonymous distribution method, for Black, it's definitely an urban thing. Citing seminal graffiti artists like Julio 204 and Dondi, as well as street performers and buskers, Black says that city dwellers have always enjoyed this type of free art.
"It all revolves around the same central ideas - it's art, it's free, and it's on the street for everyone."
Like the formerly underground rapper 50 Cent, who garnered praise for his between-contract bootleg albums, Black's unofficial tape releases have seen her develop a steadily increasing group of admirers. She already counts Chromatica and Factory Preset among her fans, and had one of her songs covered by LA punk femmes, Les Rascals. Still, the notion of the response in her music is far from a recent one.
"No, it's not completely new," agrees Black.
"The response, or the call and response are present in all forms of black music, and always have been. That of course means it has migrated to white music too. I guess I'm making what's considered to be white music, being predominantly electronic, but anyone who's dug deeper knows it was black people who arguably started that too."
The musical response has not always been exclusively limited to black artists. Liz Phair famously issued her own reply to The Rolling Stones' Exile On Main Street, while artists like Neil Young and Lynryd Skynryd have also responded to each other's work - sometimes derisively. Hip hop is similarly littered with lyrics that dis and counter-dis. Black says there is a noticeable difference between these kinds of reactions and her own music.
"The Liz Phair album is more in the vein of my own work, in that she wasn't strictly giving a literal reply, which then allowed her songs to evolve into something new. The Neil Young/Skynyrd thing was more of an argument about civil rights in Alabama from what I've heard. They weren't really responding to each other, they were just arguing! (The feud began when Young issued the critical Alabama, which was soon countered by Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama).
"For me, the response needs to be positively motivated to work effectively. How can you create something based wholly on negative feelings? It might serve a purpose at one time in your life, but I don't think it's something people would readily return to again and again."
With Black's "tape community" growing, she is putting the final touches on her latest release, a reply to the Arctic Monkeys' debut - the 12th album to be issued in the Response Series. While the 26 year-old seems glad to have finally revealed herself, she steadfastly refuses to change her underground approach.
"It's still the Response Series and you still won't be able to buy it in the shops or find it on the internet," she says defiantly.
"That's what I loved about this right from the start and that's what I love about it now. If you're in the right place at the right time, or you know the right people, you get my music. It's that simple. I'd hate to make something you can buy in K-Mart. Where's the mystery in that?"
Cate Williams
09/07/2006
Return of the Mack?
After decades in the musical wilderness, Marvin Taylor is back making records.
"I was gone," he tells Marc Cochrane.
The 1970s were equally cruel and kind to Marvin "Mack" Taylor. In 1971, in London, he was an in-demand session musician and progressive rock visionary. By 1979, he was drug addicted and destitute in Los Angeles. What happened in between has largely been blacked out from Taylor's memory, though he's keen to retell what he can still recall. More than anything, the 54 year-old is simply glad to be alive and producing music again.
Redwood Trinity, his first recording in over 30 years, bears the optimism of his hope in a new beginning, as well as the fragility of his mindset. Eschewing the prog-rock dynamic of his earlier work, it's a largely acoustic affair with some electronic instrumentation and guest appearances by old friends. Taylor says he's "sublimely happy" with the end result.
The album was recorded at Le Shack, a log cabin studio near Sault Sainte Marie, Canada, where Taylor also lived for the last six months. Now he has returned to LA - the city that nearly killed him - to field interviews and decide on the final artwork for the album cover.
"I certainly am back, and it's good to be back," says Taylor.
"Like Keith Richards says, 'It's not just good to be here - it's good to be anywhere.' I'd definitely have to agree with him on that one! Anywhere is good, good, good," he laughs.
Today, "anywhere" is the Regal Café, a small faux-wood-panelled sanctuary in one of LA's numerous oversized malls. It's an incongruous setting for a man who has spent most of his years on life's fringes. In the past, Taylor would have been thrown out of here. Now he's a regular.
"This is about my only vice," says the recently-married musician, his ring finger clinking against a hefty coffee mug.
"The rest had to go. It was them or me, really, so coffee it is."
In conversation, Taylor is animated despite the obvious physical effects he has sustained through his drug abuse. His hands tremble slightly and he has lost some of his teeth, but he remains positive and upbeat.
"It's like a fog has lifted and now I remember why I made music in the first place," he says.
"When you're younger you can get by on passion alone. Late nights, no money, occasional meals. It's all part of the deal. When you get older, it's more of a struggle in some ways, because you can see the end of the road ahead - it's not some wide-open highway where you can waste years along the journey. Time's ticking away and you've almost got to force yourself to do something. Right now I feel like I've got the hunger again, and I haven't felt that way since I started."
As a fledgling singer-guitarist, Taylor spent the early part of his career moving through the ranks of session players in London. His contemporaries included future guitar heroes like Jimmy Page, and he relished the exposure to new ideas and great players. Work was plentiful and his connections were good, with Taylor appearing on dozens of recordings for both mainstream and independent labels. In 1971, he followed the lead of many session musicians and moved to Los Angeles, before settling permanently among LA's bohemian set. There, he continued contributing to a wide range of recordings, and although much of the work was uncredited, the players he met convinced Taylor to form a band with an emphasis on musicianship as much as song writing.
"We had such great players around us all the time, being session men," he says.
"We were always busy, but it might have meant playing on a children's album or something not at all our bag. We wanted to show our chops, but also play on songs we cared about deeply as a group."
The resulting band, Fang, anticipated the rise of progressive rock worldwide, placing Taylor and his band mates at the centre of the underground west coast prog scene.
"It was a very strange time. In one way it was all very planned - I took a lot of care choosing the personnel for Fang - but in another way it was quite spontaneous. The way a scene sprung up around us was all quite organic, to be honest. We never considered ourselves the leaders of that. We simply noticed the crowds increasing each time we played," says Taylor.
"We ourselves were never the stars - the music was. To me that's the essence of progressive rock. With the stuff that followed, like punk rock, I always felt that the personalities ruled the music. The face was more important than the riff or the recordings or whatever."
For Fang, it was not only the recording of their work that was important. A road band in the extreme, they officially released just one studio album during their career (1973's March of the Gnomes), preferring to play on the haphazard tours of the era. While not in the same league commercially as a band like The Grateful Dead, they nonetheless developed a minor band of bootleggers along the way. Taylor didn't mind the "trench coat recorders", but he's far less enthusiastic about the band's tour promoters at the time.
"It's not like it is today at all," he says.
"We didn't have a clue, or at least whoever organised the tours didn't. We'd play somewhere in San Francisco one week, then a generator party in the Arizona desert the next. There was no goddamn logic to it because it was still relatively new. It was improving all the time, but if you weren't someone like the Stones or Led Zeppelin it was still very hard."
The additional pressure was alleviated by traditional rock and roll measures - drugs, and lots of them. The use of illegal substances was widespread within the band, but Taylor "took to them like a kid in a candy store," according to Fang bassist Larry Crenshaw. Taylor admits as much himself.
"I'm very careful to ensure that this doesn't come across as a drug recommendation, but we really did it all. Mushrooms, speed, coke, Quaaludes, acid, pounds and pounds of grass, peyote, DMT. We did the whole damn lot."
Arguably the most devastating item in Taylor's pharmacopeia, and one he neglects to include on his list, was heroin. Taylor's band mates claim his constitution was astounding, no matter what he was on. Until heroin.
"That shit just suffocated him creatively," says Dave Opie, Fang's drummer.
"Being the time it was, we all looked at drugs as a way of gaining new perspectives, but heroin just shut that out (for Taylor). He started becoming really withdrawn and unreliable."
As Taylor's heroin intake increased, he predictably began to alienate those around him. Plans for a follow-up to March of the Gnomes eventually faded, and Fang's live shows deteriorated sharply. Soon after, the band found itself without a record deal and without a functioning lead singer. While the others slowly returned to their session jobs, Taylor was too far gone to get any regular gigs.
"I can vaguely recall that period," he says today.
"There are a lot of regrets, of course. In particular, the way I let the band go and also the way I let the other blokes down. That still stings."
As the musician eroded his connections, his drug use worsened and he lost any semblance of a normal life. His memories of this time are blurred at best, with Taylor treading a constant path between rehabilitation clinics and homeless centres. Occasionally he surfaced as a missing-in-action blip in music news columns, much like Pink Floyd's original singer Syd Barret, but little else is known of this period.
"I was well and truly a walking disaster," he admits.
"I mean, I was gone and I couldn't see any way back whatsoever. It's a position that you never think you'll reach, and once you're there you of course can't even realise it because you're so medicated. You go through the motions of rehab and all that, but deep down you only do it because it stops people annoying you about your drug taking."
One of those who annoyed Taylor about his drug taking was Sonia Harford, a counsellor at various Los Angeles homeless centres. With her help, he gradually managed to kick his drug habit. An important part of that process was the music therapy that Harford employed to give the then ex-musician new focus. Through the therapy, Taylor slowly rebuilt his playing ability and, quite naturally, songs began to evolve. The damage Taylor has sustained through drug abuse has undoubtedly shaped the new work, with his once stratospheric vocals now slightly cracked and worn, and his hands no longer able to fly across the fret board. Taylor's lyrics are also far removed from the ethereal stuff of Fang's progressive rock epics.
"There's not much desire to create an alternate reality in my songs any more, especially when I've been through…when I've seen so much reality," he says, choosing the words carefully as he stares into his coffee.
Sonia Harford now also has a further role in Taylor's recovery - as his wife.
"Yes, well who would've thunk it?" Taylor laughs.
"Once I was back in the real world all the old possibilities opened up again. I realised there were things I'd been missing out on for a long time - love in particular. Not only did Sonia help me kick (drugs), but she also rekindled those other pure emotions within me too."
After the release of Redwood Trinity, Taylor plans to play some select gigs in support of the album. He'll be joined on the road by ex-Fang bassist Larry Crenshaw and electronic music producer Minusha, with a revolving cast of friends and performers accompanying them along the way. It's a chance for Taylor to repay some old debts and showcase "the new Mack", as he refers to himself.
"There's definitely a sense of repayment about this tour, but all those debts are emotional. Me and the boys from Fang never ever argued about the money - it was only ever about the trouble that I'd caused through my actions. Now we're all cool and I'm ready to get out on the road and show people why I did this in the first place. Tell everyone! Spread the word! Mack's back, and this time he means it!"
Redwood Trinity is scheduled for a December release.
09/04/2006
New Orleans Two Months Ago
New Orleans Two Months Ago - Kurisu
Kurisu
Reality reconstructed with the help of Vincent Gallo and a stolen Jim Morrison tape. Recorded in early 2006.
Violet Clearwing
Kurisu
A small bird in flight, fluttering through the blue smoke haze of a Friday afternoon. Genetically engineered avian machine music, recorded in early 2006.
08/16/2006
Unsafe At Any Speed
Kurisu
From the man who promised the world but delivered an atlas, comes a sliced and diced hip hop melange. Perfect for short attention spans and schizophrenics on amphetamine benders. Be sure to keep the cough syrup handy to come down for the slower bits.
Features NWA, Atmosphere, Eminem, Coldcut & Roots Manuva, Jungle Brothers, Kleenex/Liliput, De La Soul, Cut Copy, Lyrics Born, Kool G Rap & DJ Polo, Pete Rock & CL Smooth, Promoe, Dr Dre Vs Busta Rhymes, Boogie Down Productions, Natural Born Chillers and more. All tracks sped up, slowed down, mashed and slashed by Kurisu.
Enjoy!
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