Guest/Ghost Mix

'Сталкер'

Stalker: Train: Edward Artemiev
C1 :: Check: Ryoji Ikeda
Beirut, Lebanon: Abu Zeluf
Syria: Jermain Tamraz
C2 :: Cacopy: Ryjoji Ikeda
The Wicker Man: Ruined Church: Paul Giovanni and Magnet
Liquid Energy (Bubbling Rhythm): Delia Derbyshire
The Wicker Man: Beetle: Paul Giovanni and Magnet
Solaris: Track 7: Edward Artemiev
Veterano: Harmonia
C0 :: Coda: Ryoji Ikeda
Cry in the Pillow: Sabaithong Powpuri
The Sixth Collection: Pattern XXI: Mamoru Fujeida
Pou Aru Akeun: Macham Pawuut

Theft Gallery

Review: Andrzej Stasiuk: Tales of Galicia

Tales of Galicia is set in the south-east corner of Poland a few years after the fall of Communism. A time of upheaval certainly but, as the name of the volume implies, this part of the world is no stranger to social change. A mountainous region, once called Galicia, it rolled down into modern Ukraine before being annexed by the Polish. The image of a ghost territory haunting the contemporary map is an apt illustration of Stasiuk’s exploration of boundaries and demarcation. Around here, cultural identity is a history of flux and capitalism is just the sequel to earlier religions, armies and political ideologies.
Read More...

Review: Alain Mabanckou: Broken Glass

Broken Glass is a derelict who drinks at a bar called Credit Gone West in the Trois-Cents district of the DR Congo. As a disgraced school teacher and unrepentant drunk, he is an unconventional narrator, the kind we might find in Camus novels. The words you are reading, he explains, are jottings made in a notebook given to him by the bar's proprietor, Stubborn Snail, intended to leave some kind of legacy for Credit Gone West. For Stubborn Snail, all talk about Africa's oral heritage is worn out and reality too motley for neat phrases: "this is the age of the written word, that's all that's left now, the spoken word's just black smoke". Mabanckou's novel explores the space between. In describing the events of this dive and through confessions of its resident barflies, Broken Glass' notebook becomes a suitably messy dissertation on two themes: how scoundrels justify themselves through the stories they tell and the wider interplay of African literature within its alleged oral purity and colonization by the French.
Read More...

The Smiths 1985, Brighton

West Withering

I've been thinking about a book recently and feel it has enough scope to commit to. The ideas give me that weird little tingle (the gleam), suggesting I'll get a lot out of writing it. That I'm moved to make this muted public declaration gives indication that I've faith in it. Here goes.

I'm interested in how values are so often grounded in money, to the extent that a stable market economy creates the conditions for a civilized behaviour that might be meaningless otherwise. What happens to social values if the economic stool is kicked away? As we approach possible financial collapse, I feel moved to write a post-capital comedy of manners. I'm thinking of Haneke's 'Time of the Wolf', which seems more prescient every day. It's interesting that Haneke gets criticized for his bleak view of human nature when that's exactly what he's questioning in the film. Without social enablers perhaps 'human nature' has very different priorities.

I'm not particularly interested in sci-fi but, so far, my ideas seem part of a particularly British tradition of the genre, which uses it as an alienation device to look at class and other social issues. There's Ballard, of course, who's evacuated urban spaces and class tribalism correlates with what I'm working on. But also John Wyndham. I've just listened to a good dramatization of 'The Midwich Cuckoos' and BBC7 has been running Ballard's 'The Drowned World'. Both employ topographical disruption to dramatize psychological and social norms.



Incidentally, I also see Bowie as very much a part of this tradition. Parts of 'Ziggy', 'Drive-In Saturday', all the post-industrial breakdown of 'Diamond Dogs'. It gives me a good excuse to post this jaw-dropping performance from Adrian Belew.

I imagine something medieval, a dark age where the knowledge of our world has collapsed, because it no longer has purpose. So far, I have society broken down into two extremes: outside and inside -- a rough-and-ready tribalism, fraught with petty wars, and a hyper-stylized 'royal court', replete with complex rituals, grotesque and mannered, like an exaggerated 'Richard III'.

Between these worlds are the 'buffers' -- traders, henchmen and the socially mobile. But my main characters exist in the margins. A father and his 14-year-old son, Crumb. I'll speak about them more next time. But I have a clear image of the boy, pale and copper-haired, carrying a copy of 'Sense and Sensibility', a book utterly otherworldly in this new context.

Review: John Seabrook: Deeper

Deeper grew out of two articles John Seabrook wrote for The New Yorker magazine. The premise of the book is both simple and effective: the "newbie" is sent on a passage to cyberspace, armed only with rudimentary vocabulary and a tube of factor 30 to protect against "flaming". The voyager then records his progress and, shazam, cyber-travel writing is born.
Read More...