Sri Aurobindo Ashram

A friend of mine introduced me to these strange but inspiring musical pieces hosted on a rather web 2.0 website. The music it seems is written by a man named Sunil, who hosts a sort of new age retreat, education, community, and yoga center founded by Sri Aurobindo in the early 1900s.


"This section hosts music played by the Mother and Sunil. The Mother used to improvise on the reed organ and later switched to an electric organ. She played on New Year's Day and on some other occasions. These were recorded from the 1950s."

From 1965, the Mother entrusted the composition and recording of New Year Music to Sunil, and later also asked him to make music for passages she read from Savitri."

Its very difficult to describe but these pieces are almost within theyre own universe of improvisational, cinematic and eerie sounds. And theres just tons of this stuff, all like hidden gems.

Sunil's New Year Music ¨ 1967 

Mothers organ music ¨ 16th May 1954 

Mystic Solitude 

Mothers organ music ¨ Perseus  

You can explore the entirety of the 50+ years of music all uploaded to their website here: øsørøiøaøuørøoøbøiønødøo

On Liking Women - thoughts

ANDREA LONG CHU  On Liking Women  via N+1 Mag

I don't usually read feminist essays or write down my thoughts but this one caught my attention - partially because it's rare to see feminist literature written by a trans woman, (rather than trans literature written by a "feminist"). And this essay seems to be fairly aware of that, as it was written to address a problem within the current dialogue of the fourth wave - that desire is inherently subject to politics. Andrea compares this at length to the story of the "political lesbian," in a time when the Secondwave sought to rid itself of the irony of heterosexuality in a sphere of deliberate radical feminism.

new toys

its a christmas miracle!
 

I'm particularly a fan of this track here

 

Magic E / Look & Read

Make moving patterns

Noted

Swedish UFOs

CAN – Live in Soest, Germany 1970

Indents pt.1

A little collage of some british television series indents, 60s-79. Intros that are kind of surprisingly unsettling for childrens tv shows, at least nowadays. Im not sure what draws me to indents, but I suppose it's the combination of incidental music and 60s video animation oddity.

this one sounds like something out of a Oneohtrix song

I feel like ghost box makes 20000x more sense after watching these.

Graham tape delay

Graham tape delay from I•HATE•THIS•FILM on Vimeo.

Carolee Scheeman

via moma

Broadcast / Julian House Live Score

Broadcast live scoring a film by Julian House (Ghost Box, Focus Group)

Ginny Sims: six towns

Just a few weeks ago, I had the special pleasure of playing at Mirrorlab, a studio adjacent to The White Page gallery in Minneapolis. The gallery was currently hosting the works of Ginny Sims, a local ceramics artist, who's special treatment of the room to host her works was uniquely beautiful. The painted surroundings offer a strange play on perspective, appropriate for her playful works. Because Mirrorlab studios is next to white page we had the treat of being able to walk between the two spaces during the show. I feel extremely honored to have been in the presence of these colorful works too appropriate for that magical night.

Letratone

via Kindra Murphy

"Letraset was a company and brand name that manufactured sheets of dry transferable typefaces before the proliferation of computers. Up until the 1980s, these were widely used by graphic designers as well as by engineers, for whom Letraset was a convenient way of applying type to surfaces.In addition to letters in various fonts and sizes, sheets with graphic elements (Letratone) were available. "

 

A music festival in 2014 was inspired by the now forgotten art supply, featuring the music of Jan Jelinek & Masayoshi Fujita, Cavern of the Anti Matter, and more. I really love the album that Jan Jelinek & Masayoshi Fujita were making at the time.

Rest in Peace Letraset

Mix day!

No words for this one, but enjoy! I'll be putting the tracklisting in the comments soon [tapee]

download / download

Shoreditch: Experimental Music School 1969

Iceblink Live, White Page November 2017

Study Materials

Hauntology: 

I'm slowly losing track of what hauntology is even supposed to mean in a modern context anymore, since it seems so integrated in how we listen to music and enjoy so much of our media. Like how when we listen to modern lofi hip hop and we dont even really think twice about the vinyl static bouncing in the background. The way mark fisher talks about it in his blog k-punk, however, reminds me that that there was a time where that sort of technological uncanniness was new and confused the ear. 
I might also be wrong to be quick to associate Ghost Box with hauntology, but any other description of their aesthetic feels clunky. I do have a bit of a head canon for the label, however. Most often I'm returning to acts like the Focus Group, Advisory Circle, Roj.  "...[Julian] House’s own Focus Group and [Jim] Jupp’s Belbury Poly – make sounds that are less timeless and more out of time. You know they fit somewhere, it’s just impossible to put a finger on exactly where." - the Quietus, 2013

here are a few resources and things to read about hauntology. I havent quite finished all of these words, but k-punk/mark fisher is a good place to start:half lives: a cipher of iteration
the Conet Project - collecting short wave and number stations for more than 45 yearshow to think about the future: hauntology

mark fisher: What is Hauntology?
k-punk : phonograph blues

Hauntology is just a word, however, something people have reappropriated to mean something in context with art and music. There is sort of a living version of it alive in between the cracks of history somewhere in the black country of england. The strange, idyllic, lost to time-ness of the area combined with its curious connection with psychedelia, offkilter/spooky fairy tale charm is explored in this blog, A year in the country
which seems to dig into the sort of environment you would expect a band like Broadcast to form in. Ghost Box associates and all seem to have just grown out of the scenery of depicted in this blog. Records of folkloric rituals, tucked away fairy tale sceneries,unearthed inexplicable photos of uncanny situations too good to be imagined. Its as if this little world exists, untouched by outside history, an alternate past with no clue of the direction the world was headed in. A true Belbury. ("Ghost Box is a record label for a group of artists exploring the misremembered musical history of a parallel world.") Its source untraceable without more information the era; the feeling of the time these photographs seem to come from an alternate past. This blog is an incredible gold mine of curiosity and inspiration.

Collage with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance

"Accounts by several Dadaists describe how Arp made "chance collages" such as this one: by tearing paper into pieces, dropping them onto a larger sheet, and pasting each scrap wherever it happened to fall. The relatively ordered appearance of Arp's collages suggests, however, that the artist did not fully relinquish artistic control." via MOMA
"...finally tore it up, and let the pieces flutter to the floor of his studio [. . . .] Some time later he happened to notice these same scraps of paper as they lay on the floor, and was struck by the pattern they formed. It had all the expressive power that he had tried in vain to achieve. How meaningful! How telling! Chance movements of his hand and of the fluttering scraps of paper had achieved what all his efforts had failed to achieve, namely expression."

Thinking a lot about experimental collage music, chance, and improvisational aesthetics. The way focus group and children of alice's music can at times feel directed by chance and try to constantly toss the listener off of their comfortable grip of the music. But how much "improv" or collage music is true chance? What is to be said about the "aesthetical sound" of something improvisational or controlled by some form of odds - whether it be dropping samples in on top of eachother, twisting knobs on a granular effect, or just picking slices of music before you can decide how you feel about it. Sometimes it really sounds like they are picking sounds out of a hat, tearing them up and dropping them onto a piece of paper, gluing them where they land. There is definitely a sound to it, though - musique concrete? 

Jean (Hans) Arp

Objects Arranged According to the Law of Chance

1930. via moma

Maston - Swans

 hear this

What Frank Maston is up to I'd sure like to know more about. The silly indents he has for his new label that show at the beginning of the new music video are great. And I love the new record. Returning to this band is great because it seems he has followed the same path of inspiration as me and many of my peers: Harkening to library gems and film scores from the likes of Basil Kirchin, Piot, and of course, Umiliani. Its pretty appropriate that this song was released with the series of "phonoscope" indents: it definitely sets up the mindset and mood to appreciate this record; part modern lowkeypsych gem part hauntological media part neo- library record. It is verryyy Ghost Box. Also reminds me of what bibio briefly touched on here. I wonder what else will come of this direction and this label. The aesthetic is pretty clear cut, down to the rolling papers. I am excited to see if he has any other projects in store, and what  he may be recording at Phonoscope studios. 

Moon Series

moon series by lynn chadwick via the walker

who is an otherwise very brutalist sculptor. I'm a fan of these simple childlike cut-out-esque moon prints

Artists rugs

rugs by GUR

rug designed by experimental textiles artist Nadine Goepfert 

A. R. Penck

  A. R. Penck