Durutti Column - For Belgian friends
From A Factory quartet, Factory, 1980

If I had a radio show, and if that radio show were allowed the luxury of a signature tune à la Peel and ‘Pickin’ the blues’ by Grinderswitch, then ‘For Belgian friends’ would be one of three contenders (the others being ‘Christopher’, an instrumental by the Claim from their Boomy Tella LP, and ‘Jamaican rum rhumba’ by the Clientele).  But I would probably disqualify it from the race early.  Not so long ago I read that Aidan Moffat formerly of Arab Strap played a favourite piece of instrumental music – ‘Sleep walk’ by Santo & Johnny – only  rarely, for fear of getting bored with it.  That’s how I feel about ‘Belgian friends’.  I can scroll through it my head anytime, picking out the melody on the, er, piano of my mind.  To play it regularly at the head of a radio show would turn it into an ordinary every day thing; what is special about it would leach away.  So I take it out of its box only occasionally.

Music poured out of Vini – still does – so how it came to be decided that a completed piece was A, B, LP or compilation track, offcut or farmed out to the Benelux imprint or Les Disques du Crépuscule always seemed random to me.  Most likely it was simply what was recorded together was released together.  It’s all essentially Vini and a guitar or a keyboard, irregularly his voice or the voices of others, and it all flows from the same source regardless.  You could sit and listen to Vini improvise and recollect all day and not get bored, for all that he has modestly admitted that he thinks that you would.  An atypical Mancunian in that respect.

Recorded between The return of the Durutti Column and LC (on which it now appears as a related work), ‘For Belgian friends’ is atypical Durutti Column because it features Donald Johnson on drums rather than a machine or Bruce Mitchell.  It’s not Donald Johnson as we came to know and love him in A Certain Ratio, although there is a suggestion of funky choppiness as the music heads into what with a proper and willing singer on board might well have been a chorus.  He contains himself, provides the necessary rhythm for Vini’s trills and frills, but the very act of containment proved that a long-term relationship between the two was not possible.  The studio wasn’t big enough for both of them.

The piece is also unusual for being more formally arranged than most early Durutti Column, when Vini had a tendency to start and stop for no apparent reason.  This flows, builds, and drains away.  I cannot overstate its loveliness.  It has a Christmas feel – all the festive season’s extra electric light contrasting with the crispness of December nights – but because it’s also languid, fluid, essentially at one with the world, it survives an outing in August.  Whether the rain falls or the sun shines, it works, sounding like both, adapting to its surroundings like a chameleon, and as oddly unique and magical as that lizard.

• No, I drift. Mostly I drift. (On Vini Reilly and the Durutti Column, Tangents, 2001)

Simon Fisher Turner/Derek Jarman-Blue (Mute/Nonesuch 1993)

http://www.divshare.com/download/4773661-d11

Simon Fisher Turner's soundtrack is a momentous one since it serves as an integral element of Derek Jarman's twelfth and final film. The reason that the soundtrack is so essential to the film is that the entire movie consists of a flickering, amorphous blue screen accompanied by narration by three of his favorite actors: Nigel Terry, John Quentin and Tilda Swinton as well as his own commentary. Jarman's flickering blue visuals were inspired by French painter Yves Klein and were meant to simulate his own blindness caused by an AIDS-related illness.

I witnessed a screening of Blue at International House in Philadelphia when it was originally released and it devastated me while opening my eyes to possibilities of the soundtrack. In my opinion, this film is impotent on your meager television, but must be seen on a large screen to appreciate the intricacies of the shifting blue canvas on which he documents his final days. It is meant to simulate what he saw as well as his final thoughts before he left this world. Blue is a meditation on death. Blue is a last will and testament of a brilliant filmmaker. Blue's soundtrack is pretty much the entire movie if you can conjure up a faulty tv to replicate its shimmering decay.

Simon Fisher Turner contributes a suitably ambient soundtrack that adds to the surreal experience of listening to a man narrate his own death. He smartly includes snatches of Brian Eno, Momus, Coil, Satie, Durutti Column, Kate St. John amongst others. It all coalesces into a dream state where Jarman comes to peace with his condition and provides an angelic atmosphere for his eventual demise. It is heartbreaking stuff as well as a courageous statement in an age where many had little empathy for those suffering from HIV. A perfect soundtrack as well as a fitting farewell from a director who turned the lens onto himself.

So some scattered links and observations for now:

• Edward Lengel's remarkable Washington Post piece about America's World War I veterans -- and how that war experience generally has been erased or reduced in terms of the public consciousness about veterans in general -- is well worth a read on this day. To quote briefly from it:
  

  The war's last and greatest battle involving U.S. soldiers, fought in the Meuse-Argonne region of eastern France during the autumn of 1918, sucked in more than 1 million U.S. troops and hundreds of airplanes and tanks. Artillery batteries commanded by men such as the young Harry S. Truman fired more than 4 million shells -- more than the Union Army fired during the entire Civil War. More than 26,000 doughboys were killed and almost 100,000 wounded, making the clash probably the bloodiest single battle in U.S. history. But as far as the American public was concerned, it might as well never have taken place. "Veterans said to me in their speeches and in private that the American people did not know anything about the Meuse-Argonne battle," Brig. Gen. Dennis Nolan wrote years later. "I have never understood why."

• Randomly thinking about this piece led me to dig up a four part series of posts on World War I as considered in various examples of the popular imagination I did for Freaky Trigger back in 2004, "Anthems." Enjoyable enough still, I suppose, and they might be of interest on the day:

  Part 1 (on the book Tommy by Richard Holmes)
  Part 2 (on the original movie adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front)
  Part 3 (on World War I-themed songs by the Durutti Column, Mark Hollis and Piano Magic)
  Part 4 (concluding thoughts)

• And speaking of old movie thoughts of mine, two more here, on The Rules of the Game and The Silence of the Lambs. Maybe interesting, maybe not!

Hope your day's good.

download :·: zshare :·: martes en la noche

once rolas y un bonus para todos los cuerpos cansados que quieran escuchar. porfa: descarguen y disfruten a partir de las diez de la noche. en orden:

01· spiritualized : don't hold me close
02· durutti column : waiting
03· moby : living
04· public image ltd. : rise
05· omd : forever live and die
06· múm : we have a map of the piano
07· richard hawley : the ocean
08· martial solal : new york herald tribune
09· syd barrett : love song
10· horse feathers : hardwood pews
11· the magnetic fields : time enough for rocking when we're old
12· bonus track

download :·: zshare :·: martes en la noche

Malory -- Not Here Not Now
Ladyhawk -- Shots
The LK -- The LK vs. the Snow
Dawn Landes -- Fireproof
Wilderness -- Vessel States
Indian Jewelry -- Invasive Exotics
The Hundred Dollar Band -- Waves and Particles
Crescent -- By the Roads and the Fields
Durutti Column -- Live in Bruxelles 8/13/1981
Brooks -- Red Tape

Statistics are a useful tool in understanding our world, although it has been said that 43% of all statistics are meaningless, so caveat collector. Loosely put, a statistical outlier is as an 'occasional or infrequent observation in data that differs significally from its co-data'. Collectors turn the statistical world on its head. On Planet Collector, outliers rule. Weird is normal. Up is down. Expect the unexpected.

Try this. If you ask some people to name the top ten things that "people collect", this is more or less the list you'd likely get back:

Books | Coins | Comics | DVDs | Music | Toys | Stamps | Sports Memorabilia (Your results may vary. Serving suggestion only.)

Look at the list again. Yes, I know there are only eight items there, but this only serves to strengthen my next point. There exists quite a narrow view on what humans out there actually collect - this is the middle-of-the-road stuff that one might assume fills a home's spare room. And, the 20 million people who collect stamps would probably agree.

Look at the list again. Read between the lines, those little pipe characters that hide somewhere on the Eastern key-Bord. Each of those pipes represents a huge iceberg, and the text either side represents the thumb-sized tip of that mountain of ice. For every 'normal' collection type, there're thousands of outliers, quietly sitting under the surface, lurking just off our radars. You'll only find the outliers if you go looking. And the more you look, the more you find, and the more you're surprised. You might know an outlier without having ever realised it. Don't panic. They may otherwise be quite normal.

I'm talking about people who collect Gundam, jars, butterflies, flags, vintage walkie-talkies, speeding tickets, Durutti Column, newspapers, shells, frogs, autographs, soda cans, Atari, smurfs, costumes, Babylon 5, number plates, fountain pens, Toby mugs, kites, Warhammer, fishing flies, Asuka and Rei, beetles, Blythe, earrings, and coat-hangers.

Yes, there is someone out there who collects coat-hangers. In fact, there are three suspension de vêtements enthusiasts:

1. Bob Browning (see photo).

2. Penelope Cruz - yes, she apparently collects coat-hangers.

3. Someone in a remote Norwegian fishing village.

I'd like all three to join Kollecta. I'll tackle the third person, if anyone out there knows Bob or Penny, please let me know.

[ www.kollecta.com/Collector/Barney ]

On my show on Phantom 105.2 (in Dublin or www.phantom.ie everywhere) tonight, Friday 14th December, I'll be hosting a Christmas Musical Extravaganza Special like no other with tunes by the likes of Mogwai, Clinic, Sparks, Marvin Gaye, The Fall, Low, The Jimmy Cake, Durutti Column and many more. The 'Under The Radar' album is Phil Spector's 'A Christmas Gift For You'. The show is on between Midnight and 2AM.

Above, you can watch Ex-Arab Strap man Malcolm Middleton's attempt at a Christmas Number One with the cheery, "We're All Going To Die".

The earliest albums from The Durutti Column were released on Factory Records in the giddy, post-punk heyday. But even given the era's anything-goes attitude toward sonic experimentation (and especially Factory's penchant for pop obscurantism), the sounds Vini Reilly created as The Durutti Column were bold to the point of confusion. Elegantly atmospheric and deceptively fragile-sounding, Reilly piled distorted, echoplexed guitars on top of distorted, echoplexed guitars, utilized rudimentary sampling and electronic percussion, and basically made music that sounded like lounge music for the deeply disturbed. More than 20 years later, Reilly is still defying expectations and "Someone Else's Party" easily exemplifies his solitary and idiosyncratic style. Between sampling that creepy song from the "Silencio" scene in "Mulholland Drive" (on "Spanish Lament") and using a book for a bass drum on "Spasmic Fairy," Reilly maintains a hazy distance between songcraft and soul-purging. Nothing is exciting, yet none of it is boring either. Early DC albums glided by on a foppish sheen of cracked beauty; time has accentuated not only the beauty but also the cracks.

First appeared August 7, 2003 in Orlando Weekly.