Friday 28 December 2012

Détournement et Recuperation

Détournement is a technique developed in the 1950s by the Letterist International, and consists in "turning expressions of the capitalist system and its media culture against itself," like turning slogans and logos against the advertisers or the political status quo.

Recuperation is the process by which politically radical ideas and images are twisted, co-opted, absorbed, defused, incorporated, annexed and commodified within media culture and bourgeois society, and thus become interpreted through a neutralized, innocuous or more socially conventional perspective. More broadly, it may refer to the cultural appropriation of any subversive works or ideas by mainstream culture.

Sunday 16 December 2012

Nightscapes

First released in 2006
Now available for download

The Quickening

First released in 1993
Now available for download.

Friday 30 November 2012

Jez'll Fix It

Save Lewisham A&E: Jez'll fix it

On Saturday November 24, 2012, despite the rain, around 10,000 protestors marched through Lewisham, in south east London, to a rally in Ladywell Fields, to protest about the proposals to close Lewisham Hospital's A&E Department, and send emergencies to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich, to downgrade maternity services, and to sell off over half the hospital's buildings. If the proposals go ahead, there will be just one A&E Department for the 750,000 people in three London boroughs -- Lewisham, Greenwich and Bexley.
This placard is aimed at Jeremy Hunt, the disgraced culture secretary who, despite his corrupt dealings with Rupert Murdoch, was nevertheless given the job of health secretary in September, replacing Andrew Lansley. I find it ironic that, behind the Jimmy Savilled image of Jeremy Hunt, is an advert on a bus for something called "Hitman."
The proposals were published on October 29, 2012 by Matthew Kershaw, an NHS special administrator appointed by ex-health secretary Andrew Lansley to deal with the financial problems of another NHS trust in south east London that is totally unconnected to Lewisham NHS Trust, and the insultingly short consultation period ends on December 13, 2012.
Campaigners -- myself included -- are demanding that the plans be scrapped, and that Lewisham Hospital be allowed to continue providing a comprehensive service to the 250,000 inhabitants of the borough, whose health needs are more important than cuts designed solely to save money.
For further information, see: www.savelewishamhospital.com/
Also see: www.andyworthington.co.uk/2012/11/03/save-lewisham-ae-as-...
www.andyworthington.co.uk/2012/11/09/lewisham-residents-r...
www.andyworthington.co.uk/2012/11/21/save-lewisham-hospit...
For more on Andy Worthington, see: www.andyworthington.co.uk/


Cut & pasted from Andy Worthington's Flickr page. The placard image will be available for free download from a more permanent source shortly..



Sunday 11 November 2012

Lest We Forget

Claude "Chuckles" Choules

Claude Choules was not only the last surviving combat veteran of the First World War, but also the final person alive who saw active service in both world wars. 

He became a pacifist and would not march in parades that glorified wars such as the one that made him famous.

 



Friday 19 October 2012

Jez'll Fix It



Portrait of JEREMY HUNT, Health Secretary by Nigel Ayers

2012.

Free for anti-cuts campaigners.


STOP THE CUTS!



See you at the demo in London tomorrow

Monday 24 September 2012

Slime Trails



Nigel Ayers’ "Slime Trails" records two terrestrial gastropods, active just after rain. The camera casts a relentlessly flawed eye over the scene, which is so botched, off-centre and fragmented that subjects the gastropods to its unblinking stare, leaving them stripped bare on more levels than mere physical nudity and without a full-sized shell. Slugs produce two types of mucus: one which is thin and watery, and another which is thick and sticky, adding a whole new tactile dimension to the camera’s way of looking. Beyond the bodies made up mostly of water, the scene is so relentless and obstinate that the slime trail is turned back on the viewer, who thus becomes the decomposer, chewing up leaves, feces, and other detritus and helping to recycle the nutrients back into the soil. Examining the relationship between ecosystem services and biodiversity as a formal surrogacy relationship facilitates a more analytical examination and brings the issues into sharper relief. The slugs subtly deconstruct the conventional system of the male gaze in conditions and processes, through self-portrayal and seduction strategies which sustain and replenish soil fertility.

Wednesday 15 August 2012

Nocturnal Emissions: Compost CD


Nocturnal Emissions have been exploring the uncharted no man’s land between experimental sound performance, pop music and spoken word poetry for over 30 years. This live recording of Nocturnal Emissions’ show in November 2011 is proof of the fact that they’re still constantly evolving.  Deceptively bucolic ambient soundscapes give way to darker undercurrents in the bass. The 45- minute set is characterized by the subtle, almost imperceptible transformations, when a subdued pulsing that began as a flanged synthesizer chord suddenly turns out to be an actual beat that one could – well not dance, possibly, but tap one’s foot to.
“Compost” manages the feat that the music appears to be rather calm, never aggressive in any way, but leaves you with a mounting sense of tension that you cannot quite put your finger on.  As if there is something going on in darker corners of the music, your brain, or whatever – exciting to listen to.
“Compost” was recorded on 17 November, 2011 at De Ganze Backerei in Augsburg, Germany.
Organised by Attenuation Circuit , the concert featured  a performance by Nigel Ayers, the remaining founder member of Nocturnal Emissions. While most of Nocturnal Emissions’ former releases can be found on www.earthlydelights.co.uk, this album offers a glimpse of the current state of Nigel’s work as an electronic composer and solo performer.

Buy it here http://tinyurl.com/c8p9jze

Tuesday 3 July 2012

Spinal Correction Shred cassette

Nocturnal Emissions
Spinal Correction Shred

Recorded live at Naherholung Sternchen, Berlin 8th June 2012

Earthly Delights limited edition cassette.
Released July 3rd 2012. 

All titles composed and performed by
Nigel Ayers
apart from a version of “Never Give Up” by
Nigel Ayers and Caroline K. 

Cover photo by Lesley Ayers.
Running time 40 mins approximately. 
Both sides are recorded identically for your continued listening pleasure. 






Saturday 23 June 2012

Spinal Correction Shred

It was a grand night out in Berlin. Here's a couple of clips that have turned up online. Not what I did, it's the other acts. BTW Don't let off fire extinguishers at nightclubs, it's not big and it's not clever!

Wednesday 13 June 2012

Binary Tribe

Released in 1994:

Monday 4 June 2012

Berlin show Friday 8 June


8 JUNE 2012 

Nigel Ayers 
Company Fuck 
Toulouse Low Trax 
Litter Shitter the Band of DJ Sheize 
Moloch 
DJs and more..

  DIY church invites
@ Naherholung Sternchen Berolinastraße
7 10178 Berlin /
Mitte (Ubhf- Schillingstraße behind Kino International/ Rathaus Mitte)
 Doors will open @ 9 pm concerts start @ around 10pm

Saturday 2 June 2012

Sod the Jubilee!

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

Tuesday 22 May 2012

Berlin Show coming up

8 JUNE 2012 

Nigel Ayers 
Company Fuck 
Toulouse Low Trax 
Litter Shitter the Band of DJ Sheize 
Moloch 
DJs and more..

  DIY church invites
@ Naherholung Sternchen Berolinastraße
7 10178 Berlin /
Mitte (Ubhf- Schillingstraße behind Kino International/ Rathaus Mitte)
 Doors will open @ 9 pm concerts start @ around 10pm

LIVE: Nigel Ayers

 glad to have the chance to see a performance by Nigel Ayers who released some really interesting and intense recordings from the early 80s on as Nocturnal Emissions, he is still active and now performing under his real name. Nigel Ayers' sound art work is rooted in assemblage and collage. Years before digital sampling became commonplace, his recordings used many thousands of carefully edited “found” and specially recorded sound samples. His interest in the psychological effects of sound, and in particular the recombination of sound to affect perception of time and space is reflected in CD titles such as “Practical Time Travel” where sound functions as snapshots of memory forming new associations as it passes into a simulated dream world. His work reflects the fluid nature of post-modern experience dipping into elements of fringe science, outer space and ethnic music traditions; forming radical mutations of the popular song form and pitting “outsider” viewpoints against more orthodox media constructions of reality.

Nocturnal Emissions music downloads: http://nocturnalemissions.bandcamp.com/
Nocturnal Emissions at Myspace:http://www.myspace.com/nocturnalemissionsofficial
 Nocturnal Emissions at Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nocturnal-Emissions/44070841065

Earthly Delights web site: http://www.earthlydelights.co.uk/
Earthly Delights Youtube Channel:
http://www.youtube.com/user/earthlydelights2006
Nigel Ayers web site: http://www.nigelayers.com/
Nigel Ayers personal blog: http://nigelayers.blogspot.com/


Company Fuck (Australia / Germany/Half theory)
mh I saw him performing a few times already and ya kind of refreshing mad and very serious ridiculous. o.w. ; ) A one-man noisecore karaoke explosion, Company Fuck (or CxFx) is in reality Scott Sinclair - an Australian with a long history in improvised music, who left this behind a few years ago and has since been performing cutup noisecore in psychedelic costumes to audiences all around Europe, Australia, Japan, and North America. CxFx's super fast mixes of more 'serious' and 'difficult' sounds with pop and karaoke firmly place him in the realm of the 'avant retard'. To use the words of Dolly Parton - "It takes a lot of money to look this cheap!". CxFx is known for his brutal and unpredictable live shows. Sure, CxFx uses a laptop, but any similarity to other computer musicians stops there. In performance CxFx is a totally improvised wireless noise monster, able to fast-forward through an entire rainbow of musical styles with every electrified scream, grunt, cough, or spit. In his own unique way, CxFx transforms the stage into a hyper- violent karaoke bar of the future - and he may even persuade the audience to sing along. CxFx works in his own distinctive sonic territory combining extreme vocal improvisation, digital noise, and deliberate musical homage/parody. With no allegiance to one sound or scene, CxFx simultaneously plunders pirated pop music whilst also blowing apart the formulas of so-called 'underground' genres. CxFx often sounds like one man conjuring a million artists together for a bloody entangled mess of manic audio intercourse and copyright infringement. Nobody is safe from the CxFx treatment. CxFx has performed alongside Jean Louis Costes, Patric Catani, Sun Ra Arkestra, Acid Mothers Temple, Keiji Haino, Shitmat, AIDS Wolf, Christoph de Babalon, Sudden Infant, XBXRX, Otto Von Schirach, Zombieflesheater, Napalmed, and many more. CxFx releases music on Hirntrust Grind Media (AT), Fuckyoutapes (AT), God Redikz (NZ), and Half/theory (AUS).


Official website:http://www.companyfuck.com/ Live videos:http://www.companyfuck.com/video.php Facebook page:http://www.facebook.com/companyfvck audio:http://soundcloud.com/halftheory

Toulouse Low Trax (Düsseldorf/ Karaoke Kalk)

just brought out a new record, and there goes this text along which is kind of nice to read. Next to his music activities he also runs a venue called Salon des Amateurs which is an independent cafe in Düsseldorf and quite an important soacial meeting place since years. The man in the crowd is a wonderer with relaxed habits. In him the course of things and movement of the city is reproduced. The Düsseldorfer Detlef Weinrich is such a man in the crows. Some one who is constantly listening to future winds through rushes of the past. He loves the night for its free will. And his music tells stories about it. You might know him as a member of the band Kreidler. As a solo artist he goes under the name Tolouse Low Trax. And he’s already got three Eps and two albums under his belt. His first solo album „Mask Talk“ thrives on a feathery beat frequency and cool new-wave-strength. His recently released piece „Corridor Plateau“, which appeared as a limited edition to accompany the exhibition „Corridor Plateau“ contains percussive electronics and Industrial sounding like its from the second industrial revolution. His third album „Jeidem Fall“, is also not from here. It sounds like music brought down to earth from the heavens. But its a dark cosmos in which there are only fleeting glimpses of light. All eight tracks were composed in a short space of time over the period of just a few months and fit together perfectly atmospherically. With a musical expressiveness that undoubtedly twists your emotions, „Jeidem Fall“ attacks the subconscious and clouds the mind. The drums have more movement that on „Mask Talk“. Along with the constant tapping of drumsticks goes melodical arpeggios dancing dark and dirty. At times longing vocals drift abstractly through the room, as on „Sa Seline“ or „Geo Scan“, without telling any obvious story. To sound like stylistic cross references from the present and past is all just speculation for nothing on „Jeidem Fall“ really sounds like anything that has gone before. You could compare the dark minimal timbre of the drum computer aesthetic with Craig Leon’s first reductive album „Nommos“. There is also a hint of the minimalist industrial of the Spanish band Esplendor Geometrico in the bubbly textures. But Tolouse Low Trax is still looking from the present into the future and filter and filters all his personal preferences through his MPC and his small synth setup to make them come alive here and now in a new way. Again Tolouse Low Trax has created a truly mysteriously vibrating drum computer music which offers hypnotic magic for the shadowy dance floor. Only a little light should illuminate the whole thing and the bodies that move above them should have no fear from threatening percussion which are displaced into a misty trance. A dark swaying shadowy mass, ideal for a journey at the end of the night and all those non-places where longing sleeps and the last romantics dance while getting drunk

. discography: http://www.discogs.com/artist/Tolouse+Low+Trax audio:http://soundcloud.com/detlefnet


DJs: Olya (London/ CD DJ): in Kelly Graylien's words ... inspired by street credibility and cypermedia core she creates fashionable mediavomit to dance & hang to. Still Cruising http://8bitvomit.tumblr.com/ DJ Multitasking (UFO): in Mona Lisa's words... inspired by something extraterresque and comic Multitasking creates the lonely cowboy from Saturn with 11 arms showing up on a saturday dance night.

http://www.soonaspossible.org/ xorxyzt

 (PURGE/ ∞ BL4CK M4G1CK ∞): in tomas's words ... Inspired by magick, myths and unholy rhythms xorzyzt creates a labyrinthic sound world in which nothing is real and everything is distorted.

http://xorzyzt.wordpress.com/ he ah ...

and there is one more surprise surprise.

 Litter Shitter the Band of DJ Sheize (http://www.discogs.com/DJ-Sheize-Noisecore-Mix/release/3166738) & Lee Fükke (

http://www.youtube.com/user/izmarel?feature=watch) oldschool shitcore heros of all time in internet, will come down from London to do one of their dreaded western rituals...(in real life) and in their words: "Most of it can be found on internet (incl. such stinking places as myspace), but some it you will find absolutely nowhere. Part I is "old-school" noisegrind, Part II consists of cyber-noisecore and even noize. This is all a part of a bitter thing called shitcore. Due to non-stop noise grinding the mix goes out of control and at some point you can hear over 10 amplified tracks overlapping each other, which results in total noise chaos (see tracklist). Also, I ran out of time during mixing, so there's was no place left for the usual DJ Sheize megamix re-mix."

Wednesday 25 April 2012

Sunday 15 April 2012

Nocturnal Emissions - Berlin show coming up


Steve Cammack & family just popped round with this flyer for upcoming show at NK Berlin Saturday 09/06/2012.
Catch his blog at Muhmur

(Update: THIS EVENT IS CANCELLED!)
I won't be performing at NK Berlin because I don't like to play with "mysterious" Death in June supporters. These are public, aesthetic, ethical and political reasons on my part.

Saturday 14 April 2012

Transgenic


"There's no suggestion of this being chemical as in spacey and tripped_out. It seems more like some horrendously toxic product that has either been withdrawn from legal usage, or is used only as a last resort to treat the few conditions worse than its side effects.

Although there are a few drum and bass flourishes, the odd techno moment, none of this is done by conventional means. If drum and bass is Manet, Transgenic are Picasso. Most of these tracks use rhythm as a foundation, but not as a rhythmic foundation, if you see what I mean. The beats seem to be there in order to focus the listener's attention, which, once fully engaged, will inevitably notice that although the drum programs may be along for the ride, there's no-one driving.

Like many greats, this seems to have evolved under its own volition, unstructured by conscious human intervention. What with the grinding non-sequiteurs of bass noise, the squeals and virtual clanks, all reproduced in high resolution sound, Transgenic is the sound of techno after the extinction of the human race, the machines keep churning out the beats and the bass, evolving into degraded forms with an incomprehensible agenda that is quite unrelated to keeping people in cycling shorts bouncing into the early hours of Sunday morning.

I think this is a cracker, but then how could I possibly resist an album which features tracks called Oligonucleotide, Chromosome Sequence, and World Bank Schistosoma?"

War Arrow
Sound Projector

Sunday 1 April 2012

Now on Twitter


Tuesday 13 March 2012

Blasphemous Rumours

Wednesday 1 February 2012

Aquarius, the water-carrier of Altarnun



The sun is in this sign from 20th January to 19th February. An air sign.
Key words: clubs, revolutionary, waves, telepathy, eccentric, perverse, intuition, freedom, protest, reform, disruption.
Light or planet: Uranus.
Body parts: ankles, calves, circulation.

This constellation was known to the ancient Babylonians as a man carrying a jug containing water, the source of life. The jug is a group of stars that include Eta, Pi, Gamma and Zeta Aquari. Alpha Aquari – Sadalmelik of 3.0 Magnitude is 760 light years away from earth. Its name derives from the Arabic Al sad al Melik meaning “the lucky one of the king”. It is a yellow supergiant of spectral class G”. Beta Aquari also known as Sadalsuud “the lucky of the luckiest” is of 2.9 Magnitude and 610 light years away. It is another yellow supergiant of the spectral class G0. Zeta Aquari is a double star of 4.3 and 4.5 Magnitude, separated by 2.0”. After 2160 this distance will have grown to 6.0”. The period of revolution is 856 years and the system is 104 light years away. The constellation of Aquarius is formed by the area between St Clether and Laneast to the north, to Trewint in the south. The head of Aquarius lies over Trewint, beside Wesley Cottage and the body covers Altarnun. The feet of the figure lie on the holy wells of St Clether and Laneast. Sadalachbia lies over Treween. Sadalsuud is over Newhay. Ancha is near the phone-box at Lower Tregunnon. The Saturn nebula is near St Clether.

The sign of Aquarius the water-carrier coincides with the Celtic feast of Imbolc, also known as Candlemas, which is connected with wells and water. Imbolc is one of the four principal festivals of the Irish calendar, celebrated either at the beginning of February or at the first local signs of Spring. Originally dedicated to the goddess Brigid, in the Christian period it was adopted as St Brigid’s Day. In Scotland the festival is also known as Là Fhèill Brìghde, in Ireland as Lá Fhéile Bríde, and in Wales as Gwyl Ffraed. Imbolc is traditionally a time of weather prognostication, and the old tradition of watching to see if serpents or badgers came from their winter dens is perhaps a precursor to Groundhog Day. Fire and purification are considered by many to be important aspects of this festival. Brigid (also known as Brighid, Brigit,) is the goddess of poetry, healing and smithcraft. As both goddess and saint she is also associated with holy wells, sacred flames, and healing. To some, the lighting of candles and fires represents the return of warmth and the increasing power of the sun over the coming months.

Monday 2 January 2012

Nocturnal Emissions: Tharmuncrape an'goo

Nigel Ayers on New Sounds WNYC National Public Radio 1991

Nigel Ayers on New Sounds WNYC National Public Radio 1991
Nigel Ayers on New Sounds WNYC National Public Radio 1991

It's not that I'm willfully obscure, I just don't often get asked to talk about my music on national radio. If they ask me, I'll do it.
I just found this recording of a US-syndicated programme I was on twenty-odd years ago - back in the days when you weren't supposed to say "penis" on the radio.