Episode 1: Work It: Capitalism, Labor, Dance

Work hard/play hard; real subsumption; dance as prefigurative; labor = play; labour sublates play through the song; folk pastoralism; dance and sex work; refusal of work.

Beholder Halfway - Work It! Dance, Labour, Capitalism - Thursday 3rd December 2015 by Resonanceextra on Mixcloud

References:
Jeremy Gilbert and Ewan Pearson, Discographies: Dance Music Culture and the Politics of Sound, Routledge, 1999.
Marek Korczynski et al, Rhythms of Labor: Music at Work in Britain, 2013.
Iain Chambers, Urban Rhythms: Pop Music and Popular Culture, 1985.
Patrick B. Mullen, The Man Who Adores the Negro: Race and American Folklore, 2008. 
Joshua Clover, 1989: Bob Dylan Didn't Have This To Sing About, UC Press, 2010.
Huw Lemmey, ‘Werqin’ 9 to 5: cursory notes on antiwork politics from Dolly Parton to Shangela Laquifa’, Spitzenprodukte, 2013.
Federico Campagna, Federico, ‘Listen to Britney Spears – Work is the New Religion’, Guardian, 2013.
Voyou Desoeuvre, "You Want Full Communism, You Better Sublate Work Bitch", An Und Fur Sich, 2013.

See Toby Bennett's excellent music and work reference list: https://themoneytrench.wordpress.com/music-at-work/music-and-sound-at-work-resources/

Episode 2: The Acousmatic Voice

Aristotle; [Roland not Raymond] Barthes; authenticity; technological mediation [noo-muh n]; embodiment; cyborg intimacy; soft coercion; end.

Beholder Halfway - The Acousmatic Voice - 10th December 2015 by Resonanceextra on Mixcloud

 Tracklist
 The Beach Boys, “You Still Believe in Me” (vocal take)

 Drake, “Brand New” (DJ Paypal edit)

 Oidupaa Vladimir Oiun, “Khaian”

 Alvin Lucier, “I Am Sitting in a Room” (edit)

 Patchfinder, “Seksi Trip Advisor” (feat Vera Modena)

 Diamanda Galas, “I Put A Spell on You”

 Wayne Shorter, “Dindi” (edit)

 Michael Jackson, “They Don’t Really Care About Us” (Chino Amobi remix)

 Henny Moan, "Residue"

 Holger Czukay, “Boat Woman Song” (edit)

 Mariah, “Shinzo No Tobira”

 Juliana Barwick, “Envelop”

 Bruce Haack, “Electric to Me Turn”

 Diamond Hearted Black Boy, “1984”

 Joe Meek, “I Hear a New World”

 Lata Mangeshkar, “Mere Jeevan Saathi”

 References:

 Nina Power, “Soft Coercion, The City and the Recorded Female Voice”, in The Acoustic City, M.  Gandy &  BJ Nilsen,(eds.), Jovis, 2014.
 Jeremy Gilbert, & Ewan Pearson, Discographies: Dance Music Culture and the Politics of  Sound, Routledge, 1999.
 Simon Frith, Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Pantheon Press, 1981.

 Richard Middleton, Voicing the Popular: On the Subject of Popular Music, Routledge, 2006.

 Roland Barthes, “The Grain of the Voice”, Image, Music, Text, Hill & Wang, 1978.

 Don Idhe, Listening and Voice: Phenomenologies of Sound, SUNY Press, 2007.

 Alexander Weheliye, Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity. Duke University Press, 2005.

Episode 3: Acceleration/Repetition

Image: Emma Sheridan, Chinatown Communicative Scene 4 

Pessimism; machinic self-dissolution; periodising musical entropy; frustrated temporality; subalternity & repetition; rhythmic irregularity; 'avant-pop' as hyper-work & hyper-consumption; relations of (re)production.

Beholder Halfway - Acceleration and Repetition - 17th December 2015 by Resonanceextra on Mixcloud

Tracklist
Sophie, "BIPP"
Nidia Minaj, "House Kaliente - w/ DJ Olifox"
Chris Lee (Li Yuchin), "Only You"
Slug Christ, "My Chain - Slugged Out Gucci Mane"
Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez, "Bloc Party"
Jessy Lanza, DJ Spinn, Taso, "You Never Show Your Love"
Albert Ayler, "Truth is Marching In"
Black Sheep, "Similak Child"
David Borden, "For Laurie Spiegel"
OneohTrix Point Never, "Chrome Country"
Pierre Boulez, "2 commentaire I - de Bourreaux" (edit)
Holly Herndon, "An Exit"
VIsionist, "Vffected"

Resources
Richard Middleton, Voicing the Popular: On the Subject of Popular Music, Routledge, 2006.
Nick Land, Fanged Nouemena: Collected Writings 1987-2007, Urbanomic, 2010.
Benjamin Noys, The Persistence of the Negative: A Critique of Contemporary Continental Theory, Edinburgh University Press, 2010.
Benjamin Noys, Malign Velocities: Accelerationism & Capitalism, Zero Books, 2014.
Simon Reynolds, Retromania, Faber & Faber, 2011.
Simon Reynolds, "Introduction to the Hardcore Continuum" The Wire, 2013.
Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology & Lost Futures, Zero Books, 2014.
Mark Fisher, "Break it Down: Mark Fisher on DJ Rashad's Double Cup", Electronic Beats, 
Mark Fisher, "Unpicking the Codes of Ghettoville" Dazed& Confused,
Mark Fisher, "A Social and Psychic Revolution of Almost Inconceivable Magnitude:Popular Culture's Interrupted Accelerationist Dreams", E-Flux, no.46,2013.
John Russell, "Abysmal Plan: Waiting Until We Die & Radically AcceleratedRepetitionism", E-Flux, no.46,2013.
Simon O'Sullivan, "The Missing Subject of Accelerationism", Mute, 12 September, 2014. 
Nina Power, "Decapitalism, Left Scarcity, and the State", Fillip, 20, Fall 2015. 
Adam Harper, "Pattern Recognition Vol.10: Pon! Cuter Love", Electronic Beats, 
Robin James, "Loving the Alien", The New Inquiry, October 2012.
Robin James, Resilience & Melancholy: Pop Music, Feminism, Neoliberalism. Zero Books, 2015.
Steven Shaviro, No Speed Limit: Three Essays on Accelerationism, U of Minnesota Press, 2015.
Benedict Seymour, "Notes on Normcore", Mute, 29 May. 2014.

Episode 4: Exoticism & Appropriation: the New 'World Music'

Image: Emma Sheridan 

The will to hybridity; explorers and copyright; colonial violence; romanticism and innocence; pastiche and capitalism; cultural authoritarianism.

Beholder Halfway - Exoticism & Appropriation: the New 'World Music' - 14th January 2016 by Resonanceextra on Mixcloud

Tracklist

Francois Bebey, New Track

Ifang Bondi, Atis-A-Tis

Ata Kak, Obaa Simba

Silverio Urbino,  Suspiros (DJ Yadex edit)

Obi Onyioha, Enjoy Your Life

Alemu Aga, Abatatchen Hoy

Baris Manco, 2023

Polisario, Untitled

Arthur Verocai, No Boca do Sol

Witch, I Can Do Without You

Choun Vanna, Tho Thea Youm Chlong

Amanaz, Khala My Friend

References

John Hutnyk, Critique of Exotica: Music, Politics and the Culture Industry, Pluto Press, 2000.

Georgina Born & Dave Hesmondalgh, “On Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music” in Western Music and Its Others. University of California Press, 2000.

Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Harvard University Press, 

     1993.

Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke University Press, 

     1991.

Richard Middleton, “Musical Belongings: Western Music and Its Low-Other” in Western Music and 

     Its Others.

Simon Frith, “The Discourse of World Music”, in Western Music and Its Others.

Simon Frith, ed., World Music, Politics, and Social Change, Manchester University Press, 1989.

Episode 8: Climate, Capitalism, and Crisis

Geographer and sound artist Anja Kanngieser & composer and sound artist Daniel Jenatsch (w/ thanks to Rory Gibb) put together this episode on climate, capitalism, and crisis.




Tracklist
Frogs, Laos
Jungle of Kinabatangan, Borneo
The Hills are Alive, The Sound of Music
The Enormous Room, Enchanted Jails
Naturra, Bjork
River Song, Rchard Skelton
Lake, Elysia Crampton
Falsetto, Ernest Reijseger,
Fox Demon Song, Painted Skin
See Birds, Balam Acab
The Ice Melts, Robin Crutchfield
Captain of None, Colleen
Its a Silent Murder, Ammer and Console
Dambala, Exuma
Turn Things Upside Down (with Happy Ending), Robert Wyatt

References
Bruce Braun, Theorizing the Nature-Society Divide
Dipesh Chakrabarty, The Climate of History: Four Theses
Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch
Elizabeth Johnson & Harlan Morehouse, Introduction: Towards a Politics of the Anthropocene
Anja Kanngieser, Geopolitics & the Anthropocene: Five Propositions for Sound
Jason Moore, Capitalism and the Web of Life
Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

Episode 12: Black Study Group: Notes on Music & Money

                              

                                                                         Image: Jamal Cyrus, Wont Even Mention Gold (2014)

This episode, 'Notes on Music and Money', is produced by the Black Study Group. The Black Study Group is Dhanveer Singh Brar, Simon Barber, Victor Manuel Cruz, Ciaran Finlayson, Sam Fisher, Lucie Mercier, Fumi Okiji, Ashwan Sharma and with a special mention to Atticus for his guest appearance.

Tracklist

Dennis Brown, 'Money in My Pocket'

James Brown, 'Money Won't Change You (But Time Will Take You Out)'

The O'Jays, 'For the Love of Money'

Matana Roberts, 'How Much Would You Cost?'

B L A C K I E, 'I Write On Money'

Bessie Smith, 'Gimme a Pigfoot And a Bottle of Beer'

Bessie Smith, 'Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out'

Wu Tang Clan, 'C.R.E.A.M.'

The Notorious B.I.G. ft. Mase and Puff Daddy, 'Mo Money, Mo Problems'

Frank Ocean, 'Not Just Money'

Frank Ocean, 'Super Rich Kids'

Shalamar, 'Take That To The Bank;

References

Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism: The History of the Black Radical Tradition

Fred Moten, In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition

Amiri Baraka, 'The Changing Same: (R&B and New Black Music)'

Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music

Paula Chakravartty and Denise Ferreira da Silva, 'Accumulation, Dispossession, and Debt: The Radical Logic of Global Capitalism - An Introduction'

Karl Marx, Grundrisse

Saidiya Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery and Self-Making in Ninetheenth Century America

Christina Sharpe, Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects

Stefano Harvey & Fred Moten, Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study

Alfred Sohn-Rethel, 'Economics and Knowledge'

Episode 17: Black Atlantis

This month a recording of a live performance of Black Atlantis, The End of Eating Everything, an audio-visual essay produced by Ayesha Hameed in collaboration with Tom Hirst.

Recorded live at the Empire Remains shop in London in November 2016, Black Atlantis looks at possible afterlives of the Black Atlantic: in illegal migration at sea, in oceanic environments, through Afrofuturistic dancefloors and soundsystems, and in outer space – taking as its point of departure the group Drexciya’s sonic fictional world, it brings together ideas around afrofuturism and ecological crises and the related concept of the anthropocene. 

Black Atlantis combines two conversations - afrofuturism and the anthropocene. It takes as point of departure Drexciya, the late 20th century electronic music duo from Detroit, and their creation of a sonic, fictional world. Through liner notes and track titles, Drexciya take the Black Atlantic below the water with their imaginary of an Atlantis comprised of former slaves who have adapted to living underwater. This wetness brings to the table a sense of the haptic, the sensory, the bodily, and the epidermal. What below-the-water, and Atlantis brings back is the bottom of the sea, the volume of the water, the materiality of the space of the ocean, and other protagonists that inhabit the sea. 

This third instalment ‘The End of Eating Everything’// Black Atlantis III follows Bodies and Storms// Black Atlantis I; and Agitations and Adaptations// Black Atlantis II. It takes its title from a work by Wangechi Mutu which shows a monstrous form of consumption underwater. ‘The End of Eating Everything’ considers what Drexciyans might consume underwater, what things are consuming each other around them and what boundaries might be eroded between the what’s and the who’s of what is being eaten. 

With contributions from: Rachel Baker, Sam Dolbear, Lizzie Homersham, Marie Louise Krogh, Bijan Moosavi, Christian Nyampeta, Theodor Ringborg, Nikhil Vettukattil, Marina Vishmidt.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Part 1 Stars and Clocks

Drexciya The Quest (Submerge, 1997).

Sean M. Kelley. The Voyage of the Slave Ship Hare: A Journey into Captivity from Sierra Leone to South Carolina University North Carolina Press: 2016. Pp.53, 55

Wikipedia Entry “Marine Chronometer” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_chronometer

Emily Lindsay Brown “The longitude problem: how we figured out where we are” July 18, 2013 http://theconversation.com/the-longitude-problem-how-we-figured-out-where-we-are-16151

Simon Schaffer “Chronometers, Charts, Charisma: On Histories of Longitude” http://journal.sciencemuseum.org.uk/browse/issue-02/chronometers-charts-charisma/chronometers-charts-charisma-onhistories-of-longitude/

Mark Richardson “Grava 4 review” http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2456-grava-4/

“Astronomical Guidepost” Drexciya Grava 4 (Clone ,2002)

“Sound of the Sun” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZQcLJjpdrI

“Raw Video: US Ship Under Pirate Attack” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y36D17uALA

“Skeleton Clock with Chronometer Escapement – Herschel” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQvopnjDI6E

“13965 - Bliss chronometer” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWOuWShc-t4

“NASA Voyager Space Sounds – Jupiter” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImuLz1Oo9c8&list=PLKzoKueiKNwtP6wJF0Qa5Pn8EAtReMtcQ

Draining of the Tanks Drexciya Neptune’s Lair CD (Tresor, 1999)

Astronomical Guideposts: Drexciya Grava 4 (Clone Records, 2002)

Part 2 Cities under the sea

Mark Richardson “Grava 4 review” http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2456-grava-4/2

Andrew Duke “Drexciya” in Cognition Audioworks http://cognitionaudioworks.com/drexciya.html

Drexciya Neptune’s Lair (Tresor, 1999)

Blue Planet “Episode 2: The Deep” David Attenbrough. BBC Natural History Unit/ Discovery Channel 2001.

“Solar Wind” Shifted Phases The Cosmic Memoirs Of The Late Great Rupert J. Rosinthrope (Tresor, 2002)

“Bubble Metropolis” Drexciya Drexciya 2 - Bubble Metropolis (Underground Resistance, 1993)

“Intro: Temple Of Dos De Aqua” Drexciya Neptune's Lair (Tresor,1999)

Crone, et al (2006). "The Sound Generated by Mid-Ocean Ridge Black Smoker Hydrothermal Vents". PLoS One 1 (1): e133. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0000133.

“Factory Sounds” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ih0JJLoMIg

“Sound Effect -- Factory Machinery” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT4xyUAiy30&list=PLpYsyhOXjEO5qg8xQjITqsNoCxuR-_aZ_&index=2

Part 3 Monsters

H.P. Lovecraft. 'The Call of Cthulhu' in The Best of H.P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. New York: Ballantine Books, 1982, p.76.

Anaïs Duplan “A Body that is Ultra-Body: In Conversation with Fred Moten and Elysia Crampton” http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/a-body-that-is-ultra-body-in-conversation-with-fred-moten-and-elysia-crampton/

Charles Kingsley Water Babies: A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby. London: Macmillian & co.,1886.

Omar Berrada “Defend the Dead: Omar Berrada on M. NourbeSe Philip's Zong!” Chumurenga/ Pan African Space Station (Radio Broadcast) 2015 https://www.mixcloud.com/chimurenga/defend-the-dead-omar-berrada-zong/

Space is the Place d. John Coney 1974.

“Species of the Pod” Drexciya Neptune's Lair (Tresor,1999)

“Fish recorded singing dawn chorus on reefs just like birds” https://www.newscientist.com/article/2106331-fish-recorded-singing-dawn-chorus-on-reefs-just-like-birds/

“Amazing monstrous whirlpool / Чудовищный водоворот / Dvietes atvars / Torbellino / Tourbillon” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqROBTVgL6A

“killer whale sounds - bruit orque - schwertwal geräusch - odgłos orki” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qeUBGMN-hg

“The Bloop: A Mysterious Sound from the Deep Ocean | NOAA SOSUS” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBN56wL35IQ

“Underwater Whale Sounds - Full 60 Minute Ambient Soundscape” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=savCAd6RyPI

“Walt Disney: Water Babies Silly Symphonies” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imOL1gImZb8

“Wangechi Mutu + Santigold - The End of Eating Everything - Nasher Museum at Duke” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMZSCfqOxVs

Part 4 Coasts

Drexciya Grava IV (Clone Records 2002).

Stephen Helmreich, Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009, p.64.

“Mediterranean smuggler arrested for 'throwing dead body to sharks'“

Nick Squires, The Telegraph 14 Apr http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11535830/Mediterraneansmuggler-arrested-for-throwing-dead-body-to-sharks.html

“Seventeen migrants die of asphyxiation in Mediterranean smuggling boat”

Nick Squires, The Telegraph, 22 July 2016 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/22/seventeen-migrants-die-of-asphyxiation-in-mediterranean-smugglin/

“Italy is killing refugees with kindness” Nicholas Farrell The Spectator, 6 September 2014 http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/09/italys-decriminalising-of-illegal-immigration-has-acted-as-a-green-light-to-boat-people/

'New era of climate change reality' as emissions hit symbolic threshold” Press Association The Guardian Monday 24 October

2016 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/oct/24/new-era-of-climate-change-reality-as-emissions-hitsymbolic-threshold

“Winter Wind 1 Hour / Relaxing Snowstorm Sound, Winds Blowing Snow Across Forest Meadow” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZYSMkLSolc

“Wind Sounds - Full 60 Minute Soundscape” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=113BMnYOaeM

Lamin Fofana “Another World” 2015

Jean Michel Jarre Oxygene (Polydor 1976)

“Cascading Celestial Giants” Drexciya Grava 4 (Clone Records, 2002)

“L'Atlantide - Georg Wilhelm Pabst (espejismo)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sgmvlSfqeM 

Drexciya d. Simon Rittmeier 2012

Episode 18: Alpha, Isis, Eden by Laura Oldfield Ford and Jack Latham

This month, Alpha, Isis, Eden, a sound work produced by Laura Oldfield Ford and Jack Latham as part of an installation with the same title at Showroom gallery, London, February - March, 2017.

From the Showroom's notes:
"...a new sound work, made in collaboration with sound engineer and producer Jack Latham, using field recordings taken by Oldfield Ford during experimental, critically-engaged walks or 'derives' in the area. Mapping the psychic contours of the urban environment through her subjective experience, Oldfield Ford also draws on her personal history of working in the area in the public care and social welfare sectors, as well as on time she spent in subcultural scenes as a squatter and political activist."

References
Laura Oldfield Ford, Savage Messiah, London: Verso, 2011.
Mark Fisher, "Introduction", Savage Messiah, London: Verso, 2011.
Laura Oldfield Ford, "Jam City, Dream of a Garden - A Deriv - London - May 1st 2015"
Laura Oldfield Ford, "Spectral Developments - Haunted Schemes", Art Review, April 2015.
Jack Latham w/ Dan Barrow, "Invisible Jukebox: Jam City", The Wire, September 2015.

Tracklist
Jam City, "The Garden Thrives"
Rich Gang, "Givenchy" (instrumental)
Laura Oldfield Ford & Jack Latham, "Alpha, Isis, Eden"

Episode 15: Take This Hammer: Ethnographic Field Recordings of Worksong

A survey of ethnographic field recordings of pre-industrial work songs from around the world forms the basis for an inquiry into different experiences of time other than the abstraction and discipline inaugurated by industrial capitalism. The episode ends with a site-specific lecture-performance by Noah Angell titled 'Labour & Rhythm', recorded by Adam Laschinger at Banner Repeater, located in Hackney Downs Railway Station in November 2011.



References
-Ted Gioia, Work Songs, Duke University Press, 2006.
-Emma Robertson, Marek Korczynski & Michael Pickering, Rhythms of Labour: Music at Work in Britain, Cambridge University Press, 2013.
-Norm Cohen, "Worksongs: A Demontration Collection by Examples" in Archie Green (ed) Songs About Work: Essays in Occupational Culture, University of Indiana Press, 1993.
-Richard Henderson, "The Primer: Field Recordings", The Wire, February 1998.
-Frank Gunderson, "Musical Labour Performed in Northwest Tanzania, Folkways Magazine, Summer/Fall 2014.

For more recordings of See Noah Angell's work see his website.  Noah will give a lecture-performance Saturday December 10 at Center for Contemporary Art Derry-Londonderry.

Track list

Guitar Welch, Hogman Maxey & Andy Mosely, "Take This Hammer", Prison Worksongs, Arhoolie Records, 2012.

[No artist listed], "Chants Des Pecheurs De Perles Muharraq", Bahrein et Shardja: Pecheurs de Perles et Musiciens du Golf Persique, Ocora, 1984.

Baka People of Southeast Cameroon, "Water Drums 1", Heart of the Forest: The Music of the Baka Forest People of Southeast Cameroon, Hannibal Records, 1993.  

Baka People of Southeast Cameroon, "Venolouma", Heart of the Forest: The Music of the Baka Forest People of Southeast Cameroon, Hannibal Records, 1993.  

Ari People of Ethiopia, "Woni Lekha (Chant de Fauchage)", Ethiopie: Polyphonies Ari, Ocora, 2002.

Ari People of Ethiopia, "Woni Lekha (Chant de Fauchage)", Ethiopie: Polyphonies Ari, Ocora, 2002.

[No artist listed], "Octopus Fishing (Lofanga Island)", South Pacific: Island Music, Nonesuch Records, 1987. 

[No artist listed], "Shell Money Making (Alite, Langa Langa Lagoon, Malaita)", South Pacific: Island Music, Nonesuch Records, 1987.

Chandra Chhetri, Krishnakumari Chhetri, Asha Rai, Deoki Rai, "Sowing Song By Women", Folksongs & Sacred Music from Nepal, Alliance, 1999.

Kpelle People of Liberia, "Rice Planting Song", Music of the Kpelle of Liberia, Folkways Records, 1972. 

Kpelle People of Liberia, "Bush Clearing Song", Music of the Kpelle of Liberia, Folkways Records, 1972. 

Alan Lomax w/ Peggy Seeger & Ewan McColl, "Three Waulking Songs & A Song for Finishing Cloth", Scottish Drinking and Pipe Songs, Legacy Records, 1991.

[No artist listed], "Nadouri", Georgie: Chants de Travail, Ocora, 1985.

Evangelina Carballo, "Cante de Espadella", World Library of Folk & Primitive Music: Spain, Columbia Masterworks, 1955.

Juze Jezavitiene, Ona Jauneikiene, Petronele Krukoniene, "Harvest Song", Voix des Paix Baltes, Inedit, 1995.

John "Black Sampson" Gibson, "Steel-Laying Holler", Field Recordings Volume 2: North & South Carloina, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas (1926-1943), Document Records, 1997.

John "Black Sampson" Gibson, "Track-Lining Song", Field Recordings Volume 2: North & South Carloina, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas (1926-1943), Document Records, 1997.

Martin McManus, "The Falling of the Pine", Lumbering Songs From the Ontario Shanties, Ethnic Folkways Library, 1961.

Francisco Capo, "Cant de Trillar", World Library of Folk & Primitive Music: Spain, Columbia Masterworks, 1955.

Leplinas Lamar & Group, "Tomazo Na Prale", Alan Lomax in Haiti: Songs of Labour & Leisure, Harte Recordings, 2009.

"Canto dei Batti-pali (Pile Driver's Song)", The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music: Volume XV - Northern and Central Italy.

"Workers' Song (Lamento dei Cavatori di Marmo)", The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music: Volume XV - Northern and Central Italy.

Luo People of Kenya, "Naftali Ouko", The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music: British East Africa, 

Borana People of Ethiopia, "Borana Singing Wells", Olivia Wyatt: Staring Into the Sun, Sublime Frequencies, 2011.

Bavuma People of Uganda, "Boat Song, Island of Buvuma, Lake Victoria, Uganda", Music! The Berlin Phonogramm Archiv (1900-2000), Museum Collection Berlin, 2014.

Noah Angell, "Labour & Rhythm". 

Amplification//Annihilation (recorded live at Cafe Oto August 20th, 2017)

Amplification//Annihilation is a live audio-visual radio broadcast featuring the work of Leah Barclay (AUS), Robin Buckley (UK), Kate Carr (UK), Minerva Cuevas (MEX), Graciela Muñoz Farida (CHL), Anja Kanngieser and Polly Stanton (UK/AUS), Andrea Polli (MEX), Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (CAN), Ziibiwan (CAN).  It was recorded live at Cafe Oto by co-curators Anja Kanngieser, Rory Gibb and Paul Rekret. 

Artists and activists are using sound to comment on, and intervene in, the climate debate. However, while the aesthetics of ecological crisis are pervasive, replete with a dwindling dawn chorus and celebrations of a nonhuman nature, the broader contexts and stakes of these images or sounds are rarely considered. Against the drip drip drip of glacial melt, this evening showcased sound works that seek to confront environmental change.

Programme Notes: 

"There are those who want to talk about climate change, yet don’t want to talk about how those who are affected the most can’t prioritise it in the first place, because prioritising it would mean being forced to pull the layers back and also talk about the poverty, the racism, the injustice, the privilege, the hush money, the hit lists that climate change is operating from, the rounds it makes on earth starting with the most vulnerable. Everyone is affected by climate change, yet some are affected first, but no one cares until it’s affecting them."

Terisa Siagatonu — 'Layers

These are lines from the spoken word poetry of Samoan-American artist Terisa Siagatonu. Her words and voice articulate the violences of climate change, and they do not hold back. With this event I wanted to amplify the voices and sounds that counterpose the aesthetic narratives of environmental change, that peel back the layers underneath the dripping glaciers/bird calls/exotic geographies; works that ask questions, that might even demand answers. It’s not easy to do radical politics in the sound world; it’s not always easy to put sound to work as a political force. The works included here are not strictly just sound, nor do they all approach politics in the same ways. But they are part of a commitment to facing climate change and asking for those listening to be present, to be more than present – to intervene. (A.K)

Popular music’s conceit to authenticity is both crude and altogether well known. Essentially, souls bared, performers heroically elude corruption by the processes that deliver them to their audience. This belies a bigger story, wherein whatever is deemed ‘natural’ becomes privileged as a site where an older, innocent pre-modern culture is preserved. This is as evident where music is imbued with a primal energy as where the ‘countryside’ is assigned purifying or regenerating qualities. Indeed, these two attributes, the pastoral and the primal, intersect throughout the history of pop: folk and blues revivals, psychedelia, country, new age, to name but the most overstated. 

Sonic representation of ecological crisis is not reducible to changing ideas of the natural, though crisis is nonetheless discernible in growing suspicion of ideals of authenticity. At the same time, the contemporary prominence of field recording as musical accessory or as a genre in itself, implies further permutations. Equally, existential experience of ecological and economic collapse is discernible in British Industrial or Detroit techno’s confrontation with deindustrialisation and thus globalisation, New Orleans MCs; tales of negotiating FEMA flood relief, metal’s black forests, or all those musical expressions of loss and forfeiture usefully called ‘hauntological’. At the very least, these betray a changing experience of what is natural and the

assorted ways that experience is lived. (P.R.)

--

Climate and conservation scientists share an underlying drive, in that their work seeks not only to document and understand, but also to create the knowledge and conditions for effective intervention. Here, sound and listening can be tools to monitor ecological change, yet the complexity of both wildlife communities and soundscapes so often eludes quantitative interpretation, and we're returned to the purely affective dimension: comparing eerily silent forests to the glorious fuck-you exuberance of the resurgent dawn chorus at Chernobyl, now long devoid of humans. Similarly, field recordings open intimate windows into unfamiliar lives and temporalities — the ultrasonic chirps of whales and bats, the sigh of glacial ice — yet so often aesthetically reify the notion of a vast gap between ourselves and an unknowable nature. The unequally distributed violences of global climate change and ecological devastation instead require us to rethink what constitutes the natural and the external, to understand our collective interdependence, and to hear the past and present structural processes that link the silenced voices of empty forests and oceans with those of vanishing islands, oppressed communities, 'redeveloped' urban spaces and empty towerblocks. Meaningful sonic interventions are those that stay with and confront these dynamics head on: that resist the extinction of communities, knowledges and ways of life with anger, solidarity and noise. (R.G)

Featured Works

Disobedient Films and Jamie Perera — Trump Paris pullout Speech (2017)

Joanna Brouk — Playing in the Water (1981)

Steve Halpern — Dawn (1987)

Jonathan Prior — Tenby Skylarks (2017)

Alice Damon — Waterfall Winds (1990/2013)

Edgar Froese — Marouba Bay (1975)

Stratis — By Water (1984/2017)

Iasos — Libra Sunrise (1975)

Emily Dolittle — Social Sounds Whales From Whales at Night for Oboe D’Amore and Tape (2017)

Rob Thorne — Kauhanga (2014)

Ursula K. Le Guin - Kinship (2014)

Venus Ex Machina — Paraquat (2017)

*AR — Now This Terrestrial Sea (2015)

Jana Winderen — Aquaculture (2010)

Heike Vester — Seine Feeding Killer Whales (2009)

Andrea Polli — I Don’t Have The Data (2009)

Andrea Polli — Heat and the Heartbeat of the City(2007)

Toshiya Tsunoda — Low Frequency Observed At Maguchi Bay (2007)

Michael Corey and Jim Briggs — The Oklahoma Shakes (2015)

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson — Caribou Ghosts and Untold Stories (2016)

Elysia Crampton — American Drift (featuring Money Allah) (2015)

Peter Cusack — Dawn Chorus Chernobyl Town (2012)

Ultra Red — A Pico Aliso (Hemos Bastante)

Graciela Munoz Farida — El Sonido Recobrado (film, 2014)

Kate Carr — Brisbane River (2011)

Leah Barclay — Intrinsic Connections (2017)

Anja Kanngieser and Polly Stanton — And then the sea came back (radio, 2016)

Teresia Teaiwa — Bad Coconuts (feat. H. Doug

Matsuoka and Richard Hamasaki) (2010)

Terisa Siagatonu — Layers (2015)

Ziibiwan — Loon Song (2016)

Minerva Cuervas — A Draught of the Blue (film, 2013)

E+E — Fire Gut (2013)

Fis — CMB Inna (2015)

Chris Watson — Vatnajokull (2003)

Jar Moff — Financial Glam (2014)

Rob Thorne — Revelation Reprise (2017)

Drexciya — Digital Tsunami (2002)

Babyfather — PROLIFIC DEAMONS (2016)

Ariel Karma — Rainy Day (2014)

Egyptrixx — Lake of Contemplation, Pool of

Fundamental Bond (2017)

Natalie Hyacinth — Waves (2017)

Bone Thugs N’ Harmony (feat. Mariah Carey) — Breakdown (1997)

Dave Noyze — Acorn (2008)

Patrick Cowley — Jungle Dream (2015)

Jungle Wonz — Bird in a Gilded Cage (1993)

Anthony Child —Waiting and Watching (2015)

Ake — Answer a Call of Nature (2017)

Black Merlin — Wave (2016)

Press
The Wire
The Quietus

Episode 10: Cesura//Acceso w/ Howard Slater: Libidinal Economy & Music

Claire Fontaine - Change. 2006, 12 twenty-fice cent coins, steel box-cutter blades, solder and rivets.

“The necessity to be identified with one’s own intimacy, the reflection concerning all forms of power.” Luc Ferrari

"The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value counts. On it centers the rationality of the status quo, and all alien rationality is bent to It." Herbert Marcuse  

This episode produced by Cesura//Acceso, journal for music politics and poetics. It features Howard Slater reading from a forthcoming text to be published by the journal titled, "Blind Eye Turned: Notes on Libidinal Economy & Music."

Tracklist

23 Skidoo - Just Like Everyone
Luc Ferrari - Presque Rien No. 1
Gang of Four - Damaged Goods
Scritti Polliti - Messthetics
The Pop Group - We Are All Prostitutes
Au Pairs - Come Again
William Burroughts - Present Time Exercises
Throbbing Gristle - Persuasion
Nocturnal Emissions - Smear Campaign
New Noveta - VOCALINTROOXFORD
23 Skidoo - Porno Base
Cabaret Voltaire - Photophobia
Nocturnal Emissions - Moss Side
Cabaret Voltaire - Silent Command
Alan Silva and His Celestial Communication Orchestra - Luna Surface
Ornette Coleman - Friends and Neighbours
Throbbing Gristle - Discipline

Episode 30: Mood Music

This episode is on trends for a more subdued sound in pop music and an emphasis upon texture over narrative in recent sonic culture more broadly.

Tracklist

John Hassell, Dream Theory

Francisco, Cosmic Beam Experience pt 2

Chi, Twisted Camel

Umfang, Symbolic Use of Light

Karen Gwyer, Why is There A Long Line In Front Of The Factory

Michael Banabila/Michael Turtle, Our Man In Phantoms Dreamland

Yaeji, Feelings Change

Yves Tumor, The Feeling When You Walk Away

Anno Luz, Por Que

Midori Takada, Crossing

Hiroshi Yoshimura, Dance PM

References

-Julianne Ishler, Chill Pop is the New Music Trend That Isn't Going Anywhere, Dose  

-Chris Richards, 'Soft Smooth and Steady: How Xanax Turned American Music into Pill-Pop', Washington Post

-Robin James, 'Chill Pop & Feminine Excess: A Sign of the Times' 

-Andy Beta, 'Fourth World in the Twenty-First Century', Resident Advisor

-Matt Aniss, 'Ambient House: The Story of Chill Out Music 1988-1995', Red Bull Music Academy 

-Liz Pelly, 'The Problem With Muzak', The Baffler.

-David Arditi, 'Music Everywhere: Setting a Digital Music Trap', Critical Sociology, August 2017.

-Patrick Vonderau, 'The Spotify Effect: Digital Distribution and Financial Growth', Television & New Media, November 2017.

-David Toop, Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds, Serpent's Tail, 2001

-Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave Music and Dance Culture, Faber & Faber, 1998. 

-Mark Pendergrast, The Ambient Century: From Mahler to Moby, Bloomsbury, 2000.
-Sounds of the Dawn
-Douglas MacGowan

Episode 29: Ford Workers Strike with Eoin O'Cearnaigh

This month's episode, I am joined by labour historian Eoin O'Cearnaigh to discuss music as it amplified and reflected auto workers struggles in the US, UK, and Europe throughout the twentieth century. Our discussion is occasioned by Eoin's procurement of a rare record produced to support striking Ford workers in Britain.

Eoin O'Cearnaigh is currently completing a PhD in the History Department at Goldsmiths University of London. His research examines the politics of work through an historical study of industrial unrest at the Ford Motor Company Limited in Britain. He also recently completed a residency at MayDay Rooms in London, where he prepared an exhibition now on display of materials from across the archive's collections.

Tracklist
Johnny Strika,
Dick Gaughan, Handful of Earth
Heaven 17, Crushed by the Wheels of Industry
Patty Smith, Piss Factory
Einsturzende Neubaten, Armenia
Henry Cow, Industry
Joe Lee Carter, Please Mr. Foreman
Junior Murvin, Police and Thieves
XTC, Day In Day Out
Yximalloo, We Work 98 Hours For a Week #4
Test Dept., Beating the Retreat
Giorgio Moroder, Machines

Episode 28: Vito Ricci and Seance Centre's Brandon Hocura

On this episode the legendary NYC composer Vito Ricci and Brandon Hocura, co-founder of the Invisible Cities reissue label and founder of Seance Centre, the label that recently issued My Little Life, a collection of short stories accompanied by musical compositions written and performed by Vito.

While Brandon contextualises Vito's work within the broader context of Seance Centre's project of reissuing both music and literature, especially poetry, Vito discusses his recent career renaissance through the reissue of his material, how working for theater, dance, and poetry shaped his work, and his time with free jazz legends Rashied Ali, Ornette Coleman, and others.

Vito Ricci, in Vietnam circa 1960s

 Vito Ricci & Lise Vachon at the launch of My Little Life, NYC 2017

 Vito Ricci & Lise Vachon at the launch of My Little Life, NYC 2017

Tracklist

Vito Ricci, The Ship Was Sailing

Beverly-Glenn Copeland, Slow Dance

Vito Ricci, Bump Em

Vito Ricci, Kham Duc

Vito Ricci, I'm At That Party Right Now

Vito Ricci, Yours

Vito Ricci, Dong

Vito Ricci, Dub It

Vito Ricci, I Am Silent

Eblen Macari, Planetarios Suite

Episode 27: Popular Motives

'I believe, in fact, that attempts to bring political protest together with ‘popular music’ – that is, with entertainment music – are for the following reason doomed from the start. The entire sphere of popular music, even there where it dresses itself up in modernist guise is to such a degree inseparable from the commodity, from the cross-eyed transfixion with amusement, that attempt to outfit it with a new function remain superficial. And I have to say that when somebody sets himself up, and for whatever reason accompanies maudlin music by singing something or other about Vietnam being unbearable….I find, in fact, this song unbearable, in that by taking the horrendous and making it somehow consumable, it ends up wringing something like consumption-qualities out of it." 

(from a television interview with Theodor Adorno)

Tracklist

Ryuichi Sakatomo, Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence

Famous Dex, Like Wow

N.E.E.T. (Not in Education Employment or Training), Pythagoras Hammer

Linda Di Franco, My Boss

Caterina Barbieri, Scratches on the Readable Surface

Interview with Theodor Adorno

Argile, Tagtraum Eines Elefanten

Steve Roach, Quiet Friend

Tupac, Best Interview 1992!!

Keith Fullerton Whitman, Feedback Zwei

Justin Bieber Meets a Super Fan

Lonnie Liston Smith, Astral Travelling

Klein & MBO, Wonderful

Neil Young on being political 

Future & Jodeci, Whatever U Need (A JAYBeatz blend)

New Edition, Can you Stand the Rain

Kk null, z'ev & Chris Watson, Invocation - Kami, (The Celestial) Jupiter Sight Wood East Spring Dawn

Leon Thomas, The Creator Has a Master Plan

Unknown, Old School Rave the Morning After

Steve Miller Band, Fly Like an Eagle