fuck the memescape : a united fairy moons sampler

Avant Gardening's current sub-focus on under-the-radar local label activity and self-published expat wunderkindery takes a different turn of the screw this week, with a look at the prolific output of a local figure whose recent defection has been across artforms, rather than geographical borders.

Founded in late 2002 by Australian import Jim / Jimmy (nee James, nee Jimb) Currin, United Fairy Moons was, in its proprietor's words "started in order to release one record and one record only" : the item in question being a limited lathe-cut pressing of a barely-attended live performance from 2001 at the now defunct Gresham Hotel. UFM 001 is named 'Liquified', and is credited to 'Donald McPherson & co.' : a pre-Three Forks underground-supergroup configuration which also included Sandoz Lab Techicians Tim Cornelius and Nathan Thompson, as well as James Currin himself.

Needless to say, it didn't - or perhaps more accurately, wasn't allowed to - stop there. Over the next 5 years UFM's catalogue swelled to the double digits, its post-lathe, pre-neo-cassette aesthetic enlivened by the then recently accessible CDR technology, all packaged up in handpainted / handscreened 'craft boutique' covers, in the process becoming not just a reflection or documentation of, but a generator for, much local musical and associated artistic activity.

the reviews started to roll in :

"I imagine what Ray Off divines across these five tracks of peyote laced aural fever dreams would make for a fine backdrop to images of sun scorched rock formations, distant liquid hallucinations and other strange lizard-scuttling desert phenomena. One of the earliest UFM releases, currently in its third press and still roaming the wilds, highly recommended for lovers of skin-crawling, head-tickling sonic mutations."

"The effect is sort of like reading some obscure sci-fi comic book while listening to Harmonia, Vocokesh and ingesting LSD all at the same time, but there’s a lot more going on here, too."

- Lee Jackson, Deep Water Acres
"Despite its' fringe characteristics there's a sense of beauty and isolation that is much more seducing than it is perplexing, like following a hidden trail through a region draped in dramatic natural beauty. Seven Layer Ape is a slice of timeless improv.... a visual and aural masterpiece that comes highly recommended to every avid Broken Face reader."

- Mats Gustafsson, The Broken Face

then, soon after the emergence of Ray Off's 2008's monumental three CDR release 'Split the Lark' (UFM 020), the label went into hiatus. Tune in tonight as Jim joins us in the studio to spin the back catalogue and discuss the past.

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Playlist:

1. Donald McPherson & co., from Liquified (UFM 001)
2. Ray Off, track 2 from Ghost Wolf of Thunder Mountain (UFM 004)
3. Three Forks, 'Drunken Traffic', from Seven Layer Ape (UFM 013)
4. Sinking Infinities, 'L'Orb' from The Life of Riley (excerpt) (UFM 017)
5. Jo Jo ef Steve, 'Ballad of a Thin Line Man' from A Quiet Night in With... (UFM 014)
6. Rory Storm, 'Valerie Solaris Space Station' from Fuck the Memescape (UFM 016)
7. Rory Storm, 'Title Track' from Fuck the Memescape (UFM 016)
8. Spit, 'Piece for Bells' and 'Painting for Prepared Piano (ex. 3)', from Trash Music Spitacular (UFM 011)
9. CJA, 'Ok to Want Me', from Ponds (UFM 019)
10. Ray Off, 'AE', from Clean & Dry Area Before Application (UFM 015)
11. Ray Off, 'Rory & Jim Play Train Gamelan', from Clean & Dry Area Before Application (UFM 015)
12. Ray Off, live at Lines of Flight 7th October 2006, from Split the Lark, disc 3 (UFM 020)
13. Ray Off, 'Smoke People', from Split the Lark, disc 2 (UFM 020)
14. Ray Off, 'Eleballetphant', from Don't Touch your Moustache (UFM 21)
15. Ray Off, 'On Pinmero Pimero', from POLyp pop Ok Oh-oh (unreleased)

(& live interview with Jim Currin throughout the show)

[the defeat to minimalism on the outside of any communication is inconclusive] : omit

"The feel remains deeply homemade, with analogue synths, primitive drum machines, hi-jacked electronics, tape loops and a boatload of effects, combined with sad assemblages that cross moments of documentary-style field recordings with beautiful processionals that recall the more austere Ambient works of Asmus Tietchens and Klaus Schulze. Other parts are a little more schlocky, like music for a 1960s BBC sci-fi serial, but even here there's something supremely melancholy about the lonesome play of analogue codes around little signs of synthesized melody."

-David Keenan, The Wire

Electronic sound exploration probably doesn't get any more hermetically personal than the work of Omit, a mysterious figure who has been transmitting cryptic audible missives to us since the 1980s. Filled with harsh beauty, melancholic austerity, and a deep understanding of the organically creative potential of technological failure, Omit's recordings evoke the colder reaches of the universe and Kafka-esque industrial alienation, filtered through a glacial sensibility which is private, enclosed, and self-generating, much like the all-encompassing graphic-linguistic-sonic packages which comprise the releases themselves - they can sound like lost electronic / concrete experiments of the early decades of the 20th century, outtakes from the colder sessions of Krautrock minimalism, or missives from some obsolete vision of the future. It's a mystery which hasn't been at all dispelled by the gradual coming-in-from-the-cold of Clinton Williams, the person behind the persona, in a series of recent live appearances, although it is perhaps helpful to know that Williams' notion of the sonic object, and sound in general, was largely shaped by growing up in a provincial New Zealand where lack of knowledge of sound as a live, performed medium necessitated more hands-on obsessive and imaginative appreciations, via record collecting, the awareness of small mail order labels, and fine tuning the ear to the detritus of consumer technologies - those things that other people throw away. As he himself says : "I can get clicky noises out of almost anything."

Avant Gardening's Sally Ann McIntyre and Campbell Walker took the time to visit Clinton in his hotel room during the artist's recent Dunedin sojourn, organised via the distributed networks of the Audio Foundation's Alt Music series, and talked to him at length about the nebulous entity that is Omit, making noise in the New Zealand provinces, ignoring technological fashions, why doing electronics is like gardening, the distinction between hardware / software and live / studio modalities, why mixers are "designed wrong", the importance of the 'shake test', tape music culture in the 1990s, the importance of graphics, and why he's not a 'musician'. Join us tonight on Radio One, where you will also hear rare and unavailable selections from the Omit back catalogue, ranging from the obsessively worked multimedia zine-structures of the earliest tapes, passing through the collaborations with Bruce Russell and K Group, to the most recent releases on his own label Deepskin Conceptual Mindmusic, as well as a few bootleg live recordings.

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Playlist:

1. Omit, 'Failer', from Transistor Rhythms (Transformations for the TR606), Deepskin Conceptual Mind Music, 2011

2. Omit, 'Second Divider', from Quad, Corpus Hermeticum, 1997

3. Omit, '8:30pm', from Quad, Corpus Hermeticum, 1997

4. Omit, 'The First Self-Less Reflection', from Quad, Corpus Hermeticum, 1997

5. Interview with Clinton Williams, recorded in Dunedin, Saturday 19th November 2011 [backed with 'Rundowns Type Three', from Rundowns, 1995, 'Turner' from Transistor Rhythms, 2011, and HorZtial Tracking SySyem, from Interceptor, 2005]

6. Dust/Omit, 'Black Shaft Depletion', from Deformed, Corpus Hermeticum, 1996

7. K-Group/Omit, 'Format', from Storage, 2001

8. K-Group/Omit, 'Flow & Strain', from Storage, 2001

9. Omit, 'Quarter to 12 on a Saturday Night', 1989 from Intromit, 1993

10. Omit, 'Small Angry Insect', 1988, from Intromit, 1993

11. Omit, 'The Repetitive Industrial Nightmare', 1989, from Intromit, 1993

12. Omit, 'OutPut Bender / Sideband / Transmitter LoGGer', from Interceptor, 2005

13. Omit, 'Signals' (pts. 1 & 2), from Signals (excerpts), 1990

14. excerpt from live set at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery, November 2011

15. Omit, 'Bloated Swollen Liquid Vessels', from Fluid, 1992

16. Omit, 'Rejector', from Rejector, 2002

17. Omit, 'The Misrepresentation / Defusing the Infection of Control / The Beginning of Compression Amplified', from Transmogrifications, 1993

18. Omit, 'Din Shader / Slip Link', from Tracer, 2003

19. Omit, 'Solitary Disembarkment' from Interior Desolation, 1999

nathan thompson & david haines, live in the studio

in the studio @ radio one, dunedin, around midnight, early jan 2011, hosting a show featuring nathan thompson and david haines playing rare and unheard material from sun valley research, sandoz lab technicians, eye, and associated etc.

also out of shot : joyce hinterding, james kirk (both asleep), campbell walker

photo by david haines.