i can't wait / wait for someone: the lovelorn music of waterfalls

On the evidence of last Thursday's Dunedin show out at Chick's Hotel in Port Chalmers - Wellington-based Waterfalls' first sojourn out of the North Island - solo artist Amber Johnson is creating a distinctive new voice, combining what is in New Zealand terms a fairly traditional level of music geekery, blending multifarious pop, electronic, classical and folk inputs, played out through a decidedly sophisticated experimental pop world of new structures and ideas.

One thing that's striking is the way these songs aren't sweet or innocent, but the music world they create comes across as directly about the possibilities of pleasure that can be found in music, even if only fleetingly. This inversion of much of the hierarchies of post-modern pop certainly covers a lot of terrain along the way - while contemporary pop, Sandy Denny-style folk, electronic noodle, hip-hop, modern classical, new age, techno, hauntology and 4AD layering may seem part of many a contemporary canon, it's unusual to see them as readily integrated together into such lateral patterns.  

Tonight, Johnson joins us on Avant Gardening to discuss the project, and play and discuss a diverse range of music that may have some relation to it.

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Playlist:

1. Waterfalls, 'Faun' (2015)
2. Waterfalls, 'Merecat' (2011) 
3. The Pentangle, 'Let No Man Steal Your Thyme', from The Pentangle (1968)
4. ABBA, 'The Piper', from Super Trooper (1980)

5. Owen Pallett, 'Scandal at the Parkade,' from A Swedish Love Story EP (2010)

6. The Raincoats, 'No One's Little Girl,' from Moving (1983)

7. Vox Populi!, 'Fassle,' from Half Dead Ganja Music (1987)

8. West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band, 'I Won't Hurt You, from Part One (1967)

9. Bonnie "Prince" Billy, 'Someone's Sleeping,' from More Revery EP (2001)

10. The Capris, 'There's a Moon Out Tonight,' single (1961)

11. Apollo 100, 'Joy' single, 1972.

12. Claude Debussy, 'Arabesque no. 1' from Clair de Lune Piano Music of Debussy, 1975? composed 1881.

13. Olivier Messiaen, 'Le Merle Noir for flute and piano,' from Quartet For The End Of Time, (1972), composed 

      1952

14. Morita Doji, 'Wolf Boy' from Wolf Boy, 1980.

15. Eyeliner, 'Scenery' from High Fashion Mood Music, (2012)

16. Enya, 'Storms in Africa' from Watermark, (1988)

17. Kelly Rowland, 'Ice ft Lil Wayne' single, (2012)

18. Waterfalls, 'CalmTV: Cat' musical score for video artist Claire Harris (2014)
       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0OjC2B4msw

19. Blossom Child, 'I Pray' single (1985)

20. Rick Wakeman, 'I'm so Straight I'm a weirdo, single (1980)

21. Goblin, 'Suspiria' from Suspiria OST (1977)

22. A-ha, 'Take on me' from Hunting High and Low, (1985)

23. Waterfalls, 'I Can't Wait' (2013)

23. Waterfalls, 'Mongoose' (2012)

24. Ol' Dirty Bastard, 'Shimmy Shimmy Ya' from Return to the 36 Chambers, (1995)

25. Kevin Saunderson, 'Transiztor' single (1988) 

26. Kraftwerk, 'Autobahn' from Autobahn (1974)

tethered to the pole star / other ghost-like symptoms: the slow rotation of earth

Earth were always a band seemingly destined for semi-invisible cult status; what seems more surprising is that they've become such a respected mainstay of various scenes, especially since their comeback in the mid 2000s. An upcoming Dunedin show on the 12th June, first of three on their forthcoming New Zealand tour, by the hugely influential Seattle drone band, seemed an opportune moment for Avant Gardening to contemplate these heavyweight masters of the hypnotic, even hypnagogic, not to mention horizontal (as in the horizon), riff; and discuss their most singular career turn in a long trajectory, from being Kurt Cobain's weirdest friends in the grunge community, to occupying a central position in the increasingly interesting firmament between noise, metal, country blues and film soundtracks. If nothing else, this is music that is embedded in the earth of it's title, but always looking at the edge, the next horizon.

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Playlist:

1. Earth, 'Multiplicity of Doors' from Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light, Vol. 2 (2012) 

2. Earth, 'The Corascene Dog' from Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light, Vol. 2 (2012) 

3. Earth, 'Old Black' from Angels of Darkness, Demons Of Light, vol. 1 (2011) 

4. Earth, 'Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light 1' from Angels of Darkness, Demons Of Light Vol.1 (2011) 

5. Earth, 'A Bureaucratic Desire for Revenge, part 1' from Extra-Capsular Extraction EP (1991) 

6. Earth, 'Seven Angels' from Earth 2 (1993)

7. Earth, 'German Dental Work'  from Sunn Amps And Smashed Guitars (1995) 

8. Earth, 'Tibetan Quaaludes' from Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions (1995)

9. Earth, 'Peace In Mississippi' from Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons (1996) 

10. Earth, 'Sonar And Depth Charge' from Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons (1996) 

11. Earth, 'Dexamyl' from split EP with KK Null (2003) 

12. Earth, 'Mirage' from Hex: Or Printing In The Infernal Method (2005) 

13. Earth, 'Land Of Some Other Order' from Hex: Or Printing In The Infernal Method (2005)

14. Earth, 'An Inquest Concerning Teeth' from Hex: Or Printing In The Infernal Method (2005)

15. Earth, 'A Plague of Angels' from Angel Coma split LP with Sunn 0))) (2006)

16. Earth, Other Ghost-Like Symptoms from Live Hex; In A Large City On The North American Continent (2006) 

17. Earth, 'Ouroboros Is Broken' from Hibernaculum (2007) 

18. Earth,'The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull' from The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull (2008) 

19. Earth, 'The Peacock Angels Lament' from split EP with Sir Richard Bishop (2008)

20. Earth, 'Engine Of Ruin' from Radio Earth - Live 2007-2008 (2008)

audio interventions / confession ritual : the work of samin son

Catching the Korean / New Zealand artist in his near non-existent down time while in Dunedin to collaborate with the Blue Oyster Contemporary Art Project Space on a performance series spanning an exhaustive programme of 15 events from the 13 March - 5 April, Avant Gardening took the opportunity to invite Samin Son on the show to play noise fragments and other shards gathered from his latest actions and performances in the South Island: Audacious Sonic Arts Festival in Christchurch, and the Work and Play performance series in Dunedin.

http://saminson.blogspot.co.nz/

images: Justin Jade Morgan & Claire Pannell.

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Playlist:

1. Samin Son, 'Orira', recorded at Yogiga Expression Gallery, Seoul, January 2013
2. Samin Son, solo performance at Pagan House, Christchurch, 6 March 2014
3. Samin Son, 'Confession Ritual', featuring Nick Graham, part of 'Work and Play', Dowling St. Studios, Dunedin, 22nd March 2014
4. Samin Son & Reuben Derrick, duo performance at Pagan House, Christchurch, 6 March 2014
5. Samin Son, 'Reading Cut & Paste Ritual, day 2' featuring Brendan Jon Philip, part of 'Work and Play', The Blue Oyster Contemporary Art Space, Dunedin, 19 March 2014
6. Samin Son, excerpt from 'Samin Son TV' solo exhibition at the New Zealand Film Archive, Wellington, 18 April - 1 June, 2013

sine tones and stairwells: klaus filip live in dunedin

on Sunday the 24th of November, the opportunity to host Viennese improvised electronic artist Klaus Filip on the Dunedin leg of his antipodean tour produced two collaborative ensembles with local improvisors: a duo with Klaus and radio cegeste, and a trio with violinist Motoko Kikkawa and cellist Joanna Osborne. A listening space hung with sculptural sine-tones and dense washes of interference, minimal strings and poetic silences was punctuated with sets by L$D Fundraiser and a trio comprising Troy Peter James Naumoff (guitar), Rory MacMurdo (drums) and Zack Shaw (sax). 

this edition of Avant Gardening re-plays the sets, recorded a week ago, for radio. 
image credit: Motoko Kikkawa

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Playlist:

1. Klaus Filip / radio cegeste, live recording 24.11.2013
2. L$D Fundraiser, live recording 24.11.2013
3. Klaus Filip / Motoko Kikkawa / Joanna Osborne, live recording 24.11.2013
4. Naumoff / MacMurdo / Shaw, live recording, 24.11.2013

thought fatigue / i've been here before (version 2): re-listening to Donald McPherson

To risk stating the obvious, the mythos around 'lost narratives' always has its own lost narratives. Take the case of Ravensbourne's Donald McPherson, a classically trained improvisational guitarist long considered one of the more reclusive participants in a music scene not exactly known for its overt social ease. Known for releasing incredibly small run editions on lathe-cut record, most copies of which he withdrew himself soon after. He was friends with Sandoz Lab Technicians at the Otago Polytechnic School of Art in the mid 1980s. He recorded with Three Forks (Metonymic, United Fairy Moons). He released the solo album 'Bramble' on Metonymic in 2001. The photos above are from the last gig I saw him play, with Tetuzi Akiyama, at the High Street Project in Christchurch in 2010, a rarity as far as these things go. As sometime collaborator (Three Forks member and curator of the United Fairy Moons label) Jimmy Currin recently put it in a review in Dunedin street press imprint Point:

"It seems hardly a week can go by without the international underground railroad coughing up some new lost gem; sometimes as re-releases but most assiduously over the internet. 'Some Songs' ought to have been among them by now, but as it was released in an edition of 20 lathe-cut copies, you'll be forgiven for never knowing it existed - though it easily stands alongside its near contemporaries, Alastair Galbraith's 'Talisman' and Crude's 'Inner City Guitar Perspectives' as a document of rugged individualist Dunedin splendor."

Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, c. April-May 2013 an outpouring of eleven releases (including the abovementioned Some Songs, but remarkable for its diversity and multiple personae) is available, not on one of the labels currently shining the limelight of the re-release on the various cobwebbed corners of the South Island Psych moment, but as full albums uploaded on Bandcamp, by Donald himself. Some are recorded on 4 track, the more recent ones on a Zoom. Most have never been available before. What are we to make of this? Will their strange, singular sublimities change our understanding of the South Island's musical mythos?

Donald himself sounds as skeptical about such grand narratives, and as personal, as ever: 

"Weird releasing this stuff, some of my guitar recordings seem like the product of an adult human being but my song stuff seems to have something eternally adolescent and amateur about it ... with clunky rhyming verse lyrics that seem to betray a low self esteem and seldom transcend being somehow about "me".... too bad. It's what I do. I've gotta put some of it "out there" and move on. I keep swinging between thinking my stuff is the cat's pyjamas and the next minute being mortified by how "bad" it is. Maybe that's normal....."

to listen to/download the albums, read more of Donald's thoughts (and have the chance to pay him for his work), go here

otherwise, listen in to Avant Gardening tonight for about three hours of Donald's music. We will eventually podcast an interview with him here too.


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Playlist:

1. Donald McPherson, 'Black Windows' from Mirrors & Windows (2013)

2. Donald McPherson, 'At The Crack' from Bramble (2001)
3. Donald McPherson, 'Icicle Man Melts' from Bramble (2001)
4. Donald McPherson, 'Bramble' from Bramble (2001)
5. Donald McPherson, 'R.I.P' from Bramble (2001)
6. Three Forks, 'Peru' from Seven Layer Ape (2006)
7. Three Forks, 'Drunken Traffic' from Seven Layer Ape (2006)

8. Donald McPherson, 'Boulder State' from Domestic Flights (2013)
9. Donald McPherson, 'Pick-ture' from Domestic Flights (2013)
10. Donald McPherson, 'Haunts' from Domestic Flights (2013)
11. Donald McPherson, 'Fructifying' from Domestic Flights (2013)
12. Donald McPherson, 'Seascape Panorama' from Domestic Flights (2013)

13. Donald McPherson, 'Perambulare' from Mirrors & Windows (2013)
14. Donald McPherson, 'Reverie' from Variety Show (2013)
15. Donald McPherson, 'For Sooth' from Variety Show (2013)
16. Donald McPherson, 'For When You Need Your World Reborn' from Variety Show (2013)
17. Donald McPherson, 'Dark Clouds Looming' from Deviations 
18. Donald McPherson, 'Calling to the Past 1' from Anomalies (2013)
19. Donald McPherson, 'Calling to the Past 2' from Anomalies (2013)
20. Donald McPherson, 'Calling to the Past 4' from Anomalies (2013)
21. Donald McPherson, 'Paranoid Lovesick Dream' from Slag-Heap Wonders (2013)
22. Donald McPherson, 'Pining' from Slag-Heap Wonders (2013)
23. Donald McPherson, 'A Question of Time' from Slag-Heap Wonders (2013)
24. Donald McPherson, 'Lofi Song' from Slag-Heap Wonders (2013)
25. Donald McPherson, 'Volgograd Way' from Slag-Heap Wonders (2013)
26. Donald McPherson, 'The Peasant (live)' from Slag-Heap Wonders (2013)
27. Donald McPherson, 'Things Aint Dead' from Some Songs (2013)
28. Donald McPherson, 'Above the Nut' from Some Songs (2013)
29. Donald McPherson, 'Shadow on Your Heart' from Some Songs (2013)
30. Donald McPherson, 'Lullaby Shit' from Some Songs (2013)
31. Donald McPherson, 'Wee Willie Wank' from Some Songs (2013)
32. Donald McPherson, 'Decap' from Some Songs (2013)
33. Donald McPherson, 'Well Kept Carpet in an Old House' from Some Songs (2013)
34. Donald McPherson, 'I Have Been Here Before' from Breakups & Breakdowns (2013)
35. Donald McPherson, 'Forced Optimism 1' from Breakups & Breakdowns (2013)
36. Donald McPherson, 'Hanging In There' from Breakups & Breakdowns (2013)
37. Donald McPherson, 'Running Free' from Breakups & Breakdowns (2013)
38. Donald McPherson, 'Ships 1' from Breakups & Breakdowns (2013)
39. Donald McPherson, 'Psychotherapy For Basil Brush' from Breakups & Breakdowns (2013)
40. Donald McPherson, 'Bouncer' from Twenty-Twelve (2013)

ghosts in the medium : a radio seance for analogue TV

“Analogue televisions in the South Island will show nothing but static today after a switch to digital overnight.” 
– the New Zealand Herald, 28.4.2013

“Television is the most efficient reproduction and distribution medium in human history, but it can scarcely be said to have come up with anything in the last half century that could be called an art form unique to that medium. The high-low distinction never took hold here in the way that it did in film. There is no form of high television culture that could be seen as a lasting cultural asset to be preserved for future generations.” 
- Dieter Daniels, 'Television : Art or Anti-art? Conflict and cooperation between the avant-garde and the mass media in the 1960s and 1970s'

New Zealand was a relative latecomer to public television, with Auckland’s first T.V. broadcast on the 1st of June 1960 (Dunedin’s was just over 2 years later in July 1962) lagging behind the British introduction of this particular public medium in 1936. As of today in the South Island, analogue TV bands are switched off with the turn to digital broadcasting, rendering this history something of an architecture of empty static, a zone of ‘dead air’.

Personally, we haven’t watched TV ourselves for years, but taking this timely opportunity to go wandering a moment within the abandoned city of the televisual, the now-empty signal of the mass medium of our collective childhoods, Avant Gardening presents a show dedicated to both signal and static within the TV paradigm, looking at some of the discussion around TV as a medium for artistic possibility throughout the last 40 years, and a small selection of artists' varied interventions into the medium-as-material, from self-consciously critical or activist interventions into the content of public broadcast media, to the medium as a momentary focus within the wider context of the development of video, media and electronic art.

Of course, much TV art isn't really audible, great things like Paik's earliest works in the medium, Wolf Vostell's 'Sun in Your Head' and and Richard Serra's 'Television Delivers People', but you can easily track these down elsewhere. And being a show that itself transfers one medium to another, in this case streaming media or digital files to analogue radio waves, we would like to remind our listeners that during the following announcements, ‘dead air’ may be in evidence, and that the visual can itself sound like static, or silence, or even radio - where possible, we've included the links to the material if you would like to watch.

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Playlist:

1. Nam June Paik, ‘Waiting for Commercial’, performed by David Behrman and Charlotte Moorman (8:18)
2. 'The Medium is the Medium' (1969) : six artists work with television (Aldo Tambellini, Thomas Tadlock, Allan Kaprow, James Seawright, Otto Piene, Nam June Paik) (30:00) http://www.ubu.com/film/tambellini_medium.html
3. Marshall McLuhan, 'The World is a Global Village', May 18, 1960 (8:44)
4. Chris Burden 'The T.V. Commercials 1973-1977' (9:08) http://www.ubu.com/film/burden_tv.html
5. Paper Tiger TV (1983), 'Brian Winston Reads the T.V. News' (15:04)
6. Sean Snyder, 'Schema (Television)' (2006-07), (7:00) http://www.ubu.com/film/snyder_schema.html
7. Sean Snyder, 'Analepsis' (2003-04), (4:00) http://www.ubu.com/film/snyder_anal.html
8. Phil Collins, 'The Return of the Real' (2007) (68:00, excerpt)
9. Shelly Silver, 'The Houses that are Left (1991) (52:00, excerpt)
10. Laurie Anderson, 'Difficult Listening Hour' from The Kitchen Presents Two Moon July (4:21)

don't make promises / you upset the grace of living when you die: the clean lines and contradictory trajectories of tim hardin

Tim Hardin was one of the foremost exponents of the specific late '60s West Coast pop/folk sound, combining exceptionally precise, almost soul songwriting with echoes of blues and jazz, music of densely emotional variations on accessible structure. The central themes of the Tim Hardin legend are there early on, in sad songs combining poignancy and yearning with a rare maturity and self consciousness. Older than many of his mid late 60s contemporaries, Hardin was an early visitor to Vietnam after dropping out of school to join the Marines. A military 'adviser' there in 1959, it's believed that's where he picked up the interest in heroin that became quite central later in his career. Initial success was as a songwriter, and even now he's often covered, with writing distinct in its containing of a worldview that complexly encapsulates an outsider's view of the 60s zeitgeist. But as his career progressed into the early 70s, the songwriting muse began to desert him, and becoming more of a jazz interpreter, Hardin was increasingly perceived as an unreliable burnout. Albums became more erratic, shows were cancelled, stories began to mount up of desperation and abjection. There were a variety of attempts at comebacks, and he remained a strong live performer... but when he died at 39, he'd been almost forgotten.

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Playlist:

1. Tim Hardin, 'Don't Make Promises' from Tim Hardin 1 (1966)
2. Tim Hardin, 'Green Rocky Road' from Tim Hardin 1 (1966)
3. Tim Hardin, 'Reason to Believe', from Tim Hardin 1 (1966)
4. Tim Hardin, 'Misty Roses', from Tim Hardin 1 (1966)
5. Tim Hardin, 'How Can We Hang On To A Dream', from Tim Hardin 1 (1966)
6. Tim Hardin, 'If I Were a Carpenter', from Tim Hardin 2 (1967)
7. Tim Hardin, 'Red Balloon', from Tim Hardin 2 (1967)
8. Tim Hardin, 'Black Sheep Boy', from Tim Hardin 2 (1967)
9. Tim Hardin, 'The Lady Came from Baltimore', from Tim Hardin 2 (1967)
10. Tim Hardin, 'You Upset the Grace of Living When you Lie' from Tim Hardin 2 (1967)
11. Tim Hardin, 'See Where you Are and Get Out' from Tim Hardin 2 (1967)
12. Tim Hardin, 'Tribute to Hank Williams' from Tim Hardin 2 (1967)
13. Tim Hardin, 'Ain't Gonna Do Without' from Tim Hardin 1 (1966)
14. Tim Hardin, 'Smugglin' Man' from Tim Hardin 1 (1966)
15. Tim Hardin, 'You Gotta Have More Than One Woman' from This Is Tim Hardin (1967)
16. Tim Hardin, 'Eulogy to Lenny Bruce' from Tim Hardin 3 (1968)
17. Tim Hardin, 'Last Sweet Moment' from Tim Hardin 3 (1968)
18. Tim Hardin, 'First Love Song', from Suite for Susan Moore and Damian - We are one, one, all in one (1970)
19. Tim Hardin, 'Question of Birth', from Suite for Susan Moore and Damian - We are one, one, all in one (1970)
20. Tim Hardin, 'The Country I'm Living In', from Suite for Susan Moore and Damian - We are one, one, all in one (1970)
21. Tim Hardin, 'Magician',  from Suite for Susan Moore and Damian - We are one, one, all in one (1970)
22. Tim Hardin, 'One One the Perfect Sum',  from Suite for Susan Moore and Damian - We are one, one, all in one (1970)
23. Tim Hardin, 'Susan' from Suite for Susan Moore and Damian - We are one, one, all in one (1970)
24. Tim Hardin, 'Bird on the Wire', from Bird on the Wire (1971)
25. Tim Hardin, 'Andre Johray', from Bird on the Wire (1971)
26. Tim Hardin, 'I'll Be Home', from Painted Head (1972)
27. Tim Hardin, 'Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out' from Painted Head (1972)
28. Tim Hardin, 'Shiloh Town' from Nine (1973)
29. Tim Hardin, 'Blues on my Ceiling' from Nine (1973)
30. Can, 'Rehearsal' (with Tim Hardin) from Outtake Edition bootleg (date unknown)
31. Tim Hardin 'Black Sheep Boy' from The Homecoming Concert (1981)
32. Tim Hardin 'Lady Came' from The Homecoming Concert (1981)
33. Tim Hardin 'Speak Like a Child' from The Homecoming Concert (1981)
34. Tim Hardin, 'Red Balloon' from The Homecoming Concert (1981)
35. Tim Hardin 'Amen' from The Homecoming Concert (1981)