exchange culture: motoko kikkawa in japan

Tokyo-born, Dunedin-based experimental violinist Motoko Kikkawa has lived in New Zealand's southernmost large-ish city for over a decade, and been an important presence in Dunedin's collaborative improvised music community throughout that time. Like many of us (and confounding the hoary yet persistent old cliches of Dunedin's sound culture as emerging from the yearnings and nostalgia of a peripheral place which is 'marginal' and 'isolated'), she regularly travels to update living links with the other places she draws on as history, in the process weaving a uniquely personal  geographical and cultural mindset, through the constant curiosity, learning and fresh listening such peripetatic activities inspire.

Motoko's most recent visit to Japan resulted in many audio documents, both while visiting family and field recording at a temple in Hiroshima, and being a participant and listener at various small venues for experimental music in Osaka and Tokyo. With her collaborators Takashi Masubuchi and Rosie Langabeer, she performed various dates on a tour of Osaka. Motoko's audio documents of these gigs are mostly captured at two venues: Futtari (in Suidoubashi), an improvised/experimental music store which has a regular programme of live music, and Art Space Bar Buena (in Shinjuku). Her capturing of the everyday life of the cities she traveled through also includes attention to the sounds of "foreigners" - part of a reflection around the strangeness of being a stranger in your own land, and  hybrid cultural identity: being always, on some level, in both places (and languages) at once.

We are very pleased to have Motoko as our guest tonight on Avant Gardening. During the show we will be playing and discussing her observations and listenings-in to the current underground network of Japanese experimental and noise music, revealing the current crop of tiny city spaces and the particular sounds emerging from them, as well as talking more widely about sound in Japan, and pondering place and other geo-cultural reflections.

lost in music / i'm a believer: toward a theory of the original non-original

 

The notion of "originality" in contemporary music has long been boringly over-contested territory. Within the world of popular song, in particular, genre has become central to how we understand music. Songs are most often interpreted through a combination of dramatic and affective devices that are strictly codified within these genre norms and a politically conservative hierarchy that determines value through tradition and the market. 

Similarly, the idea of song composition as being somehow intellectually superior to other elements within the process has remained - within more unconscious music consumers, especially - while other, less generic and perhaps more lateral possibilities within music are marginalis ed.

Contemporary music's increasing obsession with statistics, lists and other status indicators only highlights the problems with the pre-set canon as a market tool rather than a broadly useful indicator of the way we actually use music within communities.

The Original Non-Original is a way of understanding and clarifying that the top-down approach to music value presented to us has little value within actual music communities. The coalface of music production uses this kind of approach as a tool of resistance, as an interrogation of the locus of individual and community worth within music and music history. This is opposed to the Non-Original Original which seeks to replace like with like in terms of maintaining a controllable music structure.

With that in mind, we present a show of songs and other music that starts from a position of awareness of a place in history and in genre. None of the songs here are written by their performers in a legal sense, but many of them have presented a far more complex engagement with what musical composition and performance may actually mean in the lives of musicians and listeners. To cover a song at the same time as ignoring the self-evident aims and ambitions of the original is a bold response to a conservative environment, with a wide range of exceedingly valuable possibilities for engagement with community-level musical practice.

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This playlist was originally aired as a set by DJ Concrete Steps (aka. Avant Gardening's Campbell Walker) in the Friday Night experimental sessions at Dunedin's Mou Very Bar, 14.8.2015. The night also featured an all original, all live set of non-new music from the ever-erudite ears of Mick Elborado, who we understand is currently listening to this broadcast. Hi Mick! Thanks also goes out to LSD Fundraiser, for cluing us into the above image - Lady Gaga wears Les Rallizes Denudes.

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Playlist:

1. Robert Wyatt, 'I'm A Believer' from The Peel Sessions (1987)

2. Peter Gutteridge, 'Don't Catch Fire' from Stroke: Songs For Chris Knox (2009)

3. Peter Jefferies, 'Slow Motion', recorded live, 1993

4. Big Star, 'Femme Fatale' from Third/Sister Lovers (1975) 

5. Cat Power, 'Freebird' [Peel Session] from Clear the Room [Rarities] (Undated bootleg album) 

6. The Bent Folk, 'Wrecking Ball' from Live Bent Folk (4cd box, 2015) 

7. Alex Chilton, 'I Will Always Love You' Live to air, WLYX Memphis 1975  

8. Don Howland, 'Sail Away' from Land Beyond the Mountains (2002) 

9. The Index, 'Eight Miles High' from The Index (1966)

10. The Renderers, 'Forbidden Planet' from That Dog's Head In The Gutter Gives Off Vibrations (1994)

11. Peter Laughner, 'Calvary Cross' from Take the Guitar Player For A Ride (1993) 

12. The Builders, 'Red Sky' from Beaten Hearts (1983)  

13. Big Black, 'The Model' from He's A Whore 7" (1987)

14. Primal Scream, 'Slip Inside This House' from Screamadelica (1991) 

15. The Fall, 'Lost In Music' from The Infotainment Scam (1993) 

16. Suicide, 96 Tears from The First Album (1977)

17. Drinking Electricity, 'Shaking All Over' from 7" (1980) 
18. Primitive Calculators, 'Shout' from Primitive Calculators (1982) 
19 Half Japanese, 'Tangled Up In Blue' from Half Gentlemen Not Beasts (1980) 
20. DJ Smallcock, 'Radio-Activity' from Kraftworks (1999)
21. Vertical Slit, 'I Remember Nothing' from Under The Blood Red Lava Lamp (1986) 
22. Dredd Foole and the Din, 'Ghost Rider' from Ghost Rider-Frankie Teardrop (2006)
23. Happy Mondays, 'Step On' from Pills 'N' Thrills And Bellyaches (1990)
24. Rowland S. Howard, 'Life's What You Make It' from Pop Crimes (2009) 
25. Slap Happy Humphrey, 'Chihei-sen' from Slap Happy Humphrey (1994)
26. Patty Waters, 'Black is the color of my True love's Hair' from Patty Waters Sings (1966)
27. Dead Raven Choir, 'Our Mother The Mountain' from My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind (2007)
28. Townes van Zandt, 'Shrimp Song' from Rain on a Conga Drum (1991)
29. The Mountain Goats, 'Tell Me On A Sunday' from Hot Garden Stomp (1993)
30. Dear Astronaut, 'California Love' unreleased
31. The Gun Club, 'Cool Drink of Water' from Fire Of Love (1981)
32. The Lost Domain, 'Pearline' from White Man At The Door (2007)
33. Neil Innes and Son, 'Cum On Feel the Noize' from Miniatures (A Sequence of Fifty-One Tiny Masterpieces 
     Edited By Morgan Fisher) (1980) 
34. Alastair Galbraith, 'Getting Older' from God Save The Clean (1998)
35. Roy Montgomery, 'Used To' from Just Melancholy 7" (1996) 
36. Peter Jefferies, 'Scissors' from Electricity (1994) 
37. Akira Rabelais, 'Trisieme Gnossienne' from Eisoptrophobia (2001) 
38. Robert Wyatt, 'At Last I Am Free' from Nothing Can Stop Us (1982)
39. Plinth, 'Albatross I' from Albatross (2010)

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)