a deaf piano : alex mackinnon

"Alexander MacKinnon’s place in Dunedin’s current generation of experimental sound practitioners is as multifarious as it is catalytic, with his occasional live solo appearances supplemented with frequent collaborative performances in the groups Khomet, Dirt Room, the more recent Piano Queen Rainbow Star Telephone, and a duo with drummer Lee Noyes, as well as a recent stint in Matt Middleton’s rock band The Aesthetics, work on his sound installation practice (characterized by its lo-fi take on media materiality, as well as its careful attention to the spatiality of sound), a central place as an event organiser around the None studio artist collective and in the wider Dunedin community with Alt Music’s distributed event series and the celebrated Lines of Flight festival, and publisher of the “craft DIY” record label Radio Jaundice."

"MacKinnon’s solo performance practice folds the mechanical, the electronic, the broken and the circuit bent into a space both graceful and harsh, with the sliding scale of volume and tonality amounting to electrifyingly engaged listening spaces which read sound history without collapsing its immediacy and sensual potential, prodding the moment of live expression for its sonic possibilities, and stretching the embodied ear of the listener all the way from shudderingly oceanic sweeps to microscopically attentive near-silence. Known for his transcendental approach to the guitar as expanded instrument, in which the laconic investigations of “free noise” tradition are wedded to both the catharsis of deconstructed rock mayhem and the incisive investigations of minimalist electronic composers, in MacKinnon’s repertoire sound is never allowed to rest on its laurels, and the medium is always interrogated, whether that medium be tape loops, guitar amplification, circuit bent radios, or manipulated resonance captured within glass vessels."

-Sally McIntyre, 2009

----

We were excited about Alex MacKinnon's brief return to New Zealand to oversee the installation of an iteration of his work 'A Deaf Piano' in a large group show at City Gallery in Wellington, so of course we invited him up to Avant Gardening, to talk to him about the years he spent as organisational and musical catalyst in Dunedin, his many local collaborations, his installation work, 'Precious Metals', the band he began in Athens with Aliki Boufis, and life in his current home in London.

-----

Playlist:

1. Alex MacKinnon, My Mancer from 'Mancer' 2009 (Radio Jaundice)

2. Dirt Room, House No Orikata from 'Curses' 2008 (Radio Jaundice)

3. Alex MacKinnon, Mystic Precipice from 'Mystic Precipice' 2011

4. Alex MacKinnon, Fastest Double Kick in the World from 'Mystic Precipice' 2011

5. Alex MacKinnon, Three Seas Panegyric, unreleased

6. Precious Metals, live at Bios (excerpt)

7. Alex MacKinnon, The Many, unreleased 2010

8. Alex MacKinnon, An Orthodox Observation, 2010

9. UEB Systems (Alex Mackinnon & David Merritt), track 1, 'Recordings Wanganui', 2005/6 (Self Released)

10. Alex MacKinnon, Piano Coalescence, 'The Dirt Beneath the Daydream : A Collection of Sound from Aotearoa / New Zealand', The Wire / The Audio Foundation, 2009

11. Alex MacKinnon, The Good Ship Mutiny, from 'Dead House', 2008 (Radio Jaundice)

12. Alex MacKinnon & Lee Noyes, Bell Like Beat Up, from 7 inch lathe cut, 2008 (Root Don Lonie for Cash)

december's black children / when i die, hell awaits : Japanese psych-rock in the 2000s : LSD March, Kawaguchi Masami, Up-Tight and Suishou No Fune and related musics.

There are several different strands of what could be described as "Japanese psych" music. One of the most recent is also one of the more coherent - a quite distinctive breed combining very Japanese and very European traditions. Following on from the template established by the epochal ur-band of Japanese psych music, Les Rallizes Denudes (whose singular story will be covered in depth in a future Avant Gardening) - one of extreme volume, constant feedback, crunchingly minimal rhythms and structures and violent, discordant guitar playing, along with obligatory black leather jackets and sunglasses. From this influential structure, comes the lessons and structures demonstrated by the previous wave of Japanese psych bands, epitomised by similarly black leather clad icons like Keiji Haino (Fushitsusha, solo) and Jutok Kaneko (Kousokuya), largely documented on the PSF label and others through the 90s, who brought a greater level of experimentation, a tendency towards exploring a wider range of textures and modes.

This subsequent school, explored in tonight's show, was first identifiable as such on the 2003 compilation The Night Gallery. By retrospectively featuring bands from back in the mid 90s who didn't still exist by then, we add a few more transparent elements. Bands like LSD March and Up-Tight have added a structured rock linearity that traces from the Velvet Underground, where Shizuka and Suishou No Fune show the influence of shoegazing. There's a greater impression of a tendency to be looking outwards, both in the music and in the distribution: More and more albums by these bands are released on non-Japanese labels like Siwa, Slooow Tapes, 8MM and Holy Mountain. At the same time, there's a lot of energy put into self-releasing, and murky labyrinthine discographies that mimic the sounds on display here.

-----

Playlist:

1. Shizuka - 'Heavenly persona/ A Song for the World Left Behind' from Live: Traditional Aesthetics (Rec 1995 rel PSF 2008)
2. LSD March - 'Bisyonure No Kimi' from Under Milk Wood (Important, 2009)
3. LSD March - 'Yellow Sea' from Live (cd-ARCHIVE, 2006)
4. LSD March - 'Track 1' (no title) from Disc 3, Box (Self released, 2005)
5. LSD March - 'When I Die, Hell Awaits' from Kanashimino Bishounen (Siwa, 2004)
6. Broom Dusters - 'Soko' from Sound From the Bottom of the Tokyo Underground (rec circa 1996, rel Siwa, 2007)
7. Miminokoto - 'Dokonimo' from The Night Gallery vol 1 (Alchemy, 2003)
8. Miminokoto - 'Tokedasu' from U.S. Tour 2005 E.P. Live in Tokyo (Self released, 2005)
9. Kawaguchi Masami - 'Part 2' from Live in December (Public Eyesore, 2004)
10. Kawaguchi Masami New Rock Syndicate - '(Theme from) New Rock Syndicate' from Cat Vs Frog (Palindrone, 2007)
11. Kawaguchi Masami New Rock Syndicate - 'Melt' from Live in Japan 2007 (self released, 2008)
12. Doodles - 'Sunagatari' from The Night Gallery vol 1 (Alchemy 2003)
13. Up-Tight - 'Sweet Sister Oct 1998 at Studio' from Sweet Sister 1994-2003 (Self-released 2003)
14. Up-Tight - 'The Destruction' from The Beginning of the End (8MM, 2009)
15. Up-Tight - 'The Beginning of the End' from The Beginning of the End (8MM, 2009)
16. Suishou No Fune - 'Entrance to the Labyrinth' from The Gold Labyrinth (Blossoming Noise, 2008)
17. Suishou No Fune - 'Your Tears Drop From The Sky' from The Shining Star (Important, 2007)

18. Suishou No Fune - 'Endless Descent' from I Throw A Stone Into The Endless Depths (Slooow Tapes, 2007)

the whole point of no return / let me off please, I am so tired : robert wyatt

At Avant Gardening we're quite fond of following the more hidden threads across musical careers : in a recent show dedicated to Tom Rapp/Pearls Before Swine, we explored an artist arguably at his most dramatically diverting when he dipped briefly into the familiar narrative tropes only to then head radically away from the cliche. Tonight we present an eclecticism of a similar breadth. There's a strikingly obvious turning point early in the artistic life of the great British singer/ composer Robert Wyatt : the blonde, frequently shirtless drummer/singer for jazz/prog pioneers Soft Machine (and later Matching Mole) throws himself drunkenly out of a fourth floor window after too close an adherence to the Keith Moon formula of rotating tequila and Southern Comfort, and breaks his back... and becomes a depressive, culty songwriter in a triumph of (relative) artistry over adversity. This has always been the dominant opening strand for R. Wyatt 101, but the sting in the tail is a little longer than that.

Nearly 40 years since the accident, and Wyatt has gone on to become the most interesting, consistently shifting and developing member of that generation of English musicians who created what is now known as the "Canterbury Sound" of "progressive rock". And there's a condescension in the reception of the trajectory that comprehensively overshadows the ongoing career, that is belied by Wyatt's own response: to be a serious, ongoing figure who requires no pity but constantly acknowledges his situation as casting a long shadow over his life and his work. The need to listen closer applies to his unique singing voice: tremulous, deeply accented in sound and delivery yet profoundly expressive and addictive in its depths of feeling. It's the best kind of voice to present in terms of the argument between a technically "correct" voice of general precision and that of a person who has a singular take and will sing in a singular way.

Wyatt talks about his singing in terms of jazz, as a kind of "human horn", and he often sings beautiful wordless passages without defusing emotion or focus. He has an ongoing predilection for re-interpreting old songs from disparate sources - take for example his classic take on Chic's At Last I Am Free. This tendency in the work - most likely a kind of modesty at odds with the 70s tradition of singer-songwriters he isn't really a part of - sometimes overshadows an engagement with his own songwriting. The knowledge of and love for a ridiculously open array of music reflected in the sonic textures covered across those decades is not contradicted by the range of themes expressed verbally, but the style of songwriting is much tighter, and no less compelling for it. Throughout his career as a songwriter - first expressed in tracks like Soft Machine's Moon in June and Matching Mole's Signed Curtain - he's been a striking adherent to the British schools of intelligently whimsical wordplay, perhaps somewhere between Lewis Carroll and Samuel Beckett. Somewhere in there, he's become a master of honing this tendency to a very sharp communicative point indeed... It's in evidence on tracks like the paired Alifib/Alife off Rock Bottom ("Alifib, my larder" sings the recently crippled Wyatt to his wife and ongoing collaborator, Alfreda Benge. "I'm not your larder" is the response, several minutes later) and the later Free Will and Testament off Shleep.

Of course, the sharper the point, the smaller the detail it illuminates, and Wyatt's is a deceptively modest art, one that highlights the important difference between this expressive "everyman" and the more sterile notion of the "universal". A lover and responsible appropriator of many forms from bluntly commercial pop music through many histories of jazz, world music and punk, he is also a specialist in adapting tools available with clarity and laterality. Witness the 1981 Radio Experiment LP, where he was given the tools of a small Italian radio station studio for a week to develop from scratch an equivalent of an album and did so with only the items to hand from a constant process of solitary improvisation... or also the sometimes derided tendency to use the most basic of preset sounds from 80s keyboards to great expressive effect.

------

Playlist:

1. Robert Wyatt, Sea Song from 'Rock Bottom' (1974)
2. Robert Wyatt, At last I Am Free from 'Nothing Can Stop Us' (1980)
3. Soft Machine, Moon in June from 'BBC Recordings 1967-71' (rel 2003)
4. Matching Mole, Signed Curtain from 'Matching Mole' (1972)
5. Matching Mole, March Ides I from 'Smoke SIgnals' (rec 1972, rel 2001)
6. Matching Mole, Starting in the middle of the day we can drink our politics away from 'Little Red Record' (1972)
7. Robert Wyatt & Friends, Little Red Robin Hood Hit the Road from '1974 Live at Drury Lane' (rec 1974, rel 2008)
8. Robert Wyatt, I'm A Believer from 'Peel Sessions' (rec 1974, rel 1987)
9. Robert Wyatt, Alifib from 'Rock Bottom' (1974)
10. Robert Wyatt, Alife from 'Rock Bottom' (1974)
11. Robert Wyatt, Muddy Mouse (c) Which in Turn Leads To Muddy Mouth from 'Ruth is Stranger Than Richard' (1975)

12. Robert Wyatt, Solar Flares Burn For You from 'Solar Flares Burn For You' (rec 1975, rel 2003)
13. Robert Wyatt, Opium War from 'Radio Experiment Rome, February 1981' (rec 1981, rel 2009)
14. Robert Wyatt, Holy War from 'Radio Experiment Rome, February 1981' (rec 1981, rel 2009)
15. Robert Wyatt, Prove Sparse from 'Radio Experiment Rome, February 1981' (rec 1981, rel 2009)
16. Robert Wyatt, Shipbuilding from 'Shipbuilding' 7" (1982)
17. Robert Wyatt, Amber & The Amberines from 'Works in Progress EP' (1984)
18. Robert Wyatt, Pigs (in there) from 'Abuse - Artists for Animals' compilation (1986)
19. Robert Wyatt, Gharbzadegi from 'Free Will and Testament' (2003)

20. Robert Wyatt, The Animals Film (excerpt) from 'The Animals Film LP' (1982)
21. Robert Wyatt, We Got an Arts Council Grant from 'Solar Flares Burn For You (rec 1973, rel 2003)
22. Robert Wyatt, Vandalusia from 'Old Rottenhat' (1985)

23. Robert Wyatt, Alliance from 'Old Rottenhat' (1985)
24. Robert Wyatt, The Sight of the Wind from 'Dondestan' (1991)
25. Robert Wyatt/Chris and Cosey, Unmasked from 'A Short Break' EP (1992)
26. Robert Wyatt/Pascal Comelade, September Song (w Pascal Comelade) from 'September Song' EP (2000)
27. Robert Wyatt, Was a Friend from 'Shleep' (1997)
28. Robert Wyatt, Free Will and Testament from 'Shleep' (1997)
29. Robert Wyatt, The Verb from 'Solar Flares Burn For You' (rec 2003, rel 2003)
30. Robert Wyatt, Forest from 'Cuckooland' (2003)
31. Robert Wyatt, Lullaloop from 'Cuckooland' (2003)
32. Robert Wyatt, Stay Tuned from Comicopera' (2007)
33. Robert Wyatt, A Beautiful Peace from 'Comicopera' (2007)
34. Robert Wyatt, A Beautiful War from 'Comicopera' (2007)
35. Robert Wyatt, Out of the Blue from 'Comicopera' (2007)
36. Wyatt/Atzmon/Stephen, Lullaby for Irena from 'For the Ghosts Within' (2010)
37. Robert Wyatt & Friends, Memories from '1974 Live at Drury Lane' (rec 1974, rel 2008)

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.

-----


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)

'i have just come back from the land beyond the mountains, this is not a story i was told' : the music of tom rapp & pearls before swine

Psych / folk / outsider artist Tom Rapp's Pearls Before Swine project started off as a quietly successful cult, and subsequently transferred into first an increasingly ordinary and then obscure solo project, followed by 20+ years of actual obscurity, and a quietly miraculous comeback when the tides of musc shifted in the 90s.

The most successful act on the legendary ESP-Disc label in late 60s New York, Rapp and band released two quite astonishing albums of what at the time was something very hard to classify - and involved being comprehensively ripped off in the process - after a less eccentric, country folk tinged major label career into the mid 1970s, a disillusioned Rapp then quit music to become a civil rights lawyer.

For years he barely picked up his guitar again, convinced that he'd been forgotten, and that all his albums had quietly disappeared. Come the late 90s, and the strange, delicate, defiantly playful and psychedelic music of Rapp and cohorts - somewhere between Michael Hurley and Alastair Galbraith - is absolutely in tune with zeitgeist again.

Triumphant comeback? Well, perhaps. After a few festival performances, notably at legendary English psych fixture Ptolemaic Terrascope, and a new album, then it was back to work, specialising in research into defending clients who are the victims of discrimination.

Avant Gardening brings you selections from Rapp's back catalogue, stretching from Pearls Before Swine to the recent solo material.

-----

Playlist:

1. Pearls Before Swine, 'Another Time' from Radio Pearls
2. Pearls Before Swine, 'Footnote' from These Things Too
3. Pearls Before Swine, 'Sail Away' from These Things Too
4. Pearls Before Swine, '(Oh Dear) Miss Morse' from One Nation Underground
5. Pearls Before Swine, 'Frog in the Window' from These Things Too (1969)
6. Pearls Before Swine, 'Trumpeter Landfrey' from Balaklava (1968)
7. Pearls Before Swine, 'Translucent Carriages' from Balaklava (1968)
8. Pearls Before Swine, 'Images of April' from Balaklava (1968)
9. Pearls Before Swine, 'Playmate' from One Nation Underground (1967)
10. Pearls Before Swine, 'Drop Out!' from One Nation Underground (1967)
11. Pearls Before Swine, 'Ring Thing' from Balaklava (1968)
12. Pearls Before Swine, 'Wizard of Is' from The Wizard of Is (1969)
13. Pearls Before Swine, 'The Jeweller' from The Wizard of Is (1970)
14. Pearls Before Swine, 'Look Into Her Eyes' from These Things Too (1969)
15. Pearls Before Swine, 'When The War Began' from Radio Pearls bootleg (1971)
16. Pearls Before Swine, 'Butterflies' from Beautiful Lies You Could Live In (1971)
17. Pearls Before Swine, 'Rocket Man' from The Wizard of Is (1972)
18. Pearls Before Swine, 'I Shall Be Released' from Live Pearls (1971)
19. Pearls Before Swine, 'Suzanne' from Pearls Before Swine (1968)
20. Pearls Before Swine, 'Bird on a Wire' from Beautiful Lies You Could Live In (1971)
21. Tom Rapp, 'After the Gold Rush' from This Note's For You Too! compilation (1999)
22. Pearls Before Swine, 'Love/ Sex' from The Wizard of Is (1972)
23. Tom Rapp, 'The Old Dope Peddler' live at Ptolemaic Terrascope (1997)
24. Tom Rapp, 'The Riegal' live at Ptolemaic Terrascope (2002)
25. Tom Rapp, 'Lesson of the 60s' from The Wizard of Is (1999)
26. Tom Rapp, 'Silver Apples' (a capella) from Journal of the Plague Year (2000)
27. Tom Rapp, 'The Swimmer (for Kurt Cobain)' from Journal of the Plague Year (2000)
28. Tom Rapp, 'Space' from Journal of the Plague Year (2000)
29. Pearls Before Swine, 'Full Fathom Five / I Shall Not Care' from The Wizard of Is (1971)
30. Pearls Before Swine, 'Crawling Towards Bethlehem' off The Wizard of Is (1972)
31. Pearls Before Swine, 'If You don't Want To (I Don't Mind)' off Radio Pearls (1971)
32. Pearls Before Swine, 'Ballad of an Amber Lady' from One Nation Underground (1967)

visual substitutions / city mimicry : eves

Somewhat unwittingly, Avant Gardening's first show of 2012 mirrors the last of 2011 : what is it about Dunedin's underground sonic milieux that sees us forever celebrating the talents of local under-the-radar wunderkinds and organisational forces just as they are about to fly to other, balmier climes? I'll leave that question hanging in the rhetorical for the moment, as we shift our attention to the work of Edie Stevens.

Emerging from the atmosphere of collective improvisational experimentalism and general art/life blur which has long been a feature of Dunedin's warehouse-situated creative communities, Edie's work as a solo electro-acoustic performing/recording artist, under the moniker of Eves (and previously and slightly differently, Ms. Morse) crafts a patient, dark and gritty minimalism that seems to reflect the harsh beauty and thoughtful, wintry, wandering aloneness of her home town, in quietly austere, slowly evolving soundfields full of rich tonal beauty and peripheral-vision detail, fragile and unrepeatable architectures built from the connections between rooms, resonances, drones, hums, samples, tape-machine warble, laptop, oscilloscope, pedals and field recordings, sometimes coupled live with equally austere lens-flared video washes.

Behind such sounds is a life, spent, as she says in this interview, mostly in Dunedin, and specifically at None gallery, a place that permitted Edie, from the very first contact walking in the door at 18 years old (and seeing no less a figure than Matt Middleton blowing a saxophone), to imagine a creative life, to the extent that she has lived and organised events at the space for much of the time after. Avant Gardening talks to Edie about None, her various collaborations, playing bass in Thee Aesthetics, her collaborative audio-visual installation work, reflections on gender and sound culture, listening to the sonic spaces of warehouse rooms, and speculations on why Dunedin permits a certain type of music to happen.

Many of the tracks on this show are unheard jams, untitled events & other relative ephemera. Sound quality will vary! Podcast up soon...

-----

Playlist:

1. Eves, 'City Mimicry' from Visual Substitutions tape, 2011

2. Eves, 'Aves', unreleased, undated track

3. Eves, 'Lead Noi', unreleased, undated track

4. Eves & Disco Medusae, live at None Gallery, November 2011

5. Ms. Morse, (Track 9) from Driver & Utilities

6. interview with Edie Stevens, 12th January 2012 (backed with Eves, 'Octagon Mower Environ Tone', manipulated field recording)

7. IDM (with Oliver Van der Lugt), 'Take Nothing', recorded at None, 2008

8. MegaKipple (with Beth from the Futurians), live in None gallery basement, 2009

9. Not Even Owls (with Toki Wilson), Live at Refuel, 2011

these beautiful images were all taken by Markus Gradwohl, at various gigs at None gallery, Records Records, Dunedin Community Gallery, and Chicks Hotel between 2009-11, a fuller selection of which can be seen on his site, noise redux

'from the shoebox to the harddrive' : an idealstate sampler, and a lee noyes showcase

from his beginnings as a media studies student and noise experimenter on late-night student radio in New Plymouth, through the sonic nadirs of Nelson toward his eight years of quietly catalytic collaborative activity in Dunedin and an increasing attention to off-shore internet based collaborations, Lee Noyes' singular musical presence has, to date, been a poetics of focused contradiction, ranging from cacophonous psychedelic percussive maelstroms to astringent electronic sparsities. join avant gardening for an eclectic trawl through the output of Noyes' own label, Idealstate Recordings, a platform for his own collaborative activity, as well as his many and varied other releases on labels such as A Beard of Snails, Last Visible Dog, re:konstrukt, and con-V. we begin the show with the radio debut of three new idealstate releases slated for public distribution in January 2012, and culminate with an interview with the artist recorded at his home in Dunedin, as well as a recording of one of his final live performaces in the city before leaving for Sweden, a graphic score composition for two acoustic guitars written by Alex Wolken.

-----

Playlist:

1. Lee Noyes, track two from Xiazhi, (ISR1-12), Jan 2012
2. Lee Noyes & Radio Cegeste, 'ion and bird', from to orient themselves with coastlines (ISR2-12), Jan 20123. And/Also (Lee Noyes & Stuart Porter), 'Like Also and Any', from Like Also and Any (ISR3-12), Jan 2012
4. Lee Noyes & Motoko Kikkawa with Radio Cegeste, No. 3 Wave Magnitude, from Kinematics of the Sky, (ISR4-10), June 2009
5. Lee Noyes & Crude, 'Incarcerated Butterfly' from Crude Transactions, Artless Intent 2011
6. Je Serai Une Tombe, So What, from 19 X07, (ISRCD1-08), February 2008
7. Lee Noyes and Richard Neave, 'Mauled' from Unrepent, (ISR1-10), May 2010
8. Je Serai Une Tombe, 'Nihil est Nihil', from 19 X07, (ISRCD1-08), February 2008
10. Bury my Heart, 'Skull Death Dive' from Crows of the World vol. 2, Last Visible Dog (LVD 124). 2009
11. Lee Noyes & Phil Hargreaves, 'Smile for You', from A Present from the Pickpocket, Whi Music, 2005
12. Lee Noyes, Bruno Duplant, & Paulo Chagas, 'one hidden green pepper away from the birds' from as birds (re:konstrukt), 2011
13. Lee Noyes & J. C. Combs, 'Encrypted Note' from Confessions of a Deviant Machine, con-V, 2011
14. Lee Noyes & Barry Chabala, 'Yang' from The Shade & The Squint, idealstate, October 2009
15. Interview with Lee Noyes, 20th November 2011 (backed with Xiazhi, (ISR1-12))
16. Lee Noyes & Alex Wolken, live performance of 'In a Breath' at Threave, Dunedin, 9th December 2011