ダブステップ・ディスクガイド｜国書刊行会.

I have some photos in this new Japanese Dubstep Guide Book; alongside words by the brilliant Laurent Fintoni! Available on Amazon. (I have no idea what the title characters mean)

“People do meditation to find psychic alignment. That’s why people do psychotherapy and analysis. That’s why people analyze their dreams and make art. That is why many read Tarot cards, cast I Ching, dance, drum, make theater, pry out the poem, and fire up the prayer. That’s why we do all the things we do. It is the work of gathering all the bones together. Then we must sit at the fire and think about which song we will use to sing over the bones, which creation hymn, which re-creation hymn. And the truths we tell will make the song.”

– Clarissa Pinkola Estés from Women Who Run With The Wolves 

There’s a great musical director inside my head. She gathers tunes without my conscious knowing, playing certain ones at certain times and providing a continuous, changing soundtrack to my changing interior weather system. Sometimes my amateur emo artist self calls on her to illustrate the way I feel (be it good or bad or something else), often to kick it out of my system. Then we rifle through the archives together pulling out songs. Music as detox, music as therapy, music as creation, or re-creation hymns, songs to sing over the bones with. Today, the maestro and I searched for hymns for the leaving of a situation, character and a longer term, annoyingly cyclical part of myself; internal and external predators as Clarissa Pinkola Estes (quoted above) might say. In short it’s a patch that’s ushering in a much needed personal revolution and, like all good revolutions, it needs a soundtrack. Enter Digital Mystikz, whose name is ever more apt in these days of techno-nature; and Mala in particular.  I moved through as many of his tunes as I could find on my laptop; allowing the frequencies to penetrate and pull bits of me out like string, a feeling comparable to a recent acupuncture experience. The more I dug, the more I felt relieved; lighter, tweeting (another form of creation hymns perhaps) the tunes that were pulling out the energies that a few years ago, I would’ve stamped into the floor at DMZ at Mass.

Digital Mystikz / @mala_dmz music – nothing compares ; it hits the soul

— ©GC (@drumzofthesouth) March 28, 2013

It’s no coincidence that I found an affinity with some of their titles also:

Blue Notez.

Changes.

Shake Out The Demons…

@drumzofthesouth forgive

— Charlie Foy (@charliefoy) March 28, 2013

Despite being reluctant to frequent the pubs and restaurants in the CP triangle (where I work, play, eat, love, give / am given, fight & sometimes fuk myself up) too often, in case the comrades get sick of me, I stayed in Palace last Saturday night; cos the Big Beary Godfather that is Andy Bambino was hosting the Metamono 7″ launch party in his shop and it’s somewhere I’ve never been to at night time and I’d heard that the last one was the boom shizzle and the Metamono guys have been to events at my café and Andy is a café guardian (as well as big beary godfather) and that’s how this community (breathlessly) rolls.

Andy’s a genius, not simply for his capacity to attract people as strange and bewitching as the objects he sells to his world, but also, I’m sure, cos he knows that putting on events and getting people drunk will lead to people wanting some of these strange and bewitching curiosities. (I left with a Metamono badge and a 7″ and have a desire for the bench of red chairs out the front of the shop).

Anyway, here’s the following day’s twitter review:

@Lucy_Lovebird “it’s like an old-fashioned Skrillex” #metamono#Bambinos#crystalPalace

©GC ‏@drumzofthesouth 24 Mar

 “I AM everyone” @Lucy_Lovebird





©GC ‏@drumzofthesouth 24 Mar

 everyone lost their f***** shit @Lucy_Lovebird I actually lost my cardigan, some brain cells, probably some dignity, you’re like an oracle.





©GC ‏@drumzofthesouth 24 Mar 

@METAMONOMUSIC Chez @andybambino s last night was INSANELY good

As the above tweet is so entirely true, I feel it’s only fair to expand on this in the form of :

DRUMZOFTHESOUTH’S

METAMONO MANIFESTO

REMIX

All sound is now available to all musicians everywhere
 (until they’ve acquired Tinnitus)

Music has become a flaccid shadow of the social power it once was (FLACCID? Music, are you actually gonna take that?)


METAMONO
will restrict and limit the sound sources and techniques available to us in order

TO LIBERATE the imagination
(How was your weekend? Well, I had a really good space voyage on Saturday actually”)

TO ECHO the struggle society endures
 (like the echo of an emo artist type drinking testosterone from a bottle…Stelllllaaa-a-a-a Stellaaaaa-a-a-a, Stellaaaaa-a-a-a-a)

Our restraints will be our liberties
(The testosterone will later take liberties with a man by telling him to be quiet (mid conversation) just so you can stare at his handsome face. #feminismgonewrong)

Our limitations will be our aesthetic
(EVERYBODY’S NOT ACTUALLY ON PILLS PEOPLE, BUT EVERYBODY’S LOSING THEIR SHIT ANYWAY)

We will kick against the pricks
(ooh do you want some help with that?!)

METAMONO WILL NEVER


- use a microphone (luddites)

- use digital sound generation or sampling
- (u don’t rate hip-hop then fam?)

- use mechanical sound generation
(are we really all 30-60+ year olds raving in a furniture shop?)

- use digital sound processing (But seriously how are you doing this?)


- make overdubs
(but will put the dub in “so.over.dubstep”)

- be afraid of mono
- (Well I aint afraid of glandular fever either which is just as well cos I’m amorous when I’m tipsy)

- remix
(*looks around guiltily*)

METAMONO WILL ONLY


- use analogue electronic sound generation
 (This actually IS the boom shizzle)

- use analogue electronic sound processing
 (is that what the millions of cables are all about?)

- use digital recording and basic editing when no alternative is available 
(just when you have me turning my nose up at digital)

- compose and mix simultaneously
 (& produce the sort of sexy analogue bass a South London bird dreams of)

- build their own or play used instruments (please can you build me a Theremin?)

www.metamono.co.uk  actual Metamono manifesto here: http://www.metamono.co.uk/index.html

There are some great pix by John Barrett here. Drumzofthesouth photos to follow

Cafe Thing @ Antenna Studios
Bowyers Yard, Haynes Lane
Crystal Palace, London
SE19 3AN

Facebook event
twitter.com/cafe_thing       cafething.tumblr.com

“Purported to be the findings of British astronomer Sir John Herschel, perhaps the best known astronomer of the time, the New York Sun, in a blatant use of yellow journalism, started publishing six stories in 1836 reporting the “discovery of life on the moon.” Most likely authored by Richard E. Locke in an ultimately successful attempt to boost the newspapers readership, the extravagant stories where full of alien flora and fauna, including bat winged men, nude moon maidens with luna-moth wings, unicorn moon bison and bipedal tailless beavers. In the articles it was proposed that an expedition be made to the moon using hydrogen filled balloons lifting ship like gondolas beneath, which later returned to earth under large umbrellas.?”

The Great Moon Hoax of 1836.

What is happening in fact is that I finally have an excuse to write a letter that I’ve been wanting to write (with the small chance of me doing / reading anything with any real focus or merit right now being another excuse).

Prior to sitting down to do this, my red string spider friend had suggested that I make a card for “somebody special.” I smiled and knew that I’d already decided to write a letter to South London.

Now I’m doing it, I realise it’s actually also to friends, family, place & the things that link them. Isn’t it always?

Where to begin?

————————————————————–

S.LDN

6.  _Thing_

The Story So Far

After 2010 Par LDN.

13.02.13

Dear S. LDN

6 months after 2 final weeks in Paris spent drifting, wrapping up loose ends in my head and pencilling new ones on a piece of paper around the word “café,” I’m back.

Apt that it was written in a bubble, as that what I’ve been in since returning; a bubble which occasionally bumps into others- one called “College aka MA in WTF with New Extended Family” and a smaller one named “The Overground aka Norwood J-CP-New Cross-Dalston-The Wick.”

Funny how they all interact, these bubbles, just like the 3 ecologies – environmental, mental & social. Which one is which in this instance? It could be debated; undoubtedly all are all; yet there’s “Café” announcing it’s the environmental – where I spend most of my time, being, talking, doing, thinking, listening, tasting, sensing. (working implies wear & tear.)

Between a large long wooden bar and a mirrored Palace. It’s a curious position.

I’m faced with anybody you wish to send into the room; truly faced with them and repeatedly, be they – looking for the studios next door, or neighbouring book palace; delivering parcel or object, on a defined quest for chocolate cake, recalling the going-ons of the time since the last time I faced them, the going-ons of the triangle; flirting gently, sadly with palm glued to forehead; comically (“FYI: I’m snorting a marshmallow up by nose”) or cloyingly with questions about the meaning of l***. Sometimes, it’s business meetings, sometimes bleeding fingers picking heart strings, with stories of x’s; with those in search of counsel, those willing to counsel; those who buzz.

But most simply South LDN, I’m faced with serving you a drink.

It all starts with a drink. That, or directions. (“Through the car park, up the top of the lane and then right or left and then right,” / “It’s just here, I’ll show you.”)

I’ve lost a thread or two.

Another ecology. The mental. The masters. Hmmm. Sometimes it looks like this in my head

 sometimes like this:

& this .

Occasionally, it’s some old dead white dude called Ranciere (fuck.off), sometimes agonism, sometimes anarchism (wanted, needed); the Heygate Estate:

Sometimes New cross & Deptford; a football head man un-selling you tea or hot chocolate at a free café (below) ;an un-customer-customer called “G.” who has “a very massive sound system,” clashing, subtedly with “A.” from Iran who came here for his girlfriend whose teenage daughter got pregnant by a man that A. eventually got in a fight with & thus ended up in prison.

It’s Coco, (the café cat), sitting at the end of the bar, gently, her head in nature; Donny Sunshine helping to build a den; making me long to learn or even be Italian, pondering life and sound, affirming & testing my “capo” abilities; Christina, listening and questioning words with a look of confidence which earns her the title Auntie; Youngheehee giggling, Isa walking through Soho telling a man to Fuck Off, leading us astray, to Haringey (O Hai North, there you are). It’s the others, less present (so far).

The social? Well, that’s a large part of the last paragraph; the bubbles overlapping. And Hackney:

and scraps & pubs of Crystal Palace triangle:

There’s something missing, no? A fourth ecology?

http://vimeo.com/31513791

Spirit?

There’s some behind me. “Organic” rum, gin and vodka, Breezy’s black cherry bourbon, JD, brandy, absinthe. I tasted a stronger absinthe at Numidie a few weeks ago, willingly spiked with hot sugar and dark, black in fact. I didn’t realise until some time after that it had kissed me before knocking me over, leaving me with a headache & laughter in my core, 16 bruises and wanting more.    I didn’t intend on that rhyming, I promise.

rhyme

Red string.

How complicated it must seem to others, but to me it’s one of the simplest existences we’ve had so far, LDN. Freedom and space to fill and only one night of boredom in 6 months:

+ one or two wobbles, one leading to a wobbly map and the other to affirmations:

Express the mind

Don’t get stuck

Be direct

Instincts are not to be ignored

Own yourself

NON COMPLIANCE.

Nice one.

Anyway, this was meant to be a l*** letter to you, South London. I don’t know how to write l*** really but it’s all here, somewhere.

With Parakeets,

GC xxxx

P.s. Quote of the day: ”I love my wife! Why would I buy her a Valentine’s card?”

Here’s one for the psycho-geographers!

In brief: www.mappingthepalace.co.uk  (What? You can take our area but you can never take our memories.)

Mapping The Palace is a participatory project involving current and ex-residents and visitors of the Crystal Palace area in London, initiated by Drumzofthesouth’s Georgina Cook.

The project invites the public to add memories in any form (photography, words, videos, lyrics etc) to a Google map of the area (above) and/or simultaneously to a map on the wall of the Café at Antenna Studios in Crystal Palace.

Submit via: submissions@mappingthepalace.co.uk or http://mappingthepalace.tumblr.com/submit

These will form the basis for a series of new maps of the area. A physical map will eventually be created and anyone who contributes will receive one for free.

Mapping The Palace is a collective portrait of an area which like many parts of London, is changing rapidly.

It attempts to address issues related to this change or gentrification as many people identify it as, something which seems to be an increasing concern and conversation point for many residents of Crystal Palace.

These maps can perhaps be utilised as an alternative guide for visitors, building on the standard information related to the Park’s Dinosaurs, the Antenna, The Great Exhibition and restaurants that are usually found in area guides.

It is hoped that in making alternative maps of the area, there is a greater chance that things which may otherwise be over-looked will be highlighted, preserved and considered by others.

Notable contributions to the map thus far include the prophetic image of the closed down McDonald’s with the words “Opening Soon! Another place to eat or an estate agents,” the image of the musician Burial’s Untrue LP artwork- revealing the location in which it was taken, an image from the now non-existent Fish & Chip shop and George Harris’ collection of images which are themselves part of his own psycho-geographical book project, “Postcards from a floating world.” (www.georgeharrisphoto.co.uk)

For images and further information contact:
Email: info@mappingthepalace.co.uk
Visit: www.mappingthepalace.co.uk

I’m very excited about this! I saw Tanya in Paris some time ago with her side project Yult and it was outstanding. She’s extremely original! Daisy Beau who appeared at the café some time ago (and packed it out!) will be returning to support Tanya.

Grab your tickets here and early to avoid disappointment! http://www.antennastudios.co.uk/cafe-thing/tickets/

www.tanyaauclair.com   http://dizzadaze.wix.com/daisybeau1