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“The stoner thriller canon has a new candidate: Lou Berney’s Dark Ride…The author has a gift for creating characters and stories that infuse even the most sordid corner of humanity with unforced gentleness…This is the story of one man’s transformation from apathetic stoner to avenging angel…it also keeps the pages turning at a rapid clip. Berney’s thrillers have more weight than most, and more soul, and Dark Ride lives up to his established standards.”  — Los Angeles Times

“Stellar… a friend of Marihuana and pure escapism with self-esteem laid low, Hardly is a memorable figure covering the ground between anti-hero and kind-of-hero with a deeply life-affirming message in face of the most digusting evil. This book, though being, on the surface, an adrenaline-fuelled, and, well, dark ride, even manages to contain a subtle sense of humour in our stoner’s survival package. Let‘s call it a hard-boiled „Entwicklungsroman“.“ – M. E., Flowworker

„Dark Ride is Lou Berney at his best. This story of a disaffected scare actor at a theme park who finds his purpose in the defense of two abused children is both thrilling and heartbreaking but ultimately life affirming. The story of a man who finally stands for something after a lifetime of falling for anything will haunt you.“ — S.A. Cosby, author of brilliant crime novels Der letzte Wolf and Blacktop Wasteland

P.S. At one point in the new novel, Mr. Reetze, there’s a track playing in Elenor’s car that seems to be a Kraftwerk track, possibly from „Autobahn“. I once asked Lou Berney about the music in my beloved „The Long And Faraway Gone“, and that the way he „soundtracks“ it never seems contrived.  Here his answer that will make Lajla smile:

„Thanks for that! Much appreciated. I don’t have any rules except that — the music has to be an organic part of the story or the character, and not something I’m imposing. Sometimes I’m really influenced by what I’m listening to as I write. While I was writing The Long and Faraway Gone, I listened to a lot of Lindi Ortega, a fantastic roots-country singer-songwriter whose music really helped me get in the mindset of my characters. So I put her in the novel. She’s the singer in the red cowboy boots, at the Land Run, in the background of a conversation between Wyatt and Candace.“

I have a little story to tell. My favourite lyric book of the moment is Jürgen Becker’s „Fenster und Stimmen“ (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1982). I found it in an „Antiquariat“, and fell in love with it again, like decades ago. And while sinking deeper into the words and paintings (by Jürgen’s late wife), I even remember some of the phrases, pictures, words from that summer of 1982 – and looking by my side, I see a younger Michael – reading, dreaming, singing: “I drive my car up a one-way street / Dirty looks from everyone I meet / I ask the Lord my soul to keep / No reply — must be asleep.”  I remember my ars vivendi (haha) of reading poems in those days: staying at every poem for a long, long while, sometimes with Brian Eno‘s Discreet Music floating from the speakers. One day in Begeinöden, near Arnschwang, the mailman rang twice at the food of my hill (all those blue, blue skies around), and brought me this book of poems, along with two ECM records from Jazz By Post, Gleichmannatraße 10. The summer of 1982. I easily remember my love, „Come on, Eileen“ (as well as „Abracadabra“ from the Steve Miller Band) were our songs. I can still see, now, from my window in Bergeinöden, in that other life, in a long gone century, the green, green grass, I hear the soft, soft voice of my goddess making my soul shiver, my heart tremble. Our cries. Our melting. Our small talk before and after sex. It was the 80‘s, and on the turntable „Remain In Light“!

(Ich bin auf Seite 45 meines geplanten Erzählwerks „Der schwarze Hund von Grasfilzing“. Das Recherchieren der damals gelesenen Bücher und gehörten Platten erweitert Erinnerungsräume. All die Wahrheiten lassen sich dann noch viel leichter erfinden.)

Ziemlich unglaublich, aber wahr, ist folgende Story: im Frühjahr 1983 tauchte ein Mann namens Randall Wulff (alias Lewis) im Music Lab Studio in Los Angeles auf, mit einem weißen Mercedes Cabrio, einer attraktiven Freundin, perfekt gestyltem Haar, und einer (lapidar gesagt) Handvoll ätherischer Synth-Pop-Folk-Songs. Wulff beauftragte den Fotografen Ed Colver, der vor allem für die Dokumentation der Punkszene an der Westküste bekannt ist, mit der Aufnahme des streng monochromen Albumcovers. Als Colver merkte, dass der Scheck geplatzt war, war Wulff bereits verschwunden. Es gab Gerüchte, dass er nach Las Vegas oder möglicherweise nach Hawaii gegangen war, aber höchstwahrscheinlich war er nach Alberta, Kanada, zurückgekehrt, wo ein Vierteljahrhundert später ein Vinylsammler namens Jon Murphy auf einem Flohmarkt ein Exemplar von „L’Amour“ fand. Private Pressung.

Was für ein seltsamer Liederreigen! Wenn man Klänge spannend findet, die sich ständig nah an ihrer eigenen Auflösung bewegen. „The closer you listen, the more unsettling – and yet enticing – it all sounds.“ Was Verschwinden und Untertauchen angeht, war Randall Wulff ohnehin ein Meister. Hätte David Lynch dieses Album damals gehört, er hätte ein, zwei Lieder daraus in den Soundtrack von Twin Peaks transportiert. Und Angelo hätte nicht geklagt.

Mit den Worten von Alex Wisgard: „Drumless and bassless, L’amour is as intimate as a late morning lie-in – bum notes (and there are an endaring few) are left completely in tact, you can hear shirt sleeves swipe against guitar strings, and the almost wordless vocals sound almost like Lewis is too scared to make his feelings known. For all the comparisons you could make, there really is nothing else I can think of that sounds like Lewis.“

Ach, du meine Güte!

(Text folgt)

Natürlich verbindet schon jedes Kleinstkind mit dem Cowboytum Weite, Kraft und Freiheit. Kinky war das perfekte Abbild eines solchen Klischees. Hätten gestern beim Showdown all the Presidents men wenigstens Hüte getragen, dann wäre es ein gelungener Wildwest-Clip geworden, so barheaded reichte es nur zum Auftritt in einem bizarren Wachsfigurenkabinett. Nun ist einer der aufrechten Demokraten aus Biden s Partei gestorben. Kinky Friedman wurde 79 Jahre alt. Selbst einmal angetreten in der Kandidatenschlacht , allerdings nur um den Gouverneur s Posten in Texas, wusste Kinky wie s in der Politik zuging. Er hatte mehrere Pferde im Rennen auf seiner Lebenslaufbahn. Ich kenne ihn nur als Honkytonkman, als Songwriter and Singer, nicht als Krimiautor oder Retter streunender Hunde. Nun ist er in die ewigen Jagdgründe geglitten. Ist das jetzt kitschig? Ja. „Get your biscuits in the oven and your buns in the bed“. Ist das jetzt chauvinistisch? Nein. Sorry Ladies. Kinky war einfach witzig, humorvoll, intelligent. Er war Jude. In einem seiner besten Songs thematisiert er den Holocaust.“ There ain“t making Jews Like Jesus anymore.“.

Ich möchte hier auch an den anderen Countryboy aus Texas erinnern. Billy Joe Shaver. Ihn mochte ich noch lieber als Kinky, weil er noch bessere Lyrics schrieb, noch bessere Performances hinlegte. Ich weiß nicht, wie oft ich mir “ Ragged Old Truck“ ansah/hõrte, ich weiß auch nicht, ob er den Song total alkoholisiert präsentierte, es ist auch egal, die Story, die er dazu erzählt, ist zum Schreien und seine linkischen Bewegungen dazu, my goodness. Auch dazu unbedingt “ Georgia in a fast train “ angucken und den tiefsinnigen Text dazu verstehen. In dem Song “ You can‘ t Beat Jesus Christ „ gibt es, tröstend zu dem US amerikanischen Debakel von gestern, fast cowboywise Vorgetragenes:

Now If you’re too new york for texas

too texas for L.a.

you been changing trends like rainbowends but you’re always just a song away And if the White House wouldn’t have ya, play

in every little honky-tonk and bar

The good lord made the heavens, ah but he never made a Star.

Richard Williams visiting a friend

Als ich im Oktober 2018 auf Sylt die Biografie von Robert Wyatt las, nahm ich nachts auf eine Wanderung seine Platte „Dondestan“ mit, und hörte sie am Morsumer Kliff im Stockdunkeln, mutterseelenallein und seltsam euphorisiert. Ich hatte einen alten Sony Walkman dabei. Das Foto machte ich im Teekontor Keitum. Ein echter Power Spot, zu gewissen Zeiten sich in den Strandkorb vorne rechts draussen hinzusetzen, und dann eine oder zwei Kannen Tee zu trinken. 

Aus meinem alten „Comic Opera“-Interview mit Robert:

Im dritten „Akt“ deiner alles anderen als komischen Oper“ hört man dich nur noch spanische und italienische Texte singen…

Für mich sind diese letzten Stücke und Songs ein Bündel von möglichen „Exit“-Strategien in einer unerträglich brutalen Welt. Da bin ich offen für Sinnsuche, für Bedeutungsreste, für jeden Lichtblick. Ich mochte die ergreifende Melodie von  „Del Mundo“; der Song basiert aber auf der mystischen, geradezu feminstisch anmutenden Weltsicht eines katholischen Komponisten. Da spukte wohl in jungen Jahren in seinem Kopf die Idee rum, daß wir es mit einer Erdenmutter besser haben würden als mit einem männlichen Gott.

(Photos by Alf Solbakken, Svein Kruse and Per Fronth)

Reading Ingo Biermann´s post on one hundred albums from the 80´s, my immediate respond was to start listing albums of that decade. Albums that are not necessarily fully formed as such, more that each album had a few songs here and there that in one way or another had captured my attention, and I guess also may have influenced my own work.

Putting down names and titles on that list made me think of an old friend and painter I met at the time and became my friend in 83. His name was Phillippe Laurent, a striking figure that brought a fair amount of cosmopolitan attitude and the zeitgeist of the time to the sleepy town of Kristiansand. Phillippe painted powerful images on large canvases using any given or stolen paint he would find. Often the paint used was double-coated industrial paint that would harm the skin when touching.

Phillippe created gorgeous and shocking happenings i.e. placing military tanks made from painted lawnmowers outside the Parliament in Oslo. On each side, a pile of burning rubber wheels and himself armed with a motor chain, screaming. Within minutes it was all over. He would run off into the streets before the police and fire department would enter the scene.

Installation outside the Parliament in Oslo 81-82.

His paintings – primitive, but strikingly beautiful made a huge impression on me. I used to hang around Phillippe and visited his atelier and still recall the smell of industrial paint and the large-scale paintings placed on the asphalt in the backyard. His father, an ex-military working at Charles de Gaulle commuting between Paris and Geneva. During Phillippe´s frequent trips to metropolitan cities, he would pick up vinyl records and record them onto tapes that suited as a soundtrack to his prolific paintings of that period.

A mixtape of Phillippe would be something like the following:

• 23 Skidoo – Kundalini (82)
• C-Cat Trance – Dalbouka (87)
• Chrome – Tribes (83)
• Chris & Cosey – Shivers (85)
• Kowalski – Der Arbeiter (83)
• DAF – Goldenes Spielzaug (81)
• Spliff – Das Blech (82)
• John Foxx – On the Plaza (80)
• Blancmange – Feel Me (82)
• Blancmange – Game Above My Head (83)
• Schriekback – My Spine is the Bassline (82)
• Yello – I Love You (83)
• Cabaret Voltaire – Dream Ticket (83)

Man With Tie (Phillippe Laurent). Image taken from the video “Jean Phillippe Laurent”

By the end of the decade his psychoses became more prominent. He was constantly laughing as if his own laughter would put an end to his nightmares. A strong character and a powerful imaginative painter with an impeccable sense of colors. A film about Phillippe Laurent was made in 2009 by Jonas Matzow Gulbrandsen and with Punkt photographer and painter, Alf Solbakken as narrator.

101 albums: 1980 – 89

• Viriginia Astley – From Gardens Where We Feel Secure (1983)
• 23 Skidoo – Seven Songs (1982)
• David Bowie – Baal (1982)
• Michael Brook – Hybrid (1985)
• Paul Simon – One Trick Pony (1980)
• Working Week – Working Nights (1985)
• Chris & Cosey – Techno Primitive (1985)
• Arvo Pärt – Tabula Rasa (1984)
• Smiths – The Queen is Dead (1986)
• Laurie Anderson – Big Science (1982)
• Phil Manzanera – Primitive Guitars (1982)
• Simple Minds – New Gold Dream (1982)
• Fun Boy Three – Self Titled (1982)
• Frank Sinatra – She Shot Me Down (1981)
• Brian Eno – On Land (1982)
• Flying Lizards – Fourth Wall (1981) 
• Talking Heads – Remain in Light (1980)
• Jon Hassell – Dream Theory in Malaya. Fourth World vol.2 (1981)
• Judy Mowatt – Black Woman (1980)
• Roxy Music – Avalon (1982)
• Grace Jones – Living My Life (1982)
• XTC – Skylarking (1986)
• Thomas Dolby – The Flat Earth (1984)
• David Sylvian – Brilliant Trees (1984)
• Roger Eno – Voices (1985)
• Style Council – Our Favorite Shop (1985)
• Prefab Sprout – Steve McQueen (1985)
• Peter Gabriel – Birdy (1985)
• Mathilde Santing – Too Much (1985)
• John Cale – Artificial Intelligence (1985)
• Jan Garbarek – All Those Born with Wings (1987)
• Harold Budd – The Pearl (1984)
• Manu Dibango – Melodies Africaines vol.2 (1984)
• Jon Hassell – Aka Darbari Java (1983)
• Talking Heads – Speaking in Tongues (1983)
• Philip Glass – Glassworks (1982)
• Brian Eno – Apollo (1983)
• Gwen Guthrie – Portrait (1983)
• King Sunny Ade – King of Juju (1983)
• Chrome – Raining Milk (1983)
• Instrumental Music From the Kalahari San (1982)
• African Head Charge – Environmental Studies (1982)
• Thompson Twins – Quick Step Side Kick (1982)
• Talk Talk – Spirit of Eden (1988)
• Gwen McCrae – Self titled (1981)
• Rip Rig and Panic – I Am Cold (1982)
• Daniel Lanois – Acadie (1989)
• Donna Summer – Living in America (1982)
• Michael Jackson – Thriller (1982)
• Kid Creole and the Coconuts – Tropical Gangsters (1982)
• Joao Gilberto, Caetano Veloso & Giilberto Gil – Brazil (1981)
• Brian Eno / David Byrne – My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981)
• David Sylvian – Secrets of the Beehive (1987)
• Police – Ghosts in the Machine (1981)
• Scientist – The Scientist Rids the World of the Evil (1981)
• David Byrne – The Catherine Wheel (1981)
• David Bowie – Scary Monsters and Super Creeps (1980)
• Grace Jones – Nightclubbing (1981)
• Richard Horowitz – Eros in Arabia (1981)
• Cure – Head on the Door (1985)
• The Jones Girls – Get As Much As You Can (1981)
• Sun Ra – Love in Outer Space (1980)
• Earth Wind and Fire – Faces (1980)
• Roxy Music – Flesh and Blood (1980)
• Jon Hassell / Brian Eno – Possible Musics. Fourth World vol.1 (1980)
• Black Uhuru – Sinsemilla (1980)
• Maze – Joy and Pain (1980)
• Ryuichi Sakamoto – Riot in Lagos (1980)
• Laura Spiegel – The Expanding Universe(1980)
• Unlimited Touch – Searching to find the one (1980)
• Specials – More Specials (1980)
• Norman Harris – The Harris Machine (1980)
• Michael Franks – One Bad Habit (1980)
• Indoor Life – Contre Nature (1980)
• Scott Walker – Climate of Hunter (1984)
• Simple Minds – Empires and Dance (1980)
• George Benson – Give Me the Night (1980)
• Linton Kwesi Johnson – Bass Culture (1980)
• Daryl Hall & John Oates – Private Eyes (1981) 
• The Durutti Column – LC (1981)
• Nico – Camera Obscura (1985)
• Susanne Vega – Self titled (1985)
• Neville Brothers – Yellow Moon (1989)
• Marc Almond – Mother Fist (1987)
• Jennifer Warnes – Famous Blue Raincoat (1987)
• Susann Deyhim & Richard Horowitz – Desert Equations (1986)
• Peter Gabriel – So (1986)
• Arthur Russell – World of Echo (1986)
• Laurie Anderson – Home of the Brave (1986)
• David Byrne – The Knee Play (1986)
• Le Nimba de N´ Zerekore – Gön Bia Bia (1980)
• Terry Riley – Shri Camel (1980)
• Holger Czukay – Der Osten is Rot (1984)
• John Foxx – Metal Beat (1980)
• Grace Jones – Nightclubbing (1980)
• Pablo Moses – A Song (1980)
• Heaven 17 – Penthouse and Pavement (1980)
• Robert Wyatt – Nothing Can Stop Us (1980)
• Pasteur Lappe – Pop Makossa (1980)
• Philip Glass – Songs from Liquid Days (1986)
• Prince and the Revolution – Parade (1986)

Ich liebäugelte seit langem damit, mir diese Box zuzulegen. Jetzt tat ich es: Amazon verramscht diese wundervolle Schatzkiste mit sechd Cds für schlappe 10 (!!!!) Euro – jetzt gilt es, schnell zuzugreifen, Freunde des unerhörten Sounds. Das ist eine Avantgarde mit Charme, Witz, Tiefe, Melodie, Lust, und sanfter Radikalität. Sie lieben es, aus dem Staunen nicht mehr rauszukommen – bittesehr! Den letzten Anstoss gab Eric Chenauxs Loblied (s.u. – Eric ist nun dauerhaft auf unserem „Blogroll“). Ich nehme mal stark an, Amazon braucht Stauraum für die nächsten 25 Paletten Taylor Swift.

product description: Recorded between 1963-2019, Degrees Of Freedom Found is a six CD set “Blue” Gene Tyranny hand selected from archival, live recordings, and brand new first recordings before his passing in 2020. Part new album, part retrospective, this box offers a fresh perspective on “Blue” Gene Tyranny’s musical legacy. Blue’s career defining moment, composing the music for Robert Ashley’s magnum opus, Perfect Lives, typifies the Buddha-like self-effacement of his musical life. Often lending a substantial supporting role to his friends’ more visible projects, Blue’s music under his own name blossomed in a more esoteric and highly personal manner outside of the spotlight. Across its many previously unreleased recordings, Degrees Of Freedom Found showcases a surprising, extroverted side of Blue’s music, alongside the virtuoso works of sensitive spirit for which New Music devotees have long revered him.

I was so happy to hear that this record was coming out. Six CDs of “Blue” Gene Tyranny is wonderful – it could be 30. I adore his music so much. His work with Robert Ashley was my entry point, and then his solo piano playing and his strange kind of rock music that he was making in New York. He was of the generation of folks maybe one or two generations younger than John Cage and Morton Feldman, and he’s so unabashedly beautiful in what he plays. I don’t think he has any problem with something emerging that’s almost saccharine, with a DX7 sound, a washy keyboard. And it’s not ironic, he really means it. Yet it’s strange, it’s not just beautiful. 

Whatever he’s tapping into there is at the centre of what I love about music. I’m very interested in finding strangeness in not the obvious places. Finding strangeness in beautiful places, and beauty in strange places. Also widening what is strange – like “Blue” Gene Tyranny playing a G major chord, the triad is just weird. Robert Wyatt’s a genius at that too – he knows how to make super simple things sound strange, and I think that comes out of curiosity in a radical sense, that allows people to show beautiful and strange things in a new light. “Blue” Gene Tyranny’s music will do that. He’s just a monster, and I really wish he were still around making music.

HEUTE ABEND: Die Klangcollage „TIM“ des Projekts MITTWOCH wird im „deutschlandradio kultur“ in der Sendung „Kurzstrecke“ am Donnerstag, 27.06.2024 zwischen 22.03 und 23.00h vorgestellt.

Seit ca. einem Jahr ist eine sehr grosse Baustelle direkt neben unserem Haus/Wohnzimmerstudio. Der Abriss des bestehenden Gebäudes brachte natürlich jede Menge Staub und Lärm, was oft nur schwer auszuhalten war. Wir haben den Abrissbagger bei seinem Werk aufgenommen und wollten mit den schwebenden, ambientartigen Sounds, die ihn bei „TIM“ umspielen einen ruhigen, wenn nicht beruhigenden, Gegenpart setzen. Piano, Keyboardsounds, Gitarre (mit dem e-bow gespielt), und Vocalsamples wurden verwendet, um der Unruhe Ruhe zu geben. Der Baggerfahrer war ein sehr netter Typ und zentimetergenauer Meister seines Fachs. So weit, so gut, es grüsst Lorenz Edelmann!

„Um Vento Passou” is a dreamy ballad filled with traditional percussion and sweeping strings, where Nascimento duets with his long-time collaborator Paul Simon: two croaky octogenarian geniuses singing in Portuguese and bringing decades of wisdom and warmth to a fine song. (…) This is much more of an Esperanza Spalding album than a Milton Nascimento one. But what Spalding has been able to do successfully is subsume herself into the world that Nascimento has created over the last 50 years – a dreamlike realm of folkloric myth, plugged into nature’s heartbeat. (John Lewis, Uncut)