Phillip Glass -Geometry of Circles - Sesame Street 1979

Real

Christopher Wallace.

Chavs on pills

When they're not busy calling you a mincer, robbing fivers out of their granny's purse, shoplifting from JD Sports and watching everything on TV, most 'chavs', 'neds', 'townies' or whatever you choose to call them are upholding different, wider stereotypes, like the ones about drugs and 'magic', the bliss of idiocy and the feeling that we've all been helplessly at the mercy of a vast and very confusing universe since the moment we were born.

Aside from all that pretentious shit though I like this video because walking home wasted out of your face in the misty morning is a truly important thing. 

"What happens in the meadow at dawn?"

Corporate murder demonstration in a wipe-clean castle

Don't you just love the crunch of blood-free bones? There's no guilt, no expensive and inconvenient legal proceedings, no mess, no panic and no need to claim self-defense when all you get caught doing is simultaneously hacking in half a couple of drained pig carcasses in a hygienic, sales based environment! You can even take the time to adjust your protective eyewear before plunging the enormous razor sharp phallus like an ornamental knife through warm butter deep into the skull of the large sow you've ergonomically stapled to a brand new wooden post. Luxury incarnate.

"This is why you buy a Great Sword, because you can make those HUGE cuts through flesh and bone like that... you put one of these by your front door and you're going to be a power to reckon with! NO ONE is going to be able to take advantage of you when you have a Great Sword in your house, built by Cold Steel."

The salesman repeatedly spears the disembodied bonnet of a family car with the 4ft long object d'art.

"...and THAT's what the Great Sword is all about... deep penetration..."

The cowboy boots filled with meat, the brutal skull fucking of the bleached horse head and the double swine decapitation are my personal highlights.

What's wrong with these people? 

God bless America.

Decoder

The video embedded in this probably quite laborious post comes from the original soundtrack for the 1984 film Decoder, a low budget cult affair featuring cameo appearances by the late William S. Burroughs and musician/transgenderist Genesis P. Orridge. The film is beautiful in a raw, industrio-psychedelic fashion. Both of the big cameos give pretty weird, awkward performances but it's worth watching all the same... like a decent Ballardian B-movie. It's apparently based around or 'inspired by' Burroughs's ideas about sonic virology, a concept first outlined in his seminal publication on the subversive potentialities of sound and technology, Electronic Revolution (1970). The book contains (amongst other things) ideas about the 'language virus' itself, Burroughs's cut-up method and the use of sound recording and the human voice as weapons. Richard Kirk from industrial avant-garde band Cabaret Voltaire sights Electronic Revolution as "a handbook of how to use tape recorders in a crowd … to promote a sense of unease or unrest by playback of riot noises cut in with random recordings of the crowd itself."

Steve Goodman is variously known as Professor of Musicology at The University of East London, label boss of underground U.K dance music giant Hyperdub, acclaimed electronic music producer Kode9 and as the author of  a fascinating philosophical treatise entitled Sonic Warfare (MIT Press, 2009). As Goodman terms it; we are today dealing with the dynamics and application of 'affective tonalities in the Industrial-Entertainment Complex' and 'the politics of frequency itself'. These are the kinds of ideas that Decoder sets against a backdrop of hyper-capitalist industry, impending spiritual apocalypse and ineffable individual isolation. I liked the film; the textures it deliverd, the mood it created, its lack of compromise and it's luscious low-fi, made-in-a-blacked-out-garage feel. As a student of the more subversive arts however, it disappointed me in a couple of quite important ways. Firstly, I fell asleep at least once. While this may well be 100% my fault and is certainly 100% my problem, it wasn't just my lack of zest that set me to dozing I don't think. The pretentiousness of the narrative sincerity became quite boring after a while, especially as most of the acting was so dismally guarded. The reliance on narrative in and of itself betrays a lack of conviction in the ideas that the narrative here pursues, specifically Burroughs's ideas about cut-up techniques and true deconstruction/reconstruction - to coin a phrase from Doctor T. Leary, 'pyschic imprinting' - which seem better suited to writing, musical production and more formally experimental forms of the still and moving image than to narrative cinema per se. Decoder did make me feel uneasy ; it succeeded in temporarily breaking down some of my preconditioned responses to social taboos, as well as those of my own subjectivity... but I wasn't in a crowd, and I never felt quite uneasy enough. What I think I'm trying to suggest is that the narrative form itself acted as something of a buffer against existential experience proper, keeping psychic activity just beyond arm's reach.

The editing, brutalist aesthetics and hyper-diegetic sound design were all pretty abrasive, satisfying some of the lust for sensory overload the viewer may or may not have been predisposed to. There is a prolonged  Dreammachine sequence for example; a self-hypnosis tool propounded by many a transcendentalist artist, including not insignificantly Burrough's long term partner in crime Brion Gysin, as well as by Genesis P. Orridge and the cohorts of Throbbing Gristle in the U.K in the 1970s and 80s.

The soundtrack is possibly the strongest thing about Decoder, although there are definitely some really "cool" scenes in the film. About twenty minutes in for instance, once the angst and isolation of the weirdo-protagonist have been fertilized and the fruits of rebellion begun to blossom. A mesmerizingly pretentious scene takes place wherein the junky-chic, deadpan beauty, peep show starlet girlfriend of the male lead delivers a soliloquy about the symbolic significance of the frog in the spiritual languages of the ancient world. 

"I read that they're a symbol of fertility or the amniotic fluid. For the Mayans they symbolized the vagina: Mucho."

He yawns. 

Cutting between the two faces, we see the pair each on the phone, one in blue light, one in green. 

"Got a light?" he says. 

A cigarette lighter enters from left of screen and a two-shot reveals the couple in their shared apartment room, situated like pop videos in poised pose. They've both got dark glasses on and there are frogs lolling around all over the floor, the silver futon, and the girl...

Despite my fairly directionless criticisms, it's not hard to imagine some-where, some-time, some suitably weird scenes in and outside of cinema screenings of this film. Ultimately though I'm left wanting to compare Decoder unfavourably to David Cronenberg's superb 1991 adaptation of Burroughs's famous novel Naked Lunch. The key differential is that where Decoder attempts to insert theories of Ontological Anarchy and Poetic Terrorism into a risque, cool, dirty movie, Cronenberg's Naked Lunch instead takes the 'Art' of Burroughs and emblazons it in masterfully onto controlled celluloid. Maybe that's an unfair comparison, like pitting a spirited bare-knuckle gypsy against a zen master in a game of chess boxing, but as Oscar Wilde spake through the mouth of Lord Henry, "comparisons are odious".

Sung by Linda McCartney

But mostly I just like the pictures.

Slutty

Awkward lives! Work is commencing on Issue 3.
Expect good things, bad things, good words about bad things, bad photos of good things and bad words about bad things.

Someone asked me earlier this week what clothes I would wear if I was a girl. Unhesitatingly I replied "PVC trousers". It was one of those things you say that elicits a quick giggle but over time reveals itself to have come straight from the heart.

Folk II - Issue 2 Launch Party

Z-Box loved every single second of everything.

There was some seriously high class catering and equally high class arty-farty conversation going on outside

Matt wasn't pissed in the slightest

There were smoking hot, steaming drunk girls everywhere

This guy

And lest we forget, William "DJ Dickie Darkside" Darkin, who pretty much saved the fucking day; providing apparently the only fully functional mixing desk in East London, projecting weird visuals all night, connecting pretty much every cable in the world to some electronic device or other, rolling spliffs, getting drunk out of his face, dancing like the Energiser Bunny, playing a really good dj set and helping to put everything back together again the next day. Thanks Will. 

Here's a picture of some guy swearing and probably playing something loud.

(Available for dinner parties, orgies, barbeques and weddings. Ring Terry Trotter on 0800 Love-Lumps)

(photos by Max Mallen)

This is the last load of photos from the Awkward Issue 2 launch party. I feel like I'm milking it a bit already actually. 

It was a shit load of fun and thanks a million to everyone who helped make it happen and to everyone who came along. Now if you could please buy the bloody zine because I forgot to make them available for sale at the launch party after having gathered probably dozens of potentially interested customers. I regret that. Jack Carr, quite good at writing dialogue, very bad at selling things.  I think the magazine might actually be really really good as well, so there's another reason to at least stay in touch.

See you next time.

x

Lakes Delay - Issue 2 Launch Party

James Carnes aka Lakes Delay played his filthy guts out. Eternal thanks.

The best-looking-groupie-on-the-block award went to Julie Beauchamp.

And I'd love to say that this was the sweat James worked up playing his set, which culminated in some unprecedented aggressive banana eating, but as true as that last bit is, I think he's sweating so much here because we'd all just been loosing our minds and shaking our asses to an hour of sweet, deep, earth shaking 80's dancehall and digital reggae thanks to the talented Luke Branston aka Cool Hand Luke, who incidentally appeared on the front cover of Awkward Issue 1.... fascinating. Luke is seriously the best DJ ever and in my opinion put pretty much everyone else to shame on the wheels of steel. Nice one boss.

(photos by Max Mallen)

Folk I - Issue 2 Launch Party

Here's me and Ian Pons Jewell looking..... awkward. Ian is one of those multi-talented people that make you feel lazy and crap at everything. I like having him around. Check out Ian's illustrated short story Soulcrunt in Awkward Issue 2, and have a peep at some of his quite frankly amazing video work over at murmurfilm.blogspot.com 

Alex Milnes was there, playing all kinds of ridiculous shit as the percussionist/keyboard dude for The Old Dolphin Brigade. Alex has got two wonderful photographs in Awkward Issue 2, so buy the bloody thing and put a smile on that scrumptious little face.

Ben and Emma supplied the wicked (ware)house, about a hundred guests, a lovely, open atmosphere, 4 or 5 djs, after-party cleaning services, as well as their beautiful selves and all they got in return was this lousy blog post... oh and a short term loan of the fabled Kazoogle. The party was also in celebration of Emma's birthday as well as a launching pad for Awkward, a a fact which was largely overlooked in keeping with the distinct lack of 'magazine launching'. I think it's safe to say that everyone was far too busy enjoying themselves. Thanks guys.

Singer, sitarist extraordinare, blossoming fine artist and band leader with The Old Dolphin Brigade Carl Gent helped to kick off the evening with a pzzzchangwaaaaaaa-laaaAAA, setting the tone perfectly. The Old Dolphin Brigade played a fantastic and truly memorable set. They sounded like the inside of a toy box at night when the toys come to life and play at being The Monks doing a gig in the middle of the Gobi Desert.

You can follow Carl's numerous projects at www.carlgent.com... if you like. You wont regret it, he's like a real artist or something, whatever that means.

Sergio got pretty fucking wasted after this photo was taken. He spent at least twenty minutes staring at the rain on a tree. Thanks for showing up dude.

And guest of honour, Toby Dyter, who made it all the way down from Halifax. I came across Toby as he was about to fall asleep on a grass verge with his huge feet hanging off the end and a 5 liter bottle of water at his side. I'm sure there's a passage somewhere in Zarathustra that relates to that sequence of events, but you'd have to ask him yourself.

(photos by Max Mallen)