Please Mister Please

Wednesday 15 April 2009

Dirty Three, “Everything’s Fucked” (1994).
(5’32”, 9.45 MB, mp3)

Now streaming on the jukebox.

Brockley Farewell

Monday 13 April 2009

No more dormobiles, but this last visitor to my old home in South London has added a final twist to the whole, mysterious affair.

I Give Up

Saturday 11 April 2009

Beats me why Redundens 4 comes out all messed up in The Listening Room. It works fine on the player on my NetNewMusic page so if you want to hear it properly you can go there.
In the meantime, I’ve added Redundens 7 to The Listening Room, and it sounds perfectly fine. It’s very similar to Redundens 4, but then all the Redundens pieces strive to be as alike as possible.

It’s a wonder I don’t get this stuff more often

Thursday 9 April 2009

At 19:09 07/04/2009, Stave Scout wrote:

Dear sir/madam
My name is stave scout and urgenly need some DRILLS to order
from your company.please email with the types of DRILLS you have in
stock for sale now.and the price and i will like to know what type of credit
card do you accept. I will be looking forward to hear from you soon.
Thanks
Regards,
stave

Dear Sir/Madam,
Thank you for your enquiry about DRILLS. I have a wide selection of reconditioned DRILLS and DRILLBITS for sale – from the most delicate surgical equipment to heavy machinery for vast construction projects (laparoscopy, shipping canals). Please inform me of what type of DRILLS you need and I’m sure I can arrange prompt delivery. I accept Mastercard.
Kind regards,

Pause

Tuesday 7 April 2009

The world won’t let me stay put. After having to move unexpectedly at the start of last year, it now turns out I need to find somewhere else to live in the next few weeks. Excuse me if updates are a bit spotty while I get a new place, broadband etc.

Please Mister Please

Sunday 5 April 2009

Richard Maxfield, “Cough Music” (1959).
(5’54”, 8.26 MB, mp3)

Now streaming on the jukebox.

Another Voynich Enigma Cleared Up

Sunday 5 April 2009

After sorting out the true meaning behind the Voynich Manuscript, and uncovering the Voynich Manchester lurking in East London, another revelation. Thanks to the anonymous commenter who disclosed that the mysterious Edward-Kelley Lorem-Ipsum style curtains can be bought at Argos for £10 a pair.
In fact, they can be had for as low as £8.99 if you get them in terracotta, or for as much as £19.59 if you want them ‘natural’. Judging from the customer reviews on the website, they’re very popular with cheapskate landlords; but it beats me why anyone would voluntarily waste their time writing about stupid curtains on the internet.

The Giant Adenoid that Ate St James’s takes a step closer to reality

Thursday 2 April 2009

Now it turns out that this light bulb over the colonel’s head here is the same identical Osram light bulb that Franz Pokler used to sleep next to in his bunk at the underground rocket works at Nordhausen. Statistically (so Their story goes), every n-thousandth bulb is gonna be perfect, all the delta-q’s piling up just right, so we shouldn’t be surprised that his one’s still around, burning brightly. But the truth is even more stupendous. This bulb is immortal! It’s been around, in fact, since the twenties, has that old-timery point at the tip and is less pear-shaped than more contemporary bulbs….

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, pp.647.

Welcome to the homepage devoted to the Longest burning Light Bulb in history. Now in its 108th year of illumination.

Livermore’s Centennial Light.

First Meggezones, now this.

Redundens 4

Tuesday 31 March 2009

The series of works collectively titled Redundens was begun in 2001. All the pieces take Arnold Schoenberg’s Three Pieces for Piano, Op.11 as their starting point: only the top line in Schoenberg’s pieces is retained as an unaccompanied melody (or as a list of pitch classes if you’re more technically-minded.) Each set of pieces uses a different method of encoding this melody; by pitch, register, timbre, duration, dynamics, or other means.
Redundens 4 arranges this melody for solo piano, with all variations in rhythm and articulation removed, always making the smallest possible leap from one note to the next.

Redundens 4 (8’26”, 12.99 MB, mp3)

Update: whoa! Something’s terribly wrong with the Listening Room version of this piece. It plays fine if you download it, but let me know if the Listening Room version comes out all distorted.

What’s on top of the pile?

Sunday 29 March 2009

Chicha For The Jet Set

– Why are you listening to Latin music?
– Why not?
– You don’t listen to Latin music.
– I am now.
– You never listen to Latin music!
– Don’t you like it?
– It’s fine.
– So what’s the problem?
– You, you never listen to Latin music! Why do they keep shouting “cumbia”?
– I dunno, so I’m just assuming it’s Spanish for “blues explosion”.

(Last time on top of the pile.)

Please Mister Please

Friday 27 March 2009

The Masters Apprentices, “Undecided” (1966).
(2’30”, 3.36 MB, mp3)

Now streaming on the jukebox.

Please Mister Please

Wednesday 25 March 2009

Held over due to nosebleed.

An open letter to the imaginary kebab shop owner in my dream last night

Wednesday 25 March 2009

Dear imaginary kebab shop owner in my dream last night,
I apologise for attempting to order a large lamb doner from you by referring to it by the hitherto unknown slang term, “cock”. I could tell immediately that you were offended and had possibly misunderstood me. In this alternate reality I truly believed that it was common to call large lamb doner kebabs “cocks” but, even if I hadn’t been misled, my usage of it was overly familiar and gratuitously vulgar. I am sincerely sorry.
Thank you for not throwing me out of your shop or spitting in the garlic sauce.
Yours etc.

Google vs Death, Round 2

Monday 23 March 2009

Google Street View has finally launched in the UK and is already out of date. This is a good thing, as far as I’m concerned. I’m more interested in checking up on where I used to be than where I am now, despite the new pictures looking like they’re better quality than the Australian ones (and the taunts about growing up in a tip).
The Google camera car went up my street last summer. In fact, it went up my street twice:


I’ve talked before about how Street View’s illusion of the present masks a preserved version of the recent past, already decaying and proving less and less true to reality. Now we can see street corners that exist simultaneously in two time zones at once.
For most Britons, the illusory, alternate-reality nature of Street View is immediately visible in the high streets. The economic downturn has worsened in the time between the photos being taken and appearing on the web. Google’s Britain is a brighter, nostalgic land with fewer boarded-up shopfronts, where Woolworths, MFI, Zavvi, and other chain stores are still in business.

Back in Australia, the emerging anomalies are more poignant. On the main street of the town of Marysville in Victoria, the season abruptly changes from summer to winter for a few metres; then just as suddenly, the sky clears, the ground dries up again, and the trees regain their leaves. Of course, neither version is true: we know the town was all but obliterated by fire last month.

(Crossposted at Sarsaparilla Lite.)

The Listening Room is Open

Friday 20 March 2009

To save you the hassle of downloading music you know nothing about, I’ve stayed up all night figuring out how to get every single piece of my music on this website collected in one convenient location, playable as streaming audio. So far, there are over 50 mp3s to choose from.

You’ll need a Flash player in your browser for this to work. It probably needs a few bugs to be worked out and some extra functions added, but it seems to do the job for now. Drop me a line if it’s giving you grief.
Please Mister Please has also been given the jukebox treatment.