Sarah Hennies, Orienting Response (Cristián Alvear, guitar)
James Saunders, like you and like you (Ensemble Plus-Minus)
Kim Fowley, “The Trip”
Willie Tomlin, “Check Me Baby”
The Masked Marauders, “More Or Less Hudson’s Bay Again”
Eva-Maria Houben, orgelbuch (Eva-Maria Houben, organ)
Aretha Franklin, “Soulville”
György Kurtág, … quasi una fantasia…, op. 27 (Hermann Kretzschmar, piano; Ensemble Modern /Peter Eötvös)
Filed under: Music, Travel by Ben.H
No Comments »
Small melancholia, images and music
Tuesday 17 March 2015
I haven’t posted anything for a while, and just when I thought spring had come the cold and wet weather returned over the weekend. In keeping with the mood, here’s a little piece of music I made the other night and a few of the old photos I’ve been looking through this evening.
Filed under: Art, Music, Travel by Ben.H
No Comments »
Thoughts at the front bar of the Hotel Lincoln, Carlton (with a schooner of Coopers Pale)
Tuesday 25 March 2014
I’ve been catching up with friends in Melbourne. We’re getting to the age where we can legitimately reminisce about good old times. Back Then it felt like an exciting time and place to be making music, art. Yeah yeah everyone feels their own little scene is special when they’re young, but what we were really talking about was that there seemed to be a big conversation going on. Doesn’t seem that way now. Is there a conservation still going on, and if so why aren’t we taking part in it?
Back in London, where is the conversation?
I always feel awkward about going back somewhere I know people. After an absence, they’ve moved on and I’m going to keep trying to put them back where they used to be. (This worry disappears as soon as we meet, of course.) Went to the Melbourne Now show at the Ian Potter Centre and enjoyed it for the wrong reasons, then met a friend for lunch. She disliked the show, finding it disappointing, superficial. I told her too much London art was even shallower. What had gotten me inspired was just seeing so many people back from the old Conversation still making stuff. Still not sure if this is a misguided thought.
Running with the pack is one thing, but what I miss is the feeling of competing against everyone at once – or at least of trying to hold up one’s own end of an ongoing discussion.
(Wanting to contribute to an interesting dialogue is the main impetus driving my work.)
Filed under: Art, Travel by Ben.H
1 Comment »
It’s always bin day when the Google Street View car’s in town
Sunday 3 February 2013
My very first blog post was about the sale of the house I was renting, and the imminent need to find new accommodation as a matter of urgency. (I’d set up the free blog account about six weeks earlier. Inspiration does not come to me easily.) My post gave an honest account of the deplorable condition the house had fallen into over the decades before I moved in, and pretty much every punter who inspected the place before the auction made no secret of their plans to gut the structure for renovation, if they were legally prevented from razing it entirely.
I’ve just returned from an unexpected trip to Australia, and one afternoon I happened to walk down my old street. I wondered what the old dump looked like now it had been cleaned ip.
Pretty much nothing’s happened to it in the last eight years. In fact, it looks worse. The old doorbell’s been removed, the windows in the front door crudely patched over, and random sections of the front wall have been painted various shades of grey. A new shed’s been erected in the back yard, but other than that there’s no sign of work done.
When Google Street View first came to Australia I looked up this street but it wasn’t covered. I just checked again and it is now, with photos from late 2009. In that photo it looks no different from when I left it, so these tentative changes are even more recent. Looks like the new owners work even more slowly than I do.
Filed under: The Bunker, Travel by Ben.H
No Comments »
Fear and Loathing in Street View
Wednesday 4 May 2011
Google was somewhere around Rancheria, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.
Filed under: Art, Travel by Ben.H
No Comments »
Pis Manneken-Pis
Saturday 30 April 2011
Rather like my fateful encounter with Jeremy Bentham, I was wandering pleasantly half-bombed on midday Chimay Bleus around the streets by Bruxelles-Midi station while waiting for the Eurostar when I turned a corner and bumped into this guy.
I thought he’d been dressed up as a prank but it turns out this is a Regular Thing. This day’s outfit is supposed to “honour the IT division of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB).” Apparently Belgian tech geeks are into yachting; or at least Yacht Rock.
Filed under: Art, Travel by Ben.H
No Comments »
Lost in Amsterdam
Friday 22 April 2011
Island Dead Ahead
Sunday 30 January 2011
Filed under: Travel by Ben.H
No Comments »
Happy New Year!
Friday 31 December 2010
Filed under: Stupidity, Travel by Ben.H
No Comments »
Culinary Cage Match: Australia vs Italy
Sunday 19 December 2010
It’s the ultimate showdown: which proud national cuisine can turn out the most disgusting pizza?
Filed under: Stupidity, Travel by Ben.H
2 Comments »
Meanwhile, in Narre Warren
Thursday 25 November 2010
I come home to London next week, after having a great three weeks in Melbourne. More updates will follow then, with news about the Music For Bionic Ears project and other cool stuff, but right now I’m having too much fun catching up with friends and watching the Ashes. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this:
Filed under: Stupidity, Travel by Ben.H
No Comments »
Meanwhile, in Melbourne
Friday 12 November 2010
I’m back in Melbourne for a few weeks. On Monday I finally get to visit the Bionic Ear Institute and meet some other people working on the Music For Bionic Ears project.
Filed under: Travel by Ben.H
No Comments »
Valencias from Valencia
Thursday 26 November 2009
Filed under: Art, Travel by Ben.H
No Comments »
The Gods of the Union Hotel Look On
Wednesday 16 September 2009
I just remembered it’s the Grand Final this weekend in Melbourne. I was looking through some photos last night and found some more snaps from my last trip to Melbourne. On one of my last nights there I was out drinking with some friends at the Union Hotel in Fitzroy when the football came on – the only real footy I’ve seen in nearly five years.
Essendon 16.17 (113) d West Coast 13.13 (91) in case you’re wondering.
Filed under: Television, Travel by Ben.H
1 Comment »
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.)
