26 July 2020

C·30 C·60 C·90 Go

This all started after I dug through a box of cassettes (anybody remember those???) & came across this gem that is pertinent to this very moment in so many ways. But I'll go on long enough below, so, without further adieu...






Test Dept.

Test Dept. crawled from London's New Cross squats in 1981. 






Graham Cunnington, Jonathan Toby Burdon, Paul Hines, Angus Farquhar, & Paul Jamrozy.

Test Dept.

Making music with salvaged materials from factory areas & junkyards near-by.






"The physical location of Test Dept. at their inception was very close to the artery of the city, The River Thames, from which the lifeblood of the British Empire was born. There was always a certain irony and lost humour in the fact that the waste and detritus of this old world could be found in the proliferation of scrapyards amidst the decaying docks on our doorstep. The great Maritime centre of Greenwich where many British admirals had planned their wars and voyages, was adjacent to Deptford where we scavenged and foraged for scrap metal which was forged into a sonic battery of epic proportions. The local rag and bone men (look it up), used to come past our squatted house in Nettleton Road (New Cross) and drop off old water tanks, car springs, sheet metal, gas cylinders anything that had a sonic resonance and could be hit with force with metal drumsticks or sledge hammers. This utilitarian approach based on artistic integrity and economic necessity were to form the modus operandi of Test Dept."






The group became renowned for the staging of huge multimedia events at obscure venues: a railway works in Glasgow; a sand quarry; Cannon Street Station in London; a Welsh car factory. They were equally as notorious for their political agenda, which has included action against apartheid, the rise of neo-Nazism, & Britain's Criminal Justice Act.






Feared & monitored by the British establishment, tailed across East Germany by the Stasi, sponsored by the condemned Greater London Council, & regularly hosted by British Rail, the history of Test Dept. in the 1980s alone is remarkable, yet their often prophetic role in the struggles of that era are still often under-rated. They were always on the front line of struggles against pit closures & stood proud against Apartheid. Much of what they tried to warn against three decades ago has now come to pass in even more nightmarish forms than even they then addressed.


Regrouping in 2014 after nearly two decades, Test Dept. are more vital than ever. Here's an example of what they’re up to since their phoenix re-arose...




Faces of Freedom (HeadFuck) NOzone Mix – Test Dept from Test Dept on Vimeo.



& here's the cassette that I found...



Test Dept. - European Network 1-9-8-5 cassette, V2Uitgave V207, 1985.
decryption code in comments

Label Side -

Victory
Kick to Kill
Fist
Corridor of Cells
51st State of America

Blank Side -

Inheritance
Total State Machine
Shockwork
Finale

The cassette comes packaged in an oversized cardboard box with two inserts. The cassette itself is in a regular snapcase, the tape being labeled on one side with a greyscale looking label sticker.

Recorded on VHS Hi-Fi Stereo Videotape by V2 Operatives 1-11-1985.

I  have also included in the download both sides in their original format, not separated into individual tracks.

About V2Uitgave:






V2 was founded in 1981 as an artist collective. A squat in the Vughterstraat 234 (short: V2_) in 's-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, accommodated artists from various disciplines. The founding members, including Alex Adriaansens (Alex died on December 30, 2018, after several years of struggling with cancer). & Joke Brouwer, named it a multimedia center. The building gave room for concerts & performances aa well as experiments with analog media, like TVs, loudspeakers, & Super-8 film. It also included an exhibition space for (wall) paintings, installations, & machine art. Bands like Sonic Youth, Einstürzende Neubauten, & Laibach performed at V2_ in the early days. It was a do-it-yourself period, where music, video, sound, & visual arts were combined & the artists took the arts to the street. This was a perfect pairing for Test Dept.






The V2_ location was changed in 1994 to Rotterdam & also renamed V2 Organisation as a venue or V2 Archief as a record label. V2 Uitgave (translated V2 edition or V2 release) was the cassette only label.

There were plenty of young artists in Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin who played music as well as making paintings and performances and set up their own venues to show their work. V2_ soon forged ties with places like the W139 gallery in Amsterdam and with projects in Berlin. The groups were united by a shared attitude to life and a DIY mentality. The V2_ artists’ main aim was to create a space where they could find their voices and express their artistic ideas. As they saw it, everything in society was already too packaged and framed. In the early years, they tried everything, experimenting with abandon. There were enormous paintings, installations, video presentations, shows by experimental musicians and punk bands. In retrospect, 1985 was the highlight of this early period, with performances by bands including Einstürzende Neubauten, Sonic Youth, Test Department, Laibach, and Die Tödliche Doris...Recordings of many shows were released on cassette.
                    Based on a long interview with V2_ founders Alex Adriaansens & Joke Brouwer, September 2017.  Compiled by Arie Altena



V2_ is now a 'Lab for Unstable Media'



The Manifesto for the Unstable Media was issued by V2_Organisation in 's-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands in 1987.



MANIFESTO FOR THE UNSTABLE MEDIA

WE STRIVE FOR CONSTANT CHANGE; FOR MOBILITY.

WE MAKE USE OF THE UNSTABLE MEDIA, THAT IS, ALL MEDIA WHICH MAKE USE OF ELECTRONIC WAVES AND FREQUENCIES, SUCH AS ENGINES, SOUND, LIGHT, VIDEO, COMPUTERS, AND S0 ON. INSTABILITY IS INHERENT TO THESE MEDIA.

QUANTUM MECHANICS HAS PROVED, AMONG OTHER THINGS, THAT THE SMALLEST ELEMENTARY PARTICLES, SUCH AS ELECTRONS, EXIST IN EVER-CHANGING FORMS. THEY HAVE NO STABLE FORM, BUT ARE CHARACTERIZED BY DYNAMIC MOBILITY. THIS UNSTABLE, MOBILE FORM OF THE ELECTRON IS THE BASIS OF THE UNSTABLE MEDIA.

THE UNSTABLE MEDIA ARE THE MEDIA OF OUR TIME. THEY ARE THE SHOWPIECES IN OUR MODERN HOMES. WE PROMOTE THEIR COMPREHENSIVE USE, INSTEAD OF THE OFTEN PRACTICED MISUSE OF THESE MEDIA.

WE LOVE INSTABILITY AND CHAOS, BECAUSE THEY STAND FOR PROGRESS. WE DO NOT SEE CHAOS AS SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST, BUT AS AN ORDER WHICH IS COMPOSED OF COUNTLESS FRAGMENTARY ORDERS, WHICH DIFFER AMONG THEMSELVES AND WITHIN WHICH THE PREVAILING STATUS QUO IS ONLY A SHORT ORIENTATION POINT.

THE UNSTABLE MEDIA MOVE WITHIN THE CONCEPTS OF 'MOVEMENT-TIME-SPACE', WHICH IMPLIES THE POSSIBILITY OF COMBINING MORE FORMS AND CONTENTS WITHIN ONE PIECE OF WORK. THE UNSTABLE MEDIA REFLECT OUR PLURIFORM WORLD.

UNSTABLE MEDIA ARE CHARACTERIZED BY DYNAMIC MOTION AND CHANGEABILITY, THIS IN CONTRAST WITH THE WORLD OF ART WHICH REACHES US THROUGH THE PUBLICITY MEDIA. THIS HAS COME TO A STANDSTILL AND HAS BECOME A BUDGET FOR COLLECTORS, OFFICIALS, HISTORIANS AND CRITICS.

ART____MUST____BE____DESTRUCTIVE____AND____CONSTRUCTIVE.

Enjoy & please watch the Test Dept. video...Crucial,

24 July 2020

Chasing a Tear

While (long) awaiting Portishead to release Prequel (or whatever klever name they might come up with for their next one)  I collected up three band released tracks & a hand full of non- album release single tracks & made up this imaginary release...



Portishead - 4tashare, Fantasy Recordings CVD-19, 2020.

Chase the Tear
A Tribute to Monk & Canatella
Scorn
Machine Gun
Airbus Reconstruction
Revenge of the Number
Theme from ‘To Kill a Dead Man’
Earth - Linger
Lot More
Cowboys (instrumental)
Wildwood (Sheared Wood remix - Paul Weller mash-up)

always revenging the #,

04 July 2020

Too Much Time on My Mind




I  realize I often talk about the sychronicity that occurs that sets me on the course to any given musickal excursion. Those weird coincidences that we've probably all experienced & said. "Wuh?" But synchronicity is nearly as antiquated a concept as coincidences. & nobody believes in coincidences anymore, do they? What I really mean to express is that the quantum entanglement that snares me in its web made me do it.






Sigmund Freud fathered human psychoanalysis & began unraveling the processes of the unconscious, the pre-consciousness, & consciousness in directing human behavior. He  spotlighted how every action has a underlying cause, whether apparent or seemingly invisible. Until Freud began to unlock the psyche, coincidences were believed to be either God-Universe..."Coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous" or probability..."In large populations any strange thing can happen". Freud went on to state that  subconsciously we can create our own coincidences. We subconsciously create some coincidence situations to help us resolve psychological conflicts.






Freud's heir apparent Carl Gustav Jung introduced synchronizität or synchronicity. The concept states that events are "meaningful coincidences" if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related. Throughout his career, Jung set forth multiple definitions of the term, defining synchronicity as: "meaningful coincidence"; an "acausal connecting principle"; "acausal parallelism"; or a "meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved." It was Jung's belief that, just as events may be connected by causality, they may also be connected by meaning. Events connected by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of causality.


Freud became discouraged with Jung & condemned him for wallowing in what he called the "black tide of the mud of occultism".






But this is not occult, this is the Quantum World.


In classical information theory, there is a binary system of bits (a portmanteau of "binary digits") which can take only two values: 0 or 1.  However, with the discoveries in the Quantum World, a quantum bit (in a shortened form qu-bit) can take simultaneously the values 0 & 1. Qubits are in a superposition of both states at the same time.






Like Schrodinger’s cat, until acted on by an observer (Observer Created Universe), the actual state is unknown. When a qubit is measured, the superposition state collapses to a basis binary state. An important distinguishing feature between classical bits & qubits is that multiple qubits can exhibit quantum entanglement.







Suppose that the mental states first proposed by Freud, i.e. the unconscious, pre-consciousness, consciousness, are made up of sets of mental qubits. Therefore Jung's so-called synchronistic events between causality & meaning, the material & the mental domains are merely the consequence of a quantum fluctuations between mind & matter. Until I think about it, its state is variable. When I  "a-ha", then I've really stepped in it. Quantum entanglement has me in its grips.







So I could be reading most anything right now, but I'm reading Beat Punks by Victor Bokris.  I could be reading any chapter, but I'm reading the chapter "Allen Ginsberg on Heros".  Ginsberg is talking about Bob Dylan.  Beats, Bokris, & Bob...I go "a-ha" as I realize the deluge of all the Bs. Just then, my player, on infinite shuffle, which could be playing any of 2+ Terabytes of songs,  kicks into  "Crossing the Rubicon" by, yes, you got it, Bob Dylan. Quantum Bees. Which led to this whole rant. Its not my fault, the entanglement made me do it, I tell ya.


Here's what Ginsberg was saying: "I think there's a natural progression in Dylan's work...of mountain peaks & valleys, mountain peaks & valleys, with succeeding intensification & succeeding reality & succeeding genius..."


I've never posted up any Dylan here at NSS. You've probably heard of him on your own, but...


For seven consecutive decades, Bob Dylan has had albums in the Top40.  His latest, Rough & Rowdy Ways is his 39th studio album, his first album of original songs since 2012s Tempest.


C'mon, take an irrevocable step that commits you to an unchangeable future. Create your own universe by simply observing. Listen up.



from Bob Dylan - Rough & Rowdy Ways, CD1, Columbia 19439780982, 2020.

Enjoy,