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O Yuki Conjugate



Last Updated: 11/16/2009

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Status: Single
City: London/Yorkshire
Country: UK
Signup Date: 3/2/2006

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Saturday, April 11, 2009 

Its April 2009 and instead of clearing the back catalogue and preparing new releases I'm clearing the attic instead. A box emerges and inside are a collection of photocopied A4 gig posters. I'm instantly whisked back to 1982 and the fresh faced quartet we were when playing the Newshouse (3rd Oct 82) supporting Never Seven. I've never forgotten the music that was made up of electronic rhythms, clattering dog bowls and tootling flute bashed out to an audience of 7 plus a dog. How naive! How charming! How incompetent!

Yes, I've never forgotten our performance but I'd certainly forgotten the headliners: Never Seven?
I look at the other posters. Gigs at long forgotten venues in Nottingham: Vino's and the Ad Lib, supporting other long forgotten acts. My Rash Heart? The Innocent? 38th Parallel? Then in Hull & Leeds: Bluefish? Red? Even the known acts: The Nightingales, Crispy Ambulance. All dead and forgotten (just about).
I wonder what it is that means one not-particularly-outstanding band of the post punk/industrial era can manage to continue to exist albeit by limited means and mostly in an imaginary context.

There was a twist of fate that meant we changed direction. Away from the electronic rhythms that sounded like everyone else of that time and into an unknown area of abstract drifting sounds; reverbs, loops, distant voices, hand percussion. I can't imagine that we had any idea where the rudderless ship was going but it felt somewhere uncharted and different. All we knew was that we liked the music. Our friends derided the un-commerciality of it because the world had gone funk mad; slapped basses, whistles and sticks were the rule. Who cares we thought? And we were off and running straight into the wilderness of our own dreams instead of the dance floor. The 80s were spent in studios making music for ourselves that we never expected anyone to listen to. We were almost a virtual non-existent band then, except that we at least produced a couple of albums.

Its April 2009. I'm clearing the attic instead of the backlog of new releases. I'm looking at our contemporary life in the virtual world of myspace, lastfm et al and wondering if it's any different to the virtual band we were back then?

1:19 PM
 
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Evgeny

 
maybe it was a doom in the name of headliners: Never Seven - Never Seethem, - just kidding

burn down myspace and go to the wilderness!
 
Posted by Evgeny on Saturday, April 11, 2009 - 2:31 PM
[Reply to this] 
RICHARD KOVITCH
Richard Kovitch

 
It's the the thrill of the hunt that keeps us going, be it attics, ill-attended gigs, the studio or deep into cyberspace. The hunt is all.




Oh, and I just posted a piece at my blog re Eno / Hassell's talk should you be curious.
Not their finest hour!


 
Posted by RICHARD KOVITCH on Sunday, April 12, 2009 - 12:09 PM
[Reply to this] 
Plague Recordings

 
a couple of fine albums...
ps.
the suggestion above to burn down MS and go (back) to the wilderniss sounds like a good idea!
 
Posted by Plague Recordings on Thursday, April 16, 2009 - 9:39 AM
[Reply to this] 
400 Lonely Things

 
Thanks for sharing this. Your talk of the wilderness and myspace made me think of this poem by Richard Brautigan from 1968. 

_______________________________

All Watched Over
by Machines of Loving Grace

by Richard Brautigan

I'd like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
   (right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
   (it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

_______________________________

Sitting here with my family in our quiet mountain home, connected to the world of other people only through this computer - it seems I think of this poem a lot these days...


 
Posted by 400 Lonely Things on Tuesday, June 23, 2009 - 2:00 PM
[Reply to this] 
Oddiophile

 
...so did you find any of those old PAL video tapes we discussed a while back?  Because I will still give you real cash money!
 
Posted by Oddiophile on Monday, September 28, 2009 - 4:37 AM
[Reply to this]