International Coffee Day

Today, as proclaimed by the International Coffee Association, is the first ever International Coffee Day. I celebrated by having a coffee.

Dare

Just finished an uplifting book about the early 80s music scene in Britain, Dare: How Bowie & Kraftwerk Inspired the Death of Rock'n'Roll & Invented Modern Pop Music. I love the contrast between perfunctory title (Dare - perfect; after the Human League album of course, which kind of defined the period) and the mouthful that follows. And you can tell he really tried to shorten the latter, getting rid of 'David' and changing 'ands' to '&s' or 'n's. I'd go along with the Bowie/Kraftwerk argument actually, though the last time I looked, Rock'n'Roll was still hanging on in there.
The early 80s were an amazing time for pop music - post-punk and pre-stodge. The Jam, XTC, Madness, 2-Tone, Ultravox, Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Human League, Heaven 17, OMD, Cherry Red, Japan, Soft Cell, New Order, Eurythmics, Thomas Dolby, Blancmange, Associates, Malcolm McLaren, Scritti, ABC, Tears For Fears, Simple Minds, Siouxsie, The Cure, Cocteau Twins, The The, Postcard, Crépuscule, Rough Trade, 4AD, Some Bizzare, Fetish, Cherry Red... to say nothing of the more obvious Duran, Spandau, Culture Club and the less obvious Eno's On Land, Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, Eyeless In Gaza... In 81/82 the Top 5 included weird stuff like Kraftwerk's 'The Model', Japan's 'Ghosts' and bizarrest of all, Laurie Anderson's 'O Superman'. And now? 
David Laurie's style took a little getting used to. It's very personal, casual, more like the longest ever pub conversation than a book, full of "oh my"s and "do yourself a favour"s, and even a few F words, but I liked it a lot. The tone of an enthusiast. Like classic Kurt Vonnegut, he mostly likes to keep his prose short, sweet and droll (much of it is laugh-out-loud), but occasionally surprises with a long eloquent sentence which absolutely nails an argument. 
It made me think I'm on the right track with my book, even though David L thought the slide began in '83. Well, we can argue that one over a pint one day... 

Hugo Largo

At a party at Michael Nyman's house this evening, I got chatting to a visiting photographer called Adam Peacock. As we talked, it turned out that back in the 80s he'd lived in New York and had been in a band - the token Brit in Hugo Largo. I told him I'd seen them in a basement club there around '87 or '88 which kind of surprised him. They were great, really unusual. Two bass guitarists, a violinist and a whacky singer in Mimi Goese; no drums or keyboards. He'd had hair then. Their first album was produced by Michael Stipe. I still have their second, Mettle. It had a really weird cover (left), designed by Dave Coppenhall and Russell Mills. When I got home I spent a very enjoyable half hour revisiting them on YouTube. 
Small world...

Techy Art

Boredom Research

The last time I went to Cenart, a large arts centre in the south of the city, was almost exactly a year ago, when we'd just arrived in Mexico. Then it was to see a concert by the Philharmonia. Tonight  it was pretty much the opposite: the opening of Transitio MX06, a biannual digital art exhibition. We'd helped with the UK-based artists.
Boredom Research are Paul Smith and Vicky Isley who do very 'sciency' art. (Here they are with curators Ricardo Dalfarra and Monica Bello). The piece is called Dreams of Mice and it quite literally interprets/visualises the reveries of one particular mouse they called Ron. It reminded me of Future Sound of London record sleeves. 

Lisa Ma

And here's Lisa Ma, who does even stranger research. Her piece in this exhibition, called Farmification, was about the quarter of a billion migrant workers who've left their farmlands to manufacture our technology gadgets in places like Shenzhen. So who's growing the food now?  She persuaded factory owners to grow stuff in their lunch breaks. I'm not sure how that connects with art, but Lisa certainly looks the part. The 'guitar' she's wielding is actually just a giant mouse, moving the screen presentation on. 

Burning Thoughts

Doug Fishbone's Hypno Project was weirder still. A dozen people hypnotised and then responding with grunts, whoops and hand signals to words and images. (Actually, I prefer his most recent project at Dulwich Picture Gallery where he paid a Chinese artist 100 quid to copy one of the Gallery's old masters and hung it up instead of the original. The Gallery then held a competition to see if the public could detect which one was the fake). 

However, the work I liked most (or at least was the most immediately understandable) was Mexican artist Jaime Lobato's Burning Thoughts, a long metal bar with about 100 little flames rising out of it. Strap a receptor round your head and you can control their height through brainwaves.
Art eh?  And Addictive TV will close the exhibition in a week's time.

Lunch

I am the envy of my colleagues. At crack of dawn, before breakfast, Liz prepares packed lunches for us all. This is today's: chicken, coriander & salsa wraps, mango & grapes, and lemon drizzle cake - all home made. Am I spoiled or what?
Trouble is, I tend to eat it at my desk, which is not good practise...

Past Imperfect Repackaged

Limited Edition (Sept 2015)

Received this CD in the post today. It's a version of Andrew Cox's Past Imperfect compilation, originally released in May last year (during the few months when I paused my blog). It was possibly (?) the last in a series of re-released MFH and Pump-related albums on Plague Recordings and Forced Nostalgia, masterminded by the very wonderful Fre De Vos. 
But here's a limited edition (of 80) produced for the Experimental Music Record Fair in Brussels earlier this month by Editions Abscondita. Nicely packaged. Andrew would have liked it. 
Both the original and the limited edition collect tracks from the early 80s, together with two from a hard-to-find compilation and three previously unreleased tracks. Here are the sleeve notes:

Andrew Cox was the more talented half of MFH / Pump, releases of which are available elsewhere on this site. Alongside his recordings with David Elliott, he also released four cassette albums on YHR (Arioch, Methods, Hydra and Songs from the Earth) between 1980-83.

Original (May 2014)

Tracks from these, together with other rarities are now compiled on Past Imperfect. The opening excerpt from Arioch - a terrifying salvo of purpose-built oscillators (not dissimilar to Pete Shelley's Sky Yen which was released in the same year, 1980), is actually fairly atypical of Andrew's subsequent output - which could be described as dark ambient before anyone had thought of the term.

Andrew used motley instrumentation - piano, guitar, recorders, reed organ, an obscure synthesizer, pedals and other effects units - to create claustrophobic, crepuscular landscapes, often inspired by paintings or literature.

But what makes this compilation so intriguing are the extras: two tracks from the rare Integrated Circuit Records compilation from 1983, and three previously unreleased pieces from 2000 and 2001 which had ushered in a new, ultra-minimal style.

Sadly, Andrew died in 2009 before he could fully explore this new direction, but it is gratifying to see his music recognised, despite his absence.

For more info, see here and here.

Maths

One of the challenges of modern, family-life is helping your children with their homework. Actually, I know at least one dad who refuses to do so - "Naah, they need to work it out for themselves!" - but I can't be so heartless. I don't mean do it for them, but at least help if they ask and set them on the right path. 
The homework I dread is maths and yet there is also a certain satisfaction in actually remembering how to do something you last did 40 years ago. After an hour poring over some infernal equation, it finally clicked and A & I punched the air, exchanged high fives and I privately thanked Mr Keane for getting me through my O-level, even if it was only a C.