“27th day. Have rested and am moving south. All is well. Kerans.”

So he left the lagoon and entered the jungle again, within a few days was completely lost, following the lagoons southward through the increasing rain and heat, attacked by alligators and giant bats, a second Adam searching for the forgotten paradises of the reborn sun.

J.G. Ballard, The Drowned World (1962).

1. Mandre – Isle de Joie
– Mandre4 (1982)
2. Marcos Valle – Fogo Del Sol
– Marcos Valle (1983)
3. Ethel Beatty – It’s Your Love
– I Know You Care (12″) (1981)
4. Eliza Waut – Russia
– Eliza Waut (1985)
5. Kraftwerk – Ananas Symphonie
– Ralf & Florian (1973)
6. Nite Jewel – Falling Far
– Am I Real? (Ep) (2010)
7. Sun Palace – Rude Movements
– (12″) (1983)

It’s turning to summer in Melbourne, but a summer plagued by long periods of rain, flooding, and humidity. The nights are disturbed by noisy insects, and the sun sets late and rises early. I’ve been playing with a old drum machine from the early 70s, and the tinny ‘rumba’ and ‘bossanova’ beats it spits out provide a rhythmic backdrop to these sunny soul/disco/exotica songs. Nite Jewel is worth a mention here, effortlessly making music that complements an otherwise 80s dominated playlist.

“When the Compact Disc first emerged in the 1980s, it participated in the undermining of one of our most long-held assumptions. With the C.D., the whole distinction between Side A and Side B of the old vinyl record was collapsed. With the C.D., all the tracks are on the one side.”  - Gyorgy Scrinis, from the essay “CDs & Other Things”.

1. Kraan – Young King’s Song
(Flyday, 1978)
2. D.R. Hooker – Weather Girl
(The Truth, 1972)
3. Marcos Valle – Voo Cego
(Vento Sul, 1972)
4. Kraan – Buy Buy
(Flyday, 1978)
5. Family - Larf and Sing
(Fearless, 1971)
6. ESG – Moody (spaced out)
(ESG, 1981)
7. Liquid Liquid – Lock Groove (out)
(Successive Reflexes, 1981)

Ahh, it is excellent to be back in the motel. I’ve been a busy bee of late, travelling around collecting records, photos and other ephemera. All good news for readers, as there is plenty of new and forgotten music to share.

But to begin, a slight deviation from my beatsy, more electronic tastes – this is a list compiled from records collected whilst travelling, mostly from Berlin.  The sound is certainly down a psychedelic, no-wave kind of tip – but important steps along the development of my current taste. They are tracks that i did not discover / enjoy until i had flipped the record a number of times back home. Hopefully relics worth a visit…

Photo: Author’s

Beast that you are,
3 arms that you have to hold me,
4 hands to touch me with,
One eye to gaze upon me,
One leg,
A probosis on your lower abdomen,
No head as such,
And a tuft of coarse hair on your chest,
You are perfect,
My Darling. – David Shrigley, The Book of Shrigley

The hole you have in your heart is no hole at all, it is an endless galaxy of vitamins and boxes. I wish I could find the box with your tongue in it so I could sew up the cut and put it in your clean hand – Terri Gender Bender

1. Sui Zhen – Letter to You 001 (unreleased, 2010)
2. Telegraph Avenue – Lauralie (Mag records, 1971)
3. Gonjasufi – Sheep (Warp records, 2010)
4. Andras Fox & Sui Zhen – Petit Morte (unreleased, 2010)
5. Flamingos - I only have eyes for you (End records, 1959)
6. The Mole – Dreamer (Musique Risquee, 2010)
7. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Round and Round (4AD, 2010)
8. Dirty Projectors – No Intention (Domino, 2009)

Recently I have been spending time on skype, communicating with a loved one both present and absent. There are times when words, letters, and pictures need to be replaced by a haptic space of darkness and touch.

Whilst this can be filed under the “romantic-mixtape” category, I hope the variety of sounds, places and release dates make it one for a love beyond temporal-spatial restrictions.  For those interested, the Telegraph Avenue album is a Peruvian Psych/Pop gem well worth checking out. And for the uninitiated, Sui Zhen is a nomadic wanderer from Sydney whose talent is almost matched by her prolific output. Asides from writing songs whilst most people would scarcely have time to cook a meal (see: Letter to You 001) Sui Zhen makes films, photos and other devices for the storage of memories. Her album is being prepared for release soon, so keep an ear out.

A house constitutes a body of images that give mankind proofs or illusions of stability. We are constantly re-imagining its reality: to distinguish all these images would be to describe the soul of the house; it would mean developing a veritable psychology of the house… They give us back areas of being, houses in which the human being’s certainty of being is concentrated, and we have the impression that, by living in such images as these, in images that are as stabilizing as these are, we could start a new life, a life that would be our own, that would belong to us in our own very depths. – Gaston Bachelard, “The Poetics of Space”, pg. 17

1. Deodato – Univac loves you (Very Together, 1976)
2. Koushik – Be with you (Out my Window, 2008)
3. Andras Fox – Touchy feat. Amenta (Unreleased)
4. Andres – A new beginning / You can’t hide (Mahoghani Music, 2010)
5. Andras Fox – Body & Soul (Unreleased)
6. Ron Basejam – Into my Life (Brownswood Bubblers Five, 2010)
7. Hanna - Cottage (Sound Signature, 2005)

A long overdue return to the Motel. So much has happened, from the incredible experiences of The Red Bull Music Academy, a return home, changes in my own life, and finding a new rhythm and routine.

Like a child seeking stability in an image of a house, I’m finding stability in the regular heartbeat of an 808 kick drum. All of these songs explore a tension between a evolving fluid element and a regular organizing structure of drum programming. They are what I am drawn to playing right now – slow, swung, dilapidated house.

pic: author’s (taken in torokbalint, hungary)

“Definitive, once-and-for-all developments seem no longer appropriate to musical thought as it is today, or to the actual state that we have reached in the evolution of musical technique, which is increasingly concerned with the investigation of a relative world, a permanent ‘discovering’ rather like the state of ‘permanent revolution’.” Pierre Boulez (Sonate, que me veux-tu?, 1960)

1.  Monarch All Star Jazz feat. ‘The King‘ – Lover Come Back to Me (Monarch 10″)
2. The Majestic Arrows - I’ll never cry for another boy (rehearsal) (Bandit)
3.  Stanley Black – unknown (‘Cuban Moonlight’)
4. Lloyd Miller - Gozel Guzler (Version II) (Jazzman Records, Reissue 2009)
5. Controller 7 – Unbalanced (‘Left Handed Straw’, 6months, 2001)
6. Samiyam – Catch me riding dirty (‘Man vs. Machine EP, Poobah, 2009)
7. Andras Fox - Love is Gone (draft) (unreleased)
8. Oh No – Midnight Missions (‘Dr. No’s Ethiopium’, StonesThrow, 2009)
9. J’Dilla – Donuts (intro) (‘Donuts’, StonesThrow, 2008)

Listen: a good piece of music is never definitive. There could have been alternate takes. There could have been unforeseen errors in equipment, in the musicians approach, in the mood of an engineer, in the vinyl pressing. There could be samples that could have been used differently. There could have been an extended version, etcetera.

That is not to say that the artist lacked drive or integrity to complete their work. Whilst this list features drafts and rehearsal recordings, most are mastered songs, cut to record and released. But these pieces of music still contain what I would call an unfinished element – an element which threatens to spawn a new version, a sample waiting to be used, a loop that could be extended if need be, and so on.

The infinite JDilla is perhaps the figure of the unfinished musician – his songs built upon the work of others who came before, his work has inspired musicians to come, and the very structure of ‘Donuts’ suggests endless revolution. Ending with the track ‘Intro’ seems self-explanatory in this regard.

“So you see! There’s no end to the things you might know, depending how far beyond Zebra you go.” Dr. Seuss

Pic: Author’s