Monday, July 2, 2012

Sonic Boom: I do have a good job...



Sonic Boom/Spectrum, Stockholm 2010. © Carl A
Pete Kember, a.k.a. Sonic Boom, was once a member of seminal and highly influential dronerockers Spacemen 3. Since 1990, he has focussed his musical output mainly through the project Spectrum and sidetripping collaborations like "Experimental Audio Reasearch" (EAR). No matter what, Kember is always a thorough sonic explorer, looking for the perfect miminalistic groove that sets the mind at ease – or on edge. Before a concert in Stockholm in October 2010, I had the pleasant experience of sitting down and talking to him.
The way that you work, and I’m thinking mostly of the recording, do you have very set ideas or concepts, or do you allow it to flow when it’s time to record?
I don’t improvise in a live way when I’m recording. I usually have a fixed sort of skeleton, and elements I want to put down, like keyboard parts, guitar and things. I’ll try anything that comes to mind. Usually I record a lot of stuff and then work out which things are the most important elements and then lose the rest. If I record 20 parts but think I can get the mood over most succinctly with just four or five of them, then I’ll do that. I don’t pretend to be as succinct as Kraftwerk. When you listen to their records you really hear the work of four people. You just need four people to do it and no more. They all very much know their sound range. I always find with the Kraftwerk-records that there are four-five elements and they fill the sound range in a very clever, succinct way. I try to have a similar set of discipline but I like to record a lot of stuff first and then see. Sometimes things which you try as well, they don’t work out the way you want, but sometimes it’s better. I like the surprises as well.
Has it happened that you’ve become disappointed half-way through a project?
No, never. It can happen with a particular song. If I record and get to a point and think it doesn’t work, or if I don’t like the way it turns out… Some of the songs I have very specific ideas for. I go to record it and have an idea that it’ll work out if I record it this way. For example, I have a song called ”The end”. It’s a six note arpeggio. I thought that if I had six layers of the same notes going back and forth, but each time it starts one note later, then it should just be a six note chord, constantly. Because all the bits are there all the time, but it shifts. But actually your ear is the most impossible thing to deceive. What I tried to do with that song didn’t work out. What came out of it, I really liked. I like the aural illusion it created.
In terms of inspiration, the step before something formulates… Where do you think that comes from? Both in terms of music and lyrics?
Moods and feelings is the only way I can put it really. Certain songs are written in a certain mood. I find something I find satisfying or that works for me, and then it grows out of that… What was the question again?
The essence of inspiration.
Oh yeah. It’s often things like drugs or love or loss. Strong emotions make it easier to write strong songs, usually.
”Taking drugs to make music to take drugs to”… A circular movement?
Yeah, it is, and intentionally so, because we were very much using music in that way ourselves, as an adjunct to different experiments. We wanted to try and tailor what we were doing to work well in that way.
That’s almost a scientific manner.
We used to write stuff and rehearse and often be happy with it. But we were never totally happy until we had put it through the psychedelic test. To know that it actually worked. We were very happy to find that it did work like we hoped it would.
I know quite well your musical influences and background. But if we go further back, can you remember some musical imprint that affected you?
Oh yeah. Washing machines, refridgerators, air planes. You don’t hear it so much now, but the reason I picked the name ”Sonic Boom” was that I loved that sound. Of course, now it’s illegal to make this sound. Maybe the military can do it. It used to be quite a common aural phenomenon. Lawnmowers as well. In England, where everyone has their lawns. If the sun comes out for a day, you can just hear all those mowers.
That sounds like an imprint for the EAR project specifically. It stuck with you.
It did. The other thing was that I liked very simple minimal one-two chord things. I worked out that nearly all the songs I liked most by other people very cleverly used very simple chords, just two sometimes, to the point where you didn’t actually realise it. The music worked so well. When I worked all that out, it was a Eureka moment. I thought it all added up and that it could flow.
Are you hearing any music today that affects you in the same way?
One of the most recent things I’ve liked is Panda Bear, the guy from Animal Collective. It’s very hypnotic music. He uses different kinds of rhythms and more exotic sounds. It achieves a very similar aim. There’s a guy from New York called Cheval Sombre. He’s really, really good. I’ve worked with him on some stuff as well. He works in a very minimal way but it has a bit more roots to it, more blues. It’s got a closer relationship to the blues. Those are two of the most recent people I can think of. 
Do you have in mind to convey a specific feeling to the audience? Something you want them to experience and that you work hard to achieve?
I suppose so, but it’s so different, the atmosphere in every room and from every audience. Often, the audience brings more to it than we do. Or maybe the audience can have more influence on us than we can on them. At least as much. The right set of audience can really change a gig. It shouldn’t have to work like that but for some reason it does.
Is there one concert or experience that’s been more special and memorable than others for you?
It’s hard for me to think of it like that, because the discipline and energy it takes to get that music working on stage means that we can’t experience it in the same way as the audience. When you’re playing something you can’t just go with it. You can’t be taken on the same journey because you’re having to direct and drive the train. I don’t really get that same experience. We have a lot of shows that are really fun but it’s really hard to work out something that guarantees it. It’s hard to have restrictions to make sure that it’s always like that.
What do you prefer? Recording or playing live?
Recording is a little bit easier because you don’t have to be traveling, and all the complications that are involved with that. They’re both different disciplines and I’m really glad to stop doing one and start doing the other and keep things changing and fresh and interesting. I like them both a lot, for different reasons.
Are you more of a control freak than a random-chance-man?
A mixture of both. I’m a total control freak. But when things are going well, we have spaces to let it go. I can let certain songs run longer according to the sound. If everything’s sounding really good, then I’ll do longer versions of the song. There’s room for them to be stretched out, quite a lot of them, if we want to.
In terms of collaborations, with Spectrum or EAR, do you always have to like the band or person or can you simply see it as a challenge to be able to create something completely and really new?
I have always liked the people and the music I’ve collaborated with. I can’t imagine it in any other way, really. Especially if you’re working in the flesh together. Maybe if its something through the mail it wouldn’t really matter. I think it’s important that both have an equal understanding of each other’s aims.
You’ve been doing Spectrum for 20 years now. Can you see yourself doing this in another 20 years?
Just a little slower, I guess. Less often.
All you have to do is crank up the volume even more.
(Laughs) Everyone will have hearing aids. I think I’m beyond retraining for other work.
Have you ever felt tempted to do something completely different?
Sometimes I get really sick of what I do, like everyone does with their job. That’s why I like that then I can go and work with someone else on their record and help them do what they want to do rather than what I want to do. That difference makes it bearable. Doing all these different projects. The difference between live and studio work, even though it’s a fairly repetitive cycle, just trying to keep it as interesting as possible. All jobs have their downside. But I do have a good job.
Did you ever get any feedback from Charlie Manson regarding your cover of ”Mechanical Man”?
(Laughs) No, I don’t think so. I don’t think they’ll ever let him out. It would be funny though and probably a little scary. I hope he likes it! I didn’t change the lyrics!
Is the psychedelic experience still important for you in terms of finding new inspiration and new ways of working?
Yes, it is. Psychedelics isn’t something you can do every day. Also, there’s a difference between, for instance, DMT and mushrooms, and the inspiration from them is very different. Most of the drugs I do recreationally are less extreme. I smoke pretty strong weed most of the time. Some people find it quite psychedelic. I guess it is psychedelic in a way.
Are you also interested in the politics of psychedelics? Like the upcoming vote in California about possibly legalising marijuana.
Yeah, I am interested. If it happens in California, it can spread in America. If it happens in America, it can happen in the rest of the world. America has been the policeman for everyone else, telling everyone else that they shouldn’t do it. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.
I think I read in an old interview with you that ”it’s all about the money anyway”…
I think it’s been the largest cash crop in America for a long time. It seems crazy that alcohol should be available but weed isn’t. Especially with the tax revenue they could make from it. The illegal money goes into financing all sorts of strange crime. If you can take drugs out of the hands of criminals to start with, I think that’s a good move. They’ll ID you to see if you can have a drink in a bar in the States. But I’ve never come across a heroin or crack dealer who asked for an ID.
I think there’s a dark element in basically all of your music, in all of the constellations. You said before that the music stems from your emotions. And then you make music that in turn affects you emotionally. Does it become like a perpeteuum mobile, an ”eternal machine”?
I guess that’s how it works. I mean, I don’t get up every day and feel like part of a machine that’s doing that, but that is basically what’s happening. I’m permanently refining a perspective and also checking what I’m able to do. Other people that you work with can bring in stuff too… Whenever you’re working with someone, they’ll always bring stuff in that you would never have thought of. It’s often better than things that you might have thought of. It’s also very easy to sack them and fire them. (laughs)
What about Swedish music? Is there something from Sweden that you’ve heard and enjoyed?
I guess the only Swedish artist I’ve come across is through Lee Hazlewood, and that’s Ann Margret. That’s about the best I can tell you. By the way, do Psilocybin mushrooms grow in Sweden?
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Stockholm, a photographic h(e)aven



What I am about to write will sound like a liberal anthem, and I feel a little queazy about that. Sometimes you find yourself expressing emotions or points of view that are absolutely true to your heart, but when you realise their relevant heading or, as it’s now called, ”tag”, it might not always ring a comfortable bell.
Anyway, the situation is as follows: Stockholm is a small town with hubris. Although beautiful, safe, clean, affluent and cultivated, it by no means contains a big city pulse or the urban ultra-frequencies that signal any kind of resonance with the unexpected. Usually called ”the Venice of the North”, Stockholm probably fares better as ”the Zürich of the North”. And that’s not a bad thing, not at all. If things weren’t so complacently bourgeois here, the non-adherents wouldn’t have anything to complain about, right?
What has become evident over the past decades of relentless globalisation is that older art institutions have had to adapt to competition from younger and in many ways more vital galleries and venues. This has been proto-evident in Stockholm in the case with the Museum of Modern Art (”Moderna Museet”, henceforth called MM) on one hand and the still baby fresh institution Fotografiska (specialising, as the name implies, in photography).
MM is a European landmark among museums, mainly because of curator Pontus Hultén’s strategic artist/dealer hobnobbing during the 50s and 60s. Not only were great things shown and written about, but there was already an early focus on building a truly great collection. Photography was included in this early vision, way earlier than in most other similar institutions in Europe. This has meant that a huge photography collection has been amassed, today containing approximately 100.000 images from the early 19th century and onwards.
Although kept within the same structure, the photography section was an institution in itself until 1998, when it was engulfed by big art brother MM. Many, many great exhibitions have been shown during the years since then, and cooperations with publishers like Steidl have created a catalogue/monograph industry that has further strengthened the ”trademark” of this Swedish bastion.
Then what happened? In 2010, newcomer Fotografiska popped up, not out of the blue entirely but certainly out of a dark room that was considerably more contemporary in approach. Housed by the water in a huge old warehouse building and actually looking out over the water towards the island Skeppsholmen (where, incidentally, MM is situated), the place has been packed with people from all generations who have been presented amazing shows from noteables like Sarah Moon, Annie Leibovitz, Albert Watson, Robert Mapplethorpe and many others.
When Fotografiska emerged, people and media in general liked the initiative but were immediately sowing seeds of doubt. Who were behind this venture? Surely, they didn’t have the capacity to act as an international photography institution? Surely they couldn’t afford it? Now, almost a couple of years down the road, the times and attitudes have certainly changed. Run and partly owned by brothers Jan and Per Broman, and co-owned by investment banker Sven Hagströmer (and others), Fotografiska has established itself as a highly connected and ambitious spot in Northern Europe, in many ways resembling Fotomuseum Winterthur just outside aforementioned Zürich.
The photography people at MM realised that the success of Fotografiska could only mean one thing: Fotografiska are in it for real and not only had the funds to carry on but actually even displayed a profit – surely always a thorn in the side of State-funded MM!
As I write this, in the late autumn of 2011, the entire collections’ section of MM, usually swamped with Duchamps, Rauschenbergs, Picassos, Matisses, etc, etc, now only shows images from the photography collection. It’s brutally impressive and yet only displays a mere fraction of what is actually in the collection. To wander through these halls is to literally travel through time as well as through the distinctly technical and artistic history of photography.
On the other side of the water, Fotografiska are showing Nick Brandt’s massive African wildlife pictures and the intimate street photography of Helen Levitt, while at the same time getting geared up to show new works by Anton Corbijn.
When I grew up, there was basically only the photography section at MM (the Cartier-Bresson retrospective there in 1983 actually made me decide to become a photographer!) and a small gallery in the old town called Camera Obscura. Now, we’re in the midst of a battle for the many-headed crowds, who are essentially always the winners of this strife. Stockholm has become a truly impressive place for photography as an art form.
It’s interesting to see how established preconceptions rule initally but are upheaved when something proves to be successful. In this we can see very old patterns of behaviour easily analyzed through an almost Marxist class struggle grid. As mentioned, when Fotografiska started out, the reactions were enthusiastic but still containing some kind of ill will. Why? Because there was initially no transparency in the organisation (as in old State-funded organisations) and because noone on the outisde initially had insight into the financial situation (as in old State-funded organisations) and because the main guys weren’t established in the already existing nepotistic puddle (as in old State-funded organisations).
MM has always been a bastion of old money and upper class connections. It’s always been a ”given” (to paraphrase Duchamp) within this sphere to be an associate, a supporter and, eventually, someone who donates works to the museum’s collections. This is standard behaviour in traditional circles in Stockholm (as elsewhere), and this affluent network has undeniably made MM what it is today: a really fantastic museum. It would not have been possible without the generosity, in many ways, of the upper class.
Although Hagströmer should be regarded as a denizen of this circle too, the aura of Fotografiska generally reeks of new money. The attitude is modern, aggressively ambitious and is frantically positioning the place as a fellow of similar like-minded institutions in Europe. The inclusion of events, workshops and social networking at Fotografiska is a Zeitgeistish phenomenon, but one that apparently gets results. It is not a more or less static institution for those traditionally in the know, but a vital and youthful display of love for a medium and an art form.
However, nothing is really static, is it? The situation we have today is that both parties have adapted to each other, although I’m certain that none of the spokespersons would admit to it. Moderna Museet have, by temporarily dedicating the entire collections’ section to photography and by displaying invaluable items from their collection, shown that it not only can compete but actually does so too – with a stern vengeance. Whereas Fotografiska have diligently shown that a newcomer can indeed provide an extremely healthy infusion of younger savoir-faire and potency into an art ”scene”. What we have then is currently a photography paradise, in which the old and the new have gone to the very extremes to attract people. Considering that it’s only a ten minute boat ride or a twenty minute walk in between these bastions, the audience, I would expect, is more or less the same.
What about other places then? Kulturhuset, situated at the very centre of Stockholm, usually shows great photo exhibits, but for some reason (old school thinking?) keeps an undeservingly low public profile. Galleri Kontrast is another classic, always showing good stuff, mainly (but not always) in a photo-journalistic vein. The most active and attractive place, to me, is GUN Gallery, which regularly shows a lot of new interesting stuff.
We should keep in mind that these are venues/galleries with smaller operations and hence, I would assume, greater freedom to experiment and bet on cards not as safe as Fotografiska’s and MM’s. A different mindframe perhaps, in completely different people? Well, not entirely it seems. Hagströmer is also financing Galleri Kontrast, and Mr GUN himself, Greger Ulf Nilsson, just so happens to be the designer of Steidl’s huge collaboration catalogues for MM’s current tour de force.
Creative nepotism is seemingly unavoidable in a small place like Stockholm. But who really gives a rat’s ass, when there’s such an abundance of good photography around? Old money distinctions plus new money vitality equals a pretty good scene. There: a liberal formula and market strategy that, in Stockholm at least, really works!
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Acid Mothers Temple: Croatian Freakout



Acid Mothers Temple, Zagreb 2010. © Carl A

Sometimes you find yourself in luck. I had barely landed in Zagreb, Croatia, before I found out that there would be a ”Japanese New Music Festival” in town that very same evening. The pleasantness of this event turned into a more genuine sense of joy when I realised that it wasn’t actually going to be yet another Embassy endorsed noise gala for Merzbowites. No, this was  going to be something completely different: an evening staged at a small club by the legendary band Acid Mothers Temple. All the support acts were in fact the members of AMT solo and/or various interbred combos. To be eventually topped by a sensory overload from this planet’s most charming psych samurais in union, Acid Mothers Temple.
First on stage was singer and guitarist Kawabata Makoto, who played his electric guitar with a bow in hypnotic fashion. It did remind me a bit about Jimmy Page from time to time, mid 70s Zeppelin era, but the sonoric atmosphere was added to by some Tibetan singing bowls and various strange vocals. ”My music will make you very sleepy. I’m sorry…”, Makoto said in broken English before he even began playing. The audience cheered loudly in Croatian and Makoto nodded back at them. A mutual understanding of minds (or should I say ”heads”?).
After that came Ruins, which is drummer Shimura Koji’s solo show. He treated the drums as a dearly beloved punching bag – sometimes with a frenetic brutality and sometimes with whipping caresses. Quite interesting to see someone go against the grain too… Where a lot of people use pre-recorded drums and percussive sounds to play against or over, Shimura did it the other way around. Pre-recorded instruments, fragments of songs, strange arrangements and pieces of music history were all assembled in a tape reorder and hammered to the ground by his energetic live drumming. And he sang at the same time. It looked crazy. It sounded crazy. And it probably was just that: crazy.
After this drumfest followed Akaten, which is the very same Shimura together with bass player Tabata Mitsuru. They began by playing carefully on their trousers’ flies (the word ”contact microphone” acquired a new meaning this evening), after which they played mineral water bottles, grate irons, toy guitars and even a miked up camera. Some inarticulately absurdistic theater was woven into this overall weirdness, and the young Croatian audience probably didn’t know exactly what had hit them. But there was no mistaking the fact that they enjoyed it immensely.
To make everything somewhat equal, Kawabata entered the stage again and played together with Tabata, this time under the moniker ”The Zombies from Hell”. Deep Purple’s ”Smoke on the water” was turned into a Down’s Syndromed school of rock-rehearsal, Led Zeppelin’s ”Immigrant Song” to a choir of frenzied retards backed up by distorted guitars and some seriously insane growling. Finally these Japanese zombies performed a wonderful and quite striking charicature of Miles Davis.
Then followed a moment of vocal jazz starring all three of them together, again backed up by inexplicable theater antics. Incomprehensible? Totally. And, as if all this wasn’t enough, it was soon time for Acid Mothers Temple proper. The three middle aged rock heroes grabbed their instruments and revved up the circus engines as if their lives depended on it.
The word ”freakout” is probably the most fitting one to describe what actually happened – or at least how I perceived it to be. Short song structures rolled by, often interrupted or interspersed by improvisations. It was often quite hard to know what was what (probably a conscious manoeuvre on their side and, also, what did it matter?) but I can almost guarantee that noone in the packed club cared one little bit.
One moment, you were swept away in a psychedelic rock’n’roll-blast whereupon you caught yourself laughing loudly at the sheer absurdity of it all, and yet another moment you were startled by violent sonoric twists, and yet another you noted that someone in the audience either had an orgasm or an epileptic fit (or both). It was generally a Gesamt overload of the very finest brand – the brand of the Acid Mothers Temple.
This specific evening AMT were far removed from the somewhat more accessible (strange term in their case) acid rock they’ve entertained us with over the years, like ”Children of the drab” or ”Stone woman & record”. The live sound and the performance in itself was much more avant garde and reminded me more of material from the ”Are we experimental?” album. But I find that it’s hard to describe a totality composed of so many parts. The music in itself is just one part, albeit instrumental (pardon the pun!), of AMT’s stage show. To see these three manic Japanese gentlemen explode with energy is, to put it simply, something else.
It was very interesting to be there at the ”Japanese New Music Festival” in Zagreb on that chilly evening in November 2010. I thought back at a concert with Nissenenmondai that I had seen/heard recently then, the three wonderful Japanese girls who, with a similar kind of Geist, take on a post-punk-new-wave  approach in an equally (?) far out manner. I would be sursprised if the Nissenenmondai girls haven’t taught themselves the basics by listening to Acid Mothers Temple.
I don’t really know if it’s the atomic bomb or Godzilla or Hello Kitty or whatever that’s actually causing these things to happen. There is something so delightfully disturbed in just about everything that the Japanese do, and I don’t think I’m alone in feeling sincerely grateful for that.


Acid Mothers Temple, et al
KZET Club, Zagreb, Croatia, November 2nd, 2010
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The Amazing: Gentle Giants



The Amazing, Stockholm, 2011. © Carl A

It must be very hard to be a rock musician these days. I mean, everything’s already been done before, probably a gazillion times or more. But somewhere deep inside lurks that feeling that although whatever it is you want to achieve has most likely already been achieved by someone else, you must carry on in the same brave spirit, paying homage to past demi-gods by echoing the cool chords of yesteryear. And perhaps life could be worse than that?
Occasionally though, something original does happen. It’s probably as rare in rock as in other generic genres. Suddenly something elevates the listener, knocks on tightly shut doors of fantasy and emotion, makes you shudder, makes you wake up. Music that despite well known ingredients still manages to make a genuinely new and nutritious audio-emotional stew. Why this happens, remains a complete mystery. People usually talk about chemistry. Sure, the interaction between two or more creative minds in a band can certainly make magic happen. Is that the chemistry usually referred to? Well, at least it’s one kind. Another kind are the stimulants that already creative individuals immerse themselves in to be relieved of everyday hassles, and to be one with their creation(s). This is of course a vilified perspective (and action) in a culture that defies and mocks originiality and the concept of the ”unique” in favour of pre-packaged safety and opaque visions. Perhaps another crucial piece of chemistry is the neuro-transmitted one that manifests in the anger and frustration at this obscene contemporary complacency.
No matter what, chemistry abounds in The Amazing. Mainly the multicoloured kind that seeps serenely out of their emotionally charged music. The title of the new album, Gentle Stream, couldn’t be better or more appropriate. The album is, simply, one gentle stream of highly narcotic music. I don’t dare comment on the band members’ individual metabolisms, but what I mean is the actual album itself. It’s narcotic. It really is. It’s addictive. It’s soothing, pleasant, elevating, mind-blowing, curious, happy, sad, blissful, frustrated, etc. The totality never ends and I really don’t want it to either. It’s a total ”repeat” album, perfectly assembled to provide a soundtrack for life as it is or can be at any time of day or night.
Groovy guitars, loose and cool jazzy beats’n’bass, Christopher Gunrup’s ethereal vocals, dreamy arrangements, and psych-poppy dues paid to the Age of Aquarius as well as to brave new worlds of exciting proportions. It’s highly pleasant to be a part of this experience, even if only as a listener. The songs all gradually melt into one singular ray of human life force and then dissolve again, only to start right over. Want chemistry? The Amazing have plenty, of the enticing enchantment kind that floats all around you as you drift slowly into hypnagogic fantasies and inner vistas. 
This concoction is constructed by a veritable dream team assembled from the Anna Järvinen and Dungen cabals in Stockholm. Reine Fiske’s guitars are as fierce as in Dungen, but he does seem more playful (as in ”spontaneously innovative”) in this environment. Mr Gunrup is a poetic beacon of electrified sensitivity, armed with a fingerpicking will to let words be intimately cathartic and soul-searchingly soothing at the same time. He succeeds. And the entire band is tight as… [pick your own more or less sexual euphemism] … When they all get together and crank up the volume it’s almost as much a jazz thing as a rock thing. They know their music. They don’t have to think about it (I doubt they do). They just do what they do and they do it in a way that very gently (yes, there we are again) fells you like a tree that hits the ground in slow motion, whereupon the scene is rewound backwards and you suddenly find yourself standing up in the presence of the gentle giants of The Amazing again.
This really is a knock out album in every possibly conceivable way. ”Gentle Stream”? How appropriate. ”The Amazing”? Even more so. I don’t really have a rating system here at the blog, which is naturally why I feel inclined to award this album eleven psychedelic hard-ons out of ten possible.

The Amazing
Gentle Stream
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Psychic TV: Recurring themes




When Throbbing Gristle disbanded in 1981, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Peter ”Sleazy” Christopherson moved on to Psychick Television/PTV. Armed with some major deals (Warner for the ”Force the hand of chance” LP in 1982 and CBS for ”Dreams less sweet” in 1983) and a whole lot of enthusiasm, this strangely clad and coiffed collective (which included the magical order-cum-network Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth/TOPY) set about creating some really groundbreaking music.
The strength of PTV from this early era is that they ruthlessly challenged any conventions, be it in terms of concerts, recordings or how an album should be put together. This had all been researched by Throbbing Gristle earlier on, but then under a banner of existentialist reasoning and often desolate feelings rather than under one of encouraging magical potential and pro-active change.
Magic was, it seems, all permeating. In their lives, being full time members and administrators of TOPY. But also in the music, much of it produced either as reflections on magical/occult aspects of life or as very concrete soundtracks for ritual situations (”occult ambient”, if you will). Much of this material has now been assembled in a great CD box by Cold Spring UK. It’s called, quite fittingly, ”Themes”.
With the first pressing of ”Force the hand of chance” came a bonus LP called exactly that: ”Themes”. Where the main LP was reminiscent in structure of TG albums like ”D.O.A” (1978), ie containing distinct tracks quite disparate in style but still creating quite a spellbindning unity, the ”Themes” LP was more stripped to the core. From the Eno-esque piano-improvs with an almost Nino Rota-fragrant clarinet on top, over Tibetan thighbone trumpet walls of sound, over improvised percussive pieces beautifully kept together by a vibraphone traveling a minor scale, to heavy ritual drumming bordering on impromptu voudon, the ”Themes”experience is one of heavy duty psychic music indeed.
”Themes 2” was an album in its own right (Temple Records, 1985), featuring more of the same in spirit but not in style. Here, the harsh PTV live sound and the studio experiments came to a full throttle blend, which is also interrupted by serene pieces like ”Part two”, a tarck that  reminds me of Durutti Column’s finest moments (courtesy of Alex Ferguson’s Lou Reed-romantic fingerpicking). ”Part Three” is very much ”PTV live” at the time, containing the iconic Crowley-reading-Enochian-sample, the echoes of Scriabin, the vibraphone,  the dissonant collages and occasional drumming. It still packs a powerful punch.
Additional material on the box’s ”Themes 2” CD is the group’s anti-Christian anthem par excellence, ”Unclean”, and its a capella mix, ”Unclean Monks”. Plus the piano-improv piece ”Mirrors”. The third CD in the box is the album ”A prayer for Derek Jarman”, which contains remixes/alternate versions of the ”Themes 2” material plus some really sonic sound collages that constitute the best of PTV, early 80s style (”Rites of Reversal” is one good example of this, complete with the almost trademark sounds of snarling, growling dogs).
”Themes 3” goes deeper still. Divided onto two discs it takes you on a trip into the experimental musical magics of Breyer P-Orridge and his cohorts at the time: Christopherson, wife Paula, David Tibet, Geoff Rushton (aka Jhon Balance), Monte Cazazza and others. Is it essentially a soundtrack or a documentation? The answer is of course: both. It’s live, it’s in the studio, and it’s also totally beyond both. This really is music that transcends every style as well as all preconceptions. Magic in the shaking, documentation in the taking and, lest we forget, art in the making.
To hear Cazazza and Breyer P-Orridge goof around over Balinese Gamelan and Tibetan thighbone trumpets, with cassettes of Charles Manson’s and Jim Jones’ voices ad libbing somwhere in the distance is not only weird or ”totally 1984”. It’s also very much an audio freeze frame of some really seminal art in transit. The moment passed away as moments do, but Breyer P-Orridge has always been clever in assuming that the documentation sooner or later takes on new seed-shape (”Thee process is thee product”, and vice versa). It is clear beyond all doubt that this material still sounds very, very up to date, and I dare say it is in many ways timeless. A textual and highly Breyer P-Orridge-related companion to this perspective would be ”Thee Psychick Bible”, published by Feral House in 2009.
OK, on to time then. Time passes. Zoom on to the 21st century and, yes, PTV still exist in new shapes. One of these shapes carried the fruits of the multifaceted labour shared between Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and wife Jackie Breyer P-Orridge (deceased 2007). The ”Themes 4” CD carries on in the same spirit as the previous records, but the sounds have indeed changed. Miss Jackie here recites poetry over various musical backgrounds/soundscapes. This is more an exercise in experimental psychedelia – sometimes funny and mind-boggling (”I like the holidays”), sometimes on a grand Badalamento scale (”Gobbledegook”). The sound collage-y ”Candy Factory” evokes the stern sounds of the mid-80s, as does ”I love you, I know”. The last track of the final CD, ”This is the final war”, has Jackie declaring poetic cut up war à la Brion Gysin and hubby Breyer P-Orridge (apparently commissioned by Bruce LaBruce for one of his films), to the jazzy sounds of some Lower East Side hipster hang out.
Needless to say, this ”Themes” CD box is quite a trip. Is there a consistency? Absolutely. The later CD 4 material, stemming as it does from an American period approximately two decades younger than the 80s experiments of the original Hackney rebels, carries the same will to evoke and provoke, although in stylistically different ways. As a counterpoint to the quite heavy early stuff, and, not least, as a tribute to Jackie Breyer P-Orridge, ”Themes 4: Lady Jaye” becomes the icing on a cake which is not only tasting great but which also contains many useful calories to be burnt up by magical practice, OV power by the bucketfull, sigilizing to the sounds of wolf packs, meditating by lonely flickering candles in ritual chambers (”nurseries”) worldwide, scaring and scarring yourself and, not forgetting, defusing Control by cutting up ALL sensory impressions. Quite a heavy task contained between the lines and sounds in this box of Psychick Cross-adorned CDs!
PTV in all of their guises and phases will leave a varied, perhaps even schizophrenic, legacy. This ”Themes” box undoubtedly contains some of the most beautiful and magical music Breyer P-Orridge has ever laid his hands and spells on and in. It’s a box to cherish and keep. And, for the would-be psychonauts out there, one to dive right into with a very open mind.
Psychic TV: Themes
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