our way is not difficult/basement fungus

Tim Hecker is a sound artist who moves at the (a) periphery of the electronica scene.His Haunt Me, Haunt Me, Do It Again CD is currently wedged in the car stereo (note to would be thieves: car stereo is an old discman stuck in the glove compartment), somewhere in the mid-city lifting fog. One of his CDs, Your Love is Rotten to the Core, is composed largely (or entirely, I can't tell and he doesn't say) of snippets of Van Halen, MTV VJ patter about Van Halen, and radio tour ads, etc. I think my affinity with this springs out of the Steely Dan project, that is, out of my own sense that collage can be worked over in surprising and ultimately unrecognizable ways, and yet it carries a felt ghost of its former environment, which exerts its own (counter) influence. On top of this, both Tim and I aim - I think - at a rough integration of the source material - not a gleaming surface smoothness, but a sense of textural consistency - if consistency is the word? The source distinctions become blurred - the identity, whether stolen or "home-brewed" is run-over, endandgered, pushed to the point where its discarded, where it doesnt matter any more, where the "stealing" doesn't even deserve such a bold word to describe it. Working out of the media-stream, acknowledging pop-cultural heroes and villains, thats just a part of the job, a possibility of the basic toolkit. Its in a way a tribute to such diverse pioneers of this technique, whether it be the dadaists, the early Ashberry and Berrigan poems, John Cage's Imaginery Landscapes series, Warhol's portraits, or the embedding of samples in pop music of the 80s and early 90s (from hip hop to industrial to Metallica), I think the cultural technology has changed radically, so that such "borrowings" seem far less ironic, far less foregrounded or daring, or intrusive, than they once did. In a sense, the scissors, the act of violence, that birthed the cut-up are replaced and the snippets are now seen as simply another source to work over. We are past the pioneer stage, and we're getting into working this place, this charted but rough territory. And in so doing, there is a chance here to explore, perhaps, a non-sentimental tenderness, a way to work through - critically, awarely - our tangled relationships, both with our crafts and sense of self and the wider cultural contexts we wade through. So Danielle Steele (dig that final "e" - refinement is always and add-on) and Eddie Van Halen become different, take on new life, tragic, comic, absurd, recognizably human, de-celebrified, by this type of working through.

What's Tim have to say?

There has really never been an overarching concept to any of my recordings, a concept if you will that has guided the entire recording process. The concept I've used for previous records has been more of a practice of writing, almost an act of fiction, just like the efforts used in designing the artwork. That's not to say that all of my recording processes have been devoid of ideas or directions - they very much do exist, but I've tended to ham up the presentation of a record, almost in reaction to much of the pretentious pseudo-conceptualization that is endemic to the electronic and experimental genres.

and...

Hence my work has been a hunting party for the wild fox that is the nexus of dissonance and melody. There are many possible ways to hunt the fox; it gives me a reason to keep on.

His new record - Mirages - is - evidently - out. For awhile now, I've missed that boat. But any of his CDs come highly recommended. Here's copy for Mirages (from the invw. again), and Hecker's elaboration:

Let me ask about the press material accompanying the new album: "Taking inspiration from Italian partigiani and the counter-attack of the anti-Vichyists, Hecker has issued a salvo against all tourists of melancholy, from trustafarian pseudo-leftists to the Ikea nihilists of the bobist rive droite. ... With its motifs of eroticism and torture, militancy, and ecstatic pain, Mirages also points backwards towards the Viking penchant for fighting and feasting." Care to elaborate?

This is basically making reference to some of the more heroic WWII anti-fascists, in particular their resolve in waging war against the inauthenticities of modern life - both "trustafarian pseudo-leftists" (those who pay to play) and the "bobo nihilists" (those who play to pay). I wanted to say that this record is an attempt at authentic experience (even if it failed), and even if it must be barbarian to do so.

Check out the whole interview here.
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Web crew, what can I say to you? Blogging reminds me that I'm only alone when I want to be. Actually, the trashcan I passed in the tenderloin today showed every sign of sentience. It freaked me out. It was a modest Oscar the Grouch aluminum can, 2 ft tall, with a brown plastic covering tied on, which was morphing magnificiently- and threateningly - in the wind, like some tiny and deeply disturbed butoh dancer (or, more to the heart, like some horrific minitiaure demon which was going to reach out and grab for me). As i passed, it arced out towards my leg and bike, and as i continued passing, it followed me in its lunge, bending backwards, roughly inflated and billowy.That woke me right up.

Tenderloin is an SF neighborhood reliably full of street people, drunks, junkies, and recent Vietnemese immigrants. I saw them quite clearly after that trashcan. Outside my office, I watched a grandmother kiss (SMACK!) her grandchild (suspended in grandpa's baby bjorn) and then comment joyfully on him in cantonese to her bemused husband. Love. The emotional thrust, at least, was clear. I imagine Jim has become quite the conoisseur of knowing-not knowing what the folks around him are speaking, the fine and intelligible art of discerning incomprehension, and comprehending it. Drunks on words, in words, not always, but oft

en. (what a deelight/th

a bed of nails. a home (shabby-chic)
to set out from. going
in.

"both ways, now"