I Can Hear The Sirens Singing Again
In 2009 I released “I Can Hear The Sirens Singing Again” on the Highpoint Lowlife label. It was primarily a digital release, but also came as a limited 100 copies cd, in beautiful dvd case with artwork and sleeve notes. For those who downloaded, or those just interested, the sleevenotes are reproduced below.
I Can Hear The Sirens Singing Again
There’s truly nothing thats says ‘i am a musician who wants to be taken seriously as an artist, not just someone who writes tunes, damnit’, than soundtracking a film or similar. It’s really the ultimate expression of selfish egotism to foist your own work on top of something that stands on it’s own merits – and yet the impulse is repeated, over and over, up there with the tropes of ‘artistic seriousness’ like suddenly deciding to write an opera or boasting about your complicated software setup.
And here I am, not only having devised and organised the performance of just such a hijacking, but also putting the finishing touches on releasing it. And really, I’m not sure now, 5 months later, whether this is a good idea or just the equialent of vanity publishing in literature.
The idea to do a soundtrack to Takashi Miike’s astonishing TV series ‘MPD Psycho’ came after my first watch through t in it’s entirety. So blown away was I by it’s incredible convolution of humour, drama, graphic violence and dark surrealism, that I felt (as I often do), that I had to expose as many people as possible to it, in order that their minds be blown in the same way. So, egotistic point number one there. Realising that trying to loan my already long-suffering collection of friends and acquaintances a 3 disk, subtitled japanese tv series with the words ‘OFFPUTTINGLY EXTREME’ emblazoned on the cover was perhaps a slightly hard sell, I thought of trying to host some sort of screening for it. Conversation with Macao, a friend who put on a regular experimental music night and occasional film club led to the idea of the first episode being screened as part of one of his nights; but somewhere along the way, the ‘artist’ whispered at the back of the brain, and before long the decision was made to insert myself between listener’s ears and Miike’s vision.
The idea gestated for a while before Macao suggested tying the screening in with the fairly high profile ‘Triptych’ festival, for which he was already curating an evening. With a deadline on the horizon it became clear pretty quickly that I had been spending all my time obsessively watching and rewatching the episode, creating more and more detailed cue points with every watch, building matrices of events I couldn’t possibly hope to represent. With a few weeks to go I had prepared nothing at all except for some pretty frightening looking notebooks covered in scrawled text like ‘FLOWERS MOVE TO DEATH ROOM’, ‘DEAD IMAC RAIN SNUFF SHIFT’ and, rather sweetly, ‘BEAUTIFUL GUN ROSE UNFOLDING’. All good for my hitherto unrealised book of Jack Kerouac knockoff essays but not much use.
So reaching into the grab-bag of tired ‘sound art’ moves, I contacted some like minded colleagues to give me backup and coer up for my shortcomings. One of them, Chris Dooks/Bovine Life, eventually was unable to perform on the evening but painstakingly produced 27 tracks of themes and reflections on the clip i provided him, an excellent album in its own right. On the night he peered out at the audience from the screen of my Zune MP3 player, the suffling dealer in the machine, dispensing shards of melody and drone.
The other three; Dave F/Erstlaub, Dave D/Production Unit and Tom/Konxompax, were given sections to work from, picked as arbitrary times of their choice. Out of context, they wouldn’t see where their parts fitted into the whole visually or audibly, in a self regarding attempt by myself to maintain control over the enterprise. Luckily for me, and the listener, they also broke into other sections at will, and the unexpected bursts that they brought remain my favourite parts of the whole piece.
On the evening, a full weekend of heavy partying for most of my friends and regulars to the night left an odd collection of casualties, sunday drinkers and a few die hard film buffs enticed by Miike’s name on the poster. The screen was faded, the stage littered with flight cases from the previous folk performers, and the majority of the audience were probably hungry to catch the epic dub techno of Convextion later that evening. And yet, and yet…when the first captions appeared, the lights dimmed and my first awkward spurts of sound emerged…something held. Despite technical hitches, at least one drunk performer, a snatch of primadonnaism, and a patch that failed to correctly count minutes and seconds (thank, Max/MSP!) the performance itself captured the attention of the room, even those for whom experimental noise and drone or brain-exposed flowerpot murder victims were, until then, a closed book. No chatter, and even the performers would lift their heads from laptops, mixers or objects and take in the whole.
So. I suppose the correct thing to do would be to say ‘the performance was the piece, the context was all, the experience intangible’, and the whole thing could pass into the memories of three or four people. The end result though, for me, is in parts worth a second listen, and considered by the other participants to be worthy of a release. I’m told you can replicate the old ‘Wizard of Oz/Dark Side Of the Moon’ trick if you start the dvd playing at the first noise heard – I haven’t tried it yet. So – there is a point to prolonging the trip into the world of my ego.
All thats left are the inevitable thanks; to Scott and Alasdair, whom i watched MPD Psycho with the first time, to Macao for encouraging the idea and realising it, and Darren at the Ivy for the technical support and encouragement, and of course to Chris, Dave F, Dave D and Tom for collaborating and putting up with my sometimes ridiculous whims. And, of course, to Takashi Miike, for creating this masterpiece in the first place – and, unknowingly, allowing me to stamp my feet all over it.
Thanks
Ruaridh Law
September 1st 08
Train from London to Glasgow