September stuff

‘Normal’ service resumed after a relatively slow month, so here we go with a real mixed bag….

THE RESIDENTS – Anganok/Anganok Instrumental and Bridegroom Of Blood – mp3 downloads – from the Residents Robot Selling Device, some gems from the vaults. Interesting to hear a ‘non-Residential’ voice in play on the operatic Anganok. BoB compiles gamelan-based exercises from across the Rez discography.  I can hear the sound of scraped barrels approaching in the distance…..

MACHINEFABRIEK – Loops for Voerman 3″cd and Fabriek & Fabriek and Zeeg – another three releases in the bag as my obsessive love affair with the work of the ‘prolific Dutchman’ continues… more on the way…

PERE UBU – Long Live Pere Ubu – challenging, intelligent, burpy. Meisterwerk or curate’s egg? I’m undecided.

GONG – Angels Egg – remastered edition with added tracks, bought in anticipation of their upcoming show in Edinburgh.  Unfortunately, the bass has been brought too much to the fore. Did I ever tell you about the time Steve Hillage taught me how to communicate with a cabbage?

cabbages in animated conversation

onwards….

BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE – Love Will Tear Us Apart – from the soundtrack to The Time Traveler’s Wife, a waltz-time reworking of the Joy Division song, surely now the most covered track of modern times. This one’s on a par with the excellent Gira/Swans version, great stuff.

THE ORB – Baghdad Batteries (Orbsessions Vol. 3) – it’s The Orb – what do you expect? Some updating of their sonic palette though.

HARMONIA & ENO – tracks and traces reissue – classic ’shelved’ session between Harmonia and Eno gets its second issue. The three additional tracks are certainly worth the price of admission, but I’m wondering what else has been done to spruce up this reissue – the whole set feels terribly ‘loud’, with even a modest increase in volume straining my ageing speakers.

VARIOUS ARTISTS/THIS IMMORTAL COIL – The Dark Age Of Love – other artists interpretations of Coil pieces.  Took me a while to get around to delving into this, such is my love for Coil – and my suspicion that these versions might somehow fall prey to the contemporary penchant for folky meandering.  For the most part they feel akin in tone to the originals, although there’s something indefinably not quite ‘right’, perhaps in the airbrushing away of Coil’s perfect imperfections, a dinner-table-ising of the music.

JOHANN JOHANNSSON – And in the endless pause there came the sound of bees – limited edition of his score for short film Varmints. CD was only available at dates on a US tour, but I managed to pick up a copy from Insound. Might be given a full release later this year/early next year.

KRAFTWERK AND THE ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION DVD – a history lesson in prospect for me – I followed Kraftwerk from Autobahn onwards, but haven’t seen any video/film footage from their earlier years. At 3 hours long though, it’ll be a while before I find the time to watch it all.

Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry screenprints – a cautionary tale….

In recent years I’ve successfully curbed my predeliction for purchasing original artworks, limited screenprints and the like… there’s no space left on the walls or shelves, a ******* (what’s the collective noun for packing tubes?) of unhung work fills a corner of one room. Enough, I’d said. Until I get a bigger house.

But……

Oh dear.  I’ve been following the audio activities of Mr. Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry for the best part of 30 years now (I’ve around 100+ albums he appears on in one capacity or another), and have always loved his self-drawn/painted album sleeves and marvelled at his decoration of the Black Ark etc….

So when I discovered not long ago that he’d worked on a series of collaborative art pieces that are now up for sale on-line, I hied myself over to the artist’s website here to check the work out.

Did I like what I saw? Oh yes I did.

Did I like the prices?  Ouch.

The originals aren’t cheap – well, certainly beyond my price range for the foreseeable future -

but a couple of them have been produced as limited edition runs of 50 screenprints, each individually added to by Perry.

And so, dear reader, I hope to be the recipient of a screenprint of this wee beauty in the next few days…….

with apologies to the gallery/artists for my ‘lifting’ this image from the website, I do hope they won’t mind….

And this WILL be finding a framer and precious wall-space.

ADDED 6TH NOVEMBER 2009 – A WARNING!!!

I feel that I reluctantly have to report that I’m having problems with the guy selling the screenprints – and for the moment would recommend that anyone considering purchasing approaches with extreme caution following my experience…

I contacted him by email, chose a print and paid as he suggested using on-line bank transfer direct to his account.  The print took around a month to arrive (not too fussed by that, people are busy) – but when it did, it turned out to be the wrong one – and of a much lower reproduction quality than I’d expected.

So far I’ve emailed the guy twice to try to sort something out (a return/refund) and have received no response at all.  My bank tells me that because I paid by direct bank transfer I’m not protected, so I face a trip to the local Citizen’s Advice Bureau to pursue my rights in this situation.  For the moment, I’m stuck with the wrong print, and am out of pocket.

So, please BEWARE the seller – and if you really must order, insist on using a credit card or Paypal so that if something similar happens to you, you’re covered.

Perhaps I’ve been lucky thus far, but this is the first time I’ve experienced a real problem when buying artworks online – real shame it’s something Perry-related.

If anyone else has a similar experience with this seller, do let me know…..

Will update this as the situation develops and (hopefully) resolves.