And he went on shouting through the window,
‘Pretty Vacant Maid Ibronka, what did you see looking through the keyhole?’

‘And my friends cut a hole through the wall and went along the road when they took me to the churchyard where they buried me in the ditch – but to a dead and not to a living soul am I speaking.’

Part 2 of Angela Carter’s fairytale The Pretty Vacant Maid Ibronka, first broadcast on Mining For Gold on Resonance 104.4fm and featuring the infamous Joy Casio Radio Orchestra.

I wonder what the future keeps in store for me… A psychopath out there fancies me…
We are after perverting an already quite perverted Angela Carter fairytale on Radio Joy tonight. The Pretty Vacant Maid Ibronka part one is an hour long soundscape that features Inga on laptop, James on casio, Naomi on piano and Johny on circuit bent yamaha keyboard and narration.

]]> http://radiojoy.co.uk/blog/the-pretty-vacant-maid/feed/ 0 I wonder what the future keeps in store for me... A psychopath out there fancies me... We are after perverting an already quite perverted Angela Carter fairytale on Radio Joy tonight. The Pretty Vacant Maid Ibronka part one is an hour long soundscape ... I wonder what the future keeps in store for me... A psychopath out there fancies me... We are after perverting an already quite perverted Angela Carter fairytale on Radio Joy tonight. The Pretty Vacant Maid Ibronka part one is an hour long soundscape that features Inga on laptop, James on casio, Naomi on piano and Johny on circuit bent yamaha keyboard and narration. NO AUTHOR clean 59:59 http://radiojoy.co.uk/blog/night-people/ http://radiojoy.co.uk/blog/night-people/#comments Sun, 02 Oct 2011 21:35:13 +0000 admin http://radiojoy.co.uk/blog/?p=1211

Gavin Martin (Talking Musical Revolutions) tells the tale of Lee Dorsey, backed by the Band of Holy Joy Radio Orchestra on casios, laptops, pianos, cymbals and casios and laptops…

911 ‘let’s get it over and done with’ tribute by Mike Brandon.

Fourty years ago one of the most ludicrous trials in the history of British jurisprudence reached its climax with the editors of a British underground magazine Oz being sentenced to up to 15 months’ imprisonment.

Tony Palmer’s book The Trials of Oz transcribes a lot of the court proceedings verbatim, and Vivian Berger’s defence is worth citing at length:

Asked by Mr Mortimer [defence] why he had contributed the Rupert Bear cartoon, he [Berger] replied: “I think that, looking back on it, I subconsciously wanted to shock your generation: to portray us as a group of people who were different from you in moralistic attitudes. Also, it seemed to me just very funny, and like anything else that makes fun of sex”. Mortimer asked: “You say you did it to shock an older generation? What relevance did Rupert have as a figure or symbol?” Berger replied: “Well, Rupert would probably be known to many generations as the innocent young character who figures in magic fairy tales. Whereas here, he’s just doing what every normal human being does.” “Was it part of your intention,” he suggested, “to show that there was a more down-to-earth side of childhood than some grown-up people are prepared to think?”

“Oh yes”, Berger responded cheerfully. “This is the kind of drawing that goes around every classroom, every day, in every school.” The Judge looked wounded. “Do you really mean that?” he asked… “Yes, I do mean it,” Berger replied immediately. “Maybe I was portraying obscenity, but I don’t think I was being obscene myself.”

Mr Leary [prosecution] then elucidated from Mr Berger that he lived with his mother and his two sisters, aged 10 and 12. Yes, he had often bought Oz magazine and yes he had usually left it around the house. His mother had known about his involvement in School Kids Issue and had actually encouraged the lad to contribute. No, she did not think that it had depraved or corrupted him… Mr Leary lurched to the meat of the matter, as he described it. “You were asked by Mr Mortimer,” he nodded, “about your contribution to the magazine. Do you remember saying: ‘I thought it was portraying obscenity, but not being obscene myself’?”

“Yes, I do remember saying that,” Berger replied, somewhat hesitantly. Quick as a flash Leary inquired: “And what did you mean by that?” Berger was not to be cajoled. “Well,” he replied, “if the News covers a war or shows a picture of war, then, for me, they are portraying obscenity—the obscenity of war. But they are not themselves creating that obscenity, because it is the people who are fighting the war that are creating that obscenity. The obscenity is in the action, not in the reporting of it. For example, I consider that the act of corporal punishment is an obscenity. I do not consider that the act of reporting or writing about corporal punishment is obscene”.

Something Beginning With L are a bewitching trio made up of Lucy Parnell (Vocals, Guitar), Jen Macro (Vocals, Guitar) and Jon Clayton (Bass, Keys). The band juxtaposes scuzzy electric guitars and buzzing synthesizers with acoustic fragility and electro-beats, guided into the light by the salient crystalline vocals of Lucy Parnell and Jen Macro who offer bliss-out close harmonies, melancholy and absorbing into the band’s encapsulating dream-pop.

Photo © Franek Strzeszewski

I Have A Beautiful Shadow All You Have Is A Stupid Smile: a fairytale by Johny Brown featuring Jonny Mugwump, James S Finn, Cris Lapthorn, Johny Brown and Inga Tillere.

Barry MacSweeney grew up in the west end of Newcastle. He worked as a professional journalist throughout most of his life. He met poet Basil Bunting in the mid-1960s and formed part of a local group of poets including Tom Pickard, Jon Silkin and Jeremy Prynne. Aged 19, his first book of poetry The Boy from the Green Cabaret sold well and his publishers, Hutchinsons, nominated him for the Chair in Poetry at Oxford. Unwittingly, he found himself to be the recipient of a publisher’s publicity stunt and received only three votes. It took half a lifetime for his reputation to recover. He died in May 2000.

His epic poem Ranter written in 1984 evokes the marginalized voices of mid-seventeenth century political and religious radicals who considered the poorest beggars, even ‘rogues, thieves, whores, and cut purses’ as ‘every whit as good’ as the great ones of the earth. This sect known as The Ranters believed that faith itself alone was sufficient to attain salvation, making adherence to religious law unnecessary and thus rejecting the notion of obedience, making them a threat to the stability of the government.

Brian Gibson reads the first part of Barry MacSweeny’s Ranter alongside extracts of text written by Abiezer Coppe and Jacob Bauthumley in 1650.

‘This is How we Walk on the Moon’ by Cris Lapthorn is a one hour study of the late great NYC composer Arthur Russell and takes in Alan Ginsberg, Talking Heads, Larry Levan and many others.

Charles Arthur Russell Jr. (1952 – April 4, 1992) was an American cellist, composer, singer, and disco artist. While he found the most success as a dance music artist, Russell’s career bridged New York’s downtown, rock, and dance music scenes; his collaborators ranged from Philip Glass to David Byrne to Nicky Siano. Relatively unknown during his life, a series of reissues and posthumous releases has raised his profile in recent years… Russell was born and raised in Oskaloosa, Iowa, where he later studied the cello and began to write his own music. When he was 18 he moved to San Francisco, where he lived in a Buddhist commune and studied North Indian music at the Ali Akbar College of Music. He met Allen Ginsberg, with whom he began to work, accompanying him on the cello while Allen sang or read his poetry… In 1973, Arthur Russell moved to New York and began study at the Manhattan School of Music, also working as The Kitchen’s musical director. He formed a band from 1975–1979, The Flying Hearts, recorded by John Hammond, which consisted of Arthur (keyboards, vocals), ex-Modern Lovers member Ernie Brooks (bass, vocals), Larry Saltzman (guitar), and David Van Tieghem (drums, vocals), with a later incarnation in the 1980s that included Joyce Bowden (vocals) and Jesse Chamberlin (drums). He contributed to The Flying Hearts in studio work and, occasionally, in performance with David Byrne, Rhys Chatham, Jon Gibson, Peter Gordon, Jerry Harrison, Garret List, Andy Paley, Leni Pickett and Peter Zummo. From 1975 to 1979 this ensemble, together with Glenn Iamaro, Bill Ruyle and Jon Sholle, performed and recorded the orchestral composition of Instrumentals (Disques du Crepescule, 1984, Belgium)… In 1979, Arthur wrote and produced “Kiss Me Again” under the name Dinosaur. It was the first disco single to be released by Sire Records, and the first of many of Arthur’s innovative dance tunes. This was followed by “Is It All Over My Face” by Loose Joints, released in 1980. In 1981, Arthur Russell and William Socolov founded Sleeping Bag Records and their first release was his 24-24 Music. The number “Go Bang”, which originated from this album, was re-mixed as a 12″ single by Francois Kevorkian. These songs were all frequently played at Larry Levan’s Paradise Garage; in particular, Levan’s remix of “Is It All Over My Face” (one of his earliest remixes) has been recognized as a prototype of garage music… In 1983, the album “Tower of Meaning” (Chatham Square) was released. This compelling and meditative recording, conducted by Julius Eastman, represents just a fragment of a much larger composition, which includes voices along with its instrumentation… At the same time, Arthur continued to release dance singles such as “Tell You Today” (4th and Broadway, 1983) an upbeat dance groove featuring the vocals of Joyce Bowden. Additional dance tunes included Wax the Van (Jump Street, 1985) with vocals by Lola Blank, “Treehouse/Schoolbell” (Sleeping Bag, 1986) and “Let’s Go Swimming” (Upside/Rough Trade, 1986)… During the mid 1980s, Arthur Russell gave many performances, either accompanying himself ..o with a myriad of effects, or working with a small ensemble consisting of Mustafa Ahmed, Steven Hall, Elodie Lauten and Peter Zummo… 1986 saw the release of “World of Echo” (Upside/Rough Trade, 1986), which incorporated many of his ideas for pop, dance and classical music for both solo and cello format. The album was well-reviewed in Britain and included in Melody Maker’s “Top Thirty Releases of 1986″… Arthur also collaborated with a number of choreographers, including John Bernd, Diane Madden, Alison Salzinger and Stephanie Woodard… Arthur Russell died of AIDS on April 4, 1992, at the age of 40. In an April 28 column, Kyle Gann of The Village Voice wrote: “His recent performances had been so infrequent due to illness, his songs were so personal, that it seems as though he simply vanished into his music.”.. Russell was prolific, but was also notorious for leaving songs unfinished and continually revising his music. Ernie Brooks said that Russell “never arrived at a completed version of anything,” while Peter Gordon stated, “his quest wasn’t really to do a finished product but more to do with exploring his different ways of working musically”. He left behind more than 1,000 tapes when he died, 40 of them different mixes of one song… In 2007, “This Is How We Walk On The Moon”, a song which appears on the 1994 album “Another Thought”, was used in a UK television commercial for T-Mobile. Also in 2007 the artist Johanna Billing exhibited a video of the same title, which included a cover of the song, at Documenta 12 in Kassel and at a gallery in Edinburgh. .. The documentary Wild Combination: A Portrait Of Arthur Russell by director Matt Wolf came out in 2008. The prize-winning film enjoyed great success at film festivals worldwide and had theatrical runs in Londpon, New York, Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco. It is available on DVD worldwide… A new record of unreleased recordings, “Love Is Overtaking Me” (Audika), was released in 2008.

We are stoked to be back on the airwaves this Sunday with another great Den Browne story / Jane Maskew soundscape.

“Dust & Drums” – covers the Treworgey Free Festival of ’89 at a time when the old analogue head sounds were melting and transforming into newer but no less potent digital sounds and in the days when festival meant festival, free was truly free, and to be fucked up a feeling way beyond compare.

Beyonce never quite made this one…

WARNING WARNING WARNING

Warning, may contain elements of trance!

Jonny Cola narrates a NYC star struck and neon dusted tale of his band’s journey across the wasteland of late night London before introducing miss Nina Zivancevic who pays full homage to the recently deceased poet, photographer, film maker and true underground legend Ira Cohen. In pursuing his love of NYC Jonny asks Nina all the right questions and we have an hour of almost perfect underground radio with soundscape by Inga Tillere and treated piano by James.S.Finn.

www.jonnycolaandtheagrades.net

Ira Harvey Cohen, of New York, NY, died peacefully on April 25th, 2011 at the age of 76. He will always be loved and always be missed. His legacy lives on. Read more here.

Ira Cohen in conversation with Nina Zivancevic New York, 2001
When someone says why do you write — what would you say? It is easy to say ‘oh, because of… blah, blah’, but I’d like to give a really good answer, not just a glib answer. So he was asking ‘where does poetry come from?’ So I said I thought of the book by Lawrence Van der Post which is called The Kalahari Bushmen and was about the Kalahari bushmen, or the lost world of the Kalahari, whatever, and it describes the Kalahari bushmen travelling all over the desert. And the way they conduct their whole life is by following lightning and thunder. That’s their whole life. Why? Because wherever lightning goes, water is sure to be found, and they are in the desert. So, if they see lightning down there and they see it in the desert on a probably clear horizon they follow that lightning and then they find water which is life! And I said to him that I would say that the poetry can be found in the same way. That’s how I feel about it. Whenever you follow the lightning, you’ll find a poem there. [Ira Cohen]

We are proud to present a great short story by .
Written long before the internet, it anticipates how lives become dominated by media which simultaneously bring us together and keep us apart.

Voice: Den Browne
Sound: Jane Maskew

We are most honoured to be transmitting a Sonic Postcard from Greece courtesy of Lena Latinopoulou and Alexandros Alexandridis.

1. «Ο τσοπανάκος» (legendary spot of the national greek radio)
2. Διονύσης Σαββόπουλος / Σωτηρία Μπέλλου «Ζεϊμπέκικο»
3. Μάνος Χατζιδάκις / Νίκος Αρμάος «Έγινε παρεξήγηση»
4. Χειμερινοί κολυμβητές «Λειψά μου χαμογέλασες»
5. Γιάννης Αγγελάκας «Ο χαμένος τα παίρνει όλα»
6. Θανάσης Παπακωνσταντίνου «Κάλαντα»
7. ΕΝ πλω «Αντιλαλούν οι φυλακές»
8. Αl «Alscape»
9. Γιώργος Χριστιανάκης «Prrr!»
10. Spyweirdos and John Mourjopoulos with Floros Floridis «At»
11. Stereonova «Το ταξίδι της φάλαινας»
12. Λέ να Πλάτωνος «Tik tak or Aurorina Selena»
13. Active Member «Κάνε μου τη χάρη»
14. May Roosvelt «Oomph (Mandilatos)»
15. George Bandoek Apostolakis «The idiots»
16. Larry Gus «Blizzard»
17. Mary and the Boy «You you you»

The Uninvited a tale from Den Browne and Jane Maskew and concerns Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen. It happened somewhere betwixt the town of Camden and the pitch of Twilight sometime in the great fabled messy year of 1978.

Listen to Ella Lattaque’s interview with the Band of Holy Joy and Minor Mine on Rockarolla Radio in Thessaloniki, Greece.
First broadcast on Friday 8 April 2011.

Minor Mine debut album “WHERE THEY GO” is avalaible at:
LOTUS RECORDS 7 SKRA THESSALONIKI
WAX RECORDS TSIMISKI 123 & THEOHARI THESSALONIKI
THE LAB THEMISTOKLEOUS 86, ATHENS
VINYL MICROSTORE DIDOTOU 34, ATHENS.
ΒΙΒΛΙΟΠΩΛΕΙΟ ΑΛΦΕΙΟΣ ΧΑΡΙΛΑΟΥ ΤΡΙΚΟΥΠΗ 22, ATHENS
RYTHM RECORDS, MPENAKI 74, ATHENS

“he felt the first watery eggs of sweat moistening the palms of his hands, as with every rung higher his body seemed to weigh more heavily. ……here he was, isolated on a vertical ladder flat to the side of a gas tank and bound now to climb higher and higher until he reached the vertiginous skyward summit”…..

What would you do?

Den Browne first read this story in a Pan horror collection when he was 12 and the tale has remained with him ever since.

Follow him as he retraces this giddy ascent and reads William Sansom’s ‘The Vertical Ladder’ for you…

With a dizzying soundscape by Jane Maskew

Not one to miss…

We swallowed the moon last night
The moon we swallowed up.
I must say…
It left a kind of bitter -sweet aftertaste that looped through the shunted memory.
A shunted memory of neon crackling and brick crumbling and taxi cabs speeding through empty cities at dawn.
A shunting memory of sharpened melody breaking through superfluous noise and wilful poetry through concrete static!
We had a blast though
A super luna blast.
We are suffering for it now.
For it was the kind of swallowed moon that gives the sort of thirst that can only ever be heroically quenched.
We quenched that thirst.
Having resurfaced this morning we strive now to make sense of last night’s speeded up light fragmented big city super moon adventure.
Failures, recriminations, moments of glory, moments of joy
We blame the moon
Of course we blame the moon
We have to blame the moon
Yea, we can always blame the moon
The moon remains supreme, indifferent
Ah to hell with it all and pass the bottle again!

Please join us as we skip through last night’s traces.

He lived on nothing but Tiger Blood and Vermin Pellets in the company of two supreme Goddess Micey Whores. He wore outlandish pelts and conquered all forms of media. He mastered the art of soundbite and made bacchanalian orgiastic fenzy an art form like no other creature before him. He got away with murder. He ruled the saturated interwebbish universe all week until he was knocked off his electronic headline perch by a great unjust wave of untimely death that was not entirely his own undoing. The King is dead long live the king. Whatever…

Cutting open the corpse dissecting the spleen we could not wait to get inside him. We left the offal for the hungry cat, the micey whores, the tender worms and desperate pigeons. We took a knife and lifted a fork and we ate the brains of the deposed creature. We were hoping to imbibe the dank dream world and scurrying insanity of all tart scavenging rodent life everywhere. We were scheming to appropriate some of that king rat stamina and make like it was our own! We were thinking if we could just siphon off some pumping rat vigour Our lives would never be the same again We knew that what they call viral infestation is nothing but ego engorging fame. We wanted some. Why can’t we have some? We must have some of that King Rat Charlie being.

However What transpires is an unearthly otherworldly sound An unearthly otherworldly sound transmitted through lice ridden peltish hide A peltish hide with sticky fur standing up on grey edge in damp back yard! Emitting blue rayed frequencies the sky suddenly breaks We hear he sound of STASIS73, COLUMN ONE, NURSE WITH WOUND, AFANANSI VIEBEG, MONKEY ISLAND, MINOR MINE, BRITANNIA THEATRE, BAND OF HOLY JOY and much more. This gibbering glimmering dissonant melodic soundwave from the margin mixed and scaped and scraped and taped by Inga Tillere rises up to rule the world…

An esoteric hour of devotional poetry and music compiled by Nina Zivancevic and remixed by Inga Tillere.
The hour features Ira Cohen and William Burroughs amongst many others…

It was already light when I woke up. More to the point it was already hot. I tried to gauge the time from a few background noises – the chugging & jolting lift in the building, trucks in the street below. Not much help there – the sounds were pretty much the same any time of day or night, apart from the occasional night-time symphony of gunfire & sirens…

What follows is a sharp and evocative account of a young man slipping off track and wandering over to the dark side of the street, Den Browne’s ‘Across 110th Street’ observes beautifully a moment in time within a classic American counter-cultural period.

All photos © Den Browne

Part 2 of Den Browne’s telling of the Brian Barritt story. ‘It’s About Time’ is a beautifully told halucinogenically modified tale of counter culture escapading. It takes in Burroughs, Trochhi, Leary, Kosmiche, Newgrange, Nabob and so much more… comes complete with Jane Maskew assisted soundscape.

Den Browne – Words
Jane Maskew – Sound
Helen Martin – The Dream of Angus by George Russell
Phil Martin – The Nabob of Bombasta
Brian Barritt – Road to Tir Na Nog

Brian Barritt was born in Coventry in 1934. Over the years he has been a sailor, soldier, krautrocker, hippy and punk – an adventurer with 50 years experience in psychedelics and expanded consciousness. He hitched to India in the mid 60′s and accompanied Timothy Leary during his exile from America in Algeria and Switzerland in the early 70′s. He took the producer Youth under his wing in the late 70′s, during the early days of Killing Joke, and was later taken under Youth’s wing in the early days of Acid House. His psychedelic autobiography, The Road of Excess, was published in 1998.

He currently lives in Battersea, South London, with a squirrel.

Looking at Brian’s involvement in the heyday of the 60′s/70′s acid scene & the German “Cosmische musik” early days. Words & readings from Brian’s writing by Den Browne, soundscape chosen & mixed by Jane Maskew.

Part 1 ‘Road of Excess’.

Lost In Riga © Ruedi Schorno 2007

Riga inspired sound odyssey by the Swiss artist Ruedi Schorno who for the last few years has been trying to find out ‘How To Be A Latvian’.

Lost In Riga © Ruedi Schorno 2007

]]> http://radiojoy.co.uk/blog/psychogeographic-guide-to-riga-this-week-part-2/feed/ 0 Lost In Riga © Ruedi Schorno 2007 Riga inspired sound odyssey by the Swiss artist Ruedi Schorno who for the last few years has been trying to find out 'How To Be A Latvian'. - Lost In Riga © Ruedi Schorno 2007 Lost In Riga © Ruedi Schorno 2007 Riga inspired sound odyssey by the Swiss artist Ruedi Schorno who for the last few years has been trying to find out 'How To Be A Latvian'. Lost In Riga © Ruedi Schorno 2007 NO AUTHOR clean 41:40 http://radiojoy.co.uk/blog/psychogeographic-guide-to-riga-this-week-part-1/ http://radiojoy.co.uk/blog/psychogeographic-guide-to-riga-this-week-part-1/#comments Sun, 19 Dec 2010 23:09:49 +0000 admin http://radiojoy.co.uk/blog/?p=860

A landscape is a respectable ornament for interior. It tells a lot about the spiritual life of the host…

In art, the landscape usually serves as a metaphor for life, where the eternal and the transient meet…

Each district of the city has places where the inhabitants from the whole surrounding area meet a portrait of their soul. For many years, this meant the milk and bread shop for some people, or the bar or others, and practically everyone needs at some point to visit the pharmacy.

Gather round, gather round, step behind and follow on, for a psychogeographic tour of the city of Riga this week with your hosts the Restoration Workshop of Unprecedented Feelings and fellow explorers Jonny Mugwump Cris Lapthorn Inga Tillere and Johny Brown sense, sense, sense it

We feel that Riga does not belong to us, yet cannot help imagining it does.

It is a great privilege to be able to repeat a show that we recorded and broadcast on Resonance FM this Friday. Simon Morgan released a single called Child Battery with his band Domestic Bliss in 1980. Between then and now he has lead a most eventful life of ups and downs highs and lows, been through a lot of scrapes and helped a hell of a lot of people out. His passion for music is renowned. He set up the legendary Trakmarx website. And now 30 years since the first recording he has ventured into a studio again. The result is a beautiful album called ‘Domestic Abuse’ He came down to the radio station and played us some tracks off the record. We loved all of it and we’re sure you will too.

The recording of this show is available on request.

We were much saddened to hear of the death of Peter Sleazy Christopherson this week.
On Friday night we payed homage to him with a one hour incantation at the Resonance FM Studios.
We used a lot of Sleazy’s own Threshold Houseboy Choir as well as The Homecoming, a new release by James S Finn.
Jonny Mugwump was mistress of ceregnomy and Inga Tillere and Cris Lapthore did everything to conjure up some magick sound (featuring LYSN).
We dedicated the entire hour to our own 753, Taales, Karel Van Bergen.

Photo by Shawn Brackbill