AFTER SIGHT 13

ZEITKRATZER CD

You may or may not be familiar with my obsessive attention to particular detail. A pedantry that verges on the pathological at times, and a direct and regular cause of an often bad case of insomnia. Just as a girl knows stocking seams not regimentally straight right up to the mandatory keyholes will earn her a deservedly sound thrashing, for me the thought of leaving even the tiniest orthographical error is mortifying.

In fact, on two separate occasions now, at vast personal expense, entire Susan Lawly CD booklet runs each had to be recalled and reprinted owing to a single ridiculously minor typo; always for the simple reason that, even if not a single person ever noticed, I couldn't comfortably live with myself knowing they were thus flawed.

And thus my heart sank when the new Zeitkratzer Whitehouse CDs arrived. Already bewildered by the band's bizarre choice of cover illustration, like a rabid proofreader, I came upon not only flagrantly insignificant punctuation and spelling mistakes in the booklet's accompanying text's English translation, but also factual errors. Oh, and a font that looks suspiciously like the dreaded Helvetica. Damn.

Despite all that, and some rather indiscreet revelations from our preparatory conversations on his part, ZK's genial main man Reinhold Friedl writes a lot of very kind things in the text, for which I'm grateful; and it has to be said what counts most, the music itself, sounds fantastic, clear and abrasive. It was, I repeat, an amazingly pleasurable experience to work with such incredibly talented musicians there in Marseille; this release is a great testament to their brilliant and thrilling performance.

I'll send a complimentary copy of the album to the first person who correctly identifies the original albums of the songs Nzambi Ia Lufua and Scapegoat in the comments section.

SHORT BREATHS 9

Extralinguistic Sequencing
here currently working on a re-adaptation of the originally two-hour experiment in creepy dark mass hypnosis for Tate Britain that may, just might, translate to a personal listening experience context

Zeitkratzer CD
I haven't been given the full information regarding the Zeitkratzer Whitehouse CD yet, nor have I received any copies yet - according to this month's Wire it's said to be released on October 22nd; hopefully, it'll sound much better than the cover disappointingly doesn't promise

Pope hailed
can you believe TC Ratzinger had the audacity to drive past my front door in his Merc just as I was on my way out to the barber's? as he leered at the heathens and mortals from behind a semi-smoked glass window, special attention was paid to the crisply uniformed schoolkids who'd been let out for an afternoon skive to 'greet' his holiless in a surge of puerile antipathy evidenced by universally healthy disdain, and anagram jokes

SHORT BREATHS 8
SHORT BREATHS 7
SHORT BREATHS 6

EVENTS UPDATE

CUT HANDS : live at Salon Des Amateurs, Dusseldorf, Germany : 17th July
CUT HANDS : live at NK, Berlin, Germany : 18th July
DJ BENETTI : live at Paloma Bar, Kreuzberg, Berlin, Germany : 19th July
CUT HANDS : live at GRV, Edinburgh : 12th September

MARSEILLE

I'm not quite sure that really happened. There are moments in life that, if forewarned of their imminent occurrence, would seem so impossibly unlikely as to invite incredulity. To have a ten-piece orchestra of professional classical musicians play six pieces of my music in front of a refined audience of three hundred or so at the venue Friche La Belle de Mai in Marseille is one of them.

Berlin-based outfit Zeitkratzer (led by Reinhold Friedl) and myself were invited by the venerable GMEM for Festival Les Musiques - an annual fortnight of mostly highbrow contemporary music and dance. Intertwined with my own pieces were four early works by Morton Feldman, and the juxtapositions were predictably dramatic, and for my perspective, worked surprisingly well. The musicians did an enormously impressive respectful job, and were a total pleasure to work with.

Anyway, other than to say that it was emotionally moving and humbling, the experience was so unusual that I could do with more time to reflect upon it. But it certainly helps in the schizophrenic personal struggle of a preposterous, intolerable superiority complex versus a sense of shameful fraudulence.