Four Things #25
Welcome to Four Things #25! As you can see I’ve said farewell to the Tiny Letter platform and will now publish here on Substack. Newsletter 1-24 have been transferred to this account as well for your revisiting convenience. And a special welcome to my new subscribers, glad to have you on board.
As you may know the 3024 Mentoring Program started out as a 100% online program during the pandemic, which made it excellent for connecting with likeminded people across cities, countries etc. Now that people are moving around a lot more again, it’s nice to see mentees meeting up with each other in real life, collaborating on projects and generally helping each other out wherever they can. The next logical step for me is to bring some of my online work to IRL situations as well so I’m very excited to announce I’m going to be doing live sessions in different cities, premiering at Nowadays in NYC next week! I’m going to try and add ‘mentoring moments’ of sorts to my touring schedule wherever possible, if you have any ideas for that don’t hesitate to get in touch! Another thing I quickly wanted to mention is to please check out Nosaj Thing’s new record ‘Continua’ - I did some co-production work on the single ‘We Are’ ft. the South Korean artist Hyukoh.
Now on to the Things.. Your thoughts, observations and feedback are always appreciated! Feel free to pass on the link to your friends, and check out my newsletter archive if you haven’t done so before. Wishing you health and kindness..
Martyn
Sept 24th, 2022
FIRST THING: TELL A VISION
Absolutely got lost in a punk wormhole the last couple of months, reading Bryan Waterman’s 33 1/3 book about Television’s ‘Marquee Moon’ LP and revisiting some of the excellent music made in CBGB’s era New York. Television, described by a friend of mine as ‘a band only other musicians like’, was at the forefront of a new sound that musically blended the high-brow lyricism of late 60s Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol with the grittiness of the Lower East Side Bowery. There, at the Country, Bluegrass & Blue’s Club (CBGB’) Television’s live shows spawned a sound and a style that was carried on into the (now) mainstream of American rock by bands like the Talking Heads, Blondie and The Ramones. The book interestingly points out that the Bowery’s history of theatre and (adult) cabaret influenced Television and the other bands quite extensively through the presence of another influential band, The New York Dolls. The common narrative that punk rejected any type of styling, costumes, image is maybe a lot more nuanced, even The Ramones carefully chose their jeans/leather jacket/sunglasses look it turns out. Musically it’s a great exercise to listen to Marquee Moon and Talking Heads’ first couple of records. There are a lot of similarities in the riffs and structure. Jonathan Lethem wrote a 33 1/3 about ‘Fear of Music’, which is a must-listen in my opinion, it’s in my top ten favorite albums ever!
SECOND THING: ARTHUR JAFA ON THE ORIGINS OF BLACK MUSIC
I’ve checked the archive and I don’t believe I’ve mentioned this beautiful and essential interview with the visual artist Arthur Jafa in Four Things yet! I was reminded of it the other day while reading Deforrest Brown’s book “Assembling a Black Counter Culture”, (about the origins of techno). In the video interview on Youtube, Jafa talks about how we often mistake Black Music for a logical continuation of centuries of African Music. He explains that music from Africa is tied to specific religious or political purpose and communality (chants and drums connected to rituals, gatherings, life moments etc). When people were brought to the Americas as slaves, they carried with them the enormous heritage of this music, but were brutally stripped of all its purpose. All that musical knowledge found itself in a space devoid of traditional structure but filled with incredible trauma, and this specific moment becomes the birth of Black Music. The music that comes from this trauma, Gospel, Blues, Jazz, and eventually Techno has in common that it partially reshapes the lost community in new ways and introduces an individuality ; the personal sadness or melancholy of the Blues, the skillful flaunt of the solo in Jazz, the preacher and choir dynamic in Gospel. Black Music is therefor a revolution, and in Jafa’s words ‘the most important music of the 20th century’. Really a must-watch.
THIRD THING: PAINTING WITH JOHN
Most of you have probably seen or heard about this already but I just wanted to add a beautiful John Lurie painting to the newsletter. I really love this multidisciplinary artist’s show on HBO, just very soothing television, perfect to offset busy days. The show has a certain ASMR-like quality to it, not just in the scenes where John is painting but all throughout, with the continuous sound of crickets and other rainforest animals, and the calm breeze of island life. I love that in watercolor painting you are almost communicating with the paper, with water as the vehicle; You add your paint to water and as soon as it touches the paper it decides for itself where it’s going to go. You have to learn to surrender to the process and accept whatever outcome it brings you.
FOURTH THING: FICCIONES
So much great music is being made in Colombia right now, and I’ve been really enjoying music on the Tratratrax and Insurgentes labels. Another one to watch is Artificio from Medellin, which is run by Pascual Gomez who records as Arcane Prospect, and Andrés Hernández aka Rainmaker. The brand new ‘Ficciones’ compilation collects a whole bunch of artists operating in the electronic realm where noise, electro, ambient, drum n bass all effortlessly seem to blend together.