Four Things #5 Down Under Edition
Four things #5..
Hello from Sydney - day 5 of my trip to Australia and New Zealand and finally starting to decompress a little bit. I had a really good time in Auckland, a lot of nice people there and I played a cool show at Galatos for Friendly Potential. The power went out in the entire block just when I was about to get to the drum 'n bass part, so the night was cut short but it definitely created a memory! I haven't been in these regions for years but I must say it's extremely humbling to experience the enthusiasm people have for my music and how things like Voids and my Resident Advisor Origins film have touched so many. It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day music and touring grind and forget to appreciate that your art is out there and doing good things to good people. On that note, a 3024 record has just been announced, it's my first EP on the label since 2010's "Left Hander"(!). You can listen to clips here https://clone.nl/item58045.html.
Long flights mean lots of reading and listening, so here are my Four Things for you. If you like, tell your friends to subscribe and check out the archive https://tinyletter.com/Martyn-Deykers.
Martyn,
Oct 21, 2019
FIRST THING: THE JAZZ ROOM
I was trying to find footage of London club life in the late 80s and early 90s on Youtube and came across an interview with the British film maker Dick Jewell, who produced several films documenting night life of that era. He shot "The Jazz Room" (1987) at the Electric Ballroom in Camden, and it is an amazing piece of dance (and fashion) history. Jewell would show the dancers footage of themselves from previous nights on a screen in the club, to get them riled up for the next scene, like a Super 8 feedback loop. Also note the similarities of the movements with breakdancing and Chicago footwork. Also check out this BBC2 Whistle Test segment about jazz nights at the infamous Wag Club. So funny, people saying music was too bland (in 1984 mind, possibly the greatest year for pop music in history) and they'd like to listen to Art Blakey instead!
SECOND THING: ALGORITHMS AND CREATIVITY
The subject of algorithms has come up in several conversations with friends recently and I must admit it's not something I'm incredibly passionate about because these kinds of chats often digress into bitterness about the state of social media and technology, and how could that ever improve your Pho or Ramen? When it comes to music discovery, algorithms on websites like Beatport are used to recommend music that's similar to your tastes, and presented as an alternative to the guy in the record shop that recommends you new things to listen to. However, an algorithm can only recommend things based on what it knows you like, so will only logically give you more of that, which is cool but that's not what discovery is. Algorithms actually dumb down discovery this way, and if you add certain commercial interests (what Beatport wants you to buy), you're actually even further removed from the creativity of discovery. What you need is that friend (a source you trust) who recommends a seemingly Indian Tabla record although he knows you only listen to Techno; a creative recommendation that takes you several steps ahead at once, will blow your mind and sets you onto a new path in discovery. Using Bandcamp Collections (where you can see what your friends or favorite artists bought) actually stimulates that creativity in finding new music - no algorithm, just people you trust in their musical tastes, just like going to a record store basically..
Here's some context https://aeon.co/essays/how-algorithms-are-transforming-artistic-creativity The amazing photo is Eric Kassel's installation "24 hours in photos" for which he printed off all photos uploaded to Flickr in 24 hours.
THIRD THING: THE FIRST ALL-FEMALE SPACEWALK
On October 18th, two astronauts performed the first ever all-female spacewalk. As the fourteenth and fifteenth women respectively after Svetlana Savitskaya walked in space in 1984, Christina Koch and Jessica Meir performed regular maintenance to the International Space Station ISS. A great reason to celebrate you would think? Yeah yeah not so fast.. NASA's attitude towards female astronauts is notoriously old fashioned, even during the actual press conference of this spacewalk, NASA's Ken Bowersox brought all the blatant sexist tropes to the party; women have less physical capabilities, they think 'different' etc etc. Good article once again in The Atlantic by Marina Koren.
FOURTH THING: DAMON LINDELOF INTERVIEW
I'm one of those people that loves comics and graphic novels but never has the time or patience to read them, so I really have just stuck to the absolute classics like Maus, John Lewis' March and of course Watchmen. The opening scene from the 2009 movie (with Dylan's "Times are a-Changin") is one of my favorite moments in film and I have been looking forward to getting stuck into Damon Lindelof's interpretation. Abraham Riesman, a friend of Lindelof's, did a really great interview for Vulture with the director, about his interpretation of the Watchmen universe, writer Alan Moore's disavowal and "curse" of the entire project, and the social questions raised. Worth a read.