Erstlaub

I’ll be playing at this on the 31st of August. Also on the rather stunning bill wil be TVO doofing around with his usual astounding blend of droney grumblery(tm) and post stadium techno, he’ll be joined by Beaker (Bryan Marcia) who has whipped up some rather intrigueing max/jitter visual machines that he will be kicking around on screen as TVO does his thing. Really really looking forward to seeing Keung and his Mandelbrot Set weaving their sometimes shimmering, sometimes scary webs of sound. We were going to try and have a sneaky little collab session but I’m not totally sure if we’re going to get the time now. Fighting Kites will also be taking up the slack, feedback from some of the London crew was positive from seeing them last week so looking forward to hearing them in person.

First time playing live down in London so I’m a mixture of nerves and excitement at the moment. I’ll be interested to see what sort of punters show up on a Sunday night for some heavy drones and noise action. The venue, Cafe Oto, looks awesome and I’m pretty stoked to be playing there.

I’ve been fighting this week with codecs and diminishing discspace but I should, with a bit of luck, have some shiny new (well creaky black and white) visuals as a backdrop for my set, heavily influenced by my recent love for Andrei Tarkovsky.

The new album is very nearly ready to drop, we are aiming to have it available for purchase at the show on the 31st if everything goes according to plan. I’ll post info and availability over the next few weeks.

An ever so slightly late review of Island appeared out of the blue here this week also at Australian publication Cyclic Defrost. There might even be a few rogue copies kicking around HPLL Towers still so if you didn’t already, get on to Thorsten and he might be able to oblige.

Just a quick shout to all the August birthdays also. My Sis, Louise, Sietse and AndyMegaheaphone Boy all got another year older over the last few weeks.

See you in London.

D

Watching: The Dark Knight (yesssssssssssssssss), La Dolce Vita, The Holy Mountain, Nostalgia, Stalker

Reading: Not anything particular just now, a few things I’m partways into but haven’t picked up in a while.

Listening: Stray Ghost - Losthilde - Fantastic deep, gloomy, droney epic business on HPLL, a bit of Nino Rota, some Cocteau Twins, Picked up the awesome Qaudrange EPs by Autechre - some really dirty acid noises and extended ambiences from the legends there, it might even be more rewarding than the awesome Quaristice albums.

It’s not so much the lack of output at the moment as the lack of dragging my lazy useless arse into gear to do things. Nevermind, caught up rather shockingly on about 5 years of viewing in the last few weeks. In no particular order.

Fellini’s Amarcord
Aliens (the really very long director’s cut)
Ghost Dog - Been meaning to rewatch this for ages, still amazing
The Conversation - as above
Batman Begins - rewatch in prep for The Dark Knight (probably Monday before I go to see)
Battle Royale 2: Requiem
Akira - oh why oh why is this getting a real life remake, so little need.
Curb Your Enthusiasm Series 6
The Return of the Pink Panther (ie. the really really good one)

in addition to this, I’ve embarked on something of a David Lynch retrospective including;

All of season 2 of Twin Peaks - how indeed IS Annie?
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me
Eraserhead
Wild at Heart
The Short Films of David Lynch
I tried to watch Industrial Symphony No1 but really wasn’t in the mood

To coincide with this veritable Lynchorama, I’ve been playing to death David Lynch and Marek Zebrowsk - Polish Night Music and of course the amazing amazing works of Angelo Badalamenti. Not sure why everything is so Lynchy at present but there we are.

Right, I’m away to watch 8 1/2 and attempt not to feel so numb.

Later.

D

Dave Production Unit was giving me grief about not updating my blog tonight, so here it is!

Snazzy title eh? Inspired by some waaayyyy past bedtime chat the other night with Craig Mystec, a pretty fantastic Glasgow based artist. Allegedly Goodhand is due to be working on his website (so it might happen - hah!, aye right, believe it when I see it) so I’ll link you good people up if/when it goes live.

Shopping news! I finally caved in and bought not one but two of the ltd edition Addict / Star Wars Tshirts. Too much money to spend on Tshirts but damn they are nice. To complement them, I bought a pair of camo colour puma gutties. I still need to suss out the ideal trouser to set the whole outfit off though.

Ichiban, how I love you! I had my first ever Bento experience at Ichiban, my word! what a delightful assortment of vegetarian friendly sushi. Go there, eat one, it’s a total experience. mmmmmmm edimami too.

Congratulations to Numbers who have now managed to not die / explode / sell their ideals up the river etc for a whole 5 years. The first part of the birthday celebrations took place down the Sub last Friday with Rustie, Goodhand and Callum doing the honours. Playing of The Vamp ensured  that an already way too hot Sub went nuclear. Fantastic. Next part of the celebrations happen this weekend at the spiritual homeland of Club 69 in the basement of an Indian Restaurant somewhere in Paisley, no really. It should be, to paraphrase DJ Funk, off tha chain y’all. I need to establish how hard it will be to partake in public transport seeing as a mass of idiots will be descending on this neck of the woods for T in the Park. hmmmm?!

Big shout to Chris Dooks who managed a rather splendid 8 hour droneathon at the Glasgow Uni Chapel, I didn’t make it through but thankfully a live feed was provided which meant I spent most of my Sunday lazing about listening to Dooks play a succession of lovely tunes over the internets. You can catch a sort of edited highlights on his latest Bovine Life Support System thus. It’s proper good. I got a laugh also when by means of a facebook > real life courier delivered a message to Chris on site and a handwritten “Hello Dave” appeared on the video stream.

Not much else to report, I got a letter today saying my conditional acceptance for year 2 at Perth College in now unconditional and that I’ve met the criteria (which I sort of take to mean that I passed my first year and have an HNC but I’ll believe it when I see it). My current lack of creative output and motivation is starting to annoy me, as is my insomnia. pffft. I’ll deal with it, no-one else is going to.

D

Listening: Leonard Cohen - So Long, Marianne (ehhhhh? not sure why, but album of the week!!!), Joy Division - Substance, Stars of the Lid, Caretaker, Mazzy Star, William Basinski (seeing the theme here?)

Reading: Been a wee bit slack of late but have started on Dante’s Inferno, also geting some nice design schtick from Design Basics Index by Jim Krausse and a sexy new Logo book by Rockport.

Watching: Fellini’s La Strada - wonderful, bleak and depressing, Grave of the Fireflies - really sad, I kept waiting for cute forrest spirits to turn up and fix everything seeing as it’s Studio Ghibli, they didnt, Funny Games - the original 97 version of this in German. Probably the most disturbing film I’ve seen next to Audition, really good and baaad all at once, Das Leben der Anderen - Quality east german stasi paranoia thriller, Lost Highway - words cannot describe how entirely unbored I can get rewatching this movie over and over, Escape from New York - yaaaaaaasssss, cannot get enough of the “I thought you were dead!” and “Call me Snake!” action. I might go and change my name to Kurt Russell by deed poll, what a man!

Shock and surprise, I’ve actually had some stuff to do the last few weekends, and it’s been quite good!

A few weeks ago, I was privileged enough to see the former Drexciyan legend, Gerald Donald, and his missus doing their Dopplereffekt business. Maaaaaan, talk about an intense and tight set for a club environment. Amazing stuff, completely transcendental arpeggios, lush pads, harsh bursts of pure white noise. Hmmmmmmm, Erstlaub does approve to the extent that it’s taken me a few weeks to prize Calabi-Yau Space, Linear Accelerator and a dodgy recording of a live set from Malmo earlier this year off my playlist, even now, I keep heading back to Calabi for some hyperminimal satisfaction.

This rather quality set was succeeded by a Go-Slow Cafe Breakfast with my good friends and Southside landladys Dave and Iona. Yes, I managed to consume an absurd amount of breakfast materials including several coffee’s, some fresh juice, scrambled eggs on toast and kiwi, bananna and strawberry smoothie. Managed to just avoid also eating the maple syrup crepes which usually kill me so alles gut.

Last weekend saw my good friends Mast (I actually want to be really jealous of their amazing sounds and have some healthy east-coast drone rivalry but I just can’t do it, they are both far too lovely) hitting up the rather odd setting of the greenhouse at the Dundee Uni Botanic Gardens. 4 hours of wonderously fragile and pretty tape based noisyness was complemented by Jon the drummer (who may or may not be from the band Esperi) who layed out some rolling Godspeed You Black Emperoresque rythmically dense goodness, invoking the already heavy clouds to burst and pour so much that ti was even raining inside the greenhouse. Seriously, Mast are wayyyy too good at the moment, I can’t decide whether I should be taking out a contract on them or trying to work with them. If you get the chance - GO SEE THEM, really!

Postmast it was back Fifewards to spend time with Gordon and Louise, an Indian takeaway, a fair few beers, their Wii Fit calling me overweight! (oh the offense!) and topped off with me and Lou indulging in some chick-flick goodness in the form of Breakfast at Tiffany’s starring Hannibal from the A-Team only without any plans coming together, rogue M16 firefights, milk based aviation druggings or anything else. In terms of classic films i was pretty cool but from an A-Team point of view, pretty poor.

Anyway, enough rambling from me, looks like August 31st may well be a date for any London based Erstlaub fans to put in their diaries, more details later and keep an ear out for a new release dropping on HPLL over the summer too.

Peas

D

Listening: Samoyed - Always from this Point (Andrew Mast doing what he does best, follow the link and buy a copy if there are any left, it’s only £7.50 and it’s flipping gorgeous), Dopplereffekt - Calabi-Yau Space, Linear Accelerator, Live in Malmo, Also been on an odd 4AD tip with lots of Kristin Hersch and Belly getting a look in.

Watching: Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Dark Star, 2001: A Space Odyssey

Reading: got round to finishing off my first pass at the Invisibles and most probably need to do it all again after being left clueless by its conclusion. I got a nice book of designpr0n about logos this week so I’ll most probably be digesting that also.

Welcome to the world to my first nephew, Dylan who, after much deliberation, decided to make his first appearance in the world today. Well done to my sister who had a bit of a tough time of it.

Lots of bits and pieces to this post really.

I got a new piece recorded which will be coming out on Highpoint Lowlife at some point around the summer, possibly titled “I am the line drawn in the sand between the living and the dead” if I can possibly justify having that amount of words on a sleeve. There might also be a show in London at some point, hopefully with some other amazing ambient types like Dirty Hope, Mandelbrot and TVO or whatever he is insisting on being called that week but we are at very early stages. Obviously more info on the album once I have details.

I just want to drop in how amazing the new release on V/VM is, The Stranger - Bleaklow, is just amazing amazing dark brainmusic, like some weird and evil and fragile combination of techno and ambient things, broken and twisted and lost out in a dark world. I looooove this and bought the extended edition directly from the label here - which comes with a huge amount of extra tracks. Well worth it. I also picked up 3 Caretaker albums and the superb H>Ost album Cim for a stupidly cheap price. Go now and support this wonderful wonderful label, customer service was excellent all the way too. If by any chance you end up on this blog from searching for a dodgy copy of the Stranger album, shame on you, go and buy it!!

On Thursday the 22nd, I finally got to see my heroes, the mighty Stars of the Lid playing at Stereo in Glasgow. It was not quite amazing but still very very good. They had a wonderful trio of beautiful looking string playing ladies (mental note to self: speak to label about booking string section hotties for London gig). They played among other things, Arvo Part’s Fratres which is one of my favourite pieces of music in the world evaarrr and also Requiem for Dying Mothers which I think might have made me tear up just a little. My good friend Ruaridh TVO and myself were even treated to a rare visitation by the legendary Chris Dooks who we managed to drag out of his westend palace of slumbers to join us. Thoroughly decent chat and even a promo copy of his latest album on Benbecula (listening to as I type this), he’s doing an entire day of drones also in glasgow in June which should be pretty amazing. On a slightly bum note were The Declining Winter who were supporting and played one of the dullest, least emotional, most derivative post-rock sets I have ever endured. No fun, no fun atall compared to the other support band, Remember Remember who did some quite nice loopy business that reminded me a bit of Fridge in the olden days.

After SOTL, I decided to have a bit of a Glasgow based holiday and spent a few days bumming around Chateux Law, managed to finish a few books and the like, thoroughly looked after by Tina, bless. Then Saturday was time for Cuba Libres in a posh cocktail bar then down to the Twisted Wheel for Wee Numbers where TVO and Production Unit gave it beans with some of their class RnB over awesome techno mashups, PU dropped Rasputin by Boney M, dancefloor was just destroyed, I have no idea how he pulled it off, but my word he did!

Went out partying afterwards with Dave and Iona before retiring to my Southside residency, got a decent bit of sleep and then nipped into town for some light shopping and a mash around GOMA before getting the train up the road (boooo). Back to life, back to reality, back to the here and now etc. Just in for the final mad dash before college shuts down for the summer. Huge huge thanks to my west coast friends for putting up with me mooching around theirs’ for longer than usual, more appreciated than you know.

Later suckers.
D

Reading: Finally finished 45, goodbye Bill Drummond, you are truly legend, Persepolis, The Invisibles: Apocalipstick, The Prisoner - Shattered Visage, Batman: Arkham Asylum - A Serious House on Serious Earth, the MPD Psycho manga

Watching: The 4400 series 4, Delicatessen, The Producers, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Listening: The Stranger - Bleaklow Extended, The Caretaker, H>ost - Cim, the entire Mazzy Star / Hope Sandoval back catalogue (oh my aching heart!), Chris Dooks - The Aesthetic Animals, the Inland Empire OST (Ghost of Love = yaassssss)

Just a quick update, not a huge amount doing here just now though.

The MPD Psycho performance through at the Ivy in Glasgow was awesome; myself, The Village Orchestra, Production Unit and Konx-om-Pax were joined by the disembodied sounds of Dooks’ Bovine Life and created a full alternative soundtrack to the first episode of Takashi Miike’s awesome surrealist cop show. Rumour has it that we are going to get a very limited release on Highpont Lowlife but obviously our legal representatives are in the process of beating out deals, with such a large amount of top artists it’s never going to be easy (total fabrication). I really want us to try and get a copy to Takashi Miike so if you are reading this and have the vaguest idea how to get in touch with him or his production company or anything then please shout.

I eventually got around to updating my Flickr with a few college projects and some pretty pictures after some slackness in that field too.

Other than that, I’m afraid that I am up to my eyelids i college work at the moment, and then there’s the fact that most of my free time seems to be spent rolling the mean streets of Liberty City. I’m not going to get started on how awesome GTA4 is, but yes, it’s entirely awesome. My xbox live gamertag is “Erstlaub” so hit me up and we can go cause some shennanigans.

Hoping to get down to some new Erstlaub business once college stuff is finished and then there have been rumblings of a collab between myself and Mandelbrot which could turn out to be something pretty interesting.

Later.

D

Listening: Abandoned Places - Shadow of Memory, Cloaks (the drone one, not the noisy grime one) - Serene, the awesome Adam and Joe BBC6 radio show, Philip Jeck - Sand.

Watching: just Dr Who, no spare eyeball time outside of GTA4

Reading: The Invisibles, away to start on Persepolis

You wouldn’t believe it from the promotional material (because the details weren’t submitted in time) and even from the website, my existance is still moot, but really, I will be playing at an event for the last ever Triptych Festival. I’ve had some amazing experiences over the years at Triptych, being in the same room with the legend that was Karlheinz Stockhausen, a lecture by the late great Dr Robert Moog, a wonderfully intimate performance in the bar of I think the Tron by the beautiful Colleen and Mogwai making me involuntarily make the international RAWK signifier with the massive riffs and 20 minute wall of feedback. Goodbye Triptych, and thanks.

“The Village Orchestra and Friends

The Village Orchestra & Friends (Konx-om-Pax / Bovine Life /
Production Unit) will be providing a live, improvised soundtrack to
the first episdode of Takashi Miike’s groundbreaking six-part drama
‘MPD Psycho’. Based on the manga of the same name, the (live action)
part-police drama, part-comedy, part-supernatural horror is full of
the transgressive images and blackest of black humour for which Miike
has become famous - not least through films like Audition, Ichi the
Killer and Visitor Q. We’ll be installing a PA and massive screen in
the comfortable upstairs of the IVY for this.”

See, they managed to totally miss me out, I am definitely one of the said friends though and I will be playing around 13 minutes worth of material around the 37 minute mark. Just due to the nature of the event, it’s going to be a bit different from my usual business and probably centre around sampes rather than synthesis but I’ve got a few things to sort out still. Come along, say hello, the usual stuff really. It should be pretty interesting if nothing else (although I reckon you’ll love the whole thing, it’s a pretty good line-up after all and MPD has to be seen to be even more confounding than it sounds).

On Becoming an Island emerged this week on iTunes and Amazon Downloads store alongside Boomkat now. So, if you want digital versions, it’s right there. There’s still some copies left at Highpoint Lowlife HQ so drop Thorsten a line via the fancy new website if you need one (and really, you do need it). There should be a link over there somewhere>

This Friday also sees the opening of Sugihara House, a small museum dedicated to Chiune Sugihara, at Vaizganto street 30, Kaunas in Lithuania for which I scored 3 pieces of music to accompany some short films. It was an honour to be involved in this project, especially reading up on the work Sugihara did in his lifetime. Go and have a read about him, it is most inspiring. I should get some material from them soon so will post up when it arrives. Many many thanks to my good friend Lina from Kaunas who has been fantastic in helping me with this project.

Once all this business is put to bed I’m going to settle into a couple of new things. One project will hopefully be a collaboration with someone whose work I’m really into lately and have never had the chance to work with before. Pretty excited about that really, more details once the finger has been pulled out. And invariably, given my mood of late, there will most likely be some new Erstlaub material, bubbling forth from my bitter and generally hideous feeling psyche. Oh joy! Better out than in they say though.

Later.

D

Watching: Diary of the Dead - class, slightly non-canon re imagining of the Night of the Living Dead for the 21st Century. Romero is still the king by a looooong shot. I got round to watching Control, it was as moving and wonderful as I’d been expecting, I cannot get over how young Curtis was. There is nothing I can say about Joy Division that has not already been said.

Reading: I’m still firing on through 45 by Bill Drummond and it’s still amazing stuff. Once I finish this, it’s going to be like losing a friend who comes and tells you mad stories. What a man!

Listening: The usual really, Joy Division, Stars of the Lid, other music for depressed people. I picked up Steve Reich - The Daniel Variations which I saw performed a year or two ago in London on its British premiere. Quite moving given that it is about Daniel Pearl. I’ve also been caning the Stereolab this last few weeks.

Well, maybe.

Yes, I know, things have been a bit quiet here of late. I’m currently working away on some soundtrack pieces for three short films on Chiune Sugihara, a legendary man, who as a Japanese Diplomat in Lithuania managed to save thousands of Jews following the Soviet occupation during the second world war.

The films have been made by the wonderful Mindaugas Arlinskas, you can see some of his work at his myspace page. The works will be on display at a museum in Kaunas, Lithuania for the foreseeable future. It’s been a humbling experience to be asked to do this work and to be honest, it hasn’t been the easiest imagery to work to from an emotional point of view but I do feel like I have managed to to treat the subject with the respect it deserves after much consideration. Once everything is finalised I’ll maybe be able to post up links to online versions or something.

In addition to this project, I also have my participation in TVO’s rendering of a new soundtrack to Takeshi Miike’s amazingly good MPD Psycho performance to sort out. If you can imagine Taggart vs Twin peaks downtown in Japan it’s still not even that close, but admit it, you enjoyed that thought. I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to be doing for my part, I know that I’m not taking my usual setup out for it so I’m thinking it’ll be sample based (I might manage to work in the Weevil08). This will take place upstairs at the Ivy in Glasgow on Sunday the 27th April. There will be more chat about it later on probably. Also involved are Production Unit, Konx-om-Pax and Chris Dooks.

Well, apologies for the slack posting of late, lots of college work, too much xbox 360 and a general malaise have been the reasons.

Take it easy.

D

Listening: Portishead - Third, Magnetism.. That Electricity (Mandelbrot, Fisk, the Marcias on HPLL - very good indeed), Joy Division (really? what a surprise), Charalambides - Rose/Thorn, Arvo Part - Tabula Rasa.

Watching: Finally made it through Tarkovsky’s Solaris - GENIUS, the cinema has been too cack to even bother going to lately although I’ll hopefully make it to see Diary of the Dead - the new Romero, this week.

Reading: Yes I am still reading 45 by Bill Drummond, I got a lovely book on Hokusai - one of medieval Japan’s most revered printmakers - you’ll probably know his work if you saw it. Fantastic to the extent that I’m bout to blow off a major amount of research already done into Bauhaus in favour of him from college.

Well,

Last night I went out and played in Dundee for the first time ever. It wasn’t a bad experience, I could hear very little above the 150hz side of things my behind the speakers and having the broken monitor not plugged in but I managed to soldier on and the crowd received it very well.

Cheers to everyone that came out to support, Gordon and Louise, Neil for putting the night on, Dave (been too long man, awesome to see you), Carmen, Owen and everyone else that had nice things to say about my set.

Also on the bill were Mast - who played an amazing set of fragile and weird sounds and the mighty Veestar who threw down the bosh with a bit of an acid onslaught.

Here are some pics of me on and off-stage taken by Louise who despite never having used my camera before managed to get some really nice shots of me.

That’s all for now, recordings were made of my set but quality has yet to be verified, I’ll keep you posted if there is any news.

Big respect to the girl that spent my set heckling me, I have no idea how you managed to find the one frequency I wasn’t filling and using it to hit me with torrents of abuse. I reckon the MOD could probably make use of you though.

In other news, my Quaristice ltd edition CD arrived on Friday and let me tell you, it is the single, most beautifully packaged release I have laid eyes upon, I mean, how futurist is laser etched aluminium. mmmmmmmmm.

Also a big shout out to Louise’s Beetroot Risotto, yay for absurdly coloured foodstuff.

D

Listening: The Mandelbrot Set - All our actions are constantly repeated, Steve Reich - Music for 18 Musicians, Goblin - Dawn of the Dead OST

Reading: 45 - Bill Drummond, Juxtapose

Watching: There Will be Blood - probably the film of the year, beautiful visuals, stunning soundtrack, amazing performances, yes yes yes yes. Really, its fantastic.

Just a quick one to say:

Come down, I’ll be making some dense, rumbly noises for about 40 minutes or so. Remember, I don’t tend to play live very often, so this could be the last chance for a while.

If you do make it, come and say hi.

Cheers.

D