Technology: On side A of a C30 cassette Naomi Christie speaks with assistant curator of computing and communication at the Science Museum Charlotte Connelly about tape-playing devices in the collection, including an exciting, if commercially unsuccessful, precursor to magnetic tape using optics with the advertising slogan “music from a beam of light”. Turn over for side B to hear musician Beat Ratio talking about how his four-track cassette recorder works and why he chose analogue.
Cassette covers the history, culture, and future of the audio cassette tape. Each episode takes a cassette-based theme and brings together enthusiasts and experts to shed further light on it.
Ebi is one of Iran’s most foremost pop singers from the 70s, although his music has been banned there for many years. Listening to his unique, warm baritone voice, to his stirring ballads, it’s amazing to think that over 40 years ago Ebi was already a well-established star with fans all over the world.
Ebi left Iran two years before the ’79 Islamic Revolution after recording six hit albums, and continued to work in the US. Later, he recorded another 13 albums and is still performing at sold-out concerts at prestigious venues around the world including the Sydney Opera House and Washington DC’s Kennedy Center.
In 2010 Ebi played his only UK concert for years at the Royal Albert Hall to help support the fight against Multiple Sclerosis (MS). We recorded an interview with the man himself while he was in London. The song below, Tasmim, critiques the Iranian elections of 2009. The video features two glass bowls, one filled with worms the other cockroaches as a suggestive metaphor.
A live session from the Talented Losers, comprising the notorious Sexton Ming and poet Colin Shaddick.
The Losers conduct an unusual session, in the sense that, Ming is in the studio whilst Shaddick collaborates via telephone.
The whole episode ended in a complete meeting of minds, we were united in self-realisation and found our way back to the source of the unverse through farting, haikus and shocking ourselves awake.
Continuing our trio of shows looking at international comics we have interviews with a couple of European adventure comics creators. In an interview recorded at last year’s BD & Comics Passion festival at the Institut Français, Dickon Harris talks to Yves Sente, one of the current authors of the classic Franco-Belgian strip Blake and Mortimer, who has penned stories set in the current chronology of the comic as well as flashback tales that depict the characters in their youth. Also, in a pair of interviews recorded at Gosh! comics and Laydeez do comics, Alex Fitch talks to Uli Oesterle about his graphic novel Hector Umbra, a surrealist detective story which follows the travails of a painter who investigates the underworld of modern day Munich.
Excerpts from Blake and Mortimer Vol.11: The Gondwana Shrine by Yves Sente and André Juillard / Hector Umbra by Uli Oesterle
Mathieu Copeland, co-curator of the 2009 exhibition at the Pompidou Centre and Kunsthalle Bern: Voids, A Retrospective in the studio to talk about Voids and Yves Klein. Part 3 of the ongoing series about auto-destructive art.
Obsequies For Lars Talc, Struck By Lightning was published in an edition of twenty-five copies in 1994, under the Hooting Yard Press imprint and – save for a brief, rewritten, extract posted here some years ago – has never again seen the light of day. It was the last piece of prose I completed before my descent into the maelstrom, or the Wilderness Years, or whatever one wants to call that period of ruination from which I eventually emerged with the launch of the Hooting Yard website in 2003.
Two independent sound art pieces strike almost exactly the same note in this edition of Cassette. On side A of a C30 tape, sound artist John Wynne explains how he played the note A on forty boom boxes to demonstrate beat frequencies. Then on side B Dan Bennett from arts collective Bang the Bore explains its twelve tapes project; the note B on twelve cassettes. Along the way hear a gangster answer phone tape, and visit some of the country’s finest multi-storey car parks.
We are thrilled to herald the return to Hello GoodBye of the late 70s, original post-punk pacesetters, the band that inspired indie-pop legends The Smiths & Franz Ferdinand (to name but two); The Monochrome Set.
The collective and creative efforts of founding members Bid, Leicester Square and Andy Warren can be heard bursting effortlessly – and effervescently – forth from the new LP – their first in 17 years – entitled Platinum Coils (Disque Bleu).
The dozen songs that comprise the new album each hit the giddy and wry euphoric pop heights of the groups very best work.
As 21st century Great Britain switches from analogue to digital, it is inspiring to discover that there is still something very magical broadcasting from this particular Monochrome Set.
Track list:
The Monochrome Set – They Call Me Silence (LIVE SESSION)
The Monochrome Set – LSD (LIVE SESSION)
The Monochrome Set – The Jet Set Junta (LIVE SESSION)
The Monochrome Set – Alphaville (LIVE SESSION)
Band Of Holy Joy – Wyrd Beautiful Thyme
The Monochrome Set – ‘interview’
Kinnie The Explorer – A Platonick Song
The Monochrome Set – Hip Kitten (LIVE SESSION)
The Monochrome Set – Waiting For Alberto (LIVE SESSION)
The Monochrome Set – Streams (LIVE SESSION)
The Monochrome Set – The Devil Rides Out (LIVE SESSION)
The Monochrome Set – Fun For All The Family (LIVE SESSION)
The Monochrome Set – B-I-D Spells Bid (LIVE SESSION)
Now – I
The Monochrome Set – ‘interview’
Duke Garwood – Sweet Mary Come Down
The Monochrome Set – I Can’t Control My Feet (LIVE SESSION)
The Monochrome Set – Cauchemar (LIVE SESSION)
The Monochrome Set – The Ruling Class (LIVE SESSION)
The Monochrome Set – Cowboy Country (LIVE SESSION)
The Monochrome Set – Jacob’s Ladder (LIVE SESSION)
The Monochrome Set – Eine Symphonie Des Grauens (LIVE SESSION)
Starting a trio of shows about international comics, Alex Fitch talks to a pair of Belgian graphic novelists about their work. Creator Ivan Petrus discusses The Neuport Gathering, his moving and harrowing tale of Allied soldiers during the First World War, and in an interview recorded at last month’s Comica Comiket, Alex talks to artist Maarten Van Wieleabout his ‘graphic trash novel’ Paris which features sex, drugs and degradation in the French fashion industry.
Excerpt from Paris by Maarten Van Wiele / The Neuport Gathering by Ivan Petrus
