Archive for May, 2007

Dénouement

Published by Dan Sumption on May 31, 2007 in Books. 1 Comment

I’ve written here before (perhaps a tad obsessively) about my love for author David Mitchell. It’s been a while since I read anything by him - in fact, it’s been very slightly over a year. I know this because I polished off most of his last book, Black Swan Green, in one sitting while I was acting as a polling clerk at last year’s May local elections.

So when I saw that David Mitchell’s had written a new short story, Dénouement, for last weekend’s Guardian Review I felt a moment of excitement. Then I stopped myself. Perhaps I’m slipping into hero-worship. Perhaps this would be just a so-so short story, but perhaps my cognitive dissonance would have me persuading myself that I like it. It was thus with some hesitation that I began reading, fearing the worst.

I needn’t have worried. The story used a plot-twist that’s probably as old as fiction itself, but managed to make it feel fresh. Above all, it created an indescribable feeling inside of heartstrings pulled, vertebrae tingled, emotions set to vibrate at simultaneously happy, sad, longing and incredulous wavelengths. It was unmistakably David Mitchell’s writing.

I’m not quite sure how he works his tricks, and I’m loathe to over-analyse his writing (or even to re-read his books) in case the wonder is shattered, but whatever it is he does, he does it so well. If only I’d read the paper on Saturday, when it came out, I’d have jumped straight in the car and pootled off to Hay to hear him talk and perhaps even congratulate him in person.

Smegma, Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock et al - gig review

Published by Dan Sumption on May 28, 2007 in Music and Photos. 0 Comments

Here’s an old review of a Freenoise gig which I wrote for Sandman, published about a year ago.
Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock

Smegma / Chora / The Hototogisu / Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock
Freenoise @ D’nR Live

Freenoise have showcased some fascinating line-ups in Sheffield over the last six months. Tonight they’d coaxed veteran “kings’n’queen of Freenoise” Smegma all the way from the USA. It’s a great shame that so few people ventured out on a Wednesday evening to witness the bizarre goings on.

The evening kicked off with local boys (and Freenoise regulars) Chora. Two men scrabbled on the floor, fiddling with guitars, percussion, effects boxes and other sundry noise toys. It didn’t make for great viewing but the sounds they conjured up were awe-inspiring. Actually, the whole 15-minute performance was made up of just one sound: an ever-advancing wall of noise which masked unexpected subtleties, dancing symphonies of tinnitus.

Hototogisu offered more of the same but different. Again, two people tinkered with guitars and toys, making loud-yet-subtle sound sculptures. Their performance had rather more dynamic range than Chora’s, stretches of quiet among the deafening tumult. But they also proved the maxim that less is more: 15 minutes is about the right length for this sort of set, 45 minutes somewhat exhausting and counter-productive.

Runzelstirn & Gurgelstock (from Switzerland via Japan and London) were very different, different in fact from anything I’ve ever seen before. Runzelstirn, looking like a bedraggled S&M gimp, sat in a chair wearing a skirt, rubber gloves and a long black wig. He hardly moved, except to open and close his eyes, but two microphones hanging from the corners of his mouth broadcast heavy breathing to the audience. In each hand was a switch connected to a wire, and as he caressed them the room filled with sounds of children and chaos. Meanwhile his partner Gurgelstock stalked the venue in a goblin mask, unsettling the audience by singling people out and standing next to them, while the tiny Roland amplifier on his shoulder beeped intermittently.

Finally Smegma took the stage. The band have been together since 1972, and had more than a few grey hairs to show for it, but their performance was full of energy. The set was entirely improvised, but their long experience playing as a unit made it incredibly coherent, frequently coagulating into swampy jazz-rock rhythms and funky beats which would hover for a minute or so before gradually reforming into something different.

Shame you missed it, next time, try harder! And keep an eye on www.freenoise.co.uk for more of the same, but oh so very different.

Dan Sumption

Freshly Shot!

Published by Dan Sumption on May 24, 2007 in Photos and Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I’ve uploaded a few new photosets to Dan Shot Me over the last few weeks and, as usual, forgotten to mention anything about them here. In fact, I’m not quite sure what I’ve posted here already, but check out the Peek-a-boo burlesque photos, the Everybody loves Hiem (featuring Pink Grease, Darlings of the Splitscreen, the Carol-Anne Showband and a tank) photos, both from last Saturday night, and especially the rather wonderful Pink Grease roller disco photos (also featuring the 80s Matchbox B-Line Disaster) and then head over to the photo galleries page and see what else is new.

Photos of photobooks

Published by Dan Sumption on May 24, 2007 in Books, Photographers and Photos. 0 Comments

I finally got around to taking some photos of my photobooks (all pages) and uploading them. Here they are: Ponderosa and Pernoctators.

Nuclear emergency response

Published by Dan Sumption on May 23, 2007 in Dan's Thoughts. 1 Comment

I picked up a rather cool shirt last week, from the vintage clothing store where Gill works:

Pickering Emergency Response Nuclear

Unfortunately, it only struck me after I had been wearing the shirt for a day that perhaps nuclear emergency workers’ clothing is not the best kind of thing to be buying second-hand. Does anybody have a Geiger counter that I could borrow?

Hal Wilner at the RFH

Published by Dan Sumption on May 23, 2007 in Music. 5 Comments

When I heard that Jarvis Cocker was curating this year’s Meltdown festival at the South Bank Centre, I got a little excited. Meltdown always throws up some interesting performances and collaborations, and although I usually manage to miss the entire caboodle, when I have made it along to the South Bank, it’s always been worth it: The Legendary Stardust Cowboy (performing as part of David Bowie’s Meltdown) was mindblowing (although Daniel Johnston, on the same bill, was much less so); Patti Smith’s Songs of Innocence was an extravaganze.

There are a few bands on Jarvis’s bill I would like to see - Motörhead would be nice (last saw them in 1989), Iggy and the Stooges even nicer (never seem ‘em), and although I’ve already seen Forced Entertainment’s Bloody Mess, I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing it again (although I imagine Gill would).

But generally speaking, it’s the collaborations and one-offs which make Meltdown special. And this year, the most special of these is without a doubt Hal Wilner’s Forest of No Return - an interpretation of the vintage Disney songbook. For a long time, Wilner’s Weird Nightmare, Meditations on Mingus was among my favourite albums, and I also love his work with Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs, and his tribute to Kurt Weill. Wilner always manages to put together incredibly disparate and interesting groups of musicians, along with downright bizarre arrangements, and to coax something interesting out of them. So his take on Disney is surely not to be missed.

Unfortunately, I am completely skint (no. Completely.), I won’t be in London at the time and certainly can’t afford the £22.50+ ticket price. But if you are in London and you can afford it, you should go.

I already know that!

Published by Dan Sumption on May 14, 2007 in Family Life and Funny. 1 Comment

From the mouths of babes… come a great many amusing, fascinating and enlightening utterances. I never seem to write many of them down here - something I regret because I know that most of them slip from memory all too easily, and I often beat myself up over my laxness when I read some of Scot’s bloggings on the sayings of his son Miles.

Rowan and even Lola are now pretty much too grown-up and sassy to come out with cute sayings. Almost. This weekend, Lola had her hair cut. “People at school kept telling me that I’ve had my hair cut”, she told Gill on her way back from school today. “But I already know that!”

Wawa river, Bacoor, Phillippines

Published by Dan Sumption on May 14, 2007 in In the News and Photography. 0 Comments

When it relaunched in its new Berliner format, the Guardian added a wonderful new feature, Eyewitness, which occupies the centre pages of most editions of the paper and fills the entire double-page spread with a single photograph. Some wonderful pictures have appeared in this slot, and they really benefit from the huge size (approximately the same as a 30″ x 20″ print).

Last Saturday was perhaps the most eye-grabbing I have seen yet - simultaneously fascinating, shocking, disgusting and thought provoking, with that added “WTF” factor which has one heading straight for the accompanying caption. The photo showed the head of a boy emerging from water among a flotilla of junk. It instantly prompted thoughts of death, bodies thrown up in some tsunami or other natural disaster, but this boy appeared very much alive, if rather wary of his surroundings. The caption read “Risking it all: A Filipino boy beats the heat in the Wawa river in Bacoor, south of Manila. Almost all major rivers in the region, Metro Manila, are now considered biologically dead”. The photograph is credited to Mike Alquinto/EPA.

I have searched online for a version of this photo, without success, but somebody has posted another photo obviously from the same set to Livejournal.

Take a Bad Song, and Make Things Better…

Published by Dan Sumption on May 12, 2007 in Dan's Thoughts and Music. 0 Comments

Stuart Faulkner, of The Barnacles/Pink Grease, has temporarily taken over the Barnacles Myspace page with some of his half-baked bedroom strummings. I love this kind of naïve music, and I love this first sentence of his accompanying blog post:

Here’s some songs up i wrote, they aren’t very good, but if you listen to them it will lower your expectations of how good music’s supposed to be and make the rest a far more pleasant experience in comparison!

Pink Grease roller disco photos

Published by Dan Sumption on May 9, 2007 in Photos. 0 Comments

Sorry to everyone who’s had to wait these last two weeks… but I finally got my Pink Grease and 80s Matchbox doo-dad Disaster photos sorted out. Enjoy!

And if you’re in Sheffield this weekend, please come and vist me - I am opening up my house and showing off my photos as part of Sheffield Open Up, details here. I’ll have all sorts of stuff for sale - photos, CDs, books, badges, postcards… - to fit all budgets as long as your budget’s somewhere in between 30p and £80, and I’ll also have free tea, coffee, herbal brews and lemonade.