Archive for September, 2007
Italian review of the Fire Dept’s Elpee for Another Time (dual text)
Here’s an undated review of the Fire Dept’s Elpee for Another Time by Luca Castelli in Creative Kicks, free and legal downloads – 24, a part of Kataweb, an Italian music site. I’ve put the Italian version first, followed by my English translation.
Italian
Creative Kicks, download libero e legale - 24: In Rete la “riscoperta” dei Fire Dept. […], a cura di Luca Castelli
Creative Kicks è il nostro viaggio in Rete nella musica da scaricare legalmente. Ogni settimana una selezione di artisti italiani e internazionali che hanno scelto di rendere disponibili le loro opere sul web permettendone il download gratuito, seguendo la filosofia Creative Commons.
Creative Commons è un’associazione no profit nata nel 2001 per volere del professor Lawrence Lessig, ordinario della facoltà di Giurisprudenza di Stanford e riconosciuto come uno dei massimi esperti di diritto d’autore negli Stati Uniti. Creative Commons si è posta la missione di studiare una forma flessibile di licenza che tuteli sì la proprietà intellettuale, ma che allo stesso tempo renda possibile la massima diffusione del frutto della creatività liberandolo dai tanti cavilli che ne limitano la diffusione quando esso è mero oggetto destinato alla vendita.
L’artista che sottoscrive la speciale licenza Creative Commons mantiene la proprietà intellettuale sui suoi dischi ma permette a chiunque di scaricare, copiare, diffondere i file delle sue canzoni purché tali azioni non siano a scopo di lucro.
Fire Dept — Elpee For Another Time
Non sono in molti ad aver capito che le licenze Creative Commons potrebbero essere un ottimo strumento per riportare alla luce vecchi dischi dimenticati. Album che magari hanno goduto di un magico (e breve) periodo d’esposizione per poi finire nelle vetrinette dei collezionisti e nel limbo dei dischi condannati al fuori-catalogo eterno (perché ristamparli non converrebbe neanche al più generoso dei filantropi). E’ il caso di Elpee For Another Time, seconda fatica degli inglesi Fire Dept., riportato alla luce dalla netlabel LedaTape.
Il disco non è neanche troppo vecchio, è stato inciso nel 1996. Ma quella data potrebbe essere benissimo frutto di un errore, di un’inversione, di un’usurpazione ai danni del 1969. In Elpee For Another Time si respira infatti aria di garage, punk primordiale, beat e psichedelia. Ascoltando la trascinante “Walking In The Sun” sembra di essere a San Francisco nei giorni della missione di Neil Armstrong sulla luna. E la chitarra di “Sean Breeze” ci riporta addirittura più indietro, a un ipotetico melting pot tra i Ventures e la fragrante e polverosa atmosfera dei primi spaghetti western.
Anche la qualità del suono ci mette del suo: nel 1996 c’era già chi giocava bene con computer ed elettronica, ma Elpee For Another Time sa di vinile, di macchine analogiche, di passatismo esistenziale e consapevole. Una gemma piccola piccola che può regalare emozioni grandi grandi. Quante altre ce ne saranno in giro, che implorano silenziosamente di essere riscoperte e distribuite ad orecchie assetate?
English
The “rediscovery” of the Fire Dept on the internet […], by Luca Castelli
Creative Kicks is a journey through music on the internet, searching for legal downloads. Every week it looks at a selection of Italian and international artists who have chosen to make their works available on the web, allowing free downloads, following the philosophy of Creative Commons. Creative Commons is a not-for-profit association started in 2001 by Professor Lawrence Lessig of the Faculty of Jurisprudence of Stanford, who is one of the major experts on copyright in the United States. The mission of Creative Commons is to study a flexible form of licence that protects intellectual property, but at the same time allows the maximum possible spread of creative fruit, freeing it from the many quibbles that limit the spread when it is merely destined to be an object for sale.
Artists who underwrite the special Creative Commons licence keep the intellectual property on their discs, but allow anyone to download, copy and diffuse their songs, provided that such actions are not for profit.
Not many have understood that the Creative Commons License could be the optimal instrument to bring old, forgotten discs back to the light. Even an album that has enjoyed a magical (and short) period of exposure only to end in the collector’s display cabinet and the limbo of discs condemned to the eternal outside-catalogue (because even the most generous philanthrope would not repress them). In the case of Elpee For Another Time, the second hard work of English group, the Fire Dept, it has been brought back to the light by the netlabel, LedaTape.
Fire Dept — Elpee For Another Time
The disc is not even so old, having been recorded in 1996. But that date could very well be the fruit of an error, a reversal or a usurpation of the damages of 1969. In Elpee For Another Time, one breathes the air of garage, primordial punk, beat and psychedelia. Listening to the enthralling “Walking In The Sun”, it seems to sing of being in San Francisco in the days of Neil Armstrong’s mission on the moon. And the guitar of “Sean Breeze” really takes us back to an imaginary melting pot, mixing The Ventures in the fragrant, dust-cloud atmosphere of the first spaghetti westerns.
Also, the quality of the sound positions it: in 1996 there were already enough people playing with computers and electronics well, but Elpee For Another Time knows about vinyl and about analogue contraptions and is conscious of existentialism and aware of antiquarianism. A tiny, tiny gem that can give great, great emotions. How many people will in their turn silently implore others in the future to rediscover it and redistribute it to thirsty ears?
Translator’s note:
I’ve translated “passatismo” as “antiquarianism”, which I think gives a flavour of its usage in context, which I reckon is probably a contemporary reappropriation of Franco Moretti’s neologism for a worn out, passive, aesthetic, traditionalist view of culture.
Posted by Neil
on September 10, 2007 at 10:22 am
Tags: Creative Commons, Fire Dept, antiquarianism
1 comment | Permalink
Vinh Linh Steel Bastion (1970)
I’ve just remembered a great film. Search for Luy Thep Vinh Lin or Vinh Linh Steel Bastion (1970), a great North Vietnamese propaganda film about the much-bombed area of Vinh Linh. It was directed by — I think — Ngoc Quynh and was otherwise known in English as Vinh Linh Steel Ramparts. I caught it when it was shown on TV in the early 1990s and it had a profound effect on me.
It must have been good, because it won Gold Lotus prize at the 2nd Vietnamese film festival, 1973 and Gold Medal at the 1971 Moscow international film festival. Read more about Vietnamese films from 1945 to 1975.
“Vinh Linh had no defences. It had no steel ramparts or automated protection. It didn’t even have barbed wire.”
Posted by Neil
on September 10, 2007 at 9:48 am
Tags: Film, Vietnam
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Rockhaunter — Hauntiquarianism, Dubjectivity & Fictive Counter-Intelligence
Tomorrow’s the start of Rockhaunter. Your No. 1 Guide to Hauntiquarianism, Sound and Vision.
I’ve suppressed Rockhunter. I did so on the last day of August — symbolically, the end of summer, which has become a time of musical replay for those intending to become culturally colder in the sunshine. I decided not to become evidence for a cultural-historical trend. It became clear that, without my saying otherwise, the fictivities, soundings, silent screaming and auto-arguments in Rockhunter could be taken for a drift towards the sort of repetition that elides simultaneity and absence. That is not so. I’ve pressed the constant play button on my cassette player; I made the CD replay over and over again; and iTunes is only going through all my fave tracks again because I issued it instructions to do so.
In case there’s any residual doubt, I am doing this on purpose.
On reading various blogs and things, mainly ones dealing with hauntology — the past/present — in popular sound and vision, and noting some convergency or cultural consensus in the fields, streams and spaceways, I have become more and more convinced of the power of divergency, immanent or otherwise. There’s also a growing tendency to regard hidden histories and forgotten acts as prototypes, powerful potential emetics that, if injected into culture, would blast it to pieces. There’s a sense in which regarding old radicalisms might help societies choose, in retrospect, which divergent path their cultures preferred!
Hidden histories and forgotten acts are currently doing their work, both now and then; they are neither revivable ganglia nor spent shells. Like travel writing generally — especially psychogeography — time travel writing tells us nothing, except whether the writer approves of how things turned out. Adducing historical acts and activisms is a notary’s game. It’s not for we poets.
In case you were wondering, I am happy to create false music, unnatural fictions and to field dubjective responses, and to make it funny.
To be a hauntiquary — a divergent amateur civilian — in an age of academic professionalism and convergency is as exciting as it is valueless, and perhaps even worthless. Rest assured I won’t shirk or dodge the task at hand. Hauntiquarian sounds won’t make themselves.
I’m starting again. It begins again tomorrow, from Issue 1, as Rockhaunter. Your No. 1 Guide to Hauntiquarianism, Sound and Vision.
Posted by Neil
on September 5, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Tags: Music, hauntiquarianism, hauntology
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Confessions of a hauntiquary
I’ve just searched on Google and found that the first hits for hauntiquarian and hauntiquarianism are on Feastofpalmer.com.
The history of these words is beginning. I am pleased to introduce them.
Posted by Neil
on September 4, 2007 at 2:45 pm
Tags: hauntiquarianism, hauntology
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Fire Dept — Late Development
Since I wrote a Wikipedia entry for the Fire Dept, downloads of my recordings made available through LedaTape, my online music distributor in Melbourne, Australia, have shot through the roof, after a couple of years of shifting ones and twos a week.
The Fire Dept’s first LP, L’Oeuf d’Or (1995) has been downloaded 916 times, a massive increase from the 350 or so downloads in May this year, and the second one, Elpee for Another Time (1996), has been earholed 1,053 times, more than doubling the May total. The third, The History of Fen Punk Vol. III (2003), has been grabbed 2,031 times, more than quadrupling the 500-ish downloads logged in May.
The LedaTape releases of the Cormorant Cassingles collection (2005) have increased too, since the Fire Dept wiki, the star attraction being the White Ape/Threshold People split cassingle, “Can’t Stop The Want I Got For You, Babe” b/w “No Place” (Crmrnt-4, Nov. 2004), which has been downloaded 920 times.
Posted by Neil
on September 4, 2007 at 11:24 am
Tags: Fire Dept, Music
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