Nimbin Dreaming

I first tracked to Nimbin when I was a kid, maybe 8 or 9 years old, with my family. By that time in my life I was used to bearded men smoking big cigarettes and women who smelt of patchouli. Nimbin is situated in northern NSW, Australia and today is internationally famous as alternative lifestyle center and hang out for Euro backpackers seeking exotic times. Nimbin Heads was shot between 8.30 in the morning and 8.30 at night in one day. I recognise a couple of characters in this film,

Dreamscapes

Dreamscapes: Visions of the Australian bush.

Building

Construction and deconstruction of surfaces.

Video: Endre Tveitan
Audio: Lars Lervik

Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman

Grigori Yakovlevich Perelman (Russian: Григорий Яковлевич Перельман), born 13 June 1966 in Leningrad, USSR (now St. Petersburg, Russia), sometimes known as Grisha Perelman, is a Russian mathematician who has made landmark contributions to Riemannian geometry and geometric topology. In particular, it appears that he has proven Thurston's geometrization conjecture. If so, this solves in the affirmative the famous Poincaré conjecture, posed in 1904 and regarded as one of the most important and difficult open problems in mathematics. In August 2006, Perelman was awarded the Fields Medal, which is widely considered to be the top honor a mathematician can receive. However, he declined to accept the award or appear at the congress. What is he doing now? Apparently living with his mother and playing video games.

Society of the Spectacle (La Société du spectacle)

The 1973 film by French Situationist Guy Debord, based on the 1967 book of the same title, shows the dominating oppression of modernization of both the private and public spheres of everyday life by economic forces. The hegemonic mass media operates as a propaganda machine in both communist and capitalist nations and creates commodity fetishism in the minds of the masses.

The Goodies

From the age about 8 (1977) I watched The Goodies religiously. I like to think it had a profound effect on me:

Ah Pook is here

When I become Death, Death is the seed from which I grow...

Itzama, spirit of early mist and showers.
Ixtaub, goddess of ropes and snares.
Ixchel, the spider web, catcher of morning dew.
Zooheekock, virgin fire patroness of infants.
Adziz, the master of cold.
Kockupocket, who works in fire.
Ixtahdoom, she who spits out precious stones.
Ixchunchan, the dangerous one.
Ah Pook, the destroyer.

An Animation directed by Phillip Hunt
Narrated by William Burroughs.

Kenneth Anger's Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969)

This is an 11-minute film directed, edited, and photographed by Kenneth Anger. The music was composed by Mick Jagger playing a Moog synthesizer. It was filmed in San Francisco at the Straight Theater on Haight Street and the William Westerfeld House (the former "Russian Embassy" nightclub).

According to Kenneth Anger, the film was assembled from scraps of the first version of Lucifer Rising. It includes clips of the cast smoking out of a skull, and the publicly filmed Satanic funeral ceremony for a pet cat.

Invocation of My Demon Brother won the tenth Film Culture award for Kenneth Anger.

Brian Springer - Spin

Using the 1992 presidential election as his springboard, documentary filmmaker Brian Springer captures the behind-the-scenes maneuverings of politicians and newscasters in the early 1990s. Pat Robertson banters about "homos," Al Gore learns how to avoid abortion questions, George Bush talks to Larry King about halcyon -- all presuming they're off camera. Composed of 100% unauthorized satellite footage, Spin is a surreal expose of media-constructed reality.

The Cut Ups

Experimental film, from the collection of William S. Burroughs - The Cut-Up Films. Writing by Antony Balch, story by William S. Burroughs. 1966

via http://www.ubu.com/film/burroughs.html

Syd Barrett is Dead

Syd Barrett has been dead for a while. Roger Barrett, who was Syd, died a few days ago. Not much will change with his passing for me or the many who liked the music but this is a tribute to a truly great artist.

"Suddenly the rush of the mighty great thunder,
confronted Swan Lee as his song he sang,
In the dawn, with his squaw, he was battling homewards
It was all written down by Long Silas Lang.

The land in silence stands...
The land in silence stands...
The land in silence stands."

Swan Lee (Silas Lang) 1968

Silas is the name of my son, born 14th April 2000.

Fantastic Planet

Trippy French animated film from 1973. This time done with sounds by aphex twin, venetian snares, prefuse 73, matmos, clue to kalo.

Clann An Drumma, Scottish Tribal Music

Clann An Drumma - Culloden

My mother arrived today from Edinburgh with tales of the vibrant and busy city. In honour of my Scots blood (of the clan Gordon) I give you Clann An Drumma. Scottish Tribal Music!

Clann An Drumma, Scots Gaelic for "Children of the Drum" is a tribal band from Glasgow, Scotland. Clann An Drumma was formed by Joe Kilna MacKenzie, Jacquie Holland and Tu-Bardh Stormcrow Wilson among others. Like many other bands, their line-up has changed over the years.

Their music involves heavy use of percussion (namely traditional Scottish drums) and Highland bagpipes with an emphasis on the more traditional "tribal" sounds of ancient Scotland. The band's motto is "Keep it Tribal".

One of their more well-known pieces is "Sgt. MacKenzie". It was composed by Joe MacKenzie in memory of his great grandfather, Charles Stuart MacKenzie, who died in battle during World War I. "Sgt. MacKenzie" is perhaps a departure from their normal style, as its drumming and piping are subdued and it is primarily a vocal piece. It was featured in the soundtrack to the 2002 film, We Were Soldiers. To date the band has released a total of seven albums.

Joe Kilna MacKenzie died after a long illness, on 28 April 2009. RIP Joe.

More from Clann An Drumma here.

Rhzome #1

Rhizome #1 is about a squatted art and community space that took place in Brighton in january 2001. It was orgainised by an anarchist collective called SPOR, which developed from the original Spiral Tribe founders with a focus of providing active spaces of freedom within local communities, based on the thought that "without somewhere to be free then freedom is nothing more than an abstract. They base their activities on a method of action that draws inspiration from Hakim Bey's concept of 'temporary autonomous zones' and from a Deleuzian notion of the rhizome which they put into action. They consciously organise a network that does not attempt to maintain a permanent political presence but which rather appears at indeterminate intervals, inspired by the mushroom which fruits intermittently on the basis on an ongoing mycelium. Their experiments inspire and spread this network of ideas, people, connections and actions.
Directed by Matt Lee the film was made by Indifference Productions and Weigh In, Way Out Productions, independent film-makers active in Brighton, UK.

Iraq. The Hidden Story

This is not a video you should watch if you find blood, death, cruelty and violence disturbing. It is a British report from early May 2006 of what is going on in Iraq. This is a horrific situation and it is not getting better. The Vietnam war was stopped because of what the families of the United States saw on their television news broadcasts. Such journalists as Neil Davis risked (and ultimately lost) their lives trying to show what war does to people. Ninety three journalists and media assistants have been killed since the start of fighting in Iraq in March 2003, two are still missing.

A Thanksgiving Prayer

William S Burroughs (1914-1998) gives us his own Thanskgiving prayer.

Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shit out through wholesome
American guts.

Boredoms Live 1993

I have been a fan of the Boredoms since Pop Tatari in 1993. It was as if someone had given you a new perception of the world. We listened to these strange sounds like children seeing a rainbow for the first time. But the rainbow was not an orderly and organized band of colors but rather an infectious rash that caused you to question all accepted laws of reality. We giggled maniacally as we struggled to keep up with each soaring scream and chattering chord. Up to this point the Texas psychonauts the Butthole Surfers had been my perimeter of the musical trance portal but when I dived into boretronics everything else sonic seemed like a military march by comparison. Yamataka Eye is a shaman here to heal us all of ourselves. We B*O*R*E!!!!!

Fursaxa

Fursaxa is Tara Burke or vice versa. This video from the Lantern Theatre in Sheffield sometime 2005. Thirteen minutes of Fursaxa magik....

Remembering Derrida

Pink Floyd Live 1973 (complete concert)

Earls Court Exhibition Hall 

May 18,1973

Village Sunday (1960)

Its 1960 and a Summer Sunday in Greenwich Village New York. 'Bohemians' grab your bongos and get down to Washington Square and play hard. What is amazing about this 12 minute film is in 1960 it was already 10 years since the original beats had done all this. The crowd moves quick in modern culture.

Government and Privacy in the Digital Age

I pause in my video tribute to counter culture figures of the postmodern west to bring you 'Government and Privacy in the Digital Age'. A presentation by the Open Rights Group's Sue Charman and T J McIntyre at Trinity College Dublin 24th Feb 2006. The topics include "ID cards, data retention, the national vehicle tracking database and children’s privacy."

Pull My Daisy (1959)

Pull My Daisy from Altarwise on Vimeo.

Pull My Daisy is a 1959 (the same year as Burroughs' Naked Lunch was published, Keoruac's On the Road was published in 1957) short film that typifies the Beat Generation. Directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, Daisy was adapted by Jack Kerouac from a stage play he never finished titled The Beat Generation. Kerouac also provided improvised narration. It starred Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Larry Rivers, Peter Orlovsky, David Amram, Richard Bellamy, Alice Neel, Sally Gross and Pablo Frank, Robert Frank's then-infant son.

Based on an incident in the life of Neal Cassady and his wife Carolyn, Daisy tells the story of a railway brakeman whose painter wife invites a respectable bishop over for dinner. However, the brakeman's bohemian friends crash the party.

The Beat philosophy emphasized spontaneity, and the film conveyed the quality of having been thrown together or even improvised. Pull My Daisy was accordingly praised for years as an improvisational masterpiece, until Leslie revealed in a November 28, 1968 article in the Village Voice that the film was actually carefully planned, rehearsed, and directed by him and Frank, who shot the film on a professionally lit studio set.

Bob and John

Welcome to the Soul Vlog.
Our first video is a taxi ride with Bob Dylan and John Lennon in 1966: