Iain Cameron's Diary
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2002-07-05 - 5:30 a.m.

At work Ashley asked if I could make it to an intergovernmental brainstorm in the Hague next Thursday. I'll try and squeeze this in. I wonder if it will be possible to integrate some Vemeers or seeing Gilbert? We also had a meeting with Andrew Graves from Bath - the possibility of a conference at MIT in September emerged. Mustn't grumble.

I gave Andrew a copy of my Cz stuff - LENAM agreed to let me have some comments on this.

I am going doing through the strata of acquired books and papers. I got to a volume on Cultural Analysis which seeks to introduce the work of Mary Douglas, Habermas, Foucault and the Bergers. I bought this about the same time that James was born. I discovered Habermas at Sussex in the early 1970s and took Foucault's the History of Sexuality with me on my honeymoon approx 10 years later - that usually gets a laugh. The Bergers have written some great stuff about bureaucratic rationality, religion, marriage and the family. Mary Douglas was the great guru when I worked at the University of Edinburgh and of the four I would say that she is probably the hardest to understand - the guys in the Science Studies Unit certainly baffled me and I was meant to making their stuff more accessible to the rest of the world.

I sent Ayesha a copy of Plundafonix and listened to the three pieces that are especially relevant to her interests. The Sufi chant has slipped out of my field of vision and I kind of thought of it as a filler - but listening again I thought it was OK - I quite like the blend of instruments and the mixture of togetherness and adhocness. Its preceded by a drone piece which I have always liked - it was the first time I spent a lot of effort constructing a drone from different sound sources and processes - it sounds easy I expect. But I like the scale that emerged partly from playing it with AK - an element of this scale is in the instructions for Fifths. And then there is a piece which is also based on whole number ratio fifths which just appeared one Saturday morning when I discovered a cassette that I'd made just in case and added a loop from the start of a related piece. Anyway one half of me worries that these three pieces coming together on the CD are too introverted.

There is a strong thematic element to the CD - it wears its theme on its slieve so to speak. I know the content of the theme may well provoke hostility and there's a sense in which thats as deliberate as making the image of Myra Hindley with children's handprints. My "excuse" is partly that it was a Lenten endeavour and that I was genuinely involved in the material. I certainly wonder whether I shouldn't have edited it back a bit - one of the roles of a producer is to get that kind of thing in balance- and so one of the perils of self-production is getting it out of balance. But the odd thing at the moment is an urge to keep on working with that particular theme and garage beats - especially in terms of taking thematic elements - say an ascending phrase of two tone steps and semitone - and letting that lead into quite distant keys. There is an awsome precedent for this in the first section of A Love Supreme.

I started listening to Ayesha's music - there are some great drone sounds all of which are produced acoustically.

I got an e-mail from the people who produce the big rock family tree about Cambridge music which was quite positive. Also one from Robin about the big new ND amalgamation of bootlegs which is under discussion in the newsgroup. I have just read a post from Suellen Holland who written a novel called River Man - she lives on the outskirts of Nashville.

I can't wait Mark's extreme treatment of Fifths - I certainly know that feeling where you feel provoked to take a radical step with someone else's stuff and you wonder if you have gone too far. Keep up the good work would be my response.

I listened to Music For Airports on the train home. I liked it a great deal - much more than on other hearings. The content seemed more luminous than before

Mark's CDs arrived and I immediately loaded up a quick shuffle - maybe 108 bpm? Its only just over 1 minute long but I think its such fun. Can't keep my hands off it but must be careful not to do anything drastic. I think its a kind of parody - it reminds me a bit of the Flying Lizards "Money" - well it is about money and status as far as I can tell.

Constant pre-occupation with ones own work can easily strike a reader as self-absorption I am sure. Its inherent in these kinds of projects I rather suspect. One of the things that struck me in the 1990s when I was reading about how artists regarded their studios was that the studio is the place where the work is constantly confronted - in fair weather and foul. You can make an audio piece and record it (or write it) and just leave it to get on with whatever is going to happen to it. Paul has a song which is rather in this territory at the end of his Seachanges CD and when I reviewed I took issue with it. The element self reappraisal through the "finished" work makes much more sense to me.

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