Iain Cameron's Diary
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2002-08-30 - 6:58 a.m.

Jon Cole has been working hard on http://www.rekindle.co.uk/ - which is mostly about his band The Movies. This site is very funny and Jon�s sense of style comes across. Nice to think that the Doctorate on ancient Greek pottery isn�t going to waste.

I was looking for his article on the death of Sandy Denny which is masterly � he seems to have taken it off for some reason. Anyway I mailed him asking if he would let me have a copy for www.kwase-kwaza.org. Hard to explain exactly why this piece is so right for the site in my view � I suppose its something to do with the wasteful perversity of things.

Anyway with Peter�s new release on KK we are getting a volume surge � good that this is timed with our Google listing. Robin has provided some very useful feedback on the way that the site is developing � also I got a supportive e-mail from Jeroen who directed a Skin Too Few plus one from one of Paul Bell�s one time partners, Maggie Redfern � who sits on the Broadcasting Standards Council (modesty forbids!). She acted the lead in Poison Glue � a Nick Totton rock musical about the emergence of feminism. I have often wondered why Nick got himself into such an ironically vulnerable posture on that one. I just stuck to mixing the music. Besides the ongoing Pheasant extravaganza, Stoney Ground, there were all kinds of creations in the golden era � Jon C wrote Two Voices for example � for which I remember writing elaborate flute arrangements for Clive Bell and myself. Clive often writes in The Wire very authoritatively these days.

On the domestic front, Yvonne and Jake have gone to Woodbridge just North of Ipswich to help with her mother � who was born in the First World War � and is having an operation any second. That leaves Vita and James in my tender care � actually I am doing a delicious chicken curry for them tonight.

I listened through to Plundafonix yesterday morning on the train � various reasons. I had been listening to a little compilation I did for a Japanese trip in early 2001 and had found various things that I had forgotten about. Also I decided that I needed to do some documentation on Fifths � and I wanted to listen to HORN UNDER WATER from Plundafonix which is a kind of antecedent in that its about drones and keys which are separated by a major third and features semitone steps. Also I had heard an excellent interview by Helen Mayhew with an upandcoming sax player called, I think, Chris Borden � who had been educated at Trinity and is crossing electronica and jazz.

For long while I had anxieties about the last half of the CD. Some feedback has reassured me � especially from Gilbert Isbin on HUW but also from Ayesha on the successor Sufi based track. Between these two is a track which appeared very quickly and which uses loops, pure fifths and a very low line from My Back Pages which I am pretty certain about. If you add the Isbin piece Blossoms and the My Funny Valentine derivative which gets occaisional mentions then maybe I can relax. I ought to just add that I have no doubts whatsoever about Fellthru, Cathy, Paul or Robin�s stuff which makes up the first half. I probably ought to be thinking of some marketing ploys on the CD now.

Anyway I started out on explaining Fifths and more or less got to the point when the backing track was done � although that took more explaining than I anticipated � partly because not only is there the theory but there�s the practice too � using a customised patch on the Cz101. This could turn into quite a long article, especially if I also bottle on about the post Fifths pieces. Talking about �droning on� � I came across an interesting site called Droneon as I was looking for material to explain the importance of drone music � an interesting article about Davy Graham which I immediately appropriated for KK � explains that he is part Negro (from Guyana) part Amerindian and partly Gaelic being born on the Isle of Skye. The article actually suggests that some of it could be genetic on this basis

I took the version of The Last Eleven Bars from the Tokyo CD and put it into Cubase and put a little guitar on the end � Fender Tweed Combo with a fair wallop of gain � some free tonality blues licks � I suppose this whole genre comes from Trout Mask Replica. The lesson might be that the effort comes not in actually doing it but in thinking about it before and after and editing and selecting. I listened through to Approximately Four Minutes � I think this very much at the thinking and editing stage.

Deleuze delights � he was working through his �folding� core concept � and started to toy with Mallarme. Robin and Mark know this stuff better than me � I think there is a poem with an empty bed and the wind billowing the curtain into the room? I also think that it has kept Boulez going on a piece for about thirty years. Anyway he starts on about Clerambault who photographs veiled Muslim women � whose work I don�t know. D suggests that despite what has been said this oeuvre is more than just driven by base motives:

�If Clerambault manifests a delirium it is because he discovers the tiny hallucinatory perceptions of ether addicts in the folds of clothing. It falls upon formal deduction to straddle many diverse materials and areas. It will have to distinguish between simple and composite folds � hems � knots and seams being corollaries of the fold � drapes and their proppings. Only then will ensue textures, and finally agglomeration - felt as fulling not weaving. Now lets see to what extent this deduction is properly Baroque and Leibnizian.�

Well there�s something to keep in mind for the trying periods the next time one is dragged along to John Lewis� household fabrics department.

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