Night Of The Succubus

Just watched Night Of The Succubus... No, not a cheap re-titling of Jess Franco's 1968 film but a 40min film documenting a noisy and chaotic Factrix and Monte Cazzaza performance in San Francisco in 1981. Night Of The Succubus might be best described as a cross between Recording Heathen Earth and Sogo Ishii's Halber Mensch, complete with tape glitches, Super8 footage, random inserts (Manson, Sharon Tate naturally), and an appearance by one of Mark Pauline's bio-mechanical bastards (pictured below), summarily eviscerated and later bludgeoned by a freaked-out audience member wielding a folding-chair. The music is fantastic of course, Factrix' corrugated improv-noise anticipates The Dead C by several years and Monte Cazzaza brings along his collection of creepy tape loop cut-ups (one of which would feature predominantly on Psychic TV's Themes 2 album). Incidentally, I thought I spotted Tuxedomoon's Winston Tong milling around in the background, but I'm not so sure, the Tuxedos had probably relocated to Belgium by the time the film was shot. Night Of The Succubus is available as a supplemental DVD to the essential Factrix/Monte Cazzaza CD California Babylon. Industrial cabaret of the highest order.

Berlin Atonal

Berlin has not relinquished its grip on me just yet, I’m currently listening to Throbbing Gristle’s two consecutive nights at the SO36 Club in November 1980. Both concerts were heavily bootlegged over the years, most famously by the German Zensor label as the Funeral In Berlin LP featuring Val Denham’s great sleeve artwork. This was another album I was checking for among Berlin’s vinyl dealers but no luck. Of the two nights at the SO36, the November 8th show is the best and remains one of TG’s last great concerts, highly visceral and full of great invention with definitive readings of An Old Man Smiled, Something Came Over Me, and Discipline which I believe had its first performance on this night. The second appearance at the SO36 is less vital, the performance sounds frustrated and lacking focus but as on all TG nights there are moments of terrific psychick magick. Perhaps the group’s energy had been spent sightseeing in the dreary weather seen in the pics of TG at the Berlin Wall. The fantastic picture below is from one of the SO36 nights, courtesy of Richard Gleim and shared by the TG FB group.

Berlin IV - At the Wall / Holocaust Memorial

No trip to Berlin is complete without a visit to the Wall, and here is the longest surviving section of the outer wall at Niederkirchnerstrasse, adjacent to the Topography of Terror museum. The Wall itself is tattooed with fading graffiti and is pockmarked throughout, with some parts of the wall more distressed than others. In some places the granite has been chipped away to expose the steel cables, while other sections of the Wall have holes big enough to stick your head through. Running the expanse of the Wall as part of the Topography of Terror museum is an excellent outdoor photo exhibition detailing the rise and fall of the Third Reich. It's quite a powerful experience to stand before the Wall and read about Nazi crimes and I was particularly moved by a photo of a frightened young girl named Hildegard Martins who suffered from epilepsy and was murdered under the Euthanasia program. Standing there at the photo exhibition there's a particular charge knowing that the site was once a much feared Gestapo headquarters. The building was blown to bits during the war but the walls of the cellars which functioned as torture chambers remain intact...

*****

The following two photos are from part of the Topography of Terror museum which runs parallel to the wall on a lover lever

A striking poster directing residents to quench their lights during Allied aerial bombing raids. The caption: Der Feind sieht dein Licht - Verdunkeln! translates as The enemy sees your light - black out!

Six-year old Hildegard Martins who suffered from epilepsy was diagnosed with "idiocy" and murdered as part of the Nazi euthanasia program. It's almost impossible to grasp the full extent of the Nazi murder machine but looking at this picture of Hildegard, a frightened little girl whose life was so callously rubbed out, the horror of it all becomes extraordinarily vivid and shocking.

*****

From the Wall, it was onward to the Holocaust Memorial near the Brandenburg Gate... From the sidewalk, the Memorial looks like rows of 2001-style monoliths lying flat but once inside the grid, the floor under your feet dips and the concrete slabs or stelae suddenly grow tall. It's a disorientating effect but the Memorial's abstract design is powerful without being sentimental - inside the maze I had that frisson of being lost and separated. The picture taken below is lifted from my wife's collection, Irene's shot of the canyon effect is better balanced than mine and it's worth saying that this was the trickiest photograph of the weekend to get right as fellow visitors were constantly passing in and out of view...

Berlin III - At Hansa

This unassuming building found on a side street off Potsdamer Platz is none other than Hansa Studios or Hansa By the Wall, the legendary studio that is home to some of my favourite albums. Bowie recorded parts of Low, the entire "Heroes" album and the Baal EP here, Tangerine Dream cut Force Majeure, a faulty Hansa mixing desk resulting in the famous bass distortion effect on Thru Metamorphic Rock, Einstürzende Neubauten made a racket with Halber Mensch, Nick Cave recorded the Mutiny EP with The Birthday Party and later returned with the Bad Seeds, and Depeche Mode mixed the great trio of albums Construction Time Again, Some Great Reward and Black Celebration at the Hansa. The building's facade has remained largely the same as when Bowie recorded here but the neighborhood no longer has that grim Cold War atmosphere that fed into the writing of "Heroes", and that view of the illicit rendezvous Bowie saw Tony Visconti make with a German girl standing by the Wall is now gone. Studio tours are available but require advance booking, unfortunately I only got as far as the door...

Berlin II - At Mauerpark flea market

Meeting some Berlin Residents (via San Francisco) at the Mauerpark flea market this afternoon... The majority of shops in the city, from huge department stores to small boutiques are closed on Sundays so Berliners head to the dozen or so flea markets dotted around the city. The Mauerpark market had plenty of vintage vinyl dealers (and not a CD in sight at any of them) but prices were very much in tune with what you might pay on say Discogs. If the term Krautrock is now considered rather derogatory, the dealers at Mauerpark had no such concern, every stall I visited had prominently named "Krautrock" sections, with lots of Tangerine Dream, Can, Birth Control, Guru Guru, Agitation Free, La Düsseldorf, and endless copies of the German Rock Scene compilation series. I was reaching for my wallet after finding copies of the ever elusive Kraftwerk 1 and 2 and Ralf and Florian but on closer inspection these were not the original Philips issues but very good facsimiles pressed in more recent times. Sadly, the one thing I was was prepared to hand over the cash for, a copy of Bowie's Helden 7" (with picture sleeve) was not to be found...

Berlin I - At the Victory Column

Today’s entry comes from Berlin, and we’ve spent a wonderful day strolling around the city taking in the sights. This afternoon, we left the teeming masses (and a jubilant wedding party) swarming around the Brandenburg Gate and made a pilgrimage to the Victory Column, which might be better known as the monument where Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander hang out in Wings of Desire, perched on the shoulder of Goldelse. The column sits on an island amid swirling traffic but is accessible by four tunnels. After paying the €3 entry fee, we made the trek to the top of the column which spans 285 steps, via a narrow winding staircase. The views from the top are spectacular but the climb is best recommended for folks who are physically fit. Still there are seats along the way to catch your breath so it’s entirely do-able at a leisurely pace. Incidentally the walk down to the Victory Column is rather splendid, the majestic wide tree-lined avenue takes about 20mins at a nice pace and I could imagine Kraftwerk’s side-long Autobahn would make a most satisfactory companion.

One quick note on this picture, which is a little self-consciously arty. I’m rather fond of photographing things with the sun behind them such is my love for Monique Froese’s photograph that adorns the cover of Tangerine Dream’s Ricochet album, so I couldn’t resist grabbing this one!

Rembrandt

Below Rembrandt's great painting The Syndics of the Drapers' Guild... The Dutch master's 1662 painting has been on my mind this week after I made a slightly embarrassing slip-up at the weekend. I was leaving a car inspection center and unwittingly stepped into a staff canteen rather than taking the adjacent exit door. As I popped my head in the door a gang of mechanics attending to their morning coffee looked at me with bewilderment before I made my apologies and a beeline for door number two. Thinking about the blunder afterwards, Rembrandt's painting came to mind with its suggestion that some interloper has intruded upon a meeting of a Clothmakers Guild. I love the dynamism of the painting, the figure, third from left, seated at the table with his hand open as if to demand an explanation for the intrusion, and more dramatic still, the gentleman second from left who appears to be getting up perhaps to eject the unwanted visitor. I was lucky enough to see this wonderful (and large) painting at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam a few years ago, and if you're in town I'd highly recommend spending an afternoon browsing the museum's Rembrandts, but failing that Wikipedia has a very good collection with some impressively large scans including The Syndics of the Drapers' Guild

The Well-Tuned Piano

Listening to the first hour of La Monte Young’s magnum opus The Well-Tuned Piano - four hours left to go so my morning’s listening is laid out before me… This is another huge favourite of mine that is crying out for a CD re-issue, although I won’t hold my breath given Young’s disinterest in issuing his work on CD or any other format. Fortunately I have an excellent quality mp3 rip of the album but I miss out on the album’s liner notes and the beautiful cover photo taken at the Lower Manhattan Dream House building draped in Marian Zazeela’s signature magenta lighting and featuring La Monte Young at the piano. The Well-Tuned Piano was last issued on CD way back in 1987 on the Gramavision label, packaged in a 12” box housing the 5 CDs and a large 24-page booklet. Copies of the set are out there but are prohibitively expensive to buy and more often than not the boxes are beaten up from shelf ware. The best copy currently for sale on Discogs is going for €746. Just once I’d like to wander into a used record store and find this in the racks of the unsellables for a few quid...

I very much like Marian Zazeela's calligraphy which adorns the front cover of The Well-Tuned Piano. A quick google search has led me to gallery of Marian Zazeela posters designed for Dream House events, and featuring her distinctive and beautiful calligraphic style. I rarely write anything by hand these days apart from the odd bit of paperwork that needs to be filled out so these designs are something to savor. Some examples... and more here

Tuxedomoon revisit Blue Velvet

Winding down my day listening to Blue Velvet Revisited, Tuxedomoon and Cult With No Name's instrumental soundtrack to Peter Braatz's forthcoming documentary on David Lynch's masterpiece. Collaborative albums are often fraught with danger, but the marriage of Tuxedomoon's cinematic moods with Cult With No Name's electronic textures works remarkably well. All this has given me a fierce urge to see Lynch's film again but I've resisted pulling my DVD of the shelf and instead have ordered the US Blu. I'm always slow to upgrade my DVDs but the Blu's 52mins of deleted footage has swung it for me. In the meantime, in lieu of the Blue Velvet Revisited documentary I'm trying to track down the director's earlier study of the film, No Frank in Lumberton. Be sure to catch the trailer for Blue Velvet Revisited here

Twenty-Four Hours

Tape porn courtesy of Industrial Records and the original 24 Hours boxset briefcase from 1980 comprising 24 cassettes of live Throbbing Gristle music plus 2 additional cassettes of the group interviewed for radio (circa 1978 I suspect).

From the Discogs page: "Initially offered for £77 for the UK, £80 for Europe and £82 for the rest of the world. By the time of the 1980/81 mail order catalog, each set retailed for £88 (for UK and Europe) or £99 for the rest of the world (postage paid)"

In January 2015, a complete set with the inserts and signed ephemera sold on eBay for £1,131.00 (+£48.80 p&p)...