ENO: MY SQUELCHY LIFE

Brian Eno's rare unreleased My Squelchy Life finally gets an official vinyl edition! Pressed as a double 12" album, the record will be available on Record Store Day April 18th, 2015. From the Press Release: "First time on vinyl for legendary ‘lost’ Brian Eno album My Squelchy Life. Originally slated for release on Warner Bros in September 1991 and pulled from the schedules at the last moment, in subsequent years it has been heavily bootlegged and entered the lexicon of Eno myth. In 2014 it received an official release as the bonus disc to the expanded All Saints edition of follow-up album Nerve Net. For this exclusive Record Store Day edition it is presented in a deluxe gatefold vinyl edition, including an additional track from the same recording session, “Rapid Eye”, that has never been heard before."

MUSIQUE CONCRETE

Art Pioneers celebrates Musique Concrete with this educational look at the BBC documentary The New Sound of Music (1979). Doctor Who fans take note!

DAVID BOWIE

Happy Birthday to David Bowie! Like many teenagers in early 1960s England, Bowie was inspired by American blues and R&B. He took up the saxophone and guitar and formed a string of bands that played blues and rock covers for parties and local entertainment. As a keen student of graphic design, art, and mime (!), his Mod beginnings transformed over the years as he explored areas of musical and theatrical production that we can now recognize as genre-defining outings (1960s Mod, folk-poet, 1970s glam, soul, experimental avant-garde, electronic, dance, 1980s pop, cyber punk, jungle, etc). If an artist is always in the state of becoming, Bowie has spent a lifetime pioneering the outer limits and sending back transmissions of things to come.

David Bowie stayed in the fast lane for forty years, releasing albums and pursuing his acting career, until a heart attack on stage in 2004 made him take stock. There was a nine-year hiatus with few appearances, and it looked like the limelight had been traded for quality time as a stay-at-home dad. He surprised everyone in 2013, however, with an outstanding new album called The Next Day, which was released during a flurry of Bowie-related art shows and a massive retrospective at the Victoria & Albert Museum. The V&A exhibit celebrating his career in music, fashion, graphic arts, fine art, and set design was captured in the illustrated book David Bowie Is. Now Bowie is 68- many happy returns! If his health is up to it, I hope to see him back on stage and recording new material. Collage illustration below by IFAN BATES.

Essential Current Video from The Next Day:

Related post on my Spy Vibe blog: Bowie Spies Berlin. My Bowie-Art image archive on Pinterest here. Essential Bowie: 

Movies: The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), The Hunger (1983), Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (1983), Labyrinth (1986), Basquait (1996), The Hunger (tv/1999-2000), The Prestige (2006).

Concerts/Videos/Docs: The Best of Bowie, Ziggy Stardust, Reality Tour, Storytellers, Under Review 1976-1979 The Berlin Trilogy, David Bowie Is Happening Now.

Albums: Hunky Dory (1971), Ziggy Stardust (1972), Diamond Dogs (1974), Young Americans (1975), Station to Station (1976), Low (1977), Heroes (1977), Lodger (1979), Scary Monsters (1980), Baal (1981), Outside (1995), Earthling (1997), VH1 Storytellers (2001), The Next Day (2013), Nothing Has Changed (career compilation/2014).

CLIVE BELL ON BIWA

Composer/writer Clive Bell contributed an interesting piece in The Wire recently that explores the biwa (medieval Japanese lute) and its role in avant-garde pieces by Toru Takemitsu and in the epic (and tragic!) songs of the Heike. I first heard the biwa in High School, when a teacher gave me Kabuki and Other Traditional Music by the Ensemble Nipponia (Nonesuch 1980). I then became fascinated by Takemitsu's scores for classic films like Kwaidan and Seppuku. There is an urgency and depth in biwa music that seems to echo that human experience of grief, when the throat closes up in gaps of silence and parcels out our urgent sounds in passionate spurts. More below.

Bell's article touches on an interesting note that the biwa performer, as a conduit for the epic, does not only address the living audience, but the dead as well. He quotes a Dubin student of biwa, Thomas Charles Marshall, who explains the music's haunting function: "The tradition of the lament in Japan, as I’ve come to perceive it, is a kind of requiem to appease spirits. So the Heike biwa is all about telling the story to quieten spirits that had died in a very difficult manner. Biwa hoshi [players], many of them blind, were described as living on the border line between life and death. Traditionally people who couldn’t see were regarded as dwelling between the land of the living and the land of the dead. So there’s this idea of the biwa being able to communicate with both worlds.” Read more at The Wire here. Below: The first biwa piece I heard as a young student, The Death of Atsumori, performed masterfully by Ayako Handa. Learn more: Guide to Toru Takemitsu at The Guardian, Clive Bell, Japan Society UK, Japan Society US, Christopher Yohmei Blasdel (shakuhachi), Music in Japan (Bonnie Wade), Composing Japanese Musical Modernity (Bonnie Wade), Japanese Music and Musical Instruments (William Malm).

DEVO THANKSGIVING

Welcome to Art Pioneers! As a writer/artist, I'm often inspired by the work of innovators like Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, David Byrne, Starn Twins, and many other creators from the visual and performing arts. Art Pioneers will spotlight old and new projects each day, and will feature original art and interviews as I can fit them into my schedule. Below: I created these DEVO-inspired cards for Thanksgiving, which feature vintage card designs and the band's famous energy domes. DEVO has always used their unique cartoony aesthetics to expose the absurdities, cruelty  and hypocrisy in society. Having an outsider view myself to many holiday traditions at this point, as well as being a pescetarian, I couldn't help twist this traditional iconography. Special thanks to the more than 100 DEVO pals and fans of Mark Mothersbaugh's artwork on Facebook for embracing and sharing these images. Enjoy and come back soon!