☀ URGENT ! ☀ as a result of the intensifying connection of sun, heat, and twilight evenings, the LOCKDOWNTIME newsletter committee formally urges you to listen to pastuer lappe’s funk classic, “na real sekele fo’ ya”. the bassline speaks for itself. (creds go to the producers of HBO’s excellent high maintenance for using the song in a season 2 episode. tru fans of the newsletter will, of course, know that high maintenance was one of my first ever recs, all the way back in issue #1.)
creds to new subscriber tom for rec’ing muslimgauze. muslimgauze was the musical project of bryn jones, before he tragically died in 1999 from a fungal infection aged 37. the mythology around jones is almost more interesting than the music: jones began making music in the early 80s, before israel’s conflict with lebanon in 1982 sparked an obsession with the politics of the middle east and israel’s occupation of palestine. he ended up a staunch supporter of the palestinian struggle, demonstrated by album titles such as united states of islam and (amazingly) vote hezbollah. furthermore, he basically never performed live, and once said that he never had time to listen to other people’s music - he essentially only listened to traditional middle eastern, indian and japanese music, shunning contemporary music completely.
regarding the music, it’s absolutely baffling where to start. over his life jones released 90+ records that are remarkably diverse, ranging from electronica to ambient to dub and reggae to worldbeat and IDM. considering the turnaround time of these newsletters, i’ve obviously only had time to listen to a couple of albums (“united states of islam” and “betrayal” in particular). the youtube channel that uploaded them really gets to the root of the vibes of these: dark ambient. there’s a real, deep, contemplative seriousness to these tracks, a complete distaste for anything frivolous, and yet at the same time a kind a hypnotic magnetism, a spiritual trance… i’m in no state to make any more concrete judgments on the music than that, but there really is something interesting going on here, something significant…
i’ll wrap this up here, but i’ve really only touched the iceberg of muslimgauze’s enigmatic life and music. to find out more, this article gives a very good and detailed history of muslimgauze, and i’d also recommend listening to the music, many of which are on youtube (e.g.).
don’t usually like to rec well-renowned things, for obvious reasons, but well-renowned doesn’t mean people have actually experienced something, just that they’ve heard of it. so it’s in that spirit that i recommend philip k dick’s do androids dream of electric sheep? (a.k.a. the book that inspired blade runner) (available cheaply from any second hand book store/site)
i devoured do androids… in four days. it’s an absolutely fantastic blend of pulpy sci-fi readability and humour with prescient cyberpunk pontifications on humanity, technology, and extinction. in my reading, the key theme of the book is artifice, with basically everything in it being artificial: human emotions can be immediately programmed by “mood organs”, real animals are almost impossible to tell apart from their (cheaper, less respected) electrical counterparts, and humanoid androids or “andys” stalk amongst the humans, simultaneously more-than and less-than human. the result is a persistent ontological anxiety that stalks the books pages; it constantly seems to be teetering on the brink of the abyss of the Real, the dark pit one falls in when one is forced to ask “if it’s not real, then what is it?”.
blade runner and do androids… have already been discussed to death by academics/writers, so it feels fairly futile to try and elaborate any more than that in this limited space, but if you’re interested in the concept of artifice and its aesthetics, i’d really recommend francois bonnet’s monograph the infra-world, available here.
finally, shannon and i enjoyed watching the short documentary birders (on netflix) the other day. it’s only just over half an hour long but what’s remarkable is how much it seems to slow time down, how it jolts you out of your usual rhythms and puts you in harmony with a natural or even cosmic frequency. it essentially just follows a lot of bird watchers near the mexico border, because it lies under a key passage that migrating birds pass through when migrating. they talk about why they like birds, nature, and why they’re fighting to prevent the birds’ habitats from destruction.
it’s very wholesome (in a very understated and non-saccharine way), and if you need something to help you detach from dizzying immediacy of media frenzies and twitter refreshes, it’s a very useful tool for just that.
next delivery friday morning!
jake x