![]() "A London journalist told me when Billy did his 'Cyberpunk' press junket over there, he made it a condition of getting an interview with him, that every journalist had to have read 'Neuromancer'.Anyway, they all did but when they met with Billy, the first thing that became really apparent was that Billy hadn't read it. The author recounts a rather embarrassing moment for the rock star (via an interview with Marisa Golini for Ottawa radio station CKQB-FM): Unlike Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum, who remained somewhat elusive about his inspiration, Idol was all about promoting Gibson and Neuromancer, though this did backfire on him. Three LPs, six sides of music.”While this record was the pop rock punk's interpretation of Cyberpunk culture in general, it's primary source of inspiration was William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer, from the overall visual aesthetic of the artwork to songs such as "Wasteland" and the tellingly-titled "Neuromancer," as well as a cover of The Velvet Underground's "Heroin" as a tie-in to the book's protagonist Chase and his various addictions. THE BLACK BOOK is indeed a celebration, of musical mysteries, energies and connections. Anyways, we decided to compile an album filled with artists we are very close to, others we admire deeply and a few we feel connected to in different ways. Not sure if its worth celebrating, or mourning. ‘The Black Book’ extends, in the spirit of the label, an idealised compilation of disparate possibilities connected by a sense of musical mystery and chaotic energy. IDEAL’s success and longevity may well be down to the way that Nordwall treated it as a social and artistic home, offering a place where mutually exclusive styles could bed down away from the mainstream or the genre police, and feed into a much larger, work-in-progress definition of fringe music. He called it iDEAL, and 180 releases, 20 years later, it has become an invaluable node for non-standard, wayward expressions of modern electronic noise in all its mutable variation. The story of iDEAL starts out in London 1998, when Nordwall was living the hardscrabble life: working in an underwear shop near Liverpool Street station living in a filthy Bayswater apartment scoring industrial records from the Music and Video Exchange getting drunk in cheap pubs, and dreaming of starting a new record label and platform. We always say this - we hate comps - they’re almost always shite - but this one’s a bit of a mindmelter, featuring 20 new and exclusive tracks commissioned by label bossman Joachim Nordwall to celebrate the occasion of his label’s 20th anniversary, almost 1 track per year of going against the grain. Trust when we say that Nordwall's selection skills and sprawling network of interconnected artists has yielded a frankly ridiculous tracklisting, including a 17+ minute steamroom special from Jim O’Rourke, a pulsing electroacoustic killer from Stephen O’Malley, a rare new hookup between Prurient and Carlos Giffoni, brand new ambient/field recording peach from JASSS, an amazing fizzing drone tribute to Folke Rabe by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, plus Puce Mary and Jesse Sanes aka JH1.FS3 on fine fine form, and just too many others to mention - over two hours of exceptional music. ![]() Epic, brilliantly curated two hour collection of new and exclusive material celebrating iDEAL Recordings' (1998-2018) 20th anniversary featuring JASSS, Stephen O’Malley, Jim O’Rourke (an epic 17 minute trance-enducer - honestly worthy of its own LP), Ectoplasm Girls, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Prurient, Puce Mary and many others.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |