Ian Townsend
27-10-2012, 09:24 AM
Anyone else going this Thursday (1st November)? Jonny Trunk, Chris Menist, Doug Shipton discussing crate digging around the world.
Unmissable for me. Thanks to Einekleine for the heads-up on this.:cool:
The Wire Salon: Crate Digging (http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/10001/)
Recent years have seen the emergence of a host of grassroots record labels and music blogs which seem hellbent on rewiring our sense of history. Think of the rapidly expanding archives of labels such as Finders Keepers, Soundway, Unseen Worlds, Paradigm Discs, Trunk, EM, Public Information and Numero, or blogs like Mutant Sounds, Analog Africa and Awesome Tapes From Africa. The obscure, neglected or unheard music that floods out of these samizdat operations from all points on the compass is accumulating into an alternative history of 20th century sound, undermining the official narratives of multiple popular genres and art musics alike, asserting the primacy of the previously occluded innovations of potting shed electronic composers and anonymous library music experimentalists, the cassette cultures of West Africa and the Pacific Rim, or the mass of private press releases that documented the below the radar activities of legions of amateur soul troupes, school orchestras, vernacular sound poets, and crackpot singer-songwriters.
In the process of going public with the discoveries thrown up by their audio archaeology, the record collectors and crate diggers that run these labels and blogs assume the status of revisionist historians. By unearthing sonic documents that predated or sidestepped music's great aesthetic or conceptual leaps forward, but which for a variety of reasons were wiped from the record, or never made it there in the first place, they reveal the capricious and serendipitous roles played by fashion, commerce and geopolitics in explaining why some things become cultural icons while others rot in the dustbin of history.
For this edition of The Wire Salon, a panel of label runners and bloggers including Jonny Trunk (Trunk Records) and Chris Menist (Paradise Bangkok/Original Press 365/Soundway), Clive Graham (Paradigm Discs) and Doug Shipton (Finders Keepers) will discuss the processes and consequences of digging up musical relics and audio artefacts in out of the way places and then putting them out into the world for public consumption and contemplation.
The panel will be moderated by The Wire's Editor-in-Chief Tony Herrington, who will also host a special Salon crate digging quiz in which you can test your knowledge against the vastness of the archive. Prizes will be awarded!
London Café Oto, 1 November, 8pm, £4 tickets on the door only
Unmissable for me. Thanks to Einekleine for the heads-up on this.:cool:
The Wire Salon: Crate Digging (http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/10001/)
Recent years have seen the emergence of a host of grassroots record labels and music blogs which seem hellbent on rewiring our sense of history. Think of the rapidly expanding archives of labels such as Finders Keepers, Soundway, Unseen Worlds, Paradigm Discs, Trunk, EM, Public Information and Numero, or blogs like Mutant Sounds, Analog Africa and Awesome Tapes From Africa. The obscure, neglected or unheard music that floods out of these samizdat operations from all points on the compass is accumulating into an alternative history of 20th century sound, undermining the official narratives of multiple popular genres and art musics alike, asserting the primacy of the previously occluded innovations of potting shed electronic composers and anonymous library music experimentalists, the cassette cultures of West Africa and the Pacific Rim, or the mass of private press releases that documented the below the radar activities of legions of amateur soul troupes, school orchestras, vernacular sound poets, and crackpot singer-songwriters.
In the process of going public with the discoveries thrown up by their audio archaeology, the record collectors and crate diggers that run these labels and blogs assume the status of revisionist historians. By unearthing sonic documents that predated or sidestepped music's great aesthetic or conceptual leaps forward, but which for a variety of reasons were wiped from the record, or never made it there in the first place, they reveal the capricious and serendipitous roles played by fashion, commerce and geopolitics in explaining why some things become cultural icons while others rot in the dustbin of history.
For this edition of The Wire Salon, a panel of label runners and bloggers including Jonny Trunk (Trunk Records) and Chris Menist (Paradise Bangkok/Original Press 365/Soundway), Clive Graham (Paradigm Discs) and Doug Shipton (Finders Keepers) will discuss the processes and consequences of digging up musical relics and audio artefacts in out of the way places and then putting them out into the world for public consumption and contemplation.
The panel will be moderated by The Wire's Editor-in-Chief Tony Herrington, who will also host a special Salon crate digging quiz in which you can test your knowledge against the vastness of the archive. Prizes will be awarded!
London Café Oto, 1 November, 8pm, £4 tickets on the door only