So I’ve been hanging out with Ripley lately, and her research in music and copyright issues reminded me of Jelinek’s second release on Faitiche. Under a new moniker called G.E.S. (Gesellschaft zur Emanzipation des Samples, or Society for the Emancipation of Sampling), Jelinek output a collection of brief, mirtfully sampled snippets into an album called Circulations.
Circulations; image from Faitiche.de
Jelinek pre-selected and then played a range of material in various public spaces, recording both the selections as well as the ripples of conversation, traffic, and other sounds commonly found in field recordings. In doing so, he challenged the notion of music copyright violation within the public domain.
You can preview the tracks at Faitiche’s website; ”hawaiian machine chant” is a new favorite.
Now I wish he’d visit the Bay area again, and visit the Musee Mecanique for even more incredible audio samples! Creepy puppets (like the one I caught below in 2006) would undoubtedly make rich fodder for another album.
The San Francisco Center for the Book is hosting its annual Roadworks event! Come check out this free street fair, which features a big steamroller as it drives over hand-inked linoeum blocks cut by several artists — including one of my favorites from last year, Rik Olson.
Plenty of local vendors will also be at hand with their books, broadsides, cards, and other wares for sale. Come by!
I started off with weekend brunch at Little Skillet, a tiny little window serving incredible fried chicken and fresh waffles — just steps away from 330 Ritch in SoMA.
Then booked tickets to go see the Boredoms play in New York! Yippee!
Thurston Moore
Sonic Youth proved that they could still rock out on Monday night (see photo of Thurston Moore above, from sfdavidz).
I can’t wait for Sunn O))) to slowly drone me away in a live setting. And speaking of Sunn O))), I was reminded of their homage to Southern Lord’s mainstay group, Earth when I came across a new word: Ouroboros.
According to Wikipedia, an ouroboros is “an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon swallowing its own tail and forming a circle.” I’d heard about this symbol in a few different ways, from Jung to Norse mythology — apparently even Plato found it significant.
Ouroboros
Earth produced a song called “Ouroboros Is Broken” on the slowly unfolding album, Extra-Capsular Extraction. Find it and listen closely for the tail…