Number Stations

 

I used to listen to these Cold War spy broadcasts in the late 60s and early 70s, on one of these, which was given to me by someone who captured it from a German unit in WWII and afterwards used it as a domestic radio. The British and DDR transmissions are jaunty, almost cheerful even, but at the same time have a sinister quality that all of the Number Stations output shares. My early enthusiasm for repetitive electronica made the appreciation of Kraftwerk a foregone conclusion.

Watercolours

On ladder plying hose, Ben Vautier

Watercolours, Musée d'Art Vivant, Nice, 6.7.81

"Conolly (sic), un performer du groupe de Liverpool genre Fluxus, réalise un merveilleuse petite pièce. Il s'installe sur le podium avec un chevalet et de la peinture à l'huile (sic) pour faire un paysage. Moi même sur un échelle un peu plus haut dans l'ombre avec un lance d'arrosage je l'arrose comme s'il pleuvait. Au fair et â mesure que son tableau se délaie â l'eau il le dechiré et en fait un autre. 7/10" - Ben Vautier's magazine 'Ben-Art', August 1981.

I contacted Ben when I was in the area to visit friends who were at the Fondation Karolyi artists' colony in Vence, and he invited me to come to his home in the hills above Nice. When I got there, he told me that it was the site of an international Fluxus convention that evening, that I was billed to appear as the official Fluxus artist representing Liverpool, and that I had two hours to come up with an idea. Using materials to hand, I said that I would paint the view at sunset in watercolours while he sprayed me and the easel with water, so that the image was constantly washed away and replaced as the light changed, eventually leaving a ghostly composite image to be torn off the pad and itself replaced. 

Ipcress and Quiller

Two films with themes by John Barry, both Cold War spy thrillers, released one year apart. Both use the cimbalom, a Hungarian folk instrument like a cross between a xylophone and a zither (the other unusual instrument heard in the Quiller theme is a musical saw).

The Ipcress File (Sidney J. Furie, 1965) features a brainwashing machine called The Mind Processor, inspired by Illinois Institute of Technology's Knowledge Box, later to develop into the vr CAVE. The electronic soundtrack for The Mind Processor was by Brian Hodgson at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. 
IPCRESS: Induction of Psycho-Neuroses by Conditioned Reflex with Stress
Best British Film of 1965 (BAFTA)
Listen to The Ipcress File theme

Michael Caine as Harry Palmer

The Quiller Memorandum (Michael Anderson, 1966) is a potentially great film with a fatal flaw.

"Noted for its plot twists and the portrayal of Quiller as refreshingly vulnerable and occasionally inept"* and a "deliberately paced but engrossing script"* by Harold Pinter, starring roles for Alec Guinness and Max von Sydow, location filming in what was then West Berlin with a capital W - but: the miscasting of George Segal in the leading role. Aside from the fact that he's better known for (and suited to) light and humorous parts, there is the unalluded to anomaly of an American being part of the British secret service.
                                              *Lee Pfeiffer, Quiller article in Britannica

Max von Sydow as Oktober, George Segal as Quiller

 Listen to The Quiller Memorandum theme

Bonus track. Matt Monro, former London bus driver, and the man of whom Frank Sinatra said "If I had to choose three of the finest male vocalists in the singing business, Matt would be one of them" recorded a vocal version not used for the intro or end credits, but which is heard playing on the radio in Quiller's hotel.

Eh Joe

Eh Joe? was Beckett's first play written for television, broadcast on BBC2 on the 4th of July 1966 between 10.20 and 10.40pm, with Jack MacGowran as Joe, Sian Phillips as The Voice. 

This recording is from German TV. (Yes, I know, this is a bit laboured, but take the trouble to listen until the first solo - this the best performance of this much-heard classic I've come across): Eh Joe

                                                         Photo Jane Bown

Engines as Musical Instruments

Just like a musical instrument, the length, diameter, plenum effects, and size, frequency, duration, and pressure of pulses of gas going through a series of tubes that make up an engine can produce magical sounds. 

The accidental combination in Edward Turner’s Triumph Speed Twin motorcycle engine of 1937 in all its variations is one pinnacle of musical perfection through acoustic serendipity, but the supreme example for me is the Avro Vulcan bomber. The intake geometry and ducting designed by a team led by Roy Chadwick (who also designed the WWI Avro 504 and WWII Lancaster) and the Bristol/Siddeley/Rolls Royce Olympus engine literally made the earth move during low passes, with a sweet spot at wide throttle openings that produced turbulence vortices in the intakes for a sustained high frequency accompaniment.

I was privileged to attend Mildenhall US airbase in Suffolk's ‘hearts and minds’ open day for local residents in 1978. Two Vulcan bombers did synchronised aerobatic displays over the crowd, which culminated in them each coasting along just over the runway with the throttles barely open and making a low whistling noise, then going to full power and rocketing up at a steep angle, giving a deafening droning howl from the intakes at the same time as producing enough low frequency sound to not only make the ground shake, but also cause my diaphragm to vibrate in sympathy.

They were also there for 1982, when the open day had become a public airshow. An SR-71 Blackbird, the first stealth aircraft, that flew at 3 times the speed of sound, flew in from Beale AFB, Calif, made a rolling touchdown along the runway, and then shot up vertically on top of a blue flame about 20 feet long, disappearing from sight almost too fast for the eye to follow. 

But it wasn’t as loud as a Vulcan.

Listen here (don’t forget to turn the sound on: loudspeaker icon lower right).

                                                                                 Photo © M.Fisher

Little Richard Starkey

As so often in Beatles photos, Paul looks nauseatingly puppy-like, Ringo looks stupid and George looks as if he has Bell’s Palsy. John, unusually, just looks happy - he usually looks mocking and cynical. Little Richard looks like one of the Puerto Rican ‘extreme embalming’ corpses that get photographed sitting at their own wakes.

Treetotem

Temporary installation, Hvitsten Salong 2018

Installation of work, Pablo Castro, pipe, Howard Michels, glasses, collar and tie, artist's own. 

                                                     Photo © Ronald