THE IMAGE IS THE SOUND

 

Dresden Dynamo, d. Lis Rhodes (1971)

While still a student at North East London Polytechnic, Lis Rhodes applied a range of Letratone stickers directly onto 16mm film and used filters to create red and blue colours. No camera was used.

On projection, the stickers create a range of unusual and atonal sounds: buzzes, fuzz, bleeps and throbs, and these random sounds complement the pulsing images as if by design.

Rhodes said later: 'It was an attempt to make a material connection between what is seen and what is heard. The image is the sound.'

If any of you are familiar with my musical project, Beam Weapons, and ever wondered what inspires some of the noises we make, simply watch this film, a source of ongoing inspiration.

Supplemental: Dynamo Dresden are a German football team formed in 1953, originally affiliated to the Stasi, the East German Police. Highly successful during the lifespan of the DDR, often by nefarious means (intimidating referees, transfer fixing, blackmail, violence and murder) they have fared less well since reunification, and currently play in the German Third Division.

FILE UNDER POST PUNK

 

prag VEC: Bits / Wolf / Existential / Cigarettes

Spec Records (1978)

'There is no future, 'cause you're in a fiction'

Accomplished and confident, occasionally strident, prag VEC released two singles, and recorded three sessions for John Peel. Their name is a conflation of Pragmatic and Vector,  too complex for Ingsoc but very Philip K. Dick.

Beneath their paint spattered punk facade, Bits and Wolf have a quirky Canterbury poly-rhythm going on, an almost progressive rock-ist interest in complex time signatures and interesting chords involving lots of fingers. These short, sweet, swervy blasts are agit-prop nursery rhymes played by supply teachers high on sexual politics, radical economics and arts centre poetry.  

Existential is the pick of the bunch, a sultry slow burner punctuated by angry, intellectual sounding French language narration and a series of wild, jagged guitar solos. It's tremendous, Stereolab plus steroids. 

Finally, there's Cigarettes, which marries a busy pub rock riff with a seemingly throwaway lyric about 'the fags we smoke' ('don't forget the menthol, though they're not so common now'). The crux, however, is that the fug of multiple exhalation obscures real issues. I mean, why even try to tackle world peace or famine or inequality when you can sit around with your mates like lotus eaters sucking on a B and H and talking rubbish? 

In any event, distraction devices or not, the band fully intend to 'smoke them until we die', a common attitude among dedicated addicts, and one that I used to fervently share. Now, like an ex who you cross the street to avoid, I wonder what I ever saw in them. Cigarettes, I mean, prag VEC are great.

GROTESQUE ROCK FORMATIONS

 

My eleven year old self was absolutely obsessed with Alien in 1979, although I wasn't able to see it until 1981, when it finally came out on VHS. I did, however, have the novelisation, and The Book Of Alien, a fantastic compendium of stills, sketches and extracts from the script. I have no idea where either of those went. I also had a small collection of bubblegum cards of which this is the only known survivor and is, therefore, my favourite in the series.