From rogerr@netspace.net.au Sat Feb 06 00:30:27 1999 Return-Path: Delivered-To: mike@hyperreal.com Received: (qmail 3286 invoked from network); 6 Feb 1999 00:30:25 -0000 Received: from oldotis.netspace.net.au (HELO otis.netspace.net.au) (203.10.110.190) by taz.hyperreal.org with SMTP; 6 Feb 1999 00:30:25 -0000 Received: from whirlwind.netspace.net.au (whirlwind.netspace.net.au [203.10.110.70]) by otis.netspace.net.au (8.9.1/8.9.1/NS) with ESMTP id LAA19314; Sat, 6 Feb 1999 11:29:55 +1100 (EST) Received: from [210.15.192.31] (dialup-t2-31.Melbourne.netspace.net.au [210.15.192.31]) by whirlwind.netspace.net.au (8.9.1/8.9.1/NS) with ESMTP id KAA25573; Sat, 6 Feb 1999 10:55:59 +1100 (EST) X-Sender: rogerr@pop.netspace.net.au (Unverified) Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Date: Sat, 6 Feb 1999 10:56:09 +1000 To: extreme@well.com From: Roger Richards Subject: Extreme News Dec/Jan 98/99 Status: RO EXTREME Newsletter #13 - December/January 1998/99 A happy New Year to all music lovers! I hope your New Year's resolutions include taking more risks with music and, of course, enjoying the music of Extreme. We're already into February and the new releases are being prepared. 1999 is going to be very busy and we will do everything we can to ensure that music continues to be an important and exciting part of your life. The Fire This Time is receiving great kudos and acclaim in Canada, hitting number 5 on the international music charts, with support for Assata Shakur growing. It seems that people can see through the smokescreens that US politicians are skilled in creating (did someone mention cigars?). Releases in the latter part of 1998 included Rik Rue, Otomo Yoshihide & Sachiko M and Eugene Thacker. The response to Rue's "Sample/Shuffle/Interplay" has been astounding and likewise response to Otomo and Eugene has been very positive. Otomo and Sachiko's "Filament-1" was considered one of the best CDs of '98 by Sasaki Atsushi of Groove magazine. New signings to Extreme for 1999 include Maju (from Japan) and Christian Kiefer (from USA). The long awaited third album from Soma is scheduled for mid-year, and hopefully a tour of Europe. We also have some other great releases waiting in the wings. There will also be a CD-ROM catalog featuring all of the titles released on Extreme and its imprints. Of course, the MERZBOX will soon be let loose on the world. This year will see many changes for Extreme in order to allow us to continue to improve our distribution and promotion. We will tell you more about this in the coming months. On a very sad note, the death of Bryn Jones (Muslimgauze) came as a shock to us all. Bryn's music was unique and his vision was integral to the music he made. His passion and conviction was something I greatly admired and respected. He was an artist in the true sense of the word. Hoping this finds you well Roger Richards The key activities of late: * THE FIRE THIS TIME * RIK RUE * MERZNEWS #04 * LIVE EVENTS [If you don't want to receive future editions of this newsletter, Email extreme@well.com, and you will be promptly removed from the mailing list] =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Thanks for your help with store contacts. Greatly appreciated! We are always pleased to hear more suggestions so keep them coming. What stores in your area need to carry Extreme? Email extreme@well.com with Store Names, Addresses (cities and states at least), and other Contact Information if you have it. Help us get the music out where people can hear it and buy it! =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D XCDUB-7003 THE FIRE THIS TIME "Still Dancing on John Wayne's Head" "The Fire This Time's Still Dancing on John Wayne's Head is the most politically important album of the year. It unites First Nations and African people in struggle: words, voices and instruments mixed with phat dub and hip-hop beats. Eye Magazine, Lizz Mendez-Berry "=8A Their second full length album is a stirring, innovative melding of global sounds and concerns featuring a host of well known activist/musicians including American Indian singer-poet John Trudell, Public Enemy's Chuck D, Spearhead's Michael Franti, political exile Assata Shakur, scholar Angela Davis, legendary reggae and dub producer Lee "Scratch" Perry, the militant England-based Indian dance band Asian Dub =46oundation, dub master Adrian Sherwood and traditional Native American drum/vocal group The Eagleheart Singers. Serious political messages abound, but the strongest inspiration derives from the throbbing, haunting blend of beats and voices from around the world. TFTT coordinators Marcela Toro, Pat Andrade and Errol Nazareth deserve much credit for convening such a remarkable and visionary sound of resistance. Z Magazine, Amy Carter Political music doesn't always have to be polemical or cathartic. Sometimes a point can be stronger when it's sung with gentle persuasion. That's why The Fire This Time chose the latter as their tactic for Still Dancing on John Wayne's Head. The disc raises discomforting issues of indigenous land rights and racism in the aftermath of colonialism, but its way of conveying these struggles through dub, break-beat and spoken-word is insightful and soothing. Angela Davis narrates on the history of African and Native Indian solidarity during slavery over ghostly drum patterns of a warrior dance on "Sisters and Brothers". The legacy continues when the Eagleheart singers chant over a hip-hop march on "Warrior's Dub" and when Malcolm X's epiphanic declaration of "by any means necessary" dubs out in multi-phonic directions on "At Least American Indian People Know Exactly How They Have Been Fucked Around". However, the urgency is mostly felt on the tracks "I Love Tha Future" and "Reluctant Warrior", featuring the voice of former Black Panther and Black Liberation activist Assata Shakur. Over musical beds laid out by Asian Dub =46oundation and Spearhead's Michael Franti, she gives a heartfelt confessional on the human need to struggle, her commitment to all forms of life and the promise of the good times that lie ahead. Shakur's manner is warm and conversational, but it also reveals the source of strength she has carried with her since she first escaped prison 21 years ago after being wrongly convicted for shooting a police officer, not to mention the optimism and pride she continues to nurture now that the US Government raised a $100 000 bounty for her capture earlier this year. Exclaim, Prasad Bidaye =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D XCD-044 RIK RUE " Sample/Shuffle/Interplay" (selected quotes translated) "What a crazy (and thus fantastic) record! The Australian sound manipulator Rik Rue, who is also an active member of the trio Social Interiors, makes sounds of tapes played backwards collide with vocal samples which are frequently alienated past recognition, squeaking sounds of a clarinet (!?) and electronic industrial noise (!!). Nobody would guess anymore that Rue was a saxophone player some time ago. But you would suspect that he collected his first musical experiences in bop or free jazz because every now and then familiar sounds sneak into the avantgard collages, an acoustic bass in track 4, a vibraphone in track 5. But shortly after there=B4s a bang out of Jimmy Stewart=B4s Winchester 73 and a neigh from a horse opera. Musique concr=E8te? Yes, this is what you could call it. Provided that you don't look for 'concrete' in the French language but in an English dictionary, then you could translate it with the material concrete. Hard stuff that you wont be able to pass by easily..." _Keyboards "Belching, buzzing, breakers, hammers, drum rolls, the sound of crickets - this sound collage of the saxophone-player and sound sculptor Rik Rue who has been active for more than 20 years generates its sounds from a seemingly gigantic number of speech samples, sound sculptures, natural sounds and music instruments. In a nearly surrealistic way the artist connects various, completely different carpets of sounds from small shreds of reality that seem to result in a new meaning together. Rik (as he himself says) wants to create multidimensional music that triggers associations and memories. But this is not music in the original sense of the word. More than 20 tracks blend in with each other and you have to concentrate on the things you hear to avoid throwing this CD out of your CD-player after 10 minutes listening." _Orkus "In a solo attempt the sampling-virus Australian Rik Rue, normally companion of the Social Interiors and Machine For Making Sense, presents us with the mini-disc orgy Sample/Shuffle/Interplay. Think of an allstarband of Runzelstirn, Gurgelstock, Hausen & Walkman. Tracks as `Another Fontana Mix=B4, `25 Frames a second=B4, `Toy Joy=B4 or =B4My Life with Speed=B4 give= the tempo and the direction. Rue=B4s fund of records shows various intersections with those of the people writing for Testcard and Bad Alchemy and who claim to possess only the necessary things after a wide 270 degree view round (among those naturally all cut-ups from Marclay, Oswald and Otomo, all belches by Minton, Moss and Blonk, Schimpfluch and Naked City, the best of Yamatsuke Eye and such classics as `Miniatures=B4, "Son of Bllleeeaaauuurrrrgghhh!`and `RRR 100=B4). Sample/Shuffle/Interplay gives you the chance to listen to all this music in a time-lapse that you think to be principally funny and good but that you can only stand more than a second and other than in a small doses when somebody threatens you with a pistol. `Dream Speed=B4 is one of those rare moments at which dromologue Rue steps back from the two-digit spm-area (=3Dseconds per minute). The association an= d d=E9j=E0-vu moment is really scary. This is the music Virilio has always war= ned us of!" _Bad Alchemy "Rik Rue forms collages from reality to depict it auditively in a equally puzzling and associative way as we are confronted with it every day. Environmental sounds of all kinds, seemingly put together arbitrarily, manipulated, modified, edited. Music as a mere sound experience. This must be perfect for the multi-media part of an installation for museums or as an interlude at readings of concrete poetry. Intellectuals with a sense for art will have a lot of fun interpreting that and an average listener such as me finds all this very very interesting." _Intro "Rik Rue our man in Australia now presents us with his first solo longplayer which is a platinum quality release after his last month=B4s Extreme-artists-remix gold. He bricolates his own black hole out of a lot of sound information and exchanges en passant the safety distance between improvisation and musique concrete against micro and mini disc. Tony Buck with his drum loops, Jaap Blonks and voices in general try to surmount the acoustic craters and scars that were left behind by Rue=B4s sampling virus and together they recreate unities and references. Rejected wounds still heal the quickest... Rue does not subdue his original materials to any unnecessary respect or whatever-else moral hygienic and thus maintains their original dynamic. Rik takes new directions by the rearrangements, loses himself in them, does not tie up to anything else without ever getting somewhere. Sample/Shuffle/Interplay..." _Westzeit "With zapping back and forth steadily or frequently using the =82fast-forwar= d button' you will certainly not be able to cope with Sample/Shuffle/Interplay. Rik Rue, member of the Social Interiors, unfolds a strange combination of everyday noises and rare song structures which demand a very careful listening. He himself says that he wants to create multidimensional music that evokes associations and memories and equates the obscure with the established. The passionate saxophone player and sound collector has been working as a composer and musician for twenty years now and he knows how to put the attentive listener under his ban with his multilayered collages and his sense of humour. Rik Rue seems to have a special interest in Dadaism, because various speech samples remind strongly of the sonate of the dadaistic artist Kurt Schwitter and track 16 (=82Save me from my own hand') is a remix of Steven Stapleton=B4s =82A Silhouette and= a Thumbtack'. All in all Sample/Shuffle/Interplay is an exquisite work of experimental music that will gain many friends of unconventional sound collages but it will also be misunderstood by many." _Equinoxe "Rik Rue transforms his way of working into an aesthetic position, mini disc, and other technical equipment can not in vain be seen on the cover. Rik Rue is not a musician but a bibliographer of sound, a sorter of the sound archive and an infiltrator of all known categories. On which record can one hear negotiations with the record company or where do voices hiss condensed into a digital clicking and pass a virtual swarm of bees? Rik Rue works with humour and joke and he places his cuts in the sound in a way that makes sense. His attitude is in no way the all parodistic and thus not aiming at the critic attitude of a plunderphonic. Instead Rue loves the sounds. Even if you cant create a political maxim out of this record, it=B4s fun to listen to him. For old friends of Ryoji Ikeda a new discovery that=B4= s really worth it!" _Auf Abwegen =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D MERZNEWS #04 Xmas is a great time, except if you want to get something manufactured. We lost a month in the festive excitement, which was disappointing but expected. Our MERZBOOK author, Brett Woodward, has taken the extra time to make some further revisions to the text of the book. Adding in more detail and searching out new references, he wants to make sure it is going to be an interesting read for years to come. Our search to print a hard cover MERZBOOK in Australia has sent us offshore to Hong Kong. We're very excited about the printing quality and it will certainly add greatly to the significance of the publication. CD-ROM designer and recent father, Troy Innocent, came up with a great idea to include the Extreme CD-ROM catalog in the MERBOX as a further bonus. It's received the green light and will be a valuable addition. The urgency is growing and I'm reminded of a saying: "Less haste, more speed" http://www.xtr.com/special_editions/xtrsp-3.html =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D LIVE EVENTS Kato Hideki =46ebruary 6 Tonic (NY) solo set/ Death Ambient with Ikue Mori & Anthony Coleman 14 MS Stubnitz ( Rostock, Germany) 16 Tacheles (Berlin, Germany) 17 Diesselstrasse (Esslingen, Germany) 18 Alter Schlachhof (Wels, Austria) 19 C.U.B.A.(Munster, Germany) 20 NOVA (Brusells, Belgium) (music for the silent film "Witchcraft through the Ages") 21 Turm (Halle, Germany) 22 Pinokio ( Szczecin, Polland) 23 LOT theater (Braunschweig, Germany) 24 Stadgarten (Koln, Germany) 26 B.O.A. (Luzern, Swizterland) =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D __________________________________________________________________ Roger Richards EXTREME, EXTREME Special Editions, EXTREME Dub Systems PO Box 147 extreme@well.com Preston VIC 3072 fax: Int + 61 3 9419 4086 Australia http://www.xtr.com/extreme/ __________________________________________________________________