new haircut

I got a new 'do on Friday. At first I worried it looked a bit Young Conservatives, but now I've come to enjoy that.

polluted

Extract from Matthew Stokoe, Cows:

On the bus to the meat grinding plant the cereal and fruit-fed faces of the other passengers made him feel haggard and polluted. He wanted to reach out and touch them, to reassure himself that he belonged to an essentially similar world. But he knew he did not, and that if he tried they would telescope backward like some effect on TV.
He watched them instead. They were so much more real than himself, the air around them was bright with the definition of their existence. He felt himself blurring with the sunlight and the motion of the bus, as if his outline were sand or fine powder.
There were couples too, together on the slashed seats, and they were the most densely colored of all. Their belonging, their completeness, pushed them out from the background of safety glass and pressed steel, up so close to Steven that he could feel the flow of love between them. These were the ones whose lives got shown on TV. They knew the secrets of the game and they played and never considered losing.
They were gods from some golden otherworld. They had arms, legs, their faces molded to their emotions as his did, they even aged. But they were beyond him. The air they breathed was not his air and the light that fell on them came from a warmer source than his sun. He longed to imitate them, to share in the mass normality that rolled in cathode waves across the dead nights of his loneliness.
The bus was almost empty by the time Steven stepped from it into the deathstink at the edge of the city.

markbooks

The blog's just taken a week off, mainly so I could hunt for a new flat. This was never found and the search is still ongoing. Never mind, normal service is resumed with a few more links from my Delicious page:

Class of 808: Acid House to Hardcore

HARMONY KORINE’S TRASH HUMPERS SCREENING AND PARTY - Viceland Today

David E's Fablog » Blog Archive » Blogathon: M (1951)

Discogs / user / Hysteric

Life of a Different Kind of Man

wordwizard.com - View topic - A nation mourns

For Egypt, this is the miracle of Tahrir Square | Slavoj Žižek

The Devil Reads Poetry (and i do too)

Title: No Title

ready to wear 2 / girl on girl

Further to the recent post about potential T-shirt designs, I took delivery of a new scanner today and have started work again on the project.

Traxx at AYLI: A Tale of Four Cities 01.22.11

Listening to this set by Melvin Oliphant III and it does indeed jam so hard. Watch out for the righteous edit of Anne Clark - Our Darkness around 37 mins: LINK



Resident Advisor bio:
Traxx is a lover of music — one with a passion so intense that it overcomes genre divides to weave an altogether original, exciting, and multi-textured musical fabric which envelops both the avid clubber and the home listener, as well as everyone in between. Not content to be labeled as merely a DJ, a producer, or even a DJ/Producer, Traxx is a self-described “artist of sound.” A sound that is distinctive and highly emotional which defies classification and invites analysis and discussion. From eclectic and avant-garde tunes to old school jack tracks and far beyond, Traxx hears and makes it all without discrimination, pretension or elitism.

Traxx has released music on numerous underground labels in the US and Europe including Gigolo, Relief, Muzique, M/O/S, and Crème. His music has come to the world under a bucket load of alias' including Dirty Criminals, XX Art, Mysterio, ViLLan X, Saturn V (with Tadd Mullinix), X2, and more. He's also collaborated with the cream of the underground including acts like James T. Cotton (aka Tadd Mullinix), DJ Hell, Green Velvet, D’marc Cantu, Mount Sims, Legowelt and many more to shape his unique definition of Jakbeat. Now finally Traxx is stepping out into the light with his first full length album under this own name for his own Chicago based imprint Nation.

Traxx's earliest musical memory is his being a young boy spinning 45 records on his toes. His mother has the picture proof. His first instrument was a handmade flute in elementary school, music it seems was just always going to be on the books for Traxx. Like many in Chicago, Traxx was drawn into house music through the legendary WBMX radio shows and two trips to see Ron Hardy at the legendary Music Box. Describing his first experience with house, Traxx recalls "nothing could compare, things were being discovered..this period stays with me because of the intense energy that was applied - it's a feeling, an emotion, a mental state of transcendental connection -a spiritual force with the higher being through the physical vessel of the body."

His first release appeared on DJ Hell's Gigolo label in the early 00's under the collective alias The Dirty Criminals. The Dirty Criminals was a Chicago based collective that featured mainly the work of Melvin working with collaborators like Charles Manier, William Torres, Daryl Cura, Brendan M. Gillen, Matt Nee, Josh Werner, Stephen Hitchell and Tadd Mullinix plus early on work from Jamal Moss aka Hieroglyphic Being. In addition to a number of 12"s Dirty Criminals released two albums very well received in Europe - 2004's "Organized Confuzion" and 2006's “Collision Between Us And The Damned" which featured a cover of an early unreleased version of "Acid Tracks" by Phuture that was played around Chicago. Traxx also contributed vocals to the track "Let No Man Jack" on Hell's "NY Muscle" album.

But it is perhaps on his many mysterious 12"s that Traxx has set the ground work for this his first solo album in the last three years where there's been a constant stream of them burning up dance floors with their wild new jakbeat sound. In an age of digital perfection Traxx is analog, when he DJs he plays vinyl and when he's in the studio he uses hardware. His sound recalls the past but pushes for the future with an overtly emotional and experimental approach. In addition to releasing music for other imprints Traxx also started his own label Nation which has allowed him to develop and recontextualize the various aspects of his sound.
http://www.residentadvisor.net/dj/traxx/biography

buckmarks

Time for another week's worth of links from my Delicious page:

Aesthetica Magazine Blog: Rosemarie Trockel's New Modes of Operation @ Talbot Rice, Edinburgh

Jerk @ Traverse | The Skinny

Artists have always glamorised prostitution. Manet savaged ...

GISELE VIENNE

Céline: great author and 'absolute bastard' | Books ...

Jerk review / The Skinny

My 5 star review of Jerk has appeared in The Skinny: LINK

Jerk review

Jerk

Puppets are violent things. Any British audience must surely be aware of the fact, having been raised on the slapstick of Punch and Judy and the domestic dramas of Sooty and Sweep. Even then, with all of this lurid ancestry, the one off performance of Jerk at the Traverse was something else entirely, a unique manifestation of absurdity and pain. Directed by Gisele Vienne and based on a text by the American writer of transgressive fictions Dennis Cooper, the play arrived here as a solo piece for the French actor Jonathan Capdeviell. Sat alone on a chair facing the audience, Capdeviell played David Brooks, an accomplice to the real-life serial killer Dean Corll. Brooks sets out to understand his crimes by re-enacting the murders using a cast of ragged puppets, a show watched by a crowd of psychology students, played here by us, the audience. Softly spoken and timid, he acts out horrific scenes using a range of voices and sounds, weaving between tenderness and brutality, the childish and the jaded. At intervals the audience is instructed to read a fanzine by Brooks that describes the murders, and in Cooper’s writing the victims speak the language of teenage nihilists: “Life is too confusing. And death just sounds like a great place.” Reading the fanzine, watching the puppet show, marvelling at Capdevielle’s feats of ventriloquism: all these activities might serve to distract from the show’s central subject matter, the killing of young men for sexual gratification. It’s surely not just a distraction, though. These devices serve to circle around the cold, hard fact, bringing us back again and again. During the post-show discussion among a panel chaired by Julie Ellen, Creative Director of Playwrights’ Studio Scotland, Jerk was accused of promoting a theatre of despair, of playing along with the very same views as its antihero. Another view might be that the play is just an honest reflection of how things are in the world. Whatever your own response, surely no-one can deny that Jerk is a play of visceral intensity, a one-of-a-kind that makes some unique demands of its audience. To quote one renowned artist of puppetry, “that’s the way to do it!”

Jerk @ Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh 03.02.11

To Edinburgh last night for Jerk, showing as part of the Manipulate Visual Theatre Festival. The play was written by Dennis Cooper and directed by Gisele Vienne. Jonathan Capdevielle's performance was truly extraordinary and a full review is to follow in the coming days.


Jonathan Capdevielle


Post show discussion chaired by Julie Ellen, Creative Director, Playwrights’ Studio Scotland


Your correspondent with Colin Herd post-show

LINK

A wee round-up of Yuck 'n Yum's antics in 2010

2010 round-up.... thanks.... and upcoming tit-bits


Happy New Year to all Yuck 'n Yummers!

2010. What was all that about, eh?

We started the year in Inverness with our Turn Your Bluetooth On project, presented as part of the city’s Getting Up arts festival. We distributed seven videos and one sound piece to patrons of an Inverness car park, and also published a special limited edition zine for distribution to grateful punters. In February our pals at ARIKA kindly asked us to get involved with their Kill Your Timid Notion festivities at the DCA. We love them so much that so we spent ages in our bedrooms making a supercool mixtape. Then in May we attended our first ever London Zine Symposium and we’ll definitely be going back there again this year.

The defining event of 2010 was of course our inaugural Annual General Karaoke. The AGK brought together artists, filmmakers, musicians and drinkers from all across Scotland for an unforgettable night. An extra special sparkly well done to the AGK champ Rachel Maclean for her prize-winning video, and huge thanks to all that submitted and made it along that evening.

In October we attended the Glasgow CCA Bookfair. We then headed over to Huntly for HAIRST with our mobile karaoke unit, fresh from the AGK spreading positive karaoke vibes. In November the Arches asked us to get involved with Focus Left,so we sent AGK runners-up Fear Wasabi along to represent. You can see their performance here. Yuck ‘n Yum was also featured at the launch of Thames and Hudson’s new Fanzines book in that there London, which led to our inclusion in the London College of Communications’ Zine Library. Our publication is now featured in three archives: the Salford Zine Library, the London College of Communications Zine Library and the National Library of Scotland.

Throughout 2010 the zine was brought to you in an array of beautiful covers designed by the mystically talented Paul John Milne, and we'd like to express our sincere gratitude to Paul for creating these indelible images for us. Finally, we were very sad to bid farewell to our online editor Graeme Plunkett, who has left us for pastures new. All at Yuck ‘n Yum wish him a glittering future and will miss him loads.

So what will 2011 bring? Be sure to stay tuned on our website, on Central Station, on Facebook, on Twitter, and on A6 folded up sheets of paper stapled together. You’ll certainly be seeing plenty of our new cover artist Ross Hamilton Frew, as he ensures that the next four issues arrive in beautiful wrapping. And what’s inside? Well that’s up to YOU. The deadline for the spring issue is on the fourteenth of March, so submit something!

Because oh yes we’ll be back, oh yes.

We Wantz U

We are seeking a voluntary online content manager with experience of designing and maintaining websites. The ideal volunteer must have a passion for visual art, self-publishing and zines, as well as the technical knowledge required to develop our website in accordance with the growth of Yuck ‘n Yum.

He/she will be responsible for compiling each new issue of the zine online, as well as cultivating our online back catalogue/archive. He/she will also develop YNY’s presence and visibility on social media platforms; update the website with regular news; and work in partnership with the rest of YNY to design and update the website alongside developing micro sites on a project-to-project basis.

We envisage that this commitment will be no more than a few hours per week and are ideally looking for someone who will commit to a year within the role, with option to extend.

To apply please send letter of interest and CV to info@yucknyum.com headed Online Content Manager Application no later than 5pm Friday 25th February.

LINK