8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

margaret atwood on big science

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‘It has never been more pertinent’ – Margaret Atwood on the chilling genius of Laurie Anderson’s Big Science
The seminal album, with its extraordinary hit single O Superman, was unlike anything the writer had ever heard. As Big Science returns, Atwood pays tribute to its prophetic dissection of…
‘It has never been more pertinent’ – Margaret Atwood on the chilling genius of Laurie Anderson’s Big Science
The seminal album, with its extraordinary hit single O Superman, was unlike anything the writer had ever heard. As Big Science returns, Atwood pays tribute to its prophetic dissection of…

Margaret Atwood on Laurie Anderson’s seminal 1982 album Big Science:

Big Science is being reissued at a very timely moment: America is reinventing itself again. It’s a self-rescue mission, and just in time: democracy, we have been led to believe, has been snatched from the jaws of autocracy, maybe. A New Deal, leading to a fairer distribution of wealth and an ultimately liveable planet, is on the way, possibly. Racism dating back centuries is being addressed, hopefully. Let’s hope these helicopters don’t crash.

new age steppers – radial drill

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via Dangerous Minds:

New Age Steppers was more of a long term project helmed by producer Adrian Sherwood and Ari Up of the Slits, than it was a proper band, with a revolving door cast of musical notables that included the Pop Group’s Bruce Smith, Public Image Ltd’s Keith Levene, a young Nena Cherry, Sounds editor Vivien Goldman, Steve Beresford, Slit Viv Albertine, Raincoats violinist Vicky Aspinall, Rip, Rig + Panic’s John Waddington, and vocalist Bim Sherman. The foundation of the New Age Steppers sound was provided by Eskimo Fox, Style Scott, Crucial Tony and George Oban, musicians who’d worked with Aswad, Burning Spear, Prince Far I and Gregory Isaacs and extensively with Sherwood.

reduced to just data

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Bandcamp vs Streaming
What do Nils Frahm, Anne Mueller, Jeannie Schulz, Mary Lattimore and Atli Örvarsson have in common? They are among three dozen artists whose albums I bought last year from Bandcamp,…
Bandcamp vs Streaming
What do Nils Frahm, Anne Mueller, Jeannie Schulz, Mary Lattimore and Atli Örvarsson have in common? They are among three dozen artists whose albums I bought last year from Bandcamp,…

The reality is that we are all addicted to convenience — and streaming platforms make it damn convenient for us to not think about the artists and how they manage to survive. As streaming becomes more pervasive, the sad reality is that every track, every artist, every album is reduced to just data, served up by the algorithm. It only continues to devalue our emotional relationship with the creators.  

kevin shields in the new york times

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Kevin Shields on My Bloody Valentine’s Return: Time Is ‘More Precious’
Eight years after the shoegaze pioneers’ last album, the band is bringing its catalog to streaming services, reissuing records on vinyl and recording two new albums.
Kevin Shields on My Bloody Valentine’s Return: Time Is ‘More Precious’
Eight years after the shoegaze pioneers’ last album, the band is bringing its catalog to streaming services, reissuing records on vinyl and recording two new albums.

Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine granted The New York Times a rare interview, published today, on the occasion of signing a deal with Domino Music. The back catalog is included, and the 2013 album m b v appeared on streaming platforms for the first time. That’s good, because everyone pretty much forgot about m b v, probably because it was never streaming (sad but true).

Kev also promises two new ‘back-to-back’ albums, a promise I’ll take with a grain of salt. There’s also this bit that gave me a chuckle:

“My nieces and nephews — they would complain to me, because when they would try and show their friends, they can’t find it anywhere,” Shields said. “They’re like, ‘Why are you so purposely obscure? You know, it seems stupid.’ That kind of stuff that made me think, ‘Yeah, I guess my perception of the world isn’t the world.’ There’s a whole world out there I know nothing about.”

laurie anderson – smoke rings

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I watched Laurie Anderson’s Norton Lecture yesterday — the second in a series of six. She spoke on perception and memory, regular topics in Anderson’s oeuvre, and pushed the limits of a ‘Zoom lecture’ through shifting virtual spaces. At one point she became a creepy deep-fake John Cage. And, at another moment, she played the end of the concert clip above. That’s from the 1986 film Home of the Brave. There’s a trio of great artsy ’80s concert movies: Stop Making Sense, of course, but also Tom Waits’ Big Time and Home of the Brave. The first on that list is, of course, widely available. The second was missing until a couple of months ago when it unceremoniously appeared on Amazon Prime. Home of the Brave is sadly missing in action, only available in full via an illicit YouTube upload. I’d love someone like Criterion (who was involved with Anderson’s 2015 film Heart of a Dog) to step up to the plate and give a proper digital release of this gem.

duck box update

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This morning we watched ten baby ducks jump out of the duck box. When I got up before sunrise I noticed the mama duck was out of her box and quacking repeatedly while looking up at the hole. I knew something was up so we were ready and waiting. Not long after, we started hearing a chorus of faint chirps coming from within the box. And then:

Since we were ready we were able to film the big reveal. Caroline flexed her Kitten School skills and edited the video for all to see (above). We wanted to be quiet and hidden to not scare the ducks so we watched from the screen porch — that’s why there’s an annoying screen grid through most of this. But that doesn’t dampen the cuteness in the least.