Beneath

This post relates to a photographic excursion I made to Birmingham's 'Spaghetti Junction' with my friend Dave Weight at the very start of the year.  Admittedly, it's somewhat 'after the event', partly through a backlog of other things to write about, and also because it's taken a while to sort and post-produce the numerous photos taken on the day amongst the other strands of creative activity I have in hand currently.

It's been a slightly incoherent start to the year artistically, with numerous ideas and themes vying for attention and several projects in research or preparation but relatively little finished product as yet.  As ever, it's apparent that time management and prioritization are essential skills for an artist to develop.  Behind all the exciting spontaneous stuff, some kind of organizational framework is vital if you're to see things through and stay sane in the process.  It's doubly important for those compelled to work in pockets of time around the demands of a day job.

These images weren't collected as raw material for anything specific but may feed tangentially into several themes that I propose to develop over coming months.  Less obliquely, they do coincidentally relate to Shaun Morris' motorway paintings and, his various research images from similar locations, as discussed in recent posts.  Shaun's 'Stolen Car' exhibition is over now but his own blog reveals he is still very involved with these 'sub-arterial' realms so it seems appropriate to chip in my own two-pennyworth.  Sadly, I haven't achieved anything approaching the stunning 'Blade Runner'-esque atmospheres of his recent collaboration with photographer Laura Gale.  Having discussed the potential dangers lurking in such locations at night with Shaun recently, I'm pleased to see he gathered his courage and came back with such booty.

Photo:  Laura Gale & Shaun Morris

Dave and I made our own foray into the concrete world beneath the M6 and the Gravelly Hill Interchange on an early January day of varying light conditions.  I'd originally envisioned the trip over a year previously and we'd discussed it as a more specific intention one night last November whilst exiting Birmingham and peering down as our car left the Aston Expressway to join the main Motorway heading East.

A combination of intuition, map reading and prior consultation of Google Earth suggested Salford Circus as an ideal starting point, and so it proved.  At the centre of this busy roundabout lies a subterranean concrete garden, fed by subways on all sides, from which one can gaze up at several interconnected, elevated carriageways, whilst surrounded by their immense columnar supports.  My own fantasy was of a primeval forest of vast trunks, or even the legs of an immense prehistoric beast.  Dave also, quite rightly, likened them to enormous, vertical cigarettes.  I just hope his hypnosis isn't finally wearing off.

Photo:  David Weight

Although physically connected to its (surprisingly residential) surroundings via pedestrian underpasses, there is a distinct psychological, even hallucinatory isolation about this circular clearing.  It feels like a definite vacancy on the map and one of those contemporary sites that exist only as an interstitial space between planned features.  I was also struck by the quaint, neglected attempts by 70s planners to create a planted communal space of shrubs, hexagonal pavers and textured walls.  They suggest an obsolete utopian attitude to the world they thought they were creating, indeed, the world I myself grew up in.  The film of shade-tolerant algae tinting the paving slightly green speak both of the ultimate triumph of entropy but also, (interestingly, in such a Brutalist environment), of nature, over human ambition.

Predictably, I was reminded of JG Ballard's novel 'Concrete Island' although, unlike his protagonist, we had no trouble leaving our island when the time came.  We lingered for some considerable time and I took numerous still shots but also became increasingly interested both in the immersive sonic qualities of the site and the possibilities of shooting scratch video footage of my progress through the darkened subway tunnels into the light of the 'forgotten world' itself.

Leaving Salford Circus we mounted a road bridge and then descended onto the towpath of the Birmingham and Fazeley Canal.  Just a few metres along, directly beneath the motorway is Salford Junction where it meets the Grand Union and Tame Valley Canals and it became apparent that the visual adventure had only just begun.  This complex, multi-layered world of waterways, bridges, small buildings, pipe work and power lines is rendered all the more dramatic by its seclusion beneath the motorway's massive canopy. It concentrates various historical phases of transport infrastructure at the same point, and I marveled at how civil engineers had created such a knot of interconnected routes and stratified development over the decades.  I'm also delighted by the realisation that, despite the utilitarian motivation and economical imperatives of their work, an inevitable by-product is the unintentional creation of these zones of wonder.

Photo:  David Weight

Even on a relatively overcast day there is a peculiar quality of light down there, partially caused by light reflecting back from the water towards the underside of the massive road above.  It's far from being a uniformly grey environment and I began to perceive a strange, mellow golden illumination bathing the surrounding concrete and stone surfaces.  Inevitably, there is plenty of graffiti too, punctuating the scene with insistent calligraphy and splashes of synthetic colour.

Loads more shots were taken and we indulged in a little benign trespassing, despite numerous health and safety notices.  Following the line of the road above rather than the diverging towpath, allowed us to end our expedition at a large electrical transformer.  It's inherent dangers were rendered less forbidding by the polychromatic gaiety of graffiti combining with the bold hazard graphics designed to warn us away.  Needless to say, we survived to tell the tale.  Once again, we became fascinated by the acoustic landscape of this place, particularly as it was enlivened by the periodic clattering percussion of trains alongside the constant rush of road traffic overhead.

Photo:  David Weight

I left with a head full of sensory impressions, convinced that we had only scratched the surface(s).  I certainly plan to go back for more before very long.

R.I.P. Little Dudley

I have to admit I've always been a bit sentimental about animals so I'll hope you'll forgive this indulgence.  I'm a bit heartbroken at the moment after the death of one of my two cats.  Dudley was killed by a car earlier this week at the age of 12.  Although he hadn't lived with me for a while, I saw him regularly and will miss him like hell.

Most people who have pets know you can get surprisingly attached to them and I have loads of good memories of him.  I don't know if animals have personality or just traits but he was a definite character and entertainingly eccentric in several respects.  He was physically small but very intrepid and, consequently, always getting into scrapes.  Cats are traditionally said to have nine lives.  I suspect Dud had already used up about eighteen.

I'm just sorry he couldn't find one more.

Cement

After viewing Shaun Morris' 'Stolen Car' exhibition, my friend Dave and I strolled around Rugby in search of photo opportunities, (which included some nice hazard stripes and a pleasingly mundane goods yard).  However, the real treat lay in wait as we drove away on the town's by-pass.

Rugby is another of those workaday Midlands towns, possibly like Loughborough, that enjoys a split personality through the presence of a 'prestigious' educational institution.  Many people know of its public school through its associations with 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' and William Webb Ellis. Superficial research reveals it is one of Britain's oldest bastions of educational privilege and may have also been implicated in a fee-fixing cartel of independent schools in recent times.  There's no doubt it allows a superficially mundane town to find room for the occasional up market tailor's shop and incongruously tweedy young man amongst generic shopping centre units and bellowing teenagers.  We even wandered into what felt like a more verdant 'posh end' of town on our short walk.

However, down here in the 'real world', Rugby's economy, and what employment opportunities may exist, are mainly fuelled by engineering and, most famously, cement.  We'd glimpsed the town's cement works peering over the town centre roofs and elected to drive out of town that way.  Whilst sensing the possibility of a little industrial eye candy we were unprepared for quite such an imposing visual statement.

The plant is huge, (one of Europe's largest and now owned by the massive Mexican-owned Cemex corporation, I discover).  Skirting the perimeter, I was struck by its uniformity of colour with all the buildings and complex structures sharing the same putty-grey colour.  However, this isn't dust, but rather paint, perhaps chosen to disguise what cement residue may actually adhere to its surfaces.  If that's the plan, it's successful; the site actually appears surprisingly clean.

On a bitter, grey afternoon, with light beginning to fade, this colouration, along with the lack of any dramatic movement within the complex, lent an industrial edifice of such substantial materiality an eerie, ghostly aspect.  This impression of stillness, of being uninhabited or even autonomous is something I've observed before in such locations.  We traditionally associate industrial activity with exactly that, - activity, but technological and economic realities dictate that significant industrial and commercial processes are now often overseen by a minimal human work force.  I'm reminded of Patrick Keiller's intriguing, subjective documentary film 'Robinson In Space', [1.].  in which the protagonists visit numerous seemingly abandoned but fully operational ports and industrial complexes in search of Britain's hidden economy.

The plant is best viewed from the hillside above, adjacent to the by-pass and main railway line.  From here, you can view the entire complex, as it appears to build pyramid-like towards the central tower and chimney that dominate it.  The alienating, high security atmosphere of this environment struck me.  It's a world of high fences, barbed wire, security lights and prohibition signs.  Keiller has described such industrial fortification as almost 'S&M'. [2.]  A public footpath threads between the factory site and railway line, where regular trains hurtle past, but this is a strange place for a country walk indeed.  Across the road a dammed quarry lake with man-made islands has been reclaimed for wildlife, although it resembles a singularly alien landscape.  A little way up a track that leads towards its perimeter, discarded beer cans and a scorched mattress indicated bleak leisure activities.

Leicester, 2013

It seems appropriate that, having viewed Shaun's depictions of a marginal concrete world, we should find ourselves observing the source of so much of that cement on the fringes of another town.  I also can't help noting that the mechanics of cement supply is becoming something of a subsidiary theme within my photography.

[1.]:  Patrick Keiller (Dir.), 'Robinson In Space', Koninck/BFI in Association With Channel 4, 1994

[2.]:  'A Conversation Between Patrick Wright & Patrick Keiller', In 'Robinson In Space', Reaktion Books, 1999

Reflections On 'Stolen Car'

Shaun Morris' Stolen Car' Exhibition has just entered its second week at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum.  I'd encourage you to take a look while it's still on display, if you can get there.  I went over myself with my friend Dave for Shaun's Private View last week.  I'd seen some of these motorway paintings before but it was great to view them together as a set and to catch up with Shaun and the other Indigo Octagon guys, Andy Smith and Chris Cowdrill at the same time.

I've been interested to learn just how emotionally connected Shaun is to these paintings on his own blog.  It's all too easy to plunge into intellectual debate over the formal properties or cultural context of an artwork but easy to forget that, often, an artist's motivations are deeply personal.

Anyway, having already tried to raise a bit of awareness about the show, here are a few of my own reflections on the actual paintings…

Shaun Morris, 'Silence' (L & C), 'Journey's End' (R), Oil On Canvas, 2012

• The 'Stolen Car' suite is obviously about 'place' and most obviously about the disregarded or despised marginal locations that our highly developed, modern world increasingly generates.

• Such places are romantically named 'Edgelands' today.  They might just as easily be labelled as fringe destinations; transitional zones; arenas of vacancy; cartographical gaps; breathing spaces; underworlds.  Morris' painted world is quite literally an example of the latter.

• Planners, politicians, marketeers and generators of wealth don't intend we should waste time dwelling on the spaces beneath motorways, industrial estates, car parks and the fringes of housing estates.  Artists, thinkers, romantics and anyone looking for a place to step off the treadmills of life, explore them for exactly that reason.

• These nocturnes are submerged in the sickly amber glow of street lighting.  Sometimes it shines directly in our faces or forms satellites overhead. It makes the air thick and slow but is completely modern. The World becomes orange and violet; drained of naturalism; hallucinatory.  The planet has never looked like this before in its entire history.

Shaun Morris, 'Silence' (Triptych), Oil On Canvas, 2012

• The carriageways are hoisted overhead on a forest of concrete supports.  We can only imagine the lives that fly through the light up there; insulated by speed; fleeting; moving through a transitory parallel dimension.  We know them only through traffic noise.  They remain oblivious to our very existence.  You can skate across the map but remain disconnected from life on the surface.

• We project ourselves into the zones depicted, drawn along a minor road or across a threadbare field; between the uprights framing the view beyond; through light and into pools of dense, inky shadow.  Those shadow shapes become solid and hard edged, integrated into the architecture of both concrete and composition.  They flatten and formalize.  Positive and negative become reversed.  In these pictures we must find nuance in the light.  Dark tones are definitive and impassive. 

• Should we fear to linger here? What cut-throat jeopardy might lurk in those shadows?  Or, is this a refuge; a place of solitude and reflection; somewhere to dream and mourn the dead?  Maybe we must endure some level of threat to find respite.  Perhaps neither thoughts nor deeds are policed down here.

Shaun Morris, 'Memories', Oil On Canvas, 2102

• These paintings reveal a world of concrete and steel; of fences and electricity.  But it is full of leaves too.  Trees and bushes mitigate hard-edged geometry.  A screen of branches fragments the motorway's parapet in a near-abstract painting all about the mediation of pattern.  In another, a desiccated clump dominates the foreground.  Rapid brush marks flicker in the gloom, as though caught in camera’s flash.

Shaun Morris, 'Weird Nightmare', Oil On Canvas, 2012

• In a dramatic canvas of angular futurism, Morris looks up at the underside of our modern world.  In the narrow gap between carriageways he finds infinity, bizarrely in a ribbon of bright orange.

Shaun Morris, 'The Gap', Oil On Canvas, 2012

• The painter depicts a solemn realm of rooted pillars and static structure but he works rapidly.  His brush hurries on with an urgency to depict.  Eye and mind might linger but his hand does not.  Distant painted columns lean forward, as if on the march.

• After repeated viewings, a pale, lonely horse emerges; paddocked amongst columns and pylons; grazing at the edge of the Modern Age. (Morris recounts being mistaken for a Horse Welfare official, - how often do artists face suspicion in the field?).  Can an equine brain encompass modernity?   I remember a visionary motif - the unicorn from Scott's 'Blade Runner'.

Shaun Morris, 'Silence' (Detail Of Central Panel), Oil On Canvas, 2012

• I think too of Edward Hopper with his commitment to representation and his willingness to describe modernity.  Hopper also loved the city at night under artificial illumination; found detachment and melancholy in implied solitude. 

• Here at the edge of things; beneath a main artery; where Second City bleeds into Western Marches, Shaun Morris comes home.  With Springsteen running through his head he hears the romance of the road.  He finds poetry in concrete and meaning in a forgotten land.

Shaun Morris' 'Stolen Car' exhibition will remain on display at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum until 22 February 2013.

Playlist 10

Last month's Playlist was almost late and, for numerically contrived reasons, this one's a bit early.  'Playlist 10' is also Post 100 on this blog and, as each list contains ten tracks, the temptation to mark a century this way was irresistible.

'Dubstep Allstars: Volume 03', Mixed By Kode 9 (Feat. The Spaceape)

Hyper Hat Dudes, Kode 9, AKA Steve Goodman, (L) & The Spaceape (R)

Dubstep's real moment is well past now and it long since succumbed to the formulaic mainstream or, more encouragingly, fractured into numerous fascinating 'Post-Step' mutations.  Luckily, I'm a 50 year old bloke who doesn't need to stay abreast of fashion and can just enjoy the intrinsic qualities of stuff, (that was never aimed at me in the first place), whenever I want to.

Kode 9's 2006 mix captured the movement in rude health, showcasing several of its original heavyweights, including Digital Mystiks, Benga and Skream.  Regular collaborator, The Spaceape, lays his laconic, blacker-than-black voice all over the mix tying the whole thing together effectively.  Generally, I prefer this kind of thing in instrumental form but his approach is far more engaging than the usual Grime bombast and definitely adds another dimension to the sound.  Even The 'Ape gives way to Warrior Queen though, as she teams up with Pressure to give the 07:07 suicide bombers a right good telling off.

'Five Years Of Hyperdub', Various Artists

Whilst record labels may be an increasingly endangered species, certain Independents have managed, over the years, to epitomise and distil a particular zeitgeist through strict quality control, stylish visuals, belief and vision.  Factory and 4AD are obvious examples, as is the Norwegian Rune Grammafon.  Kode 9 has pulled off much the same trick with his Hyperdub label, as a go-to source of crucial Dubstep and many of the good things that have followed in its wake.  We're closer to ten years of Hyperdub now but this 2009 survey demonstrates the strong foundations on which the label was built.

Of course, having Burial, (whose 'Fostercare' remains heartbreaking), and King Midas Sound on the roster helps no end.  Kode 9's own '9 Samurai' and reworking of 'Ghost Town', (featuring The Spaceape's near-comatose vocal), are hardly shabby either.  There are loads of other good things on the compilation, from the steppy Techno of Martyn to Darkstar's 21st Century Electro.  Amongst tracks I might never have heard otherwise are Mala's 'Level Nine' and 'Shake It'  by LD.

'Midnight Mushrumps', Gryphon

Gryphon Dress Up And Hang About The Woods Late At Night

Gryphon's second album forms a perfect bridge between the folky-medievalism of their first and the Prog. complexity of their third.  I have immense affection for their blend of good humour, authentic instrumentation and impressive musicianship and even find their fancy-dress excesses a cheerful reminder of a more flamboyant era.  In true early 70s style, the title piece is a suite composed for an Old Vic theatre production and tailored to fit one side of an LP.

'Wish You Were Here', Pink Floyd

Sid Barratt: The Unrecognizable, Rotund Stranger Who Appeared
 Mysteriously At The Recording of 'Wish You Were Here'

This is an obvious but an undeniable '70s classic' and effectively Pink Floyd's high water mark.  I revisited it after watching a late night 'making of…' documentary on TV.  It was predictably formulaic, featuring standard tropes of master recordings dissected by elderly sound engineers and band members strumming guitars nostalgically, but included some great vintage material and interesting insights into the album's creation.

It's impressive how a group of initially unfocussed, emotionally inhibited individuals could shape an artwork as resonant and well-resolved as 'Dark Side Of The Moon' then, despite various distractions, attain similar heights again with this.  For that we must forgive Roger Waters his driven megalomania, even if it resulted in embarrassing later work and, famously, fractured the band altogether.

Either way, 'WYWH' shows how, occasionally, a concept album could become a thing of sophisticated beauty by interweaving, (but not spoon-feeding), themes of absence and record-biz Mamon, and personifying them in the tragic figure of lost Floydian, Sid Barrett.  Most importantly, when all the discussion's over, the music is very good and not emotionally inhibited at all.

'Dub Side Of The Moon', Easy Star All Stars

'I an I' & 'Us and Them'

A Reggae version of Pink Floyd's best known album sounds like a crass novelty stunt but this is really very enjoyable.  New York label Easy Star set their in-house band and several big-name guests to work and three years later (!), they returned this clever rethink of the original, suggesting they took as much trouble over it as did the Floyd themselves.  Perhaps it's no real surprise that the original pristine atmospheres translate well into a dubby context and it's apparent that Roger Waters' basslines  weren't so far from the big reggae bottom end employed here.  The All Stars also get a little sly humour into the project, (bubbling bongs and coughing instead of cash registers on the 'Money' intro., etc.), but this tribute is anything but cheesy and actually adds a whole new dimension to 'DSOTM'.

'Early Venetian Lute Music', Joan Ambrosio Dalza, Francesco Spinacino, Franciscus Bossinensis & Vincenzo Capirola, (Performed by Christopher Wilson & Shirley Rumsey).

Robing and A-Luting

Recent winter floods remind me that Venice is a doomed city, destined to sink beneath the rising waters of its lagoon.  That makes these elegant, plangent lute pieces from the city's 15th and16th Century heyday rather poignant but I'm an enthusiastic observer of entropic processes and somewhat dubious about modern attempts to preserve the past in aspic (or cement).  This music was originally performed by professional musicians for wealthy patrons, providing escapism from the plague, war and financial corruption that surrounded them.  It provides similar distraction today, allowing me to inhabit an imaginative, ideal past where shifting sunlight reflects from water, onto the ceilings of a Renaissance Palazzo.

'Venice', Fennesz

This was also inspired by, and partially recorded in, Venice, being released in 2004.  If  Renaissance lutenists released beauty from strings through manual dexterity, Christian Fennesz does it by recording, treating and smearing them in gorgeous, degraded layers across his computer's hard drive.  The results are fluid,  atmospheric and mostly very abstract.  Should all this nuance and non-specificity become wearing, David Sylvian appears on 'Transit' with a deeply melancholy vocal evoking a form of particularly European demise.  Later, on 'The Stone Of Impermanence' the guitar work becomes loud and abrasive before subsiding back into ambience.

'The 50th Anniversary Collection', Bob Dylan

Young Bobby Single-Handedly Takes On Folk Music
At The 'Carnegie Hall Hootenanny', 1962

This is a massive, very limited and astonishing 4-disc release of outtakes and live performances from 1962.  It's also a cynical piece of ring-fencing, designed to secure European copyright under the 'use it within 50 years or lose it' rule. Inevitably, the tracks can be easily heard 'unofficially' anyhoo, so it's baffling to hear reports of the 100 or so physical discs already commanding stupid prices.  Scanning my music shelves, I wonder who really needs 7 alternate takes of 'Mixed Up Confusion' or indeed, any more versions at all of 'Blowin' In The Wind'.  It's astounding how one artist can have such an extensive back catalogue and how the recycling of Dylan's early recordings now resembles an unstoppable juggernaut.

Then I listen to the actual music and remember what all the fuss was about in the first place.  Whatever Dylan became over the intervening years, the young Bobby that Suze Rotollo and Joan Baez fell for was palpably hungry and committed to the material he appropriated or originated.  These performances certainly demonstrate his famed dynamism and unrivalled attack.  He steeped himself in Folk and Blues tradition but was always going to transform it into something uniquely his own and there's evidence here that Dylan actually toyed with electrification as early as '62.  More amazingly, there are even songs I'd never heard before.  It's a perfectly acceptable, (if repetitious), way to hear Dylan in his first incarnation, but I'm not sure why you'd pay for it, even if you could find one.

'Kurt's Rejoinder', Brian Eno

'Kurt's Rejoinder' re-joined

As I write I'm planning a day in London, including a visit to Tate Britain's Kurt Schwitters Exhibition.  It reminds me of this track from Brian Eno's 1977 album 'Before And After Science' which includes fragments of Schwitters reciting his own Dadaist phonetic poem 'Ursonate'.  Actually, the whole album is excellent  and, whilst Eno is best known for his membership of Roxy Music and for 'inventing' ambient music, I consider this is amongst his best recordings.

'Fear Of Music', Talking Heads

'Fear Of Music', - Be Very Afraid

Eno's production finger prints are also all over my favourite Talking Heads Album from 1979.  He and head Head David Byrne were very tight during this period so it's probably no coincidence that title track 'I Zimbra' features a lyric written by another Dadaist, (Hugo ball, this time).  The album is twitchy and rather paranoid in overall tone, showcasing Byrne's Art Geek schtick whilst capitalising on the band's inherent funk.

Postscript:

I've decided to scale down these monthly playlists for a while.  I enjoy writing them and music certainly remains intrinsic to my regular routines.  However, I fear they're tending to skate superficially over the surface of things, resorting to journalistic labelling and genre-fixation, rather than evoking the particular qualities of the actual music.  The comic captions may be getting out of hand too.  In the future I'll aim to write more subjectivity in fewer, but more in-depth, music-related posts; to get inside the music more and, (perhaps), just provide simple monthly lists as additional clues.