Corduroy Psychedelia: On Boards of Canada, Hauntology, and the PBS Unconscious

"In his “A Note on Cold Rationalism,” Mark Fisher writes: “Spinoza says children are abject because they do not know what causes their actions or desires. Like many adults, they confuse being free with ‘doing what they want,’ when freedom entails attuning your desires and emotions to your reason.” Such epistemic formlessness of youth finds its darkest mythical expression in the omnipotent child—the tyranny of desire made flesh in Anthony Fremont in “It’s a Good Life” from the film Twilight Zone (1983): desire without reason, will without limit. His family and neighbors have learned to suppress every authentic response—fear, grief, anger—behind a mask of cheerful compliance, lest a stray thought displease the child and consign them to “the cornfield”, Anthony’s name for the void into which he banishes whatever displeases him. That the only available reprieve is for a young woman named Ethel to follow Anthony into the cartoon world flickering on his television screen—dissolving into his omnipotent fantasy rather than contesting it—illuminates something essential about the cult of childhood at its most terrifying: the adult world does not contain the child’s sovereignty, it capitulates to it, falling into its abyss of desire."

https://splitinfinities.substack.com/p/corduroy-psychedelia-on-boards-of

#Hauntology

I'm doing creative research on hauntology. This is connected to a music project. I'm currently reading "Corduroy Psychedelia: On Boards of Canada, Hauntology, and the PBS Unconscious- A Philosophy of Sick Days in the 1980s" on the Split Infinities substack.

In the article the "liminal quality" of unrestricted TV viewing and childhood fever is discussed. We all have dreamlike memories of TV programmes watched in uninformed and aberration as a child. One of my own such hallucagenic TV references is Ode to Billy Joe. I was 7 years old. It is something I remember 50 years later.

Ode to Billy Joe (1976) is a romantic drama based on Bobbie Gentry's hit song about a teenage romance in 1950s Mississippi that ends in tragedy when Billy Joe McAllister jumps off the Tallahatchie Bridge. Directed by Max Baer Jr., the film stars Robby Benson and Glynnis O'Connor, exploring the reasons behind the suicide. A homosexual encounter drove Billy Joe to his death.

You can watch the trailer for the 1976 movie here:

Ode To Billy Joe (1976) Trailer
https://youtube.com/watch?v=f-_R4BRooXg&is=zlhp3cY332l2XnSJ

#hauntology

Hauntology - scrying with sound

Hauntology is a philosophical and cultural concept describing the persistent return of elements from the past—particularly failed, "lost futures"—to haunt the contemporary present. Introduced by Jacques Derrida in 1993, it signifies a "nostalgia for lost futures" or a "time out of joint," where culture recycles old aesthetics instead of producing a truly new future.

Abstract, random and improvised sound collages

In music, hauntology is predominantly associated with a British electronic music trend but it can apply to any art concerned with the aesthetics of the past. The trend is often tied to notions of retrofuturism, whereby artists evoke the past by utilising the "spectral sounds of old music technology". The trend involves the sampling of older sound sources to evoke deep cultural memory. Critic Simon Reynolds stated in a 2006 article that "this strand of 'ghostified' music doesn't quite constitute a genre, a scene, or even a network. [...] more of a flavour or atmosphere than a style with boundaries", although in a 2017 article he summarized it as a "largely British genre of eerie electronics fixated on ideas of decaying memory and lost futures". A 2009 blog post by academic Adam Harper stated that "[h]auntology is not a genre of art or music, but an aesthetic effect, a way of reading and appreciating art".

Hauntological music draws on varied postwar cultural sources from the 1940s through the 1960s which lie outside the usual canon of popular music, including library music, film and television soundtracks, educational music, and the sonic experimentation of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, as well as electronic and folk music sources. Other British influences include obscure musique concrète composers and Joe Meek's album I Hear a New World, as well as psychedelia and public information films. Also important is the appropriation of visual iconography from this earlier period, including graphic design elements of school textbooks, public information posters, and television idents.

Artists typically use vintage recording devices such as cassettes and synthesisers from the 1960s and 1980s. Production often foregrounds the grain of the recording, including vinyl noise and tape hiss derived from the degraded musical or spoken word samples commonly used. Sampling is used to "evoke 'dead presences'" which are transformed into "eerie sonic markers". Artists often mix antique synthesiser tones, acoustic instruments, and digital techniques, as well as found sounds, abstract noise, and industrial drones.

Position Normal are one such English musical duo, formed in London in 1986, consisting of Chris Bailiff and John Cushway. Their music is sample-based, incorporating existing music and found sound from unusual vintage sources (purchased second hand or previously owned by Bailiff's father) into collage-like tracks.

Hauntology is a term that offers freedom for creative interpretation, and while typically used to reference temporal disturbances and the ever-increasing interaction between the present and the past, I will use it to refer to a broader but intertwined dichotomy: Real experience vs. unreal experience. While perhaps abstract-sounding at first, it is not hard to think of examples of experiences you’ve had where the power of the moment comes from what didn’t happen as opposed to what did. Picture yourself passing through a crowded nightclub. You lock eyes with someone who passes by with a slight smile, but neither of you turn back, the flash of potential fading as soon as it begins to burn. Stories you’ve heard that you only know through imagination; dreams that slip away as you wake but leave emotional traces that you can’t shake throughout the day; missed opportunities and regrets that hound you even when their sources are long gone ― these unrealities are just as impactful on our internal experience as the realities we experience, and hauntology is an attempt to capture the ineffable emotion that comes at the border of the two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauntology_(music)

https://www.michigandaily.com/arts/hauntology-exploring-liminal-space/

https://reynoldsretro.blogspot.com/2012/05/?m=1

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nAokzlubz5lzNIQEUoKGhkxGvjSoT7LwA&si=cePT5u9saxPuiVBn

#Hauntology

Home audio

#Sampledelic.

#Hauntology

Hauntology, a term coined by Jacques Derrida in 1993, describes the persistence of elements from the past haunting the present, particularly "lost futures"—visions of tomorrow that never materialized. It suggests the present is not fully present, but mixed with past memories and ghostly, absent potential.

Finally finished Mark Fisher’s Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. I’ve been working my way through it, on and off, since the end of January.

Most of his essays in this book feature musical artists from the rave scene in London, circa early 2000’s. I’ve never heard of them before (not much of a raver, I’m afraid) but I looked them up and listened to their music while I read and took notes.

There were also essays which featured movies that I’ve seen before and mentions of movies I haven’t seen but would now like to. I particularly enjoyed his writings on The Shining, Momento, and Inception. I rewatched Momento and Inception after reading the essays and got more out of them then with previous viewings.

I first ran into Mark Fisher’s work last year, watching some of his lectures on YouTube. I’m sad that he died. The world needs more Mark Fishers.

#books #hauntology #theory #philosophy #essays

Hauntology (1–4)
by feinstruktur

Hauntology 1
Four Messages (Hauntology 2)
In the Proximity of Gods (Hauntology 3)
Hauntology 4: The Artificial Ghost Solution

https://feinstruktur.bandcamp.com/album/hauntology
#Bandcamp #OriginalMusic #Hauntology #WeirdMusic

Ended the week and welcomed the weekend after a bike ride on this lovely azue winter day with Casual Nudism by Dollboy, released on Arable Records in 2006.

"This record was made with a greater sense of purpose and identity than the previous one and used sounds and techniques that I'd been exposed to over the previous year or two as I'd drifted into an organic, folkier groove - dare I say it, this sounds like folktonica...The other aspect it shares with Plans is Jack Hayter, who has played on most of my records since 2004. He played lap steel on many tracks but a very odd, untuneable hollow, aluminium bodied acoustic lapsteel guitar on Black Sun, which is, in fact named after this instrument. The clarinet on Odd Man Out was played by Martin Smith of Tunng and there was some glokenspiel played by Alan Outram of Woodcraft Folk." Oliver Cherer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQzL2eyf228&list=RDnQzL2eyf228&start_radio=1

#Dollboy #OliverCherer #Hauntology #Ambient #Music

Been a big fan of Valentina Magaletti and her various and sundry projects(Vanishing Twin, Moin, Tomaga, and V/Z) for a few years.

I kinda think of these projects in a similar vein to Stereolab, Broadcast, Focus Group and possibly some other Ghost Box label bands.

Great stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u5icU5fRDo
#music #Hauntology