King Of The Slums

This one was a tip from John Hannon who plays in the excellent Liberez...check them out... Some crazy snarling off-the-hook John Caleisms here in some run-of-the-mill Mancunian post-punk.

Masenqo Music of Eritrea and Ethiopia

Awalom Gebremariam—Desaes at Awesome Tapes From Africa

Upcoming Adam Cadell Performances

As part of the World Forum for Music, hosted in Brisbane Australia at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music, I will be performing an hour long radical improvisation entitled Which Side Are You On? on 23 November, 6pm, Basel Jones Orchestral Hall, $10

And as the poster here shows I'll be performing some days later on the 29th at the Waiting Room in West End, Brisbane for the final Sonic Masala event of 2013. I'll be joined by Tony Irving on drums a man of serious free noise pedigree to say the least.

Coming Home From Tomorrow

Agencement

A new discovery right here on Underground Violin...another true radical motherfucker straight out of Japan. Hideaki Shimada came scraping out of the 1980s Japanese noise multiverse (it seems old mate from Merzbow encouraged him to release his stuff on his own Pico imprint or something along these lines) with his echoing, scraping, chattering, looping, ring-modulated works for solo violin as Agencement. While I ordinarily feel some derision toward some of the Cageian extended techniques that violinists like Hideaki use, he makes it into a glorious cacophony that is truly interesting to behold in your eardrums...You can find a bit out about him HERE and I plan to post plenty more about this man soon...

Violin From the Archangel's Thunderbird

While I'm fairly certain I've posted about the genius of Amon Duul II on this blog before...or perhaps at least over at Planet of the Scrapes...I feel that it's important to delve more deeply into their work here - and even more specifically into the wailing, warbling, sky-reaching violin of Chris Karrer. The history of the Amon Duul commune scene - and the excellent bands that were born out of its fecund radical womb in the 1960s - has been covered in detail elsewhere (most notably Julian Cope's amazing Krautrocksampler) so I'll just cut to the fucking chase won't I. Karrer. His violin playing is truly radical and like nothing else out there. Just listen to side 2 of Amon Duul II's seminal Phallus Dei (seen below in a freaked-out live version) for a truly mind-destroying door-growing manifestation of this claim. It's like a gypsy hoedown on the surface of Mars. What if Ludwig Van was born in 1942, ran away from Germany for a while to discover the joys of consuming pounds of hash in some forgotten corner of Morocco, then decided that the piano didn't let him play between the notes enough, picked up a violin, plugged it in through an array of fucked synthesisers and just let it scream? Karrer's playing is unmistakably classical but it's so munted and stoned out that it's like the entire European musical tradition was re-interpreted by some extra-terrestrial being and beamed directly into Karrer's brain. The delay present in a long-distance phone-call comes to mind. In a way this could be said of Amon Duul II in general...they wanted to escape post-war Europe and the guilt of simply being German by making something not made on this Earth...something from another world entirely. Karrer's violin is just that...otherworldly...but full of a screaming desperation that is entirely human. Amon Duul II had the good fortune of becoming a fairly big deal on the live and recording circuit during the late 60s/early 70s, making the radical violin of Chris Karrer perhaps one of the more widely heard examples of a truly mind-altering approach to violin performance. The radical credentials of Karrer's violin are unquestionably strong. The whole Amon Duul concept is deeply radical and truly adversarial in its complete rejection of so-called Western Civilisation. These Amon Duul II fiends still live the commune experiment, still live off-the-radar, still fight the good fight through sound and art. While other German revolutionaries chose to take the great leap into death and destruction, Amon Duul II and the violin of Chris Karrer chose to use sound as their weapon, but perhaps weapon isn't the appropriate word here, I prefer "vehicle". Karrer and Amon Duul II provided a vehicle to reach a better world, a vehicle with no fixed coordinates and no damn plan but to make a better world by taking Earth's inhabitants far out into space and finding a new one altogether. Dial this badboy up to around the 3 min mark to see Karrer pick up his violin if you're attention span is too short to watch the whole thing. It's all brilliant so I recommend the latter. God's Cock...parte 2 is the more violin-orientated one I believe...

Some more shameless self-promotion...

Good morning allllll, So it is with great pleasure that I announce the release of my new solo album 'Til It All Melts Away out NOW on Sydney-based net-label Wood & Wire. You can see what it's all about HERE Radical Violin for red-earth-dirt-road travelling. I would say my finest compositions to date on the solo front and my difficult 5th or 6th solo album....can't remember...lost count. You can find MORE OF THEM HERE

Here I'll embed the player to make it easy for you... Get into it. If you want to bring it out on some sort of platform on your label then get in touch via whatever means possible. The Doctor Accra, Ghana

Shameless Self Promotion...Again

This blog is by no means dedicated to the promotion of my own compositions (you can find all that stuff in the side bar here to your right if you really want), but since the Planet of the Scrapes Blog is currently heavily engaged in the promotion of The Songs of Baron Samedi by The Scrapes I feel that this is the most appropriate platform to announce the surprise forwarded release date of my new album "'Til It All Melts Away'" on Sydney online label Wood & Wire. It seems that the beast could well come out next week instead of the original August projected release date. This is, in my humble opinion, my finest work to date and to top it off it's being released for FREE. Here's the blurb I sent the label: Adam Cadell’s ‘Til It All Melts Away…4 compositions inspired by red-earth roads and busted sound systems...monumental, urgent, meditative, angry, gentle, more electronic than any of his previous work...it is evocative of West African sounds filtered through a fucked up lens of Minor Threat and Anton Webern with a dash of Tony Conrad dronathon for good measure. Recorded entirely on a hand-held field recorder in Accra, Ghana and then munted beyond recognition with his trusty laptop, this collection of pieces for violin, gonje, percussion, found sounds and electronics represents part of Cadell’s Radical Violin project. Music against complacency and apathy…music against capitalism and exploitation…music for truth. “Radical Underground Violinists of the world, stand up, take your instruments and your intellects and help build a culture in opposition to the powers that are degrading our disadvantaged fellow humans and making our planet uninhabitable!” Dr. Adam Cadell The Manifesto of the Radical Violinist Will post it up here when it's ready. In further news I also contributed violin to a couple of tracks on the new Jastreb (Croatia) album "Mother Europe", due out in September on HauRuck. Here's a preview where you can hear a bit of my scraping somewhere in there: You can pre-order this magnificent krautrock bastard HERE

Latest installment of The Scrapes - The Songs of Baron Samedi

Two new vessels from the in-between world have washed up on your shores...listen hard..."A Haunting" and "Militant Signals"...download if you want to support new music and a future physical release (probably on vinyl) or just stream it on your fancy bourgeois broadband if you're a cheapskate. Dig it like a shallow grave.

Hillbilly Electronic Music...Henry Flynt

Came across this highly insightful recent interview with Henry Flynt today. He's been doing some things at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn and damn is this broadcast revelatory. It includes unreleased, unheard material including the final piece, a brilliant work of "Hillbilly Electronic Music" incorporating what sounds like a violin being crunched through a 1980s commodore 64 or some old piece of shit like that. In other words....awesome. You can stream and download this lengthy beast here: And it seems he did a nice little video walking tour of a fairly recent exhibition of his work at the Kunstverein in Dusseldorf...haven't watched it yet so I'll stick it here for safe-keeping. You can all tell me how it is. HENRY FLYNT TOUR

More deep Moroccan Strings

There's some serious radical sounds coming from the violin on this little tape posted over at Awesome Tapes From Africa Seriouuussss. Whether this fiddling is radical or innovative I have no idea but it sure sounds fresh as fuck to me. Sounds like every note has meaning...love the distorted bow work at times like he's slowly turning up the gain...

Iliss Ntmazirte

Leroy Jenkins & the Revolutionary Ensemble

Some true motherfuckers here...."Invasion"...a long and powerful ear/mind-scraping from legendary Radical Violinist Leroy Jenkins and his extraordinary Revolutionary Ensemble....from The Psyche...1975 LP release with a 2002 digital reissue floating about somewhere....

Deep Moroccan Underground Strings

I've listened to this killer jam many times in the past but I feel compelled to put a link up to it up on this blog for anyone who's never found it before... Sawamites Lhmak Hmaki Avec El Miloudia As stated simply by Mr. Shimkovitz over at the amazing Awesome Tapes From Africa where this tape can be heard: "Obviously. More magic from Morocco." Obviously indeed. LISTEN HERE Over and out from Accra, Ghana Adam Barbarian Meditator

More NOISE!

You can buy and try the music of Mr Noise Khanyile here:

http://noisekhanyile.bandcamp.com/

This shit is blowing my mind....

Noise Khanyile...Township fiddle jivin'

"...Noise Khanyile, a violinist and vocalist who can also play guitar and mandolin. The stuff the band plays is half traditional Zulu music, half township jive: an acoustic mixture of violin, African women chanting, sax breaks and dance beats provided by Western drums. There's electric guitar and bass too, but the acoustic sounds dominate. These incredible shouting voices start it off - 'Hey, this is Grooving Jive Number 1' - then the violin screams and seems to laugh at you. It's so explosive. It grabs you the way dance music should.

It's political - you don't have to be told these people are living on the edge. Khanyile makes his own bows, and his strings are all worn out, but he plays in this incredibly vibrant way. He has some wild electric effects, lots of reverb which give the violin space, and he uses a sawing effect to get the tune out, like in traditional American and English folk fiddle playing. Africans use the same intervals as we do in Europe, thirds and fourths, but they also use a lot of fifths, like in jazz. And rhythmically, we have an idea of the on-beat and the off-beat, but in Africa the two are interchangeable.

All the instruments come in at some time, over the massive bass drum beat. It's only a half-tempo song, unlike a lot of the fast Zairean music, but it snowballs till they're all playing at once, and after eight minutes, it falls apart. There's no climax, the groove is too important. This is true folk rock."

This snippet lifted from the Independent.co.uk:  http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/world-music-riffs--john-jones-of-the-oyster-band-on-the-joburg-allstars-1533544.html

This township jive fiddle rips a hole in your mind. Radical as can be...

More on this motherfucker in the future....