Misanthropic Musicology on the Beenleigh Line Part 2

Monday bloody Monday. Back in the ol' tin snake on my way towards the Unutterable. A dusty apocalyptic heatwave is crushing the air around Brisbane, making the aircon in this steel shitserpent somewhat appealing despite its ultimate destination. So as predicted this week's victim is Pauline Oliveros, starting with Deep Listening, truly one of the greats of minimalism. Pauline was truly one of the greats, and easily one of the most important composers of the late 20th Century. But of course being a woman meant that the deluded dicks (literally) in charge of the classical music history books have never written her in as a significant player. She's totally ignored in sausage fests like Nyman's book on the minimalists (Reich, Glass, Young, Riley), and while her deep listening research and concepts had a significant following, I've yet to see her get the credit she deserves. 

 I was lucky enough to exchange a few emails with Pauline after she examined my PhD thesis (her examination was favourable thank you very much), and despite being an incredibly busy person she took the time to write me a couple of references and offer me some career advice. Pretty great, though obviously I'm sitting on the train to the Unutterable so I needed a bit more career advice than that clearly. She will be sorely missed, and at least for me my minimalist pantheon will always be more like Oliveros, Flynt, Conrad, Hennix, Niblock. That's the real deal right there. Deep Listening is a beautiful album, recorded in an old cistern in the 80s, it has a cavernous warmth and a strange subterranean quality that's second to none. Speaking of subterranean, I'm sitting at Central station for a long time for no reason. Classic Queensland Rail. Will I ever reach the Unutterable?


Well, heading now to the safety of South, Pauline O in my earholes accordion droning her way through the wonderful work named St. George and the Dragon (there we go with potential crypto-fascism again, when you start looking for that stuff it's everywhere). Earlier on I was grabbing a snack on my drone break listening to Pauline's drones when I passed another drone with a tattoo reading "less is more". Too right it is. The album St George is on is entitled Pauline Oliveros & American Voices, or something. Whole thing is a stunning study that proves time and time again that less is more, less is more. Whenever that policy is applied you get great music, in my most humble opinion. Jaki Liebezeit playing monotonous because some acidfreak told him to. Gylve Fenris Nagell refusing to use snare or cymbals on Darkthrone's black metal masterpiss Under A Funeral Moon because the rest wasn't needed for the nihilistic statement they wanted to make. Best to say only what needs to be said in a sea of loud, inane, frightened voices.

Botanikk is the latest thing to have featured Pauline by the looks of it, and it sounds like a great improvised set of sorts. Fantastic as usual to be expected etc. The untterable is drawing me towards it in this electric sardine can. Cruising past Dutton Park station, the closest port of call the Princess Alexandra Hospital, and notable theretofore as the station that sports a massive funeral home billboard, towering over you as you walk up to the hospital. Ah capitalism. According to Marx we were meant to reach peak Capitalism and then unite to take control of the means of production for the working class. Instead we watched TV, let Capitalism shift gears from peak to moribund, and now its morbidly obese body is exploding all over the place like the climax to that Akira movie.


Wow the perfectly normal, cleancut looking fellow next to me on the 7th locomotive wonder of the world stinks of booze. It's 7:32am. It is hot though, thirsty weather, and cornflakes do taste good soaked in whiskey. But back to Pauline. She was truly great. I mean, she was an accordionist for fuck's sake. Who does that? And it's always a perfect addition. Right now, as I ride the snake, she wheezes out dense combination tones over chirping electronics and ramming bass and then spills it over into abstract drone strokes like a slowmotion Burroughs shotgun painting. Then some electronic sounds like the busted receipt machine the ticket seller has at Bowen Hills station, halfway to the Unutterable, quarter of the way up Beelzebub's arse. Yes, arse. Now popping sounds, clicks and wheezes, interrupted by the clichéd accent of the automated train announcer declaring our arrival at central station like we've all achieved something special. We've achieved nothing of the sort my comrades.

Crawling through the Alien Bog with Pauline. Forgot she was an early pioneer of electronic music for a minute there. Weird synthesised racket that would make a nice soundtrack for that thing they've just landed on Mars that will just wind up as more human trash in the universal habitat. Alien Bog isn't trash though, but it's title translates well to my surrounds on this futuristic suburban rust rover. Why do people insist on wearing Metallica shirts? One of the great cosmic mysteries. Sun Ra probably knows out there on Saturn, and like on Saturn, the air is of a different quality on the Beenleigh line travelling further and further from the Unutterable toward home and onwards to guntown great south east. They should transmit Alien Bog through the PA on this locomotive lice laboratory, really enhance the commute, overlaid with wisdom for the workers from Sun Ra stock interviews while we glide at light (rail) speed over the glittering Brownsnake. Fuck it's brown today, silt, mud and sorrow.
Total fucking heatwave. Looks like Thor's gonna rip open the sky and throw a bolt right down the guts of the skyscraper inhabited by a certain insurance company I once worked for. You can live in hope anyway.

So on this Woden's Day I ride the snake, the ancient snake, to the lake where no blue bus is calling us. And to put the icing on the savage tropical cake, I'm not even listening to Pauline. Instead I've fallen to the temptation of listening to the excellent new release from Sahel Sounds, the soundtrack to their new Saharan psychedelic Western "Zerzura" which I also can't wait to watch. If it's anything like their tuareg version of Purple Rain (Rain Blue with a Little Red in It or whatever it is), then it's not to be missed. The soundtrack to Zerzura is absolutely fantastic. A dusty tuareg take on the Dead Man soundtrack, with a splash of Marisa Anderson to help out in the ambiance. Experimental solo tuareg guitar sountrack, yes please. It has a lonesome bedraggled quality, like someone slipped a little laudanum in their sweet green tea. Shit, last I lived in West Africa, I was in Senegal, where they put so much sugar in their cafe touba you start seeing colours you didn't know existed. I had to have a tooth extracted shortly after that trip. Damn you cafe touba, taking the tooth of toubab. Anyway back to Pauline later, if this hopeless hunk of engineer's regret ever gets me to work that is.

Man what a day and the air is hot, dry windy and scorching temperatures in this morbid capitalist utopia Trump and his mates are building for us by ignoring the obvious. But it's nice and cool in the bowels of the Beenleigh. Abattoiresque even. The incredible Pauline Oliveros Hat-hut release with the cool bridge river cover, Roots of the Moment or something, droning wheezing beatifically lazy accordion drones that somehow enhance the dusty dry surrounds outside this palladium python. I love this recording very much, an inspiration to all who give it a real listen I dare say. The best kind of minimalism, intuitive, deep and born of listening not of declaration, born of introspection, not gesture, broad and beautiful brushstrokes on sand that slowly blows away formless and forgotten in wind and rain, only to spark again in a new corner of imagination. Always alive, present, letting time and vibration do its own thing.

The Wanderer. That's what accompanies me in this moment crammed in the back carriage with the rest of the future carrion, lugging their carry-on to the inevitable, on course for the Unutterable. The Wanderer is magnificent, staying true to Pauline this morning I listen to this glorious record deep within firestorm heatwave firenado-driving deathwind week. I've skipped a few electronic options, not out of disinterest but because the name The Wanderer took me and the cover of someone riding an elephant which is well and truly less shit than riding this 7th locomotive wonder of the world. Anyway, otherworldly sounds made by very worldly instruments are considerably more interesting than the synthetic kind. On The Wanderer we once again hear Pauline take the accordion into the outer reaches, creating deep listening space, evoking the depth of time, drawn from accordion slinging hicks in dusty fields to moogs on martian planes. Why would someone take a Moog into space? Surely a laptop would suffice.

Cicada Dream Band in my head. Free improv and twitters of horns with chirping night invertebrates as tamboura. More fantastic Pauline to top off a day of utter bullshit.

Accordion and Voice and the horse sings from the cloud. Pauline once again breaking the bullshit down into manageable spheres of enlightened sound on this fine scorching Kali Yuga Friday. Beenleigh back carriage poorly air conned at 4 dollars a ticket. The most ethereally pale young woman opposite me, looking like she'd melt along with the Arctic that her ancestors surely once lived in. Pauline O, despite short visits to Zerzura I've stayed on course all week because I don't want to miss a note of this drone genius' work. Nice and quiet on the loco locomotive this morning, deep listening easy to reach despite glistening sweat in eyes. Best to close them and stop writing.

Next week: Anthony Braxton....probably.