Cold vispo: For Your Information / I love borders! / My art travels and so do I, occasionally / Music: The Shout (soundtrack) by Rupert Hine /

For Your Information, RTomens, 2025

Here's a new 'cold' (collage of old) vispo piece. Two old pieces went into the making, with print overlaid then further cut-out shapes added. At this rate, it will take me ages to weed out the rejects from the boxes and recycle them, but that's how it's going.

I love borders! Don't you? Oops, I forgot to cap the 'b'. You'll think me one of those crazy people who care about the type and number of people who come into their country - oh no!!! Perhaps you can't get Border biscuits in your country. I'm not sure if their sales cross borders. 

My art has physically crossed a few borders. It's travelled to Japan, Austria, Portugal, America, Australia...and probably other countries I've forgotten. It's more well-travelled than me. When I did fly it was usually to Europe because I can't be doing long haul. That and the fact that I love France as a holiday destination, especially the South and in particular Nice. As I always say, in my 'other life', I'd live there; perhaps in London too, although once in Nice, I can't imagine what would draw me back to London.

Here I am posing outside the Jean Cocteau museum in Menton. A cool building...with cool content!

Here's the view from the top of the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Nice. 

It's the greatest gallery in my world but is currently closed for renovation so wait until it's reopened before you go. You really should go. 

Now I must stop posting holiday snaps and mention this film soundtrack...

The official soundtrack credit went to Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford but Buried Treasure's Alan Gubby has spent seven years (!) getting this collection of Rupert Hine's recordings for the film together and it's a real treat pop-pickers.  If you like electronic film cues and short mood pieces this is a must. The clip below features John Hurt as composer, Anthony Fielding, making musique concrète.

TTFN!

Postcard Collages / Anthony Burgess and concrete music

 

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Reading Anthony Burgess' The Wanting Seed (1962) I was amused to find two references to concrete music (or musique concrète, if you want to sound posh) within the first 39 pages. 'Boys dashed to lessons in concrete music, astrophysics, language control.' (p23). Bear in mind that Burgess is depicting what is, in his eyes, a grim, godless future in which child-bearing is frowned upon and, naturally, all live under strict State control. Concrete music is, therefore, symbolic of society's decline rather than a positive subject for study. 

Burgess wanted to become a composer before becoming a novelist but the music department at the Victoria University of Manchester turned down his application because of poor grades in physics. He went on to compose nonetheless and once said 'I wish people would think of me as a musician who writes novels, instead of a novelist who writes music on the side.'

From his references to concrete music in The Wanting Seed, it's obvious he was not enamoured with the pioneering works of Pierre Schaeffer, for instance. He probably thought it sacrilegious to 'sample' his beloved classical music, to dissect and reassemble works of genius. Never mind all those 'concrete' sounds such as spinning lids, creaking doors, trains etc - it's just not music! Many others in music no doubt felt the same when first hearing a 'symphony of noises' in the late-40s and early-50s. 

On p39, Tristram is in a bar where 'Remote, cold, abstract, the concrete music went on'. A little later, someone drops a coin in the 'musicator'. The result is music we might recognise today in the form of  'a combo of abstract tape noises with a slow gut-shaking beat deep beneath'. This Burgess describes as a 'dance-tune'. How prescient. Having died in 1993, poor Anthony may well have lived to accidently hear the sonic horror he described become a reality. 

So reading The Wanting Seed today and with those references in mind, what better soundtrack to making some art than L'Œuvre Musicale. It's all available to hear in two pages on Bandcamp.