Paul Brady – Arthur McBride

Sheet music available here.

Lyrics:

Oh me and me cousin one Arthur McBride
As we went a-walkin’ down by the seaside
Now mark what followed and what did betide
For it bein’ on Christmas mornin’.
Out for recreation we went on a tramp
And we met Sergeant Napper and Corporal Vamp
And a little wee drummer intending to camp
For the day bein’ pleasant and charmin’.

“Good mornin’, good mornin’,” the Sergeant did cry
“And the same to you gentlemen,” we did reply
Intendin’ no harm but meant to pass by
For it bein’ on Christmas mornin’.
“But,” says he, “my fine fellows, if you will enlist
It’s ten guineas in gold I will slip in your fist
And a crown in the bargain for to kick up the dust
And drink the King’s health in the mornin’.”

“For a soldier he leads a very fine life
And he always is blessed with a charming young wife
And he pays all his debts without sorrow or strife
And always lives pleasant and charmin’.
And a soldier he always is decent and clean
In the finest of clothin’ he’s constantly seen
While other poor fellows go dirty and mean
And sup on thin gruel in the mornin’.”

“Well,” says Arthur, “I wouldn’t be proud of your clothes
For you’ve only the lend of them as I suppose
And you dare not change them one night for you know
If you do you’ll be flogged in the mornin’.
And although that we are single and free
We take great delight in our own company
And we have no desire strange faces to see
Although that your offers are charmin’.”

“And we have no desire to take your advance
All hazards and dangers we barter on chance
For you would have no scruples for to send us to France
Where we would get shot without warnin’.”

“Oh no,” says the Sergeant, “I’ll have no such chat
And I neither will take it from spalpeen or brat
For if you insult me with one other word
I’ll cut off your heads in the mornin’.”
And then Arthur and I we soon drew our hods
And we scarce gave them time for to draw their own blades
When a trusty shillelagh came over their heads
And bade them take that as fair warning.

And their trusty of rapiers that hung by their side
We flung them as far as we could in the tide
“Now take them out devils,” cried Arthur McBride
“And temper their edge in the mornin’.”
And the little wee drummer we flattened his pow
And we made a football of his rowdy-dow-dow
Threw it in the tide for to rock and to row
And bade it a tedious returning.

And we havin’ no money paid them off in cracks
And we paid no respect to their two bloody backs
For we lathered them there like a pair of wet sacks
And left them for dead in the mornin’.
And so to conclude and to finish disputes
We obligingly asked if they wanted recruits
For we were the lads who would give them hard clouts
And bid them look sharp in the mornin’.

Oh me and me cousin one Arthur McBride
As we went a-walkin’ down by the seaside
Now mark what followed and what did betide
For it bein’ on Christmas mornin’.

• No warning had been given to any civilians before the soldiers opened fire
• None of the soldiers fired in response to attacks by petrol bombers or stone throwers
• Some of those killed or injured were clearly fleeing or going to help those injured or dying
• None of the casualties was posing a threat or doing anything that would justify their shooting
• Many of the soldiers lied about their actions
• The events of Bloody Sunday were not premeditated
• Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein, was present at the time of the violence and “probably armed with a sub-machine gun” but did not engage in “any activity that provided any of the soldiers with any justification for opening fire”

The inquiry ran for 12 years at an ultimate expense of £195M. Its findings have been widely greeted positively.

What I post today is not directly connected but certainly not unrelated: a debate — I use the term loosely — between Fintan O’Toole of the Irish Times and members of the Wolfe Tones, an Irish rebel music band who have enjoyed a long, successful career. Fintan contends their music and their style of performing are inherently racist and filled with hate-speech, while the Wolfe Tones assert that… Well, that Fintan is lacking a sense of humour, that his knowledge of the history of The Troubles is lacking and that he shouldn’t be able to consider himself Irish.

While even after having watched it countless times, to me it is completely obvious who wins this farce of a “debate”, the Youtube comments tell a different story:

In any event, here is the “debate”, in full:

The concept of Hauntology was then brought to my attention by a knowledgeable member of the electronic music community. From Wikipedia:

The idea suggests that the present exists only with respect to the past, and that society after the end of history will begin to orient itself towards ideas and aesthetics that are thought of as rustic, bizarre or “old-timey”; that is, towards the “ghost” of the past. In this, it is has some similarity with the cyberpunk literary movement. Derrida holds that because of this intellectual realignment, the end of history will be unsatisfactory and untenable.

The name and concept fundamentally come from Marx‘s assertion that a “spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism.” Derrida holds that the spirit of Karl Marx is even more relevant after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the demise of communism, that the West’s separation from the ignorance of the suffering still present in the world will “haunt” it and provide the impetus for a fresh interest in communism.

Fascinating!

This first installation in the series will focus on more “traditional” music in comparison to the music that will be featured in the following parts. In other words: plenty of singing; plenty of guitars and drums.

Any artists or record labels who take issue with me sharing these songs need just contact me in order to have the material removed.

Sparklehorse – It’s A Wonderful Life

Sparklehorse – Eyepennies

Beautiful tune from Mark Linkaus, with PJ Harvey as guest vocalist. Unfortunately Mark killed himself a few months ago, so we’ll have no more incredible releases like “It’s A Wonderful Life”, “Good Morning Spider” or his Fennesz collaboration…

Grouper – Cover The Windows And The Walls

A few months ago I would’ve pointed to Grouper’s “Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill” as her best work, but I’ve since realised that CTWATW is much more of a grower and absolutely consistent… Certainly the “new music find of 2009″ I’m most happy about, easily the most difficult choice in selecting a single track from the album for this blog post, definitely the best music in this blog-post. Genius.

Minimum Chips – Lady Grey

Australian indie band, shamefully under-acknowledged. Perfect album from start to finish.

Cortney Tidwell – Boys

“Oh, Suicide”, a very slow reprise of this song justifies buying this CD alone. I chose instead to put the more upbeat version here to lift the mood a little.

Tape – Luminarium

Killer keyboard part for this tune. Gorgeous stuff.

Jack Rose – Jack Rose

Interesting guy, considering his main project was as a guitarist in a Doom Metal band. Only now do I learn he died suddenly last December of a heart attack. Tragic.

The Gentleman Losers – The Gentleman Losers

The Gentleman Losers – Laureline

Mirah – C’mon Miracle

Inextricably linked to memories of wrestling with Wikimedia’s parser in the early hours of the morning, working on my final year project.

The Album Leaf – Into The Blue Again

The Album Leaf – Always For You

This too. Pretty drab and dreary, cheesy lyrics and arrangements: the very essence of “folktronica”. I enjoyed it at the time, though, for some reason, so it deserves a place here.

It Hugs Back – Inside Your Guitar

Absolutely stunning album, perfect from beginning to end. Support them by buying it!

Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions – At The Doorway Again

Heather Woods Broderick – From The Ground

Sister of Peter Broderick and impressive songwriter and musician in her own right, it was difficult choosing a song from this one too.

Beach House – Beach House

A nice one to end on, no?

The next installation in this series will most likely focus on ambient noise and will appear in a week or two.

One of my favorite hacks at last weekend’s Music Hack Day is Tristan’s Swinger.  The Swinger is a bit of python code that takes any song and makes it swing.  It does this be taking each beat and time-stretching the first half of each beat while time-shrinking the second half.  It has quite a magical effect.  Some examples:
Every Breath You Take (swing version) by TeeJay

Sweet Child O’ Mine (Swing Version) by plamere

You can find more examples in the original blog post. The results really are truly impressive. I’m looking forward to playing with Tristan Jehan‘s code, and also having a look at his PhD thesis:

Machines have the power and potential to make expressive music on their own. This thesis aims to computationally model the process of creating music using experience from listening to examples. Our unbiased signal-based solution models the life cycle of listening, composing, and performing, turning the machine into an active musician, instead of simply an instrument. We accomplish this through an analysis-synthesis technique by combined perceptual and structural modeling of the musical surface, which leads to a minimal data representation.

Fascinating stuff!

An excellent article by Kurt Kleiner explores why people often act completely irrationally and how intelligence by itself doesn’t make you rational:

Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

Yes  /  No  /  Cannot be determined

The Fix Your Mix blog ran a series of articles studying the composition of pop music. Here are two: A Compositional Analysis of Kids by MGMT, Single Ladies by Beyonce. Another interesting post was entitled 5 Pop Songs With No Music. They run a good blog there — it’s worthwhile keeping an eye on it.

G.M.B. Akash was featured as the first guest photojournalist on Zoriah’s blog last April in a post concerned with child workers in Bangladesh:

My intention is not only to show the children at work as victims of bad bosses exploiting them, but I want to show the complexity of the situation: The parents who send their little boy to work in a factory because they are poor; the child who has to work to earn a living for the family; the boss of the factory who is being pushed by big garment companies to produce for less money; and the Western consumers as clients who buy cheap clothes.

Zoriah took some incredible photos recently of the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake. Here is the second set of three. Naturally, some of the photos are quite disturbing.

On to lighter things, and Vincent Bousserez created a series of macro photographs which are quite amusing:

You can view the full set here and the artist’s website here, however be warned: for some reason, the artist decided it’d be a good idea to have music play automatically when you visit his website. As the Americans say, “go figure.”

Village of Joy had a blog post with photos of 50 strange buildings. Some are very well known, but a few I’d not come across before, such as this “Kettle House” in Texas:

This house sculpted out of a megalith in Guimarães, Portugal:

And this bizarre house again in Texas:

When you check the rest out, it’s worth keeping in mind that many of the pictures are links to more information and photos.

And here are mock-ups from Front Architects of one recycling possibility for billboards: compact housing.

More photos here.

Lastly, a quite lengthy series of hilariously bizarre photos from a Juggalo gathering. Quality stuff.

Goodbye Electronica by Dave Graham

You can download it locally here:

http://ventolin.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/GoodbyeElectronica.mp3

Red Box Recorder – Live 06/11/09

You can stream it using the player above, or download it in its entirity here: http://ventolin.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/redboxrecorder-live.mp3

He’s currently on the Irish net-label Acroplane, where you can get his most recent album, Colour Codes, which comes with a PDF booklet of art by Max McLaughlin.

The Fleet Foxes play Sun Giant and Blue Ridge Mountains in an abandoned wing of the Grand Palais, Paris. Recorded in May 2008.

Slightly dodgy camera-work (did the cameraman really need to stand so close to them?) made up for by the music itself.