In the vein of our guide on how to behave at a disco or restaurant here is a guide on various sub-cultures from what we can only guess is from the late 70s or early 80s. Maybe someone could make one for our more current musical tribes? Dubsteppers, deep-housers, daggerers…
Musical and fashionable persuasions
Chicken Horror
Bottin, a producer, DJ and sound designer from Venice, Italy was raised on late 70s Italian disco and kitsch horror soundtracks which shines through in his imitative but always forward looking sound. His album Horror Disco goes down particularly well while cruising down the Autostrada from Milan to Turin on the way to listen to an 18 hour party of Berghain resident techno… as we did here. He shys away from the more soulful and retro elements of disco giving a warmer and less polished aesthetic than his Scandavian nu-disco contemporaries. More influenced by John Carpenter, Lucio Fulci and Goblin-esque robo-cult-disco than the sounds of late 70s NY or Philly.
Stevie Kotey was brought up in a time when definitions were looser and scenes and sounds more indistinguishable than today. As tea-boy for Audio One studios in Soho his belief in being part of the music industry was cemented – lucky us! Under guidance of his Bear Funk label a wide audience were exposed to the likes of Todd Terje, Prins Thomas and Lindstrom for the first time. When it comes to his own production, Stevie Kotey dips and delves into all things nice. Don’t miss his connection to the mighty Chicken Lips with their electro funk, dubby sounds and rocky disco. A true bear knows no hibernation.
So expect a reckless blend of retro-futuristic sounds and contemporary electronica set to light up the floor in El Salon at We Love on Sunday 22nd August. In conjunction with Resident Advisor, expect a special night all round with Carl Craig, Mathew Dear, Miss Kittin, Derrick May, 20:20Soundsystem Live, Steve Lawler, Motorcitydrumensemble and more… phew!
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Is there one book that you have read that has been life-changing for you?
Bottin: The Junior Woodchucks Guidebook. That, and Paul Watzlawick’s Pragmatics of Human Communication.
Stevie Kotey: I couldn’t choose just one, different books for different times, different moods all determine whether your reading something life changing, But I suppose John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Pimp by Iceberg Slim have all had a lasting effect. Oh before I forget, though it’s not a book The Viz comic equally has had a great influence on my life.
Did your parents encourage you to work in music?
Bottin: No, there are no musicians in my family (apart for one of my uncle that plays flute). My parents did not specifically encourage me but they didn’t try dissuade me either and they bought me my first synthesizer when I was 12 (a Korg M1, the clerk at the shop told’em Pink Floyd used to so it must’ve been a good one).
Stevie Kotey: No not really, unless you’re a classically trained musician or top producer, working in music was always deemed a bit of laugh and not a real job, especially when you’re self employed. I’m sure they hoped for more.
How do you apply your past experiences to what you do today?
Bottin: I often learn my mistake and I’ve done quite a few mistakes. Like trying do music that I don’t actually feel or producing for people I don’t share a similar taste with. Now I know the only way is to develop your own trademark sound and that’s what I’ve been doing in the recent years and I do not intend to stop.
Stevie Kotey: Every minute of everyday past experiences help me to judge new situations, how to judge people you meet, when to be nice and when to be an asshole. Different strokes for different folks. There’s nothing like experience especially in music.
How did you begin to work professionally in music?
Bottin: My first record deal was for a track on Irma Records Italy, in a compilation called Sister Bossa. It had a sort of Brazilian rhythm, acoustic guitar and vocoder. Quite a strange arrangement now that I recall it. Shortly after that I started making music and sounds for commercials and websites.
Stevie Kotey: Lucked out completely, I had a good careers teacher; I studied a bit and just applied myself. You can work in music without the help of anyone, but it usually doesn’t pay well. If you want something hard enough you make it happen, but essentially I invested everything I could both mentally and financially into releasing music.
Where is your current studio and what is it like?
Bottin: It’s in Venice, I have all the gear in my apartment. I’m lucky since my neighbors work till late at night and they never complain about the screaming synthesizers. I have 8-9 synths, most of them cheap Italian machines from the late 70s and early 80s (Farfisa, Siel) among the non-Italians I have a Roland SH09 and a Moog MG-1 Concertmate. Although I believe the most important piece of equipment in any studio are the speakers.
Stevie Kotey: Well I don’t really have one, I couldn’t afford to have a bespoke studio anymore, I have a little set up at home Mac G4 (old skool) some outboard synths and sound modules. If you know what you’re doing you don’t need much.
How much have you had to consider marketing issues since embarking on your career and how has that affected your creativity?
Bottin: No marketing issues at all. I’ve been doing this type of music since a while, then when Lindstrom and all the so-called “nu disco” came out I was sort of lucky since label started wanted to sign my stuff, the same stuff nobody seems to want before. I’m very active promoting my stuff on the internet though: twitter, facebook, soundcloud… I only use those for promotion, I very rarely write about personal stuff.
Stevie Kotey: Well yes you need to promote your own shit these days but, I’ve never been one for self promotion, nothing makes me cringe more than receiving weekly emails from DJs about what they are doing and where they playing etc, surely your music and your DJ sets should do the talking for you? I’m only on facebook five months ago so I’m trying to do more, as for affecting my creativity I say less profile updating and more music making.
How would you describe your work?
Bottin: Artisan-like and restless.
Stevie Kotey: A&R, production, remixer, a thinker, bringing people together and hopefully something that will be remembered when I’m no longer here.
Who were your teachers?
Bottin: My teachers were the records of Steely Dan, Earth Wind & Fire, Claudio Simonetti, Celso Valli. I took piano lessons when I was a kid, but that was the only proper music education I got – though later (at 18) I took some jazz and orchestration lessons and I also learned a lot by playing piano and hammond organ in a big bang.
Stevie Kotey: Well my teachers are my record collection, everything I want to know about music or life can usually be found in a record I own or want.
Your home is burgled but fortunately the culprits are caught and your possessions returned to you. What would you deem a suitable punishment for the burglars?
Bottin: They will have to buy me an extremely sultry dinner at a very expansive restaurant of my choice.
Stevie Kotey: I say we get medieval with that shit, flogging in the town square. naked embarrassment of the highest order, then a t-shirt that’s say’s I’m a fucking scumbag thief that has to be worn for a couple of years.
You have to make one species of animal extinct. Excluding insects, which species would that be?
Bottin: Pigeons and people who feed them.
Stevie Kotey: I can’t wish that on any animal no matter how naughty they have been; only the big man upstairs decides who stays or who goes.
If you could spend one week in any period of history, which period would you choose?
Bottin: I would love to see Venice when it was at its prime, before the plague, Napoleon and all…
Stevie Kotey: Easy April 26th 1977 at Studio 54 Bianca’s birthday party
Thanks to Ben Terry and Matty J at The Pool London / Tirk for the original article at their blog The Loop. More 11 Questions here. For a little taste of something to expect from Bottin and his horror disco roadshow, check the video below…
Being an experimental art and media project, researching The Residents is one of the strangest but most interesting experiences you can have online. I don’t think we’ve even touched the the tip of the iceberg on this one. Their whole project appears to be at once a riddle, a hoax and some kind of high concept obscurantism. To quote from liner notes of the album below, “The Residents don’t support racism, Catholicism, fascism, Judaism, cynicism, realism or journalism.”
the brain-numbing catchiness of pop music is fascism in disguise
The Residents are an avant-garde music and visual arts group largely shrouded in mystery and myth. They formed in 1969 but after several decades in music business, and still actively creating and producing to this day, they have never revealed their names or faces. Their best known device for preserving their anonymity has been covering their heads with giant eyeballs tastefully accented with top hats and tuxedos. On trying to find names for the constituent members of the band you are met with a cryptic message of: ‘If the question is “what are the names the parents gave to the people making up The Residents,” then I would say that those names belong to individuals and not the group. The group doesn’t have names within its structure. If the question is the real “who,” meaning the philosophy and outlook, then that is all clearly stated in the work. I would find it difficult to summarize.’ However the same official website does helpfully surmise that the people who started the group are exactly the same as now although the number of people who have been in The Residents is probably over a hundred at this point and still growing. The FAQ of the website (how many bands have a frequently asked questions page?) explains the disguises and refusal to be subjected to interviews thus: ‘Say you have a tank of goldfish. Say you have given each goldfish a name. A stranger wanders into your house and sees your tank of goldfish and wants to know who they are. Considering that he is a stranger, you tell him it is a tank of goldfish.’
Meet The Residents
Intermission
Demons dance alone
I found her crying in the morning
Sitting in a chair
She was wrapping something up
And wrapping it with care
I did not mean to hurt her
When I fell asleep last night
I was just exhausted
From the act of being polite
Yes, I was just exhausted
From the act of being polite
Heroes / Helden
The film itself is based on the testimony of a teenager (Vera Christiane Felscherinow) who gets involved in drugs at 12, hooked on heroin by 13 and a prostitute by 14 to support her habit. She became part of a notorious group of teenaged drug-users and prostitutes, mainly at the largest train station in West Berlin – Bahnof Zoo. Her story came to light after a meeting with two journalists while she was a witness in a trial against a man who paid underaged girls with heroin in return for sex. The journalists wanted to expose the problem among teenagers in Berlin which was plainly surrounded by strong taboos. Christiane provided an in-depth description of the life of drugs and prostitution that she and other teenagers in West Berlin experienced in the 1970′s. Her interviews were extensive, taking a total of 2 months to produce. A book was eventually published chronicling her life from 1975 to 1978, when she was aged 12 to 15. In 1981 the story was made into a film directed by Uli Edel. Christiane worked as an advisor on the film and much is shot on location in authentic and gloomy surroundings of Gropiusstadt and Bahnhof Zoo. The actors here are genuine teenagers, around 14 to 15 years old. This makes the film so much more powerful and shocking, and much more believable. The effects of heroin on these kids is staggering to behold; they turn into these sickly shadows of their former selves, like zombies, in search of their next fix. And strangely, Christiane and her friends never seem to enjoy the high from the heroin. You will never see such a bleak vision of kids lost in a surreal hell of drug addiction. And to add further to the intensity, the film is long, 138 minutes uncut, becoming steadily darker and seedier by the minute, until the viewer wonders just how long can this young girl go on like this without completely self-destructing. And amazingly, throughout the running time, the film never preaches, never becomes sentimental, as most American drug films often do. The film style is specifically German.
Verite
After the initial success of the book and the film, Christiane found herself becoming an unlikely celebrity, both in Germany and other countries in Western Europe. A subculture of teenage girls in Germany began to emulate her style of dress as well as making visits to the Bahnhof Zoo station, which became an unlikely tourist attraction. This surprised authorities on youth drug abuse, who feared that despite the film’s bleakness and the many sordid scenes (particularly those portraying the horrific realities of cold turkey), vulnerable youths may have regarded Christiane as a cult heroine and role model. Wolf Heckmann, West Berlin’s drug commissioner of the time: “The book and film have increased interest in drugs in this city. Kids who come to visit used to ask to see the Berlin Wall. Now they want to see the Zoo Station.” The book sold so well (it was translated into most major West European languages) that Christiane remains able to support herself from the royalties. Christiane still receives fan-mail and is occasionally contacted by the German media, wanting to know how she is doing after all these years.
Download: David Bowie – Heroes / Helden
Original Soundtrack on Discogs
First synthesized by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in 1938, the hallucinogen LSD emerged as a recreational drug in American cities in the early 1960s. Widely available until criminalized by the US government in the autumn of 1966, the drug – which typically left the laboratory in liquid form – was initially distributed in a number of ways, from large pills (nicknamed “barrels” for their shape) to acid-infused sugar cubes.
Alice goes through the looking glass
The development of mandatory minimum sentencing laws, in which penalties were linked to the weight of the confiscated substance, changed the way LSD was disseminated. An average active dose is in the range of .05 to .1 mg – since the laws considered the legal substance in which the drug was infused part of the total weight of the illegal substance, a single sugar cube might increase the overall weight by a factor of 100,000. New lightweight “carriers” that added less extraneous volume to the small doses of the drug they held were developed, ranging from colored gelatin chips to sheets of perforated paper known as blotter. First seen on the streets of San Francisco in the early 1970s, blotter acid soon began to be decorated with printed designs and images – ranging from smiley faces to Hindu Gods to cartoon characters – identifying it by dealer or potency, while at the same time vastly reducing the legal liability of those who possessed it.
Mad Hatter design by Mark McCloud
Mark McCloud, who, with the possible exception of the FBI, owns the world’s largest collection of (now LSD-free) blotter was recently acquitted by a jury on charges of conspiracy to distribute the drug. He is notorious in the annals of psychedelic art for his 25 year quest to compile a complete collection of LSD blotter art. US Federal authorities spent millions on conducting wire-taps, monitoring mail and surveillance of McCloud. During a SWAT style raid by an FBI/DEA task force, police seized 400 framed LSD blotters and 33,000 sheets of McCloud’s own blotter art. Designs ranged from a print of Peter Rabbit from the early 70′s to a recent example from Europe showing two lesbian aliens. None of the material had any traces of the drug. McCloud’s attorney argued that McCloud wasn’t resposible for the use of his prints by others as a vehicle for illegal drugs. Among McCloud’s defence witnesses was New York art critic Carlo McCormick, who told the court that McCloud’s work is an important part of an American folk-art tradition.
Blotter Designed and Signed by H.R. Geiger
Mark calls his collection the “institute of illegal art”. There are designs ranging from psychedelic fractals and religious imagery to portraits of counter-cultural icons such as Timothy Leary and the inventor of LSD himself – Albert Hoffman. And Albert Hoffman’s story…? Let’s leave that to another day. There are the famous ones: Felix the Cats, red and orange sunshines, Mad Hatters, Beavis and Buttheads, and McCloud’s most famous personal design: Alice Through the Looking Glass, a double-sided sheet with Alice climbing through the window into the psychedelic realm. His collection also contains rarer blotter art like the ones signed by Tim Leary and Albert Hoffman, ones with images of former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, and the inflammatory series with the FBI seal stamped on it. Some of these sheets even came with elaborate envelopes designed to match their contents.
Originally the paper used to distribute LSD was chromatic paper used for litmus tests in laboratories. The acid would turn the pink paper blue giving it the nickname – blue dot acid. That was the first commercial enterprise of LSD on paper. Then in the early 70s someone had the thought of not just putting dots on paper, but dipping whole sheets. The scientists calibrated the absorption rate of a sheet of paper and how much of a gram of acid could be absorbed by it. They surmised that blotter paper would be best because it had a high absorbency rate as it was used to absorb ink after signing a document. But acid could technically go on anything – some of the first commercial enterprises even put it on string. The anthropologist Claudio Naranjo took some LSD on paper to a shaman in Central America around 1965, the story goes that he drew some stars and a crescent moon on the paper – this was perhaps the first imagery on blotter paper.
Gorby
What happened to Mark McCloud was a “death-rebirth” experience on LSD in 1971 which took him around ten years to integrate. He saw collecting blotter paper as a way of “paying back the debt”. He thinks that by keeping examples of acid sheets, they can be part of a history that children can see, so the radical change in the 1960s can be understood as a renaissance. He believes LSD to be a “renaissance pill” – a substance that has affected consciousness, and the arts in an incredible way. It can be seen as an alchemical artform, which, once consumed affects consciousness by taking the image into themselves. McCloud says he could have easily gone from parish to parish, collecting hosts from a Catholic mass, where blank sheets of bread are stamped with an image of what appears to be the Holy Ghost, a dove flying and on the other side the name of the parish – “but since they don’t work anymore, I thought I’d collect an active host – the one that is bringing mysticism back to the people.”
Doll Face
Many musical artists have been heavily influenced by the analogue, overdriven sound of British Public Information Films. Bands such as Boards Of Canada and artists on the Ghost Box Record label such as The Advisory Circle. Another example would be the song Charly by The Prodigy which sampled the meows of a cat called Charley in a “Say No To Strangers” campaign on ITV. Which is, of course, why they decided to call said track Charly. The song went on to become one of the early classics of breakbeat music, paving the way for the big beat explosion of the mid/late Nineties.
Charley says: Don't trust strangers
Family fallout
The films always had a general low-budget quality adding to their nostalgia today. There was always an infamous static crackle before hand, giving them a Hammer Horror style aura. Some were quite terrifying and remained ingrained in the child’s psyche well into adulthood. One series which definitely fits into the unnerving category but not strictly a COI film is a series from the 1970s hosted by none other than beloved Yorkshire proto-chav, Jimmy Savile. It was called Play it Safe and used to be on Sunday, tea time, just before Songs of Praise and yep, there was some scary stuff on there. As far as possible the presentation was by interviews with parents and children who had had an actual accident, who spoke of their reactions and lessons they had learned. Most accidents Savile focussed on feature the phrase “permanent brain damage”. The films are actually quite heart-rending, the tragic testimonials from victims of what can only be described as pretty thoughtless design in the British municipal housing stock of the 1960′s and 70′s – in this film for example…
Clearly things have not changed much since this article written in the 70′s. Good advice rings true through the ages it seems! Thanks to Jaime Fat Neck for the heads up.
All you need to know
