Video – Page 31 – Frames of Reference

Sounds And Silence

This is a short trailer for the film Sounds And Silence from 2009. It is subtitled Travels With Manfred Eicher and it tells the story of his record label, Editions of Contemporary Music, following him over five years as he records musicians around the world. I discovered it thanks to Richard Williams via his very welcome new blog, The Blue Moment where he’s written about the exhibition ECM: A Cultural Archaeology, until recently at the Haus der Kunst in Munich. Continue reading “Sounds And Silence”

Tic Toc Choc

More Couperin by Alexandre Tharaud in this vidéo charmant by Elise McLeod.

Les Baricades Mistérieuses

Alexandre Tharaud plays François Couperin. One explanation of his enigmatic title is suggested here.

Flicker Pictures

We’ve been selling these ‘lenticular’ cards at The Rowley Gallery for a while now. They’ve been very popular. Seen from one angle the eye is open, look again and it’s closed. Lenticular printing is a process of combining two or more images on the surface of a corrugated plastic lens. (I don’t think lenticular has anything to do with Lent in particular.) Continue reading “Flicker Pictures”

London Is The Place For Me

Video by James Allen. Music by Lord Kitchener. London Is The Place For Me.

Goodbye My Darling

Sam Lee takes his coracle down to the river via Ridley Road and Smithfield accompanied by Gerry Diver, fiddle; Jonny Bridgwood, bass; Michael Wright & Saul Eisenberg, jews harp; Ed Hicks, banjo. For an account of their visit to Khartoum, read English Folk Songs in Sudan by Tim Cumming.

Jungle Blues

Jonny Hannah introduced me to C W Stoneking a while ago. I should have posted this video earlier, it’s a nice piece of vaudeville hokum, a pantomime Heart of Darkness. I love it and I love the comment it received on YouTube – I’m drawing a wobbly line here but…George Formby, Hank Williams, Mance Lipscomb, Tom Waits, Nick Cave, C W Stoneking – and the reply from C W Stoneking himself – That is a wobbly line, what are you doing with the other hand?

Blues For Miró

Duke Ellington and Joan Miró at Fondation Maeght in St Paul de Vence, Côte d’Azur, France.

For Kevin Ayers

A favourite song from his Shooting At The Moon album from 1970, The Oyster & The Flying Fish, a duet with Bridget St John. Continue reading “For Kevin Ayers”

Radio Carbon

When cosmic rays strike the atmosphere they create the radioactive isotope carbon 14, which can be detected in living matter and decays at a fixed rate over many millennia. Radiocarbon dating is the method by which we measure prehistoric time, and with which our own detritus will one day be measured. The filmpoem Radio Carbon takes this transient yet permanent record of time as a personal metaphor, fashioning a hypnotic journey into the human past, from the neolithic to the present moment. It’s a film with eternity at its centre, the vastness of space at its core, and a reverie of images clustering to the lens like the flashing in a stranger’s eye. Continue reading “Radio Carbon”