K-Punk

woops

is not like other people
i saw a guy the other day middle aged and fat talking on his phone loudly about his 12 grand redundancy who had those white sweat-salt patches on the back of his suit and it wasn't a black suit either
 

luka

Well-known member
It's not the best mark talking about tv shows from the old days it's hard to relate to but they gave him the clue orientste yourself this way
 

version

Well-known member
The bit about them being stuck in the timeless diner in space reminds me of Twin Peaks: The Return. Coop in that room in space and then the diner at the end and "What year is this?".
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I never saw Sapphire and Steel but DannyL used to bang on about it (well, he mentioned it a couple of times, allow me some poetic licence) and he made it sound totally fucking bonkers and possibly amazing.
 

version

Well-known member
Started Ghosts of My Life earlier.
It starts off well, but I ended up skipping a lot of the stuff in the middle about Ghost Box etc. It's all a bit sloppily presented too; lots of typos and the Burial interview's been chopped about and doesn't quite make sense in places. It's also very repetitive, but I guess that's to be expected. I quickly got fed up with reading the term "lost futures" over and over, also "popular modernism" and the stuff about 70s social democracy.

I like the stuff on Japan/Goldie/Tricky, David Peace, Jimmy Savile, The Shining, le Carré and The Caretaker, but that middle section where he keeps going on about public information films and all those hauntological acts from the '00s I can do without. Hopefully the third section picks up a bit.
 

version

Well-known member
The other thing is I'm currently really irritated by that style of writing where people list things a certain way and Mark does it a lot in this book. There's a bit where he quotes someone who also does it in a book he's discussing and it really rams home how much of a conscious style and template it is when they're both doing it side by side. Sentences like,

"'Space' becomes the over arching commodity. Notting Hill. New age cranks peddling expensive junk. Homeopathy and boutiques, angel cards and crystal healing."

And,

"Fugitive time, lost afternoons, conversations that dilate and drift like smoke, walks that have no particular direction and go on for hours, free parties in old industrial spaces, still reverberating."

The spectres of rave thing feels really dated to me atm too. I used to like that big Burial interview, but I found it a bit embarrassing this time around. The way he (Burial) romanticizes it seems ridiculous, going on about "underground folklore" and how you could see it in people's eyes even though he's already said he wasn't actually there. The bit about his dog dying and his mum telling him to have a cup of tea then him ringing her up like "I made that tune. The tune you told me to make."... :rolleyes:
 

catalog

Well-known member
i think i got that book at some point and totally skipped through it. there was one essay in it i really liked tho, the siouxie sioux one, have you read that?
 

version

Well-known member
The book's too focused in terms of theme and too unfocused in terms of structure. You feel like you're reading the same essay over and over with superficial tweaks. I completely understand what Luke was talking about re: some of this stuff working better as a blog now. Reading this stuff as and when it appeared on various sites would have been very different to reading it all back to back in book form.
 

version

Well-known member
He does seem to hit far too many of the same notes not to arouse suspicion. Imagining this exchange as Mark talking to himself's funny,
Burial: My Dad when I was really little, sometimes he used to read me M R James stories. On the South Bank last year, I was walking along, and I found a book of M R James ghost stories. I bunked that day off from my day job and I got this book, and now I’m well into M R James ghost stories.

Wire: You’re joking, really?
 

catalog

Well-known member
Lol!

I remember reading that interview when it came out, or perhaps it was the blackdown one, did he do one first?

I used to read blackdowns blog quite a bit. All a bit of a blur as to who was who but I remember thinking at the time that they both went on a bit, I was often just looking for links to mixes and things and it was buried in all this yawn explanation. All the references to this, that and the other totally passed me by at first.

And then downloading the 1st burial album and listening to it on repeat while I went to sleep and thinking it was really good. I understood it cos of all jungles and could see it was like a warp style sound, what they were doing with techno. Jungle for home.

But I ended up preferring almost everyone else in dubstep, dmz, d1, distance, kode9 and the spaceape (fukkaz what a tune). Partly cos you could at least go see em live.

I think now that loefah was the best one probably, his tunes still stand up and what he's doing now still sounds OK.

Or the bug, I think that may have been how I found dissensus actually, googling for the bug and finding John edens blog and then maybe coming here. Used to love all his killing sound stuff and the bits with warrior queen.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
The other thing is I'm currently really irritated by that style of writing where people list things a certain way and Mark does it a lot in this book. There's a bit where he quotes someone who also does it in a book he's discussing and it really rams home how much of a conscious style and template it is when they're both doing it side by side. Sentences like,

"'Space' becomes the over arching commodity. Notting Hill. New age cranks peddling expensive junk. Homeopathy and boutiques, angel cards and crystal healing."

And,

"Fugitive time, lost afternoons, conversations that dilate and drift like smoke, walks that have no particular direction and go on for hours, free parties in old industrial spaces, still reverberating."

The spectres of rave thing feels really dated to me atm too. I used to like that big Burial interview, but I found it a bit embarrassing this time around. The way he (Burial) romanticizes it seems ridiculous, going on about "underground folklore" and how you could see it in people's eyes even though he's already said he wasn't actually there. The bit about his dog dying and his mum telling him to have a cup of tea then him ringing her up like "I made that tune. The tune you told me to make."... :rolleyes:

I find this irritating too. It's interesting how certain styles of writing date.
 
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