Science will tell you there is no centre of the universe, that the universe is expanding in all directions from every point. And so at the time of writing, Dec 14, 2006, this makes the left earlobe of the organist / accordionist / guitarist / vocalist of Melbourne’s ‘Flying Scribble‘, just as important, and expansive as any other square centimetred patch of multi-dimensional vibrating space. Below, some of what tickles that ear.
Space Lady Vs The Sonic Manipulator
‘Kooky space-a-delic busker of the year award’ could only ever be tied between these two buskers, were they both on the same continent or in the same competition. The Sonic Manipulator = Claude Woodward, ‘Urban Spaceman and Planetary Citizen’, subject of a recent documentary “Ground Control to Major Tron”, and self described as ‘Fred Astaire meets Neil Armstrong’. What this translates to on the street (often in Melbourne’s CBD ) is a tinfoil covered astronaut making ethereal wailing noises with a wild range of custom-made musical inventions, designed to allow body motion and gestures to control aspects of his songs, eg THE CLAUDE-A-TRON: controls a synthesiser’s pitch by a 190mm rod moving in an arc, and the synthesiser’s volume by the swivelling of the rod, or THE SHOE: a 7 AXIS continuous controller pedal used for modifying synthesiser timbre in real time, which allows emulation of various trumpet mutes or cross fading between different vocal samples. Sample tracks – such as ‘Robot Wars’ and ‘The Martians Are Coming’ are available to download at : sonicmanipulator.com.
San Francisco’s ‘Space Lady’ (free tracks at myspace.com/suzysoundz )is another ‘street level superstar’ who plumbs the depths of outerspace to bring haunting, humorous and ethereal sounds to those passing by. Donning a steel helmet with angel wings, The Space Lady’ll carve out her very personal renditions of songs such as ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’, or ‘Major Tom’ with a range of FX pedals, an accordian, vintage casio keyboards and an array of lights.
“My whole approach of playing on the street was to make my music available to as many people as possible for free. Now the Internet has the potential to dwarf the persistent and diligent efforts I made over 20 years … and keeps my music alive without the wear and tear on my poor aging body! “
Feline Accordionists
Kittens can trigger the cute overload, but none more so than the musical pawed beasties who channel their inner meow through instruments and choreographed sound. Flying Scribble are known to have at least one grumpy sonic genius who can make the other alleycats weep with the tender sounds of his late night accordion melancholy.
Jim Avignon
“I’d rather sell a thousand images for one dollar, than one image for a thousand dollars.”
http://jimavignon.com/
Berliner Jim is a whimsical, relentlessly creative artist, who is equally at home painting giant canvasses everyday at a festival and jumping through them at night, building snowsculptures, making giant murals, creating installations for parties or …Flipping through his ‘Attack Delay’ book, you’ll find the Mona Lisa painting with the background crudely photoshopped over her head, a keyboard covered in honey, extra fingers photoshopped onto Jim’s hands to allow his fists to pumped at the camera with the letters ‘a’ ‘t’ ‘t’ ‘a’ ‘c’ ‘k’ & ‘d’, ‘e’, ‘l’, ‘a’, ‘y’, fake tattoos painted onto pornstars, biscuit sculptures, animal languages vs machine talk and on it goes, near every page a winner. Tagline for the book – “Have you ever had the best time in your life?”. But wait there’s more: playing as Neoangin ( http://neoangin.badtaste.ru & myspace.com/neoangin ) Jim keeps pumping out the tunes, super-crafted pop tunes with funny insightful lyrics, like some lo-fi electronics alt-cabaret-sitcom soundtracker from the 80s with beats from now.
Michel Gondry
“It has always been my goal to make people feel alright when they watch my work.”
Endlessly inventive as a music-video maker, Michel made a wonderful transition to feature films with ‘Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind’, and has a current follow up to this : the ‘Science of Sleep’. There’s a pretty cool 50 minute video interview with Michel, discussing sleep, dreams and ‘the science of sleep’, over at Seed magazine.
2007? ‘Be Kind Rewind’ – comedy film directed by Michel Gondry and starring Jack Black, Mos Def, Sigourney Weaver and others..
2008? ‘Master of Space and Time’ – Gondry’s adaption ( with Daniel Clowes*) of a 2005 novel by sci-fi author Rudy Rucker that centres on an inventor, Harry Gerber, who discovers a way to create his own tailor-made universe. Also to star Jack Black.
Flying Scribble
As well as being fantastic musicians, the Flying Scribble girls are of course also vivid animators and innovative theatre performers. And so Gondry gets a definite nod in as an inspiration. As for the Scribblers themselves, their music best speaks for them, also available in live doses along the East Coast of Oz over summer, Northern hemisphere tours to come. Say they :
“Neo-soul / Freestyle / Ghettotech – mischievous beats, broody organic keys, sampled textures all loving together with ethereal vocals, wak effects and all new atmospheres. We sit on a little boat together rocking on sound waves that come from the pits of somewhere deep down the waters – our music got bell soul and wood worms.”
More power to Claude…he was going off last night at his usual spot in front of the two ANZ atms on Swanston at Chinatown. This spacekernaught is a genius at electro kazoo sounds and break beats and his heavily effected improvs to passersby are all hilarious cutn pastes from Dr Who, Warner Bros Martian, Cylons et al. A Melbourne busking icon!
Hooray for Flying Scribble!