Words About Things

Legendary music producer Brian Eno has released his first album on legendary electronic music label Warp today. The album is called Small Craft on a Milk Sea and was created in collaboration with guitarist Leo Abrahams and keyboardist Jon Hopkins over the last two years. The album is the first full length since 2008′s Everything That Happens Will Happen Today which was a collaboration with former Talking Heads front-man David Byrne.

The songs on Small Craft on a Milk Sea where mostly improvised and some feature samples of ‘random’ chords which have been edited to fit the theme of the song. Eno has compared the tracks to film soundtracks divorced from visual images:

The work in this collection is a result of an occasional collaboration between myself, Leo Abrahams and Jon Hopkins. The two of them are gifted young player/composers whose work, like mine, is intimately connected to the possibilities and freedoms of electronic music. Over the last few years we’ve worked together several times, enjoying exploring the huge new sonic territories now available to musicians. Mostly the pieces on this album resulted not from ‘composition’ in the classical sense, but from improvisation. The improvisations are not attempts to end up with a song, but rather with a landscape, a feeling of a place and perhaps the suggestion of an event. In a sense they deliberately lack ‘personality’: there is no singer, no narrator, no guide as to what you ought to be feeling. If these pieces had been used in films, the film would complete the picture. As they stand, they are the mirror-image of silent movies – sound-only movies.

Eno has often worked using a combination of free improvisation and rules or structures. His Oblique Strategies cards are a prime example of this: they are cards featuring instructions designed to stimulate though and encourage the reader to think laterally. They include suggestions such as “Try faking it!” and “What would your closest friend do?”.

To see Eno, Abrahams and Hopkins performing Written, Forgotten, Remembered click on this linky link.

1,000 miles
2 weeks
4,000 photo
in 2 minutes.

Video by Mike Matas

The Mayor of a town in the south of Italy has taken the idea of ‘fashion police’ to a new level by banning women from wearing miniskirts that are ‘too short’. Mayor Luigi Bobbio feels that short skirts and exposed cleavage will harm the reputation of Castellammare di Stabia a resort town on the south coast. The new law was put to the vote and passed, women wearing skirts which law enforcement officers deem to be too short will be handed a €300 fine.

too short?

The ban comes as part of Bobbio’s move to enforce matters of ‘public decorum’ including swearing and playing football in the street. Opponents to the new law say that it is chauvinist and treats women like public objects:

“By equating women’s clothing with urban decorum, this measure implies women are no more than benches or hedges. This turns the clock back years for women and undermines all our victories.” – Councillor Angela Cortese.

The decision on what will be considered too much cleavage or too short a skirt will be left to police officers. On the spot fines will also be given to those who wear swimming costumes anywhere public apart from the beach. Female members of the opposition Democratic Party held a “Mini-skirt Day” rally in protest of the new law.

Interestingly the power to create local laws was handed to mayors by Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who is famous for having an eye for the ladies.