My Blurry Window

A rich man?

2011-12-30T13:44:00.000-08:00

To sum up the financial turbulence of 2011, this tune is processed by layering inverted data from the Oslo Stock Exchange from the last quarter of the year as a guide to re-pitch this excerpt from "Fiddler on the roof". This means that the lower the OSEBX-index goes, the more high-pitched the voice of the poor singer gets. May we hope that the upcoming year will be a happy and prosperous one for all, and that the time has come when the global financial system will be adjusted to reflect real assets a little more accurately? In the meantime: Beware of the bots!

Mental Overdrive - Darklight (video)

2011-10-26T02:07:00.000-07:00

The original version of the single "Darklight" was released in December 2010 as a dedication to Wikileaks. This video contains footage from recent Occupy events, and you can download the special #globalspring video version of the track for free at this link: http://soundcloud.com/loveod/mental-overdrive-darklight

Back in London

2011-09-25T09:26:00.000-07:00

Back in London after 6 weeks of studio work up in Tromsø. Greeted by nice weather and lots of good people. The next few weeks will see us promote our new Frost single "The Woods", and on the 5th of October I hope to see all you London-based people down at The Lexington, where we'll be playing a Frost live set supported by another live set by the very talented young Mr. Boska. To top it all, the DJ for the night is Rune Lindbaek, so it's all pointing towards a jolly evening with lots of good music and sweet people. Remember to also sign up for the FrostWorld newsletter, and thereby receive a special little treat in the shape of a free remix download. Apart from Frost activities there will also be stuff happening over at the work-in-progress blog for Everything is connected, just follow my tweets at @tiedrevolverman for updates. On a personal level I'm mainly celebrating two things this week: the fact that I didn't get fallen on by a piece of space junk, plus all the exciting stuff going on over at CERN. So on the note of the sub-atomic universe and the fact that I was a guest on the Olympic radio show over at 101.4 ON FM this week discussing Frost and football(!), I'll leave you with this one: Q: What's wearing black shorts and starts by blowing a whistle 3 times? A: The referee at a Neutrino United vs. Neutrino City match...

Keeping it unreal

2011-08-08T08:24:00.000-07:00

OK, so today's experiment is that I will try to start keeping a journal at this blog again, something I haven't done for years. Why? I don't know. It might have to do with a need to focus my thoughts. Or it might be inspired by one of the books I'm reading at the moment (I always zap between several at a time). It's called 'Ai Weiwei Speaks', and is a series of conversations between Ai Wewei and Hans Ulrich Obrist. Here Ai Weiwei talks very passionately about his blog. The year is 2006, and he finds great liberation as an artist at writing something every day and posting both text and photographs. It might be that I want to try and see if the same enthusiasm could arise within myself now that such journals are almost obsolete and nobody seems to even care to write tweets that fill up the max of 140 characters. Or maybe I'm starting to get nervous that everything I've ever thought or uttered shall soon get lost in the turmoil of this crazy world we live in, and want to play it safe? As William Gibson said in a talk I attended during the Science Fiction exhibition at The British Library this summer: "Nowadays, everything is tweeted in stone". Could it be that I believe that my thoughts are safer here in the cloud? Anyway, I'll try to note down anything that springs to mind, just for the sake of it, and see how long it takes before I get tired of it.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend a reading by the brilliant John Giorno here in Tromsø. After a long day in the studio mixing a new Frost track, I got on my bike down to Verdensteateret just to catch Mr. Giorno reading a series of his pieces. I must admit he hasn't caught my attention in any significant way before, but I guess I could be considered a fan now. The thing is I've never been one for poetry, I must admit. Not poetry detached from music anyway. But lately I've had the pleasure of enjoying listening to some very talented wordsmiths on several occasions. I'm a big fan of the brilliant, young Kate Tempest for one, and when I saw her with Sound of Rum this summer it was the pieces she did between songs that moved me the most. Ai Weiwei says: "I think that poetry is for keeping our intellect in the stage before rationality. It brings us to a pure sense of contact with our feelings. At the same time, of course, it does have a strong literary expression; but the most important thing is that it brings us to the innocent stage in which imagination and language can be most vulnerable and at the same time most penetrating". I guess he is on to something. John Giorno also shared his thoughts yesterday through a talk with Karl Larsson after the reading, and his suggestion that good poems are "pure mirrors" that the listener might "catch a reflection of his own wisdom through" kind of resonated with me. Maybe I just caught a reflection of my own wisdom through these words?

On the work side I'm putting together some new mixes of Frost songs at the moment, as mentioned above. Also, somehow the techno part of my brain seem to have awoken again for no particular reason after my 3 months spent in London. Could it be that the music I've been attached to for more than 20 years have become so much part of the woodwork in this city I love so much that it slips into the back of one's mind if too much time is spent there? Like Country and Western is now part of the fabric of Nashville? Or maybe I've just hung out too much with people like Mr. Tim Exile and Sheikh, and caught some of their crazy bugs? But whatever the reason, I've started to put down some new Mental Overdrive tracks inbetween other sessions. Basic dance tracks. Simple sounds. Old drum machines and analogue synths. Just for the pleasure of doing it. I don't know if this is ever going to be released, or by whom, but I'll post some Soundcloud links here when I feel like it.

There's also a new text in the works. It might become a story, or it might just become fragments of a story, but I'll be posting it here as it develops. I don't know at what pace, but I'll be sure to post links to new material as it gets ready.

Oh, and as another experiment I've decided to translate it to Norwegian as I go along, and post parallel chapters in my mother tongue. Unfortunately I don't have a "proper" Norwegian bokmål voice inside me, so it'll be written in my own dialect. I guess that if Irvine Welsh can write "Dirt" in part Scots, then I can write in Northern Norwegian, too. I'll post some links soon.

Have a lovely rest of your day!

Shadowplay

2011-07-31T13:04:00.000-07:00

Just over one week ago the worst imaginable terror reached the streets and surrounding forests of Oslo, the capital of my hitherto rather peaceful country and hometown for 20 years. With its unbelievable bestiality and meticulously designed intent, the attack left us all in a state of total shock, and as our tiny nation leaves near no one personally untouched, the days since the attack have been spent mourning the dead, clinging to hope for the wounded and trying our best to support those who lost their loved ones.

As surprising as the attack was, was its source of origin.

It came not via the streets of Kabul, where Norwegian soldiers have been stationed for years (in spite of strong protests from large parts of our population). Not as a direct consequence of our fighter jets being - to our great shame - the most frequent droppers of bombs over Libya over the last 6 months. And not as part of the much hyped ideologically motivated 'invasion' by extremists from another culture, expected to be rooted in and justified by ancient religious ideas.

The attack came from within. From one man and his own twisted, augmented reality.

Amidst all the grief, we were lucky that none of our leaders chose words like "We will hunt you down", or any other form of revenge-fuelled, thoughtless remark doomed to throw us into a new spiral of violence. Our heads of state rather took their time to first pay respect to the tragedy of the event and its victims, before proclaiming "We will retaliate with more democracy, openness and tolerance". I have to admit that I could sense a strange feeling of pride at being Norwegian at witnessing this. Strange, because I've never paid much attention to any conscious national belonging before.

But the problem is that whether you want to answer to this horrid act of terror with more violence or by turning the other cheek, any form of retaliation against or dialogue with the responsible require that you both exist within the same universe. In regard to what just hit us, and destroyed so many bright young futures, I'm afraid I don't believe this to be the case.

I stood next to my kids in the living room of a flat in the northern part of central Oslo when the bomb went off. The entire building shook, even though we were kilometers away from the explosion. 30 minutes before I had been walking the streets very close to the area where it actually happened. My initial feeling was therefore one of fear.

Then, a mixed feeling of rage, anger and sorrow welled up as I started to understand what had happened.

But as a picture of the murderer was drawn out in the media over the next couple of days, my next feeling was one of guilt. Guilty, not because I in any way share the attacker's insane, murderous qualities or twisted beliefs, but guilty because as the contours of his monstrous operation became clearer, I started to recognize all too many of the technological tools and relentless, thoughtful, long-term planning that had to have been involved in the creation of his nightmarish plan.

Tools I have so far embraced as predominately positive seen from an artist's perspective - the very same tools that have enabled me to create my own transmedia art project over the last two decades - novel/soundtrack/exhibition-series 'Earthbound - Surfing the Apocalypse'.

Just to clear the air: This is in no way an attempt to plug my art on the back of a terrible disaster, but after the devastating consequences of the attack I believe that the circumstances require me to share some of my thoughts and experiences gained from researching and developing this project, hoping that they might be of value in the work that lies ahead of us in trying to prevent something similar from ever happening again.

I feel that I in some strange way might understand certain aspects of the process that have conditioned this madman, without by any means proclaiming that I understand his inhumane actions or apparent sociopathic lack of empathy.

I believe we have to discuss these things out in the open and search for what enabled this monster to grow so huge before entering our world with all his madness.

My countryman and Professor in Anthropology, Thomas Hylland Eriksen writes in The Guardian on Monday July 25th of 'the tunnel vision resulting from selective perusal of the internet', 'the filter bubble' and of 'the darker waters of the blogosphere'. I want to delve deeper into these same topics, but try to shed more light on the mechanisms I believe to be at work within a human being who has built up a personal worldview through these channels.

In order to do that, I need to refer to my own project first:

Briefly explained, my work of fiction is the story of one Victor Ixelles AKA Vix, a reclusive, damaged soul who spends most of his days perceiving the world solely through the blurry window that is his laptop computer. Luckily for us, both he and his interests are fairly harmless, he cares mostly for music, Nikola Tesla and the computer game 'Pong'.

My protagonist's biggest problem is that it slowly becomes apparent that both his closest friend and 'informer' of different 'truths' - more often than not of a conspiratory nature, or at least slightly alternate to our collectively agreed-upon history - as well as the parallel Fantasy-style storyline set in a future where Vix himself plays quite a significant role in the outcome of 'saving the world' - are all part of his own inner monologue.

Or, it's rather our problem, as Vix himself is too immersed in his own psyche to even notice than there's no one else in there with him.

The project consists of a 200 page text, a multitude of (fictitious) Facebook accounts, blogs, YouTube clips and other online pieces of constructed information that all play a part in creating the illusion of the story's universe. In addition, a series of music releases, art installations and Real Life events also serve as physical manifestations to help the storyline unfold into reality, and thereby in making the illusion more complete.

In other words: the character lives in his own universe within the fictitious universe of the story, with certain parts of both reaching out into the real world.

I therefore got a chilling sensation when I learned more of the Oslo terrorist. I felt there were too many similarities. It seemed to me like he had created something of a 'transmedia project from Hell', with his 1500 page 'manifesto' serving as a backdrop for his murderous 'live events'.

This madman had, like my character, also created his own world - a world where his inhumane actions were 'justified' and 'necessary' according to his own guidelines. He has only been able to create these guidelines because he's had the most powerful tools of self-conviction at his disposition - the tools to design a private mental universe that he could dwell inside for years.

Here, he could stay untouched, unchallenged and uncorrected by anyone outside of his own mind, making sure that all of his convictions - often based on fear and disinformation - got further cemented by only choosing to communicate with likeminded souls within his online network - only searching for the information he already expected to find, keeping safe within the 'filter bubble'.

The Virtuality (including all of the web, simulacra gaming and selective online communication), is now powered by unimaginable amounts of both verified and complete bogus pieces of information, endless personal choice and filtered searchability. When you add the possibilities of larger than life simulations and risk-safe models for any action taken - however violent or inacceptable - this mega-accellerator of the mind can amplify any thought-pattern into all-encompassing mental 'truths', whether these patterns are initially based on fear or other internal emotional reactions.

This powerful, immersive machine provided this savage soul with all he needed in order to build a perfect mental monoverse - in total opposition to the universe in which we all co-exist. This monoverse became a place where he could dwell inside the corridors of his own damaged mind long enough to severely amplify all of his narcissistic ideas - to the point where he felt nothing stood between him and any action that seemed rational in the context of a world where he himself was God, judge and executioner.

'Real Life', as the digital generation feel is the correct definition for the external world (former generations have been content with the word 'Life' to define our common human experience), is quite a different place - an endless process of negotiation between your own and a multitude of other, external willpowers.

Our Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg keeps referring to human society as 'Fellesskapet'. Broken down and translated to English it would read something like 'Our Common Creation' - a great definition. A good friend of mine in the gaming industry chooses to refer to Real Life as 'The Great Compromise' - maybe an even better definition - especially for the digital generation who live at least two lives and might need to differentiate these lives in some way.

'The Great Compromise' is of course a totally different place from a 'monoverse' created within The Virtuality. Out here, the dynamics of such a multitude of willpowers constantly create a shared output that we keep referring to as "reality" - a reality you can agree with or not. If you don't like it, you have the option to bring your personal opinions to the table, but will risk having them met with critique, correction and general response. That's what co-creation is all about, or what?

But when the self-created world of a self-created 'God' collides with our shared reality, he has of course never learned to interact as a result of living in a world where he has never had to make any compromises. When this 'ruler of his own monoverse' in addition has been nurtured by a muddy soup of (dis)information, fear and pre-mediated assumptions of what's right and what's wrong, he's more likely to spend most of his time trying to 'get his message across' to those who might disagree, rather than try to enter into any form of dialogue with the outside world.

As no topic has ever actually been a matter of discussion in the real meaning of the word, frustration builds as people in general don't submit to this 'truth' that he so eagerly wants to share, and he gradually turns into an angry driver speeding down an ideological one-way street, ploughing down anyone who might stand in his way - though still raging over the fact that not enough people do.

This 'ideological only-child' mentality is also reflected in the 1500-page 'manifesto' of the madman whose name shall be forgotten. Through it he leaves no room for dialogue, but rather generously shares with us 'the truth, and nothing but the truth'.

In the old days, any dictator who wanted to rise to power had to go through a struggle 'out here', in an environment inhabited with disagreement and opposition. Or he had to be conditioned by supporters, in a closed environment like a religious or political sect. Not so any longer. Now, any readymade sociopath, brainwashed by his own self, can come barging into society before anyone can say 'I object!'.

When he in addition has had years and years of virtual weapon tuition through First-Person Shooter wargames (yes, all my friends on the gaming circuit. That's my opinion, You don't educate chefs with flight-simulators, you use them to help pilots get ready for the real thing), the result will look like what we just saw happen before our eyes here in Oslo.

The least pretty sight I've ever seen in this country.

Now, before I hear the defense-speeches from the gaming circuit holler out: No, I don't think you're all potentially crazy terrorists. It is by no means my intention to call for more regulations or bans of violent computer games.

And anyway this is not how The Virtuality works. It's not of an hiearchical structure, and thus can't be organized in the same way society in reality is organized. You don't change things by regulating them just as you don't fight music downloading by 'outlawing' it, but rather make sure each individual music lover understand that if they don't support the artists they love financially, these artists will no longer be able to perform their art.

We have learned that the virtual world has a flat structure, consisting of tiny cells with (potentially) equal power of influence. 'Big Brother' cannot expect to make any more impact through his single Twitter account than anyone else, but a million Little Brothers and Sisters can - if they unite their powers.

And one still has one's personal power at hand. The positive aspect of endless choice. The execution of this power has resulted in that I personally never engage in these kind of games, and as a parent with responsability of others I have made sure none of my kids have been trained for a killing spree during their childhood - just in case.

The gaming industry here in Norway recently complained about the lack of financial Government support. Many of our developers claim that they need such support in order to match the international competition. Well, maybe you're just not good enough? Not creative enough to come up with any new concepts - concepts that can provide young gamers with skills they actually need out here with the rest of us in The Great Compromise? Skills that might even help these gamers make this world a better place?

As for the 'the darker waters of the blogosphere' (or let's just call it the blogosfear), there's a lot of work to be done. We are now in a position where we have a multitude of dim networks of anonymous users who either believe there's a 'global Jewish conspiracy ruling the world', an 'evil Muslim invasion conspiring to overthrow the Western World', or a 'reptilian alien race pulling strings from within the Pentagon'. Or worse!

Some of these networks claim to be 'movements' of a political or religious nature, but boiled down to their essence, most of them base their ideologies on a confusing cocktails of myth, speculation and assumption of the worst possible intent in others.

On this note it must be added that maybe the most valuable aspect of Wikileaks' current 'revelations' is that they proved that there's nothing of the sort going on - that what takes place in the real corridors of power is rather boring in comparison. Maybe the US authorities should rather than prosecute consider to honour Mr. Assange and his accomplices with medals for helping them out in killing off a few crazy myths? Maybe we then could focus on fighting real corruption.

These online cults - whatever they see themselves as - have to be hunted down where they exist - inside The Virtuality, and be forced to communicate with someone outside of their closed virtual circuit. Only then can they get some help in getting relieved of their fears.

We cannot solve this by invading countries with military force, or by hunting down 'terrorist groups' that really aren't groups at all, but clusters of lonely souls posting anonymously in the same forums. We can only achieve it by invading their own sphere - invade it with values of tolerance, understanding and the willingness to enter into dialogue.

Let's reclaim the virtual world - or make a collective 'virtuality-check', if you like.

As for authorities around the world, this will require their willingness to operate with near total transparency, thus leaving no room for speculations nurturing the build-up of more creative conspiracy theories.

Because most of all, fear is dangerous. It is often and mistakingly attributed to weakness. Not so. Some people get very dangerous when they become afraid, and to them attack is often the best thinkable defense.

I'm not afraid of Muslims. Or Christians. Or Jews. Or Aliens. I'm only afraid of confused, paranoid people of all origins and convictions - and their bombs.

'SELECT AN ALBUM' on The17.org

2011-06-11T16:09:00.000-07:00

The entire text of my performance of 'SELECT AN ALBUM' can now be read on the website of The17 - at this link. And while you're there, be sure to check out some of the other great activities carried out by Mr. Drummond himself or other members of The17.

SELECT AN ALBUM: Conclusion

2011-05-16T01:41:00.000-07:00

OK, so I never actually listened to any of these albums. I only imagined what they'd sound like now, years later, and then sat down to write.

I've heard them all before, so they're part of my system anyway.

Well, all except Eric Lunde's new album. I never broke the shrinkwrapping on that one.

But I will!

And I've got his previous album "Inspirationals", and that's great.

And the book is excellent!

Or, I've only zapped through it so far, and all the pages I came across were excellent, so I imagine the rest of the book to be the same.

And Pete at Second Layer told me so, and he can be trusted.

I will read it.

Eventually.

Oh, and of course Joy Division never released any 4th album, as you will probably know. That would be some disaster. Who would all the rock magazines put on their front pages today if that had actually happened?

A new band?

And well, we’re still waiting for Frost's music to enlighten the whole world and start revolutions.

But it will happen soon, I'm sure.

Reality sometimes has to be tweaked a little to prove points.

But the rest of it is all true.

The drawing above was done by my 15-year-old daughter who kept asking me what I was writing on these last 6 Mondays. She has often been sitting across the table from me doing her homework while I've been writing the SELECT AN ALBUM performance.

I tried to explain the whole concept to her at an early stage, and one of these last nights she handed me this drawing of how I looked from her perspective.

The text translates "Music Sucks".

SELECT AN ALBUM: Decade #6 - The 2010's

2011-05-09T15:03:00.001-07:00

Eric Lunde - "Audio Selections for the Long Range Acoustical Device"

A couple of months ago I picked up Eric Lunde's new album "Audio Selections for the Long Range Acoustical Device" at the excellent Second Layer Records in Highgate, London.

I also picked up his book "Music is Meat".

I bought the album and the book on the recommendation of Pete, who runs the store. Pete told me how good the new album is, and I had the feeling he could be trusted 100%, even though I'd only met him that once for a few minutes in his shop.

People like Pete should run record stores.

He also told me that The Wire is probably going to run a feature on Lunde soon. I left the shop happily knowing that I'd picked up a pre-Wire featured artist, and then immediately arrested myself in such foolish trainspotter narcissism.

And anyway, The Wire is such an anal and pretentious magazine.

Maybe they just think too much.

Come to think of it I actually played a DJ gig once with their current editor at a rave in her home town in Norway a couple of decades ago. She seemed nice enough, and she played way cooler music than I did at the time. She played IDM, and I still played a variation of house and Detroit techno tunes.

And I also once sat in a panel discussion with their former editor, at the Numusic Festival some 10 years later. He also seemed like a nice guy, and passionate enough about his music - although I can recall that he was a little sceptical when I started bringing the issue of dreaming into the discussion.

Oh, and a few years later, at the same festival, another woman from The Wire stood next to me at an Altern8 reunion gig closing the festival of that year. She went totally bonkers, and kept offering me pure vodka out of a dirty plastic bottle while jumping up and down and shouting "I'm re-living my youth, I'm re-living my youth.

I guess the people at The Wire are allright, and that I'm the anal and pretentious one.

I think too much.

And there's all the noise.

Back to Lunde.

In his book, he presents some excellent observations on the phenomenon of noise, not only as sound, but also in the context of our entire culture and society as a whole. Noise in information, noise in sound, noise in structure.

I quite like the idea of noise, especially when put in this way.

I kind of like the sound of it, too.

I once had Norwegian maestro Lasse Marhaug remix one of my old rave tracks with great results, and I've also brought Russell Haswell to DJ at an afterparty at the local Hells Angels' prospect biker club here in Tromsø.

It was way cool, but I was the one who had to handle all the bikers' death threats towards Russell and his selection of music.

But there's different noise.

Like the "noise of abundance".

A different kind of noise.

I lament the fact that there's no "ambient" music anymore. All music has become part of the architecture that surrounds us in every aspect of the human experience.

And because of the mass of recorded music available today it has reached a point where not only does all kinds of music have the potential of functioning as ambient music, but all forms of music now also have the ability to function as noise.

Another pop song, another jazz jam, techno tune, rock eruption will only add to this noise, but interestingly enough the sound of pure, white noise will often come through loud and clear on top of the ongoing cacophony, like a sharp, clear sine wave that cuts through the murmur of a crowded room.

All this makes me think of my own "anti-noise" release from 1996, the Mental Overdrive album "Unplugged".

"Unplugged" was meant to be the antidote to my release of the techno album "Plugged" from the year before, and once purchased, the basic idea was that you could use it to replace any CD responsible of polluting your environment with unwanted music, and thereby silence a potential source of bad music.

If Bill had done it, the score would have read something like this:

SCORE 384. UNPLUGGED

PURCHASE MENTAL OVERDRIVE'S "UNPLUGGED" ALBUM
WHENEVER YOUR EARS ARE BEING EXPOSED TO UNWANTED MUSIC
LOCATE THE SOURCE OF THE SOUND
IF IT IS A CD PLAYER
EJECT THE CD RESPONSIBLE FOR THE NOISE
REPLACE IT WITH YOUR COPY OF "UNPLUGGED"
ENJOY THE SILENCE

I now realize that this might not work today, 15 years later, as CD's are disappearing as a format.

And I realize that with the disappearance of the CD, the idea of the "album" has no place in this vast sea of noise. There are no natural boundaries for storing sound anymore, no limited container for an artist to fill.

And without a set format like the vinyl LP or CD album used to be, there lays no challenge in limitations for the artist to solve, adding his or her personal touch.

It has become a book without sleeves, the Net working like a gigantic sieve, spreading anything you throw at it out into a cloud of musical dust getting carried by the wind all across the universe.

This noise.

It makes me think too much.

Maybe we will need a new focus point, something to help us capture a fraction of this eternity of sound, so we can observe it in peace?

We might have to go back to focus on the “piece of music" again, whether you call it a song, a track, a tune or a symphony.

This reminds me of my own project from 2001, "It's more fun to consume", later to be re-baptized "Commercial Music - A Barcode Symphony".

The idea was to use barcodes from the supermarket as a source of data for triggering sound, with each individual item in the store identifying a unique pitch, timbre and level of playback.

This way, I wanted to make people's own shopping habits the direct cause of music creation, maybe linking the most popular items to short samples of tracks that topped the charts at the time of the performance.

My plan was to set up a show with a group of skilled classical musicians, give them each a shopping trolley full of goods and a printed score to perform.

This would create the ultimate commercial music, I figured at the time.

But now I realize that this, too, would only add to the noise.

But anyway, Bill has already written a book on this whole subject of the abundance of recorded music, and I know he will be happy to go into the details with you.

I pause for a moment.

Listen to the noise.

And think again.

As I write this, sitting at a table in my living room, I've got the laptop I'm writing on in front of me. My iPad is in the bag on the floor, and my iPhone lies on another table at the other end of the room. My digital camera is also in my bag on the floor next to me.

I realize that all these devices are capable of playing music.

The radio in the kitchen is on, emitting some low, trance-like mumbling.

My 15-year-old daughter sits across the table with her homework. She has her headphones on, spilling thin, loud Japanese electro into the room.

There's a "ding" on my own laptop signaling a mention on Twitter. Moments later my iPad signals new mail, which I know will be repeated by my phone in a second, as both devices are connected to the same account.

My youngest daughter calls me and wants to play. My wife tells me we need to call a friend we forgot to give notice about a dinner-party this weekend, and turns on the TV, which informs me of another death toll in Northern Africa.

The wind outside makes the roof creek.

There's the noise.

And I stop thinking.

And swim in sound.

And life is beautiful.

Still, I know I will one day have to set off further north, to search for the ultimate silence.

To a place where not even The17 can be heard.

SELECT AN ALBUM: Decade #5 - The 2000's

2011-05-02T11:04:00.000-07:00

Frost - "Love! Revolution!"

We could never have imagined the impact this album would eventually have at the time of writing and producing it.

I had already lost much of my faith in pop music as a "carrier of grand ideas", and even though I admired the more politically charged chart music like Heaven 17's album "Penthouse and pavement" in my younger days, I'd stopped hoping for the perfect mix between Billy Bragg and Madonna to come along.

So, at the turn of the new millennium, I didn't have any expectations left that pop music could function as a vehicle for spreading "The Message" - whatever the message was.

Music was the message, my conclusion read at this point.

Simple as that.

But that was before the Istanbul incident:

I'd been to Istanbul a couple of times before, both DJing and with bands.

This time, I would only play one DJ gig, and then have a few days off in this lovely city with my wife and a couple of friends.

We'd just received the finished promo copies of our new Frost album "Love! Revolution!" before we left, so we brought a few copies with us to give to friends and people we met on the journey.

I've always been carrying both vinyl and CD promos with me in the most ridiculous of situations over the years. It's like giving away music brings me such joy that I always want to be prepared for it at any time.

We'd been hanging out for a couple of days after my gig, eating fantastic food and drinking delicious wine, when we decided to go shopping at the Kapali Carsi AKA The Grand Bazaar.

I love this place. It's all about commerce, but in the "right" way - if there ever was one. The stallkeepers simply want to sell you stuff, and it's not disguised as something else. It's an honest thing that they want to part you of as much of your cash as possible.

I had been looking at some colourful carpets outside one of the stalls after taking some photos of a beautiful display of lamps across the isle, when the carpet-seller approached me to hit me with his pitch.

I calmly declined his special offer, explaining that I didn't need a carpet, and as I was travelling with 20 kilos of vinyl with me on the plane, and so I wouldn't be able to bring a carpet back with me - unless I could fly home on it.

He nearly convinced me that this would be no problem, and I understood that this guy was good.

I decided to try and hit him back with something, and reached for my bag, swiftly picked up a promo CD of "Love! Revolution!" and handed it to him.

He stopped talking, looked at the CD in his hand and then back up at me, visibly surprised.

I said, "You're welcome. It's free." and then left him in a genie-like manner.

This is where we leave Istanbul.

We returned to Oslo and back to working on the release of our new album, and a few other projects that needed following up.

A few months later, a message turned up in the inbox of Frost's MySpace page (remember MySpace? "The world's largest backstage area"...)

"Dear Frost. We thank you so much for the support you provide with your music. It makes us strong, and we know we will prevail!"

The message was signed "Cara".

Now, we got quite a few messages on our MySpace page at the time, but somehow I felt that this one was special.

I would eventually be proven right.

Another few weeks passed, and then we got the following email from the promoter who had booked my DJ gig in Istanbul:

"Dear Per. Hope you're well. Just wanted to tell you you seem to be doing really well on the bootleg market here with you and Aggie's new Frost album. I see it everywhere I go. Hope you are making some real sales in addition :-)"

Over the next few weeks we had more messages sent to us - sometimes with short quotes from the lyrics from the songs on the album, like:

"THINGS ARE BOUND TO CHANGE."

"IT'S TIME TO OPEN UP YOUR EYES"

"BLINDFOLDED IN BRIGHT DAYLIGHT"

As we didn't really get the time to follow up "Love! Revolution!" with a proper press campaign and tour (the release was digital-only on our own little label with sparse funding), the album became a very underground release indeed, but well received amongst fans and on various online channels.

Over time, the little messages kept ticking in, and we somehow got used to them and didn't read much more into them than little reminders that someone out there appreciated what we did.

In 2009 we relocated from Oslo to the North, and took a break from working with Frost for a couple of years.

The surprise was therefore breathtaking when in January of 2011 we got the following email:

"Dear Frost. Thank you so much for your music. I am a student in Tunisia and we are now carrying out demonstrations to bring change to our corrupted country. Today we were marching in the streets while singing our Arabic translation of your song "Free your heart". We feel very strong and know in our hearts that we will make change happen, as this is the right time."

The email was signed:

"Love! Revolution! Kareem"

As you might understand, this felt totally unreal to us, sitting far into the Arctic Circle, immersed in projects totally different from our four-year old release of a pop record.
And it went on.

And on.

Since the first message in January, we've had constant reports of the further spreading of our music in the region, and have been told that quotes from the lyrics and even people actually singing translated versions of the songs in the streets of Cairo, Gaza, Tripoli and Damascus.

The most bizarre highlight up until now was when we watched the news the other night, and spotted a guy carrying an old eighties ghetto-blaster on his shoulder on the street behind the reporter.

The guy had a Frost teeshirt on, and barely audible, behind the voice of the news anchor we could hear the muted sound of the chorus of our song "Free your heart".

SELECT AN ALBUM: Decade #4 - The 1990's

2011-04-25T06:52:00.000-07:00

Illumination - "This is Illumination"

Acid House and Detroit Techno entered my life a couple of years before I myself entered the nineties, but I still feel that the 1990's are the true decade of dance music.

These are the years when post-disco electronic club music grew up and became both a mainstream and global phenomenon, and thereby made a difference in the world.

In 1990 I released my debut EP under the name Mental Overdrive on the now legendary (and recently re-launched) Belgian label R&S Records.

My EP consisted of 5 tracks, of which 2 of them were variations on the same tune, and my sound at the time was quite hard and noisy.

Everything went very fast back then. As we were sitting in the car approaching the cutting room; myself, label boss Renaat Vandepapeliere and stable-mates Joey Beltram and Ceejay Bolland, I was being pressed for an artist name for the record I was about to cut by Renaat, who had the sleeve designer on his oversized mobile phone while driving at more than 200 km/h.

All I could think of was "Mental Overdrive".

And so it has stuck with me as one of my most frequently used monikers, whenever I put on my dancing shoes and attempt to make some music to move a crowd.

But the very idea of me making dance music wasn't as inevitable as it might seem.

There was an "incident" when I was younger, you see.

I was about eleven, and had made my way down to the local youth club.

I danced, like any other kid, and as I was grooving along nicely to some dire chart disco that I can't remember the name of, I suddenly felt a bit too "free" on the floor, and started to get quite animated, and thereby in demand for more physical space.

This led to a sudden spastic swing of my left arm, which resulted in me knocking a bottle of coke out of the hand of the no.1 school bully, making his recently aquired refreshment relocate to floor level with a crash.

Time froze.

As if by magic, I managed to talk myself out of the situation.

As I swiftly left the club before anything more catastrophic happened, I decided that disco and dancing, separate or in combination, was a total waste of time and energy.

It would take years and years to heal this wound on my boogie muscle, and more than an adolescence - including a large music collection of bands like Einstürzende Neubauten - later, I was eventually cured by Acid House in the late eighties, and would finally dance once again.

And so - in the nineties - I found myself in the middle of the dancefloor recurrently, and had even ended up devoting my musical career mostly to create music for clubs.

The album I've selected, "This is Illumination", by the production duo of Nicholas Sillitoe and myself, seem to be a sum-up of this long journey back to the dancefloor.

The club scene in the city of Oslo, where I lived throughout the nineties, was peaking around 1998/99, with clubs like Skansen and Jazid being the places to spin, hang out and try out our new productions and remixes on the crowd.

Other producers and Dj's, like the greatly missed Erot, Those Norwegians, Bjørn Torske, Strangefruit and DJ Abstract, as well as up-and-coming kids like Prins Thomas and Hans-Peter Lindstrøm were all part in contributing to this vibrant scene.

Nick and I had a great time making this album, and as I look back at it now I can understand why dance music now has become part of our system, and will stay part of it, even as I move forward.

Much like I once learned to ride a bicycle, I seem to have let dance music into my DNA structure permanently by opening up to it in the first place.

Of course I can never re-experience the joy and thrill of getting the balance right the first time. But I still ride my bike regularly, and enjoy it a lot.

An introduction to Mental Overdrive by loveod

SELECT AN ALBUM: Decade #3 - The 1980's

2011-04-18T06:15:00.001-07:00

Joy Division - "Epitaph"

I can still remember my exact whereabouts when I read the first review of Joy Division's 4th album "Epitaph".

Back then, the reviews hit us weeks before the actual music did - being situated as far from the rest of Europe as we were here in the Arctic in the pre-internet era.

I can still remember the sounds and smells of my surroundings as I flicked trough the pages of my fresh copy of the NME.

I was standing in the snow outside my local newsagent wearing my black coat.

The coat matched my desperate desire to emulate early eighties Northern English post punk chic far more than the polar surroundings I lived in.

I guess if I had moved away from the heat leaking from the sporadic opening of the automatic door behind me as other customers came or left, I'd probably frozen to death there and then.

It was 1984.

I was 18.

The NME was the only channel of information in the field of music that I was immersed in at the time, and this album was the most anticipated release that I could ever remember.

All the drama that had unfolded within and around the band since the release of "Closer" four years earlier didn't exactly make the wait any less tense.

After the split of the original line-up, and Factory Records' intermediate cash-in compilation "Still", Ian Curtis - being the only remaining founding member of the band - had been on a long and winding journey towards the album I was about to read the review of.

It all started after Joy Division's triumphant but disastrous breakthrough tour of America in the summer of 1980.

The tension that built up within the band grew so severe that it had led to a series of incidents resulting in actual bloodshed followed by expensive visits to US dentists less than halfway into the extensive 8-month tour.

I, and many other fans, had actually feared it was already the end of the whole band when bass player Peter Hook left the tour without no other notice than his own droppings on the bed of Curtis' hotel room in September, something that led to the immediate cancellations of a handful shows.

It might as well have been the end, hadn't it been for the pressure laid upon the rest of the group and their manager by their US record company EMI, who Tony Wilson had signed them off to for a record sum in July of the same year, and who would have nothing of their investment turning to dust due to any "internal differences".

Hook was swiftly replaced by LA studio musician Lou Guber, who got the job in spite of his long blonde hair, tanned face and bleached teeth, due to his ability to memorize a vast number of songs without rehearsal.

Hook then went on a lengthy binge in New York City, where he eventually settled, and in the year after formed disco outfit FUCK! together with a set of unemployed musicians from the pre Cominsky Park glory days of disco, insisting - quite contrary to just about anyone else on the planet at the time - that this form of music still had a place in the world.

The UK music media accused him of making this move with the sole intention of pissing off his former pale gloom-rock bandmates, but they would be proven quite wrong less than a decade later, when Hook returned to the UK, reunited with two of his former bandmates and set up the now historical Hacienda club and helped spark off the return of dance music.

As the Guber lineup of JD continued their conquest of America, the emotional climate between members Curtis, Sumner and Morris worsened even more.

This was partly due to the fact that one coke-fuelled A&R's at EMI suddenly had the rather "brilliant" idea that Curtis and his new wife, Belgian journalist Annik Honoré - who was also travelling with the band on the tour - were to take over the public image of JD and be promoted as "the John & Yoko for a new generation", now that the traditional image of the four-piece band of gloomy young men with guitars had cracked.

Matters didn't exactly improve when in December the original Lennon - the one for the old generation - was shot in NYC.

Now they didn't only have a relationship between the members of the band that was beyond repair, but also a rather embarrassing public face that made many fans turn against them.

On the return to the UK, it was inevitable that Morris and Sumner had had enough, and in February 1981 it was announced that they also left with the intention of starting "own projects".

Their new band, New Order, saw them reunite with their former bandmate-turned-disco-mogul Peter Hook in New York, and the threesome - together with keyboardess Gillian Gilbert - went on to produce one of the biggest synthesized dance classics ever to be released: "Blue Monday".

This is a track that would eventually have such an impact on my own musical career that it is almost beyond description.

Meanwhile Curtis, as the only one left in his own band, returned to Europe where he settled in Brussels and immediately started planning his next move.

This move was soon to be announced in an interview Curtis did with NME's Paul Morley, who now had almost become the main channel of Curtis' public communications due to his passionate involvement with JD.

The new JD constellation was rooted in Curtis' newfound friendship with Throbbing Gristle's Genesis P. Orridge, who had been a Joy Division fan from the very start and who'd contacted Curtis straight after he returned from the scandalous US tour.

After recording a set of demos at Daylight Studios in Brussels involving guest appearances by members of exiled San Francisco art band Tuxedomoon, Curtis and P. Orridge communicated to the press (Morley) that they were "extremely excited" about the results, and looked forward to complete the production of the new material.

One can only wonder what would have come out of this dream collaboration, had it been followed through, and not been promptly rejected by EMI straight after the demos reached the ears of their US A&R department.

Devastated by the whole situation, Curtis turmoiled into a lengthy period of self-destructiveness, alcohol- and pill-abuse. Being based in Belgium, with its extremely liberal politics on prescription drugs, wasn't helping the situation either.

It wasn't until his old bandmate Peter Hook played at Brussel's Ancienne Belgique in the spring of 1992 with his seventh lineup of FUCK!, who had now - due to a growing popularity and desire to get played on the radio - changed their name to FOOK!, that Curtis seemed to wake up from his self-induced pharmaceutical hibernation.

The day after seeing his former bass player on stage, he got on the phone to EMI, and shortly after that he was on a plane destined for LA to lay down a new masterplan.

Based on their need to "monitor the process" it was decided that Curtis should develop and record the new material in LA, with a handpicked set of studio musicians all led by former JD touring bassplayer Lou Guber.

Curtis agreed to this on the condition that he could bring in a UK producer, and Martin Hannett was once again called for, and the new Joy Division set out to work in the summer of 1992.

Unfortunately it would soon be evident that the chemistry between Hannett and the musicians was going to prove a tricky one, and only 3 weeks into the sessions, after launching a string of death-threats, Hannett went AWOL and was never to be seen near the studio again.

As Curtis was now so immersed in his work and his re-gained creative vitality, he didn't object when his A&R's suggested to bring another - albeit quite different - UK producer into the project.

This new producer answered to the name of Trevor Horn, and had just gained industry fame for his productions of UK hit acts such as Dollar and ABC after having his own chart success with The Buggles some years before.

As the sessions progressed throughout the autumn, the unavoidable pressure from EMI for "strong" singles started to appear, and for "safety reasons" it was decided that a more radio-friendly cover version of JD's strongest moment to date, "Love will tear us apart", was to be recorded and re-launched into the US market as part of the new album.

For this job, EMI called for help in what they believed was some of the "strongest cards" within their network at the time, and thus members of Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band, Steven Van Zandt and Clarence Clemons - who were both working with Springsteen in NYC's The Power Station studios on what would eventually become "Born in the USA" - flew out to LA to lay down some power riffs and a saxophone solo respectively.

In parallel, Horn was working on the production of prog-rockers Yes' new material, and from the Yes camp he brought in keyboardist Tony Kaye for some bright brass synth stabs to enhance the main riff of the song to complete the US West Coast feel of the production.

(It's worth mentioning that Throbbing Gristle's Peter Christopherson later directed the video for Yes' hit single "Owner of a lonely heart" - and thereby vaguely re-established some kind of underlying TG connection with JD)

The rest of the album took 18 more months to complete, and had one of the largest recording budgets ever to be spent on a US-signed English band.

And here I was, standing in the chilly draft of the Arctic air, flicking through the pages for the final verdict.

Morley's review was brief, but fiercely clear in its judgement:

"With their debut album five years ago, Joy Division came along as 'the next step' - a band who was supposed to show us the way forward from the last decade and into the future. More mysterious and less domestic than a banal punk band, their rage was always aimed at time, history and the gods, aimed at the self, and fate. They were meant to show us the darkness leading into the tunnel, and leave us hoping to find a glimpse of light at the end."

Then he wrote:

"This - is nothing of the sort, and I don't want to waste any more words explaining why. If you really must, you can go through the heartbreaking and unbearable experience of listening to this album for yourself."

I folded up my newspaper and just stood there, staring blankly into the air for minutes, until an old man walked past and shouted "No thanks! I've got enough toilet paper at home", believing me to be handing out some sort of political propaganda due to the out-of-place clothing and the paper I now seemed to be offering to bypassers.

The following suicide of Paul Morley sent shockwaves throughout the world of music, both across the industry and in the public.

He mailed a letter with the entire lyrics for "New Dawn Fades" as a suicide note to his own desk at the NME.

In retrospect I now realize how all of the above have been instrumental in me building up my own fear of "the mainstream", a fear that has lead me to insist on releasing my music mostly on small labels over the last two decades or so, always dodging every possibility of "getting it right" in a commercial way - bar the odd remix of other artists work getting on million-selling compilations and a couple of major label licenses.

I didn't actually bother to hear "Epitaph" until years later.

Words spoke for themselves.

Words. And suicides.

SELECT AN ALBUM: Decade #2 - The 1970's

2011-04-11T13:50:00.001-07:00

Kraftwerk - "Man Machine"

In 1978 I was given a cassette copy of "Man Machine" by my friend Geir Jenssen, who would later rise to electronic ambient fame under the name Biosphere.

Geir had presented the album to me on his portable cassette player during a weekend trip to a cabin in the mountains near our hometown Tromsø a few weeks before, and had left me with a copy when we returned to civilization.

Of course Ralf & Florian would never see a penny in royalties for this copy, although I later bought the record on vinyl and thereby proved a point in early filesharing politics.

I was 12 years old at the time, and heavily into hobby electronics.

My grand Kraftwerk moment came as I was sitting at my desk in my room, soldering the components of my first simple FM radio kit onto a readymade PCB.

I had just put on the tape Geir gave me, and returned to my work. Seconds later, a power failure hit our neighborhood, and straight after the intro of "We are the robots" - just as the first beat set in - the lights in my room started flickering wildly to the analogue synth beat emanating from my small battery-powered tape-deck.

This, combined with the toxic fumes rising from my soldering iron, made me realize that I'd hit on something BIG - something very important.

It was a sign.

It was as if I, in this very instant, instinctively knew that this was the future. My future. Not only in music, but all across society in the world that I would grow up into.

My mate down the road picked up "Never mind the bollocks" by the Sex Pistols around the same time.

He tried to convince me that punk was the future.

I thought that was rather silly and a contradiction in terms, as I associated the slogan "No future" with punk.

Now, as Kraftwerk's visions of their beloved Computerworld have mostly become reality, and even punk bands record their three chord eruptions onto computers, I realize that without the punk attitude my generation inherited, and the DIY ethics that rose from the ashes, the Computerworld would have been a very dull and scary world to live in.

And I guess so do Ralf, Florian, Karl and Wolfgang, too.

SELECT AN ALBUM: Decade #1 - The 1960's

2011-04-04T06:03:00.000-07:00

The Royal Guardsmen - "Snoopy versus the Red Baron"

I can remember the green Philips portable turntable on the floor in front of me.

I can remember the worn-out paper sleeve of my mother's copy of the 7-inch vinyl single, and the wood and rubbered string record rack that I picked it out from whenever I wanted to play it.

I can remember trying to fit the record on the deck without fiddling too much with hitting the hole in the middle, which was hard.

I can remember the clicking sound when pulling back the tone arm in order to start the turntable motor, and the repeated failure of carefully putting the stylus down at the beginning of the record, due to the underdeveloped motion control of the small child that I was at the time.

I cannot remember any other details of my surroundings.

I was three years old, and this was my favourite record.

Other favourites were "Sugar Baby Love" by The Rubettes and "Barbara Ann" by The Beach Boys, but "Snoopy versus the Red Baron" was on top of the list, and it is only in retrospect that I can begin to understand why.

You might think it had something to do with the fact that fun tales of Snoopy the cartoon dog appealed more to a three-year old than the hymns of sexual celebration that my other two favourite tunes were.

But it wasn't.

It was about the fact that, in addition to the music and vocals, there were sounds of airplanes, guns and crashes in there - real sound effects to spark my imagination.

This bubblegum pop record actually contained samples - in 1966! - noises that helped me create pictures inside my head and made some kind of story unfold inside me.

In addition, the music and the song were fine, too - as a soundtrack to my inner experience.

The production resembled the sound that Joe Meek created for the Tornados, only with less backward noises and delay feedback, which couldn’t be a bad thing either

The funniest thing is that the rhythm of the track has had an immense impact on my later life as a music maker myself.

The drum beat of “Snoopy…”, with its four to the floor kick drum and marching style snare work is something that I would subconsciously apply on my first ever self-produced solo record "Drum", released under my "new beat" pseudonym Syamese in 1990.

To illustrate this more clearly, you can check out the links to the originals and to a short mash-up of the two tracks below.

Another thing that strikes me as important, is that it was all about this one song.

The album format was totally irrelevant to me back then. I couldn't care less about tracking down any LP with the band, and to this day never have heard another tune by The Royal Guardsmen.

Score 378: SELECT AN ALBUM

2011-04-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

Over the next 6 weeks I will perform Score 378: SELECT AN ALBUM by Bill Drummond.

When Bill asked me to do this a few weeks back, my first thought was that it would be a question of ranking the "most important" albums from each decade I have lived, in a sort of “best music of my life” album list, and then re-listen through them all.

I found this task rather difficult, maybe because music has always meant something on a very personal level to me, and that merely ranking pieces of my own emotional history in this way would be a very superficial way of treating such an important element of my life.

My second thought was that I would surely have to follow the score in a very rigid manner, and therefore find the time to spend 6 consecutive days listening to and thinking about these albums, something that would also be difficult to pull off in these busy times.

I don't know if it's the red and black all-caps letters of the scores that make me take this rather unfamiliar and obedient position. But in some way it feels like The17 scores are command lines, prompting me not to step on Bill's intellectual lawn or something. Maybe it's just the way they resemble computer code.

After all, you don't discuss with code, you just run the program.

At least if you're a machine.

But after giving it some time, I slowly realized that this was only the weak part of my imagination speaking, and that I could of course interpret the score as I wanted to.

I've finally decided to focus on one album from each decennium of my life thus far that somehow has had a special impact on my personal and - later - artistic development.

It might be an interesting exercise, at least to myself.

I will start with the first album tomorrow, and then post the results over the next 6 Mondays here on my blog (http://www.myblurrywindow.com).

All the texts will then be collected and posted at http://www.the17.org

Berlin February 2011

2011-03-18T02:52:00.001-07:00

My next door neighbour

2011-03-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

Nippon love

2011-03-16T06:06:00.001-07:00

Pause

2011-03-13T04:06:00.001-07:00

Evil Omar Nerd Vet

2011-03-02T10:51:00.000-08:00

Fisheye Excursion

2011-02-28T04:15:00.001-08:00

Sellout#007 - "PEACE"

2010-12-20T14:57:00.000-08:00

Peace is free.

eBay - as part of the current global financial system - will not allow anyone to give away anything for free.
In order to get any item listed here you are required to generate a profit of some kind.

The current global financial system is therefore an inadequate channel for creating peace.

The auction is open until 1200 CET Monday the 27th of December 2010, and you can place your bids above the starting price of 0.01 USD at this link.

Sellout#006 - "WISDOM"

2010-12-13T14:15:00.001-08:00

Following the actions of Tied Revolverman's brother in DNA, electronic artist Mental Overdrive, who has now openly announced his support for controversial global journalist network Wikileaks by dedicating his new single to the organization, the Revolverman feels that he has to take some precautions:

In order to avoid making life too difficult for those who might consider such support troublesome, and therefore would like to keep an eye on such an openly-speaking citizen of the free world, the object for sale in Sellout#006 - "WISDOM" is a recently removed wisdom tooth from Tied Revolverman/Mental Overdrive's own mouth.

This way - in case a DNA-sample should be needed by any of the investigating authorities - it can simply be aquired upfront here and now through eBay at a minimum price equal to the actual cost of removing it at the dentist's office earlier this autumn.

The auction is open until 1200 CET Monday the 20th of December 2010, and you can place your bids above the starting price of 175.30 USD at this link.

Sellout#005 - "PONG"

2010-12-08T02:18:00.000-08:00

The fifth item in the "Sellout" series - Sellout#005 - "Pong" - is the actual Pong machine as described in chapter 12 - 'More about shapes and structures' in the novel 'Earthbound - Surfing the Apocalypse', and featured as part of the 'Earthbound' exhibition at the Tromsø Gallery of Contemporary Art in October/November 2010.

The auction is open until 1200 CET Monday the 13th of December 2010, and you can place your bids above the starting price of 3000.00 USD at this link.

Sellout#004 - "WORD"

2010-11-29T14:53:00.001-08:00

The fourth item in Tied Revolverman's "Sellout" series - Sellout#004 - "Word" - is the last one in a limited run of 30 signed and numbered printed copies of transmedia novel 'Earthbound - Surfing the Apocalypse' in A4 format, containing 289 pages.

In addition, a CD promo copy of the 'Earthbound...' virtual soundtrack is included, as well as a printed card from the October/November 2010 exhibition at the Tromsø Gallery of Contemporary Art, a badge with an image of the "Elsewhere" installation from this exhibition, and a 'The Apocalypse has been cancelled' sticker.

The auction is open until 1200 CET Monday the 6th of December 2010, and you can place your bids above the starting price of 50.00 USD at this link.

Tromsø exhibition takedown

2010-11-22T13:51:00.001-08:00

Sellout#003 - "GROUNDED"

2010-11-22T13:26:00.000-08:00

The third installment in Tied Revolverman's "Sellout" series - Sellout#003 - "Grounded" - is a 81,5 x 49,5 cm colour print of a montage of the Revolverman himself in front of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökul during its 2010 eruption.

These eruptions brought the world's aviation fleet to its knees for days, and reminded us yet again that our entire civilization is extremely vulnerable to natural forces.

This image will be printed in no more than 5 numbered and signed copies.

The auction is open until 1200 CET Monday the 29th of November 2010, and you can place your bids above the starting price of 10.00 USD at this link.

Sellout#002 - "TATTOO"

2010-11-02T02:56:00.000-07:00

Sellout #002 - TATTOO
Your logo tattooed on Tied Revolverman's arm?
Starting price $25.000 (including ink)

The second item in Tied Revolverman's "Sellout" series consists of exclusive access to the advertising real-estate that is a patch of his own living, breathing skin - pure and simple.

This means that as of today you can place your bids for the very special placement of your logo - permanently tattooed on his upper left arm. (This is the spot that usually is most visible in any public appearance or stage presence that involves TR's parttaking, and therefore the most valuable in marketing terms.)

The image shall be no more than 5x5cm of size, but in the colour of your own choice.

If graffiti can be viewed as the opinion of the individual "invading" public space (i.e. commercially regulated property), then this will be quite the opposite: This is an exclusive opportunity for the corporate brand and its message to the market to invade an individual's body - for life-long exposure.

Exception:

Initially, the idea was to have an exception. This exception would be that anyone representing "unethical" companies or industries were not to be allowed to place their bids at this auction. After all this particular Revolverman is of a rather trigger-unhappy and environmental-friendly nature.

But after re-thinking this, it was decided that this would be wrong. This because in the world of hard cash - the world where the entire "Sellout" series belong - there's nothing more valuable than that of an "unethical" nature. The "unethical" is in fact the very essence of global capitalism.

We (i.e. you, me and everyone we know) have decided through our democratic processes and free market consumer choices that anything that is of a destructive nature should be considered far more valuable than anything that's not. Thus, weapons, environmentally damaging products, destructive technologies, synthetic drugs, unhealthy food etc. etc. have been collectively decided to have a far higher value than such banalities as love, compassion, music, natural health, peacemaking etc. etc.

This is something we are all consolidating day by day and hour after hour by upholding our personal support towards this system. This is not decided by someone "other" than ourselves - the consumers.

The Revolverman has therefore decided to rather accept this collective voice of the people, and won't mix his personal convictions into a business matter like this. In fact, it would be totally un-democratic and an act of bad ethics in itself to exclude anyone from bidding. You are therefore most welcome to place your bids, even though your trade is in death, pollution, destruction or pure greed - if you have the dough.

If you're "nice", and have more cash than the bad guys, you're also welcome.

After all - this is capitalism.

Any resemblance to the ultra-commercialism of Damien Hirst is highly coincidential - there lies no tribute to him whatsoever within this work.

This auction is open until 1200 CET Monday the 22nd of November 2010 at this link.

Sellout#001 - "YEAR ZERO"

2010-11-02T00:13:00.001-07:00

Sellout #001 - "YEAR ZERO"
Print no. 1 of 5 copies in total
Starting price $10

As of noon today, Monday November the 8h 2010 (CET), Tied Revolverman has opened the highly commercial auction series "Sellout" through eBay.

This is the first item in the celebration of hypercommercialism that is the "Sellout" auction series, and it's a colour print of a montage of the Tied Revolverman himself imposed onto an image of the global trauma that was September 11th 2001.

This event is now unfortunately part of our common emotional inheritance, and the event itself might have marked the end of something, the beginning of something, or the beginning of The End.

Time will show - it might all be up to us.

This auction is open until 1200 CET Monday the 15th of November 2010 at this link.

Setup completed

2010-10-20T15:09:00.000-07:00

From the opening

2010-10-19T13:59:00.000-07:00

Final construction pt. 2

2010-10-18T11:43:00.000-07:00

Final construction pt. 1

2010-10-18T11:31:00.000-07:00

"Powerstructure" construction

2010-10-11T14:16:00.001-07:00

Installation pt. 1

2010-10-06T12:36:00.000-07:00

"Powerstructure" sketch no. 1

2010-09-19T13:18:00.000-07:00

"Irretrievable Information" pt. 2

2010-09-17T14:07:00.000-07:00

"Powerstructure" research

2010-09-11T12:28:00.001-07:00

"Irretrievable Information" pt. 1

2010-09-08T12:49:00.000-07:00

From the construction of "Elsewhere"

2010-09-08T02:32:00.000-07:00

It's alive (sort of)

2010-09-07T08:48:00.000-07:00

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The making of "Pong"

2010-09-07T08:46:00.001-07:00

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