uzine's preposterous

[uzine] - since 1999 \ facebook.com/pages/uzine-blog/216710133861

clark e. smith


Michael Clark's company didn't just work to Bruce Gilbert's music obviously! Bolan, Bowie & Branca have been danced to, as well as Laibach, Pop & Reed, or the compositions of Jeffrey Hinton and Igor Stravinsky - see also here & there … But the most striking collaboration has probably been that between Michael Clark and the Fall …

hail the new puritan shivering man gilbert clark

Oh Mister Noisegate, bring me a dance … After Mego's reissue of Bruce Gilbert's solo debut "This Way", I'm hoping for a full reissue (no tracks missing, e.g. "There are") of "The Shivering Man", BC Gilbert's second solo album, on cd, deluxe and all … Both albums include work used by Michael Clark, as you can witness from the "Hail the new puritan" (Charles Atlas 1986) footage here: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5. (More on Clark in the next post.) Note, too, that 'debut' does not mean 'earliest recordings' … Update: it's happened, on cd ànd 2lp.

david van tieghem, master percussionist / michael clark [1/2]

Just imitated this whole exercise at home, but 't didn't sound quite the same - suppose it's the Chelsea Hotel's acoustics ;-) ... The artist at work is "of course" the criminally underrated David Van Tieghem, one time member of the Love of Live Orchestra and session percussionist for NYC icons such as Laurie Anderson, Talking Heads & Eno - Byrne. Here's another sample of his early art:
Just like David Byrne with "The Catherine Wheel" (1981-12), Van Tieghem recorded music for a dance piece by Twyla Tharp, viz. "Fait Accompli" ; the resulting album "These Things Happen" (Warner Brothers 1984) is, imho, one of the best albums of the eighties - and a lost gem in dire need of a deluxe cd reissue reappraisal. [If only for the car stereo - the lp has been working wonders back to back with Weather Report's "Sweetnighter" (1973) on a worn car tape.] Singling out one track doesn't do this album justice, as it's a plus forty minute trip of percussive genius (and compelling sax action à la Tuxedomoon, impLOG and the like) over a soundscape of sirens, breaking glass (love that sound, even though it makes me think of people pissing on the stairs), tv & shortwave clips and other New York noises ... but here goes:
... or, better still, check the video at Spike dot com > video/david-van-tieghem/2791971 (I'm splitting the link to avoid Posterous showing a black screen without value), where the video and the music are better synchronised. (Notice the "Once in a lifetime" influence, too.) "These Things Happen" is a must for anyone into early (Ralph era) Yello, "My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts" (1981-02), Bill Laswell, Martin Rev, Suicide and the whole No New York / Knitting Factory scene, but also to anyone into creative electronics and percussion ... or remotely interested in modern dance - from Anna-Teresa “Rosas” De Keersmaeker or Chantal Akerman's “Toute une nuit” to the post-Godard video dances of Pas de Deux or Michael Clark's troupe dancing to Bruce Gilbert and the Fall ... just check this other man in a suit here:

Later on, DVT would release more albums in an electronic / library / nearly new age vein, but never as intense. See the man's age old website http://www.vantieghem.com/ for more.

Incidentally, re: Byrne & Talking Heads, see also this here post ... http://snaporaz.posterous.com/go-ahead-and-tear-up-tear-up-the-paper ;-)