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Paul Smith (music Industry Executive)
Paul Smith is probably best known as the founder and manager of Blast First, the British alternative record label that released artists such as Sonic Youth, the Butthole Surfers, Big Black and Dinosaur Jr. in the UK. He continued to manage the artists and work in the music industry when Blast First was bought by Mute Records. Now he runs the very small label "Blast First Petite" on which he develops and sometime releases stuff that was refused by Mute's Blast First, including Rivulets and HTRK. He now has an exclusive contract with Pan Sonic. In 2002 he produced a multimedia performance event at the Barbican to mark the release of Iain Sinclair's book ''London Orbital''. The event featured a diverse range of artists from the literary and music worlds including J. G. Ballard and Bill Drummond Paul Smith also produced the final British tour of Ken Kesey, taking him on a bus tour around festivals in summer 1997. He is also known for King Mob, a record label of spoken word per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blast First
Blast First is a sub label of one-time independent record label Mute Records, founded in approximately 1985. It was named after a phrase taken from the first number of the radical Vorticist journal ''Blast'', published by Wyndham Lewis in 1914. Lewis's "Manifesto" begins with the words "BLAST First (from politeness) ENGLAND". History The label was founded by Paul Smith to give UK release to albums by Sonic Youth, a US band with which he was then working closely. It went on to feature more hardcore rock bands than the master label of its synthpop-oriented parent company. Before Mute Records was sold to the EMI group, Blast First fit into the company's profile, which included labels such as the Fine Line and the Grey Area. The labels employees included the sisters Pat and Liz Naylor, and the novelist Alistair Fruish. The label released a range of alternative music from Butthole Surfers and Labradford through Suicide and Sonic Youth to the William Fairey Band's ''Acid Brass' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbican Centre
The Barbican Centre is a performing arts centre in the Barbican Estate of the City of London and the largest of its kind in Europe. The centre hosts classical and contemporary music concerts, theatre performances, film screenings and art exhibitions. It also houses a library, three restaurants, and a conservatory. The Barbican Centre is a member of the Global Cultural Districts Network. The London Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Symphony Orchestra are based in the centre's Concert Hall. In 2013, it once again became the London-based venue of the Royal Shakespeare Company following the company's departure in 2001. The Barbican Centre is owned, funded, and managed by the City of London Corporation. It was built as the City's gift to the nation at a cost of £161 million (equivalent to £480 million in 2014) and was officially opened to the public by Queen Elizabeth II on 3 March 1982. The Barbican Centre is also known for its brutalist architecture. Performance ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stewart Home
Kevin Llewellyn Callan (born 24 March 1962), better known as Stewart Home, is an English artist, filmmaker, writer, pamphleteer, art historian, and activist. His novels include the non-narrative ''69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess'' (2002), and the re-imagining of the 1960s in ''Tainted Love'' (2005). Earlier parodistic pulp fictions work includes ''Pure Mania'', ''Red London'', ''No Pity'', ''Cunt'', and ''Defiant Pose'' which pastiche the work of 1970s British skinhead pulp novel writer Richard Allen and combine it with pornography, political agit-prop, and historical references to punk rock and avant-garde art. Life and work Home was born in South London. His mother, Julia Callan-Thompson, was a model who was associated with the radical arts scene in Notting Hill Gate. In the 1980s and 1990s, he exhibited art and also wrote a number of non-fiction pamphlets, magazines, and books, and edited anthologies. They chiefly reflected the politics of the radical left, punk cul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generationers in the 1950s, better known as Beatniks. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration. Allen Ginsberg's '' Howl'' (1956), William S. Burroughs' '' Naked Lunch'' (1959), and Jack Kerouac's '' On the Road'' (1957) are among the best known examples of Beat literature.Charters (1992) ''The Portable Beat Reader''. Both ''Howl'' and ''Naked Lunch'' were the focus of obscenity trials that ultimately helped to liberalize publishing in the United States.Ann Ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Counter-culture
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Houghton Mifflin. . (1993) p. 419. "Members of a cultural protest that began in the U.S. In the 1960s and Europe before fading in the 1970s... fundamentally a cultural rather than a political protest." A countercultural movement expresses the ethos and aspirations of a specific population during a well-defined era. When oppositional forces reach critical mass, countercultures can trigger dramatic cultural changes. Prominent examples of countercultures in the Western world include the Levellers (1645–1650), Bohemianism (1850–1910), the more fragmentary counterculture of the Beat Generation (1944–1964), followed by the globalized counterculture of the 1960s (1964–1974). Definition and characteristics John Milton Yinger originated th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ken Kesey
Ken Elton Kesey (September 17, 1935 – November 10, 2001) was an American novelist, essayist and countercultural figure. He considered himself a link between the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the hippies of the 1960s. Kesey was born in La Junta, Colorado, and grew up in Springfield, Oregon, graduating from the University of Oregon in 1957. He began writing ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' in 1960 after completing a graduate fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University; the novel was an immediate commercial and critical success when published two years later. During this period, Kesey participated in government studies involving hallucinogenic drugs (including mescaline and LSD) to supplement his income. After ''One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'' was published, Kesey moved to nearby La Honda, California, and began hosting happenings with former colleagues from Stanford, miscellaneous bohemian and literary figures (most notably Neal Cassady) and other friend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bill Drummond
William Ernest Drummond (born 29 April 1953) is a Scottish artist, musician, writer, and record producer. He was a co-founder of the late-1980s avant-garde pop group the KLF and its 1990s media-manipulating successor, the K Foundation, with which he famously burned £1 million in 1994. More recent art activities, carried out under Drummond's banner of Penkiln Burn, include making and distributing cakes, soup, flowers, beds, and shoe-shines. More recent music projects include No Music Day and the international tour of a choir called The17. Drummond is the author of several books about art and music. Background William Ernest Drummond was born in Butterworth, South Africa, where his father was a minister for the Church of Scotland. His family moved back to Scotland when he was 18 months old, and his early years were spent in the town of Newton Stewart. He moved to Corby, Northamptonshire at the age of 11. It was here that he first became involved in performing as a musician, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iain Sinclair
Iain Sinclair FRSL (born 11 June 1943) is a writer and filmmaker. Much of his work is rooted in London, recently within the influences of psychogeography. Biography Education Sinclair was born in Cardiff in 1943. From 1956 to 1961, he was educated at Cheltenham College, a boarding school for boys, followed by Trinity College, Dublin (where he edited ''Icarus''). He attended the Courtauld Institute of Art (University of London), and the London School of Film Technique (now the London Film School). Development as author Sinclair's early work was mostly poetry, much of it published by his own small press, Albion Village Press. He was (and remains) connected with the British avant garde poetry scene of the 1960s and 1970s – authors such as Edward Dorn, J. H. Prynne, Douglas Oliver, Peter Ackroyd and Brian Catling are often quoted in his work and even turn up in fictionalized form as characters. Later, taking over from John Muckle, Sinclair edited the Paladin Poetry Series and, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pan Sonic
Pan Sonic was a Finnish electronic music group founded in Turku in 1993. The group consisted of Mika Vainio, Ilpo Väisänen, and Sami Salo. Salo left in 1996 leaving Pan Sonic a duo. The group was originally named Panasonic until 1998. In December 2009, it was announced that Pan Sonic would disband after their concerts that month. Their final album, ''Gravitoni'', was released by Blast First Petite in May 2010. ''Oksastus'', a live album recorded in 2009, was released in 2014. Music Pan Sonic cite their main influences from the early 1980s, with industrial acts like Throbbing Gristle, Einstürzende Neubauten and Suicide to reggae, hip-hop and dub. Vainio often remarks that their music is a merger of these two schools of music, taking the harsh and pure sounds typical of industrial techno and spacing them out into longer, subdued soundscapes familiar to instrumental reggae and dub. The late outsider rockabilly artist Hasil Adkins is also cited, as well as country music sta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth was an American rock band based in New York City, formed in 1981. Founding members Thurston Moore (guitar, vocals), Kim Gordon (bass, vocals, guitar) and Lee Ranaldo (guitar, vocals) remained together for the entire history of the band, while Steve Shelley (drums) followed a series of short-term drummers in 1985, rounding out the core line-up. Jim O'Rourke (bass, keyboards, guitar) was also a member of the band from 1999 to 2005, and Mark Ibold (guitar, bass) was a member from 2006 to 2011. Sonic Youth emerged from the experimental no wave art and music scene in New York before evolving into a more conventional rock band and becoming a prominent member of the American noise rock scene. Sonic Youth have been praised for having "redefined what rock guitar could do" using a wide variety of unorthodox guitar tunings while preparing guitars with objects like drum sticks and screwdrivers to alter the instruments' timbre. The band was a pivotal influence on the al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HTRK
HTRK (formerly Hate Rock Trio) is an Australian band formed in 2003. The band is currently a duo of vocalist Jonnine Standish and guitarist Nigel Yang; bassist Sean Stewart was a member until his death in 2010. The band's debut album was produced by Rowland S. Howard. Biography Emergence Originating from Melbourne, and previously based in Berlin and London, HTRK (pronounced Hate Rock) started playing in November 2003 when guitarist Nigel Yang and bassist Sean Stewart invited vocalist Jonnine Standish to create music inspired by the surrealistic films of David Lynch, along with protopunk and post-industrial ideas. Using a very slow 808 drum machine, minimal bass grooves and highly textured noise, their attitude clashed with the "rock and roll" status quo in Australia. HTRK's first release was the ''Nostalgia'' EP in 2004, originally intended as a demo but later self-released in a limited 500-disc run. Their live shows soon caught the attention of underground icon Rowlan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rivulets
Rivulets is the stage name of minimalist singer-songwriter Nathan Amundson. Biography Rivulets was the first artist signed to Low's Chairkickers Union record label in 2001. He then released his first, self-titled album in 2002 and DEBRIDEMENT in 2003. Rivulets was subsequently signed by Blast First, recording the album "you are my home" for Blast First Petite. "you are my home" was eventually licensed by Important Records and released in 2006, followed by We're Fucked in 2010, also on Important Records. This was followed by the critically acclaimed I Remember Everything on Jellyfant Records in 2014. Rivulets then signed with France-based label Talitres, releasing the sixth Rivulets album in Our Circle in 2018. Musicians who have performed as part of Rivulets include: Alan Sparhawk ( Low), Mimi Parker ( Low), Bob Weston (Shellac)., LD Beghtol (The Magnetic Fields), Chris Brokaw ( Codeine), Christian Frederickson (Rachel's), Jarboe (Swans), Haley Bonar, Jessica Bailiff, Jo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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