INTRODUCING - Anna Von Hausswolf

Her video's having popped up unbidden onto my You Tube account, I tiptoed into the sonic landscapes of Anna Von Hausswolf. At first I wasn't sure what was going on with all this church organ stuff and dynamic band accompaniments, did I like this?. Where on earth was this coming from?  Was it just too ponderous? It felt like this ought to be pidgeon holed as Gothic but then it definitely is not. Sometimes she sings like Kate Bush and then her voice takes a chilling turn and screeches away with all the guttural power of a Swedish Diamanda Galas. Over time and repeated listens, there is a lot going on here that I find interesting, and have really come to love her work. She is uncatagorisable, though there are a rich plethora of descriptive bandwidths to fit her in - neoclassical dark wave, ambient pop, art pop, ethereal wave, experimental rock, drone. None of which are truly fit for purpose, but can be touched on for brief moments during one single track.

On her first album Singing From The Grave, there are only lyrical hints of the direction she'll later take. Quite carefully constructed songs accompanied by piano with the occasional unconventional arrangement. By Ceremony two years later she's discovered the richness of a church organ and the full Anna Von Hausswolf sound has emerged. This became her breakthrough album, it is dreamlike and suffused with complex imagery, from a world where reality and that of a foreboding folk tale meet. It displays a more diverse range of styles, from the unnerving to the frankly catchy pop tune of Mountains Crave

With each succeeding album things become more darkly sinister, the tracks longer and plunge in much deeper. Certainly by the time you get to Dark Magic's stand out track The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra you can sense an affinity with the grand guignol of Nick Cave's early work with the Bad Seeds, and the aforementioned Diamanda Galas, poking through. Its simply so out there it verges on the edges of sanity. But it is terrific stuff.

After Dark Magic the only place to go was to strip back to the basics. All Thoughts Fly is completely instrumental, no singing, just the organ and electronics. Recorded on an old organ in the sight specific acoustics of its church. The track Sacro Bosco typifies the ambitions of this album. with a brooding atmosphere, full of apprehension and dread. 

She was brought up in a creative environment. Her Father, Carl Micheal Von Hausswolf is well known in Sweden as an avant garde composer. His long layered electronic drone pieces resemble the sounds of industrial machinery as heard through several layers of concrete. At times Anna uses the organ's ability to sustain and layer notes on top of each other to create a third ringing sound that is reminiscent of this aspect in her Father's work. As on this track The Miraculous.

Her videos are often made by her sister Maria Von Hausswolf who is an award winning photographer, filmmaker and performance artist. Visually they are bleak companions that expand on her younger sisters musical psychology. These videos frequently show figures travelling through a forest, a cave or a desolate landscape populated only with overgrown ruins. Its as though we are being taken through a subterranean inner world, through someone else's dream or nightmare. Here nothing makes sense, nothing can be explained, yet it feels all too real.  Anna Von Hausswolf's work is well worth exploring.

1970's German Experimental Rock ~ Kraftwerk ( Their Early Years )

The boys from Dusseldorf, Ralf Hutter and Florian Schnieder were both in a group called Organisation before they formed Kraftwerk in 1969. But the electronic pioneers that we now know and love were quite a different beast in the early 1970's, and its not just in their haircuts and choice of clothes. Hutter appears now to acknowledges this difference by refusing to allow the re-release of their first three albums, or even include them in Kraftwerk's discography. So if you want to hear their early work it can only be found in bootleg versions and the ubiquitous You Tube videos.

What you find if you venture your ears into these albums is a treasure trove of  exploratory music struggling to find its true form. Kraftwerk in 1970 fit into a style of progressive rock performance common in the twilight of the hippie era. A loose collective of individuals hang out and play long semi-improvised pieces, probably in abandoned buildings taken over for the event. However, there is also something out of the musical ordinary going on here. First, its purely instrumental no vocals, no lyrics, no musical warmth to embrace. They play real instruments:flutes, Hammond Organs and guitars, but these are electronically adjusted and phase sounds and drones weave into the overall sound they make. Kraftwerk appear to never have been too concerned with returning back to nature or averse to technological advances, they've always idealised, embraced and celebrated the modern world as it is, or as it could be re-imagined

Here's a live performance recorded in 1970 of Ruck Zuck the opening track of Kraftwerk's first album. Schnieder plays a  muti-tracked flute which lends it a folky air of 'Jethro Tull' . Every now and then you'll recognise a particular music cadence or rising tone sequence on the flute that you realise gets re-used in later Kraftwerk. The band also features Klaus Dinger on drums who is the originator of  German 'motorik' drum beat.

On first hearing they are hard to define This isn't really trad rock but neither is it avante garde modernism. The final track on Kraftwerk 1 is Vom Himmel Hoch its an altogether darker doom laden affair that bears comparison with the bleak industrial sound of early Cluster.

By the time Kraftwerk 2 (1971) arrived the band personel had been through seismic change. For some reason Ralf Hutter leaves the band. Schnieder and Klaus Dinger remain and are joined by Micheal Rother on guitar. You Tube videos are all that's left to record this short lived triumvirate. Before Kraftwerk 2 was recorded, Dinger and Rother leave Kraftwerk to form Neu! Whether this is what prompts Hutter to return is unknown. but all this joining, leaving and returning perhaps indicates there may have been some sort of conflicts over personality or musical direction. However, Kraftwerk is re-conceived and will never be quite the same again. Hutter, so myth reports, had seen an exhibition of Gilbert & George and something about these two identically besuited gentleman with their working premise of making peoples art accessible to all, lodges in his mind. For the next two albums it will be just the dynamic duo of Hutter and Schneider playing everything.

As a second album it is admittedly a strange one.  It opens with the track KingKlang ( later to be the name of their studio) which starts with an oblique percussive overture of ringing bell noises similar to a Stockhausen piece, which then it settles into a groove that has hints of the future Kraftwerk, but its sparser and often veers closer to minimalism than a piece of pure pop music.



The album comes across as though its a series of exercises in paring down musical structures. Its all getting rather arid and conceptual, even down to re-referencing the Warhol inspired road cone on the cover, this time in green. They use no pure synthesiser sound, every sound continues to be generated from actual instruments electronically treated. No rhythms from conventional drums and still no vocals.  On this album Hutter & Schnieder sound like two men in search of a fresh direction, but not finding it.

But then comes their third album Ralf & Florian (1973) and from the cover you can sense something of the Kraftwerk visual and musical style is beginning to click into place.  Here they are photographed like people from the 1950's. Schnieder in a suit, tie and slicked back hair. Hutter, still with long hair, but parted and pulled back, and wearing a strange half repaired pair of spectacles. In a way it provides a visual metaphor for a band that can almost, but not quite, see its way forward yet. There are still a few more indiosyncrasies to iron out. Like the Kraftwerk road cone that still remains, though  much smaller, on the record cover.

The album is though full of rather delightful informal gems, and with these they begin to catch the attention and influencing of other musicians. David Bowie citied R & F as one of the influences he drew on for his Berlin trilogy. Brian Eno borrows ideas from it, on Discreet Music, made two years later, he uses a very similar taped looped tonal sequenc as Heimatklange the fourth track on the album. They remain just Hutter & Schnieder, they still don't have a drummer and often settle for flicking the rhythm switch of an electric organ on. However, the album does feature on Ananas Symphonie their first use of a proto-type voice vocoder.  It is with the fifth track Tanzmusik that you get the first appearance of a piece of music that can be considered the genuine progenitor of the future classic Kraftwerk sound. Slightly sloppier in its rhythm section, with wobbly ethereal backing vocals, but a real charmer nonetheless.



Its unusual in popular music for a band to find their signature sound so late. A third album is usually where they achieve their most fully realised and polished version of it, which they struggle thereafter to quite match or exceed. Kraftwerk seemed to have to get all their hippie and arty pretensions out of their system before they were able to create that definitive album. Autobahn (1974) is a record that is really worthy of being called groundbreaking and proved to be the starting gun for a whole new chapter in popular music.

So what happened to resolve all those conflicting ideas and bring this accelerated rate of change about? No one really knows except Hutter & Schnieder I guess, and they're not saying much that is enlightening about this period. Hutter does appear to be in control of everything now, the past and future of Kraftwerk, and everyone else are just 'music workers'. If, however, you're looking for external influences I'll point you in the direction of the track Hallogallo from 1971 by Neu! who are Klaus Dinger & Micheal Rother remember, both ex-Kraftwerk collaborators. that's been featured on a previous post.

Even on Autobahn there is still the odd bit of fluffy flute around, but the direction was now set. Here is a music with a distinct individual vision behind it. Gone are most of their self-indulgent exercises in arty farty notions. Kraftwerk's sound becomes more and more stylistically and electronically pure, with its simple, almost Bach like, melodies gliding over a backing track that is crystal clear with not one single note out of place. Plus vocals ' Wir fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der autobahn' with lyrics. But then words were never their strong point.

ARTICLE ~ Binding One's Self Without A Rope ~ No 9

Part Nine - Sailing towards Suchness

Recently the great 19th Century maritime ship The Cutty Sark was in the news, as a serious fire had raged through its hull, destroying a large part of its timber decking and frame. The day after, on BBC Radio Four's - Today programme, there was an interesting debate. The topic for discussion was - If the boat were fully restored, with little of her original timbers left - could it still be considered The Cutty Sark? - the general conclusion was that it could. For over the years it had been repaired on numerous occasions, and restored to its former glory. What it represented to maritime history, had over the years of its existence become almost archetypal, it possessed an identifiable ‘Cutty Sarkness’, a mythos and continuity that it alone could own. This had survived nearly two centuries of repair and renewal.  I thought this revealing in terms of our relationship to the things we  have created, and also by extension our relationship with that other created thing - our own Self.

Our own bodies bones, muscles and flesh are also in constant repair. Cells are being replaced every second, every minute, hour and day of our lives.  The me that is now physically fifty years old, has little left in it of the me that existed fifteen or thirty years ago. Yet there is still a physical body with remembered experiences and a continuity of habitation – a history of ‘Vidyavajraness’ that persists, despite irrevocable change and aging.  This continuity of habitation is the backbone that upholds and supports the Self.  If you took away the Self, took away that continuity of habitation, took away those recollections of past experiences and feelings, removed that ‘Vidyavajraness’, what would be left?  Would you be empty, if so what sort of emptiness would that be?  Would you be a simpleton, a vegetable or would you be a sage at peace with themselves? Perhaps there would be just the fundamental essence of a being-be-ing left, an indefinable experience sometimes called ‘Suchness’.

The Heart Sutra, is the most famous and popular of the prajnaparamita or Perfection Of Wisdom Sutras. It has something to say about the nature of ‘Suchness’ It’s presented in the form of a monologue addressed by Avalokiteshvara (an Enlightened being) to Sariputra one of the Buddha’s most intellectually adept disciples.  It could be interpreted as an instruction from a being established in ‘suchness’ to one, who in the sutra at least, has not achieved this state.  In typical Buddhist fashion it largely proceeds in defining ‘suchness’ by virtue of what it is not, thereby resisting making a firm definition of something that's spoken of as being beyond definition. It begins as follows :-

“ Avalokiteshvara, the Holy Lord and Bodhisattva, was moving in the deep course of the Wisdom which has gone beyond. He looked down from on high, he beheld but five heaps, and he saw that in their own-being they were empty”14

The five heaps he ‘beholds’ are the five skandhas:- Form, Feeling, Perception, Volition and Discriminating Consciousness – the collective constituents and supporting mechanisms for the Self. These are also referred to as the five aggregates. Now, I find aggregates an interesting choice of word to use in relation to the Self. It does have strong associations  with  builders merchant's yards that supply, wood, earth. rocks, gravels, sand, concrete and bricks, in fact everything you need to build a house.  They lie in those merchant yards in bays, in segregated heaps, catagorised, labeled and priced per ton or length. Each has it's own value attributed to it.  But Avalokiteshvara beholds these aggregates and says, not that they aren’t worth  much, but that they actually  aren’t worth anything, that as heaps they are empty of any intrinsic value or meaning we might attribute to them. They don’t individually possess even a gram of self-consciousness. They don’t sit there thinking “I am a heap, I am an aggregate, I’m a measly pile of rocks,” they just lie inanimate and worthless.  

The five skandhas  make up the Self, in the same way individual small pieces of cloth when stitched together make up a patchwork blanket. Each scrap of cloth, taken in isolation, cannot be called a blanket. In themselves the skandhas  lack a sense of their own-being. There is no owning being, there is no intrinsic value to them, this is not changed even if we bunch them all together, tied tightly with a  rope so they can become owned - my body, my feelings, my perceptions, my volitions, my discriminating consciousness.  When there is an ‘owning being’ it confers and places value onto whatever it owns – owning is valuing – owning infers meaning.  So ‘Binding one’s Self - without a rope’ may mean to do so - without attaching any value to the Self - without encouraging the ‘owning being’ to take possession of what you’re doing. The Heart Sutra  then takes it one step further  :-

Here,O Sariputra, form is emptiness and the very emptiness is form; emptiness does not differ from form, form does not differ from emptiness; whatever is form is emptiness, whatever is emptiness, that is form, the same is true of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness”14

It’s not just the skandhas, but anything that’s formed from them, indeed anything that has form, or is given form, is empty in its own-being, is empty of an owning being.

If you look at a pottery vase, what makes it useful is the emptiness that it’s form contains.  We bring to it purpose and meaning by placing water and beautiful flowers in it.  But this purpose and meaning is transitory, the flowers die and the water becomes stinking and repugnant.  Even the vase itself is breakable and can become useless fragments. Likewise, we possess a form, a body that houses various senses and a consciousness. Individually, there is no owning being, what owning being there is - the Self  can only be brought and placed into the body, like those flowers are into the vase.  The body and the Self (both the container and what is contained) are  conditioned by existence, whatever we place within it will be subject to gradual decay and death.  Not only the Self, but also the body and senses that house it, are then all empty of any durable essence.  Later in the Heart Sutra, Avalokiteshvara says:-

“Therefore, O Sariputra, it is because of his indifference to any kind of personal attainment, and through his reliance on the Perfection of Wisdom, that a Bodhisattva dwells without thought-coverings. In the absence of thought-coverings he has not been made to tremble, he has overcome what can upset, and in the end he attains to Nirvana”14

The phrase that he ‘dwells without thought-coverings’ is intriguing, because when those ‘thought-coverings’ are absent  the vicissitudes of conditioned existence no longer appear to disturb him.  'Thought-coverings' are all those things that the Self protects itself beneath, I, Me, ,Mine, You, Them, Theirs, all dualities, all ideas, all ideals, and concepts – pure and impure, conditioned or unconditioned – all thoughts of personal gain or attainment.  

If we now return to Dogen’s phrase “Binding one’s Self without a rope’ I think we can now pull on another thread and see what unravels. ‘Binding’ implies there is something tangible that must be restrained. ‘Binding’ could almost define the nature of conditioned existence. The language we apply within such an existence, will tend to justify and bind us to the very thing we may wish to eradicate. Unwittingly the very way we conceive the Self can tacitly support and make it seem viable. Even the notion of ‘suchness’, is an idea flowering from conditioned soil, and can become possessed by the Self.  In ‘Binding one’s Self’ within conditionality one needs to cultivate doing so ‘without a rope’, without  owning, without conferring value or meaning, without any ideal or conceptual framework, without any other ‘thought-covering’ that might constrain or mislead. even without any idea of attaining Enlightenment. ‘Binding one’s Self without a rope’  appears to be suggesting a process of gradually letting go and eventually doing without the support of any rope whatsoever.  Paradoxically to - Bind one’s Self – without - a Self to bind it.  

The end of the Heart Sutra finishes with the recitation of the Prajnaparamita Mantra :-

“gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha”

This translates in an unadorned manner as – 'Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an awakening, All Hail !' – it’s a further precis of the Heart Sutra. Outlining in one sentence a progression of higher states, through which consciousness  is purified of its discriminating taints, each ‘going beyond’ the one preceding it. As each impediment to Enlightenment is ceased  one becomes raised to further higher  state of consciousness  With the first ‘gone’, we have surpassed the conditioned. With the second ‘gone’, we have surpassed the unconditioned, and all preconceived notions of what enlightenment may be. This is followed by being ‘gone beyond’ any dualistic notion at all - of being an impure being in search of purity, of Samsara being distinct from Nirvana, of emptiness being separate from form.  At the penultimate stage we have ‘gone altogether beyond’ any subtle concept relating to the emptiness or otherwise of all phenomena or reality. We are empty of all ‘bindings’ associated with the Self – we are completely - Without.  This is followed immediately by ‘an awakening’ and a loud salutation from a whole Universe of Enlightened beings.

Part Nine - References
14- Taken from – Buddhist Wisdom Books containing the Diamond Sutra and the Heart Sutra,
Translated by Edward Conze – Published by Unwin Hyman 1988

PROFILE - WHAT I LIKE

This is not a ‘what I’m like’ profile, but a ‘what I like’ profile. From these interests and obsessions you can judge for yourself.

I like good coffee – Lavazza or Illy, I like eating out at a good curry or pizza restaurant. I particularly like a goodly sized portion of chips, murdered with tomato ketchup. I like Japanese food because it is simultaneously tasty and beautiful to look at.

I’m a big music fan and have been since my teenage years. The Arctic Monkeys have recently grabbed my attention for their northern verve, colloquial lyricism and humour. Wordsmiths are generally what hold my interest, particularly when combined with am adventurous approach to music making. Those who for me fall into this bracket are Nick Cave, The Smiths and Tom Waits, Lately I’m rediscovering the shear musical / lyrical wit and irony of Sparks. The Mael Brothers seem to me to be the Gilbert & Sullivan’s our their era, now entering their fourth decade of innovative music making. ( This only touches on my music obsession, for more see 40 FAVOURITE SONGS )

I’ve had a passion for history almost from birth. As a child I read history books in preference to fiction, because fiction for me wasn’t real. My earliest historical obsession was with Ancient Egypt. Today I have an interest in the mediaeval period, 13th Century Monasticism and architecture. I love visiting monastic ruins, castles and Parish Churches. I particularly like the historian Eamon Duffy’s books, ‘The stripping of the altars’, and ‘The voices of Morebath’.

These days I do like reading fiction, but I have to say its quite a few years since I felt overwhelmed with admiration for a fiction writer. Anything by Donna Tart or Peter Ackroyd I reckon is a good investment. The mediaeval murder detective stories of C.J.Samson. The stories of Ronald Firbank always amuse me immensely when ever I re-read them. Generally I like a story, rather than a mood piece or a coruscating dissection of the narrative form. Lately I’ve been reading books from my partner David’s book collection, such as William Gibson, Clive Barker and Iain M Banks.

I keep a record each year of the books I read. Its interesting to look from 1973 onwards and see my interests flare into life and then move on. These days non fiction and biography are primary. I expect this is a return to my interest in real life rather than fiction. My enthusiasms recently have been anything by Studs Terkel or Tony Parker. I love beyond reasonable limits anything by Anton de St Exupery or Bill Bryson. I like the exploratory world of Archetypal Psychology, so anything by James Hillman, Thomas Moore, David Whyte or Shaun McNiff.

As a writer of poetry I obviously can’t leave poets out. Since I first came across him in the late seventies I’ve admired Edwin Brock. For his earthy humour, perception and poetic structure, I’ve learnt a lot from him. Others worth a mention are Vladimir Holan, Walt Whitman, Pablo Neruda, Rumi, Ryokan, Baudalaire, Dylan Thomas and Yevgeny Yevtushenko.

As a practicing Buddhist I obviously have had an interest in reading the Dharma. As my first introduction to eastern spirituality Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity I still hold in fond regard for that reason only. The books of Sangharakshita, as the founder of the WBO, have obviously had a profound influence on me. He has certainly formed my view of Buddhism indelible. At the same time I have to admit his writing style is lacking in rich imaginative metaphor. To counter balance his dry rigorous intellect and analytical interpretation, I have to go to Zen. For these writers and teachers speak to my heart and inspire me. Dogen is a huge influence in this regard, speaking simultaneously to heart and mind.

I go regularly to the cinema. Films I’ve liked in recent years were Christopher Guests’s -Best in Show, anything by Pedro Almodovar, particularly Talk to Her. I must say that generally I find film emotionally a cool medium. I go to the cinema or watch DVD’s because it’s a cheap form of entertainment. I love the theatre passionately and would go more often if it were not so damned expensive. Some of the most inspiring, moving and life enhancing evenings have taken place there. Seeing the performance artists Laurie Anderson and Rose English. Seeing a Jan Fabre production for the first time. Any Shakespeare play at The Globe in London, The National Theatre’s productions of The Orestia and The Mystery Plays. Any production by Lindsey Kemp or an Arthur Miller play. I recently saw the Almedia theatre’s production of Festen, which was simply a stunning piece of theatre. Managing to be both contemporary and revive the ghosts of Greek Tragedy.

My favourite artist’s are a bit of a mixed bag but are long lasting enthusiasms. Van Gogh, Paul Klee, Emile Nolde, Kurt Schwitters, Hans Arp, Juan Miro, Richard Long, Andy Goldsworthy, David Mache, Christo, & Gilbert & George.

Favourite places to visit are anywhere on the North Norfolk Coast, or Shingle Street in Suffolk. I’ve not traveled abroad much, but I am fond of Valencia which I’ve visited twice.