Russell Davies

Hold me closer tiny TikTok

Having made the TikTok Triptych I thought I should put them on TikTok. But that's complicated. They kept being removed for copyright reasons. I thought. Not because of the original owners of the copyright (who would be fully entitled) because of the tracks that I'd uploaded as Elite Panic. So I tried to solve that by becoming an 'artist' on TikTok.

Then I discovered that, also, you can't upload something longer than a minute. Which seemed like a problem for a bit and then I got rather excited about and I started making tiny, sub 1-minute dancey TikTok cut-ups, which are enormous fun to do. They're like densely packed seeds for longer tracks. All the elements happening at once rather than being smeared out over 5 minutes of build-ups and drops.

@3litepanic Mucking about with TikTok featuring @Joy Anonymous @Shrimp'N'bass @Arte do agora @Raaf Modular @Orpheus Sinfonia @thesoundplayground ♬ original sound - elitepanic

@3litepanic I’m enjoying this now. Apologies and thanks to @JACKO2 @Kawehi @Tess Outdoors @NTS Radio @alex williams ♬ original sound - elitepanic

@3litepanic Do you jnow this song? @Beatmaker Zulu Rocone @noodle's music Dailies @Garbean @musicianexp @thee.sample.chopper @krankbrother @𝘿𝙞𝙖𝙣𝙖 @Anthony Marinelli ♬ original sound - elitepanic

@3litepanic Here comes another one @Darte Millonz y Show Kong @zumsone @Magiehue @djhurleymkfm @praiseandharmony @ㅤdancingwiththelightsout ♬ original sound - elitepanic

@3litepanic big up @Michael Sebastian @oC breaks @Kim Ofstad @drop…this @robinson’s village ♬ original sound - elitepanic

@3litepanic New news @Tomás @Joy Anonymous @Simone V. Rorschach @Liv East #joyanonymous #massiveattack #liveast ♬ original sound - elitepanic

Then, since I love a short track, I thought I'd just upload these to spotify etc where tracks are getting shorter anyway. Maybe people will like them. And, since they already had videos I thought I'd found a handy shortcut so I signed up for Distrovid (which annoyingly took a year's worth of money before I really realised what I was doing). But then that said that I couldn't have logos/watermarks etc on my videos. You can see why.

So I tried to find somewhere that would remove the watermarks for me. There must be an AI thing that does that. So I banged some videos into HitPaw. Which sort of works, but with the minimal effort I was prepared to make mostly just makes things smeary and ends up erasing faces. Which feels like I'm making a statement of some sort, which I'm not.

So, I'm not quite sure what to do next. I'm going to try uploading one thing and see how it sounds of Spotify. I worry that they don't work as well without the video. I'll have to see.

The London Review of TikToks

This almost makes me prepared to read Middlemarch

@nytimes Acclaimed author Min Jin Lee’s single most read book is an 800-page novel that’s almost falling apart at the seams. “I turn to it endlessly,” she says. Tap the link in our bio to listen to our full conversation with Lee on The Book Review Podcast, where she reflects on her journey from corporate law to writing and her best-selling novel “Pachinko,” which recently made The Times’s list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. #booktok ♬ original sound - The New York Times

Of course! Don't report the unexploded bomb until Friday afternoon. A metaphor for something.

@tytemel The level of bravery needed to be a bomb disposal expert is astonishing 💣Hear @andytorbet 's incredible stories on the latest episode of the Off Script podcast on YouTube and all major podcasting platforms 🎙️Powered by @venum 🐍#bombdisposal #britishforces #paratrooper #soldier #london #worldwartwo #theblitz #andytorbet #tytemel #offscriptpodcast #offscript #venum ♬ original sound - Ty Temel

I am also irritating.

@johnamaechiobe

There is nothing better than the transition from friendship to colleague to help people realise how irritating someone is…

♬ original sound - John Amaechi

The comments are not convinced.

@60secdocs Are #eco-friendly pond pools the future of swimming? @davidpaganbutler-tiktok foryou designs, builds, and teaches people to make their own #DIY #organic #pools ♬ original sound - 60 Second Docs

I like this idea. Thinking about something similar...

@feleciaforthewin Come listen to a lecture in a bar! We’ve got some truly 🔥 talks being added this week 😩🤓🙌 if this sounds like something you might be into, get on the email list! 🍻🧠 #lecturesontap #greenscreenvideo #nyc #nyclife #newyorktimes #nycvlog #nycapartment #thingstodoinnyc ♬ MILLION DOLLAR BABY - Instrumental King

Do future you a favour

Two events that future you might be glad you thought about

Near future you: might like to come to an Interesting Do on October 15th. An opportunity to gather with people from the Interesting Crowd. Just chat, no talks. It's free, but you need to book a ticket.

Far future you: might like to make a plan for next year. The full on Interesting conference will be back on May 14th. £30 again.

TikTok Triptych

I have recently, with my bedroom producer hat on, been messing around with constructing tracks entirely out of TikTok. It turns out that Ableton Live will let you load a video as a sound file and then (as long as you don't mess around with it too much) create a final video that uses all the elements exactly as they're played. It prioritises the ones lower down the grid.

Which means I can finally make the collagey/plunderphonic/ColdCutuppy thing I've always wanted to make without learning any difficult new tools.

I've made three things (so far) and I've put them on Bandcamp as the TikTok Triptych EP. They're also on Spotify as individual tracks. I think they work as just audio. But the videos are rather hypnotic.

Spotify

Different Levels of Ping

I Beat My Heart

Stop Me Saying

To Be Held For Long Time

A few months ago I began renting a small studio room to try and make stuff.

Then the organisation I was renting from said there was going to be a compulsory Open Studio event so I thought I should try a bit harder. And I built a machine to perform a piece by La Monte Young I've been interested in since I read Tom Whitwell's piece about attending a La Monte Young thing and I came across this video.

And I have form in piling up bits of gear and making ambient sounds come out. I like the multiple sound sources and the textures you get from blending various ages of technology. I made this, for instance, a while ago.

I started by trying to just pile things on top of each other (the inspirations are obvious) but that didn't get high enough so I bought a cheap industrial frame. I thought I was being very clever by putting it on wheeled platform to start with but it was too unstable, toppled over and smashed a lot of gear which was, frankly, depressing.

But eventually it settled into a form like this.

Which I quite liked.

I thought I'd see what it felt like to 'live with it' so I switched it on and left it running (very quietly) for several weeks. Not everything could loop without assistance but enough did that it managed to drone on gently to itself for a very long time. Every time I went in I filmed out of the window and that became 'To Be Held For A Very long Time'.

But then the Open Studio got cancelled and I was left with an oppressively large pile of old gear in a small room. So I dismantled it.

And while all this was happening I was getting a bit dissatisfied with the whole thing anyway. I was chatting with Tom (again) about this, which is clearly brilliant, but I don't think I have an educated enough sonic palate to really appreciate this kind of thing. It's what makes me a bad producer. I don't listen to detail in the way I probably should. I hear rhythm and melody and vibe but I watch YouTube tutorials about producing and 'rolling off the low-end and can never hear what they're on about. I have a similar feeling about listening bars. I love the idea of them but what interests me is the atmosphere and the enthusiasm and the patina. Not the hi fidelity. (Except that's probably the conceptual scaffolding for the whole thing.) 

I don't want to visit a shrine to music. I just want to listen.

So now, I'm thinking about something that combines these two ideas.

First this thread from Scanner about the tiny, tinny low-fi radio that first inspired his love of music. And, actually, that seems like something to install in a gallery. Not the most perfect sound ever but an evocation of listening moments. John Peel on a crap transistor. The chart show on the terrible one-speaker stereo in the 6th form centre. Pirate radio in the car. The cricket in an armchair. Britney on an ipod. Taylor on a phone.

And then, the other weekend, we visited the Southwold Sailors Reading Room, which struck me as a very perfect space. It's for reading, a bit, but mostly it seems to be for sitting, chatting, listening and generally, amiably, being. So I think that's my next project for the studio.

I've started by putting the individual bits of the machine around the walls so its less to do with gazing at a piece of installation and more about being in a place that's making noises. I want to make it comfortable and pleasant. But full of interesting bits and. bobs. Like somewhere Jim Ede might have made if he was obsessed with MP3 players rather than pebbles. I still plan to perform 'To Be Held For A long Time' but now it'll be something to sit with rather than a shrine.

And I'd also like it to be a space for quiet jams. I'm hoping musicians will be able to respond to an interesting soundscape. And maybe we'll record it. And maybe I could do some interviews too. Or we can just listen to jazz on an average stereo.

“bed-walk-bed-walk-bed-sleep”

These seem related...

"The novel’s acknowledgments take the form of an alphabetised list putting authors you’ve read side by side with memorable eating experiences, including a chip butty from a fast-food van...
Is there anything more complete than the carb-on-carb pleasure of a chip butty? The expected form of a literary acknowledgment page is quite stiff. I wanted to feel free to say that, as much as reading The Lover by Marguerite Duras was important to writing this book, so was eating – and not just fine dining, but really simple, greasy food."

C Pam Zhang: ‘I was aware of the drift towards fascism in Europe’

"Each day followed a pattern. Woolf noted the weather; any insects or birds seen on her walk (“3 perfect peacock butterflies”); her daily tally of mushrooms or blackberries (“A record find”, “Enough for a dish”); gardening or domestic activities (“Made chair cover after tea”); what was happening in the fields (“German prisoners cutting wheat with hooks”); what she had for supper (“Eating our own broad beans — delicious”); and the price of rationed goods (“Eggs 2/9 doz. from Mrs Attfield”). Adhering to a structure in her diary gave shape to her convalescence. Woolf rarely used “I” and yet we catch sight of her out walking, or sewing on the terrace in a straw hat."

How Virginia Woolf’s list-making paved the way for her literary experiments

Imagined design

There are elevated pipe systems all over Berlin. The pipes run alongside the streets and over the roads and look very industrial. For some reason, something half-remembered or half- read, I became convinced that the pipes marked the position of the old Berlin wall and were there as a
sort of memorial.

I told Anne this and we spent a long time discussing what a genius intervention this was. Really smart repurposing of existing materials, somehow low key and yet also really present. It dramatically changes your sense of the city and its psychogeography. We talked like that for quite a while. 'Wow' we said, as we walked around another bit of the city. 'I didn't realise the wall came out here'.

And then eventually we googled it and realised that none of that is true. It's just a way of getting overflow rain water to the rivers. Which is probably a parable somehow about the power of narrative around design but which is also a story about how I'm an idiot.

...introduced sandals to England

This is one of the fragments I highlighted in Olivia Lang's The Garden Against Time:

"the gay utopian socialist Edward Carpenter, who established a cross-class vegetative Eden in a smallholding in Derbyshire."

It cropped up in my readwise today so I thought I'd do some quick googling. Turns out Carpenter is a tremendously interesting character who did all sorts of fantastic things. Obviously, being of a trivial turn, I couldn't help but notice that he also "...introduced sandals to England."

Cafe Museum

The other thing I like about Vienna cafe culture is that there's a little exhibit in a top museum devoted to Adolf Loos' designs for, confusingly, Cafe Museum.

Cafe ramblings

We've just been on holiday on trains across Europe. Paris. Berlin. Prague. Vienna. Anne is on a lifetime quest to see all the the extant Caravaggios and I thought I'd like to visit cafes. Observe some non-EBCB cafe culture. It was excellent fun.

My two favourite places were Le Sancerre in Paris and Cafe Sperl in Vienna. Things about them:

Le Sancerre

We spent several happy hours sitting with coffees at the Sancerre watching the world go by. It is in fashion-y area so we were delighted by the enormous number of very tall, very thin people striding past in splendidly deliberate fashions. Tiny waists, massive boots, lots of black, neck tattoos, mullets, scarves, leather. It was so nice to see real effort being made.

The Sartorialist has been hanging out in the same neck of the woods.

It brought to mind a bit of Tony Judt's Thinking the Twentieth Century about the duty of historians to write well.

"That not only should we write well because that means that people buy our books and not only should we write well because that is what history is, but also because there aren’t that many crafts anymore that have a responsibility to the language. Whatever sort of responsible craftsmanship remains, we’re right in the middle of it."

We have a responsibility to clothes. We're wearing clothes we might as well get good at it. It made me want to up my game a bit. Maybe I should talk to Wardrobe Strategy.

But the thing we realised about the Sancerre and other typically French cafe configurations is that you're not sitting opposite each other, parallel to the street. (We're talking about outside seating here. We were on holiday). You're sitting alongside each other, facing the street. This has a number of advantages for a couple engaged in people watching and chatting.

1. There's that well observed effect where you have better conversations if you're not looking each other in the eye. Driving. Walking. Walking meetings. Watching telly on the sofa.

2. And, for people watching it's best if you're on the same plane. Clearly you lose the 360 awareness of looking other each others shoulders but you gain a common gaze. You can see what you're both seeing and you can see that you're seeing it. So the context is instantly understood if you raise an eyebrow or say, as we often did, 'excellent hat'.

Cafe Sperl

While I was away I got an email from a journalist writing another 'why are all the greasy spoons closing down' article. I made the same point I often do. There are people who love the faded, melancholic atmosphere of a place gone to seed. Writers, photographers, cafe bloggers, people doing album covers. There's an attention for ancient formica and 'patina'. But, obviously, these places also tend to be short of attention and energy. And often, the reason for the melancholy and emptiness is that they're about to go out of business. So they do. What people actually, mostly, want is somewhere that feels lively and cared for and clean. They don't want ancient patina, they want something clean.

Many of the great old cafes in Paris and Vienna have dealt with this by becoming hermetically preserved for tourists. They market the old stories but everywhere's had many licks paints. And there are queuing systems and adjacent pop-ups to deal with the overflow. You're not sitting next to the ghost of Hemingway. Though soon you might be sitting next to his hologram. It's like what the PE money did to Patisserie Valerie or is doing to Lina. Taking something quirky, odd and interesting and franchising the life out of it. It's not wrong. These are, fundamentally, businesses, but it has to be done very carefully or you kill the thing you paid for.

Anyway, Café Sperl is not like that. It's appealingly shabby. A bit like Calke Abbey. You do feel like there might be a painter or novelist in the loo. But it's still attentive and bustling and energetic. The service and the food and the coffee is great. They care. And they still have a selection of newspapers you can read. That means something, they're not going to hurry you out if they've offering you a newspaper.