Kindred Of The Kibbo Kift

I found this perplexing image by chance and was immediately drawn in by its powerful narrative.

Five figures, four of which are wearing peculiar, dark hooded cloaks are caught in an air of fixed purposefulness. The young men are oddly clothed in what appears to be religious or militaristic garb. Their backpacks are adorned with weird heraldic insignia and each carries a knife and a wooden staff. The figure on the right has a woven badge which depicts a crescent moon sewn onto his left shoulder of his jacket. All eyes are intently turned towards the ground in an air of focused ritual. Smoke begins to rise. This is the kindred of the Kibbo Kift.

The Kibbo Kift were an early 'open air' social movement founded by John Hargrave in 1920. Hargrave’s aim was to encourage “outdoor education, the learning of handicrafts, physical training, the reintroduction of ritual into modern life, the regeneration of urban man and the establishment of a new world civilisation.” Noble themes indeed. As I began to dig a little deeper I became further intrigued. Despite existing for five only years, the Kibbo Kift had many illustrious champions; suffragette Emmeline Lawrence, photographer Angus McBean, social reformer Havelock Ellis, biologist Julian Huxley and author H.G.Wells, each were all enthusiastic and ardent supporters of the movement. By all accounts, John Hargrave was something of an eccentric visionary and exuberant polymath, being an illustrator, cartoonist, wood carver, anti-fascist, thriller novelist, inventor, psychic healer and a forefather of the modern anti-capitalist movements. He was distinctly anti-fascist and abhorred the restrictions of what he saw as the shackles of an industrialised society. In the 1930's he formed the largest uniformed paramilitary street-army in Britain, the 'Greenshirts'. The 'Green Shirt Movement For Social Credit' advocated social change through the dismantling of  financial institutions and oppressive banking systems, arguing that a culture of loans and debt were just a means to enslave the working man. Oh, how times have changed.

At the height of their rise, John Hargrave's social and cultural movement could count more followers than Oswald Mosley’s Blackhirts. Strange, so very strange, that he and is his movement are now all but forgotten. 

There's a very informative site here should you wish to delve further into tales of 'green painted  bricks'  being thrown through the windows of 11 Downing Street and all things Kibbo Kift.

As a rather odd footnote, I stumbled across this wonderfully evocative audio collage of 'campfire magic' while researching the story behind this striking image. I hope you enjoy. Tracklist in comments.

Cults Percussion Ensemble

Here's another delightful recording which has just popped through the A Sound Awareness letterbox. This time, an oddly beautiful compendium of tuned percussion music, wonderfully played by an ensemble of Aberdeenshire school children. All twelve tracks were recorded and issued privately in 1979, with financial support by Grampian Regional Council and Aberdeen Educational Trust, with the resultant lp to be sold at concerts while the ensemble toured the United Kingdom, Germany and France. In my many years of scouring charity shops, jumbles sales and early morning carboots I've never even had a sighting of this elusive gem and I have a sneaking suspicion that many a proud 'Granite City' grannie or grandad have multiple mint copies sitting underneath their beds waiting to be bequeathed to future generations as precious family heirlooms. The copy I acquired came via a rather odd Yorkshire antique dealer who liked to send records in recycled pizza boxes. Luckily, the aforementioned pizza boxes hadn't been used prior to delivery. The recording itself is very peculiar, combining child like exotic percussion flourishes and eerie, swirling sound tones, all beautifully played with a melancholic innocence only youth can muster. Years ago, when I first heard this record, I instantly thought of Jonny Trunk. It's like the perfect Trunk record and it seems fitting he's decided to reissue it. What's not to love, there's spectral vibraphonic glissando, impish flourishes played on glockenspiels, proto hip hop drum breaks played on timpani drums and fourteen year old musicians conjuring all sorts of weird little shimmering sound shapes of sonic wonder on every composition. It's very enchanting stuff indeed. I should probably also mention that the record features a fourteen year old Dame Evelyn Glennie and a rather fine beige sleeve, which according to the sleeve notes, Jonny Trunk decided was too beige for a contemporary audience. I guess he's right. Head over to Trunk HQ to find out a little more.

Absurdist Sound Stones & Gallic Acid

Two very strange recordings arrived through my letterbox this morning, a decidedly odd compilation of absurdist wonky 'head jazz' by Emil Richards and a sublime anthology of psychedelic orchestration by French composer William Sheller. 

Emil Richards, percussionist extraordinaire, maverick electronic freakout pioneer and wearer of immensely formidable moustaches has long been a favourite on the A Sound Awareness turntable. This compendium collects his three best recordings; the wonderfully delirious and 'out there' "Stones", the remarkably off-kilter and weirdly arranged strangeness that is "New Time Element" and probably my favourite example of 'zoned out transcendental rug jazz' ever recorded, the extraordinary oddball and bizarre "Journey To Bliss". All three are musical gems.

William Sheller has also been a longtime favourite and this collection not only gathers together his visionary opus "Lux Aeterna" but many of his rare and seldom heard 45s such as the rather fine (and rather pricey) Erotissimo OST single which is delerious minute and a half of French psychedelic pop wizzz! "Lux Aeterna" is a very different musical proposition entirely and as such this uniquely strange recording is both difficult to describe or reference. Originally composed as a wedding gift in 1970, it's an oddly beautiful recording which combines a weirdly sinister melange of ritualistic choral chants, melancholic psychedelic orchestration, whirling electronic oscillations, meditative kosmiche groove and devout spoken word recitations. I can only think of a handful of records to compare it to, the nearest touchstones being the dark instrumental passages of Jean Claude Vannier's “L'enfant Assassin Des Mouches” or the mystical psychedelic liturgical paens of Majoie Hajary's "La Passion Selon Judas" or maybe a few of the immersive orchestral reverberations found on Jason Havelock's "Pop Symphony". As I said, comparisons are not easy. Whatever dark chemicals they were dumping in the Seine in the late 60's and early 70's to create such weirdly uncharted musical waters we can only guess. This is an exceptional example of fractured Gallic acid from the post May '68 musical pharmacie.

Both of these musical oddities are released this month by the Omni Recording Corporation and are well worth your further investigation.

Typographische Monatsblätter

Recorded Music For Film, Radio & Television: Electronic Vol.1

Fans of dark electronic tape gloopage will have much to celebrate this month with the impending reissue of Tod Dockstader's long out of print library records on the Mordant Music label. Originally released in 1979 on the Boosey & Hawkes library imprint, "Electronic Volume One" is a masterpiece of future shock electronica for film, radio and television - a strange mixture of ominous oscillations, fluctuating electro sound tones and weirdly pastoral tape glitchwerk. Lend your ears to the oddly motorik vibrations of "Snap Sail" or the weirdly glacial drift of "Floating Up" and then pop over to Mordant manor for more info.

Fauna Marina

Here's a track from a quirky little Italian library record by Egisto Macchi which features several musical compositions inspired by all things watery and sub aquatic. I'm rather fond of the eerie strange pulses of the plankton track but decided that the track about crustaceans needed to be heard mainly because my four year old daughter did a funny little crab jig to it when I played it. Maybe you could try your own movement and dance lesson at home? The record also features a rather outstanding watercolour drawing on the front cover which takes 'peaked outsider' graphic design to a whole new level - but you've probably noticed that already. Jump in and enjoy the swim but watch out for those pincers.

Control

High Voltage Tightrope Walker

Ernest Berk

British electronic music pioneer Ernest Berk provides strange electronic tonalities for this rather disquieting depiction of rural England by film maker David Gladwell.

Zaklon

A slowly evolving experimental film by Croatian cinematographer Vladimir Petek.

Veris The Program Mix

For those that like to dig a little bit deeper, here's a new audio collage of oddball library music and eccentic vibrations by vinyl archaeologist Veris The Program (one half of Mondo Fuzz). I've enjoyed his collections of underexposed and mostly ungoogleable sounds for years and this mix is no exception. Lovely stuff. Should you wish to dig and delve further, Veris was also responsible for this rather wonderful mix on Finders Keepers a while back. Tracklist in comments. Enjoy.

Programmed Data

Designs From The Cutting Room Floor

Here's an incredible set of Julian House posters for the film Berberian Sound Studio which rather weirdly ended up on the cutting room floor. Peter Strickland was kind enough to send these over last night as he knows what a Julian House fan boy I am! There's thirteen designs in total, all of which are amazing but as these particular ones have appeared elsewhere I asked Peter if I could have permission to re post them. Thankfully, he kindly agreed. Wonderful stuff!

Baron Prásil

Mrs. Merryman's Collection

More oddball post. This time a strange book of postal curiosities from a bygone age entitled "Mrs. Merryman's Collection". It's a perplexingly idiosyncratic book which gathers together postcards of the curious,the phantasmagorical and the decidedly odd. "Mrs. Merryman's Collection" beautifully presents an eclectic array of oddly surreal postcards which were inherited by the author, Anne Sophie Merryman when her grandmother died in 1980. Her grandmother, Anne Marie Merryman, must have been a rather unconventional lady indeed if this peculiar collection of picture postcards is anything to go by. Many of the postcards will leave viewers perplexed and astounded that even the most outlandish mail vendor could publish such strange and arcane images. There's an ear in a jar, a levitating chair, a smoke cloud, a curious mountain of coral and even a ventriloquist's dummy. Odd stuff indeed. The story behind these postcards is even odder, as it interweaves the lives of a grandmother and granddaughter who never met in life but became acquainted with each other through the chance discovery of a small wooden box of postcards.This book stands as a peculiarly odd testament of one woman's obsession to create a quixotic and dreamlike world of shifting shadows and haunted mirrors.It's all a little unnerving,slightly bonkers and will leave you with the feeling that you've just had a sideways glimpse into a netherworld of strangely hidden narratives and ambiguous shrouded communications.There are secret worlds between these pages.

Mrs. Merryman's Collection by Anne Sophie Merryman is published by MACK Books.

Direct Super 8 Workshop

Tuscan Castle And Country Seat

Tuscan Castle And Country Seat is a perplexingly odd record. Very odd indeed. Originally recorded in 1974 by Marco Melchiori with the intention that the resultant music would be used by the Italian broadcasting company RAI as background music. It’s difficult to imagine what kind of weird, acid soaked radio or television production it would actually complement. Strangely housed in a sleeve which functionally depicts mundane photographs of Tuscan villas, it has all the hallmarks of an ill conceived estate agency marketing scam. Straddling the boundaries between progressive rock, noise, minimalism and avant-rock this recording is a dream zone, outsider punk improv masterpiece. The opening track, “White Gladiator” rides the wave of dark moog modulation and utilises a blunted guitar riff Sterling Morrison would be proud of writing. The sound is rhythmically repetitive with both drum and guitar forming an isochronous groove which is intermittently punctuated by fluctuating electronics and soaring freakout organ oscillations. I can’t remember the last time I heard such 'out there' guitar-amp-action. “Old Colours” is fleetingly impressionistic, comprising of a murmuring detuned piano which hovers somewhere between elegiac beauty and dark mournful disintegration, part Eric Satie, part hallucinatory Kosmische electronic meditation. Side two opens with “Green Water” which heralds the 'dumbest' guitar riff I’ve ever heard which combines the heavy proto punk of Detroit raw power with the cyclical phase and pattern of classical downtown New York minimalism. Weird gear indeed. Underneath this blunted riff fest, lo-fi drug haze electronic oscillations drift loose, oozing brain fuzz on the floor. It’s hard to believe this music was actually recorded in 1974 let alone intended to be used as stock music for Italian television programmes. Likewise, “Vision Of Shore” is an epic, zoned electronic/guitar improvisational space jam. Howling electronic pulses ebb and flow as dark nebulous sustained guitar chords resonate in cosmogonic sound pools. The effect is both immersive and curiously beautiful. More oddly, the last track, “City Sound Perspective” is strangely reminiscent of a mutated Swell Maps out take, with lopsided, clipped, art house guitar weaving around a simple drum loop which unexpectedly metamorphoses into a strange amalgam of Bo Diddley-esque syncopation, raucous garage and wigged out electronic modulation. Outsider freak rock never sounded so good. This is a stunningly unique and perplexing recording, don't sleep.

"Tuscan Castle And Country Seat" by Musica Di Teisco is out now on Roundtable in a limited run of 500.

Shadows

Hat's off to the Ghost Box label for unearthing this wonderfully sinister animated title sequence for a 1970s children's television series. Does anyone know who the graphic designer was? Oddly, it reminds me of a creepy De Wolfe record sleeve come to life. Best thing I've seen on the web in ages! Well done unearthing it gents!

Ian Helliwell

A Sound Awareness is delighted to invite you to a Glasgow weekend of curious electronic oscillations and retina poppin' filmwork by audio visual artist Ian Helliwell. Hope you can all stop by and say hello.