Anyone Else Isn't You

This afternoon, I went to The Hospital, a gallery in Endell St., Covent Garden, to see a video installation titled Anyone Else Isn't You, by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard (the artists behind the reenactment of that Cramps gig in the mental hospital, and a number of Smiths-themed installations in the 1990s). This video work (named after a Field Mice song, which played at the end of it) was about the way people's lives and relationships are influenced and mediated by music, and consisted of fragments of interviews with 12 people talking about such things as mixtapes they made for/received from lovers, songs they couldn't listen to any more because they were associated with relationships gone bad, records associated with specific times of their lives, and other anecdote (one woman mentioned a friend who did so much acid he thought he was living in Pet Sounds). The people were mostly in their late 20s/30s, and the music they mentioned ranged from the likes of My Bloody Valentine and Belle & Sebastian to the Velvet Underground; the video went on for about half an hour.

There is also a booklet with the exhibition, featuring writing on the subject by Momus, Steve Lamacq and one JJ Charlesworth.

(no subject)

I'm listening to some MP3s of Fluorescent, a Melbourne electropop duo justlikehoney pointed me to, and I was struck how much they reminded me of various Australian industrial bands I've heard like This Digital Ocean; the heavy analogue drones, monotonous vocals, relentless electronic beats and all that.

Which got me thinking that someone could probably write a book/article about the Australian industrial/underground post-punk electronica tradition; there's a lot there, from the likes of SPK, Severed Heads, Ash Wednesday/Crashland and various Ollie Olsen projects (Whirlywirld, Max Q) to the likes of This Digital Ocean and SNOG, that goth band that did the techno cover of Joy Division's In A Lonely Place Ikon and indie bedroom electronica acts like New Waver and Stinky Fire Engine . And then there was Robin Whittle (inventor of the Devilfish TB-303 mod and advocate of marital BDSM), another Australian.