There seems no escaping the lure of the ‘retromania’ pervading the atmosphere & operations at TOoT at the moment, considering the latest drawing(s) to be processed, bittily, & then reassessed & reworked into a second ‘final’ state (which somehow feels less so & secure than its predecessor now appears, in retrospect…), over the course of the last few days.
Based initially with recourse to one of the recent photographs taken of the instances of ‘double black lines’ road markings located & found amongst the back streets of Chester & then developed, refined formally, to include an aspect of a second such image, this drawing (in two states) then & thus refers back to a short sequence of five others made, from the source of photographs of the original previously-local double black lines, almost four years ago & blogged at the time here.
As then, the pre-existing image content, the formal structure, subject to reformation, is utilized as the vehicle with which to explicitly foreground the process of drawing, the marks made & surface(s) (& effects) achieved through the medium of graphite (& the erasure of, as positive action) on paper.
Version 1
Version 2
graphite & putty eraser/20x30cm
Soundtrack:
The Chameleons Peel Sessions
Moon Wiring Club 'A Spare Tabby at the Cat's Wedding' (vinyl LP)
Echo & the Bunnymen 'Ocean Rain' (vinyl LP)
More musical retromania too, inspired directly by dipping into ‘The Peel Sessions’ at random points of interest in addition to reading through thoroughly, savouring every word & anecdote. The Chameleons proved to be one of those bands’ names that did indeed inspire recollections of the recording & broadcast of a ‘classic session’ as the book has it, recalled as being much enthused about with a like-minded friend back in the day, & recourse to a downloadable digital source (alas the original cassette on which the session would have been recorded from the radio has not survived, either relocations, de-clutterings or possibly over-tapings: one wonders how the music might sound thus experienced, much more directly present & palpable via its original physical form) enabled a nostalgic re-acquaintance with the music itself.
Although my musical tastes might have moved on from such as The Chameleons’ aesthetic specifically (which chimed with any number of the other bands I listened to at the time & beyond, that much is obvious), being long-since unlistened-to (not least through unavailability), still the session & especially other songs from two subsequent such recordings for the Peel show (also part of the particular download) proved not without charm & interest, & a certain frisson of recognition, of pleasant reminiscence of youthful passions: the book itself is overflowing with such irresistible seductions to indulge in nostalgia, inevitably of course. Further to this last point, & by way of coincidence, that first ‘classic’ Chameleons’ session was originally broadcast in June 1981, in the midst of taking ‘O’Level exams, the night before attending the Bauhaus gig mentioned recently: we really are on a roll, backwards.
The remainder of the soundtrack was then experienced through the medium of old technology in the form of the Sixties' record player purchased during the ‘summer’, with, first, the delights of the vinyl version of the Moon Wiring Club’s ‘A Spare Tabby at the Cat’s Wedding’ - a companion to the contemporaneous CD release (indeed being purchased together in the ‘bundle’, as recorded here, although I failed to include the LP sleeve in the photograph so there's no visual evidence of its existence) but quite different in content whatever the coincidence of some of the tracks’ titles, & equally excellent & compelling: when one factors in the related artwork, & the online presentation, the whole package/experience is profoundly rich & complex, but the music alone is a particularly rewarding accompaniment to the process of drawing.
Then, whilst reworking the drawing into its second incarnation, a re-acquaintance (probably 20 years since the last such encounter) with Echo & the Bunnymen’s mighty & magnificent masterpiece ‘Ocean Rain’ (toured & performed in its entirety during September, in the contemporary fashion for such concerts, a full 27 years after the album’s original release) in all its grandiose glory in vinyl, analogue form, the orchestral strings which constitute such an essential element of the music’s texture much richer, warmer, deeper in ‘colour’ & tone, simply more vibrant as they should be & be felt, an altogether more organic sound somehow, better suited to a fuller appreciation of the overall, encompassing sonic aesthetic. A similar thought occurred whilst experiencing the chamber-pop of Belle & Sebastian’s wonderful, adored ‘Tigermilk’ on vinyl (again, as such an album surely should be), for the very first time, recently too: good vibrations indeed.
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