I’ve got an itch that seldom gets scratched enough, a nasty, brewing little thing, a hive of jaundiced fester leavened with irritation and splinters.

It’s true though that I’ve found a venting hole. By the end of the year I’ll be releasing a limited edition retrospective disc. It’s a disc whose tastes will be spectrally broad, to say the least. Since the contentious fling that produced the mistreated hellion Oxidizer, I’ve cast my whiskey-growl across many projects as well as engaged in the irreligious fluid-exchange of writing records, but nothing has really been given the chance to properly shrink from the light of the cameras. I’ve been stretched between many magnetic poles: creativity jousting with the delight of fatherhood, my rewarding civilian gig raging against sleep. There are equally as many doors as there are walls. This is the beast we’ve chosen to love. The buckshot of all this is, that never has there been a time when I’ve been able to release everything that I want, nor half of what exists. So, in feeble aid of reparations and restitution, I’m putting together a cascade of spatters, tatters and hacked-off hands and feet.

Called “FEAST OF BURNT RAM”, this strange collection will be available in late November. It will feature CHEMLAB demo material from earlier, some PRUDE (yes, it really is coming out), tracks from the band with Plastic called REPEAT-DELETE, some PEACH OF IMMORTALITY off of the impossible-to-find second record, some scratchy broken word pieces with guests and a host of other tracks I’ve sung on that haven’t gotten enough exposure. This collection casts a jaundiced eye backwards and allows for some lost material to find a port. It also leads people down the wrong path towards the PRUDE disc, the new CHEMLAB recordings and REPEAT-DELETE that’ll soon muddy the waters.

FEAST will be released by the tiny, yet tenacious, Welt Muzik (www.weltmuzik.com), the label with little metal teeth. They’re brigands and couldn’t care less about the status quo. Enthusiastic and determined, they’re a breath of fresh air to counter the malicious inactivity the last callous fisting I endured. As with all of my releases presently, I’m only interested in doing small numbers, so it’ll be limited. Though there’s nothing much at the Welt Muzik site right now there will be by this weekend, the 15th of Summer. Glide on by and get yourself listed. We want to be sure we know where you are, like the cops. When it comes time to send out links for free tracks, special packages, event invites, remix requests, limited edition merch, ‘inner-views’, dissections and show announcements we’ll want to know how to track you down. We’re busy building a select community and we want to make sure that you’re there, if this is what turns your switch. If not, please exit through the door to your left that’s marked “100-foot Drop”.

Here’s the lump of greasy bacon swinging from the rusty hook: the actual hard-copy disc will be released in late November, however there will be lots to play with before that. Over the next few weeks there will be various CHEMLAB remixes coming out into the open. They’ll emerge from a range of strange sources and odd creatures, twitching and flailing. I promise nothing but disorder. There will also be on-line give-aways of tour merch, stickers and other torn frocks. They will appear at the Welt Muzik site as well as the hydrogenbar. Another revamp of the corpse, anyone? Eventually, you’ll be able to get pretty much the whole FEAST disc through both sites for free. Yes, we’re doing the string-free Modern Dance too, and, no, we won’t be changing you for it. What we will be doing though is charging to get the actual disc. It’ll feature selections that you can’t get on-line as well as artwork from down the years. I’ll smear it myself with Dylan’s robot fluids for you collectors. I’ve got some in a jar in the freezer. No, really.

Jackson Pollock said; “new needs need new techniques”. The music business is a new need and we need new techniques to insert our stain. In this foreign environment I don’t expect to sell like I used to. But frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. That’s no longer the point of the lance. I’m going to release records that excite me, challenge me and allow a broader range of motion to hit things with. I also want to ensure that the fans who put up with my abrasions and whiplash alterations in course so well for so long get some exclusive slices of the weirdness that’s coming. I’ll be posting a lot on all of the sites including www.twitter.com/chemlab and updates will be all over the place. I’m also about to set up a CHEMLAB Facebook page, so stay plugged.

Come out of the doorway, baby. Now we get it on in the light.

You didn’t want to miss a thing, so you never ever tried to stop and think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV1gF50AFr8

This is another one of the flikkers I’ve been catching recently as Plastic and I work through the massive pile of scratchy buzzes, hums, static and feedback that’s making up the blast sites of the Prude record and the material that he and I are doing together.

This track’s called “Kings Of The Republic Of Nowhere”. It’s about the guys that I grew up with in my old neighborhood and how they never really made it out in one piece. That was ages ago, back before there was anything except raw electricity, back when I was elastic in ways that I never appreciated, back in the days when there were no car wrecks, no blackout or broken promises, no heaven or hell, just the asphalt beneath my sneakers.

It’ll be appearing in mutated shape in two different places, cloned from the same blown cell. The flikker version of the track will be on the solo disc that Plastic and I are doing. The band hasn’t quite got a final name yet though it may well rest beneath the tattered flag of REPEAT/DELETE. The song will also be in the company of “collapsed paper stars” which is here in case you missed it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4Kc1xlJ4_0

The record’s called “The Future Was Then”, a collection of songs from the hole on Side One and then more experimental shreds and shards on Side Two. “Kings” is Side One and “collapsed” is Two, just so you can get your magnetic bearings. Plastic and I will be releasing a series of records called The Speed Trials and they’ll all sluice through Welt. They’ll all be limited edition releases though in the end they might find their way out into the stream on disc properly.

The other place that “Kings” will live out its strange life is on the Prude record. Yes, the Prude record. It’ll sound much altered from here, battered and distorted, but still the same at its air-collision core. Might be the last track of the record as it’s a nearly perfect last track. Just right to send the last bullet into the jaw and turn off the lights on the way out the blackened bore on the other side.

At this stage of the game, we’ve got no idea who might be releasing the Prude disc. It looks like the REPEAT/DELETE record will actually come out before it. I’m pleased to say that, for the time being, I seem to have stumbled into a little love affair of darkness and utter weirdness with the label that’ll be releasing the records. The label, Welt Muzik (www.weltmuzik.com although there’s nothing there right now except the holder), is leeringly captained by a demented alley cat who’s torched through many of his nine lives but still manages to soldier on. Syringe’n’gun toting Energizer demon with little metal teeth.

Getting into bed with any other label would feel like setting me up for a million dollar wound, getting the rib spreaders out for the fatal incision, but for the time being working with Welt feels like it could be a good thing. The label’s only just starting to get its sea legs and is filled with the balls and anarchic “fuck the system” attitude that other underground labels only dream of. There’s a string of weird records coming out and a host of cool fuckers associated with it and that’s profoundly exciting, so I’m digging it right now.

More noise coming.

Coney Island, one of the great American icons is about to be ripped to shreds by the greed of the developer’s saw and axe. There are plans afoot to tear out the very heart of Surf Ave, the amusement park, the freak show and surrounding blocks and put up four high-rises in their stead. The amusement park has been impinged upon for years. Rapacious developers have long wanted to take over that area for themselves, to turn it into the sort of faceless glass-fronted monolith that have sterilized so much of what was great about New York City, many cities for that matter. They’ve chewed away at the edges of it for years, minimizing it in as many ways as they can think of, but they’ve wanted a far more extensive area so that they can really sink their claws in.

Sadly, it looks like they’re about to get their way, as they’ve managed to bull through plans clearly designed by a rapist. This plan will radically alter every aspect of the place. It will also ruin much of what’s left of the long-embattled amusement park. This area’s been a vital and fascinating area of the city since its birth and though the bathing community and life style that flourished there at the turn of the century is no longer alive, there’s nothing like a Nathan’s dog, a cold bottle of beer and a ride on the Cyclone to remind you just how iconic and stellar the place really is. New York in the summer. It’s weird and dark and gritty and retains some of the mystique of ages past in its strange corners and along the boardwalk. So many brilliant movies were made about it and books written about it and photographs taken of it. It has spawned many great characters and trends and has a cultural and social history that’s rich and resonant. It’s a piece of New York history, American history, and for it to fall to the hungry desires of the developers to sate the tastes of the Gentrifiers is disgusting in extremis.

Go to the web site to see details of the plan and what you can do to help block it: http://www.saveconeyisland.net/

it's funny that i managed to just post something about three topics that i've already posted about previously and wrote about them as though no one had read them yet or been aware of them yet, as though there were no posts about them before:
the book, the record with plastic and twitter.

this is what happens when the juggling act falters, fails and falls on its own sword.

sometimes i just have to laugh.

"look in the fucking rear view!! that's what it's for, jared!!"

Pilot down!
Radio silence.

There is, as always, a lot happening on all fronts and countless chainsaws to keep up in the air. Since I saw you last I’ve had a book published. Written for the one of the oldest and most prestigious art galleries in East London, the Whitechapel Art Gallery, it’s a primer for 4 to 12 year-olds presenting them approaches on how to break down and engage with some of the basic ideas of contemporary art. Deeply interactive. It’s a handmade book that’s only available at the gallery for the time being though over the Summer we’ll be in negotiations about putting it out more mainstream. Should it become something that you can get online I’ll be sure to send up a flare and let you heat-seek.

Work on the fabled, storied Prude record, "The Dark Age Of Consent", is almost done on our end. Once the eyes are crossed, the t’s detonated and the spring sprung from the banana clip of our AK47 it’ll slot into the hungry little mandibles of Wade Alin for production. I know that it's been a long time in coming, but this is one of the negative by-products of writing a record with five people who are all engaged in their own projects. Life, and building the record across 300 miles of dark water didn't make it any easier. Next one we record in one place and in one week.
You can come and sniff the putrefaction here: www.myspace.com/prudemusic

Plastic and I are also deeply engaged in writing a record of our own. This will be another tangentially weird one, following more of an Eno arc through a broken land of songs, stories, soundtracks and rainy shadow traffic. We’re going to be releasing a collected series of very limited edition records through Welt Muzik ( the site, currently under construction, is: www.weltmuzik.com ) courtesy of the Ded Man. He’s old guard Chemlab and has some great Machine Rock ticking machine war stories to recount. Maybe some time we’ll record them too. The series will go under the heading of The Speed Trials. We’re debating whether to call this first release “The Future Was Then” or call it “The Future Was Yesterday”. I’m leaning towards the latter today.

I could spend a lot of time talking about what it is and will be, but I need to mention that there will only be 200 copies. It’ll be pressed on vinyl, 10”, nothing digital, and each of the covers will be signed, numbered and the artwork handmade so that each one’s utterly individual, some containing embedded teeth, paint, ashes, steel shards, rust dust and other Atomic Age waste.
Collectors item shit, ya know.

For more details you can check out an eye-shard that’s got a bit more info about the record. It’s triangulated here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4Kc1xlJ4_0

I’ll let you know when it’s going to go into the sales stream. There’s been a lot of interest in it already and I could essentially sell it out right here in the UK, but that’s utterly unfair to my long-time US fan base and I want it to be available across the dial. However, since there will only be 200 copies available, no pre-orders and no press copies, it’ll go fast. We’ll eventually make it digitally available to everyone that buys the vinyl so that you can have it on your iPod, but that won’t happen until it’s sold out, just to keep it from getting bootlegged everywhere…like there would be that kind of interest!

The latest Chemlab track, Solar Max (The Jimmy Semtex Coil) will be out in February on the ‘Electronic Saviours’ compilation released through Metropolis. It’s a 4-disc comp that’ll be all over the map including exclusive tracks from:

Suicide Commando, Rein[Forced], Caustic, SMP, Assemblage 23, Stromkern, Cyanotic, TERRORFAKT, The Gothsicles, Christ Analogue, 16 Volt, Combichrist, Ego Likeness, Acumen Nation, Gencab, Imperative Reaction, Tower/Opens/Fire, Deviant UK, Spahn Ranch, Massiv In Mensch, Hype Factor and on and on.

There are literally dozens more, sprawling across the musical spectrum from Splatter to Chatter through Dark Scree and Stutter, confounding splinter factions and purists everywhere. It’ll be a sight to behold, a scalpel to hold, and it’ll support an excellent cause: cancer research.

The last thing to tell you right now is that I’m on Twitter: www.twitter.com/chemlab
You won’t find details of the cup of coffee I just drank or the size of last night’s shit. That quotidian blah just doesn’t interest me at all. Instead, I bitch it, use it as a stories division, a place where I can fuck with lyric ideas, post clips and new songs and just riff neon-streams off the cuff at 3am. I’m there when I want, and that’s on-again off-again. Come check out the frayed edge, the back-port, the sunken wreckage.

There’s a fire outside. I’m gonna go and watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4Kc1xlJ4_0

this is the first of a series of off-the-cuff docu-clips shot while plastic and i write music for a collection of releases we're creating. they're shot in the studio in the in-drawn breath between the Prude record heading to production and the Chemlab disc taking flight.

this flikker's a hand-held spatter snared during the SH101 haze-layering for the song "collapsed paper stars" taken at Plastic Fantastic Studios, London, 2009. the camera recording's raggedly ambient. the track itself is raw, vocals painfully un-effected. all clearly nowhere near the production stage, yet it signposts at least where the b-side of the record's going to head.

the a-side will be more direct in indirect ways, more driving, rock, 70s electronic, backwards, built to play to the holes between the notes.

plastic and i are currently living without a name somewhere just outside of the light. though we'll gain a name and a public face, i expect that we'll never really enter the circle of light others live in.

at the moment, like us, the disc's also untitled though it might become "Electronically Yours".
don't quote me.

this record's the first in a series that plastic and i are releasing. they'll also come out in quick succession, if it all goes the way we want. each release will be a limited edition. once they're gone, they're gone, each one engineered for quick disappearance. they'll each be approached differently, probably incorporating other musicians at different points along the way. stylistically i've no idea where we'll go and that's dead exciting.

we'll be keeping the pressing for this first one minimal, almost certainly no more than a few hundred copies for sale at most. many reasons for this, not the least of which is that the series will be a time-intensive labor of love.
for this first release each one of the covers will be hand-made by us. the artwork will range across the map of styles and concepts, some will have inserted objects. others not. what you get will be dictated by the luck (or misfortune, if you get the pulled teeth, or the blood bag) of the roulette wheel's spin.
they'll all be numbered and signed, and though some may be akin to others, none of them will be alike.
no promos, no, gimmes, no review copies, no reservations. no waiting.
we're tired of waiting.

release date will be announced soon. check the street corners:
www.hydrogenbar.com
www.myspace.com/chemlab
www.myspace.com/plasticheroes

and recently allowed to run naked down the avenue:
www.twitter.com/chemlab

there'll be myspace/facebook/twitter soon, and the above will alert about the below.

we'll also capture other random segments of the recordings as seems fit and may be releasing variant aspects of the record. some better. none worse. how could they be?

and if this track isn't to your taste, try the next one. it'll be something 'other'.
now, pull the pin, count and wait for the explosion: one mississippi, two mississippi, three ..

the attendant frustrations attached to the Altered Statesmen record are legion.
it continually boggles my mind that somehow i've managed to stumble into one of those Twilight Zone episodes where a band can't get their record untangled from the tentacles arrayed against them.

finally, despite all efforts to sustain it, the record shudders and vents its dying breath.

from then on it simply floats aimlessly out in space, joining the staggering collection of unloved, unnecessary, unconnected, undesirable orbiting space trash left behind as part of an ever-growing ring of rubbish girdling the Earth. left to float un-tethered, never to dock, no beacon to beckon. its last lights soon to die out in the super-silent chill.

as far as i can tell though "the death of radio mars" is the quintessence of the selfish gene.
it has mutated and figured out how to stay alive.
out there.
in the ever-expanding ring of detritus and jettisoned flotsam, shining luridly in the chromium haze of deep space.

and so, this is where it can be found and where it shall live out its days.
it's a fitting home for such a chimeric album. i raise my glass to it, toasting longevity.
out there.

Long live the selfish gene!!

The final break’s creeping in and it seems like there’s nothing that can be done to shore up the defences against it.

There’s another noise here that makes no sense and every time I try to steer myself near it it seems to slide itself further out of the realm of the graspable.

Sometimes there’s nothing to do about the dismal tide but throw the spear into the darkness and hope you hit something.

So, to that end, I’m starting to toss spears.

There are some refitted songs up on the myspace profile as well as a few old treats. The most interesting of them, however, is at the top of the chart as it’s not only my current fave, but it kicks the shit out of the rest of the noise I hear every day. It also kicks my ass on a regular basis. It’s a remix of Binary Nation by Latin Saint. He appeared to us as in a fever dream, his ax held aloft, clad in rust and wire. I could talk about him a lot, but the remix has all of the requisite fist instead.

I really dig the guy, and since there’s a new Chemlab record in the offing, it might make sense to pull the cat into the shitter and fuck with his world. Might be a good reason to fold in new meat to the thresher and make a dishonest woman of me.

We’ll see. Regardless, go and check him out at www.myspace.com/chemlab.
I’ll talk more in a second.

www.acidplanet.com/latinsaint/songs
www.myspace.com/latinsaint

After years of the wrong signal-to-noise balance, the haze too thick to catch sight lines through, I’m in a deeply productive time for me right now. The chemical mixture of the hours and light-dark ratio, the perfect curve of the detonator coil all seem to be aligning in my favor for the moment. Nothing lasts, so I’m making hay.

I’ve just finished a strange project. This week I finished writing and designing a tour guide for the reopening of the Whitechapel Gallery, the oldest and most influential art gallery in London’s East End. The book’s geared for 4-to-12 year-olds, providing them with a fun and stimulating way to interact with the gallery space as well as begin to get a sense of how contemporary artwork’s made. It runs short, the pages chunky and some cut into, each one with a place to draw or write on and it comes with pencils, pens, crepe paper and stickers. The pages are all detachable too so you can rearrange them any way you like. It’s not tied to a specific exhibition but instead functions as a way to play with contemporary art concepts. It’s full of questions and challenges and moments of both levity and intellectual rigor..., well, for kids at least! It was a gas to create, allowing me to stretch out into new terrains where I could combine my passions for conceptual and contemporary art with my writing. It’s the sort of project that I’m hoping to do more of. So much to do. So little time left now.

At the moment it’s only available when you come to the gallery, but people have already expressed interest in getting copies when it goes into a wider printing. I’m gauging interest through the sites to see if it’s something that would sell online.

One of the other things that I’m going to try to do is spend a shred more time writing here and in other spots just for the outlet, for the simple pleasure. I’ve been writing a lot. For the first time in a long time I’m pitching with winds, the waves are rising and I’m fertile with the creative juices. Gravity’s broken off its chain under me and I’m pouring out material constantly. Seems to be on the rise. The fascinating this is that, for perhaps the first time in my life, I’m writing for me as opposed to for some supposed audience out there in the dark just past the lights at the edge. From the deep cut I’m bleeding out writing and artwork and music and I’m suddenly unrestrained. Virginia Woolf’s dictum was to get it all out, to get expressed without impediment, to do it without hate or pause or protest or obvious special pleading or any of the rest of that jagging around. She didn’t mean that the writer’s job is to write endlessly or announce and continue with a splash, but to get the real experience down: the private moments, the feel of the winter air cutting, the noise and the silence and the way smoke travels when it hits a gust of wind or the pleasure of listening to traffic knot and unknot. That’s where I feel like I’ve been heading for a little while now. I always knew the road, sometimes on, sometimes way off, but for the past year or so I can feel the hard shoulder pressing up under my feet, see the path as it stretches out towards the horizon. I’ve no idea where it’s leading, but I’m going there.

There’s a lot of music going on in and through me right now and I’ll talk about it next. There are a series of super-limited edition records that Plastic and I’ll be releasing very soon as well as the Prude record that’ll be coming out some time this year. There’s much to talk about, and if you happen to be in London over the next few months Plastic and I will be gigging a bunch at both open and closed events.

The thread pays out ahead .. ..

As some of you may know, a few years ago I had the pleasure of working with Mark Spybey (CAN, Zoviet France, Download, Dead Voices On Air and many others). I’ve been a fan of Mark’s organic and inverted music for decades, since the pummelling beginnings of Zoviet France. I always thought that it would be incredibly cool to work with him on a record of some sort. Never believed that it would actually come to pass, but the dream rippled on below the silvery surface.

We finally met years ago on the first sprawling Pigfarce tour I hollered for. He had no idea who I was, and despite my constantly sprawling drunkenly across his shoulders, we hit it off. Over the ensuing years we emailed back and forth about possibly working on a record together, but time always conspired to elude, ranging itself against our efforts. A few years ago though we finally managed to scare the days tight and I went up to spend some time ensconced in the gritty surroundings of the ex-urban Grim North link to work on the record in Mark’s studio. We also had the surprise pleasure of roping in Mark’s old terror couple, Robin Storey from Zoviet France, to play guitar and fluids and balalaika and bagpipe reed and dark circle. He was sharply minimal, the perfect insertion.

As Autumnal color gave way to frost, and crippling floods, the album wrote itself. Almost without bidding from us it unfolded its figure in the dusk in strange and unmediated segments. The disc’s called “the death of radio mars” and I’m as proud of it as I am of any of the records that I’ve ever released, even the ones never released such as the early Jackhammer Orchestra material.

We delivered it to Invisible and that’s when it hit critical third-rail flat line. They’ve yet to commit to releasing it or not, almost three years after completion, so it floats in the formaldehyde of picayune disinterest and predictable, conceptual conservatism. The passive aggression feels almost malicious.

While “radio mars” seized-up in the quicksand of the industry, the limbo of its non-existence stretching out of sight, Mark’s and my attention per force slewed elsewhere. While we engaged in other projects and records, the metal detector dowsing-rod of the mutating technological world snuck up on us.
What do I mean? I mean this:

http://blendetta.com/2009/01/listen-up-altered-statesmen

Blendetta isn’t the first, and certainly not the only place that I’ve seen the record being spooled around. Suddenly it just sprouted everywhere. I’m not sure how it managed to slither loose, but I’m fascinated that it did. I dig Blendetta’s scene a lot, and the Rock Star Journalism women that spawned it are sharp, visionary and long-time friends. They're not "cyber criminals" any more than I am or you are for downloading cracked programs or films or music or whatthefuckever. I’m attaching this link as opposed to any of the other places where you can find the record because I want to get them some added exposure. I also want the record to be heard, and this is a great way to do it.

“radio mars” is a glorious collab-spatter. It winks sidelong glimmerous, is divinely bruised and shucked by the uncivil blade. It flutters tatters ‘round the edges yet burns darkly magma at its core. On the other hand, it isn’t mastered and no final production was done on it. The album that’s in the link falls out of sequence and doesn’t contain all of the finalized versions of the songs that would’ve been on the actual release. There’s a host of imperfections that glare from the middle ground, smears of unmodulated lurching scree, and sometimes the sonic tectonic plates just don’t meet up. It’s unfinished in some very elemental ways. Yet it carries itself with the damaged grace of a film star at a cocktail party, years after her horrible, flaming pyre car accident, still elegant and captivatingly beautiful despite (or because of) the welter of scars across her face. In some aspects the spider web of fractures adds color and dimension, in others it simply detracts. Regardless, I don’t think, at this stage of the silly game that is the record industry, that this will ever be rectified. I see "radio mars" living out its existence this way, encased in binary amber, forever stumbling with one leg planted on the ground, the other waving pointlessly in the ethers.

Though neither illegal downloading or sharing of music bothers me as an artist, I’m not sure that I would’ve sanctioned the record appearing in the stream in advance of a more concrete release due to the inevitable conflicts. I certainly wouldn’t have sanctioned this imperfect version. However, since it’s clearly slipped its bonds and it seems that it’ll never be released, it’d be foolish of me not to celebrate it regardless of the state it exists in.

Tom “To Live And Shave In LA” Smith has remixed the record in its entirety too, but that’s a mind-boggling link for another night.

So, there it is.
Now you have it. Toast it. Enjoy it in all its stumbling imperfections. Spin it. Virus it. Blare it. Bask it. Burn it. Web-thread it. Review it. Pass it around as much as you like.
Welcome to the future.

I see you, in the spinning mass of charred metal and spider-webbed safety glass, flipping, flipping, flipping, flipping through smooth space.

The black Sikorski has been following my Escalade for the past three nights. It's been a serious weight on my head and on the gas pedal. Been getting speeding tickets like shit collecting flies, but they've yet to see the shadow above me. Fucking cops.

I can tell he's a prolific hunter, but I can't tell if I'm the meat yet.

"this is truly beastly music brought to the highest, most refined point!"

Phalaris, the capricious and bone-splinteringly brutal Greek tyrant of Sicily, was the originator of a demonic and almost mythic device called The Brazen Bull.

Cast and hammered out of 1000 pounds of sheet bronze, the eight foot-high Bull was created as an excruciating means of execution. Hollow inside, with a hinged door built into the middle of the bull’s back, criminals, the occasional Christian and those foolish enough to have spoken out against Phalaris would be pushed inside and the door locked tight with a thick bronze peg. Wood was heaped high beneath its belly and a fire then set alight. The drum of its body quickly became intensely hot, conduction producing blistering temperatures across the length and breadth of the Bull’s body. The victim inside asphyxiated on clouds of his own flesh searing while he roasted to death.

The fun for Phalaris didn’t end there though and the last aspect of the torture device was perhaps the most fascinating and disturbed. The architect of the Bull had constructed an ingenious and intricate system of metal tubing inside the head of the beast. Like a convoluted trumpet cross-bred with a French horn, the wide bell fit inside the interior of the bull’s mouth pointing out. The mouthpiece extended down into the body of the Bull somewhat. Discovering a possible source of fresh air as well as a way to yell for help, the Texas-style slow-roasting Bar-B-Q victim would scream frantically through the tubes. Beautifully, the prisoner's shrieks were then converted into sounds loosely approximating the bellowing of an infuriated bull. Kenny G, eat your heart out.

Dinner and a show!!

In fact, Phalaris often set the Brazen Bull blazing at orgiastic feasts to entertain and shock guests as well as to present a harrowing object lesson to statesmen of what their fate would be if they didn’t deliver unto Phalaris his due. So that 'nothing unseemly might spoil his feasting', Phalaris made sure that aromatic herbs and spices were heaped in on top of the victim so that as the trapped morsel roasted, great plumes of scented smoke would rise in spicy clouds like incense from the beast’s maw, perfuming the room and masking the smell of flesh burning. And what celestial music. When Phalaris was finally unseated by Telemacus, there are conflicting reports of what befell the vicious tyrant, but one version has it that he was actually forced into the Bull himself and roasted. Fitting, and quite possibly tasty too as Phalaris was fat and well seasoned from endless feasts of exquisite meats, herbs, nuts and fruits.

Next week; the Rectal Pear.

Lewes Arts Lab presents:
3rD: Experiments in Darkness, Distortion & Delight.

14 internationally renowned artists, filmmakers and musicians from Lewes, London, Brighton and New York come together on one cold, dark winter’s night to explore darkness, distortion and delight and set fire to our collective imagination:

Viv Albertine: (ex-Slits) solo songs.
Jared Louche & Marc Plastic: Ten one-minute Extinctions.
Pimmel: Music for Massed Fuzz Organs.
MSG: Ambient noise.
Nick Collins: Super-8 film.
Haydn Cottam: live, 3D action painting.
Ben Edmunds: silent comedy.
Steve Geliot Installation: The Compton Effect.
Andrew Poppy (ex-PTV): And The Shuffle Of Things.
Psychophallic Horses: Bearded ladies.
Roger Riley: Super-8 projections.
If You Suspect It, Report It: the ultimate road movie.
Zerocrop: psychopathic pop music.

Inspired by Andy Warhol’s Factory and The Exploding Plastic Inevitable in the late 1960s, Lewes Arts Lab was set up in 2007 by Tom Mugridge, Mark Robertson and Andy Saunders to create a platform and audience for new live and experimental art, enabling live artists to test work in progress or improvise in an uncensored environment free from the crushing constraints of commercialism and art funding.

3rD is Lewes Arts Lab’s third and most ambitious project to date. Jared Louche,
experimental poet and frontman of Chemlab, joins the Arts Lab team for this production. 3rD draws in artists from far afield, including Andrew Poppy from Psychic TV, Chris Cutler (ex Henry Cow), Viv Albertine (ex-Slits) and Zerocrop from London as well as film makers, painters, performance artists and other trouble.

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This is going to be a fascinating event and the sort of thing that I haven’t had a chance to be a part of for ages. It’s reminiscent of events that I used to organize in the States back in the 80s that covered the conceptual map. The process of creating the night has been circuitous, but even in the incunabula it has been stimulating, challenging and leavened with the willingness to incorporate anything if it’ll add to the spectacle.

Please feel free to pass this along to anyone that might be interested in coming or that knows anyone that might be interested in coming. London Clan, there is talk of three different vans coming down for the night. If you are coming and need transportation and a place to crash, get in touch soon and we’ll work something out.

We have beautiful posters available too. If you can put them up anywhere and want some just drop me a line and I’ll set you up.

Come check out the profile: www.myspace.com/lewesartslab

3rD will be presented at:
The Foundry Gallery, North Street, Lewes
Saturday 31st January 2009 | 7.30pm–midnight
Tickets £8/£5 concs | Licensed bar

I just discovered that the Napoleonic “tendon” rests in New Jersey. What an anticlimactic station to rest in.

After Napoleon Bonaparte’s death on the unfeasibly small island of St. Helene in 1821, his vindictive physician cut off and secreted away the regal organ during autopsy. It was handed off and smuggled into France by the corrupt chaplain Abbe Vignali, thus setting in motion the royal pecker’s bizarre peregrinations across the continents.

Parts of his anatomy have long circulated through the seamier corridors of Parisian collecting: slices of bowel, molars, and ribs, even sections of the bloodied autopsy sheet itself. The Abbe Vignali also managed to smuggle Napoleon’s death mask off of St Helene’s, but the piece de resistance was unquestionably the cock. After his death in 1916, the Vignali Collection went on auction. The already much-storied penis was described in the catalogue as “a mummified tendon excised from the post-autoptic body of Napoleon”, and from then on his member has been known in collector circles as “Napoleon’s Tendon”.

Irritatingly, it was not preserved in formaldehyde as so many other odd artefacts such as Rasputin’s gargantuan member are. Though passed around Europe after his assassination as a sexual aide of totemic strength, the veracity of Rasputin’s member remains in grave contest. Napoleon’s, on the other hand, does not, its veracity almost certain. Having been exposed to the desiccating power of the elements, however, it has fared poorly and looks, by all accounts, like a strip of dried leather, or beef jerky, about the thickness and length of a baby’s finger. Sorry, Josephine, we hear it wasn’t much more impressive in its original and undesiccated heyday and was, in fact, the butt of countless jokes in the UK.

After the Vignali Collection went on the block, it sallied forth between collectors across Europe, England and the US, many of whom showed it off with morbid glee, the center-piece “tendon” basking luridly in the spotlight. It was displayed in its own hand-tooled, Moroccan leather case that could be tied shut with long leather straps, all of it surmounted by a gold crest. The article itself nestled on a charming bed of crushed blue velvet, thus highlighting its diminished yet still alluring qualities.

In 1969, after a series of failed auctions, the Vignali Collection was broken up in hopes of increasing the potential for sale. The jewel in the crown, Napoleon’s organ, of course, was snapped up in a trice. Cheaply too, selling at about $2,100. It was acquired by the famed and deeply strange US Army urologist, Dr Lattimer, who had a pretty weird personal history himself. Dr. Lattimer had already amassed a unique and ghoulish museum of his own that he guarded covetously, seldom showing it. It included such darkly attractive items as Hermann Goering’s suicide vial and strips of the leather seats from the Cadillac in which JFK was assassinated in Dallas. ooooooooEEEE. My kind o’ fella.

After his death in 2007, the collection became the property of his stodgy children who currently have no plans whatsoever for The Tendon, or any of the other articles for that matter. It resides in straightened circumstances in a suitcase beneath a bed in a spare bedroom in their home in Englewood, New Jersey. Another great collection of fabled historical oddities and rarities fades, consigned to the dark and ignominious recesses of suburbia.

My next question is, where’s Napoleon’s death mask?

Though I can’t imagine that you haven’t heard this one already, the joke about the Republican senator who thought having an inexperienced, inarticulate, gun-totin’, moose huntin’ God fearin’ race baitin’ fear monger as a running mate was a good idea, but the latest in this chapter is the radio pranks from CKOI in Montreal. Two guys managed to call up Palin’s office and get right past her staff and speak directly to her. When ensues is one of the greater segments of comedy.

Some of the more egregious and hilarious moments to listen for are when he mentions that he has been following the race with his “Special American Advisor Johnny Halliday” who’s a French pop icon and has as much to do with politics as I do.

The name of the song that Carla Brunei, Sarkosy’s wife, is supposed to have written for Palin translates as “Lipstick On A Pig”.

Towards the end of it all he tells Sarah that he loved the documentary they made of her life called “Hustler’s Nailin’ Palin”. She clearly can hardly understand what the interviewer is saying and just nods along in star-struck awe even though the clue is staring her right in the face. There has been no documentary made of her life yet, though the material for it is being compiled right now. The guy’s making up the name of a possible Hustler magazine porno flick.

The PM of Canada is in fact Stephen Harper,
The PM of Quebec is actually Jean Charest. I wish that we could hear what names the guy makes up for both men, but he’s not using their real names.

Even when the pranksters aren’t dropping in obvious-as-a-falling piano cues for her to pick up on, it’s clear that she has no grasp of how to handle herself in the face of established political figures. She has nothing substantive to say and hardly manages to bumble her way through the “interview”. She lacks the faintest shred of intellectual rigor and political acumen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMV0LKlVj8I

Events like this remind us what a wonderful materials resource for the Stewarts, Lettermans and Lenos she has been. Events like this also show us what a Roveian, hatred-leavened, politically backward-looking McCain-Palin presidency would look like.

On the topic of intellectual poverty and the recent and abhorrent trend in my country that fears intellectual acuity and reviles reading, there are these:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stefan-sirucek/sarah-palinif-you-dont-re_b_135760.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/27/AR2008102702438.html

And then there’s the concern about 2012, and do not tell me that it’s not possible. Ridley’s comments about the phoenix-like return of Nixon is chillingly apt, and if you think that Rove, Kristol and the rest of the “she winked at me" crew aren’t going to try to groom her I’ve got a bridge to nowhere to sell you. Cheap.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-ridley/the-tragedy-of-sarah-pali_b_139774.html

This is the frightening aftermath that we're looking at now that McCain/Palin have seeded so much hatred into arteries of the whole country and invoked the divisive specters of McCarthy and the Klan. This is where the country is going to spend the next four years regardless of who wins the White House.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mitchell-bard/mccains-smear-campaign-wi_b_137284.html

One of the coolest things to recently come out of the jet stream blue is the Acid Planet Remix contest. Over the past few months Chemlab CentComm have had the pleasure of working out a deal with Sony's Acid Planet to bring you the most recent and dead cool remix contest. The track that's open for your delectation, destruction, mutation and evisceration is "Binary Nation" from OXIDIZER.

CHEMLAB remix contest now LIVE at ACID PLANET:
http://www.acidplanet.com/Chemlab

Go check it out, ram your fist down its throat and shoot your madness out across the spattered sky. I'll be a part of the judging process to decide who the winner of the contest is and I'm really hungry to hear the tortured, dance floor grooves you'll be unleashing.
Pass the link and info around. Post the info wherever you can. Make the noise.
Go for it!

Winning entry receives:

• Sony PSP
• Media Manager for PSP
• ACID Pro software
• Vegas Pro software
• Metal Premium Loop Library
• Brocabulary: The New Man-i-festo of Dude Talk, with Brocabulary Flash Cards ($14.95). (Learn more )
• Merchandise from CHEMLAB

Free to signup and download the remix kit. Hit up the CHEMLAB contest page on Acid Planet at http://www. acidplanet. com/Chemlab

"Codeine" live in Austin, Texas, with Pigface, the last night of the last tour that I ever did with them. Not a great version, ragged and off the mark, but it was fun to play it again. It filled the hole until the real thing came back to life.