Scott Walker "Bish Bosch"

done

not their best album but def the most entertaining one

I expect it to remind me of Piano Bar in that respect

THANKING U

np

Scott Walker 70th birthday special

Scott Walker 70th birthday special

Woops, sorry my iPhone did that by accidump

A broadcast on what might have strayed Scott from the path. I don't see Ligeti as a component of what Scott is thinking on orchestration at all -- the movement from the Chamber Concerto is very fast, with agile (the mechanised thing maybe) interruptions and not at all on a 'nightmarish' kick. There is a myth that this music is a horror show soundtrack and its completely untrue.

Then when you get to the Greenwood - vacuous writing purely cast as a 'soundtrack to Hitchcock'. Cynical writing.

Loved it for the Galas - I need to see her in concert one day.

I know when he was describing what he wanted to Evan Parker for that amazing track on Climate of Hunter he referenced Ligeti.

Sure, and in the broadcast the presenters talk about how Scott mentions Ligeti. I can't hear it apart from 'dense' sounding strings but a few composers wrote that kind of thing.

I'll give The Drift a go again, haven't heard Bisch Bosch.

Evan Parker talks a bit about his work on Climate of Hunter in this interview:

http://www.efi.group.shef.ac.uk/fulltext/mparkint.html

I've had to give Bish Bosch a bit of a rest. I listened to it non-stop over Christmas week but I think, like The Drift, it's not an album that's supposed to be listened to every day.

I did put Epizootics! on a mixtape for a car journey at the weekend, and watching the country road unwind into darkening mist was just incredible.

I do think The Drift is ahead/better than BischBosch, mainly probably because it came before it, but BB seems like "more of the same" in some ways.

Bish Bosch is an easier listen, in all. There's a humorous fourth-wall feeling going on throughout it where the listener gets let in on the whole construction of the composition, which at once draws me in but also stops me feeling completely enveloped by it. Somehow certain elements of The Drift have taken on new meaning in the context of Bish Bosch - the "WHAT'S UP DUCK?" bit was always ludicrous and terrifying, but now I understand Walker's not really doing it with as straight a face as I once thought. There's a very warm, human element to BB that has always been rather guarded throughout his career.

If you can bear Stuart Maconie then the Radio 6 interview was fun, Scott was in good form

... on good form.

.. under good form.

GREATEST THING EVER

http://soundcloud.com/adam-buxton/scott-walker-covers-scream

Anyone got any ideas about deciphering the lyrics? I want to know what all the 'XI V I I X I' bits are referring to on Zercon for example. It seems Scott revealed only a tiny amount of information about the record in interviews.

aargh @ that cover. I want 30 secs of my life back.

I don't know about the roman numerals, but have you read Walker's explanation of the song's subject?

The title contains two brown dwarves: one, the coldest sub-stellar body in the universe discovered so far; the other, Zercon, was a real-life Moorish jester at the fifth century court of Attila the Hun.

“I was interested in this thing about someone trying to escape his situation – in this case Attila’s wooden palace, which he regards as an immense toilet – and achieve a kind of spiritual sovereignty, and a height beyond calculation. As the song moves forward he imagines himself at different stages of height: he imagines first that he escapes and finds himself surrounded by eagles; then there’s the mention of St Simon on his pillar; then he jumps to 1930s America where it’s become a flagpole-sitter…’ Flagpole-sitting – trying to spend several days alone on a platform at the top of a pole – achieved a brief craze status in the 30s.

At the end of the song he eventually becomes a Brown Dwarf, known as SDSS1416. As with the majority of my songs, it ends in failure, Like a brown dwarf, he freezes to death.”

Here's an account from Priscus, which has more about Zercon.

So that first part of the song seems to be the jester doing his job at Attila's court (near the Tisza river in Hungary, which is mentioned) & insulting various types - accusing women of being prostitutes (the opening crack) or going like a gynozoon (which is a female animal trained to have sex with a man, apparently), throwing some national slurs at greeks, Gauls etc. (Basically, It's the chaotic international court of a ruler who's been terrifying the established powers of Europe.)

At the same time there's the rise of ascetic christianity – so there are eunuch lines in there & of course the section about throwing your own mother's food back at her, which is directly about Simeon Stylites i think - it's Zercon, I guess, thinking with a kind of disgust/fascination about this religion, which might be showing him a way to climb up, but is also grotesque.

There's also lot of end of antiquity/dark ages stuff going on in the background - like telescoped northern invasions - Norsemen, Nibelung are Norse-Burgundian kings, 'Basel-cum-Strasbourg-cum-Frankfurt-cum-Speyer-cum' – which is historically later than Zercon/Attila, but all adds doomy living-in-collapse atmosphere.

Those are random thoughts on the opening section. I'd need to read closer (and google harder) to get further.

Still no idea about the numbers though.

hehe, I googled "gynozoon" recently and, well, yeah I kind of wished I hadn't.

I'd read the press release, woof, but not the second bit of your post which is a great help. Would be nice to get a bit more lyric dissection going on on this thread - after all, that's part of the latter-day SW experience really.

Good point about Simeon Stylites (who isn't explicitly mentioned in the lyrics or the accompanying texts), but yeah, he refused to see his mother during all the time he spent on his pillar and wasn't she eventually buried at the bottom of the pillar when she died?

Still no idea about the numbers though.

In the Radio 6 interview he says, in passing, they are supposed to represent telephone numbers, as would have been scrawled on the walls of a Roman khazi if telephones had existed

ha, ok, thanks, would never have worked that out

Send "SDSS1416+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter)" Ringtone to your Cell

ohhh, so the insults and gags are toilet graffiti. I get it.

and the flatulence is flatulence..

The whole thing's just one big fart gag

we must make fart noises or else we become a cold dead lifeless star do u see?

ohhh, so the insults and gags are toilet graffiti. I get it.

The insults in "SDSS1416whatevea" are ripostes to hecklers... from the same Radio 6 interview

You have to do a gig to have hecklers.

I guess even Simeon Stylites had to do his business every now and again. Maybe he amused himself by carving out graffiti on the toilet area of his pillar while he was at it.

how the dwarf got brown

I still haven't gotten this album but i think i will soon, this lyric discussion is fascinating.

Anyone know what these refer to:

Adopocere
Maman Neigho

?

Right - that makes sense - it's sort of how I was seeing the earlier ones, the "the red light where you work", "you should get an agent" stuff - but then it's (Zercon-imagined) bog graffiti by the time you get to "flush hard, it's a long way to Athens", "do not eat the big pink mint".

I will listen to that interview when I get in, it sounds informative if I am going down this rabbithole.

(multi xps to Tom that)

the "big pink mint" is a toilet freshener!?!?!

YES

woof, you're the bwast!

I think it's a 'Norseman are thick savages' gag about a toilet freshener.

The 'flush hard' joke is ummmm, either saying 'greeks are shits' or thinking about it some more, 'greeks are homosexuals & likely to be found in your bottom'.

Or saying that Athens is a cesspit

From Wiki:

Adipocere (pron.: /ˈædɨpɵsɪər/), also known as corpse, grave or mortuary wax, is a wax-like organic substance formed by the anaerobic bacterial hydrolysis of fat in tissue, such as body fat in corpses. In its formation, putrefaction is replaced by a permanent firm cast of fatty tissues, internal organs and the face.

Adipocere in a zoot...? There are a lot of musical and lyrical references to late-40s/early-50s pop culture throughout Epizootics!. I kind of imagine it as West Side Story as viewed by someone who's having an extremely bad trip.

West Side Story South Pacific

Not an answer to dog latin's question, but I've just learned from Google that there's a racehorse with the charming name "Neigh O Me".

Other searches on the family name "Neigho" throws up... nothing much other than it's an ancient name.