the wire

nochexxx

harco pronting
What's up with Harco Pront, anyway? I reviewed a couple of his releases for the Wire's Critical Beats column, years ago.... haven't heard a peep from him in ages though. Always dug his stuff.

harco pront in critical beats, how about outer limits? :cool:


no idea, what he's been up too, he hasn't released anything in like 5 years!?!?!?!

you deserve to be knighted for picking up the pen and writting about him.

btw your invisible dukebox with carl craig was excellent, some great choice of records, especially liked the charevari conversation. please pardon me for knit picking, but you really should have had the original verison of kikrokos at hand. :D
 

psherburne

Well-known member
i actually never knew that was an edit of a kikrokos track until i found it on discogs, and not too long ago -- i picked up the "ron's edits #2" 12" at hardwax a few years back but there was no info about what the edits were of, and my disco knowledge runs about as deep as a mosquito's sniffer, sadly.

in my partial defense, i don't think carl knew what the original track was either. ;)

for posterity's sake, a review (not a little bit overwritten, sorry) from 2003:


HARCO PRONT
EPOS
Music For Speakers M4S21EP 12”

Electro-funk’s sketchbook king returns after last year’s debut with another nine tracks stuffed into a mere 20 minutes. Once again, Pront’s plopped himself somewhere between Drexciya and D’Angelo, offsetting delicate analog flare with elephantized low end, fingersnaps pushed high in the mix, and drum treatments so dry they’ve pushed the forest fire warning needles off the dial. The Dutch musician, who plays and programs everything here himself, from corrugated shanty-roof snares to soggy bayou guitars to rash-like Roland chords that break out just when things get randy, clearly models himself as a kind of Prince (short songs standing in for short stature?), letting him voice swoop, squeak, and serenade – though always run through a barrel of effects. Rhythmically, the EP ranges from the languid porch blues of “Brother” to the cardboard two-step of “Out” to the filigreed techno sunrise of “Smile,” one minute and eleven seconds of ambient heaven. But his sweet spot is the kind of churning, swollen funk that makes you wonder if “Harco Pront” is Dutch for “dry hump.”
 

labrat

hot on the heels of love
Oh dear oh dear..letter in this months dissing Mark Fisher/K-Punk's writing for the magazine, saying it lacks the vitriol of his blog(with particular reference to his review of the re- issued Energy Flash..accusation of an old boys/bloggers network!!!)
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
Some superb stuff on The Wire's radio show yesterday again. Really enjoyed lots of it. That Bill Cosby (?) track was something else. Is there a playlist posted anywhere?
 

noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
The scene where Keiji Haino refrains from smashing in Evan Parker's head over the improv date that goes horribly wrong is some of the most captivating TV I've seen in years. Not sure about the guy that plays Stelfox though.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
The scene where Keiji Haino refrains from smashing in Evan Parker's head over the improv date that goes horribly wrong is some of the most captivating TV I've seen in years. Not sure about the guy that plays Stelfox though.

haha nice :)

the game seen through all them different angles, from the promoters in the street, to the audience, the musicians, they managers, the club owners, the journos, the labels... just another day in this fucked up system.

like the worn out weezy cliche: the rap game is the same as the crack game.
 

luka

Well-known member
there's all these bloggers on there now.... some of them, while being interesting writers, don't really give a shit about music.... which i find odd in a music magazine.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
i had a bash here with this a while back, but not really having watched the show at that point was a wee bit handicapped:


the wire versus the wire, Posted 04-02-2005, 03:34 PM | Report Edit | Quote

i've been knocking about this idea for a while, but parody's not my forte, i can come up with the initial notion but not the follow-through ... so far all i've got is:

Lieutenant Keenan, the rookie investigator whose ideological constructs are often questionable but who always gets results

the inter office romance between plainclothes agent-at-large Young and desk sergeant Hilde-Nesset

ian penman as the bad lieutenant whose badge has been taken away

and half an opening scene:

INTERROGATION ROOM

A young man sits, slightly hunched, at a small wooden table. He looks thirsty, tired, and can't stop himself repeatedly glancing enviously at the cigarette being smoked by the second of two investigators in the room, Stubbs, who's propping himself up menacingly against the far wall, half in shadow. The other detective, Barnes, is lowering a stylus onto a record. Discordant twanging and plucking sounds emerge from the speaker. A middle-aged Englishwoman's voice ululates plaintively. A minute passes. A couple of beads of sweat form on the young man's brow. With a derisive grimace Barnes makes as if to rise and take the stylus off

HEBDEN: no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute, i KNOW this. Is it....... Shirley Collins?

BARNES (snorting): you'll have to do better than that...


and that's as far as i've got ...
 

zhao

there are no accidents
the whole thing will be driven by simultaneously:

A. competition between rival writers, their opposing ideological stance, genre investments, and the various entities they are aligned with.

B. politics and beef between artists, conflict with labels, managers and A&R guys, and battles between everyone's lawyers.

C. dynamic between various cultural institutions, academic and rogue

--- everything always lead back to a core dynamic of foundational philosophical differences.

a street-smart narrative built on details of personalities and real life action -- careers made and destroyed / major book deals and articles that never made it / sold out shows and drug abuse / grimey jazz legends, grimey MC's, and snobby composers -- hut the harsh reality is always connected to, and always an expression of, how ever subtle or concealed as subtext, grand battles between universal forces. forces such as conservatism vs radical change, making money vs. making art, individuality vs. collectivism, etc.


i think we may have something here. let's put together rest of the proposal and do up a screen play for the pilot and we'll start talking to investors by, say... August?
 
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noel emits

a wonderful wooden reason
I've got Wire #129 from November '94 here. It's kind of fascinating. That was quite a crucial period, still in the thick of the 90s melting pot when everything was going somewhere. The cover feature is 'Japan Now' so that means bits on Boredoms, Zeni Geva, UFO, Ghost, DJ Krush, Ken Ishii, Tetsu Inoue, Tanzmusik, Kevin Martin talks to Keiji Heino (one for the show?). Then we have interviews with Edgar Froese, Van Dyke Parks, Loop Guru (would they get the time of day now?), Autechre. David Toop's tribute / obit for the recently deceased John Stevens. Simon Reynolds reviews some Can reissues ('prehensile octopoid ethnofunkadelia', like it). Akin Fernandez argues for two pages that digital culture (i.e. CDs) means that vast swathes of music could just disappear when the things start degrading (www.irdial.com). Huggy Bear, System 7, Trance Europe Express 3, Chill Out Or Die 3, Soul Coughing, MC Solaar in the reviews. The live listings announce Heino at Disobey, Scratch Orchestra at the ICA, Beaumont Hannant at Club Quirky. But perhaps the most temporally curious elements of all - adverts for Virgin Megastore and Smirnoff Vodka!
 

matt b

Indexing all opinion
i have to say the piece on mark stewart is shit. its a prime example of interviewer ramping up their own POV regardless of what the interviewee has actually said. and i'm not anti k-punk, but crikey, i was cringing reading the article.

mark's other reviews in the issue were good, as was his burial piece, so i hope it was an aberation.
 
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