This is an excerpt from Kembra Pfahler’s performance at the opening of her first exhibition with us at Emalin, in 2016. Kembra has a habit of interrupting her death-rock and glam-punk sets with unexpected doses of mainstream sentimentality, including Céline Dion’s My Heart Will Go On. In the US, she tells us, this tends to produce confusion and awkwardness, both welcome responses as far as she is concerned. The London audience, however, recognised a singalong when it heard one. Everyone joined in. Kembra was happy. And surprised.
My friend Will Sheridan Jr gave me Lance Scott Walker’s DJ Screw: A Life in Slow Revolution for my birthday in 2022. Since then, I’ve become obsessed with DJ Screw and Houston rap. To me, the 35-minute freestyle June 27 is the greatest piece of music of the 20th century. Everyone praises Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert as a masterpiece of improvisation, but I recently saw a performance at the Barbican that recreated it almost note for note. I really believe that what Big Moe, DeMo, Bird, Key-C, Yungstar, Big Pokey, Haircut Joe, K-Luv and DJ Screw created that afternoon in 1996, in that steamy, wood-panelled recording studio in Houston, will never be repeated.
I watched this documentary when Jasper Marsalis was staying with me when he first got to London. I’m obsessed with how the late 60s, early 70s are a moment when things where still very much analogue but early technology started to creep it. I won’t reveal too much about this documentary but the metal dome built on Oxford Circus so that traffic could still circulate is exceptional.
I love feta and find videos of automated production lines hugely relaxing. It’s great to see innovation in this field.
