We’re living in the Souk Al Jouma area to the north of the city. It’s a beautiful area, full of 12th and 13th century buildings alongside the clutter of day to day life. There’s a busy fruit and vegetable market just down our street and every evening the milk man comes with a van full of containers of fresh from the cow milk. Men traipse out to fill their own containrs and then go home to make yoghurt. So that’s nice. The area’s hosted plenty of illustrious guests prior to us. It was originally built by people retreating from the coast during the crusades and is also known as ‘Salhiyye’ – the friendly ones. The sufi sheikh and scholar Ibn Al Arabi is buried here and every Thurday night there’s a thikr at his shrine. It’s an interesting place as it’s also the only place in Damascus where Ive seen adults with down syndrome or other learning disabilities just hanging out and interacting with the community. A while after Ibn Al Arabi Richard Burton and his wife Ishbel lived here as the British consul, until they got chased out during some intrigue. They talked of living with a ‘hammam on one side and a mosque on the other’ and not much has changed on that respect, we’re surrounded by mosques with varying qualities of voice and there’s hammam down one of the alleys. I’ve still to try it, I’ll keep you posted on that one.

Music wise there’s some amazing stuff happening here, the trouble is there’s very few places to perform other than poorly disguised brothels. We did hear some excellent Iraqi Maqam a couple of nights ago in a bar in Geremneh though, I’ll try and bring my sound recorder along next time.

Amazing animation by Magda Boreysza.

Sound by Dan Gorman and Magda Boreysza.

See more of Magda’s work here: http://www.foxandcomet.blogspot.com/ and here: http://www.magdaboreysza.com/

She is a genius so you will be happy you did.

Cheney, Markham and Gorman
Recorded in Berlin and live at Forest, Edinburgh.
Copy left Forest Records 2007

http://www.theforest.org.uk

M_D_D Go Midi.mp3
MY BEAT IS A FOREST.mp3
NO DERIVATIVES.mp3
OFF THE CUFF.mp3
PRE CURSOR.mp3
PROGRESS THROUGH PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE.mp3
VEGAN JIHAD.mp3

LISTEN TO IT IN THE POPUP PLAYER (upper left)

This is what happened at the Monsterbike Bike Building Workshop, that ran at the Forest from 14th to 18th April, 2007. Music by Danseizure. See: http://td-artwork.co.uk/ for a bit more info.

DANSEIZURE was part of Gra Granna

Supporting punk rock legends Oi Polloi and La Luain on a gaelic mayhem tour.

Collaboration with Chris Palmer and Jason Pogo
transit station edinburgh 2006

Scapegoat / Happy Shopper, live art performance with music and lights.

Video is in 3 parts:

1. The Journey
2. The Junkyard
3. The Mall

part 1: The Journey

part2: The Junkyard

part3: The Mall

Cheney, Markham and Gorman
Recorded live at Forest, Edinburgh.
Copy left Forest Records 2005

http://www.theforest.org.uk

TRACKLIST:

JustTRightMixOfJoyAndMenace.mp3
Vertical Music.mp3
Horizontal Music.mp3
HemulenVdseizureVarctiCircl.mp3
Complies_With_628357.mp3

Tracklisting

1. Brooks
2. fty
3. let´s go to bed
4. some seek
5. pitfall melody
6. happyness
7. a man in a hat
8. wallflowers
9. hamburger
10. bic hop
11. coffin
12. x data

Description

Titled ‘Lets not go out with Danseizure’ this 12 track album is comprised of melodic Electro and ambient sound-scapes.

Danseizure aka Dan Gorman lives in Edinburgh and works as an experimental sound researcher and collector. He has recently been working in a dome of an abandoned American military base in Teufelsberg, Germany. He is also performing in the up coming “Green man festival” in Wales this August.

This is the second album Dan has produced for Invisible Agent and once again it is available for free download.

Download full release

Download ZIP of entire album in Mp3 Format

Download ZIP of entire album in OGG Format

THE FUTURE IS TAPED

So would you believe it I was cleaning out the back of my couch yesterday and I found this rare danseizure K7, given to me on a night when the haar was thick, fingers exploring the streets of Edinburgh.

It only had two tracks on it:

• One is called 1 no ideas but in things Rendered and seems to feature the voice of Ryan Van Winkle.
• The other is 2 when three harmoniums fall in love but isn’t really about harmoniums.

PLAY TRACK : 1 no ideas but in things Rendered

PLAY TRACK : 2 when three harmoniums fall in love