Welcome to Japanese New Music Festival!

It is possible that the picture in this post isn’t typical of how tidy my flat usually is. That may even be true of the table itself, actually. But I do tidy up sometimes, and today I’ve been going through some minidiscs, with the idea that if I put the recordings on a hard drive I’ll claw back half a drawer of storage. The recordings I’ve copied today all come from a 2003 music / film event at Dundee Contemporary Arts, and whilst I was expecting to – and did – enjoy Ira Cohen’s gonzo poetry rant (it turns out he died recently, sad to hear that), I’d forgotten all about Ruins’ set, which began with some sample based songs about a zipper, a toothbrush, a camera, and a wine cork. After that they did some longer songs which were also great, if less obviously conceptual. Here is the first third of the set – I’ve never heard anything else like it.

Ruins at Kill Your Timid Notion, DCA, Dundee, 19th Oct 2003 by steamboatbill