I've posted sporadically before that. I declared the blog and podcast hiatus around Halloween of last year. So aside from three rando posts here on the blog, and some a few posts over on the Facebook page, CNQ has been relatively quiet on the internet. I can't do Twitter or Instagram, I just don't care enough. But these past few months I've been thinking about CNQ. I wanted to come back with a blog about my other interests -- video games, books and comics, politics, movies and stuff on streaming, painting, rock collecting, etc. But with these other interests, my thoughts aren't much more insightful than my thoughts on music, which comes down to a Beavis y Butthead type of criticism -- "cool" vs. "sucks."
Keeping a blog seems a little antiquated, it's late 2019 and 40% of the U.S. has been brainwashed to accept an anti-humanity ethos that I once thought was only regulated to apocalyptic sci-fi and comic books.
I enjoy typing and, to remind myself, CNQ is for me in the long run. If you're reading this and you're like yeh, and/or you're the few human beings who have enjoyed my output over the last 7 years, that's super-cool too. I appreciate it, of course.
But ultimately, CNQ is my hobby, and I'm not doing this for money or likes. In fact I think it costs me both. Hence the break. Good to recharge, calibrate, and start her back up when I reckon it's time.
So I've been thinking, a lot of CNQ was sharing new stuff I like on Bandcamp, with little to no critique because I'm not a critic, just a fan. Bandcamp now does a great job of sharing interesting music on their main page, and I've been seeing on there bands I was sharing a year ago, so I was like, what purpose do I serve here?
Especially since it's not like Bandcamp is paying me. But, it's the music that's important, and if Bandcamp shares something I did, that just means I was right in the first place, right?
And even though Bandcamp should clearly be sponsoring me, they aren't. Eventually, I'd like to get back to sharing tracks off of vinyl and cassette that the internet hasn't heard yet, as well as the pirate podcast, and Bandcamp probably isn't into any of that.
Maybe I will ramp up to all that.
I've got a few messages on Facebook asking me to check out tunes. I will eventually, assuming I decide to start up CNQ again.
In the meantime, I found this:
"Originally released in Israel in 1983 and only available in a handmade edition of just 50 copies. As such, this edition is the first widely available issue of this LP, making it available to an audience beyond the few hardened collectors who got to hear this strange experimental record back in the 80s. There’s nothing else quite like it from that era, let alone from Israel, although it does have some parallels with earlier avant garde/outsider music from the US and Europe. It may well be the strangest, as well as one of the most obscure records to ever come out of Israel. The instruments used are flamenco and acoustic guitar, flute, violin and sax. Some of the playing is free form and some is complex notation, but all the tracks contain collages of effects and noisy field recordings which often dominate the picture - bubbling water, a chicken farm, feedback, transistor radio, metal percussion, vacuum cleaner, etc. There are some comparisons to be made with Anal Magic and Rev Dwight Frizzell’s “Beyond The Black Crack” from 1976 (also reissued on Paradigm), “Mirror” has a similar wild and fried atmosphere sitting amidst the open sonic spaces, coupled with some skilled instrumental playing. A notable difference with the Frizzell is that Frizzell’s pieces are always titled. The 6 pieces here are all untitled. Amnon Raviv is still active as a musician, but he also holds a PhD in medical clowning and his main work these days is as a medical clown, incorporating smiles and laughter as a therapy to help recovering patients on Tel Aviv’s cancer wards. This edition comes with new artwork showing Raviv working as a performance artist on the streets of Amsterdam in 1984. The insert replicates the original artwork from one of the 50 unique sleeves and contains liner notes by the artist that give insights into the concept behind this album. Mirror is available in an edition of 500 numbered copies."
