The Kills - Richard House (updated as I finish volumes) FINAL UPDATE

I like to think of my readers as intelligent, literary, interested in music and the new, broad of mind and interested in saving money. So this one's for you. 

On the long list this year for the Booker prize is The Kills by Richard House.   It's not on the short list, but the long list gave it some prominence and it garnered some excellent reviews and comment. 

It consists of four separate but interconnected novels. The first Satler is a page turning thriller that starts in Iraq & traverses turkey to Malta and Europe, with random encounters, deaths and mystery. Thoroughly enjoyed its complex incompleteness (after all, it's only the first part, but I am not expecting answers to everything by the end - it's that sort of book), but satisfying. The next The Massive takes the situation from the opening of book 1 (a dump in the desert run by contractors) and expands on it backwards and possibly forward (it does). Characters recur and get filled out with personalities and histories. 

I haven't read The Kill (3) & The Hit (4) yet, but know 3 concerns a novel that gives the novel its name & has been being read at various times - and I expect some of the characters will pop up. The Hit then returns to Satler apparently and muddies that story. I think that there will be a lot of fun following the links, puzzling over uncertainties and just enjoy a well written book.. 

So why here?

2 things. The novel in electronic form contains links or embedded content (which, beware, make the files bigger) of films, phone calls, maps. So far I haven't found them intrinsic, but they are an indication if where fiction could go. 

But to my money conscious literary readers, if you go here (paywithtweet) you can get volume 1 as a free download if you sell your soul and send a tweet. My twitter following is pitiful so there won't be too many people bothered by the spam! Alternatively, each volume is quite cheap from amazon or apple (au$2.99 each from iTunes) which makes up to a good value equivalent 1000 page book. 

As I said, really enjoyed volume 1, 2 is great too but going a different direction, more personal story/ies. Will report back. 

Quick note: do not read the brief blurb for the fourth novel before reading it. It clarifies the role of a main protagonist, while a pleasure of the first third to a half is wondering where these characters fit and their roles.

Ok - have finished volume 2 and thoroughly enjoyed it. It completes some of the picture seen in volume 1 explaining the blast, raises questions about where Satler is, and the question of Guezzler broadens from merely his puppetmaster-like role, but also his identity at the end of 2. The book discussed in 1 was a film in 2 and will be volume 3. So 4 will have to wait to supply more answers.

Volume 3: an interesting murder mystery where we don't really know who was murdered. It is based on the book & film mentioned in 1&2. Lovely writing, amazing sense of dread built, but asks questions and answers few. About its content and action - but also what is it doing here! At this stage I can't see the link to the other volumes other than as mentioned in them.

I am getting through this quickly - don't often read through a novel as big as this so precipitously. What is glorious is the questions it leaves unanswered!

And now finsihed. The final volume continued from the end of the first. Introduced some new characters, revisited some old. A very clever use of the book by one character. Some questions answered, not all ends tied. But another very good read.

Overall well worth the time and money - and enjoyable and thought provoking read. He is great at creating a sense of dread. DON'T READ THE BLURB FOR THE HIT BEFORE STARTING - IT IS A TERRIBLE SPOILER.

Recurring aspects: unidentified deaths, unknown deaths. Misidenticication, misunderstanding. Uncertainty as to the fate of characters. Coincidences.
Well managed development of our understanding.

I was wondering about the placement of The Kill as the third volume. It doesn't directly link in terms of characters, however what I think is that it is largely there as a metafictional game - to remind us that everything between the covers is a novel; and that seeking answers for all the uncertainties in the 3 other books is like expecting the third book to be true - it is all lies. Themes/strands of the overall novel are exlored in this one. But that all 4 novels refelect life in terms of its undertainty and openness.

And a final note on the embedded material - it is interesting and adds a little detail but is not essential. The final film, which explains how Mr Wolf & his brother got the original original novel for their exploits in part 3 was filmed at Halong Bay (which I visited recently) and coincidentaly I have changed my phone wallpaper to a panorama of the bay as it works very nicely with iOS 7 - but coincidence or what!!!!

FINAL FINAL NOTE a couple of days later: This novel, set of novels has stuck with me - thinking about the plot, the fascinating intertwining and the simple pleasure. Well written, well plotted and fascinating - it is totally absorbing as a straight novel, but retrospectively mesmerising in its structure. I read all 1000+ paper pages on my iPhone & enjoyed every minute. Get the free first volume & you will want to buy the other 3 - money well specnt.

A side note about reviewing: when deciding whether to buy these I looked at online reviews. In the Telegraph they say that The Massive We know at the start that these men will die of horrific cancers within a few months of each other. Yet it is very obvious, as the first chapter goes through the deaths (yes) that there are a variety of causes (including suicide) and that the first reported (the last actual) is Santo which makes distinct reference to 36 years of psoriasis and the next starts "before Luis by 18 years came Clark" - makes you wonder how much they read if they get lost in the first chapter 

David Bowie Is in my room

Well, it finally arrived. 

I must say it is a beautiful book. The cover is orange with a sort of rubbery feel & semi-negative photos on it - Ziggy on the front, later rugged Bowie on the back. 'David Bowie Is inside' printed on the spine - the Is theme is used throughout the book, he is Is Blowing our minds, Is Putting out fire with gasoline, Is A human being, Is at given moment of time a given moment of time, even Is Referenced and Is Indexed 

The inside is beautiful, even sumptuous with the expected catalogue collection of essays, which while I haven't read them all yet looking interesting and varied. Life, album covers, impact on fashion, visual imagery, sexual revolution, writing and so on. I am sure there will be some pseudoish stuff in there, but hey this is an art catalogue. Go here to get to the V&A site

As a visual artifact we are obviously going to lose the sound aspect of the exhibition, which by all accounts was quite spectacular. But we do get loads and loads of images: costumes in full view and close up of detail and also in concert photographs, photos from the life, lyrics, drawings and paintings, draft covers, variants, simple lyrics given as a single line of text on each of facing pages and more. A visual feast well worth getting  (You can buy this from the V&A website, who direct you to their Amazon shop page. But if you buy it direct from Amazon it is cheaper. Though not a cheap book).

It's the sort of book to return to and savour. And to also make you think about Bowie and Bowie's impact on you. And as this is a spot for me to reflect, here goes.

When I review my musical life Bowie plays a rising, plateaued, rising again trajectory. After hearing the second self-titled album which is usually considered his first one, Bowie was in my hearing but not essential (I got an american import of **The Man** with the strange cartoon cover in a sale - and wasn't ready for it). As for many listeners, I should think, he sort of sank into a background until **Ziggy Stardust** - an album that I knew the songs from but didn't own till later. In that period I will admit ELP or Jethro Tull or even Elton John were higher in my consciousness. After that though, I became a more consistent buyer, **Pinups**, **Diamond Dogs**, probably not **Aladdin Sane** first up. The release of *Man who fell to earth* reignited the fire a bit & Young Americans & Station to  Station came more to the ofre (I think the Lennon duet helped). Then there was my stated **Low** epiphany. Interestingly, like many epiphanies I can recall it - and I happened to have a diary of that trip to England and there is no mention of **Low**, the radio, Crashing in the same car while we were driving or the album. Some mention of Eno later though.

That said, Bowie was back. I closely followed from that point for the next decade - even the seeming commercial dredge of **Let's Dance** and its relatives. Then Bowies quiet phase as he restructured his finance. I was excited by the return: I enjoyed **Black Tie** and **Outside** was a return to Eno, complexity and difficulty (and was probably overstretched as it is, but has some great songs) and **Earthling** was ahead of the game. Then we hit the period where my reviewing seems to have overwhelmed mainstream listening, then **Heathen** which I love, reality which I came to later and now the dramatic return.

In terms of my Bowie collection I have all the albums (I did own the Decca one but have never bothered to relisten) digitally, vinyl or CD: including the **sound and vision** box set (the second edition with 4 CDs, digital version), the best of DVD which includes the wonderful Top of the pops clips with beused young brits watching on & pretending to 'dance'.  A couple of bootlegs - scary monsters outtakes and the lost Toys album. 

I saw him live once - the Stages tour. It was good to do, but I think in retrospect disappointing: the sound was terrible, the songs too much like the records, the show quite downbeat. Looking at the costumes some of the early personas looked pretty weird - David Bowie Is pushing the boundaries! But I have got recordings of life shows from most of his various periods & enjoy them.

And a couple of other books, bought for the kindle have been interesting.

David Bowie Is in my life - and has really been a part of it for the last 40+ years. And David Bowie Is never disappointing really - the albums which are at the bottom of peoples lists of Bowie Albums From Worst To Best are (a) often near the top of someone elses and (b) better than most else which is or was going around and (c) different to the other albums in that list which means there is always something new fresh different to listen to.

I feel privileged to have been able to grow with Bowie's changes (I just inserted a note above that I wasn't ready for it when I bought The Man & that is true of other artists as well, you have to learn what they are trying to do; my late coming to Miles Davis is another example) and the pleasure of being able to think about when his musical journey and my life intersected (what was going on in my life when the thin white duke documentary came out for example). To have had one artist whose life has burned bright at the same time as I have developed is probably unique: there are not that many pop musicians who have such an extended strong career (Robert Fripp and Brian Eno come to mind, not surprisingly). Crooners - yes; classical - yes; jazz - yes; but not pop/rock I think, and not ones who have developed changed and effected so much change (I proffer the Rolling Stones as exhibit A).

And somewhat topically David Bowie Is given the best ever cover version with the Space Oddity from the space station. A good version sonically, but when tied to the so appropriate and so not bluescreened visuals it was a treat.

Musician's books and MP3

I've been reading a few books that reflect on some of the things I go on about here. (Some are just fun - like Keith Richard's which I only really bought cause the Kindle edition was briefly $2.99 or books about Bowie).

Neil Young's Waging Heavy Peace is a good read - a combination of reminiscences, reflections on his current state of mind, commentary on issues. One thing that really bothers him is MP3s - he feels that they lose too much of the sound (containing something like 15% of the original information [which reflects the changed way we have come to think about thigs as per James Gleick]). He is developing a new system called Pono which will provide digital music with the richness and content of vinyl. He even sings about in on the new album (which I bought through iTunes)

Well, as indicated by TIMR 2, I have never had a high end system, and while there are things I miss about vinyl it wasn't the sound. Despite my best efforts disks got dirty, scratched and just gained that surface noise. many things I like to listen to now would have got lost within that.

And then I was halfway through How Music Works. David Byrne combines some degree of memoir with reflection on audio-technology - the changes that the way we listen to, record and play back music has changed and how that has changed music.

I was pleased to read 

'After years of hoarding LPs and CDs, I have to admit that I'm now getting rid of them. I occasionally pop a CD into a player, but I've pretty much completely converted to listening to MP3s either on my computer or, gulp, my phone.'

which is pretty much my state at the moment - I have a ceiling full of vinyl which my head says get rid of but my heart says no. But all it is doing is sitting up there.

Another issue he crosses paths with here is how the changing technology has affected the size of music pieces. Vinyl really limited the side to 20+ minutes, 40 for an album (more for a bloated double or triple). With CDs we could go to 80 minutes. Now with digital there is really no limit (he doesn't mention looped music like Scape which can be left to play indefinitely, but that fits too).

In some ways the removal of size limit could be a blessing. As I have argued, I think that the CD led people (artists and purchasers) to expect 80 minutes, and that a short album was a rip off.(Robert Palmer's Clues faced a similar vinyl issue at 16minutes per side). This led to too much filler as people had to make every album a double. The trend to reissues with bonus tracks overcame this a bit - but many of the bonus tracks were not used originally for good reason.

There is a place for long disks - many do work & compilations/history sets work very well. As on old vinyl boy the 20 minute side is my touchstone. Artists thought about the sequence and the songs which would fit together. 20 minutes also seemed the right length - hence the use by some artists of 3" CDs (like the Metamkine series, which is in my room).

But with digital maybe we need to think more about virtual disks and suites. OK, sell albums, but through the metadata call one collection of songs Disk 1 and another Disk 2 (I'll expand on this idea in my first Dave Stafford review). Or collect pieces as suites; complete stand alone EPs which are self contained (not single and remixes or fillers); or other models (for example, almost crowdsourcing: you pay for the album, and get the songs as they are produced).

With self-selling the price structure could reflect this - the artist can set the price dependent on the amount of time to create and the amount of music - a general price for an 80 minute album, a bit less for a 30 minute suite, a bit more for an extended 100+. (DGM live for example charges less for a soundscape below about 40 minutes and a little more for really long ones: they also have a reduced price if you buy a whole series - another model which self-sellers could use).

David Byrne demonstrates that all aspects of the music industry develop, and the loss of vinyl means sides and sequencing have dropped below the radar, but as we move to no time restrictions at all, some form of shaping needs to come into play.

666 notes to hear before you go deaf

Hot on the heels of 1000 recordings to hear before you die, Toby Cresswell's 1001 songs: The Great Songs of All Time and the Artists, Stories and Secrets Behind Them, Pitchfork's 500 greatest songs and Robert Dimery's 1001 albums you must hear before you die comes 666 notes to hear before you go deaf from Anita McSusic. 

Working from a severely limited sound palette - after all there are only so many notes available, even when you take the sharps and flats or just look at the black and white keys of the piano - McSusic finds an artistic diversity within this constraint. She has, for example, identified an A flat in The Rolling Stones Symphony for the Devil which is markedly different to the A flat in the third movement of Beethoven's fifth symphony. Or, taking another example, a shifting B in the middle of a Kronos quartet glissando and one in Nine Inch Nail's Ghost IV.

For each of the notes she has identified, McSusic weaves a fascinating text, exploring how the composer reached that particular note and why she has selected it: a C sharp in Brian Eno's Discreet Music, appearing briefly at 15:32 apparently is a response to a draft caused when Robert Fripp entered the studio while Eno was creating the piece, and the tape slowed marginally. Eno discusses how he debated whether to rerecord the whole section or let that note pass. As it was one of a number of Cs within the work, and following pulling out an Oblique Strategy card that read 'Do not pass: go', the note remained. As you listen to this note in the book, the pitch has a subtle tenderness that is not present in some of the other C sharps.

When talking about historical notes, where there is no composer to discuss the material with, interviews with current performers explore how they respond to the notes McSusic has identified, and how they decide to play them. Intriguing twists emerge from this - for example the different ways that the Emerson and the Duke quartets play an F flat in Shostakovitch's 7th string quartet.

Each note has been identified in a particular recording which is available on CD - this makes it possible to find all 666 notes precisely - they are often surrounded by similar notes and identifying the one in question can be difficult. There is some discussion of putting all 666 notes onto a single CD, but that would detract from the thrill of the hunt. And the notes need to be heard in their context.

The book is organised around a sorting principle based on the composers first name, the not as written in German and the difference in the year of recording and composition. Luckily both the table of contents and the index are comprehensive and assist in navigating through the book. Though ones like this are meant for dipping.

Yes - as with all lists there will be notes that you wonder why they aren't there, and countries who are under represented (very little from Australia for example, though the opening note of Rolf Harris' Sun arise gets a guernsey). But if you want to explore notes written by people as diverse as the Sex Pistols and Stravinsky, Steve Reich to Stevie Wright, Mellencamp to Miaskovsky look out for this book, and take part in the on-line debate about those missing notes on the official website..