Chris Knowles Episode

i agree. this is the best episode in a while. great stuff.

I didn't know who he was before THC. His first show impressed me so much, i started reading the blog. By reading the blog, I started checking out the bands he was name dropping like Cocteau Twins and Killing Joke. Changed my life man.

So I've been a member for a couple of years, but just started listening to a lot more shows. I recently listened to two with Chris Knowles and became fascinated with the Liz Fraser stuff. I had my husband listen to one of her songs from Heaven and Las Vegas (I think it's called) and as soon as he heard her singing he said "that's a siren call". Blew my mind, I have to say. He didn't hear the episodes and I hadn't told him anything about the show. Just thought I'd share as it was pretty crazy.

The two Chris Knowles Siren Shows were fantastically complex, pulling together a thousand threads brilliantly. Would love to hear more about alt music from 90s, most of the music I heard was out and about in strange places and I never knew names of the musicians but remember the music. Never saw their artwork visuals either, so it is all pure sound memories for me from that era. Probably same for a lot of people.

Far as I know Sirens are bird-women, the bird part something like a seagull, wailing on rocky outcrops near oceans and rivers, luring sailors to their death with haunting calls, scavenging on remains. Mermaids are usually pretty or sexy fish-women who can breathe underwater and probably couldn't sing till Hollywood took over the mythology.

I know the culture is using siren and mermaid interchangeably but I think that's a corruption of the original mythology, I would like to hear Chris Knowles' view on this. Maybe I missed something on the last shows. My feeling is nobody has ever seen a siren and nobody has ever heard a mermaid. The difference between the two should be respected. Even if both may lure sailors to their death, the lure is sound for the siren and beauty for the mermaid. Fair enough though, both are associated with rivers and oceans and if you hear sirens or see mermaids you're at risk of being shipwrecked. Both may have gender hidden - the siren usually only seen through a mist or fog, if at all, with a feminine voice, and the mermaid's lower half hidden by scales and under the waves.

This is a bug-bear for me because I scorned TV when I was a child and teenager, and there are many musicians I will only listen to but not watch; for certain musicians (like Liz Fraser) I think the best form of respect is to close your eyes and listen; others are also good performers and visual artists but I still like to first listen, without visuals. Also if you close your eyes and listen, any crap music sounds crap and you're not mesmerised by visuals into wasting your time on it. The musicians who try to maintain independence against the system are far more likely to compromise their integrity in videos, costumes etcetera and try to keep the music intact. Because music is their Art.

This separation of sound and visuals for music is why I get pedantic about the difference between sirens and mermaids. A lot of musicians don't like to be watched.

Maybe the sirens call you, and the mermaids and merman take you home when you go under. If you have to die anyway, and imagine a heaven, I'd prefer an underwater Atlantis to the other ideas - mainly god on a cloud. (Sidenote: the misnaming of Basement Computer Servers as "the cloud" is probably part of Transhumanist marketing: die and upload to the cloud where heaven and god are. No thanks). For madnesses and entrancements, people may hear voices or see visions, sometimes both.

Liz Fraser's voice is haunting. I listened with Queen Elizabeth in mind, maybe something Chris said to cause the association. One strange track is "I wax and I wane" with gestures that are sad and mocking; they brought to mind Diana.

By synchronicity shortly after this show the film The Shape of Water fell into my hands. It has a Brazilian director and is set in the United States but the main character Elisa looks like Elizabeth (younger days), and the amphibian creature / god has a profile around the shoulders and neck of a young Prince Philip. I don't know if it was intended to invoke Queen Elizabeth but it did, in a very sympathetic way, which is no easy task with all the bad press she gets on main and alt circuits.

I don't know whether to call the amphibian creature a merman, he has gills and can breathe under water but has two legs, rather than joined tail, though the gestures describing his body might imply hermaphroditic. Anybody know what that kind of creature is called in the oldest of oldest myths?

Reminds me of old TV show, The Man From Atlantis, which we saw as tiny kids. We imitated the way he swam under water, and totally believed he was real, and also totally believed Atlantis was a real lost underworld kingdom. That corny tv series set a lot of people down the trail of searching for Atlantis stories. Looking at it now - a few clips - most striking feature of the Man From Atlantis, aside from his being amphibian, is symptoms of alien-ness like Aspergers: needing to have human rules and emotions explained to him. Nobody had heard of Aspergers in those days.

British media is currently full of underwater things, The Long Swim daily updates on main news channels and a new Warship named after Queen Elizabeth set out about a week ago. One of The Queen's doctors, a dermatologist, was killed earlier this year, knocked off his bicycle by a truck. It feels like preparation for a funeral and a wake.

I've always been anti-royalty, on the grounds of unearned wealth and privilege, later suitably dubious due to David Icke's reptilian and other royal family conspiracies, the worst of them. Lately I'm so tired of everything English being trashed I'd rather take the benevolent view that I don't really know what the royals get up to or what responsibility and duty that role entails, and if there is a more beautiful story for some of them, I'm open to it. I think The Shape of Water is a love story for Elizabeth. And a beautiful work of art.

Many thanks to Chris Knowles for this great line of research and presentation; true art is that which leads to further and deeper thoughts, bad art leads to thought-stopping cliches. Chris Knowles' work is true artistry in this sense, very much appreciated. Can't wait to get hold of his books and hear from him again.