RAW DJVJ

Robert Anton Wilson and the DJVJ Revolution.

"enter the mix"--Ninjajamm.

Friday, March 19, 2010. (edited 01/03/2017)

I dedicate this writing to Ken Campbell and the Science Fiction Theater of Liverpool, and to creative artists who use music, theater, and multimedia to inspire others and spread the wisdom across all corners of the metaphorical toast.

Approx. three years ago (now 10!) Matt Black, Ken Campbell, Alan Moore and Mixmaster Morris spearheaded a multimedia tribute to Robert Anton Wilson, held at the Royal Queen Elizabeth Festival Hall in London. This mindwarping event was at the vanguard of (2007) technology, directed toward expanding consciousness and connecting the emergent networks of raw-heads with wicked edutainment.

I helped connect Matt B with Deepleaf productions and the Maybelogic Movie/Academy, to record some of the exquisite video material used in the 2.5 hour extravaganza. With some help, I also managed to find an independent host for the entire show (sadly no longer) and have been ruthlessly promoting the event since March 2007, together with other works of Dr. Robert Anton Wilson

On the 31st of August 2008 the great British writer, comedian, actor Ken Campbell passed. He was the comic-glue who pulled the whole QEII tribute event together, as the raging ring master. Ken preserved the biting wit and information rich satire that I find budding within RAW. and that seems to me desperately missing from the the popular pop conspiracy movement. There have been a number of fitting tributes to the life of Ken Campbell and I hope that someday, somebody will produce an equally stunning multimedia tribute to Ken, like that which was made for Bob. (this has now been done)

I can also trace most of my reasoning for being here to Jung’s dream (Page 223 of Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections) situated in Liverpool, a dream that inspired the creation of the science fiction theatre Liverpool. The theater that the science fiction drama group inhabited, first opened on the day that C.G Jung died (6th June, 1961) and is just down the road from where John Lennon and the Beatles first sang Yellow submarine, you can read about this on page 223 of Cosmic Trigger.

The fact that Jung called Liverpool the ‘pool’ of life is due to this dream he had. I find particular interest in the fact that the dream concerns the discovery of a swimming pool. More than half of the dreams i remember are in pools. I first came across the works of Robert Anton Wilson in the mid 1990’s while living in the UK, and the sources of my discovery lead me to deduct that Bill Drummond and the KLF, who were carrying the money burning flame of discord in the UK at that time, probably led to my coming across Cosmic Trigger. Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty were there, back in 1976 when Bill was working briefly alongside Ken Campbell, and Jimmy came to see the show. In the RAW tribute video Bill describes how he first came across the book Illuminatus Trilogy!

Bill spoke of his new seventeen project and ‘no music day’ that also came up on radio show (2009) on the 'late late breakfast show' that also featured my friend John Sinclair, who admires 'Wild' Bill Drummond, which brings us by a commodious vicus of recirculation back to the JAMS!

RAW attracted me to the United States in 2000 A.D and led me on a five year journey acriss-cross the United States and back to Europe (2005). The day after the Royal Tribute to RAW I flew out from London to Amsterdam and have lived here since then. I once caught up with Matt Black and Mike Ladd at a Coldcut gig when they played the 'Paradiso' club in 2008. (Breaking: Coldcut just released a new album together with On-U sound: https://coldcut.bandcamp.com/

Since the London performance Coldcut and the constellation of artists that appear under that umbrella have produced countless ‘live’ shows, recorded and released ‘tracks’ ‘albums’ and even a conscious social green movement called of energyunion, continuing they're trajectory into the uncharted territory of multimedia manipulation and networked sound artivism.

As some of the first visual jockeys (VJ's) and inventors of the first VJ software that I am aware of: VJAMM’ Coldcut and by extension Ninjatune have been the mainstay of tech innovation. I was first attracted to Ninjatune by way of the Jazz Breaks series around 1994 and some of the early releases from Journey's by DJ’s, Luke Vibert, DJ Food, Amon Tobin and Funki Porcini. This new sound, to me, together with the emerging Bristol bass music scene, some Drum and Bass brewing in Birmingham and Wolverhampton, and the sounds of James Lavelle's Mo-Wax, oozed with dubbed out blunted beats. These sounds more or less shaped my musical cultural leanings for a while, and inspired me to acquire turntables, a mixer, and learn the arts of the DJ.

One sure fire sign that Ninjatune, or somebody at Ninjatune had a respect for RAW came when they released NINJASKINS: Ninjatune signature rolling papers. They came with a wonderfully intelligent fold out package describing various terms and phrases of Ninjatune philosophy, with RAW undertones. In collaboration with UK graffiti artist and music producer PART2 we made a tune that was released on Ninjatune’s sister label ‘Big Dada records’ in 1999. The track was called Quantum Mechanix’ from the album Equalibrium by New Flesh For Old Featuring DJ Weston. I carried the album to the US wishing to turn Bob onto Big Dada and Ninjatune.

After spending some time with RAW at the Prophets Conference Palm Springs and in San Francisco, I was invited to his home to conduct an interview on September 10th 2002. It was here he told me about a movie project he was working on with some locals tentatively called Maybelogic, and so i got in contact with 'Deepleaf productions' and quickly turned them onto Ninjatune, and some other musical entities I thought had an affinity with RAW, like cosmic-jazz cats 'Kosmic Renaissance' (The Supplicants). For this linking I was generously given associate producer credits on the finished movie, plus my mash-up from the DVD menu music, featuring Garaj Mahal bassist Kai Eckhardt. A movie all about RAW with a soundtrack including The Cinematic Orchestra, Amon Tobin, Boards Of Canada, Funki Porcini, and others, what?

I had done nothing more than send an email, but for me, after this spree of fortune i would tireless promote this movie and of the Maybelogic Academy (which sprung up in 2004 to provide online classes led by RAW) and of Ninjatune, playing many releases for over sixteen years (now 23) I credit Ninja with inspiring me to experiment with DJ sets and mixing techniques. Since moving to Amsterdam my musical diet changed once again, in favor of live music and writing projects influenced by my encounter with the giant of music, poetry, and activism, John Sinclair

"Although the circumstances for this event were somewhat rare and the resources to reproduce such an event based on donations for the most part, I still feel it stands as an testimony to Multimedia edutainment at its most terse and best, almost fully formed in its experimental launch that night the video teaches by example how educational lectures may look and sound like over the new decade.--Matt Black."

Although the show is 3 (10) years old, it has not picked up dust only moonlight, and it seems more relevant each day that passes, it stands as a great experimental interface between cinema, music, theater, comedy that I feel culturally binds America, Britain and the rest of Europe, and the entire world. All schools, colleges and University programs would benefit from such an interactive DJ VJ interfacing class.

For me Alan Moore produces consistent work that secures his place as the greatest living Englishman. A well rounded genius, and widely celebrated as such, he exhibits a creative interpretation of 'art and reality engineering', buttered up with RAW recipes. To see and hear Alan reading from ‘Masks of the Illuminati’ together with his wonderfully bright ‘eulogy’ for RAW (Featured in my Ninjajamm Pack above) was a heart thumping highlight of the evening in London, his accent made me feel personally at home. His first words from Masks included “A watchmaker in Amsterdam...” The following morning i flew to Amsterdam to attend the 'Jam in the Dam' festival and meet with the band Galactic, from New Orleans.

I have a long list of thanks and wish to add some extra names to those on the E-flyer’ Matt Black, Lance Boucher, Nigel Blunt, Nick Larson, Part2, Ninjatune office staff, Juice Aleem, John Sinclair, Galactic, Mixmaster Morris, Mike Ladd, Propanon, Toby Philpott.

"Ken Campbell: We did it in Liverpool because Peter O'Hallaghan had come across a dream in Jung's Memories, Dreams, Reflections. The dream changed Jung's life, persuaded him to buckle down to the unconscious for the rest of his life. Anyway, on page 223 he says something like: I was in a dark and grimy city. It was clearly Liverpool. It goes on . . . And this began to obsess Peter who was a proud Liverpoolophile. http://www.frogboy.freeuk.com/ken.html

“At O'Halligan's venue, known as the Liverpool School of Language, Music, Dream and Pun, artists became immersed in readings, performances and bizarre experiments. "It was the inspirational talking shop, where dole-queue dreamers developed their big ideas," Bill Drummond says. - http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2007/feb/21/europeancapitalofculture2008.liverpool

NinjaJamm - The final chapter (2017)

In 2012 a team of coders and developers came together to build a new audio remixing app called Ninjajamm. Spearheaded by Matt Black of Coldcut, the project became an instant success, winning the support of many NinjaTune artists, app reviewers and users.

Due to the unique share and remix attitude of Matt, NinjaJamm stands out as yet another example of innovative decentralized technology that encourages play, discovery and community, ninja jamming. Culture jamming and hacking are similar activities, re-purposed technology, crafty new tools. With literally hundreds of remixes of any given NJ release, everybody who has a device can download the app free! and begin remixing. Each downloadable ‘Tune Pack’ is like any other digital mp3 release, but with the major difference of being handed over as individual stems, to rearrange. This design intervention intervenes in the major record company world, by giving you and everybody else the means to make your own remix, share it, jam with others.

With a little effort and concentration it's now possible to create and upload your own Tune Packs, made with your own samples, and so tool-up creative audio outlaws, for little or no cost, and begin jamming. I recently made 3 Robert Anton Wilson inspired Tune Packs: ‘Kick Out The Jamms’  ‘Fly Raw’ (See Above), and ‘Fly Walk’ (watch this space)

Special thanks to Tom Grashion, who actually programmed the pack, and to  Alex, Aneek, Matt B and all Ninja's at www.ninjajamm.net

MaybeLogic Dome.

Find The Others festival was a three day confestival of discordia and high weirdness in Liverpool, November 2014. I organized the 'Maybe Logic dome' exhibition, which was a series of films made for projecting inside an 8 ft. inflatable dome (provided by Mario of immersive theaters). Although i didn't end up getting all the video together and rendered correctly for the show, the list of contributors helps to define my on-going vision for a touring Maybe Logic dome, or mobile pop-up Academy. I see the Dome projections as a new intermediary between virtual reality and augmented reality. You are sharing a 360 experience together, rather than in your own goggle world. Treats from David McConvile (BFI) Bobby Campbell, Youth, Coldcut, Alan Moore, Maybe Logic Academy Faculty, and Morley Markson. Plus DJ Food.

In the summer of 2014 it was announced that Daisy Campbell would produce a stage adaptation of 'Cosmic Trigger I" by Robert Anton Wilson. The Cosmic Trigger Play was like an ultrasonic magnet to me, and i made the trip to meet the producers and landed the role of musical director. Over the next 5 months i worked my balls off on recording, arranging, writing, and producing music for the play (with much help from the legendary Tim Egmond in Amsterdam) most of which was not used due to a late decision to have me playing 'live' drums. Some of the recordings went into a Ninjajamm pack called Fly Raw.

My original idea was to cut a vinyl record full of sounds and samples to be played during the performance, but a combination of factors, lack of funds and lack of time led to this idea being shelved. However, for the purposes of this article i think that there are certainly openings for turntables and theater to combine forces, Kid Koala Q-Bert, DJ Food, and DJ Spooky are already experimenting in this area. (See my published novel 'Sixty' and 'Open Source History' due for release later this year)

DJ Greg Wilson and Super Weird Substance are about to perform together with Alan Moore and full gang of RAW heads in Liverpool, April 1st. Celebrating the Mandrillifesto of Alan Moore, and the music dance entertainments of Super Weird Substance.

The KLF have announced a new album in 2017 and the release of a science fiction trilogy. The justified ancients of mumu seem very much alive and kicking. The DJ/VJ revolution continues to move minds and bodies across the planet, thanks to all those keeping it epic and encyclopedic, global and local. Peace.

--Steve Fly, Amsterdam 01/03/2017

John Higgs talks with Rawillumination about his new book on The KLF and RAW

Raw scholars of the highest caliber in conversation. Thanks Tom. 

JMR Higgs talks about his new book on The KLF and RAW

It's strange to say that a book about a British pop group is one of the best short introductions to the work of Robert Anton Wilson, but it's also true. JMR Higgs' KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money discusses the group but puts it in the context of the band's biggest influence, the Illuminatus! trilogy and Robert Anton Wilson.

So it's a pop biography that has lucid explanations of reality tunnels, model agnosticism and Discordian philosophy. I also learned about the history of Ken Campbell's stage production of Illuminatus!

Mr. Higgs entered the literary scene with I Have America Surrounded: A Biography of Timothy Leary, which I plan to read next year. His novel, The Brandy of the Damned, appeared this year and another novel, The First Church on the Moon, is largely complete. The Tumblr companion for the KLF book is here.

Higgs, who lives in the United Kingdom with his family, cheerfully agreed when I asked if I could pose some questions. This interview took place a couple of days ago via email.

What impelled you to write a new book on The KLF? Your bibliography shows that other books have been written on The KLF.

Hi Tom, yeah there have been fanzine histories and The KLF have been mentioned in broader music books, but there hasn’t been a book like this. One of the main reasons for writing it was a desire to write about Robert Anton Wilson and Discordianism, because that was the obvious next step after writing a book about Leary.

I’m a sucker for writing about ideas, but really what I like are ideas that kick up an absolute shitstorm in the wider world. That was fine for a Leary book, because he escaped from jail and was hunted around the world by the US government and so on. But I couldn’t think of a way to write about Bob Wilson which brought more to the party than we already had in that fantastic ‘Maybe Logic’ documentary. So this was my response to that problem – tracing those ideas all the way to that burning of a million quid on a remote Scottish island.

Why do you wish the two members of The KLF had not burned 1 million pounds?

Ah, good question. I said that because every era has a strange undercurrent of previously unthinkable ideas preparing to bubble up to the surface, and during my formative years that current was the Chaos current. The Chaos current, by definition, is never dull but it is not concerned with destination, and for me there’s something unsatisfying about that. (This, in part, was the cause of my unease about the book before putting it out.)

I wrote the book to record an aspect of the history I lived through which was in danger of being lost. That’s all well and good, but I couldn’t help think those in earlier eras such as the Enlightenment or the Renaissance or even the Sixties had more fun, and at times when I was deep in the book I would grumble about how what fell to my generation was sodding chaos and money burning.

That said, after getting the book out I feel much happier about the whole thing, and if Cauty and Drummond wanted to burn a million pounds, then good luck to them. There were far worse eras to live through. It was certainly better than the early 20th Century, when the strange undercurrent was all proto-Nazis and Aleister Crowley fucking goats and the like.

Has there been any response by Bill Drummond or Jimmy Cauty to your book?

Not that I’m aware of, but then I wrote the book and put it out without informing them. That’s not an approach I’d use for any other non-fiction book, I should add, but it was necessary for this one.

There are two main approaches to non-fiction - the first is the academic, encyclopaedic approach where you painstakingly pile on fact after fact and hope the accumulated impact on the reader gets the subject across. The second is about capturing the spirit of the thing – something like the Led Zeppelin book ‘Hammer of the Gods’ is a good example of this - and that was what I was trying to do here. An ‘official’ or ‘approved’ or even an ‘acknowledged’ book wouldn’t have been in the spirit of the thing, and that would have damaged the book.

That said, I did meet Jimmy Cauty when I first attempted this book about five years ago. He was a lovely guy and as helpful as you could wish, but speaking to him I couldn’t shake the impression that deep down he wished that no-one would ever mention The KLF or the money burning ever again. Shortly after that the publisher who had wanted to put that book out went kaput, so I put it to one side and left it. Or I tried to, anyway.

Your new book says that the "path" you chose in telling the story of The KLF was determined by a desire to "create a narrative that was (a) a good yarn and (b) something that would mess with the reader's head on as deep a level as possible." Does this describe your objectives in The Brandy of the Damned?

I was being a bit flippant there to drum home the notion that all non-fiction books are far from neutral truths, but that said it is pretty close to my approach to Brandy. Although Brandy really is intended to heal and sooth the reader’s head, rather than mess with it. I think of it as a balm. It is supposed to feel complete and satisfying at the end, even if it only makes sense on a subconscious level. It’s supposed to leave you feeling new and clean, and positive. I’m not claiming that I achieved that, of course, but that was the aim.

I’m quite open that all my books are attempts to hack the reader’s mind without them noticing, reprogramme them a little and send them on their way subtly different to how they were before. Advertisers do this all the time, but they are doing it to make you unhappy and to make you want things you don’t actually want. In that context I don’t think what I try to do is too much of a liberty. I get all this from Robert Anton Wilson, of course - anyone who’s read Cosmic Trigger and the like will know how books have the power to alter readers like that.

It’s a lot of work, writing a book, and I couldn’t do it if my ambitions were just to entertain or to distract or whatever. There are enough books that can do that already, and we really don’t need anymore. I have to convince myself that the finished work will be a more valuable use of my time than going round and giving all my friends and family a hug, or hanging out and making them a cup of tea or whatever.

How is the First Church on the Moon coming along? Our friend Orlando Monk from The Brandy of the Damned will turn up again, will he not?

He will – for one scene at least. The book’s going great and the aim is to finish the first draft by Dec 31st, so that I can think to myself, “2012? Oh yeah, I wrote three books in 2012.”

The First Church on the Moon is much more of an out-and-out comedy. Whereas Brandy is aimed at the head, without being rational, First Church is aimed at the heart, without being sentimental. (The third and final part of the trilogy is about sex and death in a way that is neither gothic nor erotic. But that’s a tale for later!)

First Church will be fun and daft and just be a real pleasure to read, with the ambition behind it not becoming apparent until the end. It’s the first thing I’ve done that I think has mainstream appeal, so I’ve got to decide whether to hawk it around big publishers or put it out quickly with the others. Going mainstream with it makes a lot of sense until you realise that it wouldn’t then appear until 2015, which would destroy any momentum I’ve been building up this year. So, you may see it soon, you may not.

Why did you release your book under the Creative Commons license? Are you unconcerned that some people might obtain copies without paying for them?

That doesn’t really bother me, if I’m honest, the more heads I can get into the better. Putting my books out under the Creative Commons Attribution/Non-Commercial license  and keeping the ebooks DRM free, just seems the healthiest approach to writing these days.

That said, the fact that the character of Orlando Monk declared himself to be Public Domain is more of a worry. I woke from a dream when I was writing ‘Brandy’ thinking, “Shit! Orlando Monk has put himself in the Public Domain!”, so I added that to the text because that book had to be true to my subconscious.

That was more worrying because I’ve got a backstory to that character that I like a lot and think is pretty outrageous, but I’d have to adapt it if others start adding things to the character. The first person who was going to add Orlando Monk to one of their stories, incidentally, died shortly afterwards. That’s not connected, of course, but I mention it whenever possible in an effort to unsettle other writers who might be thinking about using him.

You mention that you did not actually read Illuminatus! until you were 90 percent finished with the book. What did you think of it after reading RAW's nonfiction books?

I had read the first volume twenty years earlier, but I’d never got round to finishing the full thing. But that first book alone definitely opened me up and changed me for good. Most of the RAW I’ve read has been non-fiction so I’m anxiously waiting for his back catalogue to appear as ebooks so I can have a good wallow in his fiction (they’re not always easy to get hold of in the UK). I’m eager for any news about when his back catalogue will appear on ebook, incidentally!

I think publishing RAW ebooks is important. At the moment his work is kept alive by the Californian counter-culture, the conspiracy theory scene, Libertarians and the like and that’s great, but it’s also stopping his ideas from spreading further, where they are needed. As I say in The KLF book, Bob’s multi-model agnosticism does seem to me to be the only way forward from the whole post-modernism thing, without retreating into false certainties and ignoring the things that brought us to post-modernism in the first place. So I’m genuine when I say that I think he was one of the most important thinkers of the late twentieth century, but I’m aware that may not seem convincing in light of the lurid 70s book covers and so on.

I think a lot about how RAW should be presented to the 21st Century but I don’t really have any great ideas about how to do that at the moment. I will write more about this at some point. But in the meantime, I want to say how important blogs like yours are and the research you do – so thank you for all your work!