The Dominion - John Haney

Mail Order Tielli: Infinite Joy from a Subscriber's Perspective

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 02:21:14 +0000

It was a chance I was happily willing to take. Apparently, so the story goes, Martin Tielli's close friends and acquaintances assured him that one cannot simply unload four albums of music on the listening public in one skull-cracking whump. Thus, it was decided to bleed out this music one record at a time. To help finance the project up front, subscriptions were sold; each subscriber would receive four albums over the course of one year. The project would be named Tielli 2003: a fitting tag for what looked to be an epic undertaking. Having waited three months past the estimated time of arrival and having received many e-mails of assurance from Six Shooter Records, I was very smug to discover a signed, numbered, editioned disc in my mailbox.

Tielli is best known for his perfect vocal and guitar caterwauling, and for song-writing with the Toronto rock group the Rheostatics. Two years ago, his eponymous first solo album -- commonly referred to as We didn't even suspect that he was the poppy salesman, or simply The Poppy Album -- was released and met with considered critical regard. Tielli has also made work with his other band, Nick Buzz. On this most recent outing, Tielli brought in the skills of, among others, Nick Buzz band mate Jon Goldsmith, who both produces and plays.

The track "Beauty On" opens the album with a throttled piano, foot stomping, and playful vocal acrobatics declaring "I hate you all/you smell like borrowed ideas". Apart from overt nods to some of Tielli's musical heroes, this album smells nothing of borrowed ideas. From start to finish, it must be one of the most peculiar, playful, cerebral, and highly individualistic records recently made.

The album plays like a journey. It is certainly not a concept album (perhaps a misleading and overused term to begin with), though there is something under the surface that does bring the word 'concept' to mind. This does not have to do with subject matter, though there are recurring themes, the most obvious of which is water. Half of the songs on the album use repeating water imagery: ocean, sea, rain, water, pools, shore, river, ice, Atlantic, waves, surf, meniscus--what a delight it is to hear the word 'meniscus' inconspicuously inserted into a song! Nor is there a particular musical theme. The path of the album is an emotional one. The first half plays with the logical up-and-down tempo and mood of a perfect mix tape, and has a somewhat jovial tone. After a decidedly funky interpretation of Smog's "Cold Blooded Old Times", the album takes on an intensely sombre feel. This section begins with "Winnipeg" and, with the cacophonous skronking of saxophones, comes whirling to a close with the end of the juggernaut "Ship of Fire". This song may have been written and performed with Neil Young smashing his guitar in the darker corners of Tielli's brain (certain images and guitar lines are almost certainly homage).

Operation Infinite Joy is meaty. It is not light fare. It cannot be played as background music, because it demands listening. There is not a random or accidental note to be found, but rather an intensity which suggests deliberation at every point of the writing, playing, and recording process. The music draws attention to itself in such a way as to be an exercise in hearing. It is a sprawling effort, accreting sound over sound in a choreography of instruments, thoughts, and voices that could only have been divined during all-nighters behind studio walls. However, the record is impressive not only for its sounds, but for the spaces and echoes between the sounds; a resonance is made from quiet and silence.

In a photocopied note accompanying the record, handwritten by Tielli to the subscriber, he states, "I apologize for the delay on this first offering but I figured that every bit better it could be--it would be." The selection and ordering of tracks was, apparently, a painstaking process. To the last minute, Tielli was creating reams of original artwork (he is also a strong visual artist) to accompany the music. The disc is presented beautifully in a blue and grey tin. When one creative mind declares authority over so many aspects of a production, disasters can abound. However, OIJ is strange and beautiful in its sound, its look, its intention. There is always a possibility that something so supremely individual will fall short in genuine quality, which this record does not. Tielli has obviously taken the necessary time to ensure that all aspects of this project are aesthetic. OIJ sets a high standard for what comes next--Arnold Schoenberg Berlin Cabaret, a four song, sixteen minute interpretation of some of Schoenberg's work with the said cabaret. More importantly, however, it sets a high standard for everything else that comes next.

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The non-subscription version of Operation Infinite Joy is currently available in record stores. It comes in a regular cd jewel case and without the two bonus tracks which have been tacked on to the end of the subscription version.

Wayzgoose

Thu, 26 Jun 2003 10:09:35 +0000

The unseasonably warm afternoon of April 26 of this year was the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Wayzgoose festival of the printing arts in Grimsby, Ontario. A curiously named event (various sources confirm that, historically, a cooked goose did indeed figure prominently), the Wayzgoose festival is a gathering for practitioners of all arts relating to the production of fine, small-editioned, usually hand-made books. Small press operators, book binders, paper makers, printmakers, and others gather together in the Grimsby Public Art Gallery (in the basement of the Grimsby Public Library) to share knowledge and beautiful things not only with each other, but also with a respectable number of faithful and/or curious members of the public.

A woodcut by Margaret Lock; from the keepsake "December", Locks' Press, 1999. Fred and Margaret Lock were amongst the exhibitors at this year's Wayzgoose.

Wayzgoose was first organized in 1978 by the industrial designer and master printer Bill Poole, who operated Poole Hall Press out of Grimsby, an otherwise typical Southern Ontario town butted up against the Niagara Escarpment, faced by Lake Ontario, and slashed across the middle by the Queen Elizabeth Way. What brings printing aficionados to the Wayzgoose from as far away as the Maritimes is a quixotic concern for, quite simply, beautiful things -- books as aesthetic objects. William Rueter, founder and sole operator of Aliquando Press, had for display and sale a beautifully conceived broadsheet, with a simply ornamented quotation by George Bernard Shaw:

There is nothing on earth more exquisite than a bonny book, with well-placed columns of rich black writing in beautiful borders, and illuminated pictures cunningly inset. But nowadays, instead of looking at books, people read them.

Certainly, those who peddle their wares at the Wayzgoose are the type to look as well as read; they are those gentle, harmless lunatics who would endure great physical obstacles in order to hold, sniff, and stroke a handmade book.

John Metcalf, the Ottawa-based writer and editor, puts it succinctly in his memoir, An Aesthetic Underground, when describing his discovered love for books as objects:

I wallowed in bindings and leathers and fonts, in all the lovely jargon of the trade, half-titles, colophons, blind stamping, foxing, black letter, washed leaves, cancels ... I came to believe that there were few things in the world more beautiful than the deep burning black of Baskerville type on crisp rag paper.

Having only recently gained a view into this new world of fine books myself, I was surprised to see at the Wayzgoose not only the exhibiting artists, but an enthusiastic turnout from the public. After all, one doesn't find one's way into the basement of the Grimsby Public Library by accident. Many people had come expressly for the purpose of seeing these deliberate, considered bookworks. Apparently, many more people than I had imagined were interested, or at least intrigued. I was troubled by my own surprise, and I pondered the reason for it.

Good, and especially great book artists are a grossly underrated crew. They have chosen to work in a medium which is challenging in that it is ubiquitous. A painter might splash abominable hotel-art watercolours of flowers and nudes, but to the common perception this brush-wielder is -- by association with Impressionists and Surrealists -- an artist. Those who spend obsessive months hunched over a hulking iron printing press, sweating over the proportions and placement of a colophon, are working with the more 'common' media of paper, ink, and type -- and therefore might more likely be thought certifiably loony than genuinely artistic. In a day when computers are pandemic as viruses, anyone with access to design software has access to the medium of typography. And with contemporary design software comes almost infinite possibility: thousands of fonts and colours, the ability to adjust spacing on the level of the pixel. From this environment of ubiquity and possibility emerges the art of restraint.

This restraint focusses the artist on a simple and beautiful notion: the arrangement of symbols on two-dimensional space. Inexperience makes itself obvious through unconsidered and overcompensated design -- design that makes up in clutter for what it lacks in compositional sense. The experienced designer, on the other hand, may achieve by the simplest means a perfect balance of the form and content of a piece of printed matter. The composition sings. One is taken aback by the surprising pleasure of it -- an inked-type-induced elation, which I suspect for many of us is followed by a brief moment of, perhaps, embarrassment or confusion -- such as one would feel when admitting that he truly, genuinely, loves those pine-tree-shaped air fresheners that dangle from rear-view mirrors.

Still, on the last Saturday of next April, I will find myself in strange but familiar tire ruts that lead back to the basement of the Grimsby Public Library, for my second visit with that exclusive club of lunatics. Admittedly, this is a club that I would be honoured to be a part of, even if they'd have me as a member.

John Haney is a photographer and occasional printer, currently living in Sackville, New Brunswick.

The unseasonably warm afternoon of April 26 of this year was the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Wayzgoose festival of the printing arts in Grimsby, Ontario. The Wayzgoose festival is a gathering for practitioners of all arts relating to the production of fine, small-editioned, usually hand-made books. - by John Haney -