Some of the stories in vermillion sands prefigured sound art, and in there own warped way predicted many concepts that are currently explored. The sound sweep is another example of Ballard’s warped take on music. Interestingly, there’s that Buggles song “Video Killed the Radio Star” which essentially describes the narrative of that story, if you’re looking for it.

As far as musicians inspired by Ballard, I’m a fledgling composer myself (about to begin an MFA program at Mills college for electronic music), and have personally had his influence creep into my work. More so with noise/punk projects, but his work seems to not only articulate certain themes that are conceptually appealing, but also serves as a reference point that evokes a particular perspective.

I count at least 5 that should be considered ‘sound art’ in that they focus on urban found sound (mostly untreated) and the way we hear them: namely the pieces by Camilla Hannan, Alan Lamb and Jodi Rose, as well as the Crash! montage and the Conet Project extract. At a pinch, the Cousin Silas piece might be bracketed in this way, too.

But I take your point; i probably shouldn’t have called the entire playlist ‘Ballardian sound art’!

Schütze es to say he is actually lurking on this site, and that he wrote a piece called Vermilion Sands on the Lo Collaborations Vol 2 compilation, and that Green Evil was inspired by Crystal World. He has also made photo artworks of drained swimming pools, viewable at this url

http://www.paulschutze.com/drowned-moon.html

If John Coulthard would like to get in touch via john@johngillwrites.com, I might also be able to suggest ways of getting hold of Paul’s stuff.

And, yes, he is cute… I think the man’s a genius.

yours pseudonymously…

“DJ, producer, and label-owner, Kode 9 is one of the most consistently innovative leaders of the dubstep scene. He’ll be playing exclusive tunes, doing a live mix, and discussing low-end theory from J.G. Ballard dystopianism to dub’s viral nature.”

I’ve done my best to accumulate the complete works of PS but some of the early Extreme releases proved frustratingly elusive. I know they got reissued but the shops round here never seemed to stock them and by the time I got round to ordering anything I could only get Green Evil. I shouldn’t complain; in an era of overabundance and continual reissues of lost works it’s good to have something left to search for. And he may yet reissue the stuff himself, of course.

He has a boyfriend? Damn. Cos, ya know…clever, talented, cute, etc.

Yours from a small unnamed Greek island…

thanks

And I’d forgotten the singing sculptures in Vermilion Sands. Must dig it out again…

Paul seems to have been rather prolific while he was making music. I’ve got an Extreme compilation, must dig it out again…

Re: music in Ballard. There’s muzak in Super-Cannes I recall, but I guess my point is that there’s more noise, hence my affinity for the found sound of Alan Lamb and so on.

There’s a couple of musical moments I can think of in Ballard’s corpus, notably the singing statues of Vermilion Sands. And don’t Kerans and Beatrice Dahl while away the hours listening to Beethoven in The Drowned World?