"And now it's playtime"

(CINdY 1985, Abstract Magazine)


I'm with you tonight without mask or clothes
I'm in your hands like a leper I crawl and hide burnt by the sunlight and chased by the cold.
We're in some strangely-lit room no signs of decay until twilight falls over us to show us our way
beyond the comfort of loneliness we follow our footsteps dancing dancing...
I'm lying naked on the floor with my hands held up high
Something is forcing down upon me scarring my body gashing..
A piano plays quietly lullaby-like in the background
Won't you fuck me with your sin
A child rushes into the room,crying... but takes no notice of me lying naked on the floor
She walks over to the window and throws some bread to the birds by the wall
She stands by the window for a while just watching the birds then runs back through the room laughing...
And now it's playtime and some pathway through a laugh and a jolt and a laugh
Your train-stations are my radio-waves
In no mans' land
Some kind of romance
Some kind of romance...

(CINdY 1982)




From ABSTRACT Magazine Issue 5


"Playtime" was especially recorded for this project,it wouldn't exist otherwise.
We wanted to do something short and suggestive rather than structured and clear.
It was a step beyond "Camouflage Heart",though an uneasy,tentative and only partially succesful step".

For the recording of "Playtime",Cindytalk was:
Gordon Sharp: Voice and percussion
Debbie Wright: Voice and instruments
Alex Wright: Instruments
John Byrne: Instruments

Recorded at Alaska Studios,London

(Added to the player)

More on the Wrights and Cindytalk

Powers of Ten (1977)

A while ago,I came across this information:

"Btw, I had a duo with Gordon during that period, dubbed 'Pills for Ills' for the Wexner and Cleveland Cinematheque live performances of new film scores we had composed (to accompany two of Charles and Ray Eames' great films, 'Powers of Ten' and 'Tops') as part of the avant garage music/film series, for a couple consecutive years of its run"...
So I asked Phillip, for more...

"I met Gordon in the late '90s shortly after he moved to Columbus, Ohio where I have lived since 1990.
At the time, I was working in an 'art house' video rental store that was called Aardvark Video and he became a customer there. We soon became friends and shortly began to collaborate on the music/film scores.
I was then, and still remain, enamored of the Charles and Ray Eames films- some of which I saw as a child in my early school days- and I had recently rediscovered them after reading a book by Paul Schrader ('Schrader on Schrader') in which he devoted a section to them.
I had begun making music for short films a few years earlier, mainly by participating in an annual series called the Avant Garage Music and Film festival, which my friend Tim Lanza organized and ran for about 8 or 9 consecutive years.
The general concept of the series was to have several artists or groups compose new scores to accompany existing (often silent) short films, and to perform these live with the film screenings in a public venue for an audience.
I suggested to Gordon that we should attempt to re-score the Eames' films 'Powers of Ten' or "Tops",depending on his reaction to seeing them for the first time. We first watched 'Powers of Ten' and he responded immediately to it, even DJing along with it on this first viewing, if I remember things correctly.
He happened to have had some records already selected that- by sheer coincidence- seemed to work perfectly for the film, and we decided immediately that we would perform a new score based on this for the series. Gordon would perform with two turntables and I would be adding electric static and guitar noises. This was performed at the Wexner Center for the Arts and was well received.
We enjoyed the experience ourselves and decided to do another score for the Eames' film "Tops" the following year for the next installment of the series. Gordon was to be away during the dates of the actual performances, so he contributed to the score with a recording of a piano piece he had improvised some time earlier.
This piece also happened to accidentally work perfectly for a major section of the film and I found it easy to incorporate this into what was otherwise a drum and melodica-based score.
I performed it alone on melodica along with the recorded piano and drum pieces for the film screenings which occurred in Columbus and Cleveland, at the Wexner Center and the Cleveland Cinemateque, respectively.
The name 'Pills for Ills' was a purely ridiculous one I had chosen to use for this second collaboration of ours, partly because I believed I would have to present it myself in Gordon's absence and didn't want the ads to specifically list (or NOT list) him by name as appearing."

Between 1950 and 1982, Charles and Ray Eames made over 100 short films ranging from 1 to 30 minutes in length.
They also made slide shows and multiscreen presentations.
From 1953 is this visually stunning production,

A Communications Primer
Delightful.

Related article in Senses of Cinema

Up Here in the Clouds

From Isolation Recordings website:



"For its first CD release of the year,
Isolation is delighted to announce that this will be
Up Here In The Clouds by Cindytalk.
Up Here In The Clouds is a laptop set by Cindytalk,
who for the past 25 years have been beguiling
and challenging listeners with their beautiful,
uncompromising sound.
The album will be released in a limited edition of 500."

Imagery

The two bottles found in some Cindytalk-related images come from Smile Magazine,produced by Stewart Home in 1985.
About his graphics,he has said:
"...my graphics are usually simple. A prime example of this is a photograph of a packet of tea with the word 'FREEDOM' underneath. These two elements set up a simple but effective dialectical opposition between the slogan 'FREEDOM' and the historical reality of the production of tea being based on slavery.
So while there isn't necessarily much visual delectation to be taken from the graphic and it only requires the viewer to look at it for a few minutes, for anyone intelligent enough to understand how the racket we call society is organized, this combo could potentially spark off hours of thought on the inequities of commodity production and the bourgeois world."

"Haud yer WHEESHT!"

In January 2007 Cindytalk signed a licensing deal with Italian distributors Abraxas.
A sub-label,Wheesht, will shortly be re-issuing their entire back catalogue,re-mastered and re-packaged.
Wheesht will be "run" by Gordon Sharp and longtime friend Maurizio Fasolo of Italian band Pankow.

Sharps' own label touchedRAW is in the process of releasing three albums:
* Cindytalk - "The Crackle Of My Soul"
* Matt Kinnison - "Evenings Of Ordinary Sand"
* Ship On Fire - "Bits And Bobby August"
London independent label Isolation will release another Cindytalk album, "Up Here In The Clouds" (2007).