Standing Below Documentaries
(Chocolate Monk) CDR $7.00 (Out-of-stock)
COMING SOON. “Craig Stewart Johnson explores dusty corners of life in the seven separate pieces that make up Standing Below Documentaries” reports Joe Murray.” His specialism is, of course, surfing the mobius twist, navigating that ouroboros nosh with techniques deployed that reveal a singular approach to music, thinking and visual art. It will never end but it will continually smear, redact, erase and surgically slice. This is no wanton reductionism. There is a universe of subtle crawling detail awaiting a hungry listener. Tones rise like eggs joyfully surfacing in boiling milk, exposing their proud, smooth curves as white bubbles suddenly crest the hot saucepan edge messing up the kitchen. Sloopy tape-wrek cools and crusts on the floor tiles, each mountainous ridge squelched under thick rubber crocs. The lonely piano sobs in the corner, yellowing teeth pulled by distracted rusty hands for an eternity. This endless work uncovers the secret rhythm of the spheres printed onto each saddle-backed blood cell. Diary hacks! Where secret thoughts and longings are revealed. The babble of endless ‘content’ is given a sharp poke in the eye. The dictaphone, with its primitive condenser-ear, channels our words and phrases into glorious ghosts. Each rippling with fizzing static, mysterious as kirlian photography. It’s not all scuffed metallic rationality. Real beauty exists within these pieces, airy notes are placed like a ripe pear, a fat lute, a deep blue silk scarf in some varnish-darkened still life hidden away in a Ghent suburb. Lost at sea. The cruel ocean laughs haughtily at humanity’s concerns. But the groan of the rope, quickly lashed to the various planks and barrels keeping us afloat comfort us all. Fibrous stretch and release become a faint heartbeat of hope, the flickering creak of dreams. The wrench of an elbow pulled backwards. The explosion of pain, without colour or weight, dissolves into one million stars. Relief is a salve applied in thick greasy strokes. The bright dry crack of a walking stick on a polished wooden floor restores a strict order. Lazy bees fumble their cues again. Clotting in piss-yellow clouds. A subdued menace. The circle anti-clockwise and I find myself thinking, ‘is that normal behaviour?’ until the swarm spirals like a galaxy and is reduced to sweet-scented dust.” Edition of 50