Live in London 1982

In Autumn 1982, in Brixton, London, Brion Gysin, the eternal accomplice of William Burroughs, renewed the methods of performance by reciting texts, hastily brought together with this performance, accompanied by Slits-member, Tessa, Steve of Rip, Rig and Panic, Gile of Penguin Café Orchestra, and Ramuntcho Matta on guitar. Ramuntcho, in the style of Brion, called this session "White Funk." Most of the texts were written upon meeting Burroughs, at the time of the invention of the cut-up. The influence that Brion Gysin has had on contemporary music may never be taken fully into account, particularly when he introduced Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones to the shepherd's music of Joujouka. Those times were still audacious: The music was created during the sound-checks! Musically, the choice of traditional instruments expresses the desire to be free of machines (because, as Burroughs says, "We ourselves are machines."). This recording is evidence of the extraordinary creativity and spontaneity of the musical and artistic scene at that time, and it refuses to age a bit. Beyond the nostalgia inspired by the invocation of that bygone cultural scene, this is a renewed wake-up call for a kind of creativity that is terribly difficult to find today.