Robbie Rivera Axwell
Burning

Debut album by Smagghe & Cross. Music for blind observers. At times, the way the voice skipped intermittently, the recording sounded like an exercise in Uncle Bill's scissors technique but in my defence the mic I was using was hidden. I knew Jean was recording me, he'd asked for an interview after finding my name in one of his black notebooks, Jean didn't know I was recording him. He was tuning into fading echoes and when he thought the tape machine was off he left an echo of his own. "I caused such scenes on the way to and at kindergarten that first day my mother never bothered risking damage to my nascent psyche by making me return. Consequently come first grade my petulance had precluded me fromthe nursery school forged friendships of my new classmates. It's why I've always been an observer. But I've never been an archivist. I never wrote the intimate details down. If you fix them on paper there's a danger of shared ownership. The black notebooks contain coded references, the meaning once obvious now somewhat cryptic. Names, some possibly anagrammatical and numbers, presumably long dead phone lines. There are a few sketches but no photographic evidence of any kind. This to most of the population, with it's need for minute by minute high def validation, sounds like a curse. I, however, feel blessed. Evidence is the enemy. Magick for me is the carp in Herman's monastery pond. Brief flashes of gold as i disturb the murky silt of memory." It's there that one of the only two recordings of Jean's voice comes to an end. Jean has his copy obviously but If I know Jean it's long been lost or destroyed.