fruit smoke: joe murray’s tutore burlato special: acrid lactations & jointhee, flocculi, final seed, dylan nyoukis, i placca

June 9, 2016 at 11:11 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a comment
Tags: acrid lactations, dylan nyoukis, ezio piermattei, final seed, flocculi, i placca, joe murray, joincey, jointhee, tutore burlato

Acrid Lactations & Jointhee – Chest (tape, Tutore Burlato, #10)

Flocculi – Gara delle facce (tape, Tutore Burlato, #09)

Final Seed / Dylan Nyoukis – split (tape, Tutore Burlato, #08)

I PLACCA – la la vitea (tape, Tutore Burlato, #11)

O sweet Bologna! That most beautiful and learned of jewels; famous for world-renowned sauces and stunningly practical porticos.

But Bologna is swiftly becoming the epicentre of new movement, some audacious No Audience activity; a nerve centre of excellence named TUTORE BURLATO. And when this sticky spider’s web converges it does so onto a man.  A man strong of arm and handsome of chin.

His name?  Signore e signori… allow me to introduce Ezio Piermattei.

Ezio’s tape label has been documenting the N-AU as it stands and as it hopes to be.  Giving airtime to the old faithfuls and thrusting new gushers alike.  And this recent batch of tapes from BURLATO mixes the new and the old, the Anglo and the Italian, the after-dinner cigarillo and the hastily burned spice mix.

oOo

My old hands go snatch up the Acrid Lactations & Jointhee jams to play first.  Spying the body positive title, Chest, my mind spins back to their 2013 (?) release Toe where I honked on about: semi-improv, pre jazz hornings and Joincey dueting with coyotes.

And some of this would still float.  Yeah… it’s ‘song’ based for sure, but these three pulsating brains have stretched the idea of what a song can be and on Chest serve up unconscious narratives with brittle dream accompaniment.

Brittle?  Yeah… brittle is most definitely the word as there is a delicious fragility to these tunes; a fluttering of three tiny hearts in a cage of hollow bones.  They stand up (only just) on stick-thin Bambi legs, all a quiver and vulnerable.

But stand they shall, for there is some other force that holds this three-ness with powerful limb-locked poise.  Study the archaeo-acoustic cranks and they will tell you the ancients moved giant blocks with similar tones and chants.  The trick is (I propose) to melt the ego, to drain it out of your heel, and relent.

And because the general speed is set to stately (there’s not any of that ‘itch & scratch’ haste to the improvisations) Chest presents some red-hot moments:

• Bubbling synth/keys, birdsong bubbles, mung-voice choirs and frankly horny Dictaphonics.
• “How do you identify lazily?” The unknowable mumbles in a rare moment of call and response.  An underlying ur-tone of jaxx-babble frames the question.
• Depeche Mode B-Side moogs paired with drunkenly whispered threats into a green parrot’s ear (or whatever it is parrots have)
• Short mbira plunks as Jointhee sings like a cactus would – free of convention, pure with antiseptic pulp.
• The Free Jazz is dealt like a wildcard, at the optimum moment of strategic value.  And these chops are paper-cut sharp and drone precise.
• Crossed frequencies on radio-weird.  Damp-eyed with pride, accented words and phrases patter like fresh baby feet.

It’s so precious I’m holding my breath as I listen – a glorious submission – I tap out.

oOo

It’s the next day.  I’m up early, guiltily hungover while the house still sleeps.  I slap on Flocculi’s Gara Delle Facce to help re-build my soul.

Like a broth strong with lentils and kale this kind of junk really nourishes me good.

Another trio: Devid Ciamplini, David Lucchesi and Ezio Piermattei take a bunch of ‘objects’, vocoder, percussive fixings and rattle on like those old guys swigging their tiny coffees.

It’s all about the gesture and aplomb.  Rustles and dry clicks snap me back into last night’s tamed debauchery.

A stone floor is brushed with a stiff brush, copper bowls are wiped out with a sponge.  Once tight strings are slackened till they flap like a clown’s waistband. Sloppy electronics hum and splutter over graven images.  The pace is the busy, busy, busy of a market stall; conversations are started with a warm meatiness and broken off in chaotic order.  Is that a fumble for loose change or a heavy finger on the scales?  A half-dozen blood oranges get popped in a paper bag, the ends twisted with a practiced flourish.

Then a creaking of door-hinges bookends Ezio’s patented pigeon impression and punctuates the rubbery throbbing.  A glassy glissandi on prepared guitar shimmers like the ice in my Campari.  My only critique would be these jams are too damn short!

oOo

On a bit of a roll I un-wrap the Final Seed / Dylan Nyoukis tape; a shy, blushing pink it brightens my wobbly mood further.

First some biog-jizz.  Final Seed is the very Jameson Sweiger from mysterious US-based folk Maths Balance Volumes.  I talk like I know all this shit but, truth to tell, this is all new information for me that I just Googled [Editor’s note: good man, exactly the kind of journalistic thoroughness our readers have come to expect].  But boy… have I been napping!  Investigations reveal some sweet-weird going on in Minnesota.

Seed’s untitled side is a match-head; bulbous and explosive with all that energy fizzing and bright phosphorus boiling from the very first strike.

Ukulele plucks/strums and reconstructed vocal-hawks & blither (aka cunk-singing!) are layered like thick acoustic plasters creating a Rauschenberg sound-collage.  And for a while it veers between this flexible ‘boing’ and gristly rattle.

But it’s the long drawn-out synth coda that’s the soothing balm my aching neck craves.  A two note ‘ooohh…ahhhh’ tolling like soft bells.  A gentle relentlessness, a rolling muscle stretch that slides easily over damaged cartilage.   I can.  I can feel.  I can feel myself slipping under…

*GASP* <EYES BLINK OPEN WIDE, DROOL WIPED ON BACK OF HAND> *GASP*

Achem!  Dylan Nyoukis has kindly recycled elements of his hen’s-teeth Encephalon Cracks series to create a mega-mix for retirement homes.

Surprisingly electronic

one of the kids mutters as they roll out of bed and cram with cereal.  Of course the innocence of youth belies cosmic wisdom.  There really is an electric-tang to this side.  I imagine the guts of an old casio-tronic are ripped out and refilled with warm candy.  So, pressing the keys now releases rainbow-scented blurs and fruit smoke.

Voices and domestic tape interjections keep things frisky but about halfway through this piece a seam of organ meditations begins to glitter distantly like coal dust.  It has a melancholic non-congruent shine, like a shrugged shoulder coupled with eye-contact held for a fraction too long; never less than lovely, deeper than delightful.

But oldey-timey listeners need not fear!  The Nyoukis jaxx-vocals still warp and stutter, freeing strict-language from its unnecessary shackles.

In short… it’s a trip and your ticket is well and truly clipped pal!

oOo

It’s much later now.  The sun has done its work and snuck back leaving all surfaces pleasantly warm.  I type into the fading light as I PLACCA’s offering, the mysterious la la vitea plays massaging my tired old brain.

A classic tape collage work, this beast moves from knockabout to spooky in super-quick time.  There is a wonderful joy at play here.  The sounds/recordings/interventions are really allowed to breathe, to grow and sprout wings.

Side one starts with leaky plumbing and ends in a JUNK MASS with golden voices going all ‘halleluiah’ while mountain goats bleat.  It’s a tingler for sure!  On the way though this knotty terrain we’re served up buzzing flies like some eccentric lord in a sauce of wobbling naughtiness.  The double-loop reverb of a strain-station [Editor’s note: I think ‘strain-station’ may be a typo but it is too glorious to correct] Tannoy goes all tape-ga-ga across a Stooges-esque riff.  Result?  It’s like being stuck on fast forward for a year and a day.

Side two guffs the voice track with a mouthful of slow pebbles – it’s a Babel tower baby with ramps for Davros.  Soon a static blanket is draped over a clarinet and guitar in a cheeky seaside manner; a nudge and a wink if you will.  But the movement is forward, ever forward… plastic buttons may get pressed and un-pressed but it’s the lusty crying that keeps me riveted to the spot.

More wonderful wet-coffs for the Dental Tourist; a gem of a sensible tape resourcing!

—ooOoo—

Tutore Burlato