tightly packed egg: rfm tagteam on tradescantia zebrina, swiss barns & queef, various sofia artists, ian watson & rob hayler, lust rollers, of habit

October 26, 2017 at 11:44 am | Posted in midwich, new music, no audience underground | Leave a comment
Tags: entr'acte, hairdryer excommunication, ian watson, invisible city records, luke vollar, lust rollers, of habit, queef, rob hayler, sofia records, spoils and relics, structured disasters, swiss barns, tradescantia zebrina

Tradescantia Zebrina –Tradescantia Zebrina (Hairdryer Excommunication)

Swiss Barns & Queef! – Live at the Monk and the Nun (Sofia Records)

Various Artists – 12 14 16 18 20 22 = 2 (Sofia Records)

Ian Watson & Rob Hayler –Metronome (Invisible City Records)

Lust Rollers – Grim Reflections from the Poetic Spleen (Structured Disasters)

Of Habit – Extended Technique (Entr’acte)

 

Tradescantia Zebrina –Tradescantia Zebrina (Hairdryer Excommunication) CD and digital album

Mysterious rumbles from the powerfully-coiffured Kev Sanders and comrades Morgan Potts and Siobhán Britton.

Released as a fund-raiser for Trans Health, Housing Action and Not Your Fault this is a master-class in enigmatic sound.

Like a Graham Lambkin joint this reflects the perfect drifting between rooms you sometimes find yourself craving – a hot sonic ear scanning like radar for ripe sound-fruit.  So what if all the apples are withered and brown – no use for a ploughman’s but perfect for chutney!

On this release Sanders’ distinctively polite drone spoons some distant storm clouds and Morgan’s cello that appears to be playing in two rooms at once. The interjection of random slowcrash (think a falling piano slowed down by a factor of 500 perhaps) keeps things both spicy and sweet.

‘Upon Afterwoods’ is particularly poignant and makes me think of Alison Bechdel’s ‘Fun Home’ the waves of dark repression and longing collapsing into a domestic sinkhole.

But most mysterious is the final track ‘Clippings’ that seems to be a total bumdial. A piece of accidental accident to add a healthy dash of sauce to the proceedings.

Quick like fever.

Swiss Barns & Queef! – Live at the Monk and the Nun (Sofia Records) Cassette full of genuine moss and individual art print and digital album

New improvising duo Swiss Barns sport not one but two slack-string-virtuosos; Jorge Boehringer (AKA Core of the Coleman) and Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh (Woven Skull, Three-Eyed Makara, Cian Nugent & The Cosmos) both on viola.

This 20 min side-long jam takes in a whole cornucopia of approaches: hillbilly scrape, pointillist puckering and velvet-thunder drone.  It moves with the flexibility of language, a language of vibration.  But of course – aren’t they all?

Often the off-chug of the voices clash in mid-air making a third vibration that stands proud like a cormorant on the cliffs – wings outstretched replenishing its natural oils.

At other times the slick ‘plunks’ or scrapes rustle like whole peppercorns wrapped up in newspaper; a solitary tune coils like a wormcast on a beach and, as you get your eye in you see there’s another, and another and another.

But each time one of our heroes bows it’s to let out the spirit of some half-mad Pan.  Goat-legged and hell bent on debauchery the strings swoop and flutter, they roil and stab ending on a Bernard Herrmann-esque riff that makes the watching crowd stand up, hands on hips and say ‘Oi!’

Queef! play a melodie derived from a Chinese greetings card to open a set of carefully considered tape-grot and strummed/struck/fondled summatorother.  Like Prick Decay (but older and wiser) got it back together for one last show this Dada Junk Spew flirts with litter, rubbish and trash in all senses of the words. Discarded remnants of sound, found non-instruments and a heavy ticking combine in ways both formless and totally natural.

The ghost of improv haunts some sections, the mid-point reveals the shuffling chains and dropped keys of a Usurper side but soon mutates into electro-frat clowncore – complete with honking horn and what I presume are enormous shoes.

As things move towards resolution my personal favourite – the rubbery wrench of tight balloons – is combined with a spluttering dentist’s drill and the acid squeal of hot air passing through a stretched neck.

A brief countdown ends the piece and those patrons of the Monk and Nun stand up again to crow the legend ‘Oi – Oi!’

Various Artists – 12 14 16 18 20 22 = 2 (Sofia Records) Cassette and digital album

A conceptual piece of tape collage/field recording masterminded with the spider-like fingers of Natalia Beylis drawing a bunch of freaky flies into her web.

The trick is (Duke Ellington knew it and Natalia Beylis knows it too) is to surround yourself with quality horns and all you have to do is play the moods.  Here the moods are played with a firm hand and clarity of vision and the horns include heads like Elkka Nyoukis, David Colohan, Andie Brown, Sharron Kraus & Ingrid Plum.

Like all good concepts this one is simple at its root.  Each contributor is asked to record two minutes of ‘something’ from their day’s activities and these moments are stitched together into two, twenty-two minute sides.

So while you’d maybe think this would result in a choppy, highly edited mix you’d be mistaken.  The domestic kitchen noise rustles into traffic ‘schuss’, birds tweet among the cutlery and bus queue politics/tannoy announcements punctuate the random clatter and swish of someone getting ready for work.

Each situation blends into the next and themes (travel, the weather, domestic chores etc) are shared between the pieces, time-zones and countries to create a disjointed yet very human narrative.

As you lose yourself in this music rhythm and texture become all important; for me this turned into an epiphany halfway through side two where some busy fidgeting and dog toy squeak is rammed up against someone lighting the gas on a cooker.  Reader…I jumped up and clapped my hands.

As a listening piece this is both cleansing sorbet and hot sticky fudge-treat.

Ian Watson & Rob Hayler –Metronome (Invisible City Records) Cassette and free digital album

As avid RFM readers will know Rob Hayler killed off his longstanding Midwich persona rather publically at October’s TUSK festival in Gateshead.  A final Groovebox throb and hum led to an electronic disembowelling soon to be all over that youtube.  Ever the careful archivist Rob made sure his outpourings would not be stemmed.  Henceforth they gush via his solid and trustworthy everyday name –Rob Hayler.

And in this act of back-to-basics Rob doubles his impact by teaming up with the polymath Ian Watson (artist, drone-lord, electronic heavy) to launch their iron-clad ‘Metronome’.

So forget all you know about the gentle “tuk – tuk – tuk” of those cute polished wood mechanicals.  This 44 minute piece groans like mutant springs; it howls and it blisters.  It wobbles and crashes.

The scant sleeve notes suggest the source material comes from Ian and is mixed by Rob.  I always find this an interesting approach as it asks fundamental questions of the participants – how much do I present?  How much do I leave in and leave out?  Like a slow-motion improvisation the agonising decision making process is dragged from seconds into weeks!  But on ‘Metronome’ such questions are answered in a clear, unhesitating voice – this is a confident piece of duo-ism that sounds to my tin ears the greasy smearing of one decisive mind.

The mood is certainly darkly metallic, and constantly unfurling as if multiple appendages are slowly freeing themselves from a tightly packed egg.  The motion is continuous – mesmerising.  You stare unblinking, afraid to move, not daring to wonder what evil is being unwrapped.

Number one on Megatron’s playlist?

 

Lust Rollers – Grim Reflections from the Poetic Spleen (Structured Disasters) CD-R and digital album

The Aylesbury based duo of Mark Browne and Daniel Gregory come at ya on their second release with a sound that can and has been labelled non-music and idiot-jazz.

Silence flows through these improvisations like dark chocolate in a Vienetta. Objects are donked, flecked and pilched in unorthodox manners (not sure if there is an orthodox manner to ‘play’ a cardboard box anyways) and ‘real instruments like sax and gong are included.

The pleasure can be found in the laser-like operation your ears are required to perform in order to focus on a dense sound world of motion and decay. The scampering and rustling as the disc starts had me reaching for the volume in the car only to damn near soil myself when an unexpected gong strike erupts from the speakers like Norman Bates from behind the shower curtain.

The spirit of mischief is clearly on the agenda although my journey through grim reflections was more serene meditation then beardy euro-jazz freak out. Whilst listening, uninterrupted at home, I was genuinely shocked to find that forty minutes had elapsed. The loving approach to small sounds has a serenity and purity of intent that moves gracefully like the wind through tree branches and seems to slow down time.

I found its autumnal hues immensely soothing to my gonked-out cerebrum.  (by PUKE VOLLAR)

Of Habit – Extended Technique (Entr’acte) Cassette

Gary Myles is one half of sound-confusion dingbats Spoils and Relics.

Here he offers his first official solo outing and what a curious and alluring beast it is. I found myself flipping it like a pancake in my nifty new walkman whilst taking my dog Lola out on a grey October morning.

Gary’s droll Yorkshire commentary runs through both sides like ominous smog. His droll and detached voice carries a ‘scary guy at the back of the bus’ edge that is lulling and a bit sinister. Amid the sedated thud of drum machine and soggy mechanics whirr Gary’s stoic mumbles that allude to scenes of bleak surrealism and urban squalor.

Fans of Spoils and Relics may be surprised by the more err…musical heft of this delicious little tape. There is an arc and a persistence that trudges wearily on across the whole first side, the sad thump of a cheap Casios and dying batteries. The peripheral chirping and rustling underneath the beatz sound like a rusty hospital trolley on a journey down  a corridor that has no end. It also gives a hint at what suicide may have sounded like had they grown up in a Yorkshire mining town with Ken Loach as their svengali visionary.

Side B starts with hollow loops of melody smeared with several layers of tape grime, descending into blackness. As the narration returns, grey oxide drizzle flickers malevolently in the background finding space between breath, teeth and throat. An unlikely samba limps to life briefly before puttering out like a fag end in a puddle.

Magnificent

(by  LUKE VORTEX who advises us this tape, sold out at source is AVAILABLE FROM THE BOOMKAT VAMPIRES)

Tradescantia Zebrina Bandcamp / Hairdryer Excommunication

Sophia Records

Invisible City Records

Structured Disasters Records

Entr’acte

-ooOOoo-