slurred morse: nameless city haiku compiled
September 9, 2014 at 12:01 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: agorafobia, andrew jarvis, culver, drone, female borstal, george proctor, gerado picho, h.p. lovecraft, improv, inseminoid, la mancha del pecado, lee stokoe, mantile records, matching head, miguel perez, new music, nihl, no audience underground, noise, psychedelia, tapes, the dead end street band, xtul, zn
Culver – Prophecy Of The Black Spider (tape, Mantile Records, #027, edition of 50)
Culver – “Kitty” (tape, Agorafobia Tapes, #31)
ZN – Carniceria (CD-r or download, self-released)
The Dead End Street Band – Bombs Rain Down on Innsmouth (tape, Agorafobia Tapes, #29)
La Mancha Del Pecado – Witchskinner (tape, Agorafobia Tapes, #28)
Inseminoid – Gemma’s Sacred Waters (tape, Matching Head, MH204)
Xtul – Black Holes of Stellar Mass (CD-r, self-released, edition of 30)
Female Borstal / NIHL – Split (tape, matching head, mh206)
…and so for the second anthology of my recent haiku reviews. This time I’m addressing the Tyneside noise/drone scene and its transatlantic outpost in Juárez, Mexico. Picture Lee Stokoe (of Culver and Matching Head tapes) sitting in a dark grey throne room that giddies the senses with its non-Euclidean geometry. On the other side of the Atlantic Miguel Perez (of La Mancha Del Pecado and Agorafobia Tapes) sits cross-legged on the floor of his desert cave whistling along to the howling wind. Eschewing the internet, they commune via crystal balls each containing a burning eye…
I needn’t go into the sound or aesthetic of this music at any length here as thousands of words I’ve written previously are available at the click of a tag (see above). Suffice to say the gist can be garnered from the following exchange. Imagine Lee casting a withering look over two brightly coloured art-school types setting up their gear prior to a gig.
C’mon, Lee!
I say,
…it doesn’t have to be all doomy blackness does it?
The withering look is transferred to me, with a slight twinkle added to his eye:
Yes Rob, it does.
…he replies. Tongue in cheek, perhaps, but there you have it: the final word. True story.
Initially the following poems were tossed into the overcrowded public swimming pool that is Twitter (@radiomidwich) but, knowing all that shouting and splashing is not conducive to contemplation, I’ve fished ’em out, dried ’em off and present this leather-bound blog post for your leisurely perusal.
It might seem disrespectful to reduce these releases to seventeen syllables apiece – the Xtul album is a whole hour of glorious psych noise, the La Mancha tape is one of Miguel’s best, the NIHL side of that split is possibly the best thing I’ve heard all year and so on – but I put a lot of thought into these compositions and I hope the impressions expressed are, in their own way, accurate and useful. The title I used for the series, ‘Nameless City’, is, of course, a nod to the Geordie scene’s obsession with Lovecraft but is also apt for Miguel due to the desert setting of the story.
Click on the band name/album title to be taken to an appropriate webpage. Matching Head has no official internet presence as such but contact details can be found via the Discogs listings for the label – maintained (largely) by Scott McKeating of this parish.
—ooOoo—
No. 1:
Culver – Prophecy Of The Black Spider
Polished steel mirror
examined by microscope:
metallic tundra.
No. 2:
Gremlin on plane wing
observes sleeping passengers
leans into the roar…
No. 3:
Grisly truth unpicked:
Cannibal horror movie?
Documentary.
No. 4:
The Dead End Street Band – Bombs Rain Down On Innsmouth
Smothered radio,
ragged semaphore, slurred morse
lost to riot seas
No. 5:
La Mancha Del Pecado – Witchskinner
Flesh machinery
processes blind consumption:
cattle eat cattle…
No. 6:
Inseminoid – Gemma’s Sacred Waters
Dunes bombed into glass.
Tank tracks shatter windowed earth.
Sand returned to sand.
No. 7:
Xtul – Black Holes Of Stellar Mass
Existence confirmed:
selfhood undeniable
…when thrown from a ‘plane
No. 8a: Female Borstal side
Dredging a channel
up silt fouled estuary mouth
takes brute, swinging force
No. 8b: NIHL side
Seduced by darkness
beyond guttering arc-light –
like moths, like dead souls.
—ooOoo—
EDIT: Matching Head Catalogue September 2014 as a pdf document.
kinetic poetry: joe murray on acrid lactations, yol, blood stereo and zn
April 12, 2014 at 2:37 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: acrid lactations, agorafobia, blood stereo, chocolate monk, colectivo n, gerado picho, improv, joe murray, kiks/gfr, kiksbooks, miguel perez, new music, no audience underground, noise, oracle netlabel, tapes, vocal improvisation, yol, zn
Acrid Lactations – The Rotten Opacity of it All (All This Rot) (CD-r, Chocolate Monk, choc.280)
Yol – Metal Theft (C20 tapes, kiksbooks, edition of 20)
Blood Stereo – The Trachelin Huntiegowk (CD-r, Chocolate Monk, choc.243)
ZN – ZN (C90 tape, Agoraphobia Tapes, 30)
Acrid Lactations – The Rotten Opacity of it All (All This Rot)
The Acrid Lactations introduce themselves with a keening, blackboard scrape of the mind. Like when some juiced-up Beat described the howling pipes of Morocco as ‘prehistoric rock n’ roll’ Glasgow’s finest ingest the Master Musicians of Joujouka and spit them back out as the black-sticky-tar of deepest mung. There’s no doubt this has a scaly dinosaur vibe but it’s brought right up-to-date; like a Jurassic Park vacuum flask or something.
Three longish pieces make up (all this rot). Individual tracks could be modestly un-named or included in the mysterious limerick emblazoned on the backside of the blinding white sheath.
What was dirt coils,
Vainglory peals the frothy blossom,
No peal but dull the solemnest ballast.
So track one, or in my mind what I’m calling ‘What was dirt coils’, twin violins are subject to agonisingly slow torture. Trilling ‘bruuuuurrrrsss’ and abstract humming mesh the astringent scrape with careful tape manipulation, adding another layer of dislocation to the lonely lament. My overactive imagination pictures wandering alone on a desolate heath, the wind whispering cruel curses,
‘stick t’path, keep off moors’.
At this point questions like, “What’s vibrating string and what’s accelerating black tape screee?” become pointless. I neither know nor care. I’m simply delighted to surrender to the every-growing lycanthropic paranoia.
‘Vainglory peals the frothy blossom’ is a remarkable Dicatphone construction. A hyper-kinetic patchwork, busy with detail pinched from domestic recordings (red apple crunch) and intentioned playback (ukulele fiddy). It flashes bright as flame. Perfectly balanced, the blind-thumbed FFW screee and tape-knit bleats are measured against quieter ripping or an occasional shout or polystyrene scrunch or sewing box scrabble. Like listening to two people at once telling their side of the same story salient facts collide and disassociate at speed, context becomes all.
The closer ‘No peal but dull the solemnest ballast’ is a right Mad Comix knockabout hash-crash-smash with super-speed rubber percussion picking the bones out a towering Babel. More pipes (flesh and bamboo) slurp up against plucky banjo. Sounds are mixed right-up-in-your-face and then bathroom-down-the-hall with an untypical unevenness making this listener stoop then stretch to catch the narrative. This is a Jane Fonda workout of a listen…and my pale flabby midriff thanks you for it.
Again the distinctive fluid wretch of tape manipulation (in some grumbling form) take the language of improvisation and lactate it, milk it, not into sterile test tubes for the middle-brow arts crowd but into rude pottery jugs. Creamy and nutritious it slops over goblets, rough to the touch. And when I raise this white-gold to my lips and drink it down I’m refreshed in my body, head and heart.
Yol – Metal Theft
This smart little tape drops through the gloryhole with a familiar plastic crackle. Tapes from Yol always seem to fast-track the listening pile and proceeded directly to the cheap-o hi-fi for immediate consumption. Nom nom nom.
Squeak-clack, play, hiss… ‘There is no finish line’ starts the Yol ritual with a teensy, tiny bell solo, a gentle brassy tinkling played on the sort of souvenir cow bell you might have picked up from a school exchange trip to Switzerland in 1985. Like the Swiss it’s sedate, low key, intimate…a nice little opener.
But hang about there. What’s this rough, throttled and somewhat skanky tape glot? It’s ‘Dock Noise’: a mucky wind-roar, a metallic crash. What are those machines called? The ones in a bowling alley that set up your pins with a clatter? A Bowl-a-rama? A Pin-matic? Well, whatever their trade name ‘Dock Noise’ sounds like one of them going all Hijokaiden and then catching on fire.
‘Empty Flattened Tents’ sports a see-sawing hinge-creak; almost like a lost voice (ahhhh – a – huhhh) that runs through this piece creating a rubbery flexible backbone. Layered over the skeleton an angle grinder moans away like a snapped clarinet. Stressed metal squeaks underneath Yol’s kinetic-poetry (all pretty full and fluent…not the hiccoughing – stammering violence of yore) to yarble about “angry broken wasp’s nests”.
Errrrr…side two opens with ‘Posset bite’ a very moist and unhinged random mouth-jam multiplied by several Dictaphones…gulp…a charming gesture from Yol that makes me blush like a red tomato.
‘Miniature dog live’ returns to one of Yol’s classic approaches – a rusty filing cabinet hauled across a rubber floor. The offending office furniture gets thoroughly beaten and beasted as he ROARS ‘what is that noise…WHAT IS THAT NOISE?’ between gravelly chokes and strangulated ‘gahhhhhsss’. As the name implies it’s a live piece and the influence of the audience coaxes a confrontational, no-instrument black metal performance from Yol; the bleakness of the Norwegian forest transplanted to freezing-cold factory units.
This whole tape is recorded in two distinct styles. Lo-fi stinkers can curl up with gentle inner-ear fumblings; hi-fi bores can rejoice in the gloriously expansive live recordings. But there is still that wonderfully claustrophobic greasiness to this tape, like being cooped up inside a whale.
As the Kiksbooks blog rightly points out. This is a release ‘for the connoisseur’. I love that nudge-nudge touch.
So, broadminded readers. You’ll have to move quickly as this chap is limited to 20 copies. And at a reasonable £4 plus is a budget-busting snip.
Blood Stereo – The Trachelin Huntiegowk
Two twenty minute pieces of gnarled-fux originally pressed into 50 pieces of wax and now burned onto polycarbonate plastic and aluminium for the hoi polloi!
Friends and neighbours of the no-audience underground (North & South) come together on ‘Side one’ in a collection of discrete recordings formed into a new whole. This earth mother divides itself into 5 glorious parts:
- Part one – It’s slow & low. An ear to ear shuffle, domestic giffles and snatched school recordings run into vomit splosh or piss trickles. It makes me stop and wonder how long it took to capture each snippet…it’s a labour intensive approach for sure. The flowsy clarinet is introduced.
- Part two – a deep-dub Residents territory: collapsing loops of piano and doors slamming. Hiss and cornet again that reigns (in blood).
- Part three – back to a darker domestic…gurgles and snotty in the right ear, truncated samples in the left “eh oh eh-eh” (into bubbling lap experiments). A stray dog sniffing each lamp post moves in circles, testing and probing…straight lines are for squares man.
- Part four – breath sighs, moon loops…no one does it quite like this. Gasps. Organic weaving. But with a chaste cast, there is nothing sexual here. It’s like the innocence of snoring in a sinus-like cathedral.
- Part five – a pushy (and drunk) Canadian takes place of a come-down coda.
Phew…after that yeasty trip part two is going to have to live up to major expectation. With nowhere to go except true respect this second live piece is an honest, forming thing. Huff and chump are played cautiously like feudal warlords moving cavalry over the common ground of The Shire.
With few peaks this is a guerrilla campaign; hit and run…a war of attrition. The Blood Stereo show their mastery of the common ‘click’ and ‘clack’. You thought glitch-core went out of fashion with Oval. No way. These south coast munsters clunk-click every trip, building a sound-world grumpy Gaudi would dig with different timbres and speeds interlocking and breaking free. A thought erupts that I just can’t stop…
from this machinery hums come
oiled and whirling
fast, strong
tightness, meshing
meshing forever
(pert near)
steel gear inside gear
and smoothness
engaging, releasing
lapping and plunging
( – ‘Another Theory Shot to Shit’, fIREHOSE, 1986)
The boss has been talking of extraction music of late. An acute and timely observation. But what of the chaff left over from the mining process? The Trachelin Huntiegowk probes the remaining slag, the detritus of sonic grief, and polishes up a shiny opal reflecting the sunlight as a rainbow of all your collective memory.
Delve deep, drink fully. Dream dangerously.
ZN – ZN
Direct from the ashes of Colectivo N ‘ZN’ is born; the new handle of Ciudad Juarez’s finest Gerardo ‘Picho’ and RFM favourite Miguel Perez.
This god damn C90 tape is blackly black and starts off with the sound of someone wrestling with the wrapper of a riveted toffee-apple…’crackle, crukkkk, kraaaaak.’
Sparse yells and hollas slice like wounds but the the urge to rush forever forward is rejected and space opens up, blackness descends and unholy worlds are born in silence. At first power comes not from extreme volume and speed but the grey gravity that flows between gigantic bodies.
To an audience that’s grown accustomed to harsh walls of feedback and electronics the pairing of cornet and bass might seem a little light, pastoral even. But make no mistake the cornet (at times dry and hoarse as whooping cough, at others wetly thick) is painfully brutal. There is a military history to the brassy horn and it’s no wonder…this is making me edgy with its hot vibrating breath intent on conquest.
The bass sounds like it’s strung with industrial cable wrapped and stretched to dangerous high tension. Yup…there is the occasional deep growling riff but in the main Miguel keeps things high in the register, scraping and plucking. Not laying down any rhythm but leading you down blind alleys, deserted side-streets and into dangerous neighbourhoods.
The resulting oddness of side one (recognisable instruments doing unrecognisable things) frazzles my little brain and just about when synapses are about to snap a light-aircraft drone takes us above the clouds and into the merciless bronze sun.
Up here the gods clatter their impotent weapons, hurling abuse to the mortals below for failure to believe. A lone minstrel plays on impeaching the gods to spare mankind. Tears flow down ravaged faces but the cruel Sun God nods once, twice signifying displeasure, the minstrel is thrown down to earth to lay crushed on the rocks below.
Phew. I take a little break and prepare for the next instalment.
Side two opens with ‘Bitches Brew’ era Miles echo-horn but this time Teo Macero is slugging it out with Romain Perrot in a tin bath while exotic aluminium parrots pelt them with ingots of coal tar soap.
Tape grot and the crackle of 1000 bonfires smother a distant beat. And although at the same volume and intensity I get the feeling these are miniature, secret sounds amplified greatly.
Hoots echo round the concrete bunker and everything submits to this simple repetitive beat (and added fuzz combo) to form a sickly pitched nausea. This feels like the cover story for something really nasty. The longer it goes on the more I’m reminded of some deep nagging unease. It sounds like…
It sounds like corruption.
Once that thought is lodged in my noggin the scorched earth screech takes on a darker hue, layers of noise collapse on each other burying themselves…but still the beat remains. As relentless and banal as true evil.
In the best possible way this is a deeply unpleasant listen.
For more industrial ear-damage and to discover the real sound of Ciudad Juarez, check out their Bandcamp. This here live recording is a similarly outrageous trip. Phew!
—ooOoo—
(another) fortnight with lee and miguel, part two: conspiracies
February 12, 2014 at 9:36 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: agorafobia, altar of waste, at war with false noise, crown of bone, drone, la mancha del pecado, lee stokoe, matching head, miguel perez, molotov, narcolepsia, new music, no audience underground, noise, occult supremacy, oracle netlabel, raoul valve, tapes, the collects, the dead end street band, turgid animal, wehrmacht lombardo
culver & la mancha del pecado – collaboration 3 (tape, At War With False Noise, ATWAR140, edition of 50)
culver & la mancha del pecado – collaboration 4 (CD-r, Turgid Animal)
culver & la mancha del pecado – collaboration 5 (tape, Narcolepsia)
The Dead End Street Band / La Mancha Del Pecado – El Mercado De Las Brujas (CD-r, Agorafobia Tapes, #25)
Crown of Bone / La Mancha Del Pecado – split (CD-r, Agorafobia Tapes #26/Occult Supremacy OSP040)
the collects & culver – untitled (tape, Matching Head, mh203)
OK, see part one for an extensive preamble. This second half showcases a bunch of Lee and Miguel’s collaborations and split releases.
—ooOoo—
Firstly, the ongoing team-up between our two heroes sees their powers squared by being combined. Three more products:
#3 is the final moments of a desperate refugee attempting to escape certain death by clinging on to the landing gear of a passenger jet. As the aeroplane climbs to cruising altitude, and hypothermia takes hold, this doomed soul hallucinates he is entering a kind of aviation heaven. The roar of jets, the ‘whup-whup’ of rotors, the burrr of propellers all condense into a single throb carrying him upwards. This pulse fades along with his own and a slow-picked refrain on acoustic guitar mourns the frozen.
#4 is a single 48 minute long track in three movements. First is the chugging clatter of a damaged piston furiously rattling its housing as the engine it is part of belches out acrid black smoke. Secondly, great swathes of the sound are blown away by a cooling wind leaving a rumble as the seemingly broken engine settles, components fusing. Finally, surprisingly, as it cools the engine bursts back into life in a suicidal last gasp but then – spoiler alert – the piece ends in a relatively upbeat state as the rhythm calms and smoke is replaced with a pleasing iridescent glow. It is a genuinely unexpected conclusion.
#5 is 38 minutes of scouring radio static as heard in the cockpit of a single propeller aeroplane surveying the bomb damage inflicted by Wehrmacht Lombardo’s war machines.
All great.
I know Miguel is proud of this one ‘cos it’s his tape label Agorafobia’s first transatlantic split: The Dead End Street Band hail from exotic Newcastle. Their track, ‘Night of the Bloody Apes’, has the greasy, queasy electronic pulse that made the best of first wave industrial music such uncomfortable listening. It also adds a viscous layer of inescapable stickiness. At twelve minutes long it is the perfect length to lure an unsuspecting fly into the monkey cup…
The La Mancha track, ‘Raza Crapulienta’, has a forward motion I am tempted to describe as ‘roaring’ but in this case ‘gushing’ might be more accurate. There is a wetness to the torrent that suggests subterranean rivers coursing through pitch black limestone caverns.
It took me a while to warm to ‘The Chapters of Judas’ by Crown of Bone, their contribution to this split release. At first it seemed too fierce for my tastes, too easily described with clichéd adjectives such as ‘harsh’, ‘relentless’ etc. I was won round by its ridiculous, visceral, irresistible momentum. At around the 16 minute mark pedals are stamped on which adds variation to the blowtorch ferocity. With a few minutes to go we are transported instantaneously into the centre of a black mass before the noise returns just as suddenly to play us out. I don’t listen to this type of stuff very often but I would if more of it was like this.
The La Mancha track, ‘Helena’, is an example of that super-advanced music for alien races that I mentioned in part one. To feeble ears attached to feeble brains like ours it sounds like metal played by a flock of drunken geese.
…and finally we have the collaboration between Culver and mysterious, new-name-to-me The Collects. Scott McKeating, the omniscient third voice here at RFM, reckons this is the best of the latest crop. His verdict, pulled from the pneumatic tube system we use for office communication, is:
shit hot
…which is undeniable. The cauldron of boiling black liquid provided by Culver is what you might expect, I guess, but a spell is cast by the carefully chosen ingredients tossed into the mix. There is insectoid filter whine, viscera-rearranging generator throb and reedy, fluting near-melody amongst the other earthy and unplaceable flavours. Stepping away from the witch’s brew metaphor and into the suburban living room, I am reminded (again) of the little girl in the film Poltergeist, speaking to voices only she can hear via a detuned television. The first two tracks of this C30(ish) album, ‘clutch fed’ and ‘you are never going home’, could well be what is heard by her during gaps in the conversation: the background noise of a dead realm.
Given its title – ‘do you remember her last moments?’ – and the bound figure illustrated on the cover, it would be easy to interpret the side-long third piece as some kind of torture-porn soundtrack but who wants to linger on that thought, eh? Not me. Instead let’s imagine the Culveresque rumble as the mud colouring a drop of dirty water. Now put that drop on a microscope slide and take a closer look at its contents. The uniform dirt is separated into boulders suspended in solution and a teeming ecosystem is revealed, thick with monsters. This is the noise they make as they strive without sense, unaware of how beautiful and terrifying they are. Flagella thrust clumsily, cilia ripple rhythmically, translucent blobs are attacked by floating mouths. It is a grotesquely, magnificently alien scene.
Scott is, as ever, correct.
(another) fortnight with lee and miguel, part one: two (hundred) matching heads
February 9, 2014 at 9:57 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 2 CommentsTags: agorafobia, altar of waste, at war with false noise, crown of bone, drone, la mancha del pecado, lee stokoe, matching head, miguel perez, molotov, narcolepsia, new music, no audience underground, noise, occult supremacy, oracle netlabel, raoul valve, tapes, the collects, the dead end street band, turgid animal, wehrmacht lombardo
culver – plague hand (2 x tape, Matching Head, Matching Head 200)
Culver – Angel Obsolete (CD-r, Molotov, molotov 25)
La Mancha Del Pecado – A Triple Fetichistic Treatment – Tribute to Raoul Valve (3 x CD-r, Altar of Waste, AOW 138, edition of 15)
La Mancha Del Pecado – Domina (2 x CD-r, Occult Supremacy, OSP027)
Wehrmacht Lombardo – El Vicio Tiene Medias Negras (CD-r, Agorafobia Tapes, #24)
Wehrmacht Lombardo – Tyrant (self-released download)
(Editor’s note: some of the releases above were sent to me as pre-release mp3s by an overexcited Miguel, thus format/label information might be incomplete and some cover pictures may be stolen from the internet.)
Radio Free Midwich is delighted to offer heartfelt congratulations to Lee Stokoe on the occasion of the 200th release by his mighty label Matching Head. It is an unrivalled achievement, I think. Others may have been around longer or produced a greater number of releases but who can boast such focus, such unerring coherence? Over the years he has stuck to tapes whether or not bearded hipsters were enthusing over the format. He has no interest in the online world. His black and white aesthetic makes each individual package a counter used in an occult variation of the game go, played on a non-Euclidean goban. His musical project has been, to reuse a metaphor I have leaned on before, a type of cartography. Each of Lee’s releases on Matching Head, or elsewhere as Culver, is another detail of the map completed. The landscape abstracted can be bleak, inhospitable but its geography is endlessly fascinating to me. Click on the ‘Lee Stokoe’ or ‘Culver’ or ‘Matching Head’ tags above to see how many ways I’ve managed to describe what to the uninitiated might appear to be 40 minutes of mere ominous rumbling. I am, in short, a fan.
As is our Mexican cousin Miguel Perez. Miguel is a great friend of this blog and, via the magic of the internet, has become an enthusiastic contributor to the noise scene in the North East of England despite living on the other side of the world. Modern life, eh? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me describing him, with my tongue in cheek, as a disciple of Lee’s. The influence is clear in his music, his fiercely independent stance and his awesome work rate. However, I consider Miguel to be a notable artist in his own right, a skilled musician (with a background in metal guitar) and an open-minded and enthusiastic collaborator who brings out the best in those that work with him, including Lee. Oracle, the netlabel that he co-runs, chalked up its 100th release last year. Not to be sniffed at.
(An aside about the horror/fetish/porn imagery used on the packaging of these releases: I’ve tutted prudishly at these two perverts on several occasions in the past and can only throw my hands in the air again. Oh well, boys, whatever floats the boat…)
OK, on with the show. As I have a bunch of stuff on the pile from these chaps, much of which crosses over thematically or collaboratively, it makes sense to tackle it en masse. In part one: solo stuff from each, part two: collaborations and splits.
—ooOoo—
First, of course, I need to account for Matching Head catalogue number 200: plague hand by culver (covers above), a twin cassette set containing four side-long tracks totalling, you guessed it, 200 minutes. Each of these four untitled pieces (the sides are labelled a,b,c, and d and that’s all you get) is a sombre Culvanian documentary: a long, wordless panoramic camera sweep taking in the scenery with an unblinking 360 degree turn. Each is different from the last, all are wholly involving and will have the attentive listener crowing ‘aww… man, I was digging that!’ and reaching to flip or rewind as soon as the track ends. I say ‘attentive listener’ but really there is no other kind because you have no choice in the matter. This isn’t background music – allow yourself to get caught and your ego will be dissolved like a fly in a pitcher plant. It is a masterwork and a fitting celebration of the numerically notable point it represents.
When discussing Lee’s music (and Miguel’s and others like it) I often lead with metaphors of decay. If I’m in a fancy pants mood I’ll throw in terms like ‘entropy’, thus suggesting Culver depicts a world in the process of rusting shut. However, today I think I might have been looking in entirely the wrong direction. Perhaps instead Lee is composing for a super-evolved race living in a parallel universe where Culver is pop and our most sophisticated, technically accomplished mainstream musical efforts sound to them like a sick pig farting into a tin bucket. Nice to think that somewhere at least Lee is a star…
Angel Obsolete, released on Mike Simpson’s wholly reliable Molotov imprint, begins with a few seconds of a doomy bass riff and ends roughly 38 minutes later following an onslaught of electric weather. This is the sound of being trapped under an upturned giant glass fishbowl as a desert storm gradually blasts it to an opaque white. Every grain of sand, every scratch and abrasion, documented by the texture of Culver’s roar.
This three disc epic both appears on US label Altar of Waste and takes its inspiration from the work of Cory Strand, the label’s head honcho. Cory is known for his multi-disc noise/drone extrapolations from favourite film soundtracks and, following this lead, Miguel has chosen to interpret the work of Raoul Valve, best known for scoring the high-gloss art-porn films of director Andrew Blake. The sheer nylon/patent leather glamour is abstracted through the crooked lenses, peepholes and clogged filters that define the La Mancha vibe. Cory’s own description of the album is compelling:
…a frightening excursion into the deepest realms of the glisteningly erotic illuminating the horrid emptiness lurking behind boudoir noir. Utilizing the eclectic soundtracks composed by Raoul Valve for three Andrew Blake films, “A Triple Fetishistic Treatment” sees La Mancha Del Pecado transforming the vaguely banal and unobtrusive into blackest night clouds of uncertainty and self-doubt. The artistry in Blake’s films reveals layers of suggestion not oft found in standard gonzo pornography, teases of themes and relationships oft left unexplored by the mainstream in favor of quick release and exhaustive bouts of fucking. La Mancha Del Pecado takes that artistry and rips it open, exposing both the emptiness at its heart and the lurid technicolor expanse of the images it approximates.
The guy can write a sizzling blurb, f’sure, but I don’t agree. Miguel’s perversion does not seem sleazy or hollow. His submissive worship of the stocking is not an expression of existential malaise. Rather it is joyous, celebratory and engaged. His band name translates as ‘The Stain of Sin’ but there is no judgement implied in this – Miguel just doesn’t mind getting dirty.
The first disc, ‘Subtle Exhibitionism (Kyla Cole)’, is a mere 43 minutes of blood in the ears – what you might expect to hear after an hour being strapped upside-down in a dominatrix’s dungeon, your brain an electrical storm of consciousness drowning discharge. My theory is best supported by the second disc, ‘Slaves With Stockings and Heels (Kelly Havel)’, which is a glorious, sense heightening, scything buzz. Profoundly, heavily psychedelic, it writhes at a furious fever pitch throughout and seems nowhere near spent even after over an hour of effort. The third disc, ‘Industrial Girlfriends (Justine Jolie)’, is the toughest. Clocking in at 55 minutes, it begins, appropriately, with hydraulic rhythms and pneumatic hiss and continues with a pummelling tour of the factory floor where molten plastic is injected into amped up, anatomically suspicious moulds of the human form. The second half eases up a little as a series of satisfying metallic clatters are picked up, rattled, dropped and replaced until all that is left is echo steeped in static.
Domina is another epic, this time two tracks spanning a double disc set. ‘Enfermera a Domicilio’ is a La Mancha cocktail built from one part Geordie-style free-rock noise and two parts drone: Matching-Head-style ice cavern atmospherics complimenting desert scorched organ psychedelics. It is structurally ambitious and consistently engaging. After a short burst of fast talking voices (a news report? Lo siento, no hablo español…), ‘Ciudad Sangre’ steps up into a brash, abrasive fuzz with slower moving undertones. It’s like rain on the surface of an oily lake obscuring the shadow of a monster swimming menacingly beneath. The opening, the title (‘City Blood’) and the short burst of sombre percussion that appears near the end all suggest the piece is influenced by the never-ending, senseless drug war that blights Miguel’s home town of Ciudad Juárez.
Wehrmacht Lombardo is the pseudonym usually saved for the harshest of Miguel’s noise. You might expect panic-inducing, deep-into-the-red Geiger counter static, an icy arctic wind whipping across the tundra and rumbles as the inhabitants of a nearby city are reduced to burnt tar by aerial bombardment. These components will ebb and flow within the baseline roar. However, that said, neither of these releases follow the blueprint exactly and differ quite markedly from each other too. Tyrant is 23 minutes of wandering around the innards of a semi-organic, mountain-sized machine – its purpose unfathomable, the variations in its rhythms heavy and mysterious. El Vicio Tiene Medias Negras is largely standard Lombardian business: earthily visceral throughout with a particularly effective last few minutes during which Miguel cuts the low end completely. Was that the generator finally breaking down? Is the electric fence surrounding the compound now just a few strands of harmless, flimsy wire? Have we come to The End?
For now. Continued in part two…
Agorafobia Tapes / Oracle Netlabel
sorting the lego part four: soundtracks for decorating the tree
December 19, 2013 at 9:46 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: agorafobia, castrato attack group, ceramic hobs, culver, depression, dr. adolf steg, drone, free rock, gavin montgomery, kieron piercy, la mancha del pecado, lee stokoe, luke vollar, matching head, memoirs of an aesthete, miguel perez, must die records, new music, no audience underground, noise, phil todd, psychedelia, punk, simon morris, tapes
The Ceramic Hobs – Spirit World Circle Jerk (vinyl LP in silk-screened sleeve, Must Die Records, MDR 032, edition of 250)
CASTRATO ATTACK GROUP – blood porridge from the islets of langerhans (CD-r, Memoirs of an Aesthete, MOA 666-13, edition of 100 or download)
La Mancha del Pecado & Culver – collaboration six (tape, Matching Head/Agorafobia, mh 199/27)
I think I’ve written enuff about depression for now, don’t you? See the preambles to parts one, two and three of this series for an account of the development of my current illness and what I am doing to combat it. Suffice to say the struggle continues but I am very well supported and am looking forward to the break in routine that Christmas will provide. I’m trying hard not to make a ‘mulled whine’ pun. Damn, just did it…
Thanks again for the music and messages of encouragement – it all means a great deal to me.
These will be my last reviews of 2013 – if you have stuff on the review pile then it will be dealt with in the New Year. Continued apologies for any delay but we have caught up considerably during December. Articles by Joe and Scott on Colectivo N, Smut and Caroline Mackenzie are in the works and will probably appear sometime during the holiday period to tide us over until the Zellaby Awards are announced in January. Exciting!
Have a lovely Christmas, dear readers, and I wish you peace, health and love from all at RFM HQ and Midwich Mansions.
—ooOoo—
It isn’t often that I agree to review something without having heard it first. I’m not concerned about accusations of insider trading, or conflict of interest, nor are there brown envelopes stuffed with payola for me to collect in motorway service station car parks. It’s more to do with not wanting to feel obliged, nor wanting to accept freebies under false pretences – I know resources are scarce so I don’t want to trouble someone for their warez only to say ‘no thanks’ once it is too late. However, I thought I was on safe ground when Simon Morris of Ceramic Hobs pulled out a copy of their latest album and handed it to me at that Skullflower show with the words: “You MUST review it!” I agreed, of course.
Here’s the spec: The Spirit World Circle Jerk is a vinyl LP in an edition of 250 from the ever-impressive Must Die Records, the covers were created and screen-printed by Dr. Adolf Steg of Spon fame and a handy lyric sheet and download code are included for maximum convenience and enjoyment. One side features six of the seven tracks, the other side contains just the epic ‘Voodoo Party’.
Initally, it seems a bit more straightforward than the psychonautical adventure that was the last ‘proper’ Hobs LP I heard – Oz Oz Alice – but flip it over and over during the course of several afternoons and its depth, complexity and sense of humour are revealed. Ideas, characters, lines of lyrics, references to popular culture, mass murder etc. that are largely lost on me (a great track-by-track description of the album on the Must Die Records site helps decipher all this) are repeated from song to song which gives the album coherence. Don’t worry – this isn’t a tedious ‘concept’ piece, more a series of linked short stories (‘Simon Morris as the Robert Altman of the psychiatric underground’? Discuss).
Simon’s voice remains remarkable: utterly different from his speaking voice, it ranges from bassy growl, as if gargling with multi-coloured gravel and slimey algae from the bottom of a tropical fish tank, to overdriven power electronic screech, like William Bennett flicking through the Ikea catalogue in bed and getting a paper cut on his bell-end. The band are totally up to it too and the music works an accompanying range, from oi punk and pub rock to psychedelic collage. There are plenty of laughs. For example, the opening line of ‘Glasgow Housewife’: “I… BELONG… TO… GLASGOOOOOOOOOOWWWWW” cracks me up every time I hear it. It’s as funny as Wile E. Coyote stamping on the trap that Road Runner just failed to activate. There is head-down boogie – try and resist singing along to the ‘Hong Kong Goolagong’ with your thumbs in your belt-loops. And then there is ‘Voodoo Party’…
The side-long seventh track is a companion piece to the 35 minute long title track of Oz Oz Alice. It’s a category-defying collage, a psychedelic ritual, or maybe a cut-up screed by the author of a conspiracy website where everything is grist to the mill and the more you deny it the more sure he is that you are hiding something. For example, the ‘true’ story of Rhonda’s journey through a stargate, lifted from an American talk radio programme complete with dumbfounded hosts, is totally fascinating in itself and calls to mind ’22 going on 23′ from the masterpiece Locust Abortion Technician by Butthole Surfers. Surely, there can surely be no higher praise and yet this is just one of the many elements to be found sliding over each other, slotting into an order of things dictated by the track’s own gurning and fluid internal logic.
I’m happy to conclude that this album is perfect music to accompany tucking into a lovely Christmas dinner of roast turkey and all the trimmings – well, you might have to reheat it after making sure that the family whose house you have just broken into are securely tied up in the basement first…
blood porridge from the islets of langerhans is perfect music to accompany chestnuts roasting on an open fire – that is if the fire was caused by a gas explosion and is roaring in the rubble of what used to be your house. The album comprises two twenty minute plus tracks of crackling free rock. Despite the band’s name, this is clearly the result of the nine balls belonging to the four band members (which member has three is a closely guarded secret) swinging back and forth like a hairy Newton’s cradle. Nothing clever-clever here. ‘triceratops badmouth’ starts in a paint-huffing, head-banging mood and remains that way throughout – a tethered crescendo of thrashing and bucking. ‘temple of glue’ is even less structured, if that is possible. At first it’s like a squadron of dragonflies attempting to free themselves after having accidentally landed in a puddle of beery piss then, rescued at last by a beat at around the nine minute mark, they spend the rest of the track shaking themselves dry and drunkenly vowing revenge on the fool who dared urinate under their flightpath. Terrific.
collaboration six is perfect music to accompany dashing through the snow – that is if you have been thrown from a helicopter onto the tundra because your colleagues think you may have been infected by an alien shape shifter and now night is falling. The latest in a series of all-star team-ups featuring friends-of-RFM Lee Stokoe and Miguel Perez, this won’t hold any surprises for those already familiar with their work but it is perhaps a little more delicate than you might expect. The album comprises a single track on a single sided tape in a black and white cover not reproducible on a family blog like this due to, well, tits. In the spirit of seasonal goodwill I won’t make my usual prudish complaint about this ‘aesthetic’. The music, a deceptively simple, multi-layered drone is magnificent, a high water mark in the recent catalogues of both artists. How you take it could go in two opposite directions depending on your mood: is it evocative of a warm, enveloping, womb-like environment in which you shift about, satisfyingly comfortable, in a cocoon of amniotic jelly or is it a windswept mountainside, treacherous with snow-covered ice and bottomless crevasses below? Essential either way.
Buy the Ceramic Hobs LP direct from Must Die Records, where you’ll also find the track-by-track description I mention above. Buy the Castrato Attack Group CD-r (or download) via the Memoirs of an Aesthete Bandcamp site. The La Mancha del Pecado & Culver tape can be had from Matching Head, contact details on the Matching Head Discogs page.
a fortnight with lee stokoe, miguel perez (and friends)
April 15, 2013 at 7:53 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: agorafobia, black leather cop, colectivo n, culver, drone, enoc dissonance, grindcore karaoke, improv, indian lady, joe murray, la mancha del pecado, lee stokoe, matching head, miguel perez, molotov, new music, no audience underground, noise, oracle netlabel, pordiozero, posset, scott mckeating, tapes, the skull mask, wehrmacht lombardo, witchblood, xazzaz
La Mancha Del Pecado & Culver – Collaboration One (tape, Matching Head, MH191)
Witchblood – Eponine (tape, Matching Head, MH193)
Indian Lady – Help Wanted Female/The Creeper (tape, Matching Head, MH194)
Culver + La Mancha Del Pecado – Collaboration II (CD-r, molotov 18)
La Mancha Del Pecado/Xazzaz – La Fetichista (CD-r/tape, molotov 17/agoraphobia 20)
The Skull Mask – Delbene (tape, agoraphobia 21)
La Mancha Del Pecado – Cadaveres Exhumados (CDr, Ruido Horrible, rh54)
Enoc Dissonance/Pordiozero/ La Mancha Del Pecado – 3 Way Split (CD-r, agoraphobia 22/El Canzancio Records 01)
Wehrmacht Lombardo/Black Leather Cop – Stars Extinguished, Black Sky (download, Grindcore Karaoke)
Xazzaz/La Mancha Del Pecado – La Esquina Roja (download , Oracle, ORE90)
As I sit here listening to Thomas the Baby enter a particularly blood-curdling, screamy phase of the vocal improv set he is currently honing (provisional title: “The Aptamil Variations”), I find myself pondering the question ‘what is it to be a conscientious reviewer?’
Some context. The submissions pile at RFM never gets totally out of hand. It is currently about 20 items (the oldest received two-and-a-bit months ago) and that is as big as it gets. I am not complaining, of course, as being given artefacts, or pointed at downloads, is an inexhaustible pleasure for me. Having learnt a few lessons from the Termite Club/Fencing Flatworm days, I also have provisos in place to stop me getting swamped and/or frazzled. See the submission guidelines on the ‘about me and this blog’ page – basically, I am allowed to take my time and say ‘thanks, but no thanks’ if I like.
That said, the pile can still induce a kind of overloaded, guilty numbness occasionally. One of the meanings of ‘no-audience’ in my tongue-in-cheek phrase ‘the no-audience underground’ is that there are few passive consumers round these parts, everyone is involved in the scene in some way. So I ask myself: what do I owe in return for this generosity? How much work counts as ‘doing my bit’? The question feels sharper than usual at the moment because new-to-fatherhood-tiredness has sorely eroded my powers of concentration.
What, for example, should I do with the several hours of roar recently bestowed upon me by the gentleman Lee Stokoe and his Mexican cousin Miguel Perez? An intriguing body of work for aficionados of the darker, metal-infused side of drone music, no doubt, but there is a fuck of a lot of it. The answer came to me as I lulled Thomas the Baby to sleep with Cherry Vampire by Culver the other day, or rather I was reminded of a tack I have taken before. When there isn’t time to put life on hold for musical appreciation, what you can do is just use the music to soundtrack life and live inside it for a while. Thus, for a couple of weeks I have been listening to the releases above on my commute, on lunchtime strolls, when changing nappies in the middle of the night and so on.
This approach seems especially fitting for these two artists. Both are exploring the nuances of a haunting and enveloping aesthetic. As such, releases are like a series of landscape photographs that build up into an atlas of a bleak, windswept country, beautiful in its desolation. Thus they can be enjoyed en masse, at length, repeatedly and in pretty much any order. The more you breath in their atmosphere the more acclimatised you get and the more sense it all makes. Details emerge as your eyes get used to the dusk, collaborations offer new angles on the scenery.
A word about the covers. Apart from the noteworthy exception of those designed by Mike Xazzaz for his label molotov, they pretty much all feature pictures of women in states of undress and/or duress. I can’t help feeling this is a bit teenage and distracts from the impact of the music, but I am also aware that I’m unlikely to convince anyone of this. Lee has wryly raised an eyebrow at my prudishness before (I insisted there be no tits on the cover of faraday cage). He just shrugs and points over my shoulder at the totally sexualised depravity of popular culture nowadays. At least he and Miguel are aficionados of schlock images and use them in a way which acknowledges the history and context. I suspect I’ll just have to continue grumbling in my quaintly 1980s-style feminist way. Anyway, the quality of the music makes it possible to ignore the dubious packaging illustration…
There is indeed much to engage and satiate. Collaboration One is a single track documenting a primordial scene: distant landslides bury forest, volcanoes steam menacingly, giant lizards hiss in desperation as they sink into a tar pit. It smells of animals rooting in hot soil. Collaboration II is a good place for a newcomer to start. ‘Graveyard Kiss’ features a trademarked Culveresque melancholy loop rotting into mulch and coloured with Miguel’s metallic, echoing chang. ‘Funeral in Black Stockings’ (see what I mean about schlock?) is a gloriously elongated crescendo of low end rumble and crackling heat haze. It is a natural, fluid partnership of artists clearly in sync with each other.
Witchblood is a duo of Lee and Lucy Johnson (of Smut etc.) and Eponine is made up of several tracks presented on a one sided tape. There is an elusive shimmer to this, rising through the murky recording like silver carp just below the surface of a muddy pond. Delicate piano lines are partially submerged in clockwork loops, burbling water and overamped hiss. It’s like the accompaniment for practice at a ballet school for ghosts. Indian Lady is, y’know, a ‘proper’ band featuring Lee on bass. This tape contains two lengthy jams presented apparently unedited. Rumble is to the front and centre with a satisfyingly fried psych/metal guitar grooving its own way behind. I imagine teenage, stoner dragons listening to this whilst picking their teeth and relaxing after a huge meal of peri-peri hobbit.
The split album La Fetichsita finds Miguel and Mike (of Xazzaz and molotov records) on a war footing. Miguel shows us billowing clouds of metallic noise and the machine growl of giant tanks advancing whilst foot soldiers (presumably, given the title, in rubber skin suits with high heels and ‘sexy’ gas masks) finish off the wounded. Mike gives us Sabbath as played by an ill disciplined battalion of mechanical trilobites then later joins Miguel on the choking battlefield to supervise the collection of the corpses. Yes, this is pretty dark.
La Esquina Rosa is the return leg: one twenty minute track each from the same two acts, this time made freely available to download via Oracle Netlabel. Miguel’s track is a satisfying, viscous drone. Imagine filling an indoor swimming pool half with syrup and half with ball bearings then chugging backwards and forwards in a little dinghy on the surface using the outboard motor to churn the mixture up. Of you could just bounce your Casio through some filters if that proved too messy… Features a two minute long surprise towards the end unique to Miguel’s drone work.
Mike’s track begins with the sound of the listener being locked into a shipping container and the situation remains heavy thereafter. Scything, arcing, guttering electrics – as lithe and unnerving as mating snakes – and some punishing guitar feedback makes me concerned for his health and safety. Exhilarating. Mike’s stuff is so good I feel a little embarrassed subsuming it within a review headlined by others. My apologies Mike – next time you’ll get the prominence deserved.
Enoc Dissonance, a duo with Oracle netlabel collaborator Pablo Mejia, and the solo Wehrmacht Lombardo are the most balls-out-total-noise of Miguel’s various projects. Stars Extinguished, Black Sky is a split featuring the latter and Black Leather Cop, a collaboration between Scott McKeating (of Bells Hill) and RFM’s North East Correspondent Joe Murray (of Posset). The Wehrmacht Lombardo track is a very convincing, satisfyingly panic-inducing tale of a gathering hailstorm. It eases off around the twenty minute mark briefly so we can hear Miguel torture his guitar as he kills time hiding from the weather in his cave. Otherwise: you wouldn’t want to be out in it. Black Leather Cop present an almost indescribable gumbo of doomy noise/metal and discombobulating, scrabbling, dictaphonic collage. It might be awesome – I can’t tell – which means it probably is. I suspect it of being unholy at the very least, if not downright satanic. Freely downloadable from the wonderfully named and breathtakingly prolific Bandcamp label Grindcore Karaoke.
3 Way Split is comprised of tracks by Enoc Dissonance, Colombian electro-noise act Pordiozero and La Mancha Del Pecado and is co-released by Miguel’s agoraphobia tapes and Pordiozero’s El Canzancio Records. The Enoc Dissonance tracks are full-frontal racket. Fans more knowledgeable than me get the hump when I use the term ‘harsh noise wall’ because I often do so inappropriately, but surely this is pretty close. It’s like getting into a very, very hot bath or a very, very cold shower – bordering on painful at first but then strangely invigorating. I admit I don’t listen to this end of the noise spectrum often but a blast every now and again is a welcome brain-rinse.
Pordiozero provide two central tracks of agitated, restless electronics. Sub-genres of hard dance, industrial and synth based noise are smeared over one another, squeezed flat, then discarded and replaced. Vocal snippets, crunching rhythms and increasing distortion create a atmosphere of disaffected alienation.
I’d had a copy of the La Mancha track ‘She is Misery’ on my hard drive for a while prior to this being released and it is good to see it finally available. It has a dystopian, science-fictional feel to it that could well make it an appropriate soundtrack to the shenanigans pictured on the cover. Ah yes, the cover: this album is notable for its very professional looking packaging and insane artwork. A pro-copied CD-r is housed in a properly printed digipak featuring photos of some kind of post-apocalyptic alleyway in which gas-masked, pseudo-military, fetish-zombies threaten each other with guns. The mind boggles.
Anyway, here is your chance to do your duty for the international noise underground by buying one of these. It isn’t the best release in this round up but I know it cost a fair bit to produce and it would really help out our Latin American cousins if you got busy with Paypal. I know times are hard but, if it helps, you could consider it payment for all the stuff you can download for free.
Finally, we have two key releases by Miguel’s major solo guises: La Mancha Del Pecado, as already encountered several times above, and my favourite of his incarnations: The Skull Mask.
Cadaveres Exhumados by the former is a full length, five track CD-r presented in a grey digipak by Ruido Horrible (stick that label name into Google translate for an example of truth in advertising). It is an ambitious and accomplished noise album that almost scuppered this ‘fortnight with…’ idea by hogging the time available for repeat listens. There are quiet, elegiac passages of bells, pipes and slow picked guitar that balance the roaring crescendos, lend an air of mournful seriousness and indicate the level of care and sophistication taken in its construction. The noise itself is forceful and thick as bitumen in places (the final track, ‘Renuncia al silencio’, is HNW until it breaks at the end) but thoughtfully layered and throughout most of it there is space to think and appreciate what you are hearing. Its scope is impressive. Fans of the kind of metal-infused, heavy psychedelics typified in this country by the North East noise scene (from Culver to Jazzfinger to the various Mike Vest projects) should really track this down because they would dig it. High praise from me.
A word about the ‘chur-chur-chur’ sound that can be heard high in the right channel on many La Mancha Del Pecado tracks. I suppose it is an artefact of one of the filters he uses, or perhaps a result of knackered recording equipment. It would distract me occasionally at first but now it seems like a signature – like the bubbling electric jug noise that is all over those 13th Floor Elevators records.
The Skull Mask has an intensely personal vibe. It is Miguel’s shamanistic response to his experience of the Mexican wilderness. He draws on folk traditions from around the world to construct dizzying ragas and desert improv using almost nothing but acoustic guitar. Whilst the influences are sometimes clear, it has a core identity that is Miguel’s invention alone.
The tape Delbene is perhaps more varied in style than previous Skull Mask releases. Side B is definitely more hard-picked than the seasoned Miguel-watcher would expect. It shares the spiky, Bailey-esque, rawness of the pieces he records under his own name. Side A, though, is pure Skull Mask: a swirling incantation, calling up dust devils to whip the desert sand into the air. As well as his usual loose fingered virtuosity on the guitar there is some mysterious instrumentation (trumpet?!) adding to the impression that a rite is taking place. Great, as ever.
OK, I think my ‘bit’ might be done for now. Links below, folks.
black and white noise, part one: new from agorafobia
May 8, 2012 at 12:58 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: agorafobia, d.i.y. aesthetic, improv, la mancha del pecado, matthew bower, miguel perez, new music, no audience underground, noise, oracle netlabel, photocopier, photocopies, psychedelia, punk, skullflower, tapes, the skull mask, zines
- Miguel Pérez – Vouyerismo/Fetichismo (Agorafobia 011, tape)
- La Mancha Del Pecado – Espectros Del Despeńadero (Agorafobia 012, CD-r in DVD case with artwork by Matthew Bower)
- La Mancha Del Pecado – The Nylon Stains (Agorafobia 013, tape)
- The Skull Mask – Macabra (Agorafobia 014, CD-r)
Quick question for you: historically, what item of technology has done the most to help in the production of the artifacts (as I insist on spelling it) of the no-audience underground? I’m not talking about the internet now, I mean physical things: tapes, CD-rs, zines, flyers, gig posters and so on. With nods towards the home computer and the CD burner, I am tempted to answer: the photocopier.
Exploiting the strengths and weaknesses of this chugging machine with its intoxicating smell (mmm… ziney!) has led to a recognizable d.i.y./punk/noise aesthetic. It’s one I like very much. Not only that, but this marvel put the means of quick, cheap, ‘mass’ production into the hands of the worker. Literally in some cases: I imagine the office machine has been used many times to slyly run off a few (or not so few) copies when the manager is out at a meeting. I’ve never done it, of course, and I’m sure you are all blameless too. I’m just saying that some consider stealing from work to be a legitimate form of political protest. I’m just saying, that’s all…
Those lucky enough to work somewhere with, say, a Konica contract will have noticed that photocopier technology has kept pace with our aspirations. Most new machines will cough out photo quality colour copies or scan into any number of formats and proudly email you the results. Some will even generate a withering 1000 word critique of any improv CD that is pushed into the slot under the little tray for paper clips. So why do a few labels still insist on rockin’ it old-skool monochrome? I’m guessing a combo of three main reasons: a) they are punk as fuck and/or b) they have built a ‘look’ around it and/or c) having no money means having to make the most of necessity.
I think the packaging of Miguel Pérez’s Agorafobia label falls largely into category c) with heaped tablespoons of a) and b). Firstly, this guy has had no luck with digital equipment recently and a series of misfortunes has only exacerbated a lack of resources. From what he’s told me about broken computers etc. the dude appears to be a walking electro-magnetic pulse weapon.
In one sense this is heartbreaking. For example, the artwork for Espectros Del Despeńadero is by Matthew Bower of Skullflower, a hero of Miguel’s, and was secured with an international barter. Yet due to circumstances beyond Miguel’s control he has no choice but to present it in black and white via the photocopier (though a colour scan can be seen on the La Mancha Del Pecado blog). I’m sure dozens of oligarch patrons of the arts must read this blog – could one of you send this guy some money? Cheers.
In another sense it is kind of invigorating. The ragged, black and white artwork, inexpertly compiled, exactly mirrors the raw, emotionally charged music and the driven, impulsive, unmediated way it was created. Too much gloss would be dishonest.
Listening to this music I was green with envy, once again, at how Miguel is able to tackle his themes from so many different angles using solo guitar and almost nothing else. I was also struck by the thought that a grounding in metal – Miguel grew up musically in that milieu – is a terrifically useful tool. Metal is sometimes derided for its daft content or teenage sensibilities but once you can hold your own in that crowd you can use the skills to do anything. Think I exaggerate? Another example: a well known no-audience underground acquaintance of mine, rightly famed for his psychedelic style, sheepishly admitted that without the influence of Motörhead he would probably not be a guitarist today. So there you go: established scientific fact.
Fittingly, I suppose, given the artwork, Espectros Del Despeńadero does sound a bit like Lee Stokoe era Skullflower. Three long tracks of Culveresque roar with the aforementioned metal guitar submerged and abstracted in the mix. It sounds like the howling of animals, tethered at some distance from the camp. Imagine the furious, terrified, soon-to-be-gutted, dog pack in Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness (or, if you like, the similarly doomed dogs in John Carpenter’s The Thing) struggling to make themselves heard over the Antarctic wind. Best of the three tracks is the last one, ‘Vale Menos Que El Polvo’, which over its seventeen minute duration reaches an intensity that wouldn’t be out of place on a release by Enoc Dissonance, Miguel’s balls-out total noise incarnation.
The second La Mancha Del Pecado release, The Nylon Stains, is very different. Totalling a tight twenty minutes it starts, to my great surprise, with a beat. Steam-powered mechanical sailors on shore leave jerk arhythmically as laughing, plastic geisha automata dance around them. We then sink through the floor and this scene is replaced with a field recording of the workshop below where the geisha bodies are injection-moulded, repaired and the nylon stains of the title are hosed off. We sink further still and end up in the cyclopean furnace room that fuels the whole port. A hypnotic recording that invites repeat listening.
The psychedelic thrash of The Skull Mask is always welcome around these parts and has been a big influence on the fuzzed out direction I’ve been taking with midwich recently. However, Macabra is something a bit different. Taking inspiration from the Day of the Dead celebrations (the cover features a woman in a magnificent Catrina costume) and from revolutionary Mexican folk music, Miguel has reined in the ragas and dampened the delays. The energy is still crackling, of course, but now it is focussed rather than deliriously expansive. It feels like Miguel taking conscious control of a lucid dream. The second of the three tracks, ‘Con Respeto a la Señora’, even features a riff so catchy that it has been an earworm burrowed into my head for days…
To conclude we have Vouyerismo/Fetichismo, a double sided tape of harshly-lit carnality. It is appropriate that this release carries Miguel’s own name as these recordings contain nothing to hide behind. This is solo improv guitar at its most exposed – no effects, no overdubs, clinically recorded. There’s just you and the hard fact of the matter. Vouyerismo is one long track in several movements and evokes a surreal, lanquid eroticism not unlike that of Shinya Tsukamoto’s A Snake of June. However, in Miguel’s recording the participants have been driven crazy by the Mexican winds rather than the Japanese humidity. Fetichismo is more pornographic: fifteen short tracks of completely naked plucking, fingering and scrabbling. Even sustain is ruthlessly muted. A series of Polaroid photos it is impossible to tear your eyes away from.
Agorafobia releases are, initially at least, only available as physical objects for trade so contact Miguel via lamancha@rocketmail.com, get some stuff into a jiffy bag and wait – the Mexican postal system seems more or less reliable but they take their own sweet time about delivery.
More black and white noise to come from Matching Head and Fuckin’ Amateurs…
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