screaming party above invisible city: the swift by midwich reissued
May 13, 2015 at 9:34 am | Posted in midwich, new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: altar of waste, cory strand, domestic recording, drone, field recording, invisible city records, joe murray, luke vollar, midwich, new music, no audience underground, noise, screaming party, shameless self-congratulation, swifts, tapes
Midwich – The Swift (tape, Invisible City Records, ICR11, edition of 40 or download)
RFM is delighted to announce that The Swift by Midwich has been reissued by the essential Invisible City Records and is available as a beautifully packaged tape or convenient download.
The album was originally released as one 65 minute track on CD-r, presented in another beautifully designed cover in a tiny edition of 15, by highly-regarded American noise label Altar of Waste. Here is the very flattering blurb written by AoW head-honcho Cory Strand:
Gorgeous and tidal cascade of gentle droning sounds that become something akin to a crushing roar from the between the cracks in the sky and the broken limbs of trees, Midwich’s epic construction “The Swift” is a piece that flirts with both natural ambience and HNW severity without fulling giving over to either. Created from field recordings of swarms of swifts procured by the artist, the sounds here recall both the bleak pastoral harmony of the English landscape and the encroaching rumbles of black clouds swarming the sky. Similar in tone to the work of Richard Skelton with a goodly dose of Daniel Menche’s and Clive Henry’s approaches to manipulated field recordings, “The Swift” is an amazing composition that demonstrates both the awesome power of the natural world around us and the possibilities inherent within electronic manipulation. An incredibly creative work that blurs whatever genre lines you’d care to draw.
Altar Of Waste is very pleased to release this latest missive from one of the UK’s finest practitioners of underground drone. Succumb to the swarm and feel the tense beating of thousands of wings buzzing around you. Breathe in the awe.
My colleagues here at RFM dug it too. Joe said:
The Swift is a single hour long piece in three distinct movements.
Movement one: It starts like the soundtrack to ‘Evolution…The Movie’ as grey gloop is replaced by lazy cellular dividing and static, internal egg-memories. Things settle on Mothra’s mating ritual – long drawn-out breaths gradually moving out of synch as feathery lungs push huge volumes of air through Sperm Whale baleen.
Movement two: A rhythmic ticking and the clatter of ghostly forklift trucks start to creep in. The Swifts chirrup, skittering in the air warmed by the horny Mothra. Listeners note: this section accompanies the flock of stately wind turbines near Chesterfield spectacularly.
Movement three: The final five minutes heave like the tides, slowly encroaching on an abandoned city; washing through the deserted streets, clearing the human junk for a stronger, fitter civilisation floating slowly through the brine.
No question this is Rob’s most immersive and ambitious piece of Midwichery yet. You gotta have it!
..and Luke made it his album of the year:
Utterly sublime floating tones, get your cranky toddler off to sleep in minutes, limited to 15 copies only?! Madness.
Teacher’s pet, eh? The lad will go far. Positive comment written by those outside the RFM ‘office’ can also be found but, you may be surprised to learn, there are limits even to my vanity. You get the picture: it was well received and I am proud of it.
Despite the eye-watering cost of shipping copies from the USA, the edition sold out sharpish. I might have been happy to leave it there but I had one or two enquiries about reissuing it and, after falling in love with North East noise label Invisible City Records, I just couldn’t resist reaching out to label boss Craig Johnson and planting a seed. Given the catalogue already amassed it seemed like the perfect home for The Swift and, to my delight and relief, Craig agreed. The track has been carefully halved to accommodate the change in format and the new artwork captures the atmosphere of the piece exactly. It is a high quality item and, in my entirely trustworthy, un-conflicted, un-self-interested opinion, an essential purchase.
—ooOoo—
Finally, a word to those trusting souls who swapped hard cash for a copy of the original edition. If you are among that elite please forgive me for diluting the experience with a reissue and remind me of the fact when the Aqua Dentata CD-r on fencing flatworm drops later in the year. I’ll sort you out proper. If you are mad enough to buy both editions then as well as the Aqua Dentata CD-r I’ll see if I can secure you a freebie of the next midwich project which, in stark contrast, is likely to run 18 minutes and contain 12 tracks. Punk rock, eh? More news as it breaks, but for now…
—ooOoo—
the 2014 zellaby awards
January 4, 2015 at 8:23 pm | Posted in musings, new music, no audience underground | 2 CommentsTags: adam bohman, albert materia, altar of waste, andy jarvis, ap martlet, aqua dentata, ashtray navigations, askild haugland, bbblood, beartown records, botanist, cherry row recordings, chrissie caulfield, ckdh, cory strand, crow versus crow, culver, daniel thomas, dave thomas, david keenan, dear beloved henry, death of the underground, duncan harrison, dylan nyoukis, early morning records, eye for detail, ezio piermattei, female borstal, forest of eyes, hagman, hairdryer excommunication, hardworking families, helicopter quartet, henry collins, hissing frames, joe murray, karina esp, kevin sanders, kirkstall dark matter, la mancha del pecado, lee stokoe, lf records, lucy johnson, luke vollar, luminous monsters, matching head, midwich, neil campbell, new band of the faint people, nihl, no basement is deep enough, pascal nichols, peak signal 2 noise, petals, phil smith, posset, robert ridley-shackleton, rotten tables golden meat, scott mckeating, she walks crooked, sheepscar light industrial, skullflower, smut, sophie cooper, spoils & relics, stamina nudes, stuart chalmers, taming power, the piss superstition, the red cross, the skull mask, the thomas family, the wire, tom bench, werewolf jerusalem, yol, yoni silver, zellaby awards
The deliberations are over, the ballots are burning. White smoke billows from the chimney here at Midwich Mansions. Ignore the salty wave of ‘best of 2014’ lists you saw prematurely ejaculated over an appalled December – here is the real thing. ‘Never finalised prior to January 1st’ – that’s the Zellaby pledge.
And what a conclave it has been! Scott turned up early and presented his nominations as a hyperlinked series of Discogs listings – he spoke using a vocoder throughout and would only answer our questions if we assigned them catalogue numbers. Joe’s effervescent enthusiasm remained undimmed despite a trip to Accident and Emergency following a foolhardy attempt to gargle Christmas tree baubles. New kid Luke seemed happy to fetch and carry despite our hazing pranks – oh, how we laughed sending him to Wilko’s for a tub of left handed CD-rs! All I had to do was sit in my wing-backed leather chair, fingers steepled, and pass Solomon-style judgement. My beautiful Turkish manservant took copious notes during procedures, of course, and whilst those are being transcribed I’m afraid I must begin with some sombre news: the underground is dead.
An article making this claim by David Keenan was published in the December issue of The Wire magazine and caused adverse weather in the crockery. Having finally read it I can confirm that it is, by and large, laughable. The friend who sent me a copy included this note:
Here it is. I will look forward to reading your response as it would be great to see his flimsy, self-obsessed nonsense getting torn apart.
Hmm, yeah, tempting as it is to to embark on a comprehensive rebuttal what does it really matter? I hate to disappoint but engaging with the wilful fucknuttery to be found in publications like The Wire is like arguing about the properties of phlogiston – it might be of vague historical or semantic interest to those with too much time on their hands but is ultimately pointless. My favourite response has been Tom Bench‘s (@TJDizzle) satirical summary of Keenan’s disdain, tweeted in reply to some genuine outrage from Duncan Harrison (@Young_Arms):
yr not tru underground because u have friends and sometimes talk to them about music
Lolz.
Some of the fallout has been quite interesting though. Just before Christmas, RFM started getting hits from an Italian language music site that was, on investigation, carrying an interview with Keenan in which he is asked specifically about the idea of the ‘no-audience underground’ as popularised by this blog. In his short response he manages to invent a barely recognizable straw man version of the notion, take a swing at it, miss, then step back as if he’d actually landed a punch. Admittedly, Google Translate may have knocked some nuance out of his answer but, as I was able to read it, it was good for a hearty chuckle and fuck all else.
Phil Smith, currently researching the history of Termite Club for a book chapter, wrote a thoughtful piece largely agreeing with Keenan that contained the following tragicomic scene:
One of the saddest moments of the year for me (on a lovely day) was Neil Campbell & John Tree talking about whether there was ever in our lifetime likely to be a music revolution like (say) punk again (one which Keenan seems to want), & shaking their heads in total ‘of course not’ resignation, the required kidz soaked in computer games & all manner of other entertainment drips & (I suppose) music, whatever it signifies to people, only ever welling up in such a way as part of a business move anyway.
I laughed out loud reading this. Not only have these rueful old geezers forgotten at least one revolution we’ve already had since punk (rave culture – musically game changing, actual laws passed to disrupt it) but the internet enabled golden age is orders of magnitude more significant than punk. Here’s a piece from yonks ago which begins to explain why and, for good measure, here’s another from double-yonks ago about why The Wire is hopeless too.
Neil Campbell, emboldened by Keenan’s piece and nostalgic memories of poorly received gigs unearthed in response to Phil’s Termite research, ramped up his usual silliness. On Twitter he lamented the lack of confrontation nowadays and took the piss with his #realnoaudienceunderground hashtag. I was interested to find out if there was any substance behind his bravado so devised an experiment. After waiting for Twitter to move on, I called Neil out on some random nonsense in a deliberately antagonistic manner. As expected, fight came there none. Indeed, after explaining what I was up to both publicly and via direct message (the latter, I admit, did contain the phrases ‘full of shit’ and ‘you ol’ fraud!’) I found myself unfollowed. Ah well, so much for confrontation.
(Aside: Neil has form for practice/preach discrepancy. After hearing him proclaim several times that he’d rather read a bad review than a good one I took him at his word and minced three Astral Social Club releases including the album Electric Yep. I did this with heavy heart and even ran it past Neil before posting. He replied with a jaunty ‘hey you know me, go ahead’ but after I did he deleted the RFM link from the list of friends on his Astral Social Club blog and has not submitted anything at all since. I was amused to find myself excommunicated for heresy. Ah well, so much for bad reviews.)
I get the impression that Neil might be a bit uneasy with his current status as universally loved sacred cow. Or maybe he digs it and is frustrated not to be a Wire mag cover star? Who knows? I love the guy, have done for about fifteen years, and hate to jeopardise a friendship with a shameless ad hominem attack over something so inconsequential but… dude has clearly forgotten how to take a kick to the udders.
So, in summary: those that say they want confrontation don’t, or rather only want it on their own terms or at a safe distance, those that lament the lack of revolution need only to open their eyes to what is happening around them and those that proclaim the underground dead are talking pish.
Before moving on a word about terms of engagement. Whilst I’ve enjoyed a few physical fights in the past (yeah, I may be short and out of shape but I’m fucking mental), I find this kind of swaggering jaw-jaw to be boring, childish and unproductive. Comment if you like but unless what is posted is novel, substantial and engaging I am unlikely to respond. I won’t be tweeting about it under any circumstances. I have washed my hands and will need an irresistible reason to get ’em dirty again.
—ooOoo—
BOY! WHERE ARE THOSE NOTES? Oh, thank you. Have a shortbread biscuit. Right then, shall we crack on with the fun bit?
—ooOoo—
Radio Free Midwich presents The Zellaby Awards 2014
Thank you for bearing with us. Firstly, an apology: due to, y’know, austerity n’ that, this year’s ceremony will be taking place on the swings in the playground at the muddy end of the estate. Nominations will be scratched into the paint of the railings and refreshments will be whatever cider Luke can prise from the grip of local vagrants.
Secondly, the rules: to be eligible in one of the following five categories this music needs to have been heard by one of us for the first time in 2014. It does not need to have been released in 2014. As the purpose of these awards is to spread the good news about as many quality releases as possible, should an artist win in one category they will not be placed in any of the others. I do not vote for any of my own releases, nor any releases that I had a hand in, er…, releasing (with one notable exception this year). My three comrades are free to ignore these rules and write about what they like. The price paid for this freedom is that I, as editor, have final say. Thus the awards are the product of the idiosyncratic taste of yours truly with input from my co-writers along the way.
A couple of omissions explained. Long term readers may be shocked to find no mention of previous winners Ashtray Navigations or the piss superstition. Phil and Mel have been preoccupied this year with moving house, full time unenjoyment and various celebrations of the AshNav 20th anniversary and have not been as prolific as nutcase fans such as myself would like. There has been one cassette of new material, Aero Infinite, which, to my shame, I only became aware of recently and do not yet own. Believe me, the pain is fierce. Bookies have already stopped taking bets on their planned four-disc retrospective winning everything next time out.
Julian and Paul have shared a split live tape with Broken Arm and had a CD-r, The Dialled Number, The Bone-Breaker, The Heavenly Sword, out on Sheepscar Light Industrial but, in my humble opinion, their defining release of 2014 was getting nothing to appear on the developed film, a mighty album which is sadly ineligible for this year’s awards because it was released by me on fencing flatworm recordings as their ‘prize’ for winning album of the year last time. See, complicated isn’t it?
There are also many releases on the guilt-inducing review pile that I suspect could have been contenders had I found time to digest them properly: apologies to Ian Watson, Prolonged Version, Troy Schafer, Seth Cooke etc. and thanks for your continued patience. For the first time, two entries in this year’s poptastic final chart are previously unreviewed on RFM. Mysterious, eh?
OK, enuff with the preamble. The first category is…
5. The “I’d never heard of you 10 minutes ago but now desperately need your whole back catalogue” New-to-RFM Award
Joe votes for Yoni Silver:
I heard Yoni Silver play a solo bass clarinet set on November 1st this year. Over the course of 20 minutes I blinked repeatedly and snapped my fingers; my mouth hung open like a codfish and eventually my eyes filled with hot tears. I’d emerged from a jazz-hole that ranged from barely-there, reductionist ‘hummmm’, to wet-chop dribble/spittle outta the brassy pipes, to full-bore Ayler-esque gospel skronk. It was so good I didn’t just clap and holla…I vowed to start a record label to immediately box this shit up. Yoni’s discs are thin on the ground but live shows with proper jazz cats and beards like PWHMOBS are gathering pace. Watch out!
Luke goes for Botanist:
Ever fantasized about a forest dwelling black metal troll singing songs about plant life on drums and hammered dulcimer only? Me too. Well, fantasize no longer: he exists. Just when your jaded ears smugly tell you they’ve heard it all along comes the Botanist.
…but anyone paying attention will have already guessed that the winner this year is Taming Power.
I might have indulged in some ill advised Campbell-baiting above but I am profoundly grateful to Neil for taking the time to introduce me to the world of Askild Haugland. This quiet Norwegian has amassed a sizeable back catalogue of tape and vinyl releases on his own Early Morning Records, most of which were recorded, edited and annotated around the turn of the century and have remained largely unheralded since. His work – created using tape recorders, cassette players, shortwave radios, electric guitars and the like – is perfection viewed from shifting angles, filtered through prisms. His patience and dedication to uncovering every nuance of his processes are truly inspiring. It has been an enormous pleasure to promote his music to a (slightly) wider audience – exactly what this blog is all about. The chap himself seems lovely too. Read more: Neil’s accidental guest post, reviews, more reviews, Early Morning Records catalogue.
…and when you return we can move on to…
4. The “Stokoe Cup”, given for maintaining quality control over a huge body of work making it impossible to pick individual releases in an end of year round up
Joe makes a compelling case for the Peak Signal 2 Noise broadcasts:
If Cathy Soreny and her Sheffield-based gladiators had released ten 25 minute compilation tapes in a year featuring the creamy froth of the N-AU we’d stand to attention and sing a rousing song. To create ‘visual cassettes’ for your telly and computer screen and navigate the machinations of the community TV industry and come up with such a thoroughly curated, imaginatively shot and god-damn funny series is just the bee’s knees. PS2N has opened another glossy window into the N-AU.
Luke keeps it pithy:
The Stokoe Cup should clearly go to Lee Stokoe. ‘The underground is dead ‘ announces David Keenan in The Wire this month ‘shut up you prat’ is the reply from Radio Free Midwich.
Scott agrees:
Predictable enough, I HAVE to say Lee Stokoe. Browsing my discogs list for 2014 acquisitions it’s virtually all Matching Head tapes – either the new ones or tapes from the 90s that I didn’t already have. Its consistent to the point of sheer ridiculousness.
However, the editor has other ideas. This year’s winner is Daniel Thomas.
Dan’s output in 2014 has been prodigious. He even wins in two categories that don’t exist: ‘1016’ the opener on Enemy Territory is my track of the year (go on, play it whilst reading the rest of this article) and the ‘flower press’ edition of That Which Sometimes Falls Between Us / As Light Fades put together by Dave Thomas (no relation) for its release on Kirkstall Dark Matter wins packaging of the year too. The latter album is perhaps the definitive expression of ‘extraction music‘ – the sub-genre I defined as a way of herding the work of Dan, Dave, Kev Sanders and other fellow travellers into a manageable fold of headspace – and one of at least three projects involving Dan that could have been album of the year. For the record, the other two are Hagman’s Number Mask on LF Records and the remarkable Dub Variations by The Thomas Family in another beautiful package hand crafted by Crow Versus Crow:
It is the bead of sweat on the brow of the tightrope walker. It is a time-lapse film of dew condensing onto a cobweb.
Dan shows no signs of slowing, nor of relinquishing his choke-tight quality control. I cannot wait to hear what he has for us in 2015.
…and now a favourite moment for the editor:
3. The Special Contribution to Radio Free Midwich Award
Scott goes for a far-flung ambassador:
It has to be Miguel Pérez. For making RFM a global concern, and being full of passion, he’s the man.
Joe, as ever, finds this a tough one to pin down. He suggests…
…we should say a thank you to all the readers and contributors … to everyone who has waited patiently for a review/carried on reading without sending us hate mail…
…which is a sentiment I share, of course, but this year I think one particular set of contributors has to be recognized in this category. God knows how 27 different acts are going to share the gong though because the winners are…
The artists who submitted tracks to eye for detail – the midwich remixes album:
Andy Jarvis, ap martlet, Aqua Dentata, Breather, Brian Lavelle, Chrissie Caulfield (of RFM faves Helicopter Quartet), Clive Henry, Dale Cornish, Daniel Thomas, devotionalhallucinatic, DR:WR (Karl of The Zero Map), dsic, foldhead (Paul Walsh – who accidentally started it all), Hardworking Families (Tom Bench), In Fog (Scott McKeating of this parish), John Tuffen (of Orlando Ferguson), Michael Clough (who also provided cover art), Michael Gillham, Neil Campbell (Astral Social Club), Panelak, Paul Watson (BBBlood), posset (Joe Murray also of RFM), Simon Aulman (pyongyang plastics), the piss superstition, Van Appears, Yol, and ZN.
This year I finally joined Twitter which, as a wise-cracking, smart-arse, mentally unstable narcissist with self-esteem issues, turned out to be a perfect platform for me (though for those exact same reasons I think I’ll have to exercise a bit more caution with it in future). One of the first things that happened was a throwaway comment about a midwich remix project ballooning into an actual album that had to be retroactively called into existence. The final release six weeks later contained 27 re-workings of tracks from my back catalogue and lasted a total of 3 hours 40 minutes. The process was humbling, exhilarating, joyful and unprecedented in my personal experience.
The album remains available here (along with more detail as to its construction). If you don’t already have it, I recommend you treat yourself with that Christmas money from Gran. I’m charging a fiver for the download and all dough raised is being given to The Red Cross. The total donated so far, after PayPal and Bandcamp fees, is something like £180. When I reached a ton I had a giant-cheque-handing-over-ceremony, again following whims blurted out on Twitter.
Many, many thanks to all involved – you are elite members of the pantheon of the righteous.
—ooOoo—
BOY!! DIM THE LIGHTS. What? Oh yes, we’re outside aren’t we. Fetch me a shortbread biscuit then. What do you mean there are none left? Well, just give me the one you are holding. Gah! The impertinence! Anyway, finally we come to the two main categories…
—ooOoo—
2. The Label of the Year Award
Joe goes for No Basement is Deep Enough:
You could easily mistake No Basement is Deep Enough’s tape goof for a zany Zappa-esque prank. But peel away the layers; brush the fringe to one side, open that single plush tit and you are rewarded with some amazing music. Almost like a wonky Finders Keepers NBIDE have unveiled some new ghouls and re-released some remarkable old gizzards (Alvaro – The Chilean with the Singing Nose, Ludo Mich and Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson) in frankly outrageous packaging. Old or new, experimental classicists or gutter-dwelling hobo these gonks are pure trippin’ for ears.
Yeah, I’ve been involved as a one of these gonks this year but I think that means I can give you an extra bit of insight into how curator Ignace De Bruyn and designer Milja Radovanović are such wonderful human beings. I told them about getting some mentions in The Wire (Ed – you’ll love this) and they didn’t give a shit. “Ha, we always get mentioned in The Wire without any clue how, what, where, when” said Ignace, “and let’s keep it like that” he chortled into his waffle.
Luke narrows it down to two:
Beartown Records. A consistent champion of no audience sounds and nice and cheap, they sent me a parcel addressed to Luke ‘ the sick’ Vollar which contained a postcard with ‘sorry just sorry’ written on it. For this reason they are my label of the year.
Also a mention for Altar of Waste. I find it comforting to know that somewhere in North America there is a guy called Cory Strand transforming his favourite films / TV programmes / music into insanely limited and lovingly presented sets. Twenty disc drone interpretation of Harry Potter limited to five copies!? He also releases loads of drone/HNW discs that are lovely items to look at and listen to including my album of the year [SPOILER REMOVED – Ed]
Scott apologises:
Sorry, Matching Head again.
Luminous worthies, for sure, but I reckon my choice has been phosphorescent:
The winner is hairdryer excommunication.
The solo venture of Kevin Sanders has released, I believe, 26 items in the calendar year 2014. Unbelievably, during the same time, he has also had his creations released by other labels, has played live, has moved house and job along a lengthy diagonal line from North to South and has let fly with a gazillion opaque tweets. This guy’s heart must beat like a fucking sparrow’s.
But never mind the girth, feel the quality. Kev’s hairdryer excommunication sits alongside Lee Stokoe’s Matching Head as an absolute exemplar of the no-audience underground micro-label as expression of personal vision. Each release is a new page in the atlas mapping the world he is presenting to us; each trembling drone, each nihilistic/ecstatic scything fuzz is a contour line. Like all great labels, hXe is greater than the sum of its parts and only gets more compelling as those parts collect and combine. I appreciate that this might appear daunting for the newbie so here’s five to be starting with – you’ll thank me for it.
Now you see why I have to strictly enforce my ‘win allowable in only one category’ rule. I could have created a top 40 (!) that just contained releases by, or involving, Askild, Dan and Kev. Astonishing. So, leaving those guys sat chatting under the climbing frame, we finally come to the blue riband, best in show, gold medal event:
1. The Album of the Year Award
Woo! Lists! Click on the album title and you will be taken to the original RFM review (if such a thing exists) or another applicable page (if not) where you will find details of the release (label, whatnot) and, most importantly, how to go about hearing/purchasing these marvels.
First to the lectern is Mighty Joe Murray:
It’s taken a real effort to whittle this down but here’s my top 5 in order:
1. The New Band of the Faint People – The Man Who Looked at the Moon
Keep yr Wounded Nurse. These micro-pieces are stitched together with a domestic hand juggling fly agaric.
2. Rotten Tables, Golden Meat – My Nose is Broken
This cheeky release opened a new stomach pouch and gassed itself in…yeasty and fruity. Biggest smiles of the year.
3. Pascal – Nihilist Chakai House
It goes, “tk tk tk tk tk …. po/po/po – ping.” Blistering like hot metal pipes; fragile like seaweed.
4. Spoils & Relics – Embed and then Forget
Stream-of-consciousness becomes conscious itself…a living, breathing music as fresh as green parsley.
5. CKDH – Yr Putrid Eyeballs/Fungal Air Creeping Adders
The most violently restrained listen of the year by a long shot. Needle sharp. Music to break radios.
Scott briefly interjects:
Skullflower – Draconis
As sylph-like a heavyweight as you’re ever likely to hear.
Now over to the office junior Luke:
Album of the year…
Midwich – The Swift
Utterly sublime floating tones, get your cranky toddler off to sleep in minutes, limited to 15 copies only?! Madness. [Editor’s note: ha! What is more shameful? Luke sucking up to his editor or me for publishing it? Yes, I know its me – shut up.]
The rest:
Spoils & Relics – Embed and then Forget
culver & posset – black gash
Skullflower – Draconis
Aqua Dentata – The Cygnet Procambarus
Robert Ridley Shackleton / Werewolf Jerusalem / She Walks Crooked – April Fools
Ashtray Navigations – Aero Infinite
Yol – Headless Chicken Shits out Skull Shaped Egg
Dylan Nyoukis – Yellow Belly
Ezio Piermattei – Turismodentale
..and last of all, to your faithful editor. I have chosen twenty items (well, twenty three including cheats). The first half are presented in no particular order, the second set in the traditional ‘top ten run down’ ending with the actual, objectively verified best album of the year. In my opinion.
- Henry Collins – Music of Sound
- Smut – Vulgar Tongue
- Luminous Monsters – On Rubied Talons
- Forest of Eyes – Winter Wakeneth
- Adam Bohman – Music and words 2
- BBBlood – No Religion at the Salad Bar
- New Band of the Faint People – The Man Who Looked at the Moon
- Karina ESP – A single moment, repeated
- La Mancha Del Pecado – Witchskinner
- Stamina Nudes – Discipline of Exploding Bridges
10. NIHL / Female Borstal / Dear Beloved Henry / Albert Materia
The perils of the split tape, eh? I dug the Female Borstal side of the former, sadly didn’t get on with Albert Materia on the latter. However the sides by NIHL and Dear Beloved Henry were bloody marvellous and, if they’d appeared on the same object would have rocketed up these rankings. So I’m imagining an ideal world in which they did. NIHL got a haiku:
Seduced by darkness
beyond guttering arc-light –
like moths, like dead souls.
Praise for Dear Beloved Henry – equally heartfelt, less formatting:
…deceptively simple in execution: a flowing electronic drone groove with a vaguely East Asian feel – like 1970s Krautrock that has been listening to a bunch of gamelan LPs – works through the variations. However, every so often a magnetic pull distorts it off course and adds an intriguing, complicating layer of discordance. It’s like it was mastered to VHS and someone is now messing with the tracking. Is this an artefact of duping it to an old recycled tape or is this woosiness wholly intended? The result is magical either way.
9. Helicopter Quartet – Leading Edges
…the album expresses a profound vision with an austere but soulful beauty. Imagine a slate-blue version of Ashtray Navigations psychedelics or a restrained take on the intensity of, say, Swans without the self-loathing bombast. The band may jokingly self-describe as ‘semi-melodic mournfulness’ but this is a deeply serious music with, I think, plenty to say about the difficult, forlorn, wonderful, awe-inspiring condition we find ourselves in.
…Helicopter Quartet are, to my tired ears, a near-perfect example of how musicianship can be harnessed in a noise context. Chrissie and Mike balance their considerable skills with an understanding of how to use noise to pluck the soul of the listener and have it vibrate with a slightly discordant, emotionally complicated, seriously intended, profoundly satisfying resonance.
8. Sophie Cooper – Our Aquarius
When I wrote in the RFM Christmas message to the nation…
To be transported by a work of art – to be lifted from yourself, your surroundings and placed elsewhere for the duration – is a profound experience and, as someone who has trouble with self-sabotaging mental illness, one that I greatly appreciate. Catch me right and the bus to work is swapped for a magic carpet skimming the treetops. Find me in a susceptible mood and waiting at a pedestrian crossing becomes standing at the bedside of an elderly relative, brimful with a mixture of love and trepidation. Listening to music pans the muddy water sloshing inside my head, nuggets of gold and squirming, glistening creatures are uncovered. It – thus: you – is a constant source of revelation, of insight and of inspiration.
…it was no coincidence that I had been listening to this album a lot. My apologies to Sof for not getting around to reviewing it but, hey, Uncle Mark did over at Idwal Fishers. The cad suggests that it is ‘by no means a flawless release’ but if he dare repeat that in my vicinity I shall strike his cheek with my glove.
7. Stuart Chalmers – imaginary musicks vol. 1
The world his music describes is fully formed and the listener’s experience of it is immersive and ego-dissolving but carefully placed ticks – a filter echo, a moment of dictaphonic skwee – bring you back to the surface by foregrounding its artificiality. It’s like a South Sea Islands version of Philip K. Dick’s Time out of Joint. Imagine walking on the golden beach, admiring the dancing palms, looking out over the glassy ocean to the setting sun only for it all to suddenly disappear and be replaced with a featureless white room and a scrap of paper at your feet with the words ‘tropical paradise’ typed on it. As with all the very best stuff: the more I listen to it, the more I want to listen to it.
6. The Skull Mask – Nocturno Mar / Sunburn
Another terrific year for the prolific Miguel Pérez, RFM’s Mexican cousin. From the bloody-minded free noise of his improv duo ZN to the incense-and-bitumen ritual drone of The Will of Nin Girima (released on new label-to-watch Invisible City Records), I doubt a week has passed without me spending some time in his company.
My favourite of his projects is The Skull Mask and these two recordings were released either side of Miguel’s return to acoustic guitar. The former is made of enveloping, tidal drones containing half-submerged reversed vocals. It can prove oppressively menacing or hypnotically soothing depending on your mood as you encounter it. Just like the night sea it is named for. The latter is ravaged, desert psychedelia improvised with raw acoustic guitar. There is no shade under which Miguel, or the listener, can hide – this is completely exposed music and is riveting.
5. Yol – Headless Chicken Shits out Skull Shaped Egg
From the preamble to a review by Joe:
For the uninitiated Yol has carefully and modestly created his own footnote in the frantic world of kinetic poetry. Imagine tiny fragile words battered with broken bottles. Innocent syllables and posh sibilance swashes getting clotted and clumped together. Those classy phonics all chopped up and smashed; ground out like spent fags and stuttered wetly in a barely controlled rage…
Musical accompaniment is of the most primitive and brutal kind. Forget the chest-beating Harsh Noise dullards, this is frighteningly naked and exposed. Short blasts of destruction come from broken machinery, sheared plastic shards, bits of old hoover and burnt cutlery. A more dicky commentator would say recordings are made in carefully selected site specific locations. The truth? Yol’s breaking into empty factory units and shouting his rusty head off.
4. Spoils & Relics – Sins of Omission / Embed and then Forget
The closest the RFM staff come to ‘critical consensus’. I can’t decide which of these releases I prefer so you are getting ’em both. From my review of the former:
Their music denies narrative … The palette used is a largely abstract selection of found, domestic and field recordings as well as sound produced by the various electronic implements that make up their ‘kit’. The source of any given element is usually (and presumably deliberately) unclear. They are examining the innards of everything, poking around where noise happens and taking notes. It is more akin to the meta-musical experiments of AMM and their progeny.
Don’t be scared off – this music is not dry and scratchy, it is layered with humour (ranging from the wry raised eyebrow to banana skin slapstick), tension and a whip-smart self-awareness that speaks of the telepathic relationship between the band members when performing. A piece by Spoils & Relics is about sound in the same way a piece by Jackson Pollock is about paint.
From Joe’s review of the latter:
There is a constant flow of ideas all itchy with life; reminding me of a similar feeling – running your finger over a gravestone, nails gouging the names. I’m caught up in a multi-sensory melting of meaning into a constant ‘now’ … Listeners who favour that hi-fidelity will be delighted. Beards who dwell in the no-fi world of clanking tape jizz are going to be entranced. Skronk fans will be be-calmed. Zen droners will wake up refreshed and sharp.
3. Ap Martlet – Analog Computer
The title is perfect – it calls to mind a room-sized, valve-run difference engine humming with contented menace. These three tracks seem less compositions than iterations of an algorithm set in motion by a wonky punchcard being slotted into the machine upside-down. ‘Comdyna’ and ‘Thurlby’ are both rhythmic in an abstract sense – the latter being a low impact step aerobics class for retired ABC Warriors, the former an exercise in patience and discipline as a series of low-slung tones are held until they start to feedback, then released, then repeated. The final track, ‘Heathkit’, is a coruscating, brain-scouring, fuzz-drone. It is the kind of sound that in a workshop you would wear ear protectors to dampen but here it is presented for our contemplation and admiration.
2. culver – plague hand
[Editor’s note: a sudden attack of prudishness has stopped me from reproducing the covers of this release. Scans can be found accompanying the original review.]
I need to account for Matching Head catalogue number 200: plague hand by culver, a twin tape 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.
[Editor’s second note: Lee later told me that this is in fact all one track with various movements. Just so as you know.]
…and the winner of the Zellaby Award for Album of the Year 2014 is:
1. Aqua Dentata – The Cygnet Procambarus
My review took the form of a science fiction (very) short story. Eddie’s music does that kind of thing to your head. Here it is:
In some future hospital you are recovering from a horrible accident. Within a giant glass vitrine, you are suspended in a thick, healing gel – an amniotic fluid rich in bioengineered enzymes and nanotech bots all busy patching you up. From the waist down you are enmeshed in metal, a scaffold of stainless steel pins keeping your shape whilst the work continues. The first twenty minutes of Eddie’s half hour describes your semi-conscious state of prelapsarian bliss, played out over dark undertones of bitter irony: every moment spent healing is, of course, a moment closer to confronting the terrible event that put you there.
During the final ten minutes the tank empties, bizarrely, from the bottom up. Pins are pushed from healing wounds and tinkle and clatter as they collect below you. Attending staff shuffle nervously but maintain a respectful distance and near silence. As the gel clears your head, your eyes slowly peel open, the corners of your mouth twitch. You look out through the glass at the fishbowled figures in the room. You weakly test the restraints you suddenly feel holding you in place, and with a sickening flash it all comes back and you rememb———
No-one in what this blog lovingly refers to as the ‘no-audience underground’ is producing work as consistently brilliant as Eddie Nuttall. The back catalogue of his project Aqua Dentata – growing with the alien beauty and frustrating slowness of a coral reef – contains not a wasted moment. His work – quiet, long-form dronetronics with metallic punctuation – is executed with the patience and discipline of a zen monk watching a spider construct a cobweb. Best dressed man to feature on this blog too.
—ooOoo—
So, that is that. Eddie’s prize, should he wish to take me up on it, is for Aqua Dentata to have the one and only release on the otherwise dormant fencing flatworm recordings some time in 2015. I’ll keep you posted on negotiations.
Oh, and should any of you be interested in how this blog does – y’know, number of hits and all that – I’ve made the annual report provided by WordPress public and you can see it here.
Heartfelt best wishes for the New Year, comrades. All is love.
Rob Hayler, January 2015.
(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
all routes via drent: joe murray travels with gen ken montgomery, midwich, thf drenching and marc matter
February 1, 2014 at 2:22 pm | Posted in midwich, new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: altar of waste, chocolate monk, council of drent, david birchall, drone, gen ken montgomery, improv, joe murray, luke poot, marc matter, midwich, new music, no audience underground, noise, thf drenching, vocal improvisation
Gen Ken Montgomery – The Well Spliced Breath Volume 7: Voice Clippings (CD-r, Chocolate Monk, choc.274, edition of 60)
Midwich – The Swift (CD-r, Altar of Waste, AOW 145, edition of 15)
Birchall / Drenching / Poot – Scottish Floating Charge (self-released download)
THF Drenching – Unnatural White Inventions (vol 1) (self-released download)
THF Drenching – Unnatural White Inventions (Vol 2) (self-released download)
Marc Matter / Voiceover – L’oeil Ecclatante (CD-r, Chocolate Monk, choc.276)
It’s 7.15am on a rainy Sunday morning. Newcastle sleeps off its Saturday night as I board the National Express to London Victoria. Seven hours forty minutes of travel stretches out in front of me…seven hours forty minutes of quality RFM listening time. So here goes, settle down, headphones on…
(Newcastle to Catterick Garrison) First up is Gen Ken Montgomery – The Well Spliced Breath Volume 7: Voice Clippings. I’m assuming the dizzying speech loops for this charming disc are culled from self help/instructional/educational tapes from GKM’s legendary sound library.
The tone set is wonderfully dated. That Formica-slick 1950’s sound of gentle assurance and paternal wisdom (don’t worry about the bomb – it’s all going to be OK) nags at the brain stem like a fake memory. GKM adds disquiet to these Bakelite loops with bee-waffle, Disney strings and random clatter as the repetition of the most innocent of phrases, ‘You’re as pretty as a picture’ become darkly sinister. I’m reminded of those between-song collages from Bongwater, or the sharp, cultural poke-in-the-eye of Negativland. None of this in a bad way – more like when you come across a Butthole Surfers interview in inky old Melody Maker and think, ‘Cor…they were great weren’t they. Why don’t more folk do that?’ Only the track ‘If you need help’ bucks this trend and splices partial vocal snitches as tight as the wrapper on a chewy toffee penny.
“We don’t have to suffer, we’re the best batch yet”, croaked old Don Van. And I’m thinking the same think about old Gen Ken here. The Well Spliced Breath series on Chocolate Monk is damn essential listening for the student of vocal fuh. You know that. But, dear reader, this one is the creamy-doof, the Shia LaBoeuf!
(Wetherby to Woodhall Services) I’m hoping my terrible geography won’t let me down as I delve into The Swift by Midwich. I want to be knee-deep in Midwich as we pass through Rob’s adoptive home town of Leeds; creating a feedback loop of musty drone from coach to city centre.
The Swift is a single hour long piece in three distinct movements.
Movement one: It starts like the soundtrack to ‘Evolution…The Movie’ as grey gloop is replaced by lazy cellular dividing and static, internal egg-memories. Things settle on Mothra’s mating ritual – long drawn-out breaths gradually moving out of synch as feathery lungs push huge volumes of air through Sperm Whale baleen.
Movement two: A rhythmic ticking and the clatter of ghostly forklift trucks start to creep in. The Swifts chirrup, skittering in the air warmed by the horny Mothra. Listeners note: this section accompanies the flock of stately wind turbines near Chesterfield spectacularly.
Movement three: The final five minutes heave like the tides, slowly encroaching on an abandoned city; washing through the deserted streets, clearing the human junk for a stronger, fitter civilisation floating slowly through the brine.
No question this is Rob’s most immersive and ambitious piece of Midwichery yet. You gotta have it!
(Editorial aside: the more cynical amongst you may scoff but I’m satisfied that Joe’s praise for this album has nowt to do with it being recorded by me, his editor. Nor will my praise for the Black Leather Cop tape in a future review have owt to do with the fact that it was recorded by the duo of Scott and Joe, my RFM comrades. Can there be ‘conflict of interest’ down here in the no-audience underground? I may tackle this question at length some other time but, spoiler alert, I suspect the short answer is: ‘no’. At the time of writing there are still a couple of copies of The Swift left for sale – hop to it! – RH)
(Hucknall to Whipsnade Zoo (including nap)) I came across Birchall / Drenching / Poot – Scottish Floating Charge while using Mrs Posset’s Facebook contraption…what joy these ‘likes’ bring!
This heavyweight trio treat the disc as very jazz with a muscular Drenching doing a moody Mingus on bull-Dictaphone. His Clangersesque chops weave around Luke Poot’s patent furniture jam and Dave Birchall’s scribble-scrabble on guitar.
The ghost of Carl Stalling looms. The busy peaks are a cartoon catfight in a sandpaper factory; the loser tarred and feathered. Heavy weights get dropped on heads and Bluebirds tweet over a swiftly rising bruise. But it’s not all three-way, slapstick action – No Sir!
‘Deed of Negative Pledge’, a duo between THF Drenching & Poot is a dense mung of collapsed electrics in a scum-filled pothole. There’s something here that reminds me of Prince – a kind of affronted pomp. It’s easy to picture The New Power Generation battle The Revolution with toys from an Argos Christmas cracker on this one.
‘Nano-tech Slave Canoe’ by Dave & Drenching is a double-D storm of fizz & gaseous cloud – behold the hot hail. It gladdens me pans to hear some joyful ruler-twang nestling between dicta squirts and scree.
Lo…the energy never stops. ‘A Deer Walking on Some Cardboard’ is plumped up and caffeinated like early Adolescents wrecking that forgotten kitchen cabinet full of old parts for a pre-war blender until some gonzo moose-honking heralds our arrival in glorious Luton.
More tape-screw bounty accompanies me from Dunstable to Victoria with THF Drenching’s Unnatural White Inventions (vol 1) . This solo disc showcases the Herbie Hancock of Dictaphones melting into a somewhat Ballardian mood. The future is five minutes away and carved out of alienating concrete. Drenching, thumbs as heavy as Stonehenge uprights, crushes micro-sounds out of the pinched brown tape with a steel-tension squeak. Listeners note: Lovers of Raster Noton shit will dig the clean and clinical splatters of goof on display here – honest.
‘Live Acoustic Nail-Fetish’ has some button-pushing genius measured out in Samuel Morse’s code spelling out, ‘Overthrow the Ruling Classes. Unite. Rejoice!’ if I’m not much mistaken. This decoding made me jumpy. So it’s with a nervous titter I relish the electric horse sound (invented by little Jimmy Osmond) that closes this tasty piece.
Fans of balls-out skronk look away now. ‘Postal Ballot Reflux’ is a dystopian Gamelan, heavy with loss, mourning the death of the Arts & Crafts movement. It’s a lament for Brent Cross…it’s a silent scream in Halfords superstore. Finally ‘Alternating Meat Wipes’ de-tunes a radio like a Victorian lady succumbing to Polystyrene ear-pressure. That’s not something you hear everyday brothers and sister right?
I’ve arrived in the capital! And after I’ve slapped some blood back into my legs I relax into THF Drenching’s Unnatural White Inventions (Vol 2) as I make the cross-town jaunt Victoria to Stoke Newington on the number 73 Routemaster.
It’s a bold opening: the squeal of miniature figs in a foam of iron gravy that starts ‘Xmas TP-M110 Jammy Slobber’. Presently the Christmas tree decorations are taken down and the resulting chatter recorded by noisy Krill. Rice expands to fill a seeping wound…whoa man Drench! Things get serious with ‘Jettisoned Inky Crags’, a music concrete composition (electric whisk in a Smash tin) that zip-scratches and Velcro-rips like Mixmaster Mike with crabs.
The erotic closer, ‘Something for a Stabproof Goose’ is a fumble in the hide. An Owl’s haunted ‘twit-t’woo’ in strong sunlight. My ears tell me it’s all composed in negative with the fowl sound redacted, the anti-echo of quack left to dissolve into the dusk. Punishingly austere and perfectly suited to staring at the back of an old guy’s head for 50 minutes.
The next day, my London business done, I tramp back to the train station and Marc Matter / Voiceover – L’oeil Ecclatante accompanies me from King’s Cross back home to Newcastle.
I chat to the poor bugger next to me. She’s working on spreadsheets but I’m overcome with the urge to spout forth…
Hey lady! Here’s more vocal shenanigans from your Cannonball Run chums Chocolate Monk. This Mr Marc has already done his personal huffing and honking and scratched his mung into soft black vinyl if you please. The vocal explosions are then mixed and mashed up via turntables, mixing desk and effects. Neat eh?
Do you like history lady? Marc knows his onions and has been DJing with the ‘hoof and varble’ of ancient text compositions/sound poetry for a few years. It’s no surprise then that L’oeil Ecclatante comes across like the late, great Henri Chopin; full of damp glottal slops and high-pitched steamy hisses.
Listeners note: at this point I offer her my earbuds. She declines but continues to look interested.
At times it’s like being trapped in a vast jug: bub, bub, bubbing as liquid is poured out on to a blackened tree stump,
…I continue,
…other moments revisit the sonic texture of corduroy as my old school trousers, Bishop Barrington Comprehensive – year 8, are rubbed against sensitive fruit. Do you think that the sleight-of-hand encouraged by turntables allow sounds to slip wetly between your ears and rough running-breath to be laid over internal lung-farts to patch up a rhythm, soon to be nixed by the pinched trachea of Ligeti’s angels?
Although she didn’t answer and quickly went back to her spreadsheets I could tell she was hooked, another convert to the no-audience underground.
Mind the gap!
new for the new year! ‘the swift’ by midwich on altar of waste
January 7, 2014 at 9:23 am | Posted in midwich, new music, no audience underground | 4 CommentsTags: altar of waste, cory strand, drone, midwich, midwich for sale, new music, no audience underground, noise, shameless self-congratulation
Midwich – The Swift (CD-r in DVD case, Altar of Waste, AOW 145, edition of 15)
Hmmm… never thought of myself as a curly font sort of act but that cover is lovely isn’t it? RFM is very proud to kick off 2014 by announcing the availability of some new midwich material. The Swift comprises one 65 minute track, on CD-r, presented in a beautifully designed cover, in a tiny hand-made edition, by highly-regarded American noise label Altar of Waste. Here is the very flattering blurb written by AoW head-honcho Cory Strand:
Gorgeous and tidal cascade of gentle droning sounds that become something akin to a crushing roar from the between the cracks in the sky and the broken limbs of trees, Midwich’s epic construction “The Swift” is a piece that flirts with both natural ambience and HNW severity without fulling giving over to either. Created from field recordings of swarms of swifts procured by the artist, the sounds here recall both the bleak pastoral harmony of the English landscape and the encroaching rumbles of black clouds swarming the sky. Similar in tone to the work of Richard Skelton with a goodly dose of Daniel Menche’s and Clive Henry’s approaches to manipulated field recordings, “The Swift” is an amazing composition that demonstrates both the awesome power of the natural world around us and the possibilities inherent within electronic manipulation. An incredibly creative work that blurs whatever genre lines you’d care to draw.
Altar Of Waste is very pleased to release this latest missive from one of the UK’s finest practitioners of underground drone. Succumb to the swarm and feel the tense beating of thousands of wings buzzing around you. Breathe in the awe.
I’m blushing! Still, I have to admit I’m very pleased with this. Although it builds on previous ‘augmented field recording’ pieces like ‘Eaves‘ and ‘Seasonal Adjustment‘ I think it is a notable step forward for midwich. It is built from a number of sources – synth drones, domestic and backyard recordings – and at over an hour long easily my lengthiest and most ambitious piece.
A quick word about pricing. For those in the USA this is a steal at ten bucks all in and there are no excuses for not gracing Cory with your custom. For those here in the UK, or elsewhere in the world, you may blink a bit to discover that this will set you back $23 (about £14 at time of writing) including postage. This is because US international postal rates have risen to an absolutely brutal level. Cory has taken some stick for his prices, and defends himself eloquently here. To paraphrase: postal charges are beyond his control, he makes a loss on almost every item he sends abroad but does it anyway because, like the rest of us, he loves the music. Think about it like this: what you’ll be getting is a new and intriguing piece by “one of the UK’s finest practitioners of underground drone” at a high-value length in a beautiful package from a tiny edition. There is no digital afterlife planned for it either. If it helps, all purchasers may download everything from my Bandcamp page whilst paying nowt and feeling no guilt for doing so…
[EDIT: you lot have done me proud – nine days after release and six days after the post above and there are only three copies left! Many thanks, comrades. If you want one – and of course you do – better not sleep on it… RH – 13/01/2014.]
a handshake from mexico: simulacro, la mancha del pecado, wehrmacht lombardo
May 28, 2013 at 6:49 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: altar of waste, drone, jorge gonzalez, la mancha del pecado, miguel perez, new music, no audience underground, noise, oracle netlabel, shameless self-congratulation, simulacro, wehrmacht lombardo
simulacro – cuatro ep (CD-r or download, registro latente)
La Mancha Del Pecado – Anciano Y Enfermo (CD-r, Altar of Waste, AOW 52, edition of 20)
Wehrmacht Lombardo – Au Convent de Panthemont (CD-r, Altar of Waste, AOW 61, edition of 20)
Some time ago I saw an interview with that Thom Yorke from that Radiohead (presumably by accident, I have no more than a passing interest in their work) in which he was asked his opinion as to the meaning of life. He gave the following answer:
The most essential thing in life is to establish heartfelt communication with others, there’s bugger all else to do.
I thought this impressively robust and, whilst not agreeing entirely with the second clause, found myself nodding in vigorous approval. As I can’t think of a better way of putting it, I find myself in the embarrassing situation of living by a maxim trotted out by a pop star (of sorts), albeit a thoughtful one. Oh well, it could be worse: ‘life ain’t nothing but bitches and money’ as Ice Cube once asserted…
Anyway, I was reminded of Mr. Yorke’s comment again the other day when a package arrived at Midwich Mansions from my Mexican Cousin Miguel Perez, wrapped, as is his habit, with rolls and rolls of sellotape. Hacking it open, I found it to contain, amongst other things, two new releases by Miguel himself (see below) and a letter and CD-r from a fellow Mexican previously unknown to me named Jorge Gonzalez.
Jorge could easily have just emailed me but instead he took the trouble to write a (beautifully handwritten – see scan) letter and instead of just sending me his CD-r directly, forwarded it to Miguel to include with his by way of an introduction. I was charmed by his effort, approach and the sentiment of his correspondence. This, comrades, is WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT: making connections with far-flung enthusiasts. That this guy on the other side of the world has been inspired by our meagre endeavours is enormously heartening and I was touched by the method he used to contact me. I was amused to discover that it took a blog based in the North of England to bring these two countrymen together. The no-audience underground is like Gentleman’s Relish on hot buttered toast: spread thinly, richly flavoured, not for everyone but delicious to those who have acquired the taste.
So what of his music? Well, Jorge records under the name simulacro and this CD-r comprises four tracks (hence the title), totalling about 20 minutes, in a colour printed card sleeve. The opener, ‘hangar 197 X’ is five minutes of free rock that I have to admit didn’t grab me. Its heart is in the right place but it isn’t my bag. Track two, ‘nebulizador eterico’ is a slow moving lava flow of drone metal – heavy, viscous, hot enough to make the air shake but spacious enough to walk around. I like this very much. ‘escudo ceramico’ is a synth whine overlaid with some ghost jazz guitar. It kinda works and its oddness has grown on me. The closer, ‘instruccion clasificada’, is a fitting final track as it draws on elements of the previous three: synth drone, a background rattle of metal guitar, slow sludge rock stabs allowed to bleed out. So: one track I didn’t like, one I really did, two others that showed interest and promise. OK, I’ll settle with that for now and look forward to Jorge’s next effort.
Do your bit for international no-audience solidarity and visit his netlabel blogspot where you’ll find details and links to his files at archive.org. You don’t have to break out the calligraphy pens.
…and speaking of international no-audience solidarity: Miguel Perez, another fine case in point. My first mention of him and his work was a one-line dismissal of his side of a split tape shared with Culver back in the Summer of 2011. Undaunted, he got in touch to say thanks for the mention anyway and since then a transatlantic friendship has blossomed that has involved thousands of words sent in emails, the exchange of hours of music via the magic of the internet, many parcels trusted to the worrisome international postal system and collaborations on a couple of releases with more promised for the future. Partly via radiofreemidwich but mainly due to his own indefatigable spirit he has, for example, ‘met’ Yol and formed the peerlessly strange improv duo Neck vs. Throat, secured releases on excellent labels like Striate Cortex, Molotov and Sheepscar Light Industrial and arranged collaborations with everyone he can pin down. I’ve heard so much of his work over the last couple of years I feel like I’ve been sitting drinking a coke on his doorstep, listening to him figure it all out in real time.
Whilst his work rate would kill a lesser man, or at least lead to a battle-fatigued drop in quality, the opposite seems to be true of Miguel. The trick is: he listens. He reads his reviews, takes it all on board and makes mental notes of things to try next, he learns from his collaborators and, especially recently, he approaches his own solo ventures with a view to refining their quality, concentrating their purpose. All this whilst already being a virtuoso guitarist having grown up in the metal scene. He tells me that he is satisfying the hard-plucked improv impulse with his guitar duo Colectivo N (even playing live, winning over bars full of initially puzzled punters) which is allowing him to focus on the majesty of drone with his other projects.
The two albums pictured above illustrate his development perfectly. Produced in very limited editions, as is typical for this intriguing and prolific American label, they are packaged in DVD style cases and wrapped in some striking photography (even more eye-opening when you find out that the provocatively posed ‘nun’ adorning the inlay of Au Convent de Panthemont is Miguel’s wife Maria! What can you say to that?!). The professional quality of the finish is noteworthy considering the tiny number available, but entirely appropriate given the quality of the contents.
Au Convent de Panthemont by Wehrmacht Lombardo is an epic ‘airless drone’ (Miguel’s own description) apparently inspired by the Marquis de Sade’s Juliette. Whilst I agree that it is claustrophobic, albeit in an erotically complicated way, I’d say its defining characteristic is an ever present throb and that the drone, although heady and intoxicating, is secondary.
After a brief orgiastic opening, for the first half hour this throb plays out aching and distended, gratification painfully delayed, in an atmosphere thick with incense. Around the 30 minute mark an insistent hiss is pushed to the fore adding a deceptively soothing layer of white noise balm under which the fleshy redness continues to pulse. With 20 minutes to go the rhythm resolves into a metallic clatter which, in this decadent context, suggests the workings of a flagellating machine into which out hapless protagonist has been strapped. The last few minutes see the return of the initial throb only to be merged with a final burst of the duelling hiss. It’s a satisfyingly ambiguous conclusion.
The pace of this piece is perfect. The movements flow naturally from one to another giving it a clear, resolute narrative drive despite its minimal components. That it remains wholly engaging over a running time of more than an hour is a measure of Miguel’s accomplishment.
Anciano Y Enfermo (‘Old and Sick’) by La Mancha Del Pecado comprises two tracks (the title track is 46 minutes long, the second a mere 25) and is apparently inspired by a freakish snowstorm hitting Miguel’s home town of Juarez.
It is stating the obvious to say that ‘Anciano Y Enfermo’ does indeed sound cold. I’m not above reaching for clichéd imagery – arctic winds across the tundra, electric blue ice caverns and so on – but a proper account of this track demands a little more effort. You could consider it purely descriptive but I think it also contains a kind of dread for the future, a middle-of-the-night panic that we are well on the way to making this planet uninhabitable for us humans. This could be what we have to look forward to: what isn’t on fire is underwater, what isn’t desert is frozen. I wasn’t entirely convinced by John Hillcoat’s film of Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road but a few scenes have stuck with me, one of which I thought was a very efficient piece of character exposition. In a flashback to the start of the civilisation ending disaster, the Viggo Mortenson character looks out of the window at the coming chaos and immediately starts filling the bath with water. He isn’t going to wash, of course, he realises that the water supply may soon be cut off. He’s a survivor. This track makes me want to fill the bath.
‘Tragedia Silenciosa’ has an oceanic feel. It could be a soundtrack to the recurring nightmare of a shipwreck survivor. In the dream they are not dragged onto the beach and rescued but instead drown under the wind whipped surf in the howling black of the night storm. The ‘chk, chk, chk’ noise, an often present artefact of Miguel’s recording equipment, here reads as the superimposed sound of a motor dinghy forlornly searching the bay the following morning for corpses or salvageable jetsam.
A great deal of patience, restraint and concentration are shown in the construction of these long form compositions. With this release (and alongside some other recent work) La Mancha Del Pecado shrugs off the epithet ‘Culveresque’ and becomes its own creation. Miguel has distilled his sound from the muddy mixture of his influences and what remains is a clarified spirit. As Cory Strand, Altar of Waste head honcho, puts it:
…these sorts of records are exactly why I started the label in the first place. You will not emerge unscathed. Fucking amazing.
I concur.
Altar of Waste blog, entry on La Mancha Del Pecado, entry on Wehrmacht Lombardo
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