murderous, telepathic, golden eyed, alien children the world over recommend the barrel nut #13!
April 15, 2015 at 9:58 am | Posted in art, no audience underground, not bloody music | Leave a commentTags: collage, cut-ups, dada, dr. adolf steg, foldhead, gary simmons, hiroshima yeah!, illustration, jake blanchard, mark ritchie, midwich cuckoos, paul walsh, posset, spon, village of the damned, visual art, zanntone, zines
Fellow travellers, pilgrims, pray sit and give thanks for the latest issue of The Barrel Nut. It appears from nowhere today, like manna from heaven, and offers a morsel of psychic sustenance in this desert of unsatisfying blandness.
Yep, the microzine voted ‘most likely to go through a spin cycle’ by The Agitator (samizdat journal of the anarcho-launderette network) is back to blow your mind for an instant, then be stuck in the back pocket of your jeans, then forgotten about, then washed, shredded and ruefully picked out of your soggy undies whilst sat on the kitchen floor. Life affirming stuff!
In lucky #13 you will find beaked appliances on the cover by me, a digi-kaleidoscope view of The Barrel Nun by zanntone‘s Paul Walsh (a fat-fingered Google search mistake treated as artistic opportunity), a hyperkinetic collage of speed and muscle by Dr. Adolf Steg culled (mainly) from the 2000AD comic strip Nemesis the Warlock – an ever relevant satire on intolerance and xenophobia, and and art/collage double-whammy combo cheerfully reminding us that life is full of pain by the Hiroshima Yeah! brothers Gary Simmons and Mark Ritchie. On the reverse, I am delighted to present a full-page poster by ace illustrator Jake Blanchard of Tor Press inspired by John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos (a key text for RFM, of course) and the film version Village of the Damned.
For those who might be new to this publishing phenomenon. Here’s the standard blurb:
The Barrel Nut is a single sheet of A4 paper cleverly folded to make an eight panel (per side), A7 pamphlet. Paper copies will be distributed to anyone who wants one, or who has expressed an interest in the past. I’ll bring some to gigs I attend and a bunch will be passed around by those with a similar love of the post.
Should you be so inclined then you are very welcome to download and print out your own. Links to the latest issue in jpeg and pdf formats are below (you may need to trim the print-out down one edge to make it fold properly). Some more context, assembly instructions and previous issues can be found on The Barrel Nut’s own page (tabbed above).
Should you wish to contribute artwork then I would be very grateful indeed. Submissions need to look OK when reproduced as a black and white photocopy and be 7cm by 10cm in size (or scalable to roughly those dimensions). Good quality scans attached to an email are fine, originals sent in the post ideal. Please get in touch.
Contributor and subscriber copies will be in the post ‘in due course’. For those who can’t wait, or don’t mind a bit of salt-and-shake style DIY, then print out your own from the links below:
The Barrel Nut issue #13 FRONT as a pdf file
The Barrel Nut issue #13 BACK as a pdf file
The Barrel Nut issue #13 FRONT as a jpeg file
The Barrel Nut issue #13 BACK as a jpeg file
Artwork for future issues always welcome – please feel free to drop me a line.
choir of pelicans: joe murray on kieron piercy & dylan nyoukis, f.ampism & fritz welch
April 5, 2015 at 9:40 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: blood stereo, chocolate monk, collage, dictaphonics, dylan nyoukis, f. ampism, fritz welch, humansacrifice, ikuisuus, improv, joe murray, kieron piercy, no audience underground, noise, spoils & relics, tapes
Kieron Piercy & Dylan Nyoukis – An Unripe Preoccupation with Nonagenarian Moroseness (CD-r, Chocolate Monk, choc.305, edition of 50)
F.Ampism – Pattern Interrupt (CD-r, Chocolate Monk, choc.286)
F.Ampism – The Ancient Wing (tape, IKUISUUS, ikasus-046)
f.ampism & f.welch – shouting a hymn down the cosmogonic dream hole (CD-r, humansacrifice, HS009)
Kieron Piercy & Dylan Nyoukis – An Unripe Preoccupation with Nonagenarian Moroseness
Mr Kieron and Mr Dylan present a 27 minute odyssey – a minute for every year of Kurt Cobain’s life on this coppery beast.
Just in case you’ve stumbled on RFM from Cuba or something here’s the back story. KP hails from inland Megalopolis Leeds and plays tapes and devices in the hypnotic-power trio Spoils & Relics. DN plays similar tapes and devices but this time from the damp coast of Brighton with memory-scrub duo Blood Stereo. Together these gently glowing men methodically flip the switches in my head marked ‘fump’, ‘whirr’ and, most importantly ‘squelch’. Right on!
Kurt’s early years are depicted as a gentle hissing – a rising of the sap through hollow young legs no doubt! Cheeky. But by Junior High the AM Radio starts to fill his blonde little head with snatches of ‘The Mac’ stripped of everything apart from Stevie Nick’s breathy acrobatics (she sighs like a pro), each expulsion of C02 piped through an intricate system of fur-lined loops.
Our man comes of age. And while much ink is spilled over his punk rock credentials (the Flipper jean jacket patches, the Scratch Acid mixtapes) little time is spent studying his Linguaphone experiments, playing Greek Progressive Rock through that new Walkman contraption, gurning along while dropping potatoes into a ceramic bowl. But of course Piercey & Nyoukis nail this moment perfectly. History is rewritten – check your facts Charles R Cross!
The move from Fecal Matter to Nirvana is a small one, but still important to note. With eyes firmly fixed on the prize of rock explosion, a series of stretched-out faux frog calls batter my poor eardrums… but all rippled and slushed. Some said the decision to open that infamous Reading Festival set with a choir of Pelicans was a career-limiting move (and some still blame the drummer) but those brazen sea-birds honk with a mournful timbre – a cosmic disaffection rather than a cry for raw herring that says more about The Stooges and the taxonomy of ‘alternative rock’ than any limp chord or riff.
The birth of a child and a marriage takes a psychic toll as serious as Geffen contracts so it’s no wonder the mood turns darker with a comfortable helplessness – skittering pops and shuffles leaking out of my tiny earbuds mirroring the sound of grazed knees.
Now it’s near the end; the final moments amplify the torment of ‘the Rome incident’ and track the disembodied voices of the medical staff and the cardio vascular crack of the ribs. It’s not comfortable listening, but then again what is? You want comfortable? Drop some Mantovani. You want real? Plug into this delightful moroseness and let those silent tears well up and spill from your fat eyelids.
F.Ampism – Pattern Interrupt, The Ancient Wing, f.ampism & f.welch – shouting a hymn down the cosmogonic dream hole
All hail F.Ampism, king of the Quiet Village and noisy jungle!
Pattern Interrupt creates a sweaty negative zone where swollen lacewings fripp by at ear level and recycled bicycle bells become a spooked gamelan.
If you peak from under your oversized pith helmet you can watch the noble tribes holding a soft revolt, a velvet coup by waving their iPhones at the gawking tourists, SIM cards full of classic Ubuweb downloads. The cultural incongruence is too much for some holiday makers and they run screaming through the sinister Swiss Cheese plants. Those that remain hawk it up for pregnant yuks.
But it’s not all Hugh Tracey tropical offerings. The frosty steppes get a look in too. Picture a landing site for a burned-out cosmonaut; thousands of miles of desolation stretch out in all directions with only the unthinking wind for company and a boner in your spacesuit.
Mark my words. There’s a yearning quality to these recordings. A longing for a retrofitted future where Margaret Mead pursued foul-electronics rather than Anthropology and Blind Lemon Jefferson composed for the frost Calliope. This alternate future/past is best played out on ‘The Infinite Inward’ a wormhole through NYC docks (circa 1946) via Moondog’s fully open third eye.
No-Audience Exorcists take note: ‘Did you mean Wasabi’ features some of the most evil wonk-muttering, like the wolves that live in the wall of our haunted house. ‘X’ marks the spot me hearties!
The Ancient Wing tape has found a home on the awesome Ikiuisuus label* and folds the incidental music from Ulysses 31 into World in Action Technicolor. The separate tracks, peppered with ‘bloops’ and ‘bleeps’, work as a perfect whole and sound like a beautiful analogue lava-lamp slowly melting in a head shop.
And, overall the mood is funky; damn funky. I don’t get the opportunity to use the ‘F-word’ much on these here pages, but as any funkateer knows, it’s all about an appreciation of space, of slipping your timing and mining the absence. What you leave out determines what the listener has to put in whether it’s on the god-damn one or not. You gotta work for your funk and F.Ampism makes my pulse rate flitter.
But, apart from getting me a hot foot this collection is giving my memory centre a good old going over. The partial, ever mutating tunes and rippling, bubbling synths that lick like a sauce kick off a series of half-remembered sensory dreams: the toilet smell of Whitby, this hiss of an opening vacuum flask, the feel of vinyl car seats in July. I feel like a dormant part of my brain is flickering into life, the lights are starting to glow. An aid to meditation and psychic recovery!
On the quite beautifully packaged Shouting a Hymn Down the Cosmogonic Dream Hole our very own F.Ampism is joined by my favourite transplanted Texan – Fritz Welch. The theme is jazz-tinged industry with a busy, busy earful of tinkering taps, bells, squawks and diddles moving across eight untitled micro-moments. I’m delighted to hear Fritz is back behind the drum kit again with super-sharp scattering as dry as twigs vibrating the piggy membranes. F.Ampism is majoring on Dictaphones and I have to say, one Dicta fan to another, this playing is nothing short of astonishing: witty, quick of thumb and lyrical.
Although the energy level is cracked up to Jolt Cola levels that doesn’t mean any detail is lost in the delightful kerfuffle. ‘Recorded in Brighton & Glasgow’ proudly proclaims the label and I’m guessing this is no clinical studio jam but a warm-up, pre-audience knock-about that captures all the spontaneity of a show without the beer-fug and crowd noise.
The first couple of tracks hit that pretty classic drum/Dicta duo bullseye, and after a while voices, and longer snatches of tape get fed into the audio-mincer. My bristly ear picks up some of Fritz’s Crumbs on the Dumpster tales of youthful indulgence amid the clatter and flummox. But nothing stands still. The subtle sound of coughs and whistles slide into the brain-pan and add an intimacy sadly lacking in your Incus-wannabe releases. Wibbley-wobbly mbira tones get plucked and tea cups jitter on bone china saucers; it’s all grist to the collective sound-mill but never feels slapped on with a trowel. That old balancing act – being free in spirit but precise in intent is easily soft-shoed across Niagara. The double-headed Fritz-ism wants you to listen and ENJOY listening.
So Enjoy. Do it!
—ooOoo—
*Hey cheap skates! Ikiuisuus not only brought us F.Ampism on this very day but you have to check out these free downloads from a whole bunch of beards and forest folk on their colourful website. The label that keeps on giving eh?
—ooOoo—
the radiofreemidwich random tape grab-bag experiment, or: joe murray empties his bulging sack
March 30, 2015 at 12:06 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: ali robertson, alien passengers, battery humans, claus poulsen, collage, dictaphonics, drone, electronica, ezio piermattei, field recording, fuckin' amateurs, giant tank, guy warnes, improv, joe murray, jon marshall, new music, no audience underground, no thumbs, noise, pascal ansell, psychic mule records, punk, scurge, skrat records, tapes, tom white, tutore burlato, uk hardcore, Waz Hoola, winter family
[Editor’s note: Joe Murray, our resident beat prophet, has convinced his skeptical editor to temporarily abandon the usual formatting for reasons that will soon be apparent. Thus there are no release details up front, pictures will follow reviews and links will be found where they lay.]
Like all my RFM comrades I have a teetering bunch of tapes to review. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. It’s a privilege and an honour to hear so many dispatches from the No-Audience Underground.
But sometimes I feel I’m doing you a disservice my friends. It’s the same old, same old format: slot tape in, listen thrice, make notes, look at any other internet gubbins, write up final copy, post to Rob and await his judgement a’ tremble.
But today I want to spice things up baby. I’m going 50 shades on this shit.
So, in order to make things (hopefully) more entertaining and experimental in spirit for you, my dear reader, I chucked all my review tapes into a drawstring bag and will pull them out, randomly, sight-unseen ready to slap into the cheap-o hi-fi. No prior knowledge, no prejudice etc.
Mystery Tape One. The first thing I notice is an ambient hiss, growing and forming, covering all the other electronic ‘chunk-ka-kuh’ like Spanish moss. Things get less rhythmic and more drawn out (elongated gong strikes / trapdoor creak) creating a soundtrack feel with some floating voices chattering. There’s a synth or something humming giving this a very European feel… a dark Froese perhaps? Now there’s electricity in the air as the test tubes fizz and pop; a scientist twitches and mugs singing snatches of opera in a cracked voice. Somehow the radio picks up their brain waves: forgotten memories of the seaside and music hall? An Anthony Caro sculpture comes to life with deep space moans. Blimey. Who’s this? I pop out the tape and check it. Bless my soul. It’s the ever lovely Claus Poulsen with Collected Dreams on Skrat Records.
Mystery Tape Two. OK…so far so good. I fumble in my bag and pluck out the next offering. It drops neatly into the wide-mouth slot and kicks off some dark rubbery knockings, slurm residue and spurks-thumb. Oh yeah man…this is tremendous stuff! There’s a treacle-like bubbling and whomping, like some living salt-water lake throbbing dangerously, searching out new tributaries with its briny fingers. This is pure sound abstraction that builds layers of thick, dark sound-paint until a giant glove smears the oily pickle. The noxious mixture spreads thin, lightening the hue and spreading the sticky mixture over frame, wall, floor and ceiling until we are all covered with the stuff – a burnt Rothko orange. Side two opens up with a fling of ducks all ecstatically hawking and honking. These sounds are passed though some electronic doo-hickery that seems to split and repeat certain quacking frequencies so sections of the greasy reverberations get plucked for presentation with a sheen and glimmer. The water fowl retreat to roost as we dip our ears below the slick surface of water to luxuriate in music for rowing boat hulls; wooden creak and swollen pop. Gosh, this tape is really hitting the spot. Who do I have to thank? I should have known…it’s ‘The Ambassador’ Tom White with his Reconstruction on Alien Passengers.
Mystery Tape Three. This tape starts off with some nice tape gunk that moves unhurriedly between half-tunes played on fuzzed-out organ. A female voice with the smoky cadence of William Burroughs tells a tale about some sci-fi travel (or something) while Working Men’s Club beats (tiss-be-be-bon-tiss…) flit in and out of the organ tunes. And then found sound and field recordings get thrown into the mix. Not in a haphazard manner, no sir, this is finely tuned and tweaked like the exact halfway point between a Radiophonic performance scored by the late great Broadcast and waking up from a particularly vivid dream. I have to be honest with you readers… I’m stumped here; I have no idea what or who or when this is. It’s certainly more lyrical than the usual shimmy but the narrative and structure are all over the shop giving this a delightfully Victorian psychedelic edge. I can’t wait any longer; I crack under the pressure of not knowing and check the cover. Ahhhhh….it’s that beautiful and wonderfully eccentric duo Winter Family who are playing here with their How Does Time tape on Psychic Mule Records. It is indeed a play, a play designed to be listened to on a very particular train journey between Besançon in France and La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland for very particular watch makers. The ultimate commuter listen.
Mystery Tape Four. Your typical Northern pub chatter sets the scene with clattering bottles and knowing laughter. An on-stage introduction welcomes you and says, ‘This is for d boon’ before a proper guitar riff chugga-chuggas. OK…that’s a reference to the wonderful Minutemen – I get that; are we jamming econo? Is this gonna be some tour spiel dude? But, at the same time I’m expecting some tape collage work to start up, a wonk-move or gurgled gob etc. Some music concrete shit and all that doings. But no…this is pure UK hardcore, recorded very, very live, possibly from some archive with guitar/bass/drums and an angry attitude. Think Heresy or something but with a bit more of ‘baseball bat to the face and neck’ feel. The songs come in short, sharp blasts. Three or four in a row – chunka – chunka – cheer – crowd babble – chunka- chunka. It’s invigorating stuff and seems to get looser and more chaotic as the tape goes on (always a bonus for me). I’m totally lost here. No idea who it is or even how it crept into my review pile. Shall we look readers? OK…it all comes flooding back. This is Battery Humans on Fuckin’ Amateurs with their For D Boon tape. It is recorded live and recently: 6th September 2014 to be precise and features one Guy Warnes AKA Waz Hoola, the unsung hero of the northern drone scene, on drums. The usual F#A! standards of presentation apply with anarchy inserts, random gaffer tape sculpture and art fliched from Viz Comic. Side B is another live recording but this time from Scurge in 1991. You want rage? You got it.
Mystery Tape Five. I press ‘play’ and an undulating, chemically insistent, flute trills with the sort of chaotic abandon that pins Old God MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI into a restful slumber. A thousand chaffed lips puff noxious gas through human thighbone pipes while the jester dances merrily on (like he’s posing for a Marillion album or something). Gosh…this is pretty intense. The next track saunters by sounding like that crap ‘pre-computer’ computer game Simon hooking up to Terminator’s Skynet and crashing civilisation as we know it into a frosty digital sludge. Blimey…there’s a hard stop as I turn the tape over but as soon as I click things into life the holy racket starts again. This time I’m getting something like a rouge Funkadelic jam; real cosmic slop rejected by Mr Clinton for being too out-there as layers of keyboard fuzz and squealing huff pile up and up and up. A brief moment of calm (the keys ape Vangelis in blade runner tights) lets me breathe again before I’m pushed out a 30 storey window (metaphorically, dude – don’t panic, man) and, as I tumble, I catch snippets of Mexican TV, Concrete Noise, psychic experiments and terrible quiz shows as I hurtle past the apartments spinning dangerously out of control. An uneven gravity pocket spares me a sticky end and I land, gracefully and precisely, into a pair of oxblood Doctor Martins – the world’s kindest bootboy. Crows cackle around me, applauding with electric beaks. I check the details, no wiser of this tapes provenance but washed clean by its synesthetic high, to find out it’s my old Papal Bull buddy Jon Marshall and noise-nudist Pascal Ansell cavorting under the No Thumbs banner. This beauty’s called Slug Birth and is available from the brand-spanking-new Tutore Burlato label. If TB is a new name on your radar the quality hallmark of its founder, one Ezio Piermattei, should seal the deal.
Mystery Tape Six. A hawking ceilidh – all X-ray gingham and a skilful cheek-slapping solo. Reet…now there’s some ‘brum-t-t-tuh’ ursonating richly, fupping my sonics. Gosh…this is a tasty oyster to be gulped down whole. A general Scottishness takes hold with gristle and blum; stiff wire wool scraping and beautifully played Dictaphone garble. I almost trip over my big feet in my rush to turn it over as I’m aching for side two. And that’s where my experiment has to end. No system is perfect. It’s darn near impossible to ignore the fact a voice immediately states…
I’m Ali Robertson
…in Ali Robertson’s voice, soon to be joined by a variety of other familiar burrs. This side is one long ‘game’ of read personal biographies all overlapping (stop-starting) set to strict rules that our cuddly despot is keen to enforce. Waves of casual voice and chatter settle into strange rhythms – probably some mathematical fractal shit, interlocking as neat as a Rubik’s satisfying ‘click’. So yeah…durrrr…it’s Ali Robertson and his handily titled Ali Robertson & Friends tape on the always brilliant Giant Tank label.
So my excellent friends, I hope that worked for you? Me? I’m refreshed and re-born! My ears are prickling with cleansing static and expectation.
But tell me: how are you doing?
—ooOoo—
garden of forking paths: chrissie caulfield on stuart chalmers and tlön
March 14, 2015 at 2:37 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: birkhouse recordings, blood diamond music, blue spectrum tapes, chrissie caulfield, collage, liam mcconaghy, musique concrète, new music, no audience underground, noise, stuart chalmers, tapes, tlön
Stuart Chalmers – Imaginary Musicks Vol.2 (CD-r or download, Blood Diamond Music, BDM 005)
Tlön – Truth in the 13th (tape and download extras, Birkhouse Recordings, BIRK.007)
I’m not even going to try and guess what instruments, objects and bent circuits Stuart Chalmers has used in his second volume of Imaginary Musicks. The range of sounds involved is quite remarkable and his grasp of the techniques of bending existing sounds to his will is better heard than analysed. If I describe sounds in this review it’s not necessarily what was used to make the noise, just what it sounds like to me [Editor’s note: no worries, that’s the RFM way].
That said, I think I’m on fairly safe ground (looks down expecting quicksand) in stating that this is substantially a Musique Concrète album, though that doesn’t really begin to describe the breadth of experiences it contains. There are sumptuous drones, beats made from household objects, tape noises and the occasional sax solo. If there is a track on here that you don’t particularly like, then simply skipping to the next one will bring something different for you to try. That’s not to say there is no consistency, there is; perhaps think of it as an aural version of the 1990s TV programme The Crystal Maze: buzzing with wild contraptions, bizarre puzzles and an enigmatic host – Chalmers himself.
Personally, the album had my full attention from the opening track ‘Breaking Chains’. After some gentle scratching and scraping it explodes into a glorious Ben Frost-like festival of noise that assaults the ears, with heavy drums, tortured saxophone squeals, delay feedback and all manner of shrieking and buzzing. If ever an album started with a…
WAKE UP AT THE BACK!
…call, this is it. ‘Breaking Chains’ lasts just three and a half minutes but I wanted it to go on longer. This is typical. Chalmers never outstays his welcome with anything on this album, the tracks are about the length of many popular songs but with far more originality. Like Richard O’Brien at his most frenetic, he opens a door, gives you a three or four minute puzzle and then whisks you onto something new.
There is a love here, that I share, of industrial and mechanical noises [Editor’s note: see Chrissie’s own excellent Mechanisms, as she’s too modest to mention it herself]. Chalmers drops you into a room of ghostly clocks in ‘War on Nature’, there are car horns and squeaky gates in ‘To Be Lost is To Be Found’ and ‘Abandoned Cities’, then you are required to grapple with motors in ‘Wax & Wane’. There are probably all sorts of other things that I’m sure I’ve missed either because they’ve been heavily processed or secreted beneath layers of other interesting sounds but that just adds to the puzzles that repeated listens will, possibly, reveal. Chalmers leaves you few clues – sometimes the titles seem as though they are descriptive, other times they merely add to the confusion.
‘Wax & Wane’ is another favourite of mine, partly because it’s another noisy one, but also because of the way the dense textures here are so careful constructed. The motor sounds provide a basis for cheesy organ and distorted guitars (see disclaimer above) as they fade into swirling synths and gurgling. It’s like you’re locked inside the body of the engine, trying to find a way out.
Each piece on this album is a single idea in its own right and that is both it’s beauty and, possibly, its weakness. There are wonderful tracks, but also several that feel as though they should be developed rather than stopping and moving onto the next idea. That would make it a different experience, of course, and the simplicity of those pieces definitely has appeal – always best to be left wanting more.
I enjoyed this album but I have to say that Chalmer’s other release, a collaboration project with Liam McConaghy [Editor’s note: of the excellent Microdeform] called Tlön was even more to my taste. Truth in the 13th is much more synth-based and is comprised of slightly longer pieces which gives the music more chance to breathe and go through a little more development.
Again, the opener is a blinder. ‘Crepuscular’ begins with dark beats and haunting synths. Listening to this you definitely feel like you’re walking through an overgrown and dangerous forest at night – Crystal Maze’s entrance to the Aztec Zone with the lights switched off and alligators added to the pond. You get buzzed by giant insects early on, and later there are growls from larger animals that become quite terrifying in the manner of Ben Frost’s By The Throat.
Unlike Imaginary Musicks, the titles of the tracks on this album seem to be much more descriptive of what you’re going to get – or maybe I’m just very suggestible. ‘In Accordance With Divine Laws’ sounds to me like some sort of spooky, scratchy church service, complete with indistinct singing – though over what sounds like heavily distorted guitars. ‘Ancient Ruins’ takes you from the undergrowth into the full Aztec Zone in bright light where you can explore the buildings left after centuries of neglect.
As with the solo Chalmers album, this one is packed full of manipulated recorded samples and things that sound like vinyl scratches and radio noises – and here we also have even more powerful guitars and yet more synths added to the mix to give a generally thicker, often quite oppressive, sound. It’s highly risky to second guess the roles of the artists in a collaboration, these relationships are always more complex than you think, but for my money the influence of McConaghy adds something to Chalmers’ quirky puzzles that lifts them to a different level.
For me, the least appealing track on Truth in the 13th is the title track. The simple snare rhythm quickly gets boring and distracts from the otherwise good things happening around it. The two remixes of the track that are included, quite sensibly, play this down.
So, if you fancy a trip round the Aztec Zone, Mechanical Zone, the Futuristic Zone and others, I can recommend these releases to you. Personally, I’d still like to be whisked round them by a young Ed Tudor-Pole, but that’s probably just me.
—ooOoo—
Blood Diamond Music (via Blue Spectrum Tapes)
a craft ale with the bald heads of noise! the barrel nut issue #12!
February 23, 2015 at 12:58 pm | Posted in art, no audience underground, not bloody music | Leave a commentTags: collage, cut-ups, dada, foldhead, gary simmons, hiroshima yeah!, joe murray, mark ritchie, michael clough, paul walsh, photocopier art, posset, scanner art, visual art, zanntone, zines
Never one to miss an opportunity for collage fun, I spent the afternoon of a recent sick day coughing phlegm all over my cutting board (hey, at least I didn’t need a glue stick!) whilst assembling the dozenth issue of RFM’s atomic microzine. Glowingly described as a…
…momentary distraction from the hellish nothingness of the vortex…
…by Pyrrhic Victories magazine, previous editions of The Barrel Nut adorn the finest notice boards, untidy bedside zine piles and dustbins of the worldwide no-audience underground.
Should you not know what I’m barking about, or be overwhelmed by the self-indulgent whimsy of the preceding paragraph, here is a repeat of the usual explanatory bumpf:
The Barrel Nut is a single sheet of A4 paper cleverly folded to make an eight panel (per side), A7 pamphlet. Paper copies will be distributed to anyone who wants one, or who has expressed an interest in the past. I’ll bring some to gigs I attend and a bunch will be passed around by those with a similar love of the post.
Should you be so inclined then you are very welcome to download and print out your own. Links to the latest issue in jpeg and pdf formats are below (you may need to trim the print-out down one edge to make it fold properly). Some more context, assembly instructions and previous issues can be found on The Barrel Nut’s own page (tabbed above).
Should you wish to contribute artwork then I would be very grateful indeed. Submissions need to look OK when reproduced as a black and white photocopy and be 7cm by 10cm in size (or scalable to roughly those dimensions). Good quality scans attached to an email are fine, originals sent in the post ideal. Please get in touch.
So now you know. #12, the second DOUBLE-SIDED issue, features cover dada idiocy from yours truly (reproduced way larger than life and in glorious colour above), more of Michael Clough’s eerie ‘totem’ works – the scanner art equivalent of EVP recordings, a photo-memory of Summer boozing from everyone’s favourite drunken uncle Paul Walsh, some Zennish cut up hoodoo from RFM’s own Joe Murray and a pair of pieces by Gary Simmons and Mark Ritchie, the brothers responsible for Hiroshima Yeah! Gary gives us a microbial starscape of indeterminate origin and Mark entertains with an uplifting ophthalmic DIY collage. Unfold and turn over for a full page ‘Bald Heads of Noise’ cartoon by Mark Wharton of Idwal Fisher in which the notion of the no-audience underground is skewered hilariously in six panels. Unmissable.
Contributor and subscriber copies will be in the post ‘in due course’. For those who can’t wait, or don’t mind a bit of salt-and-shake style DIY, then print out your own from the links below:
The Barrel Nut issue #12 FRONT as a pdf file
The Barrel Nut issue #12 BACK as a pdf file
The Barrel Nut issue #12 FRONT as a jpeg file
The Barrel Nut issue #12 BACK as a jpeg file
Artwork for future issues always welcome – please feel free to drop me a line.
the deft placement, the golden frame: joe murray learns from spoils & relics
December 7, 2014 at 9:17 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: collage, extraction music, gary myles, improv, joe murray, johnny scarr, kieron piercy, music concrete, new music, no audience underground, noise, porta, spoils & relics
Spoils & Relics – Embed and then forget (CD, Porta, Porta #9 CD, edition of 150 in screenprinted sleeve)
This 31 minute, one track piece is the perfect ego-less recording. The sounds themselves are the smeared oils, the deft placement, the golden frame.
Keeping things uncluttered in a music concrete/collage/extraction approach is a challenge to even the lone piper yet this three-lobed beast (The Spoils & Relics band) pull it all off with no sweat or aches at all.
They easily turn the trick of making Embed and then forget totally immersive. With so few familiar sounds each click, burr and pop takes extra meaning from what I see around me. This all adds a pleasant fuzzy edge to my tedious morning commute: the Blue House Roundabout summons the erotic push and pull of heavy traffic, the sky lightens over the Town Moor churning the slate gray palette of the sky to austere duck egg blue. And, after a time, the fat patter of rain merges with the hiss of stereo-balanced electronics making crackles (although I can’t be quite sure) inside my very skull.
Crikey. I arrive at work (usually heavy with bureaucracy) as light as goose down.
But what if the visual stimulus is cut off? What if I just concentrate on the ear-hum? Will I think any less of this coquettish listen?
I plug in with darkness and think…
…there can be no better flag-bearers of the psychedelic domestic.
Kettles, or it could be electronics, weave chaotic patterns. This is the sound of being in the house all alone. Beams creak…distant Astro Wars get jammed in the scullery with that wonderful amusement-arcades-through-cotton-wool thing going on. Pennies drop and a lady gasps.
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’. A narrative presents some radio play: a potting shed séance, some misunderstanding over an old diary entry resulting in a bonfire of photos and trinkets. All the while a refreshing pessimism is overlaid across the fragile mung like soft wounds knitting new skin.
With a sharp, flinty ‘Kaakk’ the record whizzes to a close. Man. I gotta jam this disc again and again.
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.
Embed and then forget, a disc for all seasons. A lesson for all
—ooOoo—
christmas card from a blogger in chapel allerton: finally, the barrel nut #11!
December 4, 2014 at 10:49 am | Posted in art, no audience underground, not bloody music | Leave a commentTags: collage, copier art, cut-ups, dada, dr. adolf steg, gary simmons, hiroshima yeah!, joe murray, mark ritchie, michael clough, no audience underground, posset, scanner art, text score, the barrel nut, visual art, yol, zines
Bloody hell, it has been nearly six months since the last issue dropped! Bet you thought I’d discretely shoved this barmy little project down the back of the sofa. Well, I could make up a whimsical nonsense story to account for the delay (erm… lost on a yeti hunt? Nope – used that one) but the sad fact is that I’ve just been busy with other things. Still, who can resist the zen calm to be found in folding a bunch of these zines at the kitchen table? Not me. Also, I thought it might be nice to do something special seeing as it is the fifth anniversary of RFM this month so not only does a shiny new issue appear but, for the first time, it is DOUBLE SIDED. Woo!
Wrapped in the usual dada silliness by your truly you will find cut-up collage by RFM’s own Joe Murray and Hiroshima Yeah!’s Mark Ritchie (big themes: space, god, death, n’ that) and proper art that looks like a Bauhaus photographic experiment by Mark’s co-writer Gary Simmons, plus an indication of his financial situation and a terminal film still from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Barrel Nut regular Yol praises King Coffee on the tomb wall and offers sage personal advice in the form of one of his rolling text scores/typewriter screeds. Dr. Adolf Steg of (the already much missed) Spon offers some vaguely dermatological doodling with newspaper headline addenda and finally Michael Clough gets an unheard of four-panel spread for an example of his unnerving scanner art ‘totems’ series. It is top notch stuff.
Should you be a recent convert to this blog and thus have no idea what I am talking about, here’s a repeat of the basics:
The Barrel Nut is a microzine – a single sheet of A4 paper cleverly folded to make an eight panel (per side), A7 pamphlet. Paper copies will be distributed to anyone who wants one, or who has expressed an interest in the past. I’ll bring some to gigs I attend and a bunch will be passed around by those with a similar love of the post.
Should you be so inclined then you are very welcome to download and print out your own. Links to the latest issue in jpeg and pdf formats are below (you’ll need to trim the print-out down one edge to make it fold properly). Some more context, assembly instructions and previous issues can be found on The Barrel Nut’s own page (tabbed above).
Should you wish to contribute artwork then I would be very grateful indeed. Submissions need to look OK when reproduced as a black and white photocopy and be 7cm by 10cm in size (or scalable to roughly those dimensions). Good quality scans attached to an email are fine, originals sent in the post ideal. Please get in touch.
All contributors should have their copies by now, it was available to pick up at the gig last week and a bunch more will have been distributed with the latest issue of Hiroshima Yeah! Subscriber copies will be in the post soonish – consider it a Christmas card from the RFM family. Contributions still always welcome – if you like this little distraction then please feel free to send me something. More will follow in the fresh New Year.
The Barrel Nut issue #11 FRONT as a pdf file
The Barrel Nut issue #11 BACK as a pdf file
scatty and clotted the rattling: joe murray gets hep to schrein, melchior & piermattei, dylan nyoukis
November 10, 2014 at 8:20 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: bastian hagedorn, chocolate monk, collage, dan melchior, dictaphonics, dylan nyoukis, ezio piermattei, improv, jazz, joe murray, meudiademorte records, my dance the skull, new music, no audience underground, noise, ronnie oliveras, ruth-maria adam, schrein, tapes, vocal improvisation
Schrein – EinsZweinSchrein (vinyl LP, Meudiademorte Records, edition of 500 or download)
Dan Melchior & Ezio Piermattei (tape, My Dance The Skull, MDTS 10)
Dylan Nyoukis – Yellow Belly (tape, Chocolate Monk, choc.292, edition of 21 in individual collage slipcases)
Jazz.
I’m just going to let that word sit there for a while and shimmer.
Jazz.
There it is again. The ‘J’ word. That’s right. I’m talking about Jazz right now.
Ask anyone:
Does Joe like his Jazz?
…and they’d say:
Joe? Jazz? He is Jazz. He loves it inside out fella. MilesDizzyColtraneOrnetteRaMonkArmstrong. He lives for that crazy-ass Jass music.
And of course they would be right. Jazz is the cornerstone of my listening habits. So it’s with great anticipation I sit down to rap with Schrein – a real Jazz group from Germany. Ruth-Maria Adam (violin) , Bastian Hagedorn (drums) and Ronnie Oliveras (clarinet) take their three very jazz implements and imbue them with no-audience underground chops rather than beardy Trad swing. This makes for a strung-out and exhilarating listen.
‘Llullaillaco’ is particularly medicated with Ritalin drums pushing and rushing everything forward at breakneck speed until three dark voices join in profane chorus like a mini-Popol Vuh complete with dank Kecak koff.
You spot something on the horizon.
In ‘Emi Koussi’ the creaks and scratches lay beneath keening clarinet gasps (similar to PEEESSEYE kinda) and dark fractured electronics. The drums clump and skit across your field of listening as brittle as slates on a roof.
You venture deeper into the woods.
During ‘Fogo’ the horns/violin/something gets processed into the austere tones you’d expect on an Editions Mego record as the bristling hubbub clears the forest floor below. The night draws in on ‘Shinmoedake’ covering you and your party with heavy black murk, liquid bumps and waxy scratches making your neck hairs stand to attention. ‘Eyjafjallajokull’ is the finisher. Scatty and clotted the rattling of prayer bowls adds no comfort to you now. Trapped in dark magic the metallic tones ‘k-u-n-g’ and ‘c-h-u-n-g’ all wobbly. Just at the limits of your hearing a toad licks its lips hungrily. Wet slobbery anticipation?
At times the sound is as hectic as worker bees. At others it’s as mellow as a fat caterpillar basking in the mid-afternoon sun. But it’s in the bringing together of all these sounds and textures: wet and dry, soft and hard, clear and occluded that keeps this disc filed next to Alexander von Schlippenbach in the dusty racks.
Dan Melchior/Ezio Piermattei
Exquisite tape collage collaboration between two crackling bonfires of good ideas. Voice, tapes, guitar, organ, synth, percussion etc get chucked into a pot and ladled out into rough clay bowls. The soup is a steaming but cleansing broth full of herbs and piquant with fine vinegar dressing.
I think what I am trying to say is there is no confusion here. Sounds and structure are distinct and clear.
The casio-tone rhythm of ‘Bad Gateway’ may be emboldened by rubbery ripping but it’s very deliberate. As if to prove the point a simple piano sparkles in 3D above the misty sounding mung below. ‘Lurch’, a micro song, betrays Dan’s Medway roots and acts like a punky sorbet before the prog-tastic ‘A Corner of the Forest’ in which the sound of Cluster artfully collapsing in a doorway, folding way into nothingness, is channelled through psych-guitar and no-audience vocal hink. The sung coda, picking up the guitar part, is pure genius and worth the price of the tape alone.
‘Two Tiny Kingdoms’, the longest piece on the tape, is an epic construction. Through whirling sound-strobes and dainty vocal recordings a humble theme emerges. Over, under and between this central frame echoes of Italian and American voice the bilingual, the act of listening to another language jabbing my pleasure centres just like a Phil Minton jam. Subtle tape skizz adds some sonic grit and gets cautiously heavier with some occasional fretboard fuggery until the creaking of old ropes leads us out the maze.
The final song makes me smile the widest, because ‘A Teacher Star’ sounds exactly like Portishead jacked-up on Dictaphone Jazz and filthy vocal Jizz. Can you imagine that? Of course you can. And I have to tell you it sounds bloody right and bloody great.
Dylan Nyoukis – Yellow Belly
Another cracking tape from Chocolate Monk. This time it’s Dylan doing the gumming on this peachy, peachy release. The website said ‘dictaphone, voice, organ, delay’ and was recorded a few days after my birthday…the omens were good so I slipped a fiver in an envelope and waited.
A scant week later the postie plopped this beauty through the door and we all gathered round the cheap-o stereo to listen.
If you’re expecting hi-jinks and ear-tuggery look away now for this is a beautiful gush. A gentle warming, an egg-shaped fondle.
A brief introduction of Dictaphone voice ‘glurrr’ is exact and well placed. You can hear the rush of cars somewhere and the delightful button-click between takes as thoughts form and a plan emerges.
Here’s the real world in all its domestic charm
…it seems to say…
remember this and remember this well for we are going on a voyage long and arduous.
With a breathy chuff the organ begins to takes centre stage. A simple one-handed motif rises through the gently churning windpipes. It is spotted left, then right then centre stage; ever changing and growing – a misty grey dream world pulsing gently to the end of the side.
Side two opens tentatively but soon revisits the multi-layered world of rushing amber tones. Things are more clotted here, like a bust-out church organ with small dogs sleeping on the keys. Dank notes tumble down through a well of souls. The Dictaphone adds its trademark gristle and grime (rain falling, plastic crackling?) as the organ is fingered bluntly by the parishioners.
I’m writing gently in bed to the seemingly random fug of notes, all placed next to each other with ever-so-slight overlap and digging this scene immensely until the Dictaphone trills like a funky Oboe. Vocal snatches are FFWed across the church roof from Nave to Transept in a soft Suffolk burrrrrrrrr bringing things to a crystalline climax. Whoooshhh.
Individual artwork and super limited (21 copies only). Sold out but sure to surface again – keep your eyes peeled.
—ooOoo—
nictate your membranes for the barrel nut issue #10!
July 15, 2014 at 8:21 pm | Posted in art, no audience underground, not bloody music | Leave a commentTags: collage, cut-ups, dada, foldhead, gary simmons, hiroshima yeah!, joe murray, no audience underground, paul walsh, photography, text score, the barrel nut, visual art, yol, zines
Confidants, low-rollers, members of the 50-copies legion! The editor is proud to groan sleepily that the latest issue of The Barrel Nut has arrived and that a double figure issue count has been reached. Blimey! The reviews of the previous issue are in:
That’s some classic mail art shit right there.
…says PJM of the awesome Node Pajomo fanzine (paper/post only folks) and dare I say this issue rattles the bars even harder.
RFM co-writer and hep cat Joe Murray takes the first two pages to cut-up jazz/beat style with some discombobulating appropriation. Funny, poignant, rug-tugging. The centre spread sees Nut-fave Yol present a percussive illustration/text score set comprising of one word/sound. Could be a transcription of a recent performance for TV remote control and laminate floor by my son Thomas. Finally we have contrasting photographs – one a glorious evocation of freedom through art caught by Gary Simmons of Hiroshima Yeah! fanzine, the other a mysterious, possibly squalid, record of Mirfield detritus taken by Paul Walsh of foldhead and early hominids. Who knows, eh?
For anyone new to this momentary distraction, here’s some dog-eared explanatory bumpf:
The Barrel Nut is a microzine – a single sided, single sheet of A4 paper cleverly folded to make an eight panel, A7 pamphlet. Paper copies will be distributed to anyone who wants one, or who has expressed an interest in the past. I’ll bring some to gigs I attend and a bunch will be passed around by those with a similar love of the post.
Should you be so inclined then you are very welcome to download and print out your own. Links to the latest issue in jpeg and pdf formats are below (you’ll need to trim the print-out a bit down one edge to make it fold properly). Some more context, assembly instructions and previous issues can be found on The Barrel Nut’s own page (tabbed above).
Should you wish to contribute artwork then I would be very grateful indeed. Submissions need to look OK when reproduced as a black and white photocopy and be 7cm by 10cm in size (or scalable to roughly those dimensions). Good quality scans attached to an email are fine, originals sent in the post ideal. Please get in touch.
As ever, I’m proud to bring this to your attention. A fun issue, I think. Contributors and subscribers will be receiving copies in the post in due course. A bunch will be distributed by the redoubtable Hiroshima Yeah! fanzine. Links to downloadable versions below, as promised.
I’m in the lovely position of having a few contributions for future issues in hand but submissions always brighten the day. If you like this little project then please feel free to send me something. C’mon – get the crayons out and remember to ask an adult for help with the scissors. Dada safe, kids.
bronze bones hammered: joe murray on peeesseye and lost wax
June 28, 2014 at 10:24 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: ben morris, chora, chris forsyth, collage, field recording, fritz welch, humansacrifice, improv, jaime fennelly, joe murray, lost wax, new music, no audience underground, noise, peeesseye, psykick dancehall, tapes
Peeesseye – SCI FI DEATH MASK (LP, or as Joe would have it: ‘God damn heavyweight 180 gram vinyl’, humansacrifice, HS008, edition of 300)
Lost Wax – Gongzhufen Breath (tape, Psykick Dancehall)
Peeesseye – SCI FI DEATH MASK
Cryptic headline: Behold the power of threee. The pyramid triumphant: the tripod exultant!
Record Collector style blurb: The Pee/Ess/Eye – Peeesseye – P.S.I – band have been jamming with conjoined frontal lobes since 2002. Instrumentally they present the standard set up with Chris Forsyth on guitar, Jaime Fennelly pumping between harmonium & electronics and Fritz Welch rapping the percussion and the vocals (incorporating his patent fritz-o-size panting).
But beware…this three-o have recorded nothing approaching trad jazz over a whole bunch of heady 8-tracks and wax cylinders. The slow-drawn water-colour and pressurized ‘hisss’ of sneaky graff make more comfortable bedfellows for these beards.
This Sci Fi Death Mask is their last ever recording. That’s it. PEEESSEYE have left the building. But thankfully some bright spark snatched this ritual (a live performance from Antwerp) from the arms of unreliable memory via thick magnetic tape thereby basting the resulting soundwaves in rich symbolism and occult power.
Head-music gonzo stream: This whole performance is chunked into three tasty pieces.
Mouthful one, ‘Let the Hate Flow’ is a growing thing. Starting from mere microbes a leggy beast emerges from the ooze. The shimmering harmonium drone is introduced; a metallic shriek (furniture moved slowly) punctuates. The static-yet-moving palette is like sea viewed from a low-flying aeroplane; you know barely-restrained power lurches behind those cold, grey waves.
Yet when landed this ritual of purification has the same shimmering magik I last heard in the smack-gongs of Vietnam. All pause and release; bronze bones hammered and aching as tears of pure joy and gratitude rolled down my sunburnt cheeks.
Chew the gristle on mouthful two, ‘Legs Without Feet’. Heavy ticking balls and angry holla spit rough Rice Wine in gaseous cloud above your head. The offerings and prayer flags still flutter but are now soaked in foul, flammable liquid. Below, below, below the speed-junk-trash-can, like a coffee-nervous Phill Calvert, spasms in response. Guitar starts to peal, as twisted as the spire of Chesterfield, and Harmonium wildly laughs. Things are getting serious.
Swallow a final long draft with the side-long jam ’What is the value, what is the purpose?’ Tone clusters reproduce at speed to spawn one of them 1960’s goose-bands, freaking-out the UFO club crowd with a come down for an ultra-high society. They call themselves The Grateful Dong, Punk Floyd or something and let it all hang out, balancing reality on an eyelid.
And in that sweaty basement, just off Tottenham Court Road, the band finally locks minds with the audience. Together they soar the skies, pushing through the membrane of atmosphere and the old black vacuum to breach the un-breachable. A place where the senses are amplified a thousand fold; eyes become attuned to taste, ears fondle the colour of sound (all orange, pinks and blood-reds here) and we lose ourselves for eons in the pure joy of sweet slow-explosions.
Reader re-connect and economic conclusion: Even Bacchus took a day off. This ritual has to end sometime. So, spent and dripping, PEEESSEYE limp home.
Beaten? Never.
Heroes? To a man.
Available in physical and astral forms from humansacrifice.
Lost Wax – Gongzhufen Breath
Lost Wax is the one Ben Morris (also of Chora, fact fans) who released one of my favourite tapes from last year, the superb My Sore Daad Heap’d. So it’s with anticipation I jam this one into the stereo, refresh my glass with Pimms and settle back in front of the typewriter.
Right from the off with the title track ‘Gongzhufen Breath’ it’s clear Ben is adding his clear and strong voice to the chatterings concerning field recordings in the avant garde. This is no New Age whale song bullshit. This is no ‘jam a mike in yr face and hope for the best’ tourism. This is a beautifully placed, memory-gong. A tug on the collective sound-DNA we all share.
We’re in Beijing for at least part of this first piece with the busy Gongzhufen Bus Station taking a starring role. Smoky traffic roars by over a plucked string (a spare and solem Pipa possibly) and Blade Runner-style adverts. The detail in the editing roasts these sounds gently….never scorching and letting you drift in and out the soundscape, picking up a persimmon here, clumsily folding a newspaper there. My ears pensively glowed as I tuned-in deeper and deeper into this recording revelling in the non-congruence of what I could see out the window (a damp garden) and what I could hear. The instructions on the bus timetable pretty much sum this up…
Figure it reasonable transfer bus to remind you when to travel. Figure it also provides you with Beijing bus routes, sites, maps, and other information surrounding the query. Stock ride the bus with you, I wish you a pleasant journey!
‘Scragged and Stuttered’ starts with the low-glotty sounds of deep water. The innocent chitter of children talking in the distance makes this dark lake faintly unnerving. Percussive rasps (A manic woodpecker? Polite fireworks?) pepper the mix that seems to be concerning itself solely with building up a sense of foreboding and unease. Yeah…this is horror film stuff. Not that slasher, spam-in-a-cabin nonsense but adult Don’t Look Now nightmares, this time all dubbed up with Jah Shaka at the controls.
Clotted pops greet me in ‘Myfan Snare’ as 74 layers of ethno-percussion get filtered through the sound of galloping horses, each hoof fall a thunderous dunch. Shortwave static and the squeal of un-lubricated wheels wraps and warps the art of the overblown tannoy announcement. A brief taster, sonic-tapas.
Closer ‘Open Kraken’ is a sick creeper. Things start innocently enough with straining brass rods being bent and warped. All very nice I think. But, before I know it I’m bopping my head to the sound of rubber gongs beat with rubber mallets; and then slowly, stealthily the strings emerge.
A single folk fiddle is joined by its deeper cousin the Cello. More and more family arrive until the rosined strings vibrate powerfully and churn up the air like a giant spoon. Before long an orchestra as heavy as any György Ligeti commanded is bowing sea-sick lurches that crash and flood the plain.
This is sheer dislocation and rapture!
I look at the tiny tape with wonder…this sounds like it was recorded at Abbey Road; Scott Walker conducting (with a boner) such is the rousing ferment.
But eventually the sea of strings is becalmed and with a brief coda of pocket fuffle and polite throat clearing we are done. My gosh…I need a little lie down after that.
The Lost Wax do it again…surely a contender for tape of the year.
—ooOoo—
Editor’s note: Joe is a tease isn’t he? At the time of posting this tape appears to still be ‘forthcoming’. Keep an eye on the Psykick Dancehall Facebook page and website so you can snap one up when it becomes available. Sound clip available here.
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