a frame to mark the edges: joe murray on akke phallus duo, pascal nichols, thf drenching, human heads
October 2, 2015 at 1:34 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: akke phallus duo, ben knight, council of drent, hannah ellul, human heads, joe murray, pascal nichols, tanzprocesz, thf drenching
Akke Phallus Duo – An Insatiable Demand for Tea (Devastation Wreaked By) (tape, tanzprocesz, tzpCS44)
Pascal Nichols and THF Drenching – Moth of Spring (self-released download)
Human Heads – Triggers (tape, tanzprocesz, tzpCS43)
Akke Phallus Duo – An Insatiable Demand for Tea (Devastation Wreaked By)
Insomnia is curdling my body’s precious fluids. Beaten down by sleep deprivation I get up out of bed and unwrap another glorious release from the Akke Phallus Duo: equal parts Jon Marshall (Nose/Gracchus/Bull/Thumbs) and Ben Morris (Lost-Chora-Wax). It’s 3.00 am and I know sleep will only coquettishly tease me from now on so I screw ear-buds into my swollen canals and clear my sinus of thick glotts. My mind flits back and forth between dull domestics and high-art theorising. This might be a bumpy ride…
A quick note on construction for all you lab techs: these taped sounds were sent between mainland China and hilly Sheffield and back again (and back again) in a game of reverse ‘pass-the-parcel’. Stamps were soaped for sure as each skronk and hum is carefully folded numerous times around the seed of a zesty idea.
If you’re thinking thin tissue paper scrunched around pebbles and smeared with goose fat – you are totally right!
But beware. This is no, ’chuck it all in and see what sticks’ meta-collage but a painterly seascape with a steady hand, an eye for colour and bold, manly texture. As food seems to be a reference for these chaps it’s time to take those elbows off the table. But what’s first on the menu? Why it’s delicious, ‘Black Plum and Vinegar Blues’, sour as umeboshi but not bitter at all.
The themes that emerged in my sleep-damaged skull included the slo-mo creak of a giant clam opening. Sea-moss ripping; organic tendrils snapping under intense pressure. A gush of stagnant, foul water jettisoned. The gibber of the tiny idiotfish aid the greasy comedown.
I soon realize that headphones are a must here as the dead hippie electronics take more a central role than in any of the other Akke Phallus jams I have heard before.
These irregular instruments (sampler, keyboards, cassette, throat trampoline and contact mic) perform a cyber-blues, a hillbilly Dalek jug-band hootenanny. The crackle of transistors and resistors smashes the digital and becomes fleshy fibres. Components get all melted down into source code corruption.
A case in point is ‘tide-sluiced soup’, which comprises a gradual distillation process refining sound to form little more than pure thought. Imagine a robot’s mind collapsing due to a paradox in Asimov’s three rules of robotics. That’s it! White lubricant dribbling out an ‘ear’ completes the picture.
The thigh bone honk and demented wooden clonk of ‘Kendal Black Drop’ echoes the stark bleakness of the Lake District in freezing hail. Picture the loneliness of the solitary cairn, the dry fellowship of rounded rocks.
In the war of organic versus inorganic, flesh becomes rigid steel and metal spreads as soft as butter. The Akke men have leapt the wormhole with this one and beamed back an acoustic postcard from someone’s future.
You just gotta hold out hope it’s ours.
Pascal Nichols and THF Drenching – Moth of Spring
Recently Drenching’s ‘gone and done an Aphex’ and stuck butt-loads of his old stuff on Bandcamp for us cheapskates to check out, fondle and coo over. The ever generous Drenno has slid a cheeky newbie in here too. Chocks away.
Each finger-pop, tapebox ‘click’ and salty-contact crackle from ‘Moth of Spring’ is captured in voodoo fidelity on this exercise in extreme micro-sound. THF is joined by the one and only Pascal Nichols, part-wild drummist of choice for the ‘FUH’ generation who leaves his sticks in his back pocket to concentrate on microphone and objects. DRNCHNG’s Dictaphone hub-bub rings clear and true.
Gosh… these are frazzled jams, bubbling like claret-red blood through a vein. They come in three moth-like servings (studio/live/studio) with the constant rattle of a true-born fidget. It’s dry as a cracker, brittle even in parts, reminding me that fine delicacy is often created from industrial process: Nottingham Lace or Brandy Snaps being useful examples. Whatever the manufacturing formula, the powerful arms of these rhythm men crochet a fine mesh of mauve meaning.
Balance and structure become calibration points, a measurement on one axis correlates to the other plotting a classic bell curve. For some reason this brings to mind Cornell’s cluttered boxes as a type of neatness and hobo-logic emerges from the bristly chaos.
At other times I pick up the clean, fresh sound of ball bearings scooting round a copper bowl, a perfect sauce to the cultish moaning that adds the gravel of despair to an otherwise joyous occasion.
The live piece, full of iron rich canker and grot is removed through one layer of experience. I found myself sitting up in bed, leaning forward slightly to help approximate the O2 hit of seeing this flesh-like. The rattle is moister and burps gas in places.
Nichols and Drenching buckle the Jazz convention – when a piece is realised live, before an audience, you speed that mother up, all the better to show off them greasy chops no doubt. These jokers carefully create a musty lagoon to paddle your ears in. It’s a damn sludge workout man! Can I say Stoner Rock? Oops… just done it. Imagine them Electric Wizards hunkered over Dictaphones and table electronics, beards bristling, hair flying. But these moth-riffs are loose to the point of disintegration. The great heaviness of hiss and extended drones pile on the pressure until it is bathysphere tight.
THC Drenching & Redeye Nichols: the sweet relief of not getting picked for the football team.
Human Heads – Triggers
Welcome to the gentle world of Human Heads where ‘barely a whisper’ pillow-talks onto your hot cheek making your ears sing like a high-tension cable. The keys (mainly played by Hannah Ellul) bump low and slow, relaxed and poised. The voices (mainly chanted by Ben Knight) plumb a negative zone of reality, a psychedelic domestic where Lambkin spikes Pebble Mill with beige Mandelbrot.
Found sound, this collage of transmission spoons tiny verbal details, a patchy dog for instance, until a brittle beat gets all the d.i.s.c.o deliberately scooped out. With the euphoria removed we’re left with a gritty dancefloor and bleak escapism – hell to live with but delicious to observe.
The sellotape ripping over kettle whistles mimics the lonely sound of wandering from room to room forgetting what you came in for. Mind-wipe as chart position strategy versus untranslatable vocoder raps?
Boom… you had me at the first manipulated language tape.
Extended field recordings kick off side B. And rather than drop a geographical anchor (even though we are pointed quite squarely at Munich) the sense of place drifts, it smears itself across the map dislocating from regular reference points. The ‘hish’ of smooth concrete floors is dusty as the afternoon sun.
Some of the text here is appropriated from a similar place to the UNSMOOTHMAKING. New rhymes and anti-rhymes, fresh as new minimalism, are fetched up. Like those Young Marble Giants the Human Heads take space and place it carefully like white paint, a border, a frame to contain the action. For what is life without a frame to mark the edges?
Well reader, I’m spent. I’ve got to turn in for the fag-end of the night but one last Sherlock explodes in my head-pan. Five of these six artists dwelling within these projects are Manchester based. Well fancy that, it’s like that Roses/Mondays jiggery all over again. Yet I’ll wager no one called Drenching baggy recently!
Double dare you.
—ooOoo—
cscdng clttr: joe murray on david birchall, thf drenching & phillip marks
May 7, 2015 at 12:35 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 3 CommentsTags: council of drent, david birchall, dictaphonics, improv, joe murray, new music, no audience underground, noise, phillip marks, thf drenching
David Birchall, THF Drenching & Phillip Marks – The Ludic Clamp (CD, Council of Drent Recordings, CoD007)
MTHRFCKR! FSN HS BN DRTY WRD FR LNG TME. FCK STNL CLRK & HS BSS SL SHT. THS S TH RL DL FSN-WS. DPE S CDE MNY DD.
BRCHLL – GTRS: XPLSN, CRCKL & SQL. FST & RSPNSV. DRNCHNG –DCTPHNS: FFW SCR, FDBCK WHN & DFT THMB. TH GNRL. MRKS –PRCSSN: TNKL, CRSH & SNSTV FLTTR. CNG N TH CKE. SPR-FZZNG BLL F RMSHKL NRGY; LK WTHR RPRT XPLDD N CLD F CRSTL MTH!
FNS LKE BTCHS BRW? THRS SMLR VB & FL, GRT PLRS BNG LLWD T PL T TH TP F THR GME MTHRFCKRS!
CSCDNG CLTTR, SKTTR, N NSCTS N TH FRTZ. WHN TH GRP PPS RGHT LKE PP-TRTS TS N RGT HLLCNTN – PRWNS SHVR. WHSKRS TWTTR.
WHN BTFL STPS, MKNG SNS F LD PNTNGS JST DNT CT TH MSTRD – NW JGGD STHTC, SHRP S STR.
FRSH LKE RN-RCH SPNCH. RSPCTFL CHS.
PNK PRBLMS
JZZ SLTNS!
DNT B SQR. BY BY BY AT CNCIL F DRNT.
the heady scent of courage: joe murray on greta buitkute, alan wilkinson, thf drenching, seth cooke, nick hoffman, va aa lr
February 12, 2015 at 12:29 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: 1000füssler, adam asnan, alan wilkinson, council of drent, dictaphonics, dominic lash, electronica, fort process festival, free jazz, greta buitkute, improv, infinite jukebox, joe murray, lf records, louie rice, new music, nick hoffman, no audience underground, noise, organized music from thessaloniki, paul lomere, plush wattle, seth cooke, thf drenching, va aa lr, vasco alves, vocal improvisation
Greta Buitkute & THF Drenching – Contribution to a Discussion on Tic (download, Plush Wattle)
Alan Wilkinson & THF Drenching – Night of the Flaming Meatus (download, Council of Drent)
Seth Cooke – Eternal World Engines Of The Demiurge (3” CD-r, LF Records, LF044)
Seth Cooke / Dominic Lash – PACT (3” CD-r, 1000füssler, 025, edition of 60)
Nick Hoffman – Necropolis (CD, organized music from Thessaloniki, t26, edition of 200)
VA AA LR – Newhaven (3” CD-r, organized music from Thessaloniki, t27, edition of 100)
Greta Buitkute & THF Drenching – Contribution to a Discussion on Tic
An under-the-radar, sneaked-out recording from two of the out-est heads around.
I came across this one by accident via that You Tube. This led to a series of embedded links, a journey through the dark web to the home of the Plush Wattle Corporation, where this very generous free download sits.
Taking callused thumbs, fingers and twin gob-holes to act as our orchestra these two have charmed their way into my very bones. This is an intimate listen, full of clicks, creaking and rustling; it’s an interior sound world that’s perfect for headphones and tedious train journeys.
So (drum roll please)…introducing Greta Buitkute! Greta might be a new name to Radio Free Midwich but she has been wowing Northern audiences with her fresh take on vocal jaxx/nu-scat for the last couple of years. A recent move to Manchester, a light ale quaffed and connections made via The Human Heads means Greta and the great THF Drenching have teamed up – their individual super powers amplified by the presence of similar corduroy mutants.
You already know THF Drenching and you’re thinking Dictaphones yeah? Sure, the Dictas make an appearance but over half of this collection is vocal-based doof, hurling two well-lubricated throats together to dance merrily like bacteria in a Petri dish.
Yet keen Drenching watchers will note the Dictaphone tone is drier – less squelch; more rattle and hink/rustle and clatter. The bombs are deftly dropped and the feedback ‘heek’ soars like a rectangular alto.
‘Bach Bathed in Bathos, Full Illustration’ is an important cornerstone. An Hawaiian motel room is wrapped up in garish litmus paper, reacts pinkly and then is noisily unwrapped. You can’t beat them apples!
But it’s the twin-vocal pieces that froth me over like excited milk. The twin ‘Portrait of Baize Wattle’ pieces (large and small) make me recall those European Public Information films that would show up on That’s Life! The humorous animation would be followed by a vaguely chucklesome punchline…’Winner’s drink piss’ or something like that. The pace is furious but uncluttered; live with no overdubs (I think). This almost puritan and old oaty approach really pays off. The clean living certainly lends itself to Amish-style efforts.
This is in and out, reflexive and agile music. It slips happily between hi-brow and goose-honk, pearly notes and granddad mumble. As the closing seconds of the recording state:
Greta Buitkute:
Oh my God, it’s exhausting
THF Drenching (sniffs with a chuckle):
I know.
Alan Wilkinson & THF Drenching – Night of the Flaming Meatus
This is an altogether more Jazz recording. Two pieces; live, live, live at Sconny Rotts (2014) or something.
Welcome, reader a fine pair of foils: thin breath pushed through brass and the quivering whine of sculptured feedback. Damn, that’s good!
Soundz?
(i) Like snakes making out in the back of an old Audi until they make a mess of the upholstery; their coppery tones get all twisted and spoony.
(ii) Old doods reminiscing about the days in their wartime dance band – sounds leak all gummy from their ears.
(iii) The alarm on our oven telling me the bread’s ready…oh wait. That is the oven. Give me a minute…
…but it’s not all top-end tomfoolery. A real satisfying base layer of hissing creak (Dictas) and watery saliva- garbles (Saxes) give this a weighty gravity that pulls on the rocketing undulations (a flight of a condor).
And if you’re still asking questions about what free music is doing right now jam your ear up against these two beauties and huff up the heady scent of courage.
This is music for heroes!
PUBLIC APOLOGY: This review also functions as an apology to Mr A Wilkinson for my cheeky and childish ripping of his sound check sounds on my Correct Come tape. Sorry mate – can I buy you a pint or something?
Seth Cooke – Eternal World Engines of the Demiurge
These two pieces of electronic gumbo take what we might call process recordings and apply the extraction method adding calm and deliberate shadings to a real-world sound scenario.
In the first of two offerings Seth ransacks an insurance office circa 1978 whilst the office party averts prying eyes. The unmistakable sound of a dot matrix printer (duh…I was mistaken. Research shows it’s one of them stupid 3D doo-hickies) going all akka over a slowly emerging picture (in this case a 3D bust) of Benjamin Disraeli – or some similarly bearded goof – as it appears line by dotty line.
Said printer is jammed with cocktail sticks and discarded business cards – in reality electronic shadows – as he hits the print button and lets nature take its course. The frantic slide, shuffle and whirr is hypnotic and lulled me like a fat wren zonked by bright red berries until it snaps off into disturbing silence.
The calm is suddenly fractured by track number two, a gliding, sliding and silvery cascade; a perfect sound track to ice skating that would make Torvill & Dean throw greasy shapes ending up as sooty smears on the ice.
Gear heads will be pleased to note that the machinery on this disc was pioneered by Paul Lomere for his Infinite Jukebox that “endlessly extends and reconfigures MP3s by calculating probabilistic routes through the sound file based on pitch, timbre and metric position.”
Seth says he’s channelling Jack Kirby but for the romantics out there this is Bolero 2015 and a perfect 10 for artistic interpretation.
Seth Cooke/Dominic Lash – PACT
The quicksilver tones versus Pront-a-Print kerfuffle that starts this disc (‘PA’) are a waterslide into a world of grimy groan.
Massive and ungainly ‘things’ are rubbed with tweed gloves. Moist and sweating ‘objects’ are painfully squeezed to release sticky ichors. Soft and flexible ‘parts’ are cruelly bent into unholy shapes resembling the Goat of Mendes.
A close-up inspection reveals canyons of scrape and gummy friction. And while the pace remains stately for a time layers of rub and tug bring forth some slippery excitements. Oh Matron!
Track two (‘CT’) is a darker affair. The double bass bowing (Lash) and kitchen sink manipulation (Cooke) as uncooperative as a sullen teenager. Black storm clouds gather over my cheap-o high-fi and I feel my brows knit.
Gosh. This is brooding stuff.
The simple bass riff is not happy with me or you and doesn’t care who knows about it; electronics twinkle but with the black light of sea coal from Redcar beach. I love this sombre and funereal pace and can feel my mood merge into full-on sulk.
So, what you looking at eh? Clear off and leave me with Lash & Cooke. You don’t understand me anyway.
I hate everything!
More details here if you can be bothered.
Nick Hoffman – Necropolis
Microscopic attention to microscopic detail turns my hammer, anvil and stirrup into marshmallow fluff.
This is a record of extreme extremes: from hosepipe-full-on-gush to tiny cooling-metal-tik. These five pieces of sieved electronics lurch from Black Metal through the Gristleizer (The Rotten Core) to the ivory click of miniature pool balls intensifying until my speakers are fizzing and flipping-out like a model railway going straight to hell (Eros).
But what I like most about this disc are the abrupt edits, the inter-track halts and about turns that keep this grizzled noise monkey twisting to check that a fuse hasn’t blown. While I enjoy a heads-down, no-nonsense, continuous blast of fetid sludge as much as the next pair of ears being wrong-footed and fooled is a joy. What’s next? Is this build up going to explode or whimper out? It’s as slippery as Be-Bop from Minton’s Playhouse.
Nick pulls out all the stops for the lengthy closer, ‘The Scent of Ground Teeth’, a 16 minute monster of glitching signal, spluttering like a coffee percolator spiked with cobra venom.
If this blog was a radio show I would segue seamlessly from this blustery fizzing into the white-hot spitting of VA AA LR’s Newhaven. Recorded at last year’s fascinating Fort Process festival VA AA LR drop their usual prepared electronics and objects and carve out a landscape from the sound of distress flares alone. Taking away the literally explosive visual element you are left with a wonderfully peculiar 20 minutes of sparkling hiss and frazzle. Every permutation of splutter and crackle is worked through like Coltrane on Giant Steps, probing and searching; pushing forward and wringing all possible combinations from this electric spitball.
After a time the busy and frantic schizzle seems to fine-tune my old ear ‘ole letting me pick out tone and textural changes. There is a whole world in here as the planes of fuzzing gimble regroup like a forgotten language. Be sure to make a beeline for this vibrant crackle readers; a worthy bookend to that other splutter classic, Lee Patterson’s Egg Fry #2.
—ooOoo—
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!
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