happy new year humans: it’s the rfm zellaby list for two thousand and eighteen
January 1, 2019 at 2:06 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 3 CommentsTags: adrian shenton, ali robertson, bandcamp, blood stereo, bridget hayden, bulletproof socks, caroline mackenzie, caught in the wake forever & glacis, chik white, chlorine, Chow Mwng, chrissie, clemency, culver, dale cornish, daniel john williams, delphine dora, depletion, fritz welch, fuse, guttersnipe, gwilly edmondez, hawthonn, helicopter quartet, ivonne van cleef, jean-marie massou, joe mcfee, john pope, joyce whitchurch, kieran mahon, limbs bin, marlo eggplant, miya masaoka, nadio, other forms of consecrated life, paul hession, penance stare, rat cage, robert ridley-shackleton, rodrigo tavares, roman nose, saboteuse, sectioned, shrykull, shunyata improvisation group, slayer, sleepmask, slow goes the goose, sophie, sophie cooper, spelk, stuart chalmers, toby lloyd, tom white, usurper, werewolf jerusalem, wizards tell lies, xazzaz, xqui, yol, zellaby awards
That 2018 was a hard year for many eh?
The impact of recent seismic political and cultural change has reached its grubby hands into our lovely underground and started poking and prodding. In 2018 I witnessed an underground scene fractured, where tempers were frayed and short. Reasonable people and reasonable debate had given way to, barely disguised jealously, name-calling and shaming. Social media, that onetime ally of the powerless, became a toxic swamp of subtweeting, humble bragging, opinion presented as fact and relentless negativity.
It’s hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel. And yet…
There’s something so powerful about the ideas that accompany NAU/DIY music. With little commercial expectation it still remains truthful and pure. With no piper to pay we are free to pursue our own directions, explore strange cul-de-sacs and settle into comfortable dead ends. Our music is often, literally, a gift. Either between two real-life people connecting in any manner of means or, if using the ‘pay what you like’ option, a gift for the many we are yet to meet.
While it may be true that a DIY lifestyle rarely offers solutions, I feel it offers something approaching equal value. It offers hope. Hope that we can prevail in a toxic world, hope that invention, kindness and humility are still highly valued by some. Hope that we can create a safe space in a world that seems to be careering into a period of sustained traumatic shock.
For these reasons I feel, this year, it’s all the more important to celebrate this hope.
As you will know RFM spent most of 2018 hibernating and not all the RFM writers have had time to contribute so you are stuck with Rob, Luke and myself.
In a spirit of what Kathleen Hannah calls “non-competition and praise” we humbly present you the Zelleby lists 2018.
Rob Hayler
Happy New Year folks! I wish you a peaceful 2019 and hope that 2018 left you smiling. I realise that might be a vain hope given that the world is hurtling towards Armageddon but, hey, let’s leave the existential terror to one side for a few minutes and distract ourselves with talk of music. It’s fine. This is fine. I SAID IT’S FINE.
*Ahem*
RFM being on hiatus for the majority of the year has been refreshing. It hasn’t stopped me writing – add up my account of TUSK (below), my pieces for TQ Zine, various unfinished articles and a frankly embarrassing number of tweets and it totals around 15 thousand words – but the absence of pressure has invigorated my listening habits and left me untethered from critical consensus. I’ve also found time for see monsd, my post-midwich recording project, and two albums of gurgling tweakage and heavy loopism have been followed by more high concept shenanigans with Posset and yol. A collaboration with Stuart Chalmers will follow in due course. I’m proud of how this has worked out and must give thanks again to Chrissie and Ross for donating the kit I am now hunched over. Angels both.
Right then: lists, sort of. I’ll mention a ‘proper label’, a ‘not really a label’ and then gesture towards recordings made by 27 acts that had me hovering two inches above the floor during 2018.
My ‘proper’ label of the year is Other Forms of Consecrated Life. I’m currently halfway through an account of its many qualities which I hope to publish in the New Year so, for now, here are the bare facts of the matter. Based in Scotland, OFOCL has released four albums since its inauguration in January of 2016. It appears to have no online presence other than its Bandcamp page and these releases are only available digitally. There are bare bones Discogslistings and a Twitter account, also set up in January 2016, which has sent a mere handful of tweets. Each release is accompanied by a black and white photograph of an historical artefact, a museum piece, presented unreferenced and closely cropped on a plain background, thus shorn of context. The aesthetic is both neatly coherent and pleasingly enigmatic. Great logo too. The tag-line on both Bandcamp and in the Twitter bio is as follows:
“Auditory excavations. Eremetic Music. Pareidolia.”
I will say more in due course. I insist you check it out.
The ‘not really a label’ is ‘self-released on Bandcamp’. My routine is well established: during the day I follow recommendations, mainly garnered from twitter, dutifully keeping a browser tab open for each. On retiring to bed those that are ‘name your price’ are dozily downloaded to my ‘phone, either paying nowt or an amount depending on proximity to payday or whether my paypal account contains anything I can pass on. Those that require a specific fee are placed on my wish list, triaged and either discarded or purchased according to taste and resources. Releases acquired this way are listened to mainly via (surprisingly good) wireless headphones as I nod off, walk to and from work or busy myself around the house. The huge majority of my life in music is now comprised of this process and I find it magical. The efficiency, the frugality with which I can navigate an unimaginable catalogue, dizzying myself with novelty, whilst offering direct support to artists (who are sometimes also friends) is borderline miraculous. I guess I can almost still understand preferring the physical exercise of crate digging – the rush of discovery, the thwap of sleeve on sleeve, the smell, the crackle of a run-in groove – but I’ve no time for anyone who scoffs at my alternative. There are problems of course – some big – but that doesn’t stop Bandcamp being the most interesting thing to happen to music distribution since the mainstreaming of digital piracy in the 90s.
OK, my 27 recording artists of 2018 are below. One or two of those mentioned might stretch the usual remit of this blog but, y’kno, fuck it. Where a particular release has stood out, the link will take you directly to it but many of the artists featured have been prolific and are included in recognition of all the new pages in their own strange atlases. Given the ‘Little Nemo in Slumberland’ method by which I amassed most of this year’s highlights (“Gee Willikers! ‘Yesterday Rob’ has purchased a most fanciful download for ‘Today Rob’ to enjoy!”) the idea of a monolithic, numbered list seemed even more illegitimate than usual. As such, may I present a new way of arranging my year’s favourites? Everything that falls within the circles is bloody marvellous and absolutely worthy of your careful attention. The closer it comes to the centre the more it chimed with me. The alphabetical list of links is also a key to the graphic. I think the solid red outermost circle might signify ‘the North East noise scene’ or ‘pastoral psych drone’. Or maybe Kate Bush…
D chlorine
E Chrissie
F Clemency
I Delphine Dora and Sophie Cooper
L Hawthonn
Q Naido
W SOPHIE
X Spelk
ZZ Xqui
Some notes:
UN-INSIDES
Firstly, the release that falls furthest from the usual ‘no-audience’ remit of this blog: OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES by SOPHIE. In some nearby but alternate universe this has been the best selling album of the year by orders of magnitude. It has a quality, in spades, that I value above almost any other when it comes to ‘pop’ music: it sounds like it has been beamed back to us from the future. From the glorious permission of ‘It’s OK to Cry’ – a velvet crowbar opening your rib cage – to the industrial strength, mentholated joy of ‘Whole New World/Pretend World’ this is a triumph. I didn’t pay much attention to the ‘end’ of year lists prematurely spunked over an appalled November and December but I assume this topped most of them. How could it not, right?
MOST PLAYED
Let’s return to a scuzzy, black-painted upstairs room. Possibly my most played single track of the year is a recording of a gig by Clemency at The Fenton pub in Leeds and which was made available afterwards to interested attendees (such as myself) via Dropbox. How’s that for no-audience underground, fuckers!? I don’t know if this piece – a cross-genre skittering collage of unplaceable emotions, clattering beats and sliding bass – is emblematic of her work in general but a resolution for 2019 is to check out her Soundcloud archive and her ongoing radio show.
ONE OFFS
How about the indefinable masterwork X by Saboteuse on Crow Versus Crow, eh? A tape that evoked a kind of eye-bugging wild-take, like the listener was a Warner Brothers toon that had wandered into a David Attenborough documentary edited by Herschell Gordon Lewis. Or the all-conquering Red Goddess (of this men shall know nothing) by Hawthonn? A profoundly magical album that floats from the fecundity of the valley floor to the ageless moorland tops. It’s been great to see Phil and Layla playing out – each version of ‘Lady of the Flood’ I see further securing its status as track of the year. Scrying by Penance Stare was a revelation too – a model of deliberation in the face of rage and confusion, a head-clearing walk through a frozen dusk.
PROLIFICISM
As already mentioned, several of the artists listed have taken advantage of the ease offered by Bandcamp and have been busy filling chests with treasure. Chief amongst these is caroline mckenzie whose thoughtful, beautiful, longform albums are, on the surface, as welcome and restoring as warm sand underfoot but always have an emotional complexity revealed by close listening. Kieron Mahon has had it good too. My favourite of several equally excellent releases is Big Wheel – a kosmische journey with a utopian groove that reminds me at times of Kraftwerk’s ‘Neon Lights’, which is the highest praise of course. chlorine also filled a swimming pool with fluid, odd tasting, eye-stinging (sorry, that’s enough chlorine jokes) albums. I had Grassi pegged as a (very talented) drone artist having just heard Silk Trees and Solace but listened with increasing interest as later releases started to more resemble the aesthetic of his terrific photographic collages. Special mention must also be made of Matt Dalby who has been tirelessly cataloguing his life and artistic endeavours with YouTube and other social media. A small band of followers, myself included, have enjoyed his vocal improvisations, his accounts of lengthy walks, his comics about autism and his videos about eating insects as snack food. A hefty body of work is gathering, documenting a unique worldview. Finally for this section I’m going to shamelessly lump together A WHOLE COUNTRY, like a giant fistful of multi-coloured playdoh in the hands of a naughty toddler, and proclaim this ‘The Year of the Dragon’. 2018 revealed to me a bunch of Welsh underground music pulled together by Ash Cooke (a.k.a. Chow Mwng) and the Dukes of Scuba zine. Possibly my favourite of these artists was Xqui who worked tirelessly to get approximately nine million tracks up on Bandcamp and, amazingly, kept the quality control needle wavering around ‘superb’ for the whole year.
DRONE/NOISE
Now a paragraph on the genres I am perhaps most closely associated with. Should you wish your noise to be as bleak, desolate and hostile as a nuclear winter then brace yourself for Final Exit by the extraordinary Depletion. If your nihilism is of a more cosmic strain – At the Mountains of Madness rather than The Road, say – then I recommend The Transmission by Naido which is a deep dive into turbid waters with an entertaining Lovecraftian back-story. The soul music continues with the self-titled SLEEPMASSK, which provides an unnerving subcutaneous vibration which somehow feels corrective. head/rush(ed) by Marlo Eggplant is a collection of curios, miniatures, sketches and exploratory procedures given coherence by a formidable aesthetic, irresistible charisma and dry humour. Adrian Shenton’s The House That Jack Built is constructed from the cawing of jackdaws, my favourite of the mighty corvids, and thus wins this year’s ‘fuck, I wish I’d thought of that myself’ prize. Spelk has the great fortune to sound exactly like an inspired collaboration between Neil Campbell and Daniel Thomas. Possibly because it is.
UNACCOUNTABLES
Over the holiday period some of us may have spent time with rarely seen relatives and been in an awkward spot when they’ve said something politically unsavoury or made daft claims like ‘nobody ever discovered anything via a shared Spotify playlist’. I mean, what can you say? Probably best just to help them to a chair, put 6Music on for them and slowly back out of the room smiling. Serendipity remains, of course, rife. For example, one of my favourite albums of the year came to my attention indirectly when Daniel John Williams joined in with a twitter conversation I was having about a mild fetish I confessed to (peeling the protective film from a gloss surface). I checked out his work and the spacious, carefully constructed collages of Meet me on the corner became an instant staple. I literally have no idea how I got to Ivonne Van Cleef as I sleep-downloaded the work, but I was intrigued immediately by the lack of information (“Ivonne Van Cleef is a one person band from San Jose, California.”), the numbered releases, the unifying aesthetic of the photography and, of course, the music itself which is a subtle mixture of desert guitar and technological elements which make it almost unplaceable [STOP PRESS: via IVC I’ve just stumbled over Caleb R.K. Williams and Selected Works is playing as I type – bloody hell, it’s great!]. The fantastic Bad Nature by Wizards Tell Lies landed via that most glorious of promotional tactics – a tweet full of download codes and an invitation to help yourself. Mate, my scrabble to take advantage is always unseemly. This album fucking rocks. I described it at the time as ‘steely industro-punk two thirds sunk into tar-pit metal’ and ain’t going to better that today.
FINALLY
Despite being known nowadays mainly as a middle-aged, dronetronika beardy I’ve kept tabs on punk and metal since I was a thrash-teen in the grindcore/grunge boom of the late 80s. 2018 has seen one of my periodic upticks in interest, possibly due to the political shitstorm forcing slurry into every cranny of our existence, and you’ll be glad to know that I still like both kinds: fast and slow. Of the stuff new to me this year the album I return to, like a tongue wobbling a tooth loosened whilst ‘resisting arrest’, is Annihilated by Sectioned. I don’t know how to breakdown the genres and microgenres it belongs to, just that it is incredibly fast and brutal but played with such fluidity and space that the experience of listening is all consuming. It’s hardcore.
My most hotly anticipated release of 2018 was My Mother The Vent by Guttersnipe and I know that feeling was widely shared. Some also expressed an uneasiness as to whether the record would capture the screaming ferocity of the band’s incomparable live assault, but I would (I think) have been disappointed if they’d just ‘bootlegged’ themselves. I wanted to see what the duo, both whip-fucking-smart of course, would do with a new medium and, much to my great delight, it is as accomplished as I expected it to be. The noise is barely describable – an ecstatic rage, a seriousness of intent that teeters on the edge of hilarity, an amazing musicianship in the service of chaos – however the best, most eye opening track is the least similar to the tsunami of the live show. The closer, ‘God’s Will To Gain Access’, begins as snipey as you like but, over its nearly 11 minute run dubs out into a magic carpet ride over a Hieronymous Bosch hellscape. Neil Campbell described this as the album ‘grinding to a halt’, which made me laugh and is as good a take as any, but I read into it an almost entirely opposite meaning. I saw this as a statement of intent – a way of using recording to escape what has already become their expected ‘sound’ and a way of linking it to the other projects – like Blood Claat Orange, say – that Gretchen and/or Rob are involved with. The options this approach frees up are boggling. They’ve practised with Hawthonn, for example – think on that without fidgeting with anticipation! I imagine this album was second on everyone’s list after SOPHIE. Well, it’s second on mine too.
The very last artist I wish to mention is Chrissie Caulfield. As one half of Helicopter Quartet (the other being Michael Capstick) she has produced two albums of exceptional quality this year: Last Death of the Phoenix and Revisited (the latter being reconfigurations of eight highlights from the HQ back catalogue) but it is a solo release under her own name that I wish to discuss. It’s not a Game is a four track EP totalling 20 minutes and in that short run time Chrissie pulls off something near-miraculous. Via a bank of synths, her piano and violins she conveys something true and meaningful about what it is to be us. The cover photo looks like a mountain rescue team trudging across a moor on their way to rescue some hapless, ill-prepared accident victim (an amusing counterpoint to the windswept, magick romanticism of the Hawthonn cover). It complements the title and the vibe of the music perfectly – the exasperation, the frustration bordering on rage, but also the solemn knowledge that someone needs to take responsibility for salvaging the situation. It’s grown up, serious music but at its core it has kindness, not ‘ruffle-your-hair, don’t-spend-it-all-at-once’ kindness but the foundational type borne of love and respect. It’s humbling and beautiful. If I had to pick a favourite release of 2018 I think it would be this.
So, with apologies to those not mentioned (especially many lovely RFM regulars usurped by all these newcomers) that is your lot. Here’s looking forward. Take care, people, and be kind. All is love.
Rob x
Luke Vollar
“In 41 years I’ve drunk 50,000 beers, and they just wash against me like the sea into a pier.”
Not my words sadly, but the words of David Berman, slightly modified to make a point, although I’m not sure what my point is?
Perhaps it’s the years getting more blurred with advancing years. To confidently announce that Sheffield punks Rat Cage wrote the anthem for 2018 with their phlegm-saturated masterpiece ‘Pressure Pot’ from the superb seven inch Caged like Rats only to realise that it was actually released in 2017! No matter as the equally awesome Blood on your Boots was released this year.
The raw surge of excitement that is harsh noise, courtesy of Limbs Bin, does that insect-warfare-through-a-primitive-rig thing. LB’s Josh Landes is a one-man noise grinder from the USA happy to occasionally chuck in a Steely Dan cover for the heck of it. His One Happy World record is a brief but thrilling ride.
Werewolf Jerusalem released a ‘proper’ CD of dark brooding electronic minimalism called The Nightmares and old faves Usurper (along with Jelle Crama) released ‘Booby Prize’ – a fine release who’s handsome packaging matches the wondrous sounds within. Still beguiling in 2018!
And a late contender for album of the year is the self-titled debut from Notts based, UK metal duo Shrykull (released on CD in a run of 100). This tasty disc displays a fine vintage of motorcycle huffing excellence. Dig it!
Joe Posset
This has been the year when I’ve listened to more ‘mainsteam’ stuff than ever before. So, 2018 has seen me cue up new and old sounds from: Big Brave, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Kamasi Washington, Joni Mitchell, Gore, Toshi Ichiyangi, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Autechre, Alice Coltrane, Earth, Old Dirty Brubeck, Julia Holter, Tal National, Soft Machine & The Shrubs. Thanks to all of you who knocked the rough edges off a rough year.
NAU Records and tapes
- Sheer beauty love-bite swoon from Caught in the Wake Forever & glacis on Version & Delineation (Crow Versus Crow)
- Sophisticated coffee-table head noodle from Rodrigo Tavares on Congo (Hive Mind)
- Fever-dream night-sweat funk from Robert Ridley-Shackleton on Stone Cold Crazy (Crow Versus Crow)
- Un-translatable earth songs from the strongest spirit imaginable by Jean-Marie Massou on Sodorome Vol 1 (Vert Pituite La Belle)
- Blood-red kif-smoke & mind rickets from Roman Nose on Roman Nose (Singing Knives/Humane Pyramid)
- Inward spiralling fingerprint jass from Blood Stereo on Tape Loop Meditations (Chocolate Monk)
- Regional top-of-the class weirdos. All the Various Artists on The Harrowing of the North (End of The Alphabet Records)
- Workbench experiments to gnarly fingers plucking ripe air from Chow Mwng on Stuttering Hand (Self Release)
- Slick brain-fold of Lear-esque proportions from Gwilly Edmondez on Trouble Number (Slip Imprint)
- Quick-blubber-vocal-blabber from Fritz Welch on A Desire to Push Forward Without Gaining Access to Anything (Radical Documents)
- Painful jaw-twang and cavity vibrations from Chik White on Their Faces Closed (Chocolate Monk)
- And the THF Drenching prize for exceptional tapewerk goes to Stuart Chalmers and Tom White for Awkward Objects (Fractal Meat)
Live shows
Records and tapes are great and all but no scene would survive without real-life interaction. Gigs are a vital part of the NAU so I say a huge ‘yeah man’ for the regular lunchtime shows at Gateshead’s Shipley Art Gallery featuring celebrated dark artists: Culver , Xazzaz and the super spaced-out Shunyata Improvisation Group among others.
There was more lunchtime fun at The Newcastle University’s Kings Hall, this time with the exceptional Joe McPhee/John Pope/Paul Hession first-time trio as part of Newcastle’s Jazz & Improvised Music festival. Two hundred swinging OAPs can’t be wrong!
Bradford’s FUSE was one of my favourite places to play this year (in a trio with the mighty Yol and Toby Lloyd) combining supremely relaxed venue folk (Hi Chris) with great, reasonably priced, locally-sourced drinks all presented at travel-friendly times. After the show pretty much everyone who didn’t have a bus or train to catch decamped to a nearby pub to keep the conversation going. Splendid stuff.
2018 marks the year I saw my first ever ‘proper’ full-on orchestra with the super-beautiful, super-minimal piece The Movement of Things composed by Miya Masaoka and conducted by Ilan Volkov at Tectonics Glasgow. The whole thing floored me with as much impact as Black Flag did when I was a spotty teen.
The Old Police House in Gateshead hosted many, many exceptional nights; the standout for me being Ali Robertson & Joyce Whitchurch’s drama/improv/morality tale that held me in a zonked trance throughout its brilliant duration.
And in a TUSK festival crammed full of highs (Hameed Bros, Dale Cornish, Saboteuse, Pinnel, our very own Marlo Eggplant, Limpe Fuchs, Adam Bohman & Lee Patterson were all beautiful) the wonderful ink-haired Robert Ridley-Shackleton won the hearts of my whole damn family with his utterly charming, whip-smart funky and brain-boggling performance. The Cardboard Prince reigns supreme.
And talking of reigning…although the ice-hockey venue was rubbish and they were a bit tired and sloppy, I finally got a chance to see another teen favourite – bloody SLAYER with my teenage kids. And things don’t get any more metal than that.
\m/ \m/
The increasing importance of MP3 Blogs and Internet Radio cannot be denied; creating another platform for DIY artists to inhabit, I give a New Year Blog Cheer to the super classy Slow Goes the Goose, outrageously niche Bulletproof Socks, DIE or D.I.Y and Bleak Bliss (again).
As for Internet Radio I’ve goofed on the clever selections and dulcet tones of: Free Form Freakout, Ramshackle Sunrise, Sindre Bjerga & Claus Poulsen’s history of Danish & Norwegian Experimental Music, Tor FM, Fae Ma Bit Tae Ur Bit, QT and the much missed Crow Versus Crow.
And finally. Here is my special shout out to everyone who made me a mixtape, sent me a link or a CD-r. These kindnesses are always appreciated and cherished. For every zine written, lent or sent; to every gig bootlegger, interviewer, blogger and promoter. Thank you. Jx
-ooOOoo-
prick mason: rfm on id m theft able, robert ridley-shackleton, leitmotiv limbo/rnp no2 and gwilly edmondez
November 25, 2018 at 11:35 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: crow versus crow, gwilly edmondez, hyster tapes, i dm theft able, Kraag, leitmotiv limbo, mangdisc, Pink fucking Floyd, rnpno2, robert ridley-shackleton, slip, Slip Imprint, Yol 4 President
ID M Theft Able – Clean Houses Exude Fear (Mang Disc)
Robert Ridley-Shackleton – Stone Cold Crazy (Crow Versus Crow)
Leitmotiv Limbo/RNP No2 – Split (Hyster Tapes)
Gwilly Edmondez – Trouble Number (Slip Imprint)
ID M Theft Able – Clean Houses Exude Fear (Mang Disc) C30 Cassette
In the multi-faceted world of ID M Theft Able I guess this would be classed as a Rap Album. Concrete words and phrases are to the fore and the slapstick Foley-explosion is boiled down to a set of insistent hollow-point beats. But anyone expecting swaggering brags about cars, girls and dollars will be misty-eyed and disappointed. Less Young Thug more Big Hug. Trades Description jobsworths begone!
“The sight of your blood is always OK, you fall off your leg, what did you right, the sight of your blood is always OK”
The narrative is caught in aspic and carefully chipped away to reveal the irritated wasp inside. Repetition and subtle sense-change is ‘wrapped/rapped’ in breathless stanzas each collapsing on each other piled up like a language Jenga (or something). With such dense texts meanings are shucked like a plump oyster and guzzled whole, lining the brain pan with glistening salty gloop.
“There ain’t no desert, it’s like staring at the sun, it’s like staring at the sun, it’s like staring at the sun, other people see you they see you, you take your eyes from the sun and you bust your mouth”
The pace is pretty much relentless making this a very physical listen…I’m out of breath just jamming this tape at home. Heaven knows what it must have been like to sing the darn thing.
“Shove it. Shove it, Ah-wah, Shove it, Shove it, Ah-wah, Exist, Exist, Fight, Fight”
So readers…if you are new to ID M this is a great, yet fairly untypical, place to start. But with such a varied discography if you wanna get wet, you have to dive in somewhere eh? Check out his bonkers MangDisc site and label for details and while you wait for this shit to ship get goofed on strange passwords, online tests and quivering graphics.
Go Go Go!
Robert Ridley-Shackleton – Stone Cold Crazy (Crow Versus Crow) C20 cassette or digital album
The great Robert Ridley-Shackleton (RRS) seems unstoppable right now. After a bunch of essential Chocolate Monk releases and a pair of sublime performances at this year’s TUSK festival RRS is tearing up the dancefloor ‘card style’.
A world of funk, noise and gnarly confession is fully realised on this dark tape from the exceptional Crow Versus Crow label.
The title track, ‘Stone Cold Crazy’, merges Robert’s patent Tupperwave sound with teetering wonk-keyboard rhythms in a high-energy funk workout. But of course the Cardboard Prince has his signature moves and the punnet crackle leaps through my headphones adding layers of gritty confusion to this banger. ‘Pest Control’ is lyrically the darkest I’ve heard RRS, a disembodied, disinterested monologue over relentless t’wave somehow reminding me of the ickiness of my one and only listen to Throbbing Gristle. The Side A closer ‘Bury me’ warbles beneath a barrage of clack-clack and close-mic rapping that seems to slip in and out of reality. A demented carny riff completes the mental image of some dilapidated circus tent, hot animal scents wafting out the canvas flaps.
Side B starts with the bold statement ‘Yol 4 President’ so I’m expecting a joyful noise, a cathartic boil-burst. But this is more of a leaky pustule, a damp spreading yellow stain on a bandage with some inwardly focused angst. Much of Robert’s vocal is mumbled and hidden beneath static sheets but the announcement “God is Santa and Santa is God” is clear and filled with secret meaning.
There’s a wonderful jump-cut from the high-octane rattle that ends ‘Yol 4 President’ to the thumping ‘Dirty Cardboard’ complete with snarling multiple voices, ripped and shredded into many funky pieces. Dirty indeed, this track lets it ALL hang out in ALL the right places.
The final piece ‘Snack Effective’ is a bee’s nest of hiss and rumble. Like the insects got tired of slave labour and revolt into busy explosions of sexy freedom. RRS’s early ‘pocket jazz’ sound is revisited and honks like Louis Armstrong huffing his old cornet full of boiled rice.
As you’d expect from Crow Versus Crow the damn tape looks outstanding with a beautiful collage collaboration wrapping up this true vibe machine in a glittery package.
Leitmotiv Limbo/RNP No2 – Split (Hyster Tapes) C30 Recycled Cassette
This glorious, DIY as you like, split tape from Hyster really is the business.
The great Leitmotiv Limbo delivers a side of their trademark music-as-psychic-attack. In a series of smeared moans the mysterious Leitmotiv molds deep throbs from what I’m guessing is some sort of woolly synth and jacked it straight to the dirtiest, most warped tape in their collection for a quick foggy mastering job.
Each column of sound is oscillating like a sausage being pumped with sonic gristle and fat. The plump pink hands of the butcher (each fingernail a crescent of blood) are surprisingly agile and gentle as the tube of minced flesh gets heavier and heavier. Now imagine the gory mess being mashed slowly, sensuously into your ears.
It’s not all spit and sawdust…things get decidedly holy on ‘Door C’ as a whiff of incense coils like rope hissing through the gates of heaven. The mood is deepened on ‘Door E’ which generates that feeling of helpless exhaustion after an early winter run. You stand, steaming like a racehorse, hands on hips, breathing in the frigid air, the mind a perfect, beautiful blank.
In the best possible way Leitmotiv Limbo conjure up the in-between moments of life. The pauses and stutters; the twitches and delicious stretches. A satisfied yawn cast in iron.
Side two offers RNP No2, another mysterious presence, who operates in a similar sound world to that great Dane Claus Poulsen but with perhaps more of a pick n’ mix approach. Each piece is a perfect, stand-alone unit showing a variety of styles and obsessions.
So, what may be rubber batons are beating gently against a copper tube as a single note is worried and plucked from within a felt piano. Or, on the wonderfully titled ‘The Pink Flowd pecking order’, bristling electric-hums play the drums and collect the empties at the bar at the same time. I don’t know about you but for me that’s classic Prick Mason material.
Other jams of note take a tin bassoon feeding back through Jah Shaka’s soundsystem (or something) that slowly turns into early Dead C clanging, ringing and singing.
We’re eased out of the listening space with a buffling roar, it could be more rubberised twigs on vibrating pig skin, it could be a puffy cheek slapped until it glows maroon. I’ve no idea what is happening, and what has happened is no guarantee of what is next to come.
What a wonderful place to be eh?
Gwilly Edmondez – Trouble Number (Slip Imprint) Double tape (C60 and C30) or digital album
“Make your own world now” croons Mr Gwilly Edmondez (AKA Gustav Thomas and MYKL JAXN) on his career-spanning double-bulge tape package.
And even the most cursory peak into this wonderfully detailed bumper-harvest reveals a singular world that screams “E.D.M.O.N.D.E.Z!”
Tape one is comprised of unreleased gunk, radio broadcasts, classic album trax and live excursions as Gwilly leafs through his famously chaotic archive to pluck the ripest fruit, the sweetest meat from as far back as 1986.
As you’d expect a lot can happen in all them dusty years so many, many, many bases are covered my dear readers. You want the slick quick dictaphonix? You got it. You crave the sampling keyboard rainbow-beans? Tick yes sister. Is your personal Jones for the trademark un-sense gibber and brain-fold poetry? Consider yourself satisfied brother.
But this time-romp is no haphazard kitchen sink-style hodgepodge. The sense of the man (the very, very Gee Edmondez) feels as comfortable and natural as a favourite moccasin. All the pinches have been ironed out resulting in gratifying fullness. In fact there are few hard, sharp edits and things flow like one of those Fabric Mixes (or something).
The spectre of Southen Rap flavours many of these jamz like hickory-smoked BBQ. And, as would be fitting for a sweet n’ sticky rib, it’s darn slippery too. At points I’m thinking a Chopped and Screwed Stanley Unwin at others a hacked Eno biscuit but towards the end I’m exhaustedly thinking of Hugo’s big Balls.
Tape Two (Gnarlage of Self) sees EdMoNdEz jamming good in the more recent year of 2017. Here the method is to record a free-flowing data dump of capricious tunage on tape, keys, percs and gits then pass the resulting loopage to one Dario Lozano Thornton for editage.
At times this layering offers a Jack Kirby dimension, all bright colours, freaky angles and cosmic pronouncements. At others the live-in-the-room feel (bolstered by inter-jam bantz and nervous laughter) is more a modern day Alan Lomax capturing a chrome-plated Sonny Terry. And the blues reference is very deliberate readers for this tape is an unwinding transport spiel, a word-salad for sure but underpinned by the railroad whoop of the freight train hobo.
I guess the question such a well-referenced retrospective raises is, ‘so what’s changed on the journey man?’ I can safely report back that to my ears it’s pretty much everything and at the same time nothing. The tunes may differ but the voice remains utterly distinctive and wonderfully radge.
But what do I know? Listen for yr damn self coz you the boss eh?
-oo00oo-
slow as eels: rfm on various herhalen artists, mudguts, günter schlienz, hawlimann & stricktschek, nautapes #32
December 14, 2017 at 5:09 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: amantra, cauterized, concrete/field, cruel nature records, culver, dawn bothwell, descent, draaier, elricj, faye maccalman, gunter schlienz, gwilly edmondez, hawlimann & stricktschek, herhalen, kek-w, kleevex, libbe matz gang, matt warren, mudguts, nude for satan, posset, ram gabay, rust ruus, scott mckeating, scutopus, spam tapes, various artists, wizards tell lies, wound, yoni silver
Various Artists – Under The Concrete / The Field (Herhalen)
Mudguts – Granada Valley Flower Girl (Cruel Nature Records)
Günter Schlienz – Selbstportrait (Spam Tapes)
Hawlimann & Stricktschek – TEENSDREAMS (Spam Tapes)
Various Artists – NAUT #32 – Live at Northern Charter (NAU-Tapes)
Various Artists – Under The Concrete / The Field (Herhalen) Cassette and free digital album
A curious compilation that sits halfway between an all-star remix album and an old-fashioned call and response holla.
The backstory goes like this. Mark (Concrete/Field) sends a bunch of unfinished, unused but much loved sounds out into the universe and waits for like-minded beards to respond with a reaction. So what we get is a blur of interpretations and a shimmy of styles from a heady mix of collaborators.
The mood is cautiously optimistic with each collaborator (many new names to me) mining a seam of whistling iron; each piece separate in rusted glory but tied together with strong metallic links.
Cauterized bounce silver balloons with bright electric sparks. It takes Descent to riff on the itchy scratch favoured by high priests Zoviet:France. Air bubbles are released into the blood by Elricj with a turkey wishbone used as a funky clave.
What’s this? A shimmering John Carpenter-style synth all trussed up in black leather? Ladies and gentlemen – introducing Amantra.
We go back in time with Wound’s piece sounding like it was composed on a Casio calculator watch (circa 1987) – a river of bleep. Then race to the here-and-now for Matt Warren’s Styrofoam rummage and one finger keyboard bee-drone.
RFM fave Kek-W on the brilliantly titled ‘A Fax from Phillip Glass’ creates exactly that. Four organs battle the inhuman squeal of redundant technology. Libbe Matz Gang bring the gritty howl they are well known for in these parts. But watch out! Scutopus’ almost 6 min drone is crispy pancake – not filled with boiling cheese and ham but gently sculpted and rough to touch. Wizards Tell Lies, another scorched earth outfit, juggle tangled loops and fine, filigree crackle.
The gloriously named artist Nude for Satan seem to be riffling through the Necronomicon while listening to copper pipes being clanged (on leaky headphones).
Classy Draaier ends the recording on a tasteful note. A foamy sea drawing itself through smooth pebbles as the heavens dance overhead.
A perfect balm for this most abrasive of seasons.
Mudguts – Granada Valley Flower Girl (Cruel Nature Records) Cassette and digital album
Ghostly power-duo Mudguts (Lee Culver on sounds and Scott McKeating on composition) haunt and howl their way through another impressive tape drenched in sticky black ectoplasm.
The opening two pieces ‘Original Mistake Growing Arms and Legs’ and ‘Constantly Slaughtering Something’ seem to exist beneath a level of human perception. Sure, churning voices are suggested and even become corporeal for moments but mostly these are echoes, lost murmurings and hints striving to pierce the veil of human static.
The altogether more boisterous ‘Bat’ is a multi-limbed car wash applying numerous squeegee squeals to your scalp. The twelve minute ‘Every Single Edge’ truly made me jump with its needle-sharp intro cry. Imagine a single string soprano violin bowed with fury cutting through an orchestra of damp tissue paper and comb artists. Picture the clarity of intention over the glum voices of damage!
The balance is restored with the beautiful hum of ‘Carver’ a soul-scratching guitar noodle heard through heavy atmospheric interference. And the prettiest of the lot ‘Moth’ a one minute mumble, makes me think this really could be the only surviving recording of a wet marimba covered in fragrant peat.
Mudguts once again daub the strange and the beautiful with primitive woad.
Günter Schlienz – Selbstportrait (Spam Tapes) Cassette
Totally beautiful synth wig-ins.
Marvellously introspective and slow as eels this tape massages my tired temples and places a warm oiled hand on my knotted shoulders.
Schlienz’ Self Portrait floats in the air faintly glowing all across side one. The spare notes breathe into each other – a cinnamon-scented wind.
But this is in no way a dumb drift piece. No Sir! This is as deliberately approached as your end of year accounts. The movements are smooth and calm. A gentle shudder, a close cluster of harmonic moans as discrete as Eno’s Discreet Music.
Side two, ‘Campfire Suite’ takes the whole soft sheebeen outside and clusters around a real life crackling fire (just audible in the mix). This time things are less obviously soothing and more mysterious – picture an electric loon-bird or stoned sperm whale.
Perfect and peaceful – more most welcome Spam!
Hawlimann & Stricktschek – TEENSDREAMS (Spam Tapes) Cassette
Phew! This hectic duo couldn’t be further removed from Gunter’s plantagenet hoofs.
Side one opens with the mud-popping farts of a bass pipe getting lustily fingered. The wet slurp is part aboriginal dreamtime part steam-driven traction engine busting hot rivets. Percussion comes in the form of crinked coffee cans, a fistful of dry reeds and shuffling grit under the soles of a clog. It is truly magical to hear a crisp packet scrunched, up and close to the mic, as loud as Slayer in any given Enormo-dome.
Side two is an almost prehistoric take on Don Cherry’s masterpiece ‘Mu’. These boyos drag around sacks of cloth, sigh politely and snore, setting the scene before breaking out an ivory horn and badass drum.
We are treated to a walking mix; various beaters and rattles picked up, explored and discarded. It’s a pleasure, a delight, to hear the invention and thought weaving as voice melts into melodica or balloon squeak tackles a wooden bamboo flute.
Clear the picnic blanket – these scotch eggs are ripe and ready to pluck.
Various Artists – NAUT #32 – Live at Northern Charter (NAU-Tapes) Cassette
Gosh knows how many more NAU-Tapes Dave Howcroft has released in the last month but here’s the latest that found its way into my bulging stocking.
Admission corner – I’m breaking form here at RFM by reviewing a tape that I feature on but I don’t see why the other acts here should suffer because of my writing mumps.
And what a set of acts! Posset-Ruus Duo, Dawn Bothwell, Kleevex and Yoni Silver & Ram Gabay all braved five flights of stairs to take up residence in the sun-drenched plaza that is Newcastle’s Northern Charter Space. Normally reserved for visual artists this wonderful space looks out over the main drag of Newcastle City Centre – a veritable eagle’s nest!
First up new duo – Posset-Ruus (soon to be re-branded The Russets but that’s a different story) take two acoustic guitars, two mouths, two Dictaphones and four speakers in a self-perpetuating loop squeezing scrambled string-action and slack tooth honks via their Dictas in what I believe they call a hot mess. Described by some as ‘not really music’ imagined by others as Harry Pussy swapping their instruments at half time – WOOF!
Dawn Bothwell’s electronic poetry takes advantage of the view and describes the pre-Christmas rush; all mead quaff and sausage munch. A looping module takes snatches of voice and spins a ring of bright fire making it sizzle. Just when you thought you’d heard it all pitches are switched and a booming bottom-end heralds precise and hammering tech-noir squelch.
Keleevx pair up two of the hardest working folk in the Undergronk, Faye MacCalman and Gwilly Edmondez rasping on sax/clarinet and mouth/dicta respectively. Like a couple of daytime drinkers they read each other’s minds ready to place a new conversational nugget or curious honk on the table with practiced certainty. Seeing traditional instruments cozying up to what is basically outdated office equipment fills me with a wonderful sense of hope and I can wax lyrical if you want. But it’s all just breath at the end of the day innit? The secret is its vital oxygen, life-giving air whistling from Kleevex into my hungry ears. Dandy.
The brave headliners are polished metropolitan gentlemen Yoni Silver (Bass Clarinet & Violin) and Ram Gabay (half a Drum-set). I’m not going to beat around the bush here – this is world class improv. Yoni and Ram are inventive masters pushing each of their respective instruments though ten rounds delivering stylistic K.O’s with grace and regularity. Yoni’s deep, deep honk is filtered through an enviable technique, rude tongue-slaps on the gummy reed, a foot in the brass bell and plastic filters clattering with the power of sculpted air.
Ram’s drums (a couple of snares, a rogue bass drum and a collection of cymbals and gee-gaws) are cosseted and stroked like old house cats. Skins are thrummed and thowked. The mixture of texture and timing fill the air with gritty vibrations that are expertly controlled with the occasional sharp ‘crack’ brining us out of our misty reverie and back into the present. Special mention must be made of the bass drum – a slack and sliding mobile unit skittering at the sight of Ram’s well-heeled boot.
And the interplay between the two is gob-dropping, jaw-smacking. Nuance unwraps further nuance, in a cluttered Venn diagram alive with microscopic bristle. This damn tape reminds me why I love improv so much – it just keeps on flowing and reforming until (one brief violin scrape later) it snips to a perfectly neat and tidy close.
As with all other NAU-tapes these are available only from the mighty Mr Dave Howcroft at howcroft.d58@gmail.com for FREE! *but bung him a few quid eh…it’s Christmas.
-ooOOoo-
the sweet jelly is in the deft cut: joe murray on david birchall/nicolas dobson/javier saso, dylan nyoukis & friends, plastic hooligans and acrid lactations & gwilly edmondez
March 3, 2017 at 6:00 am | Posted in musings, new music, no audience underground | 1 CommentTags: acrid lactations, chocolate monk, david birchall, drugs, dylan nyoukis, fae ma bit tae ur bit, gwilly edmondez, javier saso, joe murray, nicolas dobson, plastic hooligans, skronk, soundholes
David Birchall/Nicolas Dobson/Javier Saso – XZ ::::::::: Brazil (Soundholes)
Dylan Nyoukis & Friends – Mind Yon Time? (Chocolate Monk)
Plastic Hooligans – Untitled (Chocolate Monk)
Acrid Lactations & Gwilly Edmondez – You Have Not Learned To Play & Mock in The Psychic System (Chocolate Monk)
David Birchall/Nicolas Dobson/Javier Saso – XZ ::::::::: Brazil (Soundholes) C30 cassette
Super-charged scrimple-skriffle improv coming at you mixed in, depending on your view, (almost) mono or 3-way stereo.
But what’s going on?
Dave Birchall plays granite-flecked guitar in the left speaker, Javier Saso spills slippery, silvery lapsteel in the right speaker and Nicolas Dobson sprays wild, wild violin all over the place.
Side one is a string piece for three players and it waxes happily, darting in and out of focus like a lazy eye would. Contributions are in part clotted and meshed (like a scab) and independently driven. Imagine walking three energetic hounds, each with their own digging, burying, pissing mission. Their colourful leads are soon a wrapped-up maypole binding your arms and hands. Got it?
Now replace the noble hounds with these three improv-dudes and the dog-specific missions with group-mind blankness and collective musical mischief and you’ve got the perfect picture!
While the pace is athletic there’s always room for a ruminative cul-de-sac, a wet sniff about a single tone or blunt-thumbed technique. And as I listen I pass through several phases myself: chin-stroking on the non-idiomatic tip but also horn-throwing on the sexy electric eruption.
On side two I briefly land in a thoughtful strung-out lake but get distracted by amp-pops and bright lead-crackle. The tension mounts as our three players riff on the giant nothingness that exists right at the point of the horizon; saw, saw, sawing away, whipping up a gentle typhoon that bursts with bloated rain. It doesn’t take long to plinkety-plonk and things end with that ‘Sweet Child of Mine’ intro-played inside out and over ice.
This is what it sounds like when Slash cries.
Dylan Nyoukis & Friends – Mind Yon Time? (Chocolate Monk) CD-R
Popular wisdom suggests that there is nothing more boring than other people’s drug tales.
Ha! Popular wisdom is a duff grey lie.
On this re-imagining of Dylan Nyoukis’ Fae Ma Bit Tae Ur Bit radio show various sub-underground lads and lasses ‘fess up their first or otherwise notable drug experiences. Imagine Radio 4 has been snorting and huffing all night long (or something) with Dub Naughty on the controls.
They talk, in soft mumbles and gentle whispers; ‘it was like this…’, ‘we took a taxi…’, ‘I started to feel strange…’
Recorded up close it’s an intimate listen. Breathy and in your ear(s) – you sense the memories being dragged from that grey-matter prison and forced out into the open (in some case decades later) with all the added memory moss and drama a bit of distance provides.
D-Nyoukis works like a psychedelic Foley artist, twisting the background. Adding an addled ‘whuff’ or stoned ‘skofff’ to the voices that are dropping cautionary, ecstatic and, in some cases heart-warming tales of sweet, sweet intoxication. Subtle it is, in the way a shimmering hallucination first grabs you and makes you say “wha?” But it’s a flanger-free zone yeah?
So…anyone want to split this bottle of Cherry Lambrini? I’m thinking about getting it on now anyhow.
See ya on the other side travellers! YEAH!
Plastic Hooligans – Untitled (Chocolate Monk) CD-R
The aptly named Plastic Hooligans are gentle souls wrapped up in retro Adidas and Fila.
But an obsession with the Arabic world introduces ritualistic field recordings in a primitive electronic cloak. With a sparse, shady touch, loops are played via old reverb units and malfunctioning oscillators ramping up the potency of these already fairly ‘loaded’ sounds.
The shivers come in four waves.
- A xylophone tinkles in a French-speaking colony. Delicate as a music box found among boiled chicken’s feet.
- Moroccan tapes get fed through the mincer. The ‘boing’ of the overdriven hand-drum and voice pinched sonically to release only the most important tones.
- Rubberised machinery clunks away as a giant horn is blown roughly but slowly. Deep reparative hums.
- A hiccough bounced across eleven cryptic reverb-drenched minutes. The sort of mind-loop you feel on waking from a cumin-scented dream.
Acrid Lactations & Gwilly Edmondez – You Have Not Learned To Play & Mock in The Psychic System (Chocolate Monk) CD-R
The exact Reuleaux triangle-shaped intersection between modern classical, goofy wonk and hardcore improv. Oh yes!
History Lesson #1: The Acrid Lactations have been humble key-players of the untranslatable wonk scene. Really, really, really free players smiffy that non-idiomatic improv by adding an indefinable ‘something’. I’ve pondered this conundrum long and hard and the best I can come up with is that ‘something’ might be their slight unhinged quality; a willingness to go the extra mile, wherever that trek will take them.
History Lesson #2: Gwilly Edmondez has ploughed a similarly deep furrow. A Dictaphone high-priest, instant composition stalwart and one half of those rising stars YEAH YOU! [The UK’s only father/daughter slack-hop duo pop-pickers.] Gwilly, the tallest man alive, is a selfless player, an encourager, a persuader whose full-frontal yet ego-less schtick seems to be able to connect with that artistic blank space where anything becomes possible.
Taking this babycake as a whole I’m shocked by the time-shifting quality to these suckered gobbles, hazy trumpets and clogged electronics.
The lumps are bigger yeah! For 20, possibly 30 seconds you could be listening to Pharaoh Sanders (Impulse Era), or Morton Subotnick and then it could be nothing other than the good ole AL & GE. Things are so precarious I’m on a mental zip-wire sporting a psychic g-string baby.
But readers, it’s the edit that’s the thing here. In a similar way to the exceptional Hardworking Families latest disc the sweet jelly is in the deft cut taking these pretty much wonderful recordings and carefully layering, stripping and selecting the ripest cheese.
And this editors ear not only multiplies this trio but forges new links and allegiances between sound-nodes. Put simply; a ‘clunk’ recorded one day now spoons a sexy sigh recorded another and lo! A whole new thing starts a’going on.
The sounds? A dignified sniffle and pre-language burrs make up a respectable percentage but add to that bamboo pipes that ape the breath hissing down a human neck, disturb-o-moans and high-octane heffer on brass and tin. We’re talking “Seriously munged magic” (Nyoukis 2016)
But I’m throwing in a deep balloon-rubber ripping, a damp Dictaphone squelch and a goff-keyboard going electronically slow & low. Not only but also, the relaxing humming of social insects (ants probably) discuss their complex legal system.
To sum up I’ve got (consults notes, adjusts spectacles and frowns) three quarters goat-legged- spry and muscular, one quarter lazy liquid. So that’s something for everyone then; time for dreamers to collect themselves and activists to get-up-offa-that-thing.
Right-o. Discussion proposition? Dub opened a new door for Reggae. Teo Macero projected Jazz into an alternate future state. What about this N-AU versioning then readers?
Like…whoa man. Makes you think and shout “welcome to the world Keir J Arnot.”
-ooOOOoo-
rfm attends colour out of space part two: pascal ansell remonstrates
November 23, 2013 at 10:47 am | Posted in live music, new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: brighton, charlie collins, colour out of space, dictaphonics, dinosaurs with horns, dylan nyoukis, greg kelly, gwilly edmondez, improv, joe murray, jon marshall, new music, no audience underground, noise, pascal ansell, posset, roman nose, sarah mcwatt, thf drenching, tom white, vocal improvisation
COLOUR OUT OF SPACE / 6
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL SOUND FESTIVAL
Performance Weekend: 8th – 10th November, 2013, Brighton, UK
Editor’s note: Pascal’s turn. He clearly wasn’t as impressed overall as Joe but has selected some highlights to grudgingly comply with RFM’s sternly enforced policy of being nice. Well, mostly:
—ooOoo—
In a weekend bursting at the seams with irritating vocal improvisations, glossophonics, snarled and impertinent mouth crap, the likely trio of Gwilly Edmondez, Posset and THF Drenching chose the only option viable: ol’ time barbershop. Nah, we were of course subject to gurgle-core (is that Phil Todd’s term?) but this was of the finest pedigree. Bossy, snarled and darting; a real performance in that it propelled forwards towards you, opening itself up to the punters in an act of delicious spectacle and invitation. Gwilly Edmondez is a lumbering professor of something at the University of Newcastle. He is also in possession of a reverberant set of vocal chords of such rubbery depth to be, gasp, slimey, pure slime, the slime of old lady ass, under-sofa sweat dribbles, magnificent slime, everybody! A cassette voice slowed down, and that is garçon Gwilly, whose aural slugs competed with ex-Bailey bandmate THF Drenching, the latter wrestling his amp of its feedback possibilities. Posset on the third and final hand of this musical mutant nailed a splashing blend of static and mouth junk. See his mouth didn’t sound like mouth, or gargle, or in any way approach the being so-cerebral-it-gets-silly; it sounded good, ‘sound-in-itself’ good, inexhaustibly good, serious play and goodness.
Enjoyable as Dylan Nyoukis & Greg Kelley’s set was, and admitting that Nyoukis never disappoints in his encyclopaedic vocal voyages, his control and mastery over continents of vocalics… and taking into account this mighty Scot twinned with an enormous trumpet imagination of Greg Kelley, what really is there to be said about free improv anymore? I’ve been guilty of using the term too frequently but this is bona fide, every man out for himself territory. The only markedly different aspect of this performance was the brief and inexplicable spurts of disco lights which interrupted the almost total darkness. Good drossophonic messabout improv no doubt, but achingly purist free improv. So free, so fraught with my fevered doubts and whiffs of ‘what the hell will they do next?’ that the potential of it potentially collapsing – which really is the silent riff of free improv – seemed almost welcome.
Tom White wore a pristine white shirt and has a pristine brown beard (well, almost, and I urge him to embrace the status of total barbarism) and to clatter this rhetorical bowling ball was also in serious danger of delivering a pristine white overperformance. Let’s admit it, Luke was heavily involved with that obscenely massive and adorable tape deck he played with, he might as well gone off and married it. Ha! You’ve been great! There seemed to be no space between his hands and his ears, not letting sounds be themselves without having to hey-everyone-I’m-performing perform it, histrionics over Cagian (that’s adjectival John Cage, right?) conveying, cold and impersonal just as I like it. Thankfully us floor dwellers enjoyed an earful of superb tape junk. Nicely done. I say ‘junk’ but this was the sexy middle-class green bin kind of noise junk. Tasteful streamlines of grey static were repeated with just enough of interim to evade falling into witheringly dull tape delay jerk-off marathons. How gratifying to witness such immaculate and wretched explorations and applaud with, forty, heck, sixty other sick heads! And there were real girls, with, y’know like real hair, more than three! That’s when you know you’re festivalling!
Roman Nose provided welcome relief on Friday night with songs, actual songs! The free suspension and ‘what do they do next’ idea exchanging had its tension nicely diverted out of the room, past the very friendly venue staff of The Old Market and into the great Brighton night; that tension mentioned earlier of spontaneous performances was eroded by sudden halts, and proceeding to jolt without much delay into the next number. What I later learnt was a Chinese sheng (a strange organ-like contraption) was set upon and disturbed by Sarah McWatt. Charlie Collins clambered delicately over his drumkit shadowed by Jon Marshall (the Roman Nose wolf mother) on samples of scary tharqa and messy reeds.
I loved Black Dice for a long time but always knew there had to be a looser, non-hipster version that wasn’t Yellow Swans with their drizzling mush. Dinosaurs with Horns were a revelatory gesture towards this. Any band that can cram in experimental graft with joyful zest, with a semblance of a pulse, are due more than a little attention. What could otherwise slide into our memory bin instead transforms into joyful and constructful mucking about, my real and true nub rubber! These LA teamsters offered on a side-plate to this gigantically stale loaf of a weekend some morsel of delight, genuine swaying fairyground [sic] (Editor’s note: what a beautiful typo!) rollercoasting delight and rumble.
Editors note: a comprehensive selection of band bios and links can be found on the COOS website here. Photos by Marc Teare.
rfm attends colour out of space part one: joe murray ruminates
November 22, 2013 at 8:38 am | Posted in live music, new music, no audience underground | 2 CommentsTags: acrid lactations, ali robertson, andie brown, anja dornieden, bridget hayden, brighton, cm von hausswolff, colour out of space, dictaphonics, dieter schnebel, dylan nyoukis, electronic voice phenomena, enzo minarelli, evp, f. ampism, fordell research unit, free radicals, gen ken montgomery, gonzalez monroy, greg kelly, gwilly edmondez, ilan volkov, improv, joe murray, jooklo duo, juan david, karen constance, lovers ritual, m. stactor, malcy duff, maya dunietz, michael esposito, new music, no audience underground, noise, occult hand, pascal ansell, patrick goddard, posset, roman nose, sharon gal, sindre bjerga, spoils & relics, the handeye (bone ghosts), the y bend, thf drenching, usurper, virginia genta, vocal improvisation
COLOUR OUT OF SPACE / 6
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL SOUND FESTIVAL
Performance Weekend: 8th – 10th November, 2013, Brighton, UK
Editor’s note: RFM had two roving reporters present at this year’s Colour Out Of Space festival down in that Brighton. Regular contributor Joe Murray, who also performed, enjoyed himself enormously. Pascal Ansell, whippersnapper and occasional guest of RFM, ahh… not so much. Copious enthusiasm from Joe first, a more exacting response from Pascal to follow. Over to Joe:
—ooOoo—
Ahhhh Brighton…the sun, the sea, the squalor! I’ve had a soft spot for Brighton ever since I was a wee kiddie with a vivid imagination, trying to piece together the violent Mods & Rockers legend with the twin-set & pearls crowd that strolled slowly down the pier huffing camphor-scented liniments.
These days of course it’s all about the hipsters and Bubble Tea but I’m not complaining; I’ve got my freak on as I meet my gracious host Bod for a pint or two before we lurch expectantly to the main venue, The Old Market. Immediately adopting ‘Brighton time’ I missed the mysterious Occult Hand and outrageous Acrid Lactations who I both really wanted to see – please accept my apologies Occult Lactations, I was with you in spirit.
It was sometime around pint four I met up with my co-reporter Pascal Ansell and we immediately set ourselves up in a Hunter S Thompson style press-pack; silver-eyed Tuna darting purposefully through the flitting shoal. We rejected the usual journalistic conventions to move straight from gentle ‘forming’ to chaotic ‘storming’ within minutes, swapping war-zone anecdotes, snippets of esoteric record knowledge and the loudly proclaiming the relevance of Sammy Davis Jr. The result of such firm-calved bonding and reckless drinking resulted in a beery bonhomie for sure but also meant I pretty much missed every act to play on Friday. Oops…I did it again! The one that got away was the Enzo Minarelli. Dressed in dark jeans and tight black T shirt, his hair scraped back, there was an air of the ninja in his vocal guffings. Assisted with backing tracks of further mouth-chaff the precise and deadly Enzo sliced the air with steel-edged hissing and lippy smacks. This was no po-faced sound poetry lark but a right old hootenanny with his piece ‘Poem’ being turned into ‘PoemMacaroni’ in the curdled air. The rest of the bill was crammed with exceptional acts of legendary avant-gardary but to my shame dear reader I spent the remnants of Friday propping up the bar catching up with old friends and making new ones. I’ve never been a good mixer Midwichers but I made up for 43 years of insecurity and introversion with full-strength good cheer and love for my fellow travellers. You’re (hic) my best pal (hic)!
Saturday morning was an exercise in sickness, pain and remorse as I sheepishly ate brunch with family Bod and took the drizzly bus in disgrace to witness Gen Ken Montgomery in a Hove Oxfam shop. The steamy windows of the Oxfam obscured the ‘standing room only’ crowd as I inched in and stood, stomach lurching, for this exploration of the 8-track tomfoolery. Gen Ken, dapper in vintage Op Art shirt and tie manipulated old portable 8-tracks filling the damp air with warped 70’s AM rock all mashed and rotting. The warbles and trembles on the tape gave the Bee Gees et al a sepia fuzzed-out logic as loops were found and layered up into the consistency of dusty blancmange. He was a right card too, playing it up for the steaming crowd, making asides and throwing out hula-hoops of pulsating ‘waaahhhhoooosssshhhhh-voooshhhhhh’. After Gen Ken’s performance I wandered round Brighton for a bit, drank some peppermint tea (swearing off the demon drink for the rest of the weekend) and soundchecked with the great Gwilly Edmondez & THF Drenching.
At about teatime I found myself outside the very proper St Andrew’s church for some right high culture. Old-guy Produktionsprozesse composer-guy Dieter Schnebel was interviewed by Ilan Volkov about his approach to music and personal history. Dieter seems a game old bird, humble and gracious but with a sharp sense of humour…he somehow manages to call the audience stupid and make them love him for it…dude! A bunch of doofs play some Schnebel pieces: Maya Dunietz world premieres the ass off a beautiful and catchy piece for piano, voice and tambourine. Ilan and Maya throw some shapes in a gestural piece where composer and pianist struggle for supremacy like Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. Then Maya and Dylan Nyoukis get all serious and tackle a vocal piece for restricted mouthshapes and we end up with the most spellbinding piece of the afternoon. Like air hissing through naked ribs, dry and crackly. The pair, dressed in formal black, embrace at the end of the show, cracking hearts at CooS and letting pure love flow. The only way to follow such an intense and refined performance is of course with some chips so I headed to Bankers (Brighton’s best Fish & Chip shop) for sustenance.
Energised by hot potato and grease I walk into the Old Market to see the friendly and familiar face of Sindre Bjerga coaxing gentle tape loops out of his mess of wires and objects, polishing them up and floating them on the breeze like water-filled balloons pulling gruff-clouds out the air. Stepping round his desk he carefully wraps up a few people in abandoned cassette tape, hurls a miniature cymbal onto the deck and politely waves marking the end of a neat little set. Next up were a bunch of A-Band/Ceramic Hobs/Zero Map/Smell & Quim refugees calling themselves The Y Bend. The programme describes ‘no-mind sounds’ which pretty much sums up the Hawkwind out-takes vibe. Personally I’m transported back to the days of Anti-Poll Tax benefits as this jam band takes a note and jiggles it proper between guitar, keyboard, violin and eccentric hand percussion making incidental music for the revolution.
Roman Nose take the stage behind them and win the rosette for ‘best band of Saturday’. These days Roman Nose are very much a ‘band’ bridging the gap between rock’s looseness and tape/noise/jam’s love of overload. It’s almost funky with a pushing and pulling, a wrapping and un-wrapping of tape-fuff mittens across fluttering drums and breathy intrusions via flute and black-bamboo sheng. Throw some horns for the Nose!
Huge wineglasses are set up amid electronic doo-hickery for Sharon Gal and Andie Brown. These glasses are Jeroboam massive, pregnantly full; delicate but comprising a thousand potential shivs. Like an inverse Justice Yeldham the glass is thumbed to produce deep rasping drones. It’s great to watch the deft hand movement turn into such singing and bassy mulch. Gal uses her voice like some terror-choir re-enacting a trauma. Electronic squash makes a Black Metal grunt adding to the dungeon gloom. Wow…a Carpathian Forest sprouts from the floor as the thin rays of a dismal sun rise slowly in the East. The bald guy with all the pedals is M. Stactor; his mask is a composite of Her Majesty Betty II and Saddam Hussein. Slowed down speech goes ‘burrrrrrr’ and get shoved through a variety of whizz-bangs to come out ‘BURRRRRR’ anointed with contact-mic crackle and hand-palming crunch. Brand new CooS trio Edmondez/Posset/THF Drenching adopt the dual Dictaphone position like a crouching Judas Priest. Gwilly bangs his head like Halford. And seeing as I’m involved modesty prevents me for saying too much about this fine-legged beast.
I caught about 20 seconds of Bridget Hayden’s set but within that 20 seconds I heard the entire history of overblown fuzz-guitar from the Sonics to the Velvet Underground to the Dead C. Rusty chainmail began clanking out the walls; rolling thunder crashed from the ceiling. The very gods showed their pleasure in ancient, animalistic ways. Oh boy! I was still kicking myself when Greg Kelley & Dylan Nyoukis sat erect and purposeful on a pitch black stage. Side by side they were, with Greg’s tubes augmented with cold brass and Dylan’s with moist flesh. Snide hiss and scything tones crept almost guiltily from trumpet and gob, playing merrily between wet-mouth slappings and full jowl squelch. This was no dramatic, overwrought, performance piece nor academically apologetic. The “my voice, your voice” mantra summed up a lot of the days sessions in a simple repetitive phrase. Some jokers joined in on coughing and started a response group reflex (koff-KOFF-koff). The optimist in me thought the spontaneous outpouring would lead to a scratch feral choir but no…it was a piss take…yet troupers Kelley & Nyoukis toughed it out cackling and blowing the third eye till it blinked all yeasty. Lovers Ritual (Maya Dunietz & Ilan Volkov) used voice and violin to beguile, encouraging minimal and thin tones out the cracks in the light fittings. Not content with sticking to the stage both Maya & Ilan ended up on the floor, among the punters, stroking and keening their flexible bones in a tangled tableaux.
It’s Sunday. The Lords day. And me & Bod celebrate with a visit to a typical Brightonian Car Boot sale; he picks up some Colombian tapes, I nab a Fantasy Island fridge magnet and we both head happily to the Sallis Benney Theatre for the famous CooS film screenings. I really loved what I saw but I soon discovered it’s hard to take notes in the dark so am relying on musty recall only. Standouts…the bonkers The Handeye (Bone Ghosts) by Anja Dornieden & Juan David Gonzalez Monroy which coupled 19th Century taxidermy with digitized commands and the bumbling chunter from Patrick Goddard’s charming Free Radicals. As the films ended, us gaggle of cinema-goers milled around, checking maps and GPS systems to find the next venue, giggling over being able to genuinely say, ‘See you in church later man.’ A walk along the cold, crisp sea-front takes us back to St Andrew’s Church for a session of spooky Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) from CM von Hausswolff & Michael Esposito. I’m really excited about this one. Since I was a kid I’ve been in love with that flexi disc that came with the first edition of ‘The Unexplained’. Of course I never knew these supposed ghost voices were EVP but I totally dug the hissy weirdness. The two gents open with about 15 minutes of static tape hiss with the occasionally clunky ‘chump’ like ghosts dropping wooden marbles in a bucket. The fuff was pretty damn immersive and had some of the flagging hordes crashed out on the pews. CM and Michael then took us through some of their EVP recordings (cue demonic chuckle) made in this very church. What could have been (possibly should have been) spectral and creepy turned into a bit of a laugh as the particularly chirpy Michael introduced second-long sound-clips of the dead calling us ‘assholes’, urging us to ‘get out’, that they ‘are in love with married men’ and…to much hilarity…‘it’s all shite’. Wow the ghosts sound like angry jakeys!
Back in the Old Market I strained limbs to find my comrade Pascal. It was Jooklo Duo next and I was pretty sure he’d be right up the front for this. Some lazy sleuthing revealed Pascal had packed up and gone. He’d had enough and trekked back to Leeds earlier in the day. Oh Pascal…you would have loved what came next! Jooklo Duo were absolutely amazing. Now I know that’s trite, lazy journalism but I was too busy picking my eyeballs up off the floor to concentrate on clever words. This was a 100% lung-bursting blowout with drumming as agile as a crack-fuelled squirrel. I’m no jazz buff but I like my brassy honks and squeals. Jooklo one, Virginia Genta, plays like Pharaoh Sanders with some nifty Arabic scales quickly releasing that cheeky kundalini from the base of my spine. Woah boy, I said Woah! Not one or two but three casual acquaintances said this was ‘better than Brotzmann’. Heard that? Promoters…book ‘em now.
Brighton local f.Ampism loops and loops and loops domestic clunk, mbira tones and gentle sighing all engaging and releasing softly like the briny blue sea just 100 meters down the street. A film is projected behind his hat and beard; cut-up collage sourced from what seems to be the family Nyoukis archive and Martha Colburn’s paint splattered horror-core. I have to admit I’m a total fan-boy of Amp’s choogle-leech-warp but this was a whole new saltine! Fordell Research Unit sat like a couple of chess masters and manipulated a pretty damn heavy drone with micro-movements. So far, so good. In tiny, tiny increments the drone gets grunty and somehow slower and fuller until we’re faced with a monolith – a black slab, playing the theme tune for the world’s most evil super villain. There’s a growing feeling of excitement for the next set from noise-monkeys Spoils & Relics with Karen Constance. Faced with a table full of gizmos and wires the quartet sat in quiet contemplation building a Jenga house of quivering tones and darkly-twinkling steam. Like some giant engineering puzzle, pieces are interlocked; a spark starts a fire and is extinguished ruthlessly by the hobo fire brigade. After a time the factory klaxon calls and the workers down tools and melt into grease.
It’s no secret; I’m a little in love with Usurper. Ali Robertson and Malcy Duff have been making the most singular no-input music for half a decade at least. Writing about Usurper is always a tough gig; their total lack of any of the regular handholds makes the amateur pamphleteer work hard, busting chops to describe their occasional cutlery pings and tales of Auld Reekie. Tonight they are joined by Dora Doll, one half of the legendary Prick Decay, on scissors as a circular story unfolds on twin tape recorders. Narratives intertwine as a regular haircut turns into a meditation on the seaside and seaside ritual. A grumpy Ali gets wrapped in ribbon like a maypole, Malcy crawling on the floor streaming the red and white tapes behind him. Hairy objects are presented to Ali & Dora for snipping. A guitar FX pedal, a pair of glasses, a descant recorder are shorn of hair and (in some cases) indecently rubbed beneath the barber’s shawl. Apart from the taped stories, folding in and out of phase there is a rare skronk-interruption on contact-miked yard brush ‘Shussssh, shusssh, shussssh’ as Malcy coughs up hairballs. Any traditional ideas of what performance is are dashed. Any preconceptions of what underground art should be are delightfully roasted. Usurper are right out on a limb, doing their very own thing and making up a whole new set of parameters. What on the page seems like random vignettes has a strong sense of direction and pace…and most importantly fun. I’m laughing like a drain and looking round to see a crescent of bemused yet joyful faces. No one is really sure what they have witnessed but pretty much everyone agrees it was damn fine.
The tapes spool to an end, Usurper and Dora bow and grin, and my CooS adventure comes to an end. It’s been a trip and a half Midwichers. Brighton itself is a beautiful backdrop to this very psychedelic weekend, the bands/acts/performers have all brought their own slice of oddness with a spice and professionalism the naysayers often miss. But for me it’s all been about the people…the floating and transient chats, the laughs and the in-depth conversations. There’s that quote about the Velvet Underground isn’t there? They didn’t sell loads of records but everyone who bought one formed their own band. Well this weekend might have been an intimate affair but I wonder how many projects and plans were hatched, how many ideas were sparked and alliances formed. CooS brings the no-audience underground together like a giant think-tank…but what’s gonna occur? I can’t wait to find out.
Editors note: a comprehensive selection of band bios and links can be found on the COOS website here. Photos by Joe or Marc Teare.
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