radio free midwich

vintage segs: rfm on binnsclagg, dayglow exploding super infinite, dr:wr and katz mulk

Binnsclagg arranged by THF Drenching – Bring Back Hanging (Chocolate Monk)

Dayglow Exploding Super Infinite – Weightless and Everywhere, Drizzled in Honey (disillusion.dot.dot.dot)

DR:WR – Our Shadow Days (Eps 1 – 3) (No label)

Katz Mulk – Husks (Singing Knives)

Binnsclagg arranged by THF Drenching – Bring Back Hanging (Chocolate Monk) CDr

Operatic junk-melt from two salty coves is stirred by a third with a runcible spoon.

Beard, Karl M V Waugh & non-beard, Verity Spott have cooked up a shot of pure Binnsclagg and injected straight into Drenno’s eyeball.  The last flickering spasms from the Council of Drent’s most celebrated son register on some sort of Beaufort scale (for skronk) and gets marked-up in felt tip ‘fresh gale – twigs break off trees, cluttered sounds smudge gravity.’

Clear enough yeah?

Sense-valves are squeezed firmly from the middle to let the chum squirm rudely out, forming foul brown pyramids:

rhythmic pulses throb like a sore thumb,

granulated ripping precedes a spoken word interlude,

old coins are rubbed on a vintage slate,

the TV chatter is tuned to the Mr T show,

lobbying voices blabber and honk,

synths are employed as security guards,

overloaded sections create vital grab-zones to ponder and chew bitter herb,

ghostly organs invoke the dark heart of Blackpool; pure shredding

six-handed – with a swingers firm grip

A mess?  Of course not.

Bring Back Hanging aches like the tight tangle of poetry.

Dayglow Exploding Super Infinite – Weightless and Everywhere, Drizzled in Honey (disillusion.dot.dot.dot) cheap-o digital album

This accidental-static, fluff osmosis is exactly the kind of sound The Red Hot Chilli Peppers and their foul type have tried to scrub out of existence, stomp into history, for years

The exact moral opposite of Anthony, Flea (and the other two) this rotten, fluttering pop crackles in my ears like a dry cotton bud chasing a rogue insect for about 37 minutes.

There’s no funk or no punk in this energetic splutter; indeed there is no jazz or blues either.  But this is unmistakably rock n’ roll, the closing moments of ‘Collapsing Droplets’ as badazz as Link Wray’s low-down Rumble; greasy D.A. aloft and flick knife tucked into his waistband.

If all else is true the lengthy ‘Once we Considered Surrender’ is surely the ballad, a slow dance of chittering typewriter keys and radio interference.  Somehow wetter than its companions the spitting sonics play out more like a garden hose being repeatedly stepped on-off-on-off in a herky-jerky dance.

Uncomplicated, but of course vibrating with coded meanings only the in-crowd can decode.

A whop-bam-a-loo-bop-a-whop-bam-boo!

DR:WR – Our Shadow Days (Eps 1 – 3) (No label) gratis digital album

A tone-desert as barren as Catterick Lorry Park

Oily loops of reverb’ed somethings snake in sinister circles; a gentle rumble is the slowest drummer – like yeast picked up the brushes.  ‘Dream Pollutants’ feels like some Replicant code-patch to increase anxiety and paranoia – take it slow Skin Jobs.

Lazily shifting shapes tip on hidden hinges to reflect a sooty light on ‘an attempt at exhuming nowhere’.  The see-saw effect makes this a meditative piece suitable for a trek in Nepal or charity shopping. Those times when you need to make peace with your creator (whoever she is) and open yourself to the bounty of the universe.  The final five minutes introduce giant’s steps plodding through the bog; slow and steady.

A thoughtless ohm thrown down a dark corridor? ‘Prebranded Features’ invokes Danielewski’s ‘House of Leaves ‘ with its eerie voicing’s that seem to endlessly descend into some unknowable horror.  Compact and neat this piece never stalls or chokes.  The layered lines lay as thick and deep as velvet; both opulent and oddly cloying.

But is it as bleak as the famed garrison town?  Give me answers dear reader.

Katz Mulk – Husks (Singing Knives) laser cut and risoprint booklet of performance notes with digital album

Three fine brains (Kearney, Morris, Knight) take a bunch of recordings made in public and private and wrap them up in a galactic stew with extra lashings of arm and leg movement.

This really is an arresting listen.  Each element: processed sound, voice and dripping percussion exists in a separate timeframe that I have to punch through sideways.  Viewed this way, along three separate planes, an extra dimension is revealed – a swooping movement that is felt like warm breath on the cheek rather than simply being seen or heard.

Like a velvet glove inside an iron fist…or should that be the other way around?  Heck…either way this disc demands attention.  I’ll settle for the ‘kid’s rattle full of dead wasps’ analogy; a sting in reverse, a memory of potential discomfort.

‘Temperament’ spills like wet chrome.  Including a cheeky reference to the band rather than the metal a future face presents itself – handsome in profile.

A processed whispering infects ‘Yes like a Cheetah.’ Below the chanting it squats waiting for the echoing ‘clack’ balancing the freezer burn amp-huffing on Andrea Kearney’s perfectly timed Cuban finger clicks.  High on rum I feel gloriously wasted.

Slushy-sound, slow like a glacier with levels of engagement pinned between the gritty ice?  I’m picking up much, much more than ‘A Leaf, A Gourd, A Sack’ anyways.  The tap-dancing of Ben Morris (on vintage segs  if I’m not mistaken) chatters like joke teeth, running this track out into a leaky void.

Moving furniture around an electricity sub-station seems to be the basis of ‘Y Gang’.  Ben Knight’s voice is a hyena chorus – savannah cackling and bone-crushing moans.    The floor flexes making way for a living tarmacadam demon!

That secret lemonade drinker, Beyonce Knowles, is clearly heard on title track ‘Husks’ her high-tech and passionate R’n’B blunted via discarded garden chairs and blackened disposable barbecues.

The full twelve minute masterpiece ‘Meat Stories’ continues the dripping theme.  I’m stuck in a time cave!  My mind is an echo chamber.  A discomforting shift occurs, like a muscular tick you’re trying to suppress when the silken sound shimmer suddenly turns sickly.  Like an overdose of mustard you can’t get the yellow whiff out of your hair for days.

Katz Mulk revel in the uneasy space between healthy concern and full-blown paranoia.

Chocolate Monk

disillusion.dot.dot.dot

dr-wr bandcamp

Singing Knives Records

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