new year retox: joe murray on smacked cucumber, sindre bjerga, tom white, ansgar wilken & urine gagarin
January 20, 2015 at 12:34 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: ansgar wilken, improv, jennifer iker, joe murray, ludo mich, new music, no audience underground, noise, ross parfitt, sindre bjerga, smacked cucumber, spam, stuart arnot, tom white, total vermin, urine gagarin
SMACKED CUCUMBER – FIRST TIME IN SPACE (tape or download, SPAM, spam6)
Sindre Bjerga & Tom White – Water Information (tape, Total Vermin, #87)
ansgar wilken – thank you (tape or download, SPAM)
Urine Gagarin – Hanged in a Cavern (CD-r, Total Vermin, #83)
Smacked Cucumber – First Time in Space
While Christmas indulgence can be fun for a time it eventually reaches a point where the 5 course breakfast becomes less of a treat and more of a pork-based endurance test. Let it be recorded here that from 1st Jan onwards I am pulling on my running jersey and dusting off my spikes to become a fitter, leaner guest-blogger. I will trim off the love handles. I will pass over the puddings and pies in favour of the simple lentil and kale combo.
Sonically too my ear is yearning for a cleaner palette, an astringent and sour mixture to wash away the sweet-honey of seasonal carols and jingles.
I reach for the most healthy sounding tape on the review pile and slip it into my walkman as I gingerly pound the streets of West Newcastle huffing and puffing like a lardy goat.
Smacked Cucumber are a new name to me, and in a effort to ‘listen without prejudice’ I keep it that way (rejecting Dr Google) reacting only to the music marching calmly out my earbuds.
And what a green and vitamin-rich sound this is! All the excess is trimmed to leave pure, clear sounds: a rubber ball rubbed on a snare drum, creaking wooden door, a gentle ting-tingling of tiny bells, gentle traffic roar, the hushed ping of a battered zither, air blown softly over the neck of a milk bottle and a rough stone rolled slowly round a pottery bowl.
These simple yet utterly controlled and focused sounds are paired together in a sparse duo format (fondled floor tom versus earthenware flask for example) with what sounds like two players gently reacting to differences in texture and timbre, never rising past a quiet whisper. This sensitive style of playing is EXACTLY what I need right now and I recommend this as an aural detox to all RFM readers.
I’m a curious old bird and can’t resist a quick check up of who the hell these Smacked Cucumber folk are. It’s with joyous surprise I learn the sounds I’ve been greedily soaking up come direct from the brains of Ross Parfitt and Jen Iker – two fellow travellers I met all the way back in 2014 collaborating with the ‘holy spirit of misadventure’ Ludo Mich. Cor Blimey guv. It’s a small world ain’t it?
Beat the bulge, smack that cucumber!
Sindre Bjerga & Tom White – Water Information
The sleeve notes are quite clear on this tape and with good purpose. All the base sounds are live recordings of Sindre Bjerga made in the Summer of 2013. Tom White then took these recordings, mulled on them for a while and applied some black-handed studio do-hickery in the Winter of 2014. Tom’s name keeps cropping up in dispatches and a quick check of his CV reveals a pretty-darn-hot hombre presenting real-life sound art shit but still finding time to rub himself up against some creamy live collaborators – Vasco Alves and Maya Dunitez to name but two.
OK…back to the tape (and that’s TV #87 folks. Can you believe it readers? Total Vermin are approaching the big one-zero-zero).
Regular Sindre-watchers will be familiar with his grey-particle mist. Somehow, using the same kit as many other folk, Sindre brings a signature flourish to his sound; like a fog of iron filings laid down in regular parquet patterns.
And, at first this is what you hear, until Tom starts to ingeniously ‘churn’ the mix. Beware listeners…this is no regular remix project full of lazy thread layering or sneaky crowd-pleasing tactics like dropping a ‘dope beat’ (perish the thought!).
Side A ‘Images of Hard Water in the Area (Andrea Sneezes)’ begins with a ping-pong response that is soon being forced through tight tape capstans, stretching and warping it in a frankly stomach-churning way. The queasy lurching develops into wet squeals with the canny tape delay slightly overlapping things so ‘Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet’ becomes ‘Dolphin Succumbing to Greasy Sexual Ecstasy’. More briny rumblings reach a climax with the neat little sneezes referred to in the title. Gesundheit!
Side B ‘Tidal Surges on the Way’ takes Sindre’s glottal tape melange and gently duffs it up until the sound is a blue and purple bruise decayed and aged like some booming My Bloody Valentine guitar riff. The rolling and boiling sound sputters into an arrhythmic pattern that makes the dog nod. Blimey…this is pretty heady stuff!
All in all this is an intoxicating listen. A re-framing of intelligent ideas! A gas-pod ready to pop – huff it up dear readers.
ansgar wilken – thank you
Another head-changer from the German SPAM label.
The central thread of this charming little tape is the…wait-fer-it…the humble cello played by the mysterious timebomb Ansgar Wilken.
At times the cello is played straight, pretty little tunes leaping from the springy strings. Sometimes extended techniques sneak a looky-in with cracked bows all bald and hairless being dragged across protesting strings. Electronics and spoken word interludes pepper several of the eleven micro-pieces (only one breaks the 3 minute mark, some don’t make it to a single minute) while the spirit of Henry Flynt whips up a storm with the cascading, ever modulating drones.
There’s a feeling that Ansgar is working something out with these pieces. Beating the blues, reaching for the light perhaps? I dunno. All I can say is ‘Johann Von Auben Heute’ and ‘Barn Dance’ invoke the bones of mighty, mighty Moondog and made me stomp about going
Yeah Man Yeah!
This tape has a sense of knowingness… are you prepared to let its ancient intelligence in?
Urine Gagarin – Hanged in a Cavern
A rare CD-R of scum jazz on the tape-dominated Total Vermin. The classic jazz trio (sax/bass/drums) is mentally Xeroxed so many times that a very real trumpet, drums and guitar mutate into splintered wooden plank, elephant seal and bulldozer and at times horrific diarrhoea, blood-hurricane and plague of locusts with the sheer force of their unhinged playing.
The whirring energy of fresh jazz is whipped and spun like a fucking top until all the sharp edges blur into a charcoal sludge. Imagine wet clay on the potter’s wheel toppling out of control on some lame game show; the squeals of the audience replaced with Formula One’s top-throttle pointlessness.
THINKS TO SELF << In fact those stun/concussion groups of the early 1990’s like Ascension or Blowhole are not just a great reference to this CDr. Why don’t they play that shit rather than Fleetwood Mac over the bloody racing car monotony?>>
OK…back on the case Joe…This trio are in full-on crazy mode. With no let up or pause it’s like Harsh Noise Acoustic, a continuous, rolling, tumbling, boiling of pus-soaked bandages; the flames from the stove flickering a septic green and rising dangerously high. The curtains catch fire and you must abandon the building with Arnott/Cummings/Pitt scorning your yellow cowardice.
If you got the stones slip this one on high!
For more of this damn-hot action check out some live Urine Gagarin doing it Nice & Sleazy.
—ooOoo—
[Editor’s note: the TV site hasn’t been updated for nearly two years now but Stuart is evidently still active. The resourceful can track him down and the rewards for doing so are legion.]
bellowing becomes bronze: joe murray trips on ludo mich and associates
February 27, 2014 at 9:49 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: blue yodel, fiona kennedy, improv, jennifer iker, joe murray, jon marshall, ludo mich, new music, no audience underground, no basement is deep enough, noise, roman nose, ross parfitt, singing knives, tapes, vocal improvisation
Ludo Mich/Roman Nose/Blue Yodel/Ross Parfitt /Jennifer Iker – The Clurichaun’s Naked Cheat with Sour Wine & The Leprechaun’s Coins Numismatist (C40 cassette in gargoyle shaped holder, No Basement is Deep Enough).
Deep explorations of rancid mind-space beyond the outer limits from the truly radical No Basement is Deep Enough cassette library.
I have to admit it, I’d never come across this label before until gently nudged by the Roman Nose. A quick Google search transported me to a day-glo negative zone that refreshed like a hot lemon-scented towel.
This Belgian/Serbian label is strapping on high-level, raw weirdness and pumping out load after load of creamy oddballs: Preggy Peggy and the Lazy Baby Makers, Hjuler & Frau and Cactus Truck (to name but a few). It’s not all teenage slop and skronk though…they scratch both ass-cheeks by releasing some proper ‘old-gent sound art legends’ like, Valeri Scherstjanoi and Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson. Sheesh….that’s one hell of a demographic basement-heads.
So far you can see I’m impressed yeah? But get a load of the packaging on display here. I know there’s always that risk of making excuses for the mundane if it scrubs up all shiny but this is another level of presentation. We’ve all got used to boxes, bags and inserts. But this innocent little cassette comes in a hand-crafted gargoyle effigy. A what you say? I said gargoyle dear reader; or an imp or a gnome or something horrible, small and creepy that defies classification.
It’s evil little face is peering at me now. Gulp.
And now a few words about Ludo Mich. Ludo is one of them ‘old-gent sound art legends’ I was on about before. His bristling roar and gummy leer has been mixing it up since Fluxus was a boy. But no lichen grows on his cheesy soles…the Blood Stereos, Ultra Eczemas and Singing Knives of this world are queuing up to down a bottle of cheap red vino with him and enter the steamy gorgon zone to play.
For me Ludo is more in touch with his ‘inner shaman’ than any of any of his grey-beard peers. His rites are funny for sure but seem to delve the deepest, and uncover the most uncomfortable truths with the pacing and rhythm of a natural born story teller in that classic Northern European tradition. Basically…Ludo’s got the chops man. All groovy…but what does this spectacularly packaged tape sound like?
Side one: THE CLURICHAUN’S NAKED CHEAT WITH SOUR WINE
Lord Bacchus brushes his beard thoughtfully and wipes his grape-stained mouth with the back of a gnarled hand. Mumps overlay mumps with a ‘bath-too-hotness’ of fevered screams (reflected back into your ears via beautifully inlaid Moroccan tiles). Low-throated groans are a bed of healthy spinach on which Ludo relaxes, slowly disrobing, cup overflowing.
As an accompaniment a wooden pinball machine plays on, flippers blurring with speed. Dull thuds ‘ping’ as the machine lights up ‘TILT’ with cracked bells; cats fight under the floorboards in this dream-like vocabulary of interruption.
The mist clears to reveal a boy. Rum-sodden, ruined and collapsed in Marseille. The grim hoteliers and bird-like pimps look on, beaks as sharp as whips. I rise. The wind is scented with the harsh tang of opium and degenerate accordion music wafts from the brothel window. A face appears from behind a filthy rag of curtain and speaks with two, four, six voices. I can’t understand a word but follow the voice into the nearest bar. “Absinthe?” the moustachioed waiter asks. I nod, corrupted.
For fans of the Welshman Johnny Morris and his disturbing anthropomorphism.
(Production note – side one was born in postal pieces were sent from Ludo Mich to the antique dub-controller, Roman Nose, for full manipulation and foley-frottage then whipped creamy by squalls from ensemble Yodel, Parfitt and Iker. Like Joe Meek right?)
Side Two: THE LEPRECHAUN’S COINS NUMISMATIST
More loam from the crypt recorded in a Hermit Crab shell (or Antwerp). A coven of drunks (Ludo Mich, Jon Marshall, Fiona Kennedy, Ross Parfitt) leap willingly down the well of possessed souls.
There’s a powerful vocal shunting that forces them further down the moss-lined brickwork with increasing speed. But the impact never arrives. Descent becomes all and molasses heavy. Sparks fly as friction makes the air bristle with violent electricity.
Floating in space the resulting bellowing becomes bronze, buffed to golden shine. A Greek breastplate and helmet smash together producing clouds of hideous clashing and bilious fume.
The smell of hot metal wraps itself around your tongue, teeth and tonsils; coiling through the ear, nose and throat superhighway. And then you know you are in trouble. Your senses become confused; you see the sound of the foreign holler, you hear the circular rose-tint above your head. Snakes plunge down your throat and cling to your feebly beating heart.
You might be choking but you’ve never felt so alive!
How do you find this Halfling? I can’t see a ‘proper’ website so I suggest you search for this filthy beast on that discogs site or direct from ignacedb@hotmail.com.
growling sharp: ludo mich, syed kamran ali, pascal nichols
June 11, 2013 at 12:01 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: dada, fluxus, improv, live music, ludo mich, new music, no audience underground, pascal nichols, singing knives, syed kamran ali, vocal improvisation
Ludo Mich with Syed Kamran Ali & Pascal Nichols – The Wet Black Poodle Transforms (CD, Singing Knives, SK019)
I dunno about you, but I find vocal improv pretty hard going. Given its growing prevalence in the no-audience underground, however, I realise that I may be in the minority. I see the appeal: it has an earthy immediacy, it requires little kit (none, at its purist) and it necessarily injects some theatre into a ‘noise’ performance. Anyone who isn’t awed by seeing human-Tom-and-Jerry-cartoon Skot Spear work his magic live as Id M Theft Able should probably just give up and stay at home. My RFM co-conspirator Joe Murray’s experiments with constipated gurning (‘the brown sound’) have made me laugh out loud on the bus. The canine, gutter-angst of Yol is as compelling, dramatic and darkly humorous as footage of a polar bear circling a shed full of terrified wildlife photographers. But, but, but… the whooping, clicking, lip-smacking and yelling of common or garden ‘gurglecore’ (this terrifically dismissive tag coined by Phil Todd) generally leaves me cold.
This is for two reasons. Listening to my baby son cooing, snuffling and gargling with his own spittle is, of course, charming and fascinating but listening to an adult performer doing the same is usually just boring. As a matter of personal preference, these sounds don’t hold my attention. The second reason has to do with the state of my health. I’ve suffered with depression for pretty much my whole adult life, I’ve been on various medications for over 15 years and am periodically disabled by it for noteworthy lengths of time. There is no ‘up side’ – the whole business is a massive fucking drag. I see no reason to celebrate it, nor can my illness be ‘mined’ for insight. Thus I see art that plays with madness, which gurglecore does with its affected tics and mimicking of craziness, as suspect. Sometimes I’m tempted to take a pretty hard line: the crappest gurglecore is to mental health as blacking up is to race.
So when is it OK? I guess when it is the properly thought through consequence of a lifetime of uncompromising creative endeavour, when it is part of a wider artistic context challenging the norms of communication and representation – say the neo-Dada tradition of Fluxus – and when it is performed with gusto and total commitment, ideally in the company of two other skilful, multi-instrumentalist, improvising musicians. Then it might be exhilarating… Hang on a minute the post has just arrived – Oh! Package from Singing Knives – what do we have here? Over to label head honcho Jon:
In November 2011 legendary Flemish Fluxus artist, performer and filmmaker Ludo Mich performed a series of concerts in the UK with Syed Kamran Ali (Harappian Night Recordings) and Pascal Nichols (Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides). This glass-mastered art-edition CD presents the recordings from the Manchester and Sheffield performances which were even more incendiary than the London show (see here: video at cafe oto).
Ideal. I saw these guys in the flesh at the Fox & Newt on the Leeds leg of this tour. It was a short, blistering set augmented with film projections that gave it the feel of a ‘happening’. Flanked by his two young band mates, within three minutes this distinguished looking European pensioner was doing the ‘dying fly’: on his back on the stage kicking his legs in the air. I dug it, it felt like the real deal. I can’t pretend I knew anything about Mr. Mich’s lengthy career beforehand but I recommend you set aside some time to root through the results of a Google search. Those interested in performance art, holography, the fluxus movement and naked people from the 1970s will find much to enjoy.
This CD, packaged in the attractive fold-out cover pictured above, documents two other sets from the same trip, totalling about 34 minutes. The music is muscular but leavened with humour and nuanced enough to keep its flavour over repeat listens. Each piece begins with a passage of relatively quiet feet-finding as Ludo barks and gasps and Pascal and Syed answer with pattering percussion and discrete squeaking. Recognizable words begin to form in the swirl and dada incantations follow, interspersed with rasping yelps, menacing snuffling and theatrical chortles. The accompanying percussion is impressively elastic, whipping time around Ludo’s flailing limbs. The rest is an almost unplaceable concoction of strings – plucked, bowed, rattled, scraped – rinsed and squeezed through some occult electronics. It resists analysis – gaze into it and it gazes back at you, unblinking, then leers and darts out of reach. I don’t know how much rehearsal time the trio had prior to playing but it seems like a tight unit with everyone listening to each other. Pascal and Syed support Ludo’s raving like cool-headed parents administering a dose of Calpol to a wriggling and uncooperative infant (yes, fatherhood is providing me with a whole new batch of similes). In summary: excellent stuff that I highly recommend you check out.
Given the quality of the package, the £6 all-in (for UK orders, more for overseas) that Singing Knives are asking seems very reasonable indeed. Buy here.
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