radio free midwich

other needles of infinite length: joe murray on ladyz in noyz

Various Artists – Ladyz in Noyz 3 (2 x CD-r, corpus callosum distro)

Various Artists – Ladyz in Noyz 3.5 (CD-r, corpus callosum distro)

These three discs, split across two releases, form part of the cutting-edge Ladyz in Noyz series – a long-running, on-going, world-wide celebration of female experimental and fringe musicians – and pretty marvellous it is too.  Series 3 is compiled by our very own marlo eggplant and is an explosive introduction to Twenty Eight exceptional artists.

Regular readers will know I love a compilation; and for me the more varied the better.  I’m very happy, in fact I’m delighted, to be thrown from one hermetic sound environment to another – letting sense collapse around my ears as (for example) cool, gritty reductionist harp is angrily shattered by hissing-pissy Black Metal.

First up on the cheap-o stereo is the double pack LiN 3.  It’s a fairly weighty tome and as wonderfully varied as I dreamt, shifting the rug from bleak harsh noise to psychedelic guitar-picking to hydrant-rousing rhyming all with the crisp distinctive pop of a jar of fresh pickled onions being prised open. Ready?  Sit back, pick up a fork and dig in…

Disc One

• Wolfesule – Sabbath-strength groan. Like deep ridges and howling canyons.  I’m clinging to a secluded mountain ledge.
• Lyrels – Dub yomp through marsh-land with heavy boots and backpack leaking nitric acid. In triplicate, uphill.
• Ladyjam – Spooked sheep gut and horsehair; a simple waltz round a gasping sink-hole.
• Lucy Bonk – Gin-soaked electronics and tape cacophony. Then the organ grinder puts the monkey in the blender!
• MINIM– Stainless steel poetry. Short vibrations set up a chain reaction of lonely pluck and subterranean ripple that take us to pre-revolutionary Russia.
• Alodi – Ear-shattering in the way Einstürzende Neubauten would crack the brittle brown plastic of my Fisher Price tape player.
• Sekret Dyke – Heavy and wobbling with one foot in the club and the other jammed into a malfunctioning leaf blower.
• Lady of Situations – A reefer rolled with Godflesh. A Hammond toke (Jimmy Smith) – and the walls close in like prehistoric ferns.
• VIA – Glass Harmonica full of silverfish flipping backwards in a wriggling cascade down the table and across the floor turning bare concrete to a shallow bristling sea.
• Yohimbe – Backed up potato-exhaust nightmare.  Creeping rumbles set to stun.  Chances of survival?
• Guggenheim Doppleganger – Radio waves bounced off a gritty satellite; the original signals are scrambled but marbled into a wonderful chaos. The band plays on (naturally).  KISS covers I think?
• Pony Slut – Pure boiling hell. Absolutely no-nonsense harsh noise delivered like a fist-full of wet clay.
• Multifungi – Thin needles ‘ping’ against other needles of infinite length. The tin reverb drowns out the ocean.
• L Soulio/S Lee – Classy guitar pluckage becomes a million points of light. Eventually the sound of a rosy shadow is smeared into wet grass.
• Chica X– Super innocent and joyful and gosh-darn F.R.E.S.H. The Double Dutch revival starts right now!
• Panoptic Cyst – Obnoxious tunnelling noise. Rocks and debris rush past ‘the mole’ as it descends into shale gas deposits.
• Berberine – A skilfully erased song. Wide swipes with a damp cloth make the chalky equations melt into a grey paste.  Beautifully vague.
• Milch De La Maquina – Owls cast in bronze! The Sirens join in on thigh-bone cello and cloaked vocal jaxx. Soundtrack to The Secret History?

Disc Two

• Hobbyknife – A very live sounding Noise Aktion piece paced as carefully as a chess match. Checkmate!
• Poundland – Shimmering exotica, an orchestra of lucky trinkets and gee-gaws. Like those novelty birthday cards that play a tune…but re-programmed to The Twilight Zone theme.
• Secrets – Hum-bubbling beats that just don’t quit become the Burundi under clear digital ripping and vocal harmonies really saying something.
• Motion Sickness of Time Travel – Ritual electronics using repetitive lurching like a shaman with a palmed frame drum. The full-on perfumed smoke makes my eyes water and nostril sting…but what’s that shape moving in the corner of the yurt?
• Future Ex-Wives – Solo guitar bounces between twin peaks of heavy reverb into marmalade gloopiness.
• Mass Ornament – The insistent glockenspiel and gently running water make me think about the glamour of 1950’s Air Travel and Bongwater backing tracks (circa Double Bummer). Both wonderful reveries.
• Chic Gala – Electro-punk or something that rocks the Casio ‘tom’ sound like German Disco. Condenser Mics make the voices compressed as slick carbon and powerful beyond measure.
• Jane DaPain –What is it about the deadly unpredictability of electricity that draws us like fleshy moths? Just over two minutes of perfect overhead-cable-drone
• Foxdye – An unbalancing music to knock your gravitational centre. The glitch is well and truly the star as bass ‘whoooms’ detonate in each ear making me physically limp as I try to walk to Superdrug.
• Concrete Diva – a beautiful recording that seems to capture the action going on in another room. Heavily processed guitar; part hi-life jitter, part psych-pond ripple makes time an oily slick.
• Poundland – A darker side to the abstract is mined with a bass-line thrum. Above ground the feedback squeals as gulls do.

I take a day or two to recover from this mung-barrage and then slip in LiN 3.5, which I am guessing is a stop-gap until LiN 4 hits the shores.  This mix is pulled together in bunches so we get a couple of depth-charges from Sharkiface, Phantom Chips, our marlo eggplant and one from TAHNZZ.  OK… let’s roll.

Phantom Chips favours a crisp sizzled interface; like an electrocuted typewriter.  In fact I can do no better than hurl the title ‘buzzoidcircling’ at you as a resume for this particular micro-style.  Crinkle cut!

Sharkiface looms with a slow and low bass throb that comes across like spooky Penderecki on ‘Down the Mountain’ and moves into deep-fat-fryer territory with a wicked bubbling and dust-bin drum solo on ‘Blood Transfusion’ reminding me of something on that Cosmic Kurushi Monsters comp from donkeys ago.

The single track from TAHNZZ is an intense 15 minute (harsh) wall of rubbery fluctuations and bass-heavy rumble.  So… hot gravel gets shovelled into large house-sized piles only to get knocked down by giant lobster claws.  Both peachy and pneumatic in heavy doses.

marlo ramps up the Cthulu on her pieces ‘Shursh’ and ‘Buzz Spling’.  These two pieces sound like something ‘unnatural’ escaping from a cage and poison gas bubbling through a phosphorescent marsh respectively. An undersea kingdom is discovered by rusty bathysphere (springing a hull breach) in ‘Theadle’ and then the stunned survivors join in with the dripping-wet Old Ones booming a bass-choir of massive conch shells on the ‘Sous’.  Best of all is the all-too-brief ‘Martial’, 1 minute 42 seconds of warped tattoo and bowed golden keys.

All these sounds (and more, more, more) available at the corpus callosum distro Bandcamp site.

—ooOoo—

corpus callosum distro