the sky is as full as an udder : rfm on garrett wingfield & david leon, maya dunietz & tom white and various aposiopèse artisits
May 28, 2017 at 12:50 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: aposiopese, david leon, garret wingfield, maya dunietz, singing knives, tom white
Garret Wingfield & David Leon – Yeah, No Thanks (Self Release)
Maya Dunietz & Tom White – Summer Crash (Singing Knives Records)
Various Artists – VIII (Aposiopèse)
Garret Wingfield & David Leon – Yeah, No Thanks (Self Release) digital album only
What’s the story? Two saxophones / four lungs all melt into buttery parps and hawks on this utterly charming disc.
Taking a total approach to warm breath Garret (in the right channel) & David (in the left channel) squeal and honk through nine short improvisations and instant compositions running the gamut from lightly tickled to full-on brass discipline.
The mood is generally playful, veering from the knockabout ‘I’m Fromgoogle’ (sic) played on those whizzing party favours to the beautifully recorded and played ‘Tilting @pinwheels’ where the flat slaps of the keys flutter like fancy fireflies around circular riffs – comfy as a steaming cuppa and marmite on toast.
‘Middle School Me’ is pure Peppermint Patty, tough with a misunderstood heart of gold, all ending with a delicious laugh.
But melancholy also takes a seat at the table, ‘Before, then’ starts off like some Henry Cow offering with that signature hope-through-adversity sigh and ‘Trash Panda’ revels in leaving-in the awkward silence, lip-splutter and spit-valve fingerings creating delicate pale, pearls from salty grains.
Students of the horn pay attention. These superb doodles are your new practice chops!
Maya Dunietz & Tom White – Summer Crash (Singing Knives Records) CD
Oustanding Quatermass freakery from these two living dovetail joints.
This damn fine recording leapt like a flea from the back of a 2016 tour with Maya Dunietz (voice/piano/harp) melting butter all over Tom White’s (reel-to-reel tape) witchcraft.
Taken as a whole, the mood of this vital disc is pastoral-unease…that strange sense of something untoward going on beneath the golden fields of ripe corn and proud wheat. Maybe it’s the sly Elysium lyric and wordless moans that float like duck-down warmed by the bruised air? Or could it be the gentle rush and echolalia of the handcrafted tape loops weaving a beautiful pattern of dark orange, red and pink – the twilight blush of the setting sun?
A piano picks out a decaying tune; a distracted voice mirrors it like mist. We’re living in the last days of a torch singer, gloomy glories reflected back in knotty loops and sepia memory coils. Floating free of gravity, ‘Everything is Soaked’ is deliciously intangible, hard to grasp but with sharp hooks that snag on the old grey matter making me hum Lear-like segments of these voice/tape hybrids at the bus stop for days to come.
A nagging, insistent riff marks the tick-tock of ‘Spare Ribs’, like a glitterbeat distilled through electricity pylons until they spark with deadly black energy. Maya’s close-miked vocals tweak the building pressure (a storm is brewing, the sky is full as an udder) moving from gentle/foul gibberish to shrieks of fear and panic. A disco track for the very-most-modern form of dancing practiced today.
A space opens for the delicate kora-style harp that opens ‘Josephine’. The psychedelic ghosting of tape-wax and field recordings are so subtle and controlled I may well have dreamt them, but like the salt encrusting your margarita glass, they hold it all together with their essential bitterness. Some of the few intelligible words on this whole disc, ‘black sail’ and ‘rain’ roll through the language shower – meanwhile a dry wooden rattle marks the end with a question, “are you ready to believe?”
Each of these three wonderful offerings leads us to into the closer ‘Summer’ a Pinteresque exploration of looming, deep restraint and intimate sonic denial.
“Some slow-motion explosion is corralled into a percussion loop while the liquid fairground slips between the cracks. The churning motion becomes a carousel losing its tilt, dangerously swaying. Soft and menacing vocal hoffs cheer like La Calavera Catrina, up to her armpits in the body of the piano pulling deep red tones out of the beast. A somber procession starts to wind down the hill, each villager holding the shirt-tails of their neighbor for fear of being lost in the tumbling ivory and ebony avalanche. “
Mark my words! Summer Crash is your essential balmy evening listen; thin cheroot lit and golden sherry glass poised (pinky out).
Various Artists – VIII (Aposiopèse) digital album (wav) only
Super-double-classy compilation from the French label – Aposiopèse.
Subtle glitch, granular fonk and ‘extracted’ field recordings are the order of the day over a generous 74 minutes. And like all good compilations there is a gentle narrative running through these pieces – an insistence on educated listening and patience. Buckle up tight for the ride…
- Coppice – A central heating system comes to life; witness the impudent boiler knock. A fine-tube roar as bronzed and bright as ginger. Hissing practiced to black belt standards.
- Hervé Moire & Juan Pablo Espinoza – shake up a bottle of pills and record the tiny tablets bouncing around. Defiant interventions like door creaks and synth tones just about mask a coffin lid opening. Twin players in harmony milking the dissonance teat.
- Jean-Luc Guionnet – gooses the church organ in Verneuil sur Avre, creating twelve hefty minutes of deep, deep, booming pressure in my lugs. I’m imagining this being played on a colourful Dub Sound System until the higher registers are explored in glorious throbbing detail.
- Julien Beau – records his dog growl, crickets chirp and water flow in a musique concrete envelope that ladles electronic tones over the mix like hot gravy. A pleasant kick drum reminds me I’m alive in the world as the confetti gets more intense around me in the most fabulous manner.
- Tarab – Boiling? Bubbling? The ‘soda’ of the title fights against a racquet sport (Real Tennis perhaps), high-pressure squealing and the lumber of life on the road. The shared intimacy (make-up applied on the bus perhaps) makes this almost unbearable to check out on headphones…forever thrown into personal sonic-spaces.
“I didn’t want to be a voyeur but they made me listen!”
A notebook indeed!
- Thomas Tilly – unprocessed field recordings of noisy bird barking like Daleks in the jungle. The rise and fall of the hollow-beaked trills become the softest siren, the calmest panic button ever. Ear canal (left) and ear canal (right) unite in glorious chirps.
- Tomoko Sauvage – takes a bunch of shit from the kitchen and makes music sweet enough that I darn near cried. Beautiful slopping and sonorous waterfalls wobble like fat children; hot and chubby hands held tight. Nuff said.
- Yvan Etienne – for lovers of extended tones and horror film soundtracks. Totally blisssed-out if your idea of bliss is disturbing hallucinations, thick smears of blood in the bathroom and rusty meathooks. Pitched somewhere between a sigh of exhaustion and the upper edge of tinnitus until a coda of suspicious farm machinery reveals the complete wake in fright
You want? You want!
-ooOOoo-
leather duck, baklava bullet, wrecked snail: joe murray on tapes from tutore burlato
November 23, 2016 at 4:26 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: alex drool, eran sachs, ezio piermattei, f. ampism, ilan volkov, joe murray, maya dunietz, the custodians, tom white, tr/, triple heater, tutore burlato
Triple Heater – Aurochs (tape, Tutore Burlato, #15)
Tom White – Commemoratives (tape, Tutore Burlato, #14)
TR/ – Amici di Filippo (tape, Tutore Burlato, #13)
The Custodians – Moribund Mules and Musket Fire (tape, Tutore Burlato, #12)
Usurper with Alex Drool, Maya Dunietz, Eran Sachs and Ilan Volkov – untitled (tape, Tutore Burlato, #16)
Triple Heater – Aurochs
Not a three-o but a two-oh! This new pairing from Tutore Burlato High Priest, Ezio Piermattei and the supple-limbed-totem-pole F Ampism flaps at the ears like a leather duck.
Students of the WTF scene can already imagine the smooth Tiki-delic jungle vibes and Red City grit yeah? But what this charming tape does so well is place the scribble-scrabble gently in a perfumed mango’s peppery slickness.
So a bagpipe meshes seamlessly with egg-slicer, a warped tape workout wetly dribbles into a pink sponge. Those robot-voice toys are underpinned with a twisted groaning and wrenched knot work.
Voices; children’s voices, male and female voices are a recurring warble that change the emotional resonance of every rattle and honk. Each piece remains human as a result, the occasional frenetic crackle an umlaut or other such punctuation. YEAH… I’m picking up a master’s hand in the edit suite ensuring each piece is a perfect mix of wet and dry, organic and man-made.
But it’s not all high-octane, fingers-on-triggers yucks. These gents are not afraid to whip out a haunting beauty-jam. ‘Telamoni Curiosi’ has a rich drawn-out slowness; the kind that floods through your body like hot opium immediately before you have an accident. You’re powerless to stop the door crunch the finger, the heel slip on the banana peel but in that moment of submission you taste the bitter tang of true happiness.
The perfect music to accompany images of Oscar Niemeyer’s Brasilia dream.
Tom White – Commemoratives
As 2016 continues to be that damn Tom White’s year this cassette might just be the best one yet readers.
The nosey will know the drill already; a reel-to-reel tape recorder is used to manually manipulate a loop of innocent brown tape; possibly a few pedals get pressed. Sounds easy enough, eh?
But on Commemoratives Tom’s gritty palms are transferring some kind of magnetic-manna to the slowly looping sound resulting in remarkable acrobatic leaps and whorls absolutely RIPPING out of the speakers like a sweet baklava bullet.
There’s a depth, a real colon-churning depth, to how these sounds roll bilious and tight. And just when you’re feeling fit to burst a cow-bell ‘K-LUNG’ bouncing between the speakers rattles you back into the world of flat stomachs and healthy greens.
The excellent side-long ‘Evoke a Yes’ drives Alpine cattle from their lush pasture through granular hair-pin bends; a single brassy ‘donk’ becomes the repeated motif lurching drunkenly on the local firewater until a chrome trebuchet hurls great gassy grenades into the steaming tar pits . But at the same time I’m minded of an early tape music boffin, wrapped up in labcoat and thick Clark Kents, dancing to this in his cluttered broom cupboard.
Performance-wise there is nothing held back and at times I’m pretty sure a block of particularly hectic loopery has sent me back in time a couple of seconds… a couple of seconds… a…
A powerful and heady brew that even when it’s doing nothing in particular is re-calibrating your brain-pod with subtly shifting patterns – a sly parquet interlocking those lazy synapses.
TR/ – Amici di Filippo
A right beanfeast this one – comforting and creamy.
‘Sabato’ starts with thick slapback-echo riffles over electronic-sand, creating waves of
…wuhhuhuhuuhu…
Pietro La Rocca’s lumpy canvas to paint up with Patrycja Stefaneck’s wonderful smeared voices.
Things progress at a wrecked snail’s pace: the canvas becomes laced ribbons of liquorice empowered with a mystic charge; the voice gobbles and mutters, wriggles and stutters slathered like golden butter.
Side two opens with something akin to a song but in this instance the campfire we are sitting around has been built of oleander creating choking, hallucinogenic fumes. Urgently strummed guitars stretch their steel strings to the horizon, shimmering like a Fripp-mirage while gentle disembodied voices float overhead.
The closer, ‘Digitale Terrestre’ pulls all these elements together in a light sketch, an open doodle of huffing and mithering. Innocent squeaks escape and fly between the massed mouth-chunter. This time it’s the guitar that floats overhead, darting in and out of the weft like a stickleback – silvery but sharp enough to draw blood. These enhanced throat and lips have a Residents-style quality and I’m half expecting to launch into an Infant Tango before long.
You want some sweet to go with that gravy? Look no further than duo TR/.
The Custodians – Moribund Mules and Musket Fire
Radio 4.
Radio-o-o fo-o-or.
R’aid-eeeeee-oh oh oh oh oh fuh, fuh, fuh Or?
Forgive my brief extrapolation but these Custodians (just plain Custodians on this tape – not ‘of the Realm’ as on the previous outings I’ve heard) serve up a classy dish that breaks apart that British institution of cosy improv and spoken word like a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, leaving 12 dense segments splayed and easily snackable.
Their M.O. involves occasional multi-tracked speaking parts weaving between Adam Bohman’s carefully curated sonic-detritus, Adrian Northover’s saxes and synth and Sue Lynch’s tenor sax and lyrical reeds.
It’s a truly wonderful listen; light, airy and unhurried. You just can’t fake the love and respect in this playing. It’s clearly defined yet ego-less, economical but happy to gild the occasional corner.
Each player, a standout in their own right, dons the collective cap with aplomb so shimmering brass sings and croons, often swooping in the wake of a wagtail’s gentle undulations. The ‘objects’ (large glasses bowed and combs teeth pinged with a thumb for example) add just exactly the right level of clutter and stroking to keep things tasty.
The text pieces seem to follow Adam Bohman’s ‘instructional/institutional’ approach with medical terms dropping from three mouths like ripe plumbs.
It couldn’t be more English if it wore a bowler hat.
Usurper with Alex Drool, Maya Dunietz, Eran Sachs and Ilan Volkov – untitled
Here the brothers Duff & Robertson are joined by Tel Aviv’s finest for some surprisingly tender hap, grapple and schooshh.
I guess the temptation with such a big-band is go the full Ellington and honk it up outta each loud hole. But on this occasion, and I’m not sure if it’s the brothers instructions or our host’s impeccable manners, these side-long pieces balloon like parachute silk and float with nowt but a gentle ripple.
Side one. I’m getting a tingle in my loins that suggests method. Old bronze coins dropped with arthritic fingers, cold marbles rolled across the wooden floor, straw flutes blown listlessly, burbling electric soup (sans batteries), rocking chairs rough squall, soft mouths chanting under flannel vests and knitting needles wrapped in sellotape tapped against the kitchen table. These bare-bones are constantly reinvented and realigned.
I’m getting signals in my lugs that indicate structure. A gentle moraine, its gritty interconnectedness based on Turkish carpet patterns. Twelve hands reaching out and six brains sparking with damp electricity. A bustling village of gossip coming to rest at the end of a particularly busy day.
The nervous rustle of bodies and fingers has an ingrained tension, of course, because (SPOILER ALERT) the moneyshot never arrives! If you’re waiting to see who’s going to crack first and ‘blah’ out forget it Bub, this is one saucy tease yeah?
Side two is hardly any more physical but wears its influences proudly in a collective throat-jam.
Dry coughs and sighs and huffs are double-bubbled to form a bivalve experience: left and right unite in slurpy kisses on stubbly cheeks. I picture our sacred six stretched out on roman loungers dripping sweet grape cheek-parps and wet gonzo hawks. The odd spare hand languorously rattling a tin fig or ripping off an elastoplast completes a decadent sound-image.
I riff on the chorus of grunts. I goof on the collective harmonic gasp. We follow the da-dada-dada-da-da conversation; until ‘uh uh errr…’ it descends into laugher as a Pangolin snuffles for truffles.
The real true joy yeah!
—ooOoo—
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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