the medicinal quality of northern noise, its alloys and compounds
May 13, 2014 at 10:16 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 2 CommentsTags: claus poulsen, drone, fordell research unit, fraser burnett, free doom, george proctor, gold soundz, i torquemada, improv, inseminoid, joe murray, lee stokoe, matching head, mike simpson, molotov, new music, no audience underground, noise, noise punk, nundungeon, oppenheimer, oracle netlabel, posset, sindre bjerga, singing knives, star turbine, tapes, vocal improvisation, xazzaz
posset – friction rivers (tape, Singing Knives Records)
sindre bjerga / posset – split (CD-r, gold soundz, gs#123, edition of 25)
star turbine / inseminoid / fordell research unit / xazzaz – nundungeon (CD-r, gold soundz, gs#122, edition of 25)
I, Torquemada – The Book, The Eye, The Scourge (download, Oracle Netlabel, ORE106)
Oppenheimer – Oppenheimer (CD-r, molotov, 26)
oppenheimer – js/ls/ms, js/ls/ms/mks (tape, Matching Head, mh202)
Inseminoid – Vanessa Howard’s Night Light (3” CD-r, Sheepscar Light Industrial, SLI.022, edition of 50 or download)
Surprisingly perhaps, given my status as long-term noise aficionado, I suffered my first ever migraine last week. Silver worms squirmed into the top right of my peripheral vision, wriggling downwards until their glistening made it impossible to read the newspaper I was holding. Then the left hand side of my face, upper jaw to receding hairline, seized up completely – as if a phantom of the opera mask was held clamped in place over the affected area. The pain made me feel nauseous but, in denial about what might be occurring, I decided that a few painkillers and a lie down would be sufficient treatment. The worst of it lasted about three hours.
During the following week my face and scalp remained ‘tight’ – the muscle under my left eye twitching like an oyster dripped with lemon juice. Worse though was a near constant state of seasickness which had me imagining I was swaying from side to side and made it difficult to sleep, to stomach food or to concentrate on everyday tasks. I took some time off work and visited my GP who was sufficiently concerned to prescribe some medication and insist that I saw her again if anything changed. My Dad suffered a minor stroke when he was about my age so we all wanted to make sure my brain wasn’t exploding.
Unfortunately, things deteriorated over the weekend and I reported even more, even stranger symptoms – a sunburnt feeling on my arms and hands being the weirdest – to my GP yesterday morning and she referred me immediately to Accident and Emergency at Leeds General Infirmary for a neurological assessment. I was at the hospital for six hours, four of which were spent waiting in A&E. I’ve been before in the evening and seen the bloody, alcohol-soaked horrorshow but the daytime parade of elderly patients rubbing numb limbs whilst spouses laughed nervously, each trying not to let on how frightened they were, was even more upsetting. Anyway, I eventually saw a bunch of doctors, had my noggin sliced with X-rays and got the all clear. Nowt wrong with me that a few painkillers and a lie down won’t see to.
Why am I telling you this? Well, it explains why I’m sat here typing instead of being out gallivanting. Given that all has not been well between my ears, medical opinion (and common sense) suggests that I should probably not press ’em up against the speakers at Wharf Chambers. The timing is heartbreaking as this week sees sets in Leeds from Neil Campbell, Popular Radiation, Spoils & Relics, BBBlood and RFM comrade Joe Murray as Posset. It would, of course, be a glorious way to go out – to have my head literally explode at the peak of a Paul Watson racket-crescendo, say – but my worried wife would much rather I was around to, y’know, help with the baby n’ all that. Thus here I am in Midwich Mansions, self-medicating my sulk with doses of noise from Tyneside, Edinburgh and Norway.
First then to my man Joe and his nom-de-gurgle Posset: a cassette monograph on the ever lovely Singing Knives and shared credit for a split with the ubiquitous Sindre Bjerga on the latter’s Gold Soundz imprint. Between the pair of them we are treated to a symphony for spittle and poorly-lubricated door hinge, a Punch and Judy show as performed by the inmates of Charenton Asylum directed by the Marquis de Sade, a fleet of aquatic budgerigars trilling, gargling and discussing the price of kelp, trainers squeaking on a basketball court during a game played by the anthropomorphic animal croquet teams from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, a wheelie bin full of post-midnight, soggy gremlins plotting mischief and a chipped vinyl Oliver Postgate storybook LP playing forlornly on a faulty wind-up gramophone. Occasionally in Sindre’s tracks some drone bleeds in as if his million other projects are leaking through a badly aligned tape head. Tremendous stuff, full of verve, exuberance and humour as well as a surprising and touching emotional range.
Speaking of Sindre’s million other projects: Star Turbine, his excellent duo with Claus Poulsen, leads off a compilation that could well have been curated with me in mind as the ideal listener. Four bands: Star Turbine, Inseminoid, Fordell Research Unit and Xazzaz – all favourites of mine – each donate a single 10(plus) minute track to a CD-r celebrating that line up playing the exquisitely named Nundungeon in Edinburgh earlier this year. The Turbs are in a playful mood, bringing Sindre’s current solo style to stamp gleefully around in the space afforded by their usual spacey drone. Inseminoid I will be coming onto shortly thus my later comments can be slotted in here: ‘______’. Fraser Burnett of Fordell Research Unit simply cannot put a foot wrong and his confident, expressive drone work is as satisfying as remembering there is an uneaten Easter egg still in the cellar head. Mike Simpson of Xazzaz is capable of exactly the same level of customer service but does it with added pedal-stomped, bristling loudness. Sindre had this one for sale on his recent jaunt ’round the UK – you better drop him a line to see if it is still available.
Mike Simpson also plays a part, I think, in both I, Torquemada and Oppenheimer – the former being a duo of Frater J (Jamie of Wrest? Jerome of Charles Dexter Ward?) and Frater M (Mike, probs), the latter being mainly a quartet of Jamie, Jerome, Mike and RFM heartthrob Lee Stokoe of Culver and Matching Head. I’m sure the omniscient Scott McKeating will set me straight if I have the details wrong. Both acts perform an industrial strength improv noise rock, or free punk, or doom skronk or harsh guitar wall or whatever – subgenre post-it notes won’t stick to this surface caked with filth. There is a perverse relish in referencing the Spanish Inquisition or the Manhattan Project with your band name and a dark, hopeless abandonment is certainly celebrated with the music too. It’s as morbidly beautiful as the glistening wings of a sea bird caught in an oil slick, as terrifyingly faceless as a coin eaten smooth by a corrosive fluid. I am reminded, quite purposefully I suppose, of the famous quote from J. Robert Oppenheimer following the Trinity test:
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
These Tyneside nihilists would have been amongst those laughing. They see the big – the biggest – picture.
Inseminoid, the duo of Lee Stokoe and George Proctor (of Mutant Ape and Turgid Animal), are connoisseurs of horror cinema, vintage porn and exploitative art in general but their heavy drone pieces are importantly different to the gore-splattered gusto of their colleagues above. They curate a carefully sustained atmosphere of unease, understanding that true terror is often found not in the act but in its consequences, not in the situation but in its implications. Repeat listens brought to mind haunting, half-remembered, dream-troubling passages from my own limited experience with horror fiction. For example, I always found the reveal in Ringu 2 that Sadako was actually alive and sealed in the well for thirty years before dying to be as viscerally nauseating as any of the deaths portrayed. Or how about a scene from one of Clive Barker’s Books of Blood stories where a guy foolishly pokes a seemingly dead monster and has his hand bitten off? In a moment of genius, Barker steps back from the gore for a couple of sentences to let us in on the shock and dismay this moment of idiotic bravado has caused. We see the awful, disproportionate consequences and are appalled. This is what Inseminoid are up to: cool, considered, implacably hostile – absolutely compelling.
—ooOoo—
(Editor’s note: there are various Gold Soundz resources revealed by a quick Google/Discogs search but none seem current. As such, I’ve linked to Sindre’s own page and you can ask him about these releases directly.)
sorting the lego part three: further soundtracks for graded tasks
December 13, 2013 at 5:45 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: beartown, cherry row recordings, crowhurst, daniel thomas, depression, drone, electronica, graded tasks, hagman, kevin sanders, molotov, new music, no audience underground, noise, petals, psychedelia, robert ridley-shackleton, sheepscar light industrial, tapes, xazzaz
Daniel Thomas & Kevin Sanders – Four More Cosmic Jams from Daniel Thomas & Kevin Sanders (CD-r, Cherry Row Recordings, CRR001, edition of 50 or download)
Xazzaz – Kin (CD-r, Molotov, 23)
Xazzaz – Untitled (CD-r, Molotov, 20)
Crowhurst – Memory / Loss (self-released download)
Robert Ridley-Shackleton – The Butterfly Farm (C30 tape, Beartown Records, edition of 31)
We’re all huge Tour de France fans here, right? Good. Then you’ll share my excitement in watching the build up to a sprint finish at the end of a flat stage. With about five kilometres to go the teams of the star sprinters pull into formation and chains of identically jerseyed links draw the peloton forward, protecting and positioning their man, reeling in any group of breakaway riders with a heartless, machine-like efficiency. Under the flamme rouge (a red flag indicating one kilometre to go) and the tactical jockeying is largely complete. Now it is a matter of timing and anticipation. A train of the strongest, fastest riders sacrifice themselves one at a time to maintain a superhuman pace for their potential stage winner until, with the line in sight, the last peels away and the bullet is fired from his slipstream. Bikes are thrown from side to side as pedals are mashed and a day-long, hundred kilometre race is boiled down to 100 metres of pure athleticism, competition in its most distilled form. In terms of tactical teamwork, heroic sacrifice and sheer fucking muscle it is, in my humble but correct opinion, the most exhilarating spectacle in sport. I’m embarrassed to admit how much it moves me.
Now imagine this glorious sight utterly perverted and ruined. The frontrunners are clearly drugged, hunched, steroid-addled monsters, barely recognizable as human, slobbering and growling as they approach the finish line at speeds no earthly creature could match. No one is watching but me, appalled, no one cares any more. The lead out train of two riders protect their sprinter by kicking over competitors to cause pile-ups as they pass. “Three months of viruses” finally peels out leaving “Utter self-hatred” as the trigger man who launches “Bottomless depression” to thrash for the finishing line.
When this analogy for my current mental predicament occurred to me it struck me as powerful and telling (if a bit overwrought perhaps). It does feel like Team Depression have been preparing for the attack of their star performer, and that preparation has been ruthless and unstoppable. Over the last couple of years I have been starting to understand my relationship to the illness in terms of a fight, a confrontation, a war of attrition, an ebb and flow of insurgency and counter-insurgency, a Spy vs. Spy cartoon etc. Thus this cycling analogy, in which I just look on helplessly, is a disappointing throwback to a more passive time when I thought all I could do was batten down the hatches. I daren’t even think about what ‘the finish line’ might symbolise.
Whoo boy. Suffice to say: I am down in it this week.
Thus my abilities to both complete graded tasks and think to some purpose have been cruelly curtailed. However, I’d still like to get some reviews down, for morale purposes if nothing else. For what it is worth, the stuff you have all sent me has been of incredible help during what continues to be a very difficult time.
—ooOoo—
Firstly, then, I bring you glad tidings of great joy for, lo, a new Leeds-based microlabel is born! Yes, Cherry Row Recordings has been created by a moonlighting Daniel Thomas as a home for releases too long to be comfortably housed on 3″ CD-r – the format of choice in his day-job at Sheepscar Light Industrial. The inaugural release is… well, the title is self-explanatory but it may be worth spending a moment defining what Dan and Kev (of Petals and hairdryer excommunication renown) mean by ‘cosmic’ here. We aren’t talking long hair and body paint, nor is this retro-futuro-utopio-dystopio Krautrockish cosmicheness. Rather, this is ‘cosmic’ in the existential sense Lovecraft uses it – to refer to an unfathomable and indifferent universe. This is like exploring some suspiciously intact Cyclopean ‘ruins’ armed with only a guttering flash-light, a clenched jaw and a profound sense of foreboding. The angles are all wrong. The birdsong that appears at the end of ‘three’ and reappears in ‘four’ is a cruel joke, a last gasp of fresh air before a gnarled claw draws you back into the throbbing occult machinery of the ritual. This is, as Nietzsche might put it, some heavy shit, bro’: stare into this and it stares right back, unblinking. Really terrific and a superb way to kick off the label.
With a lack of fanfare typical of his brethren in the North East scene, Mike Simpson of Molotov Records is quietly producing the finest in ego-shredding, guitar-led noise. The two releases above by Xazzaz, his (mainly?) solo project are not so much attention-grabbing as everything-else-obliterating. For example, I tried to listen to Kin again as I wrote the preamble to this piece but had to turn it off after a few minutes because Mike’s music causes my edges to crumble, then crevaces to open, then huge thoughtbergs to calve from my mental glaciers. He isn’t averse to roar, of course, and can stamp on pedals if need be, but it is the subtleties and nuance that make it so compelling. He listens patiently, he understands what is going on. He knows what to do.
Check out the Molotov catalogue now distributed by Turgid Animal.
Here’s another release I have been sleeping on unfairly. Crowhurst (which I dearly hope is named for Donald Crowhurst, subject of my all-time favourite non-fiction book The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall) is American artist Jay Gambit. Notably, this six track album downloadable from Bandcamp, has been stitched together by him using contributions from no less than 24 collaborators. This approach – lone mad scientist assembles monster from numerous sources – is not unprecedented (indeed I was among 27 credited on the Birchville Cat Motel album With Maples Ablaze. Beat that!) but is very unusual and deserves high praise for its ambition.
Presumably those invited to submit were given a remit because this does not feel like a collage. A consistent mood is maintained throughout via a magnificent feat of editing. Jay has realised a clear-headed and focussed vision: this reads as a six part meditation on the finality of death and the shadowy impermanence of everything else. That the final track in this sequence is called ‘No Visitors’ could not be more perfect.
The noise here is mainly electronic, deep-set and, as you’d expect given the source material, multi-layered, but room is left in which to think. Even in the roar the surprise augmentations – a slow piano line, the trilling of a robotic aviary simulation – tint the vibe like a beam from a lighthouse outlining treacherous rocks at the mouth of a bay.
I realise that I am making this sound bleak, which it is, but it is also compelling. “I wonder if I like this?” I thought as I pressed play for the eighth or ninth time, my actions answering my own question…
…and finally, as has become the custom in these pieces, a selection from Robert Ridley-Shackleton. This will be the last of his work that I mention this year because, ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. The Butterfly Farm (a C30 tape available from Beartown) is, I reckon, my favourite of the innumerable RR-S releases I’ve heard so far. On first listen with notebook in hand I managed to write down two words: ‘motherfucked pop’ and many repeats later I’m not sure I can improve on that.
It sounds like nothing else: ultra lo-fi clatter-pop, largely indecipherable lyrics sung with the lip curl of a fourteen year old Elvis impersonator through Suicide’s echo pedal. ‘La, la, la’s gargled into whatever recording device is to hand then looped – that’s your backing track. It’s like a mongrel pup produced by the unlikely union of two wildly different breeds of dog. Fuck knows the mechanics of it but the odd shaped yappy offspring is cute as all hell…
an astringent lullaby: joe murray on muscletusk and xazzaz
June 22, 2013 at 9:55 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: drone, joe murray, molotov, muscletusk, new music, no audience underground, noise, noise rock, unverified records, xazzaz
Muscletusk – No Hink (2 x CD-r, Unverified Records, UN039)
Xazzaz – Untitled (CD-r, Molotov, Molotov 20)
Muscletusk – No Hink
A double fucking album from Muscle fucking Tusk. This jaunt takes the noise-band to a bunch more destinations with some extreme lo-fi aesthetics and short, sharp raps across the knuckles.
In my mind’s eye there is a little Hornby OO scale set of Muscletuck, delightfully detailed and set in their characteristic pose of wild abandon, just right for the Station Master’s office. Why so? Maybe it’s because so much of this ‘No Hink’ excursion seems to be an exercise in miniature? Cast your mind back to a more innocent time when one childish distraction was for a newspaper to publish a picture of something small (say, a fly’s eye) then blow it up big so you could see all the little scales and hexagons. It looked different all big didn’t it? The detail was beautiful and unexpected – an unusual mixture. Parts of this brave record sound like a tiny performance that has been expanded and enlarged to massive portions. The scale and detail goes all squiffy and you’re left with an alien and decaying landscape; some things remain familiar yet strangely tweaked.
You want examples yeah? Disc one opener ‘Rattray Rat Tray’ comes across like mid-period Chrome disguised in scratchy tweeds. ‘I found it in the piano’ sounds like hot sand riffling through a rubber sieve – but magnified 1000 times. ‘From frozen’ takes a metallic rattle and stretches it out like a greasy ink smear across fresh linen. Don’t worry, The Muscletusk still do the stun-volume-noise-avalanche…and do so with aplomb. ‘Spare the fractal’ starts with all that moon-faced moaning but when the drums kick in…whoa boy! It all gets super-hot and tight – badda-boom, badda-bing!
Disc two instantly stands to attention, rigid and trembling on ‘Cuthome Carethroat’ with a sense of an unstable intro looking for a staircase to hurl itself down. ‘Bogus Specimen’ is hardcore, to the max, all the time, 24/7, oops-upside-your head rock ‘n roll; like a locked groove on the vinyl of the apocalypse. The heavy industry continues with ‘Melk of the Steamtube’ as a gurning lathe turns, spirals of gleaming metal slice viciously through the frigid air. ‘Night of the Hot Knives’ (my personal top pick!) zones in after the action has taken place; the debris is collected in scruffy pools and the dribbling has started in earnest. It’s a total sponge-opera mang! Slack-string guitar flops lazily around a fag-ash rainbow as people start to rouse themselves and collapsing machines are punched vigorously into life. After a time, all semblance of order is dropped through a hatch and drums and electronics lurch about, stamping heavily on your dreams, shattering them like dry spaghetti.
As with their last long longplayer (Ask the Universe on Braw Records) Muscletusk are still rockin’ but the rollin’ is coming with a distinctive lop-sided squint. Noise is at least a decade old as a sub-genre and these good ole boys are taking their grimy noise footprints onwards to soil up another fresh pasture. Take me with you Muscletusk!
Buy from Unverified Records here.
Xazzaz – Untitled
Mike Xazzaz regularly makes the long drive into Newcastle to support the no-audience underground and conjure dark, ugly music under a whole bunch of evil monikers. But it’s beneath the ornate cloak of Xazzaz that this thirty-minute piece; constructed from (Buster Crabbe era) rocketship fizz and the best bits of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless played with power tools, that has been mussing up the stereo for the last few weeks. So regular has been by airing of ‘Untitled’ Mrs Posset asked if this was one of my favourite domestic recordings of her mowing the lawn. Close but no cigar! (BTW – If you think me un-gallant letting her do all the manual work I just need to remind you that these records don’t review themselves bub!)
So, into the ‘Untitled’ zone we go! First impressions come with the record sleeve itself…displaying a distressed circuit board design that hints of data malfunction and screaming machines. Plop the silvery disc in and you’re pretty much assaulted from the off with the cool electric fizz of light sabres clashing. Like I hinted before there is an accelerating rush to this (the Flash Gordon reference) and a melodic pitch-shifting that recalls those tremolo-heavy vibes from MBV…except this time the jazz electricity comes via belt sanders, floor polishers and hammer-action drills rather than sappy guitars. The crashing continues, churning up plankton and hurling it on the zinc-coated rocks until, at around the 11 minute mark a large rusty anchor is thrown overboard and is dragged nosily (sic – it was more fun to keep the typo than correct it – RH) across a rocky sea bed. Grrrgrgggrgggrgghhhhhh! After a while your ear hairs can bristle no more and I had to settle back to accept this Black Metal take on Frippertronics as an astringent lullaby…in fact at 26 minutes in a woozy-sounding chrome bubble of feedback repeats on and on and on and on making me sleepy despite the high volume battering. But this is no Harsh Noise chest-beating…the dynamics are tested at times with the loud and heavy electronic stew being peppered with thin metallic ‘pings’ giving a different focus and perspective on things. Like when you walk down a familiar street at 4 am. The exhaust-rattling whoosh of traffic is replaced by chirping birds recalibrating your ear-memory.
Towards the end of your allotted half hour, the dark soundworld begins to draw to a close with a teased out comedown that gently floats you direct into Buddha’s benevolent palm, all fat and beaming. Om!
(Editor’s note: at the time of writing this isn’t yet up on the Molotov site but check it out and drop Mike a line to pre-order.)
artifacts of the no-audience underground: molotov label review
October 11, 2012 at 2:03 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 2 CommentsTags: fuckin' amateurs, funeral dance party, i torquemada, improv, molotov, new music, no audience underground, noise, oppenheimer, xazzaz
Xazzaz – s/t (CD-r, Molotov 04)
Funeral Dance Party / Xazzaz – MMXI (Vinyl album, Molotov 08/Fuckin’ Amateurs #62)
F.D.P. R.I.P – Under Stone and Trees (Vinyl album, Molotov 09/Fuckin’ Amateurs #68)
I, Torquemada – Asesinato Total (CD-r, Molotov 10)
Oppenheimer – s/t (CD-r, Molotov 12)
Xazzaz – Black Hearts and Brittle Bones (CD-r, Molotov 13)
Blimey, it’s like the ‘hampster dance’ or something. For a couple of days my response to Mr. Reynold’s talk garnered three times the usual average hits for this blog. Crowds are flocking to read my spirited defence of this odd little world (although I’m amused to see it isn’t all one way – almost no-one was watching the video prior to me mentioning it, now hits on it at Vimeo are bubbling along healthily). I’ve had so many referrals from that facebook that I momentarily thought about creating an account there. Luckily sense overcame vanity and I left it well alone. May I ask a favour? If anyone out there has made or read interesting comments then could you please email them to me, or comment on this blog, because otherwise I’m unlikely to see them. Cheers.
So, how to consolidate this new readership? Point them at something joyous and relatively accessible in order not to scare them off? How about a round-up of releases by a relatively ‘big name’ in order to ease the alienation? Nope: neither. Next up on the review pile is a whole mess of impenetrably hard, semi-anonymous noise, covered in skulls and on a more-or-less secret label hidden up in the wilds of the North East. Perfect! It’s the no-audience way…
Cherry Vampire by Culver is a mighty release and I said as much in my last worship-piece about the work of Lee Stokoe. However, when I came to exhort you to ‘buy here’ there was no ‘here’ to be found. No contact details on the CD-r or packaging, a partial Discogs listing for the label – Molotov – that was no more informative. In the end the ever-accommodating Scott McKeating of Bells Hill, omniscient in the North East noise scene, pointed me at a guy called Mike and a gently probing email was sent in his direction.
Yes, he admitted, he was running Molotov but had been keeping it strictly on the QT whilst it was mainly recordings by him or close associates. Amazingly, he’d built a notable back-catalogue of nicely packaged releases whilst very few outside his circle even knew it existed. Should you wish to examine truly hardcore no-audience underground behaviour in its natural habitat then the North East is hard to beat. Here is where a label such as Fuckin’ Amateurs can push out scores of releases, sometimes without even the featured band’s permission, and then just give them away at the shows they so cheekily bootleg. Even if the music, which is varied but tends towards a heavy guitarish/psych/metal inspired noise, isn’t your bag you can still find the attitude and self-sufficiency of the scene inspirational.
My nudge was well timed as it neatly coincided with Mike adding some information about Molotov to the website dedicated to his solo project Xazzaz – thus giving me something to point you at. He was also kind enough to send a generous parcel of his warez too – thus giving me a reason to point you at it.
Firstly, Mike has co-released two albums on the heritage medium of 12” vinyl with the aforementioned Fuckin’ Amateurs. One is a split called MMXI featuring live sets from Xazzaz and scene legends Funeral Dance Party. I imagine this will contain recordings of varying quality, maybe spitting with energy, top and tailed with excitable Geordie chatter. The other is, I think, a compilation of punk/noise hybrids called F.D.P. R.I.P. Under Stone and Trees. I say ‘I imagine’ and ‘I think’ because I haven’t been able to listen to either. My turntable is protesting by making a nasty grinding noise whenever switched on (all by itself – no need for HNW) so apologies to Mike and note to potential submitters: no vinyl until further notice, please. I’ll take it to bits at the weekend.
I can’t, however, pass these records by without commenting on the excellent sleeve decoration. MMXI is wrapped in a gloriously psychotic white-on-black screen print of three creatures from a Lovecraftian bestiary, doodled by a mad artist during the psychic storm caused by the raising of R’leyh. That the spear point at the end of the goat/devil’s tail is a guitar headstock and that one of the Cthulhoid creature’s tentacles ends in a jack plug is well ROCK too.
Now some CD-rs – we’ll start with the toughest. Asesinato Total by I, Torquemada is as unforgiving as the title, cover and band name suggest. I imagine this stuff is fun to make and, at one third the length would make for an exhilarating live set, but an hour long CD-r is too much for me. Not that nothing happens – it does. Not that it isn’t good – it is. Passages in the final third are terrific but by then my attention had been sandblasted to a nub. This may be savoured by those with a taste for such things but I usually order from a different part of the menu.
The self-titled Oppenheimer is almost as brutal. The components of metal are crushed and smeared until all that remains are distorted guitar and clattering, pummelling percussion. ‘Tests’, the first of two lengthy tracks, is relentless: a gang of droogs mug some defenceless krautrock motorik, wrestle it to the ground and give it a 29 minute kicking. ‘Consequences’ starts with a little swing to it (who woulda thought the Manhattan Project would be so… groovy) before settling down to more ego-mashing, eventually finishing with a swirling mechanical loop and, unnervingly, a child’s giggle.
Best of the lot though is Mike’s own solo work as Xazzaz. This is also noise coming from a metal direction but is all the better for making some concessions to the listener: shorter tracks and much more movement in tone and texture. You may even hear the odd riff or bassline, albeit one with a foot on its neck. Track six of the self titled Xazzaz is the one I keep coming back to. It is made up of a guttering bottom heavy wail, like a slowed-down, pitched-down recording of an orgasming dalek, a riff that breaks the waves like the back plates of a monstrous sea creature and bursts of whistling thrown into the air like snorts of mucus from a blowhole.
Black hearts and brittle bones crams the lot into an efficient thirteen minutes. A mournful opening, an organ drone for the shipwrecked, gives way to a sludgy guitar attempting to squall, like a giant carnivore trying to free itself from a tar pit. It ends with a haunting player piano tinkling away to itself deep under the rubble of a saloon destroyed by an earthquake. I dig it.
Ordering details can be found on the Molotov page of Xazzaz.com.
artifacts of the no-audience underground: culver – cherry vampire
September 8, 2012 at 8:04 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 2 CommentsTags: culver, drone, lee stokoe, matching head, molotov, new music, no audience underground, noise
Culver – Cherry Vampire (CD-r, Molotov, 14)
If I was to answer the question ‘what is my favourite band?’ by merely naming the act I own most releases by then it would be Lee Stokoe’s Culver. By a mile. Even a cursory tot-up of vinyl, CDs, CD-rs and tapes uncovers around 60 items in the collection. The fairly hefty Ashtray Navigations pile – house fave band calculated by my preferred method of time-spent-listening-to – is dwarfed in comparison.
Why so many? Well, plenty have accumulated via trades or simply as a result of Lee’s generosity. But that doesn’t tell the whole story, obviously. I cull my possessions occasionally and am unsentimental about gifts. Nothing is safe from my beady eye when I’m in a purging mood. What then? Perhaps it is because each dispatch illustrates a facet of the whole, mammoth project: another dark corner of another room of the strange and foreboding Culver mansion is briefly illuminated. This is a life’s work unfolding and Lee’s tireless dedication to documenting every nuance of the task is, to an elite of aficionados, endlessly fascinating.
I suppose this must seem daunting to the newcomer, even to the novice clutching their first batch of Matching Head tapes. Where to start with a back catalogue that amounts to days of seemingly indistinguishable roar? My answer is: it doesn’t matter. Whilst an obsessive might be able to chart the rise and fall of Lee’s preoccupations, his use of particular kit or recording techniques or the levels of variation and violence in the music itself, it makes no odds. If you imagine each of these releases as a chapter in Lee’s ‘book of Culver’ then they are published in no particular order. They add up to an aesthetic in the same way that the pieces of a jigsaw add up to the picture on the box. So: amass what you can, start where you like. For example…
Cherry Vampire is a single track, 36 minute CD-r released by the mysterious Molotov and packaged in an incongruously glossy 80s-style cover. A low, pure electronic hum is allowed the time and space to envelop the listeners head. It is then shaken slightly, teased out a little towards fuzz and augmented with the lightest of crackling and a top end of quiet but needle-sharp feedback. The pace is perfect. The patience and control evident in its construction are magisterial.
I first heard it during the early hours of last Saturday morning. I had been woken by troubling dreams and needed to derail an unpleasant train of thought before being able to go back to sleep. Remembering this piece, I reached for my walkman and gave it my full attention whilst lying motionless in the dark, teetering on the edge of consciousness. Ideal conditions to appreciate its austere beauty. Having returned to it since I’m happy to say it holds its own in more robust listening situations too.
Now the tricky part: getting hold of it. No contact details are included on the disc or packaging, nor on the Molotov Discogs page. My perfunctory Google-based ‘research’ revealed, as you might expect, a million creative endeavours that use the word ‘Molotov’ but the intersection of the Culver/Molotov Venn diagram is almost empty. Lee sent it to me so you could try him: email and postal contact details are on the Matching Head Discogs page. If anyone from Molotov is reading this please leave a comment or drop me a line.
EDIT: The always well-informed Scott of Bells Hill tells me that Molotov is run by a chap called Mike who can be contacted at: xazzaz@yahoo.co.uk. So now you know…
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