silvered dreams: airwaves and nostalgia for the future
July 19, 2014 at 6:08 am | Posted in musings, new music, no audience underground | 1 CommentTags: ambient music, daniel thomas, electronica, kevin sanders, miguel perez, new music, no audience underground, nostalgia for the future, oracle netlabel, oscar menzel, science fiction
Airwaves – Ambient Tracks (download, Oracle Netlabel, ORE108)
In 2006 I gave up on science fiction. I had been a voracious reader (yeah, we’re talking about books here – I have some interest in SF cinema, none in SF television) for the previous 25 years and had taken it all in from the golden age of starships and robots, through the pyschonautical adventures of the new wave, skating over the gleaming surfaces of cyberpunk to the post-post-modern present. Ironically perhaps, my interest waned because of an increasing concern for the future. SF’s wave function collapsed for me when I finally measured it against reality.
At the time I was experiencing a kind of long-form political awakening. The build up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003 had pulled concepts like ‘resource war’ out of dystopia and into the reality I appeared to be living in. I read up on peak oil, on permaculture, on climate change, on the whole coming storm and, at the same time, novels about terraforming and interstellar travel which just ignored the difficult questions or glossed over them with macguffins. After an illustrious history of satire, prophecy and back-lighting the present by extrapolating into the future, SF seemed to be increasingly irrelevant and anachronistic. Like a know-it-all mate who might be entertaining in conversation, or good on a pub quiz team, but bloody useless at a time of actual crisis. I turned my back on it and used the time I saved to learn how to grow vegetables.
However, in the intervening years I have, on occasion, found myself nostalgic for the future. It is an odd, unmoored emotion that can range from a wistful yearning for a bucolic, post-scarcity utopia to a spitting rage at wasted opportunity. Those could have been the days, eh? I’ve had cause to re-examine the feeling twice in recent weeks.
Firstly, following a conversation with Dan Thomas and Kev Sanders in which Dan was lamenting the ballooning tendency for fans of popular culture to pick it to bits before even experiencing it. Thus: the dissection of movie clips released in advance to create ‘buzz’, the speculation that runs rampant between the broadcast of one episode of a television series and the next etc. Kev made the interesting point that traditionally backward looking attitudes and activities: appreciation, analysis, nostalgia and so on had been spun around and were now facing forward. It was a brilliantly useful notion and, like shoe shops when I need a new pair of boots, suddenly I’m seeing it instantiated everywhere. In fact, some forum posters seem to exist solely in this queasy, unwholesome fug made up of part thwarted expectation, part whiny entitlement. This is nostalgia for the future distilled down to an airless and wholly unsatisfactory mode of being. Ugh.
And then, in counterpoint, I heard this: Ambient Tracks by Airwaves released as a free download on Miguel Perez’s Oracle Netlabel. Airwaves is the alias of Mexican musician Oscar Menzel, who sadly passed away in 2012, and these recordings date from 1994. Before proceeding let’s take a second to applaud Miguel’s breadth of imagination in making this available. Oracle is known as a borstal for punishing noise, flu-symptom drone and lizard-brain improv so to find this epic of retro-futurist synthtronica sharing a cell with these repeat offenders is, well, surprising to say the least. It’s like the album asked for directions to Sanity Muffin tapes then got into trouble at the border…
The IDM/electronica boom was well under way here in the UK when this was recorded on the other side of the Atlantic and some of these tracks sound very much of the time. I know I always mention 76:14 by Global Communication when I’m talking about this kind of music but it remains a favourite album of mine, a classic of the genre and was originally released in the same year. Some of Ambient Tracks could be found brooding in the same car park.
The rest of the album harks backwards – to the electronic edge of Krautrock, to the high gloss of Vangelis, to the claustrophobic pulse of John Carpenter. If I’d heard this in 1994 I might have thought it old fashioned but the ambition, sweep and sincerity of this music has aged considerably better than the more hip, knowing froth on Warp and RePhlex that I was obsessing over back then: all agitated surface and in-jokes. Do I listen to any of it nowadays? No.
Menzel’s music reinvigorates the notion of nostalgia for the future. There is nothing kitsch or naive about the vision expressed here. Its scope and scale are impressive, its emotional content earned and genuine. The task of documenting the never-has-been is necessarily Quixotic but if done, as here, with heartfelt conviction the task has nobility and conveys – dare I say it? – hope. These are silvered dreams in which we might just see ourselves reflected. Think about that for a second, comrades – these could have been the days!
—ooOoo—
Airwaves on Oracle – also for write up by Miguel and further links to Menzel’s work.
P.S. Yes, I was supposed to be keeping things to the point due to being frazzled but, hey, I found myself with something to say. Pithiness to come next.
from ibiza to samalayuca: new by midwich/the skull mask/midwich
June 11, 2014 at 11:09 am | Posted in midwich, new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: abstract balearic, andrew perry, cherry row recordings, clockwork rave, desert ambient, drone, electronica, hairdryer excommunication, midwich, miguel perez, new music, no audience underground, noise, oracle netlabel, psychedelia, shameless self-congratulation, sheepscar light industrial, the skull mask, we're gonna get fucking drunk tonight boys
Midwich – Inertia Crocodile (CD-r, Cherry Row Recordings, CRR003, edition of 50 or download)
The skull mask and Midwich – Six angles (CD-r, hairdryer excommunication, edition of 25 or download)
Midwich & The Skull Mask – Six Angles (CD-r, Cherry Row Recordings, CRR004, edition of 25 or download)
Returning from a refreshing break I am delighted to find the garden in full bloom. New reviews from Joe kick a ball about whilst awaiting my editorial attention, intriguing parcels and emails squabble about whose turn it is to go to the off license and, most excitingly, two new midwich releases bask in the sunshine.
I will account for these shortly but first a brief word of thanks regarding the brunt. I self-released this half hour long, single track midwich album about a month ago via Bandcamp charging a minimum of £1 for the download. The idea was to raise a few quid to help cover the minimal costs of this stupid hobby and, as ever, I have been touched by your generosity. Cheers comrades. Much to my great satisfaction, I also heard that its vibrations helped loosen a stubborn bout of writer’s block over at Idwal Fisher. OK, on with the new stuff…
inertia crocodile was recorded at the request of Andrew Perry, noise-tigger and label boss of We’re gonna get fucking drunk tonight boys. I was aware that Andrew has a pretty fluid notion of ‘time’, thus delay would be inevitable, but I couldn’t resist the lure of having a CD-r out on a label with that name. Well, not at first.
There then followed a year during which I would occasionally send passive/aggressive, elbow-nudging emails trying to chivvy the dude along. Response came there none. I worried for his health but having been assured by a mutual friend that he was OK my uptightness got the better of me. An ultimatum was issued. On the due date RFM’s ninja squadron broke into Andrew’s central London penthouse, liberated the master tapes, passed them to a waiting courier and melted into the night.
Daniel Thomas of Sheepscar Light Industrial was aware of these shenanigans and had expressed an interest in releasing the album on Cherry Row Recordings, his SLI offshoot label for releases longer than 22 minutes. Thus within what seemed like half an hour of the courier unzipping her black leather catsuit inertia crocodile was a Bandcamp sensation.
The album is unlike my more recent stuff. It is not extraction music – not overly dronish, no field recording and the only sound source is my Roland MC-303. I guess these three tracks comprise a sort of love letter to that increasingly worn and temperamental machine.
The title track is clattering, clockwork rave – neon stabs trip and pile up over a central throb in an atmosphere choked with dry ice. It is a badly smeared fax of a photocopy of a fax of the type of music the 303 was designed to produce. ‘Piped’ is one of those short, mood-puncturing bibbles that I used to insist on peppering midwich releases with. An analog squelch is allowed to run its course through the filters and that is about it. As satisfying as the viscous ripples formed when pouring honey onto porridge. The main event is ‘The Sure’: fifteen minutes of juicy pulses sliding over each other in a perversely fleshy, amply lubricated manner. It has a swaggering bounce that I hope will have you nodding your head. Dan coined the term ‘abstract Balearic’ to describe this which is amusingly apt. To borrow a phrase that Neil Campbell used to use to describe everything he released: ‘this is my disco album’.
No need to take my word for it though. Another opinion can be found here, as friend of RFM Forestpunk put together a terrifically flattering account of my music (and further musings about my writing and the underground in general) within a day of the album’s release. Much obliged to you, man.
Six Angles is a thoroughly collaborative affair involving myself and Miguel Perez (doing the music) and Daniel Thomas and Kevin Sanders (doing the releasing). I’m very proud to be part of it. As might be expected with a transatlantic effort like this, the process has already been documented in email correspondence, blog posts and Bandcamp blurbs so I’m going to tell the story with a bunch of quotes. Shameless, yeah, but efficient. To start, here’s me from an email on recording and editing the two tracks:
‘five angles’ – This is made up of five components: two guitar pieces and an organ drone by Miguel, two synth drones by me. Originally I wanted to layer these all together but it didn’t work so I have stretched them out end to end, one after the other, so now they can be examined in turn and tell a little story.
‘written in sand’ – This is the sixth angle and is made up of four components – guitar and organ drone from Miguel and two more synth drones from me. The guitar and organ are in alternate layers with a crescendo of synth running for twenty minutes underneath, everything comes together a few minutes from the end then gradually drops out. I wanted it to be an overwhelming, psychedelic alarm. It works.
Here’s Miguel expressing his satisfaction on the Oracle Netlabel blog:
This is totally special :
a) Is my first collaborative effort with my good friend Rob Hayler (Midwich) a total supporter and kick to get the name around UK
b) Is my first release to be out not in one, but TWO labels at the same time!
c) These labels are no other than Dan Thomas’ own Cherry Row Recordings that is starting to get fire with some AMAZING drones and is dedicated to more long form releases aside from his totally successful Sheepscar Light Industrial
d) The other label is Hairdryer Excommunication, providing some of the best drones of the world via Kev Sanders and his own Petals project and lately under his own name.
e) This is the return of The Skull Mask after a somewhat unwanted hiatus.
Featuring Midwich on electronics and The Skull Mask on organ and guitar work, this took LONG to be finished. It was like an idea on the air. There was a planned release with Smut (that hopefully will see the light one day) and the tracks remain unused. Some emails back and forth and the proposition was made to work with Rob Hayler. After our successful split (that you can find HERE) this is the first time we collaborate together.He sent me the work finished and just can say that this is nothing short but AMAZING…please taste the sand and let yourself fly out there!!!!
…and now Kev on the unusual decision to release it on two labels at once, from the hairdryer excommunication blog:
This is the sort of thing that happens in the no audience underground. Rob and Miguel will offer you some material to release which is amazing. So amazing, in fact, you want to more people to share in the fun of being involved in the release and getting more people to hear it.
This being the case, who could have been more perfect than Dan over at Sheepscar Light Industrial/Cherry Row Recordings? We’ve all pretty much worked together in some way in this game o’ sound and community… it was just too good of an opportunity to miss.
Dan’s put 25 copies out through his Cherry Row Recordings imprint and hairdryer excommunication have done the same thing, with us both hosting it electronically: No modes of exclusivity here.
Yeah, there’s a charge for the physical version, but we’re doing our best to refute capital, exclusivity and all that shit. Low cost, handmade releases (£3 plus p&p) and free electronic access: You , dear participatory listeners, can’t go too far wrong with our collective ways of organising this sort of thing, right?
In homage to the People’s Republic of DIY, the hXe physical version is adorned with a rather miserable looking Yorkshire Terrier with a crown on.
This is an international release of manipulated acoustics, synth and electronics. It is one of my favourite listens of the year and has come together in no time. Perfect stuff.
…and finally Dan explains, in an email to me, the joss paper that features in his packaging of the piece (Tatum is his Cantonese teacher):
…it’s an offering paper; something that you would burn to send good wishes etc to family, friends, ancestors etc … As expected, the text works very well: Tatum just sent me this;
“The overview of the text is “after life” (reincarnation) money; these texts were repeated several times with the five elements: Gold, wood, water, fire, earth and others such as Heaven and moon etc.”
Fits very well with the vibe and atmosphere of the pieces.
Don’t it just? In summary: Miguel sent me two lengthy improv pieces, an organ drone and a desert guitar shimmer, I edited and augmented these to create the album’s two tracks and Dan and Kev decided, in an act of mischievous, exuberant novelty, to each release half the run with two sets of entirely different packaging containing identical music. Contemplating the wonderful absurdity of all this is giving me goosebumps. As Kev says: this is the sort of thing that happens in the no audience underground. Cool, eh?
—ooOoo—
Inertia Crocodile on Cherry Row Recordings
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.)
kinetic poetry: joe murray on acrid lactations, yol, blood stereo and zn
April 12, 2014 at 2:37 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: acrid lactations, agorafobia, blood stereo, chocolate monk, colectivo n, gerado picho, improv, joe murray, kiks/gfr, kiksbooks, miguel perez, new music, no audience underground, noise, oracle netlabel, tapes, vocal improvisation, yol, zn
Acrid Lactations – The Rotten Opacity of it All (All This Rot) (CD-r, Chocolate Monk, choc.280)
Yol – Metal Theft (C20 tapes, kiksbooks, edition of 20)
Blood Stereo – The Trachelin Huntiegowk (CD-r, Chocolate Monk, choc.243)
ZN – ZN (C90 tape, Agoraphobia Tapes, 30)
Acrid Lactations – The Rotten Opacity of it All (All This Rot)
The Acrid Lactations introduce themselves with a keening, blackboard scrape of the mind. Like when some juiced-up Beat described the howling pipes of Morocco as ‘prehistoric rock n’ roll’ Glasgow’s finest ingest the Master Musicians of Joujouka and spit them back out as the black-sticky-tar of deepest mung. There’s no doubt this has a scaly dinosaur vibe but it’s brought right up-to-date; like a Jurassic Park vacuum flask or something.
Three longish pieces make up (all this rot). Individual tracks could be modestly un-named or included in the mysterious limerick emblazoned on the backside of the blinding white sheath.
What was dirt coils,
Vainglory peals the frothy blossom,
No peal but dull the solemnest ballast.
So track one, or in my mind what I’m calling ‘What was dirt coils’, twin violins are subject to agonisingly slow torture. Trilling ‘bruuuuurrrrsss’ and abstract humming mesh the astringent scrape with careful tape manipulation, adding another layer of dislocation to the lonely lament. My overactive imagination pictures wandering alone on a desolate heath, the wind whispering cruel curses,
‘stick t’path, keep off moors’.
At this point questions like, “What’s vibrating string and what’s accelerating black tape screee?” become pointless. I neither know nor care. I’m simply delighted to surrender to the every-growing lycanthropic paranoia.
‘Vainglory peals the frothy blossom’ is a remarkable Dicatphone construction. A hyper-kinetic patchwork, busy with detail pinched from domestic recordings (red apple crunch) and intentioned playback (ukulele fiddy). It flashes bright as flame. Perfectly balanced, the blind-thumbed FFW screee and tape-knit bleats are measured against quieter ripping or an occasional shout or polystyrene scrunch or sewing box scrabble. Like listening to two people at once telling their side of the same story salient facts collide and disassociate at speed, context becomes all.
The closer ‘No peal but dull the solemnest ballast’ is a right Mad Comix knockabout hash-crash-smash with super-speed rubber percussion picking the bones out a towering Babel. More pipes (flesh and bamboo) slurp up against plucky banjo. Sounds are mixed right-up-in-your-face and then bathroom-down-the-hall with an untypical unevenness making this listener stoop then stretch to catch the narrative. This is a Jane Fonda workout of a listen…and my pale flabby midriff thanks you for it.
Again the distinctive fluid wretch of tape manipulation (in some grumbling form) take the language of improvisation and lactate it, milk it, not into sterile test tubes for the middle-brow arts crowd but into rude pottery jugs. Creamy and nutritious it slops over goblets, rough to the touch. And when I raise this white-gold to my lips and drink it down I’m refreshed in my body, head and heart.
Yol – Metal Theft
This smart little tape drops through the gloryhole with a familiar plastic crackle. Tapes from Yol always seem to fast-track the listening pile and proceeded directly to the cheap-o hi-fi for immediate consumption. Nom nom nom.
Squeak-clack, play, hiss… ‘There is no finish line’ starts the Yol ritual with a teensy, tiny bell solo, a gentle brassy tinkling played on the sort of souvenir cow bell you might have picked up from a school exchange trip to Switzerland in 1985. Like the Swiss it’s sedate, low key, intimate…a nice little opener.
But hang about there. What’s this rough, throttled and somewhat skanky tape glot? It’s ‘Dock Noise’: a mucky wind-roar, a metallic crash. What are those machines called? The ones in a bowling alley that set up your pins with a clatter? A Bowl-a-rama? A Pin-matic? Well, whatever their trade name ‘Dock Noise’ sounds like one of them going all Hijokaiden and then catching on fire.
‘Empty Flattened Tents’ sports a see-sawing hinge-creak; almost like a lost voice (ahhhh – a – huhhh) that runs through this piece creating a rubbery flexible backbone. Layered over the skeleton an angle grinder moans away like a snapped clarinet. Stressed metal squeaks underneath Yol’s kinetic-poetry (all pretty full and fluent…not the hiccoughing – stammering violence of yore) to yarble about “angry broken wasp’s nests”.
Errrrr…side two opens with ‘Posset bite’ a very moist and unhinged random mouth-jam multiplied by several Dictaphones…gulp…a charming gesture from Yol that makes me blush like a red tomato.
‘Miniature dog live’ returns to one of Yol’s classic approaches – a rusty filing cabinet hauled across a rubber floor. The offending office furniture gets thoroughly beaten and beasted as he ROARS ‘what is that noise…WHAT IS THAT NOISE?’ between gravelly chokes and strangulated ‘gahhhhhsss’. As the name implies it’s a live piece and the influence of the audience coaxes a confrontational, no-instrument black metal performance from Yol; the bleakness of the Norwegian forest transplanted to freezing-cold factory units.
This whole tape is recorded in two distinct styles. Lo-fi stinkers can curl up with gentle inner-ear fumblings; hi-fi bores can rejoice in the gloriously expansive live recordings. But there is still that wonderfully claustrophobic greasiness to this tape, like being cooped up inside a whale.
As the Kiksbooks blog rightly points out. This is a release ‘for the connoisseur’. I love that nudge-nudge touch.
So, broadminded readers. You’ll have to move quickly as this chap is limited to 20 copies. And at a reasonable £4 plus is a budget-busting snip.
Blood Stereo – The Trachelin Huntiegowk
Two twenty minute pieces of gnarled-fux originally pressed into 50 pieces of wax and now burned onto polycarbonate plastic and aluminium for the hoi polloi!
Friends and neighbours of the no-audience underground (North & South) come together on ‘Side one’ in a collection of discrete recordings formed into a new whole. This earth mother divides itself into 5 glorious parts:
- Part one – It’s slow & low. An ear to ear shuffle, domestic giffles and snatched school recordings run into vomit splosh or piss trickles. It makes me stop and wonder how long it took to capture each snippet…it’s a labour intensive approach for sure. The flowsy clarinet is introduced.
- Part two – a deep-dub Residents territory: collapsing loops of piano and doors slamming. Hiss and cornet again that reigns (in blood).
- Part three – back to a darker domestic…gurgles and snotty in the right ear, truncated samples in the left “eh oh eh-eh” (into bubbling lap experiments). A stray dog sniffing each lamp post moves in circles, testing and probing…straight lines are for squares man.
- Part four – breath sighs, moon loops…no one does it quite like this. Gasps. Organic weaving. But with a chaste cast, there is nothing sexual here. It’s like the innocence of snoring in a sinus-like cathedral.
- Part five – a pushy (and drunk) Canadian takes place of a come-down coda.
Phew…after that yeasty trip part two is going to have to live up to major expectation. With nowhere to go except true respect this second live piece is an honest, forming thing. Huff and chump are played cautiously like feudal warlords moving cavalry over the common ground of The Shire.
With few peaks this is a guerrilla campaign; hit and run…a war of attrition. The Blood Stereo show their mastery of the common ‘click’ and ‘clack’. You thought glitch-core went out of fashion with Oval. No way. These south coast munsters clunk-click every trip, building a sound-world grumpy Gaudi would dig with different timbres and speeds interlocking and breaking free. A thought erupts that I just can’t stop…
from this machinery hums come
oiled and whirling
fast, strong
tightness, meshing
meshing forever
(pert near)
steel gear inside gear
and smoothness
engaging, releasing
lapping and plunging
( – ‘Another Theory Shot to Shit’, fIREHOSE, 1986)
The boss has been talking of extraction music of late. An acute and timely observation. But what of the chaff left over from the mining process? The Trachelin Huntiegowk probes the remaining slag, the detritus of sonic grief, and polishes up a shiny opal reflecting the sunlight as a rainbow of all your collective memory.
Delve deep, drink fully. Dream dangerously.
ZN – ZN
Direct from the ashes of Colectivo N ‘ZN’ is born; the new handle of Ciudad Juarez’s finest Gerardo ‘Picho’ and RFM favourite Miguel Perez.
This god damn C90 tape is blackly black and starts off with the sound of someone wrestling with the wrapper of a riveted toffee-apple…’crackle, crukkkk, kraaaaak.’
Sparse yells and hollas slice like wounds but the the urge to rush forever forward is rejected and space opens up, blackness descends and unholy worlds are born in silence. At first power comes not from extreme volume and speed but the grey gravity that flows between gigantic bodies.
To an audience that’s grown accustomed to harsh walls of feedback and electronics the pairing of cornet and bass might seem a little light, pastoral even. But make no mistake the cornet (at times dry and hoarse as whooping cough, at others wetly thick) is painfully brutal. There is a military history to the brassy horn and it’s no wonder…this is making me edgy with its hot vibrating breath intent on conquest.
The bass sounds like it’s strung with industrial cable wrapped and stretched to dangerous high tension. Yup…there is the occasional deep growling riff but in the main Miguel keeps things high in the register, scraping and plucking. Not laying down any rhythm but leading you down blind alleys, deserted side-streets and into dangerous neighbourhoods.
The resulting oddness of side one (recognisable instruments doing unrecognisable things) frazzles my little brain and just about when synapses are about to snap a light-aircraft drone takes us above the clouds and into the merciless bronze sun.
Up here the gods clatter their impotent weapons, hurling abuse to the mortals below for failure to believe. A lone minstrel plays on impeaching the gods to spare mankind. Tears flow down ravaged faces but the cruel Sun God nods once, twice signifying displeasure, the minstrel is thrown down to earth to lay crushed on the rocks below.
Phew. I take a little break and prepare for the next instalment.
Side two opens with ‘Bitches Brew’ era Miles echo-horn but this time Teo Macero is slugging it out with Romain Perrot in a tin bath while exotic aluminium parrots pelt them with ingots of coal tar soap.
Tape grot and the crackle of 1000 bonfires smother a distant beat. And although at the same volume and intensity I get the feeling these are miniature, secret sounds amplified greatly.
Hoots echo round the concrete bunker and everything submits to this simple repetitive beat (and added fuzz combo) to form a sickly pitched nausea. This feels like the cover story for something really nasty. The longer it goes on the more I’m reminded of some deep nagging unease. It sounds like…
It sounds like corruption.
Once that thought is lodged in my noggin the scorched earth screech takes on a darker hue, layers of noise collapse on each other burying themselves…but still the beat remains. As relentless and banal as true evil.
In the best possible way this is a deeply unpleasant listen.
For more industrial ear-damage and to discover the real sound of Ciudad Juarez, check out their Bandcamp. This here live recording is a similarly outrageous trip. Phew!
—ooOoo—
(another) fortnight with lee and miguel, part two: conspiracies
February 12, 2014 at 9:36 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: agorafobia, altar of waste, at war with false noise, crown of bone, drone, la mancha del pecado, lee stokoe, matching head, miguel perez, molotov, narcolepsia, new music, no audience underground, noise, occult supremacy, oracle netlabel, raoul valve, tapes, the collects, the dead end street band, turgid animal, wehrmacht lombardo
culver & la mancha del pecado – collaboration 3 (tape, At War With False Noise, ATWAR140, edition of 50)
culver & la mancha del pecado – collaboration 4 (CD-r, Turgid Animal)
culver & la mancha del pecado – collaboration 5 (tape, Narcolepsia)
The Dead End Street Band / La Mancha Del Pecado – El Mercado De Las Brujas (CD-r, Agorafobia Tapes, #25)
Crown of Bone / La Mancha Del Pecado – split (CD-r, Agorafobia Tapes #26/Occult Supremacy OSP040)
the collects & culver – untitled (tape, Matching Head, mh203)
OK, see part one for an extensive preamble. This second half showcases a bunch of Lee and Miguel’s collaborations and split releases.
—ooOoo—
Firstly, the ongoing team-up between our two heroes sees their powers squared by being combined. Three more products:
#3 is the final moments of a desperate refugee attempting to escape certain death by clinging on to the landing gear of a passenger jet. As the aeroplane climbs to cruising altitude, and hypothermia takes hold, this doomed soul hallucinates he is entering a kind of aviation heaven. The roar of jets, the ‘whup-whup’ of rotors, the burrr of propellers all condense into a single throb carrying him upwards. This pulse fades along with his own and a slow-picked refrain on acoustic guitar mourns the frozen.
#4 is a single 48 minute long track in three movements. First is the chugging clatter of a damaged piston furiously rattling its housing as the engine it is part of belches out acrid black smoke. Secondly, great swathes of the sound are blown away by a cooling wind leaving a rumble as the seemingly broken engine settles, components fusing. Finally, surprisingly, as it cools the engine bursts back into life in a suicidal last gasp but then – spoiler alert – the piece ends in a relatively upbeat state as the rhythm calms and smoke is replaced with a pleasing iridescent glow. It is a genuinely unexpected conclusion.
#5 is 38 minutes of scouring radio static as heard in the cockpit of a single propeller aeroplane surveying the bomb damage inflicted by Wehrmacht Lombardo’s war machines.
All great.
I know Miguel is proud of this one ‘cos it’s his tape label Agorafobia’s first transatlantic split: The Dead End Street Band hail from exotic Newcastle. Their track, ‘Night of the Bloody Apes’, has the greasy, queasy electronic pulse that made the best of first wave industrial music such uncomfortable listening. It also adds a viscous layer of inescapable stickiness. At twelve minutes long it is the perfect length to lure an unsuspecting fly into the monkey cup…
The La Mancha track, ‘Raza Crapulienta’, has a forward motion I am tempted to describe as ‘roaring’ but in this case ‘gushing’ might be more accurate. There is a wetness to the torrent that suggests subterranean rivers coursing through pitch black limestone caverns.
It took me a while to warm to ‘The Chapters of Judas’ by Crown of Bone, their contribution to this split release. At first it seemed too fierce for my tastes, too easily described with clichéd adjectives such as ‘harsh’, ‘relentless’ etc. I was won round by its ridiculous, visceral, irresistible momentum. At around the 16 minute mark pedals are stamped on which adds variation to the blowtorch ferocity. With a few minutes to go we are transported instantaneously into the centre of a black mass before the noise returns just as suddenly to play us out. I don’t listen to this type of stuff very often but I would if more of it was like this.
The La Mancha track, ‘Helena’, is an example of that super-advanced music for alien races that I mentioned in part one. To feeble ears attached to feeble brains like ours it sounds like metal played by a flock of drunken geese.
…and finally we have the collaboration between Culver and mysterious, new-name-to-me The Collects. Scott McKeating, the omniscient third voice here at RFM, reckons this is the best of the latest crop. His verdict, pulled from the pneumatic tube system we use for office communication, is:
shit hot
…which is undeniable. The cauldron of boiling black liquid provided by Culver is what you might expect, I guess, but a spell is cast by the carefully chosen ingredients tossed into the mix. There is insectoid filter whine, viscera-rearranging generator throb and reedy, fluting near-melody amongst the other earthy and unplaceable flavours. Stepping away from the witch’s brew metaphor and into the suburban living room, I am reminded (again) of the little girl in the film Poltergeist, speaking to voices only she can hear via a detuned television. The first two tracks of this C30(ish) album, ‘clutch fed’ and ‘you are never going home’, could well be what is heard by her during gaps in the conversation: the background noise of a dead realm.
Given its title – ‘do you remember her last moments?’ – and the bound figure illustrated on the cover, it would be easy to interpret the side-long third piece as some kind of torture-porn soundtrack but who wants to linger on that thought, eh? Not me. Instead let’s imagine the Culveresque rumble as the mud colouring a drop of dirty water. Now put that drop on a microscope slide and take a closer look at its contents. The uniform dirt is separated into boulders suspended in solution and a teeming ecosystem is revealed, thick with monsters. This is the noise they make as they strive without sense, unaware of how beautiful and terrifying they are. Flagella thrust clumsily, cilia ripple rhythmically, translucent blobs are attacked by floating mouths. It is a grotesquely, magnificently alien scene.
Scott is, as ever, correct.
(another) fortnight with lee and miguel, part one: two (hundred) matching heads
February 9, 2014 at 9:57 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 2 CommentsTags: agorafobia, altar of waste, at war with false noise, crown of bone, drone, la mancha del pecado, lee stokoe, matching head, miguel perez, molotov, narcolepsia, new music, no audience underground, noise, occult supremacy, oracle netlabel, raoul valve, tapes, the collects, the dead end street band, turgid animal, wehrmacht lombardo
culver – plague hand (2 x tape, Matching Head, Matching Head 200)
Culver – Angel Obsolete (CD-r, Molotov, molotov 25)
La Mancha Del Pecado – A Triple Fetichistic Treatment – Tribute to Raoul Valve (3 x CD-r, Altar of Waste, AOW 138, edition of 15)
La Mancha Del Pecado – Domina (2 x CD-r, Occult Supremacy, OSP027)
Wehrmacht Lombardo – El Vicio Tiene Medias Negras (CD-r, Agorafobia Tapes, #24)
Wehrmacht Lombardo – Tyrant (self-released download)
(Editor’s note: some of the releases above were sent to me as pre-release mp3s by an overexcited Miguel, thus format/label information might be incomplete and some cover pictures may be stolen from the internet.)
Radio Free Midwich is delighted to offer heartfelt congratulations to Lee Stokoe on the occasion of the 200th release by his mighty label Matching Head. It is an unrivalled achievement, I think. Others may have been around longer or produced a greater number of releases but who can boast such focus, such unerring coherence? Over the years he has stuck to tapes whether or not bearded hipsters were enthusing over the format. He has no interest in the online world. His black and white aesthetic makes each individual package a counter used in an occult variation of the game go, played on a non-Euclidean goban. His musical project has been, to reuse a metaphor I have leaned on before, a type of cartography. Each of Lee’s releases on Matching Head, or elsewhere as Culver, is another detail of the map completed. The landscape abstracted can be bleak, inhospitable but its geography is endlessly fascinating to me. Click on the ‘Lee Stokoe’ or ‘Culver’ or ‘Matching Head’ tags above to see how many ways I’ve managed to describe what to the uninitiated might appear to be 40 minutes of mere ominous rumbling. I am, in short, a fan.
As is our Mexican cousin Miguel Perez. Miguel is a great friend of this blog and, via the magic of the internet, has become an enthusiastic contributor to the noise scene in the North East of England despite living on the other side of the world. Modern life, eh? I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me describing him, with my tongue in cheek, as a disciple of Lee’s. The influence is clear in his music, his fiercely independent stance and his awesome work rate. However, I consider Miguel to be a notable artist in his own right, a skilled musician (with a background in metal guitar) and an open-minded and enthusiastic collaborator who brings out the best in those that work with him, including Lee. Oracle, the netlabel that he co-runs, chalked up its 100th release last year. Not to be sniffed at.
(An aside about the horror/fetish/porn imagery used on the packaging of these releases: I’ve tutted prudishly at these two perverts on several occasions in the past and can only throw my hands in the air again. Oh well, boys, whatever floats the boat…)
OK, on with the show. As I have a bunch of stuff on the pile from these chaps, much of which crosses over thematically or collaboratively, it makes sense to tackle it en masse. In part one: solo stuff from each, part two: collaborations and splits.
—ooOoo—
First, of course, I need to account for Matching Head catalogue number 200: plague hand by culver (covers above), a twin cassette set containing four side-long tracks totalling, you guessed it, 200 minutes. Each of these four untitled pieces (the sides are labelled a,b,c, and d and that’s all you get) is a sombre Culvanian documentary: a long, wordless panoramic camera sweep taking in the scenery with an unblinking 360 degree turn. Each is different from the last, all are wholly involving and will have the attentive listener crowing ‘aww… man, I was digging that!’ and reaching to flip or rewind as soon as the track ends. I say ‘attentive listener’ but really there is no other kind because you have no choice in the matter. This isn’t background music – allow yourself to get caught and your ego will be dissolved like a fly in a pitcher plant. It is a masterwork and a fitting celebration of the numerically notable point it represents.
When discussing Lee’s music (and Miguel’s and others like it) I often lead with metaphors of decay. If I’m in a fancy pants mood I’ll throw in terms like ‘entropy’, thus suggesting Culver depicts a world in the process of rusting shut. However, today I think I might have been looking in entirely the wrong direction. Perhaps instead Lee is composing for a super-evolved race living in a parallel universe where Culver is pop and our most sophisticated, technically accomplished mainstream musical efforts sound to them like a sick pig farting into a tin bucket. Nice to think that somewhere at least Lee is a star…
Angel Obsolete, released on Mike Simpson’s wholly reliable Molotov imprint, begins with a few seconds of a doomy bass riff and ends roughly 38 minutes later following an onslaught of electric weather. This is the sound of being trapped under an upturned giant glass fishbowl as a desert storm gradually blasts it to an opaque white. Every grain of sand, every scratch and abrasion, documented by the texture of Culver’s roar.
This three disc epic both appears on US label Altar of Waste and takes its inspiration from the work of Cory Strand, the label’s head honcho. Cory is known for his multi-disc noise/drone extrapolations from favourite film soundtracks and, following this lead, Miguel has chosen to interpret the work of Raoul Valve, best known for scoring the high-gloss art-porn films of director Andrew Blake. The sheer nylon/patent leather glamour is abstracted through the crooked lenses, peepholes and clogged filters that define the La Mancha vibe. Cory’s own description of the album is compelling:
…a frightening excursion into the deepest realms of the glisteningly erotic illuminating the horrid emptiness lurking behind boudoir noir. Utilizing the eclectic soundtracks composed by Raoul Valve for three Andrew Blake films, “A Triple Fetishistic Treatment” sees La Mancha Del Pecado transforming the vaguely banal and unobtrusive into blackest night clouds of uncertainty and self-doubt. The artistry in Blake’s films reveals layers of suggestion not oft found in standard gonzo pornography, teases of themes and relationships oft left unexplored by the mainstream in favor of quick release and exhaustive bouts of fucking. La Mancha Del Pecado takes that artistry and rips it open, exposing both the emptiness at its heart and the lurid technicolor expanse of the images it approximates.
The guy can write a sizzling blurb, f’sure, but I don’t agree. Miguel’s perversion does not seem sleazy or hollow. His submissive worship of the stocking is not an expression of existential malaise. Rather it is joyous, celebratory and engaged. His band name translates as ‘The Stain of Sin’ but there is no judgement implied in this – Miguel just doesn’t mind getting dirty.
The first disc, ‘Subtle Exhibitionism (Kyla Cole)’, is a mere 43 minutes of blood in the ears – what you might expect to hear after an hour being strapped upside-down in a dominatrix’s dungeon, your brain an electrical storm of consciousness drowning discharge. My theory is best supported by the second disc, ‘Slaves With Stockings and Heels (Kelly Havel)’, which is a glorious, sense heightening, scything buzz. Profoundly, heavily psychedelic, it writhes at a furious fever pitch throughout and seems nowhere near spent even after over an hour of effort. The third disc, ‘Industrial Girlfriends (Justine Jolie)’, is the toughest. Clocking in at 55 minutes, it begins, appropriately, with hydraulic rhythms and pneumatic hiss and continues with a pummelling tour of the factory floor where molten plastic is injected into amped up, anatomically suspicious moulds of the human form. The second half eases up a little as a series of satisfying metallic clatters are picked up, rattled, dropped and replaced until all that is left is echo steeped in static.
Domina is another epic, this time two tracks spanning a double disc set. ‘Enfermera a Domicilio’ is a La Mancha cocktail built from one part Geordie-style free-rock noise and two parts drone: Matching-Head-style ice cavern atmospherics complimenting desert scorched organ psychedelics. It is structurally ambitious and consistently engaging. After a short burst of fast talking voices (a news report? Lo siento, no hablo español…), ‘Ciudad Sangre’ steps up into a brash, abrasive fuzz with slower moving undertones. It’s like rain on the surface of an oily lake obscuring the shadow of a monster swimming menacingly beneath. The opening, the title (‘City Blood’) and the short burst of sombre percussion that appears near the end all suggest the piece is influenced by the never-ending, senseless drug war that blights Miguel’s home town of Ciudad Juárez.
Wehrmacht Lombardo is the pseudonym usually saved for the harshest of Miguel’s noise. You might expect panic-inducing, deep-into-the-red Geiger counter static, an icy arctic wind whipping across the tundra and rumbles as the inhabitants of a nearby city are reduced to burnt tar by aerial bombardment. These components will ebb and flow within the baseline roar. However, that said, neither of these releases follow the blueprint exactly and differ quite markedly from each other too. Tyrant is 23 minutes of wandering around the innards of a semi-organic, mountain-sized machine – its purpose unfathomable, the variations in its rhythms heavy and mysterious. El Vicio Tiene Medias Negras is largely standard Lombardian business: earthily visceral throughout with a particularly effective last few minutes during which Miguel cuts the low end completely. Was that the generator finally breaking down? Is the electric fence surrounding the compound now just a few strands of harmless, flimsy wire? Have we come to The End?
For now. Continued in part two…
Agorafobia Tapes / Oracle Netlabel
anti-everything, super no-fi: joe murray on colectivo n
January 15, 2014 at 2:54 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 2 CommentsTags: colectivo n, gerado picho, improv, joe murray, miguel perez, new music, no audience underground, noise, oracle netlabel
COLECTIVO N – LA ULTIMA TOCADA (download, Oracle Netlabel, ORE95)
Colectivo N – En El Polvo De Lo Que Soy (download, Oracle Netlabel, ORE94)
COLECTIVO N – Chinwuindin (download, Oracle Netlabel, ORE91)
Colectivo N – Comando Anti Snob (download, Oracle Netlabel, ORE93)
LA ULTIMA TOCADA
Radio Free Midwich favourite Miguel Perez plays guitar with his compatriot Gerado Picho on trumpet, voice and objects to make up the anti-everything, super no-fi, Mexican duo – Colectivo N. This 15 minute piece is launched through Miguel’s net-label Oracle and sounds like a real seat-of-the-pants recording. Captured in the moment and jammed round a single mic this lets the breeze blow and cars honk by as Miguel pummels an acoustic guitar with abandon. Picho adds un-tutored, rusty trumpet and the occasional dark curse on ‘La Del Estribo’. The spirit of freedom descends and we are in a total group-mind situation where to pause is to invite death. The relentless cackle of unconscious sound never batters, but fills up the empty brain cells we don’t bother to use when walking about, watching TV or talking to work colleagues. I feel full up of fluffy sound…like I’ve snorted a tremendous Yorkshire Pudding. This is not what Herb Albert meant to uncover when he travelled to Tijuana.
En El Polvo De Lo Que Soy
Anything subtitled ‘Free Improv Scum’ gets me all excited so it’s with relish I plug in the headphones to check this short 3 track release out. ‘0’ starts with an almost grindcore bass riff that descends into ham-fisted poking and prodding as some Mexican radio starts up delivering a speech or something. The occasional shard of sheet-metal-crash lends an early Sonic Youth vibe – Halloween, that kind of era. ‘1’ and ‘2’ continue the spookiness with more bass noodle and that fucked up trumpet honking in my left ear like the devil’s own goose on my shoulder until a steel water tower collapses in the right ear.
Chinwuindin
A guitar battle in Hell! Track one ‘Chinwuindin’ captures that kind of ‘hunched over the amps lost in a world of electricity and noise’ that The Dead C and Ascension reach for. This lurches between avalanche scree, metal fingerings and Skullflower soaring with no one style being settled on for long. This is all about the experience of playing and the experience of listening. There’s nothing but to strap yourself in and enjoy the ride…for 50 god damn minutes.
Track two, a session recorded in February 2013, continues the free-for-all quality but transfers it to twin acoustic guitars. With little of the volume and none of the dramatic effects this is an altogether different listen. Steel is tangled and wound up tight; notes and lighting fast runs are knotted up and playfully unravelled. While ‘Chinwuindin’ is a smeared Gehard Richter this is a medieval woodcut; painstaking slivers are carefully chiselled and removed leaving a diabolical image in the wake. My favourite part is the scratchy-scratchy wood knocking at about 9 mins in that comes across all Ken Mikami in it’s glorious outsiderness. Yeah man YEAH.
Be warned…this has fairly dodgy cover art that Miguel explains through the link below.
Comando Anti Snob
This has a multi-purpose approach like a lost compilation tape from the late 1980’s UK/USA/Japanese tape scene. Each of the nine tracks seems to invoke a different underground mood – that Colectivo N can certainly shuffle!
Parts remind me of Cock ESP or something – relentlessly heavy; probably played on guitars but things sound more like the nightmare of a giant robot (Ted Hughes’s Iron Man?) sweating nuts and bolts as big as cobble stones. Other tracks are an A-band hoot-a-long with Bagpuss organ and unrelated wooden fumbles. Then you’ve got ‘metal’ jamming in miniature like the garage-band next door before the drummer turns up. The between-track fuck about of groups like the Thinking Fellas Union Local 282 raises a head to cleanse the palette before another lurch into K2-style classic noise ‘WHHHOOOAARRRRRRRR’ and the unmistakable sound of sponges vomiting. I almost choke on my tea when I hear some spindly guitar whacking and I’m taken back into memories of I’m Being Good or Evil Barons lumping about…twanging like surf music just ran bone dry (on the desert shimmering, 13 min piece ‘IV’). The Anti Snob record ends with the kind of dada-junk-spew Prick Decay lunch on. This tasty morsel is swallowed whole oyster style with klunks and strangulated pipes.
All of these releases are free to download from Miguel’s Internet Archive pages. Not sure where to start Midwichers? May I recommend this here Comando Anti Snob available on the handy link below…it’s a belter.
alien menagerie: rfm catches up with oracle, kevin sanders, north east noise and shoganai
August 29, 2013 at 12:47 pm | Posted in musings, new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: charles dexter ward, crown of bone, culver, dirty demos, drone, erosm, george proctor, hairdryer excommunication, hogwash, improv, kevin sanders, la mancha del pecado, lee stokoe, matching head, miguel perez, mike simpson, mutant ape, new music, newcastle, no audience underground, noise, north east noise, oracle netlabel, pablo mejia, petals, seth cooke, shoganai, sindre bjerga, suburban howl, tapes, the truth about frank, turgid animal, xazzaz
ErosM – Demo II (download, Oracle Netlabel, ORE97)
La Mancha Del Pecado – Masiva Pared Dedicada Al Placer (download, Oracle Netlabel, ORE99)
Crown of Bone – Children of the Corn, a Tribute (download, Oracle Netlabel, ORE100)
Seth Cooke / Kevin Sanders – split (CD-r, hairdryer excommunication, edition of 25, or download)
Kevin Sanders – heard more saying less more nothing enraptured in their mud of nothingness (or “no matter”) (hairdryer excommunication, download)
Petals – Salivate Stone (tape, Dirty Demos, edition of 30)
Suburban Howl/Mutant Ape – split (tape, Turgid Animal)
Sindre Bjerga – foreign tongues (tape, Matching Head, mh195)
Culver/Xazzaz – split (tape, Matching Head, mh196)
The Truth About Frank – Live 10/04/13 Hogwash 6 Fox and Newt Leeds (self-released download)
Charles Dexter Ward – CDW 310513 (self-released download)
Charles Dexter Ward – CDW 121012 (self-released download)
Shoganai – ショウガナイ (self–released download)
Eagle-eyed readers will have noted that since joining the organisation in May RFM’s new staffers Scott McKeating and Joe Murray have been doing a lot of the heavy lifting. As they frolic – sweating, bare chested, rearranging the rockery in the grounds of Midwich Mansions – I close the window to avoid breathing in their heady, powerfully erotic musk. There, behind closed curtains in the cool darkness, I mumble into the whisper-ma-phone that links my property to Idwal Towers and discuss possible sightings of an absent muse with Uncle Mark.
She was here until recently: the Summer season has seen (*ahem*) ‘major’ articles by me about Lucy Johnson, Robert Ridley-Shackleton and the purported golden age of internet-enabled uber-punk amongst other things, a dozen (re)releases plastered up on the midwich Bandcamp site and the publication of the first two issues of North Leeds most popular noise/art microzine The Barrel Nut with much more to come. Not bad, eh?
And yet… in the face of a review pile of over thirty items, some received more than two months ago, I feel guilt-stricken. It’s an oddly masochistic response as I have every reason to take things at my own pace. This is ‘only’ a ‘hobby’ after all and I have, to put it mildly, a lot on. However, it still pains me to see quality pile up whilst I don’t have the energy to attend to it. Leaving aside my own musical fumblings, writing is how I pay my way but, despite being thrilled by a lot of what I am hearing, my organs of musical appreciation are currently worn to sorry nubs, my powers of whimsical metaphor generation flummoxed.
So what to do? It don’t seem right to sleep on so much good stuff so I’m going to embark on a desk/head clearing news round-up and see what happens. I apologise to those kind enough to submit their work recently – you may not be getting the 1000 word flight of fancy you were perhaps hoping for – but I call on the discerning readership of this flagship blog to do their duty and check this gubbins out.
First then: RFM offers heartfelt congratulations to our Mexican cousin Miguel Perez and his comrade-in-arms Pablo Mejia on the occasion of the hundredth release from their netlabel Oracle. A remarkable achievement, an admirable dedication. Number 100 itself is Children of the Corn, A Tribute by Crown of Bone. From the off this is ruthlessly pummelling – watch where you have the volume set prior to pressing play – and until a change of direction in its final minutes (during which the soundtrack of the film that inspired it is sampled, I’m guessing) is like screaming into a hurricane. You already know if you like this kind of thing – check it out if you do, it’s a great example.
Other noteworthy recent releases include Masiva Pared Dedicada Al Placer by Miguel’s own La Mancha Del Pecado. This is a feature length (96 minutes!) rumbling drone which sits static in a culveresque way, like some machinery of war idling as a mechanic fine tunes the engine, before exploding with speaker-challenging bass in an all too short final section. I was so amused by this that I imported the file into Audacity and, as expected, the wave form looks like something that you’d use to unblock a sink, or bash someone over the head with. At the other end of the spectrum we have a four track, 21 minute EP titled simply Demo II by ErosM. This music is sombre and delicate, weighty and expressive. It shows discipline, ambition and a seriousness of intent that makes its short running time all the more remarkable. Those of you into Geordie drone/noise should be tempted across the Atlantic to pick this one up.
Closer to home, we find a split release on hairdryer excommunication featuring field-recording-based tracks by label boss Kevin Sanders and bearded polymath Seth Cooke. I’m saying nowt about Seth’s effort here because (spoiler alert) I’m going to proclaim his genius (again) in a soon come review of his latest for Sheepscar Light Industrial. Kev’s ‘side’, a piece of augmented atmospherics titled ‘Eight aisles (for Truro Court)’, brought on an irresistible attack of vanity on my part as I thought I could hear the influence of my very own ‘eaves’ in its construction. It’s a largely domestic recording buzzed up with accompanying fuzzy drift. I put on a Christmas cracker paper crown saved for such occasions, proclaimed myself King of Drone and strutted up and down the hallway. Then I listened to his latest work, heard more saying less more nothing enraptured in their mud of nothingness (or “no matter”), four tracks of entirely lovely, glittering brilliance constructed from nothing but a ukulele and a fuzz pedal. I was, all joking and whimsy aside, moved. Once I’d finished gawping I tore up my pathetic headgear in a fit of jealous rage.
Also well worth getting hold of is Salivate Stone by Petals, Kev’s usual nom de plume. This tape has been released in a perilously limited edition by Dirty Demos and comes lovingly cocooned in a bed of tissue paper within an oversized case. The content is spring-loaded, high tension, balanced, held by the slightest of catches. Spiralling screws lift a heavy vibe upwards whilst friction heats the barely greased moving parts until they throb and grind against one another. Birds tweet. Clearly, he is the King.
Whilst I’m on interestingly packaged noise tapes, I have to mention the Suburban Howl / Mutant Ape split on Turgid Animal. Here you will find two sides of unnerving catharsis housed on a neon orange cassette safety-pinned into a hessian bag painted in camo colours (shades of TG’s industrial 7″s) and accompanied with an exquisite mini-comic detailing a suicide by self-butchery. The object as a whole has a satisfyingly doom-struck, hopeless aura. Two new tapes on Lee Stokoe’s Matching Head label are dressed in his standard livery of black and white sleeves with the minimal information provided typewritten by hand. The Culver / Xazzaz split sees Lee’s giant robot square up to Mike’s lizard monster in a contest to decide who wins the North East. An honourable draw is the all-too-predictable outcome and both end up side by side, content to stamp on the false noise pretenders that dare challenge them. foreign tongues by Sindre Bjerga documents three involving live sets from his travels in 2012. Has he now got something released on every noise micro-label in the world? He can’t be far off.
Others are content to release their own live stuff. I know nothing about The Truth About Frank other than what can be gleaned from their Bandcamp site but suffice to say that a friend of Hogwash, that is the admirably eclectic and regular experimental music evening hosted by Dave, Noah and Benbow, is a friend of radiofreemidwich. My own single figures was recorded at one of their gigs. TTAF’s set is a three stage affair – a shuffling beat, looped, layered barely intelligible voices, orchestral stabs to finish – that I found engaging and entertaining. They don’t try and do too much in their twenty minutes, each idea is allowed time to breath. They also submitted a bonkers photoshop collage to The Barrel Nut #2 – guys, check your email! I’m waiting on a postal address so I can send you a few paper copies!
Also to be found on Bandcamp are two live sets by Charles Dexter Ward performed at the Cumberland Arms and Morden Tower respectively, both to be found in that Newcastle I keep going on about. These pieces are beautiful. There is fuzz tone shimmer with enough bite to chew your ego to mush. There are chopped and filtered loops heavy enough to anchor the vibe yet sinuous enough to let the groove flow and build. They do the thing that a successful live recording must do: make you wish you’d been there.
Finally, then, we have the album of the year. Well, maybe – it is certainly a contender. ショウガナイ by Shoganai was one of those out of the blue ‘hi, let me introduce myself, would you like to hear my album?’ surprises that makes this ‘job’ such a joy (the cover is the pic that heads this article). The fella behind this project, remaining semi-anonymous for his own reasons, has produced a piece of work so ambitious and accomplished that the fact that it is available to download on a pay-what-you-like basis from that Bandcamp left me stupefied. More evidence of the golden age, should it be needed.
Some details: your download will contain nine tracks spanning 41 minutes. These episodes are clearly the product of a single aesthetic but vary in construction. There is computerborne surrealism, the programme code distorted by a horseshoe magnet ordered from the Acme catalogue, there is deep-fried tropical psychedelia the like of which wouldn’t be out of place on a Space Victim or AshNav album, and there is the cooing and squawking of an alien menagerie, recorded rooting and strutting about the forest floor on a distant, poisonous world.
I’m imaging (the muse! she returns!) one of these creatures sitting patiently in a tree, humming and carving intricate patterns in the bark with an impossibly sharp talon. Earlier it was furious having found itself caught in a snare – the indignity! It freed itself immediately, of course, and is now waiting for the return of the witless hunter that set the trap. The unsuspecting fool is going to be disembowelled for his trouble. The creature trills to itself, musically…
…and on that happy note, I call ‘enough!’ Plenty of links within the body of the article – go hear for yourselves.
rob takes huge bite, eyes water, grins, attempts to swallow: rfm rounds ’em up
June 28, 2013 at 11:56 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 2 CommentsTags: aetheric records, brian lavelle, colectivo n, crater lake sound, drone, dust unsettled, electro pop, electronica, etai keshiki, improv, marky loo loo, miguel perez, mika jarvis, nacht und nebel, new music, no audience underground, noise, oracle netlabel, people-eaters, peopling, tapes, the subs, the subs(cribers)
people-eaters – hinterland (3” CD-r, edition of 20, or download, Aetheric Records)
people-eaters – vore EP (download, Aetheric Records)
peopling – BULBOUT (download, self-released)
Etai Keshiki – Shit Off (download, self released)
nacht und nebel – downloads culled from five various releases
Colectivo “N” – La Ultima Tocada 06-02-2013 (download, Oracle Netlabel, ORE95)
Brian Lavelle – The Night Ocean (download, Dust, Unsettled)
The Subs(Cribers) – Spilling Gravy In The Castle Of unfathomable Terrors (tape, edition of 40, Crater Lake, CL#003)
Dear reader, as a fellow music fan, I wonder if you ever feel that you have bitten off more than you can chew? Do you stare forlornly at a pile of unheard tapes and CD-rs? Do you scroll guiltily through the overfull menus on your mp3 player? Do you look at your monthly credit card bill, panic that you have been the victim of some kind of fraud, then realise that all those little Paypal payments are for various microlabel whims?
Heh, heh…
It’s brilliant isn’t it? What a privilege to have access to so much terrific art and the wonderful people that make it! I wouldn’t have it any other way: long may I choke. A case in point: last month through a mixture of hard work, delegation and judicious use of the words ‘no thanks’ I managed to get the review pile here at Midwich Mansions down to zero items. Did I take the opportunity to sit on the porch and admire the rhododendron flowers? Did I bollocks. I touted for freebies, I drifted around Bandcamp, I even paid for a few physical objects with actual money. Last week the right speaker of my ear buds broke and I had an infection in my left ear that made it painful to listen to music. Time to take a break? Not a bit of it. I ended up ramming the still working left bud into the wrong ear so I could continue getting my groove on, albeit in discombobulating mono – *sighs, grins sheepishly* – I just can’t help myself. The upshot of all this silliness is that the review pile is now teetering again and a round-up is in order. I shall point you at some great stuff that can be had cheaply or for nowt and explain with brisk efficiency why you should check it out. Links at the end. First up…
hinterland by people-eaters comprises two tracks totalling about 19 minutes and is available as a criminally limited 3″ CD-r with lovely cover by Crow versus Crow (a sort of ethereal version of the Black Flag logo), or as a download from that Bandcamp. The main components of the music are a swell of delicately balanced feedback, some breathy electronics and a low, hissing crackle (monotron?) which sprinkles a pinch of iron filings over the mix. It has a cool, enveloping feel – as if the frozen wastes are close, but that you are protected from them by a layer of parental skin and hair. Thus it documents the antenatal experience of a gestating polar bear cub (now there is a pull quote for a press release if ever I saw one: “makes you feel like an ursine foetus” – radiofreemidwich). It is also beautifully recorded and this attention to detail shows an admirable faith in their own vision. If you are going to take the trouble to return your listener to the womb then you shouldn’t allow anything to poke the amniotic sac.
The vore EP (five tracks, 21 minutes, Bandcamp download) shows a similar level of light but unswerving control. Minimal elements – an ominous rumble, a voodoo rattle, the splintered reflections from a broken mirror – are slowly rotated to give the listener a chance to appreciate each facet, then dismissed. There is, dare I say it, a midwichian simplicity to this release: the methods of construction are discretely hidden, the sounds trusted to engage (or not) on their own terms. I wholeheartedly approve of this discipline and like the results very much.
Coming at things from a different but equally satisfying direction is New York based noisester Ronnie Gonzalez who records as peopling. His skill is in taking the tropes of power noise – gargling electronics, sulphuric vocal distortion – and by combining them judiciously with more accessible ‘musical’ elements creating something fun and life-affirming. His latest, BULBOUT, a three track EP totalling seven minutes, has the funk – not a notion much called upon here at RFM. Older readers may recall the mutant pop of early 90s electro-industro-punkers like Babyland (yeah, if you want ‘played once on John Peel 20 years ago’ references this blog is for you!). Peopling is the teenage son of that sound: beaming, busting with mischievous energy and clearly spitting out his medication the second the nurse leaves the room.
Ronnie refers to BULBOUT as a ‘digital 7″ single’ which makes perfect sense to me. One of the strengths of the Bandcamp model is that, within the prescribed site format (ugly but functional enough to be transparent), you are free to present your release how you like. If your work is complete, coherent and self-contained then why can’t it be an ‘album’, even if it is only two minutes long? Which brings me to…
Shit Off by Etai Keshiki is a one track album totalling an epic 113 seconds and apparently named for an incidental detail in the short film My Wrongs 8245-8249 and 117 by Chris Morris (click on thumbnail to enlarge). It is hardcore fast, rhythmically elastic and very, very angry. Imagine the camera focussed on someone drowning in a lake, screaming for help as they surface, limbs flailing in the churning froth. Then the camera pulls back to reveal there are actually four people making exactly the same moves in unison. This is synchronised, precision flailing. Freely downloadable but chuck these kids some money if you can as they are always proper anarcho-punk skint.
New to me is the charming Henry Davies who took my left elbow in one hand and with the other gestured to his Bandcamp site where the lazy can find all his recordings as nacht und nebel collected in one convenient location. I downloaded the newest five – split tape w/Crimwewave, split tape w/Lea Cummings, hrönir, split 7″ with W>A>S>P>S and 466 Days originating on various labels – which takes us from the present day back to October of last year. Selecting ‘play all’ on my mp3 device accidentally compiled them into an impressively cohesive 11 track, 61 minute ‘album’ of short and shortish noise tracks.
Henry’s sole sound source is, apparently, a cello though there is little that sounds like a Bach concerto here. Like Chrissie Caulfield’s violin, I suspect his instrument is filtered and processed by a daisy-chain of effects before it reaches our ears. Most of this is fairly heavy duty electronic noise but it is far from being mere HNW. Henry has an ear for the rhythmically mechanical and is adept at handling a rolling crescendo – a quality sorely lacking in much overly-static ‘harsh’ noise. Thus the tracks have dynamism, momentum and are edited for impact. The rhythmic elements clear some headspace which allows the listener to fully appreciate the atmosphere. Thus despite being a demanding listen, the work is never wilfully bombastic or alienating. Very much worth your while.
A word about Henry’s band name, as I was troubled by it. Nacht and nebel (‘night and fog’) was the Nazi policy of providing no information as to the fate of those taken prisoner by the regime. It facilitated mass murder, unimaginable horror shrouded behind mute bureaucracy. Is there anything more nightmarish? It is also the German title of Nuit et brouillard a profoundly harrowing short documentary film about the Holocaust released in 1955, directed by Alain Resnais. In short: why the fuck would anyone choose this as their band name? I put this to him and he replied:
First off, it’s emphatically not a pro-nazi thing at all.
When I started doing this (about 7 years ago, I think?) I had the idea that whatever name I chose for it should in some way reflect the fact that it isn’t obvious that all the sounds originally come from the same source (a ‘cello) – a kind of audio obscurantism, if you like. Around the same time, I happened to be reading Philip K Dick’s The Simulacra, which mentions nacht und nebel in passing, and that it translates to night and fog (but little else, as i recall), which struck me as exactly the sort of thing I had in mind. Some investigation at the library later and the awful nature of it was quite striking.
My intention with nacht und nebel musically has always been to evoke an atmosphere of dread more than anything, with suggestions of unsettling and nightmarish things going on that are being hidden from view so you can never quite make them out (seen through a glass, darkly, as it were) and that you have no control over. (Which no doubt betrays my interest in certain kinds of horror) – judging my success or otherwise at attaining such arguably highfalutin goals is no doubt best left as an exercise for the listener. But that all played into the choice of name as well in one way or another – as you say, troubling.
So yes, it’s entirely abhorrent, both for what it obscured and that it enabled ‘across-the-board, silent defiance of international treaties and conventions: one cannot apply the limits and terms of humane treatment in war if one cannot locate a victim or discern that victim’s fate.’ That said, I do find it interesting that ‘band’ names are almost always taken to be a positive thing (a kind of seal of approval) when there’s no real reason for the opposite not to be the case (i.e. the band ebola, for instance, come to mind as an example.)
I was satisfied with this (and, as an aside, that last point is an interesting one). I suppose my worry about his use of that concept for a band name comes from growing up with industrial noise and power electronics in the 1980s and 1990s. That scene was overflowing with idiots vying to be the most ‘shocking’ or ‘challenging’ or ‘transgressive’ and I suppose when I found out what ‘nacht and nebel’ referred to I was taken back to those tedious times. Now I see that is not Henry’s intention at all and, whilst I am still squeamish about the use of such concepts/imagery in this context, I’m happy to acknowledge that he has at least thought this through.
OK, let’s lighten the mood.
Colectivo N is the improv duo of RFM regular Miguel Perez (La Mancha Del Pecado, The Skull Mask) and his compañero Picho. La Ultima Tocada (June 2, 2013) is the document of their last gig together before Picho moved way over west to that other crazy border town Tijuana. What we have here is a very entertaining quarter hour of Miguel jaggling the strings (yes I know jaggling isn’t a proper word but you know exactly what I mean, don’t you?) of his guitar whilst Picho wails comically and/or mournfully through a strangulated trumpet. There are vocals: sardonic interludes and some exaggerated, grunting pastiche of lounge jazz – a bit in the first few minutes reminded me of the scat solo in the immortal ‘mnah mnah’ Muppet Show sketch. Worth noting that this performance did not take place in the Juarez equivalent of the Fox & Newt in front of a knowing, improv-savvy audience but in a regular bar in front of bemused punters who had little idea what was occurring. These boys have some big brass balls. Miguel tells me that the recording cuts out before the applause because… there was no applause. Which is both hilarious and awesome.
After all this noisy racket my poor infected ears needed a little balm so, on a whim, I made a visit to the website of long-term friend of this blog Brian Lavelle. Brian’s work, that is: his own recordings and those made by friends and associates released by him on his Bandcamp label Dust, Unsettled, is uniformly excellent. To my shame, a quick search of this blog reveals that he has not been mentioned recently. My apologies – I suspect this is because I rather take him and the quality of his offerings for granted. Erik Satie once described selections of his own work as ‘furniture music’, meaning them to be used as background ambience, and I have to admit to treating Brian’s back catalogue as a kind of wing-backed leather armchair. Around Midwich Mansions his music is ‘used’ – as a lullaby, a massage, an exotic holiday, a diverting puzzle – rather than ‘listened to’ as such. Sounds like a back-handed compliment, I know, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.
Take, for example, The Night Ocean a 40 minute, single track album inspired by an atmospheric short story by H.P. Lovecraft and R.H. Barlow (a pdf version of which is thoughtfully included with the download). It ripples in the cool offshore breeze, it shimmers with reflected moonlight (‘Yet for me there is a haunting and inscrutable glamour in all the ocean’s moods. It is in the melancholy silver foam beneath the moon’s waxen corpse…’), it fizzes as each stroke disturbs the plankton and triggers a phosphorescent display. And that is it: no driving forward momentum, no complicated narrative, just a barely perceptible ebb and flow. By using ‘stop’ or ‘repeat’ this track can be made to last exactly as long as you need it to. An excellent example of the underrated sub-genre LNW (lovely noise wall).
And finally…
If the concept of ‘goodwill’ could be transformed into a band then the result would be The Subs, such is the regard with which they are held. The doe-eyed adoration is justly deserved, however, as the duo of Markylooloo (Stoke scene veteran, paragon of virtue) and Mika (the girl who radiates sunshine) produce electro-pop perfection. The band’s small but exquisite catalogue of songs, crafted in fits of sporadic creativity spanning two decades, is almost overwhelmingly charming. Cute without being twee, sweet without being saccharine, daft without being stupid – it’s as groovily, refreshingly life-affirming as eating ice-lollies in the park on a warm Sunday afternoon. Lovely.
—ooOoo—
Right then, here’s where to get all this great stuff:
The Subs(Cribers) – Discogs listing, more info here, no word on the Crater Lake site as yet so email Pete – pete_cann@hotmail.co.uk – for ordering details.
a handshake from mexico: simulacro, la mancha del pecado, wehrmacht lombardo
May 28, 2013 at 6:49 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: altar of waste, drone, jorge gonzalez, la mancha del pecado, miguel perez, new music, no audience underground, noise, oracle netlabel, shameless self-congratulation, simulacro, wehrmacht lombardo
simulacro – cuatro ep (CD-r or download, registro latente)
La Mancha Del Pecado – Anciano Y Enfermo (CD-r, Altar of Waste, AOW 52, edition of 20)
Wehrmacht Lombardo – Au Convent de Panthemont (CD-r, Altar of Waste, AOW 61, edition of 20)
Some time ago I saw an interview with that Thom Yorke from that Radiohead (presumably by accident, I have no more than a passing interest in their work) in which he was asked his opinion as to the meaning of life. He gave the following answer:
The most essential thing in life is to establish heartfelt communication with others, there’s bugger all else to do.
I thought this impressively robust and, whilst not agreeing entirely with the second clause, found myself nodding in vigorous approval. As I can’t think of a better way of putting it, I find myself in the embarrassing situation of living by a maxim trotted out by a pop star (of sorts), albeit a thoughtful one. Oh well, it could be worse: ‘life ain’t nothing but bitches and money’ as Ice Cube once asserted…
Anyway, I was reminded of Mr. Yorke’s comment again the other day when a package arrived at Midwich Mansions from my Mexican Cousin Miguel Perez, wrapped, as is his habit, with rolls and rolls of sellotape. Hacking it open, I found it to contain, amongst other things, two new releases by Miguel himself (see below) and a letter and CD-r from a fellow Mexican previously unknown to me named Jorge Gonzalez.
Jorge could easily have just emailed me but instead he took the trouble to write a (beautifully handwritten – see scan) letter and instead of just sending me his CD-r directly, forwarded it to Miguel to include with his by way of an introduction. I was charmed by his effort, approach and the sentiment of his correspondence. This, comrades, is WHAT IT IS ALL ABOUT: making connections with far-flung enthusiasts. That this guy on the other side of the world has been inspired by our meagre endeavours is enormously heartening and I was touched by the method he used to contact me. I was amused to discover that it took a blog based in the North of England to bring these two countrymen together. The no-audience underground is like Gentleman’s Relish on hot buttered toast: spread thinly, richly flavoured, not for everyone but delicious to those who have acquired the taste.
So what of his music? Well, Jorge records under the name simulacro and this CD-r comprises four tracks (hence the title), totalling about 20 minutes, in a colour printed card sleeve. The opener, ‘hangar 197 X’ is five minutes of free rock that I have to admit didn’t grab me. Its heart is in the right place but it isn’t my bag. Track two, ‘nebulizador eterico’ is a slow moving lava flow of drone metal – heavy, viscous, hot enough to make the air shake but spacious enough to walk around. I like this very much. ‘escudo ceramico’ is a synth whine overlaid with some ghost jazz guitar. It kinda works and its oddness has grown on me. The closer, ‘instruccion clasificada’, is a fitting final track as it draws on elements of the previous three: synth drone, a background rattle of metal guitar, slow sludge rock stabs allowed to bleed out. So: one track I didn’t like, one I really did, two others that showed interest and promise. OK, I’ll settle with that for now and look forward to Jorge’s next effort.
Do your bit for international no-audience solidarity and visit his netlabel blogspot where you’ll find details and links to his files at archive.org. You don’t have to break out the calligraphy pens.
…and speaking of international no-audience solidarity: Miguel Perez, another fine case in point. My first mention of him and his work was a one-line dismissal of his side of a split tape shared with Culver back in the Summer of 2011. Undaunted, he got in touch to say thanks for the mention anyway and since then a transatlantic friendship has blossomed that has involved thousands of words sent in emails, the exchange of hours of music via the magic of the internet, many parcels trusted to the worrisome international postal system and collaborations on a couple of releases with more promised for the future. Partly via radiofreemidwich but mainly due to his own indefatigable spirit he has, for example, ‘met’ Yol and formed the peerlessly strange improv duo Neck vs. Throat, secured releases on excellent labels like Striate Cortex, Molotov and Sheepscar Light Industrial and arranged collaborations with everyone he can pin down. I’ve heard so much of his work over the last couple of years I feel like I’ve been sitting drinking a coke on his doorstep, listening to him figure it all out in real time.
Whilst his work rate would kill a lesser man, or at least lead to a battle-fatigued drop in quality, the opposite seems to be true of Miguel. The trick is: he listens. He reads his reviews, takes it all on board and makes mental notes of things to try next, he learns from his collaborators and, especially recently, he approaches his own solo ventures with a view to refining their quality, concentrating their purpose. All this whilst already being a virtuoso guitarist having grown up in the metal scene. He tells me that he is satisfying the hard-plucked improv impulse with his guitar duo Colectivo N (even playing live, winning over bars full of initially puzzled punters) which is allowing him to focus on the majesty of drone with his other projects.
The two albums pictured above illustrate his development perfectly. Produced in very limited editions, as is typical for this intriguing and prolific American label, they are packaged in DVD style cases and wrapped in some striking photography (even more eye-opening when you find out that the provocatively posed ‘nun’ adorning the inlay of Au Convent de Panthemont is Miguel’s wife Maria! What can you say to that?!). The professional quality of the finish is noteworthy considering the tiny number available, but entirely appropriate given the quality of the contents.
Au Convent de Panthemont by Wehrmacht Lombardo is an epic ‘airless drone’ (Miguel’s own description) apparently inspired by the Marquis de Sade’s Juliette. Whilst I agree that it is claustrophobic, albeit in an erotically complicated way, I’d say its defining characteristic is an ever present throb and that the drone, although heady and intoxicating, is secondary.
After a brief orgiastic opening, for the first half hour this throb plays out aching and distended, gratification painfully delayed, in an atmosphere thick with incense. Around the 30 minute mark an insistent hiss is pushed to the fore adding a deceptively soothing layer of white noise balm under which the fleshy redness continues to pulse. With 20 minutes to go the rhythm resolves into a metallic clatter which, in this decadent context, suggests the workings of a flagellating machine into which out hapless protagonist has been strapped. The last few minutes see the return of the initial throb only to be merged with a final burst of the duelling hiss. It’s a satisfyingly ambiguous conclusion.
The pace of this piece is perfect. The movements flow naturally from one to another giving it a clear, resolute narrative drive despite its minimal components. That it remains wholly engaging over a running time of more than an hour is a measure of Miguel’s accomplishment.
Anciano Y Enfermo (‘Old and Sick’) by La Mancha Del Pecado comprises two tracks (the title track is 46 minutes long, the second a mere 25) and is apparently inspired by a freakish snowstorm hitting Miguel’s home town of Juarez.
It is stating the obvious to say that ‘Anciano Y Enfermo’ does indeed sound cold. I’m not above reaching for clichéd imagery – arctic winds across the tundra, electric blue ice caverns and so on – but a proper account of this track demands a little more effort. You could consider it purely descriptive but I think it also contains a kind of dread for the future, a middle-of-the-night panic that we are well on the way to making this planet uninhabitable for us humans. This could be what we have to look forward to: what isn’t on fire is underwater, what isn’t desert is frozen. I wasn’t entirely convinced by John Hillcoat’s film of Cormac McCarthy’s book The Road but a few scenes have stuck with me, one of which I thought was a very efficient piece of character exposition. In a flashback to the start of the civilisation ending disaster, the Viggo Mortenson character looks out of the window at the coming chaos and immediately starts filling the bath with water. He isn’t going to wash, of course, he realises that the water supply may soon be cut off. He’s a survivor. This track makes me want to fill the bath.
‘Tragedia Silenciosa’ has an oceanic feel. It could be a soundtrack to the recurring nightmare of a shipwreck survivor. In the dream they are not dragged onto the beach and rescued but instead drown under the wind whipped surf in the howling black of the night storm. The ‘chk, chk, chk’ noise, an often present artefact of Miguel’s recording equipment, here reads as the superimposed sound of a motor dinghy forlornly searching the bay the following morning for corpses or salvageable jetsam.
A great deal of patience, restraint and concentration are shown in the construction of these long form compositions. With this release (and alongside some other recent work) La Mancha Del Pecado shrugs off the epithet ‘Culveresque’ and becomes its own creation. Miguel has distilled his sound from the muddy mixture of his influences and what remains is a clarified spirit. As Cory Strand, Altar of Waste head honcho, puts it:
…these sorts of records are exactly why I started the label in the first place. You will not emerge unscathed. Fucking amazing.
I concur.
Altar of Waste blog, entry on La Mancha Del Pecado, entry on Wehrmacht Lombardo
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