everyone’s favourite uncle: joe murray on adam bohman (again)
June 25, 2014 at 11:09 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: adam bohman, clive graham, collage, dictaphonics, improv, joe murray, new music, no audience underground, noise, paradigm discs, sound diaries, talking tapes, vocal improvisation
ADAM BOHMAN – Music and words 2 (CD, paradigm discs, PD 30)
Like a classic mixtape you make for your good friend overseas this utterly charming record is less snapshot of ‘where it’s at’ and more time-travel device for the hyper-elastic mind.
Clive Graham from paradigm discs is the good-guy compiler here and all his source material comes from the personal chump-tapes and hen’s teeth releases from everyone’s favourite uncle – Adam Bohman. Some recordings stretch back to 1977 and it’s a trip to hear Adam as a young man all clipped and springy.
In Music and words (re-released 2013) the spotlight was on Adam’s tutored ping, verbal monologues and electric tape-jiggery. This time round (or before, or after) we get to hear some more linear sonic collage, extended ‘talking tapes’ and some real life songs!
You all know that the art of compiler lies in pacing and placement. Do you big-bang it at the start or drop a sleeper half way through side two? Well, dear reader, with material as rich as this you can afford to do both.
Things start with the world-wide mega-hit ‘When a man’; a viciously witty response to every meathead jock, alpha male and pumped-up Charles Atlas type swinging their (metaphorical) johnson in your (metaphorical) face. Delivered in the style of a gravelly action-film trailer arguing with itself we are treated to the world of what real men see, think and do. Real men (the interlocking voices of ‘Kenny’ & ‘Shane’ tell us) kill people, blow them away and have intercourse with horny chicks. And then it piles weirdness on weirdness with Rhodes Boyson and Steven Segal and Gore Vidal being referenced…
I saw someone blown away by Norman Lamont
…creeps out of one speaker building mental pictures of an evil-looking Spitting Image puppet getting freaky with the Bohman fist controlling.
And it’s these talking tapes (and variations thereof) that have captured the no-audience underground so much. Trips to London, Southend-on-Sea and Wiesbaden become enlightening travel guides of the curious-mundane. Adam’s daily fry-ups, train delays and listening habits are magnified through tape to enter a level of detail Nicholson Baker would be proud of. London & Wiesbaden are the build-up to gigs Adam is playing and the slow and measured psychedelic-domestic reveals a universe of connections; it becomes a precursor to the show, an essential route map of thought-processes that lead up to a tantalising blank, because, of course, the show itself is not represented. His trip through customs on one of the Wiesbaden pieces is almost a live performance anyway with the airport security playing a supporting role to Adam’s youthful mutters.
The sonic-collage pieces seem to each take a different medium and apply the same signature blunt tape edits creating delightful variations. In ‘Interruptions’ an old chord organ chokes and coughs with dust. In ‘Screams of the Undead Earthworms’ vocal blips and bibber melt like spit and during ‘Crimson Catfish’ Adam takes rogue radio recordings and chops them up with a rusty hacksaw.
The more song-oriented pieces: ‘Vicar with a Travel Bag’ or ‘Ordnance Survey’ or ‘Waterfall Song’ are as British as a cockle-scented general. His cheeks brick-red from massive Sherry consumption he wonders:
Why didn’t that Damon Albarn chappie use Bohman rather than Ray Davis to create his Hope & Glory template? Others would have followed. I can see Shed Seven ditch their feathercuts for Bohmanesque tonsures, muttering into Dictaphones as they search the aisles of Maplin’s for cheap batteries. The Verve taking their ricket-legged swagger down the allotment with a tartan flask, carefully comparing the differing resonance of scrap metal pipes. And of course Elastica copying every detail of a collage down to source material and then passing it off as their own work.
But never let it said these are naive recordings. If you are looking for cynical bite ‘My Wife’s going to have a Baby” is dripping with sarcasm and first-world-male-dread. The Southend-on-Sea talking tapes capture the darker side of Essex drinking culture and Adam acknowledges “I must sound like a terrible snob” as he avoids the thick-necked quaffers. The ‘Jenkins Family’ is pretty much a sharp poke at cultural tourism and, as the sleeve notes proudly point out,
…was recorded the year before EastEnders was first broadcast.
At just over 79 minutes this is a long record…but never seems it. The pieces have a careful planning (as careful as any mixtape meant for wooing I’m guessing); the Talking Tapes come in convenient chunks and are interspersed with collage and song, making this more like an afternoon with a spectral Radio 4 taken hostage by the ordinary ghost. Essential.
tight to the brassy keyhole: joe murray eavesdrops on adam bohman’s music & words
September 4, 2013 at 10:03 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: adam bohman, dictaphonics, improv, joe murray, new music, no audience underground, noise, one wobbly egg, paradigm discs, sound diaries, vocal improvisation
music and words by ADAM BOHMAN (CD, paradigm discs, PD09)
I’ve struggled with this review for about a month and spilled a lake of Quink in the process. My first reaction to hearing Music & Words was a big sloppy love poem, complete with little hearts drawn to dot any ‘i’s. Then I went the other way and got all WIRE magazine serious (don’t you dare! Ed) explaining how Adam Bohman fits into the UK underground like a lop-sided jigsaw piece (Editor’s note: this album was originally released in 1999 and was reissued in June of this year). In the end I almost fell back on my lazy Bananafish approximation and licked up the mouldy pool of mung with my double tongue-brother. But I guess in these situations I have to fall back to the last refuge of the music guest-blogger, honesty. And it’s with pure, clear honesty I declare Music & Words a phenomenal and brave record. It would be easy to hurl around the words, ‘charming’ or ‘naive’ or perhaps ‘childlike’ but make no mistake…this is weighed with the heavy domestic like grandparents that lived through the horrors of war. We often talk about a musician creating their own language. That’s normally a feat in itself. But it’s own belief system? That’s upper-level creativity of Scott Walker (Tilt onwards) proportions.
The first two studio tracks are dandy variations on that ribbed springs and echoplexed gongs caper giving a gamelan electric vibe. ‘Nice music to read to’ I think but gosh…the pages stop turning for good on track three ‘At Home (Sunbury)’ as Adam lists his tea (liver, mashed potatoes and Brussels Sprouts) and explains where he is and what his doing – visiting family for Christmas.
I’ve heard a million sound diaries and sonic art pieces that aim to give a home to vagrant sounds but this, simply and clearly nails you to the spot and I end up staring at the cheap-o stereo like it’s going to sit up and waggle dance. It all reminds me of a Home Counties One Wobbly Egg from Dictaphone flag wavers Fuckin’ Amateurs. The hurly-burly mixture of deadpan voice, rusty metal and blast of radio/TV/tape noise are as comforting as a strong brew and hobnob.
With the scene set ‘Sun dried’ becomes a sour sorbet of Dictaphone/tape recorder jump-cuts and fine tones (Adam’s Pause Pieces). Annoying at first but gradually easing into another diary entry (what Adam calls his Talking Tapes) that leaps into a treatise on preparing fish while The Fall and The Pulp (from John Peel’s festive 50) mung on, self-importantly in the background. Soon I realise…I am listening like an eavesdropper; ear stuck tight to the brassy key hole. And it’s thrilling!
Adam’s obsessions are his food (breakfast, dinner, tea and sundry snacks are described with bored relish) and buttoned up Public Safety instructions that are read with a smirk like a sherried-up uncle. The whole mashy mess is overlaid and underlaid with inappropriate music, clues to set the scene, TV rabble and the occasional violent tape ‘scree’ and crumpled whirr. The editing is a work of genius. Whenever possible words are slurred as the PAUSE and RECORD button are pressed together making the Christmassy fug gin-soaked…even at breakfast. ‘At Home (Red Mullet, the Woodcock of the Sea)’ is the Rosetta Stone of this odyssey with Adam chatting to his mum about biscuits, snatches of church bells, cookery book recitation, tape fuckery and a winter walk to the pub with the interior dialogue of the prodigal son; at times mocking, at time sentimental about his home town. I know this feeling so well having escaped small-town boredom in my teens to discover the thrilling anonymity of the city. Words lurch into the mix: straight into clandestine toilet recordings and the ‘whuuuuush’ of cars speeding by. This breathtaking, dizzying listen comes to a gentle close with Adam lying in bed listening to the wind and rain before we have one quick jerk into Adamworld for a post script chat with mum about Sam/Zam Hoffman. ‘It was quite near to sending me mad’ says mum with a very mad giggle.
When the words cease we are left with some tasty scrapings on ‘sweepings’ that seem to four-track the groaning of iron ore and would happily satisfy any deep droner.
But it’s not all tape experiment, ‘In Memoriam E. Power Briggs’ is live in front of a chirpy sounding audience. It feels like an afternoon in a dusty village hall until screwed up snatches of seaside organ get dragged down the A1 all Christian Marclay-like as Pianosaurus jam alongside in a side-car.
The mix of studio, live and Dictaphone pieces are in no way jarring or affected. In fact this has the feel of a compilation tape you might make for a friend’s older brother…keen to impress with your jazz knowledge but really wanting to get your grubby mitts on all them Emerson, Lake and Palmer doubles.
My dream tonight is One Wobbly Egg, Scott Walker & Adam Bohman meeting in Sunbury, outside the Estate Agents or maybe the Magpie Hotel, a fine bottle of red uncorked and breathing. As the vino gushes Adam clangs on the park railings, mumbling his daily diary as One Wobbly Egg skeets FFW blur out of a brace of Dictaphones. After a while, feeling around the sound, Scott drops hot coins in a bucket and adds bleak and dark harmonies. Come on…a Bohman/Walker/Egg trio gotta make the Oto scene eh?
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