pride of the potteries: sophie cooper on saboteuse, subs(cribers) and stoke on trent
March 23, 2015 at 4:52 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: andrew jarvis, electro pop, joincey, marky loo loo, mika de olivera, new music, no audience underground, noise, poot records, saboteuse, stoke on trent, subs(cribers)
Saboteuse – Death, Of Course (CD-r, Poot Records)
Subs(cribers) – Finger Fighting Basics For The Socially Inept (CD-r or download, self-released)
The City of Stoke on Trent is a place that on the surface looks to be completely dead. The town of Stoke itself has a High Street consisting of a few charity shops, boarded up failed businesses and an occasional nasty looking pub. It doesn’t look like much is going on but, if we delve a bit deeper, there is evidence that the city is on the cusp of a renaissance: art will save this place. In September 2014 arts organisation B-Arts received a whopping grant to develop their vision of Stoke on Trent as ‘Art City’, aiming to induce a positive change in how the city’s cultural profile is viewed. Activities are already taking place: B-Arts themselves have taken over a giant warehouse close to all those boarded up establishments and will offer cheap studio and exhibition space for artists to use, last year Supersonic organisers took over Hanford Park and presented a day’s festival, outdoor performance organisers Appetite have put on a series of free events across the towns bringing new work to locals and AirSpace Gallery in Hanley continues to curate fantastic contemporary art exhibitions in a disused Post Office building. These are just a handful of activities that I know about. Stoke is a place to watch and deserves this attention after having its original industry so brutally treated.
Radio Free Midwich is a music blog, of course, so what of the music scene in Stoke? The city has an interesting musical past and today when I look to its experimental fringes I see individuals from the area creating music and art largely because of an instinctual need to do so. I’m so thankful for this scene because, as I grew up in Stoke amongst constantly creative people, it taught me not to sit about and do nothing with my time. There’s a hell of a lot of talent in the Potteries and for now I would like to draw your attention to the following two releases.
Saboteuse – Death, Of Course
This CD-r came out sometime in 2014 on Poot Records and I’ve got to say, I find it a bit irritating that I didn’t know about this release until Joincey gave a copy to me personally in February this year. As the sleeve notes bear no mention of Poot Records at all I assumed it was self released but Joincey informed me otherwise. If you enter this title into a search engine it does pop up on Discogs and if you have a nose about there (and in the rest of the Poot Records catalogue) you’ll see that Luke puts out some awesome titles. I just can’t help but wish more people were able to know about this stuff when it first comes out.
Saboteuse is a duo of Andy Jarvis and Joincey. The pair have been making music together for a long time and it just gets better and better. Death, Of Course opens with ‘Yearning, “Rosebud”’, which is a brilliantly savage introduction. Starting with a quiet beat, like slow footsteps going into a dark cave, dirty looped bass then lays a foundation for a barely in control electric guitar ‘solo’ that sounds like it’s being beaten to pieces to make way for a clattering percussive ending. It’s terrifying. The sound puts you on edge and I can’t imagine anything I would like to find less during a cave exploration than the creatures summoned by this track.
On ‘Cheeking the other turn’ instrumental melodic lines interject, perfectly complementing the lyrics delivered by Joincey who loops words and sings over the top of them. It is difficult to work out what the words are about but I know they can’t be meaningless as the whole record has a strong sense of control over chaos. On ‘Blackened Pool’ the lyrics are more audible but still completely surreal:
I think I can take this heat because I’m wearing the white hat, which side are you on now? Cinnamon bagel, raisin bagel.
I’ve been listening to this record intently since I got it trying to work out what the lyrics mean but have got nowhere. It doesn’t matter though because this is the language of the Saboteuse world: better to just listen in.
What I find most interesting about this release is how smartly some songs segue into one another. It’s a “I wish I’d thought of that” moment between ‘Burying Yourself on a Desert Island’ and ‘You, Holding My Breath’ where the two tracks become one and a natural break eventually comes part way through the second. It reveals a well thought out and really intelligent approach to the construction of this record.
Saboteuse produce consistently innovative and compelling music. I can only hope that eventually some clever, fancy record label will cotton on to their brilliance and sort them out with the flash release they deserve.
Subs(cribers) – Finger Fighting Basics For The Socially Inept
The first time I saw The Subs play live was at their ‘comeback gig’ at Andy Jarvis’ hen do a couple of years ago in Stoke. This was Marky Loo Loo’s first time performing with Mika De Olivera on additional vocals and I’ll admit, I didn’t really get it at that point. I was nursing a particularly monstrous hangover after drinking too much gross lager in Newcastle’s The Full Moon the previous evening and just wasn’t in the right mood to understand the band. I mentioned this to Joincey who advised me not to be so dismissive because this was Mark’s “life’s work”. It wasn’t until I heard Finger Fighting Basics For The Socially Inept that I got what he meant.
Finger Fighting Basics For The Socially Inept was self-released on Valentines Day this year. It could just be a coincidence but I like to think of this album as a gesture of love towards Subs fans and to themselves. You couldn’t make this type of beautifully cute pop without being completely into it and the entertaining good times that come with it. There’s an ecstatic energy throughout the album that celebrates the overriding mission of creating joy for themselves and their listeners. It must have been so much fun to have made this.
Paradoxically, despite all this love and happiness the subjects covered by The Subs are dark and macabre and even death gets playfully joked about. My favourite track has got to be ‘A Day Out With The Aphids’ which on the surface comes over as a super sweet, toe tapping, pop tune but when you listen to the lyrics the aphids aren’t having such a great time: “what will the future hold? Death under plimsoll”. There’s a lightly morbid theme that runs throughout the album, I mean, light in the sense that the music is so blimming upbeat and happy that it takes your attention away from the grim subject matter. Check out these titles: ‘Killed By A Bath Nap’ (genius), ‘Next Spring You Will Die’ (charming) ‘Necro Supermarket’ (what??) ‘Dead Mans Jeans’ (where Mark picks up some new clothes from the local cemetery) and you know what, these songs are DEAD funny! Dark matter presented in rainbow wrapping paper, how could I have not seen how amazing this band were before? Is The Subs’ “Life’s Work”, to bring joy to all who listen? To remind us that it’s OK to just have a laugh sometimes? They are doing very well if so.
So there you have it, two contributions to the sound of Stoke on Trent – “Art City” in the making. I wish the place the very best.
—ooOoo—
Poot Records [Editor’s note: yeah, good luck with that. Be resourceful though – it’s worth it.]
grot all get mangled: joe murray on panelak, f. ampism, david birchall, rogier small, rotten tables, golden meat, ckdh
July 5, 2014 at 8:09 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: angurosakuson, ckdh, david birchall, f. ampism, improv, joe murray, new music, no audience underground, noise, panelak, pascal ansell, poot records, rogier small, rotten tables golden meat, tapes, total vermin, vocal improvisation
Panelak – Heimat (CD-r or download, Angurosakuson, AS#007)
F. Ampism – Chew Valley Moor Wardens (CD-r, Poot Records)
David Birchall/Rogier Small Duo – S/T (C20 tape, Poot Records)
Rotten Tables, Golden Meat – My Nose is Broken (C20 tape, Total Vermin)
CKDH – Yr Putrid Eyeballs (CD-r, Poot Records)
Panelak – Heimat
Starting with electronics swimming in electric bile over a bunch of Korean zither pings all antiseptic and clean an antique ZX81 crashes. KkKKkkqqQKkqKQKkk. In the Congo ghosts play Mbira via shortwave lightning with sudden peaks in volume and intensity. Phew! The first two songs (‘How I wrote Panelak’ & ‘Underfelt Silk Leaves’) are over and I’m sweating already.
‘Prayer Milk’ does that tunnel-vision thing for your ears making them tune inward as granular chuff curls like a graphite wave. Watch out casual surfers…don’t get caught in the undertow.
My gosh, this is the Crossfit of noise; all muscular beefing and sweaty reps. But…Panelak’s Pascal Ansell isn’t getting all Rollins on your ass. No sir. This is still pretty enough to make me blush pinky-red. Especially with the glitch water-jug/chess beats/preset keys of ‘Slugs Salloon’ which is the kinda junk turning up on PAN at the minute. Dance music mutated out the disco, round the corner and into the all night Deli serving chrome toaster-noise to anxious couples climbing out a collective K-hole. Selector? Re-rewind!
The 14 minute palette-cleanser ‘Nix Cornd Beef/Timesheet’ reminds me of the time I was locked in King Cross train station trying to avoid the security guards as semi-automated cleaning carts trundle the platforms snagging metal rails and sparking green in the darkness. Just so you know.
This prepares the listener for ‘BBBlues’ with a guitar that’s the sort of thing to give Albini nightmares such is the sound ripped, processed and fucked. The ever present waterfall vibe that bootleg software wafts becomes an undercurrent laying a liquid foundation.
The closer, ‘Largesse Projects’ is more Stingray-undersea-kingdom shit; follow the pressure waves of psychic-torpedoes as they zero in on their own personal Bismarck! At a mile deep the nitrogen/oxygen mixture makes mush of your brain. Half forgotten memories of Rave culture, Noise basements and night bus paranoia all curdle into a paste of grey-matter.
Thoughts intertwine and Jacques Cousteau leers at my wasted face under his gnarly woollen cap. “Get a grip” he yells (in French). But I’m too far gone on Panelak and burst out laughing at the salty puddle collecting round his brogues.
Shit man…this is strong stuff.
F. Ampism – Chew Valley Moor Wardens
Brighton-based beard F. Ampism has been riffing it for years. His set at Colour Out Of Space 2013 was one of the highlights of the weekend and this cheeky snapshot of mung is a earhole warmer par excellence.
The shingle-tape warping and snatched speech samples comes across all Chaotica and sits comfortably at the table with all that LAFMS shit; ‘cept there’s a handmade quality to this like wave-polished scrimshaw.
Let me explain. Wooden batteries get replaced with felt. Off-kilter percussion from Nairobi is laid over kitchen clatter (‘Bandoneon’). A baking tray buckles and reed flute plays comforting Azathoth (‘Indian Head’). Free-jazz workshops are rendered in miniature like the band are starting to arrive and the drummer practices exotic chops (‘Water from a Wooden Bowl’). Grotty tabla ‘slaps’ are slowed down into the futuristic plastic ‘Boing’ posing a problem for Mega City One judges (‘Norma Supral’) as mercury is sluiced down a drainpipe. There’s a fidget’s delight as KLF goof-on like ‘Chill Out’ (‘Comfrey Wazzo Shed Suite’). Repetitive faux-ethic glock plonks, bronze owls t-wit and t-woo during ‘Hanging Litterbugs’ as Martin Denny finds the sweet-spot on his analogue synth.
To sum up: loops of recorder grot all get mangled. You sit and raise a glass. The wind blows through your grass skirt.
And if god is a DJ, Amps sits at his right hand mixing all the uncomfortable sounds dropped at the pearly gates.
Check this mother out!
David Birchall/Rogier Small Duo
An eye-watering tape cover, all pink vibrations and Mexican skulls houses this crispy duck.
Warble-guitar rubberises snazzy drums all over side one with the clitter-clatter meshing like oilbeads. Dave’s dextrous volume pedal work gives the six string a human voice…an open-mouthed gasp that speaks in a dialect from the lost land of Atlantis. When the silvery bubbles of air float up they get well and truly popped by Rogier’s mini-trident as floppy skins (drum kit) pound like a war cry. Up Helly-Ah!
Texture is explored for sure but it’s got a furry quality, like mould-ridden cheese, that makes me salivate grey goo down my shirt front.
I saw these two live recently and was blown away by their Crimsons. Diggerty velocity and ultra-hard riffin’ that stopped on a dime leading to Pinteresque silence and uncomfortable stares. And it’s good to hear those dip-outs, troughs and fallows on this pinky tape. Too many beards just jam it without no contrasts…saps. The chaps got chops!
Side two starts off all mellow and that with a ribbed ripple, a cluster of notes that dart and dive around Smal’s dropped grenades. But these explosions become milestones, stately markers on a voyage over rough terrain before they gradually morph into the start of the Pink Panther show (circa 1979).
About halfway though coffin-opening squeaks and moans start coming from somewhere as Private Jazz gets the brushes out ‘schhhh, schhhh, schhhh’…a minute later we’re in Company Week territory with heavy improv chokes and giggles from drum and guitar. This jollies me up and I’m sad, genuinely sad, dear reader when the extended grimble solo ends this tape.
Oh yeah…I know people like to know this kinda stuff: Dave plays in Northern Loon-duo Chastity Potatoe, Desmadrados Soldados de Ventura, Stuckometer, Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra and Rogier does stuff with Jaap Blonk, Eugene Chadbourne, Sunburned Hand of The Man and one of Earth or something. Both websites are chocked full of tapes, drawings and videos that make me wanna get up and do some shit!
Rotten Tables, Golden Meat – My Nose is Broken
My word: hunka-grunk-scrunt! This is the kinda doof that gets me out of bed in the morning, lickerty-split! Do not pass muesli. Jive straight out the door and into the woods for loamy communion breathing in the ferns.
Rotten Tables, Golden Meat are a totally gonzo electronics/vocal mush duo jamming at the heart of the new Soviet weird and its long tradition of sound poetry and religious ecstasy. Partly recorded on Jon Marshall’s travels in Russia with St Petersberg resident Anton Auster these two sides are sharp like pickles with a lasting tang.
Side one: A live excursion jammed in St Petersburg starts like an experiment with speech from an impossible archive, micro-sounds isolated, presented and turned inside out for a gaggle of tweed elbow-patches. The lecture continues but moves into the chemistry lab; a pristine white coat mixing noxious chemicals all a’bubble and foamy. Rhythm is important to RTGM and loops move in eccentric orbits around each other, meeting in points; farewells no doubt tearful as they forever pull themselves apart. But it’s not all buttery beauty! There’s enough ‘crunch’, ‘squark’ and ‘fonk’ for the gruffest gong-farmer. In fact about halfway through side one everything kinda disintegrates into a morass of electronic gunk, shortwave gabble and tape squeal. A purgatory of choirs is summoned through the mire with a majestic sweep of the curtain, beckons in a new dawn of pained snivel.
Side two is mixed like a travelogue, switching from one place or mood to another but with a modesty and innocence. Shy words and the crunch of boots on fresh electric-snow open the proceedings; a black-out rave for the diesel-clogged tugboats that thump across the frozen harbour. This hums for a while then jack knives like This Heat’s Health & Efficiency with a propulsive yet lopsided whoozy sample driving a bright cavalcade of rips and shunts and liquid voice. More snatches of Russian conversation tease, a mouse-organ and reed thin whistles…tin-plate clicks and damaged music box mechanisms crackle with hidden purpose. Then to close the sampled speech, all lightly manipulated, turns into a charming thought piece and/or erotic lullaby ’ears, some gills mama cav-or’ that’s just as dishy as Steve Reich.
Sorry to get extra huggy-kissy but this is one god-damn essential experience. Like a tin bath…you gotta get in to drop out!
CKDH – Yr Putrid Eyeballs
An exceptional Black Metal logo always draws me in and the singular art work in this oversized cardboard CD case makes this a hard disc to ignore.
Razor-sharp tones (a high C#?) open ‘Your Putrid Eyeballs’ sliding over each other like greased jade. These thin green needles puncture the twilight (it’s getting dark as I type) and I notice that swinging my head from side-to-side makes them dance gently in the middle of the room. A brown and granular wash (think coffee grounds) plays a twin-tone melodie as liquid hydrogen rushes down a spiral staircase leaving toxic steam in its wake. The between-track silence is uncanny.
Beautiful austerity.
‘Fungal Air Creeping Adders’ jams on these strange radiophonic tones further, bunching them up to create a ripple, a rhythm and a steady bass-line crackle. It all sounds strangely contemporary and the sort of thing I imagine is played in an inner-city night club shortly before kicking out time; the feeling of dread and alienation is real. An occasional metallic scratching uncovers itself gradually, steadily becoming unnerving, unsettling…like something is about to shear off and screech out the stereo covered in nasty blisters. And then…just before the end a beautiful thing happens and two sine-wave tones modulate in just the right way to create a third tone, a harmony that sings like an angel. It only lasts a second but becomes the grit in the oyster, the seldom seen hint of violet in a rainbow.
All the more delicious for its rarity.
—ooOoo—
Angurosakuson WordPress (for physical objects)
Angurosakuson Bandcamp (for downloads)
Editor’s note: don’t fret if you visit the Poot or Total Vermin sites and can find no mention of the releases reviewed. Luke and Stuart both work within a jelly-like, highly-flexible notion of ‘time’ and should be contacted directly with enquiries as to availability.
threat of disintegration: joe murray puzzles over basic house but is damn sure about the piss superstition
December 18, 2013 at 10:07 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: alter, basic house, electronica, joe murray, julian bradley, new music, no audience underground, noise, poot records, stephen bishop, the piss superstition
Basic House – Oats (CD, Alter, ALT12)
the piss superstition – southpaw the skull (CD-r, poot records, poot#49)
Basic House – Oats
One of the stranger developments in recent years has been them naughty noise-boys trading in their para boots for vintage gazelles and applying the ‘noise’ mentality and sound sources to a completely new template. Labels like Pan, Opal Tapes and Alter are scooping up these singular artists and opening up new vistas; transforming these no-audience stalwarts into some-audience players.
Oats starts with tape hiss as fresh as ocean spray soaking the bridge of the Terra Nova. And it’s with this image of adventure I sit down and struggle to work out, what is it that Basic House does? He’s not a DJ. Well not here anyway, so it’s not turntablism I’m listening to. He is using sound sources and in some way sampling them but I find the term samplist clumsy and insufficient. The job title ‘composer’ is far too stuffy and does nothing to describe the very organic thought process on show. So, how about loopist? One who performs with loops? Does that take us any nearer understanding the art of the Basic House?
Let’s see…
Like movements of a galactic timepiece ‘AR II’ chimes with cymbals double-timed by Jack DeJohnette. On a second listen the touchstone could be Tom Recchion’s Chaotica with its woozy, schoozy fat-wobbling circles spiralling within each other and occasionally collapsing. I think I’ve just got this thing cracked when it all ends with about 15 seconds of syrupy mid-70’s easy listening schmaltz. The atmosphere is briskly challenged by ‘Child Confession’ with the introduction of a soggy-bottom beat, a machine-like ‘whump’ that anchors the soaring, grinding gears.
I need to make something clear here though Midwichers. A few commentators have used the word ‘industrial’ when describing Basic House. For me this sends out all the wrong messages. This is not the itchy grime of a replica WW2 uniform but the beautiful deep pearly-grey of a dove’s wing. And while the occasional beat (however lopsided and lurching) signifies a ‘club’ feel, this has as much in common with late-period Blood Stereo as Berlin’s Transmediale. It’s all about the sound of the sound.
‘Interiors’ could be extreme vocals pushed through a mincer. It could be the time stretched squeal of a pig as a bi-plane circles overhead. The only thing that remains certain is the distinctive klunk and scree of a Dictaphone that makes an appearance into the misty melange; fading slowly…
‘BG Feathers’ lavishes a beat so distorted it sounds like a dot matrix printer wired to explode, whilst cymbals buried deep are ‘ten-to-two-ing’ again. Folded into the mix a stanky aquarium squelch comes across almost like a parody of an acid track. These are not Autechre’s studied opaque strategies but genuinely odd juxtapositions and alliances; field recordings from the Nostromo, air vents opening and closing wetly.
The CD version that I have been playing has a couple of tracks of silence separating side one and side two to mimic the anticipation of turning the record over and diving in again. Patience is rewarded with ‘Time Table’, that loops the sound of a trawlerman’s winch hauling nets and throaty gurgles that wouldn’t be out-of-place in Yol’s back catalogue
The penultimate piece, ‘C – Beat’ ripples like mercury. The heavy, silvery waves lapping with insistent purpose until we find ourselves at the Terra Nova once again, climbing out the sea like lesser gods, ready to summon accursed masters in a diabolical ceremony.
But does the term loopist work? For me Basic Stephen Bishop waits right until the end to give us hungry listeners a tantalising clue with the epic ‘L-Wave and Comb’, the greatest tune Jazzfinger never wrote, an exercise in dank basement gloom, grimy loops and never-ending climax. You’ll have to listen to see if you agree with me Midwichers!
OK. I started this slightly hysterical review with a knee-jerk and badly-researched statement; folk are leaving the sub-underground to engage with a slightly different set of parameters. Basic House et al are making work that is just as challenging and avant garde as anyone else on these pages but it’s snagged something more commercial. It’s becoming more than another tiny-micro niche and turning (dare I say it?) into a movement. And the million dollar question…what’s the difference? Could it be that a slight change in frequencies and presentation are the deciding factors? Are audiences so shallow that the merest hint of a beat places this music into a different, more commercial and visible, category? Hell…I don’t know. But it’s fun trying to figure it out eh? Until then consider me a fan…the oldest swinger in town.
the piss superstition – southpaw the skull
That Dorian Gray of the no-audience underground, Piss Julian Superstition Bradley, kindly put me up once after a gig in Leeds. We had a laugh that night; drank some beer, listened to Public Enemy and generally put the world to rights. But my enduring memory of that visit was having the most powerful and outrageously lucid dream of my life kipping on his sofa. I’m one of them annoying light sleepers. The merest rattle of a fag paper and I’m sitting bolt upright shot through with black-coffee alertness. But on that morning it took me hours to pull myself round. I was so confused I kept questioning my compatriots (Lee TUSK and our RFM host Rob (Editor’s note: heh, heh – much fun was had by all…)) ‘Did someone visit in the night?’ so realistic were my dozy memories. That, dear readers, is a taste of the potency of Mr Julian Bradley when he’s not even trying! The contact-high off his sofa was enough to knock me for six all morning. Now imagine distilling this psychedelic essence into a silvery disc and pouring it into your ear. That is pretty much what I attempted with repeat listens to the glowing masterwerk southpaw the skull.
But despite his boyish good looks, me and Julian must be similar ages coz the all the references on this sizzling disc are super-resonant to my 43 year-old ears. At some points it’s the harshest, worst fidelity imaginable, Velvet Underground bootleg ever; a two note boogie, nodding-out over the zonked repetition, dropping brass polish all over the floor and headaching the metallic fumes. At other times it’s a Stylophone demonstration disc played by furious bees then roughed up in an alley by a Mexican girl gang. Finally there is a hint of that old Pebbles compilation (with bands like The Litter? The Wild Knights?? (Editor’s note: the most reprehensible song ever? Possibly.)) letting them guitars ring out and feedback like a trashy liberty bell. There’s a real joy in the simple fuzz and fuh that’s pretty darn contagious. Even non-musical sounds twang the memory gong with the grey-pumice pulsing of a ZX Spectrum game endlessly loading becoming a theme running though ‘Hospital Material.’ And if that makes things sound like moronic retro-riffage you got it all wrong pal. Amid the spark and fizz of the uber-distorition strange melodies peek out. ‘Sev Acher’ is one of them modern hymns you get on Songs of Praise every now and then that has a vaguely familiar tune taking unexpected turns as if people don’t know the words very well. It’s on the point of constantly breaking up but holds things together for a minute or two before a breathless surge towards the climax.
And it’s that threat of disintegration; the edge-of-chaos collapse that keeps making me turn back to this sweet knuckle-sandwich again and again for a hit of fresh air.
Buy Oats via the Alter Bigcartel site, buy southpaw the skull by contacting Poot direct.
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