sliver lizards: joe murray on olivier di placido, fritz welch, kelly jayne jones, ross parfitt, jon collin, yol, culver
October 8, 2016 at 2:44 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: beartown records, culver, early music, fritz welch, joe murray, jon collin, kelly jayne jones, matching head, olivier di placido, ross parfitt, winebox press, yol
Olivier Di Placido & Fritz Welch – untitled cassette (tape, humansacrifice, HS0010, edition of 75 or download)
Kelly Jayne Jones & Jon Collin – Sheffield, 9 August 2015 (tape, Early Music)
Jon Collin with Ross Parfitt – Münster, 10 April 2016 (tape, Early Music)
Yol – This Item Has Little Or No Scrap Value (tape, Beartown Records, edition of 48)
Culver – Gateshead Soup (tape, Matching Head, MH213)
Olivier Di Placido & Fritz Welch – Untitled
Absolutely no nonsense Technicolor squall and dramatic brokenness from that most hectic of fluffer duos: Di Placido/Welch.
Like stitches in yr lip this stings a little as it wrenches new shapes outta junk-drums and garrotted-guitar. Frantically itchy as scabies it is… the scabby metre has you shuffling on and off the hot foot never quite sure where to hang your hat. But I’m diggin’ it… diggin’ it bad.
I’m listening with an abstracted grin now. I just can’t help it; the reptile part of my brain fair goofs on the hard/soft, fast/slow choices being presented to my dense grey lumps. But at the same time my debonair city-slicker love-node is lapping up the lightening-fast interactions and improvisations between flapping pig skin and eviscerated coiled steel. The perfect music for the metrosexual caveman perhaps? Shit… let’s throw a party to find out. I’m on nibbles.
Is that some post-production fingering I can hear in the backmasked vox that plays us out of this side? Wonderful, wonderful… let’s get some electronics soaking up this gravy to deglaze the nuggets.
Goosh… ya!
The other side* made me squirt like Slaine in full-on berzerker mode such is the slap and clatter, the fizzing rip and hi-hat chit-chit-chit-bash. Like an erotic jazz experience it manages to create that brassy plateau of living a constant high… then stops on a teasing sixpence.
It’s not all hi-NRG jizz-riffles though. One small section’s a right downer of industrial ‘booms’ and ‘crashes’ played out next to a juddering (bass) washing machine that segues neatly into a promise of friction and anatomically crude charcoal drawings. Phewy.
The art of the improviser occasionally gets ladled with faux academic nonsense from highfaluting bodies, boards and authorities. A pox on them. This is vital as hydrogen and alive as a fresh pig because it’s free from any grey-beard permission.
Play this at your next lecture and watch Prof implode!
*I’ve used the rather unhelpful ‘this side’ and ‘other side’ descriptors because there’s nothing as bourgeois as track titles or side demarcations on this babycake. Total Hardcore yeah.
Kelly Jayne Jones & Jon Collin – Sheffield, 9 August 2015
On seeing the title a ripple of excitement forced me to check last year’s journal and I can see I was right there, in Sheffield, when this piece was recorded.
…firmly camped upstairs for the rest of the show Jon Collin & Kelly Jones played guitar & flute but nary a note was plucked or blown. 99% of the sound came from feedback tones as fresh as a handful of snow down the trousers. Thin and minty… menthol smoke sprouting from the fingers. Control was the watch word and even a dropped e-bow couldn’t interrupt the stately ‘hhiiiimmmmm’…
Listening back to this, in a domestic setting, seems to downplay the austerity and dial up the astringent complexity. The sharp guitar tones (sliver [Editor’s note: I suspect a typo but am leaving it in for the sake of poetry] lizards shimmer across cool marble) mesh perfectly with the breathy feedback/flute (crystallised ginger crushed into powder and applied to the forehead) and create a ritual of pure transcendent beauty.
I’m often lost in the fog of metal or jazz (crashing and slashing) but the paleness and gentle simmering of these mercurial sounds has tickled my mind forever with its frosty bliss.
Jon Collin with Ross Parfitt – Münster, 10 April 2016
It starts with twin guitar plucking, wild and free as a Manx cat, but stretching out time into an almost cosmic nothingness.
However sparse and spectral this recording is though there’s a right-in-your-face attitude with some heavy clarity. Those brushed-steel sounds emerge from the plucks adding an odd gamelan ‘kong’ to the twisting strings, reminding us we are on a journey. From here to where doesn’t really matter but the steady pad of the foot and swing of the arm propels this music constantly forward.
Don’t look back.
A lake of clear water lays still and calm. Birds (too far away to distinguish species) swoop lazily overhead. All is peaceful until the standing stones begin to quiver, small pebbles roll down to the lake sending ripples across the surface drawing patterns that weave and double cross.
A watery maze appears. The walls clear enough to see through but refractions set up a prism effect showing the landscape with a rainbow light. Glorious colours indeed… but what’s that smoke on the horizon?
Yol – This Item Has Little Or No Scrap Value
Ever wondered what JAZZ would sound like after Yol had had a fair go at it? Wonder no more as ‘Finley Crafted’ kicks like a Sidney Bechet joint with bruised ribs. Yakety-Sax and Ten-to-Two drums are pushed out a porthole but the pulse… the all important swing remains. It’s all syncopated beats and bomb-detonation throat, man. Gosh! This is heady, heady head-est schizz right from the get-go. These ‘live’ recordings are juddering with malevolence and stark contrast. ‘Bleed Mouth Parts’ and ‘Trapped in Portland Works’ are two of the most violent and brutal recordings I think I’ve ever heard. Sorry Extreme Noise Terror. Yol has beaten your usually exceptional ROOAAOOORRROR trump with a single (but scientifically focused) gob, cheap spanner set and polystyrene block.
Real rubble is thrown about for ‘Bird Feathers’ a rare decent into bass with (what sounds like) a fully pressurised deep sea diving suit dragged down a spiral staircase – as you listen, ear cocked against the air tube, it pulses ‘Vuphhhh-chk-hhhoooofff’.
The final boof , ‘A Medium Experience’ brings the hooligan noise back into home territory with the warmness and (dare I say it) comfort of interlocking manacles. Again my jass-ears are focused on the clattering percussion; the tinka-link of scrap metal that divides time like a punk Dejohnette. Do I have to say it? Essential. Essential and life affirming motherfuckers!
Culver – Gateshead Soup
What is there left to say about Culver? The most singular of artists he does his thing with no regard for fashion or favour. You’re into it or you’re not.
This tape (same as the last and same as the next) was picked up at a live show and apparently not available via more ‘official’ channels. What? Less official than a regular Matching Head release… that’s like trying to copyright snowflakes, man.
But what’s it sound like? A slowly emerging landscape of loops that I’ve tried to scientifically represent (a) to (g):
(a) a foul machine heating up and (b) three solitary acoustic guitar notes
(a) with (c) brown organ smear
(c) and (d) foreboding doom rumble
(d) incorporating (e) bleak metallic thunder
(e) gives way to (f) plumes of black smoke rising over the battlefield
(f) gently diminishes for (g) Valium earthquake
(g) x 2 fades out incredibly slowly leaving you praying for a start to the endless nothingness…
—ooOoo—
new year retox: joe murray on smacked cucumber, sindre bjerga, tom white, ansgar wilken & urine gagarin
January 20, 2015 at 12:34 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: ansgar wilken, improv, jennifer iker, joe murray, ludo mich, new music, no audience underground, noise, ross parfitt, sindre bjerga, smacked cucumber, spam, stuart arnot, tom white, total vermin, urine gagarin
SMACKED CUCUMBER – FIRST TIME IN SPACE (tape or download, SPAM, spam6)
Sindre Bjerga & Tom White – Water Information (tape, Total Vermin, #87)
ansgar wilken – thank you (tape or download, SPAM)
Urine Gagarin – Hanged in a Cavern (CD-r, Total Vermin, #83)
Smacked Cucumber – First Time in Space
While Christmas indulgence can be fun for a time it eventually reaches a point where the 5 course breakfast becomes less of a treat and more of a pork-based endurance test. Let it be recorded here that from 1st Jan onwards I am pulling on my running jersey and dusting off my spikes to become a fitter, leaner guest-blogger. I will trim off the love handles. I will pass over the puddings and pies in favour of the simple lentil and kale combo.
Sonically too my ear is yearning for a cleaner palette, an astringent and sour mixture to wash away the sweet-honey of seasonal carols and jingles.
I reach for the most healthy sounding tape on the review pile and slip it into my walkman as I gingerly pound the streets of West Newcastle huffing and puffing like a lardy goat.
Smacked Cucumber are a new name to me, and in a effort to ‘listen without prejudice’ I keep it that way (rejecting Dr Google) reacting only to the music marching calmly out my earbuds.
And what a green and vitamin-rich sound this is! All the excess is trimmed to leave pure, clear sounds: a rubber ball rubbed on a snare drum, creaking wooden door, a gentle ting-tingling of tiny bells, gentle traffic roar, the hushed ping of a battered zither, air blown softly over the neck of a milk bottle and a rough stone rolled slowly round a pottery bowl.
These simple yet utterly controlled and focused sounds are paired together in a sparse duo format (fondled floor tom versus earthenware flask for example) with what sounds like two players gently reacting to differences in texture and timbre, never rising past a quiet whisper. This sensitive style of playing is EXACTLY what I need right now and I recommend this as an aural detox to all RFM readers.
I’m a curious old bird and can’t resist a quick check up of who the hell these Smacked Cucumber folk are. It’s with joyous surprise I learn the sounds I’ve been greedily soaking up come direct from the brains of Ross Parfitt and Jen Iker – two fellow travellers I met all the way back in 2014 collaborating with the ‘holy spirit of misadventure’ Ludo Mich. Cor Blimey guv. It’s a small world ain’t it?
Beat the bulge, smack that cucumber!
Sindre Bjerga & Tom White – Water Information
The sleeve notes are quite clear on this tape and with good purpose. All the base sounds are live recordings of Sindre Bjerga made in the Summer of 2013. Tom White then took these recordings, mulled on them for a while and applied some black-handed studio do-hickery in the Winter of 2014. Tom’s name keeps cropping up in dispatches and a quick check of his CV reveals a pretty-darn-hot hombre presenting real-life sound art shit but still finding time to rub himself up against some creamy live collaborators – Vasco Alves and Maya Dunitez to name but two.
OK…back to the tape (and that’s TV #87 folks. Can you believe it readers? Total Vermin are approaching the big one-zero-zero).
Regular Sindre-watchers will be familiar with his grey-particle mist. Somehow, using the same kit as many other folk, Sindre brings a signature flourish to his sound; like a fog of iron filings laid down in regular parquet patterns.
And, at first this is what you hear, until Tom starts to ingeniously ‘churn’ the mix. Beware listeners…this is no regular remix project full of lazy thread layering or sneaky crowd-pleasing tactics like dropping a ‘dope beat’ (perish the thought!).
Side A ‘Images of Hard Water in the Area (Andrea Sneezes)’ begins with a ping-pong response that is soon being forced through tight tape capstans, stretching and warping it in a frankly stomach-churning way. The queasy lurching develops into wet squeals with the canny tape delay slightly overlapping things so ‘Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet’ becomes ‘Dolphin Succumbing to Greasy Sexual Ecstasy’. More briny rumblings reach a climax with the neat little sneezes referred to in the title. Gesundheit!
Side B ‘Tidal Surges on the Way’ takes Sindre’s glottal tape melange and gently duffs it up until the sound is a blue and purple bruise decayed and aged like some booming My Bloody Valentine guitar riff. The rolling and boiling sound sputters into an arrhythmic pattern that makes the dog nod. Blimey…this is pretty heady stuff!
All in all this is an intoxicating listen. A re-framing of intelligent ideas! A gas-pod ready to pop – huff it up dear readers.
ansgar wilken – thank you
Another head-changer from the German SPAM label.
The central thread of this charming little tape is the…wait-fer-it…the humble cello played by the mysterious timebomb Ansgar Wilken.
At times the cello is played straight, pretty little tunes leaping from the springy strings. Sometimes extended techniques sneak a looky-in with cracked bows all bald and hairless being dragged across protesting strings. Electronics and spoken word interludes pepper several of the eleven micro-pieces (only one breaks the 3 minute mark, some don’t make it to a single minute) while the spirit of Henry Flynt whips up a storm with the cascading, ever modulating drones.
There’s a feeling that Ansgar is working something out with these pieces. Beating the blues, reaching for the light perhaps? I dunno. All I can say is ‘Johann Von Auben Heute’ and ‘Barn Dance’ invoke the bones of mighty, mighty Moondog and made me stomp about going
Yeah Man Yeah!
This tape has a sense of knowingness… are you prepared to let its ancient intelligence in?
Urine Gagarin – Hanged in a Cavern
A rare CD-R of scum jazz on the tape-dominated Total Vermin. The classic jazz trio (sax/bass/drums) is mentally Xeroxed so many times that a very real trumpet, drums and guitar mutate into splintered wooden plank, elephant seal and bulldozer and at times horrific diarrhoea, blood-hurricane and plague of locusts with the sheer force of their unhinged playing.
The whirring energy of fresh jazz is whipped and spun like a fucking top until all the sharp edges blur into a charcoal sludge. Imagine wet clay on the potter’s wheel toppling out of control on some lame game show; the squeals of the audience replaced with Formula One’s top-throttle pointlessness.
THINKS TO SELF << In fact those stun/concussion groups of the early 1990’s like Ascension or Blowhole are not just a great reference to this CDr. Why don’t they play that shit rather than Fleetwood Mac over the bloody racing car monotony?>>
OK…back on the case Joe…This trio are in full-on crazy mode. With no let up or pause it’s like Harsh Noise Acoustic, a continuous, rolling, tumbling, boiling of pus-soaked bandages; the flames from the stove flickering a septic green and rising dangerously high. The curtains catch fire and you must abandon the building with Arnott/Cummings/Pitt scorning your yellow cowardice.
If you got the stones slip this one on high!
For more of this damn-hot action check out some live Urine Gagarin doing it Nice & Sleazy.
—ooOoo—
[Editor’s note: the TV site hasn’t been updated for nearly two years now but Stuart is evidently still active. The resourceful can track him down and the rewards for doing so are legion.]
bellowing becomes bronze: joe murray trips on ludo mich and associates
February 27, 2014 at 9:49 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: blue yodel, fiona kennedy, improv, jennifer iker, joe murray, jon marshall, ludo mich, new music, no audience underground, no basement is deep enough, noise, roman nose, ross parfitt, singing knives, tapes, vocal improvisation
Ludo Mich/Roman Nose/Blue Yodel/Ross Parfitt /Jennifer Iker – The Clurichaun’s Naked Cheat with Sour Wine & The Leprechaun’s Coins Numismatist (C40 cassette in gargoyle shaped holder, No Basement is Deep Enough).
Deep explorations of rancid mind-space beyond the outer limits from the truly radical No Basement is Deep Enough cassette library.
I have to admit it, I’d never come across this label before until gently nudged by the Roman Nose. A quick Google search transported me to a day-glo negative zone that refreshed like a hot lemon-scented towel.
This Belgian/Serbian label is strapping on high-level, raw weirdness and pumping out load after load of creamy oddballs: Preggy Peggy and the Lazy Baby Makers, Hjuler & Frau and Cactus Truck (to name but a few). It’s not all teenage slop and skronk though…they scratch both ass-cheeks by releasing some proper ‘old-gent sound art legends’ like, Valeri Scherstjanoi and Sigtryggur Berg Sigmarsson. Sheesh….that’s one hell of a demographic basement-heads.
So far you can see I’m impressed yeah? But get a load of the packaging on display here. I know there’s always that risk of making excuses for the mundane if it scrubs up all shiny but this is another level of presentation. We’ve all got used to boxes, bags and inserts. But this innocent little cassette comes in a hand-crafted gargoyle effigy. A what you say? I said gargoyle dear reader; or an imp or a gnome or something horrible, small and creepy that defies classification.
It’s evil little face is peering at me now. Gulp.
And now a few words about Ludo Mich. Ludo is one of them ‘old-gent sound art legends’ I was on about before. His bristling roar and gummy leer has been mixing it up since Fluxus was a boy. But no lichen grows on his cheesy soles…the Blood Stereos, Ultra Eczemas and Singing Knives of this world are queuing up to down a bottle of cheap red vino with him and enter the steamy gorgon zone to play.
For me Ludo is more in touch with his ‘inner shaman’ than any of any of his grey-beard peers. His rites are funny for sure but seem to delve the deepest, and uncover the most uncomfortable truths with the pacing and rhythm of a natural born story teller in that classic Northern European tradition. Basically…Ludo’s got the chops man. All groovy…but what does this spectacularly packaged tape sound like?
Side one: THE CLURICHAUN’S NAKED CHEAT WITH SOUR WINE
Lord Bacchus brushes his beard thoughtfully and wipes his grape-stained mouth with the back of a gnarled hand. Mumps overlay mumps with a ‘bath-too-hotness’ of fevered screams (reflected back into your ears via beautifully inlaid Moroccan tiles). Low-throated groans are a bed of healthy spinach on which Ludo relaxes, slowly disrobing, cup overflowing.
As an accompaniment a wooden pinball machine plays on, flippers blurring with speed. Dull thuds ‘ping’ as the machine lights up ‘TILT’ with cracked bells; cats fight under the floorboards in this dream-like vocabulary of interruption.
The mist clears to reveal a boy. Rum-sodden, ruined and collapsed in Marseille. The grim hoteliers and bird-like pimps look on, beaks as sharp as whips. I rise. The wind is scented with the harsh tang of opium and degenerate accordion music wafts from the brothel window. A face appears from behind a filthy rag of curtain and speaks with two, four, six voices. I can’t understand a word but follow the voice into the nearest bar. “Absinthe?” the moustachioed waiter asks. I nod, corrupted.
For fans of the Welshman Johnny Morris and his disturbing anthropomorphism.
(Production note – side one was born in postal pieces were sent from Ludo Mich to the antique dub-controller, Roman Nose, for full manipulation and foley-frottage then whipped creamy by squalls from ensemble Yodel, Parfitt and Iker. Like Joe Meek right?)
Side Two: THE LEPRECHAUN’S COINS NUMISMATIST
More loam from the crypt recorded in a Hermit Crab shell (or Antwerp). A coven of drunks (Ludo Mich, Jon Marshall, Fiona Kennedy, Ross Parfitt) leap willingly down the well of possessed souls.
There’s a powerful vocal shunting that forces them further down the moss-lined brickwork with increasing speed. But the impact never arrives. Descent becomes all and molasses heavy. Sparks fly as friction makes the air bristle with violent electricity.
Floating in space the resulting bellowing becomes bronze, buffed to golden shine. A Greek breastplate and helmet smash together producing clouds of hideous clashing and bilious fume.
The smell of hot metal wraps itself around your tongue, teeth and tonsils; coiling through the ear, nose and throat superhighway. And then you know you are in trouble. Your senses become confused; you see the sound of the foreign holler, you hear the circular rose-tint above your head. Snakes plunge down your throat and cling to your feebly beating heart.
You might be choking but you’ve never felt so alive!
How do you find this Halfling? I can’t see a ‘proper’ website so I suggest you search for this filthy beast on that discogs site or direct from ignacedb@hotmail.com.
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