hot ashes: the work of lucy johnson
July 11, 2013 at 7:50 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 2 CommentsTags: blackest rainbow, drone, esk, lucy johnson, mike vest, new music, no audience underground, noise, obey, rife, smut, space victim, tapes, turgid animal, visual art, witchblood
Smut – ‘Scraps’ (tape, Turgid Animal)
Smut – Piano One (tape, Turgid Animal)
Smut – Live at Morden Tower, Newcastle, 09.03.13 (self released download, Soundcloud)
Space Victim – Angel Face (3” CD-r, Turgid Animal)
Space Victim – Decreased Awareness Of Inner Processes (CD-r, Blackest Rainbow)
Space Victim – Kiss From The Serpent (self-released download, Bandcamp)
Esk – Ashdene (tape, Turgid Animal)
Rife – “Demo” (tape, Turgid Animal)
One of the refreshing things about what I playfully refer to as the ‘no-audience underground’ is that it is not full of self-aggrandising blabbermouths. There are a few – me, for example – and an acceptable level of self-absorption is common, but many artists quietly get on with producing excellent work mainly, it seems, for their own gratification and the pleasure of their circle.
The noise scene in the North East of England has often been celebrated here for this kind of self-sufficiency. I write a 1500 word review full of words like ‘entranced’ and they just look up from their effects pedals for a second, murmur an embarrassed ‘thanks, man’ and get back to work. Nowt insular about this, of course: they are a friendly, passionate, talented lot generally happy to talk, pleased to see you and flattered by any interest. It’s just that, with a humility I find barely understandable, they don’t go looking for it. Nor does approbation seem that important to the process.
This situation allows for the gradual discovery of that most mysterious of creatures: the unsung hero. Names are pencilled in – an aside from the omniscient Scott McKeating, a credit on a Matching Head insert, say – then repeated until they become underlined in bold and further investigation becomes inevitable. Such has been the case with Lucy Johnson.
I had, of course, already praised Space Victim, her duo with Mike Vest, to the hilt (they featured in RFM’s best of 2012 list) and more recently did the same for the Witchblood tape, her duo with Lee Stokoe, on Matching Head. A comment from Miguel Perez led to me picking up her tapes as Smut and hearing those led to me finally paying some proper attention. Over the last few weeks I have been putting two and two together via Discogs, the Turgid Animal site and various other rune-casting activities and have been gathering up examples of her work. She records solo as Smut and Esk, is half of the aforementioned duos, is the vocalist for black metal band Rife, and is also in the bands Obey and Dark Bargain (as reviewed by Scott below). Her artwork adorns covers and T-shirts and has recently been made available to buy as prints. Most of this stuff is available from the label and distributor Turgid Animal which (according to that same review by Scott) she co-runs. Blimey, eh?
Now, I am aware she is on Facebook but I have self-excluded myself from that party for reasons of life being short and, anyway, where’s the fun in that? Far more entertaining to piece all this together imagining a shadowy matriarch/polymath pulling strings and making things happen isn’t it? Then write a lengthy blog post about it. Then, AND ONLY THEN, say ‘hello’. Thus:
Hello Lucy. I trust you are well.
As for the music: Lucy has the Midas touch. We’ll start with Rife as I don’t really know its genre – black metal – so am not qualified to judge. Despite my ignorance, though, I dug it: sounds well angry and has the recorded-on-a-dictaphone-that-had-been-left-in-the-boot-of-a-car-parked-outside-the-rehearsal-room muffled rawness that I am told is customary for bands of this type.
Ashdene by Esk, another Turgid Animal tape, this time a solo project, begins in a similar vein but soon mutates into something far more apocalyptic. These four tracks recorded by Lucy bridging 2011 and 2012, feature sulphuric vocals – treated to the edge of power electronics, riffs as sticky and abrasive as beach tar and an overall heaviness equal to sleep paralysis. By the time we get to ‘III’ the words ‘fucking’ and ‘awesome’ seem entirely appropriate and adequate. After this storm, the final track is shockingly quiet. A slow picked guitar accompanies the sound of a troll enduring unhappy dreams as he sleeps under his bridge. The sound of savvy locals using a chain ferry can be heard nearby. They watch with interest, the guitarist slowing to a stop, as an unwary traveller chooses to cross the river on foot…
What next? Ahh… Space Victim. The more I listen to this duo of Lucy and (longhaired doyenne of the psych/noise underground) Mike Vest the more I want to listen. Such is their obliterating power that the rest of the review pile can only tut as Space Victim strut to the front of the queue, skip over the velvet rope, work their Jedi mind trick on the bouncer, settle down in the VIP area and spark up a huge joint whilst sitting under a ‘no smoking’ sign.
The music is dominated by an acid-fried guitar sound and the vibe is heady, humid and darkly psychedelic. It manages to be both expansive and claustrophobic at the same time. Like staring at the sea, becalmed in all directions to the horizon, then turning to face the reality that you are stuck on a tiny desert island and the only potential food source is the fly blown corpse of a fellow shipwrecked sailor. The epic Decreased Awareness Of Inner Processes feels like campfire music for an evening with the tribe of human/animal hybrids rejected by Dr. Moreau, the horror of their abject condition tempered by their heartbreaking nobility. They stir the ashes with a stick and the embers glow the same red/gold colour as the setting sun.
Don’t let me put you off with grim similes, though. There is ecstatic release to be found within the vine-choked entropy. The end of Angel Face, for example, lifts as Lucy and Mike make the existential decision to accept their roles as protagonists in an early J.G. Ballard novel and paddle their kayak above the flooded streets of the newly tropical Newcastle. Kiss From The Serpent is all exquisite submission – like the willpower-sapping first taste of the terminally delicious, transformative fungi in the exceptional weird tale ‘The Voice in the Night’ by William Hope Hodgson (if you don’t know this beautifully creepy short story do yourself a favour and slap a librivox reading on your mp3 playing device – you’ll thank me for it). Dangerously, addictively glorious.
Finally then, we come to another of Lucy’s solo projects: Smut. I’m not sure in what sense she is using the word – soot, ‘obscene material’ etc. – but I discover it can also mean a fungus causing disease which fits nicely with the reference above. It’s like I plan this stuff. Anyway, Live at Morden Tower, Newcastle 09.03.13, a record of the first Smut gig, is a collection of well chosen noise elements looped, layered and topped and tailed with a brief sigh of solemn church music. The method is simple enough – a collection of pebbles dropped one after the other into a pond – but the effect is profound. It is like being dragged backwards, in slow motion, through the terrible events that the sombre music bookending the piece is memorialising.
Side one of ‘Scraps’, the first Smut tape, is filled with an increasingly angry spiral of distorted and overlapping alarms. The hull has clearly been catastrophically breached and life support is failing. The racket is visceral enough to be properly panic-inducing. That it ends with a burst of song, so smeared as to be unintelligible, is not the least bit reassuring. The second side begins with a would-be crescendo, tethered to the spot. Stabs and rattles pierce the fuzz as it tries to shake itself free. The final section acts as a bridge between this noise and the tape that follows below. A delicate but determined piano line echoes with doomed insistence until it is subsumed under unintelligible radio communication and an all-consuming mechanical grind.
Piano One, the most recent of Lucy’s releases that I have heard, is a remarkable album and a fitting place to come to a halt. The resources she calls on are minimal: piano played with slow deliberation, tape hiss, pedal throb and that is about it. A couple of tracks are more active, including one in which she appears to be strumming the wires within the instrument, but most are stark and simple (occasionally brutally so: one track is little more than a two note refrain). At first, given the context of the releases above, this seems incongruous – like Erik Satie picking up a guitar, stamping on the DS-1 and screaming ‘for those about to rock!!!’ but repeat listens reveal a melancholy air and a seriousness of intent that is of a piece with the rest of her work. The heaviness here is emotional: there is nothing to hide behind. It is like partially recalling a troubling memory and being uncertain as to whether it was a dream or whether it actually happened. I was transfixed by this, as I was with the similar vibe of Witchblood, her collaboration with Lee Stokoe, and recommend it very highly indeed.
rfm’s 2012 round-up part one of two: the zellaby awards
January 4, 2013 at 1:59 pm | Posted in musings, new music, no audience underground | 11 CommentsTags: ap martlet, aqua dentata, ashtray navigations, astral social club, bbblood, castrato attack group, cathal rodgers, culver, daniel thomas, drone, eddie nuttall, electronica, etai keshiki, fordell research unit, hairdryer excommunication, half an abortion, hasan gaylani, hobo sonn, improv, joe murray, joined by wire, kev sanders, kieron piercy, lee stokoe, live music, melanie o'dubhslaine, michael clough, miguel perez, neck vs throat, neil campbell, new music, no audience underground, noise, paul watson, petals, popular radiation, posset, shameless self-congratulation, sheepscar light industrial, space victim, spoils and relics, star turbine, striate cortex, tapes, the skull mask, truant, wharf chambers, yol, zellaby awards
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the second annual Zellaby Awards, presented in association with Radio Free Midwich and hosted, via satellite link-up, from the quarantine ward at Midwich Mansions.
And what a year, eh? From watching Mel O’Dubhslaine reinventing music in Kieron Piercy’s basement through to laughing out loud on the bus as I listened to BBBlood’s breaking glass tape, the year in music has been remarkable.
Whilst the emphasis in these awards is on bloggable recorded music, the live performances I saw in 2012 could warrant a whole other sack of prizes – such was the astounding quality on offer. Congratulations to the venues and promoters of my fair city of Leeds for making them happen. Truly there is a renaissance at hand and anyone with a fiver who lives within commutable distance of Wharf Chambers can come and see it.
On a personal level, this has been my most satisfying and successful year in music since I first leant my elbow on a keyboard. I was delighted and humbled by the reception that met my return as midwich both as a live act and over a series of well-received (and largely sold-out) releases. The reanimation of Truant has proved most entertaining too. I’ve been careful to watch and learn from my betters and may finally, after twelve years on and off, be getting somewhere with this drone business…
OK, enuff with the vague preamble! It’s time to carve the turkey and dish out some meat!
—ooOoo—
Almost. First, some methodological asides:
One: the music mentioned below may not have been released in 2012, although most of it was. To qualify it just had to be heard by me for the first time in the calendar year 2012.
Two: I have taken the editorial decision to exclude releases that I feature on. Modesty is not a virtue I can be accused of but awarding myself prizes is a bit much even for me. This led to an interesting conundrum when making the big decision in the final category…
Three: there are the same five award categories as last time. Should an artist win big in one of them they may appear overlooked in others. This is deliberately done in the interests of plugging as much as excellence as possible. No-one should get the hump as I love all my children just the same.
—ooOoo—
Now if you’d kindly take your seat, the ceremony is finally about to begin…
5. The “I’d never heard of you 10 minutes ago but now desperately need your whole back catalogue” New-to-RFM Award goes to…
(with special mentions for BBBlood and Spoils and Relics.)
A lot of brusque, hard-bitten and jaded noise types have found themselves swooning like 12 year old Justin Bieber fans over the work of Eddie Nuttall this year. His small but perfectly formed back catalogue has the fascinating, alien charm of a pea-green lizard, eyeballing you from behind the glass of a reinforced aquarium. In an age of excess, the austere control he exercises over his minimal music is as refreshing as snow. You should have seen me elbow grandma out of the way to get hold of his latest. Big things still to come, I hope.
4. The “Astral Social Club” Award, given for maintaining quality control over a huge body of work making it impossible to pick individual releases in an end of year round up goes to…
(with honourable credit afforded to Lee Stokoe.)
The work of Kevin Sanders sounds like nothing but itself. Sure, a less conscientious commentator could categorize it as ‘drone’ or ‘noise’, even ‘improv’ in places, but these are just reference points that Kev politely nods to on his way past to somewhere else. Each dispatch from his own label, hairdryer excommunication, or guest appearance elsewhere, is another segment of alternative cartography, another section of the map he is constructing that overlays the everyday, revealing previously hidden connections, secret tunnels. This is why it is impossible to pick out individual releases for special comment but why every little bit is essential.
3. The Special Contribution to Radio Free Midwich Award goes to…
(also in the frame being Joe Posset and Miguel Perez.)
My burgeoning bromance with Daniel Thomas (who I knew previously by his given name) has been the talk of the no-audience underground in 2012. Our friendship has spurred me on in my creative endeavour and has led to an overhaul in the way I think about midwich and the place of this blog in the big/small scheme of things. The immediate success of his label Sheepscar Light Industrial was due to a carefully thought through ‘business model’ that has breathed new life into the ‘micro-label’ format. I’ve been sorely tempted back in that direction as a result – he makes it look so effortless (lolz etc.). The chap is a force for the good and well deserves this public pat on the back.
Likewise Joe and Miguel whose infectious enthusiasm has been great for morale all through 2012. An email from either is always a soul-lifting treat. Special thanks to Joe for actually contributing to RFM in the most practical way: 3,000 words of terrific reviews. His whole end of year account can now be read (in six parts, it totals 32,000 words!) here.
2. The Label of the Year Award goes to…
(with Sheepscar Light Industrial manfully accepting silver.)
For the second year running. I needn’t go on at great length: Andy Robinson’s vision, integrity and hard work led to a world-enhancing series of releases. A package from him is always a drop-everything-else cause for celebration. He also released the undisputed album of the year in the Victorian Electronics box – a four CD set, exquisitely packaged with astounding care and attention to detail – featuring four artists at the height of their powers. It led to a celebratory gig at Wharf Chambers which is generally held to be one of the highlights of the musical year and the edition sold out in a couple of days. I hope that it will be reissued in some form some day but in the meantime it remains a perfect historical document. So how come I’m talking about it here? Well, one of the featured artists is midwich so it is disqualified from the big prize. Tough, I know, but thems the rules. Hopefully being the only two-time winner will soften the blow for Andy. Congratulations, man.
1. The Album of the Year Award
There is so much to choose from this year that it is almost embarrassing. First, in no particular order, are those that would have been in the top twenty if it wasn’t for the brutal fact that a top ten is much more dramatically satisfying…
- Astral Social Club – ASC #23
- Ashtray Navigations – Three Spots Two Circles
- Hobo Sonn – Synthetic Preserves
- Fordell Research Unit – The True Meaning of Red
- The Popular Radiation CD-r series
- A Brief History of Joined By Wire
- Star Turbine – Equilibrium
- Posset – Correct Come
- Ap Martlet – Pyrite
All terrific stuff, click on each to read my thoughts at length and for contact/buying details.
Now on with the top ten, in reverse order of course:
10. castratoattackgroupetaikeshiki
The adrenal rush of these punk vignettes is as focussed as toothache and as effective as a blow-dart to the neck (Etai Keshiki)
…and…
It is a life-affirming, nostrils flaring, magnificent wig-out … There are no lulls, no tricksy passages of noodling, no lumpy transitions. This is, ironically given the name of the band, completely balls out from beginning to end (Castrato Attack Group).
It is, as you’d expect from these two, artfully constructed, nuanced and textured as well being totally balls-out gonzo in places. Clinking-plinking-tinkling, smashing, grinding, crunching, squeaking, that kind of ‘pouring sharps’ noise as the pieces settle – like the apocryphal Eskimo having 40 words for snow, a specialist vocabulary is needed to describe the effects these chaps pull from their single sound source…
This is heroic stuff, recorded simply and cheaply with a red-raw honesty … Miguel was amused to see this described as ‘bluesy’ in Vital Weekly but during Part Three, the epic nine minute centrepiece, it isn’t hard to imagine him standing at the crossroads, his loose-fingered raga whipping the desert dust into strange, dancing anthropomorphic shapes. The pieces either side illustrate the expressive power of Miguel’s technique: sore-eyed from the campfire or crackling and mysterious or solemn and contemplative.
7. Daniel Thomas – Delighted in Isolation
Leaving dinosaur-related whimsy aside let me lean across the table, look you in the eye and conclude thus: Delighted in Isolation is an accomplished and deeply satisfying set. The impressive technical savvy with which it is composed and compiled is never an end in itself but instead always serves the flow. There are stand-out tracks – I’ve listened to that final section god knows how many times – but more importantly there is a coherence, a unifying aesthetic, throughout which allows for a sophisticated emotional response from the listener. Dan is a storyteller.
A gloriously super-minimal analogue throb. When listened to at the appropriate volume, that is: so loud as to be consciousness threatening, it sounds like the sewing machine that God used when she was stitching up creation. Fucking amazing.
5. Space Victim – Psychotropic Mind Murder
Passages of this album are properly fried. The psychonauts amongst you may be reminded of the ‘chameleon’ stage of an acid trip: peaking like crazy, your senses fizzing like sherbet fireworks, your skin rippling and morphing to mimic your surroundings, your eyes bulging and swivelling independently of each other. Or so I hear. I wouldn’t know, of course.
4. Mel O’Dubhslaine – I Can Remember the Faces of All the Grebs at My School
Absolutely extraordinary, nothing like anything else I’ve ever been sent. Thirteen tiny tracks, each properly titled, of spiky, squirming surrealism played on bizarre cross-pollinated hybrid instruments. …Grebs… is a unified collection expressing something wonderfully unfathomable.
3. Aqua Dentata – March Hare, Kraken Mare
This is precise, slow-moving, crisply defined and unafraid of periods of silence. It has an attention diverting flow and an interestingly oblique rhythm. The rise and fall is like the breathing of a quarantined astronaut, infected by some spaceborne virus which is now busy reconfiguring his DNA.
The other-worldliness is especially evident on the short second track when what sounds like a recorder is used as an unplugged analogue for the pulls and throbs of electronic feedback. The first and final tracks employ the near perfect length and despite being created with, y’know, instruments and that, have an unmistakeably ‘Lilithian’ xenobiological vibe. I trust that by now I have established this is a very, very good thing indeed.
2. Cathal Rodgers – Thirty-Nine Years Of Decay
Thirty-Nine Years Of Decay is artfully constructed, beautifully evocative and emotionally harmonious. It is melancholy without being maudlin or sentimental, gruffly realistic without being unkind or gratuitous. It is the sound of someone trying to process difficult notions about time, about aging, about mortality and taking seriously the enormity of the challenge. For the record: I am talking about layers of pedal-loop throbbing, scything guitar and/or synth drones, high tension metallic pulses all beautifully recorded and elegantly balanced. A point is being made eloquently and convincingly.
…and drum roll please as the golden envelope is opened… Ladies and gentlemen, the Zellaby Award for album of the year 2012 goes to:
Forgive me quoting myself at such length but the story is a good one…
Earlier this year me and Miguel Pérez, RFM’s correspondent of the Americas, produced a split CD-r: Miguel in his psychedelic raga guise as The Skull Mask, I contributed a throb-heavy Midwich track. Fifty copies were manufactured and offered to friends and to those willing to trade or brave enough to express an interest. One of those who kindly responded was Yol – see below for my thoughts on his art – who sent a copy of PUSHTOSHOVE in return. I was mighty impressed and threw some mp3s of it across the Atlantic to Miguel who found himself just as appreciative. Those two got in touch with each other.
Soon files were being swapped and neighbours unnerved. The work was fashioned into shape with machine tools, willpower and spit and now the results of this experiment in transatlantic improv can be revealed. It’s a fucking triumph.
To be specific: what we have is a five track, 32 minute CD-r, packaged in another example of Yol’s winningly stark graphic style. Two of the pieces are Miguel improvising over material provided by Yol, the other three vice versa. I think the difference between the two sets of tracks is marked and interesting. One is furious, claustrophobic, the other has more air to it, a little more room in it to pace nervously up and down. I’m not going to tell you which are which, though, as I think it might be fun to try and work it out for yourself.
Yol’s contribution is aptly described as ‘Throat Attack & Smashing of Objects’ on the back of the CD-r. His vocalisations range from the almost conversational to horrifying bellowing to teeth-clenched, spittle-flecked groaning. It is remarkable – unlike anything else I’ve been sent. His utter commitment to the physicality of the performance is awesome. Scraping, crashing, the dropping of metal objects augment and divide the stuttering tirade, like punctuation.
Miguel’s part is described as ‘Guitar Neck, Hair Sticks & String Damage’ and his style here is similar to that on recent recordings released under his own name. No effects, no overdubs, rarely even sustain, hard picked, unforgiving in its discipline yet nuanced, subtle and compelling. There is no ornament to it because none is needed.
The collaboration is a success, meaning the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Miguel underscores the rhythms and cadence of Yol’s glossolalia. Yol’s furious delivery both bounces off of and is contained by Miguel’s guitar, like the steel ball bearing on a pinball table.
…and there we have it. Another magnificent year.
The Award Ceremony
Well, given that Yol is in Hull and Miguel is on the other side of the world in Mexico I quickly gave up on the logistics of actually handing over a prize. Instead of a voucher (as won by Ashtray Navigations last year) I will be putting an equivalent amount of money behind the release of the second Neck Vs. Throat album in the New Year. Yes, I’m getting my hands dirty with this one. Is it the return of fencing flatworm recordings? Watch this space!
Right, everything that isn’t music to be summarised in part two…
artifacts of the no-audience underground: space victim
March 6, 2012 at 1:05 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: bells hill, bong, drone, improv, lucy johnson, mike vest, new music, no audience underground, noise, psychedelia, space victim
Space Victim – Psychotropic Mind Murder (Bells Hill, BH009, CD-r, edition of 50)
In the same package from Scott of Bells Hill that contained the Culver & Fordell Research Unit CD-r was nestled this monster, eyeing me suspiciously and waiting patiently for the opportunity to flex its scaly wings.
For what we have here is Space Victim, a duo of Lucy Johnson of Obey and Mike Vest of Bong and Basilica (see VISUAL VOLUME for details of all these variations). And what Space Victim have for us is some heavy, viscous, maximalist guitar psychedelia. Don’t be expecting anything whimsical or pastoral and flower strewn. This is best-night-of-the-year-without-leaving-your-armchair drug music. I suppose should you want a musical reference point then this sounds a little like millennial Ashtray Navigations, pre-synth turn, with Phil’s guitar sound at its most monsoon drenched and tropical.
The release is bookended by two lengthy jams (for want of a better word): ‘The Sea of Sleep’ (17 minutes) and ‘Entrail Weight’ (20 minutes, great title) which riff, drone, drift and shimmer in a heat haze. Teenage dragons might groove on this in a lair filled with dope smoke as they do flame-grilled hot knives whilst sniggering at that lame-ass Lord of the Rings shit. The tracks that make up the middle section are much shorter and offer glimpses of experiments: part mad science, part arcane rite. Orgone accumulators crackle and the tang of ozone bleaches through the heady fug of incense. However glimpses are all you get: sometimes these tracks end suddenly, as if the laboratory door had been slammed shut in your face.
Passages of this album are properly fried. The psychonauts amongst you may be reminded of the ‘chameleon’ stage of an acid trip: peaking like crazy, your senses fizzing like sherbet fireworks, your skin rippling and morphing to mimic your surroundings, your eyes bulging and swivelling independently of each other. Or so I hear. I wouldn’t know, of course.
Over the last couple of weeks a few casual listens led to an addiction blotting out almost everything else. Then this release became pretty much the only thing I wanted to hear. I was hoping that typing this up might help break the spell, but I can feel its claws tightening on my shoulders again already…
Highly recommended. Contact Scott of Bells Hill via scottjamesbellshill@gmail.com
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