rowdily settling in my stomach: rfm on bold oxide lust, sindre bjerga, king kungo and brandstifter
May 5, 2017 at 6:16 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: bold oxide lust, brandstifter, cologne, enrique r palma, king kungo, nils quak, sindre bjerga, spam, spam tapes
Bold Oxide Lust – A Fad, Then (Self Release)
Sindre Bjerga – Almost Like Music (Spam Tapes)
King Kungo – Da Ist Der Rhein (Spam Tapes)
Brandstifter – Die Stereoiden Des Merz (Spam Tapes)
Bold Oxide Lust – A Fad, Then (Self Release) a cassette perhaps but certainly a digital album
Effervescent and blistered electronic tone-poems enter one ear then dum-dum the precious grey fluid within.
It is, of course Enrique R. Palma to blame for detonating my magnetic mind-wipe direct from his base in Yucatan, Mexico.
This four-tracker, a quartet of future blues starts with ‘Brunei Rigs Nuns’ fizzing like damp fireworks until it moves through a movement for (1) stainless-steel frogs and (2) diamond-tipped cicadas. Most surprising is the guest pan-pipes hoffed by B. Eno (or someone)!
The sound of falling piss hails the start of ‘Cobalt/Trauma Eel’ while synthetic chords swell and bloat under the golden shower. The longest piece on record – a hefty twelve minutes – things move from hot splatters to distant gasps and exhalations. The organist is determined to add some decorum to this situation and play clumped, fistfuls of notes that seem to decay into soft butter almost instantaneously.
N-AU crossword fans will no doubt make a beeline for ‘Anagram Liar’ to seek some obscured pattern in the flailing muss. I’ve never been a cryptic fan but, for the record, my findings are as follows: aqueduct field recordings meshed with Judy Dunaway scores, electric typewriter keys tapped with frenetic energy, mouth squoosh. A winner in anyone’s book.
Enrique leaves closer ‘A Fondly If In’ to really kick out the jams. This is a full-throttle rocker in a world where Suicide became punk’s measurement and the Smex Pustules petered-out like the bad fashion-world joke they were. Almost 9 minutes of explosive muck and bluster that then chills-the-fuck-out and we’re transported to a soft cantina filled with warm erotic hiss.
Sindre Bjerga – Almost Like Music (Spam Tapes) cassette
Bjerga- a presence unmoveable!
Bjerga – a method unrepeatable!
Here stand two live performances summoned from N-AU’s Misterrrrrrrr James Brrrrrroowwwwwwwwwn.
(Side A) We travel back in time to March 24th 2016. We are in the fine city of Cologne (home of Spam tapes). Prepare yourself for a tape-jaxx heavy set.
The FFW button is given some serious hammer as voices get squeaky and disco/funk grows an extra limb. But the tomfoolery can only last so long as Sindre breaks out something more sparse and dub-wise where faint grunts waddle.
The sudden intrusion of space makes me feel uneasy and makes each click, throb and slo-tape-smear something a little uncomfortable – like watching a candied industrial process.
And while the third movement goes full-circle back to Sindre’s drone roots with a gritty, visceral chugga-chug-chugga of perfect dictaphonix roar; the final segment gets me all tight round the middle, in a post Sunday-lunch kind of way, before the rosemary and sage farts offer sweet relief.
(Side B) The dial is set two days earlier and this time we are in the home of the International Trade Conference circuit – Frankfurt!
Things start off very quietly with a muscular yet almost internal sound. Could this be the birth of peristalsis-core?
The swallowing and bolus-juggling come in waves (natch!) squashing and releasing tight clumps of roots reggae into my innocent ears.
Any riddim is soon overpowered with searing tape roil, drone-embers and destroyed soft-rock (think Leather and Lace) until a child’s voice steals the show speaking with great emphasis.
As befitting a master Bjerga rejects the easy crescendo in favour of a return to subtle ham-fist tape warping: voices clutter and mesh with wet mouth-noise and (snip) it all suddenly cuts off.
Time travel at its finest.
King Kungo – Da Ist Der Rhein (Spam Tapes) cassette – plays same on both sides
Utterly charming and disarming!
This brief and beautiful tape is an on-the-spot composition of Nils Quak’s young son King Kungo running, shouting and talking inside a huge resonant bridge in Cologne. In the background a piano loop by Michaela Melian is playing (from a previously happened-upon installation).
Both are dressed in the most wonderful natural reverb I think I have ever heard.
Simple eh? But the sum of these parts results in a powerful listening experience, swaddled in memory and warmth.
The piano is sparse and dry – echoing through the huge space dropping ivory tears in complex patterns. But it’s the young Master Kungo that turns these ingredients into a ray of sunshine.
The shouts and hollas let us gnarly-old adults revisit that pure innocent joy of shouting into the wind; you can hear his excitement as these sounds reflect back his practiced squeals and effectively rolled ‘r’s and trills.
The feedback loop of noise-excitement-noise-excitement is, I’ll wager, one of the universal N-AU equations and keeps us coming back to damp cellars across the globe to plug in and play. Hearing this laid out without no pretence or posturing is most intoxicating – like the first sip of ice-cold lemonade; I can feel the fizziness flow though my head and neck, rowdily settling in my stomach.
Production-wise it sounds like nothing has been touched or tweaked so there is an occasional tape flutter or mic rustle but hey…that just makes it more real man.
An experience tape of wide-smiles and wonderment!
Brandstifter – Die Stereoiden Des Merz (Spam Tapes) cassette
And of course this offering from Brandstifter couldn’t be more different. Note to self – never expect the usual from Spam!
What sounds like tightly wound, tightly worked “FIELDS, LOOPS, NOISE, VOX” rumble, rustle and whistle between broken teeth.
After a few minutes of side one’s opening soft-factory vibes we’re treated to a hiss-symphony of subtle breath sounds all looping over themselves like Wounded Knee’s most delicate moments mumbled into the bottom of a pint pot.
In time, small electric motors power some fowl or other into a clucking mess, feathers are ruffled and breasts plumped – but look alive little goose – the farmer and family chant a Summer Isle backwards psalm.
Side two is a more free-flowing energy river and goes a little something like this
…car door/rubber knocks/more bloody geese/someone takes a marimba onto the train/dropped chocolate coins…
until a real Fylkingen text-sound experiment wraps creamy ‘b’ sounds and ‘lem’ sounds round various tonsils ending in a true babblicious fountain!
Brandstifter waltz the looping majestic!
Spam Tapes / A-Music Spam Page
-ooOOoo-
tin apples: joe murray on kiko c. esseiva, sisto rossi, dale cornish, phil julian, murray royston-ward
November 10, 2016 at 1:29 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: dale cornish, joe murray, kiko c esseiva, murray royston-ward, phil julian, sisto rossi, spam, the wormhole
Kiko C. Esseiva – Zenith Larsen/Nadir Larsen (tape, SPAM, spam20, edition of 50)
Sisto Rossi – Soundtrack To A Nailed Shut Coffin (tape, SPAM, spam19, edition of 40)
Dale Cornish and Phil Julian – Laughing Out (7″ vinyl, The Wormhole, WHO#07, edition of 123 or download)
Murray Royston-Ward – My Neighbour Who Lives in the City of Mirrors near My House (2 x 32 page booklets and CD-r, edition of 80, privately published)
Murray Royston-Ward – Language is a Virus (16 page booklet and CD-r, edition of 30, privately published)
Murray Royston-Ward – Improvisations 2014 (28 page booklet, edition of 50, privately published)
Cologne’s SPAM tapes introduces me, yet again, to a bunch of whacked-out sound-goats who’ve been chugging on at this lark for ages. I’m blind and I’m humbled!
Kiko C. Esseiva, a Swiss/Spanish electro-acoustic artist is first out of the traps with a mysterious pot of gunk inlaid with grease, buzz and tin apples.
The two sidelong pieces (‘Zenith Larsen’ and ‘Nadir Larsen’) crackle with a fairly dark energy, juggling taped grot with live (or live sounding) interventions on cracked gongs and bicycle wheel.
Like eavesdropping on a light machinery workshop the sounds move to their own logic, cutting out and starting up when the unseen controller sees fit. You’ve just got to keep your fingers clear of the whirling blades eh? But this never sounds grim… almost at the end of side one there’s a glorious smear of ant-noise and cyborg humming that makes me click my fingers like I’ve remembered an old magic trick.
Side two (‘Nadir…’) is a thoughtful huff on brass pipe and fingernail tap until some unholy voice-jugger/vibrating clam starts a magnetic earthquake in my stomach. Gosh! This is warped and holy. Magnificent and almighty! I’m having a bit of an experience here as I dash about looking for my headphones to inject this straight into my hungry holes.
Of course, the unseen hand turns a dial and we are left in a land of shingle, mournful keys and wretched whirring. Hey… there are worse ways to spend an afternoon right?
Harsh Noise thinker and instrument builder Sisto Rossi (AKA Wallkeeper) wins today’s prize for evocative tape title with his Soundtrack To A Nailed Shut Coffin.
What would you expect from a tape like this reader? Claustrophobic screams? Stiff-armed wriggles and cramped-leg stomps? Bloodied fingernail scratch? Yeah… me too. But I have to report this tape, while stunningly intense and full-on, is almost nihilistically detached in its approach.
Sure the buffering roar of noise is filtered into your skull along with the odd broken-crockery rattle but it’s all constructed with a feeling of impotent dread, a slackness, a ‘lost cause’ lassitude that’s strangely affecting.
While occasional electronic squalls add a high-end to the relentless churning and asphalt-grazing thunder the base-note is those personal dark thoughts; those repetitive nightmares made so real you can smell the damp earth.
The closing moments capture the last fleeting thoughts of expiration – part relief and part regret; bright as 1000 fires but burning out to dead ash in micro-seconds.
The sound of lying broken, six feet under and simply giving up.
From grimy analogue hopelessness to bright digital cleanliness with Dale Cornish and Phil Julian on their super snappy li’l seven-incher Laughing Out.
The title side absolutely crackles with the sort of power and energy that winds up in a filthy-dirty joke told in the Vatican.
Shared electronics spit goat fat. It’s dripping wetly on hot coals while Dale sneers it out.
It’s a guffaw in cuisine
he snarls, leading the dear listener on a hectic goose-chase around slack-littered city streets and the hidden canyon of dreams we project onto whatever our reality is right now.
But this is in no way ‘dream-y’ readers. The poise and shimmer is as solid as a beard trim and ultra-sarcastic like the very best Glam Rock. There’s still a pair of hobnail boots beneath all that glitter, eh?
The ‘b’ side offers us two shorter ham-slaps. ‘For Vocal’ mimics the shattering of optic nerves, made of bruised ice, against a brass pitchfork. Yeah! Very brittle, incredibly sharp and super-cold.
The closer, ‘Palazzo’, starts with a dark pulse but soon morphs into a mini mystery play for baritone voice and tight crime-beats.
Can you hear? Can you hear?
The whole thing, sides ‘a’ and ‘b’, clock in at under 6 minutes; the perfect brevity of a paper cut or punk gob.
Taken as a piece of found-sound-art-off-the-pile Murray Royston-Ward’s My Neighbour Who Lives in the City of Mirrors near My House is an impressive enough document.
It shudders and ripples, it pops and whines in all the right places. But add to this the rich Bangladeshi field recordings data in the accompanying booklets, outlining Murray’s journey from leafy Nottingham to the other side of the world, and you’re adding another peppering of intention and understanding.
On ‘A Very Small Guernica Facing a Rather Large Mona Lisa’ these augmented recordings (a rethinking of what silence actually is) feature the constant urban horn section of tuk-tuks and taxi cabs punctuating Murray’s iron-coated dragnet like exploding garlands.
Let’s be clear, Murray’s a master of the clink and rattle: on ‘Topos of Intrusive Sound’ the carefully placed metallic object, dropped shoe or Pringles tube shuffle in and out of your earhole with a customary jolliness. Murray’s top trump has always been his inclusion of careful humour into this sometimes stuffy improv world.
But the mood darkens (unsurprisingly) at the ‘Slaughter Livestock Festival’; excited crowds chatter while suspicious cows gingerly cotton on. Every sound becomes pregnant with meaning. A quite innocent washing makes me think of thick red blood sluuushing down the dusty street, a metallic ‘shing-g-g’ the sharpening of a blade. At twelve minutes this is an unbearably tense listen.
Language is a Virus, a 28 minute spoken word/reportage collage, concerns the myths, prejudices and reality of Ebola; not only the disease itself but its socio-political impact. What makes this hit even harder is the fact source material was gathered by Holly Royston-Ward, Murray’s wife, during her work as a nurse in Sierra Leone. Harrowing, thought-provoking and informative. No smart Alec remarks from me (for once), all I’m going to say is check this out here.
Finally, an honourable mention goes out to Improvisations 2014, an artist book of photographs, locations, timings and instrumentation for imagined improvisations. An interesting experiment, it invites the ‘listener’ to imagine combinations: spring, metal chain, cassette player, prayer cymbal, bait packaging (for example) with no recorded sound to back it up. I’m getting a plink/boing/screee/crackle from this list. What about you?
Take a trip with Murray but be sure to flick through images of a 70’s Alan Whicker to get the dislocation vibe spot on.
—ooOoo—
a stressful night in the bathysphere: joe murray on sindre bjerga, bruce russell, gnarlos, no intention, yol
September 15, 2016 at 12:04 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: allen mozek, bruce russell, gnarlos, joe murray, l'esprit de l'escalier, lf records, no intention, sindre bjerga, spam, yol
Sindre Bjerga – For The Automatic People (CD-r, LF Records, LF057)
Bruce Russell / Gnarlos – Ruined Again (12″ vinyl, L’Esprit De L’Escalier, LELE04)
No Intention – Representative Work (tape and zine, spam, spam 17)
Yol – Is it Acceptable? (CD-r, LF Records, LF056)
Sindre Bjerga – For The Automatic People
I’ve been listening to a lot of Sindre lately. A damn lake of Bjerga-tronics have I been imbibing. Morning (Sindre), noon (Bjerga) and night (Sindre again). Those tape-jaxx interventions and kitchen-sink drones have been both bread and beer to me.
So much Bjerga has been supped I’m starting to look like the Norwegian ambassador himself. See my ‘Sindre-selfie’ for evidence:
Diversion innit! To get you in the mood and all receptive to my reviewing like.
Here comes the rot.
FTAP starts with some seriously munged vocal slurp. Slow and low it hoists its freak flag and blows goonish raspberries to keep it flapping.
As ever, the pinch is never far from your ears, this time with an extra element of ‘double-singing’ that would make I DM THEFT ABLE widen his eyes and say ‘goop, goop, goop’ from his bristly gob.
From this point in it all gets a bit Philip José Farmer; a dune buggy idles on the sands, erotic-robots squeal with pleasure leaking greasy r/jizz. Are those tentacles caressing the brushed-steel bodies? Eek… time to make my excuses and leave.
I spy the spring-loaded ‘Bjerga-ma-phone’ dumbly boinging underneath this radio interference from Mars and can feel the slow creep of bacteria munching through the red sands. It’s all fizzing crackle (cruck) and blistering sparks (hwunk).
Like a tennis match played with tinfoil equipment there’s a thin swoop and crisp backhand smashing lettuce through a sieve before the tape mush (source: Culver plays The Sweet?) takes over again burying me up to the neck in chatty sound ants.
I’ve never felt so tired I…
…as I awake the sun is starting to set. I can’t move my head to see but I can bloody feel those robots dragging themselves towards me.
Bruce Russell / Gnarlos – Ruined Again
As warped a slice of wax as you’re going to find this side of tomorrow.
Seymour ‘Gnarlos’ Glass performs a magical work of tape-wonk blending musty sound-ingredients into a fetid whole: marbled like inexpensive brisket. Sections of this side entertain a gentle wobble and circular riffling that’s lifting the side flaps of my cap and inflating my valve. How exhilarating!
Brief mind-pictures?
- Small mechanical birds mutter brief algorithms.
- Slow goons argue about magnetics in a variety of future languages.
- A visit to the All Moscow Dog Show (тяв-тяв)
- A stressful night in the Bathysphere
Again I’m floored by the rattling squawk of the finch and whirr. It parrots a flywheel that, in turn, scores concentric patterns into the sole of my foot. I can trace them with a sharpened pinkie, mirroring the record rotating nearby in my darkening room.
Confused by the repetitive motion the Gnarlos-sounds sprays from my heel just as clear as from the knocked-off speakers causing a Quadraphonic effect not heard since Tommy pulled back the chromed plunger and let his blind fingers do the talking.
But don’t go to bed thinking this is just an exercise in the knockabout and playful. ‘The Organ Courier and the Chinese Billionaire’ simmers with such a heavy beauty it’s almost too delicate to bear at times… that’s value for fucking money, eh?
Bruce ‘Dead C’ Russell quotes those fancy-pants French philosophers on ‘No Mean Dub/No Mean Cry’ as he rustles digestive biscuits in an old tin bath… the grimy miner.
Imagine the re-scoring of an Italian horror movie in which they all decide not to go back to the cabin but check out the swamp instead. Ankle deep in solid water the perfectly represented group watch the fireworks damply explode overhead with a slub, a grobe and a wimpy gnash.
After a while sounds roll backwards, I pick out the Vuvuzela listed in the sleeve notes but also hear something darker…perhaps it’s Chango resplendent in his red and white beads, oiled moustache atop a wet red mouth. Where’ve you been hiding fella?
In and around my increasingly religious visions the electronics swarm like a high pressure front and dry room recordings, half lecture, half apology, leap from varying fidelity-boards blowing kisses into my crispy ears.
Praise Him!
No Intention – Representative Work
Totally beguiling and innocent tape work from Vitrine boss Allen Mozek.
For the pragmatic it’s a tape of domestic psychedelics; poems read by a variety of groovy cats, piano, occasional percussion and glorious tape gunk.
You know the kind of thing. Lo-fi? For sure. But with no actual intention? Here’s where we have to draw a line in the sand.
For dreamers and lovers this is blissful stuff. A stream-of-unconsciousness it nudges at the same sleep-centres that pitch the wheel on my nocturnes. Repetition and repeated themes allow both brain-drift and moments of sharp clarity. I find myself zeroing in on details… a piano run, a particular condenser mic tone, a twist of unexpected studio panning.
There’s a bustle and busyness to the proceedings. Short, quick steps clipperty-clop with a deft ‘pocket jazz’ feel. It’s almost impossible not to get lost in the rattle and hiss, to picture yourself, collar up to keep out the drizzle, dashing between antique shops to keep out of the sudden downpour.
But what works so well is the sense of time travel. This is undoubtedly made up of recordings made at different times for many purposes and then carefully stitched together, in yet another place and time. But with an educated editor’s ear goofing on the similarities and differences, the sonic jigsaw soon fits snug and any ragged edges get snipped to fit.
An honorable mention to ‘Tape Op Ex (Four Cartridges)’ that has a European finesse, grand architecture and ruinous fountains, sweeping into a feedback breakdown that could be culled from a retro-BLOWHOLE session. Damn!
And of course, things end with a sigh, a gasp. The mechanical click accompanies a ditch-dry Allen,
these are my representative works.
And these works do you so very proud man.
Yol – Is it Acceptable?
Yes, always.
Tempting thought it is to submit a two word review to THE BIG HIMSELF [Editor’s note: I would have published it too.] there is so much in these wonderfully rich recordings it would be a crime to short-change you (my dearest of all possible readers) of the fullness my ears have gratefully received from his majestic and most furious Yol-ness. You feel me?
This collection of recordings sounds very, very live with a clear and achingly honest ambience. Traffic noise, hard brick-reflection and the occasional snippet of audience voice place these as performances or site-specific experiments.
And these urban performance spaces reveal an instantly recognisable landscape. For me it’s the loading bay behind Cowgate Morrisons; fenced off with razor wire, concrete-grim with 24 hour dust and punctuated with rusty piles of unwanted something. For you it will be a similarly bleak and underappreciated space.
But in Yol’s hands the sonics kick-off like a glorious one-man Neubauten nursing a Pernod-fulled hangover.
Trucks back-up beeping rudely, the diesel blows gritty chuff making a reet big KOFF, KOFF, KOFF. Rubble is dragged across a factory floor and metallics cry out, bruised by sharp knuckles.
These are the bass rumbles.
But there’s a balance, a lightness to counteract this darkness – enter the domestic floor percussion. Your yogurt pots and balti bowls make a brittle clatter that dances brightly and sparkles in the stereo field.
For me it’s the deformation of language that’s absolutely, totally riveting here. It all starts with what I guess proper-critics would call a vignette. A super-lit and hyper-real world is conjured up in a few brief sentences or words, bold as Japanese calligraphy. But these words are squashed and stretched in strange and terrifying directions. Yol circles individual syllables like a vulture, swooping in to tear at a fricative or rip a vowel sound clean out of its meaning-carcass.
Words are shorn of a regular purpose when they are hoarsely barked with a Gobi-dry mouth. But they land more powerful than ever; stark and isolated.
To my tin ears this plastic language and clatter is seen through a lens of what it means to live in Britain today; a country pulling away from culture and kindness. A country hurling itself into a greedy grab bag for the few and saving the rain-water kebab meat for the rest of us.
And what sound sums up this futility, the almost desolate hopelessness? Perhaps it’s the lonely squeal of a castor that ends ‘Soz Hard’.
A symphony of petrochemical by-products and constant spiralling pressure.
—ooOoo—
L’Esprit De L’Escalier (just a Discogs page – you may have to dig)
Spam (excerpt on Soundcloud, release coming soon)
through our cat’s head: joe murray on lieutenant caramel, nils quak, robert ridley-shackleton, the moth kingdom, buddly tuckers
March 18, 2016 at 10:23 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: buddly tuckers, cardboard club, joe murray, lieutenant caramel, meudiademorte records, nils quak, robert ridley-shackleton, spam, the moth kingdom
Lieutenant Caramel – Überschallknall (tape, SPAM / Meudiademorte Records, Spam 15, edition of 60)
Nils Quak – In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni (tape, SPAM / Meudiademorte Records, Spam 14, edition of 40)
Robert Ridley-Shackleton – God (tape, Cardboard Club)
The Moth Kingdom – Bleeding Cherub (tape, Cardboard Club)
Buddly Tuckers – S/T (tape, Cardboard Club)
Lieutenant Caramel – Uberschallknall
I’m listening to this directly after jamming Ben Gwilliam’s freezer-burn tape that my esteemed colleague L. Vollar covered a while ago. For a second I think the opening door-slam from the Lieutenant is a direct psychic-echo from Ben’s frosty vacuum death. Rest assured readers, it’s not. This is an altogether different beast.
This silky smooth Caramel is in fact bona fide French electronic composer/film-maker Philippe Blanchard who is tweaking the desk like a daemon on this Music Concrete beauty. Five exceptional pieces are collected on the banana-yellow tape. I say… shall we dance?
You dig that Luc Ferrari tape-mesh right? Then tune into ‘Die Grosse Liebe’, a cryptic crossword of sound that despite the fiendishness of the clues fits as neatly as a half-dozen eggs in a box. The sharp detritus from a traveller’s DAT is the fuel and these snippets slam together making my eyes riffle in REM despite the bright February sunshine. Coiled bass notes fairly boom out of the speakers during ‘Die Obdachlos’ in a way that should make any tape-denier check their dolby and scrub out their ears.
The wonderful piano/ice-drip/wrenching rope trio dominate ‘Der Teufel’ revealing a natural timing and swing that’s as syncopated as any King Oliver. It’s as delightful and light as meringue, the sort of music I could imagine going through our cat’s head.
There’s a JAZZ FROM HELL quality to ‘Andreea’ but rather than give me a tension headache (bloody arse Xappa) this massages my temples with sweet oil and pungent herbs. The resulting fumes relax me in rag-doll positions, all bent legs and lolling tongue.
But this relaxation is short lived! Taut piano-wire is strung up like some Hellraiser-inspired installation on ‘Tot eu Tot’. A bruised thumb plucks the assembled strings releasing dull ‘poings’. A calloused hand rubs their metallic length to leech out pico-symphonics. This is no dark-gothic remembering but a brightly polished chrome-dream, Ballardian in temperament.
Damn don’t waste money trawling the collector-scum market for hi-brow tape-composition! Throw open your doors to nutritious SPAM!
Nils Quak – In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni
Hey! This tape speaks to me man. In the insert there’s a tiny note from Nils that says this whole tape was conceived “in stolen moments of mid-life angst”. I’m with you brother Nils! That’s the kind of thing I need tattooed on to my manky ankle.
So, does it sound angsty? Is it half full of piss and vinegar, half full of maudlin tears? Doesn’t sound it to me mate… this is synth-based raffles for sure, but the mood is exploratory and playful.
The many short tracks are neatly divided into carefully prepared drones, deep enough to lose yourself in and bleep-and-booster electronic pitch-bubbles that float nice and pretty with the occasional headlight shinning through the fog to pick out the detail real peachy.
So, at points you have shifting plates of beaten steel rubbing over each other, sensuously vibrating. Then the mood changes to a bubbling electro-bongo beating out a Roy Castle rhythm. Again things switch for a heavy oil by-product jam, all crude slurping and melting blackness as eventually bee drones get drowned in heavy syrup.
But within the constant shape-shifting there’s something gnawing at me, a familiarity that I can’t quite place. And then it dawns like a big orange sun, I’m getting huge nostalgic wafts of Manchester’s late, great Disco Operating System in the Sci-Fi vibrations. Yeah… the radioFONIC is in the house and churning up gravity with some wicked deepness.
Robert Ridley-Shackleton – God
Are you ready for card?
…asks Robert as the wonderful God cranks up.
It’s a good question. Are YOU ready for card? Am I ready for card? Are any of us really ready for card? Many pixels have been rearranged into shapes that spell out RRS and this dude is fast becoming The Shaggs or Gwilly Edmondez or The Fall or something?
Point one. He’s a true original voice – that distinctive pocket jazz ‘whhhuuurrrrr’ backs these jams like a Sunny Murray ride-cymbal smashhhhhh. The tinny ‘b-tish, b-tish, b-tish’ of an ancient casio-tone drives each tune and is the kind of thing that would make Mark Ronson sweat his structured quiff flat as a pancake. The stream of consciousness lyrics baffle with gnomic platitudes,
Believe in yourself
is crooned with s.o.u.l. direct from a d.i.s.c.o. club, circa Rotherham 1983. Reader… nothing really sounds like Ridley-Shackleton.
Point two. The unshakeable resolve. RRS has his formula; he’s carved it out like a sailor with their whale bone and now… he owns it. There’s no pretence at any progression or change. You know what you’re getting right from the distinctive artwork to the gristly Dictaphone work. Every second is a reference to the world Robert has created from yogurt pots and toilet duck. But like all great artists who create their own unique sound there’s still the capacity to surprise. Any slight deviation from the norm becomes a quantum leap, a forehead-slapper (just think back to Dylan’s electric shazz-nazz for the crowd to cry ‘Judas!’) that makes you go
eh?
Halfway though side two the frippering flutter gets as dense as any Niblock-block and a micro second could be those jokers-euro Farmers Manual.
Point three. The unfettered urge to create. A prolific artist at the best of times, RRS keeps on moving, moving, moving letting no grass grow under his velvet pixie boots. The zines, tapes, label(s) and releasing other folks jaxx keeps these idle hands far too busy for the devil to slip on a pair of gloves. If I was a religious man I’d be questioning the BIG GUY… is this more divine influence?
The individual tracks mobius in on themselves (in less enlightened times they might have called this a concept tape) so a divine perspective is woven through each song, even the painfully honest ‘Sex Thug’ until we start where we once began.
So, when the dust settles, what are we left with? Another Ridley-Shackleton joint that’s the same as the rest? F’sure.
Another moreish peek into the wild and frightening world of Robert Ridley-Chaka Khan. Damn right!
The Moth Kingdom – Bleeding Cherub
A fellow traveller called LOAM hops into a time machine and takes me back to my teenage years; joss sticks, Answer Me! zine and lo-fi tapes of scratchy guitars.
Super simple songs played on acoustics and electrics. The odd maraca and piano sample get sprinkled over things like tangy za’atar. LOAM sings along with a deep reverb painting dark pictures of cruel nature and harsh life.
In his label write up Robert Ridley-Shackleton confesses his lack of knowledge of this kind of ‘folk’ sound, and me… I’m equally, embarrassingly clueless. But what I do know is this starts to sound better and better as the sun sets, a smoky whisky appears and things unwind and unravel, beautifully illustrated on the ‘Corpse of the Crow’. Check it out.
Buddly Tuckers – S/T
A collaboration between CHROME and ROBE (a pyjama-clad RRS, I’m guessing) where that pocket-jazz sound is the filter through which electric solids and field recordings are mashed.
The overall doof is classic Cardboard Club; a mid-table throttling, damp rustle and condenser-mic ripple. But underneath all this graphic industry ghostly voices waft like ripe Camembert.
At one point some keyboards squawk with the ferocious virtuosity of Islam Chipsy playing with sheepskin mittens on… it’s all treble attack released in careful blocks.
The universal balance is kept via crunchy Dictaphone work; Dr Strange summons up celestial choirs from a separate dimension – you can feel them but not quite hear them.
Fans of all this NOISE genre should give this one a try for some sweet floral catharsis.
—ooOoo—
respectfully anxious: joe murray on recent releases from spam
September 20, 2015 at 7:39 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: baldruin, dan melchior, flamingo creatures, joe murray, jooklo duo, metabolismu, sinergia elettronica, spam
Flamingo Creatures – Rock Classics Vol 1 (tape, SPAM, spam11)
Sinergia Elettronica – Maribor (tape, SPAM, spam9, edition of 80)
Baldruin – Klaue (tape, SPAM, spam12, edition of 40)
Dan Melchior – Black Night/New Morning (tape and riso-printed art zine, SPAM, spam10, edition of 80)
Flamingo Creatures – Rock Classics Vol 1
Spam in a cabin? Spamalot? Hey man… Spam gets a bad press these days. But for the chopped pork/tinned meat generation Spam holds a heart-warming place next to austerity-busting Woolton Pie and greasy Snoek. But my RFM groovers… I’m digressing. This bundle of very welcome Spam slapped onto the welcome mat and worked its way straight up to the tape deck with no delay.
First up it’s the sinister playground sound of FLAMINGO CREATURES, the CEO(s) of all this delightful SPAM. Imagine a Mesopotamian naming ceremony with Sun Ra guesting on keyboards and winsome chanting (via perished inner tube), then tune into a very delicate use of reverb giving each sound a mauve shadow. Plucked violin makes me think patchwork thoughts while electronic wheezes huff asthmatically. Each phrase is coupled perfectly; the buba-buba-buba rumbles give much needed bass heft to the lighter pinched strings. The ‘poing’ of amplified springs is coddled in gritty looped finesse. All this jiggery-pokery is paced gently. Don’t run away with the thought this is rushed or hurled about willy-nilly (the approach of many a goof-merchant). The confidence to just let sounds be, explore and stretch out shows a deeply sedative practice, a mastery of one’s art. A love of what matters: sound, space and magic.
Sinergia Elettronica – Maribor
Full-on wonk/skronk and gronk from this sooper-grooper of jaxx-monks The Jooklo Duo and gibbet-swingers Metabolismu.
I know what you’re thinking…
This is going to be a meeting of THAT GOD DAMN free jazz beast and 60’s style, horn-rimmed spectacles wearing, white-coat sporting radiophonic electronics goof.
I can’t fool you dear readers… you are on the darn dirty dollar with your perceptive deductions.
Each musical moment of this seriously funky tape is bished and bashed through copper circuits and magnetic mercury pools. It hums and squeals. It soars and plummets. The black becomes white, the up becomes down. Electricity has the upper hand here; lightning squiggles through drainpipes, ROM memory crashes in a spectacular fashion, empty batteries prompt fluctuating voltage through Tron’s soldered city. But… it’s not all Robocop trap work. Oh no. Real life human intervention beats a flexitone solo over hot dusty wire. Bamboo pipes hiss real-life breath over the meta-organic complexity. The effect is future/retro… Tetuso the Iron Man with ice-hockey hair. We see a pre-Skynet meeting of minds; human and blow-bot both digging Don Cherry’s pocket trumpet squark and the blunt architecture of machine code as beautiful sides of a similar moist coin.
Further listening seems to plunge me deeper into this parallel universe. Steam Punks… you got it so wrong. In Sinergia Elettronica’s alternate reality Halim El-Dabh got that Mohawk he always fancied.
Years later we all wake up and Bad Brains are fresh for raspberry Pi.
Baldruin – Klaue
New Day Rising!
Lo-fi keyboard studies like a little Ludwig Van champing away at his harpsichord in a powdered wig (dripping glitter).
The Bandcamp blurb says Baldruin is showing a more distorted, noisy and abstract side on this saucy tape which makes me think ‘blimey’ as this is as tripped out as a tie-dyed vest with ‘GONG’ written on it.
All the colours are swirling man…
But, let’s get serious. That’s no dig at a soft head. No way. The Baldruin delivers the hum and fuss of machine-made circuits, the flipped out, the turned on.
A Space Echo doubles each fingered shove so things ripple nice across your personal spectrum. Tunes waft in soft on the jasmine winds, suggested as such, and then gently tugged away. But not before they spiral-drill into the soft grey matter (tiny delicate earworms); so when dislodged they pull my precious neurons free!
This Baldruin plays with the edges, mastering the indistinct and implied. In the same way a micro-movement of the cheek and eye muscles can turn a smile into a snarl, twists of the sonic palette warm up chilly electronics until they are a comfortable 98.6 Fahrenheit all over.
For fans of day-dreaming and the soft ‘swussh’ of traffic skimming down rain-drenched streets.
?????????????
Dan Melchior – Black Night/New Morning
Dan pushes this tape/pen & ink combo to create a wonderful multi-platform experience.
Very gradual tape melange fritters the start of ‘Black Night’ until things settle into electronic tones both deep and ribbed. Like running a stick across the railings the juddering swoops soon become symphonic, softly shouldering each other into little human pyramids.
The jagged malfunction vibe increases as ghostly voices compete with the black-night vibrations; things start to crash like trees yelling ‘TIMBER’ from splintered mouths as they fall beneath the developer’s mega-deforestation-tank.
The warble continues. Fresh noise is squeezed on from time-to-time but the lolling, rolling tones keep on keeping on like dark tidal soul.
Turning the tape over to ‘New Morning’ creates a sharp contrast. This side long piece is a guitar meditation full of those optimistic swells that give me little tingles. It must be some sort of AMSR shit but certain notes, in certain orders under certain circumstances give me a shiver – a shudder of electricity just under the skin. Add to this the slow pace and classy VOX stuttery r-e-v-e-r-b and I drift back to teenage summer holidays – that blissful ache of warm cider evenings and unrequited love. But before this gets all Spacemen 3 a gentle organ-huff blows across the stereo-skies, human chatter leaks through the gaseous wobble and the tape is rounded off chalky and lavender.
The accompanying zine ‘Biro Crimes’ is even more direct than the tape; a selection of drawings made at the Duke Cancer clinic are respectfully anxious and never less than beautiful.
A treasure, like all this wonderful SPAM. Be sure to check out the SPAM bandcamp for more tapes, zines and vinyl.
—ooOoo—
SPAM blog – Flamingo Creatures and Baldruin releases (also: Baldruin on Bandcamp)
SPAM blog – Sinergia Elettronica release
SPAM blog – Dan Melchior release (also: Dan Melchior via Meudiademorte Records)
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.]
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