fizzing blue stars: joe murray on ksds, acrid lactations, smear campaign & poulsen/harrison/watson/bjerga
February 6, 2015 at 2:08 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: acrid lactations, bbblood, chocolate monk, claus poulsen, duncan harrison, improv, joe murray, ksds, new music, no audience underground, noise, paul watson, sindre bjerga, smear campaign, stars dots and the new junk, stuart arnot, sue fitzpatrick, total vermin
Claus Poulsen, Duncan Harrison, Paul Watson & Sindre Bjerga – Blind Dates (CD-r, Chocolate Monk, choc.294, edition of 66)
KSDS – Black Abba (CD-r, T-Shirt and stickers, stars, dots and the “new” junk, Starsdots016, edition of 15 or download)
Acrid Lactations – Drizzling Quids A’ Crepuscule (tape, Total Vermin, #88)
Smear Campaign – Funky Cold Demeanour (tape, Total Vermin, #36)
Claus Poulsen, Duncan Harrison, Paul Watson & Sindre Bjerga – Blind Dates
A note on construction: these two duos; Duncan and Claus, Paul and Sindre played live to an audience in single figures in London’s free and easy Olive restaurant last year. These remarkable first-time duos were recorded and expertly mixed by Claus Poulsen and released in an edition of 66.
Duncan and Claus serve up a hubbling, bubbling mixture of tension and texture. Drawn-out scrapes and moans open the piece until loose cheeked ‘pops’ cut some slack and open up the landscape for Duncan’s concrete word-dub. Meanwhile a rich acoustic ripping rolls out of Claus’ fingerless gloves as he jingles a vintage synth with his toes. The button marked ‘sexy robot talk’ is fingered to start up a hot conversation that would make Louis and Bebe Barron blush beetroot red! A satisfying climax is sculpted out of decaying polystyrene blocks and Viking horns – classy!
Paul and Sindre begin inside a peach, pulling out chunks of juicy flesh and dropping it noisily to the floor. Sindre starts his onyx panther purring while Paul plays an egg-slice by caressing it with red Tudor brick.
Next they turn their attention to soundtracking a rowdy bout of Olympic wrestling. I can clearly picture the slap of stinging-pink flesh on the crash mat and feel the astringent whiff of liniment in the nostrils. A cub reporter gets in close with the Dictaphone but fluffs the buttons (screee…) and a disco plays, thump, thump, thump in one unfortunate head until you bail and cry ‘UNCLE!’ Chucky Cheese is hosting a sugar-frenzied birthday party for Sky Saxon and the electricity keeps cutting out like Norman Collier is controlling the Black Ark.
Then things get serious. A sound like giant granite blocks being slowly moved around the chessboard is overtaken by Wu Tang Killer Bees (swarming) then descending into the insect-o-cutor to die spectacularly as fizzy blue stars.
All this furious invention makes me ponder the position of the improviser in 2015. It used to be a point of pride for grey beards to master the jizzle, skin or hornpipe until they could play inside out. Listening to a record like Blind Dates makes me remember that a collection of eggs, dried seaweed and a typewriter can transform just as spectacularly in the hands of a select goon. Ears are of the highest importance. Imagination is gold dust. Courage is the epaulette earned through practice and concentration.
Hold up your heads gentlemen…you join the pantheon along with yr average Derek, Evan or Han on this blow-out piece.
KSDS – Black Abba
This is a cheeky one alright. Mocked up to ape the Sabbath classic Master of Reality this disc by KSDS might be free of all inverted crosses but it’s still a heavy trip (man).
Fans of Kosmische-leaning keyboard action pay attention! This is whirling like a day-glo electric galaxy.
In some places heaviness comes from clustered chords held down until grim fingers bleed. In others (‘Cosmic Radiation’ for instance) crude beats lend weight and sound like the ghost of Jacob Marley took up the drums, rattling his rusty chains. ‘Hammer of the North’ is as claustrophobic as an oft remembered family car journey with a similar sense of tension and restrained anger; the shifting banks of delay sculpting something almost dancefloor friendly that would sit neat and tidy in the Opal Tapes catalogue.
And just when you think you’ve got the measure of things a tune of pure loveliness (‘With Anger’) swirls like some green and pleasant church organ gone up the silk route for hash and adventure.
But it’s on ‘The Stack’ that things get totally sepia-tinted kraut. Sounding like mid-period Cluster simple lines overlap building up layer upon layer until the tinniest beat (high hats spitting like a drowning man) keep strict tempo with a military bearing.
Acrid Lactations – Drizzling Quids A’ Crepuscule
More strung-out edge-of-consciousness skronk from that most singular of duos, Acrid Lactations.
Following in the footsteps of The Who, Iron Maiden, Kiss and Johnny Cash, Acrid Lactations release their version of that record industry classic – THE LIVE ALBUM. For many bloated groups it was a stop-gap, a cynical filler to be snorted up between tour and studio. But for some (hopefully the old beards named before) the live album becomes more than just a different version of the same old shit. It’s a chance to stretch out and rediscover the energy and vim that brought you together in the first place.
This collection of jams recorded between 2012 and 2014 is so live you can chew on the humus breath of the audience. You can sniff the peculiar brew in the air and feel the starchy knit of a woolly jumper necessary for the unheated venues of the no-audience underground.
But what do you get from the Lactations in a freewheeling live space? I sense a willingness to push things even further in these recordings. I mean…this is performance right? Honest entertainment for cold hard cash yeah? Stuart and Susan know the value of a dollar and play right up to punters letting new gasses fly. There’s a strong brass presence with the familiar Arnot trumpet joined by a whole selection of metallic blowholes from Sue (pipe, whistle, ocarina perhaps). An old accordion is humped and huffed with a lazy foot, tattered voices mesh, taped squalls blabber and a metallic shiny sheen shimmies.
Yet it’s the very dualism of a two piece group that makes the strongest impact here. With only four hands between them there is a delightful limitation to what can be done. You can only juggle with what you have eh? Sonically there’s a ‘to-you-to-me’ that’s so much more than basic call and response…it’s an appreciation of what needs to be left out, rejected, un-attempted to concentrate on the pure reaction/expression/reaction that flows like warm milk.
Most of the recordings are high energy affairs, skipping slightly quicker than your beating heart, but on occasion a delightful interlocking calmness occurs making a high tide mark in the performance journey.
Someone draw a plimsoll line so we can see how high we all got!
Another fine Acrid tape on the goddamn essential Total Vermin.
Smear Campaign – Funky Cold Demeanour
The word on the street is that this ruby red tape is based on old hip hop vinyl found in Glasgow’s charity shops. The Fly-girls and B-boys among you will perhaps notice the play on words in the title barfing up memories of your favourite gold rope wearing sexist Tone Loc.
So can you expect block rocking beats on your boombox? Errrrrrr…not really.
Side one starts off with what sounds like a huge bath full of agricultural slurry being thoroughly mixed…a flexible hose runs from the bottom of the steaming vat to your ears so you can better hear the liquid brown churn.
Soon metallic voices start to spar and dart (could this be our Anthony?). The distinctive ‘schliip’ and ‘f’wip’ of turntable melts into the dull consonants like a seasoning, bringing out the highlights, shining the vowel.
Side two opens with some percussive bumming as rusty sponges are rubbed together. A brief spurt with some human air is soon battered like a pork medallion with swathes of medieval feedback. Yet still the lip, teeth and tongue flip and stutter like a malfunctioning mp3 file.
This minimal judder strolls seamlessly into an altogether more hellish movement of tightly bound-up humming and rubbery percussion, stretching out across all points of the compass before ‘snick’ the sound stops and the tape pops.
Having said all that (and yes I know I was starting to become really cryptically verbose before) this is all done with a sense of reverence to the source material. This is certainly no ‘look at those people in the past, they stoopid cuz they clothes different’ schtick but a real act of honest sonic ecology.
Recycling done with no turntables nor a microphone.
—ooOoo—
stars, dots and the “new” junk
Total Vermin (now nearly two years since a blogspot update but Stuart is clearly still active. Be resourceful)
rancid fridge imploding: joe murray on knives, osmiroid, pain jerk, justin marc lloyd, duncan harrison and hyster tapes
March 19, 2014 at 9:26 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: beartown records, blyth, drone, duncan harrison, electronica, english as apples, grey park, hyster tapes, improv, jamie wrest, joe murray, justin marc lloyd, knives, kohei gomi, leitmotiv limbo, new music, no audience underground, noise, osmiroid, pain jerk, stars dots and the new junk, tapes, vocal improvisation, wasted capital since 2013, yol
Knives / Osmiroid – Stars, Dots and the “New” Junk (tape, Stars, Dots and the “New” Junk, starsdots007, edition of 50 or download)
Pain Jerk – Inflammable Material (CD-r, English as Apples)
Justin Marc Lloyd – I’m Sorry for the Thoughts Assigned to My Name (C29 tape, Wasted Capital Since 2013, WC6, edition of 50)
Various – FOUR LETTER WORLD COMPILATION (recycled tape, Hyster Tapes, HYSTER17, edition of 50)
Duncan Harrison – Ogre Neon (CD-r, Beartown Records)
Knives/Osmiroid – Stars, Dots and the ‘New’ Junk
The little seaside town of Blyth UK has been churning out some of the murkiest noise that my little ears have ever feasted on. So, it was with the grim anticipation of a solemn kicking I unwrapped this Blyth-related tape from the excellently named ‘Knives.’ I make the distinction of this being Blyth-related as the hipsters may know Knives as Blyth ex-pats, refugees who left their fabled mist-drenched home for the bright city lights of London.
These dark Knives take the guitar/drum/bass/tape set up you’ve shook your head to for all them years and set the controls for glistening tinnitus. On ‘Days of ancients’ finesse is treated with distain…this is a ROCK recording and plods like an undiscovered Birthday Party sound check while Nick’s round the back kinging his wretched ink. The unctuous rhythm leaves guitar free to dive-bomb, swooping and crashing into gasoline-scented balls of flame. Track two ‘Ancients of days’ starts off with the leaden bully-boy stomp of The Cosmic Psychos or Slub or something and disintegrates into a sheer hellish miasma of scorched electric gravy…steaming, dangerously fizzing.
Osmiroid sounds less like a band and more like a couple of heavily-bearded dudes with tapes, modulators and laptops playing evil dragging noise. Imagine a splintered, heavy cable hauled over a gravel pit of broken bottles. That’s the kind of abrasion pouring into my ears right now. The modulators give a fowl hoot every now and again. Another god-damn Australian makes an appearance but this time it’s Rolfy Rolfy Harris hawking his never-popular Stylophone. Yup. This makes no sense at all and is all the richer for it.
You can try before you buy at Bandcamp.
Pain Jerk – Inflammable Material
Real life, honest to goodness, retro Japanese noise from Kohei Gomi aka – Pain Jerk. But before we dive into this shiny beast there’s some back story. Jamie Wrest takes it from here.
Initially this Pain Jerk album was meant to get issued as a cassette 18 years ago. But it just never happened because of one thing or another. I was handed the DAT by Steven Middleton who was first sent it by Pain Jerk in 1996. Next I paid a visit to my friend M.P. Wood who runs the Soundroom studio in Gateshead. He worked his MAGIK on the recordings and now here they are in all their nasty glory after all these years. So enjoy whoever you are…
OK. The scene is set…but what does it all sound like? If you’ve never experienced Pain Jerk this is a pretty great place to start. With the first piece ‘Spiral Dragon’ you get unhinged-blackened-noise whipped-up like the mother of all howling storms. But there’s also some brief interludes of squelching electronic bird-song (possibly the base material for these improvisations) that sneak through the brutal tidal hammering. The white noise hiss gets turned up beyond any levels of common decency and, in parts, become a static floating thing, a gauze cloud perhaps? But any temporary prettiness is soon shouldered aside by the very physical jerks of metallic paintwork all scratched and peeled; wire wool in the tumble dryer, a rancid fridge imploding.
Track two ‘Right Angled Air’ is even more aggressive with less bass and more hi-fi harsh roar. There’s very little let up from the caustic scouring except a herky-jerky knob twiddling towards the end that temporarily dulls the sharpness for a moment, but of course brings things back at double export-strength…and then it just ends without no fanfare or crescendo. Phwoar! What a listen.
No idea where you can get this. English as Apples is the ultra-underground, hand-reared, barely legal bootleg label run by Blyth’s most beloved son Jamie Wrest. You could try the man himself, a fixture at most North East noise shows. For readers based outside Geordieland an email to the ever-helpful Turgid Animal label might help…possibly.
Justin Marc Lloyd – I’m Sorry for the Thoughts Assigned to My Name
Described as ‘Globular Vocal Mass’ on the handy Wasted Capital site this neat looking tape from Justin Marc Lloyd caused me a bit of a foggy-brained confusion. I know, pretty much for certain, that Mr Lloyd is a born and bred American. From over the pond and all that. So why does this tape remind me so much of the late 1990s Essex-bwoy sound of Ceefax Acid Crew or Chaos A.D.?
It could be the sound quality which is busy and precise but ragged as dogtooth check. It could be the speedy, buzzing energy; manic as a teenage oik on Frosty Jacks. It could be the obnoxious clots of ‘globular vocal mass’; derived as easily from a rusty Commodore Amiga as a mucus-drenched throat.
“So much for the overall feel of the tape you hippy.” I hear you snort. “What about the edited highlights man?” OK…I know you’re busy people. Here’s the skinny version.
Side One contains the future-hit ‘Sub-dermal Thirst for Bland and Christian-like Suburbia’ and has a ‘wasp-in-a-crisp-packet’ buzz about it with some crunching ‘beats’ sounding like heavy mortar fire hitting the next village. Real Apocalypse Now shit. It ends with the superbly brief ‘Comfort of One’s Own Innocent Lover’ which appears to be some sticky-palmed sigh lasting for exactly 26 seconds.
Side Two starts with a see-sawing motion, and a Vocoder bleat like some ‘Rockit’ era outtake and segues into the sound lampposts make in a buffeting high wind (a kind of bruised and lonely temporal clicking) on ‘Perimeter Scan with Faulty the-world-is-shit Filter’ until a rise-of-the-robots synth alarm crushes other sounds beneath its primitive metallic chime. The final piece is an homage to the Wasted Capital/Hideous Replica brothers where objects, things and stuff gradually get folded round the sort of gloriously limp guitar loop last heard on a Kemialliset Ystavat record. Wow…that’s some ground covered; Chelmsford to Tampere via Chicago. Booyaka! (Editor’s note: yes, Joe did really write ‘Booyaka’ – I shall deflate his bouncy castle immediately as penance.)
Various Artists – FOUR LETTER WORLD COMPILATION
Hyster is a Finnish label specialising in the more austere end of the no-audience underground. Artwork is from the photocopied greyness & musty collage school. The tape releases are recycled and lovingly battered. The artists tend to be Northern European beans sweeping round the iron-filings factory. So far it’s all pretty dope. This simple little tape opens my ears to a few unfamiliar names and presents the ever-wonderful Yol in a new context. Here goes…
Crap sampled horn and heavy dub effects over a skronky-ass scribble open the proceedings with a piece from LEITMOTIV LIMBO. Then there’s a gap…and then the slum-horn strikes up again. It’s all over in under 3 minutes and I love the off-handedness of this. There’s a serious ‘I don’t give a fuck’ to the way it’s shaped and presented. Like the slouching teenager outside the off-license…he doesn’t even want you to go in and buy some Special Brew for him…he just wants to see you squirm like a middle-class liberal.
GREY PARK are a perfectly named project for this kind of gristle. There’s a bone-freezing dawn mist outside. But, pulling on warm socks and boots, you crunch through the most beautiful field of silver-frosted grass; each blade a perfect pewter shard. Looking back you see your own heavy footprints creating rhythmic dark patches like rough stitching on a blanket.
Breeze block rumble and the cough-glotty howls from cattle baron YOL opens side two. This ‘disappointing human-head pulled out’ kinetic-poetry and furious violent honks are artfully tempered with some real subtle tin-tapping, stone grumble and an almost hissing scat coda from our man from Hull. Six minutes long and over in a flash.
The mid-1980s synth tone mumble over record-player-run-out-groove ‘schhhhlip, schhhhlip’ and recorded babble make %20 come across like Tangerine Dream got a bonk on the head. Recorded live in Chomsky Bar, Riga it says here. I picture this played on Newcastle’s Diamond Strip at closing time. Tottering heels and big-armed boys slow the dance from which all dances come, the hen-night quietens to silence and all take stock of bitter lives lived. No one returns on Saturday.
Two Euros plus postage. 50 copies. Trades welcome. Weirdness distro and ‘zines too… plaa@pcuf.fi
Duncan Harrison – Ogre Neon
I’m over a year late reviewing this god-damn essential clutch of sonic-chuff from Brighton’s Duncan Harrison.
The general mood is confident. Unhurried and relaxed; this is no sweating beard scrabbling at the lock. And while Hanover Mist might open with close-miked domestic chutter it’s the kinda-blue bicycle-bell sample that makes this as refreshing as pink grapefruit.
Pretty much all approaches are fair game, so: loops, vocal jizz, noise interruptions, kraut-inspired repetition and crackling ambience all play a part in building up the lumpy canvas on ‘Rattles in the North’ with its heavy closing meditation on the three words…
Let’s try again, let’s try again, let’s try again, let’s try again, let’s try again, let’s try again, let’s try again…
…that becomes pregnant with hidden intention and meaning.
But again I keep coming back to the relaxed hand on the tiller. There’s no hurry to get from ‘A’ to ‘B’ at all. A limp finger dangles in the water as the punt floats imperceptibly through the bull rushes.
A simple two-note bass riff creates the backdrop for ‘Dust from the Artists Quarter’, the building ‘sceeeeee’ sine wave thing giving this a medical vibe – music for dentists perhaps? At any rate it’s starched and white for sure. ‘The Shadows Cast by the Bottom of Photoframes hung on Gallery Walls’ is a fuzzy-logic vocal piece with that expressive Dictaphone smear all over the plosive and consonant knocks that goes something like this…
n..n..NN..Ssss…S’t..nN..ssh
…with the occasional blurt of dicta FFW klonk for three blissful minutes.
Now the the chasers are necked, and the hors d’oeuvres munched, the main event occurs. A weighty 20 minutes, ‘Upstairs in Infinity’ squeezes the tubes marked Pierre Schaeffer depositing the chalky paste ready to spread.
Things gently toast with some concrete turntable frittering and intimate bottle breathing (this captured like some Mongolian shamanistic ritual, the low tones echo the desolation of the high plains via Cream Soda) until slo-mo, dicta in pocket reportage, takes us on a trip though the sort of antiques shop last seen on Tales of the Unexpected. Stark lighting and swift edits make the stuffed birds all sinister and beaky. The old busted violin squawks like a Harpy. Single notes drift as dust motes in the pale afternoon sun. But what’s that scratching come from the old tea chest? It sounds like something’s try to GET OUT! Cue credits and daft titles.
If this sounds like your kinda schizzle check out Duncan’s Bandcamp for this and a whole bunch of other essential releases (hint…2012’s Young Arms is his ‘On The Corner’). As Rob always says, ‘give what you can.’
Afore ye go…check out the excellent Beartown Records site for more related mung.
Over and out comrades!
Blog at WordPress.com.
Entries and comments feeds.
radio free midwich 