radiofreemidwich goes to tusk festival 2016
October 23, 2016 at 8:22 pm | Posted in live music, midwich, musings, new music, no audience underground | 8 CommentsTags: ashtray navigations, culver, daniel thomas, dark tusk, giant tank, guttersnipe, invisible city records, jen parry, joe murray, la mancha del pecado, lee stokoe, matching head, midwich, miguel perez, mp wood, neck vs throat, oppenheimer, paul margree, rachel lancaster, sage gateshead, senyawa, silent servant, skull mask, stuart arnot, the soundroom, tony conrad, tusk festival, usurper, we need no swords, wolfgang voigt, xazzaz, yol
TUSK Festival 2016, Sage Gateshead, October 14 – 16
Hmmm… ‘Long, Authoritative List Of Everything That Happened’? Nah, not really my style. How about ‘Epic Musing On Life, Music And What It All Means’? Oof, maybe later.
Let’s just start with the car.
Dan(iel Thomas – well known in this parish) kindly agreed to drive me, Sarah and Lisa to our digs in Newcastle. Here we are setting off:
Dan looking handsome, a vision in stubble, Sarah in holiday mode, Lisa appalled at Sarah’s story about someone whose retina fell out and me giving it some cheek. What could go wrong, eh? Well, Dan’s back is crook and went into spasm on the A19. At one point I had to shift gears for him because he couldn’t reach down to the stick. Given that I only hold a license to drive an automatic this was a fraught moment that I had to be talked through. Still, my slight embarrassment was as nothing to the agony Dan was clearly suffering. After gliding into some grim services so Dan could walk it off, Sarah drove the rest of the way.
Luckily, when we arrived a retinue of servants rushed to carry Dan into the fluffy opulence of Malmaison and I was roughly directed to Premier Inn, where I would be KEEPING IT REAL. As I trundled the wheelie case containing my band and my clothes along Quayside the air started to crackle. I looked up and saw – fuck me! – the trio of Mike ‘Xazzaz’ Simpson, Lee ‘Culver’ Stokoe and MIGUEL ‘SKULL MASK’ PEREZ walking towards me (all in black, natch).
Is this Rob? This is Rob!
Miguel said, lunging in for the bear hug. Mike, who refuses to be photographed despite being a strikingly handsome guy, helpfully took this soon-to-be-iconic picture. Left to right: Miguel, me, Lee. Tyne Bridge in the background. Cool, eh?
I’ve already written something about how important Miguel’s visit is to me and will return to the theme later so for now I’ll keep to the narrative. Suffice to say I have rarely, if ever, seen anyone so pleased to be somewhere. The huddle broke up so Miguel could soundcheck and I could settle into my (actually very pleasant) hotel room.
Soon I was trotting back over the Millennium Bridge to Gateshead and up the fuckloads of steps you need to climb to get to Sage:
My feelings about Sage were fluid and contradictory. On some levels it is profoundly impressive – an arts-for-all enterprise on a huge scale, proudly publicly funded, run by friendly and enthusiastic staff – but at other times it felt like a vast airport lounge from a Ballardian near-future dystopia. From across the river it looks like a reclining figure from the title sequence of a cheapo James Bond knock-off (‘Silverfinger’?), on the inside it’s a Duplo play set, lit in sugary, boiled sweet colours. For a structure so enormous it has little heft. I could easily imagine the giant struts (one is cutting across the corner of the first picture below) hauling back the whole silver facade on a sunny day, like opening a roll-top bread-bin. I did get pretty comfortable (institutionalised?) over the three days but there was definitely culture shock to contend with.
An example: as I entered Hall 2, the main TUSK venue (middle picture above), for the first time on Friday an usher used a torch to show me down the stairs. The room was dark aside from the stage lights illuminating the band currently playing. Oh, I thought, it’s going to be like that is it? Theatre.
Feeling discombobulated and out of my element I leaned myself up against a tousle-haired giant and enjoyed the crunktronik drama of Bad@Maths. When the house lights went up at the end of their set I realised I was clutching onto:
…Joe ‘Posset’ Murray – my RFM comrade-in-arms! Always a delight to be in his company, likewise:
yol! Another who fears photography will remove biopsy snippets from his soul but I was NOT TO BE DENIED. We soon became festival buds and hung out throughout proceedings. Now though, I was so excited about seeing Miguel play that all I could do was babble and take photos of my new boots. I’m not joking:
[Editor’s note: at this point, after I’ve started introducing people but before I start rhapsodising about Skull Mask etc., I’m going to apologise in advance for not mentioning everyone I spoke to. This is partly because my notes are sketchy (and my memory worse) but mainly because I’m uncomfortable assigning some conversations to this ‘highlights package’ and some not. The social aspect of this trip was a thrill – from meeting people for the first time, to catching up with rarely seen friends, to chewing the fat with the regular crowd but outside of our normal context. It was all very inspiring. In short: if we talked, rest assured that I enjoyed our conversation and want to talk to you again. Likewise I’m not busting a gut to account for every band, nor provide comprehensive links and tags – that isn’t the purpose of the exercise. A quick net search should fill in any gaps. There will be one Get Carter joke.]
Next up it was Miguel Perez, playing as Skull Mask (apologies for crappy picture, I still had the flash on my camera from the boot pics and once he got started I didn’t think to try again). This was what I was here to see and his set – just man and guitar – was astounding. Flamenco flourishes, desert folk, improv spikiness and metal hammering flowed, pressed and burst like a time-lapse film of jungle flowers opening, like lava flow, like clouds of starlings at dusk, like liquid mercury. Miguel is one of the most technically adept guitarists I have ever seen but all that virtuosity is in service of one thing: the truth. To say the music of Skull Mask is heartfelt or sincere is to understate the raw beauty of what it reveals: a soul. Miguel’s soul.
Stood at the front I found myself having an out of body experience. Part of me was enjoying it on an absolutely visceral level, unwaveringly engaged, but another part of me was floating above thinking about what the experience meant. I’ve had a hard time with music this year. I’ve not listened to much and have been in denial about how burnt out I’d got keeping this blog afloat whilst juggling the demands of ‘real life’. I’d been hoping that this event would prove to be a big purge and cleanse and that I’d be returned to music rinsed clean and ready to GO. That didn’t happen, but something better did.
Watching the performance unfold, I started thinking about how beautiful life can be despite, sometimes because of, how hard it can be. I thought about the miraculous combination of factors – hard work, friendship, sheer bloody luck – that led to us all being in this room at this time. A strange, accepting calm enveloped me whilst at the same time the more present, grounded part of me was yelling (internally – I do have some control):
HOLY FUCKING CHRIST!! MIGUEL IS SAT RIGHT IN FUCKING FRONT OF ME PLAYING THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THAT FUCKING GUITAR!! FUCK!!!
At the end of the set I felt myself tearing up.
Outside, shortly after, Miguel was holding court talking ten-to-the-dozen. I’ve never seen anyone more stoked – his heart must have been beating like a sparrow’s. He explained his philosophy of life, about living in the moment but appreciating the steps that have brought you to it, about the Mexican relationship with the dead, about the music he had just played. I couldn’t keep up – my mind had been blown – but luckily it didn’t matter that I couldn’t say anything, as Miguel, beer can in hand, couldn’t quiet down. And why the hell should he? It had been a triumph.
A short time later I found myself stood next to Miguel watching Guttersnipe (how wonderful to be able to type that sentence). I had predicted that their set would be amongst the most talked about at TUSK and they certainly left the crowd open mouthed, wide eyed, ears ringing. I feel like I could write reams about this band, scribble profane codices, letterpress manifestos, paint placards to be carried in protest or celebration but when I actually sit down to type… it’s confounding. The strength of Gretchen’s personality – gentle, thoughtful, keenly intelligent, enabled by a seemingly (to this fat, middle aged man) unbounded energy explodes on stage into a writhing conduit for, what? Rage? Despair? Whatever it is, it feels like unmediated access to the same rooms that Miguel opened doors to. Likewise, Rob’s unassuming, cheerful manner translates into the most glorious, life-affirming, pushing-a-shopping-trolley-down-the-concrete-stairs-of-a-car-park, free-punk drumming I’ve ever heard. Afterwards, Paul Margree, of the We Need No Swords blog, tried to praise his technique and, in typical self-deprecating fashion, Rob disagreed:
My technique is shit, there is just a lot of it, and fast.
Love it. This pair are unique, the band are important and you have to check them out.
Wandering in a daze after this I was collared by the very lovely Jen Parry who wanted to show me the exhibition of Matching Head artwork that she had put together, which was hidden under a staircase around the corner from the main entrances to Hall 2:
I really dug this and thought Jen had captured the vibe of Lee’s cut-and-paste aesthetic very cleverly. The exhibit was interactive in that you could make yourself comfortable and listen to Matching Head releases on the tape recorders provided. On the leather sofa (bottom picture) there was a hammer (and some goggles – health and safety!) which I assumed was also there for punters so I used it to whale on some of the tapes and tape cases that were artfully scattered about. It seemed appropriate at the time, though I’ve noticed a disapproving tweet from Andy Wood about the smashed cases since. In my defence the artist was there egging me on and taking photos of me doing it! My apologies if I got the art wrong – difficult to tell nowadays <winking emoji>…
About this time I realised I was shot for the day and silently drifted away. Back at the hotel I half-watched Dredd on Film4 whilst sorting out stuff for the next day’s gig. In my pants.
—ooOoo—
On Saturday I woke from from the dream-free sleep of the righteous and padded downstairs to gorge on obscene amounts of breakfast in a room with a view of the underside of Tyne Bridge. Glorious. As I was tucking into my second plateful, I noticed that I had been name checked by Dawn Bothwell in the introduction to the festival programme. Blimey! I nearly spat out my bubble and squeak. It all added to a cheerful, woozy calm, a kind of blown-out relaxation that I hadn’t felt since sitting on Low Newton beach in Northumberland with my wife Anne and son Thomas back in May:
Aside from feeling sheepish about instigating a complicated, 6-way conversation about how we were all getting there (the more tired I am the more insistent I am about knowing WHAT HAPPENS NEXT), I was also relaxed about performing. My band was packed (see picture above, midwich fits in a rucksack), I was sweet smelling, fully medicated and my cheek pouches were bulging with spare breakfast. LET’S GO!
Well, let’s all see Wolfgang Voigt first. This involved sitting in the Northern Rock Foundation Hall, feeling like I was in a dream version of a school assembly, with the headmaster replaced by an anonymous, unannounced middle-aged man giving a wordless, non-performance whilst illuminated by his laptop screen. The sound – an ambient, computer-musicish drone, augmented by airy and/or brittle vibes familiar to those who know his work as, say, Gas – was perfectly lovely but I doubt it would have held my attention without Rachel Lancaster’s terrific visuals.
Rachel’s film was perfectly measured to draw out the best in the music. We were reminded that there is nothing more sublimely beautiful than smoke rising in still air (‘Patrons are requested to smoke only on the right hand side of the auditorium’ – remember that?), unless the smoke is thick enough to resemble glaciers calving, or liquids of different densities spiralling into each other, or the pearlescent quality of crocodile scales as the creature lies semi-submerged and glistening…
Right then, NOW let’s go.
‘Dark Tusk’ was set up by Lee Stokoe as a fringe event to help make the most of Miguel’s visit. Here’s the blurb:
With the arrival of Miguel Perez in the UK to perform as Skull Mask at TUSK, it would be unthinkable to let him escape back to Mexico without congregating with some of his closest conspirators from the Northern noise void.
Culver & La Mancha del Pecado: with six collaborations to date and numerous splits and joints amassed, a live collaboration between these 2 horror drone obsessives was inevitable…
Midwich: one of Miguel’s most ardent advocates via his Radio Free Midwich blog, this is a mega-rare live performance from Rob Hayler’s solo electronic machine-dream.
NeckvsThroat: an ongoing postal duo of Miguel and Yol, binding guitar and voice with barbed wire and discarded steel.
Xazzaz: sinkhole drones, guitar fog and harsh dives from darkest Northumberland.
Plus sound installation by MP Wood.
2pm till 5pm at the Soundroom, Cuthbert Street, Gateshead, NE8 1PH. 15 min walk from Sage Gateshead.
Free with Tusk pass, £3 without.
Cool, eh? I love a matinee performance, me. Miguel, yol and I met up with Jamie (if you don’t know his recordings as ‘Wrest’ you should check them out immediately) and his pal Steve who had kindly offered to drive us to the venue from Sage. Miguel spent the journey telling us about how he had fended off two shitfaced Glaswegians in the hotel bar the night before. They had offered him drugs (‘the hardest in Glasgow!’) in full view of two coppers who also happened to be there. He wanted no part of it, fearing he was being set up, but Jamie assured him:
Nah, that kind of thing just happens around here…
…and expanded on similar topics whilst Steve forlornly tried to get him to concentrate on the journey and offer directions. Never mind, we got there.
The Soundroom is a community centre/rehearsal space/gig venue sat in isolation in Gateshead. I suspect most of us scuzzball, dog-eared, D.I.Y., no-audience underground types found it much easier to breath there than in the airy atrium of Sage and it is well equipped with a very decent PA.
Turn out was good, including – fuck me! – is that…
…erstwhile RFM colleague, Discogs obsessive and near-hermit Scott McKeating? Yes, it is! Just one of many hands from the pantheon of the righteous I shook during proceedings. You know who you are.
Once underway, the gig proved a joy. First up was Neck vs Throat, the duo of Miguel and yol, playing with the lights on for full kid’s-birthday-party-at-local-church-hall effect:
I needn’t say too much about this one as, amazingly, a video exists of the performance – filmed by Pete Cann (who, being an absolute darling, had come up from Leeds just for the afternoon) on his ‘phone. Sound quality is hardly crystal but fuck that – it’s a document.
What truly boggled the noggin was how fluid and natural the partnership appeared. Prior to that very afternoon the project had only existed as a transatlantic file swap. Now it felt like a psychic connection, the product of long hours of rehearsal. Miguel’s fingers-in-the-soundhole grappling, like a wheelbarrow of gravel being dropped into molasses, perfectly in sync with yol’s clattering, guttural retching and bleakly comic exhortations.
Next was Xazzaz and Mike treated us to the best set-that-wasn’t-Skull-Mask of the weekend. As has already been noted, he forbids photography so all I have is this snap of his set-up, snatched prior to the show beginning:
Mike used two (maybe three?) guitars and three (maybe four? Five?) amplifiers to create a drone/roar of ego-obliterating purity and intensity. All the Xazzaz recordings I’ve heard have been exceptional but actually being there as it unfolds live was a shortcut to… I dunno? Enlightenment? For something as heavy as watching a gigantic dinosaur thrash its last and slowly sink into a tar pit it was a strangely life-affirming, awe-inspiring experience. North-Eastern drone-metal of this quality is pretty much my favourite thing in all the world. Fucking hell, I thought, I’ve got to follow that…
…and so it came to pass. I thanked all who were there and those involved in setting it up, had a quick word about the two tracks I was about to play – one inspired by a dismissal of our music by Miguel’s daughter, one a version of my track from a split CD-r I shared with Miguel, dedicated the set to him and… faded up a recording of my son snoring. The rest was thick, chewy, throbbing drone at pleasingly high volume that would have gone entirely to plan if I could have stopped myself fiddling with the cut-off. Anyway, it seemed to go down well and I was rubbery with relief once all was packed away. Enjoyed the opportunity to bounce about on my seat too.
Finally then: Culver and La Mancha Del Pecado. Another unique opportunity to see a transatlantic tape-swap project in the flesh and this time the one that kicked it all off. Miguel later told me that, like so many of us who end up in noise, he found himself looking for something without knowing exactly what that something was. He discovered Skullflower, read up about it, saw Culver mentioned, found a rip of a CD-r in a shady spot on the internet, listened to it and heard the contents of his own head reflected back at him. Soon they were collaborating on a series of beautifully sustained, utterly nihilistic, implacably menacing ‘horror drones’ and the rest is willpower and logistics. This set was an absolute masterclass.
…and it wasn’t even 5pm.
I have to admit that the evening programme back at Sage was something of a blur after that. My highlights were the early doors sets from Usurper (above above) and Ashtray Navigations (above).
Surprising myself, I realised that this was the first time I had seen Ali and Malcy go at it live despite having heard many of their releases and eyeballing numerous zines and comics over the years (indeed, one of my collages can be found in Giant Tank Offline #4). My usual reaction to their work – amused bewilderment – was swept away by a far more concrete admiration for the Dada lunacy of the performance.
For example: crouched under a table, each took a turn deliberately and repeatedly banging their head as if trying to get up and forgetting the obstacle above them. I thought that the yellow objects taped to their heads were something like washing-up sponges to soften the blow but was later informed by Stuart Arnot (of Acrid Lactations, who was roped in to their gig at the last minute) that it was butter and that the stink in their hair afterwards was rank. Idiocy or commitment to the art? Or both? Oh, you decide.
After the first few minutes of Ashtray Navigations starting, Miguel, who had been leaning on the stage, came over to shout in my ear…
Now I know why everyone loves them!
…and I had to grin because he was right: it was, from the off, a performance full of heart that encouraged a reciprocal response from an eager, affectionate crowd. Phil pulled out one heart-stoppingly preposterous solo after another whilst Mel – resplendent in glittered Converse – held down the electronics and laughed at the site of Gretchen Guttersnipe and RFM’s own marlo eggplant wigging out front and centre. Much as I enjoyed the bubbletroniks and nostril-flaring bombast I think my favourite track was a lengthy ambient piece halfway through during which Phil folded himself up and sat on the floor. It was spacious and woozy but had a crisp brittleness to it that kept it fresh and engaging throughout. Have I heard this before? Probably, but I couldn’t name it. Shameful, I know, considering my placing in the AshNav fan club. What can I say? I’m a big man, but I’m out of shape.
The evening culminated with me, Dan, Lisa and Sarah reconvening and rolling up to my second fringe event of the day. This time at The Old Police Station (a venue I was told is ‘borrowed’ from the council?), a ten minute walk up the hill behind Sage. The place was already full when we got there at about 1am and there was a great squat gig vibe with people spilling out into the street, sat on the pavement talking loudly, drinking and smoking. For me it felt like travelling back in time 25+ years to my misspent youth in Brighton, a bittersweet feeling I was reluctant to embrace until someone appeared, like Scooter in the Muppet Show, shouted…
C’mon Miguel you’re on!
(or something like that) and we all piled in to a tiny front room to see Oppenheimer play. Seriously, there must have been 30-40 people plus a four piece band in a space more suited to two sofas and a telly. Once over the initial crush panic, it was awesome.
Oppenheimer are the aforementioned Jamie (drums), Lee (bass) and Mike (guitar), this night augmented with Miguel (also on bass) and they play, Christ, how to describe it? Super-basic, long-form, thug-punk, primal-metal. Whatever it is, it had the packed crowd bent at the waist, rocking in unison. It is a crying shame that Mike doesn’t allow photos because when he was stepped on by a drunken and oblivious punter the look of lupine ferocity he threw was fucking terrifying. I did get this pic of Jamie, Miguel and Lee though, which, as a piece of reportage, is my favourite of all the photos I took over the weekend.
After the set I waved goodbye to my sweaty comrades and walked back to the hotel. I put a music channel on the TV as I got ready for bed. Every video looked like a film by Matthew Barney. Lights out: 3am.
—ooOoo—
On Sunday morning I felt exhilarated after the remarkable day before but old and tired after the late night. Oof, I don’t intentionally go to bed at 3am ever nowadays. Thus another war-on-the-buffet, gargantuan breakfast was warranted before I stumbled to Sage in order to meet Paul ‘Pops’ Margree, still of the We Need No Swords blog, who wished to interview me for his podcast. I’d met Paul for the first time this weekend, we’d hit it off and were already chatting in a free and easy fashion. However, when the tape recorder was switched on something stamped on a fuzz pedal between what I was thinking and what I was saying. Oh well, here’s hoping he can salvage something coherent.
We adjourned upstairs to the Northern Rock Foundation Hall (where Voigt played) to see yol at midday. This was easily the weirdest programming kink of the festival – both venue and timing – but a fair few people had turned up to see yol take his turn as headmaster-gone-wrong at the front of assembly. The gig was intense, muscular, poised. The venue adding a unusual theatricality to the bulging veins and growling stutters. I always look around at the audience during a yol show, relishing the expressions of appalled fascination, but the stage lighting made it difficult to gauge reactions. His comic timing was faultless though, plenty of half-laughs as we appreciated him diffusing the tension with a funny line then realising that what he had just said was easily as bleak, nihilistic even, as the rest of the performance. To describe his total commitment to expressing his vision I need to reclaim a debased word and re-inflate it with meaning: yol is an artist.
Feeling some trepidation about lasting the day I decided to accompany the men in black (Jamie, Mike, Lee, Miguel) back over the river and had a laugh walking with them through the Quayside market as far as my hotel. I cocooned myself there until it was time to go see Tony Conrad: Completely In The Present. Cuddling up with Joe Murray in the back row, this turned out to be a beautifully measured and life-affirming documentary about a charming and fascinating artist, surpassing all my (fairly high) expectations. I loved it, and can only praise the transparency of the film-making – the director Tyler Hubby does an excellent job of standing back and allowing the story to be told by Conrad himself, a wise decision when your subject is such an intriguing raconteur. With a voice and demeanour like a cross between William Burroughs and John Waters, Conrad chuckles through a life of iconoclasm, innovation and determination in a way that can’t help but be awe-inspiring. There is also an hilarious section about what a total bell-end La Monte Young is. I don’t want to get into any more detail about the content as you really should track this down – you’ll be rewarded. The film was clearly a hit with Tuskers and provoked much discussion afterwards. I was lucky enough to see Conrad live twice and boasted of it many times during the rest of the night.
During the evening programme I made the effort to give every act a fair shake, a decision made easier by the fact that my brain was shot and I found myself in a state of happy bewilderment wherever I was standing. Highlights for me were probably Silent Servant and the final act Senyawa.
Tall table for a short guy, eh? Must share Dan’s back problems. Silent Servant – American producer Juan Mendez – was notable for changing the atmosphere in Hall 2. Suddenly all the middle-aged beardies (like myself) found themselves at a club night. Advertised in the programme as ‘grinding, irresistible techno’ I actually best enjoyed the bits where he veered into Electronic Body Music territory – the kind of high camp, leather bound pounding that our Belgian friends were so good at in the late 80s. yol was tempted in, amused by the prospect of seeing me dance, and guarded my handbag and coat whilst I stomped and flailed in tragic approximation of my twenty-something self. The ‘pit’ of Hall 2 was soon lined with middle-aged beardies (like myself) leaning on the wall, sweating and clutching at their chests. Whoo boy, haven’t danced for any length of time in a while. The young and beautiful looked on in amusement.
The last act on Sunday, and thus of the festival as a whole, was the Indonesian duo Senyawa. Vocalist Rully Herman powered through a scouring range of timbres and techniques, hands grasping the mic stand or raised up in Black Metal claws. Fuck me, the swagger on this dude. Wukir Suryadi held his own playing an apparently hand-made instrument called the bambuwukir which resembled a giant phallus, stringed and pegged, which he could pick or bow to create anything from the most delicately augmented silence to brutal shredding. I suspect they personify exactly the type of high-quality, cross-cultural, what-the-fuckery that TUSK wishes to promote and that their place on the bill was no accident. Having them headline the whole shebang was programming genius. After their set, under the cruel house lights, Lee Stokoe and I exchanged the kind of blasted/delighted look that Lee Etherington, creative director of TUSK, must design the festival to provoke. Congratulations, mate – mission accomplished.
All that was left to do was say goodbye. Handshakes were exchanged, gratitude expressed, Miguel was hugged, wished well, hugged again, wished well again but now with a distinct wobble in my voice. I nearly fell down the stairs in my hurry to get into the fresh air.
We’ll see each other again sometime, right?
Yes. We will.
—ooOoo—
Postscript:
a) We got home safely, as did Miguel. Dan recovers.
b) Two Skull Mask tapes were made available to coincide with Miguel’s visit, one released by Invisible City Records (hello Craig) and one on Lee Stokoe’s Matching Head. I’ve been listening to them as I typed this article and I reckon you should buy both. Lee also has some rad Skull Mask t-shirts for sale. Hit him up via the contact details on the Matching Head Discogs page. All the discerning blog editors are wearing ’em – an Autumn wardrobe essential.
c) Last year the live-streamed sets from TUSK were made available after the event via the Archive page of the TUSK website. I shall be keeping an eye on this, and on Lee Etherington’s Twitter feed (@tusk_music), in the hope of similar generosity with this year’s recordings.
—ooOoo—
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)
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.]
scarfing antelope: joe murray on lovely honkey & his acrid lactations
July 26, 2014 at 10:29 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: acrid lactations, glastonbury, improv, joe murray, lovely honkey, luke poot, new music, no audience underground, noise, stuart arnot, sue fitzpatrick, tapes, the curse of never-ending elbow, total vermin, vocal improvisation
Lovely Honkey & His Acrid Lactations – Hardy the Wayfarers (tape, Total Vermin, #85)
I’m a bit of a worrier me. I worry about all the normal things a middle-aged, pampered, white, male worries about I suppose: kids, missus, job, state of the world and all that jazz. But being a welded to the no-audience underground I sometimes worry I’m being an inadvertent elitist.
Is the underground, with its limited editions, challenging approaches and cultural immersion more valid than the mainstream? The best I can muster is a, “Duh…I dunno” most of the time.
Maybe it’s time I did some serious thinking.
To make it clear reader…I have no problem with pop music. Check out the teenage magic-realism of Eliza Doolittle’s ‘Walking on Water’ or the outrageously frothy ‘Call me Maybe’ by Carly Rae Jepson? Curiously enough this kind of pure, purple, pop makes me smile just as wide as any of Phil Minton’s japes. Sure it’s a transient sugar rush…but are you telling me that Shakira (Editor’s note: Ugh. I was with you up to Shakira) don’t make you snap your fingers like the Art Ensemble?
So that’s pop music sorted out…but what about it’s more grown-up brother: indie rock?
In this day and age I should know everything about the current crop of indie rock lovelies, eh? As folks keep yammering on it’s all on the internet, for free, forever. Yup…the internet might be a portal to everythingness but you still need to peak in the right window – you dig.
I took the recent bloat-fest Glastonbury to be my window on the world. The BBC kindly chopped up footage into easily digestible mouthfuls so I could taste the best the indie rock world had to offer whilst sat in comfort at home. What a treat! These truly must be the best of times. I settled back with tea and a selection of biscuits, giddy with the knowledge I was bound to discover some rare breed, some slinky mink that had passed me by while I had my eye lowered to the grubby underground.
And I waited, and waited, and waited some more. I know Jonah Jameson (Editor’s note: very funny – you’re sacked) don’t like no negatives so I can’t really go into detail here. Let’s just say I watched 6 hours of footage and the only act that excited me was some bass and drum duo. And that’s just coz they sound like my brothers band.
So… I tried, I really tried; but with my scientist head on I can say the experiment failed. The indie rock mainstream is not for me, doesn’t want me, can’t stand me and its back to the underground I hop.
I slip on the next tape in the review pile from Lovely Honkey and his Acrid Lactations.
Now this is telling us something right from the off. Like Cliff & the Shadows or Mike and his Mechanics this is presenting us with a handy sonic-perspective, a clue even. I picture some formation; a bizarre food pyramid with Luke Poot as its king carnivore, his golden mane flowing in the hot Serengeti wind with Sue Fitzpatrick and Stuart Arnot scarfing antelope at his shoulders.
That’s set me a visual. But musically, how does this Robin Hood and Merry Men scenario unfold?
Immediately three, really wet mouths are coughing in phlegmy unison! ‘Hierarchies of Spirit’ slurps and spits, moans and whimpers its way through a spellbinding array of lip-smacks and bloats. The genius touch is a two note drone on dusty keyboard (or cracked violin) that anchors the gurgling mouths from setting alight. Such glorious tension.
‘Gulch Reflexion’ is a whole load of trouble deeper in the throat with pre-language babble (via Sue) over the severed epiglottis explosion. In fact the best advice I can give you to build up a mental picture for this is take any Carcass song title and shave off its hair. Naked and pink yet? You got it.
Take a baking tray half full of water tapped with ritualistic seriousness as your baseline for ‘Snails in the foundry of the Demiurge’. Beat in a dozen Delia’s getting loaded on sticky Madeira and Babel hollas a gibber. Coda: the distinctive cracks and pops of a Glasgow tenement building coming to rest after a violent Hogmany.
The longer pieces ‘Obedient Refexion’ and ‘(Briny) Expiant and (Milky) Redemptive’ grace side two with a calmer mung.
My first listening summons up visions of Shhh/Peaceful scored for gibbering monks and played back through medieval Dictaphones:
The illumination is all greasy from burning candles but the brilliant colours shine through. The fabric may be rough but the needlepoint is detailed.
An insistent rhythm is heard from outside the Monastery walls (Tony Williams on tea-caddy?) as the wails of limp-berserkers float in on the mist. Some joker messes with the intro to Iron Man (Sabbs not Marvel) and Wayne Shorter swaps his horn for marbles that he drops into a bucket.
Phew…you’ll surely admit to some Miles Davis/Viking invasion thing going on here. It’s not just me is it?
…as the mental-mists clear I realise this is what I’ve been missing with all that flaccid indie rock. There’s no pictures, no sizzled synapse leaps… just the dull plod, plod, plod of the verse and the tedious plod, plod, plod to anthemic chorus. But the Lovely Honkey and his Acrid Lactations my fine friends are as magnetic and shiny as an Aaliyah video (Editor’s note: that’s more like it – you’re hired again, back to work).
And if you don’t agree I hex you with the curse of never-ending Elbow.
—ooOoo—
(Editor’s final note: at the time of writing the TV blog is way out of date, so hit up Stuart directly via smearcampaign@hotmail.com or on one of them social networks and he is sure to oblige.)
guest post! extracts from the joe posset end-of-year round up! part two of two: conference of gurgles
December 12, 2012 at 7:11 am | Posted in musings, new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: acrid lactations, alt vinyl, blue spectrum, cabbage rosette, discombobulate, dylan nyoukis, handmade birds, hapsburg braganza, improv, jazzfinger, joe murray, luke poot, new music, no audience underground, noise, phil minton, posset, stuart arnot, total vermin
OK, for preamble from both me and from Joe Murray, guest author of this post, see part one below. No need to repeat ourselves here – on with part two:
(with continued apologies to those whose pictures I’ve stolen. Click on the linked bits for further info and/or purchasing details)
–ooOoo–
Hapsburg Braganza – Recurring Dreams LP x 2 (Alt Vinyl)
Guitar reigns supreme here. A faded, scrubbed, scuffed guitar sound that seems to slink along the skirting boards. Sombre chordings and plucks play with time, swinging in places (‘Dolomite 98’ is almost jolly; like a weary parent’s forced smile) adding space like Dub. To keep it all frosty Phil introduces the occasional fear piano (hear ‘In Holland Cloth’ brother and tremble) and dervish organ (mainline ‘Golding’s Eclipse’) with fog grey electronics smeared carefully over a few of the tracks. The biggest Hapsburg surprise is the addition of super subtle drums every now and again; courtesy of Bong’s Mike Smith. A lazy journalist would point to the drums and shout “A-Ha. Slow drums and slow guitar…that’s post-rock that is!” And of course they would be wrong. There’s an older tradition here. The tradition of the saga, the legend, the epic story shared between glowing faces over a roaring fire. Recurring Dreams is a lengthy wallowing in the Kingdom of Hapsburg…and this is a place where you need to take your time, pull up a stool, bathe your feet in the stream. Recorded mostly in the early hours, on the edge of sleep, gives Recurring Dreams a definite feel…we often talk of peripheral vision…could this claim to be the first example of peripheral listening?
Cabbage Rosette with Phil Minton – Ran out of breath licking elegy nipple, cough and fall to bits, tight chest as achievement? CD-R (Total Vermin)
Balls out skronk from Messers Poot & Vermin abetted by Mr ‘jazzface’ Minton on swelling tubes. Over-blown kitchen electronics huff each and every cough and splutter so the inward sigh becomes symphonic, the lip smack a thunderbolt. Squeaky doors or plastic tape cover are rattled to destruction (screeechhh, scraaaaaw) and the only recognisable ‘instrument’; a phat keyboard, blebs in dopey chimes, once, twice then not at all. Sounds are fairly poured over each over with abandon and mixed up with a hot spoon. There’s little structure or reason to this making it all the more fun and engaging. The frenzied jerk and Tourette’s tick keep the energy up. You can almost picture them, shoulders up to earholes, spazzing out on spittle warp. Things get more crimped towards the end when what sounds like some remedial turntable abuse plays up against mouth babble and the whole thing ends in a conference of gurgles and wet-fart lippings. 13 mins in total…the perfect length.
No Artist – Untitled aka Blue Spectrum – I Almost Drowned MC (Blue Spectrum Tapes)
Sorry about the mystery surrounding the name here. It’s all very confusing…if you’re trying to check it out it’s got a Pegasus on the cover. Released in a huge edition of 3! Flipping open the case and slapping this into the deck starts a strange claustrophobic trip. Recorded in the lowest of all know fidelities this sounds like a penguin colony getting their hands on some sharpened sticks and menacing the keepers. The bars of the enclosure are wired up to the mains and blasted apart using slow dynamite. Sparks fly, low crunching fills the air and before long blubber and blood lap up against the sides of the pool. Things get pretty nasty towards the end of side one with granite hammers being thrown at a giant insect-o-cutor. High tape strangeness in the mould of an early Prick Decay or pre-school Cock ESP or something. Side two couples its buffers to classic dark noise territory and sounds like massively amplified rolling stock slamming on the breaks and keeping them there for 25 mins. Metal on metal screech and heavy rumbling fuss make this a steam powered listen, all oily and soot covered sideburns. Refreshing as a Irn-Bru enema.
(Editor’s note: in the spirit of investigative journalism Joe contacted Simon of Blue Spectrum for further information and got the following response:
As far as the title and artist goes there wasn’t any, although I credited myself on discogs just to say who made it. I didn’t want it to have a name or title. On the spine there is ripped paper in place of where the artist and title would usually go. I think how you referred to it was perfect no artist – untitled aka blue spectrum ‘I almost drowned’ because it gives it an identity. The official label name is Blue Spectrum Tapes. This is the discogs page. I will be making another batch of these soon, maybe 10 or so copies.
…so now you know.)
Jazzfinger – Destroyed Form MC (Handmade Birds)
One sided cassette that opens the door to forbidden times. At some level all Jazzfinger records are an exercise in archaeology. Although I have a brand new tape in my hands the actual recordings could have been made 20 years ago and only now have filtered through the arcane and secret Jazzfinger process known only to Has, Ben and Sarah. As it happens this does invoke ‘early’ Jazzfinger when cymbals and organ played a much bigger part in the ritual. ‘Ocean is free’ sounds like my earliest memories of Jazzfinger with the singing-grainy organ, tape wobble and sickly cymbal tapping. ‘Sun Punishment’ lurches forward in time to the white-out-guitar-squall period blowing static clouds of electric fuss all over. This one is more badly behaved than most JF jams delving into metallic tantrum through to a come down of goblin hammers tinkling. The final jam ‘blown cotton woodland’ sounds like the soundtrack to some terrible conspiracy theory documentary on cable. A doomy horsefly buzzing in your ear, some backmasking sound manipulation drawing to a close of throbbed out organ bliss.
The Acrid Lactations – The Presidential cow is bound to the maypole MC (Total Vermin)
This tape pretty much takes every gob-punk cliché and bombs them back to year zero. Very fucking warped skronk and then some extra double girl on boy skronk are the order of the day. Things seem to be in both real time and then manipulated via bad-electronics at random, making for a discombobulating listen. Moaning and groaning is fighting with pinched throat gurgles, drawn out mouth drones stray to the fore with a more high pitched keening just at the edge of my (admittedly damaged) hearing. Regular instruments are jettisoned as being bourgeois in favour of the more democratic domestic rattles of: bird-pipes, concrete sacs being dragged, ice chinks in a glass of Dandelion & Burdock, ripped cardboard, amplified plastic bags, violently bubbled milk and yogurt pots etc. Helium high screes march over tape loops of ‘vurrrum-raaaam’ with indistinct clumsy DJ scratching like Grandmaster Flash’s first session on him moms hi-fi slipping a ‘high on crack’ sample against falling down the stairs drum machine. There’s a bluesy quality to some of this…god know how that got into here…and then, just before you can dismiss this as aimless fucking about I’m reminded this is just a fag paper away from James Tenny’s classic tape piece ‘Blue Suede’ from 1961. The Lactations know their history man! For today and today only this tape has the distinction of being the exact end point of what music is and what it can achieve. Awright!
Dylan Nyoukis – The Acrylic Widow Vinyl (Discombobulate)
As of writing this is still unreleased but early 2013 will see this burst forth like pus. There are four measured tracks here.
- Dry coughs and outta-wack piano chords play into Boy Scout bike repairs, ‘test the bell, spin the wheel!’ Hot air leaks from a perished rubber hose. With knuckles like hazelnuts, these sounds shine like delicately laid cobblestones, laid end-to-end without no fuss or haste, they are tram tracks. Late night thumps, ‘boof, baff’ and a lousy Soft Machine organ solo talks a Brighton raver down from gritted jaw oblivion.
- Ideas are put through the wringer in stereo effect. The domestic bric-a-brac builds up: a motorcycle revving, the dry crunch of gravel underfoot…a jumble sale of sweaty woollens, singing out through pinched throat to make un-sense of the phrase ‘iss, sum bear-lae-um’. An unexpected kitchen sink gamelan makes for a feverish listen. Tension is introduced via leathery lunged accordion but there’s no crass crescendo. Fading out like pinched guts.
- Euro voices abound in tangled syntax. Verbs sounds & nouns renamed. Sure, there’s blubber and chunder…’you, you, you and me’ that’s slam-up-bang to babby titter-chat for starters. Then the downs come in, re-directed by taut tape loops making the ecstatic, grooving on the surface of bubble. The proclamation, ‘I’m right here’ leaves us in no doubt who you are sharing your damp bedsit with tonight, slurping up the old wine as red as pooled blood.
- Another take on the stretched ritual. A parrot squawks underwater struggling for fresh O2. Furious eraser scurrying action is met with the stony silence of a 14 year old girl while apples crunch between strong white teeth. Our old friends, words, are worried and fretted in a dark experiment; turned over looking for new seams and valves to shuck and prise open like ripe clams until mucus-like muscle slips free and falls to the flagstones below.
This is a living séance with The Acrylic Widow. Wisdom from the Old Ones, the thin Venn diagram slice between frantic scuttling & sweet Miskatonic stoned.
–ooOoo–
…and so we end the extract with a fittingly festive Lovecraft reference. Many thanks again to Joe for his kind permission to post these great reviews. His complete 2012 round-up will be available at the end of the month over at the Posset myspace blog. Reading it, and chasing up the goodies that it describes, will give you something to do in that null week between Christmas and New Year after you’ve broken all your new toys…
wired for sound part 34: new from total vermin
December 1, 2012 at 1:08 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: acrid lactations, core of the coalman, drone, fordell research unit, hard pan, hobo sonn, Ian Murphy, improv, new music, no audience underground, noise, smear campaign, stuart arnot, tapes, total vermin
Core of the Coalman – Stain (Total Vermin, #65, C59)
Fordell Research Unit – The True Meaning of Red (Total Vermin, #66, C32)
Acrid Lactations – Crude Paintings on Porcelain (Total Vermin, #67, C37)
Hard Pan and Hobo Sonn – Soup Electric and Roll (Total Vermin, #71, C26)
Smear Campaign – Love in an Heroic Vernacular (Total Vermin, #72, C36)
Stuart Arnot, boss of prolific tape and CD-r label Total Vermin, likes to put on a spread. Rather than drip feed us his releases one at a time he prefers to prepare a banquet, a smorgasbord long-promised then presented triumphantly in full on the Total Vermin blog.
I can see the sense in this approach: one big promo push covers a raft of releases, simultaneous availability encourages multiple purchases which are, in turn, easier to post in batches. Economies of scale and all that. The only problem is getting excitable punters such as me to sit still, chew their food and digest each course properly before gorging on the next. Over the last month or so I’ve been savouring the five tapes above from the latest menu. I’m finally at the picking-my-teeth, calling-for-the-bill, sending-my-compliments-to-the-chef stage of the meal.
First up is Stain by Core of the Coalman. Jorge keeps it simple: a full hour (in two halves) of slowly evolving variations on a fuzzed-up viola loop. What at first seems like a Tony Conrad-ish endurance test took a few minutes to pop my bubble of mental resistance (soap-film thin at the best of times) then mind freed, my arse did follow. I was soon dancing naked on the driveway of Midwich Mansions. This tape is hard, lovely.
Fordell Research Unit is flavour of the month round here and The True Meaning of Red is a late contender for tape of the year in the hotly contested ‘droning fuzz roar’ section. Five short to mid-length tracks, all beautifully balanced, all sharing the delicious alchemy of a poached egg coagulating in fiercely boiling water. The whole thing invokes a feeling that we are rarely treated to: total, magisterial, soul-cleansing satisfaction. A must buy.
Now we come a series of tapes illustrating what might be called the Total Vermin house sound. Whilst the girth of Stuart’s impeccable taste is impressively meaty, listen to a bunch of TV tapes – especially those involving Stuart himself – and you’ll start to recognize variations on a similar groove. It isn’t coolly academic meta-music, nor is it balls-out fire music, rather a kind of all-in, kitchen sink improv. Recordings are lo-fi, but components are not mashed together, detail is maintained and no sharpness is dulled. It exists in its own world where ‘real’ instrumentation muscles in on everyday activity and makes the commonplace enigmatic and musical. The approach is perfectly at home on tape and housed in the vibrant paint and crayon colours of the packaging.
Examples? Take your pick. Soup Electric and Roll is by Hard Pann and Hobo Sonn which unpacks as Stuart, Pascal Nichols and Luke Poot who are joined for this recording by Ian Murphy. Side A is all stomping, knocking electronics with subtleties bobbing to the surface, side B is a sublime, too-wide-eyed choir of Nurse With Wound-ish unvocalizations. Compelling late night listening or discombobulating walkman contents for the commute.
Love in an Heroic Vernacular is Stuart solo in his Smear Campaign guise. A band name like that might lead you to expect power electronics or harsh noise but not a bit of it. Instead you get in-between-train-carriages whistling wind, queasily arrhythmic percussion, clouds of robot starlings, skittering electronics and mournful trumpet. At one point the entire mix is dropped down a well. It’s like the alien funk of 1970s Miles filtered through ectoplasmic gel and played at half-speed. Terrific.
Finally, we have Crude Paintings on Porcelain by the wonderfully named Acrid Lactations, a duo of Stuart and Susan Fitzpatrick. Possibly the most lo-fi of these productions, it was apparently recorded in a shower room and, as the occasional sound of running water proves, the fixtures and fittings were pressed into service. Side A is rumbling, popping improv percussion using whatever implements and instruments they could drag in whilst still being able to close the door. It sounds like Paul Hession trapped in a cupboard and trying to alert the search party. This is augmented with some unplaceable trilling and circuit-bent stylophone stylings and finishes with Susan and Stuart hallucinating the trumping horns and jangling cowbells of a procession of tiny Swiss goat-herds as they march across the linoleum. Side B starts in a contemplative fashion before the goat-herds return in buoyant mood having eaten some mouldy bread and interesting looking mushrooms in the meantime. The second half has a more ominous feel as a foot-long giant bee starts banging its head against the shower room window. I dig it.
To buy this stuff visit the Total Vermin blog, make your selections – tapes at £2.50 a throw plus postage – and email Stuart at smearcampaign@hotmail.com for an all-in quote.
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