woke up with a frog on my tongue: rfm on aftawerks, sophie cooper, yol, ocean floor, anla courtis, robert ridley-shackleton, the slowest lift & f.ampism
November 23, 2017 at 7:15 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: A thin slice of sexie funk, acid waxa, aftawerks, alan courtis, anla courtis, aphelion, cardboard club, coherent states, concept bongo, coopermania, crow versus crow, curfew tower, f. ampism, four shadows, ikuisuus, isle of dogs, ocean floor, on/off, robert ridley-shackleton, RRS, sophie cooper, soundholes, the slowest lift, unstruck sound centre, vhf, yol
Aftawerks – Isle of Dogs (Acid Waxa)
Sophie Cooper – The Curfew Tower Recordings (Crow Versus Crow Editions)
Yol –On/Off (Soundholes)
Ocean Floor – Four Shadows (Aphelion)
Anla Courtis – Concept Bongo (Coherent States)
Robert Ridley-Shackleton – A Thin Slice of Sexie Funk (Cardboard Club)
The Slowest Lift – The Slowest Lift (VHF)
F.Ampism – The Unstruck Sound Centre (Ikuisuus)
Aftawerks – Isle of Dogs (Acid Waxa) Sold Out Cassette and digital album
Now I may not know my 808 from my 303 but what I can tell you is that this tape is what I’ve been reaching for when I need to get shit done.
Putting the bins out? Check.
Going to argue with the teachers at the kids open day? Check.
Completing that application for planning permission? Check.
For each domestic stretching task I’ve found Aftawerks’ no-nonsense squelch, jaunty computerised bass and pinprick precise beats the perfect mental and physical workout.
I’m in no way qualified to review this with any sense of where it fits into things historically. Some of it sounds like incidental music on Miami Vice, some of it sounds like the tunes kids blast at the back of the bus with extremely complicated hi-hat and clave patterns.
But whatever it is I’m bouncing and moving.
So…am I cool now?
Sophie Cooper – The Curfew Tower Recordings (Crow Versus Crow Editions) Sold Out Cassette and digital album
How low can you go?
On this tape Sophie Cooper goes Mariana Trench deep into the wild and weird world of the orchestra’s most misunderstood instrument – the trombone.
Sophie’s ‘bone is not played for yuks. No sir. Her Avant Garde drone credentials are writ large on a ‘Tribute to LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela’s OCEANS’. But at the same time the farting bluster that comes naturally from hot brass is not shied away from. In fact it is welcomed in a series of breathy improvisations that notch up extra points for unknown textures and intense control.
At times the brass guffs are joined with real-life human breath totally getting that ‘soft and intense’ vibe Miles perfected on Kind of Blue. On ‘What the fuck was he thinking?’ trumps turn to growls and growls turn to gasps and I’m transported into a world of leather lungs and wax paper aioli, gently expanding and contracting – the rasping hiss as rich in life in a succulent rock pool.
Delicate sound manipulation enters the frame occasionally with ‘Push the Button’s’ double-tracked horns locking together into some hefty warble tone. A pot is twisted and it gets fuzzier and hissier until it reaches Michio Kurihara’s mythical bliss-out proportions.
As it stands, with its site specific jams and improvisations, this tape would be a winner. But add to this the sweet narrative charm and you’ve got a keeper, a real put-on-the-top-of-the-pile-er.
The fabled dial-a-bone sessions link recordings together and are presented unedited and raw…the phone rings, Sophie answers, she asks what kind of jam the caller wants (loud/soft, short/long) and, BBBBUUURRRRRRRRRRMMMMM, she delivers. Classic trombone action.
Who you gonna call?
Yol –On/Off (Soundholes) Cassette
SIDE ON: JUST FIRE. JUST FIRE NOTHING ELSE. FEEDBACK SCOURS CLEAN. YOU DID A CRAP WHEELIE IN THE PARK. GIBBER G-G-GIBBER. ROAR AND RUUR AND RAAR. THROAT IS SORE BUT CAN’T STOP. JUST FIRE NOTHING ELSE. SSSSSSSSQUEAL – BURN IT CLEAN / CUT IT OUT. FIRE, FIRE, FIRE ON A LORRY. SCRATCH/BUFFFFFFGGG. SILENCE. TWO DOGS. BACKGROUND CHUNTER ON A TAPE OR SOMETHING. TWO FAKE PLASTIC ROTTWEILERS. BUMMMMGGGGG—AWWWWWWWWW WHAT THE FUCK IS IN THERE? EEEEEEEEEEE…SILENCE-CLICK.
SIDE OFF. PROTEST WIG. UGHHH. SCRAPE/SCRAPE. UHHH-GHUUUR. DISEMBODIED WIG HEAD ON THE BALCONY OF THE LUXURY FLATS. SCRATCH. CREEEE—WAAAJ WAAAJ. I SWEAR DOWN IT WAS LOOKING AT ME. HAH-HAH-HER. FADED GHOST LETTERS. GUNG-KIDDLE-TOING. SAY SOMETHING ABOUT. BOING. PAINT, SHOES, GLOVES. PING…CRUNCH. IS IT A WARNING? CHUDDLE-RATTLE-HING. CRAZY PAVING. SCRATCH-UG UG UG MADE FROM BROKEN GRAVESTONES ROARRR-R-RAAAH. SQUEAL-EEL. ALWAYS KEEP A SPARK PLUG IN YOUR POCKET. UHG UHG CRASH. SILENCE-CLICK.
Ocean Floor – Four Shadows (Aphelion) CD, Cassette and digital album
These four sublimely beautiful modular synth pieces from one Mr Aonghus Reidy simply ooze out of the speakers like a ripple of ripe camembert.
Opener ‘Airglow’ reverberates round our domestic front room with a poise that turns our little lounge into some ebony-tiled basilica. A devastating presence wearing the monk’s cowl of humility. ‘Shadows’ follows with gentle runs of oscillation that wouldn’t be out of place in a schools and colleges broadcast from 1983.
Things wind down a little with ‘Night’ – shimmering like moonlight on a vast lake the melody moving so slowly it almost collapses. And things are finally put to bed (Ed – groan!) on ‘Slumber’ a real-life lullaby; in equal parts sweetness and sinister.
It’s pretty. It’s lovely. What’s your problem punk?
Anla Courtis – Concept Bongo (Coherent States) Cassette and download
Clipped and ribbed thribblings.
Yes it’s the bongo drum – beloved of the beatnik and unwelcome midnight-jammer. But here Alan/Anla Courtis takes the hippie staple and drowns it in several pints of ‘chunng-fhhfhhung’ stretching each dull thud into a warm tropical front. Elastic thumps collect in wildly unstable clouds; popping and clicking like plastic thunder.
Waxy rolls and smears.
Two fifteen minute pieces focus on different approaches. ‘Concept Bongo I’ concentrates on the short-lived resonance that exists in the negative space these drums are designed to hold. Vibration is carefully controlled and limited to strict, neat parameters. The tables are turned on ‘Concept Bongo II” a freer, looser jam, sloshed with reverb sounding exactly halfway between an afternoon with Steve Reich and Faust’s most blunted tapes experiments.
The sound of a million blunt fingertips gently striking pigskin.
The palette of sounds is, understandably, quite limited to these thrilling pops and clicks but this familiarity make me smile nostalgically, like uncovering a well-earned scar when it’s warm enough to wear shorts.
Can I say Bongo Fury? Guess I just did.
Robert Ridley-Shackleton – A Thin Slice of Sexie Funk (Cardboard Club) 3”CD-r
The Cardboard Prince is pretty much unstoppable on this brief funk workout. I’m guessing there’s some new kit involved here as RRS sounds deep, heavier and more, well…sexie on this release.
Enough of the preamble – where’s the beef?
- ‘Eye Just Want 2’ – Chart-ready Brit-funk with indistinct vocals (such a shame I can’t make them out) and an irrepressible squid-beat spurting electric ink.
- ‘Dancing Under the Table’ – A classic RRS instant composition with a riff on jam sandwiches and death(e), the coiling bass line gradually tweaked till it cries Uncle.
- ‘Cheater’ –This one is the cream of a particular creamy crop. Lyrics sound like Cheap Trick! Lyrics sound totally RRS!! The squelching bass line needs to be wrung out it’s so darn wet. Many pots are twisted and drum-fills are added with wild abandon as RRS opens his heart to curse all the cheaters out there.
The Slowest Lift – The Slowest Lift (VHF) Vinyl LP
This knock-out tag team: Sophie Cooper and Julian Bradley (AKA The Slowest Lift) find their spiritual home on veteran freek-retreat VHS for their debut long-player.
Let’s recap. The Slowest Lift excels in duality. Their coupling of (on one side) shocking distortion, tape noise and blistering huff with (on the other) soft slow voices and gentle unhurried compositions make the act of listening like dreaming through an electrical storm.
The prospect their heaving and groaning fuzz will descend into splintered chaos is always hinted at but generally inches back from the brink guided by a warm sonic-sirocco rebalancing the actors like perfectly carved chess pieces.
I guess what I’m trying to say is this is classy but still a psychic bruiser yeah?
Opener ‘Crystal Fracture’ re-imagines something like TOTO’s Africa decamped to the Devil’s Causeway and played by colourful walkers on sharp sticks.
I’m always intrigued by that songs-named-after-the-band/album-titles-named-after-the-band type of thing. Am I to assume that this song ‘The Slowest Lift’ is a mission statement? A brief track to distil the essence of Cooper/Bradley? If so I can report back T.S.L. are a devastating cocktail of the fizzy and the smeared – think carbonated grease!
Strung-out lines of gruffly-tempered fluff skittering in a beam of yellow sunlight next…it’s ‘Bank Holiday Tuesday’ – a slow boil. The birth of casserole-core if you will. ‘Preset’ has the swagger of some undiscovered Ulver back-catalogue gem; cascades of VU-guitar strummage while Transylvanian horns duck and parry.
A lazy hiss of a harmonium fidgets with those darn tachyons shimmering in and out of phase on ‘Hi from the Skyline Swim’. The voice, relatively en clair is delivering a warning of sorts. Watch out for the grandfather paradox perhaps?
Taking a breather I think what I like most is the unpolished air to this remarkable record. The ever-so-slightly discernable patina of tape hiss when another instrument adds to the mix, it’s the sound of unfinished business. ‘EV Plus’ is a great case in point – like two found recordings laid over each other. T.S.L. make like archaeologists digging for treasure that their painstaking research assures them is just beneath their feet.
Song title of the month, ‘Extreme Cops’ is a sculpted meringue, chemically complex but light as air, ‘The Chauffer’ similarly buoyant Compare and contrast to closer ‘Punched’. A concrete overcoat, worn as you sink beneath the dock of the bay.
The Slowest Lift dog-ear a new chapter in ye olde booke of English free-mind collectives.
“SHhvvvHHHuuuhhHHHHHSshsshSShshsSH”
F.Ampism – The Unstruck Sound Centre (Ikuisuus) Vinyl LP
A lovingly prepared Petri dish of ripe exotic beans sprouting quivering tendrils that wrap round my pink toes.
A slushy bubbling and melting ripple permeate each of these nine itchy pieces. Each song a study in Technicolor; detail hanging heavy with Nag Champa and waxy banana leaves.
‘The Loosest Caduceus’ shudders like muscle spasms while ‘Sand/Blood/Glass’ makes me shave my head and begin a Bic-pen trepanation. An over-reaction from an excited listener you think? I challenge you not to seep between these vinyl grooves in search of forbidden knowledge. Me? I napped and woke up with a frog on my tongue. There’s no escape from the cramps!
But lovers of gritty drama and kitchen sink realism will not be disappointed by ‘Absolute Beyond Ill’ as fucking real as ‘tripping’ down the steps of the police station.
Get merry and totally bronzed with AMPISM! Essential.
STOP PRESS: Dwellers of Sheffield ! You can watch f.ampism and a whole host of other RFM faves LIVE on Saturday 2nd December at Regather 57-59 Club Garden Road, Sheffield, S11 8BU. This all-dayer contains Dylan Nyoukis & Kieron Piercey, Historically Fucked, Katz Mulk, Sippy Cup, Giblet Gusset, Acrid Lactations & Joincey, Luke Poot & Duncan Harrison and some joker named Posset. Doors open at 3.30pm and the howling starts at 4pm. Kids welcome. More info here.
Cardboard Club / Hissing Frames
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corn toes throb: rfm on diatribes, yearning kru, sophie cooper & julian bradley, sam andreae/david birchall/otto willberg and kay hill
April 27, 2017 at 5:30 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 1 CommentTags: david birchall, diatribes, heavy petting, invisible city records, julian bradley, kay hill, luke vollar, mantile records, mappa editions, otto willberg, sam andreae, sophie cooper, strange rules, the slowest lift, vernacular recordings, yearning kru
Diatribes – Sistere (Mappa Editions)
Yearning Kru – Swumpengelf (Mantile Records)
Sophie Cooper & Julian Bradley – The Blow Volume 3 (Front & Follow)
Sam Andreae/David Birchall/Otto Willberg – Hair in the Chimney (Heavy Petting/Vernacular Recordings)
Kay Hill – ANARAK (Invisible City Records)
Kay Hill – Summit Tapes pt 2 (Strange Rules)
Diatribes – Sistere (Mappa Editions) Handsomely-boxed C40 tape and digital album
A new-to-me name, Diatribes, are a Swiss improvising duo – D’incise & Cyril Bondi – who offer us two damn-fine, side-long, ritualistic explorations.
‘Tabi-Tabi’, this woozily hypnotic twenty-minute rhythm workout starts like a boredoms drum-circle with a handful of percussion (bells, shaker, bamboo claves, half bag of rice and those damn shell contraptions) round a campfire and stays near enough in that vein for the duration. Off-kilter electronic fingering appears around the edges and new shaken textures begin swooping in over the central heartbeat.
A lazier reviewer would play the Steve Reich card but this seems in no way minimal. Sure there’s not much in terms of shifting sonic content but the arrangement and variety of dryness verses simple clattering brass is filling my soft head with little tinkles like I done an ASMR youtube marathon.
The pulse never changes…but just when I think “I’m about to leave my earthly body, swooped to heaven with winged heels…” a series of thin ringing tones guides my soul back into this slumped form on a silver wire.
I’m a cotton-mouth shaman!
The contrast of ‘Utsara – Utsara’ couldn’t be more pronounced. Double-deep floor-tom beats in half-time with a sultry resonance. It sounds human-played with deft smears and deep-red ringing.
Imagine your favourite gamelan record slowed down and ironed out to a single fragrant strike repeated over and over again while something lurks behind the mix hissing and spitting.
This is the music of waiting for bad things to happen and listening is an uneasy, spiritually distant experience – there is no euphoria in the repetition – just slowly creeping dread like the crops failed and goat milk has gone sour. Why’s everyone looking at me?
I’m a cowering villager!
Yearning Kru – Swumpengelf (Mantile Records) tape and download
What the Dickens tape-mulch that sounds like a super-high-gloss production being ruined by an unexpected plutonium pulse and scrambled forever.
This tape is such a delight because of it’s extremely twisted DNA. No sound is left unmolested for a moment – each digital bang or gritty slump is smothered in maximal oddness, then wrung out, then laid out on another freakish griddle.
I’ll try to make sense of it for you but I fear I’m too old…
- Swooshing, the colour of Vogue Magazine – all fleshy beige (Canisters in the Marsh). A three-part structure is implied but never enforced: smeared samples, a clock ticks backwards drips behind, smashed glassy tinkles blink.
- Unpleasant whalloping (Gulping Boulders) and dropped iron vases. Corn toes throb.
- Beamed direct from Hell (Nightbrightener) as Dante attempts to sing his way out over a barrage of malfunctioning bass machines and melting RAM.
- One recognisable mbira is a brief oasis (Tattoo (Petrol)) until my bratty breath is looped (The Address) like no human mouth could ever, ever, ever…it ends in desperate scratchin’.
- This is no conventional medley (U Neva Glissend) but a hint of Sunday School organ gone random while the bad kids glitch and moan in the pews.
[Ed’s not: despite the computer-led approach, Cronx’ Yearning Kru leads directly to Hull’s Yol on my why-aye-player and the segue into gritty, real demolition sounds perfect – hey people – let’s make it happen!]
Fans of Guttersnipe and Autechre form a queue please…
Sophie Cooper & Julian Bradley – The Blow Volume 3 (Front & Follow) tape and digital album
RFM’s very own Sophie Cooper and his Excellency the Julian Bradley have been creating soft bubbles of weirdness for many years ploughing fuxxed-electronics, vocal grease and guitar-moff in a variety of solo trips, swift duos and long-lived freakbands. Pledging their troth to the way-out they formed The Slowest Lift (check press for details) but on this fayre tape they play under their own names. No less sloe! No less lifting!!
OK…that’s the scene set. What you’ve got here is two sides of ferric huss that runs the gamut from ‘thundering whale barnacles’ to ‘cardamom fueled intoxication.’ The controls are jammed into the red from the off with maximum distortion, reverb and delay of a type so strong it begins to punch through the fog that obscures the river bank that I’m squatting beside.
Details?
Tracks like ‘Wish Me to Forget You’ a gruff-electronic-folk-sonnet wonders what became of the hangman’s beautiful daughter. ‘The Body’ considers the mysteries of the fallow field. Full of shuddering wormy detail and slowly rejuvenating with essential nitrates!
Super-slow and re-imagined ‘Greenhead’ is as catchy as Under Mi Sleng Teng and fair forms a crust with them steel-pan clonks that count it out…5,4,3,2,1.
The three-part movements of ‘Nowhere from the Water to Go’ starts with (1) misty-eyed spirals of multiple guitars picked in the spirit of Portugal’s Manuel Mota – rugged plucking looped over thumbs like cat’s cradle – until (2) all sin is washed clean with thick, bassy waves of caustic tone spitting like a red-hot poker plunged into rough cider. The coda (3) haunts in its brevity – a pickled pepper of all that’s gone before.
Up-to-the-minute tape-scroll and scratch-jaxx infects the short neighbours ‘My Muscles’ and ‘The Mirror’. The former a black-dark fustering of synth-tones, dragged copse and dislocated voice the later a bona performance of séance gymnastics. Lo!
The spookiest of the bunch, ‘Congratulations,’ showcases floating twin vocals becoming an almost-ghost. No doubt a terrible tale is being told over a tune as loose as a Bardo Pond jam from way back.
Seriously delightful, yet quivering with restraint. Sort of like sweeping an experienced hand over the powerful flanks of a gelding.
Sam Andreae/David Birchall/Otto Willberg – Hair in the Chimney (Heavy Petting/Vernacular Recordings) CD
Ecstatic three-way improv shunting with many fingers.
That idea of complex gets a bad rap eh? In a world where simplification and convenience are sleepwalking us into some sort of human stasis we often shove anything difficult or involved on to tomorrows ‘to-do’ list.
Those real-gone physics-beards have got the right idea though. They claim even the thorniest, knottiest equation can be beautiful. A problem so complex so wide and deep and long that most of us mere mortals can’t even understand the damn question gets wrapped up and buffed into a solution all brief and balanced – achieving beauty.
So along with the Prof Yaffles: Sam Andreae/David Birchall/Otto Willburg invite us to smudge their chalky equation with our fresh ears.
Hair in the Chimney is an ultra-complex, lovingly-layered and nuanced peak into a virtually infinite system of sax, guitar and double bass techniques.
Don’t get your Zappa out! These techniques are a million miles from prog’s privileged meanderings (and for that matter refreshingly free of improv cliché) and almost telepathic as any squeak, belch or ‘boing’ travels from sax to guitar to bass in a second.
There’s three lengthy pieces here, long enough to get dug in and explore an ever changing landscape of some new improv patois. The textures move from brittle and broken to bulbous and ripe over the course on each imagination.
And though you might expect that with two string-bringers there’s an overreliance on pluck. Not so! The guitar and bass are as happy to hum and wobble as the sax is evidently delighted to quietly pop from time to time.
Of course it’s not all about speed and mimicry. The sympathetic support of each instrument and player is super-palpable as each voice is selfless enough to bring out the best in each other. Be that a slow dripping, almost Sonic Youth-style, electric gamelan or a razor-sharp ladder of tones, each essential to the overall sculpture.
Floats as easy as lubricated conversation.
Kay Hill – ANARAK (Invisible City Records) C20 tape and digital download
A welcome return from Ben Hallatt. A fine player who first ruffled my feathers a coupla years back at the glorious Crater Lake festival – then proceeded to gently massage my shoulders, taking great care to conceal a syringe of potent sedative that could be plunged into my neck when least expected via a slew of marvelous releases.
Here under the Kay Hill moniker he continues with what I previously described as eerie-urban-horror with muted synth and tape work.
On the mysteriously illusive ‘ANARAK’ (no info save from the artist and title) Ben offers two sides of insistent minimalism that flick with cold urgency like Morse code distress signals. The stately and austere construction of these pieces nudges Ben further away from the noise-dingus camp into a zone of bespectacled academia and ultra-minimal electronics with the implied threat of early Wolf Eyes/American Tapes/Hanson releases.
I guess the rotating orbs we hear are reels of analogue tape floating with thudding rhythms that are offset by smears of static gristle and clunk. Ben constructs his tracks like a plate spinning exercise of noises, his timing and flair for adding and subtracting sounds at the right time is impeccable. (Luke Vollar)
Kay Hill – Summit Tapes pt 2 (Strange Rules) C20 and digital download
‘Summit Tapes pt 2’ continues the engrossing drama with high lonesome tones smooshed with low key grunk and fleck.
The forlorn, barely-there conclusion of the first side sounds, for all the world, like the slow journey through an underground cave-river to an unknown conclusion. A dim light illuminating the craggy rock and the knowledge that you may well be facing the end alone.
The subtle and eerie unraveling of the second side has a slow and steady whistle rising like Doctor Octopus’ steely tentacles within a claustrophobic vortex . I keep going back to horror as a comparison but it does seem appropriate with Kay Hill as he has a gift for building tension and dread that, like the best horror films, focuses on the drawn-out suspense and fear – not the grisly climax.
So it’s fitting that there is no grisly climax to be found on either of these Hill tapes; and as the muted keys whir and crunch, half remembered voices play out ‘side b’ like a waterlogged fifth-generation tangerine cassette.
I am again extremely impressed. (Luke Vollar)
Heavy Petting / Vernacular Recordings
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