stress of speech: joe murray sings along to emblems of cosmic disorder, pascal nichols

September 4, 2014 at 2:56 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a comment
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Karl M V Waugh – 5 Alarm Systems / Songs About Choir Boys (CD-r and text prosody poems in document file, Emblems of Cosmic Disorder)

dogeeseseegod / The Zero Map – Split (tape, Emblems of Cosmic Disorder, unspecified limited edition)

Kosmos 954 – IX V IV (CD-r in hand made cover, Emblems of Cosmic Disorder)

Binnsclagg – 23 (CD-r, no label)

Pascal – Nihilist Chakai House (LP, Discombobulate, BOB003, edition of 250, ‘on frozen puddle coloured vinyl’ as Joe would have it)

Songs About Choir Boys-5 Alarm Systems 1Songs About Choir Boys-5 Alarm Systems 2

Karl M V Waugh – Songs About Choir Boys / 5 Alarm Systems

Like many folk I’m slightly aroused by office stationery [Editor’s note: too right – I’m still banned from Rymans].  There’s something about the clear usefulness of envelopes, pens, polyvinyl packets that’s so darn satisfying.  So it was with trembling hands I slice open the latest package from our esteemed editor; a selection of goods from new ‘boutique’ label Emblems of Cosmic Disorder.

A slim document file, the kind of thing you’d find in any dusty HR department, houses a neat CD-R in a clam case and several pages of closely typed text.

I check out the disc (‘songs about choir boys’) first.  This 20 minute piece has three distinct sections:

  • Cluttered junk noise collage – echoed pings, guitar scratch knitting itself tighter and tighter.  Balloon squeak adds a slivery ripple.
  • Domestic vocal psychedelic – “What valley?” Bus-travel-noise, digital avalanche, granular fractals etc. “I’m gonna go out now.”
  • Electric Balalaika heard through the fog of war, Austrian glitch and heavy pastries.

The editing is sharp, each distinctive piece flows nicely like egg yolk through new copper pipes.  Not a leak in sight!

I take out the poems (‘5 alarm systems’) and give them a bash.  On a first reading these short pieces come across like some fractured stream-of-consciousness narrative…

“Diamond scratching on the inside of my scalp.”

Or

“Duncan Harrison refuses to fight Johnny Liron and everyone’s oxygen supply is depleted.”

Pretty heady stuff, ya dig?  Like reading old Bananafish magazines through a gin hangover or something.  But closer inspection of the handy press release states these are prosody poems; a term I have never come across before.  A quick google search tells me…

Prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance (statement, question, or command); the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of language that may not be encoded by grammar or by choice of vocabulary.

OK…I get it.  It’s all about how the poem is read.  So I heave myself from the comfortable armchair and gracelessly unfold to my full (and rarely realised) six foot three and read these darn things loud and proud.

The neighbours curtains twitch, the kids giggle, Mrs Posset asks if I am feeling well.  The answer is a boisterous ‘YES’.  In fact I feel better than ever.  The act of reading is a tonic, a shot in the arm, just the very thing.  And I read on; in trembling baritone.  The intensity and vigour leaves me glowing like a Victorian lady.

I wonder if these excellent poems are to be read along with the music?  There are no instructions in the envelope to the contrary so I take matters into my own hands and rig up the gramophone to record and play and hawk out money scam intake collection [Editor’s note: click to hear a one minute rendition – self-embedding journalism, that] for kicks.

Even if this was never K.M.V. Waugh’s intention the interactive nature of abstract sound and spoken word is a great one: ham & eggs, strawberries & cream.

I urge you to check this one out and popularise as a parlour game for all the family.

dogeeseseegod zero map frontdogeeseseegod zero map back

dogeeseseegod / The Zero Map – Split Tape

There’s some real right brain/left brain stuff going on here on this pocket guide to cosmic disorder.

dogeeseseegod take the knotted tangled path with raw ganglions swaying.  Junked up domestic field recordings get clotted and rubbed up rough with the sound of water (a unifying fixture with dripping tapes, gushing pipes and the steady trickle of piss) running through this whole piece, ‘Tappin ‘Ard O Phiernahe On Rye’.  As I settle in my listening chair I’m picturing some Futurist Opera, the men of dogeeseseegod wrapped in itchy suits as they arrange scrap metal structures to a newspaper score.  Occasionally there’s the rare fizz of melody.  A guitar or keyboard makes a dash out the door with a tune stashed up a tight cuff.  But mainly the sounds are free to roam within the strict structure of the edit.  You’ve seen One Man and his Dog right?  Sort of like that but with sheep being replaced with rude tape blarts and hawking tremors.   Thankfully the electronic effects are kept to a minimum so the pure mung rises to the top of the beaker, ready to be scooped off and fermented; brewed into zingy espresso.

This kinda porridge pot can be hit or miss but I am delighted to say this is breakfast gets a Goldilocks ‘just right’ from me.

The Zero Map set their dune buggy down a smoother, less hectic, route.  The modestly titled ‘Z’ is a meditation.  Pale blue tones float out my cheap-o hi-fi clearly.  They arrange themselves in regular symmetrical patterns that turn in on themselves, forever folding and unfolding across a hidden axis to reveal a thousand-leaved Chrysanthemum glowing with an inner light.  The sound warms up to a pinky-red hue and the slight ‘tap, tok, tap’ of a recurring theme (the decaying ring of a bell with all the attack digitally snipped off perhaps?) rubs my shoulders as I settle deeper into the Chesterfield.   My eyelids droop and I find my 14 year old self perched in front of the TV trying to keep up with Horizon or something.  I’m scrunching my brow over some really complex but beautifully original maths, the slight chemical tang of lemon squash leaving a bright yellow smile on my lips.  The almost spiritual neatness of a Venn diagram, intersecting arcs creating enclosed spaces calms my teenage self into a Zen stillness that rockets through the years anointing my old-guy bristles with Nag Champa.

Kosmos 954 – IX V IV

Kosmos 954 –IX V IV

What’s this?  A live in the studio jam all cut up with a monkey claw?  Yeah man yeah.  It starts with odd honks and the sort of space echo Joe Meek would have pawned his Ouija board for.  And then a scissor cuts and Kosmos 954 draw us into the gloom for some heeds down pub-kraut-rock.  Zoinks!  The edits keep on coming: a rhythmically blocky soundtrack to 80’s handheld game ‘Scramble’ (Kink, kink, kink!) slides into slurring crabs leaving tracks in the sand of mystic Hebrew script ending the ritual with a heaviness worthy of Haikai No Ku. I love to be confused by a record and Kosmos 954 are cheeky mystic monks Ra-Ra-ing like a funky Rasputin.

Binnsclagg – 23

Binnsclagg – 23

More poetry and ‘natural malfunction’ from the South coast.  I’ve been told this is not an emblems release but it bears all the hallmarks; handmade sleeve, ambitious scope and grievous cluttered sound etc.   The lazy blogger would drop names like Graham Lambkin but this is a far more robust beast.  Sure enough, there are browned-off words that melt like dripping but some of the accompanying sound is sharp and glitchy enough to share self space with those Editions Mego jokers.

Things get pretty dark about 14 mins in.  The crystal plumage noise is replaced with matter-of-fact reportage and amplified gibber/gong workshop.  The natural energy of a live improvisation takes over and an end of the pier sample wraps things up nicely in under 25 minutes.

Pascal - Nihilist Chakai House

Pascal – Nihilist Chakai House

Whooosh.  I’m on my way to mighty Manchester with an earbud full of Mancunian musicians making the Megabus the most happening bus on the M62.

Rob has beat me to it, covering the excellent, Getting Nothing to Appear on the Developed Film by The Piss Superstition already.  So, all that I can add to the no-audience dialogue is a breathless “CHECK OUT THE SUICIDEFUZZOUTLIVEATTHEBUDOKANMIGRANE ON THIS SHIT MAN!” to the poor bloke sitting next to me.  He snores on…

The next record in my brace of Manc offerings comes from Pascal Nichols, one half of the wonderful Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides (often abbreviated to tongue-straining acronym PWHMOBS) who are stealthily playing their way into the hearts of the underground.

Here Pascal wallops hollow gourds until they clank and click like a Moondog army marching menacingly through a dark Mardi Gras.

And then…a bagatelle?  Rubber marbles?  The sound of impact folded inward.

In my cloth ears a theme reveals itself.  Cacophony is introduced then tamed…the gradual removal of syncopation reveals the human heartbeat within.  ACTION POINT: A Grandfather Clock is taken apart piece-by-piece – a military ‘tick / tok’ resolutely strict and stiff-upper-lipped morphs seamlessly into an allotment shuffle; muddy tools being hung in racks by knotted hands.

A dry ‘thwock’ repeats.  Micro spaces click sticks.  Did I just hear a sneaky ‘Moonlight on Vermont’ snare ripple?  The stick clicks continue and seem to say ‘hatchback’ in the language of the trees.  Bees are waxed for sure…you can smell the yellow howl of varnish all over the ba-da-boom, ba-da-bing.

Soon a knitting machine of Patrick Woodroffe proportions rattles pennies in a jar.  Each bronze disc placed with a trajectory planned by a master’s hands.

This is a glorious and life-affirming record.  The joy of playing is evident in every snare swish and cymbal brush.  Share the spirit of adventure…let the love in!

—ooOoo—

Emblems of Cosmic Disorder

Discombobulate

thrashing circumstance: self-released by dr:wr, forgets, orlando ferguson, luminous monsters and garland fields

April 16, 2014 at 7:20 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a comment
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DR:WR – Zamage: Music For Party (self-released download)

forgets – reasons based on our thrashing circumstances (self-released download)

Orlando Ferguson – O! What hath man wrought? (self-released download)

Luminous Monsters – On Rubied Talons (self-released download)

Garland Fields – Schizophreniclustercadence (self-released download)

drwr - zamage

I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: this ‘self-released download’ business is punker than punk. It is now possible, via services like the all-conquering Bandcamp, for anyone to present any sound at all to anyone else. Admittedly the means of production have not been seized entirely – we still need the internet, which is far from universal, and those banks of servers hosting The Cloud are not owned by a vegan co-op – but compared to the advances punk made in democratizing the creation of art and music this state of affairs is flat out anarchy. No one is listening, of course, but that isn’t the point – this is a qualitative change that we (well, oldsters like me) are still marvelling at. In celebration of all this freedom here are some glowing accounts of items I have been pointed at, *ahem*, ‘recently’…

DR:WR – Zamage: Music for Party

First then, a two track download from the school of The Zero Map. Firstly, ‘Wooden Flesh’ (reminds me of my entry to a ‘make up your own Channel 5 shock doc title’ contest: ‘The Boy With Wooden Legs… But Real Feet!’) sounds like dawn in one of those 2D, day-glo chthonic realms visited by the Yellow Submarine. Creatures gibber and shake the undergrowth as their cartoon anatomies burble. The middle section takes on a hunted tension then, having breakfasted on each other, the improbable animals settle down to the pan-dimensional business of the day.

‘This is not Thesis’ has a greater urgency to it. A crystalline shimmer is sullied, smeared as insistent ticking (at first) then a low end throbbing alarm (in the second movement) suggests there is only a very short amount of time left to defuse the suspect package – bristling with coloured wires – that no-one saw being delivered. If only you’d not spent your lunch break on the river bank eating magic mushrooms, eh? Luckily the only thing that happens when the big red LED counter gets down to ’00:00′ is that a little flag unfurls with the word ‘BANG!’ printed on it and we can all enjoy a pleasant come down.

forgets - reasons

forgets – reasons based on our thrashing circumstances

Next is forgets, winners of ‘the band I feel most guilty about not mentioning in the 2013 Zellaby Awards award’. Their latest recording – a raw, rehearsal room mix that demands volume and attention – features prose poetry from Kroyd over the improv noise guitar of Mitch, as expected, but also has some instrumental interludes reminiscent of the duo’s free rock incarnation Bluejay Neutrons too.

I find Kroyd’s storytelling to be hypnotizing. The dourness and despairing humour of his observations are perfectly relayed by the rhythm of his delivery and underscored by Mitch’s post-apocalyptic (well, that’s how it feels in some parts of Leeds on a rainy weekday afternoon) chang. At their most effective the poems bring on a kind of existential panic. Kroyd is not content: he realises that his ability to document the cruelties and absurdities of life does little to mitigate them. Being able to feel is not necessarily a survival trait. In fact, to see clearly can be a debilitating disability. So why not blur that vision with drink and rage and wry self deprecating humour, eh? I think Kroyd might be a hero of a strange sort and Mitch is either his therapist or his enabler depending on the shifting mood in the room.

This is not an easy listen but I recommend it, as I do the rest of their back catalogue.

orlando ferguson - o what hath man wrought

Orlando Ferguson – O! What hath man wrought?

Boy, have I come late to this party. I’m hoping a cheesy grin and a blue plastic bag full of cans is going to get me past the doorman… Orlando Ferguson is a York based duo: John Tuffen and Ash whose-surname-I-don’t-know. Long term midwich fanciers may recall John’s beautiful techno album available from namke communications which I released on fencing flatworm recordings, or perhaps his own artfully packaged micro-label minimism. A decade, and several regenerations (see: neuschlaufen), later John got in touch to alert me to this new project. I was delighted to hear from him but, within minutes, had lost the file down the back of the harddrive and, minutes after that, forgot about it. That was months ago – shame on me. Something, possibly guilt at missing their recent Hogwash show here in the beautiful garden city of Leeds, got me rummaging around and I’m very glad that I did.

Orlando Ferguson was, I am told, a late Nineteenth Century advocate of Flat Earth theory and created a very beautiful map, decorated with bible quotations and jibes at fancy-pants science types, in order to disprove all that globe nonsense. Given that the band is named for such a character, its histrionic title and the defiant running time of 48 minutes for a single track you might expect this album to be epic, idiosyncratic and to have serious courage in some entertainingly wonky convictions. You would be right on all counts.

Put simply: this is a long, involving, proggish, psychotronic ritual which, despite its grand spaciness, remains admirably disciplined throughout. Yes, there is scouring, splintering guitar but it never gets noodly or aimless – riffs have an effective tech/kraut simplicity. Found sounds – some Foley work with bits of metal too – give the piece a grounded, located feel which I appreciate whilst voices gurgling and spitting keep the angelic host tethered to the altar. Its overall success is a product of John and Ash’s balls-out confidence – this was performed live at a noise show where sets are generally half this length – and obvious faith in their work. Great stuff. I now discover there are seven releases available via their Bandcamp site, all of which can be had for a mere couple of quid a throw.

luminous monsters - talons

Luminous Monsters – On Rubied Talons

When Matt of the inexplicably named guanoman emailed to plug his new Luminous Monsters album the description had me bouncing in my chair with anticipation:

Five tracks ranging from delicate near-silence to raging psychedelic noise, via heavy drone and the customary ham-fisted approximations of Middle Eastern modes.

Oh, Matt you smoothy – you had me at ‘ham-fisted’. I jest, of course, but it did sound custom made to fit these sorely mistreated ears. So it has proved – I like this album very much indeed.

We start with ‘The Kundalini Engine’. Imagine a great master of gamelan has died unexpectedly in the night. The following morning his shocked students gather to play a tearful, heartfelt tribute. A background buzz of sympathetic electronics and a swell of crystal guitar are entirely appropriate and poignantly represent the fragility of it all and the nearness of the spirits that day.

Next, ‘Tears of a Shoggoth’ sees an example of Lovecraft’s terrifying, amorphous, slave race summoned by a strangely faceted purple crystal and imprisoned in the dome of a mosque. An almost instinctive folk memory is awakened in the frightened populace and, on a moonless night, they surround the building with torches and play music – anything to keep the thrashing, furious animal inside.

Regarding ‘Coils of the Doxic Host’ I was recently asked what it is I am currently looking for in music and, without thinking, I replied ‘low end with sprinkles’. Plenty of that here. A satisfyingly full drone calls to mind a giant cauldron full of boiling caramel. The witch tending this delicious but lethally hot concoction is killing time by improvising on a miniature hand-held church organ.

‘Of Smoke and Sinew’ and ‘Wrath of the Tyrant Sun’ could be parts one and two of the same adventure story. We start with guitar shimmer, a heat haze over the desert sand, then – drama – a truck full of excited men with shovels arrives. They leap out and throw themselves into the task of uncovering a giant hatch that, according to the chap holding the map, is the gateway to a nameless underground city. Once opened, the gathering storm above and the hot, unnervingly breathy, wind coming up from the blackness below suggests the whole business has been a very bad idea indeed…

A cracker. Sadly, I think you’ve missed the pre-release opportunity to swap a free download from Matt for a hand-drawn picture of a monster (charming, eh?) so you’ll have to pay actual dough for it but, at three quid, this is a steal.

garland fields

Garland Fields – Schizophreniclustercadence

Finally then, the above.  This is officially on a label, Megawhat Recordings (I can’t decide whether that name is teeth-grindingly cheesy or some kind of Oi! genius – might be both), but as all the ‘acts’ gathered under this umbrella are incarnations of the same bloke, Robin Foster, this definitely counts as self-released.  Robin presented this to me with all the enthusiasm of a kid being ordered by the playground bully to light a banger pushed into some dog shit:

I hope at the very least my music doesn’t repulse you too greatly.

…he said and who can resist such a persuasive hard sell?  Luckily, not me.  The release comprises one 20 minute track of trilling electronic noise.  On first listen it appears to be a shipping container full of panic-stricken R2D2s short circuiting as an anti-droid luddite hoses ’em down.  Which is good, obviously, but further listens reveal quite a lot more going on.  Fans of foldhead’s gurning squawktronics will enjoy the struggle as flopping, squashed sounds try to right themselves whilst a malfunctioning gravitational field hurls everything arse over tit.  Good fun.  I shall investigate this guy’s work further.

—ooOoo—

DR:WR

forgets

Orlando Ferguson

Luminous Monsters

Garland Fields / Megawhat Recordings

meditative anarchy: releases from tor press

January 26, 2014 at 5:30 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 7 Comments
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The Zero Map – Cerebrum Paté (CD-r, Tor Press, TORCD04, edition of 60, lino print cover)

Plurals – Debasement (CD-r, Tor Press, TORCD03, edition of 100 with three lino prints)

Ignatz / Sophie Cooper – Split (tape, Tor Press, TORCAS005, edition of 75)

Hellvete / Jake Blanchard – Split (tape, Tor Press, TORCAS006, edition of 75)

The Zero Map - Cerebrum Pate

Blimey, you lot have woken from your winter hibernation pretty sharpish, eh?  After throwing off the bear skins and shaking out the grass matting the first thought in the groggy collective mind of the no-audience underground seems to have been ‘must… send… parcel… to… Rob…’ or ‘nnnghhhh – download code for RFM!!’  Thus a review pile that had been diligently reduced to single figures during a hyperactive December has, by the end of January, been re-swollen to over forty items.  I ain’t complaining, comrades – far from it.  A skim through the new stuff reveals a level of quality and invention that is noggin-baking.  My only concern is how to do it all justice.  What  a glorious bind to be in, eh readers?  What a privilege to be a creative partner in this collective endeavour!  Anyway, enuff swooning – I better get to work: a few posts to put 2013 to rest, the spring greens of 2014 to follow shortly after.

Today we’ll be looking at four releases on Tor Press, the Todmorden-based record label, zine publisher and gig promoter, run by illustrator Jake Blanchard.  The first of these is Cerebrum Paté (cover above) a thirty-two minute, two track CD-r by The Zero Map, the Brighton based duo of Chloe Wallace and Karl M V Waugh.

I consider this band to be underrated – meaning that Uncle Mark of Idwal Fisher doesn’t like ’em as much as I’d like ‘im to like ’em – but not, of course, here at RFM HQ where they are firm favourites.  On several enjoyable occasions I have pretzelled myself attempting to classify the meditative anarchy of their vibe.  On the surface there is nothing gonzo or discordant apparent.  An augmented drone, or electronic collage, carries you along like a pooh stick on a slow moving stream, flowing over and around some interesting obstacles.  However, the closer you look the more peculiar it gets.  One of those obstructions might be, say, the arm of a shop window mannequin sticking up out of the current, or perhaps some  unknown hand has rearranged the pebbles of the stream bed into a mosaic depicting the face of Philip K. Dick, or maybe some biological agent in the water has turned the orchids in that tree stump blue (aside: Upstream Colour – best film of 2013) and so on…

Suffice to say that the first track, ‘Neutrino Detector’, begins with some nicely intestinal bass and that the second track, ‘A Python’, ends with a visceral crescendo that makes me want to drink blood from the skulls of my vanquished enemies.  In-between times you’ll find plenty of whatthefuckery to flavour your reverie.  Recommended.

Plurals - Debasement

Next is Debasement, a CD-r by the three (or four?) member ‘scattered collective’ Plurals.  The disc is accompanied by three beautiful lino prints, one each by Ben Jones, Tom J Newell and Jake Blanchard, each an interpretation of one of the three tracks that make up the album.  I consider this band to one of the frontrunners in this sport.  Their sound has, for me, a subtle narrative quality that is compelling, exciting and rewarding of repeat listens.  It draws stories out of me.  Like this one:

The first track, ‘Modal Nodes’ is a glorious drone piece, a model of adulterated perfection.  Picture a conical, many-limbed alien creature, nestled comfortably in an indentation on a sandy beach.  Scattered around it are a number of terracotta coloured objects, each of which is picked up and, with a whip of a tentacle, set spinning.  Some of these tops contain whistles, others beads and carved stones, all of which hum or rattle as they rotate.  Luxuriating in the buzz it has created the creature uses half its mouths to join in with ululations and the other half to grin with.

‘Ape Skull Photography’ begins with more insistence – the urgent throb of a distress signal triggered by the captain of an exploration vessel sent to map this new world.  The cause of his alarm is the frightening speed at which his crew have ‘gone native’ since arriving.  The majority can be found scooping out their own hollows and joining in with the alien groove, only to be dragged away by the few left unaffected.  This gathering siren sound begins to blot out the sound of the siren.  Cut to the bridge of a rescue ship sent to investigate.  The crew shift in their seats, uneasily listening.

‘Glowing Generic Diety’ is the final sublimation.  Primed by the smeared-out distress signal the rescuers didn’t stand a chance and succumbed immediately.  The captain can now be found on a nearby riverside, covered in red muck, fashioning his own spinning pots from the clay.  Dozens are drying on the bank behind him.  The rest of the crew are entwined in tentacles, consciousness liquefied in a grotesquely beautiful parody of nirvana.

Heh, heh – how’s that?  Tremendous stuff.

ignatz sophie cooper split

Hellvete Jake Blanchard split

..and finally the two split tapes.  Sadly, they are already sold out and do not appear to have a digital afterlife.  However, I am compelled to mention ’em at least because they are marvellous.

Ignatz, a guitarist from Belgium called Bram Devens, contributes five tracks of outsider blues with an archaeological crust to the recording that suggests Daniel Johnston transported back to the Mississippi Delta of the 1920s.  His playing is raw and immediate but contains passages of disarming subtlety.  His voice is fragile but his delivery has plenty of personality and push.  I have been charmed by these haunting, humorous pieces and invigorated by the lifeforce they exhibit.  One track, ‘Liquorice’, is named for my favourite confectionery too!

Sophie Cooper’s songs here concern absence and displacement and are half submerged in fuzz, echo and lapping ripples of liquid noise.  The atmosphere is maintained beautifully, the medium conveying the message.  ‘Dreamlike’ is an adjective easy to reach for when faced with anything at all diaphanous but, despite an explicit rejection of the notion by Sophie: track four is titled ‘I Never Associate Dreams With Anything’, I think the description fits.  The tidal to and fro between here and distant, me and you, inside and outside has the sort of discombobulating internal logic you might struggle with on waking at 3am.  I recently had the pleasure of seeing her perform live.  Her voice and guitar were accompanied by a filtered flow of taped audio detritus which gave the impression her songs were emerging from a kind of shared, consensual hallucination.  Also, by filling the gaps between songs and thus not providing the usual silence for applause her set was placed firmly in the context of the noise performances that preceded it.  Very smart and very engaging.

The tape shared by Jake Blanchard himself and Hellvete, a guy called Glen Steenkiste, is a meeting of mighty, magical dronezillas.  However, instead of tearing chunks out of each other whilst stamping on the unsuspecting burghers of Todmorden, Jake invites Glen to a campfire party at a beauty spot up on the Pennine tops.  After roasting a few cattle the monsters take turns casting spells to entertain each other.  This isn’t lazy, elbow-on-the-keyboard drone but a glowing, crackling, rolling presence built from ‘real’, sometimes handmade, instruments.  It is beautifully layered and textured and animated by a sparkling and complex soul.  Vibracathedral Orchestra comes to mind, of course, as does Jazzfinger, but replace the incense with the sinus clearing tang of pine resin.  It ain’t all epic, though.  The Hellvete side ends with a charming, tiny, banjo-plucking coda called ‘Op Linkeroever’ (Dutch for ‘On the Left Bank’).  This return to a human scale serves the same take-a-deep-breath purpose as, say, ‘Cripple Creek Ferry’ at the end of Neil Young’s death-of-the-hippy-dream masterpiece After the Goldrush.  If I hadn’t taken so long to get around to this release it would have surely figured in the 2013 Zellaby Awards, so sincere apologies for that.

To conclude: Tor Press is boss.  The attitude exhibited by this outfit is impeccable.  Every aspect of the operation exudes an understated but unmistakeable class.  The content and choice of acts, whilst not always to my exact taste, show an adventurous but coherent vision for the label.  Attention to detail is rigorous and quality control strictly enforced whilst retaining a loose, friendly and collaborative vibe.  The packaging is exceptional – covers and inserts are hand-printed where feasible and beautifully designed with an eye for the aesthetically satisfying.  Jake is, and I do not bandy this term about lightly, an artist.

Should you know anyone unconvinced as to the achievements possible here in the no-audience underground, any fool who uses the term ‘hobbyism’ as an insult, or insists on clutching tatty security blankets like The Wire to their bosom, then point them at labels like this and tell them to shut the fuck up.  Tough love, yeah, but they’ll thank you for it eventually.

Tor Press.

wired for sound part 37: claus poulsen, lord cernunnos, ronzilla, left hand cuts off the right, bad suburban nightmare, the zero map

April 24, 2013 at 11:04 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 1 Comment
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Claus Poulsen – Electric Lobby (tape, Matching Head, MH192)

Lord Cernunnos / Ronzilla – Death Cap Drones (tape, Triangle Tapes, TT#5)

Left Hand Cuts Off The Right / Bad Suburban Nightmare (tape, Armed Within Movement, AWM007)

The Zero Map – Distant Storms (tape, Armed Within Movement, AWM010)

Claus Poulsen - Electric LobbyDeath Cap DronesLef Hand-The Zero Map

A couple of readers have asked me how I’ve managed to keep the blog posts so regular whilst working full time and sharing baby-raising duties with my awesome wife.  To be honest, I’ve surprised myself.  The first thing to say is that I definitely don’t turn to my blog when I’m bored at work.  No, I’d never do that, obviously.  Never.  Secondly, on examination, I appear to have cut away everything extraneous.  I hang with Anne and Thomas the Baby whilst multitasking domesticities, I do my best to keep up with family and friends, I go to work and I think about music.  All the other silliness with which I filled my time has fallen away.  I am knackered, of course, but in a way it has been an invigorating few weeks of priority realignment.  It turns out that this blog, my contribution, is profoundly important to me.  So on with the show, eh?

The tapes pictured above are the last of the review material that arrived around the birth of my son.  Apologies to the artists and labels for the, I hope, understandable delay.

I raised an eyebrow at the discovery of a release by Claus Poulsen on Matching Head.  Now, my love of Lee Stokoe’s legendary label is well documented and its quality could only be doubted by the cloth-eared.  However, even I have to admit that it is a fringe concern and that his tape-only, black-and-white aesthetic is for the hardcore.  Readers of this blog will be more familiar with Claus from his ‘prestige’ projects for Striate Cortex (solo and as half of the duo Star Turbine with Sindre Bjerga) and the duo Small Things on Sundays with Henrik Bagner.  The last time they were mentioned here I was talking about vinyl, no less.  Would the rough kids over at Matching Head beat him up and nick his lunch money?

No.  I needn’t have worried.  Although similar in tone to some of his other work, the new context makes perfect sense and the tape hiss just adds another layer of varnish to the puzzle box.  The Electric Lobby in question is described by an unreliable narrator.  It is furnished with FAX style brooding electronics, which are in turn upholstered with carefully detailed noise textures and discretely lit with loops of what may be field recordings of various human endeavours.  It has an expansive, unreal air of not-quite-convincing artifice.  At one point an unintelligible voice makes an announcement to the suspiciously robotic guests.  It’s as if, just after you sat down next to a guy who looks exactly like Philip K. Dick, the whole hotel is replaced by white space and a slip of paper with one word on it: ‘HOTEL.’  Very good indeed.

Death Cap Drones is a split tape shared between Lord Cernunnos (Andrew Erickson) and Ronzilla (noise scene veteran Ron Rice) and was sent on spec by the charming Marc Roberts of analog evangelists Triangle Tapes (slogan: “Analog rules.  Keep it reel”).  It is a beautiful package: oversized ‘audiobook’ box with separate plastic holder inside to stop the cassette rattling about.  The J-card is a stylish silver-on-black design.  A lot of work for a mere fifty copies – I approve wholeheartedly of this show of commitment.

The Lord Cernunnos side is a series of tracks with a kind of At the Mountains of Madness feel – like excerpts from an audio account of exploring an ancient, ruined alien city, knee deep in snow and rubble, only to find some of the machinery is still warm and working to a forgotten purpose.  At one point a member of the expedition leans against the wall and inadvertently sets off a recording of a strange percussive pattern – like hollow bamboo logs being struck.  I like this very much, the ominous atmosphere of non-specific threat is successfully maintained throughout.  As if to prove it is bad voodoo, I was listening to it on my walkman on a packed commuter bus yesterday morning and no-one would sit next to me whilst it was playing (and, yes, I had washed before leaving the house – har, har – you smartarse).

The Ronzilla side comprises two ten minute tracks of pupils-as-pinholes peaking.  A low end throb jostles with teeth-loosening treble as you try and keep the shivers in check and convince yourself that the red light apparently shining behind the closed eyelids of your sleeping friend Chris is nothing to worry about.  Just the drug – deep breath, ride it out.  This is intense, fried (to use a current favourite word on this blog) and, I suspect, not for everyone but I’ve found myself compelled to return to it several times.  The sort of oddity you want to poke with a stick, just to see what happens.

Finally, we have two tapes from Adam Beckley’s label Armed Within Movement.  The packages are standard: tapes in cassette boxes with black-and-white illustrated J-cards, but no less pleasing for that.  The AWM collection has a satisfying shelf identity.

The music of Left Hand Cuts Off The Right, known to his mum as Robbie Judkins, reminds me of the cassette culture underground that I first came to know and love in the late 1990s (Rob Galpin’s ‘Sunny Days Out’ springs to mind, for example).  Tracks seem to be composed by accumulation of elements, or to coalesce around a sound or an idea – like an egg poaching in boiling water – and we are presented with a snapshot of where the process had got to when Robbie leant on the record button with his elbow.  As such, some of it feels a bit sketchy but it is never less than charming and repeat listens reveal it to be finely balanced, constructed with a chef’s understanding of its ingredients.  A whimsical reaction is hard to resist but doesn’t feel quite right so I’ll limit it to this: the track ‘Habibi’ sounds like an increasingly frantic colony of budgerigars attempting to perform a tune by hovering over a marimba and dropping nuts on it.

The side by Bad Suburban Nightmare, a solo project of Dan Hrekow, begins with ‘Drone Heartbreak’, a slow-picked, desert guitar meditation.  Its minimalism and discipline provide the grateful listener with a contemplative space, cocooned inside a soulful, emotionally resonant atmosphere.  The second of the two tracks, ‘Alchemy’, is genuinely strange: a series of distant explosions take their own sweet time to devastate the next valley over, or perhaps it is the first track again but heard underwater, Ben Braddock style, at the deep end of a swimming pool, or perhaps, given the title, this is what the chemical reactions might sound like if we had molecular microphones and could record lead transmuting into gold.  Mesmerising.

Finally we have Distant Storms by The Zero Map.  I notice that Uncle Mark over at radiofreemidwich’s sister blog Idwal Fisher was grumpily dismissive of this tape a few posts ago.  I can only assume that his faithful manservant had allowed Mark’s glass of Manzanilla to warm to room temperature and the resulting fury led to this lashing out.  ‘Rudderless’ indeed, I ask you!  Alas, it falls to me to set the record straight.  I am a fan of Chloe and Karl’s work and I remain so after hearing this because the fact of the matter is: it is good.

The side long ‘Champagne Awakening’ opens magisterial – all raspberry dawns over the Nile as drug-addled dignitaries take river cruises in opulent barges.  The atmosphere of decadent possibility is tainted when the Pharaoh takes one drink too many and has a vision of the mechanised future.  The air remains full of spices and aromatics but the scene is now, in her head, overwhelmed with searing noise and engine rhythms.  Out of this a tropical guitar emerges and ties it all up with a foot-on-the-monitor feedback conclusion.  Rock!

Side B features four tracks that slide into one another so I’ll treat them as a whole containing different movements.  We begin with some agitated, swirling, popping electronics accompanied with some plucked acoustic guitar and non-verbal vocalisations.  The plucking becomes more purposeful and is augmented with some filtered… what?  The other instrumentation is hard to place: horns, keys, violin?  I can’t tell, it’s hypnotic.  This builds into an improv raga fury over a spiralling, descending roar until we get to a passage of totally balls-out (sorry Chloe – you know what I mean) psychedelic noise.  A low-end engine rumble revs up into a fuzz whine over skittering electronics, sometimes spacey, sometimes subterranean.  There is a calm eye within the maelstrom which we see glimpses of occasionally as the storm tears holes in the clouds.  I imagine Chloe and Karl (and Peter Herring who features on two tracks) sitting there, cross legged, facing each other but with eyes closed, just willing all this into existence.  Cool, eh?

Matching Head

Triangle Tapes

Armed Within Movement

Claus Poulsen

Lord Cernunnos

Ronzilla

Left Hand Cuts Off The Right

Bad Suburban Nightmare

The Zero Map

first impressions: kevin and karl play pretty for baby

April 11, 2013 at 8:43 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a comment
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Kevin Sanders – Singing (etcetera) in a hallway for baby (tape/download, hairdryer excommunication)

KMVW & PTLS – split (2 x 3” CD-r/download, hairdryer excommunication)

Singing frontSinging backKMVW and PTLS

Amongst the tributes paid to the birth of our son, I was particularly touched and delighted that Kev Sanders, best known ’round here as blog fave act Petals, dedicated a recording to him. The ol’ smoothie did the same for Seth and Sara on the arrival of Beatrice last year too.

Aww…

Anyway, as it was created in his honour, I thought I’d let him review it. Here is Thomas’s initial reaction:

first impressions

I see what he means – it is very odd indeed.  Here’s how he was at the end, having dressed for dinner with it on in the background:

verdict

A success, I’m sure you’ll agree. Download it for the amusement of your whole family here.

On a roll, I decided to try him on the Karl MV Waugh (him of The Zero Map) and Petals split too and, to my sleep-deprived surprise, I think I heard him say the following:

Finest quality aural cartography of the neurotic mindscape and a cracking object to boot.  Double 3″ CD-r is truly the format of champions and to mount it in a 7″ single sleeve is magical. All should be rushing to acquire one of these, or, if it proves no longer available, gratefully accepting a free download in consolation.

Remarkable – I couldn’t agree more. Then he filled his nappy with something the colour and consistency of korma paste and the listening session was brought to a hurried close. To get your copy see here.

artifacts of the no-audience underground: the zero map – live @ spirit of gravity 2011

May 22, 2012 at 6:01 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a comment
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I’m not sure many in the no-audience underground set out with the intention of creating something ‘charming’.  As a description it doesn’t feel very cool or hip or punk or challenging does it?  Despite that, I consider it to be a much underrated quality that takes some skill to achieve.  To be charming a piece must be sufficiently subtle, gentle and engaging without being overly fey, whimsical or insubstantial.  It has to convey its intention with just the right level of self-awareness: too much is arch and mannered, too little is childish and naive.  The knack is in maintaining the balance.  It is not easy.

Even before I heard the music, The Zero Map, a duo of Chloe Wallace and Karl M V Waugh (two middle initials, eh?  Class), had got it right.  Karl sent me a polite email reminding me that I had liked a previous release of theirs (I had, very much) and wondered if I might consider a new thing of theirs for review.  I said sure, of course, and a few days later the 3” CD-r above arrived at Midwich Towers.  I was charmed by its handmade cover (pictured) and handwritten ‘press release’ (for want of a better term).  C&K are model correspondents.

The 21 and a half minutes contained on this CD-r document a performance recorded in their hometown of Brighton in September of last year.  It begins with a section in which (what may be) thumb pianos and the like slowly overlay one another, via ladles of delay, into a crescendo of picking and plinking.  Imagine a cabinet of Victorian toys – tin soldiers, china-headed dolls, music box ballerinas – being possessed by the spirit of Sun Ra.  There then follows a slightly uneasy middle section where a cool feedback tone threatens to smother the detail but this is a transitional moment and forgivable in a live setting.  Finally, the feedback becomes a drone which gently granulates into noise with added keyboards and feline ululations.  This last section has a pleasantly mysterious feel.  I mentioned The Cats of Ulthar in my previous review of The Zero Map – is this a muezzin call to fetch them back from the moon?

I like this: it is considered without being overly polished, fun without being daft and engaging enough to encourage repeat listens.  It is charming.  Details of how to get hold of this – £4 plus postage – can be found here.

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