happy new year humans: it’s the rfm zellaby list for two thousand and eighteen
January 1, 2019 at 2:06 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 3 CommentsTags: adrian shenton, ali robertson, bandcamp, blood stereo, bridget hayden, bulletproof socks, caroline mackenzie, caught in the wake forever & glacis, chik white, chlorine, Chow Mwng, chrissie, clemency, culver, dale cornish, daniel john williams, delphine dora, depletion, fritz welch, fuse, guttersnipe, gwilly edmondez, hawthonn, helicopter quartet, ivonne van cleef, jean-marie massou, joe mcfee, john pope, joyce whitchurch, kieran mahon, limbs bin, marlo eggplant, miya masaoka, nadio, other forms of consecrated life, paul hession, penance stare, rat cage, robert ridley-shackleton, rodrigo tavares, roman nose, saboteuse, sectioned, shrykull, shunyata improvisation group, slayer, sleepmask, slow goes the goose, sophie, sophie cooper, spelk, stuart chalmers, toby lloyd, tom white, usurper, werewolf jerusalem, wizards tell lies, xazzaz, xqui, yol, zellaby awards
That 2018 was a hard year for many eh?
The impact of recent seismic political and cultural change has reached its grubby hands into our lovely underground and started poking and prodding. In 2018 I witnessed an underground scene fractured, where tempers were frayed and short. Reasonable people and reasonable debate had given way to, barely disguised jealously, name-calling and shaming. Social media, that onetime ally of the powerless, became a toxic swamp of subtweeting, humble bragging, opinion presented as fact and relentless negativity.
It’s hard to see a light at the end of the tunnel. And yet…
There’s something so powerful about the ideas that accompany NAU/DIY music. With little commercial expectation it still remains truthful and pure. With no piper to pay we are free to pursue our own directions, explore strange cul-de-sacs and settle into comfortable dead ends. Our music is often, literally, a gift. Either between two real-life people connecting in any manner of means or, if using the ‘pay what you like’ option, a gift for the many we are yet to meet.
While it may be true that a DIY lifestyle rarely offers solutions, I feel it offers something approaching equal value. It offers hope. Hope that we can prevail in a toxic world, hope that invention, kindness and humility are still highly valued by some. Hope that we can create a safe space in a world that seems to be careering into a period of sustained traumatic shock.
For these reasons I feel, this year, it’s all the more important to celebrate this hope.
As you will know RFM spent most of 2018 hibernating and not all the RFM writers have had time to contribute so you are stuck with Rob, Luke and myself.
In a spirit of what Kathleen Hannah calls “non-competition and praise” we humbly present you the Zelleby lists 2018.
Rob Hayler
Happy New Year folks! I wish you a peaceful 2019 and hope that 2018 left you smiling. I realise that might be a vain hope given that the world is hurtling towards Armageddon but, hey, let’s leave the existential terror to one side for a few minutes and distract ourselves with talk of music. It’s fine. This is fine. I SAID IT’S FINE.
*Ahem*
RFM being on hiatus for the majority of the year has been refreshing. It hasn’t stopped me writing – add up my account of TUSK (below), my pieces for TQ Zine, various unfinished articles and a frankly embarrassing number of tweets and it totals around 15 thousand words – but the absence of pressure has invigorated my listening habits and left me untethered from critical consensus. I’ve also found time for see monsd, my post-midwich recording project, and two albums of gurgling tweakage and heavy loopism have been followed by more high concept shenanigans with Posset and yol. A collaboration with Stuart Chalmers will follow in due course. I’m proud of how this has worked out and must give thanks again to Chrissie and Ross for donating the kit I am now hunched over. Angels both.
Right then: lists, sort of. I’ll mention a ‘proper label’, a ‘not really a label’ and then gesture towards recordings made by 27 acts that had me hovering two inches above the floor during 2018.
My ‘proper’ label of the year is Other Forms of Consecrated Life. I’m currently halfway through an account of its many qualities which I hope to publish in the New Year so, for now, here are the bare facts of the matter. Based in Scotland, OFOCL has released four albums since its inauguration in January of 2016. It appears to have no online presence other than its Bandcamp page and these releases are only available digitally. There are bare bones Discogslistings and a Twitter account, also set up in January 2016, which has sent a mere handful of tweets. Each release is accompanied by a black and white photograph of an historical artefact, a museum piece, presented unreferenced and closely cropped on a plain background, thus shorn of context. The aesthetic is both neatly coherent and pleasingly enigmatic. Great logo too. The tag-line on both Bandcamp and in the Twitter bio is as follows:
“Auditory excavations. Eremetic Music. Pareidolia.”
I will say more in due course. I insist you check it out.
The ‘not really a label’ is ‘self-released on Bandcamp’. My routine is well established: during the day I follow recommendations, mainly garnered from twitter, dutifully keeping a browser tab open for each. On retiring to bed those that are ‘name your price’ are dozily downloaded to my ‘phone, either paying nowt or an amount depending on proximity to payday or whether my paypal account contains anything I can pass on. Those that require a specific fee are placed on my wish list, triaged and either discarded or purchased according to taste and resources. Releases acquired this way are listened to mainly via (surprisingly good) wireless headphones as I nod off, walk to and from work or busy myself around the house. The huge majority of my life in music is now comprised of this process and I find it magical. The efficiency, the frugality with which I can navigate an unimaginable catalogue, dizzying myself with novelty, whilst offering direct support to artists (who are sometimes also friends) is borderline miraculous. I guess I can almost still understand preferring the physical exercise of crate digging – the rush of discovery, the thwap of sleeve on sleeve, the smell, the crackle of a run-in groove – but I’ve no time for anyone who scoffs at my alternative. There are problems of course – some big – but that doesn’t stop Bandcamp being the most interesting thing to happen to music distribution since the mainstreaming of digital piracy in the 90s.
OK, my 27 recording artists of 2018 are below. One or two of those mentioned might stretch the usual remit of this blog but, y’kno, fuck it. Where a particular release has stood out, the link will take you directly to it but many of the artists featured have been prolific and are included in recognition of all the new pages in their own strange atlases. Given the ‘Little Nemo in Slumberland’ method by which I amassed most of this year’s highlights (“Gee Willikers! ‘Yesterday Rob’ has purchased a most fanciful download for ‘Today Rob’ to enjoy!”) the idea of a monolithic, numbered list seemed even more illegitimate than usual. As such, may I present a new way of arranging my year’s favourites? Everything that falls within the circles is bloody marvellous and absolutely worthy of your careful attention. The closer it comes to the centre the more it chimed with me. The alphabetical list of links is also a key to the graphic. I think the solid red outermost circle might signify ‘the North East noise scene’ or ‘pastoral psych drone’. Or maybe Kate Bush…
D chlorine
E Chrissie
F Clemency
I Delphine Dora and Sophie Cooper
L Hawthonn
Q Naido
W SOPHIE
X Spelk
ZZ Xqui
Some notes:
UN-INSIDES
Firstly, the release that falls furthest from the usual ‘no-audience’ remit of this blog: OIL OF EVERY PEARL’S UN-INSIDES by SOPHIE. In some nearby but alternate universe this has been the best selling album of the year by orders of magnitude. It has a quality, in spades, that I value above almost any other when it comes to ‘pop’ music: it sounds like it has been beamed back to us from the future. From the glorious permission of ‘It’s OK to Cry’ – a velvet crowbar opening your rib cage – to the industrial strength, mentholated joy of ‘Whole New World/Pretend World’ this is a triumph. I didn’t pay much attention to the ‘end’ of year lists prematurely spunked over an appalled November and December but I assume this topped most of them. How could it not, right?
MOST PLAYED
Let’s return to a scuzzy, black-painted upstairs room. Possibly my most played single track of the year is a recording of a gig by Clemency at The Fenton pub in Leeds and which was made available afterwards to interested attendees (such as myself) via Dropbox. How’s that for no-audience underground, fuckers!? I don’t know if this piece – a cross-genre skittering collage of unplaceable emotions, clattering beats and sliding bass – is emblematic of her work in general but a resolution for 2019 is to check out her Soundcloud archive and her ongoing radio show.
ONE OFFS
How about the indefinable masterwork X by Saboteuse on Crow Versus Crow, eh? A tape that evoked a kind of eye-bugging wild-take, like the listener was a Warner Brothers toon that had wandered into a David Attenborough documentary edited by Herschell Gordon Lewis. Or the all-conquering Red Goddess (of this men shall know nothing) by Hawthonn? A profoundly magical album that floats from the fecundity of the valley floor to the ageless moorland tops. It’s been great to see Phil and Layla playing out – each version of ‘Lady of the Flood’ I see further securing its status as track of the year. Scrying by Penance Stare was a revelation too – a model of deliberation in the face of rage and confusion, a head-clearing walk through a frozen dusk.
PROLIFICISM
As already mentioned, several of the artists listed have taken advantage of the ease offered by Bandcamp and have been busy filling chests with treasure. Chief amongst these is caroline mckenzie whose thoughtful, beautiful, longform albums are, on the surface, as welcome and restoring as warm sand underfoot but always have an emotional complexity revealed by close listening. Kieron Mahon has had it good too. My favourite of several equally excellent releases is Big Wheel – a kosmische journey with a utopian groove that reminds me at times of Kraftwerk’s ‘Neon Lights’, which is the highest praise of course. chlorine also filled a swimming pool with fluid, odd tasting, eye-stinging (sorry, that’s enough chlorine jokes) albums. I had Grassi pegged as a (very talented) drone artist having just heard Silk Trees and Solace but listened with increasing interest as later releases started to more resemble the aesthetic of his terrific photographic collages. Special mention must also be made of Matt Dalby who has been tirelessly cataloguing his life and artistic endeavours with YouTube and other social media. A small band of followers, myself included, have enjoyed his vocal improvisations, his accounts of lengthy walks, his comics about autism and his videos about eating insects as snack food. A hefty body of work is gathering, documenting a unique worldview. Finally for this section I’m going to shamelessly lump together A WHOLE COUNTRY, like a giant fistful of multi-coloured playdoh in the hands of a naughty toddler, and proclaim this ‘The Year of the Dragon’. 2018 revealed to me a bunch of Welsh underground music pulled together by Ash Cooke (a.k.a. Chow Mwng) and the Dukes of Scuba zine. Possibly my favourite of these artists was Xqui who worked tirelessly to get approximately nine million tracks up on Bandcamp and, amazingly, kept the quality control needle wavering around ‘superb’ for the whole year.
DRONE/NOISE
Now a paragraph on the genres I am perhaps most closely associated with. Should you wish your noise to be as bleak, desolate and hostile as a nuclear winter then brace yourself for Final Exit by the extraordinary Depletion. If your nihilism is of a more cosmic strain – At the Mountains of Madness rather than The Road, say – then I recommend The Transmission by Naido which is a deep dive into turbid waters with an entertaining Lovecraftian back-story. The soul music continues with the self-titled SLEEPMASSK, which provides an unnerving subcutaneous vibration which somehow feels corrective. head/rush(ed) by Marlo Eggplant is a collection of curios, miniatures, sketches and exploratory procedures given coherence by a formidable aesthetic, irresistible charisma and dry humour. Adrian Shenton’s The House That Jack Built is constructed from the cawing of jackdaws, my favourite of the mighty corvids, and thus wins this year’s ‘fuck, I wish I’d thought of that myself’ prize. Spelk has the great fortune to sound exactly like an inspired collaboration between Neil Campbell and Daniel Thomas. Possibly because it is.
UNACCOUNTABLES
Over the holiday period some of us may have spent time with rarely seen relatives and been in an awkward spot when they’ve said something politically unsavoury or made daft claims like ‘nobody ever discovered anything via a shared Spotify playlist’. I mean, what can you say? Probably best just to help them to a chair, put 6Music on for them and slowly back out of the room smiling. Serendipity remains, of course, rife. For example, one of my favourite albums of the year came to my attention indirectly when Daniel John Williams joined in with a twitter conversation I was having about a mild fetish I confessed to (peeling the protective film from a gloss surface). I checked out his work and the spacious, carefully constructed collages of Meet me on the corner became an instant staple. I literally have no idea how I got to Ivonne Van Cleef as I sleep-downloaded the work, but I was intrigued immediately by the lack of information (“Ivonne Van Cleef is a one person band from San Jose, California.”), the numbered releases, the unifying aesthetic of the photography and, of course, the music itself which is a subtle mixture of desert guitar and technological elements which make it almost unplaceable [STOP PRESS: via IVC I’ve just stumbled over Caleb R.K. Williams and Selected Works is playing as I type – bloody hell, it’s great!]. The fantastic Bad Nature by Wizards Tell Lies landed via that most glorious of promotional tactics – a tweet full of download codes and an invitation to help yourself. Mate, my scrabble to take advantage is always unseemly. This album fucking rocks. I described it at the time as ‘steely industro-punk two thirds sunk into tar-pit metal’ and ain’t going to better that today.
FINALLY
Despite being known nowadays mainly as a middle-aged, dronetronika beardy I’ve kept tabs on punk and metal since I was a thrash-teen in the grindcore/grunge boom of the late 80s. 2018 has seen one of my periodic upticks in interest, possibly due to the political shitstorm forcing slurry into every cranny of our existence, and you’ll be glad to know that I still like both kinds: fast and slow. Of the stuff new to me this year the album I return to, like a tongue wobbling a tooth loosened whilst ‘resisting arrest’, is Annihilated by Sectioned. I don’t know how to breakdown the genres and microgenres it belongs to, just that it is incredibly fast and brutal but played with such fluidity and space that the experience of listening is all consuming. It’s hardcore.
My most hotly anticipated release of 2018 was My Mother The Vent by Guttersnipe and I know that feeling was widely shared. Some also expressed an uneasiness as to whether the record would capture the screaming ferocity of the band’s incomparable live assault, but I would (I think) have been disappointed if they’d just ‘bootlegged’ themselves. I wanted to see what the duo, both whip-fucking-smart of course, would do with a new medium and, much to my great delight, it is as accomplished as I expected it to be. The noise is barely describable – an ecstatic rage, a seriousness of intent that teeters on the edge of hilarity, an amazing musicianship in the service of chaos – however the best, most eye opening track is the least similar to the tsunami of the live show. The closer, ‘God’s Will To Gain Access’, begins as snipey as you like but, over its nearly 11 minute run dubs out into a magic carpet ride over a Hieronymous Bosch hellscape. Neil Campbell described this as the album ‘grinding to a halt’, which made me laugh and is as good a take as any, but I read into it an almost entirely opposite meaning. I saw this as a statement of intent – a way of using recording to escape what has already become their expected ‘sound’ and a way of linking it to the other projects – like Blood Claat Orange, say – that Gretchen and/or Rob are involved with. The options this approach frees up are boggling. They’ve practised with Hawthonn, for example – think on that without fidgeting with anticipation! I imagine this album was second on everyone’s list after SOPHIE. Well, it’s second on mine too.
The very last artist I wish to mention is Chrissie Caulfield. As one half of Helicopter Quartet (the other being Michael Capstick) she has produced two albums of exceptional quality this year: Last Death of the Phoenix and Revisited (the latter being reconfigurations of eight highlights from the HQ back catalogue) but it is a solo release under her own name that I wish to discuss. It’s not a Game is a four track EP totalling 20 minutes and in that short run time Chrissie pulls off something near-miraculous. Via a bank of synths, her piano and violins she conveys something true and meaningful about what it is to be us. The cover photo looks like a mountain rescue team trudging across a moor on their way to rescue some hapless, ill-prepared accident victim (an amusing counterpoint to the windswept, magick romanticism of the Hawthonn cover). It complements the title and the vibe of the music perfectly – the exasperation, the frustration bordering on rage, but also the solemn knowledge that someone needs to take responsibility for salvaging the situation. It’s grown up, serious music but at its core it has kindness, not ‘ruffle-your-hair, don’t-spend-it-all-at-once’ kindness but the foundational type borne of love and respect. It’s humbling and beautiful. If I had to pick a favourite release of 2018 I think it would be this.
So, with apologies to those not mentioned (especially many lovely RFM regulars usurped by all these newcomers) that is your lot. Here’s looking forward. Take care, people, and be kind. All is love.
Rob x
Luke Vollar
“In 41 years I’ve drunk 50,000 beers, and they just wash against me like the sea into a pier.”
Not my words sadly, but the words of David Berman, slightly modified to make a point, although I’m not sure what my point is?
Perhaps it’s the years getting more blurred with advancing years. To confidently announce that Sheffield punks Rat Cage wrote the anthem for 2018 with their phlegm-saturated masterpiece ‘Pressure Pot’ from the superb seven inch Caged like Rats only to realise that it was actually released in 2017! No matter as the equally awesome Blood on your Boots was released this year.
The raw surge of excitement that is harsh noise, courtesy of Limbs Bin, does that insect-warfare-through-a-primitive-rig thing. LB’s Josh Landes is a one-man noise grinder from the USA happy to occasionally chuck in a Steely Dan cover for the heck of it. His One Happy World record is a brief but thrilling ride.
Werewolf Jerusalem released a ‘proper’ CD of dark brooding electronic minimalism called The Nightmares and old faves Usurper (along with Jelle Crama) released ‘Booby Prize’ – a fine release who’s handsome packaging matches the wondrous sounds within. Still beguiling in 2018!
And a late contender for album of the year is the self-titled debut from Notts based, UK metal duo Shrykull (released on CD in a run of 100). This tasty disc displays a fine vintage of motorcycle huffing excellence. Dig it!
Joe Posset
This has been the year when I’ve listened to more ‘mainsteam’ stuff than ever before. So, 2018 has seen me cue up new and old sounds from: Big Brave, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Kamasi Washington, Joni Mitchell, Gore, Toshi Ichiyangi, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Autechre, Alice Coltrane, Earth, Old Dirty Brubeck, Julia Holter, Tal National, Soft Machine & The Shrubs. Thanks to all of you who knocked the rough edges off a rough year.
NAU Records and tapes
- Sheer beauty love-bite swoon from Caught in the Wake Forever & glacis on Version & Delineation (Crow Versus Crow)
- Sophisticated coffee-table head noodle from Rodrigo Tavares on Congo (Hive Mind)
- Fever-dream night-sweat funk from Robert Ridley-Shackleton on Stone Cold Crazy (Crow Versus Crow)
- Un-translatable earth songs from the strongest spirit imaginable by Jean-Marie Massou on Sodorome Vol 1 (Vert Pituite La Belle)
- Blood-red kif-smoke & mind rickets from Roman Nose on Roman Nose (Singing Knives/Humane Pyramid)
- Inward spiralling fingerprint jass from Blood Stereo on Tape Loop Meditations (Chocolate Monk)
- Regional top-of-the class weirdos. All the Various Artists on The Harrowing of the North (End of The Alphabet Records)
- Workbench experiments to gnarly fingers plucking ripe air from Chow Mwng on Stuttering Hand (Self Release)
- Slick brain-fold of Lear-esque proportions from Gwilly Edmondez on Trouble Number (Slip Imprint)
- Quick-blubber-vocal-blabber from Fritz Welch on A Desire to Push Forward Without Gaining Access to Anything (Radical Documents)
- Painful jaw-twang and cavity vibrations from Chik White on Their Faces Closed (Chocolate Monk)
- And the THF Drenching prize for exceptional tapewerk goes to Stuart Chalmers and Tom White for Awkward Objects (Fractal Meat)
Live shows
Records and tapes are great and all but no scene would survive without real-life interaction. Gigs are a vital part of the NAU so I say a huge ‘yeah man’ for the regular lunchtime shows at Gateshead’s Shipley Art Gallery featuring celebrated dark artists: Culver , Xazzaz and the super spaced-out Shunyata Improvisation Group among others.
There was more lunchtime fun at The Newcastle University’s Kings Hall, this time with the exceptional Joe McPhee/John Pope/Paul Hession first-time trio as part of Newcastle’s Jazz & Improvised Music festival. Two hundred swinging OAPs can’t be wrong!
Bradford’s FUSE was one of my favourite places to play this year (in a trio with the mighty Yol and Toby Lloyd) combining supremely relaxed venue folk (Hi Chris) with great, reasonably priced, locally-sourced drinks all presented at travel-friendly times. After the show pretty much everyone who didn’t have a bus or train to catch decamped to a nearby pub to keep the conversation going. Splendid stuff.
2018 marks the year I saw my first ever ‘proper’ full-on orchestra with the super-beautiful, super-minimal piece The Movement of Things composed by Miya Masaoka and conducted by Ilan Volkov at Tectonics Glasgow. The whole thing floored me with as much impact as Black Flag did when I was a spotty teen.
The Old Police House in Gateshead hosted many, many exceptional nights; the standout for me being Ali Robertson & Joyce Whitchurch’s drama/improv/morality tale that held me in a zonked trance throughout its brilliant duration.
And in a TUSK festival crammed full of highs (Hameed Bros, Dale Cornish, Saboteuse, Pinnel, our very own Marlo Eggplant, Limpe Fuchs, Adam Bohman & Lee Patterson were all beautiful) the wonderful ink-haired Robert Ridley-Shackleton won the hearts of my whole damn family with his utterly charming, whip-smart funky and brain-boggling performance. The Cardboard Prince reigns supreme.
And talking of reigning…although the ice-hockey venue was rubbish and they were a bit tired and sloppy, I finally got a chance to see another teen favourite – bloody SLAYER with my teenage kids. And things don’t get any more metal than that.
\m/ \m/
The increasing importance of MP3 Blogs and Internet Radio cannot be denied; creating another platform for DIY artists to inhabit, I give a New Year Blog Cheer to the super classy Slow Goes the Goose, outrageously niche Bulletproof Socks, DIE or D.I.Y and Bleak Bliss (again).
As for Internet Radio I’ve goofed on the clever selections and dulcet tones of: Free Form Freakout, Ramshackle Sunrise, Sindre Bjerga & Claus Poulsen’s history of Danish & Norwegian Experimental Music, Tor FM, Fae Ma Bit Tae Ur Bit, QT and the much missed Crow Versus Crow.
And finally. Here is my special shout out to everyone who made me a mixtape, sent me a link or a CD-r. These kindnesses are always appreciated and cherished. For every zine written, lent or sent; to every gig bootlegger, interviewer, blogger and promoter. Thank you. Jx
-ooOOoo-
the sky is as full as an udder : rfm on garrett wingfield & david leon, maya dunietz & tom white and various aposiopèse artisits
May 28, 2017 at 12:50 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: aposiopese, david leon, garret wingfield, maya dunietz, singing knives, tom white
Garret Wingfield & David Leon – Yeah, No Thanks (Self Release)
Maya Dunietz & Tom White – Summer Crash (Singing Knives Records)
Various Artists – VIII (Aposiopèse)
Garret Wingfield & David Leon – Yeah, No Thanks (Self Release) digital album only
What’s the story? Two saxophones / four lungs all melt into buttery parps and hawks on this utterly charming disc.
Taking a total approach to warm breath Garret (in the right channel) & David (in the left channel) squeal and honk through nine short improvisations and instant compositions running the gamut from lightly tickled to full-on brass discipline.
The mood is generally playful, veering from the knockabout ‘I’m Fromgoogle’ (sic) played on those whizzing party favours to the beautifully recorded and played ‘Tilting @pinwheels’ where the flat slaps of the keys flutter like fancy fireflies around circular riffs – comfy as a steaming cuppa and marmite on toast.
‘Middle School Me’ is pure Peppermint Patty, tough with a misunderstood heart of gold, all ending with a delicious laugh.
But melancholy also takes a seat at the table, ‘Before, then’ starts off like some Henry Cow offering with that signature hope-through-adversity sigh and ‘Trash Panda’ revels in leaving-in the awkward silence, lip-splutter and spit-valve fingerings creating delicate pale, pearls from salty grains.
Students of the horn pay attention. These superb doodles are your new practice chops!
Maya Dunietz & Tom White – Summer Crash (Singing Knives Records) CD
Oustanding Quatermass freakery from these two living dovetail joints.
This damn fine recording leapt like a flea from the back of a 2016 tour with Maya Dunietz (voice/piano/harp) melting butter all over Tom White’s (reel-to-reel tape) witchcraft.
Taken as a whole, the mood of this vital disc is pastoral-unease…that strange sense of something untoward going on beneath the golden fields of ripe corn and proud wheat. Maybe it’s the sly Elysium lyric and wordless moans that float like duck-down warmed by the bruised air? Or could it be the gentle rush and echolalia of the handcrafted tape loops weaving a beautiful pattern of dark orange, red and pink – the twilight blush of the setting sun?
A piano picks out a decaying tune; a distracted voice mirrors it like mist. We’re living in the last days of a torch singer, gloomy glories reflected back in knotty loops and sepia memory coils. Floating free of gravity, ‘Everything is Soaked’ is deliciously intangible, hard to grasp but with sharp hooks that snag on the old grey matter making me hum Lear-like segments of these voice/tape hybrids at the bus stop for days to come.
A nagging, insistent riff marks the tick-tock of ‘Spare Ribs’, like a glitterbeat distilled through electricity pylons until they spark with deadly black energy. Maya’s close-miked vocals tweak the building pressure (a storm is brewing, the sky is full as an udder) moving from gentle/foul gibberish to shrieks of fear and panic. A disco track for the very-most-modern form of dancing practiced today.
A space opens for the delicate kora-style harp that opens ‘Josephine’. The psychedelic ghosting of tape-wax and field recordings are so subtle and controlled I may well have dreamt them, but like the salt encrusting your margarita glass, they hold it all together with their essential bitterness. Some of the few intelligible words on this whole disc, ‘black sail’ and ‘rain’ roll through the language shower – meanwhile a dry wooden rattle marks the end with a question, “are you ready to believe?”
Each of these three wonderful offerings leads us to into the closer ‘Summer’ a Pinteresque exploration of looming, deep restraint and intimate sonic denial.
“Some slow-motion explosion is corralled into a percussion loop while the liquid fairground slips between the cracks. The churning motion becomes a carousel losing its tilt, dangerously swaying. Soft and menacing vocal hoffs cheer like La Calavera Catrina, up to her armpits in the body of the piano pulling deep red tones out of the beast. A somber procession starts to wind down the hill, each villager holding the shirt-tails of their neighbor for fear of being lost in the tumbling ivory and ebony avalanche. “
Mark my words! Summer Crash is your essential balmy evening listen; thin cheroot lit and golden sherry glass poised (pinky out).
Various Artists – VIII (Aposiopèse) digital album (wav) only
Super-double-classy compilation from the French label – Aposiopèse.
Subtle glitch, granular fonk and ‘extracted’ field recordings are the order of the day over a generous 74 minutes. And like all good compilations there is a gentle narrative running through these pieces – an insistence on educated listening and patience. Buckle up tight for the ride…
- Coppice – A central heating system comes to life; witness the impudent boiler knock. A fine-tube roar as bronzed and bright as ginger. Hissing practiced to black belt standards.
- Hervé Moire & Juan Pablo Espinoza – shake up a bottle of pills and record the tiny tablets bouncing around. Defiant interventions like door creaks and synth tones just about mask a coffin lid opening. Twin players in harmony milking the dissonance teat.
- Jean-Luc Guionnet – gooses the church organ in Verneuil sur Avre, creating twelve hefty minutes of deep, deep, booming pressure in my lugs. I’m imagining this being played on a colourful Dub Sound System until the higher registers are explored in glorious throbbing detail.
- Julien Beau – records his dog growl, crickets chirp and water flow in a musique concrete envelope that ladles electronic tones over the mix like hot gravy. A pleasant kick drum reminds me I’m alive in the world as the confetti gets more intense around me in the most fabulous manner.
- Tarab – Boiling? Bubbling? The ‘soda’ of the title fights against a racquet sport (Real Tennis perhaps), high-pressure squealing and the lumber of life on the road. The shared intimacy (make-up applied on the bus perhaps) makes this almost unbearable to check out on headphones…forever thrown into personal sonic-spaces.
“I didn’t want to be a voyeur but they made me listen!”
A notebook indeed!
- Thomas Tilly – unprocessed field recordings of noisy bird barking like Daleks in the jungle. The rise and fall of the hollow-beaked trills become the softest siren, the calmest panic button ever. Ear canal (left) and ear canal (right) unite in glorious chirps.
- Tomoko Sauvage – takes a bunch of shit from the kitchen and makes music sweet enough that I darn near cried. Beautiful slopping and sonorous waterfalls wobble like fat children; hot and chubby hands held tight. Nuff said.
- Yvan Etienne – for lovers of extended tones and horror film soundtracks. Totally blisssed-out if your idea of bliss is disturbing hallucinations, thick smears of blood in the bathroom and rusty meathooks. Pitched somewhere between a sigh of exhaustion and the upper edge of tinnitus until a coda of suspicious farm machinery reveals the complete wake in fright
You want? You want!
-ooOOoo-
leather duck, baklava bullet, wrecked snail: joe murray on tapes from tutore burlato
November 23, 2016 at 4:26 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: alex drool, eran sachs, ezio piermattei, f. ampism, ilan volkov, joe murray, maya dunietz, the custodians, tom white, tr/, triple heater, tutore burlato
Triple Heater – Aurochs (tape, Tutore Burlato, #15)
Tom White – Commemoratives (tape, Tutore Burlato, #14)
TR/ – Amici di Filippo (tape, Tutore Burlato, #13)
The Custodians – Moribund Mules and Musket Fire (tape, Tutore Burlato, #12)
Usurper with Alex Drool, Maya Dunietz, Eran Sachs and Ilan Volkov – untitled (tape, Tutore Burlato, #16)
Triple Heater – Aurochs
Not a three-o but a two-oh! This new pairing from Tutore Burlato High Priest, Ezio Piermattei and the supple-limbed-totem-pole F Ampism flaps at the ears like a leather duck.
Students of the WTF scene can already imagine the smooth Tiki-delic jungle vibes and Red City grit yeah? But what this charming tape does so well is place the scribble-scrabble gently in a perfumed mango’s peppery slickness.
So a bagpipe meshes seamlessly with egg-slicer, a warped tape workout wetly dribbles into a pink sponge. Those robot-voice toys are underpinned with a twisted groaning and wrenched knot work.
Voices; children’s voices, male and female voices are a recurring warble that change the emotional resonance of every rattle and honk. Each piece remains human as a result, the occasional frenetic crackle an umlaut or other such punctuation. YEAH… I’m picking up a master’s hand in the edit suite ensuring each piece is a perfect mix of wet and dry, organic and man-made.
But it’s not all high-octane, fingers-on-triggers yucks. These gents are not afraid to whip out a haunting beauty-jam. ‘Telamoni Curiosi’ has a rich drawn-out slowness; the kind that floods through your body like hot opium immediately before you have an accident. You’re powerless to stop the door crunch the finger, the heel slip on the banana peel but in that moment of submission you taste the bitter tang of true happiness.
The perfect music to accompany images of Oscar Niemeyer’s Brasilia dream.
Tom White – Commemoratives
As 2016 continues to be that damn Tom White’s year this cassette might just be the best one yet readers.
The nosey will know the drill already; a reel-to-reel tape recorder is used to manually manipulate a loop of innocent brown tape; possibly a few pedals get pressed. Sounds easy enough, eh?
But on Commemoratives Tom’s gritty palms are transferring some kind of magnetic-manna to the slowly looping sound resulting in remarkable acrobatic leaps and whorls absolutely RIPPING out of the speakers like a sweet baklava bullet.
There’s a depth, a real colon-churning depth, to how these sounds roll bilious and tight. And just when you’re feeling fit to burst a cow-bell ‘K-LUNG’ bouncing between the speakers rattles you back into the world of flat stomachs and healthy greens.
The excellent side-long ‘Evoke a Yes’ drives Alpine cattle from their lush pasture through granular hair-pin bends; a single brassy ‘donk’ becomes the repeated motif lurching drunkenly on the local firewater until a chrome trebuchet hurls great gassy grenades into the steaming tar pits . But at the same time I’m minded of an early tape music boffin, wrapped up in labcoat and thick Clark Kents, dancing to this in his cluttered broom cupboard.
Performance-wise there is nothing held back and at times I’m pretty sure a block of particularly hectic loopery has sent me back in time a couple of seconds… a couple of seconds… a…
A powerful and heady brew that even when it’s doing nothing in particular is re-calibrating your brain-pod with subtly shifting patterns – a sly parquet interlocking those lazy synapses.
TR/ – Amici di Filippo
A right beanfeast this one – comforting and creamy.
‘Sabato’ starts with thick slapback-echo riffles over electronic-sand, creating waves of
…wuhhuhuhuuhu…
Pietro La Rocca’s lumpy canvas to paint up with Patrycja Stefaneck’s wonderful smeared voices.
Things progress at a wrecked snail’s pace: the canvas becomes laced ribbons of liquorice empowered with a mystic charge; the voice gobbles and mutters, wriggles and stutters slathered like golden butter.
Side two opens with something akin to a song but in this instance the campfire we are sitting around has been built of oleander creating choking, hallucinogenic fumes. Urgently strummed guitars stretch their steel strings to the horizon, shimmering like a Fripp-mirage while gentle disembodied voices float overhead.
The closer, ‘Digitale Terrestre’ pulls all these elements together in a light sketch, an open doodle of huffing and mithering. Innocent squeaks escape and fly between the massed mouth-chunter. This time it’s the guitar that floats overhead, darting in and out of the weft like a stickleback – silvery but sharp enough to draw blood. These enhanced throat and lips have a Residents-style quality and I’m half expecting to launch into an Infant Tango before long.
You want some sweet to go with that gravy? Look no further than duo TR/.
The Custodians – Moribund Mules and Musket Fire
Radio 4.
Radio-o-o fo-o-or.
R’aid-eeeeee-oh oh oh oh oh fuh, fuh, fuh Or?
Forgive my brief extrapolation but these Custodians (just plain Custodians on this tape – not ‘of the Realm’ as on the previous outings I’ve heard) serve up a classy dish that breaks apart that British institution of cosy improv and spoken word like a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, leaving 12 dense segments splayed and easily snackable.
Their M.O. involves occasional multi-tracked speaking parts weaving between Adam Bohman’s carefully curated sonic-detritus, Adrian Northover’s saxes and synth and Sue Lynch’s tenor sax and lyrical reeds.
It’s a truly wonderful listen; light, airy and unhurried. You just can’t fake the love and respect in this playing. It’s clearly defined yet ego-less, economical but happy to gild the occasional corner.
Each player, a standout in their own right, dons the collective cap with aplomb so shimmering brass sings and croons, often swooping in the wake of a wagtail’s gentle undulations. The ‘objects’ (large glasses bowed and combs teeth pinged with a thumb for example) add just exactly the right level of clutter and stroking to keep things tasty.
The text pieces seem to follow Adam Bohman’s ‘instructional/institutional’ approach with medical terms dropping from three mouths like ripe plumbs.
It couldn’t be more English if it wore a bowler hat.
Usurper with Alex Drool, Maya Dunietz, Eran Sachs and Ilan Volkov – untitled
Here the brothers Duff & Robertson are joined by Tel Aviv’s finest for some surprisingly tender hap, grapple and schooshh.
I guess the temptation with such a big-band is go the full Ellington and honk it up outta each loud hole. But on this occasion, and I’m not sure if it’s the brothers instructions or our host’s impeccable manners, these side-long pieces balloon like parachute silk and float with nowt but a gentle ripple.
Side one. I’m getting a tingle in my loins that suggests method. Old bronze coins dropped with arthritic fingers, cold marbles rolled across the wooden floor, straw flutes blown listlessly, burbling electric soup (sans batteries), rocking chairs rough squall, soft mouths chanting under flannel vests and knitting needles wrapped in sellotape tapped against the kitchen table. These bare-bones are constantly reinvented and realigned.
I’m getting signals in my lugs that indicate structure. A gentle moraine, its gritty interconnectedness based on Turkish carpet patterns. Twelve hands reaching out and six brains sparking with damp electricity. A bustling village of gossip coming to rest at the end of a particularly busy day.
The nervous rustle of bodies and fingers has an ingrained tension, of course, because (SPOILER ALERT) the moneyshot never arrives! If you’re waiting to see who’s going to crack first and ‘blah’ out forget it Bub, this is one saucy tease yeah?
Side two is hardly any more physical but wears its influences proudly in a collective throat-jam.
Dry coughs and sighs and huffs are double-bubbled to form a bivalve experience: left and right unite in slurpy kisses on stubbly cheeks. I picture our sacred six stretched out on roman loungers dripping sweet grape cheek-parps and wet gonzo hawks. The odd spare hand languorously rattling a tin fig or ripping off an elastoplast completes a decadent sound-image.
I riff on the chorus of grunts. I goof on the collective harmonic gasp. We follow the da-dada-dada-da-da conversation; until ‘uh uh errr…’ it descends into laugher as a Pangolin snuffles for truffles.
The real true joy yeah!
—ooOoo—
chasing the unnatural: joe murray on graham stewart, brendan mcgeever, 21st century band, downer canada, graham dunning, tom white
November 4, 2016 at 1:26 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: 21st century band, brendan mcgeever, downer canada, fractal meat cuts, graham dunning, graham stewart, joe murray, piped-in in from head office, power moves library, tom white, vitrine
Graham Stewart & Brendan McGeever – Larsson Sessions (tape, Piped-in From Head Office Records, pifho007, edition of 41 or download)
21st Century Band – Dinner Free (tape, no label – or not, see editor’s note below)
Downer Canada – Hieronsong (microcassette, tape, Power Moves Library, PMLibrary 010, edition of 5, edition of 11 or download)
Graham Dunning & Tom White – You Are a New Creature (tape or download, Fractal Meat Cuts, initial edition of 10 with hand-printed lasagne sheet)
Graham Stewart & Brendan McGeever – Larsson Sessions
It’s the tradition for hacks like me to drop them Blade Runner references coz it’s such an N-AU universal [Editor’s note: as a life-long PKD fan and former PKD obsessive, I think Blade Runner is shite, not a patch on the existential masterpiece it is ‘inspired’ by]. Blah, blah, blah – Replicants and Vangelis yeah! But for once I want to tweak the paradigm and re-imagine the rainy streets and heavy manners for a pastel-smeared over-the-rainbow, Studio Ghibli version. In my imagining folk are retired with a big hug, the noodles come with a side order of foam bananas and the massive Greek gets turfed out the studio to allow Stewart and McGeever to tinkle on the slack plastic keys [Editor’s note: that would be better, f’sure].
What we gets here is a set of micro-songs and themes all played lightly on the Roland System 100 Model 101 and Korg Poly 800 exactly in the middle of 2004; predating Oneohtrix and his goons by 8 seasons at least (by my cheesy reckoning).
Soft and delightful. The wobble floats upwards, the digital purring of a cat shifts into a light sprinkle of icing sugar dusting your cheeks. A brave world is glimpsed through the cotton candy fug, orange and pink and red, the colour melts onto your tongue chasing the unnatural. A most gentle voice, tones almost under the threshold of my hearing, instantly turning the instrumental studies into something approaching the Scottish Air!
Zoinks! It’s rare I listen to anything so self-consciously pretty. Sure, there is rough and fragile beauty a-plenty in ‘da scene’ but these deliberate constructions of a blunted, golden sunlight chimes perfectly with me on a cold autumn morning. My word! These warm pools of analogue colour splodge with a tranquillity rare in this day and age; the hopscotch skipping makes my toes jolly ranchers.
While critics goof on that arch Stranger Things parade… the coolest boys in school have been digging out the archive and pulling out the real thing.
Get lucky.
21st Century Band – Dinner Free
[Editor’s note: as this tape was chucked directly into the rabbit warren where Family Posset live I have never actually seen it. The discogs listing gives that name and title and says it is without label. However, almost every picture the internet associates with it suggests it could also be called ‘Masochism’ and be released by Vitrine with the catalogue number VT18 in an edition of 100. As we are diligent journos here at RFM I demanded photos from Joe and received the above. Unused J-cards being recycled? In-joke? ‘Art’? Who knows, eh? Those scamps!]
I’m guessing you sound-sorcerers ken THE VOICE OF THE MYSTERONS yeah? All that booming echo that explodes outta nowhere yet still casts a circular shadow? Ever imagined THE MYSTERONS washing up, fixing a bicycle tyre or rattling around just for the jaxx of it?
21st Century Band (or perhaps it’s Masochism, also mentioned on the tape sleeve) taps right into this Martian telekinetic vibe and sets up a broadcast of damp clanging and the glug-glug-glug of a jug-band decanting their tear-stained blues.
Events are fractured from their reality belt. Without an eye we are left rather loose in our understanding and this, my dearest reader, is what makes Dinner Free so gloriously slack and comfy.
I can project any sordid thoughts onto this soft creamy expanse of recorded fuh. So much so, when the one-note keyboard pads like the soft foot of a toddler I’m so deep, I’m so immersed it all sounds natural and right. The plastic flute – natural and right. The brief Hawaiian TV snappet – natural and right (Side A – ‘New Sensations’).
Side B – ‘Kyoko on Yoko’, makes even less sense. Someone is reading a Dennis Wheatley novel and acting out the opening ritual scene which would be scary if the Satanists weren’t so damn posh. Who’s ever been spooked by a dandy Satanist?
But, I have to admit, the squeal of the wheel has a swing like Jaki Liebezeit – even the tugboat horn solo could be a cowbell. Even the juddering machine soundz could be floor toms slapped with rubber teats.
A real tickler (‘Hidden Tracks’) rigs up the exact sound of an English back-bedroom; cracked pipes (laid out on a wooden chair) and Woolworths guitar with that distinctive watery treble. It fair takes me back to the smell of fanzine ink – Grim Humour and the Kent massive!
Downer Canada – Hieronsong
Hyper-real tape pieces from the multi-limbed Kev Cahill that came out on a damn micro-cassette! It’s sold out now, in this rarest of formats, but there’s no excuse not to point a squeaky mouse at the download option.
We’re talking 30 minutes of delicious hiss and human breath here.
Part one sounds like a lo-fi take on Steve Reich classic ‘Come Out’ recorded on a cross channel ferry. The
speaking, dreaming, lucid, vision
refrain loops incessantly, folding back on itself, building up layers of meaning then squeezing them flat like word toothpaste out from a tube. The listening experience is strangely comforting, your mind wanting a rhythm to settle but edgily excited by each new juxtaposition thrown up the wonderful (dis)symmetry of loop-music.
Part two fuzzes deliciously for a third of its lifespan; there’s nothing much happening apart from the busy fizz of magnetic tape buffering across the simple mechanics of dual tape players and the sound of a real live room. But as I’m getting settled into a Jazzfinger frame-of-mind multiple wooden flutes parp with jittery menace across the landscape. These ‘pipes of pan’ induce a real panic, a loss of control and feeling of unease that’s hard to shake. Not sure if it’s the tone or the collapsing logic that is so unsettling here but I breathe out again only when a firm finger presses ‘stop’ and the ritual clicks off.
File under shipping-forecast-peyote-trip music.
Graham Dunning & Tom White – You Are a New Creature
A magpie-eyed borrower and reel-to-reel druid are joined by saucy neophytes on both ‘crisps’ and ‘rice spill’ for ‘Battle Overall Perspectives’, a lengthy vexation that takes up all of side one.
Rattle-hula and rimple-roll eh?
That’s right! Simple crackle and rippage is run across slack mag-heads while CO2 is bubbled through warm milk (blub,blub,blub) making the edge of it smell suspiciously fruity. There’s a pet lip protruding as the nimble fingers tackle crispy potato snacks and mash sticky rice with gummy mouths.
The sound-scape runs between ‘impossibly busy’ to ‘sparse and spooky’ like an inner city carpark over the course of its stale concrete day. And it’s these movements; the transitions that make me roll over and cry ‘Uncle!’ Such plastic crackles are not uncommon in the N-AU (see Robert Ridley’s latest Tupperwave ) but the damn languor of the knuckle pops is glorious. Glorious ya hear?
Interlaced: stray moments of crowd noise, a piano, more crisps and knotty knocks… then an ill wind blows. We’ve moved to a very different terrain. The ‘fi’ is shoved up high into your face and the dry and brittle becomes sleek and oil-filmed. I’m seabird drowning in black gold.
If there’s not an ecological message I’m damn well chalking one up. My slow-brain ruminates on nasty packaging and unnecessary filling, those string bags for oranges, tin pie dishes and the grot you have to wrench off a jar of Dolmio before you can douse your pasta in that crimson gloop.
The gummy mouths strike back in ‘Raking Leaves on Black Top’ (side B) with a filthy nosh of sloshing, rushing and warped crotchets.
A studio piece, this revels in heavy echo and thick textures creating a sly narcotic effect potent as Scientist’s Space Invaders dunked into a frothing burn, brook or beck.
And while I’m typing away, the increasingly unhinged ‘flup, flupp, puppp… whirrrrrrr, flup,pup, pup’ of mangled tape really starts to fidget at the edges of my vision. I get audio hallucinations; I see a tunnel and my lips tremble. A wheelbarrow of melons trundles by, scarlet ivy grows up my trouser leg. This really is some Live at the Filmore East joint. My gosh!
But this psychedelic vibe is well and truly bummed on closer ‘Reville Bugle Call’ by pitting those ‘Sounds of Death and Horror’ sound effects el-pees against the incidental Foley from an episode of Space 1999 with all their sexy catsuits and leotards. I’m sat up straight and paying strict attention as the vortex of shrieks and damp piano sustains my crystal plumage.
Dunning & White. Jokers maybe, explorers for sure – but watch out for the sharpened key hidden between the fingers. I said watch it!
—ooOoo—
21st Century Band / Vitrine – Be resourceful.
unlicensed hiss: joe murray on tapes from vitrine: church shuffle, ross manning, abh, tom white
October 10, 2016 at 7:32 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: abh, artbreakhotel, church shuffle, joe murray, ross manning, tom white, vitrine
Church Shuffle – Aura Deterrent (tape, Vitrine, VT25, edition of 100)
Ross Manning – Natural Causes (tape, Vitrine, VT27, edition of 100)
ABH – Drag (tape, Vitrine, VT30, edition of 100)
Tom White – Automated Evangelism (tape, Vitrine, VT028, edition of 100)
Church Shuffle – Aura Deterrent
Another set of classic tape-werks from those Vitrine wizards.
The sleeve tells me Aura Deterrent was recorded direct to a ‘Singalodeon Karaoke’ and while I’m not familiar with that exact device I feel I’ve lived the best parts of my life in the warm, comforting fug of this signature cheap tape hiss.
This modest and unassuming tape mixes broken beats (‘Liberty Choice Falafel’) with spoken word, field recordings and instrumentation to create basic structures. But it’s the magic of the medium sprinkled over these foundations that gives everything a Mars-like tint; pinky red and drugged-up warm.
Before I think about napping ‘Phone Ring’ rattles like an extremely polite noise tape, excusing itself for volume but weaving complex patterns from left-over sonics – I’m shot though like milky coffee.
Take ‘Monty Order’, a comforting lentil dhal of a piece, that circularly flirts like a shadowy ring on a shadowy planet – abstract groan-happenings whipped up from carefully manipulated tape hoof with uncomplicated feedback acting as cruton.
The self-depreciation of ‘You could have bought a house’ (if what? If you’d not started a tape label?) adds a splash of vinegar to the warm rumble, the clotted sounds all buffed up and polished by cheap electronics.
So while this is purring like a cat in one way, there’s a sharp claw extended… just in case.
Ross Manning – Natural Causes
Percussion workouts that run the gamut from scrap-metal-dinosaur-bar-brawl to tinkling-glass-rod-foreplay.
Ross Manning is an Australian and therefore adept at the ancient art of sound-mugging; whereby a collection of related tones creep up behind you, pin your arms to your side, and envelops. No need to struggle as the argy-bargy slips a practiced hand into your inside pocket and removes exactly seven dollars.
The whiff of homemade instruments and DIY electronics is ripe and strong. Such gloriously natural and human sounds can only slip out of the lonely ramshackle workshop. Think Moondog’s chops played on Harry Bertoia’s vibrators.
The beard-rockers can goof on ‘Catalogue from a Young Man’ all construction site abstraction but a gentleman may entertain a lady when ‘Dub Date’ speeds up and up and up to a Nancarrow velocity. Each percussive stroke sharp and precise; mapping the exact grey explosion from fat raindrops.
The sidelong; ‘Song for Eugene’ takes glorious time to deliver like a preacher. The smeared window squeaks, a chorus of faulty windscreen wipers, are gently drowned in frosty lake; the crackle of ice all but muffles the gamelan tones slowly booming in the crisp air above.
But what’s that? Baka Pygmies reach for the most sonorous logs and clap them, slap them across a wide stereo field. The rhythms are exotic and eccentric, scoring circular patterns in the air growing more complex and waxy by the minute. I try to follow the connections, marking each change in crystalline tone, percussive intensity with a simple chalk mark. Until it all becomes too much, I’m knee deep in white dust and whacked out as Gorilla Glue bud.
Extras: (1) Cover art shows some rickety pencil drawings of the instruments within. All spindly and ragged this insight helps an old codger like me visualise. (2) Sold out at source so you’re going to have to dig for this victory. (3) The sound quality is beautifully sharp and deep. Audio snobs take note!
ABH – Drag
[Editor’s note: band name on inlay card is ARTBREAKHOTEL but in label listings it is as above. As you will.]
Reader, you have a choice. You can imagine the man-made or the natural; a faulty malfunction or a raw natural process ‘coz both apply to my tin ears.
One-man wrecking crew, Nobuo Yamada, is joined by Newcastle’s New Blockaders in some form (psychic, physical, spiritual, actual) to rattle the edges of reality with a scrap merchant’s calloused hands. Something decidedly metallic is scraped against bone (or shell!) while a field recording of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake is blasted from the top of the historic Morden Tower. I posit ‘Drag’ is either: a badly-oiled machine crashing through its gears or the heavily amplified sound of a lobster shedding its carapace? You decide.
Despite the absence of Geordies, ‘Spin/Off’ is no less hectic and reminds me of the time I was battered with a rubber hose.
I dropped my keys into an enamel kidney dish and took the beating willingly. As the truncheon swished and rudely flexed I used my heat-vision to melt the copper wingnuts holding the Town Hall’s scaffolding together so the poles fell like giant pine needles noisily scattering on the cobbles beneath.
A temporary bliss of forgetting washes over me (hiss, shissshhh (internal tape noise)) but soon enough the deep clang of crab claws tap out an occult rhythm on my exposed throat.
Tom White – Automated Evangelism
London’s Tom White has researched and translated a singular vocabulary from the humble reel-to-reel tape machine. These antiquated pieces of sound propaganda have been used by many mind-roofers but no one makes it gush quite like Tom!
The building-blocks of his tape language recall the rutting of sentient sponges; both deeply wet and intimate. But it’s the brutal punctuation that makes a listener sit up straight and say
YES SIR!
Abrupt slops bookend gooey, muddy, pops right from the get-go on ‘Evidence of Tampering’. One sparse sound-matrix is overlaid over another, building up a sonic checkerboard that (and this is where you hear a master’s hand at work) never becomes cluttered or slips out of focus. The landscape is precise and tight yet builds up an urgent sense of motion; for this music moves with an awkward beauty… all elbows and knees.
And this dancing abstraction eventually bows to the unlicensed hiss of surreptitious street recordings – a domestic detail held and turned over in Tom’s hot paw until it clicks together brilliantly, forming a broken tune fragment (yet cleverly framing a clutter of ‘pop and crackle’).
The third and final movement stutters like a shadow flickering over a chain-link fence. Ghostly ‘phafs’ and ‘vumps’ ripple as the scales of a snake do; the constant expansion and contraction – mesmerising as sneaky Kaa singing ‘Trust in Me’ ya hippies!
Shimmering crickets rub their legs in King Tubby’s yard on ‘Lapillo’ as rubber tiles are slapped against wooden boards. The gentle pissing of water lubricates a shifting sound-platter serving a hot human hummus. Things become more rhythmic and I picture a hip-joint popping and locking in its socket: a juddering bone wrench worthy of any Old School Hip Hop crew until meek croaks and phlegm waves soak up the battered piano I left for dead on the shore. This trip is a dreamer, a brocade curtain-raiser for sure.
SOLD OUT AT SOURCE! So if you want hands-on tape manipulation at its very best you must dial 0800 T-W-H-I-T-E and ask for a (wink wink) thumb tweak on the ferric (wink).
—ooOoo—
the 2015 zellaby awards
January 8, 2016 at 11:24 am | Posted in blog info, musings, new music, no audience underground | 2 CommentsTags: aas, alec cheer, ali robertson, alien passengers, andrew wild, andy crow, anla courtis, aqua dentata, ashtray navigations, bbblood, benjamin hallatt, blood stereo, bridget hayden, cardboard club, charlotte braun, chocolate monk, chrissie caulfield, claire potter, crow versus crow, culver, david chatton barker, david somló, delphine dora, dominic coppola, duncan harrison, e.y.e., expose your eyes, fake mistress, female:pressure, fort evil fruit, g.j de rook, giant tank, graham dunning, guttersnipe, hagman, hairdryer excommunication, half an abortion, hardworking families, helicopter quartet, ian watson, invisible city records, joe murray, john tuffen, joined by wire, jon collin, kay hill, kev sanders, kirigirisu recordings, know this, luke vollar, luminous monsters, macrowhisker, mantile records, marlo eggplant, mel o'dubhslaine, memoirs of an aesthete, midnight doctors, namke communications, no basement is deep enough, paul harrison, posset, power moves label, r.a.n, reckno, richard youngs, robert ridley-shackleton, rosemary krust, saboteuse, sabrina peña young, sam mcloughlin, saturn form essence, scke\\, shareholder, shredderghost, sindre bjerga, skatgobs, sonotanotanpenz, sophie cooper, steve lawson, steven ball, stuart chalmers, tabs out, the piss superstition, tom white, tutore burlato, va aa lr, whole voyald infinite light, winebox press, xazzaz, yol, zellaby awards
Hello friends and welcome to the 2015 Zellaby Awards and Radio Free Midwich end-of-year round-up. I’m very glad to see you. My apologies in advance to those long term readers expecting the usual introduction full of whimsical nonsense. There will be some of that, of course, but this year needs to be taken seriously and I’m going to start dark. Don’t worry though – spoiler alert – there will be joy and life-affirming redemption by the end: this piece is my It’s a Wonderful Life.
Firstly, it is not the job of this blog to comment on the wider world but aside from the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, our glorious future prime minister, 2015 was largely without hope. I wish you all good luck in navigating the coming End Times.
Personally, away from music, my year can be split into three four month long segments. For the first of these I was ill with non-stop, run-of-the-mill viruses. Nowt serious on its own but the cumulative effect of so many strung together – a necklace of snot – left me in a parlous state. My depression played cards with its fidgety cousin anxiety, waited until I was defenceless and then kicked in the door. The second four months were spent off work attempting to shift these unwelcome guests whilst maintaining a functioning family life. I’ve written about this debilitating effort elsewhere, no need for further details here. The final four months of 2015 were the tale of my recuperation and slow recovery following a change in medication and a breakthrough in both the treatment of my illness and my attitude towards it. After much grief, I left 2015 exhausted and resentful but hopeful that new ways of muzzling the black dog will allow me a lengthy period of peace and sanity.
When I was down in it, days, weeks even, passed when music seemed more trouble than it was worth. The list of releases submitted to RFM for review, plus other stuff that caught my bloodshot eye, became an untended vine cracking the panes of its greenhouse and desiccating the soil in its giant terracotta pot. I’d try to ignore it, slumped in my deckchair, but would be tickled awake by a tendril and look up to see something like Audrey II grinning down at me:
Or maybe one my colleagues – Joe, Chrissie, Sof, Luke, marlo – would arrive with a ladder, new glass, plant food, exotic orchids or intricate alpines to distract me, gawd bless ‘em. Looking back, I’m surprised at how often I actually did pick up the trowel – if only to wave hello, or whack Luke on the nose with it when I found him digging in the flower beds – and I’m quietly proud of maintaining this garden despite the inclement mental weather. During 2015 radiofreemidwich received approximately 32,000 visits – a new record. 93 posts were published, including the blog’s 500th, by half a dozen different authors. The most popular of which were last year’s Zellaby Awards and my no-audience underground ‘state of the notion’ address – most gratifying as both are heartfelt celebrations of the scene. Not bad, eh?
Now, at this point in the introduction I was going to get catty about my usual scratching posts, hit a few sacred cow arses with a banjo etc. but, looking down at the silted pavement and up at the grey sky, it’s clear that what the world needs now is love, sweet love – not smart alec remarks and passive-aggressive score settling. So let’s get the party started instead.
Here’s the rules: to be eligible in one of the following five categories this music needs to have been heard by one of us for the first time in 2015. It does not need to have been released in 2015. As the purpose of these awards is to spread the good news about as many quality releases as possible, should an artist win in one category they will not be placed in any of the others. I do not vote for my own stuff as midwich, nor any releases that I had a hand in (thus no Aqua Dentata on fencing flatworm – sorry Eddie). The team will avoid touting each others’ projects too – not because we care about conflict of interest (there isn’t any down here) but we do like to maintain at least a veneer of decorum. Aside from marlo, who has been nostril deep in PhD crap all year and thus didn’t feel qualified to contribute, the whole team has chipped in and I will be pasting their responses below. This year I am at least nodding in the direction of democracy when compiling the lists but, as editor, I am reserving final say. Don’t worry though – my dictatorship is benevolent and progressive.
Right then, time to pop some fucking corks…
—ooOoo—
Radio Free Midwich presents the 2015 Zellaby Awards
5. The “I’d never heard of you 10 minutes ago but now desperately need your whole back catalogue” New-to-RFM Award
Chrissie expresses doubts about the whole process then nails a perfect nomination:
I’m not much of a one for end of year retrospectives, forward is my preferred direction. Also I find it hard to compare music and place it in any sort of order. One day a particular piece or artist will be exactly what I need, another day it will have me screaming for the STOP button. Add to which I haven’t actually reviewed very much this year. Even when I found a (rather large, rich) niche to occupy I still take longer to complete a review than I’d really like. Still, I hate to disappoint, and I never miss a deadline so…
Even while reviewing one album, I couldn’t help mentioning tracks on other albums!
[Editor’s note: an extract from Chrissie’s review of Science Fiction & Horror Movie Soundtrack Collection: Strange Films of Sabrina Peña Young:]
‘Singularity’ is a whole Star Trek episode in miniature. It opens as an almost conventional, if nicely constructed piece of theme music, and gradually becomes something very much more. Going from the journey out, discovery of a possibly inhabited planet, then meeting an alien, trying to escape and the closing theme music again – a novella in seven minutes forty-three seconds! To be honest I’m pretty sure that that isn’t the actual narrative of ‘Singularity’ but I like to make things up as I’m listening and that idea seemed plausible at the time [Editor’s note: it’s the RFM way…]. What it’s really about is the rise of machine intelligence, of course; which is equally scary, possibly.
Joe speaks in italics:
Not for the first time, Serbia’s No Basement is Deep Enough label has pinned my lugs back and hotly tongued my ear. But this time it slipped a note in my pocket that read ‘G.J de Rook’ (but no phone number I notice!).
Gerrit’s considered gobble-de-gook on a and bla is the metallic-gravy I’m craving right now. The calm and pleasant gibber hits that sweet-spot of babies gurgling, a hummingbird’s gaudy thrum and the plastic pop of wrenched bubble-wrap. These are universal sounds; sounds enjoyed from the Mongolian deserts to the Seattle coffee-house scene. These are the sort of sounds we need to send into space – gaffer tape a CD-r to Voyager or something- for them bug-eyed overlords to ponder.
Although Gerrit’s wider discography is relatively thin and achingly expensive don’t worry readers, I have a plan in place to slurp slowly in discreet ‘o,o,o,o,o,oa,oa,oa,oa,eh,eh,eh,o,ooo,o-like’ sips. Think on.
Sof’s joy in discovery:
I heard and reviewed the album 3 by Sonotanotanpenz at the start of my Midwich employment and have since heard everything I can by them because, for me, they just tick all the right boxes. Cheers to Kirigirisu Records for pointing me in the right direction finding this stuff!
Luke forward/slashes:
Ben Hallatt – Kay Hill, scke//, KIKS/GFR – the sinister/minimal man, eerie urban horror with muted synth/tape work.
…and I say:
…that I haven’t had the wherewithal for the obsessive curiosity that usually makes it so easy and obvious to decide the winner of this category. I have a few interests bubbling under – that lovely, young Graham Dunning seems like an intriguing chap so maybe I’ll stalk him once I have the energy – but in the meantime I’m happy to to go along with Chrissie’s nomination of Sabrina Peña Young.
4. The “Stokoe Cup”, given for maintaining quality control over a huge body of work making it impossible to pick individual releases in an end of year round up
Sof ponders:
I don’t think I have an answer for this one, I can only think of Delphine Dora who released four albums this year which to me seems a huge amount! I’m not really into musicians who put out so much stuff that I can’t keep up. It puts me off if I’m honest, I like small and considered bodies of work. [Editor’s note: a very practical attitude – and Delphine should definitely be on everyone’s list anyway.]
Chrissie scratches her head too:
I’ve not really reviewed enough to come up with a suitable nomination for this. Similarly for the label award. I was tempted to nominate Steve Lawson for the Stokoe cup but he might be rather too ‘big’ for that to be sensible now and also I don’t believe he’s ever been reviewed here [Editor’s note: he is and he hasn’t but, hey, s’up to you – it’s an indication of where you are coming from too]. However he does release a considerable amount of material and it is of quite an amazingly high standard.
No doubts from Joe:
We’re all renaissance men and women now eh? Fingers in various pies yeah? You’re a composer/performer, a curator, a thinker, an archivist, a broadcaster, a hard-assed critic and goofy listener, a publisher and promoter? Scratch the N-AU and we bleed like colourful skittles.
This is all vital and impressive for sure. But the real trick is to weave all those various roles together with a broader sense of ‘who you are’, a central-unifying-theme and aesthetic that’s as real as Westeros fantasy shizzle. So with the powers invested in me by the fabled ‘Stokoe Cup’ I hereby recommend Andy Wild, the Crow versus Crow guy guy, as an upstanding exemplar of unified vision, industry and purpose.
Not only is Andy releasing beautifully packaged CDs on the CvC label, he’s keeping us up-to-date with a set of paintings and photography. He’s had a one-man exhibition, “You’re Gonna Need That Pure Religion, Halleloo” in his native Halifax. He’s researched, presented and broadcast almost 100 radio shows and curated a bunch of special one-off sessions (like John Peel yeah). And all this strikes me with a look and a feel that’s unmistakably CvC and unified. Here’s an example: as Andy dug deeper into old blues records spindly hiss and burr appeared on the paintings (and in the exhibition title). The smeared photos mirrored the abstract sound of worn vinyl. The shows became looser, the voice deeper and the mood darker. Do people still do mission statements? If so, is ‘be beautiful’ taken?
Luke starts on a theme:
A tough one this year with the above mentioned Ben Hallatt and the incredible Stuart Chalmers. My vote, however, has to go to Robert Ridley-Shackleton: the Oxfam prince, the cardboard king. He keeps on peaking, inhabiting his own corner. In a just universe he would be on the X Factor panel: he IS pop.
…and I say:
Well, Joe makes a compelling case for Andy Crow there and since being born from an egg on a mountaintop the nature of Shackleton is irrepressible, but I’m handing the trophy to a familiar name and previous Zellaby award winner: Kev Sanders.
Whilst not quite reaching the Stakhanovite release rate displayed in 2014, his productivity remains alarming high, as does the quality of his work. I’ve not reviewed a great deal of it, nor much else released on his label hairdryer excommunication (this collection of haiku from September being my main engagement) but it has been an ever-present background radiation.
If you picture the year as an autobahn, one which I have been stalled beside, hood up, engine steaming, then Kev’s music is a series of electricity pylons running alongside carrying cables buzzing with an intensity that is somehow both bleak and comforting. I wish him well with his coming move to that London and look forward to a chance to catch up whilst he is otherwise engaged. Now, like a casino bouncer chucking out a professional gambler, I’m banning him from winning anything else for a while. House rules.
3. The Special Contribution to Radio Free Midwich Award
Sof and Chrissie have a playground tussle over who gets to be teacher’s pet:
Sof: It’s no secret that Rob Hayler has had a rough year with his depression but his drive and passion for underground music has meant he’s kept up with this blog which I’m sure a lot of folks wouldn’t do under the same circumstances – fair play and respect to you!
Chrissie: At the risk of sounding like a spoilt kid sucking up to the boss, I’d like to nominate Rob for this award. In what has been a difficult year for him he’s hired three new writers, no small risk in itself, trusting our ability to actually deliver readable prose (well, in my case anyway) in usable quantities, not to mention editing it onto the blog in good shape and good time. He’s also put up with my erratic writing schedule and lack of enthusiasm to take anything off the review pile – preferring to go off on my own in a crusade to bring more female artists to the notice of our good and loyal readers.
[Editor’s note: it might appear shameless to include the above, and I admit it kinda is, but, as I’ve pointed out, it has been a tough year and I was touched. Let me have a little sugar, yeah?]
Luke picks an outlier:
Sorry gonna have to be Robert Ridley-Shackleton again [sings: “Return of the Shack! Here it is…!”]. A little quote from Robbie following a chat about tedious porn/bondage themes in noise:
To me noise is a positive thing, it fills my brain full of the joys. I don’t understand all the negative themes presented, to me it’s life affirming
Yeah baby!!!
[Editor’s note: R-Shack’s physical contribution to RFM is indeed notable as he sent copies of all his releases plus extra examples of his womble-on-ketamine junk art not just to RFMHQ but also personally to Joe and Luke too – a Knight of the Post.]
Joe rallies the troops:
As ever, I reckon this one belongs to everybody. Anyone that sent in a tape, clicked on a link, wrote a review, listened with intent, left a comment or gave a god-damn fuck. This one’s for you. It’s all of us that make this: writers, readers, editors…even you cynics (coz debate is good, yeah?). We’re all part of the oneness. No one hears a tree fall in an empty forest right?
…and I say:
Tempting as it is to fall into step and punch the air, nostrils flaring, there is an objectively true answer to the question and that is: Anne, my wife. Without her love, care and truly unbelievable strength this blog would not have continued to exist.
However, if we limit the word ‘contribution’ to meaning actual hands-on graft accounting for the endeavours of the no-audience underground then only one name can be engraved on this medal: Joe Murray.
Of the 93 posts published this year a huge proportion were by Joe and each of those usually contained reviews of numerous items sourced from far-flung corners of the outer reaches. Despite his hep prose poetry being the best music writing currently available – Richard Youngs himself described Joe’s review of his epic No Fans seven CD box set as ‘the definitive account’ – he is completely selfless in his unpretentious enthusiasm. He embodies the ethos of this blog.
[Editor’s note: hmmm… getting a bit lovey and self-congratulatory this isn’t it? Maybe I’ll rethink this category for next year <takes deep breath, dabs corner of eye> OK, on with the big gongs!]
2. The Label of the Year Award
Sof sticks to the point:
I’ve really enjoyed every release I’ve heard from Fort Evil Fruit this year, and most years, I think we must have the same taste in music.
Luke whittles on the porch:
Another tough one with old favourites like Chocolate Monk continuing to deliver the goods. However at a push it’d be Winebox Press, a fairly laid back work rate but always something to look forward to, can’t think of another label as aesthetically as well as sonically pleasing to me at least. Objects of cosmic power that’ll warm you from the inside out.
Joe’s takes a turn:
Let’s hear it for Cardboard Club. Why? For the dogged determination and other worldly logic of course. I have no idea what is going on in the disco/noise shire of Robert Ridley-Shackleton. All I know is that I like it, I like it a lot.
Robert’s singular vision is not so much outsider as out-rigger; a ghost on the pillion. The label spreads itself across media so the scrabbly zines, tape artwork and ‘pocket-jazz’ sound can only contain the RR-S, nothing else. But what made me giggle, what made me really smile was the recent move to vinyl. Some lame-o’s see the hallowed seven inch as a step up; a career move if you please! With that kind of attitude the battle is already lost and all ideals get mushed in ‘rock school’ production. None of this for our Cardboard Club… it sounds exactly the same! A hero for our troubled times.
…and I say:
Yep, all excellent selections deserving of your attention but, with hairdryer excommunication out of the way, I’m going to use editor’s privilege to share this year’s prize between two exemplary catalogues: Invisible City Records and Power Moves Label. Both are tape-plus-download labels based on Bandcamp, both have strong individual identities – in ethos and aesthetic – despite presenting diverse, intriguing rosters and both share impeccable no-audience underground credentials (PML’s slogan: ‘true bedroom recordings with delusions of grandeur’). It don’t hurt that the gents running each – Craig and Kev respectively – are polite, efficient and enthusiastic in their correspondence too. Anyone looking for a model as to how it should be done could do worse than sit at the front of their class and take careful notes.
[Editor’s note on the Editor’s note: yes, yes, I know that ICR re-released my epic masterpiece The Swift, thus making it the label of the year by default but I felt duty bound to mention it anyway. Shame on Tabs Out Podcast, by the way, for filling the first 135 places of their 2015 Top 200 with hype and industry payola. Glad to see sanity and integrity restored with #136.]
1. The Album of the Year Award
Chrissie kicks us off:
1. R.A.N
My first female:pressure review and the one I still listen to the most.
…not only are the individual tracks on this album good, but the ordering of them is exquisite. They follow on from each other in a wonderful, spooky narrative that runs smoothly and expertly from start to finish – the gaps between them allowing you to pause for breath before being dragged into the next hellmouth.
2. FAKE Mistress – entertainted
The opening track, ‘Appreciate the moment’s security’, will pull you in with its drama, heavy noise-based beats, spooky voicing and very punkish shouting but you’ll stay for the gentler opening of ‘You better trust’, intrigued by where it’s going. There’s harsh noise in the middle of this track and in lots of places on this album, but it’s never over-used. It’s here as a structural device to take you by surprise and drag you out of your complacency.
Luke casts his net wide:
Robert Ridley-Shackleton – Self-Titled EP
Charlotte Braun – Happy Being Sad
Absurde, Chier – Absurde VS Chier
Skatgobs – Pointless
Blood Stereo – The Lure of Gurp
Alec Cheer – Autumn
Ali Robertson & His Conversations
Guttersnipe – Demo
xazzaz – descent / the crusher
VA AA LR – Ping Cone
Stuart Chalmers – Imaginary Musicks 3/4
Anla Courtis – B-Rain Folklore
S C K E / Kay Hill – Disclosure, TESSELLATION A/B, IN-GRAIN, Cold Title
Jon Collin – Wrong Moves / Dream Recall
Whole Voyald Infinite Light – Uncollected Recordings
Ashtray Navigations – Lemon Blossom Gently Pixelating In The Breeze
Melanie O’Dubhshlaine – Deformed Vowels
yol / posset – a watched pot never (no link – ask yol or Joe, they’ll sort you out)
half an abortion / yol – the designated driver
Shareholder – Jimmy Shan
[Editor’s note: blimey, eh? Luke also provided a ‘year in metal’ list too! Available on request.]
Sof’s impeccable taste displayed:
I’m going with Steven Ball’s Collected Local Songs which I reviewed earlier this year because it’s the one I’ve gone back to over and over, each listen revealing more to me. It’s such an original piece of work.
Originality is the theme of my list –
Saboteuse – Death, Of Course (this maaaaaaay, have come out last year!)
Bridget Hayden and Claire Potter – Mother To No Swimming Laughing Child
Duncan Harrison – Others Delete God
Guttersnipe – Demo
Rosemary Krust – Rosemary Krust
Sam McLoughlin & David Chatton Barker – Show Your Sketches
Delphine Dora – L’au-delà
Joe selects:
I fucking guarantee your serious music critics will moan and denounce 2015 as a fallow year for sounds. Fools! If you look around there’s an embarrassment of riches spilling out of the tape drawer, CD-r pile and download..er…folder?
I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable hurling my opinion of ‘what’s best’ around so, in the spirit of “non-competition and praise”, here’s what I’d play you right now if you were to pop round for sherry.
- yol – everyday rituals. When a record makes you run giddy for the Spanish/English dictionary you know something extraordinary is at work. You’re familiar with yol yeah? You’re not? Get a-fucking cracking pal. This is a truly explosive & genuine performance that makes your insipid rebellion look safe as milk.
- Duncan Harrison – Others Delete God. A super-subtle voice and tape work. What I love is the ‘too studio-fucked to be field recordings and too much punk-ass rush for fluxus’ approach. Natural and wonderfully blunted domestic, ‘Others…’ inhabits its own space – like a boil in the bag something served piping hot.
- Midnight Doctors – Through a Screen and Into a Hole. The merciless despot with a harmonium! Phil Begg’s steady hand guides a cavalcade of rough North East gonks through their paces to produce a timeless noir classic. It is equal parts soundtrack, accurate cop-show homage and mysterious new direction for tight-meshed ensemble. C’mon Hollywood… make that damn call.
- Shareholder – Jimmy Shan. Rock und Roll songs collapse in sharp slaggy heaps. Dirty explosions replace instruments (the guitar x 2 and drums) leaving us dazed in a no-man’s-land of stunning, blinding light and electricity. Ferocious and don’t-give-a-fuck all at once.
- Tom White – Reconstruction is tied, even-stevens, with Sindre Bjerga’s – Attractive Amplification. The world of violent tape abuse is one I follow avidly. But there’s nothing to separate these two outstanding tapes (of tapes, of tapes, of tapes). Both Tom and Sindre have the muscle memory and total mastery of their mediums (reel to reel and compact cassette) to wrench brown, sticky moans from the vintage equipment. It sounds belligerent, punch drunk and rum-sloppy to my ears. A perfect night out chaps!
…and finally, your humble editor:
Bubbling under: here are the releases that made my long list but not the countdown. Every one a cracker, presented here in alphabetical order to avoid squabbles breaking out in the car park:
Culver – Saps 76
David Somló – Movement
Delphine Dora and Sophie Cooper – Distance, Future
Dominic Coppola – Vogue Meditations
Hagman – Inundation
Hardworking Families – Happy Days
Ian Watson – Caermaen
joined by wire – universe allstars
Luminous Monsters – The Sun Tree
Robert Ridley-Shackleton – Self-Titled EP
Saturn Form Essence – Stratospheric Tower
Shredderghost – Golden Cell
yol – everyday rituals
[Editor’s note: I also have to make special mention of Askild Haugland and his peerless recordings as Taming Power. I’ve received two (I think, possibly three) parcels from him this year containing his work, all the way from Norway, and these recordings always have a profound and meditative effect. Some of it, for instance the 7” single Fragments of the Name of God, could quite possibly be perfect.]
OK, right – ooo! exciting! – here’s the top ten, presented in traditional reverse order:
10. E.Y.E – MD2015
…and what a joy it has been to have Paul Harrison back in the fray! Yes, after over a decade new material from Paul’s Expose Your Eyes project was finally made available via his new Bandcamp label Eye Fiend – a repository for much missed Fiend Recordings back catalogue (Mrs Cakehead has to be heard to be believed) and digital versions of the new stuff which is otherwise only available in tiny hand-splattered physical editions.
MD2015 is a four CD-r, four hour and twenty minute set comprising discordant synth clatters, decontextualized chanting (familiar to anyone into first wave industrial music), beats: pitter, patter – galloping hooves – factory presses, intoxicating loops, delirium (remember that footage of animals drunk on fermented fruit? This is the OST to a bootleg version of The Lion King that features those orgiastic scenes), repetition beyond human endurance / irresistible motoric groove, ‘proper’ noise – all primary sexual characteristics out and flapping in the breeze, and sorbet-refreshing shortwave-radio-ish pulse. It is a lot of fun.
9. AAS – Balancing Ritual
Y’know when your favourite stoner rock band lay down a super heavy, half-hour long, ego-obliterating, tethered crescendo but it isn’t quite enough so you and a hardy group of the suspicious break into one of the spaceships of a seemingly benevolent alien race currently visiting Earth and discover this playing inside? Yeah? A version of the above but clinical, steely, a step up from our humble efforts. It’s like that and I, for one, welcome our new drone overlords…
Graham Dunning offered to send me a tape of this, I visited Bandcamp for a sneaky preview and ended up so impressed that I’d bought the download and fallen in love before my exhausted postie even delivered the jiffy bag. I can count on the fingers of no fingers the other times that has happened recently.
8. Duncan Harrison, BBBlood, Aqua Dentata – “Ineluctable modality of the visible”
What an excellent three-fer. Not only occupying a wholly justified place in the chart but giving me the opportunity to praise Paul Watson (BBBlood), Duncan Harrison (who’s Others Delete God tape, so highly praised earlier, shamefully passed me by. Did I ever own it? Did I send it to Joe in a moment of madness? Ah, who knows?) and Eddie Nuttall (who, as Aqua Dentata, is producing amongst the finest work on my radar). Here’s some extracts from marlo’s review:
…But, damn you, Duncan Harrison! The first track immediately gets me back in my academic head! ‘(Je suis) La Loi’ makes me think of psychoanalytical linguist theorist Julia Kristeva and deconstructionist scholar Jacques Derrida. The use of breath and physiological sounds makes the listening an embodied experience. The listener feels present. It is hard not to notice if one’s lips are dry or if you possibly had too many coffees…
…In ‘Nexistence of Vividence’, BBBlood returns to more of the crunchy reeling and wheeling and dealing. It is a typhoon that builds and waits. Never fully collapsing, the sounds peters out like attempting to catch water running through fingers. Yet there is an ethereal resolution to the struggle and the listeners are laid to rest, an aural wiping of the brow. Time to rest after the long haul…
…Eddie Nuttall, a.k.a Aqua Dentata, is not from this planet. I honestly don’t think he is. His music feels like extraterrestrial communication from outside our universe. Like binaural beats and subconscious interfering hypnosis, his untitled track sounds like it is made of laser beams. As a listener, you feel like you merge with the frequency and question your ability to make cognitive sense. It isn’t because of a reliance in bombarding one with several sounds but rather a direct cerebral invasion…
7. The Piss Superstition – Garage Squall
Joe reviewed this one in the shape of a UFO. No, I don’t know why either but it is absolutely bang on:
Mag-lev trains.
The very best form of bluster.
As gentle as breath on a mirror,
Predator’s Answerphone message
The Velvet Underground trapped in a matchbox.
A map! Hectares of featureless crystalline crackle – zoom into mountains,
A corduroy vibe; not geography teacher clichés but that ribbed softness – a tickle on the fingernail.
Ride the world’s slowest roller-coaster taking 1000 years, cranking the incline.
Forbidden Planet strained with nourishing iron-rich greens,
A dream-tractor changing gear on the endless road.
Immense power restrained by gravity
A hit of strong, clean anaesthetic,
I’m counting backwards.
10, 9, 8…
6. Stuart Chalmers – Loop Phantasy No. 1, No. 2, No. 3
Joe again, not sparing the superlatives:
…But this time I throw my regular Northern caution and cynicism out the window and claim these three recordings THE MOST IMPORTANT SALVAGED TAPE LOOP RECORDINGS EVER YEAH.
What? Like…ever?
I hear you ask.
Yes
I answer with a calm, clear voice.
Like in the whole 100 year history of recorded music?
You probe,
even including the oft- mentioned high- water mark of looping Tom Recchion’s Chaotica?
You add. I merely smile and press play on the device of your choice.
You must listen, you must listen to truly understand
I chant with glassy eyes.
Anyway… fuck yeah! That’s what I’m saying. If you want to know where looping is right now in 2015/2016: PLAY THESE RECORDS. If you are looking for an instructional map of what’s possible with simple tape loops, a couple of pedals and some hot ears: PLAY THESE RECORDS. If you want to open up that valve in your stomach that helps you release gaseous tension: PLAY THESE RECORDS…
…Students of tape culture – your set-text has arrived. Screw in those earbuds and get seriously twisted.
5. Ashtray Navigations – A Shimmering Replica
A beautiful album in every respect and an entirely life-affirming experience. Terrific to see Phil and Mel get such a high-profile, flagship release in what was a high-profile, flagship year for the band. I will have more to say on this in a long-planned article which will be published around the eventual release date of the long-planned best of Ashtray Navigations 4CD box set. Coming soon! In the meantime: buy this.
4. Melanie O’Dubhshlaine – Deformed Vowels
Likewise, Mel’s remarkable solo venture deserves a much more detailed account than it is going to get here. Via a kind of meta-semi-improv (or something?) she continues on her utterly compelling, largely unheralded project to reinvent music on her own terms.
I imagine a Dr. Moreau style musical laboratory in which Mel cares for her cross bred instruments, incunabula parping their first notes, joyfully interacting with the sentient automata Mel has created to entertain them with. She dangles a microphone over the giant aquarium tank in which they all live and conducts this unique performance.
Unlike anything else I’ve heard this year, or maybe ever.
3. Helicopter Quartet – Ghost Machine
A peerless work, even within the band’s own faultless back catalogue. From my review:
It is difficult to write about Helicopter Quartet, the duo of RFM staffer Chrissie Caulfield (violin, synths) and Michael Capstick (guitars), because their music is so enveloping, so attention seizing, that when I’m listening the part of my brain I use to put words in a row is too awestruck to function. However, following many hours with it, I am certain this is their best album yet. That a work of such mature beauty, sculpted over months, is freely downloadable is surely further evidence that we are living in a golden age for self released music. It has the austere and magisterial presence of a glacier edge, the drama of that glacier calving into the sea.
If you ever act on anything I say then act on this: go get it.
2. Guttersnipe – Demo
Wow, this kicked the fucking doors in. With this CD-r and a series of explosive live performances Guttersnipe owned 2015 – they were either your new favourite band or you just hadn’t heard of them yet. Luke got to review this one, here’s an extract:
Guttersnipe whip up a frightening noise on drums, guitars, electronics and howled vocals that will have you reaching for the light switch. The cassette fidelity smudges the freejazzmetalhaze into a fog of terror from which emerges the fangs of a gaping gob ready to bite you. I’ve been listening to a lot of black metal recently and these vocals could have the corpse painted hordes crying for their mama. However, they are not the guttural grunts of the alpha male but more a feminine screech of desperation and disgust which the other two respond to by conjuring a blackened and unsettled miasma. Calling this disc demo leads me to believe that Guttersnipe are selling themselves short. This is impressively original material that comes over like a Xasthur/Skullflower hybrid with a hefty slug of secret ingredient. Marvellous job.
Amusingly, and presumably because he hadn’t seen them live at the time, he seems to imply this duo is a trio – a testament to their ferocity (and my skills as an editor…).
1. namke communications – 365/2015
Finally then, the winner of the Zellaby Award for album of the year presented by Radio Free Midwich is, in an unusually literal sense, the album of the year: 365/2015 by namke communications. Here’s some context from a piece I wrote in March:
…old-friend-of-RFM John Tuffen, in a project which recalls the conceptual bloodymindedness of Bill Drummond (who has raised ‘seeing it through’ to the level of art form), is recording a track every day throughout the whole of 2015 and adding them to the album [on Bandcamp] as the calendar marches on … each track is freshly produced on the day in question and, as might be expected, vary enormously in style, execution and instrumentation – there is guitar improv, electronica in various hues and field recording amongst other genres welcome ’round here…
Indeed, added to various forms of (usually light and expansive) improv and field and domestic recordings of life’s ebb and flow were many forays into sub-genres of electronica, techno as she is written, actual *ahem* songs, drones of many textures, experimental sketches with software and new toys, callbacks, the odd joke (all tracks in February had the duration 4’33” following a twitter exchange with me) and so on and so, unbelievably, on. I can’t claim to have heard all of it – of course I haven’t – and there are misfires – of course there are – but the level of quality maintained is gobsmacking given the scope of the exercise.
Each track was accompanied by notes, most with a picture and then a tweet announced its presence too. John was no slacker on the admin – I approve. In March I suggested:
This one I have no qualms about dipping into, in fact I would recommend constructing your own dipping strategies. As the year progresses you could build an album from the birthdays of your family, or never forget an anniversary again with a self-constructed namke communications love-bundle. Won a tenner on the lottery? Create your own three track EP with the numbers and paypal John a couple of quid. Or perhaps a five CD boxset called ‘Thursday Afternoon’, in homage to Brian Eno, containing everything released on that day of the week? Or condense the occult magic with a set comprising every 23rd track? Ah, the fun to be had. Or you could just listen to it on a daily basis until it becomes a welcome part of your routine…
I was at least half-joking at the time but engaging with 365/2015 has proved a unique way of experiencing an album. During the worst of my illness, as I spent nights trawling Twitter unable to sleep, it did become a valuable part of my daily routine. Literally a light in the darkness – Bandcamp page shining on the tablet as I lay in bed – John’s project, existing due to nothing but his crazy drive to create (the whole thing, 40+ hours, available as a ‘name your price’ download!), truly helped me through. A clear and worthy winner.
In conclusion…
So, that is that for another year. John’s prize, should he wish to take me up on it, is for namke communications to have the one and only release on the otherwise dormant fencing flatworm recordings some time in 2016. A surprise baby sister, perhaps, for his lovely available from namke communications released by me back in the day and now (I think) a teenager itself.
Many thanks to my fellow writers and to all who support us – for your time, patience and enthusiasm – it is much appreciated. Heartfelt best wishes for the New Year, comrades.
All is love.
Rob Hayler, January 2016.
—ooOoo—
the radiofreemidwich random tape grab-bag experiment, or: joe murray empties his bulging sack
March 30, 2015 at 12:06 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: ali robertson, alien passengers, battery humans, claus poulsen, collage, dictaphonics, drone, electronica, ezio piermattei, field recording, fuckin' amateurs, giant tank, guy warnes, improv, joe murray, jon marshall, new music, no audience underground, no thumbs, noise, pascal ansell, psychic mule records, punk, scurge, skrat records, tapes, tom white, tutore burlato, uk hardcore, Waz Hoola, winter family
[Editor’s note: Joe Murray, our resident beat prophet, has convinced his skeptical editor to temporarily abandon the usual formatting for reasons that will soon be apparent. Thus there are no release details up front, pictures will follow reviews and links will be found where they lay.]
Like all my RFM comrades I have a teetering bunch of tapes to review. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. It’s a privilege and an honour to hear so many dispatches from the No-Audience Underground.
But sometimes I feel I’m doing you a disservice my friends. It’s the same old, same old format: slot tape in, listen thrice, make notes, look at any other internet gubbins, write up final copy, post to Rob and await his judgement a’ tremble.
But today I want to spice things up baby. I’m going 50 shades on this shit.
So, in order to make things (hopefully) more entertaining and experimental in spirit for you, my dear reader, I chucked all my review tapes into a drawstring bag and will pull them out, randomly, sight-unseen ready to slap into the cheap-o hi-fi. No prior knowledge, no prejudice etc.
Mystery Tape One. The first thing I notice is an ambient hiss, growing and forming, covering all the other electronic ‘chunk-ka-kuh’ like Spanish moss. Things get less rhythmic and more drawn out (elongated gong strikes / trapdoor creak) creating a soundtrack feel with some floating voices chattering. There’s a synth or something humming giving this a very European feel… a dark Froese perhaps? Now there’s electricity in the air as the test tubes fizz and pop; a scientist twitches and mugs singing snatches of opera in a cracked voice. Somehow the radio picks up their brain waves: forgotten memories of the seaside and music hall? An Anthony Caro sculpture comes to life with deep space moans. Blimey. Who’s this? I pop out the tape and check it. Bless my soul. It’s the ever lovely Claus Poulsen with Collected Dreams on Skrat Records.
Mystery Tape Two. OK…so far so good. I fumble in my bag and pluck out the next offering. It drops neatly into the wide-mouth slot and kicks off some dark rubbery knockings, slurm residue and spurks-thumb. Oh yeah man…this is tremendous stuff! There’s a treacle-like bubbling and whomping, like some living salt-water lake throbbing dangerously, searching out new tributaries with its briny fingers. This is pure sound abstraction that builds layers of thick, dark sound-paint until a giant glove smears the oily pickle. The noxious mixture spreads thin, lightening the hue and spreading the sticky mixture over frame, wall, floor and ceiling until we are all covered with the stuff – a burnt Rothko orange. Side two opens up with a fling of ducks all ecstatically hawking and honking. These sounds are passed though some electronic doo-hickery that seems to split and repeat certain quacking frequencies so sections of the greasy reverberations get plucked for presentation with a sheen and glimmer. The water fowl retreat to roost as we dip our ears below the slick surface of water to luxuriate in music for rowing boat hulls; wooden creak and swollen pop. Gosh, this tape is really hitting the spot. Who do I have to thank? I should have known…it’s ‘The Ambassador’ Tom White with his Reconstruction on Alien Passengers.
Mystery Tape Three. This tape starts off with some nice tape gunk that moves unhurriedly between half-tunes played on fuzzed-out organ. A female voice with the smoky cadence of William Burroughs tells a tale about some sci-fi travel (or something) while Working Men’s Club beats (tiss-be-be-bon-tiss…) flit in and out of the organ tunes. And then found sound and field recordings get thrown into the mix. Not in a haphazard manner, no sir, this is finely tuned and tweaked like the exact halfway point between a Radiophonic performance scored by the late great Broadcast and waking up from a particularly vivid dream. I have to be honest with you readers… I’m stumped here; I have no idea what or who or when this is. It’s certainly more lyrical than the usual shimmy but the narrative and structure are all over the shop giving this a delightfully Victorian psychedelic edge. I can’t wait any longer; I crack under the pressure of not knowing and check the cover. Ahhhhh….it’s that beautiful and wonderfully eccentric duo Winter Family who are playing here with their How Does Time tape on Psychic Mule Records. It is indeed a play, a play designed to be listened to on a very particular train journey between Besançon in France and La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland for very particular watch makers. The ultimate commuter listen.
Mystery Tape Four. Your typical Northern pub chatter sets the scene with clattering bottles and knowing laughter. An on-stage introduction welcomes you and says, ‘This is for d boon’ before a proper guitar riff chugga-chuggas. OK…that’s a reference to the wonderful Minutemen – I get that; are we jamming econo? Is this gonna be some tour spiel dude? But, at the same time I’m expecting some tape collage work to start up, a wonk-move or gurgled gob etc. Some music concrete shit and all that doings. But no…this is pure UK hardcore, recorded very, very live, possibly from some archive with guitar/bass/drums and an angry attitude. Think Heresy or something but with a bit more of ‘baseball bat to the face and neck’ feel. The songs come in short, sharp blasts. Three or four in a row – chunka – chunka – cheer – crowd babble – chunka- chunka. It’s invigorating stuff and seems to get looser and more chaotic as the tape goes on (always a bonus for me). I’m totally lost here. No idea who it is or even how it crept into my review pile. Shall we look readers? OK…it all comes flooding back. This is Battery Humans on Fuckin’ Amateurs with their For D Boon tape. It is recorded live and recently: 6th September 2014 to be precise and features one Guy Warnes AKA Waz Hoola, the unsung hero of the northern drone scene, on drums. The usual F#A! standards of presentation apply with anarchy inserts, random gaffer tape sculpture and art fliched from Viz Comic. Side B is another live recording but this time from Scurge in 1991. You want rage? You got it.
Mystery Tape Five. I press ‘play’ and an undulating, chemically insistent, flute trills with the sort of chaotic abandon that pins Old God MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI into a restful slumber. A thousand chaffed lips puff noxious gas through human thighbone pipes while the jester dances merrily on (like he’s posing for a Marillion album or something). Gosh…this is pretty intense. The next track saunters by sounding like that crap ‘pre-computer’ computer game Simon hooking up to Terminator’s Skynet and crashing civilisation as we know it into a frosty digital sludge. Blimey…there’s a hard stop as I turn the tape over but as soon as I click things into life the holy racket starts again. This time I’m getting something like a rouge Funkadelic jam; real cosmic slop rejected by Mr Clinton for being too out-there as layers of keyboard fuzz and squealing huff pile up and up and up. A brief moment of calm (the keys ape Vangelis in blade runner tights) lets me breathe again before I’m pushed out a 30 storey window (metaphorically, dude – don’t panic, man) and, as I tumble, I catch snippets of Mexican TV, Concrete Noise, psychic experiments and terrible quiz shows as I hurtle past the apartments spinning dangerously out of control. An uneven gravity pocket spares me a sticky end and I land, gracefully and precisely, into a pair of oxblood Doctor Martins – the world’s kindest bootboy. Crows cackle around me, applauding with electric beaks. I check the details, no wiser of this tapes provenance but washed clean by its synesthetic high, to find out it’s my old Papal Bull buddy Jon Marshall and noise-nudist Pascal Ansell cavorting under the No Thumbs banner. This beauty’s called Slug Birth and is available from the brand-spanking-new Tutore Burlato label. If TB is a new name on your radar the quality hallmark of its founder, one Ezio Piermattei, should seal the deal.
Mystery Tape Six. A hawking ceilidh – all X-ray gingham and a skilful cheek-slapping solo. Reet…now there’s some ‘brum-t-t-tuh’ ursonating richly, fupping my sonics. Gosh…this is a tasty oyster to be gulped down whole. A general Scottishness takes hold with gristle and blum; stiff wire wool scraping and beautifully played Dictaphone garble. I almost trip over my big feet in my rush to turn it over as I’m aching for side two. And that’s where my experiment has to end. No system is perfect. It’s darn near impossible to ignore the fact a voice immediately states…
I’m Ali Robertson
…in Ali Robertson’s voice, soon to be joined by a variety of other familiar burrs. This side is one long ‘game’ of read personal biographies all overlapping (stop-starting) set to strict rules that our cuddly despot is keen to enforce. Waves of casual voice and chatter settle into strange rhythms – probably some mathematical fractal shit, interlocking as neat as a Rubik’s satisfying ‘click’. So yeah…durrrr…it’s Ali Robertson and his handily titled Ali Robertson & Friends tape on the always brilliant Giant Tank label.
So my excellent friends, I hope that worked for you? Me? I’m refreshed and re-born! My ears are prickling with cleansing static and expectation.
But tell me: how are you doing?
—ooOoo—
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.]
rfm attends colour out of space part two: pascal ansell remonstrates
November 23, 2013 at 10:47 am | Posted in live music, new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: brighton, charlie collins, colour out of space, dictaphonics, dinosaurs with horns, dylan nyoukis, greg kelly, gwilly edmondez, improv, joe murray, jon marshall, new music, no audience underground, noise, pascal ansell, posset, roman nose, sarah mcwatt, thf drenching, tom white, vocal improvisation
COLOUR OUT OF SPACE / 6
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIMENTAL SOUND FESTIVAL
Performance Weekend: 8th – 10th November, 2013, Brighton, UK
Editor’s note: Pascal’s turn. He clearly wasn’t as impressed overall as Joe but has selected some highlights to grudgingly comply with RFM’s sternly enforced policy of being nice. Well, mostly:
—ooOoo—
In a weekend bursting at the seams with irritating vocal improvisations, glossophonics, snarled and impertinent mouth crap, the likely trio of Gwilly Edmondez, Posset and THF Drenching chose the only option viable: ol’ time barbershop. Nah, we were of course subject to gurgle-core (is that Phil Todd’s term?) but this was of the finest pedigree. Bossy, snarled and darting; a real performance in that it propelled forwards towards you, opening itself up to the punters in an act of delicious spectacle and invitation. Gwilly Edmondez is a lumbering professor of something at the University of Newcastle. He is also in possession of a reverberant set of vocal chords of such rubbery depth to be, gasp, slimey, pure slime, the slime of old lady ass, under-sofa sweat dribbles, magnificent slime, everybody! A cassette voice slowed down, and that is garçon Gwilly, whose aural slugs competed with ex-Bailey bandmate THF Drenching, the latter wrestling his amp of its feedback possibilities. Posset on the third and final hand of this musical mutant nailed a splashing blend of static and mouth junk. See his mouth didn’t sound like mouth, or gargle, or in any way approach the being so-cerebral-it-gets-silly; it sounded good, ‘sound-in-itself’ good, inexhaustibly good, serious play and goodness.
Enjoyable as Dylan Nyoukis & Greg Kelley’s set was, and admitting that Nyoukis never disappoints in his encyclopaedic vocal voyages, his control and mastery over continents of vocalics… and taking into account this mighty Scot twinned with an enormous trumpet imagination of Greg Kelley, what really is there to be said about free improv anymore? I’ve been guilty of using the term too frequently but this is bona fide, every man out for himself territory. The only markedly different aspect of this performance was the brief and inexplicable spurts of disco lights which interrupted the almost total darkness. Good drossophonic messabout improv no doubt, but achingly purist free improv. So free, so fraught with my fevered doubts and whiffs of ‘what the hell will they do next?’ that the potential of it potentially collapsing – which really is the silent riff of free improv – seemed almost welcome.
Tom White wore a pristine white shirt and has a pristine brown beard (well, almost, and I urge him to embrace the status of total barbarism) and to clatter this rhetorical bowling ball was also in serious danger of delivering a pristine white overperformance. Let’s admit it, Luke was heavily involved with that obscenely massive and adorable tape deck he played with, he might as well gone off and married it. Ha! You’ve been great! There seemed to be no space between his hands and his ears, not letting sounds be themselves without having to hey-everyone-I’m-performing perform it, histrionics over Cagian (that’s adjectival John Cage, right?) conveying, cold and impersonal just as I like it. Thankfully us floor dwellers enjoyed an earful of superb tape junk. Nicely done. I say ‘junk’ but this was the sexy middle-class green bin kind of noise junk. Tasteful streamlines of grey static were repeated with just enough of interim to evade falling into witheringly dull tape delay jerk-off marathons. How gratifying to witness such immaculate and wretched explorations and applaud with, forty, heck, sixty other sick heads! And there were real girls, with, y’know like real hair, more than three! That’s when you know you’re festivalling!
Roman Nose provided welcome relief on Friday night with songs, actual songs! The free suspension and ‘what do they do next’ idea exchanging had its tension nicely diverted out of the room, past the very friendly venue staff of The Old Market and into the great Brighton night; that tension mentioned earlier of spontaneous performances was eroded by sudden halts, and proceeding to jolt without much delay into the next number. What I later learnt was a Chinese sheng (a strange organ-like contraption) was set upon and disturbed by Sarah McWatt. Charlie Collins clambered delicately over his drumkit shadowed by Jon Marshall (the Roman Nose wolf mother) on samples of scary tharqa and messy reeds.
I loved Black Dice for a long time but always knew there had to be a looser, non-hipster version that wasn’t Yellow Swans with their drizzling mush. Dinosaurs with Horns were a revelatory gesture towards this. Any band that can cram in experimental graft with joyful zest, with a semblance of a pulse, are due more than a little attention. What could otherwise slide into our memory bin instead transforms into joyful and constructful mucking about, my real and true nub rubber! These LA teamsters offered on a side-plate to this gigantically stale loaf of a weekend some morsel of delight, genuine swaying fairyground [sic] (Editor’s note: what a beautiful typo!) rollercoasting delight and rumble.
Editors note: a comprehensive selection of band bios and links can be found on the COOS website here. Photos by Marc Teare.
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