fizzing blue stars: joe murray on ksds, acrid lactations, smear campaign & poulsen/harrison/watson/bjerga
February 6, 2015 at 2:08 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: acrid lactations, bbblood, chocolate monk, claus poulsen, duncan harrison, improv, joe murray, ksds, new music, no audience underground, noise, paul watson, sindre bjerga, smear campaign, stars dots and the new junk, stuart arnot, sue fitzpatrick, total vermin
Claus Poulsen, Duncan Harrison, Paul Watson & Sindre Bjerga – Blind Dates (CD-r, Chocolate Monk, choc.294, edition of 66)
KSDS – Black Abba (CD-r, T-Shirt and stickers, stars, dots and the “new” junk, Starsdots016, edition of 15 or download)
Acrid Lactations – Drizzling Quids A’ Crepuscule (tape, Total Vermin, #88)
Smear Campaign – Funky Cold Demeanour (tape, Total Vermin, #36)
Claus Poulsen, Duncan Harrison, Paul Watson & Sindre Bjerga – Blind Dates
A note on construction: these two duos; Duncan and Claus, Paul and Sindre played live to an audience in single figures in London’s free and easy Olive restaurant last year. These remarkable first-time duos were recorded and expertly mixed by Claus Poulsen and released in an edition of 66.
Duncan and Claus serve up a hubbling, bubbling mixture of tension and texture. Drawn-out scrapes and moans open the piece until loose cheeked ‘pops’ cut some slack and open up the landscape for Duncan’s concrete word-dub. Meanwhile a rich acoustic ripping rolls out of Claus’ fingerless gloves as he jingles a vintage synth with his toes. The button marked ‘sexy robot talk’ is fingered to start up a hot conversation that would make Louis and Bebe Barron blush beetroot red! A satisfying climax is sculpted out of decaying polystyrene blocks and Viking horns – classy!
Paul and Sindre begin inside a peach, pulling out chunks of juicy flesh and dropping it noisily to the floor. Sindre starts his onyx panther purring while Paul plays an egg-slice by caressing it with red Tudor brick.
Next they turn their attention to soundtracking a rowdy bout of Olympic wrestling. I can clearly picture the slap of stinging-pink flesh on the crash mat and feel the astringent whiff of liniment in the nostrils. A cub reporter gets in close with the Dictaphone but fluffs the buttons (screee…) and a disco plays, thump, thump, thump in one unfortunate head until you bail and cry ‘UNCLE!’ Chucky Cheese is hosting a sugar-frenzied birthday party for Sky Saxon and the electricity keeps cutting out like Norman Collier is controlling the Black Ark.
Then things get serious. A sound like giant granite blocks being slowly moved around the chessboard is overtaken by Wu Tang Killer Bees (swarming) then descending into the insect-o-cutor to die spectacularly as fizzy blue stars.
All this furious invention makes me ponder the position of the improviser in 2015. It used to be a point of pride for grey beards to master the jizzle, skin or hornpipe until they could play inside out. Listening to a record like Blind Dates makes me remember that a collection of eggs, dried seaweed and a typewriter can transform just as spectacularly in the hands of a select goon. Ears are of the highest importance. Imagination is gold dust. Courage is the epaulette earned through practice and concentration.
Hold up your heads gentlemen…you join the pantheon along with yr average Derek, Evan or Han on this blow-out piece.
KSDS – Black Abba
This is a cheeky one alright. Mocked up to ape the Sabbath classic Master of Reality this disc by KSDS might be free of all inverted crosses but it’s still a heavy trip (man).
Fans of Kosmische-leaning keyboard action pay attention! This is whirling like a day-glo electric galaxy.
In some places heaviness comes from clustered chords held down until grim fingers bleed. In others (‘Cosmic Radiation’ for instance) crude beats lend weight and sound like the ghost of Jacob Marley took up the drums, rattling his rusty chains. ‘Hammer of the North’ is as claustrophobic as an oft remembered family car journey with a similar sense of tension and restrained anger; the shifting banks of delay sculpting something almost dancefloor friendly that would sit neat and tidy in the Opal Tapes catalogue.
And just when you think you’ve got the measure of things a tune of pure loveliness (‘With Anger’) swirls like some green and pleasant church organ gone up the silk route for hash and adventure.
But it’s on ‘The Stack’ that things get totally sepia-tinted kraut. Sounding like mid-period Cluster simple lines overlap building up layer upon layer until the tinniest beat (high hats spitting like a drowning man) keep strict tempo with a military bearing.
Acrid Lactations – Drizzling Quids A’ Crepuscule
More strung-out edge-of-consciousness skronk from that most singular of duos, Acrid Lactations.
Following in the footsteps of The Who, Iron Maiden, Kiss and Johnny Cash, Acrid Lactations release their version of that record industry classic – THE LIVE ALBUM. For many bloated groups it was a stop-gap, a cynical filler to be snorted up between tour and studio. But for some (hopefully the old beards named before) the live album becomes more than just a different version of the same old shit. It’s a chance to stretch out and rediscover the energy and vim that brought you together in the first place.
This collection of jams recorded between 2012 and 2014 is so live you can chew on the humus breath of the audience. You can sniff the peculiar brew in the air and feel the starchy knit of a woolly jumper necessary for the unheated venues of the no-audience underground.
But what do you get from the Lactations in a freewheeling live space? I sense a willingness to push things even further in these recordings. I mean…this is performance right? Honest entertainment for cold hard cash yeah? Stuart and Susan know the value of a dollar and play right up to punters letting new gasses fly. There’s a strong brass presence with the familiar Arnot trumpet joined by a whole selection of metallic blowholes from Sue (pipe, whistle, ocarina perhaps). An old accordion is humped and huffed with a lazy foot, tattered voices mesh, taped squalls blabber and a metallic shiny sheen shimmies.
Yet it’s the very dualism of a two piece group that makes the strongest impact here. With only four hands between them there is a delightful limitation to what can be done. You can only juggle with what you have eh? Sonically there’s a ‘to-you-to-me’ that’s so much more than basic call and response…it’s an appreciation of what needs to be left out, rejected, un-attempted to concentrate on the pure reaction/expression/reaction that flows like warm milk.
Most of the recordings are high energy affairs, skipping slightly quicker than your beating heart, but on occasion a delightful interlocking calmness occurs making a high tide mark in the performance journey.
Someone draw a plimsoll line so we can see how high we all got!
Another fine Acrid tape on the goddamn essential Total Vermin.
Smear Campaign – Funky Cold Demeanour
The word on the street is that this ruby red tape is based on old hip hop vinyl found in Glasgow’s charity shops. The Fly-girls and B-boys among you will perhaps notice the play on words in the title barfing up memories of your favourite gold rope wearing sexist Tone Loc.
So can you expect block rocking beats on your boombox? Errrrrrr…not really.
Side one starts off with what sounds like a huge bath full of agricultural slurry being thoroughly mixed…a flexible hose runs from the bottom of the steaming vat to your ears so you can better hear the liquid brown churn.
Soon metallic voices start to spar and dart (could this be our Anthony?). The distinctive ‘schliip’ and ‘f’wip’ of turntable melts into the dull consonants like a seasoning, bringing out the highlights, shining the vowel.
Side two opens with some percussive bumming as rusty sponges are rubbed together. A brief spurt with some human air is soon battered like a pork medallion with swathes of medieval feedback. Yet still the lip, teeth and tongue flip and stutter like a malfunctioning mp3 file.
This minimal judder strolls seamlessly into an altogether more hellish movement of tightly bound-up humming and rubbery percussion, stretching out across all points of the compass before ‘snick’ the sound stops and the tape pops.
Having said all that (and yes I know I was starting to become really cryptically verbose before) this is all done with a sense of reverence to the source material. This is certainly no ‘look at those people in the past, they stoopid cuz they clothes different’ schtick but a real act of honest sonic ecology.
Recycling done with no turntables nor a microphone.
—ooOoo—
stars, dots and the “new” junk
Total Vermin (now nearly two years since a blogspot update but Stuart is clearly still active. Be resourceful)
new year retox: joe murray on smacked cucumber, sindre bjerga, tom white, ansgar wilken & urine gagarin
January 20, 2015 at 12:34 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: ansgar wilken, improv, jennifer iker, joe murray, ludo mich, new music, no audience underground, noise, ross parfitt, sindre bjerga, smacked cucumber, spam, stuart arnot, tom white, total vermin, urine gagarin
SMACKED CUCUMBER – FIRST TIME IN SPACE (tape or download, SPAM, spam6)
Sindre Bjerga & Tom White – Water Information (tape, Total Vermin, #87)
ansgar wilken – thank you (tape or download, SPAM)
Urine Gagarin – Hanged in a Cavern (CD-r, Total Vermin, #83)
Smacked Cucumber – First Time in Space
While Christmas indulgence can be fun for a time it eventually reaches a point where the 5 course breakfast becomes less of a treat and more of a pork-based endurance test. Let it be recorded here that from 1st Jan onwards I am pulling on my running jersey and dusting off my spikes to become a fitter, leaner guest-blogger. I will trim off the love handles. I will pass over the puddings and pies in favour of the simple lentil and kale combo.
Sonically too my ear is yearning for a cleaner palette, an astringent and sour mixture to wash away the sweet-honey of seasonal carols and jingles.
I reach for the most healthy sounding tape on the review pile and slip it into my walkman as I gingerly pound the streets of West Newcastle huffing and puffing like a lardy goat.
Smacked Cucumber are a new name to me, and in a effort to ‘listen without prejudice’ I keep it that way (rejecting Dr Google) reacting only to the music marching calmly out my earbuds.
And what a green and vitamin-rich sound this is! All the excess is trimmed to leave pure, clear sounds: a rubber ball rubbed on a snare drum, creaking wooden door, a gentle ting-tingling of tiny bells, gentle traffic roar, the hushed ping of a battered zither, air blown softly over the neck of a milk bottle and a rough stone rolled slowly round a pottery bowl.
These simple yet utterly controlled and focused sounds are paired together in a sparse duo format (fondled floor tom versus earthenware flask for example) with what sounds like two players gently reacting to differences in texture and timbre, never rising past a quiet whisper. This sensitive style of playing is EXACTLY what I need right now and I recommend this as an aural detox to all RFM readers.
I’m a curious old bird and can’t resist a quick check up of who the hell these Smacked Cucumber folk are. It’s with joyous surprise I learn the sounds I’ve been greedily soaking up come direct from the brains of Ross Parfitt and Jen Iker – two fellow travellers I met all the way back in 2014 collaborating with the ‘holy spirit of misadventure’ Ludo Mich. Cor Blimey guv. It’s a small world ain’t it?
Beat the bulge, smack that cucumber!
Sindre Bjerga & Tom White – Water Information
The sleeve notes are quite clear on this tape and with good purpose. All the base sounds are live recordings of Sindre Bjerga made in the Summer of 2013. Tom White then took these recordings, mulled on them for a while and applied some black-handed studio do-hickery in the Winter of 2014. Tom’s name keeps cropping up in dispatches and a quick check of his CV reveals a pretty-darn-hot hombre presenting real-life sound art shit but still finding time to rub himself up against some creamy live collaborators – Vasco Alves and Maya Dunitez to name but two.
OK…back to the tape (and that’s TV #87 folks. Can you believe it readers? Total Vermin are approaching the big one-zero-zero).
Regular Sindre-watchers will be familiar with his grey-particle mist. Somehow, using the same kit as many other folk, Sindre brings a signature flourish to his sound; like a fog of iron filings laid down in regular parquet patterns.
And, at first this is what you hear, until Tom starts to ingeniously ‘churn’ the mix. Beware listeners…this is no regular remix project full of lazy thread layering or sneaky crowd-pleasing tactics like dropping a ‘dope beat’ (perish the thought!).
Side A ‘Images of Hard Water in the Area (Andrea Sneezes)’ begins with a ping-pong response that is soon being forced through tight tape capstans, stretching and warping it in a frankly stomach-churning way. The queasy lurching develops into wet squeals with the canny tape delay slightly overlapping things so ‘Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet’ becomes ‘Dolphin Succumbing to Greasy Sexual Ecstasy’. More briny rumblings reach a climax with the neat little sneezes referred to in the title. Gesundheit!
Side B ‘Tidal Surges on the Way’ takes Sindre’s glottal tape melange and gently duffs it up until the sound is a blue and purple bruise decayed and aged like some booming My Bloody Valentine guitar riff. The rolling and boiling sound sputters into an arrhythmic pattern that makes the dog nod. Blimey…this is pretty heady stuff!
All in all this is an intoxicating listen. A re-framing of intelligent ideas! A gas-pod ready to pop – huff it up dear readers.
ansgar wilken – thank you
Another head-changer from the German SPAM label.
The central thread of this charming little tape is the…wait-fer-it…the humble cello played by the mysterious timebomb Ansgar Wilken.
At times the cello is played straight, pretty little tunes leaping from the springy strings. Sometimes extended techniques sneak a looky-in with cracked bows all bald and hairless being dragged across protesting strings. Electronics and spoken word interludes pepper several of the eleven micro-pieces (only one breaks the 3 minute mark, some don’t make it to a single minute) while the spirit of Henry Flynt whips up a storm with the cascading, ever modulating drones.
There’s a feeling that Ansgar is working something out with these pieces. Beating the blues, reaching for the light perhaps? I dunno. All I can say is ‘Johann Von Auben Heute’ and ‘Barn Dance’ invoke the bones of mighty, mighty Moondog and made me stomp about going
Yeah Man Yeah!
This tape has a sense of knowingness… are you prepared to let its ancient intelligence in?
Urine Gagarin – Hanged in a Cavern
A rare CD-R of scum jazz on the tape-dominated Total Vermin. The classic jazz trio (sax/bass/drums) is mentally Xeroxed so many times that a very real trumpet, drums and guitar mutate into splintered wooden plank, elephant seal and bulldozer and at times horrific diarrhoea, blood-hurricane and plague of locusts with the sheer force of their unhinged playing.
The whirring energy of fresh jazz is whipped and spun like a fucking top until all the sharp edges blur into a charcoal sludge. Imagine wet clay on the potter’s wheel toppling out of control on some lame game show; the squeals of the audience replaced with Formula One’s top-throttle pointlessness.
THINKS TO SELF << In fact those stun/concussion groups of the early 1990’s like Ascension or Blowhole are not just a great reference to this CDr. Why don’t they play that shit rather than Fleetwood Mac over the bloody racing car monotony?>>
OK…back on the case Joe…This trio are in full-on crazy mode. With no let up or pause it’s like Harsh Noise Acoustic, a continuous, rolling, tumbling, boiling of pus-soaked bandages; the flames from the stove flickering a septic green and rising dangerously high. The curtains catch fire and you must abandon the building with Arnott/Cummings/Pitt scorning your yellow cowardice.
If you got the stones slip this one on high!
For more of this damn-hot action check out some live Urine Gagarin doing it Nice & Sleazy.
—ooOoo—
[Editor’s note: the TV site hasn’t been updated for nearly two years now but Stuart is evidently still active. The resourceful can track him down and the rewards for doing so are legion.]
scarfing antelope: joe murray on lovely honkey & his acrid lactations
July 26, 2014 at 10:29 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: acrid lactations, glastonbury, improv, joe murray, lovely honkey, luke poot, new music, no audience underground, noise, stuart arnot, sue fitzpatrick, tapes, the curse of never-ending elbow, total vermin, vocal improvisation
Lovely Honkey & His Acrid Lactations – Hardy the Wayfarers (tape, Total Vermin, #85)
I’m a bit of a worrier me. I worry about all the normal things a middle-aged, pampered, white, male worries about I suppose: kids, missus, job, state of the world and all that jazz. But being a welded to the no-audience underground I sometimes worry I’m being an inadvertent elitist.
Is the underground, with its limited editions, challenging approaches and cultural immersion more valid than the mainstream? The best I can muster is a, “Duh…I dunno” most of the time.
Maybe it’s time I did some serious thinking.
To make it clear reader…I have no problem with pop music. Check out the teenage magic-realism of Eliza Doolittle’s ‘Walking on Water’ or the outrageously frothy ‘Call me Maybe’ by Carly Rae Jepson? Curiously enough this kind of pure, purple, pop makes me smile just as wide as any of Phil Minton’s japes. Sure it’s a transient sugar rush…but are you telling me that Shakira (Editor’s note: Ugh. I was with you up to Shakira) don’t make you snap your fingers like the Art Ensemble?
So that’s pop music sorted out…but what about it’s more grown-up brother: indie rock?
In this day and age I should know everything about the current crop of indie rock lovelies, eh? As folks keep yammering on it’s all on the internet, for free, forever. Yup…the internet might be a portal to everythingness but you still need to peak in the right window – you dig.
I took the recent bloat-fest Glastonbury to be my window on the world. The BBC kindly chopped up footage into easily digestible mouthfuls so I could taste the best the indie rock world had to offer whilst sat in comfort at home. What a treat! These truly must be the best of times. I settled back with tea and a selection of biscuits, giddy with the knowledge I was bound to discover some rare breed, some slinky mink that had passed me by while I had my eye lowered to the grubby underground.
And I waited, and waited, and waited some more. I know Jonah Jameson (Editor’s note: very funny – you’re sacked) don’t like no negatives so I can’t really go into detail here. Let’s just say I watched 6 hours of footage and the only act that excited me was some bass and drum duo. And that’s just coz they sound like my brothers band.
So… I tried, I really tried; but with my scientist head on I can say the experiment failed. The indie rock mainstream is not for me, doesn’t want me, can’t stand me and its back to the underground I hop.
I slip on the next tape in the review pile from Lovely Honkey and his Acrid Lactations.
Now this is telling us something right from the off. Like Cliff & the Shadows or Mike and his Mechanics this is presenting us with a handy sonic-perspective, a clue even. I picture some formation; a bizarre food pyramid with Luke Poot as its king carnivore, his golden mane flowing in the hot Serengeti wind with Sue Fitzpatrick and Stuart Arnot scarfing antelope at his shoulders.
That’s set me a visual. But musically, how does this Robin Hood and Merry Men scenario unfold?
Immediately three, really wet mouths are coughing in phlegmy unison! ‘Hierarchies of Spirit’ slurps and spits, moans and whimpers its way through a spellbinding array of lip-smacks and bloats. The genius touch is a two note drone on dusty keyboard (or cracked violin) that anchors the gurgling mouths from setting alight. Such glorious tension.
‘Gulch Reflexion’ is a whole load of trouble deeper in the throat with pre-language babble (via Sue) over the severed epiglottis explosion. In fact the best advice I can give you to build up a mental picture for this is take any Carcass song title and shave off its hair. Naked and pink yet? You got it.
Take a baking tray half full of water tapped with ritualistic seriousness as your baseline for ‘Snails in the foundry of the Demiurge’. Beat in a dozen Delia’s getting loaded on sticky Madeira and Babel hollas a gibber. Coda: the distinctive cracks and pops of a Glasgow tenement building coming to rest after a violent Hogmany.
The longer pieces ‘Obedient Refexion’ and ‘(Briny) Expiant and (Milky) Redemptive’ grace side two with a calmer mung.
My first listening summons up visions of Shhh/Peaceful scored for gibbering monks and played back through medieval Dictaphones:
The illumination is all greasy from burning candles but the brilliant colours shine through. The fabric may be rough but the needlepoint is detailed.
An insistent rhythm is heard from outside the Monastery walls (Tony Williams on tea-caddy?) as the wails of limp-berserkers float in on the mist. Some joker messes with the intro to Iron Man (Sabbs not Marvel) and Wayne Shorter swaps his horn for marbles that he drops into a bucket.
Phew…you’ll surely admit to some Miles Davis/Viking invasion thing going on here. It’s not just me is it?
…as the mental-mists clear I realise this is what I’ve been missing with all that flaccid indie rock. There’s no pictures, no sizzled synapse leaps… just the dull plod, plod, plod of the verse and the tedious plod, plod, plod to anthemic chorus. But the Lovely Honkey and his Acrid Lactations my fine friends are as magnetic and shiny as an Aaliyah video (Editor’s note: that’s more like it – you’re hired again, back to work).
And if you don’t agree I hex you with the curse of never-ending Elbow.
—ooOoo—
(Editor’s final note: at the time of writing the TV blog is way out of date, so hit up Stuart directly via smearcampaign@hotmail.com or on one of them social networks and he is sure to oblige.)
grot all get mangled: joe murray on panelak, f. ampism, david birchall, rogier small, rotten tables, golden meat, ckdh
July 5, 2014 at 8:09 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: angurosakuson, ckdh, david birchall, f. ampism, improv, joe murray, new music, no audience underground, noise, panelak, pascal ansell, poot records, rogier small, rotten tables golden meat, tapes, total vermin, vocal improvisation
Panelak – Heimat (CD-r or download, Angurosakuson, AS#007)
F. Ampism – Chew Valley Moor Wardens (CD-r, Poot Records)
David Birchall/Rogier Small Duo – S/T (C20 tape, Poot Records)
Rotten Tables, Golden Meat – My Nose is Broken (C20 tape, Total Vermin)
CKDH – Yr Putrid Eyeballs (CD-r, Poot Records)
Panelak – Heimat
Starting with electronics swimming in electric bile over a bunch of Korean zither pings all antiseptic and clean an antique ZX81 crashes. KkKKkkqqQKkqKQKkk. In the Congo ghosts play Mbira via shortwave lightning with sudden peaks in volume and intensity. Phew! The first two songs (‘How I wrote Panelak’ & ‘Underfelt Silk Leaves’) are over and I’m sweating already.
‘Prayer Milk’ does that tunnel-vision thing for your ears making them tune inward as granular chuff curls like a graphite wave. Watch out casual surfers…don’t get caught in the undertow.
My gosh, this is the Crossfit of noise; all muscular beefing and sweaty reps. But…Panelak’s Pascal Ansell isn’t getting all Rollins on your ass. No sir. This is still pretty enough to make me blush pinky-red. Especially with the glitch water-jug/chess beats/preset keys of ‘Slugs Salloon’ which is the kinda junk turning up on PAN at the minute. Dance music mutated out the disco, round the corner and into the all night Deli serving chrome toaster-noise to anxious couples climbing out a collective K-hole. Selector? Re-rewind!
The 14 minute palette-cleanser ‘Nix Cornd Beef/Timesheet’ reminds me of the time I was locked in King Cross train station trying to avoid the security guards as semi-automated cleaning carts trundle the platforms snagging metal rails and sparking green in the darkness. Just so you know.
This prepares the listener for ‘BBBlues’ with a guitar that’s the sort of thing to give Albini nightmares such is the sound ripped, processed and fucked. The ever present waterfall vibe that bootleg software wafts becomes an undercurrent laying a liquid foundation.
The closer, ‘Largesse Projects’ is more Stingray-undersea-kingdom shit; follow the pressure waves of psychic-torpedoes as they zero in on their own personal Bismarck! At a mile deep the nitrogen/oxygen mixture makes mush of your brain. Half forgotten memories of Rave culture, Noise basements and night bus paranoia all curdle into a paste of grey-matter.
Thoughts intertwine and Jacques Cousteau leers at my wasted face under his gnarly woollen cap. “Get a grip” he yells (in French). But I’m too far gone on Panelak and burst out laughing at the salty puddle collecting round his brogues.
Shit man…this is strong stuff.
F. Ampism – Chew Valley Moor Wardens
Brighton-based beard F. Ampism has been riffing it for years. His set at Colour Out Of Space 2013 was one of the highlights of the weekend and this cheeky snapshot of mung is a earhole warmer par excellence.
The shingle-tape warping and snatched speech samples comes across all Chaotica and sits comfortably at the table with all that LAFMS shit; ‘cept there’s a handmade quality to this like wave-polished scrimshaw.
Let me explain. Wooden batteries get replaced with felt. Off-kilter percussion from Nairobi is laid over kitchen clatter (‘Bandoneon’). A baking tray buckles and reed flute plays comforting Azathoth (‘Indian Head’). Free-jazz workshops are rendered in miniature like the band are starting to arrive and the drummer practices exotic chops (‘Water from a Wooden Bowl’). Grotty tabla ‘slaps’ are slowed down into the futuristic plastic ‘Boing’ posing a problem for Mega City One judges (‘Norma Supral’) as mercury is sluiced down a drainpipe. There’s a fidget’s delight as KLF goof-on like ‘Chill Out’ (‘Comfrey Wazzo Shed Suite’). Repetitive faux-ethic glock plonks, bronze owls t-wit and t-woo during ‘Hanging Litterbugs’ as Martin Denny finds the sweet-spot on his analogue synth.
To sum up: loops of recorder grot all get mangled. You sit and raise a glass. The wind blows through your grass skirt.
And if god is a DJ, Amps sits at his right hand mixing all the uncomfortable sounds dropped at the pearly gates.
Check this mother out!
David Birchall/Rogier Small Duo
An eye-watering tape cover, all pink vibrations and Mexican skulls houses this crispy duck.
Warble-guitar rubberises snazzy drums all over side one with the clitter-clatter meshing like oilbeads. Dave’s dextrous volume pedal work gives the six string a human voice…an open-mouthed gasp that speaks in a dialect from the lost land of Atlantis. When the silvery bubbles of air float up they get well and truly popped by Rogier’s mini-trident as floppy skins (drum kit) pound like a war cry. Up Helly-Ah!
Texture is explored for sure but it’s got a furry quality, like mould-ridden cheese, that makes me salivate grey goo down my shirt front.
I saw these two live recently and was blown away by their Crimsons. Diggerty velocity and ultra-hard riffin’ that stopped on a dime leading to Pinteresque silence and uncomfortable stares. And it’s good to hear those dip-outs, troughs and fallows on this pinky tape. Too many beards just jam it without no contrasts…saps. The chaps got chops!
Side two starts off all mellow and that with a ribbed ripple, a cluster of notes that dart and dive around Smal’s dropped grenades. But these explosions become milestones, stately markers on a voyage over rough terrain before they gradually morph into the start of the Pink Panther show (circa 1979).
About halfway though coffin-opening squeaks and moans start coming from somewhere as Private Jazz gets the brushes out ‘schhhh, schhhh, schhhh’…a minute later we’re in Company Week territory with heavy improv chokes and giggles from drum and guitar. This jollies me up and I’m sad, genuinely sad, dear reader when the extended grimble solo ends this tape.
Oh yeah…I know people like to know this kinda stuff: Dave plays in Northern Loon-duo Chastity Potatoe, Desmadrados Soldados de Ventura, Stuckometer, Levenshulme Bicycle Orchestra and Rogier does stuff with Jaap Blonk, Eugene Chadbourne, Sunburned Hand of The Man and one of Earth or something. Both websites are chocked full of tapes, drawings and videos that make me wanna get up and do some shit!
Rotten Tables, Golden Meat – My Nose is Broken
My word: hunka-grunk-scrunt! This is the kinda doof that gets me out of bed in the morning, lickerty-split! Do not pass muesli. Jive straight out the door and into the woods for loamy communion breathing in the ferns.
Rotten Tables, Golden Meat are a totally gonzo electronics/vocal mush duo jamming at the heart of the new Soviet weird and its long tradition of sound poetry and religious ecstasy. Partly recorded on Jon Marshall’s travels in Russia with St Petersberg resident Anton Auster these two sides are sharp like pickles with a lasting tang.
Side one: A live excursion jammed in St Petersburg starts like an experiment with speech from an impossible archive, micro-sounds isolated, presented and turned inside out for a gaggle of tweed elbow-patches. The lecture continues but moves into the chemistry lab; a pristine white coat mixing noxious chemicals all a’bubble and foamy. Rhythm is important to RTGM and loops move in eccentric orbits around each other, meeting in points; farewells no doubt tearful as they forever pull themselves apart. But it’s not all buttery beauty! There’s enough ‘crunch’, ‘squark’ and ‘fonk’ for the gruffest gong-farmer. In fact about halfway through side one everything kinda disintegrates into a morass of electronic gunk, shortwave gabble and tape squeal. A purgatory of choirs is summoned through the mire with a majestic sweep of the curtain, beckons in a new dawn of pained snivel.
Side two is mixed like a travelogue, switching from one place or mood to another but with a modesty and innocence. Shy words and the crunch of boots on fresh electric-snow open the proceedings; a black-out rave for the diesel-clogged tugboats that thump across the frozen harbour. This hums for a while then jack knives like This Heat’s Health & Efficiency with a propulsive yet lopsided whoozy sample driving a bright cavalcade of rips and shunts and liquid voice. More snatches of Russian conversation tease, a mouse-organ and reed thin whistles…tin-plate clicks and damaged music box mechanisms crackle with hidden purpose. Then to close the sampled speech, all lightly manipulated, turns into a charming thought piece and/or erotic lullaby ’ears, some gills mama cav-or’ that’s just as dishy as Steve Reich.
Sorry to get extra huggy-kissy but this is one god-damn essential experience. Like a tin bath…you gotta get in to drop out!
CKDH – Yr Putrid Eyeballs
An exceptional Black Metal logo always draws me in and the singular art work in this oversized cardboard CD case makes this a hard disc to ignore.
Razor-sharp tones (a high C#?) open ‘Your Putrid Eyeballs’ sliding over each other like greased jade. These thin green needles puncture the twilight (it’s getting dark as I type) and I notice that swinging my head from side-to-side makes them dance gently in the middle of the room. A brown and granular wash (think coffee grounds) plays a twin-tone melodie as liquid hydrogen rushes down a spiral staircase leaving toxic steam in its wake. The between-track silence is uncanny.
Beautiful austerity.
‘Fungal Air Creeping Adders’ jams on these strange radiophonic tones further, bunching them up to create a ripple, a rhythm and a steady bass-line crackle. It all sounds strangely contemporary and the sort of thing I imagine is played in an inner-city night club shortly before kicking out time; the feeling of dread and alienation is real. An occasional metallic scratching uncovers itself gradually, steadily becoming unnerving, unsettling…like something is about to shear off and screech out the stereo covered in nasty blisters. And then…just before the end a beautiful thing happens and two sine-wave tones modulate in just the right way to create a third tone, a harmony that sings like an angel. It only lasts a second but becomes the grit in the oyster, the seldom seen hint of violet in a rainbow.
All the more delicious for its rarity.
—ooOoo—
Angurosakuson WordPress (for physical objects)
Angurosakuson Bandcamp (for downloads)
Editor’s note: don’t fret if you visit the Poot or Total Vermin sites and can find no mention of the releases reviewed. Luke and Stuart both work within a jelly-like, highly-flexible notion of ‘time’ and should be contacted directly with enquiries as to availability.
barking at tornado: noise by yol, half an abortion and posset
May 2, 2013 at 7:49 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: dictaphonics, half an abortion, improv, joe murray, memoirs of an aesthete, new music, no audience underground, noise, pete cann, posset, tapes, total vermin, vocal improvisation, yol
Yol – cordless drill faces separation anxiety (CD-r, self-released)
Half an Abortion – Drowsy Seepage (CD-r, Memoirs of an Aesthete, MOA 2013-1)
Posset – The Glistening Fist (tape, Total Vermin, #81)
As well as being art worthy of contemplation in and of itself, all that dreamy psychedelia and rumbling noise-metal I listen to serves a valuable purpose. When my disposition is knotted and tangled (thus: most of the time) a dip in this universal ego solvent is most therapeutic. It isn’t suitable for every occasion, though. Sometimes I need music brimming with angry energy or anarchic humour to slap me out of a fug or compliment a brash good mood. Sometimes I want to laugh on the bus, in wide eyed appreciation of the spiky, ludicrous and invigorating. Thus, in certain circumstances a briskly cold shower is of more use to me than a luxurious warm bath. Here are three excellent examples of this type of cathartic racket.
The latest self-released CD-r from Yol, cordless drill faces separation anxiety, comes packaged in his usual stark, bleakly humorous graphics entirely appropriate to the stark, bleakly humorous contents. These seven tracks, totalling a tight 19 minutes, comprise perhaps the most accessible (at the risk of stretching the meaning of that word to breaking point) set that I’ve heard from him yet. There is some clipping and distortion, of course (how on earth do you set the levels for this?), but that is an integral part of the Yol sound, much like tape hiss is for Culver. In the main though the recording is clean and tidy, the lyrics are decipherable and a couple of these pieces include elements that could even be described as *cough, splutter* musical.
‘eco’, for example, has a harmonium accompaniment that suggests an unholy attempt to reanimate Ivor Cutler gone nightmarishly wrong (sorry Cutler fans. Too soon?). It also begins with seagulls cawing which gives the track a very odd, drowned, sea shanty vibe. The usual sound palette is also evident throughout so don’t panic about our man going soft. Dropped metal clatters, scrapes and spins on its axis as it rattles to a halt. Yol’s voice tears through a canine repertoire of yelps, roaring insta-crescendos, syllable-snapping gulps and retching spits. His is a complete, unique vision expressed with absolute commitment. Just fucking great.
The guy still no internet presence as such, just his YouTube channel and an email address (yol1971@hotmail.co.uk) that you can use to arrange a trade or sale.
Drowsy Seepage by Half an Abortion, the unfortunately named solo project of tyke Pete Cann, is a six track CD-r released by Phil Todd’s boutique concern Memoirs of an Aesthete. It comes packaged with the screen-printed cover pictured above. Now, the illustration isn’t entirely clear, and I hesitate to guess what is going on for fear of what it reveals about my imagination, but it sure looks like a King Kong style giant ape ejaculating hard through a torn up skyscraper. The sounds contained within aren’t as gonzo as this image suggests they might be, but there is a level of nihilistic exuberance and darkly surreal humour. For this is tabletop electronics: down, brutal and discombobulating when it needs to be, light and evasive as a winged insect the rest of the time.
My favourite track is the second, ‘A Lucky Strandage’: a rolling, squealing clatter like a saboteur sneaking along a factory production line of industrial robots, tasering each one as they pass, just to see them spasm. The best track, though, is the fifth, ‘Too Ripe to Drive’. Imagine skipping forward a few years and visiting a grindcore guitar hero now in his twilight years, infirm, faculties eroded by age, hands palsied and shaking. Not unhappy, but perpetually befuddled. Now imagine his mischievous grandchildren arriving with a guitar, a practice amp and a bunch of effects pedals, plugging them into each other in a haphazard fashion, handing the instrument to the confused but clearly delighted old man and chanting: ‘shred, grandad, shred!!’ This is what the result sounds like.
Visit the Memoirs of an Aesthete Bandcamp site to purchase.
Finally, we have The Glistening Fist by Posset, the solo guise of RFM’s North East co-correspondent Joe Murray, released by Stuart Arnot’s excellent tape label Total Vermin. What could the title refer to? Perhaps the charming developmental stage Thomas the Baby has just reached now that his saliva glands have been activated and coating his hands in drool has become a favourite pastime. Or could it be a video of a grotesquely perverted sexual act that has escaped from the quarantine of its ‘specialist’ audience and is now surging around the internet? Let’s hope the former, eh kids?
Joe’s trademark dictaphonic squigglecore is not front and centre this time around. Instead we begin with some bogman blues, which is cut short by (what I think is) Joe being called in for tea by his daughter. This sets the scene for a very entertaining tour of lo-fi cassette culture tropes filtered through his own shaggy joie de vivre. We are presented with a home-brewed concoction of grunting vocal improv, some hilariously treated to sound like gremlins dealing with a nasty bout of food poisoning, field recordings (gulls make an appearance here too at one point, coincidentally – I approve – more seaside noise please), groaning, shuddering loops and unfathomable clattering. It is charming, engaging and breathlessly pulls you through its short duration with the promise of even more weirdness around the next corner.
Visit the Total Vermin blog to find out how you can get this and other tremendous tapes for silly cheap.
guest post! extracts from the joe posset end-of-year round up! part two of two: conference of gurgles
December 12, 2012 at 7:11 am | Posted in musings, new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: acrid lactations, alt vinyl, blue spectrum, cabbage rosette, discombobulate, dylan nyoukis, handmade birds, hapsburg braganza, improv, jazzfinger, joe murray, luke poot, new music, no audience underground, noise, phil minton, posset, stuart arnot, total vermin
OK, for preamble from both me and from Joe Murray, guest author of this post, see part one below. No need to repeat ourselves here – on with part two:
(with continued apologies to those whose pictures I’ve stolen. Click on the linked bits for further info and/or purchasing details)
–ooOoo–
Hapsburg Braganza – Recurring Dreams LP x 2 (Alt Vinyl)
Guitar reigns supreme here. A faded, scrubbed, scuffed guitar sound that seems to slink along the skirting boards. Sombre chordings and plucks play with time, swinging in places (‘Dolomite 98’ is almost jolly; like a weary parent’s forced smile) adding space like Dub. To keep it all frosty Phil introduces the occasional fear piano (hear ‘In Holland Cloth’ brother and tremble) and dervish organ (mainline ‘Golding’s Eclipse’) with fog grey electronics smeared carefully over a few of the tracks. The biggest Hapsburg surprise is the addition of super subtle drums every now and again; courtesy of Bong’s Mike Smith. A lazy journalist would point to the drums and shout “A-Ha. Slow drums and slow guitar…that’s post-rock that is!” And of course they would be wrong. There’s an older tradition here. The tradition of the saga, the legend, the epic story shared between glowing faces over a roaring fire. Recurring Dreams is a lengthy wallowing in the Kingdom of Hapsburg…and this is a place where you need to take your time, pull up a stool, bathe your feet in the stream. Recorded mostly in the early hours, on the edge of sleep, gives Recurring Dreams a definite feel…we often talk of peripheral vision…could this claim to be the first example of peripheral listening?
Cabbage Rosette with Phil Minton – Ran out of breath licking elegy nipple, cough and fall to bits, tight chest as achievement? CD-R (Total Vermin)
Balls out skronk from Messers Poot & Vermin abetted by Mr ‘jazzface’ Minton on swelling tubes. Over-blown kitchen electronics huff each and every cough and splutter so the inward sigh becomes symphonic, the lip smack a thunderbolt. Squeaky doors or plastic tape cover are rattled to destruction (screeechhh, scraaaaaw) and the only recognisable ‘instrument’; a phat keyboard, blebs in dopey chimes, once, twice then not at all. Sounds are fairly poured over each over with abandon and mixed up with a hot spoon. There’s little structure or reason to this making it all the more fun and engaging. The frenzied jerk and Tourette’s tick keep the energy up. You can almost picture them, shoulders up to earholes, spazzing out on spittle warp. Things get more crimped towards the end when what sounds like some remedial turntable abuse plays up against mouth babble and the whole thing ends in a conference of gurgles and wet-fart lippings. 13 mins in total…the perfect length.
No Artist – Untitled aka Blue Spectrum – I Almost Drowned MC (Blue Spectrum Tapes)
Sorry about the mystery surrounding the name here. It’s all very confusing…if you’re trying to check it out it’s got a Pegasus on the cover. Released in a huge edition of 3! Flipping open the case and slapping this into the deck starts a strange claustrophobic trip. Recorded in the lowest of all know fidelities this sounds like a penguin colony getting their hands on some sharpened sticks and menacing the keepers. The bars of the enclosure are wired up to the mains and blasted apart using slow dynamite. Sparks fly, low crunching fills the air and before long blubber and blood lap up against the sides of the pool. Things get pretty nasty towards the end of side one with granite hammers being thrown at a giant insect-o-cutor. High tape strangeness in the mould of an early Prick Decay or pre-school Cock ESP or something. Side two couples its buffers to classic dark noise territory and sounds like massively amplified rolling stock slamming on the breaks and keeping them there for 25 mins. Metal on metal screech and heavy rumbling fuss make this a steam powered listen, all oily and soot covered sideburns. Refreshing as a Irn-Bru enema.
(Editor’s note: in the spirit of investigative journalism Joe contacted Simon of Blue Spectrum for further information and got the following response:
As far as the title and artist goes there wasn’t any, although I credited myself on discogs just to say who made it. I didn’t want it to have a name or title. On the spine there is ripped paper in place of where the artist and title would usually go. I think how you referred to it was perfect no artist – untitled aka blue spectrum ‘I almost drowned’ because it gives it an identity. The official label name is Blue Spectrum Tapes. This is the discogs page. I will be making another batch of these soon, maybe 10 or so copies.
…so now you know.)
Jazzfinger – Destroyed Form MC (Handmade Birds)
One sided cassette that opens the door to forbidden times. At some level all Jazzfinger records are an exercise in archaeology. Although I have a brand new tape in my hands the actual recordings could have been made 20 years ago and only now have filtered through the arcane and secret Jazzfinger process known only to Has, Ben and Sarah. As it happens this does invoke ‘early’ Jazzfinger when cymbals and organ played a much bigger part in the ritual. ‘Ocean is free’ sounds like my earliest memories of Jazzfinger with the singing-grainy organ, tape wobble and sickly cymbal tapping. ‘Sun Punishment’ lurches forward in time to the white-out-guitar-squall period blowing static clouds of electric fuss all over. This one is more badly behaved than most JF jams delving into metallic tantrum through to a come down of goblin hammers tinkling. The final jam ‘blown cotton woodland’ sounds like the soundtrack to some terrible conspiracy theory documentary on cable. A doomy horsefly buzzing in your ear, some backmasking sound manipulation drawing to a close of throbbed out organ bliss.
The Acrid Lactations – The Presidential cow is bound to the maypole MC (Total Vermin)
This tape pretty much takes every gob-punk cliché and bombs them back to year zero. Very fucking warped skronk and then some extra double girl on boy skronk are the order of the day. Things seem to be in both real time and then manipulated via bad-electronics at random, making for a discombobulating listen. Moaning and groaning is fighting with pinched throat gurgles, drawn out mouth drones stray to the fore with a more high pitched keening just at the edge of my (admittedly damaged) hearing. Regular instruments are jettisoned as being bourgeois in favour of the more democratic domestic rattles of: bird-pipes, concrete sacs being dragged, ice chinks in a glass of Dandelion & Burdock, ripped cardboard, amplified plastic bags, violently bubbled milk and yogurt pots etc. Helium high screes march over tape loops of ‘vurrrum-raaaam’ with indistinct clumsy DJ scratching like Grandmaster Flash’s first session on him moms hi-fi slipping a ‘high on crack’ sample against falling down the stairs drum machine. There’s a bluesy quality to some of this…god know how that got into here…and then, just before you can dismiss this as aimless fucking about I’m reminded this is just a fag paper away from James Tenny’s classic tape piece ‘Blue Suede’ from 1961. The Lactations know their history man! For today and today only this tape has the distinction of being the exact end point of what music is and what it can achieve. Awright!
Dylan Nyoukis – The Acrylic Widow Vinyl (Discombobulate)
As of writing this is still unreleased but early 2013 will see this burst forth like pus. There are four measured tracks here.
- Dry coughs and outta-wack piano chords play into Boy Scout bike repairs, ‘test the bell, spin the wheel!’ Hot air leaks from a perished rubber hose. With knuckles like hazelnuts, these sounds shine like delicately laid cobblestones, laid end-to-end without no fuss or haste, they are tram tracks. Late night thumps, ‘boof, baff’ and a lousy Soft Machine organ solo talks a Brighton raver down from gritted jaw oblivion.
- Ideas are put through the wringer in stereo effect. The domestic bric-a-brac builds up: a motorcycle revving, the dry crunch of gravel underfoot…a jumble sale of sweaty woollens, singing out through pinched throat to make un-sense of the phrase ‘iss, sum bear-lae-um’. An unexpected kitchen sink gamelan makes for a feverish listen. Tension is introduced via leathery lunged accordion but there’s no crass crescendo. Fading out like pinched guts.
- Euro voices abound in tangled syntax. Verbs sounds & nouns renamed. Sure, there’s blubber and chunder…’you, you, you and me’ that’s slam-up-bang to babby titter-chat for starters. Then the downs come in, re-directed by taut tape loops making the ecstatic, grooving on the surface of bubble. The proclamation, ‘I’m right here’ leaves us in no doubt who you are sharing your damp bedsit with tonight, slurping up the old wine as red as pooled blood.
- Another take on the stretched ritual. A parrot squawks underwater struggling for fresh O2. Furious eraser scurrying action is met with the stony silence of a 14 year old girl while apples crunch between strong white teeth. Our old friends, words, are worried and fretted in a dark experiment; turned over looking for new seams and valves to shuck and prise open like ripe clams until mucus-like muscle slips free and falls to the flagstones below.
This is a living séance with The Acrylic Widow. Wisdom from the Old Ones, the thin Venn diagram slice between frantic scuttling & sweet Miskatonic stoned.
–ooOoo–
…and so we end the extract with a fittingly festive Lovecraft reference. Many thanks again to Joe for his kind permission to post these great reviews. His complete 2012 round-up will be available at the end of the month over at the Posset myspace blog. Reading it, and chasing up the goodies that it describes, will give you something to do in that null week between Christmas and New Year after you’ve broken all your new toys…
wired for sound part 34: new from total vermin
December 1, 2012 at 1:08 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: acrid lactations, core of the coalman, drone, fordell research unit, hard pan, hobo sonn, Ian Murphy, improv, new music, no audience underground, noise, smear campaign, stuart arnot, tapes, total vermin
Core of the Coalman – Stain (Total Vermin, #65, C59)
Fordell Research Unit – The True Meaning of Red (Total Vermin, #66, C32)
Acrid Lactations – Crude Paintings on Porcelain (Total Vermin, #67, C37)
Hard Pan and Hobo Sonn – Soup Electric and Roll (Total Vermin, #71, C26)
Smear Campaign – Love in an Heroic Vernacular (Total Vermin, #72, C36)
Stuart Arnot, boss of prolific tape and CD-r label Total Vermin, likes to put on a spread. Rather than drip feed us his releases one at a time he prefers to prepare a banquet, a smorgasbord long-promised then presented triumphantly in full on the Total Vermin blog.
I can see the sense in this approach: one big promo push covers a raft of releases, simultaneous availability encourages multiple purchases which are, in turn, easier to post in batches. Economies of scale and all that. The only problem is getting excitable punters such as me to sit still, chew their food and digest each course properly before gorging on the next. Over the last month or so I’ve been savouring the five tapes above from the latest menu. I’m finally at the picking-my-teeth, calling-for-the-bill, sending-my-compliments-to-the-chef stage of the meal.
First up is Stain by Core of the Coalman. Jorge keeps it simple: a full hour (in two halves) of slowly evolving variations on a fuzzed-up viola loop. What at first seems like a Tony Conrad-ish endurance test took a few minutes to pop my bubble of mental resistance (soap-film thin at the best of times) then mind freed, my arse did follow. I was soon dancing naked on the driveway of Midwich Mansions. This tape is hard, lovely.
Fordell Research Unit is flavour of the month round here and The True Meaning of Red is a late contender for tape of the year in the hotly contested ‘droning fuzz roar’ section. Five short to mid-length tracks, all beautifully balanced, all sharing the delicious alchemy of a poached egg coagulating in fiercely boiling water. The whole thing invokes a feeling that we are rarely treated to: total, magisterial, soul-cleansing satisfaction. A must buy.
Now we come a series of tapes illustrating what might be called the Total Vermin house sound. Whilst the girth of Stuart’s impeccable taste is impressively meaty, listen to a bunch of TV tapes – especially those involving Stuart himself – and you’ll start to recognize variations on a similar groove. It isn’t coolly academic meta-music, nor is it balls-out fire music, rather a kind of all-in, kitchen sink improv. Recordings are lo-fi, but components are not mashed together, detail is maintained and no sharpness is dulled. It exists in its own world where ‘real’ instrumentation muscles in on everyday activity and makes the commonplace enigmatic and musical. The approach is perfectly at home on tape and housed in the vibrant paint and crayon colours of the packaging.
Examples? Take your pick. Soup Electric and Roll is by Hard Pann and Hobo Sonn which unpacks as Stuart, Pascal Nichols and Luke Poot who are joined for this recording by Ian Murphy. Side A is all stomping, knocking electronics with subtleties bobbing to the surface, side B is a sublime, too-wide-eyed choir of Nurse With Wound-ish unvocalizations. Compelling late night listening or discombobulating walkman contents for the commute.
Love in an Heroic Vernacular is Stuart solo in his Smear Campaign guise. A band name like that might lead you to expect power electronics or harsh noise but not a bit of it. Instead you get in-between-train-carriages whistling wind, queasily arrhythmic percussion, clouds of robot starlings, skittering electronics and mournful trumpet. At one point the entire mix is dropped down a well. It’s like the alien funk of 1970s Miles filtered through ectoplasmic gel and played at half-speed. Terrific.
Finally, we have Crude Paintings on Porcelain by the wonderfully named Acrid Lactations, a duo of Stuart and Susan Fitzpatrick. Possibly the most lo-fi of these productions, it was apparently recorded in a shower room and, as the occasional sound of running water proves, the fixtures and fittings were pressed into service. Side A is rumbling, popping improv percussion using whatever implements and instruments they could drag in whilst still being able to close the door. It sounds like Paul Hession trapped in a cupboard and trying to alert the search party. This is augmented with some unplaceable trilling and circuit-bent stylophone stylings and finishes with Susan and Stuart hallucinating the trumping horns and jangling cowbells of a procession of tiny Swiss goat-herds as they march across the linoleum. Side B starts in a contemplative fashion before the goat-herds return in buoyant mood having eaten some mouldy bread and interesting looking mushrooms in the meantime. The second half has a more ominous feel as a foot-long giant bee starts banging its head against the shower room window. I dig it.
To buy this stuff visit the Total Vermin blog, make your selections – tapes at £2.50 a throw plus postage – and email Stuart at smearcampaign@hotmail.com for an all-in quote.
artifacts of the no-audience underground: recent human combustibles
August 10, 2012 at 7:09 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: ashtray navigations, electronica, human combustion engine, human horses, improv, medusa, mel delaney, memoirs of an aesthete, new music, no audience underground, noise, part wild horses mane on both sides, phil todd, tapes, total vermin
Ashtray Navigations – Three Spots Two Circles (Medusa, 014, 2 x 3″ CD-r with poster, edition of 50)
Human Combustion Engine V – Bible Whistle (Total Vermin, #76, cassette)
Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides + Human Combustion Engine = Human Horses (Memoirs Of An Aesthete, CD in digipak, edition of 250)
So, Phil and Mel hand me some new stuff, right, and it is well smart so I decide to write about it, yeah, so I look back through the blog to find my last piece on the AshNav axis to make sure that I repeat any running jokes or overworked metaphors that I’ve annoyed them with before and, to my horror, I discover that I’ve said nothing about Three Spots Two Circles! Nowt!
I’m not sure how/why this dodged the review pile but I suspect it was because I thought it had sold out at source – Medusa – almost instantly. I might have been wrong (please check) but I don’t like to risk upsetting my sensitive readers by singing the praises of an unavailable item. Still, as a terrific release by my favourite band I have to at least note it in passing. From the eye-opening, Pendereckish scraped strings of ‘Forced Orchestra One’, through the more recognizably Ashnavian tropical psych of, well, the rest of it, the level of humour, invention and groove is maintained at a knock-out pitch. The package is exquisite too – a lovely foldout poster in Renaissance gold, black and white hides two individually wrapped 3″ CD-rs. Double mini-CD-r = format of champions. Let’s move swiftly on to two items that are (almost) definitely available…
Human Combustion Engine V – Bible Whistle, is a one-lengthy-track-per-side cassette on the surprisingly-lovely-given-the-name Total Vermin. The cover features the enormously be-conked, perma-grinning plaster face of Mr. Noseybonk – a nightmare-inducing mime from 80s children’s television series Jigsaw. Perhaps the less said about him the better.
Anyway, this be the fifth outing of Phil and Mel’s synth duo incarnation (hence the ‘V’). As you might expect given the instrumentation, there are tangerine passages but it isn’t overly krautish nor does it feel at all like pastiche, or even homage for that matter. If you want layers of low-end robo-dystopian rumble or epic synth washes then you can find ‘em – especially on side two’s ‘The Importance of Whistle Boards’ – but there is also plenty of agile tweakery going on which pushes things forward in an angular and involving fashion. Let’s examine, for example, the opening to side one’s ‘Holiday Bible Week’ which begins in a spacey manner but this isn’t 2001: A Space Odyssey spacey, more knitted-out-of-pink-wool Oliver Postgate spacey. As the atmosphere surrounding the trilling and warbling darkens the new genre of electro-doom-clanger is birthed before our very ears.
An excellent companion piece to the stuff by Cloughy recently reviewed below. At the time of writing this isn’t up on the Total Vermin blog yet but you could always drop Stuart a line at smearcampaign@hotmail.com and enquire as to what is up.
Finally, we have a proper pressed CD in a larily coloured digipak released by Phil’s own label Memoirs of an Aesthete. Usefully, the project is explained by its own title: Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides + Human Combustion Engine = Human Horses so there you go. Pascal Nichols (percussion) and Kelly Jayne Jones (flute, electronics and piano) join the HCE synthers for an improvised 40 minute performance recorded by RFM-chap-of-the-year-contender Andy Jarvis, Heathen Earth style, in front of a select audience.
I was very interested to hear how this was going to fit together. Would the synths of HCE be mobile, reactive and spacious enough to accommodate, say, the delicacy and emotional potency of KJJ’s flute? Would the remarkable, rolling, free drumming of PN really get its claws in or would it just skitter over the surface? Silly me for even asking. All the elements augment and amplify each other, creating a multi-faceted whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Imagine you are about to embark on a giant jigsaw (I’m talking about the tabletop time-killing activity now, not Mr. Noseybonk) of a tropical jungle scene. The picture is always there, in prospect, from the moment you tip the pieces out of the box, before you even start to solve the puzzle. However, it won’t resolve itself until you make some progress in assembling it, then it gradually becomes clearer and clearer until it is fully revealed by the satisfying placement of the last piece.
OK, now picture yourself as retired and therefore a fiend for jigsaws. This is some distance in the future, of course, and now jigsaws are high tech things with shape-shifting pieces that change each time you waggle your iBrain implants. Also, not only does the picture gradually take shape as you put it together but an immersive scene of lush plant life, strange insects, heat haze and exotic bird calls – stuff you can hear and see – is created at the same time. Repeat listens to Human Horses is like that. Buy here.
wired for sound part 22: ocelocelot and asymptotem
February 20, 2012 at 1:12 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: ashtray navigations, asymptotem, drone, mel delaney, melanie o'dubhslaine, new music, no audience underground, noise, ocelocelot, tapes, total vermin
Ocelocelot – The Umbragechord (Total Vermin #46)
Asymptotem – Four Lines Cross (Total Vermin #58)
Slavishly following Mark Wharton’s impeccable Idwal Fisher blog – as I do, as you must – led me to pick up these two tapes from the exquisitely named Total Vermin: a lo-fi, hi-quality tape and CD-r label that you should definitely be acquainted with. I even handed over hard cash as Stuart Vermin was in a state of post-Christmas skintness and unable to countenance a trade. At first I wasn’t going to write this piece: Mark had done a bang-up job already, I’d paid and was therefore free of moral obligation and the review pile is teetering again but, but, but… they are both so great that I had to at least mention them in passing.
Four Lines Cross by Asymptotem is described on the Total Vermin blog as follows:
Recorded on a balmy early-summer Sunday evening in Stoke-on-Trent, without talisman Joincey, robbed by the national rail network. Large ensemble drone approaching beauty at times, especially on the opening flute duet between Mikarla de Oliveira (Sculptress) and Kelly Jones (Part Wild Horses Mane on Both Sides). Blossoms into a blast of flute, cello, trumpet, guitar, bass, synthesizer, vocals and percussion, with the line-up completed by Andrew Jarvis, Jim Brindley, Michael Walsh and Stuart Arnot.
…but this is overly humble and modestly literal. This (mostly) acoustic, English pastoral improvisation sounds like a medieval Vibracathedral Orchestra. It is exactly as delightful as Mark asserts so, in a shockingly lazy piece of blogjacking, I insist that you read his full account here.
Ocelocelot is Melanie O’Dubhslaine, better known ‘round these parts as that Mel from Ashtray Navigations, and her tape is even better than Mark suggests. The Umbragechord gets the short final section of a lengthy and entertaining post which first castigates the idiocy of The Wire magazine then praises the genius of the aforementioned AshNav. All that I need to add is an explanation of how jealous I am of Mel’s achievement here. Side one, ‘inaudible frequencies being removed’, throbs and side two, ‘Nobody knows this is everywhere’, drones both with a cool fury that I have attempted to achieve with midwich many times. I have rarely been as successful.
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