crater lake festival 2015
March 18, 2015 at 12:24 pm | Posted in live music, new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: benjamin hallatt, charles dexter ward, crater lake festival, culver, dale cornish, dictaphonics, drone, dylan nyoukis, electronica, evil moisture, improv, jerome smith, joe murray, kay hill, kieron piercy, lee stokoe, live music, luke vollar, marlo eggplant, matching head, mel o'dubhslaine, new music, no audience underground, noise, pete cann, phil todd, posset, psychedelia, rudolf eb.er, shameless self-congratulation, sof, sophie cooper, stephen cornford, stuart chalmers, tapes, vocal improvisation, yol
Whoo, boy – where to start with Crater Lake? Maybe with the simple and declarative: Crater Lake Festival is a day-long celebration of experimental music held annually in March at Wharf Chambers in Leeds and is organised by Pete Cann. Them’s the facts. However, over the four years of its existence it has grown into something over and above a display of the curator’s unimpeachable taste and ‘iron fist in a velvet glove’ approach to time keeping: it has become a gathering of the clan. As well as being an unrivalled opportunity to see the risen cream of ‘noise’ (some in combos suggested by Pete himself) perform to a large and appreciative crowd, you also get the equally important social side. Names are put to smiling faces, hand are shaken, warez exchanged, plots hatched – all taking place in a general air of slightly delirious enthusiasm fuelled by the constant flow of decent, fairly-priced alcohol.
This blog is known for a phrase coined as shorthand description of the scene it documents but I am steering clear of that for now. I don’t want to co-opt something that is clearly greater than the sum of its parts and can’t be pigeonholed. I will say this though: when I noticed that Pete had hooked some relatively big fish for the bill, and saw the Arts Council logo had snuck onto the corner of his poster, I asked him how he’d managed to successfully tap ’em for funding. He replied, to my delight, that he’d used my write up of last year’s festival as the blurb for his application and they couldn’t wait to shower him with cash. Despite knowing that the Arts Council has recently taken an almighty bollocking for being Londoncentric and that any application from Winterfell was going to be seriously considered, it was still a very proud moment. There you go, people: this stuff matters. Hang on a second, I seem to have something in my eye…
<sniffs, turns to window, regains composure, harumphs manfully>
OK, a word about the below. Due to family commitments – a visit from my parents to celebrate the second birthday of my son Thomas – I could only attend for the three hours from 8pm to 11pm. To be honest, given the stinking cold I had, that is probably all I could manage anyway. So, having spent the afternoon chasing the kid around Home Farm at Temple Newsam (and marveling at turkeys that looked like monsters from Doctor Who, or an illustration by Ian Watson) I arrived flustered and discombobulated into an already pretty drunken milieu. Suspecting this would be the case I had already tasked the other four RFM staffers attending (alas, Chrissie had to be elsewhere recording an orchestra) with documenting the day so all I had to organize was a group photo.
In the piece that follows the author of the paragraph is indicated in bold like this – Luke: – and interjections about non-musical aspects of the day are (bracketed and in italics). Photographs of the workshop were taken by Sof (using the ‘nice’ camera) and the awesome pictures of the performers were taken by Agata Urbaniak and kindly donated to RFM for use in this piece. I am hugely grateful to her – and to marlo for having the presence of mind to ask – and recommend that you all visit her flickr site too.
Right then, let’s go!
—ooOoo—
(Joe: Too early! We – one half of the Newcastle delegation – arrive too early at Wharf Chambers. We spot an Evil Moisture prepare for his evil workshop through the crack in the door but take the old army maxim on board – eat when you can – and scoff a scrumptious Persian meal at the place round the corner. A brief sojourn to Leeds market is broken by a call from YOL. We can sound check so I make my way back to base camp. Pete’s relaxed event management skills pay dividends. Everyone knows/does their job. Things tick like Swiss time. The super-patient sound guy balances our 10 second sound check, we nod satisfied with the racket and slope off to meet ace faces Ben Hallatt & Dale Cornish cackling in the Wharf Chambers sun trap.)
The workshop
Sof: I fought my way through Saturday afternoon Leeds crowds to make it to Wharf Chambers just in time for the Evil Moisture / Andy Bolus Ghost Hunting Detector workshop. We had been instructed to bring along a non-metallic cylindrical object, basic soldering skills and undead ancestors. I’m sure I had the first two with me at least.
We all gathered round a table in the middle of the bar on which we found various items I came to know as ‘cells’, wires and other dangerous looking bits. I’m generally quite scared of electronics (old residual fear of metal work at school no doubt) and so always sign up for activities like this to try and get over this issue. Andy’s approach to the workshop was really relaxed with his main instruction being a hand drawn diagram that he placed in front of 4 of us before letting us get on with it. He was available to answer questions and sort out our various mistakes – great teaching style. This helped to kerb my concerns, I mean, if he could be so chilled holding a wand that can melt metal then why shouldn’t I be too?
There were a lot of confused and frustrated faces around the table during the process but these all turned into massive grins when the detectors finally worked out. It took me nearly 2 hours to attach the cells to a battery and a long wire wrapped around a giant pencil but you know what, it bloody worked. I mean, I’m not sure if the loud squealing noises that were produced from this thing were communications from the other side but when I stuck it into an amp through a bit of reverb at home some use was envisaged. In retrospect I shouldn’t have drank a really strong black coffee during the process because the shaky hands did become a bit of an issue but I got there in the end!
(Joe: While the laboratory is an evil hive of evil activity the wonderful folk of the N-AU turn up, firstly in ones and twos, then huddles, then mobs. I meet Sophie for the first time and gasp in awe at the purple camera she’s sporting so rakishly. The N-AU are prompt, alert and full of relaxed bonhomie. Crater Lake has started!)
Joe: fractured electronics garbled and yarbled straight outta Mel’s mini-mouth – possibly reading out what she was doing (I’m lowering the volume on this tape, I’m adding more reverb on this channel) – via a Dutch translation aid and robot clarinet. The vocal musings were calmly paced, relaxed and with an electronic softening that tickled the tiled floor all nice. Phil Navigations joined in on cyber-Taiko drum to muss things proper towards the end. Ke-tung!
Luke: droll Yorkshire instructions fed through robot vocoder. About five minutes in it dawned on me that I could listen to this quite happily for hours. My mate thought I’d left because Phil turned up and it was in danger of going ‘all musical’ not so: my chalice had run dry.
Joe: (view from the floor) dunno about this, lots of knees and boots, getting awful hot awful quick, Yol clatters…HIT IT!
Boof/~~~scree/HAWKS////zingzingzing/~~II~~:~~BAU~~~~/CLANK. The end.
Cor. That felt good.
Luke: yowser this was fun like visceral high energy free gumph played with the contents of a skip, lots of gurning growling and testifying.
Marlo: the interesting element of this performance is that opposed to some electronic noise acts that seem distanced or detached from actual live performing, these two were very alive, very awake and fully present in a visceral and physical way. Yol, as usual, used his body as his instrument to full capacity. Apparent in his performance were both his sensitivity to environment and his physiological response to Mr. Posset’s intuitive electronic gestures. Both, not shy to show some presence, expressed a reciprocal appreciation of live art.
(Joe: Later… the food comes out full to bursting with Pascal’s grapes… I’m too keyed up to eat but notice it gets a thumbs up from Lee Culver who, no shit readers, is a proper gourmet/baking behemoth. Top Marks.)
Joe: top drawer Dictaphone thumb-nastics from Stuart. The whirr and ‘scree’ of fast forwarding tape was a joy to hear as it bounced from one hand to another; Stuart flinging his luscious black locks like a metalhead and shaking like a nervous cicada. Even my tin ear picked up the subtle tape preparations and timings as skronk melted effortlessly into ethnic-plink with industrial overtones. Of course no one knows what Stuart really looks like…he threw his Kim Thayil wig into the crowd and disappeared into the balmy Leeds afternoon.
Luke: about three beers in this was lush green elephant tea. I dig the candles, the wig, the ritual maaan. Led to an interesting conversation outside. Seems in the N-AU you got your tapes lovers and your tapes haters (known as ‘taters’)
I’d rather watch him play the sounds than play a tape of it
…one geezer remarked.
He was playing a zither thing!
I retorted in his defense. I myself am pro tapes: the wow, the flutter, the plastic encased mystery.
Joe: Ben Hallatt set up an impressive reel-to-reel machine and facilitated the sound of a monkey opening a recalcitrant jar of peanut butter through the fragile, disintegrating brown tape. A play in two parts, this simian housekeeping was taken over by a more keening, knock-kneed hubble-style. All glorious drippings to clear out me waxy tabs.
Luke: my highlight of the day. Tape music with lots of pop and hiss but with, if not a tune, then a beguiling pattern. I struggled to verbalize how impressed I was to the man himself and was astounded that he had no merchandise to pass on (you haven’t heard the last of Kay Hill, readers).
Marlo: Ben Hallatt performed a nuanced, textured and atmospheric tape art set. Despite the surging, celebratory atmosphere of Crater Lake, he held a patient and meditative space. Starting from a minimal structure, he added an elaborate architecture that was sturdy and mindful. The performance was a sound journey that led the audience through this construction and left them in a different place.
Joe: Canary Yellow computer splutter. Spitting and frothing like a thousand tiny tummy kicks from the blue shrimps inside. Marie said to me,
It sounded like the 90’s.
I said,
What. All of it?
She said,
Sure, in Belgium.
I’m no flat pancake!
Marlo: I had previously seen Dale the week before in Nottingham. His mood was quite different this time. With alert attention, he proceeded to command his laptop to amuse, irritate, and tickle the audience. If I were to have a party, I would invite Dale. Always enjoyable, instead of baking him a birthday cake to compliment last week’s set, based on this performance I would make him profiteroles. Thus instead of a treat that is made for pure enjoyment, celebration, and taste, a pastry as work of art which takes many steps prior to presentation (and I like profiteroles a lot).
Joe: Soundtrack to Night of the Living Squelch that somehow managed to dissect Dylan & Kieron so one duo played breathing noises: hisses, coughs and sighs and the other ‘ghost’ duo played the sound of the first duo running their outputs through resinous pinecones. By gently slapping their foreheads bubbles of gas birthed from parted lips adding a metallic sheen. Please stop me if I’m getting too technical.
(Joe: Later…. booze is consumed, hands shook and booty exchanged. Among the hugs plans are hatched and reputations blackened! Later… we meet the boss. In what must look like a comical gesture to onlookers we both reach out one hand to shake and another to pass cdr/tapes/notes to each other.)
Joe: Erotic Jerome is the most focused man in the N-AU. Every twitch and tremor of his hands opened another subtle filter, let out a deceptive synth note or texturised the canvas with his painterly guitar thribbings. Guess what? Watching CDW reminded me of that Keef.
What do you think about when you’re playing?
Asked the handsome young Vee-jay.
I don’t think on stage. I feel,
came the raspy reply. Nuff Said.
Marlo: I had the immense pleasure of being acquainted with Jerome after his stellar set at Tusk Festival. This time, the layers and processing felt more dense. Every time I felt as though I had embraced a new element of his guitar mosaic, I was being introduced to yet another level of intensity that abandoned yet built upon the previous input. It was a rich and powerful piece.
Rob: I got my non-euclidean groove on and shimmied like a tentacle. It was cyclopean. Who would have thought such a nice guy could be an Old One in human form?
(Joe: Later…a fart in front of Elkka Reign Nyoukis makes her laugh so hard it drowns out the nearby trains. Later…it’s a Warhol of confusion. The heat and the noise and the crowd means conversations start, stop, merge and scatter. I’m bending ears all over. Later…The RFM photo op. I never realised our erstwhile photographer was the legendary Idwal himself! Our handsome group is propped up by my screamingly odd face.)
Rob: The evidence! Five sixths of RFM: me, Sof, Luke, Joe, Marlo – Chrissie sadly couldn’t make it as she was recording an orchestra. Cheers to Uncle Mark for taking the picture.
Marlo: As they said in Videodrome (1983),
Long live the New Flesh!
I say this because I felt like Cornford was battling with the mind melting controlling of vertical and horizontal holds, in a telekinetic struggle with amplitude and frequency, he went head-to-head with his multiple television screens. He was absorbed. I was absorbed. I think the visuals that seemed to translate his audio concoctions were pretty. I would love to see more of his work.
Rob: I felt like the little girl in Poltergeist (1982) but I wasn’t communing with the dead, rather a race of electric creatures attempting to re-programme my bonce with strobing logic. They may have succeeded. I await the trigger word from Mr. Cornford.
(Rob: Sof, Sof! Where are you? I think Sof and Jake’s last train beckoned around this point)
Joe: Rich sarcophagus music. Prostrated like a monk with a Casio, Culver played the sound of the tides spiced with deep orange paprika. Ebb and flow washes over you easily for sure but remember Culver’s dark gravity pins you to the planet like a moth in a cabinet.
Luke: whilst Charles Dexter Ward embraced the crowd with his pink love drone in a highly pleasing manner, Culver extended the black tentacles of Cthulu and left us powerless facing the ghastly pit of torment. I am inebriated at this point and only roused from my Culver trance by my pal clinking glasses, it’s a fine moment: we are ridiculously close to the high priest himself. There can be only one.
Marlo: Culver is remarkable in that he uses similar gear and techniques to others whilst adding something completely signature and unique. I would say that Culver is one of the best drone artists in the UK. His monastic and constant involvement with his gear makes for a compelling performance. Despite the darkness that he chooses to invoke with sound, there is a clear joy interspersed amongst the high frequencies.
Rob: I make a mental note of all in the crowd who talk during Lee’s set. There will be a reckoning. A RECKONING!
(Luke: sad to say I had to miss Evil Moisture and Rudolf Eb.Er but I was successful in navigating my way home. Cheers Pete, see you next year!)
Joe: A Very Wonderful Fucking Sloppy Mess (AVWFSM). Long, long loops of disgruntled squirm get run through the Bolus-zone to come out triple-strength odd. With nothing to hold on to the free fall becomes increasing delicious.
Marlo: When watching Andy Bolus, one wishes that they had superpowers like photographic memory or the ability to time travel. The issue is that normal human capacities do not allow for full visual comprehension of the devices across his two tables and to simultaneously be absorbed by the sounds. There is just so much going on! From the crazy inventor’s lab of his set up to the enveloping waves of sound, my body was compelled to move. Pushed up close to the stage with several other victims of unintentional movement, I held onto a monitor to make sure I didn’t collapse from my undulations. These movements are, by far, my favourite response to good noise. His detailed dynamics had a light touch. Well paced yet not predictable in his shifts, Andy seemed to be using his whole body, even his feet to make the monster chewing sounds. But there were purposeful and understated details placed delicately through sound blasts and running engines. Not sonic saturated and definitely not shy, Evil Moisture’s intuitive performance was well worth the wait.
(Rob: at this point I bow out myself and trot off for the second-to-last bus home very happy with how the day has gone. I’m in such a good mood that when I discover the New Blockaders tape Joe gave me earlier is leaking oil onto the other merch in my bag all I do is chuckle. Ahh, occupational hazard.)
Marlo: One of the best things about seeing noise and improvisational music played live is the feeling that what one witnessed is unique and unrepeatable. Experience a performance by a sound artist like Ruldolph Eb.Er, for example, and you know immediately that what you saw and heard will never occur again the same way. In this case, it might be the fact that several Crater Lakers had lost their marbles on booze and kept hollering throughout the set. That was a bit unfortunate but his professionalism didn’t allow one moment of lack of concentration. I use the word ‘dynamic’ a lot when I talk about noise and sound art, often using it to describe movement. However, in this case, Rudolf’s use of tension and silence is signature to his style. Silences punctuated the set and left the audience irritable and anticipating each aural stimulation. Personally, I was enthralled by the spectacle – I felt prone to his ‘psychoaccoustic’ gestures and was dizzy with confusion. My favorite part of his set was when he placed some nodes covered with a black, inky sound conductive substance on his face and head whilst appearing startled and trembling. I like to think he was slightly losing his mind with the audience but by the end he was fully composed and I felt freaking grateful I had stayed cognizant enough to appreciate all the different acts contained within the piece.
Joe: It had been a very long day. Whist I don’t approve of public drunkenness I am charmed by the tipsy. All my notes say is:
good oaky noise but possible Harkonnen spy.
I think it’s about this point that my brain packed up…
—ooOoo—
…which is an appropriately wonky note on which to end. Alas, that is that for another year. Many thanks to all involved – performers, venue and attendees – with special back-slapping to Pete Cann for making it happen. It was a terrific day. See y’all next time.
—ooOoo—
Photo credits:
Agata Urbaniak: performers
Sophie Cooper: workshop
Mark Wharton: Team RFM
scunnered, holding a pickle: joe murray indulges with chocolate monk
February 27, 2015 at 12:57 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: blood stereo, chocolate monk, dylan nyoukis, improv, joe murray, karen constance, new music, no audience underground, noise, vocal improvisation
Dylan Nyoukis – Scunnered at Breakfast (CD-r and text inserts, Chocolate Monk, choc.299, edition of 50)
Blood Stereo – Rid Raw (tape, Chocolate Monk, choc.300, edition of 20)
Dylan Nyoukis – Scunnered at Breakfast
This booby is 25 mins long and formed of two waxy-cream hemispheres. Dylan kicks off in balls-out Holy-Mystical-Roller mood with a lulling and lowing, slightly shifting, accordion loop that puts a stoner nod on your basic livestock (goats, cattle, llama etc). Cud-scented breath busily excites the brittle reeds with a ‘whhuuuuuuhhh – whuuuuuuuhhh’. Gosh! It’s like accidently tripping over some classic organ piece; Psych Mouldfield’s Tubular Balls or something as eventually flutters of speech and slivers of stomach-ache gas right in through the swollen yellow belly. I’m goofing off over the stretching that’s going on here and it takes me right back to a fragrant memory-bomb: thinning bright oils with stinky turpentine, just like it was yesterday. After approximately 8 minutes of kneading this pale wash a whole bunch of crispy characters get an invitation to the dusty rodeo. Familiar faces rub their paws together with some names new to me. So (koff koff) on the mike, it’s head-cheese from…
Hitomi Arimoto, Marco Cazzella, Seymour Glass, Paul Kirk, Ludo Mich, Angela Sawyer, Norman Shaw and Erkki Sinnemaki
…all magi-mixed with a steady hand on the capstans.
Scunnered. The guest’s sounds turn to speech, words fracture meaning. Scunnered. Slowed talking stories from assembled heads, multiple-layered voices, pinched taped squall. Scunnnnered. Placement plays with sense & non-sense; reptilian repetition leaks into my gut. My brain (eager to please) takes these sleazy pieces and stitches together a map with key designed by Flavor Flav and Sen Dog. Skunnn-nered. I follow the contours and with the handy charts supplied work my way through the (SKUNNE’RRD) text,
…flurr
flutchy
fluther
fluze
flype
flyrd
foal
foarrie
fob
foachel
fochen
fock…
mouthing along with the international word-set, puckering my lips in a dry whistle and filling my neck pouches with greedy air to bellow a long and low mewl. That thing happens when sibilant hisses all come together like an MC5 jam, riffing on the chord, and building intensity around a single abstract moment. The source doesn’t matter so much…it’s the heart with which you execute the exercise. Scuuuuunnnnnurrreeeeeddddddd.
Phew. My Kelman-flaps flicker. Let’s get this shit on the National Curriculum, eh?!
BTW…the random Radio Free Midwich quality check suggests that while I score high on gonzo it’s far too low on eyeball-scrape. I’m all about the soundz (man) so often forget to mention the rusty packets this shit gets sent in. No more! Attached are pics of this whole goofy package. You can sing–a-long my friends and gaze at our knighted host. See…I listen!
Blood Stereo – Rid Raw
This ruby red tape holds the accolade of being Chocolate Monk 300. Think about it. That’s Three Hundred soft-tissue missiles delivered on target. Three hundred brain-pans re-tuned and soured. And three hundred beautiful objects to line up and believe in when you’re up against the mundane cruelty of early 21st Century life.
Blimey…I’m getting all emotional…I better just talk about the music eh?
It’s tape in two parts right?
(a) futtle-the-pin It goes “Kuff, Kuff.” There’s street noise and lavatorial water-gurgle. This is pieced together like a Junk Opera where two layers of sound overlap each other, two layers of consciousness leak into one omni-strata. The arresting ordinariness of some of the sounds – cat’s crying, bird song and distant traffic ‘shooosh’ play like a new exotic into the Dr Who tape melt. Then a slammed cell door makes this a dub and I understand the dread that runs beneath this whole side.
(b) outen-under starts with strange kissing cousins: a violent choking and Chinese flute that’s just about the most uplifting sound ever. A strange under-the-duvet recording of deep lungs wraps itself up in a gentle clanking (the mechanism for a dry dock pumping out oily water perhaps) like a sweet spring roll; crispy on the outside, gelatinous within. The Chinese theme continues, tinting the air in my dank writing corner, refreshing and fragrant as freshly picked jasmine with the insistent electronic bubbling adding a splash of vinegar! Then the weird gets spread about like tick-cream and the lost voices/spooky keys/frog-goff starts to resemble a future dream I might have tomorrow – faceless bodies hum and vibrate, hair sprouts out of palms. An old horse-drawn carriage clip-clops down the forest track, led by nuns lashed to the bridle.
Sick of reading my shit yet? You wanna one-liner eh? It’s the best bloody Blood Stereo side for ages man…go find it doof!
Oh yeah…I made a promise to mention the art. The cover art seems to be penned by the same hand as Scunnered with thick, black lines carving out an image that would have fit nicely into 2000AD’s Cursed Earth landscape. Their Muties were genuinely disturbing man…and this bugger’s holding a pickle.
—ooOoo—
[Editor’s note: alas, both releases now sold out – frequent visits to CMHQ recommended to avoid disappointment.]
the heady scent of courage: joe murray on greta buitkute, alan wilkinson, thf drenching, seth cooke, nick hoffman, va aa lr
February 12, 2015 at 12:29 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: 1000füssler, adam asnan, alan wilkinson, council of drent, dictaphonics, dominic lash, electronica, fort process festival, free jazz, greta buitkute, improv, infinite jukebox, joe murray, lf records, louie rice, new music, nick hoffman, no audience underground, noise, organized music from thessaloniki, paul lomere, plush wattle, seth cooke, thf drenching, va aa lr, vasco alves, vocal improvisation
Greta Buitkute & THF Drenching – Contribution to a Discussion on Tic (download, Plush Wattle)
Alan Wilkinson & THF Drenching – Night of the Flaming Meatus (download, Council of Drent)
Seth Cooke – Eternal World Engines Of The Demiurge (3” CD-r, LF Records, LF044)
Seth Cooke / Dominic Lash – PACT (3” CD-r, 1000füssler, 025, edition of 60)
Nick Hoffman – Necropolis (CD, organized music from Thessaloniki, t26, edition of 200)
VA AA LR – Newhaven (3” CD-r, organized music from Thessaloniki, t27, edition of 100)
Greta Buitkute & THF Drenching – Contribution to a Discussion on Tic
An under-the-radar, sneaked-out recording from two of the out-est heads around.
I came across this one by accident via that You Tube. This led to a series of embedded links, a journey through the dark web to the home of the Plush Wattle Corporation, where this very generous free download sits.
Taking callused thumbs, fingers and twin gob-holes to act as our orchestra these two have charmed their way into my very bones. This is an intimate listen, full of clicks, creaking and rustling; it’s an interior sound world that’s perfect for headphones and tedious train journeys.
So (drum roll please)…introducing Greta Buitkute! Greta might be a new name to Radio Free Midwich but she has been wowing Northern audiences with her fresh take on vocal jaxx/nu-scat for the last couple of years. A recent move to Manchester, a light ale quaffed and connections made via The Human Heads means Greta and the great THF Drenching have teamed up – their individual super powers amplified by the presence of similar corduroy mutants.
You already know THF Drenching and you’re thinking Dictaphones yeah? Sure, the Dictas make an appearance but over half of this collection is vocal-based doof, hurling two well-lubricated throats together to dance merrily like bacteria in a Petri dish.
Yet keen Drenching watchers will note the Dictaphone tone is drier – less squelch; more rattle and hink/rustle and clatter. The bombs are deftly dropped and the feedback ‘heek’ soars like a rectangular alto.
‘Bach Bathed in Bathos, Full Illustration’ is an important cornerstone. An Hawaiian motel room is wrapped up in garish litmus paper, reacts pinkly and then is noisily unwrapped. You can’t beat them apples!
But it’s the twin-vocal pieces that froth me over like excited milk. The twin ‘Portrait of Baize Wattle’ pieces (large and small) make me recall those European Public Information films that would show up on That’s Life! The humorous animation would be followed by a vaguely chucklesome punchline…’Winner’s drink piss’ or something like that. The pace is furious but uncluttered; live with no overdubs (I think). This almost puritan and old oaty approach really pays off. The clean living certainly lends itself to Amish-style efforts.
This is in and out, reflexive and agile music. It slips happily between hi-brow and goose-honk, pearly notes and granddad mumble. As the closing seconds of the recording state:
Greta Buitkute:
Oh my God, it’s exhausting
THF Drenching (sniffs with a chuckle):
I know.
Alan Wilkinson & THF Drenching – Night of the Flaming Meatus
This is an altogether more Jazz recording. Two pieces; live, live, live at Sconny Rotts (2014) or something.
Welcome, reader a fine pair of foils: thin breath pushed through brass and the quivering whine of sculptured feedback. Damn, that’s good!
Soundz?
(i) Like snakes making out in the back of an old Audi until they make a mess of the upholstery; their coppery tones get all twisted and spoony.
(ii) Old doods reminiscing about the days in their wartime dance band – sounds leak all gummy from their ears.
(iii) The alarm on our oven telling me the bread’s ready…oh wait. That is the oven. Give me a minute…
…but it’s not all top-end tomfoolery. A real satisfying base layer of hissing creak (Dictas) and watery saliva- garbles (Saxes) give this a weighty gravity that pulls on the rocketing undulations (a flight of a condor).
And if you’re still asking questions about what free music is doing right now jam your ear up against these two beauties and huff up the heady scent of courage.
This is music for heroes!
PUBLIC APOLOGY: This review also functions as an apology to Mr A Wilkinson for my cheeky and childish ripping of his sound check sounds on my Correct Come tape. Sorry mate – can I buy you a pint or something?
Seth Cooke – Eternal World Engines of the Demiurge
These two pieces of electronic gumbo take what we might call process recordings and apply the extraction method adding calm and deliberate shadings to a real-world sound scenario.
In the first of two offerings Seth ransacks an insurance office circa 1978 whilst the office party averts prying eyes. The unmistakable sound of a dot matrix printer (duh…I was mistaken. Research shows it’s one of them stupid 3D doo-hickies) going all akka over a slowly emerging picture (in this case a 3D bust) of Benjamin Disraeli – or some similarly bearded goof – as it appears line by dotty line.
Said printer is jammed with cocktail sticks and discarded business cards – in reality electronic shadows – as he hits the print button and lets nature take its course. The frantic slide, shuffle and whirr is hypnotic and lulled me like a fat wren zonked by bright red berries until it snaps off into disturbing silence.
The calm is suddenly fractured by track number two, a gliding, sliding and silvery cascade; a perfect sound track to ice skating that would make Torvill & Dean throw greasy shapes ending up as sooty smears on the ice.
Gear heads will be pleased to note that the machinery on this disc was pioneered by Paul Lomere for his Infinite Jukebox that “endlessly extends and reconfigures MP3s by calculating probabilistic routes through the sound file based on pitch, timbre and metric position.”
Seth says he’s channelling Jack Kirby but for the romantics out there this is Bolero 2015 and a perfect 10 for artistic interpretation.
Seth Cooke/Dominic Lash – PACT
The quicksilver tones versus Pront-a-Print kerfuffle that starts this disc (‘PA’) are a waterslide into a world of grimy groan.
Massive and ungainly ‘things’ are rubbed with tweed gloves. Moist and sweating ‘objects’ are painfully squeezed to release sticky ichors. Soft and flexible ‘parts’ are cruelly bent into unholy shapes resembling the Goat of Mendes.
A close-up inspection reveals canyons of scrape and gummy friction. And while the pace remains stately for a time layers of rub and tug bring forth some slippery excitements. Oh Matron!
Track two (‘CT’) is a darker affair. The double bass bowing (Lash) and kitchen sink manipulation (Cooke) as uncooperative as a sullen teenager. Black storm clouds gather over my cheap-o high-fi and I feel my brows knit.
Gosh. This is brooding stuff.
The simple bass riff is not happy with me or you and doesn’t care who knows about it; electronics twinkle but with the black light of sea coal from Redcar beach. I love this sombre and funereal pace and can feel my mood merge into full-on sulk.
So, what you looking at eh? Clear off and leave me with Lash & Cooke. You don’t understand me anyway.
I hate everything!
More details here if you can be bothered.
Nick Hoffman – Necropolis
Microscopic attention to microscopic detail turns my hammer, anvil and stirrup into marshmallow fluff.
This is a record of extreme extremes: from hosepipe-full-on-gush to tiny cooling-metal-tik. These five pieces of sieved electronics lurch from Black Metal through the Gristleizer (The Rotten Core) to the ivory click of miniature pool balls intensifying until my speakers are fizzing and flipping-out like a model railway going straight to hell (Eros).
But what I like most about this disc are the abrupt edits, the inter-track halts and about turns that keep this grizzled noise monkey twisting to check that a fuse hasn’t blown. While I enjoy a heads-down, no-nonsense, continuous blast of fetid sludge as much as the next pair of ears being wrong-footed and fooled is a joy. What’s next? Is this build up going to explode or whimper out? It’s as slippery as Be-Bop from Minton’s Playhouse.
Nick pulls out all the stops for the lengthy closer, ‘The Scent of Ground Teeth’, a 16 minute monster of glitching signal, spluttering like a coffee percolator spiked with cobra venom.
If this blog was a radio show I would segue seamlessly from this blustery fizzing into the white-hot spitting of VA AA LR’s Newhaven. Recorded at last year’s fascinating Fort Process festival VA AA LR drop their usual prepared electronics and objects and carve out a landscape from the sound of distress flares alone. Taking away the literally explosive visual element you are left with a wonderfully peculiar 20 minutes of sparkling hiss and frazzle. Every permutation of splutter and crackle is worked through like Coltrane on Giant Steps, probing and searching; pushing forward and wringing all possible combinations from this electric spitball.
After a time the busy and frantic schizzle seems to fine-tune my old ear ‘ole letting me pick out tone and textural changes. There is a whole world in here as the planes of fuzzing gimble regroup like a forgotten language. Be sure to make a beeline for this vibrant crackle readers; a worthy bookend to that other splutter classic, Lee Patterson’s Egg Fry #2.
—ooOoo—
clawed metal: luke vollar on black heath coven and yol
January 27, 2015 at 11:12 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 3 CommentsTags: andrew jarvis, beartown records, black heath coven, daz rowlands, doom metal, improv, jim brindley, luke vollar, new music, no audience underground, noise, tapes, vocal improvisation, yol
Black Heath Coven – Erratic Glacial Haze (tape, Beartown Records, edition of 48)
Yol – This Item Has Little Or No Scrap Value (tape, Beartown Records, edition of 48)
Black Heath Coven are a trio from Stoke on Trent with Andy Jarvis, Jim Brindley and Daz Rowlands in their ranks. Can’t say I know Jim and Daz but I have known Andy for years through his bewitching musical endeavours and his now sadly defunct CD-r label First Person. Aside from being about the most affable and charming bloke you are likely to encounter his resume is pretty impressive, from mighty fine picking and singing to weirdo electronic adventures with a variety of different folks. Let’s not rattle on about him here though, as that would be a touch unfair to his comrades in the Coven.
Now I would like to think of myself as RFM’s resident metal warrior (which may cause Joe and Rob to smash flagons of ale into their heads, beat their chests and roar in indignation before pursuing me through a snowy forest at night, swords in hand, with only a pair of wolf skin briefs [Editor’s note: a pair each, I hope] to keep the chill out) and I can sense the claw of metal on this tape before I stick it in the stereo. After all, you’d hardly expect an electro-pop group with a name like that.
Sure enough the tone is ominous and the guitars are tuned to doooom. As a dude who massively digs early earth and Sunno)) albums where the amp worshipping, melting tar pit vibe is maintained for the duration this is fine by me, but it ain’t all they got. Electronic passages and dusty lonesome guitar sounds provide subtlety and variety before inevitably giving way to massive lumbering riff juggernauts that crush the puny villagers underfoot as sine waves scorch the arid earth. It’s an epic trip at seventy odd minutes, so best plug in your lava lamp, crack a brewski and drop the fuck out. I like this a lot and would be proud to sew their patch onto my denim vest (if I had one).
Next up, and also from Beartown Records, is another offering from shaven headed Hull resident yol. Regular readers of RFM will know the score by now: deranged utterances and curses of (what sounds like) an extremely troubled individual dragging metal around: 1, rest of the world: 0.
To my mind there is no one doing anything even remotely similar to yol. While the N-AU contains it’s fair share of gibbering and slobbering droolers, yol stands alone as inhabiting the twilight worlds between sound poetry, power electronics and hard-core punk without ever being any of the above. The fact that a lot of these pieces are recorded live adds another level to the already formidable intensity, polite chatter abruptly ceases as yol does his thing. He growls – he grunts – he roars – he attacks various lumps of debris. There is zero in the way of processing/electronics and yol is not afraid to leaving gaping yawps of silence between his spasms. One track ends with some frantic applause as if the audience were afraid of him. Who could blame them when lyrics like…
BURNT BURNT BURNT FEATHERS, PLASTIC FORK
…are delivered in such a fierce manner it would make Henry Rollins hide behind the sofa. It would be easy to speculate on what fuels the fire behind yol – grey drizzly council estates, abandoned shopping trolleys and sallow faced bureaucratic arseholes all appear in my head – but as yol walks a tightrope between terrifying and surreal without giving much away it is left to the listener/spectator to draw their own conclusions. I remain baffled in the best way – it ain’t pretty but it is beautiful.
—ooOoo—
‘are you allowed to do this?’ – joe murray on yol
November 27, 2014 at 12:12 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: extraction music, ggrrraaaagh, joe murray, kukukuk-eeurrrh, new music, nnnngghhn, no audience underground, noise, vocal improvisation, yol
Yol – Headless Chicken Shits out Skull Shaped Egg (self-released CD-R or download)
Yol – Extraction (self-released CD-R or download)
The most singular artist in the No Audience Underground right now – Yol – is making the music of his troubled soul sing like shaven angels wearing round-shouldered donkey jackets.
For the uninitiated Yol has carefully and modestly created his own footnote in the frantic world of kinetic poetry. Imagine tiny fragile words battered with broken bottles. Innocent syllables and posh sibilance swashes getting clotted and clumped together. Those classy phonics all chopped up and smashed; ground out like spent fags and stuttered wetly in a barely controlled rage (NOTE: howls of despair and anguish…impotent shrieks of denial punctuate Yol’s feverish work like Big Star’s drum fills).
Musical accompaniment is of the most primitive and brutal kind. Forget the chest-beating Harsh Noise dullards, this is frighteningly naked and exposed. Short blasts of destruction come from broken machinery, sheared plastic shards, bits of old hoover and burnt cutlery. A more dicky commentator would say recordings are made in carefully selected site specific locations. The truth? Yol’s breaking into empty factory units and shouting his rusty head off.
OK…that’s the pre-amble puff piece. I’m a fan man and I’m heading into these two newish recordings with great expectations.
Headless Chicken Shits Out Skull Shaped Egg is Yol’s Tales of Topographic Oceans, his Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. At 46 minutes it gives the time and space needed to develop a territory rich with greed, chokeholds and cheap furniture. Oh yeah…its recorded in an empty bank.
The action is kept scrabbly like knitting needles clicking so tunes like ‘filing, endless filing’ not only sounds exactly like white-collar pointless repetition and takes me back to the days I developed funny blisters through excessive contact with the nasty plastic wallets the Crown Prosecution Service used back in the day. ‘Operating the phones’ and ‘Lunch, discussing the commute’ (a blues and C&W number in that order) are worryingly damp with the vocal roars being some of the most violent I’ve ever heard, kicking those Black Metal chaps right in the studded codpiece. There’s desperation to this red-raw roar that even makes Ms Lydia Lunch seem like she was faking it.
The trademark Yol moving-a-heavy-filing-cabinet-across-lino-squeal is played out on ‘Sitting in on a loan interview’ with some grim whisper to vom-yell about “your lidless eye” upping the ante, adding a touch of psychedelia to the big-wide-world tomming. As the album plays on I’m reminded of Idwal Fisher describing ‘Trying to wash your hands of it all’ thusly…
Are you listening to someone having a nervous breakdown or are you listening to someone recording their new album?
…which try as I might I can’t improve on. It’s nothing short of horrifying.
After 40 minutes of bloody fingernails and tension headaches I’m expecting some sort of psychotropic climax on the final track, ‘After the crash’. Again I’m wrong-stepped as this measured piece for baking tray, leaf crackle, hinge squeak and gentle Dictaphone mumble is a sensitive lament; a moment for quiet reflection and quite simply, beautiful…like a pale sun viewed across the misty marshes.
I know it’s crass to make comparisons but forgive me this little slip. Listening to Headless Chicken… is kind of like the first time I heard Usurper. Ali & Malcy’s totally uncompromising soundworld of rattled chain-link fence (I think it was on a Psykick Dancehall compilation. Their track called ‘Oasis Lighter.’) was so different to anything that had dripped in my ears before I didn’t ask the obvious, ‘is this music?’ question but the more paranoid, ‘are you allowed to do this?’, like some music police would capture me in the night for all this dissident listening. Yol serves me this guilty pleasure again like chokey porridge. Re-calibrating my dials, sharpening me shiv.
I take a breather and slap on EXTRACTION expecting more violent shaking-hell but am faced with a
l-o-n-g /
d-r-a-w-n /
o-u-t
piece of real life
E xt
ract i on
mu
s i c.
Our esteemed Editor has written eloquently about extraction before. But here Yol has raised the stakes like some Vegas card-sharp and recorded a real extractor fan going about its extracting business with the finest shimmer of feedback frosting the trembley peaks. It’s gloriously understated.
I ride the waves of greasy flapping, “Khhhhoooorrrrr – – – – chhhhhheeeeeeeeeee” it goes, gently shifting in and out of a rhythm. For over 15 minutes the pace is kept tantalisingly constrained, delaying the pay off until an extremely patient Yol coughs a few coughs and yells like Rollins at the end of Damaged…
“Taken out!”
Blimey. That’s a powerful couple of discs man. Check out Yol’s Bandcamp for a sneaky listen and to check out the funky artwork too. And he’s up for trades so get digging under the bed for swaps.
a camera pointed at us: joe on peak signal 2 noise
November 14, 2014 at 9:35 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: belied gunaiko, bill orcutt, crank sturgeon, dylan nyoukis, electronica, fritz welch, harappian night recordings, human heads, humbolt ventures, improv, joe murray, joincey, jointhee, jon collin, jooklo duo, julian bradley, junko, luke poot, marvo men, new music, no audience underground, noise, papal bull, paul steere, peak signal 2 noise, ps2n, roman nose, sharon gal, sheffield live community television, stuckometer, sweat tongue, television, the family elan, the piss superstition, trans/human, turk geko, vimeo, vocal improvisation, yol
Peak Signal 2 Noise (TV show, Sheffield Live Community TV and Vimeo)
[Editor’s note: amused by the impressionistic ‘off the TV’ snaps that Joe sometimes tweets I encouraged him to use the same technique in illustrating this article. Thus what you are seeing has more to do with the workings of Joe’s phone camera (and fevered bonce) than the clear, sharp, properly lit and framed images you can expect from this excellent television programme. OK, over to Joe…]
It’s seems to be a truism in broadcasting that music TV has to suck really, really bad.
Cast your mind back to the mashed potato blandness of The White Room, the jokey yoof-arse of The Tube and the god-awful sweaty slobbering from Jools Holland (which is apparently still on).
What should be so simple, folk playing music with a camera aimed at them, turns into an excuse for zany camera angles, ill-thought out concepts and paedophile presenters. Ugh. It’s grim. I rest my case m’lud. [Editor’s note: hey, SnubTV had its moments!]
Thankfully Peak Signal 2 Noise is different fishy kettle. There’s no presenter to foul things up, no false stage antics or miming fools. It’s just a camera in face of the no-audience underground.
Cut up like a mix tape, the show moves swiftly between a whole buncha beards in a whole bunch of situations (live show footage, specially recorded pieces, installation performances) keeping the energy up and creating spaces to dream. Although edits are hard some interruptions blur the edges: a cheap kaleidoscope, raw fennel seeds bouncing on a speaker, frozen wasps, Yodel/Honkey and the Bubble Wrap man. On the seven episodes broadcast already you can expect to see…
· Jooklo Duo – Tender solo sax squall like free-jazz insects. Drums clatter in fur mittens. A sound so wonderfully clear and fresh it’s like a clear mountain stream running over polished cobbles.
· Human Heads – A real Dr Who vibe. That’s not saying this is Radiophonic; more like Ben & Hannah are playing parts of a broken Tardis for kicks.
· Humbolt Ventures– Glorious Sellotape jam. Rubbing and stroking are the order of the day with thin vibrations. Bullroarers in pt 2 induce coma.
· Bill Orcutt – Winged Eel finger-licking, blues shalom with naked foot.
· Luke Poot – No one does shame quite like Poot. Performance, the pink end of noise, a burst orange ball is honked like a rubber sax, lights pulled out flies, plastic toast. Lead us Luke!
· Dylan Nyoukis – Multiple Vines flicker like cat’s eyes –the hottest tip yet from the dark monk.
· Papal Bull – Maplin shoplifters curse the day tape was invented. Slow torture of the C30.
· The Family Elan – Off-kilter yarbles from Transylvania (or something). A proper band!
· Sweat Tongue – No Wave roots with new (blue) boots. Treble cranked high like it should.
· Harappian Night Recordings – Those familiar stretched ferric sounds clash off Bali bonce with wide eyes.
· Roman Nose – Layers and layers of Cardiff chalk blown up (Roman) nose, hopping from frame to frame capturing the mauve kinetic holla. PLUS some bagpipe animation creep hidden elsewhere!
· Marvo Men – Free gong-poetry on a dusty floor in a freezing space. Every opportunity taken to push things beyond ‘here’ and into ‘there’ with head-folding results. A brave and true duo.
· Fritz Welch – Mental crenulations and high metallic wavering; clikerty fingerings and squeak in two glorious parts
· Stuckometer – Free Jizz overdrive for the ‘fuh’ generation from these boy legends.
· Junko – “Atttttahhhh-atttttaaahh. Ktchhttaaaaa. Tch-aaaaaahhhhh.”
· Sharon Gal – Granite-hard birdvoice dreamtime. Geysers scored for hot-ash hiss.
· Dylan Nyoukis/Luke Poot – This time together. In conversation via khat-o-phone. Explosive sinus and remorseful tutting like all the world’s Geography teachers at once.
· Turk Geko – Found footage, frowned frottage, grown pottage, hewn montage.
· YOL – Without a face he chants (gggrrrrrrrr) leaving few traces but ghastly thoughts.
· Belied Gunaiko – Silver cloud noise. The sound of pilots dozing off…
· The Piss Superstition – Transparent methods. A ‘how to’ guide if you will. But ingestion of foul liquids may, just may, play a part in the visceral rusty bliss-tronics.
· Jon Collin – Naked guitar (finger then slide) of ultimate sorrow. Salty harmonics from slack, bitter strings cry. Two-fer-one.
· Trans/Human – Mystery Machine hi-jinks full of fuzz, fizz and fixx. Taking pale ‘scree’ to the people like hotdogs.
· Joincey Jointhee – Word poems to a frosted tit. Superb fractured sentences folded together with abrupt and sudden breath. Curse the rain that stops the f-l-o-w.
· Crank Sturgeon – Electric Portraiture. Oh my Crank!
OK friends…I tried me hardest with those descriptions (for some reason this is so much harder than talking about records) so it’s probably best just to tune in really. If you are Sheffield based you can get this on the proper telly (9.00pm/Saturday/Channel 159). Jokers living in other locales can check out Vimeo for an identical web version and an archive of everything broadcast so far building up to an encyclopaedia of No Audience shenanigans. The series plans to run for 10 episodes which should take us almost up to Christmas. But, be warned, the busy bees behind the venture are looking to bust out in all different directions in 2015.
Stop reading. Start watching.
scatty and clotted the rattling: joe murray gets hep to schrein, melchior & piermattei, dylan nyoukis
November 10, 2014 at 8:20 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: bastian hagedorn, chocolate monk, collage, dan melchior, dictaphonics, dylan nyoukis, ezio piermattei, improv, jazz, joe murray, meudiademorte records, my dance the skull, new music, no audience underground, noise, ronnie oliveras, ruth-maria adam, schrein, tapes, vocal improvisation
Schrein – EinsZweinSchrein (vinyl LP, Meudiademorte Records, edition of 500 or download)
Dan Melchior & Ezio Piermattei (tape, My Dance The Skull, MDTS 10)
Dylan Nyoukis – Yellow Belly (tape, Chocolate Monk, choc.292, edition of 21 in individual collage slipcases)
Jazz.
I’m just going to let that word sit there for a while and shimmer.
Jazz.
There it is again. The ‘J’ word. That’s right. I’m talking about Jazz right now.
Ask anyone:
Does Joe like his Jazz?
…and they’d say:
Joe? Jazz? He is Jazz. He loves it inside out fella. MilesDizzyColtraneOrnetteRaMonkArmstrong. He lives for that crazy-ass Jass music.
And of course they would be right. Jazz is the cornerstone of my listening habits. So it’s with great anticipation I sit down to rap with Schrein – a real Jazz group from Germany. Ruth-Maria Adam (violin) , Bastian Hagedorn (drums) and Ronnie Oliveras (clarinet) take their three very jazz implements and imbue them with no-audience underground chops rather than beardy Trad swing. This makes for a strung-out and exhilarating listen.
‘Llullaillaco’ is particularly medicated with Ritalin drums pushing and rushing everything forward at breakneck speed until three dark voices join in profane chorus like a mini-Popol Vuh complete with dank Kecak koff.
You spot something on the horizon.
In ‘Emi Koussi’ the creaks and scratches lay beneath keening clarinet gasps (similar to PEEESSEYE kinda) and dark fractured electronics. The drums clump and skit across your field of listening as brittle as slates on a roof.
You venture deeper into the woods.
During ‘Fogo’ the horns/violin/something gets processed into the austere tones you’d expect on an Editions Mego record as the bristling hubbub clears the forest floor below. The night draws in on ‘Shinmoedake’ covering you and your party with heavy black murk, liquid bumps and waxy scratches making your neck hairs stand to attention. ‘Eyjafjallajokull’ is the finisher. Scatty and clotted the rattling of prayer bowls adds no comfort to you now. Trapped in dark magic the metallic tones ‘k-u-n-g’ and ‘c-h-u-n-g’ all wobbly. Just at the limits of your hearing a toad licks its lips hungrily. Wet slobbery anticipation?
At times the sound is as hectic as worker bees. At others it’s as mellow as a fat caterpillar basking in the mid-afternoon sun. But it’s in the bringing together of all these sounds and textures: wet and dry, soft and hard, clear and occluded that keeps this disc filed next to Alexander von Schlippenbach in the dusty racks.
Dan Melchior/Ezio Piermattei
Exquisite tape collage collaboration between two crackling bonfires of good ideas. Voice, tapes, guitar, organ, synth, percussion etc get chucked into a pot and ladled out into rough clay bowls. The soup is a steaming but cleansing broth full of herbs and piquant with fine vinegar dressing.
I think what I am trying to say is there is no confusion here. Sounds and structure are distinct and clear.
The casio-tone rhythm of ‘Bad Gateway’ may be emboldened by rubbery ripping but it’s very deliberate. As if to prove the point a simple piano sparkles in 3D above the misty sounding mung below. ‘Lurch’, a micro song, betrays Dan’s Medway roots and acts like a punky sorbet before the prog-tastic ‘A Corner of the Forest’ in which the sound of Cluster artfully collapsing in a doorway, folding way into nothingness, is channelled through psych-guitar and no-audience vocal hink. The sung coda, picking up the guitar part, is pure genius and worth the price of the tape alone.
‘Two Tiny Kingdoms’, the longest piece on the tape, is an epic construction. Through whirling sound-strobes and dainty vocal recordings a humble theme emerges. Over, under and between this central frame echoes of Italian and American voice the bilingual, the act of listening to another language jabbing my pleasure centres just like a Phil Minton jam. Subtle tape skizz adds some sonic grit and gets cautiously heavier with some occasional fretboard fuggery until the creaking of old ropes leads us out the maze.
The final song makes me smile the widest, because ‘A Teacher Star’ sounds exactly like Portishead jacked-up on Dictaphone Jazz and filthy vocal Jizz. Can you imagine that? Of course you can. And I have to tell you it sounds bloody right and bloody great.
Dylan Nyoukis – Yellow Belly
Another cracking tape from Chocolate Monk. This time it’s Dylan doing the gumming on this peachy, peachy release. The website said ‘dictaphone, voice, organ, delay’ and was recorded a few days after my birthday…the omens were good so I slipped a fiver in an envelope and waited.
A scant week later the postie plopped this beauty through the door and we all gathered round the cheap-o stereo to listen.
If you’re expecting hi-jinks and ear-tuggery look away now for this is a beautiful gush. A gentle warming, an egg-shaped fondle.
A brief introduction of Dictaphone voice ‘glurrr’ is exact and well placed. You can hear the rush of cars somewhere and the delightful button-click between takes as thoughts form and a plan emerges.
Here’s the real world in all its domestic charm
…it seems to say…
remember this and remember this well for we are going on a voyage long and arduous.
With a breathy chuff the organ begins to takes centre stage. A simple one-handed motif rises through the gently churning windpipes. It is spotted left, then right then centre stage; ever changing and growing – a misty grey dream world pulsing gently to the end of the side.
Side two opens tentatively but soon revisits the multi-layered world of rushing amber tones. Things are more clotted here, like a bust-out church organ with small dogs sleeping on the keys. Dank notes tumble down through a well of souls. The Dictaphone adds its trademark gristle and grime (rain falling, plastic crackling?) as the organ is fingered bluntly by the parishioners.
I’m writing gently in bed to the seemingly random fug of notes, all placed next to each other with ever-so-slight overlap and digging this scene immensely until the Dictaphone trills like a funky Oboe. Vocal snatches are FFWed across the church roof from Nave to Transept in a soft Suffolk burrrrrrrrr bringing things to a crystalline climax. Whoooshhh.
Individual artwork and super limited (21 copies only). Sold out but sure to surface again – keep your eyes peeled.
—ooOoo—
fever dreams of a plush boob: joe murray on no basement is deep enough
November 5, 2014 at 9:39 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 2 CommentsTags: alvaro, andrew zuckerman, field recording, fleshtone aura, found sound, horaflora, improv, joe murray, lieven martens moana, my dance the skull, new music, no audience underground, no basement is deep enough, noise, raub roy, singing bows, spoken word, tapes, vocal improvisation
Alvaro: The Chilean with the Singing Nose – 1978 (tape, No Basement is Deep Enough, NBIDE#27, edition of 60 packaged in ‘breast-shaped construction’)
Fleshtone Aura – Wet Cocomo (tape, No Basement is Deep Enough, NBIDE#29, edition of 55 packaged in ‘triffid-shaped construction’)
Lieven Martens Moana – The Volcano, The Night that precedes all, and a hymn for Paul Gauguin (tape, No Basement is Deep Enough, ‘purple tape in leather-look wallet painted and bubbling faecal mess’)
Horaflora – No Roof is High Enough (tape, No Basement is Deep Enough, NBIDE#26, edition of 49, ‘blue tape wrapped up in multi-coloured plastic rope’)
Alvaro: The Chilean with the Singing Nose – 1978
A true original. Grey-beard Alvaro was born in Chile in the 1940’s then moved to London as Punk gobbed and pogo-ed its way into the Bill Grundy Show. For a time he was a 101’er, some cockney pre-punk pub-boys, with a bloke called Strummer but luckily he had the sense to move on before things got stale and boring.
Rejecting Punk’s uniform but rejoicing in easy-listening, avant-garde composition and wonderful daftness in three equal parts Alvaro sits down at his piano to come up with…err… I’m not quite sure.
To my tender ears I can pick out something that sounds like the Goon’s Bluebottle (possibly a quality of the nose) with the magic-realist lyrics of an Ivor Cutler. Songs concern themselves with a number of domestic situations: a love of honey, mothers milk and in one case being made of wood. But this never comes across a faux-naive or affected, it’s all utterly convincing.
For me the piano sound is a big part of the draw. It does that wonderful swooping thing, a slightly warped thing, making it all sound wide-eyed like Charlie Brown cartoons. An instant memory-bomb that detonates in less complicated times.
These lovely piano-led songs are punctuated by the occasional spoken word spiel, sax bleat or drums to keep it spicy. But it’s all kept simple and pretty uncluttered with the kind of frail gossamer-touch that Robert Wyatt musters up.
Side one ends with an augmented domestic field recordings (dentist chatter/water running/tuneless singing/plastic pipe whistle) that is as bang up-to-date as anything in the no-audience underground today.
You could waggle that ‘outsider artist’ card if you like but I think that’s a bit of a red herring. I think Alvaro (recording here in 1978) is exactly where he wants to be, doing exactly what he wants to do with confidence and, with a quality you don’t get every day, charm.
Fleshtone Aura – Wet Cocomo
OK. You wrestle with the Triffid/Venus Fly Trap package and stick the tape in. You ponder, is this jizz any good or what?
Thankfully the oval sounds within match the green construction without.
Fleshtone Aura is the one and very Andrew Zuckerman, half of mung-faves Gastric Female Reflex and involved in the very collectable Beniffer Editions label.
Found sound, loops and accidental damage are the kings here all netted up and laid out like noxious butterflies. Fleshtone Aura provides the base material and it’s the listener that has to join the dots into <><><><><><> patterns. Are you ready readers?
The different approaches work well. Found tapes of ‘X Factor-style’ auditions are charming and cheeky, the Wii sounding electronics frothy like bubble tea. Recorded cat squeals and deep throated bilge nestle up against brightly-blurring vash. But the scratched electronics stop anything becoming over-twee. The velocity is generally quick…the edit pieces are less music concrete and more attention deficit disorder channel-hopping but there’s plenty of space to stretch out and enjoy the fuzz if you are patient.
The teenage rampage card is played several times but FAura can’t help being god-damn classy on the tape’s closer, ‘Gomer’s Frontispiece’, in which wet digital clicking pitches against brass horn (downtuned) like the kinda thing Scott Walker should be thinking of next.
Listen or buy here or see NBIDE links below.
Lieven Martens Moana – The Volcano, The Night that precedes all, and a hymn for Paul Gauguin
Real name realness from Dolphins into the Future main-mung. DITF were the red-hot tip a year or two ago, name checked in Pitchfork and The Guardian. We dig a little deeper here at Radio Free Midwich so here’s an early pitch of the solo, real name project. Always an interesting prospect that when a moniker-beard goes back to the birth name. Must mean something; a glimpse under the rug? A trueness of intention?
The jams on this handsome purple tape are superb right from the off. Deep gaseous whales moan and croon churning the briny and vibrating atom to atom with greater efficiency than through air. Therefore the ‘gungs’ and ‘tungs’ meet my ear and melt into the fibrous bristle within. Like wallpaper paste its thick and gloopy but strong with purpose, an aid to mesmerism perhaps? The final snatch of close-vocal harmony (recorded in a Paris side-street) snaps me from my stunned state and prepares me to get up and turn this fella over.
Side two is an extended vocal piece for voices and recorded tape titled ‘Lava (The Bells from Above)’. It’s beautifully tropical with a Howler Monkey vibe that moves to greedily rising tones surging onwards and onwards, higher and higher like pure sine waves until my merely human ears become useless. The final section blends the sounds of the Maldives (noisy birds and insects) with a sonorous gong adding its own bronze gravity.
There’s a beautiful laziness to these recordings. I don’t mean things are careless or idle. They take their own time to do what they need to do and, as a result of that, force you to too. Prepare these for the cocktail hour! Meet me on the veranda with a Mint Julep at six o’clock.
Horaflora – No Roof is High Enough
Horaflora is just one guy going by the name of Raub Roy. He seems to be a busy fella up to his eyes in sonic experiments with a whole flotilla of names, dudes and radgies.
On this little tape he’s pretty much on his own, crouched on a rooftop, recording Cambodian Singing Kite Bows. Singing bows give off a harsh buzzing as the wind rushes by; loud enough to scare away squirrels and deep enough to summon the spirits. It’s not a gazillion miles away from the vibrations of a throat-singing guy but with the added twinkle of bells and very subtle sound manipulation it’s an altogether prettier listen. Perfect if you are after something light, yet still with experimental credentials, at the end of a busy day.
—ooOoo—
No Basement Is Deep Enough – Discogs
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—
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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.
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