radio free midwich

a yeasty upstairs room: rfm on blood stereo, stuart chalmers & neil campbell, rlw & dylan nyoukis and the custodians

Blood Stereo – Where There’s Raw Grace in Garbage (Chocolate Monk)

Stuart Chalmers & Neil Campbell – In the Vicinity of the Reversing Pool (No Label)

RLW & Dylan Nyoukis – Gukuruguh  (Chocolate Monk)

The Custodians – The Grape That Takes No Prisoners (Chocolate Monk)

Blood Stereo – Where There’s Raw Grace in Garbage (Chocolate Monk) CDr

The wet-slippage of malfunctioning MP3 files or possibly a functional electronic sound – say the alarm in an overloaded lift – starts this single 37 minute grunt.

Over the course of the next half hour there are more than a few moments to treasure…

• Cannibalised spoken word overlaps a low moaning (licked forefinger rubbed over smoked glass coffee table?) in perfect sympathy…a ghostly parrot chatters the syllables in strict timing.
• 10cc’s tape loops hijacked for the ‘oooooooo’s’ and pulled through Kolkata in a handcart.
• “What is this shadow in which we come?”asks an inquisitive voice.
• A brief movement scored for plastic packaging materials, ring modulator and rain on a tin roof.
• The matrix recording of coins dropped into hot syrup is re-mastered with a Joe Meek mind.

The sink gurgles and psychedelic reportage are kept to a minimum though to concentrate on rhythm in all its forms, for this is Blood Stereo’s most spacious record yet.

Dry, echoing ‘clonks’ and ‘squarks’ are placed carefully into the mix – but not with a dictator’s swagger stick.  Rather the gardener’s crisp carrot!  These, sounds are encouraged to grow, swell and bloom.  The fullness of the harvest is a testament to this pair of green-thumbs, nipping and tweaking, composting and watering their bumper crop.

But fear not goofs! It’s not all serious trousers – there are still yuks in this mix.  The family (sound) portraits and the occasional snot-nosed sniff make an appearance before the truly beautiful, final movement of antique telephone engaged-tones and exotic hot breath-waffles.

Blood Stereo’s statement is clear…from the trash I create diamonds, from the unheard and unloved I fashion unique listening flaps.

Aye.  That’s the grace all right.

Stuart Chalmers & Neil Campbell – In the Vicinity of the Reversing Pool (no label) CDr and digital album

Two monarchs ruling together in the kingdom of the Reversing Pool.

This super-sick collaboration takes the idea of loops and propels it into the negative zone where all laws of physics are crudely tippexed out.

That’s not to imply it’s lumpen.  No way! There’s a real delicacy to these swooping spirals, like a collection of rare ceramics spinning in a vortex.  You catch the occasional blurred pattern, a hint of Royal Doulton perhaps, that you can hang your hat on but your brain is mostly taken up with the sheer majesty of complex, cyclical movement (deep in the reversing pool).

‘Star Camera’ must be a J-Pop K-Hole.  The baffled drum loop, a soft beat, slipping in and out of reality as our avatar (probably dressed as Sailor Moon) squawks an electric fudge.

The whirling, swirling miasma doesn’t let up quickly.  Even the slurred vocal starting ‘Slipping Slipping’ is part of a greater orbit.  A sort of cosmic churning taking in smears of electric guitar and fizziling keyboard washes.

A reprieve is served on ‘Detitrus on Old Bank’ and ‘Migrating Dirge’.  They are looser for sure but spinning just as fast creating sparks that ‘zip’ off my xylophone and makes me ring my bicycle bell with abandon.  By the final minute ‘Detritus…’ has turned into solid jam.  ‘…Dirge’ jingles like pennies in a sock; a curious bank or preparation for the borstal breakout?

A joyful noise unto the creator – you bettchya sweet cakes.

RLW & Dylan Nyoukis – Gukuruguh  (Chocolate Monk) CDr

Stone-cold classic tape-werks from wonk-central: Chocolate Monk.

(adopts HBO voiceover pose)

“Previously on Chocolate Monk…

Dee Nyoukis shifts his spittle at the Nefertiti Jazz Club, Gothenburg six or seven years ago and pledges the live tapes to one Ralf Wehowsky, legendary thinker and doer who unleashes several gallons of whup, whup all over them.

The result is an interchangeable reality sauce, or something. “

The Nyoukis-vox tapes are a shadowy presence and tend to inhabit the corners and dado rails of this mix while RLW slathers on huge scoops of itchy sound.  At times it’s a fine violin, a recognisable sound fragment that adds a kind of sign-post, indicating the way.

At others it’s a deep abstract scribble.  Like an IRCAM-heavy squall the sheets of sound are utterly alien and yet comfortably retro-fitted.  Before you can polish your specs a granulated ripping peppers things, spicing lengthy tracks ‘Left Shoe’ and ‘Right Shoe’ up hot!

Sounds tend to whizz more than I am used to filling up my room with blank swoops or popping-mud farts.  Dylan’s strangulated vox get pinched further via squealing Ralf-manoeuvres; pitched up through your appendix scar and out via your nostril.  A silver thread seems pulled through me aching Gulliver scrambling my mind eggs.

Can I mention Varèse in this punk-ass blog?  Eek! I guess I did.  Well some of the ‘Right Shoe’ movements are percussive clatter-boxes – part Ionisation part Goldie’s Metalheadz crew but all bookended with damp squelching like a thick milkshake being sucked.

A disc for damn voyagers and heroes.

The Custodians – The Grape That Takes No Prisoners (Chocolate Monk) CDr

Top-quality brain-scrape from double-saxed trio with added Bohman power!

If you were to do a google image search for ‘Englishness’ I’m sure the old clichés of well-oiled cricket pitches and fluffy cream teas get fetched up before long*.

But for me…nothing seems more English than a ragged mess of electronics/objects balanced on a pub table in a yeasty upstairs room.

Imagine the very polite anticipation as we stand around waiting for some beard (Adam Bohman) to rummage about in the confusion and wrench out an antique-shop clattering.  Picture the sympathetic tones coaxed out of some saxophones (Adrian Northover & Sue Lynch) – but not too loud mind!

And in this way The Custodians are the most English of groups.  Perhaps it’s the practice habitual orderly queuing creates that explains the space each player leaves making this an altogether charming listen.

But how do these Toby Jugs come together, what’s the chatter yeah?

A double-barrelled approach divides performances into either:

• thin sax tones floating over industrious sawing and dry chitter / picture Ronnie Scott’s after closing time with the roaches skittering around brass holes or…
• bi-narratives/tri-narratives weaving sense in, out and around both my pink ears like the dusty graveyard where radio plays go to die.  These talking pieces make the tired old brain work HARD.  It’s almost like there is a loop of text that keeps getting manipulated live between Adam, Adrian and Sue as painterly touches of soft-round brass spread buttery glee.  No mercy!

The audacious tri-narrative; ‘King and Queen-Traction and Wine’ squeezes my head-sponge good with its three-fold reading text-loops, pitched squeal and wonderful steam train noises making it all tip-top and tally ho!

A real Babel is unleashed on ‘Tlotm variations’ where our three friends are joined by linguaphone tapes running backwards / forwards / sideways pressing all sense though a reality sieve until all that remains is a flapping jaw and soft wet tongue.

*don’t bother to check the validity of this – in reality a Google Image search for Englishness is predictably awful

Neil Campbell Big Cartel / Stuart Chalmers Bandcamp

Chocolate Monk

-ooOOoo-