sliver lizards: joe murray on olivier di placido, fritz welch, kelly jayne jones, ross parfitt, jon collin, yol, culver
October 8, 2016 at 2:44 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: beartown records, culver, early music, fritz welch, joe murray, jon collin, kelly jayne jones, matching head, olivier di placido, ross parfitt, winebox press, yol
Olivier Di Placido & Fritz Welch – untitled cassette (tape, humansacrifice, HS0010, edition of 75 or download)
Kelly Jayne Jones & Jon Collin – Sheffield, 9 August 2015 (tape, Early Music)
Jon Collin with Ross Parfitt – Münster, 10 April 2016 (tape, Early Music)
Yol – This Item Has Little Or No Scrap Value (tape, Beartown Records, edition of 48)
Culver – Gateshead Soup (tape, Matching Head, MH213)
Olivier Di Placido & Fritz Welch – Untitled
Absolutely no nonsense Technicolor squall and dramatic brokenness from that most hectic of fluffer duos: Di Placido/Welch.
Like stitches in yr lip this stings a little as it wrenches new shapes outta junk-drums and garrotted-guitar. Frantically itchy as scabies it is… the scabby metre has you shuffling on and off the hot foot never quite sure where to hang your hat. But I’m diggin’ it… diggin’ it bad.
I’m listening with an abstracted grin now. I just can’t help it; the reptile part of my brain fair goofs on the hard/soft, fast/slow choices being presented to my dense grey lumps. But at the same time my debonair city-slicker love-node is lapping up the lightening-fast interactions and improvisations between flapping pig skin and eviscerated coiled steel. The perfect music for the metrosexual caveman perhaps? Shit… let’s throw a party to find out. I’m on nibbles.
Is that some post-production fingering I can hear in the backmasked vox that plays us out of this side? Wonderful, wonderful… let’s get some electronics soaking up this gravy to deglaze the nuggets.
Goosh… ya!
The other side* made me squirt like Slaine in full-on berzerker mode such is the slap and clatter, the fizzing rip and hi-hat chit-chit-chit-bash. Like an erotic jazz experience it manages to create that brassy plateau of living a constant high… then stops on a teasing sixpence.
It’s not all hi-NRG jizz-riffles though. One small section’s a right downer of industrial ‘booms’ and ‘crashes’ played out next to a juddering (bass) washing machine that segues neatly into a promise of friction and anatomically crude charcoal drawings. Phewy.
The art of the improviser occasionally gets ladled with faux academic nonsense from highfaluting bodies, boards and authorities. A pox on them. This is vital as hydrogen and alive as a fresh pig because it’s free from any grey-beard permission.
Play this at your next lecture and watch Prof implode!
*I’ve used the rather unhelpful ‘this side’ and ‘other side’ descriptors because there’s nothing as bourgeois as track titles or side demarcations on this babycake. Total Hardcore yeah.
Kelly Jayne Jones & Jon Collin – Sheffield, 9 August 2015
On seeing the title a ripple of excitement forced me to check last year’s journal and I can see I was right there, in Sheffield, when this piece was recorded.
…firmly camped upstairs for the rest of the show Jon Collin & Kelly Jones played guitar & flute but nary a note was plucked or blown. 99% of the sound came from feedback tones as fresh as a handful of snow down the trousers. Thin and minty… menthol smoke sprouting from the fingers. Control was the watch word and even a dropped e-bow couldn’t interrupt the stately ‘hhiiiimmmmm’…
Listening back to this, in a domestic setting, seems to downplay the austerity and dial up the astringent complexity. The sharp guitar tones (sliver [Editor’s note: I suspect a typo but am leaving it in for the sake of poetry] lizards shimmer across cool marble) mesh perfectly with the breathy feedback/flute (crystallised ginger crushed into powder and applied to the forehead) and create a ritual of pure transcendent beauty.
I’m often lost in the fog of metal or jazz (crashing and slashing) but the paleness and gentle simmering of these mercurial sounds has tickled my mind forever with its frosty bliss.
Jon Collin with Ross Parfitt – Münster, 10 April 2016
It starts with twin guitar plucking, wild and free as a Manx cat, but stretching out time into an almost cosmic nothingness.
However sparse and spectral this recording is though there’s a right-in-your-face attitude with some heavy clarity. Those brushed-steel sounds emerge from the plucks adding an odd gamelan ‘kong’ to the twisting strings, reminding us we are on a journey. From here to where doesn’t really matter but the steady pad of the foot and swing of the arm propels this music constantly forward.
Don’t look back.
A lake of clear water lays still and calm. Birds (too far away to distinguish species) swoop lazily overhead. All is peaceful until the standing stones begin to quiver, small pebbles roll down to the lake sending ripples across the surface drawing patterns that weave and double cross.
A watery maze appears. The walls clear enough to see through but refractions set up a prism effect showing the landscape with a rainbow light. Glorious colours indeed… but what’s that smoke on the horizon?
Yol – This Item Has Little Or No Scrap Value
Ever wondered what JAZZ would sound like after Yol had had a fair go at it? Wonder no more as ‘Finley Crafted’ kicks like a Sidney Bechet joint with bruised ribs. Yakety-Sax and Ten-to-Two drums are pushed out a porthole but the pulse… the all important swing remains. It’s all syncopated beats and bomb-detonation throat, man. Gosh! This is heady, heady head-est schizz right from the get-go. These ‘live’ recordings are juddering with malevolence and stark contrast. ‘Bleed Mouth Parts’ and ‘Trapped in Portland Works’ are two of the most violent and brutal recordings I think I’ve ever heard. Sorry Extreme Noise Terror. Yol has beaten your usually exceptional ROOAAOOORRROR trump with a single (but scientifically focused) gob, cheap spanner set and polystyrene block.
Real rubble is thrown about for ‘Bird Feathers’ a rare decent into bass with (what sounds like) a fully pressurised deep sea diving suit dragged down a spiral staircase – as you listen, ear cocked against the air tube, it pulses ‘Vuphhhh-chk-hhhoooofff’.
The final boof , ‘A Medium Experience’ brings the hooligan noise back into home territory with the warmness and (dare I say it) comfort of interlocking manacles. Again my jass-ears are focused on the clattering percussion; the tinka-link of scrap metal that divides time like a punk Dejohnette. Do I have to say it? Essential. Essential and life affirming motherfuckers!
Culver – Gateshead Soup
What is there left to say about Culver? The most singular of artists he does his thing with no regard for fashion or favour. You’re into it or you’re not.
This tape (same as the last and same as the next) was picked up at a live show and apparently not available via more ‘official’ channels. What? Less official than a regular Matching Head release… that’s like trying to copyright snowflakes, man.
But what’s it sound like? A slowly emerging landscape of loops that I’ve tried to scientifically represent (a) to (g):
(a) a foul machine heating up and (b) three solitary acoustic guitar notes
(a) with (c) brown organ smear
(c) and (d) foreboding doom rumble
(d) incorporating (e) bleak metallic thunder
(e) gives way to (f) plumes of black smoke rising over the battlefield
(f) gently diminishes for (g) Valium earthquake
(g) x 2 fades out incredibly slowly leaving you praying for a start to the endless nothingness…
—ooOoo—
resin and paprika: joe murray on dario lozano-thornton, field recordings from the caucasus
October 6, 2016 at 8:20 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: dario lozano-thornton, early music, field recordings from the caucasus, joe murray, winebox press
Dario Lozano-Thornton – 42 Rokeby Terrace (self-released, CD-r edition of 30, ‘Slightly Deluxe’ CD-r edition of 20 or download)
Various Artists – Kazbek: Field Recordings from the Caucasus (2 x tape, Early Music, EM102, edition of 70)
Dario Lozano-Thornton – 42 Rokeby Terrace
Well-scrubbed and softly spoken, Dario Lozano-Thornton shuffled onto the North East Dictaphone scene a few years ago as the random egg-nog in multiple electronic/improv pick up groups under the performance name Unvoiced Velar Plosive.
While I could see Dario had greasy fingers in tape manipulation I had no idea he was an axesmith too. That was until I saw his Sonny and the Sharrocks extreme free-jazz; the chops rattling bones in an Italian restaurant (for real). So when he passed me this disc, reeking of blues and nostalgia, I booked some quality time with myself to drink sweet moonshine in a single intoxicating gulp.
The back-story here is that each tune (music and lyrics) is built out of first time improvisations and recorded with the luscious intimacy only a home recording can provide. It features a cast of characters (indeed the new cream of Newcastle’s music scene) and a Midnight Doctor or two.
This is darned remarkable stuff that leaks a new kind of wax out of those old blues records you don’t play as much as you really should. This is no ‘I-got-up-this-morning’ pastiche but a neat rosewood cabinet. Each little polished drawer opens with a satisfying smoothness and contains a delicate song-ling yawning and stretching as you wake it from hibernation. These things are carefully folded and scored and reveal delicate treasure made of muscle, gut, breath and bone.
Examples? The effortless smoke of drag your sentences becomes an erased Tom Waits with only the wood grain remaining. Caustic streaks of violin that capture the universal dustbowl on another’s woe build (along with that stray spectral mbira) a stark bony construction. Beefheartian (yes!) Zoot Horning, but with the sorrow bar whammed, on electric coles, holds a magic mirror to cut outs; a beautiful bruise of sound – harp, guitar, strings, oboe (?) and musty Dictaphone.
The pace is slow and deliberate. There’s no sense in rushing as volcanic sand gets stuck in your plimsolls. Things follow a natural flow: a guitar line bleeds into a vocal, a vocal blossoms into a saxophone wail or mbira pluck. The songs are short – a minute, a couple of minutes in the main proving, yet again, that brevity is an end in itself.
Think it, say it, get out.
Various Artists – Kazbek: Field Recordings from the Caucasus
Beautiful recordings of some of the planet’s most wonderful music.
A few years ago Jon Collin’s award-winning Winebox Press released this in a deluxe 4 cassette-and-handmade-box edition that was a joy to weigh in the palm. I had the pleasure of exhibiting it (and a bunch of other Winebox releases) at the ‘Everyone Loves Tapes These Days’ exhibition. But, close though I was, I never managed to snaffle one of these earthly delights. Since then my days have been marked by a raincloud until… Jon launches a new edition on the soon-to-be-essential Early Music label.
Format-junkies can still swoon over the double-pack-cassette-on-minty-green complete with grainy pics of an awld gadgie and wifey but for me the music is the draw, neatly compartmentalized across four generous sides.
I’m no musicologist but the rise and fall of the gruff voices on the VOCAL ENSEMBLES side meshes the harmonies my pampered western ears have grown accustomed to. So this is all about the clash of sick tones, rich as paprika; whether the swoops come from a group lurching; their voices like a car speeding over a hump-back bridge (the kind that leaves your stomach fizzing) or solo muff aching with sadness [Editor’s note: Wait, what?! Oh, I’ll let it go…].
The sweetness of the SONGS AND ENSEMBLES include the truly wonderful Ashiq Nargile and move from ‘blues’ conversations over slinky strings to someone that sounds like Fergal Sharkey holed up in the cheese caves. These recordings are informal in the best possible way and littered with start-up strums, coughs and genial asides. There is no clinical Real World shit here but genuine, squat-on-a-carpet ambiences. Oh yeah… the woodblock accompaniment to the rasping, gasping accordion set is pretty mesmeric.
Gentle ducks at the wrestling festival opens WINDS AND REEDS where squealing and greasy pipes get a thorough work-out. Reed organs crackle with eccentric tunes, popping and parping like the magical mouse-organ. Then we get soft flutes – overblown split bamboo in some eye-watering Eastern jazz – to groups that sound totally Morocco with dissonance overlaid in patterns as old as memory tiles.
And there is no let up on the final side INSTRUMENTAL STRINGS – raw as neat spirit infused with spruce resin. These tunes are plucked with a rural urgency, the unmistakable sound of people who need to get shit done before the sun goes down. I’m all speed-freaked by the business until a dulcimer tune transports me back to 1980’s Tales of the Unexpected with its mysterious off-klang.
If you’re looking for some real genuine direction take up these two tapes, listen and bury at the cross roads. I swear your head will never be the same again.
—ooOoo—
the 2015 zellaby awards
January 8, 2016 at 11:24 am | Posted in blog info, musings, new music, no audience underground | 2 CommentsTags: aas, alec cheer, ali robertson, alien passengers, andrew wild, andy crow, anla courtis, aqua dentata, ashtray navigations, bbblood, benjamin hallatt, blood stereo, bridget hayden, cardboard club, charlotte braun, chocolate monk, chrissie caulfield, claire potter, crow versus crow, culver, david chatton barker, david somló, delphine dora, dominic coppola, duncan harrison, e.y.e., expose your eyes, fake mistress, female:pressure, fort evil fruit, g.j de rook, giant tank, graham dunning, guttersnipe, hagman, hairdryer excommunication, half an abortion, hardworking families, helicopter quartet, ian watson, invisible city records, joe murray, john tuffen, joined by wire, jon collin, kay hill, kev sanders, kirigirisu recordings, know this, luke vollar, luminous monsters, macrowhisker, mantile records, marlo eggplant, mel o'dubhslaine, memoirs of an aesthete, midnight doctors, namke communications, no basement is deep enough, paul harrison, posset, power moves label, r.a.n, reckno, richard youngs, robert ridley-shackleton, rosemary krust, saboteuse, sabrina peña young, sam mcloughlin, saturn form essence, scke\\, shareholder, shredderghost, sindre bjerga, skatgobs, sonotanotanpenz, sophie cooper, steve lawson, steven ball, stuart chalmers, tabs out, the piss superstition, tom white, tutore burlato, va aa lr, whole voyald infinite light, winebox press, xazzaz, yol, zellaby awards
Hello friends and welcome to the 2015 Zellaby Awards and Radio Free Midwich end-of-year round-up. I’m very glad to see you. My apologies in advance to those long term readers expecting the usual introduction full of whimsical nonsense. There will be some of that, of course, but this year needs to be taken seriously and I’m going to start dark. Don’t worry though – spoiler alert – there will be joy and life-affirming redemption by the end: this piece is my It’s a Wonderful Life.
Firstly, it is not the job of this blog to comment on the wider world but aside from the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, our glorious future prime minister, 2015 was largely without hope. I wish you all good luck in navigating the coming End Times.
Personally, away from music, my year can be split into three four month long segments. For the first of these I was ill with non-stop, run-of-the-mill viruses. Nowt serious on its own but the cumulative effect of so many strung together – a necklace of snot – left me in a parlous state. My depression played cards with its fidgety cousin anxiety, waited until I was defenceless and then kicked in the door. The second four months were spent off work attempting to shift these unwelcome guests whilst maintaining a functioning family life. I’ve written about this debilitating effort elsewhere, no need for further details here. The final four months of 2015 were the tale of my recuperation and slow recovery following a change in medication and a breakthrough in both the treatment of my illness and my attitude towards it. After much grief, I left 2015 exhausted and resentful but hopeful that new ways of muzzling the black dog will allow me a lengthy period of peace and sanity.
When I was down in it, days, weeks even, passed when music seemed more trouble than it was worth. The list of releases submitted to RFM for review, plus other stuff that caught my bloodshot eye, became an untended vine cracking the panes of its greenhouse and desiccating the soil in its giant terracotta pot. I’d try to ignore it, slumped in my deckchair, but would be tickled awake by a tendril and look up to see something like Audrey II grinning down at me:
Or maybe one my colleagues – Joe, Chrissie, Sof, Luke, marlo – would arrive with a ladder, new glass, plant food, exotic orchids or intricate alpines to distract me, gawd bless ‘em. Looking back, I’m surprised at how often I actually did pick up the trowel – if only to wave hello, or whack Luke on the nose with it when I found him digging in the flower beds – and I’m quietly proud of maintaining this garden despite the inclement mental weather. During 2015 radiofreemidwich received approximately 32,000 visits – a new record. 93 posts were published, including the blog’s 500th, by half a dozen different authors. The most popular of which were last year’s Zellaby Awards and my no-audience underground ‘state of the notion’ address – most gratifying as both are heartfelt celebrations of the scene. Not bad, eh?
Now, at this point in the introduction I was going to get catty about my usual scratching posts, hit a few sacred cow arses with a banjo etc. but, looking down at the silted pavement and up at the grey sky, it’s clear that what the world needs now is love, sweet love – not smart alec remarks and passive-aggressive score settling. So let’s get the party started instead.
Here’s the rules: to be eligible in one of the following five categories this music needs to have been heard by one of us for the first time in 2015. It does not need to have been released in 2015. As the purpose of these awards is to spread the good news about as many quality releases as possible, should an artist win in one category they will not be placed in any of the others. I do not vote for my own stuff as midwich, nor any releases that I had a hand in (thus no Aqua Dentata on fencing flatworm – sorry Eddie). The team will avoid touting each others’ projects too – not because we care about conflict of interest (there isn’t any down here) but we do like to maintain at least a veneer of decorum. Aside from marlo, who has been nostril deep in PhD crap all year and thus didn’t feel qualified to contribute, the whole team has chipped in and I will be pasting their responses below. This year I am at least nodding in the direction of democracy when compiling the lists but, as editor, I am reserving final say. Don’t worry though – my dictatorship is benevolent and progressive.
Right then, time to pop some fucking corks…
—ooOoo—
Radio Free Midwich presents the 2015 Zellaby Awards
5. The “I’d never heard of you 10 minutes ago but now desperately need your whole back catalogue” New-to-RFM Award
Chrissie expresses doubts about the whole process then nails a perfect nomination:
I’m not much of a one for end of year retrospectives, forward is my preferred direction. Also I find it hard to compare music and place it in any sort of order. One day a particular piece or artist will be exactly what I need, another day it will have me screaming for the STOP button. Add to which I haven’t actually reviewed very much this year. Even when I found a (rather large, rich) niche to occupy I still take longer to complete a review than I’d really like. Still, I hate to disappoint, and I never miss a deadline so…
Even while reviewing one album, I couldn’t help mentioning tracks on other albums!
[Editor’s note: an extract from Chrissie’s review of Science Fiction & Horror Movie Soundtrack Collection: Strange Films of Sabrina Peña Young:]
‘Singularity’ is a whole Star Trek episode in miniature. It opens as an almost conventional, if nicely constructed piece of theme music, and gradually becomes something very much more. Going from the journey out, discovery of a possibly inhabited planet, then meeting an alien, trying to escape and the closing theme music again – a novella in seven minutes forty-three seconds! To be honest I’m pretty sure that that isn’t the actual narrative of ‘Singularity’ but I like to make things up as I’m listening and that idea seemed plausible at the time [Editor’s note: it’s the RFM way…]. What it’s really about is the rise of machine intelligence, of course; which is equally scary, possibly.
Joe speaks in italics:
Not for the first time, Serbia’s No Basement is Deep Enough label has pinned my lugs back and hotly tongued my ear. But this time it slipped a note in my pocket that read ‘G.J de Rook’ (but no phone number I notice!).
Gerrit’s considered gobble-de-gook on a and bla is the metallic-gravy I’m craving right now. The calm and pleasant gibber hits that sweet-spot of babies gurgling, a hummingbird’s gaudy thrum and the plastic pop of wrenched bubble-wrap. These are universal sounds; sounds enjoyed from the Mongolian deserts to the Seattle coffee-house scene. These are the sort of sounds we need to send into space – gaffer tape a CD-r to Voyager or something- for them bug-eyed overlords to ponder.
Although Gerrit’s wider discography is relatively thin and achingly expensive don’t worry readers, I have a plan in place to slurp slowly in discreet ‘o,o,o,o,o,oa,oa,oa,oa,eh,eh,eh,o,ooo,o-like’ sips. Think on.
Sof’s joy in discovery:
I heard and reviewed the album 3 by Sonotanotanpenz at the start of my Midwich employment and have since heard everything I can by them because, for me, they just tick all the right boxes. Cheers to Kirigirisu Records for pointing me in the right direction finding this stuff!
Luke forward/slashes:
Ben Hallatt – Kay Hill, scke//, KIKS/GFR – the sinister/minimal man, eerie urban horror with muted synth/tape work.
…and I say:
…that I haven’t had the wherewithal for the obsessive curiosity that usually makes it so easy and obvious to decide the winner of this category. I have a few interests bubbling under – that lovely, young Graham Dunning seems like an intriguing chap so maybe I’ll stalk him once I have the energy – but in the meantime I’m happy to to go along with Chrissie’s nomination of Sabrina Peña Young.
4. The “Stokoe Cup”, given for maintaining quality control over a huge body of work making it impossible to pick individual releases in an end of year round up
Sof ponders:
I don’t think I have an answer for this one, I can only think of Delphine Dora who released four albums this year which to me seems a huge amount! I’m not really into musicians who put out so much stuff that I can’t keep up. It puts me off if I’m honest, I like small and considered bodies of work. [Editor’s note: a very practical attitude – and Delphine should definitely be on everyone’s list anyway.]
Chrissie scratches her head too:
I’ve not really reviewed enough to come up with a suitable nomination for this. Similarly for the label award. I was tempted to nominate Steve Lawson for the Stokoe cup but he might be rather too ‘big’ for that to be sensible now and also I don’t believe he’s ever been reviewed here [Editor’s note: he is and he hasn’t but, hey, s’up to you – it’s an indication of where you are coming from too]. However he does release a considerable amount of material and it is of quite an amazingly high standard.
No doubts from Joe:
We’re all renaissance men and women now eh? Fingers in various pies yeah? You’re a composer/performer, a curator, a thinker, an archivist, a broadcaster, a hard-assed critic and goofy listener, a publisher and promoter? Scratch the N-AU and we bleed like colourful skittles.
This is all vital and impressive for sure. But the real trick is to weave all those various roles together with a broader sense of ‘who you are’, a central-unifying-theme and aesthetic that’s as real as Westeros fantasy shizzle. So with the powers invested in me by the fabled ‘Stokoe Cup’ I hereby recommend Andy Wild, the Crow versus Crow guy guy, as an upstanding exemplar of unified vision, industry and purpose.
Not only is Andy releasing beautifully packaged CDs on the CvC label, he’s keeping us up-to-date with a set of paintings and photography. He’s had a one-man exhibition, “You’re Gonna Need That Pure Religion, Halleloo” in his native Halifax. He’s researched, presented and broadcast almost 100 radio shows and curated a bunch of special one-off sessions (like John Peel yeah). And all this strikes me with a look and a feel that’s unmistakably CvC and unified. Here’s an example: as Andy dug deeper into old blues records spindly hiss and burr appeared on the paintings (and in the exhibition title). The smeared photos mirrored the abstract sound of worn vinyl. The shows became looser, the voice deeper and the mood darker. Do people still do mission statements? If so, is ‘be beautiful’ taken?
Luke starts on a theme:
A tough one this year with the above mentioned Ben Hallatt and the incredible Stuart Chalmers. My vote, however, has to go to Robert Ridley-Shackleton: the Oxfam prince, the cardboard king. He keeps on peaking, inhabiting his own corner. In a just universe he would be on the X Factor panel: he IS pop.
…and I say:
Well, Joe makes a compelling case for Andy Crow there and since being born from an egg on a mountaintop the nature of Shackleton is irrepressible, but I’m handing the trophy to a familiar name and previous Zellaby award winner: Kev Sanders.
Whilst not quite reaching the Stakhanovite release rate displayed in 2014, his productivity remains alarming high, as does the quality of his work. I’ve not reviewed a great deal of it, nor much else released on his label hairdryer excommunication (this collection of haiku from September being my main engagement) but it has been an ever-present background radiation.
If you picture the year as an autobahn, one which I have been stalled beside, hood up, engine steaming, then Kev’s music is a series of electricity pylons running alongside carrying cables buzzing with an intensity that is somehow both bleak and comforting. I wish him well with his coming move to that London and look forward to a chance to catch up whilst he is otherwise engaged. Now, like a casino bouncer chucking out a professional gambler, I’m banning him from winning anything else for a while. House rules.
3. The Special Contribution to Radio Free Midwich Award
Sof and Chrissie have a playground tussle over who gets to be teacher’s pet:
Sof: It’s no secret that Rob Hayler has had a rough year with his depression but his drive and passion for underground music has meant he’s kept up with this blog which I’m sure a lot of folks wouldn’t do under the same circumstances – fair play and respect to you!
Chrissie: At the risk of sounding like a spoilt kid sucking up to the boss, I’d like to nominate Rob for this award. In what has been a difficult year for him he’s hired three new writers, no small risk in itself, trusting our ability to actually deliver readable prose (well, in my case anyway) in usable quantities, not to mention editing it onto the blog in good shape and good time. He’s also put up with my erratic writing schedule and lack of enthusiasm to take anything off the review pile – preferring to go off on my own in a crusade to bring more female artists to the notice of our good and loyal readers.
[Editor’s note: it might appear shameless to include the above, and I admit it kinda is, but, as I’ve pointed out, it has been a tough year and I was touched. Let me have a little sugar, yeah?]
Luke picks an outlier:
Sorry gonna have to be Robert Ridley-Shackleton again [sings: “Return of the Shack! Here it is…!”]. A little quote from Robbie following a chat about tedious porn/bondage themes in noise:
To me noise is a positive thing, it fills my brain full of the joys. I don’t understand all the negative themes presented, to me it’s life affirming
Yeah baby!!!
[Editor’s note: R-Shack’s physical contribution to RFM is indeed notable as he sent copies of all his releases plus extra examples of his womble-on-ketamine junk art not just to RFMHQ but also personally to Joe and Luke too – a Knight of the Post.]
Joe rallies the troops:
As ever, I reckon this one belongs to everybody. Anyone that sent in a tape, clicked on a link, wrote a review, listened with intent, left a comment or gave a god-damn fuck. This one’s for you. It’s all of us that make this: writers, readers, editors…even you cynics (coz debate is good, yeah?). We’re all part of the oneness. No one hears a tree fall in an empty forest right?
…and I say:
Tempting as it is to fall into step and punch the air, nostrils flaring, there is an objectively true answer to the question and that is: Anne, my wife. Without her love, care and truly unbelievable strength this blog would not have continued to exist.
However, if we limit the word ‘contribution’ to meaning actual hands-on graft accounting for the endeavours of the no-audience underground then only one name can be engraved on this medal: Joe Murray.
Of the 93 posts published this year a huge proportion were by Joe and each of those usually contained reviews of numerous items sourced from far-flung corners of the outer reaches. Despite his hep prose poetry being the best music writing currently available – Richard Youngs himself described Joe’s review of his epic No Fans seven CD box set as ‘the definitive account’ – he is completely selfless in his unpretentious enthusiasm. He embodies the ethos of this blog.
[Editor’s note: hmmm… getting a bit lovey and self-congratulatory this isn’t it? Maybe I’ll rethink this category for next year <takes deep breath, dabs corner of eye> OK, on with the big gongs!]
2. The Label of the Year Award
Sof sticks to the point:
I’ve really enjoyed every release I’ve heard from Fort Evil Fruit this year, and most years, I think we must have the same taste in music.
Luke whittles on the porch:
Another tough one with old favourites like Chocolate Monk continuing to deliver the goods. However at a push it’d be Winebox Press, a fairly laid back work rate but always something to look forward to, can’t think of another label as aesthetically as well as sonically pleasing to me at least. Objects of cosmic power that’ll warm you from the inside out.
Joe’s takes a turn:
Let’s hear it for Cardboard Club. Why? For the dogged determination and other worldly logic of course. I have no idea what is going on in the disco/noise shire of Robert Ridley-Shackleton. All I know is that I like it, I like it a lot.
Robert’s singular vision is not so much outsider as out-rigger; a ghost on the pillion. The label spreads itself across media so the scrabbly zines, tape artwork and ‘pocket-jazz’ sound can only contain the RR-S, nothing else. But what made me giggle, what made me really smile was the recent move to vinyl. Some lame-o’s see the hallowed seven inch as a step up; a career move if you please! With that kind of attitude the battle is already lost and all ideals get mushed in ‘rock school’ production. None of this for our Cardboard Club… it sounds exactly the same! A hero for our troubled times.
…and I say:
Yep, all excellent selections deserving of your attention but, with hairdryer excommunication out of the way, I’m going to use editor’s privilege to share this year’s prize between two exemplary catalogues: Invisible City Records and Power Moves Label. Both are tape-plus-download labels based on Bandcamp, both have strong individual identities – in ethos and aesthetic – despite presenting diverse, intriguing rosters and both share impeccable no-audience underground credentials (PML’s slogan: ‘true bedroom recordings with delusions of grandeur’). It don’t hurt that the gents running each – Craig and Kev respectively – are polite, efficient and enthusiastic in their correspondence too. Anyone looking for a model as to how it should be done could do worse than sit at the front of their class and take careful notes.
[Editor’s note on the Editor’s note: yes, yes, I know that ICR re-released my epic masterpiece The Swift, thus making it the label of the year by default but I felt duty bound to mention it anyway. Shame on Tabs Out Podcast, by the way, for filling the first 135 places of their 2015 Top 200 with hype and industry payola. Glad to see sanity and integrity restored with #136.]
1. The Album of the Year Award
Chrissie kicks us off:
1. R.A.N
My first female:pressure review and the one I still listen to the most.
…not only are the individual tracks on this album good, but the ordering of them is exquisite. They follow on from each other in a wonderful, spooky narrative that runs smoothly and expertly from start to finish – the gaps between them allowing you to pause for breath before being dragged into the next hellmouth.
2. FAKE Mistress – entertainted
The opening track, ‘Appreciate the moment’s security’, will pull you in with its drama, heavy noise-based beats, spooky voicing and very punkish shouting but you’ll stay for the gentler opening of ‘You better trust’, intrigued by where it’s going. There’s harsh noise in the middle of this track and in lots of places on this album, but it’s never over-used. It’s here as a structural device to take you by surprise and drag you out of your complacency.
Luke casts his net wide:
Robert Ridley-Shackleton – Self-Titled EP
Charlotte Braun – Happy Being Sad
Absurde, Chier – Absurde VS Chier
Skatgobs – Pointless
Blood Stereo – The Lure of Gurp
Alec Cheer – Autumn
Ali Robertson & His Conversations
Guttersnipe – Demo
xazzaz – descent / the crusher
VA AA LR – Ping Cone
Stuart Chalmers – Imaginary Musicks 3/4
Anla Courtis – B-Rain Folklore
S C K E / Kay Hill – Disclosure, TESSELLATION A/B, IN-GRAIN, Cold Title
Jon Collin – Wrong Moves / Dream Recall
Whole Voyald Infinite Light – Uncollected Recordings
Ashtray Navigations – Lemon Blossom Gently Pixelating In The Breeze
Melanie O’Dubhshlaine – Deformed Vowels
yol / posset – a watched pot never (no link – ask yol or Joe, they’ll sort you out)
half an abortion / yol – the designated driver
Shareholder – Jimmy Shan
[Editor’s note: blimey, eh? Luke also provided a ‘year in metal’ list too! Available on request.]
Sof’s impeccable taste displayed:
I’m going with Steven Ball’s Collected Local Songs which I reviewed earlier this year because it’s the one I’ve gone back to over and over, each listen revealing more to me. It’s such an original piece of work.
Originality is the theme of my list –
Saboteuse – Death, Of Course (this maaaaaaay, have come out last year!)
Bridget Hayden and Claire Potter – Mother To No Swimming Laughing Child
Duncan Harrison – Others Delete God
Guttersnipe – Demo
Rosemary Krust – Rosemary Krust
Sam McLoughlin & David Chatton Barker – Show Your Sketches
Delphine Dora – L’au-delà
Joe selects:
I fucking guarantee your serious music critics will moan and denounce 2015 as a fallow year for sounds. Fools! If you look around there’s an embarrassment of riches spilling out of the tape drawer, CD-r pile and download..er…folder?
I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable hurling my opinion of ‘what’s best’ around so, in the spirit of “non-competition and praise”, here’s what I’d play you right now if you were to pop round for sherry.
- yol – everyday rituals. When a record makes you run giddy for the Spanish/English dictionary you know something extraordinary is at work. You’re familiar with yol yeah? You’re not? Get a-fucking cracking pal. This is a truly explosive & genuine performance that makes your insipid rebellion look safe as milk.
- Duncan Harrison – Others Delete God. A super-subtle voice and tape work. What I love is the ‘too studio-fucked to be field recordings and too much punk-ass rush for fluxus’ approach. Natural and wonderfully blunted domestic, ‘Others…’ inhabits its own space – like a boil in the bag something served piping hot.
- Midnight Doctors – Through a Screen and Into a Hole. The merciless despot with a harmonium! Phil Begg’s steady hand guides a cavalcade of rough North East gonks through their paces to produce a timeless noir classic. It is equal parts soundtrack, accurate cop-show homage and mysterious new direction for tight-meshed ensemble. C’mon Hollywood… make that damn call.
- Shareholder – Jimmy Shan. Rock und Roll songs collapse in sharp slaggy heaps. Dirty explosions replace instruments (the guitar x 2 and drums) leaving us dazed in a no-man’s-land of stunning, blinding light and electricity. Ferocious and don’t-give-a-fuck all at once.
- Tom White – Reconstruction is tied, even-stevens, with Sindre Bjerga’s – Attractive Amplification. The world of violent tape abuse is one I follow avidly. But there’s nothing to separate these two outstanding tapes (of tapes, of tapes, of tapes). Both Tom and Sindre have the muscle memory and total mastery of their mediums (reel to reel and compact cassette) to wrench brown, sticky moans from the vintage equipment. It sounds belligerent, punch drunk and rum-sloppy to my ears. A perfect night out chaps!
…and finally, your humble editor:
Bubbling under: here are the releases that made my long list but not the countdown. Every one a cracker, presented here in alphabetical order to avoid squabbles breaking out in the car park:
Culver – Saps 76
David Somló – Movement
Delphine Dora and Sophie Cooper – Distance, Future
Dominic Coppola – Vogue Meditations
Hagman – Inundation
Hardworking Families – Happy Days
Ian Watson – Caermaen
joined by wire – universe allstars
Luminous Monsters – The Sun Tree
Robert Ridley-Shackleton – Self-Titled EP
Saturn Form Essence – Stratospheric Tower
Shredderghost – Golden Cell
yol – everyday rituals
[Editor’s note: I also have to make special mention of Askild Haugland and his peerless recordings as Taming Power. I’ve received two (I think, possibly three) parcels from him this year containing his work, all the way from Norway, and these recordings always have a profound and meditative effect. Some of it, for instance the 7” single Fragments of the Name of God, could quite possibly be perfect.]
OK, right – ooo! exciting! – here’s the top ten, presented in traditional reverse order:
10. E.Y.E – MD2015
…and what a joy it has been to have Paul Harrison back in the fray! Yes, after over a decade new material from Paul’s Expose Your Eyes project was finally made available via his new Bandcamp label Eye Fiend – a repository for much missed Fiend Recordings back catalogue (Mrs Cakehead has to be heard to be believed) and digital versions of the new stuff which is otherwise only available in tiny hand-splattered physical editions.
MD2015 is a four CD-r, four hour and twenty minute set comprising discordant synth clatters, decontextualized chanting (familiar to anyone into first wave industrial music), beats: pitter, patter – galloping hooves – factory presses, intoxicating loops, delirium (remember that footage of animals drunk on fermented fruit? This is the OST to a bootleg version of The Lion King that features those orgiastic scenes), repetition beyond human endurance / irresistible motoric groove, ‘proper’ noise – all primary sexual characteristics out and flapping in the breeze, and sorbet-refreshing shortwave-radio-ish pulse. It is a lot of fun.
9. AAS – Balancing Ritual
Y’know when your favourite stoner rock band lay down a super heavy, half-hour long, ego-obliterating, tethered crescendo but it isn’t quite enough so you and a hardy group of the suspicious break into one of the spaceships of a seemingly benevolent alien race currently visiting Earth and discover this playing inside? Yeah? A version of the above but clinical, steely, a step up from our humble efforts. It’s like that and I, for one, welcome our new drone overlords…
Graham Dunning offered to send me a tape of this, I visited Bandcamp for a sneaky preview and ended up so impressed that I’d bought the download and fallen in love before my exhausted postie even delivered the jiffy bag. I can count on the fingers of no fingers the other times that has happened recently.
8. Duncan Harrison, BBBlood, Aqua Dentata – “Ineluctable modality of the visible”
What an excellent three-fer. Not only occupying a wholly justified place in the chart but giving me the opportunity to praise Paul Watson (BBBlood), Duncan Harrison (who’s Others Delete God tape, so highly praised earlier, shamefully passed me by. Did I ever own it? Did I send it to Joe in a moment of madness? Ah, who knows?) and Eddie Nuttall (who, as Aqua Dentata, is producing amongst the finest work on my radar). Here’s some extracts from marlo’s review:
…But, damn you, Duncan Harrison! The first track immediately gets me back in my academic head! ‘(Je suis) La Loi’ makes me think of psychoanalytical linguist theorist Julia Kristeva and deconstructionist scholar Jacques Derrida. The use of breath and physiological sounds makes the listening an embodied experience. The listener feels present. It is hard not to notice if one’s lips are dry or if you possibly had too many coffees…
…In ‘Nexistence of Vividence’, BBBlood returns to more of the crunchy reeling and wheeling and dealing. It is a typhoon that builds and waits. Never fully collapsing, the sounds peters out like attempting to catch water running through fingers. Yet there is an ethereal resolution to the struggle and the listeners are laid to rest, an aural wiping of the brow. Time to rest after the long haul…
…Eddie Nuttall, a.k.a Aqua Dentata, is not from this planet. I honestly don’t think he is. His music feels like extraterrestrial communication from outside our universe. Like binaural beats and subconscious interfering hypnosis, his untitled track sounds like it is made of laser beams. As a listener, you feel like you merge with the frequency and question your ability to make cognitive sense. It isn’t because of a reliance in bombarding one with several sounds but rather a direct cerebral invasion…
7. The Piss Superstition – Garage Squall
Joe reviewed this one in the shape of a UFO. No, I don’t know why either but it is absolutely bang on:
Mag-lev trains.
The very best form of bluster.
As gentle as breath on a mirror,
Predator’s Answerphone message
The Velvet Underground trapped in a matchbox.
A map! Hectares of featureless crystalline crackle – zoom into mountains,
A corduroy vibe; not geography teacher clichés but that ribbed softness – a tickle on the fingernail.
Ride the world’s slowest roller-coaster taking 1000 years, cranking the incline.
Forbidden Planet strained with nourishing iron-rich greens,
A dream-tractor changing gear on the endless road.
Immense power restrained by gravity
A hit of strong, clean anaesthetic,
I’m counting backwards.
10, 9, 8…
6. Stuart Chalmers – Loop Phantasy No. 1, No. 2, No. 3
Joe again, not sparing the superlatives:
…But this time I throw my regular Northern caution and cynicism out the window and claim these three recordings THE MOST IMPORTANT SALVAGED TAPE LOOP RECORDINGS EVER YEAH.
What? Like…ever?
I hear you ask.
Yes
I answer with a calm, clear voice.
Like in the whole 100 year history of recorded music?
You probe,
even including the oft- mentioned high- water mark of looping Tom Recchion’s Chaotica?
You add. I merely smile and press play on the device of your choice.
You must listen, you must listen to truly understand
I chant with glassy eyes.
Anyway… fuck yeah! That’s what I’m saying. If you want to know where looping is right now in 2015/2016: PLAY THESE RECORDS. If you are looking for an instructional map of what’s possible with simple tape loops, a couple of pedals and some hot ears: PLAY THESE RECORDS. If you want to open up that valve in your stomach that helps you release gaseous tension: PLAY THESE RECORDS…
…Students of tape culture – your set-text has arrived. Screw in those earbuds and get seriously twisted.
5. Ashtray Navigations – A Shimmering Replica
A beautiful album in every respect and an entirely life-affirming experience. Terrific to see Phil and Mel get such a high-profile, flagship release in what was a high-profile, flagship year for the band. I will have more to say on this in a long-planned article which will be published around the eventual release date of the long-planned best of Ashtray Navigations 4CD box set. Coming soon! In the meantime: buy this.
4. Melanie O’Dubhshlaine – Deformed Vowels
Likewise, Mel’s remarkable solo venture deserves a much more detailed account than it is going to get here. Via a kind of meta-semi-improv (or something?) she continues on her utterly compelling, largely unheralded project to reinvent music on her own terms.
I imagine a Dr. Moreau style musical laboratory in which Mel cares for her cross bred instruments, incunabula parping their first notes, joyfully interacting with the sentient automata Mel has created to entertain them with. She dangles a microphone over the giant aquarium tank in which they all live and conducts this unique performance.
Unlike anything else I’ve heard this year, or maybe ever.
3. Helicopter Quartet – Ghost Machine
A peerless work, even within the band’s own faultless back catalogue. From my review:
It is difficult to write about Helicopter Quartet, the duo of RFM staffer Chrissie Caulfield (violin, synths) and Michael Capstick (guitars), because their music is so enveloping, so attention seizing, that when I’m listening the part of my brain I use to put words in a row is too awestruck to function. However, following many hours with it, I am certain this is their best album yet. That a work of such mature beauty, sculpted over months, is freely downloadable is surely further evidence that we are living in a golden age for self released music. It has the austere and magisterial presence of a glacier edge, the drama of that glacier calving into the sea.
If you ever act on anything I say then act on this: go get it.
2. Guttersnipe – Demo
Wow, this kicked the fucking doors in. With this CD-r and a series of explosive live performances Guttersnipe owned 2015 – they were either your new favourite band or you just hadn’t heard of them yet. Luke got to review this one, here’s an extract:
Guttersnipe whip up a frightening noise on drums, guitars, electronics and howled vocals that will have you reaching for the light switch. The cassette fidelity smudges the freejazzmetalhaze into a fog of terror from which emerges the fangs of a gaping gob ready to bite you. I’ve been listening to a lot of black metal recently and these vocals could have the corpse painted hordes crying for their mama. However, they are not the guttural grunts of the alpha male but more a feminine screech of desperation and disgust which the other two respond to by conjuring a blackened and unsettled miasma. Calling this disc demo leads me to believe that Guttersnipe are selling themselves short. This is impressively original material that comes over like a Xasthur/Skullflower hybrid with a hefty slug of secret ingredient. Marvellous job.
Amusingly, and presumably because he hadn’t seen them live at the time, he seems to imply this duo is a trio – a testament to their ferocity (and my skills as an editor…).
1. namke communications – 365/2015
Finally then, the winner of the Zellaby Award for album of the year presented by Radio Free Midwich is, in an unusually literal sense, the album of the year: 365/2015 by namke communications. Here’s some context from a piece I wrote in March:
…old-friend-of-RFM John Tuffen, in a project which recalls the conceptual bloodymindedness of Bill Drummond (who has raised ‘seeing it through’ to the level of art form), is recording a track every day throughout the whole of 2015 and adding them to the album [on Bandcamp] as the calendar marches on … each track is freshly produced on the day in question and, as might be expected, vary enormously in style, execution and instrumentation – there is guitar improv, electronica in various hues and field recording amongst other genres welcome ’round here…
Indeed, added to various forms of (usually light and expansive) improv and field and domestic recordings of life’s ebb and flow were many forays into sub-genres of electronica, techno as she is written, actual *ahem* songs, drones of many textures, experimental sketches with software and new toys, callbacks, the odd joke (all tracks in February had the duration 4’33” following a twitter exchange with me) and so on and so, unbelievably, on. I can’t claim to have heard all of it – of course I haven’t – and there are misfires – of course there are – but the level of quality maintained is gobsmacking given the scope of the exercise.
Each track was accompanied by notes, most with a picture and then a tweet announced its presence too. John was no slacker on the admin – I approve. In March I suggested:
This one I have no qualms about dipping into, in fact I would recommend constructing your own dipping strategies. As the year progresses you could build an album from the birthdays of your family, or never forget an anniversary again with a self-constructed namke communications love-bundle. Won a tenner on the lottery? Create your own three track EP with the numbers and paypal John a couple of quid. Or perhaps a five CD boxset called ‘Thursday Afternoon’, in homage to Brian Eno, containing everything released on that day of the week? Or condense the occult magic with a set comprising every 23rd track? Ah, the fun to be had. Or you could just listen to it on a daily basis until it becomes a welcome part of your routine…
I was at least half-joking at the time but engaging with 365/2015 has proved a unique way of experiencing an album. During the worst of my illness, as I spent nights trawling Twitter unable to sleep, it did become a valuable part of my daily routine. Literally a light in the darkness – Bandcamp page shining on the tablet as I lay in bed – John’s project, existing due to nothing but his crazy drive to create (the whole thing, 40+ hours, available as a ‘name your price’ download!), truly helped me through. A clear and worthy winner.
In conclusion…
So, that is that for another year. John’s prize, should he wish to take me up on it, is for namke communications to have the one and only release on the otherwise dormant fencing flatworm recordings some time in 2016. A surprise baby sister, perhaps, for his lovely available from namke communications released by me back in the day and now (I think) a teenager itself.
Many thanks to my fellow writers and to all who support us – for your time, patience and enthusiasm – it is much appreciated. Heartfelt best wishes for the New Year, comrades.
All is love.
Rob Hayler, January 2016.
—ooOoo—
drink up the vapours: luke vollar on winebox press
April 1, 2015 at 11:37 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: barry dean, contemplative music, desert guitar, desolate wasted melancholy, edwin stevens, jon collin, luke vollar, tom settle, whole voyald infinite light, winebox press
Jon Collin – Wrong Moves / Dream Recall (tape, Winebox Press, winebox26, edition of 72 ‘from the door of the below wardrobe’)
Whole Voyald Infinite Light – Uncollected Recordings (2 x tape, Winebox Press, winebox25, edition of 82 ‘in a double tape case constructed from the broken down frame of a wardrobe’)
Winebox Press is something special. Thus when an e-mail appeared in my inbox advertising two new releases I didn’t hesitate to order them immediately. Jon Collin seems to occupy his own little pasture of contemplative music untroubled by the futile excesses of modern life. The fact that most releases are on the cassette format and attached to lumps of wood fashioned from old wardrobes, boxes and whatnot adds a charm that really emphasizes the aesthetic at work. Whether it’s Jon’s music or that of like minded artists which gets released, there is a common theme: a primitive folk music that’s been nourished with a knowledge of underground forms and approaches. A scan of the Winebox Press blog will show an impressive list of highly desirable objects put together with love and devotion, most now long gone. I cannot think of another label with such a heartfelt dedication to presenting their cherished sounds in a way that makes them feel possessed with cosmic force. It’ll warm you from the inside out.
Wrong Moves / Dream Recall is straight up lovely. An unfortunate habit of the male music scribe is to show off his knowledge when discussing artists in order to make unnecessary comparisons:
blah blah John Fahey, blah blah Robbie Basho
…ad nauseum. Well I’m not going to do that [Editor’s note: heh, heh – you kinda already did! Sneaky]. I will say that his guitar playing on Side A is languid, reflective and beautiful. Notes are shrugged off like drops of water falling onto the surface of a lake, while the creak of his bottle neck confuses his playing and the cassette format keeps the listener cradled in ‘cotton wool arms’ (copyright: Joe Murray). There is no purpose or forward motion to these short pieces, rather it sounds like Jon is out on the porch, daydreaming his fingers across the strings. He manages to combine a hesitant probing approach to playing with a profound serenity that is as deep and green as the forest that adorns his High Peak Selections album. The picture attached to the box is a scene of coastal idyll: a beach, some trees and a blurry patina that reminds me of flicking through my grandparents’ photo album as a kid. Shit, I’m already choking up and I haven’t even flipped it yet.
Side B sees some piano and ebow action. The tactile feeling conveyed is supremely seductive – the kinda opiated creek you could swim in for hours. Pure piano for the second piece and Jon’s playing is as unhurried as his guitar playing. I LOVE this sound and if this brief foray into piano is new for Jon then I hope we get to hear more.
Uncollected Recordings by Whole Voyald Infinite Light sees Jon joined by some guitar slinging buddies, a quartet on the first tape and a duo on the second. Tape One sees some loose and heady psych jams with Tom Settle and Edwin Stevens on bass and drums and the ethereal vocals and guitar of Barry Dean (Infinite Light) coming over like Tim Buckley via Kate Bush. If you, like me, can dig baggy, exploratory wig outs that roam around like crazy horse then this will most certainly stoke the coal in your fire. Jon shows another side of his chops and goddam if that boy can’t play the shit out of his geetar. Grizzled leads carry the rest of the group over the horizon into the sunset with enough conviction to make the most seasoned of heavy psych collectors nod solemnly in approval. Side B is a slow burner, the collective instruments and ‘that voice’ glowing like stars in the sky – hell, there’s even a harmonica – and some truly stupendous string blurt going on.
Jon and Barry go it alone for the next tape and the guitars coalesce into thick streams of fuzz tone, showering sparks like a six stringed flame thrower. Things slow down to more nuanced interplay with swelling feedback, off kilter spontaneous riffing and the vibe of a tape left to roll capturing ‘the moment’.
Side D starts with an almost Japanese feel of desolate, wasted melancholy. Barry’s vocals are at their most nuts here (seriously how does he sing that high? I wonder if he talks like an ordinary guy?) and we bow out with more harmonica and drunken guitars crying into their beers. I’ve no idea if this configuration is an ongoing concern but I certainly hope so. The wild and the free, the prairie dwellers who howl at the moon and drink up the vapours, are always welcome in my kingdom.
—ooOoo—
Winebox Press:
the 2013 zellaby awards
January 4, 2014 at 8:52 pm | Posted in musings, new music, no audience underground | 4 CommentsTags: aqua dentata, ashtray navigations, beartown, billy sprague, bjerga/iversen, black sun roof, blue yodel, ceramic hobs, culver, daniel thomas, drone, duff/nyoukis/robertson/shaw, electronica, foldhead, galena, gary simmons, hairdryer excommunication, half an abortion, helicopter quartet, hiroshima yeah!, hissing frames, id m theft able, idwal fisher, improv, joe murray, kevin sanders, kirkstall dark matter, knurr & spell, la mancha del pecado, lee stokoe, lost wax, lovely honkey, lucy johnson, mark ritchie, mark wharton, mastery, matching head, melanie o'dubhslaine, memoirs of an aesthete, miguel perez, moral holiday, new music, no audience underground, noise, ocelocelot, paul walsh, people-eaters, phil todd, plurals, poor mouth, psychedelia, robert ridley-shackleton, sanity muffin, scott mckeating, seth cooke, shareholder, sheepscar light industrial, shemboid, shoganai, skullflower, smut, somália, spoils & relics, starlite coffins, tapes, the piss superstition, thomas james hayler, union pole, vocal improvisation, winebox press, witchblood, xazzaz, yol, zellaby awards
Ladies and gentlemen, dear readers all, welcome to the hotly anticipated Zellaby Awards for 2013. The show, in its third annual outing, is presented in association with Radio Free Midwich and hosted by the editor from his comfortably-appointed padded cell in the basement of Midwich Mansions.
In previous years the awards have formed part one of a two part round-up of cultural highlights. However this year I can easily roll what would usually be part two into this preamble. Why? Three words: Thomas James Hayler. The birth of our son in March was an epoch-defining, paradigm-shattering, life-forever-altering event for all of us – I’m sure you’ll remember the moon turning a fire red that evening – but looking after the kid (y’know: issuing orders to the nannies, sorting through the mountains of flowers, cards and teddy-bears left at the gate of the estate, that kind of thing) has rather cut into the time and energy afforded to culture in general.
It was interesting to experience how looking after a baby pares life down to the essentials. I now do my bit to help with Thomas, I look after my wife Anne as best I can too, I keep up with my friends and family (more or less), I go to work (when healthy) and I think about music. That’s all I have but, crucially, it is all I want. Sure, we could do with more money and better health – who couldn’t? – but establishing this balance has been refreshing and revelatory. I can sincerely state, all joking and archness to one side, that Thomas joining us has made 2013 the best year of my life so far. By some distance.
<stares wistfully into middle distance, wipes tear from stubbled cheek, returns to business at hand>
I did get to read a handful of books, of which HHhH by Laurent Binet, about a 1942 mission to assassinate Richard Heydrich, chief of the Gestapo, was the most compelling, original and intriguing. I even stole a line from it to use in a review. I think I read the entire of Museum Without Walls, a collection of essays and television scripts by polemicist, architecture critic and commentator Jonathan Meades. I say ‘I think’ because it was mainly done in sleepy five page chunks in the middle of the night. Otherwise I kept my membership of the bourgeoisie fresh by reading the London Review of Books and took my news mainly from Private Eye which, despite its many faults, holds power to account at least some of the time thus making it unique in the mainstream. I pretty much gave up on film and television aside from using the boy as an excuse to watch Regular Show and Adventure Time on Cartoon Network. Oh, and Game of Thrones series 3 was fun too if you like that sort of thing.
Down here in the no-audience underground I devoured, as ever, anything posted by Uncle Mark over at the essential Idwal Fisher blog and cover-to-covered the no-less essential Hiroshima Yeah! the moment it arrived in the mail. Congratulations to the latter on reaching its 100th issue this year, no mean feat with one of its two editors in prison… Also in the realm of the self-published, a pamphlet of poetry by my good friend and comrade Nick Allen has been on my bedside table since he surprised me with it at work one morning and has been well-thumbed and repeatedly enjoyed.
It has been another golden year for music, both live and recorded. A couple of my all-time favourite gigs occurred in the last 12 months and my ‘long list’ for best album contained 34 contenders! Never mind those bullshit ‘end of year’ polls you see in print magazines that you know were proofread over ice-creams in August, never mind those ‘best albums of the last fifteen minutes’ you see on internet based blogzine snore-fests. This is the real deal: compiled whilst the New Year is still bellowing after being slapped into life. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves – we need to trot through a few methodological points, then the ceremony can commence.
Firstly, the music mentioned below may not have been released in 2013, although most of it was. To qualify it had to be heard by RFM for the first time in the calendar year 2013. Secondly, releases featuring the staff of RFM (me, Scott McKeating, Joe Murray) are excluded. Modesty is not a virtue I can be accused of but awarding ourselves prizes is a bit much even for me. Thirdly there are the same five award categories as last time (although one has had to be renamed…). Should an artist win big in one of them they may appear overlooked in others. This is deliberately done in the interests of plugging as much excellence as possible and thus no-one should get the hump. Finally, I did invite the aforementioned Scott and Joe to contribute nominations but the final decisions are mine. Think of me as a benign dictator listening carefully to his advisers before passing judgement.
OK, shush now – the house lights are dimming… Time for the first category!
—ooOoo—
5. The “I’d never heard of you 10 minutes ago but now desperately need your whole back catalogue” New-to-RFM Award goes to…
(with honourable mentions for Joe’s choice: WANDA GROUP, “the absolute master of steamy hiss and non-linear edit”)
Here’s a extract from the lengthy overview of Lucy’s back catalogue that I posted back in July:
One of the refreshing things about what I playfully refer to as the ‘no-audience underground’ is that it is not full of self-aggrandising blabbermouths. There are a few – me, for example – and an acceptable level of self-absorption is common, but many artists quietly get on with producing excellent work mainly, it seems, for their own gratification and the pleasure of their circle.
This situation allows for the gradual discovery of that most mysterious of creatures: the unsung hero. Names are pencilled in – an aside from the omniscient Scott McKeating, a credit on a Matching Head insert, say – then repeated until they become underlined in bold and further investigation becomes inevitable. Such has been the case with Lucy Johnson.
I had, of course, already praised Space Victim, her duo with Mike Vest, to the hilt (they featured in RFM’s best of 2012 list) and more recently did the same for the Witchblood tape, her duo with Lee Stokoe, on Matching Head. A comment from Miguel Perez led to me picking up her tapes as Smut and hearing those led to me finally paying some proper attention. Over the last few weeks I have been putting two and two together via Discogs, the Turgid Animal site and various other rune-casting activities and have been gathering up examples of her work. She records solo as Smut and Esk, is half of the aforementioned duos, is the vocalist for black metal band Rife, and is also in the bands Obey and Dark Bargain (as reviewed by Scott below). Her artwork adorns covers and T-shirts and has recently been made available to buy as prints. Most of this stuff is available from the label and distributor Turgid Animal which (according to that same review by Scott) she co-runs. Blimey, eh?
Can’t wait to hear what comes next. There is at least one more Smut tape to pick up and the Obey album to look forward to as well…
Next is…
4. The “Stokoe Cup”, given for maintaining quality control over a huge body of work making it impossible to pick individual releases in an end of year round up goes to…
(with honourable mentions for Kevin Sanders whose consistency proves awe-inspiring, Bjerga/Iversen’s album-per-month Bandcamp project, Joe’s choice Hapsburg Braganza and, of course, Lee Stokoe, who was also Scott’s choice)
Given that I went from not knowing who he is to hearing/seeing around 50 objects produced by him during the course of a few months Robbie was odds-on favourite in this category. That said, I realise that it is a controversial choice as ‘quality control’ may not be an entirely appropriate concept to apply to this gushing, unstoppable flow. I suppose one man’s drivel fountain is another man’s exuberant exploration of an outsider vision. As I wrote in my first overview piece about his stuff:
Call it an ‘aesthetic’, a ‘vision’ if you like, but it becomes clear during the perusal of these artefacts that this is Robert’s world – a dimensionless jiffy bag containing a wonky, distorted universe – and that the rest of us are tourists within it.
For what it is worth, The Butterfly Farm, the tape pictured above released by Beartown Records, is as good a place to start as any.
On to…
3. The Special Contribution to Radio Free Midwich Award goes to…
Joe Murray and Scott McKeating
(with honourable mentions for Dan Thomas and Miguel Perez who both understand what friendship is really about. Cheers fellas.)
Obviously. In May Scott offered to help out, I bit his hand off. This gave me the idea of asking Joe, who bit my hand off. Once these appendages had been sewn back on we shook them vigorously and got down to the typing. I like to think that the house style at RFM sits somewhere between the jazzed exuberance of Joe and the more meticulous, journalistic work of Scott. Thus between us we offer a comprehensive ‘three bears’ account of this remarkable scene. Being able to lean on these guys has kept the porridge at a perfect temperature during some pretty distracted times, especially baby- and illness-related, and I am beyond grateful for their contributions.
Now we have…
2. The Label of the Year Award which goes to…
(with honourable mentions for, well, see below…)
This was a very, very hotly disputed category. I was tempted to be perverse and, in the style of Time magazine’s mirror cover, proclaim label of the year to be ‘self-released’. Certainly, in this Bandcamp enabled age the idea has to be considered seriously. But that ain’t much fun is it? Let’s have an argument instead! Joe stepped up for Winebox Press:
Jon Collin’s labour of love has presented some amazing music this year (Vampire Blues, Lost Wax, and his own gorgeous schizzle) all nailed to hand-sanded wooden chunks. This extra detail might make things difficult to file but the soft hand-feel makes me return again and again to these loose spools of joy.
Scott proclaimed Matching Head, natch:
Same as every other year. Lee Stokoe keeps it prolific, adding new regulars to a strong cast of returning cassette-friendly noise/drone/wtf artists.
Both excellent choices, of course, but what of the Sheepscar Light Industrial, last year’s runner up, or Kirkstall Dark Matter – a blood feud between Leeds postcodes? Or is the glorious return of Sanity Muffin gong-worthy? Speaking of returns, was any more welcome or surprising than that of Union Pole which made a long-gone 76 item back catalogue available to download for the total of one dollar? Or what about Hissing Frames or hairdryer excommunication, the content-pumps of Robbie and Kev respectively?
The choice seemed impossible so I left the scribbled lists and did a couple of those things that you only see people do in the movies: splashed my face with water then stared into the bathroom mirror, took a cold can out of the fridge and held it against my cheek etc. Soon clarity was restored. For not putting a foot wrong, for never having even a single hair our of place, it had to be Memoirs of an Aesthete. Phil Todd’s label has released one belter after another this year and has probably clocked up more minutes playing time in Midwich Mansions than any rival. If it has Phil’s seal of approval on it then you should buy it. Simple really.
…and finally…
1. The Album of the Year Award
Risking accusations of hyperbole, I have claimed once or twice over the course of 2013 that we were living in a golden age. Revisiting the releases I heard during the year I feel absolutely vindicated. Add my long list to the short lists provided by Scott and Joe and you have a total of over 40 titles without even counting much not-really-released-as-such-but-still-magnificent work such as the soundcloud presence of, say, ap martlet. Scott mentioned…
Black Sun Roof – 4 Black Suns & A Sinister Rainbow (Handmade Birds) – Davies and Bower make noise ritual a rhythm thing.
Skullflower / Mastery – Split (Cold Spring) – Black metal soundtracks.
Joe added:
Duff/Nyoukis/Robertson/Shaw – Acetate Robots (Giant Tank) – Soft Scottish mumble, sweet as tablet.
Poor Mouth – S/T (Total Vermin) – Stream of consciousness wonk-out in proud Estuary English.
Lost Wax – My Sore Daad Heap’d (Winebox Press) – Environmental sounds lashed into a bivouac as the sun rises.
ID M Theft Able – Babb’s Bridge (Veglia, King Fondue, Zeikzak, Taped Sounds) – Like Manson’s internal monologue as knives get knotty.
Blue Yodel & Lovely Honkey – Poppies & Cocks (Chocolate Monk) – Mooooggg, hummm…voosh. Boo-fffff.
Both lists pleasantly indicative of the interests of my comrades, I think. Take note. Right then, as I did last year I have whittled my choices down to twenty with the first half presented in no particular order, linked to the original RFM reviews. Here we go:
- Witchblood – Eponine
- La Mancha Del Pecado & Culver – collaboration 6
- Spoils & Relics – Angels Trumpet Over Moonbeams
- Plurals – Gland Extraction
- The Ceramic Hobs – Spirit World Circle Jerk
- Aqua Dentata – Ten Thousand Wooden Faces
- Half an Abortion – Small Scale Demystification Quandary
- starlite coffins – medicine eagle
- Galena – Buried Finch
- people-eaters – imprecate
Every one a winner. Click on the above for further thoughts and for contact/purchasing info. Now on with the top ten, in reverse order…
10. Xazzaz – Untitled (Molotov 20)
This was reviewed twice on RFM this year. Firstly Joe said:
…a melodic pitch-shifting that recalls those tremolo-heavy vibes from MBV…except this time the jazz electricity comes via belt sanders, floor polishers and hammer-action drills rather than sappy guitars. The crashing continues, churning up plankton and hurling it on the zinc-coated rocks until, at around the 11 minute mark a large rusty anchor is thrown overboard and is dragged nosily (sic – it was more fun to keep the typo than correct it – RH) across a rocky sea bed. Grrrgrgggrgggrgghhhhhh! After a while your ear hairs can bristle no more and I had to settle back to accept this Black Metal take on Frippertronics as an astringent lullaby…
…then I pitched in with:
Mike’s music causes my edges to crumble, then crevaces to open, then huge thoughtbergs to calve from my mental glaciers. He isn’t averse to roar, of course, and can stamp on pedals if need be, but it is the subtleties and nuance that make it so compelling. He listens patiently, he understands what is going on. He knows what to do.
Check out the Molotov catalogue now distributed by Turgid Animal.
9. Shareholder – The Backwards Glance volumes 1, 2 and 3
Joe turned me on to this one. He wrote:
The Backwards Glance is ten god-damn years of recordings all wrapped up in beguiling drawings, elastic bands and creepy collage work. Sandy has taken the Faust approach and jams are cut-up hard against each other so you lurch between approaches, styles, themes and moods … My advice is to block out a few hours in your schedule, settle yourself in your preferred listening area and drink this special brew in deep. As in the dog-eat-dog world of high finance the Shareholder is always looking for a unique selling point. This USP for these clever little tapes is their god-damn addictiveness!
Joe also beat me to this one too and came up with the best simile of the year, damn him:
Culver is a master of the dark art of static movement. In the same way smoke will fill a room to the corners, too thick to see thorough but fragile enough to part with the wave of a hand, Culver plays that hard/soft, full/empty, maximal/minimal dichotomy like Erich Von Daniken’s ancient astronauts. Always working on the edge of being there and not being there this piece, this relatively brief drone called ‘seven human hairs’ is like watching ink boil … Somália is some mysterious Portuguese music maker who, on ‘das cordas’ takes a melancholic Satie riff (Gnossienne No. 1 I think) and loops it over and over again with a grimy patina of tape murk. That’s it. No speeding up or slowing down. No descent into beats or basslines. Just a gradual fade into the muck collected round the capstans. Super simple and super effective. It works at times (and I have to point out here I have played this tape a lot!) like dark canvas, swallowing the light but freeing up the subconscious. This is dreaming music.
The spec is simple enough, a single track of about fifteen minutes in length, but its ingredients are tricky to separate out. I suspect the noise that sounds like a swarm of angry wasps flying into a juddering extractor fan may be a vibrating implement set upon a drum skin. The buzz is malevolent – like tapping the glass of a giant tank full of insects only to have them all turn in unison, give you a hard stare and then start working together to get the tank’s lid off… Some abrasive electronics are then set loose in order to scour and gouge the source noise whilst a bucket of low end catches the swarf. The concluding crescendo is visceral, tough and as sparkling as your peripheral vision after a sharp smack to the back of the head. Yeah: awesome.
Joe is a true believer:
I think it was the mighty Stan Lee/Jack Kirby axis that came up with the Incredible Hulk to explore the untamed, brutish side to mankind. The trick Yol has turned is to take this Yahoo Hulk and transplant it into the damp and bland world of Northern Britain – 2013. This is no Marvel Universe magic realism but the dark perverted land of a bent cop, conflicted priest or overworked teacher. It’s a post-Saville world where celebrity corrupts and no one can really trust each other. Yol gives a voice to the bitter and bleak, the misplaced righteousness and revenge that most of us keep buttoned up tight. The inner struggle is played out in vivid crimson, choked out, spat into the gutter and stamped on with spite.
The fella behind this project, remaining semi-anonymous for his own reasons, has produced a piece of work so ambitious and accomplished that the fact that it is available to download on a pay-what-you-like basis from that Bandcamp left me stupefied … Some details: your download will contain nine tracks spanning 41 minutes. These episodes are clearly the product of a single aesthetic but vary in construction. There is computerborne surrealism, the programme code distorted by a horseshoe magnet ordered from the Acme catalogue, there is deep-fried tropical psychedelia the like of which wouldn’t be out of place on a Space Victim or AshNav album, and there is the cooing and squawking of an alien menagerie, recorded rooting and strutting about the forest floor on a distant, poisonous world.
4. Helicopter Quartet – Where have all the aliens gone?
Their sound (‘drone rock’? ‘dark ambient’? I don’t know) is dense and rich, each element absorbing in its own right, all contributing to a mysterious but coherent whole. It is like finding an ornately inlaid wooden casket containing a collection of exquisitely handcrafted objects: what might be a bear, carved from obsidian, a female form cast in an unplaceable grey/green metal, an abstract pattern, possibly even unreadable script, scrimshawed onto yellowing bone. All irresistibly tactile, all fascinating, all revealing aspects of the character of the unknown and long dead collector who gathered them together.
It is cliché to describe simplicity as ‘deceptive’ and efficiency as ‘ruthless’ but both phrases are perfectly apt in this case. There is no waste, no let up, the emotional demands of this music are unmistakeable. Despite the jokes about torturing aliens on its Bandcamp page, this is a deeply serious music but it is epic on a human scale.
Four tracks, each about twenty minutes long, by four different solo artists. First is veteran Leeds scenester Shem Sharples, recording as his robotic alter ego Shemboid, who kicks things off with ‘myths of the prehistoric future’ – a Ballardian pun well suited to this blistering, splintering track. Shem is an aficionado of the garage psych sound and his skyscraping fuzz/wah guitar illuminates the rubble like harsh Californian sunshine.
Next is ‘bontempi bastet’ by Ocelocelot, Mel O’Dubhslaine’s noise/drone endeavour. The track is remarkable: an ectoplasmic gumbo, a thick electronic soup spiced and seasoned to make the corners of your eyes twitch. Or is it an evocation of heaven? Mel is a serious artist quietly and brilliantly re-purposing music to serve her own mysterious ends. She does this with good humour and modesty and I think she might be my hero.
Third is ‘no forks’ by Moral Holiday, Phil Todd’s affectionate homage to first wave industrial music. The backing is brittle, unforgiving, stark. Phil has taken the bucolic feel of the most utopian electronic Krautrock, frogmarched it to a grimly urban setting and then recorded it amongst the glass and concrete, mutating to fit its new surroundings.
Finally, we have ‘taser delerium’ (sic) from Paul Walsh’s foldhead. Perhaps you could imagine spiking the punch at a convention of shortwave radio enthusiasts then getting the fried participants to improvise a jam using nothing but the guttering warbles of atmospheric interference. Life affirming stuff – joyful noise wall. Like an intruder appearing at the foot of your bed, paralysing you with a swift injection to the sole of your foot, then draping his cock across your forehead as you lie prone and immobile, it is a perversely calming experience.
In summary: this album is damn near perfect.
2. Ashtray Navigations – Cloud Come Cadaver
Previous winners come oh-so-close once more. I wrote a lengthy psychedelic ramble accounting for each track in turn which you can read by clicking on the title above. For now I need only quote the final remarks:
It’s like a ‘Comfortably Numb’ for the psych/noise underground but defiant, without a trace of self pity. It could accompany the ‘ages of man’ sequence at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Did I mention that Ashtray Navigations are my favourite band? This is why.
Absolutely magnificent.
…and finally, the RFM Zellaby Award for Album of the Year 2013 goes to…
1. The Piss Superstition – Vocal Learning
Back in May I had a moment of prophetic clarity:
The music suggests systems gone wrong, like some guy pushed in a punch card upside down and then went to lunch leaving everything running. Yet heavy, juddering electrics describe arcane symbols as they spiral through the iterations of this garbled instruction set. Something truly wierd is being revealed. The serrated buzzing suggests saw mill equipment escaping its moorings and consuming itself as one bladed machine vibrates into the path of another. But again, there is nothing random about this movement. All is being conducted by an unfamiliar intelligence for some unknowable purpose. In the end though, all metaphors, similes, superlatives and whimsy just slide off this band or, at best, get caught in the gears and mashed – such is the beauty, mystery and power of their output. They do not sound like anyone else and yet, somehow, it turns out that this sound is exactly what I wanted to hear. Its value can only be calculated by fumbling with an alien currency, glinting strangely in my palm.
Thus: Vocal Learning is the best album of the year so far. Why? Because it is – I said so.
…and there we have it. The End. Well, not quite. There is a prize should the winners wish to claim it: a release on the fabled fencing flatworm recordings. Yes, in a tradition stretching all the way back to one year ago I decided to reanimate my legendary label to issue one release a year which could only be by the winner of the Best Album Zellaby Award. So, JB & Paul, how about it? Drop me a line if the idea tickles you both and we’ll talk turkey.
RFM’s ongoing account of the no-audience underground’s creative endeavour will continue shortly. We wish you all a very happy New Year!
woollen arms cradling: joe murray on vampire blues, culver, somália, yavgnu and roman nose
November 7, 2013 at 9:07 pm | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: culver, drone, improv, joe murray, jon collin, jon marshall, lee stokoe, matching head, new music, new weird moscow, no audience underground, noise, roman nose, singing knives, somália, tapes, vampire blues, winebox press, yavgnu
Vampire Blues – Recorded Live at Les Voûtes, Paris, France, 24th November 2012 (C36 tape, Winebox Press, winebox22)
Culver/Somália – Untitled (tape, Matching Head, 197)
yavgnu/Roman Nose – Split (tape, исподволь)
Vampire Blues – Recorded Live at Les Voûtes, Paris, France, 24th November 2012
Vampire Blues is the natural-organic duo of Jon Marshall (Harmonium) and Jon Collin (Electric Guitar) feverishly stroking and a’ huffing live in the City of Light.
Side one is super-heavy on the harmonium, wheezy like an asthmatic pony as the guitar gently rests, calmly ‘pinging’ every so often. This is a boozy sedative with absolutely no intention of rushing. Waves of heavy vibration are pushed and pulled through the battered reeds and amplified with the slightest hint of over-distortion making everything quiver like it’s heard through a heat haze. As ever, with Winebox releases, the sound of the tape itself becomes a third player with its woollen arms cradling the sounds making it all fuzzy-eared and alive. After a while guitar rouses itself with prepared plucks performed with gnarled, wooden fingers, new leaves sprouting in place of nails.
Side two rips pretty much from the click of the play button. The gravy-brown harmonium picks up pace (huff-huff-huff) as a Sonny Sharrock style guitar solo falls heavy like electric sleet. Nifty playing makes the guitar sound backwards/forwards, background/foreground all at the same time with a thin keening edge…the sound of loss and yearning. The harmonium pumps on and on reaching some candle-lit nirvana; reaching the peaks of ecstasy like some Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan sculpted from geranium-scented air. After the dizzying heights are reached there’s the slow trek down into the foothills to drink deeply in the crystal-clear brook that runs swiftly across the valley floor.
Bavardage assez, voici le boeuf. Edition limitée de 70 ans. 7 £ pour acheter de thewholevoyald.blogspot Pour votre argent, non seulement en êtes-vous présent document extatique mais cette petite bande vient cloué sur un morceau de peinture de table éclaboussé!
Culver/Somália – Untitled
Culver is a master of the dark art of static movement. In the same way smoke will fill a room to the corners, too thick to see thorough but fragile enough to part with the wave of a hand, Culver plays that hard/soft, full/empty, maximal/minimal dichotomy like Erich Von Daniken’s ancient astronauts. Always working on the edge of being there and not being there this piece, this relatively brief drone called ‘seven human hairs’ is like watching ink boil. The darkness is mesmerising and minutes lurch past, my fingers poised claw-like over the keyboard, when I sort of forget what I’m doing, so drawn into the loamy and fertile sound rolling out the speakers. I’m lucky enough to get to see Culver play a couple of times a year so I have a window into his working methods. I reckon this is a keyboard derived drone made with simple pieces of kit (Casio, Dictaphone, Sticky Tape) but that doesn’t stop the coiling tentacles probing out all soft tissues; leaching the essence of me out my living skin, as Nyarlathotep looks on delighting in the exquisite cruelty.
Somália is some mysterious Portuguese music maker who, on ‘das cordas’ takes a melancholic Satie riff (Gnossienne No. 1 I think) and loops it over and over again with a grimy patina of tape murk. That’s it. No speeding up or slowing down. No descent into beats or basslines. Just a gradual fade into the muck collected round the capstans. Super simple and super effective. It works at times (and I have to point out here I have played this tape a lot!) like dark canvas, swallowing the light but freeing up the subconscious. This is dreaming music. With my amateur musicologists hat on this whole idea of macro-samples could be traced back to hip hop I guess and people seemed to get their knickers in a twist when that hipster Oneohtrix Point Never did the same with a Chris De Burgh sample (‘Nobody Here‘). This is twice as cool and double the fun. It also became Mrs Posset’s favourite tape of the year which I think says a lot. Keen to learn more a quick Google search reveals little about Somália apart from an up-and-coming split tape with the with bonkers Portuguese duo Yong Yong. Wow…sounds like another essential release.
Sparse info here.
yavgnu/Roman Nose – Split
Direct from Jon Marshall’s duffel coat pocket this tape has travelled back from Russia on friendly sleeper trains following his visit deep behind the Iron Curtain (editors note: Scott chips in to tell us the tape is on a Russian label called ‘ispodvol’. According to Jon it’s a Russian word ‘исподволь’, meaning something like ‘gradually’.)
yavgnu are a ‘New Weird Moscow’ collective of bowed strings, flute, effects, vocal, guitar and percussion yet they speak the universal language of folk-group improvisation like any Chora or Hunter Gracchus would back in Blighty. Whacked out violin and percussion jangles crack the frozen earth as river-smooth pebbles of ‘echo’ are lobbed down any grike. Rusty bows are rubbed up against guitar and cymbal until the horsehair splinters and rips while previously recorded experiments jump through time-holes making the very ‘then’ now. Whilst the methods and vernacular are common to improvisers the world over (and this is no place for my extraordinary pamphlet linking the desolate Tuvan plains to Hull’s abandoned factories) the overall feel is very different. The balances we grow accustomed to in western improv are skewed and jammed. The weight of instrumentation feels different in the hand and demands careful consideration. There’s no desire to fill each space with sound; the restraint in the playing and decision making is apparent and welcome. There’s a calm confidence to this work that many an improv collective could learn from.
On this tape Jon’s Roman Nose is a collage of solo jams on ‘bicycle breaks, effects pedals, junk, metal food bowls, harmonica reeds, harmonium, sheng, tabla, tharqua, xaphoon & vocals’ and is as ecstatic and mixed up as that all sounds. Notes, tones and breaths tumble over each other in a frantic rush with tightly coiled punk energy. Metal bowls are bashed rhythmically until the tinny echoes fold in and the reverberations become diamond sharp. A sheng is blown with such lung-bursting power bamboo splinters and rips, tabla’s are amped up and twonked until skin can resound no more. This is a pretty violent melange and a world away from the more composed (but no less frantic) three-piece Roman Nose I saw live recently. This is all about the forward motion, propulsion, riding the peaks and soaring the ionosphere. Bliss. You might be able to get this from singing knives but I’d move fast if I was you. A birdy tells me there are fewer than 10 in the whole world!
the creases on a hand: joe murray on jon collin
June 6, 2013 at 7:31 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | 1 CommentTags: blues guitar, desert guitar, giant hell, j collin, joe murray, john fahey, jon collin, new music, no audience underground, winebox press
J Collin – Follow The Great Road (High Peak Vibrations Vol 1) (download, Giant Hell)
Jon Collin – High Peak Selections (vinyl LP, Winebox Press, edition of 250)
J Collin – Follow the Great Road (High Peak Vibrations Vol 1)
Jon Collin plays the guitar. Mostly the electric kind with magnetic slides and sheer-faced shingle; but with a tint of acoustic woodiness from time to time too. And, as with every solo guitarist playing in the 21st Century, the spectre of John Fahey has to be addressed at some point. I’ll be honest with you, I wasn’t hip to Fahey until fairly recently. I’d love to say I’d been collecting all the early albums since I plied my trade as a teenage blues scholar but it wouldn’t be the truth dear reader. As a teen I was steeping myself in the blues…shit I didn’t even pick up a record unless it had an old wizened geezer on the cover but the local Our Price only ran as far Robert Johnson, and once I’d supped with the devil my first exposure to Fahey was a little underwhelming. It was all a bit… pretty & lyrical. I didn’t get it…the fan boy gleam I’d seen reflected in so many fan boy eyes never caught a spark. But, my excellent friends, I persevered, played dusty & scratched sides late into the night; listened to the mixtapes fellow travellers had made me and after a few years the silver dollar did indeed drop. I was a fully fledged Fahey fanatic. But what’s all this got to do with Jon’s work? Well…I’d like to say, right from the off, I get this. I get it, I want it, I need it. This is a vital, vicious sound that needs no introduction or interpretation. Jon plays with a palate as dry as a fine Fino sherry. Tunes are coaxed, not just from plucking and picking but from rattles and slices against the uptight steel strings. This has been out for a while and, as a physical object, it is sold out. But the honest & mighty Giant Hell organisation, via the indie-pop graveyard, Bandcamp have made it available for free download to all. These sound like improvised pieces to me that ghost in and out of consciousness, but with some honest grit beneath the nails too. Silvery, rolling fingering makes a raga of ‘Virgin Soil’ with a nagging, insistent tug at the edges of sleep that fades to sun-drenched dreams. ‘A La Sainte Terre’ has a hint of Hapsburg Braganza’s tear-jerking explorations of sepia-toned space and foggy memory; tumbling the blues out of a wire-wool cloud of soft kittenish scratch as it threatens to shake itself to death falling though our cluttered knife drawer. I’ve said this before, but tape comes into it’s own with Jon’s soundworld, the blowsy hiss building warmly and covering me with beautiful crochet. It’s only with the closer ‘Westward I Go Free’ you get anything approaching a traditional song, nixed with occasional scrabbling, like many hands are trying to turn Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Albatross’ inside out and back to front. A right proper stunner that’s perfect flu-recovery music.
Free download from the Giant Hell Bandcamp site. (editor’s note: I took advantage of this after reading the above and concur – it is beautiful stuff. RH)
Jon Collin – High Peak Selections
The beautifully packaged, reassuringly heavy album is a child wise before it’s time; generous and a little bit mysterious. Things kick off in an almost industrial vein with the spooky ‘Prelude to CK Junior Blues’ in which nary a note is plucked. Thin, tinny, feedback drones croak over heavy amp ‘fuh’ and inner-spring ‘clack’. Strings are sliced, with a knife perhaps, or certainly menaced in some way, until the ghost gives up and returns to the ether leaving a warm humid scent like pine forests after rain. ‘Furniture Makers Moan’ collects pockets of headstock ‘ping’ and knuckle reddening ‘clunk’ as hot and cleansing as horseradish sauce and models them into tiny chess pieces ready to be displayed in an antique box. Even the blind idiot gods of the elements doth their cap as it starts to rain outside the instant ‘High Water’ starts, mirroring the downpour caught as a duet with the salty guitar. This time things aren’t quite as abstract and, as a Chinese blues hopes of happier times, there’s digging deep into some dark corners of the soul, the overseer looks on, cane in hand. After so many variations of steel and wood and thumb and finger it’s hard to imagine where else there is to go but ‘For the Road No’s 1 & 2’ adds aggression to the mix with each note violently plucked and spawning a slight shadow in this knotted tone poem. Complex as the creases on a hand, a pleading tone weeps (man I tried to keep weeps outta this…guitar/gently/weeping etc is a blogging no no) like a boy with a skinned knee. It’s relentless, like illness, until what I’m guessing is part 2, kicks in with a hopeful riff of golden buttery sunlight peaking over the trees helping you scramble out of the darkness towards home. Phew…this is emotional stuff, not afraid to be beautiful and not bullied by trends. Essential to my 16 year old self and any other blues scholars out there…oh yeah.
Only 250 issues of High Peak Selections are available in this world and can be located via Winebox Press for £10 plus p&p.
catgut pluck: joe murray on shareholder and lost wax
May 6, 2013 at 9:51 am | Posted in new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: ben morris, drone, improv, joe murray, lost wax, new music, no audience underground, noise, sandy milroy, shareholder, tapes, visual art, winebox press
Shareholder – The Backwards Glance Vol 1, 2 & 3 (self-released, 3 x cassette)
Lost Wax – ‘My Sore Daad Heap’d’ (cassette, Winebox Press, edition of 77)
OK then, Ladies and Gentlemen, a message from the editor: as promised, here is the first piece by RFM’s official new contributor Joe Murray. BEWARE! This hep cat is far too jazz to use paragraph breaks so take a deep mental breath before diving in. Over to Joe:
Hey there no-audience underground! Delighted to spill my beans all over in frantic excitements. You got time to listen? Today I’ve got a bunch of red-hot tapes for you from rare solo projects; Ben Morris’ Lost Wax and Sandy Milroy’s Shareholder.
Blimey! This is a mammoth document from Shareholder. Sandy’s been doing hard time with gruntcore dinosaurs Muscletusk for ages, dragging a screeeee guitar round the yeasty pub scene causing buckets of lightning to implode. But it’s his Shareholder disguise that I’ve been digging this past few weeks. The Backwards Glance is ten god-damn years of recordings all wrapped up in beguiling drawings, elastic bands and creepy collage work. Sandy has taken the Faust approach and jams are cut-up hard against each other so you lurch between approaches, styles, themes and moods. The last bunch of Shareholder CD-Rs I have heard were delightfully guitar based. But this is so much wider in focus. Things kick off with a faux-eastern style keyboard motif and pretty much chop & change at random over the next six 45 min sides. That’s a lot of ground to cover so I’ll start with the signature Shareholder sound: very fucked, distorted guitar, swooping though soft arcs of ‘waauuuuuhhhhh, waauuuuuuuhhhh’ like an eiderdown chock full of downers. At times there’s a harsher edge; like a Sonic Youth guitar breakdown, then things might spruce up like a flavour bud living or a flinty acoustic ramble. All good yeah. But added to this pot is a gravy of dark ambient groaning like some Supersilent workout, generous dumplings of radio play tape chatter, some real-time guitar versus drums jams, silent corridor creak and atmospheric crunch. A staggering amount of styles are covered. I think tape 2 (Alice?) hits the sweet spot from the word go with some jumble-under recording and some real classy sample work. Single phrases are looped until all meaning has been destroyed via senseless repetition. If this was London, people would shout ‘Hype Williams’ and draft an over-written essay on consumerism and modern culture…but as this is Edinburgh it’s all undercut with a Ned-ness lope and knuckle-head knock. The radio interview/play aspect comes to the fore with a beautiful, beautiful tape/speech/keyboard piece. I can’t tell where this starts and ends (no songtitles to help neither) but for 10 mins or so a perfect and poignant set of interviews, phone messages and gloomy keys float out the speakers with a cheeky wink. ‘Proper’ songs poke at that Velvet itch, bombastic news idents screech out at random and there’s even eight bars of some 2-step boogie. I could go on but this would just turn into a long, long list of the different snippets that amuse and startle. And I’m guessing different bits would jump out for you depending on your mood or appetite. My advice is to block out a few hours in your schedule, settle yourself in your preferred listening area and drink this special brew in deep. As in the dog-eat-dog world of high finance the Shareholder is always looking for a unique selling point. This USP for these clever little tapes is their god-damn addictiveness! The Backward Glance was originally a private, ‘trades to mates’ kinda deal. But such is the power of RFM that Sandy has agreed to dubbing a super-limited run of 10 (editors note: I suspect this is seriously overestimating our influence, but good on him! – RH). You too can marvel at Shareholder’s brave vision by sending £10 (inc P&P) to iamsandymilroy@yahoo.com clearly marking your mail BACKWARD GLANCE in big letters so it don’t get missed. Oh yeah…trades are very welcome.
(EDIT: After posting Joe’s review of the Shareholder tapes above I secured a set in trade from the charming Mr. Milroy. I have to concur: they are wicked awesome. You’d think my ragged attention span couldn’t deal with four and a half hours of anything but I was engaged throughout and right got the hump when ‘real’ life made me turn ’em off and deal with other things. Wholeheartedly double-endorsed by radiofreemidwich – RH.)
Ben Morris has been treading the boards with what some nameless observer described as ‘the only decent band in London’, Chora. This is his first outing as Lost Wax, with the cryptically titled ‘My Sore Daad Heap’d’ on cassette. Right, first things first. This little tape comes out via the Winebox Press so you’re in for some nifty & challenging packaging. ‘Sore Daad…’ comes nailed to a piece of wood (once a comfortable futon by all accounts) and bound up in elastic bands and brown paper, making it all the more special. With only 77 other handmade brothers & sisters around in the whole voyald you’re going to have to net this sucker soon. It might just be a little thing to you but seeing all this hard work, inventiveness and sense of fun tickles my laugh lines from the off. Sheesh…if I’m gooning over the packaging what’s going to happen when I slam this baby home? Ok…stereo on…tape in…press play. The anticipative hiss of a really warm recording shifts into a fly-blown world as hot and high as a Cement Garden. Golden memory shimmers like tissue paper and drags things like a summer holiday that never gets to the end of the six week fug. ‘M1Jet’…a hissy and fizzy guitar, tape, rusty trumpet (?), organ and field recording struggle in a frothy brew of ever-changing colour and texture. Waves slap against the jetty and a single bell rings as a pregnant coda. ‘Brackish Lung’ takes tiny bell drone/ringing sounds layered over the unmistakable gurgle of piss flowing warmly into a thin tin funnel. Other elements of warm fuggy huff get folded in until these gentle waves climax in a gushing golden shower of trucker’s Tizer. ‘Afternoon Mesh’ summons one of my favourite immersive sound environments…rain falling on a nylon tent. An homage to Maya Deren perhaps? This makes beautiful the art of doing nothing much at all. Rolling hiss and gentle rumble are punctuated by tent-zipper ‘whhoooossshhh’ and the everyday pyrotechnics of a close miked match (or something). The listener is at the core of these intimate soundscapes and this gentle humming is as meditative as a giant gong’s enveloping reverberations; but writ in miniature, tiny cogs ticking away to silence. ‘Clogged & buttered’ takes the rhythmic ‘whump’ of the bilge pump and outboard motor and overlays a peasant guitar, mulchy walk, chunter and Geiger counter crackle to pull together the whole liquid theme. This draws me to the ocean, like an aquatic ape…there is a naturalness and timelessness to this little tape. A 1960’s Ladybird book come to life with clear and precise illustrations. The art of composition is more of a lopsided collage for Lost Wax; see-sawing between clammy-fingered catgut pluck, natural woody drone and high performance field recording. The lessons of Lambkin are applied making this a serious contender for tape of the year. Want it? £6.50 plus packaging costs from Winebox Press my friend.
guest post! extracts from the joe posset end-of-year round up! part one of two: clotting and unknotting
December 9, 2012 at 3:27 pm | Posted in musings, new music, no audience underground | Leave a commentTags: akke phallus duo, apollolaan recordings, giant tank, honk, improv, live music, new music, no audience underground, noise, posset, psychedelia, reprographics jazz, the whole voyald, usurper, winebox press, yol
One of the finest and most welcome signs of the festive season – along with mince pies, carol concerts and the whimpering of my beautiful Turkish boy as he ascends the step ladder to affix the Ian Curtis doll atop our giant Christmas tree – is the arrival in Midwich Mansions of the annual round-up by Joe Murray, best known here as Posset, RFM’s North East correspondent.
All through the year Joe keeps his nib licked, pointy and ready to scribble down his thoughts on the music that he encounters. These terrific reviews, steeped in gonzo enthusiasm, are not published on the fly but saved up for a ginormous splurge in late December. A monster email is fired off to the elite whilst the whole caboodle is simultaneously plonked onto the all-but-secret Posset Myspace blog.
This year, in what I hope will become an annual occurrence, Joe has very kindly allowed me to preview a couple of hefty extracts. I trust your fancy will be tickled. Modesty prevents me from reprinting the very kind words he had to say about the brilliance, importance and significance of my own release ‘eaves’ but I reckon I can wrestle modesty to the floor and link to it later. Joe tells me the whole thing will be finished for the lull between Christmas and New Year so I’ll nudge you in that direction then. For now, the below:
(with apologies to those whose pictures I’ve stolen. Click on linked bits for more info and/or how to purchase)
—ooOoo–
Although I might mug & blush to be bagged the North of England correspondent by Rob it’s a responsibility I take deadly seriously. Through wind & rain, dodging rats and burned out wheelie bins I stumble to check out as much of the no-audience underground (Newcastle division) as I can for you my dear reader. This year it’s all been about the live spectacular: Rhodri Davis’ electric big-muff harp versus Harry Smith’s abstract films, The Unit Ama redefining the power trio, Hapsburg Braganza’s slow unravelling of time and space, Hassan Gaylani ripping up a bully-boy beat as Popular Radiation, The return of Lobster Priest making me throw the horns, Edwin Li playing the Guzheng and vibrating to the infinite twang, Wrest’s sustained campaign against wood, concrete and metal, old boys Zoviet France’s meta-performances featuring shows within shows, Richard Dawson singing ‘Poor Old Horse’ with tears like hot gravy, Will Edmonds wiry gruffalo stance and bluster…and of course the Pharaoh of gloom, Culver, perfecting his dark, cold sarcophagus music.
The records I’ve enjoyed the most have been mostly Northern too.
Akke Phallus Duo – Terroir/Pissoir CD (Apollolaan Recordings)
Spreading greasy butter over the cracks between primitive-electronics, free jazz, ethno-forgery, noise and vocal mush to form a queasy soundworld like the un-song incidental pieces from the very fellows This Heat. And now i’ve got that lot jammed in my head I can’t help noticing a tasty 80’s avant tinge to this. Perhaps it’s nostalgia for my first forays into the underground… a fist full of fanzines and flexidiscs as my guide that excites me about the disc so. There’s a lot of ground covered here. Tracks can be composed from miniature loops of banjo clash sliding into sick sounding melange with connector crackle and fizz mixed to the fore. Or then it’s a rude tin-can clatter, duck call shangle and doddering violin (like an OAP on black ice) all building up into unexpected peaks. There’s an almost OCD quality in some of this with fresh chunks layered precariously on top of each other like some dark Jenga nightmare. Opener ‘Futhorcs Meat Contorts’ is a ten minute epic of screech, homemade waterphones, tape avalanche and pained vocal holler. Compare this to the all too brief ‘Gut Macs’ recorded down a mucus-cogged oesophagus with analy inserted double ‘A’s. ‘Bid’ah’ rewires my head and all its middle-class World Music appreciation by sneakily layering vocal chants both gossamer haunting and Black Sabbath heavy. The closer ‘Clather’ sounds like it was played on thick black rubber bands which is even more reason to hit play and wade thru this memory robber again.
Yol – Pushtoshove CD-R (No Label)
An out-of-the-blue email from the mysterious Yol ended in this humming disc being shoved through the door – direct from Hull. Like ‘power electronics without electricity’ is how it was billed in the fevered e-conversation and you know what…that’s pretty much spot on. But there’s more to this than a serial killer obsession and badly copied pornography sir. Featuring one of my favourite sounds: filing cabinets being dragged across a concrete floor; this is like a field recording of psychotic house-movers arguing with themselves over the finer points of town planning, medical dilemmas and rodent holocaust. Yol beats up resonant metal boxes and chucks spanners about while coughing out a scream of anguish, soon to descend into shopping-list poetic repetition. ‘Disconnected’ is a duet of gurgled threats and squeaky door…I mean what a paring, it even has a key jangle solo. ‘Limb’, a live piece judging from the smatter of applause at the end, is a raw bellow against an invisible whinger, accompanied by a crate of milk getting kicked across a courtyard. Fans of Blyth’s mighty Wrest are gonna cream over this new rasping square peg. A few years ago I coined the term ‘pocket jazz’. Somewhat arrogantly I set up to recreate the classic jazz trio (drums, bass, sax) played on the contents of a gentleman’s trouser pocket (coins, rubber band, cigarette papers). No one was listening of course and it never caught on, but that’s not the point. Taxonomy is important and Yol seems to have come up with the new classic; ‘reprographics jazz’, the sound of busted photocopier and curdled yell. It even comes in a real nice 50’s Blue Note style cover too. Go daddy go!
Usurper – The Big Four CD-R (Giant Tank)
You’ll have to forgive me. I am off work sick with that horrible bathroom unpleasantness thing and feeling a bit other worldly. Not sure what I want to do, TV’s a drag, not got any films I want to watch, can’t focus on a book so I thought I would write. So this isn’t exactly a missive from the flu frontline, more a general weepy malaise. Read on reader! For me Usurper are one of the most intriguing groups around at the minute. I can understand why their slack rumble and rattling can come across as a joke on the audience. But listen deep and you’re rewarded by a map of micro-sound; familiar scrapings and gurpings that are a welcome relief to all that reductionist mump. In fact, while remaining strictly no-input, this has an ultra Spartan quality that I would have thought would have dragged the micro-improv world to the Auld Reekies duo’s sound years ago. The Big Four has four stretched out tracks of extended elastic band pluck, fizzing alka-seltza, polystyrene twist, rubber ball bouncing, wotsit munch, tin clicking, occasionally throating glock, dropped coin, wrenched bubble wrap etc. As ever it’s how this sonic detritus is piled up that reveals the art. Nothing so corny as building to a junk crescendo…this is all about joining and dividing, clotting and unknotting, rubbing sounds vs percussive sounds, natural sounds vs man-made honk. My recent deep descent into the world of Sound Poetry/Mouth Guff has revealed the works of Jackson Mac Low. A poet, performer and fellow rattling fidget in the style of Usurper. I guess if you have to draw a parallel or you feel the need to legitimise this kinda fuff here’s your chance. Jackson’s celebrated hump ‘A piece for Sari Dienes’ is almost indistinguishable from some of the jams Usurper treat us to here. The final track (representing either Anthrax, Metallica, Slayer or Megadeth) is even more based in mouthjizz terms with fireside homilies and pre-language yelps delivered against mung mumbling, lippy hissing and distant pre-recorded voices. They capture a moment of Bruce Forsyth ‘ggggggggg’ in an uncanny tribute to the chinny entertainer that cuts through like a knife. Brilliant. What Usurper bring to the table isn’t just this post Sound Poetry vibe but also a gritty purity that’s just right for a double dip economy. This speaks to Berklee Grad Students with the vocabulary of the JML catalogue or Poundshop chic. All recorded in one day (October 7th…henceforth know as Duff/Robertson day).
The Whole Voyald – Circumambulations parts 1 & 2, 7 inch vinyl (Winebox Press)
A rare vinyl release from Winebox Press/Serfs/Whole Voyald/Vampire Blues jam-master Jon Collin. The cover sports a bleak grey seascape, minimal info and blank labels. Not much to go on at all. But slap this platter on the turntable and you get sucked into a 3 dimensional kaleidoscopic dream. Psychedelic in the broadest sense of the word the sticky money shot here is the soaring, ripping, taunting guitar soloing that seems to hover slightly above the lazy, grainy strumming…the only thing keeping this from flipping right out the room. It starts off easy enough, a bluesy vamp, a simple gob-iron riff (classic protest song chord changes) and then this vital, shaking hell of a solo tears the roof off. Tonally this is like a tinfoil pie case being crushed in a weathered fist. Structurally it’s like a harmolodic Neil Hagerty; all lightning fast ‘sense’ U-turns and mercurial fingerings. I’ve compared Jon to Sonny Sharrock before and yet again I think the comparisons are justified. There’s something unhinged and unschooled here. More like a stream of consciousness lava flow than prissily measured note clusters. The other side is a churning ocean current; you listen though a layer of silt to Prince Namor’s underwater blues for a destroyed Atlantis. Giant structures assemble then fall, scattering rocks down the abyss…silently. Yup…this side is easier on the ear, it’s more rounded and less metallic…like a drizzly geography field trip on wax.
–ooOoo–
Cool, eh? More to follow in part two…
Blog at WordPress.com.
Entries and comments feeds.
radio free midwich 