radio free midwich

prick mason: rfm on id m theft able, robert ridley-shackleton,  leitmotiv limbo/rnp no2 and gwilly edmondez

ID M Theft Able – Clean Houses Exude Fear (Mang Disc)

Robert Ridley-Shackleton – Stone Cold Crazy (Crow Versus Crow)

Leitmotiv Limbo/RNP No2 – Split (Hyster Tapes)

Gwilly Edmondez  – Trouble Number (Slip Imprint)

ID M Theft Able – Clean Houses Exude Fear (Mang Disc) C30 Cassette

In the multi-faceted world of ID M Theft Able I guess this would be classed as a Rap Album.  Concrete words and phrases are to the fore and the slapstick Foley-explosion is boiled down to a set of insistent hollow-point beats.   But anyone expecting swaggering brags about cars, girls and dollars will be misty-eyed and disappointed.  Less Young Thug more Big Hug.  Trades Description jobsworths begone!

“The sight of your blood is always OK, you fall off your leg, what did you right, the sight of your blood is always OK”

The narrative is caught in aspic and carefully chipped away to reveal the irritated wasp inside. Repetition and subtle sense-change is ‘wrapped/rapped’ in breathless stanzas each collapsing on each other piled up like a language Jenga (or something).  With such dense texts meanings are shucked like a plump oyster and guzzled whole, lining the brain pan with glistening salty gloop.

“There ain’t no desert, it’s like staring at the sun, it’s like staring at the sun, it’s like staring at the sun, other people see you they see you, you take your eyes from the sun and you bust your mouth”

The pace is pretty much relentless making this a very physical listen…I’m out of breath just jamming this tape at home.  Heaven knows what it must have been like to sing the darn thing.

“Shove it.  Shove it, Ah-wah, Shove it, Shove it, Ah-wah, Exist, Exist, Fight, Fight”

So readers…if you are new to ID M this is a great, yet fairly untypical, place to start. But with such a varied discography if you wanna get wet, you have to dive in somewhere eh?  Check out his bonkers MangDisc site and label for details and while you wait for this shit to ship get goofed on strange passwords, online tests and quivering graphics.

Go Go Go!

Robert Ridley-Shackleton – Stone Cold Crazy (Crow Versus Crow) C20 cassette or digital album

The great Robert Ridley-Shackleton (RRS) seems unstoppable right now.  After a bunch of essential Chocolate Monk releases and a pair of sublime performances at this year’s TUSK festival RRS is tearing up the dancefloor ‘card style’.

A world of funk, noise and gnarly confession is fully realised on this dark tape from the exceptional Crow Versus Crow label.

The title track, ‘Stone Cold Crazy’, merges Robert’s patent Tupperwave sound with teetering wonk-keyboard rhythms in a high-energy funk workout.  But of course the Cardboard Prince has his signature moves and the punnet crackle leaps through my headphones adding layers of gritty confusion to this banger.  ‘Pest Control’ is lyrically the darkest I’ve heard RRS, a disembodied, disinterested monologue over relentless t’wave somehow reminding me of the ickiness of my one and only listen to Throbbing Gristle.  The Side A closer ‘Bury me’ warbles beneath a barrage of clack-clack and close-mic rapping that seems to slip in and out of reality.  A demented carny riff completes the mental image of some dilapidated circus tent, hot animal scents wafting out the canvas flaps.

Side B starts with the bold statement ‘Yol 4 President’ so I’m expecting a joyful noise, a cathartic boil-burst.  But this is more of a leaky pustule, a damp spreading yellow stain on a bandage with some inwardly focused angst.  Much of Robert’s vocal is mumbled and hidden beneath static sheets but the announcement “God is Santa and Santa is God” is clear and filled with secret meaning.

There’s a wonderful jump-cut from the high-octane rattle that ends ‘Yol 4 President’ to the thumping ‘Dirty Cardboard’ complete with snarling multiple voices, ripped and shredded into many funky pieces.  Dirty indeed, this track lets it ALL hang out in ALL the right places.

The final piece ‘Snack Effective’ is a bee’s nest of hiss and rumble.  Like the insects got tired of slave labour and revolt into busy explosions of sexy freedom.  RRS’s early ‘pocket jazz’ sound is revisited and honks like Louis Armstrong huffing his old cornet full of boiled rice.

As you’d expect from Crow Versus Crow the damn tape looks outstanding with a beautiful collage collaboration wrapping up this true vibe machine in a glittery package.

Leitmotiv Limbo/RNP No2 – Split (Hyster Tapes) C30 Recycled Cassette

This glorious, DIY as you like, split tape from Hyster really is the business.

The great Leitmotiv Limbo delivers a side of their trademark music-as-psychic-attack.  In a series of smeared moans the mysterious Leitmotiv molds deep throbs from what I’m guessing is some sort of woolly synth and jacked it straight to the dirtiest, most warped tape in their collection for a quick foggy mastering job.

Each column of sound is oscillating like a sausage being pumped with sonic gristle and fat.  The plump pink hands of the butcher (each fingernail a crescent of blood) are surprisingly agile and gentle as the tube of minced flesh gets heavier and heavier.  Now imagine the gory mess being mashed slowly, sensuously into your ears.

It’s not all spit and sawdust…things get decidedly holy on ‘Door C’ as a whiff of incense coils like rope hissing through the gates of heaven.  The mood is deepened on ‘Door E’ which generates that feeling of helpless exhaustion after an early winter run.  You stand, steaming like a racehorse, hands on hips, breathing in the frigid air, the mind a perfect, beautiful blank.

In the best possible way Leitmotiv Limbo conjure up the in-between moments of life.  The pauses and stutters; the twitches and delicious stretches.  A satisfied yawn cast in iron.

Side two offers RNP No2, another mysterious presence, who operates in a similar sound world to that great Dane Claus Poulsen but with perhaps more of a pick n’ mix approach.  Each piece is a perfect, stand-alone unit showing a variety of styles and obsessions.

So, what may be rubber batons are beating gently against a copper tube as a single note is worried and plucked from within a felt piano.  Or, on the wonderfully titled ‘The Pink Flowd pecking order’, bristling electric-hums play the drums and collect the empties at the bar at the same time.  I don’t know about you but for me that’s classic Prick Mason material.

Other jams of note take a tin bassoon feeding back through Jah Shaka’s soundsystem (or something) that slowly turns into early Dead C clanging, ringing and singing.

We’re eased out of the listening space with a buffling roar, it could be more rubberised twigs on vibrating pig skin, it could be a puffy cheek slapped until it glows maroon. I’ve no idea what is happening, and what has happened is no guarantee of what is next to come.

What a wonderful place to be eh?

Gwilly Edmondez  – Trouble Number (Slip Imprint) Double tape (C60 and C30) or digital album

“Make your own world now” croons Mr Gwilly Edmondez (AKA Gustav Thomas and MYKL JAXN) on his career-spanning double-bulge tape package.

And even the most cursory peak into this wonderfully detailed bumper-harvest reveals a singular world that screams “E.D.M.O.N.D.E.Z!”

Tape one is comprised of unreleased gunk, radio broadcasts, classic album trax and live excursions as Gwilly leafs through his famously chaotic archive to pluck the ripest fruit, the sweetest meat from as far back as 1986.

As you’d expect a lot can happen in all them dusty years so many, many, many bases are covered my dear readers.  You want the slick quick dictaphonix?  You got it.  You crave the sampling keyboard rainbow-beans?  Tick yes sister.  Is your personal Jones for the trademark un-sense gibber and brain-fold poetry?  Consider yourself satisfied brother.

But this time-romp is no haphazard kitchen sink-style hodgepodge.  The sense of the man (the very, very Gee Edmondez) feels as comfortable and natural as a favourite moccasin. All the pinches have been ironed out resulting in gratifying fullness.  In fact there are few hard, sharp edits and things flow like one of those Fabric Mixes (or something).

The spectre of Southen Rap flavours many of these jamz like hickory-smoked BBQ.  And, as would be fitting for a sweet n’ sticky rib, it’s darn slippery too.  At points I’m thinking a Chopped and Screwed Stanley Unwin at others a hacked Eno biscuit but towards the end I’m exhaustedly thinking of Hugo’s big Balls.

Tape Two (Gnarlage of Self) sees EdMoNdEz  jamming good in the more recent year of 2017.  Here the method is to record a free-flowing data dump of capricious tunage on tape, keys, percs and gits then pass the resulting loopage to one Dario Lozano Thornton for editage.

At times this layering offers a Jack Kirby dimension, all bright colours, freaky angles and cosmic pronouncements.  At others the live-in-the-room feel (bolstered by inter-jam bantz and nervous laughter) is more a modern day Alan Lomax capturing a chrome-plated Sonny Terry.   And the blues reference is very deliberate readers for this tape is an unwinding transport spiel, a word-salad for sure but underpinned by the railroad whoop of the freight train hobo.

I guess the question such a well-referenced retrospective raises is, ‘so what’s changed on the journey man?’  I can safely report back that to my ears it’s pretty much everything and at the same time nothing. The tunes may differ but the voice remains utterly distinctive and wonderfully radge.

But what do I know?  Listen for yr damn self coz you the boss eh?

Kraag/Mang Disc

Crow Vs Crow

Hyster Tapes

Slip Imprint

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