Snotnosed

Snotnosed - Cock Vomit

Second Layer Records. Cassette.

Giving Wire magazine a kick in the bollocks seems to be popular pastime these days and while its tempting to lace up the steelies and flex the old knee muscles I feel I have to admit that without it there would be a sizable gap for magazines covering the outer edges of music. That said theres a lot I don’t like about the Wire but I’m not going to sit here and type out a list of all my Wire gripes. Lets just say that that top of my list would be the fact that, for the most part, I find it an extremely dull read. [Which reminds me, I’ve just tried and failed for the third time to read Paul Hegarty’s book ‘Noise History’ - a tome so dry and professorial it makes the Wire look like Viz - and have I to mention the fact that Hegarty seems to think that Pete Best was a member of Whitehouse? Have I to? Too late].

Whats been filling the message boards recently has been the editorial for December's issue. In it Wire editor Chris Bohn takes to task todays noise/Industrial artists for failing to

further the progress made by the likes of first generation ‘noise’ artists such as Whitehouse and Throbbing Gristle. What I find disturbing though is that Bohn still seems to think that todays Noise/Industrial artist/bands are obsessed with those hoary fail safes; misogyny, serial killers, autopsies, the Holocaust, sexual perversion, porn etc and that the only way to get attention is by shocking people. Of course there will always be those who continue to be drawn to extreme and taboo subject matters but does Bohn think that all Noise, Power Electronics, Industrial, Experimental artists are still wallowing in a sea of aimless transgression? How many noise artist are still using dead bodies as cover stars these days? Last time I looked Merzbow had a chicken on the front of one of his releases - and it had all its feathers on. How many noise/Industrial artists still think of themselves as controversial? How many are out there to shock just for the sake of it? How many feel the need to explain themselves with intelligent critique and self analysis? Would Bohn like to see every new Noise/Industrial/Experimental act starting out today sign some kind of contract stating that they’ll never use a cutting from Readers Wives as an LP cover?

Can’t you make noise and experiment with noise and use what the hell you want for cover art or t-shirt art without recourse to having to explain yourself [isn’t that what Whitehouse did]? Can’t you make noise and Industrial music just for the sheer pleasure of it? Because you like the sound of what you do? Because its what you want to do without having to worry about whether you're advancing the cause of Noise and Industrial music by having Doris from Newark as your cover star. Why does noise and Industrial music have to evolve and ‘work out new strategies for telling unpalatable truths’? What unpalatable truths? And whilst I’m here can someone please tell me why it is that William Bennett is suddenly so popular with Wire magazine? Having ignored him and his work for the majority of his career they now realise that he is in fact an intelligent human being with something to say, not just some knobhead sticking knobs on his releases. So it’s OK for Bennett because he’s into African drums now but its not OK for Snotnosed because they’ve got the word ‘cock’ in the title? Is that it?

What would the Wire think of Snotnosed then? Have they already been reviewed? I doubt it. Maybe they’d merit a couple of lines in Byron Coley’s whimsical ‘Size Matters’ column. Snotnosed are a Hanatarash tribute group. End of review. Maybe the Wire would pick up on the Snotnosed shock tactic of using the word ‘cock’ in the title or the inner sleeve with pictures of cocks, real puerile ones as drawn by serial killers whilst they were wanking off to atrocity porn and dreaming up ways of cutting up the dead body in the bath. [Those early Japanese noise artists loved their ‘cock’s’ and ‘dick’s’ and ‘penis’s’ {peni?}. There were some days when you just couldn’t move for Japanese noise cassettes clogging up your letter box with cocks all over them].

If you’re going to pay tribute to a Japanese noise band then it ought to be Hanatarash [or Hanatarashi - I never knew why they added the ‘i’ - or dropped it for that matter]. They were the most destructive of the lot really - existing for a brief period in the 80’s but leaving a legacy thats still felt today. Hanatarash folded due to the fact that they usually destroyed the venue thus quickly running out of places to play.

And it had to be Michael Gillham that did it. Anyone who has been lucky enough to see Snotnosed in action will have seen Gillham swing sledge hammers, break his bones, draw blood, destroy stages, light fittings, floors. Most gigs end with the audience huddled together at the back of the venue with owner stood blocking the exit, arms folded with a look that said ‘nobody gets past me till all this shit is cleared up and I have compensation’.

Cock Vomit is a constant wall of destruction. Two sides that sounds like all the best smashing up bits of a Hanatarash gig edited together to make up two sides of junk annihilation. Sleeve says ‘performed and recorded by Michael Gillham at the Creche’ and if this is indeed the result of a live performance then I’m impressed. It would have to have been an old gig though as I remember Snotnosed jacked in for the very same reason that their Japanese heroes did. Expect total mayhem, total destruction and lots of cocks of course. Gillham writhes around in his [de]construction like an eight limbed Japanese noise monster, at the bottom of the mix you can hear glass shattering, steel drums meeting their end, pipes being clattered, heavy thuds and through it all a non-stop barrage of chopped box noise hitting you behind the ear, a dislocated bombardment, a pain in the head. If anything Snotnosed sound more like The New Blockaders at full tilt which may explain why there’s a collaborative release between the two in the pipeline. Its also the best Snotnosed release to date.

I listened back to some Hanatarash gigs in the course of my duties and what you can hear is people having a good time. In-between all the glass getting chucked about and the screamed vocals and the venue being destroyed is laughter. Whilst dodging the flying debris, taking pictures [on one recording you can hear the sound of lens shutters clicking] and hoping that Hanatarash main man Yamatsuka Eye doesn’t actually kill himself, people can be heard laughing, enjoying themselves. Its called having a good time.

One last thing. The cover of this months Wire - is that the best you can do?

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