Jason Crumer - Let There Be Crumer

Jason Crumer - Let There Be Crumer
Second Layer CD. SLR016.




Contact: www.secondlayer.co.uk

 

And there goes another decent record shop. R.I.P. Second Layer.  Not that I ever went. I went past it once whilst crawling out of London playing my part in the Friday afternoon ritual that is the exodus of the metropolis. The spare moments that I had during trips to the capital never proved conducive to Second Layer homage thus I never got the opportunity to chuck some money over the counter for some of Pete’s fabulous wares - I did my bit with the mail order though. At least we have the RRR Record Store LP with which to relive Second Layer memories and there’ll be photos knocking about and memories for those that went and spent. Perhaps most importantly the mail order section survives along with the website and the label.

An example of which sits here. I’ve been staring at Crumer’s fizog for too long now [I’m assuming its him on the cover although the similarity between Crumer and Todd Rundgren in his drug saturated heyday is uncanny]. It was either Crumer or the cake on the back sleeve - a cake that looks like it was made by somebody on acid with access to an unlimited supply of day-glo foodstuffs. On the inside there’s a foldout triptych featuring cock fights and dead rats all of which by now will have led the thoughtful amongst you to have deduced that this is a bit of an all over the place release. And so it proves.

Crumer has moved around within the noise beast for a while now but I don’t have too much of his work here to compare - a RRR LP which features plenty of noise and the odd PE type track and an Ignovimus CD from 2006 which will remain deep within the cardboard walls of a very deeply buried box.

On Let There Be Crumer he moves from drone to noise to field recordings to tubular bells to musical boxes and all the way back again in a bid to create something, some kind of concept, some kind of noise concept album, some kind of I don’t know what. A series of rather fetching short stories printed on the inner sleeve in the teeniest tiniest font you could ever imagine prove to be rather fetching but from all this I detect the hand of someone at a crossroads not knowing which path to take.

As a whole it is all over the place but within there lies much charm, the held down key drone that opens and ends the piece is delightful enough as are the tubular bells that feature a heavy downpour as accompaniment, the dull drone that follows the tinkling of a musical box builds to capture within its length the grinding of industrial machinery before the musical box reappears. The only parts of Let There Be Crumer I didn’t like were the noisy parts, which I suppose is why we’re all here. The juxtaposition of all those dainty sounds shunted into some all out tabletop free for all doesn’t sit easy with me. Maybe it will with you?

RUNDGREN

CRUMER