Woven Skull - Fat Baby Blues
Deserted Village. DV51. Cassette [Cassettes sold out and now available as a free download]
The Sunken Hum - Vol 1 Field Recordings of Rhythms & Drones
Deserted Village. DV51. Cassette
Tarracóir - Growth.
Deserted Village. CD/DL
Its the word ‘awesome’ that does it for me. A word favoured by vocabulary deficient American teenage noise artists that grates like sand between my rotten teeth. I see it here on Deserted Village’s press release for Woven Skull, a trio of souls who are chucking Irish folk, gamelan and drone into the air to see what happens. To be fair to Woven Skull the word ‘awesome’ is used in conjunction with a music festival going by the name of Hunter’s Moon [which, coincidentally, is the name of a house I once to a party to in Gomersal where someone carved their name in the wooden bog seat before knocking a hole in the wall big enough to crawl through]. But I digress. Deserted Village, yes, they’ve sent me decent work in the past but for some reason I took against the the three headed skull motif on Tarracoir and the name Tarracoir itself which makes them sound like a third rate thrash band. And whats with the miserable looking kids on the Woven Skull release. Sheesh, you’re supposed to draw me in not put me off. And theres another one sat on top of a car dressed in a Santa outfit giving what could be the Heavy Metal two fingered devils horn thing except of course it isn’t.
So lets forget ‘awesome’, thrash metal and miserable kids and concentrate on Deserted Village who sent me two tapes and a CD so long ago that I can’t remember what they sounded like in the first place. And when I do its not good news. Again. Like what the what the. They doing it to me on purpoise? They used to send me good stuff now all I’ve got is people with beards twanging guitars, really fast, twangy with a delay on the twangs. Horrible. Its horrible. So I turn it off and then the cassette sticks so I get fed up and download the damned thing and side two, well, side two opens up into something completely different. I’ve been listening to Alvarius B and Cerberus Shoal and this gives me that same feeling. That feeling of being smothered in lots of warm blankets, layered over whilst you sink deeper into a comfy bed. A comfy bed to end all comfy beds. Its glorious. A slow sinking into comfort feeling made from rasped strings and smooth round stones being knocked together before being dropped, plop, into deep still waters, a sound that I bet hasn’t been touched up making it all the more remarkable. A drone of sorts with seashells being rummaged and wind chimes and an aching two note draw on a bass and someone smashing up orange boxes for firewood. It doth tickle my ears. Just don’t mention the first side.
The Sunken Hum collect various field recordings including an auctioneer at a cattle market, waves crashing, running water, …. you get the idea, which were all recorded as part of a sound art project wherein a two minute field recording was taken everyday for a year. Budgies, hums, things frying, photocopiers, someone sweeping up, traffic, people in a pub, someone walking over a shingle beach, popcorn being made, the best sound I found started at around the two minute mark on side two where Pete Hook was playing a digeridoo at 33RPM until someone turned the speed up to 45 RPM. I have to admit to having fallen out with found sounds of late. I want songs in my life once more.
Which brings us to Tarracóir. This from the press release ‘ Tarracóir’s genre is ‘Base Metal’ - the listener is the alchemist. You will hear elements of Free Jazz, Death Metal and the blare & clatter of Tibetan Buddhist demon-chasing rituals’, and across the bottom in caps ‘LET’S GET READY TO FUMBLE!’ And then the computer spat the CD out saying it was an unrecoginsed format or somesuch. So I found the download on DV’s Bandcamp page and I played it thinking this is going to be easy, two lines about how I hate thrash metal or Base Metal or whatever it is they’re calling it today and I’ll be back to my Prefab Sprout in no time. And then something remarkable happened. I found myself wanting to hear more of it. Here I am fourth track in and I may be getting my noise schtick back. So its not Normcore [as they say on the press release - like what the fuck would I know] but it is a half decent racket that isn’t all full on BLEURGH with the drummers arms going a blur and a thousand guitars dying a death. Electronics can be heard, parps and squeaks, trombones even, garden hose even more even. I could be a fan.
https://desertedvillage.bandcamp.com/album/growth
http://www.desertedvillage.com/index.php
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