The New Blockaders - Live At The Rammel Club/The Dome

The New Blockaders - Live At The Rammel Club/The Dome
VLZ Produkt. VLZ00043 - CD
300 copies.



Two TNB gigs as recorded in 2012 one of which I attended and got a chair chucked at my head and the other I missed by a day seeing as how, by sheer coincidence, I happened to be in London on the weekend of the Harbinger Sound Broken Flag weekend at The Dome, Tuffnell Park, London.

The Dome gig in question and the Broken Flag weekender that it was a part of, is one not fondly remembered by some I spoke to with tales of egotistical preening and wildly varying performances to the fore. I was there on the Saturday, the middle night of the three with some of those early attendees already fading and fearing the worst. Tales of testing noise sets with not much in the way of respite were common. The venue, a former dance hall, had no seating so you stood and took your punishment like a man. Literally, for as ever these events were male dominated. On the Saturday I witnessed a theatrical Club Moral set, a rare performance by Sigillum S and a less said the better abysmal rock set from Ramleh. I came, I saw, I got the last tube back to Covent Garden and was glad to be on the train home in the morning. When news filtered through that Sunday nights TNB headlining set wasn’t much more than a bout of drunken tomfuckery I felt that I’d missed little and had held my sciatica at bay as a bonus.

Was it all drunken tomfuckery though or is that just the residual memory of those who bravely batted it out for the full three nights only to have The New Blockaders staring them in the face come late Sunday? Having bravely faced numerous three night noise fests its usually left to the loudest and most extreme act to kill off any remaining enthusiasm a three night crowd has left in it. So I treat such tales with caution and wait for the cold light of day to appear before passing judgment myself.

Thus with the benefit of Youtube footage and the audio here I can only see The New Blockaders doing what they do; creating havoc and out of that havoc the most beautifully formed chaos. Out of such cacophony come moments that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

In 2012 they were messy and all the better for it. The Rammel Club set runs to twenty minutes, The Dome set a longer thirty minutes worth. Both begin quietly with the yelp of excited audience members greeting random loud blurts before being drowned out by hammers bashing stubborn metal and saws painfully coming in to contact with extraction fan casings [I’m guessing]. When this kind of provocative, highly visual style of performance takes place but not six feet in front of you by three balaclava-ed unknowns in jackets, shirts and ties the atmosphere soon turns excitable. Which is where the chair comes in. But no damage done. TNB performances aren’t known for their violence but it appears that some members [for once credited on the inner sleeve] just can’t help themselves. It all adds to the allure.

As for The Dome set I can only assume that the high stage and huge floor space must have played its part. Listened to [and watched] in the cold light of day you can understand where people were coming from; the entire thirty minutes worth is a ramshackle mess with TNB personnel wandering around the stage, picking things up, hitting them, twisting knobs on noise boxes and at one stage picking up a magazine to flick through. A huge and ancient Tannoy cone has detritus dumped in it and is driven repeatedly into the stage floor, things are kicked over, people shout, the volume peaks, dies and squeals painfully back in to life, the cone is abused endlessly until its dumped, either out of boredom or frustration its purpose having been served. During a lull in proceedings someone shouts ‘Take yer bins out’ and you realise the same person must have been at both gigs. A true fan.

These recordings never reach the maximalist highs of Live at Anti-Fest or Live at Hinoeuma [and maybe others of such nature that I’m not familiar with ] but they do show The New Blockaders coming full circle and creating sounds that have more in common with their earlier outings. A pity we don’t see much of them live anymore. Saves me getting my head bashed in I suppose.

http://www.vlzprodukt.com/

Lenka Lente

Félix Fénéon - Les Ventres et Autre Contes
Nurse With Wound - Lonely Poisonous Mushrooms
Lenka Lente. Book + 3”CD
ISBN : 979-10-94601-08-2


Another Lenka Lente book/CD combo where you get to discover that ‘Les Ventres et Autre Contes’ translates as ‘The Bellies and Other Stories’ and that Félix Fénéon was an Italian anarchist, art critic and literary stylist with a tremendous goatee beard who didn’t like the portrait that Paul Signac painted of him because he painted it in profile, not face on as requested, but he hung it on his wall anyway.

Pity the poor English monoglot though for as ever with Lenka Lente the text is all in French but look on the bright side, at least you get to know more about obscure figures in the world of European art. Five short stories here that first saw the light of day in various French literary magazines circa the late 19th century. I wish my French were better than it is. For English speakers wishing to explore Fénéon's work there's a book of his still in print called ‘Novels in Three Lines’. A collection of hundreds of his deadpan observations as published in various French newspapers of the day. It gives us a taste of Fénéon's work and his no doubt languid sense of humour:

Harold Bauer and Casals will give a concert today in San Sebastian. Besides that, they may fight a duel.

Seventy-year-old beggar Verniot, of Clichy, died of hunger. His pallet disgorged 2,000 francs. But no one should make generalizations.


There's more to Fénéon than this tho and I've included the link to his wiki page should you wish to learn more.


Previous Lenka Lente editions have seen Nurse With Wound coupled with outsider artist Adolf Wölfi, art critic and poet André Salmon and the author Charles-Louis Philippe. They should do one with Boris Vian. I once read Boris Vian’s, ‘I Shall Spit on their Graves, because I thought Vian, who also played trumpet and was involved in the 1950’s Paris jazz scene was Neil Campbell’s doppleganger and that there might be some kind of link between the jazz scene in Paris in the 1950’s and the noise scene in West Yorkshire in the mid 1990’s but there wasn’t.

The Nurse With Wound track is taken from 1989 comp ‘Automating Vol. II’ and is a nine minute compendium of quick edits that are barely recognisable bagpipes, coughs and dramatic church organ chord clusters that rear out of your speakers like lions trying to bite your head off.

I wonder what Fénéon would have thought of it?



http://www.lenkalente.com/


Félix Fénéon Wiki

BLJ+S&Q

Black Leather Jesus/Smell & Quim - My Darling, Forever Dressed for Sex.
Petit Sole. PS80. CD




I think it was Simon Morris who compared Smell & Quim to the recently extracted finger from the anus of life. An index finger that from the second knuckle down has a slight musky odour, the nail something beneath of which we’d rather not speak. Its what you run under your nose as you listen to such as this. Just to get you in the mood.

Seeing as how this disc was the devil’s work to play I took to rooting around in my Smell & Quim box and then my noise boxes where I found the odd Ramirez release with obligatory gay porn cover. Ramirez and Black Leather Jesus go together like hairy men and ball gags. A man of many talents then, involved with more bands than you can shake a rubber sex fist at and still, after many years, disturbingly prolific.

In 2014 Black Leather Jesus and Smell & Quim appeared on the same bill at a never to be forgotten gig in Manchester. No doubt relishing the opportunity to go on last Smell & Quim erased any memory of what had gone previously with a performance that verged on physical and sexual abuse. Of course the band were shitfaced which made the wearing of some ridiculously heavy masks covered in razor blades and barbed wire as made by Dr. Steg all the harder, that’s Dr. Steg the man who found himself under threat of ejection from the premises after wielding a knife of his own construct and threatening to trash the place. Instead he took to the stage wearing one of his heavy, gold sprayed, barbed wire covered masks and screamed and shouted for the duration. The gig was made all the more bizarre by the appearance of a certain Callum Terras, his one and only appearance with the band and someone who not long after would be found floating in the Irish Sea. This release is dedicated to him. Simon Morris and Kate Fear were going through some kind of relationship breakdown at the time resulting in Morris having his back passage defiled by Fear who appeared to take great delight in roughly inserting the handle of a percussion instrument where percussion instruments shouldn’t go. Fear also hacked off most of Stewart Keith’s wild and not been cut for decades hair. There might have been some putrid Philadelphia cheese involved too. It was one of those nights. The sound they created was a hellish cross between the over-amplified heart beat of a recently jabbed smack head and the edited audio of every single Jimmy Savile Top of the Pops appearances.

Going through my Smell & Quim cardboard box I’m in constantly reminded of their use of gay sado-masochistic porn soundtrack samples. Something that Ramirez on the other side of the pond no doubt relishes. ‘The Transubstantiation of the Shit of Christ’ [split tape with Aube on the Fever Pitch label and still one of my all time favourites] contains the kind of gay porn samples its probably not wise to play at a volume your neighbours can hear, unless you have very liberal neighbours that is. And this in pre internet days when I can only imagine that sado-masochistic gay porn was much harder to come by.

Which brings us to ‘My Darling, Forever Dressed for Sex’ and a cover that features some stubbly faced gentlemen getting all up close and personal. The track titles couldn’t be anything other than Smell & Quim tho; ‘Big Cocks Flobbing Gristle’, ‘Now If You’re Into Anal …’ and ‘Heavy Spunkers’ with the sounds therein heading more towards early Smell & Quim industrial dirge than the more recent high powered noise as heard on Powerfuck and Lavatory. Black Leather Jesus, who are credited with having no less than ten people in their ranks other than Ramirez appear to contribute the death rattle roar with Smell & Quim throwing everything else into the mix. One sound that is easily identifiable is that of the hand drier as found in the Gents toilets in The Grove, Huddersfield. I know this because I recorded it and am credited on the inner sleeve as being part of the band. When I tell you that this is one of my proudest moments I’m not being glib in anyway, shape or form. 

‘Big Cocks Flobbing Gristle’ starts with the hand drier and some industrial clockwork clank before moving into noisier territory, ‘Now If You’re Into Anal …’ has some seriously slowed down slurry vocals and heavy breathing as recorded by an asthmatic deep sea welder with lead boots on, ‘Heavy Spunkers’ is your full on roar that eventually chips out in a sea of digital crackle and dust. Its early Smell & Quim coupled to some Black Leather Jesus flat out noise stun but where the gay porn samples are coming from is anybody’s guess.

   

http://blackleatherjesus.blogspot.co.uk/p/updates.html