Robert Ridley-Shackleton

Robert Ridley-Shackleton - Stone Cold Crazy
Crow Versus Crow. CVC010
Cassette/DL 50 copies.



I saw Robert Ridley-Shackleton at Tusk and yet I didn’t see him. I saw him because you can’t miss him, he’s like a night shift Dave Lee Roth in Versace. I didn’t see him because he performed in one of those little pod things that can only fit five people in with any degree of comfort but I did hear him. I was having a cup of tea in the foyer when over a violent blast of electronic noise I defined the odd ‘fuck’. By all accounts [The Bearded Wonder’s] his performance was one of those life enhancing experiences that makes you see the world differently from there on in but that might have been the tea or the view or the camaraderie which were there in abundance. I’ve heard some of his work before; wonky songs sung into a Dictaphone, lots of scuzzy lo-fi noise, lots of stream of consciousness and lots of cardboard. Why the cardboard? I have no idea. Its his thing, that's why they call him The Cardboard Prince. He sent me some of his cardboard once and it was very cardboard-y, torn bits with Cy Twombly dashes on them. I liked it/them. I liked the spontaneity of it/them. I like the spontaneity of Robert Ridley-Shackleton. He’s very prolific dontcha know. Bits of cardboard with Cy Twombly dashes on and noise. Its a winning combo.

On paper he’s the Filthy Turd trying to get his head around a song as heard through a gramophone horn playing a very scratched and cracked Edison cylinder. The six tracks on Stone Cold Crazy are all mini classics of a sort in a Robert Ridley-Shackleton world where there’s lots of Robert Ridley Shackleton to go around. Stand out track is ‘Bury Me’ with its Harlem Shuffle Honky-Tonk piano which is probably a toy piano getting the one finger on each hand hammer treatment amidst a blizzard of white-ish noise. Not all is sung though, not all is Prince [via the cardboard]. At the start of ‘Yol 4 President’ [best song title this year] you get a sarky ‘pardon me for bloody well breathing’ and a one sided conversation about video games, all to a background of whirring noise and cutlery drawers being rummaged.

While I don’t doubt that The Cardboard Prince does write actual songs I’m more than happy living with what I’m assuming are reams of stream of consciousness lyrics/thought processes pinned to noises generated by broken bits of electronic gunk, V-Tech’s and Dictaphones. Its a winning combo.

How much of this you cant take in one go is up to you. Its not exactly easy listening but it does involve you. You cant help but feel you’re a part of someones world when hearing this. A cardboard world full of Cy Twombly dashes and songs to make your ears ache.




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https://cardboardclub.bandcamp.com/