Max Nordile

Max Nordile - Grey Material
No Label. Cassette.

Max Nordile - MONK/Solstice
Independent Woman Records. Cassette.

Vol - 2
No Label. Cassette.

Nothing Band - Descension/Digestion
Decoherence. DECO-09. Cassette/DL

Nothing Band - Anarchy 99
F 32. Cassette.

Breeze - Fresh Whiffs/The Guilty Baby
No Label. Cassette.

Uzi Rash - We Live on Trash
Freedom School Records. 12”

Uzi Rash - Coreless Roll Can-Liner
1234 GO! LP/DL 
 
Wet Drag - Work Drag
Wacky Wacko. WW08. 7”



Arriving just before Christmas 2018 this pile of goodies from Max Nordile may not only be the second best Christmas present I got it may be the reason I keep this blog from turning in to a digital mausoleum.

Yes, while in my cups I have intimated to those close at heart that 2018 may well be the last year that Idwal Fisher continues in its present format. I’ve been doing it for ten years now and will soon hit 500 posts and while I still enjoy hearing new music I was becoming just a tad bored of spending the start of most evenings politely responding to emails containing press releases and links to Drop Box saying thanks but no thanks. A part of me will forever be Old School and all that digital gubbins is nothing but whisps of smoke and ephemeral mirrors. Its there but its not there and besides I fancied putting some ideas down on paper and writing me some fiction. One problem; I have no ideas and to be a writer of fiction you need ideas. I’ll leave all that up to Mrs Fisher who seems to be doing quite well with it.

Six cassettes, an LP, a 45 RPM 12” and a seven inch single, in a box, from California at an eye watering cost to Max Nordile of nearly $40 blows all those Drop Box links into last weeks food waste bin. Nordile has done this to me before but never at such a cost and so extensively. I feel humbled and rejuvenated. For now the fiction’s on hold. Here comes more weird stuff.

Another big plus is that Nordile just sends his work out of the blue, no email before hand [which I’m sure he has access to] or dreaded Drop Box link, just a dashed off hand written note explaining what he’s sending and that's about it. It doesn’t get any simpler. Press play, enjoy.

So instead of ruminating about whether to jack the blog in I spent the days between Christmas and New Year, those indeterminate, indistinct days where the quality of daytime television improves only ever so slightly and no bugger knows what actual day it is anyway, soaking up the Nordile vibe.

All of the above contain Nordile in some shape or form, from Uzi Rash and Wet Drag [both on the verge of mutant punk like emissions and defunct since 2012/13] to his now more recent solo experimental/improv explorations and collaborations. Solo stuff like Grey Matter which is Bailey-esque scratchings and MONK/Solstice [the Solstice side being a live recording from earlier this year], pure experimentation and improv par excellence with guitar, sax, shakers and tin cans all getting a look in, the atmosphere being a mesmeric one of constant rolling guitar trash flux, jitter and roll. Weirdly engaging.

Vol. is Nordile sparring with Morrison Magic with two live sets of guitar/sax improv the length of each bout on the Burlington side determined by the setting of a kitchen timer that goes off regularly at around the sixty second mark much to the amusement of those gathered. The Live at Octopus side is more of a full on shriek-a-thon with added shouting but no kitchen timer.

Breeze is Nordile collaborating with Jackson Blumgart with Blumgart adding deeply busted and buried rhythms and TNB like scrapings to Nordile’s blustery sax. All this recorded to one very far away condenser microphone. That’s Fresh Whiffs, The Guilty Baby runs to two sides and appears to be a live track again recorded to a single mic this time kept under a thick woolen blanket for the occasion. Here spacey vocals and theremins find themselves wandering into all out noise territory and all to good effect.

The Nothing Band is actually Nordile alone but under a band moniker. Why not? On Anarchy 99 he ups the sax skronk with some truly wondrous vibrations while filling out the sound with trumpets and saucepan abuse not forgetting the slide and swipe of his electric guitar. Its that sax sound on side two that shows Nordile really getting to grips with the thing producing squeals within the notes that somehow sound unreal. And the sneezing. Nordile [or someone in there] sneezes a lot. Whether this was intentional or not [or maybe it was whiplash] I guess I’ll never know.

All this growing from the ashes of Uzi Rash who appear to have been some kind of floating collective that started out [at least on this evidence] playing tribute to Doo-Wop, the Monks and Jonathan Richman before morphing into a harder edged ur-punk outfit and an LP on Oakland punk label 1-2-3-4 GO! Records [the first side of which has the most dead wax I’ve ever seen on a record - a good half at least]. There’s evidence on Youtube of Uzi Rash playing sweaty twenty minute sets that end with Krautrock like versions of The Doors ‘Break on Through’, this when Uzi Rash were down to three; a drummer, bass player and Nordile on nasal-y vocals and mini keyboard. The pick of the two here is ‘We Live on Trash’ from 2010, an A4 insert for cover and six tracks with titles like Turn on Yr Love Lamp, I Saw U, Maypole and I’m a Trash Bag, some of which may be covers such is their likeness to 50’s and 60’s vocal groups and erm The Country Teasers. ‘Coreless Roll Can-Liner’ is what you might call more normal. Nothing wrong with that but a testament to how far Nordile has come in his mission to break free from the shackles of structured musics in to more experimental and improvised areas.    

Tracking this stuff down is the hard bit. Nordile has a Bandcamp page:

Nothing Band

And a Big Cartel page:

Max Nordile

He could be on Facebook. I’m not.

You can find the New Zealand label Independent Woman Records here:

Independent Woman Records

And Decoherence here:

Decoherence

Discogs has a few copies of the We Live for Trash 12" going for a very reasonable few bucks. But then there's the postage. Steel yourself.

Discogs


In the meantime I’m still here. Post number 498.