The COVID-19 Diaries. Week 1

Dave Phillips - Post Homo Sapiens
Attenuation Circuit
ACU 1017.
CD/gravel encrusted cassette/DL
500 copies.




On Friday morning I set off on a mission to buy some food and to assess the damage. Cleckheaton, I had convince myself, would by now be full of dazed people wandering the aisles of Tescos buying things they’d normally never buy. All of them wondering if they could make something to eat from a packet of Ainsley Harriot’s Mediterranean cous cous, a three-pack of Sharon fruits, some pickled gherkins and half a pound of mince. To my surprise the town was fairly civilized; the butchers was open, as was Greggs, the bakers too but plenty of shops were shut and will remain that way for a long time to come. Corona had done the damage. Nobody was going to forget these crazy days and quiet nights for as long as they lived. Those shelves did look desperate though, like a horde of Vandals and been through ten minutes earlier raiding everything they could get their hands on, except for the Tio Pepe and the Ainsley Harriot stuff.

I parked just down from the Pound Shop and went to drop my prepaid mail off at the Post Office. When I got back to the car the Pound Shop was taking delivery of two pallets worth of Velvet three-ply toilet rolls. Toilet rolls now having a value that would have seemed unimaginable two weeks ago and overnight have risen from being a humdrum personal hygiene staple commodity into something worth killing for. I wondered if I should buy some myself but decided against it, what with Me and Mrs Fisher being well stocked in that department and deeming further purchases at this moment tantamount to panic buying. But I entered the shop anyway just to see if they had anything I could use. Inside was a queue that lead away from the counter right back in to the inner sanctum where the pet food and the car accessories lie. Each person in that queue clutching a nine-pack of Velvet to their chest like it was a long lost and recently returned pet. The man who runs the shop, along with his sons, is of Pakistani origin. He has a strange beard that is some kind of chin strap that leaves a very clean upper and lower lip. I find it a remarkable accoutrement and never fail to have a good gawp at it when I’m in there. He’s a small, quietly spoken man, slightly reserved in his comings and goings but this morning he was in panic mode. He had a shop full of people and was behind the till looking desperately for help and finding none. The Velvet had just come off the back of his van and hadn’t been priced up. ‘I can’t sell Velvet as I don’t know price’ he shouted so that the entire shop could hear him. But not his sons who’d gone AWOL. The queue continued to stand and clutch silently. They weren’t going anywhere without their toilet rolls.

All this the result of people wanting to eat bats in China. Which seems to be the best held belief at the moment. The result of cramming animals together in environments where they should never be crammed. Bringing species in to contact with each other, spreading pathogens where they shouldn’t. Or maybe you think the Corona virus is all a big hoax, nothing more than influenza with muscles, an excuse for governments to exert more control over their citizens, something that will be all over by July and off to Lords we go to jolly well watch the cricket.

As if. Things will never be the same again after Covid-19. There will be pre COVID-19 and post COVID-19 and what did you do during self isolation mummy. Why, we made you dearest.

At least its easier for us all to keep in touch now. There’s e-gigs too. Last night I watched a Graham Dunning and Viktor Zeidner gig, cast it to the TV and lapped up every deranged minute while buzzing on G&T’s. In the afternoon I’d become more acquainted with some people I know on Bandcamp, who’d waived their usual fees in a bid to put more money in peoples pockets at time when they need it most. Step forward Ashtray Navigations and Foldhead. I’d have bought more, wanted to tuck in to some Vibracathedral Orchestra but the site crashed.

I’m still at work [just] as is Mrs Fisher [just] but we’ll both be spending a lot more time at home. Seeing as we both spend a lot of time at home already this isn’t the end of the world for us. It’ll be more difficult for some than others though. Families that don’t get on. Families that do get on to start with but are at each others throat after three days. People with dependents. People who are ill. The confused, the angry and those who don’t give a shit and were still in the pub last night at midnight getting as much beer down their neck as they could because this could be the last time for a long time. I have a very active 84 year old father who seems utterly bewildered by whats happening and has just seen his summer of sport disappear down the same tube as his nightly two pints down the club. Once the snooker went that was him finished.

So thats where I’m at. Still sat in front of a computer thinking up words to describe sounds that people are kind enough to send me as the world goes to shit outside. I’ve decided to post weekly, probably on a Saturday. It will still be about the music and sounds but it will also be a kind of diary; whats on the shelves [or not] in Tescos, Skype conversation of the week, what happened at work of note and whether the old boy in the Pound Shop ever did find a price for that Velvet.

I wrote this Dave Phillips review last week but never got round to posting it due to being in mild shock as to what was going on. It seems more pertinent now than seven days ago, which is some indication as to how fast this thing is moving. I couldn’t concentrate then by any degree and instead spent my time on Twitter watching Donald Trump make a bigger cunt of himself than anybody ever thought possible, or on YouTube watching people mend things. The Ying. The Yang. As ever. See you next week.

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For anybody affiliated with the Bald Heads of Noise, Dave Philips stands as a Demigod. He of the permanent cue-ball noggin, he of the deep and serious stare, he of the visceral, stomach-churning noise sets. A seriously committed noise artist who for the last several years, [maybe longer, I haven’t been keeping count] has devoted himself to highlighting the important role insects play within nature and their symbiotic relationship with us, homo-sapiens. We who seem to make life extremely difficult for insects, paying them little attention, except when they annoy us. Let us not call them bugs and do them a disservice let us recognise their importance and let the fact sink in, as Dave Philips starkly reminds us on the sleeve notes, that nature doesn't need us.

If you’ve seen a DP live set in the last few years, the chances are that you’re still reeling from it. Be it sitting at a mixing desk blasting field recordings of insect sounds or stalking the stage like a maniac to an ever increasing crescendo of dog barks, whispered vocals, heavy breathing, squealing pigs and hammered piano keys. The last time I saw him in Leeds he gave this very kind of performance as an unsettling back projection of environmental disasters and animal abuse played out. It was the kind of performance that gets people setting up direct debits for PETA before they leave the building, while swearing never to go near sausages again. Its almost like he’s defying you not to. Its a powerful message and using noise as a weapon means you’re struggling to ignore it.

I disappeared down the DP wormhole a while back after a casual mention of his name on social meeja hit me like the heel of my hand to the forehead. A big ‘duh’, like why haven’t I listened to any Dave Phillips for a while? So you go right back to Fear of God and the hardcore stuff and then a little Schimpfluch Gruppe because who doesn’t like a bit of noise absurdism and then through the noise and field recordings before coming out the other end a day later with wobbling jowls. 

These latest recordings span November 2018 to June 2019 and have to be played loud and in one continuous session as per disc printed command. Which I duly did. The volume I get but not the insistence that I listen to it in one sitting seeing as how there are six tracks each with their own voice. I don’t think there’s any kind of continuity unless the command is there purely so that you pay attention. Which it probably is and we do need to pay attention. So pay attention.

All six tracks are woven around insect and animal sounds; chewing termites, cicadas, chattering seagulls, crowing crows. All six tracks bear DP hallmarks; hammered piano keys, a leap in volume that gets the heart pumping, a noise drone built from insect sounds that become ever more menacing. You also get what sounds like a bout of post-coital [pre-coital?] giggling at the end of the first track ‘Biosemiotics’, a call and response run up the high piano keys with Luzia Rasu on ‘Phytognosophysiology’ [something to do with plants] and something that wouldn’t look out of place as background to a spot of Edgar Allen Poe perusal, this being ‘Metamorphosis’ with its crows, creepy plucked strings and menacing spoken words. The bowl-ring, up close chewing sounds and sonar sounds of birds unknown make ‘Hydrotropism/Heliotropism’ a far more relaxed affair, when those creaking oar straps come in and someone starts bonging the side of a very big, very empty vessel you could be within the comfort of your own home, or out on the transvaal with DP.

Post Homo Sapiens isn’t just a reminder that Dave Phillips is out there, its a reminder that planet earth is in dire need of some healing hands. You have to listen. Maybe not all the way through in one go but listen you must.

http://attenuationcircuit.de/