Week 3
Monday 30th
I’m surprised at how quickly we adapt to situations. A month ago the buying of food and services was done without much thought, a couple of pizzas ordered for collection [your usual order, ready in ten minutes] at the local Italian restaurant and now we take the empty shelves, queues for the supermarket, the two meter distancing from other human beings in our stride. We don’t complain or make a noise about it. It must be done and that is all.
I have two days of work left before a month of inactivity. This is how it feels. Its not something to look forward to with any kind of enjoyment. An hours walk in the morning, up to Scholes and back again for a cup of tea and a read of the paper. No more runs in to Leeds for something to eat, no more bookshops in Bradford, no more friends, no more family, holidays gone, no need to buy any clothes as I wont be going anywhere, the ones I’ve got now will probably see me out, no more charity shops and a decent shirt for £4 and the Letters of Franz Kafka as edited by Max Brod Penguin books 1975 with a Paul Klee cover £2 as from Oxfam.
Now is the time to read and write and sit in the quietness. Hours on end with the 5.30 am alarm on the phone turned off. Reading until the eyes droop and maybe a little nod in the afternoon before waking and more tea and more books. I think I’ll lay off the wine too. Its a slippery slope. A bottle a night and then two. Half pissed and waking up later and later with a head thats fatter and thicker with each passing day. It’ll be like being out of work and watching shit on the telly until three in the morning.
Work is a waste of time. Everything broken down as if the machinery itself cant be bothered. No bugger there. Every bugger pissed off. Hardly any mention of the virus. An empty world where nothing happens and the newspapers all have articles on ten things to do with tinned tomatoes and how to spot garden birds. After work I go to pick up Mrs Fisher and sit in the car waiting with the radio on. I soon fall asleep and I’m in a reverie of sorts with hypnagogic radio voices floating and all is peaceful and quiet. When I awake its a minute to five and here she comes, still working and as pissed of as me.
Tuesday 31st
So thats it then. For a whole month. Paid too. I feel like I’ve escaped from a burning building and on the way out someone handed me an envelope stuffed with tenners, ‘here you go, this’ll see you on for a few weeks’. At the beginning of March this would have been an impossible thought but then so would housing homeless people in hotels for free and seeing the empty streets of Llandudno filled with mountain goats munching down peoples floribunda. The world turned upside down, its guts pulled out and chewed on by an unseen enemy.
The last day was surreal. Five people doing what they normally do during the day while the world outside sits in front of their TV’s watching keep fit videos. When I left at 4.30 everybody had long since gone. I was the last one out and when I got to the car I realised I’d left my bag and had to go back for it, me not wanting my first day back [whenever that will be] to begin with the binning of two rotten satsumas and a blackened banana.
Wednesday 1st
After dropping Mrs Fisher off at work I call in at the local sorting office to pick up a parcel that we’ve missed the delivery of yesterday, which must irk the shit out of the already stressed and overworked Posties as most people are stuck in their houses. The small collection office is locked and theres a notice on the door with a number to ring, so I ring it and while its still ringing a man appears as if from nowhere. I go to hand him the missed parcel card and he takes about three steps back, ‘cant touch yer card mate, what name is it?’ I tell him and hold up both the card and Mrs Fisher’s ancient driving license which I’ve brought as proof of I.D. He peers at it, ‘and the address?’ I tell him that too and within seconds he’s gone and back with the parcel which he leaves on a bin for me to collect.
I decide that my morning routine will involve a circuitous walk to Scholes. A walk of two miles that is one half uphill and one half downhill. It takes me past pubs that I used to drink in that are now residences, pubs that have been flattened, the house I lived in as a kid and the Co-op which has cheery staff and space for only three customers at a time. This morning I score for the last of the Braeburns, some sausages, a packet of hot cross buns, tissues and by some miracle spaghetti. The streets are still deserted and the sky downcast and miserable, the hot days of last week now long gone and probably for the better seeing as how its no fun cooped up in your house when the suns out. Nearer to home I walk through the local park and stop to admire the wildlife which in one particular corner, which I’ve named ‘Bird Corner’, has goldfinches, sparrows, great tits, a little wren and also a huge brown rat which seems to be living happily off the debris spilt from bird-feeders. A curious squirrel comes to greet me but I haven’t got anything for it but make a mental note to shove a few almonds in my pocket for the morning.
The rest of the morning is catching up with emails and after two hot cross buns and a fruit salad for lunch I decide to finish my Geoff Dyer book but soon fall asleep.
I’ve read a couple of Dyer’s books. He’s a travel writer, author, journalist maybe. I’m not sure of his job description. ‘Yoga For People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It’ is seen as his blockbuster, something he mocks himself for in the introduction to his much later book White Sands. It was written in 2003 when Dyer had a liking for getting stoned and chatting up women and then getting them stoned, usually with disastrous results. In places like Paris, or Amsterdam or Cambodia was it. He flies to Libya after relations with Gaddafi turn more favorable so as to visit the ruins of Leptis Magna where the ruins are magnificent and the food is terrible. He goes to a Techno festival in Detroit and does his best to score some weed off the kids before he realises the reason they’re blanking him is because they think he’s an undercover cop. In Amsterdam he and a couple of friends take magic mushrooms and cant find their hotel and so it goes. Dyer’s not just a ‘I went there, did that’ kind of writer though, he’s deep, a deep thinker on many subjects, one of them being himself. In a cafe in Detroit he’s convinced he’s having a nervous breakdown and weeps into his breakfast, when asked by a member of staff if he’s ok he replies ‘I’m bound on a wheel of fire that mine own tears do scald like molten lead. How are you doing?’ He ruminates on the philosophy of travel and how the quicker we’re transported somewhere the more impatient we become, he tells a couple admiring the ruins of Detroit that ruins aren’t a reminder of what once was but of what will come. Many a chance encounter has him quoting his favourite poets; Auden, Ashbery .... This is like travel writing written by an intellectual who likes to get stoned and can write two pages on how much he’s going to miss the sunglasses he’s lost. He’s funny too with a sense of humour thats sharper than a dart. When asked if he speaks English by a local in Cambodia he replies ‘Yes, I’m an expert’.
Thursday 2nd
I didn’t see the squirrel, or the rat, or most of the birds barring a blackbird and a couple of sparrows. Its gotten cold again and the recently shaved chin is feeling it so I pull up a scarf which also acts as germ inhibiter/filter and gives passing pedestrians and the Co-op staff some cause for comfort. I assume.
This morning I bought a packet of dark chocolate digestives, three onions, some mushrooms which we’ll have for tea in a risotto and the Spenborough Guardian, the local paper that I send to my mother so that she can keep a check on whose died.
On my walk I pass through the council estate where I used to live as a kid and take note of the changes; the street leading up to my old house used to have gardens bordered by privet hedges through which we used to run, being chased by angry residents who didn’t much care for a group of kids tearing holes through their well trimmed privets, we called it the Grand National and on the other side were tidy gardens with low walls. The privet side is now mostly gravel spaces for cars with only a handful of privets surviving while the other side has tatty, bare gardens with greasy wheelie bins, forgotten children’s toys with grass growing through them and bored cats that stare out of windows fitted with net curtains, one garden has a rabbit in a cage and every time I walk past it it seems to be giving me the eye. The house where I used to live doesn’t have the ash tree anymore, the tree that I could never climb because it didn’t have any low hanging branches, Ash die-back probably took it. The house itself has solar panels on the roof but apart from that it looks just the same.
Friday 3rd
Mrs Fisher doesn’t work Friday’s so we do the walk together. A brisk northerly breeze is blowing which necessitates the wearing of extra layers, my scarf being fully justified though I don’t need it in the Co-op as I’m going to Sainsbury’s to do the weekly shop later on. This will be the furthest I will travel during the lockdown. Its about three miles away.
On our walk we decide to not talk about the coronavirus as a way of distancing ourselves from the subject, but after two minutes of silence and a false start where the coronavirus gets mentioned by accident we abandon the idea and start talking about it again.
In the park Mrs Fisher spots a dunnock pecking the ground near a hedge, though not in Bird Corner which has nothing but sparrows in it. Still no sign of the squirrel. A house on the edge of the park has a plaque cemented in to the floor outside its front gate. It says ‘Spen Fame Trail’ with a number below it. I’ve been meaning to look in to these plaques since they first started appearing over ten years ago but have never got around to it. With great authority I tell Mrs Fisher that this is the house that Roger Hargreaves used to live at, Roger Hargreaves being the creator of the famous Mr Men cartoons. ‘I think you’ll find its the other chap’ she says. ‘The painter? Edward Wadsworth? Are you sure I thought he lived somewhere else?’. When I get home I check the website and sure enough its the Wadsworth house.
Saturday 4th
On Saturdays I have a change of routine and walk in to Cleckheaton to see if its still there. It is but very few shops are open. Those that are have queue’s outside them. There’s one bloke in a queue outside the newsagents which is now operating a two customers at a time policy and when I get inside he’s at the counter buying lottery tickets and scratch cards with a lingo that marks him out as a regular purchaser of such items. Its a language containing instructions about separate lines and random cards that sounds like he’s ordering a Chinese take-away. By the time he’s done there’s a small pile of paper on the counter that amounts to £28 in sales ’you might as well give me another two seventeens and save you the bother’ says the man who seems to think being given £2 change is a bother. I imagine him going home to scratch them all off, each one becoming ‘the one’ each one passing with a mixture of anticipation and desperateness and thoughts of the time he won five grand.
The pound shop isn’t open yet and I have a slight panic as to what I’ll do if it doesn’t as this seems to be the only place you can buy bog paper around here without getting in to a fight. It also makes me feel grateful to the people who are still coming to work and keeping their businesses open. I feed the pigeons with last nights left over pitta breads and wander around the deserted streets making a mental note of the shops that are still open; Jackie F’s, Maughans the bakers, the pet shop [which has a customer emerging from it with a huge dog bed], the health food shop, the pharmacy, Metcalfes the butchers, Home Bargains and Tescos, everything else is shut for the duration and has signs on the doors or windows wishing their customers well and hoping to see them again soon. When the pound shop does open I buy bog rolls, bleach and two pairs of rubber gloves size large as my hands are starting to feel the effects of too much washing. I walk home through Tesco’s car park where they have the new queueing system set up and for which there absolutely no takers, and up Whitcliffe Road past the long shut library and through the park where I meet the two ladies who are keeping the bird feeders full. At the bottom of the park the squirrel comes to greet me but I have a different coat on to the one that has the almonds in it and anyway, a dog scares it off up a tree.
Sunday 5th
The BBC weather forecasters are saying that today could be the hottest for six months. This sends the government into a panic as they envisage hordes of people descending on seaside towns and parks, ignoring pleas to stay at home. If they do stay at home barbecues will be lit at ten am, soon to be followed by the first can of lager of the day. I envisage half the country to be blind drunk by three pm and sunburnt down one side by six.
It is a nice morning but there’s still a cheeky northerly breeze taking the edge of the heat but still I don shorts and me and Mrs Fisher are out of the door by eight thirty. Our main obstacle today are joggers who seem to be multiplying faster than the virus. I’ve never seen as many. Where did they all come from? Some look like seasoned joggers; slim, lithe, wearing expensive looking trainers, arm sleeve iPhones and easy grip water bottles, then there are those who seem to be wearing the shorts and t-shirts they went on holiday in last year in. The dodging of joggers is a constant and takes any enjoyment out of the walk, necessitating numerous road crossings so as to avoid their abundant sweat and panting lungs. We pass one lumpy lad who looks like an advert for an heart attack, a mass of boiling purple sweat, ungainly limbs and a pounding gate that must be doing his knees more damage than his lungs good.
Last night we talked with some friends via facetime and drank two bottles of wine in the process. This is the new socializing.
Venusian Death Cell - The Cross
CDR
Venusian Death Cell - Decay Within
CDR
I hope David’s alright. David is Venusian Death Cell, well most of it, most of the time. He writes all the songs [except for the covers of course] and plays, as far as I can tell, all of the instruments, except when he plays live, which isn’t often. He tells me he likes to go for long walks in the hills around Dublin, walks which help him think more clearly. David and his long walks have probably been curtailed somewhat due to the coronavirus. This isn’t good for David’s head. We need to get David more fresh air. Its of vital importance. Whether it has curtailed his recording muse we shall have to wait and see for these two releases are from the back end of last year, but fear not for they still contain all the vital Venusian Death Cell ingredients.
These are David screaming and growling his lyrics while grinding out a riff on his electric guitar and attacking a drum kit that sounds like its been held together with bale twine and tie wraps. This is mainly due to the way in which David records his albums which sound as if its all going in to just the one microphone. Its an instantly recognisable sound and one that I’m wholly familiar and comfortable with; an electric guitar sometimes with no amplification as in the cover of Cannibal Corpse’s ‘Skull Full of Maggots’. To be honest I’m not the worlds biggest Metal fan but I can happily listen to VDC for days on end. Well, maybe not days but you get my drift. Its the ‘outsider’ tag that does it for me. An acquired taste perhaps but wholly to my liking. Those expecting well polished Metallica like anthems should look elsewhere but if you want it raw and earthy then look no further.
The most revealing track on both albums is the interview with David thats the last track on ‘Decay Within’ [I’m pretty sure this is a first for VDC], an interview conducted by Gorf who says ‘cool’ a lot and in which David expounds on his influences and lyrics. A pity its all a little too muffled, I had to strain my ears but its all in keeping with the aesthetic. He describes his music as Death Metal/Outsider Music which if you’ve ever heard a VDC album you’ll find to be the perfect description.
On Decay Within you’l find song titles like ‘Whipping White Women Thrash’ this need not alarm you, this is about being ditched, being given the Spanish Archer [El Bow] and contains the lines ‘the aching white sex, immersed in pleasure’. Not bad eh? And if you take out the interview, this album comes in at around the 20 minute mark which is the same as The Cross which in my book is no bad thing.
The first track on The Cross is ‘Paradise’ its lasts a minute and is a slave boat drum thump, next track is another in the VDC continuing Halloween series in which David sings the word ‘halloween’ repeatedly to different backings. This is version ‘VIII’ and sounds like the entire Chocolate Monk catalogue melted on to one disc, actually its David’s guitar drenched in the filth of a thousand melted Metallica CD’s or something in the middle. ‘Grave Breed’ is a grinding dirge with slightly phased vocals. ‘Immolate’ is a 50 second instrumental of battered drums, tremulous guitar wobble and a dysfunctional guitar solo that Derek Bailey would have had on any of his albums, its only about three notes long but it gets you right there. Longest track ‘Cries’ is a wash of wavering, droning guitar and harsh vocals [or vokills] as David sometimes calls them.
Maybe its the Irish fresh air that does it. As ever, one Venusian Death Cell album is worth ten of whatever Metal album you’re listening to.
davidvora [at] hotmail.com
Grodock - Der Sog/Kollaboration
Attenuation Circuit/Grubenwehr Freiburg
Cassette/DL
50 copies
Bassenger, Medwed, Stadlmeier - Distanz Stillstand Überwindung
Attenuation Circuit. ACU109
CD/DL
100 copies
Day two in the Idwal Fisher household and the housemates are already falling out as to who does the vacuuming. I say Mrs Fisher should do it because thats part of the bargain we have, I do the cooking and the shopping and she does the cleaning. But you’re off work she says. ‘Technically I am’ I say but its called being furloughed, as of this moment in time my job still exists, its just that I’m not allowed to do it. What I’m actually doing now is conserving my energy and preparing myself for the return of work and when that happens I shall be fitter and fresher and in a better frame of mind than when I left.
Some OK noise from Grodock on one of the tracks on the Der Sog side of this tape [Schlag ins Gesicht/Hit in the Face], which comes with a rather natty red J-card insert and a paste on actual drawn by hand cover, but its the less noisy stuff thats far more interesting; a panting dog that could be the sound of someone sawing a lump of wood in a drone filled room as a dead body gets dragged around, air escaping a depressurized compressor, ventilator noise [topical].
David Leutkart [for tis he] makes all these sounds from concrete, stone and metal which he then subjects to ‘electronic treatments’. Things pick up considerably on the second side with four collaborative tracks including one with house favourites Dieter Müh, this making for a slow, cyclical drone of an industrial nature that contains trademark Dieter Müh hard to hear voice samples that are no doubt of a succinctly transgressive nature. The collaboration with Oba Boba [great name] ‘Die Ominipotentez eines Hundeweipens/The Omnipotence of Dog Whiskers’ is a decaying Basinski drone, sampled dog barks and monkey screams whizzing and whirring through walls of electronic squiggle, clang and harmonica wheeze. This as recorded in Freiburg which is where Leutkart originates from. The very last track sees him lock horns with Felix Mayer for a TNB like scrape drone parp fest. A game of two halves Brian.
‘Distanz Stillstand Überwindung’ translates as ‘distance, stagnation, overcoming’. Here we have three performers live improvising with bass, drums, spoken word and vocal samples. These performers being Julia Zemanek [Bassenger], Gilbert Medwed and Sascha Stadmeier. Imagine the the three of them in an empty theatre playing this as music for a silent black and white film and it’ll help you frame where we are here.
Zemanek’s bass is to the fore for the most part, a reverberating beast of a thing through which we hear spoken words, all German of course, some of them hers, some of them sampled as provided by Stadmeier. Medwed switches from loose alt-rock type drumming to electronics, Stadmeier from vocal samples to electric guitar, to a custom built amplified ‘wood and metal object’. And around they go keeping it alive and interesting, working with each other to keep it going. There’s a reversing truck warning bleeper as Medwed finds a groove and then it all falls apart and a voice appears. Hearing German spoken like this always lifts a release from the mundane, I find it gives a work much more gravitas, makes it much more appealing, if these words were spoken by Geoff Lynne in a Brummie accent it just wouldn’t work. I have little idea what the words mean, it could be a recipe for sticky buns, but it fits perfectly. At times it sounds like they’re at a party, all talking at once, a mumble jumble of words as the drums rattle and roll and the electronics rumble on, early on track three its all atmospheric doom and frotted guitar strings. Only rarely do the three of them loose their way, which isn’t too shabby for an improv release that runs to nearly fifty minutes. I kept going back because I enjoyed the atmosphere they created, an austere one, a cold one, one with voices that appear as if to instruct or bring warning. On the last track [there are four] they move from empty spaces and distant voices to TG like synth throb to a disembodied voice that ends and leaves you hanging there. Is this German high art? I hope so. Answers on a postcard.
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