This is it then. Get used to it. Queueing to get in to the supermarket, your hair cut by the missus with scissors bought off eBay, back door surveillance, holidays in Britain where a pint of shitty lager costs six quid and the beer garden is patrolled by the distance police [all food and beverage brought to your table by a member of staff after you’ve ordered it via the app, no loitering in the toilets either and ultraviolet lighting to show that you’ve washed your hands properly], the avoidance of A&E for minor injuries, the avoidance of people in the street, joggers that kill, Face Time chats, online gigs and everything brought to your door by overworked, underpaid, stressed out delivery workers. At least nature is getting a rest from us. Airline travel? Forgeddubout it, who wants to sit in a metal tube at 30,000 feet for hours on end breathing recirculated germs all washed down with a tin of G&T, that’ll be ten pounds please and payment by contactless only. Just wait until winter comes around and next years gas and leccy bills start dropping through the door. Its still all a bit of a novelty for some I suppose, BBQ’s every day, sitting in the garden until you’re pissed and nipping out to the Co-op fifteen minutes before it shuts for another four cans and a half bottle of own brand brandy just to see you off. The future certainly looks anything but bright.
I’m doing my best not to annoy the delivery workers by not buying anything. I know that this will eventually ruin the economy but for now I’m getting more of a kick out of revisiting older material. The insatiable urge to buy and consume new product, to discover new sounds and writers has hit a rock, lost three wheels and now lies in a ditch gasping for air along with all the dust gathering at Wall of Sound.
I find myself rereading books that have sat on my shelves for 25 years and LP’s that haven’t seen the light of day in decades. Last week I read James Kelman’s 1985 novel ‘A Chancer’, a book I read in the early 90’s but couldn’t for the life of me remember a single detail of. I knew that I enjoyed the book but the passing years have wiped every trace of it from the memory banks. So why not read it again. Which is what I did. After which I realised that I had lots of books on my shelves that I’d read and was of the opinion that they were truly worthy of my time and that I needed to revisit them, especially the Bukowski Black Sparrow Press originals, so why not re-read everything I already own? Pull up the drawbridge on literature, foot the brake on music, withdraw in to my own personal cultured world like I’ve withdrawn from the outside world.
Having said that Dr Steg recommends that I should get hold of a copy of Charles Platt’s notorious sci-fi sex novel The Gas, a novel in which a gas leak turns the normally staid British masses into raving sex maniacs. Its a books that I’ve been getting around to getting for years and now may be the time. £4 via Kindle or read it via Google books? Mmmm. Then there’s Kelman’s The Bus Conductor Hines, another of his early 80’s novels which I’ve never read. Mmmm, £4 via eBay for a ‘like new’ copy including postage . Alright then once more for old times sake. Old habits die hard. Carry on now. Nothing to see here.
Robert Ridley-Shackleton - Cardboard Sane
Chocolate Monk 476
The self styled Cardboard Prince brings you his ‘back from the brink’ album. An album of two halves divided by a message to his fans informing them that he’s not going to commit suicide as he’s turned a new leaf, those days are behind him now. Where once stood Aladdin Sane now stands Cardboard Sane. The rebirth album for the No Audience generation. Whether this is all part of the Cardboard Prince schtick or a genuine outpouring of feelings I know not. I don’t know him that well you see, to be honest I don’t know him one bit. I’m not that familiar with his music either though some of it has found its way through these hands, but not for some time.
After listening to the gig that makes up the second half of Cardboard Sane I’m kicking myself that I never got to see him perform at the Sage during a recent Tusk fest. That would have meant being in close contact with someone who never stops talking though, whose audience never stops talking either come to that. The boundary between performer and audience being non-existent to the point of the audience actually being part of the performance. If ‘Saturday Night’ is anything to go by there wouldn’t have been much in the way of music either just Ridley Shackleton having a conversation with himself in much the same way a deranged Papa Lazarou would if he’d been told to warm up a Vic and Bob crowd, stream of consciousness words and sentences spat machine gun like and often ending in loud screaming, shouting and hollering as if the brain has come to some sort of impasse and the only way to unblock it is by shouting in frustration tourettes stylee.
He is funny though especially when telling the audience [some of which he appears to be on first names terms with] to shut up because he’s performing.
His songs, four of which you get before the I’m not going to commit suicide track are built around programmed synth beats and keyboard solos Sun Ra would have been proud of. A bit like Suicide for Twitch subscribers. The opener ‘Call Me’ pays no tribute to either Blondie or Astrud Gilberto but is instead an appeal to person or persons unknown and sets the tone for three tracks of misery all delivered in Ridley Shackleton’s sing-songy spoken voice. At least you can dance to this one. The beat is indeed infectious maan. ‘I Can’t Stand Me’ is more frenetic with Ridley Shackleton swinging between evangelistic preacher in hot mode, Michael Jackson going ‘whoo-hoo’ a lot and defeatist groans. The twelve minute ‘Opera’ muses on how shit the world is.
I hope the lockdown isn’t having an adverse effect on the Cardboard Prince [cardboard being his preferred medium for carrying his Twombly-esque art, so I’m informed] nothing that would make him go back to where he was before Cardboard Sane because this has been fun.
Chlorine & Possett - Ultra Fluff
Chocolate Monk 477
What a time to be in a band called Chlorine. Just take the recommended dose, usually a 99% dilute solution, intravenously, once a day while singing hallelujah and all your virus doubts be banished. Guaranteed peace of mind. Just ask the Orange Baby Man if you don’t believe me. He’s getting his most senior medical advisors to look in to it so expect results any time soon.
Word has it that the Chlorine and Posset met up pre Covid-1984 to jam the jam, to get wiggy with the wires, check the chakra, clang the clang, Chlorine with percussion electronics, Posset with Dictaphone and megaphone vokills.
The 54 second opener pulls your ears wide open and shits in huge dollops of electro-acoustic speaker damage before taking you by the well washed hand into a cordoned off area where you will be met by a representative in full hazmat suit and explained as to what it is electro-acoustic music is all about. This being one of the three Zoundroom Blues that are to be found along your way. These several Zoundroom Blues being fingerposts to TNB territory; a compendium of holy howl and metal scrape with plenty of those life affirming ‘thumps’ that flatten your ear drum. Must be a North East thing.
All sounds being re-edited, remixed and reworked from hours worth of jam material, all boiled down to the very essence of juicy ear joy. Its not all clunk and clatter though, expect
electro jazz skitter, industrial skreech, dominoes being shuffled, circular saws going through stubborn tree knots, Jenga towers collapsing. At ten minutes in length and the longest track of the twelve is ‘Cruize Clips Doo Boil Bricks’ which gives us the chance of greater inspection and introspection with dying cassette tape and rubbed violin sitting two meters apart from plonked European piano and African Kalimbas. Depth a-plenty lies in wait for the intrepid listener. Bravo sirs.
Dylan Nyoukis and Seymour Glass - No One Cares About The Drama Queen’s Potassium Intake
Chocolate Monk 479
Another crucial pairing and a solid thirty minutes worth of audio gobble from two men who’ve probably been singing happy birthday while washing their hands for the last thirty years.
Howler monkeys, stretched plastic, newspapers a-flutter, cello’s being broken for scrap, murdered bagpipes, sea birds, toy pianos, sheets of tin as soundboards, the lost call of the last Dodo, bridge strings, parping, grunts, the intro to Hamburger Lady edited down to five seconds and sampled in to a one second bite, harps, guillemots, shortwave burble, Duncan Harrison, heavenly choirs, a computer from a 1970s James Bond film going batshit, voices, log xylophones, more parping, swimmers suddenly realising that they’re sharing the water with sharks, raspberries [made with the mouth], things made of metal hitting things made of metal, underwater jazz, made up languages, sci-fi synths, burbles, The Clangers, green wood being chewed, small dogs asking to be let out, someone going ‘ahah hehe’ on a loop, a parrot, squeaky pet toys, a cough, left ear cooing and all of it put together into a complete audio experience for the delectation of sonic explorers everywhere.
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