Sunday, July 05, 2020

Pumf








Godspunk Volume Twenty-One - Various Artists
PUMF. PUMF 798. CD

Quougnpt - Wear And Tear of the Thrust Bearing
PUMF. PUMF 805. CDR


Several weeks ago I received an email from someone offering up a copy of the new Godspunk various artists release for review. I replied that Pumf supremo Stan Batcow had long stopped sending me the Godspunk series after I rather ungraciously gave one a kick in the guts rupturing its appendix in the process. This due to the good to bad ratio being becoming seriously out of kilter, something that had been happening for a while and [most crucially] that there were always too many tracks by UNIT on them. A band I’ll never come to terms with. Besides, I was way too busy sealing up every draught in the house in an attempt to make it Covid-19 proof all while bleaching the three hundred face masks I bought on eBay and making a sign that said KEEP OUT! POSTIES AND DELIVERY DRIVERS EXEMPT. And then Stan goes and sends me one anyway. 

So what to do? Do I burn my ears once more with the ridiculous UNIT a band so deliberately obtuse they make Yes sound like Status Quo doing Derek Bailey, do I roll my eyes across the words The Large Veiny Members and wonder who the fuck would ever want to be in a band with a name like that? Oh and heres the taurus board who seem to prefer lower case and Stan’s own project Howl in the Typewriter who sound much better stripped down but thats hardly ever. They’re all still there bursting with energy and pride all of them waiting to unleash their music on me and I have about as much enthusiasm for this as a Hermes driver on overtime. So I thought I’d give it a listen. What harm could it do? Its not like my calendar’s bursting with social engagements these days and then theres always the urge to see if UNIT have got any better. Spoiler alert, they haven’t. If you like bands that in one song can go through ten key changes, twelve genre changes, five shifts in tempo and have a singer who sounds like the kind of person waiting to pounce on you in the pub so that he can tell you about his run in with the pigs at the CND rally in Hoxton then this is the band for you. If not avoid. 

As for the rest; Johnny and the Kaprikorns are a straight up and down shit kicking country band, Satanik Seagvll Sekt starts out all electro/punk and ends anthemic on seagull sounds, Harsh Noise Movement loop sounds to hypnotic effect, the taurus board is all digital reggae and The Large Veiny Members make Orb sounds for Glastonbury stoners. Saving my ears from total torment are Lettuce Vultures with some decent Yankee rawk thrash and Nil By Nose whose trip up north for a funeral [presumable Simon Morris’] is a spoken word piece of some significance with observations from his journey put to a soundtrack of synthy electronica. There’s a fridge magnet and booklets too, Stan puts a lot of work into these releases but as before, they’re just not for me.

By way of added torment came the unpronounceable Quougnpt. Here be seven tracks of mainly film, TV samples and pop singles all put together in a fashion so as to create new atmospheres. Plunderphonics I believe its called. Actually not that bad in places especially with the young lass reciting Spike Milligan’s the Ning Nang Nong. 

I came, I listened, I went back to bleaching my masks. 











2 comments:

Anonymous said...

loolz, funniest review I have heard this year, outside of the Sothebys' catalogue comments regards, Rolf Harris early weerx.

Anonymous said...

The angry fella from the allotment.