Jean Louis Costes - Stop Music No Good
Research Laboratories. Cassette. 30 copies
Don Mandarin - Take Me To Cape Town [Mary Visits Elizabeth]
Research Laboratories. CDR. 20 copies
DN0 - Inflation Now!
Paisley Shirt Records. Cassette/DL
I don’t know how it happened but in the middle of last year I came across the Costes youtube channel and I made a bet with myself as to how long I’d have to wait before I saw a lump of shit. It wasn’t a long wait. Costes was jumping about in a field in France with his electric guitar, probably singing about how useless American Noise bands are, and then he shat on it. Not that you saw him actually shit on his guitar but there was what looked like a very loose stool being dropped on to an electric guitar.
About fifteen years ago me and Walklett went to see Costes at the Brudenell where he was touring his play Holy Virgin Cult, a play apparently based on his own childhood that was some sort of critique of religion that involved Costes and his female cast of two stripping knacker bare before pissing on each other and then, au naturel, shitting on each other. I happened to be at the bar when the pissing started and watched the barmaid’s jaw fall ever lower as the pint she was pulling got fuller. It was about the time that the shitting started that someone in authority appeared and pull the plug, telling us all to go home and do something far more sensible and civilised instead. Not having a ringside seat I inquired among the dispersing audience if it actually was shit they were dropping on each other only to discover that it was chocolate sauce they’d carefully loaded their bowels with pre-performance. Still, what a night eh?
Apart from the accidental Youtube sojourn I don’t think I’ve listened to anything by him since that gig so to see something by him drop through the door came as a bit of a surprise. Apart from triggering a few happy memories it meant that I could dig around on his website and see what he’s been up to to. This leads me to discover that he’s been adding to his book and film portfolio like a beast. Costes isn’t a man to stand around, I reckon he records something everyday, setting his preset rhythms on his drum machine before singing songs about the size of his cock and how useless American Noise bands are, all sung in English in a very strong French accent with lots of reverb. His books now include the tome ‘Underground Hitler’ the cover of which shows him in a distressed state doing his best Hitler impersonation and, it goes without saying Viva La Merda. None of them available in English alas*.
The eight tracks on Stop Music No Good are pretty much as I remember him, a full on exploration of the Costes psyche as put on tape and spat out using synths, loops and vocal effects to help aid digestion. His lyrics can be quite funny, especially on I Met God and Papa Dick where he gets to sing about his dick. As with the youtube session I wondered as to when the shit would appear and there it was, about the second line in, the word ‘merde’, I felt at home.
Papa Dick is the one you can sing along to and I feel we all should. A eurobeat synth pop song thats a pean to his penis, all the places it goes and all its foibles
Papa Dick is too big
Papa Dick Is too huge
Papa Dick is so strong
Papa Dick is the king
...
Poop poop on the clit-o
Poop poop on the cack-o
It doesn’t get much better than this.
The leap from Costes to Bert Kaempfert is a huge one but it is one that must be made if we are to untangle the inner workings of the other Research Laboratories release laid before us. For it is Bert Kaempfert’s foot tapping easy listening classic Afrikaan Beat thats the backbone of a Basinskie-esque opener from Don Mandarin. Not that its a foot tapper anymore. Slowed down to less than half speed and drowned in a lethargic steel mill rhythm it becomes something else entirely, a lava lamp stoner trip for heavy eyes and them who likes to take heavy drugs. The other three tracks move in a similar fashion albeit one of them for just twenty seconds; underwater communications, submerged wanderings, Eraserhead murk and drones, ultra tape sludge extraordinaire.
In sunny California its important to get DN0’s name right, thats DN-oh. Inflation Now! I get the feeling that the exclamation mark is important too. Whether this is instruction or warning I know not. What I do know is that DN0 are a trio made up of Max Nordile, Ian Dugas and Steve0 and that this cassette is the distillation of a four hour improv session. I once sat through a three hour improv jam at Install in Glasgow, Don Dietrich, Mikawa, Keenan and others I cant recall all going full bore until inevitable tiredness kicked in. As it did with me. I’m pretty sure I fell asleep and when I awoke all players were virtually on their knees, the kora player looked absolutely done in. But here its just the three of them and for the most part its all suitably loose in a drunken Fall session kind of way with Dugas’s drums doing a good job of skittering around and keeping quiet when need be as the twin guitars of Nordile and Steve0 go part Magic Band part pull the strings off the neck TWANG. Nordile sings like a Saturday night drunk and a fine thing it is too, Tom Waits trying to do an angry Chet Baker, a depressed Youtuber telling his subscribers that he hates them all. Things go wild on a couple of cuts but these are rare outburst from a trio who seem happier exploring their spatial awareness. Space baby, its the final frontier.
* Many thanks to those who have pointed out that the mighty Amphetamine Sulphate has published Costes in English [The Last Crusade] and has Underground Hitler waiting in the wings.
Amphetamine Sulphate
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