Monday 14th
An email arrives from Steve Fricker a.k.a. The Forgotten Man of Noise. I’ve not seen or heard of him for years but rumours of a new Smell & Quim LP arriving on his long running, on and off label cum distro Cheeses International have ben circulating for a while now.
In the days when there seemed to be a Noise gig at the Red Rose every other week Fricker was a regular often lugging along several boxes and bags of records which he set up at the back of the venue, some of which he actually sold. When a Dieter Müh tour of Europe coincided with a night of Noise at the Red Rose Fricker offered to put them up for the night in his flat in Stoke Newington. Then still a duo Dieter Müh had already dropped off their gear at Fricker’s and it was just a matter of getting a few hours sleep before getting to Heathrow for a 5 a.m. check in. Except on the night in question Fricker was in no mood to go back to his flat in Stoke Newington to get some shut eye and was determined to make full use of the Red Rose’s two a.m. late night license. I tactfully reminded him that two people now sat outside the venue shivering and tired wouldn’t mind a few hours kip before getting on a plane to which he waved his pint at me and and said ‘they want the moon on a stick don’t they’ and with that I left them to it. Later on I heard that at around three a.m. they managed to prize him from the venue and get him in to a taxi. With all thoughts of getting any sleep now abandoned Dieter Müh gathered up their kit and made their way to Heathrow airport, only to get five hundred yards down the road and realize that they’d left behind a bag containing several vital pieces of equipment. Needless to say Fricker was now safely in the Land of Nod sleeping off six hours of drinking and despite waking up all his neighbours the man could not be roused. And so it was that Dieter Müh set off on a European tour, tired, miserable and gearless.
Tuesday 15th
A bright sunny morning and up and dressed, fed and watered and then the hill that is Moorside to stretch our legs and blow away the cobwebs. The first thing we see is a skinny older gentleman wearing nothing but his boxer shorts and a t-shirt bringing his wheelie bin out for collection. He has a stiff leg and looks about 70. At first I think he’s a jogger bringing his bin out before setting off up the hill but not with those legs one of which is stiffer than the other, both of which look like matchsticks.
In the cemetery I discover the graves of people I used to know; pub landlords, fathers of friends and names that seem familiar but which I cant place. The chapel of rest is long gone and some of the older gravestones and monuments are in a pitiful state of collapse, the surviving relatives and family either dead, moved away or long past caring. Its not like it would take long to right them or put them back in to some kind of shape but this seemingly simple task seems to be someone else’s problem and certainly not the councils, whose upkeep of the cemetery seems to consist of emptying the bins and trimming the foliage.
In the park birds are sunning themselves in the upper reaches of bare trees and rats are feeding on a dissolved fat-ball that someone has placed on a stone wall. We stand and watch them for a while and I decide to film them on my phone getting nearer and nearer as I go, the rats watching me as they eat. I get within three feet and all six of them disappear, but only for a moment until one reappears soon followed by its mates. They seem almost tame, inquisitive and far from the notorious image we all have in our head of vicious black sewer rats capable of chewing your face off or eating babies. As we leave a pair of old ladies out for a stroll take our place and stand and watch for a while.
The circular walk around Scholes is one that I completed daily during the first lockdown in April and its one that it looks like I’ll be doing until the 18th of January which is when I go back to work. Yes, its that old furlough feeling once again but this one dead in the middle of winter which if you’re lucky gives you six hours of daylight and if you’re really lucky some sunshine to go with it. I have Mrs Fisher for company too as she was made redundant at the end of October and has settled into a life of writerly ways as I’ve continued working. I get the idea that she think I’m going to be disturbing her days of peace and quiet with hours of turntable abuse but nothing could be further from the truth. Instead I shall use my time to sift through the review pile, make my way to the bottom of the to read pile, walk around Scholes, say hello to little old ladies going to watch the rats and hopefully avoid joggers and getting in to arguments with cyclists who think riding on the pavement is legal.
I shall also use this surfeit of time to pass judgement on the various Bandcamp links I get sent on a now daily basis. Expect no in-depth assessment and carefully weighed up judgement [not that there’s much of that going on here anyway], instead a brief summary as to what it was I was listening to while writing this crud up.
Today it is to Vexspectra we turn. This being the one man Experimental Noise project of Ian Liddle who at one time seemed to spit out noise releases with the same rapidity as Merzbow and who moved to Berlin with all the rest of the sensible people twenty years ago so as to paint, draw and sell t-shirts, all while making a god awful racket.
Vexspectra finds Liddle experimenting with Noise by filtering in Drum & Bass and ranting Londoners, everything overloaded and firing in the red. Not all of it is full on though, there are longer drone-like workouts too like on the seventeen minute ‘Holidays in the Sun’ and ‘Drome’ where the noise is replaced by murk and subterranean murk. On ‘Okcocacolahallelujah’ you’ll find a live track as recorded at the Red Rose with that other London based, long gone project The Digitariat; a three minute punk inspired blast of noise with one of them shouting ‘Craig David Eminem’ ad nauseum over a sea of gadget rupture and sweat. One of several releases that Liddle has put on Bandcamp for our delectation all of which I’m assuming, are from that twenty year ago period.
Remembering that I haven’t watched my rat video I check my phone to discover that its only one second long.
https://vexspectra.bandcamp.com/music
Wednesday 16th
Last night neither of us felt in championship form and wondered if we’d contracted the dreaded, me getting the blame as I’m the only one of the household to enter public buildings i.e supermarkets to buy food to stop us from going hungry. I haven’t had a drink for weeks but wish I had a nip of something to hand so as to settle a bubbling stomach. Instead I get an urge to eat chocolate and drink coffee, coffee which is weird as I don’t like coffee that much. So I demolished a box of Toblerone triangles and rink the last of Mrs Fisher’s now forgotten instant decaf which I suppose isn’t like coffee at all.
The rest of the night was spent reading books, me with Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and Mrs Fisher with John Cooper Clarke’s autobiography which she thinks would be much improved by the removal of his many lists, most of them being of records and bands that he likes. But what about all the Jewish jokes I say to her? What Jewish jokes? It transpires that she’s been skipping chapters. Unforgivable.
For the whole of the evening I have Radio 3 on at a volume that I can listen to without it annoying Mrs Fisher. A Roberts radio placed at a distance not one foot from my left ear. I find Radio 3 to be a beacon of sanity in the run up to Christmas [and most other times come to that] seeing as how its the last station on earth I’m likely to hear Slade, Shakey, Macca, Kirsty, Queen, Wham and Robbie William’s churning out their festive cheer while being egged on by perma-cheer DJ’s reminding us at every turn that the Big Day is almost upon us. The 5-7 evening slot is hosted by the jovial, erudite and enthusiastic Sean Rafferty whose guest for the night is the bass-baritone Gerald Finley and while I’m no big fan of opera he does give a marvelous rendition of Chestnuts Roasting By An Open Fire which when it ends has both me, Rafferty and no doubt a few hundred thousand listeners totally in awe. For the first time this year the merest glimmer of festive cheer is felt to enter my bones.
Radio 3 has a reputation for being stuffy and snobby but as long as the likes of Elizabeth Alker and Ian Macmillan are at the microphone I shan’t feel like an urchin at the window peering in. I try to catch as much of the weekend breakfast show as I can and was amazed to discover that one of their presenters was the son of a Dewsbury miner.
Despite the skies being grey and full of rain we decide to go for a walk after lunch and don waterproofs, boots, hats, scarfs, gloves and into my pocket I shove half a bag of bird seed which I intend to leave out for the birds in the park, or the rats if they get to it first. We’re about three quarters of the way round when the rain really starts to come down and we’re both remarking on how well our showerproof pants and jackets are holding up when I feel the first signs of dampness around the knee. By the time we get to the park we’re both damp from the hip to foot and the birds/rats can wait another day. The pace is upped until we crash through the door dripping like taps.
Papal Bull is where Jon Marshall and Joe Murray [Roman Nose and Posset respectively] arrange Dictaphones, things that can be rubbed to make sounds and mouth cavities in several notable formations. I think it was the former that sent me the file that I see is called ‘Four’ but for the life of me I cant find a trace of it on their Bandcamp page containing as it does but the two tracks that appeared on a soon to disappear seven inch lathe cut. Neither can I find the original email as I’ve been having email trouble recently, partly due to working from now a creaking twelve year old iMac that will have to be replaced sooner rather than later. But still I have sounds and you have a link to the two tracks so all is not lost. ‘Four’ looks like its been aimed at a vinyl release containing as it does two LP friendly tracks both of which spread their tape spool in a most accommodating manner. Its where Joe Posset’s tape sludge meets John Marshall’s found sounds, movie soundtracks, creaking windmill loops, random voices. At times they’re killing beetles with the soles of shoes, gibberish appears regularly as does tape squeak, jabbed Dicta buttons and empty milk bottles jingling together atop a washing machine on its final spin. A nice lady speaks,
someone is playing the bass strings on a cello with their teeth as a babble of voices leak through miles of magnetic tape. Oh they joys.
https://papalbull.bandcamp.com/releases
Friday 18th
Yesterday evening I called in to see my 84 year old father. Not one to be buffeted by something as threatening as a pandemic he’s seeing out the lockdown with steely determination. He says he’s not missing the pub because of all the restrictions in place when they’re open; sitting alone at a cordoned off tables, having to wait until the bar staff come to you, filling in your details, and having to ‘swishy swoshy’ your hands all the time, something he says while making hand washing motions. At least he’s got plenty of whisky in, or will have on Christmas Day when he opens several bottles of the stuff.
A terrible nights sleep and up at six a.m. with a headache which I do my best to rid with copious amounts of tea and ibroprufen. By nine o’clock I must have drunk ten cups and after some breakfast I’m feeling normal again so go food shopping. I sit the early hours out in the poang listening to the cricket from Australia which is being played out in front of a crowd of 18,000 people in temperatures that we can only dream of back here in miserable old England. It seems a world away in more senses than one.
Last night I listened to Klaus Schulze’s debut 1972 album ‘Irlicht’ because his name keeps cropping up in a Bald Head’s Whats App group plus its been a while since I indulged in his first two albums. As usual I end up going to Deezer and am blown away by just how much of his stuff is on there. I decide to make it my lock down mission to listen La Vie Electronique which appears to be here in its entirety, before going back to work. Seeing as how the original release ran to fifty CD’s it should see me out. Expect updates.
As such todays Bandcamp recommendation is Schulze’s last release ‘Silhouette’ which came recommended by the Mirfiled Maestro himself Mr Walsh and is just as god as he suggested. No doubt there are plenty of clunkers in Schulze’s back catalogue but if he doesn’t make another record he can rest easy knowing his last was a good one. Expect meditation and drone and those wonderful heavy synth washes where it sounds like he’s using all ten fingers at once.
Sunday 20th
In the park I lay out some peanuts for the birds on various activity tables. These being tables with board games printed on to the surface that I’ve never seen used for anything other than putting food out for the birds. There are no rats in this corner of the park this morning but as we pass a holly bush I see something move and when I look closer I see that there are several rats walking around its branches. One of which is eating from an upturned half a coconut shell that somebody has deliberately tie-wrapped to a branch so that it can hold nuts and seeds. Dropping a few peanuts in we stand back and sure enough, seconds later they’re being taken.
I save a few peanuts for the squirrels who seem to prefer the bottom of the park and I wonder if there’s some kind of hierarchy at work. Rats at the top, squirrels to the bottom and never the twain shall meet, unless the food runs low forcing each in to the others territory. There’s a lidded box nailed to a tree which the squirrels access by lifting the lid with their heads. We don’t have to wait long until one comes along and takes from the box some monkey nuts which it stuffs into its cheeks and runs off with.
Yesterday I went to Huddersfield to meet up with a small hardened group of desperate normality seekers. Sometimes known as the Bald Heads of Noise. Today being twelve months to the day when we met up at the Royal Oak in Halifax to say our goodbyes to Simon Morris. We said we’d make it an annual event but with the pubs being shut its impossible. Campbell’s tweeted that the second hand market has become some kind of vinyl mecca comparable only to Tokyo and New York and its hard not to go and meet up and see some faces I haven’t seen in a long time and see if his claims are true. This being the last Saturday before Christmas you’d expect the place to be heaving but its absolutely dead. I Park at the top of town and having plenty of time on my hands take a leisurely stroll up through to Greenhead Park and after turning a corner I’m met with the most amazing smell of someone cooking curry. Its only an hour since I’ve eaten breakfast but if someone was to put whatever it is that cooking in front of me I’d happily scoff it. I’m half tempted to track the aroma down and knock on the door and would you mind if I had that recipe for whatever delicious meal it is you have cooking but then they’d probably think I was some kind of nutcase or covid spreader so I shuffle off back in to town to wait outside the train station.
Where I watch prostitutes going for a warm in various taxis, the drivers of which wait for no one as there is virtually no one about and who are probably glad of the company even if it means sitting in a small confined space with the windows up and the heaters going. I kill ten minutes in Vinyl Tap where I soon discover that my appetite for record buying has dwindled to virtually zero. This isn’t helped by the sight of single LP’s attached to £30 price tags, though their are some Sun Ra LP’s for tenner each, all of which I suspect to contain tracks from the early 60’s when he was still yet to fully embrace the ten minute Moog solo. Then I see the Thurston Moore Record Store Day marijuana leaf shaped picture single for £20 and my spirit slumps again. A bloke at the back of the shop is shouting at the top of his voice through his mask ‘GREAT TRACK THIS MATE WHAT IS IT?’ which comes out something like GRAY TRAT THI MAY WHARRISI? all directed to the shop owner who’s playing some kind of nondescript alt country pop track. To be fair to Vinyl Tap there’s a decent section of reasonably priced second hand goods, no doubt pulled from downstairs which is firmly closed to the public. So don’t let me put you off.
And then we’re all together. Unseen in each others company for a year and isn’t it a pity we can’t sit down inside and chew the fat and instead wander around the very well spaced apart market stalls, following the green direction arrows and alighting on the first of several traders who have on this last Saturday before Christmas humped numerous heavy plastic boxes of records for us to look at. Having got out of the habit of using cash I realise I’ve only got a fiver in my wallet but even if it was stuffed or even if there was a cash machine five feet away I don’t think I’d be buying anything such is the depths of my vinyl lassitude. Not that the choice isn’t good and the prices very fair and certain people are filling their boots so all is not lost.
Goodbyes are said and before we’ve even got around to Brexit its time to go with promises of meeting up again whenever its safe to do so.
Stuart Chalmers and Claus Poulsen - When There Were Birds
Blue Tapes. Cassette/DL
The third [I think] collaborative effort from those finely matched collaborators Chalmers and Poulsen. Their last outing was a beatific humdinger of a blissed out, languorous work called ‘Fictions in the Age of Reason’ which is where you need to go to escape those panic buying covid catching queues but this a different beast all together. These are shorter workouts culled from two live performances as recorded in Leeds and Bradford a couple of years back. I remember the Bradford one vividly [and going to gigs in general mores the pity] as me and Mr Walsh, who was on the undercard, ventured out on a filthy night totally unsuitable to gig going [a gig I’d quite happily walk there and back in my bare feet right now, but thats another story]. These shorter tracks are less immersive of course but no less intriguing, hence the TNB like scrape of Fuse Noise which until now has escaped their recorded work. As far as I know. There’s still plenty to enjoy though with Chalmers scrapey, looping, echoing, swarmandal strings a constant bringer of strange etherealness as Poulsen’s dreamy, droney, electronics and shortwave radios float around in a space once occupied by early Kraftwerkers.
https://www.clauspoulsen.com/2020/10/01/stuart-chalmers-and-cp/
https://stuartchalmers.bandcamp.com/
1 comment:
Wonderful as ever. X
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