Smell & Quim - Cuntybubbles
Cheeses International. CI15. LP.
320 copies
Smell & Quim - Pushy Gothic Gnome Versus Charity Techno Gnome
Chondritic Sound. CH-363. CD
Smell & Quim/Mama Baer - Wooden Nail Pony
Carpenter Prod. USA. HOM-Inc boot 12. LP
40 copies
Latex Days - A Tribute to Awkward Geisha
Love Earth Music/Harsh Noise Movement LEM234. 2 x CD
Coming away from a Smell & Quim album singing Bobby Shafto wasn’t what I was expecting but when the needle left the groove there I was:
Bobby Shaftoe's gone to sea
Silver buckles at his knee
He'll come back and marry me
Bonnie Bobby Shaftoe
Its the last thing you hear on side two, Simon Morris singing an English folk song before the solemn clang of a church bell and the return of the stylus. And sing it he does, in a resonant, trembling voice like he’s auditioning for Steeleye Span. The result being the raising of the hairs on the nape of the neck and the recurrent thought that he’s not around anymore. A year has passed since he was put to rest and there’s still a big gap where he should be but performances such as this, on a record such as this are reminders not just of himself but of just how good a voice he had. I’m told that these were the last recordings he ever made and it seems apt that they should appear on a Smell & Quim record, a band that he was a major part of for what must have been twenty five years.
Cuntybubbles arrives via the crazed locked down brain of Milovan Srdenovic who has been using his enforced time to create a Smell & Quim lockdown classic that will be seen as one their best. Surely a miracle of our times created out of the unlikely triumvirate of death, plague and pestilence. Let us all rejoice though for out of such darkness emanates a stone cold beauty. Then there’s the rebirth of Cheeses International, a label I’d long assumed defunct and with it the reappearance of the forgotten man of noise Steve Fricker. His website may be next to useless but there you go, thats yer man right there.
As ever Milovan has crafted his sound using a connoisseurs eye, venturing to places where other bands are either fearful or sane enough not to tread. Dark places, Bobby Shaftoe places. Thus we have Stewart Keith reciting the story of the Wicker Thing [a wicker cock that is Smell & Quim’s take on The Wicker Man] his words delivered as if by a pungent Gandalf with deranged bagpipes and buggery as accompaniment, there are porn film climaxes, flapping flywheel belts that make a syncopated rhythm, military drums, snatches of live action as laid down in Birmingham and Leeds, theres Milovan intoning the words ‘mouth, crop, gullet, bladder, bowel, vagina’ over and over again and that these are the only words to this song makes perfect sense. We have pissing in a bucket because we must have, looped samples of an indeterminate nature wail away until stripped back to reveal further layers that may just be the man himself shaking that noise shaker thing, an instrument that looks like a purloined buddhist prayer wheel riven with nails, bottle tops and ribbon. Opening track ‘Cleopatra Frankenstein’ has a loop of Stewart reciting a story which settles on the words ‘a very beautiful maiden must hold the bough while a man from behind has anal intercourse with her’, ‘Old Spunker’s lengthy rhythm stride derives from sexually congressed thigh slaps and moans before dissolving into a military snare drums rattle, ‘Jimmy Savile - Timelord’ is a short clatter of samples; Tarzan yodeling, Milovan and Morris giving us Savile’s catchphrase ‘as it ‘appens’ and the word ‘nonce’ repeated with growing gusto. ‘The Quim Reaper’ has Morris singing the words ‘and now we’re gonna die’. This being probably the most profound track Smell & Quim have ever given us.
Cuntybubbles is a built around the long track on side two, itself an amalgam of several shorter tracks; The Cuntybubble Variations contains ‘The Theme From Cuntybubbles’, ‘Pissy Tights’, ‘Cannibal Adderley Street’, the literal ‘Mouth, Crop, Gullet, Bladder, Bowel, Vagina’ and last but not least the pounding Wank Engine’ before Stewart Keith tells us all the story of the ‘The Wicker Thing’ and the beautiful town of Bell End and its deadly tradition.
This is up there with Jesus Christ, Cosmic Bondage and Stephen Hawkins Butt Plug and which ever other Smell & Quim release it is that you hold as your favourite. A ribald mixture of collective voices culled from beyond the grave and the Outer Hebrides where Jimmy Savile sits aside old spunkers and wicker cocks, where the full regalia of the ‘Wank Engine’ compliments the noise dance of ‘Cleopatra Frankenstein’, where filthy noise meets people pissing into buckets.
In some ways I see it as a tribute to Simon Morris. His presence is there throughout and finally and most memorably with a sodding folk song. Was it ever anything else but madness in here?
Its been a busy year for Milovan. Not only a new album but new material via a split LP with Mama Bär, a track on the Awkward Geisha tribute Latex Days and a reissue of the 1998 SPITE cassette Pushy Gothic Gnome Versus Charity Techno Gnome. So not all doom and gloom then.
The Awkward Geisha tribute comp is well worth getting, not only for the Smell & Quim track Dolphin Cunt but for the truly eclectic gathering of the other twenty-two participants, lots of whom are new to me; Ghostskull, Kenji Okamoto, scum2.1, Bloody Shiv, Drifter, Prize Fuckup, Dead in Japan … I have no idea. The latter being me not another band name. As you’d expect there’s lots of noise but much else in-between including a truly memorable version of ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’ by Gimp Gash. Eugene Chadbourne teams up with Harsh Noise Movement for seven half minutes of noise called Kojak is Dead that draws things to a close. I shall now show my ignorance by admitting to never having heard of Awkward Geisha so how these tracks compliment/balance/showcase their work I couldn’t tell you. If you go looking for one of these I hope you have more luck than me.
On the Mama Bär split LP ‘Wooden Nail Pony’ the Smell & Quim side contains a full on noise storm called ‘Filthy Cunt’ a track that ebbs in and out of various bowel and bladder movements but at only 40 copies there’s not going to be many getting to hear it. This brings us to the reissue programme and with it the fact that lots of Smell & Quim releases reside on ultra limited, hard to track down lathe cuts and cassettes, especially a lot of the earlier stuff. The reissue of Pushy Gothic Gnome highlighting the fact that somebody needs to put all these together in one place so that they can be easily accessed, Youtube cuts will not suffice though at the moment they’re better than nothing. A double CD of rarities and joy, a treasure trove of obscure but delightful noise. It needs to be done. Whether the cover from Wooden Nail Pony is included depends on how brave the publishers are, even the Discogs jpegs are pixelated.
Pushy Gothic Gnome Versus Charity Techno Gnome features the late 90’s line up of d Foist, Holly Hero and the Syrup of Love Unlimited Orchestra. Its the line up that existed for a couple of releases and some memorable Bradford 1 in 12 performances. Here Milovan adopts a speeded up broad Yorkshire gnome-y voice ‘I’m from Bradford in West Yorkshire’ before channeling his inner Elvis as d.Foist sprays everything in sight with his splatter beat electronics, I have the feeling that some live material may have been incorporated too. Interesting to hear what would become Astral Social Club tropes in and amongst the turmoil. What the Syrup of Love Unlimited Orchestra contributed is not recorded but I bet it involved drink and was an integral part of what eventually develops into a total noise burn out on side two.
All together now:
Bobby Shaftoe's gone to sea
Silver buckles at his knee
He'll come back and marry me
Bonnie Bobby Shaftoe
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