Ceramic Hobs - Black Pool Legacy

Ceramic Hobs - Black Pool Legacy
Harbinger Sound. 2XLP + booklet. Harbinger 171


That the Ceramic Hobs have finally achieved some kind of recognition after thirty years ‘at the bottom end of show business’ comes as no surprise to those that know them. That it should come after they’ve split up comes as no surprise at all. Nothing was ever straight forward in Ceramic Hobs land. A recent interview and article in Wire magazine and a twenty five track compilation, as selected and sequenced by Phillip Best isn’t that bad a way to call it a day though. That’s if they have split up. You can never be sure with the Hobs. Nothing was ever certain as far as they were concerned. That’s an enormous part of their appeal. If you want certain go and listen to Radio 6.

Simon Morris is the constant. The only member of the band to have witnessed every one of those thirty chaotic years. Through incarceration in various mental health establishments, the death of band members, the drugs, the drink, the fall outs, the gigs played to ten people, the nearly thirty band members, the Mad Pride outings, he’s seen it all. It’s Morris’s band now but when I first heard them, over twenty years ago it was more of a Morris/Batcow operation. Stan Batcow being the ying to Morris’s yang, Batcow a tall ginger haired skinny teetotaler [surely the only one they ever had] seemingly forever dressed in day-glo beetle crushers, skin tight stripy leggings and a kaleidoscope of lycra tops. The riff-tastic Batcow complementing Morris’s growling, shouting, talking vocals like Blackpool and drink. There’s no doubting that once he departed the Hobs soon found themselves in a far darker corner of the room. With Morris at the unstable helm we get the culmination of thirty years work in the shape of Voodoo Party, a side long cut of crazed sample psych madness that was the last track on their last album. Like writing your resignation letter using the wrong hand after three bottles of Buckfast and a bifter.

We’re in Blackpool. Blackpool by the sea. Its the only town in England the Hobs could have possibly come from. A neon lit shithole at the end of the railway line. A place where drink and drunken sex are the common denominator and where prescriptions for antidepressants outnumber the people who live there. A black pool. Why they’ve bifurcated it I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Simon. Its either got some deep, esoteric meaning or its because it didn’t fit in with the design. The legacy bit is easy. This is their legacy, the release with which that legacy will be forever cemented .

Phillip Best has done a fine job in collating and sequencing these twenty five tracks. A tough job in difficult circumstances what with the Hobs back catalogue having more than its fair share of hard to track down obscure material [so don’t go thinking that that Discogs page is ‘it’]. A handful of albums on Batcow’s Pumf label, their last album Spirit World Circle Jerk on Must Die Records, a smattering of singles and the rest is a scattered to the wind flock of CDR’s, cassettes, flexis and lathe cuts half of which have already been lost down the backs of settees. You could even argue that some of their best work lies in obscurity like the 90’s ‘Free Tim Telsa’ six track mini LP on the Small Orange label or Pumf's ‘Ultramont’ an album that contains the ripping fifteen minute whip lash bass line epic ‘Altamont - Birkenau - Masada [Never Surrender]’, none of which are represented here. Whether this is through choice or the simple matter of being unable to source the material I don't know. Squeezing thirty years of work on to four sides of vinyl was always going to leave gaps but such are the myriad depths of the Hobs back catalogue we can always hold out for volume two. And three.

Best gives us three of their best to get us in the mood; two singles in ‘33 Trapped Chilean Miners’ and ‘Shaolin Master’ then ‘Irish Jew’ [‘I’m an Irish Jew what’s it to you?’], Shaolin Master is pure Hobs joyous lunacy with Morris projecting a couch potato who thinks he can still handle himself [‘I’m trained to destroy’], all killer riff and spindly guitar solo before slipping in to the synth pop spoken word oddity that is ‘Does He Take Sugar’. You can go anywhere from here, from the seven minute jangly pop of ‘Flower’ where the vocals and lyrics are given over to Jane, just Jane, another short lived band member with its deliberately warped tape of Smiths like jangle, to the barebones of Hard Horn Blues and Hey St Jude which is the nearest the Hobs ever get to stripped down. For much of the what the Hobs do isn’t stripped down and bare, its the exact opposite, its cluttered with samples, voices, shouts and calls so you can expect to hear bits of everything from ISIS recruitment videos to Blackpool tourist commercials to the theme from The News at Ten, to the theme from 80’s kids TV show Rentaghost, Marylin Monroe singing Happy Birthday Mr President to the cod football chant of ‘yer dads yer mum yer mums yer dad’ some of which may even be on this record and some not, to be honest I’ve listened to that much Hobs this week I don’t know my Al Al Who from my OZ OZ Alice 6.

Their thirty years are well represented but no tracks off 'Spirit World ...' which is understandable seeing as how it only came out a couple of years ago. Tracks from 'Shergar is Home Safe and Well' and 'Straight Outta Rampton' are well represented as are several of their singles. One track I’ve never heard before and can’t place is the strummed along Catholic Monochrome Holocaust which is apparently due to it being pulled from the many Oz Oz tape sessions. This info as taken from the accompanying booklet as written by long time fan Chris Sienko who does a sterling job of sifting through the many hidden references and multiple layers of every track on the album. A fine document in itself and one of the few on the Hobs that I know of. Then there’s The Prowler and the homage to Blackpool punk bands Blackpool Transport with its rasping bass line and mass of Blackpool punk band samples, M61, Amateur Cops, Prisoner Cell Block H Theme, Pro-Ana Tips ‘N’ Tricks, Rainbow Self-Realisation Therapy, All Psychiatrists Are Bastards. If the song titles don’t intrigue then look away now, if they do then dig in. Last track of the lot is the title track from Psychiatric Underground [easily their densest and most impenetrable release], a statement on the hopelessness of the psychiatric system ending with a voice culled from a found cassette reading, rather badly, an essay on English Industrial history, all set to samples of 18th century combat, horses hooves and a seaside Wurlitzer organ [maybe], the last voice you hear is the same one saying saying 'this tape has run out'.

The last time I saw the Ceramic Hobs [The Ceramic Hobs? Ceramic Hobs? Theeee Ceramic Hobs?] was last year in Leeds on their farewell tour. The merch table carried copies of their current single 50 Shades of Snuff each one coming with a handmade Dr. Steg cover, each one the subject of many hours of work. There they were in a little pile all on their own, the Hobs only merchandize of the evening and on top of them a piece of paper with the word ‘free’ on it. And nobody would go near them. Perhaps they feared they had dog shit smeared on their insides or that they’d melt when they got them home or maybe they thought that nobody in their right mind would ever consider giving away their records. Nobody in their right mind ...

Black Pool Legacy might just get Ceramic Hobs some rightly earned cultural credit. For one of the most inventive, creative, crazy bat shit groups of the last thirty years, a band that by rights shouldn’t have lasted anywhere near thirty years, its the least they deserve.





Harbinger Sound

The Grey Wolves

The Grey Wolves - Exit Strategy
Tesco. Tesco 118. LP/CD

The Grey Wolves - Catholic Priests Fuck Children
Hospital Productions. HOS-499. CD


I don’t quite remember how it happened but some time during the mid 90’s I found myself corresponding with The Grey Wolves and along the way managed to make a complete fool of myself. The Grey Wolves were serious people. Very serious people. On a mission. Intelligent, driven, focused, ready to take the knocks. You kind of got the impression that they didn’t fuck about. And I knew nothing.

As I remember it they were setting up an English Industrial Heritage Museum [or something along those lines, detail is now vague] and they were looking for people to contribute something toward it. Which is where my ignorance showed and where the correspondence ended. Hey ho. Life goes on. It seems odd therefore to be writing on the demise of The Grey Wolves twenty years hence. A final farewell gig in Birmingham a few years back and a more recent one as a nod to Tesco’s 30th Anniversary in Germany and with Exit Strategy that's your lot.

Its not a bad way to say goodbye either. Not that I have everything The Grey Wolves have ever released or have heard it. I can compare though and not everything I’ve heard is someone screaming ‘we hate you’ through a wall of feedback. In fact I doubt there’s much of it that is. The Grey Wolves were far cleverer than that. Some of their artwork, which they were rightly highly regarded for, or their dialogue, may well have got the temples throbbing in certain sections of society but unless you look at it all in a wider context, you’re missing the point.

The Grey Wolves weren’t there to explain though, they were self styled ‘Cultural Terrorists’. Nothing was sacred, nothing was off limits. Everybody was an enemy. Everybody was a target. Which is where ‘Catholic Priests Fuck Children’ comes in. Regarded as their best outing its been given the rerelease treatment courtesy of Hospital Productions who have defended the sensibilities of those of a nervous disposition by covering the CD in an outer sleeve. Originally released 1996 by the German label Praxis Dr Bearmann it carries everything from looped dialogue, swathes of Industrial noise, Industrial ambience, juggernaut PE and in last track ‘Destruction’ a pummeling, forward driven ur-beat thats smothered in all manner of synth wash and dirty electronica. The sleeve contains some of the best of their collage work too with lady boys, priests, Myrah Hindley, Yukio Mishima, and Japanese bondage all juxtaposed in a suitably grainy black and white fold out.

It all boils down to the music in the end of course. So I went trawling around, digging myself deeper into The Grey Wolves internet hole, a deep hole which I’m quite happy to wallow in and then pulling out older releases that haven’t seen the light of day for a while. There’s the collaboration with JFK, ‘Assassin’ a mutant disco slab of propelled Industrial rhythms with Lee Harvey Oswald staring out at you from the cover and which comes on suitably apt transparent red vinyl. Then ‘Blood and Sand’ from 1990, the Gulf War album, an album imbued with gloom, death, murky military radio comm chatter and further back to Red Terror/Black Terror and what seems like pure experimentation. I could mention the live LP Tokyo Suicide Service where they no doubt baffled the local audience by sampling ‘The World is Like a Great Big Onion’ and any number of their collaborations with Con-Dom and Genocide Organ to name but two of the bigger hitters.

Then there’s ‘Exit Strategy’ and nine tracks worth of American cop radio, dead star transmissions, gas mask breaths, malfunctioning androids, dolphin sounds, Arnie and Samuel L Jackson, everything submerged beneath a series of pulsing cardiac beats. The last three tracks are ‘Seizure’, ‘Terminal’ and ‘Flatline’ and there’s the heartbeat cardio read out flat lining on the cover just in case you didn’t get it. On ‘Seizure’ comes the vocal sample, ‘maybe we ought to start thinking about an exit strategy?’ They already did. Their last LP is also notable for having Jérộme Nougaillon produce it, mix it, engineer it, master it and add additional material to it. If that wasn’t enough he even got involved with the artwork. All this makes for a more polished sound. A sound polished to black semi transparent with the aid of the grime as scraped off the sides of thirty Salford corporation buses. The grime of thirty years in a grim business.  


Tesco


Hospital Productions

Killy Dog Box

Killy Dog Box - Sump
Kata Basis. KBCD001KDB17. CDR



Fuck me with a ragman’s trumpet, its Killy Dog Box. Morbid from Middlesborough in his black hoodie. Ye Godz. How many years has it been? Run to the hills. Bury the cheddar. Lock up your daughters. Stay indoors and hide the cat. Its no place for the weak of heart. Read on at your peril.

Morbid used to send Killy Dog Box material when I was still doing the print zine. I was usually less than kind to whatever it was he sent me and then he started another project called Pre-Dating The 13th which was even worse and STILL he kept on sending me it and then nothing. For what seems like a very long time until just before Christmas when Sump arrived.

I’ll take my hat off to him though, we never fall out. Its never personal with me. Its always about the music. We shared a liking for early Genesis which smoothed the waters somewhat but Killy Dog Box? Even the name. Who could do such a thing? Somebody loved him though, Rob Hayler’s put Killy Dog Box on his oTo cassette only label plus lots of self published work of course and then Pre-Dating The 13th. I have no idea. Whats all that about? There was a one off zine too as I remember, Navigator [?] and an obsession with an obscure Romanian surrealist called Victor Brauner which may have been a name Morbid adopted at some stage. Then I heard he’d become a poet. I’ve not heard any of his poetry. 

Mercifully I have managed to expunge whatever memory it is I have of Pre-Dating The 13th and most of Killy Dog Box come to that, there remains but a slight stain somewhere in the recesses of my brain but its nothing I can’t handle. Hideous stuff with moaning in it. I don’t even want to try and imagine what it was it did sound like. Killy Dog Box were, as far as I can remember, a little more palatable. More bass. More life. More death. On his Soundcloud page Morbid tags his KDB tracks DarkAmbientNoise, Darkwave, Industrial which is how I remember it and after spending an evening reconnecting with KDB I find little that isn’t to my taste with some of his work veering slightly towards Power Electronics even. But that name, that art work? What’s it doing? Where’s it going? What is it he’s trying to convey?

Sump is a three track CDR single and KDB are at present a duo with Peter Heselton joining in the fun. Eighteen minutes of music for which Morbid would like seven of your English pounds. Good luck with that one. The opener ‘Das Jenseits’ has its roots deep in the late 70’s and is KDB masquerading as Vice Versa or similar era Cabaret Voltaire, think primitive heartbeat synth drums, squally guitar and a vocal so destroyed, reverbed and doom laden it renders the lyrics unintelligible. Standing by the Grave is Morbid with slightly more legible vocals singing over a fuzzy guitar and a stuttering drum machine, What Light Remains is an atmospheric early Cocteau Twin wash with the lightest of Morbid-y celestial vocals daubed on it.

What this means and I can hardly believe I’m writing this, is that I have a Killy Dog Box release in front of me that I’ve actually enjoyed. But lets not get carried away here, this is slight, less than twenty minutes worth for your bucks and then theres that cover to come to terms with. Still, its a step in the right direction. You can unlock the door now.


Killy Dog Box

Invisible City Records, Unsigned.

Ian Watson & Rob Hayler - Metronome
Invisible City Records. Cassette/DL. ICR35
50 copies.

La Mancha del Pecado & Culver - Volume 7
Invisible City Records. Cassette. ICR36
50 Copies

Magyar Mezőny - Havizaj Válogatás
Unsigned Label. Cassette/DL US033
50 copies

Unsigned Experimental Noise Comp #3
Unsigned Label. Cassette/DL US031
50 copies




Those car-azee cassette people. Don’t they know they’re a dead format? OK,  lets not go down that road again. Cassettes are kool again and everybody with a beard wants one. At least I can’t see the big supermarkets selling pre-recorded cassettes anytime soon. Although I do remember the days when supermarkets did sell them and had sections of the shop dedicated to music [and I don’t just mean a rack lost in the nether regions selling a few scabby CD’s] where you could also buy cassette head cleaning tapes which came with a little bottle of cleaning fluid and C120’s that your machine chewed up after two minutes. Tapes were usually displayed in wire racks of a design that put the sleeves face on and which could be slid out should you wish to purchase your selection. I bought Paul Brett first album on cassette out of Cleckheaton Tesco, it must have been the mid 70’s, in the days when you could buy an obscure English folky guitarist singer songwriter’s latest release in your local supermarket. Days that have gone and will not return. A fact I still find rather depressing. You can buy plenty of shite vinyl in the supermarkets these days though and who thought those days would return? I stumbled across Batley Tescos vinyl section a while ago and nearly wet my pants laughing; Led Zep 4, Rumours, The Joshua Tree and what I assume to be the drivel that constitutes the charts these days. If I’d have been forced to take one record home with me it’d would’ve been The Queen is Dead but then only to take it home and file it seeing as how I cant see myself playing The Smiths again any time soon. Those days, like those of Paul Brett are firmly behind me now.

But still they come. Two from Invisible City, a label deeply rooted in the north east of England all full of drone and horror and two from those Royal Hungarian Noisemakers based in Budapest.

Two releases from ICR both of which are on a journey from A to B both of which seem in no hurry to get to where ever it is they’re going. Not exactly the most exciting releases I’ve ever had through these hands but then it is January and these releases seem to have January written all over them. The Watson/Hayler collaboration is a forty five minute drone as recovered from inside a grandfather clock where it takes forty five minutes to strike midnight. Inside the clock all is decayed and rotting, the mechanism worn and rusty and in need of maintenance, the sounds coming from within all suitably decomposed and appearing to alter little throughout its A to B journey and when you flip the cassette it plays the same on the other side. Thus giving you the chance to indulge in unlimited minutes worth of head crumple with just the auto return on your Walkman to remind you that there is a world out there. I think the clue is in the title.

For whatever reason they choose fit ICR have decided that the La Mancha del Pecado & Culver is to be a cassette only release. And if there’s anybody out there who desperately needs a copy to complete their collection please get in touch. I’m all for recycling. Apparently this is their seventh outing together, Mr La Mancha and Mr Culver, the other six seemingly having passed me by leaving no mark. I can only hope that they’re an improvement on 7 which begins in all the right places, held down keys producing deep drone, but soon looses its way with the introduction of random clusters. This is I presume, horror drone. A soundtrack to a cheap Italian horror flick where hair is torn and eyes gouged to the accompaniment of wild eyed, over the top acting and badly dubbed dialogue. It certainly has that feel to it. The flip is more interesting with reversed loops going around plucked strings while a hollow wind blows dirt across an empty car lot but this again falls in to moribund, murk territory where nothing much happens at all. January.

The two Hungarian tapes provide much more in the way of succor and provide evidence that there is a place where Throbbing Gristle, Tangerine Dream and Aphex Twin all still live happy lives getting pissed on Unicum and Zwack. Not that all the projects and artists on these two releases are Hungarian. Info isn’t as forthcoming on Magyar Mezőny but the other release certainly has an international feel with America, Italy, Spain and Russia all represented.

I’ve had a couple of tapes from Unsigned before but I’m still no wiser as to any of the names here. Royal Hungarian Noisemakers apart the rest are new; BOM, WN, Pulpo!, dzsemszGOND, United Gods, UEUM, Adeptus Mechanicus, Live Animal Transport, Yann is the Bastard, The Use … the list goes on, around twenty new names for me to get to grips with. The majority here are working within an experimental field mixing definable genres like techno, ambience, industrial, noise, PE, electroacoustic and field recording and creating new and exciting sounds along the way. Oh yes pop pickers. Over the four sides I found little that disagreed with me which for a v/a comp is pretty good going. Some of this is down to the high production values and the quality of the cassettes themselves but lets give the people who put this together credit too. Highlights are plentiful: Your Grace Adrianna Natalie hails from The Bronx and combines Industrial Noise with Techno, the introduction of her voice in to the mix made me actually pump my fist, the ghost of Derek Bailey appears on the acid guitar work of Pulpo!, the electro-acoustic work of Miguel A Garcia is worthy of note as is the eerie vocals on United Gods empty factory ambience, theres the Harold Budd like piano work of Hideg Roncs, the noise trombone of UEUM, dip in anywhere and you will find tiny rhythms, big rhythms, euro synth big beats, Kieth Rowe like guitars, creaking oar straps, TG sludge, abstract noise, TNB scrape and clatter.

Its like I just received an out of the blue various artists comp from the mid 90’s and now all I want to do is dig out the bio’s and track down their back catalogue. Lots to admire here. Just don’t go looking for them in Tescos.    



Invisible City


Unsigned

Mama Wati, Infinite Space Infinite Stars, These Feathers Have Plumes, Isnaj Dui

Mami Wata - Mami Wati
Wild Silence. CDR

These Feathers Have Plumes/Isnaj Dui
Was Ist Das. Cassette

Infinite Space Infinite Stars
Beartown Records. Cassette


I must have seen Andie Brown play several times now but never actually sat down to listen to one of her releases. That's her as one half of Mami Wata along with Sharon Gal and as was once with Infinite Space Infinite Stars and as she is now with These Feathers Have Plumes. That's her behind those oversized wine glasses in a sort of experimental take on the glass harmonium thing where you wet the tips of your fingers and play a half recognisable version of Cavatina or Ode to Joy. Except this is much, much better.

I saw her play in Huddersfield recently in a freezing room above a shop on the high street. A very low key and friendly sort of gig where we all sat around on wooden chairs getting numb arses, shuffling ever nearer the portable heaters. As These Feathers Have Plumes Andie attaches huge oversized wine glasses by various electronic means to her laptop so as to pick up vibrations made by wet fingered frotting and clanging and in this instance at least, the addition of small toys which turned out to be things called microbots, battery driven insect toys which whirred and bumped in to each other and tried in vain to climb the steep sides of the glass. All this gets fed in to the laptop from which emerge the most sonorous and delightful of drones.

The Infinite Space Infinite Stars release is the oldest release of the three here, six years old and long out of print, but worth mentioning as it shows us how Brown has developed her sound in the years up to 2016 which is when the other two releases appeared. It has two tracks, one on each side, both running to around the ten minute mark, one track of the crystalline Bach organ work meets Charlemagne Palestine as the Nostromo passes overhead in the opening credits to Alien, the other a Mike Ratledge keyboard solo from his Soft Machine days gone slightly wrong in a good way. All very seventies, Schultzy, Froesey dreamy moments with echoey factory doors being slammed in the background.

The Mami Wata release is in parts totally demonic this being entirely down to Sharon Gal whose remarkable use of her vocal chords echoes the effect used by horror film sound engineers to conjure Beelzebub by slowing the vocal until its just about recognisable. Not one for the kiddiwinks before bedtime. Upon which Andie Brown layers some stunning glass and electronics work so that first track Icefire makes you feel like you're tumbling down a collapsing cliff face into a wild and thrashing rock bashed surf with deadly demons cackling in your ear holes. Like all the Omen films rolled in to one and given over to Xennakis for further manipulation. 'Two' begins with a crucified zither being bashed around a throbbing drone until Gal's shivering vocals emerge once more. Here Gal's vocals are haunted gasps, death rattles, guttural hair raising deliveries. Last track Fata Morgana is a full on fifteen minutes worth of nostril flaring, cloud soaring, spread your wings, take the drugs, celestial synth choir which is some kind of amalgam of all that has gone before. Which coming not long after I sat down and watched Herzog's mesmeric film of the same name gave this release an almost intended synchronicity. Gal is also credited with electronics and recordings which I take to mean field recordings. It all works. Total bliss. Wonderful.

The split tape with Isnaj Dui is the one in which Brown's glass work really shines. Especially on tracks like Soho Living Room in which Dale Cornish recounts the days when he used to visit London as a teenager and on the three 'Return's' the second of which is almost church like with glasses being struck with the serenity of a religious service until the field recording of plastic boxes being crushed is introduced. Brown's use of field recordings [a road compactor joining a xylophone] are perfect fits. Hand in glove. Foot in slipper. Chip in gob. On the flip we have Kate English aka Isnaj Dui. I once saw her at the Unitarian Church in Todmorden on the Tor Fest bill. She played flute that day processing it though various effects until we had flute loops filling that cavernous space. I remember Philthy Taylor jumping to his feet and making a beeline to the merch stall as soon as her set finished. He's been a fan ever since. This is excellent too. One single track performed and recorded in one take that moves from dreamy flute work to looped plucked bridge strings that build and build before almost disappearing then evolving into more heavily looped flute work that flutters and morphs and swoops and dives and soars, its arms a-fling around your swirling head.

So now I curse myself for not indulging earlier. For not being Philthy Taylor and making a bee line for that merch stall. Better late than never tho.

If you're keen enough, and you should be, the links below may lead to you whats left of the digital footprints of these most wonderful releases. That Beartown release though? That may be prove a tad harder to track down. Lets just say I feel lucky having one.


Wild Silence
Was Ist Das
Beartown Records


Andie Brown
Sharon Gal
Isnaj Dui

Life Irritates Art

Life Irritates Art - Name and Shame
DVD.

Christmas came and went in a blur of Lemsip, paracetamol and triple XXX Corvonia. I had intended to write words of wisdom during the period that has become known as Chrimbo Limbo but after Mrs Fisher began her slow descent into her own personal bronchial Beirut it was nailed on that I would soon follow. And so it came to pass. I returned from the Boxing Day Batley/Dewsbury match shivering like a shiting dog and after spending a good fifteen minutes in a blisteringly hot shower I took to the Poang and began my own miserable path to pills and potions perdition. After 13 hours in bed our heads were like mistimed church bells, our lungs became vile breeding grounds for slimy green stuff, our limbs went limp, energy levels fell to a barely alive status, we shuffled between rooms when needs must attending to toilet where the barest trickle did emerge and all the while that sodding, fucking cough. A rib aching, back killing cough. A cough that begins in the pit of the stomach, your abdomen contorting into vicious knots, the head pounding, the gob dry. With both hands gripping the sides of the bathroom sink unit I coughed and sweated and ached like I was playing the devils own pinball machine. We flung ourselves into chairs and gave in to the horror that is Christmas daytime TV where Greg Wallis goes to tea factories and Shrek 3 is a constant. I slept little and spent the dark hours in bed listening to Test Match Special live from Australia, my earbuds falling out as they became trapped in the writhing and aching, one minute Dan Norcross, the other Geoffrey Boycott and then sleep and then not knowing if I was listening to the Barmy Army or the wind howling outside. A delirium of sorts took over me and I flew thousands of imaginary miles over many countries to be in the warmer climes cheering England on in their futile bid to retain the Ashes.

And for a week or more that was that. I did venture out once for essential supplies and walked in to to town foolishly thinking that the fresh air would do me good. I stumbled with wobbly Bambi legs for the fifteen minutes or so it takes, threw some things in a basket and walked out again. Got the bus home. Couldn't hack it. Returning home I once again collapsed in to the Poang this time like a returning Arctic explorer, chest heaving, head spinning, thinking thats me not moving for a fucking long time.

We ate all the things that people gave us for xmas because cooking anything was out of the question; chocolates, shortbread, spiced biscuits [spekulatums], mince pies and those flat and hard Italian cakes made from squashed figs that you have to soak in tea for ten minutes to get going. Fruit rotted in bowls. Alcohol remained untouched. Only tea could save us. Having got extra brewing tips from Greg Wallis after his visit to the Ty-Phoo factory on Merseyside I made tea by the gallon and drank it with all the fervour of a thirsty builder. But where it went I don't know. My body must have been soaking it up to use as sweat for little came the way its supposed to.

What little pleasure I took during this most miserable of weeks was through the medium of radio. Actually putting music on of own choosing never entered my head. Instead we listened to Radio 3. Over the last year year or so I've discovered that long exposure to R3, at a volume that is neither too loud nor too soft, is the aural equivalent of a rub down with the Sunday Times and here, in my hour of need, when the flesh is as weak as it gets without rotting I could sit in the Poang and let R3 waft over me in a never ending roll of warm comforting waves. Not everything R3 transmits meets with constant, ultimate approval of course [I'll never fathom Opera and you can keep your Viennese waltzes] and they do seem to have more than their fair share of double barrelled presenters but the hits far outweigh the misses and the surprises are a constant source of pleasure. I don't do end of year lists but if I did it would be clogged with many of the things I heard or stumbled across on R3. I awoke one Sunday morning to hear Bernard Cribbens singing 'Right Said Fred', the week after it was Charles Trenet and 'Le Mer'. One Sunday afternoon during an Austrian conductors Private Passions set [R3's take on Desert Island Discs] they played Iggy and the Stooges 'I Wanna Be Your Dog', in entirety. Then there's Late Junction, Words and Music, Between the Ears, The Verb with Barnsley's own Ian Macmillan. I can even take Jazz Record requests should the mood take me. Its another reason why the review pile has remained, for the most part, untouched.

All of which is a preamble of sorts as an explanation as to why the words have been in short supply of late. Only seven posts in the last three months with none in December at all. If I made New year resolutions I'd make one to write on a more regular basis but I don't do them and besides I'm terribly lazy and easily distracted. So thats that then.

What I could do is extol the virtues of this here DVD+R containing the work of many a creative adventurer as put together by the south coasts very own Jason Williams who judging from images found on here has honed his starving homeless basketball player look to utter perfection. The disc is made for dipping and by that I don't mean in your Costa Coffee flat white. The downside to this is that unless you make notes you're going to miss something and I made notes and I've missed lots. I must have done. There's stuff everywhere which mirrors Jase Williams own chaotic scattershot working style. Jase seems to have been out of the loop for a while, at least since the demise of his last band Mothers of the Third reich. I think they gave up because they struggled to get gigs. No shit. Last I heard from Jase he was part of a Black Metal High Impact aerobics team [Motto: drop and give me 666] and here's the poster on the lengthy [240+] PDF/AVI/JPEG booklet thing called NAME AND SHAME which probably contains the artwork of various others named on the back sleeve here who could be Ocelocelot, Paul Tone and the splendidly monikered The Knit Nurse amongst many, many others but none of it seems to be titled so you have to guess. There's collage and photos and digitally manipulated  images and the odd glimpse of the injuries Jase usually sustains whilst gigging, cuts to head and limbs usually. Of the moving images we have Jase and Joe Henderson in a room full of people sat cross-legged as Jase honks his sax and Joe smashes a table to matchwood with a sledgehammer. Actions to which the audience look suitably unfazed. Some videos are short short, over and done in a minute or so as with Rasen Krieg and random noise bursts as a wandering hand pulls apart an egg custard or a 12 second film of rudimentary motor moving a pen about. There's video footage of someone talking at a gallery opening and there is of course the very strange and esoteric OK OK Society partaking in some kind of ritual where Ken and Barbie get wrapped up in fishing twine with a key between them [soundtrack by JW and Vomir]. The mighty Filthy Turd appears in a short edited gig highlights video called 'Down at the Bottom of the Pond'. A definite highlight this with the Turd at one point emerging from behind his rig, pre noise onset, head wrapped in cellophane [and in and amongst it many a cassette] and casually announcing to his audience 'Years ago I used to sniff a lot of glue'. The mans a genius. My biggest discovery though and the track that made me say 'really, no' was that of Ego Much. Two tracks here, both field recordings, one from inside the freezer compartment of the fridge the other a lengthier outing containing wind chimes, running water, scraped strings, bottles rolling around a concrete floor, overhead jets, cackling crows, rattling chains all of which have gone through a backward loop of a dog eating its dinner. And Ego Much is ... Jase Williams. Life is full of surprises. 

I'm almost better now thank you for asking. Not quite 100% but fit enough to rattle this off and post it. New year. New hopes. New Poang.



deepkiss720 [at] hotmail.com

Errata

Timglaset #7 - Errata
Kit Records KR26
44pp A5 zine + cassette/dl
150 copies.



Everybody makes mistakes. Its why people put rubbers on the end of knobs. We’re only human after all. Think of Trump, of Brexit, of Hipsters.

I too have made many mistakes during my life, some bigger than others, but listing them all here would be both tiresome and in some cases too revealing for one so shy and retiring. Suffice to say that I once thought painting the living room walls a garish shade of canary yellow was a good idea only to give up after half an hours application as it was making me feel ill. Quelle horreur.

Timglaset #7 is all about mistakes, or as it calls them ‘Errata’. Which may be more to do with a list of printing mistakes in a book but is here taken in a wider context so as to take account of things that go wrong but with surprisingly good results. Think Penicillin. Think tea bags. Think Jackson Pollock.

Its a tidy, glossy print A5 zine filled with imagery, poetry and accounts of things that have gone wrong artistically. Such as Malcolm Green and his box full of gone wrong art projects. Artworks that haven’t come out right for whatever reason, etchings that haven’t fixed, all going in a box until that box itself becomes damaged and the things inside it damaged even further. I was particularly taken with Marco Giovenale’s ‘Arte Molto Povera’ and his small scraps of torn paper stuck to walls. The Dada like cut and paste work of Robin Tomens and Jane Pearrett is also to be cheered as is Mirfield’s very own [and the reason I’ve got this] Paul Tone and his ‘Snow Birds Kiss My Face My Grassy Legs Shine’ digital image manipulations.

The accompanying cassette also has its delights and its errata. The first two tracks are a short interview with a certain Thomas Walsh, both equalling 37 seconds in duration the first being nothing but total silence the other being full of interruptions and false starts. After that I’m struggling to see where error plays its part but at least I got to hear some music by ten people I’d never heard of before. Music that spans everything from gently plucked acoustic guitar, piano, Dennis Duck like stuck grooves and Chris Carter like synth pop courtesy of Devonanon. My absolute fave and the one that made me swoon was by Domenique Dumont. Henri’s Dream is a track that sounds like it was recorded in a very big bathroom with French pop outfit Air as Dominque sings/talks her seductive lyrics down the toilet bowl her voice emerging like an alluring Siren, the sounds a languid synth pop beat suffused with Gitane smoke.

The zine may be slight at 44 pages and through your hands in less than 15 minutes or so but the quality is top notch and the memory lingers. Nothing wrong with that.


https://kitrecs.bandcamp.com/

YOL

YOL - ON/OFF
Soundholes. #068.
Cassette. 75 copies

YOL - Hand of Glory
No label
CDR/DL.



ON/OFF arrived with a disturbing hand written note from the man himself stating that the first track I will hear was an attempt to drive the audience from the venue by subjecting them to walls of hideous feedback, noise and trademark YOL screamed utterances. We must assume here that YOL is in the midsts of some kind of system purge. A cleansing act. An act of purification maybe? To purge himself of some unwanted inner id. He can do it of course. Make a noise I mean. When he wants to he can make some truly horrendous noise but on this occasion it wasn’t enough. It wouldn’t be would it. Only a few audience members decided to call it quits.

Without delving in to the ‘noise as entertainment’ dialogue too deeply its a well worn fact that some people are drawn to such things; head in bass bins at the Motorhead gig, sat on the bus with earbuds going full bore, hour long 90’s TNB sets. In the live situation the visceral thrill of actually feeling the noise is all part of the appeal and if part of that live situation just happens to involve a bald man from Hull screaming and stuttering, bent double, retching his very lungs out then all the better.

Except that YOL doesn’t have to go down this route. We know he can make a racket just by using the barest of equipment; eating forks, bits off a tractor, finger cymbals, chains, galvanized watering cans, with the most mundane of everyday items he can make some ridiculously painful noise. Its his delivery, his voice and his blacker than coal black humour that sets him apart.

Watching YOL live is like being in the same room as someone with deep psychological problems. Someone who is having problems with the neighbours and its been building for years and today just might be the day it all goes pop but instead I’ve come to this small gig space with a bag of junk and a contact mic and for your delectation I’ll deliver lines like ‘ITS SAD THAT NOBODY IS SINGING ABOUT STRAY DOGS AND GLUE SNIFFING ANYMORE’. As brought from the very pit of the stomach and deposited from the mouth with such venom, such ferocity that it makes you wince. And then you realize what he’s just said and you want to laugh. Oh shit, what do I do? Laugh? Wince? Leave the room? My emotions are all over the shop. What am I witnessing? Who is this man?

The YOL back catalogue is an ever growing one and as it grows our man in Hull looks for different ways to express himself. Hence the full on roar of ‘Just Fire’ and then after it the tape collage as background noise of ‘Two Dogs’. Thats the ‘ON’ side. ‘OFF’ is without power but no less effective, so we have YOL with scratchy violin on ‘Protest Wig’, ‘Faded Ghost Letters’ sees an acoustic guitar get the treatment.  ‘Crazy Paving’ sounds like it was recorded on our squeaky back gate. Its still has the same effect on the listener. Be it all out noise or YOL with a mop bucket, the effect is still disorientating.

‘Hand of Glory’ [no its not a Ramleh tribute] sees YOL put an upright piano through its paces. The track is of course ‘Knees up’.

But its to YOL’s delivery and his observations writ large that we are drawn to. That strangulated scream, the silence that follows and the words he invokes;

TWO FAKE PLASTC ROTTWLEIERS  GUARDING A STORAGE UNIT

ALWAYS KEEP A SPARK PLUG IN YOUR POCKET IN CASE SOMEONE INSULTS YOU FROM A PASSING CAR

On ‘Trachea’ he’s duetting with an out of control food processor and an unravelling five meter tape measure as he screams /growls/retches ‘I’M A SURGEON NOW’.

‘Knees Up’ is a live track with that piano and unknown squeaky things. YOL sings ‘AT THE END OF THE DAY THE BILLBOARD PROMISING SOUP IS LEAKING’ and you hear the faintest of titters and muffled laughter. As the keys tinkle randomly you hear laughter. Thats what keeps me coming back to YOL and why even after several years of self flagellation his work is still so damned rewarding.

Hand of Glory is seven tracks all done and dusted in less that 25 minutes. I’m thinking it could be YOL’s most complete release yet.


Soundholes


YOL - Bandcamp

Soft Issues

Soft Issues EP
 


I was in Leeds the other week to see Sleaford Mods at Beckett University. The yearly pilgrimage to catch up on Underwood in Peter Grant mode in the brief five minutes spare he has between flogging t-shirts and trying to work out which city he’s in. Looking around the sold out Beckett University gig space mid Sleaford Mods set, from my vantage point of stage left just a bit in behind the bloke who was bigger than me but at least stood still, I reckoned I was the second oldest person there. It was noisy of course and good fun but I got knocked around like a pinball and I think I’m getting too old for it now. At one point someone making their way back from the bog or the bar tripped over the person behind me and hit me full on in the back. It was an accident, the guy was apologetic, he wasn’t drunk but it made me realize that going to gigs of such nature was best left to those who don’t mind going home covered in beer spray.

The week previous I was in Leeds to see Charlemagne Palestine and Ryhs Chatham at the Howard Assembly Rooms. And to see Campbell get his Astral Social Club vibe on in support too. This is much more my kind of gig now; comfy [ish] chair, bar outside without a massive queue where you can get a drink in a glass, no knobheads shoving you in the back and Campbell was on form as was Charley and Rhys though its a pity Rhys had feedback  problems and they had to cut the set short. At least we got to see them do a duet with squeaky teddy bears. If there’d have been no feedback there might not have been any squeaky teddy bears.

An email from Soft Issues leads to the discovery that there’s a new Leeds ‘harsh noise/drone’ band in existence and that of a new venue; Chunk, which is on Meanwood Road and is the home to lots of bands that I never knew existed. This is all good news of course and I dare say that Chunk is the kind of venue where gentlemen of a certain age aren’t shoved in the back by people returning from the bar [they don’t have bar anyway its bring your own].

Soft Issues EP is a five track download only offering at the moment but is due for cassette release through Concrete Block Records. I’m waving my physical review rule only once again to bring you news of exciting developments in the world of Leeds noise. Yes, genuine excitement. Its been a while since I reviewed anything of genuine noise content but here it is and its in Leeds and its noisy.

The people responsible for Soft Issues are duo whose names are unknown to me. It matters not. What matters is that I’ve just discovered a truism in that anyone from Yorkshire who shouts over walls of noise sounds like either YOL or Dave Walklett. On the first two tracks its like Yol and Walklett twinned up with William Bennet in the dying days of Whitehouse. The similarity is uncanny. This may put some people off or decry them as copyists but I couldn’t care less. When things eventually do slow down with ‘The Thrill of Seeing Your Friends Fall’ its to a cavernous five minute long two key drone with a spoken word dialogue that you can barely make out that sounds like someone reading from the works of Sigmund Freud. ‘Degloving’ is the first two tracks again, hammer hard speeded up electronic rhythms, screaming, shouting before the chip out track ‘Hetchell’ and more wasteland washes and the screaming of tortured lost souls.

Is it drone? Only just. Is it noisy? In parts yes. Is it from Leeds. Most definitely.

As far as I know this is their first outing. Maybe I’ll catch them at Chunk one day. I'll have a chair please.

https://softissues.bandcamp.com/releases

Ross Bolleter - Du Piano-Épave

Ross Bolleter - Du Piano-Épave - The Well Weathered Piano
Lenka Lente
ISBN : 979-10-94601-17-4
228pp €20


Ross Bolleter plays ruined pianos. Ruined as in ruined by the elements. In most cases the elements of Western Australia which is where Bolleter resides with several ruined pianos, most of them in his kitchen, the rest in the laundry room. I trust he has sympathetic neighbours. The climate in Western Australia proves especially conducive to ruining pianos which may go some way to explaining why ruined pianos aren’t a big thing in the UK and Northern Europe where a couple of harsh winters and a soggy summer would no doubt see a piano reduced to wet wood and oblivion. Scorching Western Australian summers along with the occasional flood are the perfect climactic conditions for turning once proud instruments into rats nests, frogs homes and quite possibly the ultimate improv tool.

The distinction between ruined and its poorer cousins devastated and neglected is important here; the piano has to have spent some time out of doors naturally degrading rather than being the subject of violence [a lounge piano in a war zone perhaps or a physical attack] or plain old neglect [a piano left to its own devices in a room no one visits anymore].

If you have enough of them you can create your own ruined piano sanctuary. You can visit it yourself. At the last count there were forty ruined pianos scattered about Kim Hack's and Penny Mossop's olive farm near Perth, all of them slowly returning to the earth, soundboards cracked, veneer flaking, keys swelling and shrinking, broken hammers clacking, drying and crumbling and along the way making the most incredible sounds. 

I have to admit to not having heard of Bolleter before this book arrived and in a blinding epiphanic flash realised just how capable a ruined piano could be in the improv stakes. Once taught bass strings slapping against cracked wood, rotten felt hammers hitting rusty piano wire, thuds where once lived ringing overtones, plinks and plonks and what Bolleter calls ‘clicks, doks and tonks’, sounds that to him are as interesting [if not more interesting] than the sounds the instrument was originally made to produce.

The book is at its best when Bolleter and his collaborators recount tales of finding ruined pianos, describing with uncontrolled glee the states of decay they find them in. One is found in the flooded lower floor of a Prague gallery, the room pitch black, the keys wedged together, the sounds from it barely audible. Bolleter travels to abandoned mining towns to play pianos that have been left in derelict hotels, roofs fallen in, fireplaces halfway up walls. Pianos that have been abandoned by sheep farmers are seized upon by Bolleter who sets about coaxing sounds from them.

Over twenty one short chapters Bolleter covers the history of the ruined piano in Australia [and uncovers the amazing fact that when the population of Australia stood at 3 million there were over 700,000 piano's in the country], the way he works, the people he collaborates with, his exhibition for ruined panos in Perth [Piano Labyrinth], his wittily titled label WARPS [World Association for Ruined Pianos Studies], its numerous releases and his forays in to ruined accordions. 

Having spent a couple of evenings listening to Bolleters work I find that he can create sounds that move between melancholy and outright bedlam and most places in-between. Situated between four pianos he moves around like an improv Rick Wakeman kneeling down to strike and pluck exposed strings or hit ruined eye level keys. It's fairly obvious he's mad keen for the ruined piano, obsessed even.

Lenka Lente’s Guillaume Bellhome has translated Bolleter’s words in to French, including some of his poems, a discography, bibliography and a filmography. The first half of book is in French, the second in English. There are also numerous black and white photographs of many a suitably ruined piano as found in its natural surroundings. Its a splendid book, a splendid looking book, it even feels good and is printed on the kind of paper that smells strongly of paper. My favourite kind of paper. As a printed outlet for all things obscure, improvised and poetic Lenka Lente goes from strength to strength. Their status is assured.  


Lenka Lente

Video

Video




 

Amphetamine Sulphate

Jason Williamson - Slabs from Paradise
Amphetamine Sulphate
ISBN - 978-0-9991825-5-0
$10

Simon Morris - Creepshots
Amphetamine Sulphate
ISBN - 978-0-9991825-0-0
$10

Phillip Best - Captagon
Amphetamine Sulphate
ISBN - 978-0-9991825-3-6
$10

Gabi Losoncy - Second Person
Amphetamine Sulphate
ISBN - 978-0-9991825-2-9
$10

Samantha Davies & Matthew Bower - Talisman Angelical
Amphetamine Sulphate
ISBN - 978-0-9991825-1-2
$10


There can’t have been much of a gap between Phillip Best extolling the virtues of a reprint of Pierre Guyotat’s ‘Eden Eden Eden’ and the announcement of his own publishing imprint Amphetamine Sulphate. Here was a Guyotat fan [they do exist] somebody who actually takes pleasure in reading Guyotat’s onslaught of grubby, gruesome sex and violence [imagine de Sade writing The 120 Days of Sodom in the style of Finnegan’s Wake and you have some idea of where we are here] and was urging us to buy the handsome German hardbacked reprint. I declined. I bought a paperback copy of Eden Eden Eden when Creation republished it in the early 90’s and gave up after an hour feeling like I’d received the literary equivalent of a bloody nose. So I sat down with Best's first five and put my bravest, hardest face on. It felt necessary.

Here is a man whose doctoral thesis ‘Apocalypticisim in the fiction of William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard, and Thomas Pynchon’ actually made sense of Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow before the internet was awash with all those helpful GR guides. The man who I saw screaming over a WASP synth in Bradford in 1995, the man who I’ve seen snarling his way through crazed, amped up Consumer Electronics sets. I knew these five weren’t going to be Penny Vincenzi primers. I knew this was going to be tough. After reading the first few pages of the Davies/Bower collaboration I also knew that I may have to resort to tearing a 36 page book in half using my bare hands but more of that later.  

Of the six authors I’d read Simon Morris before. As far as I know this is Jason Williamson’s first foray into short story writing so barring his work with Sleaford Mods this is another new one. The Best thesis apart I’d not ready any of his work either. Gaby Losoncy was also new to me as was the writings of Davies and Bower.

So where to start? Perhaps with the physical and the fact that these are nearer to book-lets than perfect bound books. Its no criticism. Its what they are. The covers are cloth bound and the pages clean. Then there’s the fact that if you live in England and buy them straight from Best in Austin Texas the US Mail will anally rape you whilst emptying your wallet in front of your eyes. If I was Best I would be looking at some kind of European/Australian/Far East distro so as to ease the pain of those not within Trump's grasp.

Of the five I enjoyed Simon Morris’s Creepshots the most. Having read his Consumer Guide last year I know the man can write and although the biggest chunk of CG was cut from his numerous Facebook posts [containing quick guides and critiques of various bands and authors oeuvres], the first section ‘Mergers’ dealt with the deaths of various members of the Ceramic Hobs and Morris’s continuing struggle to cope. Creepshots carries on in that vein, the whole work an epistle, a 32 page letter that begins ‘Dear Ecka’ and is a candid self assessment of his current state of mind that collates his thoughts on joyless sex, crap pubs, drink and Lana Del Ray with whom Morris seems to have some kind of fixation. Trips to Skye, Halifax and Brighton [amongst others] bookend a section that cuts up corporate promo material for hotels and art galleries with news stories regarding the social cleansing of homeless people in Manchester. An affecting and direct way of highlighting a disturbing political trend.

Morris knows his shit as they say and can wax knowledgeable on most subjects, especially Dworkin, Acker, Lana Del Ray, Austin Osman Spare, Crowley and The Fall. That he can rustle up a threesome from nowhere and can exchange tittle tattle with Una Baines and write about it with casual insouciance is a regular delight. The sex scenes are the best I’ve read since Brett Easton Ellis and that's the highest compliment I can give him.

Jason Williamson has also been published [a book of Sleaford Mods lyrics from the same house as Morris’s Consumer Guide] but these are [as far as I know] his first forays in to short story writing. It seems a natural extension for Williamson who since establishing Sleaford Mods as this country’s saving grace has also tried his hand at acting. His five short stories are, as you would expect, full of the kind of language designed to give Daily Mail readers a serious attacks of the vapors. Five short stories peopled with those for whom causal sex and sniff are the the ultimate driving forces in their lives. ‘Tony’ is a Facebook warrior lacking social nous, ‘Wrong John Silver’ is one half of a gay couple addicted to the sniff, drink and sex in public parks, ‘Southcrampton’ finds Mark the builder in some kind of bizarre relationship with a pole dance, ‘Fuckin Nora’ isn’t an exclamation but an admission and easily the best of the lot, ‘Mad Carol’ is the girl at the cracker factory with no nickers on getting her skirt lifted above her head and shrink-wrapped to a pallet. Surprisingly I found the dialogue Williamson attaches to his creations to be as one dimensional as the characters themselves. Most of them appearing as blank faced ciphers, cunting and fucking their way through another miserable day. Maybe too nihilistic. Maybe that's the point? But when he chucks in the odd description he can instantly bring them to life, Boner has ‘a skull dented like a potato’. Its all you need. The blurb on the back cover captures Williamson at his best;

‘It’s a wanker’s hell, a nothing, with everything wrong in it. Civvy life is a fucking boredom cruise across the dead med. Fuck that. Responsibility isn’t for animals on drugs and when the sharpened core emerges, the green twisted wart, the wicked witch; then you go for it big time, open your legs, fuck them, let them fuck your face, become the god and don’t feel bad about it either.’        

Words taken straight from a Sleaford Mods rant. Williamson may yet give us something more substantial but for now these five short stories feel more like works in progress.  

Best’s book is the longest of the five here. An almost weighty 60 pages. It contains 73 entries, each one written in a different location, a list of which can be found at the back of the book.

An authors note explains;

‘Captagon is a composite text of my own imaginings interspersed with appropriations, rewritings and in some occasional instances outright thievery from the printed sources listed below. Other borrowings from film, television, magazines or whatever music I happened to be listening to when writing have not been listed’.

There then follows a six page bibliography of which about 90% is alien to me. Familiar names such as Samuel Beckett, James Herbert, Peter Blatty and Mick Wall find themselves listed among writers published only by universities none of whom are Stephen Hawkins. From this we ascertain that Best has a healthy appetite for philosophy, horror and a fascination with the ability of human beings to inflict upon themselves the kind of psychological and physical damage that makes you wonder if we’ll ever fully evolve.

Some pieces read like reports pulled from war zones. Prescription drugs with exotic sounding names are scattered like the pills themselves. ’55’ written in La Honda CA, has this; ‘Don’t examine your feelings. Never examine your feelings. They’re no help at all’. The end result of being fed all this seriously depressing material is that you yourself become depressed. I read this in one sitting and at its end blew my cheeks out and muttered something like ‘and you think you’ve got problems’. Almost every entry has been stripped of punctuation, barring full stops, which somehow manages to make things even bleaker. Work that one out.

Where Best’s writing takes over from that of the aforementioned authors I cant tell. I detected no Mick Wall and his Black Sabbath biography or the writings of James Herbert. It matters not.

Of course I was expecting death, doom and misery and I got it by the page. Captigon [aka 'chemical courage', the brand of speed made by ISIS] does at times feel like a drug trip. A bad drug trip of course. A drug with an exotic plastic sounding name made by Rhone-Poulenc.

Gaby Losoncy’s Second Person is ‘a sort of guide, a replicable guide for other people to direct their thoughts and feelings that are or feel worthless into a manifestable material substance’ and is [I think] a deep and personal outpouring of her existential philosophy. And is a work I found very difficult to connect with. Or ultimately gain anything from.

Losoncy writes; ‘I speak a lot in abstract because there is no proper language to describe what is attained by proceeding like I have’ which may have been my problem. Some pages contain just the one line,

‘The more of you there are, the better off we are’

Some pages are left blank, whether this was intended or a printers error I’m not sure. Towards the end of the book she gathers a head of steam and gets deeper into her subject but completely loses me along the way. At the back of the book is a short chapter entitled ‘Show Piece for Neutral. March 2017’ and reads like a speech Losoncy gave. She is obviously a very deep thinker. But far too deep for me.    

Which leaves us with Samantha Davies & Matthew Bower which I’m guessing has been written in a dual narrative style a la Mark Manning and Bill Drummond but with far less spectacular results. To be honest I couldn’t tell them apart although one narrator mentioned cats and dreams a lot. Having read all the books written by Crowley, Spare and Lovecraft our heroes write alternating chapters with titles like ‘Innards Fasten’d for Light’ and ‘Rais’d Aloft With Scorpion Heart’ mostly written in a ‘magick’ spelling style no doubt adopted so as to channel the dark lords words. For the biggest part its all tosh of course but I did read it all the way through and found at its end that I somehow, in some strange way, had rather enjoyed myself and thus decided on the spot not to rip it in half.

My mind was changed by the mention of Arvo Pärt;

‘Pärt is infected by the black butterfly wing of Britten. Shivering strings brush his face. Britten was depraved like me. Pärt constructs a Black Noise Ornament [cantus for B.B.] out of the sickness: Bell, x2 speed violin, x1 speed violin, half speed cello: Revolve slowly in space.’  

So they’ve listened to ‘Cantus, In Memoriam of Benjamin Britten’, one of Pärt’s most profound and deeply moving compositions and written that. I forgive them everything.

Where Best takes Amphetamine Sulphate next remains to be seen but I doubt it'll be anywhere sunny.

http://amphetaminesulphate.bigcartel.com/






 

Daniel Thomas - Keep The Red Kites Flying

Daniel Thomas - Keep the Red Kites Flying.
Cherry Row Recordings. CRR 010. Black CDR


I’ve been reading David Toop’s book ‘Haunted Weather’ mainly in a futile attempt to make myself more familiar with the nether regions of this [and Toop’s] musical planet. The pages did turn and the lad can write, as easy on the eye when extolling the virtues of people like sound artist Akio Suzuki or the 70’s improv scene in England or Pan Sonic and then, just when I’m getting a grip on him the words ‘stochastic resonance’ spill from the page and I’m once more the thick kid in the maths class chewing the end of his pencil, brain gone to mush when faced with, what for everybody else, is the answer to a simple maths question with brackets in it.

Still, I quite like the sound of stochastic resonance and now that I’ve seen it on the page and know that its a ‘thing’ I plan to use it whenever the opportunity arises; ballads about the sea sung by retired fishermen, ambient Merzbow releases, the new YOL, the possibilities are endless. Stochastic resonance even has a Wiki page and according to it its an ‘area of intense research’. What it actually is ‘is a phenomenon where a signal that is normally too weak to be detected by a sensor, can be boosted by adding white noise to the signal’. Theres more to it than that of course [why else would it be the subject of intense research] but for the uninitiated [me] I see it more as fiddling around with some buttons until a sound appears.

Can I use stochastic resonance in regards to what Daniel Thomas produces? Why not. There’s loads of it or, as is more likely the case, none at all. It makes no odds, its still one of his best releases.

I’ve not been the cheeriest of champions towards Thomas and his Cherry Row imprint of late. The last couple have been distinctly below par and I was beginning to think he’d blown his wad creative wise. I gave him my version of a mercy killing by not reviewing them. But like the solid citizen that he is he doesn’t take his bat home and instead carries on sending me them. This pays off in dividends when after what must be many a month since its initial release, I finally get the to invest in Red Kites the time it deserves and find within its black frame three tracks of contemplative sci-fi spaceship beating heart mainframe electronics that just about pops my socks and gets the five repeat max treatment.

I’ve seen him play live a few times but not recently. Mainly down the Wharf, each time creating atmospheres where time slows to a sludge pace, a crawling soundtrack containing movements that move at a glacial place that may or may not have been once upon a time termed ‘extraction music’ by the Bearded Wonder.

The best track on the album is ‘Enjoy Defiance’ a broken down analogue signaling machine emitting random sunspotted ‘toks’ to a steady 4/4 snare [or the electronic equivalent of] that puts on weight and density like a bodybuilder on steroids. Not unlike the aforementioned Pan Sonic with Leeds and its suburb Sheepscar standing in for Turku and Tampere. A far remove from earlier DT works and the not to be mentioned Cherry Row release that I fear contained some stuck out like sore thumbs 50’s movie samples. No doubt there are labels dedicated to such electronica but I couldn’t tell you the name of one of them. Thomas deserves to be on one of them though. His work has matured and judging from ‘Kites’ its worth you and other labels, seeking out.

‘Float’ and ‘Construction’ are no fillers either. The former a Forbidden Planet outtake that you could almost dance to, a subtle drone underpinning mutated ethnic rhythms before various fizzing ectoplasm's emerge. The latter a lone drive home through Ballardian underpasses, TG like grime smearing the windscreen, cars passing in the opposite direction leaving behind glowing tail light flares.

The online dictionary definition for stochastic reads thus; ‘having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analysed statistically but may not be predicted precisely’. Resonance I know. I could have turned a corner here. I quite like the sound of the both of them. Literally.




Cherry Row Recordings

Vokera Fan Bearing

Culver - Negative Gate
At War With False Noise
ATWAR 182. Cassette
50 copies.

VOM - Initiation
At War With False Noise
ATWAR 188. Cassette/DL
100 copies.

Vampyres - Astral Sacrifice
At War With False Noise
ATWAR 189. Cassette/DL

Schlaken - Veneration of Relics
At War With False Noise
ATWAR 186. Cassette/DL

BRB>Voicecoil - Containment
Muzamuza. 18. Cassette

BRB>Voicecoil - Reconfigure Moments
Muzamuza. 19. Cassette

Expose Your Eyes - Disintergration
Dokuro. DK67. - Cassette/DL


I’m not one to get sentimental about inanimate objects but after 21 years of trusty service the sight of our old boiler getting chucked in the back of a van was a sad one. Not just because it gave us 21 years of trusty service but because of the noises it made. The new boiler makes no sound at all, except when its making hot water, the rest of the time its a white box on the kitchen wall with copper pipes coming out of it. The old one, for the last two years of its life had a worn fan bearing. A worn fan bearing that drove ‘Alan the Boiler Man’ almost to distraction ‘you can hear that fan bearing halfway up the street’ he would say as he entered the house with his compressor and rolls of tackle preparing for its yearly service and I would say ‘yes it sounds rather nice’. A response which, judging from the look on his face I can only assume he found rather baffling. But I did like it. Both me and Mrs Fisher liked it and now when I come down for my breakfast the kitchen is deathly silent. Its just not the same.

The old fan bearing sounded a lot like Vampyres, a steady drone noise that if listened to closely alters pitch and wavers a little before settling down to a steady bearing grating hum. A simple hum and one which seems to mirror the house’s own circadian rhythms. Coming up the street now all is silent. I have no worn fan bearing to greet me just the squeak and grind of a metal gate as its bottom strut scrapes against concrete. Which sounds a little like brb>voicecoil and a little like TNB. Maybe I’m replacing the sounds of the house with this pile of tapes that sits in front of me? Maybe I’m hoping for a band or noise artist to replicate the sound of the old boiler fan with its grating bearing and welcoming hum? I think the Bearded Wonder may have beaten me to it. To be honest Vampyres are far noisier than the worn fan bearing and chuck in plenty of cold feedback in their bid to make lo-fi noise for Generation Z. I’m just making the comparison because pretty much every noise/drone outfit I’ve ever come across did at one time sound like the worn fan bearing. Its an easy analogy to make but one that bears repeating.

Vampyres are Martyn Reid and the Lee Stokoe, he who sits aloft on the throne of drone, he for whom no bad words have ever been written. I much preferred his Culver release here though. ‘Levitational Pull’ is a three track drone recorded seven years ago and scheduled for an LP release. The mad fools never put it out. So its another Culver release you say, and I say whats wrong with that? Have you heard a bad one? No. There is a lot of them but each one is like having Newcastle brewed laudanum poured down your ears. Genuflection is the only response. Best track here is ‘Negative Gate’ with a chiming, shimmering heatwave chord progression coupled to a cycling drone thats pure menacing horror film soundtrack territory. ‘Levitational Pull’ is the close up sound of sledge runners being dragged across frozen lakes at breakneck speed.

The house actually sounds more like brb>voicecoil. Especially from the outside where most of ‘Containment’ appears to have been recorded. The wind whipping against various man made objects to the accompaniment of passing traffic, meshed fences rattling in a buffeting breeze. There’s nine ‘containments’ here each one exploring a different sound, some are early TNB-ish, mystery sounds, shuffling, clatter, hard to pinpoint sounds which makes for an intriguing listen. And no after recording dabblement either. These are the sounds as captured, pure raw sounds; ‘The recordings capture natural reverbs, clipping distortion and phasing as a result of mic placement within and around subject matter’. This means you get the scrape of shovels, the tinkle of broken tiles, crows, skylarks and that natural reverberation. On one track it sounds like the mic has been dropped in to a huge empty vessel and after it rocks and sticks the resulting echo and clang being glorious and noisy. Top stuff.

‘Reconfigure Moments’ is a ‘collection of audible time frames cut - manipulated - reset - reprocessed’ and contains in last track ‘Refine’ a moment of indelibly great industrial rhythm. This appears amongst a sea of decaying structures, silences, decomposing electronic matter and all out general knock your ears off electroacoustic greatness. Much better when listened to on the download so as to capture the crispness of the recordings, the detail, the leaf mulched footsteps, the bag of marbles being gentle fondled, the gasp and flutter and wow of the artist at work. Who is Kev from Newcastle. Thats all I know. Its all you need to know.

VOM are early Cocteau Twins without the vocals. A three piece with a drum machine doing their best to keep the early 80’s vibe alive. Bauhaus even. Well almost no vocals, I did detect a smattering of electronically adjusted moaning but its wasn’t enough to get me too excited. Same for Schlaken and ‘Veneration of Relics’, a post apocalyptic, dystopian soundtrack as wrung from an electric guitar and many effects. Like dark clouds gathering on the horizon it filled my ears with dread. Sturm and Drang. Black and grey. Music to fill your bombed out house with.

Expose Your Eyes has filled this house with sounds for many years now. More years than I care to think about. Unusually for EYE ‘Disintegration’ has found a home on a label. Most of Paul Harrison’s work usually arrives here in clumps of CDR’s, hand painted jobs, hand stamped, the result of no doubt intense passages of creative energy after which he goes all quiet and hibernates or makes films that recapture what its like to walk around Yorkshire Sculpture Park off your tits on acid. His latest delivery contained just the eight CD’s [of which more later] and this cassette which is pure EYE; thirteen tracks of mangled noise, slowed down voices, road drills, swirling psychedelica, looped shortwave transmissions, pounding rhythms and, of course, grating fan bearings. As primitive as noise gets. After that, everything goes quiet again.



    

AWWFN

MUZAMUZA

DOKURO