Tier Three Week Three
Tuesday 29th
Venusian Death Cell - Serpent
CDR [contact davidvora at hotmail.com]
Awake to find that its been snowing and is in fact still falling as I peer in to the black gloom that is outside. We’re still out of the door by nine and up the hill where the roads are very quiet due to most drivers shitting their pants at the sight of the white stuff even if it is only three inches deep. And wet and is already melting and turning to slush which means those cars that are on the roads take great delight in driving through the accumulated piles of it at speeds capable of spraying it everywhere. Especially down the legs of me and Mrs Fisher who shouts obscenities as they pass. This makes the walk a pretty miserable one though we do see The Timid Lady and The Speed Skater. By the time we get to the park a few families are out and have built a couple of snowmen that will probably be the only evidence that snow fell come three o’clock this afternoon. Some kids are lying on their backs attempting to make snow angels in three inches of wet slush. A dog pisses up against the smaller snowman while someone shoves two sticks into it to make arms.
Serpent is the first Venusian Death Cell to feature its creator on the cover rather than what has been the norm up to now, a hand drawn image. I have to admit that this came as quite a surprise seeing as how I though Mr Vora [for tis he] was a teenager.. A ridiculous notion seeing as how David has been sending me his work for what might just be that length of time. Thats David with the microphone giving us the two fingered Heavy Metal horned salute on what must be album number 40 by my reckoning. If not, it cant be far off. VDC albums have been getting shorter and more experimental of late which is something I applaud. Serpent has nine tracks and is all over in seventeen minutes. It contains essential VDC tropes; home recorded twangy electric guitars that sound like they’ve been played with little or no amplification, a basic drum kit, David’s shouty vocals, death, vampires, hell, satanic themes and a cover version. This time of Obituary’s ‘Cause of Death’ which at almost five minutes in length is nearly a third of the album. The title track is thirty five seconds of slapping sounds which deals with David’s ongoing mental health problems ‘The laughter in me I call the serpent’.
His ongoing fascination with the Halloween film franchise results in ‘Halloween 9’ and is one of the spaciest things I’ve heard from VDC, track eight is also thirty seconds long and is the VDC answer to Van Halen’s Eruption. I know which I prefer.
EC - OXID
Nueni Recs. CD.
https://soundcloud.com/estaniscomella/
https://www.estaniscomella.com/
OXID is the work of Spanish electronic musician Estanis Comella and is one of those releases that finds its way here unbidden in the hope that I might find something to like thus giving Estanis and Nueni Rec some much needed promotion [they don't need it, I've just checked]. You win some, you lose some. Fifty five minutes of electronic beats that I found hard going and offering praise I find harder still. But I didn’t give up, I found the Estanis Comella Soundcloud page and had a listen there but still the same computerized [I’m guessing] software generated deconstructed beats. I imagine Sonar in Barcelona to be full of such work, mildly interesting for those who are in to such things but ultimately unrewarding for those who aren’t.
Pär Thorn & TR Kirstein - Scorpionizer
Topos Media. CD. 150 copies.
Described on the Topos Media website as ‘a mixture of paranoid drone music, industrial loops, perverted field recordings and occult transmissions’ Scopionizer finds Danish sound artist Tobias Kirstein collaborate with Swedish performance artist Pär Thorn who together have created eight tracks that wouldn’t have looked out of place on an Illusion of Safety release such is the combination of voices, noise and drone, discounting the lengthy almost fourty minute last track that is a constant low end thunder in the distance rumble thats presumably been put there because the parameters of CD technology allows it. And why not. Groove to its rumbling I most certainly did. For the first seven think sine-wave drones layered with police radio transmissions and other sonic detritus ‘an intense sound world’ no less ‘with references to true crime, teleevangilism and HP Lovecraft’. ‘East of the Gainsville Raceway’ is a mesmeric cyclic sine-wave drone that has you zoned out after five minutes, the inner rhythms revealing themselves to be the guts of ancient machinery meets Nurse With Wound’s Rockette Morton, with ‘Static Sun’ a purer version of this. The chopped and edited speech patterns also appear on ‘Global Wind Service’ before ‘Providence’ and a distraught male voice [Danish? Swedish?] relating a tale that makes absolutely no sense to me but is obviously upsetting and probably revolves around the either of the Gulf Wars.
Stewart Keith & Neil Campbell - Gasio 2020
CDR
Neil Campbell - Roll The Vole to the Owl [Music for Thumb Piano, Flute and Voice]
Cassette.
https://theneilcampbell.bandcamp.com/album/roll-the-vole-to-the-owl
According to an article he wrote for the Wire, Campbell has been keeping body and soul together by recording en plain air. In a shed frequented by Mirfield druggies by the looks of it, a spray painted tin shed with half burnt sofas and chairs for company. Whether Music For Thumb Piano, Flute and Voice was the result of this I know not but the collaboration with Stewart Keith certainly was not seeing as how Mr Keith is now seeing out the virus in the Orkneys or the Shetland Isles, or was it the Outer Hebrides? Somewhere remote and virus quiet anyway.
Gasio 2020 finds the pair in a Casio duel belting out ever more manic rhythms in a psychedelic 1970’s day-glo children’s cartoon fashion. Rhubarb and Custard on nightclub drugs maybe. Only thirty odd minutes worth to get your head in to though but thats plenty long enough to exercise those housebound legs, even if it is within the confines of your garden. Winner of the Head Melting award goes to last track and the longest workout that has a groove so deep and so urgent its likely to bring on Mr Ben hallucinations.
Campbell and Keith have collaborated on and off for donkey years now and every time the results have been off kilter, sometimes verging on the edge of listenability but never dull. When Stewart Keith was known by other names they wrote songs that were probably written on the spot and recorded soon after. Lots of songs. Probably written in the front rooms of cheap accommodation in Nottingham where the booze and the miser gas fires fought a constant battle with sleep. Its what you might expect from two who have crossed paths in the A Band and Smell & Quim. Long may they reign.
Of a more holistic and thoroughly sanguine nature are the seven tracks of solo thumb piano, flute and voice recordings. No full on wig outs here but gentle meditations with the thumb piano in constant gently plucked play. I’m thinking more Matsumoto than Mirfield here, more gamelan than Grange Moor with that wheezy flute and ghostly vocal moan going a long way to banishing those covid blues. Like Gasio 2020 the later longer tracks are the ones in which you can set the controls for where ever it is you want this music to take you, which for me and no doubt lots of you would be somewhere where the virus don’t shine. I hear that they’re going to have a great New Years Eve party on that Antarctic research station. That Campbell can work within such differing styles of music, with such effortless ease and joy is no small marvel.
Wednesday 30th
I stop outside the newsagents to drop a letter off for Mrs Fisher. There’s a dead pigeon on the pavement outside. Its barely above freezing and I suppose the pigeon must have succumbed to it. What this is doing for trade though I don’t know. I look in the window and there are no newspapers for sale nor customers.
At the entrance to Sainsbury’s theres a member of staff offering face masks and hand sanitizer to those who need them. An old bloke in front of me takes one of the masks and puts it on. I follow him to the newspaper section where he picks up a copy of the Sun and takes it to the toilet with him.
With the pavements being frozen over there’s no chance of a walk, what with Mrs Fisher being allergic to slipping and breaking her neck. I can hardly blame her. Quite what A&E departments must be like at such times I shudder to think. There are more people in the road than there are on the pavements. Joggers included.
Spent last night listening to the new Smell & Quim releases that have arrived. Cuntybubbles looks like its heading for Instant Classic status and is probably their most inventive release since Stephen Hawkins Butt Plug. And then the documentary on Bruce Dickinson and the gig he played with his band in Sarajevo during the Balkan war. Worth watching if only for the slightly eccentric United Nations Major whose job it was to make sure it happened.
Grey Park - Palm of Saddam
Hyster Tapes. Recycled Cassette.
https://greypark.bandcamp.com/
A Grey Park tape arrives and with it, clutches chest in dramatic fashion, an actual download code. Very little of what Grey Park creates makes it in to the digital realm so this is a rare chance to indulge for those who miss out on the short run cassettes, all of which are of the recycled variety all of which I very much admire such is there air of mystery and intrigue.
Because you never know what you’re going to get with Grey Park which is why I’m a bit of a fan. Anything from audio bricolage to audio verite to drone to noise with a small n and most other things in-between bar plain song and Buxtehude cantatas. There’s three tracks here one of them a smidgy two minutes worth of someone firing blanks in a large empty room as someone else shifts stuff about, the other two a tad longer around the ten minute mark, the latter of which opens with some ferocious radio interference before mellowing out with gongs, sonar pulses and eventually a long drawn out minimalist sine-wave drone. The remaining track is a looped drone not dissimilar to Astral Social Club, just the one theme here; a reverbed keyboard cluster shimmer under which you’ll find a heavy bass drag and upon it a sinuous solo that could be Slash playing one repetitive note high up on his guitar fed into a gadget box from where it emerges as a subdued smear. A bit less than thirty minutes of music but every second of it worth investigation.
Thursday 31st.
Watched the Ozzy documentary/film last night and as ever you leave it wondering how he’s still alive. I read a book a few years ago written by one of Black Sabbath’s roadies in which he related the tale of how Tony Iommi turned up to see Ozzy who was now living in a Home Counties mansion. The band were between tours and albums and Ozzy was going out of his head with boredom, so Iommi went down to see if he could cheer him up. Deciding to go for a drink at the local pub they all piled in to Iommi’s brand new Range Rover and duly set off only to realise soon after that none of them had any money. Ozzy suggested Iommi should sell the car to a local farmer so thats what they did, driving onto a farm and asking the perplexed farmer if he wanted to buy their shiny new car for £50 and could he give them a lift to the pub if he did. Which is what happened. How they got back is not recorded.
One of the few pluses to be taken from this foulest of years has been my new found appreciation for classical music, especially as brought to me via Radio 3. Maybe its an age thing but shifting between Schubert’s song cycle Winterreise and the many noisy things to be found here has never been easier or more enjoyable, though I’m still to be converted to the delights of opera, especially those composed by a certain German featuring singers wearing horned helmets. Some of my favourite unexpected listening joys have come while being sat in the poang on an evening with the radio gently playing next to my left ear. Like hearing Dame Vera Lynne singing ‘We’ll Meet Again’ accompanied by a spooky Wurlitzer organ. Having never heard the song in its entirety, usually because its only ever broadcast on TV when the Second World War is mentioned and then only the first couple of lines, I was somewhat spellbound to hear the eerie organ and Vera Lynne’s distant, brave, defiant voice. Something deep within me stirred and though not being of the generation who took inspiration from the song I couldn’t help but feel a nostalgic pull. And and the Kronos Quartet playing Terry Riley’s heavenly Sun Rings on a midweek morning, and Kate Rusby singing In The Bleak Midwinter on another still and quiet evening. Words I thought I’d never write.
As for Schubert’s Winterreise, please do give it a go and try and get the Ian Bostridge version though any that you find will do the job. Played mainly in minor keys and being about as depressing a song cycle as you can get, it has been known to drive people from the venue. Sort of like a nineteenth century Whitehouse.
A Mass For Shut-ins
Totes Format. DL/recycled cassette. 30 copies.
Subversive Intentions - Not The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack To The Anthropocene.
Totes Format CDR/DL. 30 copies.
Coldsore - Pollutant 5
Totes Format. DL/recycled cassette. 30 copies
Coldsore
Totes Format 3” CDR. 20 copies.
https://totstellen-grmmsk.bandcamp.com/
https://subversiveintentions.wordpress.com/
At least covid-19 has benefited the environment; rams wandering around deserted Welsh towns, skies bereft of vapor trails, cleaner air that during the first lockdown I could actually smell, all thanks to people spending more time at home rather than nipping to Tokyo for a DJ set of ambient tunes before flying down to Sydney for that all important album release party. Totes Format has been defiantly flying the climate change flag for some years now, as well as flags for many other worthy causes that any right minded person would attach themselves to. Doing so through the sound medium is a good as any way to help spread the message and via Subversive Intentions the chance to listen once again to Greta Thunberg’s defiant ‘how dare you’ speech, the one that she gave at the UN climate change conference last year, the one that put goosebumps on your skin and got you shouting ‘go fucking tell ‘em’ lass at the TV.
Subversive Intentions is the solo project of the person behind American lo-fi experimental tape label Histamine Tapes. ‘Not The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack To The Anthropocene’ was recorded using two smartphones to capture found sounds, sounds which were then formed into various shapes. Apparently the aim was to capture a more lo-fi sound but such is the quality of smartphone technology these days the end results were far more polished than expected and no worse off for it. An hours worth of TNB shuffling, kids talking about how precious water is, clanging pipes, TV samples of news items relating to climate change, scrunching noises, tubular bells, church bells, punky bass riffs, cafeteria sounds, conversations, lots of loops, various grinding noises and Greta of course. For such a disparate array of sounds this holds together well and rather than being sanctimonious is actually quite up-lifting. Joy to the world indeed.
Cold Sore’s doom laden sounds make up the majority of ‘A Mass For Shut-ins’ with four tracks of drone no doubt created by some of the impressive looking DIY equipment I keep seeing on Twitter, along with similar excellent work from Draaier, Echos, cowp, Clive Henry, Concrete Field and MYRKR who round things off with a particularly draining and foreboding piece. The mood doesn’t change much during ‘Pollutant 5’ Cold Sore’s ongoing series highlighting the threat of pollution, though these do contain more noisy elements including PE type drilling structures, distorted vocals relating to oil spills and static crackling against a blasted tundra landscape. What I got when I first played the tape was the remnants of what it contained before, something that threw me as I’m pretty sure that Coldsore haven’t yet dabbled in the 70’s Finnish folk/pop scene. These unexpected sounds are more than welcome though and if anything provide a little respite from the all round heaviness and feeling of doom that these releases engender.
The three inch Cold Sore CDR is made from two recycled card circles held together with two bits of rusty wire. Its this kind of stand out packaging that lifts a label and for which Totes Format have taken a serious interest in, not only recycling material but making their releases stand out with the use of laser etching and hand stitched sleeves. More grinding drone here but with some outstanding close up to the mic termite chewing sounds as accompaniment.
Friday 1st
Spent last night reading a few JG Ballard short stories and doing the Guardian crosser which I got about three quarters done before the peepers started to fade, so we decide to watch the Billy Connolly documentary on ITV, but their catch up player isn’t working so we end up seeing out the new year with the last fifteen minutes of the Sound of Music and about twenty minutes of Skyfall, the bit where Xavier Bardem escapes from an unescapable glass box and tries to kill M. Before deciding to jack it all in and go to bed at around eleven o’clock. And so the dullest of ends to the most unforgettable of year.
The evening is punctuated by constant firework explosions which eventually become tiresome as does a constant distance thud, thud, thud which we assume must be coming from a house party though where exactly we cant decipher, even after Mrs Fisher has done her net curtain twitching best. Later the next day she explains to me that the fireworks that were being lit at eleven o’clock were in celebration of the UK leaving the EU, a fact that had completely left my thoughts.
At seven thirty this morning the Radio 3 breakfast show plays Burt Kaempfert’s ‘A Swingin’ Safari’ and even though I’ve slept badly and aren’t feeling exactly on top of the world this cold dark new years day, I swing my feet along to its infectious zippy beat while drinking my third cup of tea of the day. This being Radio 3’s intention. After breakfast we decide to go for an early walk but soon return after spending fifteen minutes clinging to each other on top of frozen pavements. I return Mrs Fisher safely home and venture out on my own exploring the industrial wastelands just off Westgate where there’s plenty of snow but not as much ice. Its an area I’ve never ventured into before despite having lived in the area for over thirty years. A creepy, desolate place with rushing water to be heard under exposed concrete flooring and the sad brick shell of a disused factory, a huge eyesore that sits alone amongst broken bricks and car tyres full of water and snow. Its high up gable end semi-circular window must have once been a proud part of the design but now its shattered, its glory days firmly behind it never to return and now a portal for pigeons.
Saturday 2nd
Noisesculptor - Ordinary Mind Disorders
Unsigned.US074. 2CD/DL 50 copies
Rovar17 Vs Xpldglke - Nix Ugribugri
Unsigned.US070. CD/DL 25 copies
Meanwhile, back in Hungary they’re still dealing with that arsehole Trump wannabe Viktor Orban who, shock horror, tie me down because I don’t think I’ll be able to control my anger, seems to be blaming everything on the, on the …. Jews. Ever heard that one before? Its an old one I know but the legs on it are incredible and you wont believe the number of oafs who’ll suck this shit up and put a cross in the box come the big day.
Those Unicum swillers Unsigned have sent me a couple of releases that look pretty good in all their fold out CD glory. Ugribugri I liked just because of the name. Who couldn’t love something called Ugribugri? No translation is available so lets assume its a Hungarian/Czech word like thingumnybob or doofah. Then you discover that Ugribugri is a series of live recordings as laid down by Rovar17 Vs Xpldglke in the Czech republic and the UK at the beginning of last year, in March! FFS Just before the shut down. I’m talking about the covid-19 spread it about tour here; Lincoln, Ipswich and London. Did you got to see them? Have you caught the plague? Please get in touch if you have/did.
But first Noisesculptor whose name gives the game away slightly. Six tracks of what are described by the label as being ‘massive psychedelic noise ambient hits’ which are then remixed on the second disc by Ribastuka, wst’d, Rovar17, Andorkappen, Rauppwar and xpldnglke. Drop the word ‘psychedelic’ and you have me on board, noise/ambient yes, psychedelic not so much. Think evolving soundscapes of an unsettling nature, sci-fi film soundtracks created using computer software and a table full of gadgets, though no instrumentation is given I’d lay good money this is where we’re at; a child’s voice manipulated amidst waves of reverb, microtonal washes, the hiss of alien creatures and the anguished wails of torture chambers, the hum of heavy futuristic machinery, rapid heartbeats, heavy on the effects and sounding good for it with next to nothing to get in the way of an enjoyable forty-five minute ride. The second disc finds itself in similar territory and to these cloth ears is more of the same though I dare say the artists involved would disagree. Also worthy of note is the inclusion on the inner sleeve of a Bernd and Hiller Becha like image of a power station. Another pointer for you.
The term noise/ambience would appear equally at home with Rovar17 Vs Xpldglke’s audio account of last years tour. These seven, shortish, lo-fi-esque excursions teem with all manner of radio swill, crumbling electronica, distortion, erratic beats and wavering in the distance, treated to within an inch of his life the unmistakable sound of Eric Satie. Whether these tracks are of electro-acoustic in origin I know not though I’ll take a guess that most of the sounds were generated from laptops and noise boxes. Thats no criticism by the way. Judging by the three tracks recorded in the UK it looks like I missed a rewarding, albeit brief tour but then again, by early March last year I wasn’t traveling much further than to work and back and was spending the rest of my time tracking the imminent shit storm all while bathed in hand sanitizer. The applause at the end of each track is sparse which you’d expect from gigs of this nature, though I dare say the virus put a few off too. What a pity for all involved. An interesting document then with our two protagonists creating some rewarding, never dull, always morphing noises. You might not have been there but at least now you can hear the results for yourself and all free from the worry of catching the dreaded.
Today I venture as far as the bin. Its been a shit day weather wise and I’m not going out so there.
https://havizaj.bandcamp.com/music
Howard Stelzer - Invariably Falling Into the Thickets of Closure.
No Rent Records. 3CD/DL
Howard Stelzer he of the cassette tape manipulations improvisations and someone who I haven’t listened to for far too long now. After seeing a review of the above via Vital Weekly I decide that the time has come to rectify this anomaly so I purchase the above and then discover that there’s a Bandcamp facility where in exchange for a ridiculously small amount of money I get access to all things Howard for ever and ever amen. Count me in. Hello Howard and how are the kids? You see we’re friends already. What a great idea.
Its to my eternal shame that I’ve not listened to enough Howard Stelzer over the years. The last time was a collaboration with Campbell which might have been earlier this year, the time before that … er … Bond Inlets? Which came out in 2008. Eek. The Campbell collab was a long drone as I remember which is what we have here. On the third disc that is, where for forty five minutes you can float on a salty sea and forget about your trouble and strife. Then there’s everything else for we have almost two and half hours of sounds to explore here. All of it so damned good it almost makes me cry. I’m sorry I’ve been away for so long Howard. I wont do it again.
Somewhere along the line I’ll have to assume there was a shift from pure cassette manipulation/improvisation to the incorporation of drone within Stelzer’s work because the last time I was there the drones weren’t. Where or when this shift came I know not. But here it is, Maroon [all the track titles have been given colours] and forty five minutes of blissful drift that begins with bleating lambs, tinkling wind chimes and works in some high end guitar notes courtesy of Jeff Barsky and Windy Weber for Stelzer doesn’t work alone here. There are in fact over a dozen collaborators amongst these three discs including Tom Smith and Audrey Chen all of whom were no doubt more than welcome at the Hotel Amnesia where along with the Sun Room all of this was recorded. Some of it in the live situation too judging by the unmistakable sound of tape squelch and general vibe. Neither is it all drone, there are field recordings, strummed guitars, dub reggae workouts with an Uncle Jim like voiceover [Lilac], Neu! like motorik rhythms [Teal] and for good measure a few lines from Prince [Violet] theres some folksy singing too courtesy of Bill Ironfield [Burgundy] where he succeeds in channelling his inner Paul Simon amidst of a blurry background of decomposing cassette tapes. Stelzer’s cassette detritus gets scraped off the floor to permeate pretty much everything here [Maroon apart] the entire structure an edifice to Stelzer’s talents. Other shorter drones work there way in here too with Cyan and Burgundy in particular providing Stelzer with opportunities to groan out drones that come at you in waves of decay. If all of this sounds a little bit of a juxtaposition too far then you have to take my word here.
https://howardstelzer.bandcamp.com/music
Sunday 3rd
I should be at work tomorrow but will instead join the furloughed forces for another two weeks of fun and frivolity. In the morning I'll read the new Dai Coelacanth book. This has been the strangest Christmas/New Year period I've ever experienced but in a lot of ways its been an enjoyable one. Lets see what 2012 2021 brings.
