Bulbs/Godspunk 6/Zack Kouns/Miss High Heel/Duncan Harrison/Deepkiss720

Last night I dreamt I made experimental music with Thurston Moore.

Zack Kouns - A Woman is not a Sphinx

lucpascal [at] yahoo.com

www.zackkouns.com

Handmade is a term truly abused in the cdr game. Handmade, when related to a TNB release makes you go all warm and tingly in the nether regions whilst pound note signs circle before your eyes as you envisage the ebay resale value twenty years hence. Moonmoonmoon’s release ‘ A Woman is Not a Sphinx’ takes handmade to new heights [lowts?] by sticking a plain white cdr into a piece of folded card glueing a mirror the size of a pound coin to the front and adding the title in red felt tipped pen. Its written in a nice arched shape tho, i’ll give it that. 

So far so bad. But then I play the damned thing and what do you know I actually like it. Well some of it. A Woman is Not a Sphinx is Zack Kouns who either plays sax, zither, sings, drones and sticks and stones and wind chimes or he has lots of uncredited friends. Each of these ten tracks holds up on its own in either a slow sax honk meets Steven Sondhiem meets singer songwrity echo chamber or late night dysfunctional Scott Walker smokey jazz bar stylee. The only thing that bugs me is that Zacks singing voice eventually begins to grate like a bad pub singer and during some tracks you wished he’d just shut up and let the perfectly good sounds in the background do their own thing. On one track [they’re all untitled of course] he performs a perfect reflection of Faust in their prime. Bizarre. According to Zacks website he’s available for hire and will play anywhere, in the nude too thrill seekers’, for modest travel expenses of course. The kids birthday party will be unforgettable Malcolm. 

Bulbs - Light Ships

www.freedomtospend.net

Some releases you just cant take to and wonder what anyone saw in them in the first place. Freedom To Spend’s first release is by Bulbs; a duo that finds ex Axolotl guitarist John Almaraz teaming up with the drummer William Sabiston in what is promised as a truly great meeting of minds. After ten minutes listening to a gagged mute trying to escape from a padded cell using a drum stick and an electric guitar for tools I was beginning to think this wasn’t the grand opus I’d been promised. Almaraz makes wheedly, fiddly noises with his guitar whilst Sabiston fumbles with his drums. The whole thing sounds like a gay disco coming through a tinny speaker via downtown radio Botswana. Imagine George Formby having his first electric guitar lesson whilst Cletus plays with the preset keys on a drum machine and you have some idea of the horror I have endured. I was told this release had divided opinion and after suffering this dud I’d like to hear from someone who actually likes it - label owners apart.

Godspunk Volume 6

www.pumf.net

Stan Batcow’s steady trickle of lunacy continues with Pumf’s sixth volume of Godspunkyness. After four attempts and varying degrees of success [in my opinion anyway] Stan finally hit pay-dirt with a cracking volume five. Juxtaposing a single noise track around the usual bunch of non-conformist popsters like the Las Vegas Mermaids, Needle Park, Stan’s own Howl in the Typewriter and the implausibly named Satan The Jesus Infekt’d Needles and Blood [amongst a host of others] he managed to harness all that ribald lunacy into a single cohesive unit that was both listenable and for once, repeatable. If dotty pop songs coupled with the fringes of mental health are your bag you missed out. 

So to volume six. I see Unit are still there. Last I heard, London ‘punk’ agitators UNIT had taken time out to pen a song deriding yours truly. Not content with hating multinationals and loving trees they seem to have taken a dislike to Idwal Fisher. I can only assume they have more time on their hands than they know what to do with. Here they chip in with a song called Eco Warrior blues which if I was in charitable mood would suggest was a cocky, cheery pub rock Greenpeace anthem but I’m not - think sub Chas ‘n’ Dave penning an anarchist anthem after too many ales dahn the Elephant and Castle. 

The Haddenham One’s sampled voice repeating the line “they spilt my medicine’’ over rumbling dubious hip hop cheers had me in its thrall. Characters like Evil Jack McDeath, The Style Pigs, The Shi-ites, Bartles and Elwyn Temple Meads populate Godspunk releases like tramps on a park bench on a warm day. When not knocking out witty sideways-on songs about mental elf and stuff they build up dreamy techno-y worlds like DimM D3ciPLe [yes that is how its spelt]. So there’s something for everybody y’see. Top trumps on volume six tho is Stan’s own Howl In The Typewriter outpourings. The man comes at you like a demented Stock Aitken and Waterman production and because its his label he can have six goes - the best of which is a split channel affair; one channel sounding like someone putting on an anorak in a gale and the other a lonesome industrial drone. Godspunk discs are little pieces of creation that every dysfunctional, tee-total, alcoholic, tree hugging, London b-boy, mental health sectioned largactyl numbed person should have. Keep em coming Stan.

Miss High Heel - The Family’s Hot Daughter

Blossoming Noise CD

www.blossomingnoise.com

http://www.myspace.com/misshighheel

Is it just me or does anybody else think Tom Smith is overrated? Virtually everything I’ve listened to by Smith has been a long, tortured session of rapidly moving, quick edits and annoying warped vocals. Lots of people like him of course which is why Miss High Heel isn’t a Tom Smith release per se, lots of folks join in here to slap Tom on the back and give a helping hand, say what a great thinker he is, so original its not true the mans on a different planet etc.., Jim O’Rourke chips in as do around eight other like minded souls. But don’t be fooled, this is still essentially a Tom Smith album seeing as how he recorded, mixed, edited and produced the whole thing. They got Trevor Brown to do the cover and this may be just about the best thing about what is essentially a leaden mass of dense, sixteen different directions at once sub John Zorn Pain Killer blasts and layered groaning vocals. What really gets my hackles rasied is the way Smith piles up his vocals so that you get three voices coming at you at once all of them sounding like a bunch of pissed up tramps trying to harmonize a Ramones number Dalek fashion. It’s the Emperors new clothes time and it has to stop. I got to track five and skipped through the rest just to see if there was anything other than what had gone before but my disappointment was only further extended. 

The story goes that this album has lain dormant for the last ten years and has only recently been unearthed. Make your own judgements.

Thing is, I actually quite like Smith’s work when he teams up with his long time outfit To Live and Shave in LA. Their last outing on Blossoming Noise was well received here and rightly so.

Duncan Harrison/Deepkiss 720 [no title] CDR

Luggage Records http://www.geocities.com/luggagesound/news

Homemade covers cut from NWA LP sleeves wrapped in black and white photocopied photos of a naked female mannequin leaning in someone’s window. Probably Jase Williams window. Mr Williams as last seen twiddling the knobs at the Termite Fest in Leeds  whilst performing as DK720. Jase does noise and by Christ it’s noisy. He was playing a green guitar too that had no neck, just the headstock glued/nailed/bolted straight onto the body throwing it into the floor of the Holy Trinity Church and by God its a good job the vicar wasn’t there. Duncan Harrison I know not of but I assume that Luggage Records must be something to do with him as, after checking out his website, he seems to appear on lots of their releases. Which are damned cheap at £2 a throw and if this is anything to go by then they’re damned noisy too. After relearning all the best bits from the Incapacitants seminal release As Loud As Possible I stuck this one in the slot expecting some light relief but instead I get a rollicking good earbashing. Things tend to slow down to Norman Collier stutter standards on track three but for the most part I was quite happy to sit through all 25 minutes of this raucous homemade beauty.

Culver/Matching Head

Culver & Waz Hoola - Maps of War [MH153]

Inseminoid [MH152]

The Prestidigitators vs The Purple Better One - Jazz Mag With Pages Stuck Together [MH150]

Murder Book - Anglo Angel [MH143]

Matching Head is the label that shouldn’t exist but clearly does. Releasing everything on shop bought cassette tape with black and white photocopied paper inserts its about as Luddite as you can get in 2008 but is all the better for it. 

Based in the North East of England Lee Stokoe’s label finds a home not just for his own excellent Culver drones but for an array of noise merchants, experimenters, twisted pop diablos and outré dabblers.

Now up to releases in the 150’s and with no sign of slowing down its always a pleasure to see a batch of MH tapes appear at Idwal Towers. 

And this batch is no exception. 

The North East bent is large and could be larger seeing as how I’ve no idea where Murder Book or Inseminoid hail from But The Prestidigitators vs The Purple Better One are the real NE muck in the pearl. Jazz Mag is an unremitting seething whump of top end 200 notes a second fret frot and drum abuse that is as sadistic as it gets in its homage to prime era Smell & Quim disturbance, This is not just pure homage though but a continuation of that lineage. The soft porn insert and general feel of top shelf newsagency filth is of course pure gold and sadly missed.

Inseminoid is Walls of Jericho noise in which Stukas dive bomb from 30,000 feet all guns rattling into a high trebly glissando guitar piece. Then you’re stuck in a tent on the Arctic ice cap whilst a blizzard whistles by at -40C. Then it’s John Fahey and all very confusing.

Murder Book’s Anglo Angel is a series of uninteresting circuit fluctuation but that disappointment is negated by the arrival of Culver and the Indian spinner Waz Hoola [and with a name like that he could be an Indian spinner]. Culver’s drone work is never less than immersive and this is no exception. Two tracks of key depression pulse and throb drift bringing to life a wheezing build of heavy nod out dopage.

MH releases are mostly one sided C90’s [at least the ones I’ve had through my hands have been] they’re affordable, inventive and a million miles away from an MP3 link in an email from someone you never heard of. So the sound quality is never going to be pristine but what are you some kind of clarity freak? Some of these sounds come alive in the hiss.  

Get a life gadget boy and buy into some real sounds.

Label: Matching Head. Prices: £1.50 UK/£2.50/$5 ROW

Contact: 

Lee Stokoe, 100 Saltwell Place, Gateshead, NE8 4QY, UK 

email: lee_stokoe [at] hotmail.com

RRR/Nose Picker/Irukandi/Realcide

RRR - The Best

Nose Picker [cant find a title]

Irukandi - Pray For Me

Realcide - Ready to Fight

There I was tearing down the inside lane of the M621 at 60 mph with Burt Kaempfert’ s Afrikaan Beat blasting from the tape player when the thought occurred to me that Ron Lessard had just sent me some really rubbish records. Which is a little like kicking your granny in the shins after she’s just given you a fiver for your birthday but it has to be said, Nose Picker, Irukandi and Realcide, you did nothing for me. Actually come to think of it they did do something for me; Irukandi made me want to fall asleep - big tired bear yawns afore curling up for three months hibernation sleep. Realcide made me realise why I don’t like all that angsty, hardcore, thrashocre call it what you will core, all that shouting oooh no and Nose Picker ... four live tracks of screaming and a-hollering that sounded like Incapacitants on a tenth grade dub recorded in a toilet on a train. A meandering collection of random bleeps and nostril debris that is the epitome of time wasting. Ron did save himself from a five star lashing by including one of his most marvelous compilations though. Simply titled ‘The Best’ it includes some snorting material from the likes of Halflings, Cathode Terror Secretion, Ichorous, Brutophilia the Cherry Point and the enigmatic IS. Fluttering undertows of woofer expanding mania from Halflings, screaming noise from CTS and IS chip in with with an almost disappearing off the scale of audibility piece that plunges into the bowels of hellfire damnation noise save your souls you hell bound sinners.  And as for Brutophilia ... well what do you expect from an outfit with a name like that. It all comes wrapped in customised junked sleeve with oddball newspaper inserts hand written by the man himself labels. Which leaves me wondering why, with so much good and wholesome American noise out there, does the Ronfather choose to put out such mediocre stuff as Nose Pickers?  

www.rrrecords.com

Sickness

Sickness - Mudlark

Self Abuse/Ninth Circle Music CD

Being a mudlark in London during the Industrial Revolution meant that you’d hit rock bottom. Scavenging the banks of the Thames at low tide, you did your best to avoid the rotting corpses, turds and other unsavory flotsam in the desperate hope of finding something to sell that would keep you alive for another day. Wading ankle deep, bare footed in a fetid, slimy, bacterial gloop meant that for you life just couldn’t get any worse.

And here’s a picture of a river bank on the sleeve and the insert finds various written edicts headed ‘scavenger’. I think you get the idea.

So a collection of hard to find Sickness items collated on to one easier to find disc that includes live material from the sixth Consumer Electronics show that if you needed a starting point for Sickness is where to go first; a murderers confession that detonates into a squall of harsh electronics thats as good an indicator of the mans work as anything I’ve heard.

Sickness’s strength lies in the control displayed throughout these 10 tracks. It’s noise Jim but its under control noise. Take the best bits of Government Alpha couple them with the noisier end of TNB and you have an approximation of what Sickness can really be about. Throw in the intelligent work ethos and the stunning live shows and you have one hard working geezer who knows exactly what he’s doing.

Through no fault of his own there was some kind of equipment failure during his 2007 No Fun set and never have I seen so many people at a gig so genuinely gutted. That he came back in 2008 opened the whole weekend and stomped all over the memory of that is testament to the mans mindset and the high esteem in which he’s held.

Buy this CD go straight to track ten ‘Everyone Dies Alone’ and hear how a noise track works in the hands of someone who knows what he’s doing; heavy breathing, silence, dry joint static, random eruptions, footsteps down a corridor. Perfect. Just don’t expect to find a copy on a river bank.

Contact:

www.selfabuserecords.net

www.sickness999.com

Ramleh

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Darryl Fantastic, Ashtray Navigations, Early Hominids

Darryl Fantastic, Ashtray Navigations, Early Hominids

Dewsbury Socialists Club, 23rd January 2010.

I’ve been to some strange venues in my time but seeing what is essentially a noise gig at what is essentially a working mens club in what is probably not thee most salubrious town in England takes some beating.

Working mens club, especially those in the North, have a reputation for dourness, cheap frills and an ability for making people unwelcome. Its not all unfounded, I’ve been in a few and many’s the time I’ve been asked by the jobs-worth committee man on the door [usually ex-service] as to whether I’m a member and when eventually seated with drink after signing my name three times in a huge ledger and crossing my heart promising to vote Labour until I die I sit down only to be told by the same person that thats so-and-so’s seat and he’ll be in half an hour and can you sit somewhere else preferably over there out of the way. But its not all doom and gloom, the beer is usually cheap and if you can avoid the domino card and raffle ticket sellers you can have yourself a thrifty night out. Putting this lot on at the Dewsbury Socialist Club though was a little like going to the Wheel Tappers and Shunters Club and finding a Herman Nitsch blood play in mid session or, for those of more tender years discovering Brian Potter had booked Whitehouse into the Phoenix Club.

The DSC is a small place directly off Bradford Road, made up of one room, two pool tables and a sea of sixties aluminum fluted floor buffets. After fortifying myself earlier in the evening with several pints of Taylors Landlord at the West Riding it was a joy to enter the portals of the DSC to find Kelham Island’s Easy Rider standing proud at bar full of tap lager and insipid ales. The PA was pumping out dub reggae to a small gathering of locals sat chatting amicably away and taking the dub in their stride. The odd punter who’d actually heard of this gig and had come from out of town stood with pints in hand, the frequent sideways glances giving away their nervousness. Maybe some of them were wondering if they’d got the right venue, the right town? There was no entrance fee [someone later came round with a bucket for change - a cleaned out urinal cube bucket which I thought was a nice touch]. 

With no fanfare what-so-ever a stout punter of advancing years moved from the bar, strapped on a bass guitar and started thrashing it. Loops of God knows what emanated from someone bent over a table full of gadgets and it all sounded very Astral Social Clubby. The locals carried on chatting although now leaning more into each other to counteract the volume but they still seeming unperturbed. Darryl Fantastic [I think thats what they were called] played for what seemed like half an hour and nobody left the room. It got louder, it got quieter, it rose and it fell like solo sessions in a jazz whig-out and it wasn’t half bad at all. Maybe they’re all secret ASC fans? Had I stumbled upon a nest of underground dub noise drone fans, a sub-culture of sound freaks who for years have been holding clandestine meetings in Northern working mens clubs, zoning in on the most recent releases before slinking off to their mill flat conversions to snack on meat pies and tripe?

The more beer I had the more surreal things became. The bar staff were really friendly, the beer was really good [and cheap] there were people out back smoking like chimneys, snaffled in whisky was getting passed round, Ashtray Navigations were steaming into a number that began as a disco track and mutated its way into a hydra headed monster of wailing guitar noise. As the beer kicks in so do the Early Hominids who manage to do what neither of the preceding could and empty the place. The Campbell/Walsh axis has noise at its heart but its posh noise with oscillating frequency envelope generators or somesuch with strobe lighting chucked in for good measure. Its too much for some and off they head for the Big F in Batley or the curry shop across the road. The set is cut short by what could be equipment failure or drunkenness. Someone shouted ‘do you do requests?’ I think it was me. As I stumble through the door to look for a taxi it looks like the stragglers are gearing up for a late night session. What time do you shut asks someone, the obvious reply being ‘How much money have you got left?’

Wagon and Horses, Birmingham, Saturday 28th 2009

Wagon and Horses, Birmingham, Saturday 28th 2009

Grunt

Slogun

Sickness

Con-Dom

Ashtray Navigations

Putrefier

Lash Frenzy vs Mort the Sonic

Iron Fist of the Sun

Cities Prepare for Attack

Noise and Power Electronics gigs aren’t normally known for their back slapping bon-honomie so the sight of a packed room singing ‘Happy Birthday’ at the conclusion of Saturday nights Con-Dom set was slightly surreal. It also gladdened the heart and will no doubt never be repeated. Saturday nights gig at the Wagon and Horses may have been organised to celebrate Wrasse Productions 15th ‘unbirthday’ but to all intents and purpose the reason why so many people travelled such great distances was to celebrate Mike Dando’s 50th. The man behind Con-Dom reaches the half century mark and people have turned out in numbers to pay their respects.

The venue is a stand alone glowing oasis of warmth and light in the wet and dark industrial fag end of Digbeth, a less than salubrious smear of run down businesses and garages on the outskirts of Birmingham where passers by were few and far between. The downstairs bar is lit by a roaring wood fire, the Guinness is on form and the punters are already piling in. A bent old man in a camel hair coat and flat cap arrives carrying two battered 1950’s suitcases. By now its chucking it down and he’s pissed wet through. He orders a half of bitter and stands drinking it at the bar, slowly drying out in front of the fire. Next to him are two six foot bald headed power electronic freaks covered in black ink and black clothes talking Genocide Organ and the merits [or lack of them] of CDR. Upstairs there’s so much equipment that its actually impinging on the floor space and its going to be eight hours before it all ends. It’s 6.30 and I’m probably drunk already.

Now I’m not going to give a detailed and individual account of who did what to whom and where but let me just say this; in all my years of going to these kinds of shows this was the first where I saw every act, heard every sound and most importantly, enjoyed every minute of it. From the moment that Cities Prepare for Attack laid an electric toothbrush onto a horizontal guitar and layered lots of Non like loops around it to the impromptu Grunt performance at the death I had a sloppy grin on my face thats taken two days to wipe off. Of course there was plenty of pushing and shoving and some folks did get upset during the Slogun and Con-Dom sets, I even saw a beer glass get chucked but it was all in good humour. Yes. I think you can chuck a beer glass in good humour. So long as its not aimed at someones head. Lash Frenzy and Mort the Sonic laid on a heavy bass guitar led noise drone rumble that was even more impressive once they’d completely filled the venue with dry ice and two flashing strobe lights. Other highlights were a noise based set from Ashtray Navigations [who were pumped up to a threesome for tonight], Putrefier gave his usual solid set with the noise guitar getting plenty of abuse, Sickness are as solid as it gets, floor clearing from Slogun, bodies everywhere and then a bare chested Con-Dom with Genocide Organ and Anti Child League support getting everyone jacked up. Grunt rounded things off using borrowed equipment but things were hazy by then, the Guinness had taken a hold. But I definitely did see someone strip off naked and dance about. If you weren’t there then you’ll just have to make do with the second hand stories that’ll no doubt be doing the rounds for years to come.

The previous night it was MEV playing their part in the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. I’ve been going the last three years to at least one night of the HCMF as there’s usually something worth catching. Last year it was Dror Fieler’s one hour blast-a-thon, the year before that, Cut and Splice with Randy Yau, Sudden Infant and The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra. And if you thought making music with vegetabkles was boring then you need educating. The VVO made cabbage noise, played a Kraftwerk cover [Radiation] and a version of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring that was both bold in execution, remarkable to watch and highly entertaining. The prices are a tad steep when you’re used to paying a tenner to see five bands in a small room above a pub but the venues are top notch and the sound reproduction is incredible. MEV were Alvin Curran, Fredric Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum and it was a rare pleasure to witness a group performing improvised music with such lightness of hand. They played for an hour utilising three open topped grand piano’s, samples from lap-tops, oranges bounced on piano strings, voice, bizarre flute like things all of it coalescing into one organic mass of flowing delight. About three minutes in what sounded like a mobile phone rang but of course it was them. Two minutes later a voice was heard saying ‘oh lets just start again’ but that was to fool you too. Three way hammered atonal piano work gave way to sublime passages of melancholy, noise, flies zapped in humane killers. At one point Rzewski stunned a female punter in the front row when he left his piano and asked her if he could have a drink from her flask. Whatever it was he liked it. They even came back for an enlightening Q&A session where Cage was quoted liberally and someone asked if there was a difference between sound and music. Curran said he preferred the sounds he heard outside his house to those played by people calling it ‘free music’.

November began with Colour Out of Space in Brighton. Getting shunted back from its September slot proved to be blessing when the Indian Summer arrived. The sight of people sat outside pubs in t-shirts at the beginning of November was a bizarre one but a welcome one at that. After getting solidly drenched last year it made a decent change to be able to socialise in a climate that didn’t resemble Tierra Del Fuego. Colour Out Of Space is the best event of its kind in Britain. Not that I’ve been to them all. Maybe its a mixture of the venue [a student theatre of a goodly size complete with decent PA], or the abundance of real ale pubs but those three days pass in a mixture of great music and good company. Thanks to curator Dylan Nyoukis there’s always a healthy mix of styles and genres ranging from vocal works to full on noise and with 33 acts covering two stages over three nights there’s going to be a bit of something for everyone and lets not forget the film screenings and galleries too. And at only £25 for a weekends worth of entertainment it has to be the best deal going. The down side to all this socialising is the inevitability of missing something. There you are deep in a drunken conversation when people start exiting the theatre to tell you you just missed the best set of the night. On the Saturday, so drunk and sociable was I that I only saw one act. It was though, the seriously deranged and highly entertaining Kommissar Hjuler and Mama Baer. The Kommissar and his missus divided opinion with a set in which they dressed in khaki jungle fatigues, complete with pith helemts whilst singing the refrain from The Lion Sleep Tonight. For about 40 minutes I think. The back drop screened a film they’d made of a man [I’m guessing the Kommissar] dressed in a pantomime lions outfit wandering about on a deserted lake edge staring into the horizon looking lost and mournful. As their demented vocals became ever more incoherent they sank first to their knees and then to the floor. It was exhausting just to watch.

Morphogenesis, Trevor Wishart, Damion Romero, Logos Women, Phil Minton and Isabelle Duthoit, Karen Constance and John Wiese, Sten Hanson, Joseph Hammers and probably lots of bits of others were seen, half remembered and enjoyed but the biggest cheer of the entire weekend and the one that brought the house down was Ju Suk Reet Meate and Oblivia who for a good thirty minutes entranced us with an improv ride through an array of vinyl samples. toy trumpet parps, noises, scrapes, out there sounds and kitchen sinks played against a huge screen of boiling tar pits and star fish. An unforgettable evening.

After being cosseted by Brighton the following weekend was akin to trip into the seventh ciicle of hell ... Stockwell. A place so lacking in cheer it makes Dewsbury look like Rio de Janero. Exiting at the fag end of the Northern line into a steady stream of early winter drizzle didn’t exactly fill me with the joys of spring but at least the Grosvenor isn’t too far of a walk and theres’ only half a dozen gangs of hooded youths to negotiate - each one of them looking you up and down and assessing your mugging potential. Tonight’s trip is to see Mikawa and Nihilist Assault Group but there’s John Weise and the Putrefier/Romance collab which gets off the ground about five minutes after Dean Romance gets to the venue. Unable to get the day off work the poor bugger has got on the earliest available train and within minutes is hastily plugging in his gear and away we go. The Grosvenor isn’t the best pub in the world and neither is it the worst. It just looks a little unloved and with me feeling damp at the corners and with one eye on the clock [last tube around midnight and you just don’t want to get stuck in Stockwell on a wet and windy Friday do you?] I just can’t get in to the swing of things. NAG, I feel are slightly let down by the lack of volume. Middle NAG is drilling a hole into a cymbal with a power drill when he gets it stuck which sends him into a rage and equipment is sent flying. He’s sent flying, he falls over and loses it and charges out of the venue. Left and right NAG stand there in silence in front of baffled audience. I leave, missing Mikawa. Unforgivable I know but it has to be done.

Somewhere in the middle of all this there was a brief Hair Police tour with a stop over in Leeds. The last time they played Leeds the venue was double booked and they ended up playing the shittest venue in town; the upstairs of The Vine. The upstairs room of The Vine looks like its been boarded up since 1983. You could hardly see through the windows for grime, beermats were literally glued to the formica table tops, there was a gents toilet that hadn’t had water run through it for years [but that didn’t stop us using it], buffets with legs missing, a total dump. Tonight though, they’re at the much improved Brudenell. When I first stared visiting the Brudenell it was more Pheonix Nights than respected venue. After a close scrape with the local authorities in which they nearly lost their entertainment license due to complaints about the noise, they’ve beefed up the soundproofing, beefed up the PA and even had the decency to stock some Chimay [whilst I’m at the bar two young lads appear and spying the Chimay ask the barman what it is ‘oh its some really strong Belgian stuff’ he says you wont like it and he’d be right - best stick to the WKD]. The PA is the envy of The Grosvenor. If NAG had had this PA then they’d have floored the place. As it is even the support acts are sounding impressive. A collaboration between Mutant George and Lee Culver going by the name Inseminoid delivers some of those great rumbling noise bass drop outs. They trail off into a tinny recording of a bog standard pop tune that goes on so long the audience wander away bemused and befuddled. Astral Social Club’s stuttering set seems to be some kind of Abba tribute. Latest ASC insert Paul Walsh layers on all kinds of sonic abuse as compliment to Campbell’s guitar frills, pumping beats and obscure Abba loop. There’s some kind of equipment failure mid set but the pair recover with a monstrous drum driven Krautrock/Faust-like wig out. Hair Police play the floor in front of the stage, all dark glasses, drunken equipment thrash and beery bass riffs. After soaking up their No Fun LP Certainty of Swarms this last week I revel in the combination of gadget led noise meets flat out rock throb meets disjointed fucked up stop start hit it miss it sprawl. Hair Police are no Wolf Eyes-lite they are the halfway house between what the indie kids want and what the noise crowd will give them. Its a short set, maybe twenty minutes but its still a visceral thrill.

Just Glittering Issue 2

One of me early offerings from the mid 90's with weasel on cover.

JG2

http://www.mediafire.com/?mjlj3kdhmuh

Filthy Social Club/Astral Turd + various others

A piece I originally wrote for inclusion in the forthcoming noise journal As Loud As Possible but which has now been replaced by a more recent offering.

In which the hirsute Stewart Walden sits on a freezing bus with broken windscreen wipers on the hard shoulder of the M1 on a wet Saturday night in January in the midst of a 600 mile round trip just for the brief delight to be had in throwing Smell & Quim audience members around a tatty room smelling of spilt beer and brought in kebabs. Walden is one of the true unsung heroes of the UK noise underground. So far off the radar as to be seemingly on a different planet but appearing Gandalf like at S&Q gigs, gigging with Neil Campbell and drinking cloudy cider in real ale bars. Because it is to the West we must look first. West Yorkshire and two fine West Yorkshire residents going by the name of Astral Social Club and Filthy Turd rolling around a mucky pub in Leeds like a pair of drunk Injuns after necking a bottle of the white mans firewater. The Turdster, last seen in Dortmund Square 9 o’clock Friday night stripped to the waist, beer belly to the fore, singing songs about his dirty snake, wearing a skull mask, keeping a maddening beat with an empty baked bean tin and a stick. ASC mainman Neil Campbell, last seen hot footing it back from some chic euro hotspot electro love in after wowing the denizens with his sun melting beats and drones. But on this [probably] wet July night they pull together as Filthy Social Club/Astral Turd, a sea of feedback and Red Indian holler. The Turdster cracking his whip, espousing gibberish spoken words, the pair of them howling like they’re trapped on a plane that’s losing height and the sea’s coming at them at zillion miles an hour. Crashed cymbals and the Astral Social Club beat box breaking up and sounding like a cheap disco through plasterboard walls. Needless to say the whole thing builds into an uncontrollable monster that no doubt had the lights flickering and the punters downstairs wondering what the fuck was going on.

EE’s broken analogue noise dump cassette ‘Ceramics’ is fine wonderment to my shell-likes. Taking apart the back of an old CRT TV and sticking your fingers where you shouldn’t, putting a metal bar across the circuitry of an old reel to reel computer main frame or just plain old guitar effects boxes. I don’t know how they make this shit and I prefer not to know. It spoils the effect. If I found out it was really easy then I might go and do it and form a noise band and see the world and get to sleep on peoples floors and not shower for days and get bitten by things that live in carpets and drink too much alcohol and eat too much of the wrong foods and forget what country I was in or what day it was and when I got back home I’d make some noises like this and send them to Sound Holes who’d spray paint the cassette and put it in a box and make 68 copies so that 68 people could have one each and listen to its churning noise and feedback. Except for the bit towards the end of side two where it all goes a bit pear shaped. I wouldn’t do that bit because it was a bit crap really.

Snotnosed – Live Shit Action 2003-2006 - utter madness - listen to the sound of a big bald bloke fly head first into a dustbin full of broken crockery. Gasp in amazement at the sight of a big bald bloke smashing the shit out of pokey venues with a sledgehammer. Be amazed at stories of how big bald bloke breaks bones and bleeds everywhere. Because if you’re going to do a Hanatarash tribute act you might as well do it right. And then there’s the machete and the Peter Sutcliffe mask and the broken records … lots of things broken of course.

But first you need your big baldy scary bloke, that’s Michael Gillham [Cock Combat], on some outings he’s joined by Cock Victory [on metal and drills] and there’s ‘Censored’ too but mainly its Cock Combat going for head bleeding glory in a series of mental outings where audiences scream and shout encouragement as the debris from a Dansette record player mingle with the spilt beer and the blood. Cock Combat screams too, galvanized dustbins are destroyed, cymbals hurled with gusto. Lots of things get broken including Cock Combat’s bones. Three gigs in a row he breaks foot, knuckles and wrist. Some people would have given up but this just spurs him on.

I once saw Snotnosed play the Royal Park Cellars in Leeds. Cock Combat wore a Yorkshire Ripper mask and waved a sledgehammer at the audience before doing back flips onto broken cymbals. He destroyed a galvanized dustbin by repeatedly swinging it into the floor as Cock Victory hid behind a box of tricks keeping the noise levels up. That gig isn’t here sadly but there are six other tracks of equally enjoyable mayhem, including Live Actions 0, 1, 4 and 5 to keep the English noise obsessed fan happy. From such mayhem comes a surprisingly good listen. In between breaking records over his head and waving fire extinguishers at the audience the Cocks cook up some decent ear bleed. The Bloodcurdling screams, the sounds of things being busted, it’s enough to bring a tear to your eye.

Snotnosed activity is now suspended, presumably so Gillham can get his breath back, but this here document [which even copies the first Hanatarash sleeve and logo and comes with pin badge and booklet] is all you need to re-live those extra special demented moments. Just insert disc and hit yourself over the head with your sister’s records.

Under his Kylie Minoise moniker Lea Cummings gave us one of the best noise releases of 2008 with Spank Magic Lodge, an utterly magnificent noise breach which will surely one day receive its heroes welcome. It had zany track titles too like ‘The Last Survivors of a Band of Nude and Long Haired Freaks’ and I loved it.. Then comes ‘You Suffer’ a CD of seemingly endless maximalism and unwavering dullness that would be better employed as a beer mat. Maybe it was just something he had to get out of his system? Maximalist noise has its fans but its safe to say that I’m not one of them. Lock yourself in, turn up the stereo and kick four of your senses good bye for an hour … err no thanks. Coming after the sheer joy of Spank Magic Lodge it’s hard to bear.

Fortunately for us Cummings also appears in Opaque. A twin headed guitar beast who ditched their drummer years ago when they developed a penchant for avant guitar noise. Opaque don’t just do neck ringing head down mindless noise though. On the four disc set ‘The Cult of Survivors - Unreleased Tracks 1997-2007’ there’s plenty of honest to goodness noise of course but within these forty odd tracks of live and studio detritus lives pulverizing drones, struck strings and deathly frottage.

Seems Opaque live shows have the habit of polarizing the audiences though, half of them bottling them off and unplugging their guitars while the other half try plugging them back in again. As far as noise goes they sure don’t sound or look pretty; track one, disc one, a two minute blast-a-thon that must have rattled the rafters in Utrecht. It’s brutal unapologetic ear wax dislodging material and if anything nearer to prime Jap noise circa mid 90’s than two guys with guitars in Europe in 2004. But they can do ambient too and if Buddhist temple like chilled out ambience with dying amp warmth is your bag then there’s some of that on here too. TNB clang isn’t far away as are gloriously built up overdriven motordrones and echoing dead factory ambience.

They also have the sense to jumble the styles too so that each disc runs its own stylistic gamut. Something to be welcomed when faced with so much material in one package in these days of ever dwindling attention spans. Of course, four discs is always going to carry unnecessary baggage and I reckon that this could have easily been slimmed down to two hour long discs or, if I’m being brutally honest, maybe just the one.

Andy Jarvis floats around the UK underground noise scene like a traffic warden – only friendlier. Sticking 3 inch CDR’s from his own First Person label under windscreen wipers and taking notes of how long you’ve been parked he drifts along invading Stoke on Trent’s pubs with a variety of fellow bong merchants laying down everything from ether pluck to vibrant noise drone. When not running his own label he appears from nowhere on obscure outposts espousing drone and strum. On the four unnamed tracks on Aghast/Agape Jarvis layers jumbled guitar chords over shimmering electronics, lays down orgasmic Tangerine Dream like synth washes over a Robert Fripp guitar run and on one track sounds like Manhattan Research era Raymond Scott after a good session. The first track is sub sub sub guitar riffage played with the fattest plectrum in the box reverberating back to you until it morphs into mangled vocal mantras that come in half way between Tuvan throat singing and a moaning mystic at a lively seance.

But back to Walden who this time turns up in London at the Old Blue Last with Neil Campbell [or should that be Procrane Split?] a gig seeing the light of day on Campbell’s own Astral Social Club CDR run, this being number 16. Procrane and Stool Man go where no dronester has ever gone before; a deranged, monged out, head nodding cess pit of mutated beats, held down synth keys, wild Theremins and shortwave radios. Its 25 minutes of batting each others senses up hill and down dale. It runs beautifully, taking in Pan Sonic like bass spasms, spaced out Theremin walks and one finger snyth jabs. They climax in a cumulative splatter, knee trembling and with the walls shaking - one half of them heads for the North leaving the London punters with only their flat ale and bleeding ears to contemplate. The other goes back to the bar. Bad news is this though … there’s only 24 copies to go round.

Filthy Social Club/Astral Turd - www.777was666.com [cassette]

A Jarvis- www.beyondrepairrecords.com [cassette – 50 copies]

EE - www.sndhls.com [cassette]

Snotnosed - www.atwarwithfalsenoise.com [CD]

Kylie Monoise/Opaque www.korvoroxsound.com

ASC - http://www.myspace.com/astral_social_club

As Loud As Possible http://www.asloudaspossible.org/

Just Glittering issue 1

This is the first thing I ever did and its pretty crap but it contains information on and words by Milovan Srdenovic and Seedian Gross. From the mid 90's

JG 1 MASTER COPY.pdf