Knurr & Spell / Ashtray Navigations

Ashtray Navigations - Cloud Come Cadaver.
Memoirs Of An Aesthete. CD
MOA2013-2

Knurr & Spell - Being Psychedelic Sounds From Yorkshire
Memoirs of an Aesthete / Research Center for Definition of Happiness [West Yorkshire Branch]. Split Release. CDR
MOA-2013-1







When in Dusseldorf play spot the millionaire. They’re easy to find in their gold brocaded skippers caps, red slacks and deck shoes, a last desperate attempt at trying to capture that Warren Beatty mid 70's look before gravity takes a hold of their nether regions. Watch them finger the price tags of luxury goods in designer shops on the Königstrasse, price tags designed to induce reflex wincing amongst those with lesser means. Pale blue cotton jackets costing €1800 and watches that you could swap for three bedroom semis. Writing down the price of that cotton jacket in my notebook I realised that for the same amount of money I could get a 1000 glasses of Altbeer in any of Dusseldorf fine ale houses or, if I was so inclined, the above two releases and €1780 change.

The Alt was, as ever, worth the trip. A bitter, hoppy, top fermented brew served in 25CL glasses thats brought to your table by a team of constantly busy beer waiters. Each glass is ceremoniously dumped on your beermat and then marked off with a stubby pencil which the beer waiters keep nonchalantly tucked behind one ear. Monies are collected at your table at the sessions end when all your ticks are counted up and the total written on your now soggy beermat. Everybody drinks the same beer, everybody goes home happy. My favourite watering hole and the place to go to experience the full on Alt experience is the Zum Eurige - here the beer is poured straight from a keg thats tapped on the floor and lifted into place by three hefty beer waiters. Glasses are constantly poured and then held aloft on silver trays through its many rooms and on a busy Saturday night, where the Champions League Final consisted of two German teams, they were changing a barrel about every fifteen minutes whilst serving what I reckoned to be about a thousand customers. The atmosphere is one of social hospitality where consideration for the drinker is the prime objective, food is sold until about ten at night and bar snacks are offered by food waiters doing the rounds [just don’t try the Mettbroetchen  - thats seasoned raw minced pork on a teacake with onions on top - never again]. Compare this with trying to get served in a busy Spoons on a Friday night where the overworked and underpaid staff do their best amidst groups of arseholed blokey blokes whose over enjoyment of shite lager makes you wish Tasers were legal.

Its only an hour an ten minutes to Dusseldorf from Leeds Bradford Airport which would give you just enough time to squeeze in ‘Being Psychedelic Sounds From Yorkshire’. Whilst debating the intricacies of Knurr & Spell with your neighbour and passing on the three small cans of Carlsberg Export for ten pounds offer that Jet2 think is good value, you can sit back and bask in the knowledge that something stirs in the Leeds environs.

Knurr and Spell is a now virtually extinct game peculiar to Yorkshire. The game was played on the tops of moors by men in clogs and flat caps and is often described as a poor mans golf. Equipment was basic and the rules were simple, a wooden rod with a square lump of wood on the end [the Spell] with which you hit a small porcelain ball [the Knurr] as far and has hard as you possibly could. At one time it was incredibly popular and large numbers of people would tramp up to the top of bleak and windy moors to watch grown men hit a small pellet of porcelain 400 yards. Bets were placed, competition was fierce and then they invented colour television.

In case you were unaware there’s an emergent psychedelic noise drone experimental kind of thing ongoing in Yorkshire [and Leeds in particular]. Under gloomy skies and with the aid of flat vowels and whippets people have been making psychedelic noise drone experimental sounds for some years now. In their own quiet way Phil Todd and Mel Delaney have been the unsung heroes of this continuing ‘scene’. Aided and abetted by the likes of Midwich, Astral Social Club, Piss Superstition, noisy buggers like Foldhead and Half an Abortion, labels likes Sheepscar Light Industrial, Fencing Flatworm and the wonderfully named Kirkstall Dark Matter things have been getting spacier for some time now. Striate Cortex got the ball rolling with their benchmark release ‘Victorian Electronics - A Leeds Assemblage’ a four-way three inch CDR jobbie that disappeared quicker than a pint on a Friday tea time and if I may be so bold there’s my own humble effort ‘The Feeding of the 2,079,211 - A Compilation of West Yorkshire Residents’, a various artist cassette that came out a few years ago and which I still have a few copies left should anyone care for one.

On ‘Knurr & Spell’ you will find Ocelocelot, Moral Holiday, Foldhead and Shemboid who turns out to be a chap going by the name of Alan Sharples. With each track running at around the twenty minute mark theres enough time for you to light a joss-stick, switch on the lava lamp and put the tripe in the oven before really getting into the groove with your own personal finger cymbals and GV roll up. Shemboid’s contribution begins with a blistering ripple of processed guitar that eventually settles out into a blissful dream-like coda of down strummed heavy chord-ness and harmonic delight. Mel’s Ocelocelot is a cow horn blast of detuned synth muck, a warped buzz of dying bees, a Theremin gone mad, perhaps the Mekon’s corporate anthem. As ever Ocelocelot is an entirely unfathomable, un-genreable, un-pigeonholeable slice of otherness.  Foldhead blitz the zero and ones with a sizzling blast of box abuse skree. Aptly titled ‘Taser Delerium’ its flat out noise, a noise enlivened by a shifting disorientation, a flicker book eye blinking mass of loose live wires and androids gone berserk. But my pick of the bunch goes to Moral Holiday. Moral Holiday being the Toddmeister on his day out in Dario Argento country. ‘No Forks’ is a cheap slasher movie soundtrack that has a doom-laden two chord left hand synth repeat backbone on which we get echoey downward spiraling motes of Moogblather, a spacey phasered PE like vocal and a sumptuous frazzled guitar solo at its end. Its remit is to transport you from Boar Lane to Alpha Centuri via Tangerine Dream territory with nothing simpler than a CD with pictures of rhubarb, blackberries and tripe on it. One to savour.


And then you play Cloud Come Cadaver and you realise that Ashtray Navigations are still one of the best, if not thee best bands in Leeds. Phil and Mel soak up so much freaked out psyched out spazz that they’ve now begun to sound like one of the best bonged out ensembles that never made it out of mid 70’s Deustchland. Play me this blindfolded and I’ve have told you that it was prime German muck played by people with long hair, longer beards and a roomful of analogue synths, bongoes and electric guitars. Last track ‘The Final Hit’ is just that Ralph Hutter on a trippy trip with floating motes of flutes, synth dabs, distant bongo slaps and a synth solo played somewhere in the middle section of the keyboard for the duration. We begin with a languorous top end guitar solo workout thats played out over some choppy keyboard stabs and a cicada like backbone rhythm. ‘Granite Phalli’ is like a more austere Harmonia with wobbly analogue rhythms acting as foil to some seriously heavy psych chord riffage. ‘Like 12 Xmas Dinners Stacked On Top Of Each Other’ is an off his tits Keith Emerson chucking black puddings and pork pies at his Moog from 50 yards away, spaced out one finger keyboard pokes that escape like steam out of a steam trap as bubbling analogue bubbles squiggle about beneath. Can all this really be happening in Yorkshire in 2013? It certainly can.



Contact:

Memoirs of An Aesthete/Ashtray Navigations

Research Center for Definition of Happiness

Spoils and Relics / Cremation Lily / Harbinger Sound

Spoils And Relics - Turner
Harbinger Sound 7”

Cremation Lily - Fertility Servant
Harbinger Sound 7”


The first time I visited Nottingham’s Chameleon Club was after seeing Wolf Eyes and Putrefier play across town. Word got out that there was going to be some kind of late night jam session there with members of Smegma, Heather Leigh Murray and Dave Keenan joining in for one big wig out. You climbed what seemed to be about fifty steep stairs and got a drink and then went up another three hundred tight stairs before you got to somebody's old sitting room that had a huge PA system and mantlepieces on which to rest your drinks. Jase Williams was there and banged his head on one of the low beams smashing his spectacles so badly that he had to tape them to his head so as to be able to see. He was drinking whisky out of a pint glass and was as pissed as a rat. He wasn't on his own. I remember looking out of the window and seeing the Nottingham nightlife wander about zombie-like fashion below. The last time I was there was March 2012 for the three night Rammel Weekender. On a more sober return I realised how well run the place actually was and how friendly the staff were, often making cups of tea and coffee for those less inclined to hard drink and serving up veggie food at ultra cheap rates. The PA was still the best in town and I even got to DJ, playing some crap old chazza records at a spot just below a short flight of steps on a flexible wooden floor that meant every time some over enthusiastic punter jumped down them so did the record I was playing.

For some inexplicable reason this small oasis of sanity smack in the middle of Nottingham’s city centre is shutting its doors for good.  What effect it will have on those more closely associated to the place is obvious, the impact it will have on the local experimental music scene doesn't bear thinking about. Even though I only went there a couple of times I find I have some valued memories.


At least we have ‘Turner’ to spin as we lick our wounds. Released as a tribute to the Chameleons long serving owner Nick Turner it says in one run off groove ‘dedicated to Nick Turner’ and in the other ‘he looks like a young Burt Reynolds’. According to the sleeve he looks more like Charles Bukowski chugging down a bottle of beer. As a nod of appreciation this is subtle and heartwarming.

On Turner we find Spoils and Relics being as wondrous and entertaining as ever, small clockwork toys make their way around the bottom of a mop bucket, destroyed walki-talkie's blare, there's clinking, muffled sounds, wire brush abuse and is that the sound of the Chameleon staff rounding up 4am stragglers before preparing to fight it out for a taxi with the whats left of Saturday nights revelers? Well yes I do believe it is.

I should have been at the Chameleon in March to see Nottingham's finest the Sleaford Mods bat it out with Consumer Electronics and Cremation Lily. I had a brand new hire car at my disposal with heated seats, heated steering wheel, sat nav, all the buttons that my knackered limo didn’t have. I could have traveled down in style and arrived pampered and ready for action but as has been usually the case this year some fetid fever decided to invade my weakened frame rendering me fit for naught else but a Lemsip and a sweaty night in the Poang.


I did see Cremation Lily last year at the Wharf Chambers, a performance of ritualistic Power Electronics that included the wetting of what looked like ashes that were then smeared around face, arms and bare chested body. As ever with Power Electronics I’m reminded of the noise genre that dare not speak its name, a shame for whilst Power Electronics may have been hijacked by every screwball doing the rounds it does turn out the occasional gem. And with that be-blacked body Cremation Lily did indeed turn out to be a gem.

Up until now Cremation Lily releases have appeared on ultra limited edition handmade cassettes with black and white montaged photography as cover art. As a way of building an audience and forging a definite image its something I applaud and encourage.

On this first outing on to vinyl the cover shows a dour Southend on Sea photographed and reproduced in such a way at to make it look about as appealing as an Azerbaijani oil field. Its the misinterpretation that appeals. Where once went charred corpses, gratuitous sex scenes and mutilated genitals we now have a south coast holiday resort masquerading as 1940's Russian front line and it works perfectly. In the run off groove it says ‘the future is bright’ adding further to the mystique. So far so good and then you play it … two sides of destroyed and deliberately incoherent vocals attempting to emerge from beneath an almighty onrush of clubbed to death noise. A man fighting to be heard in a tempest. Whats not to like?

Four tracks are credited as are the dates 7th June 1995 and 9th October 2005. Only two tracks can be seen and heard and what those dates mean I have no idea. Further intrigue.

Cremation Lily are a relatively new act within Power Electronic circles and remain an enigmatic force. Those limited edition cassettes disappear fast as will this single. There's no website or contact for Cremation Lily as far as I can see but for those whose interest has been piqued there's always the Strange Rules website. 


Harbinger Sound seven inchers don’t so much get released as thrown out at closing time. Turner was only made available over the bar at the Chameleon, both have probably all but disappeared. 

Kakawaka / Half An Abortion / Tim Olive & Katsura Mouri

Kakawaka - Ein fröhliches Lied auf den Lippen den Wandersmann kann nichts erschüttern
Cassette.
100 copies + download

Half An Abortion - Drowsy Seepage
Memoirs of an Aesthete. CDR.
MOA-2013-1
75 Copies + download

Katsura Mouri & Tim Olive - Various Histories
845 Audio. CD.
845-2



Apologies for the crappy images above but my scanner isn't behaving. Its not how I like things to be presented you see. Not that I'm a hysterical perfectionist but a scanned image gives detail and highlights the artists wares. Its like Kenny Morrison sez, everything's in the detail. As it stands now you're struggling to see that King Kong like figure ripping up a skyscraper and sticking his penis in it whilst ejaculating through the windows. You'll struggle to see Pete Cann sat at his desk in contemplative mood on the reverse looking like a 70’s German synth pioneer pondering whether to put some batteries in the Walkman and if the the mixer he bought on eBay for ten quid will last for another thirty minute set. You will not see the Kakawaka countryside image in all its fold out J-card glory but you will note that the Tim Olive/Katsura Mouri release is a thing of simplistic beauty and design and its here where we should begin. I like clarity.

What initially put me off Kakawaka was the Kakawaka website [and it has to be said the name itself which I assumed was another Filthy Turd offshoot]  - a  horrible, eye searing glare of canary yellow background, red font and cerise blue links, its titles also being a blurred pixilated mess that would in no way lead me to believe that the person behind this disfigured piece of the interweb was in any way capable of producing something, that whilst no way a classic, is indeed a very good twenty minutes worth of its genre. That genre being Industrial Lite Ambient Ritual Field Recording.

Kakawaka give us two ten minute tracks of processed field recording, reversed tape engineering, noise and an atmosphere that lies somewhere between Dieter Müh’s more quieter moments, Chris Watson on steroids and with perhaps a certain leap of imagination, some of Column One’s output.


I’m guessing that Mr. Kakawaka likes the great outdoors to such an extent that he brings them home to his studio to process them with a sprinkling of Industrial Lite Ambient Ritual Field Recording Noise powder. Here we have the squeaky shaft of a windmill as a stand alone opening before lots of sped up in to reverse sudden stops, squawking crows and glitches before the sound of discordant frequencies being bent into shapes unknown. Crunches, bowl rings, insect chatter and ritualistic drums beaten to galley slave rhythms. All this on ‘Immer Diese Schuld’. The reverse is much better, ‘Überall Nur Widerlicher Schmerz’  begins with a tiny clock panning around your skull before layered thighbones are blown in a medieval jousting competition fashion. Cue a heavy downpour, some held down keyboard key drones and the sound of a car door banging shut at its conclusion.  

Noisy Pete [AKA Half an Abortion, AKA Pete Cann] gives us six tracks of elcetro-acoustic gubbins that show Mr. Cann at his most thinking best. Having got the urge to smash things up out of his system [for a while at least lets assume] he gives us plenty to ponder, especially on the first three tracks where sawn bits of tin and noise gadgets of a various nature are tweaked into sound waves that disappear out of the top of your skull. Proper electro-acoustic noise that’s in a constant state of flux, bubbling and boiling and at times exploding into noise rupture. My only gripe are a couple of rather muddy tracks that appear to have been recorded in a room layered in felt. Murky noise of a mid 90’s cassette bent thats best left well alone. But I forgive him because this has changed my perspective on Half an Abortion and Pete Lives In Leeds and this is on the Memoirs of an Aesthete label which is Phil Todd Who Lives In Leeds.


Meanwhile back in Japan we find Tim Olive continuing his collaborating ways, this time with Katsura Mouri. On previous releases Olive has played a one string electric guitar, guitar pick ups and analogue electronics, on ‘Various Histories’ he’s back with the pick ups and this time ‘metals’ with Mouri being credited with ‘turntables, edits and mix’.

And as with those previous releases the sound quality is simply stunning. The pairing is also a success with Mouri’s turntable antics combining with Olive’s deliberations to produce an almost Smegma like electro-acoustic session. A series of fumblings and clangings, small springs being twanged, wire brushes bering combed, the deep throb of a submarines engine.

Five tracks spread over thirty five minutes is perfect and with one of those tracks [the last, all untitled, perfect] hogging half the release it gives those of you with attention deficit disorder something to hang on to. That last track is a delight with Olive’s metal playing coming to the fore with steel cylinders being rolled and loose wires being monotonously plucked over guitar pick ups delivering that glorious low twanging sound. Its the up close to ear attention to detail that grips you though - the tickling of the ears with sounds culled from table top detritus entwined within a body of sinewaves and low end throbs, the broken pottery being sifted through that compliments an emergent buzz, the discordant thrum of seriously detuned guitar strings as accompaniment to glass crunching. A complimentary pairing.

Chuck in the bold design, plain brown card CD liner and you have a label worth following.


Kakawaka main page 

Kakawaka Bandcamp

845 Audio

MOA
 

SPON 27 + 28

SPON 27 - Dr. Adolf Stegs Pocket Sized Survival Kit

Contents include:

One sea shell bracelet
Seven small pieces of chalk in various colours
Three beer bottle caps [one Marstons, one Miller, one plain]
Three used plasters in a plastic bag and one used plaster on its own
An enamel badge celebrating the Queens Golden Jubilee
A small key
Four Christmas tree lights
Two Licorice Allsorts [one pink pastille, the other white nougat with licorice layers]
Fourteen tiles spacers
Approximately twenty cat biscuits
Approximately twenty Rawl plugs
A picture hook
A broken piece of blade
A plastic bottle stopper
Three screw bits for a socket set
Two slot headed cap head screws with wing nut fastenings
An enamel badge from the British Red Cross
Several staples and numerous panel pins all attached to a magnet
A purple cosmetic jewelry stone
A used plaster with hair attached in a plastic bag
Three dice [die?]
Two dome headed slotted screws
Some nail clippings in a plastic bag
Several small screws and some bits of plastic in a plastic bag

All housed in one of those tidy boxes that only people with tweezers or fingers like a child thief can get into.

What I am able to survive with this kit remains unclear. A long flight? Fifteen minutes in front of the computer? A trip to a part of the world where uneducated savages are appeased by the promise of useless bits of paraphernalia in exchange for virgin brides? Christmas? A day out in Burnley?

SPON 28 - The Brion Gysin Issue

A single A3 sheet with a reproduction of Brion Gysin’s obituary as written by Genesis P Orridge which appeared [I think] in the Guardian newspaper. The reverse containing one of Gysin’s artworks and a photo of the man as enhanced by Steg. With it comes a single sheet of A4 with some more biographical Gysin info and a Steg enhanced Gysin picture on the reverse.
                 
SPON [? - Could be a continuation of the above or the above could be a wrapper for this]

A brightly coloured A4 ‘comic’ whose cover is a letter of complaint from the Technical Enforcement Officer of the Environment Protection wing of the Lancashire County Council requesting that to whom it may concern better shift their shit or there’ll be trouble. Inside there’s plenty of Steg’s great penwork and a collection of family snaps, mainly from the 70’s and 80’s, containing many a shot of a child dutifully standing in front of something important. The young Dr. Steg perhaps? Theres also a great pull out centre spread Dr. Steg artwork which contains the following words; ‘Mick Philpott Britains Best Dad’. Mick Philpott being the father of 17 children and the killer of six of them when a bizarre plot to frame the woman who left him went horribly wrong.

SPON [CD]

The Ceramic Hobs Live At The Cedar Tavern Blackpool 2012.

After ten minutes of listening to Live at the Cedar Tavern my computers optical drive decided that it had had enough and whirred to an abrupt halt. This has never happened to me before. I feel it is all part of Dr. Steg’s master plan. Before everything went whiirrrrrrrrrrrr I heard the Hobs talking and about five minutes of feedback, every other instrument stubbed out bar for the tiniest amount of drums. I could of course try to play it on another drive but I feel that its better left this way.

Its Steg’s world. There’s no point trying to make sense of it.


http://worldofsteg.co.uk/

Bugs, Brainwaves and Bangalore. More from Gruenrekorder

Mark Lorenz Kyslea - Eins+
Gruenrekorder. CD
Gruen 120

David Rothenberg - Bug Music
Gruenrekorder/Terra Nova Music. CD
Gruen 122/TN1309

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay - Eye Contact With The City [an elegy to Banglaore]
Gruenrekorder. CD
Gruen 108




I’ve been looking at Dave Foster Wallace’s book Infinite Jest for some years now. Since it was published in 1996 in fact. I used to pick it up in the Bradford branch of Waterstones  and marvel at its sheer size [all 1,067 pages of it] and wonder if one day I’d find the time, or the courage, to read it. Seeing as how I’ve now managed to club Pynchon into a corner with a knotty stick I decided the time was right and finally bought a copy.

Imagine my surprise then, dear reader, to find Wallace’s voice on the Mark Lorenz Kysela’s release ‘Eins+’. There he is on Martin Shüttlers composition ‘Schöner Leben 7’ in what I assume is one of his readings along with samples of people practicing their sax solos as culled from Youtube. Its almost like he’s begging me to read the damned thing.

On ‘Eins+’ Kysela’s plays various Sax’s, clarinets and assorted oddments in thee modern composition style, interpreting the work of several modern composers; Christoph Ogiermann, Thomas Stiegler, Michael Maierhof, Alvin Lucier, Uwe Rasch and the aforementioned Shüttler.

A casual read of the enclosed booklet leaves you in no doubt as to what kind of territory we’re entering here ‘...the autonomy of the aesthetic process is subordinated to dispositions that regulate it externally’. Erm yeah. As ever its whats coming out of the speakers that count and what does emerge is truly captivating. On Michael Maierhof’s  ‘Splitting 13’ a plastic cup filled with marbles is inserted into the mouth of an Altosax the result being a series of shrill and dissonant vibrations capable of shattering anything brittle. Tremendously painful and piercing rattles that are followed by silences and low undertones that are the sort of hums you get from digeridoos. A bit like being given electric shocks and then a nice cup of tea in rotation. The entire 70 minute trip begins with a walk to the performing area and a Sax so closely miked as to be able to pick up everything from breaths, tone holes being covered and uncovered and a series of dissonant scrapes that screech like a length of suspension bridge cable being abused with a tenon saw. Electronic elements are introduced, most prominently on Shüttler’s piece where we begin with a gentle flickering of glitches, fried connections and disconnected telephone lines but perhaps most notably on Alvin Lucier’s ‘In Memorium John Higgins’ where ‘the vibrations of a stable clarinet tone and the vibrations of of a slowly rising and barely audible sinus tone meet’. This being Kyslea’s interpretation of Lucier’s discovery that amplified brain waves could be converted into audible frequencies.

We end with a a short but delightful composition from Uwe Rasch called ‘For Sopranosaxophone and Volleyball’. I’ll assume you can work that one out for yourselves. The piece ends with the crashing of a piano lid. A fitting finale.

Kyslea’s task couldn’t have been an easy one but he tackles these difficult pieces with a professional hand. A delightful if at times difficult listen and one that I feel I’d be more comfortable with listening at home than in the live situation. Having seen plastic cups filled with water scraped in the name of contemporary composition I feel I have a platform to speak from.

David Rothenburg likes to blow his Sax too. And his bass clarinet and a Norwegian flute that has no holes. He likes to play along to insects sounds as captured on several tracks here. Rothenburg wanders into the great outdoors to blow improv and play along with the Katydids. The idea being that the insects provide a natural rhythm to Rothenburg’s improvisations. On a number of tracks he’s helped out by friends, most effectively on ‘Glynwood Nights’ where the overtone singing of Timothy Hill compliments the found sounds of nocturnal insects. A live track as recorded in Estonia [‘in which only 50 people were allowed to attend’ it sez here] is perhaps my pick of the bunch, mainly due to it not having much of Rothenburg but lots of a guitarist called Robert Jürjendal whose Hillage like noodlings are the perfect compliment to the nighttime sounds of the Borneo rainforest.

I can’t help thinking that I could listen to Rothenburg without the insects and the insects without Rothenburg but I’m stuck with them both. If I was a fan of bad puns I’d say it bugs me but I’m not. The guy obviously loves what he does and has a quirky sense of humour [track 7; Phaaaroah! Surely he’s a Pharoah Sanders fan? And track 9 ‘The Water Boatman’s Loudest Penis’ - ‘do not try this at home’] But for the most part I find these pieces jarring.

Budhaditya Chattopadhyay’s ‘elegy to Bangalore’ is a single 55 minute composition thats a
monotonous ride mixing the dull roar of building work, city traffic, pneumatic drills [them again] the agitated chatter of site foremen, grinders at work, traditional Indian classical music, [that’ll be the sounds culled from reel-to-reel tapes found in the city’s flea market]  … you get the idea … in an attempt to convey the rapid urban growth of Bangalore. In one huge solid lump that I found difficult to digest.

The entire composition appears as if through a cotton wool filter, car horns appear out of audible fog like dying sea mammals stranded on the Arabian seashore, scaffolding clangs to ground in a muffled thud, clarity there is none. Things finally get interesting around the 40 minute mark when pneumatic drills [them again] get phased through some kind of filter making for a slightly woozy I’ve-had-five-pints-too-many feel. An unintentional drug type trip maybe but I’m glad it was there all the same.

Maybe my listening facilities are out of whack here. Maybe I’ve been listening to to many pneumatic drills of late? Eye Contact With The City was the recipient of an honorable mention at the 2011 PRIX  Ars Electronica fest so what the fuck do I know?

Perhaps Dave Wallace will be more digestible?






 

Gruenrekorder

Felipe Otondo - Tutuguri

Felipe Otondo - Tutuguri
Sargasso. CD





For a scary moment I thought I might be out of my depth here. I mean I’ve read reviews of Tuturgi that were thousands of words long written by people who’d swallowed dictionaries. Then you discover that Otondo is a lecturer at the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts and is the recipient of several international musical awards, he’s also the author of works such as ‘Contemporary trends in the use of space in electroacoustic music’ and ‘Using spatial sound as an interdisciplinary teaching tool’. Don’t think there’s much chance we’ll see Otondo down the Wharf Chambers any time soon then, but then he has premiered in Leeds.

The four ten minute-ish compositions on Tuturgi are of such depth that I feared my humble playback devices weren’t going to be up to their reproduction. We are in electroacoustic field recording territory here and you don’t listen to something that premiered at INA/GRM and received first prize at the 2012 Quartz Radio France International competition on a boombox you bought at a car boot sale. We’re dealing in serious head music here friends.

So I do my best by donning headphones and turing up the volume. Shutting off all outside interference for total immersion I submerge into Otondo’s world and ‘Irama’. Irama being ‘the general meaning of time interval between two successive sounds or actions’ as perceived in Javanese gamelan. So what we have is a rhythmic piece that ebbs and flows at once a huge low bass gong that drones out to be met by the purest solitary struck note you ever heard. A single ringing chime that resonates so deeply and clearly, so piercingly that it seems to penetrate the very deepest recesses of your skull. Tiny scatters and flurries of notes merge to almost silence creating an air of tension thats kept in place by the reappearance of tappings that sound like thin porcelain cups being struck.

Inspiration for the second track ‘Teocalli’ comes from the Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar and his story of a man who finds himself in hospital dreaming that he’s on the run from the Aztecs. Street drumming from Mexico mixes with samples of interviews with Zapoteco indians, monks plainsong and human whistles all devised as a parallel running of the dreamer and the modern Mexico. Its also Otondo’s noisiest work here where the drumming becomes warped into howling jet blasts of eruption that give way to the gentlest plain song and then, by way of respite, a child’s squeal of delight.

Third track ‘Ciguri’, inspired by the writings of Antonin Artaud contains perhaps the most startling and ear popping sounds on the whole release. Centered around a peyote ritual that fascinated Artaud ‘Ciguri’ becomes an enveloping field of tintinnabulation aided by a deep drone and a piercing high end hertz tone that pierces your hearing like a hot needle. Originally developed from part of a music and dance piece that showed at the Edinburgh fringe this piece was actually played at the 2011 Huddersfield International Computer Music Association where the state of the art reproduction facilities caused some audience members serious discomfort. Played in Huddersfield, premiered in Leeds and I missed em both. Unhappy face.

‘Sarnath’ uses field recordings gathered at Buddhist pilgrimage sites in India. Bells, gongs, drums, birdsong, chatter, chanting, prayer. Ortondo phases the bells and gongs until they sound like an earthquake in a grandfather clock factory each time allowing the eruption to diminish leaving gentle Harry Partch type rhythms to sit alongside exotic birds and the sound of Buddhist marching bands blowing their Indian trumpets into a squeals of adoration.

Felipe Ortondo is a Chilean who, like most internationals composers lives a peripatetic lifestyle. Having worked in Denmark he now finds himself in England and Lancaster via a stint in York. He’s won numerous international awards for his work and has performed [and had his work played] in numerous countries. He’s written extensively on the nature of electroacousitc music, has been involved in dance and theatre, sound instillation and has worked on Radio 4 dramas. In his spare time he even finds time to paint. He’s a sense of humour too, if you get chance have a listen to his seven minute tribute to Frank Zappa   


And yes he does have a soundcloud page but I think he’d prefer it if you went along to one of his performances and experienced his work in real time, failing that you could always buy Tutuguri.

Comes in an origami like fold out sleeve which I’ve never seen before and an informative booklet. A remarkable release that demands a much wider audience.

Contact:

Sargasso

Otondo

Totstellen/GRMMSK

Totstellen - KSR
Telenautik/1000+1 Tilt Recordings. CDR
175 Copies.

Totstellen - Komaschine
Totes Format 11. 3” CDR
30 Copies.

Totstellen - Live @ Wendel [Berlin 2006]
Totes Format.12. Cassette. C22
25 Copies.

GRMMSK - Dirty Snow
Totes Format 13. Cassette.
50 Copies.






Collapsing old buildings feature in a rare outing for the video format courtesy of German based artist Totstellen. A ten minute film of various mechanical dinosaur beasts tearing apart steel reinforcement and crumbling concrete in a way that's weirdly compelling. Not auto destructive art but architectural destructive art, a 60’s tower block in Hamburg that was the last squat in the city, the images and sounds of it being slowly brought to ground via hydraulic jaws and pneumatic drills as captured by Totstellen in a bid to try and make sense of why his former home was being flattened in the name of capitalism. Some sounds are manipulated, some looped, some processed, some added to but when its raw it works best.

Working with primitive and borrowed equipment Totstellen wandered the place alone in the days before its end mixing the sounds he found there with the ones from the actual demolition; hence plenty of sawing metal, pounding drills, donkey engines puttering, the crunch of glass underfoot and at its heart stillness and the shrill squeal thats feedback teetering on the edge of rupture. Fifty minutes worth of field recordings that I feel are only slightly marred by a slightly overzealous wish to introduce industrial noise elements during the first track ’10’ [the second track being ‘8’]. Still, there’s plenty to admire here, not least the sleeve which is a rough cut from a buildings blueprint which has been overprinted with a stark image of steel reinforcing. More Einstürzenden Altbauten than neubauten really. Think TNB symphony or musique concrete meets concrete.

Totstellen is the peripatetic sound artist who when he isn’t railing against the system turns up as GRMMSK who plunders dub reggae which he listens to whilst riding around Helsinki on the bus network but its under the Totstellen moniker that his best work is to be found.

On Live @ Wendel Totstellen manipulates sounds he recorded under [and inside] a motorway bridge going over the Elbe whilst playing a homemade stringed instrument with a drill. Not only does it sound good but the images accompanying it are remarkable too; a gaunt baldheaded chap, knacker bare, covered in white paint wandering around Ballardian landscapes like a cross between Blixa Bargeld and Nosferatu. This is all part of a video installation complete with the monotonous roar of traffic, clanging riveted substructure and a processed drilling sound that's the roadside equivalent of facing a dentists drill. Its a creepy listen which compliments the artwork no end. But perhaps the most remarkable release of them all is Komamachine. Sampling dialogue and music from the Quay Brothers film ‘Institute Benjaminata’ this is a chilling and eerie ride into queasy dark ambient territory courtesy of some fine moaning from manacled lost souls and the creaking of leather straps [I’ve not seen the film but I intend to, anything that gets compared to Eraserhead goes down on the to do pile round here] chuck in some sorrowful viola, throbbing industrialania and you have something that would bare comparison to Gavin Bryars ‘Sinking of the Titanic’ writ large on a screen of David Lynchian making.

Having watched the Tunnel/Brucke video on the Totstellen website I urge you to do the same. This is urban exploring with a wider remit. This is trying to make sense of your urban surroundings through sound and imagery.

The Live @ Wendel has 12 different covers, Dirty Snow comes wrapped in a Styrofoam sleeve, stick in the blueprint sleeve on KSR and you have somebody whose really thinking about what they’re doing in the packaging stakes whilst tackling some big themes at the same time.






Contact:



Totes Format

Totstellen

1000+1 Tilt Recordings

Muennich/Esposito/Jupitter-Larsen - The Wraiths of Flying A

Muennich/Esposito/Jupitter-Larsen - The Wraiths of Flying A
Firework Edition Records CD.
FER1102. 300 copies.



Stumbling across a BBC Radio 4 documentary examining the work of Dr. Konstantin Raudive at around the same time this dropped through the door was a spooky coincidence. It was Raudive, an elderly Lithuanian doctor, who one day in1969 turned up at Gerrards Cross with a large amount of tape recordings which he claimed contained the voices of the dead. Over 70,000 of them amongst which were the voices of Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini and no doubt many a lesser well known human being. With Raudive EVP was born thats Electronic Voice Phenomena to you and me.

‘The Wraith of Flying A’ incorporates EVP and the work of a couple of American silent film actresses including Audrey Munson to whom this release is dedicated [thats her on the cover]. Munson’s success would be the inspiration for over fifteen statues in New York alone and whose demise led to her being incarcerated in a lunatic asylum for the last 65 years of her life until her death at the age of a 104. I’m assuming that its GX who has the silent movie actress fixation. The fact that her career ended with the rise of the talkies and we have EVP here has me thinking that there may be some kind of talking theme going on here.

Michael Esposito’s work with EVP has passed through here before. As an audio excursion I find it fascinating but as proof that the dead are communicating with us I find it about as positive as proof as that of mediums who say they can put you in touch with your recently deceased Aunt Ethel, psychics and the Loch Ness Monster. If the dead really wanted to communicate with us why would they make it so hard for us to decipher what they’re saying, why not just leave a note saying ‘I’m OK, the foods shit but the hours are great’?

Here we have thirteen tracks six of which are short half minute interludes which I’m assuming are pure examples of EVP, that is white noise through which, if you strain your ears as far as they will go, you can just about make out a feeble sound that may just be someone saying ‘put the kettle on’. Its the same as scrunching your eyes up to see pixilated pictures. Why the dead never say anything prophetic or that is of any use to us remains to be explained.

Of the remaining seven tracks only one is a collaboration between all three artists. ‘Heimsuchung’ [German for ‘afflicting’] is one of those boiler plate noise drones that sounds terrific with the headphones on and the volume whacked up as far as you can stand it. A growling linear low end pitch of a roar thats a B52 bomber warming up its engines, EVP comes through in parts, each voice a snatch of a sound that appears for a couple of seconds only to disappear as quickly again, the tinkling of light chains [the ghost of Christmas past perhaps?] and the rattling of Ernie’s ghostly gold tops in their crates make up the rest of it.

The Haunting of Mary Minter Miles [another silent film actress] comes in two parts and is a collaboration between GX and Esposito. The first is a short piece of swirling ‘voices’, the second a more expansive nine minutes worth of actual talking which sounds like it could have been the actress herself being interviewed over which various scattershot sounds flit in and out like bats trapped in a room.

‘Slithering’ is the work of Muennich alone. Here the whole piece has been dragged through the very dusty groove of a very old record above which vibrate tiny clocks.

So we have EVP, noisedrone, field recordings and probably some electro-acoustic manipulation too [I’m particularly taken with the tossed coins coming to rest on first track ‘The Green Room’]. An all round decent listen whatever your thoughts on EVP and communicating with the dead.


If you get the chance please do listen to the Jolyan BBC R4 documentary. Not only does Jolyan have the sensible skeptics eye he also touches on various other aspects of the phenomena and people working in the same area, including a chap in Seattle called Brian Jones who records everything from cats and dogs to pebbles being stood on, all of which he claims, like Raudive before him, contain the voices of the dead. Plus, theres probably the only chance you’ll ever get to hear both Gyles Brandreth AND Joe Banks [of Disinformation] on the same program.





Firework Editions

Fragment Factory/Muennich

GX





Esposito


BBC page re EVP

BBC R4 Jolyan Documentary


[not sure if the above works outside the UK?]

LF Records Chalmers/Cooke/Bjerga

Seth Cooke - Pneuma
LF Records. CDR
LF028

Stuart Chalmers - Daydream Empire
LF Records. CDR
LF029

Sindre Bjerga - Black Paper Wings
LF Records. 3” CDR
LF030





You only have to look at the list of influences on Stuart Chalmers ‘Daydream Empire’ to know that you’ve backed a winner: Ghedalia Tazartes, Jeff Keen, Jean Dubuffet, Jorge Luis Borges and William Burroughs … er ... OK thats good enough for me now strap me in and lets see what this Chalmers does with a cassette uh?

So thats what you can do with a cassette uh? Create whole new worlds of sonic exploration, open up new vistas of ear tickling delight, joy for the ear drums, intelligent work-throughs of sounds that taken on their own seem mundane but when mixed into a whole bring on an entirely new meaning; 20’s dance music, gamelan, plucked bridge strings, radio news broadcasts, looped computer game rhythms, bowl rings, the striking of a match, native folk songs in tongues unknown, Apollo rockets taking off, self help meditation courses and Michael Winner complaining of a ‘mediocre haircut’ [for there is humour in here too]. And thats just the merest scratching of a surface to you sir.

Of the eleven tracks on here there’s is but not one second that I would describe as unwanted or in need of further editing. This is your sound explorers motherlode, a thirty five minute joyride that you can dip in to anywhere along its line to find aural gratification of the highest order.

Track six [Maya] kicks off with about four seconds of a fairground organ before layering on the gamelan, someone hitting sticks and a mouth making whooshing sounds. Add to that a rubbed piece of wood, some bottles being knocked over and a piece of string pulled taught and plucked and therein lies the best three minutes and fifty two seconds of musical nirvana to come through the speakers this year.

But lets not stop there. Lets talk about Chalmers gift for juxtaposing sounds; 1930’s ballroom crooners that live but for two second to be replaced by Nurse With Wound parp and the BBC news. ‘Thought Patterns’ wanders into Astral Social Club territory with a looping mini dance beat thats the Galaxian soundtrack smothered with baby gurgles and sped up cassette muck. ‘Moon and a Mask’ comes out of the ether with a looped spoken word sample and a trawl of the shortwave bands.

I could go on describing each track in detail and the numberless ways in which Chalmers has crafted this release but I want you to experience this release for yourself. I am still in awe as to how Chalmers has constructed such a thing of beauty. There was more than just plain old cassette tape involved of course, I suspect synths and radio’s and the odd electro-acoustic phenomena, either way, however way this is life affirming stuff.

A pity I missed the Chalmers and Durgan gig in Bristol recently. I suspect it would have been a classic. 

Back in Seth Cooke’s house we find him suffering at the hands of workmen with pneumatic drills at their disposal. After putting up with the annoyance for long enough Cooke did the only thing that a sound artist can do and recorded the disturbance with an eye [or an ear] to using it as soundsource for future work.


But this is no Einsturzende Neubauten gig. On the first track [both running to about thirty minutes] the drill sounds as if it was recorded at the deep end of a local swimming pool. The muffled sound of the vibrating drill works its way through a series of oscillating waves, each a drowsy somnabulance that probably describes Cooke’s wishful mind during the entire episode. During the second track [both untitled] the drilling becomes more prominent in places, mutated by Cooke’s dextrous hand into something else entirely. The drones slip into the background and passages of calm appear, the drill rears its ugly head again and again until you’re glad it wasn’t you that had to put up with this ongoing set of essential repairs.

As a work of experimental nature it works perfectly and is a fine example of turning a bad experience to your advantage. And then what did he do? He moved from Leeds to Bristol. At least it wasn’t that London.

As in the last review we find Sindre Bjerga jogging in last like a riderless horse in the National. With a semi-hard-on of a drone Bjerga adds radio traffic voices, voice manipulations and jolts of capstan abuse to a low hertz hum. Coming after these last two its a little like losing a tenner and finding a fiver. I’m certain that one day a Bjerga release will arrive at Idwal Towers chock full of ear popping electro-acoustic magnificence but until that day I’m playing Daydream Empire until all the zero’s and ones fall off into the CD player.

 
 


Contact:


LF


Chalmers

Cooke

Bjerga

Kirkstall Dark Matter / Sheepscar Light Industrial

Midwich - Single Figures
Kirkstall Dark Matter. CDR
49 Copies.

Phil Julian - Hive Work
Sheepscar Light Industrial. 3” CDR
SLI.013. 50 Copies.

Sindre Bjerga - Misdirection
Sheepscar Light Industrial. 3” CDR
SLI.014. 50 Copies.

Astral Social Club - Squeegee Anthem  #1
Sheepscar Light Industrial. 3” CDR
SLI.015. 50 Copies.





I felt tortured by having to pass the Wharf Chambers on Saturday night knowing that my chances of going in for a drink were about as slim as the bus ticket that I had in my pocket. Somebody was either playing or soundchecking and there were people stood around clutching glasses and bottles, a warm and welcoming light beckoned me in from the cold cobbled street, but it was all to no avail for I had a previous engagement the extraction from which would result in a fissure of my personal relations that I fear would become permanent.

There’s a gig at the WC on the 22nd of June and I expect you all to be there. Its being organised by Dan Thomas of Sheepscar Light Industrial and its billed as ‘The Compass Points North’. A mouth watering night lays ahead. All the young dudes [and one older one] will be playing: Aqua Dentata, BBBlood, Hagman, Midwich, Petals and These Feathers Have Plumes. A night of contemplative drone and microscopic pops and crackles eked from tin cups, thigh bones and the odd synth.

FB event

The 22nd of June also happens to be as near to my birthday as bugger it is to swearing so I’ll see you all there. Mines a small glass of well chilled Manzanilla please.

Having seen the other half of Hagman climb the parabola with his Sheepscar Light Industrial label Dave Thomas has decided the time is right to enter the fray with a repost of his own. Coming in from the other end of Leeds his Kirkstall Dark Matter label is but one release old but what better way to start than with that Leeds stalwart Rob Hayler and his well loved Midwich project.

‘Single Figures’ captures that essential Leeds cog Rob Hayler in jolly banter mode as he introduces two tracks he played recently at that other well know Leeds venue the Fox & Newt. In typical light hearted Yorkshire banter style the first thing you hear is Phil Todd demanding his money back followed by a jovial ‘gerrof’. There follows two tracks, the first of which [‘Penny Dropped’] finds Hayler expanding on the sound he found so pleasing in his kitchen one day; that of a cake tin lid rocking on a hard surface whilst slowly coming to rest. On ‘Seasonal Adjustment’ the passing traffic of Chapeltown Road becomes the accompaniment, with both, Hayler augments with the barest of cycling synth notes that bring with them that dream-like head lightening drone experience. Hayler admits to liking it loud and warns his audience that it could become uncomfortable but I didn’t hear any doors banging. Not that anybody would have to suffer for long seeing as how most Midiwch sets are done and dusted in around twenty minutes, as is the case here. A pity we’ll have to wait until June to see him tread the boards next. I’ll be down the front genuflecting away with the rest of them. Comes wrapped in pages from John Wyndham’s novel the Midwich Cuckoo in which the pages have been cleverly utilised to mark down the number of the release and in which the the words ‘the’ and ‘cuckoo’ have been erased leaving the word well you know… clever stuff. I dare say these have all gone but a good start from KDM and a label to watch out for.


Meanwhile back in Sheepscar Dan Thomas keeps things ticking over with another three of his SLI releases. Pick of the bunch this time around is London based Phil Julian whose ‘Hive Work’ shifts through various gears via a flapping mid era Whitehouse blow out to tiny fizz, rapid Gieger counter clicks and a vibrating hum thats the celestial OM vibrating at a degree guaranteed to set lightbulbs swinging. Maybe there were bees at work here too. Julian is like a steady hand on the tiller. You know you are in capable hands and this twenty minute snatch of his work is just about damned near perfect.

Astral Social Club keeps up the racket quota with a track thats built around the Charles Ives theory that if one orchestra wont work then use another one in, and make ‘em play something different. ‘Squeegee Anthem  #1’ has at least three tracks going on at once including a backbeat nicked from Hawkwind’s SIlver Machine and two separate Koassolater lines each doing their best to out spazz the other, one going forward, the other backward with a little shimmy from left to right for good measure. Somewhere within this maelstrom an electric guitar has its neck wrung so that the whole shebang comes at you like five DAB's tuned into Funtastic Radio 1 going full blare. A fine example of how Neil Campbell manages to keep ASC going forward without repetition, deviation or hesitation.

One of the most prolific artists experimenting in murk of late is Sindre Bjerga. I’ve a couple of his things here awaiting the pen but I’m finding it hard to be enthusiastic. Judging from these two tracks we can assume that Bjerga likes to wander around Eraserhead like landscapes reeling off cassette tape as decorations for the dead. This is some of the darkest tape manipulation I’ve ever heard: miserable, dank, fetid and claustrophobic. I actually think Bjerga achieves something here, in that he’s produced something interesting but which I personally wouldn’t like to listen to more than a couple of times in case I found myself gong for the knife drawer. 


And whilst I was thinking all this shit up this came through the door:

Knurr & Spell - Being Psychedelic Sounds From Yorkshire.
Memoirs of an Aesthete. MOA CD 004.


Knurr & Spell being that game peculiar to Yorkshire [and now largely forgotten] in which groups of men donned clogs and flat caps and took to the moors to belt a tiny pot ball as far as they cold with long sticks. Apart from reminding me of the game, Knurr & Spell features four tracks from Shembod, Ocelocelot, Moral Holiday and Foldhead but its only just got here and I haven’t listened to it properly yet so you’ll all just have to wait. Oh and there’s pictures of rhubarb and tripe on the CD too. Smashing.



 
KDM


SLI


MOA

Mothers of the Third Reich, BBBlood, Half an Abortion, Left Hand Cuts Off Right, Bad Surbuban Nightmare, The Zero Map

Mothers Of The Third Reich
Swim Club. Cassette. C60
100 Copies

BBBlood/Half an Abortion -Split
Crater Lake. Cassette.
100 copies

Left Hand Cuts Off Right/Bad Suburban Nightmare - Split
Armed Within Movement. C60
AWM007

The Zero Map - Distant Storms
Armed Within Movement. C40
AWM010


So what are we to glean from these offerings? That noise is alive and well and ordering drinks at the bar? That cassettes will never die? That I will never like the Zero Map again until they, by some miracle of a career change, manage to record a really great cover of Haysi Fantayzee’s ‘John Wayne is Big Leggy’? That Jase Williams is still the most enigmatic noise maker in the UK? That the sound of breaking glass will never lose its aesthetic appeal no matter how many ways it gets interpreted? That Left Hand Cuts Off Right are still managing to illicit little squeals of delight?

All of the above statements are true. And seeing as how these four releases were pulled at random from the review pile and given a serious listening to during the last couple of weeks I can still say with absolute certainty that I’m either incredibly lucky to be getting good stuff to review or that my audience now knows me so well as to not bother sending stuff from America. Hello European micro labels celebrating noise and drone and bye-bye American teenagers with too many ‘awesomes’ in their vocabulary.

Talking of which, here we are on the Swim Club website; ‘Super stoked to be putting out this mighty bohemoth [sic] of a tape’, another annoying Americanism followed by a spilling mistok [I’m no pedant myself tho]. I have to admit that I find myself squeezing both fists until the blood appears at the very mention of that most annoying of adjectives, ‘super stoked’ comes second with the catchall ‘dude’ running a close third.

Its not a phrase I’d expect to find south coast resident Jase Williams using any time soon. Jase’s new-ish adventure into sound is The Mothers of the Third Reich. After jettisoning his long time noise project DK720, he’s teamed up with female drummer and sometime Amniotic artist Johannah Henderson to terrorize small venues up and down the country with a kind of noise that really is noise. Crashing of pots and pans, squawking sax, guitar abuse and what a guitar it is, a one stringed affair that’s Jase’s take on the Diddley Bow but without the bow. One long studio track and three shorter tracks culled from a short tour show Jase and Johannah building and collapsing with Johannah rattling the drums and Jase either doing a wayward Lisa Simpson on the sax or a disturbed Keith Rowe on the guitar. Sometimes its an all out ball breaking affair at others more subdued with only the occasional cymbal being chucked against the wall. And it is a long haul. The last MOTTR thing I got from Jase was a C120 [or at least it felt like it]. C10’s? Fuggedit, when you dive in with Jase its for the full mashing. Comes with a denim patch all ensconced within some kind of weird printed synthetic fabric.


Pete Cann likes to smash things thats why they call him Noisy Pete. I’ve seen him in action on a few occasions, be it with hammer in hand or violin or most famously in the Wharf Chambers with some clowns mobile phone. I assume that Paul Watson likes to do the same. Either side of their Crater Lake split will bring glass smashing relief but I’m betting that the noisier side is Pete’s Half an Abortion - bottles being chucked into an empty 45 gallon drum as the Leeds traffic rumbles past, perhaps the sounds being processed and looped into further destruction further along the line.

And what’s not to like about the sound of glass smashing? The permanent destruction of something fragile produced to a magnificent sound quality for our aural delectation. Both sides are marked and I could if I wanted tell you which side is which but I feel it hardly matters as both are truly magnificent in their primitive rawness. Smashing glass for aural pleasure has been around ever since people threw bottles against a wall in search of cheap thrills and the knowledge that their split second action not only made a great sound but left a dangerous footprint. Then there’s Jewish weddings, rioters and plate glass seem permanently drawn to each other and then theres the Ballardian image of crushed windscreen glass mingling with spilt semen and engine fluids in Crash. Wolf Vostell, Joke Lanz, Richard Rupenus and no doubt plenty of others [Watson dedicates his track to Lowe and Lanz but I failed to discover who Lowe was] have trod this path with much success before and long may others do the same.

Having just left Left Hand Cuts Off Right at the Must Die Records turnpike its a pleasure to reacquaint myself at so early a juncture. Here’s that Robbie Judkins again making micro drones and teeny ectoplasms of rattles and Kagel like toy noises. Especially on ‘Habiba’ which comes over like a Joe Jones machine tumbling down the stone steps in Whitby or a group of over zealous Alpine cow bell ringers on speed. Judkins uses improv techniques, radio interference and field recordings [and probably lots of other techniques which are lost on me] all on show with second track here ‘Seventy Heads With Seventy Tongues’ which sounds like a Van der Graff generator spitting sparks into an ominous drone whilst a New Dheli school teacher takes charge of her pupils.

Bad Suburban Nightmare’s Dan Hrekow tumbleweed Ry Cooder-esque ambience has met with approval before. Previous BSN releases have provided much in the way of a ‘Paris, Texas’ soundtrack and long may he continue. ‘Drone Heartbreak’ is Krekow continuing this theme but its second track ‘Alchemy’ thats shows a new direction. Here the guitar disappears to be replaced by hollow depth charges exploding in a series of muffled displays, perhaps the digestive system of a whale or the irregular heartbeat of chain-smoking fat bastard.

Back on the south coast we have The Zero Map - the Ying to Jase William’s Yang. The Zero Map do for drone what Mogadon did for creativity. Having once [a while ago it has to be said] liked a Zero Map release I now find myself finding lots of reasons not to like them.    
Its drone aboard a rudderless ship. Aimless, drifting stuff thats harmless enough but never alive enough to hold you attention for long. I await the Haysi Fantayzee cover version with much eagerness.


Contact:

Crater Lake

Armed Within Movement

Swim Club


Jase has kindly pointed out to me that I've made it seem as if Johannah does nothing but drum with MOTTR. This is of course a total misconception. Johannah is of course an integral part of the band, an inspiration as well as multi-instrumentalist without whom the band would not exist. I'm more than happy to point this out and send you in this direction for further MOTTR satisfaction.

http://mothersofthethirdreich.bandcamp.com/