Penus Rectus

Penus Rectus 1997/Penus Rectus 2010

Dead Mind Records - CD + 7”

Ever wondered why black rap artists never refer to their manhood as a ‘cock’? According to Peter Silverton and his fascinating book ‘Filthy English’ it may have something to do with the fact that female African slaves called their fannys ‘cocks’. Quite why a euphemism for manhood came from a shortening of the name Richard though I don’t know, the same goes for why female African slaves should call their fannys cocks - some things just get lost in the midsts of time. But then dicksucker just doesn't have the same impact as cocksucker does it? Same goes for dick off, not nearly as effective as cock off and whilst dickhead is eminently more user friendly than cockhead I find cocktease or pricktease far more user friendly than dicktease [which is too near to striptease to be of any use as a good swear]. Apparently early English puritan settlers to America were so worried about overuse of the word ‘cock’ that they did their best to rid themselves of it by adopting the Dutch word ‘roost’ - hence ‘rooster’ rather than cockerel. Its why Americans call faucets faucets and not stop cocks [an English English word for ‘tap’] and why weathercocks and cockroaches become weathervanes and plain old roaches. 

Which brings me to Penus Rectus and the age old obsession of noise and penises. [Actually Penus is latin for painful which explains nothing whilst rectus is latin for straight. I’m nothing if not well researched]. Peni abound on the artwork to both these releases of course. Indeed various inserts and artwork are covered in all manner of phallus. Maybe its there for just in case you forget what one looks like or maybe they just like drawing big knobs? Whatever. 

The CD is a bit of a curates egg. Its a collection of tracks that appeared on a 1997 three cassette comp called [of course] Penus Rectus. The original cassette release carried about 30-odd tracks but here they’re whittled down to twelve, the frustrating thing being ... no track info. The insert says ‘this selection taken from …’ and leaves it at that. Having discovered the original release on discogs it seems a shame that Dead Mind haven’t taken the time to at least give us some detailed info or stretched it further by re-releasing the whole thing. Without a track listing I’m lost. It all sounds like decent mid nineties noise to me, meaning its fairly uncomplicated, muddily recorded and delivered with a sometimes naive honesty but with no info comes no detailed review. Just for the record, track 11 was my favourite [I’m guessing Macronymhpa].

At least the single is marked up. A track each from Prurient, Odal, Smell & Quim and Streicher. Odal is the only artist who appeared on the original cassette release and while Smell & Quim and Streicher were certainly around at that time they didn’t. That leaves Prurient to kick things off with a huge swaying lopsided pan-attack of holistic noise. A far cry from his feedback workings and well worth hearing. No doubt the Prurient completists will already be taking notes. Odal is a short blast of static and buried screaming whilst Smell & Quim work over a track call ‘cuntsocket’ [presumably included so that the other half don’t feel left out]. Its a classic slice of degenerate Quim with [I hope] porn outtakes amid a miasma of swirling muck. Which leaves Streicher. Perhaps one of the most enigmatic and controversial artists ever to release work in the Noise/Power Electronics arena. Listening to this contribution will leave you no wiser though - a straight forward blast of decent if not earth shattering noise. Which gets me to wondering as to whether the single contains material originally earmarked for the cassette release? The label that released Penus Rectus in 1997 was Dutch, Dead Mind is Dutch, there’s a link somewhere.

Contact: www.blutistzeit.nl

Peter Silverton/Filthy English http://tinyurl.com/4h4t3rs

[after many weeks the CD artwork appears]

The New Blockaders - Live At Hinoeuma

The New Blockaders - Live At Hinoeuma

Hypnogogia. GIA04. CD 300 Copies.

For about five all too short years the Red Rose in London was the best noise venue in the country. Hinoeuma and Harbinger Sound put on plenty of quality shows there. For us Northerners it was easy to get to too; two hours on the train, two stops on the tube and out in to the wilds of the Seven Sisters Road past the former Rainbow Theatre, the dodgy pubs, the 24 hour continental deli’s, the grease outlets, the muggers and the shady looking locals. Its gone now of course, the last I heard it was a pool hall, but for those few short years it was perfect. Front of house was a regular pub, usually frequented by dwarf Turkish bin men and alcoholics - it was like the Duncan transported to Finsbury Park. Compare it now to The Grosvenor, allegedly the best noise venue in the capital, with its hike to Stockwell, [sarf of the river], its no tubes after midnight and only night buses and taxis to fight over and endure. The room at the back of the Red Rose was huge with a good sized stage but perhaps most importantly of all it was run by a guy who really didn’t give a shit about what you got up to so long as you drank lots of beer. 

One of the most memorable events at the Red Rose was the night TNB headlined. It was also the night Emil Beaulieau played his UK debut. Merzbow, Putrefier and various Shimpfluch members also found there way on to the bill, an impressive line up by anybody's standard and one not likely to be repeated. On that night The New Blockaders were so loud they drove me from the venue. This has been documented before and I feel no shame in repeating it here. Two or three times I sought the sanctuary of the front bar with its dwarf Turkish bin men only to return moments later to be met with … silence. It was so loud TNB kept blowing the fuses and all the owner did was dig out some new ones, run up a ladder and replace them ... only for them to blow again. I think they blew two or three times and each time the two Blockaders sat stock still and waited for the power to return and for the onslaught to begin. TNB delivered their set at a murderous level of sound. It was unyielding and unforgiving and its still the loudest thing I’ve yet to experience in a live environment. To stand in that room when it was in full sway was like having someone take a swing at the back of the your knees with a billy club. It was a volume you could actually feel.

A few years back this momentous event was commemorated via a RRRecords picture disc and as is usually the case with TNB material its short run disappeared pretty quickly. You can still get it, at a price of course, but for those who missed out this Hypnogogia repress is particularly welcome. 

Listening back now I’m met with the same predicament I had when listening to the vinyl; is that what they really played? The passing of years and no doubt the amount of beer I consumed that night have played tricks with my decaying brain cells. For me it was wall noise before the term was coined, an unrelenting barrage of sonic distortion designed to engulf, destabilise and overwhelm the listener to such an extent that it drove out any kind of thought process or rational engagement. And on the disc? Two 17 minute tracks of slowly unfurling, instantly recognisable TNB motifs … but no wall noise. There’s slow hums, creaking leather straps, ball bearings being dumped into a galvanized dustbin, chains, rattles and plenty of what I like to call noise churn, that lovely low end rumble that seems to fit snugly somewhere between your biorhythms and and a recess somewhere deep in your brain.Some elements I detect from previous TNB releases, what appears to be a primitive machine gun and then theres the slime slurpers, the release the bats experience and the bit that sounds like all the windows just blew in in the midst of a force ten hurricane. 

My abiding memory of that night is seeing Phil Todd’s anti-performance. Sat stage front at a table with his face covering balaclava and its defiant ‘X’ he drank from a bottle of wine. It was performance art and anti art rolled into one but above all it was nihilistic and  destructive - words with which The New Blockaders have become synonymous. 

On a different note, the CD image depicts a decaying building in modern day Detroit. In case you weren’t aware Detroit is crumbling and Polidori’s been there to document it. 

Polidori documents decay and destruction - TNB compose the soundtrack.

Polidori images:

 http://tinyurl.com/4bzf4az

Michael Esposito/Kevin Drumm

Michael Esposito/Kevin Drumm - The Icy Echoer

Fragment Factory 7”. FRAG16. Clear Vinyl. 300 copies.

I have this vision that in the distant future you’ll be able to have a file containing every note of music ever recorded surgically implanted straight into your brain. Everything. Everything ever recorded starting with Eddison’s wax cylinders right up to what popped out of itunes five seconds ago shoved on to a chip and stuck into your head at birth. And with regular updates it would be but a small job to connect yourself to a PC and download al the new stuff thats been made available. For a small fee of course. Wouldn’t it make life so much easier? And then just think of a piece of music and it appears in your head. No more need for portable music appliances or storage devices. Think of all that saved space. Devices will be made available for those wanting to share music in social situations of course but for when you’re on your tod all you’ll need is a single thought.

Except that wouldn’t be very good at all would it? Where’s the fun to be had in just thinking of a piece of music and having it pop into your head? What about the bigger picture? The way the artist wanted their work represented? The album sleeve? The inner sleeve? The run off grooves? The subtle messages hidden in reversed record grooves? [Rob Halford would never have had to defend himself from inserting hidden messages onto his records if he’d have released Suicide Solution on an MP3 download only single now would he?]And what about different coloured vinyls? Picture discs? Locked grooves? Double grooves? Clear vinyl? Shaped discs? Interlocking discs? Vinyl so heavy you can actually feel the weight in your hands. Who remembers the albums that came out during the oil crisis in the late 70’s? Albums so thin and flimsy they were almost like flex-discs older brother? Ah yes, flexi discs. What about seven inch singles? Ten inch singles? Five inch singles? Records that play 33rpm on one side and 45 rpm on the other. Records that play from the inside out? Maxi discs. EP’s. Double A-sided singles. Triple LP’s. Gatefold sleeves. Records with more than one centre hole. Juke box singles with the centre punched out. Acetates. Dub plates. 16 inch transcription records. Records made from glue. Records with only a finite life span.Transparent sleeves made to look like bags of sick. The Sergeant Pepper album cover. Anti records designed to destroy your stylus. Duchamp picture discs designed to induce hypnosis. 78’s. 16’s all the lot consigned to the dustbin of history replaced by something the size of a babies little toenail.

Which is why vinyl is still so vitally important. Now more than ever. Its heyday may have gone but in the hearts of people who still love music its still there, a format worth fighting for in a world slowly sinking into a digital sea.

Which brings me to Fragment Factory who have nailed their intentions to the mast with their first foray into vinyl. Let me start by saying that I know little about Kevin Drumm and even less about Michael Esposito. The latter I may be forgiven for but I suppose admitting to not knowing much about KD is a little like admitting you’ve never heard of Captain Beefheart. Well, at least in the circles I move in it is. Esposito is different. Research tells me that he’s involved with Electronic Voice Phenomena - the capture of voices from beyond the grave. For The Icy Echoer they use field recordings taken from a cemetery coupled to EVP files, found sounds and Drumm’s [I assume] prepared guitar. What it all sounds like is five short tracks of rummaging around in a plastic bag sounds and one longer track of rummaging around in a plastic bag sounds. Some tracks have pulses running through them, some don’t. On some you can hear voices and on others you can’t. One track has a slight guitar melody to it over which you can hear crows. If this sounds glib its not meant to. I have listened to this record many times and have still to make my mind up as to whether its an important EVP document or just a straight forward piece of music concrete/field recording composition with a bit of guitar chucked in. I suppose being the worlds biggest sceptic makes me the wrong kind of person to be evaluating a record that has EVP at its core. If there are ghosts out there trying to talk to us they appear to be going out of their way to make it as hard as possible for us to capture their rare utterances. One mans snip of ghostly speak is another mans wind in the trees. Having said all this I did enjoy listening to the groans and the static and the doom laden backgrounds plus its made me curious to further explore the worlds of Drumm and Esposito. Job done. Most importantly of all its a record I shall look forward to reacquainting myself with. And it is a record. A small clear piece of plastic with sounds on it and for that we should all give thanks.

www.fragmentfactory.com

Ashtray Navigations / Ocelocelot

Ashtray Navigations - Ink Clouds And Axe Revealer

Memoirs Of An Aesthete. CDR. 100 Copies

Ocelocelot - The Umbragechord

Total Vermin. Cassette

Observant Wire readers may have noticed a ‘letter’ from my goodself gracing the pages of their latest end of year round up edition. Said missive was not submitted by me via email as stated but was actually copy and pasted from this very blog after a third party brought the article in question [from whence the ‘letter’ was lifted] to the attention of Wire editor Chris Bhon. At first I was flattered, this soon turned to annoyance and then finally acceptance. At least I’ve had a ‘letter’ published in Wire magazine ran one thought and then, but why didn’t they get in touch and ask me if they could use my work? I suppose that anything published on a blog will be seen as being in the public domain and therefore open to use and abuse but still, a comment left in the appropriate place would have a earned a reply. Life goes on.

I felt duty bound to buy myself a copy of said rag and seeing as how I was due a trip to Leeds to seek out Oliver Sweeney sale items I thought I might as well kill two birds with one stone. So there I was sat in Romagna’s cafe with my bowl of pasta and glass of red flicking through the latest Wire when I all but involuntary sprayed a huge gob full of everything onto the couple at the next table. I’d arrived at the regular Global Ear column and guess which city it was covering? Yes, Leeds of course and here I am in Leeds which is just about my home town and the place where I’ve been to more gigs than anywhere else and where I like to think I know [or knew] some of the people involved in the experimental music scene and as I’m reading Bruce Davies column all I’m waiting for is the mention of Todd and Delaney and Ashtray Navigations and The Termite Club and and and nope, no, not a word. Not a fucking sausage. Todd and Delaney are like Leeds Experimental royalty and even if the Termite Club has been tucked up in bed for a while its not as if its ceased to exist completely. But no mention of any of them? Oh dear. Davies does mention those other giants of the Leeds arts scene, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth [perhaps without realising that Moore was born in Castleford and Hepworth in Wakefield both about 15 miles away] before coughing up those other predictables, The Kaiser Chiefs and the Sisters of Mercy [the former a band that ditched grunge with the emergence of Brit Pop and the latter featuring a lead singer who changed his surname to Eldritch in the hope that it would make him appear more interesting] but no Wedding Present? No Mekons? No Three Johns? Certainly no Ashtray Navigations or Ocelocleot or even a hint towards the Termite Club. Life goes on. Again.

By the intervention of some unseen force I arrived home that day to find a package from Todd and Delaney awaiting me. I gave Ink Clouds And Axe Revealer about six straight spins and then got stuck into the Ocelocelot tape. Ash Navs is Phil and Mel playing together and Ocelocleot is Mel flying solo. During Ink Clouds I was transported back to the mid 70’s and kept uttering names like Froese and Fripp and maybe even Tomita to myself. Somehow they’ve managed to squeeze in Chris Carter along the way too. The psychedelic drone is still in full effect of course with Todd’s guitar soaring away like a high voltage out of control lava lamp but for now it comes wrapped in a 70’s prog keyboard homage. At least on the second track ‘Secretaries of the Future’ it does, which is pure mid 70’s solo Froese and somehow feeds in to the current craze for all things Emeralds keyboard prog. Theres even a hint of some breathy Florian Schneider flute sounds. ‘Horn Progress Affectation’ even goes and outdoes Emeralds stringer McGuire in the melody stakes - its a dual guitar duel with high end electric guitar dabs producing notes of short star like blink quality over a bed of keyboard note melody - theres a bit of Pussyfooting Fripp in there too. Erased by Ornithology, Incorporation Pop and Faxing sit in more familiar Ash Navs territory whilst last track Sponge isn’t a million miles away from Throbbing Gristles AB/7A. A bit like AB/7A meets Walter Wanderely in fact.

These six tracks and thirty minutes worth are what keep bringing me back to Ashtray Navigations. Not a bad track, not a bad second of work, endlessly listenable, totally rewarding. An impressive achievement. I’m a fan. I’ll always be a fan. No doubt some label is queueing up the vinyl reissue already. Bring it on.

This more melodic approach appears to have rubbed off on the other half of Ashtray Navigations. Delaney’s work under the Ocelocelot moniker has often seen her deliver drones of a more abrasive nature, NoiseDrone for want of a better term, but here, using a Keytar and an Evolver, she gives us her most melodic work to date.

The metronomic burble is long enough to get your head round and would no doubt induce mild bobbing should circumstance prove conducive whilst the other is a split level slow moving drone with a sub strata of deep hertz om over helicopter blade chop - a track which reminded me in great amounts of that sublime Sand track erm ... Helicopter. Mr Froese would no doubt approve very much jah.

Contact:

Memoirs of an Aesthete

Total Vermin

Ocelocelot

Bacillus

Bacillus - Anthracis

Cipher Productions. Business card CDR. 100 copies.

I’ve never been that much of fan of CDR business cards to be honest. They’re small, faffy and you can’t play them in slot CD players. They store very little sound and unlike a seven inch single will never become a true fetish object. Having said that this release is well put together which no doubt ticks lots of boxes in the noise world but its whats on the inside that counts too of course. I assumed that the contents weren’t of a biohazard nature so ventured in to find out. There’s a laminate text on bacillus thats been cut and pasted from the internet and a smaller, similar piece carrying various info along with all the track titles; ‘Inhalation of Weapon Grade Spores in De-Staticized Aerosol Agent’, ‘Exotoxin Production Resulting in Hemorrhage and Edema’, ‘Encapsulated For Environmental Resistance’ and ‘High Level of Antiphagocytic Virulence Factor’. And then I played it. I would have forgiven some of the above if the five minutes worth of noise contained therein had made my gonads explode but they didn’t. What I got was four short tracks of badly put together splutter and rumble that sounded like someone messing about with the pause/play buttons on an old Ramirez cassette. My head hit the table and tears of sadness rolled onto my keyboard. My limbs became limp and I felt the will to live drain from my body. Only the thought of a bottle of untouched Japanese whiskey downstairs brought me back to life.

Investigation of the Bacillus web site is obligatory too, its all part of the concept. Dispensing with regular tabs like discography, press, history etc... there’s Disease Profile, Emerging Cases, Documented Cases and so on. Obviously there’s lots of jpegs featuring rotting limbs, petri dishes and people wearing hygiene masks and for the really adventurous links to outfits like the World Health Organisation and the Foundation for Infectious Diseases amongst others. What really killed it for me was the fact that its all written in the third person.

Conceptual releases work when all the elements work together - the recent offerings from Auris Apothecary show just how much effort you have to put into your conceptual releases for them to work - this release is only a third of the way there.

http://bacillus.webs.com/

http://www.iheartnoise.com/cipherproductions/

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia - irrelevant

The 7.17 From West Wittering Is Late Again

LP. 300 Copies.

Quite why Steve Fricker’s solo project should be such an infrequent visitor to the shores of UK musical experimentation is a mystery that only the man himself can explain. You’d have to find him first though for Fricker is a man of mystery whose sightings are few and far between. The last time I saw him must have been about five years ago, he’d adopted the guise of a second hand car dealer, all slicked back long hair, Bermuda shirt and leather car coat. This was after the man with a van days where he could be found crossing the capital in his antique Mitsubishi side loader doing dodgy deals with the capitals diaspora. I first came across him in the early 90’s when he used to run Cheeses International, a pre-internet mail order outlet and label. He was the kind of person who’d lug two heavy bags of records halfway across the country on the odd chance of shifting an Asmus Tietchens triple LP to a drunken punter at a New Blockaders gig. I still miss him as do many others.

His releases under the Onomatopoeia moniker are few and far between and could easily be counted on the hand of a Todmorden teenager - and this after 20 years of experimentation. The last Onomatopoeia release was ‘A Marble Holder From Andover’ and that was seven years back - its one track ran to just twenty minutes. Onomatopoeia’s first album appeared in 1990 [I was lucky enough to find a copy in Huddersfield’s second hand market for a fiver one saturday morning - a serendipitous event that still has the ability to lift me from my cups]. Then there’s the collaboration with Smell & Quim, the vocal only experimentations on Auditory Hallucinations, a cassette that appeared on G.R.O.S.S. and ‘Interesting Train Journeys Of The West Midlands & Non-Palindromic Place Names’ - apart from the odd compilation contribution that’s it. Except for ‘irrelevant’.

It was at the recent Lowest Forms of Music festival that I spied a flyer for ‘Irrelevant’. Picking it up and squinting at its print in disbelief I think I heard myself say out loud, ‘Bugger me is Fricker still alive?’ all this while waving the flyer about as if it was evidence of life after death. I pocketed the flyer promising myself to buy a copy later.

What I’ve always like about Onomatopoeia is the surreal British humour and self deprecation; A Marble Holder From Andover has a picture of a marble holder from Andover on the cover, on ‘irrelevant’ all the track titles are alliterative and begin with the letter ‘C’ and ‘B’; Cellophane Cucumber Clamjamphire, Corduroy Croquette Clap-Clinic Cull, Blennorrhoea, Chafed Cervix Coleslaw Cum Chutney Cesspit, Bland Basingstoke, the label it appears on is called ‘The 7.17 From West Wittering Is Late Again’, then there’s the small ‘i’ of ‘irrelevant’ a stab at self deprecation perhaps? A Marble Holder Holder From Andover was dedicated to his van, each copy of Irrelevant has a different world flag glued to its cover and on it goes.

Irrelevant started life in 1997 as a cassette that ran to 70 copies. The 7.17 From West Wittering Is Late Again have reissued it on vinyl and in doing so have done us a great service. Utilising a single instrument for each track Onomatopoeia create sounds that range from the almost Industrial to pure experimentation. On Corduroy Croquette Clap-Clinic Cull a single cymbal is hit repeatedly, little rhythms building and dying away. Blennorrhoea [utilising one Piccolo] creates a ghostly ambience, Cellophane Cucumber Clamjamphire [utilising one hunting horn] is equally funereal. You get the picture. Horns cymbals, piccolos, a bass guitar and a zambomba [an African drum] all taken in some way to create sounds that become removed from the original instrument. There must be some treatments or multi tracking going on tho I’m no expert, with maybe the cymbal track coming though as the purest [and harshest] of the lot and Bland Basingstoke [utilising the zambomba] being mangled in such a way as to sound like a looped Con-Dom fill. My only slight criticism of the whole enterprise are the latter parts of the almost side long Chafed Cervix Coleslaw Cum Chutney Cesspit [utilising bass guitar] in the latter parts of which the bass guitar becomes too obviously apparent. In a track that begins with some fine two phase oscillating fizz it peters out into random bass farts that end up sounding like a poor mans Sonic Youth solo. But let us not depart Onomatopoeia waters on such a low note because for us Onomatopoeia fans any appearance is to be warmly welcomed. I for one hope that some equally benevolent soul takes up the task of reissuing those other obscure Onomatopoeia releases but for now I’m more than happy with this.

contact: 7.17[AT] orange.net

Snotnosed

Snotnosed - Cock Vomit

Second Layer Records. Cassette.

Giving Wire magazine a kick in the bollocks seems to be popular pastime these days and while its tempting to lace up the steelies and flex the old knee muscles I feel I have to admit that without it there would be a sizable gap for magazines covering the outer edges of music. That said theres a lot I don’t like about the Wire but I’m not going to sit here and type out a list of all my Wire gripes. Lets just say that that top of my list would be the fact that, for the most part, I find it an extremely dull read. [Which reminds me, I’ve just tried and failed for the third time to read Paul Hegarty’s book ‘Noise History’ - a tome so dry and professorial it makes the Wire look like Viz - and have I to mention the fact that Hegarty seems to think that Pete Best was a member of Whitehouse? Have I to? Too late].

Whats been filling the message boards recently has been the editorial for December's issue. In it Wire editor Chris Bohn takes to task todays noise/Industrial artists for failing to

further the progress made by the likes of first generation ‘noise’ artists such as Whitehouse and Throbbing Gristle. What I find disturbing though is that Bohn still seems to think that todays Noise/Industrial artist/bands are obsessed with those hoary fail safes; misogyny, serial killers, autopsies, the Holocaust, sexual perversion, porn etc and that the only way to get attention is by shocking people. Of course there will always be those who continue to be drawn to extreme and taboo subject matters but does Bohn think that all Noise, Power Electronics, Industrial, Experimental artists are still wallowing in a sea of aimless transgression? How many noise artist are still using dead bodies as cover stars these days? Last time I looked Merzbow had a chicken on the front of one of his releases - and it had all its feathers on. How many noise/Industrial artists still think of themselves as controversial? How many are out there to shock just for the sake of it? How many feel the need to explain themselves with intelligent critique and self analysis? Would Bohn like to see every new Noise/Industrial/Experimental act starting out today sign some kind of contract stating that they’ll never use a cutting from Readers Wives as an LP cover?

Can’t you make noise and experiment with noise and use what the hell you want for cover art or t-shirt art without recourse to having to explain yourself [isn’t that what Whitehouse did]? Can’t you make noise and Industrial music just for the sheer pleasure of it? Because you like the sound of what you do? Because its what you want to do without having to worry about whether you're advancing the cause of Noise and Industrial music by having Doris from Newark as your cover star. Why does noise and Industrial music have to evolve and ‘work out new strategies for telling unpalatable truths’? What unpalatable truths? And whilst I’m here can someone please tell me why it is that William Bennett is suddenly so popular with Wire magazine? Having ignored him and his work for the majority of his career they now realise that he is in fact an intelligent human being with something to say, not just some knobhead sticking knobs on his releases. So it’s OK for Bennett because he’s into African drums now but its not OK for Snotnosed because they’ve got the word ‘cock’ in the title? Is that it?

What would the Wire think of Snotnosed then? Have they already been reviewed? I doubt it. Maybe they’d merit a couple of lines in Byron Coley’s whimsical ‘Size Matters’ column. Snotnosed are a Hanatarash tribute group. End of review. Maybe the Wire would pick up on the Snotnosed shock tactic of using the word ‘cock’ in the title or the inner sleeve with pictures of cocks, real puerile ones as drawn by serial killers whilst they were wanking off to atrocity porn and dreaming up ways of cutting up the dead body in the bath. [Those early Japanese noise artists loved their ‘cock’s’ and ‘dick’s’ and ‘penis’s’ {peni?}. There were some days when you just couldn’t move for Japanese noise cassettes clogging up your letter box with cocks all over them].

If you’re going to pay tribute to a Japanese noise band then it ought to be Hanatarash [or Hanatarashi - I never knew why they added the ‘i’ - or dropped it for that matter]. They were the most destructive of the lot really - existing for a brief period in the 80’s but leaving a legacy thats still felt today. Hanatarash folded due to the fact that they usually destroyed the venue thus quickly running out of places to play.

And it had to be Michael Gillham that did it. Anyone who has been lucky enough to see Snotnosed in action will have seen Gillham swing sledge hammers, break his bones, draw blood, destroy stages, light fittings, floors. Most gigs end with the audience huddled together at the back of the venue with owner stood blocking the exit, arms folded with a look that said ‘nobody gets past me till all this shit is cleared up and I have compensation’.

Cock Vomit is a constant wall of destruction. Two sides that sounds like all the best smashing up bits of a Hanatarash gig edited together to make up two sides of junk annihilation. Sleeve says ‘performed and recorded by Michael Gillham at the Creche’ and if this is indeed the result of a live performance then I’m impressed. It would have to have been an old gig though as I remember Snotnosed jacked in for the very same reason that their Japanese heroes did. Expect total mayhem, total destruction and lots of cocks of course. Gillham writhes around in his [de]construction like an eight limbed Japanese noise monster, at the bottom of the mix you can hear glass shattering, steel drums meeting their end, pipes being clattered, heavy thuds and through it all a non-stop barrage of chopped box noise hitting you behind the ear, a dislocated bombardment, a pain in the head. If anything Snotnosed sound more like The New Blockaders at full tilt which may explain why there’s a collaborative release between the two in the pipeline. Its also the best Snotnosed release to date.

I listened back to some Hanatarash gigs in the course of my duties and what you can hear is people having a good time. In-between all the glass getting chucked about and the screamed vocals and the venue being destroyed is laughter. Whilst dodging the flying debris, taking pictures [on one recording you can hear the sound of lens shutters clicking] and hoping that Hanatarash main man Yamatsuka Eye doesn’t actually kill himself, people can be heard laughing, enjoying themselves. Its called having a good time.

One last thing. The cover of this months Wire - is that the best you can do?

www.myspace.com/blackoperationsmusic

www.secondlayer.co.uk