Rovellasca - Delirium, or Sonata
Crow Versus Crow. CVC017
Cassette/DL. 50 copies.
Vatican Shadow/Salford Electronics - Temple Gas Mask
Hospital Productions. HOS-677
Cassette/DL. 200 copies.
Posset - Pestling The Unalterable
DL
Posset - Grindcore My Rave Years
DL
Venusian Death Cell - The Rose
CDR
At around nine a.m. Wednesday morning I answered the phone to a most irate Mrs Fisher. While halfway through her personal ablutions she’d received a knock at the door and thinking it was the nice post lady she made for it déshabillé; shower cap, tatty sweater, no make-up all while shouting down the stairs, ‘I’ll be there in a minute’ then fighting with the slippy front door mechanism only to be met by the grim stare of two police officers.
After a momentary grilling through a crack in the door it became apparent that it was me they were seeking and after further questioning said it was in relation to some post that had been sent my way courtesy of a certain Dr. Steg. Said post containing items that could lead to injury should they be handled without due care and attention vis-vis the daft bugger had sent me something with a razor blade glued to it. They waved the offending item in Mrs Fisher’s face and said that they would return.
Which is where we stand at the moment. Needless to say, this didn’t go down well with Mrs Fisher. Her mood that day further darkened when after retrieving a pile of wet clothing from the washing machine discovered the entire load covered in tiny bits of tissue paper, this due to me not checking trouser pockets pre laundry basket entry. When two workmen turned up next door and started pulling the bathroom out the day was beyond repair. You can imagine the looks that awaited me when I returned home from work. All of this on top of Mrs Fisher having been made redundant the week before. Not good. Wine and promises of ‘this wont happen again’ can only get you so far but fortunately for me the ship of calamity was slowly steered into shallower waters. I now await the return of plod.
Still, lets look on the bright side; the Russians have found a cure for Covid-19 even though they’ve only tested it on seventy-nine people and the streets of the United Kingdom will be much safer going forward thanks to the promised arrival of hundreds if not thousands of Covid-19 Marshals. These people will be tasked with doling out friendly advice, hand sanitizer and masks all while making sure people don’t come closer than two meters together except in pubs and restaurants where anything still goes in a desperate lets not hide it bid to make up the shortfall in Rishi Sunak’s depleted tax revenue account.
At least my purple snood arrived from Uniqlo. Thank you Mrs Fisher. Thank you Uniqlo.
In other news I signed up for a Deezer account. I still don’t know if this is a good thing or a bad thing and its something I’ve been having a lot of internal conversations over. One part of me thinks ‘well, how do the artists get paid for their work and what happens if my phone has no charge and the wi-fi’s dodgy just at the exact same moment I’m in the mood for that ECM comp?’ while the other thinks ‘well, at least I can listen to the entire King Crimson back catalogue for ten quid’. For musical exploration purposes it seems to be a portal of discovery while on the other hand I’m wondering if I’ll ever have to buy another physical object ever again. But does me craving having the physical object make me a collector rather than just a listener? I can listen to the new Ashtray Navigations release via Bandcamp [that other now essential online portal of discovery] and never have to look at the Ash Navs LP/CD combo I bought ever again. But I like having the physical object. Its mine. It has art and information on it, the entire release is an artistic statement in so many different ways and if you have lots of them you have a collection of sorts and if you have a Deezer account you have a way of listening and thats it. So much is missing. So much of this sits uneasy with me.
When you’re running out of shelf space maybe this is the way to go? When we’re all crammed into some Ballardian [Covid-19 free] hellscape, elbow to sharp elbow having access to everything ever recorded ever via certain online retailers will be par for the course and buyers of vinyl will be seen as weird antiquarians, the kind of people who don’t mind getting up off their arses every twenty minutes to put more music on. Whatever.
A couple of people who are still very much working within the physical domain are Andy Wild of Crow Versus crow and Dominik Fernow of Hospital Productions. Crow Versus Crow cassettes are things of beauty and well worth having, the cassette shell here having an opaque textured sheen, the sleeve containing Wild’s own artwork that is Twombly meets Schwitters but here leaning more towards the Schwitters. Rovellasca being Invisible City supremo Craig Stewart Johnson who according to the Bandcamp press ‘explore[s] emotional resonance within delicately constructed monolithic palimpsests’ which is a fantastic line and one that I almost understand. To my ears its a very mellow and utterly absorbing industrial extractor fan drone played out in three parts, the tape hiss adding to the work immensely, one of those drones that leaks out of bass amps and rumbles across the floor vibrating your flares before disappearing up your leg.
Dominik Fernow’s project Vatican Shadow is one I’ve read about but not heard, usually on Twitter where people make jokes about Vatican Shadow’s cover art being leaked, a joke that is totally lost on me. After various investigations I now know that Vatican Shadow lay down heavy beats in an Industrial meets Hardcore Techno kind of way. Not that I know a thing about Hardcore Techno, or Industrial come to that, but it seems apposite. Thudding beats of a stark and brooding nature which after Salford Electronics has smeared it with his grey suburban grime becomes ever more depressing. All that’s left to do is alter the BPM and cover it in black and white artwork reminiscent of 1990’s Power Electronics outfits, thus lots of soldiers shooting at things in the desert and the trying on of gas masks. One for the dark nights ahead. Dark Knights ahead.
Posset’s pair of releases have been very kindly put on to disc for those us digital averse or who prefer the physical but these are to all intents and purposes digital releases. The CD’s are kindly received as it means I can listen with headphones on through the hi-fi midweek as Mrs Fisher looks for a new partner on Tinder. As ever its always a pleasure to hear what the Possetted one has been up to. A most singular voice from the north east and who can resist a release that takes its title from a line by Beckett. This would be Pestling The Unalterable of course and not Grindcore My Rave Years, Beckett long since having snuffed it before such things became available to consumers.
With Dictaphone and tapes in hand our intrepid hero sits on a park bench every morning watching the geese make their way toward the water. Those expecting a Chris Watson-esque recording will be disappointed to find twenty minutes of someone gasping for breath as small feathered things tweet and tape squidge burbles and boils and bubbles along like bad guts after too much beer and curry. The twelve tracks that make up Grindcore are an extension as such but add to the mix the belchings of beelzebub, intergalactic communications, people having sex in millisecond bursts, drunken readings of Finnegan’s Wake, cats growling, the Clangers on acid, cats whisker radio trawls and people playing tubas while hitting metal buckets. This exploration of sound through the medium of tape and voice is one that I never fail to delight in, Posset achieving with such humble equipment sounds that eclipse those working within well equipped studios.
Meanwhile, over in Ireland Idwal’s favourite Metal band Venusian Death Cell has delivered what is surely their shortest and arguably best work to date. Ten tracks in under 20 minutes of sucked through a condensor mic straight to tape fuck you I don’t care I’m doing it anyway with my whammy bar and drums all coming through in spectacular wall of sound ear bleed-o-rama metal as you never heard it before. David Vora [for tis he] has been doing this for so long now it feels like coming home every time I get one of his releases. The manic vocal intros, the two stringed up and down the neck ‘Orphan’, the pounding drum of ‘Rotting in Hell’, the Slayer cover and ‘Master’ where Vora bangs a piano, hits play on a beat box and reverbs his guitar to shreds all while singing the word ‘master’ over and over again. Long may he continue to rule in hell.
There’s a knock at the door. I must dash, Mrs Fisher refuses to answer it.
Vatican Shadow / Salford Electronics
davidvora10 [at] hotmail.com
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