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Saturday, October 31, 2020

Further Adventures in Royal Mail Land with Hyster and Steep Gloss

 








D D Dobson - Ritual Bath

Hyster Tapes 30.

Recycled cassette. 50 Copies


Honkeyzontel Picnic - Facing Charges As A Sport

Steep Gloss. SG20

Cassette/DL



On Monday evening I answered the door to a young lady who said to me ‘Does an I-dwal Fisher live here?’ This she said while proffering a battered jiffy bag which I took from her and which I saw written upon it the words ‘Idwal Fisher’. Missing from underneath these words was the name of the town where I live and the post code.  Sending things in the post minus its intended town and post code is to put your mail in to a black hole from which the chances of it re-emerging are about the same as me bumping into Laurie Anderson in Cleckheaton library. ‘Its just that I thought it might be important’ she said, ‘ because its come from abroad’. Indeed it had. From Finland. I thanked her profusely and asked her how far she’d come? It transpired about a fifteen mile round trip, from the other side of Huddersfield and with that she was gone into the dark night. I felt befuddled. Should I have offered her money as some kind of recompense? Should I have invited her in for a cup of tea [probably not do-able under the current circs though] should I have explained who Idwal Fisher was? Maybe she just thought I was from Wales? No matter. After returning to the warmth of the living room I discovered that a Royal Mail employee had written at the bottom of the packet ‘try Huddersfield’ and beneath that an HD post code. I decided to send off a postcard thanking this kind person even more profusely than before while offering to do her washing up for a year or some-such by way of gratitude. As of today, no reply.


The next day I received a post card from the Royal Mail telling me that I had an item waiting for me but that I must first pay them £1.50 as the sendee hadn’t put enough postage on it. Then I got to wondering how it is that I’m all of a sudden finding myself more involved with the Royal Mail than I’d rather be and am I on some kind of watch list for awkward buggers? This, let us not forget coming after a visit from Plod wanting to know who it is sending me postcards with razor blades glued to them. 


Then I got to thinking whether this hassle was a price worth paying for not entering the digital realm? If these had been links in emails some poor lass might have never known where Cleckheaton was, the Royal Mail would be £1.50 down and I wouldn’t have two rather wonderful cassettes. Maybe it was meant to be.


Theres little chance of entering the digital realm with Hyster Tapes seeing as most of their releases exist as physical objects only, the majority on recycled cassettes that are also a very reasonable two euros apiece to purchase. To enter in to Hyster’s world is to come face to face with some exemplary ‘out there’ sounds. You can start your journey at ‘noise’ base camp in that all the Hyster releases I’ve head come from that germ seed but you’ll soon find yourself wandering lost in a room where just about anything that can make a noise is deemed worthy enough for inclusion on a recycled cassette. The D. D. Dobson release is no different in this manner in that some of it appears to be going in perpetual reverse and here’s a capstan coming to a shuddering halt and theres several conversations all going at once with one in particular exhibiting the characteristics of a gibbering lunatic. This is the musical equivalent of the detritus that accumulates on forest floors and over time becomes mulch that gives life to so many other things; a constant chatter of groans, whirrs, chunters and grunts not as escaping from a human voice box but from that deep mulch sound world. None of this explains why there’s sections of a syncopated finger-clicking surreality here or why theres a sirens wail [the classical kind, not the emergency services], or why a warbled tape presence should be here to set the tone. But it does. A series of cascading and rapacious tape swirls straight out of the Pierre Schaeffer book. Tell me this was recorded at Studio d'Essai circa 1953 and I wouldn't think any different and are they really trying to harness all that electrical power and do they have a van de graaff generator to hand with which to dissipate all this outage? Russians talking. Drones. And why is there a washed out Residents track in here? Why not is the answer. And why is someone blowing tunelessly down a trumpet tube while bombs fall on Libya? Can someone explain this to me? I’d be eternally grateful. On seconds thoughts …. Russians. A gong shimmering. Residual hiss and 1970’s telephone connection blat. Reel to reel computers going full bore just to send you your overdue leccy bill.


Wigan label Steep Gloss is quickly turning into another essential outlet for all things unclassifiable/wonk/sound-art/dada call-it-what-you-will, a veritable treasure trove and a steadily growing one at that. None so stranger than Honkeyzontel Picnic, this being the duo of Luke Poot and Darran Adcock who’ve submitted a lockdown classic of sorts as accompaniment for those of us who are struggling to make sense of the world. For nothing here makes any sense. Forty five tracks, some of them but mere seconds long of surreal absurdism thats a Northern Giles, Giles and Fripp meets Suicide meets Kagel meets Joincey during a lockdown in Park Hill Flats where they wrote songs while banana peel scrapings dried out in the oven. Luke Poot [I’m suspecting its him] delivers the lines to such beautifully ridiculous songs with a seemingly bunged up nose [at times whispering in your ear to Julius Eastman type bashings and toilet noises], like he’s halfway towards falling asleep or perhaps a heavily narcotized Larry Grayson, while as accompaniment we get random electronica and homely domesticity; squirts and squeals, cassette cuts, squeaky doors, kitchen sounds, sweeping up sounds, toy pianos and thumped tupperware, smoke alarms and whistles. Some tracks exist for as long as it takes to recite the lines they hold:  


‘Bugs Bunny, more like Insect Bunny’


‘grandma died in the paddling pool playing with nail clippers’


‘thats isn’t cooked its just wet and Sellotaped’


And actual sneezing, ‘sneezing in a bin-bag so as to huff it later’ delivered with a flatulent raspberry and hopefully in isolation.


I cant help but think that Poot and Adcock have found the zeitgeist here. Nothing much makes sense in the world these days so why not hunker down with forty five tracks of sheer lunacy and become at one with Honkeyzontel Picnic covid Stylee. Count me in. Well worth the fifty bob.  



Hyster


 Steep Gloss


   








  

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