Comics

 

Pornoa Ja Verta

P A Manninen

Published by Lempo Kustannus

Slasher 6666 [8+10]
Help Crew
No Point
Horrible Injury

Published by Noah Brown

Spon 20
Published by Dumb Cunt Comics








I’ve been a lover of comics for as long as I can remember but it wasn’t until the arrival of Marvel Comics in the early 70’s that that things really took off. Before Marvel there was the Dandy, Beano, Whizzer & Chips some football mags like Score and Shoot and girly mags your sister read in which a never ending number of schoolgirls romped about on horses or did gymnastics. You read them because everybody else did, they were cheap, easily available and offered plenty of laughs for you pence. I liked action comics too, Commando and Warlord, hastily drawn strips in which great battles and engagements of various wars were rendered into heroic cartoons where Germans and Japs and various other unwanted elements were shot down and blown up for juvenile entertainment. With the arrival of Marvel came The Hulk and Spiderman superheroes who made Desperate Dan look a bit parochial and whilst Dennis and Gnasher were good fun and ever so slightly risque they’d never be a match for Spiderman who had to do battle against the likes of Doctor Octopus and the Goblin. Imported DC comics came with exotic looking shiny paper covers that cost mega pocket money but gave you the adventures of Batman and Superman, whilst trips to the east coast for short holidays meant the exotic availability of American horror comics such as Eerie and Creepy. And there was always the satirical MAD magazine which seemed terribly sophisticated to a spotty youth with a zip up cardy and NHS specs growing up on a housing estate in West Yorkshire.

In the late 70’s my appetite for such material waned only to be rekindled in the early 80’s by the appearance of the eye weepingly funny Viz. I had a friend whose brother attended Newcastle University and whose return to West Yorkshire saw the first copies of a comic that was to pass around the tap room until it became nothing but a bunch of loose sheets. [As an aside I thoroughly recommend Viz creator Chris McDonald’s revealing biography in which he traces the rise of Viz as linked to his decline into depression].

When Viz started to fade in the late 80’s I once again left comics behind until I discovered Sverre H Kristensen. A review in Headpress alerted me to a Norwegian cartoonist whose deliciously depraved material reached its zenith with the arrival of the one and only issue of Sewer Cunt. A comic that not only praised serial killers and went for the jugular in more ways than one but reviewed hardcore porn films and most importantly carried some of the sickest and most incredibly drawn cartoons I’ve ever seen. SHK begat Mike Diana and Boiled Angel, a comic so depraved it put Diana in jail and whilst I’m here lets not forget Art Speigelman whose Maus tipped the comic world on its head upon publication.

Back in the early 90’s one of the first zines I ever printed up [about 20 copies using a dodgy HP printer that for the most part refused to play ball thereby necessitating the hand feeding of individual pages in to the damned thing] found its way in to the hands of a Finnish cartoonist called Pekka Allann Manninen. Pekka gave me a desirable review in a Finnish magazine resulting in a steady stream of correspondence ever since. Pekka is known in Finland mainly for his Captain Gangrene [Kapteeni Kuolio] creation, a strip that charts the adventures of his battles against enemies such as the Black Pope and various Finnish mythical beasts. He draws for Finnish newspapers and puts together a compendium of Finnish cartoonist via the publication that is Sarjari. Not once in the last 15 or so years has he made me think that he was ever going to upset the apple cart and then last month ‘Pornoa ja Verta [Porno and Blood] landed on the mat. Within its 80 pages was plenty of well, porno and blood. I must admit to being a little shocked at first but eventually felt admiration for someone who can turn his hand from Finnish superheroes to a cartoon called ‘Sexdeath’ without a single battering of one single eyelid. I recommend his work to you all. What it all means or the purpose of its existence [or origins] I’m not entirely sure but there’s nothing like rocking the boat to shake you out of your stasis.

Noah Brown shoved a carrier bag full of items into my possession during a recent Wharf Chambers gig. In it were CD’s and cassettes of experimental sounds of his own making, tapes by a band called Normal Man [who he drums for] and CD’s from his own label ‘Horrible Injury’ [more on the sounds later]. Then there were the comics, three were mini comics made of a few folded pages and stapled together with the hurried put togetherness of someone who doesn’t like hanging about. For the most part these are crude drawings produced by someone who doesn’t like to have nothing to do with his hands for more than five seconds. Slasher 6666 comic is the more substantial offering, each mag is A4 and comes with a ‘noise’ CDR. Slasher 6666 is loose and ramshackle and contains things like the full page outing of a Cunterpillar [‘Yum Yum - shit tastes good today!’ hence joining the circle that began with Viz’s Raymond the Caterpillar ‘He’s so big we cant fit any words in!’]. There’s a wonderful photomontage strip called ‘Adventures of Hooligan Head’ in which the head of a baby gets grafted on to that of a West Ham fan who then goes on lots of adventures that include killing hippies, getting John Peel beat up and having a drink with an American tourist. Then theres the untitled strip in which someone who looks incredibly like Nick Griffin comes home to find his boyfriend being buggered by a big black man. Madness abounds of course, as does social awareness [Nescafe and powdered baby milk], conspicuous consumerism [Slaves For Bullshit], workplace politics [I Work With An Arsehole]. Plenty to admire and pass on. Like all good comics Slasher is a vehicle for personal expression so while the drawings may well be crude in certain areas its never delivered with less than heartfelt expression. The CD’s are worth a listen too; highlights on 8 include two WWII veterans bickering at each other and ‘Brown and Benbow’ doing a John Shuttleworth, 10 is as equally entertaining with a variety of styles courtesy of the raucous Drunk In Hell [‘I’m an Arsehole’], faux disco with Piss Disco [‘Turkish Desire’ with the curious shout out for BBC Ipswich?]  and the entirely appropriately named British Football Hooligans [I wonder if they have trouble getting gigs?]. Noah Brown is proving to be another vital cog in the wheel that is the Leeds ‘scene’ Putting on gigs, drumming, drawing, painting, experimenting with sound. I owe him a pint.

Which leaves Spon and the outpourings of Dr. Steg. Spon 20 is a collaboration between Dr. Steg and Andy Paciorek the results of which consists of a series of highly detailed black and white creations most of which carry little in the way of dialogue but plenty in the shape of those whom Dr. Steg and Paciorek admire and loathe, thus plenty of mentions for the Ceramic Hobs, Alvin Lucier, Stan Batcow, Must Die Records, Donlon Books, Covers 33 and Hiroshima Yeah! The art is of such detail that you could spend many hours trying to find these and the names of those who have fallen foul of Dr. Steg including possibly the greatest comic artist of our time Brian Bolland. Black ink on white paper does it for me and while this may only be two pieces of A3 folded and stapled in the middle its actual depth goes much deeper. Spon 20 also comes with a Fes Parker CD. Parker, the still sadly missed Godfather of Blackpool Post Punk, is a Fylde Coast legend, a massive influence not only on the Hobs but many a punk growing up on the west coast of England.



Contact: Lempo Kustannus

Contact: Slasher 6666

Contact; Spon

Armed Within Movement

Finglebone - Voorpwerp
Armed Within Movement. AWM002
Cassette. C20. 40 copies.

Sea of Palms - Aino Tytti
Armed Within Movement. AWM003
Cassette. C26. 40 copies.

cM nG/Spoils and Relics
Armed Within Movement. AWM004
Cassette. C60. 40 copies.







I’ve never been on one of those holidays where you get to relax on a white sandy beach as attentive staff bring you a never ending supply of exotic looking drinks served in half a coconut. All well and good and no doubt selling like hotcakes to those who can afford it but I fear I’d eventually get bored with all that pampering. Somewhere down the line I’d hanker after a cup of Yorkshire tea brought to me in a cracked cup by someone looking like Bella Emberg or a black cloud to drift overhead scattering the locals, something to remind me that I was still in the real world and that one day, in the not too distant future, I’d be once again be getting out of bed at 5.30 am to make my way to that sorry place of employment I call work.

For this years cultural edification me and Mrs Fisher took off on a ten day trawl through three European cities. At the height of summer and in temperatures when you really should be doing nothing but lounging about having drinks stuck in your hand we experienced the delights of having to drag our suitcases down streets where tourists were never meant to drag suitcases. Along the way we saw some impressive sights with the retina burning image of two tramps fucking in a piss stinking underpass near Keleti station in Budapest being amongst the best [or worst should you think that way]; tramp clothing hung on the bits of concrete left bare where wall tiles had become dislodged, trickles of freshly vented urine made its way across the floor, the air was fetid and disgusting and still two people thought it the best place to get their rocks off. They might even have been gay, it was dark, I wasn’t hanging about, two pairs of feet aft and two short haired heads to the fore going at it like a Singer sewing machine on speed. This, after negotiating various other underpasses along Rákóczi Avenue all the while getting the nagging feeling that the excruciating pain that is sciatica was making a most unwelcome return to my left leg. Then there's the time we dragged our cases up to Bratislava’s main train station to be met by vomiting drunks and gangs of young toughs doing their West Side Story bit complete with simulated oral sex and hand guns tucked in belts. Lets not forget the Slovak taxi driver who seemed to be able to say in perfect English the words ‘sixteen euros and ten cents’, the laughable amount he charged for a five minute ride and probably the same amount he charges all foreign visitors no matter where they go. Then we got lost trying to find our hotel in Vienna, it was the fold in the map that did us, by the time we reached The Savoy [no not ‘that’ Savoy] we were hot, sweaty, hungry and very, very thirsty … and still facing two flights of steps and a check in procedure hosted by a man who we had no choice in calling Herr Flick. After chucking our things on the floor, showering and changing in to some clean clothes we headed for the nearest bar where we ordered lager and food and experienced the nearest thing we’ll ever get to that moment in Ice Cold in Alex where they all stare at a cold beer for two seconds before necking the lot. Then there was the time we managed to find ourselves the only people standing between drunken PAOK Salonika fans and several hundred heavily armed members of the Viennese constabulary. There’s the time we went in to a dimly lit Viennese establishment, hungry and thirsty, only to realise that the menus were written in Vietnamese and German, a situation that needed two pairs of spectacles, one upside down and two feet in front of the other and the deciphering of the German bits. The William Burroughs exhibition at the Viennese Kunsthalle was probably the most bona fide highlight of the trip, one of those magical moments when you turn a corner to be met with a poster of Bill taken in Paris in the 50’s and the words ‘on until September’. On a Tuesday morning at the back end of August 2012 we had the place to ourselves. And then we came back home.

Seeing as how I was so behind in the review pile I decided to take along some of it as aural stimulation. It turned out that drone really does help the journey along [as does the mental racket as made by Normal Man, a release that on more than one occasion proved to have been be recorded loud enough to drown out the moribund chatter of my fellow travelers]. CD’s were easily ripped and thanks to the wonder of the modern age I was able to take a number of cassettes in MP3 format. Armed Within Movement having taken the correct precaution in making all their releases available as downloads to those who’ve bought the things in the first place. This means that I got to listen to Finglebone, Sea of Palms and Aino Tytti on the train from Budapest to Bratislava and cM nG/Spoils and Relics on a hotel bed late at night after too many wines. There were others too including a new batch from Gruenrekorder, the latest from Sheepscar Light Industrial, Noah Brown, The Plurals, La Cose Bianche, Culver & Karst and Cathal Rogers, all of which more later. Alas I didn’t find the time to rip the whole Ramleh box set which is a shame because if I’d have been playing it whilst passing those rutting tramps it would no doubt have enhanced the experience no end.

After getting back in the saddle I notice that the bearded wonder over at RFM has already listened to and dissected just about all of that list. Our review piles seem to be almost perfectly matched these days, as are our observations. cM nG really does not engage the listener at all - too many random noises that fail to connect. Improv should have something to carry it along and whilst there is a touch of scrapey TNB-y sounds to the proceedings the sounds that enter and leave the fray are often nothing more than annoying; sharply resonating finger cymbal like clang that enter deep into the ear canal and ring in pain, tampered tape manipulations, sporadic rim shots, radio sounds … a very flat and dull affair as recorded live in Manchester by the duo of Michael Walsh and Andy Jarvis. Its hard to put your finger on why a different group of people working in the same environment and creating the same kind of feel should produce something that is so completely different and totally captivating but this is whats happened on the other side with Spoils and Relics. Although not a live recording the sounds here come and go at regular intervals leaving you wondering what it was you actually heard. The joy to be had from improv works of this nature is that the source sounds remain utterly out of reach, you could be listening to a ventilator shaft fan humming away, the abandon ship alarm, electronic insects, the small nurdling sound that somehow creeps inside your ear becomes utter bliss, drill bits at work, generators, the list is endless and a credit to the people working within Spoils and Relics.

Finglebone’s droney guitar noodling proved to be the most therapeutic way to watch the Hungarian countryside pass by. I should have made a video of the blurring greenery and used Adam Varney’s melancholy pluck as background. Merging drones and field recordings with his echoing guitar work Varney creates pieces that evoke atmospheres more usually associated with Ry Cooder [and maybe even the more recent Bad Suburban Nightmare]. These are melancholy pieces in which Varney’s slightly struck electric guitar strings reverberate into the ether helped along the way by the sound of rushing water and large hums. A hint of Cocteau Twin, a smattering of Jim O’Rourke, somehow veering towards New Age but having enough originality to stop it falling in to that category. All very relaxing and contemplative.

Aino Tytti and Sea of Palms also use field recording and were part of that same journey. Sea of Palms mean streets of Birmingham mixing with guitar work thats not entirely dissimilar to Varney’s. A work that breaks down in to three distinct sections the middle one containing the most delightful of motifs and something the likes of which John Fahey wouldn’t have minded putting his name to. Tytii is more full on celestial choir. Angelic voices made from home made synths that ebbs and flows and rises to crescendos to crash again like waves on a cold Finnish coast, that depending on your mood or stomach for such material, could go on for hours, days even, at least until you reach the end of the line.


Now for the bad news, All these are already sold out at the label. Googling the artists various web pages may produce results but I dare say that these releases will surface at a later date sooner rather than later.


 



Contact: www.armedwithinmovement.bandcamp.com

Sheepscar Light Industrial

Daniel Thomas & Midwich - Twenty-three Taels
Sheepscar Light Industrial
SLI 001. 3” CDR. 50 Copies

Mel O’Dubhslaine - I Can Remember The Faces Of All The Grebs At My School
Sheepscar Light Industrial
SLI 002. 3” CDR. 50 Copies




Still in Leeds we find Daniel Thomas with his shiny new Sheepscar Light Industrial label. A label that sends its wares out in to the world in generic, pill bottle sleeves at the cost of a measly thirty bob. A label that makes all its releases available for download and a website where you can listen to everything for free. That's all the boxes ticked before I even tell you that the SLI website is itself a thing of minimal black and white clarity that even a fool like me can navigate without getting all grumpy.

Concentrating on ‘electronic, experimental, improvised, psychedelic, drone and noise’ SLI has got things off to a marvelous start by delivering a suitably lo-fi groan like industrial drone from Thomas & Midwich and a set of thirteen surreal quirk-ettes from Mel O’Dubhslaine.

‘Grebs’ contains tracks that range in length from seventeen seconds to two minutes and nine seconds and with the tracks flying past you at a not inconsiderable rate of knots the sounds of parping, randomly played synth keys and computers talking to each other become even more surreal than if they were lengthier tracks on a lengthier format. Track titles like ‘But What Is Known About The Man Who Stalked The Street Attacking Lone Women’ further add to the all round ‘what the fuck’ quality. Apparently O’Dubhslaine has been experimenting with an electronic instrument that manipulates breath flow the results of which are the most remarkable I’ve heard from her. Quite unclassifiable and going so far as to subvert the style of the label by containing so many tracks that an insert has to be issued. The three inch format appears to be the soup de jour for labels releasing experimental material and with sounds as adventurous as this it suits it perfectly.

‘Twenty-three Taels’ meanwhile is twenty one minutes worth of a gently chiming hypnotic two note drone underneath which are buried the scouring sounds of steel plates having their rust removed to the accompaniment of a suction pump hitting the last dregs of a bunded sump. Barely shifting from its inception it moves serenely throughout its length with only the suction sounds becoming slightly more urgent. This coming together of label cheese Daniel Thomas and the bearded wonder that is Rob Hayler shows, I assume, the face of the label that the world will see the most of. Time will tell.

A good start then and one that has already seen another four releases in the shape of Mexican guitarist Miguel Pérez, former denizen of Leeds Michael Clough, Hagman and [of course] Midwich.  


Contact: http://sheepscar.blogspot.co.uk/



 

Victorian Electronics

Victorian Electronics  ‘A Leeds Assemblage’

Featuring:

Ashtray Navigations
Astral Social Club
Midwich
Daniel Thomas

Striate Cortex SC50.
4 X 3” CD. 50 copies.


As we pack our bags in anticipation of a ten day trip that takes in Budapest, Bratislava and Vienna I’m armed with the knowledge that thanks to having worked with a Hungarian for the last seven years I have amassed a vocabulary that will see me through the first few days of our adventure. Words and phrases I have learnt in Hungarian over those years include ‘Can I have’, ‘Thank you’, ‘Scraper’, ‘I don’t know’, ‘Fuck off’ [obviously] and ‘bungy strap’ [whose literal translation, rather cutely, is ‘rubber spider’]. I fear that my chances of using the word ‘scraper’ are slim, as is bungy strap, but you never know. I have also discovered that the Hungarians have a word for the piece of plastic that shoelace manufacturers place on the end of their shoelaces to stop them unravelling. Its a word that seems to have about two dozen syllables and has no real translation in to English apart from ‘the piece of plastic at the end of your shoelace that stops your shoelace unravelling’.

Before we pack our bags I really did want to nail the Victorian Electronics release. Its the one that everybody [yes everybody] has been talking about and the one that I haven’t been playing nowhere near enough since I had it pressed in to my palm by an eager Rob Hayler. Three inch CD’s are a particularly chi-chi format but one that I can neither play on my PC or my Walkman should the thing be having one of its off days. So over the last few weeks, when time permitted, I’ve been sitting in a lotus position headphones on taking each SC50 disc as holy relic, blessing it and placing it into the body of the NAD where I’ve spun them to my contended enjoyment.

It is a thing of beauty of course. Its something the bearded wonder has been extolling the virtues of for quite sometime. ‘Striate Cortex Releases, Hand Made Wonders, Read All Abhat It’ quoth the bearded one and when you do actually get your hands on it you can see the need for such triumphing. But without the back up of some decent sounds the packaging counts for very little. I’m always a little wary of reviews wherein the packaging gets a bigger word count than the actual sounds but fear not for this time its justified: cardboard box that is hand-painted both inside and out, fur lined and printed OBI strip, three paneled insert, insert with contact info and a nice picture of Leeds by night and a squared piece of cotton wool acting as protector of CDs from the onslaughts of the modern world. The CD’s themselves also carry some groovy artwork, not something you see a lot of with three-inchers. All lovingly put together, as are all Striate Cortex releases.

So this is the story; a group of like minded individuals meet up every Thursday lunchtime in the Victoria pub in Leeds for a couple of pints and a chat and the swapping of music and tales of derring-do. Amongst them are the participants of this here release; Midwich [Rob Hayler], Ashtray Navigations [Phil Todd and Mel Delaney], Astral Social Club [Neil Campbell] Paul Walsh [Foldhead] and no doubt Daniel Thomas. All this as related by Rob Hayler in his affectionate sleeve notes.

The only thing left to do is to tell you that these four discs are all essential and will probably go on to be seen as a landmark release in the history of experimental music in Leeds. It captures the rawness of Astral Social Club in full swing blistering drone mode wherein Campbell wrings the neck of his guitar in madman fashion to a maelstrom of horror helped along by Walsh chucking in noise blasts and squiggles like a farmhand scattering chicken feed. Ashtray Navigations trail back in time to 1983 with a pulverising New Order-ish drum machine attack before going all Muslimguaze-y/ethnic-y with a superb piece of bass-ery where each lugubrious note resonates ominously, at its end comes some dreamy Doors like keyboard fillsbut not before we get some tin cups hit with sticks and what sound like maracas. If I’d have been played this in Wire Invisible Jukebox mode I’d have never have guessed that this was Ash Navs. After seeing them play at the release party for SC50 a few weeks back I detected driving chords in an ever so slightly Hawkwind manner but this is different again to that and light years away for the all out guitar psych that the mighty Todd has laid on us over the last few years.

Daniel Thomas produces a drone that moves through three definite murky phases, a series of slowly morphing pulses, triple layered seas of dense muffled hiss amongst which you find beats folding over each other at a steady rate, a noise drone powers its centre, a head bobbing drone loop its end. Midwich’s opening salvo of maddening buzzing gives way to muffled bottle knocking and glass rubbing, it's a slow paced affair, a largo of doom that eventually moves in to more familiar Midwich territory with a swaying and dying, nagging, growing, glowing [and yes] head bobbing drone. A solitary buzz like a lonesome bee appears at its end and then its gone.

Its heartening to know that there are creative souls in Leeds keeping the flame of musical experimentation alive. The place has had its ups and downs over the years but thanks to the people involved here its definitely on the up again. Long may those Thursday lunchtime sessions continue. Now for the bad news, these all sold out long ago. Here's hoping for a double LP reissue.



Contact: http://striatecortex.wordpress.com/

Midwich live in Leeds

As recorded at the recent Wharf Chambers/Striate Cortex release party.

Astral Social Club - Magic Smile

Astral Social Club - Magic Smile
Wonderyou. CD. WNDU009




It came as a bit of surprise to find that the bearded wonderloiner has been having a bit of trouble getting 'in' to the last few ASC releases [ASC 22+23]. Talk of pushing things forward in an odd and unique direction providing a barrier to aural gratification. Which just goes to show how two people can hear the same thing and have entirely different opinions. Its what makes the world an interesting place innit? Ones mans fire in a pet shop is another mans Schimpfluch gig.

Magic Smile did though work wonders for the bearded wonder and so it should. It will work for you too if you should have the fortitude to drag yourself away from the Olympics and install yourself near a set of speakers with the volume turned all the way up to belting. Its worth getting for a number of reasons main amongst them being the fact that you will hear ASC maestro Campbell singing on the title track, something that I don’t think I’ve heard since a Motown cover on a very early self titled LP, the other reasons being that this release contains some of the best ASC work to date.

Coming from someone who’s listened to a fair amount of ASC/Campbell related material over the years I find myself making this statement with no reservations.  Stand out tracks abound and whilst there’s the odd one that never really takes off as in ‘Och’ a piece that sounds a bit too Walter Carlos-y for my liking, the rest are either stunning or stunnings daughter. On ‘Frwrk Rmrk’ a gently frotting acoustic guitar mingles with the sound of splashing water and Campbell issue enjoying themselves, all very bucolic and family harmonious until the pounding beat kicks in and intensifies to such a pressure that the inclusion of a street riot sample manages to do the impossible and take the thing even higher, By its 12 minute conclusion my head was a wobbling blancmange, my body a limp and spent wet lettuce. This segues into ‘Tempo Rubber’, a squelchfest of rapid bleats acting as foil to a thousand wet fingers rubbing a thousand wet wine glass rims at whose conclusion arrives a solitary synth solo the likes of which you’ve not heard since a mid 70’s Kraftwerk album.

Alert readers will note that this release comes from the same people who brought us ‘Kufuki’ a release so awful in concept and delivery that I had to have it out of the house. They may well have found the Campbell, taken him to their hearts and let him loose remixing one of their releases but that doesn’t mean I’m going to like it. They do the same thing in reverse here and remix the first track ‘Rubber Lagg’ and stick it on the end where I can listen to it and report that at least it is listenable.  ‘Rubber Lagg Remixed’ takes all the good things from the original and replaces them with Japanese moaning, trill beats and quirky synths. Remix as Japanese-ification. As openers go Rubber Lagg is long enough, at thirteen minutes, to completely loose your head in. I found myself involuntarily nodding away to an ever blurring room wishing that I had a very loud sound system and a captive audience with which to subject it to. It’s one of Campbell’s best.

And then there’s the singing. Well, its a kind of singing. More of a talking/singing through some kind of effect that makes it seem as if Campbell is floating in space whimsically amusing himself as he drifts off into the nearest galaxy. Sloping synth wonk and chiming doorbells act as accompaniment.

What I find so affirming is that even after years of steadily releasing quite a hefty number of works under the ASC banner there's little evidence as to a drop in quality or a sense of the project being exhausted. If anything the opposite would appear to be true and with the Japanese getting in on the act who knows where we’ll end up?



Wonderyou

ASC

Wharf Chambers 28th July 2012

Astral Social Club
Ashtray Navigations
Midwich
Mel O’Dubhslaine
Hagman
Foldhead

Saturday 28th July, Wharf Chambers, Leeds.



We were there to celebrate the 50th Striate Cortex release and the birth of a new Leeds label. The new Leeds based label being Sheepscar Light Industrial whose generic black and white design makes for releases that are not only easy to recognise but will no doubt carry many a memorable tune. Dan Thomas is the man behind the label and the man behind the table who I find spreading his wares and taking the money at the entrance to the gig itself, an inner sanctum within the Wharf Chambers where all the action takes place.

After years of no action gig lassitude the Leeds ‘experimental/noise/drone music scene’ is certainly getting up a head of steam. On the night this lot took to the stage there was a similar gig across town at the Fox and Newt. It may have halved the audience but at least there’s one to halve. It was because of a lack of live venues that the Leeds ‘experimental/noise/drone music scene’ was dying a death, its something I’ve commented on before but it bares repeating in the light of recent events. - The Brudenell, once the preserve of the cheap gig night out has reinvented itself as a ‘proper’ venue and attracts ‘proper’ artists like Earth and er .. Charlotte Church. The Fenton has disappeared up its own arse and has decided it doesn’t like the look of anything that doesn’t incorporate guitars and drums, The Cardigan Arms has gone all silent and The Adelphi hasn’t held a gig in years [that I’m aware of at any rate]. The Pack Horse? I have no idea. Lots of venues that used to be at the heart of the Leeds ‘experimental/noise/drone music scene’ have either changed their policies, gone bust or transformed themselves into a variety of opening and closing bars where the only constant is the slowly increasing price of the overrated bottled beers. As it stands now, for those of us wanting a cheap gig space in the city centre its down to the Wharf and the Fox and Newt.

The Wharf is to be found at the bottom end of town within easy falling distance of the Duck and Drake. It occupies a building that, barring for a few improvements, looks like the previous occupiers have just left; plenty of original stone flooring and ceramic wall tiling to which has been added an ad hoc bar behind which lie a couple of fridges and a kitchen where the cooking smells of various vegetable based dishes fill the air.

So thanks to likes of Dan there’s new blood augmenting the old which is refreshing to see but it was to the old[er] that we looked to for a start - Paul Walsh’s noise frustration outlet Foldhead developed from a quiet start into something quite tumultuous. I have no idea what these noise artists play as it all looks far too complicated to me but whatever it was that Walsh was using as backdrop to his illuminated snowcone it did a fair representation of some quality era Jap noise. Fizzing bursts of energy, exploding stars, you know the thing. Noise is best served short and sharp and most importantly live. Its where it works best. For the course of evening all the sets were short-ish, around the twenty minute mark and met with raucous enthusiasm by the small horde of punters. The beginnings of a perfect evening.

Next up were Hagman. Two Thomas’s. One a Dan, the other a Dave. Neither are related. Theres is a bleak drone born out of spending too much of their time around abandoned business premises which I guess is what happens coming from a place like Sheepscar. Haunting, desperate, empty, sad and dare I say depressing drone. Depressing in a good way.

Mel O’Dubhslaine produced sounds from what looked like an electronic clarinet whilst partner in crime the Toddmeister sat crossed legged on the stage torturing what looked like an electronic bongo. This bringing together of curious instruments produced sounds that put me in mind of the soundtracks to freaky avant garde 50’s sci-fi films [none of which I can recall or am even sure exist but you get my drift]. All very angular, space jazzy and a complete and welcome surprise. Short, very short bursts of angular frot that has been compared in delivery to the best bits of ‘A Sucked Orange’.

I finally get to see Rob Hayler kneel before his Roland for a Midwich set which, for me, has been long delayed, either through the weather or a dodgy limo. My short bus ride to Leeds sees the Bearded Wonder genuflect before his equipment and genuinely loose all inhibition as he tweaks one note through a series of pitches and mixes it in with found sounds of his own recording. To watch someone become so completely involved in their own performance is one of the joys of live music, with head bobbing wildly and uncontrollably Rob dives into his work only occasionally looking up at the audience showing us a beaming grin that stretches all the way to Bradford.

Ashtray Navigations took to the stage as a threesome this time with a guitar player unknown to me who biffed out a Hawkwind like riff which Mel & Phil took as a cue to go stellar with. Ash Navs have morphed and weaved through many phases but this rocking out/psychedelic one seems to be lingering more than most. Something I’m quite happy with.

Which leaves Campbell and ASC who charges around the venue delivering  a pre-set diatribe that mentions the Luddites, Cleckheaton, the origin of the ASC moniker and no doubt some other things which by this time I was slightly too drunk to take in. Aided by a bearded Seth [there was lots of beards here tonight] who played a mic’d up drum, it was an archetypal strap yourself in head down no nonsense Casio bashing beat fest of the kind that is genuinely life affirming. Of course I sat glued to my seat feeling a bit queasy but still totally at one with the euphoria.

At the end of the evening I also got to meet and Andy from Striate Cortex who, like me, was quite drunk and for some inexplicable reason wearing dark glasses. He insisted that I take lots of his releases home with me extolling the virtues of each one before shoving them into my hands with a missionary like zeal. Upon discovering that I was Idwal Fisher he made me promise that I’d mention that he was a lovely guy, which of course he was. Even if he was wearing dark glasses indoors.

I’m still ogling at all the wares I got shoved in to my grateful hands during the course of the evening - the 50th Striate Cortex release is a thing of beauty housing four three inch CDR’s showcasing four of tonight acts [ASC, Ash Navs, Midwich and Daniel Thomas] the two first Sheepscar Light Industrial releases are also things of three inch CDR beauty. As well as a bag full of comics, cassettes and CDR’s from Noah Brown I also blew a fiver in the bargain £1 a chuck box. Happy times ahead for me and for Leeds.


In a move that will no doubt become ever more prevalent the entire gig was made available online within 24 hours.

http://soundcloud.com/sheepscarlightindustrial/hagman-live-at-wharf-chambers


Striate Cortex

Sheepscar Light Industrial

Wharf Chambers





1 - ASC
2 - Ashtray Navigations
3 - Foldhead
4 - Hagman
5 - Mel O’Dubhslaine
6 - Midwich

The Turnip Flag / The Tin Drum

The Turnip Flag: Selections from The Ceramic Hobs Magazine 1986-1988

A5 zine


I was trying to find some kind of clever link to bridge Gunter Grass’s book The Tin Drum and this here Ceramic Hobs fanzine; in the former a mentally unstable Danzig dwarf decides upon birth that he’ll stop growing at age three because he doesn’t care much for the adult world or his fathers offer of running the family vegetable shop. Covering thirty odd years of the protagonists life [from the 1920’s to the 1950’s - as recounted from the bed of his mental institution] Oskar Matzerath describes, in many picaresque scenes, the death of his mother and two fathers [one presumptive] the attack by the German army upon the Danzig Post Office, his love affairs, his attempts at religion and his joining of a dwarf troop of Nazis entertainers. The latter is the cut and paste jejune outpourings of three members of the Ceramic Hobs. They couldn’t be any further apart.

Grass’s book is a classic of modern literature and one of the most important books written in the German language. The Turnip Flag contains interviews with G.G. Allin and Steve Stapelton, has articles on Peter Sutcliffe, The Butthole Surfers and Dada. Gunter Grass writes in a style that's been compared to James Joyce. Turnip Flag say that if you don’t like Psychic TV then you can fuck off.

I first read The Tin Drum when I was 18 and it gripped me like no other. Whilst my friends were reading Stephen King [and I have to admit that his books went through my hands too] I found the world created by Gunter Grass far more absorbing and edifying. As luck would have it Volker Schlöndorff’s film adaptation of the book came out at the same time and I felt duty bound to drag two friends along with me to a screening at Bradford’s Odeon cinema. In 2009 a new translation of the Tin Drum appeared and I made a promise to myself to reread it.

I’m glad I did. Breon Mitchell’s translation freshens up the 50 year old manuscript no end and makes it a far more approachable and easier to read text than the previous Ralph Manheim translation. The text flows splendidly and once again I found myself in Oskars very strange world.

Grass has since been taken to task for upsetting the Israeli’s in a poem which wonders if its such a good idea for them to have nuclear weapons. He’s also admitted to being conscripted in to the Waffen SS at age 14. Hey ho.

I’ve no idea how many Turnip Flags appeared. I was never aware of its presence until this selection landed on the mat. Hopefully more of these buried nuggets await discovery. They need to be for these youthful cut and paste diatribes are as entertaining as Mr Grass’s. At least to me they are. Worth getting for the Steve Stapelton interview alone.












Simon Morris Ceramic Hobs