Taming Power

Taming Power - Autumn Works 2002
Early Morning Records. 014 LP
220 copies

Taming Power - Three Pieces
Early Morning Records. 015 10”
111 copies

Taming Power - Six Pieces
Early Morning Records. 016 10”
110 copies

The Golden Road [To Limited Edition] - A Compilation of Experimental Music
EMR Comp 7”. Split label release.
4 x 80 copies

Sonorotiés de la vie de Bohème - A Compilation of Experimental Music
EMR Comp 7”. Split label release.
4 x 75 copies



Who’d have thought that an obscure Norwegian drone artists could have such an effect on a small community of listeners in West Yorkshire? Mention the words ‘Taming Power’ at the next noise gig down the Wharf Chambers and you will see several balding, unshaven men of a certain age go visibly weak at the knees. It’d be a good time to stiff em for a drink as they’ll be drifting away on some recent memory of a night spent in spinning Taming Power vinyl, the woes of the world banished by drones capable of sending you into mindsets and moods that you thought were only achievable through designer drugs of a William Burroughs nature. Five stoup's of your finest mead stout landlord and he’s paying.

What makes the Taming Power experience all the more mind boggling is that these records still exist and are available to buy 15 years after they were pressed and that Mr Taming Power himself Askild Haugland, is still pulling out the odd copy to send to acolytes such as myself, Neil Campbell and Rob Hayler. All this while Record Store Day 2016 morphs into an excuse to offload expensive reissues of the kind of crap you can still buy on Discogs for pennies. Its enough to make a balding, unshaven man of a certain age cry into his mead.

Over the last couple of years several Taming Power packages have made it all the way from Norway each and every one spun into infinity, each listen bringing with it, amongst other things, a head shake of disbelief. For it is in disbelief that works such as these aren’t being more widely lauded. Still. Thanks to Campbell I’ve been pushing Haugland’s work for a couple of years now, this after a cheap CDR of his more abstract feedback/noise work was shoved into my hands in an Heckmondwike boozer. Little did I know that this slim promo disc would result in a number of packages arriving here containing vinyl that not only takes up pride of place on my groaning vinyl shelving but is now cemented as being amongst my most prized possessions. In my head I keep rewriting the list of things I’d save in a house fire and if I had a steel box that could hold 50 records all of the Taming Powers would be in it. Especially the ten inch vinyl which is where Taming Power seems most at home.

Haugland’s ability to conjure up such devastating and sublime work lies not only in the simplicity of his instrumentation but in the simplicity of his handwritten, glued on photo sleeves and the continued use of recording dates as track titles. A recipe that gives his work a unique quality that mass production can never replicate. ‘Autumn Works 2002’ again employs the electric guitar going through a distortion/relay set up before being fed into a 4-track recorder to skin tingling effect. A simple set up that is enough to create drones that range from the wildly ringing to the bleakly austere and haunting. On ‘Three Pieces’ and ‘Six Pieces’ Haugland once agains finds himself among the singing bowls, metalophones, field recordings, cassette recorders and tape recorders and with them gives us the side long B-side ride to ‘Three Pieces’ thats a looping, unforgettable sunrise across an blasted Arctic tundra. On ‘Six Pieces’ you will find comparisons to Nurse With Wound’s ‘Soliloquy to Lilith’ and with it the deathly moans of Haugland himself, there’s a school bell that rings out too perhaps telling me that its time to put my Taming Power records away for a while. Its not going to be easy.

The singles meanwhile are but an amuse bouche, the small glass of amontillado before a sumptuous meal. They feature the work of Bruce Russell, the ubiquitous Sindre Bjerga, Taming Power and  some people I've never heard of who have no doubt gone on to other things since. Fragments to get you in the mood. To Planet Haugland then with mead in hand.  


Taming Power/Early Morning Records

Basic Concept

Basic Concept - Live in Salacious Sussex
Concrète Tapes. 20 copies.




I was going to review the latest Black Leather Jesus/Smell & Quim collaboration but the damned thing refuses to play in the computer. No CD player upstairs you see. The one downstairs is the dogs bollocks. You can hear it halfway down the street when the valves have warmed up and the neighbours aren’t in [I’m considerate to fault I’ll have you know] but not in here right now. I’ve played it a-plenty when in the comfort of the Poang, crosser to hand, Saturday afternoon drifting by as I flit in and out of sleep awaiting the results and cocktail hour. But not tonight. Defeated by a CD so its to cassettes I turn. The ever trusty cassette to which I was so unkind not so long back. I’ve had more cassettes sent since I slagged them off than anything else. That’ll teach me.

So I put my hand in the velvet review bag and pull out ‘Live in Salacious Sussex’ by the totally unknown to me Basic Concept and then I remembered that it came with the last Ceramic Hobs single and that I’d played it a few times before and that Basic Concept was in fact Simon Morris on vocals and some bloke called Carl Anderson who mucks about with electronics and goes by the name Nil By Nose. So Simon Morris, who is not only the mainstay of the long suffering Ceramic Hobs and the mighty Smell & Quim and is now also a published author [I saw him signing copies of his book at my list visit to the WC] is now a rapper. Yes, a fucking rapper.

Then I remembered that I’d watched a video made by Anderson which recounted two German dates they played in 2013 and I searched for it on youtube but to no avail. Its one of those ‘hey, we’re off on tour and here we are in the bar at Manchester airport having a drink before we get on the plane’ followed by wobbly footage of people wandering european cities slightly pissed. So I played the thing again, slightly remembering this time that I kind of liked its drug induced slowed down techno type vibe with Morris rapping/singing all over it. And I still like it.

Two live tracks, one recorded in Brighton and the other in Worthing, both of about twenty minutes or so in length and both containing the kind of music that I wouldn’t normally rush to take with me on my holibobs; i.e slow thudding beats with someone rapping over them. But it works dammit.

What lifts this from the mundane is Morris’s vocal delivery and his, yes, rapping. When Morris raps [I can’t believe I’m actually writing these words] he appears to be having a conversation with himself, a dark moan at times, a wounded soldier shouting for help in a muddy trench, a Fylde Coast 50 Cents. Just don’t ask me what he’s rapping about. I think I got references to tin foil and drugs and at one point he tries on ‘Warm Leatherette’ and ‘You Only Live Twice’ for size but for the most part I’m guessing its all stream of consciousness. It’s all a larvelry larf innit with Anderson’s ‘treatments’ [shall we call them], synth fucking about-ness then, morphing through different phases so that Morris’s delivery isn’t all thrown on to the same background. Daft thing is this, Morris and Anderson suit each other like a shitty seaside town and cheap alcohol. They were meant for each other. It bloody well works, which surprises nobody more than me.

Physical copies still exist and even if they don’t you can listen to it all via the wonders of broadband.


Bandcamp

L'eclipse Nue - Negative

L’eclipse Nue - Negative
Dorei Recordings. DOR 021CD



It’s not a good start is it? The cover art I mean. If you were out for a browse on a Saturday morning and you picked up ‘Negative’ by L’Eclipse Nue would you buy it or would you think ‘what the fuck is that’? For a moment I thought we were back in Venusian Death Cell territory, that mysterious one man Irish death metal band whose covers depict Satanic rituals drawn in a childish scrawl on lined note paper. But no, this is Daniel Sine, a one man band ‘industrial, experimental, noise’ unit based in Tokyo and it was his friend who painted the cover. A picture that portrays a nude model, a woman who sat nude for artists before ‘offering herself’ up to them and now she’s back as a ghost with a mission and now you know as much as me.

So far so bad. But let us not get bogged down in the sodding cover art or we’ll be here all night. This has been with me a while now. I played it upon arrival which is my usual modus operandi and thought my usual thoughts when faced with an industrial, experimental, noise album of this nature. That being that the we could be in for a rocky ride. For while L’eclipse Nue and Sine may cal this industrial, experimental, noise I’d say it has more in common with Power Electronics with very little in the way of experimenting going on. And as enee fule no Power Electronics straddles a thin line between parody and tediousness. When its good theres nothing else like it, when its bad its awful. There are those who manage to stay on that line forging artistic careers that gain respect with the passing years and then there are those who make middling PE/Noise albums and I’m classing this as one of them. That's not to say that a middling PE/Noise album cant have instances of greatness within itself, its just that sometimes you think maybe the quality control button came off in his hand.

As if the cover art wasn’t enough of a distraction there’s the track titles to contend with; ‘Prying Open the Manhole Cover to the Tunnel of God’, ‘Transitioning Into the Next Dimension’, ‘Facing the Gaping Jaws of Infinity’ and my favourite ‘Dial Emergency’. But still I listened and somewhere among the blasted dystopian landscapes I found moments that I genuinely liked. There’s plenty of that deep low end rumble going on, the distant roar of a radioactive dust storm stripping the barren earth of its last vestiges of useful minerals as seen in a sci-fi film starring Matt Damon. Then there’s tracks like ‘A Promise In Hell’ which is ten minutes of that rumble with Beelzebub in the background no doubt muttering dark somethings. Which is followed by a hideous squeal with leaden low end synth key throb and a strangled, ethereal female vocal [‘Revenge Of A Dead Model’].

Things start off so well though with ‘Humiliation On Film’ going for that full on cathartic roar with a menacing disembodied voice telling you to ‘turn around’. Third track ‘Poisoned by the Yellow Spines of a Hundred Greedy Slugs’ [my second favourite title] reminded me of Italian PE outfit Iugula Thor with a rattling wasp like synth lead and equally disaffected vocals. At two minutes its noisy perfection. Put it on a single with a decent cover and god’s your manhole cover.

Sine has worked with Toshiji Mikawa, Hiroshi Hasegawa [amongst others] and gigs regularly in Tokyo. Maybe he should ask Mikawa san to do the next cover.

 http://www.dorei-recordings.com/

http://www.leclipsenue.com/

Consumer Electronics - Wharf Chambers 04/04/2016

Consumer Electronics
Circuit Breaker
Knifedoutofexistence

Leeds, Wharf Chambers, Monday, 4th April, 2016.


There was a time when the mere thought of driving to a gig in Leeds passed through my brain in nanoseconds. Drive? And come home sober? Not have a drink? Like really not have a drink?  And then one day I went to a gig in Leeds in the car and it wasn’t actually that bad. In fact I even preferred it. So now I go to lots of gigs in Leeds in the car. It saves me £20 in taxi fares and no hangovers. And if I go to a gig in Leeds in the car and I get a parking spot outside the Wharf Chambers I can be home in little more than 20 minutes should the traffic lights and inner city Leeds ring road gods be on my side. Then there’s the bonus of listening to the radio. Something rather special about listening to late night radio in the car when you’re on your own. Radio 3 or 4 where they usually have something cerebral on; ‘Late Junction’ or ‘Hear and Now’ with their atonal modern classical and nose flute players from Azerbaijan.

Last night I encountered the writer WIlliam Fiennes telling an audience at the Wellcome Collection’s reading room of his experience of Crohn’s disease; an essay on the inflammation of the intestines, splashes of blood in the toilet bowl, the unpleasant world of fistulas, ulcers and stomas; that surgical procedure where you get to say hello to a bit of your bowel through a hole in your side. Fiennes used words like flatus, anus and shit and fantasized, in his anesthetic haze, of the nurse kissing the end of his bowel and inserting her fist into the stoma to massage his inner organs.

Phillip Best’s speaking voice sounds not dissimilar to that of William Fiennes. Maybe its the gig playing tricks on my mind but the ride home felt like a continuation of the gig. Consumer Electronics didn’t do an encore [maybe they did but I left soon after] but I got my own personal one in the car driving home. I wouldn’t have got that in a taxi.

Augmented by Russell Haswell and Sarah Froelich Consumer Electronics have emerged as something of a hot ticket with the usual five bald heads and the bloke behind the merch table now being augmented by the next generation of thrill seekers including women, something of which I heartily applaud. The mixed bag of old and young, male and female was a healthy one for a Monday night and although I bet no one went home singing the refrain from ‘Murder Your Masters’ I don’t doubt not one of them went home disappointed.

At the back end of an almost 30 date tour you’d think their voices would’ve burnt out by now but thats not the case. Froelich’s voice is as searing as a blow torch and the nearest thing you’re going to get to having weld spatter in your face at a gig. Its a phenomenal instrument and one you can only marvel at. If there’s a woman that can emit the word ‘fucking’ in song with any more venom than Froelich I want to meet her. But this is not all swearing and full on noise. Consumer Electronics have shifted gears in the last few years and are unrecognisable from previous incarnations. As Haswell noted before the gig, ‘this isn’t Industrial or Power Electronics’. I’d call it pop music. Phillip Best’s pop music for a supposedly proud nation thats nothing but a thin skin covering a mass of rotting flesh. Suck it buttercup.

Best opens his shirt to squeeze his tit but the offer to the audience isn’t coming. He shakes his fist, he sings and rants off mic genuinely lost in the moment. ‘Let’s get fucked up’ he says before we head off again into the dystopian distance. Haswell leaves his post to check out the sound and deems it not loud enough and the already considerable volume is inched even further. Back at his post his gaze never leaves his equipment. There a genuine chilling moments too especially when Best intones the last verses of ‘Colour Climax’

This is it
The bare life
It feels like love
Doesn't it?

Its a shifting set with Froelich and Best sharing singing duties, at times duetting in some twisted Eurovision Song Contest way. They move through gears that Consumer Electronics haven’t used before with pounding beats, high end synth squeal and relative silence. Copies of Dollhouse Songs were seen to be shifting from the merch table. Always a good sign.

What went before has left me baffled. Circuit Breaker are the next big thing from Harbinger Sound but their take on late 70’s synth moan has me baffled. A duo with synth and synth guitar [I think] with a singer who looks like he’s doing his best with an ill fitting set of dentures. I heard his style described as ‘mannered’ which is being kind. I’d prefer strangled with the words appearing only after they’ve been pressed through is gums. The songs are plodding, depressing affairs all of which sound incredibly similar. They have their fans though, it’s just that I’m not one of them.

Knifedoutofexistence was one man, a chain, some distorted vocals and a disintegrating tape loop. I liked it.

And then I drove home.



William Fiennes - The Bowel


   

David Keenan - England's Hidden Reverse

David Keenan - England’s Hidden Reverse
Strange Attractor Press





A long Bank Holiday weekend saw me finally to get to grips with the dead weight that is England’s Hidden Reverse. Having foolishly missed out on its first print in 2003 I was genuinely excited to be able to read Keenan’s words without recourse to auction sites and resale prices designed to make my eyes water and my bank account go into hiding. And by dead weight I mean the sheer size of the damned thing. I don’t know how big the original was but the reprint is a 400 page plus house brick made of paper, if you have weak wrists go and by the e-reader version. If such a thing exists.

So was the wait worth it? Yes and no. After spraining my wrists for a weekend I found my admiration for Steve Stapleton growing by the hour while my dislike for David Tibet even further compounded. Having Keenan drool all over David Tibet for 400 odd pages left me with the urge to play nothing but the Ramones for a week. I have problems with Tibet you see and the main problem is his voice. And his maudlin delivery and his whimsical songs and his fucking Noddy obsession. In fact I have a problem with ‘obsessing’ altogether in this book. Just about everybody in it is obsessing over something or other. Tibet especially who obsesses over Noddy, Shirley Collins, Austin Osman Spare, Crowley, Tiny Tim  and a never ending stream of Victorian Gothic horror writers. For instance; there’s the time Tibet, having been made aware of the obscure writer Count Stenbock, is told that Edwin Pouncey has an impossible to find copy of his best work, he immediately rings Pouncey and tells him to name his fee, which he does and which is ‘pretty huge’. When Tibet eventually gets hold of the book its a slim tome which ‘vibrates in his hand’. And on it goes. One obsession after another desiccated for all its worth before being passed up for the next obsession.

I have the same problem with Coil. Being synth knob twiddlers I should have been all over them but my ears have been ravaged by covers of Tainted Love and that was enough for me. I find their music tedious in the extreme, the result of too many drugs and visits to gay nightclubs that don’t open until five in the morning that play nothing but ear bleed techno which they then go in to the studio to replicate. Much to the disgust of Stephen Thrower who’s switched Wakefield for London just so that he can get better sex and be in a cool band. I know they have lots of other strings to their bow but its just never going to happen between me and Coil. Even if they covered the theme music for 70's BBC comedy 'Are You Being Served' in a slightly camp ambient ritualistic way would I ... hang on a minute.

The main reason I bought this book was to find out more about Steve Stapleton and William Bennett, who are perhaps, the only two sane people in it and the only two people whose music I still buy to this day. Tales of riotous early London Whitehouse gigs and disastrous Nurse With Wound European dates [where Stapleton tries cocaine for the first time and spends the entire set screaming on the floor] are well worth recounting. 

Its Stapleton’s partner Diana Rogerson who we should all be giving thanks to and is for me the unsung hero of the book. Sick of seeing him finish his job of work and head straight for the studio Rogerson gives him an ultimatum; London or the west coast of Ireland. If not for the will of a strong woman the story here might have ended earlier than expected. I then discovered that Stapleton composed Soliloquy for Lilith by using a chain of effects pedals that he played like a Theremin. I also learned that when Tibet stayed with Stapleton for a recording session he ended up in a B&B down the road due to an infestation on the farm, thus ruining Tibet’s already fragile artistic temperament. I also discovered that John Balance began life as plain old Geoff Burton. I love trivia such as this. I discovered lots of things including the fact that I don’t have nearly as many Nurse With Wound albums as I should have.

Having said all that the book is a bit of a plod. Chapters are bolted together interviews coupled to the chronological running of things with little in the way of solid critique and a lack of Keenan’s obvious enthusiasm for his subject. Maybe the answer to this lies in the fact that Keenan began writing this book in the late 90’s, going on for twenty years ago now when his pen wasn’t as sharp as it is now. The newly included preface ‘Crime Calls for Night’ [actually the name of a talk delivered by Keenan in response to Attractor Press republishing his book] is where Keenan is now and although it may not entirely suit the tastes of Mr. Hayler over at RFM it does at least show a genuine love for his subject and a bite that the original text lacks. My other main beef is the fact that Death in June, Douglas P and Tony Wakeford escape free in to the night without having to explain their dalliance with fascism with Tibet making but a passing mention of Douglas P’s ‘fascination with the Second World War’. And lets not leave here without mentioning Keenan’s intensely irritating habit of shortening Current 93 to ‘Current’ and in one instance simply ’93’.

Stapleton deserves his own book, one with critique running through it and lots of artwork, album sleeves etc.... something capable of capturing Stapleton’s sense of humour and the singular uniqueness of his music. A biography if you like.  A big heavy book even. I dare say he’s had plenty of offers but as far as I know this is as good as we’ve got and its going to have to do for now.

I haven’t actually finished this yet, I still have a few pages to go but with any luck I wont come across anymore pictures of a soppy eyed David Tibet. If I do I may have to fling the thing across the room. If my wrists are still capable that is.

SPAM

Lieutenant Caramel - Überschallknall
SPAM 15. Edition of 60

Posset - Standard
SPAM 13. Edition of 50

Nils Quak – In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni
SPAM 14. Edition of 40

I’m quite sure Frans de Waard is as happy as a pig in shit rolling around in all those releases he gets sent every week, but just imagine opening the door to a postie armed with piles of jiffy bags every day, all of them containing the same kind of music. All those JLIAT releases that go on for hours and hours? All that indescribable nonsense thats gets just the one listen and off to Oxfam or eBay. Maybe he has more time than me. Maybe he likes listening to nothing but discordant skronk and JLIAT everyday of his life, for hours on end, day after day, week in month out. Until one day, he says to himself ‘I cant take this anymore’ and he torches his house and runs away to join a transgender ABBA tribute band based in Luxembourg. FDW as Benny and a promise to himself to listen to nothing but the top 40 for the rest of his life. That’s what would happen to me if I had to listen to JLIAT all the time. 

My biggest fear is that I end up getting sent the same kind music as FDW ad infinitum. A never ending lifetime of coming home from work and picking up jiffy bags with 60 minutes of the same old same old on it. A living hell. Maybe FDW chills out with some Texas or Prefab Sprout on his nights off, or maybe a spin of the Grease soundtrack? Who knows. When it comes to listening to music I prefer plenty of variety and that doesn’t just mean swapping Adam Bohman for Jonothan Bohamn. Variety it has to be and while I’d quite happily rave on all day about Adam Bohman I’d be slitting my wrists if I had to listen to nothing else for two weeks solid. If all I wrote about was Adam Bohman I’m pretty sure that soon enough the only people reading this blog would be me and Adam Bohman. It doesn’t work like that.

But back to me and these words of mine which are but a sideshow, a peccadillo, something I like to do when the urge strikes, when the muse is upon me, when I’m gripped by a certain piece of music or a release and the need to put words on screen and click post descends upon me with a fervor I find impossible to ignore. Its why people who get good reviews on these pages immediately send me everything they’ve ever done and then wonder where there isn’t another equally as magnanimous rave review the day after. It doesn’t work like that.

So the day comes when three tapes arrive. Each of them containing sounds created by two people I know nothing of and one whom I’ve heard of but not heard. My heart flutters a moment and I put aside my recent qualms about tapes not being loved here any more and insert the rather ridiculously named Lieutenant Caramel into the machine. Judging by the name, Lieutenant Caramel could be anything except maybe an Adam Bohman side project. What I wasn’t expecting to unearth were the workings of Phillipe Blanchard, a French composer born in 1961 who judging from this all too short ‘Überschallknall’ release is a master of the studio, his own studio and genres with French graves accents in them; Musique Concrète for example. How his name has passed me by all these years [according to Discogs his first release appeared in 1986] is worrying me somewhat. As this tape slowly spooled further on my jaw fell further with each passing inch, after numerous repeats I just shook my head and thanked Joe Murray Posset for sending me them.

From his studio in France Blanchard mixes and edits sounds resulting in a kaleidoscope that encompasses the radio chatter of Mexican drug cops [I’m guessing], a group of people trying to pull a cow out of a well in India [I’m guessing], atonal string quartets, footsteps as accompaniment to Kagel like toy compositions, the rubbing of bass strings and randomly struck piano notes. Using sound sources as taken from his travels through Syria, Rome, Samarkand and no doubt plenty of other places along the way you also get plenty of spoken word in foreign tongues which when coupled to the sparse sounds of those wires being rubbed and the bass notes of a very deep bass being plucked give rise to what can only be described as sheer ear delight. Special mention must also be given to the sound quality here, perhaps the best I’ve ever come across on cassette tape, the result of Mr Blanchard’s studio and a high fidelity cassette. Life’s full of surprises. What was that about the longest journey beginning with a single footstep? I feel like I’ve been on this journey for years and have only just got over the threshold. What a wonderful world we live in.

The aforementioned Joe Posset and the sender of these items of delight is where we pitch up next. His name has been familiar to me for a while now, mainly due to various reviews of his releases on the Hayler RFM site and later, through his own idiosyncratic writing in the same place. He’s not Adam Bohman or the Filthy Turd or the tourettes affected YOL or THF Drenching but he does like to wander around with a dictaphone, probably mainly in the North East where I think he hails from.

What struck me is that his work [based on this release] is very low key, relaxing in certain instances, whereas Adam Bohman can be fairly frantic in his approach, at times appearing to have just got off the bus with the square wheels, [reciting menus and flyers stuck to walls] and the Filthy Turd is, well … the Filthy Turd. Posset appears as if through a veil of mist, revealing himself in parts as a creature of mystery with gently plucked acoustic guitars, the sounds of rummaging, stand alone sounds of dogs barking and groups of Sri Lankan’s impersonating strange animals on windy moors. The overall sound quality is certainly lo-fi and thats a benefit here of course, those murky sounds are all part of the aesthetic, they’re the ones that add to the mystery, the sound of someone playing Candy Crush Saga while eating a red hot meat and tatie pie and getting beaten up at the same time, the Phil Minton bit, the pagan ritual in a forest clearing knee deep in crunchy leaves or is that the tape rubbing against the capstan, slowing things down, stretching things to snapping point. The beginning of one side contains an exquisite bucolic loop with masses of tape swirl slathered across it. Short but beautifully perfect. A beguiling sound and one to wallow in. Posset reveals himself as a collector of sounds be they from gob or fumbled guitar or forest floor. Lets all buy dictaphones and put our boots on.

Which leaves us with Nils Quak and some modular synth workouts via Germany. Which for the most part are eminently listenable with nods to Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works II, Chris & Cosey and some full on noise/drone, finger prod squeals/farts for good measure. This came with bits of tin foil stuffed into the case for reasons which remain unexplained while the title is a Latin palindrome known as the devil’s verse. The things you get sent eh?


https://flamingosandothercreatures.wordpress.com/
     

Karies

Karies - Parole Grätig
7” - In A Car 002 / Harbinger Sound 156


Apart from being the German word for tooth decay Karies are four serious looking young German gentlemen that Underwood was raving about the last time I saw him. He bunged me this 4 track tour e.p. and said ‘Give it a spin, see what you think’. So I did and it was like um …  er …  okaaaay. Perhaps I need more information. Maybe I could give this China Crisis LP a shove for an hour and investigate. So I found myself watching an hour long Karies set as played in a long thin room, that despite being up for five months now, has managed a measly 300 views and an even measlier seven ‘likes’.

Four blokes, three guitars, plenty of effects and a prayer mat with Joy Division stitched into it. They sure do wear their influences on their sleeves these moody looking Germans. Perhaps I should chuck Neu! into the equation too and Killing Joke and the guitar sound of the Cocteau Twins. So many guitar bands, too much time. Not that I have anything against guitar bands, some of my favourite bands have guitars in them but to stand out as a guitar band in a world of guitar bands you have to have something special, have a sound that is your own and Karies have a sound that is made up of lots of other guitar bands and a drummer who cant help it with the fills. Kill the fucking fills man.

But back to the e.p. which is where I started this an hour or more ago and four tracks that sound a damn sight more punchier than the gig in the long room. It must be the grooves in the record. Grooves versus Youtube? Hifi versus Mac speakers? A one sided fight if ever there was one. ‘Signale’ is my favourite of the four, a rapid bass driven 3.42’s worth of angst with a drop out tinkly cymbal bridge that builds back to its epic climax and with the added European charm of shouty German language vocals you have something you could jump around the room to.

After submitting my senses for an entire evening to the Karies cause [y’see, the things I go through] I find myself coming to the following conclusion; Karies could go one of two ways, they could either be the biggest band in Germany come the back end of 2016 or they could end up with another 100 hits on that Youtube vid. The gap between success and everlasting obscurity cannot be measured by a few hundred words in a review like this. 301 views. 


Harbinger Sound

Simon Morris - Consumer Guide

Simon Morris - Consumer Guide
168pp Hardback book.
Tegenaria Press.


One of the few people who made my brief dalliance with Facebook all the more bearable was Simon Morris. The long suffering singer/songwriter, the only surviving original member of the singularly fantastic Ceramic Hobs, Smell & Quim activist, drunk, Power Electronics fan and one of the most interesting people I know, spent his time on FB posting critiques of his favourite/worst bands, films, authors, foods, drinks and English seaside towns. And then he quit FB. And then he’d reappear again. And then he would threaten to quit FB and not do so and then he would. And then I did and that was the end of that.

His posts were of the highest quality and always led to numerous comments and active banter. For example, the merits of the entire Neil Young back catalogue could be disseminated in a series of pithy paragraphs using a straightforward language of the kind more normally found in books by Ballard and Bukowksi. On one memorable occasion he posted a piece entitled, ‘A Guide to Love, Sex and Relationships’ and in the space of a few hundred words made some kind of sense of the tangled web that, when you come to think of it, is the nub of life itself. He was the only person I know that was putting anything of worth on Facebook and it made scrolling past pictures of peoples cooking all the more bearable.

Thankfully there are people at Tegenaria Press who have seen the worth in Morris’s musings and have had the good sense to collate them all [all?] in to one rather wonderful and essential hardback book entitled ’Consumer Guide’. The cherry on the cake comes in the shape of two new works that are its beginning and end, one dealing with Morris’s personal life up to the present and the other his dissemination of the major Ceramic Hobs releases.

‘Further Back and Faster’ documents the Morris life so far; thirty pages that cover the death of friends and band members [of which there are many], Smell & Quim gigs, European Hobs dates, Sleaford Mods support slots and destructive sexual relationships; 

‘Never anything but hands below the waist. Sucking, a lot of sucking and always in public, and she needed me to withdraw so she could watch the spurt. How my mother hated her’. 

There’s the detailed account of the infamous Smell & Quim gig in Belguim where the promoter booked them, thinking they were a duo and got instead fifteen drunk Smell & Quim members on his doorstep. One was Morris of course who along with his fourteen paralytic band members, takes to the stage at three in the morning with potatoes in his underwear.

In ‘Self Critique’ we get background information on all the main Ceramic Hobs releases, which for a band who drench their work in all manner of symbolism and oblique references is truly revealing. If Morris should so wish he could devote his next book to expanding on the myriad corridors that make up their darkest album ‘Psychiatric Underground’ alone, the first track of which is covered here and gives some indication as to just how deep the Hobs really go.  After donkeys years of trying to make sense of Psychiatric Underground this is like being given a treasure map with a big cross on it.

The bulk of the book is given over to those FB posts though and is possibly the only place in book-land where within the same covers you're going to find critiques of Art Garfunkel and The Grey Wolves. How many people do you know could do that? Not only are his targets wide and varied [Pink Floyd, Joy Division, Blue Öyster Cult, Lou Reed, Dexys Midnight Runners, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, Sonic Youth, Morrissey, Manic Street Preachers, The Pastels, Cocteau Twins etc] their dissemination is, crucially, absolutely spot on. Of the bands that I’m familiar with I found myself nodding along constantly, inwardly shouting ‘yes’, in an increasingly higher voice at regular intervals. Whether Morris is critiquing the Guns n’ Roses back catalogue or the novels of Martin Amis you get the feeling he knows what he’s talking about. You trust him all the way leaving yourself free to go out and seek what he suggests while leaving the duds behind.

Of more pertinent interest to readers of these pages may be the chapter ‘Underground’ where Morris tackles the few Harbinger Sound releases that have ‘beats’ on them and then theres Skullflower and the eight ‘real’ Smell & Quim albums. The correctly titled ‘Cinema’ tackles the output of David Lynch, Lukas Moodysson, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson and Sam Peckinpah and like all good critics Morris comes out with some truly memorable lines as in calling Wes Anderson ‘the Sonic Youth of cinema’. In an earlier chapter he loads his gun and fires it at Neil Campbell calling him a ‘talentless dilettante’ [Morris’s disdain for drone is well know], not a view I share but an example of his bluntness. His writing becomes belligerent to the point of this bluntness and is all the more fun because of it. In the chapter ‘Throwing Shade’ there's a series of lists all with the word ‘shit ‘ in the title. Lists that caused this reader to chuckle deep into his leather buttoned Chesterfield:

Your Favourite Bands Are Shit

Big Star - beloved by an all-male audience of unstable depressive opiate abusers, this ultra-tedious ‘sensitive’ cult act boil my piss to the limit ….’

The Clash - the single most boring rock band that ever existed …

Billy Bragg - big nosed moaning ginger tosspot …

Followed by ‘Shit Films’, ‘Shit Books/Shit Writers’ and ‘Some Mostly Shit Bands from the 90’s’, culminating in a list of ‘Shit English Seaside Towns’ and Fleetwood ‘where even the charity shops are boarded up’.

Now for the bad news; only 100 copies have been pressed with a promise that they will be the only 100 copies ever pressed. At £23.23 [including recorded UK delivery] Its not cheap but then it does have some Phillip Best words on the back sleeve.

Consumer Guide is destined for sold out cult status, a book that people of a certain persuasion will seek out and spend large amounts of money on, samizdat copies will circulate on the internet and Morris’s status as a writer of genuine freshness will be cemented. I’ve even contemplated sucking the Zuckerberg tit again. If I knew fresh words were there I'd be seriously tempted. Our only hope is that another book emerges.  

https://tegenariapress.wordpress.com/

Lenka Lente

Alfredo Costa Monteiro - Anima

Lenka Lente
40 pp poem + CD in de-bossed box.
ISBN : 979-10-94601-03-7
50 copies

Charles Plymell/Bill Nace - Apocalypse Rose
Lenka Lente
Book + CD. ISBN : 979-10-94601-02-0

Moondog - 50 Couplets
Lenka Lente
Book. ISBN : 979-10-94601-06-8


French label Lenka Lente mix sound and poetry like no other label I know. I mean there must be other labels and what with me getting all proud over home grown poets like Tony Harrison and Ted Hughes of late, I think there should be more. A slim volume of Ted Hughes poems with accompanying sounds courtesy of Guttersnipe perhaps, Tony Harrison coupled with Vibracathedral Orchestra, Simon Armitage and Piss Superstition. I live and dream but for now its to France and the exquisite Lenka Lente for our sound and word fix.   

After pairing Nurse With Wound with André Salmon, Adolf Wölfli and Charles-Louis Phillipe we now have Bill Nace rubbing shoulders with American Beat poet and writer Charles Plymell. These tiny books, about the size of your average smart phone are a sheer delight, perfect carriers for works such as this. Plymell’s Apocalypse Rose is a series of poems that first saw light of day in 1967:

I’m over here of course
melting in war stories
playing a sweet mournful tune
on a hollow flute made from
the bones of dead junkies

Which inspires Bill Nace, last seen rubbing guitar strings with Kimmy G, to create a loop from the intro to Jim Reeve’s Distant Drums [at least that's what it sounds like to me] a meditative peice that slowly evolves and transforms and disappears leaving traces of well being.

Alfredo Costa Monteiro’s ‘Anima’ is a fifteen minute sound poem using Spanish, French and Portuguese words, mainly alliterative, all combining to create a dark and menacing atmosphere. The 40 pages of the poem are elegantly printed on single sheets and placed into a debossed box along with the CD. An artefact worth owning and one that I’m glad to give shelf space to. Monteiro’s recitation is close up to the mic and sounds particularly good on headphones where the words are slowly released into your ear canal in short bursts; grunts can be heard, petite morts and the satisfied sound you make when a particularly difficult stool exits the bowels. Twice during its course an industrial hum appears and when it leaves Monteiro’s voice sounds even more sinister.

Moondog’s 50 Couplets are something that I knew never existed. 50 rhyming couplets in measured iambic parameters of 14 syllables each. Some are witty, some are sad and some just downright odd:

An armoured knight fell off a ship and sank into the blue.
He looked a lobster in the eye and said ‘you’re armoured to?’ [sic]

She bought a cover to cover the seat; but the cover was so nice,
She bought a cover to cover the cover; and now its covered twice.

You couldn't tell me more than when you looked into my eyes.
Now, you are there and I am here; and hope within me dies.
  
Rush the beach, good Anglemen, and stop the Norman landing.
Use what strategy you will, but leave no Norman standing.



Costing a mere €5, the Moondog book is far cheaper than a small glass of beer at a Gare Du Nord cafe, as cheap as frites and and much better for you. These may not be the deepest thoughts ever committed to page but I'm glad they exist, on paper, in a slim book, not on ebook, Kindle, laptop, phone. 



http://www.lenkalente.com/products

Consumer Electronics - Dollhouse Songs

Consumer Electronics - Dollhouse Songs
Harbinger Sound. HS152. LP


The last time I saw Phillip Best he was drooling spit on to his sweaty man paps. This larger than life character was winding up an audience of Americans who, you couldn’t help feel, had little idea as to what exactly was going on. Soon to jettison his leather jacket and shirt, but keeping on his shades, Best did what he does best and antagonized his audience with lengthy ‘come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough’ gestures as a snarling, bent almost double, Dominik Fernow delivered contorted noises via laptop. I didn’t get every word of his delivery but the word ‘cunt’ could be heard approximately every third word, most of them aimed at the audience who he seemed to be treating with total disrespect. Being called a cunt by a beer bellied wank spanner may not be everybody's idea of a good night out but you’d be surprised at how many people are prepared to have their hearing damaged by 40 continuous minutes by Consumer Electronics noise. Not that I’m that a big fan I must admit. I much preferred Best in his earlier CE forays when he was still employed as part of Whitehouse, when he used to keep his shirt on [double cuffed too] reading his lyrics from a huge book that he waved in front of his ever sweating face.

All this aggression is part of the show of course. Off stage Best is head of Philosophy at Texas University. He’s written dissertations on the noise scene in Montenegro, chaired debates with Richard Dawkins and has a personal library that contains three miles of shelving. None of that is true but you kind of get the feeling that it could be. His favourite word is ‘cunt’ and his favourite writer is Thomas Pynchon. That much may be true. He’s an intelligent man and all that drooling on to his tits is there to wind you up. On record he’s all failed social systems, broken lives and suicidal teenage girls. And noise of course. 

Unlike the last two more recent-ish CE albums I’ve heard: ‘Nobody’s Ugly’, two sides of noise drone and ‘Estuary English’, 23 minutes worth of rabid delivery spread over two sides of vinyl, Dollhouse Songs feels more like a complete album. Perhaps the best CE album to date that I’ve heard. Maybe its the arrival of Russell Haswell on electronics or Sarah Froelich on screaming or the Trevor Brown sleeve art but somehow this feels like the one to wave at your mates and go ‘see, it can be done’, noise turns into art with lyrics that you can sing along to. Well almost.

His ranting, rabid, spittle flecked delivery is at one with the whatever hideous noises are being created. If you told me Best records these things rolling around the floor of a padded cell with a hypo sticking out of his arse I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised. What does come as a surprise is that the best track on here is also the quietest. ‘Colour Climax’, [infamous Danish porn empire in case you didn’t know], finds Best quietly speaking over but the lightest of noise flotsam, his words somehow appearing all the more menacing than when in full tilt, and at its end this:


tested like a witch in the dirty old river
feeling ruined fucked off
bed looks pissed in
skin dried hard and thin
strapped with sternal wire
abattoir-quartered
hung in joints and sides

this is it
the bare life
it feels like love
doesn’t it?

So its not all hammer and tongs, even though there is plenty of that. ‘History of Sleepwalking’ erupts into the kind of electronic snare drum hits that make you feel like your tweeters are going to pop. ‘Knives Cut’ is all subtle low end rumble with Haswell skreeing circuit abuse all over it. On ‘Condition of a Hole’ and ‘Murder Your Masters’ Froelich tries to outdo Best by screaming her lungs raw. A constant deluge of forced words delivered to a series of monotonous rapid pulse beats. ‘Nothing Natural’ has no words and appears to be the space where Haswell get to flex his muscles, it sounds like Tangerine Dream on a noise trip and ends with someone orgasming.

Consumer Electronics reveal the social dystopia that lies in wait. A world brought about by the ubiquity of freely available antidepressants and pain killers. A world where the excessive consumption of cheap alcohol and Class A drugs leads to family rupture, suicide and self harm. A future of uncaring governments, war, death and pestilence. Its not a pretty world but then neither are Consumer Electronics. 



http://harbingersound.bigcartel.com/












 

TNB Orchestra

TNB Orchestra - Eine Kleine Nichtsmusik
Hypnagogia. GIA08. 300 copies.


On discovering that Eine Kleine Nichtsmusik consisted of two almost forty minute tracks I had the review written before I’d even played it. My mind ran to the hideous nature of Harsh Noise Wall [so noise isn’t ‘noise’ enough for ya hey punk?’] and works of a maximalist nature that no doubt exist on 16 gigabyte flash drives and run until your head falls off or your hardware malfunctions. I mean how much noise can one person take in a single sitting? Eighty minutes all in one go? Are you insane? I’m a traditionalist in these matters though and TNB don’t make music to wash the dishes to. I want to sit and listen to your release in the nature that it was intended. I will sit and listen to this all in one go and I will bloody well suffer for it. It comes with the job.

I trawled Twitter and found Japanese noise fans complaining that Eine Kleine Nichtsmusik was over long and difficult to get through in one-er. If it was too much for the Japanese then what chance did I have? And then I remembered Paul Watson’s comment that you could probably fit every noise fan in the world into a football stadium and wouldn’t it be great if we could all be nice to each other, there’s not many of us after all, we need to stick together, one big happy family sitting side by side on piano’s making horrible noises. And yes that is a noble sentiment except that I was thinking more National League North while Watson was probably thinking Championship. But how many in that ground are getting a kick out of an eighty minute noise release? How many people, even those who claim to be rabid noise fans, are getting their kicks out an 80 minute noise release? By now we’re down to those in the dug out and the queue for the half time Bovril. The audience is getting smaller as the tracks get louder and longer.

Then I played it reminding myself that this is, after all, The New Blockaders, or to be more precise TNB Orchestra. What the difference is I have no idea, the sleeve leaves no clue,  the tracks aren’t even given titles. So the only thing left to do is play it. I’ve been putting it off for long enough and here goes and ... well, that wasn’t so bad was it? Too much for some but not for me. It was like rolling in Chanel scented moss as Raquel Welch fed me plump grapes, it was like having the best sleep of my life. It wasn’t and certainly never will be Harsh Noise Wall or whatever the fuck that is. It does creep up on you though. The first thirty minutes are some of the most inventive TNB material I’ve heard with shortwave hiss and computer chatter slathered over a low end rumble and at around the fifteen minute mark Daleks but ever so slowly the chaos takes hold until you realise you’re trapped in a vortex of spiraling, out of control noise. TNB trademark clatter and squeak can just about make itself heard and sometimes voices making ghostly sounds for this is alive with all manner flotsam. An exhilarating joy.  But thats the peak. After reaching the summit the downhill descent of track two is less interesting as gas leaks, astronaut breathing and the wind howling outside eventually develop into a flat-lining assault. At its very end it collapses in on itself revealing the dying spasms of a malfunctioning android and the muffled, struggling puff of a steam fed funicular.

TNB releases now appear to follow a familiar pattern whereby a limited run of handmade CDR’s are sold to rabid collectors which then goes to fund the larger release. I dare say that those at TNB towers have an eye on a double LP for this somewhere down the line and I for one would buy it. Not exactly the Metal Machine Music of noise but still worthy of your time. See you in the Bovril queue.


Buy here

Dieter Müh

Dieter Müh - Hanging the Blind Dog.
Hanson Records. HN257

Dieter Müh - Live at Gängeviertel
Soundholes. Live #005.


There’s always been an air of menace to Dieter Müh releases; the unsettling atmospheres, the Yorkshire Ripper victim confessional slowed to such a degree that you think the hammer must have done more damaged than originally thought. And no rolling of the eyes at the back please, Dieter Müh are an industrial outfit, an ‘Industrial Ambience’ outfit if you like [I have no idea if its in operational use but its the one I prefer] and as such are entitled to use such samples with impunity. It comes with the territory and the fact that Dieter Müh use transgressive material such as this to powerful effect is because the source is heavily disguised, this is no gay porn fisting video at a Power Electronics gig, this is subtle and as such cranks up the gravitas, its chewing your ears up without you even knowing it.

The Dieter Müh sound has altered very little over the 20 odd years its been coming through this door. Which is somewhat surprising when you learn that from three original members there now survives just the one; Steve Cammack. And while Dieter Müh releases may not arrive with the regularity they once did, the one thing you can be sure of is that when they do, they don’t lack quality. A testament to Steve Cammack and his impeccable quality control.

These two cassettes contain three live performances from a couple of years back one of which is, I’m pretty certain, the 2012 Rammel Club Festival set. Its the one that begins with the Maureen Long interview her voice slowed down to such an extent that it becomes a hideous slur and then a sudden eruption, a pounding rhythmic pummeling and you're off. I was there, the room moved from silent attention to heart thumping rush within a second. Its what Dieter Müh do. Its what they’ve always been capable of, holding audiences rapt with gently unfolding rhythms before unleashing a barrage of rhythmic fury at the end of which you'll sometimes hear a menacing voice intoning the words ‘we’re not happy, ‘till your not happy’. The flip begins with dolphin squeals, a bowl ring drone and a gently unfolding, overlapping, enveloping rhythm that develops into an ever more out of control monster, until the tapes cuts it and then silence.

‘Live at Gängeviertel’ repeats the same both sides, a single twenty two and half minute track that moves through two distinct phases starting with layered vocal samples and somebody whispering ‘nobody’. Buried voices appearing out of the silence, voices appear for one word and then disappear, panicked radio communications with an Eraserhead-esque Wurlitzer organ playing out some 1920’s ditty in the distant background, the ‘nobody’s’ get louder, a blizzard make itself heard, drunken WWI soldiers sing, Enochian recitations. Mysterious atmospheres, darkness and unease. Dieter Müh at their very best.     




Soundholes

Hanson

Ceramic Hobs / Disco Mental

The Ceramic Hobs - 50 Shades of Snuff/Welcome to Malaysia Airlines
Disco Mental - Never Can Say Goodbye
Smith Research SRV21. 7”


I’ve been digging through my singles of late, spinning a few and wondering why I still keep those that I either don’t like anymore or have no idea whats on them. I’m not the worlds biggest single fan but I do have an abiding admiration for a format that is unmistakably of itself. Its a single. It has a single on it. Once upon a time, in a dark and miserable past, they contained a track taken from the album and a b-side that was the instrumental version, a cheap and shoddy way for uncaring record companies to pump product on to an uncaring and easily pleased consumer base. At their best they’re visceral slices of a moment in time, the perfect piece of plastic that for a few minutes is the best thing in the whole world.

Over the years I’ve accumulated several Ceramic Hobs singles including one that I had a hand in [read; sent Steve a cheque and six months later received a hundred singles in return] which’ll be Shaolin Master, which I still claim to be one of my all time favourite seven inchers, there was that flexi on Pumf’ ‘The Stoat Rides Out’, the lathe cut with Greasy Walter and the Razors [who were probably just the Hobs under another name and who sang a Neil Young song to a Led Zeppelin tune], ‘72 Hour Drink Binge Alco Pop Madness’ and more lately ‘33 Trapped Chilean Miners’. There’s no doubting that Ceramic Hobs singles have certainly got darker around the edges as the years have passed.

Which is hardly surprising. Their guitarist Nigel Joseph died of a drug overdose in 2014, various members have seen the insides of psychiatric units and one peripheral member was found washed up on the Fylde coast, drink is a constant, sanity seems as far away as Mars but still they make decent records. It must be the Blackpool sea air that does it.

There is no instrumental on ‘50 Shades of Snuff’. There’s no b-side either, for this is a split single, one side of which is Disco Mental; a one off collaboration between Hobs man Morris and the recently departed John Several who between them do an almost straight cover of Never Can Say Goodbye. A song most famously given a disco backing by Gloria Gaynor but here given a cheesy synth drum preset 4/4 beat by Several with Morris singing over the top [in more than one sense] though tons of echo, a performance that disintegrates and becomes ever more tortured as the needle progresses. So we have a dying John Several, a man whose name you thought would never end up in the same sentence as word ‘disco’, recording a disco track thats being sung, almost as in eulogy, by the singer of a band who have either all been sectioned or who are dead? As black humour goes this is as dark as its possible to get.

The doom factor is further in evidence on ‘50 Shades of Snuff’ a track book-ended by recordings made at the inquest into former Hobs guitarist Nigel Joseph’s death from a drug overdose [here given his real name Keiron Wilmot]. Both tracks finds the Hobs staring into a black mirror whilst chugging out stop, start, cracked riffs. Morris’s vocal delivery is, as ever, a thing apart, a raw vibration from the diaphragm, a fag smoked patina hoarse shout, the sound of vocal chords being gripped by pliers. What ‘Welcome to Malaysia Airlines’ is all about I have no idea, apart from the obvious. Morris says at its onset ‘Acid’s groovy’. Lets leave it at that.

I get the feeling that however many of these singles exist have now all been covered in Dr Steg artwork and sent out to loving homes. My copy arrived bearing a postcard I’d sent to Dr Steg many years ago. I slide it in next to ‘33 Trapped Chilean Miners’ and wonder how much darker the Hobs can get before they eventually collapse into a Blackpool sized black hole?

http://smithresearch.blogspot.co.uk/

Mark Wynn - Singles

Mark Wynn - ‘Singles - But They're not Really Singles, I just sent them to the Screen and said they were Singles’.

Harbinger Sound. Harbinger158. LP + 20pp A4 Zine. 500 copies.




Its not often I see the names of those I’ve reviewed getting a mention in the local paper but there was Mark Wynn’s name next to Burts Trad Jazz Band at The Wickham Wednesday night 8.00pm as appears every week in the Spenborough Guardian's ‘Whats On’ column. This, not long after he’d sent me one of his CDR/zine releases packed to brimming with two minute guitar strum avant punkish wit, everyday observations, one sided conversations and a cut and paste zine the likes of which I thought had died out forty years ago.

I did my research for that release and discovered that Wynn had a previous life in which he fingerpicked blues and country songs, the sort of thing that would appeal to those who attend Heckmondwike’s Comrades club and their once a month Crown of Lights acoustic night. The sort of evening where people sit around candle lit tables listening to wannabee Suzanne Vegas, Billy Braggs and Noel Gallaghers. So me and Mrs Fisher went along knowing full well that Wynn had left behind his fingerpicking past and was now supporting Sleaford Mods and was taking to the stage with a ghetto blaster that played his pre-recorded songs to which he sings/talks whilst stripped to the waist, an emaciated Jaques Tati on mind bending drugs, Iggy Pop from York, a deranged, bare chested Frank Spencer.

After a Suzanne Vega and her partner had chimed their way through 20 minutes of heartfelt whimsy as written in a Welsh cottage on holiday in the middle of winter 2010 and Billy Bragg had channeled Joe Strummer with a maraca tied to his left foot it was Wynn’s turn. As he plonked his ghetto blaster on the stage I heard one of his friends shout ‘where’s your guitar?’, a comment which was soon drowned out by whatever it was Wynn had recorded which could have been the energetic ‘ She Fancies Me That One In Age Concern’. As is the norm the whip thin Wynn stripped to his waist within three minutes of taking, not the stage but the floor, and was posturing his way around the scattered punters blowing out each of their tea lights in turn to which many stood up and beat a hasty retreat to the snooker room. By now me and Mrs Fisher were rolling around in mirth hoping he’d keep this up for the rest of the night but no, it was all over in about ten minutes. Wynn pressed stop on his ghetto blaster and told his audience that that was his last song to which there was a smattering of polite applause and a very audible ‘thank fuck for that’ before he shouted ‘ONLY JOKING’ and pressed play once more regaling us all with his instant classic, ‘Rip Off The Fall’. Our amiable Irish host took to the floor with his radio mic and tried to make light of what had just happened by saying something along the lines off ‘well, you never know what to expect from Mark Wynn do you, oh oh oh?’ It was a night I shall never forget.

The next time I saw Wynn was September last year supporting Sleaford Mods at the Irish Centre in Leeds. Same sort of get up but this time he’s even thinner and is sporting a child’s tiara. He’s got all his gear set up on a small table to which he occasionally sits and twiddles something as he eats grapes before leaping up and walking around the stage delivering songs in rapid fire succession in what feels like an almost stream of consciousness delivery.

I get the feeling that he’s an artist incapable of stemming the constant flow of ideas racing through his head. Take the cover of his latest ‘Singles’ LP which is in part a letter to Harbinger Sound supremo Steve Underwood apologising for not offering up a proper cover.  All handwritten in caps and worrying about whether  Rowntrees should have an apostrophe and whether ‘color’ should have a ‘u’ in it. There is of course the obligatory photos of himself staring into the camera [he’s made for the camera], shirtless of course and with a picture of his grandfather on the reverse for good measure.

Wynn takes his cue from the Versatile Newts, the Popticians, the TV Personalities, Desperate Bicycles, a very English kind of DIY punk aesthetic but right here and now in 2016. Think Patrick Fitzgerald having an urge to write songs about Battenburg and Bukowski. An unstoppable force of creativity. I dare say you could put Wynn in a white room with five objects and before the night was out he’d have the beginnings of a new album. 

There are 18 songs here [not all singles of course that was Steve’s idea as you can read about on the cover] and have titles like ‘I Just Don’t Understand Nick Cave’, ‘Real Sausages Made by a Real Butcher’, ‘The Girl Who Looked Like Bobby Gillespie’, ‘Your Nan is Not an Invalid’, ‘She’s My Baby And She Makes Me Die Inside’.  ‘I Just Don’t Understand Nick Cave’ begins with a hard strummed electric guitar and Wynn shouting ‘I’m not even that drunk’. Its probably all over in less than a minute. Most songs are just the retelling of things that happened accompanied by handclaps, tambourines and primitive drums and did I say they were catchy? His songs are as catchy as ebola. He sings in a talking voice. Listening to him is like catching a conversation across a table in a greasy spoon. Some nifty guitar work on ‘Houses on the Green Grass’ give away his previous incarnation in a song that is about … about what? I have no idea but its as catchy as hell and mentions Leeds. ‘Your Nan is Not an Invalid’ mentions New Earswick and Halifax. I’ve heard songs of his that mention Batley. I saw him in Heckmondwike. I doubt I’ll get the opportunity again. ‘John Tries To Buy Some New Tappers - A Movement in Three Parts’ is about his friend going to work in his socks because he has no shoes. ‘Battenburg’ is about Battenburg and has Wynn shouting ‘MULL OF KINTYRE’ in it. ‘Knee Socks’ … you get the idea. ‘She’s My Baby And She Makes Me Die Inside’ sounds like the Stooges with Wynn singing through a bullhorn. And its all utterly brilliant and as fresh as a newly opened packet of GV.

All 18 tracks on 'Singles' were culled from the last two years worth of Wynn's numerous self released CDR's, so what I suggest is this; buy 'Singles', play it to death and whilst you're at it buy up all those CDR's because you're going to need those too.  

Mark Wynn



Harbinger Sound

Tactile - Deep Immersion Electronics

Tactile - Deep Immersion Electronics
Sentrax Corporation. 2XLP with download code.


This stunning looking double LP white vinyl set finally arrived at Idwal Towers after spending a month in a neighbours house whose kids had taken it in and duly forgot about it. And then I had to dismantle the Hi-Fi because new gear was purchased and then the new rack didn’t arrive for a month so for all this time I was playing the MP3 version, which I now realise, after hearing the vinyl for the first time this week, is like trying to appreciate Stockhausen’s Hymnen through a partition wall. Once installed, the new system made me appreciate the fact that music of this nature, electronic music of a droning nature [in fact most music in general it has to be said] is far superior on vinyl to that of MP3 or any of its variants. Don’t argue. You lose. A marvelous object and a beautiful listen. I’m cheering you all the way.

John Everall’s Tactile project has lurked in the undergrowth ever since its inception, as befits someone whose name has been attached to the likes of Coil. His name usually crops up in conversations along with the words Sentrax Corporation, the label he started in the early 90’s that became home to God and people like Justin Broadrick, Mick Harris, James Plotkin. And then in 2014 John Everall [now known as Several] passed away making Deep Immersion Electronics his posthumous release.

Not being too familiar with John Everall’s Tactile project, I relished the chance to fully indulged in his twin synth drones and supped heartily from his droning cup. A listen that when coupled to the fact that he was working on this up until his death, added a certain poignancy to the proceedings.

So we have nine tracks, all numbered, all created from twin cycling analogue synths giving, not surprisingly, a very deep electronic immersion; gently throbbing pulses, sunspot transmissions, data churn, beetling emissions over which sinewy oscillations weave their way across an all encompassing spectrum. At nine minutes in length the longest tracks here ‘D.I.E. VIII’ and ‘D.I.E IX’ go for that deep, deep churn, the relentless onward march of a robot army with but a single fluxing synth note weaving its way across it. Immersive music for immersive people.

My only qualm is that these tracks aren’t immersive enough, at nine minutes I’m just getting in to it and those three minute tracks are but mere tasters, the amuse bouche. I’m thinking triple album here with a track each side. I’m not saying Several hasn’t done his job but the chance to explore these themes further is tantalizing but lost. 

This was Several’s sixth Tactile release and my first. A release that had me exploring corners of Youtube that I don’t normally get to. Another door opened.




http://www.sentrax.co.uk/

Pascal Nichols Leaves Leeds

Has as been kindly pointed out me, I’ve gone and got my Pascal’s mixed up in the below review. Pascal Ansel is a Tiggerish young man bursting with enthusiasm, youth and energy, he’s the one whose leaving Leeds for Lisbon. Pascal Nichols is the gentleman who plays in Stuckometer. This much I now know. I leave the review as is, a monument to an aging brain and testament to my continuing ability to not get even the simplest of facts right. I like to think of myself as the John Peel of reviewing, always playing records at the wrong speed, always getting my facts wrong but not really caring that much and still happy in the knowledge that I have the ability to engage brain and hands from which words appear on a screen. Here’s to old age.



Stuckometer - Rainbow Beads Excretion
Total Vermin 60. CDR

Luke Poot/Lovely Honkey - Shame 3
Angurosakuson 008. CDR

So farewell then Pascal Nichols. You gave us lots of memorable noisy live performances like when you stripped to your knickers and poured beer over you head in the Wharf Chambers. You were making some godawful racket that sounded like Stock Aitken and Waterman channeling Whitehouse and it was grrrrrrreat. Your enthusiasm gave those of us with flat batteries an unexpected recharge, you even took up the improv baton in Leeds while those around you looked to their shoes and mumbled words like ‘thats the night I wash my hair’ and erm ... ummm ... you run a label with an unpronounceable name [unless you're Japanese and then it makes a lot more sense] and now you leave Leeds for Lisbon which makes us sad.

Having listened to these two releases over the last couple of nights I cant help get the feeling that Nichols feels most at home with his improv cap on. I mean making noises in your underpants is a good way to pass a Sunday afternoon on but improv has a certain gravitas to it which Nichols fits comfortably well.

Rainbow Beads Excretion sees Nichols join David Birchall and Karl Sveinsson for two approximately thirty minute-ish tracks of outrageously good guitar, bass and drum flail. Coming in at the more cerebral end of the improv spectrum this is no Unky Thurst send them all packing at midnight last act on lets see hows many’s left when the lights come up teeth bared molten lead earbleed-a-thon, even if it does have its Keiji Haino moments. Which is where we begin but things soon plateau so as we can experience the rub of bass, the scratch of bridge strings, the rattle of drum, the wheeze of keyboard feedback, the clang of chord. All I ask of improv of this nature is for to be carried along, to be not bored, to not think that oh that bit sounded a tad cliched, I think they were running out of ideas, they were bored, they fell asleep. I felt none of that with this. Second track ‘Fill Fill Fill’ begins with jack plug abuse, squeals of metal against metal, tiny bells, the clang of tubular bell-like things and distant whoops. An austere atmosphere that feels like the soundtrack to a difficult avant gard film form 1950’s France thats punctuated twice along its length by two mighty buffets of improv storm.

Who Luke Poot and Lovely Honkey are I have no idea but just to hear once again that mildly racist term of abuse as last seen in the 70’s sitcom Love Thy Neighbour has raised my spirits no end. I hear Scottish accents and the first track is all muffled mutter words and shouting, drunk people calling to each other across a public park while trying to get a noise gadget to work. There then follows three live segments as recorded for On North Manchester FM in which Mr Poot affects emphysema, wind and baby gurgles while playing  snatches from a cassette that contains samples taken from Match of the Day including David Taylor saying ‘do I not like that’. I’m assuming that the producers at On North Manchester FM have sympathetic producers and are used to people coming in to their studios and shouting ‘STREPSILS’ as people have their breath sucked out of them. Last track ‘Happy, Yeah?’ is another live one, three odd minutes worth of odd sounds, film dialogue, scuffling, squeaking but mainly film dialogue which makes me wonder what Poot and Honkey were up to all this time? Watching the films? Were they displayed? We need to know. For whats coming at me now makes about as much sense as freezing lettuce. At least the audience liked it. And Pascal.


Total Vermin [not been updated for a couple of years]


Angurosakuson      

Grim Enema

Grim Enema
Must Die Records. MDR 38. CDR

We must look forward by first looking back. Unless you’re the Italian driving an open top Ferrari in the 1976 film ‘The Gumball Rally’; a no hold’s barred, totally illegal road race that starts in Time Square and ends up thousands of miles later when the road runs out at the Pacific Ocean. In it, the Italian looks to his co-driver and intones the immortal words ‘First rule of Italian driving; whats behind is not important’ before ripping off the rear view mirror and chucking it on to the back seat.

I didn’t see Nigel Joseph in any of the end of the year lists of those we have lost. I did see Lemmy and Philthy, Ornette Coleman, John Renbourne, Chris Squires, Rod McKuen, Demis Roussos, Mick Lynch, Edgar Froese and plenty of other musicians including Ward Swingle who you really must search online for but no mention of Nigel Joseph.

He didn’t have any hit singles, or write any classic tunes. He was in the Ceramic Hobs though. He used to play the Hoover or more conventionally the guitar, even if he did play sat down at the front of the stage. I’ve written about his solo releases on these pages before and retold tales of how he used to send me letters regarding news of his latest noise release including one that was going to be a one off of a hundred tapes sewn into a dogs carcass and when I got one [not the one in the dog obvs as that was only released for one second on one day and then went away for ever] it was just a distortion of a blues cassette which sounds really cheap and crass but was actually quite good in its own raw way. I interviewed him once too. Another tale I’ve told before but one that I like to mention because I don’t like interviewing people as I don’t like asking intrusive questions but Joseph was quite happy to answer questions regarding his fragile mental state and the amount of spine numbing drugs he was taking. For someone who was supposed to be ‘mad’ [a word I’m not happy using but its the one that was bandied about most when talk moved to Joseph] he seemed a lot saner than some of the idiots I have had the displeasure of sharing my working time with.

I think Grim Enema arrived just before Nigel Joseph died which was in the middle of 2015. It seems appropriate that it appears on the totally un-ironically named Must Die Records, a local Blackpool label that also found room for his migraine inducing un-danceable drug music release 'Radioactive Snuff' and of course the still tragically underrated Ceramic Hobs LP 'Spirit World Circle Jerk'. And on the same week that I take delivery of the new Ceramic Hobs single ‘50 Shades of Snuff’ [which I dare say features Joseph in some way or another] I thought it about time I paid my respects by highlighting Nigel Joseph’s Grim Enema.

Except its not just him. A scribbled note mentions the name Ben Stephenson which means nothing to me. So its a collaboration. A full blown band maybe. The MDR website has no further info but it does include, as does the CD, a list of around 30 or so books which I took the liberty to search for online. Its a list that swings all the way from erotic fiction to knot tying manuals to the Koran to Irish politics to the properties of concrete and if I didn’t know better then I’d guess that its a list of books as found on Nigel Joesph’s bookshelf.

But what of what we get to hear? Thankfully for me its not the monged out drug induced beat fug that was Radioactive Snuff, neither is it the throwaway noise of ‘1,2,3’ what we do have is jumbled mass of Sunn O))) type guitars as recorded in a drafty Blackpool bedsit when the tide was out and the drugs were in. Endlessly reverbing chords of heaviness, the Cocteau Twins on Largactyl minus Liz Fraser. Three tracks and forty odd minutes worth of lo-fi  Blackpool drooooooooooong with a Dr. Steg cover and a juxtaposed list of books. As a goodbye statement from Nigel Joseph, one time Hob, one time filler of dead dogs with noise cassettes its seems perfectly pitched.  


http://mustdierecords.co.uk/