Post EU Exit Blues and a Night Down the Wharf Chambers

Suckdog
Apostille
Guttersnipe
Simon Morris

Leeds, Wharf Chambers, Thursday 30th June 2016.

Its not everyday Lisa Carver rolls into town and its not every day that you get to see Simon Morris read from his book so I dislodged my constant cloud of post Brexit gloom and wrenched my weary arse down to the Wharf Chambers for some Sam Smiths cherry beer and Club Mate hoping to see the bearded Wonder and those other friendly faces that congregate at the soggy end of Leeds.

Of course I know who Lisa Carver is. Lisa Suckdog. Heard her name plenty of times but then I realised I had no idea what she actually does? Sing? Roll around the floor naked? Makes horrible noises? I knew she wrote books. I once asked Simon Morris if he knew of any female Charles Bukowski’s and he replied ‘Lisa Carver’. So I went home and forgot to buy any of her books. There were books on the merch table but I was most taken by a copy of Rollerderby magazine and its picture of a woman being used as crocodile bait. As I bought it Carver walked past and I asked her to sign it for me which she did: Mark - we met on a moist night in 2016 who knows then what? Except I couldn’t read it until I got home because I didn’t have my readers on.

Simon Morris takes a seat on the WC stage and tries to get his laptop to work. When he does he blurts out a few passages from his book ‘Consumer Guide’ ‘The Clash - The single most boring rock band that ever existed, clueless politics, tuneless lumpen riffs, overproduction and stylized painful fashion input. I’d take fucking Jon the Postman over these clowns as far as punk goes’. Sharp barbs delivered with pinpoint accuracy by a spittle flecked Morris who gets carried away with himself until his laptop crashes whereupon he recalls an old joke which was something to do with explorers looking for bacon trees. His new stuff is all loveless sex, drugs and dismal towns and bodes well for the future. He then tries to give away some Ceramic Hobs singles and fails miserably. The man has talent.

I knew Guttersnipe would be loud but I didn’t think I’d be fearing for my hearing. Giving up the stage for the wall opposite meant I could sit and then stand on the stage to see them and feel those depth charge sub harmonic bombs going off beneath my arse and feet. Comparisons with Lightning Bolt are inevitable but I’ve seen both now and much prefer Guttersnipe’s frenetic guitar, drum synth splatter. That its just the two of them making all this racket is hard to fathom with the willowy striped stockinged singer/guitarist/synth/gadget holder Gretchen wailing like a banshee whilst jabbing at the strings of a high fretted guitar. The equally willowy drummer is all arms and legs either keeping the thing ticking over or exploding into a cartoonish flurry of limbs. They only play four songs and are done in about twenty odd minutes, the last song being a lengthy foray into the kind of spaced out grooves that could only have been born under Leeds’ dark arches.

Apostille is a one man Pet Shop Boy cum Con-Dom live action. He unravels around 20 foot of microphone cord and then spends the rest of his sample driven hard pumping floor filling banging beats set trying to hang himself with it. He appears to be having conversations with his equipment, at one stage he stops what he’s playing so that he can have a conversation with someone stage left, he jabs at buttons, says he likes someone called Robin, talks about the lack of samples on his sampler, leaps around the floorspace, rolls around the floor, screams, sings, talks, mumbles, throws his head back, rolls his eyes and then he gets on his gadget laden table, runs the mic cable through a beam hook and around his head and for a moment I’m betting everyone in the WC was bracing themselves for an inevitable rush forward to lift him up thus preventing something very unpleasant happening. His songs are chaotic things at the mercy of his ever hovering, prodding fingers and people are dancing. Yes, people are dancing.

After all this frenetic activity its a more sedate start to the Suckdog set. Billed as ‘The Jaywalker Tour’ Suckdog sees Carver mother and daughter joined by the Kuzak sisters in a small play-let of sorts. A mini soap opera if you like. A tale of some sorts that I have to admit I couldn’t quite follow but which contained plenty of taped music of various kinds, audience participation [one male punter ending up on stage holding hands in the air with a puzzled look on his face], jumping around, smashing into people, spilt beer and smashed folding chairs.

Carver lies back on a chair and says she’s dying of cancer, assumed member of family shouts hurray and throws paper money in the air, after that it all gets hazy but its something to do with going to prison and not getting the right medicine [something we all sing along to]. At one stage the music changes to some kind of punk hardcore and everyone goes bat-shit as folding chairs are chucked into the audience, one of which goes whizzing past my nose end missing it by inches. Further chaos ensues when someone who is dead on the floor has their insides ripped open and everybody eats their guts which in this instance is spaghetti which soon gets chucked around resulting in the WC resembling a food fight in an Italian restaurant.  When they’ve done and taken their applause the WC is a complete and utter mess. The floor is littered with broken glass and chairs but everybody is all smiles and appears to have had a rather wonderful time. 

Outside its raining and we’re not in the EU anymore.









 

Outside Artists, Finnish Heavy Metal and Robert Ridley-Shackleton

Robert Ridley-Shackleton - Robert Ridley-Shackleton
Hissing Frames. Cassette.

Robert Ridley-Shackleton - God
Hissing Frames. Cassette.

Lörsson - Famous Lehto’s Pasties [?]
Gafoni/Gasthaus 5. 7”

Lörsson - Tipuuraa
Gafoni Galaxi-4. One sided 7” flexi





It was whilst listening to the Robert Ridley-Shackleton tapes that I found myself perusing Honest John’s most eclectic musical purchasing website and pondering as to whether to splash out the 20 odd sobs required to purchase the reissue of Jean Dubuffet’s 1961 double LP ‘Experiences Musicales’. Two sides of what is, judging from the brief excerpts I’ve heard, the sound of a man not playing the violin very well. This being the sound of a man trying to capture in sound what he created on canvas, inventing new ways of making sound, breaking free of recognised norms, tearing up the rule book and chucking it out of a third floor Parisian window where it lands on fresh dog turds.

The term ‘outsider artist’ is derived from Art Brut. It describes the work of the insane, the child, those with no training or yearning for recognition, those whose work knows no boundaries or cares to recognise them. I’d put Robert Ridley-Shackleton and Lörsson in there too but with reservations. Can you be an outsider artist and still have a Discogs page? A website? A Blog? I suppose you can, even the great Joe Coleman, one of thee great outsider artists is now shunned by the outsider art movement and its sellers and exhibitors because he’s too damned accessible and he sells his paintings to order. But I digress.

As far as I know neither Robert Ridley-Shackleton or Lörsson are insane or six years old but they do work on the boundaries of the creative spectrum where rules there are none and where the results are about as bizarre as you can get within the confines of recorded and physical medium. Robert Ridley-Shackleton with his torn scraps of cardboard artworks and Alan Vega plays Poundland tributes and Lörsson with their take on the lets get wrecked and record it and release it approach.

All of the things you see here are over in a blinking of the eye. The eponymous Robert Ridley-Shackleton cassette [it could be called RRS, nothing is certain] runs to less than a minute, at a guess. As does one side of the hard to find out what its called Lörsson single. That Lörsson should then go to all the trouble of having their work pressed up on exotic flecked turquoise vinyl and bright Tango orange flexi makes them all the more desirable and whacko. When dropping the needle on to the single with Tero Lehto’s name on it I wasn’t sure as to whether my stylus had broken or as to what speed the thing should be properly propelled at; dogs bark and a wheezy keyboard plays a programmed Whistling Dixie and then a drunk Finn sings. On the flip a record is spun at insane speeds as someone mumbles/argues with themselves. The last track is more mumbling, incoherence and coughing to the loop of a stuck record. And thats it. All done and dusted in about two minutes I reckon.

Tipuuraa is to all intents and purposes a one man heavy metal band practicing in his bedroom whose only instrument is an out of tune guitar that he’s put through an effects pedal and a practice amp powered by two dying AA batteries. The eight tracks on here, some of them lasting mere seconds are absurd in the extreme and the nearest thing I’ve heard to the mighty one man Irish heavy metal band Venusian Death Cell and thus destined for greatness.

Robert Ridley-Shackleton meanwhile appears to have some kind of card fixation. He sings songs about it and uses torn bits of it to adorn his art works and missives - I had one here but it appears to have got mixed up with the real rubbish and disappeared. And there’s something called the Cardboard Club, which is probably Robert Ridley-Shackleton sat at a table piled with torn bits of cardboard, paper, Copydex and pens. Judging by the proliferation of his card/art works and his recorded output I’d say that Ridley-Shackleton likes to ‘churn it out’ as we say in the business. And long may he do so.

On ‘Card is God’ he sounds like an 8-bit Suicide with plenty of yelps, ‘ows’ and pub singer ‘wo-ho’s’ over a ramshackle, rapid and catchy rhythm that eventually crumbles into paper rustling. These tracks appear to be actual songs albeit one of a shaky structure liable to collapsing into field recordings of someone trying to get matches out of a box. On ‘Believe’ RRS sings apparently random phrases in a George Michael fashion as parrots are attacked with flamethrowers. ‘God is Card’ goes for the  Neil Young ‘Tonights the Night’ fashion and reprises the opener. A mini classic. The brief eponymous release has two tracks each side but its hard to detect the join with more of the 8-bit Suicide, degraded static, singing/moaning thing going on.

Hissing Frames [Ridley-Shackleton website/blog] showcases many of his cardboard artworks cum zines which to my eyes bear more than a passing resemblance to Cy Twombly and at a push Jackson Pollock. Impressive stuff and definitely outsider-ish.
       





Gafoni


Hissing Frames

The Nightingale Noise Bar and the Eggshells of Death.

As I said, I missed Luke Younger in Tokyo by three nights but he sent me certain vital information such as the existence of the HMV Shibuya second hand record shop and almost as crucially the Nightingale Noise Bar in Tokyo’s Golden Gai. As soon as I heard that there was a noise bar in Tokyo I knew I had to find it. Which is where my problems began.

The Golden Gai is but six narrow streets that is home to over 200 very small, idiosyncratic bars and cafes. Its an area that has, by some miracle, managed to escape the developers wrecking ball thus giving the area a distinct David Lynch/Blade Runner feel. High rise surrounds on three sides with a Bhuddist Temple sat at the other. Its about as weird as Tokyo gets and Tokyo has lots of weird. 

Some of the bars are really, really, really, really small. We’re talking four punters max. Some of them will only allow you in if they like the cut of your gib. If the bar owners mates are in town then don’t even bother sitting down. Some of the bars have cover charges, something that will be anathema to western drinkers, you mean you have to pay to sit down? There are bars dedicated to the plasticity of the 80’s, world music, there’s the place where you can get served by a nurse, get served a cocktail that's the alcoholic take on colonic irrigation. There’s Cambiare, a bar themed around the Dario Argento film Suspiria.

I studied the Nightingale website and then how to find the Golden Gai which as it happened wasn’t that far from our hotel. I had Mrs Fisher with me of course, who as ever is most accommodating in my flights of fancy, but I wondered how long she’d be able to stick it out in a noise bar.

We decided to get there as soon as it opened thus imagining we’d secure one of its few seats. So at around 7.45pm we found ourselves wandering up and down each of the Golden Gai’s narrow streets agog as to the sheer number and variety of its tiny establishments. We looked in the doorways of bars that catered to the more extreme end of the Heavy Metal scale, folk bars that had acoustic guitars on the walls, real honest to goodness American bars the likes of which Pops used to drink in. There were bars full of cats. The furry variety, not the Jazz fan variety but I bet there were Jazz bars too. We saw doorways so slim we wondered how people of a portly persuasion would ever get through them. There were signs for bars down back alleyways that you could hardly squeeze through. After two circuits though we saw no sign of the Nightingale. And then we came across a map of the place all lit up and no doubt put there just for the likes of tourist who have trouble locating tiny bars. And there was the Nightingale. Written in English, down at the bottom of the very first street we’d walked down and near to Bar Plastic Model. So we walked down there and no, we still couldn’t find it. We looked up and down. We Walked up and down. We asked people. And still no sign of it.

Eventually we did find it and when we did enter its dark space the barmaid seemed genuinely thrilled to see us and excited that we’d found the place. 'How did you find us?' Which leads me to believe that actually finding the Nightingale is all part of the fun which is why I’m not giving exact details here. I've given enough already and If you’re as keen to find it as I was then so will you.

Lightbulb's in eggshells hung from the ceiling as did what looked like seaweed. A skinned monkey or small animal with a squashed head hung on the wall [I have to say I didn’t see it myself but Mrs Fisher reported its presence and wasn’t exactly thrilled by it]. A small TV screen played a Godzilla movie and from two huge JBL’s came the sound of a thunderstorm. The lighting was of course suitably subdued and all purpley, red and dark. We ordered a couple of drinks and took in the surroundings; a riveted polished steel bar top, a huge upside down clock, a poster advertising a 1960's German art show, various noise making gadgets of the homemade variety, a sofa with a blanket thrown over it sat against a wall and up against the bar seven bar-stools, behind it were crammed hundreds of LP’s.

Conversation was somewhat hampered by the thunderstorm going on so we moved to the end of the bar where we sat and watched the TV screen which soon changed from Godzilla to a Japanese documentary about traditional folk music. I became fascinated by it and saw in it the Bongoleeros and the Filthy Turd, people dressed as horses banging bits of wood and a man with a performing monkey. The barmaid came over and apologised for the owner not being in and talked of a Rune Grammofon gig across town. We got another drink and she began mixing records layering Pan Sonic like beats with GDR political speeches then ambience and finally a growing Industrial roar. As the volume increased the Japanese folk music documentary got weirder with people wrestling bears which was around the time Mrs Fisher began to get restless. I got up to take some pictures and saw stuck to the clock a piece of paper with the word 'HELM' written on it that looked like it could be a gig running order. Maybe Helm played a gig there? I felt like I was following in his footsteps. I was following in his footsteps.

I asked for the bill and for four drinks of plum wine mixed with soda handed over an eye-watering amount of money. I couldn't have cared less. I'm going back one day. I hope its still there when I do.

http://www.tokyo-nightingale.com/

Audio Man Dig and the Japanese Record Shop Trail.

Tower Records - Shibuya

Sonny Boy - Nagasaki

Sonny Boy

There are many reasons to visit Tokyo but the main one is for the record shops. Of which there are more in one city than any other city I know of. I’ve been to plenty of big cities but when it comes to the sheer variety or record shops on offer Tokyo makes the brain boggle like no other. And while Mrs Fisher details the logistics of how to get to Tokyo Tower I’m on Vinyl Hub checking out how many Disk Union shops there are in the Shinjuku area. But first you have to find the correct Disk Union shop for Disk Union has about thirty stores in Tokyo alone [and a recently opened branch in Osaka] and has dedicated classical music stores, dedicated Jazz stores [on three floors] and dedicated everything else stores. My favourite is the seven floor Shinjuku store where you go up in the tiny lift to floor six and browse the avant garde/noise section followed by the post punk section and then down the stairs stopping off at Prog, CD/Record accessories before having a shufty around the first floor new stuff and back out in to the street for some sushi and a beer.

Record shopping/browsing in Japan is not without its pitfalls though. The fancy OBI strip on a CD case may look exotic but when you’re faced with a wall of them written in Katakana it can become a frustrating experience [Katakana is the alphabet the Japanese use for translating foreign words]. A wall of CD’s, all with spines facing you, all in Katakana is nothing but a headache waiting to happen. See how long your patience holds after you’ve pulled out your tenth CD the most interesting of which is Sade’s Greatest Hits. And for some reason they catalogue them in alphabetical first name order. No I don’t know why either.

But first to the biggest one of them all and Tower Records. Originally an American chain that now survives in Japan alone. The gargantuan maw that is the entrance to their nine floor Shibuya Tokyo megastore [believed to be the biggest record shop in the world] stands like a malevolent monster waiting to suck in unsuspecting passers by before turning their Yen into saccharine drenched J-pop CD’s. Worth going in to just to get an idea as to what dangerous drugs feel like without ever having to take them or suffer the after effects. If you’re into having your senses assaulted by an iPad on every shelf end blaring out such unlikely named homespun J-pop bands as Bump Chicken and Mr. Children [names which somehow appear to have no effect whatsoever on their popularity but may go some way as to explaining why that popularity ends in far east airspace] then go ahead. I guess the classical music section is quieter. I have bought things from Tower Records on past trips but passed up on the Shibuya monster this time due to lack of time. I much prefer spending my Yen in the more relaxed and friendlier surroundings of Japan's much smaller establishments. Places that make you feel happy and relaxed and don't have iPads brainwashing you into buying Baby Metal CD's.

In Nagasaki I found Sonny Boy and a wall of CD’s all with spines facing me, all covered in Katakana. Believe it or not I have now learnt Katakana and to my annoyance have discovered it is of little use when faced with a wall of CD’s all with their OBI strips facing you. This is mainly due to the fact that translations are designed to help Japanese pronunciation hence for instance, The Damned become ‘Damudu’ and Miles Davis becomes something even odder due to the fact that the Japanese cant pronounce ‘v’s’.  As with most Japanese record shops the stock in Sonny Boy is meticulously catalogued with LP’s all in plastic sleeves, all having a small square of coloured paper attached to the top left hand corner containing all the information you need. There was a seriously good selection of European avant garde/electronic/prog but being so early in the trip and being unfamiliar with most of it I left empty handed. The vinyl walls were well packed, some would say overly-packed. One wall contained boxes of singles, some of the punk variety, that I casually browsed through as Mrs Fisher sat patiently on a nearby stool checking her phone for messages. A seven inch single from the early 80’s by a Japanese band called The Floor tempted me. I’d never heard of them but upon seeing the words ‘new wave/experimental’ I felt a twinge in my wallet but £20 quid for a single by a band I’d never heard of? Was it worth it? I guess Underwood has all their back catalogue bar that one and is cursing me now.

One advantage that some Japanese record shops have over their UK equivalents is that they quite happily stock used and new vinyl together. Another is that most vinyl is stocked in 12 inch deep wooden boxes situated at waist height usually two deep. This allows for faster browsing with a technique I saw in use whereby you start at the back of the box and pull a record up with one hand as the other hand selects the record in front of it, as the record at the back is dropped back down the other hand picks up its record and so the process continues. I saw quite a few people adopting this technique and watched them quick scan a box containing about 50 LP’s in a flat minute. Think about this the next time you’re in Jumbo Records and stretching to reach the A - J in the jazz section and your sciatic nerve starts twanging.

Next stop Fukuoka and Ticro Market which is located in the trendy clothes shopping area and up a flight of stairs. Its a fairly small shop [by Japanese standards] stocking almost exclusively vinyl and was big on Hip-Hop and dance with a smattering of most other genres catered for but again I left empty handed.

In Kanazawa I had Estacio Records on my list but after getting lost in the back streets the trip was abandoned in favor of keeping the entente cordial between me and Mrs Fisher alive and healthy. Mrs Fisher, it has to be said, has the patience of a saint when it comes to the fruitless search for record shops in foreign cities and has accompanied me on many a leg stumping walk in search of vinyl succor. So I wasn’t complaining. I still had four nights in Tokyo at the back of the trip to look forward to so not finding Estacio Records was no biggie. Instead we went for onion rings and beer. This is Japan we're talking about after all.

Later that night as we wandered the back streets looking for somewhere to have a quiet beer we came across Audio Man Dig. It was around 8 o’clock at night, a humid night and Audio Man Dig’s ramshackle outer and gloomy interior didn’t win me over, so we carried on walking. Ten minutes later curiosity drew me back and after managing to squeeze in through a front door that was almost hidden by a wall of hi-fi packaging I found myself in the most ramshackle record shop I’ve ever seen the inside of. Inside, sat listening to classical piano music, surrounded by hi-fi equipment and teetering box sets of classical music was a kindly faced gentleman who immediately sprung to his feet and began screwing in all the light bulbs in the back of the shop. The shop appeared to hold the three of us rather snugly but I feared as to what would happen if anyone else came in. The back of the shop disappeared into darkness where shelves of audio equipment could be seen, each with a day-glo sticker attached advertising price and condition. The few shelves that I could get to were mainly jazz and classical. To get to the jazz section I had to step over two boxes and then found myself shoulder to shoulder with vinyl and a red hot light bulb six inches from my skull. Then the nice man in the shop asked us if we liked coffee, which we said yes to and off he disappeared into the back of the shop whereupon ten minutes later he emerged with a pot of coffee and three cups. We sat in the three chairs that he had and listened in silence to the quite beautiful piano music that was playing through a Linn/Naim set up. ‘New model’ he said seeing I was interested. Mrs Fisher began taking notes and handed me a CD of Ethiopian harp music on the French Buda label. I began writing the names of artist and composers on a bit of paper and asking him if he had anything by them to which his reply was ‘nothing’.

‘Mauricio Kagel garimaska’,
‘Nothing’,
‘Stockhausen garimaska’,
‘Nothing’,

It could have been my pronunciation or my handwriting. Maybe I should have asked if he had any Damuda? I climbed back into the Jazz section for one more look and found Miles Davis. I found original Jap pressings of ‘Agharta’ amongst many others but plumped for Albert Ayler’s ‘Prophecy’, not an original but an Italian repress and welcome all the same. I took some pictures as he bagged up Albert and The Harp of King David and then I noticed some Impulse LP’s behind the counter that his hi-fi equipment sat on. A counter he’d now outgrown. He didn’t seem troubled by the fact that he was running out of space. He seemed like the happiest man in the world and he shut in ten minutes. I wiped some sweat off my forehead and made for the door. As I got there it was opened by the first of three westerners. I bid them good luck and we made for the fresher air.

The Nice Man in Audio Man Dig

Audio Man Dig

Audio Man Dig

Exterior of Audio Man Dig

Another reason why Japan wins ‘The Best Place to Go Record Shopping’ award is that most places stay open until 9 o’clock at night, seven days a week. At 7.30pm in your Tokyo hotel room you can say to yourself, ‘you know what I think I’ll just pop down to Disk Union in Shinjuku and see if they’ve got the new Bob album in’ and off you go to have a browse. In the UK they open at 9 o’clock in the morning when everybody’s in bed and shut when the shop has people in it. Its like the pubs used to be twenty years ago and is in some sense ridiculous.

When we got to Tokyo I made for the 6th floor of Shinjuku Disk Union and put my hands on the Whitehouse ‘New Britain’ boot which was going for a ridiculously cheap £10 then the new JFK/Grey Wolves collaboration ‘Assassin’. I bought a Lucian Berio LP, not one of his electronic works but good all the same. They had a copy of the Blood Stereo/Smegma split on Nashazaphone so I bought that too. I bought lots of stuff over four days, all of it most welcome and all of it damned cheap seeing as how they were having a 20% off everything weekend sale. And then Luke Younger told me about the second hand HMV shop in Shibuya, a place packed with rare and exotic jewels of the experimental/noise variety, a rich compendium of all that is good and rare and as it turns out, very expensive. I missed Luke in Tokyo by about three days but he told me about HMV in Shibuya and the Nightingale noise bar in the Golden Gai district [of which more later] and for this I am eternally grateful.

Its best not to confuse the HMV shop in Shibuya with ‘HMV and Book’ in Shibuya. Which is what I did. And although HMV and Book in Shibuya is a wonderfully pristine and well organized floor of books and CD’s its not the place to go if you’re seeking rare and exotic jewels of the experimental/noise variety. Instead we found [due to my most excellent map reading skills it has to be said] the two floor HMV that is mainly vinyl and has the biggest selection I’ve ever seen of avant garde/experimental/modern composition LP’s under one roof. 1950’s musique concrete singles? No problem. Those shiny silver Phillips series of LP’s by the likes of Francois Bayle? No problem. Gallery press Henri Chopin 10 inchers? Yours for huge amounts of Yen. Upstairs they had Jazz and World Music and a room dedicated to singles, downstairs there was a room dedicated to cassettes but I never found it. It was without doubt a mind boggling array of vinyl but the prices were out of my league so I left empty handed.

One of my aims whilst in Tokyo was to find Los Apson. I was there ten years ago when it lived in a tiny room on about the third of forth floor of a mundane office block in Shinjuku. A place rammed with all manner of audio strangeness and wrestling masks. I bought a bootleg of the Sex Pistols A&M single for a tenner and a BusRatch/Hijokaidan split. I still have them and the bag they came in. Since then Los Apson has upped sticks and moved to the up and coming trendy vintage clothing/record shop area that is Koenji. Sort of like Tokyo’s answer to Camden but without the million tourists a day and crap band t-shirt stalls. Then I discovered that Los Apson only opens from three in the afternoon until eight at night and we were there at noon. In its place I found Be-In Records in a covered shopping street. Up a flight of stairs I found a decent sized room specializing in mainly 60’s and 70’s UK and American rock/pop/prog vinyl with the usual wall full of Beatles including all the solo material. I mean how many people actually buy Ringo Star LP’s? Everything in English too which made for pleasant browsing. I left with Jazz though,  Cecil Taylor’s ‘Solo’ and Miles Davis ‘In a Silent Way’ both Jap pressings, both a fiver. Thank you very much Be-In Records.

On my last trip to the sixth floor of Disk Union in Shinjuku I pondered how many record shops there were in Tokyo and how long it would take me to get round them all. Probably weeks, months. There’s no other city I know of or have visited that has such an array of record shops catering to all tastes and pockets. What I’ve written here doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface. These are just the ones I went in.

On our last night there I made a solo trip to Disk Union’s sixth floor and poked my nose in each section as I made my way down wondering if I’d ever get to come back. Regret mingled with the thought that tomorrow we’d be on a plane and I’d soon be at home playing what I’d bought. We were tired after three weeks stumping around Japan and my suitcase was getting dangerously heavy. As I hit the ground floor I couldn’t resist one last look around and as I turned the corner there was Keiji Haino checking out the Jap psych. Japan is full of surprises.

 




Before setting off I spent some time on the excellent Vinyl Hub website which is where you’ll find information on all the above shops except Audio Dig Man in Kanazawa who appears to have no web presence at all. The best I can do for you is to point you in the direction of the streets behind the Tokyu Hotel, just don’t leave it until 8 o’clock at night to go there.





Vinyl Hub

Nuen Recs + Bruces's Fingers

Manfried Wender - 2015³
Nueni Recs #006.  CD

Kulakantu - Oier Iruretagoiena
Nueni Recs #005.  CD

Hession/Stefani - Concretes
Bruce’s Fingers. BF 128. CD



Thanks to the Bearded Wonder over at RFM I now have two releases from Nuen Recs to listen to. Or not as the case may be. Two releases that were deemed unsuitable for dissemination at RFM due to the fact that the Bearded Wonder declines to put the boot in anymore, something to do with positivism and preservation of the id. No fear, where Beardy fears to tread I done my welders clogs and start jumping around in broken bottle glass. Fortunately for me the Campbell bunged me a Hession/Stefani release that did more than enough to reverse the damage.

Things didn't start well with cursory listens revealing most of the Wender release to be nothing but silence.  Not absolute silence as recorded in an anechoic chamber of course. No, no no, that would be too easy. But I'm an attentive listener these days and with the new hi-if still tickling my eardrums I decided to put aside a precious Saturday afternoon to get to the bottom of what was actually going on here. Now I'm no stranger to silence in the area of recorded music and have great affection for people like Bernhard Günter and Francisco López, musicians who have chosen to work at the very bottom of the audible scale [my eternal memory of Gunter is a picture of him cupping a dried leaf to his ear as if listening intently to his slow desiccation, but I digress]. 2015³ is a work by the Swiss minimalist composer Manfred Werder as interpreted by the Swedish duo Regler. Something to do with Werder giving them a line of text by Walter Benjamin and telling them to get on with it. The results are a 40 minute track that for the first ten minutes sounds like someone setting up a drum kit and for the next thirty minutes is nothing but virtual silence. The inside cover shows someone asleep at the drum kit and someone asleep on the floor in front of an industrial lamp [all part of the interpretation kiddoes]. I can only assume that the recording is that of the drummer setting up his kit so as not to awaken his partner before turning on the lights at 40.00 resulting in this conversation:

‘I tried not to wake you during the recording’
‘It's ok I'm a heavy sleeper’
‘We've done. I’ve pressed stop’
‘Did it work?’
‘I think so’
‘Great’


Things aren’t much better in Kulakantu land where silence also exists but in my opinion not in nowhere near enough quantities. Four tracks of electronic cerebral cak that is cold and detached and exists for the kind of person who sits at home wanking over their Milton Babbitt vinyl. One track sounds like a toy airplane going overhead its engine cutting out intermittently, another is electronic cicadas and then silence, electronic cicadas, silence, electronic cicadas, silence. And so it goes. 


Sweeping away this depressing mix of chin stroking intellectualism is ‘Concretes’; a collaboration between the percussionist Paul Hession and Ewan Stefani. With Stefani processing via his own software and synthesising whatever it is that Hession has created. The results are a never ending panoply of sounds as brought to us by Hession’s drums, sampler, ring modulator, echo machine and Hubback gongs. For 56 minutes and eight gloriously individual tracks I delighted in all manner of rattles, riffs, prods, bumps, burbles, scrapes and samples of old films. First track ‘Rindade Insult’ is a whirr of quick edits, each one chopped into its own tiny epic of improv heaven, ‘Vermeer Kankare’ is more subdued, a glass orchestra, ‘Nja’ at almost fifteen minutes is the longest and most rewarding outing with the sounds slowed down to almost drone like proportions as beebling electronica wheedles away in the undergrowth before mutating into drum and bass like structures.

Simon H Fell's production is of such a quality that listening to this eternally spewing forth mass of sounds is like manna from heaven. I could ravish this release for the next ten pages, run my tongue over its fold out cover and around the edges of the disc itself all the while reveling in the fact that it was recorded in West Yorkshire and that Simon H Fell’s initials are the same as Milovan Srdenovic’s Stinky Horse Fuckers label. That and the fact that the only silence that exists on this release are the two seconds between each track.

http://www.nuenirecs.com/

www.brucesfingers.com
 

Staraya Derevnya

Staraya Derevnya - Kadita Sessions
Self released cdr. 60 copies.


There’s not that many genre defying releases make it through the door here these days and the days when I get them in hand felted pouches are even rarer so here’s to Staraya Derevnya who’ve managed to do both. Cheers.

The man behind this genre defying release and someone who I feel has the mastery of the studio at his fingertips is Gosha Shtasel. A man who has somehow managed to create a work that takes in elements of Ghédalia Tazartès Einstürzende Neubauten, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Belgian experimental rockers Deus, World Music and lounge muzak.

Before we go any further though here’s a list of some of the instrumentation as credited on the rather fabulous fold out CD cover:

Percussion
Toys
Objects
Marching band kazoo
Shruti box
Synths
Melodika
Chello [sic]
Theremin
Violin
Feedback
Brushes

And a choir of six people. And cries and whispers.

What the objects are I have no idea. They could be anything because inside this release lie all manner of sounds and instrumentation all of it bringing to my ears the kind of aural delight one comes across all too rarely.

Track one ‘Hram’ kicks off with a blood curdling Tarzan roar before going hell for leather in some kind of Siberian knees up, a demented breakneck race for the finish line where all the participants fall around spent and pissed. Track two ‘Mem’ kicks off with the sound of a skip full of milk bottles being dropped from a great height. A sound that continues through its course as two people, one speaking Russian, the other Hebrew [I think] talk to each other from either side of my headphones each. Track three ‘Chastity’ has the shruti box, someone scraping stones together, the feedback and a head down pean to someone’s God as sung in Hebrew.

And so it goes. Each track a beguiling mix of sounds, voices, languages and styles, a journey, a testament to the producer’s skill and a joy for the listener. I’m taking in the Kazoo right now. I like Kazoo’s. I don’t hear enough Kazoo’s. With it the some Ethiopian jazz courtesy of Hailu Mergia. In a moment there will be some Turkish funk and a splattered keyboard solo where the player rests all his hands on the keys going for the big Sun Ra cluster buster. It all ends with a conversation. Maybe in Russian. After which I put it back in its felt pocket and give thanks to man called Gosha Shtasel.


http://www.starayaderevnya.co.uk/

Etsy

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.  

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