King Kong Records Osaka

My research into Osaka’s record shops amounted to a quick Google search whilst simultaneously throwing a few shirts into a suitcase. Organization has never been my strong point and once again it would turn out to be my downfall. The search turned up the Jagged Visions Zine blog and a second hand record shop called King Kong. A shop that by all accounts [well, Jagged Visions anyway] deserves to be at the top of any serious record collectors list. Not that I’m a serious record collector in a rabid Pink Floyd fan way whose life isn’t complete without every version of Dark Side of the Moon [238 according to Discogs since you ask], I’m more of a leisurely afternoon browsing kind of rummager, the kind that likes to be surprised. I like to ‘dig’ as the parlance has now become. Crate dig. And there’s nowhere better to crate dig than in Japan.

There were three nights in Osaka at the beginning of the trip and one night at its very end in which to discover King Kong and those as recommended by Jagged Visions. Armed with my Jagged Visions knowledge I now knew that the Amerika Mura district of Osaka, in which numerous record shops lay, was to be found just north of the very hotel in which we were staying. So after some fitful sleep and numerous cups of strong coffee a map was consulted and the Amerika Mura district was located.

Its warren of gridded streets bear comparison to London’s Camden Town in that there appears to be no end of people wandering around countless shops looking for something to buy that's cutting edge and probably costs a fortune. Fashion victims abound. I saw one chap with odd shoes on and a baseball cap with the word FUCK writ large on its brim in two inch thick white perspex letters. There were Tartan frock coats with holes cut in them and skateboards and whilst it all looked ‘right on’ and ‘free’ and ‘fun loving’ the arms of big business had already made themselves felt in the guise of Red Bull sponsored surfboard painting and Grand Theft Auto XXII promos. At least the record shops were indie. If I could find them.

But I didn't. I consulted the notes I’d made back home and realised I didn’t have an actual address, just something in the nature of 'opposite this' or 'near that'. With Mrs Fisher in tow I knew my time was limited and whilst it was fun watching the fashion victims visit shops like honey bees on overtime there was always going to be the jet lag and a certain lassitude that was never far away.

In the end I gave it up as a bad job and off we trotted to Osaka Castle or was it the Aquarium or the Sky Tower, somewhere on the tube miles away. All was not lost though. During the coming days I would add to my Cornelius collection in Kochi whilst in Takamatsu the Mimosa Bird Jazz cafe would reveal unplayed copies of Coltrane’s Ascension and The Albert Ayler Trio’s Spiritual Unity both in the same box and both for a fiver. Around the corner in a crammed to the roof ‘Voice’ there were boxes of singles including many a Led Zeppelin Jap only 45 which I knew were worth money but for the life of me I couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to buy and resell them when I got home. And all the time I was wondering if I’d ever find King Kong records during my last night in Osaka.

And there it was. We passed it by sheer accident. Thirsty and hungry and looking for somewhere to slouch with a few beers and a bowl of noodles for company we passed it right there on the right. Where ever it was. I still don’t know. But after spending a good hour in there and not even scratching the merest surface of a micro surface I can tell you that King Kong is the best second hand record shop I’ve ever been in. It is vast, enormous, ongoing, mind boggling in size and scope and breadth of genre, format, style and content. They even have their own cardboard boxes made up and at the back of the shop piles of them awaited sifting and sorting. Books and t-shirts abound. There was even stuff spilling out into the street. There must have been a bazillion records in there. I saw one person browsing records and couldn’t work out how he’d actually got to where he stood. There were dark corners that you just knew held some hidden gem but there just wasn’t the time. And then Mrs Fisher asks ‘don’t you know these people?’ and waves a flyer about for the recent Sudden Infant/Rudolph eb.er show that I missed by a month or so. I felt like an explorer following in the footsteps of those who have gone before me.

I was never going to leave empty handed so I bought one of the first things I saw ‘The World’s Worst Records!’ on Rhino Records with the sick bag still attached all for a 1000 yen [£6.50]. Just about everything I picked up was reasonably priced with the thinking being sell it and shift rather than sit on it forever looking at it gathering dust. I found the noise/experimental box [tucked away in the bottom left hand corner if you’re in a rush] and found two Schimpfluch related releases [got, got]. It was like bumping into old friends. Mrs Fisher found something she liked and I paid for them and the nice lady at the counter slipped a flyer into my bag that if I’d have had on day one would have led me to no less than 15 record shops all within the same area, all of which I failed to locate those two weeks earlier. I reproduce it here to save all further travelers the same trouble.

Having looked at the websites of each one of them I get the feeling that they like to specialize, be it reggae, hip hop, soul, 50’s & 60’s rock ... but I think I found the best one first.

Earlier in the day we ventured south of Namba station into the densely packed streets of Den Den town in search of further obscure Jagged Visions recommendations but found nothing but Tower Records and a quirky beer shop cum cafe. We tried a couple of bottles of pale ale from the Osaka brewery Minoh and deemed it one of the best bottled beers either of us had ever had but at a 1000 Yen a bottle [yes that's £6.50] our thirsts were somewhat tempered. Paying the bill I picked up a flyer that said ‘I Love Craft Beer’. On its reverse was a map showing the whereabouts of a craft beer shop not ten minutes walk from the Sky Tower where Minoh’s full range of beers were there for all to try. I tried to hide my tears as best I could.

1 - Newtone Records www.newtone-records.com

1 - Afro Juice www.afro-juice.com

1 - Rootdown Records www.rootdownrecords.jp

2 - OX - www.ox-z.com

3 - Waxpend

4 - Sakura Records - www.sakura-records.net

5 - Vinyl Chamber - www.vinylchamber.com

5 - Nightbeat Records - www.nightbeatrecords.com

5 - Morpho Records - www.morphorecords.com

5 - Rare Groove - www.raregroove.jp

6 - Voxmusic www.voxmusicweb.com

6 - Perfect Pitch Records www.perfectpitchrecords.com

7 - King Kong www.kingkong-music.com

8 - Groovenut Records www.groovenutrecords.net


Jagged Visions Zine

www.craftbeerbase.com

Recon

The Bongoleeros

Kogumaza

Super Hagman

Plurals

Onehotrix Point Never
Cut Hands
Helm

Recon Festival
Howard Assembly Rooms, Leeds, 26th September

Super Hagman
Plurals
Kogumaza
The Bongoleeros
Vibracathedral Orchestra

Recon Festival
Brudenell/Hyde Park Picture House, Leeds 28th September



I usually post reviews of gigs I’ve attended the day after the show when the mind is fresh and the ears are still ringing but here I make an exception. Four gigs in eight days gave me little time for writing but on the other hand, plenty of time for reflection. Did I really see the Bongoleeros play two venues and a litter strewn Leeds street within the space of twenty five minutes? Did I really see the Sleaford Mods rip up the Kraak in that same space of time? Did I really see William Bennet wiggle his hips, not so much like a fucking eel, but more like your dad at a disco? I saw all of this and more. I saw Mainliner play that most famous of venues the Hebden Bridge Trades Club, a club so steeped in Labour Party history that I felt half naked without my members card. A town so steeped in heavy lesbian activity that the sight of a group of earth mothers with twigs in their hair and their Germain Greer for President badges worn proudly on their frayed dungarees caused not a single stir. To see Steve Stapleton propping the bar up seemed perfectly natural. I would see his one time partner William Bennett the night after but I’d have preferred it if it was Bennett propping the bar up [hardly likely I know but worth the observation] and Stapleton doing the gig but you cant always get what you want. As someone once sang

It got me to thinking about whether I preferred more down to earth venues like pubs, clubs and warehouse spaces or those austere art house caverns like the Howard Assembly Rooms. I’m thinking I know which the artists prefer: a chance to perform before 300 people with a huge back projection, a shit hot sound system, a decent wedge in their expenses paid pocket and kudos on the important music circuit or to rub shoulders with the lumpen proletariat, parading their wares through a house PA whilst being at the mercy of a sound guy whose got a headache and already hates your band whatever you do, in front of, if you’re lucky, 50 punters all the while running the gauntlet of getting ripped off by the promoter and getting home the day after having slept on someones floor for two hours.

There’s no denying the impact of those top end sound systems though. A clarity of sound that you rarely come across outside art spaces and Radio 3 live broadcasts. The arched roof of the Howard Assembly Rooms coupled to that Function One sound system played its part perfectly in reflecting Helm’s performance. And its here that I have to admit that I was in on a freebie courtesy of Helm’s Luke Younger. Its not often I get the chance to swan into venues such as the Leeds Grand and say ‘I’m on the guest list’ but here I was saving myself £12.50 and looking forward to seeing Helm [most of all] and then Cut Hands [curious as to how William Bennett is mutating these days] and Onehotrix Point Never [now forever known as Ten Pint T-rex] and their vintage synth warblings.

Helm played for about 45 minutes. Perhaps 15 minutes too long but still plenty of time for Younger to mix his looped cassettes [I’m guessing - I was near the back] and bring in sounds of a light rhythmic gamelan like nature, street sounds, found sounds maybe, all of which create a super slow ethnic ritual austere bleak industrial ambience, if there exists such a thing. I’m writing this a week after the event so forgive me the lack of detail but it was as if I was listening to [not surprisingly] a Helm record, any number of which I’d heartily recommend to anyone interested in such delicateness. Towards it climax Younger left the stage leaving his equipment to play all on its own. This lasted for about ten minutes during which members of the audience began to look at each other clearly confused. Was he finished? Was he going to come back on? Can I get up and go for a piss now? When it did finally come to an end there was polite, baffled applause. This is good. Cause consternation in your audience. Expect the unexpected. Even in an airy art space.

With hindsight I should have left there and then. Ears still ringing from Mainliner I was in no mood for what came next. Which brings me back to pub versus art venue. I once saw Bennett’s Whitehouse play the Royal Park Cellars, about a couple of miles away from the more austere walls of the Howard Assembly Rooms and it was one of the most exhilarating gigs I’ve ever been to [this has since been qualified by what I later discovered to be some carefully choreographed dramatics] but for sheer volume and presence its memory lives vividly on. I saw Sotos leave the venue with blood pouring from a cut hand [HA!] caused by smashing a beer bottle in what I assumed was genuine anger, the floor was awash with spilt beer, blood, crushed fag ends and the body of a drunk and passed out punter. No doubt Bennett, Best and Sotos made next to bugger all on the gig but it did Whitehouse’s reputation as a force of power electronics a power of good. And here’s Bennett ten years later stood stage centre with his ‘ethno noise’ project Cut Hands. Against a back drop of snakes and the silhouette of a naked woman dancing about as nicked from the intro to Roald Dahl’s ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ its a constant plodding thud of bashing drums of the kind more likely to be found at a Turkish wedding. I swear Bennett had one of those cheap Casio keyboards with the preset sound buttons and every now and again, on a beat, he’d press the cymbal button several times for effect. As it churned relentlessly on Bennett got more and more carried away with himself in one instance putting both hands behind his head and swiveling his hips vigorously to his own beats. I looked around the room and saw nary a nod. My interest was piqued when I realised that what Bennett was actually playing was the slowed down instrumental passages from the last two Whitehouse albums. Maybe. Maybe if I’d seen him play the Kraak in Manchester instead of Smell & Quim on the same night [and the same venue the Sleaford Mods played last week] I’d have enjoyed it more?    

Ten Pint T-Rex’s back drop consisted of some computer generated blobs that made me want to vomit. By now I was considering chewing through my wrists as an alternative form of entertainment but decided to stick it out just to see if it got any worse. It did. Vintage synth was augmented by someone playing a laptop which wasn’t what I was expecting either. Neither was I expecting two minutes of silence between each ‘song’ as Ten Pint T-Rex *1 patched up whatever vintage piece of synth it was he was playing before treating us all to whatever it was it was called. The silences were embarrassing, the sounds being created only marginally interesting, in places, at times, when I was awake and not gnawing on my wrist, I did like some of it. I was glad I hadn’t paid £12.50 to witness it all. I was waiting for them to play ‘Nobody Here’ with the loop as nicked from the Chris De Burgh song Lady in Red but no. If he’d have played that, even for thirty seconds, I’d have forgiven them everything but now Ten Pint T-rex are on Warp or Mego or some other forward thinking label and everythings all fucked to buggery.

Somehow I managed to make it to the end but fled in to the street as soon as it finished. People applauded and some people even cheered. They must know something I don’t. Not only as the Emperor got no clothes he’s waggling his dick in our faces too.

Saturday couldn’t come quick enough. A matinee spot that began in the Brudenell and ended in the Hyde Park Picture House where at 1PM on the last sunny weekend of the year a crowd of people found themselves in a darkened room listening to drones and noises and all things good for the princely sum of five pounds. This five pounds got you to witness Super Hagman, Plurals, Kogumaza, The Bongoleeros and the Vibracathedral Orchestra and it was all as humanly warm and life affirming as the Howard Assembly Rooms hadn’t been. Yes they were both part of the same festival but in terms of enjoyment one might as well have been played in a Stalinist gulag and the other the warm snug of your local.

What remains lodged forever in those frontal lobes is the absurdist drama that is the Bongoleeros. A band that have imagination and costumes and a language all of their own [Dirty Mind, Secret Brain, I Can’t Help Myself, Do you wanna see some dirty drawers?] all songs of one line sang in a lascivious tone with a rapid fire burst of tin can or spazzed out of tune electric guitar for accompaniment. Tin cans, sticks, purple tights pulled over head, horse brasses for necklaces, split crotch pants and a jacket full of Mexican skulls with Hank Williams guitar writ large in paint at the back. They crawl and holler and stomp on guitars, bang a drum, shout, sing, play a Stylophone on the hip, rock guitar style. They do covers of Great Balls of Fire, My Coo-ca-choo and Borstal Break Out all of which consist of the song title sung over and over again. They hand out sticks and cans and we march proudly with them to the Hyde Park Picture House all a-grin making a racket and stopping the traffic as the local kids shout ‘fucking weirdo’s’ at us. But we don’t care because we’re all in the Bongoleeros and the sun is shining and we’re all as happy as happy can be.

When we get there they’re showing ‘The Tales of Peeping Tom Bogal’ which is of course a Bongoleeros film. And then the Vibracathedral Orchestra whose absence is now but a distant memory. Beautiful drones and clatterings all of which we soak up from our comfy Hyde Park seats where we drift in and out of mid afternoon consciousness.

Earlier in the day Hagman became Super Hagman due to the addition of a drummer [last seen playing with Castrato Attack Group in support of Mainliner]. Steadily growing drones of all things electric to which cling rim shots and tumbling drums. The bass drum is hit with a steady thud that increases with intensity as the drone builds so beautifully.

And Pluarls who’ve arrived from Brighton for a delightful set of equally gorgeous drone made with strapping Les Paul and voices and gadgets. And Kogumaza who’ve come from Nottingham and have been in town for about ten minutes before they’re playing their own kind of fuzzed guitar chord chugg which I’m no big fan of to be honest but the days going so swimmingly its like the whole place has been infected with good vibes. There’s Rob Midwich with baby jet lag, there’s Pete Cann filming everything and not breaking his camera. We’re going past the Royal Park Cellars and the take-aways that are just opening and the local garages who appear to be doing a roaring trade mending taxis and the shop that sells onion bhajis and everything is just so damned perfect you never want it to end.

  
   

Sleaford Mods, Human Heads, Vibracathedral Orchestra. Kraak, Manchester.

Sleaford Mods
Human Heads
Vibracathedral Orchestra

Kraak, Manchester, 20th September, 2013.




'I don't like puddings'.


The Kraak exists off a narrow black brick sooted alley in the Northern Quarter of Manchester the kind of place where Engels and Peter Sutcliffe passed by both with very different intentions in mind. The bohemian quarter of Manchester, a place where the streets used to run with human filth and disease was the norm, a place where old age began in your 40's and people lived in cellars. The Empire.

Things have improved somewhat and you can now park your car on former slums and return to it several hours later to find it still intact. The pubs are still cramped affairs with 1930’s themed bar staff pulling Iron Maiden bitter, whilst across the street well heeled Manc pay £10 for three bits of tapas whilst washing it down with Boddingtons and Stella. They have record shops here too of course but according to the Undermeister the pickings are poor. After a spicy bowl in a Bradford style 70’s curry shop its up a few steep flights of stairs to a room with a stage and a wooden floor, a bar that charges made up prices for cans of red piss and a gents that will leak said piss into the venue - kind of. Some things in Manchester never change.

The Sleaford Mods aren’t wearing Keep Calm and Carry On t-shirts - they’ve come to cheer these miserable Mancs up and theyr'e succeeding. There's one young girl down the front whose swaying to the Mods pummeling beats and rants and she’s not just smiling, she’s beaming from ear to ear, a grin that would revive a dying man. Her hips are going like she’s warming up for a night at the Wigan Casino and she’s here with about fifty other souls to see the Sleaford Mods before they explode in the face of Saturday tea time mediocrity.

The Sleaford Mods are here to make your miserable existence that bit more bearable. Theirs is an existence laid bare, a shitty world full of shitty meaningless jobs and shitty pubs selling shitty overpriced beer to help numb the shitty life that people thinks great because we’ve got a SKY subscription, a 50inch telly and a two week all inclusive in Skiathos in October to look forward to. Theirs is a world of dodgy drugs and Amber Leaf 12 gram packs, tinned lager and pointless fights in pubs that used to be centers of social community but are now viscous drinking holes existing purely to see the clientele numbed before being ejected onto dog shit encrusted streets. Its a world few people write about or sing about or perform with any kind of grasp of reality or humanity, a world that is bleak but not without humour. Take them as your own my black hearted friends. The Sleaford Mods are here to help us on our merry way to the crem.

Its a simple set up - a lap top in front of which Andy rocks about clouding his face in a wreath of e-cig steam whilst Jase stands and rants in those flat Notts tones. Cans of lager are clutched and the songs come thick and fast. The whole things last about thirty minutes but seems like a blur that flies past in ten. They kick off with the new single ‘Mr Jolly Fucker’ before ripping into ‘Fizzy’ and ‘the cunt with the gut and the Buzz Lightyear haircut’ and the slightly more down tempo ‘Shitstreet’ ‘I built a swimming pool in my living room and I called it deep house’, a word that appears like a mangling of arse. The ‘Wage Don’t Fit’ and its chorus ‘When I said I didn’t like it, its because I really don’t’. One day we will all be singing these songs. Rants laid upon looped riffs with infectious melodies. Simple and effective.

Earlier in the day an Astral Social Club slot morphs into a Vibracathedral Orchestra jam which lasts for about an hour and takes us from synth bleat TG-ness to Faust forest follies to Eno-esque ambience. Six of them crammed on to the stage with a mass of instrumentation which they pick up and put down for about an hour, the thing shifting like the mutating beast it is. You can measure the intensity of any VCO performance by the amount of energy Campbell puts into it and about half way through he’s shaking like an off centre washing machine that has a lead brick in it. Its good to have them back.

A Manc filling of Human Heads had me scratching mine. Male/female one with electronics and the other playing a table top fan whilst ‘singing’ and at one stage bouncing a tubular steel chair on the floor. I had it described to me as Volcano the Bear meets or Milk From Cheltenham. Its just Manchester innit?








     

Ambrose Field - Quantaform Series

Ambrose Field - Quantaform Series 
Music For Solo Flute in Virtual Places.
Sargasso. SCD28071






Ah yes, the flute. An instrument of torture. Unless of course its in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing. Having been forced to listen to Jethro Tull as a teenager I’ve had an aversion to the instrument and just when I thought I couldn’t take no more the world of light classical gave us James Bloody Galway.

All is not bad though. Having discovered Hariprasad Chaurasia, the famed Indian classical flautist, who’s traditional raga’s are some of the nearest thing to aural relaxation a man can get, I will quite happily spend a relaxing summers evening listening to his sublime playing whilst drifting in and out of consciousness, my head resting on a bejeweled bolster as a loyal punkawallah brings me a mint julep.

So I was intrigued to see how Jos Zwaanenburg would tackle award winning contemporary composer Ambrose Field's flute compositions. Divided into two different sections each deals with the flute in a different way; the ‘Quantaform’ sections are where you hear the actual flute whereas the ‘Technoform’ sections are where you hear the ‘electronic ambient interludes where the flute is absent and only its echo “its acoustic after image” remains’. Needless to say, it was these ‘Technoform’ pieces that I found the most intriguing.

This is to take nothing at all away from Zwaanenburg’s skillful flute playing. The pieces are meant to be technically challenging. I’m no expert on the instrument but you don’t need to be to realise that what you are hearing isn’t Ian Anderson stood on one leg or James Galway going through ‘Annie’s Song’ for the umpteenth time. The way Zwaanenburg stresses certain notes and pitch bends others is certainly impressive, as are the way the acoustics contrast during each set of 'Quantaform's’. Ambrose’s idea was to compose each piece for the acoustic space he had in mind, working backwards by analyzing the acoustics of each space and then composing the piece for it.

Its the ‘Technoform’s’ that prove to be the more interesting part of the project though. Especially during the middle section [5-8] where Field manipulates the echo of half caught breaths and Zwaanenburg’s feathery cycling notes turning them into flighty ethereal drones. ‘Technoform 9’ produces an ominous industrial drone, ‘10’ an electro-acoustic composition, ’11’ you could call glitch electronica.

I recommend headphones and a healthy twist on the volume dial too for there is plenty of detail in here. Whether you can overcome your flute aversion is another thing but I’m glad I overcame mine.



       


Sargasso

Zwaannenburg plays Field

http://ambrosefield.wordpress.com/

Smell & Quim - Spaceshit

Smell & Quim - Spaceshit
Must Die Records.
MDR026


I first heard Spaceshit at Diz Willis’ wake. Not feeling quite sure as to what it was exactly I was listening to I asked current Smell & Quim accomplice Paul Harrison for clarification and when he said 'its the new Smell & Quim album' nobody could have been more surprised than me. For it sounded nothing like any Smell & Quim album I'd ever heard before.

Appearing at the end of the millennium on Nigel Joseph’s Mental Guru label its 40 continuous tracks contained prank calls to prostitutes, the theme from the Onedin Line, twisted beyond recognition songs, very little noise and a sleeve that had green aliens on it. It was, and indeed remains, the most ‘out there’ Smell & Quim release to date.

Spaceshit saw a particular Smell & Quim era come to an abrupt end. The death of Diz and the departure of Neil Campbell, Harrison and the slow falling apart of the Sowerby Bridge crew led to more drinking, less gigging and a hiatus of about seven years in regards as to any significant Smell & Quim activity. Containing contributions from just about everyone who’d ever been involved with Smell & Quim up to 2000 the end result was put together by Srdenovic and Holly Hero [no doubt over a few gins] and is in some ways a tribute to Diz and those Sowerby Bridge years.

Thanks to Must Die Records re-releasing it in a split track format you can skip to track 19 and ‘Fannies and Priests’ to listen in on a drunken conversation about shagging that must have taken place in Graceland [the house cum studio in Sowerby Bridge where drink sodden S&Q activity loomed large] at three in the morning [or, quite possibly three in the afternoon] after large amounts of alcohol had been consumed. ‘Fannies and Priests captures for posterity the slurring before it turned into snoring and then there’s ‘Fucking Ada’ which consists of thirty seconds worth of a room full of drunken people shouting 'fucking Ada' at the tops of their voices. A snapshot of everyday folks lives in a hill side West Yorkshire town circa 1999.

Littered throughout Spaceshit are two recurring tracks of an Hawaiian nature in which a lap steel and a Martin Denny rhythm are fed through short loops upon which a manic ‘yeah, yeah yeah’, some pummeling drum and bass and the sound of a needle being carelessly pulled from a record are slopped all over it. 30’s Jazz, 80’s pop and old blues records are all looped and mutated into shapes far distant from their origins. Frantic film voices become deranged chatter, stuck CD’s come and go, The Hollies ‘He Aint Heavy’ is just about discernible [going backwards, stuttering, breaking up] under a drum beat that's also treated and breaking up and going backwards. When Milovan sings ‘Too Much Dipsy Doo Will Make You Cooney’ right near the end of it all on track thirty six against, what is possibly Stewart Home reading from one of his books, you want to punch the air, pull down your pants and tip a bottle of Buckfast Tonic Wine down your neck in drunken homage.

There is little in the way of ugly noise on Spaceshit and some people may find that rather odd. What It does have though is buckets of Smell & Quim humour and a gentle hint of nostalgia. After listening to it again for the first time in 13 years I now find myself loving every daft sodding minute of it - the juvenile track titles: ‘Any Other Arsehole’, ‘Master Testicle In the Knickers of Time’, ‘Can’t Fuck, Wont Fuck’, ‘Beef’, the recurring Hawaiian lap steel, the dopey prostitutes who don’t realise they’re being taken for a ride [‘do you have any girls who can do circus tricks?]. Every daft and glorious sodding minute of it.

Thirteen years later its a sentimental ride and an affectionate one too. A release whose purpose is that of a fingerpost to a time past. It is also, quite possibly, the best Smell & Quim album to date. Go and argue over that one. Over a few beers obviously.       



Must Die Records

The Black Neck Band of the Common Loon / Patrizia Oliva & Jason Williams

The Black Neck Band of the Common Loon - The Fleshing Beam
PRO030. CDR 100 copies.


Patrizia Oliva & Jason Williams - Untitled
Setola di Maiale CD



What fun, what jolly japes. An hour or so of Brighton improv and some Italian noise with an Eastbourne filling thats the common link courtesy of Jason [to give him his full name] Williams. Or as I call him the six foot nine inch length of peripatetic noise thats more likely as not to be found on a bus or a train or cramped uncomfortably in the back of a car trailing halfway across the country on the off chance of deafening a few people in a room above a pub.

He’s been ‘at it’ for as long as I’ve been writing this drivel but never have I seen anything appear with his given name on it before now. I suspect a maturing, a growing of sensibilities, a chance to put his name to something. Literarily. 

Having abused guitars and noise boxes for years it seems only natural that he should bring these forms to his involvement with Brighton improv duo The Black Neck Band of the Common Loon who when not grubbing around in Hectors House and various other houses of Brighton ill repute are chilling with Unky Thurst and doing their best to keep improv alive in the land of salad and cock rings.

Having just soaked up a few bars of improv courtesy of some Smegma offshoots in the last review it seems appropriate to pluck their 'The Fleshing Beam' from the pile. Where we find Andy Pyne playing drums and vocals and the curiously named Blue Pin playing electrified violin, piano and ‘whine’ as well as even more drums. They take on collaborators now and again, mainly as ballast I assume, this time with the aforementioned Jason Williams as just down the road accomplice. To it all Jase throws in modified cello, tenor sax and of course, electric guitar.

And it works a treat. Over eight tracks and fifty minutes worth with the moods swinging from all out thrash to Pharoah Sanders fluttery flute solos to sparse drum rattle and tinkly piano. Strings are tugged and frotted, when the vocals appear they’re buried deep in the mix so that they emerge sounding like Native American chants except that the Indians have had too much fire water and things have gone all sloppy. All this on ‘Static Pleasure’. Breathy flute like wheezes are forced gently down the neck of a sax and are joined by scattered drum rim shots and a forbidding sounding church organ that mutates into a moaning vocal drone. Beats or rhythms that are more like slightly speeded up funeral marches or quick march Eraserhead themes are slathered with wild cello [Force Feeding The Flock]. On one track theres some kind of garbled language that sounds like a Turkish stall holder shouting his wares or a call to arms by an overzealous Iraqi or is this a Lightning Bolt cover all played out to massed spazzed out drumming and masses of guitar abuse. If anything our Mr. Williams bosses things a little, I guess he can’t help himself, not that the rest would have complained seeing as how the results are so effective  


The collaboration with the Italian vocal improvisor Patrizia Oliva on the other hand harks back to Williams earlier days as noise provocateur when making a racket was all that counted and bugger the aftermath. After what turns out to be probably the worst first track of a release I’ve ever heard, anywhere, by anybody here now and in all likelihood, the future too there does appear to be something of worth lurking within but bugger me if it didn’t labour in revealing itself.

Oliva’s voice is a gentle thing, a child singing nursery rhymes or a dreamy Japanese schoolgirl absentmindedly moaning the lines of a J-Pop song whilst staring out of the school window. An ethereal presence that when left alone is a very strange thing to listen to indeed but when slathered in Williams own brand no-fi noise gubbins becomes a so far out there what-the-fuck moment you have to wonder whether this was all one big joke on the Wire magazine or a genuine attempt to reconfigure whatever clash of genres this actually is. Oliva’s vocal moments are few and far between alas. I’d have liked to have heard more but when calm does descend, to a level of barely heard buzzes and shuffling, we’re left with too much of Williams glitch dub noise and too little of Oliva. A curious release and one that's had me baffled for quite a while now. I’m either so far off the pace these days I don’t even know my own arse or this is the new dogs bollocks. Someone else decide for me please.

 

Foolproof

Black Neck Band of the Common Loon. Bandcamp

Seto Di Maiale

Bandcamp

When I was younger I soaked up as much music as was humanly possible. Having very little money meant that, like a lot of other kids growing up in the 70’s, I had to tape music off the radio and even the TV and when money did come along, usually in the shape of a gifted fiver or maybe a WH Smiths record token I’d spend all Saturday afternoon perusing the selections on offer even though I knew exactly which record it was I wanted and which record it was I would be taking home on the bus with me. Singles and LP’s were played over and over again until the lyrics became ingrained. Sleeves were poured over and ruminated upon, talked about, ogled, held in awe and inspected for hidden messages. Run off grooves would be held up to the light to see if there were any jokey references from the pressing plant. Tapes were made from LP’s I borrowed off friends but no matter how hard I tried I could never get an album on to one side of a C90 thus ensuring that lodged in the memory for ever more would be the last track of an album that cuts off mid word. Picture discs and shaped vinyl only enhanced the pleasure. A record with a picture on it. Whodathunkit? Coloured vinyl. Smelly vinyl. Clear vinyl. You lapped it all up and wanted more. You could never get enough. And when a mate mentioned a new band that you needed to hear a tape was produced from a top pocket and you took it home and looked at it as if it held the secrets of the universe and when you played it you knew that just maybe somewhere in there the secret of the universe lay waiting.

Then you started working for a living and you could afford to buy a lot more music. And your record [and tape] collection grew more quickly. Now you could afford to take risks and some of the records [and tapes] you bought were not only the recommendation of friends but those of writers of music papers like Sounds and the N.M.E. and Record Mirror and soon you began to realise that some of the people reviewing didn’t share the same tastes as you and you ended up with records you didn’t like that much and they got sold on to second hand record dealers or mates that wanted two copies of the same LP so that they could play it on their stacker record deck thus enabling them to listen to both sides of the record without having to turn it over.

And then they invented computers and the internet and the world of music shifted on its axis.

Having every note of music ever recorded available to stream and download may seem like a dream come true to someone like me but I find it anything but. I now find having too much music available to me a distraction. Having everything ever recorded [almost] within my grasp is like being a kid let loose in the worlds biggest sweet shop except that after being in there for a few years I’m now sick of it and look back on the days when I played a record to death and ogled the sleeves with great fondness. Hard drives have been filled as have memory sticks and DVD’s, all full of countless thousands of hours worth of music, most of it still un-listened to, uncared for and ultimately unwanted and all I want to do is spin a Roy Harper LP I bought this afternoon for £2 in Vinyl Tap.

There is only one way to combat this fear and that is to go back to how I used to listen to music. I can do this with whatever format of music I care to choose, I prefer vinyl but I'm not averse to CD's and cassettes and MP3's but the overriding factor is one of familiarization. I’ve been adopting this method for about last few years now which is why the review rate has dropped off the end of a cliff. Coming from someone who used to write a zine and listen to tenth rate noise CDR’s with my finger pressed on the fast forward button I know which method I prefer.

In the early days of downloading it was all Napster, and then Myspace appeared [and oh how we all laughed when Murdoch bought into that clunky monster and turned it into the biggest turd on the web] and when Napster got caught by the goolies any number of soulless P2P’s chock full of bugs and porn appeared.

At the fag end of 2013 things have settled down and you can go legit if you want: iTunes, Spotify, YouTube [typing ‘full album’ into YouTube gives you 9,500,000 returns] and any number of other websites allow you to stream and download to your hearts content.

And then there's Bandcamp with which I’m now listening to the new Sleaford Mods album [and you should too]. I’ve found myself coming to like Bandcamp, mainly because I get a lot of CDR’s to review that refuse to play and the labels involved have a Bandcamp page where for absolutely nothing [barring your device and connection] you can listen to their output to your hearts content.

All of this so as to give my fellow traveller Rob Hayler over at Radio Free Midwich an enormous plug. Rob has set up a Bandcamp page whereupon you can listen to his own true Midwich-ing including a piece he played at the Wharf Chambers earlier this year that he dedicated to yours truly [still one of the proudest moments of my life]. Then there’s that other fine Leeds label Sheepscar Light Industrial who have yet to release a dud and whose physical releases disappear pretty quickly. And the Sleaford Mods of course, whose new album is yet a fine greasy smear on the MacDonald’s window of life.

Streaming and downloading has its benefits and I'd rather have it than not but the magic of those early years will never be replaced by a few clicks of the mouse.

  

Bandcamp

Midwich

Sheepscar Light Industrial

Sleaford Mods

Psychoyogi / The Subs [Cribers] / Half An Abortion / Early Hominids / Pigface Records

Psychoyogi - Opulent Trip
CD

The Subs [Cribers] - Spilling Gravy in the Castle of Unfathomable Terrors.
Crater Lake. CL003. Cassette. 50 copies.

Half An Abortion - Small Scale Demystification Quandary
Angurosakuson Cassette
Anguro 008

Early Hominids - Two Halves of Delirium
Angurosakuson. CDR

Human Combustion Engine - Goats Balls/Gods Balls.
Angurosakuson. Cassette

MSHR/The Tenses - Split Tape
Pigface Records. 019
Cassette. C40

Ju Suk Reete Meate - Solo 78&79
Pigface Records. 016
Cassette. C40


My doctor told me to stop letting the review pile approach insurmountable levels and to get on with it. After all, he reasoned, some of the stuff you get sent probably only gets listened to the once anyway and seeing as how you’re so far behind with the review pile most of what you’re reviewing has long since been sold out or given up for dead or forgotten about anyway. Its not like the world’s hanging on your every word either is it? And besides, the people who send you this stuff want an opinion within oh ... six months at least, and most important of all want the world to know that the thing actually exists. I mean some of these people had gigs to promote that were tied in to the release you were sent and that was like months ago.

As with Psychoyogi. Who despite being a mouthful had a gig in June to promote Opulent Trip. Psychoyogi sound like they like to listen to lots of quirky English 60’s band like Giles, Giles and Fripp whose angular jazz like leanings and oh so English tales of funny people they delivery with great accuracy. I also detect Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band and Soft Machine. The ghost of Kevin Ayers looms large. Singer/guitarist Chris Ramsing holds the thing together with a guitar thats a bright thing with many quick changing chords on it that runs to tinkly solos as the bass plucks out back notes. His voice resembles that of a 1920’s crooner meets Viv Stanshall singing into a lozenged shape microphone. Short instrumentals of the kind heard during afternoon spa recitals are sprinkled throughout but the actual songs are the stand outs. These guys can really play too as evinced in ‘Shadows’ with its breathy delivery and Zappa like sharp turns in the chord department. I found myself curiously drawn to their work but only because I do like the likes of Giles, Giles and Fripp and Soft Machine and some of Zappa’s more quirky output. If those names don’t mean anything to you then you may find their output totally alien but I do recommend you at least give them a go, but not before putting on your smoking jacket on first of course.

Also finding their inspiration in the past are The Subs[Cribers]. A sometime synth duo out of Stoke comprising of Markylooloo [Marky Loo Loo? Looloo? and Mika [Jarvis I think]. Six songs that sound like rough demos from an early 80’s Human League or a chipset Kraftwerk covers band trying to do Depeche Mode numbers. Which is no bad thing of course. It all works thanks to the harmony created by Marky Looloo’s half spoken/sung Midlands tones and Mika’s matching sing song singing voice. I see them both sat on the floor of a living room in Burslem, crossed legged, picking out their favourite preset rhythms and drum sounds from a cheap Casio keyboard before writing the words on the fly. A favourite track would be hard to pick but I did like ‘Blown Away’ and its line ‘Will I ever learn to fly’. The songs are so short and happy you can forgive them the worst sleeve of the years and the terrible band name. Impossible not to like and destined for cult status.  

The Subs[Cribers] appear on Pete Cann’s Crater Lake label whilst Pete Cann himself [under his still annoying everyone but I’m not changing it anyway ‘Half An Abortion’ moniker] appears on current Loiner Pascal Ansell’s Angurosakuson label. Stuff happens in Leeds and people need to know about it. Whether they’ll want to hear Pete’s junk noise more than once though is a moot point. The kindest thing I can say about Half An Abortion’s ‘Small Scale Demystification Quandary’ is that some of it almost sounds like TNB scrape. Pete likes to smash things up and when he does the results are usually pretty good but when he introduces masses of feedback over the top of it I find myself wondering if his quality control monitor is on the blink. The quieter moments on here are thus the more revealing ones.

Further Angurosakuson noise abuse comes courtesy of those Belgian ale connoisseurs Early Hominids. The pink elephant being what you see after listening to this at dangerous volumes whilst consuming the two halves of requisite numbers of Delerium’s that is all it takes to render speech, thought and coordination muddled. The conjoining of Neil Campbell’s Astral Social Club mutant beats and Paul Walsh’s Foldhead noises produces a delightful mixture of ear assault where the noise bleats crumple under the sheer weight of synaptic rupture of psychedelic noise. Nine tracks and 45 minutes worth, the highlight for me being track four which sounds like a disco being destroyed by an army of invading DJ’s all playing Merzbow’s Pulse Demon in unison on Technics coffins that they push into the venue on hospital trolleys. A mighty sound for sure. And again all Leeds based.

More Leeds based merriment comes courtesy of Human Combustion Engine. Yet another project courtesy of the Todd/Delaney hit factory. I saw Mel play an HCE set on her own in Todmorden the other week where the acoustics of the church the gig was held in did those eerie, spacey sounds a world of good. A total Moog synth experience if my decoding of the fools fonts on the sleeve is anything to go by and one that benefits from being all wonky on one side and more ambient on the other. If, like me, you have a few Tomita albums tucked away that you don’t tell anybody about, or have a hankering to dig out a Tangerine Dream album now and again, purely those early ones [not the first one obvs as that is neither meditative or electronic] that are all echoey and transcendental then this may be the one for you. This is more your thinking mans synth blather though with one strand hovering in the background going all wobbly whilst in the foreground the Millennium Falcon ticks over warming its engines up. Not one to confuse with Ten Pints Too Many or any other of those so called ‘vintage synth lovers society’  ‘bands’ that emerged in the wake of the Emeralds debacle but pure weird synth burble. A directionless wander in the greatest possible sense.

The Pigface label isn’t from Leeds, as any self respecting fan of ‘underground music’ should really know. The label started by Smegma member Ju Suk Reete Meate over thirty years ago has resurfaced mainly due to the resurgent interest shown in cassette only labels. Late 70’s and early 80’s Pigface records are now highly sought after items -  a measure of the importance with which they are now held. These guys were making crazy sounds when the rest of us were happy with what was left of the Sex Pistol making records with seedy bank robbers. Five cassettes have appeared over the last couple of years with two being handed over to 40’s jazzbo drummer turned Smegma collaborator Lee Rockey and the other from Tenses - another Smegma offshoot featuring Meate and Oblivia - who also appear here sharing a release with MSHR who, I discover, are a duo making noises with synths of their own making. The MSHR/Tenses is a collaboration between the two and as you’d expect its a constantly changing scenery of parps, synth stabs, spoken word LP samples and general all round buggering about in the name of jamming improv. Apart from an instance where someone goes a bit mad with a gong I found it all to be in the finest Pigface tradition. Think bells, toys, things that are shaken, rattled, banged, bonged, dropped, kicked, bashed and blown, plucked, prodded, patted, poured and popped, clanged, cut, creaked and coddled into a myriad juxtaposition of sounds.

The Ju Suk Reete Meates solo stuff is a different bag altogether with one side showcasing his solo guitar work and the other a session in front of a pump organ. There’s other instruments involved too including a bass guitar played by foot and some reel to reel tape loops but the main instruments ring loud. I’ve heard some of Meate’s solo guitar stuff before via the De Stijl’s reissue of his other 78/79 guitar solo work and this is a fine accompaniment to have. The guitar is loud and freakish, squealing along to the singing of bowed sheet metal. The loops appear like snoring insects, the records are stuck in forced grooves emitting remnants of 50’s rock and roll bands, the trumpet it doth parp and the guitar [electric au natural] a frantic spazzed thing, twanged hither and thither, scratched and slowly scraped down the length of one string bringing forth a joyous hum from the speaker. The pump organ pieces are the best work I’ve heard from Meate, not a Nitsch blast but a considerable presence all the same with a powerful drone emerging that comes at you like a twisted horror flick soundtrack played by a demented Dr. Mabuse. Through it all you can hear the squeak of the pump being pumped, in other hands an irritant but here most welcome and redolent of a quirky NWW Sucked Orange track. Not something you hear in church everyday.

To be thrust into the Smegma/Pigface spectrum once more makes me realise how boring a lot of other so called improv/experimental music is.








Psychoyogi

Craterlake

The Subs-[Cribers]

Angurosakuson

Pigface

Nacht Und Nebel - W>A>S>P>S> - Lea Cummings - SCKE//

Nacht Und Nebel/Lea Cummings - Split
KIKS/GFR 007
C40 

W>A>S>P>S/Nacht Und Nebel - Split
NUNWSP001
7”

SCKE// - Ornaments
MEIR 2004/KIKS/GFR 2012
7”. 300 copies


What is this mixture of acronyms, German language and angle brackets you ask? It’s enough to drive a reviewer batshit. What does it all mean? And who uses angle brackets in-between CAPS these days anyway? This jumble of CAPS, >’s and //’s has me yearning for simplicity, clarity and clean lines, but fear not, all is not lost for when I actually make my way through these three releases I find that there’s life in a small label..

Like with that Lea Cummings, the purveyor of the horribly monikered but you got to like him for it anyway ‘Kylie Minoise’ [who may now be defunct anyway]. Putting aside his Minoises he lays down a warm drone made from an unchanging set of held down keyboard keys.  Cummings is no stranger to the drone having released a number of such compositions under his own name and on his own label but I feel this track has a deeper purity and is all the better for it.

Nacht Und Nebel deliver stuttering sub wooer fart PE like atmospherics where the screams of tortured souls are replicated by circuit board abuse. A brooding atmosphere of uncertainty for those who like their nights in to have a darker edge. This is true of the split with Cummings and to a certain extent the flip of W>A>S>P>S but overall I feel that Nacht Und Nebel have yet to make the most of the grit in their oyster for once in a while a sound emerges that puts the teeth on edge has you squinting out of one eye hoping that there’s isn’t another one around the corner. Still, both N&N performances here hold enough promise to make further adventures into dark ambient industrial territory worthy of attention.

W>A>S>P>S meanwhile delve in to the Whitehouse back catalogue and emerge with a remixed b-side from 1981 where the synth buzz of bent circuitry leads to a constant barely shifting drone of amp crackle and jack socket abuse. Played at 33RPM and at a loud volume its drone like effects and unbending nature are stimulation enough. Like Power Electronics without the histrionics.  

Which leaves SCKE// and two sides of glitch electronica. Described on the website as ‘2 X gritty loops and piercing feedback over warm undulating tones’ I found it to be anything but - which just goes to show you how two people can hear the same thing and give completely differing views. I found harmonics and yes, loops, but of a Harry Partch strings hit with water balloons kind of thing. The treated sounds of an analogue phones engaged signal that loop into rhythms in a Penguin Cafe Orchestra kind of way, only with PCO playing Otomo Yoshihide’s table top gear instead of detuned cello’s - if that makes any sense.


http://www.kiksgfr.net/