Astral Social Club - Electric YEP/Metal Guru

Astral Social Club - Electric YEP
Trensmat. TR038. LP.

Astral Social Club - Metal Guru
Must Die Records. MDR 030. Blue vinyl 7” + CD.



Here it is then, the one that caused all the fuss. Well, a bit of a fuss. Come to think of it I don’t think there was that much of a fuss at all really. After the bearded Wonder over at RFM said that he didn’t like Electric YEP that is [barring one track, saving most of his ire for the SLI release Squeegee Anthem #1 to be more precise]. Not liking an Astral Social Club release? Well I never.

Of all the music that resides here at Idwal Towers I dare say that Neil Campbell’s output looms largest. From his early days with ESP Kinetic, to the A Band, to Smell & Quim, Vibracathedral Orchestra, solo under his own name, countless collaborations, the rebirth of Vibracathedral and finally his long running project Astral Social Club, its a pretty big chunk of what I own.

And when I come to think of it theres hardly anything of his I don’t really like. Which is quite an achievement. Some of that ESP Kinetic material was a bit erm … of its time shall we say but that was recorded when Campbell was about twelve and was in the midst of an over exuberant Throbbing Gristle/Joy Division/P.I.L./Velvets fixation. We can forgive him that. The rest I can happily listen to for hours on end.

When Astral Social Club first appeared in the mid 2000’s amidst a hurried spurt of self made CDR’s I took a handful to Corsica and played them non stop as I drove around what the Corsicans laughably called roads and I called pathetically thin strips of tarmac dug into steep mountainsides. The drones on some of those early ASC releases took my mind off the constant stream of backed up traffic with incredible ease. Pulling over to the side of the road to let about twenty cars pass by I admired the scenery at the exact moment one of those searing, starburst guitar led drones of Campbell’s emerged from the cars speakers. I swear that tears of joy welled in my eyes. I’ve been playing them ever since and lots more besides.

The ASC sound has morphed since then and to a degree that the Bearded Wonder can no longer appreciate, at least on the two releases mentioned above. Things have hardened somewhat since those guitar shimmering days but I for one can’t get enough of it. The ASC sound may  be more visceral, smell of burning rubber, reek of vodka Red Bulls, amphetamines and provincial night clubs but that's fine by me.

Perhaps it was Snow Clouds, the opener on YEP that did it? A slow trawl through plucked bridge strings and an ultra slowed down plodding beat with Gerry Garcia noodling on Mogadon before a Stylophone outdoing each other contest hits town. This eventually segues [as is the way] into an ur-Pan Sonic bout of ultra-violence and helicopter throbs that's all heart monitor gone batshit before rounding off with some starburst supernovas of sun rising, chest filing, shoulders back, life affirming, greatness. Crumbs. Krautrock from Mirfield. Side two is an even more ever building even more ur-Pan Sonic even more hooks of forefingers pulling the edges of your mouth ever wider apart bout of tongue waggling whaaness that never gives up pummeling and churning and gurning its way to the thinnest of run off grooves ever. And don’t forget the ping pong and the bird song.

After all this the seven inch on MDR seems so very, very brief unless you manage to grab the accompanying CD that may or may not be as rare as hens teeth. I’m hard pushed to tell. Here we have the full twenty minute version of Moonage Daydream which yings the yang back to early ASC outings courtesy of a stethascopic heartbeat that spreads out into the most effortless cycling sinewave drone. Metal Guru isn’t the T Rex cover, unless there lies buried a T Rex version made from old computer reel to reel data gone wrong. The guitar soloing is manic, at odds with whats going on around it, masses of wheedling notes splattered all over three rhythm tracks that are all trying to compete with each other. ‘Lagg [Original]’ contains an Abba loop that makes them sound like Zombies riding a shitty seaside roller coaster with lapping water for company. ‘Kuff [Singular]’ is maddening morse code played out to a Harold Budd synthscape.

I don’t buy every release that Campbell puts out, there is rather a lot of it it has to be said. But I do dip in occasionally. It wont be long before the next installment and I for one will be waiting with keen ears.


 Contact:

Trensmat

MDR

Astral Social Club

@Trensmatrecords

@MustDieRecords

@astralsocialite

    

MULTIPLETAP - Cafe OTO

Taking a leaf out of the Vittelli book of listening I spent the last fifteen minutes of my weekend in London laying prone on a comfy bed listening to the sound of Dalston creep in through an open window.  A crisp ,clear, very early spring morning lent access to a concrete mixer, an angle grinder, jets circling for Heathrow,  cop car sirens, traffic, chatter, slamming doors and that ever present but unidentifiable low hertz hum that pervades every waking city minute but only becomes apparent during those rare moments of stillness.

It sounded like Makoto Kawabata smashing his guitar to bits as Jojo Hiroshogi egged him on. It sounded like Hijokaidan, Pain Jerk, Katsura Mouri, Toshiji Mikawa, Yumiko Tanaka, the dropped beer glasses on the hard concrete floor of Cafe OTO, the clanking of beer bottles, the windows rattling as I got some fresh air and chatted to the homeless guy pan handling pound coins for an old copy of OK magazine as the windows shook during Pain Jerk’s soundcheck ‘you’re gonna spend four hours in there - [nodding with his head to inside, roll up jammed between lips, hands deep in pockets, incredulous look on face] - you are all fucking mad’ - wanders off shaking head.

My best laid plans for staying relatively sober are wrecked by the Baron who shoves bottles of potent Kernel into my hands thus ensuring I spend most of Sunday wandering the Kingsland Road a shivering wreck handing off junky beggars and looking for sustenance in places like Rough Trade where I predictably buy nothing, the Whitechapel Gallery where I stare at Hannah Höch collages and various other cafes of exotic origins who would no doubt like to sell me something far stronger than tea for my throbbing head. Dodging the dog shit and bemoaning the loss of a long line of once great pubs that disappear in clouds of litter blown up by passing buses the walk clears my head for further sonic adventures.

The OTO is sold out and rammed both nights. An ambitious looking roster soon proves to be just that and is running late from the off. There's no stage so everybody crams up close to see whats happening. When the Baron asks me whats happening and I tell him some Japanese woman is stripping off he disappears like a dart into the wall of bodies. On the second night chairs are placed in a semi circle and there's a video projection so everybody can see whats going on. It helps. On the first night Takahiro Kawaguchi and Makoto Oshiro bridge two tables with kitchen foil and then place contact mics on it. If you're at the back it sounded like tin foil blowing in the wind. If you're down the front at least it adds another dimension. They drop washers and bits of metal into a vibrating speaker cone which has a piece of string tied to it thats stretched to a lighting scaffold that oscillates it into different shapes. Junko screams solo for twenty minutes. Pain Jerk wraps us all in dense swarms of throbbing bass whizzes and crunching stabs of pain. Of course its not loud enough or long enough but with such an ambitious line up that was always going to be the pay off and we give thanks that they are all here and in good health except for Toshimaru Nakamura who misses his slot with Mikawa and Akiyama on the last night night due to a mysterious eye injury.

Its not all noise of course. These two nights show the wide array of talent Japan currently has to offer so there's some traditional instruments brought to the fore first with a pairing of Yumiko Tanaka and Ko Ishikawa with Tanaka scraping, plucking, bowing, attacking both the Shamisen and the Japanese banjo in a ferocious fashion whilst singing in the delightful falsetto that traditional Japanese singers use so effectively. The Japanese flute [Sho] of Ishikawa emits graceful, gentle drones whilst his solo set on the second night brings the chatter to a complete halt. Rarely have I seen an audience so entranced.

Not all of it works. Not for me personally that is, although every performance is given a burst of rousing applause at its conclusion. Junko yelping over an electro-acoustic set was just plain wrong and I'm no fan of guitar abuse either so the pairing of Toshiji Mikawa and Akiyama forever teetered on the edge of painful atonal squawk [they sure missed Nakamura and his poorly eye - we hope you get better soon Nakamura]. Perhaps atonal squawk was the intention? Pure dissonance run ragged. The Hiroshige and Kawabata guitar hero set may have ended in a smashed guitar and the sight of one happy punter clutching the debris as a trophy for home but it didn't do much for me.

But these mismatches were few and far between. For the most part it worked beautifully and a lot of what I witnessed will be remembered for a long time to come. The light show that accompanied Doravideo's set and his battle with Pain Jerk the following night was enthralling with punters heads lit up with multicolored lasers in day-glo colours as Yoshimitsu Ichiraku's instrument of choice, a kind of Blade Runner-esque keyboard whose keys lit up in bright colours, triggered lasers and of course lots of noise. The erotic dancing from Miko Wakabayashi and the guitar abuse and turntable abuse that went with it forming a three cornered female noisefest was plain euphoric. The phenomenal depth of gutteral noise and stuck needle rhythms that Mouri produced from a humble portable record deck was really quite astonishing. Stylus abuse par excellence.

Highlight of the weekend and the most surreal collaboration of the lot came from Hatsune Kaidan. Electronic noise storms from Toshiji Mikawa, guitar eruptions from Jojo Hiroshige and between them stood on a chair in a waist length turquoise cosplay wig and the most innocent cherubic face you could wish to see stood Kamin Shirahata singing J pop minimal synth backed songs. See them at any cost, they will change your life. Cafe OTO cheered them to the rafters - two middle aged men, one bent over a table of electronics, the other thraping away on a Gibson SG and every salaryman’s dream totty singing songs of fuck knows what in a cutsie voice with oversized headphones on. Only in Japan.

The last words uttered on Sunday nighty came from Mikawa who after a speed drenched Hijokaidan set thanked Kou Katsuyoshi for organising it; "Without his passion this would not have happened". More cheers, hugging, back slapping. Its been a great two nights.

[In a sign that I must be getting older and more sensible I did indeed see every performance over the two nights. Reporting back on them all is a task beyond me. These are the highlights. All those involved deserve a mention and my heartfelt thanks.] 

ありがとう

@MultipleTap
@cafeoto

Multipletap

Cafe OTO

Petals

Petals - Magnates Agus Drochthoradh
Hairdryer Excommunication
CDR


Petals - Scamail Le Focail
Hairdryer Excommunication
CDR




A short while ago Rob Hayler caused a bit of a stir by admitting that he didn’t like the new Astral Social Club album 'Electric YEP'. Coming from a friend of Campbell’s, a collaborator of Campbell’s and champion of Campbell’s music since the year dot this statement came as a bit of a shock. Knocking Campbell? It just doesn’t happen. I theorise that the Bearded Wonder’s words were the result of the opening track on YEP, 'Snow Clouds', a heavy doper outing that felt like wading through two foot of treacle at 16rpm. As openers go its a little like being given a large glass of Largactyl as an aperitif before been asked to join in the Hokey-Cokey. As far as I know Hayler and Campbell are still the best of friends. And so they should be. Rob said he didn’t like Neil’s album not his face. It wasn’t a personal attack and while some critics are stupid enough to incorporate the two there's also the person who thinks that an attack on their art is an attack on them. There’s a difference.

Any artist worth his salt must be prepared for negative criticism and be able to handle that negative criticism without taking it personally. It comes with the territory. If you take negative criticism badly then you’re in the wrong job.

Criticism has to be carefully weighted though. When coupled to constructive criticism it can even have benefits. A badly written negative review [‘your noise CD is shit’] wont win you any medals or friends down the WC. A badly written negative review with no constructive criticism also wastes the readers and the artists time whilst diminishing whatever respect the reader has for the reviewer in the first place. Just don’t go there. Its not worth it. If you’re going to knock something be prepared to say why and explain why. Its common courtesy. I’ve banged on about this before but its worth repeating.

After saying all this I guess Kevin Sanders of Petals is now fearing the worst. But fear not.

I’ve been happily listening to Petals ever since Sanders appeared in Leeds a few years ago. His minimalist electronic drones and general experimentation with tape loops have produced some decent results but after the first play of ‘Magnates Agus Drochthoradh’ I could hardly believe my ears. A single forty minute work it reminded me of my own failed doodling’s in the world of electronics from 20 years ago after discovering that rubbing a metal rod on the back of a circuit board made for an interesting buzzing sound. Memories of me listening to such failed nonsense for hours on end came back to me with a vengeance. At first I thought my experiments ‘interesting’ and filled many tapes with its buzzing telling myself that there were nuances in there that were clearly of mind altering capabilities. It must have been the whiskey. I drank lots of whiskey in those days. When I sobered up I chucked the tapes and sold the four track.

Listening to ‘Magnates Agus Drochthoradh’ makes me think that Petals isn’t any better than I was in 1994 and I know this cant be true. I don’t delve into what people experimenting with noise and electronics use to make their sounds, it takes all the mystery out of it for me, but to hear Sanders release something that sounds like me 20 years ago made me feel like I’m going round in circles and that can’t be a good thing.

That buzzing sound washes over pretty much all of the 40 minutes on here with various drones and wooshing sounds going on, off and around it for company but ... that … buzzing … sound … I cant get it out of my head. It ultimately annoyed me. I persevered. Maybe it was me? Had I had enough sleep? Were my trousers too tight? Did I have some unconscious problem whirring around my head? Nope. It was the buzzing.

I’m happy to say that there’s little trace of what I was up to 20 years ago on ‘Scamail Le Focail’ [I have no idea what these titles mean, Latin anagrams? Magma track titles?]. Here again a single 36 minute piece of simmering electronics and deteriorating drones of a very languid nature that move slowly through many phases, some featuring held down synth keys [I’m guessing] that gently throb in a graceful and effortless manner, others a tad sharper and dare I say it of a buzzing nature.

Coming hot on the heels of the Sanders/Thomas collaboration ‘Four More Cosmic Jams’ in which Industrial hum carried me in mini raptures to my bed for days on end, was I perhaps expecting too much?

Onward ever onward.


http://hairdryerexcommunication.wordpress.com/

W.I.P. - Feral EP

W.I.P. - Feral EP
CDR. 15 copies.
No contact info.



W.I.P. [which I’m reliably informed isn’t an acronym for Work In Progress] was pushed into my eager mitt during last November's Con-Dom 30th Anniversary all night freeze out in Birmingham by one of the organisers who just so happens to be one half of the outfit in question.

As far as I’m aware, said person, Phil Taylor, a person with experience in organising noise related gigs in and around the Birmingham area, had never before appeared on stage, or disc, with his Power Electronics hat on. Being so obviously a fan of the genre one can only wonder why it had taken him so many, many years to finally get it together and do something? It's not like he's getting any younger.

Perhaps he was waiting for the right partner to come along, which is where Lee Howard, another Brum habitue, and only member of Iron Fist of the Sun comes in. IFOTS, I’ve seen play a few times and have always enjoyed. IFOTS play PE in the classic sense of distorted vocals coupled to throbbing industrial rhythms played at ear piercing volumes. There’s probably more to it than that and I’ll probably be taken to task by Howard for not mentioning the Diana Spencer fixation or the electro-acoustic influences but there you go.

Phil Taylor made for a menacing presence on the night, his vocals appearing, as is PE custom, totally distorted and stripped of meaning. The onslaught was welcome and although their set was short they made their mark.

There’s only two tracks on the Feral EP both of which they played on the night.  Emerging at just shy of twenty minutes these two tracks show enough promise to warrant further visits to the studio [or the pub as is more likely]. ‘Why?’ Begins with a sampled rant on apathy as culled from the recent Southcliffe TV drama [a terrific tirade delivered by Rory Kinnear in which he attacks his parents apathy ‘so long as you’ve got your pint and your Beckham baseball cap ...’] before an ominous throb emerges followed by those shrieking, distorted vocals. ‘Elemental’ is initially far more subdued, incorporating thunderstorms going though various effects and some synth laden howling winds before some much clearer vocals appear [‘do you understand what wrong means?’] of course all hell breaks loose eventually but not until we’ve had some sampled female dialogue and further destroyed PE delivery.



Both tracks are available to listen to through the IFOTS Soundlcloud page.



https://soundcloud.com/search?q=ironfistofthesun%2C

Gruenrekorder

Merzouga - 52 46 North 13 29 East - Music For Wax Cylinders
Gruenrekorder. Gruen 124. CD

Cathy Lane - The Hebrides Suite
Gruenrekorder. Gruen 127. CD

Christina Kubisch Und Eckehard Günther - Mosaïque Mosaic
Gruenrekorder. Gruen 131. CD

Rodolphe Alexis - Morne Diablotins
Gruenrekorder. Gruen 139. CD

Audio Work by Christoph Korn and Lasse-Marc Riek
Series Invisible. Collection II. Booklet.



The black square you see above is in fact a small booklet containing a list of locations where Lasse-Marc Riek and Christoph Korn captured a series of 50 field recordings. Dates, times, location and notes such as ‘recorded from a row of bushes’ are dutifully reproduced. More importantly they also note the date and time these recordings were deleted. For these recordings now exist only as words on pages and nothing else. The Roland Barthes quote ‘it cannot be denied that the thing existed’ as reproduced courtesy of Georg Imdahl’s introduction says it all.

Thankfully for the rest of us, and my aching brain, the remaining releases haven’t been deleted.

The most radical of the remaining four comes courtesy of Merzouga’s trawl through the 16,000 wax cylinders as belonging to the Berlin Phonogram Archive. Since the early 20th century  ‘…  trading as well as scientific expeditions were bound to travel with a phonograph and send their recordings to Berlin’. More than a hundred years later the duo of Eva Pöpplein [electronics] and Janko Hanushevsky [prepared electric bass] have taken elements from what I presume is but a small selection of the archive and transformed them into one 38 minute whole.

In his excellent sleeve notes the head of the Berlin Phonogram Archive Albrecht Wiedman asks a pertinent question; ‘Could the archive benefit from such an endeavor?’ But its not until he realises that unlike scientists, who request that the cylinders be digitally restored before embarking on their research, sound artists actually prefer the surface noise and imperfections and wish to incorporate these deficiencies into their own work. It sounds like an epiphany of sorts for Wiedmann who admits that he’s glad he took the opportunity to work with the pair and now listens to the archive from different perspectives.

Merzouga’s skill lies in the way in which they marry their instruments into a world filled with ghostly voices, bird calls, ethnic chanting, and all manner of grime as accumulated in however many of those 16,000 cylinders they worked through.  Pöpplein’s electronic treatments are subtle and deftly placed, a ringing here, a quiet drone there, a fallen saucer lid coming to rest. Hanushevsky’s bass meanwhile goes through all manner of permutations from rubbed edges, to tiny plucks to bowed throbs.

What makes the piece work so well is the tempered nature in which the three elements combine. Never during this 38 minute piece do you get the feeling that one element or another has taken over and bossed the show. At times surface noise is left to run alone, chanting tribesmen are backed by a beautiful paced bass run, ancient ceremonies are backed by chiming bowl rings.  

Merzouga have graced these pages before with a similarly approach to a trip down the Mekong river. 52 46 North 13 29 East [the coordinates for the Ethnologisches Museum Dahem where these cylinders are stored] is a far more adventurous undertaking and one with far more startling results. In the final second of this piece there lies the familiar sound of a needle full of fluff leaving its groove. A fitting ending but only a temporary one due to continuous plays.

You’d think that Cathy Lane’s homage to those far flung Scottish islands the Outer Hebrides would be a bleak affair full of uilleann pipes and the pounding of waves onto stout harbour walls. Its anything but. What begins with the warning bleeper of a docking ferry soon unravels into a series of interviews where voices are looped, some being given various ‘treatments’, before being mixed with the sounds of birds, sheep, tweed looms, the ever present winds, the crashing waves and in the last track and most memorably a church service where the congregation sing a mournful psalm to the sound of yet more crashing waves.

Lane’s aim is to heighten awareness of these islands, its culture, its natural history and local history. But it was only during ‘Watch Over Us All’ the strongest track amongst the six here, with its layered plaintive singing and austere sermon that I found myself finally rapt. The Whicker Man loomed large for me albeit in a Calvinist/Presbyterian/Protestant/Catholic/Free Church of Scotland non pagan kind of way.  

Mosaïque Mosaic actually begins with a church service. They’re praying to the same God but that straight laced fear of God Scottish hell fire and brimstone service has been replaced by a shoulder swaying, keyboard swirling one where the sermon is delivered twice, once in French and once in English: My God! Mon Dieu!.

These last two releases are pure field recording. Rodolphe Alexis with a walk through the forests of the Lesser Antilles, Gaudaloupe and Dominica and Kubisch and Güther in the Cameroon. Both come to life with a tropical rainstorm where the heavens open and the locals get a taste of God moving his furniture about. In the Cameroon the rain peters out on a tin roof until the cicadas, birds and other insects can be heard once more with Alexis the results are even more Biblical.

Kubisch and Güther’s made a deal with the locals in a I’ll show you mine if you show me yours kind of fashion. With Cameroon being a noisy place by nature [car horns, markets, amplified music etc.] they thought that it might be in the locals interest to hear what went on outside these everyday noises. The locals then took them to places they thought might interest them, hence the church, an abandoned hotel, the river, a national park. The results veer from the chaotic [the church service] to the sublime [the end of that rainstorm] with both sides coming out winners. Holding workshops for the locals Kubisch and Güther soon realised that the locals did indeed take heed of what was going on around them ‘but so far they had not felt any necessity to store these sounds’.

On Morne Diablotins [the name of the highest mountain in Dominica] Rodolphe Alexis takes a walk with recording equipment in hand passing Jaco and Sisserou, the endemic species of parrot, but failing to locate any mountain chicken’s or giant frogs. There’s always a next time. Its his mission to record and observe giving us the purity of the rainforest in all its verdant glory.

And whilst I thought that these recordings weren’t anything out of the ordinary [preferring David Tudor’s electronic take on the rainforest if pushed into a corner for an opinion] they do draw you in. Especially on the longest and most immersive track, the 28 minute ‘A Night in Grand Bay’ where a tropical rain storm, insect chatter and the agitated calls of parrots all joyously mingle.

Bird and insects sounds dominate on all of Morne Diablotins. As they should.

Another solid set of releases from the ever reliable Gruenrekorder.




http://www.gruenrekorder.de/

Deserted Village

The Primal Barber Trio - BARBERarberbarbr
Deserted Village. DV44
3”CDR/DL

Toymonger - The Night Vision
Deserted Village.
LP/DL [Released in 2007]

United Bible Studies - The Kitchen Session
Deserted Village.
LP/Free Download EP [Released in 2011]

United Bible Studies & Jozef Van Wissem - Downland
Deserted Village.
LP/DL


It took me a bit of time to work out that the one CDR and various bits of paper that Deserted Village sent me meant I could listen to all these releases via the medium of internet. You see, I’m like John Peel, in that I feel more at ease with records and physical formats, streaming and downloading are fine but give me a record any day. Perhaps its just as well that Peel never got to be confused by downloads, CD’s nearly did him in as it was. But I do like a nice record. They’re round and full of grooves and when you spin them and put a needle on them music comes out.

And yes I know I said I don't review downloads and I’m not going to start either [sort of] but Deserted Village put that Tom Carter benefit release up on their Bandcamp page a while back [which I’m still listening to by the way seeing as how there's nearly a hundred tracks to absorb] and whilst listening to The Primal Barber Trio I got drawn into the whole Deserted Village streaming/downloading thing and thought maybe this isn't such a bad way to go after all. Put aside your grumpy complaints I said unto myself and revel in this new found technology. A technology that enables you to listen to lots of lovely things for not very much money at all and in some cases bugger all money.

To be fair to Deserted Village they do back up their downloads with a physical presence which is to be applauded and it is to this that I turn first. Except it wont play. I’m cursed with the non playing 3” CDR.  They do look cute and you can get 20 minutes of music on them, which is like one side of an LP, but getting them to play is a different matter. My PC wont take them, my Walkman dithers as does my stereo which leaves me back at the Deserted Village Bandcamp page where I listen to The Primal Barber Trio via streaming heaven and whilst I’m at it the rest of this lot.

Primal Barber Trio are Stuart Geelon, Gavin Prior and Aonghus McEvoy. A three way vocal improv outfit a-gurgling and a-groaning their way through the Irish undergrowth like Blood Stereo, Phil Minton, Jaap Blonk, Trevor Wishart and some more people whose names'll come to me when I’ve posted this. Described as ‘No polite improv snoozefest, only  deranged ritual’ gives you some idea of what they're up to and to what Irish improv sounds like. Totally bonkers. Far more maddening than Blonk, far rougher round the edges than Minton and further down the road of drunken roar than Blood Stereo. The drunken yelling even reminds me of Humberside’s premier tourettes championeer YOL in places. And then theres the dictaphone abuse.

When solo, drunken roars appear to no one in particular. Together they sound like a gang of workmen trying to urge each other on whilst digging a hole. Sometimes the shouting reaches a crescendo and then it becomes quite frightening. Dictaphone abuse fills in the background somewhat with sweeping swirls of chaos, looped static and clunking loops. Mumbles, nonsense words, lunatic crying, the rattle of jail cell chains.

All this emerging from a ‘layered and collaged’ process courtesy of Prior the end results fitting in somewhere between a Stuart Chalmers tape improv session and a fight between Minton and Wishart in the bogs of the Duncan. Heady stuff. I urge them to do more.

The rest I listened to whilst dotting around the Deserted Village website. United Bible Studies are a folk group that incorporate synths and bizarre as that sounds it does work. Like Vashti Bunyan teaming up with Edgar Froese. The Toymonger release is almost seven years old now but worth a listen. Described as Ireland’s first noise 12” its anything but [noise that is]. What it is, is scrape and drone with Prior again in the thick of it producing brooding atmospheres across four tracks.

The Deserted Village Bandcamp page, not a bad place to end up. 

 
 



Deserted Village

Diz Willis and Pizzle zine

 

Pizzle was a single A4 sheet that existed for one issue and was the work of Paul Harrison. I think all of these statements are facts but I could be wrong. It all happened a long time ago when Paul Harrison and Diz Willis were active within Smell & Quim - the Sowerby Bridge years. 

Whether this has appeared on the internet before now I know not but despite its mostly irreverent nature I feel its worth reproducing.

Vittelli: London Sound Survey & Matthew Phillip Hopkins

London Sound Survey - These Are The Good Times. 
[Field Recordings From London In The Early 21st Century]
Vitelli. VIT001. LP. 300 Copies.

Matthew Phillip Hopkins - Nocturnes
Vitelli. VIT002. LP. 300 copies in grey vinyl including artists booklet.

Although not obviously aimed directly at Londoners per se These Are The Good Times does give the habitues of our capital city the chance to listen anew to the sounds it produces. As Ed Baxter observes in his most excellent sleeve notes, Londoners aren't so much in transit as on the way out to be replaced by 'newer more robust urban punchbags'. This is the record that every one of those punchbags needs to hear to convince them that the ‘smoke’ isn’t just a constant barrage of emergency vehicle sirens, traffic and computerised voices telling you to mind the gap.

Thanks to the combined efforts of sound recordist Ian Rawe and Vittelli's Nick Hamilton we now have 21 instances with which to hear London through fresh ears. Culled from over 40 hours worth of material that Rawe recorded for the London Sound Survey website these 21 tracks have been selected by Hamilton to show London in a new light.

There’s the joke telling Irish beggar on conduit street, the chatter of customers and staff at Pellici's cafe on Bethnal Green road [bit a mash? lovely], the nostalgia filled lachrymose singing of pearly kings and queens and the Poet of Villers Street reciting the classics. Atonal squeaks appear courtesy of the Stonebridge Lock Windlass, dark ominous drones from the Sun Street Passage on Liverpool Street, vibrant ethnic music via a Caribbean Sunday Service on Canvey Island. A Trumpeting busker on Euston Road plays a sad lament.

Rawe recorded surreptitiously when the need arose, thus giving some of this a clandestine appeal. I doubt the sight of Rawe complete with parabolic reflector and shoulder strung recording equipment would have gone down a treat in Pellici's caff. Needs must.
My favourite pieces are the Corton Refinery sirens and the wide band that is the Motorcycle Wall of Death as recorded in Dulwich complete with rasping bike engines and the whoops of delighted onlookers. I shall be visiting London in a couple of weeks and thanks to Rawe I shall approach it with ears anew.

Release number two sees Matthew Phillip Hopkins garner comparisons with, amongst others, William Basinski, Nate Young and Giancarlo Toniutti and in the 'liking' stakes I'd say that they were all bang on. MPH [as I like to think he’s known] does indeed begin proceedings with a remarkably Basinski like Disintegration Loops piece albeit with added stifled gas mask breathing and the crackling of a distant bonfire. This, 'Nocturne 1', is mournful and dirge-like. Nocture 2 is more electro-acoustic in nature. A looping distant church bell and creaking oar straps add to the drenched subdued atmosphere. Tape abuse appears albeit of a very subdued and tempered nature along with tiny snatches of capstan skree amidst that deep and sonorous church bell. ‘Nocturne 3’ is the side long outing, a steadily cycling drone with seemingly random synth prods emerging like sparks of radio static that fizz into the ether.

According to the press release Hopkins produces these works using synths, cassettes, fx pedals, contact mics and random objects, in the dead of night, with headphones firmly in place.

I have to admit to never having heard of Hopkins before, no doubt due in part to his adherence to the no audience underground ethos of releasing your work in tiny micro editions. Which means I can compare his work with that of Phil Todd, Mel Delaney, Daniel Thomas, David Thomas, Eddie Nutall, Kevin Sanders, Stuart Chalmers, Andie Brown … and probably quite a few more of the recent crop of luminaries who are creating drones and atmospheres in an experimental electro-acoustic environment. Hopkins may live and work in Australia but he has plenty of contemporaries here in England.

Nocturnes is his first vinyl outing but after lapping this beauty up for the last couple of weeks lets hope its not his last.










Vittelli


Soundcloud

London Sound Survey

Nigel Joseph

Nigel Joseph  - 1 2 3
SRV20. CDR. 30 Copies.

[All above information baring artist name and run number guessed at]

I remember interviewing Nigel Joseph many years ago after a particularly long drinking session in Blackpool. We were sat in Simon Morris’s front room and Simon thought it’d be a good idea for me to ask Nigel a few questions as I wrote a zine and I could type it all up and print it and everybody could read it.

Joseph had a history of mental illness and talked frankly about his run in with the psychiatric branches of the NHS, his suicide attempts and the strong drugs he took to keep him on the straight and narrow - oh the hours flew by. And despite having been out drinking for most of the day he seemed to be making more sense than the rest of us put together.

When he’s not making noises he plays guitar with the Ceramic Hobs. He’s perhaps most famous [or should that be infamous?] for playing the Hoover, running the thing around the stage as the Hobs played on. He once released a hundred noise tape that were sewn inside a dead dog and only available for ten minutes at ten past ten on the tenth of the tenth, or was it a hundred dead dogs inside ten noise cassettes … never mind, its not on Discogs. The last release I got to hear of his was a few years back on the Blackpool label Must Die Records, a release that had beats so drug infused I seem to remember passing it on to Campbell with the words, only to be played under the influence of Largactyl. Campbell loved it of course. I have another old noise release of Josephs here that is basically old blues records distorted into oblivion. Like listening to Led Zeppelin doing Leadbelly covers through totally fucked speakers at volume 11.

And now this. Three tracks of noise that run to 28 minutes. Simon Morris once asked me how do you keep coming up with things to say about noise releases? And I really didn’t know how to answer. Like a trooper you just get on with it.

1,2,3 is three noise tracks. It could be a pure dub of another noise release. Its generic noise that flat-lines in the same mid range. It could be two noise releases with one release in each speaker.

That's how you write about noise releases.

Flyers of interest.

Sleaford Mods - Three Singles

Sleaford Mods - Bambi/Scenery
X-Mist. XM-101. 7” [including lyric insert]

Sleaford Mods - Jobseeker/14 Day Court/Black Monday
Kraak. K083. 7” [some copies include sew on patch]

Sleaford Mods - Mr Jolly Fucker/Tweet Tweet Tweet
Fourth Dimension Records FD388. 7”



Filling the gap between last years Austerity Dogs and the launch of the next Sleaford Mods album, in Leeds, at the Wharf Chambers, on the 29th of March, on a date that can’t come quick enough,  appear three seven inch singles, each one a life affirming Stella Artois fueled belch.

The future will be Sleaford Mod shaped, of that there is no doubt. The gig in Leeds is already being talked about a full two months before it actually happens [its a much delayed gig which only heightens the tension]. There’s talk of the WC having to ration tickets. I know people that are genuinely excited [me] and worried that they might not get one. The ball is rolling. Interviews are becoming more frequent. Music journalists try in vein to define their ‘sound’ with ever increasing implausibility. Everybody from Gil Scot Heron, Mark E Smith, John Cooper Clark, The Normal and The Wu Tang Clan get dragged in to the equation, so its no surprise to see such a clumsy genre moniker as Punk Hop emerge. Punk Hop? Give me a break.

Each of these three singles will put you on until Leeds on the 29th but I recommend buying them all. They’ll cheer you up no end. On them Jason Williamson tackles social media [Tweet Tweet Tweet - ‘chopped heads on London streets, all you zombies tweet, tweet, tweet’] and on Jobseeker the exasperation with having to deal with the civil service when signing on [‘so Mr Williamson, what have you done in order to find gainful employment since your last visit’ ‘fuck all, I just sit around the house wanking all day’]. The lyrics are on the record label so you can watch them going round and round as it plays. Mr Jolly Fucker is an inspired of stream of consciousness rant; ‘baa baa black sheep have you any crack, Mr. Kipling acid dances, 60 kids wheres mine, fish fingers, take the batter off, I cant believe you had kids, digital time boards are the new public shitters, two pint buzz and loads of office turds pushing in, can’t you see I was here first you cunt’ interspersed with shouts of Mr Jolly Fucker! A blast thats all over in two minutes flat. Bambi’s mournful refrain is ‘oh yeah I forgot’ delivered in a sarcastic tone that mimics the slack jawed response of the couldn’t care less perfectly and begins in true Sham 69 fashion with ‘This songs about drones and water cannons 1,2,3,4’  and could be aimed at Steve Jones for whom ‘the 80’s didn’t work out but at least you made a record with Axl Rose’. 14 Day Court includes a false start [‘fuck it’] and the classic line ‘Sonic Youth fan MBV, if you like feedback that much get a job at the council’ and ‘I don’t want white teeth and big tits, I want yellow fingers and missed mortgage payments’. Black Monday is the nearest they’ve come to a full on Fall-esque Container Drivers comparison. Try listening and keeping your feet still at the same time. Unless you’re in a coma its not possible.

These songs could be about indie music, The Sex Pistols, the local council, Williamson’s neighbours, self abuse, drugs, Fawlty Towers or the existential travails of someone trying to make his way in the world armed with a bog standard job and the thought that it could be all that lies between the check out at Poundland and a food bank.


Fearns pumping computer driven beats do resemble The Normal, they do resemble The Fall, Williamson’s sense of humour does resemble John Cooper Clark, his observations on modern life are beyond compare. Williamson is a poet for our times and the Sleaford Mods make you want to jump about.

What they’re doing is unique and saying that in the year 2014 gladdens my heart no end.


www.sleafordmods.com

Smell & Quim; An interview with Simon Morris, Stewart Walden and Kate Fear.

About three or four years ago Steve Underwood asked me to interview every past and present member of Smell & Quim with an eye to a future article for As Loud As Possible. I readily agreed, with hindsight not realising the enormity of the task ahead of me. After I'd attempted to interview Neil Campbell and Paul Walsh in a busy Friday night pub in Mirfield I realised my task was even more futile. What I did manage to get down was a few questions thrown at the following people who happened to be in the Duck & Drake on the afternoon of a gig at the WC by Ramleh. 


SM = Simon Morris

SW = Stewart Walden

KF = Kate Fear

IF = Idwal Fisher




SM: Stewart do you remember the list of twenty things you were given to do?

SW: I was given a list of twenty things to do and a twenty sided dice.

SM: ‘Kiss the girls and make them cry’ was one of them. You picked me up and forcibly removed my clothes at the front of the crowd next to Cath O’Connor and I was really insisting on keeping my pants on and I suddenly realised hang on I’m being stripped I suppose this means I’m in the band now?

SW: A few of those twenty things I didn't do ... waltz with Diz I didn't do, masturbate into blancmange I didn't do and call the police I didn't do. I did go to the upstairs bar, and remember I was dressed in a leotard with a banana down the front, and there were all these people there who didn't give a shit about the music and the gig I shouted ‘Call the police’.

IF: Simon, where did you meet Dave?

SM: I’d met Neil Campbell already, at a gig, we were both on Pumf Records and I’d had some contact with Stewart when he was doing Swank. I remember getting the first A Band single, we were swapping tapes,  I was sending Stewart, Neil and Mike Con-Dom tapes. I remember having Dave pointed out to me ‘thats the guy from Smell & Quim’. There was a Skullflower gig, an amazing gig with only about 30 people there, the Termite Club about 1994/95, it was a wonderful night and lots of people seemed to meet each other.

SW: That's where I remember meeting you for the first time ... at that gig.

SM: We were talking on the way over ... the era of 90’s Smell & Quim very much had an overlap with the end of the A Band ... so there was a number of people involved in the A Band who ended up in Smell & Quim, Sticky Foster was involved in a number of 90’s Smell & Quim performances. There's the one with the rectal thermometer.

SW: It was a turkey thermometer. I tried to stick it up his arse but I think I missed and he yelped.

SM: I remember you handing it to Shack and Shack licked it. Shack wasn’t in Smell & Quim at the time, Stewart pulled out this rectal thermometer ... Shack was dressed as a dentist ... he was just in the audience, not a member of the band and he licked it. it was kind of gross.

IF: It was a big social thing as well around that time wasn’t it? Especially around Sowerby Bridge. Were you there at Sowerby Bridge? I suppose there was lots of drinking going on?

SM: Yeah, Diz and Sandy were there.

SW: Lots of ideas that came to nothing.

SM: Paul [Harrison] remembered you [SW] knocking on the door at Sowerby Bridge after a row with your ex and saying you’d been sleeping in bushes. Paul was like ‘oh bloody hell’. The Sowerby Bridge scene … Ivy Cottage where Shack and Holly lived. They were very interesting flats those where Diz, Sandy, Paul and Nandi lived. It was like a William Burroughs Interzone thing with these tunnels, weird architecture and staircases.

SW: The flats were at the top of the street and you walked between these tunnels between the houses and suddenly it falls off and you have to walk down these stairs.

SM: Strange houses and the amount of drink and substances around, insane art.

SW: Sandy and Diz between them ... amazing people. Didn’t Shack have a recording studio in Sandy’s basement?

SM: Yeah, yeah.

SW: I only went down there once but to find these people who were doing this kind of thing was amazing. Supremely generous people too.

SM: Your last gig was the Citizen Fish gig wasn't it?

SW: Yes, Neil gave me a ten pound budget for props so I went to the fish market and bought three fish with it. For that gig we were all meant to dress up as rock stars.

SM: I was Jim Morrison but I didn't have any leather trouser so I used black bin liners.

SW: This was the one where Neil was Jimi Hendrix with the black curly wig and sun glasses and he injured his back and couldn't move at the time so he’s just sat in a chair in front of a table with a tape deck. I took a fish and put it down the front of his shirt knowing that he couldn't get away or get out of it ... so Neil’s sat there with a black curly wig, dark glasses, tape deck turntable with this fish tail sticking out the top of his shirt.

SM: My memory of that gig is the reaction of the anarchist vegan guy who was shouting ‘fish is murder’ and he actually came up to me outside the gig and said to me ‘I know you’re going to call me a fucking hypocrite cause I’m wearing leather shoes but I’ve had these shoes a long time. Sorry mate but a fish is just the same as a cow’.

SW: I threw one of the fish into the audience and all these hardcore vegans were jumping out of the way and this one guy picked it up and he said ‘Its OK I used to be a fishmonger, I can handle it’. After the gig I hid the largest fish inside Citizen Fish’s bass drum and I hope they didn't find it until they were in the van on the way home.

IF: Those 1 in 12 [Bradford] gigs were truly inspiring.

SM: Do you remember the one where we had a break dancer? Sandy had met him in the mental hospital. He was called Paddy. He had no idea what he was doing he was just break dancing in the middle of the floor to noise music. That was also the night of the mystery electrician. He was in the upstairs bar and we became paranoid because we thought there's no way he can be here just to mend the fuse boxes all night and we became convinced that he was involved in surveillance. Which years later might have been true because they had a lot of trouble with fascists there. There's something on Stephen Hawkins Butt Plug where you can hear ‘Hello mystery electrician’. People still talk about the mystery electrician.      

IF: Tell me about the Belgian gig

SM: The Belgian gig was wonderful. The promoter thought Smell & Quim were a duo and he had fifteen people turning up on his doorstep. We were all over his house, in the kitchen, in the attic, everywhere.  He was very nice but he made the mistake of giving us free drinks, too many it seemed, unlimited, and it was all this ridiculous 8% dark beer and we were playing at three in the morning. Paul Harrison had made all these preparations, oh I’m going to do a bit of synth or tape noise or whatever, it was about an hour before we were due to come on and the red mist came down and by the time we got on stage he could barely stand up and he just threw bottles at the crowd. Because it was a day trip to Belgium there was lots of other people doing one off performances. Andy Bolus from Evil Moisture, he got Lisa from Prick Decay to fist him with a rubber glove on, she got a couple of fingers in. Eva Revox and Julian Bercourt from this French label were there and his girlfriend was Japanese and she spoke very little English ... she was just talking about Smell & Quim over the top of it. And there was the Shite Girls which was sort of a Smell & Quim spin off. There was Holly, Kirsty, and Sandy and Nandi, they were in potato sacks. Diz had this sprinkler attached to his trousers as if piss was spurting out. I had some potatoes down my underpants, I’d had these potatoes in the dark for about six weeks and they had long tubers growing out of them and I’d pull these tubers off one by one and then throw the potato at some poor Belgian ... some noise guy got on stage and started trashing everything. Dave got a telling off from the venue people and they were saying ‘we’ve had skinhead bands here, we’ve had punk bands here but never this’.  It was a bit pathetic because there wasn’t really any damage. It was just a bit wild.

SW: And then four years ago when we went back to Holland with the new Smell & Quim line up this guy turned up and he said ‘I was at the Belgium gig!’

SM: What are your memories of Paris?

SW: The Paris gig was October ‘95 and a friend of ours called Sue wanted to go to the gig and she didn’t want to go on her own so she paid for me to fly over and we didn’t tell anyone. The Paris gig was great. Nobody was expecting us of course. Neil was there, Sticky was there the whole entourage as Smell & Quim was in those days and we turned up unannounced and it was terrific fun. I wore a stripy skirt with a strobe light inside the skirt.

IF: Its important to know what you’re wearing in Smell & Quim.

SW: Well you had to have a costume. A costume was everything. The Elvis suits, the Leiderhosen.

IF: Didn’t you turn up for the aborted Smell & Quim gig at No Trend wearing a silver lamé suit?

SW: It was a gold lamé suit actually. Dave couldn’t make it. Steve [Underwood] who organised the gig said I could do a solo set if I wanted so I set up to prepare to do it and all I had was the props I’d brought with me which was an ironing board and twenty wooden spoons.

IF: You must have cut rather a dash walking through London looking like that.

SW: I was relying on other stuff being there but I did put the wooden spoons in the ironing board frame in the toilet as a sound check and Carl, one of the A Band people who’d arrived during this time ... his first experience of me at all is of a bloke in a gold suit making a load of banging noise and saying ‘OK I’ve done the sound check’. As it happened the venue was flooded and there was a lot of delays and I didn't get to play so I said let the people who’ve come from afar play instead of me. That was in 2006 so the Smell & Quim comeback proper didn't happen until a year later which was the time when we got the entire festival thrown out because they’d chosen to put us on first.

IF: The Deaf Forever festival in Leeds.

SW: Thats the one. Phil and Mel put a lot of work into that, they got people coming from all over, one person was coming from Belgium and hadn’t even arrived by the time it was all over. This was pretty much all the fault of Mr Gillham who’d brought along a pigs head and a machete. A bad combination.

IF: And lets not forget this was at a venue not 200 yards away from a mosque.

SW: Yeah, yeah. But it was fun. It was a brilliant set.

IF: I was there and I saw the two people who complained about the performance. They were sat next to me and they shot back upstairs, two minutes later the landlord came down and that was that.

SW: All I did was go round with the mouthwash. I’d got given five bottles of mouthwash so I got some labels made with Smell & Quim pigs on them, stuck em on and people wouldn’t believe it really wasn’t mouthwash. And there was some raw sausages. It was very much a pork theme that night. And people didn’t want to touch them so I put one on somebodies knee ... ‘have a raw sausage’. In the meantime, behind my back Gillham was doing somersaults with a machete and attacking this pigs head.    
   
SM: I had a pigs mask on and couldn’t see a damned thing and narrowly avoided the machete on a couple of occasions. It was quite scary.

IF: He was pushing the pigs eyeballs back into its head which was quite gruesome.

SW: The landlord complained about people trying to set fire to the pigs head and it was just two matches in its nostrils. I was pouring mouthwash on it just for weirdness sake. But that was a great gig too especially afterwards when we sat around a table in the bar upstairs being glared at by everyone else in the room.

SM: Kate, tell us how you first met Dave.

KF: I first met Dave at a gig and he was crashed out. Volcano The Bear were playing and I’d fallen asleep pissed ...

IF: That was the Termite gig in that mill complex on the outskirts of Leeds that nobody could find. There was a solo French artist on that night ‘Nocturne’ ...

SM: Who Dave didn’t take too kindly to.

IF: About halfway through this hour long synth barrage which was like Jean Michelle Jarre only ten times more boring, Dave went up to him and shouted in his face ‘You’re dying a fucking death mate’.

SM: The thing with Smell & Quim is that Dave’s a catalyst that makes things happen for a lot of people. I remember one gig where I didn’t even see Dave ... this is the last time Sticky played. The one with the breakdancer. Dave would have been around there somewhere but I didn’t see him for the whole gig. The whole craziness of Smell & Quim, it whips your brain in to a frenzy. Shack and Holly they got hold of this rave DJ ... we got this gig in Middlesborough and it just turned in to dance music basically, Dave and Shack and Holly were all on cocaine and this rave DJ’s just going bump, bump, bump. It was basically a rave gig. Dave had been drinking all weekend and he said ‘for our next gig we all have to learn martial arts and karate and what we’re going to do is go out and mug all the crowd and leave the venue with the music playing and all the punters on the floor’ … I think he was worried we weren’t going to get paid.

SW: I think the main strength of Dave is that he assembles all these nutters around him for them to do the crazy stuff. Whether it be dealing with haircuts or me screaming into someones groin, as I did in Holland.

SM: That was great. Groin shouting in Holland.

SW: If you can imagine this ... there was about thirty people there and I approached each one of them, who were ninety percent blokes, grabbed them by the hips, I was on my knees, face into the groin and shout. So you’ve got this vibration, this feeling of it, the vibration and the heat, with the noise. You’d probably not hear the shouting.

SM: Its almost like aural pleasure in a way isn’t it? You gave aural pleasure to a number of men.

SW: The important thing to remember is that it was a penis festival. I might have been the only person at the festival who did something penis related.

SM: They all got naked.

SW: Getting naked is normal for the likes of us.

SM: That was the last gig at Hondenkoekjes. His missus had had enough ... Marc from the FCKN BSTRDS ... we drank the place dry and I think it was the last straw for his missus.

KF: I had a mallet and people were throwing things and I was knocking them back and one of them was a bottle and I just whacked it and they were saying that could have gone in my eye...

SM: And they were saying oh its not too bad we had Whitehouse here and they were throwing glasses too. 

IF: Do you think its just as well Smell & Quim have never toured America.

SW: Still might happen.

SM: We’ve still not seen this new album [Lavatory]. Have you seen the pictures? Me and Dave are naked and Kate’s naked, Gillham and Stewart didn’t get their photos in.  

SM: I’ve no idea how Dave puts Smell & Quim records together. I’m just a bit part player really.

SW: I haven’t contributed recently. I haven’t physically, actively done stuff since four years ago here in Leeds where we did ‘In The Brown Girls Ring’. In Holland we had about thirty people all doing the ring-a-ring-a-rosie thing and here in Leeds they weren’t up for it.

SM: Gillham was off his fucking bonce on speed and ecstasy.

IF: He cut his hand didn’t he?

SM: He cut his hand and wrote ‘Smell & Quim’ in the blood on the drum. The guy who owned the drums wasn’t happy.

SW: Me and Kate were going round the audience body searching people ... simultaneously .. each person had four hands on them at the same time. 

SM: I suppose I must have done a maximum of ten Smell & Quim gigs since the one where you started off by stripping me. For a while in the mid nineties it was whoever turned up and now Dave says that this line up is the classic line up.

SW: The reason this lineup is so great is Michael Gillham

SM: Michael is wonderful.

SW: Michael is ‘it’.

IF: You haven’t told us how you mate Dave

SW: I met Dave because in 1992 … in 1992 me and Neil had been making music with various bands and Neil had the Jesus Christ LP and he played it to me and I looked at him and said whats this weird shit? So one day Neil says to me you know that band with the Jesus Christ album well they’re playing a gig. So we went along to the gig. It was at the Duchess of York [now defunct Leeds pub/venue]. We went along and we were in the audience with a couple of mates and we taped the gig. Who are these weird guys? Both of them fell on their backs drunk several times during the set. I mean literally on their back with their legs in the air, off their faces, a lot of vodka drunk, even then they had the bucket shaker thing, fabulous stuff with the vibrating going on. They were great. On the ‘Christmas Album’ they released the recording of that, their first gig and its the recording that me and Neil made and you can hear me and Dave and Jimmy and Sue talking all over it. Neil had been writing to Dave and he went up afterwards and he said ‘Hi I’m Neil from Sheffield I wrote to you’ and Dave was so drunk he just went ‘uuuuuur’ and Neil’s trying to make conversation and Dave’s so drunk all he can do is go ‘uuuuuur’. After the gig they were just sat on the edge of the stage looking like a morose Laurel and Hardy.

IF: I’m trying to find out some further information on this gig. I believe Mike Dando was on the bill. There was Smell & Quim, Con-Dom, Haters and Techno Animal.

SW: Thats right yeah.  The next Smell & Quim involvement for me was in 94 with ‘Whats Your Health Problem’.

SM: Oh, the phone box.

SW: That's right the phone box. Paul had left by then so it was just Dave and he was trying to get people to contribute and we had some lyrics that Stream Angel had written ...

SM: … Manchester Woman.       

SW: Manchester Woman, yeah, that's right. So we’re in this phone box in Sheffield shouting our heads off down the phone and Dave recorded the whole thing and I think its track five on the album.

SM: It sounds like some loonies shouting.

SW: But we were some loonies shouting. In fact that's all we’ve ever been. Some Loonies shouting. A good way to get a recording is to go in to a launderette, preferably a 24 hour one so you can go when nobody else is using it, put a load of money in all the machines but also stack on top of the machines a load of bottles, glasses and stuff so that when the machines go in to the spin cycle you don’t just get the sound of the bottles but of the machines too. 

IF: Didn’t Diz collect sardine tins?

SW: Jeff Nuttall wrote a book about performance art and there's a picture of Diz in it wearing the sardine tin necklace.

SM: Its on the cover isn’t it?

SW: There's a whole history of Diz that none of us knows about.

SM: He once got Lol Coxhill to play at a Smell & Quim gig in London.


SW: Holly got Smell & Quim to play her 21st Birthday party. She booked this room at this really posh hotel in Halifax.

IF: Didn’t she book them in as a jazz band?

SW: Smell & Quim were still Dave and Paul Harrison at this time and they were wearing the Elvis suits with the robot heads. I made myself a costume out of a fishnet curtain and wore nothing else. I used to go into the audience at that time and I’d made some blue popcorn that was brown sauce and garlic flavored which I was offering out. I don’t know what they did but Dave and Paul managed to set off the smoke alarms. I think there was smoke coming out of the robot heads. And the fire alarm went off and the place had to be evacuated but Paul and Dave hadn’t realised because they couldn’t hear the alarm. The manager called the fire brigade and the building was evacuated. So we’re all out in the street including me in my fishnet thingy and the fire brigade arrive and Holly knew one of them so she’s having a chat ... meanwhile back in the room Dave and Paul are still playing, they’ve got these robot heads on and cant see a fucking thing, they had light bulbs where the eyes are. All the noise and the smoke machine’s going and the first they knew was when the manager pulled the power and everything stopped. They wonder what the fuck was happening so they take off the robot heads and the rooms empty except for the manager and the chief of the fire brigade.

IF: Who where the two who played in Smell & Quim at the first Vibracathedral Orchestra gig at the Yazen-I-Kylo [Leeds].

SM: That was Steve Massey from the Hobs [Ceramic Hobs], who’s spent 11 years in nuthouses now, on guitar, Paul Harrison on bass and I think I had a tape player going ‘one, two, three, four’, and it was a really bad gig in that we were all dispirited thinking this is terrible.  Apart from when Dave was doing stuff with Steve Fricker ... there were a couple of gigs that were billed as Smell & Quim and Onomatopoeia [Fricker’s project].

IF: One of those was the Scruffy Murphy gig in Birmingham wasn’t it? That involved a fish too.

SM: Yeah, the landlord refused to sell any more beer. Fricker wrapped the audience up in string. Those were the quite years of Smell & Quim.

SW: Simon, were you at the gig where I had a roll of industrial strength cling film?

IF: Was that the one where you wrapped the audience up with it?

SW: Yes, all of the audience.

IF: Except for me. I was stood at the back. I could see you coming.

SM:  Cath O’Connor and Pauline were sirens at the 120 Rats gig.

SW: I was the compere. The whole event was organised by Phil Smith. It was Blackpool bands versus Leeds band.

IF: The Rats was a squat venue wasn’t it?

SM: Yes, on Meanwood Road in Leeds. It was a just a few houses knocked into one.

SW: The Hobs played, Bilge Pump played, Smell & Quim played, Sticky was there, James Barnes ... Pauline and Cath wore silver foil and bubble wrap.

SM: Diz had a starting pistol at that gig and he shot it into the air which was a shock for some people. Crank Sturgeon guested with Smell & Quim in London one night. Andy Bolus was there ... that was another one where we ended up with fifteen people on stage .. Jim Plaistow from the A Band ...

SW: There's a big cross over from A Band to Smell & Quim. In Fact of the current line up Dave is the only one who isn’t connected with the A Band ...