Reflections/Imaginations

Reflections - Original Instrumental Hits
CBS. Various Artists LP

Imaginations - Further Reflections
CBS. Various Artists LP



The chazzas have been kind to me of late. At a time when most of the review pile lies in a moribund heap sighing at me like a bored teenager I take great comfort from the plunder to be had in Cleck’s chazzas. And Brighouse, whose Oxfam furnished me with two half decent Be Bop Deluxe albums ['Modern Music' and their last 'Drastic Plastic'] and Bill Nelson’s second solo album ‘Quit Dreaming …’ but it was the hometown chazzas that once again saw me returning home with a bulging organic cotton tote bag.

Someone must have been down to Kirky Hospice with their dads old LP’s and who am I to resist? For there on a crammed shelf [which I had to get down on my haunches to inspect of course] lay ‘The Fifth Chasidic Song Festival 1973' and beside it something called 'Geulah Songs' by the Jerusalem Orchestra and all in Hebrew with a sepia picture of some smiling cherubs by the Wailing Wall. There was ‘Turning the Tides’ by Moon a jazz rock outfit from the 70's who are simply awful and ‘Air Pocket’ by Roger Powell a 1980 schmock rock LP [featuring Todd Rundgren on e-bow vomit] which I struggled to play all the way through but those covers and the fact that I’d never heard of these people and for the sake of 50p I could have in my hands some kind of lost classic but no it was all rubbish but hey ho they takes your money. But I’ve not finished, there was the Stanley Clarke ‘Journey to Love’ LP from 1975 which was all grubby and gritty but after being carefully washed with hand soap under warm running water it came up a treat - I can thoroughly recommend this method of cleaning records and the pleasure to be had in feeling those minuscule bits of grit wash away under your fingertips and the triumphal return to the turntable of a once more gleaming record where, as if by magic, most of the crackle has disappeared.

Its these two LP’s of instrumental hits that have had the most plays over recent weeks. Released in the early 80’s by CBS they capitalised on the continuing public appetite for all things film and TV themed, here a moment in time buoyed by the success of the likes of breathy New Age folksters Clannad and Greek keyboard prodder Vangelis whose ability to churn out twee tunes made him a household name and far more money than playing prog with Aphrodite’s Child. He has three contributions over the two here here but for what I'm presuming are contractual reasons his Chariots of Fire theme is played by a totally unknown to mankind outfit going by the name of Hawk & Co. 

There are two reasons why I like these kind of 'instrumental' comps, one is that they contain music that I find oddly emotional and the other is the bizarre juxtaposition of artists and composers, its only on compilations such as these that you will find Phillip Glass [with ‘Facades’ au natural] sharing the same billing as Acker Bilk, Riuchi Sakamoto with Richard Clayderman, The Shadows with an Orchestra conducted by Geoffrey Burgon.

Imaginations contains my favourite Elton John track, ‘Song For Guy’. Favourite because I liked it as a kid when I heard it on the radio and favourite because he hardly sings on it [and like Clannad he does sing, a dint in the ‘instrumental’ lie]. Reflections also has the only Abba track I’ll admit to liking which is ‘Arrival’, a pop droner if ever there was one. Sakamoto’s Theme From Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence is still one of the saddest things I’ll probably ever hear and is simplicity itself but not all of its good of course. Comps are never perfect but the good stuff far outweighs the dross. Dross being panpipe music, which once upon a time used to be the default chazza background music until they all went upmarket and started having their own radio stations with Diddy David Hamilton dishing out tips on how to stay warm in between spinning Cliff tunes. So we have to have Flight of the Condor because you can't have a [supposed] instrumental album without Flight of the Bloody Condor on it or Cavatina, or sodding Albatross. I’ll even let them have American jazz twiddler Lee Ritenour playing ‘Love Theme from an Officer and a Gentlemen’ because I’d rather have his instrumental version than the original which is of course far superior.

You have to have some ying to your yang and this is my way of offsetting the hours spent at the foot of the review pile. After an hours worth of light classical and a smattering of Andreas Vollenweider’s harp I feel like I could tackle a Merzbow box set. Maybe that's going too far but you know what I mean.

André Salmon + Nurse With Wound

André Salmon - Léon Léhautier, Anarchiste Pur.
Nurse With Wound - Close To You
Book + 3” CD

38 pp
10 x 15 CM
ISBN :  979-10-94601-00-6



Many years ago my Nurse With Wound education was given a healthy boost by the purchase of two Nurse With Wound MP3 discs as bought from a record shop on Nevsky Prospekt in St Petersburg. The Russian disdain for copyright meant that Mr Stapelton got bugger all for his work whilst I got 22 albums spanning 1979 to 2000, and while the discography is incomplete it would be churlish of me to complain about the missing albums and the inevitable loss of sound quality.

I was already familiar with bits of the Nurse With Wound ouvre [as should anyone with any serious interest in the further reaches of sonic exploration] and consider A Sucked Orange and Rock ‘N Roll Station to be amongst my favourite albums but those two discs took me on a longer journey that at its end led me to believe that not everything Nurse With Wound released was covered in gold dust. Those early albums may have inspired a generation of noise makers but listening back now to Blank Capsules of Embroidered Cellophane I’m wondering if I can stick its full 28 minutes worth of studio fuck-about-ery and whether it was that good in the first place. Probably not. Merzbild Schwet is equally hard work and have you heard the collaboration with Hafler Trio on Staalplaat? Hard work doesn’t even cover it. But anyway. 

My favourite Nurse With Wound sounds are the ones that somewhere along the line involve Colin Potter, David Tibet and Andrew Liles. ‘Close To You’ features Tibet and Liles in a fifteen minute mini epic that begins with solemnly played low end piano keys and ends with a Blackpool Tower organ version of the eponymous Burt Bacharach classic [there’s also a snatch about midway of the intro to Andy Williams' take on Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You - I guess they must have been listening to lots of Burt]. All this had me diving into the Nurse With Wound back catalogue so I played Man With the Woman Face and Chance Meeting and A Sucked Orange and Spiral Insana but not Sylvie and Babs because I don’t like the cut up stuff. But yes, Close To You, classic Nurse material with trademark Nurse sounds such as whispered foreign languages, salamanders sucking up worms and crisp packets being crinkled at loud volumes. A mysterious fifteen minutes worth with each sound being replaced in turn making for a seamless and endlessly curious journey. It goes without saying that the production and engineering standards are of the usual ear boggling quality.

There’s the book too, another one of those little Lenka Lente books and a story [In French] of an obscure anarchist who in 1893 killed the Serbian minister for France for wearing a decoration in his jacket. But I dare say that most of you reading this couldn’t give a toss about that little fact. Which is a shame because I’m sure there’s some kind of connection to be made here which due to my lousy French I’m missing [I have Frans de Waard’s review to thank for the Serbian minister info]. I can’t chide Lenka Lente for not publishing English language editions of their work but like Frans I feel that us monoglots are only getting half the picture. Our loss is the French speaking worlds gain I suppose.


[As an aside, I think I may actually be warming to 'Blank Capsules ...'. Its taken me a long time but perhaps I'm finally ready for it now.]


www.lenkalente.com

Guttersnipe

Guttersnipe - Demo
CDR.




Like Spike Milligan said ‘If you keep your ear close to the ground you get to listen to lots of dogshit’. And while this job [job?] leads to plenty of good listening I still get my fair share of dogshit. I have so many dog turds now that the review bin overflows with them. I daren’t even go near them for fear they’ll leap out and attack me, their little plastic cases trying to sever my jugular as I frantically flap in any direction screaming for help and mercy and forgiveness all in one panicked blurted out sentence.

But good things do arrive and when they do they’re a pleasant surprise. This Guttersnipe demo was picked up from the merch stall on the Saturday of the Tor Ist Das! fest where Guttersnipe were easily the best thing I saw all day. Not bad for an early evening slot in a church where acoustics don’t normally lend themselves to such howlings. Perhaps it was my stage front slightly to the left pew that did it? Or the good sound as generated by the sound man. I have no idea how these things work. All I know is that that guitar sound was real mean, a deliciously degraded sound akin to a seething wasps nest being stripped to its core with a circular saw set at 10,000 revs. There’s a drummer too, a cross between a daddy long legs and Thurston Moore, all lithe limbs and tousled hair. They’re from Leeds of course, assembled from the wreckage of a short lived group who had a Japanese sounding name who I saw play a few times down the Wharf where their short songs made from scratchy urgent guitar and rapid drumming always went down well with me - even if it wasn’t the kind of thing I’d chuck on the turntable at home.

There’s electronics too which gives their sound a noisier edge but its the way they combine guitar, drums and electronics into songs as a whole that really got my [and most everyone else’s in Todmorden’s that day] attention. Their delivery is all sneer and growl delivered with guts and emotion and genuine feeling. Its not something you come across too often.

The delicately printed fold out sleeve tells me the band consists of Xyloxopa Violaxia Bdallophytum on guitar, vocals and electronics and Oxylepis on drums, backing vocals and ‘troniks. I pass this on as mere information. By far the best of the six tracks and thirty minutes of this demo is the nine minute epic ‘Tutti Frutti Chernobyl’, which begins in Bolt Thrower territory and ends up in in the bottom of a tarry pit from which emerge the gaseous plops of various Japanese noise bands. Xyloxopa sings like a demented siren stuck down a well having diseased rats dropped on her head, a voice thats makes Diamanda Galas sound about as menacing as Mary Poppins. Oxylepis drums like an octopus. ‘The Last Vestiges of Sodomy on the Racecourse’ which gets my vote for the best track title of the year, contains the kind of guitar wringing that makes you want to like guitars all over again. At a time in my life where guitar bands mean less with each passing year I find myself in the unfamiliar position of championing a band with one at its very heart. The Last Vestiges of Sodomy on the Racecourse’ descends into the kind of howling noisestorm as created by many a noise artist but behind it all lies that voice and those rattling drums and a constant barrage of bass note detonations. Exhilarating stuff. Last track ‘Long Pincers Pips In The Tin’ is the shortest at a minute and a half and finds a helium filled cat singing to a background of electronic squiggles. Its all utterly joyful and full of life and proves that Leeds is still capable of producing bands that are at the very edge of whatever the zeitgeist is. Cant wait to see them down the Wharf Chambers, if they sounded good in a church the WC is going to feel like CBGB’s. 


https://guttersnipe.bandcamp.com/releases

Harbinger Sound Radio Show.

I never really got the collector thing. The usual stamp collection as a kid and then in my teens a rather odd phase, that lasted a couple of years, whereupon I took it upon myself to collect cigarette packets. No, I have no idea why either. One day I chucked them all in the bin and thats been that as far as collecting goes. Even when I got into music I didn’t feel the need to collect everything by an artist I admired or a genre or a label or a certain period of time. I’m more of your gadfly picking up bits here and there before moving on, always in search of something new, being delighted by some unexpected sound or release thats just amazingly dropped through the letterbox thats the best thing I’ve ever heard since the last thing. Even now where I’m lucky enough to be in a position to be able to afford pretty much what I want music wise, I feel no need to own original Pharoah Sanders LP’s or some of his more obscure early singles. If the house were to burn down tomorrow a part of me would probably think someone had done me a favour. But this isn’t everybody of course.

Some people are collectors. There are websites and magazines dedicated to their pursuit, collectors fairs where they get to dig around for bits that have escaped them and meet other collectorists, online forums where the tiniest details can be gone over in even greater detail by even greater collectorists. The Record Collector is one such magazine and I buy the odd copy if something on the cover catches my eye. This months issue features Steve Underwood in their ‘Collector of the Month’ column [or whatever its called]. And Steve, as any fule kno is head cheese at Harbinger Sound, the label thats gone from reissuing Japanese noise cassettes to top ten in the album charts courtesy of Sleaford Mods.

Its no secret that I’ve known Steve for quite some years now and have actually seen, in the flesh, his record collection, or parts of it at leasts since the place he was staying in when I visited wasn’t actually big enough to contain his thousands of singles and LP’s. A few of us spent an evening at his flat playing ‘Have you got?’ and invariably Steve had. An original copy of The New Blockaders first LP was casually tossed across the carpet, singles that people had heard of but never seen were dug out for us to ogle and admire. Jaws were dropped and homage was paid. We are not worthy etc.

I knew Steve liked his noise and his punk and his Bukowski, he used to send me tapes of Urinals singles and Smegma LP’s all of which were gratefully received all of which acted as portals to new worlds but it wasn’t until much later that I discovered that what really made Steve’s pulse race a little faster were singles released between 1978 and 1984.

These were the years when punks DIY ethos ran riot resulting in an explosion of creativity where anything was possible and the only limits of your creativity was the time it took for a needle to get from one edge of a seven inch single to the run off groove. Exciting times that are unlikely ever to be repeated but are remembered fondly by those who were there.

Steve took some of these singles down to Torquay to play on Steve Cammack’s Muhmur Radio Show. Its a three hour show [split into two for ease of access] which I’ve now listened to in its entirety and what its shown me is that there is a reason why people collect things; Steve collects singles from this period because if you want to hear them then you have to buy them in order to do so - they just don’t exist anywhere else, there are no handy double CD comps for you to listen to whilst you do the crossword, there may be the odd music blog with online archives but where’s the fun in that? If you want to listen to what Steve listens to you have to get out of your chair every three minutes and get your wallet thrashed in to the bargain. Its part of what being a record collector is all about.

The list of singles that follows this piece will give you some indication as to where Steve’s tastes lie. These bands were working on the edges of the edges. On labels so obscure that some of their releases have only ever been seen and heard by the very few. We are in deep DIY country, a country populated by those for whom punk was a soon to be forgotten corpse fit for nothing but those hitching a ride to stardom and appearances on Top of the Pops.

I have to admit to being blown away by these three hours. Listened to as a whole they span everything from adolescent prankery to groove damaged loop to damaged DIY punk to pre LAFMS craziness and are in all probability unlike anything you’ve ever heard. Since 1984 at any rate.  






Playlist:
01: The Agitators : "Alien Sketch" (Redball Records) 1979.
02: The Agitators : "Johny W." (Redball Records) 1979.
03: The Agitators : "Fat Boy lager" (Redball Records) 1979.
04: The Agitators : "The Very Reverend 'Slow Talking' Jack Ruby" (Redball Records) 1979.
05: The Agitators : "RASCLAAT" (Redball Records) 1979.
     (All tracks taken from the "Bound & Gagged With A Length Of Rubber Tubing" EP).
06: Pre Fix : "Underneathica" (Subterranean Records) 1981.
07: Der Spielverderber : "Spielverderber" (Zick Zack Records) 1980.
08: Pulp Music : "Low Flying Aircraft" (Pulp) 1982.
09: Dix Denny/John Denny : "Adulthood" (Numbskull) 1979.
10: Zyklon : "Part Time" (Grim) 1981.
11: NG : "Ambivalence" (Unbalance Recordings) 1980.
12: Residenz : "Albert Hilsberg" (Rondo Records) 1980.
13: Anemic Session : "Anemic Session" (Output Records) 1981.
14: Eazy Teeth : "Car Noise" (Dental Records) 1980.
15: Orchid Spangiafora : "Dime Operation" (Orchid Spangiafora) 1978.
16: Enstruction : "Keep Out Of My Body Bag" (Deux Ex Machina) 1982.
17: Die Lemminge : "Im Himmel" (Pure Freunde) 1981.
18: Flesh : "My Boy Lollipop" (Flesh) 1979.
19: Michael Atavar : "Cabral Dynamic" (Chance Records) 1980.
20: Sex : "Correlation Coefficient" (Index Records) 1979.
21: Annie Anxiety : "Hello Horror" (Crass Records) 1981.
22: Anonymous : "Snake Attack" (Flat Records) 1980.
23: The Barons : "Boiled Dinner" (Doublethink) 1981.
24: 8 Voices : "8 Voices" (Plurex) 1980.
25: Rectifier : "Perversion Of A Refined Nation" (Local Anaesthetic Records) 1982.
26: Nun : "Riv Skf" (If Product) 1984.
27: Another : "Paris Tribe" (Backstreet Backlash Records) 1982.
28: The Magits : "Fragmented" (Outer Himalyan Records) 1979.
29: Survivors : "We Died …" (Peoples Records) 1979.
30: Collective Horizontal : "Beach Coma" (Dolmen Records) 1981.
31: Phil Bedel : "Voice Of Concrete" (Happy Squid Records) 1980.
32: Daisuck & Prostitute : "Ai O Itamu Uta" (Altamira) 1980.
33: Omming For Woks : "Cut Of Knives" (Jabberwok Records) 1984.
34: In The Pink : "Running In The Family" (Grey & Anxious Records) 1982.
35: Idol Death : "New Lesson" (Dispy) 1980.
36: Radio Free Europe : "Eno's Funeral" (MiG Records) 1979.
37: Monty Cantsin : "Paper Bag Syphon" (Syphon) 1978.
38: Men/Eject : "Draw" (Not On Label) 1980.
39: Neu Electrikk : "Converse Of Tapes (Synesthesia) 1980.
40: Neu Electrikk : "Hand" (Synesthesia) 1980.
41: Hovlakin : "Unknown Title" (Unbalance Recordings).
42: The Poems : "Achieving Unity" (Polka) 1981.
43: Culturcide : "Consider Museums As Concentration Camps" (Information Records) 1980.
44: Debt Of Nature : "Gospel Light" (New Alliance) 1982.
45: What Is Oil? : "Scrosh!" (Oof Potato Enterprises) 1982.
46: Precision Bearings : "Don't Fall Down" (Fowl Records) 1982.
47: Mu : "Turn Off The Radio" (Backstreet Backlash Records) 1981.
     (Taken from the "Motion In Tune" LP).
48: Grønvirke : "Grønvirke" (Gry) 1982.






Part 1


Part 2


Muhmur

Taming Power

Taming Power - 16 Movements For Electric Guitar
Early Morning Records. EMR LP - 008.
200 copies.

Taming Power - Selected Works 1992-98
Early Morning Records. EMR 10” - 005.
200 copies.

Taming Power - Selected Works 1997
Early Morning Records. EMR 10” - 006.
202 copies.

Taming Power - Fragments of the Name of God
Early Morning Records. EMR 7” - 013.
220 copies.


My short ten minute car journey to work takes me past two important reminders. The first is whats known locally as the ‘Chartists Fields’. The Chartists were the first working class political movement in England to petition for a voice in politics, which until then had been denied the ordinary working man. In 1839 what is thought to be a crowd of 250,000 Chartist supporters gathered to hear people talk in field that I now drive past every morning; 20,000 people marched the twenty odd miles from Todmorden with a brass band leading them the way all to hear incendiary speeches from people like Feargus O’ Connor who told them that change must come. This place reminds me of my working class roots and the fact that I live in what was once a hotbed of radical political thought and deed.

On the far edge of one of these fields I can see the back boundary wall of Liversedge Cemetery. Built in Victorian times it contains many an imposing headstone some of which I can just about make out as I tootle along with John Humphries reading me the early morning news. This reminds me that one day I will be dead so I better get my sodding finger out and write some reviews.

Which brings me to Taming Power and the third batch of records that have arrived from this most mysterious of Norwegian projects. Mysterious because Askild Haugland, the man behind Taming Power, decries all manner of promotion, mysterious because all his records have fairly mundane photos glued to them, mysterious because all his track titles are the dates he recorded them, mysterious because his work sounds so damn … mysterious.

Using sound sources such as an electric guitar, a pair of 70’s Tandberg reel to reels, radios, Tibetan bowls and the odd ethnic horn he wrings from them works that wallow in vast oceans of crenelated feedback, works that are primitive in their construct but somehow create the power to grip like little else I know. Some of his work pushes the boundaries of what you can physically endure, not because they’re poorly constructed compositions or painfully uncomfortable but because they’re so damned haunting, so uncomfortably sad and distressing, so … mysterious.

Selected Works 1997 is a case in point. Two side long tracks of two reel to reel tape recorders continually feeding back in a torrent of squealing lo-fi discomfort, a release that had it appeared on an early Broken Flag release would be seen as a classic of its kind. A seemingly never ending cascade of whistles and screaming contacts constantly jarring each other into submission.

And then there’s the deeply austere and melancholic ‘16 Movements For Electric Guitar’ which is easily the pick of this Taming Power delivery. Here Haugland plays electric guitar like he’s sat in the rain besides his best friends grave wringing out the saddest most deeply unsettling compositions - all of it swathed in rusty Taming Power analogue murk. Four tracks of spatial intertwining guitar notes, each one left to ring into an empty black hole where the sounds disappear forever. What makes this an even more unsettling listen is the minutes silence that breaks each side leaving this listener feeling like he’d attended a religious service where a minutes silence was deemed compulsory so as to let the enormity of what you’d just been told sink in. After listening to this LP for months now I doubt I could ever tire of it. If you thought Nick Drake was your favourite fireside autumnal listen then more fool you. On ‘16 Movements For Electric Guitar’ Haugland makes Nick Drake sound like Ken Dodd. This is the power of Taming Power. Arguably his best release and the one to start with should you feel like expanding your horizons.

‘Selected Works 1992-98’ sees Haugland augment his twin Tandbergs with amongst other things a Casiotone, a radio and a circular saw. As you’d expect with early recordings the results are patchy but never less than curiously listenable with Clanger like whistles and industrial sparks flying, especially with the aid of the circular saw. Throbbing Gristle throb comes courtesy of the Tandbergs feeding back, an out of tune electric guitar plucks a sad melody to a shortwave radio backing. What you cant help admire here is Haugland’s desire to document what he did and eventually feel confident enough to release these works on to vinyl.

Which leaves the single ‘Fragments of the Name of God’ and four short tracks as recorded in 2003. Here a glockenspiel augments the ever present Tandbergs creating ice cream van music on LSD. One track gives us the soundtrack to a floating in space 1950’s science fiction B movie. Unusually for Haugland he names one track ‘Rain’ [and then the date] which is but a sliver of what appears to be a pure field recording. Even this sounds ... mysterious.

I’ve been the fortunate recipient of three packages from Askild Haugland now and with  each one my admiration for what he’s achieved increases a hundredfold. This is a man who has worked in utter obscurity for decades releasing his work to total silence, to the applause of no one but still he’s continued composing and releasing. Long may he do so.


 
http://www.sonoloco.com/rev/emr/emrframes.html








  

Stuart Chalmers - Imaginary Musicks Vol 2,3 & 4.

Stuart Chalmers - Imaginary Musicks Vol 2
BDM005 CD. DL

Stuart Chalmers - Imaginary Musicks Vol 3 & 4
Hairdryer Excommunication. CDR/DL



I was in London at the weekend. Me and Mrs Fisher lounging around in the Princess Louise on a Sunday afternoon making the most of a quiet room and letting Sam Smiths wheat beer work its magic whilst admiring the enamel tiles and the etched glass thinking ‘wouldn’t it be great if all pubs were like this’? An afternoon eddy, a rare chance to leave feeling slightly fresh before sloping off down Kingsway for a curry in the India Club.

Its the same kind of feeling I get when listening to Stuart Chalmers work. It was his releases I immediately went to after ditching the dirty underwear and washing the Smokes grime from my pits. With the lights down low and headphones in place I return to Imaginary Musicks 2, 3 & 4 and pretend I'm half cut.

Chalmers has created what I like to think of as a Museum of Sound in which he displays all manner of aural oddities that he chooses to transform and alter via tape abuse and the addition of field recordings and acoustic sounds into a music that can veer from the achingly tender to the all out industrial. His earlier work was more visceral with the pull of capstans and the click clack of fast forward buttons to be found among the melancholic bowl rings and relaxation records while his later work, as found here, appears to have a purer fluid running through it.

When I saw him at the Wharf Chambers at this years Crater Lake Fest he played a zither, various bits of wood, an array of cassette players and pedals all while knelt on the floor with a waist length wig shielding just about everything and it was nothing less than captivating. Mixing everything from chant to drone to bird song to office chatter to speeded up Terry Riley records [maybe?] to slowed down jazz to old time music hall to you just about name it he creates these spaces, these areas where sounds congeal and coalesce and morph into something that is much better than the sum of their parts.

The artist I’ve most compared him to is William Basinski and there are moments in his work where a decayed tape loop brings to mind Basinski’s Disintegration Loops. It appears here also with the track ‘Requiem’ on 3 & 4 but instead of letting us all drown in a pit of misery Chalmers cleverly corrupts the thing by layering over it the audio taken from an 80’s BBC sports quiz, the results being similar to having your frame set afloat on a sea of morphine while discovering who finished second in the County Cricket Championship in 1981 [Sussex in case you were wondering]. The track that follows it is Henri Pousseur meets Tricky, the one after that contains some harshly plucked oriental strings, mutterings and the swooshing sound you make when you rub finger cymbals over a stone tiled floor. The track after that is pure tape abuse with a swirl of what was once a smooth jazz tune obliterated into a quick fire squish of wobbly saxophones and eerie space sounds. And then there’s the rapid edits that recall the kind of madcap lunacy of Nurse With Wound's Sylvie & Babs. Such is my admiration for what Chalmers creates I found myself not only listening to these two releases but going back to his previous works and luxuriating away entire evenings filling myself with feelings of warmth and melancholy and delight.

I can only imagine that Chalmers has an ear for sound and that he is capable of seeing the  potential transformation inherent in say the field recording of a firework display which is what he utilises on the last track of 3 &4. A simple field recording of rapid bangs and the delighted oohs and ahhs of the crowd is held up against a background drone of such deep beauty it left me feeling emotionally drained. And it isn’t often that happens. 

To show off his breadth of tastes Imaginary Musicks Vol 2 kicks off with some serious Industrial barrage this being the stuttering bombast of pummeling drums, computer chatter and spacey noises. Before he then goes on to create the kind of mouth chewing effects more normally associated with Phil Minton expect that this is definitely not of mouth origin and has a church organ for backing. He’s creating whole new worlds here.

What I find continually mystifying is that Chalmers work remains in relative obscurity. He’s been championed in a few corners but deserves a wider audience. His time will surely come. 





https://bluespectrumtapes.bandcamp.com/music

https://hairdryerexcommunication.wordpress.com/

https://stuartchalmers.bandcamp.com/





  

The PowerString Game

The PowerString Game
Henk Van Mierlo Kreative Kommunikatie BV. LP


Have you noticed how the charity shop record bins are changing? Admittedly you wont have to dig far before you come across a Jim Reeves record or something by Bert Kaempfert but all those records that were bought in the 60’s by people who were dying in the 90’s are slowly drying up to be replaced by people ditching their bland 80’s and 90’s pop 12 inchers. Now I’m starting to see a smattering of battered pop tunes and Donna Summer LP’s. Not that bad in itself and perhaps worth a ten bob punt should you be in the mood but those Jim Reeves records wont be around forever and while Sid Vicious may have been a fan I can’t see myself ever buying one.

I used to buy lots of chazza vinyl and some of it I bought just because I liked the gaudy cover or reckoned that what lay within would be much better than the sleeve showing three beardy blokes stood in a field with banjoes and fiddles. I cut right back when I realised I had nowhere to put them and took about a hundred of them back to where they came from vowing to be more stringent in my chazza choices in future.

And to a larger extent I have been a good boy and left behind what I would have normally taken but that's not to say I’ve stopped looking. How could I? The lure of a charity shop record bin is as strong as ever. The thought that behind that Shirley Bassey album may lie something by Asmus Tietchens [something that did once happen to me in the Red Cross in Heckmondiwke] and its not as if I’m just digging around for rare Hamster Record releases. My love of the absurd and weird is something that goes hand in hand with charity shop record bins. You could trawl eBay and Discogs but the real buzz is to be had in finding something like The PowerString Game, which is essentially a promotional tool for the PS Hy-O-Sheep oil filled tennis racket string with added cheesy music.

Rescued from Mind in Brighouse on Saturday morning [along with three Greek Rebetika records and a lap steel LP by Rod King, perhaps of which more later] The PowerString Game contains one 14 minute track of promotional guff for the strings and 11 tracks of music to inspire the tennis player. These being, amongst others, easy listening versions of The Old Fashioned Way, Mack The Knife, You Are The Sunshine of My Life, Magic Fly [?] and two lounge-core instrumentals; one called ‘PowerString’ the other ‘Another Ace’ both of which were written by someone called P. Elsterre who nobody has heard of but some sad completeist on Discogs where six entries are to be found against his name.

So far so odd but its the 14 minute PowerString opener that features the Brass Band of the Royal Guards, Chris Evert Lloyd, Jimmy Connors, a Wimbledon speaker, an umpire and a commentator that separates this one from the rest. Part of that 14 minute track contains a set of tennis being played with no commentary, the announcement of the scores by the umpire and applause being your only guide. Another section goes into the technical detail of the PS Hy-O-Sheep oil filled tennis racket string, repeating the words PS Hy-O-Sheep oil filled tennis racket string every ten seconds like they were trying to brain wash you into buying the PS Hy-O-Sheep oil filled tennis racket string in a not so subtle way before reminding you that point of sale material will be place in every sports shop in the land while the tennis match between Evert and Connors continues in the background. And now on to those inspirational instrumentals.

Even the back cover is weird. A tennis player holding a racket like he’s got the left side of a marching banner in his hand, hands far apart, racket in front of face, grimaced as if it was nuclear device he was trying to fend off and not a fluffy tennis ball.

Sadly my order form is missing from the record. I know it should be there because the man who’s doing his best to sell me PS Hy-O-Sheep oil filled tennis racket strings tells me so. My life is incomplete. There’s one for sale on Discogs for 67p but it doesn't state whether the insert is there. Perhaps I could get in touch. Perhaps I could get a life.

Twilit Grotto - Holiday Snaps

Twilit Grotto - Holiday Snaps
Beartown Records. Cassette.
30 Copies.


Should you judge a book by its cover? Should you judge a crap noise cassette by its cover? I do? And for my prejudice I pay the price. Thus the twisted gargoyle on the front of Twilit Grotto’s Holiday Snaps release has remained unplayed for many months just because I took an instance dislike to their twisted gargoyle cover and, it has to be said, the rather daft name [which also appears to be the name of an archive of esoteric writings - perhaps there is some connection, perhaps I care, perhaps I don’t]. If I’d been a proper music journalist [ … ] it would have gone on to a prepared list whereupon it would have received clinical attention six months ago and then, and then you would have been able to buy a copy. Because buy a copy you will want to do after I tell you all about it.

Forget the gargoyle [to be found on the walls of an insane asylum in Ghent and the very mask of one its former patients] and instead think analogue synths and rather bizarrely a mixture of folk and synth drone and some kind of twisted power electronics, finger in ear folk drone, Keith Emerson Daggers and the synth stabs of early Soft Machine albums drone folk sing thing. Whatever this is I don’t have a name for it and that I rather like.

Twilit Grotto is the project of the ludicrously named Mr. M Shit who describes what he does as Heavy Electronic Evacuations. Which is certainly true of ‘Old City Walls’ which begins with some seriously delightful synth squeals before Mr Shit begins singing in a voice more often to be heard in folky pubs intoning the virtues of old boats and the value of the fiddle drill. Folk Electronics anyone? The way this track escalates into a wall of screaming frequencies while being anchored to a twin bass bomb drop made me wonder if this was a first for the melding of two very opposite genres?

The side long ‘Bats in the Cave’ has Mr Shit phasing that same vocal folk drone over Wasp like synth throbs that pan through each ear before spiraling out of control with ever more frantic and delirious energy. Like an electronic firework display soundtracked by Steelye Span and a Moog Orchestra.

First track ‘Digging The Sunken Palace’ is probably the weakest of the three seeing as how it sounds for the most part like the end of ‘Bats in the Cave’ but who am I to complain? I just found myself a whole new genre.

But now the sad news. Due to my dislike of gargoyles on covers the measly 30 copies of this have long since gone. The good news is that you can still get this as a download. Hello Mr Shit.


http://www.beartownrecords.com/
       

https://twilitgrotto.bandcamp.com/releases


 

Sleaford Mods - Key Markets

Sleaford Mods - Key Markets
Harbinger Sound CD/LP/DL


I now find myself in the curious position of reviewing a release that has already found itself the recipient of glowing reviews in the The Guardian, The Times and of all things The Daily Telegraph. How did that happen? Witness then the curious rise of Sleaford Mods and Harbinger Sound, from never made a penny noise label putting out 100 run LP’s by the likes of Pain Jerk and Contagious Orgasm to home of arguably the most important band the UK.  And all this without the aid of fat brown envelopes, glitzy websites or an ever churning Twitter account.  

Ever since an Austerity Dogs test press turned up one Saturday morning and I spent the rest of the day listening to the thing on repeat, rapt and rapidly trying to write down the lyrics for a lame review, I soon began asking myself ‘how far can they take this thing’? I mean its that simple its laughable. Two blokes and a laptop? Is that it? A Suicide for austerity Britain? Kraftwerk after half of them have been laid off? How far can you take such a simple set up before it all rolls back on itself and the punters move on to the next big thing? One album? Two? A small tour and a support slot and back to the Rammel Club until thirty years down the line you’re on the bill at the Barbican with Terry Riley and some African thumb piano merchants.

And then Divide and Exit came along and with it some of their strongest material to date. Tweet, Tweet, Tweet hit a zeitgeist bullseye not seen since The Specials Ghost Town and while it may not have shot up the charts and embedded itself into a nations psyche [yet - these are dark days for the charts] it at least further propelled them into the welcoming arms of jaded music journos tired of reviewing the new Bjork and interviewing floppy hatted singer songwriters with a million Twitter followers.

It wasn’t until they got a mention in the Daily Mail that I knew they’d truly made it. These foul mouthed Wreckers of Civilization who dare to knock Boris off his bike and don’t forget Saturdays paper and its free 16 track CD soundtrack to the summer featuring Katrina and the Waves and Men Without Hats singing The Safety Dance. You can dance if you want to.

And so it came to pass that their third album for Harbinger Sound appeared and with it bigger venues, Glasto slots and DM’s from The Prodigy and Leftfield, [not fogetting th book of lyrics, art shows on late night BBC2 and endorsements from Stewart Lee and Iggy Pop] Personally I’d like to see them in the charts, get an airway ban followed by a full page spread in the Mail with Fearn and Williamson spoiling middle England’s breakfast. We live and dream.

I needn’t have worried about Key Markets being a duffer. It was what I feared the most, having to choose my words carefully and point to the floor fillers while skipping over the also rans. If anything its their more complete work. Williamson’s vocal delivery has become, and I mean this most sincerely folks, more refined. As have his targets. Compare the guttural, spit flecked wage slave rants of ‘Fizzy’ to the more laconic delivery of ‘Rupert Trousers’ and its withering observations of Boris and his brick and the cheese making Blur-ites. Compare the slinky grooving bass of Tarantula Deadly Cargo with the rattling bass of Routine Dean.

Key Markets is perhaps the most confident Sleaford Mods album so far, the one that sees them move further out into an orbit of their own, creating a world where the stream of consciousness lyrics live cheek by jowl with pin sharp jabs at Tory jokers and those who choose to wear £200 wellies. Its the album I feel they’d be happiest with. Its the one where Williamson’s urgent studio written lyrics are the accompaniment to a killer beat as formulated by Fearn.

Witness ‘Silly Me’;

And then the crap kicks in makes everything go thin, lost out square grout, weather bangs on my door, experts come out, the dud work, chirping on about ya music moves, you run a crap club in brum you loose, I won, I won.

Any idea what thats about? Me neither.

Witness ‘The Blob’;

Ready! In Service fuck me its a pity party ebola people in masks airport motorola hey motto tripping over the toblerones near victoria’s not very good secret they’re knickers mate ice box challenge and all the aeros I like mine in a packet mint flavour no zeros, have it culture! Organic farting in the pool what a waste I like a bit of smell I like a bit of taste stroll around the grounds the garden every house used to have one in 1965 now look at us oh what a fucking life!! 

Witness ‘In Quite Streets’:

Weaning it on my angle you fucking satanist its not a pentangle, arthur! No druids out of date barrel fluids I go large for a pound and regret it greasy, a sharp contrast from the newly adopted organic nice mate easy variety is the lie of life no lonely hearts club just a collection of moose faced bastards.

Witness ‘Cunt Make It Up’

Its the wannabe show and you always wanna be the same, posy shit and leather jacket, motorbikes from the 50’s you live in carlton you twat you’re not snake fucking plissken!

And while the press home in on the Tory bashing elements hence:

Boris on a bike, quick knock the cunt over. [Face to Faces]

Most forget the humour:

Gary Coopers on the glue cos he stuck to his guns [Bronx in a Six]

Key Markets has its punk moments; No Ones Bothered, the crowd chanting intro to first track to ‘Live Tonight’. In Quiet Streets rattles along for four minutes until you realise it has an outro chorus thats one of the best things they’ve done. These things creep up on you. The lounge piano that opens Tarantula Deadly Cargo is the precursor to some languid bass and was the song they finished their set with the last time I saw them in Leeds on a night where Williamson nearly lost his voice and everyone still went home brimming with verve and happiness. They’re having the times of their lives. Finish your set off with a slow one about people fleeing persecution. ‘Just one Cornetto mate’.

Rupert Trousers is all louche with Williamson sat watching the Tory Party conference where Tory joker in Wolfs clothing Boris Johnson brought out a house brick to make a point on housing during his ‘oh isn’t he soooo funny speech’ to the faithful [I was actually in Birmingham during the Tory Party Conference and outside the media tent, a tent wrapped in the Tory motto ‘Securing A Better Future’ lay a homeless man in a sleeping bag who security deemed to be of such low risk they left him there for me to take pictures of]. But I digress.

They’ll change of course. They have to. They jagged their jobs in so they could tour and record unhindered by alarm clocks and managers and supervisors and targets. But if Key Markets is a product of this new found freedom then its a win win situation. Not for them the coke filled difficult third album [I’m deliberately forgetting the pre Fearn releases here] instead an album that further cements their reputation as the best band in Britain.


I could go on but y'know.


Key Markets is out on Friday.

Expose Your Eyes - Micronnitus

Expose Your Eyes - Micronnitus
No Label. CDR. Comes in VHS box.
20 Copies.



Without Expose Your Eyes there would be no Idwal Fisher. Of that there is no doubt. It was all a long time ago now but in the days when flyers fell out of jiffy bags like confetti, an Expose Your Eyes flyer stood out due to a contact address that said Featherstone. This once proud mining town, about a twenty minute drive down the motorway from here, is the kind of place I’m always happy to leave. With pound shops, Booze Busters, numerous Class A pick up shops masquerading as take-aways and a newsagent that likes to remind everyone passing that they once sold a winning lottery ticket, its high street is a vivid reminder of how desperate a town can become. Having been there on numerous occasions to watch Batley get battered by Featherstone Rovers I wondered how this one horse town could ever be the home to someone peddling noise. So I wrote. What happened next was a twenty year musical odyssey that still continues to this day.

I soon became the recipient of what seemed like an endless stream of Expose Your Eyes cassettes. I guess Featherstone can do that to a man. I also became a regular correspondent with Paul Harrison, the man behind Expose Your Eyes. But it wasn’t long before the inevitable happened and Harrison left Featherstone for Sowerby Bridge. A move that resulted in an inevitable collision with Smell & Quim and then, after a few more years of sonic exploration, a virtual silence. And then a move to Hebden Bridge where Paul let Expose Your Eyes die a natural death. After what seemed like years of stasis I was alerted to Expose Your Eyes videos appearing on Youtube, said videos looked like visual versions of Expose Your Eyes, all in and out zooms of cows in fields to a background of spacey weirdness. Mr. Harrison was back.

And then someone suggested an afternoon drink in Halifax. So a few of us meet up once or twice a year and drink and talk rubbish and after about the fourth or fifth meeting here comes Micronnitus.

Being handed a paint splattered video box containing a noise CDR immediately brought on one of those Proustian madeleine moments and the talk soon turned to the days when the sight of such things was a common sight on any noise buyers doormat. Me being almost allergic to home made noise CDR’s these days, my immediate thought was ‘how long does the thing run for?’ Rather unkindly of course, but having long since put to bed the noise release as evening entertainment the thought of sitting through 80 minutes worth of insane screwed lunacy [that I know Harrison is perfectly capable of] appealed to me about as much as drilling my own teeth. This isn’t 1993 anymore. I am no longer an eager thirty something looking for ‘out there’ audio kicks anymore. I know how noise works. I know that there is a noise fan for every noise artist. I also know that trying to shift a noise release is as easy as getting rid of Ebola. I also know that Discogs is the rest home for every kind of noise detritus known to mankind since the year dot. But this was from Paul H. The man without whom.

And then I found myself with a Saturday all to myself so I dug out the review pile and sat through all manner of crud and not so crud and discovered that when the alcohol to blood ratio is at just the right level I find myself still curiously drawn to such things. Especially those given to me by someone who I used to correspond with on a regular basis and whose noise cassettes I used to devour with a mixture of awe and incomprehensibility.  So I played the damned thing and cranked up the volume and yes. It. Was. Noise. Far noisier than I was expecting to be honest like Harrison had managed to get his hands on some old Pain Jerk equipment.

And now you want me to expand on that very simple comparison don’t you? You want me to tell you how it held me rapt for its entire running length [I cant remember its running time, I was a bit pissed], or how I was held in my recumbent position like an astronaut on take off, held firm by the howling gale emerging from my speakers, the highs, the lows, the spectrum it works in, the way it made the woofers go all wobbly. But all of that doesn’t really matter to me at this present moment in time. I’ve reviewed more noise releases than you can shake a Merzbow fan at and its like dancing about archeology anyway. Its pointless.  All that does matter is that Paul Harrison made some noise, put it on a CDR and stuck it inside a purple paint splattered VHS cassette box that was dished out to his mates in Dirty Dicks one Saturday afternoon in June.

These are the facts. Forget the mechanics. Its not important. I played it once. It didn’t last that long. Its over. Its finished. And now I’ll put it on a shelf, or in a box, where it will linger for a very long time. All I’m left with is the memory of it and the knowledge that the man without whom is once again making horrible noises.

No Thumbs, Shepherds of Cats, Panelak.

No Thumbs - Slug Birth
Tutore Burlato 01. Cassette. 50 copies.

Shepherds of Cats & Panelak - Muscle Atrophy in a Squirrels Left Leg.
Fanfare CD04. Free DL.
100 copies.

Panelak - The Om Tragicord
LF Records. LF046. CDR


I was about halfway through listening to Slug Birth when the thought struck me that I could actually be listening to Taming Power, whose review I started to write many months ago and which has since slipped from my memory. These things happen. My mind wanders. I’m easily distracted. I also know from previous experience that whatever it is that Pascal Ansell puts his hands to results in a hideous noise. The kind of hideous noise that I’ve been shying away from for many months now.

But for whatever reason I found myself with a long Saturday in front of me and the urge to join the throngs at the Cleckheaton Folk Fest didn’t appeal so I thought, well, why not. I’ll have my own Anti-Folk Fest right here and for once I’ll play myself some hideous noise.

So I did and guess what? It was hideous. But me being in a stalwart mood I persevered right on through the first track of Slug Birth even if it did sound like the worst piece of enthusiasm over talent racket I’d ever heard right up until my headache started which was about the same time that mixing with the hordes at the Cleckheaton Folk Festival began to sound appealing. The sun was out. I was thirsty. What was I doing? So I turned it off for a while and went back to it later when my disposition became a little more amenable to such travails and guess what? It got better. Much to my amazement what was once a hideous racket had somehow transformed itself into an Amon Dull jam where someone repeatedly hits simultaneous notes on a cheap keyboard as a thousand scribbles of an electronic nature form the kind of background swirl as seen on the more delirious sections of Astral Social Club releases. Side two continued in much the same vein until it returned to the regular enthusiasm over talent, heavy drone, noisier K2 in the background, chopped edits, rumbles, destroyed speaker fart feel territory that I have now become accustomed to.

‘No Thumbs’ is Ansell and Jon Marshall [of whom I have to say I know nought] but its Ansell who for me is the fly in the ointment here. As I type these words he’s in Leeds promoting a Termite Club gig which I should really be supporting but due to the nature of my very being I find difficult to attend. Playing tonight are an Anglo/Polish improv trio  going by the name of ‘Shepherds of Cats’ who I shall forgive the jokey name and the jokey title of their release just for the fact that they’ve made it all the way to Leeds to play in front of what, all things being as they usually are, will be a crowd of around 20 people [this is Tuesday, an improv gig on a Tuesday night in Leeds, when its warm outside]. I’m also instantly attracted to the Polish label Fanfare due to the fact that the front page of their website shows scrolling footage of ghostly fell runners on what has to be that lonely stretch of tarmac ribbon that weaves along the misty moors above Huddersfield. I’m now thinking I should maybe ditch my hesitation, get the car out, drive to Leeds, park on the double yellow lines outside The Fenton and declare my undying love for an Anglo/Polish collective and a nutter from Leeds who likes to perform naked whilst pouring beer over his head. But I digress.

Ansell’s project Panelak adds ‘electronics and field recordings’ to the 53 minute single track that is Shepherds of Cats ‘Muscle Atrophy …’. He also adds his own voice which was no doubt unintentional but in true improv style stays within the recording. Having played this a while back and returning to it now I recall my original thoughts being that the piece flowed wonderfully without ever stretching my patience or aural stamina. Not being the biggest fan of improv in the world this is all I ask of it. It has space, it has ‘small blowable things’ it also has scraped strings, plucked bridge strings which is what I kind of expect from improv but it also has rather to its credit, tender passages where Ansell’s electronica appears as complimentary background hiss to back of the throat ghost moans. A violin seems to be an angry wasp and rattle of drum rims plays host to fridge hum and spastic electronic noodles. Singing of sorts, a drunk at a bus stop singing his own thoughts. I could go on but its what you’re left with at the discs end that matters to me most and the fact that I’ve now played this several times and would like to return to it again is more than I can say for any of the Derek Bailey solo recordings I’ve heard [not that this is an exact comparison of course but just the way I feel]. 

After my temporal shepherding duties I approached the return to Panelak and The Om Tragichord with about the same enthusiasm I reserve for going to the dentist. But after a predictable early bout of ADHD noise edits the man actually settles down and records something that I might actually want to listen to more than once. Perhaps there is something here. And so it proves. Its track two ‘Sarcomere’ a Japanese like off kilter plod of odd keyboard prods that has classical violin samples and ear tickling tape squelch at its end that lifts me from my ennui. From there we head off into the kind of fun territory that you’re more likely to find on an early Faust albums or those Jim O’Rourke solo outings where a robust guitar chord wraps itself around the same sad bass note over and over again. Last track Bactograil reminds me of those deranged albums that Joincey used to spew out using only a Casio and a condenser mic only here with the vocals replaced by a cheap harmonium which is probably a fridge. Again.

Say hello to The Fenton from me and thank you for listening.




http://tutoreburlato.blogspot.co.uk/

www.fanfarefanfare.com

http://www.lfrecords.autmusic.com/

Woven Skull, The Sunken Hum, Tarracóir.

Woven Skull - Fat Baby Blues
Deserted Village. DV51. Cassette [Cassettes sold out and now available as a free download]

The Sunken Hum - Vol 1 Field Recordings of Rhythms & Drones
Deserted Village. DV51. Cassette

Tarracóir - Growth.
Deserted Village. CD/DL


Its the word ‘awesome’ that does it for me. A word favoured by vocabulary deficient American teenage noise artists that grates like sand between my rotten teeth. I see it here on Deserted Village’s press release for Woven Skull, a trio of souls who are chucking Irish folk, gamelan and drone into the air to see what happens. To be fair to Woven Skull the word ‘awesome’ is used in conjunction with a music festival going by the name of Hunter’s Moon [which, coincidentally, is the name of a house I once to a party to in Gomersal where someone carved their name in the wooden bog seat before knocking a hole in the wall big enough to crawl through]. But I digress. Deserted Village, yes, they’ve sent me decent work in the past but for some reason I took against the the three headed skull motif on Tarracoir and the name Tarracoir itself which makes them sound like a third rate thrash band. And whats with the miserable looking kids on the Woven Skull release. Sheesh, you’re supposed to draw me in not put me off. And theres another one sat on top of a car dressed in a Santa outfit giving what could be the Heavy Metal two fingered devils horn thing except of course it isn’t.

So lets forget ‘awesome’, thrash metal and miserable kids and concentrate on Deserted Village who sent me two tapes and a CD so long ago that I can’t remember what they sounded like in the first place. And when I do its not good news. Again. Like what the what the. They doing it to me on purpoise? They used to send me good stuff now all I’ve got is people with beards twanging guitars, really fast, twangy with a delay on the twangs. Horrible. Its horrible. So I turn it off and then the cassette sticks so I get fed up and download the damned thing and side two, well, side two opens up into something completely different. I’ve been listening to Alvarius B and Cerberus Shoal and this gives me that same feeling. That feeling of being smothered in lots of warm blankets, layered over whilst you sink deeper into a comfy bed. A comfy bed to end all comfy beds. Its glorious. A slow sinking into comfort feeling made from rasped strings and smooth round stones being knocked together before being dropped, plop, into deep still waters, a sound that I bet hasn’t been touched up making it all the more remarkable. A drone of sorts with seashells being rummaged and wind chimes and an aching two note draw on a bass and someone smashing up orange boxes for firewood. It doth tickle my ears. Just don’t mention the first side.

The Sunken Hum collect various field recordings including an auctioneer at a cattle market, waves crashing, running water, …. you get the idea, which were all recorded as part of a sound art project wherein a two minute field recording was taken everyday for a year. Budgies, hums, things frying, photocopiers, someone sweeping up, traffic, people in a pub, someone walking over a shingle beach, popcorn being made, the best sound I found started at around the two minute mark on side two where Pete Hook was playing a digeridoo at 33RPM until someone turned the speed up to 45 RPM. I have to admit to having fallen out with found sounds of late. I want songs in my life once more.

Which brings us to Tarracóir. This from the press release ‘ Tarracóir’s genre is ‘Base Metal’ - the listener is the alchemist. You will hear elements of Free Jazz, Death Metal and the blare & clatter of Tibetan Buddhist demon-chasing rituals’, and across the bottom in caps ‘LET’S GET READY TO FUMBLE!’ And then the computer spat the CD out saying it was an unrecoginsed format or somesuch. So I found the download on DV’s Bandcamp page and I played it thinking this is going to be easy, two lines about how I hate thrash metal or Base Metal or whatever it is they’re calling it today and I’ll be back to my Prefab Sprout in no time. And then something remarkable happened. I found myself wanting to hear more of it. Here I am fourth track in and I may be getting my noise schtick back. So its not Normcore [as they say on the press release - like what the fuck would I know] but it is a half decent racket that isn’t all full on BLEURGH with the drummers arms going a blur and a thousand guitars dying a death. Electronics can be heard, parps and squeaks, trombones even, garden hose even more even. I could be a fan.







https://desertedvillage.bandcamp.com/album/growth


 http://www.desertedvillage.com/index.php

Sleaford Mods - Talk Bollocks/Little Ditty/Grammar Wanker

Sleaford Mods - Talk Bollocks/No Ones Bothered

Salon Alter Hammer/In A Car. 7”

Sleaford Mods - A little Ditty/I’m Shit At It
Emotional Response. 7” [Inc DL code]

Jason Williamson - Grammar Wanker. Sleaford Mods 2007-2014
Bracket Press.



If you’ve ever had to work with a temp you will know the sinking feeling that accompanies the ‘Here’s Kevin, you’ll be working with him today’ feeling. At 6.30 in the morning with a long 12 hour stretch ahead of you and a numpty staring you in the face, ‘Here’s Kevin, you’ll be working with him today’ are the last words you want to hear.

I’ve had my share. The ones who like to do donuts on the fork truck, the ones who chuck good material in the skip and take the crap stuff to the warehouse, the ones who try to pick up 4 meter wide material with a sack cart, the ones who’ve been getting out of bed at 2.30 in the afternoon for the last six months and cant get their head around the fact that at 6.30 in the morning they have to be switched on, not off. I worked with one temp, a teenage stoner with lank hair and bad breadth, who liked to sit back and rest his feet on the work station until one day the MD walked round and asked him what exactly it was he was doing? ’Just chilling’ came the reply, which I think were the last words I ever heard him say. I worked with a temp who fell asleep in a drainage channel. The same temp took to skinning rabbits, whilst working, or not working as the case may be. There was the Phantom Shitter who liked the leave the toilet unflushed. The old guy who poked his tongue out like a budgie and coughed every two minutes. And then there's the temp who at 11.30 every morning shouted ‘COME ON DINNER!’ like he was cheering in a 50 to 1 winner. Some temps have walked out. Others gone to the chippie never to return. I’ve worked with South Africans, Ethiopians, Romanians, Hungarians, Australians, ballet dancers, circus strong men, banned from driving HGV drivers, blobbers, murderers, muggers, heroin addicts, alcoholics,t tea-totallers, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, born again Christians, manslaughter-ers, squaddies and those who like to spend at least three months of the off season in the less than salubrious bars of Manila. There was the guy who  turned up for work on his daughters bike, a pink one with tassels on the end of the handlebars. Those who have knocked down walls or put holes through them with the pointy end of a pole truck are too numerous to mention here. There’s the spillers, the wreckers, the manglers, the fucker-uppers, the lazy, the dying, the smelly, the fat, the thin and the bent in half how the fuck is he going to manage? The ones having heart attacks, the ones who disappear for a crafty fag just when its getting busy, the ones who fall asleep in the canteen, the ones who turn up totally unprepared. The almost blind, the almost deaf, the farters, the burpers, the ones who take their boots off at break time and rub the soles of their feet like Laurel and Hardy did in Sons of the Desert.

I began to wonder if there were temping agencies who specialize in strange people. But then again I think, perhaps its just life. Best to get on with it. Not all of them are ding dongs of course, every now and again you find someone who you can actually have a conversation with, but then they’re usually just passing through, killing a few weeks before a proper job turns up.

Thanks to the Sleaford Mods I now have a song to sing to these people.

‘I’m shit at it!’

‘Can’t even work in a chippy’

‘Chips peas and gravy’

‘I’m shit at it!’

‘It ain’t fucking rocket science’,

‘Heston Fucking Blumen Cunt’,

‘I’m shit at it!’,

‘Can’t even answer the phone’.

‘I’m shit at it!’

'Can’t even butter a cob right’.

Which is the line that gets repeated as I sing along my singy song.

Can’t even butter a fucking cob right you fucking numpty. COME ON DINNER! Cant even butter a cob right you fucking cock end.

Its these little things that keep you going in a factory environment where the only fun to be had is laughing at each other. Taking the piss. Laughing at the fat lad and the lass in the office with the bent nose and the plastic tits. The gaffer with a head like a five pound onion who cant drive for shit and likes to show us his ski boots like we fucking care. Bell End.

Its songs like these that keep you going through long shitty days. Its something to cling to when you're looking at that sleepy eyed numpty with nothing but a chicken nugget between his ears.

Sleaford Mods have been lobbing small plastic bombs about in the run up to the release of their imminent new album ‘Key Markets’. Like all good bands these singles aren’t just filler or contractual obligation crap but proper teasers, Talk Bollocks being sold on a recent short German tour [and now fetching silly sums on eBay]. Talk Bollocks has a bit of cheesy working mens club keyboard as intro and a chorus that speaks for itself. Here we have Williamson bemoaning the shit that gets talked on tour and the mundanity of it all. No One’s Bothered [Slow Version] is a stream of consciousness observations ‘Victory for no one Hates as much as bleeds The dark through the go on Dead up from the knees An hip shake shake it I been round The grass in the dug out.’ all to an ultra slow Fearn inspired slave boat beat. The faster version that's doing the rounds rips up a storm and if that's the version that's on Key Markets I’m already down on one with head bowed.

A Little Ditty is the rapid and catchy two and half a minutes that begins with a burp and ends with Williamson saying off mic ‘that end bit's shit’. You know all about this one already so its to the b-side and the unapologetic existentialist ‘I’m Shit At It’ which is the bees knees, the motherlode, the track that shows Sleaford Mods at their very best. A track that comes from nowhere, has no precedent, has no mother or father, no smarmy right on DJ plugging it, or dollar backed label pushing it. This is where we all get to rub our tummys and laugh like drains.

Here we see the return of fellow Nottingham resident John Paul for a spot of verbal sparring with Williamson. It starts thus;

John Paul: I’m shit at it. Can’t work for no one telling me what to do.

Williamson: [off mic] I’m shit at it.

John Paul: Can’t work for mesen. I’m shit at it. Can’t even work in a chippie

Williamson: Chips peas and gravy

John Paul: I’m shit at it

(and then the sound of someone making rasping noises, close up to the mic, raspberry fashion]

And on it goes until Fearn’s solid beats kick in and Williamson walks up to the mic and just gives it to us. John Paul finishes things off solo style; ‘ … I’m like an hit man on 20 Marlboro menthol, like Diamond Lights with Hoddle and Waddle, you don’t need tattoos to be a footballer mate, just a shit hair cut and a page three model’ And then, after more than half a minute of silence he returns with a few rabid lines about ‘G Star dads, heads to toe in the stuff ...’ and the dross to be found in pubs. Perfecto.

I’ve been flicking through that book too. Not keeping it all pristine so I can sell it on when I’m skint. When John Harris reviewed Grammar Wanker for the paper version of the Guardian it appeared below a review of Tory posho William Waldegrave’s memoirs and opposite a review of Nigel Farage’s autobiography. The picture of Farage accompanying the piece was one taken from below, a deliberately unflattering photograph that made him look like a maniacal Punch. Waldegrave was pictured attempting to milk a goat, perhaps the one and only time in his life that he ever got his hands dirty. Williamson appears at mic, bottle of water to hand the very faintest outline of scribbled tats visible. I know which one I'd trust.  

I have my favourites; ‘Rollatruc’, ‘Swarfega’, The Wage Don’t Fit’, Donkey ['Hold on hold on, bought rock ‘n’ roll what a con'], Trixie [who writes songs about prostitutes these days?]. Life on the factory floor, the shitty pub, the litter strewn streets, minimum wage, no job, shit job. Life as it is for a lot of people, everyday folk - not Ambridge. I used to have Bukowski but now I’ve got Williamson too. Life's raw and open wounds.

Guillaume Bellhomme, Guillaume Tarche.

Item - Guillaume Belhomme, Guillaume Tarche
Published by Lenka Lente

78 pp
10 x 15 CM
100 copies
ISBN :  978-2-9545845-7-7


L’enveloppe - Guillaume Belhomme
Published by Lenka Lente

32 pp
10 X 15 CM
300 copies
ISBN : 978-2-9545845-0-8


Remember that odd little book I got sent a while back? The one about the size of a packet of Marlboro 100’s that contained nothing but lots of black and white pictures of avant garde/improv/jazz/electronica record covers juxtaposed against things ordinary like say an Ornette Coleman LP stood beside a picture of a card with the words ‘Et maintenant’ printed on it? Well, there's another book that's almost EXACTLY the same except its called ‘Item’. Same cover, same font, same authors [authors? There’s no writing in this book except for the back cover where, as in ‘Time’ there exists a list of all the people whose work appears between the covers]. So I do my job as ace reviewer and scan some of the more interesting photos and let you judge for yourself. As to whether this is a work of love or the work of someone with too much money and a huge avant garde/improv/jazz/electronica record collection at their fingertips is for you to decide. I point you in the direction of my last review and the connection between improvisation and composition. I look forward to ‘Emit’.

Guillaume Belhomme is also the author of L’enveloppe, an even slimmer tome that I’m thinking originally came with a Michael Esposito 3” CD which knowing Esposito probably contained some EVP recordings - so maybe the two are linked but seeing as how my French is about as good as my Japanese I can’t tell you very much about it. Except that it may be about an envelope. Or enveloping. Or something. Its definitely fiction. What I can tell you is that the few reviews in French that exist online are all nothing less than totally effusive. Belhomme is also a journalist and author of books on John Coltrane and a Jazz anthology. My money is on him being the man behind all this.

More interestingly [for English speakers at any rate] are the Nurse With Wound and Adolf Wölfli releases. I keep dropping these hints but y’know ...


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Time