Foreclose on the definite, obliterate all expectations. From the building blocks start anew. Reconnect the heart to the mind via the spidery funk line. Dangle a proposition and attach it to the running board of a runaway bus, for this is the start of a new adventure. The unknown is not un-named, it is Go and play quietly by yourself, the 758th album this epoch from Jumble Hole Clough, a possibly imaginary concept that exists both before and after Schrodinger opens his box in the troubled hamlet of Hebden Bridge yesterday. The tree fell in the forest, no-one observed it apart from Colin Robinson who wrote a tune about something else entirely called Skin & Hide that combined pop and the fractured dissonance of our troubled souls. "Goat and gland, Autonomy in hand, Don’t fill your ear full of sand".
Colin's work will engage your noggin as well as make you smile, possibly at one and the same time. This is the kind of multi-tasking I can cope with. Colin's hovercraft is always full of eels, which is probably why he gets few paying customers. Slippery blighters, eels, and some of these sprout wings and fly off dripping and shimmering before being sucked into the turbines of passing budget airliners, flying low to see if they can ascertain where all this goddam interference is coming from.
Can you send me one of Santa's Swearing Elves for Xmas?
You can get this sequence of noises HERE, and Colin invites you to Name Your Price. It would be good if you bought it for cash money, he needs a new shovel to bury all those dismembered eels that fell from the sky and landed in his front garden t'other day...
In my fevered
imaginings I would like to think that the annoyingly over-capable DIY Sturmführer Dick Strawbridge, he of the unfeasibly
humungous moustache and loveable teddy bear persona was playing the Midi-kazoo for Schnauser, the wonderfully strange yet cuddly combo from Bristol,
as they cavort around the stage playing Have You Got PPI?, a particularly loose-limbed number from
their fabulously tumescent new album Irritant. In my peculiar fantasy, Dick looks
proudly over to his son, guitarist and singist Alan as he belts out the wonky
wonderfulness that comprises Schnauser’s weird yet perfectly self-contained universe, as strange tiny creatures synchronously writhe about in Dad's bristling upper lip hair monster.
In other news it turns out that "We are the brainworm" as the Nutty Boys play klezmer, and enquiries are made by chanting girl choruses asking "Have You Got PPI?" while a craftily purloined cheesy synth line from Bowie's Sound And Vision burbles away. Above all this lunacy, the melody is king and queen, and on the lilting but portentous Fail Better, the lyric implores the listener to get off their collective ass and try again. Failure may be the only option, but goddamn, do it better! A curiously fatalistic take on the Protestant work ethic that no doubt has crossed all our horizons at some point. On the other hand "Get yourself a life boy, get yourself a life girl" as the broiling sounds of wildly careening guitar, saxes and and noises off permeate the stately pace of the melody. Groovy feckers, this Schnauser band, who have caused my newsfeed to be inundated with adverts for the International Schnauzer Society, Alsatians For Jesus, and Poodles On Stumps, the bastards...the band, not the doggies, c'mon.
The club band at the local Latino Disco strike up here and there with a carefree joyfulness that flies in the face of the heavy manners of these perma-weird times. Hypertension is only displayed in the tune's title as this infectious instrumental does odd things with your pelvis. The album title is another misnomer, for this fab record is about as annoying as being given a full body massage by...insert your fantasy rubdown applier here. She or he is however suffering from a caffeine overdose, won't stop talking while chewing his or her bottom lip. It's a small price to pay.
A New Atmosphere is a snake-hipped bossa nova for dancers with at least two left feet. This thing schwings, baby, in a louche Hatfields kinda fashion, before briefly meeting 10:15 as it furtively leaves the bedroom, then subsequently descending to the bottom of the well, where workers go blind making mustard gas shells. There be an underlying seriousness at work, doncha know? They even get in a good old rant against the Bullingdon Bullies and turkeys voting for Xmas on The Monday Club, another musically satisfying trip through a series of vaguely familiar motifs, that as a whole make for the knee-flexing Schnauser Sound, ending like early Roxy swirling away down the plug hole.
It is over two and a half years since Schnauser's last album, the defiantly odd Protein For Everyone, and the Bristolians have refined their once fierce quirkiness into a gloriously fun experience. Irritant is just right for these surreal summer months as collective madness descends upon this benighted nation. The ongoing Schadenfreude Party is going to be a long one, methinks. All hail Supreme Leader Boris as we barf into our soup.
Sorry, got sidetracked there...Gleaning the influences that inspire this record is like lowering a net into an over-populated fish tank and coming up with a bewildering variety of writhing aquatic wildlife. This smorgasbord of delights is the combination of everything you can think of, from Cardiacs, through Madness, to Ivor Cutler via The Beatles and very early Daevid Allen/Kevin Ayers' Soft Machine, and on to Syd's Floyd, Berlin Bowie and XTC. As a result it cannot be pigeonholed for convenience.
Just give it a listen over on Bandcamp, for it bears bounteous gifts. Hopefully, this drooling missive might make you curious enough to buy it. Right. I'm off to join The Chocolate Labrador Motorcyle Club...
Tracklist:
Spiele Mit Katzen (4:21)
Chinese Brainworm (Taenia Solium) (4:48)
Re-Mortgaging The Nest Of Hair (4:12)
Sorry, You Were Out... (1:24)
Have You Got PPI? (4:44)
How About A Kiss? (4:06)
Fail Better (6:35)
Hypertension (4:15)
A New Atmosphere (8:22)
The Monday Club (7:43)
Speile-Jangle (Reprise) (2:17)
Total running time - ...about as long as a couple of very leisurely pints, or the time it takes Kat to saunter up the garden at 2:30am, catch, bring home and devour a luckless rodent, at the foot of our bed.
Line up:
Alan Strawbridge – guitars, vocals
Dino Christodoulou – tenor and soprano saxophones, vocals
Duncan Gammon – keyboards, vocals
Holly Mcintosh – bass guitar, vocals
Jasper Williams – drums, vocals
Footnote: No YouTube video available for this album, though if you type "Schnauser Irritant" into YT's search engine the first vid is the instructional "How to keep your mini-schnauzer's beard unstained", which you might find useful. Glad to be of help.
"All we need...is fresh air in our brain" declaims the propulsive opening title track to this driven and tribal album, recorded on a tour of the USA in 2016, and Faust...or is it faUSt..., the rhythmic engine room of Krautrock are back on my radar after an absence of some years.
Seems like I have some catching up to do, as true to their anarchic spirit, there appears to be two versions of the band currently in existence. The version we find here, spelling themselves faUSt, no doubt after their long American connection, are steered by bassist and singer Jean-Hervé Peron ("jhp.art-terrorist") and drummer Werner Diermaier ("Zappi"). They are the most active of the two versions, having released a handful of albums since 2009, and they tour fairly regularly.
Fresh Air kicks off with the mammoth title track, which for the first half of its length is a dreamy synth-led ambient wander through a Polish translation of part of a work by French poet, painter, musician and performance artist Joël Hubaut entitled Put Put Epidemik, essentially an increasingly surreal list of the desires of the protagonist. The female narrator declaims "Chciałbym", or "I would like" followed by increasingly surreal pronouncements such as "antennas and jaws", or "eyes on the floor of my mouth", to name but two. The full translation can be found HERE. Eventually the band join in and establish a primitive and relentless but nonetheless hypnotic motorik rhythm, with accompanying distorted guitars and declamations, this time in English, on where we need fresh air. All quite bizarre, and so utterly Faust...or is it faUSt. To borrow John Peel's famous description of The Fall, this band are "always different, always the same", and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Here is a fabulous live set, filmed last year, featuring the line up from most of this album...
Actually when you get down to it, there is quite a similarity with The Fall apparent in many places on this record, the disinterested vocals of Barbara Manning on Lights Flickr, the general anarchic and uncompromising air, the joy in repetition, the surreal and declamatory lyrics, it's all there. Mind you it is no secret that MES is a big Krautrock fan, especially of Can, and one suspects, Faust.
The meaty rhythmic heft of Zappi and jhp is to the fore on Le Poulie, where the pulse of Neu! is given extra energy by righteous anger and ancient synthesisers. The chugging sax on Chlorophyl ends in free jazz territory, continuing into the beginning of the fast, noisy, and feral Lights Flikr, which for me is the album highlight, as Barbara Manning treads a nervous high tension line, telling us...
"Lights Flicker as I blink my eyes to the the beat, to the beat, to the beat
Of his oh so hot drum, I place my mouth over it
beat beat beat long strokes, wet
the words are like spit"
This is organic, shamanic, lustful, repulsive and propulsive, turning into a strange tale of exploding heads and parts of corpses found in the washing up. Marvellous!
Returning to the sea from whence all life came, Fish is strangely primordial and a warning to end the album, the protagonist praising the sea. "The Sea, the Sea, she is eternal, she saw you when you were a baby", but "She does not mind all the corpses of the refugees...she does not care about our futile problems", all to a familiar yet creepy Faustian drone.
Uncompromising as ever, faUSt...or is it Faust...continue their unmapped path to who knows where, least of all themselves. The journey continues to be thoroughly engaging, and the band who made The Faust Tapes well over forty years ago, and one of my top five favourite records of all time, continue to surprise.
Tracklist:
1. Fresh Air (17:30)
2. Birds of Texas (2:30)
3. Partitur (0.22)
4. Le Poulie (6:37)
5. Chlorophyl (8:04)
6. Lights Flickr (5:39)
7. Fish (11:22)
Total running time - 52:07
Line up:
All of this is approximate and gleaned from the live video above...
Jean-Hervé Peron (aka "jhp.art-terrorist") - Bass, guitars, vocals
Werner Diermaier (aka "Zappi") - Drums
Maxime Manac'h - Guitar, percussion
With:
Ysanne Spevack - Viola (1&7)
Barbara Manning - Vocals (3,5&6)
Beata Budkiewicz - Translation, Declamation (1)
Ulrike Stöve - Vocals (1)
Robert Pepper - Keyboards, electronics, vocals (1&7)
Ulrich Krieger - Saxophone (3,5&6)
Michael Day - Electronics? (3,5&6)
Braden Diotte - Electronics? (3,5&6)
Jürgen Engler - Vocals (4)
Warning: May Contain Notes is the third release from Sheffield-based Martin Archer's Juxtavoices, described by Martin, quite succinctly I feel, as an "antichoir". While the largest proportion of the strange collage of sounds emanating from this CD derives from the large ensemble of human voices, this is not choral work in traditional sense.
If you arrive at this album having never heard Juxtavoices before, you may well be shocked, but also hopefully intrigued by its sheer otherness to indulge its excesses for a while. I am lucky for I knew what to expect, having already experienced their first album Juxtanother Antichoir From Sheffield some four years ago.
Juxtavoices is a large conglomerate of singers and performers from the Sheffield avant music and arts scene, and it includes both trained and untrained voices. Although the pieces they perform are scripted, the finer details of the works are improvised, with whistles, chattering, moans, whoops and hollers coming at you across the stereo spectrum in the most unexpected of places.
We start with Ascent which does just that, slowly climbing a metaphorical staircase to arrive at a rarefied summit. This album was recorded at various locations over a couple of years, and this first piece was recorded at The Golden Lion, Todmorden, which I can only assume is a pub. It must have made an odd accompaniment to a leisurely pint, is all I can say!
The music and texts of the pieces were contributed by four of the choir, and my one criticism of the packaging is that a lyric or text sheet is not included, nor as far as I can see is it provided via an online link, which given the labyrinthine and near-cacophonous nature of a lot of this album would have been a rather useful addition, even if space necessitated it being in highly truncated form. The PR sheet informs me that the compositions "include troubled seascapes, exploding islands, futurist wars, curious wordplay on the subject of aging disreputably, letraset abstraction, a reinterpretation of early Cabaret Voltaire recordings, and a terrifying ascent into the very jaws of hell". Indeed! you can probably work out which is which from the track titles.
There are so many layers and strands to these works that it will take several listens before you can have any familiarity with the album, which is why I have had this review copy for over four moths before I have been able to even begin to get below its extremely densely packed surface. A piece like An Imp Unity of Dyads, with its musical interjections from percussion, bassoon, glockenspiel, and concertina, contains righteous declamations, multi-voiced spoken words, snatches of song, chatter, and choral harmony, all seemingly reading from different scripts, yet sounding completely deliberate. A unity of two parts perhaps? I have absolutely no idea what it is all about, but it sounds like nothing else on Earth. Planned anarchy, if you will. As the album progresses it gets ever more abstract, and To You & Me, Krakatoa is as unnerving and as cacophonous as an exploding island. At least I understand this one!
The DVD is an essential part of this package, for the videos that accompany the pieces, put together by audio-visual contrarian Bo Meson do help one unravel some of the more baffling aspects of the CD, where one is left to one's own imagination. Ascent, with its treated colour negative collages of rockets lifting off, and in some cases exploding catastrophically, certainly upped the ante of my cerbral cortex while listening to that one again! We learn via newspaper clippings, adverts from the time and old newsreel that the highly creepy RMMV Asturias is a soundtrack to the maiden voyage and seagoing history of what was then, in 1926, the world's largest motorised ship. Or at least that's the gist of it, although quite how the frequent appearances in the video of a segment of a debt recovery letter fit in, I'm not sure.
The final track Western Works is Juxtavoices' interpretation of three early tracks by fellow Sheffield oddballs Cabaret Voltaire, whom every punker worth his or her bondage trousers will know for the superb alien disco smash Nag Nag Nag. Some of us even bought a couple of their albums back in the day. Needless to say, what Juxtavoices do with the Cabs' avant derring-do is as utterly different as it is fitting, given the source material. I will describe it no further, you'll just have to buy this very strange offering, and find out for yourself.
Tracklist - CD
1. Ascent (9:04)
2. RMMV Asturias (13:41)
3. An Imp Unity of Dyads (9:57)
4. Helvetica (15:25)
5. To You & Me Krakatoa (11:17)
6. Atavistic Ennui (10:29)
Total running time - 70:42
Tracklist - DVD
1. An Imp Unity of Dyads (9:58)
2. Ascent (9:02)
3. RMMV Asturias (18:21)
4. Helvetica (21:36)
5. Drawn From No Well (18:44)
6. Western Works (19:41)
Total running time - 1:37:22
Line up:
Juxtavoices:
Julie Archer, Martin Archer, Jon Ashe, David Bartholomew, Ian Baxter, Mick Beck, Nathan Bettany, Geoff Bright, Chris Bywater, Clinton Chaloner, Julie Cole, Laura Cole, Emma Cooper, Paul Coupe, Edward Eggleston, Kat Fletcher, Sharon Gill, Alan Halsey, Matt Harling, Lyn Hodnett, Maria Kalnars, Christine Kennedy, Bo Meson, Tamar Millen, Geraldine Monk, Rick Moran, Liam Murphy, Tim Plant, Marion Rout, Liz Searle, Wolfgang Seel, Walt Shaw, Jan Todd, Jane Tormey, Caroline Veal, Peter Veal, Linda Lee Welch, Gillian Whiteley.
With:
Walt Shaw - Electronics and percussion
Nathan Bettany - Oboe
Mick Beck - Bassoon, tenor sax
Gillian Whiteley - Concertina
Martin Archer - Glockenspiel, baritone sax
Links:
Discus Music - Juxtavoices page
Facebook - Juxtavoices
The new album from Rushden musical sensation The Fierce And The Dead was going to be called That'll Lern Ya, Me Ol' Booty, but Bad Elephant label boss 'Ard Man Elliott weren't havin' none o'that, me duck, o no. Mr Elliott, issuing dictats from his lair down in That London weren't havin' no peasants 'avin ideas above their station, and so the more prosaic and cash register-friendly Field Recordings it is.
Last summer, after taking a wrong turn on the way to the Ceynty Teyn to buy a sheep, Farmer Stevens and his ragtag bobtail hayseed dixies ended up at some noisy fair goin' by the name o'Ramblin' Man where they thought they may as well set up stall to display their wares. As we all know, this involves making a mighty fine racket with them electric guitars, amplifiers, and pedal thingies.
But...there was a problem. Just before they mounted the stage, an almighty argument ensued over the ownership of the last bar of Crunchie in the bottomless tranche of largesse supplied by Mr Elliott, otherwise euphemistically known as "The Rider". All that could be heard were the plaintive cries of "Tent yorn"..."Tent theirs"..."Tent mine"..."Welloosunisit?" Eventually, a scawny stray dog wandered over and 'ad it away. That's that solved then.
Right, that's enough of that bollocks, just listen to this and pre-order the thing, it'll dislodge those ceramic ducks off yer wall with ease.
You do realise that yesterday the owner of Everton FC bought the Liver Building, and the Liver Birds will be painted a rightful and justified Royal Blue, to go with our new ground nestling by the Royal Blue Mersey don't you? It's enough for those folk over at Big Stand FC to get their unwashed boxers in a twist.
...sorry, we have to take our small pleasures where we can. Now, where was I? Oh yes, the new album by Christchurch, NZ based ex-pat Scouser and Mad Koppite Matt Deacon and his American drummist buddy Chris Jago, who record under the name The Bob Lazar Story. Firstly, who was "Bob Lazar", and what is his "Story"? Whomsoever he may be, and whatever be his story (Ed's note - summat to do with UFOs...have you not heard of Google, ya lazy bugger?), this latest chapter entitled Baritonia is more than worthy of your attention, and it is more than fitting that this disparate "band" have ended up on that amorphous collective based in That London, known as Bad Elephant Records. Just as there is no defining a general musical trait that runs through 'ard man Elliott's label, so there is no putting one's finger on Matt's...err...musical pulse, so to speak. He's a slippery devil, and his music is just as lithesome and wriggly, and all the more splendido for that.
In The Woods With Tony Iommi is the best track title I have seen in a while, and is, I seem to recall, the product of a "Give a track a name" competition. Lawdy knows what the prize was, a collection of Stevie La's nasal hair finger-knitted into a mitten, most probably. Needless to say the track in question is most definitely not heavy metal as it lumbers through the woods in an alternately angular and lumpen fashion, occasionally stooping down to pluck a wild flower. Mr Deacon lays down some fine guitar on this track, as I suppose he would have to, given the title. Like I say, it is deffo not heavy metal, daddio.
Here's a video, completely unrelated to this album...
Within the strange hinterland of Baritonia you may detect a Zappatista flourish here, or a Crimsoid lurch there, and maybe even a smidgeon of yer Gentle Giantisms, but the whole of this highly tuneful yet wilfully complex amalgam is far more than the sum of any fleeting influences that might be detected. I have spouted nonsensical strings of words about these two reprobates before, so I knew what to expect, but this time round with Baritonia being their first full length album, this ne'er met duo have pulled out all the stops. Simply put, this is a reet little beauty and well worth how ever many ackers Mister Elliott will force from your trembling clutches for it.
Tracklist:
1. Baritonia (6:26)
2. LOL, Definitely (3:51)
3. Eastern Rising (0:18)
4. Make It Like It Used To Be (2:20)
5. Top, Top Switcherooney, Elbow (3:33)
6. In The Woods with Tony Iommi (6:27)
7. Relax For A min, Yeah? (0:56)
8. YNWA, LR (6:41)
9. Blues For Foodstool (1:57)
10. Escape Tits (2:45)
Total running time - Longer than it takes to say "It's our year", much longer...
Line up:
Matt Deacon - Guitar, gynth (sic), mouse, jaws harp
Chris Jago - Drums, finger cymbal
BUY IT HERE (release date is 14th April, but if you're keen - you should be - you can always pre-order the damn thing, wassamarrerwivyer?)
Permanently snowed under with review downloads, sometimes you need a good virtual enema to clear out the crap...so here's a collection of shorties. some by guest reviewers:
Dr Watson's Sphincter Assignment - Blessed Are The Proctologists
Based in a hut halfway up Mt Snowdon, these Welsh sheep worriers occasionally come down the mountain to gather in a studio to make incomprehensible noise with acoustic instruments, including the Swansea Nose Flute, the aluminium beat box (otherwise known as "a bucket"), primal shouting, banjos and an acoustic guitar with an action that would snap the fingers of lesser men. One track consists of singist Dai Ovine-Evans-Williams screaming "Arse!" in five different local dialects over guest Steve Hackett's coruscating solo, on a loop. Matt Stevens was never like this.
Roger McNasty
Blinkywinky Possibility - Me, A Flower
Blinkywinky was once known as Susan Chives, which apparently was her real name until she changed it by deed poll in 1998 following a life-changing acid trip at the Wellingborough Swirly Festival. She makes fetching acoustic dreamscapes and warbles like a shy wombat. Quite luvvly, and only slightly ruined by Steve Hackett's incongruous solo on the otherwise wisp-like I Dream of Clouds.
Pete Spiggot-Duffy
Galadriel's Pet Dragon - Spank The Magic Keyboard
The title being the only thing about it that grabs your attention, this is the kind of thing that makes mainstream music fans point and larf at prawg. This retrograde inspiration-free endless wibble is about as progressive as 45's cabinet, and almost as ugly.
On one track, the seemingly interminable but "only" half-hour long Breakfast For Gollum, guitarist Mark Mywurdz gets to shred with all the subtlety of of a raging yeast infection, and is about as irritating. When this guy gets going your pet cat will leap from your lap and fly out the room like you just screamed the "vet" word at it. Sadly, one soon finds out that he also knows how to down-tune his guitar, which is unfortunate as it results in endless recycling of those minor key low-end chords that appear on nearly every prog metal album from here to the gates of Mordor.
Buy this if you are a total moron who thinks that prog = progressive. Kanye West is more progressive than this backward looking festival of ego-wankery.
Sally Weaselface
Crazed Sex Muvva - Helmet Cheese
The Muvva return with their trademark incendiary blasts of bestial noise on their new Helmet Cheese EP. This thing will push your eyeballs way back in your head, and while you are blind with ecstasy. kick you so hard in the nads you won't be able to breathe until it's all over. "But...what's the music like?" I hear you ask. I have abso-fkn-lutley no idea.
Roger McNasty
Brian's Goat-Starting Handle - In Praise of Leaning
This is music for the knees. If you can force yourself to sit through its forty eight minutes of ultra-complex lunacy and over-clever machinations, so obviously praying at the altar of the mighty Cow, you will find your patellas will be on the wrong side of legs. Steve Hackett is on this somehere, but you wouldn't know. Rumour has it that he was completely flummoxed by the arrangements and couldn't work out where to fit his solo in.
Fun, but only for masochists.
Sheila Fossil
Crucifix Symphony - Oil The Hinges Of The Gates Of Hell
I mean, just what is the point of prog metal like this? Trying to find originality in this over-populated sewage swamp of a sub-genre is about as easy as finding a social conscience in the Tory Party. Those riffs! Those indecipherable but no doubt puerile lyrics! That hair! Those tattoos! Black...it's all going black...bblllaaacck....nurse, the green pills...mother, o mother....
Either this lot are masters of irony or completely lack any self-awareness. Only buy this if you are deaf.
Roger McNasty
Genesis - Invisible Touch
Waddya mean, this actually exists? (Ed's note - Steve Hackett isn't on this one)
