DinahBird - A Box of 78’s
Gruenrekorder LP. Gruen 148.
300 copies.


'This is the story of a box …'

A leather box containing over fifty 78rpm records of opera and classical music that belonged to DinahBird’s grandmother. Who was born in British Columbia in 1910 and grew up on a small island off its west coast, a place called Salt Spring. When she moved from Salt Spring to various other homes during her life she took the box with her until her death in 2000 whereupon the box became Birds.

Bird decided to take the box of records back to Salt Spring and using her great grandfathers diary and daily weather notes as a guide she played them on a portable gramophone player in the places where her grandmother and her family would have picnics or played tennis or danced. Bird recorded the results, mixing in conversations with a whispering distant relative, old friends of the family and people she came across. Extracts from the diary are read out, wind chimes and crunchy footsteps are heard as are the scratchy impossibly high wavering falsetto of long forgotten opera singers.

The results are a gentle account of a life now passed, an island, its people, the outdoors, the sea and a pile of old 78’s but the projects raison d’etre reveals itself when a stranger, upon finding Bird playing her records and hearing her story, tells her that she’s gone to all this trouble to hear these records as her grandmother would. 

The flip contains 12 locked grooves that are short loops of some of the sounds heard on the ‘Trackside’, these being pieces of wood being knocked together, a ships horn, water being poured, a musical box and various other hard to define oddities together with samples of some of those 78’s. The last loop recounts Bird talking about the man she met who added an ‘s’ to the word ‘always’ and thus ends the record with the word ‘always’s’ looping into infinity.  

Bird takes the concept a step further by sending an LP of radio sounds [pressed by Gruenrekorder] on what she calls a ‘Radio Relay’, in which radio station A [this being KunstRadio in Vienna] plays the record and then passes it on to radio station B until after 22 radio stations down the line Bird gets back a presumably dog eared, worn and hopefully scratched record [and seeing as how there are two radio stations in England on the list I’m sure the Royal Mail will do its bit in helping the process along]. You are encouraged to do the same thing with your own copy should you wish and a ‘Listening Log’ is provided for those wishing to participate, though how many people will be willing to part with such a delightful record is hard to tell.

What we need now is for the the project to continue with A Box of 78’s being played on Salt Spring by further generations of the Bird family, thus ensuring that Bird’s grandmother and her favourite records are never to be forgotten.      



Gruenrekorder

YOL - This Item Has No Scrap Value
Beartown Records. Cassette

YOL - Extraction
Self Released. CDR


So is the underground dead or not? Dave Keenan says it is and the only thing that can save us is the work of an internet hating sociopath with a suitcase full of mind blowing noise.  For Keenan, the ubiquity of social media and too many rounds of jolly old back slapping has left the underground in a perilous, if not dead, state. He has a point. Circle jerking your mates latest 80 minute noise CD only serves a very limited purpose. Mr. Keenan says that what the world needs now are critics unafraid to say it how it is, point people in the right direction preferably using a direct language that everybody can understand without the need to check out eight obscure bands on Youtube before proceeding to their bandcamp page and downloading something that you listen to just the once before duly forgetting about it forever until one day it pops up on shuffle play while you’re on the train back from London.  And still its shit. How true.

Keenan takes to task static performers, artists and noisemakers who sit behind tables staring into laptops, stacking up cassette tapes, mixing eight track doodles into a mixer as tea lights gutter around their feet. Where all the jumpers and screechers sayeth he? Lets see somebody break sweat.

Let us not forget though that it was only a few years ago that Mr Keenan was thrusting Hypnogogic Pop upon us. A genre whose very definition gave the impression that this was either falling asleep or waking up music. An insipid style of muzak usually played by those purveyors of bum crack drone, west coast muddle heads and vintage synth bores whose whimsical nonsense born from 80’s Yawn Rock now exists mainly on rarely played Youtube videos and once enthused, now forgotten releases.

The thing that annoys me about the whole ‘is the underground dead’ argument is that its a redundant one. Unless you’re a music journalist looking for ‘new music’. The music press is constantly looking for new things to write about. Its one of the reasons the music press is virtually dead and why in its place we have monthly magazines dedicated to Prog and Classic Rock. Mainstream press music journalists now find themselves farmed out to other departments and file copy relating to the new Nissan Leaf or the Conservative Party Conference. Off you go lad and don’t forget those thousand words on the new Prince album by Friday, cheers. There isn’t enough happening to keep a music journalist in full time employment. Unless they want to sit down with the latest 27 disc King Crimson box set. Thats the Wire’s job. Or Prog’s. The boundaries blur.

The ‘underground music scene’ is both music you haven’t heard yet and something thats never been done before. The latter is becoming harder to define. As the future spreads out inexorably before us so the past stretches out ever further behind. The past is just as exciting a place as the present. In America in 2014 and for the first time, iTunes sales of ‘old’ releases outsold new releases. For the entire year. Not just a bit of it. All of it.  The past has never looked so rosy and the music industry knows it. Hence the 27 disc King Crimson box set and no sign or sight of anything that even smells of originality unless you’re Yol.

Because after tens of years of listening to all kinds of muck I’ve found Yol to be that rare thing; refreshing, exhilarating, noisy and capable of making me wince in pain during playback of his releases and cheer out loud enthusiastic during his live performances. And unless anybody can point me in the direction of some obscure Fluxus artist thats treading the boards in a similar manner then Yol is, for me anyway, the most exciting thing to have emerged from the non existent underground in donkeys years.

Yol’s live deliveries appear to be born from a dysfunctional ability to express rage at planet Fuck Up. Part Tourettes sufferers spastic squawks, part scraped fork tine on rusty pipe, part mop bucket clatter. To see him live is to see his neck tendons stretch to Deirdre Barlow proportions whilst screaming seemingly stream of consciousness words at a 90 degree angle to the floor.  Bent double he attacks bits of tin and kitchen utensils with a rabid intensity that makes you wonder if he is indeed in the midst of a convulsive fit.

This Item Has Little or no Scrap Value captures that intensity with four short live outings and a longer studio cut. At each turn I found myself with finger hovering over the stop button finding the intensity of the performance hard to bear. On Bird Feathers he snarls and gurgles, tries to spit out words, pants like a dog before eventually the words ‘bird feathers’ emerge stuttering from his tortured frame. He moans, sounds like he’s in pain, drops stainless dog bowls to the floor, shakes chains, clatters pots and pans with sharp boings heading off into the distance. Its like The New Blockaders finally found themselves a vocalist.

A Medium Experience has Yol intoning ‘this    item    has   little    or    no    scrap      value’ over a ‘bring out yer dead’ muted bell dong and a cow horn, something lifted straight out of the opening sequences of a Hammer Horror film with the mist clearing off a muddy turnip field as the opening credits run.

‘Trapped in Portland Works’ finds Yol doing battle with party blowers, something that squeals like a mouse and a band playing rock and roll numbers bleeding in from somewhere within the same building. Here his utterances are nonsense garbles, the party blower adding an absurdist element to it all.

And then there’s the distinctive black shaped skeletal forms and crows and hands and ladders that cover all YOLs work and bring to mind Saul Bass and his Hitchcock posters. For Yol exhibits too. He may offer up the odd tweet but not for him a constant logorrhea of trivialities but finely crafted messages of edification.

Whether Yol can maintain this level of intensity remains to be seen. A sign of things to come arrives in the shape of ‘Extraction’. Which is basically a tongue in cheek riposte to Rob Hayler’s championing of ‘Extraction Music’. In which Yol records the sound of an extraction fan, [naturlich] twice, the first track being fifteen minutes of said extraction fan gently humming over washes of feedback, the second being a much shorter three minutes  of the same with Yol retching his way through the word ‘extraction’ in an excruciating fashion until a kitchen timer sounds and the thing fades out.

This isn’t just me circle jerking. This is here and now and relevant and, if you care for such things, the underground.


 www.yolnoise.bandcamp.com


http://www.beartownrecords.com/















  

Panelak, Core of the Coalman, Bongoleeros, Ceramic Hobs
Wharf Chambers 27th February 2015

It started badly when the glass of the drivers side mirror fell out and shattered all over the tarmac in Tesco’s car park. I’m off to Leeds tonight I thought and need to get it replaced otherwise I’m in danger of ending up in the side of a wind up rocket I mean taxi.

So I got the glass and fitted it and set off to Leeds where the Wharf Chambers is heaving with young things with beard growth. In the venue part its not so heaving but  still quite busy and still plenty of beard growth and the laughing woman.

Panelak Pascal doesn’t strip naked but he does sing songs in various homemade dresses. His equipment is old and battered, a Korg covered in tape, an iPod that gets dropped on the floor, various pedals and wires everywhere, some of it works and when it does he introduces a song and then sort of sings it getting carried away in the moment head back eyes shut running on the spot in his bare feet where his jeans have landed mic in hand knocking over the lamp stand. Its Dada meets Donna Summer. Pascal picks up scraps of tatty paper in-between songs either in a bid for inspiration or to check out his lyrics. He gets carried away and opens two bottles of beer, one with the other which explode into life splattering everybody. Its now Whitehouse meets Dada meets Donna Summer. He douses himself with one of the bottles, drinks half the other before singing a bit more, barefoot in the beer puddles.

Core of the Coalman does battle with his equipment. Knelt on the floor he gets everyones attention by laying on a violin drone riff and once he’s got it he introduces various effects, kneeling on pedals, standing up to pluck said violin, flicking cables, kneeling on gadgets, messing with a dusty laptop. At its peak its a huge noisedrone but the earthing problems rob him of his chance to really get going. But its still sounds pretty good.

The Bongoleeros are scattering various detritus around the WC floor; bits of metal bar, tin cans, trumpets, tambourines with skulls drawn on them, a length of blue rope, battered Yorkshire pudding trays, flattened cymbals, guitars with horse brasses nailed to them, the top of a composting bin. They don hand painted jackets, pull ladies stockings over their heads and disappear out in to the street to begin their set. One Bongoleero has a pair of purple ladies tights over his head with bells in each foot thus making a jangling sound as he walks, falls, rolls, crawls around the WC floor. They sing of the strongman and dirty drawers and the laughing woman. There’s mention of the mythical Yorkshire town of Pitchley before thy start in to the best version ever of Alvin Stardusts. My Coo Ca Choo with one Bongoleero showing the leather Alvin glove that must be adored. They lift tiny metal bars in to the air, intone strange mutterings and it all feels like a revivalist meeting invaded by drunken lunatics. At one stage a bottle of Bogo Juice is handed out to the audience and they drink deeply of the draught. Bongoleeros go missing in the audience but there’s three of them tonight so theres always two up front waving their arms around singing songs of madness, deep rock and roll as it should be, stripped bare of excess and refined to rawness. They all kneel down and pray to Carl Perkins before a Bongoleero takes off one of his silver boots and holds it aloft for the audience to pay their respects. A blue suede show of sorts. It’ll do. When not twanging and banging they sing a capella side by side before disappearing out the door to mess with the young beards heads and out in to the street and gone forever.

Its now ten thirty and I have a decision to make. The car park I’m in shuts at 11pm and by the way the Ceramic Hobs are shuffling about it hardly looks as if their going to get going by then never mind finished. I spy the street outside and theres room for one car right at the end. I dash off to the NCP and drive the short way back to find the space still free. I roll it in and reverse back not noticing the telegraph pole near the kerb edge and smash my wing mirror clean off. I then get mad and reverse back too far and hit the car behind me. At least its free parking at this time of night. So when I get back inside my mood has soured and I feel as if the Hobs aren’t doing it for me. The last time I saw them here they were on top form, with Morris screaming his lungs off, the band gelling and the songs sounding like they meant something. They were tight and coherent and lunatic in all the best ways. A guitarist new to me in tatty England shirt knocking out the riffs. Tonight they seem as if they’re going through the motions and with Hob stage right playing the baby head gadget being charged at by guitarist stage left. The pair of them like rutting stags rolling about on a beer swilled floor. Morris is waving around a pair of angels wings made from white bird feathers that are either on his head or up his back or on the floor, his snake skin skirt hangs below his beer belly and they all seem like they want to be in different rooms. But maybe thats just me and my bad mood.

Its the Crater Lake Festival next week. I’m going on the bus.

Crater Lake Festival
Wharf Chambers, Leeds
March 7th, 2015

Rudolph. Eb.er
Evil Moisture
Culver
Stephen Cornford
Charles Dexter Ward
Dylan Nyoukis & Kieron Percy
Dale Cornish
Kay Hill
Stuart Chalmers
Yol & Posset
Mel O'Dubshlaine


Five pound entry for eight hours worth of Crater Lake was always going to be the best fiver spent all year. And so it proved. As the rest of Leeds' desperate late night thrill seekers parted with the same sum for a bottle of lager in a crap pub a knowing and not inconsiderably large crowd of people took the opportunity to soak up large amounts of sonic exploration for the same amount.

Arriving just after 3pm I was met with the sight of people wandering around clasping empty beer bottles with wires and batteries coming from them. Most of them were wearing idiotic grins, like they'd just discovered that there was a way of getting drunk on water. All this due to an Andy Bolus workshop in which objects of a personal and round nature could be turned into ghost detectors or something. I don't know what it was but it seemed to make half a dozen people sat around a table insanely happy. I half wished I'd joined in but I find things with wires terrifying and I'd have no doubt had to have drunk the bottle of beer first which, with the day ahead of me, would have been a mistake, with lunch time beers turning in to afternoon beers turning in to night time beers turning in to a review of the first three acts and nothing else. With such a great line up sobriety was for once to the fore.

Someone called Ted said I should incorporate more beer related content in to reviews and with the Wharf Chambers supplying a decent stock of vittles the opportunity was there and when I spied Rudolph Eb.er clutching a bottle of something looking good I asked him what it was and came back from the bar with a non alcoholic beer that tasted of Lapsang Souchong. Which actually wasn't that bad in the way that a generous mouth feel lager with no alcohol does. So I went back to the bar for another bottle of Club Mate and contented myself with the fact that whilst various bits of the Ceramic Hobs were rolling about on the floor in drunken dishabille I was able to retell to you in these words exactly what happened at the 2015 Crater Lake Festival.

Pete Cann's once a year all day festival of sonic exploration has become a firm favourite on the calendar. It ticks all the boxes in that the venue is perfect, the city is perfect, the sound is well, there’s no complaints and its cheap to get in. Did I mention that its only five pounds to get in? Five English pounds to see over dozen or so people get to grips with drone and noise and cassette improvisation and many things that lay in between. Well I never. Tell that to someone from that London and they wouldn't believe you.

At around 3.30pm Mel O'Dubshlaine began talking in to a small microphone manipulating her voice via god knows what so that what emerged from the speakers were broken fragments, not Norman Collier meets Jaap Blonk but disembodied voices, ghostly appearances. When Phil Todd joined in on something that looked like a futuristic tambourine the whole thing went kind of spacey. And off we go.

The original red tiled floor of the WC performance space has born the brunt of Yol's previous performances there especially with regard to a steel mop bucket. Along with the north east’s very own dictaphone merchant Posset they make for a match made in scratch heaven. Yol hits the floor with a steel rod and scrapes empty yoghurt pots across the tiles, Joe Posset screams into a variety of Dictaphones. Yol's head goes back and he screams about glass cathedrals [shopping centres?], Joe Posset screams into his Dictaphones and screams about what I’ve no idea. Voices appear through the murk only to disappear and there in its place but the faintest tinkle of metal on red tile.

Cassettes feature prominently in several acts including Stuart Chalmers who kneels in front of two lit candles and dons a long black wig which he lets fall over his face as he performs his own private ritual. Playing a Walkman in each hand he fast forwards and reverses over the capstans before hitting a pebble with a stick and eventually strumming a very small zither. I've been waiting a long time to see Chalmers play live and the wait proves to be worth it. Like Nyoukis and Percy he creates atmospheres in which impossible to identify sounds appear. Sounds that are being created by the manipulation of a never ending supply of cassettes. At its start Chalmers moves from received pronunciation spoken word 50's BBC female announcer to atonal classical compositions before blending everything into noise. Nyoukis and Percy become so involved in their composition that beads of sweat appear, each adjustment to their ongoing work morphing into disturbing atmospheres. You can almost smell the cassette cases.

Dale Cornish plugs in a lap top plays thirty seconds of something and then gets involved with an audience member after being sarcastically applauded. He then gets involved in a discussion about the merits of merch before delivering some low end frequency beats in a Panasonic kind of way. When he rips out the link to the PA loud cheering can be heard and he has a grin from ear to ear suggesting that he's just enjoyed himself very much thank you. We are all enjoying ourselves very much thank you very much.

Everybody gets a loud cheer. Its an enthusiastic audience. After Lee Stokoe's sublime two mini keyboard drone set I'm given the best ever eulogy about how the man is a giant amongst drone makers. And who am I to argue? Stokoe has the nous to let his relentless waves of crashing drone play out its finale on his own amp leaving the PA to lick its wounds. Charles Dexter Wards drone set is, I think made from electric guitar, but I'm sat on the reclaimed pew at the back of venue and all I can see are peoples backs, but its loud. Easily the loudest thing so far and with my head back and my eyes shut I soak it all in.

I see five minutes of Kay Hil’s set but he seems to be having problems with his equipment causing unwanted feedback and equipment chatter to leak in. Its the only set I miss.

Stephen Cornford has four TV's stacked up with a contact mic on each screen. The two TV's in the middle of the stack are side on and when they are brought to life they show interference and static from which Cornford mixes the results relaying them to us. I'm stood about three feet in front of his TV's trying not to remember what my mother told me about sitting too close to the telly because this is the best place to be to take full effect of those ever changing flickering screens and the drones they''re making. I now know I’m not epileptic. If you were sat at the back on those reclaimed church pews I dare say the impact may be lessened but being that close and with the volume getting louder it was the perfect place to be. When he begins to turn the TV's off one by one there's an almighty jump in volume as the last one dies, a noise so shocking and unexpected in its volume that it brings audible gasps.

When Andy Bolus takes to the stage he tells us all to turn our phones off or get out of the room as their signals interfere with his sensitive equipment. Which seems to contain a butchered tape machine that has a crinkled length of cassette tape looping out of it and into another home made machine. This is now the loudest set of the night and the longest set I've seen Bolus play [this from a man whom I once saw play the Kirkstall Lights for all of about thirty seconds after falling off the stage dressed as a rabbit or a dog and injuring his back].  There are people getting carried away after eight hours of steady drinking and they begin shoving each other about and waving their fists in Phillip Best homage. When Bolus releases huge thunderclaps of noise this only goes to induce further jostling but there's only about four of them and they look like they come from good homes.

The days entertainment ends with Rudolph Eb.er sat behind a mixer delivering a series of his trademark sounds, my favourite being the fly trapped in a bottle. At one stage he sticks two brain activity sensors covered in black boot polish on to his head, an act which  makes his eyeballs swivel. There's a change in frequency and a change in Eb.er's appearance as he now has black dots all over his head. A completely different performance from the last time I saw him at the Extreme Rituals in Bristol which was bare chested and crossed legged with the added sense destroying stench of burning vinegar for accompaniment. If we'd have had the burning vinegar in the confines of the Wharf Chambers there’d have been a stampede for the door. As it is the feisty crowd down the front make the most of Eb.er's brief forays into all out noise but for the most part this is a short stray in to Eb.er's own sound world.

Outside and on the way to a taxi the streets are clogged with £5 bottle of beer merchants. I could tell them about Club Mate and the Wharf Chambers but somehow I don't think they'd be interested. Roll on next year.

Ian Middleton - Untitled [casio, etc.]
Self released CDR [1994 - 1996]

Ian Middleton - Untitled II
Self released CDR [1996 - 1997]

Ian Middleton - Untitled III
Self released CDR [1997 - 2001]

Ian Middleton - Aural Spaces
Self released CDR [2004]

Ian Middleton - Moire Music
Self released CDR [2007 - 2014]

Ian Middleton - Mobiles
Self released CDR [2007 - 2009]

Ian Middleton - Time Building
Self released CDR [Recorded 2007 - 2008 - Mixed 2014]

Ian Middleton - Tape Tapes
Self released CDR [1999 - 2007]

Ian Middleton & Mark Vernon - Desire Lines
Self released CDR [2014]

Ian Middleton - Music for the Survivor
Self released CDR [?]

Ian Middleton - Well of Sorrows
Skire LP. SKR02 [2009]

Ian Middleton - Aural Spaces
Swill Radio LP. Swill 029 [2009]

Ian Middleton - Time Building
Entr’acte LP. E66 [2009]




It was Campbell who mentioned Ian Middleton. Another hitherto barely heard of, off the radar, under the radar, no buggers ever heard of him, obscure beyond words, outsider drone artist. I mentioned his name to Simon Morris in Dirty Dicks only to be reminded that it was Middleton who made a fleeting appearance on the Ceramic Hobs sprawling late 90’s supermad Psychiatric Underground release. This was in days when Middleton was Remora and tape noise ruled the world and nobody was really that fussed if all you did was offer up two sides of C90 fluff and stuck it to a paper plate with ‘play loud’ written on it in fibre tipped pen. Not that this was what Middleton was doing but you get my drift.

All this after Campbell had turned half of West Yorkshire and other environs on to that obscure Norwegian noise/drone project Taming Power and the talk turned to outsider artists and those who choose to work without the merits/demerits of social media and self promotion.

Middleton has been releasing material for years now with but a small handful of labels having the nous to give him a platform. The ten CDRs you see above have all been burned by the man himself and I dare say thats there’s more where they came from. The LP’s are things of utter joy and without Middleton’s kindness and Campbell’s prompting would have sadly passed me by.

But they didn’t and for the last few weeks I’ve been soaking up the drones and letting them cast their unearthly spell on me. For these are drones capable of casting you adrift from your earthly woes. These are drones capable of lifting you from your cups, capable of filling your lungs with air and head with swimming joy. Its what really good drones do.

Since 1996 Middleton has been creating them with a Korg MS10, a few effect pedals and the occasional field recording. Before 1996 it was mainly noise and Ceramic Hobs dalliances. Its what you did in 1996. ‘Untitled [casio, etc]’ is the organist at Cologne cathedral giving vent to his psychedelic noise drone side whilst channeling Brainticket through Nurse With Wound. Heavy duty full on pummeling drone throb with weasly tones and erupting novas. Raucous drones that penetrate your skull and leave you tripping like a nodding hippie gazing in to his Tangerine Dream fold out gatefold sleeves. You have to start somewhere. ‘Untitled II’ sees the appearance of Bohman-esque kitchen detritus and a prepared acoustic guitar. On ‘Untitled III’  the 22 minute opener ‘Catacombs’ has just the faintest whiff of industrial drone. Its a murky world but one heading in the direction of purer drones. And then, barring a few pure piano compositions, we move in that purer drone world.

A blow by bow account of all thirteen releases would test both your patience and mine but suffice to say that barring a few dodgy tracks on those three early releases the vast majority of what you can hear is both compelling and highly rewarding. I found myself listening and lost in a reverie and on many occasion wondering if I would ever pull myself from my Middleton musings. Opportunities to indulge to such a depth rarely arise and must be fully expoloited.

‘Mobiles’ contains analogue era Raymond Scott melodies, reversed tape drones and feather light drones. ‘Moire Music’ utilises the field recordings of Mark Vernon and is minimalist and austere with hedgerow birds adding depth to frosty morning walks. ‘Music for the Survivor’s’ is where we hear Middleton sit down at a piano, four short tracks that begin with a stark and sombre interlude before being joined by ever so gently plucked strings. Middleton’s piano feels as lonely and oblique as Harold Budd’s with the resonance holding on long enough to give us that real depth of loss. ‘Tape Tapes’ contains ten short works that barely rise above the five minute mark. ‘Time Building’ wanders into Forbidden Planet territory, this time with added squeaky gates and ‘out there’ added spacey-ness.

The three vinyl releases are were I found myself reaching swoon max. ‘Well of Sorrows’ is beautifully austere and melancholy. The four tracks on side A creating suitably bleak atmospheres of forlornness especially on the longer Lonely Highway. This is American road movie territory where a denim clad Martin Sheen sticks his thumb out at the side of a wide open road waiting for a battered convertible with Sissy Spacek in it to pull up - big sky drone moving through ever sadder and sadder phases, diminished chord loops soaring and dipping through each other. The side long Snowdrops is a series of shifting phases and beetling notes burbling out of a drone stream of analogue information. Bliss.   

The Entr’acte release Time Building and the Swill Radio release Aural Spaces share similar ground in which shimmering drones appear dominant. The two wide bands on each side of Time Building are each long enough to set your drift dials to nod and should be used as such.

I was rather worried that after receiving such a generous package [two packages] that I wouldn’t like what they contained or only half like them or be indifferent to them and have to explain to Campbell that his taste sensors had taken a kick to the gut. This obviously isn’t the case. Instead I have discovered another one of those rare human beings, one who eschew fame and fortune for the far more humble goal of creating genuinely beautiful music.




 
Incomplete Discogs page






iancmiddleton [AT] gmail.com










 

Over the last few weeks I have been the fortunate recipient of not one, but two Dr. Steg packages. Both arrived unannounced. Both were enough to raise me from my cups. The first was an assemblage. A picture if you like. An assemblage that had glued upon it golden things that Dr. Steg’s dog had chewed. More on this later. The second package contained Dr Steg’s diary, various comics and sheets of A4 that show the existence of various other forms of SPON. More on these later too. I sat and read the diary on Friday night and knew that I couldn’t put it away without further comment. I gave it to Mrs. Fisher and she read it with the same degree of amusement and delight. After consultation with Dr. Steg he was quite happy for me to reprint here.

The diary covers three months of 2001 and shows not only how Dr. Steg’s passes his days but his wit and eye for the absurd. In it the mundane sits cheek by arse with Dr. Steg’s surreal dreams. Cats stare into space and dogs lick the inside of cats mouths. Steg himself sits and stares at empty washing lines. He builds dog kennels out of Twiglets. He makes pointless lists of ‘different things’.  All recorded for posterity in Steg’s instantly recognisable mix of made up words and phrases [Foot & Mouse], ampersands and jumble of capital and lower case letters within the same word. There’s the odd bit of instant art, CD price stickers [remember the days when the likes of HMV and Virgin got away with charging £16.99 for a CD?] and parking tickets too. At its end we see Steg’s more philosophical side, something that doesn’t come as a surprise at all, ‘When I said art is dead I really meant that modern society had killed art but art can only ressurect itself when modern society is dead. We will continue!’

Barring a few edits to make for easier reading I’ve left the spelling and syntax as is.



Er ...That's it? Watched a cat sitting very quietly on the driveway. World on verge of imminent collapse. Cut toe nails & fed clippings to dog. Welsh farmer committed suicide due to Foot & Mouse disaster. Blew nose.

16th March
Watched washing line blowing gently in the wind. Mass killing of healthy animals. Also available in Brian Cant flavour.

17th March
Woke up - went to toilet. Made cup of tea. Listened to  the Cocteau Twins. Watched dog going to the toilet and wiping his feet on the grass. Run away from all your Kwik-Save trolleys.


18th March
Woke up early & had a hearty breakfast of Jelly Babies, Digestive biscuits and Mr. Kipling apple pies. Proceeded to spend morning painting all the dirt and dust in the garage white so that it looks clean. Dry roasted peanuts for dinner. Spent afternoon studying dirt on window panes in strangers houses. Evening spent sitting in a darkened room, not easy to read. Went to bed.

18th March
Spent entire weekend listening to 'Slave to the Wage' by Placebo and now its Monday morning & it still makes no sense. I will write to them and ask what it means? Nothing sounds very well today? Where are we going? What a confusing world we live in!

20th March
Woke up after a lovely dream about death & murder. Day 28 of Foot & Mouse disease. Watched dog lick the inside of a cats mouth [as the cat yawned - Eric]. Thought today was Friday but it is only Tuesday. Picked scabs from dogs nose.

21st March
The day after 20th March 2001. It snowed all day today, but the snow didn't contain any snow adhesive so it didn't stick.

22nd March
Nothing happened yet. Tried to saw dog in half. Nothing?





23rd March
Breakfast. Nothing - a bit more nothing. Nothing for tea - some more nothing. Went to bed. The future is furtive.

24th March
Spent all day today painting all the dirt & dust in the garage its original dirt & dust colour. Painted all the coloured cats white [they were not happy about this so I had to nail their paws to the floor & paint them with a lavatory cleaning brush].

25th March
Rudely awoken from an interesting dream about being suffocated in a giant plastic bag prison type thing, chair, box, cling-film, cardboard death chamber coma dream suffocation thing! Rather nice while it lasted? Fuck!

26th March
Spent the afternoon studying the waterflow of sink and baths in empty houses. Plucked all the dogs fur out with tweezers. Here is some of it that was plucked from around its penis.

27th March
Huge mass killing of cattle and sheep and then putting them in huge fucking hole. On a brighter note they have re-opened  B&M Bargains. It has new electric doors & new shelves  stocked  with the same crappy rubbish as before. Jelly Babies & Dr. Pepper for lunch. Wore clean socks for the first time in four weeks.




28th March
Dull day but enlivened at tea time by watching police deal with an armed holed-up in some shitty drug flats. Bought 2 tins of cat food. Sunny evening, watched shadows of tree on the wall at the bottom of the garden.

29th March
Realised today how utterly pointless & boring keeping a diary really is if you were to do it properly! Never got round to writing to Placebo? Or man from crisp factory. Six letters to post but couldn't be arsed to buy stamps in Post Office.

30th March
Tried to make pen work. Created artificial rain. Nice dream, but can't remember what it was?

31st March
Awoke at midday. Fruitcake for dinner. Watched television for 3 seconds. Walked past a rotting kebab on a traffic island.

1st April
Dog farted. Did something pointless. Dog farted again. Watched washing blowing slowly on washing line.

2nd April
Read book about the Pre-Raphaelites. Tape re-corded dog singing. Tape re-corded cat sneezing whilst an aeroplane passed over head and one passenger vomited, another picked his nose and flicked it at a stewardesses arse. Someone ate a banana and an old man choked to death on his false teeth. Bought some broccoli & something that looked like spit. Out of date food for tea.



3rd April
Moist interesting nights dreaming about mutilation, radioactive waste disease death, memories & general carnage. Must have been something I eight. Visited a rather unpleasant place, nothing unusual happened, remember something important while walking across a zebra crossing! Evening spent deep in thought thinking about the depth of thought [probably as deep as any of the deepest holes in existence]. Cats never gamble & they have no concept of money.

4th April
Sixth week of Foot & Mouse disease. Can't think of one interesting observation yet! Pistachio nuts for tea. Spent evening listening to various kettles boiling inside the garage. All the steam caused the garage to evaporate. Very unfortunate!

5th April
Dream fragment - Angry Hotel comissionaires crucifying a tiny Jesus in a giant metal crucifix/coffin type thing under a pier [possibly Brighton]. Jesus was either Les Dennis or Rik Mayall?

6th April
Saw a very unhappy wet pigeon sitting or huddling next to a used orange condom.

7th April. We exist in a place that has been replaced with ABBATOIRS built from the rotting remains of disease ridden lying bastard politicians. No one can deny this fact.

8th April
Saw a squirrel looking furtively at a sheep whilst it rained heavily and we listened to an old fur-encrusted T-Rex tape. Visited a house with no shelves, very messy! I had to leave a record shop & a book shop due to some unpleasant sounding people who I had the misfortune to be standing next to.

9th April
Dog sicked up tiny remains of human fingers all over hand brake as we went round Around-About on our way to Curries. They now rest in a tiny plastic bag in the bureau along with other solid things that disagree with his tiny dog stomach and he sicked up several hours later along with foul smelling grean bile! Tried to avoid watching the shiny new television. Spent evening listening to shiny new-old Fall CDs. [Plasma Screen TV ￡7-8000 if ordered from Comet]

10th April
8.16 am saw a lollipopman dashing by on his bicycle. Watched two pigeons fighting. Read enormous book about Benjamin West, the first artist born in America to achieive international stature.

11th April
Read a very thin narrow book about radiators. Saw two very old midgets shopping

12th April
Breakfast - small squares of cheese with a peanut on top.

13th April
Can't remember anything interesting happening  today - maybe I am dead?

14th April
Breakfast - went over the top - small squares of cheese with 'two' peanuts on top.

15th April
Thought cat was going to write a novel but it couldn't get the top off the pen.

16th April
More very odd dreams due to massive cheese intake. Too strange to write down but can remember the vastness and immense bizarre details of a hell on earth camping trip inside something dead & rotting. Knee deep in blood & entrails of something?

17th April
Thought I saw a nun with a step ladder! Saw a very old thing and a very narrow kitchen with cookers. Dream about flying and imaginary photographs of things that never existed except in the minds of imaginary people who existed in a non-existent place. [v.good]



18th April
Cat tried to assassinate the Queen. Unluckily he forgot to put bullets in gun.

19th April
Considered buying nail scissors.

20th April
Made a dog kennel out of Twiglets.

21st April
Opened a door. Mowed the lawn for the first time in 6 months.

22nd April
Opened a new packet of soap. Suicide bombers in Israel. Health risk of cancer from burning cows.

23rd SPON
Watched 23 different things that included the following:-

1. Drainpipes
2. Grass
3. The dogs eyebrows
4. Checkout womans teeth in Safeways.
5. Envelopes
6. Walls
7. Snot
8. Sky at different times of the day & night
9. Road signs
10. Bruises & cuts
11. Hair & stubble
12. Bricks
13. Tree stumps
14. Toothpaste
15. Skin
16. Ink in pens
17. Trouser & shoes
18. Car head lights & aerials.
19. Dirt on rims of cups & wine glasses
20. Jumpers & shirts
21. Rubber ducks
22. Books & old records in charity shops.
23. Blossom on trees & bushes.

23rd Spon
Spent day watching grass grow a tiny amount in the back garden.

23rd Spon
Strange dream concerning a mail order body parts operation that sent me a new body part each day. Eventually I had an 8 or 9 foot body in the kitchen. I was then sent all the intestines and inside body parts. For some reason they did not look like normal inside body parts? Woke up and listened to 'Songs for Drella' by Lou Reed & John Cale.

23rd Spon [Brown day].
Posted a large [brown] envelope filled with six year old memories & ideas that I still [and will never] understand. Painted something [brown] - am glad that I have no more [brown] paint, I loathe & hate [brown] paint, I loathe & hate [brown]. I am very glad that grass is green & it covers horrid [brown] soil. II suppose I must be grateful for this one small gift in life. It could have been the other way around! Horrible thought. Also, pity about the colour of tree bark! Glad I am not called [brown] as well.


23rd Spon
Saw a priest carrying a staple gun. But it was in fact a yellow helicopter. Sunny day that became very wet. Saw many strange & weird things today! Listened to something very old that actually sounded very new.

23rd Spon
The difference between a pencil and a pen is this. Spent the day & evening watching clouds drift by. Dream - some one sent me a very sharp sword in order to kill all plasterers in the world. Bought some new type of shoes!

3rd May
Watched cat have a big piss.

4th May
Wet.

5th May
On the road to Monets garden. Saw many very irritating Americans discussing religion with their sons. Sat next to a man with hairy nostrils.

12th May
I don't care. You don't care. We don't care. Nobody cares?

17th May
Some people I vaguely know - house burnt down very quickly.

18th May
Spent evening painting in the rain - unfortunately notebook got so wet it nearly fell apart!

19th May
Saw 4 ducks going for a walk near a very busy main road. Dead mouse on doorstep this morning. Bought book about David Sylvian and I read it very quickly.

20th May
Visited the Tate in Liverpool and saw some lovely pictures by Picasso, Bonnard, Hockney, Mark Boyle, Peter Blake, Derek Boshier, David [?]. Spent several hours studying their surfaces & colours.Splendid afternoon! And also Miro, Dubuffet & Frank Auerbach as well! Caught dog trying to shag grey cat.

21st May
Woke up, fell asleep and then woke up again. Strange dreams about things that aren't very nice. Placed dead mouse in jam jar in garage.

22nd May
Woke up and listened to 'Pied Piper' by Crispian St. Peter and watched an empty black bin liner blow around the garden. Then listened to 'Just Like Eddie' by Heinz and then 'Sea of Heartbreak' by Don Gibson and finally 'He Kissed Me' by the Crystals. Came home to find dead mouse in jam jar completely maggott ridden. So threw it in neighbours garden that I do not like. Saw odd man having a really good pick of his left nostril whilst stareing into a shop window - possibly a jewelers or shoe shop? Avoided neighbour who I do not like as I saw him find jam jar with maggot ridden mouse corpse inside, he didn't look very impressed - think he threw it in his dustbin! Listened to 'Let it Bleed' by the Rolling Stones.

23rd Spon
Saw a well dressed elderly gentleman riding a Harley Davidson. Listened to bees pollinating flowers and dried blossoms blowing against walls and pavements.

24th Spon
Cut grass with tiny pair of scissors. Very, very odd dream last night - vague & weird people with severe mental problems turning into shops, cows & dogs! People crying tears that turned into churches & cathedrals - an overall sense of religious doom & surreal heaven? Don't know! A strange sense of ridiculous hope & not hope? Things expanding turning in to unexpanded things drifting & bright! Then returning to darkness & dreadfulness - no hope in this place - only fear and certain death after an initial baptism of enlightenment. Took dog for walk.

25th Spon
Things overheard on the way back from Monets garden -
1: Where is there a public toilet I can take hostage! [No public toilet was taken hostage].
2: I always sleep better with a hand grenade stuffed up my arse! [No way to disprove this statement]. Actually heard evening of 6th May 2001.



26th Spon
Very old 'Fall' songs played on the only CD player that works in the house. Flower petals from Monets garden dry silently in a chest of drawers. Changed one Rolling Stones CD for this one.

27th Spon
Nothing Day - Read funny story about a man who killed his wife & four step-children. Working on pictures of people who have been stabbed to death. Mainly children

28th Spon
Visited the David Hockney exhibition at Saltaire Mill. Jolly splendid day. Big spaces full of pictures, books, furniture, chairs, photographs & pianos. Bought book about David Cronenberg. Saw large plastic dinosaur.

29th Spon
Wet day spent standing in rain. Got wet.

30th Spon
Day of blood and blooded animal carcasses. Blood on carpet. Blood on wall of toilet, blood and flesh on garage floor, blood on sink! Spent afternoon reading book that is covered in spots and fingerprints of blood. Small traces of blood on cats whiskers. Blood on bed sheets! Changed them for ones not covered in blood but flowers.

31st May
Saw graffiti on wall that says - Why police.

1st June
Saw graffiti on the side of an electric generator building next to a shit smelling park that just said - orgasm! Further on down a scummy back alley, written on the wall of an old rock factory where the words - hits from the bong - in bright red letters. Saw midget, with very long large head, nearly knocked over by elderly man in large cow or car? Walking in to the gents toilets in the casino I heard an old New Order song playing as I took a piss but couldn't remember the name of it? And the entire room shimmered in the wind as if all the wallpaper and furniture was nailed to the washing drying on the line outside.

2nd June
Talked to Eric about the meaning of life, but unfortunately, being only a cat he had no idea what he was talking about. Read interesting article on Jamaican graffiti. Primitive thoughts about fire, death, very real feelings about our past and future, if it's going to happen it'll happen and we mean nothing - dragged along without asking. We don't care - we have lost our feeling for any form of compassion or genuine careing. People die in front of the television. We need to be 'shocked' in a real sense to jolt us from the television, work place apathy [general life] cruel, cold, asleep, destiny no feelings nothing - no - thing. Create a new religion or pigeon. Watched good film called 'Boys Don't Cry'.

3rd June
Wiped dust from the surface of something dusty.

4th June
Watched excellent film called 'All the Little Animals' with John Hurt in it. Dog exploded. Watched 2 ginger cats staring at each other in a funny way?

5th June
Morning - attacked by wild dog then walked in to lamppost. Afternoon - lovely and wet - sat in a darkened room listening to 'Everything and Nothing' by David Sylvian and reading biography of William Burroughs by Ted Morgan. Drinking French red wine that cost 89p a bottle. Evening - nothing but wind and rain.

6th June
Spent evening watching clouds.

7th June
Graffiti on wall of Liberal Democrat party HQ in big black letters 'VOTE ELVIS'

8th June
Hollow empty feeling this morning. Listened to 'The Smiths' in an attempt to cheer myself up a bit. Cats have left half a mouse in the garage.

9th June
Watched '2001 A Space Odyssey' this evening. Why doesn't now look like that? Saw graffiti on old falling down building that said 'danger keep out'. Nearly got knocked over by a bycycle.

10th June
Bought copy of 'Less Than Zero' fromme book fair. Visited nice shop & bought very expensive salt & pepper pots.

11th June
Dry bread for dinner. Discussed the possibility of plastic surgery on the dogs head to remove his saggy eyes & wobbly chin bits. I seem to be absorbing music & writing at an enormous rate. Also appear to be less dark than last year. Thinking more about nature and clouds, trees, leaves, insects, grass etc ... rocks, earth, dirt, flowers.

12th June
Met some body who wasn't very happy.

13th June
Read books about Picasso, Throbbing Gristle and extracts of Cities of the Red Night by William Burroughs. Listened endlessly to Black Water by David Sylvian. V beautiful & haunting song!

14th June
Listened to The Smiths 'singles' especially No. 11 Panic and No.15 Girlfriend in a Coma. Line from an old Psychic T.V . song came to mind - dreams less sweet became more real whilst I thought about a world of human piss plants? Watched 'meet the parents'.

15th June
Wet with thunder & lightning. Reading Kenneth Williams diaries. Watched Call Me Joe? Picture fell off wall due to '1964' string.

16th June
Slept very late. Watched 'American Werewolf'.

17th June
Slept very late again - took dog on beach - kite convention - dog had fight with another dog. Watched 'Ronin'. Listened to old Cabaret Voltaire album 'Voice of America'. Watched documentary about Picasso - repaired and re-hung picture that fell off wall on Friday - only three pages of this diary left - eric not very happy today. Dream about a world covered entirely in dead animals and pavements made from dead mice. When I said art is dead I really meant that modern society had killed art but art can only ressurect itself when modern society is dead. We will continue!



18th June
Dream about a civilisation of cancerous flys living in a decaying city made from wombs, scabs, ear wax & human dog farting machines roam the city & vomit acidic beans & sausages over the flies to try & kill their maggot offspring buried deep inside rotten human organs & dead babies that drowned in ancient poisonous spinal fluids. My mother was today diagnosed with Spon disease.

19th June
Wet. Thought about the space between spaces in a very spatial but initially flat way. Had bath. Read 'The Bell Jar' by Sylvia Plath & listened to 'Concert' The Cure Live. Due to lack of people going to country during Foot & Mouse epidemic there is a strain of mutant plants that have taken over near streams and can give off skin infections if touched. Sounds like fun! When leaving no entry is permitted. Maybe to some death is a lovely dream whilst the world itself [reality] is a bad dream - last line inspired and stolen from Sylvia Plath. Also KleenPane windows cleaned today. Free quotes Tel 01253 or 7500411. Took to looking at book about Pre Raphaelites whilst listening to The Smiths*. Particular favourite plates include page 85. Girlfriend in a Coma. William Dyce - Pigwell Bay, Kent -a recollection of October 5th 1858 and whilst listening to Placebo* page 107 - William Holman Hunts - The Shadow of Death 1870-73. Whilst thinking about my own father who was a carpenter! And my own date of birth 23-06-66. Black-eyed*.




http://www.batcow.co.uk/steg/contact.htm

Filthy Turd – Peculiar Woman Carelessly Psychic
Debila Records. 3'' CD-R. 30 copies.

Urdwyg The Goldrr - Cassette Psychic Volume 4
Recycled Cassette.

Makakarooma.
Recycled cassette.


A year or two back I donated three large boxes of cassettes to the Filthy Turd Foundation. A gig at the WC provided the opportunity to offload the best part of what must have been well over 500 cassettes and there in the twinkling of an eye went what must have been well over 500 cassettes that I hadn't listened to in donkeys years and would probably have never listened to again as long as I'd lived for ever and ever amen.

Until, inevitably, they came back. But this time spray painted and containing the righteous sounds of Makarooma and Urdwyg The Goldrr. That's The Filthy Turd to you or Darren or Pig or the Vile One or that masked man in the Bongoleero’s. He's the wearer of many guises all of them fitting like the proverbial Alvin Stardust glove.

The recycled cassette is Filthy's weapon of choice. It circumnavigates the need for sleeve manufacture, catalogue numbers and for the most part track titles and even album titles. The man is a Discogs completeists nightmare and for this we all give thanks. Not for him the tedious task of hand writing each issue number with silver tipped pen ensuring that each potential owner has a unique item. Filthy ensures that each potential owner has his own unique item by hand blathering the thing in spray paint over a swathe of old cassettes. Hence I get Urdwyg The Goldrr - Cassette Psychic Volume 4 on a cassette Paul Williams sent me donkeys years ago containing Merzbow, Masonna and the Japanese Comedy Torture Hour inside a sleeve that Jase Williams sent me donkeys years ago mentioning some Mary Millington flexis and a two channel mix of The Tape Beatles and someone called Aggo [I think?]. I dare say all involved are more than happy to see their work recycled so. The Makakarooma release comes on the Marriage of Figaro inside a smeared Enigma sleeve. We can only guess at what Mozart would’ve thought of his work being dubbed over by Makakarooma.

Urdwyg The Goldrr - Cassette Psychic Volume 4 is where Urdwyg, with Dictaphone to the fore, wanders the waste lands of Burslem calling for his dog amid a fug of lo-fi noise that could either be the wind blowing down his condenser mic or the howling of the lost souls of Stoke on Trent. These are the distorted ramblings of a 21st minstrel his lute replaced by a Dictaphone, his tales of derring-do replaced by the Dalek bark of incomprehensibility, the skip in his step replaced by a drunken stagger. And then, when it's all finished, comes the squalling dirge of whatever it was that was there originally. Monstrous in its execution, debased in its intent. We have nothing to compare.

The last time we saw Makakrooma they were supporting the Sleaford Mods. I've seen the video evidence. Someone banging a slave boat drum with monotonous regularity, Filthy stage right with his chopped in half busted guitar, head back, flailing out of tune chords that mutate in to vortexes of feedback, another guitarist, that man Jarvis, just hitting the damn thing. A masked singer of sorts dives in to the crowd and gives them the microphone hugging them and thanking them for their contribution. Puzzled faces abound.

As ever with Filthy related projects the boundaries blur but with Makakarooma a continuous rhythm of sorts eventually emerges from the layers of murk. Its not pretty and its never, ever, ever going to be anything but. But this is the way it is. At times I swear I could hear Metal Urbain underneath the shitstorm but with everything being buried under years of accumulated tape muck this is only an educated guess. Feedback. More feedback. Grabs of spoken word. Dissonance. Hurt. Noise. Farts of an electronic nature and pinning it all to the tatty tap room dartboard of life is a fat brass dart with the words ‘Filth’ written down the side.

After all this fumbling around in the lo-fi dark the leap in sound quality on the 3” CDR comes as quite a shock. Here a thousand edits of various Filthy Turd detritus are Sellotaped together to make one totally uncohesive whole.  Filthy sings about the ‘Spidery Girl’ and intones manic mantras whose words will forever remain hidden. There’s even a touch of the Whitehouse’s with Filthy reciting tales of strange beasts to the thumping clatter of synth in overdrive. Guitars appear for milliseconds amid distorted walls of feedback, dogs whine as their nails scrape parquet flooring, dogs bark, Filthy barks, Filthy gargles, bangs things, hits things, slows things down and speeds them up. Edits of live performances are jammed in between random Dictaphone utterances.

What we have here is a living breathing Dada thing. Filthy Turd as the ghost of Hugo Ball wandering the streets of Burslem on an empty Sunday morning creating his art out of nothing but the most basic of instrumentation and a fervent imagination. Catch your breath and be amazed.

I've lost count of the number of Filthy related items I've received [and reviewed] and have no wish to go back to relive them. Instead, like Filthy, I live in the present. For these releases are living breathing things of the here and now. Take them to your black hearts and love them.






Filthy Turd Blog



Debilia Records

Black Love - Soundtrack For Black Power
Hertz-Lion. Cassette. HL-2.

On Saturday Morning, as is my habit, I set off on my hunter gathering duties. As I turned the key in the ignition the radio came to life and the speakers regaled me with that drippy hippy west coast anthem; America's 'Ventura Highway' [how the car radio came to be tuned to Radio 2 is a mystery I shall have to solve at a later date. What with me being permanently stuck in the R4/R3 ditch these days the sound of Anneka Rice's inane babblings towards the tracks end was enough to have me swerving all over the road desperately trying to hit the ‘4’ button on the display without crashing. Something I have no wish to repeat].

Having fulfilled my hunter gathering duties I returned home to find ‘Black Love - Soundtrack For Black Power’ awaiting me and there, stamped upon its return address, the words Ventura CA.

We were destined to like each other. I was going to smother this release in critical kisses from the off, adopt it as one of my own, take it to parties with me, introduce it to friends, give it a Buddhist name and register it with the Wine Society. We were going to be more than friends, we were going to be travelers through life. And then I discovered that the package contained a cassette and my love increased a thousand fold. I was floating on air. My eyes twirled in delight. My heart felt lighter. A skip came to my step and everything seemed covered in lovely dust. With a ‘Bank of Hell’ 20 note stuck to the inside of the case my love increased another thousandfold. When I discovered that it had a running time of 2.23 seconds I had all on not to involuntary ejaculate into my M&S boxers. And then, and then ... the climax … no web presence. No web presence. Can you handle that fact? Here we are again in 1992 and Bill Gates still hasn’t thought that a web browser would be a good idea. We’re in writing to each other territory folks. Just the return address on the jiffy bag and little ol’ me. I mean, even if it sounded like shit it was going to get ten thumbs up. Possibly more.

I read the press release, something about a performance at REDCAT in LA in 2008 involving Sarah Best, David Cotner and a Segovia. No, not that one. Transpires said cassette is actually the data for a 1981 Texas Instrument game called Strange Odyssey. This being a time in gaming pre-history when gamers needed to load data from cassettes to get their pixelated, simple beyond idiocy games to work.

You could of course play these data cassettes on Walkmans and boomboxes, the results being a constant stream of computer chatter. Noise in other words. What Cotner, Segovia and Best did [Best running point on logistics, it says here] is combine these sounds with those of other amplified tape sounds, these tapes being duct tape, Scotch tape and er ... 'magic tape'? Each being torn, ripped and no doubt used to strangle passers by with within the darkness of the venue, as a measuring tape twanged back in to its protective case from one end of the venue to the other for added effect.

I doubt whether these sounds are incorporated in to the sounds I'm hearing now though. This is code dissonance, a conceptual release and nothing else.

The cassette itself appears to be an original Texas Instrument release but this could be the work of Hertz-Lion industry. That is all I know.

The delight in such absurdist releases as this are multifarious and should be replicated in large doses so that we may venture in to the world of noise at more regular intervals. A case in point - I have three Pain Jerk CD's here that have remained virtually unlistened to since their arrival a couple of months back. A two and a half minute noise cassette, be it data chatter, Merzbow or The New Blockaders, in this format and at this running length, should be applauded. The best sub three minute noise cassette I've heard since Cock E.S.P.'s legendary 'You Know What They Say About Guy's With Short Sets'. And far better for the morale than Ventura Highway.

Contact:

Hertz-Lion Releasing
Post Office Box 1211
Ventura
California
93002

Michael Clough - MetaMachineMusic
Sheepscar Light Industrial. 3” CDR. SLI028

Neil Campbell - Oystercatcher Salad
Sheepscar Light Industrial. 3” CDR. SLI029

Hagman - Inundation
Sheepscar Light Industrial. 3” CDR. SLI030



Daniel Thomas’ Sheepscar Light Industrial label keeps to its perfectly timed release schedule with three more perfectly timed releases. I’ve reviewed the previous 27 and as far as my now rapidly withering braincells recall I don’t remember reviewing a duff one. Or even a less than interesting one. Horrible word ‘interesting’. How do you like my new coat? Oh, its interesting. A noncommittal weasel word that gets you out of a hole when needs be. Like here.

Sheepscar Light Industrial is what I think of when I see the dead pubs at the side of the M621, or the rain making the suburbs of Leeds look grimmer than they already are. Its the same grimness felt from reading David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet [and if you haven’t and your penchant for uber noir Yorkshire grime runs deep then I urge you to investigate]. I see the stark brutalist edifice that is Millgarth police station and I think of David Peace’s 1974 and Sheepscar Light Industrial and the sodium lights that barely brighten the flyovers in Beeston and Hunslet. Leeds and its Ballardian industrial estates and edge of town shopping centers and overpasses and the long road down through Hunslet past the Tommy Wass where it always rains. This is where Sheepscar Light Industrial fits in. Its what comes to mind when I hear something by Daniel Thomas or David Thomas who together are Hagman or with any [and many] of their multitudinous formations and labels.

Hagman - The two Thomas’s with two ancient computers talking to each other. The gentle beetling of corrupt data chatter. Information exchange eventually morphing into something that is a dysfunctional rhythm. Something giving you just enough to hold on to, to help you carry you along on your trip from Sheepscar to Mabgate.

Michael Clough’s MetaMachineMusic is all pneumatic drill’s combining in to a two way drone where the analogue cycling is underpinned by a flat out shortwave radio line that phases and undulates throughout. I think it was Seth Cooke who took to task the council workers digging up his road at 7.30 in the morning by taking that drilling sound and turning it in to something far more listenable. Clough, a one time resident of Leeds and no stranger to its murky edges, has done the same here albeit ending up with something that modulates into something with far smoother edges. I dare say that an analogue synth has played its part here ironing out that drill until its a munched up mess of shortwave fizz and out there drone.

Campbell’s work under his own name is shorn of the far more in your face electronics of his Astral Social Club stuff and here is no exception. Hear a one second vocal stutter, an electric guitar played with a sawing horse hair bow, chirpy birds, a clanging drone. Like being stuck inside Big Ben with your grannies budgie at midnight. Here you can luxuriate in the grates and grinds. This is no disco remix. But it is, I’m reliably informed, an edit of a recent live performance. I hear the words ‘fish and chips’ as the thing beast disappears around the corner.

I have been quiet for quite some time and physical copies of these will have no doubt long since gone, but fear not for reward can still be found online.


http://sheepscar.blogspot.co.uk/

Fish From Tahiti - Decal Baby
Harbinger Sound LP


Who are these Feeshes from Tahiti? Leetle Feeshes. From Taheeeti. Obscure beyond words. A band with no web presence on a label with virtually no web presence, or presence that's of any use [HS website front page is still showing the flyer for last years Soundclash show in Belgium]. Type in ‘Fish From Tahiti’ and you will get just shy of a million hits with just shy of a million of them being information and pictures about fish from Tahiti but there at the top of the pile is a Youtube video of a Fish From Tahiti release called  ‘Weird Noise E.P.' Which since being uploaded two years ago has garnered a meagre 304 hits and the one comment [‘Top’] which totally un-oddly enough doesn't appear on this collection of obscure beyond words singles and compilation submissions and unreleased material.

So far so normal then for the label that has for years been more than comfortable shuffling around in the brick gaps of the, dare I even say it, ‘underground’.

What better to confound those who have come to Harbinger Sound via the Sleaford Mods. I am a Sleaford Mods fan hence I go out and buy everything that appears on their label because, QED, I must like everything that label puts out. But this is no Sub Pop here, no Domino. If you are a Sleaford Mod fan on the bus home with Decal Baby under your arm you are going to be baffled, confounded and perhaps upset when you get home to find that your two pronged social despair attack and angst has been replaced by 14 tracks of looped dub upon which straight lifts from language tapes have been layered.

Its not all like that of course, although I must admit to liking the French and Mandarin voices I’m hearing. In some instances there are rapid drum and bass assaults and things that sounds like Milk From Cheltenham outtakes and 1930’s jazz dance bands but for the most part we’re in crumbly loops of dub with added things territory. Things being either squiggles of electronica, or English lessons as read by 50’s BBC announcers or just plain old weirdness. Depending on your point of view this is either the bastard offspring of Paul Hardcastle’s ’19’ or the demented re-workings of the Art of Noise by people who went to Dada School.

What lifts this from such drollery is its obscurity and repeat play-a-bility. I dare say that the Fish From Tahiti fan club could easily fit into a Volkswagen Polo. A car that could take them to gigs that they’ve never played or record fairs where their records never turn up. In the meantime you have this LP. Just don’t ask me where you can buy it.

Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, May 16th 2015

Having been to many a noise gig at the Brudenell, in the days where a gathering of 25 was deemed a success, I’m more than a little alarmed to find myself pushed up against the back wall with one arse cheek clinging to a bit of seat backing for purchase. The last time I was here they had tables set out cabaret style, now its just shiny black contract flooring and later, a wash of crushed plastic pint pots and Red Stripe cans. They have proper door staff  too and Underwood has his work cut out manning the merch table. Am I still in the Brudenell or have I, by some mystery of the space time continuum, been transported to a parallel universe where rabid punters throw tenners at you for band t-shirts and the band actually mean something and have worth and gravitas and could spend the night pissing up against the posters advertising the upcoming non-entities and nobody here would complain. Well, not much.

From my precarious perch at the back of a crammed Brudenell it soon becomes apparent that Jase Williamson’s voice is teetering on the brink of disintegration. Months of hard touring has done its damage but the audience appears unconcerned instead singing along with unfettered joy whilst producing football terrace chants with which to raise a plastic pint pot to.

But first the Ceramic Hobs who by their very nature are either falling out, falling in, crashing down the side of a drunken wave, dying, being sectioned or being unpredictably brilliant. Tonight, with a decent sound system to work through, they manage to produce a performance that bridges gaps between punk, rock and psychedelic insanity. The chords are chunky, the clown rubbing the babies head is spitting electronic sparks, the keyboard player doesn’t play it with her arse, singer Simon Morris wears a Grateful Dead baseball cap, a Venetian opera mask and a Whitehouse t-shirt and reminds us that he has one of the best voices in the business. He’s also singing in his underwear. The drummer keeps time, especially on the tricky Hong Kong Goolagong [a sexually ambiguous Australian Aboriginal hitchhiking demon, if you must know] which wavers all over the road like a drunk driver with no air in his passenger side tyre. The guitarist stage left throws playing cards into the air with random words written on them. Morris holds up a small Dr Steg canvas with a cutting from the local Blackpool press documenting the case of an old lady who committed suicide on Christmas Eve. As they've been doing for a while now Morris ends things with an a capella version of Mr Blue Sky. This is the kind of band that needs to be on the Sleaford Mods support list. There is no more room in this life for indie landfill, bored rock, prima donna wank guitarist who think that their next big break is just around the corner. Give us the Ceramic Hobs and Makakarooma and their ilk and leave that tired indie shit to the students and the sales reps.

But I digress.

JB Barrington is the Manchester poet I last saw supporting Sleaford Mods in Hebden Bridge. He’s John Cooper Clark crossed with a Tourettes afflicted Tom O’Connor. His best poem is his first which is about greed and the predictability of everything being done for moneys sake [ever wondered why your local’s now a Tescos Express, ever wondered why wars are always fought in oil rich countries..’]. At Hebden Bridge he got heckled by a feminist who took exception to him using the ‘C’ word in a derogatory manner and like all pros its now in his set. As is the odd gag and biting social observations. And after a short fifteen minutes worth Andrew Fearn appears with his laptop.


Witnessing the rise of Sleaford Mods is a new one for me. The kind of bands I take to normally wander around in the darkened corridors of obscurity until they eventually die of disinterest or boredom all while making horrible noises. To see Sleaford Mods being praised in the media, selling out tours and most importantly, making the most relevant music this country has heard since the early 80’s gives me a warm feeling inside that can only be replicated by several brandies and cat videos on Youtube. I’ve never been to a gig before where people recite sections of lyrics to each other whilst making their way from the venue. Something is happening here. In several fleeting years Sleaford Mods have quickly risen from obscure label curiosity to arguably the most important band in the country. In fact, take away the arguably, I can think of no other band that are as culturally relevant at a time where, as a country, we are staring down the barrel of another five years of Tory governance. Is it too much of an exaggeration to say that we could be at the start of something big here?  Two blokes and a laptop are making 99% of music being made today sound irrelevant. And that's because it is. Our airwaves are a constant stream of spongy blobs of nothingness, servers are crammed with the meaningless twaddle of dilettantes, ears are filled with the inconsequential drivel of faded rock stars, socialites, wannabee’s and never will be’s, people so far detached from the comings and goings of ordinary people, so surrounded by a constant coterie of fawning acolytes and blind fans that they mistake what they do for worth. It has no worth. It is worth-less.   

Sleaford Mods have taken a sharp axe to the tree of rock and have felled it before our very eyes shitting on the stump as they do so, ’twenty five years its taken me to get here and its fucking shit’ croaks Willaimson. As they come out for their three song encore the real juice of the evening is in the second and new track ‘Tarantula’, a more mellower offering from the new album that, if I got this right, is about those poor bastards risking life and limb aboard leaky boats trying to escape misery and tyranny. How many bands do you know writing songs about that?

That Williamson manages to get to the end of the quick hours worth of a gig is a miracle of sorts. I half expect his voice to just disappear, his jaw going up and down with nothing but the odd squeak emerging. The full house at the Brudenell wouldn’t have given a toss. They’d have swept the pair up carried them through the street of LS6 like kings aloft singing Jolly Fucker and Tweet, Tweet, Tweet and any other of what are now becoming classics until they came across a slop shop and bought them curry and beer until the sun came up.

If I’ve learnt one thing over the years its that you can rid yourself of writers block by writing about Dr Steg. Because, as some of you may have noticed, this thing, this thing that I do [I don’t particularly like the word ‘blog’ but it serves a purpose], this thing that I do that I, and others, sometimes call ‘a blog’, is a definite hit and miss affair. Words wise I mean. And I dare say quality, though I rarely re-read anything I write leaving the thing [that thing again] up there for eternity and history to judge, use and abuse.

I’ve been giving the blog [blog bog fucking bog] some serious thought of late. Again. A serious rethink is once more underway. This after I realised I’d painted myself into the corner of a room by foolishly promising I’d review everything I got sent and not only that, reviewing everything I got sent after listening to it in great depth. And then I get sent a CD/DVD/CD-ROM/BOOK from Gruenrekorder thats a pean to a remote island off the Canadian coast or somewhere equally remote that I have to admit to not taking much interest in due to being overcome with the enormity of a task that involves not only reading a 300 page book but taking in a DVD that contains hours of field recordings and an interactive CD-Rom that no doubt contains instructions for making toggles. I just don’t have the time fellas. I’ll send you it back I promise.

And then I found myself thinking, but I’m just reviewing the same stuff over and over again. Only a fool would complain at getting sent vinyl from the [genuflects in all directions] Taming Power and I’m not going to here but there’s only so much I can say about something no matter how good it is. My biggest fear is being sent the same thing over and over again and trying in vain to find a gear with which to start the brain moving. Thats not to say I don’t enjoy listening to the stuff I get sent its just that the mere thought of having to critique whilst listening is now spoiling my enjoyment of the listening experience. I’m getting to the stage in life where actually not thinking about what I’m listening to is becoming the more preferable option. Gone now are the days where I used to sit with pen and paper, nib poised as the needle hit the record and within instants the words would appear. Perhaps I have the onset of early dementia? My brain is definitely on the dip and for evidence you only have to ask Mrs Fisher about the numerous instances in which I’ve clear forgotten the one thing it was I was supposed to remember. Whatever it was.

So here I am once more thinking up things to say about Dr Steg. But here its about what you see and read [although he did enclose a couple of OKOK Society releases in with his latest package that I’ve been listening to all night and which have stirred such memories of days of yore that I feel as if I’ve been transported back in time to 1994 - more on these later perhaps - after much not thinking]. With Dr Steg its about what the eye sees and in this instance its a Dr Steg postcard showing a picture of someone called Brindley Dummett, a fold out poster of sort thats folded like a Hayler-esque Barrel Nut Zine, a small sketch book that looks as if it was a pictorial diary of a visit to Paris in 2002 and another of Dr Steg’s surreal diaries in which he doffs his cap to the likes of Viv Stanshall and Michael Bentine.

This wasn’t the only things he sent me. Resplendent upon the walls of Idwal Towers there now resides yet another Dr Steg canvas. Given the title ‘Redundant Teeth of the Afterlife’ said canvas depicts the words ‘IDWAL FISHER’ as made from children’s toy plastic letters atop a construct of various oddities including a half set of false teeth, animal bones, kids toys and other detritus as no doubt found on Dr Stegs many travels around the west coast of the north of England and his home environs. To say that I was honored to receive such work is an understatement of a magnitude measurable on the Richter scale. In my many years of being sent review items, books, records, and  CDFUCKINGDVDFUCKINGCD-ROMFUCKINGBOOK box sets and Filthy Turd releases wrapped in rancid fried rice this work of art tops the lot. I may have rare records lurking on the shelves here that I didn’t pay for and accepted in lieu of a review and are now probably worth sums that will one day bolster my rather piss poor pension pot but this picture, this work of art this ‘Redundant Teeth of the Afterlife’ I will treasure until my dying day. It will be there on the wall of my sheltered accommodation, my care home, it will sit atop my coffin as the thing disappears in to the flames to the sound of Roy Harper’s mournful ‘When an old Cricketer Leaves the Crease’. Its ashes will become mine as they’re shot into the sky inside a Standard Fireworks rocket Hunter S Thompson stylee.

It goes without saying that I am a fan of Dr Steg’s work. The man himself is as unpredictable as sweaty dynamite. I’ve bumped into him at a couple of Smell & Quim gigs and he’s by far been the drunkest person in the room - no mean feat at a Smell & Quim gig. At the Gullivers gig in Manchester he nearly got the place shut down after waving a dagger about and declaring that the Green Room was toast [said dagger was actually a Steg spray painted letter opener cum blade with no edge to be used as a Smell & Quim prop but nobody was really paying that much attention and when a drunken lunatic comes at you waving something like that the details get lost]. When I saw him at the Sleaford Mods gig in Blackpool he was already reeling drunk by about 7pm and spent the entire gig either dancing like a fool or covering himself, the furniture and the walls in stickers that carried this blog’s url [the calls never came]. I later found out that he made it home via a casino where he lost all his money and an all night garage whereupon he fell into a point of sale display.

He’s good at getting the words flowing again too.

Southwark Mental Health News 127 
w/ Continuity Mad Pride v/a CD. 1000 copies

Made with the help of a £750 grant from the South London & Maudsley Trustees ‘Smile’ fund this Continuity Mad Pride various artists CD defied all my expectations and turned out to be actually rather good. In a ‘all the way through good’. Well most of it anyway. I’ve had these Mad Pride CD’s through my hands before and I don’t remember the others being as … um ... cohesive. Perhaps time has erased some of my grey blobs of remembrance but nope I don’t think I was as royally entertained by Continuity Mad Pride as I was with the others.

I played it through twice while making comments to myself along the lines of of well whodathunkit, theres me liking a UNIT track [mainly because it had a William Burroughs sample on it], and there’s Hiroshima Yeah! zines head cheese Mark Ritchie hovering between greatness and busker like someone doing a bad Leonard Cohen cover but it actually sounding better than Laughing Len himself. His voice has that really sad ache to it that gets you right there. There. And there’s Jim MacDougall who was last seen being arrested somewhere no doubt, probably for popping bank windows or somesuch and Fes Parker [R.I.P.] with a rollicking The History. Of course I don’t know who half of these people are but what struck me was the way they’d created sounds that went down my earhole and reached my brain without me having to make pained expressions of the kind that has one side of my mouth going higher than the other making one eye shut in a grimace.

And then the CD refused to play. No doubt some Mad Pride hidden agenda designed to turn you in to frothy mouthed UKIP voter. I played it on my PC and the third time I inserted it into its slot the little pointy thing just went down all the tracks in split second and stopped. So I took it out and rubbed it on my sleeve and put it back in but no, it was no more. But I do remember being held in thrall by The Ceramic Hobs ‘33 Trapped Chilean Miners’. A single from last year that I'm most familiar with and is without doubt the track that has the biggest ‘what the fuck’ factor. That the Hobs continue to record such remarkable rock churn with little in the way of recognition remains one of life’s mysteries. We live in hope.

Of the rest I’m relying on memory. It seemed to get spacier as it went along of that there is no doubt, was the last track by Esther Leslie a poetry reading as given to a Dada inspired parp band? I think it may have been. The Astronauts rocked it. Thank you Mr Astronaut. Alternative TV. You know about them. And DJ Unfit For Work. Come on down your time is nigh.

Southwark Mental Health News itself is an A4 paper zine of sorts containing lots of information as regarding drop in centers, gigs, marches, help groups and the dodgy Braham Kumaris pseudo religious cult who believe that the world is going to end soon [now theres a surprise] and that only India will be left standing [yawn], theres a cartoon strip about Raffy the psychiatric Labrador, a lengthy piece entitled Capitalism Is Bad For Your Health by Robert Dellar, a small review section and an appreciation of Nikki Sudden, some poems, thats about it. The only thing I cant tell you is how to get hold of a copy seeing as how these are given away to the artists and those members of the Southwark Association for Mental Health. You could try their website.


Southwark Mental health

Or their FB page

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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 ...


http://www.lenkalente.com/products

Time

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.

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

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/

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.

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.