BBBlood #6

This is a strange collaboration. It reminds me of one of those old "pay to play" type of releases that were quite prominent in the mid 1990's. Deluxe packaging, good presentation but two artists that shouldn't really be sharing the same release. Full marks to the label So I Buried Records for putting out quality BBBlood material, but I do think they should have waited for The Baron to provide enough material for a full CD album instead of splitting his work with Umez. Just a thought ...
It has been interesting, exciting (even) listening to the developing sound of BBBlood over the past three years, from bedroom blitz noise to intelligently structured aural sculpture.
Back in 2010 I saw BBBlood live performance in London where Paul Watson (aka The Baron) manipulated the sound of bubble wrap with a host of contact microphones and a plethora of effect boxes - that construction is featured on the opening track "Breath In The Fumes" .. along with hailstones on glass, and tape manipulation, and all recorded whilst his partner shuffles around the kitchen making breakfast! Well, that is hat it sounds like to these ears. "Mouse Trap" is musique-concret. AMM, Mark Durgan, The New Blockaders, Anima .. if you like the noises those artists produce then you should be listening to BBBlood.

Umez bring us three differing numbers. Songs. "Z-Fighters" isn't too bad. Listenable with a kind of The Residents vibe. The next two tracks are instrumentals. "Airship" is a badly recorded piece with multi-layered guitars, it sounds like Umez are desperately trying to find a "hit", a tune for a car advert or something. About ten years ago Dieter Muh played Bardens Boudoir in Stoke Newington, we were sharing the bill with Hair Police - also on the bill were a London based band called Cutting With Pink Knives. They moaned and groaned that they were "bottom of the bill"...they roamed the venue telling each other and their girlfriends that they were bigger and better than Dieter Muh and they should be "on" after us and not before. Dave and I agreed and went on first. Needless to say Cutting With Pink Knives were fucking awful, all guitar postures and nodding the head to wave the foppish hairstyles. Whatever happened to Cutting With Pink Knives? Ex members could be in Umez ...
After about fifteen minutes of silence after the last Umez track has mercilessly finished a "bonus" track appears. It has BBBlood in the left channel and Umez in the right and is quite simply maddening.

The release has to be listened to for the BBBlood tracks alone (mastered by the master masterer Phil Julian by the way), as I mentioned the label should be putting out full length albums by each artist, not this little samplerette - two projects searching for completely different goals. Perhaps BBBlood will put the tracks on a forthcoming "greatest hits" CD ...