Animals & Men #2

Have just spent a pleasant while listening to the latest release from Animals & Men, the 10" EP "To Live And Die In The West Country". That's right ... new release after many many years. When bands from the old days (that's late 70's early 80's to you and me) reform the news always comes with a sense of trepidation, a sigh of "oh dear" ... but with Animals & Men there's no need to worry - they have kept their sound (they have kept their line-up), they have returned with a no nonsense hi-fi lo-production classic EP that sounds as if it could have been released in 1979. The sound has a live studio feel with hardly any instrument separation or overdubs and no cymbals were struck in the making of this EP.
Four tracks that kick off with "Easy Riding", a sense of motorik, chugging blues .. "Living on planet' easy" followed by "I Never Worry", a live favourite from 1982. Discordant guitar strikes with a Wire-esque bass line and a catchy chorus. Great stuff. Side Two opens with the longest piece on the EP "Oh Death! (Traditional)". Description: Think of Neu or Guru Guru jamming with Young Marble Giants and you won't be far away from the sound. Vocals way down the mix and at times incoherent. Susan Wells has a similar style  / voice to Alison Stratton. "Just A Dot" ends the EP. A little power-pop paean that (I think) needs a scuzz guitar running low in the mix throughout ... but...it sounds like a Swell Maps song (without the scuzz guitar running low in the mix throughout).
I like this release, it takes me back to a time when I was innocent and happy. It is sing-a-long and dancey.
Hopefully Animals & Men will do some live dates to promote this release. It is on their own Radstock Records imprint. Contact ralphjmitchard(at)aol.com to get a copy. (I have no idea how many have been pressed).

Dieter Muh Live In Paris & London 2010.

A release of live performance recordings made in London & Paris 2010 is imminent through Hanson Records. Details to follow.

VipCranco

Whilst sat here getting ready to type this blog I thought I'd slip on the compilation CD "Throne" recently put together by Cold Spring Records. It starts with a track by Iron Fist Of The Sun which is so bloody awful I cannot believe that Cold Spring don't have some sort of quality control ... Unbelievable .. and anyway I am not here to to tell of my personal dislikes but to talk of VipCranco.
With VipCranco I know I am somewhat late to the party but it was only in June this year that Chris Groves of Cipher Productions introduced me to their sound. I have given my thoughts on their release via Cipher earlier this month .. Bowled over with their sound I have now bought two more albums .. courtesy of Cold Spring Records. (They have a summer sale on at the moment and there are bargains to be bagged).
"Xax" was released five years ago and is their first release on their own imprint Lisca Records. I know little of VipCranco and their output as there is very little written on the Internet, but I do know that they are an Italian quartet. "Xax" is a great album, very hard to categorise and quite unlike the ritual drone of the eponymous Cipher Productions cassette. The sound across the six tracks (three a side) is mainly ampnoise and frequencies. I can here radio dial doodling and the distant humming of bass guitar strings but the main construct is ampnoise and (controlled) feedback. It is not claustrophobic but it certainly has a boundary - I know that I am in a room with the sound. I (almost) get a sense that the pieces are scored. Classical Musique Concret. (CMC as we say in the trade). Think Alvin Lucier, Peter Appleton and Annie Gosfield. The "Noise In Your Eye" installations that were travelling the UK thirty or so years ago - that sound is all in "Xax".
The pieces have excellent titles too; "Blue Mastitis", "C5-C6", "The End Is Endless Strife" - which has such weird frequency shifts that it wouldn't sound out of place on the "Berbarian Sound Studio" soundtrack. "Xax" closes with the electronic sandstorm "Uncoloured Future".
It's a brilliant LP to play alongside "Afflicted Man Musica Box" and anything by Grey Park.
As mentioned, I managed to pick up a copy from Cold Spring Records (the "Throne" CD has picked up a little thanks to Boyd Rice covering David Bowie), or try Discogs. (There's no contact address on the LP).

MuhMur SoundArt Radio Broadcast : 22/08/2013.

What a difference a day makes, as I sit and type this the rain is lashing against the front windows of Hartop Towers, dark rumbling skies and wet socks after just nipping out to the off license to top with Belgiums finest. Yesterday was radio show day and Tamsin and I took the kids for an early evening picnic in the grounds of Dartington Hall. Glorious sunshine!
Tonights programme featured exclusive material from ARKHE. The latest project of Andreas Johansson. Andreas used to perform and release under the name of Pestdemon and the "session" features an unreleased track from that period. High quality material for which I say Tack! Andreas. I hope you enjoy ...
Engineer Dave is on holiday in Aberdeen so SoundArt mainman Chris Booth sat in with me. It is his voice you can hear introducing the programme ... A little bit of the previous programme bleeds in to the mixcloud upload - some poetry live from a pub in the late 1970's ... sorry ... live from a pub in Totnes.

Playlist:
01 : Tibetan Red : "The Sistine Chapel" (Zanfonia) 2000.
02 : Arkhe : "Pagan Mechanisms" (Exclusive piece for MuhMur Radio).
03 : Arkhe : "Kryptovraklarn" (Solformorkelse) 2012.
04 : These Feathers Have Plumes : "Don't Wish Your Life Away" (Sheepscar Light Industrial) 2013.
05 : Andrew Chalk : "Vega #3" (Faraway Press) 2004.
06 : Soviet France : "Smocking Erde" (Charrm Records) 1990.
07 : Tribes Of Medusa : "Veil Of The Solstice" (Self Released) 2013.
08 : Arkhe : "Vrakloge" (Exclusive piece for MuhMur Radio).
09 : The Sodality : "They Never Learn" (Verba Corrige) 1994.
10 : Virgin Prunes : "Sandpaper Lullably" (Rough Trade Records) 1981.
11 : Pestdemon : "Hearse - Cold Air" (Exclusive piece for MuhMur Radio).
12 : The Country Teasers : "David I Hope You Don't Mind" (Fat Possum Records) 1999.
13 : Dieter Muh : "Bethlehem" (Live at London Slimelight. 2004).
14 : Arkhe : "We Have Borne Swords, We Know, Do We Not?" (Release The Bats) 2012.
15 : Gary Numan : "Cars" (Live in Santa Monica 1980).

The programme is uploaded on mix cloud. Copy & Paste.
*** www.mixcloud.com/muhsteve/muhmur-soundart-radio-broadcast-22082013/ ***
The next programme will be at 9pm on Thursday September 19th. SoundArt is having a "tech week" after covering the Totnes Festival, so there will be no programme on the 5th. The 19th will be the 23rd MuhMur Radio Programme and will feature exclusive material from Phil Julian.

Pictures:
1: In the DJ's chair. (Photo by Chris Booth).
2: Arkhe "Session".
3: Pre-Programme Picnic.

Ceramic Hobs

Have just spent a pleasant weekend listening to The Ceramic Hobs latest LP "Spirit World Circle Jerk" on Must Die Records. A strong contender for album of the year, but there's four months to go ...
A long time since a Hobs album release and this one carries on from where the 7" "33 Trapped Chilean Miners" left us. "Shergar" was polished - "Spirit World" is raw and how I like my Hobs.
It is the side long "Voodoo Party" that really gets me excited. A magickal mystery tour. It has cheesy muzak beginnings with tales of close encounters of the fourth kind and ends with reports of elementary school shootings in Connecticut and for fifteen or so minutes in-between is the work of sheer brilliance.
The construction of the album reminds me of Smell & Quim's "Spaceshit" with the segueing tapes cut ups and lounge lizard cocktail jazz moments ... "Voodoo Party" (as mentioned) starts with a radio phone-in from a woman who claims to have passed through a stargate and whilst this is happening there's a telephone conversation just out of earshot - memories of 'phone conversations with the mighty John Everall (although I know it's not). Rumblings as the machines awake to the beating of drums and beginning of a live improvised psyche-out "Hobs" style. (Copyright Hulme Crescent squat bands, 1986). Just as it starts it collapses and Jase Williams of Mothers Of The Third Reich blurts on the saxophone. "No, You're Going The Wrong Way" Live psychedelic rock-out with the kind of noise and quality that sucks you in to its vortex. The brain thinks of multi-coloured light show, strobes, smoke machines pumping out vanilla and strawberry clouds ... chant "Voodoo Party ... Voodoo Party" - turn the speakers to eleven and it gets very intense. Mushroom flashback. The voice of Elvis, there's a hurricane a-coming, Sandy Hook shootings...who's that telling me to smile and the world'll smile with me? Millicent Martin, Alma Cogan, Susan Boyle ...
Side A is made up of six tracks. I won't lie, I have been following the writings of ceramic head Simon Morris for a few years now. His words of wisdom and glorious insight and machinations of the world politic that appear on various Internet forum boards have kept me "tuned in". The tracks on Side A contain pearls of wisdom and word-play that take you in to Simon's world. "Say No, To" ... Child Witches .. The Devil .. "The Hong Kong Goolagong" is anthemic - I've been chanting it for the past few days ... who is John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt? "His name is my name too". Sections of "Voodoo Party" are revisited in title track, with acoustic twelve string and harmonies to rival Crosby, Stills & Nash .. or The Albion Dance Band. The side ends with "T.A. Death".  where Simon growls over a rough and raw 12 Bar Blues riff and tells us "I'll have your guts for garters".
It's one of those LP's where you play Side A and have to play Side B straight away and then Side B again. Give yourself a good hour and a few tins to listen to this.
The LP is limited to 250 copies and is packaged in an unique Dr. Steg silk screen print. Yeah, each LP is unique, not only in sound but in artwork too...Must Die Records have given The Ceramic Hobs a release they deserve.
Go to www.mustdierecords.co.uk and see if there's any left - you need to hear this LP, and (just to let you know) MDR are putting out an Astral Social Club 7" in a couple of weeks!

Picture.
1: Tamsin modelling the latest LP by The Ceramic Hobs!

The Dark. Outside. Galloway Forest. 2013.

 

Sunday August 31, 12pm - Sunday September 1, 12pm. Murrays Monument, The Galloway Forest.
Contributed an unreleased recording to this project: "As part of the Environmental Art Festival Scotland, 24 hours of music that nobody has ever heard before will be broadcast from noon to the Galloway Forest where nobody might be listening. The only way to hear ids to be there".

www.thedarkoutside.tumblr.com

VipCancro/Andrea Borghi

Very excited about this cassette. I do like hearing new projects / new sounds / fresh approaches etc and this has happened with VipCancro. I understand that they have been actively performing and releasing for quite a while, but this weekend I "discovered" them for myself. (Well, with a helping hand from Chris Groves of Cipher Productions). I remember (well) meeting a chap called Mick McDaid in Lincoln about 15/16 years ago and he introduced to me to a whole new sound with projects like  Inade, Column One, Origami Galaktika, Manipura and loads more  - listening to VipCranco reminds me of meeting Mick.
Chris kindly handed me this cassette when we met in Berlin in June. A clandestine meeting outside "Barbieworld" just off the Alexanderplatz. On returning I took the tape from its packaging and it had Velcro sticky pads on the cassette - if I put it in the cassette player it would have been stuck in there for ever! Now I know that Chris was getting bored of standard cassette package releases, but I thought this was maybe an "anti-cassette", one that would ruin my cassette player. So the cassette remained on the shelf in the gimp room at Hartop Towers. Last week I received a message from Chris saying that I could just peel the sticky-pad off and the tape'll play fine. The cassette comes packaged in a cut and bent old record with the information being the label of the vinyl. (see picture). The cassette is stuck with "industrial" Velcro inside the bent vinyl. Nice idea.
VipCranco are Italian. A quartet that release stuff on their own Lisca Records. I have no idea what VipCranco means - my computer tells me it is Galician, but that is about all. It does sound like Kip Keino who used to be a marathon runner for Kenya ... but I don't think that fact bears any relevance to the cassette. The cassette is a split release with VipCranco bass player Andrea Borghi. VipCranco's sound is of controlled feedback and amp noise. Straight away I am put in mind of Nurse With Wound and their "Soliloquy For Lilith" / "Homotopy For Marie" / "Spiralinsana" albums. Dark, ritual, subterranean (industrial) un-nerving ... classic stuff. Four pieces of magic. "Flutal" has eerie whale song loop and tiny tiny floating voices ..... real clever stuff, and after playing the latest These Feathers Have Plumes 3" Cdr I can hear similarities in sound.
I cannot recommend VipCranco enough and I am now going to hunt for their back catalogue!
As mentioned, Side two is Andrea Borghi, VipCranco member and founder of Lisca Records. Andrea presents more "noisier" pieces, tracks that venture in to HNW. (I think). Microphone feedback, heavy distortion and echo on stun. "Abort/Modifica 3" is slightly more minimalist but still with ampnoise and crackling electricity ... it has an air of abandonment ... and the final piece is far too long - but let's not dwell on side two - it is VipCranco that need listening too.
The tape is available from Cipher Productions www.iheartnoise.com/cipherproductions or google Lisca Records and brush up on your Italian - expect to hear on my radio programme soon.