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Saturday 17 August 2019

Bagman - Men Who Solicit Sex.


Bagman – Men Who Solicit Sex – Black Psychosis – Cassette – 2019 – Black16.

A1. Men Who Solicit Sex Part I
A2. Men Who Solicit Sex Part II.
B1. Will.
B2. Men Who Solicit Sex Part III.
B3. Men Who Solicit Sex Part IV.



I sometimes think I am a bit Power Electronics lightweight; I feel tend to favour stuff from the personal, ambiguous perspective – I support, but I don’t fully engage. Then I remember that I listen to Bagman, I have loads of Bagman and Stark, I buy whatever he releases. This makes me realise I am a heavyweight listener as Bagman is the acid test, a Northern England one-man Hell. If you were playing Power Electronics Top Trumps, the Bagman card would annihilate most of the other cards of artists then and now.  

Men Who Solicit Sex begins with samples of news reports of women smuggled into the country and then forced to work as sex workers. News samples, recordings of sex workers introduce every track. All Harsh Noise Hell breaks out, this is a horrible eruption that is as raw as it gets. It’s as if he is saying “Never mind cool labels, deluxe vinyl, here, have some hell on a cassette.” This is just bass heavy blasts and roared vocals and sharp frequencies making a vile racket. Men Who Solicit Sex Part II uses a more juggling synth sound, again deep, bass heavy as the vocal is distorted beyond coherence, sharp frequencies tinged with distortion cut in. The vocal has more to say, it’s sharp as if quoting depictions or re-enactments of incidents. The simple display of synthesiser is more disturbing than the vocal and samples, I am not sure if I love or hate it – juggly jug, juggly jug, juggly jug… can’t remove that from my head.  

Will is more Alpha male Synthesizer demonstrations, Powerful drones and cut-up vocals intertwine; the vocal is distorted beyond being remotely coherent. Overpowering drones wade in to dominate everything, the noise annihilates itself a lot here - the vocal is ace.

The fourth Men Who Solicit sex is a complete noise explosion, the vocal is sharp, yet cut up and distorted; this time it borders on inhuman. The noise is full and massive as if using Harsh Noise Wall abuse but allowing things to come through frequently. Pulsations of sound occur frequently here; the sound judders a lot – this makes for a more effective explosion. The final Men Who Solicit Sex is infected and whispered as if poisoning your mind. As the sound drags and feedback tweaks in, the intensity rises, slowly, repeatedly and consistently. The low-end drones enter, things grow, threaten more and more. This is a prime example of lower end noise abuse.

Men Who Solicit Sex is social commentary at its very best. Roleplay and reality are mixed for maximum effect. I am off to try forgetting about this and will probably have nightmares in the process. Still my Top Trump card though.

Choppy Noodles 2019.

#Inner Demons Records 4. Loss - She,Zombie.


Loss – She, Zombie – 3” CDR/Download – Inner Demons Records – IN0020 – 2017 https://innerdemonsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/she-zombie-ind020

1.  She, Zombie.
2.  Dead Dreams.


This disc was part of the recent, epic Inner Demons package that I recently received. This one threw me; I was expecting straight up noise or HNW when I put it on but got something totally different. Loss is a Dan Fox project that has been active since 2004.

She, Zombie uses a looped sample of a female voice from a film I assume, this never stops, as a melodic bass line plays in the background, the bass throws me back to the 1980s work of Plecid. The use of atmospheric noise shifts to melodic keyboard drones as the work progresses. The male vocal sample that takes over is rich and expressive, the noise has become delicate, atmospheric electronica as if the soundtrack to loss and sadness. As the female voice returns it’s warped more and more as the track nears its end, it becomes androgynous and more incoherent as the music gradually floods it, drowning it slowly. Only feedback is left.

Dead Dreams is esoteric in comparison to She, Zombie’s warped soundtrack, except this has aggressive electronica and beats. The use of melody is powerful and emotive. Dead Dreams contrasts upbeat rhythm to the slowness of the opening track yet ties in through the style of electronics. This is a much shorter track, but equally rich and evocative.

This release certainly grabbed me, I was impressed by the usual, strong Inner Demons presentation and strength of the work presented. Both tracks are great and worthy of purchase.

Choppy Noodles 2019.

Loscil - Equivalents


Album: Equivalents
Artist: Loscil
Label: Kranky
Catalogue no: KRANK221

Tracklist:
     1.      Equivalent 1
     2.      Equivalent 3
     3.      Equivalent 6
     4.      Equivalent 5
     5.      Equivalent 2
     6.      Equivalent 8
     7.      Equivalent 7
     8.      Equivalent 4



My only other encounter with Loscil (aka Canadian Scott Morgan) has been with his 2011 album for Glacial Movements Records, Coast/Range/Arc, which I haven’t heard in an age (it’s in some box somewhere, remaining unpacked since we moved some years ago). Fortunate it was, then, that notice of this release came up on a Facebook group feed and in consequence my reacquaintance with this project is most welcome.

Eight tracks of deep glacial ambient and all numbered out of sequence; I can’t say why that may be, but I suspect there’s no particular reason behind the move. Then again it could just simply be that, after having composed the pieces and naming them, the artist decided that the suite as a whole flowed better in this way.

One thing that I can say without fear of contradiction is that this is an absolutely scintillating album, an exhibition of canvases depicting a multitude of moods and perceptions, ephemeral and long-lasting, shifting mists of ideas and concepts, some delineated more fully than others with some overt and others subliminal. Above all though is that it provides a metaphorical magic carpet ride, that it simultaneously energises and elucidates, that it informs us of new perspectives and points of view. It takes us on a trip through icy landscapes, through vertiginous chasms, and snow-covered alpine ranges. The air is clear here, unsullied and pure, the snow below us is completely unmarked, and the presence of man is minimal. It soars and flies gracefully and effortlessly, sometimes exhilaratingly skimming over ground and at others lifting us up above the clouds. It’s an enlightening aural experience, in the sense that it shines a torch on the beautiful wilderness below, a pristine kingdom of unblemished majesty and splendour.

Highlights for me include ‘Equivalent 1’, a slow, meandering kayak ride through high-sided gulleys and gorges on crystal waters, enlivened by waterfalls tumbling from the heights above, foam and rainbow-tinted spray hanging as if suspended in a moment of time. The sky is pure azure, without a cloud marring its gem-like clarity.

‘Equivalent 5’, a dizzying flight through the stratosphere amongst angelic visions and voices, an epiphanic experience bringing with it an intense clarity of connection with the natural world below. It’s almost as if the breath of Gaia can be heard, and its beating heart felt – a breathtaking and invigorating vision that transcends all boundaries and melts away unnatural classifications. ‘Equivalent 7’ is a slowly unfolding drone interspersed with gentle waves of icy-clear counterpoint, a pulsating, living, ebbing and flowing of time and movement. And to close out, a meditative trance-inducing drone floats in on wings of gossamer on ‘Equivalent 4’, and this time the journey focuses on the inward trip, and we become aware of ourselves and our connections to the endless flows of life and the patterns that keep the world in motion and ever-evolving. It’s a restful track to end on, an appropriate punctuation mark to conclude both the album and our explorations with – a fitting emphasis on the essential cycles of energy that ensure that the world and its systems continue working.

A triumph of an album: a painterly depiction of spectacular land- and mindscapes, a mesmerising flight through the frozen beauties of otherworldly places in the isolated regions of our home planet where the influence of man is still very limited. It stirs the imagination and the pulse, sparking off visions of incomprehensibly dazzling vistas, and staggeringly magnificent natural wonders. At a time when we’re becoming more and more aware of the fragility of the delicate balance between the systems helping to support the world and our ignorant interactions with them, this is perhaps an opportune reminder that we must keep fighting and acting.

Bedazzling.

Available as a download, CD, and a double vinyl album from here:


Psymon Marshall 2019. 

Car Made of Glass - Every Song is a Good Song.


Album: Every Song is a Good Song
Artist: Car Made of Glass
Label: Montgomery Street Records
Catalogue no: lola021

Tracklist:
     1.      Running on a Discontinuous Circuit
     2.      The Road
     3.      Infant Mind
     4.      Experiments in Bluetooth Technology
     5.      Wind Brushes C



Judging by this, Fortuna, California five-piece Car Made of Glass have a very simple philosophy: if an object, process, or action can make a sound, it can be used to make music with. That idea is evidenced on this latest recording, listing as it does things like amplified glass, raw meat in scalding pan, light-switches, and straw and water, amongst other inventive uses of unusual instrumentation. And yes, this is another one of those exploratory journeys I sometimes make to the margins of the margins of the musical non-mainstream, as I believe everyone needs to stray outside their comfort zones on occasions.

You’ve probably guessed that this is a highly experimental suite of compositions, and you’d be right. Right from the off randomly bouncing beads of glass tinkle in scattershot fashion, crackling and reverberating like tiny little explosions, minute fireworks detonating into multitudinous colours and hues in a weeping, mournful sky. ‘The Road’ starts off sparklingly with individually-strummed acoustic guitar chords against a backdrop of dustiness, a quiet hot summer day on some long, lonely desert road, heat shimmer rising off the black-top, and the radio struggling to find a station. Static and voices, slide guitar, and the slow, ticking crackling of heat expansion underscore the vast empty spaces of this landscape, sweltering under a merciless sun. Then, finally, the colours leech out, and everything burns away into a blanket of white.

‘Infant Mind’ is a strange concoction, a splattering noisiness backing up a solo saxophone (I normally hate this instrument, but here it adds a wonderfully ghostly presence to the track) accompanied by piano tinkling and jazz drums. A late summer evening, the heat of the day cooling off, drinks under the stars, and flirtatious strangers. This has minute echoes of The Caretaker about it: perhaps a fractured memory of an evening long ago, when life was sweet and easy, things were perhaps simpler, and new possibilities seemed endless.

The next track, ‘Experiments in Bluetooth Technology’, is the loosest and most freeform of all the pieces on here, and does exactly what it says on the tin (to coin a phrase). Staccato blasts of random snippets of electronics, noise, music, and voices splash, crash, and dash, garnished with slabs of white noise, bleeps, squeaks, bells, rattlings, and all manner bits and bobs. It’s that radio still struggling to find a station with a clear and strong enough signal. It’s also alien in some inexplicable way, a glimpse of a world or environment that’s unfamiliar to most of us.

Distant creakings and scratchings open ‘Wind Brushes C’, sounds heard while one is half-asleep and still dreaming, a disorientating, confusing hypnogogic vision inspired by the real world. It’s infused with high summer heat and dust, and the skittering and chattering of chitin-shelled creatures scuttling around unseen in subterranean tunnels, their business unfathomable and secretive. More than that, the space is unending from horizon to horizon, with little to break up the monotony. The colours here are muted and sandy, with only the blue bowl above providing any distraction for the eye.

What this collection does particularly well is spark off images, painting vistas and panoramas with minute detail and their associated atmospheres. It focuses on the small within the large: we experience it on the human level, and yet it still tells us that we’re standing in an inhumanly flat and endless prospect, reducing us to nothing more than an insignificant mote. It’s humbling and terrifying: when faced with seemingly limitless horizons we retreat into ourselves, defocusing and magnifying what’s directly in front of us or on the ground.

It’s a distinctly accessible album – it’s not out and out avant-garde thrashings and bashings, or difficult for difficulty’s sake. While it’s not musical in the sense of having recognisable tunes or melody either, it is very musical in that it elicits moods and feelings, and inspires the imagination. I will definitely be listening to this one again – there’s just something sparkling winding its way through the veins of invention here, allied to a truthfulness and clarity, all facets that appeal to me.

Available as a limited (50 copies) CDr from either of these links:

Psymon Marshall 2019.