The Mannequin Factory.

The Mannequin Factory – ST – CD and Digital – Sonic Entrails Records – 2019 - https://sonicentrails.bandcamp.com/

     ·        Mad as Hell 19

     ·        Feast.

     ·        I Found God.

     ·        Sentient.

     ·        Abdicate.

     ·        Black Stork.

     ·        The Wheel That Never Stops Turning.

     ·        Prisms and Palettes.

     ·        Carbon Jackboot.

     ·        Subliminal Sledgehammer.

     ·        Agents of Change.

The Mannequin Factory is made of musician John E. Smoke and Punk Poet Adam Probert. This is their debut album as Manequin Factory, Adam Probert has done several solo albums for the label and John E. Smoke has recorded for years as part of Flesh-Eating Foundation.

I’m immediately reminded of the story interludes on the Small Faces ‘Ogden Nut Gone Flake’ album, but with impressive social commentary added, this tends to be about the Austerity Cuts, Unemployment, Violence, Wars and the effects of Capitalism around the world. The warped electronics at an odd atmosphere to the already odd, expressive voice of Adam Probert, they provide a bleak landscape of sound for the vocal to build, models of our society on. I also find this a lot more persuasive than a lot of the Anarcho Punk I love through the clarity and sharp delivery.  As punk goes the vocal delivery is up there with Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys and Cruckifucks Doc Corbin Dark, this is rapper level articulation and rhythm.

At times the vocal and noise seem to explode to work together to create convincing expressions of hell, Feast is a prime example of this, the vocal rants at speed on the build ups to explosions. Vocalist and musician often seem to fire off each other. I found God allows Industrial beats and Blasts to do the work, the vocal is more affected here and doesn’t work as hard as it did on the previous tracks, it works better when it really takes the lead. The approach on the album is varied and the vocal does later adapt to the style and structure of each track to move from being purely spoken word to almost sung, the rhythm and timing are excellent. What sounds come from the voice also changes frequently.

There is an otherworldly surrealist approach to the album. The punk perspective seems to sit in the same world that the weirder parts of Crass came from via its’ experimental leanings with a Rudimentary Peni like lyrical, absurd view into other realities. I would call this a punk album, it incorporates Noise, Rhythmic Industrial and bits of Power Electronics, but it is the best punk album that I have heard in years.

Choppy Noodles 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:

https://carmadeofglass.bandcamp.com/

https://montgomerystreetrecords.bandcamp.com/album/every-song-is-a-good-song

Psymon Marshall 2019.

Switchblade Cheetah.

Switchblade Cheetah - Discography overview and interview.

Brian Pitt – Drums and Vocals also involved in (Neon Lushell)

Gregory Lee – Guitar, Bass, Keyboard and Vocals.

Select Discography.

Guns. Money. Bullets. Skulls. (2006)

Bone Gospel. (2010).

The Mellow Sounds of Switchblade Cheetah. (2011)

Trash Sucking High Heeled Scum – 2012?

Chapel of the Bitch (2016).

                                                                                                                                       

I was introduced to the sounds of Switchblade Cheetah around 2009 when their singer registered on an old Rozz Williams forum that I used to admin. He mentioned the band that he was in; Switchblade Cheetah. I checked the link and I was impressed by tracks that were on their Myspace. Over the years as Myspace died out and Facebook came to prominence and I’d lost touch with their music. I recently remembered them and started listening to them again. I finally started buying their albums from Zodiac Killer and Worker Bee Records, I was blown away by the impressive tracks and constant evolution from album to album.  I have done an overview of the output of this mysterious cult band as their discography is an essential for anyone wanting to hear forward thinking and original punk. 

Tallahassee, Florida based band Switchblade Cheetah evolved from an older band called Peppermint sometime around 2006. This led to their debut release ep: Guns. Money. Bullets. Skulls. Members are also involved in other bands including Neon Lushell and Smoke Mountain. Switchblade Cheetah belong in the camp of bands that believe keeping Rock and Roll dangerous and raw is the only real way it can be kept alive.

The Bone Gospel - self released (2010) 

This is one of the earliest releases containing all the tracks from their 2006 debut ep; Guns. Money. Bullets. Skulls. Those tracks are in a more stripped down Hardcore style. However, as the album progresses the bands garage punk and melodic sensibilities start to show, particularly on tracks like Feral Children and I--We-Lets scare Tracey to Death. This style doesn’t fully blossom until their next full length release.

The Bone Gospel is essentially a collection of early and later hardcore tracks; a selection of tracks where the band develops melody and harmony, some live tracks and demos. If the sections were separated into different discs or different releases it would more cohesive. The delivery of the live tracks is even more adrenaline charged, scummy and forceful than their output on record at this point. This demonstrates Switchblade’s effectiveness as a live act and successfully charts their artistic growth- no doubts there. 

Trash Sucking High Heeled Scum - Zodiac Killer Records (2012) 

This still offers traces of hardcore but it is morphed into an odd proto- Punk, adrenaline fueled garage rock. But things also move into just keyboard and vocal tracks like ‘Bag of Bones’ and ‘Slaughter High’. ‘Hair of the Goat’ and ‘That’s OK’ are tracks that really do up the ante and show glimpses of progression into the next album’s aesthetic. A real knowledge of the wider pre-punk roots of Rock and Roll coupled with an excellent sense of melody and harmony is demonstrated on High Heeled Scum. 

The occult/ horror film imagery on the cover adds a blackened sense of danger to the album. This is Scum rock with a 1960s-garage aesthetic, pure talent delivered through lo-fi methods washed over with fuzz and waves of distortion. This is the album that sets Switchblade apart from their peers.

Chapel of the Bitch Workerbee Records (2016)

Four years later we see Switchblade Cheetah immersed fully in a blackened 60’s influenced psychedelia. The darkness of earlier records is fully and maturely infused into the new sound. Chapel knows how the 60s ended, there is no wide-eyed optimism, or hip simulation, only a journey through the dark underbelly of the 60s that would ultimately lead to the end of the decade’s innocence. The Cheetah is our guide through Acid Masses and Blood Baths that ultimately portray the landscape of The Chapel of the Bitch.

Chapel’s 13 songs make this a lot shorter than other Switchblade albums and says goodbye to the days of Lo-fi. This is a shining example of Switchblade Cheetah’s vision fully realized to its most effective standards so far. Chapel of the Bitch stands as the bands absolute high point and was well worth the wait. 

Interview with Switchblade Cheetah:

Choppy:  What prompted you to become Switchblade Cheetah from the Glampunk of Peppermint, were there any similarities in sound or was SC a totally new start in style?

Switchblade Cheetah:  Peppermint was essentially nothing more than a misguided attempt to score a record deal. We didn't enjoy doing it, and all the recordings have been destroyed. Switchblade Cheetah was formed in response to that bad experience.

Choppy: Early on you had a kind of fractured hardcore sound, but on the first album The Bone Gospel it begins to disintegrate, melody and harmony begins to enter the picture. What influences and personal changes caused this.

SC: I think Cheetah's early sound was mainly an attempt to distance ourselves from our previous band. Not long after the release of our first EP, we actually started to feel just as limited as we did in our previous band. I think it was around this time that we started to open up and incorporate more melody into our sound. We've both always been into melodic music, and Cheetah's early stuff is actually the sound of a band attempting to repress its natural melodic impulses. The later music is more representative of who we really are.

C: What were your lyrical influences and themes, were they personal or based around other influences? I am particularly thinking of Chapel of the Bitch and High Heeled Trash Sucking Scum.

SC:  Trash Suckin' is obviously all over the place musically, and is probably the best representation of our different influences, which range from classic country like the Louvin Brothers to early punk and lo-fi stuff. Chapel is almost exclusively a result of our love for 60s garage rock and psychedelia, although we do jump around a bit on that album as well.

C: How often have you played live, what has the reception been like?

SC: It's been several years since we played live, but we generally got a good reaction...at least from the people who didn't walk out. The shows were not very audience-friendly, in fact, one of our main purposes of playing live was to berate the hipsters in attendance. In addition, our live shows were comically intense, to the point that Brian suffered several on-stage injuries during our short playing career.

C:  I see you kinda rooted in Scum Rock, on stage injuries is testament to this, but you are essentially progressive, your discography constantly evolves and shifts. Where do you want to take Switchblade Cheetah, at this point about half a year since the album's release, where do you want to go as a band?

SC:  Our primary focus right now is Smoke Mountain, but Chapel is a good representation of the direction Cheetah is headed.

C: You mentioned you have another band; Smoke Mountain, do you see this as a separate project or a side wards way of evolving Switchblade Cheetah? Also does Neon Lushell have any influence on Switchblade?

SC:  Smoke Mountain is a completely separate project, but we think Cheetah fans will dig it. It's heavily influenced by 70s doom metal. All I can really say about Neon Lushell is that its in a world of its own. I'd definitely recommend it if you like Cheetah's stranger stuff.

 

Choppy Noodles 2016

Links:

Workerbee Records website.  
Switchblade Cheetah Bandcamp 
Switchblade Cheetah Facebook 
Zodiac Killer Records