Pre-Update Update> Bits

The next Total Vermin batch, including releases from Vampire Blues, Bolide, Fordell Research Unit, Core of the Coalman, Acrid Lactations, Lovely Honkey, Hard Pan and Hobo Sonn, Smear Campaign, Pascal Nichols and Stuart Arnot, a reissue of the Ashtray Navigations disc, and maybe a couple of extra things, will be with us some time in April. Meanwhile, here are a few things from other labels that are available now.

Smear Campaign - "Rapunzel, Let Down Your Guard" pifho015 C35 £4



The first part of the Rapunzel trilogy. I shall now quote PIFHO's blog, a quote which includes a quote from this blog:

First part of the "Rapunzel" trilogy (apparently "there is an intricate concept and a narrative arc, but for the moment let's leave it at 'Futuro-Mediaevalism'"), the third of which, "Rapunzel Let Down My Tyres" is already available on SC's excellent Total Vermin label - http://totalvermin.blogspot.com/ - and the second, "...Mother", is forthcoming on Beartown records - http://www.beartownrecords.com/.

Side 1 here is an emotional rollercoaster, long-since abandoned to vandalism and rust, which has been coaxed by feral youths into one final journey along the only remaining section of track between foreboding and despair, while side 2 features, among other things, what appears to be a thoroughly researched historical re-enactment of the infamous drum machine mutiny of 1986 at Roland Corporation headquarters.

Side A

1. Cadaver Palaver

2. "The Gag! The Gag!"

3. Archimedes' Mirror Self-Tan

Side B

1. Act 2: Snivelling Pissabed Enters

2. Conduit Locknuts, Loops and Nipples

3. Disco, Bald and Chain'd

4. A Warning to the Gable-Ended

The Piped-In From Head Office blog also has a wee listen-before-you-buy of the tape's weakest track. Enjoy!

Various "Winners Don't Shiver" (#2) pifho016 cdr £4

Thoroughly good compilation of which I have a few copies, thanks to tracks by The Gamecock and Acrid Lactations being included...

I'm too lazy to review the contents myself, but Graham isn't:

They are loved, loathed, feared, despised and even worshipped; human beings whose appearances and natures often conspire to defy that very description. We call them freaks. We have exhibited them, exploited them, applauded them, laughed at them and, sometimes, shut them far away from the world...

Nackt Insecten “Dead Good Song”
The Gamecock “The Gila Myth Made Flesh”
Andrew Perry “The Mistake”
Acrid Lactations “Confess! Hapless Monkling”
Boom Edan “Hey Come Here”
Tripping Landlocked Infidels “With Spleen in Pocket”
Helhesten “Blue Steel Burned Off”
Hobo Sonn “Hydro-electric”
C.A.G. “Man Daby Vestibule for Pre Kluxen Serenade”
Johnny Scarr “Circular Hillage”
Bad Orb “Monobassatron”
CK Dexter Haven “Sightless Insects Chew Barnacled Rope”
Ananas Pyramidalis “Lytchett Lipshit”
Solipstink “Bogey Nights”
Kunstlusk “Everyone in Norway Loves This Climbing Mouse”

Well, maybe a bit too lazy.

The Gamecock - In the Slippery Grip of an Homunculus' Hand cassette (Cthirty-something, I think) Golden Lab Records ROWF21 £4



Here's a description of The Gamecock by my cohort in that band, Nick Mitchell:

Duo of Stuart Arnot (Smear Campaign; Plum Slate) and Nick Mitchell (Beach Fuzz; A Wake). They play a kind of arrhythmic, un-danceable funk of high-end frequencies and low-end drum machines, fed through a wah-wah and rammed forcefully into the listener’s cerebral cortex. Pitch-shifted casio crap and unadorned Roland Juno shimmer are melded to form what is at once both sweet and listenable and yet still, somehow, horribly repellant. Sitting somewhere uncomfortably, painfully and way away from the hypnogogic pop bandwagon, where the drum machines have bronchitis and the synthesizers sneeze, they are brutally loud, joyfully all-consuming and epic in their prolongation of the crescendo.

I warn any Wagner or Godspeed You Black Emperor! or Mogwai fans that may have stumbled across this quaint little corner while shopping for nazi memorabilia or eyeliner or tracksuits or whatever that there are NO CRESCENDI in The Gamecock. Don't fall for Mr Mitchell's wee joke. If there were, we'd be releasing this stuff on 220g vinyl or DVD-A or something. Probably should read something like this:

...epic in their post-production employment of amounts of compression that would make the folk who make advertising jingles for local radio blush.

That may be something of an exaggeration, but it the prevarication may have prevented me from having to offer up a genuine alternative description of the material herein. I seem to remember thinking that it is, perhaps, The Gamecock's best tape.

POST-SCRIPT

Feeling inadequate after the above evasion of duty, I have had a listen to 'In the Slippery...' and will now share my thoughts. Contrary to my previous claims, two of the five tracks include crescendi, and indeed, diminuendi. The first side is completely danceable. I would dance to it, and have done so, just now. It's like a hybrid of industrial music and house, without the ludicrous posturing of the former or the lasciviousness of the latter. The second side has some danceability, and some more reflective passages. There is little evidence of keyboard play on this cassette; mostly we just work the drum-machines, often with quite some ferocity. If you were me, and I was you, I'd buy this tape.