Posts Tagged 'Spoken Word'
Listen: Nosnisbor vs Prudent split release
Posted: 3 December 2021 in Recommended Streams and Videos
Tags: audiotape, Chrustopher Nosnibor, Dale Prudent, Dret Skivor, Harsh Noise, Limited Edition, Spoken Word, Underground
Swedish microlabel Dret Skivor marks its first birthday with another suitably challenging release, in the shape of a split release featuring spoken word artists Dale Prudent and Christopher Nosnibor. As both artists also purveyors of harsh noise, they've combined the disciplines to create complimentary pieces of some of the harshest noise-backed spoken word around.
As the accompanying notes detail, 'This release brings together two spoken word artists who also do harsh noise. These are the results. Nosnibor rants and raves in the York area of England and elsewhere. Prudent performs no audience spoken word in (in)appropriate spaces around Hammarö in western Sweden. '
Available as an audiocassette in a limited edition of six, and also as a download, Dret 12 is an instant underground classic.
Listen to the dense blast of Nosnibor's 'A Psychological Spasm' and Prudent's sprawling, feedback-soaked 'på bunkern' here, and follow the label's advice – Listen through decent headphones or decent speakers for the full horror of what lies within……
Yol – viral dogs and cats
Posted: 23 October 2021 in Albums
Tags: Album Review, Avant-garde, community, Crow Versus Crow, Experimental, no audience, Obscure, Spoken Word, Underground, viral dogs and cats, Weird, Yol
Crow Versus Crow – 29th October 2021
Yol is, unquestionably, a definitive presence of the self-professed 'no-audience underground'. If you're unfamiliar with this (and there's no shame in that, because the clue's in the name), it's a term coined by Rob Hayler who blogs at radiofreemidwich, who says 'there is no 'audience' for the scene because the scene is the audience'. If it sounds incestuous and self-involved, then maybe it is, but in a good way: that is to say, it's more of a community than a scene, and one defined not by sound or style, but an ethos of mutual support, and it's an incredibly broad church. Global domination isn't on anyone's agenda: this is art for art's sake, free expression, experimentalism because. No-one is judged on technical competence – in fact, no-one is judged at all. Anything goes, and yol absolutely encapsulates that, with 'music' that's utterly off the wall.
The blurb advises that viral dogs and cats offers 'five tracks that revolve around the essential 'found objects / mouth noise / mangled language' core of yol's practice, brimming with razor-sharp observations, absorbed and regurgitated to form absurd, looping, distending cantillations. Visceral, cathartic and piss-funny in equal measure!'
The first piece, 'chunks of tongue' (it's not a song, by any stretch), is deranged, demented, with what sounds like some kind of contact mic slattering and random tweets providing the backdrop to some utterly dented shouting and yelping and gargling about expensive ice cream being sold as strawberry, but… well, he doesn't believe it. The strawberry pieces are chucks of tongue! He splutters and spews like he's choking on the offensive material, and as amusing and Dadaist as it is, it's also quite disturbing. Context counts, of course: this is an album (albeit a short one that's more of an EP), so it's art, but if you found someone doing this in the street, they'd likely be sectioned.
There's very little musical backing on here, apart from whistles and trills of feedback and random extranea, meaning that it's almost a spoken word album of sorts. But it's crazed, cracked spoken word – there's no narrative, only crazed spluttering and yelping. More than anything, I'm reminded of Mike Patton's Adult Themes for Voice album. The simplicity and sparseness is a major feature here: yol shows that you don't really need anything to make an impact, and when we've become accustomed and conditioned to polished, produced song-orientated music , to be assailed by something so primitive as almost nothing but a human voice, contorting every way possible is an unusual experience, and one that will likely freak some people out. Good, I say.
'eat out to help out' isn't only representative of the album as a whole, but a standout. He stammers and mumbles around, catching his breath, panting, while struggling to verbalise some deep, frenzied anguish about a plastic fork with a nugget on it. The repetition of a single phrase with varying emphasis is very much an extension of the permutational technique initiated by Brio Gysin in the late 1950s and early 1960s, only here, the sequence of the words remains unchanged, with the delivery and emphasis changing on each repetition instead. The effect of the repletion is quite challenging and ultimately disorientating.
'Viral cats and dogs get bored… Get back to shitting everywhere!' he screams on the title track. 'Yes, but not in my backyard!' I want to shout back after waking to frequent turds from neighbourhood cats on the sliver of AstroTurf at the end of my yard. Bastards. And immediately, I find myself foaming at the mouth with fury, and realise that this is it. Tapping that vein into raw emotion and unspeakable fury, I'm seconds away a fit of from inchoate screaming abdabs – which is precisely what yol serves up here.
viral dogs and cats isn't an album to be judged on technical competency – in fact, it's not an album to be judged on any scale of merit of whatever, beyond 'does it have an impact?' Of course it does. It leaves you feeling weird. Because it is weird. And that's the fun of it.
Enablers – Output Negative Space
Posted: 6 October 2021 in Albums
Tags: album revire, Enablers, Experimental, hybrod, Jazz, odd, Output Negative Space, Reissue, Spoken Word
Human Worth
Since their formation in 2002, Enablers have forged a career that has truly defied categorisation, and they've maintained a steady output, delivering eight albums – occasionally in flurries, sometimes with longer pauses between – each of which has pushed different directions and different boundaries.
But while their debut saw them showcase a sound that was different, it was their second album, released on Neurot in 2006, that really made a definitive statement that set Enablers in afield of their own creation. 2006 is now a whole terrifying fifteen years ago, and so, just as the time is right to reflect and reappraise the feat that is Output Negative Space, so the time is also right for a magnificent reissue courtesy of Human Worth. And being a Human Worth release, 10% of the proceeds plus Bandcamp cut going to charity – on this occasion, Sounds of Saving, who aim to improve mental health and reduce suicide rates by celebrating the power of human connection to music and directing people to the resources they need before it's too late – in respect of drummer Joe Byrnes, with this release also marking the tenth anniversary of his passing.
The album features the lineup of Joe Byrnes (Drums), Pete Simonelli (Words ), Kevin Thomson (Guitar), and former Swans bassist Joe Goldring (Guitar & Hammond), and they really do cohere as a unit: the interplay between the four is outstanding; everything flows, so fluid, so natural, so intuitive. The chemistry and the electric vibe is immediate from the opening track, 'Five O'Clock, Sundays', which touches so many areas, crosses so many boundaries, and yet belongs to no one genre.
Simonelli's delivery certainly isn't rap, but then, it's not singing either; it's spoken word but with a sort of poetical, beat slant, with rhythm and a wonderful cadence that's calm, even, but dynamic, too. The instrumentation is a bit jazz but it's not jazz, it's a bit mathy but doesn't have quite that cutty, choppy, angularity, instead meandering and noodling, but without ever hinting at indulgence, and then there are crests and waves and low-level crescendos.
Most spoken word with backing feels very much like that – spoken word with fumbled instrumentation or otherwise awkward and juxtaposed. Not so Output Negative Space. This feels like a band, a complete collaboration, where each contributor is fully cognisant of the bigger picture, that their part is just that – a part of a whole, where nothing works unless everything works. And everything does work. There isn't a second that doesn't hit a sweet spot in terms of the performers coming together.
Output Negative Space is a stunning journey, and it's wildly unpredictable. And yet it works.
There are moments when riffs break out and things get as almost conventionally rock; elsewhere, as on 'Mediterranean', everything happens all at once and comes in from all angles, and there really isn't a moment that's predictable – but at the same time, it's not unduly jarring, and it doesn't feel disorientating or chaotic. What it does feel is remarkably balanced; all of the elements combine to forge a real sonic synergy, and the music is so, so sympathetic and intuitive in the way it provides an understated backdrop to Simonelli's nonchalant, world-weary vignettes, brimming with observations, details, and aa palpable sense of humanity.
Fifteen years on, it still sounds fresh, unique, and absolutely amazing.
With a small and selective roster and a keen focus on quality, Human Worth have done a super job, to, producing a limited edition run of heavyweight 180g vinyl, packaged in a gatefold sleeve which includes a hand numbered booklet featuring writings by vocalist Pete Simonelli and friends of the band remembering drummer Joey Byrnes 10 years after his passing, accompanied by rare tour photography by Owen Richards.
In all, it's pretty special.
hackedepicciotto – The Current
Posted: 4 January 2020 in Albums
Tags: Album Review, Alexander Hacke, Blackpool, Crime & The City Solution, Danielle de Picciotto, Einstürzende Neubauten, exploratory, hackedepicciotto, mood, Spoken Word, The Current
Potomak – 31st January 2020
hackedepicciotto is Alexander Hacke (Einsturzende Neubauten) and Danielle de Picciotto (Crime & The City Solution), and The Current is their fourth album It's pitched as being 'their most powerful album yet,' and the press release explains that 'after composing desert drones for their previous album Perseverantia and dark foreboding melodies for Menetekel, their new album moves forwards, gaining in speed and energy'.
The energy is abundant, but it's dark and flows in subterranean currents. Recorded in Blackpool, of all places, there is little sense of illumination in a work that's dominated by shadow, although that's by no means a criticism.
'All people / are created equal' de Picciotto announces in a stilted monotone which echoes out across a bleak and solemn soundscape of atmospheric, picked guitar and dramatic strings which glide and swoop over a swirl of electronic crackles, indistinguishable voices and dolorous bells. Over the course of the piece, she utters various permutations of the phrase, revealing new meanings with each arrangement.
There is very much an exploratory feel to The Current: this is not an overtly linear work, or an album comprised of songs in the conventional sense. These are eleven distinct 'pieces' which are more spoken word / narrative works with music than anything, although this misrepresents the fact the words and sounds are very much equal in their billing. And yet there is a sense of progression, as the rhythms become stronger, more forceful, and more dominant as the album progresses.
'Onwards' plunges downwards with a grating bass pitched against a relentlessly rolling rhythm; ethereal, choral vocal harmonies and cold, cold synths forge an unusual juxtaposition, and the result is powerful, stirring deep-seated emotions that swell in the chest as the energy rises.
In contrast, 'Metal Hell' goes post-industrial with metallic clattering an scraping disrupting a choppy, processed guitar riff that cuts a murky path over an arrhythmic mess of percussion, and the title track thunders a slow martial beat to build a grandly epic piece that conjures images of sweeping vistas dominated by rugged mountains and dense forests.
Things take a turn for the unsettling on 'Petty Silver', which finds de Picciotto writhe and wheeze in a sort of little girl lost voice against a backdrop of chiming xylophone and a heavy synth grind that's pure Suicide. The penultimate track, 'The Black Pool' opens with a cluster of samples from news soundbites or similar about ow 'the UK is fucked' (fact, not an opinion) over some swirling ambient drone and a Michael Gira-esque monotone vocal trip
When the pair share vocal duties, Hacke's cracked, grizzled growl is the perfect contrast to de Picciotto's clean, airy yet tense and high-string delivery. And it's the contrasts that make The Current: it isn't any one thing, but a number of things simultaneously and while the rhythm section resonates deep and low, there's lot going on at the front of the mix, and it's this dynamic that gives the album a constant movement. To dissect it beyond this would be do damage the effect: The Current is an album that possesses a subtle force and brings submersion by stealth.
MAP 71 – Void Axis
Tags: Album Review, electro, MAP 71, Primitive, Spoken Word, Void Axis, Young Marble Giants
CD/DL Fourth Dimension Records/Foolproof Projects FDCD107/PRJ049
The blurbage: Void Axis is Brighton duo Map 71's fourth album. The previous one, Gloriosa, released on Fourth Dimension as both a limited edition cassette and, later, a CD featuring bonus material, saw them garnering more praise and attention than before. During the interim they have continued to play live regularly and have a few more shows planned around the UK in September and October, including an appearance at the Fourth Dimension Records' label night at Cafe OTO on 19/10/2018, where they share the bill with Alternative TV, Richard Youngs and EXTNDDNTWRK (Andrew Fearn of Sleaford Mods' solo endeavour). A 2×7" compilation will appear to coincide with this likewise featuring a track by them. Lisa Jayne (words and voice) and Andy Pyne (drums and electronics) are based in Brighton and became Map 71 in 2013.
The critique: This is glorious. It's not accessible, easy, light. In fact, it's anything but either. Atonal vocals and clattering motoric percussion dominate. We've moved a long way from The Fall and Kraftwerk, but at the same time, MAP 71 call to mind the sparse simplicity of Young Marble Giants, but synthier and dronier.
Blank, monotone narratives about nothing in particular drift out over repetitive synth oscillations and cyclical synthesised rhythms. For ever.
'Nuclear Landscapes' presents a thunderous, murky, barrelling noise by way of a backdrop. The rhythms are messed-up, sound bouncing against sound to build a dark mess of noise like tennis balls in a tumble dryer. Elsewhere, 'The Future Edge' goes murky and dips into Suicide territory with its dark, dank, throb which provides the sonic backdrop to Lisa's expressionless spoken-word narrative.
'Armour and Ecdysis' goes spacious and eerie, with fear chords and heavy echo and infinite delay creating an unsettling atmosphere, while '21:12' goes dark and robotic in in its plundering of early 80s post-punk electronic works for inspiration. And it works Void Axis is tense and dark, and clinical and difficult in a stark analogue way.
Void Axis isn't an album to engage with on an emotional level: there's no engagement or resonance here.
Sonically, I'm reminded in some ways of Dr Mix and the Remix's Wall Of Sound – the album released by Eric Debris post-Metal Urbain through Rough Trade in 1979 and which provide a blueprint for both The Jesus and Mary Chain and Big Black. Being one of my all-time favourite albums, this is a good thing: Void Axis is spectacularly primitive and claustrophobic and insular. And in its revisiting the technologies and production values of almost 40 years ago, Void Axis is also imbued with a certain sense of authenticity, despite its being spectacularly out of step with, well, pretty much any zeitgeist. Let's face it, no-one else sounded like Dr Mix back then, and nor has anyone before or since, and the same is true of the drum-machine thump-led treble overload of Big Black.
But ultimately, what sells Void Axis is that is doesn't sound like any other album. MAP 71 have found their niche.
Dream Nails / Crumbs – The Crescent Community Centre, York, 2nd August 2018
Posted: 3 August 2018 in Live
Tags: Altrnative, Crescent Community Centre, Crumbs, Debate, Dream Nails, Femnism, Grunge, Henry Raby, Indie, Inverse Sexism, Katie Watson, Live Review Feminist Punk, Patriarchy, poetry, Spoken Word, York
It's not often that an evening of live music begins with spoken word poetry. It's a shame, as the two media can often prove complimentary. John Cooper Clark supporting The Fall and KJ Farrington supporting Sleaford Mods stand out in my mind for all the right reasons.
Self-professed punk poet and nerd, Henry Raby, gets things going with a couple of pieces. A seasoned performer who seamlessly rides out any fluffed lines (and can turn forgetting a line into a plug for his book), he's relaxed and emanates an energy that's infectious, and which is paired with a disarming affability.
Katie Watson's poetry is personal, confessional, brimming with anxiety and keen observations, and rendered with fine details and a certain self-effacing humour. Her delivery is superb: having previously caught her not s long ago at a spoken-word night in a small room, she seems to revel in the bigger space, the challenge of a larger audience, and being faced with a microphone.
What Henry has a knack of bringing to events he's involved in is a spirit of inclusivity, of equality, of unity. We're all misfits together here. So, the board gaming nerds, the varied shades of gender and a range of musical and literary tastes are all catered for here.
Crumbs describe themselves as 'a post-punk pop party pack' who like 'pets and puns' (and alliteration, on this evidence). The four-piece blend jangly 90s indie with a grunge sensibility. Pavement would be an obvious, but fitting touchstone, and at one point I find myself thinking about a collision between The Cure and Carter USM, while elsewhere, there's a new song that boasts a chunky, funky bass groove and choppy, fractured guitar worthy of Gang of Four. It's an eclectic and compelling mix. The guitarist has some of the dirtiest overdrive I've heard in a while, creating a strong contrast to the crisp, chiming tone that features in most of the songs' verses. It's a simple dynamic, but highly effective. Playing on the floor in front of the stage, the sound in the front rows is mostly backline, and this only heightens the experience of the band being in such close proximity to the audience.
Having only caught the second half of Dream Nails' set at Live at Leeds, and found it to have been good fun, I was keen to see how they'd go over the duration of a full headline set.
They're high-octane and high-energy from the get-go, and if there was any question over whether or not they could sustain it for a full set, they answer it with a resounding yes. There really is no let-up in their four-chord poppy punk thrashabouts. The lyrics veer between vulnerability and vehemence, and while they may lack overt depth or subtlety, the directness is part of the appeal. And behind the effervescent performance style, and the bouncy, accessible tunes, there are some serious issues, largely centring around the challenges of being a woman in the world today.
And these are the reasons why I'm here. I go to gigs to watch and listen to bands. As a music critic, I write about them, and because we live in a very visually-orientated age, pictures accompanying a review are often useful. But Dream Nails don't like having their pictures being taken by men, and since I didn't have any female company in tow to shoot a pic on my behalf, there's no image here.
Men snapping away make them feel uncomfortable. Especially men in my demographic with certain types of camera (I'm 42, although the post on their Facebook page which appeared within a short time of the show's ending would suggest they think I'm older, and I prefer t travel light). Fair enough. Although generally, if you're going to implement a policy, such as no photography without consent, it's better to state it up-front. But when that policy is called during the show, and applies only to a few – well, men, actually – the issue becomes rather thorny under scrutiny.
Nobody likes to be singled out, especially not based on an assumption, and even less when the assumption is incorrect – because that's prejudice. To be singled out as one of two men with cameras, with the justification that they hadn't given consent, and fuck the male gaze, was not comfortable. I can live with uncomfortable: I'm aware that my own performances have a tendency to evoke a very tangible sense of discomfort and awkwardness. But no-one is ever singled out or humiliated, and it's not about 'unlearning oppressive behaviours'.
But more than anything, I found not only the approach troubling, but what it represents. Now, the battleground of gender is one of which I have only a cursory knowledge, but I am acutely aware of the divisions and infighting between the various identifiers. But ultimately, being a straight white male, I'm in the bracket which is the worst of the worst on the enemy scale. As we mark the centenary of The Representation of the People Act 1918, which gave British women over 30 the right to vote, at the same time as picking through the fallout of the events that led to the #metoo campaign, it's clear we've still got a long way to go and that male oppression is rife.
However, the 'calling out' of 'creepy' guys taking photos of a band performing assumes that all men are creepy and only go and see bands with women in because they want to go and ogle women. Which also seems to undermine the idea that as women making music, people –regardless of sex / gender (I'm aware the correspondence between the two varies considerably) – may simply appreciate their art, and, like so many others, shoot snaps for posterity or social media because it's the age we live in. To judge an individual based on the behaviour of a number (not even necessarily a majority) is prejudice in action.
This – literal – finger-pointing may have been well-received by a sector of the audience, but even if it hadn't been directed at me, it would still have sat uncomfortably on a personal level: publicly humiliating someone based on an assumption is very much a knee-jerk response, the likes of which result in heated arguments. My knee-jerk reaction was to omit Dream Nails from the review altogether, but precisely what would that achieve? Certainly nothing productive. First, what's actually needed is rational debate and mutual understanding of commonality. Second, they played a decent set, and went down well with a crowd of a respectable size, which is no small feat – especially in York on a Thursday night.
Moreover, feminism, at its heart, is about attaining equality for women. To substitute misogyny with misandry is not a push for equality, but to simply invert and replicate the behaviours of the guilty, and thus perpetuate division. Dream Nails generously commented on their Facebook thread, 'Also if u r a male fan who is feeling affronted by this, pls remember you are still always welcome at our shows without your cameras.' So, credit where it's due, they're still espousing equality. But is conditional equality really equality? Not really. Obviously, I'm grateful for the concession to be allowed to attend their shows in the same way anyone else is.
I shouldn't feel the need to state that I'm not anti-feminism; quite the opposite. Moreover, I'm fundamentally opposed to any -ism that promotes inequality, discrimination, prejudice. And so, while Janey Starling may have provoked something personal in her actions, my beef isn't so much directed at her or the band, but at the way complex and difficult issues are addressed, without any attention to the details or any sense of nuance, with too many people shouting about the lack of consideration they're shown by others without showing that same consideration in return.
They ended their set with a blistering rendition of 'Deep Heat'.
Alanis Obomsawin – Bush Lady
Posted: 30 June 2018 in Albums
Tags: Alanis Obomsawin, Avant-garde, Bush Lady Abum Review, Constellation Records, Experimental, Spoken Word
Constellation Records – 15th June 2018
Bush Lady, originally released in 1985, is described as 'a unique and magical record by any definition', and as 'an invaluable example of contemporary First Nations music that blends traditional folkways with modern composition'. Obomsawin is a member of the Abenaki Nation and one of Canada's foremost activist documentary filmmakers: with over 50 films to her credit, she's not primarily known for her musical output, with Bush Lady being released as a private pressing, half of which languished in her home for years and years.
It's not easy to place. It's not folk; it's not spoken word. But then, these aren't conventional songs either, although there are some charmingly pleasant flickers of woodwind and strings. But it's primarily about Obomsawin's vocals. Her voice conveys so much; against monotonous, thudding rhythms and trilling notes, eerie discord and wandering abstraction, she swings between blank monotone and quirky vocal contortions that jar the spine.
The real thing about Bush Lady is just how fresh and contemporary it feels, and sounds, never mind the fact it's 33 years old. It's not that nothing's changed in this time, but an indicator or the creative prowess and sheer otherness of Alanis Obomsawin's art.
Lydia Lunch & Weasel Walter – Brutal Measures / Flies on You – Fibbers, York, 12th February 2018
Posted: 16 February 2018 in Live
Tags: 12th February 2018, Brutal Measures, Fibbers, Flies on You, Leeds, Live Review, Lydia Lunch & Weasel Walter, Punk, Spoken Word, York
There's probably not much to say or write about Lydia Lunch that hasn't been said or written before. A cult legend in her own lifetime – a rare thing indeed – she remains one of the most formidable performers around. Tonight – performing the only northern show of three UK dates with Weasel Walter with her 'Brutal Measures' spoken word show (why said show happened to be in York… Those present weren't merely grateful, but overjoyed, but those present were depressingly few in number), she's uncompromising from start to finish.
Before Lydia and sidekick Weasel Walter who drums and generates all mind of noise to accompany her take stage, Leeds punk foursome Flies On You deliver a visceral, in-your-face set of primal punk songs. It's a challenging and emotional show, a mere fortnight after guitarist and lad songwriter Andy Watkins' sudden and unexpected death. Front man Doug Aikman clearly struggles at times, but still pulls of a storming performance. And while the basis of what Flies on You do is meat-and-potatoes old-school punk, there's a distinctly post-punk vibe that borders on goth in their rattling basslines and screeding reverby guitar peels. Moreover, it's delivered with passion and a certain degree of wit – and the refrain 'Katie Hopkins in human form' is a great line whichever way you look at it.
She may have mellowed with age, but Lydia Lunch is still infinitely more fierce in every way than pretty much anyone. It's all relative. And she may not be large in stature, but her presence fills the room. Her voice is a cracked rasp for the most part, but she uses it to compelling effect. It's not about being seasoned, either: this is her nature, who she is. Raw, real. Intense. Intense. Intense.
'Brutal Measures' is an extended spoken-word piece set in a number of movements, split by segments of hefty percussion and augmented by extraneous noise passages. Or, as Lunch's bandcamp page describes it, 'a longform composition featuring tense spoken word versus manic free drumming outbursts, glued together by cryptic electronics'. Recorded live, there's an improvisational aspect to the musical accompaniment to Lunch's words, which she delivers alternating between two mics, one clean, one heavily reverbed. The twenty-minute recorded take stretches to a full fifty-minute set live. And yet there is no filler: the drum solos breaks are tight, taut, concise and blistering. The instrumental electronic passages and the extraneous noise which both accompany and intersperse the chapters are intriguing, and the beer barrels Lydia uses as a table for her notes double as percussion instruments in the sometimes cacophonous batteries of sound between spoken word passages.
She does get slightly pissed off when the stand for the clean mic slides down and is uncooperative, and the venue techs are slow to react – but then, who wouldn't be? But she doesn't make a deal of it, and continues her narrative stream regardless. She's a performer, not a diva.
As a spoken word performer myself, I am in awe. For me, it's a challenge, and one I sometimes struggle with. Even the good nights are challenges. Lydia is in a league of her own. She holds the room, even with a whisper. She silences the chatting tossers at the bar. Not because she's dictatorial: she does it for everyone who's paid to hear her and Weasel and the chat at the back.
Words fly every which way as Lydia sparks in all directions: she's a relentless conjurer of images and ideas, with a perspective on everything. Even delivered slow, mean and low, it's often hard to keep up with her endlessly swerving trajectory, but it all comes together to present a version of her world-view. And yes, it is pretty brutal, all told.
It's an early finish – but then, it's a Monday night – but what the set lacks in duration, it more than compensates in intensity – did I mention intensity? If some spoken word performances leave the audience departing wilting because they're a trudge, tonight is very different: Lydia Lunch and Weasel Walter create something utterly compelling, that leave the audience wilting by virtue of its immense force. Spoken word at its best.
Myra Davies (Music by Beate Bartel & Gudrun Gut) – Sirens
Posted: 1 February 2017 in Albums
Tags: Album Review, Beate Bartel, electro, Gudrun Gut, Moabit Misik, Myra Davies, Sirens, Spoken Word, synth
Moabit Music – 27th January 2017
Despite having three previous albums to her credit, including one with Gudrun Gut, this is my first encounter with Canadian spoken word artist Myra Davies. I sometimes wonder, as an occasional spoken – or shouted – word performer myself why there aren't more talkers putting out spoken word recordings. As a medium, spoken word is enjoying a surge in popularity, with both open mic and curated spoken word nights springing up all over, in addition to those longstanding ones which have survived, sometimes by virtue of being the only platform around for a form of entertainment which is, one could argue, the oldest of all.
There are a fair few big name authors who have extensive catalogues – Charles Bukowski, William Burroughs, Henry Rollins are among the first names which spring to mind – but apart from the odd clip on YouTube, it seems that very few writers who read aloud commit their voices to the recorded medium. Granted, some writers simply aren't cut out to perform, and sadly, their readings to their material a disservice. But then, when done well, performance can bring a piece of writing to life and convey elements of the work not always immediately apparent to a reader. It's all about the emphasis, the intonation. And there's nothing to say spoken word recordings have to replicate the experience of those readings which take place in pubs and libraries: there is infinite scope to render the words very differently and to add myriad depths and dimensions – as Joe Hakim's collaboration with Ashley Reaks and the recent album by The Eagertongue evidence – when done well, spoken word can be exciting and can reconfigure whatever perceptions one may have of the genre – which, of course, isn't really a genre. Because spoken word can spill into so many other fields, and far beyond rap at that. Kate Tempest? C'mon, please! Her accessible, right-on doggerel may be well-meaning, but it's little more than sixth-form poetry delivered in a hip-hop style without the beats.
On Sirens, Myra Davies brings the beats, thanks to her two musical collaborators, Beate Bartel and Gudrun Gut, who provide the backing to alternate tracks Despite this, Sirens demonstrates a remarkable cohesion, and doesn't flip-flop between styles. Davies is a fantastic orator: she's not only blessed with a cool, laconic tone, which benefits from her dry Canadian accent, but she's also got a real sense of what works for narrating her own words. Sounds simple, but many writers lack this skill.
'Armand Monroe' sets the tone: sparse, angular, electropop with a funk groove, it's cold yet fiery, as Davies spins out a succession of evocative imags. Jittery, tense robotix with propulsive, grinding synths abound, and wibbly loops and sumptuously spacey motoric beats dominate the album. 'Golddress' is a taut effort: listening through 'phones, I find I have a racing pulse and my sense of anxiety increases as the track builds: it's steely, detached tone is curiously out of kilter with real time and current space, it's hard to let it simply pass.
Instead of sounding like a retro hash of futuristic music from the 80s – to which it does bear clear parallels – Sirens captures a sense of alienation, of otherness. It's not simply in the weird doubling and echo-based effects on the vocals, or the treatments of the drums, or the twitchy, slowly warping effects of the synth backings – all of which contribute to Sirens being far more than a 'spoken word' album – but a combination of all of these factors, with the addition of something intangible. Perhaps it's simply the restrained force and clinical focus of Davies' delivery of words which are both gritty and discomforting. Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that Sirens is a superlative work of art. A hybrid of spoken word and electro-pop / coldwave / etc., it represents a perfect creative synthesis.
Ashley Reaks – Growth Spurts
Posted: 17 January 2017 in Albums
Tags: Album Review, Ashley Reaks, collaboration, Crossover, Dave Formula, Dub, Experimental, fusion, Growth Spurts, Jazz, Kevin Boniface, Margo Guryan, Mike Watts, Post-Punk, Spoken Word, Sylvie Hill
Some reviews are seemingly fated. This is one such review: I was slow to get started, and then, having spent several evenings working on a detailed critical analysis, exploring the album's wild eclectism on a more or less track-by-track basis in a discourse of some eight hundred words, my laptop crashed and most of the work was lost, with the only available version being a collection of notes which were days old. How it happened, when my word processor is set to autosave every five minutes, I have no idea. Thanks Microsoft.
Still, this is an Ashley Reaks album, and a man who can produce three albums in a year – and continue to produce art, and to gig relentlessly, under difficult personal circumstances – deserves the same kind of unbowing attitude from a reviewer.
Because it's an Ashley Reaks album, anything can happen. And it will. And it does. Following on from Reaks' 'punk album' This is Planet Grot (and a remarkable credible and impressive punk album at that), Growth Spurts, on the one hand, could be considered a return to more familiar territories. But then, on the other, it could justifiably be tagged his 'jazz album'. The familiar elements of reggae and post-punk inspired dub are present and correct, but this collaboration-based collection of tunes also brings in some wild jazz stylings. The collaborative element is also key here, not only to appreciating Growth Spurts, but to understanding Reaks as an artist, at least as much as it's possible to grasp such an idiosyncratic and singular individual.
Like his collage artwork, his music is a mish-mash of elements drawn from here, there and everywhere, often bolted together at weird angles and demonstrating incompatible proportions and lines of perspective. He has very much his own slant on things, and his approach is also very much his own: Reaks is one of the few artists who consistently produces work which has the capacity to surprise, to confound, and, occasionally, confuse – which is a healthy response to something which is so staunchly unconventional. You get the impression that Reaks' raison d'être is to produce art which surprises and confounds himself, as much as any notional audience. His mindset appears to be that if it's not fresh, unexpected, and if it's not sincere, then it's worthless. Collaboration, when done right, yields an output which is greater than the sum of its parts, and draws out facets of each contributor which may not otherwise be known.
As such, Growth Spurts is a world away from his previous collaborative effort, Cultural Thrift (2015) with poet Joe Hakim, on which Reaks stepped toward the rear portion of the stage to provide a background accompaniment (which in itself was a departure given Reaks' propensity for dizzying soundclashes). Five of the ten pieces – it would be wrong to refer to this as a collection of songs, given that they feature spoken word and poetry – feature writers and poets from a broad and diverse range of backgrounds. They're disparate characters, as varied as Reaks' own sources of input, hand-picked to contribute to the album.
The result is dizzying, a rollercoaster journey through a vast swathe of cultural terrain. Each of the collaborative pieces is distinct and different, and finds Reaks attentive to the style of the different speakers. And as the strange, strangles vocal cacophony which introduces the album's first track, the oddly ominous prog-dub drum'n'bass neoclassical jazz mixup that is 'Divorced from the Body' shows, he's digging deep to locate new and unexpected hybrids. And yet, amidst the chaos, he still whips up some killer hooks – something so many experimental / genre-smashing artists completely overlook in their quest to innovate, to dazzle with their imagination and technical prowess.
'The Gentle Art of Ignoring' with Sylvie Hill is the most outright jazz track on the album, and her sassy vocal delivery and confident Canadian accent brings another sharp dimension to an album which displays almost infinite dimensions, but there's just so much to take in. But if you need a pointer for where to start, start with the basslines. The crashing jazz-influenced drum 'n' bass drumming, the wild brass, the myriad perspectives of the different vocalists all slot into place over those low-down basslines that stroll and groove and leap and boogie. Get on down.