TQ #17 & St. James Infirmary - Answers To Questions Unasked

New TQ issue is dedicated at length to the latest edition of the annual Tusk festival in Gateshead. Having never attended it since I live in less developed parts of Europe I like all these reports (one is this, the other one is from the semi-revived Radio Free Midwich); for one, when I was a child living in the non-Western part of Europe, and thus not being able to attend many gigs due to the high costs of transport for artists (= extremely expensive tickets), one of my favorite parts in reading rock and metal magazines was concert reviews. Secondly, with underground experimental music festivals, reading reports is a great way to discover new artists, and to slightly uncover the mystique of the No-Audience Undeground heroes you are never going to see live in your place of residence. A video of Smut during her impeccable Tusk performance was particularly such a good introduction. So we got live reviews of the great Vampyres and Liminal Haze, Lea Bertucci/Double Bass Crossfade, and the NWW Mail Art Action by Andy Wood of TQ and Chow Mwng accompanied by David Howcroft of No-Audience Undeground Tapes (I have referred to this project here), and of the Tusk film programme, interviews with Robert-Ridley Shackleton (check out his latest piece of junk gunk funk on Crow Versus Crow), G.W. Land (aka St. James Infirmary), and Ceramic Hobs, and a review of Drooping Finger's Arthur's Hell cd (Drooping Finger plays heavy ambient electronics, check some tracks here).

As always TQ comes with a giveaway cdr, and this issue carries St. James Infirmary's Answers To Questions Unasked. Never heard of the project before, so the cd and the interview have been enlightening; we're talking diverse experimental music, mainly on the heavy ambient/drone side with a strong psychedelic edge, as well as some surprising moments, as the weird black metal outbreak on track #1, and the fizzy electronic oriental psychedelia of track #3. Good stuff, will need to check out more.

You can land a subscription with TQ here to get all the goodies offered and learn more great stuff straight outta the N-AU.

Chow Mwng: The Music of Welsh shapeshifter Ash Cooke

In a recent post on Die Or DIY about Michael Morley's Gate, it was said that Morley gives the impression that he can't play the guitar and that he's quite good at pretending to not be able to do so. Well, if playing the guitar means soloing like Joe Satriani, let's hope that Morley really is paraplegic when it comes to guitar-playing.

The same impression is also passed by Ash Cooke, Welsh guitar player for Derrero (when it comes to lo-fi indie of the more electric variety, you can't get better than them), guitar/keyboard/whatever torturer of solo project Pulco, and more recently in Chow Mwng, as well as designer for the covers of TQ Zine.



Nunavik was the one release that introduced Ash to me and probably most people, as it was a free giveaway with TQ #7. In this recording he emulates the Canadian Inuit peoples throat singing style to challenge Western-centric notions of what correct music stands for, and he mixes it with maddening improvisations for Casio synth, percussive junk and guitar whateverness. In fact it sounds like a really damaged human beat box on avant-garde overdose. Cool!

Get it here for free



In Ah, Alpine! he combines unmusical acoustic guitar strums, apreggios and pinched notes with heavy guitar chorus effect, some drum hi hat doodling and casio synth without any reason.

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Perforation Function. Amazing work. This is Chow's most melodic/real guitar playing, delivering some pretty acoustic jazz guitar arpeggios while also including his usual synth noise, stream-of-consciousness lyrics, and percussive doodlings. There's a nice concept behind it, too, as this has been his response to David Howcroft's Nurse With Wound mail art action, during which he sent out to volunteers a dismantled tape of a NWW Tusk Festival tape, asking them to destroy/deconstruct it as they saw fit. I understand that most people just smashed it, but Chow Mwng made music around it, resulting in this hereby release, where apart from his live improvisations he includes several samples from said NWW recording. Added to that, he's gonna play live while David will be exhibiting the results of his mail art action during this year's Tusk. I absolutely love this music. (Posset has also made a sound response to the NWW action, producing a tape's worth of a loop of the gig).

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Stuttering Hand is my favorite of the lot whereby he focuses exclusively on guitar improvisations and prepared guitar damage.

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More of the same prepared guitar nothingness on One Day All This Will Make Sense? Gimme more!

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Even more guitar nonsense/noise collages accompanying an art zine featuring Chow's great artwork.

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Möbius - Above The Clouds, Night cdr

Those readers who remember the TQ anniversary post will remember my raving about a track featured on the compilation that accompanied that issue contributed by Möbius. This is a vocal drone duo from Newcastle consisting of a guy doing very low pitched hums and occasional death grunts similar to background synthesizers or a Tibetan monk and a woman singing, moaning and mourning above with a gorgeous voice. Their approach is narrative and generating images of demons, witches, cauldrons and Cthulhu. Möbius is really the new breaking out unit from the ever prolific and inspiring North-East  English/Tyneside womb of drone/noise. From what I see in this video they also have a ritualistic aspect to them that reminds me a little bit of Phurpa, something that makes them even more adorable in my eyes and mind. And to make things even better, I saw that an oncoming TQ issue will be coming with the new Möbius recording for free, so I hope that more people will become exposed to them; this means that a subscription to TQ to get the cd is a pressing necessity! And for those who still haven't made the right move to contact David Howcroft of No-Audience Underground for live tapes of the great artists of the North-East region, I think that this cdr will convince you to do so, as David has already recorded and generated four Möbius gigs on tape along with other great people such as Death In Scarsdale, Womb, MP Wood! Admire this amazing cdr and do any necessary action now! 2017 cdr on Inverted Grim-Mill Recordings (cool name).

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TQ #14/ No-Audience Underground Tapes/ Posset - Another Forever Tomorrow cdr

New TQ issue continues in a more retrospective note as in the previous John Peel issue, with the main part of the zine focusing on accounts of kraut rock giants such as Can, Holger Czukay, first Faust, and Kraftwerk.

The most important part, though, is an interview with David Howcroft, the person behind No-Audience Underground Tapes, which I have talked about here; in the interview David talks about his connection to Blyth and Fuckin' Amateurs, the formation of N-AuT, consideration on its future, and the story behind the Another Headache For the NHS compilation, which was released in order to gather financial aid for a shockingly serious accident David had had. I already knew that that comp was released in aid of David, but I wasn't aware of how dangerous his condition was, and I wholeheartedly wish him the best.

I grasp the opportunity to remind readers of the blog that No-Audience Underground Tapes is an important effort to document the life of the North-East England drone/noise/experimental scene, recording and releasing gigs by such amazing musicians and groups like Vampyres, Posset, Smut, Fells, Witchblood, Möbius, Death In Scarsdale, Wrest, Noize Choir, and so many others. More than 50 tapes have been released so far, and I really hope that David will keep at it for as long as it takes. I would offer the full list here, but I highly recommend that all of you drop David an email, ask for the list, get some stuff and give him your support; after all he is doing it for free, without charging for the tapes, which is an important aspect of the underground.

Finally, this most recent issue of TQ comes with a free cdr of Posset's Another Forever Tomorrow. Posset is obviously one of my favorite artists ever, and on this release he proves again his expansive vision of electronic music, from his patent dictaphone manipulation of vocals and voices to an amazing gamelan-like tune called "Rubber Whiskey Decisions," and from a dictaphone blues anthem called "Dub Touch (Two)" to more ambient/drone incursions with the cd's intro and outro. Great stuff as usual, you can listen to it here.

Vampyres (Lee Stokoe & Martyn Reid)

Vampyres is a hot new project by Lee Stokoe of Culver/Witchblood/Matching Head tapes/millions of other projects and Martyn Reid of Depletion (2017's  Lost Signals tape on Matching Head was a masterpiece of grey industrial synth bleakness) and in their releases they play intense and dense droning industrialized noise quite close to Depletion. If Culver is the all-devouring primeval drone of the Great Old Ones lurking out of space to engulf us, Vampyres is the dark daily presence of Nyarlathotep, the carrier that brings the message that our technology-infested world will be engulfed in evil.

Since Lee prefers Culver and  MH material not to be uploaded online, I will provide links to anything that has been posted online by labels, and links for potential purchases.

Astral Sacrifice (2017, At War With False Noise) - Free streaming 

So hypnotic and miserable is the sound that I fell asleep listening to it while waiting at a public service.

Century Scars (2017, Invisible City Records) - Free download

Damaged screaming poisoned-wind-swept noise drone.

Bloodstream (2017, Matching Head) - Buy it

Like a pool of green toxic fluids dripping from big evil factory machines.

Voyeurs At The Gates Of Hell (2018, Matching Head) - Buy it
Caustic like acid on throbbing flesh wounds with deceptive moments of lull.

At The Altar (2018, Cruel Nature Recordings) - 1 tape remaining

Impenetrable sprawling ringing drone on a real bad trip.

Despondent Kingdom (2018, Narcolepsia) - Samples and ordering

The most recent one and possibly the best one yet along with Bloodstream. Three tracks of evil modular synth industrial drone of the order of Maurizio Bianchi and early Wolf Eyes.

Vampyres & Rust Ruus - Live At Club Ponderosa, Gateshead, 30 September 2017 (No-Audience Underground Tapes)

Ali Robertson & Joyce Whitfield, Vampyres, brb>voicecoil, Spoils & Relics - Live At Soundroom Gateshead 23 June 2017 (No-Audience Underground Tapes) - Contact the label for free tape copies

Two live documents of gigs of Vampyres, where they are even more deafening, abrasive and threatening. On the other side of the first tape, Rust Ruus plays high-pitched sounds which sound to me like they have been created with wind instruments - but I'm not sure. On the other tape, Ali Robertson of Usurper and Joyce Whitfield play a live set of dictaphone sounds and Posset-like autistic mouth sounds. brb>voicecoil offers a set of pulsating and slightly rhythmic/a-rhythmic electronic weirdness. Spoils & Relics sound like they are constantly connecting live wires to each other along with samples of some robotic talking are heard in the background.

Also, Vampyres have set up a soundcloud account, where they have posted two more tracks that I haven't seen anywhere.

(and of course, these tapes can be got via email contact)

Documenting the No-Audience Underground

 

I've frequently referred to the "no-audience underground" term which has been coined by Rob Hayler of Midwich and of Radio Free Midwich blog to describe the North England experimental/noise scene which consists of a core of musicians having eschewed the idea of being "accepted" or "understood" by a wider audience and play for themselves and for a group of people which includes also other musicians. In this blog I have covered many of the musicians involved in this scene like Culver, Smut, Witchblood, Posset, etc, that play some of the best music ever recorded in the experimental/drone/noise milieu. Now that the Radio Free Midwich blog has ceased operations, the task of making this scene visible has been upheld by other media, one of which is the TQ Zine I covered last week. Another very interesting project is the No-Audience Underground Tapes initiated by David Howcroft. He documents live gigs of various artists playing in the hotbeds of this scene, Newcastle and Gateshead, which he then puts to tape and sends for free to anyone asking, not even asking for shipping costs. I have myself got a number of tapes. This is undeground sharing par excellence. So far he has produced more than 40 tapes, including live gigs by Culver, Vampyres, Depletion, Smut, Witchblood, Posset, The New Blockaders, Xazzaz, Noize Choir, Fells, gigs in the Tusk Festival and many many others. Also I hear he's doing an interesting Nurse With Wound project which sounds fun.

I think that this is a project that really encapsulates the meaning of the underground. Having stated here that downloading is not enough and that we all ought to support great artists by giving something in return and that physical tapes, cds or vinyl cannot be replaced by mp3 files, I highly urge that all readers send an email to David to get copies of those gigs and to encourage him to keep the N-Aut project going. His email is howcroft.d58@gmail.com