Review: Matias Aguayo & The Desdemonas - Sofarnopolis

Still from Cold Fever video, by Matías Aguayo and Céline Keller.


It's the 14th of September 2016, an unwelcoming Wednesday night in Edinburgh, and I've forced myself up from the comfort of my sofa to go and see Berlin's Matias Aguayo and The Desdemonas at Sneaky Pete's. "Is this how you dreamt it would be?" asks Aguayo at one point, between songs. It turns out to be the central lyric of the next number, in which he's seemingly talking about the dystopian future-present our childhood selves would find themselves living in today, but the question could equally apply to our expectations of the gig. Best known as figurehead of the flawlessly-cool Cómeme label, and as a producer making infectious, highly-imaginative, personality-filled house music, what drew me out tonight was the promise of hearing that creativity translated to a traditional rock band line-up. But in truth his band, The Desdemonas, create an even fuller, more complex sound than I had expected. The noirish edge I had anticipated is there, in the heavy b-movie creep of the basslines, and a guitarist ringing out reverb-spooked tremolo strums that would make Robert Rodriguez weep. As well as singing, Aguayo sometimes plays a bizarre-looking homemade keytar, or percussion. Another guy plays synths. Did I mention the synths. The unexpected element for me are the occasionally epic, teutonic synths, creating a collision between a cold wave front from Berlin, and the warmer atmospheres of Aguayo's Chilean heritage, the latin dance rhythms underpinning it all (the drummer is kept very busy).

Aesthetics aside, from track to track we're treated to a bewildering array of song types, from seductive sex jams to apocalyptic synth pop; it's hard to categorise at all. Fortunately this is not a weakness, as Aguayo himself is a natural performer, with the personality to hold something so potentially chaotic together. The venue is not very busy, and I find myself at the front of the stage, Aguayo, who has been dancing throughout, undulating sensuously before me. In tight trousers, smartly-heeled boots and a polkadot blouse, he looks for all the world like a ghost from the heyday of '80s or early-'90s indie. Entranced by his dancing, all of my feeble hetero passcodes are unlocked one by one, and within no time, I'm his. I'm by myself and he's close enough that it feels like he's dancing for me, with me. Fortunately, at this stage I've only had one beer.

Later, whilst performing the previously mentioned song about our dystopian present, he will body pop and footslide with some of the best dance moves I may have ever seen from a live performer. Admittedly, I've never seen Justin Timberlake live. Perhaps he would have been better. But in a small, intimate club on the Cowgate, in the gutter of the city, to watch something like this is just joyously incongruous and fantastical. I think these might really be some of the moments I live for: in a small, unassuming venue, seeing something genuinely not quite like anything I've seen before - the true wonder of pop music. It's still out there, somewhere, as we once dreamt of it, in naive childhood wonder, FM dreams beamed beneath duvets via walkman radios. In a gig that feels, at different times, like a bar band from an unknown, superior South American remake of The Lost Boys, or the first genuinely good band to play at the Bronze (apart from Cibo Matto, obvs), or Chris Isaak's little-known midlife breakdown post-punk vampire-biker-themed jam band, we find, finally, simply, transcendent pop wonder.

Fast forward to November 2017, and the album the Desdemonas were teasing last year (they toured it across Europe, without any of the material having been released) has now finally arrived. Is it how I had dreamt it would be? Not entirely - it features some mellower numbers, and ambient interludes, and perhaps more smoke machine than the gig did. It's dreamier, and darker, whlst simultaneously lighter in other places. If anything, it seems to show an even broader collision of influences, is even harder to adequately describe. And the song about the dreamt-of future seems to be missing. Perhaps it was me who dreamt it? Much like the gig, the album is entirely its own thing, not quite like anything else out there. Titled Sofarnopolis, it's apparently a conceptual narrative, with clues filled in by Aguayo's accompanying comic strip art. Perhaps it was never about what we dreamt it would be after all, but about Aguayo's dreams; and they seem to be wild, intriguing, oblique fantasies of a different, more exciting time. In this parallel world, perhaps a young Aguayo is laughing to himself as he foresees his future self on the cover of the NME and Melody Maker, the biggest latin-indie-synth-goth pop star of a decade that never was... whoever's dream it is, it's a future past that's a joy to visit.


Sofarnopolis by Matias Aguayo is out now, via Crammed Discs.

Welcome to the Tarot Drome

Marisa Carnesky (Photo by Manuel Vasson)

On Saturday morning, I caught the train from the sunny idyll of Dorset up to London and, alighting at Waterloo Station, I felt the cold reality of the dirty, rushing metropolitan life of the city blow towards me down the platform. Nearing the ticket barrier, I looked down onto the small section of track between the front of the train and the buffer stops, as I always reflexively do. I was taken aback to see a large dead bird there, and, surprised, it took me a second to assimilate that it was in fact an owl. I've seen plenty of flat dead birds in my time, but never an owl. It felt very strange, seeing this majestic creature that one would normally only see on television, or in captivity, bereft not only of the cover of night, its secrecy and mystery, but also of its life. Its wings spread wide, it was nearly completely flat. I wondered how it had got there.

I was only in London for a day, and was therefore very pleased to find that the short run of Marisa Canesky's new immersive theatre thing, Carnesky's Tarot Drome, coincided with my visit. I'd heard about her Ghost Train a few years back, and had thought it sounded fantastic, but had been unable to get to it. This new show features an eclectic cast of multi-disciplined performers each portraying a card from the major arcana of the tarot, which is one of my favourite books ever (as well as something I've been exploring in my artwork for the past five years)!

So it was that I found myself, along with a few friends, leaving the surface world behind Waterloo Station to descend into the graffiti-illuminated catacombs beneath, where, through a fire-door or two, we would experience the Tarot Drome show.

In the blue corner - The Moon.

Once within the atmospheric, vault-like arches of the Old Vic Tunnels, the evening began with an introduction from Marisa Carnesky, holding court in a full-sized wrestling ring. The first two cards were drawn, and then the audience was directed into a series of adjoining rooms, where they were then free to wander between the various performers. This cleverly introduced a random element akin to a real tarot reading - it was up to the audience to decide which performers they watched or interacted with, a selection process further complicated by some cards being harder to find (The Hermit) or attracting large crowds or queues (The High Priestess).

There was no pressure to interact directly with any of the performers, and there was more than enough impressive imagery, costume, set design and performance on show to keep a politely-detached audience member perfectly satisfied - Nina Felia's Death immediately drew a large crowd with her gracefully balletic contortions before a fan of skulls and bones. However, I can't help feeling that a more direct interaction with the performers and their prescribed rituals was essential for a fully satisfactory divinatory experience.

Rhyannon Styles as The Chariot

One of the golden rules of tarot readings (according to my copy of Tarot For Beginners) is that the subject must freely choose to have the reading, without any kind of coercion. I don't see this as based in superstition, along the lines of evil spirits only being allowed to enter a house by invitation, so much as a simple acknowledgement of the fact that someone who is not interested in engaging with and exploring the symbolism of the tarot in relation to their self is far less likely to get anything from it. In this respect, I suspect this element of the show was potentially quite challenging for some.

On entering the first room (different parts of the audience began in different rooms), we passed through a curtain of VHS tape. Just that morning on the train, I had been developing a story which has been growing from a song I wrote a few months ago, in which doors made of hair feature prominently (don't ask), and the tape immediately made me think of this. Just beyond this, the first performer we came to was Strength (performed by Hellen Burrough aka Traumata), who was sitting in a bed of hair, and engaging in a ritual with audience members which also involved hair. Now, although hair has obvious symbolic associations with strength, to draw a first card that had such immediate (same day) personal resonance was a bit surprising, so I resolved that I should try to interact with her. However, with many fellow audience members also wanting to interact with any given performer, finding the right moment was less easy, and, in this case, I found myself feeling awkward the longer I stood watching others have their wrists braided. Being Strength, the initiative to interact was mostly hers, with audience members invited forward with a hand gesture, and, missing selection a couple of times, I quickly felt discouraged - last to be picked for the team yet again! La Force inverted?

This is what I feel may have been a challenging part of the show for some less forward people. For me, it was less about a reticence to engage with the performers, rather than a consciousness of so many others wishing to do the same, and thus an inevitable polite stiff-upper-lip resignation to letting others get on with it. I don't know, perhaps that's just me, as someone who is monotonously bad at getting served at bars, or ordering food in a restaurant without entering into a state of panic! But so it was that I found myself wandering further around the room, choosing not to engage with any of the performers but simply enjoying their performances from a safe distance.

Professional wrestler Phil Bedwell as The Emperor.

I found a spot near a wall where I had a good view of all five performers in the first room. To be honest, perhaps too good a view at times - unsurprisingly, Carnesky's tarot went deep into the id, with a strong bias toward a psychosexual reading, and more than once, stood between Nina Felia's slow-motion contortions and Rowan Fae's Temperance, circling a tank of water in a gold bikini, I had to reflexively lower my camera as I found myself confronted by bums on all fronts. Which is not to say it was at all seedy, the erotic edge in no way detracted from the performances themselves, in fact fitting very naturally with the wholly surreal atmosphere (although my sister did apparently feel compelled to drag her boyfriend away from Death's semi-naked clay-pasted form!).

By now, having executed some impressively gymnastic poses above the mouth of the tank, Temperance was in the water, performing an inversion of her exploration of the tank exterior at the start of her piece. From the gloom, a man stepped forward slightly and suggested I go up to the tank and touch it. I hesitantly did so, feeling a bit daft and self-conscious. There was no response from inside the tank. "Sometimes she doesn't notice you," the man shrugged. Now, there is only so much stiffness anyone's upper lip can take, and following on from the Strength debacle, I now felt really determined to interact with a performer, and so, emboldened by the "sometimes", I decided to try again. Wandering around to the other side of the tank, I again put my hand to it, and this time Temperance responded, following my hand with her hand, and then her face, as she moved around inside the tank. It was quite an odd experience - I felt very self-conscious, and conscious of now being a part of the performance, and interacting with a strange lady in a bikini writhing in a tank. Despite being surrounded by watching people, and interacting with a player performing a predetermined role, it was nonetheless an inescapably intimate moment. I suppose it's a bit like being invited onstage by a magician and suddenly finding yourself not in the audience, but somewhere between the smoke and the mirrors. At essence, a human interaction, no matter how staged or theatrical, is still a human interaction, and in an odd atmosphere like the one at this show, that felt quite surreal and charged.

There were still many performers to see after that, and I got a fortune cookie note from The High Priestess (performed by Vicky Butterfly) that was freakily prescient to current life concerns, despite the fact that the theatrical intimacy got the better of me that time (somewhat to her righteous disdain) - it was a very solemn ritual but, alas, I can't have someone stare at me ominously from close range and still keep a straight face, as disrespectful to a High Priestess as that might be (sorry!).

Roller cards.

There was much, much more, and I left the first part of the show feeling that I could easily see the show again a couple of times and have an entirely different experience. But there was only time left to quickly grab a rushed autograph from The Chariot, as superficial and fleeting a celebrity meeting as one could hope for, before the audience was called back to the central room.

Everyone returned to the ringside for an impressively choreographed(?) pitched battle between Strength and The Emperor, before entering a final room where the performers took to the stage on roller skates to deliver a gloriously incomprehensible rock operatic reading of the final cards, complete with full band (Rasp Thorn & The Briars) and theremin solos, and a visual and musical colour that suggested an imagined '60s hippy musical.

I had a massive grin on my face throughout the entire finale, but my sister and her partner apparently found its wide-eyed optimism a little too intense, and so it was that, once Carnesky had finally disappeared with a twinkle, arse-into-spotlight, and all the performers had emerged to take a bow, I found them already in the bar area nursing double rum and cokes. I thought it had been really interesting how the interactive elements of the show dissolved the traditional barriers between performers and audience, albeit in a theatrically-mediated way, and, perhaps partly inspired by this, I felt an urge to go and offer a brief personal thanks to the performers who were beginning to gather in the bar area. My companions, however, were keen to leave the dim (and slightly damp) subconscious world and head to the South Bank to throw themselves around on horrific-looking fairground rides, and so the opportunity swiftly passed.

Two hours later, I was still feeling nauseous after a three minute ride on the deceptively mini-looking mini rollercoaster, despite having had explicit foreknowledge that I would not enjoy it at all, and I was still thinking about the likely meaning of my "reading", and how this had perhaps already been forgotten by the time we reached the bar. Sometimes there are things that we simply never learn - but there's no harm in the occasional refresher lesson.

This was a multi-layered piece of experimental theatre which was of a high enough quality to be enjoyed at face-value, but also, like the tarot itself, rewarded interaction and a deeper personal consideration. This was my first time experiencing a piece like this, and it was a total joy; I will very much look forward to whatever comes next from Mrs. Carnesky and her acolytes. There are many better photos than the bad ones I took on the Carnesky Productions Facebook page, but should anyone read this and decide to go to the show this week (and you should if you can!), I'd suggest resisting the temptation to look and allowing yourself to be surprised.

Personally, I was a little surprised at the total lack of owls in the show, given that they featured heavily in the promo photos.. but on reflection, I'm happy enough for them to stay in the safety of the shadows.

Art Is Hard Pizza Club

I've had a couple of pretty special-looking LPs and tapes in the post recently, but I thought this release particularly deserved a good blogging.

Art Is Hard is a South Coast label, mainly promoting South Coast bands, but with the odd one or two from further afield. I heard of them a while back, when they put out their first compilation, as a t-shirt with download, which featured some great now-defunct Bournemouth bands like Dutch Husband and True Swamp Neglect, as well as the much-more-currently-active likes of Colours and Kinnie The Explorer.

And then, whenever I saw Lee Dutch, he would inevitably be wearing the t-shirt, so it was kind of hard to forget about them!

Now, it's 2012, and they seem to have not gone away yet, and are seemingly boasting an ever-more impressive roster (Yrrs and Black Tambourines currently doing it for these ears).

Over at their Bandcamp, they've been running the Art Is Hard Biweekly 5" Pizza Club for a few weeks now. Basically, every second Friday, they put up a track for free download, with only one physical copy available to buy, at 1pm on the day. I somehow managed to snag a recent one, and so was the lucky recipient of a tasty-looking burrito pizza CDR, carefully packaged in this amazing (and much bigger than I'd expected!) pizza box.

The CD is My Teen Idol by Perfect Hair Forever, apparently from New Zealand. It's some of that retro recorded-on-a-lolly-stick surf sound that all the cool kids dig. You can hear that, and the other pizza club tunes, at the Art Is Hard Bandcamp. But I'd recommend also visiting the Perfect Hair Bandcamp, and checking out the whole EP that the tune comes from - beautiful stuff!

Art Is Hard, well, they're on Facebook too. Yeah?

Thank you Art Is Hard.


YUM.

Perfect Hair Forever - My Teen Idol by Art Is Hard Records

R. Stevie Moore / / Live in Bournemouth ! ! !

David Shrigley represents for R. Stevie Moore

Some years back, I was briefly playing "inaudible banjo" and "keyboards played with my feet" in a band called Skitanja. At a rehearsal back in about 2006, the band's twisted mastermind, Steve Potatoes, had introduced me to the wonderful music of R. Stevie Moore. I can still vividly remember being stood by his computer, listening to I Like To Stay Home streaming through the interubes. Incredible stuff, I thought! Crucial work, really!





Fast forward to earlier this year, and I happened to find myself sharing a flat with Mr. Potatoes. So it was that I heard first-hand when the simply incredible happened - Potatoes (possibly whilst drunk) had booked R. Stevie to come and play in Bournemouth! It's little understatement to suggest that, for myself and many of my friends, this incredible booking coup represented the most exciting thing to happen in Bournemouth possibly ever! R. Stevie was touring outside the US for the first time in his forty year career, and was not only coming to the UK, but to Bournemouth!


Celebrate the news!


An overlarge supporting bill was arranged, posters and flyers were printed, and the mayor was informed.. and so it was that, on an uncharacteristically hot British summer's day, R. Stevie arrived in Bomo. (Now, don't ask complicated questions, but suffice it to say that he arrived from the continent, driven by one Steve Potatoes..)

Recently-opened superior record-purchasing emporium Rose Red hosted an afternoon acoustic session, with a relaxed R. Stevie playing a raft of lesser-heard (but genius) songs to an appreciative crowd, on the shop's wonderfully airy and light lower floor. As a fan, it was an unbelievable treat to experience R. Stevie playing so casually, in such an intimate environment. Really magical stuff.


In Rose Red Records

With hellos said to R. Stevie, and the instore cola supplies drunk dry, there was some aimless wandering in sunny Boscombe (something about a Sleeping Dog Lying test, the so-called woof response, on the counter in Richer Sounds?), before I headed to the venue for the evening show, Champions, with Martin and Ed.

Some of the area's best weirdo bands were also playing: Martin's ever-incredible Powdered Cows, plus a hastily reassembled but on-skronk Skitanja, featuring the afore-mentioned Ed, along with Martin, Potatoes and Inspector D. I. Signs. I played a Hardsparrow set too, but there you go. Nothing is perfect.


Powdered Cows



Pretty soon, it was nearing time for the R. Stevie main course. He seemed a bit distant and unsettled, compared to the earlier show. It's not hard to wonder what it must seem like to a seasoned musician like R. Stevie, to be in a foreign country and arrive in a venue like Champions, which is, quite frankly, a bit of a weird place at the best of times (part venue, part Overlook Hotel, despite great improvements and the best efforts of the owners to revamp it.) The stifling warmth of one of the hotter days of the year was probably not helping much either.


SkitanjaI Like To Stay Home (R. Stevie Moore) by Skitanja


Nonetheless, the gig was great. Following fantastic sets from Skitanja and the Powdered Cows, R. Stevie's touring backing band, Tropical Ooze, played a set which was worth the price of entry alone.

Then R. Stevie played. Despite his seemingly unsettled mood, and the oddness of seeing a legend like RSM in a local venue that I'm not hugely keen on, it was fantastic to get to jump around to the actual R. Stevie Moore, playing the actual hits, backed by a solid band, surrounded by friends. Two of these friends, Rich and Lucy, had travelled down from London for the evening, just to see R. Stevie. The band swung into the sublime Play Myself Some Music, and all was wonderful with the world. The whole day was really such a special event.


The man, the legend


The set began to draw to a close earlier than I had expected, with a bit of an awkward stand-off developing between RSM onstage, and a slightly confused audience. Eventually, temporarily placated with a bottle of wine, the set continued for a short while longer, before finally ending with his celebrated solo rendition of the Popeye theme.

After the gig, I got R. Stevie to re-sign the back of my i-Pod (he'd actually done it earlier in the day, but it had rubbed off in the sweat-pit of the gig), rechristening it an R-Pod, in acknowledgement of the huge amount of the prolific musician's material that has made it on there.


The R-pod


By and by, it would turn out that I'd lost my wallet (and train tickets) in the venue, presumably whilst pogoing to I Like To Stay Home, and so it was that I had to wake myself at 6am to return to the venue, to try to recover it before catching the train back to Scotland. Did I say train? Well, I ended up having to change to the overnight coach in London, travelling on for some ten hours to Dundee, arriving in the early hours of Monday morning having had precious little sleep - it was a somewhat hellish journey, much of which was spent with the guy next to me, Bobby from Bulgaria, either talking incessantly, or asleep, crushing me like a long-suffering wife. And then I had to go straight into work.

But, you know what? It was all worth it. So totally worth it. For the legend that is R. Stevie Moore.

Thank you R. Stevie!

And thank you, Steve Potatoes!


Poster Potato-style!


Interested parties might make first departure into the Outer Mooresphere here: THE R. STEVIE MOORE CASSETTE CLUB

And check out this essential documentary: TAPE TO DISC

R. STEVIE MOORE & TROPICAL OOZE are on tour NOW!

Hats off to HaarFest

It's now been a month since Fence Records' second HaarFest event, and I think I'm just about ready to regather my senses, think up a local-news-style headline, and cast a teary backwards glance over the week's events.

HaarFest is Fence's more relaxed sister-event to the now well-established Homegame. Where that festival now has about forty-five acts, crammed into several venues over one weekend of concentrated chip suppers, pear cider and hedonism, Haarfest harks back to the event's earlier days, with the music only running in one venue at a time, and with quaintly diverting activities like sack races and geological walks to fill lazy days. And pear cider.

I was running a felt hat making workshop this year, which ran across two days, to meet demand. Yes, people were mad for making felt hats, it turned out.

The premise was similar to that behind last year's successful googley-eye workshop; to start with a simple idea that then provided a jumping-off point for participants to go bat-poo-crazy with: in this respect, the results could not have been more satisfying!
HMS Ginafore had dubbed the workshop "Hardsparrow's Madhatters Hat Party", and so I felt duty bound to provide party rings and pink wafers, but a majority of these actually ended up as integral elements of people's headgear. We first made simple felt hoods, but these really began to come alive when the workshoppers started adding their own embellishments and design-twists!

You can see pictures of some of the hats on the Fence forum here.


Madhatters in Cellardyke Town Hall.

The hats were subsequently worn as part of a pageant on the Sunday, with King Creosote and HMS Ginafore leading a colourful musical procession, winding its way from the Fisheries Museum to the Cellardyke Town Hall, where a ceilidh dinner-dance brought the week's events to a climax. Later that evening, the last of the bands played, before King Creosote treated those still wobbling to carefully selected gems from his extensive collection of Eighties vinyl.


Confiscate KC's early Eighties vinyl at your peril

Sadly, I missed the church tea, the sports day, the playwriting workshops, and the Pictish Trail's musical pub-crawl, but the fascinating geological tour of the Cellardyke shoreline, and the usual sterling line-up of musical wonders (see video, top) more than made up for that. I'm sure there were other things too, moonlit swims in the Cellardyke pool, Seamus Fogarty on stage in a biscuit and feather-covered felt hat, rescuing toads, wandering around beaches in Pittenweem unable to find Jo Foster's art installation (had it washed away?).. but not much of it comes back to me with any clarity now, lost amidst the usual jumble of laughter, music, good times and drinking that constitute a Fence event! So, a big thanks for all the hard work of the organisers, and to all the inspirational hat-makers, and godspeed next year, when Haarfest will hopefully once again roll to shore.


Seamus Fogarty wears silly hat (photo by Ade Brown)

The "Cellardyke Rose"

20 (000) Gigs Under The Sea

After four (or is it nearly five?) years of ramshackle lo-fi, folk, leftfield pop and backwards raffles, this Friday sees the final voyage for Club Anemone. I moved to Scotland last month, and will be travelling back down briefly to do 'the honours' at the last show. In the time that the night has existed, I have personally had some wonderful nights which will stay long in my memory.. and I hope that others feel the same.





I can't give one single reason why I started the night, but it was certainly not to make money, or to become anything other than a bloke that sometimes arranged for some bands to come and play. It did in part stem from a desire to fill what I perceived to be a hole in the local scene, to put on bands that I would like to see, that would often play Southampton or Brighton, but would give Bournemouth a miss, and to bill those bands alongside some of the many amazing local acts. It's been great to see so many superb left-field acts in Bournemouth.. whether it was Sam Amidon, perched on the stage-edge at the Central (he would return to support Beth Orton at the 02 this year), or Andre Herman Dune, singing sweet calypso songs in the belly of the ibar. It's also been an uphill struggle at times - and the fact is that the hole is very much still there. But people are still digging, and Bournemouth seems only to be on the rise, culturally-speaking, and in terms of the increasing amount of interesting gigs.





The night could not have survived without the existence of free-hire venues. Unfortunately, it has often only just been financially viable for me to host these gigs in Bournemouth, even with free venue hire. Often, acts have taken considerably lower fees than they are accustomed to, in order to play a new town. The painful truth is that an act of the size I would host might sell out a small venue in Brighton or London, but would find less of an immediately responsive audience in Bournemouth. So I would like to salute those local establishments that are forward-thinking enough to allow promoters to use their venues for free, in return for bar-takings, allowing promoters like myself to book more "risky" acts. Ibar has grown to be the spiritual home of the night, and, despite its arguable aesthetic failings, is the place that has done most for Club Anemone, as well as providing a home for other similarly independent promoters. Thank you Leigh and Andy!




I'd also like to tip my hat to those who have supported the night as paying customers, many right from the start, and often willing to take on trust that they would have an enjoyable night, based on previous experiences rather than any prior knowledge of the bands - I was taking a gamble with this night, that that sort of adventurous gig-going attitude might exist in the area; so thanks to those that have proven me not entirely wrong!





The Blue Boar has recently provided a change of scenery, and has also been very accommodating. I'd like to say that I miss the early days in the Central in Ashley Cross, but, in spite of all the drinkers we brought into their otherwise near-empty pub, they didn't seem to like us, for reasons unknown.. hmmm..




.. perhaps it was something to do with the over-athletic sound guy there, who, having quit the role following a barney with the venue, nonetheless arranged, at great personal financial risk, to sneak his PA back in, so as not to leave us in the lurch? Biggest thanks in the early days would without a doubt go to that living wonder of a man, Mr. Alf Lee, who also served as a ridiculously cheap (if not occasionally free!) soundman in those early days. Genuine legend!





Many other individuals have also given invaluable assistance, whether through manning the door, lending equipment, or any number of other jobs necessary to help a one-man-maniac hold a night together! Thanks for various things go especially to Lee Jones, Tony Foster at BHOne, Ed Mitchell, Marcus Edgar, Chris Catlin, Rob Langdon, Conrad Barr, Dan Barrow, and Nick Churchill, and more latterly Patrick Gough, at the Daily Echo .. and apologies to any others I have surely forgotten!




More recently, the gigs at the Blue Boar have been entirely dependent on the involvement of Mr. Michael Tanner, who has essentially put on the last couple of nights, while I have simply stood at the door and done bad Jools Holland impressions. Michael and Nick Palmer, of Directorsound, have also been responsible for bringing many of the nights most interesting visitors to my attention, and many of the gigs would simply not have happened without their invaluable input.





With Friday's gig set to be the last for the forseeable future, a bit of a party would seem to be in order. And no-one could be more perfect to help celebrate this final gig than our good friends, and most regular return visitors, Rachael Dadd, Rozi Plain, and, of course, the incredible Ichi! In the cosy nautical environs of the Blue Boar cellar, with party atmosphere compulsory, this should be another unforgettable night! Full details here and here!




Those who have seen these acts before will know what to expect: evocative and subtle world-folk invocations, reminiscent of Seven Swans-era Sufjan Stevens, from Rachael Dadd (The Hand, Whalebone Polly); fuzzy, wavelike indie-pop from the Fence Collective's Rozi Plain (ahead of a slot at the Apple Cart Festival in London on Sunday); and Ichi, from Nagoya, Japan, bringing a host of homemade instruments and party tricks, the most jaw-dropping, entertaining and hilarious one-man-band you are ever likely to see!




There will be free party bags for early arrivals, naturally, and then Club Anemone will slip its moorings and move quietly into the night one last time.. satisfied in the knowledge that there will always be other, similarly naive and single-minded people out there, also mad enough to put on gigs.. and some of them will probably be the most interesting nights that Bournemouth has to offer, whether it be Alan Krayon's irregular nights of improv-grind insanity, or Houschka's bold new ventures. And who knows, perhaps Conrad will start booking crazy Japanese laptop-electronica singers again one day? We can but hope..



The Pictish Trail and Rozi Plain, shortly before boarding The Simulator.


Golden Ghost and Viking Moses upsetting the neighbours, after the first gig, many many moons ago.



Confused but happy punters.

Lost Clusters

I've been an admirer of Akin Fernandez's Irdial Discs since 1995, when I took a chance on their compilation album There Are Too Many Fools Following Too Many Rules. A track on a New Electronica compilation - A.M.D. by Clip Talk - had caught my ear shortly before and, with its dissection of the bridge between melody and noise had, quite frankly, blown my frail young mind.






Loving parts of Too Many Fools, I then bought the Mario Paint EP, recorded entirely in the SNES program of that name, and found music that tallied with the experiments I'd made using the simple software (Music Maker) that had come bundled with my parent's Atari 1040 family pack. A music where composition and texture held more significance than style. This burgeoning revelation would lead to a continuing love of single-instrument composition, and a still unfulfilled desire to own a harpsichord. My copy of Mario Paint came with a black and white Irdial catalogue inside. The titles and art inside this magical pamphlet filled my mind with curiosity and wonder.. I was particularly keen to hear Ms. Mimi Majick's Lost Clusters in D Drive. Just the title held such fascinating promise!

Later, living in London, I'd find their records in second hand shops, often radically reduced in price due to the fact that the label's house sleeve was intentionally printed to look worn and damaged. These sometimes felt more like avant-garde art objects than records. Which is not to overlook the sheer aesthetic beauty of some of the music itself..

I made a cup of tea, put on Anthony Manning's Islets in Pink Polyprophlene, and fell instantly in love. And his Chromium Nebulae album would quickly become my go-to record in those lazy moments in life where time seems to briefly stop, those odd hours lost somewhere in between the accepted ones, at least until you open the curtains.






Neuropolitique and Thee J. Johanz made my head feel funny. The definition/grain of the music itself was, like Akin's label artwork, fundamentally lysergic. It tasted funny, and I wondered why no-one had fed me it before. Ray Tracing (another pseudonym of Akin), on the other hand, made me want to jump around the room with a big grin on my face - King of the Bleeps!






Fast forward to the internet age (a bit late coming for me), and I found much of the label's catalogue available for free online.. leading me to some of my favourite finds - including Mimi Majick's incredible, timeless EP, and many of Akin's earlier works, as Aqua Regia and Beautyon. Fernandez must be one of the single most under-rated producers of the tail-end of the 20th century.






More recently, I've revisited Neuropolitique's album, and downloading his Irdial back catalogue, found many absolute gems. The depth of their catalogue is incredible.






Globally, they are probably best known for The Conet Project - a collection of recordings of so-called Numbers Stations. In a reflection of the label's thoughtful and provocative approach to copyright law, the label took these anonymously broadcast, presumably government-level transmissions and exploited the secrecy of their authors by releasing them on a compilation album.
To nicely complete the situationist prank/lesson in copyright law, Fernandez subsequently sued the band Wilco for using parts of this album without Irdial's permission.






Another choice piece of wax I plucked to safety from the racks of the Music & Video exchange was the excellent Monster Music mini-album. Monster Music was a series of pirate radio broadcasts made by Irdial in the early 90's, a series of ten, with each intended to be curated by a different artist. For a long time, these recordings represented a large gap for me, when looking down the Irdial catalogue list. They do all exist, however, on MP3 at least, and, at the time I wrote this, back in November 2010, the first few were easily findable online via a blog (in fact inspiring this piece).

They've since been taken down. But, according to the Irdial site, "all ten shows are floating around on Gnutella, OpenNap, Morpheus and the other free music sharing services". Not sure if those services even exist still, but if you can find them, they're well worth a listen. What I've heard is all essential stuff, with the Perfect Game Music Fan episode providing the perfect interim soundtrack for the Blue Moon Festival (a night of music made with the Sound Club tracker) I hosted last year.

Check out the Irdial musical philosophy, and then take a jump into a bottomless political wormcan here!

"Time Does Not Exist"

Here are pages 2 to 5 of the Peanut Snake Summer Catalogue zine from last autumn, a little piece about Goodiepal.

If I were to write this now, it would be pretty different, as I've said some quite inaccurate things. But I'll take comfort in the words of Charles Fort, who supposedly once said, "I believe nothing of my own that I have ever written."

☠ CHEQUE MATE ☠

Anyway, Mr. Goodiepal has just announced the release of three new LP's, which are add-ons to the Route 66 Experimentet album that came with a free 500 Danish Kroner note, thus making it possible to make a profit from buying the record.

These new records have amazing artwork by Ulrik Borberg, and possibly feature favourites such as Ryst Jeres Klon Komputer, as well as Anders Jørgen Mogensen's "legendary hit Dream Horse".





Goodiepal has also recorded over an hour and a half of FAQ audio-responses, downloadable here, apparently designed to be played back along with these records. Full instructions here.

However, perhaps the most interesting aspect of these releases is a continuation of the "free bank note" idea. The three new LP's cost approximately €2.60, €11 and €100 each. The first (€2.60) supposedly comes with the Goodiepal's bank card details, allowing the purchaser to draw renumeration from his funds. The second (€11) comes with a 1000 Roma bill, exchangable once the Romani people establish a homeland. The third (€100) comes with a signed blank cheque, drawable on Goodiepal's English bank account. This creates an interesting scenario, wherein any purchaser can feasibly buy the record and then get their money back (all proceeds from sales will go into the account), but only so long as another purchaser has not been greedy and gone for the whole lot!

Buy here.

More info here.

Kewpie Evolution: The Tarako Megapost

Rose O'Neill, creator of the Kewpie. (Image from Westport History)



Rare "Kewpie Kutouts" (Stuart Ng Books)


I recently did a little online research into Kewpie dolls. Up until then, I'd thought that a kewpie was probably a fruit, but it turned out that it was in fact a character created by Rose O'Neill in the early 1900's, the drawings of which soon became popular enough for the creations, big-faced cherubic babies with pointed quiffs, to be corporealised in celluloid doll-form, a cutely-abstracted homunculus which quickly conquered the world, even receiving a mention in Anne Frank's famous diary, and being placed in a time capsule at the 1939 New York World's Fair.



One of O'Neill's charming illustrations, reproduced on a postcard from the mid-20th century.



Vintage porcelain blue-winged O'Neill Kewpie Doodle Dog


As early as 1923, the Kewpie's image had been enlisted for its powerful services as a company mascot, representing the Kewpie Hamburger chain in the US. But fast forward a century and the Kewpie image-virus has mutated in ways that would surely have been unimaginable for O'Neill.

An image search for "kewpie" today summons forth a startling array of disturbing and unsettling pictures. Now, even the earliest dolls sometimes looked a bit creepy, as with this googly-eyed jointed doll from c. 1913:




And the dolls being made today are, quite frankly, vegetable-headed cabbage patch horrors.

Nothing, though, quite compares to the indignities forced upon the poor Kewpies when they made the mistake of travelling to the Far East unaccompanied. Like any cog in the Japanese character mascot machine, Kewpie has suffered almost every pop-cultural per(v)mutation possible, with the nadir (zenith?) being reached with these dangling phone charms, rendering Kewpie as a sperm, an old man, and even a poo!



More info about these here.


I have no idea who owns the character rights to Kewpie internationally, but a Japanese food company, apparently best known for their mayonnaise, trades under the Kewpie name and uses the character as their mascot. Lovely. Right? Splendid. Yes.



Lovely. Right?


However, at some point, a diversion into the pasta sauce sector, and the Japanese penchant for having a character's face poking out from inside a cute costume (see Kewpie Godzilla, below), somehow collided to create the Unearthly Beast of the End Times that is Tarako.





Tarako is fish roe, seemingly a sort of womb sack full of fish eggs. This is used in a pasta sauce made by the Kewpie company. Tarako is also the name that has inadvertently been given to the mascot created to advertise the sauce - a bizarre mutation with the Kewpie doll's cute face attached to a fish womb body.



Sad sacks.


What follows are some of the many Tarako pasta sauce adverts, presented here in a megapost for your greatest satisfaction.




















There are at least two more Tarako adverts to be found on YouTube, if you're feeling addicted..

In 2006, the Kewpie company hired two young girls to perform the Tarako song for an advert. This new band, named Kigurumi, went on to record a Christmas version of the theme, and to further success..




.. culminating in almost indescribable public performances such as this one:




You can read an English translation of the lyrics to Kigurumi's "Tarako Tarako Tarako" here.

Thank you for reading. If you feel a bit funny now, just be thankful that you can turn off your computer. For some of the afflicted, it is not so easy..

Pine Cone Hiccups

Just to mention that the Pine Cone Kick audio book will soon be available - sometime in the next month or so, hopefully!

There have been some hiccups. During the debut reading, it emerged that not only had I not coloured in the yorkshire puddings in one picture, but also that there were six words missing from the narration.

Now, this might not sound like a lot, but take note, for when tragedy strikes, it often takes careful aim; for the missing words result in a major bone-based continuity error - and tragedy's foot is last seen planted firmly in the more tender regions of your unsuspecting narrator's plot.

What we suddenly have, in complex technical language, is a "ghost-bone" - and even the most elementary creative writing courses will advise you against the sudden introduction of a ghost-bone in all but the most whimsical and unrewarding of horror stories.

Anyone that records audio will also be able to tell you that something recorded in Hankinson Road with Alan's microphone, while tired and slightly intoxicated, will probably sound quite different when recorded in the Triangle with your own microphone, whilst sober and unemployed and distracted by pigeons.

But.. these challenges will be overcome (possibly via the application of some inappropriate sound effects) and I'll hope to be able to present the finished object very soon!

Wooopty!

The Rock Charmer

On Wednesday I was privileged - along with locals, families and friends, and the odd bat conservationist - to attend the preview night of The Rock Charmer, a collaboration between The Paper Cinema and accordionist Kimmo Pohjonen, commissioned for the Inside Out festival.
Set in the impressive surrounds of the Winspit quarry, with the constant whisper of the waves behind us, and a clear star-filled sky above, we watched as The Paper Cinema's hand-manipulated paper puppets and scenery acted out a mysterious narrative, projected some 40 feet high on the bare cliff face.




This was accompanied by Kimmo Pohjonen's animated and often theatrical performance, with industrial sounds and looped and echoing primal wails and tongue clicks taking their place alongside the more familiar sounds of his accordion. And, to be fair, the less familiar sounds of his accordion too, when he either struck it to create rhythms, or amplified the clicks and wheezes of its bare mechanical processes.




The Paper Cinema's projections fitted the music neatly, with images of robot arms carrying squared blocks of stone, suggesting they were building on (or quarrying from) the cliff face itself. This gave way to more familiar Paper Cinema territory, with grizzled sailors, fierce oceans, and mysterious cities upon ships all taking their place (and sea beasties, hot-air balloons, and giant heads too, quite naturally).




Including the pleasant, cow-filled walk to the site from the nearby pub, and an installation in part of the local caves of The Paper Cinema's shadow-casting sculptures of atavistic beasties, it was a tremendous evening, truly making the most of a remarkable location, and a wholly memorable experience. Grand stuff indeed!



Behind any wizard's curtain, there is almost always a man with a beard.*



Walking back to the Square & Compass by lamplight.



*With an unbearded female assistant holding everything together (not pictured).