Unfetter Cheese?

Nutshaft's editor was hit by a surprise change in submission dates by its printers this month, so I had to change my schedule and write this review in a few stolen moments.  To be honest, it came out alright, although it might be a bit purple...and I got the LP name wrong in the original.  Still, the editor should have corrected it, isn't that his job, or something?  Here's the Dec Ocelot plug thing, whilst we're at it.

I went to a gig the other day.  It was promoted by It’s All About The Music (although as this was not their first event I’ve been to where the promoter didn’t even enter the building, I wonder whether there isn’t an ulterior motive).  I saw some great music from Oxford, Swindon and California via Berlin, but I was driven to write about Charms Against The Evil Eye, Oxford’s whirlpool of prog, pop and Pitt Rivers signage.

Once upon a time Matt Sewell had a band called The New Moon, and they made some very pleasant lightly psychedelic folk-pop tunes, about cosmology, bifurcating felines and a very strange, acid-fried photographer.  The songs were good, in a crepuscular Robyn Hitchcock vein, but the band never quite did them justice, decent though their efforts were.  It was the addition of a new name and a supple, almost jazz-inflected rhythm section that lifted the band and made them one of Oxford’s secret gig pleasures, often to be found in the dusty corner of some odd line-up somewhere in the shire, playing to a select coterie of appreciators.  Not that they can’t ramp up the noise and the three chord garage fuzz if they end up higher on the bill...even if someone not a million pages from this column thought they resembled The Black Hats’ dads at this point.

If you like your songwriters intellectual, melodic, laconic and looking a bit like Vic Reeves, then I suggest crossing your fingers, carving an oaken talisman, donning a Mesopotamian pendant and heading out for some Charms Against The Evil Eye.

FREE CHOW – ASLEEP WITH MY HAND IN YOUR MOUTH (Own label download)

Sometimes, you just know the title came first.  Take Robert’s Web, the atrocious 2st century Carrott’s Commercial Breakdown in which comedian Robert Webb introduced ‘net clips with a dead-eyed resignation.  Or, consider Jesus In Furs, Free Chow’s Christmas song: surely the name came first, and the concept of throwing nativity lyrics at The Velvets’ finest bondage anthem later.  Either way, it’s great fun, a Benylin-wooze of varispeed tape vocals and cheap guitars which, considering the LP also on offer, is not too sacrilegious.

For, Asleep With My Hand In Your Mouth is a brutal stream of tacky noise and schoolboy taboo bashing, somewhere between The Butthole Surfers and V/Vm, sliming its way from the ersatz sex waltz of “This Is My Scrotum” to the Stylophone country of “Freight  Train”, presets goosestepping over common decency with every bar.  Childish nonsense, in many ways, but high quality childish nonsense: we love the Chicory Tip bass keys on “Don’t Touch Kids”, the Rocky Horror meets Jigsaw weirdness of the opener, and the fact that jukebox, pukebox rock ‘n’ roller “PB Party” manages to make jokes about both Hamlet and putting peanut butter up your arse.  When our tabloid media increasingly indulges in ethical paradoxes, denouncing pornography whilst celebrating unceasing titillation, demonising supposed deviants whilst shoving airbrushed teenage midriffs where the actual news used to go, perhaps the only option is to blow a big raspberry, stick two fingers in the air and make an ugly pop song about pederasty.  We like this record.  We may not always enjoy it, but we like it.

Vampire, Weak End

Here's a review.  And here's another Ocelot article to go with it.  Presumably the new one is now on the corners of bars, as from yesterday.  I seem to have got a month out of sync.  I'll have to write an extra review to catch up with myself.

Audioscope deal in vintage stereo equipment.  Audioscope also manufacture hearing aids.  And furthermore it’s a Welch Allyn model of audiometer.  But ignore all that Google noise, because so far as we’re concerned, Audioscope is a charity festival in Oxford, that since 2001 has raised over £22,000 for homeless charity Shelter.  The principle is simple: get some of the best acts from rock music’s leftfield into a room all day, ensure the volume is loud and the bar is fully stocked, and get people to pay a very reasonable amount to get in and see top acts like Can’s Damo Suzuki, Wire and Four Tet, and well as lesser known experimental noiseniks from Oxfordshire and beyond.  And they sell cupcakes, which is something akin to nirvana after 4 solid hours of beer, doom metal and breakcore.

On 23^rd November at The Jericho you can see America’s wonderful avant-Morricone types Califone topping the bill, but our personal tips would be Ghostbox’s hauntological heroes Pye Corner Audio, spooking you royally like the ghost of the Children’s Film Foundation in a cave  made of synth, and Tomaga, who twine effects around live drums and twist them into a fascinating sonic skein.  In short, you should attend because Audioscope is good value, raises money for a superb cause, and features loads of funny noises.  In fact, go back to that Welch Allyn website; there’s a mysterious clinician sticking a little machine in a boy’s ear, which pumps out randomly selected tones.  Perhaps those two Audioscopes aren’t so different after all.

ALEXANDER SCHLIPPENBACH TRIO/ NOSZFERATU, Oxford Contemporary Music, North Wall, 17/11/13

The Alexander Schlippenbach Trio have been touring for 43 years, and judging by Paul Lovens, you’d think they’d never had a night off.  With his three day stubble and tired, loose black tie, he looks for all the world like The Simpson’s ill-starred salesman, Ol’ Gil Gunderson.  When he hunches over his low drumkit, the clattering avalanche he creates makes us think of some lovably unfortunate rom com loser trying to wash dishes in a speeding caravan.  The trio’s improvisation is a masterclass, and, at twenty minutes, far too short.  Over Lovens’ astonishing percussive barrage, Schlippenbach lays down roving piano chords that, much like a David Lynch plot, seem to very nearly make perfect sense, and Evan Parker is a huge, unflappable presence in the centre of it all – although he does eventually reach his trademark sax skirls, for much of the set he interjects slow, sad lines as if he were trying to find a Broadway ballad somewhere in the fracas.

Before that, Noszferatu played three new compositions, that skirted the edge of jazz.  In fact, good though it was, sometimes, you wished they’d skirt a little further; take Finn Peters “43”, a piece that starts with mournfully zenlike flute, bowed vibraphone and single piano notes, like individual pixels in some wintry scene, but develops into a cocktail Debussy miasma that was a little overly pretty.  The best piece is Dave Price’s “Twitcher”, scored for piccolo and various bird calls, a huffing, squeaking concoction sounding joyously like a rubber-clad gimp doing calisthenics. 

After the interval both acts come together to play three further compositions, but despite some interesting elements, and inevitably fantastic performances, the soundfield feels a little crowded.  Hanna Kulenty turns this to her advantage in “Smokey Eyes”, sounding like all the cues from an episode of Columbo happening at once, tense woodblocks rubbing against eerie flute and love theme piano, but generally we wish both acts could have played separately for longer instead.  They end with Joe Cutler’s “Flexible Music”.  It’s enjoyable, but the trios sounded a damn sight more flexible in the first half.