Elektric-Piss

Traversing the counter-culture for music from beyond

[elektricpiss]

Tokin' Rap R-Tist - Reprasentin' Multi-KKKulture

(Batty Crease)

****

It started with a dis. But doesn't it always? Post-Doggy Style. the world seemed up to its nose in Gs & Hos, and little has Changed in rap and R&B game since. If it's not Nas & Jay-Z going at it like a pair of pissed hairdressers at a staff Christmas party in the Wirral, it's Drake and everyone's favourite Suffragette, Chris Brown, going toe to toe over a pop-star who advertises coconut water.

Where rising hip hop star Tokin' Rap R-Tist - aka Finchley born Keith Orville - is concerned, things are not quite so straight forward. Tokin's particular beef takes a special place in the litany of rap grudges by being a transatlantic one; his nemesis taking the form of the highly rated New York spitter, Bronx Scrotum.

So long standing has this spat been that its true origins have been bogged down under a cavalcade of rumour, myth, lies, and plain old industry hype. Why Bronx Scrotum sent a literal truckload of Treacle Tarts all the way from Dusseldorf to Tokin's mother, only he can fathom.

Now it’s time set the record straight: in a recent Elektric-Piss interview, Tokin' clearly outlined the facts as the stand. In 2004 Bronx scrotum - then just plain old Deyvon Gutters - arrived as an exchange student at St. Michael's Catholic Grammar School in Finchley.

Though they initially bonded over a love of Carlton from The Fresh Prince and playground impersonations of Q-Tip, their differing work ethic caused endless antagonism. Gutters somehow knew he was destined for a life in music and thought Orville should follow suit and not bother to study. Orville, at that point, was intent on becoming a bacteriologist and had no intention of not studying hard. On the day he was due to hand in his last piece of hand written biology course work, he found Gutters had taken a hole punch and crafted the word BITCHES through every page.  Orville consequently failed to get the required results to go to university.

But here's the second rub. If Gutters hadn't rewritten that coursework in his own inimitable style, Orville would not have the career in music he does. And Orville knows it. It's to his eternal chagrin, however, that his career has been entirely overshadowed to this point by that of the critically adored Bronx Scrotum, whose endless jibes in comparing the Bronx to Finchley have left a intercontinental trail of bitterness.

After the commercial failures that were his first two albums - 2008s Straight Outta Trumpton and 2010s Spearmint Rhino Girls - everything is riding on his latest release, Reprasentin' Multi-KKKulture.

Lead track Booka Booka (bracka cat cat) is a vehement statement of intent. Reflecting the phonetic sound of gunfire, looping walls of drums skip like TEC-9s across an American high school cafeteria. Samples of Al Pacino in Scarface, Marlon Brando in the Godfather, and what sounds like Fred Astaire in Easter Parade, liberally pepper the track, as Tokin' drops verbal sound bombs like "Smoking weed through the chamber of my Gat, I nearly blew my face off cos that blunt was so phat".

Such lyrical missives sound a deliberate throwing down of gauntlet to Bronx Scrotum, whose recent appearance on the US version of Strictly Come Dancing was  ill-advised to say the least.

Tokin's flights of fancy continue on the Atlanta style Krunk-Flip of third track Set Ya Mother's Bloomers On Fire where Rosa Parks, described as cross between Eva Mendes and Kim Kardashian, sits at the front of a school bus in Finchley; not through defiance at racial segregation, but just so she can get closer to Tokin'.

A Trapped In The Closet style segway into the proceeding track Leandras Bangers then follows, as echoed Dancehall bass collides with a sample of the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz singing "We are the Lullaby League". Tokin's gruff croke is transformed until it resembles a child at an 1980s wedding stealing helium from the balloons on each table.

His anger at both his neighbourhoods stark deprivation and the cheating ways of an ex-girlfriend apparent in the line  "Things changed in the hood when we got a drive-thru McDonalds, caught my bitch in her Vauxhall trying make me a cuckold." 

24 Carat Calvins finds Tokin' eulogising himself as a first class cocksman, not only announcing his desirability to every female member of Bronx Scrotums family, including his grandmother Maybelle, but to womankind at large: "Wear my trousers round my knees, show my boxers, show my briefs, in my pants I feel a breeze, when dem bitches bend like reeds".

The dazzling one-two of Juicy Booty Big N' Bouncy and Bad Bwoys of Finchley Under 15s County Cricket Club  - the latter a tender reminiscence of his days as a skilfull leg-spin bowler until injury struck him down - see Tokin' highlight his vicious flow to its maximum, his voice cracking at end as he desperately pleads with the sound engineer, "yo, go to Boots and get me some Tyrozets, blood."

The one real disappointment on the album is the light weight production of album closer Bleep Bleep Your Bleep Bleep Censorship (Bleep Bleep!!!), where the music from Rolf Harris's Two Little Boys plays incongruously with Bangra beats larger than the Shard and a flurry of sex noises from 1970s Swedish porn.

However, that doesn't distract from the fact that it's a monumental leap forward. It seems Tokin' isn't content anymore with trying to convince everyone that Finchley is the Bronx's transatlantic cousin, for his sights are set far wider. The Multi-KKKulture that Tokin represents could soon be of a far more global nature. So watch out, Crawley, here he comes...

Tracks:

Booka Booka (bracka cat cat)

Leandras Bangers

Chiswick Gangsta Lean

24 Carat Calvins

Set Ya Mothers Bloomer on Fire

Juicy Booty Big N' Bouncy

Bad Bwoys of Finchley Under 15s County Cricket Club

Give Me Your Gravy

Bleep Bleep Your Bleep Bleep Censorship (Bleep Bleep!!!)

[elektricpiss]

Leo Sayer - Vital Again

(All Dayer Records)

*****

For those too young to remember Leo Sayer from his decade long reign of terror, he is a singer with curly hair, who sometimes dresses up as a clown. Or was. For like Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond, and I suppose, in a way Tom Jones, he is now all serious, and has put away those childish things to make a solid, legacy-redefining statement. 

And like Johnny Cash before him, he has teamed up with a legendary million-selling producer, who has literally taken him to pieces and reassembled him atom by atom. Instead of adhering to the Rick Rubin formula, Sayer has shrewdly chosen Wogan-theme-composer, and Bang Bang-er B.A. Robertson. It’s a decision that suits him well, as Robertson’s access to top notch session sax players and way with a vivacious bass-line puts a spring in Sayer’s step. It’s got vitality then, but is it vital?

Album opener, I’m Mean (as in Average) certainly is. It’s a stripped down delta blues number, backed by the gospel stylings of (EP favourite) Angela Ford. It skilfully dismantles Sayer’s glossy, celebrity sheen, and reveals him at heart to be a regular guy (in both senses). 

Celebrity Big Brother thematically unites both Robertson and Sayer (as you remember Sayer famously tried to get out, while Robertson spent a fruitless decade trying to get in) so the second track “Well, Well, Orwell” is of particular interest. Its jazz-tinged guitar and mellow sax distract from the sinister undertones. “There are simply too many flies on this wall” wails Leo, at one point.

The first of this set’s two covers is Sayer’s take on (Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. One suspects if he paid more attention to the dynamics and emotional core of the lyric, rather than the syntax and grammar, he might have been more successful.  His insistence on changing the lyric to “I can’t get any satisfaction” is a needless distraction.

"The Walnuts” picks upwhere his own eighties housewife-heartache classic “Orchard Road” left off.Thirty years on, The Orchard Road of the title is long gone, having made way for a shopping mall called The Walnuts. Sayer’s tale of a chance encounter with an old flame in British Homestores is affecting and displays an incredible eye for detail. That said, this reviewer would have preferred a bit more on the romance and slightly less information on the parking facilities.

The second cover “Should I Stay Or Should I Go” is given an interesting country edge, featuring pedal steel guitar and banjo. Again Sayer feels the need to deal with the syntax, inserting a high-pitched, spoken word section in which he explains that logically it would be better to go, as there is double the amount of trouble if he stays, means he has to subsequently change the chorus to “I am going to go now.” I’m not sure this approach has worked as well as it might have.

Sayer’s own subtle and witty song-writing is highlighted on Predisposed To Passion in which he assumes the role of a barrister defending his client’s need for frequent, extra-marital sex, and Neither Here Nor There which charts the highs and lows of the singer’s steamy romance with his satnav.

But it is the last song, As We Approach The Ice Age that is the most affecting dealing, as it does, with the slow decline from middle age to the grave. His insistence that “the endless night is falling” and “we’re almost out of tomorrows” is delivered with such conviction that you could be forgiven for thinking that this is Sayer’s swansong. 

Final track “Wake Up Alice” puts paid to all that. In a sudden tonal left turn, Sayer becomes a clown again, in a somewhat misjudged comic song (penned by Robertson, we should note) which tells the story of an elderly man trying to rouse his dead wife with a series of loud noises and enticing fragrances. “Alice awaken! It’s eggs and bacon!” runs a sample lyric against an authentic music hall setting, complete with booing from a clearly enraged audience.

Whether this album rejuvenates Sayer’s career and opens him up to a new, younger audience remains to be seen, but it serves to remind us of what a versatile performer Sayer still is. Not vital, perhaps, but definitely a potential option.

Tracks:

I’m Mean (as in average)

Well, Well, Orwell

(Can’t get any) Satisfaction

The Walnuts

Should I Stay Or Should I go?

Predisposed To Passion

Neither Here Nor There

As We Approach The Ice Age

Wake Up Alice

[elektricpiss]

Sebastiene Pratfalle - Les Nincompoops

(Lent Mode)

*****

Veteran of the Belgian ambivalent-house scene and latterly pioneer of dark bleep, Pratfalle has kept the world waiting for a follow up to his 1997 masterpiece "Sélection dans le Menu Spécial." 

It's not all his doing, plagued by misfortune, as he was. First, his ambitious follow up album (included here as a second disc in the two disc set) was shelved by Universal.

His next rejection was for his proposed soundtrack for the Artist, a piece he worked on for 18 months, for his old friend Michel Hazanavicius. Locking himself away in a Derby basement, with nothing but the film's storyboard and a bontempi keyboard, he refused to attend a single production meeting, for fear his original ideas would be polluted. His eventual submission was quickly rejected containing, as it did, heavy use of spoken word and multilple plot spoilers over a doom-bossa backdrop. He hasn't spoken with Hazanavicius since. 

So I approached this release with caution. I started with disc 2, as chronologically it was recorded first. Each of the quartet of tracks is radically different. Opener Musique pour les Dentistes is a dubstep number with elements of weird glitch and glovebox-house. Incredibly fast paced from the off, it conjures images of gore, splintering teeth and mild antiseptic, until without warning Pratfalle's trademark electro-bassoon rises to the surface, destroying all in its wake. 

The more pastoral Music Pour l'Agriculteur is a welcome relief, its warm waves of sunshine, bees buzzing and gentle birdsong interspersed with amorous giggles against a woozy grippe-hop backing.

This blends into the shortest of the quartet, Musique pour l'Expert-Comptable, a chattering of key-strokes punctuating a delicately-paced, auto-tuned aircon/desk fan mashup, vividly conjuring the zen-like tedium of a high street accountancy firm.  

Musique pour l'Haltérophile completes the set, with it's grunt-heavy, dubby quackstep, which though a bit passe in 2012, would have been genuinely pioneering if release five years ago, as intended. Instead it remains a faintly gaseous curiosity.

The newer stuff is better. Leading with last summer's hit single Longtemps, pas voir, it sets out its globe-trotting, lunk-hop, fat-house stall, taking few prisoners, but offering little in the way of surprises. 

That's not to say it is without ambition. Men va Tanker Mon Char allows Pratfalle free range to incorporate door-slams and dog burps as percussive devices, while Bavardage layers a series of increasingly disconsolate sighs over a fresh-bass/latin-mangle backdrop.

But it is Les Matières Fécales en Conserve that raises the bar for the young pretenders. Incorporating elements of nu-jack-lotion and energo-polka, while carving out jittery new rhythms from what can only be described as a hybrid of solids and air, Pratfalle creates an impressive and ultimately fatal masterpiece that lives on in the listener's ear long after it's impressive eight minutes are over. 

Incoherent? Sure. Frustrating? Mais oui. Genius? Peut-être.

[elektricpiss]

L:PO(X"") - qwerty OOPS!

(Shutter Hauteur via Crestfallen)

*****

Track listing:

Cancel (A Fraction)

Divisor

Frequency Density

Mensuration

Prism

Scalar

Significant Figures

Soroban

Vertex

Pioneers of the seminal Acid Reflux movement of the early 1990s, L:PO(X"") have been quiet for far too long. Silent, in fact, since issuing a communique dismissing their entire recorded output as "analogue filth" at the turn of the millennium.

Since that pronouncement, their classic hits, Expector8 and (Stuck In The) Spin Cycle, have been deleted and all clips of their sole, chaotic appearance on Top of the Pops -- in which they abandoned a live performance of Expector8 to present their (incorrect) solution to Fermat's Last Theorem -- have disappeared from YouTube.

In the interim, rumours have abounded of various abortive ventures -- an album of acoustic versions of Kraftwerk songs; The Turing Lyrics Project (classic rock anthems encrypted on a World War II Enigma machine); even a brief and unlikely stint masquerading as The George Deformbys (an ostensible covers band whose signature tune, When I'm Cleaning Windows XP, was usually guaranteed a hostile reception wherever it was played).

But now, finally, we have qwerty OOPS!

First, to parse the title. "Qwerty" appears to be a fairly straightforward reference to the structured randomness of a keyboard layout, while "OOPS!" not only introduces the element of error, a mistyping, but also conjures up incongruous echoes of breakfast DJ Dave Lee Travis.

The track listing, and the ostentatious rejection of all things analogue, would suggest a potentially arid exercise in so-called math-rock; L:PO(X"") plays with this expectation, however, not least on the "hidden" tenth track, The Enchanted War Hammer of Vlad-Estragon.

Even discounting the ironic prog of Enchanted War Hammer and its bid to recast Waiting For Godot as a D&D style role-playing game, qwerty OOPS! belies its rigidly arithmetical facade.

Of course, programmatic beats and Reichian repetition abound, as well as lyrical references to Euclidean geometry and calculus (Scalar contains an aside about a  "slave to the algorithm", while Frequency Density is almost certainly the first song in history to feature the rhyming couplet "Simultaneous equation/Mash up the nation.")

But elsewhere there are unexpected touches of what can only be described as human warmth -- the "ah one, ah two, ah one, two, three, four" count-in to Mensuration's four-minute electronic drone, the brief kazoo solo at the end of Divisor, the sample from Bernard Cribbins' Right Said Fred ("Couldn't shift it, couldn't even lift it") that crops up repeatedly in Significant Figures.

All of which begs the question whether L:PO(X"") have retreated from their earlier, reductivist position, or whether another elaborate conceit is being played out.

Perhaps the only completed work from The Turing Lyrics Project holds the key:

Tknxkn kmistrs, bagsgsddd/Vbnyfnkkl nff!/Heerasdi (nhdfh kiibbg).

[elektricpiss]

Tom Watson and the Select Committee - Your Face My Arse

(Licking Tarmac)

*** 

"Bobcat, weasel, mastodon...your vagina is eluding me."

It is perhaps the greatest truism of modern music that the ability to write lyrics such as these requires having had a special kind of upbringing, I'd go as far to say that it requires a very specific one: unless you born, in 1976, no less, the progeny of a septuagenarian high ranking Nazi doctor who had fled Berlin in '45 for the sultry climes of Argentina, stringing such an orgiastic rush of colliding syllables together would doubtless be impossible. Sharing your name with an American golfing legend would also, needless to say, bring an unmanageable array of burdens.

It is those very burdens, and that background that imbue Tom Watson & the Select Committee's sophomore effort with the kind of nihilism that could well make grown men choke their neighbours pets, just because they can.

With a surge of vibrating harmonium, and syncopated beer-hall-brawl in Bavaria oompah stabs, opener "Opening An Umbrella (When It's Already Inside You)" sees Tom and his fellow miscreants liberated from the glockenspiel dominated introspection of their debut album, 2011s Viva Vulva.

Clearly stung by criticism that Viva Vulva's songs were overly subtle  - the subject of Uncle Brian's Razzle Collection remains a mystery - Watson has plumped for a more overt song writing style over this 8 song cycle. Second track I Wanna Be A Spaniel At The Make-Up Laboratory is a heart rending ode to vivisection and the general joys of animal cruelty. It is Watson's greatest trick to find beauty in places where his peers see only horror. Few could argue with that logic having heard the four part harmonies of the song's chorus and the wonderful "43 shades for Max Factor, only one little death for you" refrain. It's a song on which bassist Barry Sniff's randomly chosen, largely tuneless notes add a certain carnival flair to proceedings.

However, it's on the title track Your Face, My Arse that Watson has produced a song that may come define his career: a staggering 22 minutes long and built around a single, relentless chord - which the liner notes claim is played on repaired 1984 Casio reeled in by a retired alcoholic fisherman in Morecambe Bay - with stick percussion and backing vocals provided by the Jolly Knackers Morris Dancers of St.Ives. 5 minutes in, Watson soars beyond the boundaries of his own comfort level to cry in a drunken, west country brogue "Your Face, My Arse", like the ill begotten spawn of The Worzels and The Wicker Man. Therein lies the central mystery of the album: who's face is it that Watson wants to tightly press against his cantankerous buttocks? We, the listeners? His band mates? The sister for whom on his debut he declared semi-amorous feelings for? Is it pleasure he offers us, or the remnants of last night's chicken korma?

It is album closer Richard Gere: You call that a hamster? that the clues to the meaning Your Face, My Arse are seemingly revealed: the line "little furry dominatrix, down the tube for my daily fix" highlights a far more sensitive, intimate side to Watson's brusque soul, as the Select Committee's stomping doo wop and Peruvian nose flute backing drifts subversively from the speakers.

Perhaps the question we should all be asking is just how 25 Morris dancers were recorded in a studio the size  of a  Fiat Uno? It seems enough scrumpy was provided for the Jolly Knackers to take that particular secret to the grave, leavingWatson and his selected friends an enigma, wrapped up in a tape-loop for eternity.

[elektricpiss]

The New Adventures Of Midway Still - Harangue Meringue

(Habeas Corps)

*****

Let's deal with the name. This isn't a new album by 90s Kent rockers "Midway Still" and has literally no connection with that group. Instead it is a side project from Blunt Tools singer Ralf Averbuch, well known Anglophile and aficionado of the Kent trio, who states in the press release that this project is "taking the baton" from Midway Still, “re-imagining them for the 21st Century.”

But, there's no questioning the ambition. Averbuch has assembled a who's who of indie rock, with an enormous band, the full line-up of which cannot be listed for reasons of editorial space, but includes luminaries of the Delaware dilettante rock scene, such as Creepy Teacher's Matt Berado and Hostile Horse (aka Tom Sloan). It's a roll call that reads more like a guest list than a line-up, but is that enough to raise it above the critical mauling that previous Blunt Tools and associated Averbuch releases have had at the hands of the critics?

Opener “Wipe Tape” smacks your nose bloody with squalling feedback blended with a sampled modem overlaid over massively distorted percussion. The effect is dizzying, like watching your life on fast-rewind, or tumbling down an unrolling sheet through a hotel window. At eight minutes fifty nine, it tests the patience of the listener but then one suspects it is deliberately forbidding, acting as a gatekeeper, dissuading anyone but the most serious music fan, making sure it’s only us that make it to the other side. It's only whispered  lyric: "I think we should wipe the tape now" comes after two seconds of silence at the end of the track confirming my interpretation is correct.

This segues untidily into the surprising, jazz-tinged dub of "Dismal Piercing.” Towering echo and splashing percussion contrast with a tidily picked guitar line, reminscent of Lalo Schifrin's theme from Bullit. For a moment you are on the sort of safe ground that Blunt Tools usually inhabit, but out of nowhere you’re confronted with an element of dischord, at first sounding like a bum note, but repeated with an inept regularity that acts both as a declaration of war and a signifier of Averbuch’s frustration with musical convention.

"Fashion Accomplice" is even bolder, and perhaps is the lynchpin of the album. Sampling Otis Redding’s Try a Little Tenderness but adding a brutally struck, heavily distorted banjo, the piece is built around a single refrain: “the music critic isn’t wearing any clothes," presumably a bitter swipe at how any old rubbish gets written about these days.

But after it is repeated, endlessly, over fifteen minutes, it starts to take on a meaning of its own. A majestic, mantra-like quality. Otherworldly and strangely moving.

"Barlow v Mascis" imagines two thirds of Dinosaur Jr in the divorce courts fighting for custody of the drummer. I won’t spoil the ending, but needless to say it is riveting, powerful and thought provoking. And if that wasn’t enough, the time signature appears to be based on the Fibonacci sequence.

Perhaps the biggest gamble on the album is the next track, "Accordians are not the only fruit." It doesn’t feature any accordion, but instead is a reprisal of Fashion Accomplice. The song is so similar that I took it to my brother Tim, who works in IT, and he confirmed that the file is identical in every way. It literally is the same song, the same recording. The sheer audacity of this manoeuvre is breathtaking, but it pays off. On second listen, at some point during the endless repetition of the phtase "“the music critic isn’t wearing any clothes" it occurs to me that it I misread it first time around. It’s the music critic not wearing clothes, not the musician. It’s the critic’s work which is positioned as being vapid, not the music itself. The whole thing is a deliberate manipulation of the listener's field of vision. Unless he’s simply made a mistake, which can happen to us all. 

The final track, "Don’t Release This" keeps the momentum up, and it is here that we get to hear each member of this colossal supergroup perform a solo. Arturo McGregor from Basically Actually performs a Hammond solo that is among the best ever recorded, but this is kicked into touch by the majestic viola of Helena Cooper from The Norfolk Broads. And on it goes, Tufty Jenkins, Len Macack and Hovis Rocksteady all putting in virtuoso performances.  Eventually the song fades out leaving the listener exhiliarated, exhausted yet bewildered. Before fading back in again, then out, in for about three seconds, then out for good.

Harangue Merangue is a devastating piece of work, and is streets ahead of Averbuch's much derided main project Blunt Tools, whose reliance on more conventional song structures seems antiquated.  Quite what the (still very much in existence) Midway Still make of it all is anyone's guess.

Track listing :

Wipe Tape

Dismal Piercing

Fashion Accomplice

Barlow V Mascis

Accordians Are Not The Only Fruit

Don't Release This

[elektricpiss]

Dempsey & Makepeace - Series 4

(Hurrah Lungs!) 

****

Since they played a “secret fan club” gig early last year at the Hoxton Bar & Grill, publicised only to a purloined copy of the Mumford & Sons mailing list and causing a virtual riot among the crowds who had besieged the venue in the belief that the nu-folk charlatans would be appearing under the assumed name of Retro Tweed Malarkey, this Suffolk-based collective have been largely silent.

Hence the air of anticipation surrounding the current release, and the inevitable confusion as it transpired that their name had changed once again.

Series 4 can, however, be seen as the culmination of the reclusive trio's programme of ironic reappropriation of vintage TV signifiers. Previous releases -- Isn't That Ilya Kuryakin? by Sapphire & Steel, and 2010's Harvey's Watching The Kids, under the guise of Cagney and Lacey -- were obviously knowing references to the originals, playing with the listener's memories.

But D&M's choice of Series 4 as the title for the album represents a departure -- both stripped down and neutral, a flat statement rather a playful question, it nevertheless situates the resulting record in a distinct timeline (aficionados of the actual TV show will, of course, already be aware that there never was a fourth series).

Which therefore begs the question, is Series 4 an attempted continuation or conclusion to the original show, prematurely cancelled after three series? Or perhaps an indication that nothing is ever finished, that every artistic creation can be co-opted by a future generation.

But look again at the track listing:

Love The Hit

Tequila For Harry

Blood In The Dark

Jericho Sunrise

Given To Extreme Prejudice

The Cortez Scam

Armed Bird

Mantrap Angel

The Burning Bogeyman

Cry God For The Prizefighter

  Every title is derived from cut-up versions of episode titles in the show's first three seasons. There's no progress here, no culmination, just a cultural product as raw material, cut loose from its context and reconfigured.

Similarly, at a musical level, D&M give themselves a willingly constrained palette to work with -- specifically, an overblown, over-bright 1980s sythn-pop monstrosity -- which they then proceed to recombine, turn inside out, and distort at will.

Love The Hit is a textbook 80s pop anthem -- pinwheeling primary colours, over-emphatic drum sound, muted guitars, foregrounded synths carrying the melody. Tequila For Harry, on the other hand, appears to be Love The Hit backwards, recorded in someone's garden shed. Blood In the Dark strips out the rhythm section -- you can almost feel your teeth rotting as you listen to the resulting sickly, trebly overload. Jericho Sunrise then opts for the exact reverse, a frankly absurd attempt at a dub remix while retaining the syndrums and slap bass. And so it goes -- swapping the chorus with the bridge, translating the lyrics into French and then scrambling the word order, shifting various sections up or down an octave, until Cry God For the Prizefighter which, as far as this reviewer can tell, consists of all the other tracks played simultaneously.

D&M are fully aware that MP3 culture is seen as the death knell of the traditional album, allowing the listener as it does to cherry-pick tracks, mess with the sequencing, and splice in totally incongruous songs from elsewhere. So they have decided to take this to its logical conclusion and performed the equivalent of an iPod shuffle at the level of the song itself.

In fact, the way in to this album may be to approach it more as a Dadaist thought experiment than  as a collection of songs. It's a collection of song, singular (in more ways than one). I'm pretty certain that Dempsey and Makepeace demand the right to piss in different colours.

[elektricpiss]

The Shrugs - Third Anus

(Future Husk Recordings)

* * * *

Tracks:

Progeny of Slaves

Badly Written Porn

Toxoplasma Gondii

Two More Weeks Of Pain

Crass Monument To Bling

Bizarre Baby Products

I'm A Eat You

Blame The Kernel

Production Is A Gobbler

(I Can't Remember How) Many People I Hit With My Baton

  "Shrug (vb): To draw up and drop (the shoulders) as a sign of indifference or doubt"

 A shrug. A gesture. But what is trying to convey? The Shrugs' opaque facade offers few clues. Maybe the album title offers a way in. "Third Eye" would be a familiar trope, a transcendental vision, a glimpse beyond the veil. But Third Anus? More of an evacuation. What the title offers is actually a way out, rather than a way in. And a conundrum -- what happened to the second anus?

The Shrugs, of course, shrug. They won't answer. They can't be arsed.

And so to the songs. Progeny of Slaves will surely be dense, heavy, aggressive. Won't it? In which case, the birdsong and the jaunty recorder motif come as something of a shock. The muttered vocals are buried way down in the mix, but apparent references to Wilfred Hyde White, platform 0 at Stockport railway station and the Great Reform Act of 1832 do little to add clarity.

Badly Written Porn fizzes past in a flurry of feedback, yelping and frankly disconcerting whistling, while Toxoplasma Gondii, as the title suggests, recreates the acute tedium of an O-level biology class on a stuffy summer afternoon. After nine minutes, the bricolage of found sounds -- adolescent sniggering, chalk scraping on a blackboard, footsteps barrelling down corridors -- fades out and a looped sample of Steve Jones swearing at Bill Grundy ushers in Two More Weeks Of Pain.

 An acquaintance of mine once described the music of The Fall as sounding "like a band in a house across the street chucking its equipment down the stairs." He'd never heard Two More Weeks of Pain, but it's a prescient phrase. The Shrugs, I like to think, would approve. Undemonstratively.

Crass Monument To Bling is an ambitious stab at reconstructing the sonic cathedral as a detached faux-Georgian pile in Brentwood with electronic gates and fake Doric columns flanking the entrance. It "succeeds", to the extent that such designations are relevant.

I'm A Eat You ventures into the US demotic but crucially eschews any attempt at an American accent, with the resultant distancing effect adding heft to the Shrugs' attempt to ventriloquize the thought processes of a vagrant, ripped to the gills on bath salts, hallucinating a life or death struggle with a discarded burrito in a dumpster in Cleveland. The ironic refrain of "four dead in O-hi-o" is suitably haunting, under the circumstances.

The last three tracks can, I think, be regarded as a triptych, albeit a dissonant and tangential one. Blame The Kernel's title seems to imply that the very heart of The Shrugs' project is somehow implicated in its inevitable failure, and the song echoes this theme by inserting two minutes of silence at the centre of its four-minute duration, bookended by a mantra-like chant of the song's title. Production Is A Gobbler appears to disavow the very process of recording music, smirkingly layering on every conceivable studio trick -- phasing, Auto-Tune, cavernous, echoing dub, backwards guitar, multitracked vocals -- until the entire edifice collapses into cacophony ... To be replaced by the relative calm of (I Can't Remember How) Many People I Hit With My Baton. A single unaccompanied male voice, building the song title a word at a time, like a roundel, the hypnotic mood punctuated only by the manic giggling which grows ever louder until it blots out the vocal.

The Shrugs, then. A wilful resistance of explanation, a willed embrace of ambiguity. Indifference, or doubt? An idle gesture, or a considered stance?

Clenched, The Third Anus guards its secrets well.