Voyeur's Market (Calgary, Alberta) released "Songs O' Yule" in plenty of time for the holiday season. I, of course, didn't hear it until the end of the 2nd week in January. Clearly this is a sign that it's time to get an early start on Christmas 2025. Chop chop, time's wasting.
Minimum Table Stacks (New Jersey) is again showing itself to have an ear for both older and newer music. This is the same label that reissued Violin Sect and also released an LP version of The Sheaves (both in 2023). The label's ear for oddball pop reminds me a bit of Siltbreeze. Let's hope Minimum Table Stacks stays at this for the next 30 years like Siltbreeze.
As far as how Voyeur's Market sounds, I'll let the Bandcamp page do the talking:
"...the six songs written, performed and recorded by Pridham (Ashley Pridham, who is also known for her work as one of the Slime Gurlz) are above all incredibly infectious bedroom pop with nods towards 80’s UK indie, 90’s US garage rock and the more minimal 80’s post-punk from both shores. (The track “Henry Kringle” is actually a twang-y ‘contrafactum’ of the Country Teaser’s hit “Henry Crinkle”.) The EP’s six track (sleigh) ride makes stops at K Records, Slumberland, Yoyo Studios and the International Pop Underground, Slant 6’s Embassy in D.C. Pop music, Twelve Cubic Feet and the Raincoats... something for everyone."
MYSTERY PLANES #6
Walthamstow Trades Hall, 61-63 Tower Hamlets Rd, London E17 4RQ
8pm til midnight
£6 on the door
live sets from:
THE BOHMAN BROTHERS
“Sound art veterans The Bohman Brothers invest random words with unearned meanings via the eloquent juxtapositions of their elegantly neutral voices. After three decades of experimentation, these alchemists of banality, these banalchemists, turn everyday leaden language into poetic gold.” Stewart Lee
MIDNIGHT MINES
Special expanded guitar/clarinet/drums/more guitar/more drums line-up, celebrating the release of their new LP 'Since My Baby Left Me' on Minimum Table Stacks. Should have some copies for sale on the night if the courier gods are kind.
the sheaves — Excess Death Cult Time (Minimum Table Stacks)
We can’t seem to find a photo of the sheaves, but this came up in the image search.
Excess Death Cult Time by the sheaves
If you’re going to compare the sheaves to the Fall, fair enough, but let’s be clear. The reference point is not the hooky, keyboard-lighted Fall of the Brix years, they of “C.R.E.E.P.” and “Cruiser’s Creek.” No, this is more like the late dystopic Fall, the slurry, spitty years following Country on the Click, where Mark E. Smith drawled madly on over disintegrating textures of rock-adjacent guitar noise. Like end-stage Fall, the sheaves are always falling apart, always dissolving into chemicals, always losing the thread. Listening to Excess Death Cult Time is like trying to make sense of a dream you’re having, not later, but while it’s still going on.
The title track, for instance, starts with a bass haring off in an indeterminant direction, and someone coughing. Soon, two more guitars are at it, noodling high and not in any recognizable key, at odds with one another, but possibly making the convergent points. (Imagine a bar fight where two drunks are yelling at each other at increasing volume but, weirdly, yelling the same thing.) The drums very nearly hold things together, or at least keep them in the same room, but chaos roils underneath, always ready to spew up out of the murk. And over all this, the singer, drones disconsolately, his voice discernible mostly as a buzz but occasionally taking shape in words, i.e., “Are you losing your hair, it’s passing you by, it’s passing you by, it’s a lovely excess death cult time.” The song is a mess of sharp-edged parts clanking together.
This is a band not afraid to try out a song called “Guitar Wank,” which, true to its name, gives a pair of players license to do whatever the fuck, in concert and conflict with a high noodling keyboard, also wandering untethered. The song coalesces out of parts, taking shape from dream-like voices, doubled, but slightly out of sync, and a snaggle of intertwined dissonance. Imagine staring at tangled piles of junkyard wires until you can see the shapes of animals in them (and then staring longer, until these shapes disappear). This is what listening to “Guitar Wank” is like.
Not that it’s unpleasant, especially if you’ve been weaned on folk-noise-industrial eccentrics like Siltbreeze’s Pink Reason and CIA Debutant. If it were easier to get to the songs, you might not bother. Everybody loves a challenge. And so, perhaps, it’s worth mentioning that two songs on this disc come together right away, not exactly welcoming you in, but at least opening the door.
“Hit Silly” is the real ringer here, with its rumbling shimmy of electric guitars and half swallowed vocals giving it a cracking, staticky sheen like early Guided by Voices. It’s considerable signal cuts through the noise. Indeed, it’s anthemic the way the guitar chords shift in inevitable ways. There’s a clear progression and none of the antic scrabbling in corners, the mumbled venom, the chaos.
“Lariat Slung” makes it a party, too, with its thundery bass and antic carnival keyboards. The singer elides and swallows the words, muttering ominously most of the time then breaking into startling clarity. “Oh there’s nothing to do, all of the time, oh say, I feel sick, all of the time.” You might feel a little woozy yourself by this point, but in a good kind of way.
Minimum Table Stacks has released another gem. Unlike many previous releases, this is a new band, although it sounds as if The Sheaves could be from the early 1980s.
This kind of reminds me of The Fall or Swell Maps. But the vocals recall the sound of the unheralded Herms.
In 1981, four Welsh lads decided to form a band, play some gigs, record a single and release it on their own label Cheek to Cheek (A Porky Prime Cut!). As the sole output of a short-lived band, Violin Sect’s “Highdays and Holidays/Rivals” is one of those ultra-rare post punk 7” singles that has become a fetish object for collectors. It is by no means the most expensive or sought-after record ever, but for all the strip mining of obscurity, Violin Sect have never made an appearance on any of the many compilations of DIY, post punk and experimental pop singles released over the years. In 2022 singer and bass player Steve Walker dug out the old tapes and had them remastered along with two demos not heard since the original session. New Jersey label Minimum Table Stacks have now sent them out into the world, probably to a mix of joy and chagrin from the cratediggers collective.
All this begs the question, origin story aside, is it any good? Well yes actually. Walker and his bandmates, Steve Jinks on guitar, Phil Rimell on drums and Hywel Pontin percussion and backing vocals, were clearly fans of Scritti Politti and Swell Maps and with their DIY mix of dubby rhythms, scratchy post punk guitar, whimsy and skepticism made a record that can stand with “Skank Bloc Bologna” and “Read About Seymour.” It’s a little undercooked but has an immediacy and enthusiasm that goes a long way to overcoming the band’s technical deficiencies.
Walker’s bass provides the focus of the four tracks on Vile Insect. Whether laying down a rubbery counterpoint to the cowbell skank of “Holidays and Highdays” or the bouncing over cobblestones riff on “MILK” it forms the spine around which the voices, guitar and percussion are free to wander, occasionally tripping over each other like capering puppies. Walker’s voice which ranges between Dan Treacy’s willful amateurism, and the warbling eccentricity of Ivor Cutler is something of an acquired taste, but it suits the looseness of the music. ”Fit & Anxious” is the outlier, an echo laden rhythm with Hywel Pontin’s sprechgesang and Jinks’ guitar creating a claustrophobic atmosphere that sounds both completely of its time and presciently modern.
Violin Sect are one of many who had a moment and disappeared. It’s taken 40 odd years but happily for us, their music has a new life and hopefully will get a little of the attention it deserves.
Music releases for 2023 are in full swing - equal parts new music and reissues. Violin Sect were a short-lived Wales-based band. "Vile Insect" is a reissue of their 1981 two-song 7" plus two unreleased songs. It is being released by Jersey City (New Jersey) label Minimum Table Stacks.
This has a minimalist feel not unlike The Raincoats or Vitamin. "Rivals" sounds like it could be a Mission of Burma song. The Bandcamp page mentions Scritti Politti as well (I'm assuming they mean early Scritti Politti).
