Star Guzzling & Riding Free - Vibracathedral Orchestra & Astral Social Club

... to my mind's ear, Vibracathedral Orchestra's music is some of the most enjoyable mindless entertainment around. Their M.O. is simple - using whatever they have to hand, they start playing, until they stop. Their signature sound is, well, just pure sound, long drones of keyboards and synths with percussion, guitars, violin, flute, electronics, whatever, aiming for ecstatic psychedelic suspension, not beat-driven but with pulse and percussion, vocals but no lyrics, just shouts and yelps when it feels right. They record in real time, never playing the same thing twice, then edit the recordings down onto self-released CDRs or released by labels all over the world on CD, vinyl or tape. They've turned on my enthusiasm enough to travel to see 'em, to the beautiful cities of Leeds, Glasgow & Brighton, as well as their sporadic London gigs.

The latest collection of cosmic wibble beamed out of their Yorkshire HQ is 'Wisdom Thunderbolt' on Richmond, VA, USA label vhf records, which has released most of their findable output. It doesn't guarantee to make you cleverer when you hear it, but I like to think that it will. Starting with the title track, which initially sounds like it's based around the motif from 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind', it then breaks down into a stumbling drum machine rhythm and strange parping noises. 'Rainbow Whirlwind' is twelve minutes of shimmer and twinkle and 'Sway Sage' is a full-on roar, sounding like a ridiculously extended finale of a freaked-out rock jam from start to finish. Hey, it's all good. There's a great line about the legendary improv band AMM's records being as like and unalike as trees. Vibracathedral Orchestra's recordings are like strange mushrooms - take a lick!

Recently Neil Campbell, who was always the mouthpiece of the orchestra (or the most willing to talk, at length, about music and everything - see the current issue of THE WIRE) left to concentrate on his 'rainbow scurf sound' project of (mostly) beatless technoid frolics, Astral Social Club. So far he's released about 12 CDRs of material (Volumes 1-7 are available as an mp3 CD for a few quid), a 'proper' CD on vhf records again and the LP 'Star Guzzlers' on the Italian small edition label QBICO, all of which I'm currently getting my ears around. 'The Club' played last week in London, at the Corsica Studios space in a railway arch in Elephant and Castle, playing with Yellow Swans (who were also very loud and very good) and a bunch of other experimental units whom I'm not going to damn with faint praise. Joined by Stewart Keith, it was a stunning set of high volume joyous chaos of guitar, analogue synth and goodness knows what gizmos in a suitcase. We (me and The Doktor) walked out into the South London night with smiles on our faces. Far out guv.

A selection from Astral Social Club mp3 CD, with thanks to Neil:

2/6
3/4
4/3
4/4

Astral Social Club at Corsica Studios, London, 25/05/07 (pic: Nurse)

More pics of the Astral Social and Jennifer Gentle gigs added on the Flickr page.

Hiss from Nowhere - Jennifer Gentle

Marco Fosolo, Jennifer Gentle at the Horse & Groom, London
03/05/07 (pic: Nurse)

... first heard of these lovely Italians via the excellent Lexicon Devil blog/label, which was so impressed by their first two self-released albums that it reissued them as a double CD called 'Ectoplasmic Garden Party' (which I managed to purchase from Forced Exposure recently - you can get most of their other material via Sub Pop). I borrowed these from a hip friend and have totally fallen for the the second album, 'Funny Creatures Lane'. It's a brilliantly full-on technicolour mash-up of Beatles/Pink Floyd inspired pop at it's most tuneful and psychedelic. It's clear that Jennifer Gentle (at that time a recording-only duo, which makes it even more impressive) are totally in love with sixties music but they're inspired enough to project their musical fantasies to produce a sound that's full of life, fun and mania - (I'm going to regret saying this, but...) more soaked in LSD than preserved in Aspic. It's win-win and very addictive! On an obscure aside, I have to mention that, amongst many other things, 'Funny Creatures Lane' features the best use of cowbell on an Italian record since Parma's Raw Power's early recordings. Plus catchy tunes sung in chipmunk voices. And a fantastic Sitar wig out. And a languid 'Give Peace a Chance'-style singalong at the end...

Last year they released the album 'Valende' on Sub Pop, more delicate and pretty, sparser and quieter than FCL but the more I listen to it, just as good, with killer pop tunes like 'I Do Dream You' which sounds like a worldwide smasheroonie, and the gorgeous acoustic psych folk of 'The Garden'. They've released more experimental stuff too - 'The Wrong Cage', a live collaboration album with yer man Kawabata Makoto from Acid Mothers Temple and the vinyl-only 'Sacramento Session', one side being a stoner jam recorded live at a radio station in California (well, duh!), the other a very dark and ominous solo piece by main man Marco Fosolo.

Their latest is another bedroom solo recording by Marco; 'A New Astronomy' (Released on the Italian small edition label A Silent Place, like The Sacramento Session), which is dedicated to an Italian mad-genius flat-earth theorist called Giovanni Paneroni. Amongst other things is a Dick Dale-meets-Sun City Girls rocker called 'Sex Rituals of the Dead' and the multitracked firework guitars of 'Hiss from Nowhere'. Not only that, they're writing a score for a film about legendary gay eccentric musical innovator Joe Meek (See the film website here) to be released later this year. I'm seeing a theme here of an admiration for the misunderstood, vilified visionary, as well as outer space. I really hope that they're understood and embraced, on earth, right now though, as they're accessible and interesting and fun to be appreciated by pop kids as well blogging eejits like myself.

Was really excited when I heard they were playing here, in the Horse & Groom pub in London. They're on Sub Pop, have toured America and China and come to London and play to a few dozen people in the upstairs of a pub in the shadow of The City, then at a club called The Social in the West End. Compared to the fantastic recordings, the songs were 'just' played straight, but seeing as their tunes are so good anyway, it was totally enjoyable.

Jennifer Gentle at the Horse & Groom, London, 03/05/07
(pic: Nurse)

There's a new album coming out on Sub Pop in three weeks, which I'm really excited about! Knock yourself out at their fab mySpace site, which has all the info, music and videos you'll require to make a sober assessment.

Satanism... murder... dead bodies - IN DUST

...in the hope of encouraging disagreement, I'll say now that in my humble, IN DUST were the best Irish band of the '90s. First saw them in '91 at the Art College in Belfast, and they stood out first of all visually as they were synth based - I swear that singer Alex was playing a star-shaped bass, though that could just be a fantasy on my behalf. They were good too, maybe notable for being 'interesting and different' on first encounter, but they went on to deliver. The line up was Alex Finnegan (vocals), Steve Nolan (programming/ keyboards/ vocals) and Ryk Irvine (guitar).

In early '92, I guess, their sophomore 12" EP 'Bewildermental' was released on their manager's label Wallcreeper Records. It was an interesting and unfashionable mix of electronic post-punk/'dark' pop (All three were proud Depeche Mode fans), sometimes dramatic and nearly pompous, sometimes quirky, with Ryk's inspired death-metal-style solos and tremelo-arm abuse. There was one standout song, 'Focus', with it's dischordant electronic hook and the exhortation 'Concentrate your senses on what you desire!'

By the time the EP was released though, their songs were getting heavier, more riff-based with harder rhythms, even wilder guitar solos and techno/acid style noise. Live they went for it with pure attack and a lot of people didn't know what to make of them. They were so exciting, the most over-the-top and the most inventive local band around AND they were OUT THERE, putting records out and creating a cartoon hell onstage all over the place. One of my fondest memories of that era was when they asked the band I was in at the time, The Golden Mile, to support them in Letterkenny (15 May 1993 in case you were wondering). It was our first really good gig and In Dust just tore the roof off the place, a couple of hundred kids moshing and stage diving in the back of a pub, as opposed to the usual gigs by local bands attended by the core of scenesters and indifferent audiences of indie kids.

Their album 'Nosebleed' must have come out in '93, after they toured Britain with their friends Therapy? when the latter were one of the most popular live bands in the country. The production on the album was disappointing, but it was still a good album which didn't sound like anyone else (Frank admission - I've not listened to those records for ages and my albums are currently packed in boxes. Now I'm wishing I had them to hand!). The only bands at that time that were melding 'rock' with sampling, programming and electronics successfully, if you'd have asked me, were The Young Gods (whom In Dust opened for in Belfast and Dublin in '94), New Zealand's Skeptics and Moonshake.

They were part of a cool, creative crowd and they made a eye-fucking video for their never-released 'Hyperdeemic Nerdle' (I know - what a stupid title!) which mostly focused on Steve strapped to a chair, struggling and bleeding. SOMEBODY! PUT IT ON YOUTUBE! It's worth noting that Wallcreeper was, albeit briefly, the only independent label in Northern Ireland at the time, save for Good Vibrations, which had long since attained National Treasure, heritage status. The other releases on the label were a 12" EP by Repulse, a terribly dull sub-sub Godflesh outfit and the 'Desperately Seeking Satan' CD EP by local bon viveurs LMS who were just a little bit influenced by The Jesus Lizard and would antagonise audiences with rock-star posing and shirt/trouser removal at any given opportunity. They were fun and all about having a good time. There was a poster campaign for the EP in an attempt to bait the good Christian folk of Ulster, although I forget if there was a moral panic on a par with local legends Bleeding Rectum's 'Daniel O'Donnell Must Die!' posters.

In Dust quietly left the building around '95 maybe, 'sick of soundchecking' and maybe having taken it as far as they could go. The various strains of weird techno and left-field dance music was the new noise for them and I think Steve put out a few 12"s when he moved to London after they finished. Hopefully someone can furnish me with a bit more information?

I bumped into a very drunk Ryk one night in London a few years ago and he later gave me a tape of their best recordings, my copy of which had been destroyed years before. Jeez I missed it, but here it is again! Three out of four songs from their Peel Session, just like how they were live, recorded in January '93. Big Love to Ryk, Steve & Alex and the Wallcreepers.

Hyperdeemic Nerdle
Magnet Womb
Boredom Result

Honor Role: Rictus LP - Homestead Records, 1989

... absolutely one of the best American records of the 80's, 'Rictus' turned out to be the final release by the Richmond, VA, USA quartet Honor Role, who split after it was released, leaving this classic unsupported and underrated. I heard it around '91, courtesy of a my friend Rick, and for me and a few chums this album was just the business, it has it all, post-hardcore jagged rhythms, inventive and exciting guitar playing, studio FX and overdubs, repetition, varied arrangements, really strong - in the sense of backbone and enjoyability - songs and lyrics, the order of the songs seems like it was thought out, and the cover's great too, this weird jarring design that gives away no clues.

I saw reviews after the fact comparing HR to Die Kreuzen and Voivod, 'cause of guitarist Pen Rollings' non-obvious, abrasive Metal-influenced guitar playing, which is fair, though I always associated 'em, personally, with the mid-American gothic (can't stress the small 'g' strongly enough there!) of Big Black and Slint, but then you've got the confidently offbeat tunefulness of Mission of Burma or Eleventh Dream Day to consider. Whilst researching (read: typing 'Honor Role' into Google), turns out they were into The Fall, Birthday Party, Metallica and Slayer, just like everyone else! OK, that's the list done. Needless to say, in my blog, Honor Role are 'up there'. I hope one day to curate a festival at a British holiday camp with all of the above, though at this late stage my original vision of an all naturist event might have to be compromised.

The music is remarkable enough, but this is a lyrics album, mate. Singer Bob Schick's schtick, if you will, is all about the terror of growing up/ old, the fear/ reality of compromising/ selling-out, rejection/ depedence in relationships, finding your own way, but free from cliche and self indulgence, never bleak and hopeless for it's own sake, despite coming from a band whose canon features titles like 'Early Grave', 'Purgatory', 'Thankless Job' and 'Judgement Day'. It's just life, and more complex than you'd think. On top of that, he can also tell stories.

Opener 'Listening to Sally' starts nonchalantly, downbeat, with a repeated minor chord refrain, then the story starts, only half-sung; a psychiatrist talks about one of his clients, a young widow who 'wasn't always like this, she slowly grew this way' whilst he has do his best to do his job right and pay the bills. Next, 'Absolve' has the opening gambit 'She shuts the door on me/ face down on the sidewalk sticking pins into the telephone book/ thinking I could be happy with any of these', sung over one of the most heartbreakingly sad guitar melodies of fluid grief ever.

The next couple of songs are even more monotonous and melancholy, and by the end of 'Swing It' overdubbed melodies, distorted, illegible vocals and noise pile up over the knotted, go-nowhere riff until it stops abruptly, leaving some doomed maniac to hammer out a chord from the evil end of a piano to introduce 'Skippy'. The stop-start riff and brilliantly creepy guitar lines are as grotesque as the paranoid lyric about this weird redneck DJ round town. One day you come home, Skippy and his pals throwing a party in your garden, then round on you and call you a piece of shit. Left humiliated and aghast.

'Salty Tears' kicks off the second side briskly, pulling off dischordant and danceable, ending in a jam with an entire other band! (The Alter Natives - anyone know who they were?) The rest of the album settles down in pace and mood after that, more tuneful and OK, not as dazzling as side one, just calmer. The highlight for me is the near anthemic 'Thankless Job' with a mutha of a guitar solo on a par with J Mascis - Pen Rollings can sure wring out the articulate tearjerk. 'Familiar and Plain' slows everything right down to usher in the lovely, reflective flute-driven instrumental, 'Break the Ice' to tuck it all in.

OK, this is a time of life album for me - you may have to suspend your disbelief as far as the production's concerned, which is OK but not great and not everyone will like Bob Schick's vocals, but this record is a great piece of work to be sure.

Merge Records released an anthology CD in 1996, enticingly called 'Album' with a sticker on it with an endorsement from Steve Albini. Doesn't appear to be available except by download. In reverse chronological order, 'Rictus' starts it (Maddeningly, criminally skipping out 'Skip It' and the interlude before 'Skippy'), then their cool but less-realised debut LP 'The Pretty Song' and their fantastic singles (except their quirky debut, which can be found here). So, if you're a guy like me you'll have to pick up Rictus on vinyl and the CD to get the full picture.

Bob Schick sang with Coral (not The Coral from Merseyside) for a while afterwards. Pen Rollings played in the instrumental Breadwinner post-'Role and has a new band, Loincloth, which you can read about below...

Fansite with Discography
Interview with Pen Rollings
Dude's MySpace Blog with Bob Schick interview