Bondi postcard from the Museum of Sydney thoughtfully included in compilation package - Jaws has apparently eaten at least one of the legs of the two guys at the front - didn't they used to be in Neighbours? Or was that Summer Bay? etc. Anyway, it's all a bit physically ept and naturey if you ask me. Shouldn't they be at home reading all those famous Aussie philosophers...or something?
Infinite Thought (i.e. me) reviews an aussie-core compilation from someone kind enough (D84) to answer my plaintive call, after having missed out in the first round (all those wasted days of puppy-like anticipation!). In a moment of madness and desperation I previously claimed: 'At this point if someone sent me a tape of themselves weeing with Westlife playing distantly over the plaintive sounds of their under-attended children crying in the background....it would get a good review'. But they didn't (curse you lazy parents!). Instead I got something far better (although quite possibly less poignant and not as likely to involve Social Services, or whatever the Australian equivalent is).
Clever selection of song titles for starters - something of a political theme: 'The Lighter Side of Global Terrorism' (Jello Biafra & The Melvins), 'Revolution' (Butthole Surfers), 'Plastic Bomb' (Poison Idea). Lots of men shout at me on Side One: 'Your blood on my hands!' ('Slateman' by Godflesh). Then it goes a bit swimmy and prog towards the end of side one with some band I've never heard of called 'Old' and 'Who Are You?' (I, er, simply don't know!)
Side two goes all hip London winebar for a minute with Carl Craig's '4 My Peepz', making me wonder whether I should be kicking some high heels against chrome plating in a club whilst eyeing up some American Psycho-esque chap. At this point I get a text from my Ma telling me my uncle and his boyfriend are getting married this summer. Excellent! Should be drinking cocktails or champagne, though have drunk last bottle of latter (oh I didn't buy it, like I've got any money - I get paid in champagne for various writing jobs - I think it's a kind of tax scam). Down some slightly corked wine instead (can wine be only slightly corked? Quite possibly not). Blurgh. Anyway, bits of chocolate bunny in the sensorial admixture make me forget whether the Carl Craig track has blended into the Lassigue Benthaus track or not ('Overflow'). I listen out for some lyrics. There aren't any. Erm...have a picture:
'North Bondi womens march past team, 1947', apparently (no apostrophes required, it seems!). From the back of the postcard. Their faces seem to have been made a bit elongated due to my leaning on the scanner whilst eating a mix of fried mushrooms, potatoes, spring onions and tomato ketchup (before I got round to smashing the head of my chocolate easter bunny on the back of a chair, heh). I think it looks quite neat like this tho, a bit Aphex Twin/Chris Cunningham-ish, even. Can't work out what those semi-circular motifs are on the skirt-bits are though. Laurel wreaths? Good-luck horseshoes? Necessarily inadequate semiotic manifestations of the impossibility of female desire? Who knows!
Turns out the Carl Craig track is, like, bare long! The Lassigue Benthaus track reminds instead just slightly too much of days spent at Trowbridge Pump Fayre listening to Ozric Tentacles with my dear Pa, West Country rave casualities and druids getting organically trashed on cider whilst doing deeply unattractive things with glo-sticks (on reflection, 'organic' a term possibly invented by Sainsbury's in 2002). Ah, Glastonbury 1995, the folk stage! Ah, the Amulet at Shepton Mallett's listening to Wolfstone whilst trying to persuade Pa to buy me their t-shirt (featuring a giant red wolf paw-print)! It's all coming back... the swimming/trace theme gets going: James Plotkin's '(Swimming Against) Clinton Street' (also possibly a bit political, yep yep), and Sandoz's 'Ocean Reflection'. Is now the time to take the ketamine? Only joking, of course (though great line in Basic Instinct II when k-holed Stan Collymore, being driven by Stone around Canary Wharf says 'I can't move' and she replies 'you don't need to. You're in a car.' Fantastic!)
'Planet Earth is blue' a voice informs me on, er, one of the tracks or other. Is it though? my stratified and rather ungenerous mind wonders. The Thames, for example, looks pretty mucky to me, and I've seen at least three shopping trolleys in there round my way, the metal leaching off of which would at least taint the original blue (if indeed this is EVEN TRUE) of the water. Pah! I mean, if you live somewhere where nature genuinely does you some visual favours (I dunno, baby turtles being born at midnight on a sandy beach, sun, ha, places you could run wild without getting shot by an irate farmer, etc.) you might believe this kind of natur-propaganda. But I don't. Not living here anyway...grr, visions of bronzed, healthy beach-types enjoying themsleves by moonlight on endless sand-stretches...pasty englishness feeling slighted...
Er, haven't really mentioned much about the actual music...suffice it to say that the first side goes 'WRRRRRAAAAAAGH!' and the second 'whooooooooosh, bleep, whooooooooosh'. It's very nicely done. Thanks D84!
