DJ Negative Skillz

I had a go at the art of reviewing a long time ago and decided though I had an interest in music and writings about music I decided I wasn’t really much cop. So while I will try my best to give this review a good shot, apologies in advance for the shit prose – I’ve also compensated for this with some photos capturing my actual reactions to all of the songs on the tape.

First of all some of the circumstances of this tape. The paperwork states the tape was

‘mixed on 1 turntable with nuff pause button edits and rewinds by the one they call DJ Negative Skills'.

It was hand delivered to my place in East London on a Tuesday early evening (20th March). We get a lot of door-to-door sellers so I don’t always answer the door (figuring friends will bell me), so I’m glad I did this time. We had a brief but pleasant conversation, where I immediately broke the tape-swapping code by giving my dissensus name and asking for (and getting) his.

The tape is carefully crafted, with as much interest going on ‘in the mix’ as there is in the official tracks. For the whole of the tape it feels like DJ Negative Skills has his hands next to the record lining up another signature sabotage. This has the effect of making it feel like he’s sat there listening to the music with you, which feels kind of creepy but also gives you the discipline to listening properly and not being able to dismiss anything without giving it a proper listen.

I’ve listened to the tape around 10 times in the three or so weeks I've had it. Sometimes I've spun it in my spare music/work room (where all the pictures are taken) but it has also soundtracked my cycle ride to work ( though I got some funny looks pulling out my clunky walkman at work).



Onto the sounds, Side A starts with ‘For your love’ by the Yardbirds where we get a turntabalists re-reading of the song – the song dipping out of right and left channels, slowing down, stopping, the needle thudding against the record, before the tampering ends and we hear the whole if slightly slowed version of the record. This seems to work, a good start.



A change of tack up next with Salt N Pepa’s ‘shake your thang’ (featuring E.U) a slice of late 80s pop rap…which doesn't particularly move (Push It still cuts it but this is just meh) – lot of needle feedback creep in at the end, but I think this is all part of the compiler letting me know their on the controls



Then we have Rammelzee versus K. Rob, leftfield hip-hop from about the same time I think or just later. Rammelzee’s the strange looking dude adored by the Wire isn’t he. This is okay but nothing special. My ill-advised attendance at Shoreditch bars between 1999-2003 killed the vibe of anything 'old school' like this for me. Some more random turntabalism sneaking in at the end at the track cuts between channels, the turntable is unearthed, it cuts and fades, fades some more, cuts back in (I’m hoping this is all very deliberate).



Then we get a couple of slices of The Bordeoms ‘jungle taitei’ track, the second being labelled as DJ Let’s Try & DIY Drum Machine Mix, which sounds like an in-house job rather than any formal mix. Again we get some channel hopping – the first one spends a while just coming out of the right channel. The remix starts with a throbbing Aphex-like pulse going through it while the singer appears to be drowned. The drumbeat becomes more complex and rhythmic. I'm enjoying this, despite having to chase the sounds around the room.



Next is Nobukazu Takemura’s ‘a lost treasure’ a lovely solemn track with vocordered vocal. This is the first artist I’ve not heard of before but sounds worth looking into though I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d discover something in Schneider TM territory.



Next some plinky plonky business with The Remote Viewer – here it was difficult to tell if the glitches, speeding up and down was the author’s or curators italics. Quite a pleasant tune though, if nothing particularly different



Finally Dry Hustle ‘do it sloppily’ is a turntablists or VVM-style version of Missy Elliot’s ‘get ur freak on’…not really doing an awful lot for me.



Side B starts with Pram’s ‘eltopo’. I heard a lot about Pram during the post rock era, but never really bothered checking them out. This has an obvious Morricone influence, with a central (almost Casio sounding) whistling melody backed by occasionally epic strings. Then we get come radio fm searching (again not sure if this is part of the pram track or our compiler’s doing)



Then we get Dexy’s Midnight Runners ‘burn it down’ with some intro volume tampering and cutting out and slowing down by out turntablism champion…. I suppose this is kind of wearing for me now – particularly the switching from left to right channels. Great song though.



Then it’s Quickspace with ‘rise’, whimsical indie stuff – pleasant enough, but not particularly rousing in any way. I’m starting to think the flitting between left and right channels might be a cassette fault – only also the other turntablism antics is making me think otherwise.



Next it’s the more rocky sounding The Yummy Fur with ‘supermarket sounding a bit like Wire, which is quickly followed Neotropic ‘ultra freaky orange’ – filmic mid-90s sounding electronica/lounge/trip-hop…. though it is quite a dense sensory overload, these ears aren’t quite ready for a return of these type of Mo Wax/Vadim/Luke Vivert style soundings.



Then we get a blast of Merzbrow/Gore Beyond Necropsy with ‘a horse named rectal anarchy’…and blast is the right word, sounding like a high-speed train hurtling past. Again some confusion whether the tomfoolery in the mix is from our compiler or the track artists. Somewhere in there we also had Hijokaidan (another artists unknown to me) with ‘ferocity of practical life part 2’ though I didn’t spot exactly where!



Dave Brubeck Quartet’s ‘blue shadows in the street’ is an aptly named mournful swinger of a tune.




Next have Georgia Moroder’s fantastic thumping ‘call me’ instrumental. The tape closes with some distant radio signal beeping away for 15 minutes or so interspersed with some more gadgetry play from the compiler, including a 5 or so minute false ending.

I can't remember the last time someone gave me a handmade, uniquely compiled tape. It must have been my ex, from years ago. We did a tape swap once - bad, bad idea. She taped me a load of stuff that I wasn't very keen on, like 10,000 Maniacs and Kristin Hersh. One day, I revealed that I'd taped over it, I think I'd discovered some pirate station and instinctively chucked her tape in the deck to capture a piece of South London Jungle history (which I later lost). She went completely fucking apeshit - "Do you think I wanted to listen to that punk crap you taped me?" she screamed. "You just don't get it, do you? You NEVER get rid of tapes someone's made for you". At the time, I thought she was being ridiculous, but now I look back through the frozen wastepipes of time, I concede she had a point - but, as usual, it took me years, and until it was too late, to spot the obvious.

Anyway, a few words before I start my review. I've listened to the tape I was sent about seven times now, in various conditions. If I was to create a psychological profile of the compiler, I would guess that he is Australasian, has a pretty Mediterranean girlfriend, has DJ'd (professionally) in the past - oh, and that he wasn't at home on the 5th March when Hackney Homes attempted to conduct a Tree and Grass Inspection. Before Chef Napalm starts yelling again, yes, this tape is very well mixed and obviously hasn't been burnt off at random from MP3s, etc - are we all clear on that? Also, I deliberately haven't Googled any of these artists or tracks, to keep the 'review' as honest and unbiased as possible.

I didn't enjoy the beginning of the tape so much - "Pump" by HE SAID is a placid sort of Alabama 3-style jam, except it doesn't really sound like Alabama 3. It sounds OK if you're drifting off to sleep, I suppose....this is followed by some guy called BILL FAY, who sounds like an Aussie. "Sing us one of your songs, May" he urges, in what seems to be a song about a girl whose soldier boyfriend's been killed in action - maybe with the ANZACS? It's nice enough, but years of smoking must have hardened my heart, as I ended up wishing Fay would shut up and leave the grieving kid alone.

Then we get DAVID BANNER, with "Cadillacs on 22". This is the first of two tracks which the compiler has marked '(C&S)'. I don't know if this related to 'screwed' rap, as discussed on Dissensus, but the song title feels appropriate - this sounds like a R&B platter played at 22 rpm! To be really honest, I can't see the point of it, it sounds stupid. Next up are the ALIEN PORN MIDGETS - I was expecting some hardcore thrash band with wacky lyrics, but "High Altitude Over An Eastern Shore" turns out to be a genuinely 'screwed' instrumental, sort of like Martin Denny sniffing paint and knocking out some ragtime-exotica crossover tune for a 1940s black and white Tom and Jerry cartoon. I found this quite enjoyable, especially after I'd had a few drinks.

HOLGER HILLER's "Waltz" is next, which sounds a bit like one of those old BBC2 music workshop programmes from the 80s - you know, the ones where impeccably well-behaved kids would be split into groups and trained to play separate parts of an overall musical piece - one bunch of kids on glockenspiels, the others bashing triangles - oh, you get the point. I know this bloke's a bit of a cult Kraut legend, but I thought this track was excessively long and was a bit too tidy and conservative.

I've spent years avoiding the music of CAN, as, like Faust and Neu!, I figured it was boring shit for hippies. After nearly 30 years of resistance, I decided to check out the latter two bands this year, and was pleasantly suprised by Faust (I think Neu! suck though). However, this tape's forced me to seriously re-evaluate the situation: Can's "Transcendental Express" is a gloriously fucked-up experimental piece. If you've ever seen that episode of "The Prisoner" where Patrick McGoohan is slipped a powerful hallucinogenic drug and tries to cross a ballroom full of leering, melting faces, this song's a bit like the audio equivalent of that. Strangely beautiful with a hint of menace, at times reminiscent of dead souls wailing through a wind tunnel, it's completely made me change my mind about Can. The muso-critics were right! I've been a bloody fool!

I was looking forward to the LEGENDARY PINK DOTS track, as I was sure that I'd once bought an LP by them when I was living in Camberwell in 1995, which I'd really enjoyed. It was only when "Closet Kings" kicked in, though, I realised I'd actually been thinking of Pink Industry. This sounds like one of those jaunty, jangly, folky things that are splattered all over the "Messthetics" series of CD-Rs. Are they Australasian? I don't hate it, but it doesn't move me in a massive way.

Christ knows what to make of EXUMA's "Metastophalise" - the music's quite sombre, with a tragic, epic feel and scraping strings, but the guy delivering the rhyming soliloquy had me rolling round the floor with laughter, especially as he sounds like he's trying to come across as really sincere and anguished. Maybe I am just a heartless cunt - I always used to crack up laughing at that Tindersticks song about the kid who falls down the well, too - but I quite enjoyed this in the same way I like William Shatner's, er, 'cover' of "Elegy For the Brave". Exuma sound like they (or sounds like he?) could be a contemporary of Comus, part of that deviant 70s folk scene.

Then POSITION NORMAL's "Bucket Wipe" bleeps into action, sweet and hypnotic echoing intergalactic signal noises reverberate over a slightly phased guitar riff. It's got a Radiophonic Workshop feel, and harks back to the good old days when everyone thought that, come the year 2007, schools would be teaching subjects like 'space station communications' and we'd all be riding flying giant squids to work. I really dig the next track, "Stornello" by EUGENIO PILA, because it reminds me of the bloke who used to play his flamenco guitar in the backroom of the Camden all-night kebab shop, Marathons. I can't tell you the amount of nights we'd end up back there after gigs, especially during winter when, soaked in beer, we'd seek warmth, overpriced cans of Guinness and small donors until the tube re-opened at 5.30am - sod hanging round in the cold waiting for a night bus. Marathons is a bit of a London institution like that, I don't know anyone who hasn't been in there at 4am at some point in their lives. Whatever happened to the skinhead bloke who used to wear the plastic policeman's hat? I haven't been for ages, but this track sounds EXACTLY like Marathons used to, even down to the drunken conversations and laughter in the background.

Then WILEY delivers "Doorway", which manages to get across a positive message without sounding too preachy, and proves why grime is about 3,493,748 times more relevant and interesting than any of this Hed Kandi crap my workmates keep telling me about. FAUST's "Psalter" sounds immediately familiar, I've actually got this track on the "Faust 4" LP but it's got a different title there. I particularly like the handclaps on this track. MALACA's "Atola" has an imposing drum beat, though I couldn't really get into it - something about it annoyed me, particularly the vocals. EXCEPTER's "Whirl Wind" starts off with what sounds like a treated xylophone or steel drums sample, before a noise reminiscent of TG's later gigs kicks in, with low frequencies, echoing vocals and distorted electronic cornets zipping in and out of the mix. I liked this, but the one criticism is that the vocals were a bit too mellow - I think it'd benefit more from ripping off the early SPK /Ramleh style of metallic yelping and howling. LIGHTNING BOLT work for me occasionally, when they manage to lock into a spikey groove and keep it going. They do this on "2 Morro Morro Land", which ends Side 1, but there's a bit too much axe-wanking halfway through for my liking.

Side 2 begins with DJ SCREW's "21 Swishahouse" - right, so was this recorded at 21 rpm then? (PS- I'm not joking, I really don't know!) More slowed down rap business, awful. RUFF SQWAD have a bit of a soppy moment on "Motherland", and at risk of offending any Ghana-based readers, I thought this was terrible - twee tune, really wack 'rapping' - I just couldn't shake the image of fat policewomen trying to dance to this at Notting Hill. VITALIC's "Polkamatic" sounds like the theme tune to a really bad 70s Bulgarian religious TV series. Seriously, I know some people go bananas for this baldie DJ, but it just sounds to me like a rotting corpse playing on an organ in a dilapidated cathedral. Though that actually sounds alright....

Then we're up for three bits of unadulterated DANCE FUN. I'd rather have heard CROOKERS' "Buzz Beat", DJ COONE's "Love" and the untitled track from the BOOTLEGGER BEATS 2 white label in some brick-walled basement club, being lashed by flying dreadlocks - the smell of cigarettes, poppers, perfume and sweat blending into a warm fug - than on headphones in a flat in North London. I'd especially be interested in obtaining the latter record, on the strength of that track alone, purely for old skool nostalgia reasons.

Sadly, this cloudburst was shadowed by ARIEL PINK's "House Arrest". I'm glad I never checked this bloke out when he was hot shit on Dissensus. With the opening chords to this song, I honestly expected a voice to pop out, crooning Ooh, you make me live...well, if your idea of fun's a Mark Stewart imitator groaning behind some flanged Radio 2 granny-friendly gush, you're welcome to it. HAVING SAID THAT, I did actually quite like the ending fade-out of this song. Unfortunately, it was followed by RED CRAYOLA, whose "The Mistakes of Trotsky" is up to their usual, abysmal standards. To be fair, the only other RC I've heard is the "Soldier Talk" LP from '79 - I really liked the sharp, clanging guitar sound on that album, but it was completely wasted by the band's insistence on establishing their 'cleverness' and 'experimentalism' by farting around with time and tune changes every 30 seconds, instead of locking into a potentially devastating groove. This song's folkie shit with spindly vocals, as wet and slimey as seaweed.

I have a lot more time for LE ORME's atmospheric and evocative "All'Infuori del Tempo" - again, I'd rather have been strolling around Genoa's Old Town section in twilight than stuck in London when playing this. At least they (or he?) know what they're doing and they do it very well. I hate the term "life affirming", but this is definitely "soul rousing" at the very least. It sounds like it could be from the 70s, though has a timeless quality, and it makes me wish I had some tasty, raven-haired Italian vixen with wraparound shades to spend the summer with - having violent arguments, eating gnocci and drinking too much red wine.

On a 'soul rousing' theme (god, that sounds even more pretentious than 'life affirming'), NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL's untitled instrumental piece is another winner. I think bagpipes are involved? It's like a march over some dewy glen at sunrise, and sounds better the louder you play it. Kind of gave me a warm feeling, like winning the lottery.

Another band I checked out for the first time ever this year was the Pretty Things, brilliant UK 60s psych-garage beat, a genre that's still pretty 'new' to me. So I was pleased to hear "Imposters of Life's Magazine" by THE IDLE RACE, which conjures up images of collar-length hair and mod suits, dropping black bombers and Picadilly shebeens, better than anything the Stones or Beatles ever cooked up. Like the Pretty Things' "Death of A Socialite", the lyrics seem to viciously mock the lameness of fame and celebrity culture, over a twisting and turning beat.

"Air" by INCREDIBLE STRING BAND is fairly dull, sounds a bit like something Thora Hird would have listened to on the bus on her way to Sunday evening mass, but it leads into what, for me, is one of the gobsmacking tracks on the tape. If you'd told me 2 weeks ago I'd really enjoy a piece of music by a brass band, I'd have laughed in your mug. But I found "Bradford" by BESSES O'THE BARN BAND a genuinely potent and moving piece, easily equalling any experimental piece you'd care to mention. Despite being anti-nationalist, I quite enjoy regionalism, but although I was born in the Smoke, I've always had a soft spot for Yorkshire. I like their attitudes towards life. Maybe it's also because my mum was sent from Ireland to live in York when she was 6, resulting in a bizarre mongrel accent. "Bradford" is strong and passionate, but there's also a strange sense of keen melancholy, as if shouldering the woes of this city, shaken in the 80s by unemployment, the imbecilic Yorkshire Ripper and the football ground fire.Bizarrely, I got a lump in my throat.

Side 2 ends with OG RON C's "DSR" - more slowed down rap, give it a rest! - BUCCANEER's "Kill A Sound" - not bad, but not really my favourite dancehall MC, a bit too laidback - and PEOPLE LIKE US' odd "Music Alone". Though, personally, it was going to take something SERIOUSLY extra-special to shift the powerful spell cast by "Bradford".

Well, there you go. I'd say I liked at least half of it, which is certainly good going in my book. At its best, some parts reminded me of listening to John Peel back in the old days, and there's not many compliments you can pay a DJ to top that, really. I'd also like to thank the compiler for breaking down my anti-Can prejudice, and for introducing me to some freaky folks who I'm now gonna Google after hitting the PUBLISH button for this post. And as yr based in Hackney, give us a yell on Dissensus, you ought to come along to the next NE London drink-up. Unless you're still waiting for Hackney Homes' garden unit to turn up with their chainsaws. Cheers! MARTIN

The tapes are in the mail!

Watch this space for new reviews soon.

birds of town + country / history of lovers

dissensus tape swap nov 2005



wow, that was in two thousand and flippin' five! i lived in a different place when i first recieved the cassette. after the initial excitement of getting a wee package in the post, i think i unfortunately let the tape wash over me and only really noticed aspects of it that i didn't particularly enjoy at the time. i was quite chemically distracted in those days and it ended up set aside. shameful.

last summer, me and some friends arranged to set up a little party in a field north of london. we borrowed a car and headed out there to do some reconnoissance. we were a bit worried when we realised there was only a cassette player for audio entertainment. i used to have hundreds of tapes but they're all stashed up north, so i grabbed the few i had. airing number two for "birds/lovers". it was hella hot at the time and we were all pumped on party plans. "birds.." was jettisoned in favour of grime and breakcore tapes.

so now there's talk of a second round swap.

today i finished work early to go get some fillings. got the appointment wrong and ended up with a few spare hours. it's freezing cold and very sunny outside and i think "birds/lovers" is well suited to these conditions. an afternoon drinking tea and eating fruit and nut bread, watching the empty trees out the window.

A
birds of town + country

coil - strange birds (excerpt)
my bloody valentine - drive it all over me
the microphones - the glow, part 2
biosphere - 3rd planet
tipper - L.E.D. down (radioactive man remix)
l'usine - charydis
depeche mode - world in my eyes
pole - meim (fourtet remix)
siouxie and the banshees - peek-a-boo
the popguns - waiting for the winter
electrelane - birds

interludes on side A from: aphex twin, GSYBE + "birds of town and country"

B
history of lovers

calexico/iron+wine - history of lovers
king biscuit time - walk this earth
natural self - the sound
madder rose - sugarsweet
neutral milk hotel - king of carrot flowers, part 1
prinzhorn dance school - space invader
various productions - what about them?
londonbeat - i've been thinking about you
the knife - heartbeats (rex the dog remix)
oscar sulley - olufeme (natural self remix)
low - california
two lone swordsmen - driving with my gears in reverse
disco inferno - summer's last sound

shite review - apologies to the creator.
one day your eggs are going to hatch..

Part Deux

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bondi blitzkreig

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!

Nang/Bang

Nang [A] Side:
45 minutes of random freestyle grime MCing from pirate radio station LUSH 107.6.

London pirate radio feels like the bleeding edge of modern music from the left side of the Atlantic and I was so eager to hear some honest-to-god grime freestyle that my evening commute felt like it was stretching into eternity. It was a heady moment when I was finally able to bask in the analogue glory of looped beats, slang rhymes and occasional static. After about the first half-hour, though, the new sheen had worn away somewhat and I was left with a disparate number of stale loops, intelligible vernacular, and mumbled phrases. After repeated listens, the highlights became the vocals of an unnamed female MC, who spontaneously broke into gospel-type house-diva vocals at the end of random phrases, and the screw-ups and miss-cues of the remaining non-descript male majority. Not only did both add a bit of spice, but also contrasted the varying levels of talent I imagine are endemic to pirate radio; soulful, poignant vocals versus “Oh gosh!”, “Listen!”, and station identification MCs seem to use when they fuck up.

Bang [B] Side
High Tide – James’ Last (Time To Swing)
Beckett & Taylor – More Lies
Dadableep – Ill Spec
Inaqui Marin – Ultrabitch
Funk D’Void & Phil Kieran – Black Worm
Dave McCullen – B*tch
Audion – Just Fucking
The Chemical Brothers – Get Yourself High (Switch’s Rely On Rub)
Switch – Bounce To This
Depeche Mode – Precious (Misc Mix).”

Nicely rounded trip through experimental electronics, techno, electro-house, and back again. A garden of distorted beats, the mix is almost totally devoid of any unprocessed timbres. Everything sounds harsh, angular, and overdriven, just the way an modern techno mix should. High points are Dave McCullen’s electro-house groover B*tch and the progressive Depeche Mode remix that wraps it all up. The rest of the tracks have been artfully chosen to bridge the gaps between the experimental opener, B*tch, and Precious. The whole thing hangs together very nicely, despite some rough mixing through the middle. All in all, the kind of solid underground selection I would expect from a London-based Dissensian.

Review- Hauntology 1, a k-punk compilation

There’s a fairly obvious clue as to who made this one in the title- made for me by one of only two people in the cassette swap that I actually know outside of Dissensus, so I imagine he had to pull his finger out somewhat…Though I haven’t specifically written about it before, this mixtape partly inspired the starting of this thread and the writing of this post , so that should give some indication of the general Zone in which it exists- tracks seem to have been chosen specifically for their ghostly effects, and mount up like a pile of detritus, with little markers of possible futures and failed pasts- and surprisingly enough, it includes some things by John Foxx.

‘I turn towards Big Ben. But there is no time. The face across the street is blank.’

The tape is bookended by two Foxx/Harold Budd pieces, ‘Momentary Architecture’ and ‘Missing Person’, suggesting as much with their titles as by their limpid piano chords the shadows and displacements that echo throughout. The tape then moves through the icy tundra and mammalian murmurings of The Residents and into some reconstructed gamelan by 23 Skidoo, before making a detour into the grand guignol in Penderecki’s fairly horrifying ‘The Dream of Jacob’, as (if I’m not wrong) previously used to soundtrack Jack Nicholson’s ferocious mugging in The Shining. A This Heat track then continues the tape’s more quietly unnerving bent, which is then mechanised by the inhuman whispers of Tuxedomoon’s ‘A Mystic Death’ and Plastikman’s ‘Car Ten’. The first time I think I came across the Derridean neologism ‘Hauntology’ was in an Ian Penman review of Rhythm & Sound, so fittingly there’s some Berlin Dub here in the form of Pole’s ‘Huckenpack’, evoking in its cracks and folds that most palimpsetic of cities, as does the disconcolate clanging of Einsturzende Neubauten’s ‘U-Haft Muzak’. Its insistent metallic klang then carries on into (a surprisingly Ure-era) Ultravox’s ‘Your Name (Has Slipped My Mind Again)’, an elegaic piece of blank-eyed post-punk psychedelia. End of Side 1.

‘I think we should put some mountains here. Otherwise what are the characters going to fall off on?’

Cabaret Voltaire’s ‘Fuse Mountain’ implies in its vaguely bucolic refrain played on (what sounds distinctly like) a recorder a kind of depressive version of the music to Kes, the archetypal primary school instrument sounding eerie rather than cute. Well, still a little cute. The subsequent Coil instrumental features gongs and what sounds a little like someone submerging themselves in water until at the point of drowning and then gasping before plunging down again, as well as some remarkably bleak strafes of darkcore synth. Near the end of this is a spoken female sample of unknown provenance (I’m guessing Sapphire & Steel), the patrician tones of which continue into The Advisory Circle, where they are echoed and filtered as if to make uncertain their comforting effect. The cuckoos are then continued by the title track from Laurie Anderson’s ‘Big Science’, which gives an itemised list of outer-suburban non-places: car parks, malls and so forth, with a refrain of ‘every man for himself’ suggesting an unexpected depiction of consumerist anomie. Another short Tuxedomoon piece and then Belbury Poly’s quite lovely ‘The Willows’, which takes the industrial moorlands of the Cabaret Voltaire track and moves them to a sun-smeared South Downs. Then the chattering voices and tannoys end this excursion as the listener is confronted with the none-more urban tones of Phil Oakey, here with (proto-Human League) The Future. There’s a minatory BBC Radiophonic Workshop track, here sounding a great deal like the minature council estate electronica of the Human League’s Dignity of Labour EP- while curiously the CV piece it mixes into sounds exactly like the Radiophonic Workshop (supporting the idea that in Sheffield Delia Derbyshire was always more important than The Beatles)- the concrete walkways are than traversed by Robert Rental and Thomas Leer, until interrupted by an atypically optimistic Ariel Pink track, its indistinct, smudged surfaces strikingly unlike the grey geometries that precede it. It suggests Joe Meek in 1962, or Bowie in 1976, or some unnamed AM soft rock masterpiece, while not exactly evoking any of them, talking of incessant waitings and longings with no interest in release. And then there’s another Foxx/Budd piece, and a minute or two of hiss.

Tracklisting

Side 1
John Foxx & Harold Budd- Momentary Architecture
The Residents- The Walrus Hunt
23 Skidoo- G-2 Contemplation
Penderecki- The Dream of Jacob
This Heat- Diet of Worms
Tuxedomoon- A Mystic Death
Plastikman- Car Ten
Pole- Huckenpack
Einsturzende Neubauten- U-Haft Muzak
Ultravox- Your Name (Has Slipped my Mind Again)

Side 2
Cabaret Voltaire- Fuse Mountain
Coil- Enochian Calling
The Advisory Circle- And The Cuckoo Comes
Laurie Anderson- Big Science
Tuxedomoon- A Drowning
Belbury Poly- The Willows
The Future- Blank Clocks
BBC Radiophonic Workshop- The Master
Cabaret Voltaire- Sad Synth
Robert Rental & Thomas Leer- Day Breaks, Night Heals
Ariel Pink- For Kate I Wait
John Foxx & Harold Budd- Missing Person

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