Today’s record Lazer Boy 4 (VANITY CASE VC 23) was made by the duo of David Lazonby and Stephen Goodwin with guest appearances from Mick Dale and Chris Graham, and comprises a mix of songs, spoken word, and instrumentals, recorded with a nice rough DIY production edge that is enormously endearing and warm. I liked the instrumentals ‘We Will Rise Up On The Wind’ and ‘A Thousand Kim’, which feed psychedelic rock and Krautrock styles through a particularly English post-punk styled mincer and turn out perfect meat products for the butcher, all the more impressive for keeping what could have turned into a 20-minute jam of needlessly self-indulgent windbaggery within the four-minute mark. On the other hand, there’s always the 16:43 track ‘319-392’, an epic of Pink Floyd head-duggery that is so ambitious it’s structured in five subtitled chapters. But it remains endearing and charming, with an unassuming home-made organ drone, quasi-cosmic cymbal crashing, space cadet bass riffs, phasing, wah-wah guitar and half-formed song elements, that sort of thing.

Lazer Boy (like many Lazonby related bands) may not be 100% inventive every moment nor especially avant, but they have a high level of facility with playing their instruments and making records such that they make it seem both easy and natural, something a lot of players should envy. Nice. From 23rd January 2020.

Quite a few 1980s / John Peel show bands in that list, and these songs don’t do a great deal to advance out of that particular nostalgic vibe, apart from the fact that they’re all about something we didn’t have in the 1980s – the internet. Yes, Adam describes the LP as “a loose concept work about the online culture of the mid to late 2010s”, and as such we have songs called ‘Abandoned Website’ or ‘Content Farm’, and lyrics that refer to such hot topics as online bullying, mindlessly adding likes on Facebook (‘Just Lovely’), ganging up on people on forums and chatrooms (‘The Ad Hominem’), and response videos. All of these are serious and touchy subjects, and it’s good to hear someone conscientious enough to have a tilt at addressing them through song; many of these themes point to conflict and argument, and the way that social media generally has in fact proven to be a breeding ground for making disagreements even worse than they already are, failing to provide a suitable mechanism for reasoned debate. All we need to complete the set is a song about “flaming” emails, but I expect that’s old hat by now.

Full marks for the sentiment, but the style and manner in which The Hector Collectors address these topics is rather unsatisfactory. The jolly, upbeat mode of each song seems quite at odds with the subject matter; the band play every song with the reckless tilt of ‘Container Drivers’, and the singer has an audible grin on his face as he throws out his barbs between clenched teeth. I appreciate it’s probably intended to be satirical, but the humour seems forced, and a bit broad. Adam Smith is good with words, but blunts his meaning by using too many of them, producing phrases that are more convoluted than an Elvis Costello verse. And if they’re serious about playing pop music, this band need to learn the value of concision; too many songs are overlong by several verses and a chorus, and could use brevity to make their points sooner. The opening song alone hammers its point into the ground through an excess of verbiage, with added verses that do nothing to advance the point of the song. Not a completely worthless record, but I’m afraid I soon grew weary of its prolix and extroverted surface, its stodgy blokeish tone. The label is also home to a Scots band called Colin’s Godson, in which Greatorex plays. From 11th September 2019.

Garford Mute (TOTAL LIFE SOCIETY TLS008) from 2017 is the band’s eighth album. They also released it as a double LP on vinyl and sent me that too. Gotta dig the grey and gloomy cover art by Roger Ballen. Open hands, figures hidden behind a curtain, a frame without a picture, a flying dove…this image is replete with symbolic meaning. Garford Mute is notable for featuring a small army of players, including some major players – members of Pere Ubu, Minutemen, The Stooges, Guided By Voices and Bren’t Lewiis Ensemble are all here. SOT formed a Pere Ubu connection long ago, have toured with them, and have charmed original members Scott Krauss and Tom Herman into their projects…still the album has a very guitar-heavy sound as most of the army are axemen, and the only thing to leaven the overall mix is the occasional toot from Steve Mackay’s saxophone and electronics from Gnarlos. A quick scan of the track credits indicates an allocation of at least two guitar players per cut, sometimes as many as three or four! Everyone concerned rocks overtime with the insistent, chugging rhythms that the Tanks have made all their own. I see on the press release Matt thinks of his baby as “a psychedelic rock band”, but my pigeon-holing tends to lead more to the hardcore-punk thing…they have the same kind of sluggish negative energy I always enjoyed on Flipper records, for instance. It’s also worth pointing out that nobody really takes “solos” in the conventional sense, and the songs tend to emerge as a polyphonic morass of several guitars and basses all playing their lines at once, the better to match Matt W’s lyrical outpourings, which for the most part tend to refuse conventional verse-chorus structure. Anger, energy, blocked emotions, expressive howls…everything is seething and boiling in the constrictive melting pot of this Garford Mute. A heavy item.

Related item in the package is by Hidden Rifles, a 2017 album called Across The Neighbourhoods (TOTAL LIFE SOCIETY TLS009). Same label, same Cleveland connections, another supergroup of name players – though a smaller band this time. Mark Shippy, Jim Sykes, and Matthew Wascovich are joined by Mike Watt of Minutemen and Norman Westberg, hard-working guitarist from Swans. Another guitar-heavy record, it must be said, but I sense that Hidden Rifles is the project Matt W turns to when he wishes to let free his avant-rock side. The band might not be as all-out discordant as Pere Ubu, nor as given to wild dynamics, but the combo can turn in some unsettling angsty urban noises when the song calls for it, such as at the start of ‘Paranoid Unsaid’ – a good instance of a psychotic episode rendered on sliding guitar strings. On the title track, Matt’s penchant for declaimed rather than sung vocals reaches some kind of apogee, and he combines his urgent rap with a dangerously slow drawl that just exudes sheer menace. Come to that, there’s sleazy menace creeping all over this record, but we could single out ‘Subway’ as one example of a horrific descent into a past-midnight scenario where a beating-up situation is pretty imminent, suggested vividly by the nasty reverb guitar riff that swings like a thug holding a bicycle chain.

Hinge (TLS010) by Scarcity Of Tanks is from 2018, the most up-to-date item here – and their latest, at time of writing (though we’re advised to look out for Dissing The Reduction, their planned 2019 release). Here the Tanks lineup is quite different to the guitar-squad from Garford Mute: Doug Gillard, Don Goodwin, Nate Schelbe and Michael Yonkers are the core band joining Matt W on his quest to spread the truth, but don’t except a “minimal” record – the preferred formula still leans towards a crowded sound, lots of guitars, and an insistence on pounding every point home with strident drumming attacks. However, some tracks step out of this mould – ‘Ride The Ridge’ for some reason feels like something REM might have recorded in 1983, while ‘Walking On The Earth’ makes a good fist of experimenting with the band dynamic by introducing a vicious “choppy” rhythm that requires the guitarists to think on their feet. ‘I Don’t Want To See You’ is an instance of how the SOT “formless” mode can be made to work to great advantage – any pretence at song structure is abandoned in favour of a gloomy, endless rant, the musicians having to follow the singer down a very dark tunnel. Pound for pound, there’s more variety in the song form and the sonics here than on the double LP, which is all of apiece – each song is clearly about something different, and even the booklet underscores this fact with its assorted photos of loneliness and suburban decay printed behind the lyrics. The five piece works well as a unit, though I will single out the electronic additions of Michael Yonkers – he adds that touch of malign crackling noise the like of which we haven’t heard since Mission Of Burma. Chris Yarmock did the cover painting.

A case of discovery and reactivation then as Headache, Trupa Trupa‘s third release, first came into existence on the ‘Blue Tapes & X-Ray’ imprint. When Stéphane Grégoire met the four-piece in their Polish homeland, a copy was quickly thrust into his palm and a love affair soon blossomed. Blossomed so well in fact they were eventually signed to Stéphane’s ‘Ici d’ailleurs’ label with the now newly remastered ‘Headache’ receiving a further reshuffle, finding itself transformed into a more substantial double vinyl set.

Opening the files on the band in question reveals their admiration for Slint, Pavement, sixties psychedelia and Syd Barrett. And yet poet/vocalist Grzegorz Kwiatkowski’s melancholic vocal lines appear to float over rooftops and pavements of a distinctly slinty-grey urban backdrop, where psyche’s characteristics seem to be pretty thin on the ground, even from that height. “Halleyesonme” and “The Sky is Falling” partly owe their existence to certain post-punk aesthetics (think second album Cure and possibly The Comsat Angels?), rather than totally surrendering to phase one of psyche revivalism involving Paisley Undergrounders such as The Rain Parade or True West.

It’s agreed that “Sacrifice” does contain some muted Gilmouresque fretwork and Rick Wright’s Grantchester daydreams are ably referenced down the time-line by Rafal Wojczal. But… it’s those dominant early eighties manoeuvres of Wojtek Juchniewicz on bass and drummer Tomek Pawluczuk that propel the band towards near-mainstream thought and away from the inviting prospect of exhilarating weirdness and the unexpected. A session with Steve Lamacq beckons…. Also available on c.d. format.

I’m completely unfamiliar with previous Deafheaven recordings like “Sunbather” so I come to this third album of DFHVN’s as an innocent. Perhaps it’s not a bad idea either that I start my association with DFHVN’s music with “New Bermuda” as this is the band’s first recording as a quintet revolving around the core duo of George Clarke and Kerry McCoy. “New Bermuda” is a personal document of Clarke’s feelings and moods in the period after the release of “Sunbather”, how that recording changed his life (and not always for the better) and how he struggled to cope with the rapid changes and upheavals that sudden attention brought him and McCoy.

DFVHN’s style is a great blend of tough, steely and aggressive black metal, thrash and indiepop shoegaze. The balance varies from track to track with the result that the music ranges from straight-out BM to emotional shimmer-guitar melancholy and back again with surprisingly smooth (though sometimes sudden) transitions. When done very well (as on middle track “Baby Blue”), such transitions push the music to epic heights of intense emotional drama. Intro track “Brought to the Water” is a good example of DFVHN’s post-BM / shoegaze fusion: it starts off as sharp and raw hostile BM and morphs into bright summery tremolo guitar beauty and what seems like a mood of hope and optimism – until you read the lyrics and realise this song is actually a calm plateau of stability perched unsteadily on the edge of blackness and chaos.

Did I mention “chaos”? Well that’s exactly where we fall into with succeeding tracks like “Luna”, with the music to match. The vocals increasingly are the real BM deal, sometimes the only deal on some tracks: they’re screaming-across-the-board raspy and demonic, while riffs and rhythms dive right into a mix of blast-beat frenzy, post-BM, crunchy slabs of Metallica-style riffing, shrieking lead guitar siren and dreamy introspective trance melody wonder. With each succeeding song, the music continues to push through greater trials of dark depression and hopelessness, and ever more intense and hard-driving sound structures, into the final track “Gifts for the Earth” which is a calm acceptance of one’s fate in a swirl of bright and sharp energy, vistas of light stretching far into the distance, melancholy piano and roaring wraith voices.

Out of the storms and the afflictions of life, with all its anxieties and struggles, comes music of tremendous power, beauty and majesty. The incredible thing is that the DFHVN guys play the songs almost effortlessly, as if writing and recording music of personal angst, self-doubt and loss of hope was second nature for them. The songs’ lyrics follow a narrative starting with uncertainty and then falling into a downward spiral that seems it was predestined, so organic is the music as it unfolds.

Some listeners might find the lyrics and the music in most songs don’t match well: the saddest words seem to accompany the happiest, most uplifting tunes, depending on how they interpret the lyrics. The weakest weapon in DFHVN’s arsenal is Clarke’s thin vocals which are going to need development or buttressing with a second vocalist on future recordings to match the heights the music is capable of achieving, if the band is inclined to strive for bridging the divide between the alternative mainstream and underground BM. That is a very tempting prospect as the band’s music has the potential to determine a new standard of fusion metal.

This is a strange one. The opening track of the High Time EP from Rough Fields seems so at odds to the two that follow, that you wonder if it might be a different band. Not in any drastic way. The title track High Time itself is full of the rhythmic delay effect that The Edge and others have made a career out of. Shimmering guitar battles with a pedestrian synth bass and vocals placed down in the mix. The song doesn’t really go anywhere or say anything. How this gets billed as “Indie”, I don’t know (in terms of style as opposed to delivery). Lugton’s and a host of independent distributors died to have their name associated with this?

The two other songs that make up the release do not have the momentum of the title track. Leaden instrumentation, singing guaranteed to bring on narcolepsy and the delay effect flittering across some more. I really don’t know if James Birchall (the person behind Rough Fields) has just fed everything through this effect, but boy does it become wearing. It is as if he has tried to out-Alvin Alvin Lucier by continually feeding the output back into the track, resulting in a mush.

My trouble with the release is that in both instances the genres have been done so much better by others. The first track had me thinking of how well Stateless did this kind of stuff on ‘Bloodstream’. The last two had me thinking how much better Christopher Willits does this stuff, full stop.

JACK TATTY

1. Mark E. Smith, title unknown
   From Pander! Panda! Panzer!, UK ACTION RECORDS TAKE19CD CD (2002)
2. The Fall, ‘Mollusc in Tyrol’
   From Seminal Live, UK BEGGARS BANQUET BEGA 102 (1989)
3. ‘Paintwork’
   From This Nation’s Saving Grace, UK BEGGARS BANQUET BEGA 67 LP (1985)
4. ‘Bonkers in Phoenix’
   From Cerebral Caustic, UK CASTLE MUSIC CMQDD1299 2xCD (Expanded Edition 2006; original release 1995)
5. ‘Dog is Life / Jerusalem’ (excerpt)
   From I am Kurious Oranj, UK BEGGARS BANQUET BEGA 96 LP (1988)
6. ‘Hurricane Edward’
   From Levitate, UK ARTFUL RECORDS CD ARTFUL CDX9 2XCD (1997)
7. ‘Bug Day’
   From The Wonderful and Frightening World of… The Fall, USA PVC RECORDS PVC 8932 LP (1984)
8. ‘Light / Fireworks’ (excerpt)
   From The Infotainment Scan, UK CASTLE MUSIC CMQDD1227 2xCD (Expanded Edition 2006; original release 1993)
9. Title unknown
   From Pander! Panda! Panzer!, op cit.
10. ‘Haf Found Bormann’
    From There’s a Ghost in My House, UK BEGGARS BANQUET BEG 187T 12″ single (1987)
11. Mark E. Smith, ‘The Horror in Clay’
    From The Post Nearly Man, UK ARTFUL RECORDS ARTFULCD14 CD (1998)
12. The Fall, ‘Distilled Mug Art’
    From 2G+2, UK ACTION RECORDS TAKE18CD CD (2002)
13. Mark E. Smith, ‘I’m Bobby pt. 1’ (excerpt)
    From The Post Nearly Man, op cit.
14. The Fall, ‘Das Boat’ (excerpt)
    From Reformation Post TLC, UK SLOGAN RECORDS SLOCD007 CD (2007)
15. Mark E. Smith, ‘Lucifer Over Lancashire’ (excerpt)
    From Pander! Panda! Panzer!, op cit.
16. The Fall, ‘Early Life of Crying Marshall’
    From The Marshall Suite, UK ARTFUL RECORDS ARTFULCD17 CD (1999)
17. Mark E. Smith, title unknown
    From Pander! Panda! Panzer!, op cit.
18. The Fall, ‘Papal Visit’ (excerpt)
    From Room to Live, UK COG SINISTER COGVP139CD CD (reissue 2002; original release 1982)
19. ‘Medical Acceptance Gate’
    From The Collection, EEC CASTLE COMMUNICATIONS CCSCD 365 CD (1993 compilation)
20. ‘Noel’s Chemical Effluence’
    From The Twenty-Seven Points, UK PERMANENT RECORDS PERM LP 36 2XLP (1995)
21. ‘Symbol of Mordgan’ (excerpt)
    From Middle Class Revolt, UK PERMANENT RECORDS PERM CD16 CD (1994)

11 broadcast badly distorted due to turntable fault.

The Sound Projector radio show,
originally broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM

The Sound Projector radio show,
originally broadcast on Resonance 104.4 FM