Dave Phillips, A Collection of Hair, Israel, Heart and Crossbone Records, 2 x CD HCB040 (2013)
Any pig farmers and owners of Tasmanian devil pets – yeah, I’m talking to you with the steel spike through your lower lip in the far corner there – who happen to read TSP will discover that several of the sounds that appear on this 2-CD compilation set are already theirs for free as among other things some field recordings made of wild boar feeding in rural Bavaria and those snarling Antipodean varmints feature on a few tracks. “A Collection of Hair” gathers up recordings made by the noisician Dave Phillips over a period of 15 -16 years from 1995 to 2011: contributions to other compilations and projects, re-workings of past tracks, live recordings and some pieces hitherto unreleased. The collection makes for quite uncomfortable listening: the first CD can be very challenging as it includes online recordings of the squealing and grunting Warner Bros favourites (track 1), hissing cats (track 3) and several pieces of voice manipulation and distortion that give the impression of someone being stretched and moulded as if he were warm soft plasticine.
Although a lot of fearsome found-sound recordings and manipulations appear throughout the double set, the source materials – and there are very many – can be clearly discerned: perhaps the surprising thing is that so many natural phenomena as well appear on the album. There can be a lot of drama and some very unsettling sound art pieces: witness for example, “The possibility of life’s destruction”, dedicated to the victims of the 2011 earthquake and nuclear reactor disasters in Japan, in which the screams of victims overcome by catastrophe form the backdrop to a series of stern crashing keyboard chords. Listeners expecting something like Gnaw Their Tongues or other Mories-related projects will be surprised (maybe disappointed???) that this particular hirsute package is well ordered and far, far less theatrical than the Dutch artist’s work. Indeed, to get the most enjoyment – or should that be fright? – from “A Collection of Hair”, the listener should turn up the volume on the sound system to the highest level s/he can tolerate. Several tracks can sound quite subdued if heard at normal listening levels.
Track titles and the sound materials used reflect Phillips’ interest in a range of subject matter from the extremes of human behaviour to animals in their native habitats, the place of the individual person in a society hyper-obsessed with control and conformity while paying lip service to freedom of choice and a superficial material cult of individuality, and a fierce and unflinching interrogation of what we take for granted in Western society. In this day and age of post-Peak Oil and irrevocable climate change where the main sources of our news and information and the actual reality are as disconnected as never before and Western governments overturn each and every law and institution within their own jurisdictions and beyond to pursue sinister agendas, the need for acts like Dave Phillips, William Bennett’s Whitehouse and others to hold our easy and lazy beliefs and assumptions in a mirror to our faces is more urgent than ever.
By now TSP readers will have realised that this set isn’t easy-listening soundscape art for when they just want to immerse themselves in sound, unless of course they like being dropped into life-threatening scenarios with bloodthirsty bone-crushing marsupials or stuck in situations of gross human behaviour. This album doesn’t lend itself to very many repeated hearings but it does feature enough interesting found-sound and other recordings that it itself could be used as a source of material for sampling and distortion. The compilation makes a deep impression on your consciousness, penetrating right into the neural networks, far more so than it would have done had it been an all-out noisy electronic assault on the senses.
Contact: Heart and Crossbone Records