Quirky post-punkish songs from The God In Hackney on their Cave Moderne (JUNIOR ASPIRIN ASP 026) LP. I started out with high hopes for this LP, considering its release on Junior Aspirin Records, which hasn’t released many records but can boast a highly unusual catalogue of eccentrics. Plus The God In Hackney features Andy Cooke, the man who brought us the uncategorisable LP of eerie modernistic gothic horror as Socrates That Practiçes Music (noted here). At first spin Cave Moderne seems underwhelming, with its rather ordinary performances and bland-sounding songs that verge on easy-listening and don’t seem to go anywhere. However, a few hours after leaving the water, I find my brow furrowed as I try to figure out these mildly cryptic puzzles, where the what-on-earth factor notches up 15 points out of a possible 25.
While their tunes may not be especially memorable, there’s a balmy quality to the performances of Cooke, Fox, Marlowe and Mellors, using lots of keyboards along with bass and drums…at any one moment they don’t know whether to be a more intelligible version of Sudden Sway or a more cryptic version of Depeche Mode. There’s a blank minimalism to these performances that must have taken the quartet some time to cultivate and hone to this fine degree. The lyrics are another crossword puzzle…at one level, an apparently random string of phrases or shopping lists of odd words that don’t belong in the same shopping trolley. Then 30 minutes later you have the impression you’ve just heard a very valuable secret, expressed in coded terms which must be deciphered at all costs.
As to “meaning”, Cooke and company intend this concept album to present “contemporary Neolithic” and call it “prehistoric-future music”. The concept is amply illustrated by the memorable cover art, which was produced by the talents of Olivia Mole. The Neanderthal man image is then restated on the full-colour inner sleeve, said man now dwelling in a cave-like showroom that’s been furnished with TV set, a tasteful armchair, houseplant, and coffee table shaped from rough-edged glass. But something bizarre is happening to his body…he appears to be materialising into (or away from) another dimension, that might involve a shag pile carpet and a table full of broken telephony equipment. Even this enigmatic visual aid pales against the flip side of the inner, where a Kraftwerk-esque showroom dummy sits on a curved chair surrounded by a lurid green cave-space. Both images are quite humorous, but also informed by chilling themes of alienation and physical displacement. As commentaries on the human condition go, this visual schema is a true head-scratcher. At any rate, there’s no danger you will confuse this record with the Cromagnon LP made by the two demented hippies for ESP-Disk’ in 1969. What they came up with was simply lumpen, ungainly, inept and “primitive” acid-rock dirge, whereas Cave Moderne is far more layered and packed with semiotic trickiness. Arrived 9th June 2014.