Here’s a hot new reissue of the Bladder Flask LP from 1981, One Day I Was So Sad… (SONORIS SNS-21CD). To me it seems like not so long ago I was enthusing over the 2001 reissue on the Polish label Sonaria, but now here comes the French version on Sonoris, thrown out in a digipak CD in late 2022 and on LP in 2023. And what’s more they’ve even managed to find three bonus tracks!
Richard Rupenus sometimes drops me a concise email about his releases and reissues, and wanted me to know that the Sonoris label had also reissued P16.D4’s Distruct, a 1984 master-work by Ralf Wehowsky which included contributions from Bladder Flask, NWW, Die Tödliche Doris, DDAA, The Haters, Merzbow, and others. Yes, the 1980s – a time perhaps when experimental music felt different somehow, more radical, shocking, even a shade more dangerous. As to this benchmark cut-up record, I wonder how much more I can find to say about it – I feel I covered it fairly well in 2001 and again in 2018, when we heard this bizarre slapstick remix version of it called Le Scrambled Debutante & Broken Penis Orchestra Play Bladder Flask. Playing it today, it feels a lot more approachable than it used to for some reason; what once were breakneck speeds now feel more manageable as I strap on my seatbelt, and what once appeared to be shockingly illogical changes and edits of unrelated material now feel they are part of a very subtle master plan. I shan’t say that I’ve cracked the “code” of Bladder Flask, a task beyond human endeavour, and in any case the original aim wasn’t to build some kind of sonic structure – quite the opposite – through cut-ups of short pieces of analogue tape, a huge diversity of source material, and a madcap approach to assembly, it’s more likely to be saying something about the nature of chaos, and about our futile attempts to make any sense of the completely random nature of the universe.
Even so, something more is getting through to the Pinsent brain this time…perhaps I’m seeing more of the inherent humour this time, and certainly appreciating the way that tapes are largely free from “processing” or filtering, suggesting that the creators may have been consciously avoiding the trademarks of classic musique concrète technique and preferred to let the snippets speak for themselves, with the true genius of Bladder Flask emerging simply from the overlaying and connections between so many ill-fitting elements. I can even enjoy the vulgarity of it, the farting noises, the forced laughter, the air of the zany and the infantile spew around my ankles, without feeling the need to climb onto my high-horse of cultural snobbery. Another selling point of this CD is that we now have more detail – very precise detail – about who made the recordings, and when they did it. For years I’ve assumed Bladder Flask was all the work of a teenaged Richard Rupenus, but brother Philip Rupenus was also involved, as were three other mayhem merchants – John Mylotte, sometimes called Sir Ashleigh Grove and founding member of Metgumbnerbone; Nigel Jacklin from Alien Brains (famed UK noise pioneers who were released on Snatch Tapes; Rupenus was a guest member); and Sean Bredin, who also played in Metgumbnerbone and other groups involving the same circle of friends, such as Masstishaddhu who made one record for United Dairies in 1988.
The bonus Bladders amount to an additional 29 minutes of music – I thought they were previously unreleased, but in fact they surfaced not long ago on a Kommissar Hjluer project and as a seven-incher on Anomalous Records. Even so it’s great to have these bonus manifestations of the Bladder Flask mentality in the toaster – or is it? The long piece, called ‘The Groping Fingers Of This Vulgar Intruder Have Strummed The Toppling Byzantine Organ Of His Mind’, is spectacularly unpleasant – much denser than the original LP, almost airless, forming a clotted tangle for the ears and the brain. There’s the same jumble of aural information, but there’s too much of it happening at once, without any breathing space given to the poor over-worked listener. It’s also nastier; the racking cough sounds throughout won’t win any new converts to the cause of experimental music. That said, there’s still a persistent alien-eerie quality to this poisoned gumbo which may be exhumed from a depth of around 960 feet, if you can break through the crust of the silted earth with your shovel.
The other two extras, ‘I Am As I Have Spoken’ and ‘Zzzeut-Zzt-Zzt-Zzt (Pour Chapeaux, Manteaux Et Parapluies)’ are easier to digest, the former making considerably more use of spoken word fragments and also somehow implying a menace, a shrill violence which hasn’t appeared to this point. The latter piece is just plain horrifying. It’s as though Rupenus were turning his melt-ray on everything about the world he doesn’t like, particularly conventional music, and he won’t stop until the objects of his hatred are dissolved into ashes and mud. The mangling of popular song is an unexpected trope here, not a thing I’d ordinarily associate with Rupenus, but he brings his own distinct personality to this well-worn move. Even the liner notes are interesting; I suspect now they’re a cut-up of extracts from previous reviews of the record, which means even my prose might be buried in here somewhere. Missing in action is the original front cover found image of the distraught young man with a revolver at his desk, and his pained expression that always made me think he was contemplating blowing his brains out. Which is probably what this still-strange record is trying to do with your brains, so approach with caution. From 6th March 2023.