Les Nixes – Anti-Climb Paint (REBELLE 07). Oddity on vinyl from the Cluny label Rebelle in France…like an off-piste take on jazz poetry, except there’s not a jazz move in sight and I only make this wild guess based on presence of trombone and bass, neither of which can be clearly heard in their naked state and certainly not in a manner immediately recognisable to Grachan Moncur III or Charles Mingus.
Surprise of the day is hearing Ted Milton’s speaking voice, reciting lines from his collection of poems Anti-Climb Paint which he wrote during the infamous year of 2021. Ted Milton is the one-of-a-broken-mould UK genius who was the leader of Blurt in the 1980s, John Peel favourites on the radio, and second only to The Cravats for those who favour demented eccentrica in bombastic musical shapes. I’m having a hard time following the story of how he ended up on a record with trombonist Patrick Charbonnier and bass-player Eric Brochard, but Milton may not even have been in the room at the time, and I think his recordings were incorporated into the lengthy improvisations laid down by the French musicians. Strange enough so far, but add a dash of surreal poet Guillaume Appolinaire from whom the title was lifted, a murkoid micro-organism sleeve by Yannis Frier, and you start to marvel at the living chunk of looking-glass imagination you now hold in your paws. Impressively, the two French fellows so distort their playing that this record on the whole feels more like a guitar and electronic noise record, only now and then pinned down to wheel by the bizarre random utterances of Milton, thus giving it the shape of a radio show or TV programme from 1970s Hell…a warpoid Ivor The Engine episode spliced with William Blake at his most acidic, and enhanced with wayward Radiophonic Workshop effects.
For more output from the puffing half of the act, look out for brass septet Kill Your Idols (who made a Sonic Youth covers record) and De L’Angle Mort, a duo with Lionel Marchetti. Apparently the three of them have been looking for a platform that would allow them to present the material yet again, in a completely different way. I’m not sure how anyone could achieve that, short of slipping into the fifth dimension on Planet Jupiter. Very good. From 6th Sept 2023.