THE BUFF MEDWAYS : This Is This (2001)

Several months ago, I promised that I'd share a few obscure or unavailable nuggets from the colossal Billy Childish back catalogue. Typically, it slipped my mind - I'm not getting any younger y'know - but my memory's now back on track (yes, I turned it off & on again, simple as that), so here's the first...

Named after an extinct breed of 19th century chicken, decked out in dashing Prussian army regalia, & paying explicit homage to The Jimi Hendrix Experience (on this inaugural outing, at least), The Buff Medways were Chatham Bill's first stop after he'd finally lain Thee Headcoats to rest. Though he'd return to his cherished Kinks & Who records for inspiration with subsequent Buffs LPs, this electrifying debut still sounds like their most impressive collection to me - vintage fuzz guitars hack out an improvised escape route through crackling valve amplifiers, the drum kit clatters & rattles like a dilapidated rag & bone buffet, while the backing vocalists reel off immaculate mucky pup Townsend impersonations. No frills, baby.

Recorded at Liam Watson's esteemed Toe Rag studios, This Is This was released by Vinyl Japan in 2001, but has been out of print since the label ceased trading a decade or so ago. The Buffs' line-up at that point comprised Billy on vocals & guitar, with ex-Daggermen/Masonics' bassist Johnny Barker, & Wolf Howard (previously of Armitage Shanks & The Kravin' As) on drums. They frequently achieve the impossible - of sounding more authentically "6Ts" than mnay genuine period bands - hereon, & every song's a killer. So it's crying shame that it's been out of print for so long - a used copy will currently set you back £25 or more.

Teach Me What You Know

YUKARI FRESH : Yukari's Perfect! (1997)

I treated myself to wee binge in Juno's sale t'other week &, amongst other elusive delights, picked up the 2-part Yukari Fresh career retrospective, Flammable Tapes (her "greatest hits" collection) & Instrumentally Flammable (a companion disc of demos, remixes & rarities). They're immaculately packaged, of course - most Japanese CDs are - each disc daintily housed inside an elegant origami-style cardboard wallet, with a 1' badge, a piece of Zen-like embroidery, & an info-packed insert printed on gossamer-thin bible paper. They're a great way to catch up with Yukari's extensive back catalogue - each containing a minor avalanche of short & sweet, playfully melodic electronic chanson that could actually be obscene paeans to noodles for all I know, my understanding of Japanese being predictably non-existent. Unfortunately, they're not cheap. I coughed up £20 for the 2, an absolute bargain considering they'd normally retail at a whopping £25 apiece (I've already seen Flammable Tapes on Amazon for £50+). That said, the former is one of the most played CDs I've bought in ages, so it was worth the splurge...

Back when I was young(-ish), £25 was a ludicrous amount of money to pay for a compact disc. Never mind if it had been specially imported from Japan in minuscule quantities, was elaborately & beautifully designed, & came complete with that all-important - sigh - obi-strip (I've no idea why I still get excited about those rather nondescript, often incomprehensible rectangles of printed card but, inexplicably, I do). One of the great advantages of Internet blogging was that I was finally been able to hear dozens of the horrifically overpriced, long deleted Japanese imports that I'd drooled over back in the mid-90s - pre-Paypal, pre-mp3, pre-iTunes. Hai!

Yukari Fresh was one of the first Shibuya-kei artists I heard - after the ubiquitous Pizzicato 5, of course - c/o Bungalow Records' genre-establishing Sushi 4004 compilation. The solo project of Yukari Takasaki (ex-Snapshot), her debut, Yukari's Perfect!, was released on the P5's Escalator label in 1997. The epitome of cheeky Tokyo whimsy, it made Altered Images sound like King Crimson (don't panic, it's also very short). As a friend once pointed out to me, if the industrious inhabitants of Bagpuss's Marvelous Mechanical Mouse Organ had ever tried their hand(s) at producing hi-NRG Yé-¥é techno, Yukari's Perfect! could plausibly have been the result. Though aesthetically reciprocal, it pre-empted Go-Kart Mozart's deadpan, Bullring Centre-inspired 'novelty rock" by a few years. Personally, I much prefer Yukari's breezier take on things. Lawrence, this may seem cynical, but I'm still not entirely convinced that "Drinking Um Bongo" was an attempt to address Rwanda's appalling human rights record, sorry.

As with many of the original Shibuya-kei artists, Yukari went on to pursue a bewilderingly prolific career over the subsequent decade, including releases under her punkier Yukari Rotten nom de plume, & collaborations with Mansfield (on this wonky cover of Beck's "The New Pollution") & Fantastic Plastic Machine, while hosting her long running Radio Active Man radio show (named after one of the songs from Yukari's Perfect! as it 'appens). Her most recent - possibly final? - record, 2008's Grrrl Summer Cape Kid Etc EP (Escalator's swan song release) was far more rough & ready than her earlier work, with each song recorded live in a single unedited take while Yukari sang, whistled, played kazoo, & wrestled with the drums. An oddball crossbreed of lo-fi & high tech, the intentionally crude samples subvert her refined electronic wizardry, & vice versa. It's strange to think that, like most of her Shibuya-kei contemporaries, Yukari is pushing 40 now, as her music's unaffected child-like charm has remained largely unsullied. One question though: why are so many Japanese indie acts obsessed, at least lyrically, with English football? Expositions on the back of a postcard please (preferably this one).

Triplicate Quackery

SONIC YOUTH : Kali Yug Express (2002)

A quicky post. Sonic Youth's Kali Yug Express is currently fetching £100+ on Discogs & the like, which makes it ideal blog fodder, I suppose? A 3-song blue vinyl 10", a meagre 500 copies were given away with the French edition of the Murray Street album. Though recorded in & around the Murray Street sessions, these tracks were actually out-takes from the band's ancillary soundtrack projects, Things Behind The Sun & Demonlover, & reflect their penchant for freeform, experimental improvisation. Kali Yug Express was also released as an extended promotional CD, though the additional songs thereon were merely selections from the band's pre-Geffen back catalogue, as per the Screaming Fields Of Sonic Love compilation.

n.b. In Japan, Murray Street was appended with an exclusive bonus track, "Street Sauce", which I've yet to hear. If anybody can slip me an mp3 of it I'd be pathetically grateful (thanks).

Htuoy Cinos

ADVENTURES IN STEREO : The Attic Walk EP (1996)

Jim Beattie, founder member of Primal Scream with Bobby Gillespie, formed Adventures in Stereo in Glasgow in 1994, following the break-up of his post-Primals project, Spirea X. Joined by ex-Spirea vocalist Judith Boyle, & Simon Dine (who had managed & co-produced the band towards the end of their brief career), the trio's initial trilogy of low-fi 7" EPs provided a hazily melodic, pop art distillation of The Beach Boys finest (pre-Smile) moments, & Phil Spector's early girl group productions. Based around Dine's evocative 60s-derived loops, the songs themselves were often puzzlingly fragmentary, pop art miniatures fading in & out of earshot like alluring excerpts from half remembered 60s chartbusters. Despite the bargain basement budget, their records were so seamlessly produced that it was often difficult to identify at which point the sampling wizardry ended & the authentic musicianship began. Their sonic magpie approach elicited comparisons with Stereolab & early Broadcast but, though all 3 bands certainly shared a similar retrofuturist aesthetic, A.I.S. actually had far more in common with sampledelic New York duo Dymaxion (though their records were markedly different). One thing A.I.S. definitely were NOT, however, is "twee". Twee = Belle & Sebastian, Talulah Gosh flexidiscs, bed wetting virgins with Hello Kitty hair slides, & grown men in shorts murdering jingle-jangle Byrds riffs. A.I.S. always sounded more like Saint Etienne being dragged backwards into an undulating Joe Meek vortex.

Dine split after the first few singles &, while both parties briefly continued to use the A.I.S. moniker, he would eventually knuckle down to mastermind the pandemically groovy Noonday Underground (& end up collaborating with mod coffin dodger Paul Weller, bizarrely enough!). Noonday Underground recorded a handful of LPs but called it a day when vocalist Daisy Martey jumped ship to join Morcheeba (yuk). Beattie & Boyle released a couple more A.I.S. albums, with live musicians playing a greater part in proceedings as they progressed, but both of them have slipped away into (willing?) obscurity since calling it quits in 2000. Does anybody have a clue what either of them are up to nowadays?

The Attic Walk EP was Adventures In Stereo's debut release, a 4-song 7" on their own Kinglake label, from 1996. I'm a great fan of all their records, but this one's a particular favourite.

Underground Sounds

SHOES THIS HIGH : Shoes This High EP (1981)

Shoes This High weren't together for very long, only a year or so in fact, but they still managed to leave behind this incredible 7" as their defining artifact. Barrelling 'round New Zealand's North island at the arse end of the 1970s, their sketchy, Rough Trade-indebted sound suggested that either (i) somebody down under was importing copies of Grotesque & A Trip To Marineville at a phenomenal rate, or (ii) John Peel's broadcasts reached a far wider audience than the Beeb intended (hats off to The World Service!).

Eventually settling in Auckland, the band released their eponymous EP c/o their own STH Music label in 1981, & it's 4 snotty, shambling outbursts were as hermetically innovative as the benchmark 45s their South island island contemporaries - embryonic incarnations of The Chills & The Clean - were concurrently recording for the nascent Flying Nun. It's a tragedy Shoes This High didn't hang 'round long enough to record an LP but, as a result, this solitary single has since acquired semi-legendary status, like that dumbfounding What Is Oil? e.p., & justifiably so. It still sounds hilariously brilliant (& remarkably prescient) to my fagged out ears, & warrants some sort of lavish re-release, preferably supplemented with as many moth-eaten out-takes as the band's scattered ex-members can round up between 'em. Put your money where your mouth is, Mr. Domino Records, the world doesn't need any more cosy James Yorkston 10th anniversary repackages, it needs Shoes This High!

Sop Pongs

SEXY LEPER : Turf The Void (2011)

The inclusion of Sexy Leper's Portobello Ghosts LP (actually a cassette) in my end of year baker's dozen has prompted a flurry of interest. Unfortunately, I'm unable to convert tapes to mp3 at the moment (rest assured I'm working on it!) so, instead, here's their tremendous Turf The Void EP, a single-sided 12" on the elusive, highly collectible, Aotearoa label (responsible also for a mind-blowing 4-disc Slither|Slather box set).

In all honestly, I'm not quite sure how to describe Sexy Leper's music: it's improvised, & based around "rock" instrumentation, but only rarely employs a tangible rhythm, the percussion being sporadic & scattershot at best. Electric guitars are a pivotal part of their line-up, though they're scraped rather than strummed, picked at rather than plucked. There's an eerie Vox Continental amongst the melee too, & a snatches of squawking, hissing shortwave radio. I'm reminded, ever so slightly, of The Dead C circa Harsh 70s Reality, & that's definitely not a bad thing, is it?

Aotearoa

ANGUS MACLISE : Trance (1987)

Apocryphal or not, legend has it that Angus MacLise, original drummer with The Velvet Underground, reacted to confirmation of the band's first paid live date by angrily quitting - "You mean we start when they tell us & we finish when they tell us? I can't work that way." His brief tenure in the formative V.U. aside, MacLise was also a published poet, bookshop owner, underground film maker, calligrapher, Occultist, Fluxus-affiliated artist, & nomad. As a member of both The Theatre Of Eternal Music & the original Dream Syndicate (alongside Tony Conrad, Terry Riley, John Cale, & founder La Monte Young), MacLise's drug induced, stream of consciousness improvisations ultimately inspired the music of contemporary fringe outfits such as Sunburned Hand Of The Man, Tower Recordings & No-Neck Blues Band, whose open ended/free form performances continue to baffle audiences 30+ years after his untimely death, in Nepal, from tuberculosis . All that remains of MacLise's pioneering multimedia performances are a few reels of grainy, disintegrated sound recordings, since bequeathed to the Yale Collection Of American Literature by his widow, & fellow traveller, Hetty. Fortuitously, their crude quality somehow enhances their mind-boggling cabalistic awesomeness.

Growing interest in MacLise's clandestine oeuvre has, in recent years, resulted in a brace of fascinating archival releases from Table Of The Elements, Siltbreeze, Quakebasket & other similarly broadminded, zero budget imprints. However, the 1st label to release any of his work was Fierce Records, a long defunct Welsh bootleg emporium, allegedly masterminded by the bassist in Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction (!), & generally better known for it's abundance of nose thumbing Pooh Sticks flexis. Fierce issued "Trance" in 1987 in a meagre edition of 100 single-sided 7"s. A short low-fi tape recording of a mid-60's sine tone experiment, "Trance" was packaged pop art-style (n.b. irony alert) with an "Angus" chocolate bar, a selection of Khatmandu prayers, a "Far Out" badge, an incense cone, & a mail order list of spurious MacLise-related ephemera. Though the choice of inserts was characteristically arch (their most notorious bootleg, The Jesus & Mary Chain's "Riot" EP, included a free syringe & a torn scrap of plaid shirt!), Fierce's intentions were undoubtedly sincere, "Trance" playing an important catalytic role in the subsequent reevaluation of MacLise's life & work.

n.b. For a far more astute overview of MacLise's life & works than I could ever muster, take a look at this excellent article.

Straight Farthest Blood Towards