Mystikal - Unpredictable (1997)

While I always enjoyed Mystikal turning up on other people's tracks, I never took the plunge with a whole album. The sheer intensity of his delivery seemed like something which would make for tough listening over an hour or more; but I found this in the racks like someone half remembered from school and it seemed like it would be stupid to just pass it by - rude even - and so once again here I am learning the error of my ways, nearly a quarter of a century behind the curve as per fucking usual.

Taxonomically speaking, Mystikal is to be found occupying roughly the same branch of the rap family tree as Fiend, Full Blooded, Ludachris, and possibly Busta Rhymes - gruffly voiced dudes who sound like they're about to explode most of the time. If the mighty Fiend can be considered the alpha male bullfrog of rap, then Mystikal is probably the Tasmanian devil - both the critter and the guy from the Bugs Bunny cartoons. My guess would be that the influence of James Brown looms large, although possibly not so large as the hellfire Baptists Mystikal almost certainly encountered growing up in New Orleans. His delivery is pretty shocking first time you hear it, the sort of thing that has you holding the speaker upside down to see whether it's broken. He yells, he whoops, he growls, he howls like his eyes are about to pop right out of his head with the sheer force of testimony, and he changes gear from rumbling tornado warning to five-hundred miles an hour with unpredictable ferocity - hence the title, I guess. All that booty-bounce My Little Pony rap which the yoots dem are so keen on these days began with either Mystikal or members of his platoon; so it's perhaps his fault, although to be fair, he did it a million times better and it's not like he's been sending out invitations to rip him off. The difference, I suppose, is that Mystikal's delivery remains clear no matter how close he gets to the point of lyrical meltdown, and he delivers shit that's worth hearing, which makes for incredible listening.

So, an entire album of this bloke pebbledashing one's lugholes actually works and isn't at all like listening to extreme metal, as I assumed it would be - although it could be argued that the growled chorus of Oh Shit! Motherfucker! Goddamit! on U Can't Handle This works a lot like some metal riff. It probably helps that Beats by the Pound, the No Limit label's in house production team really gave this album its own sound, one which could mostly be transposed to a live band as distinct from some of the weirder techno stutter with which they graced sets by C-Murder and the rest. So it's almost jazzy, or at least has jazzy overtones, bolted to hard as fuck beats blended in with chiming guitar funk, piano and so on; all of which keeps Unpredictable nicely grounded as our boy raps his face off - literally by the sound of it. It also helps that Unpredictable is good to the last drop with not a single skip button special in evidence. He keeps it moving and he keeps it startling, and I need to track down those other albums while I can still afford the fuckers. Unpredictable was one of No Limit's best beyond any shadow of doubt.

Meteor F. Atomic - This is How I Dance (2021)

I gather this is Danny Ayers, brother of Nigel and formerly of both the Pump and the first line-up of Nocturnal Emissions, which should be enough to at least dispel expectations of This is How I Dance sounding like the Detroit Spinners. I'm not sure whether this ever had any sort of official release back in 1981 when it was recorded, but suspect it was probably a few copies handed out to friends, at best. Anyway, here it is again, possibly for the first time, thanks to the revived Sterile Records, and I'm surprised it's taken this long in some respects. I'm not saying This is How I Dance is life-changing, but it's surprisingly listenable for something with such basic ingredients.

What little background detail we have reports that This is How I Dance was recorded directly onto cassette, which is entirely believable; and it might be viewed as a single lengthy work in four movements, if you really want to. Most of it seems to be mains hum, rummaging around inside a transistor radio with a screwdriver, things recorded off the telly on shitty condenser mics, hiss, and the sort of feedback we used to summon by holding our massive Tony Blackburn style headphones up to the microphone. There's a degree of repetition but I'm not even sure our man was using anything so fancy as a tape loop, and it may just be actions repeated over and over live into the cassette deck. The second movement, if that's what it is, utilises a Boss DR55 drum machine, albeit more as a noise source than for the sake of rhythm, phase pedals, and what sounds like a Casio VL-Tone; so suffice to say, the whole enterprise resembles things I've heard before, albeit a long time ago, and yet remains fresh thanks to the Meteor's sense of invention and the sheer impossibility of working out what the hell's coming next, plus the textures, rough as fuck though they often are, are gorgeous. Imagine Tissue of Lies without the sensory overload, and oddly hypnotic. This is How I Dance proves that the size of either the budget or the studio never mattered.

godspunk volume twenty-two (2021)

I should possibly open by declaring certain details which may suggest a lack of objectivity on my part. I've known Stan Batcow, the man behind both this compilation and the Pumf label which spawned it for a plurality of decades. He's appeared on things I've recorded, and I've appeared on stage with him back when he was blowing a jug for the Ceramic Hobs. I contributed to the first three volumes of godspunk, and have been a member of one of the bands who contribute to this collection. Anyway, Stan has been sending me the latest volume of this thing since way back whenever, usually with some disclaimer along the lines of I know you probably think this is a pile of shite, but it's free, so bollocks - you'll have it and like it, or words to that effect; and I always feel as though I should make the effort to review the thing, or at least spread the word in some way, but I never do.

It isn't that I think the godspunk compilations are a pile of shite, but I've often found them a bit of a mixed bag. There's been some great stuff on godspunk over the years - not least being the Las Vegas Mermaids and one of the Shend's rare solo outings - but there's usually a couple of tracks I'm not so keen on, and I always feel awkward about it. Actually there have been at least a couple I've actively hated.

The deal with godspunk is that the artist contributes to the cost of producing a fancy compact disc, essentially paying for time on the disc and a page in the accompanying booklet. So if you have sixty quid, or however much it costs, you can probably get yourself on one of these. Although this has meant the inclusion of an occasional splash of uninspiring or otherwise workmanlike pub rock over the years, that sort of thing has generally been in the minority, and the eclecticism of these compilations tend to reflect the mix of weirdos with whom Stan Batcow breaks virtual bread rather than who just happened to have sixty quid to spare. The godspunk discs therefore tend to present a bewildering selection of pop, punk, DIY, techno, house, country, noise, avant-garde, prog, metal, rockabilly, free jazz, and trad garage just for starters; which can be a bit overwhelming if you're not prepared for it, which is usually why I'm left speechless.

I tend to listen to this sort of thing on a Discman while I'm out on my bike, and I took a slightly different approach with this one because it's the first volume issued on two discs. Fearing sensory overload, I took the case with me so as to refer to the track list as I listened, and somehow it made a big difference, providing some kind of context to the anticipated barrage of random swerves. It still didn't mean I loved everything here, but it rendered the experience a little less like arbitrary twists of a radio dial and therefore a lot more interesting.

My favourite tracks came from the ever formidable Harsh Noise Movement - who directly big me up in the booklet for some reason; and Jeanie & the Kaprikorns who seem to be a country and western outfit, which may mean I've been in Texas too long, or not long enough depending on how you look at it. Also great are the Large Veiny Members, Taurus Board, and Nil by Nose - all godspunk regulars who can usually be relied upon to come up with something worth hearing; and Stan's own Howl in the Typewriter should probably have been mentioned in that sentence. There's also UNIT, of which I was a member back in the eighteenth century and concerning which my commentary might therefore constitute a conflict of interests, although I will say that it's probably the best stuff I've heard from UNIT in a long time, at least in so much as that a couple of their tracks feature none of the usual easy listening glockenspiel overload and are therefore almost listenable, if a little more clean cut than I like; having said which, I could have lived without the Apostles classic Anarchy, Peace & Freedom rewritten as a self-improvement anthem. Infected Youth banging on about H.P. Lovecraft didn't really do it for me either, but never mind - a couple of duds amongst what amounts to nearly fifty tracks isn't a bad average.

I suspect the mistake I've been making with these godspunk collections, aside from taking them along as I go out and about but leaving the track list at home, is listening to them as I might listen to, off the top of my head, Rising from the Red Sand or some compilation demonstrating a fairly specific focus; because godspunk is essentially a spigot. You turn the tap and weird shit gushes out in seemingly random sequence. The key to appreciation is therefore in riding the gusher, going with the flow, and expecting to be surprised - which you absolutely will be. With editorial policy being whoever happens to have sixty quid and something they want to share, one might be forgiven for certain assumptions regarding godspunk; but it's worth remembering that it's 2021 and the majority of talent free shitehawks will most likely be clogging up Bandcamp or similar download sites because they're free and easy, or at least easier than physical media has become. So rather than godspunk assembling an array of ageing pub rockers who just happen to have cheque books at the ready, it's probably closer in spirit to the tapes once issued by Music for Midgets and the like, by virtue of contributors having eschewed the path of least resistance, musically speaking; so check the fucker out, is what I'm saying here.

Pumf Records link up there on the left hand side of your screen.

Wyclef Jean - The Carnival (1997)

 

I haven't always been well disposed towards Wyclef Jean, so this represents quite an about face for me. I found the Fugees underwhelming and exhaustingly worthy, rap music for people who read Mojo or who shop at Whole Foods. I wasn't wild about their solo material either and was particularly appalled by Wyclef's colonisation of Another One Bites the Dust, improbably billed as a collaboration for some movie soundtrack or other. It was the Queen song stretched out so as to accommodate lines from Wyclef and Canibus, with Mercury's verses prefixed by Mr. Jean asking, Freddie, where you at? as though to conjure the image of some magical jam with the afterlife - although the actual answer to the question of where Freddie was at should logically have been, I'm fucking brown bread, pal. Don't you watch the news? Additionally, there was Gone Till November which I couldn't avoid for about six months or so, and which annoyed the hell out of me. The song takes the form of an address from a bad lad who has been sentenced and is off to do his time in the stripey hole. Take care, mum, he says - although, I'm paraphrasing here - and sorry about being a criminal. It's just that I'd prefer not to work a nine to five because robbing banks is easier, given my lack of qualifications. At the time I somehow missed the inference of the song and assumed it to be Wyclef telling everyone he was off for a lovely six month holiday, sipping rum from a half coconut on some beach because work is for squares and suckers. I found this irritating because my job was fairly back breaking but fucking off to Barbados didn't really seem like an option.

Then he turned up on an episode of that Jools Holland thing, which wasn't really a massive surprise.

Several decades later, I experience an unexpected tug of nostalgia for Gone Till November, not least because I realise the subject matter isn't quite so gormless as I somehow took it to be. I haven't thought about Wyclef in a long time and am surprised to recall the strength of my dislike for the man, which of course prompts a re-evaluation. Because I'm nothing if not a contrarian, it probably helps my volte-face that Wyclef's most vocal critics have themselves tended to be complete fucking cocks, one of whom I seem to remember objecting on the grounds that Wyclef thinks he's Bob Marley, the evidence presumably being that they're both musical black men with dreads and are therefore essentially identical.

Anyway, the only thing I've been able to find wrong with The Carnival is all the extraneous yacking between tracks, of which there seems to be a lot. Much of the album is framed as a courtroom drama with songs provided in evidence in the case of Wyclef accused of being too fly, or something of the sort. It's not that it's not actually funny, because it sort of is - and the interview with the world's scariest rapper made me literally laugh out loud - but the album simply doesn't need it because it's already good enough, which I really didn't expect. The fact of Wyclef playing a shitload of instruments to a fairly high standard doesn't actually mean he's merely dabbling when it comes to either the rap or hip-hop production, and certainly no more than it means he thinks he's Bob Marley. The key to the man seems to be that he never really gave a shit about ticking the right boxes or fitting neatly into any single genre, so he takes the sort of eclectic approach which means you're a multi-instrumentalist if you're a white guy, but apparently doing too much if you're Wyclef Jean; and he's eclectic because he fucking loves music and, above all, he tries to entertain and keep things interesting for the rest of us - hence even that Jools Holland slot.

As you might expect, The Carnival drifts all over the place, musically speaking, with a substantial Latin or Caribbean influence on a lot of the material, but it's cheery and sincere rather than cheesy, being born from an obvious and infectious desire for the listener to have at least as much of a blast as those playing the stuff. In case I've made it all sound like Tito Puente, hip-hop production nevertheless dominates, and it's a fairly polished sound - as distinct from the rough as fuck we're all used to - but draws heavily on dub and the whole sound system dynamic so we don't have to think about Sting nodding his head with approval as he listens to the record; not unless we really want to. Weirdly, excepting Gone Till November, much of the album blends into a relatively seamless landscape of uptempo beats and tunes, nothing really standing out but working as a whole because, possibly excepting the chatter, there are no real duds to ruin the mood. It's not the greatest album I've ever heard, but it's decent for something I once assumed would be fucking terrible. Better late to the party than never, I guess.