British Murder Boys - Active Agents and House Boys (2024)

I still don't know a whole lot about this pair. They turned up in Wesley Doyle's book about the Some Bizarre label with some frequency yet without actually having been on the label so far as I could tell, and that seemed like a recommendation. They're from Birmingham and what physical records they release tend to sell out before you're even aware of them - so I've been lucky on this occasion.

It's old school acid or possibly techno in so much as that you could slip any one of these tracks onto a compilation in between Maurice Joshua and Lidell Townsell and I doubt anyone would notice; which is because, aside from the obvious Rolandisms, this music, like that of the acid pioneers, resists the formula which eventually took over, instead building a similar intense mood - not one which immediately suggests smiley tees and glo-sticks, it has to be said. The clue is probably in the name.

British Murder Boys, at least on the strength of this one, are distinguished by pounding overdriven tom and the tempo wacked up just a few notches beyond what is probably healthy, creating a sort of euphoric coronary effect. It's just a bit too fast, just a little too dark and claustrophobic, and that's why it's great. Sequences buzz away behind the pounding, with half-heard howls echoing into an endless decay which seems to fulfil the promise that Cabaret Voltaire failed to deliver when they turned smooth house around the time of Hypnotised. Very tasty.

The Fall - This Nation's Saving Grace (1985)

Some journalist - don't remember who - once described the Fall as sounding like tossers rummaging around in a broom cupboard, which I love because they do - or I suppose did - and it's funny, both accurate and way off the mark at the same time; and ultimately it doesn't matter because the Fall were fucking magnificent, and insults just seem to slide off into irrelevance. I don't know if this was the best album but it's the one I like most, and the first one I caved in and bought. Years later I had a conversation with Larry Peterson during which I offered the Fall as an example of how bands can sound decent without rehearsing the life out of their material. He pointed out that, contrary to the tossers rummaging around in a broom cupboard hypothesis, the Fall were actually tight as fuck and hence extremely oiled and well rehearsed, figuratively speaking. Of course, he was right. What I'd lazily taken for a loose, almost ramshackle quality was nothing of the sort.

I'm still not exactly sure what the quality is, that thing which sounds like the Fall and only the Fall and no other band ever - apart from the Kevin Staples Band* I suppose. Possibly it's simply what music sounds like without the bullshit you don't really need, practically translating to a lack of artificial embellishment - something akin to what Steve Albini was always trying to achieve. The result is usually what tends to sound like a ruthlessly well practiced live band, so it's the sound of human beings twanging, thumping and howling away in real time, doing what it needs to do musically- according to Smith's vision - to the very best of its abilities rather than chasing virtuosity or ostentation for their own sake. The vision itself always remained faithful to the basics of rock and roll as something derived from the blues, but without feeling the need to repeat or impersonate unless there was some specific point in doing so, and experimentation was always part of it; which is why they sounded like that, I guess.

This one is particularly cinematic in places, with touches of krautrock and the usual elements which seem to wilfully work against whatever else the track is doing - the distorted or otherwise loosely detuned vocal, or the drums on the Damo Suzuki song doing their own thing; or that passage on Paintwork where we're invited to pretend the twenty-four track studio is a mono portable cassette recorder and someone has accidentally taped the sound of the telly over the rhythm section; and while none of these elements were unique to the Fall, only the Fall ended up with rock and roll songs which felt as though they could be discussed as novels alongside Burroughs, James Joyce, or whoever else you care to mention from the last century. Each track is its own self-contained world, even when the literally narrative element is so minimal as it is on LA. It's surreal, funny, grim, witty, grounded, bloody awkward, and mind-boggling all at the same time. They were truly unique.

*: Two admittedly listenable tracks on Another Thing from the Crypt (1984) on the Dead Hedgehog label sounding so much like a Stars In Their Eyes tribute to the Fall that it's hard to work out why they bothered, and apparently they didn't after that.

Busdriver - Fear of a Black Tangent (2005)

I heard somewhere that Busdriver was what the kids on the streets are listening to—excuse me, what the kids on the streets are checking for these days; and while most things associated with today's young people tend to be pure fucking garbage, I like to keep an open mind because I know it can't all be rainbow haired foetuses named after forms of anxiety medication. However, it turns out that Fear of a Black Tangent came out in 2005, meaning it probably counts as old school by now, although this may also be why it's worth a listen; so swings and roundabouts or summink…

Should I ever have given the impression, I'm not actually down on backpack rap - or underground, which is maybe a less annoying tag - just the stuff which sticks to the self-important formula while sneering at everyone else - the funky puritans who want you to expand your mind with a game of chess prior to making sweet lurve to your woman partner. Busdriver probably counts as underground, beyond which he's more or less his own genre - intelligent, and I mean real intelligence here, not just some bore aspiring to be your social worker. He's in the same ballpark as E-40 in terms of sonics and mood, also massively witty, which may not be obvious from the first few spins with that verbal firehose blasting away for an hour or more. But sense comes with familiarity, and the gags - delivered with deadpan earnest - are gutbusting once they emerge.

I replied to the wuss with a yo' mama's joke,
When he said how much he pushed the envelope.
A group of sexually ambivalent nihilst, crying from an ovarian cyst,
Picking at a vegetarian dish,
Idolising a German band who barely exist,
But me, my name's never on the full-colour flyer.
I'm just the dull Busdriver,
Thinking 'til my head is a bowl of dust fibers.

Musically, it's as distinct as it is lyrically, and I was surprised to see a full cast of producers listed, having assumed it could only be the work of himself, so beautifully formed is the vision as a whole. The sound leans towards actual instruments, as distinct from bleeps, glitches, and other elements not found in nature; but the way it's all put together is incredible - highly tuneful, and gently psychedelic in the sense of the Bonzos rather than the Legendary Pink Dots - although their name also came to mind. It would be pleasant if unremarkable but for the explosive energy somehow pinning all the notes to the beat, like it's threatening to go drum and bass without ever quite getting there, or if not drum and bass, then maybe one of the more manic Bugs Bunny cartoons run through the projector at four or five times normal speed.

...and by the point at which you believe you've figured all this out, you're now listening so fast that you can actually digest the import of Lefty's Lament, and so realise you've been listening to Public Enemy all along, or a tangent thereof; so I guess that's where the title came from.

The Very Things - Mr. Arc-Eye (Under a Cellophane Sky) (2024)

 

With hindsight it's difficult to miss that the Very Things really were the absolute pinnacle of something or other and surely deserved a  more strident crack of the whip, having very clearly defined themselves as distinct from the Cravats despite being more or less the same band. We had some great singles, two cracking albums - or one and a half depending on your mileage - then a sudden frosty silence broken only by the sound of One Little Indian shovelling every last penny into the chuffing Sugarcubes - regarding which I'm still feeling short-changed to this day. The posthumous missing album was interesting but didn't really feel like a missing album so much as some stuff that happened to be laying around. I was long resigned to that being our lot, and then this monster appears.

I'm not sure quite where Mr. Arc-Eye sits in the canon, or would have sat, and my first guess was that it followed fairly closely on the heels of Motortown in terms of recording. Recent smoke signals seem to suggest it's actually an entirely new album, which seems just as likely for, while consistent as what they did next, it also has a distinctly timeless sound. It's as sharply dressed as Let's Go Out with one meticulously glossy shoe still in the jazz dive - two in the morning by the sound of it - smoke everywhere. The horn section and driving bass invoke Motown without sounding like nostalgia, specifically the dark, dirty, raw Motown of the sixties when the label set vocal groups to the sort of instrumentation that gave the Stooges a run for their money. This may even be what Clock DVA were aiming for on Advantage, so maybe imagine a more muscular, more effortless Clock DVA if they all had jobs - down a coalmine, most likely. The most unexpected aspect of this record is how it blends the two very different strands revealed when Rob and the Shend went their separate ways - the driving soul of Hit the Roof or Vivarama with the growling motorbike beat of GrimeTime. It probably shouldn't have come together with quite such grace, but these men knew what they were doing.

I'm possibly lost in the moment here, but this may even be the greatest work by any of those involved, which is quite a boast considering the back catalogue in its entirety; and certainly Mr. Arc-Eye contains some of the Shend's most powerful vocal performances. I realise there's not much point harbouring a grudge thirty years after the fact, but I really would have appreciated something like this more than the oh so fucking quiet song.

VX - Minutes to Go-Go (2024)

I'm only familiar with VX as Peter Hope's pianist - figuratively speaking, the man who tickled the ivories on the excellent Kilo Price for Dead Shapes which you may possibly remember from here. His own, mostly instrumental, material - overlooking the possible absence of sounds deriving from anything much that might count as an instrument - while similarly raw and initially abrasive, is a whole different kettle of fish. It's noise in so much as there's little common ground shared with Herman's Hermits, but while my closest point of reference is probably the work of +DOG+, Minutes to Go-Go feels intensively sculptured, even structured without quite turning into an Art of Noise record. Amongst the electronic crunches, overdriven circuits, gated slabs of feedback and the like, we find remnants of what may once have been vocals, percussion instruments, and other sound sources warped and looped into shapes which seem to emerge and gain greater prominence with each listen, until you no longer notice quite what a racket it is, instead hearing something that might almost be - I don't know - a film soundtrack perhaps. It seems different to the involuntary admiration of fire extinguishers we sometimes experience at the end of an afternoon trudging around some gallery, because I don't think there's such a pronounced random element here. These patterns are surely more than shapes perceived in the ear of the beholder. Listen enough times and you'll find yourself transported to filthy truck stops in cyberspace, the medina in Marrakech, the inside of your own head, and other alien territories. Minutes to Go-Go is one hell of a trip.

Apply within.

Flipmode Squad - The Imperial (1998)

This one took a long time. While happy to acknowledge the mighty power of Busta Rhymes' tonsils, I was never much of a fan. I'm not sure why beyond that I found him a bit demanding on the ears, where I've tended to find verbal acrobats of similar thrust mostly entertaining; although it probably didn't help that there was some laboured deeper meaning to the name Flipmode which I've mercifully forgotten - some of that motivational poster philosophising that rap tends to do when it takes itself too seriously for the wrong reasons. On the other hand, I've always held Rah Digga in high regard, and her Dirty Harriet is a fantastic record; and she's part of Busta's Flipmode Squad so it seemed I should at least give it a listen. Unfortunately, once I got home I realised the cheap copy I'd found in the racks of CD Exchange was the clean version - because I keep forgetting to check to make sure my purchases have a parental advisory sticker meaning I won't have to provide my own swearing. Given that the whole point of rap is the fucking words, even the naughty ones, the clean version will always be a complete waste of time, regardless of the album. I tried, but it sounded peculiar, and musically it wasn't quite grabbing me either.

Coming back to the thing a couple of years later, mainly because I'm replacing all the clean versions purchased by accident with the real thing as a point of principal, it begins to make more sense. I get the impression Flipmode were simply a bunch of guys whom Busta considered promising and so deserved the exposure. No-one quite lyrical enough to earn living legend status, but no weak links in the chain either. It's quite a minimal album, musically speaking, at least compared to most of the rest of what was going on in 1998, which I gather is because it's an album as an album - a simple showcase rather than some grand concept (although grand concept rap albums have mostly been averagely shitty concept), thus obliging us to focus on the microphone activity as much as we would at an open mic night full of unknowns. So there isn't even any conspicuous turntable action, just looped beats, and nothing to distract from the main event; and with this in mind - it's undeniably solid. Of course, it's street stories, grandstanding, the usual jokes and complaints woven from individual voices, but original individual voices with more kinship to what should probably be considered underground than most of what you used to read about in The Source. Busta grows on you, and Digga is great as ever, but the others also shine, notably Baby Sham who, as the youngest member - so I would guess - reminds me a little of 57th Dynasty's Lil' Monsta, particularly on the confessional cross-generational dialogue of Do For Self.

It's not a perfect album, and I could live without quite so many skits, but at heart it's a shitload stronger than first impressions may imply.

Final - I Am the Dirt Under Your Fingernails (2002)

I first encountered Final back in the eighties when we both turned up on the same compilation tape. I got into Godflesh a bit late in the day - late nineties or thereabouts - and at least another decade had passed before I made the connection, that both were the work of the same individual, namely Justin Broadrick. This made a lot of sense despite Final and Godflesh sounding very different to each other. I Am the Dirt Under Your Fingernails also sounds significantly different to what I'd heard of Final back in the eighties, but then a fair bit of time has passed and this shares the same concrete-density as much of Broadrick's other work.

I detect what may have been feedback, but otherwise it's anyone's guess where these sounds originated. Mine would be that whatever it is we have here was recorded on traditional tape then slowed to a sludge-crawl to the point where even the shrillest of screams is reduced to a bass rumble hung precipitously on the edge of hearing, even the slightest variation in tape speed stretched to tonal craters in what is very much a sonic landscape; and the occasional flicker of drop-out may even be spaghettified gaps between molecules of ferric oxide. Anal Probe, who issued the compilation where I first heard Final, had a photocopied catalogue listing destroyed music amongst the vague genres in which they specialised, and I'm fairly sure that's what we have here.

That said, whatever the first thing to hit you may be when you listen to this disc, discordant racket somehow doesn't figure. Minutes passed before I noticed I'd been listening to this thing very much as music rather than merely engaging noise. The notes we've been left with are long and mournful, evoking mist, rain, and vast spaces from which life has moved on. The best description I can come up with - and which occurred to me as I was listening - was if the first SPK album felt like listening to Elgar. There's something monolithic here, something carved in stone and so weathered as to be barely recognisable, something which has left behind a sense of loss as big as the world.