Sleaford Mods (2007)

 

As you hopefully realise, the Sleaford Mods were Jason Williamson and various other blokes as required for a good five years before Andrew Fearne got involved, and they - or I suppose he - recorded quite a lot of material prior to Austerity Dogs bothering the hit parade. Some of this early stuff has resurfaced on compilations and bootlegs but will most likely remain obscure due to the legality of clearing all those samples, of which there are many. Anyway, someone has at last done the right thing in issuing vinyl bootlegs of the first four as originally released on CDR, so we get to hear this stuff more or less as intended in terms of artwork, running order and so on - which I personally find less confusing than assemblages such as Retweeted, I'm Not a Mod - Fuck Off and others.

...and guess what?

Contrary to any faint expectation you may have of ropy demos from before someone got their shit together, it's fucking great!

Williamson rants, yells, croons, belches, cracks jokes and delivers one lyrical wedgie after another with the same relentless wit and bile with which you will be familiar. Presumably unsure as to whether anyone was even listening at this point, if anything, he seems to give even less of a shit about sparing anyone's feelings. The music is looped samples, blatantly stolen without any attempt to disguise sources, but with just enough crafting and editing to keep it from sounding like punky Philip Glass; and while we may have noticed the looping of riffs from the Jam, the Pistols, even the Who on Retweeted, the choice of wallpaper on this debut effort is such as to leave the whole feeling distinctly jazzy, albeit in a moody sense with bars lifted from Roni Size, Bernard Herrmann, Barry White and others; and there's even a sample-free acoustic guitar instrumental, just in case you think you had the thing all figured out - and it fits right in.

Should anyone have developed the wrong impression, Sleaford Mods is no shaky beginning, no finding of feet regardless of being a quite different animal to Austerity Dogs. It's a fully formed blast of inspired racket, opprobrium - and even crooning - and as vital a debut as Bollocks, Illmatic, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, or any others you care to mention.

Rimarimba - Chicago Death Excretion Geometry (1987)

Rimarimba was a name which turned up on tape compilations back in the eighties, specifically the Real Time series put out by Unlikely Records. Robert Cox was the man behind both Unlikely Records and Rimarimba, so it sort of felt a little as though he was sneaking this stuff into my home by wrapping it up with the music of acts I actually wanted to hear, Attrition and others; and it sort of felt that way because it's exactly what I would have done. I didn't actually dislike the music of Rimarimba, but it seemed repetitive and fiddly and not entirely my sort of thing; and then suddenly, thirty years later, I bought this album because it was there, affordable where the first two now cost a fucking fortune, and I somehow felt it my duty to buy the thing, like maybe I owed Rimarimba an apology. It felt as though I should at least make an effort, besides which I always find it pleasing when it turns out that some tape dude has made it onto vinyl.

Rimarimba works much better at length - as opposed to broken down into five minute snatches on some cassette - and with a better understanding of what he was trying to do - thanks in part to extensive sleeve notes of the kind one would expect to find on a classical recording. Simply, this is systems music in the vein of Philip Glass, Steve Reich and so on, and as such really needs a broader span of time in which to build up momentum and achieve its effect. I gather this is mostly programmed - sequences of notes, tunes which repeat over and over, change, or are replaced with fresh sequences - and yet it doesn't quite sound so, retaining an organic sense of progression, and the instrumentation is such that it could be played by a small orchestra without anyone giving themselves a hernia. Not being classically trained, as Cox clearly is, I don't fully understand the promises made in the sleeve notes regarding the structure of the music or what he was trying to do with it, but it nevertheless feels like a satisfying, rounded piece of work, not quite hypnotic but definitely immersive, which leaves faint traces of mood in the consciousness even after the needle has lifted from the end of the second side - sort of how the ambling melodies of village church bells can stay lodged long after one has passed by.

Foetus - Hide (2010)

The measure of a genuinely classic album - pretending for a moment that it's possible to be make objective judgements about such things - is that it sounds like the single greatest album ever recorded during  listening, and only as it ends will you recall having regarded other records with similar fervour. Foetus is distinguished for me by having churned out a good few albums which figure in this category, and Jim Thirlwell is one of those rare artists who seemingly sets out to improve upon earlier works rather than simply repeating former glories. He's been doing it since Deaf from way back whenever the hell that was, each one better than the last. Admittedly there was a bit of a fallow period lasting roughly from Thaw to Flow - great albums all, but a bit too much of that generic noise rock landfill, gargling crude oil whilst pretending to be a guy from Tennessee who's just married his own mother. It sounded great on Hole and Nail, but by 1988, that one string of the bow was wearing a bit thin, not least for having been photocopied by a thousand growling clowns, and if you don't believe me just dig out Ministry's Industrial Rock is Like Really Awesome album and try listening to it now without smirking.

Thankfully, Thirlwell seemed to tire quite quickly of that sort of unreconstructed cobblers, and so from Flow onwards he returned to providing greater emphasis on musicality than on sheer roaring texture. Contrary to dimwitted belief, he was never really industrial in the first place - in fact any person using the term industrial in relation to their music who isn't a former member of Throbbing Gristle should probably feel free to either grow up or piss off - but such associations tend to stick, no matter how wide of the mark they may be, and so the man's actual talents often tend to be either overlooked or misunderstood. Thirlwell is above all a composer, as even his early Philip Glass inspired efforts will reveal. His work is almost always narrative in that it tells a story, even if it's a non-verbal story and the progression isn't always linear. His music is assembled with expert care; and the quotation or cut and paste of other musical genres is more of a grappling with musical language than just sticking a load of unrelated crap together in the hope it will freak someone out. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that it could be argued he's closer in spirit to Rogers & Hammerstein, or at least to The Residents, than the Sex Pistols or Nurse With Wound.

Hide takes a few spins to sink in, but once it does, it's as tenacious as one of those terrifying Australian fish that swims up your hampton. Initially it comes as a shock, not least because this time he's added opera, psychedelia and mariachi music to the blend whilst somehow still producing something that sounds like Foetus. This is what I mean by grappling with musical language - the operatic Cosmetics cuts no corners, avant-garde classical time signatures all over, bits of Schoenberg, professional singers all expertly woven together by a master's hand to produce what is essentially the genuine article, as opposed to just some kid with a sampler and a Beethoven CD. The sheer overwhelming quality of song writing - or perhaps I mean composition - remains strong throughout, and although it's hard to pin down the actual thrust of the narrative, it feels like there is one - I'm guessing something roughly environmental, although that may be a little simplistic as an interpretation.

Hide is distinctly a Foetus album whilst also sounding like nothing you will have heard before, which is quite an achievement for something which quotes so freely from other genres. If there was ever any doubt, aside from being one of the few artists who can whistle mournfully during the bridge of a song without sounding like a knob, Thirlwell really is a musical genius.