It's always a little strange when the distant past resurfaces to invade the present. Somewhere in the cupboard behind me are hundreds of cassettes dating from the early 1990s, and buried in those boxes are more than a couple featuring Bügsküll. Back then they were part of a strange musical landscape which I found myself inhabiting after almost accidentally drifting into it via my own cassette-based exploits. I find this period of musical history cropping up quite a bit lately, and it was interesting to hear some of this explored on a recent Song, By Toad podcast. Quite why it should be this music, or why it should happen right now is open to interpretation, but part of it must relate to the accessibility of simple recording technology and the complete indifference of major labels to grassroots music making at present. The interest of big business is elsewhere, seeking quick returns on multimedia tie-ins, and so once again the bedroom musicians, the hard-working local indie acts and the one-man micro-industrialists are left to pursue things on their own terms. No-one is going to get rich from music just now, but culturally we all surely stand to gain? There's a quote attributed to Shrimper mastermind Dennis Callaci from the turn of the last century: "Music is always better when the powers that be are out of touch, and with the internet, the major labels are going to lose control." Once again, Dennis was on the button.
Of course Bügsküll never really went away, despite my years of completely missing the point - and you can find out more about their exploits here. But what about Bügsküll in 2012? Well, in some aspects reassuringly little has changed. Now focused on the originally Portland, Oregon based but now continent-spanning duo of Sean Byrne (Austin, TX) and Aaron Day (Berlin), there is a refreshing directness which harks right back to those days of cassette releases and home recording. Their basic premise remains intact as Byrne's often delicate, heartfelt nearly-folk songs collide with scraps of recovered sound, simmer in tumults of generated noise and are steeped in analogue hiss and crackle. However, listening back to some of those early cassettes on Shrimper and Eldest Son there has certainly been a distinct shift in fidelity, and a move away from the way songs from those early recordings would dissolve frustratingly but rather beautifully into fuzzy, noisy oblivion as recording artefacts and format limitations became features of the soundscape. I'm not sure I always really understood what the band were aiming for back then - but perhaps one's musical palette matures in the same way our tastes in cuisine develop, and listening now - particularly in the context of "Hidden Mountain", I've completely fallen for the approach all over again.
This blog isn't idly named, and I listened to this for the first time speeding east and watching the sun come up over a frozen landscape. It was an oddly and absolutely fitting way to experience this release. Opening with an extended instrumental introduction in "Old Town", the title track which follows is a curious epic of pastoral Americana, which I can't help but keep replaying in my mind. It's a simple proposition - a delicate guitar melody is plucked out against an atmospheric backdrop of stuttering electronics and layers of droning noise. Perhaps the key to how this gentle, but persistent song manages to worm its way into my consciousness is the new found discipline. The noise never threatens to overwhelm Byrne's calm if melancholy vocal. Continuing in a similarly laconic mood, "The Lights" is driven by a simple but effective vocal melody, which leads a drone of keyboard and the ever present understated, folk-inflected guitar. Then, rather unexpectedly a maudlin brass section joins briefly, lifting the song into new territory before it departs. It's a breathtakingly sudden interlude. The pace picks up a little on "Wolves" but it becomes clear that this isn't by any means going to provide lighter moments. The guitar line here repeats hypnotically and and mantra-like while Byrne manages to sound even more desolate than on the slower-paced opening tracks. Somewhere here I realise that this is just what I wanted from the last Bill Callahan record, but found I lost amongst all it's extravagant complications and overly clever staging.
The elaborately named "Early Winter, Hoping for an Early Spring" appears to have taken a leaf from The Twilight Sad approach to song nomenclature. Not unlike their often bleak and mournful recordings it too has a strange metallic edge to its melody, before startling multi-tracked and distorted electronic vocals eerily join in. The curious cyber-folk saga which follows is unsettling in it's oddly warped background sounds, but remains achingly, unerringly beautiful to hear. On "Lost Cause" Byrne pitches a more personal first-person lyric, together with a whirling electronic shimmer. His voice is at its most vulnerably and sonorous finest here, as he quietly intones the regret-laced verses. Finally "To Be The Head and Not The Tail" closes the record on a comparatively and defiantly upbeat note with what is perhaps the most immediately accessible track on the record. On the surface, it seems to be a distant cousin of George Harrison's "Isnt It A Pity?", but rebuilt from shards of odd sound effects, multi-layered vocals and a steady guitar strum. The lyrics appear to concern natural selection, with an unnamed creature slinking around ensuring it's own survival. Then, the record's only electric guitar solo enters - a majestically fuzzed-up delight of an outburst, if sadly all too brief. Taking a cue from this sudden squall the track builds towards its ending with a cacophony of whirling machinery, and appropriately drenched in hiss. In lots of ways, writing about music has brought me full circle, and to be listening to Bügsküll now connects me right back to some of my earliest experiments and projects, some of which have themselves been strangely re-energised of late. It's pretty certain in fact, that if some of those earliest cassette recordings hadn't found their way into my enthusiastic but clumsy hands back then, I'd be listening to some very different music right now. The lyrics and the music here both seem to deal throughout with a sense of pent-up natural process, and asserting some sort of understanding on a complicated world. Overall, this is a masterpiece of wonderfully intelligent songwriting, barely controlled noise, and simple but beautiful construction.
This release manages also to take the recent debate about legacy formats to a curious new conclusion - being released simultaneously on three labels, each handling a different format. The CD is available from Scratch, whilst Shrimper are providing an outlet for the cassette. Perhaps most exciting though is the vinyl release on Almost Halloween Time, each of the 110 limited copies coming with a painstakingly hand-drawn sleeve - an example being seen above - by the remarkably talented label owner, Luigi Falagario.
Bügsküll - Lost Cause
When you hear stories about artists creating a buzz before having released a note of music to the public, it's often a signal that the hype will exceed what is delivered. Marketing in these social media savvy times is cheap, and far less tiresome and complicated than recording or releasing music in many cases. So, the really efficient publicist will have people talking about an artist without really knowing quite what it's all about. But Rachel Sermanni's name was being mentioned constantly for well over a year without any of this industry machinery clanking into action at all, and it was being uttered in those hushed tones people use when they think they've stumbled across something really special. People spoke of 'that voice' and 'those songs' before trailing off in disbelief. And often these were people who already made or wrote about music - the very people who are usually most cynical about such things. Now, finally the evidence is captured for a wider audience. It's not easy to determine if this is really Rachel's debut EP, or if that role falls to last years "Bothy Sessions". That was a strangely atmospheric, rough-hewn collection of songs which reflected a very specific recording process in a particular place and a time - and in that sense was almost a live recording. This is a very different prospect indeed. It's polished, but not overly so - and it uses a far wider range of instruments and textures to capture both the spirit and the mood of these songs perfectly.
There are songs here which have circulated in demo versions or cropped up in Sermanni's live set for some time, finally committed to record and all the better for their sometimes lengthy journeys in time and place. Over time they seem to have become richer and more careworn, and the palette which Rachel uses to paint these complex, intriguing pictures has darkened surprisingly. Veteran of many a performance, "Song to a Fox" begins with strange, quivering metallic guitars and a dramatic, pensive atmosphere before Rachel's voice swells into the stride of the song. The urban fairytale develops further with a keening violin and a strange throb of drums entering the increasingly complex but still compelling fray. Pitched somewhere between a sweeping spaghetti western soundtrack and a traditional folk melody, it's near impossible to pin down this song, which perfectly reflects the ways of the creature which shares it's name. Having heard this stripped back to just voice and guitar, it's almost a shock to hear this treatment - however, what is preserved despite the ornamentation is the sense of space and freedom which this remarkable voice always seems to conjure. Next, "Black Current" continues by exploring two of Rachel's oft revisited themes - darkness and dreams. It starts with an uncomplicated, unassuming shuffle which is immediately transformed as Sermanni's voice spirals high into the air, intoning transformational dreamscapes. The music here tells it's own story, skipping from stuttering passages of tension to swooping bass-led descents. Picking up the curious, unsettling staccato, the final transformations begin with "I feel my limbs shrink/into my fins", and suddenly the song has mutated into a strange, dizzy waltz.
The eerie drama persists as "The Fog" opens with urgently picked guitars and a shiver of horror movie violins. The atmosphere here is dusty, bone dry and darker still than the first two tracks. However, despite being perhaps the most musically complex piece on the record, this is by far a stand out vocal performance. Rachel's voice leaps from a beguiling, whispered come-on to a gutsy, bluesy rasp and then proceeds to switch effortlessly between the two as the song veers crazily between light and dark, quiet and dramatically shrill. This is wonderfully atmospheric gothic storytelling, steeped in the dust of years but indeterminate in it's place in history. The instruments skitter and twist, before reuniting for a final chorus of "Mercy, Mercy/I've been caught/lying with my darkest thought". Here it's evident that Rachel's ability to sing is matched by a dramatic skill, the vocal as much acted as sung. Solid thuds of stand-up bass bring in the gloriously redemptive, and by now much needed "Breathe Easy". The atmosphere shifts entirely, building around a simpler melody which matches heart-stopping orchestral swells with vocal pirouettes. This atmosphere supports a far less enigmatic lyric which instead explores strength and resilience around a central refrain of "we'll swim/knowing rain can't touch us". With less instrumental backing than on the previous three songs, the voice is more than ever the centrepiece, and the record ends on a genuinely beautiful high.
I realise I've waxed somewhat lyrically about this EP perhaps, but that's the kind of mood this music inspires. Its thought-provoking, indulgently dark moods invite you in, but don't always reveal the secrets behind the songs. The dramatic span of this music far defies being labelled - as it almost certainly will be - traditional folk music. It's connection to all the best aspects of pop music is clear in the ability Rachel Sermanni has to captivate and hold a listener rapt for the next twist, and the often cleverly underplayed instrumentation provides just the right touches to urge the black-edged stories on apace. This is a remarkable document of the first steps of an utterly remarkable talent.
Rachel Sermanni - The Fog
You can purchase "Black Currents" on CD from Townsend Records or digitally via iTunes or Amazon MP3.
After a surprisingly but mercifully busy start to the year, these next few weeks are a bit of a hiatus. That's not to say there isn't plenty happening - but for a couple of weeks at least I'm back on service trains, making my own entertainment so to speak. I don't mind this at all, and the opportunities to revisit areas and see them changing subtly or just to people-watch and drink coffee all around the UK are never unwelcome. However, lately I've not had much time to plan these trips - so beyond saying "I think I'll do another West Midlands Day Ranger" I'd not thought in detail about today until this morning at about 5am! I'd used one of these tickets recently and found it to be very flexible, to cover a huge area and to be very good value indeed. Today though I was on my own - no bad thing in some ways after a difficult week, and had perhaps a little more freedom to wander as I wanted. The journey up to the Midlands passed sleepily and uneventfully as I'd hoped. I needed a lazy element to the day, as the week had been a bit fraught and stressful. The warm train sped through a frosty, pale sunrise before depositing me at Birmingham on time. Booked my rover ticket, grabbed breakfast and headed for the 09:01 to Crewe. Again this was a pleasant journey through the wintry morning scenery, with a few surprising locomotives moving around at Crewe just to keep things interesting from a railway perspective! It was clear though, that all was not well here - lots of delays, with some trains inexplicably showing twelve hours late, as a result of a fatality near Atherstone in the Trent Valley. I'd planned on the 10:33 Euston slow train, which would give me another long run - but this was now expected to terminate at Stafford. Given that it was leaving from the relatively unusual Platform 2 at Crewe meant I did it anyway. In the event, after a short delay at Stafford we were allowed to continue - one of the first stopping services to do so, though we omitted the call at Atherstone passing at speed on the Fast lines. At Rugby I alighted and explored the remodelled station a little. It is much improved in some ways - having extra platforms, a more pleasant subway and a sense of space around the rather quiet concourse. However, it has lost it's buffet with a small concession near the ticket office doubling up now, and inexplicably just closed for lunch when I arrived. Didn't hang around long here, not like the old days of hot tea clutched in cold hands watching passing freight trains. The next Birmingham local service was rather packed so I hopped only as far as Coventry before switching to a Pendolino service for the last few miles.
Out of new street and over to Moor Street for the rest of my travels today. The Chiltern Lines have figured large in recent times, not least because I'd neglected them for a while. Also, the arrival of the new Class 172s on London Midland local services has sparked a little interest in the area. Moor Street too, continues to be a welcoming and impressive terminus. There is space, a sense of being a 'real' station in it's historic buildings, and it feels practical and usable too. An excellent refurbishment job overall, and who would have thought when the Snow Hill tunnel was reopened in the early 90s that this station would return to it's former glory quite like this? Grabbed the first service heading north to Snow Hill, which took me as far as Kidderminster. I'd considered a run further on to Worcester or even Great Malvern, but options coming back weren't great. A quick change here for a service back as far as Tyseley. I hadn't been here since the Centenary Open Day in 2008, and I found a rather sleepy, cold station inhabited only by a couple of intrepid trainspotters. Noted a few more of the new units on the extensive depot beside the line, before heading back into Moor Street for much needed hot coffee.
For my final spin of the day, I decided on a run down to Leamington Spa, rather like the last time I used a rover ticket in the Midlands. I like the original features of the Great Western station, and it would be nice to do this in daylight this time. Hopped on a waiting Chiltern service and had a quick run down to Leamington, changing platforms before an equally speedy run back into Birmingham while watching an impressive sunset in the west. A quick, twilight walk back to New Street and a chance to relax with coffee and enjoy watching the busy station life before catching the usual 1V65 back towards home. Noted some problems at Reading delaying services out of Paddington, but the generous layover of my chosen service at Bristol meant that it arrived late but departed bang on time. The trip home was in good company too, with railway acquaintances and former colleagues on the train. So it had been the kind of day I set out to enjoy - lots of winter sunshine, coffee, people-watching and escapism - and when I added it up, surprisingly around 500 miles of travel.
It's strange to be sitting here, in 2012, reviewing a Guided By Voices record - and it brings back all kinds of memories for me. To begin at the beginning, there's no reason that anyone reading should remember Revolver Records in Bristol. The shop was tucked away in a doorway which led to a long passageway adorned with gig posters, into a cramped windowless room. The room was full of treasures - and presided over by the man with the loudest voice in Bristol, booming out his disdain for music which didn't cut the mustard, or yelling praise for his latest and usually most experimentally unlistenable discoveries. It was here I first discovered GBV, clutching my copy of "Vampire on Titus" on the train home and not quite knowing what to expect. Then, almost ten years later and just before the turn of the century I'm stalking around Bristol again, but in a mess. My life as I'd planned it is collapsing around my ears, and my uncle and I - and he's hardly a lover of cutting edge music - find ourselves in the Fleece and Firkin drunkenly watching GBV. Robert Pollard is smoking, slugging beer and high-kicking from the stage, the songs last mere seconds each, the band just keep playing - loud and messy but drifting occasionally into focus. It's the perfect distraction from the chaos of real life. My uncle yells in my ear: "he's almost like a proper rock star".
So, just over twelve years after that fateful evening and nearly twenty years since GBV first pricked my consciousness, we have "Let's Go Eat The Factory". I confess I was a little apprehensive about making the purchase - just like I was when the shouty man at Revolver tried to make me do so all those years back. I'd not been a good fan - as the number of GBV releases multiplied and with a soap-opera of line-up changes, quality inevitably dipped and I'd lost track. Like all the best soaps it was possible to dip out for a number of releases and to return to find not much had changed. But I still found myself returning to the churning noise and buried tunes of those early purchases because, frankly, no-one quite did it like GBV on form. This release is marketed as being recorded by the "classic line-up", which refers to that 1993-1996 or so collision of Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Kevin Fennell, Greg Demos and Mitch Mitchell. A collective of musicians content not to let technology or fidelity stand in the way of a wonderful tune - and one which had a thorough grounding in the pop and rock of the sixties and seventies rather than an education in the 90's indie-rock scene with all its attendant posturing and eclectic referencing. Listen to the output of this GBV line up and you'll find T Rex in the crunchy guitar riffs, John Lennon in the surreal but downtrodden lyrical preoccupations and a vocal delivery which often pays tribute to David Bowie.
Perhaps the most reassuring element of any reunion is not how many of those original features which once hooked you in survive, but how real and unforced they feel when delivered twenty years later? I'm overjoyed to say that "Let's Go Eat The Factory" in all its ramshackle, chaotic glory, retains all of the incoherent brilliance which "Vampite on Titus" provided all those years back. It's just as inconsistent, frustratingly patchy but ultimately gloriously experimental as those early 90s records. There are cuts which deliver straight out, medium-fidelity garage rock - but with Pollard's cynical, nasally Bowie-like croon overlaid they become tiny epics with nonsense lyrics, "The Unsinkable Fats Domino" and "Chocolate Boy" being perfect examples. Elsewhere they stray into the more experimental territory which has always confounded and amused, with "Old Bones" being an oddly Caledonian effort which shares a buried melody with "Auld Lang Syne" delivered on a cheap keyboard. There are also further deliciously odd synth-pop treats such as "Hang Mr. Kite" which adds an unexpected layer of strings to the reverb laden vocals. Only on "Doughnut for a Snowman" do we get hints of the later-period Rik Ocasek moderated, radio friendly GBV which never quite delivered. It's a curiously gentle ballad, with an impenetrable lyric which is delivered with genuine feeling nonetheless. Compressed into a couple of minutes and shorn of any attempts at production, its a shimmery pop delight which makes you realise why they might once have thought a radio-friendly GBV could have worked. There are also a couple of acoustic tracks here, the like of which both Pollard and Sprout both toyed with in their more obscure solo efforts. These are fragmentary, brief and tantalising with "The Room Taking Shape" clocking in at under 45 seconds, tailing off just as it starts to get interesting. The only track to break the three minute barrier is "We Won't Apologise for the Human Race" which closes the album in strangely pensive style. By GBV standards it's an epic, with chugging glam rock guitars and stabs of strings which burst into an anthemic garage rock chorus. The relatively extended length is provided by a minute of so of squalling, tangling guitar fuzz.
The question I've seen raised repeatedly by reviewers elsewhere, who've had the benefit of advance hearing of "Let's Go Eat The Factory" is whether these 21 sprawlingly unrelated tracks really make an album? With few of them exceeding 180 seconds in length and many of them tailing off into oblivion early with a click of the portastudio, the album shifts along at a curiously stuttering pace I'd agree. However, it was always thus - and a listen to any of those "classic line-up" era records will deliver a similarly uneven, sometimes disconcerting experience. This is the great joy of this type of recording - the experiment is captured and delivered to the listener pretty much unmoderated. Sometimes it doesn't work, but on other occasions GBV seemingly accidentally capture a classic pop song buried in the murky recording. This approach isn't for everyone, but in my case it's probably one of the reasons I got involved in making music, and certainly relates to my decision to write about it all these years later.
With some of the reunion dates cancelled and the band reportedly on the verge of dissolving again, it's worth remembering that this line-up was never far from complete implosion. Conversely, there is more positive talk of another album in the can and more material to follow, and this work ethic always set GBV apart from the slacker mentality of the scene which they found fame within. Perhaps the trick is not to look at this as a reunion album, and to expose it to all the intense scrutiny and criticism that inevitably brings, but to consider GBV as something which has drifted in and out of existence for almost 30 years now, and shows no signs of disappearing while that 'almost proper' rock star in Pollard continues to stalk the stage. This line-up though, captures the sense of unbridled energy and no-stone-unturned inventiveness better than most, and as a result "Let's Go Eat The Factory" is full of tiny masterpieces.
"Let's Go Eat The Factory" is available now from all good record retailers on both vinyl and CD. You can also download via iTunes. A video of the band's recent performance of "The Unsinkable Fats Domino" on Letterman is also pretty essential viewing.
Guided By Voices - The Unsinkable Fats Domino
Lost::MikeGTN
I've had a home on the web for more years than I care to remember, and a few kind souls persuade me it's worth persisting with keeping it updated. This current incarnation of the site is centred around the blog posts which began back in 1999 as 'the daylog' and continued through my travels and tribulations during the following years.
I don't get out and about nearly as much these days, but I do try to record significant events and trips for posterity. You may also have arrived here by following the trail to my former music blog Songs Heard On Fast Trains. That content is preserved here too.
