BSPH: Max Q - Max Q 1989 (Michael Hutchence / Ollie Olsen project)

Sometimes the best the artist has to offer is somewhat hidden under the surface and left mostly unnoticed in the light of the more celebrated works. That's the story of Max Q in a nutshell, a project of INXS' frontman Michael Hutchence and Whirlywind's Ollie Olsen.

But how do i got here? I have been watching recent Michael Hutchence documentary and it got me back at the time i did INXS discography guide (gotta find and post it - probably the single best piece of music writing i ever did). One of my big regrets with that piece was that i haven't mentioned about Hutchence's solo efforts like his posthumous solo album with Andy Gill and 1989' Max Q. The latter was killing me for years because i could've added a paragraph or two about it almost immediately - i've got the copy a couple of days after the piece of published and the editor already gave me a new assignment.

Now, watching Hutchence documentary, i thought it would be good to make it right ten years too late.

So. Let's start.

Max Q was a collaborative project of INXS' frontman Michael Hutchence and Whirlywind' Ollie Olson. The two met on the set of the movie Dogs in Space in 1986. Sidenote: the movie is a cultural landmark that captures the spirit of mid-80s Australian music scene in a manner of classic Wim Wenders flicks.

The story goes: Hutchence and Olsen worked on a couple of songs for the film's soundtrack (including the lead single of the soundtrack album Room for the Memory which was a big hit). The experience was good enough to decide that their artistic impulses can spark something special in a full-length album format titled after Olsen's dog because it was a cool name.

But before they could get it on, Hutchence needed to go back to INXS. He was gearing up towards his career peak with INXS' 1987 megasmash Kick, so further collaboration was put on the backburner for a couple of years. Then in 1988-89, during the band's sabbatical, Hutchence got back to the project ready to do something completely different.

In hindsight, prolonged gestation of the project was a blessing, as Hutchence and Olsen had time to solidify the vision and flesh out the songs. The resulting is something truly special. I would dare to say, that this album is actually the best thing he ever did - the artist at his most raw and daring.

The album combines then-trendy chicago house sound with pop rock songs and leftfield post-punk blue-eyed soul sensibility. In many ways, the album predates the aesthetics U2 had developed a couple of years later with Achtung Baby - similar combination of modern technology and raw emotion underpinning.

Later in the interviews, Hutchence went into detail about the creative process of the project. "It was really fast, you know, it was just enthusiasm – it was just, ‘Let’s do this, let’s do this’ – Olsen wanted to make the new Thriller and I wanted to make something a bit more left, you know? So these two strange ideas got together… With Max Q, we didn’t really know what monster we were making, you know what I mean? We were just gonna see what happened by the end. See, with INXS, it’s a little bit more worked out than that."

Aside from Olsen and Hutchence, the other important creative force on the album is Todd Terry. He added some unexpected textures to the mix and provided very creative approach to the song arrangements. The songs perfectly combine relentless grooves with steadily revolving melodies. It never get boring.

Unfortunately, the album went mostly unnoticed by the public, especially in comparison with INXS smashing success.

Nevertheless, Max Q was important project for Hutchence. It let him to explore his creative parts unknown and expand his writing skills into different styles. Among other things, the influence of Max Q is felt of latter day INXS albums, especially Full Moon Dirty Hearts, whose The Gift would not sound out of place on Max Q album.

Random notes on DNA songs

Back in the day i used to take extensive notes while listening to music. The thing is - my brain generates a lot of thoughts and when they just float around my head starts to boil and having it hot is no good.
And when you write it down - the pressure's off and you can keep your head fresh.

I stopped doing that due to work-related burnout. But why not try it again?

Here are some of my notes on songs by seminal New York No Wave band DNA.

The thing you need to know about DNA is that this was the band that wasn't in the whole music thing. They were doing a thing of their own that just happened to be expressed with sounds. Also - this is how Sonic Youth would have sounded like if all the articles about them were accurate.

Count off, sampling and Kirk Pearson's unpersoned "Going Up"

Last Sunday, I was talking with my friend about De La Soul intense sampling style and at some point the conversation veered further into conceptual art territory of supercuts and Youtube Poop. In particular, I was asked whether there were any pieces that combined counting and sampling that weren't DJ Shadow's "The Number Song". And I remembered one - i saw it a few years back. I just couldn't remember its title.

So i've spent over 5 hours trying to find this particular plunderphonic mashup. What a nice way of spending Sunday evening. For some reason it was way harder than i thought. 

Here's what i remembered: the piece featured a countdown from one to one hundred culled together from various songs. Plain, simple and to the point. The best supercuts are always like that - they just blast through and leave you contemplating.

I first saw this piece mentioned in one of the Rate Your Music lists back in the early 2010s. After that, i saw it featured on one of the topical wikipedia pages, either Sampling or Mashup. I also vaguely remember it being on Free Music Archive. The only things i couldn't pin down was who made it and what was the title.

At first, i checked rate your music and couldn't find anything resembling that particular piece. But i have found a list with many-many unusual types of count off in pop songs. It was insightful and ultmately pointless.

Then i have checked whether the piece was still referenced on the aforementioned "sampling" and "mashup" wikipedia pages. None. I also checked "plunderphonics" page. If there were any mentions of this composition - they were long gone. Or they were still there and i just couldn't identify it correctly due to my recollection of the piece being incorrect or misrepresentative.

Then i went further down the wiki wormhole and checked pages like "Count Off" and "Counting (Music)". Once again - nothing. 

Then i went all guns blazing on google and typed every imaginable description of the composition i could think of - "plunderphonic counting off/count off/countdown composition", "countdown out of samples from different songs", "count off sound collage" and so on. There were three types of search results: 1 - DJ Shadow "The Number Song" (obviously); 2 - every children counting song ever (predictable outcome); 3 - general references to respective concepts (because there was nothing else relevant).

It felt really awkward - i was certain that i heard that piece but i just could not find any trace of it. At some point i even thought that it was some kind of Mandela effect thing or that i just imagined that piece and then forgot about it and now thought about it again but as something else. It was really confusing.

Then it hit me - if i can't find anything on the current web - why not peek at the past? After a thorough raid on Wayback Machine on every available lead - i was able to identify the track.

The name of the composition was "Going Up". It was made by Kirk Pearson. The composition was released in 2011 on an album "Please Don't Sue Me". "Going up" is made out of unaltered soundbite samples from different songs that together create a count from one to ninety-nine. The selection of samples is eclectic - among other things you get obvious Doors reference and less obvious Zager and Evans reference.

Here's what is interesting - it is scrubbed from existence. I've looked through every available Kirk Pearson release and couldn't find it. Not even the slightest mention. There were lots of stuff but not "Going Up". Why? Guess what - there is only a few things that can make things un-exist on the internet. In case creative works - it is mostly commonly a copyright violation.

The thing is - the whole "Please Don't Sue Me" album was a giant lament configuration of plunderphonics - it was a detournement of other people's stuff - culture jamming in action. The thing that propels the culture forwards and opens up new possibilities and explores new aesthetics. 

And naturally at some point the representatives of these people took action. Because we can't have conceptual art that transforms other pieces and recontextualizes them to explore certain themes and ideas - it is disrespectful and detrimental to the sources. 

It is very sad, but i'm glad i took this journey. It made me think about how unsafe and fleeting is culture jamming. But at the same, it encouraged me to move on. It is an act of defiance, and that's what art is all about.

Now, let's perpetuate the legend of "Going Up".

BSPH: The Deviants - I'm Coming Home

"I'm Coming Home" is the song by seminal british psychedelic garage rock band The Deviants. It was written by Mick Farren and released on the band's 1968 album titled "Ptooff!".

The song is built around an increasingly menacing, baleful and ominous lyrics that fantasise on the topic of homecoming and rejoining with the loved one. It is an interesting take on a "lovelorn longing / coming back home" cliche that sprawls all over rock music (even "Louie Louie" is about that). In a way it exposes that cliche as being a good blanket to cover hapless glorification of an unhealthy obsessive behaviour in sweet flowery speech figures.

"I'm Coming Home" tells a story of a protagonist proclaiming that he is getting back "home", probably as a pep talk to himself. The description of his path is very meticulous and rich with details - he describes his journey step by step, gradually building tension and increasing the notion of impending threat.

He spells out how exactly he is going to get "home" and what he is going to do "there". The ultimate intent of the protagonist is to rejoin with his "lady", who, judging, from his words is not expecting this visit and probably even not suspecting it is going to happen at all. What he going to do is quite obvious - attempt a forceful but passionate swive, jump and knob to know.

From the musical standpoint, the song is basic four note stomping vamp waltz that ebbs and flows as the story goes, a kind of stretched out and meaner sibling of The Troggs' songs.

"I'm coming home" starts with the persistent tenacious march with a waltzy sweep at the end of the bar. It is plucky and cheerful. Gradually the march devolves into a sluggish chug, the beat intensifies and turns the whole thing into a manic rave-up Yardbirds-style.

The tension reaches to the point of combustion and the song explodes with fuzz-infested burst of two guitar soloing at the same time. They cancel each other out and make a lot of directionless noise.
The double solo transitions into the next section of the song where music calms down and takes a backseat so that Mick Farren could chillingly recite what he is going to do with the object of desire.

Then the song explodes with the sweeping solo that reiterate what was just said. It falls apart into a mindless shredding over a drum avalanche. And then things get back to an opening march, except now it is sloppier and it almost instantly devolves into a haphazard outbreak that falls off the cliff into outer space and dies out.

What makes the song particularly disturbing is that the whole song is a first-person fantasy scenario playing out in the protagonist's head - a disturbing narrative of the sickened mind trying to express itself. That's why a level of detail is so high.
And it goes a distance to prove its point. Mick Farren sings it with such a conviction you just can't help but get repulsed by his performance. He hams it up quite a bit but keeps things at reasonable level - his performance retains the plausibility of the scenario.

Overall, the song is a great example how to spin a familiar narrative into something more sinister and unfortunately relatable.

(As a sidenote, I'm Coming Home and We Will Fall sound really good back-to-back, i had a chance to listen to it that way once when i hit shuffle on my Winamp player.)

Lou Reed - Modern Dance

Some things are better to enjoy in a modified form. For example, without sound or color or simply a soundtrack or vice versa or heavily distorted or from another room or while the refrigerator is humming and the washing machine is drumming and the kettle is whistling and the teeth are rattling. You get the point.

Such is the case with the music video for Lou Reed's song Modern Dance.

I already covered the other Lou Reed music video on this blog and now Youtube recommended me this video, so why not have another about the great one?

Modern Dance is a song from Lou Reed 2000' album titled "Ecstasy". The song itself is a contemplation about going places in a manner of a modern dance composition. Which doesn't say much because modern dance is a mystery and its function in the lyrics is to defamiliarize narrative with an arbitrary detail that sticks out. Over the course of the song, the protagonist mentions options like going to Amsterdam and spending evenings at the Van Gogh Museum. Or Yucatan, "where women are women, a man's a man". Or just falling in love because that's a fine option too.

The video for the song is closely tied to the lyrics and yet it is something completely different. On the surface, it is on the nose mockery of the blatant performance art, but the more you look at it - the more earnest stupid fun it seems. There is no undercurrent - it is just what it is and it is really weird to realize that there is nothing to it except for what is on the screen.

And what is on the screen. There is one and only Lou Reed in a chicken costume, standing in the middle of the stage while two showgirls are doing the job. Lou just stands and stands and endures whatever girls are doing to him. The girls are doing basic walkaround routines. Their costumes adapt to the national symbols of the countries mentioned in the lyrics. So you get a tartan suit, french beret, a sombrero and so on. At the same time, the girls are slowly but surely tear the costume apart, throwing feather away.

In the middle of the video - Lou's chicken suit is cleared off the feather and he sits around like a bag of nutshells. Then we cut to girls preparing the soup - throwing mock vegetables in and mixing the thing with the giant spoon. Then the narrative fragments into the glimpses of tearing the feathers, Lou sitting around, Lou being boiled in the soup, Lou dancing with the girls, being boiled in the soup, being torn apart, dancing, boiled, dancing. Then the song ends, he takes of the chicken head and walks away.

When you watch this with the sound on - it is just there. It doesn't do much because you are focused o the song. But if you turn the sound off - things change. You start to piece together a narrative. The video starts looking like one of those old vaudeville documentations that capture the routine but none of its context. It feels odd, misplaced and incomprehensive.

You see the man in the chicken suit. And he looks really passive. Sometimes he lips a phrase to punctuate the narrative, but for the most part, he is just there. The girls are walking around in, changing costumes all the time, then they start to tear the chicken costume apart because they want to make a soup out of this chicken. The man is still passive and so he ends up in the pot and girls continue to dance because that's what they do.

BSPH: Alan Vega - Ghost Rider

New versions of the old songs are nothing new. Usually, it is a shameless cash-in on one's glorious past, an exploitation of the devoted fanbase. But sometimes an artist manages to subvert the original and reinterpret it in a way that brings a couple of new shades to the original and somewhat changes its substance.

Case in point - Alan Vega's solo version of "Ghost Rider".



"Ghost Rider" is a song written by Alan Vega and Martin Rev of legendary synth punk band Suicide. It was originally released on the band's 1977 eponymous album. Alan Vega had released his version of the song in 1981 on an album titled "Collision Drive".

This version is a slight elaboration on the original with a couple of new flourishes, an expanded lyrics and a completely new sonic aesthetic that somehow manages to fit the theme and the tone of the song even better than the original. It is a weird example of the successful reinvention of the song by its author. The song retains the intensity of the original, but manages to be distinct enough to hold on its own and build upon the original.

In its core, the "Collision Drive" version of "Ghost Rider" is a rockabilly song. Unlike the monotonous solid drum machine grooves slashed by the thudding synth vamp of the original version, "Collision Drive" version is played by actual musician and that brings a completely different dynamics to the song.

The song is rolling with that rockabilly straitjacket swing. In fact, its skeletal primitivist arrangement owes a lot to early The Cramps stuff.

The monotonous stomp of the song consists of the one track mind drums, detuned piano, constipated guitar lines and thumping bumbling bass.

The song starts and ends with the pitch sweeping whopping wailing drone - an allusion to the revving engine. It is joined by 4x4 permabasskick polka dot beat that creates a rock solid groove underlying of the song. The drums are on the offensive in a meat mincing way.

Over the course of the song, the drums are joined by clapping. This brings some reminiscence of the classic Stooges stompers. In a way, it sounds as if the song was submerging into a quicksand substance with those claps.

The bass part is weird. It plays the iconic three note motif so sloppily it merges into a subsonic quakes - it is not as much a bass line as a melodic undercurrent as it is a physical pushing of the song forward with its groove. Funny thing is that at times the bass player gives up on playing the motif and he just plays along some stuff that sometimes sticks out of the tune. This bass combined with morose detached drums creates a beat to behold. It is disjointed and yet it works due to its ferrocious tenaciousness.

The other elements of the groove are manic guitar and honky tonk detuned piano. Both guitar and piano are playing simple two note rambling riff that goes on top of the song as if it was attached to it with a duct tape. They work as a background flashing behind - a sonic wallpaper. They ignore everything that goes on in the song.

The lyrics are slightly expanded with a couple of more phrases fleshing out the title character of the song - The Ghost Rider. There are more references to the Ghost Rider being on fire, swinging the chain and being an utter force of destruction blazing away. No mentions of the blue jumpsuit though. I guess it was out of fashion then. Weirdly enough, the way the lyrics are structured resemble a good old Delta Blues chantey. It boomerangs around - goes for a walk on the theme and then goes back to the central refrain.

BSPH: Oxbow & Marianne Faithfull - Insylum

 "Insylum" is a song collaboration of the American noise rock psycho punk blues band Oxbow and singer-songwriter Marianne Faithful. The song is an interpretation of the classic Willie Dixon song "Insane Asylum". However, it is reworked to the point of being a thing of its own.

"Insylum" was released in 1997 on Oxbow's album "Serenade in Red". The song is punishingly abrasive hard-edged interpretation of the classic blues song spliced with the hard rock reiteration of the blues by the likes of Led Zeppelin.

This song is a great example of a creative use of cliches and subverting them into something else with its own substance. "Insylum" is a Frankenstein monster of the song that seems like a casualty of a transporter accident in "Star Trek". "Insylum" is deformed and barely hangs together. At the same time, the song contains this weird imposing aura. Every second of "Insylum" means it. This song is not a pleasant listen, this song erupts the void upon the listener and makes him gaze into it looking for something nonplush nondescript.

The song stomps its way through with that particularly nasty bone crunching 1-2 step that grows with intensity throughout the verse until it breaks down into a hysteric chorus.

The lyrics of "Insylum" are about longing and yearning in its most brutal and devastating form. In its core, "Insylum" tells a typical story of the relationship falling apart and subsequent attempts to fix it. The catch is that the lover is locked up in the asylum and probably for a reason. Because of that the song slowly morphs from trying to get things back to accepting the reality of the situation.

The song is all about sonically depicting the throes of the protagonist who just can't take it anymore but slowly getting over it. This notion is delivered by an assorted collection of seething sobbing, crying, torturous howling, wailing, bailing, grunts, random sideline snorts, and opaque babble.

The song starts in medias res and then immediately takes a u-turn in an opposite direction. It kinda walks backwards all the time and it creates a sense of suspense - you almost expect this song to stumble and fall apart.

The rest of the dreadful atmosphere is accomplished with a mindful use of blues cliches wrapped into an additional layer of coarse fuzz and tingle. It is a dark-dark song.

The guitar parts are slightly malformed and tremblesome. They play some classic blues lick with an additional deep to the feel, but ut is not as much playing as it is erupting upon the song with its melting lava burning the ground in its way. Then there is a little organ that almost mocks what is going on in the song with its tingling hiss.

The MVP of the song are the drums by Greg Davis. His drum parts are less about constructing a rhythmic backbone of the song as they are all about the suspence, ebbs and flows of tension. The majority of the drum arrangement is a simple 1-2 16th beat that acts that plays waiting game staring contest with the listener until it breaks into a brutal beatdown.

The use of bass in this song is also very unconventional. Dan Adams' bass follows the drums and adds some shiny blacks to the beat. At the same time the bass line is delineating space in which the action is going. It is something like echolocation - flickering contours that may or may not resemble something familiar. If there is a way to depict the monsters produced by the sleep of reason - this is a good example of making it right. The bass line itself reeks of dread. 

The other strange thing about the song is an anticlimactic closure it delivers in the end. Over the course of the song the arrangement slowly devolves into a carnival mockery - it gets ridiculous with its intensity and then it stops as if it was all play. It leaves an unsettling feeling afterwards.

"Insylum" is a master-class in layered subversion of cliches and forging something new out of the old parts. The way it preparates the blues conventions, reinvents its most generic elements and adds the new flourishes to the age old narratives is spectacular.

BSPH: Del Shannon - One Track Mind

"One Track Mind" is a song by american rock'n'roll singer Del Shannon. It was originally recorded in the late 70s during Shannon excursion into Ireland but left floating in the bootleg dimension until recently being reissued on an album titled "The Dublin Sessions".

Stylistically "One track mind" is the answer to a hypothetical question "what will happen if you combine sloppy jumping hangover swagger of The Rolling Stones with the stoic swamp vibe of John Fogerty and Creedance Clearwater Revival?". It is hard pounding rock song with a genuine emotion bringing it on another level.

Musically, there is not much going on. The song is built on an incredibly catchy Ray Charles-channeling electropiano riff around which the rest of the arrangement is built. The guitar lines are clearly inspired by Keith Richards start-stop bounce, while the drums provide a solid backbone to the proceedings.

The lyrics are by-the-numbers "abstract kitchen sink relationship stuff" about things getting under the skin and then a bit hedgehoggy with tough verbal exchanges.

What makes it interesting is that Shannon sells it like it is the lowbrow high drama with that particular indelible smirk that points out the unreliable narrator flavor behind the performance.

While the text treats the situation as sacramental "these stupid things", the way Shannon performs it suggests that the narrator doesn't take the accusations seriously and is partially delusional about his behavior. This suggests that there is much more obsession involved than it seems.

Del Shannon's story is one of the biggest injustices of rock history. He deserved better. The man wrote one of the most heartwrenching heartbreak songs of all time "Runaway" and spent the rest of his long career in the shadow of this song. While his later works never reached the exposure of his early - the man never stopped to move forwards and update his aesthetic. "One Track Mind" is one of the highlights of his later career.

BSPH: Chubby Checker - Love Tunnel

"Love Tunnel" is a song by American rock 'n' roll singer Chubby Checker. It was released in 1971 on Chubby's fascinating attempt at artistic comeback titled "Chequered".

The story goes - after a lacklustre decade of trying to recapture the flame of "The Twist" and "Let's Twist Again", Chubby decided to move on and try something different. He wanted to update his sound to a modern times. In order to do that he studied religiously the records of Jimi Hendrix and Arthur Lee. While he was trying reinventing himself, things have changed in the american showbiz and nobody was interested in Chubby Checker's artistic reinvention. He was a joke. But Chubby wasn't the one who backs down and so he relocated to Holland and later recorded his reinvention record with the local session men. Nobody cared, but the document persists.

The song "Love Tunnel" is a highlight of an album. It is the longest song of the bunch and the one with the most intricate structure. It is an odd mix of straightforward upbeat psychedelic rock mixed with mid-60s Rhythm and Blues with "less is more" arrangement spliced with a old school gospel linings.

Chubby's performance is on fire. And it feels very natural, Chubby is in his natural element. He's all in and it shows. Chubby's voice is very intense and raw - he's on the edge, he plows through the song like a bulldozer leaving a cathartic bliss afterwards.

The first part of the song is an fast tempo stomper. It starts in medias res skipping the convention intro - going straight from the transition to the verse. Chubby is out of breath trying to keep up with the high tempo and it reflects the themes of the song - getting hung up in the whirl of love feeling up to the point of getting tunnel vision. Then the stomp slowly falls apart into a series of breaks during which Chubby ravages like a cat closed in a box.

The middle part of the song drops the tempo down to the crawl. It is as if the entire band decided to lay down as close to the ground as possible. Chubby goes for somber sprachtgesung repeating a couple of phrases in a manic thousand yard stare manner. It is as if he was shellshocked for real after the initial ordeal. The words circle around like a gang of crows waiting for the gravely feast. It is haunting.

Then the song picks up and resumes the uptempo stomp. But now its loose and sloppy. The bits and pieces of the song are falling apart and the whole construction runs at the breath's end - it is going as if it was shot in the back at the end of the first section and only now an impact starts to wear the body down. And then, before you know, it is over as if nothing happened.

"Love Tunnel" is a fascinating document of an artist trying to get find himself, defy expectations and try something more adventurous than usual.

***

BSPH: Lou Reed - No Money Down

Sometimes I feel like there is something missing when it comes to discussing Lou Reed. Don't get me wrong - the man is got a well-rounded conversation on his body of work. However, there are few sorely missing spots. The usual conversation about Lou Reed usually revolves around his early years with Velvet Underground, his solo triumphs of Transformer and Berlin, the epic story of the Metal Machine Machine, his collaboration with John Cale and also his last project with Metallica. Everything else is basically swept under the rug or so it feels.

Case in point - this thing.


This is a music video for a song "No Money Down". It was released in 1986 on an album "Mistrial" also known as "You thought you've heard Lou Reed at his most misguided and pointless? Try this". It is mechanistic assembly line new wave cliche-ridden business-as-usual plastic death march to oblivion with trademark sprechstimme that populated much of Reed's oeuvre of the 1980s. But the video is what makes it really special.

The video depicts an animatronic recreation of Lou Reed's head lip-syncing the song on a black background. The head is actually quite well-designed and its artificially doesn't come into attention until a bit later on (almost immediately, actually, but you don't really think about until the things get weird). The movements are chunky but not really that noticeable. It is off, but not much to annoy. I mean - when you have to lip-sync such song - the head is going to move like that even if you are an actual living breathing creature - it is that kind of a torture.

So - Lou Reed is staring at the viewer from behind his cool and cheap sunglasses. There is an infinite blackness in the background. The look on his face begs for Judge Dredd's helmet because it is an atrocity. He looks tough as in "too tough to dance".

His head moves as if the neck got stiff and also numb. There is feign and shoddiness in the movements. The more he moves his head around - the more "uncanny valley" feeling you get. But there is nothing really going on - so there is also a growing tension of expecting something to happen.

The train of thought watching this is looking like this: "- fighting; the timid tune; soniferous; horrid 'n appallin' words - you speculate upon that feeling - in order to be dragged away to your adapted apparition...".

Right before the boredom gulp shifts from an intention to action, things start to happen. Lou Reed's uncanny valley head takes off the glasses and he does in style. And then, in an unexpected expected turn of events, things go in a slightly "Hellraiser" direction. The hands, which are definitely real human hands, start to tear off the skin from the head. For some reason, it is oddly satisfactory and even displeasedly beautiful.

Here's how this sequence looks like:

• The hands are tearing off the cheeks;
• show off the teeth;
• tear off the skin on the temples;
• tear off the tip of the nose ;
• tear off the hairpiece;
• tear away the rest of the nose ;
• then go the ears ;
• then go the brows;

What you are left to witness is the machinery of the head. Those eldritch eyebulbs and that rube goldberg face construction. It feel weird to look at it, even though there is nothing really appaling.

And then, as a finishing stroke the hands are ripping off the jaw and you now it looks even more like some retroactive Hellraiser tribute.

•  and fade out.

BSPH: Luther Allison - Meet Me In My Own Hometown

"Meet Me In My Own Hometown" is a song by American Blues guitar player Luther Allison. It was released in 1992 on an album titled "Hand Me Down My Moonshine". The song is an old school throwback acoustic folk blues with a strong minimalist vibe. It is an example of Luther Allison's exceptional talent of making something special out of whole bunch of nothing.

What is fascinating about this song is how little of the song there is and yet how big it feels. It makes an impression of The Song. (at least for me).

The arrangement is folk blues classic done to perfection. Luther Allison was the student of the game and he played with the greats like Howlin' Wolf. He knew how to make the song tick and not even break a sweat. He was the right stuff.

"Meet Me In My Own Hometown" is just a basic chord loop and a very simplistic even barebones set of repetitive lyrics laid on top of it always going back to the core refrain. The song starts with some cool blues guitar licks slowly setting in the tone and the mood of the proceedings - playful and somewhat tongue-in-cheek with that infinite overheated swamp dusty chill. This song does not really care about anything except for itself - it is here to have some good time and be excessively full of itself. This song just likes to be played. And it is really unusual to listen to a song with such an attitude.

The guitars swirl around the chords with fills zigzagging all over it like those flies. The groove it sets in is indelible and eerily irresistible. It is basic blues stomp, but it is done so well and with such mighty swagger you don't really need it to be anything else. The beat goes on so steady it seems like it was there forever and it can go on a couple of infinities and never get old.

"Meet Me In My Own Hometown" just circles around the core refrain going over and over again barely noticeably moving forward. In a way, it is a kind of sonic starfish. If you look at it - it seems like nothing is really happening, but if you shift your attention onto something else and then come back - it turns out a lot of stuff had changed in-between.

The song ebbs and flows back and forth starting mild and getting harder near the end of the verse with the strumming getting more intense and emotions wrapping up the vocals. Over the course of the song the tension showly grows. The whole thing culminates with breaking into mountain climbing dueling solos that go broadway in their swashbuckling fencing. It is like a pack of fireworks going off to fight the thunder and lightning Godzilla style.

The lyrics are also very interesting beast. It is structured as a sort of dreamy rambling conversation with a friend (probably an imaginary one). The protagonist asks whether his friend would meet him in his own hometown in the future so that they could have a big-big-big party there and the blues would be played all day and all night to the end of time and everything would be just fine just like this song. After a while a question morphs into a taunt but everything else stays the same.

Each sentence is capped with the phrase "...in my home home town". It is repeated to the point it looses even a semblance of meaning and turns into some kind of a wraths - a distant and obviously impossible dream. After a while, there is distinct feel of despair seems lurking deep in the background. It is very grim and bleak song wrapped into a feel-good hangout stomp like a mummy.

"Meet me in my home town" is a textbook example of classic blues "less is more" approach. There is just a little bit of the stuff and it kinda erupts upon the listener in the sweeping surge of cool.

BSPH: Death Ride`69 - State of Decay

"State of Decay" is the song by an American tribal industrial gothic rock extraordinaires Death Ride`69. It was released in 1989 on an eponymous album "Death Ride'69". It is rockabilly psychout with some goth sensibilities and transgressive attitude.

Thematically, "State of Decay" covers an evergreen topic of ceasing to exist and explaining the nuances of this unknowable but intriguing process. It don't have much to say about it - but it repeats all the buzzwords over and over again in overly theatrical manner.

The songs starts with soft female voice humming "it is just a dream". After that the drums kick in and the word of the moment is "nightmare". The drum sound is wrapping the listener around with its rusty sheets. Over time the wrap gets tighter and tighter until it starts to squeeze the air out of the composition and then immobilizes it. Curiously, it all comes together neatly in the end.

The bass joins in a bit later. It jumps around in a checkerboard pattern. The arrangement of the bass line represent the throbbing heart trying to break free and break out of the chest. Supposedly, it wants to run away to some dark corner and just lay there. In the same time, the guitar is crooning in the background painting a lifeless wasteland that was burned into the crust that was then showered with rain for an eternity.

The voices whirl around with some spooky verbiage. It is limited to the key words so it can be considered as some sort of conditioning thing. After a while the words stop making sense and turn into just another sound in the song.

The thing with this song is that is sounds like a run a through the swamp that dried up, fossilized and turned into a dusty spacey tomb. The song is built around a tribal drum stomp. It was a war drum that went "nah! and just went syncopating and galloping forward towards nothing with an intention of making a direct impact that will never come.

The drums take the spotlight for a while and do absolutely nothing with it. They just go on pretending that nothing is happening and there is no reason to expect anything special with that particular thousand yard stare that suggests something exquisitely horrid going on behind it.

Then the guitar finally comes to the forth and does some buzzsaw swirls. It is like that Dumbo tornado that's too far away to make an impact but visible enough to make an impression. And since this didn't worked out - the sound abruptly ends with what can be described as hammering the final nails in the coffin.

BSPH: Vulcano - Bloody Vengeance 1986

Vulcano is probably the greatest black metal band that ever graced the face of this cursed earth. Seriously. Their 1986 album Bloody Vengeance is the textbook example of a record that mows through the listener and leaves no stone unturned. The album is only 24 minutes long and itleaves a lasting impression without wasting a moment.

The album kicks off with the bone crushing blast beat of Dominios of Death. The song sweeps through like a hurricane and wipes the plain so clean you can see your own reflection. It goes in several rounds so that there will be nothing left intact. That's how you start an album. The vocal are drowned in reverb so much it is basically an increasingly more menacing sounding glossolalia. The transition into the solo section of this song is like short and sweet dance on the grave. The solo itself is like strangling a wild tiger kiwi - it is piercing through with its high notes.

Spirits of Evil just starts with a little beatdown after which the onslaught ensues. The following blast beat and riffing section is nasty as if the song actually was trying to chase the listener and cub him to the bloody pulp. The transition into the stroll is terrifying - this song is going to beat the dust out of you. The verse-chorus parts follow the suit and with each iteration get more and more intense. The buffallo crowd stomp before the solo is amazing. The solo is like burning lazer tearing through the debris of the body - it goes through like knife through butter leaving quite a mess behind.

Ready to Explode is a wolf in sheep's clothes of the album. It is a hardcore punk song with some serious Slayer-style soloing. And it ends with a bang.

Holocaust is a centerpiece of an album. It got more riffs than any other song - they are piled onto each other.  The guitars sound as if they were boiling magma of the depth of hell flowing backwards and excessively fuming acidic steam. By the time the song gets to the first chorus it gets so hot the drummer picks up the tempo so much he gets ahead of the rest of the band so much he actually gets in sync somehow and the whole thing sounds as if a mountain range engaged in a deep sea diving.

Incubus is the sonic equivalent of drilling the hole in the nondescript dense space and in the same time trying to stomp it to dust with the blast beat river dance. The vocalist is yelling some angry scary stuff - it sounds like he is trying to outbark the sleeping dog. The second part of the song cuts Slayer's throat, pulls out the tongue through it and fancies it as a necktie. The solo is sleazy - it sweeps up and down like splashes of blood.

Death Metal is the best song on the album. It is very much in the vein of classic New Wave of British Heavy Metal - Tygers of Pan Tang and Iron Maiden in particular. But not before long it gets bored with that and turns into a leviathan grinder that buzzsaws its way through the depths of eldritch nil to the surface of hideous zilch. The middle section sounds as if it saw Chtulhu, thought it was really bad idea and then ran scared without looking back not realizing it was running nowhere. And after realizing that it started to run even faster and actually started to disintegrate - the song ends rather abruptly.

Voices from Hell is something like Sparks filler track covered by Einstuerzende Neubauten but recorded haplessly wrong. It segues into Bloody Vengeance - the song starts with the satanic incantation that goes for some time to set the right mood. Then the song starts in earnest and it is an absolute murder. Unlike the rest of the album - it is mostly mid-tempo and it seems like it is meandering and going back and forth without apparent reason. In reality - it circles the listener around like the murderer who just cornered his victim.

MFT: Deep Purple - Speed King but only lyrics and transliterated

Deep Purple's song "Speed King" needs no introduction. It is "all guns blazing" full throttle rocker that blasts its way through the listener's mind as if it was mere sour cream with mashed potatoes and boiled nuts. The song signified Deep Purple's complete reinvention from Mark 1 meandering sorta-kinda prog to bone crunching hard rock with a slight flavor of brutal prog. It is a showcase of the new line-up - every member gets a moment to shine and they all sound like one bad slab of distorted avalanche of sound. 

The other way Speed King is significant are lyrics. Ian Gillan writing style is very unusual. He wasn't writing lyrics straight - that's too simple. He was combining every imaginable blues, rhythm-n-blues, soul, funk and rock-n-roll lyrical cliche into one Molotov Cocktail. His lyrics were generic but in the same there was something that made them stand apart from the rest. It was like very brutal mad lib word salad. Truly rock and roll dada. 

Speed King lyrics make sense, but not very much but you don't care about it because it sounds cool and totally fits the song's overall sonic aesthetic.  

The only way the song this great can be improved is by transforming it into something different and yet still retaining the defining features of the original.

Case in point - this thing. 

This is Deep Purple's Speed King lyrics. But not exactly. These are Deep Purple's Speed King Lyrics but they are transliterated in russian. Why? So that the russian-speaking fans could sing along the lyrics correctly. I guess Faith No More would've liked to adapt this version.

The resulting text closely recreates how the song's lyrics are written in english except in intensely clumsy russian transliteration. It is so clumsy - chances are you will stumble more than once while reading it and those stumble will thud with this particular perpetuating echo.

If you think about it for a moment - this is a very interesting case of mutation of the original text. It is still there but it is transformed enough to be a distinct version. 

BSPH: The Beatles + Clint Ruin and Lydia Lunch - Why don't we do it in the road

"Why don't we do it in the road" is the song by The Beatles. It was released in 1968 on the band's double album known as "The White Album". The song was written by Paul MacCartney in a bout of inspiration so perplexing it is fascinating. The story of inciting accident goes like this: while vacating in India MacCartney saw two monkeys having a moment of raw passion for a blink or so and then he thought a good idea to wrap this moment into a song but in an abstract manner. You have to respect him for being able to do that much with so little.

This song is so sparse and vacuous - you can't really do much with it perception-wise. You have to take for what it is - a short, barebone arranged and very simple piece based on a blues formula. In a way, it is a tour de force in being as lame as it is humanly possible in the format of a song.

You can also pretend to think about it for a long time with no closure whatsoever. After a while you can almost reconstruct the train of thought that lead to the creation of this song. I guess, it was just a daring spark of "what if" that erupted out of longing for the sheer sting of amusement. Nevertheless, it is charming

"Why don't we do it in the road" is what can be described as a throwaway. And by late 60s The Beatles and Lennon / MacCartney in particular had mastered the subtle art of throwaway to perfection. The song is a showcase of how you can do a song basically out of anything at hand - spoilers: you just do it (i feel Pink Fairies vibes).

In fact, it is not even a song, there is just this jingle "Why don't we do it in the road" and some transitional ramblings to spice it up. The lyrics are unintentional exercise in constraint. There are only two lines - "Why don't we do it in the road" over and over again and "No one will be watching us" once in a while because apparently it gets boring uttering the same thing over and over again. The lyrics are performed in an increasingly erratic manner. It gets more and more aggressive or agitated and it brings a lot of needless intensity to this little piece. And then it is over.

***
Later, in 1991, JG Thirlwell AKA Clint Ruin and Lydia Lunch had released their interpretation of the song on their collaborative release "Don't Fear the Ripper". Ruin / Lunch version is a good example of how to make a cover version really distinct piece that brings something new to the song.

This cover version was a complete reinvention that put its tongue-in-cheek barely-there sensual subject matter to the forth and upped the tension to the uncomfortable levels. The word that best fits this version is "malevolent". 



The changes are drastic but subtle. The song follows the original but turns it upside down at every turn. In addition to the original minimalist lyrics performed by Lunch with an exquisite salaciousness and sheer voluptiousness, there is an additional bout of scatting from Clint Ruin after every verse. It is disturbingly joyful blare of drooling expectation. This is a culmination of something-something and not in a good way.

The guitar part transmits this notion. Its parts are barely kept in tune, they swirls around the song like a pack of scavenger crows waiting for the thing to be done so that they could start feasting. The drumbeat is expanded into a full-blown strolling swing. The bass brings twisted groove of two heartbeats getting closer. There is suspence.

Ruin / Lunch version drips with sleaze. It is dark and brooding stomp. In this arrangement, it is a tale of raw lusty desire trapped beyond reach and attemting to get out of its restraints by all means necessary. It is a story of passion boiling and slowly going out of control and destroying everything. It goes nowhere with that maniacal thousand yard stare and it is fascinating...

BSPH: Kraftwerk - Boing Boom Tschak

In continuation of previous post - let's remember the last time someone pulled the audacious trick "Let's spell obviously scat lyrics absolutely straight".



"Boing Boom Tschak" is a composition by legendary german techno-pop band Kraftwerk. It was released in 1986 as an opening track on their abortive comeback album "Electric Cafe". The composition is a part of the Techno-Pop suite that encompasses the entire side A of the album.

And what an album it was. While "Electric Cafe" continued to explore minimalist stilted aesthetic presented on the 1982 album "Computer World" and 1983 single "Tour de France", in the same time it presented something new and completely different for Kraftwerk. If previously Kraftwerk were working out the theme - this time there was no concept to back up the music, it was less about exploring any particular idea and more about just making some bangers.

Or so it seemed.

Also - they've probably heard Art of Noise and Yello, said "What?" a couple of times and thought they should hold their beers. Which was rather fair assessment all things considered.

"Boing Boom Tschak" is built around the blips of samples of onomatopoeiac exclamations reminiscent of sharp percussive sounds. In addition to obvious "Boing", "Boom" and "Tschak", there is also "Peng" and a slew glitched-up, chopped and screwed variations for every word. Every exclamation got their share of "B-b-b-b", "Tsch-tsch-tsch", "Pe-pe-pe", "Boo-boo-boo" and "Bo-bo-boing" fills. In addition to that there is a title drop "Musik Non Stop" which is means so little in the space of this track, it could have been "giraffes on horseback salad" to the same effect.

Despite being reminiscent of drum sounds, the samples blatantly sound like mere words and nothing else which creates dubious dissonance with their meaning. The exclamations are intentionally devoid of any semblance of groove and dried down to their very carcasses. They occur as sparks in the vacuum, surrounded by some sparse sonic wallpaper.

It sounds utterly pointless but in spite of that, the resulting "lyrics" are really inspired example of constrained scat sound poem score designed for as many elaborations as possible but stuck in the routine. It should be noted that the variation part was something that was explored by Yello at that time.

"Boing Boom Tschak" tries really hard to fill as much space as possible with this stuff and in the same time make it feel like every word is launched straight into heart of the abyss. After a while it starts to resemble poker face "try not to laugh" exercise. However, despite all odds, combined together they create some otherworldly Dalek-like groove.

As it is "Boing Boom Tschak" is barely a song, it is more like an extended jingle that just goes on and on and on apparently nowhere but with that boggling tenacity. It is a part of the bigger thing that was torn out and left on its own. The next track "Technopop" just pretends "Boing Boom Tschak" don't exists and does its own thing.

In 1991 it was incorporated into the song "Music Non-Stop" on the 1991 album "The Mix". This time it was much better fit that improved upon both songs which were criminally underdeveloped in their original forms. Now it sounded like a demented Detroit Techno stomp by the way of Moondog.



But as it is, "Boing Boom Tschak" is a weird stilted piece. It is stuck uncertain of what it should be. The best word to describe it will be "pointless" and it is probably the most glorious example of a completely pointless song that nevertheless exists and definitely proud of this fact. But the lyrics are really great scat material worth performing the right way.

BSPH: The Prodigy - Boom Boom Tap

Sometimes you stumble upon something so simple and astoundingly mind-numbing you just can't help but morbidly wonder how it managed to be the way it is. You realize that by this point you have put more thought in the piece then the actual creators, but nonetheless you soldier on as if it actually mattered. 

This is what i thought when i first heard this song.



The song is titled "Boom Boom Tap". It is performed by seminal british big beat electronica producer Liam Howlett AKA one-man band The Prodigy. "Boom Boom Tap" is very simple song, in fact, it is late Black Eyed Peas level of simple. One dig pony. Basically it is what it says on the tin. It is booming, blasting, blaring banger that walks around with a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound.

And indeed, how atrocious does it sound.

It is so loud, you can't really tell what is going on in the song aside from the song playing. It is quite an experience. I think Luigi Russollo would have liked the production of this song. It is so nondescript - it is just impressive.

The loudness of "Boom Boom Tap" is catharthic. It is like a sonic equivalent of Katamari Damacy star substitutes. Mess of sounds so dense - it is nothing in particular but nonetheless imposing and eventually effective.

The production of the song is so uneven - it leaves this weird approximation of impression - as if you haven't really heard the song but some rotting, partially incinerated, partially calcified remnants of the song being blown off by the gust of wind of the incoming tornado. It is just bits and pieces caught in a snapshot and thus turned in the wholesome piece by the act of documenting.

The best thing about this song is the lyrics. While being simplistic and absolutely mind-numbing, the lyrics work really well with the overall sound of the song. It is blatantly charming. These words are really good for crooning and scatting all over the place and also banging head against the wall out of nebulous notion of opaqueness. But in the song they are delivered in the manner so straightforward you start to question the very nature of reality. Why? The reality is that it would have been tongue-in-cheek, if the tongue wasn't biten off...

From the compositional standpoint, it is a master class in lyrical minimalism. "Boom Boom Tap" lyrics consists of barebones, repetitive slurred onomatopoeiac drolling of either "Boom Boom Tap" or "Tick Tick Bang" with neat pigtails of "Fuck You" at the end of each section. While the verbiage is limited, there is a lot dynamics between the lines and you can really feel there is a lot of things going on beneath the words. It is really impressive.

Bil Sabab Power Hour: Sparks - When I Kiss You I can hear Charlie Parker Playing

"When I kiss you (I can hear Charlie Parker Playing)" is a song by British extraordinaries brothers Mael of Sparks. It was released in 1994 on their comeback album "Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins". The song itself is demented, twisted inside out backwards spin on then burgeoning genre of eurodance pop trash that was at the peak of its popularity by mid 90's.

The thing with eurodance genre is that it is so limited in its aesthetics you can't really do much with it. It is based upon a barebone templates. You have this imposing rhythm backbone upon which "verse - chorus - verse - chorus - break - chorus" structure is tacked on and it can go until the end of time and two more minutes just in case. The song closely follows its formula and in the same time it manages to subvert every single element of it and make something of its own that resembles the other thing while being fundamentally different.

The arrangement is the fascinating element of the song. It is obnoxious and gaudy. The tempo pumped up to eleven and gallops at the ridiculously breakneck speed. It brings displaced cognitive dissonance inducing cartoonish feel to the song. It blasts through.

The instrumentation contributes greatly to this uncanny notion. While being completely synthetic, the arrangement is based around typical traditional pop orchestrations - it is strings of all walks and tembres mashed together in a melted plastic something-something peppered with splashy orchestral hits. Underneath it goes by the numbers bumbling eurodance rhythm track. At times it feels as if it wandered into a song from some other placed and stuck around because he enjoyed the vibes.

The lyrics are stylized as machine gun ratatat stream of consciousness circling around desire and longing and also pitiful merciless waste of passion. The images move in jump cuts - from one thing to another.

The sequence of images slowly but surely builds a narrative out of these blocks. It paints a vivid story with very masterful fleshing out of the scene, characters and their dynamics. There is yearning, deception and treachery, despair and restlessness and abrupt shutdown of feeling.

It is really impressive how it manages to tie train of thought and the story into one knot so seamlessly. You don't even notice how much information is spelled out throughout.

"When I kiss you (I can hear Charlie Parker Playing)" is a master-class in turning things inside out make doing something special with extremely limited form eternally banished in the template purgatory.

MFT: The Band - The Title - The Tracklist As a Poem

More often than not, the tracklist contains more than just a list of songs in a particular order. Sometimes it tells a story of its own. Other times it evokes a stream of images of its own that just ebb and flow independently from the music they designate.  

There are also those rare instances when every element of the equation clicks in a different way - when the name of the band, the title of an album and the tracklist form a thing in itself, a poem of sorts. 

Today i've stumbled upon one of such.

MFT: Ariel Pink - Pom Pom Album Cover

This is a front cover for an Ariel Pink's album titled "pom pom". It was released in 2014 on a record label 4AD. It is one of my favorite album covers. But not because of its content but because of the creative possibilities it offers. The thing is - it is comprised of a handwritten text. And such as, it is quite ambiguous and for the lack of the better word - unassuming. The title also happened to be on a pink background. And when it is pink - you need to think pink and pink means you gotta move around a bit and put it upside down and backwards inside out.