April Drudion

April 2011ce

In preparation for their forthcoming Fuck Off & Di debut ORCADIA, Black Sheep VC members Vybik Jon and Common Era pose at the legendary Devil’s Den with the Archdrude and fellow Sheep Michael O’Sullivan.

Hey Motherfuckers,

Delightful it was to see so many of you out on London’s streets last week; inspiring and invigorating to say the least. But I must reiterate, especially in light of my G20 revelation, that we are here in the long-term to fight the Man, not lay fists upon his servants and lackeys. The Man lives behind walls created to keep you simultaneously OUT of his own life AND in fear of his own State-endorsed militia. So always remember that, should you choose to take on the truncheon-wielding cop, it’s only living in the short-term, however sweet whacking that SP25 might feel at the time. In his classic BERKELEY CONCERT double-LP, Lenny Bruce noted that – even back in the early ‘60s – many protesters on the street cared nothing for the greater political issues, instead employing the march as an opportunity to ‘protest against police men’. Not anymore, kiddies. For you are all precious cargo, essential to the Revolution and required intact. And to all you teenagers who know that many of your own generation are already lost to the culture of Exxon, Cowell & Coke, babies you don’t need them. You don’t need thousands, nor even hundreds of Revolutionaries to do the Revolution; you need only a few score primal minds with clear heads and a System, and the rest of society will fall in line at the sheer obviousness of it. The change is coming, kiddies, brothers’n’sisters all. But tread carefully and always remember Merrick’s sagacious words:

“The classic police attitude of arrogance, smug superiority and know-it-all would be criticized as being damagingly out of place and over authoritarian if it were how a parent treated their ten-year-old child. Yet when personally faced with police officers we all find ourselves playing along with it. Why? Cos we know they can make life awkward for us. They can, on a whim, put us in a cell for 24 hours, raid our house and take anything they want away, or search our car. And that’s just the stuff they know they’re entitled to do. We all know this, so we obey them and don’t object to their bias, vindictiveness, insults and bullying. They are not here to serve the law-abiding public. They are here to control us through fear.”

So patience, Motherfuckers. There’ll always be a right way. Rite on!

INGNODWETRUST by Gnod

Okay, let’s now vault into this month’s Reviews Section, wherein six highly useful and uncanny album releases await my dissection. First off, let’s put our hands together for Manchester collective Gnod, whose extraordinary new album INGNODWETRUST has just surfaced on Bristol’s Rocket Recordings (www.rocketrecordings.com). Tell ya watt, mofos, this record contains two totally compelling meditations and is one essential purchase to those on a strict budget. The excellently-titled track one (‘Tony’s First Communion’) daubs euphoric sonic thang all over a typical OUTSIDE THE DREAM SYNDICATE beat, whilst the near quarter-of-an-hour ‘Vatican’ wrestles with muffled electro-reggae and Dillinger vocaleptics over epic early T. Dream Mellotron 400 and a drumloop straight outta P. Gabriel’s ‘I Am the Intruder’. Yup, this is a highly useful combination across the nation, brothers’n’sisters, and it’s wonderful to report that these pyramids of geezer are growing from strength to strength. Yowzah!

ETHNOGRAPHIES by the Hermetic Brotherhood of Lux-or

Let’s next move on to the huge double-CD ETHNOGRAPHIES VOLUME I by Sardinian sextet the Hermetic Brotherhood of Lux-or, whose chants, processions and rituals have – across two long CDs of on-site filed recordings – captured a sound that I’ve only previously encountered in Japan via such time-breaking ensembles as Taj Mahal Travellers, East Bionic Symphonia and Marginal Consort. Those spirited few of you who are particularly intrigued by my invoking such hallowed Nihonese ensembles will not be disappointed by the None More High heathen jabber contained within the grooves of these two CDs from Trasponic Records (www.trasponic.net). Indeed, there’s even a degree of degraded Ur-musicality contained within these fine works that is futuristic enough to be considered genuinely post-Edisonian. Imagine Miles’ 32-minute ‘Get Up With It’ title track captured only by vocal FX and primitive concussion within the portals of some megalithic Sardu antron and yooz nailed these slippery motherfuckers somewhat, what! Buy this two-CD set, it’s the Mother of Fuckers, it’s the Brew that is True.

MARE DECENDRII by Mamiffer

More magnificent ritual music issues from the oe’rflowing motte of Mamiffer, the piano-dominated ambulant post-Doom ensemble mentored by Wolf Eyes’ Aaron Turner and led by keyboard player Faith Coloccia. Yes, released on the excellent Conspiracy Records (www.conspiracy.com), the vast eternities of MARE DECENDRII are like some oft-melodick yet ambient post-Doom take on EINJAGER UND SEIBENJAGER-period Popol Vuh, issuing forth a massive ritual music played by house-sized trolls of a variety that occasionally approaches the portentous stentorian processions of Queen Elizabeth. Phew. Gargantuan yet precious, cumbersome as a giant’s daughter in glass slippers. And if that’s don’t sound compelling, they’ve already placed the coins on yer eyes!

THE PSALM by Monkeypriest

Still, all will be awakened from the dead by THE PSALM, the intense new offering from Spanish power trio Monkeypriest, whose Ur-riff was clipped from the first buds of MASTER OF REALITY, then raised in silence by Reverend Bizarre’s Albert Witchfinder before being shaped from three formless titans into today’s anonymous representatives on earth known only as Monkeypriest 1, Monkeypriest 2 and Monkeypriest 4. Released on the Spanish Feretro Records (www.feretrorecords.com), the contents of THE PSALM impress more and more with each listen, its sonic fury not of the Billy Anderson variety, but more brutal and reminiscent of the mung worship contained within Ramesses’ WE WILL BRING YOU GLORIOUS TIMES as passed through the Orthodox filter. Best of all, the ‘Priest saves the best till last and unleashes upon us the ten-minute epic closer ‘Our Kingdom’, a song of such genuine religious intensity that it even rivals Reverend Bizarre’s classic ‘Strange Horizon’. A chip of the old Ur-block, Methinks?

A SIREN BLARES IN AN INDIFFERENT OCEAN by Bridget Hayden

Finally, our Vinyl of the Month award is this April shared by a French gentleman and an English woman. So as it’s always ladies-first, I gots to direct you to the unutterably skewed and always pleasurably hostile yawp of A SIREN BLARES IN AN INDIFFERENT OCEAN by Bridget Hayden, whose guitar mangling, digital scrawl and lo-fi ocean trawling surface across seven fine tracks to be found in a limited edition of just 300 from Kraak Records (www.kraak.net). Often, the sub-sub-sub-garage riffery claws at the listeners’ psychic hackles like a chav-nailed 60+ Howard Hughes scraping his feral mitts across God’s blackboard, whilst elsewhere the massed e- guitars achieve a truly cello-esque attack in the Roy Wood tradizione. Side two’s epic 9-minute opener ‘Thrash Momento’ even achieves that same early G. Branca multiple guitar spiders-on-vaseline rock’n’roll freeformlessness that everyone can never get enuff of. So, while still dreadfully sorry I am that the great Vibracathedral Orchestra split, at least there’s mucho/molto sonic solace to be gained from La Hayden’s epic present Fee Maelstrum. C’mon!

HENRY: THE IRON MAN by Philippe Petit

Let’s now conclude the reviews section with a good look at the intriguing music contained within the grooves of HENRY: THE IRON MAN by Frenchman Philippe Petit, whose collaboration with Italian trio Chapter 24 I discussed a coupla months ago. I gots to say that Petit’s bizarre sonic travelogues irrigate my psychic synapses like some council issued canal boat ride, or a giant-size and an ever-approaching municipal kerb cleaner. Boy, does this stuff worm its way into your primary brainsac, as drones and semi-random events collide with kaleidoscopes of demented distant concussion and foreground lo-fi mung. And with his adroit combinations of musique concrete and Pierre Schaffer-like turntable FX, this Petit druid brings us maximum midrange at all times, hell, you could meditate to this shit on an old fashioned Dansette! Released in a gloriously vivid hard card 12” cover on the Aagoo Records label, this is a right lovely vinyl LP on which to bequeath endless rotation. Call the artist direct on www.myspace.com/philippepetit and score your ltd. ed. immediatement. Oo ja, mes dames et mein hairies!

Right oh, and with that I shall do anutha grand sodding off for four weeks or so. In the meantime, keep on checking out On This Deity at www.onthisdeity.com and make sure you’re working constantly so as to wrestle some kind of control for your future out of the hands of the Greedy, the Nihilistic, the Solipsistic and the Lame.

U (Fucking)-Know!

Vive La Revolution and Death to Motherfuckers!

Don’t Piss in the Water Supply!

JULIAN (Lord Yatesbury)