Julian Cope’s Album of the Month

Frown - Wallghost

Frown
Wallghost


AOTM #37, June 2003ce
Released 2000 on Stateless Records
Recorded in 1995CE.

  1. Wallghost (18.58)

Note: As a rock’n’roll fundamentalist, I’m pleased to announce both the shortest Album of the Month AND the shortest review in a hulluva long time. I tried to get the review even shorter but (being a garrulous asshole) I couldn’t, so there. By the way, the sleeve really is all white and there’s no writing on the CD either. Class.


Cunt for it!

Coupla geeks ago, I got a cryptic email from my associate-in-noize Seth Man saying he’d just sent me “a truly arcane and terrifying bit of business.” Uh, (more than) look out! As dis coulda been anything from a boxed set of LINK WRAY & DAVIE ALLEN COLLECTED SOUNDCHECKS OF THE 60s & ATTENDANT ANSWERPHONE MESSAGES to a triple vinyl version of THE WOMBLES IN VIETNAM1, I weren’t about to hold my breath. Instead, I just mosied over to the part of our house that has no windows or doors and sat there waiting. And waiting. At the behest of the US government, Seth’s vinyl library still sits in liquid form (behind razor wire) awaiting compulsory purchase by the military for use in anti-terrorist activities. Seth Man’s analyst recently spilt a drop 2mm square on her clothes and it scorched a hole in her dress, her undies, and every item of clothing back in her apartment that she was even intending to wear over the next month. Keep back, everyone, we got the RAWK coming through!


Seemingly gets Louder and Louder around 10 minutes 24 seconds

So, said “terrifying bit of business” duly arrived and I put it on and it done it for me big time. Drums and mid-range and high range and no low range at all. Excellent. Glenn Branca plays Chaingang’s “Son of Sam” perhaps (remember Stephan Wischerth’s cymbal-less drumming on ‘The Spectacular Commodity’?). A stripped version of Die Krupps’ STAHLWERKSYNFONIE, maybe? Whatever, these guys have plugged their B&Q electric paint-strippers directly into the National Grid and re-decorated a stately home in one afternoon. Bravo chaps. Had to be an Album of the Month because, even though it was too short by far and featured only one track and was really damned difficult to get hold of, it was truly Un-fucking-sung!!! And there really is too too little of this rabid riotous un-neurotic intuitive non-career moving in the charts nowadays.

Frown Press Release

Fucking Record Companies! Call this a press release? Sack the whole publicity dept! [click to view]

Besides, Holy McGrail had long been hassling me for another Doom Album of the Month anyway, so it was always gonna be THE HORTATOR’S LAMENT2 by Toadliquor, at the very least, or the big double-CD anthology VERRATER3 by Leviathan, or the re-issue of Boris’ mighty AMPLIFIER WORSHIP from ’98. Of course, in the real world I’m dreaming of, it should also have been the new 12” by Khanate4 or the impending vinyl re-issue of Sunn0)))’s THE GRIM ROBE DEMOS, or even the latest LOTUS EATERS ambulent monster. But as anything Stephen O’Malley or Greg Anderson get their claws into sounds mossive and pairfect, I don’t wanna play favourites and [so I] havta keep that stuff surgically installed on my inner flesh-turntable for when I’z abroad in the foreign climes.

But, as you’ll notice when you listen to this month’s Album of the Month opus, it ain’t necessarily the kinda thang yooz can getcha intellect around. Nope, ain’t the sorta sound to get the words flowing. Cain’t think of a thing to write about it actual-mont. Brain deadening and inhuman? Nere, that’s a cop out. Makes you bent? No, too politically incorrect. Gets you off with other people’s wives? U-wish! Hardly praiseworthy stuff. Excites you enuff to invade Mecca and reveal the pagan meteorite brung there by Abraham in 1800 BC and hidden since the 7th century? Now, yooz getting’ close to the sauce, sister. All I can say of this aural horror is:

U-Neeeeeeeeeed!!!


End of review. A sinch.



FOOTNOTES:
  1. The later slowed down Randy Holden-period Wombles without Chris ‘Fucking’ Spedding in the Christopher Biggins cozzy!
  2. Yeah, I know it’s another Southern Lord release but it’s bollocks of the dog.
  3. This amazing double album is available through Tumult Records from San Fransisco, contactable at http://www.tumult.net. It appears to be a collection of all their best stuff for the past decade and it is horribly more-ish.
  4. Stephen O’Malley tells me the Dubin passed out twice during the last recording sesh. Listen to this sucker and tell me it don’t out-Queen Elizabeth Queen Elizabeth in the Eternal tail-out dept.