Rack Monkey swinging from the 7" shelves

12/02/03

For a variety of reasons I’ve had a bastard headache most of this week, so what I didn’t need was a record bearing no artist, title or discernable tune. But as luck would have it Diskono records have set out their stall in Statement Square by releasing just that, and one of the results found its way here. Side one is static and crackle broken at the very end by bursts of radio warble (nondescript terms for nondescript sounds), side two is someone replacing their stylus with a clothes peg and learning to scratch on a Django Reinhardt LP. I have a friend who’d probably like it, and he can have it. diskono@hotmail.com Various Artists are no more help. “Cognac” reads side one, “Queen Bee” side two. The labels, it turns out, are on the wrong sides of the record. Vars002@hotmail.com, it says. Limited edition. Sigh. Whoever this is by, it does good work – Queen Bee is a slice of exotic crooning, high on mike-stand melodrama and probably on copyright infringement; Cognac is slow, rattling electronica with a spooked female vocal. Playing a Misteeq single at 33 revs might produce something similar, frankly I haven’t tried it. Perhaps the idea is that I email the given address and ask what exactly is on here. I haven’t tried that either, nor am I likely to. Playing it straighter but none too straight is LA-based indee hip-hop weirdcase Busdriver, whose Touch Type (with Radioinactive) shuffles in whispering about typewriters then explodes into frenetic rapdoodling on a recurring slapstick thwang, like a cartoon frying pan chasing a redneck beat poet. As the clued-up will expect not a damn word makes sense (“Dear Tipper Gore, welcome to Jamaica”) but producer Paris Zax cooks up a soupy waddle of xylophone, vintage typewriter clack and flute to gum up the cracks in Bus’s pot. This too, apparently, is a deeply and thrillingly rare 7”, but you know what record store clerks are like. And so back to solid ground. Granted a cursory play on John Peel last year and only now reaching the monkey in physical form, The Temporary Thing’s Forever And A Day is the work of one Andrew Gleason, a touching, songwriterly number with a melody that takes off effortlessly, dipping its wings now and then for a bleak little chorus as if suddenly ambushed by the hopelessness of it all. It’s a self effacingly beautiful song, like the best efforts of Appendix Out, James Yorkston, and, come to think of it, Van Morrison on Avalon Sunset. With a lung missing. Fans of the Fence collective at least will find their spots gently but firmly hit. thetemporarything@hotmail.com / www.popart.gr Since we Islanders are growing accustomed to four of the titular in one day, Vanishing Breed’s potentially Vivaldi-inspired concept EP The Seasons seems nothing if not timely. But it’s also marvellous, wringing four distinctly flavoured but complementary pieces out of what could easily have proved a dry conceit. Produced with the help of his colleagues from They Came From The Stars; I Saw Them and Japanese experimentalist Shintaro Taketani, Alexander Holmes' four compositions manage an unexpected sense of progression. Lovesick Snowman’s unsteady toybox melody and occasional canters through frosty synth-pop thaw into a looped guitar pattern on Flowers Open For The Flight Of The Golden Butterfly, quick and expectant but never quite allowed to blossom; the Summer piece Bird At Daybreak brings a similar sample to fruition, romping along on a bright African-flavoured figure and introducing the first consistent beat, a twitching crackly type saddled to big, shifting bass tones. The fourth track sounds a calmer, autumnal afterglow. It’s built on another guitar loop but throws vocals into the mix – a sort of romantic nature ramble with Matt Johnson, since you ask. A period of designer skipping midway through swells vertiginously, drowning out hints of music before the main theme returns with a clipped beat and a fuller, layered guitar part that sporadically builds up to a digital wash and pulls back on the verge of absolute dissolve. All of which amounts to an overly technical dissection of something that, in practice, sounds like an eventful walk in the country with your special friend. Very nice.

www.the-echo.com/ Click here to discuss these reviews on our music forum. Previous Rack Monkeys: January 2003 November 2002 October 2002 September 2002 August 2002 July 2002

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