A diy bedroom label compilation might be expected to offer one or two gems and a great deal of enthusiastic mucking about, with low production values.
Not in Leeds it doesn't. With the calibre of BILGE PUMP, THAT FUCKING TANK and QUACK QUACK breathing down your upstart necks something a bit more is expected. MUCKY SAILOR partners Steven Nuttall and Gus Bousefield have had to pull off a bit a coup. They have called on artists who have played at their gigs in recent months and put up 21 world-beaters from the underground of reconstructed poprockulalia. Very prettily parcelled up they are too.
And, amazingly it actually sounds like a party mixtape for cool bohemian aesthetes the world over. It roars along - very much like MUCKY SAILOR themselves, with occasional genre swerves that might make you dizzy, but which definitely made me smile. The artists have all played in Leeds, but their homes are all in other dimensions, and sometimes other towns.
Scan the names and you are bound to see one or two you recognise. And if you do, and you really like what they do you can be pretty sure you will find the same confident blasts of "different" in all the others.
PLEASE, "The Shame " is a lurcher of low end riff and hypnotic guitar wheedling. COWTOWN 's "Jumpin’ Rabbit, Moving Eyes" is seriously cunning indie-antidote fun stuff with better yelling and tighter playing than a barrel of wombats. THAT FUCKING TANK doing "Owl End" is more evidence of their breathless and breathtaking virtuoso minimalism. (this time with quiet bits). GAY AGAINST YOU sing "Let’s Build A Chinatown". Its "pt. II", so I guess Part I must have also tested the frequency range of sound systems. To destruction and beyond. Bass n' Quirk, basically, with Super Mario fills. CISSY, "Ghost Ride the Whip" brings knife, fork and spoon into the kitchen and leave the sink outside to leave room for a throbbing bass and plasticated riffs on various instruments of the less-expensive kind. THE POINTS SYSTEM's "Britney" might not be about what I think it's about, but its visceral and very short splurge of concentrated glitching does evoke the spirit of bimbo culture pretty definitively. 32 seconds long and fascinatingly unpleasant. HONEY RIDE ME A GOAT do a Beefheart instrumental stew of "Newts Pump A Concocted Ulcer" and it tastes just fine. HAIR + MAKE-UP, like CISSY are CD débutantes, but their "Fingers" are pretty damn funky. PARK ATTACK's "Shitheel" was recorded live in Edinburgh and it sounds like there might have been some damage to the building. They judder and yowl in a good way. HIROSHIMA ROCKS AROUND, "Closed Mouth" is straight hardcore with yelping, furious guitars and obdurately neighbour-unfriendly drumming.
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There's no break or let up in this CD - let;s just get on with it, eh? Well worth the time.
7 HERTZ spring a real change with "Wrong Dance, Take Two", doing a spiky jazz/orchestral theme to a a very bizarre 5 minutes on a mushroom inspired excursion across the dance floor. Luscious. POLTERGROOM's rattling "Toilet Door" might be in four four, but I lost count too many times to be sure. TATTIE TOES' "Taiko Lullaby" seems to Japanese, with drumming and interruptions, complex and beautiful and engagingly odd. SERIOUS SAM BARRETT plays and sings "Heather" with finger-pickin' style and a great country voice. Straight as a die. CHRIS SHARKEY's "Fucknac" compresses ten minutes of something into 46 seconds and creates a wobbly bobbly feast in the process. MUCKY SAILOR, "Never Too Much" is the lounge bar drummer/organist combo from the Club of Deconstruction. A bit scary, a bit amusing, a bit like epicure candy floss after the waltzers. HOUSE MOUSE have "Brooken Tooths" but sound as though they're making fun with some plugged in things and a squeaky duck. ELIZABETH's "Biella Kalimba" is just that, but claims to be the "Non-Gabba Edit". It's a delightful interlude of musical sanity. BILBAO SYNDROME offer "Depression Costume (Live in Leeds)" and it sounds very heavy and strangling, in an urgent bid for escape kind of way, glitching off in unavailable directions with grinder noise and whatever else they can find. CHOPS' "Chop of the Pops" is raucously industrial with disorientation and mayhem, while PIFCO's "Hope it Floats" closes the show with Klang und Sturm in whimsical partnership.
www.myspace.com/stenchofmuscle
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