Mumps Rubella – Fountain of Youth

Apparently some people have found “Louden Up Now”, !!!‘s second album, slighly underwhelming, probably because it contains only one Giulliani and not 10 or 13. Personally I’m quite happy with it, I find its meandering drones and synthetic crescendos fascinating, Nic Offer’s druggy blasphemous barking really engaging and the princey Shitschweissmerde falsettos smuuuv as silk. Plus seing them live at Barcelona this spring was one of my year’s musical highlights, they sounded like something in between Fela Kuti and The Clash, and that’s very good because I think that’s their objective (or is it playing Can standards with Sly and the Family Stone’s spirit?).

In any case, I agree there are no Giuliani’s in Louden Up Now besides the one we had already met. Well, Measles Mumps Rubella, with “Fountains of Youth” might have just concocted something for those believers that didn’t find enough guitar licks in !!!’s album.

Mind, of course, these guys do their own thing, they are harsher than !!!; they’re not californian heads high and jamming, they are Washington D.C. noiseniks, they don’t want to make the indie kids dance, they wanna make them POGO. You wouldn’t say that from the sedated hi hat beginning of the song with its quirky out-hudian bass phrase, but hey, you wait for the speed to kick in, the frenetic pace to set, and then you tell me about it: there’s enough here to keep both the tattooed guys and the girls with the nerdy glasses happy, because yeah, there’s rabid howling, acid (or angular?) guitar spirals inherited from Captain Beefheart via Andy Gill and enough rhythm changes to make you throw up with joy.

For me what does it is that moment when the song becomes an authoritarian, frenetic, constantly growing but sickly static pure slab of noise dance with its punk face locked in a clenched jaw in whose eyes shines a reflection of that crazy studio where Lydon, Levene and Wobble decided to create white boy toxic funk. Yeah, that moment burns and dies in a cloud of complex guitar interplay, and as all good highs, it goes to heaven and never comes back, same as us, same as we did with Giuliani. I think this songs, for all its differences, will take us to that same place.

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Scott Walker – Face on Beast

Is this really Scott Walker or Einsturzende Neubauten ??? The intensity fucking kills me. When I first heard Tilt I thought it was the lost soundtrack to ‘Heart of Darkness’. Later I fell in love with the album.

If a bunch of aging prog rock musicians got together are performed The Liars – ” They Were Wrong So We Drowned” , might sound like this (shit what a terrible idea – I hope it never happens…).

Mr.Walker only recorded the vocal for each song once. Bastard. I’d kill to be able to sing that well in a million takes.

Scott used to be in the easy listening section, but this is about as easy listening as a couple of Alec Empire albums. Mum used to watch the Scott TV shows, and had a few records, but when I played her this messed up stuff, boy did she hate it. And you got to like the music your parents hate. Maybe this is what Jacques Brel would have been making in 1995, but i don’t think so. Many pupils outgrow their teacher…

A few years after this album I was flumuxed to discover Benjamin Britten’s work with his lover, the great tenor Peter Pears bears an uncanney resemblance to some of the composition, check it out! I speak on lie!

Tilt is an album out of place and time, apparently using no sequencers click tracks or computer wizardry it manages to sound contemporary, increadably dark and wholly engulfing. Remember, no drum machines were harmed during it’s making (although thats hard to believe sometimes). A huge quaalude of an album.

I defy anyone to classify this record.

Go on, do your worst.

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