Low – "A Lifetime Of Temporary Relief - 10 Years Of B-Sides & Rarities" (Rough Trade – RTRADCDX195) 2004

After Keith Levene,and Nik Turner.Another from this week of Musical Deaths, is the sad loss of Mimi Parker,the lady from Low. The Husband and wife populated trio who gave us the much derided,even by Mimi and Alan, category of this kind of minimal melodic ambient neo folkrock,that has come to be called Slowcore. Which, personally, I reckon fits them to a 'T'. It's slow, and uncompromising....it's .Slowcore!?

I am of an age where my last flirtation with 'hip' music was around the time of Jungle and Post Rock in the late nineties, so I look upon Low as a fairly recent entity,and often overlook the fact that they've been going for nigh on thirty years....that is until this week,as Mimi died of Cancer. Robbing the world of her pure voice and minimalist drumming.

This vast compilation of their first ten years,was the last record i bought in England before i migrated to pastures new in jolly old France.....it's a bit shit here,but it's fucking cheap.We came as a family, and promptly started the process of disintegrating forthwith;such is the fashionable path we trod ,trés moderne.

Now all that's left is me and a house full of records,synths,and to quote Syd,Dust and Guitars.All of which one can simply turn off when they get on ones proverbials.You can't do that with humans I found out.....they have 'needs'....needs that someone on the spectrum can't give without an effort. Its all mi mi mi innit? I don't ask or expect anything that isn't offered.

A great soundtrack to emotional and mental breakdown and its aftermath has to be the melancholic splendor of Low......which is ironic, because they never broke up as a family,just losing a few Bassists along the way....always difficult creatures is yer Bass player.

They do remind one of such indie leg-ends as Young Marble Giants,and Galaxie 500, with a tad of Joy Division's more downbeat moments,as if fronted by English Folk great Shirley Collins....(Is Shirley Collins a Dame yet?...if not why?).

This compilation features all their rare bits from 1994 to 2004,and the demo versions of "Lullaby" and "Cut" from their flawless debut LP,are worth the price of admission alone;enhanced somewhat by swathes of automatic level cassette hiss,as if summoning the soul of Mimi back from the grave to haunt us a bit more.This IS White Soul music after all?

You may have noticed that i am being uncharacteristically respectful in this synopsis of a trendy american group,and i'm sorry, but Low were quite marvelous indeed. Not everything modern and american are wrong you know,he said,stating the bleeding obvious.

This came with a DVD documentary, which you can probably find on YouTube no doubt.

Although this horrified me! Low are one of those groups who shouldn't ever be seen on camera or in photographs; unless as blurred shadowy black and white images in an abandoned bunker somewhere in Alaska .Not that they're ugly or anything,it just doesn't fit the music.There were always far too many clear photo's of Joy Division for example,where we discovered that Ian Curtis always wore the same shirt and looked like Mr Bean...they should have only been photographed by Anton Corbijn,in dimly lit underpasses in winter.Young Marble Giants had this talent naturally.impossible to photograph without looking like they lived in Siberia.

Anyway,Rest in even more Peace that was portrayed in your beautifully depressing tunes Mimi.Hope to hear you again beyond the void one slow looong day? Thanks for all the temporary relief.

And to finish,... some jokey wordplay to lighten the mood......Its all Mi Mi Mi these days innit?

Tracklist:

Lullaby (Demo) 10:06
Cut (Demo) 5:41
Heartbeat 4:08
Peanut Butter Toast And American Bandstand 2:23
Tired 5:11
I Started A Joke 4:28
The Plan (Demo) 2:50
Prisoner (Demo) 6:10
Prisoner 3:48
Tomorrow One 4:28
Turning Over 7:49
Bright 2 1:45
Walk You Out 4:46
Tear Down 4:48
Standby 5:11
David & Jude 1:22
Cheek 3:24
Venus 3:44
Boyfriends & Girlfriends 6:06
Surf 2:31
No Need (Version 1) 5:03
Be There (First Version) 8:28
Lift 5:45
Joan Of Arc 3:21
Long Long Long 3:50
Lion/Lamb (Demo) 3:50
Will The Night (Demo) 2:47
Last Breath 4:47
Joan Of Arc (20 Below Mix) 3:25
Old Man Song 3:48
Try Try Try 0:37
Lord, Can You Hear Me? 6:24
Venus (Time Stereo Dub Mix) 3:51
Those Girls (Song For Nico) 3:06
[silence] 2:50
Words (In Misfits Style) 2:50
Turn (In Misfits Style) 1:03
Over The Ocean (In Misfits Style) 1:36
I Remember 3:22
Kindly Blessed 2:17
Blue-Eyed Devil 5:02
Sleep At The Bottom 4:54
When You Walked 3:55
Back Home Again 5:20
Don't Drop The Baby 4:02
Surfer Girl (Live) 3:35
Blowin' In The Wind 3:49
Open Arms 4:02
...I Love 2:45
Carnival Queen 5:13
Overhead 4:33
Don't Carry It All 4:13
Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me 3:58
Because You Stood Still 5:33
Fearless 6:20
Shots & Ladders 2 6:47
Words 5:46
Shame 4:08
Over The Ocean 3:50
Looking Out For Hope 11:28
Will The Night 3:07
Weight Of Water 4:21
Don't Understand 6:56
Immune 3:31
Home 2:25
Dinosaur Act 4:07
Canada 3:49
Over The Ocean (Oosterschelde Version) 5:03
Canada 15:42
Two Step (Live At Bard College) 6:11
Soon (Live At Coolidge Corner) 7:38
I Remember (Live In Paris) 5:40
Closer Than That 1:06:11
In The Fishtank 16:50
Making Of Trust 17:34

DOWNLOAD from heaven HERE!

Death By Milkfloat – "Sense And Nonsense" (Di Di Music – DI DI 120) 1987

Another group who should have been but never was,as in wasn't,on Ron Johnson Records, would be Death By Milkfloat. An amphetamine fueled Mackenzies type mental indie funk rush that couldn't be criticised for its low energy levels.

They also field another candidate for the fastest guitarist in the west,competing with the guitar wielders from the Wedding Present and The Nightingales;at a time when we all thought it had to be that bloke from Napalm Death,or other daft Grindcore nonsense from some silly sausage in Solihull.....drop the 'Soli' part and you'd be close,as Death By Milkfloat came from the lost city of Kingston Upon Hull.It rises from the sea smog of the Humber Estuary like a Brigadoon of functional architecture appearings like a grey ghost as one approaches across the Humber Bridge. 

It is said that once you go to Hull you can never leave,that's it, It's all over;due to the confusion spread by the Ministry of Defense Listening and early warning station.....Fun Fact: Hull is the nearest point in the UK to Russia.

Right now there are dozens of grey men and women hacking Russian soldier's phones for evidence of Genocide, and infiltrating slavic computer systems with false information...and they're doing it in Hull.

This would explain the manic high speed choppy style of probably, Hull's bestest group....not counting Fat Boy Slim of course,and certainly not counting Coum Transmissions aka ...Throbbing Gristle;especially now every trendy worth his spots think TG are the Dopest group to namedrop to his bearded chums in the nominate your own price coffee bar in the bohemian quarter.

Tracklist:

A1 What
A2 (What's Your Name) Roger Murray
B1 Man With A Dog
B2 Never The Same
B3 Fishlake

DOWNLOAD by milkfloat HERE!

We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use it - "Bostin' Steve Austin" (Vindaloo Records – FBOX 1) 1986

Also on Robert Lloyd of The Nightingales fame's Vindaloo Records,and touring mates of Ted Chippington, were the snappily named 'We've Got a Fuzzbox and We're Gonna Use it' from the home of heavy metal, Birmingham England....... 

As the much missed Jerry Orbach once said....(Who?)...

"Maybe this isn't your cuppa, but I'll cop to my fetish for 80's ladies. Why did they just seem so much more fun? When did girls just become so dour? Just look at the photo and tell me when you see girls like this anymore. You don't. Then again, if you read this blog it's unlikely that you see any girls aside from your mom and porn. At the risk of sounding like a misogynist, there's tons of girl bands out there now that really wish they could be this good, but, unfortunately they are shit. To this day, I wonder what ever became of these ladies. It's my debilitating laziness that prevents me from typing the band into google and actually find out. Some things are better kept as memories."

Nowadays the only 80's ladies I come across (Phnaar Phanaar) are ladies IN their 80's rather than ladies FROM thee 80's....oh by the way, the guitary-one with the star-shaped shades died about a decade ago.....cancer.

Of course, it all went tits up when Closet Gaylord Geffen got wind of it....prized them from Vindaloo,and shortened their name to just..."Fuzzbox",and insisted on hit singles and the like.

Why are major record labels such eternally blocked toilets of pure shite? They observe something the public like then change it,and sell a crapper version of it back to them.

Tracklist:

A1 Love Is The Slug 3:06
A2 Wait And See 2:15
A3 Jackie 2:39
A4 Spirit In The Sky 3:05
A5 X X Sex 1:59
A6 Alive 2:17
B1 What's The Point 2:27
B2 You Got Me 3:35
B3 Hollow Girl 3:09
B4 Console Me 1:27
B5 Rules And Regulations 2:48
B6 Preconceptions 2:32

DOWNLOAD it HERE and stuff!

Chorchazade – "Death Is Eeklo" (Unreleased) 1988

We have a short break in our stay in South Wales, and briefly return back across the Severn Bridge to Bristol via Penzance, as some kind person has provided us with the missing Unreleased Chorcazade album from the famed mass group extinction year of 1988. The strangely titled "Death Is Eeklo".
Here,they sound like a intriguing mix between early Felt and a Josef K 45 played at 33rpm, although the Slint parallel remains.
Production values are up on the "Made To Be Devoured" album.As are the number of unfathomable words like 'Eeklo' and the unpronounceable group moniker,which is apparently pronounced thus: Cork-ah-zayde!?

Tracklisting:

01) Night Ferry
02) Laughing Gasman
03) Amorous Gasman
04) Wheel
05) Treacletime
06) Checkered Soul
07) Smiling Wessex Ghost
08) Neat Around Nought

DOWNLOAD is eeklo HERE!

Chorchazade ‎– "Made To Be Devoured" (Get Ahead Records ‎– GET#1) 1987

Proto-Post Rock is the made-up genre for this deeply buried and deeply good lost album from another lost British group. Pre-dating the very american Slint to the claims of inventing Post-Rock by a couple of years at least.
This is one of Slint producer, Steve Albini's, favourite albums,which suggests an undue influence on those tiny giants of post-rock , by the giant of american alternative rock himself. He was always whipping out his copy of "Made To Be devoured" in the control room apparently; explaining the undeniable parallels with that "Spiderland" album.
But you won't find Chorchazade doing sell-out(in both senses of the word)tours performing "made To Be Devoured" in its entirety to packed audiences of middle-aged bankers, oh no. I doubt the individuals involved even remember,or care, they were in such a bizarre group as this at all.......at least I hope not.

Tracklist:

A1 Pie Maker
A2 Half A Crown
A3 Beak (Concise Version)
A4 Felix Rex
B1 It Aint Because
B2 Twain
B3 Tom Dander
B4 Out Of This World

Made to be DOWNLOADed HERE!

Chorchazade ‎– "Crackle And Corkette EP" (Crackle And Corkette ‎– Crack One) 1985

"Indie" was supposed to be music for misfits,but even within these ranks there were outsiders.None more so than this Cornish bunch of outcasts with an unpronounceable name....Chorchazade??? WTF!? 
Impossibly obscure and from Penzance,on the most isolated tip of England.This is a weird kind of Aspergers Syndrome Rock, that doesn't seem to care if anyone ever listens to it;the last thing they seemed to want to get is attention or love.With a name like Chorchazade they were destined to get what they wanted,and they certainly got it..... total obscurity!
The music they somehow managed to write,is a bizarre form of Outsider-post-indie,or an even more autistic form of proto-post-rock,making Slint look like Metallica in the process.
They did however manage to perform sporadic concerts in Britain and Europe from 1977 to 1988, often supporting such luminaries as the terrible James, Marc Riley and the Creepers, A Certain Ratio, The Blue Aeroplanes and The Brilliant Corners.
They eventually released this 12 inch EP which John Peel played a track off;but said that he 'wished the group had a simpler name, like the Moody Blues’' and never played another of the group's recordings.They also played at the Glastonbury festival in 1988, but only on the 'warm-up' Thursday. It rained heavily and the only sound between songs was the buzz of scrambling motorbikes in an adjacent field. The group’s manager(they had a manager???) and one of their girlfriends(They had Girlfriends?????) stood alone, watching from under a large golf umbrella.
Chief Chorchazader Chris said:"At the end though, the last few songs, when the sun came out and all these people wrapped in bin liners appeared from nowhere, nodding their heads and shaking the rain out of their hair. We had back stage passes for the whole festival but we went home as soon as we'd finished playing. We played the Ashton Court festival a few times of course, when it was free, before it turned into the total shit that it is now. We even played second to last on the main stage Saturday night once. The review in the paper said we 'went down like a fart in a spacesuit.' It was true too, all those people expecting a dance and a good time and everything. Hmmmm."
In 1989 the band apparently, recorded an album called 'Death Is Eeklo' and went on a short tour of Belgium to promote it. The group’s minibus was found, empty, in a lay-by a mile or so outside of Waterloo like an Indie Marie Celeste. Half eaten baguettes, a cigarette still smoking in the ashtray. The tour was not completed and the album was never officially released.In 1995 a benevolent caretaker rescued hundreds ( estimated to be 75% of the total number originally pressed ) of the group's vinyl records from a skip outside a Bristol music distribution factory. A lot of them have warped and look like shallow black bowls now. If you own a Chorchazade record, you have a very rare thing.

Tracklist:

A1 Aah,You Are,As Light As A Feather 5:03
A2 Where There's Brera 3:05
B This Is His 8:13

DOWNLOAD to make your headphones crackle HERE!