Here is a scan of the Wire review of "The Setland L.P." by Mike Barnes-



There's also a rather good review at Brainwashed.com by Andrew Gowans-

This is the first release from these long time friends and collaborators. Having been cohorts for 40 forty years, playing in groups together as far back as 1974, this album captures a day's recording back in 1992. My preconceptions of this collection of vintage home recordings being like the musique concrète stylings of early Dead Voice On Air were shattered within seconds of the album's opening track. I will confess to stopping the LP and taking out the disc to check it was the right album.

"Watch" opens the album with dirge feedback-guitar, heavy crunching drums sounding like a lost, Psychocandy-era, Jesus And Mary Chain single. As the distorted guitars and buried vocals gather momentum, however, they suddenly stop a minute in, and unabashedly the track changes to a warped electronic soundscape. From here "Watch" quickly turns again, this time to a heavy No Wave sound of rapid drums and Sanderson’s free-jazz saxophone. The track ends by serging into a sparse drone with looped Vocal snippets, similar to Spybey’s later, more minimal output.

The five tracks on the album are almost meaningless guides, as the album stops and starts and changes pace and style so frequently it should either be indexed 20-30 times or released as a single 45-minute entity. There’s frenzied garage rock, bass heavy drones, cut-up samples, screeching jazz, and each movement provides no idea where the record will go next. It is strength of the album, however, as it is accomplished with great results making the listening experience akin to the mania of playing The Faust Tapes.

In interviews Spybey has frequently cited Can and Faust as inspirations but never has their influence been more explicit on a release than The Setland L.P. The heavy, repetitive drumming is dotted throughout the album; while the second track, "Power Cut," eventually veers into a heady, feedback dripping, cover of Faust’s "Sunshine Girl." No Wave and Free Jazz nods are found throughout and there are several lengthy menacing ambient pieces backed with radio samples, reminiscent of Throbbing Gristle’s "Ecoli."

The whole album has this warm feeling of being two friends’ condensed mixtape of a lengthy day’s jamming, experiments, and homages to the music they grew up listening to on cold, grey days in the North of England. The Steland L.P. is very raw, obviously recorded with minimal production in a home studio, but what is here transcends their recording limitations. At points the album can be frustrating, as a more catchy moment suddenly cuts out far too soon, but the vast amount of diverse and interesting sounds means there’s never a dull movement, and makes this an exciting and highly recommended listen.

The album is (unfortunately) only available as a digital download from Lens records, as either .mp3 or lossless .flac. Personally I would have liked a physical release, but ultimately it’s great this is available in any format. Let’s hope the follow up album Spybey has alluded to also sees the light of day.

I like the fact that both reviews have pretty accurately summed up the story of this recording, as well as making pretty spot-on guesses at the influences. It's funny, I really can't stand Throbbing Gristle, but "Ecoli" is one of the tracks I'm more fond of, although AMM and Keith Rowe in particular were probably more of an influence on those tracks for me.

Curiously, we're not the only North Easterners to have an album recorded in 1992 but only seeing the light of day now...

I'm not sure anything I write could do justice to the contrasts and oddities of skitster's (and SELFS's) wonderful "Folk Yule 2" last night...

Instead, I think I'll go for telegrammatic impressions

- Me telling an audience of Pass-The-Parcellers not to clap along with my music, because it was "putting me off"...

- transpont singing a lovely song about a bit of Greenwich Park

- The saintly skitster making order out of potential chaos (and chaos magick)

- Hawthorn Well singing the "clean" version of "Postman's Knock" (as opposed to the filthy Blackheath Morris version)

- Penny Hedge (probably not her real name, I now realise) telling a slightly haunting story about a tree.

- A woman with a guitar singing a self-penned song from the point of view of "Canoe Man", bizarrely giving him a strong West Coast American accent.

- My wife, blindfolded, wrestling with a man dressed as a "Yule Cat".

- A woman, whose name I didn't catch, doing what I can only describe as performance riddling, which was a million times better than that sounds - funny, thrilling and puzzling.

- The sight of lots of people unsuccessfully suppressing giggles whilst a histrionic poem by Aleister Crowley (possibly the most ludicrous Englishman to ever live) was read out - ostensibly to help heal Terry Pratchett (?)

Oh, Man, nobody organises events like skitster. It was worth it just to see the expressions on spoombung and jurawatchmaker's faces. Actually it was worth it, full stop. Bravo!

Saturday night at the LMC Festival felt like Jazz Night compared to the previous evenings, mainly because two of the bands used a drum kit. The first such group was a trio of Peter Evans, Steve Beresford & Mark Sanders. Beresford and Sanders were familiar to me of course, but the American trumpeter Evans was unfamiliar - although he settled into the interplay of the two British players very easily. Evans started on long single notes while the English clattered about, before heading off into virtuosic but decidedly un-bluesy playing - superfast ostinatos and a tendency to reach for the highest notes in his register (which he accompanied by standing on tiptoe, something I found quite endearing). Steve Beresford played his mixture of old school electronic devices and found toys, but played on this occasion in a sympathetic supporting role to Evans as virtuoso, whilst Sanders is just Mark Sanders, simply one of the most continually inventive and swinging drummers around - something he makes look irritatingly effortless.

More new stuff to my ears followed with the duo of Margarida Garcia and Barry Weisblat. Garcia played one of those stick-like electric double basses, which are very difficult to love, although she did her best by playing in a relaxed and sombre style, eschewing theatrics. In fact their whole set was sombre, even melancholy in a smoky, dusty kind of way. Weisblat played his own self-made instruments which seemed to consist of fluorescent tubes and springs. From these unlikely sources he coaxed strange oblique melodies in a timbre somewhere between a mournful owl hoot and a glass armonica. Lit only by candles at first, they emerged out of the dark like a gloomy dream as Weisblat started stwitching on his little fluorescent tubes, the arco bass winding around the sounds. Their set finished with the surprisingly violent sounds of an amplified lit candle, and of it being extinguished; a rare theatrical gesture in this festival, but not unwelcome.

A solo laptop set from Helena Gough followed. Announcer Cecilia Wee prepared us by stating this was "music for darkened rooms and closed eyes". There's always going to be a problem with presenting this kind of music in a live situation, but when the music was as extraordinary as that produced by Gough then it ends up only really being a problem for those who lack imagination. Her music seemed to owe as much to the music of GRM electro-acoustic legends as Francois Bayle and Parmegiani as to the current generation of laptoppers. What it wasn't was reductionist in any way - a rich forest of sound, luxuriantly spread across the stereo spectrum, with sounds appearing and morphing before our ears before settling back into the backdrop. It's difficult to talk about such abstract music without resorting to clichés, but it was amazingly evocative- and I found my attention wondering vary rarely during a very long set, as I was moved like a traveller through some very exotic places.

In contrast the finale of the festival saw the drum kit brought out again this time for Tony Buck of The Necks to clobber alongside past and current members respectively of the fantastic Polwechsel, Burkhard Stangl and John Butcher. There was plenty to watch, from Stangl's occasionally hilarious no-wave jerks and spasms, Butcher's recent embrace of electronics and the astonishing drumming of Buck. Buck was a revelation, I'd seen him play once before in the minimalist funk trio Tipper Gore, but that didn't prepare me for his playing here - like Sanders he uses a lot of accessories to produce textures in the quieter moments, but also isn't ashamed to give the drums a good thwacking when the music deserved it - as it did in one memorable sequence with Stangl thrashing his guitar with a bow and Butcher playing a wild eastern-flavoured soprano over the top. Later Butcher indulged in some playful use of feedback- pulling sympathetic strands of noise in stuttering bleeps, whilst the other players splattered around him. It was a terrific performance that raised the heartbeat and brought the festival to an ecstatic climax. The applause that followed showed I wasn't the only one who thought so.

It would be difficult to enjoy everything at an LMC festival, to some extent it would have failed if you did - it exists to prod, provoke and intrigue. If the Festival was a little lopsided, with the least satisfying stuff on the first night, it more than made up for it on the following evenings. The fact that this year's big name, Charlemagne Palestine, gave a performance that bordered on utterly embarrassing, seemed to fit a festival that alternatively thrilled, baffled, bored me to tears and left me gasping in astonishment...

Assuming that what one expects from a Festival of Experimental music is to be surprised, then Friday night didn't disappoint from the very start. The first act was a duo of two women, Billy Roisz and Angélica Castelló on "recorders and video", "Recorders" somewhat stretched the definition from the things we tooted on at primary school, as one of them was a boxy tube about six foot long - when blown into it produced eerie wheezing, ghostly sounds as the player's breath was routed around the internal catacombs of this monstrous thing - the "video" was pretty arcane too, an old telly and various bits and pieces of electrical equipment (placed on doilies I was pleased to see) produced crackles and noise whilst a projection on the wall seemed to freeze sound waves. It was enigmatic and decidedly peculiar, but more importantly rather wonderful and evocative. There was an interplay between these two divergent sounds - one the very human sound of breath, the other the fractured noise of obsolete consumer electronics, that was baffling, witty and full of unexpected turns. I liked it.

The following duo of Robin Hayward and Matt Davis on tuba and trumpet respectively was a masterclass in extended brass technique. Hayward has been exploring silence and tiny sounds for over a decade now, and despite this reductionist background his new music seems to be a progression away from the aridity of the style. Davis too has matured into a trumpeter of enormous precision - not just using the avant-trumpeters arsenal of gargling and growling but pure tones and astonishing control. Hayward sat (head obscured by the enormous bell of his instrument) and produced sighings sound and sudden valve clunking thuds, while Davis held sustained slowly evolving sounds. Occasionally the two would coalesce into a single thread of ambiguous harmony. It was delightful, and utterly spell-binding.

It seemed like a lot of the audience were there to see Charlemagne Palestine demonstrate his astonishing "strumming" technique on a couple of harpsichords. We did get to see that, eventually, but first a flamboyant and possibly slightly inebriated Palestine decided to share his cognac (stirred by his finger) and his wisdom with us. He'd noticed the amount of silence on the previous evening and seemed to be trying to lay claim to being responsible for Morton Feldman's move into sparse lengthy pieces. He wished he had a five hour performance to share with us....the minutes ticked by has he wandered about the theatre giving audience members sips of cognac, and the amount of time left for a musical performance started to slip away. Finally after an age, he came back to the harpsichords and performed short bursts of the strumming style on each one in turn. These "potpourris" (his term) were OK, but compared with the long sweep of his piano pieces they were disappointing - the harpsichord lacks the sustaining clouds of harmony, and the pieces were too short to really appreciate the technique and stamina required to perform them. He finished by hammering away at both of them simultaneously until bits of wood started flapping, and alarming clunking noises started emerging. Then he stopped and amongst the applause invited the man who'd made the harpsichords on stage - the gentleman seemed remarkably relaxed as he examined the damage done to his pride and joy.

The protracted performance of Palestine meant I couldn't catch all of the performance of Norbert Möslang, a former member of the extraordinary "cracked everyday electronics" duo Voice Crack. He started with a flashing light which set up a thumping bass note over which the characteristically grainy blur of radio waves and cheap, knackered electronics wafted over on waves of deafening feedback...I'd like to have seen how it developed - it was a pretty confrontational opening, but I had to flee.

EDIT: Brighton readers may be amused to know I was in seat no B12

A Review

This year the LMC Festival is at the Cochrane Theatre in Holborn, and marks the continued move in experimental music away from draughty semi-squats to comfortable ticketed theatres. Instead of mumbling unshaven LMC jobsworths doing the announcements we have the clearly ennunciated tones of of Cecilia Wee. These are all good things.

But if compromises towards comfort have been made in the environment, the music, if tonight was anything to go by, is more uncompromising than ever.

Stuck with the difficult first spot on the bill was the artist and sound maker Bob Levene. She has a collection of cymbals that are inscribed with soundwaves, like vinyl records, and can be played on turntables. It's actually a rather nice bit of conceptual art, as the recordings on the cymbals are of...cymbals. Hi-Hats thwocking, rides swishing and deeper gong like sounds were played as she selected a cymbal, put it on a turntable and added it to the mix. Surrounding everything was a constant surf whoosh of white noise and crackles. Whilst not unpleasant, it was difficult in a hall like this to really keep my attention - what would satisfactorily pass 15 minutes as a performance in a gallery was stretched out to untennable lengths - and despite moments of clapping multi-rhythms and loud swathes of white noise - the sheer lack of variety of sound was disappointing.

Next up was our first encounter in the evening with the music of Japanese guitarist Taku Sugimoto, in the form of a string trio he'd composed called "29th November 2007". It was performed by a trio of noted reductionists lead by Angharad Davies with Julia Eckhardt and Michael Duch . Unsurprisingly, being familiar with the composer, "frenetic" would not be an accurate description of what was to follow. The group played a chord together then immediately held their instruments silently for over a minute. Several people walked out, somebody behind me snorted. That was the only time all three played in unison. Using short strokes or single plucks, the piece progressed with the now familiar one-note every-so-often with massive silences inbetween. Despite the outside sounds of various police sirens and some insane cackling that I wondered was actually in my head, the piece refused to get beyond very boring.

Yasunao Tone I confess I was pretty unfamiliar with, but he does have an impressive pedigree. A dapper Japanese man in his seventies, he sat immobile behind a laptop and pummelled us with noise. The sound appeared to be lo-grade, and very short samples looped ruthlessly and changing constantly. It was a harsh and at times painfully loud experience. It ended unexpectedly with no sense of development or structure. This was followed by a best forgotten short piece of vocal hollering, before he peformed his second piece which was only marginally more varied - a few swooping arcade game noises appeared and he ended suddenly again. A member of the audience stood and bellowed "Bravo!", and although nobody else joined him, he did seem to go down very well the crowd here.

To complete a night of somewhat one dimensional music, Taku Sugimoto took to the stage with his guitar, an amp, a table-lamp and a bottle of wine. By this point in the proceedings I was surprised to find myself warming to Sugimoto's performance (huge silences, a lot of musings, very occasional notes plucked - usually harmonics of the same note, although there were a couple of unexpected semitone shifts), there's something very theatrical about his silences, the way he sips from his wine, the tilted hat, the somewhat bemused expression after the plucked note, as if it wasn't quite what he expected. This is a music of rigorous sparseness, but not without a charm and even a vague excitement as you see Sugimoto finally reach to pull a note out of the abyss. That said, the performance was not really any different to the three previous performances I've seen by him (except possibly longer and even slower) so I'm not sure I'd be in a hurry to repeat the experience for a while. Sugimoto has his schtick, and I doubt he's going to change much now, but as the climax of a night in which every act seemed intent on wringing out the most the could from an extremely limited set of sources, it was, I suppose, appropriate.

Last night saw me watching yet more live music, this time the music of my dear friend sham9 and her new band The Kittiwakes.

Happening at a singer/songwriter club, (as opposed to a folk club) with a good PA but no proper beer, in a well decorated basement - I had to sit through some of the most fay and disengaged "folk-tinged" songs I've ever heard, played by two lads up from the Isle of Wight. Earnest and self-effacing to the point of passive-aggression, it was a huge relief when they finished and sham9 and her friends took to the stage.

Using a spartan line up of two fiddles and accordion, they immediately raised the atmosphere with an energetic string driven jig - the hoarse scape of the horsehair contrasting hugely with the preceding blandness.

They played just four songs, varying from the knees-up of the first number to a haunting ballad, this was, despite its folk trappings rather weird music. Following in the tradition of concept albums about unlikely subjects (spoombung's garlic celebration "The Stinking Rose" comes to mind), all the pieces were based on Kate's experience of a small bit of Norwegian coastline. The fact that she was able to wring such high-quality music from such an apparently limited source, and fuse it to a very English folk tradition is a testament to her imagination, although I am curious to hear how it can be develped further.

The minimal band worked well - the two fiddles often playing in delicious harmony, whilst the accordion chugged and filled in the gaps very effectively, and when all of the band sang, along with Kate, the effect was enchanting.

I took some rubbish photos - they'll appear here eventually.

A few words (and a few rubbish grainy photos) about Mike Cooper's 65th Birthday concert at The Red Rose on Thursday.

In funny way Mike Cooper's musical career has been like mine in reverse - he started in traditional folk music and then got the improv bug, and rejected his roots with records like the extraordinary "'ave they started yet?" (a duo with the dancer Joanna Pyne on Matchless) which not only rejects the blues and folk tradition, but almost rejects music itself, being one of the most rigorously abstract guitar records I've ever heard. From this point he then reached back, taking and reclaiming those parts of the music he started with that he could still work with - whilst simultaneously exploring traditional music from other areas, most noticeably the Pacific.

This gig was a celebration of all of this - and the music (and there was a lot) ranged right through the genres - there was plenty of knotty free improv such as a terrific trio of Steve Beresford on piano, Roger Turner on percussion and bassist Joe Williamson. There was some noisy free electronica with Pat Thomas and Cooper on table-top electronics and Turner again clouting and bashing a seemingly random array of objects in a manner as bafflingly musical as it was hilarious.


Roger Turner / The Recedents - David Toop, Mike Cooper, Roger Turner

There were several highlights for me - a sustained piece of dusty abstract windswept Americana with Cooper on slide guitar, vocalist Leila Adu being deeply bluesy, and hollowed-out thumping from drummer Fabrizio Spera. Leila Adu had earlier entertained us with the most doom-laden balladry since Jarboe period Swans, so the airiness of this piece was most welcome.

Also of note was a performance by The Recedents - with Lol Coxhill's place taken by David Toop on lap steel and flute. When Toop took up the flute there were echoes of Coxhill's soprano in the slurring and bending of notes. Mike Cooper elected to do all his performances from behind a table with a flowery tablecloth, very tasteful, but slightly disappointing if you wanted to see him actually play the guitar, as it was completely hidden.

A musician I've never had the pleasure of seeing before was Duck Baker, who did a gorgeously unashamed jazz set with master-bassist-of-all-styles Joe Williamson. Playing an unamplified acoustic guitar with great fluency and wit, he also did a quartet with Beresford and Spera that was as playful and enjoyable a bit of acoustic improv I'll see this year.



Steve Beresford, Duck Baker and Joe Williamson

Cooper did a duo with Max Eastley, with Eastley playing that ski-like string instrument he always plays, and Cooper adding some blues vocalising to a droning textured wash of sound.
For a notionally free improv gig there were surprisingly few saxophones and only one full on sax-tear up with Cooper, Geoff Hawkins and Tim Hill hitting an Ayler frenzy after a subtle folk blues lead in from Cooper.

There was the pleasure of a flute duo of Toop and Clive Bell with Cooper orchestrating a selection clicking and whirring samples behind them, and I left shortly after a duo of Hawkins and an unknown-to-me banjo player/vocalist who could have stepped straight out of a Harry Smith documentary.



David Toop, Mike Cooper, Clive Bell / Banjo player, Geoff Hawkins

The other thing that was great was to meet again a whole load of musicians I hadn't seen for ages, which made me realise just how long I've dipped out of the "scene". It was really great to see John Russell, the man who taught me all I know about running music clubs. He was looking great - and telling me about a forthcoming memorial gig for Paul Rutherford. It was also marvellous to see Steve Noble, Nancy Ruffer, Gerard and loads of others. A smashing evening in fact - actually worth going to North London for...
It was also interesting to note some of the musicians who didn't play - the wonderful accordionist Mike Adcock, and folk guitar god John Rebourn didn't play, and I'm sure that I wasn't the only one aware of the fact that all four members of Alterations were present - what a tantalising thought!
What came across most strongly was Cooper's openness to all sounds and musics, an openness not always seen in free improvisers, but then there are few that have taken such a unique route as him.

After attending this concert I wish I'd been to some of the others- I missed a rare chance to see "Four Organs" being performed for example- as this concert was so marvellous.

Well almost, I had a few misgivings about the opener "Cello Counterpoint" in which a cellist plays the melodic role against a backdrop of video clones. It didn't work for me, it compared unfavourably to the other "Counterpoint" pieces for Guitar and Clarinet, possibly because the sound of massed cellos, to put it bluntly, sounds like strings rather than the tonal pallette provided by clarinets, for example. It actually sounded more "classical", and reminiscent of the similarly disappointing "Triple String Quartet" -it was performed with admirable gusto though by the gothy Maya Beiser.

The World Premier of "Daniel Variations" something else entirely though, performed by a battery of xylophones and marimbas, a few more "orchestral" instruments, four pianos and a vocal quartet, it showed Reich to be at the head of his game. The work is built around forbidding quotations from the Book of Daniel, and the writings of the murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, I was relieved that Reich didn't use the actual spoken word recordings this time, partly because of the grim subject matter and partly because, as a technique, he's probably taken it as far as he could with "The Cave". Instead the vocalists sang the word in close, ear tickling harmony, which at times was almost overwhelmingly lovely. The mallet instruments chugged and chimed polyrhythmically while the vocal lines wound around them. It was Reich at his most melodically interesting, forward-looking best.

During the interval I looked around for familiar and or famous faces - spotted Savage Pencil, but there was nothing to rival the last time I Saw Reich, when I watched the spectacle of "The Cave" over the noble dome of Arvo Part's head.

The last piece was the reward, of course, an hour of "Music for 18 Musicians", and I noted beople settling themselves into their seats for a long and lush ride. It's a work I've known and loved for nearly 30 years, and I have dim memories of seeing it being performed on the telly in the late 70's, but nothing prepared me the majesty of seeing it live. The performance has accurately been described as being like a ritual- and this is true- the musicians move at allotted moments from instrument to instrument, the rather stern lookin metallophone player in the centre still chimes in the changes with 5 note motifs, and the instruments are arranged symetrically, facing eachother in little cells, rather than the audience, it's self-contained and at times resembles a production line. But it's an entirely secular ritual of mathematics, and that, to me, is it's charm, despite it's references to African trance music, it is a music of plusses and minuses, of division and multiplication, and its ability to be profoundly moving is almost accidental. But stirring and emotional it is! As the piece moved into the central maraca-shaking movement, the music becomes extraordinarily lush- deep cello sweeps and ecstatic vocalising all surrounded by a shimmering harmonic wall of pulsing and droning- I felt my heartbeat increase. The hour passed faster than I ever imagined, and the piece wound down to a single violin note....and the crowd went wild.

The best "serious" composer of the century is called Steve and wears a baseball cap. That's nice too.

You'll have read all the rave and 5 star reviews- here's my take-

Already the queue of people returning copies of The Drift to HMV will have formed. When I worked as the jazz buyer for a well known London record store, we stocked lots of copies of Pat Metheny's "Zero Tolerance for Silence" CD, despite the fact it was an obvious "homing CD". We weren't wrong- within hours of the first copies being sold, the purchasers were returning it. It appeared that the black cover and rave review from Sonic Youth wasn't enough to put off the jazz-fusioners that lapped up his stuff- only the dark racket inside was.

Similarly I expect a troup of people to have bought "The Drift" after the extensive coverage in the newspapers, which made many references to Walker's "number" LPs and the gloomy Brel covers. People expecting the luxuriant melancholy of Scot 4 are not going to enjoy the sparse clank of "The Drift". In fact, even those who enjoyed "Climate of Hunter" are going to find this a tough one.

Actually, I think Walker very cleverly wrong-footed the critics by choosing a band of (to me) complete unknowns. The only names I recognise are folky Andrew Cronshaw (on concertina and shawm etc) and old hand Brian Gasgoine, who, outside of his work with Scott seems to be a composer of library music. By choosing a bunch of people with no ready-made stylistic history (imagine him working with..say...David Tibet's gang of A-Level goths as a contrast) the critics have had to rely on their descriptive powers to sum up the LP. As am I.

Musically this is one bloody dark, if not terrifying LP- soundwise the guitars are heavy and detuned, bass flat and "post-punk", drums functional (but not "80's" anymore). The strings are frequently microtonal- glissandos and siren noises abound. There's a lot of space, Scott's voice often appearing completely a capella, without even the luxury of much reverb. And the voice is that higher croon of the last two LPs. The feel is (forgive the cliche) filmic- with sudden bursts of noise and moments of stillness, and extraneous noises off- while Scott croons another vocalist improvises in the background, somebody punches some meat (I know) Scott himself plays some raucous sax while a donkey brays. On the albums softest track, "A Lover Loves" Scott interupts his own performance with constant "psst!"s...

Lyrically, for me, it's a step backwards. Unlike the imagery of "Climate of Hunter" which grasped at something unattainable, these songs are about things. Elvis's still born brother, the execution of Mussolini's lover, torture, all become subjects of Scott's songs. And, more than ever before, there's an overbearing emphasis on pain- eyes are gouged, bodies are hung, forks are polished to be stuck in people and so on and so on. It's a pretty unrelenting parade of morbidity. The sort of morbidity that was frankly offputting in the work of a fool like Michael Gira, and is absolutely startling in the work of a 63 year old former pop star. Jesus, what kind of nightmares is Scott Engel having that can bring out these horrors? I said before that it's "terrifying" and it is. The much mentioned moment when Scott inexplicably starts quacking "What's Up Doc?" in the voice of Donald Duck should be hilarious, in fact it gave me goosebumps. Although it's an indication of Scott's removal from the world you and I inhabit, that he appears to have mixed up Disney's irritating duck, with Warner Brother's camp rabbit.

So is it any good? I don't honestly know, it left me as drained as a Bela Tarr film, and like a Tarr film it is compulsive and does have moments of grim beauty. I'm not going to play it very often (and it would make awful background music), but I will come back to it. And there's nothing else like it. But, there's no huge advance on his previous album "Tilt" it's just grimmer still.