Issue 47 / 13 December 2024
Your essential DIY electronic music dispatch – Good Stuff bumper edition including Cate Brooks, Polypores, Ian Boddy, Subexotic triple bill, Gazelle Twin, Black Hill Transmissions, Retep Folo + more
Welcome to the very last review round-up issue of the year. This week’s edition is a truly bumper read that should keep you going well into the weekend. And right at the end I’ve republished one of my favourite pieces I wrote for Melody Maker starring Shaun Ryder and Howard Marks. I hope you enjoy all that.
Our target of hitting 1,000 subscribers by the end of the year is tantalisingly close. It’s down to the last 50 people now. Can we do it by New Year’s Eve? Tell your friends. Next week is our final mailout of 2024 and it’s the Moonbuilding Album/Book Of The Year special. What is Album Of The Year? Not quite sure yet, there’s a few in the running, but as soon as I know, you’ll know. It’ll be by next Friday for sure.
Have a good week. See you next Friday.
Neil Mason, editor
moonbuildingmag@gmail.com
Issue 47 Playlist: bndcmpr.co/0096a40a
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Words: Neil Mason
GOOD STUFF #1
CATE BROOKS ‘Prismatics’ (Belbury Music)
I’ve had this latest offering from the brilliant Cate Brooks for a while now and I’m so pleased it’s finally out so you can enjoy it too. It’s described as “corporate electronica”, which I really like, and is a homage to the commercial and TV music of the early/mid-8os, a period that was right on the cusp of analogue technologies giving way to computers.
The first trio of tracks work a treat with the breezy opener ‘Blue Chip Fever’ and the sweeping ‘Living Data’ both building towards the epic grandeur of ‘Chipset’. The title track is a stunner. A full-blown hands-in-the-air romp, it feels like something Jean-Michel Jarre would conjure up. I spoke to Cate about the release for this month’s Electronic Sound (out yesterday), which funnily enough has Jarre on the cover. Was she a fan? She most certainly was. “I was really only a kid at the time of albums like ‘Zoolook’ and ‘Magnetic Fields’, but those were seminal albums, especially on a little Sony Walkman.” It’s a keen observation. The Walkman changed the way we listened to music completely. I’ve talked about this loads before, but the idea that you could venture out into the world plugged into music that created your own private soundtrack was monumental. I think it goes double if the music you happened to be listening to was electronic and future-facing. Listening to Jarre at night in the back of a car coming down a motorway was quite a thing as I recall.
Cate doesn’t do press, so I was delighted she decided to speak to me. We talked about her attitude to extra curricula activity. “It’s just a question of priorities,” she told me. “I’ve worked out that I would rather spend my time making music and being in the studio than doing things like interviews. It’s the same for playing live; I don’t, because I’d just rather be doing other things.” It’s such a great chat. I ended up with way more than would fit on the page. I’ll run the whole thing here at some point if ES don’t get it on their website, which they really should. The centrepiece of the album is the epic 10-minute-plus ‘Technology Suite’. “The big drums at the beginning were really influenced by things like ‘Knight Rider’ and the ‘TVAM’ theme,” says Cate. “Big drums gated through Lexicon reverbs. For some reason, the track makes me think of my old Commodore Amiga computer and some of the game soundtracks. That's definitely another influence.”
‘Prismatics’ isn’t released as you’d imagine on Ghost Box, but on Jim Jupp’s recently revived Belbury Music label, which hasn’t seen a a lot of action since inception. It was home to Cate’s early Cafe Kaput ‘Applied Music’ releases and this new one is the label’s first outing since 2023’s Kyron’s ‘Dreaming Eden’. It’s quite a different vibe to the mothership, even visually with Jim rather than Julian House providing the sleeve art. “I think Jim realised that he wanted the whole package to feel very different from the Ghost Box world, which is a whole vibe in itself,” Cate told me. “Jim has some beautiful artwork ideas too and I really love the fresh, precise nature of the whole package. Our conversations about how the whole thing should look got us researching everything from the Polaroid logo to obscure Japanese references and it all came together without any fuss.”
‘Prismatics’ is a wonderful record, so well observed and perfectly executed. It’s such a now sound too. It’s not a million miles from what Warrington-Runcorn is doing with his palette. This is Cate Brooks though, I always feel the enigmatic line gives her work a little extra umph. This has umph.
GOOD STUFF #2
POLYPORES ‘Unlimited Lives’ (Aural Canyon)
Seems to me that friend of Moonbuilding, Stephen James Buckley, is teetering on the brink of a new phase, which is very exciting. He recently revealed that he has been diagnosed with autism. “I’m still processing it really,” he wrote on his Insta page. “It’s weird having to reassess 42 years of life in a whole new context. I think the main thing for me is that it explains why I find certain things very difficult (sudden unexpected changes in plans, rejection, uncertainty, sitting still, controlling my emotions, socialising without alcohol, etc), but also why there are some things I’m really good at (long, detailed explanations, releasing like 800 albums per year).” He talks about how “enthusiastic/obsessive/excited” he gets about certain things, which was at the fore when we spoke for the cover feature of Moonbuilding 5 earlier this year as is one of the key drivers that makes him, well, him. I think we should only expect good things to come from this news. He doesn’t have to wonder any more, he just needs to embrace his difference. Which is why he is so great in the first place. He says he’s been looking into autism more seriously this year and I think you can see the effect that is having on him already. Firstly, here’s a release not on one of the usual suspect labels. Aural Canyon is a long-standing US ambient cassette specialist and one Stephen has admired for a while. Musically, there’s a change too. Although you can’t put that down to this news as ‘Unlimited Lives’ was recorded in Summer 23. There is talk in the accompanying notes that the album recalls Polypores’ earlier ambient works, saying ‘Turtles All The Way’ could have come straight off ‘Azure’. Which is mighty big talk. Stephen is always one for moving forwards. He knows how good ‘Azure’ is, but has no desire to replicate it. He needs to move on. And you can hear that here. Yes, that track is ‘Azure’-like, but the same person made both so it would be. It’s interesting to note he lists “percussion” and “acoustic guitar” in the credits. Summer, when this was made, is an especially ripe time for Polypores and you can hear the skip it puts in his step on tracks like ‘Summer 04’. It’s a beauty. There’s a swing here too that you don’t get on ‘Azure’. A track like ‘Screensaver’ feels weirdly dancefloor somehow. Loving the titles, as always. ‘Crocodile Girls From The Moon’ stands out, as does ‘Lucy Overtone’. The former sounds like it’s being played by The Clangers – all warm plinks and plonks, the latter dancing around a rhythmical pulse. Like The Cate Brooks album, and I don’t know why this is, it might be just me, but the centrepiece here is also the longest cut, the 10-minute plus ‘Strings Of Lights And Shapes’, which is a riot of sound that ebbs and flows like nebula. There’s a track called ‘Vibe Shift’, which I think is probably Stephen’s new frame of mind. He’s on the move. Hold tight. Can’t wait to see what he brings us in 2025.
GOOD STUFF #3
IAN BODDY ‘Options’
So here’s one that should spark plenty of interest. As you will know, DiN big chief Ian Boddy has been making music for, well, a while. Way before he dreamed up DiN in the late 90s. In fact, his earliest forays stretch right back to the late 70s when he was producing electronic music at Spectro Arts Workshop in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, which he has described to me before as “a fabulous open access studio filled with Revox tape recorders & VCS3s”. ‘Options’ appears on his personal Bandcamp page where he says he’s slowly uploading all his non-DiN albums. This one dates back to 1982 and was released by the Bristol-based tape label Mirage. Ian explains it’s a game of two halves. The first side features eight shorter compositions, while on the other side there’s two long live tracks recorded on 7 November 1981 at Spectro. I always love the detail Ian goes into. Here he recalls that he had expanded his range of instruments for this outing, adding a Moog Opus 3 and, when a Fender Rhodes temporarily appeared in the Spectro Arts studio he made good use of it on the track ‘Water On Stone’. He talks of the reasons it was a tape of two halves, saying the decision was a conscious one. “Many electronic artists dwelt in the domain of the long, drawn-out track, which I certainly loved,” he says, “but I felt this would challenge my writing skills. In a way it pre-empted the library music work I would begin in the mid-90s where brevity is a must.” So what does it actually sounds like? What do you imagine leftfield synthy workouts in 1981 sounded like? You can absolutely hear why Ian is reissuing them now, because they sound great. The other week we reviewed The Sea Of Wires album on Cold Spring, which came out about the same time. There’s such a warmth in the sounds coming out of the early 80s and attach that to someone like Ian Boddy, a man with such a clear vision he is still, 40 years later still serving up very high quality work. You can almost hear where he was headed in tracks like the ‘Corridors’ and ‘Karina’. The former’s prowling growl of a bassline underpinning a tsk-tsk drum machine and gentle melody, while the latter is a bright atmospheric drift of sweeping strings and tinkling keys. The live sets on the flip really are the shape of things to come. Nothing is under 13 minutes and they’re cracking electronic explorations, as you would expect from Ian no matter when he made them. This reissue of ‘Options’ comes on cassette in an edition of 100 with a reproduction of the original sleeve, Letraset credits an all. In DiN news, there’s a really good addition to the DiN MiX mixtape series from Maggie Houta aka DJ Maggie, who takes her lead from the summer-released ‘25 Years Of DiN’ to produce a 20-track/94-minute mix of the best downtempo electronica has to offer. Helpfully the Bandcamp page has a continuous mix for your listening pleasure.
GOOD STUFF #4
CARLISLE CITY COUNCIL ‘The Lanes Re-Development’ (Subexotic)
XQUI & DOGS VERSUS SHADOWS ‘Dwell Time’ (Subexotic)
DAVID A JAYCOCK ‘Music For Space Age Shopping’ (Subexotic)
Well this is a rather interesting ‘Shopping Centre Trilogy’ triple bill from Subexotic. Who knew town planning would be capturing the imagination in the way it has? While Warrington-Runcorn has by no means a monopoly over music about buildings, his particular town planning niche has obviously captured the imagination. That he started from a place where the idea of a record about the mundanity of an actual new town development plan has now expanded to the point where Gordon can hold his own discussing the nitty-gritty politics of these developments makes the whole project zing. It’s interesting therefore to see another label turning their tanks in that direction. Of course, we’ve seen countless releases about Brutalist architecture, cold war infrastructure and places in general, but I can’t have been the only one double-taking when I saw the Carlisle City Council release. I’m all for more records about town planning (not a phrase I ever thought I’d be writing), but I was surprised to see something that looked and felt so much like a Warrington-Runcorn release. And of course, that release is top of the bill here because of the name behind it. Carlisle City Council is none other that The Heartwood Institute’s Jonathan Sharp who is no stranger to trawling past memories for musical inspiration. His ‘Divided Time’ series under his own name is based on memories from 1970s family photos. They are gloriously evocative releases that we can all relate too. Here he stays in the past to tackle the controversial 1980s development of a new shopping centre in Carlisle. “While some welcomed the bright, airy new spaces replacing what was seen as a run down and dilapidated quarter of the working-class poor,” say the release notes, “others railed against these historic cobbled streets being swept away under a tide of comprehensive commercial development.” It’s a mightily accomplished piece of work as you’d expect from Jonathan. Musically it feels like somewhere between WRNTDP and David Boulter’s beautiful ‘St Ann’s’, which dealt with slum clearance and the building of a huge new council estate in Nottingham. Like David, Jonathan does a beautiful line melody, and it’s here throughout, ‘Shopping Centre’ is especially lovely, a bright shiny twinkle of a track as you’d imagine The Lanes, the shopping centre in question, was when it opened its doors for the first time in 1984.
David J Adcock’s title, ‘Music For Space Age Shopping’, made me smile straight away. And that 70s sleeve is a cracker. Did every town and city centre have a hole in the road like that? Or hole in’t road as it was called in Sheffield, which is the image used here. David’s release explores “the relationships between mid-century architecture, consumerism and community” and like Jonathan “the gradual or sometimes brutal removal and change of places in the name of progress”. He talks about how the arrival of shopping centres was not dissimilar to Christians building on pagan sites and how the purpose was similar - the buildings were either made to pray in or for worship at the alter of retail. Really interesting stuff. David’s work feels kind of Kraftwerkian, see the warm bass-y chords and the bright melodies on opener ‘Arndale (Part 1)’, and at the same time quite loungey too, see ‘Arndale (Part 2) Back Patches’. Lounge Kraftwerk. Now there’s a genre I’d like to see more of.
Last but not least comes Xqui & Dogs Versus Shadows who serve up the most avant-garde offering, as you might expect. Their ‘Dwell Time’ is described as a “lively, Dada-esque spree through the earthly delights of shopping mall muzak and consumer theory”. Just reading that makes you want to listen, right? ‘Dwell Time’, they explain, is the length of time a shopper spends in a shopping centre and is obviously a key metric for those trying to flog them stuff. Like on ‘Music For Space Age Shopping’, there’s plenty of Arndale love, like on the swirly ‘Arndale Dawn’, the backwards-y squelch of ‘Arndale Dreams’, which is actually quite nightmarish, and the mangled tape loopisms of ‘Arndale Hopes (Shattered)’.
It’s such an interesting take to have three (very different) releases dealing with the same subject matter. Could it be a trend? I don’t expect to see a let up in music about buildings anytime soon and 2025 could well be the year when we see dancing to architecture go large. Never has it seemed more popular.
GOOD STUFF #5
GAZELLE TWIN ‘Shadow Dogs’ (Invada)
As a general rule of thumb, best not ignore Gazelle Twin when she releases anything. Here Elizabeth Bernholz arrives with a remix album, a rethinking of last year’s ‘Black Dog’ long-player. It’s always interesting to read down the list of remixers. Sure, not everyone you ask is going to say yes, but it always gives a good indication of the company someone is keeping. The rolecall here is more interesting than most, as you would expect. There’s an outing for BEAK>, unsurprising seeing as they run the label this is released on, there’s Keely Forsyth, Marta Salogni and Penelope Trappes, all three immediate contemporaries and great choices. Sealionwoman are folk/jazz duo double bass player Tye McGivern and vocalist Kitty Whitelaw, which is pure Gazelle Twin. There’s a Gary Numan remix, which you’d guess is a swap for her appearing on ‘Intruder’ and her remix of his track ‘We Are Lost’, which leaves the film director and composer Mark Jenkin, Elizabeth is a big fan of the atmosphere created in films like ‘Bait’ and ‘Enys Men’. I’m probably overthinking this, but remix albums are so interesting! The connections and why certain people are chosen is very revealing. The set gets more interesting the further you get into it. The Mark Jenkin mix is fantastic, proper wonky arthouse stuff, just like his films. And amazingly good too, again like his films. His take on ‘Sweet Dream’ sounds like a broken music box, or at least a broken turntable being played in a barn a couple of fields away. Great stuff. Sealionwoman’s version of ‘This House’ is terrific too, adding their own vocal over a rasping Portishead-y backing, while the brilliant Penelope Trappes is the perhaps the star turn here with the drone-fuelled choral shimmer of ‘Author Of You’. It’s Gazelle Twin, and even when it isn’t, what’s not to like?
THE HANDY ROUND UP
As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been chasing my tail for the last few weeks and I’ve got a bit of a pile up of releases that deserve mention. As this is the last review-driven mailout of the year, let’s rattle through as much stuff as I can so no one feels left out.
There’s a couple of cracking EPs that need mentioning. First up is Black Hill Transmissions, Scottish Scotland-based Mark Scanlon who we’ve featured before. He had a great boxset, ‘Transmission #3’, out this time last year. It contained an album, a zine, postcard and a bootleg cassette. Do check it out on his Bandcamp. There are actually a few left. Well worth investing in. His Bandcamp page says “cut & paste, heavy grooves, dub, noise, DIY” and his forthcoming ‘Versions EP’ is from the heavy grooves/dub department. The mellow bassline and ‘Twin Peaks’-y twang of opener ‘Last Walk To Blind Lake’ is very nice, the epic ‘Money Eats’ is something you’d expect to find on Polytechnic Youth offshoot Deep Distance such is its locked-down groove that is sent sprawling over 12 minutes. ‘Hannah Hoch Sez’ is the most song-like piece here, it sounds kind of like a louche late-night jam, lots of echo, repeating guitar lines and a deep bass rumble, while closer ‘Ruins’ is a deeply dark synthy grindhouse sort of thing. It’s all very decent and comes mastered by one Gordon Chapman-Fox who is a long-time friend of Mark’s. Having people like that behind you does no harm at all. Mark isn’t what you’d call prolific, but you hope there’s going to be more regular communications from Black Hill Transmissions in 2025. It’d be good to feel the quantity and the quality.
blackhilltransmissions.bandcamp.com
Next up comes the first in a new zine series from Lisbon’s always inventive Russian Library label. First out of the traps is Retep Folo (feat. Dorothy Moskowitz and Hudson “Boom” Persson). Retep Folo is Swedish artist Peter Olof Fransson whose work you may know from releases on Buried Treasure, Clay Pipe and WIAIWYA. He’s also The Owl Report, which is a great name, but no full releases as yet. The physical release of this is very limited coming on reel-to-reel 1/4-inch tape (edition of seven), a seven-inch lathe-cut (edition of 30) and a seven-inch and tote bag (edition of five). Unsurprisingly they all sold out before I’d even finished typing. Both tracks are deliciously weird. ‘The Occupation Of Your Brain’ is a mangled sound piece that repeats the title over and over while electronics simmer away underneath. The flip ‘Supernova’ is a rather nice haunting lounge smoocher that sounds like its beaming in from a parallel world. The zine has pictures selected by the artist and design by the label’s João Paulo Daniel who is knows the value of a Benday dot. Nice work.
russianlibrary.bandcamp.com
We’ve already talked at about Jonathan Sharp, but there’s a new offering from The Heartwood Institute courtesy of Bernard Grancher’s excellent Rouen-based Astra Solaria label that can’t be ignored. ‘Forgotten Futures’ comes with scant information, other than it was recorded winter 2023-spring 2024 with a note saying “Debt of gratitude owed to Mr Ballard and Mr Moorcock”. The track titles are all London-based, ‘Westway’, King’s Cross Road’… and come with dialogue about the perils of inner city living, which seem to point at dystopian fiction of the aforementioned, maybe? And then there’s a few more specific titles, like ‘Martello Street’, which was home to Throbbing Gristle’s Death Factory HQ. The track is quite industrial. There’s the briskly tuneful ‘Clanricarde Gardens’, which is a well-to-do street in Notting Hill where in one of the fancy houses John Lennon apparently smoked his first spliff. The closer, ‘The Battle For Powis Square’ seems like a good clue. It’s a 1975 film about the residence’s fight with Kensington and Chelsea Council to get access to an overgrown, underused square open to the public. Lots of dots need joining there. And more council business being explored by Jonathan. Anyone else got any theories?
astrasolariarecordings.bandcamp.com
A Lo Recordings double bill that bolsters their excellent Spaciousness ambient cassette series by two. The first, Francis Morning’s ‘Subtle Bodies’, comes mastered by Alex Gold at quiet details studio, which makes it essential listening. Francis is a US-based sound artist whose work throws up lots of talk about “contemplation of inner channels”, “mindfulness” and “moments of introspection”. It’s one of those lovely peaceful early morning records that embraces “piano melodies buried under layers of tape hiss, meandering sine wave bass notes, and expansive ambient textures”. Very nice. The second release is from label big wig Jon Tye’s deep-listening ambient project Ocean Moon Group, which features Jon on “electronic manipulation” the “string theory” of Jack Amor and the “visualisation” Graham Guy-Robinson. ‘Call For Peace’ came together last month when OMG (ha!) along with friends Ricky Romain and Paul Chivers met up to create “a message of peace”. At its heart is ‘Call For Peace - Part One’ and ‘Call For Peace - Part Two’, which offer up over 40 minutes of ambient loveliness, and there’s a couple of single mixes for those with who prefer things pop song length. I’ve had the full-length versions on several times this week, it they are very, very mellow. All money generated by this project goes to healpalestine.org
lorecordings.bandcamp.com
The hits just keep on coming from pals over the pond at Past Inside The Present. Nitechord’s ‘Lume’ is the latest in a long of crackers the label has delivered this year. Nitechord are a mysterious outfit, the label describe them as an “intercontinental ambient-tech duo” who so far have released just two remixes. This debut, say the label, “extols the calm and mystery of the night through mid-tempo pulses and shadowy whispers”. The story goes they sent an anonymous demo to PITP HQ with no information other than a four-line stanza (a quatrain, apparently) that read:
“We hope
there is room enough
in your world
for this work”
“Those original recordings,” say the label, “were so captivating in their raw form that they are issued here essentially untouched, other than by the mastering work of James Bernard at Ambient Mountain House.” It’s a great story and the work is indeed captivating. It’s unusual sounding and takes a little while to tune. It’s beat-driven, but fuelled by ambient drones. It’d work without the beats, which sit right back in the mix, but the work is really striking because of them. The opener, ‘Reflect’, introduces you to the huge-sounding whomp-whomp bass drum that permeates throughout. There’s several places where the drums drops out leaving the drone alone in such lovely long fade outs. Quite often, like on ‘Dim’, the drone is so upfront it sounds like you’re catching the remnants of a rave going on in nearby. It is most enjoyable.
pitp.bandcamp.com
Three to go and I can sleep happily in the knowledge I’ve cleared my pile for 2024! First up there’s Norman McLaren ‘Rythmetic: The Compositions Of Norman McLaren’ (Phantom Limb). Norman was a pioneering Scottish/Canadian animator who also made his own soundtracks between the 1940s and 1970s. He was described as the first electronic musician. His work is superb. Really playful and yet, at the same time, clearly trailblazing. This release sees that work released in a new career-spanning retrospective for the first time.
phantomlimblabel.bandcamp.com
From Russian label ТОПОТ Ʇ TOPOT comes ‘Dobrozlo (Complete Edition)’, a 10th anniversary reissue of the debut album by ADMI Ensemble Of Toy Musical Instruments. You have to love people who can make this kind of quality work with “multi-coloured battery-powered synthesizers, talking alphabets, plastic xylophones in the form of an elephant, walkie-talkies, toy drums, plush radio and other sounding toys with diminutive and affectionate characteristics”. But this isn’t mucking around, as the notes say “the musicians play them quite maturely”. Indeed, ‘Lullaby / Колыбельная’ sounds like Kraftwerk on steroids. It’s seriously impressive stuff.
tawpot.bandcamp.com
It’s been a while since I’ve caught up with Michael C Coldwell’s Crooked Acres label. ‘The Jettison OST’ is the soundtrack to his film of the same name and also acts as a neat showcase of the talent at the label – Urban Exploration, Martyn Stonehouse’s Megalith Transport Network and Conflux Coldwell, which is Michael himself. The film looks great, the trailer starts with the line “Up until that day the machines had controlled everything”. You want to watch that eh? It’s a horror film about AI, made using AI, the download of the soundtrack contains a VIP link to the film.
crookedacres.bandcamp.com
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This is one of my favourite pieces I did for Melody Maker. The Dope Smugglaz were riding the crest of a wave in 2000. They’d released two great samplefest singles, ‘Grease’ homage ‘The Word’ and ‘Double Double Dutch’, which was, oh you know. For their third single they teamed up with Shaun Ryder and the late, great Howard Marks as the Dope Smugglaz Allstars for a cover of Donovan’s ‘Barabajagal’, which again was rather good. I don’t know what came first, but Shaun was at one point married to Oriole Leitch, Donovan’s daughter, and they have a daughter together.
In the Melody Maker death rattle years angles for features tended to be pretty literal. So if you had the most famous drug trafficker since Pablo Escobar and Shuan Ryder, known for his ability to put the drugs away, in the same room because they’ve made a single with a band called Dope Smugglaz, the feature was always going to have a drug-related theme.
The idea was we’d tackle some stoner wisdom with these fine members of society, you know, those conversations you had late at night after one bifter too many. I had a long list of questions and while Howard understood the premise and played along, Shaun was much more interested in his fried chicken and became increasingly irate as we went on. Which is fair, my line of questioning was quite annoying.
I know what you’re thinking. Yes, spliff after spiff made their way round the room during the interview. The photographer was my great pal Brian Sweeney, and both of us were as stoned as goats by the time we’d done. So much so that when we emerged from venue onto a rather busy Charing Cross Road, the hustle and bustle was all a little too much so we immediately disappeared into a bar across the road, found a dark, quiet corner and spent a good couple of hours waiting for ourselves to level out a little. Howard Marks, it has to be said, smoked good shit. RIP sir.
This piece was first published in Melody Maker in July 2000.
THERE are some moments in life when you have to take a good look around. Some moments that hurt when you pinch yourself because, in fact, they are real. And they shouldn’t be.
You join us late one afternoon in London’s Borderline venue. Sat around the table is the world’s most affable ex-drug smuggla, the velvet-voiced Mr Howard Marks. Opposite, Mr Shaun Ryder, who needs no introduction. Together with Timmy Christmas, Keith Binner and Chico Ijomanta, they are known as the Dope Smugglaz Allstars.
If you could drink the irony, no-one would be thirsty today.
WITH two fine singles - a disco version of the “Grease” theme and the equally satisfying “Double Double Dutch” - already tucked neatly away, Dope Smugglaz’ new single (another cover, this time of 60s psychedelic folker Donovan’s ‘Barabajagal’) is further proof that we’re in the presence of a musical time bomb ticking down its final few seconds.
So today we’re putting Dope Smugglaz on hold. You’ll be hearing plenty about them in their own right over the next few months. Today, the collected Allstars, who’ve just finished shooting the video for said single, is too good an opportunity to waste. Too many of those late night questions prompted by one chubby too many to answer. We pinch ourselves once again. It still hurts.
“We don’t deliberate existentialism and stuff round our way when we’re high,” begins Timmy. “We just Sellotape things to our head.”
We already regret the next question.
“We had this mate,” explains Timmy, “who was open to suggestion when he was high so we’d see how many things we could Sellotape to his head. He’d have this massive Mekon head made out of chicken carcasses and telephones and footballs and rollerskates with his little face just peeking out of the bottom. Then we’d make him go to the shop and buy. . .”
More Selloptape?
“A Wispa. We’d make him go to the garage and say [whispers] ‘Can I have a Wispa’ with this massive Mekon head.”
Now where? Home? Or do we tackle the mysteries of life along with the huge bucket of fried chicken Shaun’s just appeared with?
“It sounds like an extremely ambitious project,” shrugs Mr Marks, “but we’ll give it a go.”
WITH SO MANY RELIGIONS, WHICH ONE IS RIGHT? IF YOU DON’T FOLLOW IT, DO YOU NOT GO TO HEAVEN?
Howard Marks: “Shall I start? Not all religions have Heaven. For example, the native American religion doesn’t have a Hell, as such, so universally it wouldn’t be the case that believing in one religion rather than another would prevent you from going into Heaven. As regards which one is right, I suppose you would have to examine if they are internally consistent with each other. Maybe there’s not actually any conflict between any one religion and another merely in its interpretation.”
MM: So why are most wars religious?
HM: “Most peaces are too. Most things are religious. Some tend to use religion for odd things, for example, the church has used it to gain power. There’s been an abuse of religion, but that doesn’t mean religion is a bad thing. Some people even abuse drugs.”
Timmy Christmas: “Never.”
HM: “No, honestly.”
IF EVERYONE WANTS WORLD PEACE, WHY DOESN’T IT HAPPEN?
HM: “Too many religions.”
SR: “[Spluttering on his chicken] There’s too much money involved in it not being peaceful.”
HM: “Peace and prosperity to the arms industry.”
MM: But what if there wasn’t an arms industry?
HM: “There’d be much more peace.”
Chico Ijomanta: “And we’d be armless… hurhurhur.”
IF UFOS AND ALIENS EXIST…
Shaun Ryder: “Them wings are double spicy if you want to try one, H.”
… THEN WHY HAVEN’T WE ALL SEEN THEM?
HM: “Well, UFOs obviously exist…”
SR: “[Incredulously] Have you ever seen my dick? Doesn’t mean it’s not there does it?”
HM: “UFOs obviously exist by definition, otherwise they’d be identified. There must be some flying objects that haven’t been identified.”
TC: “Beginning the way you identify something as unidentified, you can’t go wrong. It’s like the imaginary Mr Howard Marks.”
HM: “Hm, does he exist? Or is he part of your imagination?”
SHOULD WE TAKE IT FOR GRANTED THAT MAN WALKED ON THE MOON?
HM: “It’s probably not important if we did or not. I was around when they f***ing landed on the Moon and it was rather odd. All I remember was seeing them playing golf. If you’re trying to convince the public, you wouldn’t do it by playing golf on the Moon.”
SR: “If you think about the technology that we know we’ve got today, at this minute, me and two pals who are really good at putting shit together could probably get us up to the f***ing Moon anyway.”
HM: “But you wouldn’t go would you? It’d be like Bognor or Weymouth, f***ing boring.”
TC: “No atmosphere, hurhurhurhur.”
ARE THERE OTHER UNIVERSES BEYOND OUR OWN?
SR: “Course there is [getting highly annoyed], f***ing hell, kid. You’re pretty ignorant to think there aren’t.”
MM: I don’t. Some people do.
HM: “It depends on how you define a universe.”
TC: “In Leeds when there was stone age man, people used to think Bradford was a bit of a scary, crazy, imaginary parallel universe.”
[Silence]
SR: “[Offering huge bucket of chicken] Do you want one of them, H?”
HM: What is it? Chicken? Is it good?”
SR: “Yeah, it’s very hot.”
TC: “Nobody ever thought we’d go the Moon, but eventually we found out we could, same with universes. We’re always discovering something we didn’t know about. We need a void out there or we just can’t handle it. You know the unified field theory? Before the Big Bang there was 37 different fields and after the Big Bang, God’s sat there going ‘I remember when everything round here was just fields’.”
[Silence].
WHY DOES TIME APPEAR TO GO FASTER OR SLOWER WHEN WE KNOW IT TO BE CONSTANT?
SR: “[Loud sigh] It’s just your perspective, the way you look at it and feel it. It is constant otherwise we wouldn’t be like we are right at this f***ing minute. It’s the way each individual feels time.”
HM: “It may actually be going backwards. The world may actually start as a decaying f***ing nuclear waste ground and end up as the Garden Of Eden. It would make more sense for it to begin as a bag of decaying bones and end up as a perfect new-born baby. We’re just looking out of the back window rather than the front. Our memory of the future tells us the dinosaurs are before us, but actually that’s what’s happening next. The world will get less and less populated and it’ll end up with Adam and Eve having a good shag.”
MM: And that’ll be the end of the world?
HM: “The beginning actually, but I know what you mean.”
MM: So the beginning and the end?
HM: “No. Not at the same time, of course.”
MM: Of course…
SR: “You sure you don’t want any of this, H?”
HM: “No, I’m alright thanks, Shaun.”
IF YOU ARE PARANOID HOW DO YOU KNOW IF THEY’RE REALLY AFTER YOU?
HM: “I’ve no idea. I know them all now.”
CI: “Just because you’re not paranoid it doesn’t mean they not after you.”
HOW DO BOATS FLOAT AND PLANES FLY?
HM: “Although I understand how planes fly - Bernoulli’s principal, all that kind of shit - I sometimes wonder how the f*** can something that heavy fly.”
MM: How does it?
HM: “If you’re going in a car and you put your hand out of the window and just tilt your hand, it is impossible to keep it down, you notice the lift. That’s the only f***ing comfort I get in a great big steel tube.”
MM: Why do they weight baggage but not people?
HM: “They can tell the weight, they know what they’re flying with. The first resistance of the fields is the function of the weight; the function of the mass of the thing.”
MM: So they have to wait until the plane gets off the ground to know how much the thing weighs?
HM: “No, just until they’re moving. That movement depends on the mass of the object, then they’re able to calculate whether there’s too many fat ladies on board. Obviously, any f***ing idiot could see if there was 300 fat ladies on the plane. It’s also much easier to discriminate against fat luggage than it is fat ladies.”
TC: “Is that the old bag theory?”
DOES THE SAME THEORY EXIST FOR BOATS? STUFF IT WITH FAT LADIES AND IT’LL SINK.
HM: “You see, a boat will float, Archimedes’ principal, a plane won’t float. In order to stay in the air you need the forward momentum. With a boat it’s just a matter of how much water you displace.”
SR: “[Highly annoyed] You could think that about your f***ing legs man because I don’t know how they work. If you were bothered about all this you’d be f***ed anyway, you just use these things out of necessity, don’t worry about it.”
MM: I’m not, but people do.
SR: [snorts loudly] “They should f***ing worry about some other stuff.”
MM: Why do people worry?
TC: “I don’t know, I’ve been worried about that.”
HM: “There’s just part of the brain which has to worry. It depends on what things you worry about. We all worry, we just worry about different things.”
MM: If there’s nothing you can ultimately do about it, what’s the point?
HM: “We often do things there isn’t any purpose in doing.”
MM: Why?
[Sound of SR exploding].
HM: “A badly administered mixture of instinct, genetic programming and hedonisism, I guess. And being f***ing forced and pressured to do all sorts of f***ing things you do in normal life, [also becoming increasing frustrated] come on.”
TRAINS, RIGHT.
HM: “I know what’s coming next.”
WHEN YOU’RE TRAVELLING AT 100 MPH AND THERE’S A FLY IN THE CARRIAGE, WHY WHEN IT TAKES OFF DOESN’T IT JUST GET SPLATTERED?
HM: “[Letting out a weary sigh] Because it’s already going at the same forward movement as that of the train. It’s not changing its movement in any way. Therefore there’s nothing to decelerate. Nothing to slow it down.”
MM: We knew that.
HM: “I know you did.”
MM: Just checking
[Heave on huge joint. Turn green. Keel over].
A MESSAGE FROM THE MOTHERSHIP
***MOONBUILDING ISSUE 5 IS OUT NOW***
Bloody hell! Will you look at that? MOONBUILDING, Issue 5, is a scorcher. On the cover, depicted by the untouchable Nick Taylor, is the awesome Polypores. In our free-wheeling chat we get right under the hood of Stephen James Buckley’s musical operation, offer up a listening guide to help you safely navigate his extensive back catalogue and we also have an whole new Polypores album exclusively for your ears.
Yes, we are giving you a not-available-anywhere-else new album called ‘The Album I Would Have Released In An Alternate Universe’, which happens to be the sister recording to his recent Castles In Space opus ‘There Are Other Worlds’.
Want to try before you buy? No bother. If you’d like an extract from our Polypores cover feature interview where Stephen Buckley talks about his formative influences, which probably aren’t what you’d image, you can do that here… moonbuilding.substack.com/p/issue-28a-26-july-2024
Elsewhere in the issue there’s a profile of our new favourite label Mortality Tables, Pye Corner Audio gets in on the There’s A First Time For Everything act, we round up an absolute mountain of recent releases and serve up our thoughts on the best albums from the last few months, including Loula Yorke and Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan. There’s a column from The Orb’s Alex Paterson, which starts off about Jah Wobble and ends up about Andrew Weatherall, and an all-new instalment of Steven Appleby’s brilliant Captain Star cartoon strip.
This issue also features a pile of great book reviews (that’s great books, reviewed, rather than the reviews being great, although they are pretty good). There’s a cracking chat with Justin Patrick Moore, the author of ‘The Radio Phonic Laboratory’, and a bonus chinwag with the world’s finest music journalist, Mr Simon Reynolds.
The virtual shop doors are open at moonbuilding.bandcamp.com for your purchasing pleasure. This magazine ain’t going to buy itself.
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