Little Nobody - Solid Gold Collectibles and Then Some

Year: 1997/98
Label: iF?
Genre: Electronica, Hip Hop, Jungle, House

The Jim Jarmusch retrospective on SBS this month has reminded me just how much influence Dead Man had on shaping my adolescent perception of the world. It gave me an existential netherworld through which I could escape the struggles of high school, puberty and teen angst. What greater gift can culture give us but a complete and completely pervasive world in which to escape and dream?

I think Andrez Bergen understands this concept. He's an Australian ex-pat, originally based in Melbourne, now living in Japan I believe. As Little Nobody he released this collection of tracks on his own if? imprint in the late nineties. It was clearly a self-released affair. The artwork for this baby is nothing more than a colour photocopy. And, as a self-released and therefore somewhat obscure album it also flew under the radar of copyright infringement issues, as it samples from a number of pre-existing sources, including Jarmusch's Dead Man. That was what hooked me on this record.

The first part of this album is (I believe) lifted from an EP of the same name - the rest are tracks from Little Nobody's debut album Pop Tarts. There's a distinct difference between the material that comprises each. The first part was the part I fell in love with. Back when I picked this up I was only just starting to get into electronic music via the indie-crossover of the trip hop sound and a friend who was into techno. The first five tracks here are sample heavy excursions into dreamy hip hop - heavy on atmosphere thanks to their liberal use of film samples. Over blunted beats Bergen throws minimal melodies, ambient textures and some of my favourite movie quotes. I loved the fact that I recognised the samples from Dead Man, with Gary Farmer whispering "Nobody will observe" on the track Nobody's Driving perfectly capping off a broken instrumental hip hop piece. Elsewhere Johnny Depp is sampled in Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, and there's a chopper sound that I liked to think was taken from Short Cuts - another favourite at the time.

The second track, entitled Old School Gangsta Slap features an extended poem from an unidentified source (I still have no idea where it's from). Over a dreamy, nay, downright gorgeous ambient synth texture comes a distant voice intoning the words:

Its a voice from heaven while I'm riding down the freeway
He say that gangsta sound is dead and gone
He say that nasty groove is something to prove
That getting your face and leaving an angry taste
Get you up in arms about the disgrace and make you shake it all over the place
He say that's been here and now it's gone
It's time for the wise to move on
He talking bout some new kinda sound with a different view
We used a hammer, a golf club will do
If the machine gun lyrics just fire blanks
Get out of the trenches - put on those pink checkered pants
He say it don't matter what you say, it's what they see that'll win the day
They change your name from six to four
You'll win the game if you knew much more

For me this piece (which I suspect is yet another film sample) predates the likes of Saul Williams, Kool Keith or MF Doom and their anti-gangsta rapping styles. There's something deeply aspirational and soulful about that piece. Something that tapped into my adolescent yearning to transcend my situation, to ascend to some new form of consciousness, some new way of being, of existing. Even though it was clearly about black gangsta culture, as a middle class white kid I could relate to its plea for cultural and social evolution. There's that existential, metaphysical stuff again. It was what I needed at the time, and listening to it now it brings back the loneliness, the self-reliance and the melancholy that comes with figuring out your place in the world.

As the album moves past its initial hip hop indulgence it veers into almost every other form of electronic dance music of note in the mid nineties - big beat, house, trance, drum'n'bass - it was almost a grab bag of styles - an attempt to cover all the bases. Around track nine the sound moves into dubbier, trancier territory - riding heavier, faster grooves for more sustained periods. For the most part these tracks bored me at the time, and listening to it again the whole thing has dated slightly. The foray into jungle, entitled ... and more still carries a distinct atmosphere that I'm fond of, but for me this collection was all about that dreamy, blurry, trippy first section.

As a streamlined investigation of hip hop sonics and cinematmospherics, Little Nobody, through the use of a cleverly chosen mystery sample, and a bunch I knew and loved, captured my imagination and offered me dreamy, cascading sonic respite from the dramas of adolescence. Bless him for that.

Wooden Fische - Syphons

Year: 1995
Label: Independent (no label mentioned, cataloged vat 37)
Genre: Art-Rock, Indie Rock, Post-Punk

I know very little about Wooden Fische. They were on the Perth scene before I was old enough to go to licensed gigs, and I've heard nothing about them from anyone I've ever spoken to in the scene. From what I've managed to glean from the occasional google search and O's myspace page they were part of the Jacuzzi International crew, which was a bunch of local bands from the early to mid nineties (including Bluetile Lounge, O and Yummy Fur) who used to play shows at the Grosvenor and have parties where they'd hang out in jacuzzis. That's about all I know... But what's funny is that although I have no knowledge of what this scene was all about, in my mind I've glorified it as this halcyon age of great local music where a collective vibe blossomed, many good times were had and that transitive, ephemeral je ne sais quoi that we (as musicians, music fans, people in a scene) search for in music and bands was somehow achieved by a select group of now ageing indie kids who used to be in bands.

Warwick picked this up at a Cash Converters around seven years ago, and when he got bored of it he gave it to me. I've treasured it ever since, because I really feel as though I've got a genuine piece of local music memorabilia here. It was pressed in 1995, when it was certainly rarer than it is now for local bands to get the money together to make a recording. Every band seems to have pro tools and a home studio these days, but this little gem takes me back to the pre-internet age, when media technology wasn't nearly as democratically accessible. The liner notes to this are all in Chicago - that generic Apple Macintosh font from the eighties and early nineties (see above), and the CD even has that now rather quaint 'Compact Disc' logo on it:

This EP was released the year I turned fourteen, which is about when I was starting to go out to local all-ages gigs at venues like Planet Nightclub (now the Dollhouse) and O2 (now a patch of lawn that's currently being redeveloped) - but the bands I was seeing were lightweight indie-pop bands like Jebediah and Beaverloop. In comparisson, the music on this EP is dark and intense - more visceral, and far more rewarding.

It's funny that Perth's been labelled as a haven for upbeat indie-pop bands, because there have also been a bunch of great - I would say world-class - bands doing something different, something awesome - something I relate to far more. More obscure, and in my opinion more interesting than your Eskimo Joes or Little Birdys, in a figurative sense bands like Tucker B's, Mukaizake and Adam Said Galore, for me, stem from this EP.

I see this as the precursor to those bands (especially Adam Said - there are the same angular minor key guitars, tight, propulsive rhythms and expressively imagistic yet off-the-cuff lyrics and vocal delivery). It's artiness is stooped in an Australianism - vocalist Chris Hann sing-speaks in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Mark Seymour's gruff, muscular, blokey delivery - but he has Seymour's sensitivity too, and his lyrics are just as poetic:

Give me one dollar and I'll get on a train
Gimme all your money and I'll call up a taxi
Stumbling out, of an angel's house

I probably shouldn't have made the allusion to Mark Seymour, cause you're probably thinking these guys sound like Hunter & Collectors, but they're way better. There's a terse post-punk angularity to the rhythms and dirty, almost-dischordant guitar work here. They're up-tempo, almost punky songs, that have a straight ahead-ness to them, and yet the guitars sound like they're kind of hanging off this big behemoth of driving rhythm, almost flapping in the wind and skipping and trilling alongside and around the edges. And then at times everything falls in together and drives through in moments of purposeful clarity and verve. I guess I get snippets of early Sonic Youth in some of these songs - the guitars have that gain-drenched mid-nineties "rock-end of indie rock" crunchiness to them that's gorgeous. What keeps me coming back to this record though are the melodies, the lyrics, and the songwriting - I think that's what keeps me coming back to many of my favourites. The songs twist and change subtly, darkly - like some organic/machine hybrid - they're never comfortable staying where they are - and the lyrics convey this tension and discontentment so well:

Put all the blood in the water
Tear the earth out of the sky
Make a wish
Tell me a lie

Hann's lyrics and his brooding/ranting delivery are pretty captivating. I really believe the emotion behind his voice. The visceral darkness and intensity of these songs is palpable - I believe they meant every note, every lyric, every beat. There's a dark mythos here that's heightened by the lack of information I have about it - by my inability to complete the story in my head. Who knows, maybe they were just a bunch of kids in a band who had fun playing shows and drinking their riders...

I don't know what happened to Wooden Fische. I assume they just broke up like every other band does. I don't know their story - this is all I have. There's an address in the artwork though - it's in Maylands. And there's a phone number too. Maybe one day I'll call it and see who picks up. Whoever it is I'm sure they'll never have heard of Wooden Fische. But what if? ...

Hello!

Hi. This blog is a venue for music criticism of various forms - it will generally feature posts about my favourite albums, or albums I am listening to that I believe require thoughtful investigation, but in future may branch out into general music-related posts.

As opposed to writing what I term "blanket" reviews, which seek to justify or analyse an album from a critical perspective, I will endeavour to write from a more personal, emotive stance that includes anecdotal material and my own subjective responses to a particular text. For this reason I don't believe this blog falls into the genre of traditional music criticism as it's not written for a general audience in a typical evaluative style, but works more from the heart in an effort to document my various musical obsessions.

Unlike other music-related blogs, I won't be including downloadable files of the albums I write about. My apologies - I don't have the file-hosting knowhow to do this, so all you're gonna get from me are rants/recollections/random commentaries and the like. Hopefully some of the stuff I write here will encourage others to seek out the subjects of my posts in some form or other.

The term "brachiating" is defined as " To move by swinging with the arms from one hold to another, as certain apes do." In this sense I hope that this blog will swing across genres, encompassing the variety of styles and musical approaches that I hold dear. I will endeavour to cover a wide range of albums across numerous genres, and will attempt to include as much of the trivial ephemera that clutters my head about a particular text as possible.

I hope you enjoy it!