THE WARDROBE
(Andrew Liles & Tony Wakeford)

"A SANDWICH SHORT"

Special Guest John Murphy appears on *
Helen and Alice Potter appear on $

TRACK LISTING
.Wednesday
.A Horse with One Leg
.Another Drink? *
.With Pessimistic Optimism
.Lucifer Before Sunrise $
.10mg of Diazepam
.Crow Funeral (Terry and Dave Emigrate to Benidorm)
.Rural Murders
.In Defence of Shoplifting
.The Poor Broken Boy
.A Sandwich Short
.Yesterday Was Years Ago
.Lysergic Eiderdown
.Wednesday (Again) *

REVIEWS

Michael J. Salo on 8 November 2006

One of my favorite albums of '05 was the first Tony Wakeford & Andrew Liles collaboration as The Wardrobe titled 'Cups in Cupboard', which I felt to be an evocative blend of folk-noir acoustics and strange electronic accompaniment. That one was a tiny edition of 500, and a number of them were lost en route across the Atlantic so it's even less. A real rarity if you have one.
'Cups' remains deleted but now we are presented a
new album from this curious duo.
This yankee can be a little slow to keep up with those zany Brits and their vast arsenal of witty expressions, so the first task at hand was to look up the title, 'A Sandwich Short'. OK, this expression means "lacking in intelligence."
The absurd choice of a title carries on something of a tradition for Wakeford's most avant garde releases, going back to 'Revenge of the Selfish Shellfish' with Steven Stapleton (designed to be a "totally stupid" project, according to Stapleton in 'England's Hidden Reverse').
The silly spirit is further represented by the giant sandwich appearing on the back cover art ­ probably not a romantic enough image for say, a Sol Invictus album.
Despite the lighthearted side to the proceedings there's always been much beauty to be found in Wakeford's experimental efforts, and this album begins with a piano led piece that continues in the vein of the dark romantic, filmic qualities of 'Cups'.
From there, 'Sandwich' starts getting weirder and more sinister. Where 'Cups' maintained a relatively consistent vibe, 'Sandwich' is better described as being made up of many different parts, each track having its own odd character. The acoustic instrumentation and electronic sounds change with every track, dabbling in everything from accordian to didgeridoo.
Despite the varied musical approach there's a particular atmosphere of menace that stays through this album. There are a number of dramatic peaks in the music, contrasting with the consistently mellow
'Cups'.
The foremost peak of the album is surely the remake of "Lucifer Before Sunrise," originally by Wakeford & Stapleton. It's years since I heard the original, I don't recall exactly what it sounded like, but here it is just the most delightfully Satanic track, its misanthropic lyrics made specially potent by being delivered by the sweet young lasses, Helen & Alice Potter. A brilliant idea.
It's hard to say for certain but my impression is the overall composition of this album is heavy on the Andrew Liles influence, where the previous release feels more like it's led by Wakeford and accompanied by Liles.
In summary, 'Sandwich' ranks as perhaps the weirdest album Tony Wakeford has ever released, and it even comes out on the weird side for Andrew Liles.
Everyone who enjoyed 'Cups in Cupboard' should surely pick this up to hear where they've taken the project next. Everybody else who enjoys their folk noir with a touch of sonic madness should also have a listen, along with anyone who happens to like their surreal electronics with a dash of real acoustics and some good old Satanism thrown in for fun.

BRAINWASHED
Written by Jonathan Dean
Monday, 27 November 2006

It is nice to know that there are still people out there with very strange ideas, sufficiently demonstrated by this album, the second collaborative effort from Tony Wakeford and Andrew Liles. However, in a world in which Nurse With Wound is working on a HipHop album, and David Tibet is both a professed Christian and a cabinet member of the OTO, perhaps the word "strange" needs to be redefined.
For their second outing as The Wardrobe, Liles and Wakeford redefine the parameters of strangeness with an album that marries lovely, emotive, nostalgic instrumentals to the shudders and creaks of old Victoriana. More often than not, the songs meander and drift through the cobwebby attics of old English country houses, the eerie and insistent presence of memory creating an uncanny atmosphere that fairly sparks with ghostly electricity. Eerie electrical portals to other worlds are found amidst the creaking floorboards and old, out-of-tune pianos, dusty guitars and rusty accordions. Without warning, atmospheric melodies are overtaken by the free play of the unconscious, eccentric intrusions from out of the ether, snatches of warped dialogue, wobbly old 78s or incongruous sound effects suites pop in and out with a refreshing absence of logic.
Whereas the title of Cups in Cupboard, the duo's first album, signified a measured appropriateness—cups in the cupboard, everything in its right place—the title of this sophomore album suggests incompleteness, lunacy and lame-brained-ness: "She's a few sandwiches short of a picnic, that one." Apropos of this contrast in title, the new album is not as pleasing and tuneful as that first album, preferring instead to push out the boundaries of discomfort, finding ever newer ways to subtly dislocate the listener in time and space. While the opening piano dirge "Wednesday" seems to start off in the same general ballpark as Cups, it soon descends into an eerie, droning netherworld, with a tinkling counter-melody that constantly threatens to derail the funereal proceedings. Everything finally digresses into buzzing electric insectoid oblivion, a miasma of withering 19th century parlor music, like watching a Merchant Ivory film on acid.
Things only get wackier from this point with the whimsically ramshackle "Horse With One Leg" and the heavily intoxicated, messily percussive strains of "Another Drink?". "Lucifer Before Sunrise" will be the most pleasurable track for old-school Nurse With Wound fans, a reworking of a track that originally appeared on Stapleton and Wakeford's sole collaboration The Revenge of the Selfish Shellfish. This time, the deeply weird crypto-Satanic text is read aloud by Colin Potter's daughters (internal rhyme unintentional), as skeletal guitar figures are licked by crackling flames. The Potter girls' spooky voices are twisted and mutated, scattered around the stereo channels, before being joined by Wakeford's morbid, gravelly vocals, so familiar from well-worn Sol Invictus records from the past two decades. Everything you loved about the English underground esoteric music scene, all in the span of five minutes.
Since Current 93 and Nurse With Wound have apparently decided to take permanent vacations from these kinds of fucked gothic sound experiments, it's nice to hear the flag still being carried by Liles and Wakeford. A Sandwich Short is the perfect mix of disarming melodies and outre electronic textures, with lots of delightfully menacing moments of plain, old-fashioned sinister whimsy.

LUNAR HYPNOSIS
The Wardrobe is a collaboration between Andrew Liles and Tony Wakeford. Andrew who is a long running electronic/experimental composer has worked with such artists as Bass Communion, Hafler Trio, Steven Stapleton, and Karl Blake to name but a few, while Tony Wakeford is of course the mastermind behind Sol Invictus, L’Orchestre Noir, and as well many other projects.
I’d have to say my initial reaction to this record was a weird one. As I pulled the CD out of the envelope my eyes meet with the picture of the sandwich that graces the back cover of the album and then flipped it over to see the weird cover image of a doll. I couldn’t help but chuckle a little more when I opened the booklet and seen the picture of two very unenthusiastic men, one of which, Mr. Wakeford was sitting down with a gigantic fish in hand.
‘A Sandwich Short,’ which means lacking in intelligence is the second album released by this duo, while the first and now deleted ‘Cups in Cupboard’ was released last year. I unfortunately missed this album so I really don’t know if this album bares similarities to the debut or to Andrews’s normal music. One thing for sure though is that this isn’t really the usually thing from Tony.
Musically now The Wardrobe offers up an assortment of acoustic guitars, ambiance, electronics, neo classical elements, cabaret music, experimentation, and besides that just a lot of weirdness. There isn’t any sort of actual genre classification you can file this under as everything is quite random and unexpected. Vocals are nearly completely absent from the recording with the exception of some narration on the song ‘Lucifer Before Sunrise’ by Helen and Alice Potter who are the daughters of Colin Potter. This particular song is also a cover of sorts as it was originally a song made by Tony and Steven Stapleton several years ago. There are other vocal appearances on the album, but I believe they are just samples, but they may also be Andrew speaking.
Each track definitely has their own identity to them. Some are piano based songs, while others feature ambiance and neo classical sounds merging together, a few are acoustic dirges, but a lot of them are just odd and experimental and probably are closest sounding to Nurse With Wound. The album carries a lot of sentiments too; creepy, ominous, melancholic, silly, and just plain indescribable.
In one hand I’m really enjoying the album, but due to its diversity it really is a tough listen. However there are some very enjoyable moments here and there and I can honestly say I’ll come back to this album from time to time to see if it starts to click into place better.
November 14, 2006
By JJM