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REVIEWS
The Representative of the Rubber People
Mother Goose winged it's way towards me and landed with a honk on my doorstep
this frosty morning. After wringing it's neck and plucking the down off
I stuck it in the oven at 190º and sat down to eat some Weetabix.
I've got a lot of Mr.Liles stuff and I must admit I have enjoyed listening
to most of his releases. But on Mother Goose our favourite Jeremy Clarkson
lookalike has totally exceeded my expectations. This one is definitely
his most beautiful release yet. From beginning to end the aural journey
takes the form of a ghost train ride of epic proportions encompassing
all the dark places a childs mind tends to inhabit. Sounding like a minty
breathed Uncle Monty, Lord Bath's excellently spoken nursery rhymes add
the seasoning here. More plummy than Edward Fox sucking a pebble. Steve
Stapleton may get the kudos for his releases in this territory but Mr.
Liles has provided a template here from which all of us can benefit....and
enjoy. A breath of fresh hair on the bald pate of dada. My opinion in
a cliche would be "From the sublime to the ridiculous..." but that does
not do Mother Goose justice. It is the perfect soundtrack for a mushroom
trip to Brighton Pavillion. If you listen closely you might hear some
seagulls here too and the Weetabix never tasted better.
"Georgie Porgie pudding & pie...
Kissed the girls and made them cry.
When the boys came out to play
He kissed them too, he was funny that way."
BRAINWASHED
Written by Lucas Schleicher
Wednesday, 25 January 2006
Little doubt can be cast upon the
fact that nursery rhymes are of a rather Grimm history. As innocent as
they may sound, the most unusual of subjects find their way into these
couplets and tales of misguided, punished, or otherwise confused youth.
Andrew Liles, with the help of Lord Bath and Thighpaulsandra collaborator
Sion Orgon, has recorded the audible equivalent of that awkward and dark
thread that plays inside the mind of every child's sleeping head.
Lord Bath is, so far as I can tell,
an English essayist, painter, poet, and intellect of aristocratic background.
His work covers everything from Kama Sutra and religion to speeches on
the importance of art to essays on world government, warfare, and punishment.
As such, his willingness to work with Andrew Liles makes a lot of sense.
Both artists exhibit a body of work as widely varied as it is perverse
and alluring. Mother Goose's Melody... is Liles' extension into the realm
of nursery rhymes. Using Lord Bath's background as a poet and speaker,
Liles employs him to perform various rhymes after which an accompanying
piece of music plays out the details of that rhyme. The result is a little
unsettling, exaggerating, or perhaps highlighting, the drama and terror
that some nursery rhymes keep hidden in their simple machinations. Though
Lord Bath and Liles may not employ any of these rhymes directly (such
as "ashes, ashes, we all fall down"), the line that they draw between
the words in the poetry and the music is too direct to ignore. Though
the music is often peaceful, Liles' now familiar and twisted perspective
often lurks just below the sweet melodies and synthetic dances. No matter
how appeasing the music may seem, there's always a sixth sense informing
me that a Victorian terror lay somewhere just below the surface.
Liles' familiarity with the ignored is more evident than ever on this
release. A interest in ventriloquism, animal surgery or testing, plant
life, and prosthetics all make their way into the song titles. More often
than not, the titles add a dimension of strangeness to the already odd
compositions and revel in the unusual synthesis generated. "Cannula Tubes
as Fine as Straw" is a lovely guitar piece that strolls lazily through
a hillside during the spring. The name of the song and the rhyme that
accompanies it, however, places a farmhouse in the distance with a dark
shed where animals stand, cannula sticking out of them in bizarre arrangements.
The trickle of water and the tearing sounds that appear in the song then
become appalling and the entire piece changes itself from a meditative
work into a song about pain or perhaps a song about a very confused maid.
The possibilities are endless as Liles has managed to paint sounds more
expertly than ever on this release. His compositions reflect eras, places,
ideas, and nightmares more keenly than on any of his other releases. Perhaps
it is the topic of this album that has made that possible; the deeply
ingrained memories of childhood mixing with Liles' love for the absurd,
the repulsive, and the unexplainable might be more inspirational than
any historical, theoretical, or geographic origin that Liles' has played
with before.
This album is far more listenable than Liles' last solo effort, the labyrinthine
New York Doll. The music is far more akin to the melodic and often emotional
My Long Accumulating Discontent. Where New York Doll harnessed its energy
in the fractured essence of its many samples and locations, Mother Goose's
Melody... finds all the power it needs in the atmospheres and songs Liles
has crafted. With that in mind, this recording has deepened a split in
Liles' output. On one hand there is the Andrew Liles that works intimately
with drone and natural instruments. He combines the two, uses them to
recall old places, forgotten ideas, and possibly to reveal a disturbing
underworld of subconscious desires and bottled up evil. On the other hand,
there is the Liles who plays with sounds and draws them all together with
a concept laid out before hand. New York Doll and Aural Anagram/Anal Aura
Gram fit this bill with the bulk of their sound being drawn from some
concept, instead of the other way around. What makes Mother Goose's Melody...
such a solid album is that Liles has allowed his influences to flow both
ways. That is to say, there isn't just a concept informing his music here,
the music is also informing the concept, perhaps simultaneously. That
not only strengthens the album's music, but it feeds the ideas behind
the recordings and makes them more intimate with the material everyone
hears. It makes drawing connections easier and more fun. In turn, the
record is more fun to listen to and twice as effective at convincing anybody
that this sound world is real and directly related to the one we live
in.
TOUCHING EXTREMES
Should you try to lull your baby to sleep by playing this record, be ready
for strange surprises when he'll be growing up as Andrew Liles has written
a series of warped melodies and droning songs, mixing them with more "traditional"
narration taken from classic children literature to hassle your aural
balance with this bunch of contrasting elements. Backward voices, animal
sounds, morphing synthesizer waves and guitars create a fabulous world
where nothing is like one could expect - and even when it is, there's
always a lurking fear of something suddenly coming out from nowhere to
change the rules of the game, therefore destroying every notion of comprehension
that our brain might have been memorizing during the process. Those who
follow Colin Potter's label will find their natural environment here,
although a little submerged by bubbling oleaginous waters; make no mistake
about it, this is not some sort of luxury joke for kids, instead it is
an album whose peculiar shape and delicious craftmanship will bewitch
you at first listen.
Massimo Ricci
QUIET
NOISE
Vorliegendes Album formiert sich aus knapp einem Dutzend lose zusammenhängender,
lebhafter Klangfragmente, welche als Tracks von moderater Spieldauer jeweils
zu Beginn eine exzentrisch-humorvolle narrative Einfassung oder Skizzierung
durch von Lord Bath rezitierte nursery rhymes, die man sich vielleicht
als in Richtung Abzählreime bastardierte Wiegenlieder vorstellen
darf, erfahren. So gesehen kreist »Mother Goose’s Melody …«
gelassen um eine Schubladisierung als Konzeptalbum und überrascht
als eine Art abseitig-eklektisches Ambient-Patchwork aus Field Recordings,
Drones und Loops, durch das sich überraschende Soundfragmente und
schüchterne Melodien in einer angedunkelten Atmosphäre pirschen.
Andrew Liles, unterstützt von Sion Orgon sowie dem bereits erwähnten
Lord Bath, präsentiert sich hier von seiner besten Seite, indem er
unter Berücksichtigung feiner Details großartige, fesselnde
Soundscapes, Humor und eine packende Atmosphäre einander näher
bringt. Denn trotz einer gewissen augenscheinlichen Divergenz oder auch,
aber nicht negativ: Zerissenheit legt die Musik niemals diesen faszinierenden
Duft zwischen unheimlich und verdreht ab. Und so gleicht das Hörerlebnis
einem vertagträumten Schweben durch eine Abfolge unsicherer Dämmerzustande,
einer Klangreise zwischen Kindheitserinnerungen, Déjà-vu und
Wegdriften, an die man sich danach nur noch fragmentarisch erinnern kann.
Was naturgemäß als Aufforderung zu wiederholten Aufenthalten
in diesen großartigen Soundscapes gelesen werden kann.
Tobias Bolt
THE
WIRE
The latest project from the fabulous Andrew Liles is dedicated to the
notion that nothing good ever happens in a nursery rhyme, even when enunciated
with such gleeful relish by guest narrator Alexander Thynn, the seventh
Marquess of Bath. Scratching kittens have to be placated, half-awake children
are left to wander around the town at night, and we all know about the
girl with the curl in the middle of her forehead. Aided in a couple of
places by Sion Orgon from Thighpaulsandra’s group, Liles takes his
time over teasing out the darker strands to be found woven into childhood’s
brighter moments, carefully stacking eerily sustained tones, desiccated
samples and disembodied voices against Lord Bath’s exuberant delivery.
The results feel like a compendium of forgotten folklore awaiting its
future.
PROGRESSIVE & PSYCHEDELIC MUSIC
This item surely has some classic narrative English literature
association with it, performed and written by Lord Bath, who has a really
pleasant and effective narrative voice. This voice-with-electronica brought
back in mind the contemporary electronic composer Paulin’s Oliveros
and her “Beautiful Soop”, and her recording from 1966 based
upon a text by Lewis Caroll (-an association I had before with Thighpaulsandra’s
2005 release-). The nursery rhyme poetry as well might have something
of an Alice in Wonderland world in them, as being told by Mother Goose
(who stands for a known symbol of a mother narrating fairytales to her
children), and as being part of a different dimension with a surreal reflection
of the harder to understand parts from the adult’s world, seen from
an innocent vision ; this vision might find many experienced communicative
situations surreal or at least incomprehensible or odd, or just makes
spontaneous humorous reactions. The experimental ambient music to it is
really beautiful and expresses its own world too of reflections. I already
mentioned Thighpaulsandra in the beginning of this review. It seemed that
Sion Orgon, from this group, collaborated here with extra instrumentation.
Part of the instrumentation is acoustic (double bass, guitar, and acoustic
sound mixes and loops). Some of the voice recordings are remixed backwards.
In total this sounds like a work of art that listens like a book with
music, with a sometimes relatively simple but always crafty and effective
body.
MUSIQUE MACHINE
Brighton based Andrew Liles has been releasing his own brand of surreal
sound collage for around ten years now. He has released a wide range of
Cd-Rs vinyl singles and full length albums, and Mother Goose Melody or
Sonnets for the Cradle is his latest.
The first interesting thing to note about this album is the presence of
the eccentric Alexander Thynn who happens to be the 7th Marquess of Bath.
His narration of various nursery rhymes throughout the album add an extra
element of the bizarre to an already surreal and curious collection.
The first track titled The Milky way seen through the Cripples Telescope
is a minimal affair that builds like much of Liles material from simple
tonal elements that create an uneasy droning miasma through which other
piece of sound fall through. There are hints of very creepy synthesizer
melody that emerge from the fog and have me thinking of those 70s horror
movies with Peter Cushing freaking everybody out with his endless stare.
T here seems to be a central theme of nursery rhymes, children’s
fantasies and other curiosities throughout the album. Safety in Numbers
begins with singing children and the Marquess of Bath before entering
into a crackling vinyl montage that brings to mind that cavernous depths
of The Caretakers ballroom nightmares. There is something fundamentally
unsettling about hearing this sort of forgotten old time music run through
the mill of modern technology. Voices from the past and all that.
Gilberts Potoroo has a similar undertow and augments the mood with more
low end drone electronics and plucking strings. Sounds of the netherworld
with Nurse with wound like tapings scrapings and what sounds like a cartoon
character madly running round in circles.
One Misty Moisty Morning is a purely tonal piece that at times sounds
like a number or organs playing in an old abandoned church. Slow chords
and creeping melodies that both lull the mind and unnerve the soul.
Cannula Tubes as fine as Straw is my stand out track from the album. Field
recordings and guitar are the primary sound sources and they mix to create
an atmosphere that draws you in, conjuring up images of lonely towns in
green fields and children playing in the sunshine. But if this sounds
all a bit idyllic be warned that the repetitive strums and sounds of water
hint of an impending danger and fear on the wind. Sion Orgon of Thighpaulsandras
band pops up on the more noisy Quivering Umbels and L314.00 (Floating),
where he sprinkles flecks of sound from the Audiomulch sound processing
software. The final track Mechanical Substitute for Arms is a long droning
tonal workout that leads the listener back to the surface after a trip
through a childlike underworld of dread and candy.
Much of what Liles does on this record can be compared to the work of
Steven Stapleton, Irr.App.(Ext) or others. But Liles certainly has his
own take on things. His fascination seems to be primarily with mood and
atmosphere rather than creating the most strange and complex mix of sounds
he can find. As a result this album has a direct simplicity to it that
gets into your head and is very difficult to remove once the music has
come to an end. A deeply unnerving record. - Duncan Simpson
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