016: WATCHING THE ABBEY BURN

Good morning from Glastonbury, South Somerset, where… wait, whaaat?

Yep, that’s right. I’m away from my Yeovil home turf. I went on a road trip: headed up the ol’ B3151 in a horse-drawn stagecoach, pursued by brigands, cut-throats and over-priced coffee all the way to Glastonbury. The plan was to meet up with my old pal, Chris G, for beers and to see Acid Mothers Temple.

This is my 7th or 8th time (I’ve lost count) seeing them, with Chris and I joking that our now-annual AMT pilgrimage has replaced the Annual Road Trip to see The Fall. It helps that AMT seem to now regularly include Glastonbury - which is just up the road from us - in their UK tour itinerary. About 12 or so years back the band I was in at the time supported AMT guitarist and mainman, Kawabata Makoto, when he played the Island in Bristol and I got to hang out in the green room, drinking whisky and wine with him, while he told great stories of the early days of the Japanese Noise Guitar scene. Having no internet and growing up in a remote part of rural Japan his only view of the 70s UK rock bands that he loved (like Deep Purple, etc) was seeing the odd photo of them playing festivals with stacks of Marshal amps piled up behind them on stage. Not realising that these were mostly for show - for hype purposes only and the music was actually coming through a PA - he said, laughing years later at the ridiculous of it all, that when he and his friends started playing live gigs they thought that to play a proper UK style Rock show you needed at least a dozen amps piled up behind you. But it was almost impossible to round up and hire that many amps, plus it would’ve cost a fortune! Prior to that (we’re going back to the early 00s) now, I had interviewed Makoto for an Acid Mothers article in Dazed & Confused magazine. Back then, in the UK, all we had to go on where AMT were concerned were a handful of super-rare albums and a series of garish, solarised / colour-saturated photographs of what appeared to be a commune of semi-naked Japanese freaks in bizarre costumes that included some zonked-out dude called Father Moo. I love that this whole UK-JP cultural exchange seems to have initially been based on two-way miscommunications. But the beautiful end result was that freaks in both our countries were turned on, inspired by and created scenes from these goofy misunderstandings.

I’ve seen local (Wells, Somerset) heroes, Deviant Amps, a handful of times now and they’re always a fun and enjoyable listen-watch. Tonight was the best I’ve seen them: they sounded tougher, heavier somehow - maybe it was the sound, maybe it was the new drummer, dunno. They channel a mid / late 70s (but Bob Calvert-free) Hawkwind vibe with, on their last song, a Punky side-order of Nik Turners Inner City Unit.

Black Helium is one of those bands I just assumed I had already seen until I saw them and realised I hadn’t. They’re London-based, but I think they tend to pop up on pysch-rawk bills down here semi-regularly, so maybe they played at an event I either didn’t make it to or arrived slightly too late for. Or something. They play heavy late 60s / early 70s Blues-based psychedelic rock mixed in with a scuzzed-up 1990s greasy truck-stop Royal Trux vibe. They’re bloody great. As my mate Chris said: “They’ve gone straight into my top ten must-see again bands.” Their last track was a wonderful, M3 motorik-infused psych-groove that went straight up through the roof and into Low Earth Orbit when singer-guitarist, Stuart Gray, stomped on his fuzz and wah pedals at the same time. Fuck, yeah! They have a new album out on Riot Season very soon.

Meanwhile, I bumped into AMT’s synth-player, Higashi Hiroshi - the mighty maker of the spacey-cosmic thwoooshes; AMT’s very own DikMik / Del Dettmar - who was having a ciggie-break out back by the bogs, and we had a very quick chat about the Roland SH-09, the fabulous monosynth from 1980 which Hiroshi uses to make his trademark tripped-out Space Sounds. I’m an SH-09 owner-user too - I love it! - but I can’t get mine to do what Hiroshi does!

Every time I see Acid Mothers Temple it feels like they were even better than the last time. I’m sure that’s not true - I’ve seen them in some very bizarre, funny, pub anecdote-generating circumstances - but it certainly feels like it when yr in the middle of a show. Like The Fall in their time, I think AMT have been able to constantly renew and re-energise themselves by bringing in new, younger rhythm sections and additional guitarists. They’re 30 years into their mischief-making musical career and sound more kinetic and punchy than ever. This time round, Makota adopted a choppy, almost post-punk rhythmic style of playing for the first half or so of the set - like a cross between The Gang of Four and Dwayne Eddy - slashing across the music, almost diagonally, like he was moving through different, non-linear time-lines and dimensions that only he could see-hear-feel, sending out short, beautiful splashes of colour-tone, ringing ratatat licks and rainbow bursts: tiny 1970s Robert Fripp pedal-board tone-trails that he left in his wake before accelerating off again at hyperspeed. It was like he was zig-zagging in and out phase with the performance, cutting through the music, following the beat of a different drummer than the one that we could hear; re-intersecting with it at points of his own unique choosing.

All too soon, however, the shimmering riff of ‘Pink Lady Lemonade’ began chiming out from his amp, twisting back in on itself like a Moebius-loop / Escher-staircase spiralling upwards towards Infinity, with the rest of the band locking into a warm, buoyant and all-embracing groove, gently supporting and lifting it up as music slowly shifted up through the gears, before finally accelerating off into a blur of sound as Makota cut loose on his guitar. All bets are off now, it’s lift-off - time to fly! AMT push themselves right up to the sonic edgelands where rock music bumps noses with noise. Makoto has his guitar raised now, spinning it, summoning down shards of glistening, brain-frying feedback - but, blimey, so is the bass player too! - never seen that before! The whole band is watching Makoto intently for cues, trying to figure out where he’s going next, where the music is taking him. They’re all grinning at one another. And so are we.

Of course, Chris and I had to get down right at the front and the 15mins of rocknoisefeedbackshredding that ensued meant that our hearing was completely blown out when we retreated for a quick cheeky aftershow pint in the only pub still open in town. It was a tragic case of eh?, huh?, what? Took two days for my tinnitus to settle down. There’s a lesson to be learned there, I’m sure, but I’ll probably forget it by the time they next roll into town.

Since I had to stay in Glastonbury overnight and I’ve always wanted to lodge here (it was actually cheaper than other local B&Bs / hotels), I did. And it didn’t disappoint with me its dank, peeling paint Dungeon Synth vibe and spiral stone turret style staircase.

My pal Paul who runs the Cozmic Store up the road told me legend has it King Henry VIII stayed there to watch the Abbey being burned down across the road during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. I did a quick search and found that, a few weeks later, Abbot Richard Whyting - who resisted the sacking and burning of the abbey - was hung, drawn and quartered on Glastonbury Tor. His head was hung from the west gate, and assorted limbs and body parts put on public display in Wells, Ilchester, Bath and Bridgwater. Ouch.

And, speaking of which, a night out with Chris G never fails to yield at least one noteworthy anecdote: waking up in the small hours in my pitch-black room, I rolled over thinking I was at home and not in a narrow single bed, only to fall out bed and crack my head open on a piece of elderly dark wood furniture. Owww, wtf!? I put my hand to my scalp only for it to come away… wet. Found a light-switch and, dear reader, this is no exaggeration: there was blood everywhere. It was a medieval acid-psych massacre!

Just remember, kids: don’t let this happen to you. It’s not big and it’s not clever.

Yr pal, Kek

Howdy. I’m Kek-w… (call me Kek). I’ve been writing professionally for over 30 years, mostly comic books, though I also write books, short stories and films. For fun, I make art and music. HUMANE DEBRIS is a cross-time conceptual continuation of Human Debris, a punk / post-punk ‘zine I made with friends around 1980ish and my early 2000s blog, Kid Shirt. It’s an attempt, possibly foolhardy, to create a windbreak from the endless sandstorm of toxic hatred and bigotry spewed out by a terminally sick, AI-obsessed social media. A peaceful blue lagoon for like-minded mutuals, freaks and weirdos, far away from the divisive bile spat out by fash-enabling billionaires.

Pleased ta meetcha.

SLATE UPDATE

Oh, speaking of Judge Death: a new episode of Fall of Deadworld appeared a few weeks back. A double-length one-off story featuring Judge Fairfax called ‘Blow by Blow’. If you missed it you can score a copy here. It’s unflinchingly brutal. Here’s some of Dave Kendall’s pre-lettered art for it:

After writing scripts for a couple of Deadworld-adjacent one-off stripss, I’m now back on the current series, Justice. Episode #11 has been outlined in detail and I’m currently tinkering with the final shape and content of Ep #12 which hopefully will set us up nicely for what will possibly be the final series. I say ‘nicely’, but there’s some pretty horrible stuff in this series. Characters die and some very heinous shit takes place, mostly to the undeserving. Stuff happens that (hopefully) you won’t have seen coming, though I’ve laid some clues along the way, going back to the very first series 10 years (!) ago. So, I’m on the final furlong and not far off from wrapping this series up, touch wood.

I have another comic-book series on the go that I’ve temporarily put to one side while I get Deadworld off my desk and free up some branespace, but it’s not far from my mind and I’ll be working on the script for the third episode of that one fairly soon. I’m also thinking about a potential one-off thing with artist Rob Richardson. Mostly, though, when my brane hasn’t completely seized up I’ve been working on new material - one short story in particular - for a potential sequel to my Sword ‘n’ Sorcery / Science Fantasy book, Other Times. See? I’m not a total slacker…

It’s not a direct sequel of that book, mind. By that, I mean this one will feature new characters and new worlds, though there is a new Amerigo Verde story in the works featuring more melancholic anti-hero adventuring in The Sinking City as featured in my Mondo Baroque story. But that’s a way off yet. I was disappointed that I didn’t have a new book ready for the Taunton Con a month or two back, so I decided to remedy that. I looove writing Nu-Old School Weird Fantasy! Just have to sneak it in when I can between the bill-paying work.

Meanwhile, it looks like Hatchette have published Volume #2 of The Order by myself and the legendary John M Burns as part of their 2000AD: Ultimate Collection series. This has been a long time coming and I’m extremely pleased to find the remaining series have been finally collected. You can score a copy here.

Oh, and I recently released a new album: ‘slowercase’ by u U:

It’s a digital-only album of slow, quiet, meditative, minimal-ambient music inspired by the lowercase movement. Originally, I recorded it for myself, as something I could have on my phone that I could play when the world got a bit too much and I needed to retreat for a few minutes, but it struck me that maybe other people might enjoy or find some respite in it too. So I’ve released it as a pay-whut-ya-like / ‘name yr price’ release.

Meanwhile, Kafka’s Appraisal, a short film I wrote (which was shot in Manchester last January - attending the shoot was an amazing adventure in itself) has lurched forward again. Director Martin Gooch recently shared the first edit of the film with me and asked for notes. There were hardly any - it’s looking very cool, kinetic and fast-paced to my eyes. ‘Scuse the crappy photo of a freeze-framed still above - it looks a lot nicer than that, even though the colour grading still needs to be done, along with a bunch of other post-production work. Watch this space - more updates, as and when!

KID SHIRT’S CRATE DIGS

So much great music around at the moment (tho, ain’t that always the case!) that I scarcely know where to begin! So, howsabout we kick off with the brand new album by my pal, guitarist Cyrus Pireh? It’s called ‘Thank You, Guitar’ and it’s available for pre-order and officially out on Bill Orcutt’s Palilalia Records on the13th of June:

I’m not quite sure how I first came into contact with Cyrus - maybe it was on Twitter before it became a rancid fash-enabling sewage farm and you could still get to meet cool, new ppl - but I’ve known and corresponded with him for a decade or more. He made the ‘Coils on Malbec’ album using “liquid coils of Malbec wine” with another old friend of mine, the amazing Argentine musician, Anla Courtis. I asked Cyrus to talk a bit about his new album and he kindly replied:

“The songs on the record emerged as part of my ongoing dialogue with the electric guitar. I practice 5 days a week for an hour at a time and am always improvising and noodling and coming up with little riffs, ideas, and techniques. This is a process I've been documenting on my Youtube channel over the past 4 years. If the ideas have legs, they'll find their way toward each other and get arranged into larger and larger ideas until they become pieces.

“I selected the 10 tracks for this record because they specifically describe my relationship to the instrument as a site of deep study as with the opening track that took me 10 years to finally understand and tracks 3, 5, 6, and 10 which all emerged spontaneously in the moment. The electric guitar contains these extremes and everything in between for me: the patient quest for knowledge and the ecstatic joy of the now. In walking this path, I have come to feel the instrument is its own entity deserving of thanks. It has taken me on this journey from the image on the cover of the record (performing at the Fireside Bowl in Chicago, IL, usa, in 2001) to the place I'm at now and I am excited to keep walking the path to see where it leads.

“Many of the tracks on the record make use of a recording technique where there are separate hardware limiters on the left and right channels. The difference in latch rate between the two limiters causes the sound to appear to dance back and forth between the two channels. I am also playing through the 4GRE Amp I designed on all the tracks which gives the electric guitar its specific distortion and tone.”

Cyrus has also created a book (which he kindly sent me a PDF of) called The Art of the Canon and this factors into the album’s creation. He told me: “The Art of the Canon book is a collection of 19 canons that mirrors / spoofs Bach's The Art of the Fugue. Tracks 3, 5, 6, and 10 are all the result of that composition process. I'm hoping to have the book done right around the time the record comes out on June 13.”

The music is beautiful: it dances around the listener’s ears and inside their head, around the confines of the skull, up and down the neurons, jumping synaptic gaps to find new routes around the interior of the head. No wonder folk like Bill Orcutt and Tom Carter have been raving about it! Enjoy.

Another friend with a new release out is Paul Maskell, who has just put out his first album as Outtract. “7 tracks of ambient electronica mixed with beats and field recordings”, as Paul describes it:

You can score a copy on Bandcamp (above) or pop into Paul’s record shop, The Beat & Track, just over the Dorset border from Yeovil in Sherbourne, and buy one directly from him. It’s an extremely cool and friendly shop, full of vinyl goodies and gems, old and new - the perfect place for an hour’s crate-digging. Rumours that Paul and I may have collaborated on a forthcoming EP of electronic music are, well, completely true!

I don’t have space here (or time) to write a review that would fully do it justice, but let it be noted that I had a wonderful day / evening out at the Monochrome Festival of Ugly Music at Strange Brew, Bristol, back in April.

Despite the usual problems getting a train up to Bristol (it was cancelled by the time I walked down to the station and I had to wait an hour or so for a relief taxi (!) to then take me from Yeovil to Westbury Station in Wiltshire to pick up another train), I still managed to arrive just in time to see the deranged, London-based Bestial Death Metal band, Gorgon Vomit. Phew!

The festival is ever so slightly skewed toward Death Metal - which isn’t a problem for me, tbh - but the acts I saw ranged from Accordion Noise(!), Progressive Crust Punk, Cosmic Horror Drone and - no nice way to put this - Dutch Harsh Noise musician, Svartvit, who delighted in putting contact mics in his mouth and inducing his own gag reflex. (But he’s a total sweetheart off-stage).

Was super-glad I managed to catch my old pal, Gretchen (aka Vymethoxy Redspiders) from Guttersnipe, here performing in one of her solo configuration-personas, Xapheena Q.Q. Utslekk, as Petronn Sphene. I first met Gretchen in the physical world in 2015 in the car park of a de-consecrated church in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, where she sold me a bag of DIY music tapes she’d made - it was like some dodgy drug deal, except she was selling hits of pure, uncut freak-culture. A couple hours later, I saw her and Robert Glew (aka Tipula Confusa, who I’d also been corresponding with) play in the church as Guttersnipe and the world was never quite the same again.

Gretchen is the only other person I’ve known who’s used the word ‘sphene’. It’s a calcium-titanium-nesosilicate mineral, often green in colour (“special interest” alert here!) - which is why, oblivious to Gretchen’s own appropriation of it, I named a world after the mineral in the second, green colour-coded series of SAPHIR : Liaisons Dangereuses. The mineral was ‘discredited’ in the 1980s and is now known as (yawn) titanite - boy, this world sure loves to suck the fun and mystery out of things, don’t it? Thank All The Entities That Be there are still ppl like Gretchen putting some much-needed strangeness back in. Occult-Art-ReMystification-Aktion-Units, innit.

Petronn Sphene is her Maximalist Gabba-Rave-No Wave project. (No Rave?) And it’s every bit of a full-on deranged day-glo hyperlurid sci-fi Akai MPC1000 beatblast voicechanged shriekfrenzy overload as you might imagine. You have to experience this as much as listen to it. Immerse yrself in the - wait, was that Schwetfest co-organiser, Adam, going nutsoid down the front a few yards away from me? You bet yr damn neon body art it was! I woulda been heartbroken if I’d missed this performance! Phenomenal.

Gretchen also recently had a tape out on Liquid Library - ‘Anandamide Aberration’ with fellow Leeds noise freak, Pete Cann, as La Brea Pulpit. Dig it:

Soooo much more stuff I wanted to cover in this ish-ep, but it’ll have to wait ‘til next time as this one is already starting to sprawl sideways. I was also gonna run a Readers Letters section as a few ppl got back to me about The Sackman Incident that we covered last time round and told me about some paranormal encounters of their own, not to mention assorted and interesting puppet-related facts. We’ll run some letters next time too, so if you have any weird, chilling stories you wanna share that might or might not also include puppetry, feel free to drop us a line.

I’m not sure why I’m referring to myself in the plural today.

CHILL WITH KIKI

Like Kiki, you’re a star - and don’t ever forget it. Be yr Most Amazing Self and confound the doubters! We believe in you. x