Family Fodder - 'Savoir Faire: The Best Of' (Dark Beloved Cloud)

When Dark Beloved Cloud released Savoir Faire in '98 it came a time when this collective seemed defunct and long-forgotten; nothing had been heard since 1983's somewhat messy All Styles and this hybrid post-punk/experimental/art-pop band was music to my ears. The title track, opening things off, set the pace - a fast bit of aggressive art-pop with a French-sung bridge and two members of This Heat playing along. I was hooked and fell in love with this disc, which to this day is still the go-to Family Fodder record for me. Probably the greatest hits nature here is beneficial for this band, a ragtag collective that mostly gravitated around Alig Fodder and Dominique Levillain; being a completist gets you a few extra gems for sure (some of which we talked about on the vinyl blog) but the average Joe can survive for a long time with just this. There was a time almost 20 years ago where I could not believe such crazy sounds were hidden in rock's recent past; this was before the reissue fatigue set in and this sort of very British experimentation wasn't as commonplace. There's still an audacity and ridiculousness to 'Playing Golf (With My Flesh Crawling)', merging Residents/Snakefinger riffs and Eno-esque vocal delivery into something so fundamentally absurd it's become a classic. That it hews to a clever pop structure as well, with hooks, tension and release all delivered at the appropriate moments, is also key; Family Fodder are experimentalists in affect, lyrics, and production a lot of the songwriting is just bubblegum. Take 'Cold Wars', which in an alternate universe would have been a chart topping smash, or 'Film Music' (spoiler: it's empty); if only this songwriting talent had been used for less Gestalt purposes! But this is how I love it, a demented kitchen-sink mentality that did a lot to inspire my own music at the end and in the years following. Most of the Family Fodder singles are on here, which is nice as they are harder to find; this includes the double-punch of the Blondie 'Sunday Girls' cover (done actually pretty straight) and then the spastic rave-up 'DEBBIE HARRY', which at the time this came out was more well-known via Unrest's two sorta-covers, 'Winona Ryder'. A lot of British music in the early 80s was embracing dub and reggae forms and you hear a bit of this in Family Fodder, most notably in the dub take on an Erik Satie Gymnopede (or is it a Gnossiene?), though the curation of this disc otherwise stays away from that tip. Even still, it's a long way from an Adrian Sherwood production, being too self-consciously goofy. The last few tracks are where things trail off, containing their absurd 'Dinosaur Sex', a song I don't actually enjoy yet I can't imagine releasing a representative disc of Family Fodder without it, and a few later pieces from the 80s, previously unreleased, none particularly memorable. The last few years have got the band back together, though they haven't seemed to make much of a splash and I personally haven't heard any of it.

Bablicon - 'The Orange Tapered Moon' (Misra)

Ten years ago I was jizzing over this and it hasn't been any worse for the wear. This 'sophmore' effort is much more focused, with a significantly shorter running time (35 minutes) and pieces that, if not composed more tightly, at least feel more cohesive. Opening track 'Silicon)(Bucktown' is the pop song Bablicon hinted at with their first album, replacing the moaning with sharp, shouted lyrics that are still just a bit buried by dissonant string glissandos and thick-ass Wurlitzer piano. The funk-rock bass drives it along but this band knows exactly which side of fusion to stay sheathed in. Things get a bit more Zorn, before exploding on 'Anne on an Infibulus' where musical chops meet determination and momentum. The whole record has a nervousness to it, though it's able to take on a groove at the same time. Things start to fall apart despite the rolling medicine ball of rhythmic prog. There's a nice ebb and flow in the higher register, and by the time things segue into the flanged aggro-dub of 'Orange Moon' we've been on some sort of very weird journey. Side two (the CD booklet, though near-impossible to read, replicates the 'proper' style of an LP) opens with some tinny concrète piece that clatters about rather ambitiously, and in the hands of less skilled artists it may seem out of place. What makes Bablicon great is their ability to forge a balance between the collage aesthetic and more guttural jazz/groove-oriented music, yet with a flavor for fake neoclassical orchestration (heard a bit on the first album too, but more prevalent on 'ZIO(Z)'). The final track 'An Orange Pumpkin Glowing Moon Ensemble', takes the bigband minimalism of Vibracathedral Orchestra and injects it with a dose of 'Here Come the Warm Jets'. Triumphant, anthemic, or just easy? Again it's all in the balance, and this feels like a release to me - the crowning summation of what was the (now pretty much forgotten?) Bablicon's finest moment.