The Ex - 'Tumult' (Fist Puppet)

My dalliance with The Ex begins in 1983, with this first step away from the straight Crassisms of Disturbing Domestic Peace and towards the discordant, improv-based experimentalism that would occupy their next 30 years of existence. It begins with 'Bouquet of Barbed Wire', with long guitar drones and slow, throbbing drumming over which G.W. Sok intones his invective; here, as on much of the record, it's an observation about fear in society. He sounds almost bored as he chants, but he's just getting revved up, and over the next 50 or so minutes, the Ex pluck, plod and pound away at the shell of capitalism. Boredom might be a theme of the record, despite being called Tumult -- 'Happy Thoughts' is drenched in ennui, with hints of drum programming (!) following Sok's distant 'Wait for the big bang' repetition; is this depression following oppression? Martial law is invoked on the next track, 'The Well-Known Soldier', but I've always found the Ex's political strides slightly compromised by the fact that they come from Holland. As oppressive as they may find all governments to be, they're coming from one of the most progressive places in the world, where punk rock bands can be supported by the state and squats are everywhere. That's not to say I'm calling bullshit on The Ex, but that they are a often a testament to the truth that things can always be better. Throughout Tumult, the band is happy to fall back into fast 'n furious punk at times, such as 'Red Muzak', and any sort of melodic, anthemic qualities are avoided in favour of the shouted polemic and monotonous rhythm. Their interest in Ethiopian jazz and their dalliances with Han Bennink are a long way away, but will come with time. The cover art boasts a red warrior, faceless as part of the proletariat, bending the bars of a prison, but I think the red and black, the pure leftie outlook, is already about to evolve. Some gems litter Tumult, but the Ex are never a band great at self-editing, and 53 minutes is pretty long (especially knowing I have a few more Ex records ahead). This album came just before a run of brilliant records, from Blueprints for a Blackout through Aural Guerilla and then the genius work with Tom Cora, so it feels like a penultimate glimpse of an open sky, just over the horizon. Mixing metaphors, yes, but Sok's as guilty of this as I am (just check out 'Hunt the Hunters').

Butchy Fuego (Pickled Egg)

Whatever happened to this guy, anyway? Butchy Fuego is some weird visionary in Chicago who hung around with a lot of artrock/freejazz dudes, and made this beautifully designed solo record back in 2001 or so. And like most things on the vastly underrated Pickled Egg label, it failed to make much impact and thus, Butchy Fuego has disappeared into the pile of early 00s experimental CDs. A shame too, cause there's some astoundingly precise cuts here that run between spazzy neo-electro ('The Conquering of Planet Argotron') to Bügsküll-like collage mastery ('Music for Sarah's Film'). The opening would suggest that this is a very schooled bit of post-academy Henry Cow worship, but Butchy Fuego shifts gears constantly, with just enough cohesion to avoid feeling like a weird compilation. 'The Paleontologist' has some buried vocals, as the piece lumbers along in a sort of improv scuzz-rock, not unlike stuff like the Lowdown or Mouthus only a few years precognizant to them - the basement jam band returns in 'Menstrual Motorcycle', only significantly thrashier. 'Bumbleplight' actually sounds like Squarepusher at times, with a cut-up flitter-flutter that doesn't overdo the amp-buzz electronica, feeling again like a logical extension of the acoustic basis we hear earlier. 'Hot Balls' is my mixtape selection - it's an anthemic punch to the jugular that rips out of the speakers through it's lo-fi production, in a fairly calculated stance. But awesome nonetheless. I can imagine that Butchy Fuego is a fairly studio-based project, though the live instrumentation feels organic, not like samples. 'My Experience with Electronics' is maybe the centerpiece, both sequentially and musically. Despite the weak title, Butchy's throwing everything into the bag here and it gels nicely. The album comes to a polite close with 'Bunny', which is delicately sung like a Bedhead song, farting and wheezing until an accordion-driven 4-track indierock second part explodes. I shouldn't keep comparing elements of this CD to other artists, because Butchy Fuego certainly has eked out his own sound, one that should have found some fans. But fans of what? Eclectic, genre-bending art-rock, fractured songforms, complex compositions -- all things that sound great on paper but reveal themselves to be distinct and idiosyncratic when you actually hear them. But if any of those keywords tickle your fancy, then this is one to seek out, undeniably.

Aksak Maboul - 'Un Peu de L'Âme Des Bandits' (Crammed Discs)

Source: Received from Recommended mail oder on July 8, 2006 for £9.

Belgium! Land of rich wonderful beer, vertical archery, and waffles sold on the street. Aksak Maboul's second album is their maximalist one: there's traditional folky jams, weird prog-ambient beatdowns and some Broadway passages too. Frith and Cutler are all over it and occasionally steer it into Henry Cow territory ('Geistige Nacht') but that's not a bad thing at all. Everything imaginable is stuck into a blender here but it' stays on the Appolonian tip. This is essentially the last anyone ever heard of Aksak Maboul (apart from the Crammed 'Made to Measure' comp which'll be reviewed on Dislocated Underbite in about 2 years); soon after this (which was 1980, if yer wondering) they turned into the Honeymoon Killers (who made some great jams of their own). This (and their first record) are just enough to build a legacy on, if you ask me. There's some weird shit: 'Inoculating Rabies' which sounds more like the other (NYC) Honeymoon Killers except with a bass clarinet and bassoon way too forward in the mix; the improv parts of the second half (labeled as 'Cinema') are like Curlew covering Dead Machines. I think Aksak were originally started as an offshoot of Univers Zero, though I could be wrong - but this disc goes far beyond any UZ I've ever heard - like balancing the most aggressively strident art-rock-prog compositions on the same spoon as 'outsider' music. More Catherine Jauniaux would have made a great album even better, though I guess I can always turn to Fluvial for that. CD version tacks a Honeymoon Killers track on the end which is cool but breaks up the purity of the album like these f'ing CDs always do.