SIMON FINN - PASS THE DISTANCE

This is one of those fabled releases. One of those records with so many stories surrounding it that you are unsure about what is truth and what is infact urban legend.

Amongst the chatterings related to this I have heard that the master tapes, missing for decades are haunted and somehow made the woman who found them in her flat jump out of the window in a 'Damien the Omen' style.

I have heard that the the reason for the albums swift removal from the shelves only weeks after it's release was down to similarities between the shit cover and a Clark's (or similar) shoe ad that was running in the press at the time.

I have heard that Simon Finn was in fact part shark and breathed through gills hidden in his neck, beneath his wing tipped collar.

Who really know's what to believe? I do know that pretty much everything else on the 'Mushroom' label is not worth investigating, I also know that Simon can get his 'wail on' with the best of them.

I am also in no doubt that 'Pass The Distance' has earned it's place at the top of most people's 'Great Lost Album' list. It really is exceptional singer songwriter fodder despite the sleeve.

So did I 'get my stupid on' and bid upwards of 250quid for an original copy? I did not. Some guy in Germany put out a very good press on Mayfair records. It has a couple of very nice inserts, the sleeve is good card stock and the printing is really crisp. Each one is hand numbered (unless I dreamt that) and as far as I know it is official.

Quite why Tibbles, wait, do we still call him Tibbles or has that changed? Quite why David Tibet of love 'em or hate 'em neo-folk doomsters Current 93 didn't put out a vinyl version when he re-issued the CD I don't know. It seems nothing short of perverse. Either way, here it is.

It was my mate Simon (not Finn) why turned me on to this. He mentioned it a couple of times in passing and before excitedly buying a 90's bootleg of it from On the Floor Records in Camden. (What's the deal with bootlegs now? Is it suddenly okay to sell them?) Anyway. He said something along the lines of:

'This will be my most significant purchase of the year'.

And I remember thinking, wow, that's a pretty grandiose statement for a record by somebody called Simon Finn with such a ridiculously shit sleeve. But it stuck with me and I did some digging. Listened to some clips on the internet and tracked down a copy.

'Pass The Distance' is a fantastic excursion into hopeless urban bed-sit doom-folk. It's as huge as it is whiney. It's very powerful stuff in a massively negative way.

As most people will tell you the show stopper is 'Jerusalem', the subject matter of the song is obvious and on reading the lyrics you would be forgiven for thinking that Simon (Finn) is one of the Xian brigade, he is not. He is an acid casualty from the Syd Barrett school of fucked. By the end of the song our protagonist is wailing so hard that it sounds like he is about to cry. Couple that sob with some genuinely interesting instrumentation (and the help of David Toop) and you have something well worth devoting time to. Not too much time though because like I say, it's fucking miserable.

SHIRLEY COLLINS AND THE ALBION BAND - NO ROSES

I have to put my hands up and say 'I just don't get it'. This is fuzzy felt, it's blue peter, it's Pam Ayres riding a Shetland pony whilst she romanticizes corduroy and the three day week.

It is just not me. Now we've established that, I need to try and find out why it's anyone at all (except for the original listeners) in the year of our lord 2011. 'No Roses' doesn't have the curious instrumentation or acid tinged lyrics that make the Incredible String Band so appealing. Despite the inclusion of a couple of murder ballads, it's not dark enough to be 'death folk' and it isn't catchy enough to compete with Fairport Convention at their best. It's just a less than curious artifact from a time when other people were creating a lot more exciting or proficient music.

Add to this the fact that it was recorded in that sprawling metropolis of London and any visions of wooden caravans, camp fires and burning of wickermen should vanish in a puff of pipe smoke because the geography of it's recording betrays the sentiment sold on the sleeve and in the sound.

The front sleeve proudly lists the names of twenty seven players. You would expect a pretty huge sound from twenty seven people playing all at once but the reality is there's a lot of guesting through out, some of it very inappropriate like the saxophone on the opener 'Cloudy Banks'. Much of it sounds plodding, pedestrian, colour by numbers.

So does anything even come close to rescuing this from the 'File under: 'Maypole Dancing Shit' section?

Three things. The back of the sleeve (as pictured above) - Don't know who he is but that has to be contender for 'Neck Beard of the decade'.

There's a Jew's Harp on one of the tracks and let's be honest, who doesn't love a bit of the old Jew's Harp. It's an instrument so moronic that it comes full circle to being even more awesome than the triangle.

Finally there is the last track. 'Poor Murdered Woman'. Despite my playa hating I have to flag this as being a hell of a song. It's the only track where Shirley lets her 'hey nonny no' vocal stylings slip into something heart-felt and listenable and whilst the instrumentation is in no danger of setting the world on fire it does work, succeeding in painting a very dark picture of rape and murder from days gone by.

I'm assuming there's a rape in there anyway. As a rule of thumb I always assume that when they mention 'flowers' in folk songs they are actually talking about vaginas, and they mention flowers a couple of times.

Anyway. I'm glad I got rid of my vinyl copy of this. It had a weird clouding on one side when you held it up to the light and whilst it didn't smell of cat-piss it gave that impression.

This review was done from the Castle Recordings 2004 Release - Props as always to Castle for always dropping a couple of staples worth of insight, sleeve notes and pictures onto the CD as should I ever want a true insight into this patchy outing I am well armed.

So, 'No Roses'. Buy another copy of 'What We Did In Our Holidays' instead.

JAN FRYDERYK CREATIVE SOUND - FAUN

This guy is German. (At least I think he is German)

He's a piano player.

He does not have a Wikipedia entry.

If I could stretch to more than a dozen words in German there would be some clues as to the man's history and background on the rear of the sleeve. Sadly the comprehensive notes, probably outlining the making of the record and the chief protagonist's history are a series of 'k's, 'z's and umlauts.

Given this I shall take my customary tact and make something up...

Jan Fryderyk discovered the world of Jazz after being admitted to Ansbach Military Hospital as a child. He had complained of a chronic stomach pain and on examination doctors removed approximately 4oz of human hair from his stomach and intestinal tract.

Jan Fryderyk had a hair eating problem, unlike most people with this affliction the hair was not in fact his. At weekend Jan would roam from barber shop to barber shop with an eye to scoring a snack and had been doing so since an incident involving a wig on his seventh birthday.

It was whilst he was recovering from the operation that Jan heard some G.Is stationed there playing John Coltrane's 'Blue Trane' and he was hooked.

To this day nobody knows how or why the hair eating problem started. What they do know is that despite a relapse in the early 80s his passion for the jazz piano has all but cured him.

Sound wise, this is obviously piano led, but don't let that put you off. It's not a painful Cecil Taylor excursion into the land of the solo plinkity-plonk. The other players here do a fantastic job of filling in, covering for and adding to Fryderyk's key-happy ways.

I need to single out Alan Skidmore formerly of Kieth Tippet's 'Centipede' here for a special mention. He's an exceptional saxophone player and he has a tidy beard. He does soft, distant and gentle AND 'I'm having a shit-fit' both surprisingly well. I say surprisingly as he's a Brit and despite evidence to the contrary I still firmly believe that 'Jazz' is the realm of the dead (with a few exceptions) American.

Quite who to thank for rest of it I do not know as Peter Giger(Pictured above), Doug Hammond and a guy called Trilok Gurtu all contribute percussion of some type or other. The sheer amount of skin beating gives you some idea of how good this could and does get.

It isn't indispensable by any means but when the repetitive percussion gels with the piano 'Faun' comes alive in a wholly entertaining and mostly enjoyable way.

COIL - SCATOLOGY

This record would appear to be massively apt for the current climate and matching mood. This morning it was minus 14, I opened my front door and was assaulted by the kind of cracking and concrete like air that says 'death if you wear the wrong hat'. I have been in colder but it has always been for positive 'happy happy' recreational reasons: Chicago - record shopping, New York - record shopping, Amsterdam - three guesses?

But to be face-raped by this kind of weather not through choice but necessity, fuck if that doesn't ever make me miserable. Not even the weekends spoils (VIP record fair - review to follow) can detract from the fact that right now I am at a psychic low of below-freezing. Right now I am not just questioning my buying habbits but my very leaving the house, nay my bed. The office is shit as ever, two thirds empty and utterly silent. I could be at home listening to 'Scatology' really loud.

So the sound of 'Scatology' is not exactly what you might call 'cheery'. Quite why I put it on last night when I knew I was having trouble raising even the most enigmatic of smiles I don't know, but I did. I suppose after a car journey to Berlin last week that saw Starship's 'We Built This City on Rock n' Roll' played three times I am pretty much impervious to anything.

'Scatology' is integral to Coil's mythology, an important part of their Crowleyesque quasi-non/religious poop and blood worshipping synthesiser based insanity due to it being somekind of beginning. When I first heard of the group it was in association with 'Wax Trax' (Ugh) records and in retrospect I don't know if their brief period with the label was a genuine attempt at selling themselves to the RevCo/Ministry crowd or not. I imagine they had every chance of having a fan base to rival that of Skinny Puppy (musically parallells can be drawn with all three previously mentioned bands) and conquering Canada but it didn't happen. Now was it something to do with releasing a concept album about shitting? About shitting and then playing with it? About squeezing it through your fingers and smearing it on your face? Now I don't know for sure but if ever I felt safe in an assumption it would be now...

Yes you can hear toilets, melancholy 80s keyboards and a very angry John Balance but it's never as base as you might expect. It stops a long way short of anything too toiletty and is wonderfully deadpan throughout. Now unlike their peers (Death in June, C93, NWW etc) Coil actually managed to build on their manifesto of muck rather than falling short in later years. Sonically they became more powerful and visually more exciting but as starting points go this is a good one.

Unrelated: I run the risk of incurring the wrath of Angela Merkel and the German tourist board in saying this but seriously, if you can avoid ever coming to Bavaria ever as long as you live, please do so. It is the black, black heart of a very ugly place and that in mind track one, side two: 'Solar Lodge' - 'Watch the black sun rise.'

Slightly more related: Sadly no, my copy does not have the 'anal staircase' post card pasted on the front sleeve.

UPDATE 20/4/2011: It does now.