1.
the empty record store cocaine party dream (22.56)
|
So
I'm CD shopping, as I regularly do, only this time it's to a
place I only vaguely recognise; an obscure back door to a nondescript
row of grey concrete buildings in a bleak, flat industrial area
somewhere outside my usual city centre parameters. I enter the
door expecting to see it full of customers, and more obviously,
CDs, but when I walk in the floor is cleared out, and only a
few empty racks are left hugging a couple of the walls. There
are people working though; the owner is moving things around
in the back but I never quite see his face, and leaning on the
counter is a girl I recognise from somewhere else. We get to
talking, but never really touch on the reason why this record
store is resolutely record-free. She tells me, as an unrelated
matter, that the staff are having a party and I should come.
Whatever, I got nothing much else planned. She hands me a crumpled
five pound note.
'Bring this with you'
'Why?'
'To buy the cocaine!'
'From who?'
'From me!'
'Why would I pretend to buy cocaine from you with your own
money? Why don't you just give me the five pounds worth of
cocaine and I'll bring it to the party?'
There follows a lengthy, circular discussion about the logic
or otherwise of the recycled money transaction. I point out
that I don't do cocaine anyway, but she tells me I don't have
to take it, I just have to 'buy' it. Or be seen to buy it,
presumably. And then, of course, I wake up.
...
(see the
front cover and inlay
with these helpful links)
This is part two of the, er, tryptich of 3" CD releases,
which will wrap up in a pleasingly triangular way with the
next instalment. 3 CDs, 3 songs, 3 inches, it's the magic
number as you'll know by now if you're up on your De La. Triangularity
aside, this is a little something for the fringes, pushing
past the twenty minute barrier in a stew of drones and whirring
and...something else (rule of three, ain't it). Emerging from
the swamp with a faintly familiar arpeggio, it gets laced
with some more substantial form and structure and a stack
of infra-red beams bouncing off the pickups. I've pulled that
trick, pointing various household remotes at my guitar, before
and I'm not tired of it yet. If James Iha/My Cat Is Alien/rule-of-three-satisfying-third-example
can play guitar with toy rayguns then I can do this by way
of a cheap tribute...fitting somehow.
The most ear-catching part of this is the drone, two lengthy
passages of humming, cacophonous ambient noise which kick
in partway through and then at the end. To me it's a great
sound; it's made from strumming open strings the wrong side
of a capo and twisting the resultant noises with my amateur
wizardry, and as always layering the pieces on top until it
feels right. It's a throbbing sound, hitting what felt like
the right mix between unsettling and unrelenting noise on
the one hand, and pleasing, sonorous tones on the other. Slightly
like hearing people rolling something around the inside of
a big church bell, through some kind of filter. But you'll
hear it. Right? |
© Enough
Rope