|
We first became aware of ApAtT some four years ago, the EP their debut was both a revelation and a ragtaggle affair that cross wired some many reference points that the mere fact your head was in serious fear of spinning clean off your shoulders wasn’t your first primary concern. It was one of those rare releases that cause a would be listener to harass innocent passers by shouting their merits whilst attempting to drop their name at every conceivable conversational juncture ensuing a newly applied drip effect subliminal word spreading campaign and a no doubt red card showing banning from polite social life. The EP itself was an unrelenting assault of skewed and disparate influences - Zappa the obvious keystone marker - but blunted by a bewildering examination of freeform bastardisations of weirdly wired bleached psyche folk interwoven with electronics, freakish noise attacks and a general air of lunacy and the strange unshakeable belief that if they weren’t at least of this planet ell they certainly sounded nothing remotely Scouse sounding then, now or next year and beyond.
Since then - diddly squat - we sadly fell off their mailing list and out of their affections, we heard rumours of an album but never got the chance to hear it - our hi-fi pined at the loss - we bit our lip and fronted it out spurned and hurt until now that is.
To hear Apatt or more specifically their ‘black and white mass’ full length is to experience a musical odyssey like no other, avoiding the usual pragmatics of pop, they are a law unto themselves dabbling in sounds. It’s not an immediate winner granted - to hear it full through first listen you’d think they’d lost the plot, we even loaded it up onto the I-pod and for weeks it sat there - not some much unloved but ignored - it seemed lost in the hustle and bustle of the early morning rush to work - both us and the hand held player exchanging confused looks each and every time one of the tracks appeared on the random option disgracefully pressing skip in the process.
Each and every album always needs a hook track - a track that draws you in, encouraging you to press the repeat button and in time slowly acclimatise your listening experience. For ’black and white mass’ - ’happiness’ is that cornerstone key moment. We’d already fallen over ourselves hearing this particular cut on one of those multi label samplers last summer (‘lets dream it, dream it for free’) - the sets best moment by far in fact looking at what we said then we can’t better it so for all those who didn’t take heed first time of asking here it is again -
’Happiness’ is without doubt the samplers best moment by some distance an exotic Hawaiian styled ode of stalker intent that melds the oddly unhinged pop vocabulary of Whitetown with the sinister darkly toned language of early career Space both lost beneath the starlit splendour of Stereolab’s self styled bachelor pad down tempo groove all sublimely metered out with doo wops and big band sounding strings - once heard you’ll be spellbound - guaranteed.
Apatt are of course cryptic jesters, children and progenitors of an age to come, warped flower people, ‘black and white mass’ creaks, groans and mooches unsteadily between the fried, the frayed and the downright fantastic - perhaps right at this moment the only ensemble daring to veer into their crooked cosmos are the equally disturbed and imaginative freely spirited travellers they came from the stars while those stretching a little further back may well find common associations with Cud’s ‘when in Rome, kill me’(none more so is this the case than on the hauntingly surreally Barrett addled ‘marmalade’). Across this confused though strangely rewarding 26 track suite Apatt engage in moments of freeform jazz assaults, light-hearted ritualistic wig flippers (‘the holy toad’), mini progressive operas (the loon-ish ‘BBQ Tonite’), music hall oddness, acid dipped shanties, sand dusted serenades (‘an oaf climbing a fence’), Soviet regality, noire-ish folk standards from the dark side (such as the ‘nightmare before Xmas’ spookiness applied to ‘fairground abuse’) and white hot sonic meltdowns - the sounds trip out in unrelated fashion causing you to constantly be teetering on the back foot, an impish lucky bag of sorts with the band doling out the occasional curveball just when you are beginning to think you have their measure.
‘found it’ with its strangely addictive skewed funk bastardisations sounds like the psychotic moments of Pretty Things ‘SF Sorrow’ dropped headlong into an evil incarnation of Prince inhabiting children’s TV Nickelodeon styled landscape - the obvious fascination with the funks enfant terrible is furthered - well momentarily - on the low slumped chassis of the boy racer night groove of ‘my subconscious shone like beam of light forever’. And though they do their best to avoid any notion of being lumped into the Liverpool scene they still manage to squeeze in the hip swinging ‘firebird’ and pay the obvious dues to the Beatles ‘revolver’ and ‘rubber soul’. Elsewhere the lounge styled shipping forecast / promenade prowling Gilbert O’Sullivan meets Beach Boys meets Charles Mansen ‘whiskey priest’ manages to be both dinky and disturbing while - and not for the first time on this set - on ‘the daily act’ your entrusted to be taken by the hand and led in to wired and wonderfully obscure world of Vivian Stanshall. And really has there ever been a more putrid song title than ‘grope cunt lane’ - probably though not in recent memory - a Beefheart meets Dawn of the Replicants stew replete with lip smacking smoking struts and jazz burps which neatly threads into ‘quite repulsive’ which has to be heard just for it farmyard impersonations to song - well deranged.
‘Black and White Mass’ is THE first crucial full length of the year somehow I don’t reckon it’ll be topped in our affections though be warned it’ll do your f**kin head in.
www.pickled-egg.co.uk
Key tracks -
happiness
Marmalade
Found it
hungry for your dinner
MARK BARTON
|
