|
Somewhere out there, in a galaxy many light-years from Earth, someone is trying to make contact with our humble little planet. This person/ thing/ entity has tried many different ways of doing so – message in a bottle, morse code, smoke signals, but nothing seemed to work so he/ it/ they hit upon the idea of transmitting music through the cosmos via radio waves. After several unsuccessful attempts that sounded variously akin to a congealed mass of white noise, Lou Reed’s ‘Metal Machine Music’, a bad days rehearsal on the set of Stomp, the agonising wail of Baby Clanger having lost his Mum or, worst of the lot, Britney Spears, it was back to the drawing board. Only then did he/ it/ they chance upon a sound reminiscent of a weeks worth of painstaking knob-tweekery by Joe Meek having press-ganged Kevin Shields into a few days work experience and securing the services of the local gang of Gregorian Monks to add some vocals. With the resultant mass of discordant rhythm guitar and heavenly chanting finally down on tape, and with the addition of an otherworldly interlude courtesy of the Cosmic Jokers, the play button is pressed and the finished article is transmitted to weave it’s way awkwardly through the ether finally to be received on a cheap and tinny transistor radio somewhere near Fresno, the owner of which has fallen asleep and therefore misses out on twenty five minutes of cosmic bliss and a potentially life-changing aural experience. Had the ethereal producer downloaded the five tracks on ‘Technicolor Static’ he/ it/ they would have saved themselves a lot of time.
RICHARD STOKOE
|
