This time on the Fighting Boredom album review page you get the ‘bluesy, dark, and psychedelic numbers’ of Wizard Master, the Avon Terror Corps compilation in support of trans rights, Boris & Uniform with ‘the sound of frustration, .. founded on resilience.’ and a ‘strange, seductive blend of experimental pop, jazz and sci-fi cinema excellence’ from The 3 Clubmen. Read about them below…
Wizard Master – Ablanathanalba
Electric Valley Records
The snatch of country and western crooning at the beginning of this record is just to distract you for when the Birmingham influenced riff grinds in slowly. Then it doesn’t really stop all the way through. Tuned to Iommi massiveness and distorted just enough. It’s wonkier in places, especially when they’ve taken the brown acid, but ultimately it’s solid as a monolith.
They are, of course, Evil. Evil satanic bikers, death worshipping pagans, drug addled lunatics. Black magic sorcerers, just plain Evil.
The rest of the band, behind those guitars, are immovable. The bass and drums couldn’t be more solid if they were buried in concrete and bricked over. There are old film samples, bells tolling slowly and the sound of what sounds like a black mass, as I said.. ‘black magic sorcerer’, it’s all about dynamics, how it all falls into place and how the devil still has all the best tunes.
But where it differs from much of the music like this is the voice, high, whiney and brilliantly understandable. It just works.
Just because you are an evil biker doesn’t mean you can’t be happy, and I reckon the first thing evil bikers do when they get home is stick this record on.
Various Artists – Avon Terror Corps – HAVON’ A GOOD TIME
Avon Terror Corps
Politicians and a narrow circle of elite media commentators have been obsessing about trans people. This fake moral panic poses a genuine risk to the safety of trans folk, and to the policies and laws that ensure they can enjoy the same rights as everyone else.
We stand in solidarity with our transgender siblings. All proceeds from this comp will be distributed to directly aid local trans people collecting funds for surgeries and mental health support.
Listen, love and $ the artists:
This is a compilation of twenty tracks in support of Trans Rights brought to you by those lunatics at Avon Terror Corps. Twenty tracks and each one is mesmerising and strangely brilliant in it’s own way. My notes alone make excellent reading, I think for a change I’ll just put them up.
Here we go, unedited and probably incomprehensible…but I don’t worry too much, just listen to it and you will see what I mean.
1 dance dub expletives filthy sounding. 2 Drums and mantras.. cultish, weird and wobbly sounding. 3 Mutant jazz funk then into industrial muffled with hatred spiked all over it, back to spaced out funk skipping and odd, nasty again. 4 static drenched, rapper glitched out track. 5 bleepy, broken techno. 6 electronic hardcore punk, grunty and ace. 7 laid back drone based electronica getting more discordant as it goes on spaced right out. 8 slow minimal beats, buzzing electronics and vocals over the top. Wonky rising and falling menacing witchcraft feel. 9 stupid synth whittling sounds breathing and noises, confrontational. 10 funereal goth stomp. 11 low bassline, synths coming through, drone and cool, scuttling and disturbing underneath. 12 messed up dub and stupidity. 13 fuzzy destroyed distorted beats, static hi hat going off over it all, drops to drone, then beats then a sigh. 14 scattering beats, strange vocal sample and odd squigglings over it all, no discernable cohesion into pounding techno. 15 drone, feedback static undulating, it moves around but it’s just there fades to static then beats but incoherent and jerky, unsettling and compelling. 16 slow deliberate beats and metallic noises underneath, faster beats underneath and percussion and undulating synths but the lurching slow drums lead it all. 17 bass synth riff static and distortion, grumbling and dirty. 18 electro hardcore unrelenting and impenetrable nasty and fast. 19 nasty fast static drenched and faint, rises slowly as the long notes on top get your attention expecting it to explode, dense. 20 static drenched drone, feedback and distortion.
There you have it, Avon Terror Corps in a nutshell, bloody fantastic.
Boris & Uniform – Bright New Disease
Sacred Bones
Just listen to the first song. Insanely heavy guitars layer upon layer, slow steady skipping drums and bass with a seething vocal which at any moment you expect to disintegrate and when it slips into true hard core half way through it blows you away. I am never entirely sure which band is spurring the other on, but however they created this, it doesn’t matter, it’s an exercise in rage and noise. This hard core slam to the face lasts until the fourth track, which slows everything down and uses drone more than riffs, totally disorientating after the start of the album and slips into disturbing growling as it ends.
Then it just gets weird, the doom free jazz with buzzes and crackles, the synth driven electronic science fiction soundtrack and the lurching drunken fuzz of the nest three tracks will nicely mash up your brain and leave you dizzy, disorientated and lost, an excellent result.
It slips back to hard core battering but it’s slower and even angrier. Ending on a doom drenched screaming with hate and despair.
What an album. Stunned.
The 3 Clubmen – The 3 Clubmen EP
This is a small slice of British eccentric pop brought to you by three friends who evidently have the same strange pop wiring in their heads. You can tell that Andy Partridge is involved but his isn’t the only genius grey matter being used here. Long time friends Jen Olive and Stu Rowe give the idiosyncratic tunes their own stamp too.
It’s strange sounding and slightly off the wall, but it is British pop music harking all the way back to the sixties and leading all the way up to the day after tomorrow. Very cool.
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Wizard Master are on Facebook and have a Bandcamp page.
Avon Terror Corps are on Bandcamp.
Boris’ website is borisheavyrocks.com, they are on Facebook, Bandcamp, Instagram and Tweet as @borisheavyrocks.
Uniform’s website is uniform-nyc.com, they are also on Facebook, Bandcamp and Instagram.
The 3 Clubmen are on Facebook and Tweet as @the3clubmen.
