Alan Moore & Tim Perkins - Angel Passage

Psychogeography, art and music combine in an album born of Blake.

Angel Passage is an odd disc. It's a studio reworking of a performance Alan Moore and Tim Perkins presented as part of the Tygers of Wrath concert, presented at the end of Tate Britain's William Blake exhibition. And as such, it sits in no-man's land; it's not a run-of-the-mill spoken-word album, nor is it a cast-recording album. It's a weird hybrid, like reading Moore's meditation on Blake's life while ghostly music that's not quite separate floats through the air. Occasionally, it's problematic - I just want to hear what he's saying, dammit - but for the most part, it adds a well-judged air of mystery.

The disc opens with an overly-Nymanesque track, Golden Square, which does the album no favours. Thankfully, the rest of the disc seems a bit more organic - less "look, I'm a fanfare!" and more reflexive, more attuned to the flow of words. Innocence charts a youth's growth, traipsing through the city, childish melodies playing over the top of industrial sounds -- the workhouse and youth contrasted. Hell, Experience and Heaven touch on different times of life, with soundscapes constructed as you'd expect: Experience with soft regret, Heaven with an exuberance suggesting a loss of worry, and Hell as a military forge in the bowels of the earth. And, constantly, beneath it all, Moore's almost-vagrant voice, dripping in the ear.

Once you get over the fact that yes, it is Alan Moore speaking on this disc, you start to realise that - the frisson of excitement of hearing the ramblings of a possibly psychotic chaos-magickian comic god aside having by now dissipated - the vocals aren't that grand. Of course, it's really the only path to take: an actual singer narrating this effort would spoil the down-and-dirty nature of the words and wouldn't provide enough of a contrast with the divine angel that makes sporadic appearances. Let's face it: Blake was battling with the difference between shit and sanctity - and as an exploration of that, this album succeeds mightily, even if it doesn't have Alan Rickman on vocals.

Moore's particular psychogeographical interests add an interesting twist to the tale; there are maps and cyphers in the liner notes that make you want to take a long, twilight ramble through the streets mentioned, just to see if the feeling created here actually exists. Effective? You betcha.

In the end, this CD's refusal to be categorised it what'll dog it forever. Not an album, not a biography, it's not something that you'd normally pick up, even if you're a big Moore fan, but it will reward if you give it a chance.

This article originally appeared on splendidezine.com.

Tom Waits - Blood Money

One of two discs dropped on the same day, Blood Money finds Tom Waits in finely theatrical, seed-pod-abusing form.

Blood Money, one of the two Tom Waits albums released in the same day, is, like Alice, a theatrical effort. It's a collection of tunes that have shown up in the Waits/Wilson collaboration, Woyzeck, based on Buchner's play of the same name. Unlike Alice, though, it's not quite as strongly linked to the show that spawned the songs. There's not an especially obvious narrative here, though the links to madness, adultery, murder and love - oblique, granted - do provide enough for you to create a mental movie. This is a rather filmic album, after all.

There's a real sideshow feel to Blood Money, a feeling of country-dances and oppressive summer evenings. Sure, it doesn't have quite the narrative cohesion of some of Waits' other albums, but it's got as much panache. A Good Man Is Hard To Find, despite its nihilistic lyrics ("only strangers sleep in my bed / my favourite words are good-bye") has a distinctly tipsy-night feel to it, a depressive-though-happy boardwalk feeling that, it seems, only Waits can pull off.

Stylistically, this album features tunes that sound more identifiably "late-period Waits" than its sister release, Alice: the carnival-mirror sounds of Calliope - played on a 57-whistle number from 1929 - sounds like a woozy update of Swordfishtrombones' Dave The Butcher, with more kids-in-oubliettes appeal. Knife Chase seems to take ideas from Raymond Scott's Powerhouse and run with them: chiming guitars, wheezing, and the feeling that you're being pursued through Cuba by a guy who's carrying a fine assortment of Acme-produced merchandise. There are still fine weepies to be found - Lullaby is perhaps one of the finest songs that Waits has yet laid down - but they're not as much in the limelight here; the stalking thumpers of tunes like God's Away On Business and Starving In The Belly Of The Whale create a shadow from which it's hard to escape. Sure, there are other sad tunes to be found - Woe and The Part You Throw Away - but they seem to be coated, occasionally, in the smiling- (or griping-) through-the-sadness cloak that's served Waits well; Coney Island Baby, a lovesong, manages to resurrect the tearing-up grin of Frank's Wild Years' Innocent When You Dream. It's a sucker-punch, perhaps, but it's delightful.

More so than most other artists, Waits has reached the point where borrowing bits and pieces from his past styles is not an attempt to relive former glories, or to cover up for a lack of ideas. He can safely and freely plunder his stylistic catalog; rather than ill-considered bower-birding, the mixing of previous approaches and feels found here provides something new, yet pleasingly familiar. There are weird instruments aplenty - four-foot seed-pods, anyone? - but that's not the appeal; it's the fact that, just maybe, everything fits. Like waking up one morning to discover you suddenly like coffee, this is one of those albums that feels natural; the discord and the overwrought weepiness, the experimentalism and the simplicity - everything works. It fits.

Of the two released, this is the album that veers closest to the Goreyesque-weirdo-with-a-thing-for-hitting-chests-of-drawers stereotype of all things Waitsian, but it's also the more finger-snappin'. Blood Money is a disc that you can dive in and out of - and each time be confronted by a tune that'll make you break down and weep, buy you a drink or beat you up in a darkened alley. That alone makes it worth purchasing.

This article originally appeared on splendidezine.com.

Tom Waits - Alice

Tom Waits' lost masterpiece comes to (non bootlegger) light, as part of a two-album release plan.

Alice is the legitimate release of music that had its origin in the theatre. Tom Waits' collaborative production of Alice - a tale about the obsessive side of the author of that famed looking-glass tale - was, in sound, very much like his earlier collaboration, the rough-round-the-edges howl of The Black Rider, cut with tunes so simple that in less sure hands they'd have turned to treacle. In opposition to the demos of the work - a theft (and then, bizarrely, return) of Waits' personal tapes of the songs-in-progress - this album, coming nearly ten years after the show debuted, seems a lot smoother, a more slow-burning tribute to an elusive object of desire. The songs are rich, though there's not quite as much on-the-edge desperation (or outright insanity) as has been explored elsewhere in Waits' canon - there's an after-dinner, satisfied-and-sleepy feel to some of the slower numbers. In fact, title track Alice is as close as Waits has come in a long time to the sleepiness of earlier periods; piano, bass, muted horns - it's afternoon-light through venetian blinds, persistent thoughts of She, only much more natural than ever before. Elsewhere, Stroh violins - think of your run-of-the-mill fiddle with a horn attached - create a from-the-ether atmosphere that's only aided by the sparse arrangements, highlighting the fact that the Brennan/Waits team is among the best songwriters around. (Could David/Bacharach ever construct a sympathetic tune about a guy without a body who wanted to work The Sands? I think not.) In terms of grand weepers, too, it doesn't get much better than this: if tunes like Flower's Grave or No One Knows I'm Gone don't move you, then you are officially dead.

Of course, that's not to say that it's all languid despair on wooden floors: the album is given a hearty kick by mad-rabbit fancies (Kommienezuspadt) and Singapore-reminiscent tales of bizarre, seemingly piratical journeys (Everything You Can Think). There's swing amongst the sadness - not enough to turn this into a laugh-a-minute excursion, but enough to remind the listener that there's light in the world, as well as dark.

Most of all, Alice appears to be shaped by the feel of Waits' most recent tour. There's a visceral, shaggy, performative feel to the tunes, yet it's one that's a world away from the still-touted boozer-who-tinkles-the-ivories hokum of previous years. There's a sense, at once, of showmanship and nakedness, though it's never anything less than completely honest. There's no U2-like posing, no nu-metal faux-theatre; just the refreshing feeling that you're listening to someone who really, really means it.

I defy you to find a more elegantly shambolic, soulfully homespun and, indeed, heartfelt album than this. Tom Waits' "lost masterpiece", as it was once nicknamed, has come into the light. Buy it.

This article originally appeared on splendidezine.com.

Oxbow @ The Verge, London: May 15, 2002

"Anyone who saw us play twelve years ago in the Union Tavern, come up after the show. For a free t-shirt. And a free ass-fuckin'."

Eugene Robinson isn't messing around. This is how Oxbow shows start - and it's all down-sewer from there. The band are in the midst of their first UK tour in a long time - a tour that began with news that only three of their scheduled eight gigs had actually been confirmed - and there's a lot of anger to be worked out in this evening's set. There had been a hint as to this, of course: the singer's earplugs are gaffer-taped to his head. This is not the sort of behaviour that you'd expect from Kula Shaker, you know.

The supports of the evening proved to be less than able foils for such crushing rock death: openers Stanton played reasonable - though, to these ears, rather unrehearsed - indie riffrock. Second band Econoline played (overtime, I might add) rather pedestrian janglefare with the sort of "these are our songs! Aren't they good?" attitude that made trips to the bar a blessing in disguise. The only support of any note came by way of the Lou Barlow-esque charm and sit-down poise of third-in-line nice-guy act Wolf Colonel, another American gigging his way through the UK with a good line in singer-songwriter simplicity. He was set apart, though, by taking time to nudge the running order of his gig - as tonight's Verge show was meant to be - to allow Oxbow a place to show their wares.

When they finally take the stage, Oxbow's set is unstoppable. It contains a large slab of tunes from the band's latest, An Evil Heat, though there are earlier works on show, too. Much like on-disc, the live incarnation is defined more by what you can't understand than by what you can: lyrics obsessed with basic drives flow past as riffs hover above tunes for minutes, before crashing down upon the audience. The sound delivered is big and hard; like Albini with bigger balls, it's something that's incredibly loud, but without suffering from any lack of clarity. If anything, it's clean; the band's sound is simpler than on disc, and there's a distinct feeling that there's nothing to hide. This is how it is. As if in empathy with the abrasive, reductive nature of the band's sound, Robinson sheds his clothes as the gig proceeds, dealing with a disruptive audience member (and Jarvis Cocker clone, albeit not as lofty) by grinding the halfwit's face into his crotch for a good minute or so. This theatrical aspect is entirely in keeping with the grand sweep of the band's narrative; songs here are epic - about six minutes each - with quasi-operatic moments that intrigue, even in the raw rock power environment of the pub gig.

Interestingly, Oxbow's performance ethic seems to be informed less by the idea of playing tunes and more by the idea of shamanism. Prior to mounting the stage, incense burned as the band's drummer rocked on his haunches. Guitarist Niko screams at his amp, in places of high emotion. Bassist Dan slides plates of bass along the floor, while Eugene seems to enter a trance-state while onstage -- flailing about, pushing aside vocal monitors like fog, and almost-speaking-in-tongues while removing his clothes until he's a writhing mass of muscle, singing about "a handful of ass" and assorted sexual peccadillos while wearing tightie whities and gripping his cock. It's cruder and more full-on than many bands - can you see Malkmus doing this? - but in the context of Oxbow's music, it works. It's terrifying, broken and rocks with a limping swing that's hard to deny. I, for one, spent the entire gig wanting to get closer, but was terrified of being on the receiving end of some of the band's more personal attentions.

Oxbow are criminally good - which is strange, given that initially, they never intended to play gigs. The open-mouthed state of the audience - admittedly, not quite as open-mouthed as the guy who'd been skullfucked earlier - is testament to the fact that though their playing out is infrequent, it's as muscular and as compelling as any you'll come across. Certainly, it's more nuanced and organic than a lot of more regularly-gigging bands can manage - this being ably exemplified by the couple of minutes spent attempting (successfully) to outplay a whistling heckler. When the gig ended - prior to the encore, that is - cards were flicked into the crowd. Scoring one, I noted that they bore the message that You Have Just Been Given The Treatment. Tell Your Friends! above a link to the band's website. With anything other than the primal experience that'd just been witnessed, it would've been cloying overkill: with Oxbow, it was simply the truth.

If there was ever a live act destined to turn you into a rabid fan - or a quivering lump - then Oxbow's it. They'll be gigging in support of An Evil Heat for a while, so make sure you check them out when they land near you... and make sure you stay right up front. You may not leave without your pants, but your gig-going will be incredibly changed by the experience.

This article originally appeared on splendidezine.com. Photos from this show were provided by the rather incredible Russ Fischer.

Oxbow - An Evil Heat

This disc just isn't experimental - it's been gene-spliced with something Lovecraftian.

Once in a while, a record comes along that makes you question the sanity of the people who made it - or a CD makes you feel that there's something, at a basic level, terribly wrong. An Evil Heat is one of those recordings. Try taking the big guitar sound that was found on some Rage Against The Machine tracks, and giving it to the Birthday Party. Pour them full of crack and paranoia, and then make Nick Cave slur more, utilising a vocal technique that varies between the squalling of newborns, the ranting of mental patients released into the community, and demon wails. Like The Jesus Lizard after a stay in prison, Oxbow's music is dangerous, in-your-face and utterly compelling. Their live act is described as "live cock fun", which is pretty much what you get here: demonic cock-rockin' riffs, corralled by someone who sounds like he's working through some serious problems. It's truly oceanic.

Don't expect too much in terms of lyricism here; though the disc is excellently-produced, obfuscation (and what sounds, at one point, like an attempt to sing while eating) seems to be the norm here. Surprisingly, this isn't a negative point; the snatches of meaning that are gleaned from attentive listening make An Evil Heat a much more mysterious listening experience. Like a book written in code or a fragment of map, the appeal of this disc is what we don't know about it.

It's the rare moments of calm - or what passes for it in Oxbow's world - that make you realize exactly how fractured the rest of Oxbow's sound is. Stallkicker ends with eerie guitar lines that sound as if they were lifted from Einstürzende Neubauten's Blume: they're all carnival-mirrors and ice. S Bar X has a low-key almost-blues feel that's a departure into normality. Sorry (the last breathing space before the final, 32-minute endurance-tester that is Shine (Glimmer)) is perhaps the most approachable tune, sounding the most normal of the nine on offer here, but its silence is undercut with a sort of seasick feel - a rolling that effectively communicates the physicality of the group's live performance.

The rest of the time, the best way to describe Oxbow's sound would be to talk in terms of rupture. Imagine a rip in the side of the universe; the sound of the world draining out into nothingness - that's what An Evil Heat sounds like. Screaming guitars battle rising waves of drums that coast relentlessly across the top of songs, while the vocals sound like a klaxon warning of the world folding in on itself. It's not for the weak, but this is an essential album - it's a wake-up call for the creators of all the albums that've been foisted on the public in the name of experimental rock. This disc just isn't experimental - it's been gene-spliced with something Lovecraftian.

Oxbow frighten the hell out of me. And that's the way dirty, dark, fucked-up rock should be. Trent Reznor would kill to be this compelling. Put simply, you need this CD. Let them keep you awake nights.

This article originally appeared on splendidezine.com.