Get your own Free Homepage
On any compilation album, there will be roughly 30% pure turd, 60% run of the mill and 10% god-like genius (although the latter is optional).A (vinyl) lemma accompanies the theory:
If you buy the vinyl, the good stuff (if it exists) will be randomly distributed across both sides of the disc and no two good tracks will occur in succession.You're already beginning to see the truth in this, aren't you? But wait a moment, in the last couple of weeks I've come across two albums that violate the theory: The broken voice and this, Noises from the sound cupboard. In both cases there's nary a duff track in sight and the sequencing is spot on. In addition, the motivation here is worthy too--the Boa team wanted to create an eclectic collection that they believed in and that they thought others might ordinarily pass by without hearing. And they succeeded.
The contents are a mixture of spoken word tracks and songs with the former often segueing into the latter, a common bond between them all being the self-production and use (in many cases) of skip-retrieved antiquated equipment. The bands range from the totally unknown to the upper echelons of indie, although no-one gets higher billing than anyone else and quality is not compromised by any of them which means, as the sleeve-notes say, this cannot be called "lo-fi".
High points of the record for me are Peter Easton with a spoken-word/harmonica blues concoction, Urusei Yatsura doing their usual thing especially well, The Interceptors' take on surf, Adventures in Stereo with a soft pop song, Magoo sounding uncannily like Jane's Addiction, John Cavanagh's mad "Arcturan Amplitude" rant and Van Impe making a dirty noise. One Dove also appear here--their first release since 1993.
Boa HQ, Flat 2/L, 1011 Cathcart Rd, Mt Florida, Glasgow, G42 9XJ.
Get your own Free Homepage