Dave Phillips - ? download free

This item by Dave Phillips is a true puzzler, though we should expect nothing less from a release called ?, and the task of bewilderment on a world-wide scale has long been the chosen career path of this experimenting absurdist from Switzerland. Those that have deeper digged than I into the European perplexment conspiracy will be more familiar with the ins and outs of the Schimpfluch cabal; Rudolf Eber’s record label of that name has featured the releases of similar marginal pranksters and noise-gods since 1990, among them Runzelstirn & Gurgelstøck, Sudden Infant, and Wash Your Brains, although the Schimpfluch-Gruppe of which Dave Phillips is a member seems to be slightly different, even if its dates are roughly coincident and its grand scheme for the worldwide implementation of absurdity roughly overlaps. Further clues may also be found from the back catalogue of Tochnit Aleph in Berlin, perhaps. Heart & Crossbone, for their part, may be in the camp of those who revere Fear Of God, a Swiss grindocre noise band which existed for about a year in 1987, probably by word of mouth. Dave Phillips was the bass player for that band, although one suspects that with his disposition and ideas, he contributed a lot more than jut playing the bass. Perhaps uncharacteristically for this label, this actual release doesn’t contain that much noisy content pound for pound, and instead offers an unfathomable series of mysterious events, aimless instrumental passages, and nonsensical tape cut-ups that will keep you perched on the edge of your toolbox. You will probably start to feel queasy and sickened around the middle of track three, with consists of 12 minutes of orgasmic groaning voices, slowed down and mangled in various hideous ways, and overlaid in nasty loops like coiled serpents. It’s the sort of things that makes you ashamed to be a human being, which is probably the general idea. It’s followed by a bizarre passage of accordion music which is struggling to be heard against a barrage of abstract sound which may or may not include underground trains, crowds of happy shoppers, and angelic choirs rising. Then there’s the sinister lower-range piano work on track 5, a piece where gradual tape manipulation creeps in to slow down the sound and deepen it still further, all the while smuggling in foreign sibilants and unpleasant murmurings suggestive of an ugly troll luriking in the drawing room in the dark. Worrying stuff; and rest assured, there is plenty worse to come on this album of dissonant, dark and deeply disturbing compositions. The label informs us that these ten compositions were centred around field recordings, with the addition of cello, piano, accordion and voices. Apparently the process of creating and assembling it was largely a therapeutic act of self-healing by its maker, during “a period dominated by severe disturbances of loss, mental abysses and depair”. He pretty much put his own heart, body and mind under the microscope, breaking himself into piece and analysed what he found through the portal of music, deliberately confronting himself with “bile and degradation” at every turn. Ultimately, this was intended as a purgative process, but there can be no doubt that in the performance of these mental excavations, a large amount of psychic spew and filth has also ended up on the grooves of this record. Only those who feel capable of processing such morbidity and unhappiness should proceed with purchase of ?, and listen to it in the company of a friendly therapist.(Ed Pinsent, The Sound Projector, Issue 19, January 2011)