The Sound Projector, Ninth Issue, 2001 (BM Indefinite, London, WC1N 3XX)

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Various Artists - Enormous Pile Of CDRs (and a vinyl single) from Fencing Flatworm Recordings

It's lucky that I was recently involved in a traffic accident and so confined to bed for six months, otherwise time simply would not have allowed for digestion of the many Fencing Flatworm discs delivered by a container unit suspended from beneath one of those big long twin-propellered helicopters you get in films about the 'Nam. Perhaps I exaggerate a little, but there really do seem to be a fuck of a lot of them.

CDRs eh? Quantity over quality blah blah blah... but hold on there, Bald Eagle. If CDR as a medium is as rubbish as word on the street (as it were) would have it, Fencing Flatworm may be the exception that proves the rule. To open on what is probably a relatively unimportant point, can I just say how nice it is to see home produced (either by computer or laser copier) cover and label artwork that doesn't resemble something knocked up by a bored fourteen year old in the back of an exercise book with a leaky biro. This take-it-as-it-comes scrawled approach to design looked fantastic on all those old Fall albums, but now irritates worse than a chilli pepper enema, I would imagine. It's just as contrived as any Yes album cover. Do people believe it lends them an edge of rebel-cool? 'I'm so fucking out there that I doodled the cover in the margin of the Yellow Pages 'cos graphics is for squares.' The only positive aspect of this approach is that it usually provides a pretty accurate indication of how much effort has gone into the music. The Flatworm covers, each of which follows the same rigid formula, are good enough to get their own paragraph in this review. Each is based around a lavish and colourful photo of some aquatic beast, my particular favourites being the porcupine fish on Kneale / Monk / Henderson's Cicada Shrines [Fencing Flatworm Recordings FF008 (2000) CD] and the baby octopus on No Energy's eponymous offering [Fencing Flatworm Recordings FF007 (2000) CD]. Like the plot of Buttman's European Vacation, it's simple but extremely effective.

There being such a quantity of these buggers, I'm forced to review them in one big lump for the simple reason that there is neither the time nor space in my life sufficient for more thorough digestion and reportage. Most of the discs last a pleasantly concise thirty minutes or more. The quality seems to be consistently excellent, and there is quite a variety of sounds from disc to disc, although a certain electronic minimalism does dominate to an extent.

Midwich's Every Day Is The Same [Fencing Flatworm Recordings FF001 (2000) CD] and Life Underwater [Fencing Flatworm Recordings FF002 (2000) CD] both manage engaging moments of scarcity, particularly on one piece which vaguely resembles the distant throb of a ship's engine, and suggesting to these ears a stripped down version of Nocturnal Emissions.

Random Number's New Global Vulgar [Fencing Flatworm Recordings FF005 (2000) CD] is sort of lap-top drum'n'bass but with squeaky noises which at times threatens to get apocalyptic, in a polite sort of way.

Klunk's Infrathin [Fencing Flatworm Recordings FF009 (2000) CD] is a distant relative of some of the weirder Lode Runner offerings from Racing Room tapes. Kind of like how I expected Oval to sound, except they didn't, so this is preferable.

No Energy's disc, mentioned above, seems to weld, rather incongruously, NE style greengate drones onto jazz-era Clock DVA, to convincing effect.

Cicada Shrines, also mentioned above, is a live performance which to these unadjusted ears resembles an improvised jazz version of Throbbing Gristle, if that isn't too lazy a description. Which it probably is.

The weirdos of sore-thumb proportions are Straight Outta Mongolia (great name) whose S.O.M. [Fencing Flatworm Recordings FF004 (2000) CD] is stuffed to the gills with tunes, and even songs. They remind me a lot of Severed Heads circa. Bad Mood Guy or The Big Bigot, which is no bad thing. Being among the more intensely structured music here, the flaws are a bit more obvious. The vocals could be better recorded, and the whole would benefit from a slightly fatter studio sound.

But these are only minor quibbles which seemed to have been ironed out for the token vinyl artefact here. No Energy / Midwich / Straight Outta Mongolia / Random Number who collaborate with each other on Huddle One [Fencing Flatworm Recordings FFR-A (2000) blue vinyl 7"] producing a hot blue biscuit of on one side, a heavily-layered looping drone, richer in constituency than a butcher's turd, and on the other, some wonderful percussion which somehow manages to plod along with a caffeine-driven freneticism under a resonating piano riff. Anyone remember Severed Heads' 'Harold & Cindy Hospital'? It's like that, but different, and just as good. Not everything here has been entirely to my tastes, but even the more inscrutable discs have enough going on to suggest that Fencing Flatworm is one of the few labels that dares to exercise some sort of quality control. Hats off to them, I say.

WAR ARROW