Friday 26 May 2017

No. 37 Billy Mahonie - Nightmare City

My third and final offering from Billy Mahonie is their Nightmare City/Scary Village single. It gathers together a pair of tracks from 2002/3. According to the Rough Trade sticker on the front, both tracks were originally available as mp3s from the band's website, but were subsequently released as a single on the French label Euprate in 2007. I think this was the band's final single, though there was a fourth and final LP release in 2009. Both tracks were subsequently included on the Exhale on Mare Street compilation, which can be found in its entirety at https://billymahonie.bandcamp.com. Both tracks are relatively long (the single plays at 33rpm as a result); Nightmare City offers some excellent loud-quiet-loud-quiet-loud-louder dynamics, whilst Scary Village briefly resembles Bela Lugosi's Dead (in a good way).

The single is a rather lovingly put together - clear vinyl is always a winner and the sleeve in printed on semi-transparent paper, with a suitably nightmarish city scape. I do own a further seven inches featuring the instrumental joys of Billy Mahonie, but it's a split single, so won't feature until we reach the letter V (for various, obviously), which at the current rate will be around 2049. If memory serves this particular single was a gift from fellow-indie traveller Mark (@pomfob) currently pursuing all things indie in the greater Europe as I write this) - many thanks!



Teaser - Next time will feature one of the greatest goth tunes ever.

Sunday 9 April 2017

No. 36 Billy Mahonie - One Thousand Years Of Billy Mahonie

Firstly a confession, I'm not certain that this is strictly a Billy Mahonie release. I'm slightly anxious that it should be filed under various artists and thus blogged about in (at this rate) about 37 years time. All will be explained...

It is also a landmark for two reasons - it's the first double-pack single (though there are plenty more to come) and it's  the first where one side of the vinyl is, in fact, an etched image. The single was put together to celebrate the fact that it was (first-rate indie label) Too Pure's one hundredth release.

So, that leaves three sides of music. The first is provided by Billy Mahonie; a reworking of Flagiolettes (this, along with the other two tracks are taken from their debut album, The Big Dig) called Less Flagiolettes and with added trumpet from Ian Watson (who I think also worked with fellow Too Purists, Gallon Drunk - more of them later). 

However, it's the other two tracks that are problematical, only because they're clearly not really performed by Billy Mahonie. On the flip of disc 1 is a reworking of We Accept American Dollars, remade by Luke Sutherland, of the fantastic Long Fin Killie (more of them later, too) and Bows. The final track is redone by Hefner (featuring Darren Hayman, later of The French, Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern etc - much more of them/him later). Both the re-workings, sound fairly different from the originals - for a start they both have vocals. The former could easily be a Bows track and the latter sounds like a Hefner demo (no great surprises there).

The whole thing is nicely packaged in a smart gatefold sleeve; all-in-all a rather lovely object (but I still think it might be a various artists release).

You can listen to Less Flagiolettes at Gavin John Baker's excellent Bandcamp site, alternatively there's a fine (if incomplete) version of the band forming Flagiolettes on a boat in Poole Harbour. You get a good sense of what an impressive live outfit they were (even on a moving boat).




Saturday 25 March 2017

No. 35 Billy Mahonie - Whistling Sam

Billy Mahonie were a London based all-instrumental band; the brain child of Gavin John Baker. At the time of this single, their line up consisted of two bassists, a guitarist and a drummer. Their music was always labelled post-rock, I guess partly because of the lack of a singer and because they were contemporaries of bands like Tortoise and Mogwai. I'm not sure that either comparison is that helpful; whilst they could certainly play it loud, they were never quite as bombastic as Mogwai can get and unlike Tortoise, there's no black-polo-neck-and-goatee-beard-jazz thing going on. What you do get is rather lovely interplay between then guitar and basses, fairly sparse drumming and a sound that shifts effortlessly from quiet and intricate to loud (and still intricate). 

This was their first single proper; they'd previously release a split-single with fellow bass guitar over-users Rothko on Fierce Panda; this came out on Fierce Panda offshoot Livid Meerkat, in 1998. You can hear both tracks from the single, On The Brinck and Whistling Sam, at Gavin John Baker's excellent and exhaustive Bandcamp page, on the very fine Found compilations.



Sunday 19 March 2017

No. 34 Big Black - He's A Whore

Big Black's final single included two cover versions. The first was Cheap Trick's He's A Whore, from their 1977 debut album, whilst the b-side includes their cover of Kraftwerk's The Model, which had already been included on their final album, Songs About Fucking.

So, compare and contrast time. First up, Big Black's take on He's A Whore versus Cheap Trick's original version; the video is worth a go, if only to engage with Robin Zander's hair and his outfit, which leaves little to the imagination. 




Then we have Big Black performing a fine live rendition of the Kraftwerk classic, alongside the Kraftwerk original (I still remember watching this promo clip on Top of the Pops as a teenager and thinking how alien and sci-fi it sounded).