Throbbing Gristle – Weirdo Shrine

5 July 2023

Review + Q&A: Omnibadger – Famous Guitar Licks Vol. III (2023, Cruel Nature Records)

Remember HAL, the evil AI computer aboard the space ship in 2001: A Space Odyssey? Ever wondered about what it would be like if that guy was programmed to make music in stead of sending a bunch of astronauts to their death? Well that’s a borderline weirdo coincidence because Omnibadger just fixed that fantasy for you.

On the strangely titled Famous Guitar Licks Vol III The band draws up a menacing spectacle of death bleeps, harsh noise, noise rock, human yelling, and all kinds of other insane raucousness that is programmed to creep people the fuck out. And make you forget about the fact that there is no Vol I or II, which once again is of course suspect as hell.

The band used to be called Omnibael, which more openly referenced their demonic upbringing. But then again, consider a badger truly, and realise that those critters are evil as hell too, and not to be trifled with. It’s like the band wanted us to believe they were fluffy cuddly mammals in stead of the psycho devils they clearly house internally, well yo did not fool this weirdo, not today!

Back to the “music” though, because this racket is still considered that, even though at times on this record it stretches its definition. I guess if you like the sound of blown up speakers, broken beats, gurgling shards of glass, and being yelled at, this is your cup of boiling bile. All the other people might want to give it a go for shits and giggles, and hit the stop button as the former creeps down your pants well before the latter presents itself…

Any of the above might be completely made up though. It might be written by an AI trying to fend off potential saboteurs, it might be the truth, or it might be all or none of these things. Better see for yourself my adventurous furry little friends…

Better still, we made contact with Omnibadger to see whether we were dealing with actual humans. We are still not quite sure, though their answers made us lean towards yes. You guys be the judge! Oh and take to their Bandcamp to listen to their new album, because it is a hoot!

How are you? How was the pandemic period for you as musicians?

Yeah, not bad. Could be worse, you know? The pandemic was actually good despite all the horror going on. That’s what got us started doing what we do as Omnibadger. Music had pretty much come to a hault with our other projects due to lockdowns, but Jase and I knew eachother from playing shows together before with a couple of other bands, This Sun No More and Goya. I can’t remember why now, but we got talking about music and our solo electronic noise projects. (Plan Pony and Old Man Disgusting) We started sharing music with eachother and said “fuck it, why don’t we do something together?” It was during that time when the government arbitrarily allowed people to meet up in groups of two or three, so we thought we’d book our a practice space and just have at it. So we just brought a shit load of equipment and started messing about, usually just experimental improv stuff with drum machines, loopers, samplers, contact mics, oil containers, and guitars. It started working pretty well right away. I think we’d already recorded a small E.P. within the space of 4 hours. We got on board with a bunch of live streams with other artists, and started doing that every other week or so. We ended up on a few compilation records and it went from there.

Can you introduce yourself, how did you start your career, etc?
I’m Phil from Omnibael/Omnibadger, typically a play guitar/bass/vocals and general electronic nosie shit. I wouldn’t really call it a “Career” more just fucking about with music we like. I’ve been in a few bands throughout my life and this is the lastest venture. I’m a noise merchant at heart, so it’s about time I did something about it. It’s good to finally let loose and just make whatever the hell springs to mind on that particular day.

What can you tell me about your musical backgrounds?

I started out just playing guitar and instantly joined some teenaged hair metal band, you know fuckin Motley Crue sounding shit? Since then I moved on to what I actually wanted to be doing and joined a post metal band, which I’ve been in for over 15 years now (This Sun No More) I went to college in Stafford to study music tech and that’s when I became interested in the more noisy electronic side of things. Typically just recording nasty synths, chopped up drums and yelling my lungs out in to a webcam microphone. My parents were super proud.

What does a regular day in your lives look like?
Ah, you don’t wanna know about that. Typically I just work at a manufacturing plant with robots. On the weekends I try to make music, but life often gets in the way. It’s a good outlet. Music, or rather sound is a one of the few things I care about in life. Gigging, writing, recording, just hanging out with other “musicians.” Most of the time I’m just doing normal adulting to be honest. I’d rather not, but here we are. So music is a good escape from all that.

What is the best thing about Famous Guitar Licks Vol. III?
The secret track at the end that no one has noticed yet. We got a bit in to the Shaggs while coming up with ideas for the record, and thought we’d have a go at doing a sort of Shaggs song. We didn’t do the Shaggs justice but it was a lot of fun. It’s kind of just this out of tune guitar, out of time electronic drums, an old children’s recorder and a kazzoo. It’s probably the best song on there. Surfin’ was really fun as well, because that’s actually an older song which we never really got round to recording. We sampled the drums for it by just banging on old shit outside the practice space for that industrial sound. We had a lot of fun with that one.

What does the title refer to?
It’s just kind of a Throbbing Gristle inspired joke, you know Jazz Funk Greats? Clearly it’s not actually an album of famous guitar licks. I mean, Surfin’ has a Dick Dale inspired riff at the end, but you can’t tell due to the copious amounts of fuzz, and the terrible way I played it. All the reviews just focussed on the idea that it said “Vol. III” which is just another ironic layer. Ah, whatever. We felt because the previous record had a bit of a serious title and a very sickly sound on it, we ought to have a bit more fun with this one. It’s not all nihilistic angst… This one had more of a whimsical feel to it… At least for us anyway. That’s also why we changed the name to Omnibadger which was what we were originally called before we went in to pure industrial noise depression stylings of Omnibael.

Where do you live and how does it affect your music?
Stoke On Trent, city of pottery, debauchery, monkey dust, poverty and endless wearhouses. So yeah, you can see where we get the sound. I mean, it’s not so bad. There’s a lot of green space as well, but we wanted to focus more on causing a racket. Perhaps some of that green will chime in on a future record. Our Twee Pop phase will happen eventually. Be warned.

Who are some contemporary musical heroes of yours?
Swans, Isis, Aphex Twin, The Body, Can, Fartclops, Harvey Milk, Lightning Bolt, Merzbow, Nisennenmondai, Pere Ubu, Suicide, Lez Rallizes Denudes, Black Dice, Animal Collective to name a few. Everything we do gets compared to Godflesh and Throbbing Gristle for some reason, so I guess I’ll mention them. I mean… If you can describe any of that as contemporary.

Can you tell me about how you went about composing and recording songs?
Typically we’ll just grab a bunch of equipment, shove it through a bunch of fx pedals and speakers, jam with it for a bit and press record when it starts sounding pretty good to us. Then we’ll develop those ideas over time and hopefully come up with something that’s worth actually putting on a record.

What are your immediate and long term future plans?
Gig, record, gig, record, do some splits with folk around the country/world. Just meet some fucked up, like minded individuals and make some horrible music with them. Then who knows? Settle down with all our noise artist riches.

What should the Weirdo Shrine reader do after reading this interview?
Make some music, get in touch with us, invite us to play at your local DIY venue. Go buy some stuff from Cruel Nature, they’re an awesome DIY label, and everything on there is just gold. Then… Idk, take drugs, fuck the system, call your parents and tell them everything is going to be okay, take your dog for a walk, watch the Lord of the Rings extended editions, piss yourself for old time’s sake, quit your stinking job, make model ship in a bottle, drink a piping hot grape juice, coax a pigeon in to your local Greggs and watch the chaos, stick your penis in a hoover, delete your Facebook profile, listen to Dog Train, join a cult and invite Louis Theroux to check it out, go on the Wetherspoons app and order a bowl of peas to every table, cry. It’s been so long since you cried, why can’t you cry anymore? It used to be so easy.

12 April 2023

Review + Q&A: Gum Takes Tooth – Recovery Position (2023, Wrong Speed Records)

I fell asleep during an episode of the British sci-fi series Misfits and woke up inside my dream. I don’t remember all of the details, but I do know Gum Takes Tooth created the soundtrack for it. I was inside a dark concrete factory transformed into a dance hall and people were just out of their tits. Madness ensued and I woke up bathing in my own sweat and feeling like I just ran a marathon.

Claustrophobic, dystopian, and somehow very British in its attitude, Recovery Position is electronic music for scumbags and lowlifes. It is music that will eat all of your pills so you don’t have to, it is music that will drink you booze and spit it in your face. It will make you feel like you are being choked by a shining piece of wobbly plastic by cartoon aliens. And on top of that, it is quite impossible to categorise.

There are elements of dubstep, ambient, noise, and breakcore present, but all of those are well hidden in the thick pasty Gum Takes Tooth sound. For relative electronic laymen like yours truly it pretty much boils down to a lot of pounding beats and a dark and creepy atmosphere. Music that feels rushed, like running inside a maze, always looking behind your shoulder, because you know something is coming for you…a wild trip for the adventurous weirdos out there…

I talked to the dynamic duo Jussi Brightmore and Tom Fug, who have found a way to make their band project work through distance. Right now they are in Portugal and London, but still making music together and lots of future plans as well. How does that work? Let’s found out…

How are you? How has the pandemic period been for Gum Takes Tooth?

Jussi: As for many, the pandemic was a time of enormous challenges for us, but also enormous change. The lack of an in-person social context for music, and in-person musical creativity was hard for us. Neither of us felt that the online social music events that proliferated throughout the pandemic did anything to replace the event of people sharing physical space while listening, watching, or creating. In fact, the total opposite. it really made us appreciate the community value of underground music, and really cherish it. That recognition of the irreplaceable social qualities of music culture has actually been a really positive outcome of post-pandemic life.

For me personally, the pandemic facilitated change that totally disrupted my life, and opened a new chapter. I got out of the UK just before the tragic gates of Brexit closed to become an resident of the EU in Portugal, extremely thankful of the liberties that this status entails. I’m also hugely humbled by the generous welcome that I’ve received here. I left London after the first lockdown to live on the road for a while, at least between the various subsequent lockdowns, often living in pretty Mad Max-style environments. Definitely a big change from East London.

The move, while immensely positive, mandated a total shift of my life. Inevitably this has certainly had a big effect on Gum Takes Tooth given our lives as a creative unit and close friends in East London for the previous 14 years. We now live in different countries and, somewhat ironically given what I previously said about the necessity of being in the same space as the other for creative collaboration, we now collaborate remotely most of the time. As such, it is only appropriate that the sound of GTT has undergone such a great transformation.

Can you introduce the band, and how did you meet, etc, where does the band name come from?

Tom: Myself and Jussi met almost 20 years ago now, playing in a different band. The band came about when I was given an old 70s Simmons drum synth, and when the rest of the band couldn’t make rehearsal, myself and Jussi experimented with playing the synth triggered by my acoustic drums. Initially the intention was to incorporate this into the existing band, but when the others couldn’t make a gig we had been offered, we though, why not do that thing we’ve been messing about with as a different band.

Jussi: Yeah, that was a bizarre time with that old drum synth. it was designed just to make disco tom sounds, like you hear in ‘Ring My Bell’. I was playing guitar in that band and at this time I had a bike accident and lost the use of my left arm so was unable to play that. It became a situation of creativity rising from limitation. I couldn’t play the guitar with one arm but Tom could trigger the drum synth from his drum kit, enabling me to manipulate the synth sounds with my functional arm. I remember hooking it to fuzz pedal and a big bass amp stack and it was just like, boom! Instant gratification but also it didn’t sound anything like anything else. Really inspirational. The synth wasn’t designed to play melodically but I discovered it would create sequences of notes that didn’t fit in any western scale, instead to it’s own microtonal ratio. While that old drum synth was too unreliable to use for long, we proceeded to use the harmonic ratio and the scales it generated for many years, recreated in the virtual modular synths we continued to design and develop.

What can you tell me about your musical backgrounds?

Tom: As a kid I took evening classes in classical percussion and guitar. I’ve pretty much been playing in bands non stop since I was about 13 years old. Most of the bands have birthed and died, but I tend to always have a handful of other bands and projects on the go outside of Gum Takes Tooth.

Jussi: For a significant section of my childhood I moved around Australia, where we were living at the time. In retrospect I think this really dissociated me from popular culture at the time. As such I wasn’t really into pop music as a young kid, in fact I found myself super sensitive to it and critical of it, probably just because I felt excluded from what it was projecting, which seemed unattainable and insincere. Later when my family had moved back to England, I fell in with a friend who’s older brother was in art school and would supply him with music. I was 12 and through this channel I started hearing music that really switched me on. Looking back now it was totally wild music for a kid of my age to be listening to but I was totally lost in it. It was mainly proto-Industrial like Throbbing Gristle. Severed Heads, Coil, early Philip Glass. Some reason it will just make total sense. At the same time I was super inspired by the rave tapes I would steal from another friend’s older brother. In the reverse order compared to how most people get into underground music, it was only after listening to that stuff that I got into classic rock and picked up the guitar. But even then I was into making basic electronic music and trying every kind of instrument I could lay my hands on. I always had an exploratory approach and wanted to make new sounds with whatever instrument I was playing.

Later I started playing in loads of bands and collaborating frequently. A scene that had a huge effect on me was the collaborative improv ethic of the international CDR DIY noise scene of the early 2000s. I can thank Dylan Nyoukis and Karen Constance of Blood Stereo (with whom I had the great privilege of playing with frequently) for introducing me to this world when I lived in Brighton, UK. It was the scene that bands like Wolf Eyes grew from. Super diverse, mind-blowingly creative and totally renegade, it comprised a hugely inclusive international underground self-supporting community. Most of the recordings from this vibrant scene are hidden away from history off-line on micro release CDRs which is a shame.

But the extreme cultural diversity of London was a huge influence. That’s something I appreciate now I’m not living there anymore. London living baked into me the joy of always knowing that there’s infinitely more to explore, anywhere at any moment.

What does a regular day in your lives look like?

Tom: As neither Gum Takes Tooth or any other musical ventures pay my bills, my regular day consists of roaming around London and setting up video and audio post production facilities. Then spend the evenings working on music mostly. As Gum Takes Tooth are currently separated by about 1,000 miles, we mostly work on music remotely, but try to get together for some jams occasionally.

Jussi: Well, things seem to be changing very frequently for me at the moment so a day in my life isn’t necessarily indicative of a general routine. For the last few years I’ve been in and out of some periods of reduced health that have limited my mobility for significant stretches of time. Now is one of those times. Hopefully I’ll be pretty much recovered from these by the time that we start gigging after the release of the ‘Recovery Position’ album. The clue is in the album title 😉 Thankfully I live somewhere of amazing natural beauty and I enjoy this extremely low tech environment with my lovely family and its many animals and plants. Like Tom I have a day job, currently designing medical tech, but it’s fully remote so I can take it anywhere – particularly good when my physical mobility is reduced.

Recovery is slow but every step brings a change in how I see the world. The experience is ultimately positive in that it totally reinvigorates my thirst for life, bringing with it a rebirth of personal identity that is deeply liberating.

What is the best thing about Recovery Position?

Tom: It’s been exciting to work on these tracks from a different musical perspective compared to the last albums, especially by removing the acoustic drums completely – which makes quite a big difference in the outcome. Especially trying to balance creating something new, but attempting to maintain “our” sound, whatever that happens to be.

Jussi: The constraints of our weird old home-made setup meant that we couldn’t really ever play stuff like anyone else, and bringing something new to the table is a key to what we like to do creatively, but then we were itching to experiment beyond these limitations. The tricky thing about using most all-electronic creative environments is that they can easily lead to making very familiar sounds and styles/genres of music. We needed to make whatever we did interesting and even, hopefully, unique. We didn’t want to take a too well trodden path, and ideally forge new paths as much as possible as we intuitively follow where the music feels like its leading for us as we create. I hope that this can be heard throughout ‘Recovery Position’.

Where do you live and what is the environment like for musicians like you?

Tom: I moved to London from Norway in 2003, and have been here since. London has a great environment for musicians. There’s a great community and a lot of support between musicians – going to see each other’s shows etc.

Jussi: Right now I spend a fair amount of time thanking my lucky stars that I’m living somewhere of such incredible wild and natural beauty near Lisbon in Portugal. I’m part of a small group of local friends who are all interesting musicians into interesting music. We put on clubs and gigs locally and also in Lisbon under the Xtranhez moniker. Lisbon has a vibrant underground scene and it’s great to be part of that. I also have the opportunity to jam in some really beautiful wild places out here in the countryside which is really inspiring.

Can you tell me about how you go about composing and recording songs?

Tom: From the very start, we have never really sat down and planned out our music. They have pretty much always come out of us getting together in the studio and jamming. With the distance between us now, that is much trickier, so we tend to work together over audio/screen sharing, composing and arranging in Ableton Live. I’ve always thought of our musical process as being more experimental or explorative. Rather than coming up with a concept for a track, it tends to be more about trying out a specific process as an experiment at the start and seeing where that takes us. Like “what happens if we modulate this parameter in a synth in a certain way”, or “what happens if we route this sound through these effects” etc.

Jussi: Yeah, we experiment without any specific goal and when something rises out with a feeling that we think has power then we continue to build on it intuitively. This way the track finds its own form.

What are your immediate and long term future plans?

Jussi: Right now, while we continue to work on new material we’re really looking forward to the gigs we have coming up and to playing live regularly again. It’s a fantastic feeling to be gigging and to explore this new chapter of GTT.

What should the Weirdo Shrine reader do after reading this interview?

Tom: If it’s out by the time you read this, obviously you need to listen to our new record, ‘Recovery Position’ on Wrong Speed Records.

18 January 202318 January 2023

Review + Q&A: The Psychotic Monks- Pink Colour Surgery (2023, Fat Cat Records)

Writing about The Psychotic Monks with a headache. It fits the mood. On Pink Colour Surgery even more than before the band shows off their eerie quality to crawl deep under your skin and rattle your bones. Electronic beats like drills, shattering pots and pans, urban field recordings, the French postpunkers use it all to paint their drab picture of life as they know it.

Like my throbbing headache, it refuses to back down, until it finally drives away its stubborn point; there is no escape. You need to let go and give yourself up to the bleakness. White walls, grey streets, zombified youths robotically dancing in the alleys. Sweat and energy and movement, but no joy. We have come to an understanding. The future is grim, so we dance, and move our bodies, we are beaten by the drums, by the inevitability of defeat.

At various points on Pink Colour Surgery the band lets their blackened crust crack, and light drips in. A song like Imagerie is a good example of this. Decors is another one. Even when you hear the world around it crumbling to dust on the background the songs have beauty and hope, whether they are in vain or not. On goes the beat again though, throb, throb, throb. The Psychotic Monks plod on, they smile sad smiles and rip open another can of melancholic soundscapes and cling-clanging stomps.

Does this review have a happy ending? My headache will subside. Pink Colour Surgery shows the beauty of decay. We will fade and our current world will crumble, but humans can make songs about it that last forever.

How are you? How has the pandemic period been for The Psychotic Monks?

We’re fine thanks, and you? A lot of work since the pandemic, music helps to get though the week since then. We had a great year in 2019 with a lot of shows, when everything stopped it actually felt good but the pandemic period wasn’t easy, we had a lot of perspective on what we were doing since 2015, ideas and fears for the future. We managed to keep on jaming, playing our instruments, discovering new instruments, catharsis thanks to the music. We agreed on planning our 3rd album, composed with all the material we recorded since the lockdown ect. We had at least one or two shows every months since 2015, when everything stopped we filled that blank with jams sessions and a lot of rehearsals..

Can you introduce the band, and how did you meet?

Artie : Guitars/vocals // Martin : Guitars/vocals // Clem : Drums/vocals/synths // Paul : bass/synths/vocals/trumpet . Clem arrived in Paris almost 10 years ago , he met Artie and Martin in a music school , then I (Paul) joined the band in 2015 and we recorded our first album, went on our first tours in France..!

What can you tell me about your musical backgrounds?

There were some music schools in our musical background, nothing crazy, just enough to learn musical technical stuff, we discovered a lot on tour actually x). // Musical background could mean « references » (2015-2018) : BRMC, BJM, QOTSA, RATM, POND, Pink Floyd, Ty Segall.. // (2018-2020) : Slint, Nick Cave (w/ The Birthday Party), Aldous Harding, Gilla Band, Shame, Swans, Shanon Wright… // (2020-) : Throbbing Gristle (w/ Genesis P–Orridge), Giant Swan, Talking Heads, BCNR, This Heat, Clara Rockmore, Sophie, Sega Bodega…

What does a regular day in your life look like?

We rehearse at Mains D’Oeuvres in Saint-Ouen, close to Paris. We go there, we chat, we play some music, play again because it is not good enough yet and then we go back to our own lives, or we stay together to hang out in someone’s apartment.

What is the best thing about the new album?

The best thing about the new album is that it was produced by Daniel Fox (Gilla Band-ed). Cheers man!

Where do you live and what is the environment like for musicians like you?

I live in Lille (north of France) the rest of the band live in Paris. It is a great environment, we’re able to see a lot of artists performing around, it is very inspiring. Lille is more quieter which is fine to me, I can get easily to Bruxelles or Paris for a gig or something. There are also a lot of bands.artists to meet around, and Mains D’Oeuvres which hold our rehearsal room, also have a kind of theater, expositions room, dancing classes… we met a lot of people there , ❤ on them.

Who are some contemporary musical heroes of yours?

Mine would be Injury Reserve, By the time I get to Phoenix moved me a lot recently.

Can you tell me about how you go about composing and recording songs?

We are lucky to have the right stuff in our studio to be able to record multi-track. So when we jam we can easily isolate one person’s part and rework on it, make it musical with another with some perspective.. Almost all songs of our upcoming album come from jams with the 4 of us during the pandemic. Then we rework and compose a structure with the parts from the jams, trying to find the balance. It ends often with a ≥ 6min songs lol.

What are your immediate and long term future plans?

This december we go on 4 gigs in France and then we’re gonna work on a soundtrack for a short movie about a young vampire. I think that might be a lot of fun ! Our album is release in February, we will start our tour in march and hopefully we will travel a lot , and in the UK during the year to share it live and loud ! Miss the UK !

What should the Weirdo Shrine reader do after reading this interview?

Get to know us ! We just released a live session of a new track, come to watch it, tell us if you liked the energy! Cheers