Nina Walsh has uncovered a couple of contrasting cuts from the considerable archives of The Woodleigh Research Facility – the collaborative project that she shared with Andrew Weatherall. 

The first, Yacidik, dates from December 2016, and is more of that frightful, four-to-the-floor, oompty boompty music. With a big, punchy kick, and playful programmed percussion – the clue’s in the title – the track’s defined by a very flirtatious Roland TB-303. Showers of shimmering cymbals signal breakdowns of sorts, and the groove stops and starts, allowing those who might be rushing a momentary breather. While the drums are kinda disco, the rest of it most definitely is not. More an echo of the acid-soaked progg-y gear that Weatherall would hammer at his club, Sabresonic. A fantastic flashback to those fabled parties in the arches beneath London Bridge, on Crucifix Lane, at a venue called Happy Jax. A sound that’s currently proving to be popular all over again. 

The second selection is a whole other shebang. In 2018, W.R.F. performed at Durham Literary Festival, during the presentation of the Gordon Burn Prize. Burn was an award-wining author himself, who sadly passed in 2009. Nina composed the music, while Andrew read from Burn’s 1991 novel, Alma Cogan, which reappraises the life of the `50s TV celebrity.

Business savvy and ambitious, Alma was a singer, who turned light entertainer as the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II put a goggle box in every self-respecting UK home. Nicknamed “The Girl with the Giggle in Her Voice”, Alma topped the charts in the pre-rock `n` roll era, and she was the highest paid British female artist of her time. Cogan died in 1966, riddled with cancer. She was only 34. Burn’s book rewrites a history where that tragedy never happened, and instead has Alma, 20 years later, looking back at her career, showbiz and the price of fame. 

Nina’s music, a piece 13, 14 minutes long, is a glitched and twisted mix of Joe Meek and Luboš Fišer. Its magical, enchanted, music box chimes executing a weird, warped, waltz. Its lop-sided gait, that of a Tom Waits tall tale. Before I looked at the press release about Cogan, it conjured, painted, pictures of Tod Browning’s freaks packing up and hitting the road, Nick Cave’s carny calling it quits and leaving town. Bells toll and there’s the hum of what might be subliminal human harmonies. The combination conveying this kind of Coil-like sinister subversion just below the work’s pretty surface.  

The Durham performance also featured a short film, again produced by Nina, which is included as part of the new Bandcamp package. Consisting of treated monochrome slow motion loops of Cogan’s TV variety shows, the star, who embodied post-World War II optimism, glamour – all be it sedate by today’s standards – and success, is made anonymous in negative and silhouette. Her image of supposed attainable affluence dancing lonely and alone. 

Woodleigh Research Facility’s Apparently Solo Volume 3 is out now on Facility 4. 50% of profits go to the charity SOS Podenco Rescue.