Released to coincide with a compendium of David Keenan’s music writing, of the same name, Volcanic Tongue: A Time-Travelling Evangelist’s Guide to Late 20th Century Underground Music cherry-picks Lo-Fi DIY tracks championed by the journalist / author during his days running the Glasgow record store, “Volcanic Tongue”. 

The 20 tunes showcased courageously criss-cross in all sorts of anti-genres. Blending drones, Eastern, spiritual influences with drum machines and untutored but enthusiastic, energetic 6-string strum. The boundary between bluegrass Americana and nomadic Tuareg blues is blurred with cyclical, repeating refrains, and raw space rock roars like free-jazz skronk, emitting screaming, feedback epiphanies. Mixing desk levels are shoved up into places they’re not supposed to go, so howling, distorted noise accompanies collages of field-recorded seabirds and sampled seismic explosions. Ambient atmospheres are woven from ethereal whispers, and siren-like sighs evolve into eccentric, outsider, primal wailing. There are soft serenades of Spanish picking and spectral, far away voices, and kosmische electronics, wired whistles, that summon a serene, but slightly spooky, otherworldly space. 

Sometimes the offerings are achingly arty. Painfully pretentious, full of the seriousness of youth. Always, though, in pursuit of their singular creative vision these amateur, aural auteurs are pushing the limitations of their available means and non-existent budgets. Refusing to be pigeonholed, or pander to any “pop” preconceptions about what constitutes music. Everyone more listening to their inner muse and doing their own avant thing. 

There are the odd outliners that are easier to label, or easier to spot where their influences are from. The Bachs, for example, were authentic, `60s Chicago garage rockers, and their Tables Of Grass Fields is a long lost psychedelic nugget. ESP Kinetic shout and bark like The Fall. Their poetry recalling the urban nightmare of John Cooper Clarke’s Beasley Street. Their bass-line, Peter Hook. Hollywood Autopsy hail from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but again sound Mancunian, with a wall of trebly shredding like a “shambling band” produced by Martin Hannett. 

The American punk of Counter Intuits’ Anarchy On Yr Face has angular, Devo-esque riffs, well, angular everything to be honest, but the challenging, sometimes confrontational stuff is balanced by things like the fragile Nick Drake meets Sid Barrett folk of Patrice, by the Current 93 affiliated Simon Finn. A To Austr’s Thumbquake & Earthscrew, a waltz wrought from ringing guitar, is cut from similar occult sonic cloth. 

Texan new-ager J.D. Emmanuel might be one of the better known names here. His Attaining Peace is medieval-melody-ed modular synthesis. Vox Populi! are another. The veteran French collective’s Gole Mariam comes in woozy waves of resonant buzz and multitracked voices, like Dead Can Dance, or Miranda Sex Garden, meeting La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela in a delirious fever dream designed to drive evil spirits out. 

The listening component of David Keenan’s Volcanic Tongue: A Time-Travelling Evangelist’s Guide to Late 20th Century Underground Music can be ordered directly from Disciples. The written work can be purchased from White Rabbit Books. 

I love the sleeve / jacket art by Julian House. 

Notes

Keenan’s writing for The Wire is the reason why I own CDs by artists such as Derek Bailey and Keiji Haino. His enthusiastic reviews also made me realise that improv is something far better experienced live. 

Keenan’s tome England’s Hidden Reverse, especially in its revised edition, is essential reading for anyone interested in the aural experiments performed within the axis / orbit of Coil, Current 93,  Nurse With Wound and Psychic TV, and how their occult sonic ceremonies overlapped with the world of pop. 

I own several of Keenan’s novels; For The Good Times, Xstabeth is currently on my desk, but This Is Memorial Device is my favourite, and clearly draws on Keenan’s time at Volcanic Tongue.