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total time 45'21"
Cover by Adam Bohman
Released 2006
1980
was an incredibe year for London’s experimental music scene
with many different strands. Recommended Records were rereleasing
the first two Faust LP’s, L. Voag had found ‘the way out’,
Swell Maps were ‘in occupied Europe’. Throbbing Gristle
and other industrialists were giving plenty of live actions. Nurse
With Wound had just released their first LP, as had This Heat. The
other great LP on Piano Records by Steve Beresford was also on the
shelves. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the capitol Adam Bohman was making
his first recordings working with two budget cassette recorders.
Bunhill Row was the first complete album of material, but whilst
the aforementioned artists were pressing up their recordings and
making them easily available via Rough Trade or the Recommended
Records ‘shop’, Adam’s releases remained in tiny
cassette editions made for friends or exchanged on the mail art
network.
So here for the first time is Bunhill Row, released as it should
have appeared at the time - on vinyl.
It must be said that this is quite unlike any of Adam’s other
releases, and quite unlike his work with Morphogenesis, or his work
as one half of The Bohman Brothers. This is ‘songs’ -
30 in all, and the main instrument used is a trumpet (an ordinary
trumpet), along with other acoustic instruments and a vast variety
of objects and junk, much of which is still part of the Bohman armoury.
The overall feel sits somewhere between R. Steevie Moore and Caroliner,
but this is British of course. Somehow it all works, and all in
all, opens another window on to the incredibly fruitful astral alignment
that occured over London at this time.
Adam also has a solo
CD on Paradigm Discs, and also appears on 'Variations - a London
compilation' the first CD released on Paradigm Discs. The only other
solo CD by Adam is on Mycophile
REVIEWS
Bixobal #2
Often times I can get a general idea of what I am getting into when I get a record by someone whose work I am familiar with. But that certainly wasn't the case with this LP. I expected it wouldn't be like Bohman's work with Morphogenesis, and I learned the man is eccentric from the brilliant microcassette monologs which have appeared previously. But this archival release recorded in 1980 is songs with melodies and all. The opening number even has the qualities of a sing-a-long, with melodic lyrics of a local woman and her vibrator recorded so lo-fi and raw. With this, we definitely are fully engrossed in another eccentric aspect of Bohman. The album is composed of 30 songs, most hovering around one minute in length. They all exhibit a spontaneous music brut quality with vocals ranging from actual singing to decidedly off key to monotone instruction. There is a really gritty edge to all of this, sounding like he recorded one take on a cheap tape deck and played that back while playing over it. He can range from wistful in "Midnight Movie" to stream of consciousness on "Talkin' Bout Manilow", and then into plain racket territory as he stirs up noise with his collection of instruments. As to the latter, I quote from the jacket: "vocals, trumpet, six string guitar (prepared or not), home made stringed instrument, wine and drinking glasses, melodica, rubber bands, short plastic tube, electric shaver, glass bowl, light bulb, inside of toilet roll, various metal objects, spine binder, whistling and recorder." The primary instrument is often the trumpet, which he plays decently, although the overall impression is of someone trying to play instruments without regard to what they are supposed to sound like or to whether he plays them properly. It gives the album a very playful feel while Adam just goes for it. Giving a hint to his future work, the other instruments add a rough grain to some of the songs with noises heading towards experimental territory. At times seeming downright ugly and odd, it is both of those things in the right ways. "Bunhill Row" is a fun and rollicking recording. It is music as defined by song form, but it is so battered by Bohman that it becomes his own little beast. Obviously not appreciated at the time it was recorded, the album comes to an end with "Animal Biology", which nears the 3 minute mark before Adam announces that his mother has complained about the racket, leading to a curtailing of the bedroom recording. Following this, the last track on the record, "The Milk Chocolate Soldier", seems to be recorded accapella outdoors. If you missed Bohman's curious sense of humor earlier on the record, you can't help but come face to face with it on this cut where he teases and taunts his little edible soldier. So check out his audio diorama of "Missionaries of the Amazon Basin", the tale of wondering what to think of the dead body in "The Girl in the Purple Dress", and join in on "It's Sorglehop". Bloody brilliant. Eric Lanzillotta
KJFC 89.7FM
Bohman (from the London project Morphogenesis) created this solo record in 1980, overdubbing everything on cheap cassette recorders. He sings and plays trumpet, guitar, melodica, and a bunch of non-traditional instruments such as electric shaver, radio static, plastic tubes, rubber bands, toilet rolls, etc… Many of the tracks are crazy noise pieces with banging metal for percussion and unrecognizably distorted instruments, and there are plenty of ranting vocals: (A9 “….we are missionaries, we have come to convert you!”, A11 “…she was a whore!”, A12 “…I live in a cave!”, and so on). There are also some lovely but depressing pop songs: in “Irresponsible Parent Blues” a single father tells his child that he/she is going to be put in a “home”; “The Girl in the Purple Dress” is about a body found floating in a river (“you were dead… you were dead…”). Extreme weirdness is everywhere; even the pop songs sometimes have howling or shrieking sounds in the background. Voice-only tracks such as “Talkin’ ‘bout Manilow” and “The Milk Chocolate Soldier” show how twisted Bohman really is. The ragged tension of some of this material reminds me of Bohman’s fellow UK scenesters Throbbing Gristle and This Heat, and what they were up to at that time. This record is an amazing adventure! Max Level
The
SOUND PROJECTOR (15th issue 2007)
Fantastic LP
of 1980 cassette recordings by this certified UK genius. These miniaturist
avant-pop songs, some lasting less than sixty seconds, make for
an incredibly beguiling and intriguing listen. Everything fits right
in with the recorded work of Sexton Ming and Viv Stanshall, especially
in the very English subject matter, being dealt with in a very English
way... the underlying gloom and pessimism, the rainy weather, the
letters from the Council, the failing relationships, the landscape
of miserable houses... it's all here in the dense and opaque content.
Listen to songs like 'Irresponsible Parent Blues' or 'Melancholic
Alcoholic' for proof that England's social problems haven't changed
(or improved) much in the last 26 years. There's humour too - in
'Heavy Metal Halifax', or the hilarious 'Talkin' Bout Manilow',
which takes social satire of the 'normals' to new depths, with its
absurdist parody of shopgirls and secretaries gushing inanely about
Barry's music in their Thames Estuary accents. Bohman's charmingly
abrasive work from this period could be a missing piece in the jigsaw
puzzle of early 1980s avant-garde post-punk crossover history, a
zone that includes the Miniatures LP compiled by Morgan Fisher,
The Door and The Window, and The 49 Americans - not to mention the
history of DIY cassette bands...
Even bearing all the above in mind, you still won't be prepared
for the unearthly sound of this LP. It's in the utterly unique singing
style, the performance, and presentation of this music. There is
clearly some preparation in the composition of the lyrics and song,
and the recording method, yet in the finished product Bohman makes
it sound so natural as though it had only just occurred to him.
His singing style may not be a total shock if you've heard any of
his wonderful spoken-word cassette recordings from his aural diary
(also released by Paradigm, on 1999's Music And Words CD, and on
compilations), but it may surprise some listeners.... then there's
his performative style, here deliberately restricted to playing
acoustic instruments and based mainly on the acoustic guitar, trumpet,
and recorder, but also including all manner of domestic objects
and junk used as percussion (very English method this, connecting
strongly to the work of Hugh Davies). Finally there's the recording
method, involving astonishing use of degraded cassette tapes, battery-operated
players, loops, and anything else that might contribute to the aesthetically-delightful
obfuscation process. It takes the Mark E Smith aesthetic to the
nth degree. I think it's fair to say Bohmans lightened up slightly
on this warped approach to recording since 1980; but here, it sounds
beautifully raw, dirty, and mesmerising.
Brother Jonathan Bohman plays on one track; add to this the dazzling
'outsider art' sleeve by Adam, a nifty vinyl pressing, and we have
a genuine masterpiece of grown-in-the-UK genius. It's a genuine
pleasure for me to whole-heartedly recommend this LP to everyone.
Welcome back, Paradigm.
Ed Pinsent 21/11/2006
The
WIRE (Jan 2007)
Adam Bohman is known for
off-the-wall noise improv, hectically coaxed from a table-load of
everyday objects - in collaboration with his brother Jonathan, or
recently amongst verbal jostling with performer Patrizia Paolini.
But this remarkable LP documents an outpouring of songs, rants,
experiments and sonic dada from a feverish autumn in 1980, when
a 21 year old Bohman was at his most uninhibited. It's not always
a pretty sight: "In the village of the porcupine procreator/There
lived a little woman with a big vibrator" is as sentimental
as a Bohman love ballad gets.
"Stay home on Monday" is another catchy tune, though Bohman
has rendered the chorus indecipherable by singing it down a toilet
roll interior. Everything is non-electronic, but multiple overdubbing onto
a cheap reel to reel tape recorder has stretched the sonics way
beyond busting point, which is of course the point. "Talkin'
'Bout Manilow" layers up distorted voices like a chorus of
demented parrot's cooing over their idol's lovliness. Bohman luxuriates
in sheer distortion. "It's Sorglehop" finds him ranting
like a furious poet over a complex howling racket, "Missionaries
Of The Amazon Basin" suspends a pedantic voice - "We come
in peace!" - over frantic, pseudo-ethnic hooting, to hilarious
effect. It's silly but damnably intense.
Bohman's liking for a wistful, outer space trumpet melody recalls
the excellent Birmingham group Pram, while his declaiming over metal-bashing
("If you're feeling perky") evokes 1980s art-punk duo
The Door And The Window. The average track length is one minute,
and the cover allots generous space to Bohman's art, at once luridly
colourful and grim like German woodcuts. Clive Bell
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