DNRC095 | LP | 2022 Read more
Category: Fiction (page 6 of 50)
Of course, there’s no point writing oneself into a corner or being labelled a one trick poet. So I’ve started writing fiction. Actually, I’ve always written prose. Poetry is for – oops.
Wikipedia meme band Chloro-5-substituted adamantyl-1,2-dioxetane phosphate’s debut disc, the understated My Mother Cleans Them, hit the charts just weeks after the release of DNRC Records’ all-time greatest-selling album. I speak, naturally, of the magnificently barmy Watercress, by Irish-Dutch folk songstress and chanteuse, Eyna.
Chloro-5-substituted adamantyl-1,2-dioxetane phosphate thus rode a small but significant wave of popularity for DNRC Records which, given its long history of deleting each of its releases, sometimes before the were even recorded, was a major step forward, both for the label and its hopelessly-dreamlike founder.
And so, we come to Chloro-5-substituted adamantyl-1,2-dioxetane phosphate’s ‘difficult’ first LP, and its barmy title. While the latter may have been generated as part of the original meme crawl, there is nothing at all random about this stunning album, set in a moonscape once used by Howard Hughes for the filming of an atomic-themed Western musical.
What else can possibly be said about this collection of twenty six pop-by-instruction post-perfect lessons in the chemical arts, except that like all cocktail albums it is filled with a staggeringly diverse range of lo-fi sounds and influences, a fusion of elements expressed perfectly on opening track and album stand-out ‘Straight To Wallpaper’.
What else can possibly be said about this ten minute Powerpoint presentation of a song—with its towering chord arrangements between slides and an intricate light-show of sonic wonderment throughout the breathtaking final six minutes, where the robotic chisel of Johnny ‘Mango’ Mars’ guitar work is let loose in a field of syncopated drum fills (Gin Desole) and bass drills (The Exit) that drifts towards its unexpected conclusion, a chipmunk whale chant coda to waken the dead—except what I just said?
Fans of the education through music genre will warm to the presence on this disc of several medleys, which in a ‘cute’ way summarise the backgrounds of the three band members, and their individual contributions to the emerging foodcore scene in Melbourne’s inner suburbs, especially the newly-electrified Fitzroy Underground precinct.
This former no-go zone with its ‘Spiders From Mars’ feel sheltered the only remaining live music venues in the Zone: Totalled on Wellington Street and the cavernous Bullring, right above the Underground station itself, at the old intersection of Brunswick and Johnston Streets.
While Mango Mars served his musical apprenticeship alongside inner-city jam musicians and students from MUT, Desole and The Exit (whose in hindsight ridiculous stage name was an apparent protest at the sacking of The Edge from U2) both came from strict foodcore backgrounds.
Their subsequent culinary requirements forced the band to record this album in a way that not only had no negative effect upon the environment, but also somehow actually turned the music into food.
The LP was to be officially launched in private, at an exclusive after-dinner performance by the band, their first in eight years, supported by an apparently large rider request, which was, also apparently, later refused.
In any case, we shall never need to wonder what went wrong, or why, or how the public would have reacted to the album if it had been released, for it was of course deleted the instant it hit those imaginary shelves in Old Fitzroy, and sadly no trace of it remains, save this barely readable review. We shall never see the the likes of Chloro-5-substituted adamantyl-1,2-dioxetane phosphate again. CSADP.
On Internet forums there appeared messages of a powerful explosion at an Australian nuclear power station located in the suburbs of Sydney. According to witnesses’ statements the explosion happened at about 3 pm on the 9th of September. In particular, one resident of this town has made a call and had time to inform her relatives that connection in the town was being cut off in order not to let people phone somebody. She insists that the explosion really took place at the nuclear power station, and that it was a really powerful one, and now the radiation cloud is moving. This information is being unofficially confirmed in public agents’ private conversations. Besides, local residents place pictures of the explosion consequences and victims’ bodies in their blogs. The photo’s attached to this email! Send this email to your friends!
Via bulletin boards in China news spread quickly of the cataclysmic detonation at Satel Heights, one of several nuclear reactors ringing the putative southern capital at a distance of roughly twenty kilometres from the city’s own epicentre. According to grainy mobile phone reportage from two Chinese journalists trapped inside the consular building in the already-decimated federal capital, Canberra, the explosion happened at about 3 pm on the 9th of September. One of the reporters, whose name has been suppressed, had time to inform her editor on the mainland that all Amerikan comms were down, rendering the continent literally off the hook. All Chinese comms, of course, remained functioning but due to the limited number of handsets and their location on the persons of the consular staff in only thirty five consular stations nationwide, access to their more advanced capabilities (including an upgrade in image quality from ‘grainy’ to ‘cinematic’) remained strictly within the control of the military apparatus. Australian authorities from overseas posts have held an emergency video link-up and are now planning mass evacuations from the Australian east coast, as it appears that the nuclear explosion was in fact of a scale not seen before, and that now the radiation cloud is moving north. This intelligence is now being confirmed worldwide by the private chatter of public officials engaged in maintaining the secrecy of military comms. The engagement of private agents to monitor evacuation procedures, monitor and quell any signs of individual or mass unrest (with vigilance especially towards looting and crimes of the corporate person) has also been reported. Little of this information actually arrived on the screens of the global network of Internet users, who could only look on in horror at the spectacle of destruction and slaughter paraded in the blog posts of those who have survived. The photo’s attached to this email! Send this email to your friends!
Scientists from the future will stumble upon this album and think: so that’s what all the fuss was about.
Watercress, the breakthrough album for Dutch-Celtic songstress Eyna, signalled a shift in fortunes for DNRC Records and its enigmatic founder, despite the fact that said ‘fortunes’ failed, as ever, to materialise.
In short, Watercress is a classic. Here’s why.
Possessing a voice as fearless as a rabid chipmunk on helium, Eyna also found herself in a fortunate situation whereby her bi-lingual ‘moon’ ballads were quickly ‘covered’, first by the Dutch superstar Jan Smit just hours after the album’s release in the Netherlands; and then later that day by a re-animated version of the Fureys in a small establishment in Temple Bar, Dublin.
Eyna’s success in both of these little countries propelled her instantly towards the larger German satellite circuit, where she ground her way through the summer of 2023 as a support act, opening first for Christy Burr and then Stung.
Her appearances later that year in a stage musical version of her life as an airline stewardess were all the more haunting for her audiences’ knowledge that none of it was true.
In fact, the closest Eyna got to any kind of aeroplane was through her song licencisng arrangements, whereby melodious synthesiser versions of her most well-known tracks (I speak naturally of ‘Watercress’, ‘Pinocchio Flow’ and ‘Miss Bo Dean Remembers …’) were ‘piped’ through the speaker systems of international jumbo liners before, during and after both takeoffs and landings.
While an aggressive campaign to ban this practice ultimately failed at the last step before the ICC in The Hague, the ensuing unrest and sporadic duels that occurred throughout smaller airports and terminals led in the end to the preserving of Watercress in amber until a settlement could be reached as to its perpetual distribution.
There the album may well have rested, had it not been for the efforts of a dedicated band of musicologists and expert whale-song recorders, who patched together an unauthorised version and propagated it via the usual underground and electronic channels.
What we hear, then, is an entire mono-culture’s take on Eyna’s unique and soaring voice—a voice which Stung later described as being even more suited to the singing of uplifting car commercial theme songs than his own. Unforgettably, a voice which was deleted, sadly, by a now-extinct species of song-cop, in that fateful summer of 2024.
We will never hear her melodious and guttural moon songs again.
DNRC092 | EP | 2021 Read more