PRJ030 - The Black Neck Band of the Common Loon The Fleshing Beam

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Tracklist:

  1. The Rebuke
  2. Bead Spitter
  3. Static Pleasure
  4. Looning Song
  5. Force Feeding the Flock
  6. I'd remember if I was another me
  7. Open Mouth Mounting
  8. The Fleshing Beam

Format: CD-R
Price: £7.00
Released: March 2013
100 Copies

Music by Andy Pyne and Blue Pin.


Reviews for The Fleshing Beam

The Sunday Experience, September 2013

'Littered amongst the sonic debris that we here mirthfully refer to as the tales from the attic record room you’ll note several references to a certain Andy Pyne. Who the bloody hell is Andy Pyne you are probably all wondering as you scratch your heads and give quizzical grimaces of puzzled curiosity – and we know you because big brother who is watching you told us so. Mr Pyne is with friends and accomplices a kind of one man music factory kicking out sounds plastered to limited edition CD’s like no ones business via his imprint foolproof projects. Long been on the radar of these musings since the distant days of puffin boy and braer rabbit he has in recent years ventured out as kellar, medicine and duty, raised by wolves and the black neck band of the common loon whose 5th outing we have here doing strange things on the player. The Loon are a freeform collective of revolving door membership this opus featuring blue pin and Jason Williams – the former named per the credits slip within on hand to play drums, piano, violin and whine – presumably not at the same time though I wouldn‘t put it past him. Strictly limited to just 100 copies along with unlimited download variants, ‘the fleshing beam’ finds our trio of intrepid imps evermore scaling the aural boundaries of the unknown to plant flags and colonise musical worlds as yet unmapped let alone on any known radar. So far left of this heat it nearly falls off the viewfinder (the decidedly wired and skittish ‘I‘d remember if I was another me‘ putting paid to that and sounding not unlike Bablicon in a nightmarish Japcore headlock), agitate and annoy appear to be the key watch words to the Loon philosophy, resolutely refusing to adhere to any tick box generic regime instead preferring to pummel and puzzle enquiring heads alike amid a jarring ju-ju jamboree made up of 8 freakish mutants (which don’t come any freakier it should said than on ‘force feeding the flock’) which at moments touch base unsettlingly with previously cited reference markers so that you get a terraforming stew into which elements of art rock, no wave, acid jazz, primitive folk and earth beat cross match, repulse to form new aural DNA strains with somewhere here old favourite Albert Ayler being for one heavily indebted to and dutifully lapped up on the chaotic fried jazz squall that is ’bead spitter’ whilst older listeners keenly aware of Volcano the Bear back in the day when they where too weird for the Wire might fancy a little casual re-acquainting Loon style that is via the mildly trippy though deranged crooked earth beat improv of ‘static pleasure’ while the pursuing ‘looning song’ has it seems taken more than an odd spin of the Volcano dudes ‘yak folk’s y’are’ as it concocts a darkening stew of Residents like sonic sorcery that’s all at once odd, deeply unsettling and transposed in an archaic druid like tongue. For long time admirers of the Loon there’s even a vocal moment, a very rare occurrence to those well versed in Foolproof Project groove courtesy of ‘open mouth mouthing’ which in case your taking notes sounds not unlike a deep fried art prog afro kraut bad boy which leaves the quite frankly shit faced and gone ‘the fleshing beam’ to see things ominously out with a sinister display of torch jazz noir which at intervals put us in mind of trunk’s excellent ‘voodoo sessions’ albeit of course as though fractured and recalibrated by the mischievous hand of Stockhausen with Moondog on side for added strangeness.'

IDWAL FISHER, September 2013

'What fun, what jolly japes. An hour or so of Brighton improv and some Italian noise with an Eastbourne filling thats the common link courtesy of Jason (to give him his full name) Williams. Or as I call him the six foot nine inch length of peripatetic noise thats more likely as not to be found on a bus or a train or cramped uncomfortably in the back of a car trailing halfway across the country on the off chance of deafening a few people in a room above a pub.
He's been 'at it' for as long as I've been writing this drivel but never have I seen anything appear with his given name on it before now. I suspect a maturing, a growing of sensibilities, a chance to put his name to something. Literarily.
Having abused guitars and noise boxes for years it seems only natural that he should bring these forms to his involvement with Brighton improv duo The Black Neck Band of the Common Loon who when not grubbing around in Hectors House and various other houses of Brighton ill repute are chilling with Unky Thurst and doing their best to keep improv alive in the land of salad and cock rings.
Having just soaked up a few bars of improv courtesy of some Smegma offshoots in the last review it seems appropriate to pluck their 'The Fleshing Beam' from the pile. Where we find Andy Pyne playing drums and vocals and the curiously named Blue Pin playing electrified violin, piano and 'whine' as well as even more drums. They take on collaborators now and again, mainly as ballast I assume, this time with the aforementioned Jason Williams as just down the road accomplice. To it all Jase throws in modified cello, tenor sax and of course, electric guitar.
And it works a treat. Over eight tracks and fifty minutes worth with the moods swinging from all out thrash to Pharoah Sanders fluttery flute solos to sparse drum rattle and tinkly piano. Strings are tugged and frotted, when the vocals appear they're buried deep in the mix so that they emerge sounding like Native American chants except that the Indians have had too much fire water and things have gone all sloppy. All this on 'Static Pleasure'. Breathy flute like wheezes are forced gently down the neck of a sax and are joined by scattered drum rim shots and a forbidding sounding church organ that mutates into a moaning vocal drone. Beats or rhythms that are more like slightly speeded up funeral marches or quick march Eraserhead themes are slathered with wild cello [Force Feeding The Flock]. On one track theres some kind of garbled language that sounds like a Turkish stall holder shouting his wares or a call to arms by an overzealous Iraqi or is this a Lightning Bolt cover all played out to massed spazzed out drumming and masses of guitar abuse. If anything our Mr. Williams bosses things a little, I guess he can't help himself, not that the rest would have complained seeing as how the results are so effective.'