Two Magpies slips and slides all over the place; check out the disorientating rhythms on the title track – it’s like an elfin, modern take on Ruth White’s Flowers of Evil.
Two Magpies slips and slides all over the place; check out the disorientating rhythms on the title track – it’s like an elfin, modern take on Ruth White’s Flowers of Evil.
http://quimper.bandcamp.com/ (Soft Bodies Records)
Really not sure what is going on here, but it’s good. Actually it’s beyond good. And further evidence that there are a HELL of a lot of enervating acts driving a wholly feminine, or female-sounding agenda which is forward thinking and shorn of any pretension. It’s as if the final death knoll on cock rock has tolled. Good.
Two Magpies slips and slides all over the place; check out the disorientating rhythms on the title track – it’s like an elfin, modern take on Ruth White’s Flowers of Evil. Or Ruth White’s granddaughter showing off her tricks on children’s TV. The cover’s a bit Aubrey Beardsley or Sidney Sime too, and this adds to the fin de siècle decadence. Overall there is a strong feeling of being locked in some dangerous and psychedelic children’s playground; one which runs like a silver thread through the record. And at times there is a feel of the Residents; why I’m not sure, it may be the gloopy bouncy bass on My Volunteer, or the dislocated voice… whatever it’s got that same sense of being disconnected to most of the rest of the world. Feline feels like its chronicling some extremely dangerous sleepover party and Rictus is a mini rave that is being conducted in a forest clearing. The last track The Balcony is a tour de force, a ghostly track that is by turns, wantonly hedonistic, melancholy and ambitious. It sounds massive in scope, bubbling away, and threatening to kick into something really out-there, even though sonically it keeps itself in check.
Brilliant, and, at seventeen minutes, all too short, frankly.