Current Issue 346
December 2012
On the cover: Scott Walker – In a rare interview, the singer and composer talks Mike Barnes through his ambitious, brutal and absurdist new album, Bish Bosch. Inside: Peter Brötzmann redux, Wyrd sounds from the West Country, Jonas Mekas, David S Ware, Pinch, the Slowfoot label, Fontanelle, and much more.
(Mike Barnes talking with Scott – very good. I got to know Mike Barnes some years ago at the Punkt Festival in Kristiansand. I was curious to meet him personally after having read many of his reviews – a soul mate in a way. I was not disappointed, a wonderful, tall person, a music lover with passion and understatement. M.E.)
Excerpt: „On BISH BOSH, Scott uses an expended musical palette including eruptions of Metal guitar riffing, Latin percussion, pounding drums, massed strings, gongs, shofars (ram’s horn trumpets), marbles rolling around on dustbin lids, and a tubax: „This thing is like a cross between a tuba and a big fat saxophone that you have to sit on the floor“, he explains. Characteristically, all this is punctuated by pensive tracts of humming silence, through which his voice floats and soars. Played by Pete Long, the tubax’s growling low notes introduce „Epizootics!“,the album’s most percussive track, which includes some elements of hot jazz, Scott Walker-style.“