zoon van snook: interviews and interludes

and here was me thinking serial killers were the sole musical preserve of woeful thrash (slayer excepted) and tabloid serialisations.  so colour me all shades of surprised when the jaunty bleepy skittery beats of ‘that just about does it’ and its jazz-taxi-theme-by-way-of-daft-punk features none other than charles manson on vocals.  well sampled anyway.

which pretty much sums up this neat little package: sidesteps, sideswipes and left-field maneouvers.

yup a nice fuzzy warm little tune and then:

“i can do anything i want to you people anytime i want to”

ending with the ever so slightly chilling claim of:

“believe me if i started murdering people… there’d be none of you left”

not so goddam gentle is it now.

made up of bits of stuff, samples, found sounds, household objects as beats and drums, guitars, biscuit tins, and candle stick holders, snook has been described elsewhere as “brilliantly interesting” – quite a vague and frankly awful use of our wondrous language you’ll agree – but i can’t help agree.  the ep is both brilliant.  and interesting.

actually i’m detecting more than a whiff of chris morris’ fucked electronicks and jarring distorto-samples every now and again.  combined with the rockist tendencies of yr ulrich schnausses and the sinking in lovely warm scottish jelly feeling of benbecula records.  with this you can’t go wrong really.

bibliophone starts off all stuttering, wet and gloopy, stitching itself together before it gets kinda cloudy and unkle comes in with an acoustic guitar and some raw bloody drums (which frankly could have come off a steve albini record) to kick yr head in.

forget yr oddtronica’s and daft genrepigeonholes.  it’s all good fucking music.  whether it features a forty minute atonal tenor sax solo or it lasts for thirty seconds of two thrashed chords.  this record features neither.  for the record.

it’s all glitchy in a way that doesn’t (as it often does) get in the way of the beat.  it’s all ambient and chilled without (as it often does) descending to new age shopping mall toilet music.  troublesome trucks has something of the collage, the montage, sonically speaking, something of the idm (but not yawnsome) and the musical sketch pad of the recent brassica album.  clumsy fumbling vocal samples, strings, xylophone and an impatient urgency behind the soothing beat.  lovely stuff.

anyway enough chuntering, the debut ep is physically out now on cookshop records and is mouldering away tensely awaiting its digital release on the first of september.

“up until this point, my life was like a badly written screenplay for a film about fuck all”

the gloaming (diego chavez remix): disorted wandering beats: melody: headphone panning pulsing joy: video:

snookspace / cookshop music / kudos records