In a message dated 7/2/99 4:09:33 PM eso200@is5.nyu.edu writes:
quoted 4 lines Also, I'd appreciate any opinions on the Richard Thomas/Wormholes disc off
>Also, I'd appreciate any opinions on the Richard Thomas/Wormholes disc off
>Lo Recordings. I thought the Milk 12" and "Shoes and Radios Attract Paint"
>CD were brilliant, but I haven't seen much mention of this Wormholes
>"re-structuring". Any good?
from Motion -
http://motion.state51.co.uk/reviews/281.html
-with formating, punctuation, etc. corrections as forwarded by the author.
The possibility for disaster loomed large over "Seven Point Plan", with
Richard Thomas' perpetually untethered free-style scrapwork hitched to the
(more-or-less) straight-ahead three-piece Rock material of Dublin's
Wormholes. But since Thomasification is occuring after the fact, the
Wormholes having been recorded prior, there's little need for either party to
compromise. Thomas can be as deliciously "out" as he likes, filling every
available wrinkle in the Wormholes' sludgy sound with xylophone runs,
saxophone dribblings, squiggly, eely synth, koto clang, creaky hinges and
saints-know-what-else he had lying about his Wales homestead. Seven Points is
billed as a collaboration, but its more of a one-sided Frankensteinian remix
project -- and its Thomas' crafty fingers that are all over this record.
Everything has been turned downside-up and jumbled: the CD tray is glued to
the wrong side of the digipack, the track titles are burped up as absurdist
fragments ("Vermicelli/Vorticella 1," "Its A Magpie So I'll Spit And Salute
Sir"), and the album reels from Wordsound hiphop ("Route/Also [Eammon
Directions]") to stoner rock ("Lieblings Gruppe") and musique concrète á là
John Oswald ("The Gibson Grasshopper") in leaps and lurches. That
oft-repeated "Welsh Sun Ra" epithet fits even less cozily here than it did on
Thomas' frankly brilliant "Shoes and Radios Attract Paint" and "Something
With Milk In It". So we're once again sent scurrying in search of an
adequately descriptive tagline. You could do worse than "Butthole Surfers
colliding head-on with Mogwai, Sun City Girls, and Coldcut in a museum of
pyrophones, gravichords, and other lost instruments." But the fun is in
working out the formula for each new concoction (Tod Dockstader + Microstoria
= "Sceptron Sperry Gyroscope?" Quickspace + Plaid = "Yorkshire Rider?"). Some
will prefer Shoes' quirked-out braininess to the (m)ad-lib angularity of this
rather lighthearted outing -- and one does miss the refined madness of
undiluted Thomas. But "Seven Point Plan" can still screw your head around a
full 360º. Or do it in completely, as when Thomas lands a one-two Boredoms
whiplash punch like "Googleplex-Onomics"/"Synod Lincoln Trails." He's already
proven that he has a one-of-a-kind mind as well as a touch of ADD. If it
means more enticingly odd records like Seven Point Plan, we can let him have
his jollies too. -gg
mr. e.
now on: nori: 21056 (bathyscaphe)