HR003
Macroglossia — Articulation without the Tongue
C90
Macroglossia — Articulation without the Tongue
C90
stream and download at Bandcamp:
REVIEW by Jerry Kranitz
The collaborations continue on the third release, this time with Richard Martin who would go on to be a Harsh Reality regular and play on every tape release of Phinney’s long lived Viktimized Karcass band. Both Phinney and Martin record with acoustic guitar, keyboards, found sound objects, metal percussion, vocals and ‘machines’.
The 35 minute epic ‘No Choice’ opens with a rhythmic drill and bells, and quickly transitions to a bells and light percussion groove plus simple playful keyboard melody. The vibe remains fun and playful as dual keys noodle along with clanging percussion and frenetic electro percussion sounding grooves. The drill returns periodically, as do various other string scrapes and clangs. I’m really diggin’ that hyper-active percussion and keys, which brings to mind some kind of Romper Room theme at 78 rpm. Near the 10 minute mark someone says, “What’s that sound?!”, and then “Choice… choice… choice….”, and then garbled voicings along with the “Choice” chanting. I later hear what sounds like a skronking saxophone? The keys go accordion and then even a little symphonic, and all the while the kinetic beats and one keyboard form the anchor for various forms of experimentation and play. I like just past the 18 minute mark when the metal hammering takes over for some bedroom industrial grooves… everything else takes a backseat to the choppity-chop rhythmic intensity, with various yell/chants popping in every once in a while. Things eventually ‘calm?’ and we’re in a surprisingly coherent mish-mash of sound fun, clangs and yells, and I faintly hear the kinetic keys/electro percussion percolating in the background. I dig the vacuum (or hair dryer?) and power tools combo, with a funky metal beat and angry “Your fucking choice!!” screams. Overall… young artists experimenting and exploring the possibilities, zig-zagging between aggression and play. Fun stuff!
‘Avulsion Of The Eye’ is next and features more playful keyboard melody and light percussion…. guitar noodling… the drill pops in… the other keyboard… harmonica?… various sounds… It’s like a much more sedate version of ‘No Choice’. And overall it’s got an impressively linear glom of grooving chaos. I’ll bet these guys were having a blast!
At 36 minutes, ‘That’s What I Need’ is another epic. I like the playful carnivalesque keyboard melody, random scraping, and moving and clanging of objects, which are soon joined by guitar attack chords. The keyboard and guitar combo starts to get very interesting with all kinds of weird manipulation and scraping of the strings, which is frantically intense on the guitar, yet the whimsical keyboard just keeps merrily playing. One crazy jam! The street ranting vocals kick in and set a crazily off-kilter groove, bashing away on the guitar along with the keys. Chris and Richard get into a kind of comedy exchange at one point, arguing something about red necks vs rock vs punk. “What is a Punk!? Please tell me! I ain’t got no dictionary!” Then “Redneck. KKK. USA. Fascism. Racism. Poverty. War. Religion. Punk. Carp. Rocker. Hippie. Nigger. Spic. Jew. Hebe. Asshole. Shit for brains. Scumbag. Whore. Dyke. Faggot. Homosexual. Asswipe. Fuckhead. Dipshit. Pervert. Wop. Dago. Hey, you name it.” Most of the remainder is dominated by Chris’ stories and random rants, sometimes accompanied by Richard’s garbled voicings, plus banging, bells, guitar, and a low sustained droning keyboard note. When we get down to the last minutes, power tools, metal clangs, and other machinery take over, eventually settling into a bedroom industrial chaotic groove, which brings us to the end.
Finally, ‘That’s What I Need (I Saw) PT. 2’ closes the set, picking up right where the previous left off. It’s another cool jam with a droning sustained keyboard note, loads of choppily rhythmic clatter and bells, power tools and… horn? Then the keyboard drone is left on its own, as the boys banter and the horn lets go with some lazy licks. This one is very easy paced. Lots still happening but more subtle than the rest of the album, aggressive drilling notwithstanding!.
Jerry Kranitz interviews Chris Phinney
JK:
So on these first tapes you’re collaborating with different people.
CP:
Macroglossia… the cover of that tape is basically what Macroglossia is. It’s a disease where the tongue swells up and everything. So me and Richard Martin got together. He was a friend of mine. He knew Honeycutt. We got together and we pretty much did almost the same thing as everybody else. We were a little mellower except for our crazy chant that we went into about everything. Just using every derogatory word we could use as a joke.
The collaborations continue on the third release, this time with Richard Martin who would go on to be a Harsh Reality regular and play on every tape release of Phinney’s long lived Viktimized Karcass band. Both Phinney and Martin record with acoustic guitar, keyboards, found sound objects, metal percussion, vocals and ‘machines’.
The 35 minute epic ‘No Choice’ opens with a rhythmic drill and bells, and quickly transitions to a bells and light percussion groove plus simple playful keyboard melody. The vibe remains fun and playful as dual keys noodle along with clanging percussion and frenetic electro percussion sounding grooves. The drill returns periodically, as do various other string scrapes and clangs. I’m really diggin’ that hyper-active percussion and keys, which brings to mind some kind of Romper Room theme at 78 rpm. Near the 10 minute mark someone says, “What’s that sound?!”, and then “Choice… choice… choice….”, and then garbled voicings along with the “Choice” chanting. I later hear what sounds like a skronking saxophone? The keys go accordion and then even a little symphonic, and all the while the kinetic beats and one keyboard form the anchor for various forms of experimentation and play. I like just past the 18 minute mark when the metal hammering takes over for some bedroom industrial grooves… everything else takes a backseat to the choppity-chop rhythmic intensity, with various yell/chants popping in every once in a while. Things eventually ‘calm?’ and we’re in a surprisingly coherent mish-mash of sound fun, clangs and yells, and I faintly hear the kinetic keys/electro percussion percolating in the background. I dig the vacuum (or hair dryer?) and power tools combo, with a funky metal beat and angry “Your fucking choice!!” screams. Overall… young artists experimenting and exploring the possibilities, zig-zagging between aggression and play. Fun stuff!
‘Avulsion Of The Eye’ is next and features more playful keyboard melody and light percussion…. guitar noodling… the drill pops in… the other keyboard… harmonica?… various sounds… It’s like a much more sedate version of ‘No Choice’. And overall it’s got an impressively linear glom of grooving chaos. I’ll bet these guys were having a blast!
At 36 minutes, ‘That’s What I Need’ is another epic. I like the playful carnivalesque keyboard melody, random scraping, and moving and clanging of objects, which are soon joined by guitar attack chords. The keyboard and guitar combo starts to get very interesting with all kinds of weird manipulation and scraping of the strings, which is frantically intense on the guitar, yet the whimsical keyboard just keeps merrily playing. One crazy jam! The street ranting vocals kick in and set a crazily off-kilter groove, bashing away on the guitar along with the keys. Chris and Richard get into a kind of comedy exchange at one point, arguing something about red necks vs rock vs punk. “What is a Punk!? Please tell me! I ain’t got no dictionary!” Then “Redneck. KKK. USA. Fascism. Racism. Poverty. War. Religion. Punk. Carp. Rocker. Hippie. Nigger. Spic. Jew. Hebe. Asshole. Shit for brains. Scumbag. Whore. Dyke. Faggot. Homosexual. Asswipe. Fuckhead. Dipshit. Pervert. Wop. Dago. Hey, you name it.” Most of the remainder is dominated by Chris’ stories and random rants, sometimes accompanied by Richard’s garbled voicings, plus banging, bells, guitar, and a low sustained droning keyboard note. When we get down to the last minutes, power tools, metal clangs, and other machinery take over, eventually settling into a bedroom industrial chaotic groove, which brings us to the end.
Finally, ‘That’s What I Need (I Saw) PT. 2’ closes the set, picking up right where the previous left off. It’s another cool jam with a droning sustained keyboard note, loads of choppily rhythmic clatter and bells, power tools and… horn? Then the keyboard drone is left on its own, as the boys banter and the horn lets go with some lazy licks. This one is very easy paced. Lots still happening but more subtle than the rest of the album, aggressive drilling notwithstanding!.
Jerry Kranitz interviews Chris Phinney
JK:
So on these first tapes you’re collaborating with different people.
CP:
Macroglossia… the cover of that tape is basically what Macroglossia is. It’s a disease where the tongue swells up and everything. So me and Richard Martin got together. He was a friend of mine. He knew Honeycutt. We got together and we pretty much did almost the same thing as everybody else. We were a little mellower except for our crazy chant that we went into about everything. Just using every derogatory word we could use as a joke.
Page 567 of Chris Phinney's copy of Anomalies And Curiosities Of Medicine, Julian Press, 1956
JK:
I thought it was pretty cool, not necessarily racial. As my notes say, you get into a kind of comedy exchange. “What is a Punk!? Please tell me! I ain’t got no dictionary!” And then you seem to run through every word you can think of.
CP:
Right, exactly.
JK:
Was this still recorded with the Akai?
CP:
Still using the Akai open reel 4-track.
JK:
Not to jump ahead, but I see one more Macroglossia later in the catalog (HR031). And that had Mike Jackson and Stuart Locke, and I wasn’t sure if it included Richard Martin…
CP:
Richard’s on it. I can’t remember without looking at the tape. A lot of this is jogging my memory, cause a lot of these tapes I haven’t listened to in forever.
JK:
It’s interesting that you later resurrected the Macroglossia name.
CP:
It had to be because Richard was there, because otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. I know we had Stuart Locke. He’s not even a musician, he’s just a fellow painter. We had him sit in. And Jackson of course is a musician. And that was pretty much kind of the beginning of… me and Jackson started doing our own improv with R.S.V.P., which we’ll get into. We did one tape as R.S.V.P. and then we turned into Cancerous Growth. But we’ll get into that later on.
JK:
Was Richard Martin just another one of your Memphis friends? I don’t remember the name from other tapes.
CP:
He was a part of the so-called ‘Memphis Mafia’. He was the printer for Malice. After we quit using Clark’s Quick Print, because we got pissed off with issue #5 at the shitty way that they cut everything, Richard ended up being the printer for Malice. We would go and do it at night. I would go with him and his boss didn’t give a damn whether we used the stuff or not. We would print it all, collate it all, staple it all. We’d spend almost all night. And then he’d have to go to work the next morning, and of course so did I. But he started printing Malice with issue #6. But he was always at all the shows. We had similar tastes in music. He had gotten in touch with Throbbing Gristle.
JK:
I have to keep asking as we get to each tape, do you remember any publicity that this first Macroglossia tape got, in terms of reviews, or if it led to further networking opportunities…
CP:
Well, maybe more trades, but not many. Again, Gunderloy did a review in one of his old Factsheet Fives. It was branching out. I sent to OP but a lot of it didn’t get reviewed in OP. Forced Exposure, I sent them stuff. You know how it is. They pretty much did what I did. If they didn’t like it they didn’t say anything about it.
JK:
Again, not to jump ahead, but was Richard Martin in any of the later bands?
CP:
He was on every Viktimized Karcass tape there was. He either played keys or sang. If I was singing a lot of times he would play the keys. If he was singing I would play the keys. He did most of the singing on Viktimized Karcass.
I thought it was pretty cool, not necessarily racial. As my notes say, you get into a kind of comedy exchange. “What is a Punk!? Please tell me! I ain’t got no dictionary!” And then you seem to run through every word you can think of.
CP:
Right, exactly.
JK:
Was this still recorded with the Akai?
CP:
Still using the Akai open reel 4-track.
JK:
Not to jump ahead, but I see one more Macroglossia later in the catalog (HR031). And that had Mike Jackson and Stuart Locke, and I wasn’t sure if it included Richard Martin…
CP:
Richard’s on it. I can’t remember without looking at the tape. A lot of this is jogging my memory, cause a lot of these tapes I haven’t listened to in forever.
JK:
It’s interesting that you later resurrected the Macroglossia name.
CP:
It had to be because Richard was there, because otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. I know we had Stuart Locke. He’s not even a musician, he’s just a fellow painter. We had him sit in. And Jackson of course is a musician. And that was pretty much kind of the beginning of… me and Jackson started doing our own improv with R.S.V.P., which we’ll get into. We did one tape as R.S.V.P. and then we turned into Cancerous Growth. But we’ll get into that later on.
JK:
Was Richard Martin just another one of your Memphis friends? I don’t remember the name from other tapes.
CP:
He was a part of the so-called ‘Memphis Mafia’. He was the printer for Malice. After we quit using Clark’s Quick Print, because we got pissed off with issue #5 at the shitty way that they cut everything, Richard ended up being the printer for Malice. We would go and do it at night. I would go with him and his boss didn’t give a damn whether we used the stuff or not. We would print it all, collate it all, staple it all. We’d spend almost all night. And then he’d have to go to work the next morning, and of course so did I. But he started printing Malice with issue #6. But he was always at all the shows. We had similar tastes in music. He had gotten in touch with Throbbing Gristle.
JK:
I have to keep asking as we get to each tape, do you remember any publicity that this first Macroglossia tape got, in terms of reviews, or if it led to further networking opportunities…
CP:
Well, maybe more trades, but not many. Again, Gunderloy did a review in one of his old Factsheet Fives. It was branching out. I sent to OP but a lot of it didn’t get reviewed in OP. Forced Exposure, I sent them stuff. You know how it is. They pretty much did what I did. If they didn’t like it they didn’t say anything about it.
JK:
Again, not to jump ahead, but was Richard Martin in any of the later bands?
CP:
He was on every Viktimized Karcass tape there was. He either played keys or sang. If I was singing a lot of times he would play the keys. If he was singing I would play the keys. He did most of the singing on Viktimized Karcass.
