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ALBUM OF THE WEEK ORGAN # 260

RUDE MECHANICALS – Glass Eye (Rim) – Jaded things are brushed aside and all kinds of secrets and champagne and oil and toe nails painted red, not that you have a choice over the colour of your toe nails, Miss Roberts is clearly in control of that decision and everything else here. So this album landed just in time for our radio show last Sunday, we like to think we’re green around here, we have no problem with recycling used words, here’s what we said when we put last Sunday’s playlist up on line, we had to play a couple of tracks straight away...
“Now where do we start with this one, haven’t really explored the album yet, only got it out of the wrapper this afternoon, all kinds of stage bendy pointy jazz and spiky hard boiled experimental noise and toe sucking and golden showers and post punk art rock performance and body fluid meditation and creatively absurd goodness and dark decadent moistness. Led by the mysterious Miss Roberts, her band of ‘symbiotic slaves’ are different”
....and that was one little part of Glass Eye, one tiny little part! There’s aliens and people living in lofts and filing the junk in alphabetical order, there’s and hypnotic jazz clarinets and tight rope and more champagne and funny language that I don’t understand. And Miss Roberts has a beautiful red dress, she said her mother made it. Isn’t Rim Sexton Ming’s label? This sounds like the kind of thing he would put out. Has someone taken video footage of the thoughts in my head? Auto erotic fixation? Bar room noir, strange art-blues cabaret, dirty dishes, chocolate wrappers – you take up smoking, I’ll take up crack, none of this will matter after that. Strange Theremins, strange sinister sins, beautiful sins, and I think to myself, what if, one day... well...
Rude Mechanicals are unique, Rude Mechanicals are strange, Rude mechanicals are good – go admire them over at - www.myspace.com/flyingcaberet or www.rudemechanicals.org.uk or www.rimrecords.co.uk

"Hello, yes, we, the Rude Mechanicals, will be headlining at the Fiddlers Elbow, 1 Malden Road, Camden, London, NW5 3HS this Friday, 22nd August. £5

Nolonger do you need to be lost and lonely, nolonger do your socks have to sink in existential angst , for I, Miss Roberts, will be taking love slaves this Friday.

Lessons will include instructions in Ettiquette, Taxidermy, a Rotten Tango, and perhaps a meditation on Bodily Fluids, if your lucky!

Love
Miss R."

Ah, thanks Sean for putting that up here! Come along sometime, would be nice to meet you in the flesh, I'm curious now having heard your voice a fair bit.
A friend of mine, Owy Thomas, whose a massive Cardiacs fan, says you stayed round his place once after a Cardiacs gig, or something like that (?)

Jo

Owy, I know Owy, don't think I've slept on his floor though...nope, that wasn't me...

RUDE MECHANICALSANARCHISTWOOD / RUDE MECHANICALS – Inn On The Green, Ladbrook Grove, London, 10th Sept

There were no red trucks in Ladbrook Grove and nothing was wished on, we missed the Portobello film festival bit of the night but there was Punkvert film-bites running through most of the evening and well where do we start with this tale? There was already some kind of vibe at 8.30pm, and well before the first band things were feeling good, something happening here. Now I need to urgently get tonight out on (virtual) paper and try and explain at least some of it before the details – need to explain why I found myself out front on the phone telling others they needed to get down here mid way through. We’re at a Punkvert/Subterfuge night called A Fete Worse Than Death that’s part of the Portobello Film Festival and also something called an Ex-Gratia Recordings launch party night – I thing that’s what we were at.

We’re under the Westway anyway, Clash-land, West London and just along from the Earl Percy where that wanted a riot of their own back there. There’s always different feel under the Westway in Ladbrook Grove, this is Hawkwind/Killing Joke territory, that whiff of head-punk counter-culture still hangs in the air and half the people in here look like they were either Clash roadies or groupies back in ’79 – we are not in Hoxton and this certainly isn’t Camden.... There’s healthy dub and the sounds of Sly and The Family, James Brown and Public Enemy spinning while we wait for the first band, and did we get a bit of the Battle of Britain soundtrack, the bit that sounds like Stench Of Honey? We certainly got the classical strains of Holst and Mars over the PA and who is this man dancing around chaotically ballet-like is an orange boiler suit? Is he some official part of the night or just a passer by “enthusiastically” joining in? What’s he shouting about? Mars? Bringer of War? - “Can we please have a f**king band on stage” he eventually yells and goes and straps on a guitar and starts ranting about Auntie Mary having a cannery before the rhythm section shuts him up and ANARCHISTWOOD quite literally kick off. Four of them, two orange boiler suits, drummer in white vest and pint sized short-cut blond-haired ball of energy in jeans and basque in control of it all – “we’re a punk rock band” she declares as they launch in to a song called Stumpf**ker and a rant about Tipper Gore while the girl in the box dances around the audience - oh yes, the girl in the “feel-me” box - I think that’s what she called it - she’s wearing it around her top half, long legs and high heels, the box is painted silver, two holes cut in the front, you can guess the rest. Anarchistwood are ripping through some rather fractured, rather messy new wave proto-punk rock, they abort half way through a number of songs, they have one about Snorting Whisky that wasn’t the Pat Travers song (unless they really prank-rocked it up while they drank cocaine). They sing about Rivers of Shit (I think that’s what they were singing about) while animated films of pigs and sheep in sunglasses go past, and tales of caution and seeing things in another light. Singer girl – she maybe called Sistah Kist – certainly had an energetic limit-pushing personality, born to shout at the front of a punk band, and when she wants to, she really can sing. The band thrash on here, bite and turn there and hey twisted mister you’re a total wreck and agents of thee great cosmic joker and proud of it. She’s good, they’re good, they’ve got this raged art-punk thing going down, they’re messy, they walk a musical tightrope and you’re never sure if they’ll make to the end, they’ve got a bit of Crass, some Patti Smith a touch of Butthole Surfers and some kind of hint of situationist chaos and a gloriously good punk rock mess...

So this is it then, the stories on other people’s shoes, RUDE MECHANICALS have to be seen, no they really do have to be seen - they all look so intriguingly good, they demand your full attention, your fascination. Lynda Beast is with them tonight, mostly with her violin, sometimes a trumpet kind of thing, long olive green dress, bow between her legs, how was she playing it just then?. Kitty Kat is over there with blue hair and red heels (that somehow later on end up on the dance floor and have to be handed back) behind her keyboard and her oboe, Guy Avern weaving in the middle of it all and mostly driving the bass. Dapper man called Cos would be centre of attention in most bands with his refined guitar, there’s so many centres of attention here though – both visually and musically. Tommy G is at the back with his colourful jazz-stroked drums gluing it all together – there’s some seriously good musicians up there and it all seems to flow so so easily, so effortlessly when it should be so uncomfortably awkward. How to explain it? How! In an ordered alphabetical way while alien mice take over the tube lines, or feeding Derek lots of pies and then there’s the escalators that are to be considered nothing more than stair impersonators.

And there in the middle, looking radiant in her long red dress and big white hair and in finger-pointing control of everything is Miss Roberts. Telling us how to dance in such a charmingly refreshing (and wonderfully plummy) way – and we can’t help but respond to her elegant demands that really do manifest in to your deepest reality while her band of symbiotic slaves decorate the walls of your insides with their questions concerning time and the invention of the calendar and a later a Rotten Tango. Order up some Champaign and drink the golden outrageousness of it all, the twitching behind curtains and the life in carrier bags and looking though letter boxes. Oh it makes such bizarrely good sense and all the thoughts on video taken from inside of your head and strange noir and the sweet sweet smell of back bar-room art rock and strange other-jazz - and the smiling encroachment of my dancing neighbours for the frantic finale of Disco Dancer where they take on funk in a deliciously eccentrically English way and teach us all the routine. We’ve been though all kinds of genuinely avante across-the-line jumping with art rock and performance cabaret jazz and new-wave no-wave bites of blues and Zappa and Beefheart and before the disco there was another routine – oh yes, 1-2-3 hoorah!!! Most seem to already know that was required, there’s a cult following and a genuine word of mouth thing going on, Miss Roberts has clearly instructed them before – all seriously hard boiled art rock performance and all such fascinating fun and we were expecting good on the strength of the Glass Eye album, really wasn’t expecting it this good though. Yes, such fun and watching you from the other side... oh yes, love the existential angst and it doesn’t have to be that way for Miss Roberts will take control. Rude Mechanicals are wonderfully good They leave the stage to wild applauds and the sound of the Dead Kennedys and then, after some more inspired choices from the spot-on DJ, all kinds of ranting and filthy spoken word and audience-baiting performance and removal of clothes from a man called Handsum Pete - some writhing semi-naked boy-nuns and guitars and you really had to be there, following Rude Machanicals was tough Hansum Pete and his friends took it a whole different naked way ..

Anarchistwood: www.myspace.com/didtheypayyoutosleepwiththosepolarbears
Rude Mechanicals: www.myspace.com/flyingcaberet or www.rudemechanicals.org.uk
www.punkvert.tv

A Post Script from Funkcutter because Zoe deserves a proper name check: “It was wonderful and top totty! we had a last minute addition of our beautiful silver cake box girl Zoe Snelgrove - yum yum - and of course the fabulous DJ Mr Johnny southside + KodeK VJ filling in the large holes between live bands and all hail Handsum Pete, he surely is the worm of christ...”

new one sounds good on thier My Space

playing on May 30th at The Inn On The Green on West London...

Shouldn't there be new album news by now Miss Roberts?

the album should be out in January now!
more news from Ex Gratia as we get it....