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Check the press release: "Genre: experimental". Add "with bells on" and you're about there. This transcends experimental, which is no good thing. It's just too, well, stupid really â?? songs are stretched too long (why write a concentrated five minute song and make it good when you can write a thirteen minute sound collage and piss everyone off?), vocals are irritatingly squawked as much as they're sung, and song titles echo the crap within. I mean, would you go out of your way to listen to Ouch: Sinti, Roma, Zigeuner, The Names of Gypsy? Thought not. The intermission, A Paranoid Home Companion, is likely to be the biggest waste of time (seven whole minutes of guff) of your life. For 'Chaiming The Knoblessone' to be such nonsense is annoying, as the musicians involved are clearly talented individuals; maybe this is just a case of too many cooks? There are a few glimpses of loveliness on Mrs Shakespear Torso and Sole Foot Of Man, but nothing enough to stop you returning this promptly to the point of purchase. Unless you're some kind of sick musical masochist of course, in which case, I don't want to talk to you.

Mike Diver
CWAS #13 - Autumn 2003

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