On listening to the first few minutes of this CD, Amy,
my six-year-old daughter, observed that ‘this
is pop’, a moment later she added ‘untidy
pop’... Bootleg fires scattershot samples
from a hundred potato guns, each shot hitting the target/missing
the target/not knowing there was a target there in the
first place/dropping the gun/baking rather than firing
the potato/etc, etc.
Bootleg initially appears like a manic depressive
on the upswing, the emotional equivalent of approaching
the top of a big dipper while suffering motion sickness
and vertigo simultaneously. As the album continues it
begins to slow down and focus more, the twists and turns
occurring a little less frequently. Second track Cocktails
is a fine piece of Farfisa mellowness thwacked with
bent notes from what might be a violin strung with steel
strings. Scarlet begins like an Italian spy
thriller before taking a detour off the strada to visit
a fairground.
* Bootleg is like a portion of fat, tasty chips
slapped into a big white bap.
* Bootleg is the bastard offspring of Carl
Stalling and a benzedrine-addicted Autechre.
* Bootleg is like a wet weekend in 1950s Morecombe
brightened into day-glow colours by dropping a fantastic
tab of acid (temporally impossible, but what the heck).
* Bootleg is like the wall-mounted collages
pieced together from disparate detritus by British artist
Tony Cragg, but instead of confrontations between police
and protesters they illustrate karaoke-singing businessmen.
David Toop in his 2004 book Haunted Weather
refers to a generally unacknowledged parallel history
of sonic experimenters who worked in populist rather
than avant-garde spheres. He initiates this analysis
with reference to Danish wildlife recordist Carl Weismann.
Weismann edited together outtakes of dogs barking into
a canine rendition of Jingle Bells, which eventually
and entirely unexpectedly reached no.1 in the US 16
years later. Æ appear to follow in this populist
tradition by creating challenging musical collages out
of sonic detritus reminiscent of fairground rides, distorting
halls of mirrors and, perhaps most appropriately, those
humorous illustrations in which holes are cut for people
to stick their heads. Although frenetic, hectic and
exhausting, Bootleg is a lot of fun, chock-full
of sonic detail, surprising juxtapositions and revelatory
moments of unexpected beauty.
Colin Buttimer
3/5 |
