Shearwater Records is pleased to announce the sixteenth in a series of weekly – more or less – releases in their virtual seven inch “OCF” series.
Old Man – OCF 16
For a certain generation the Venn diagram of computer programming, experimental noise music and the extreme left of political activism overlapped at one point: role playing games. Nerds on drugs, basically – and you, you reading this, you may stare well at the ground, shuffle your feet, huff and puff a bit…. Admit it, this is you too. You’re a nerd on drugs, and you like it.
So if you know who says, “"Borag Thungg, Earthlet" or the difference in the use of a D12 and a D20, then Black Inoru would probably have been the band for you. They started life in the mid 80’s as a wargaming club at Wanganui Collegiate, and like all rejects of a particular order, moved on to marijuana and records habits as soon as they reached 6th form. Their band, named after a Witch Goddess in an Ian Livingstone book, evolved over time into an almighty dub-prog soundclash, a mixture of King Tubby and This Heat. In 1998 they moved to the UK, and did quite well for themselves, playing Glastonbury, influencing Radiohead’s sound around the time of ‘Kid A’, and being in the slightly astonishing position of being sampled by Aphex Twin in his track ‘Doppermin Trildren’. This was subsequently used in a Japanese cellphone commercial, and earned them a small chunk of royalties.
In the mid 2000’s the band petered back to New Zealand and have played sporadically ever since. Guitarist Rob Forscutt was with the band from the beginning, surviving several line up changes and two global relocations. For the last few years he’s lived with his partner and children up the coast from Timaru, and has been an active participant in the scene of everyone’s favourite south Canterbury town. He’s lent his distinctive guitar-picking style to at least half a dozen of the loosely coordinated collectives that make up the bands down there, featuring on recordings such as Momrath’s ‘Goat Healer’, Ebephim Code’s ‘P4126’ and Sorrell Pelusilium’s ‘In-Crowd On The Half-Screen.” He’s also had some more mainstream success with this indie-folk duo with his daughter Jillian, as Little Painted Dog.
Old Man is the name of Forscutt’s solo project, under which he’s released a slew of small runs of recordings, ranging from Birchvillesqe ambient drone to Japanese sparseness. These two tracks fall somewhere in the middle, sounding like Roy Montgomery covering This Heat’s ‘Paper Hats’ before disappearing into a beautiful digital smoosh. A fine, cleverly made record that rewards ongoing re-engagement.
Available for free from the DivShare link below. Size: 9.53 Mb.
This and previous releases are archived at http://shearwaterrecords.blogspot.com/
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