One Saturday-sized gobbet of time was taken up with a trip to Capitol City to twist nipples at the Autumn Anti-Folk Festival, by kind invitation of druidic poptart, Filthy Pedro. Master Egg had thrown himself down the autobahn earlier in the weekend to prop up feverish gangsters Prints of Whales, and Loopol had rubbed his hands early too, putting his ear to the lay of the land. Stuchbury was wandering about the world hitting things with sticks for the Polytechnic. So when CocOen finally dragged his foetid leatherly collapsed colon down to the West End, the ground was fully forked and primed. The 12 Bar is a small red place with a seventeenth-century chimney in the middle and a balcony so close you could quite easily dangle over and kick the lead guitarist in the face. We knocked it over with a Hammerpulse, we knocked its bricks off.
Your humble correspondent could not stay too long, so he saw only a handful of the Antifolkerati.
Sgt Buzfuz had expanded into a gang since last we met and it was a saucy bacon barm indeed, flecks of righteous yet tuneful indignation dripping from the carefully-manicured corners. Also,
Candythief laid down the candles and opened up the windows to the misty November future. They were a caged indie/folk liger, pacing round the tiny red space, having just escaped the sweaty imagination of Maximillian Dynamite, Napoleon's nerdier cousin. Then Hammers. Then a blur of men on their own, including a guy from Sweden with a laptop and guitar who sounded both great and (according to Loopol) "like a Swiss Kermit the Frog".
Waiting for further news of Delicate Hammers? Well, we were like raw garlic burning our way through the collective Antifolk intestines. We were a bu
nch of firecrackers held tight in their unsuspecting fists. A power trinity of claymation deities wading into the shining tide of semi-alcoholic goodwill, shivering out earthquakes of baked glamour in plastic bags. We played to the balcony, where they could not see our shuffling disco feet; we crouched for the floor, where otherwise no-one would have seen our shining, hairy faces. The cricket ball organ solo worked beautifully, so we did it a couple more times. We unleashed a new wailing version of "CocOen Aflame", which we'd been tinkering with in our brown room. There are even rumours of a radio interview conducted with Loopol and Master Egg. We felt swirled in a gorgeous steam and the eyes of many a lady upon us. We were a suave and charismatic meat that night. The tins were open and the magic beans sprouting visions of drink and sex and glamour, not a four hour sober drive home.
Car lights, clown faces: who gives a stick?
Birthmark In Shape of Piece of Toast Found on Face of Jesus
Noson Guto Ffowc 2006, 08:52 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton
We could have been anything we wanted to be with all anger we had!
Peppery hot on the hump of unexpected Bierkeller glory, Hammers have punched more holes in the fabric of time and style with Son of Group Hug. The augurs are good, and the chickens have not lost their tell-tale entrails in vain.
The aura of potato hunged heavy in the air as Group Hug Number Nonesuch tickled the tarmac at the Carlton Social and Bowls Club in neon-streaked Whalley Range. Gummy invitations had been couriered by Olympic torchbearers to the two corners of this fair kingdom, and the M40 was scattered with pearls to facilitate the passage of two London collectives known soft in our hearts - Filthy Pedro & The Carthaginians and Prints of Whales. Hearts skipped with the light-footed beauty of a thousand startled flamingoes. Think Miami Vice, but with Bonnie Prince Billy in place of Jan Hammer. No, seriously. Think about that.
Ours is a Saturnine family, chums, but none the less we like to make with the party-time. Polaroids burn in our veins like acidic yoghurt, polaroids of shiny nudity and lurid lipsticked grins. That's how stained we are with party juice! But digression is the worser part of news, so let's move onward.
First with their balls out of the bag were the luminescent
Racoons, knights in Brazilian satin, hair blowing romantically yet ironically across their shining eyes and onto the church-hall floorboards. Your humble correspondent was spilling chilli sauce over his new jumper at the time while pounding the streets towards the action, but hallowed scrolls bear witness. The Racoons plucked fruit from the very air and planted the pips in the hearts and ears of all. Mighty trees will shiver and flutter their leaves in strong winds in the future, trees uncurling themselves from that very moment.
Next up, with Gilgamesh pulling his tendons into top notch shapes, was Filthy Pedro and
his band of Carthaginians. The sound was a ragged cloak for the aging, priapic anti-folk hornet, his vocals diffused like bad tea, but the picture was printed plain: "I am Filthy Pedro! I know ancient stuff! The druids call me uncle and I will burn down in a hail of seething black vomit anyone that doubts my transubstantive intent." Wriggling topless along the stage, wandering about the dancefloor collecting Rock'n'Roll points, whooping and a-hollering the name of Hermes Trismagistus, all featured heavily in his turn. Disco Stu kept the time, occasionally augmented by machines, and a novice Carthaginian by the name of
Amy put bass noises about in learned fashion. The ancient world flowered bright, but never so recently.
So far so fun, but it was not until the nicotine and gumbo wizards,
Prints of Whales
scraped their crepuscular hides onto the stage and barked the command to dance like joskins that the gaslight glowed hard in the parlour. The dirty, pockmarked moon seems so close when these guys make the stuff that Richard Branson gnaws his bearded chin with a mushrooming sense of crossed ambition. Saw wobble with soul, banjos soar. It was an irregular hoe-down with Master Egg on birthday bass duties, standing amongst the swirling dancing crowd like one of us plebiscite types. Skirts were swirling, Polish beers swilled. A bonfire of fun.
Finally, the pesky sound limiter defeated by sticking plasters, your sweet Hammers clambered aboard and their drunken fury was amusing to behold. The usual under-handed battle with sound desks, unwilling backing tracks and the unruly lightning in our fingers. "Moon in Aries" blazed, random objects thrown around by mischevious sprites, gin on their breath and jazz stains on their gloves. Dimmed by bottles, little remains in brains of what happened that night, but the party lurched onwards in the face of stern clock-watching bureaucracy to The Flat Above. Friday night grease flamingly licking the rags, vinyl bridges reached across the Mariokart rainbows to Valhalla, home for warriors fallen in the heat of enjoying themselves. We know the dark, drizzly nights draw our friends around us. The circle cracked and all the love poured out.
Carry the backpack into the long walk of Decade #4, Master Egg, and teach lessons until Uranus half-returns. Life begins at lunch-time!
Thunder Spews Out From The Tiny Mountain
Nos Calan Gaeaf 2006, 11:59 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton
Winter Commences in 3... 2.... 1.....
The surprise tore its way out of our tiny minds like a Kossack horde on a trip to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Concrete bulkheads whispered bad thoughts in the streets as we approached through doomy lips. Garrisons of doubts nibbled the wobbly edges of our appetites, carefully nurtured with the chilly, brackish waters running down our collective spine. And yet, it went OK.
We huddled around music types for some kind of human warmth in the cavernous stench of Der Bierkeller. Band(ism) broke off a couple of cans, rolled them across the cavefloor, sketching peacocks and drum-pedals on the rough-hewn walls to hand the torch to the future. The Generalissimos showed us their sandwiches, opened up tubs of beard wax and etched the script of the next twenty years on a thousand beermats, scattering them into the streets. Kni9hts fiddled with their expensive keyboards.
The three of us strode and stood and barked like beasts, and the cloudy dusts of our ancestors swirled with content. I sang so hard at one new point that the blood in my throat exploded, curdled in my inner ear and dissolved a significant part of my thinking. Or perhaps that was pints. Aye, maybe pints. There was a heckler in flourescent orange that we couldn't hear, so he went back to dig a hole somewhere. There were plots painted of Group Hugs to come, circles drawn in the sand.
These words are woeful arrows thudding into the turf. The Platonic bullseye eludes, the evening won't be caged. But get the idea, friends: success.
Huge, quaking, milky invitation.
Party Time in UK's Third Shittiest City!
28 Hydref 2006, 14:34 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton
Tremble, ye mortals! For the Near Future is At Hand!
After a hiatus of some months piled into an unsightly corner, Group Hug is burning the balls from the world once more this Friday evening. See the monkey? You see him? That monkey is your Friday night. Face up to it. Embrace your imploding spastic inevitable.
Here's the skinny, baristas! Firstly,
The Racoons wind up some excellent deliveries, beautiful melodic googlies and heartbreaking legbreaks. They are sleek, furry, glamorous creatures, standing tiptoe atop the abyss of their quivering possibilities. Hell, yeah!
Then from the sprawldering Metropolis creeps the filth,
Filthy Pedro, as we live and breed, spittling venom from the undercrust. He has souped himself up with a couple of mighty croutons, this low-slung prince of the netherthought, and will bring furious ancient knowledge ringing around
our inner ears. You might lose balance a little, your hands might run amok and touch swanky members opposite of your sex. The greatest evening of your life, eh?
Gilgamesh be praised whilst ski-ing in the Hypoborean iceflows...
Following soft, and no doubt delayed by motorways, carbon emissions and
swollen caravans on their jaunt from Londonland, trumpet
Prints of Whales. We've had them play Der
Hug
before, and for a few sweet minutes the Moon drew closer to the earth and the tidal swirl of loveliness rose to eye level and melted into tears. Silent, unknown tears, but salty nonetheless. Bluegrass tints, hormone-strewn limericks, city boys strolling down gritty country lanes with willing barmaids and genitals like angry balloons.
Then, your Hammers. Who will turn up, eh? The party buccaneers, the champions of the bad idea pulled into great shapes, the harbinger dogs of the singeing collapse of All Things Bad? Or the three-cornered hat on the head of the guy who didn't quite get there? There are only a handful of ways to find out. We advise you choose option a) and make your way over. It's a birthday party. It costs nothing. Come on!
Summon up every tiny reason you have for not coming: geographic, aesthetic,
psychological, financial, and throw them into a big, big fire. You owe
history. The clock is hungry for the days to come.
My glands hurt...
Cloud Cloud Cloud Cloud Cloud Cloud Cloud
23 Hydref 2006, 16:17 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton
Taste the cupboard through your crooked teeth.
The new True Swamp Neglect album has fallen meteorically at my feet from a jealous heaven. Prometheus unplugged. Zeus resents his private convesations having been recorded and translated into furious electric guitar. A miasma of keyboard noise that mongs it up nicely enough. There's the sound of Flash Gordon, laying siege to crystalline castles, and conversations between unwashed lovers under unwashed sheets in bedrooms washed with almost.
If you could buy it, I'd tell you to buy it. In the meantime, harrass the Swamp
here and get them to spray it across our island home till the birds are
blinded.
Huge Hairy Slabs of News Rotting on Beaches
19 Hydref 2006, 12:00 - Hammer HQ, Manchorlton
A thick hubrile gloop is tiding risingly about our ears, noses and throats.
It is with a lightly shaded heart that fingers are put to keys this High Noon, chums! The
Bad Leg Vaganza at Matt & Phred's Jazz Emporium on Monday night was a sore lesson, a growing pain of debilitating shiver. The Universe was reaching around to give us a slap, instead of slapping us with a reacharound, as we'd hoped.
Our front room rehearsals had been such intensely rewarding exp
eriences, our tight metallic coil mingling angelic particles of ruddy rust into our similarly oxegenated bloodstream. An awesome, tiny, warm star evolving in front of the sofa, drawing in its milky, swirling fronds; touching us all at the tip of our spines; inviting the infinite in for a cup of tea. But this was only half the story...
The god of electrickery had warps in his fingers for us that night; great uneven, warty unexpected surges of noise and feedback that steamed our nerves and set our hands jangling. After a roughage-dominated diet of party PAs and semi-evolved sound systems, our Hammer digestions weren't able to cope with the silky, rich noises of a proper venue. We felt like railway station announcers, but were in fact the train crash. Morbid, swarming versions of our own voices taunted us from stage off. Organ sounds reared up in revolt, a riding school of angry, sonic insurrection. The significant crowd of Hammerfans who'd been licking their tips in anticipation of a good showing were visibly undone by the spectacle. And after such a typically excellent performance from the heroic Ed Barton, which including both a monkey outfit and a Alpine Teuton costume. I'd not seen The Barton(ism) dressed up with somewhere to go before. The world buckled then bulged outwards ever so slightly.
Livid and stinging sing the scars, but each leaden tail o' the cat has left us with something to think about for next time. The assult on precinct 2006 is not over yet. In fact, the Hammerfuture is packed choking with action, including the return of Group Hug to Mam City's crumbling brickworks. We will be back with metal projects in our pockets, and you'll be pleased to see us.
Until then, prepare the path and eat the weeds...
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