On ‘Knurr & Spell’ you will find Ocelocelot, Moral Holiday, Foldhead and Shemboid who turns out to be a chap going by the name of Alan Sharples. With each track running at around the twenty minute mark theres enough time for you to light a joss-stick, switch on the lava lamp and put the tripe in the oven before really getting into the groove with your own personal finger cymbals and GV roll up. Shemboid’s contribution begins with a blistering ripple of processed guitar that eventually settles out into a blissful dream-like coda of down strummed heavy chord-ness and harmonic delight. Mel’s Ocelocelot is a cow horn blast of detuned synth muck, a warped buzz of dying bees, a Theremin gone mad, perhaps the Mekon’s corporate anthem. As ever Ocelocelot is an entirely unfathomable, un-genreable, un-pigeonholeable slice of otherness. Foldhead blitz the zero and ones with a sizzling blast of box abuse skree. Aptly titled ‘Taser Delerium’ its flat out noise, a noise enlivened by a shifting disorientation, a flicker book eye blinking mass of loose live wires and androids gone berserk. But my pick of the bunch goes to Moral Holiday. Moral Holiday being the Toddmeister on his day out in Dario Argento country. ‘No Forks’ is a cheap slasher movie soundtrack that has a doom-laden two chord left hand synth repeat backbone on which we get echoey downward spiraling motes of Moogblather, a spacey phasered PE like vocal and a sumptuous frazzled guitar solo at its end. Its remit is to transport you from Boar Lane to Alpha Centuri via Tangerine Dream territory with nothing simpler than a CD with pictures of rhubarb, blackberries and tripe on it. One to savour. idwal fischer.
Knurr & Spell- Being Psychedelic Sounds From Yorkshire by Moral Holiday
