Shop our Big Takeover store for back issues, t-shirts & CDs
Follow The Big Takeover
Not ones to shrink in the face of adversity, Brighton, UK experimental duo Noteherder & McCloud took a live recording accident and used it to their advantage.
Dissembling was recorded November 2012 at the Phoenix Gallery in Brighton for The Aural Detritis Concert Series. Somehow, Noteherder’s saxophone was recorded as a separate mix from McCloud’s synthesizers, allowing the duo the perfect platform for a cassette release where each mix can occupy its own side of a tape. The result is two drastically different version of the same performance from the perspective of the individual bandmates.
Geoff Reader, aka McCloud, dominates side A’s “Noiseherder” with his synth, beginning with eerie church-like tones fit for a Hammer horror flick. Noteherder’s saxophone wails in the distance, but the unsettling drone is the focus here. As the keys of Satan playing a church organ continue, low-end rumble and disembodied voices join the fray until a pulsing, spacey synth comes in and transforms the scenery into Dr. Who on a really bad trip battling Daleks that look like demons in an Anglican outer-space church. Finally, it peaks in melting high-pitched drone as Noteherder sardonically laughs in the background and everything falls apart into splintered layers of reality as Peter Fonda rides off on the white horse.
Side B’s “MC Loud” showcases Chris Parfitt on his soprano saxophone, offering a lyrical alternative to the Satanic acid trip of “Noiseherder.” Here, Parfitt’s sax sings like John Butcher dancing with the Master Musicians of Jajouka. Other-dimensional birds fly through a tumultuous alien landscape seeking asylum. McCloud’s synthesizers drone and pulse in the background creating a cavernous landscape for the troubled avian beings. As they land, they become cats in heat cavorting in the caves before spreading their wings and returning to flight under the glow of an extraterrestrial sun.
It’s not every group that can find the magic in mistakes. Noteherder & McCloud do so gracefully, understanding that improvisation takes place in three-dimensional space. Dissembling is an aural argument, two sides presented from the debaters’ respective point of view. Somewhere in between lies the truth, but that’s long lost to recording error. Noteherder & McCloud couldn’t be happier.
