Pan-Dimensional Orifice
All the news and gossip surrounding music legends Pan-Dimensional Orifice!
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Arachnid - Jakob Muck (1995)
Arachnid is notoriously impenetrable, many sentences make no sense on a literal or metaphorical level and there is no discernable plot to speak of. Griel Marcus has described the book as the "Finnegans Wake of rock n' roll." Robert Christgau was more blunt however when he described the album as "utter shite, unreadable, unreal, unread."
It is rather difficult to comprehend a novel that begins:
"Moonflake sunset on the glib highway clavicle, buckets of brawn and a narcoleptic raven, hills of mythological indifference penetrate the eyeline like the quasi-satiric ramblings of an emaciated hedge. Johann shouts 'adieu' and porn floods the wardrobe, speckled boots of chunky chatter, syphilitic windmills blight my dawn, animal my thumb, bid fairwell to the sex robot and burn your schoolbooks in the Japanese consulate bathroom..."
The book continues in this vein for 722 pages, each more absurd than the last. It finishes:
"...ho ho ho sang the glovebox moonshine hotelier, brink my brick and cogitate on a kestrel's kiss whilst painting in the pitch-black of daylight. No said Zeus, grasping a kettle with his logic, cheat clamboured colour amid dinosaur windows, Nixon frowning like a ditch in lingerie, my name is Brendan Squirm I swear on my tits, who dies for freedom(pee-dome) if treasure does not exist? Pope Chomsky? Remember the Argonauts and try to forget tomorrow, ho ho ho."
It's no classic.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Intelligentsia - Paroxysm (2000)
"A low point in human history, ten times worse than Talking Heads. Hideous, contrived, hate-filled and misanthropic. Truly, utterly demoralising. Do not listen to this album."
Paroxysm
1 - Atlas Chugged
2 - Public Domain Stream
3 - Henry Cavendish
4 - On The Aborigines of The Specious
5 - Richard Ellmann
6 - I Mill, Milieu?
7 - Recrementitious Bildungsroman
8 - Tits And Ass And Shit
9 - How Brechtian?
10 - Anaemic Arrivistes
11 - Empfindsamkeit
Lilian Katt - Onomatopoeia (1999)
Onomatopoeia
1 - Once More Unto The Beach
2 - Accidental Narcissist
3 - Catastrophes Of Nostalgia
4 - I Almost Never Don't
5 - Kissing The Floor (Alcoholism)
6 - Hapless As A Lagoon
7 - Muttering Gutteral Utterance
8 - Lunching With The Pissheads
9 - Three Quarks For Muster Mark
10 - Lunatic Fringe (Unfortunate Haircut)
11 - Bimbo Eruption
12 - Boxes In Trees
13 - Fester Under My Malevolent Glare
14 - You Cling Like A Limpet
Friday, July 31, 2009
Jakob Muck - Off The Drugs (1999)
After 3 years of heroin abuse in Vienna, which yielded some of the best and worst albums of his career, Muck went home to Minnesota to contemplate things. After a mysterious "radical epiphany" in a McDonalds car park one Sunday evening he kicked heroin for good by locking himself in a shed for 2 weeks of painful withdrawal. To make matters worse for himself he had neglected to let out the 5 families of swallows that had made a home inside and spent his days in convulsions, getting pecked in the face and covered in birdshit. Unable to distinguish between his hallucinations and reality in any case, it didn't make that much of a difference.
Emerging alive from the shed, Muck vowed to put his long-standing drug problem behind him and record the best music of his career. Self-produced, Off The Drugs was "an excoriating crucifixion of the self" according to Bono, and garnered universal rave reviews. Muck also scored his first Number 1 single with the self-confessional "Jesus, Sorry About That, I Was Out Of It There For A While, Fucking Hell."
Unprecedented Sucess
Off The Drugs won a record 9 Grammys at the 2000 Awards including Record, Album and Song of the Year. While presenting the award for Best Rock Vocal to Muck for "Makin' Amends", a tearful Bono said:
"Thank you Jakob for your light and giving. Thank you for your grace and humility. Jakob Muck is like the blind lamb who lives on a cliff but does not go over the edge because a wise man built an electric fence at the edge of the cliff to stop sheep from falling off the edge of it. The lamb keeps walking into the electric fence because it cannot see, and has no sense of direction because it is blind, but it does not go over the edge because the electric fence is in the way because the wise man put it there to stop the sheep from falling off the cliff. So even though the lamb is blind, it does not go off the edge because it can't and that is because there is a fence in the way because the wise man put it there. Jakob, lamb, you keep on walking into that fence, just keep on walking into that cliff fence."
Tracklisting
1. Jesus, Sorry About That, I Was Out Of It There For A While, Fucking Hell
2. Makin' Amends
3. Fixin' Shit Up
4. It's Good To Be Clean
5. Ditch The Junk And Then Junk The Ditch
6. Palpable Sense Of Yearning
7. McDonalds Car Park, Sunday Evening
8. Feeling A Lot Better, Thanks
9. What Was I At In Vienna
10. Shed Withdrawal Blues
11. Track Marks Of My Tears
12. Her, Eoin
13. Sunshine Is Nice
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Jacob Muck's Top 10 Favourite Albums Part 2
A visceral excursion into the vagaries of the female condition, Welcome Home, Darling was, according to Lilian Katt, "a fuck you to all those docile, domesticated, anything to please him, little miss perfect, trophy wife bimbos who give feminism a bad name". This pungent follow up to We Fuck Life was too vitriolic for mainstream consumption and due to a slew of heroin related deaths, proved to be the band's last album.
Sans-Culottes - Te Futueo Et Equum Tuum (1989)
Portland, Oregon's finest drunken sons shone brightest on this, their last album before they all died from drugs.
1 - Dan Is Going To Spew, Man!
2 - All The Girls I Love Are Other Men's Daughters
3 - Totally Stoned
4 - Epic Party
5 - Girls Are Weird
6 - I Stink Of Hot Love
7 - Ridin' On The Bus
8 - Gonna Leave This Town
9 - Nothing To Do
10 - Do Nothing
11 - Sorry Ma, I Need Money.
The Electric Chairs - Best Of All Possible Worlds (1976)
Something of a kitschy delight, Best Of All Possible Worlds is perhaps the greatest pop album ever made by a trio of Japanese teenage schoolgirls. Lead singer and keyboard supremo Matsurisha Matsurasho's songs of sexual confusion and clothes struck a chord with many a western teenager.
1 - I Like You, Maybe It Is Love
2 - Awesome Trousers
3 - I Love Clothes
4 - I Am Happy Now (I Was Sad Previously)
5 - I Want To Kiss Love Kindly
6 - I Love Clothes (Reprise)
7 - Be My Fond Boyfriend Man
8 - Party On The Street Now
9 - Please Be Special To Me
10 - Your Style Is Cool
11 - I Like Looking At You
The Junk Specifics - Needless Use (Of Brackets) 1966
The Muppets Sing Lead Belly (1984)
Though the critics initially scoffed, this collection of covers turned out to be a real eye-opener. Backed by house band Dr Teeth And The Electric Mayhem, The Muppets tear through Huddie Ledbetter's back catalogue with an admirable gusto. Kermit's frenzied take on Take A Whiff On Me is a coked-up classic and Ms Piggy's cruel vocal on They Hung Him On A Cross continues to haunt. Beaker's synth laden electro-pop take on Mr Hitler is the 80's.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Whore Pope - Lyrics
Whore Pope
Yeah, he lives in the
Tries to do what he can
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
He got ten hats and a sceptre, man
Tries to make things go to plan
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
He travels the globe
People talk in his ear lobe
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
He only seems so serene
Cause he don’t know what it mean
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
He is Gods man main
On the elemental plain
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
When the cardinals figure who he will be
They send white smoke up the chimney
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
He is the main man, the hot shot, bishop and king
People like to kneel down and kiss his ring
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
He drinks wine and eats bread
Got a strange hat upon his head
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
He travels wide and far
In a glass car
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
I’m not saying that he’s a prostitute
On the contrary, he ain’t blowin’ no flute!
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
But he travels around, waving profound
He visits everywhere on the wide world round
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
I like him, what can I say?
I couldn’t do what he does every day
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
I couldn’t stomp around, waving like a goon
Neither could I live my life without poon
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
I wish I could spend a minute in his shoes
I’d step out onto the balcony and sing me some blues
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
Can you only imagine the public relations toll?
Of the Pope singin’ I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl?
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
All the same I couldn’t do that to the church
Don’t want to leave any flock in the lurch
Whore Pope, Whore Pope
No dope, got scope
Don’t sit and mope
Just don’t care about the Pope
OK?
Salacious Protrusion - Lyrics
Salacious Protrusion
Continental Confusion
From the psychobabble in the Tower of Babel
To the mystic fits of Cain and Abel
It is simple to see what the cause is.
Salacious Protusion
Cold Fusion
Why do you reckon we sit and think?
Why do women sometimes slowly blink?
Come on, surely you can see what the cause is.
Salacious Protrusion
War Delusion
Why did Hitler do what he did?
Why make the jar if not the lid?
It’s obvious what the cause is.
Salacious Protrusion
Atrocious Allusion
Did Copernicus get his shit together
Because there was some cloudless weather?
We all know exactly what the cause is.
Salacious Protrusion
Erotic Illusion
Why do people drink in bars
What’s the symbolism of cigars
Oh come on, you know what the cause is.
Salacious Protrusion
Psychedelic Diffusion
There is a Sistine Chapel
Because there is an Adam’s Apple
You cannot help but see what the cause is.
Salacious Protrusion
Genital Intrusion
Why is there the cunning hair flick
Or that deep red ruby lipstick
You know what the cause is.
Salacious Protrusion
Foregone Conclusion
Paris has the Eiffel Tower
Georgia O’ Keeffe has her flower
Lets just all agree on what the cause is.
May I Caress Your Soul, Madame - Lyrics
May I Caress Your Soul, Madame
When I see the seagulls shitting on the statues by the
I think of you standing by the café in the rain
You had water in your shoes and you did not enthuse
When I jokingly said all you could do was dance and pout and feign.
Oh Madame, I have regretted my actions like a fool
I never do admit so simply as a general rule
But when I sit at night in the bar where you used to sing
I feel akin to the vagrants drool, oh akin to the vagrants drool
May I
Caress Your Soul,
Madame?
I disobeyed your orders, yes, but not from spite
It was in a dim girl’s pelvis that I tried to find delight
And when you walked into the room, and startled, knocked over the broom
I knew anything but silence would have only been too trite.
I know I am a callous man, I deal in callous love
I received my orders from below, not from above
But I see your sad blue eyes and your apocalyptic frown
Your name is Paloma, the whore, the dove.
May I
Caress Your Soul,
Madame?
On cold spring nights I wander with my jacket and tobacco
I cannot say I have a place to go or way to follow
I simply let my eyes fall in a bleak droop to the ground
Oh darling I feel so hollow, so inane and hollow.
The sun rises ironically, the moon laughs dirty guffaws
The paths of love are judicial and governed by odd laws
The jury of the natural world throws acid in my eyes
I, like you, cannot see past my pride and ugly flaws.
May I
Caress Your Soul,
Madame?
The waitress in the café puts a key into my hand
She says “room 16, at midnight, the Hotel Grand”
I push it back into her palm, say “I cannot tonight Madame”
And sleep instead to dream of this sunken ship that we have manned
Oh
I no longer worry dear that I might fall and fail and die
For I have died already and died over and over since
Can you help me dear, would you even try?
May I
Caress Your Soul,
Madame?
The sewers hold the refuse, the rats and shit and piss
I often feel that I myself should add myself to this
I would float down to oblivion, drowning in putrefaction
But I would dream forever of your kiss.
I sign this final note and hope it finds you well
I drop it in the post box as I feel my cold heart swell
I dream this will entice you back with fondness on your lips
I will either end with you on earth or in the depths of hell
May I
Caress Your Soul,
Madame?
Is there Something Still
In Your Soul,
Madame?
Do You Dream of Me
In Your Soul,
Madame?
May I
Caress Your Soul,
Madame?
Jacob Mucks Top 10 Favourite Albums Part 1
Never Odd Or Even - No X In Nixon (1973
Supercomputer - Fatal Fractal Void (1965)
Dweebs - Laika The Space Dog (1983)
Washington DC's Dweebs were the ultimate college band, adored on campus and a critical favourite. Laika The Space Dog used the titular mutt as a symbol of the lost innocence of the Cold War.
1. To Space, Dear Laika
2. Bark Away Boy or How The Cold War Came To Pass
3. The Paranoid Style in American Politics
4. Space Race Blues
5. Apollo And Zeus
6. A Configuration Of Sorts
7. Floating In A Tin Can
8. Laika Dies
Humanoid - Thought Transmission (1978)
Officially the heaviest album ever made, Thought Transmission is a masterpiece of riffage and screaming. Lead singer Bill Charbert and lead guitarist Sunn "Thunder" Moon spent 6 months in a disused warehouse crafting the album, eating stray rats and drinking piss to "get down to the dregs, man, really see what it's like down there in the filth, man" according to Moon. Muck described the album thus: "It's a vision, man, there's some visionary shit in that bodacious songset, it's just wild fucking gravity, man, with primo heaviosity".
1. Suck My Gland, Faggot
2. World Of Vomit
3. Trapped In The Clown Forest
4. Lemme See Them Tits, Maw
5. Maximum Heaviosity Forever
6. Rock (Featuring Roll)
7. Duh Nuh Nuh Nuh, Duh Nuh Duh Duh Nuh Nuh
8. Pisschild
9. Get An Abortion, Bitch
10. C.U.N.T.
11. Sweet Way Of Love
Muck was asked in 1997 by Spin Magazine to list his 10 all-time favourite albums.
This is part 1.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Lesbians - We Fuck Life (1991)
"you know, it's like purely for the sake of degradation and shit, you know what I mean, i'm not even following your, like, phallic agenda and stuff and your Y chromosome and sports and shit like that, it's like, what i'm saying is just, you know like fuck Nixon and Copernicus with their dicks and stuff and like you know, Marie Curie, you know, like why am I never hearing about her and stuff and the war machine so totally is man stuff and you know thats what I want to change and shit, it's like Joan Jett is cool but like men are so, kind of, wrong, you know, and like, yeah you know..."
Katt was known to use shock tactics to great across her point, often using her used tampons as plectrums to highlight "how men have got like, dicks, and that's fine, that's ok, you know, but, you know, so what, you know, kind of, like." The other members of Lesbians were Kim Bjellert, Loki McRoki and a young Courtney Love, who didn't actually play on the album but antagonised ceaselessly on its behalf.
1. We Fuck Life
2. Sapphic Agenda
3. Nihilist Rage Slut
4. Menstrual Retardation (Menopause Song)
5. Man + Man = War
6. Snide Vulva
7. Oversized Check Jacket (Hidden Lesbian)
8. Domestic Abuse Is So Not Cool
9. Marie Curie
10. Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves
11. Doll Persona
12. I'm Not Your Plaything
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Apotheosis Of The Negroid - When The Hurlyburly's Done (1991)
Described by Audrey Hepburn as "gutteral, sonic and implicitly ionic", the album was the cause célebre of the chattering classes with its roccoco flourishes and neon postulations, entheogenic spiritualism and bestial somnolent gravity, proto-specific anarchism and dim, corpulent spleneticism, its spectral ambivalence and caterwauling pseudo-morality, its sultry languor, its elemental intransigence, its allusive fascism, its rabid, ribald mellifluous conceit, its overbearing hauteur, its sagacious inaccessibility, its..... oh fuck off.
1. Sarcastic Marauder
2. Only The Great Negate
3. Banquet Of Grotesques
4. Pry, Minister?
5. Is, Was, Am
6. Mollify My Soul
7. Goof Loon Boogie Bonk
8. Erotic Glimpses
9. Amalgamated Genitals
10. Sly Hallway Fuck
11. And Now.... Eternity
12. Not My Cup Of Tea
13. Why Do I Smell Like Mud In The Morning?
14. Goatscape
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Marsupial Oblivion - Elvish Parsley
1. Spirito Santy
2. I Nearly Shat My Pants In Anticipation
3. She's A Beaut
4. The Vagaries Of Social Conservatism
5. Hyphenated Children
6. Roam And Cat Lick
7. You're A Fucking Bastion (National Treasure)
8. I Love You (From Behind The Bushes)
9. Sweaty Palms Of Lust
10. Hiroshima Farmers' Market
Thursday, July 16, 2009
"Everything Is Totally Fucked Altogether" Lyrics
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Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
The Vienna Pentalogy
No Cure For Curiosity - February 1998
Down To My Last Bollock - October 1997
"Antediluvians" - May 1997
Lapsed Chasm - 1996
Robert Christgau Review.
Heavens Above! Rock's most "misunderstood" artiste decamps to Vienna and records the most coherent, though hideously contrived, albums of his career. Muck has an almost imperceptible sincerity that expresses itself in tidy, abstact bass-lines. His overweening arrogance expresses itself everywhere else.
The most convivial of the "pentology" (oh, for the days of WC Handy) is Lapsed Chasm, which has a druggy somnolence thats slyly ingratiates itself with the listener. Apart from opener "Freight Train Be Comin'", a shameless, embarrassing shout out to the Mississippi Delta and environs, the album saunters indiscriminately along, mixing high jive "Throw Them Hands Towar's Day Lord", skiffle "I'm But A Binman" and electronica "EuropaFunkSludge" to agreeable effect. A-
"Antediluvians"
The portentous quotation marks are warning enough. Muck has made his contribution to the unlistenable "art rock" performance piece disaster (see Metal Machine Music: Reed, Lou). Usually the sign of a contractual squabble, it appears that this offering is, somehow, a serious effort at making music, which renders the subsequent sprawl of noise infinitely more amusing. "Soundscape 1" is mesmerizing in it's awfulness, lapping loops of hideous feedback "qualified" by a dour unchanging drum machine beat. The transmogrified piano on "Noise-scape 1492" is more berzerk and unsettling than anything by Beckett. Perhaps something of a glorious disaster? C+
Down To My Last Bollock
Nobody knows you when you are down and out. Except, of course, if you are a world famous musician like Jakob Muck. Is this album sardonic? Mostly acoustic and "confessional" in tone, with all vocals set to anguished yelp, Last Bollock is a monument to self obsession. It starts badly, the minor chord ravages of "Winona, Why?" segueing into the turgid 9 minute solo piano of "Shot At Redemption", and only gets worse. A special place in hell should be reserved for "Last Will And Testament", the cello-led finale. D
No Cure For Curiosity
Yes there is and this is it. E-
Canals Of Europe
Like the final flailing swings of a falling boxer, Canals Of Europe has a strange dignity all of its own. Muck has always been an exceptional songwriter, his personality and demeanor just got in the way. "Anarcho" is a good start, and "Kiss My Grits" is even better, but the five song flourish that comprises "Moscow, 1917", "When I Were A Young 'Un", "May I Caress Your Soul, Madame"(eat your heart out, Jacques Brel), "Narcoleptic Janitor" and "Pancake Moon" is the best work of Muck's career. Closer "Retrospective Haircuts", with it's eviscerating fiddle and mournful trumpet, comes perilously close to High Art. A+
Time Magazine November '94
Rolling Stone Magazine Oct 93
1995 Singles - Accoutrements/ Oh Happy Day/ Martin Keown EP.
1. Accoutrements
2. Accoutrements (Wyclef Jean Remix)
3. MMMPlop
The bands first foray into out and out pop is a jaunty number about the trappings of the rock star lifestyle. The x-rated lyrics and controversial video brought the song attention but the track itself is a Pan classic and a fan favourite.
Sample Lyric: "Get down on your knees, baby/get down on your knees, girl/ open your mouth wide/ so I can get inside/ until the silk flood starts to swirl."
Oh Happy Day Oct '95
1. Oh Happy Day
2. River Deep, Mountain High
3. He Hit Me (It Felt Like A Kiss)
Released only 3 weeks after Accoutrements, this collection of covers sold poorly and raised concern over the well-being of Jakob Muck. The previously joyous Oh Happy Day is here a discordant atonal dirge dripping with hateful sarcasm. This weirdness is accentuated by the recurring sounds of doors closing and the outro which consists of snatches of Hitler's Nuremberg Address interwoven with the sound of lamb slaughter. Scott Walker's production does nothing to help. A later, cleaner Muck described the sound as "heroin fucking crack behind a bin on the Reeperbahn at 4:17 on a February morning." It would be churlish to disagree.
The Martin Keown EP Dec '95
1. Box Prowler
2. Keown Keown Keown
3. He's Gunner Fuck You Up
After his hospitalisation in October and subsequent stint in rehab, Muck was encouraged by friend Michael Stipe to write about his ordeal in uncompromising terms as a means of showcasing the terrible depths of drug addiction for the public at large. Muck refused and instead wrote 27 songs about Martin Keown. He planned to release the songs as a double album but was stopped by his record company, who sensed such a move would be career suicide. To placate the burnt-out singer they quietly released a Norway only 3 track EP as a limited edition 1,000 copy collectors item. The original EP now changes hands for as much as £700. The EP has been re-evaluated over the years and is now considered to be quite a cogent appraisal of the abilities of the Arsenal defender. The 23 other songs planned for the double album have been extensively boot-legged, most commonly as "Keownly You", but never officially released.
Synopsis
The group released a number of esoteric stand alone singles in 1995 during what was a strained period for inter-band relations. The critical mauling that greeted Onslaught upon release in late 1994 devastated Muck, whose already bizarre behaviour became more and more absurd. The nadir came at the following year's Glastonbury when Muck sung while cowering behind the drums in a burka. Pianist Reg McMurphy was fired in early 1995 after an argument over a cheese-board in Copenhagen, ending his 15 year friendship with Muck. McMurphy took drummer David Elvish and bassist Nwonkwo Achumba with him and formed Trans-Dimensional Appendage who would come to eclipse The Pan with their 12M selling debut Yeah, Come On, Yeah. The singles released in 1995 by The Pan are a fascinating glimpse into the drug-besotted mind of Muck and could be considered as solo records.