Thursday 19 November 2020

Expedient Self - "The Present EP" (Self-Released) 2020


 Ok,Yeah I admit it, I've never listened to the Durutti Column!!?...but if I imagined what it would sound like it'd be like this brand spanking new Expedient Self  EP. It's even available on CD for a reasonale price!!!(that's right not for free download on here!?)...not on a CD-r either...with artwork. I did enjoy the Durutti Column's idea of housing one's LP in a sheet of sandpaper,all carefully glued together by the lads from Joy Division,so as to fuck up the other albums you stored in the C-E section of your meagre record collection.Amusingly they never expected that we would house it in a protective plactic cover!No such innovation occurs here however,strictly Kranky-esque ambient album style artwork that seems to move as one looks at it, like drifting cloud formations through the foliage of a tree grasping for more Carbon dioxide.
There's that insular quality which pervades most of Bandcamp, lost among the hoardes of wannabes,and ignored geniuses who are slowly devaluing music further by the sheer quantity of the stuff. Even the innovative things get dragged into the soup,so everynow and again one must dangle the hook into the murky looking liquid and pull out a plum. I feel that this is one of those occasions,and whisper it loudly in the ear of any mildly interested parties,who may play it at a mildly interesting slumber party one day....bouche à oreille,as they whisper in France.
For a more lucid description of the 'bands' sounds here's an Expedient Self spokesperson using the royal 'we' to deny that they are a Durutti Column for the 2020's......:

"We're Expedient Self, a post-rock/experimental band from Brighton, UK. We like putting our guitars through FX to make them sound weird and wonky, while fitting these weird and wonky sounds into structured 'songs.'"

ps...were The Durutti Column the First Post-Rock band...discuss?

pps...not that I've heard them/him of course,nudge-nudge, wink-wink;)


Tracklist:

1.Sparkly Unicorn 02:48
2.Cancer 04:52
3.The End of History 04:34
4.Skinner Box 04:42
5.Hands for Heroes 02:01
6.The Old Normal 05:19

or 

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Penis

Jonny Zchivago said...

he doesn't have anything else to do...or?....Is That you Donald Trump?

Leslie Ash's Bloated Face said...

"I did enjoy the Durutti Column's idea of housing one's LP in a sheet of sandpaper."

Tony Wilson's idea, not Vini's. As if he would give a shit.

Jonny Zchivago said...

@LESLIE aSH'S TROUT POUT......and Tony Wilson nicked that idea from a franch situationist geezer Guy Debord who published a book in the fifties,"Mémoires",which had a sandpaper cover. Nothing's original.

rev.b said...

The sandpaper cover stored in a protective sleeve reminds me of how I mishandled Christian Marclay's Record Without A Cover. It came as just the disc, with whatever scratches and damage it had picked up on its way to the buyer. You were supposed to continue the process by leaving it out in the open, coverless. So what did I do? Slip it into a plastic sleeve of course. Dumb fuck! I did the same sort of thing with another one of his called Footsteps. The thousand disc pressing was laid out on the floor of a gallery where patrons walked on them while looking at whatever was displayed on the walls for the show. Afterwards, the discs, which had the sound of footsteps recorded on them, were gathered up and sold to soft-minded twits like me. Yet another nifty concept. So I took the record, covered in footprints and placed it on the turntable. After playing it for a minute or so, I saw that the act of playing the disc was removing the footprints. So I took it off and haven't played it since. If I'm going to sink money into 'modern art', you'd think I'd use it in the way it was intended to be used.

BTW, this is a nice one. Agreed, they've certainly heard the Durutti Column, but thankfully he's/they're not as twee as Vini can be sometimes.

Penis

rev.b said...

Oh, apparently, going by a comedy show I saw on the telly last night, the now proper spelling of the soon to be former US president’s last name is ’t****’. It certainly qualifies as an expletive, doesn't it?

The She-Sea Monster From The Deep That is Orianne Cevey said...

Yes, I am aware of that. My point was Vini would not have bothered with such a thing.