Hammered Gods EP

text

And so here come the Black Helicopters, screaming over the horizon like Robert Duvall's psychotic misfits, though jettisoning the Wagner in favour of battle-weary copies of Led Zep II and Disraeli Gears. Having released perhaps the most unreleasable record ever released, details of who or what the Helicopters might be are appropriately elusive, though the press release provides a most entertaining extract from a 1976 CIA directive on destabilising subversive musicians. Of course, whilst much of today's relativistic music industry is about as subversive as Ainsley Harriott cooking for Richard & Judy, their Residents-style anonymity and the reckless, thoroughly disreputable sampling employed here could be smart tactics. Akin to Deconstructing Beck, Negativland, Timet Lorenzo Brusci, Double D and Steinski, Hal Willner and the Cut Chemist yet thoroughly English, it's funny too, as "Hammered Gods" employs abortive BBC Radio 4 interviews and unhinged exotica alongside Bob Plant's brummie blues bawling; stealing away "Whole Lotta Love's" riff, copying and pasting its one note essence, teasing without resolving. It's only as one's whole body tenses expecting the nonexistant release that we realise how deeply embedded in the psyche some popular music is. "I'll Be Your Mirror" fr'instance. And is that "I Feel A Free Strange Brewed Badge Of Your Love" in a chopped-up, funked-up Creamy finale? Some might have a few things to say about the legality of this release, if it weren't 'not released' as a limited-run white label on a made-up record label (hello, and probably goodbye, Rotor). Motion readers can spot "Hammered Gods" at your local freaky-listening club, by observing the DJ sitting back and grinning inanely for its 15 minute duration. Mail us with details of exactly what they follow it with ;-) The other tracks effectively sandwich it in terms of accessibility, "I Am Leatherman" possessing the finely-turned hooks and largish beats of more usable DJ fare, whilst "Beyond Our Ken" is almost unlistenable yet inspired, being the sound of an unmanned malfunctioning Soho editing machine stuttering over a Kenneth Williams line. The Black Helicopters have emerged with a startlingly memorable record, on the one hand hilarious, on the other thought-provoking, and on it's mutant third hand, thrillingly audacious.