Turkey and Stuffing

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There's a chill in the air and a pair of festive new V/VM platters, "Turkey" and "Stuffing," on the deck. That can only mean one thing. 'Tis the season when Manchester's merry pranksters come awassailing, having slipped into Satan's workshop, filched the K-Tel Kristmess kollektion and gotten jiggy wit Red Headed Roy (The Butcher Boy)'s cleaver and tongs. This Christmas, V/VM give us their hearts prepared with just the right hint of eggnog-sotted mischief and presented on festively ZipLoc-ed and candy-color coded PVC. It's all thoroughly daft, proudly irreverent and sure to further inflame those who already resent these Mancunians' doctrinaire reading of academic sacred-cow Luigi Russolo's The Art of Noises. Suddenly ubiquitous Stock, Hausen and Walkman and ever-smirking sarcasm queen People Like Us number themselves among the caroling cabal this year, bearing plunderfa-la-la-la-lonic seasons gratings for all and offsetting the V/VM crews (nothing if not creative) cheeky misinterpretations of Yule-tide chestnuts ("roasting on an open pyre?") To treat these sub-Negativlandian piss-takes as anything other than harmless seasonal entertainment (and a wholly preferable alternative to the fruity Xmas smuzz currently glutting the airwaves) would be ridiculous. But only a real Grinch would stoop to hail on V/VM's parade of crippled chorales, Chrimbo cut-ups, painfully earnest Dada poetry and Casiotone widdle. How can you resist The Bouncing Bucephalus Bell Ringers From Brinnington or the self-descriptive Electronic Fly Symphony? Knowing V/VM's track record, such names no doubt serve to protect respected mates from trainspotterly eyes. Butcher Claws makes the strongest impression, hacking through the cheer and good will with two scarified noise-terror turntablist abominations. The leering equivalent of such holiday anti-fare as Silent Night, Deadly Night or Don't Open Til Christmas, BC's shocks come cheap but pack a memorably nasty sting.