Smell & Quim

Smell & Quim/Onomatopoeia - 'Live At Kirkstall Lites - Brutalist Mix'
Cipher Productions [Sic 82]. CD

Smell & Quim - Quim De La Quim
Stront. Cassette. [C90 in A5 wallet with two inserts]


The Smell & Quim tour bus is full of rotting corpses watching animal porn. Rolf Harris steering the 254 Huddersfield to Leeds Arriva to the Kirkstall Lites, a neon lit fun pub where the tearful souls of attendees are tormented by long haired skeletons in shell suits bearing an uncanny resemblance to Jimmy Savile. The conductor is Cyril Smith. A midget troupe of Black and White Minstrels sing a capella versions of Brown Girl In The Ring whilst pumping helium into tired wheels that show their webbing. Chuck D swings his oversized alarm clock in homage to Jimmy Clitheroe and Ken Dodd tells jokes. How tickled I am.

The recent rectum invading Gulliver’s gig in Manchester added yet another page to the already notorious Smell & Quim live action dossier. See them at all costs. They’re on fine form. There are no substitutes. For none are drunker. None more chaotic or unstable. None will leave the venue, themselves or you in a more disheveled state. You may fear for your ears and your eyes, your Farah slacks and your carrier bag carrying that days charity shop pickings but you will leave a better person. You will have been anointed in the best possible way.

Alas I wasn't at the Kirkstall Lites gig that night in Leeds in the early 90’s but I hear it was a good one. Wet fish may have been involved. Of the several Smell & Quim collaborations with Stephen Fricker's Onomatopoeia in the 90's I saw, alas, none.

Fricker is now forever known as the forgotten man of the English noise scene. Disappeared, just like that. But what a man. I once saw him tottering around the Red Rose on Seven Sisters Road, glass in hand, like a magician about to show you a magic trick - the trick being trying to keep the beer in the glass before it made it to his mouth. A fine fellow in a loud shirt and a greasy overcoat. Arthur Daley on cheap drink looking like he needed a good nights sleep. If you’re reading this, have one for me Mr. Fricker.

One of those live outings was at that shitty 'Kirkstall Lites'. An edge of Leeds 'fun pub' where all the 'fun' was to be had in paying over the odds for shit beer beneath piss poor murals featuring John Coltrane and Charlie Parker. It captures 18 brutal minutes worth of pure, exhilarating noise that appears to have been run through a mixer and shows that when it comes to making noise in its purest, most basic, nihilistic form Smell & Quim can live with the best. I still wish I’d been there.

Quim De La Quim's three studio tracks hark back to a previous Smell & Quim age. Constructed by Srdenovic and Gillham it brings to mind earlier releases such as ‘A Sods As Good As A Wank To A Blind Arse’, early 90’s Smell & Quim where the Industrial parp and scrape of rusty axles bring to mind huge female bottoms pounding old fashioned bicycle saddles down cobbled streets. ‘Anal American’ contains premium rate porn chat smut as background to all manner of tree felling and ballon rubbing hideousness. There’s a Beatles-esque Day in the Life never ending chord smash and the hand drier in The Grove blaring away and at its very end with a spittle flecked ‘CUNT’ is the maestro himself Milvoan Srdenovic. For just in case you’d forgotten what it was you were listening to. As if you could.

The more attentive amongst you will have noticed that all the tracks on Side A are the reverse of Side B [in a fashion] which is exactly the effect upon playback. Rather than this render the B side a predictable experiment in reversed noise it actually creates a unique listen in itself.

Last track ‘Killer Cunt’ is Smell & Quim at their pounding best. A juddering juggernaut of skull shaped maracas beaten together at a pulse quickening rate, a pounding beast of a thing, an explosion in a bottling plant, a scrap yard gone mad, concrete going around your new Bosch washing machine.

And again maestro, this time in reverse.



Cipher

Stront