Not that you should necessarily listen to him past the age of 15, but Bill Hicks’s joke about men jizzing out whole galaxies in their sleep could be applied to Matt Loveridge’s approach to releasing records. Is it Loveridge or Williams? It used to be Team Brick, and sometimes it’s Klad Hest or Fairhorns or MXLX or playing ATP as one third of BEAK>. It’s CDRs and tapes and one man shows that appear from nowhere to spread spore-like, radiating from Bristol to infect willing brains with warped MIDI noise, improvised moanings, modern composition and ecstatic, trancelike sonic pressure. All this relentless, itchy energy is less like throwing enough shit at the wall, more the endless hydra-headed possibilities music can grow into. And this, uh, rainbow shower consistently leaves good music lying around as a bit of bonus.
You could reeeeally reduce things by saying this is Loveridge’s “piano album”, though that maybe conjures Gonzales or Chris Martin not being clubbed to death. There’s not much Billy Joel on ‘Drowners’, unless that’s his ghost moaning from inside the piano, slicing his face on the strings. ‘Line Up The Glyph’ alternates between gothic piano stabs and wrecked calm, vocals moving from stentorian boom to drifting murmurs. Its dry refrain of “You fuckers…” probably won’t be sung in the street, and it dissolves into a sweet, feedbacking blissout of bassoon and chord clang. There’s similarly lush sound gloops in ’50°S 100°W’ and ‘Smiling Resplendent Up Worried Gulch’, monk/Monty Python-like chanting and layers of chattering in the former, priest-like utterances and metallic zings in the latter, lovely piano lines crawling out of the wreckages of both. This is what happens when you follow your nose: ‘Snarlin Radge With Accurate Gun Hand In Feary Withers’s waves of rippled, echoing piano masks buried screams and grunts, floating eventually towards some distant brass honks and a sort of desert mirage of madman’s rambles. The closing ‘Pitgazer’ is more structured – some martial piano, rising and falling, some skittering drums bolstering it – but again things take over: feedback, ghosts of voices, halting piano, waves of fuzz and crackle gradually covering everything.
‘Drowners’ washes over you like some treacly oil slick of ideas. It’s dense and weird but floats on a hazy cloud of simplicity, bare ingredients clustering like buzzing flies. All of which means: another great album by Matt Loveridge. Throw it on the pile, roll around in it.
