HW: OFF: Quimby!

[Jon Jarrett]

On Mon, 22 Oct 2001, K Henderson wrote:

> Here's my review...perhaps not the amazing metaphorical zoo that Jon
> Jarrett offered on the Nikestra, but I try my best.  :)

        Aw shucks... and after such a compliment I'm going to snip his
entire review too, if only because it was good and I wasn't there so have
nothing to add. But this:

> At the show, copious amounts of merchandise was available. Included was the
> SD2001 official T-shirt featuring a MQB-related front design, and all the
> band names from the weekend event listed on the back as in previous years.
> A really nice design (available in several shirt colors, including white,
> grey, and yellow), as long as you're not particularly squeamish about
> protruding alien genitalia.  Those of you with the 'Definitive Unsolved
> Mysteries...' disc should know of what I speak.  CDs were spread upon
> several tables, including the entire Quarkspace catalog, the three Quimby
> CDs plus Hardy's solo disc, and then a number of Strange Trips specials.
> These included (I think) the three that were released last year (Harvey's
> for sure), but also a couple of 'new' CD-R specials that Jim has offered
> (perhaps just for the tour?).  Alman Mulo's Afrodiziac (which I believe has
> been OOP for over a decade) and Harvey's more recent solo effort 'Red
> Shift' (which I didn't look at, but I assume it was also a S-T CDR?, unless
> Harvey had his own stash of Taste issues which I rather doubt).  I got an
> Afrodiziac for myself, and just put it on moments ago to discover it
> doesn't read easily on either of my disc-players.  But with a little
> encouragement, it did finally 'read' and play - seems to play fine now but
> I'll probably burn myself an extra copy for security.

        ... by which I mean, the Harvey solo CD. I got one at the
Hawkestra. It was the last one they had, I don't know if they had more to
start with, they had to search for it so maybe not as otherwise I guess
they'd have known where it was. I just find it odd that this CD (and mine
is a CD, not CD-R) should pop up so suddenly both sides of the Atlantic. I
think someone *must* have been sitting on a stash of Taste issues, if not
Harvey, or possibly someone actually managed to find the guy who owns the
label. Anyway, it's very good. If you have his _Interstellar Chaos_ album
you know that's sort of two sorts of track, the free-form atmospherics in
short bursts and then the lengthy repetitive space-machine trance kind of
efforts like a factory of pulse engines all running. Which is OK but
for eleven minutes with minimum variation could be more interesting. _Red
Shift_ combines the two straight away, you get a few bits of the
atmospherics and then a sequencer line appears from the underlying fog,
you just hear it winding up with a noise I love before the atmospherics
shine again and when they clear it's set up and running, This is just the
first track, `Solar Drive Down' but it's more or less like a short Harvey
version of TD's `Rubycon Part 1' and I love it. The other stuff is not so
startlingly good, but still better, the whole album shows a lightness of
touch missing from _Interstellar Chaos_ and the story in the liner notes
is class stuff. So if anyone knows who's made these discs available, get
'em to do it more, more people should be listening to this stuff. Yours,

Jon

--
"I recognise that I have transgressed many of the precepts of the divine
law, and that I am subjected by various vices and iniquities, disobedient
to the words of the divine mystery brought unto me and a worshipper of the
delights of this military age." Marquis Borrell of Barcelona, 955 A.D.

             (Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College London)