Aural Innovations review Ron Tree/Judge Trev album

[Jon Jarrett]

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005, trev wrote:

> Here it is:  http://www.aural-innovations.com/issues/issue30/moab01.html

        Hi Trev,
                 he seems surer of his reaction than I have been! I
suddenly understand why you've been having record company indifference to
this, none of them would know what on earth to do with it would they? ike
Beefheart shouting about how difficult it is to do poetry these days to a
crowd full of people shouting for `Booglarize you Baby'.

        Um, anyway. I wrote some reactions. I shan't post 'em to the list
in case you think they aren't the advert you might have wanted, which
isn't to say I don't like the album, just that I'm confused by it in
about equal measure. Use the text as you like, not that anyone much would
see my name as an endorsement, but anyway, here is wot I wrote, or
something, yours,
                  Jon

ObCD: The Bevis Frond - _Valedictory Songs_

MOTHER OF ALL BANDS - _INSECT BRAIN_

        I have to say that this album was something of a surprise to me.
Knowing bassist Ron Tree's punk background and the way he worked with that
in Hawkwind, and owning quite a lot of guitarist Judge Trev'swork with
Inner City Unit and The Atomgods, I was expecting high-speed punk. Wasn't
this, after all, a band which Terry Ollis had refused to join because they
played too fast? Instead, they seem to have borrowed Senser's drummer and
that too leads one to think high speed intricacy.

        Well, this is not what it is, so you may as well shed that idea
straight away. This is actually mostly an album of jamming and tone
poems. The rhythm section is surprisingly anonymous; Ron's playing is very
minimalist one-string stuff for the most part and the drummer is content
to sit back and hold things down. Even Judge Trev, though he does let go
into impressive soloes when given the chance, and is a fine player in
almost any situation, almost seems to have stepped away from the
metaphorical mike when he gets his chances. Perhaps this is my
imagination, perhaps it's production but nonetheless, with a few notable
exceptions, the instruments here are content to stick with a steady
straight-ahead approach. This makes the best thing on the disc in some
ways one of the two covers, a version of Hawkwind's `Spirit of the Age'
which challenges any reading after the original but is of course a song
Ron and Trev have been playing a long time now. It falls down rather when
faced with material like the Atomgods' `Dolphins Über Alles' because here
the drummer and bassist don't really know what's missing and how to supply
it. The band, then, for some reason which given who's in it is difficult
to fathom, is restricting itself to backing work.

        That leads one on to the question of what's at the front, of
course, and the answer, except for a couple of songs sung (really quite
well) by Trev, is Ron Tree in possibly his finest ever voice, which may
explain things. More controlled than when he was with Hawkwind, equally as
riveting in delivery as in his best work with them, and far far better
than the last few years' odd contributions to Star Nation and so on have
been, the blurb supplied with this preview disc may not underestimate when
it says Ron has never performed like this before. Most of the pieces wind
up to a vitriol-spitting climax with appropriately frantic guitar and
other found noise to match.

        Thing is, a personal objection maybe, but though the delivery is
fabulous, a lot of the words are ones we've heard things like before. By
my reckoning Ron has been ranting about insects now for nigh on eight
years without ever having had much to say that couldn't be summarised as
"Insects! They're all over the place and they're... insectile!" so when
the first song (and title) song turns out to be more of this the fact that
it's probably his best piece on the subject, and suitably backed with odd
and unsettling noises as well as the steady rhythm, doesn't entirely
remove the hope that it's also his last.

        This is not to say it's all like that though. `Insect Brain' is
followed by the much stronger `Meat Eater', where Ron runs from a starting
position ridiculing red-meat-based diets, making of the `meat-eating man'
an inefficient and messy predator sleeping off his vicarious kill, through
a brief digression about soldier machismo, through to a marvellous end
section begun with the phrase `Uh... can I get a refill?' followed by the
words off the side of a bottle. I don't know what he was reading, I think
some kind of essential oil compound, but you really really shouldn't drink
it and the succession of ever nastier-sounding chemical ingredients and
warnings is perhaps the most successfully-unsettling thing I've ever heard
him do. Maybe the lesson here is that he should stick to other people's
words but it's hard to say that when you remember his stuff on Alan
Davey's _Captured Rotation_ and so on. `Meat Eater', in any case, comes
back to haunt you a few hours later I find, and the thin chain linking the
ideas together and the progress of association is inevitably reminiscent
of another song Ron's sung a lot, Hawkwind's `Assassins of Allah'. This is
very good stuff and goes a long way to justifying the approach the band
have chosen.

        The other top stand-out track for me is `Precious'. I couldn't
really tell you what Ron's going on about here; the point of departure
might be Lord of the Rings, but he's off on his own almost
immediately. What makes this stand out apart from the apparent vein of
inspiration Ron's struck is that for some reason almost alone here the
rhythm section woke up and for a few minutes you get to hear drummer and
bassist both performing at full strength. The drummer seems to have got a
credit here, he deserved one too, it's very good but it does rather leave
you wishing it had all been like that.

        Notable mention also for Judge Trev's `Me' which though it does
seem to be a pagan anthem (nothing wrong with that, obviously, that
wouldn't be wrong with a Christian one anyway) is really quite a good and
far-ranging one. If his solo album _God and Man_ is all this quality I
really should own it already.

        All told though this album reminds me of my reaction to Nick
Saloman's Scorched Earth project. That produced a very fine album, but it
wasn't the Monster Magnet-like Sabbath-exorcism he was originally talking
about. The album I hoped they'd make is still to happen. Here too, I feel
sure more could be done with this band than this, which flips between
being a Judge Trev solo album and a Ron Tree one. Both are on very good
form but they don't seem to really tie up, it doesn't feel like a band, it
feels like session work. What they've done will I suspect wear well, and I
probably still haven't stressed enough that some bits of it are very good,
but is this really what these ingredients produce when mixed in a
studio? I never would have guessed, and I'm still rather hoping for a
different album even as I find myself spinning this one every few days and
catching myself chanting snippets from it in places I probably shouldn't
be.

--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)