the black neck band of the common loon

Littered amongst the sonic debris that we here mirthfully refer to as the tales from the attic record room you’ll note several references to a certain Andy Pyne. Who the bloody hell is Andy Pyne you are probably all wondering as you scratch your heads and give quizzical grimaces of puzzled curiosity – and we know you because big brother who is watching you told us so. Mr Pyne is with friends and accomplices a kind of one man music factory kicking out sounds plastered to limited edition CD’s like no ones business via his imprint foolproof projects. Long been on the radar of these musings since the distant days of puffin boy and braer rabbit he has in recent years ventured out as kellar, medicine and duty, raised by wolves and the black neck band of the common loon whose 5th outing we have here doing strange things on the player. The Loon are a freeform collective of revolving door membership this opus featuring blue pin and Jason Williams – the former named per the credits slip within on hand to play drums, piano, violin and whine – presumably not at the same time though I wouldn‘t put it past him. Strictly limited to just 100 copies along with unlimited download variants, ‘the fleshing beam’ finds our trio of intrepid imps evermore scaling the aural boundaries of the unknown to plant flags and colonise musical worlds as yet unmapped let alone on any known radar. So far left of this heat it nearly falls off the viewfinder (the decidedly wired and skittish ‘I‘d remember if I was another me‘ putting paid to that and sounding not unlike Bablicon in a nightmarish Japcore headlock), agitate and annoy appear to be the key watch words to the Loon philosophy, resolutely refusing to adhere to any tick box generic regime instead preferring to pummel and puzzle enquiring heads alike amid a jarring ju-ju jamboree made up of 8 freakish mutants (which don’t come any freakier it should said than on ‘force feeding the flock’) which at moments touch base unsettlingly with previously cited reference markers so that you get a terraforming stew into which elements of art rock, no wave, acid jazz, primitive folk and earth beat cross match, repulse to form new aural DNA strains with somewhere here old favourite Albert Ayler being for one heavily indebted to and dutifully lapped up on the chaotic fried jazz squall that is ’bead spitter’ whilst older listeners keenly aware of Volcano the Bear back in the day when they where too weird for the Wire might fancy a little casual re-acquainting Loon style that is via the mildly trippy though deranged crooked earth beat improv of ‘static pleasure’ while the pursuing ‘looning song’ has it seems taken more than an odd spin of the Volcano dudes ‘yak folk’s y’are’ as it concocts a darkening stew of Residents like sonic sorcery that’s all at once odd, deeply unsettling and transposed in an archaic druid like tongue. For long time admirers of the Loon there’s even a vocal moment, a very rare occurrence to those well versed in Foolproof Project groove courtesy of ‘open mouth mouthing’ which in case your taking notes sounds not unlike a deep fried art prog afro kraut bad boy which leaves the quite frankly shit faced and gone ‘the fleshing beam’ to see things ominously out with a sinister display of torch jazz noir which at intervals put us in mind of trunk’s excellent ‘voodoo sessions’ albeit of course as though fractured and recalibrated by the mischievous hand of Stockhausen with Moondog on side for added strangeness.