ZGUN
(USA, June 2008)
Billy Bao Dialectics of Shit LP
(Parts Unknown)
Billy Bao Fuck Separation 10” (S-S)
Billy Bao Accumultion EP (Xerox Musik)
Billy Bao shot to micro-stardom wit’ a bullet last year on the strength
of a stunningly powerful guitar-freakout 7” whose enormous sound was
only slightly mitigated by the virtual impossibility of tracking a copy
down. Well, here comes an appropriately apologetic deluge of what we
used to call in The Industry “sonic fuckery.” The mysterious
conglomerate that revolves around Mr. Mattin (no first names please) has
managed to hit all the marks, and not just on the level of mere vinyl
format (well, no 6” flexi releases … yet), while simultaneously
functioning on three almost totally distinct stylistic planes. In order,
from small to big: The 7” sounds like the EP that Harry Pussy never
released on the Bad Vugum label. It’s 10 short bursts of squall and
screaming that functions as the true successor to all those early 80s
hardcore EPs that packed a similar number of songs onto a single
platter; and it plays at 45 rpm! Apparently the theme of the record is
reflected in the title, in that the songs are supposed to pile up the
phlegm and sturm as the thing plays through but I have to say that until
I was told this it didn’t really register. Anyhow, it’s really fresh and
doesn’t get old fast, unlike “real” hardcore, soooo, next we have the
10” and here is something else entirely. Honestly. BB sits down in a
candle-lined, eggcrate-shrouded studio cave and just jams out two
sidelong modern stoner-metal-jamz that echo no band that I am currently
familiar with. I find myself glancing back over to my older Earth
titles, hell, their first couple of obscuro EPs, to find a similar
touchstone. I admit, I’m not up on indie metal moderne, but this No Wave
metal of Billy Bao’s is enough to make me think twice about my reflexive
boycott of Boris and Sun 0)))-- maybe I am missing something. If Greg
Ginn had heard this in 1984, we’d have yet another o/p SST product to
vainly scour the understock for, but this is available in the actual
here and now. And, upon closer listen, the title of the damn thing
starts to resonate, I think they are slowly combining and re-forming two
songs at the same time on this. Clever apes. Now I feel like I failed a
math quiz the first time a round, and now I’m going back over my
scribblings and spotting my errors in the polynomials. What-ev-er, the
concept is not as fascinating as the stuttering sonics anyhow, gimmie
another beer and fuck Mr. Whitaker-Connolly and his fucking geometry
proofs. Finally, their LP, of which the only truly negative thing I can
weakly conjure is that the title is kinda dum. On this record, Billy Bao
takes the No Wave that dominates the 7” and infects the 10”, along with
the metallic churn and the dead-lunged vocals, and adds another
dimension: They’re actually a noise band. A couple of tracks on this
have “imperfections” built into them, “skips” and harsh static and wot
not, that had me out of my stuporous languor and over to the rec player
in no time … fuckers. That’s way more upsetting than Whitehouse
instructing me to rape the next door neighbor’s 10-year old daughter
(purely conceptual critical trick there, since no actual children seem
to live in my neighborhood). But when Billy Bao isn’t making me blow
nonexistent fluff off my needle, they’re swamping my stereo with a
sickly twenty-generations-removed blues vomit that recalls nothing so
much as a Civil War-era hospital orderly absently humming to himself as
he gathers up hundreds of severed limbs for disposal. It’s violently
dissociative in the most life-affirming way, and the only rough
comparisons I can honestly make to are the much-missed Scando gorillas,
Brainbombs. All in all, these three releases are the early contenders to
make 2008 the Year of Billy Bao. —RW
The
cover of Billy Bao's debut full length features a rather enthralled
young human listening on headphones to a 7" whilst devouring the
details on the back of the sleeve by Spanish punk band Las Vulpess. Las
Vulpess (Vulpess is latin for 'foxes' or 'sluts' in Spanish) were a
rather notorious 80's all girl punk band from Bilbao who once created a
ripple in spanish 'order' by appearing on Saturday morning TV doing a
loose fit, snarled up version of 'I wanna be your dog' entitled "Me
gusta ser una zorra" ("I Like Being a Fox", or, "I like being a slut")
! On this track ze singer spits such gems as "I'd rather masturbate
alone in my bed, than sleep with someone that talks to me about
tomorrow. I'd rather fuck with executives, that talk crap and then
forget you". Needless to say for the youth watching this way back when
it would have been a thrilling 'fuck you' to the established order of
domesticity and community Their sole release, a 7" "Me gusta ser una
zorra" (I Like Being a Fox) b/w "Inkisición" (Inquisition) was a
concise middle finger to all that attempt to direct an individual into
a certain means of existence, a way of thinking, a suggested approach
to life.
25
years later Billy Bao have paid homage to the band via their album
sleeve and embraced the spirit within this microscopic event of human
creativity via their release "Dialectics of Shit". A much needed
antidote to the bong-psych noise set, the 'doom' generation, the
nostalgic rock bullshit and the fucking dime a dozen drones that have
dominated so much underground music in the aftermath of the Iraq
stampede au-go-go. In recent years, we have had a plethora of
aesthetically based 'evil' music. Whilst few seem comfortable
confronting the cause of this anxiety.
On this platter: Catchy fuck melodies, scratchy feedback, anthemic
punk, high spit, fierce pitch and exquisite oblivion.
Ghosts: Pussy (Harry and Galore)
Billy
Bao sound desperate and foaming, most importantly - today (this is far
removed from the Acid Mothers factory of cosmic quotation or the 1983
worship of Hospital etc).
Dialectics of shit" is unhinged, frightening and exciting. There's is a
desperate air that is both and exhilarating.
"You
get me, you get the kicks" packs in half way, old school vinyl skip
style, built into vinyl pressed, a needle scratch and then:
"My Life is Shit
your life is shit
and you don't do
anything
Just
drink
fuck
sleep
and get killed
by a system
that only wants you as a
working corpse"
(Lyrically, NO-ONE escape's, the singer himself is a victim of his own
venom)
Elsewhere:
Factory of Repression
"Give me work and education
give me health and civilisation
give me culture
and
i will shit on your nation:
factory of repression"
The
abuse seems directed at the complacency, materialism, muffled awareness
and dead-skull party mindset that is a cyst in the bladder of culture
today.
The motive seems comparable with Cornelius Cardew's
step away from the Avant Garde preferring to communicate 'en masse' via
piano based worker songs.
With respect to this, we ask, who is this band? and where did they come
from? And why, why, why are they doing this?
The
official band bio refers to Billy Bao as an individual from Lagos
(Nigeria) who discovered punk rock in Bilbao. This character
subsequently hooked up with 3 fugged musicians and started creating
songs which 'go beyond what rock and roll is and what it could be'.
Billy sings with this band.
You Tube footage suggests
otherwise with short footage of noise punk blat performed by 3 gents.
Notorious art, improv, conceptual geezer Mattin fronts the band with 2
other maniacs thrashing away at their maligned instruments.
Mattin
has been active for many years, constantly causing trouble in a variety
of avenues. Many years spent observing, winding and stirring the very
core of so called 'experimental', 'radical', 'progressive',
'intellectual' movements such as computer music, reductionism,
'songs'', improv and noise. His practise sits outside the chosen realm
it explores. Poking and proding the form as an attempt to anyalise
exactly what is being produced and what it is that is being expressed
by the artists who posit themselves flat bang, square centre in their
chosen parameters.
I have seen Mattin do an improvised
computer music set which entailed him covering his ears from the
'noise' when in fact no sound was produced at all. My personal
favourite being a 'collaboration' with merzbow video which featured
regular noise fixture Akita doing his live thing with the
'collaborative' component consisting of Mattin coming on screen briefly
to place a glass of water on the table for said performing artist.
Genius! I have seen him do an improv gig where he turned a desk lamp
towards the audience and proceeded undertake a 'spontaneous'
interrogation of the crowd that choose to pay money for 'a gig like
this' .
I have tried to fight back, once being chased out of a
venue by Mattin with his computer held out front of him opening and
closing the 'jaws' like some unbridled monster. Another occasion, after
'heckling' a gig, Mattin ran over and put his hand between my legs
squeezing my balls, HARD! (cue: the sound of 1 human falling rapidly to
the floor).
Mattin is the kind of cunt that likes to win. A
smart-arse, but a curious smart-arse with the kind of nous that
contributes to the success of a potentially insipid noiserock act like
Billy Bao.
Billy Bao is no anyalitical study. It strikes the
listener as sincere. An authentic call to wake up. A firm punch to
society, to the powers that govern, to the interaction within ones
'community' and to those within the experimental noise/rock/improv set.
Everything is infected, the systems in which you operate, the way you
live your life, the means by which you pursue pleasure. An ongoing lack
of concern for anyone outside 'your' agreed orbit. The rampant 'self'
of politicians, corporations, artists, the old and the young.
The
noise presented here is not macho posturing or sausage party back slap,
the noise is a scream, a scream to intensify anxiety which is a
by-product of an ever diminishing truth.
The noise is disgust. The music is release. The scream is human.
When
once posited the question "What are you doing with your music?" for the
publication "Blocks of Conciousness and the Unbroken Contiuum" (sound
323) Mattin responded:
"To fuck the structures that try to make
me behave or use my instrument in a certain way. To open fields of
possibility, bastardising any preconceptions of how a situation should
be".
Billy Bao is a unique project in Mattin's output but the principles at
work remain the same.
Amongst
all this Billy Bao entertain, they provide a visceral thrill which is
resplendent in the very best angst ridden music, a music for humans
that refuse to accept the terms, conditions, lies and manipulations
constantly thrust upon all of us.
Punk rock is dead, most
certainly, but the disgust which fueled the fire lives to feed the
"Dialectics of Shit". It thrives on disgust harnessing a balance
between "noise" and "rock".
This record is the complete and
utter fucking bomb humans and one of the only decent 'contemporay'
release these ears have encountered this year.
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Billy Bao - "I am Billy Bao, Right Here Right Now" (Dialectics of Shit)
YouTube evidence seems to indicate that Billy Bao, ostensibly a four piece led by a Nigerian expatriate currently residing in Spain, is in fact fronted by improv-provocateur Mattin. Though a juicy narrative exists in the public version – Bao as third-world rage channeled through sloppy sludge protest-punk – the (perhaps) true story is undeniably the more interesting one.
Mattin’s work hits at odd angles, but is ultimately generous. Whether exploring sheer noise or deconstructing singer-songwriter conventions, he trusts his audience to receive and judge the work appropriately. It couldn’t be otherwise, really. The work is predicated upon audience interaction. This can sometimes be obvious: in performance, Mattin may record the sound of the audience and play it back live or may set up a pure inquisition to prod attendees’ motivation for bothering to show up at a concert of his sort. These might sound like stunts, and they may be, but they’re far from apolitical; if we’re to believe Mattin’s assertion that ease of exploitation constitutes a major flaw of “experimental” music (commoditization of its breakthroughs), shifting the focus from the product/producer to the site of reception allows for a more direct negotiation, not to mention an increased focus on the world outside of the art itself.
If Mattin really believes this, how and why does he incorporate the Bao bluff? Even if the Bao tale is true, it’s still being employed for Mattin’s ends; he hosts the Bao website, for Pete’s sake. Is his philosophy by itself not enough to engender action (assumedly the goal of political art)? Punk rock certainly doesn’t have much to brag about anymore. The young child listening to the Vulpess 7” on the album cover might co-sign that group’s feminist message, but did Vulpess change the world? To that end, has Mattin? Punk has undeniably been exploited and has arguably hit a political dead-end. Mattin is marginal. Dead-on philosophy or dead-on punk purity: either way, we’re fucked. Put them in conversation with each other? Dialectics of shit.
Dialectics of Shit can’t not be a frustrating experience. I don’t really buy the above nihilism, and I don’t think Mattin does, either. It’s a despair that an artist with his leanings and thoughts would necessarily encounter, and he can’t really be blamed for wanting to change the site of reception, even if a tired punk-rock sneer must go in tandem. Fortunately, Mattin compensates for simple attitude. Speaker channels fizzle and die throughout, static gradually overpowers a few songs, bits are looped to suggest a skipping record, and the album eventually devolves into junk noise. If anything, the record gets your attention.
Billy Bao hit all the bases that Pissed Jeans
do, but the difference is that Mattin isn’t joking. Like sonic brethren
Brainbombs, he actually has the courage of punk convictions, even if
the Bao alias turns out to be a hedge. I’m a Pissed Jeans fan, but if
the lyrics of “My Life Is Shit” (My life is shit, / your life is
shit / and you don’t do / anything / Just / drink / fuck / sleep / and
get killed / by a system / that only wants you as a / working corpse)
were theirs, I probably wouldn’t be able to shake the feeling that they
got a beer after recording the track. Bao keeps the straightjacket
drums and dirty fuzz riffs, but recognize that the child listening on
the cover deserves better. I’m not fully convinced that the Vulpess or
Minor Threat tack isn’t the more honest or effective one, but Dialectics
of Shit is to be applauded for putting the ball firmly in the
listener’s court.
