Some more records: ØXN, Mohammad Syfkhan, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, and Irish experimental music

ØXN Cyrm (2023)

This is a multiple side project band featuring Radie Peat of Lankum, Katie Kim of Katie Kim, Eleanor Myler of Percolator, and John "Spud" Murphy, a producer of records by Lankum, Katie Kim and Percolator and various other acts. Lankum you may well have heard of. Percolator I am not familiar with but I have some limited prior exposure to Katie Kim, having seen her play in one of the Santa Rita Concert series in the Little Museum of Dublin. Investigation suggests that on this record the vocals are by Peat and Kim (easy to tell apart), drums & percussion are by Myler, production is by Murphy, and other instruments are by everyone. The songs are mostly of a dark folk variety, with the opening version of the "Cruel Mother" setting the scene with its lyrics about a woman giving birth in a wood and then killing her newborns. It's a song I've heard versions of before but this one seemed more centred on the woman's suffering, giving some background into how she came to be pregnant and the sheer misery of feeling like you have no option but to give birth in secret and then kill your babies.

Then we have "The Trees They Do Grow", a beautiful Scottish folk song about a young woman unfortunately married off to a much younger son of some rich guy. And then "Love Henry", a murder ballad (previously recorded by the Furrow Collective and adapted into "Henry Lee" by Nick Cave), the ominous "The Feast" (an original tune), and "The Wife of Michael Cleary". The last is a song by Maija Sofia and it deals with the disturbing 1887 incident in which Mr Cleary became convinced that his wife Bridget had been replaced by a changeling, so he killed her, burned her body and buried it in a shallow grave. Michael Cleary was convicted of manslaughter and spent 15 years in prison.

The final tune is a cover of Scott Walker's "Farmer in the City", sung by Katie Kim, which I have heard her play live at the above mentioned concert, shortly before Walker's death. The song originally appears on Tilt and I get the impression it is the standout track in Walker's mostly tune-free late oeuvre, as it sounds quite odd but is still recognisably music. It was noticeable when he died that "Farmer in the City" got a lot or airplay on forward thinking radio programmes. The version of the song here is also pretty ominous, with Kim almost intoning rather than singing her vocals to a largely droney accompaniment.

So there you have the Øxn record. It's pretty short but unlike the last Lankum album it is all-killer-no-filler and does not feel like it has been padded out with drone noodling to make it seem weightier. I recommend it to be people interested in this world of music.

v/a Under the Island: a Compilation of Experimental Music in Ireland 1960 - 1994

From Nyahh Records comes this compilation of Irish weirdo music. Various big names appear here, like Roger Doyle (an early work recorded when he still lived with his parents), Desmond Leslie (perhaps most famous for punching Bernard Levin on live television), Olwen Fouéré (big local stage actor who also shows up in films, also sometime Roger Doyle collaborator, with her track here having music written by him), Daniel Figgis (a former Virgin Prune). It's an odd record in that although it collects music from a lot of different people over quite a long period of time, the record ends up sounding almost like something by a single artist, with the tracks flowing into each other in ways that make it hard for casual listeners to tell where one ends and the other begins. Top marks though to Danny McCarthy's 1988 piece "Music For An Electric Hurling Stick", which is illustrated in the sleevenotes by him posing with a hurley to which he has fitted strings and pick-ups (an iconic illustration which seems not to have made it onto the internet, so you'll have to use your imagination).

Bandcamp

Mohammad Syfkhan I Am Kurdish (2024)

Another Nyahh Records release, in this case by Mohammed Syfkhan, a Syrian-Kurd who has found himself living in Ireland. He plays bouzouki and occasionally sings, mostly to a programmed accompaniment but occasionally to cello by Eimear Reidy and saxophone by Cathal Roche. See my review of the album launch concert.

Bandcamp

My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult Confessions of a Knife… (1990)

This is not a completely new to me record, as I have had a copy of it on vinyl since 1990 or 1991, but I decided to download a digital copy for I can listen to it more conveniently. For the sake of readers who have never heard of or forgotten about My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, they were a Wax Trax industrial act whose schtick initially was camp disco Satanism. On this record we get some industrial pop on which their Satanism is combined with samples from trash films of yore. The most striking track is probably the opener, "A Daisy Chain 4 Satan", with its repeated spoken word sample 'I live for drugs' (occasionally interspersed with 'I can't afford, I would never buy drugs'), while other stand-outs are "Kooler than Jesus" (featuring the repeated refrain "I am the Electric Messiah! The AC/DC god!", apparently taken from obscure 1972 film The Ruling Class, which means that the line is probably being spoken by Peter O'Toole) and "Ride the Mindway". But it's all good and I am enjoying binge listening to it again.

Looking back into the past, I think shoegaze and industrial were my big musics of the late 1980s and early 1980s. Very different, obviously, but variety is the spice of life. I may be falling down an industrial nostalgia rabbit hole, so don't be too surprised if you see me reviewing Revolting Cocks' Beers Steers & Queers in the near future. And also don't be too surprised if you hear about me putting on my vintage My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult t-shirt and heading into Dance to the Underground (Dublin's premier queer goth club).

images:

CYRM (Discogs)

Under the Island: a Compilation of Experimental Music in Ireland 1960 - 1994 (Bandcamp)

I Am Kurdish (Bandcamp)

Confession of a Knife… (Wikipedia)

Mohammad Syfkhan / E the Artist (Bello Bar)

This was a launch concert for Mohammad Syfkhan's I Am Kurdish album. It was taking place in the Bello Bar, which is one of Dublin's pokiest venues but also somewhere that hosts a lot of forward thinking music put on by Vinnie Dermody's Enthusiastic Eunuch organisation. The venue's annoying feature is that there are very few good seats giving you a reasonably clear view of the stage, so if attending you need to get down early. My friend "Eoghan" and I were in the queue when doors opened but we still weren't able to nab seats right at the front of the raised bit, but we were at least able to grab stools in front of the stage. From here we had an unobstructed view of E the Artist, who did laptop stuff (and occasional guitar stuff) while also using his voice as an instrument. I am generally a bit wary of laptop musicians but this guy seemed to have something and I hope we see more of him. He has a short record on Bandcamp that might be worth investigating.
Mohammad Syfhkan himself is a smartly dressed Kurdish fellow who used to live in Syria but has left there for a country where he is less likely to be killed. He plays the bouzouki and sometimes sings, while a programmed instrumental track accompanies him. I found the sound of his bouzouki fascinating… it had a quality that made it sound like it might have been electronically treated, but maybe that is just the way bouzoukis sound when played Kurdish-style.

In some ways he is a bit like Omar Souleyman, in that they are both Kurds, the music is also from the world of Dabke and they both played lots of weddings. Nevertheless they are still different: there is a definite groove to Syfkhan's music but it's nothing like as frenetic as Souleyman's. This is maybe music for a wedding of respectable older people who still like a boogie, not for completely mad for it young people who've drank too much sugary tea and are now buzzing their nuts off. Nevertheless, by the end of the set everyone was up and grooving.
And he kept playing and playing. Eventually I felt that I could only take so much music so I slipped away into night, stopping to buy a copy of the album and the Under the Island compilation. "It's past my bedtime," I commented to Vinnie Dermody as I was going. "It's past a lot of people's bedtime," he replied.

Check out Mohammad Syfkhan's album on Bandcamp.