When avant-garde guitarists Colin Robinson and Michael Linden West performed as a duo during the last weekend of the Winter of 2016, they didn't have a name for their project. They settled for The Clog Hunt Occasional Collapsing Knitting Society, suggested by Dave Lee, one of the regulars on the Clangroyd Facebook page, a hang-out for the various avant-garde acts in Hebden Bridge. Live at The Nutclough Tavern 19th March 2016 documented that debut performance and now there's another live recording, recorded in the first weekend of the Autumn of 2016: Live at The Nutclough Tavern 25th September 2016. They changed up things a bit and gravitated to twisted voodoo funk.
Spontaneity is key, with an assorted array of gizmos and effects acting like a bunch of kids after the school bell has rung to announce the holidays: a riot may happen without warning. Robinson and West share a love for Krautrock, King Crimson and Captain Beefheart; repetitive patterns and Sci-fi keyboards are torn apart by loud outbursts of distorted guitar. Fulsome Fishcake Funk sounds like an experiment by Adrian Belew and Thurston Moore that got out of hand. While most musicians would discard it as being just to plain weird, they use it as launchpad for howling feedback, serious clipping and post-rock mayhem.
For most listeners Imagined Didgeridoo Creates Helical Almonds is the toughest cookie to chew down. Washes of something sounding like modal jazz clashes with a twin guitar part that is part thrash metal and part Mike Oldfield playing while wearing a straitjacket - fascinating and scary. As a contrast they included six fragments recorded during their soundcheck. You could actually try to dance to them, but don't rely on it as a means for a successful mating ritual.
The Clog Hunt Occasional Collapsing Knitting Society:
Michael Linden West: electric guitar, imp(lement)s of the perverse, electronics
Colin Robinson: electric guitar & devices, hypothetical Mellotron, groove box
Live at The Nutclough Tavern 25th September 2016 is a self-released album. Buy it (pay-what-you-want) from their website.
Tracks:- Gnus Kill Life Coach
- Fulsome Fishcake Funk
- 21:12 Alfresco Emu Funk
- Imagined Didgeridoo Creates Helical Almonds
- Soundcheck fragment no.1
- Soundcheck fragment no.2
- Soundcheck fragment no.3
- Soundcheck fragment no.4
- Soundcheck fragment no.5
- Soundcheck fragment no.6
» Michael Linden West on Soundcloud
» Jumble Hole Clough on Facebook
HCTF review of Live at The Nutclough Tavern 19th March 2016.
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