Bertie Marshall – Exhibit

Upset The Rhythm

Upset The Rythm‘s radar is always sharp and can be relied on to serve up a healthy antidote to the burger’n’fries musical factory that clogs up our cultural arteries.

Companioning the creative, often at the expense of commercialism they go, scouting fresh talent, scouring the musical roadside for neglected gems, and I’m guessing their recent journey with Normil Hawaiians has bought fresh dividends in the shape of early collaborator Bertie Marshall. More famous for his writing credentials, Exhibit concentrates our attention Bertie’s lesser known musical forays.

Back in the day, only a single seven inch ever made it out into the wild under the disguise of Behaviour Red (both tracks of which are included here); but as this collection shows, that was just the tip of a huge musical iceberg that until 2021 had laid mouldering in some dusty archive. “Any good?”, I hear you ask. Well, yes… I’ve got to be honest, I’m seriously tempted to end this review here and now in a capslock-appropriate BLOODY BRILLIANT; but in the interests of dishing some detail, I’ll continue.

Straight in there, the insane insurrection of abstracted cry, chant and taut transition that is “Ke Ke Ke Ke Ke Ya” flames your senses in a napalmed focus, throws your eyes wide open with its tribal intensity, harnessing the percussive talents of Noel Blanden of Normil Hawaiians fame. It sets you up for the odd disturbia of “Talk To Tapestries” and the soured nursery rhythms of “The World Is Round”, then “Chihuahua Talking Dog” flips the mental maul again as Bertie’s vocals career off hysterically, raving like a possessed canine to a tight pummel.

It’s a refreshing listen for sure, tangent-tilting with jaded whimsy and sardonic snips, Bertie’s vocals feeding you a raw vortex of thought, furnished with scratchy splitters of instrumentation or gloomy tropes that seem to curve into that barbed narrative. Scarred flavours that fall into the liltingly diaristic normality of “Meshes Over Morning”, warmly floating out on mid tempo uplifts.

Could this have been a follow up single to “Ke Ke Ke Ke Ke Ya”? Who knows, but it certainly switches in the contrast, but before you can process that, the next track “Offering” (the original flip to the first track) whips you clean away, giving you another glimpse into Behaviour Red’s sound world, a post-punk tumble that crimsons deliriously in your head.

It’s a sound that fits with the disconcerting slant of that marble horse head of the cover, and sort of feeds the anxiety within, that storyteller quality that drops fish-heads into the flora and delights in its artistry. It also delivers a sneaky cross-pollination of UTR’s Dark World release as “Sang Sang” shuffles a creepy tarot of ivory and distended voice that’s truly intoxicating, spell-like even; then bullies it away on the Bauhaus of elsewheres that is “Shaking Johnny”, a track that devotionally dives in Minimal Man-like half-lights that take flight with your imagination, sling shotting you into its cardiac thump.

These are tales that hook firmly into your flesh, are impossible to shrug off as the sinister sting of “The Tattoo Breathes”‘ daggers or the weirded-out erotica of “Little Red Sports Car” scratch metaphorically at some truth as a dirty rub of guitar wasps behind.

Exhibit has been on constant rotation for a month now and its charms have yet to wane; its dark sensibilities are seriously good, addictive even, shiver-splashing prophecy on “Commit to Fire”, lyrically delighting in the fact that everything looks better in the rain. Exhibit is a curious creature whose originality is there to be savoured.

-Michael Rodham-Heaps-