Label: Caciocavallo Format: CD
Hank and Slim, two good ol’ boys who lurched from legendary Bluegrass status and back into the trailer parks of Obscurity, Tx, making Country music take the dark experiemental route. Or Robin Storey and Nigel Ayers deconstructing the sound of the airwaves and the pedal steel into droning peyote-fuelled washes of moody Mid-West ambience? Rumours that the latter are true cannot still be confirmed, but if so then these sleeve notes are damn’ funny! Hilarious, especially the section about the return in the Eighties of Hank’s stint with Country Punk group Limey Faggots, favourite support group for both ZZ Top and GG Allin with a Thompson Twins fixation; there’s nothing like a good yarn to liven up the lonely nights on the paririe, now is there?
The World Turned Gingham isn’t so much of a laughing matter in itself, as swarms of disembodied and vapourised voices call from the depths of the tape machine and sampler in back-masked calls of the wild blue yonder. The guitar pickin’ and electronic foolin’ is slow to the point of treacle chopped and diced into dessicated jerky strips of ambience, and a track like “Suitcase On The Highway” reverberates with ghostly choirs and slow-motion instrument sample fragments to time-wrangling effect. “Strange Lights On The Prairie” echoes with the calls and responses of what could be the Greys taking another sweep over the range, soundtracking a close-up encounter with the delay units. As for “the Ballad Of Marky Martin”, it’s a whispered dirge slowed to a crawl, as a dread campfire story of those unfamiliar Country archetypes, skinhead football hooligans, complete with an eerie whistling melody.
This album is a strange one, and about the only recognisable slice of Country music comes in the shape of “Thumbs In Beltloops”, but that’s so deconstructed as to be more of an excercise in rhythm and texture than it is a lament for a dead dog. Still, it’d be fun to watch the cowboys and girls stepping out to a barn dance where the liquidised words, plangent chunks of barbecued guitar and upchucked percussion samples of “Gas, Food Trailer Park” was playing – not much hootin’ and a hollerin’ going on there, except maybe at the DJ. Definitely too much cactus juice; pass another peyote button, boys.
-Linus Tossio-
