Vernon & Burns - Lost Lake

Madness is in my pile today. First Bjork, then this pile of concrète crazypie. At least I didn't get the bicycle-driven thing as well, that would have flipped my wig. Apparently these two are from the arena of radiophonics/plunderphonics. I'm unsure where this record should be lodged as it sounds like it's largely from that demented pasture but it seems to occasionally like chatting in the little drone and free jazz/improv yard next door. Once in a blue moon they even go for a brief piss in the field recordings barn. There's some utterly fantastic stuff on here. Expertly stitched audio collage, gibbering toy-town pop and clever aural goonery. Scary manipulated voices mingle with Moondog style percussion, bleak haunted house synths are tormented by digital cricket echoes, some wonky Pete Um/Ergo Phizmiz-style balladeering is roundly assaulted by these bursts of vicious spluttering fuzz and a loud bang that made me shit myself a bit. I flip over and from the seeds of more clattering, belching rumbling improv grows a massive gurgling, stumbling analogue noise bush. This bush grows wheels, shifts into a kranky gear and proceeds to swerve drunkenly down the road knocking over three mechanical cats and squashing a blind hedgehog made out of old aluminium tins. There's not a normal moment on this bloody interesting album but for unabashed lovers of abstract ephemera and plain weird experimental records this really is the tip-tops. I really can't recommend it enough and you know you're getting top drawer material when you realise these nutters had the most elaborate and impractical packaging on their Mort Aux Vaches CD, a series commissioned for only the most hardy and respected of out-there sound artists and musicians.