Slow Crush (fourth letter to Lowri)

Yesterday the heatwave had factored up so much I had to cook a curry in the nude. It wasn’t a fish curry as I’ve been a vegetarian since I was sixteen. Luckily I remembered to put some clothes on before catching a packed tram, or I could have caused quite a commotion on the locomotion. I alighted at Piccadilly Gardens, destination Soup Kitchen. A funny thing happened just before I got off the tram. A man who was also disembarking banged on the window to attract a woman who was walking by but she was busy with her phone and didn’t hear him. As he walked along the platform just ahead of me he got a phone call from her, and as the tram pulled away they were directly opposite each other waving from across the tramlines. Later they turned up at the same gig I was going to! Soup kitchen basement must literally be Manchester’s coolest venue in terms of temperature, but it’s also quite likely the smelliest. Wilderness Hymnal was near the end of his set when I walked down the steps and was as close as I’ve seen anyone get to a nude performance since “True Story.” The bearded mohawked man was dressed in a sort of tropical tribal wraparound dress, bare chested, with white face make up and strange brow decorations that made him look a bit like an owl. He sang almost operatically as he played a keyboard and made quite a spectacle. Next Pijn played the loudest set I’ve heard anyone play for a while. They remind me a little of Swans and a lot of godspeed you black emperor but with metal influence. It was the second consecutive night I’d seen a band with a cellist, and Pad Ray plays a flat slide guitar perched on his knees. The other three play instruments that are easy to guess. The snare drum was so loud that I had to retreat to the sound desk to avoid hearing damage, and even there the volume made me so dizzy I almost felt like I was going to faint three times, but that felt good. Slow Crush from Belgium were less intense, one of those bands who definitely love My Bloody Valentine, and probably Cocteau Twins too. I thought they were quite dreamy but my friend Jojo who played bass in Breaking Colts and Jackie O left after half a song to go see The Jungfraus who were playing Night and Day. The Soup Kitchen gig finished quite early and I made it to Night and Day before The Jungfraus had even played a note. There were a lot more people I know at that gig as Jungfraus singer and guitarist Mick Kenyon co-runs Peer Hat and drummer Liam Farr runs the bar at Aatma upstairs. The Jungfraus have a lot of sixties influence and remind me at times of Love. I met our friend Andrew Guest there and told him about this facebook project and he seemed mildly perturbed which was quite funny. Then the DJ played “Knowing Me Knowing You” and I couldn’t help singing along which made a woman on the other side of the room smile. I didn’t realise I was Aha-ing so loud!

What Do I Get? (third letter to Lowri)

The heatwave seemed even hotter yesterday in Stretford and Chorlton and I only saw one crazy melanoma addict sunbathing on the yellowing grass in Longford Park. I hope she had the factor 9. The air in Hulme stinks of smoke that has blown in from the fire. Lucky for me the Peer Hat doesn’t have kitchens under the venue so doesn’t turn into a sweatbox like Fuel. Quite a many people turned up to hear Laura James sing her pleasant folky songs, sometimes with just her guitar and sometimes with a cellist and keyboarder who she bizarrely informed us were not her lovers, or something like that, which got her an odd look from the cellist. She seemed quite nervous. Upstairs afterwards the DJ got me dancing to some old punk rock songs after a line of people tried and failed to can can to Michael Jackson. An artist called Aki who often paints in the Peer Hat, and paints pictures of bands as they play, painted a picture of me dancing to “What Do I Get?” by Buzzcocks and wrote the words of the song as he remembered them around my head. He got the words all wrong but the gist of them is there and they make the picture seem quite sad. If he’d painted me singing through a paper tube to “2 by 4” and “The Man Whose Head Expanded” by The Fall, as I did just before I had to catch the last 256 bus home, and mashed up the words, that would have been way more interesting! I also turned “Heart of Glass” into karaoke and my Debbie Harry impression got people laughing.

Heatwave Fuel (second letter to Lowri)

It’s a heatwave! The Greater Manchester outback bushfire is raging near Stalybridge. Friends are saying the smoky air in the city is making the atmosphere seem like India, where people are always burning garbage. Stretford and Withington seemed unaffected by the pollution, at least as far as my nose can tell. Yesterday near Stretford mall I got shouted at by a turban wearing car passenger of probable Indian descent. Usually men who shout at me from their cars are shouting abusive orders to get my hair cut. This was the opposite. I couldn’t hear him at first as I had earphones in but a mother with two children waiting at the crossing next to me pointed him out, and asked if I knew him. I didn’t and I was a bit confused. Had I done something that had made him angry that I didn’t even know about? Even after I’d stopped listening to music I couldn’t hear what he was shouting over the noise of the car engines. As they drove off he gave me two thumbs up signs. The mother told me that he was shouting that he loved my hair!

That evening I caught a 25 bus to Fuel. How long is it since you’ve been there? I remember when Hotpants Romance and the Lovely Eggs played there and you walked around with a tray full of Hotpants Romance souvenir trinkets like a snack seller at a cinema, which was almost funnier than the funniest band in the world. Could this have been your first solo performance?

Fuel recently had a stage installed and it’s painted with black and white zig zags with a red curtain hanging at the back, like the black lodge from Twin Peaks. This was the first time I’ve heard a band play on that stage who actually sounded like Twin Peaks music, at least for some of their set. JFrisco are a jazzy trio from Leeds playing guitar, keyboards and clarinet or at least that’s what it looked like they were playing to me. Between songs the guitarist informed us that time and gender are illusions so I’m not sure if they would be happy if I described them as women, but I would if I was judging by appearance. They were a nice surprise as I enjoyed them as much if not more than the two bands I’d heard before. Cynthia’s Periscope is the one man synth pop and percussion dancer Paul Morrice who also often does the sound for gigs at the Peer Hat and Aatma. He played a set of what he said were his happiest songs as it was a very hot sunny day. The last song was much noisier than the others and he danced to the far end of the room banging a drum and danced on a table. He’d brought some flyers for a couple of gigs he’s putting on and these were very useful as fans. The bassist of Stoke instrumental trio Owte told us all their tunes were proggy, and that’s true if it means complex rhythms and time changes that catch dancers out. If I was judging the illusion of gender by appearance I’d say they were all men. The guitarist was wearing a Bilge Pump T-shirt and as they are one of my favourite bands we got talking about them after the bands had all played. Before they played the bassist joked that they’d probably clear the room, but promoter and compere Brandon M Bizzle told them the whole point of his monthly night “You Might Not Like This” is to have bands of different genres or styles play together. K1square finished off the night with some techno that got most people dancing, but I enjoyed dancing badly to Owte more.

Last time I did any vocals was in May at the monthly Fuel night “The Noise Upstairs” where improvising trios are formed at random by picking names from a hat. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone vocalise there so it was odd that the trio I was randomly thrown into was with Brandon, also on vocals but through effects, and a guitarist I’d never met before who plays in a band called Good Guts who I’ve yet to hear. Maybe I’ll put that right now if they have any music online.

Roland and Evans (first letter to Lowri)

Dear Lowri Evans,

Have you flown to Brazil yet? Or were you planning to swim there? I learnt to swim as a child but I’ve never learned how to fly, so it’s lucky for me that some clever fellow invented the aeroplane. A wise man once wrote that the art of flying is falling over and missing the ground, but I gave up after too many bruised knees. Yesterday evening I went to the Peer Hat to listen to an improvising trio playing guitar, drums and modular synth. You might remember David Birchall who played guitar. He played bass in the band Cornish Tin Mines who were crazy enough to let me vocalise over their music the first time we met, when your band Hotpants Romance shouted for a Sugar Fix at Stuart, Vixen, Ben and Adam’s house on Albert Road in Levenshulme. I don’t think they are hip to combining dead fish with improvised music yet, but David does have a CD with another trio where they all sit naked in a communal bath in Japan on the cover photo, so perhaps there is hope for them. It also amused me that they used a bass drum made by Evans and an amp made by Roland, which suggested to me that Life the Universe and Everything are trying to tell me that we should start this facebook art project as you suggested. They made fifty pounds and in a terrible approximation of an Australian accent I suggested they spend it on burgers for a barbecue even though I’m a vegetarian. I suppose I must have been drunk. I have also remembered two Wire songs about fish:

Wire – Playing Harp for the Fishes / Fishes Bones

Looking Through Your Window

After seeing Lowri Evans’ two perfromances that I’ve reviewed just before this blog post, I wrote a facebook message about the week those two happenings happened. Here it is, again:

“What a strangely surprising and bloody lovely week it’s been for me. Starting on Monday with lovely Lowri Evans naked with a big smelly dead fish, then a couple of days later smashing an old stereo with Lowri Evans in hi-vis flourescent yellow jacket and drawing a very childish picture of that event on Darren Adcock and Tasha Whittle’s pen pressure triggered sci-fi modular synth and later that day watching the very unpredictable and surreal nightmare horror film “Possession.” On Friday I heard headbangers Aggressive Perfektor play some violent metal holocaust and mistook a gruff vocal for, “Our drummer is Tim Horrocks, he plays too fast!” followed by a band who sounded like eighties chart metal with a guitarist in Union Jack spandex trousers who I could only really listen to for a couple of songs. On Saturday I went to an all day gig featuring the noisy exploits of Flea, Diagonal Science, SOS, Four Candles, Drink and Drive, The Empty Page, Bobbie Peru and The Sandells. And to round it all off a brilliant Sunday party with The Ex, the most perfect anarchist band in the universe. Arnold sings, “Return to a state wherein strangers do not exist” and that sums up the experience of hearing The Ex. They make it seem like everyone in the room is a friend. I told Arnold and Terrie that after the gig and they seemed really pleased. I also told Terrie’s daughter Lena, who played a few songs before The Ex, that Terrie often looks like the happiest man in the world, and she said “He is.” The Ex always get me dancing but not as well as Miriam Ma Ve. It was all a lot of fun, and that’s what life is about. Islington Mill, Peer Hat, Soup Kitchen.”

This led to Lowri proposing that we collaborate on a facebook art project. At first I thought this was a joke but then events led to me starting a daily diary that I shared with her in the form of a public letter on facebook. Lowri contributed her facebook page whilst she was busy in Brazil, and I wrote a lot of words. The result was that I actually began to enjoy writing again, after quite a long spell of not being at all bothered with it. One day I was listening to “Happy House” by Siouxsie and the Banshees and the lyric “Looking through your window” jumped out at me as a title for the project. Lowri thought this was interesting, so that’s what it’s called. This is also quite relevant to me as the very first time I saw Lowri when her band Hotpants Romance played with the band I “sang” for (Cornish Tin Mines) I thought she looked like she could be Siouxsie Sioux’s much more beautiful younger sister. She doesn’t really look that much like Siouxsie, I was almost certainly drunk. Ceramic Hobs shouty man Simon Morris suggested I make all the letters into a book and call it “Namedropper” and I’d already thought about compiling them all into a fanzine and giving a copy to every friend mentioned. I’m far too lazy to do that and anyway there are enough objects cluttering up the world, so I decided to blog them all instead. The next fourteen posts on Pulsating Venus are all letters to Lowri. Letter fourteen was the last one sent as simultaneously my laptop died and Lowri decided it was time to end “Looking Through Your Window” as she needed her facebook space to promote her Sao Paolo  performance of “The Secret Life of You and Me.” Letter fifteen was never published. It now appears in all its gleeful anti-Trump glory. Letter sixteen would have been a review of The Breeders gig, but was never written. Letter seventeen would have been about Mr Airplane Man and Jeuce, however by this time I was so busy that I didn’t have time to write the diaries until days after events so it was a good place to stop. It was almost as if the Sun Ra film “Space is the Place” had fractured the illusion of time and a linear temporal progression had broken down. Lowri Evans has always been amusing, and now she has become a muse.

“Here’s To You” by Lowri Evans (June 20th 2018)

Behind Islington Mill an artist had set herself up in residence behind a small table and a sign reading “Hello OPEN.” On the table were a few old bottles. People were invited to bring something and destroy it and these were emergency bottles for people who didn’t bring anything. Lowri Evans’ performance of potential catharsis through violence against inanimate objects was advertised thus: “Do you have a household item you would like to smash against a wall? Do you have something you use every day that you’d like to destroy forever? Do you have something precious you’d like to break into tiny pieces? Then now is your chance! Bring your object and yourself and tell me all about it!” Lowri was dressed in a high visibility fluorescent yellow jacket and kindly supplied protective goggles, hard-hats and gloves so smashers wouldn’t get hurt. I brought an old stereo I’d found abandoned on the street and had taken home in the hope that it would function, however it didn’t so I suppose it wasn’t really something precious. This turned out to be the largest object anyone smashed, but I foolishly only wore goggles and got green paint all over my hands from the large shipping container that things were being smashed against. I should have worn gloves! After each person smashed an object, Lowri would select a shard from the debris and place it in a small transparent plastic bag with a message phrased from whatever the smasher wanted to say to the object. My bag has a transistor and a message tag reading, “Graeme To carrying you home and never working.” She asked everyone how they felt about smashing an object. I told her it was fun but I didn’t feel any different after smashing the stereo, I had a sense of equanimity about it. Some people did get some catharsis out of it, especially Jen Wu who it was generally agreed threw the best smash of the day. Her bottle shattered into so many fragments it seemed magical: almost total destruction. Later in the afternoon more people gathered and some stuck around smashing lots of objects, mostly glass but also an old squash racket. It was a smashing party. Lowri smashed the final object, a glass she’d brought all the way from Brazil. She told us that after the end of her last long term relationship she had smashed every glass in the house except this one. Now even that last glass was destroyed forever.

“True Story” by Lowri Evans and Sippy Cup (June 18th 2018)

The large gig room at Islington Mill named the Burrow by Fat Out has been closed and is being used by screen printers One69A until the planned refurbishment is finished. The gallery is occasionally hosting gigs, and other happenings continue in and around the warehouses on Regents Trading Estate behind the Mill. Lowri Evans of Hotpants Romance and Eggs Collective was living at the Mill bed and breakfast as artist in residence, and invited me to a performance she was planning at Caustic Coastal warehouse with abstract improvised music duo Sippy Cup and photographer Heather Glazzard. She told me that it was her celebration of the World Cup, and would be happening at the same time as England’s first match. She said the performance would be a surprise. The surprise turned out to be that she was stood naked with a large dead fish draped over her shoulder. I don’t think it’s any great secret that I’ve had a huge crush on Lowri since the first time I met her when the bands we were performing with played at a house gig in Levenshulme, so it was quite a lovely surprise to see this beautiful woman naked. It was not however a sexually arousing experience, maybe due to the presence of other people in the room and certainly due to the overwhelming stench of the fish. As Kate Armitage and Stuart Calton rattled, whistled, rustled and clanked in a corner, the candyfloss haired lady walked very slowly across the concrete floor, clutching the dead body of the silver haike close to her. Fish scales stuck to Lowri and later she said they looked like contact lenses. Another surprise: after about fifteen minutes Kate, who drums for Hotpants Romance, suddenly banged a drum and switched off the light for a few seconds. When the lights came back on, Lowri had moved to a different location and was holding the fish above her head, with her back to us. Lights would go out at roughly fifteen minute intervals for the hour and a half long performance, increasing in frequency towards the end. Each time Lowri would move to another place and took on a new pose in the silent darkness. I thought that it would have been funny if she’d walked right up to the people watching and held the fish out to them and then dropped it on someone when the lights came on. When I told her this she suggested that I get naked with a dead animal myself so that I could do it! I’m sure Jamie Robinson could find me a dead rat or pigeon somewhere around the Mill! There was a terribly worrying moment when Lowri slipped in water on the floor, but she regained her footing and didn’t fall over. She laid on the floor with the fish next to her and slowly raised her head so it was right next to the fish’s head, and I thought she might be about to kiss the fish. Later she told me there was no way she was going to kiss the fish. When she stood again her thigh looked bruised, but it was just dirt from the floor. Lowri always makes me laugh: the funniest moment was when she shuffled along with the fish along a leg and its tail on her foot. The overall feeling was rather solemn and ritualistic. All of the senses were involved in the primarily audio visual performance as the fish smelled horrible, and there was strawberry water to drink, but only Lowri was experiencing the sense of touch, holding the fish to her for most of the performance. It must have smelled worst for Lowri, and Heather actually had to stop photographing and filming towards the end as the stench got too much. I managed to reduce it by cupping my hands over my nose. At the end Lowri lied down on the floor again and didn’t move much with the fish lying alongside. Seven people watched, but only two stayed for the full performance, as people could come and go as they pleased. One lady seemed a bit disgusted by it. There could be moral objections to this performance. The prudish would frown upon public nudity, but Islington Mill isn’t known for prudery. A more serious moral objection that I pondered myself is that as a vegetarian, using a dead fish seems repugnant. It could be argued that the fish was already dead when Lowri and Heather caught an early morning taxi to Ashton to buy it, or that it could have fed people as was actually intended. When it was alive and swimming in the sea, what would it have thought of its future if we could listen to the fish? What would the fish out of water think about being paraded about artfully by a human? Did it live and die for this? When Lowri dies will a fish carry her away into the sea? Was it all a mermaid plot? Lowri said the idea behind the performance was caring for a dead thing. This reminded me that when I was a child I had cared for a dead bee. It stung me and died and I kept it in a box until it completely decayed, and I was sad that the beautiful bee slowly disintegrated. I suppose I was a little sad for the dead fish, but much happier to see Lowri and hear Sippy Cup’s longest ever performance. They created a memory that has forever transformed the freezer unit in Caustic Coastal. I’ll certainly always remember Lowri and the haike every time I go there. Aside from the duration of the performance it didn’t really have any connection to the World Cup but holding it at the same time as an England match must have drastically reduced the risk of any loaded laddishness erupting.