SPIT - Little King Annual
CLaudi_019
CDR
Edition of 100
This album collects a series of tracks as snippets from the year following Ryan Cockburn's relocation from Dunedin, NZ, to Melbourne, Australia. After a couple of releases of mysterious turntable strategies on Dunedin's United Fairy Moons label (one side of a split lathe, and a cdr), and endless praiseworthy activities with the band EYE, "Little King Annual" has been realised through a series of process experiments with dilapidated equipment. There are a variety of surprise moves including detuned rock, backyard nano-tech percussion improvisation, wafting sea-breeze clouds of tones and textures, and even a couple of field-recordings... This is CLaudia's first full-length release from a solo artist (who isn't the guy who runs the label).
REVIEWS:
"Originally from New Zealand, Spit's Ryan Cockburn is now a Melbourne resident, which is where he recorded Little King Annual. The denuded rock 'songs' here move at slothful pace. On both "Etude Pour Un Derive" and "Hearth For A Grave", streams of feedback bisect lethargic riffs and drums, though they're occasionally upset by waves of scratchy guitar that are so psychedelically trebly, it's like Helios Creed has taken some serious downers. The freer pieces don't always cohere, but they're still full of possibility: for example, the disassociated clatter of "A Chestful Of Crumbs" gains purpose when an acoustic guitar drunkenly stumbles into view." THE WIRE, #290 April 2008
Three new releases on CLaudia, one of New Zealand's finer CDR labels. The big one is by Spit, also known as Ryan Cockburn, who moved from Dunedin to Melbourne, where he recorded this album. Cockburn has been turntable [?] and was a member of EYE, but for this album he picks up a wide variety of instruments. On the CLaudia website you can find detailed notes on all instruments used, which include anything from cheap toy guitars, mixers, microphones and computer. The result is, despite the use of a computer, a pretty lo-fi affair, but also a pretty varied affair. From strumming the guitar, feeding the boxes on the floor, to pieces that include drums, such as the rock like opening 'Etude Pour Un Derive'. The pieces are pretty long and one could wonder if they aren't too long at times. It could have been better if Spit would have trimmed things down a bit. But when he bumps in some variety inside a track, like in 'Cheesegrater For The Knuckles' things are pretty nice. One geographically very well defined product. (Vital Weekly)
ALBUM NOTES:
Étude pour un Dérivé (Study for a Derivative): November 2006
One very cheap toy steel-string guitar.
One old 4 track tape machine.
One 0 Dolfin drum kit.
One Behringer Xenyx 802 mixer.
One iMac (with Garageband).
Two cheap contact microphones.
Two Behringer C2 microphones.
Before the coming of the digital age, there was a era of magnetic inscriptions. Choices were more limited but maybe more deserving as well.
No computer. No pedals. No gear. A new country requires a reassessment of concerns. Slowly started to pick things up and this comes from the very start. The fragile little steel-string guitar became a raging beast when given some juice. The strings on this thing where so close together, no fingerings possible. If able, munted claw-like. Saddled up the contact mic's and drove the gain on the little fiveteen-watter.
Bad drums added on stinking hot late December, holed up in carpeted room with crapped-out kid's drum kit. Hopelessly influenced.
Cheesegrater for the Knuckles: August 2007
One adapted Casino electric guitar.
One Behringer Xenyx 802 mixer.
One cheap Behringer delay pedal.
One iMac (with Garageband).
One Fender Mini Tone-Master.
One clump of Blu-Tac.
One tinfoil bag (used)
One old snare drum.
One cheap contact microphone.
One small ornamental bell.
One (circa mid twenty century) portable turntable.
Two plastic flowers.
Two Behringer C2 microphones.
Two metal paper clips.
Three cymbals.
Recorded the same day as "A Chestfull of Crumbs' with similar means. Just giving the set-up a little vim and vigour. No hands and a bed made from low end guitar feedback and a empty bag of crisps.
No more, no less.
Hearth for a Grave: April 2007
One (circa mid-twentieth century) wind organ.
One cheap microphone from Savers.
One borrowed RAT.
One adapted Casino electric guitar.
One Casino KA15.
One Behringer Xenyx 802 mixer.
One cheap Behringer delay pedal.
One 0 Dolfin drum kit.
One iMac (with Garageband).
Two Behringer C2 microphones.
All bow down to my will-some fancy!
Memories of the long walk to Aramoana,
when late and dark.
Often wet, next to always cold.
Hiding under withered outcrops
Of marcocarpa, drenched.
Groceries in hand,
Hoping for a car.
Thunderstorm in future days,
Warmer by far.
Hail the frozen tundra Progrockers!
A Chestful of Crumbs: August 2007
One Behringer Xenyx 802 mixer.
One iMac (with Garageband).
One clump of Blu-Tac.
One small ornamental bell.
One paper parasol (broken).
One pink Martinez acoustic guitar.
One (circa mid twenty century) portable turntable.
Two plastic flowers.
Two Behringer C2 microphones.
Two metal paper clips.
Three cymbals.
Seeking a new kind of interaction with the moment and consciously trying to become less po-faced.
I made a series of crappy little percussion instruments made from plenty of Blu-Tac and assorted bric-a-brac. Practically impossible to repeat a given situation because of the poor workmanship, things falling off, getting caught in something and ripping off, the guitar sliding off, the whole thing falling over. Totally makeshift. In a reoccurrence of a symptom of work that has popped up previously, I retrogradely discovered (mostly by happenstance) a whole tradition of this kind of methodology in improvisation here in Melbourne. No name-dropping needed. A community none the less.
The field recording is a open fire, recorded in Wanganui July 2007. An ode to people who help out on the road.
Resist the Mull Star (Coda for Aramoana): August 2007
One megaphone.
One Fender Mini Tone-Master.
One Behringer Xenyx 802 mixer.
One cheap Behringer delay pedal.
One cheap contact microphone.
One iMac (with Garageband).
One Fisher Price children's tape deck.
One old Sanyo multi-speed tape deck.
Two Behringer C2 microphones.
Recorded quickly using two small tape decks and a megaphone. Floundering really but still sweet enough to get away with it. An old four-track tape from back in 2002, living and in freezing wonder in Canongate, Dunedin. I remember at the time using an incredibly decrepit, but endearing studio that was under the house we lived in. Field recordings of birds taken with a big old and clunky VHS camera with a great cigar mic and messed up snippets of pop dopery and goo, constructed with Music2000 on the old Playstation One. A piece of old equipment seems to me to sonorously remember beatings past and retain an old injury or aliment. Tactilely engaging with them can lead to them becoming vocal again. This is only explanation of have for the eerie waita-like wailing's of the old Fisher Price tape deck as pressure was applied.
Two Kidneys and Liver: October 2007
One adapted Casino electric guitar.
One Casino KA15.
One Fender Mini Tone-Master.
One Behringer Xenyx 802 mixer.
One electric hand fan.
One cheap Behringer delay pedal.
One iMac (with Garageband).
One Boss RC-20XL Loop Station.
One iMac (with Garageband).
One cheap contact mic.
One found large metal cutting disc.
Five long wooden meat skewers.
Blatantly pulling tricks from NZ luminaries.
Hand fans and abrupt endings.
Whispery threads and concrete shoes.
Where things are headed.
SPIT ( a.k.a. Ryan Cockburn )
5th December 2007
Melbourne
Australia