Blabbermouth - Horspiel

  by Dave Goodwin

published: 4 / 7 / 2019

Label: Dirtier Promotions
Format: CD

intro

Bizarrely marvellous concept album from Blabbermouth, the new project of Public Image Limited and the Damned’s Lu Edmonds and the Godfathers’ Mark Roberts

So, how on Earth do you categorise this then? This is the debut album from the band that calls itself Blabbermouth. It is a concept created by Lu Edmonds (PiL, the Damned and the Mekons), and Mark Roberts (Nenah Cherry, D-Ream and the Godfathers). They released a single ‘Deep State/Tohoku Manga’ in time for Record Store Day 2018 and unleashed the concept then on the unsuspecting world, the concept being a world not so far away where artificial intelligent cyberbots’ mock humanity while their musical cyber-serfs Blabbermouth provide the soundtrack. Weird, I hear you mutter? And weird it is. Believe it or not, the whole album is sung in more than one language with lyrics sung in Chinese, Russian, French, Hindi, Tuvan, Spanish and Turkish. Oh and English too. Welcome to ‘Hörspiel’ - a soundtrack and an album that is caught mixing semi-industrial noise, off kilter pop, post punk, ambient sounds, synthetic speech, a robot that reads texts randomly found on the internet, and a plethora of guest musicians including throat singer Albert Kuvezin from Mongolian band Yat Khat, Mekons vocalist Sally Timms, ex-Magazine guitarist Ben Manelson and Henry Cow clarinettist Tim Hodgkinson. ‘Deep State' includes the bizarre, dark and almost disturbing voice of Albert Kuvezin, which mingles with the subtle drum and machine text lyrics. It then bleeds into ‘Karbap-Karbap’ which again features Kuvezin and this time a dub style bass which will send you off into another world, the equivalent of walking through the back of Mr Benn’s shop. At this point I was thinking when first listening to it that it all had an undertone of PIL. Then ‘Maschine- Fragment’ popped up and almost confirmed the thought, except for the lyric which features old revolutionary slogans in Russian and Tuvan from Lenin, and also has Stalin spouting “The state is a machine designed for the oppression of one class by another” and “Art belongs to the people.” The rest of the album continues in the same wonderful vein, with ‘Tamanaco’ sporting more of Albert’s ponderings and ‘Facts Don't Lie’ featuring Justin Adams . There are also other hidden gems like German radio-plays of the 1920s intertwined with the theme of the allegedly imminent take-over of the world by artificial intelligence ,until it culminates with the Blabbermouth Voice Robot Ensemble on the last track ‘Tumbao’. ‘Horspiel ‘ is blatantly peculiar. It doesn't apologise for it either. And why should it? Bizarrely marvellous.

Track Listing:-