FALAFEL AVANTGARDE

He-Pea
Public Eyesore Recordings #46
www.sinkhole.net/pehome

by Steve Koenig

Public Eyesore has been doing unheralded yeoman service to the free and avant garde for some time now, releasing dozens of CDs in cardboard sleeves. Almost all are worth checking out at the check-out. Here’s my (their?) first vinyl sliver, at seven inches at 33 1/3.

On side one we find a loop of a woman speaking in French, (I believe she’s saying “Jamais cris,” never cry, if my grammar’s still vaguely decent) almost as if Diamandas Galas’ voice was slowed down but it’s not. The voice is interfered with by wonderful analog sounds: some grinding, some tapes slowed up a down as if a snail-like accordian chord or a motor revving up and down. There’s a momentum which builds, layer by layer, and the synth, which sounds more like a kazoo, adding an anthemic feel, making this piece enjoyable fun, at times even beautiful, fading after seven minutes.

Side two is a rock bass guitar riff, psychedelic in effect. It too has swirling whooshes but also a guitar making a pulsing rhythm, parodizing in form some of the great extended rock and soul vamps which have always hooked me (Sly’s “Sex Machine, Charles Wright’s “High As Apple Pie,” Isaac Hayes’ work on Enterprise). It also runs seven minutes.

(Note: What I call side one has “A” etched in the vinyl, although the label is only on what I call side two, stamped “HE-PEA A,” but etched “B” on the vinyl.)

Track Listing: Side 1. Mousse Tang; Side 2. Landerian

Personnel: Oren Adar-Burla, Joseph Copolaovixh, Schlomi Fridge, Omri Hanegi, Jango, Barak Shalit, Uri Tchelet, Dan Toren, Orna Zusman

Instruments: knobbers, pickers, thumpers