THE TERRIFYING AND UNKNOWABLE FACES OF PREHISTORY

Number Four:

A terracotta portrait of the god Turms

(Etruria) circa 500 BC

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HI FI NEWS

Apologies for the delay since the last TOMTIT musical release, but we've only just run out of money, drugs and fans to do stuff to, so, as a result, we are now compelled to return, reluctantly and angrily, to the studio. 

Don't worry, we work best in a dark cloud of simmering resentment.

BONES ARE GOOD

THE GREAT ATTENDER

This gentleman is Paul Snowdon, an artist and musician who records under the name of Time Attendant. His new album, Bloodhounds, has been on the TOMTIT turntable and various mobile devices for weeks now, and is only just beginning to give up its mysteries.

For us, most modern electronic albums seem either glacial and ungiving or too eager to be liked, but 'Bloodhounds' bucks the trend by being a very warm, but affably ambiguous record. 

Sometimes it sounds like a partially unspooled techno tape, but it also evokes Henk Badings or Tom Dissevelt or Tristam Cary and the other greats of the post war electronic music scene. Mostly, it provides the soundscape and lets the listener provide the landscape: unlike many 21st century projects the artwork and song titles don't make it clear what you are supposed to hear, to think, to feel, to enjoy, to 'get'. Instead, Paul concentrates on intriguing and baffling and exciting the ear with a huge panoply of fascinating made noises, found sounds, field recordings, bleeps, bloops, swoops and swipes and then leaves the rest up to you. We think we identified a colony of bats leaving a cave at one point, but it might equally have been a mouse in a trap or a squeaky ducking stool.    

As an example of the immersive qualities of this superb record, Unmann-Wittering was listening to it just yesterday whilst wandering around a branch of W.H Smith, and was so transfixed by the closing track ('Fuchsia Circles') that he became dangerously over stimulated and spent £18 on stationary he didn't need and £31.75 on magazines, including one about military modelling, a pursuit he hasn't been interested in since the late eighties.

Get it here, but for pity's sake be careful. 

NOW, SCIENCE NOW

"Hallucinations without drugs, you say? Right, you have exactly thirty seconds to convince us - after that, we're calling security to have you forcibly removed"

THE TROUBLED NOW

 

This book was enormously entertaining, and took two hours to read, only marginally longer than it took to write. The story involves a super handsome, hyper intelligent millionaire explorer / playboy and his relentless search for the Mansonesque gang of hippy misfits who butchered his film star wife in the name of Satan, and it cracks along at quite a lick, especially as author Avallone keeps his foot on the accelerator by having lots of one sentence paragraphs.

Yes, he does.

Definitely.

There is no question of that.

No question at all. 

The Mansonesque gang are only playing at being Satanists, of course, and the relentless search of our hero (did you notice he's called Phillip St. George?) mainly involves him getting his lawyer to get him a long list of stuff like smoke grenades and a cigarette lighter with a gun in it and then idly hanging around the scene of the crime and waiting for the murderers to come back. When they do eventually return, St. George stuffs the miscreants full of psychotropic drugs and subjects them one by one to all manner of psychological torture while they cry and soil themselves. 

That'll learn 'em.  

Definitely.

There is no question of that.

No question at all.

10 SPARKS ALBUMS MUST BE WON!

In the olden days, they put groups like Sparks on the front of 'the junior TV Times', as well as a two page interview, a centre spread poster and a competition. Things were better then, even if the illustrator does appear to have 'de-Hitler-ized' Ron's moustache a bit. 

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