Gwilly Edmondez/Bloomin’ Caroline/Ludal Le Chacal – I Fucking Love That! (2009)

On Friday 13^th November 2009, Gwilly Edmondez, Bloomin’ Caroline and Ludal Le Chacal performed as live vocalists and situational improvisors in the Sound of Aircraft Attacking Britain presentation The Velvet Lantern, a four-hour video/performance installation programmed as part of the Cardiff performance art festival Experimentica 09. The performance took place in Chapter Art Centre’s roomy Stiwdio space; the logistical complications were such that SAAB’s Richard Bowers and Ian Watson spent pretty much the whole day setting up and eliminating problems arising. Outside the rain pounded the Welsh capital in the heavy and relentless way that is particular to South Wales and the South West UK; the trio would probably have spent the day drifting around Cardiff city centre, seeing sights and wasting energies on anodyne distractions. But with the flooding deluge outside, they were instead confined to the studio control room above the performance space where their habitual noise-making inevitably evolved into an actual recording session using the only means they had, the mono mic on the Boss BR-1 that Edmondez was travelling with.

The session that emerged relates with real intensity the stir-crazy cabin fever that infested their collectivity that afternoon and was subsequently sweetly packaged and art-worked by Ludal. The weird thing is that November 13 2009 remains the only time this exact trio have performed; this album leaves you begging for more, and Kakutopia hopes very much that somehow the trio can reconvene in the not too distant future to pick up where they done left off.

Tracklisting
1. Ouverture – I Fucking Love That… It’s Like Rick Wakeman
2. Act 1, scene 1- Psychiatric nursery
3. Act 1, scene 2 – I’m so sorry… bitte d’ane
4. Act 1, scene 3 – Jo the fucking taxi…c’est toi la tapette
5. Act 1, scene 4 – It’s actually Caroline’s voice
6. Act 1, scene 5 – One more time
7. Intermezzo
8. Meanwhile in Siberia
9 Meanwhile in Ilton Joan’s bedroom
10. Act 2, scene 1 – May somebody answer the damn phone
11 Act 2, scene 2 – Toi t’es pas beau, t’es pas mignon
12. Act 2, scene 3 – KGB Headquarters…really
13. Act 2, scene 4 – Je veux ma maman
14. Intermezzo2
15. Meanwhile inside culture lab’s printer
16. Meanwhile in Tatooine
17. Act 3, scene 1 – Organization
18. Act 3, scene 2 – Mikado train…are you allright
19. Act 3, scene 3 – Dog on acid
20. Act 3, scene 4 – Grand Finale

Personnel
Gwilly Edmondez
Bloomin’ Caroline
Ludal Le Chacal

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Gwilly Edmondez – Song Birds (1987)

When Gwilly Edmondez bought his first 4-track recorder in 1984, he was already four years old as a player in the Radioactive Sparrow odyssey wherein total improvisation was the sole prescription. Inevitably, perhaps, he deployed the same method for solo studio projects, improvising four tracks (or more bouncing down) separately, building a song’s internal logic through each overdub’s increasing familiarity with the material. That every recorded performance comprised first and only takes of each part was not observed on principle, then; rather it was the absence of any notion that another approach might be worthwhile.

Like almost all Gwilly’s solo albums (with the exception of 1986’s Bigger Geddy Numbers) prior to 1990’s unaccompanied rock singing epiphany, Song Birds is mostly made up of songs whose content and intent is socio-emotional – expressions pitched at specific people and personal experience, even including love songs. ‘Baby, Please Don’t Leave Me’ plays on the narcissistic self-pity the spurned indulges bordering on real insanity. The title track is probably the only song Gwilly ever made about his dad. ‘Blow Job’ ham-fistedly tries to tell the tale of a fraught relationship’s unraveling from the point of view of a girlfriend herself. ‘Who Is They?’ uses a favourite technique of assembling voice overdubs as an auto-choral rabbling, drunk on the euphoria of total self-identification, astonishingly re-observed by Gwilly on encountering a group of ecstatic winos in York one day during an early 21^st C heatwave, snapping it briefly to dictaphone for inclusion on the eventually finalled On On On On Any Edmondez (2003-?).

Rather than mining the original masters in the hope of yielding fresh inversions benefiting from 21^st C hindsight, this upload is a direct digitization of the edition that did narrow rounds upon the album’s original completion. A glance at the cortex revealed by a visit to the separable archive, in the now, shows that the voices on ‘Ysette Monroe’ are actually quite loud – their subsumption deep into the mix here, therefore, would suggest an intention to weave them like neighbouring colours into the manically overbearing keyboard lines.

Anyone familiar with the Sparrow oeuvre would notice the title ‘Mong’ with a bemused recognition. However, the song is named for the woman whose voice is heard throughout the track: Edmondez was given the cassette and was given to understand that the person singing on it was a Thai prostitute called Mong – on the tape’s label was scribbled ‘Mong singing.’ So there you go. Gwilly seems to have lazily Eno-Byrne’d the objet trouvé into what winds up working in a gay star-shone derive through gently soporific dog hair, setting the precedent for the following year’s more earnest ventures into collage/improvisation on Group Portrait Laughing and Nonchalance In Vain.

Tracklisting

1.     Baby, Please Don’t Leave Me
2.     Song Birds
3.     Blow Job
4.     Ysette Monroe
5.     Mong
6.     Who Is They?

Personnel
Gwilly Edmondez – all sounds, except for…
Jason Davies – mandolin on ‘Mong’

Mong – vocals on ‘Mong’
Casio keyboard borrowed with thanks off Owen Powell of Ogmore
Yamaha synth borrowed with thanks off of Jane Powell of Llandaff (no relation)

Recorded in the Shed, Ewenny, Bridgend, Summer 1987.

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Gwilly Edmondez – Abstract Exhibitionism Volume 1

Gwilly Edmondez began making voice recordings to dictaphone in 1990 when he was in France, discovering that spending a lot of time alone brought on automatic singing, exuding unaccompanied songs that would draw improvised elaborations around fixed, remembered choruses. Borrowing a headset microphone from American art student Eric Miller, he recorded a handful of songs that would form part of a string of tapes during the early 90s that for some reason Gwilly never saw fit to compile as albums. Early Unaccompanied Rock Singing (U-ARS) classics like “I’m A Crazy Rebel,” “You’re Ahead Of Your Time, You Are,” “Yo, What’s Happenin’ Bro?” and “Baranoid Fiesta” have yet to be issued on any format.

Abstract Exhibitionism Vol. 1 (2001) was therefore the first dictaphone album proper, and was born out of a kind of phase 2 wherein the dictaphone became the recording media of necessity for Gwilly as he spent long days going back and forth between schools and private homes as a freelance music teacher. Another collection of recordings actually made while teaching, rather than between, will be issued at some stage as the album The Complete Harrow Of My Teaching Hour. Meanwhile here’s the first of five albums made exclusively in “hand position.”

Original sleeve note
Gwilly Edmondez ~ Gwilly the Very Good Musician (sec) ~ Abstract Exhibitionism ~ Vol.1 ~ With All Writing On the Cover ~ Version 1 Version ~ And Shit ~

Actual Title: ABSTRACT EXHIBITIONISM VOL.1

Was recorded by hand/hand position in 2001, April in Kakutopia-France (hence all that French shit) over an extended period of several days, including a grouping together of more than a week. The whole thinking in front of this albo was to prove that, in order to be a recording artist, you didn’t need to splash out hundreds of pounds on it. All you needed was to be a bloke or a woman, and be in hand-position with your shit. OK, so I flush a lot of bogues along the way – I piss a lot, like you – but that was to prove above and beyond that I never stopped, not even for a moment, the process by which a proper artist carves his gapor. No Fancy Tricks were employed here – just one man and his shit. Do you know what I’m saying?

Gwilly Edmondez (Improvizuh) – Lead Guitar and Vocals

Occasional companions: Tony Gage, Luno EdLandez, Serge Neri, Cécile Lindfors, Gabelli & Esther Sobin, Bruce (!) Lee & Skip Undo. Aces high:~ All the above, Stu & Marie, for real, (at the time of writing I still owe Marie 25 quid for helping me shit through that nonsense at the City Screen), Ian Watson and Richard Bowers for what is to come. Bruco because of all that Kaspar/Sarah shit he’s got going on. Word is Bone, 20001 Kid, checkit, negga.

Tracklisting
1) Sweet Nuthin’s Is It
2) 4-Head Farrad
3) Wank Your World Off
4) Sting-Ray-O-Meter
5) Bloody Guvamant
6) Good Music is Where You Find It (1)
7) Friday Was Amazing
8  COCK!
9) Gyrascore
10) Télé-Loisirs
11) A Object That Seems Very Far Away
12) Evans/Edmondes Family Penis
13) Good Music Is Where You Find It (2)
14) A Bollocks
15) Loy-Cam
16) Floydian Schlepp
17) Angels Of The Pipe
18) Jesus Built My Rod
19) Dandy Lorat
20) What You’re Doing Around It
21) Wang Your Hangar
22) Le Catalogg
23) Stenched
24) Good Music Is Where You Find It (3)
25) Conclusion: Music Can Be Exciting

Recorded by Gwilly Edmondez April 2001

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