volcano the bear
the idea of wood
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Tracks:
All music by Coleman, Padden, Mott & Moore. Textile Records are proud to release the new challenging musical adventures from the British improvisational quartet Volcano The Bear. Formed with the constant idea of being a group with uncompromising and boundless ideas, the quartet (Clarence Manuelo, Nick Mott, Aaron Moore and Daniel Padden) is utterly beyond classification. This radical and unique music brought vtb to the attention of the more discerning. Drawing on the work of Robert Wyatt, Faust or This Heat, the music of Volcano The Bear is the perfect combination of music and non-music, melodies and free expression. The band creates a musical environment crossing composition with improvisation, filled with crackling electronics, rumbling percussion, unconventionally played guitars, manipulated vocal noises, and distorted pianos. The Idea Of Wood is an ideal mix of primitive folk, art rock and filmic sound sculpting. Eccentric, hypnotic, mystic, but most of all truly incredible. REVIEWS "...They have been weaned on the kind of music that can screw you up for the rest of your life (to quote Steve Martin out
of context) and they're supposed to be professionally weird (too much has been made of the United Dairies/Nurse With Wound
connection, surrealist graphics, and Jeremy Prynne-like song titles), but Leicester's multi-instrumentalist quartet Volcano
The Bear tap into a rich vein of quintessentially modal English folk eccentricity. On this latest outing, violins, hurdy-gurdies
and accordions vie with distorted echoes of 70s prog (the epic drum fills on Shake Your Crow) to create a ten-part
suite of alarming freshness and originality. As is often the case with VTB, things pick up after half-time, especially on
Curly Robot, which plays with tape speed and unashamedly heavy use of special effects, sounds of dripping taps and
an aquatic Harold Budd-like piano eventually sliding into a song ("songs" here consist of little more than endlessly recycled
simple chord sequences). "I will not see the mountainside until I come down the mountainside," intones Aaron Moore,
Wyatt-like, on the closing The Mountains Among Us, and it's an appropiate description of the listening experience -
constantly offbeat and surprising in the moment but coherent and convincing when heard as a whole..." "...That familiar spirit of playful chaos, randomness and intuitive group improvisation I've come to expect from Volcano
The Bear is in fine form throughout The Idea Of Wood. Even though VTB have been releasing music since 1996,
this LP on Textile Records is only their third full-length studio album. The bulk of their work is scattered across a clutch
of live cassettes and CD-R's, 10" vinyl editions, EP's and compilations. The Inhazer Decline and Five
Hundred Boy Piano showed what The Bear could do when challenged to make a coherent album - tightly produced and concise,
yet accurately reproducing the almost accidental, improvisatory feel of their live shows. This is not an easy task. Consider
other free-folk improv ensembles such as Jackie-O Motherfucker, Sunburned Hand Of The Man and No-Neck Blues Band; their albums
tend to be hit-or-miss affairs dominated by unfocused meandering with occasional eruptions of senseless cacophony. In stark
contrast, The Idea Of Wood is a study in controlled chaos. VTB's singular grasp of group dynamics lends itself
to the album format; their loose, disparate improvisations are consistently reigned in and alchemized into instant skewed
pop. Comparisons to The Residents, Faust and This Heat spring to mind, but The Bear form their own unique clearing in the
woods in which to shit. Itchy, atonal violin scrapes and insect buzzes flit nervously on She Whistles, I Cough Like A Tiger,
a clattery improv that happens upon some genuinely riveting moments of pure outsider weirdness. There is clear vibe of woodland
ruralism that pervades The Idea Of Wood, as if it were the product of tree-dwelling hermits communicating through
a primitive language of acoustical phonetics. Aaron Moore's hushed vocals whispered over the warm buzzes and banjo scales
of Golden Hot Bite sound eerily similar to Robert Wyatt's muttering hobo delivery. Woman Who Weighs Out The Wood
immerses the listener in an organic sound environment where a gentle bed of cathedral chanting and medieval percussion cushions
the processed squawking of crows. It's John Renbourn's Sir John A Lot Of as produced by Yamatsuka Eye. Curly Robot
is this album's beating heart, a 10-minute excursion that begins with muted jazz but transforms into a simmering invocation
of the pastoral gods of Frazer's Golden Bough. Miles ahead of their free-folk contemporaries, Volcano The Bear's The
Idea Of Wood is teeming with life and coursing with sympathetic magic..." Welcome return for our favourite loons from Leicester. Volcano the Bear have been scaring decent record collections for
too long now with their eccentric eerie non-music/art rock hybrid and the wayward The Idea of Wood provides
proof indeed that they aren't going to let up just yet. Hermetically sealed in their own unique universe, VTB delight in confusing
the would be listener with conflicting signals masked within absurd and surreal terrains, too weird to be associated with
the Residents and too wired to fall into line behind Henry Cow their macabre aural landscapes are deliberately out there and
unsettling and most importantly, theirs. No one sounds, has sounded, or will ever sound quite like Volcano the Bear. Evolving
free folk expression and elements of controlled chaos, the quartet delve deep in the realms of archaic folk, incorporating
a large degree of medieval textures fused with notions of olde English ritualism. Several riffs short of a melody the 10 compositions
that make up The Idea of Wood simply stand to mess with your head like its never been messed with before, the
incorporation of vague Eastern tonal templates and tribal like dynamics aligned to deliberately off balanced time signatures
make this a curiously unnerving listening experience (Golden Hot Bite). As reference points go, Wood clearly identifies
closely to their debut release Yak Folks Y'are, at times deeply claustrophobic so much so that you wonder whether
you've mistakenly stumbled upon some heathen ceremonial gathering. Indelibly English on the underside, to that there is no
doubt, yet VTB incorporate a wealth of long dormant and rarified essences from a world of another time that's been long forgotten,
lost mantras and ancient codas invade the musicality (She Whistles, I Cough Like A Tiger). Curly Robot serves
as the albums centrepiece, from its chilling epitaph all elsewhere radiate to and from. At 10 minutes in duration it serves
as the Wood's most lucid point, a concoction of drizzled jazz motifs suspense laden atmospherics that together would perfectly
adorn any film noir score recalling Carpenter's more shadowy moments on a head on collision with Budd. Somewhere else the
barbed lunacy is still abound you'll be happily informed, both Chimney Fear and Shake Your Crow run riot in
the surreal world of the Goons as though Bluebottle, Eccles and the endless crew had done acid and then decided to do a spot
of trick or treating with the local villagers and forgetting the treat bag into the bargain. The Idea of Wood
in short proves without question that this lot occupy a niche that most of their competitors can only dream of being loosely
associated with, Volcano the Bear are without peers, unique and three sheets to the wind and counting. ...and here are some lyrics.... Golden Hotbitewe can't be pleasing Woman Who Weighs Out The Wooddear, gases in amateurs hands The Mountains Among Usi will not see the mountainside
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