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irr. app. (ext.), "Concrete Mixes"/"Bracktul Thleecher"/"4 Orphans"/"The Famine Road"
Matt Waldron has obviously had little to do lately judging by the landslide of irr. app. (ext.) releases that have recently come available. Ranging from very old archival material to more recent compositions (including collaborations with Nurse With Wound and Diana Rogerson), Waldron has unleashed a Pandora’s box of sonic delights on the world. Widely available as downloads from his own site and as limited edition CD-Rs elsewhere, these releases build on an already impressive but far too limited back catalogue.
 
Not quite another Blue Sabbath Black Cheer collaboration but close enough to count, Concrete Mixes sees Waldron using Dried Up Corpse’s Musique Concrète single (an unplayable 7" made out of concrete) as source material for his own work. Taking up the challenge of this anti-record having no real musical worth, Waldron hits it, scrapes it and attempts to play it on an old record player in order to form a dense mass of hardcore heavy rock (with no actual relation to the genres of hardcore or heavy rock).
samples:
Waldron’s limited foray into being a vocalist is documented on Bracktul Thleecher. Two versions of "Black Teeth" (Waldron’s party piece at Nurse With Wound shows) highlight the humor at the heart of irr. app. (ext.). The first version was Waldron’s first performance of the piece in California in 2006 where he stomps through the song using a range of vocals and solo percussion. Not a huge amount has changed with the 2011 studio version also included here but hearing this very simple but perfectly captured take is a treat. The other song included here is "Lurcher" which was written for Nurse With Wound but not used in the end. Again there are two versions, one live and one studio, but the song does not have the same magnetism of "Black Teeth." "Lurcher" is not bad but when paired with such a strong song, it has to fight hard to get a look in.
samples:
On the subject of Nurse With Wound, 4 Orphans features the finished parts of an abandoned collaboration between Waldron and Steve Stapleton from 2001. While both since have appeared on Nurse With Wound and irr. app. (ext.) albums respectively, none of the collaborations come close to the sounds or approach of 4 Orphans. "Form in Fasciation" is a percussion-heavy work where haunting drones and ambiences emerge like spirits during a primitive religious invocation. On "Pitches of Suchness," the pair develop a piece that brings to mind Luc Ferrari’s Presque Rien except instead of a sleepy fishing village waking up to a sunny morning, night has fallen and something queer is afoot. Out of all these releases, this is the one I keep coming back to. It is too bad this album was never finished because this certainly had the potential of being a masterpiece.
samples:
Another collaboration included in these recent releases is a reissue of The Famine Road, Waldron’s work with Diana Rogerson which was originally included as a bonus CD-R with her Fistfuck live LP in 2008. The original version from the bonus disc is included along with two newer versions of the piece. The 2011 edition is as engaging and askew as the 2008 version and the "Easy Listening" version removes all the sharp edges of the original to make a mournful, textured ambience which is more in line with the idea of a famine road; roads built during the Irish famine in the 1840s from nowhere to nowhere as part of the government's attempt to employ the countless starving people who had found themselves without a means of feeding themselves. This is bleak music for a bleak period of history.
samples:
- The Famine Road (2008 Version)
- The Famine Road (2011 Version)
- The Famine Road (Easy Listening Version)
 
