03: BLURT
‘THE FISH NEEDS A BIKE’Â / ‘THIS IS MY ROYAL WEDDING SOUVENIR’
(ARMAGEDDON 7″, 1981)
FACT: Blurt is a notoriously hard group to categorise. Give us your best shot.
DD: “Skronky no-wave that separates the sheep from the goats. Music that you put on when you’re DJing to figure out if this crowd really wants to go ‘anywhere’. I find records like this really freeing. To me they’re the equivalent of radical free improv or noise in the sense that they make you feel like you’ve just taken a deep breath and, er, BLURT-ed out whatever you’re feeling, but they are formally totally different from improv. Party music, in other words.”
MCS: “Folk dance. Do it yourself dance music?”
“When people start to ‘sing’, they get totally tangled up in cliche ideas about what is or isn’t emotional, soulful, tasteful, musical and that’s why most singing sucks so bad.”
Would you say Blurt have influenced Matmos’s music in any way?
DD: “Not on our recordings, but certainly in our live performances I feel like Martin’s manner and way of approaching sound-making has the same sensibility. The desperation/inspiration boundary is a fun place to visit when you’re playing live.
Ted Milton’s poetry is at the heart of what Blurt is about. Do you feel there are any comparably singular and innovative voices in contemporary music?
DD: “All voices are singular. I really mean that. It’s like fingerprints. Everyone’s voice is singular. But when people start to ‘sing’, they get totally tangled up in cliche ideas about what is or isn’t emotional, soulful, tasteful, musical and that’s why most singing sucks so bad. In terms of people who are on the Ted Milton wavelength, I can think of Jad Fair, Phil Minton, Jaap Blonk, Molly Siegal, Maja Ratkje.
MCS: “David Thomas? Captain Beefheart?”
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aidee
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Matthew McKinnon