Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Steve Gilmore Reviews: Guanoman - Goddesszilla

Artist: Guanoman
Title: Goddesszilla

And now for something completely not normal. Not normal at all.

When this artist passes on to better worlds, that should be engraved on whatever commemorative plaque is around in his memory. The king of bird crap also doubles as an (makes a quote sign) experimental artist although to be fair, I don't think Guanoman could fit in so narrow a space. My own prediliction for this artist kinda comes and goes although I think I've liked more of his material than I've disliked. However, it was in his lounge lizard Mr Robert DeVore personna that the Guanodude dished up for me one of 2005's more memorable tracks. I Blew It is a pastiche crack-me-up spoof on the likes of Lounge singers everywhere, so accurate and so finely balanced between spoof and the real deal that it makes unnerving listening. There again almost everything this artist alights on could bask in the baleful light cast by this most unnerving of artists.

For my money Guanoman is way up their on the weirdo scale - even by Soundclick's very idiosyncratic standard - falling into the same realm as is occupied by the like of Pilesar, drt, Richard Dunlap et al. yep, you can shudder freely at this stage, people often do. 'But Gilmore' you may protest, 'this is just musical junk surely??' Well, I suppose that would depend on which end of the argument you are standing on. At first, I freely admit, a lot of so called experimental stuff went over my head UNTIL I started to really listen to what people were doing - and that came about chiefly through this review process. Like Pilesar, Guanoman has a highly developed sense of what he is about and it takes a bit of time to acclimatise to his particular blend of aural mayhem. As I said earlier, sometimes I get it, sometimes I don't and Goddesszilla may well fall into the latter category.

It's a little runt of a track, sliding under the wire at a puny 1:47 which - given it's highly stylised intro - isn't what you are led to expect. With lyrics like 'I've heard the beauty in her sighs, I've seen the starlight in her eyes, I've felt the magic between her thighs, And it makes me sad, to know that...she's 200 feet tall, breathes fire and eats people' reverberating through your ear canals with gleeful abandon absolutely does not prepare you for the rock influenced maelstrom that erupts around :50 and tears down all the lovely carnal thoughts you have been having about gargantuan lizards as if they were bits of paper in a hurricane. Goddesszilla is essentially an intro and an outro with nothing whatsover in between and - surprisingly enough - I like it that way. Mind you, I often wonder if I have caught something off these experimental people that means I will never look at life in the same way ever again. This track is a bit of a slight Guanoman treat but well worth adding to the list of oddities this man has produced over the years and an example of just how far he can stretch the envelope - ANY envelope...

Guanoman. Not any old birdshit purveyor....

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