hockyfrilla's Blog
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new ckdh cassette: summer daze
total vermin issue a pretty green tape of summer time head mulch - blissed up. Available from us or from Total Vermin.
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spirit and spector - new hockyfrilla on chocolate monk
'Some archival recordings from this annoyingly reclusive duo from Edinburgh. You may well know Rhian (aka CKDH) from doing time in Giant Tank, jamming with Kuupuu, looking fierce in The Barbarians, and she was recently seen performing as part of Smegma at the Smell in LA. Dora Doll was a founding numbnut of Prick Decay/Decaer Pinga, has performed in Smell & Quim and terrorized many a young man at 'noise' shows in her time. “Spirit & Spector” is a miasma of electrical smoke, the sound of wheezing subterranean light bulbs & a bucket load of mechanical schlub worms all wrapped up in the collapsing essence of muscled women. It all sounds broken to me, but hey you don't need no opulence, pauper.'
listen to clip and buy from chocolate monk -
hockyfrilla / ckdh review - SWEET!
Idwal Fisher
CKDH - Feld MoseCDR
Hockyfrilla - Vulpes Vulpes
CDR
I was listening to WFMU the other night when they played a Blood Stereo track and then Brighton came flooding back to me all unseasonably warm and good ale. Colour Out of Space disappeared in its usual all too quick fashion but the burned into the brain memories of Kommissar Hjuler, Mama Baer, Ju Suk Reet Meate and Oblivia [to name but a goodly few] were there again in the Sally Bennis Theatre tickling my shell likes like no other. As usual it was the best weekend of the year.
I have to admit to a great ignorance for much of what happens in Brighton though. A few Chocolate Monk releases have happened my way but no Blood Stereo, or Hockyfrilla or the offshoots, in this case CKDH. The scrape of Mr Nyoukis’s work has been there in the background seeping its way into the grey matter almost by osmosis but as for hard matter then no, none. At least now I have these two to go on. Hockyfrilla being Nyouki’s sister Dora Doll ably abetted by sole other female companion Rhian. A female duo then and how short are we of them? The more females inhabiting the male dominated experimental, noise drone arena the happier I am. Thus I am now in a state of half lidded, all knowing bliss having bathed the ears first in the twenty minutes or so of Vulpes Vulpes and then Feld Mose.
Catching up is never a chore and discovering that Dora Doll and Rhian make a kind of dying equipment, all falling apart, scuzzy, no-fi drone in which everything disintegrates into its constituent parts [at least on here it does] fills me the kind of joy equalled to that of discovering that your digs in Brighton has a quirky Belgian restaurant across the road that sells Bruges Zot. Three tracks and twenty minutes that scour the drone landscape with an array of dry joints, feedback, rustling and general murkiness all of which produces some kind of altered consciousness in those od-ing on Sussex ale. It must be the pebble beaches or the genial atmosphere that contributes to it all but I’m a fan.
CKDH is Rhian delivering up waves of shingle shimmer, sine wave float and hard beans slowly rolling around a large drum. The longest track on here, the opener, dissolves into silence for the best part of five minutes only to emerge on the second track in the kind of high pitched whistles that bemuse dogs. For the most part, the rest of Feld Mose consists of barely heard sine waves in to which the mandible chatter of insects is folded, factory hum and the drilling of sensitive teeth. It’s a winning combination. -
a nice review frim smooth assailing
hockyfrilla are the manchester / edinburgh (respectively) twosome of dora doll (akalisa nyoukis, of prick decay / decaer pinga) and rhian thompson (ckdh and giant tank).
gulo gulo begins with the strong presence of droning and quickly brings in banshee caterwauling to join the various subtle noisy manipulations that drift through at random. a short while later hockyfrilla add another higher drone to their base and start skewing a musical layer of
some sort (not sure if it's their own or not), but they'll keep it pretty hushed, comparatively. i'm rather drawn to the stop and go nature that's produced by what they're doing with it, though the tone of it, to begin with, also carries a high level of appeal.
after four minutes (hmm, i'm sensing a theme here) the vocals will come back through as their manipulations will have taken on a great buzzing (and clacking) quality that they'll play up by droning it out into waves of fluctuating amplitude. a repetitive beeping (like a wristwatch alarm) teams up with the droning base, as does a shrill ringing sound; the vocals will have disappeared by this point. soon enough, the ringing, which was less distinguished, takes on a more coherent repetition, which occurs in between each instance of the other beep, creating a memorable, slightly hard on the ears, rhythm. once this is established the duo will keep any other additions minimal, also scaling back everything else that wasn't background fodder.
near ten and a half minutes, the background quiets down as the main rhythm is transformed, with the beeping removed, as that ring becomes something slower, less pronounced and arrhythmic. i do like the seesawing tonality of it, even if lisa and rhianthrow me off by giving it some repetition, only to halt it unexpectedly, before resuming again. during this period the vocals will come back and i don't know if they're mimicking the buzzing drone from before, or if that's what they were all along, but i like that i can clearly tell what the hell it is now. the last few minutes bring back a nice shifting core drone and also introduce a catchy pattern consisting of a sustained tone, followed by shorter beeping to finish up.