Glasgow’s fiercely underexposed SMACKVAN have been putting their songs together over several years now. They are religiously uncompromising aural journeymen who explore the psychological gaps between the notes and the noises.
This three track EP is SMACKVAN’S first release on their own Sans Culottes label since their astringently wonderful album “Company of Women”. It’s the sonic equivalent of a fantasy world, with Philip K. Dick pessimism and a landscape and a language all of its own.
The sounds are reminiscent of conventional instruments and suggestive of human handclaps and singing, but never more. They might have set out as guitars, drums, people, saxophones or pianos in their earliest moments. But the final mixes have an eerie timbre that speak of their long passage through filters, distortions compressions and anguished intelligent minds. With their percussive samples, their voices hinting at visceral pain, their implied melodies and fractured stories these songs might or might not be capable of live performance. I do know that Smackvan are out there somewhere, they have names: Michael Feeney, Owen McAulay, Alan Parker and Gerry Tooner. There is a web address: www.smackvan.com
Track 1 is “Evil Entering”, which echoes Haitian voodoo up through the fetid back lanes of a cold and misty Scottish city. A screeching guitar plays strangled chicken against a syncopated, almost ironic handclap and assorted industrial artefacts rattle and creak as the deep Scots voice intones: “there’s an evil enterin’ this house and its just the start / there’s a sickness breathin’ in this house/ We love it ... we need it”. This is a considerable and very spooky seven minutes 45 seconds. It’s like Tom Waits without the playful humour. It has epic scope.
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Track 2 is “Metallic Taste”. It has a sweetly sung super-slow melody, accompanied by the simplest guitar and bass combination, acupunctured throughout with needles of mysterious electronic origin. Its quiet menace fades out gently after nearly five minutes so the dramatic bridging silence can be blasted to hell by the wrathful and breathtaking chords of “Shower Scene”. Track 3 is not an advert for Timotei. More a soundtrack for a black and grey film about nameless psychiatric disorders. Its big echoes resonate and sing against an increasingly static-filled sky. The final crackles will put your hair on end.
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