volcano the bear : catonapotato

volcano the bear

catonapotato

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[catonapotata] A CD collection of live recordings made by the duo of Aaron Moore and Nick Mott between February and June 2004. Released by Digitalis Industries / Broken Face in August 2005.

Tracks:

gabriel
a universal history of infamy
lovely shepherd
puppy grill
my favourite tongues
ong pate
sharp as the queen's teeth
the god's are massive

gabriel - leicester, uk
infamy - paris, france
shepherdpuppyteeth - norrköping, sweden
tonguespatemassive - sheffield, uk

All music composed and performed by Mott and Moore.
Mastered by Kev Reverb.

REVIEWS

Certain things just need to be seen and heard to be believed. One of these things is to experience Volcano the Bear in the live setting. Nothing I ever say will accurately describe that evening last year when I made the trip down to the unlikely setting of their first Swedish gig (the art museum in Norrköping) but it goes without saying that it was a night of pure magic and brilliance.
Volcano the Bear was formed in 1995 with the constant idea of being a group with uncompromising and boundless ideas, and they’ve always tried to aim for a live environment where they can do whatever they please. This results in a live show that beyond grandiose sonic qualities, blends the very essence of key words such as surreal, shifting moods, myriad of instruments, humor, beauty and to a certain degree, even self-indulgence. That said, these sonic transgressors are not for everyone. If you’re a fan of free-form improvisations, free jazz, weird drones, pagan folk, whimsical acoustic pieces, disjointed percussive riffs, crackling electronics and actually own more than one record by either the Sun City Girls, This Heat, Faust, Residents, The Shadow Ring or Captain Beefheart, then you owe it to yourself to check out these cats.
Catonapotato is a perfect example of Volcano the Bear in a live setting. All eight tracks presented here were recorded live by the duo of Aaron Moore and Nick Mott at four different occasions in 2004. These four shows took place in Leicester (England), Paris (France), Norrköping (Sweden) and Sheffield (England) and all broadcasts different sides of this talented duo. The number of styles explored throughout seems endless, though words like free, folk and jazz keep popping into my head. Catonapotato is not necessarily free jazz or free folk, but it does indeed display music that is completely free from any sort of constraint and structure. It just floats along, how ever it wants to, with the aid of squeaking and skronking horns, corrosive string massage and hypnotic drums that more than once approaches the tribal. It’s mainly an instrumental affair, although some vocals come up on a few tracks and as if all this wasn’t enough, we’re served some incongruous electric guitar rhythms that recalls the Sun City Girls at their very best.
All in all, Catonapotato is just a brilliant sonic excursion down a musical path very few are brave enough to follow these days, and along the way, the band manages to explain exactly why the true environment for Volcano the Bear is the live setting. If you never have come across this band before I honestly believe that you never have heard anything quite like it. This is meditation music for the drone/noise generation.
© Mats Gustafsson

Catonapotato is a new live CD from everyone’s favourite ethno-industrial free jazz collagists, Volcano the Bear. Recorded throughout Europe in 2004 by the duo of Aaron Moore and Nick Mott (VTB is usually a trio with the addition of Daniel Padden), these tracks capture two musicians that wilfully exist in the margins yet always maintain an accessible kinetic base. Volcano the Bear’s music is performed and recorded live, by people no less, who insist on being anything but predictable as they navigate through multiple stylistic dimensions. A random sampling of any VTB album yields passages of art pop whimsy, industrial drone, Middle Eastern folk, free jazz communion - sometimes all in the same song. Each studio album has exhibited an erratic, rough-hewn quality that combines early minimal sound sculpture with DIY art punk aesthetics. The results are always spontaneous in Volcano the Bear’s hands, and Catonapotato is no exception. It just happens to feature some audience noise.
Gabriel sets things on fire from the get-go with lumbering jazz percussion driving scorching bow work, slashing its way through the dank air in rabid atonal streaks. The piece eventually builds to a propulsive gallop before shifting to a minimal dream, quickly swallowed by guttural groans rumbling straight from the belly of the Volcano. Next comes caveman drums, shrill brass squawks and the sounds of other bizarre ethnic instrumentation being severely abused. All this is but a teaser for the industrial jazz dirge of A Universal History of Infamy. Here the boys dig in deeper with mournful bows against a mélange of percussive whoosh and clatter as stoned vocal chants writhe in agony. The chanting is intensely levitated over nearly ten minutes, and broken up with stochastic interludes of swampland jazz and strange tones.
Lovely Shepherd is two minutes of meditative Middle Eastern horns that eventually explode into the Aylere-sque free jazz assault of Puppy Grill : blurting sax runs over collapsed drum rolls. It proves that these cats can swing with the best of ‘em when they want to. Through it all though, that brittle Volcano edge remains.
Things get both more direct and devotional with the stark primitive pulse of My Favorite Tongues, sort of a cross between Sun City Girls and early Velvets, with a minimal fractured guitar and vocals intertwining as perfectly as anything these lads have conjured to date.
Ong Pate downshifts into minimal tones and rustling percussive clatter beneath childlike vocal murmurs. It’s the kind of track VTB likes to drop occasionally to throw the listener off the trail. The injection of clacking percussion and bizarre noisemakers, along with deep elastic bass tones, lands them squarely in the Nurse With Wound nightmare factory. Sharp As the Queen’s Teeth conveys a similar icy minimalism, this time with just reverb drenched minor key guitar plucks. Not surprisingly, the effect is utterly transporting across its length of just over four minutes, percussive thwacks inserted just halfway building to a glorious krautrock freak out.
Somehow, closer The God’s Are Massive manages to sound like nothing that’s come before. Just think about that for a moment. With plodding percussion, detuned guitar and atonal bows beneath disturbed vocals, the piece amounts to a crashing clang fest that honours both the squealing minimal trances of Tony Conrad and the dusted art clang of the Dead C. It’s hard to believe that just two people made this track, let alone the entire album, but then that’s the undeniable beauty of this record. Catonapotato is the height of avant-garage sonic exploration captured in its most feral state. Essential.
© Lee Jackson
Terrascope Online