Chin43: Dwoogie "Babble Off"

Chinstrap are delighted to present "Babble Off", 11 nuggets of gold from the vaults of the marvellous gentleman who goes by the name of Dwoogie, made between 2000-2003. It is an album for an extremely decadent electronic party at the apocalypse. Frantic rhythms and a reservoir of textures fly about like pinballs, competing for space with unforgettable melodic hooks, revealing a wild clatter of twenty-thousand stocks of kitchenware thrown down a vast staircase into a digital abyss from which delicious popgasmic flowers bloom. 



This release comes with artwork designed by another prime slice of gent, the great Oblivian Substanshall.

And direct from Kraków via Dwoogie mail come the following safety announcements...

1. Bloo. The title came from bluegrass, as I wanted to make as stupid a bluegrass piece as I could. Reckon it worked, personally.

2. Bieszczady. A region of Poland in the very southeastern corner. The oldest people who live there have been inhabitants of 5 countries during their lifetimes without moving house. The area was depopulated of its local minority inhabitants in a murderous campaign by the Polish authorities. It’s still mostly empty. I like it.

3. Fox On The Run. Play on words. The original “Fox On The Run” was by The Sweet, of course. But that’s irrelevant. The voice you hear on the track is Polish newsreader and now editor of Polish Newsweek, Tomasz Lis. Lis is the Polish word for “fox”. In the extracts you hear, Lis is cursing like a soldier, on mic, about how fucking shit a particular news item is. “Kurwa” is the Polish equivalent of “fuck”. It appears frequently on this track.

4. Last Train to Bemblow. “Bemblow” is a very poor transliteration of Polish “Bębło”, which is a village outside Kraków. My ex used to work there. It hasn’t got a rail link, but the track sounds trainy, so there you are.

5. Diana’s Chauffeur. An aural representation of what driving into a tunnel at 100mph might sound like.

6. Touch. Just a silly piece of scrap. No idea where the “Can I touch it?” sample came from.

7. The Last Snowman. This was written around one Christmas, when I sent it to members of my family as a present. The title is designed to mislead. It has nothing to do with winter. It’s a direct translation of the Polish epithet “ostatni bałwan”, which means something like “total idiot”. This may change your view of the song. It may not. Who cares anyway?

8. Soukup in Babylon. Named after a crazy Czech bus driver I came across outside Plzeń – one Pavel Soukup. We were staying at a campsite called, for reasons unknown, Babylon. That’s the title of the track. “Babble Off” is also a reference to this stay.

9. United State. At the time this track was being written I was working on a grammatical analysis of a foreigner learner’s English. In certain contexts, they said “United State” rather than “United States”. It was my job to find out what those contexts were. An interesting task, surprisingly enough. Unlike this note.

10. Mood. I found an online version of Frank Herbert reading “Dune”. A book I enjoyed very much as a teenager. The section I used for the recording is about Paul Atreides being trained by his weapons master Gurney Halleck. “Mood” is not important in this context.

11. Smackin’. Who doesn’t like “Smoke On The Water”? Well, me, for one, so I did a version with the stupidest sounding synths I could find. Incidentally the increasingly loud drone in the first section is a sample of King Crimson’s “Elephant Talk” slowed down and played backwards.

Chinmix 04 - Simon "Robodub" Mathewson mashes the Chinstrap Back Catalogue

A delicious mash-up of the Chinstrap Back Catalogue by Simon Mathewson, the cheeky chappie behind the recent ROBODUB release.

Chin42: ROBODUB

We would like to introduce you to ROBODUB, a project from composer & visual artist Simon Mathewson. Seven slices of dub created by robots who have developed impeccable taste, these are superbly crafted genre compositions that sit together like coloured blocks as a superb listening experience, a kind of geometric reggae from a melancholy dystopia. How about that then?

More from Simon Mathewson, including music for synchronised swimming, Victoriana comic strips, and video feedback films here.

Chinmix 02 & Chinmix 03, collated by The Superfools

Continuing our series of mixes on Chinstrap, we continue with two mixes by New Mexico's remarkable sound-collagist The Superfools. 

Chinmix 02 is The Superfools choice of cuttings from the Chinstrap back catalogue, collaged and melded in his own unique fashion.

Chinmix 03 is probably going to be your new favourite mix - a collage of mambo and related music from across the past fifty years, from the artist with a mission to create genuinely Latin-American sample-music. How can you resist?

Chin41: Anthony & Substanshall "Culture Is Not Your Friend"

We are delighted to present the continuing collaboration of Anthony Donovan and Oblivian Substanshall. "Culture Is Not Your Friend" is an hallucinatory journey down a rabbit hole of filth and magic, a meeting of minds that proceed to explode. Dig in!

Like this? Dive into the first Anthony & Substanshall collaboration here.

Chinmix 01: Chinstrap 40 Retrospective, collated by Ergo Phizmiz

A selection of choice cuts of sound meat celebrating 40 releases on the Chinstrap netlabel.

Collated by Ergo Phizmiz.

Featuring music from Bebe del Banco, Oblivian Substanshall, Vernon Lenoir, Plushgoolash, Albert Glasser, The Superfools, Martha Moopette & Heather McCallum, The Last Hat Girl & Dwoogie, Vulnavia Vanity & Ergo Phizmiz, Pete Um, Elvis Herod, and Talulah Lotus.

This is the first Chinmix, of which there shall be more! Next up in the series is a rather marvellous mix of mambo by The Superfools. Good.

Chin40 - Ergo Phizmiz "Papalaka Papalaka"

A spoken-word audio/video opera by Ergo Phizmiz, with text entirely snipped from the writings of Noel Coward. The audio is created from Ergo's collection of gramophone records, a sample from Monteverdi's "Combattimento de Tancredi", a wooden kitchen door, and Ergo's "Hallucination Duets".





"The Impulse to Shoot at Every Shadow" by Ergo Phizmiz from Ergo Phizmiz on Vimeo.

Text-Collage, Sound-Collage & Production by Ergo Phizmiz

Voices by Ergo Phizmiz, Flora Bertolli & Martha Moopette

* * *

N

When the curtain rises the stage is in darkness.

There is the sound of voices. Enter Young Man

followed by Young Woman. He turns up lights,

disclosing a comfortable little study with

a sofa, armchairs, books, etc.,

and the remains of a fire in the grate.

*

M

In January I went to Paris and breakfasted daily, curtains of wisteria

and serried ranks of snow capped mountains.

F

For the whole of the following year I did not work, my cough rapidly disappeared,

and then in a moment their colour and vitality faded.

M

Some little question of English grammar I bit her arm right through to the bone.

F

I drilled resonantly, a slight strain, you play exclusively in your mind,

I may add, that was not entirely free from superciliousness.

M

To this day we still meet occasionally and have a good time, but

the paths back into the past are long and tortuous, and new faiths,
like new policemen, were sick and tired of it.

*

F

My last link with familiar life, disappearing down the

M & F

handbags, hats, coats, sandwiches, apples, oranges, shoes, stockings, and bits of fur,

a tinny piano, too many chairs, a few mottled looking glasses,

always a pervasive smell of last week's cooking.

*

M

Small miserable groups of people huddled in corners.

I had still one more battle. Cockie in his box,

Mother to greet us blind in a dirty kimono, nor could
I have chosen a more thoroughly unsuitable place.

F

Conducting a furtive, illicit detail, but the climax
was always the same.

M

I soon became bored and wanted to go home,

made up into dark little rooms and passages,

and one could see across miles of marshes,

a square edifice wearing perkily a pink corrugated tin roof,

falling to pieces,

*

N

The noise is deafening – the chorus in various travelling dresses

are clustered round the low counter, trying to get the baggage examined

quickly, and talking, and shouting.

Young Englishman strolls languidly in.

*

M & F

there were two small ponds, five poplars,

a ramshackle garden consisting almost entirely of hedges,

and an ancient, deeply green orchard with thick grass

and low growing apple trees, hats, coats, sandwiches,

apples, oranges, shoes, stockings, and bits of fur,

a tinny piano, too many chairs, a few mottled looking glasses,

always a pervasive smell of last week's cooking,

two small ponds, five poplars, a ramshackle garden.

*

F

I was suddenly conscious-smitten by the sight of a poor old gentleman,

raspberried with the utmost fervour, although far from assured,

had at least been enough to procure me a dignified pose.

M

It was the result of careful thought, only for the sake of the salary,

seemed to be a static, over-cautious mania for travel and change,

but to me it wasn't foolish at all.

*

N

She takes the breakfast-tray from side table and rests it on her knees.

She proceeds to pour out coffee, she sips some of it

and then begins to eat a little toast. The telephone rings again.

She takes off receiver and speaks with her mouth full.

*

F

It is patronising, of course, to a certain degree,

but not consciously or disagreeably so;

I managed tactfully to erase some of the bloodstains.

As a new animal I received many surprising visitors in my cage.

M

My vision of myself at eight and twelve and sixteen is clear.

I know how I looked, of course.

Superlatives flew through the air, richochetting off mouldering midsummer.

F

Even Irene forsook me for a while.

*

M

I used to get packets of bacon on credit, restraining

the impulse to shoot at every shadow cast by the street lamp.

F

Her failure lay within herself, in her abrupt pride, and

sudden sharp intolerance, and her inability, when in certain moods,

to accept the small change of friendship, even from those

who loved her dearly,

M & F

deeply green orchard with thick grass

and low growing apples trees, hats, coats, sandwiches,

apples, oranges, shoes, stockings, and bits of fur,

a tinny piano, too many chairs, a few mottled looking glasses,

always a pervasive smell of last week's cooking,

two small ponds, five poplars, a ramshackle garden.

*

N

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