AUTOMATIC RAY - King Automatic (Voodoo Rhythm Records)
John Schooley remarked in an interview earlier this year that one of te
benefits of being in a one-man band is that you don't have to concern
yourself with the behaviour or performance of your band mates. On the
flip side, Schooley noted with a sigh, "there's no-one else to carry all
your shit". That's an important logistical factor in how far a one-man band
is prepared to challenge the outer limits of musical dexterity.
King Automatic is the solo garage trash nom de plume of Jay, drummer
with French garage band Thundercrack, and occasional collaborator with Billy
Childish, amongst others. King Automatic's tools of the trade include
(but are not necessarily limited to) the kick drum, snare, hi hat, farfisa
organ, samples, guitar and Jay's own ravaged vocals.
The opening track - listed as "Drive to Fast", though I assume that's a
spelling error created in translation from the French - is a scene
setting track if ever there was one. It's like jumping in a mate's car after
everyone's had a skinful and screeching off into the distance without a
care for one's future on earth (which, just to make it clear, is incredibly
stupid behaviour and inherently more dangerous than listening to this
CD). It's a breakneck journey that may well be aimed at weeding at those
punters who don't have the internal composition to cope with King Automatic's
solo attack.
"Waitress Problem" sees the organ in action for the first time -
creating a four-way battle between hi-hat, drops of organ noise, industrial
strength guitar noise and grating vocals. "Oversleep" is not quite as
abrasive - it's almost melodic at certain moments, the truncated 60s
organ melody taking the roughest edge out of the searing rock guitar solo
that appears mid-song.
"It won't start" - maybe based on the deranged mutterings of a driver
driven to the point of extreme frustration by a car that refuses to get moving
- rests on a brutish guitar line that could be the perfect sonic
representation of a car engine struggling to spring into action.
"Napoli Ribbons" is the bounciest, and the longest, track on the gig courtesy
of a happy-go-lucky keyboard lick; "Autistic", in vivid contrast, opens with
a soft, ambient moment before being rapidly overcome rock riff that's
riddled with moments of Stooges glory mixed with 50s rock sensibility. "Welcome
to Disney World" - dominated by indecipherable vocal interruptions - is
possibly the garage soundtrack Gallic critics of the French Disney
World have always wanted; put it over the loudspeakers at Eurodisney and that
particular piece of American imperialism would be gone forever.
"Down in Soho" is short, simple and just a bit nasty; "Rekord 2066" is
a nasty journey into outer space, an acid trip that's gone horribly wrong
and caused the listener to be condemned to a Warholian interpretation of
the most extreme Kubrick fantasies.
There's a few covers thrown into the mix - my favourite is the unique
take on Kraftwerk's post-industrial "The Model". The classic simple melody is
still there, but instead of Kraftwerk's Teutonic electronica King
Automatic delivers a ragged trashcan assault that could have been produced
originally had Kraftwerk written and produced the song in the worst heavy metal
polluted factory areas of the former Easter Europe. Devo's "Mongoloid"
gets a similarly faithful, but different treatment, and would (I guess with
no confirmation) be appreciated by Mothersbaugh, Casale et al as an
appropriate contemporary interpretation of Devo's before-its-time commentary
on the impact on contemporary technology on social relationships.
"I don't give a fuck" and "Sugar Ray" are live recordings,
demonstrating that the recorded sounds barely differs one iota from the
extreme white garage noise of the live sound; the former is another
illustration of the inherent beauty that lies within one man's garage;
the latter could take you down a path into perpetual hypnotic oblivion.
Voodoo Rhythm has the best record company marketing slogan I'm aware of -
"music to ruin any party". King Automatic would ruin most parties with
his unadulterated assault on the sonic sensibilities of most listeners. But
those that endure the attack would form a community that would be bound
with the closest of bonds. - Patrick Emery
