Over the last eighteen months,
Neu! Reekie!'s monthly Friday nights of what used to be called
alternative entertainment has captured Edinburgh's off-piste
underground in a way not seen since Rebel Inc lit-zine first broke
cover in the early 1990s. Neu! Reekie!'s speak-easy pot-pourri of
spoken-word performances seen in-between screenings of avant-garde
animations with a live music finale also recalls the ghosts of
live-art cabaret night Silencio!, which lit up Edinburgh a few years
back, while its spirit dates back to the 1980s post-punk happenings
of Richard Strange's recently revived Cabaret Futura nights.
Now Neu! Reekie! Ringmasters
Michael Pedersen and Rebel Inc founder Kevin Williamson bring us Neu!
Reekie! Records, an aural experience that spreads the night's
multi-media inclinations even further. Their first release is a
double A-side 7” single, with Pedersen and Williamson overseeing a
side apiece. While on one side, Williamson performs the title poem
from his collection, In a Room Darkened, for his contribution, a
lovely ditty called The Caterpillar Tango, Pedersen has conjured an
avant-indie-pop super-group into being.
Jesus, Baby! Are some-time
driving force behind Fire Engines, Win, The Nectarine No 9 and now
The Sexual Objects Davy Henderson, former Futuristic Retro Champions
keyboardist and current TeenCanteenist Carla J Easton, Belle &
Sebastian associate Roy Moller and The Wellgreen/The Store Keys
dynamo Marco Rea, who gift-wrap Henderson's lead drawl in some
delicious harmonies on a lovely concoction mixed and mastered by
former Coral guitarist Bill Ryder Jones..
“We didn't want to just put out
a single,” explains Pedersen, who drafted in former Coral guitarist
Bill Ryder Jones to mix and master a song penned with Henderson's
voice in mind following an acoustic Sexual Objects set at Neu!
Reekie! “We wanted it to be curated so it reproduced the
back-catalogue of Neu! Reekie!”
The nearest comparison with Neu!
Reekie! is with Giorno Poetry Systems, the label set up in 1972 by
post-Beat poet/artist John Giorno, who released albums by the likes
of novelist William Burroughs and chart-topping performance artist
Laurie Anderson, as well as Giorno's own collaborations with No Wave
composer Glenn Branca. In the UK, poet and publisher Michael
Horovitz, whose Children of Albion compendium inspired Rebel Inc's
own Children of Albion Rovers, took musical associates culled from
the pages of his New Departures imprint on the road. These included
jazz pianist Stan Tracey, saxophonist Lol Coxhill and People Show
founder Jeff Nuttall, as well as Horovitz himself.
In keeping with Neu! Reekie!'s
all-embracing eclecticism, the single's cover art will be provided by
Jim Lambie, while the record's launch will be a three-pronged long
weekend. This begins with a Friday night Edinburgh show featuring
Jesus, Baby!'s debut alongside Williamson, and with appearances from
novelist Alan Bissett and ex Arab Strap guitarist Malcolm Middleton.
An afternoon in-store appearance at Avalanche the next day will see
the record physically available for the first time, while a Saturday
night Glasgow grand finale will feature a reading from Scotland's
original polymath Alasdair Gray. Each Jesus, Baby! member will then
show off their individual band's wares before regrouping in a
glorious Jesus, Baby! Huddle.
“We've started a record company
as a visceral representation of what we do in Neu! Reekie!,”
Pedersen says, “and now we're turning that into a live event.”
Neu! Reekie! Records
Unveiled, Scottish Book Trust, Edinburgh, July 27th,
7-10pm, with Jesus, Baby!, Kevin Williamson, Michael
Pedersen, Alan Bissett and Malcolm Middleton: Avalanche
Records, Edinburgh, July 28th, 2-3pm, with Jesus, Baby!,
Kevin Williamson, Michael
Pedersen; Mono, Glasgow, July 28th,
7.30-10.30pm, with Alasdair
Gray, Jesus, Baby!, The Sexual Objects, TeenCanteen, The Store Keys,
Kevin Williamson, Michael Pedersen
A
shorter version of this article appeared in The List, July 2012
ends
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