Four stars
Thrrp! is a 1987 comic
book by Leo Baxendale, who created Minnie The Minx, The Bash Street
Kids and a million other pop-eyed cartoon urchins. Published by the
tellingly named Knockabout Comics, Thrrp! spins a near wordless yarn
concerning twin brothers Spotty and Snotty Dick, who rid a town of 'a
mysterious plague of Snotties and Bogies' by leading them out, Pied
Piper fashion. With the book's title referring to the noise made by
the towns-folk as they let rip en masse with particularly soggy
follow-through farts, Thrrp! was hailed twenty years after its
publication on Now Read This!, a blog by former chair of the Comic
Creators Guild, Wim Wiacek's, as a 'gloriously gross, pantomomic
splurt-fest' and 'the most lunatic slapstick to grace the music hall
or comic page'.
There is something of
this in Usurper, the Edinburgh-based duo of Ali Robertson and Malcy
Duff, who, for a decade now since disbanding their sludge-doom-racket
combo, Giant Tank, have worked with 'disabled instruments' across a
plethora of Cdrs, cassettes and increasingly theatrical performances.
These exercises in absurdist vaudeville have turned the pair into the
Vladimir and Estragon of the Noise set, their table-top ticklings of
assorted bric a brac resembling Michael Bentine's Potty Time if
scripted by Reeves and Mortimer by way of sound poet Bob Cobbing and
veteran vocal gymnast Phil Minton.
The two extended
untitled pieces on this limited edition vinyl are more akin to
self-reflexive radio pieces, as Robertson and Duff slurp, gurgle,
cough and splutter their way into a series of feral routines that
sound like an army of chain-ganged trolls playing pitch n' toss down
the salt-mines. Rhythmic squeaks come on like out-takes from some
1970s sex farce as the vicar casts his appalled eyes ceiling-wards to
where the noise is making a tit-shaped chandelier jiggle while the
corners of the cucumber sandwiches wilt in unison. If there are hints
of more serious punchlines beyond the things-to-make-and-do
soundscape, Robertson and Duff remain spotty and snotty enough to
amuse and entertain. Thrrp! to that.
The List, January 2014
ends
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