EP Review by Mark Bayross
A month ago, I took up the opportunity to see two legends of industrial-experimental music, Coil and Foetus, play at the Royal Festival Hall. Unfortunately, some bright spark had the idea of putting ex-Fire Engine frontman Davy Henderson’s The Nectarine No.9 on between these two goliaths, and coming after the mind-bending sensory assault of Coil, the guitar combo lost (literally) 99% of the audience in the space of five minutes.
I did feel slightly sorry for them as I joined in the stampede for the exit sign, but, for God’s sake, they had four guitarists on stage and not one of them dared to make a vaguely interesting sound.
And so it was with some trepidation that I loaded The Nectarine No.9’s latest EP into my CD player. I have to admit, the omens weren’t good: writing “extended play” instead of “EP” in the title was a fair hint of the pretentiousness that awaited.
The title track is indeed fey indie bollocks of the irritatingly jangly variety, but INDELIBLE MARQUER (ooh, clever mis-spelling) is two minutes of discordant din that somehow goes on forever and is a dead giveaway of a major ideas drought, and GIANT HAYSTACKS is a excruciatingly muffled lo-fi ditty.
They save the best for last, though. FROZEN PEAS is a collection of ham-fisted keyboard effects thrown together over a shuffling cheapo backing. The whole “extended play” sounds like it was recorded in about ten minutes.
If you want to be pretentious, you should have at least one idea worthy of attention.
