 |
Antony Milton
Live @ The Cake Shop (transient recordings) CD
With respect to the staggering amount of music that Antony Milton has released since the mid-90’s, I feel a little ill-equipped to review this recent CD on Ben Spiers Transient label. The only other disc of Antony’s that I’ve heard is the petite, insidious, but quite enjoyable motorised noise outing Small Engine Funk Tantra.
Live @ the Cake Shop is quite different, to say the least. It captures the whole of one solo gig: 6 tracks, just under 30 minutes. After the loose, opening wash of fuzzed guitar chords and glistening tones, suitably titled Anything, Antony heads purposefully through a well-paced set of songs: you know … words and music.
The fairly raw, hiss-drenched recording seems appropriate for what sounds like an intimate concert, but it doesn’t always do the lyrics justice. I could barely make them out on Sirens, where the guitar soaks up the middle sonics, but some clean, subdued playing carries the song through its somber yet weirdly dreamy melody. It’s not a huge disadvantage that the words get a bit buried and well, not everything needs to be there in the first few gos.
The sparser melody on A Brief Tenure let the vocals through loud and clear. It’s a performance that bears repeated listening well and highlights Antony’s direct, compelling singing. I’ve read some comparisons to This Kind of Punishment, Pin Group, the Terminals, but what these tracks remind me of more is the early, folk-oriented Kiwi Animal, filtered through the post-rock era sonics of Keiji Haino and the like. Again I feel there are probably people much better informed to place this music, but I can say with certainty that this has really grown on me. It’s as memorable a set of songs as I can recall coming out of the local scene for ages.
As well as the more spacious outings, Antony pulls off an impressive piece of rhythmic furor on Grain in the Wood. Imagine the start of Pinball Wizard kept going for the whole song; sort of epic in a nice way - more articulate than your average piece of rock bravado. It reminded me a bit of This Heat. And the way it casually slips into the reverb-blasted mantra Astray speaks volumes for some subtle intelligence at work – such a deft sleight of hand for a recording made, according to the cover, “during a bout of insomnia”.
If this is the type of material Antony is taking into a group setting then I will be looking for more and suggest you all do so too. Although I feel like I might in fact be the last one to realise this.
Review by John Kennedy