[batreleaser]

this sounds fucking rad..

"Edition of 500 copies on 180g vinyl, Crowd Pleaser is the debut releases on Philip Best's (Whitehouse/Ramleh et al) new private press vinyl imprint, Hand To Mouth. The follow-up to the jaw-droppingly beautiful Nobody's Ugly, Crowd Pleaser sees the CE line-up bolstered by the addition of Mattin (Billy Bao et al) and Gary Mundy of Ramleh. The first side is a massive departure for CE, with Best transplanting his recent work with Whitehouse onto four intensely dynamic vocal-led pieces. Best has really come into his own over the past few Whitehouse albums, his lyrics a cascade of fractured images, sidereal horrors, miserable suburban monotony and explicitly coded assaults on the armour of personality. As a vocalist I think he has one of the most original deliveries, his nasty English oik accent and his barracking machine gun delivery situating him somewhere between the gutter-snipe style of John Lydon and Genesis P-Orridge and the vocalized reed work of Peter Brotzmann, with words sometimes smeared or exploded into pure texture and explosive epiglottal energy. It's an exhilarating and challenging listen and the music is very precisely constructed, now detonating huge bass bursts that introduce the vocals, now flat-lining into heavenly floating tones and huge cracks of static. On the flip there's a single side-long instrumental, a constant accumulation of guitar feedback and choral electronic tones that peaks like an ascension of motorcycle engines. In many ways it feels like a new Whitehouse album, minus the African drums and with a more dilated approach to the sonics. Either way, it's totally fantastic and proof of just elastic the 'noise' remit can be in intelligent hands, which is a rarity in these days of noise-as-elevated-adolescent-hate. Comes with a full lyric sheet too. Highly recommended."-from volcanic tongue website