Where to start? How about here, at the beginning. Volcano The Bear might be 45 years old...they're actually 20 years old, but I thought they might be 45 years old when I first heard them, which consisted of a quick YouTube visit once I knew Miasmah had put together a compilation. It didn't make sense, Miasmah releasing stuff that old. The music didn't make much sense either. I wasn't impressed. I was dumbfounded and, actually, disinterested. Then I got sent this compilation...
...I've been playing it ever since, not because there are 64 tracks, but because suddenly, as the old penny dropped, I realised Volcano The Bear were brilliant...and they were only 20 years old...
...intrigue..we all feel it when discovering a new band...are Volcano The Bear really a band? Do they exist, or are they a dream concoction the way dreams often are...of Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa, Faust, AMM and Tribal Music from...Leicester...
...electric folkways...eclectic folkways...from Secret Museum Of Improvisation...? art Bears...the polar opposite of Rock'n'Roll Bears...genre-free range Bears...
"Crikey Biscuits!"
"Horse! Horse!"
...what are they going on about?
...Art Rock? No...NO! Not that...
...anti-music...PRO-Music...unprofessional music...music as it should be, perhaps, wants to be, was meant to be...a folk music...so who's crazy? The Volcano Bears? Or all the conformists? Joy and pain are like sunshine and rain, so someone said...TVB are the joy, the sunshine...and their spirit makes most of what the world accepts in the name of music sound like a torrent of pain...
...Strausshand's dark riff dirge, Botticello's beautiful simplicity, Fat Monarch's 'motorik' (M1) lost highway drive, Hot Rat Piano's unprepared piano dark echo chamber music, Cond's saxophone (nod to post-Mod Jazz Freefall), Strange Dreams Of Invisible Girls' alien interference invasion of fifty-foot B-movie (invisible) monsters, Tremendo's rip, rig and panic percussion/melody juxtaposition...
...all over the place, the spaces Volcano The Bear inhabit, armed with all manner of instruments, traditional, tape and electronic...an assault on the sensible, the conservative, the bland, regimented, genre-bound restrictions...the art ensemble of Leicester...ancient to the future...
Bandcamp
Miasmah
The Wire
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