Dalglish - Niaiw Ot Vile (PAN)

Poor me. This isn't easy to review. I'll get no medal for doing it either...

Dalglish won six Football League First Divisions, two FA Cups, four League Cups, seven FA Charity Shields, three European Cups and one UEFA Super Cup, for which he did get medals, presumably. That's Kenny Dalglish, who is Scottish.

The Dalglish who made Niaiw Ot Vile was also born in Scotland. This cannot be a coincidence.
There's no record of him owning any medals, but he may have won some at school. His real name is Chris Douglas.

Kenny Dalglish once said: 'What is called for is dignity. We need to set an example.'

This Dalglish no doubt feels the same about music. So much of it is, as you know, most undignified, being the work of filthy whores with their legs spread wide for filthy lucre, twerking their way to success with devoted fans and label bosses firmly behind them.

This Dalglish once said this: 'I never imagine in such short time music would get so massive and so shallow in so many ways. Now, there’s global techno/house yuppies, new age regurgitates, noise hipsters, model DJs, wannabe witches and fashionable darkness. It’s disgracefully desperate in so many clichéd ways. I never thought back then that this is what we were fighting for, against all those established musics.' 

Oh, Chris, I know what you mean, not that I ever believed too strongly in 'the fight' after five minutes of thinking about it back in 1977 and realising that They will always win.

Here's a new one for his list of listening types: avant-garde hipster. They're bearded and skinny, or bald and big. They stand reverentially at gigs, hands clasped as if in prayer, or scream like maniacs at the sounds of machines being tortured at Wolf Eyes gigs. They can be seen lurking in the background at Boiler Room sessions trying not to look bored whilst someone manipulates machinery. They love the PAN label, I'm sure. Wire readers unite and fight for your right not to party!

PAN boss Bill Kouligas was featured in last week's Guardian Review magazine, now ain't that something? Perhaps it's a sign that the avant-garde hipster really does exist and lives with Mummy & Daddy in Hampstead. He sneers at common hipster icons such as Flying Lotus - 'Rhythm? Bah! So outmoded.'

Niaiw Ot Vile track titles:

Venpin
Noscrlu
Viochlm
Out_Kutzk
Ciaradh
Donsfe
Seit Nuin
Sclunt
Mothlitz
Oidhche

Google 'Noscrlu' and all you get are references to this album. It's a world unto itself. Is he speaking Elvish, or Klingon? Like Autechre, who he once supported, he's speaking his own language. It's probably best in the end because nobody can accuse you of being clichéd, or choosing the wrong words.

In my own language, this album is:

Werll fi doont, dufoumm ti gorr settaaal ppo sankeer. Brouf teeann leeif ojj. Mothlikk diar pirrf grunss alloooh te maaenir. Sqoiull ittor!

Now disagree with that.

This album doesn't start, continue or end happily. Which is not to say it's tragic. Neither it is all bleak, or particularly angry. Reading interviews with Douglas, I'd expect it to be one of those, since he sounds like a loner, of sorts, and definitely not about to twerk himself for The Man.

Is it art? Is is Abstract Sound Art? Perhaps. Perhaps it's Rothko in places, and Pollock elsewhere. There are harmonious colours in such tracks as Out_Kutzk, Seit Nuin and Oidhche, which is not to say it could sit alongside Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel, quite. There are also drips and splashes that clunk, rattle, warble, click and groan. Noscrlu sounds just like a recording of an explosion in a firework factory, played backwards, with Terry Riley on electric harmonium in a nearby church. I know what that sounds like, so don't question me, please.

Viochlm reminds me of the time Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra transmitted a gig from Saturn (you missed it?). Strange strings, indeed, but it also brings to mind a Buddhist temple on Mars during an electric storm, which explains the discordant electronic interference during the otherwise Zen-like alien tranquillity.

Needless to say, it's really worth hearing, even if you're not an avant-garde hipster...

There are no tracks from the album online yet, so here's one he made earlier...