Copper Sulphate Crystals – Man in Formaldehyde (Pointy Bird Records)
September 19th, 2003 by susanna
If cows ever break free from the shackles of intensive milk and beef production, travel beyond the walls of the lowly cowshed, abattoir and artist’s studio and begin to participate more fully in our society then I could imagine that putting a man in formaldehyde might well be how the artists amongst them would exact revenge for their treatment at the hands of mankind in general and one Damian Hirst in particular.
Happily, for us at least, Man in Formaldehyde is a recording artist and a bit of a sonic innovator rather than the horrific product of bovine vengeance upon our species. Even more happily he has just released his debut album, Copper Sulphate Crystals, on the new Isle of Wight based label Pointy Bird Records. Bordering on the ecstatically, it’s very very good.
His moniker seems to be more than just a quirky and amusing tag to catch our eyes in record shops and review columns – the often bizarre constituent parts of his sound have a ‘specimen’ like quality about them. Raw, dry samples of brass and strings float unchanging and unemotive in the melodies they play, it’s not a trumpet or a cello you hear but its Xerox image, duplicated and moved to different notes. This stark presentation is a shock to the system at first but the laid back trajectory of many of the pieces here, such as Birds Spin in Magnetic Milk, gives you a chance to walk around these exhibits and before long you are revelling in their frozen, simplistic beauty and the combined result is cinematic and quite moving.
Not that it’s all curation of strange sounds into fascinating exhibitions. There are some pop leanings and sweet acoustic guitar playing in The Sacred Heart of Jesus and reminiscences of David Sylvian era Jon Hassell and what sounds like a guest spot by the Moomins to be found in A3055. And if that sounds like in incongruous mix it should be, but in the hands of MiF it is both beautifully strange and strangely beautiful.
Not everything here is laid back and weightless. Earthmonster 1 is a growling, sonically abused rock drum wig out and it’s successor EarthMonster 2 is a sleek, taughtly skinned beast prowling through a glitchy, junglist soundscape. But on the whole it is the lazy latin lilt of Copper Sulphate Crystals 1 which opens the album (and is the most straight ahead track here) or the slow motion splendour of Zero G 100′s and 1000′s experiment 1 (an incredibly apt title) that resonate most memorably in MiF’s audio laboratory. These are tracks that have a surface charm but whose details reward repeated listening.
Zero G 100′s and 1000′s experiment 2 moves the action into the black and white flickering candlelight of a silent horror movie and is much darker and more sinister but is preceded by the cockle warming combination of the plaintive Harry’s Song and Mother’s Day, a collage of simple musical shapes and speech.
By the end of Copper Sulphate Crystal 2 which finishes this collection you are left feeling that MiF has taken you through a truly bizarre collection of soundscapes, musics, tones and noises (however you want to classify them) which are familiar but you’ve never heard like this before. The experience is fascinating, involving, entertaining, weird and very often accompanied by a strong sense of deja-vu.
It’s an album that should be difficult to grasp yet draws you in to its visions and dreams until you clearly see, through the formaldehyde, the world as this man sees it. And if I’m overdoing the superlatives here it’s because I think this album is the best of its kind since Susumu Yokota’s Grinning Cat and it might well be a classic – a little like the Boards of Canada but with melodies and an attention span, possibly less shocking than Damian Hirst but a great deal more technically accomplished, challenging and engaging. But hey, I’m a vegetarian.
Jez Wells
