BOOMING LARGE
'I'm thinking I might go out on stage completely naked or something,' says Brian Hollon, aka experimental American producer Boom Bip, who is preparing for the first date of Mush Records' UK tour in Brighton.
The dramatic effect of such a gesture would neatly compliment the pure theatricality of the pair's collaborative debut, Circle (Mush/Leaf), which has hardly been performed yet, in spite f arriving in late 1999.
'It's kind of an audio film with lots of different emotionsÉabout a disturbed individual chasing his dreams and not sure if he's doing the right thing,' Hollon explains.
He's surprisingly garrulous for one who normally leaves all the talking to his lyrical partner, Doseone.
'I think it's an album that demands your full attention,' he goes on. 'You can't just put it on in the background. It's better to listen to on a set of headphones before you go to bed.'
When I posit that this might be a recipe for some strange dreams, Hollon laughs. But listening to Doseone's poetry of frantic whispers and deranged raving laced with Boom Bip's orchestration of a crate-load of pop samples, psychedelic sound effects and often intense percussion can be a bumpy ride.
You are reminded of the madness/genius of Lewis Carroll as much as Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. The ghosts of Captain Beefheart, The Last Poets and The Residents are all present, while Anti-Pop Consortium (Warp) and the Anticon collective, with whom the pair's label-mate cLOUDDEAD (Mush/Big Dada) has close ties, are clearly contemporaries.
'We're really happy with the reaction we've received here,' says Hollon, acknowledging the torrent of praise that met the recent UK release of Circle and an enormously successful John Peel session last week. 'We weren't sure whether people would love it or hate it.'
With an 'energetic' live show, involving theremin, guitar, laptops and decks, Boom Bip and Doseone guarantee to live up to the hype.
ANDREW RICHARDSON