After the “Bum Dungeon” techno frolics and drug chugging ferrets unleashed on volumes one and two of her Apparently Solo series, Nina Walsh ups the ante and pushes the boat out to present two hugely contrasting extremes in mood, style and vision on this spellbinding third excavation from the Facility 4 archive.
Forged in December 2016, ‘Yacidik’ shamelessly indulges Nina and Andrew’s undying love of the Roland TB303 to produce a lysergic glow-worm’s love truncheon of throbbed up, floor-scorching bliss. The briskly booting groove (hot-wired with subtle twists) and malevolent bassline set the scene for a churning analogue juggernaut draped in dark pads and tickled by counter melodies before the acid machine rears like a gnarled rusty monster schlong ejaculating the kind of mayhem that reduced Chicago’s Music Biz or London’s Shoom to sweltering carnage and innocent keks to dust. Again it’s the forensic, almost subliminal micro-tweaking Nina applies to the track’s inner jock-strap that can tighten essential ingredients for maximum effect or quite happily let the 303’s unearthly slavering twitter coat everything like brown champagne from a medieval bonnocan’s untamed bunghole.
“One sound I’ll never get bored with is the Roland 303,” says Nina. “After much dangling of the acid carrot he took a bite and, after one familiar raised eyebrow, never looked back.” The result could be the Apparently Solo series’ most devastating morsel yet.
By her own admission, Nina has long enjoyed the sparkling melodies pirouetting in her head waiting to be directed to the right platform; whether oompty boompty scrotum-wrangler, psychedelic ballad or cerebral massage for restless souls. In my humble opinion, ‘Alma’ carries the most exquisitely beautiful melody she’s ever written – composed in 2018 as a backdrop for Mr Weatherall’s reading from author Gordon Burn’s 1991 novel of the same name at that year’s Durham Literary Festival.
The astonishing depth and resonance of the central motif speaks for itself as, for over thirteen time-stopping minutes, Nina caresses, tweaks and garnishes it with spectral tones, haunted pads and shifting, whispering textures, her intricate micro-surgery tempered by tangible emotions and melancholy.
Although recorded in September 2018, ‘Alma’ could easily stand next to the beatless ‘Smokebelch’ as a poignant eulogy for Nina’s late co-conspirator, but at that time she happened to be navigating the anniversary season of her late partner Erick Le Grand. If anyone, it was his own mischievous spirit tugging at her creative udders when she composed its twinkling reverie. Five years later it sounds universal. In my case, hearing that heart-tugging melody unfolding over glacial cascades, oaken cello swoon and majestic swells can evoke memories but more like auras of my recently departed mum, dog or partner.
Whether she knows it or not, Nina created a mesmerising modern classical masterpiece five years ago using just that time-suspending theme, her medicine box of electronic magic and obviously a lot of love (plus oceanic guest cymbal crashes). Although Burn’s novel imagines the early 60s pop singer who died of cancer in 1966 as living to reflect on the sordid trappings of fame, Nina’s music more fits the tragedy of someone who died too young.
Typically, that wasn’t her idea, as she explains; “For some reason when I was composing that tune I had Mussorgsky’s music from Night on the Bare Mountain in Fantasia going round my head. I rarely write an entire tune on machines but composed the whole piece on synths. Now it just makes me think of Erick, and every time I hear one of those well-placed cymbal crashes I can only think of the Captain himself.”
Nina also made a film projected as a backdrop during the performance included here as a bonus. Like I said, two polar opposites in mood but gloriously extreme pinnacles in their chosen fields.
Kris 'Rampant Rabbit' Needs
This month Nina is donating fifty per cent of the artist’s share to SOS Podenco Rescue, one of her favoured charities that no doubt Andrew would have approved of.
The Woodleigh Research Facility is the name adopted by Andrew Weatherall and Nina Walsh to channel the creative partnership
that began over 30 years ago and, in his final years flowed as a torrent of cosmic techno-funk and intergalactic future grooves at their Facility 4 studio. Since Andrew’s 2020 passing all actually solo productions are by Nina Walsh, marked by the new Facility5 name & logo....more
