KF36 – KF36 (UP51)

My first listen to this tape by KF36 was another Union Pole mystery. Why?  It seemed to be a recording of someone learning to play the drums. 

This was real ‘boom-tish, boom –tish’ territory.  Not your rolling thunder or free-jass eruptions but the slow and steady exploration of co-ordination; foot, leg, arm and hands moving in time and space to mimic the vibration of the universe, or something.

It was both charming and puzzling.  What was going to happen next?  Were massed guitars going to crash in and overwhelm the beat?  Was the drummer going to cut loose, or overdub, or blast-beat themselves into a new dimension?

Nope.  They were going to keep on drumming, ‘boom-tish, boom-tish’ trying out ginger fills and the occasionally drag.  As you’d expect from a mid-90s tape release this was all captured on a grotty walkman or similar for that distinctive bedroom fug.

It can’t all be drum practice I thought but, listening carefully to ‘track 4’ I gradually made out two indistinct voices.

Voice 1: the drummer it seems, in the zone and keen to keep going, “I’ll just do a little bit more alright?”

Voice 2: the observer, muttering untranslatable replies, but clearly recording the drums for some dark purpose later.

I’d still be stumped if it wasn’t for my chat with Kasra Mowlavi who we met as Crayon Skidder (UP21).  Kasra revealed he was KF36, “named after a Japanese Chewing Gum”, during our chat in 2023.  But what he described was a very different approach to music than the solo drum venture I had heard earlier.  As he explains, KF36 was a result of his digging even deeper into the underground’s loose yarbles.

Hi Kasra, can you tell me about the KF36 on Union Pole?

I can’t remember how that tape was made.  At that point Dan had given up on stuff and I was making stuff on my own. I think that one is me putting bits of records through distortion pedals and putting that on tape as I was getting into the tape manipulation stuff. 

I can’t remember much about it. I recorded loads and loads of stuff one summer holiday because I was bored.  I had these distortion pedals and my dad is Iranian so he had these Iranian records and I’d put a penny on the turntable to make the record jump back; I thought that’s how you made loops and record it to tape.  I’ve got a box of all this stuff on cassettes, maybe I should listen back to them?

That sounds very much like the approach taken on the KF36 tape released by Fusetron ‘Stuck up a Wheelchair Hatch’ and most certainly the approach on the Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers collaboration with ‘To Live and Shave in LA’, ‘Peter Chris vs Peter Christopherson’ where the notorious weirdoes of ‘To Live and Shave’ have this to say…

“the KF36 crew were wreaking psycho-linguistic havoc within European noise cells. Employing (now ubiquitous) swallowed microphones, amplified room tone, home two- and four-track recordings of running water, urine streams, and fuck knows what else, and, most impressively, roots, bulbs, and stalks transplanted from someone’s untended collection of East Asian folk arbors, they created an oddly analgesic sub-dialect of sound, a mollifying, absorptive mass almost certainly without precedent, but at the time sounding suspiciously de rigueur. It took a few listens to catch on, but I did, and an invitation to collaborate was extended.” 

High praise indeed! OK…back to the story with Kasra.

Were these tape experiments released?

There was stuff that came out but I don’t know where. I just made a bunch of stuff and sent it off just before I went to University.  I lost track of things around there. If it came out, it came out.

My discogs sleuthing’ reveals a few KF36 tapes kicking about but the trail is icy cold after all these years. But this still doesn’t solve the mystery of what I hear on the Union Pole tape and the kind of weirdo-o loop-age Kasra and TLASILA describe.  The ever splendid Bananafish magazine are, of course, all over this…

“When I’m not relaxing on the porch enjoying a freshly grilled fillet of grout, you’ll find me listening to KF36 Fifteen cassette (15 songs in as many minutes) and waiting for the sky to darken as a winged black light poster salesmen flying in formation (a Saturn logo) drop hand-chiselled brass nameplates in the streets.”  Bananafish# 10

But I am a red tomato! 

I realise I’ve been listening to the short B-side tracks: two, three and four only.  There is a juicy twelve minute ‘track one’ that I’ve missed.  I press play and turn from tomato to sweaty gummy.

This is a piece for messy and sedative loops, circular grind and distant cosmic clatter.  The abrasive swish, fine like jewellers rouge, is gradually replaced with a rubbery sponge bath, all intimate bubbles and froth.  It squirts up, grey and gritty, between the toes and other hidden crevices. 

Ever so gently any grime is replaced by noises (not noise).  I’m getting the plumy notes of an aquarium pump and the acidic clink of cider bottles.  Before too long a phalanx of whistling kettles bring back the circular grind, a new negative metric on Mohs scale. 

As Kasra promised the turntable makes an appearance in the final movement.  Some backwards prog-rock or baroque-pop is nudged into a crafty loop with his lucky penny.  Is that ‘War of the Worlds’ I can hear with Richard Burton’s stentorian rumble back-masked and satanic?  Whatever…it all whoofs and whirls to a sudden stop leaving my ears steaming for justice.

Chewy, chewy, chewy.  You can download KF36’s minty freshness here for $1

https://unionpoletapes.bandcamp.com/album/kf36-up51

OR…you can download the whole damn Union Pole discography of 76 tapes for $5 here.   Don’t be cheap!

*the image at the top of this post shows the KF36 Pratissoli valve filter, thrown up by a search on google images – funny eh?

It won’t surprise you to learn that I often make mistakes!  Please leave a comment below if you spot a mistake in the blog or have a tale to tell to drive this Union Pole story forward.  Everyone is invited on this ride.