I thought the original tape cover for this marvellous Crayon Skidder release is lost somewhere in time but…within two hours of the blog being posted Brad Rose from the amazing Foxy Digitalis blog dropped me a line with photos from his personal collection. A huge thanks to you Brad!
With a title like Buck Rogers and our timeframe set in the early 1990’s I suspect we’re goofing on Gil Gerard era Captain Rogers; all tight white body suits, a grumpy Twiki and fancy-pants Dr Theopolis.
Crayon Skidder, Kasra Mowlavi on spidery guitar menace and Dan on clap-trap drum dust, were a toothsome duo releasing music on all the great underground labels at the time: Chocolate Monk, Destroy All Music, E.F. Tapes and of course Union Pole.
But, oh how I love a duo! I sometimes think a two-some is the perfect creative partnership. Having someone to share, shape and celebrate a sound is both practical and economic and much reduces the chance of ‘band politics’ that can simmer and sour a project.
Crayon Skidder’s one guitar and one drum set approach, whether it’s by accident or design, make the very most of the space a duo can open up. Nothing is overwrought, overplayed or over-thought. This Crayon Skidder duo are a perfect duality, an on/off switch a yes/no response.
But what does the tape sound like?
Side A
Crunchy Pillow. This tape starts with ghostly twangs on slivery steel strings and brittle rusty clatter. Freedom is slow. Freedom is patient. Gentle urges are explored, a slightly bitter beat, a chiming gamelan ripple on guitar until the energy fades out like a deflating balloon leaving a rubbery vacuum; a place where tightness once lived.
They Live on Lava. Surfing on the radioactive waves of a promontory. No Wave repetition caught on a dusty boombox. A song-like structure is suggested, and then rejected in favour of wrestling cool little exploding noises out of boxy drums and cheap guitar.
Food. Monsters Stalk the Land. Long-limbed creatures with swooping claws and furious teeth hidden by furry mouthparts. I feel the absence of gravity and all of a sudden the jam fades into blackness…
They Jumped up to Move Tuna. A brief verbal nod and ‘yeah’ captured on tape. Fizzing and spidery, an arachnid in your lemonade. In parts there’s some sort of artificial soaring sound like a malfunctioning phaser pedal. This leads to an almost deconstructive take on ‘the riff’ as notes are put together in strange and unholy ways until the thing ends without ceremony or warning.
Side B
2,3,4,7,9,12… Those fallen spectres, those demented shadows play an increasing tune that coils like a snail’s shell, tightening up all the while towards a centre of perfectly balanced tension. Unlike all the other tunes on this tape, this one does make me think of ranting front-person, snarling comments and put-downs until I realise, I’m muttering these self-same oaths as my fellow commuters look on – amused.
Eiderdown my Trousers. There’s a Dead C energy to this one. Maybe it’s the urgency of the barren strums and the skipping, agile beat. Maybe it’s the fact the whole thing sounds like a cement-mixer is breaking down, clattering through ever more destructive cycles of revolution spewing out a dense liquid something. The breakdown is a canny repetitive three-note riff, as curious as a raised eyebrow.
Inca Eyeball our Bag. What starts as more finger-picked slackness takes in some more powerful ‘rock’ posturing. It’s like that time Alan Lomax brought his tape recorder to the Thurston Moore High School and asked the students to play the sound of their sorrows. Or something? I forget.
Q/A/X. It starts with the squealing peals of those damn seagulls in Brighton. And it’s certainly the most metallic tune on this tape. But not like Crue you dolt! More like polished chrome, buffed up brass. In fact anything reflective, hurling back your own internal noise right back at you.
Slides Away. Joe Meek rolls in his grave for one hot minute but with a brief nod towards the Minutemen rather than a dead Buddy Holly. I’m not trying to be poetic or goofy or anything. It really does ‘double nickel’ me. And that makes me think of D Boon for the third or fourth time this week.
Fast forward twenty-odd years and I track down Kasra, who now runs Critical Music, and is a globe-trotting Drum & Bass DJ.
It’s the hottest day of the year so far and we Zoom call, me in Newcastle and Kasra in London, and talk about his journey into the world of mysterious noise and beyond.
Kasra Mowlavi right now
Hi Kasra. Can you tell me how your journey with Crayon Skidder began?
Crayon Skidder started when I was about 15 but I need to go back a bit first. When I was 13 or 14 Nirvana came around and they blew me away. But one of the things that was really special about them, and I think this has been lost over time, was they introduced people to lots of different types of music. They would talk about Sonic Youth and then it’s a short step to The Boredoms. Thurston Moore, in particular, was a conduit to me finding all sorts of different stuff, and I spent every weekend in record shops searching for it. We’d spend hours in Soho, we’d go from Sister Ray to Selectadisc and on to Covent Garden to Rough Trade.
The first counter-culture tape I bought was by Comet Gain on the Plankton label. I just liked the look of it, I hadn’t heard it, and then I learned the guy behind the counter in Selectadisc was in the band. When I got it home, I didn’t like how it sounded but I loved what it stood for. I didn’t know you could just ‘do this’. It was my first taste of DIY. Making records back then was still expensive but this showed me making cassettes was easy. Then at some point later a tape from Andrew Clare from the Infinite Chug label in Brighton came my way.
Tell me more about that Brighton connection?
I think it was Andrew that started telling me about mail-order record stores.
…at this point Kasra quickly googles something to check what he’s saying and mentions Fisheye Distribution whereupon I excitedly whip out the 30 year-old catalogue I have been leafing through recently and Kasra laughs that he had the exact same catalogue…
There was a record store that opened in Hove or Brighton, Bubblegum Records, and he had all the weird American vinyl. But by this time I was basically spending every bit of money I had on records and tapes. For Christmas and birthdays I only wanted records, so I’d be unwrapping Caroliner records on Christmas day and my Mum and Dad were just recoiling at these things.
But the main opening to the whole thing about tape culture was Dylan Nyoukis and Chocolate Monk, which I guess is the same for lots of people. He was making amazing music himself but also having relationships with all these wonderful, mysterious characters like Seymour Glass and Trumans Water, who I absolutely adored and worshiped…my favourite band on earth. Dylan’s work was really inspiring; everything he released was mind-blowing: stuff like Blowhole and Glands of External Secretion. And through that I got to know Jeff (AKA Jeff Fuccillo – Union Pole founder) via letters and trading tapes. Around this time I was getting inspired to get involved a bit more, I liked the little club that it was and how odd it was; and the incredibly mysterious nature of the music and impossible levels of dedication you needed to be a completist.
(Kasra adopts crate-digger stance – fingers poised over imaginary record boxes) “They did an album last week? How do I get this week’s 60 minute cassette? They only made two? I gotta have it!”
I loved that thing about not knowing anything about the people who made the music but loving what I heard. It was so exciting and underground. But you had to be quick, so when those first Harry Pussy records came out they sold out straight away.
Pre-internet it was a real job just keeping up with what was happening.
Yeah. I would get wind of things via Bananafish Magazine and phone up Bubblegum records to pre-order records from the US. But I was so obsessed and phoned so much it got to the point he asked me to stop calling. I was so obsessed coz I knew if I didn’t get it now I’d never get it. Not like it is now with downloads and discogs.
It was so special but really hard to explain to people. When I was at school people couldn’t understand that I was in a band but didn’t really play anything; that we weren’t bothered about ideas of ‘being good’ and were just doing it because we wanted to, we had to.
Crayon Skidder – Reeal is Turkish for Peas (Chocolate Monk)
I love that idea of making music because making music, the activity in itself, is fun. It’s also a great way to connect with like-minded people.
A big part was the community and the fact you got mail from all over the world. My Mum would testify to this. I was doing my GCSEs and I was getting boxes and boxes of tapes delivered to the house and I was at the post office every other day. It was like Christmas every day!
Stuff from Phil Todd’s Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers (and of course Ashtray Navigations) was important.
I’d write to Dylan at Chocolate Monk and get the five tapes they were releasing that month and he’d record me a Sun City Girls record or something.
In fact me and Dan, (the Crayon Skidder drummer) went up to Scotland to stay with Dylan one time, which was an eye-opener. We were still at school, 15 or 16.
I bet you had fun in Blackburn. But speaking of linking up with folk, Jeff Fuccillo spoke of his fond memories of staying with you when he was in the UK in the mind 1990’s
Yes, he stayed with me at University. I remember him coming to my Halls, I went to Royal Holloway, and we went into Central London to go to record stores. I smoked at the time and I remember distinctly walking through Leicester Square and Jeff asking for a drag on my cigarette and he said ‘this is the drug that hits you the quickest’. A funny thing to remember but it’s a really clear memory.
You’ve mentioned mystery a few times and to me there is something really mysterious about the name Crayon Skidder. Is it an insult of some kind?
(Laughs) It was completely random. It was that thing of putting two random words together but I always quite liked it. But it’s not as cool a name as the Dead C. Because that’s what I always wanted us to sound like.
No one is cool as the Dead C eh?
Of course not. They are still fucking amazing, in fact I’m going to see them next week at Café Oto. Last time I saw them was 15 years ago so I’m really excited.
Tell me more about how Crayon Skidder played. Were you improvising or working through some themes?
Everything was completely made up on the spot and recorded in Dan’s bedroom or my parent’s garage on a Sony portable radio with a built-in tape recorder, not even a four-track.
It still sounds great!
We did think about placement a bit for some reason and made sure the recorder wasn’t too near the kick drum or the guitar amp. And we had to record very quietly.
(excitedly interrupts) That makes total sense and it gives Crayon Skidder a menacing, pre-Slint quality. Because the tunes never explode, they just keep on being menacing. I wondered if that because someone was asleep next door.
That’s right! It’s funny to talk about it like this, we just loved doing it, and I was taking it quite seriously. Dan wanted to be John Bonham and I wanted to be Bruce Russell. I was very anti-technique; ‘don’t waste your time learning how to play’ just do it.
Were you out playing gigs?
Nah. We only played once, at the first Chocolate Monk all-dayer in Brighton. My Dad and Dan’s Dad drove us down and then they went to go and see Brighton & Hove Albion (the local football team) while we went on to the upstairs room of a pub with all these reprobates listened to each other bark at a snare drum for four hours.
We were never that confident of people; we were young and thought what the hell is going on but it was very cool.
OK. I know this is Prick Decay but I think this is from the gig Kasra was talking about (photo courtesy of Bananafish Magazine #10)
Were you KF36 too? I see there is a Union Pole tape (UP51) that features tape collage and some solo drumming.
Yeah. KF36 was named after a Japanese chewing gum (laughs).
I’ve had a look but the usual reliable discogs has some big gaps in the Crayon Skidder and KF36 discographies.
Yeah, we didn’t develop the rabid fan-base I had hoped for (laughs)
While there may not be a visible Crayon Skidder Army out there their legacy lives on in the memories of all true believers. See these liner notes on ‘HUH’s ’ You don’t need magic’ album on the An’archive label by the lovely Jon Dale written in March 2023.
HUH call themselves ‘free-form freak-out / noise improvisation’, and there’s a touch of the Familiar Ugly in the collective stammer and stutter central to their music. They’re remarkably untroubled by anyone’s expectations, resulting in a music that’s as confusing as it is compelling, full of clamour and vigour, but never for the sake of it: these seven improvisations, sometimes song-like, sometimes careening and hyperactive, sometimes smeared and abstract, all make their own kind of perfect un-sense. Line them up next to similarly puzzling yet enthralling gutterpunk improv units: Smegma, Bone Cure, Nihilist Spasm Band, Crayon Skidder.
You can’t escape the Skidder historical.
You can listen to Crayon Skidder here and buy a download for pin money.
https://unionpoletapes.bandcamp.com/album/buck-rodgers-up22
OR…you can download the whole damn Union Pole discography of 76 tapes for $5 here. Don’t be cheap!
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.
6 responses to “Crayon Skidder – Buck Rogers (UP22)”
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Not sure why Crayon Skidder have never crossed my path before (maybe my aversion to guitar improv duos has something to do with it) but like the Dead C (who I really didn’t get for quite some time) there’s something intangible about their music that draws you in, no doubt helped in part by your on point writing. Top notch as always Mr Posset.
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Thanks again for reading. Delighted you are enjoying the Skidder message
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Well now I gots to check out crayon skidder . Great writing as usual Joe
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You are very kind Luke. Thanks for reading and let me know how you get on with Crayon Skidder!
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[…] made up for it when I went to Uni. I just read the Crayon Skidder piece with Kasra Mowlavi and I went to the same college, Royal Holloway maybe 7-8 years earlier than […]
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[…] 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 […]
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