Yahowa 13

First heard these mad munties by accident after buying the wrong album at a car boot. For years, it stayed at the back of my wardrobe, collecting skin shards amongst the discarded Shaker Maker Monster moulds, Letraset skims and Maskatron bits.

I'd given it a quick listen but it just wasn't my kind of thing. Too hippy by half. I owned a Sex Pistols bootleg, bought from a bargain bin in Butlins - no really - called Never Trust A Hippy and I took that as gospel for a while.

I didn't play it again for six or seven years, despite the fact that for some reason I'd got it out of the wardrobe just before going to University and it'd stayed, unplayed, at the back of one of my record boxes for the entire course.

I played it again while living in Brighton after seeing someone I thought was the main beardy weirdy behind Yahowa 13 lying, burnt red, on the beach by Hove Leisure Centre. I guess it probably wasn't him but it had got me curious so I went back and played the record again, hearing it with new, drug-tingled, ears. The years between stretched away, my childish punk snottishness dissolved and reassembled into a wider plain, a bigger picture and an expanded soundfield that now included everything from La Monte Young through Cathy Dennis to Kevin Ayers and Merzbow. I listened long and hard, right the way through the night, conjuring the shaman i am...

And it was still much crapper than it ought to be.


Go here and see for yourself.