The Jewelled Antlers of King Mong

The earlier posts on the *Mersey* Goat Boys and (especially) proto-group King Mong have started to reap dividends. Yesterday I was contacted via mirror gazing by the elf-styled 'lead spirit' behind the Jewelled Antler Collective (she'll claim there is no leader but she's lying) who informed me, much to my astonishment, that several of the bands under that legend - The Dead Raven Choir, The Birdtree, Blithe Sons, Thuja, Skygreen Leopards, Wolfmangler, The Devon Cream Scuttles and The Child Readers - have contributed to a soon to be released CD-R of cover songs / derangements of King Mong, IX Tab(ulations) and The Ungrateful Living material, some of it (the King Mong stuff) only ever released in limited edition cassette copies placed inside owl skulls on the hedgerows around TS Eliot's former East Coker residence.

Here are two tracks that may appear on the collection, complete with their original de-deformed titles:

Thuja - untitled (track 3)

This is an instrumental version of a song by King Mong originally called "(MISSING / OBSCURED)...a pleat of meat" and also features on the Thuja album All Strange Beasts of the Past

Wolfmangler - Dirge for Viking Assholes

This is my favourite interpretation so far - of The Ungrateful Living's mini-disc only e.p. title track "The Swollen Apendices". The original track was a two and a half minute slab of psypunk splutter but Wolfmangler stretch it out obscenely to a 7 minute funereal stomp, tinged with the menace and regret that can only come from a lost Kirk Douglas eye and the feeling that one day Michael will be born.

For balance, here's a track from the Jewelled Antler brigade (that name reminds me of something - Sarah by JT Leroy perhaps?) that doesn't cover the King Mong collective, an oddly scrapey, piano-led piece of dead slow, stuck-pig blues, sung as if the fire's getting too close and Grandma's teeth are being used as Runes.

Dead Raven Choir - The courtesan