Den in Mudkiss Fanzine April 2010 - http://www.mudkiss.com/
The Rude Mechanicals are a new name to me, but its a welcome introduction. I'd heard there was a distinctly Zappa-esque flavour to their music & Sure enough, the Captain Beefheart/Frank Zappa influence is there for all to hear. However, after listening to this for a while, its native character shines through. Its really of a part with our art(school)/rock tradition - artists who operate on their terms: if people get it, fine, if not, that's ok too. Sure, super vocalist Miss Roberts can do "Troutmask" style phrasing & much more, while squawks, squonks, intricate bass & guitar interplay abound to Zappaesque effect. After a while its artrock roots shine through - more than a little early Roxy, elements of Robert Wyatt, Father Murphy, the Pop Group, Rip Rig & Panic, XTC, & Henry Cow, or even oddball forbears like Kevin Coyne or the Bonzo Dog Band.
There's a great musical flow to the album, which is quite an achievement given the amount of different music it engages with. There's also a distinct Miles Davis feel to it, partly in the bubbling, merging rhythms (think "Bitches' Brew") or some lovely plaintive kinda blue trumpet lines. Lyrically, the album takes in all manner of strange tales ("Like Magnetism"), & bizarre musings (the title track).
Its one of those albums that seems to flow & bubble together into a whole, rather than individual tracks. There's a great feeling of experimentation & "no safety net" running thru the album, & its no surprise to hear they do a powerful & theatrical live show, featuring a lot of improvisation & spontaneous elements.
Album Review by Organ - www.organart.demon.co.uk
26th JAN '10: RUDE MECHANICALS “The Cyclops And The Wildebeast” (Ex Gratia) - Is there anybody there? Terms and conditions apply.... Stitch me the perfect child, bodies found and left out in the cold, stolen brains of a rich man... Who knows what goes on in the mind of Miss Roberts “ for it is her once more, Miss Roberts and her Rude Mechanical symbiotic slaves (or something like that - less body fluids this time, something far more sinister sounding). Rude Mechanicals really don’t fit anywhere, musically or lyrically they really are rather different “ dangerously different, lot of people claim lots of bands are different, Rude mechanicals really are.
Rude Mechanicals are things living in lofts, things behind twitching curtains, they’re automatic priests and such, is there anybody there? There’s a man on the train, eating on the train... Do I need a cup of tea? Some large red fake eyelashes? That smell again? She killed him... For the pleasure, because she needed something to do so...? Are our organs compatible? Can someone please check? We are here today gathered together under this beautiful sky... actually the sky is rather grey and cold today and they’re a band so terribly ignored, London’s best kept secret (and I almost had to bully this new album out of them a week before official release, like some kind on sin eater with indigestion). Tasting the sin, do you love it or hate it? Does it taste of gin.... if Rude Mechanicals were a drink it would be gin, gin from a cracked yellow teapot of an afternoon, while Derek was out and birds were playing in gutters and... They’re a very strange band, you’ll either love them instantly or just look at those who do with a fresh air of suspicion - you like this, what goes on in your head? Do I really want to share my space with someone who likes music like this? Born in a Wednesday, full of grace or woe? And this time around they’re even tougher to pin down than last time... Is there anybody here called Wolfgang? A myriad of lamps? You want to possess me? Well only if you’re sure, I don’t want to start a quandary... Guess who I saw the other day, bloody Greta Garbo, looking a little worse for wear, there was fish in her hair... something something something, oh I know... So we almost had to bully this out of them in time to play it on the radio before the actually release, so we could write some words the week before it comes out... Rude Mechanicals are such a well kept secret, like him in the attic, a treasure, and the bodies and the gin in the teapot and the appetite for human flesh (and candyfloss). Rudimentary lungs inflating, we shall fight them on the beaches, armed with Winston Churchill speeches.... Porn films for the deprived? The depraved? What happens to the sin eater once he’s eaten all your sin? Is it time for a new paragraph now?
Does sin taste of gin? Does it taste better over night? Rude Mechanicals really don’t sound like anyone else, they don’t sound like English tea party Zappa fronted by powdered wig Thatcher, or the sky cracked open or strange afternoon dances or waltzing around lounge jazz or William D Drake playing disco music or some kind of off-hinge performance art with big red dress and even redder shoes and strange violin players called Lynda Beast or keyboard bits from very English horror movies or ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and what about those mobiles? It ain’t half cold in here, there’s a bird in the gutter, and what about the people you see on train journeys and visits to the seaside and fish and chip eating monsters and more tea vicar... Strange lounge dancing and English tea parties and cucumber sandwiches and there really is nothing quite like Rude Mechanicals “ they’re a delight, a very strange delight, a very very strange delight, I do so love these Rude Mechanicals, strange is good when strange sounds like this... Dare you to go see..?
Bizarre Magazine - FEB '09
One of the most exciting bands in outsider music. ...a delicous cacophony of trumpets, drums and guitars, led by a screeching singer who looks like Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous as styled by Elizabeth McGrath and sent out to steal childrens souls. Sublime.
Village Voice
Everett True, Hugs and Kisses No: 76
Have you any idea how unusual it is for me to enjoy an unsolicited CD these days? And to want to hear it again? And then, as I type these words, another one appears”the Zappa/Beefheart theatrics of the free-moving RUDE MECHANICALS’ album Glass Eye (loads of drums played like percussionist is doing the washing up, and off-mic oboe, and the feeling that these folk surely have to be the same age as me because they love Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Here And Now, Lindsay Cooper, Make Up and Skill 7 Stamina 12 just like me, surely?) and you know how unusual THAT IS???
Very.
