The cover of Billy Bao's debut full length features a rather enthralled young human listening on headphones to a 7" whilst devouring the details on the back of the sleeve by Spanish punk band Las Vulpess. Las Vulpess (Vulpess is latin for 'foxes' or 'sluts' in Spanish) were a rather notorious 80's all girl punk band from Bilbao who once created a ripple in spanish 'order' by appearing on Saturday morning TV doing a loose fit, snarled up version of 'I wanna be your dog' entitled "Me gusta ser una zorra" ("I Like Being a Fox", or, "I like being a slut") ! On this track ze singer spits such gems as "I'd rather masturbate alone in my bed, than sleep with someone that talks to me about tomorrow. I'd rather fuck with executives, that talk crap and then forget you". Needless to say for the youth watching this way back when it would have been a thrilling 'fuck you' to the established order of domesticity and community Their sole release, a 7" "Me gusta ser una zorra" (I Like Being a Fox) b/w "Inkisición" (Inquisition) was a concise middle finger to all that attempt to direct an individual into a certain means of existence, a way of thinking, a suggested approach to life.



25 years later Billy Bao have paid homage to the band via their album sleeve and embraced the spirit within this microscopic event of human creativity via their release "Dialectics of Shit". A much needed antidote to the bong-psych noise set, the 'doom' generation, the nostalgic rock bullshit and the fucking dime a dozen drones that have dominated so much underground music in the aftermath of the Iraq stampede au-go-go. In recent years, we have had a plethora of aesthetically based 'evil' music. Whilst few seem comfortable confronting the cause of this anxiety.

On this platter: Catchy fuck melodies, scratchy feedback, anthemic punk, high spit, fierce pitch and exquisite oblivion.

Ghosts: Pussy (Harry and Galore)

Billy Bao sound desperate and foaming, most importantly - today (this is far removed from the Acid Mothers factory of cosmic quotation or the 1983 worship of Hospital etc).

Dialectics of shit" is unhinged, frightening and exciting. There's is a desperate air that is both and exhilarating.

"You get me, you get the kicks" packs in half way, old school vinyl skip style, built into vinyl pressed, a needle scratch and then:

"My Life is Shit
your life is shit
and you don't do
anything
Just
drink
fuck
sleep
and get killed
by a system
that only wants you as a
working corpse"

(Lyrically, NO-ONE escape's, the singer himself is a victim of his own venom)

Elsewhere:

Factory of Repression

"Give me work and education
give me health and civilisation
give me culture
and
i will shit on your nation:
factory of repression"

The abuse seems directed at the complacency, materialism, muffled awareness and dead-skull party mindset that is a cyst in the bladder of culture today.

With respect to this, we ask, who is this band? and where did they come from? And why, why, why are they doing this?

The official band bio refers to Billy Bao as an individual from Lagos (Nigeria) who discovered punk rock in Bilbao. This character subsequently hooked up with 3 fugged musicians and started creating songs which 'go beyond what rock and roll is and what it could be'. Billy sings with this band and beyond this not a lot more is known of this character.

Also appearing is Xabier Erkizia - an experimental cat from the Basque Country who plays in the brutal hardcore group Gutariko and is a key figure in developing the experimental scene in this region via his regular Audiolab events.

The somewhat notorious art geezer Mattin also plays a key role in Billy Bao. Mattin's profile is rather substantial in the ghetto of 'nerd' music having been active for many years, constantly causing trouble in a variety of avenues. Many years spent observing, winding and stirring the very core of so called 'experimental', 'radical', 'progressive', 'intellectual' movements such as computer music, reductionism, 'songs'', improv and noise. His practise sits outside the chosen realm it explores. Poking and prodding the form as an attempt to anyalise exactly what is being produced and what it is that is being expressed by the artists who posit themselves flat bang, square centre in their chosen parameters.

I have seen Mattin do an improvised computer music set which entailed him covering his ears from the 'noise' when in fact no sound was produced at all. My personal favourite being a 'collaboration' with merzbow video which featured regular noise fixture Akita doing his live thing with the 'collaborative' component consisting of Mattin coming on screen briefly to place a glass of water on the table for said performing artist. Genius! I have seen him do an improv gig where he turned a desk lamp towards the audience and proceeded undertake a 'spontaneous' interrogation of the crowd that choose to pay money for 'a gig like this' .

I have tried to fight back, once being chased out of a venue by Mattin with his computer held out front of him opening and closing the 'jaws' like some unbridled monster. Another occasion, after 'heckling' a gig, Mattin ran over and put his hand between my legs squeezing my balls, HARD! (cue: the sound of 1 human falling rapidly to the floor).

Mattin is the kind of cunt that likes to win. A smart-arse, but a curious smart-arse with the kind of nous that contributes to the success of a potentially insipid noiserock act like Billy Bao.

Billy Bao is no anyalitical study. It strikes the listener as sincere. An authentic call to wake up. A firm punch to society, to the powers that govern, to the interaction within ones 'community' and to those within the experimental noise/rock/improv set. Everything is infected, the systems in which you operate, the way you live your life, the means by which you pursue pleasure. An ongoing lack of concern for anyone outside 'your' agreed orbit. The rampant 'self' of politicians, corporations, artists, the old and the young.

The noise presented here is not macho posturing or sausage party back slap, the noise is a scream, a scream to intensify anxiety which is a by-product of an ever diminishing truth.

The noise is disgust. The music is release. The scream is human.

When once posited the question "What are you doing with your music?" for the publication "Blocks of Conciousness and the Unbroken Contiuum" (sound 323) Mattin responded:

"To fuck the structures that try to make me behave or use my instrument in a certain way. To open fields of possibility, bastardising any preconceptions of how a situation should be".

Billy Bao is a unique project in Mattin's output but the principles at work remain the same.

Amongst all this Billy Bao entertain, they provide a visceral thrill which is resplendent in the very best angst ridden music, a music for humans that refuse to accept the terms, conditions, lies and manipulations constantly thrust upon all of us.

Punk rock is dead, most certainly, but the disgust which fueled the fire lives to feed the "Dialectics of Shit". It thrives on disgust harnessing a balance between "noise" and "rock".

This record is the complete and utter fucking bomb humans and one of the only decent 'contemporary' release these ears have encountered this year.