Cured Pink – II Put Aside (Another Dark Age)

0

front_cover

The last time I saw Brisbane experimental artist Cured Pink live he terrified me. It was at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival in 2011. Cured Pink performed in a duo with percussionist Will Guthrie and it was alternatively violent, absurd and dangerous. With Guthrie on kit, Pink began by throwing around a steel drum filled with rocks before whacking a microphone against his head really hard and doing a back flip. It was ludicrous and physical, at times almost musical, but then Pink pulled out a heavy iron chain and began hurling it around haphazardly, repeatedly slamming it down inches from a respectful audience seated cross-legged before him. I honestly thought someone was going to die. When Guthrie erupted into a flurry of break beats I was in near ecstasy. It was the perfect mix of ridiculousness and genius.

Cured Pink has since morphed into a 4 piece band, but new vinyl label Another Dark Age have gathered together some of his earlier solo material into this 3 track EP II Put Aside. It runs the gamut from the surprisingly cohesive to chaotic madness, beginning with Enderie Nuatal, a dark unsettled violent take on house music, where his raw depravity somehow ends up on the dance floor, offering the peculiar vocal sample “I could’ve been described as a dandy,” in a broad Australian accent, alongside insistent bells – the bleak thumping junkshop funk of a Cabaret Voltaire or Einsturzende Neubauten.

The b-side is a terrifying atonal trawl through murky power electrics, musique concrete, disembodied wails and what sounds like a pig grunting, from live recordings gathered in Australia and Indonesia. Eschewing the dance floor, these pieces appear to be culled from live performances of the kind that were perpetrated upon the audience at the aforementioned Melbourne Jazz Festival, with objects breaking, being dragged and smashed to no particularly rhythmic or indeed musical end and DIY electronics tortured within and inch of their lives. It’s noisy, difficult and pretty much nonsensical. If you want the sound of madness pressed onto wax it’s waiting right here.

Share.

About Author

Bob is the features editor of Cyclic Defrost. He is also evil. You should not trust the opinions of evil people.

Leave A Reply