Half Cousin’s first album ‘The Function Room’ resolutely and robustly follows the dictum of ‘found sound’ as the method by which to construct music.
The traditional staples of guitar, bass and accordion offer the identifiable, but all other “instruments” are played, seemingly, at the band’s creative discretion, subject only to their availability, affordability and ease of use.
Knocks, squelches, bleeps and blips round out the album’s sound; what is actually making these noises is anyone’s guess.
On first play, each track of ‘The Function Room’ arrives from unobvious points of reference; it’s as if you’ve accidentally stumbled upon a series of strange frequencies sent from the outer reaches of the known musical universe.
If poorly implemented, exploratory music that has no obvious moorings can confuse, frustrate and eventually render the listener antipathetic to the band’s cause. On paper the arrangements of ‘The Function Room’ shouldn’t work, but the underpinning that supports the experimentation is the overriding desire of Half Cousin to retain melody. And therein nestles the fun and adventure of this idiosyncratic and hard-to-classify debut.
Wistful and blissful folk of the Highlands and Islands (the band hail from the Orkneys) variety is present, but its delivery is often blurred and distorted by left-field, lo-fi, D.I.Y electronica that resonates as far back as the late 70s/early 80s Teutonic originators, as well as with modern initiators such as FourTet and The Aphex Twin.
This may be the Sound, but the ethic is most certainly Punk.
Anyway, what is it with these offshore bands? At the other end of the country we have The Bees making music like the last 25 years haven’t happened, and so it is with Half Cousin. Although their respective musical diets are radically different, Half Cousin shares with The Bees that same determination to make music on their own terms, even if it wilfully avoids contemporary styles. It’s up to you to ‘get it’, because they’re not going to compromise just so their music attunes itself more easily with a wider potential audience.
So what do we call this music?
As is its wont every other week, NME has already scrambled around for an unused tag to pin on an apparent new scene, labelling Half Cousin as the advent of, ‘Witchrock’. Hmmm. It’s a problematic task, trying to categorise a band’s sound in words; invariably, the effect of a label is to limit the punter’s expectations rather than offer them enlightenment.
I’m reminded of a closing piece of dialogue on the Durutti Column album ‘The Sporadic Recordings’ on which the band has recorded itself being interviewed by US Customs. It goes something like this:
US Customs: “Occupation?”
Band spokesman: “We’re musicians. We’re a group.”
US Customs: “What kind of music do you play?”
Band spokesman: (stumped) “I don’t know. What kind of music do we play?”
After a pause, Vini Reilly eventually offers a tongue-in-cheek, “Avant-garde Jazz Classical”. It’s relevant, but it doesn’t even begin to tell you the half of it. However, I’ll rise to the challenge and proffer “Junk Punk-Folk Krautrock” for Half Cousin. With this you can hopefully gain enlightened entry and move forward with conviction and interest into their musical territory.
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Opening track ‘Country Cassette’ succinctly heralds the singular approach of the band. A fuzz-box funk riff plays alongside angular percussion with a breathy vocal. Descriptively, it’s only a fraction of the song’s musical journey; it would take the rest of this review just to describe how the remainder of the song plays out.
(So, not only do I fail to give you a peg on which to hang the band’s style, I also can’t encapsulate into words the music itself. Call me a reviewer? Pah!)
Unexpected twists and turns punctuate nearly all the songs on ‘The Function Room’ and it is to the band’s credit that these diversionary tactics mainly enrich your listening pleasure rather than detract from it.
Songs such as ‘Mrs Pilling’ (with a bit of Ivor Cutler in the mix), ‘Blue Ruin’ and ‘Tiles’ are clearer in their folk heritage, but even so the urge to deconstruct/reconstruct is constantly tracking the music’s progress, just waiting for an opportunity to pounce.
There are successful contrasts of tone across the album; where ‘Hindsight’ is warm, beautiful and intimate, ‘Simple Boy’ is arched and jagged. Out of the corner of my eye I catch some Radiohead, I Am Kloot, Clinic, Depeche Mode, Beck but as quickly as they appear, they’re gone.
Perversely, the album closes with a baroque cover of The Beatles ‘Girl’. The familiarity of the song startlingly breaks the reverie that the previous originals have established. I find myself unsure whether to smile or be annoyed at this rude awakening .
‘The Function Room’ has been primarily recorded on a 4-track. The ‘home recording’ production works well in the context of the band’s musical attributes and their experimental agenda. It will be interesting to see if better quality studio facilities will harness the band’s sound and broaden their horizons, or - as happened with The Beta Band after ‘The Three EPs’ – it will diminish their individuality and dull their uniqueness.
For now, ‘The Function Room’ is terrain well worth exploring if anyone out there is itching to ‘touch that dial’ and discover some new musical vistas.
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