Wanda Group

OSCULATING ELEMENTS... / MY GOD IS EVERY BIRD IN THE UNIVERSE

Genre: ELECTRONIC

Cassette

Boomkat Product Review:

Deadly double-header of concrète jazz and shearing computer music from WANDA GROUP, spurted on his private label U G ORGANIC THROAT BLOWER - RIYL Sun Ra, Tod Dockstader, Graham Lambkin, Joseph Hammer.

Both albums were originally issued in 2017 in a slipstream of WANDA GROUP's own, cranky temporality, but are here presented on a physical format for the first time, showcasing the chirality and contrasts of the Rainham-raised, Hudds-based outlier in abundance. While it’s entirely possible that some folk only know Wanda from his well aimed and uncompromising potshots on social media, his sprawling catalogue betrays a ruthlessly honest approach to expression, untrammelled by trend or convention.

The A-side ‘OSCULATING ELEMENTS FROM ASTORB-DATABASE FOR 991 THAT ORBITS DAGENHAM 24 HOUR ASDA’ characterises the inexplicable ludicrousness of his art with a half hour of free jazz fire that he occasionally attempts to extinguish with pregnant pauses of field recordings (possibly of him pissing on a computer) and piercing high register squalls whilst the jazz struggles to find a way to clatter back in, something like Sun Ra colliding into Elias Tannenbaum’s ‘Arp Art’ via Joseph Hammer cut-ups.

The B-side ‘MY GOD IS EVERY BIRD IN THE UNIVERSE’ is more explicitly electronic, but also deviated with the same hands-on sense of madness and curiosity, shelling 23 minutes of amorphous concrète redolent of Tod Dockstader’s DIY ‘60s works as much as Florian Hecker’s most perplexing pandämoniums.

Cassette (6)