Review of The Order of the Dolphin by Mark Barton (2014)
It’s a fair while since we had the excited feels like Christmas day vibe that usually to comes to pass when new grooves from Dalmatian Rex and Eigentones drop through our mail box. For nearly twenty years the Dalmatian ones have been worrying, amusing and confounding the turntables of those fortunate enough to have fallen under their surreally zany gaze. Happily the intervening years have done little to curb their goofiness, their obtuse oddness and wilful refusal to play the pop game. Still as non conformist as ever it’s a mark of pop’s forgiving nature that the Dalmatians exist, they are a welcome escapism from Saturday night pop blandness and follow the leader bandwagon jumping fashionistas, neither are they backed by money hugging power houses or called upon by the amassing little village pop presses with each passing release to sell their one dimensional souls for a clock ticking slither of action you call fame before being despatched in the forgotten box until next time – should they of course survive the ignominy. Instead the Dalmatian ones enjoy splendid isolation content one suspects to playfully busy themselves in their own little universe shut away from the harmful elements of a society by and large setting upon themselves.
Getting a bit bleak this isn’t, time for a switch what say you. ’the order of the Dolphins’ the latest opus from Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones is comprised of 14 tracks, old school admirers will be all too familiar with what to expect albeit with added surprises while those newly visiting for a first time in short can expect an odd odyssey of peculiar delights teetering from lunacy to English eccentricity (as on the name checking delights of these isles here super glued onto a hoodwinked throbbing groove ripped straight from a post Rotten Pistols back catalogue by way of ‘singing rule Britannia in my union jack pyjamas’) to three chord wipeouts to weird school wonkiness and Vivian Stanshall flights of folly (as on the quaintly disturbing bandstand bonkerisms of ‘wobbly wobbly girl‘) – and that’s just the first track. Of course I tease. One glance of the titles is enough to give the casual subscriber a hearty hint of what lies in store – stuff like ’the punk rock national aeronautics and space administration’ is straight out of the Half Man Half Biscuit sketchbook albeit sound wise gouged with a three chord kick that nods directly to the Ramones while old school Peter and the Test Tube Babies devotees will pogo till cardiac arrest with the goofed up groove of ’sourpuss’ . those fancying their sonics snarling and glue sniffed in agitant fury a la Stranglers might be advised to take issue with the bleached and bitched out shock treated ’where the fuck are the dolphins?’and while your there add in some wonderfully grass skirt shimmy toned skanking love notisms (’fancy the socks off you’).
At this stage those still not convinced of the Dalmatian credentials and slightly suspect that their tomfoolery masks heavily their lack of knack to address their serious muso shortcomings might want to get you’re your ear gear around ‘it is time to blow your mind’ – a gloriously amorphous dream drift hypno grooving ambient beauty replete with prowling bass lines and Grace Jones-esque side servings that flirts around the outer edges of Ozric Tentacles universe and hones in on the mind tripped aural galaxies once upon a time harbouring the sorely missing in action of late they came from the stars (I saw them) – class in short. One of the sets highlights and a marked move away from the preset formula is the tenderly mellowing distress applied to ‘drowning in the sea of trees’ which aside impishly channelling the coda of Radio head’s ‘all I need’ by its fall fractures superbly into a heads down sonic maelstrom. From therein things take on an unusually darkly subdued turn with the appearance of the seductively fracturing stream of consciousness poured forth within the austere cold wave chilling ‘dead fish’ as it swims into the eclectic territories of Human League’s ’circus of death’ and the ice cold chamber drone of the silently macabre and funereal ’the burning man’ both perhaps hinting at a new emerging chapter in the Dalmatian evolutionary curve.
Recommended in case you hadn’t guessed thus far.
Everyone is a Robot Except for me and My Monkey
My initial thought is how this track creates such a unique yet unusual sound that, in normal circumstances, I would have switched off immediately, as it is not to my own personal taste. Yet somehow I found myself listening intently to lyrics such as 'I'm quite sure when this happened. It was the day that Jimmy Saville got his KBE'. This one track single contains spoken vocals that resemble a saner Frank Zappa, yet are still both absurd and obscure. Although I'm certain die hard Zappa fans would ultimately disagree that this artist could possibly be compared to the unique Zappa. Accompanied by an even more surreal video this track is definitely worth a listen, because you will be telling your friends about it. It does, however, have the Marmite factor: you are either going to love it or hate it but go on, give it a try.
Emma Crichton
Losing Today Review of Psychedelic Monsters written by Mark Barton
Should come adorned with one of those government health warnings that requires you to approach with caution, adhere to the recommended dosage and that in the occurrence of the suffering of side effects to seek professional help.
It's quite obvious that chief Eigentone Paul is one of pop's great eccentrics whose lineage taps into the mindsets of Van Vliet, Johnston, Stanshall, Zappa and the Goons, clearly reading from a different songbook from the rest of us - no doubt the wrong page to.
Do not adjust your hi-fi for they control the width, the length and the space between your ears, veering from the crooked to the creepy, the ominous to the odd, the inspired to the insane 'psychedelic monsters' is a 47 minute trip to a place you perhaps hoped you'd never go, a place of the strange, the wondrous, the wonky and the melodically mischievous.
Its been a while in incubation, 'Dalmatian Rex have been quietly grooming and nurturing the follow up to 2003's desirably wired Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band meets Butthole Surfers 'Majikal Moose Moustache Musique'. Nineteen tracks feature within including this years much loved brace of singles - the dippily Devo-esque 'Geek' and the sublimely chilled softly psyched UFO / tin foil / robot paranoiac isolation of the smoked 'everyone is a robot except me and my monkey'. Nice to see that old habits die hard - getting to be something of a trademark now with each new album phase the band members names have changed - these days finding them sporting zoo animal titles (don't even go there) while fans of the whacked out song titles of past times (whoever could forget the immortal 'suddenly he became attracted to a deep fat fryer') will find the impish Beefheart / Stanshall like pen well sharpened with the inclusion of nuggets titled 'the frieshian who dreams of multi dimensional budgerigars' (incidentally very minimalist and clearly of note for fans of early career Fall albeit meeting Rooney on a rainy Manchester night) and the Half Man Half Biscuit - ist 'the drummer from Showaddywaddy is going to kick my head in' (really I'm being serious just don't go there).
Estranged from normality 'psychedelic monsters' is a surreal trek through a Lear-esque labyrinth, a place located in the overlapping voids where the various strands and species of pops orbits converge, psychedelic in terms of the fractured confusion of a loose free spirited post Floyd Barrett mindset rather than psychedelic in the Barrett Floyd meticulous / perfectionist / visionary / seer mode and yet scribed with an anything goes Zappa-esque appeal.
Opening to the nonsense like eerie drone ambient psychosis of 'I'm scared of you Japanese Cheese' and the unparalleled wig flipped angular grip of 'I'm not scared of you mushy peas' - 'psychedelic monsters' makes its intentions to mess with your fringe clear from the start, between the skewed, absurd and abstract you'll find love noted odes to Thunderbirds characters - 'lady Penelope', strange warped Popticians / John Cooper Clarke styled prose ('Albatross y'), momentary interludes ('flying florescent jelly fish', the huge ever growing pulsating brain that is the parting 'at the bottom of the sea…' and 'rhubarbermarmalade') and lunatic hymns for the lonesome and disenfranchised 'weirdnessy'.
Between the cracks emerges brief moments of lucidity courtesy of the toe tapping beat grooved sugar tipped harmony laced 'Octopus I love you' and the electro swirling braids of the chugging power pop grinds of 'tarzan, jane, superman and lois lane' which at times sounds like the Weddoes being piped through the ether from a parallel universe. Then there's the nuts down motorik grind of the gnarled austere post punk bleakness of 'the loneliest whale in the world' coming across like some skin peeling psychosis wracked prime time Joy Division while the unravelling and punishing pulse racing monochromatic kraut grind of the power surging 'ever so slowly losing my mind' may just have the Hawkwind space cadets among you swooning in mesmeric admiration.
Clearly the work of a fractured genius.
Key tracks -
The loch ness monster
The Frieshan who dreams of multi dimensional budgerigars
Weirdnessy
The loneliest whale in the world
Losing today review of Geek
I'm sure I mentioned these in passing a day or so ago when we took a peak at their brand spanking new download only release 'everybody is a robot except me and my monkey' which you can access via the bands website at www.myspace.com/dalmatianrexandtheeigentones - anyhow 'Geek' is the release that momentarily got away until that is head Eigentone Paul kindly sent us a replacement copy. Strictly limited by the looks of things to just 200 hand numbered copies - which in case you are wondering ours is number 13 which depending on your perspective could be viewed as both and good and bad thing given that it could mean that only 12 copies have shifted or indeed if the distribution is from bottom to top then only 12 copies are still available. Either way it's a corking slice of 'do not adjust your hi-fi set tuneage for Dalmatian Rex control the horizontal, the vertical and all the weird bits in between for the next 5 minutes and thirty eight seconds at least.
Oh to inhabit the strange skewiff world of the Eigentones, their misfit sounds all at once acutely absurd and disturbingly distracting, pointless trying to pigeonhole they morph, mutate and manifest through a freewheeling floorshow of 'please themselves' styles, some recognisable other knocked up you'd suspect in their away from prying eyes secret sonic bunker, no doubt the bastard offspring of the Cravats and Van Vliet. 'Geek' is ludicrously catchy, by their wired anti pop standards almost a blunted stab at a spot of chart friendly pop stardom, a playfully disturbed would be anthem for 'geeks' who apart from somehow taking over the world while everyone was asleep in the late 90's have in the case of those of the computer variety become the nu age equivalent of train spotters. Well that's my view and I ain't being moved from my position on the soapbox. Anyhow before I digress anymore - 'Geeks' is admirably set to a charging and decidedly demented and dinky punk laced lo-fi power pop surge that sounds like it was loosely swiped from Devo's arse pocket over which a rhyming shopping list of Geek loves are proffered in a typically deranged deadpan delivery - a kind of Geek psychological profile if you like - we scored one for the Shellac obsessions. Absolutely barking. Sadly our copy is minus the protective tin foil - don't even bother asking. Flip the disc for the oddly unravelling 'the woke up this morning song' that unless I've serious missed a few pages appears not unlike one of those moments when you wake up in a trippy hangover state resulting from last night's dream wherein your heads all fuzzy and reality has momentarily been a tad untied and left wandering, we usually get them when we've eaten chilli peppers after an evenings session at the local village watering hole. Anyhow best approached with caution. Oh yea the cover has a picture of a rubber duck with glasses wearing a tie. Very strange. And so with that normality - whatever that is - resumes. www.dalmatianrex.co.uk
Losing Today review of "Everyone is a robot except for me and my monkey"
Dalmation Rex and the Eigentones 'everybody is a robot except for me and my monkey' (free download). Those with fairly long memories may well recall our utter fondness for the strangely named Dalmation Rex and the Eigentones. Their second full length 'majikal moose moustache musique' from a few years back for Sorted was a constant feature on the losing today hi-fi - wired, cracked and decidedly essential ear groove as far as we were concerned. And then the band fell from view and off the radar. We feared the worst. And then out of the blue early this year strange dispatchers from far off began to wobble our well honed antenna. A single 'geek' was promised - sadly it never arrived at our gaff - royal mail perhaps you can answer as to why exactly not. (Fear not Paul from the band has promised another copy so expect further adulation in a future missive). Then a message of a free download, video and news of a forthcoming album entitled 'psychedelic monsters'. Man we were fainting at the sudden hive of activity. 'everybody is a robot except for me and my monkey' is the title of that download (you can access it for gratis via their my space page - address later). Taken from the aforementioned forthcoming album Dalmation Rex and crew in mellower tones playing the pop dream - well almost. Think 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' meets the crooning Mighty Boosh on a landscape populated by picturesque homely postcard scenes of soulfully sepia tinged Christmas montages all peppered by smokingly sublime chill down vibes, comotosing cosmic whirlpools and shimmering 50's styled bubblegum standards. Need we say more - just rip the ruddy thing will ya.
Reveiw by Dandelion Radio's Mark Whitby
Hear them in session on my April Dandelion Radio show, streaming throughout the month at www.dandelionradio.com
I feel the way I felt when I first got a whiff of Stump. And that from someone (me) who rates "Quirk Out" as the highpoint of the history of that disputed territory of the mini-album and EP.
I also rated Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones tenth in my "Listen To Me" top ten of 2007, which was probably too low, and as much a result of hearing their demo too late in the year as much as anything else.
The demo in question featured the single "Geek", which was in my show in February, and which came out that month as a single on the Sorted label, complete with a piece of tin foil I've since realised you're supposed to wear as a hat. Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones still sound great without the tin-foil.
The session they've produced is magical, easily up alongside and perhaps even ahead of the one 2 Hot 2 Sweat did for the programme last year. It features versions of "Everybody in the World is a Robot Except For Me and My Monkey" and the scarily, almost chart-friendly "Hairy Monsters", songs that first revealed themselves to me on that initial demo. You don't have to be slightly deranged and have a lopsided view of the world to like these songs, although personally I don't trust your judgement if you don't. "Hairy Monsters" is the sort of record someone like Geri Halliwell would make in a parallel universe where hens can speak and the UK singles charts consist mainly of tracks performed by ballpoint pens lost down the sides of sofas.
In that universe, it is impossible for a song called "I'm Scared of You Japanese Cheese" to be anything other than great, and thankfully that is a characteristic shared by our own universe. The title's as self-explanatory as that of the other track in the session, "Ever So Slowly Losing My Mind" and it is to be hoped that this professed decline continues to be as slow as possible, because it's a highly fertile mind that's responsible for producing this stuff, and Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones have got a long and fascinating musical journey to take us on during the process.
And you can download their wonderful album, Magical Moose Moustache Musique, entirely for free at www.last.fm/music/Dalmatian+Rex+and+the+Eigentones/Majikal+Moose+Moustache+Musique
And We Don't Make Toothpaste for Anyone Else, which can be heard in all its glory at
www.last.fm/music/Dalmatian+Rex+and+the+Eigentones/We+don%27t+make+toothpaste+for+anyone+else
This album contains such wonderful titles as "Giraffe Expansion Device" and "Nailing Fried Eggs to an OAP".
Losing Today Review of Geek
http://www.myspace.com/dalmatianrexandtheeigentones - crude, crooked and crucial, this lot are the celebrated minders of Half Man Half Biscuit's locker room of daft but inspired song titles - its been way to long since Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones last scared the crap out of our hi-fi, months of carefully planned rehab was essential following the walloping it got from this lots hi-fi slapping Cravats meets Beefheart meets Fall goonery that was the 'majikal moose moustache musique' full length. And don't be phased by the fact that it's a few years old now - kids be warned this'll still fry your brain cells. Well the worrying news is that DRE are back with a brand spanking new single - 'geek' / woke this morning song' - both sides of which feature here though we've tried to resist listening to them preferring instead to wait for a hard copy to do whatever damage it will on the turntable - however I don't mind saying its a bit of a ripper especially the flip cut - very 'bill is dead'. In an act of immense generosity and by way of attempting to spread the word the bands first to albums can be downloaded gratis via a link on this page and worth making the effort just to hear 'born to photosynthesise' and 'this is my hippopotamus and his name is not Gerald' - totally wired.
http://www.losingtoday.com/tales.php?id=181
My Dog's Got A Bucket On Her Head (Sorted) 7"
There was Donald Where's Your Troosers by Andy Stewart and Blue Jean (ahem) by David Bowie but songs about trousers are not as common as you might think. (Assuming you'd ever thought of it. Which you hadn't.) Dalmation Rex add one to the total with 28 Button Oxford Bags ("The best strides that I ever had were..") on the underneath of this white vinyl treat. Gruff garage Beefheart with silly-billy would more or less cover all you need to know. I like it.
Old Leicester Mercury review
Wacky Leicester surrealists Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones are famed for a Guinness Book of Records entry for the shortest-ever gig, writes Dave Davies. Their Abbey Park Festival '99 appearance consisted entirely of the one-second song, Ping. They also use bizarre song titles like Cauliflowers, Chrysanthemums and a Labrador Called Gertrude Arranged to Resemble a Peter Shilton Hairdo. Maybe now they'll be known for their brand new album Majikal Moose Moustache Musique, which is out on Monday. It's the follow-up to their critically-acclaimed 1999 debut, We Don't Make Toothpaste For Anyone Else, and has already been made album of the week on Student Broadcast Network Radio. It sounds like The Fall jamming with Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa, while my favourite track, 28 Hole Oxford Bags, with its gutteral vocal, bass-driven riffs and swirling spacey synth, even evokes Hawkwind.
Review of "We don't make toothpaste for anyone else" on the Robots and elcetronic brains site...
http://www.robotsandelectronicbrains.co.uk/reviews/pre99/drex.html
Frank Zappa in a garage straight jacket, stuffed to the gills with hallucinogens and suffering from cattarrh... would only sound about half as skizo as Dalmatian Rex on this, their debut full length release for Sorted (and their tracks on the "Brain cakes" and "Suction prints" comps both appear on the LP). You get an idea of the sound from the titles: "The encyclopedia of dental repair technology," "Born to photosynthesise," "Teaspoons are the instruments of Satan," "Chicken karma sutra" and so on. Sonically much like Gag at times, they have a stop/start kitchen sink mentality, tricky wobblesome riffs, dirty power chords, spoken word segments, Brussel sprout mantras---think Beefheart and the Fall. You know how they say that if you were to sit down in one place, eventually everyone in the world would walk past? Well, if you sit and listen to this over and over, you'll eventually hear a bit of everyone who's done something interesting in rock music
A good review of our second album "MMMM" by Mark Barton in the Losing Today magazine...
http://www.losingtoday.com/reviews.php?review_id=595&band_alpha=d
Gripping stuff. I can't remember a record having given me so much fun on one hand and on the other a sense of positive confusion. The incredibly Beefheart / Fall inspired title 'Majikal Moose Moustache Musique' should give you fair warning that all is not quite right on planet Dalmatian Rex, but then as you would probably gather these loveable urchins (who at one time went under the guises of Mule Dilemma, Victor Universe and Mouse Hole Opening) recline in a musical world which freely condones the extraction of unruly potions of weird images and warped collages. This is Dalmatian Rex's second album and follows their equally Goon like named debut 'We don't make toothpaste for anyone' and features both sides of their recent seven inch platter 'My dog's got a bucket on her head / Twenty eight hole Oxford bags' which those of you with long memories may remember getting the thumbs up in Singled Out. Let's cut to the chase and warn you that if you suffer with the following then you should avoid this like the plague. Don't buy if you have a sense of humour failure: like your music safe and nicely defined and hate Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, The Goons, the Cravats, the Cramps and the Butthole Surfers. Let's put it this way 'Majikal Moose Moustache Musique' is testing stuff, unbalanced, chaotic, disjointed and alarmingly addictive. This is psychiatric pick 'n' mix pop at it's best, check these out for titles 'Suddenly he became sexually attracted to a deep fat fryer', 'pickled onion on an ironing board' and the B movie Cramps necking 'Naked Lunch'-isms of the buzz saw 'I was married to a fly headed girl' one of the albums highlights. During the course of the album such liberating questions as where have all the slugs gone are asked, the joys of string and elastic are all are pondered upon, references to nurses succumbing to black holes, masturbation, the loves of orang-utans and the age old debate about whether Englebert Humperdink is really the anti Christ all puzzling dealt with throughout the course of sharp bursts of fuzzy wayward punked up manoeuvres, curious advertisement interludes and Edward Lear like twisted imagery. In amongst this there's still time for some reverse vocal messages (Gagong du ging yadyad ou' and the inclusion of a spoon. Highlights have to be the iced eerie threads of the melotron on 'Moose moustache man' and the spoken word comedy of 'This is my hippopotamus and his name is not Gerald', Viv Stanshall eat your heart out. The lunatics have well and truly left the asylum and are heading for a sound system near you, you were warned.
It’s a fair while since we had the excited feels like Christmas day vibe that usually to comes to pass when new grooves from Dalmatian Rex and Eigentones drop through our mail box. For nearly twenty years the Dalmatian ones have been worrying, amusing and confounding the turntables of those fortunate enough to have fallen under their surreally zany gaze. Happily the intervening years have done little to curb their goofiness, their obtuse oddness and wilful refusal to play the pop game. Still as non conformist as ever it’s a mark of pop’s forgiving nature that the Dalmatians exist, they are a welcome escapism from Saturday night pop blandness and follow the leader bandwagon jumping fashionistas, neither are they backed by money hugging power houses or called upon by the amassing little village pop presses with each passing release to sell their one dimensional souls for a clock ticking slither of action you call fame before being despatched in the forgotten box until next time – should they of course survive the ignominy. Instead the Dalmatian ones enjoy splendid isolation content one suspects to playfully busy themselves in their own little universe shut away from the harmful elements of a society by and large setting upon themselves.
Getting a bit bleak this isn’t, time for a switch what say you. ’the order of the Dolphins’ the latest opus from Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones is comprised of 14 tracks, old school admirers will be all too familiar with what to expect albeit with added surprises while those newly visiting for a first time in short can expect an odd odyssey of peculiar delights teetering from lunacy to English eccentricity (as on the name checking delights of these isles here super glued onto a hoodwinked throbbing groove ripped straight from a post Rotten Pistols back catalogue by way of ‘singing rule Britannia in my union jack pyjamas’) to three chord wipeouts to weird school wonkiness and Vivian Stanshall flights of folly (as on the quaintly disturbing bandstand bonkerisms of ‘wobbly wobbly girl‘) – and that’s just the first track. Of course I tease. One glance of the titles is enough to give the casual subscriber a hearty hint of what lies in store – stuff like ’the punk rock national aeronautics and space administration’ is straight out of the Half Man Half Biscuit sketchbook albeit sound wise gouged with a three chord kick that nods directly to the Ramones while old school Peter and the Test Tube Babies devotees will pogo till cardiac arrest with the goofed up groove of ’sourpuss’ . those fancying their sonics snarling and glue sniffed in agitant fury a la Stranglers might be advised to take issue with the bleached and bitched out shock treated ’where the fuck are the dolphins?’and while your there add in some wonderfully grass skirt shimmy toned skanking love notisms (’fancy the socks off you’).
At this stage those still not convinced of the Dalmatian credentials and slightly suspect that their tomfoolery masks heavily their lack of knack to address their serious muso shortcomings might want to get you’re your ear gear around ‘it is time to blow your mind’ – a gloriously amorphous dream drift hypno grooving ambient beauty replete with prowling bass lines and Grace Jones-esque side servings that flirts around the outer edges of Ozric Tentacles universe and hones in on the mind tripped aural galaxies once upon a time harbouring the sorely missing in action of late they came from the stars (I saw them) – class in short. One of the sets highlights and a marked move away from the preset formula is the tenderly mellowing distress applied to ‘drowning in the sea of trees’ which aside impishly channelling the coda of Radio head’s ‘all I need’ by its fall fractures superbly into a heads down sonic maelstrom. From therein things take on an unusually darkly subdued turn with the appearance of the seductively fracturing stream of consciousness poured forth within the austere cold wave chilling ‘dead fish’ as it swims into the eclectic territories of Human League’s ’circus of death’ and the ice cold chamber drone of the silently macabre and funereal ’the burning man’ both perhaps hinting at a new emerging chapter in the Dalmatian evolutionary curve.
Recommended in case you hadn’t guessed thus far.
Everyone is a Robot Except for me and My Monkey
My initial thought is how this track creates such a unique yet unusual sound that, in normal circumstances, I would have switched off immediately, as it is not to my own personal taste. Yet somehow I found myself listening intently to lyrics such as 'I'm quite sure when this happened. It was the day that Jimmy Saville got his KBE'. This one track single contains spoken vocals that resemble a saner Frank Zappa, yet are still both absurd and obscure. Although I'm certain die hard Zappa fans would ultimately disagree that this artist could possibly be compared to the unique Zappa. Accompanied by an even more surreal video this track is definitely worth a listen, because you will be telling your friends about it. It does, however, have the Marmite factor: you are either going to love it or hate it but go on, give it a try.
Emma Crichton
Losing Today Review of Psychedelic Monsters written by Mark Barton
Should come adorned with one of those government health warnings that requires you to approach with caution, adhere to the recommended dosage and that in the occurrence of the suffering of side effects to seek professional help.
It's quite obvious that chief Eigentone Paul is one of pop's great eccentrics whose lineage taps into the mindsets of Van Vliet, Johnston, Stanshall, Zappa and the Goons, clearly reading from a different songbook from the rest of us - no doubt the wrong page to.
Do not adjust your hi-fi for they control the width, the length and the space between your ears, veering from the crooked to the creepy, the ominous to the odd, the inspired to the insane 'psychedelic monsters' is a 47 minute trip to a place you perhaps hoped you'd never go, a place of the strange, the wondrous, the wonky and the melodically mischievous.
Its been a while in incubation, 'Dalmatian Rex have been quietly grooming and nurturing the follow up to 2003's desirably wired Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band meets Butthole Surfers 'Majikal Moose Moustache Musique'. Nineteen tracks feature within including this years much loved brace of singles - the dippily Devo-esque 'Geek' and the sublimely chilled softly psyched UFO / tin foil / robot paranoiac isolation of the smoked 'everyone is a robot except me and my monkey'. Nice to see that old habits die hard - getting to be something of a trademark now with each new album phase the band members names have changed - these days finding them sporting zoo animal titles (don't even go there) while fans of the whacked out song titles of past times (whoever could forget the immortal 'suddenly he became attracted to a deep fat fryer') will find the impish Beefheart / Stanshall like pen well sharpened with the inclusion of nuggets titled 'the frieshian who dreams of multi dimensional budgerigars' (incidentally very minimalist and clearly of note for fans of early career Fall albeit meeting Rooney on a rainy Manchester night) and the Half Man Half Biscuit - ist 'the drummer from Showaddywaddy is going to kick my head in' (really I'm being serious just don't go there).
Estranged from normality 'psychedelic monsters' is a surreal trek through a Lear-esque labyrinth, a place located in the overlapping voids where the various strands and species of pops orbits converge, psychedelic in terms of the fractured confusion of a loose free spirited post Floyd Barrett mindset rather than psychedelic in the Barrett Floyd meticulous / perfectionist / visionary / seer mode and yet scribed with an anything goes Zappa-esque appeal.
Opening to the nonsense like eerie drone ambient psychosis of 'I'm scared of you Japanese Cheese' and the unparalleled wig flipped angular grip of 'I'm not scared of you mushy peas' - 'psychedelic monsters' makes its intentions to mess with your fringe clear from the start, between the skewed, absurd and abstract you'll find love noted odes to Thunderbirds characters - 'lady Penelope', strange warped Popticians / John Cooper Clarke styled prose ('Albatross y'), momentary interludes ('flying florescent jelly fish', the huge ever growing pulsating brain that is the parting 'at the bottom of the sea…' and 'rhubarbermarmalade') and lunatic hymns for the lonesome and disenfranchised 'weirdnessy'.
Between the cracks emerges brief moments of lucidity courtesy of the toe tapping beat grooved sugar tipped harmony laced 'Octopus I love you' and the electro swirling braids of the chugging power pop grinds of 'tarzan, jane, superman and lois lane' which at times sounds like the Weddoes being piped through the ether from a parallel universe. Then there's the nuts down motorik grind of the gnarled austere post punk bleakness of 'the loneliest whale in the world' coming across like some skin peeling psychosis wracked prime time Joy Division while the unravelling and punishing pulse racing monochromatic kraut grind of the power surging 'ever so slowly losing my mind' may just have the Hawkwind space cadets among you swooning in mesmeric admiration.
Clearly the work of a fractured genius.
Key tracks -
The loch ness monster
The Frieshan who dreams of multi dimensional budgerigars
Weirdnessy
The loneliest whale in the world
Losing today review of Geek
I'm sure I mentioned these in passing a day or so ago when we took a peak at their brand spanking new download only release 'everybody is a robot except me and my monkey' which you can access via the bands website at www.myspace.com/dalmatianrexandtheeigentones - anyhow 'Geek' is the release that momentarily got away until that is head Eigentone Paul kindly sent us a replacement copy. Strictly limited by the looks of things to just 200 hand numbered copies - which in case you are wondering ours is number 13 which depending on your perspective could be viewed as both and good and bad thing given that it could mean that only 12 copies have shifted or indeed if the distribution is from bottom to top then only 12 copies are still available. Either way it's a corking slice of 'do not adjust your hi-fi set tuneage for Dalmatian Rex control the horizontal, the vertical and all the weird bits in between for the next 5 minutes and thirty eight seconds at least.
Oh to inhabit the strange skewiff world of the Eigentones, their misfit sounds all at once acutely absurd and disturbingly distracting, pointless trying to pigeonhole they morph, mutate and manifest through a freewheeling floorshow of 'please themselves' styles, some recognisable other knocked up you'd suspect in their away from prying eyes secret sonic bunker, no doubt the bastard offspring of the Cravats and Van Vliet. 'Geek' is ludicrously catchy, by their wired anti pop standards almost a blunted stab at a spot of chart friendly pop stardom, a playfully disturbed would be anthem for 'geeks' who apart from somehow taking over the world while everyone was asleep in the late 90's have in the case of those of the computer variety become the nu age equivalent of train spotters. Well that's my view and I ain't being moved from my position on the soapbox. Anyhow before I digress anymore - 'Geeks' is admirably set to a charging and decidedly demented and dinky punk laced lo-fi power pop surge that sounds like it was loosely swiped from Devo's arse pocket over which a rhyming shopping list of Geek loves are proffered in a typically deranged deadpan delivery - a kind of Geek psychological profile if you like - we scored one for the Shellac obsessions. Absolutely barking. Sadly our copy is minus the protective tin foil - don't even bother asking. Flip the disc for the oddly unravelling 'the woke up this morning song' that unless I've serious missed a few pages appears not unlike one of those moments when you wake up in a trippy hangover state resulting from last night's dream wherein your heads all fuzzy and reality has momentarily been a tad untied and left wandering, we usually get them when we've eaten chilli peppers after an evenings session at the local village watering hole. Anyhow best approached with caution. Oh yea the cover has a picture of a rubber duck with glasses wearing a tie. Very strange. And so with that normality - whatever that is - resumes. www.dalmatianrex.co.uk
Losing Today review of "Everyone is a robot except for me and my monkey"
Dalmation Rex and the Eigentones 'everybody is a robot except for me and my monkey' (free download). Those with fairly long memories may well recall our utter fondness for the strangely named Dalmation Rex and the Eigentones. Their second full length 'majikal moose moustache musique' from a few years back for Sorted was a constant feature on the losing today hi-fi - wired, cracked and decidedly essential ear groove as far as we were concerned. And then the band fell from view and off the radar. We feared the worst. And then out of the blue early this year strange dispatchers from far off began to wobble our well honed antenna. A single 'geek' was promised - sadly it never arrived at our gaff - royal mail perhaps you can answer as to why exactly not. (Fear not Paul from the band has promised another copy so expect further adulation in a future missive). Then a message of a free download, video and news of a forthcoming album entitled 'psychedelic monsters'. Man we were fainting at the sudden hive of activity. 'everybody is a robot except for me and my monkey' is the title of that download (you can access it for gratis via their my space page - address later). Taken from the aforementioned forthcoming album Dalmation Rex and crew in mellower tones playing the pop dream - well almost. Think 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' meets the crooning Mighty Boosh on a landscape populated by picturesque homely postcard scenes of soulfully sepia tinged Christmas montages all peppered by smokingly sublime chill down vibes, comotosing cosmic whirlpools and shimmering 50's styled bubblegum standards. Need we say more - just rip the ruddy thing will ya.
Reveiw by Dandelion Radio's Mark Whitby
Hear them in session on my April Dandelion Radio show, streaming throughout the month at www.dandelionradio.com
I feel the way I felt when I first got a whiff of Stump. And that from someone (me) who rates "Quirk Out" as the highpoint of the history of that disputed territory of the mini-album and EP.
I also rated Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones tenth in my "Listen To Me" top ten of 2007, which was probably too low, and as much a result of hearing their demo too late in the year as much as anything else.
The demo in question featured the single "Geek", which was in my show in February, and which came out that month as a single on the Sorted label, complete with a piece of tin foil I've since realised you're supposed to wear as a hat. Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones still sound great without the tin-foil.
The session they've produced is magical, easily up alongside and perhaps even ahead of the one 2 Hot 2 Sweat did for the programme last year. It features versions of "Everybody in the World is a Robot Except For Me and My Monkey" and the scarily, almost chart-friendly "Hairy Monsters", songs that first revealed themselves to me on that initial demo. You don't have to be slightly deranged and have a lopsided view of the world to like these songs, although personally I don't trust your judgement if you don't. "Hairy Monsters" is the sort of record someone like Geri Halliwell would make in a parallel universe where hens can speak and the UK singles charts consist mainly of tracks performed by ballpoint pens lost down the sides of sofas.
In that universe, it is impossible for a song called "I'm Scared of You Japanese Cheese" to be anything other than great, and thankfully that is a characteristic shared by our own universe. The title's as self-explanatory as that of the other track in the session, "Ever So Slowly Losing My Mind" and it is to be hoped that this professed decline continues to be as slow as possible, because it's a highly fertile mind that's responsible for producing this stuff, and Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones have got a long and fascinating musical journey to take us on during the process.
And you can download their wonderful album, Magical Moose Moustache Musique, entirely for free at www.last.fm/music/Dalmatian+Rex+and+the+Eigentones/Majikal+Moose+Moustache+Musique
And We Don't Make Toothpaste for Anyone Else, which can be heard in all its glory at
www.last.fm/music/Dalmatian+Rex+and+the+Eigentones/We+don%27t+make+toothpaste+for+anyone+else
This album contains such wonderful titles as "Giraffe Expansion Device" and "Nailing Fried Eggs to an OAP".
Losing Today Review of Geek
http://www.myspace.com/dalmatianrexandtheeigentones - crude, crooked and crucial, this lot are the celebrated minders of Half Man Half Biscuit's locker room of daft but inspired song titles - its been way to long since Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones last scared the crap out of our hi-fi, months of carefully planned rehab was essential following the walloping it got from this lots hi-fi slapping Cravats meets Beefheart meets Fall goonery that was the 'majikal moose moustache musique' full length. And don't be phased by the fact that it's a few years old now - kids be warned this'll still fry your brain cells. Well the worrying news is that DRE are back with a brand spanking new single - 'geek' / woke this morning song' - both sides of which feature here though we've tried to resist listening to them preferring instead to wait for a hard copy to do whatever damage it will on the turntable - however I don't mind saying its a bit of a ripper especially the flip cut - very 'bill is dead'. In an act of immense generosity and by way of attempting to spread the word the bands first to albums can be downloaded gratis via a link on this page and worth making the effort just to hear 'born to photosynthesise' and 'this is my hippopotamus and his name is not Gerald' - totally wired.
http://www.losingtoday.com/tales.php?id=181
My Dog's Got A Bucket On Her Head (Sorted) 7"
There was Donald Where's Your Troosers by Andy Stewart and Blue Jean (ahem) by David Bowie but songs about trousers are not as common as you might think. (Assuming you'd ever thought of it. Which you hadn't.) Dalmation Rex add one to the total with 28 Button Oxford Bags ("The best strides that I ever had were..") on the underneath of this white vinyl treat. Gruff garage Beefheart with silly-billy would more or less cover all you need to know. I like it.
Old Leicester Mercury review
Wacky Leicester surrealists Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones are famed for a Guinness Book of Records entry for the shortest-ever gig, writes Dave Davies. Their Abbey Park Festival '99 appearance consisted entirely of the one-second song, Ping. They also use bizarre song titles like Cauliflowers, Chrysanthemums and a Labrador Called Gertrude Arranged to Resemble a Peter Shilton Hairdo. Maybe now they'll be known for their brand new album Majikal Moose Moustache Musique, which is out on Monday. It's the follow-up to their critically-acclaimed 1999 debut, We Don't Make Toothpaste For Anyone Else, and has already been made album of the week on Student Broadcast Network Radio. It sounds like The Fall jamming with Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa, while my favourite track, 28 Hole Oxford Bags, with its gutteral vocal, bass-driven riffs and swirling spacey synth, even evokes Hawkwind.
Review of "We don't make toothpaste for anyone else" on the Robots and elcetronic brains site...
http://www.robotsandelectronicbrains.co.uk/reviews/pre99/drex.html
Frank Zappa in a garage straight jacket, stuffed to the gills with hallucinogens and suffering from cattarrh... would only sound about half as skizo as Dalmatian Rex on this, their debut full length release for Sorted (and their tracks on the "Brain cakes" and "Suction prints" comps both appear on the LP). You get an idea of the sound from the titles: "The encyclopedia of dental repair technology," "Born to photosynthesise," "Teaspoons are the instruments of Satan," "Chicken karma sutra" and so on. Sonically much like Gag at times, they have a stop/start kitchen sink mentality, tricky wobblesome riffs, dirty power chords, spoken word segments, Brussel sprout mantras---think Beefheart and the Fall. You know how they say that if you were to sit down in one place, eventually everyone in the world would walk past? Well, if you sit and listen to this over and over, you'll eventually hear a bit of everyone who's done something interesting in rock music
A good review of our second album "MMMM" by Mark Barton in the Losing Today magazine...
http://www.losingtoday.com/reviews.php?review_id=595&band_alpha=d
Gripping stuff. I can't remember a record having given me so much fun on one hand and on the other a sense of positive confusion. The incredibly Beefheart / Fall inspired title 'Majikal Moose Moustache Musique' should give you fair warning that all is not quite right on planet Dalmatian Rex, but then as you would probably gather these loveable urchins (who at one time went under the guises of Mule Dilemma, Victor Universe and Mouse Hole Opening) recline in a musical world which freely condones the extraction of unruly potions of weird images and warped collages. This is Dalmatian Rex's second album and follows their equally Goon like named debut 'We don't make toothpaste for anyone' and features both sides of their recent seven inch platter 'My dog's got a bucket on her head / Twenty eight hole Oxford bags' which those of you with long memories may remember getting the thumbs up in Singled Out. Let's cut to the chase and warn you that if you suffer with the following then you should avoid this like the plague. Don't buy if you have a sense of humour failure: like your music safe and nicely defined and hate Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, The Goons, the Cravats, the Cramps and the Butthole Surfers. Let's put it this way 'Majikal Moose Moustache Musique' is testing stuff, unbalanced, chaotic, disjointed and alarmingly addictive. This is psychiatric pick 'n' mix pop at it's best, check these out for titles 'Suddenly he became sexually attracted to a deep fat fryer', 'pickled onion on an ironing board' and the B movie Cramps necking 'Naked Lunch'-isms of the buzz saw 'I was married to a fly headed girl' one of the albums highlights. During the course of the album such liberating questions as where have all the slugs gone are asked, the joys of string and elastic are all are pondered upon, references to nurses succumbing to black holes, masturbation, the loves of orang-utans and the age old debate about whether Englebert Humperdink is really the anti Christ all puzzling dealt with throughout the course of sharp bursts of fuzzy wayward punked up manoeuvres, curious advertisement interludes and Edward Lear like twisted imagery. In amongst this there's still time for some reverse vocal messages (Gagong du ging yadyad ou' and the inclusion of a spoon. Highlights have to be the iced eerie threads of the melotron on 'Moose moustache man' and the spoken word comedy of 'This is my hippopotamus and his name is not Gerald', Viv Stanshall eat your heart out. The lunatics have well and truly left the asylum and are heading for a sound system near you, you were warned.
