A.P.A.T.T.

a.P.A.t.T. is quite an off-the-wall project that has been releasing albums and EPs since the turn of the decade. No one really knows what their exact purpose is, but in 2013, they came close to exposing that purpose by performing a piece of music that was composed and played by following the positions of bird droppings (substituting them for notation) on pieces of music manuscript paper. This ended up being a 20 minute performance at the Tate Liverpool art gallery and was called Bird Sheet Music. Are you starting to get the idea?

According to the band's website, "a.P.A.t.T. wears white, but the music is colorful. Redefining notions of success and failure. A restless, relentless take on 21st century music and performance involving deconstruction, reconstruction and ever evolving values." Does that even confuse you more? Then the best thing to do is to just listen to their avant-garde style, which also includes an album of new music composed for the film "Nosferatu". They have also collaborated with other eclectic and avant- rock bands like Secret Chiefs 3, Acid Mothers Temple, and The Sun Ra Arkestra, just to name a few.

In December of 2019, the band finally did the inevitable and released an album of Christmas music called "The Essential Now That's What I Call an a.P.A.t.T. Christmas" which features several tracks recorded through the years by the project until there were 12, one for each day of Christmas. Ahhhh! The first track was recorded in 2006, the next was in 2008, and then there is one for each following year until 2016, giving us 10 total, and then two recorded in 2019. The album warns you "Warning Explicit Christmas Language". The full album runs about 35 minutes.

The album starts off with avant-garde whackiness with several choral voices singing nonsense melodies in other languages and also in the typical Christmas clichés in fake operatic voices. As it continues, the wild craziness continues, happy, joyful songs bubbling over with an overabundance of enthusiasm and memories of opening "prezzies". If it doesn't elevate your soul, it will have you doubled over laughing at how over the top it is. There is the guitar bass playing like a polka-tuba on "Snowin" with wild surf guitars spinning out of control. There's the retro-sounding "Merry Chirstmas (I Still Love You)" that even uses vocal effects to make it sound like an old jazz record, except for the fact that it's dripping with sarcastic happiness, and even a children's chorus joins in.

The only recognizable tune is the cover of "Sleigh Ride" that you just have to listen to believe, like Christmas spirit gone mad with a choir from an asylum, and it even slips into growling vocals and heavy guitars for a few seconds. The other songs, I believe, are original because I don't recognize them, but they definitely rip off the typical sounds of Christmas lampooning them to death and the exuberance is just way over the top. There are a few tracks that might be a little more serious utilizing avant-garde styles for more original sounding tracks like in "Frost Robin" and "Star on the Eucalyptus Tree", but still adding in elements of humor and fractured Holiday joy. "Just Hello" is like someone dumped out a puzzle of mixed up Christmas carols and then put it together into a song that doesn't quite fit together. Then there is the one explicit track (#11) that will remind you that this is not an album you will want to put on when the family visits, basically made up of random dirty words that are fitted together to make hilarious sense with some Christmas references thrown in?..

So, if you want something totally different for Christmas, and if you are not easily offended, and if you have a sense of humor with an appreciation of avant-garde music, then this is for you. It's not something you will probably listen to a lot, but it's good for a laugh or two, plus there is a good amount of off the wall sound throughout. The band calls it "The joke that goes on too long / keeps giving".

The usual crazyness of a buch of highly skilled performers able to put several different genres inside a single track. It starts with "The Man Returns From The Hereafter With A Future Flower" which goes from reggae/ska to noise and heavy giving the listener no possibility to guess what's coming next. Then "The Blood" in which the guitar jack is used as a percussive instrumet by hitting the magnets and causing electric noise. A modern classical composer, Rominetti, the first who used the electric guitar in classical compositions was used to do the same. There's again a bit of everything, including "screamo".

Should I have to try to explain what avant music is, probably the three minutes of "Nice" could make the job. A slow weird melody repeats itself in the middle of apparently randomic noises until the noises keep the scene to end in a fadeout.

The first of the three "postcards" touches reggae again but move soon to a sort of funky with distorted guitar and a sudden end. All in few more than one minute, then another minute of noise and screams comes. The crazy background choir completes it.

After all that noise, a grand piano opens the second "postcard" on which a French voice says something that I don't understand. Just another minute, then "Magpie Face" is a sort of funky-metal alternated a bass and glockenspiel in support of a weird choir and back to screams.

The first long track was also the last track in the previous release of this album. Thunders, percussion of various kind for about 3 minutes until an Em gitar chord opens the dances. Here comes noise, screams, to suddenly stop giving room to a crazy sung part followed by a slow tempo interlude promising surprises. Effectively the slow song which comes is a sort of a surprise, but the final crescendo reintroduces the original mood.

After another 1 minute "postcard" there's a more than 30 minutes long track which wasn't present in the original release. One can think to a joke or to a ghost track as the first 6 minutes are completely silent, then an a capella choir comes from far away in a very slow crescendo. "There's a voice inside my hand". is a quite strange sentence as one would expect "head", instead. It continues in that way, but at minute 10:30 a sort of soloist brings some variations, but just for a while. 25 minutes of this stuff, some noises in the end and it's done...fading it out.

They can do better.

It is really tough to describe the music on this album. I guess that is not odd, considering it is classified as avant-prog. It is obvious to me that A.P.A.t.T. is not really influenced by progressive music. The avant-garde songs show no sign of this. However, there are some obvious eighties pop influenced songs here, including one that is an homage to Prince. As I was listening, I found that I wasn't really a fan of this album, but when it was over I ended up buying the vinyl on Bandcamp. Like any prog or avant-garde type album, perhaps I will like it the more I listen. Heck, it took me 30 years to appreciate Lizard by King Crimson.

I did rate this as 2 stars because I can't see the average prog fan liking this one. But, if you are into avant-prog, I'm sure you would rate this one much higher. In fact, as I listen to it more, I may change my vote.

"Fun with music" is a very fitting title for this album, because the band apparently had a lot of fun here, as will the listener. The album sees the band playing around with various different styles and building blocks from the big reservoir of popular music along with bringing in some of their own elements to put together a quite unique and idiosyncratic mixture.

The dominating mood is lively and circus-/funfair-like with some nice folk elements and instrumentation (violins, glockenspiel etc.; also they like a 3/4 funfair organ grinder rhythm). There are melodies aplenty but mostly you won't get too much time to appreciate them because the listener is usually very quickly guided to the next attraction before getting too settled on any single one, although there is the occasional song that plays out its atmosphere over the whole time without being interrupted by sharp contrasts (as happens elsewhere on the album). One example for more consistent songwriting is the melancholic Did You See The Sea,. Ploth Kep starts off like a North Sea Radio Orchestra chamber folk instrumental and sticks to its motifs while building up quite some intensity toward the end, like a carousel taking on speed - but at least it remains the same carousel that had started the song off slowly. Matter of Fact is a pretty straight but pleasant and dynamic instrumental; oh well, I just listen to it again and it's straight compared with other a.P.A.t.T music, which doesn't mean "straight" by less relative standards at all.

Some other tracks are short "style studies"; Regards is a melodic choir piece, The Easiness of Today's Kinder Egg Toys is 1980s trash electronic, Take The Bait gives us a more modern techno dance rhythm, although the band apparently found this too annoying on its own, so it added in some diabolical left field elements of their own to make it develop into its very own joyful nightmare. Generally, despite apparently loving accessible melodies, they also have the odd go at atonal outbursts, and they certainly don't resist the idea of putting both of these elements (and some others) together in the same song. On Give My Regards To Bold St, they surprise us with some sleek sharp complex music that could almost qualify as innovative prog to be taken seriously.

The whole album is full of nice little ideas to spice up their offerings such as the crazy and addictive double beat that is scattered into You Treat Me (Like Peter Shit) to make the whole thing stutter and shake your head and body up.

I haven't mentioned a number of songs but it's not that these are unremarkable, rather they throw together the already listed ingredients and some more and I just don't know how I do them justice not being as versatile as a writer as they are as band.

Obvious associations are Frank Zappa's music (one of the male voices also sounds pretty Zappa-ish, although I like the female singers on the album more; you are treated to quite a range of voices here) and Cardiacs and their spin-offs without the punk guitars. Another element not mentioned yet is some end-70s/early 80s artsy fun New Wave as can be heard from Devo or the Sparks. The first Mr Bungle album also comes to mind. Altogether this is a stunningly complex and bewildering mix.

I'm now struggling whether this is four or five stars. What's there to criticise? Well, I guess the frequent contrasts and style changes may feel to some listeners (and even me at times) a bit strenuous and forced. But if I make the effort to really get into it, I'm just amazed by the richness of this album. So overall I now have convinced myself to rate it five. It achieves brilliantly what it sets out to do, fun and madness, energy and even some beauty (and some very inventive arrangements and good playing), and if I crave for something more consistent it won't eat all my other music, I guess, so it doesn't do any harm that this isn't music for all occasions.

It was in 2011 when the BBC Merseyside radio commissioned this sort of soundtrack to an Avant band from Manchester which resulted in about 1 hour an half of very various music which is intended to be played as comment to a specific edition of Nosferatu, the one filmed by the German director Mornau in 1922.

Each of the four tracks stands for about 24 minutes and is an instrumental suite which contains different moments: from noisy electronic, to metal, to symphonic to chamber rock and more. Everything well played and most of all well composed. As example, Part II moves from a melancholic string quartet to a guitar based dark rock through an electronic noise passage, then the deep bass sound of the viola brings its darkness while a sequence of piano notes gives the idea of an increasing chaos.

Describing the whole four tracks would take too long because of the big amount of things inside. While listening I recall some famous sequences of the original movie. Even without having seen it entirely, I'm sure that watching to it with this soundtrack, as it has been thought by the band would be an amazing multimedial experience.

Because of the subject there's no track of the Zappaesque humour that the band is used to put in its songs, but I must say that in my opinionthis is the most appealing a.P.A.t.T release for proggers. For who likes dark chamber rock in the vein Art Zoyd, Shub Niggurath, October Equus and their likes.

4 solid stars, very close to 5

First of all let's say that I've seen proper studio albums shorter than this (supposed) EP. This is an album of covers from one of the craziest bands that I've discovered thanks to PA, but the original songs are so distorted and far from the originals that we need a key to understand what the band is doing.

Let's start from their usual output. Whoever has enjoyed their "Black And White Mass" knows what the band is capable of and their approach to music, being it jazz, rock, folk or just fun. Fun is one of the keys: there's a number of parodies, the opener and the closer are mixes of more and less famous pop, but not only, tracks like the polkamixes of Weird Al Yankovic. The second key is their background: the band is from Manchester and surroundings, and there's a lot of "locals" inside. Spice Girls can mean something to United supporters, however it's a very "British" mix of songs. Take it as it comes, it's like zapping on the radio frequencies.

I don't know, or I can't recognize, many of the originals and this is a limitation to my possible fun, but a track like "Vampire Birthday", being it a cover of not, is perfectly in line with the crazy and noisy moments they are usual to.

Somebody may be concerned about the use of tapes and electronics. Often it sounds just like they have cut and pasted together radio recordings in a patchwork of sounds. Well, Battiato has done the same experiments in the 70s, and this is not too different. Only, Battiato was looking also for fragments of speeches, including pieces of TV advertising, or at least something which could have been easily recignised by the Italian listener but put in a different context. For a.P.A.T.t., whatever it means, it's exactly the countrary: they try to make known things unrecognisable.

A special mention goes to what I think was one of the worst, uninspired and uninteresting songs ever released by the Beatles, at the same intellectual level of Obladi Oblada: that's Yellow Submarine. The way this song has been disassembled and made similar to a 80s Atari videogame soundtrack is amazing and funny. The noisy interlude fits quite well, also if you think to the use of tapes that even Beatles actually did.

I'm not ashamed of suggesting this album as good and surely not essential. It's a free download, in the worst case you would have lost some time in picking it from bandcamp, and if you don't like the genre you'll take less than one minute to decide to delete it from your hard drive.

Personally I have enjoyed it enough to listen to it more than once. If Yankovic destroyes songs starting from the lyrics, A.p.A.T.t. destroy them from music. Give it a try.

a.P.a.t.T made this EP, suitably called Free(e.P.), available as a free download on Bandcamp. The EP seems to be a collection of cover songs, but they've been morphed and distorted to the point that any resemblance to the originals is not easily discernible or lost entirely. The opening and closing tracks are called Megamix Parts 1 and 2 and seem to be a mix of 1980s numbers mashed together, sometimes seemingly in a simultaneous manner. There are a lot of programmed drums and much of the music has clearly been edited on a computer with added effects. Vocals are distorted beyond human abilities.

Other covers include the Spice Girls' 2 Become 1, Styx's Mr. Roboto on the song Kilroy Was Here, and the Beatles' Yellow Submarine. Many of the others I cannot readily identify.

The music throughout the album can barely be called music in the traditional sense. They are more like harsh sound collages, manipulated with computer software. There is an overlapping hip-hop presence throughout much of the material. The assault on the ears is disjointed, machine-like, and just plain messed up.

It isn't clear to me what the point of this was. Making a mockery of popular music? Trying to make something as lousy as possible on purpose? An experiment run amuck? Or a bunch of pre-teens farting around with computer music software while giggling?

I'm all for experimental stuff, but this borders on immature stupidity.

A name comes to my mind: FRANK ZAPPA. This band from the Northwest (of UK) is crazy, skilled, grotesque but also funny, approachable and eclectic.

This album was available as free download when the band was suggested for inclusion and I have to say that my very first impression was already good.

The muisicianship and the richness of ideas can be appreciated since from the firsts of an incredible number of tracks. Without counting some interludes of just a bunch of seconds, the three "untitled" (just loops played reversed", there are 24 short tracks in this album. I think only the Ramones were able to put so many songs in one hour album.

The influences, or the genres touched by this album are very various. ZAPPA is the reference specially in songs like "FireBird", "The Holy Toad" and "The Stars Spell Out Your Name", but we can hear echoes of Post-Punk, British Glam, Musical, even Pop music or we can go deep in noisy psychedelia or have all of the above in a single track like "Avajibber".

You can't get bored with the big variety of things in this album with three minutes songs which change theme up to three - four times. Well, most of the songs don't reach three minutes in length.

There's a big variety of instruments used, too. Instruments of any kind and probably some invented directly by the band members. "Whisky Priest" is very fun and I think ZAPPA would have liked it. The final of this song with loops and noises, and the following "An Oaf Climbing a Fence" make me think also to RON GEESIN.

There are also songs that can remind to CARDIACS or they predecessors DEVO. Everything very British in any case. Let's mention also the hypnotic "Young Free And Parasite" and the crazy "Grope Cunt Lane" . Let's have fun with "Happiness", absolutely crazy to finish with the longest track (5 minutes) that is made of just a sort of bell sound for the first 4 minutes that's replaced by more usual instruments in the last minute.

A very good and promising album for who likes the genre. Not for everybody, even though it's approachable enough.