This is a childs cornucopia of found sound. Bedroom magic orchestrated silences: like the delicate fragile seven-inch singles Jane, Marine Girls and Sarah Goes Shopping released in the early 80's;
like waiting up every morning and spotting wonderment in the way the grey clouds shudder: like a lo-fidelity woozy reading of all the Big Boys and Girls, vaguely aware of how ridiculous extraneous
noise and pomposity is, counter balancing the flow with song after song of perilously loveable melodies. Arch stuckist Sexton Ming extols the virtuses of PVC over a Wurlitzer-style organ on "I
collect Pastics", sound is given a ridiculing on "Gideon's Bible" and C&W itself is menaced ever so gently on "Our Condolences"
Imagine Baz Luhrman shorn of commercial considerations, Billy Childish's singular worldview transferred into the world of rudimentary electronica, or the extraordinarily playful inventiveness of
the The Guy Who Invented Fire (sampled here on "High on the Wind") If those comparisons are too obscure then try self-therapy. It may help.
Female solo musicians are still a rare occurrence on the electronic scene. If artists such as Leila have managed to get themselves noticed, the genre seems bound to be dominated by the male gender.
So, this album, released on Californian label Blackbean & Placenta is a breath of fresh air. Multi talented artist Frances Castle, aka Transistor Six not only writes and produces her music
using old records, cheap sound effects and a handful of collaborators around the world, but she also provides all the graphic work for her releases. After a self distributed first album, Green
Vegetable Monster, released on MP3.com, collecting some of her early work, and a handful of singles, London-based Castle now brings out her first proper release. Johnny Where’s My Purse? is a
fascinating assortment of distorted tongue-in-cheek pop, clever laptop electronic and unconventional samples. Using 30’s and 40’s folk and country recordings as a base for her
compositions, Castle builds fragile ephemeral songs on which she hangs disturbing little stories about plastic fetishists, boys who receives radio signals from outer space through their heads, hand
transplant or summer afternoons spent under a tree. The parallel with Leila’s offbeat universe is unavoidable, although here, miss Castle performs most of the songs herself. And the
comparison stops here. Castle’s musical scope has a rare poetic twist which gives this album a child-like innocent dimension. Songs such as Little Joe Your Head’s Too Big, The Neadson
Poisoner, Our Condolences, Old Oak Tree or Autumn In The East End are perfectly crafted little vignettes, evocative and melancholic, and yet, despite their slight old-fashioned structure, terribly
modern. Elsewhere, on I Collect Plastic or Real Life Hand Transplant, she offers an altogether more absurd side of her personality, the former, written and performed by Sexton Ming, being one of
the most hilarious moments ever recorded. Little instrumental punctuations inserted here and there all along the album offer perfect breathing spaces between the actual songs, proving that if she
is a brilliant songstress, Castle is also a talented composer and musician. With this beautiful and clever debut, Frances Castle establishes herself as one of the most interesting and
uncompromising new British artists, with a talent for creating fascinating incongruous tales and charming musical moments. One to discover urgently.
The Transistor Six sound is just right - maybe its because the sun is bright out side, no, it would be right whatever the weather. A warm, almost (but not quite)fragile, very personal, very
inviting but very private, a glimpse inside Frances Castle (shes always interesting, take the time to check out her rather glowing paintings if you can). here we have experiments in lo-fi college,
delicate songs a kind of riot grrl/D.I.Y/Olympia?K records vibe. Some of its beautiful some of its delightfully strange -'I collect plastics' is just bizarre in a very positive way. The noises are
crafted, the textures are considered. Its almost country music, its almost many things yet ultimately its like very few things you have ever heard before - some its like walking though a hall of
mirrors and seeing all kinds of things (like extra hands and contraband) in the reflections and you know well they're not going to be there if you look over your shoulder. The vocals are childlike,
the sounds are broken by crackling radio signals, Hawaiian sunset moments, shimmering trumpet sounds Holgar Czkay, Brian Eno's "My Life in the Bush Of Ghosts". Will Self - they all come to
mind.
If you follow art, you may be familiar with Frances Castle; she's part of the Stuckist movement, and is known for her paintings of "soft fury
(sic) monsters with hard pink genitals, based on the people she meets and monsters in general". If you don't follow art, don't worry -- you may not be able to comment cleverly on Castle's CD
booklet illustrations, but you'll still enjoy the music, which is as gloriously, defiantly peculiar as anything you're likely to hear this
year.
.Castle assembled these songs using a four-track recorder and a PC (in itself an iconoclastic move, given the capital-"c" Creative world's general Mac-centric attitudes),
culling bits and pieces from ancient folk and country records and adding the tentative output of elderly instruments. On paper, it's nothing that hasn't been done before, but there's an intangible
quality to Castle's approach that makes her work wholly different from the other sample-based projects you've heard. When she's at her most accomodating, she knits snippets of well-aged music into
loungy melodies, then slaves her Frankenstein tunes to bristling rhythms that combine drum machines, turntable crackle, bird and animal noises and other environmental sounds (including, on her
version of the Iditarod's "Our Condolences", an absolutely maddening creaking-door sample, likely scavenged from her PC's "sounds" folder). Vocals are applied as needed, either by Castle or one of
her collaborators. Imagine Tipsy's Trip Tease as reconceptualized by Solex, and you'll be hacking away at the above-water bit of the
iceberg.
.However, while these pieces might be considered pop songs in the absolute broadest sense of the term, they're actually something far more insidious -- mutated, ramshackle
shadows, capable of fooling the naked ear but not the mind. There's more sonic "machinery" built into these songs than there needs to be, suggesting hidden purposes and advanced functions
beyond our ken. You'll detect this aesthetic in pieces like the discordant "The Neasden Poisoner" and the somnolent "Old Oak Tree", both of which practically scream "Dismantle me!" -- suggesting
that if you only listen closely enough for long enough, the music will divulge a strange and marvelous secret. Dig too deep and before you know it, you'll be spending all your time poring
over magazines, underlining words, cutting out articles and sticking them up on the walls of your garage, basement or garden
shed.
.Beyond her flair for dense sonic collage-making, Castle displays a finely-honed taste for narrative absurdity, which is ably indulged by her collaborators. "Little Joe Your
Head's Too Big", for instance, is the best song ever written about a disproportionately large cranium. Over an exotica-tinged drone, a thrumming bass line and a rhythm track crafted from squelches,
squeaks and clattering bits of metal, guest vocalist Steward delivers the macrocephalic protagonist's tale of woe; apparently, in addition to the whole oversized noggin issue, he's plagued by radio
signals from outer space. Along similarly peculiar lines, Jesse Todd Dockery turns in a pair of his trademark quizzical narratives, "Real Life Hand Transplant" and "The Tree Frogs of Kentucky", the
latter of which closes the album on a suitably mysterious, philosophical note.
.It's Sexton Ming, however, who truly brings the house down. Over "I Collect Plastics"' trebly silent-movie music loop, he growls quasi-nonsensical (and often
pants-wettingly funny) lyrics in a working class accent, half-heartedly singing along with the background tune. If you can get past lyrics like "One up the bum / No harm done / I've got a plastic
Action Man / And a polythene Dalek suit / Oh, to be a chemist / at the Scotland Yard / I'd hit my head and I'd break my legs and I'd cover myself in lard" without being moved, you don't deserve to
own a CD player.
.Of course, a lot of indie rock fans who claim to be into "new and challenging sounds" will be utterly lost in Transistor Six's mixed-up world. If your idea of pushing the
envelope is slightly off-key background vocals, or if you like your music neat and tidy and devoid of cluttery extra idea bits, "Johnny Where's My Purse" will probably be a bit too chaotic
for your tastes. And that's fair; like much Stuckist art, the disc has more to do with actually having ideas than polishing their presentation, and its rough-edged charm is better suited to
explorers than musical day-trippers. Though it can be amateurish, childish and willfully obscure, "Johnny Where's My Purse" is also one of the most joyous listening experiences you'll have
this year, for it truly revels in being weird for weirdness' sake. -- George Zahora
Imagine taking your regular folk record and then letting DJ shadow have his way with it for a week. The result might sound something not unlike Transistor Six, one Frances Castle and several
collaborators. A variety of samples are combined with acoustic based-based folk songs to create something essentially refreshing and peculiar at the same time. There are electronic beats, squirts
and squibbles throughout the record, as well as longer vocal samples that form the center of a few songs. Its a fresh take on a folk record, and very funny at times. too. Oftentimes folk records
can sound stiff and predictable, but castle coyly navigates the electronic and folk paths carefully to provide something rustic enough to listen to on your porch in the summer while confusing the
hell out of your friends at the same time.
For all the music that is tossed up on different clearinghouse websites without much of a second thought, we're living in an exciting time in terms of the creation of music. Just about every person
who wants to can create music if they have a computer (or even less with some resourcefulness). Granted, that leads to a glut of the aformentioned in which there is no quality control, but there
are some true diamonds in the rough as well. Frances Castle is one of them, and somewhat of a modern day renaissance woman too. Not only does she record her own music as Transistor Six, but she
does wonderful little drawings as well, which comprise the art for the release, as well as graphics on her website. Musically, Johnny Where's My Purse? is a completely bizarre concoction of folk,
laptop electronics, and old-tyme radio. Imagine Sparklehorse with a slightly goofier lyrical and music focus (and a female singer for the majority) and you're getting a little bit closer. In
addition to the tracks that she sang, Castle also collaborated with people that she knew, taking recordings of their vocals that were sent to her and inserting them into tracks. After opening with
a short intro track, the album starts in earnest with "Little Joe Your Head's Too Big," and one truly gets a sense of the odd nature of the group. Moving along with a creaky, giddy-up beat and some
warm synths, the track wobbles along with a off-kilter feel for the entirety, while Castle adds vocals that are ever so close to being out-of-key. Lyrically, the track is as bizarre as something
you'd get from the Elephant Six collective, focusing on a boy with a head so big he picks up radio signals. While "The Neasdon Poisoner" continues with sort of a woozy feel (including some nice
tremelo guitars and more oddly sung vocals), "Elgar V The Smoke Alarm" opens up with an absolutely beautiful juxtaposition of sampled strings and odd clicks, before dropping off to a super fun
finale, with distant vocals by "Steward." Even with the slightly bizarre qualities of the first few tracks, though, nothing prepares one for "I Collect Plastics," in which gruff, surreal vocals by
Sexton Ming are backed up by twisted carny music. On "Gideons Bible" and "Fire In Suburbia," the old-tyme feel comes into play even more, with looped samples of twangy guitars and a warm hiss that
reminds one of listening to an old radio. The former is a sample driven track that rolls along with a sly blues feel while the latter again features Castle on vocals and adds some nice sampled
strings as well. Despite a couple tracks that don't work quite as well, the album is full of clever construction and music, and although it was recorded on a computer, it hums along with a nice
lo-fi feel that works well given the style of music. Not as bubbly as Solex or as dark and contemplative as the aformentioned Sparklehorse, Transistor Six fills a nice middle ground somewhere
in-between the two. Rating: 7.25
You'd almost swear there is a touch of the Savant Syndrome running through Transistor Six's "Johnny Where's My Purse?." This british outfit evokes hip musical child's play one moment, and brainy
adult art pop the next. Transistor Six is the group name Frances Castle gives herself. Her songs are constructed from seemingly contradictory musical elements, which nonetheless work together in
some strange paradoxical way. "Little Joe Your Head's Too Big," for example, utilizes what sounds like a preschool squeaky toy as its primary rhythm instrument, a smidgen of empathetic accordion
(?) for distant mood creation, and sporadic slide guitar touches to give it an earthy quality. All the while, this whole contrasting musical menagerie underpins Castles's girly vocals. Instead of
relying upon traditional drums and bass to give the music anything resembling standard rhythm patterns, Transistor Six is something closer to a sophisticated family band, where everybody chimes in
on found household items. (Daddy sang bass, Mamma sang tenor...) Needless to say, there's plenty of clinking and clanking going on within these soundscapes. On "Old Oak Tree," the 'group' ventures
outside the family homestead, employing song bird sound effects. Castle's kittenish singing is the central focus throughout, but she's also not afraid to share vocal duties with others. On "I
Collect Plastics," Sexton Ming's croaked styles are featured, and "Gideons Bible" is built around an un-credited male spoken word section placed over a jazzy vibraphone-dominated base. This album
never lacks for variety, as "Splintered Wedding Song" is the traditional "Hawaiian Love Song," redone with plenty o' percolating percussion, and "Our Condolences" has the mordant rhythm of a
funeral march and also samples blues vocals in some spots. You may want to think of Transistor Six as Stereolab descendants, except without either the cheesy synth parts or the French political
lyrics. There is also a kind of scientific detachment to their subject matter, which brings them closer to Talking Heads or Kraftwerk. No matter the label, Transistor Six's steadfastly oddball pop
is well worth a listen for the curious. -Dan MacIntosh
What's all this? A highly mysterious and enigmatic package of music, starring the Stuckist artist Frances
Castle, whose work I've been a fan of for quite some time. Her music, however, I was ignorant of until
now.
Most of the music is
well-crafted lo-fi oddball synth work (with a Residents/Tinklers feel sometimes), with appearances by special guests such as J.Todd Dockery, Sexton Ming, and The Guy Who Invented Fire. These guest-star tracks are, of course, the first ones I gravitated to, and
it's my humble opinion that Sexton's contribution, "I Collect Plastics", is the album's finest cut. Dockery's entries, "Gideon's Bible" and "Tree Frogs of Kentucky", are typical JTD
mostly-spoken-word ramblings, sort of standing at the corner of Lou Reed and Ken Nordine. Snippets of his dialogue are recognizable from some of his other works, such as the "I need that old sound"
routine.
Among the tracks in which
Castle shines alone in the spotlight, my favorites are "The Neasden Poisoner", which cleverly samples Gerry & The Pacemakers' "Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying", and "Fire In Suburbia", a
tense and haunting song with especially enchanting Kendra Smith-as-a-child vocals by Castle and a strange exotica-folk
feel.
The album's only real
fly-in-the-meringue for me is "Our Condolences", which gains points for sampling what sounds like Mississippi Fred McDowell's "You Gotta Move" but loses them all for the annoyingly repetitive
sample of the door-opening sound from AOL's Instant
Messenger.
All in all, a recommended
item to anyone with an interest in warm lo-fi electronic-minimalist-pop projects. And if you have an interest in the scene from which Castle eminates, then the disc is a must-have. For more info on
purchasing it, e-mail bbptc@ix.netcom.com and tell 'em we sent ya.
From Record Collector magazine.
Transistor Six, The Post Office Tower (Elefant)
7"
The title
track of this (too short) EP is an upbeat humorous tune with wurlitzer style accompaniment, dedicated to the Post Office Tower - now the BT tower - when it was still spinning in the 60s. An
enchanting tune. the B-side is an xcellent mix of samples that tells the tale of a singing machine with the voice of an angel created by a 15 year old kid - surreal and amusing. The metallic vocals
on this track are like this entire Ep over all - magnificent and so simple.
Transistor Six, The Post Office Tower (Elefant)
7"
Bedroom sampler meets steel drums in a lack-of-elbow-room situation. "The Post Office Tower" is a nostalgic nursery rhyme gem. Nostalgic for Frances Castle and nostalgic for me. Me first:
although the song is about the tower in London, there is another one in Birmingham outside which, early every December, me and Russell (my brother) would be deposited along with around 100 other
kids for a Christmas party paid for by 20p-a-week deductions from our parents' wages by Busby. The party actually took place in the building next door to the Post Office Tower but that was better
than the tower itself because you could stare out of the window at the adjacent alien monument and, in a time before every council estate was covered with the bastards, wonder just what these
curved marvels actually did. Back at the party, pass the parcel around a huge circle of kids would still be going through its drudging monotony, the size of the eventual prize, belied by the mass
of paper that encased it, being hardly worth the bother and always won by some arrogant kid who'd flaunt it for the rest of the afternoon. Tea was always a selection of too dry and too small cakes
and sandwiches followed by jelly in perilously flimsy paper bowls. Difficult to drag a meal like that out for any length of time but try we did because what came afterwards was the
entertainer. The same bloke every year would turn up with an acoustic guitar and a stick-on Leo Sayer haircut and sing "Lily the Pink" for what seemed like days until we finally got our
presents. Ah yes, the presents. Having the same present for every child within a certain age range was certainly an expedient way to buy the things but hardly destined to cause great whoops of
delight and surprise amongst the recipients. Except for the first child in the queue.
As soon as I heard the opening to this 12" - a montage of traffic sounds and orchestral tuning which flows seamlessly into the opening tune - I knew I was going to like Transistor
Six. The vocal on that opening song reminds me of the sort of eerie melodies heard in the original Star Trek when Jim Kirk met another bleached blonde space babe! Overall, this record proves yet
again that imaginative use of a 4 track can beat many a jaded "big studio" production hands down and imagination certainly means variety and colour. Cool beats, oscillations, vocoder and hawaiian
guitar meld together for music which sometimes alsmost harks back to 1940s cinema and at others even has a reggae feel to it! I can add that you needn't worry and pressing quality: in the past,
some bbptc releases were a little "thin", but the quality here is just fine. Transistor 6 is Frances Castle who also runs a website
featuring paintings by herself and other artists such as Ella Guru. You may find these images beautiful or disturbing, but you should
check out the site. (John)
"Transistor 6's Lo-fi space age country music, made on anologue synths, a home computer, looped wav files, slide guitars and a Tascam 07."
That's what the promo says... true but what it doesn't say is that this cassette is an amazing adventure! Transistor 6 is a solo studio project of London artist Frances Castle.
"Green Vegetable Monster" starts out with the sounds of passing cars and birds. The music part doesn't begin until several minutes into the sounds. It fades in with a slow lazy drumbeat and wavery
theremin, then comes in Frances' sweet British accent vocals. The songs continue on their way, all fitting into the same general lo fi spacepopsong mood (with the occasional drone hip hop groove
diversion).... the sound effects fitting just as a much as the instrumentation. Available via a tape swap or postage. (it's definitely worth getting a hold of if that is all being asked. don't pass
this up.)
From Skyways
Sample heavy bedroom pop that immediately brings to mind ' His Name is Alive and early Sukpatch. This cassette is almost entirely the work of Frances Castle, who is also somewhat
renowned for cartoonish sexual artwork. Castle's vocals are twee and mellow, with a delightful british accent, and they work well with the spacey lo-fi sounds that fill the rest of the songs. My
favorites are the first two tracks. 'North of Finsbury Park' is built around nursery rhyme lyrics and samples of birds singing, while shadwell is a spooky tour of Castles home territory narrated by
a computer that actually speaks her lyrics. The rest of the stuff here is in the same charming vein, with titles like 'Backyard Rocketship' and 'The Astronaughts on Brighton Beach'. This will
probably appeal most to fans of stereolab and the Slabco roster but everyone should give it a try.