I can hardly ever remember my dreams. It’s kind of frustrating sometimes, but I’m resigned to the fact that that’s the way it’s meant to be, right? As a result of this, I am more than a little distrustful of Leo Chadburn and his alter ego Simon Bookish. For not only does he remember his dreams, but they also have a recurring motif (transport), and he remembers them so well that he has managed to re-create them in the form of ‘Trainwreck/Raincheck’, an album of avant-garde, mostly electronic, spoken word-littered soundscapes.
And when I say avant-garde, I mean avant-garde. I haven’t listened to such a dense and far-out album as this for a long time (not that I have really set out to). It is unsurprising that a classically trained composer, actor, performance artist, vocalist and remixer for hire and multi-instrumentalist, recently returned from touring with the National Theatre, who references Euripides and experimental French composer Erik Satie in his press release, has produced a challenging record, but any thoughts of a quirky Patrick Wolf-a-like are way off as far as ‘Trainwreck/Raincheck’ is concerned. It is, in fact, a barely quasi-pop experiment of startling content.
The artwork for the album, which sees Bookish dressed in futuristic pyjamas, high above a cartoon city dreaming of ships and aeroplanes is a successful depiction of how the album sounds, but is hugely more romantic than the clinical coldness of much of what is held inside. Beginning with future-experimental wobbly noises akin to the alarm system on the Starship Enterprise on ‘Theme (Mercator Projection)’ and moving swiftly into an electronic backing track that sounds like you have a crossed telephone line with a conversation between robot rats, it is an opinion polarizer from the outset. Many more will be put off the moment Bookish opens his mouth with the first stream-of-consciousness dream-tale of ‘Crab Lawn’. This sci-fi psycho-babble continues on the subsequent ‘Invasion’ and ‘Dwarf Documentary’ as his voice meanders through bizarre tales of the dreams he has had. It works adequately enough on the Philip K Dick-esque ‘Crab Lawn’, but the slightly fey, knowing tone of ‘Invasion’s “And so… It might have been Berlin I suppose” is rather off-putting.
The question with these spoken word compositions, is – eccentric experiment aside – whether the stories themselves are interesting, engaging or well written/delivered enough to make for appealing listening. The answer is probably a ‘no’. There are moments of wit, most notably when Bookish is explaining to Bush and Rumsfeld how ducks stand on one foot to avoid getting shit on both feet (‘A Deception (Municipal Mix)’) but rarely is there anything that begs for a repeat listen, a story to really enjoy. It is actually the ‘songs’ where Bookish moves away from the straightforward spoken word that are the most successful. The closing ‘Long Haul’ is sparse and calming, the drone-based ‘Arborescences’ is a triumph of bleakness (if something of an acquired taste…), while on ‘Interview’ he actually strings together something of a melody and his Bowie-esque intonations support what is closest to a traditional song structure. A record like this neither warrants nor benefits from comparisons, though. At a push you could see Bookish as a kind of future-Beefheart or a precocious English David Byrne, but these associations are as misleading as they are useful.
‘Trainwreck/Raincheck’ is a success in that as intended it sounds totally otherworldly and as close to the reality of dreams as one could get. Not in the usual way that fluffy, ethereal music is described as dreamlike, but instead in a coldly psychological portrayal of the confusion and stream-of-consciousness nonsense that dreams actually are. It is densely layered, unsettling and uncomfortable, occasionally warm and fuzzy, but always surprising and generally just plain strange. Like most dreams though, it is the negative moments that that stay in my head after the event – the deliberately read, forced monologues of ‘Invasion’ and ‘Dwarf Documentary’ in particular. As an avant-garde pop music experiment it’s intriguing and often brilliant, as a pleasurable listening experience, well… it isn’t really. Not for me anyway. I strongly recommend anyone remotely interested to give this record a listen and make up your own mind, though, because for as many that will undoubtedly hate it there will likely be the same number who think it’s a work of genius. The problem is, I have reached my final sentence and still have no idea how many stars it deserves. I shall sleep tonight dreaming of a fence to sit on…
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First published on rockfeedback.com. See it here.
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