Tesco… Every Skittle helps

Review: Wishmountain – Tesco

Published on July 24th, 2012 | Jonny Abrams

For his first album as Wishmountain since 1998’s Wishmountainisdead, found-sounds legend Matthew Herbert has taken the quite brilliant step of creating tracks made entirely out of sounds elicited from the ten best-selling items in a Tesco supermarket according to a 2010 survey by The Grocer magazine. Those familiar with his previous project – last year’s controversial One Pig – will not be surprised by the ingenuity of this self-imposed limitation.

First up is “Lucozade”, a squelchy, quick-stepping shuffle featuring what sounds like backwards flute samples (blowing the top of the bottle?) and the kind of percussion you’d get in those levels of Super Mario World when you’re drifting over lava on the Skull Raft.

“Nescafe” wields a sticky, crinkly rhythm section and a strange rubbery pound to it too, going on to play host to what sounds like a train but can’t be, while “Kingsmill Hovis and Warburton” sounds as if Mr Scruff’s collection of samples was being obliterated by Space Invaders.

“Fruit Shoot” weds berserk clapping to creepy Aphex synth plinks, “Dairy Milk” forges a fizzy kind-of-samba, “Walkers” bites, snaps, jabs, bounces and crinkles like a Rubik’s Cube rolling through a jungle made out of bubble wrap. Yup.

Finally we have “Andrex” smashing the till on the counter and “Coke” flipping a deck of cards from hand to hand in between pounding its robot fists. As you can see the music on Tesco conjures some pretty strange imagery, and yet parts of it are actually quite danceable, albeit the dancing would probably be pretty weird. Keep ’em coming, you crazy genius!

Rocksucker says: Four Quails out of Five!

a quail a quail a quail a quail

Tesco will be released on 6th August by Accidental Records, and there will also be very limited 12” releases of “Dairy Milk” and “Nescafe” and a reissue of seminal techno track “Radio” all on 16th July. For more information, please visit www.matthewherbert.com or www.accidentalrecords.com/wishmountain/

Artists: matthew herbert, wishmountain

About the Author

Jonny Abrams Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.