It’s all quite vintage, warm good fun — all packaged in raised copper with coinage and frills its imprint keeps its distance but teases of something somehow familiar.
Vernon & Burns are based in Glasgow and Mort Aux Vaches is their latest. In the shadow of People Like Us, Felix Kubin and Donna Summer this record just makes good sense. Humorous party music combines with loungey cartoon beats making tracks like “Doing Quisby” a bright spot in the lineage of the incredible Staalplaat series. Spoken and sing-song word blend with peculiar noises, rustling through silverware, vintage harmonies and aerodynamic editing, like audio-gaming, stitched together seamlessly. On this twenty-one track disc of short snippets there are discordant marriages between bombs and bloated accordions, syrupy pours and creaky doors. It’s dimensional, a very physical effort. Gangsters and ladies make shady deals, whistling as a Victrola scrapes along the edge of vinyl, output quite rustically over some weary campfire song. It’s all quite vintage, warm good fun — all packaged in raised copper with coinage and frills its imprint keeps its distance but teases of something somehow familiar. (Toneshift, 2010)
Mort Aux Vaches is out now on Staalplaat.
