Following hot on the heels of the re-release of his acclaimed ‘Build Library Here (Or Else)’ album, Perfection R.I.P. (along with October’s single ‘The Tree Of Knowledge’) is the first new material of the year from Bolton-born Andy Regan, the veteran Cardiff-based lo-fi subversive more commonly known as PAGAN WANDERER LU.
His umpteenth EP to date (13th or 14th?) - his second for Brainlove - ‘Perfection R.I.P.’ is an eight song collection that combines conventional instrumentation with an assortment of crazy stuff, like Roland grooveboxes, an omnichord and other car-boot sale acquisitions to defy genres and very effectively challenge our society's political/ideological status quo.
Sonic threads run through the vibrating chorus of the synths as the guitar bubbles beneath. The vocals occupy the space between loud and quiet, as ZX spectrum computer noises crackle with static. ‘The Gentleman’s Game’ is piercing, and in studded in bursts with moments of pop perfection. Layered synth sounds overwhelm like the ideas conveyed in this critique of underclass conflict.
Chaos and carnage shake the brain as the advertising sloganeering of ‘Sell Space’ poke at the media evils of commercial brainwashing, whilst ‘Perfection Or A Simple Life’ takes a cynical swipe at the repression of free love, forsaken for the consumerist trappings and social control that hovers. The acoustic rattles and the beats hold the oddball mish-mash of long-shot electronic sounds in place as they serve to challenge, convey and subvert the ideas we are force fed by society in these cloned-out times of consumer frenzy.
Dark and distorted static noise pierces the piano’s melody in the smouldering ‘Norman Kember’ whilst insistent vocal tracks are harmonised at the fore of the bouncing single ‘The Tree Of Knowledge’, with its insane arrangement, cassette eject sounds, reverse middle eight and the snarling hookline ‘can fuck my apples’. A recurring theme in Regan’s work, ‘un-christian’ churchgoers are spat at for their hypocritical veneer of respectability once again, and the racism and greed beneath the façade is unravelled.
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“Rather build a mosque than another retail park” he asserts decisively over the dysfunctional soundscapes; just one of several killer lines designed to get right on the tits of the complacent.
Partly like a loop tape of MTV with an axe through it, the runaway streams of consciousness are psychotic with frustration and alive with the need to deconstruct the lies. On a musical and political level, it is full of dark humour, but also truly challenging and incisive in a way designed to make the listener sit up and notice.
The binary breakout of ‘000’s and 111’s’ rocks like gameshow trash, whilst the computer-generated ‘Simple Life’ yearns briefly for machine-driven surrender to the consumer-orientated infrastructure-out comforts of conformity as the music jars and grates against the comfort zone.
It is what’s needed, a brittle, brave and honest response to the bullshit we’re fed in alarming quantities these days. As a refusal to swallow any more, this had-it-up-to-here record screams ‘Conspiracy’ from the rooftops, and sounds exactly like what it is – one man’s really violent struggle against the vile and vulgar inherent in today’s commercially-geared ideology. A concerted effort to stop the rot, it's insprational to the point of being brilliant.
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