Jumble Hole Clough: Auntie, why does your house smell funny?

English avant-garde musician Colin Robinson is into investigating generative patterns on the new album Auntie, why does your house smell funny? by his Jumble Hole Clough project. That might seem as a restricting method to come up with something worthwhile and interesting, but being some sort of musical Houdini enables him to steer the process to uncharted waters. Percussion is key on this release, grounding the swirling textures and keeping it tight as he veers into his signature literate lyrical universe wherein anything goes.

Robinson once again proofs that you can write a tune about pretty much anything, be it Leon Trotsky, the perspective of an eyewitness at the crack of dawn at the site of a battle in the English Civil War (6 am, Marston Moor), a bit of claustrophobia (Another dream about being trapped in a crowded, enclosed space), show respect for an early synthesizer (The Wonderous and Most Efficacious Electronium of Happy Valley) or a biblical character's wardrobe (Why did Noah have so many fur coats?).

With his mates Jim Ramsden and Nigel Lawson pitching in to help him out with the growling vocals, Robinson has created a bunch of songs that will strike a chord with fans of Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits. It is a damn fine example of eclectic eccentrism - baffling at times, but also a showcase of wondrous experimentation within self-imposed restraints.

Auntie, why does your house smell funny? is a self-released album. Buy it (pay-what-you-want) from his website.

Tracks:

1. A Christmas Card from Karlheinz
2. Jackfield and Bedlam
3. Friday 13th Part 12
4. Trotsky bought the ice pick himself
5. Did you see The Face of God?
6. In dark rooms. Forever.
7. Salt-caked smoke-stack
8. How many fish in the sea?
9. 6 am, Marston Moor
10. Tom Lee and the gibbet in Grass Wood
11. The Wonderous and Most Efficacious Electronium of Happy Valley
12. Swimming underwater
13. Dreaming in Slow Motion
14. Another dream about being trapped in a crowded, enclosed space
15. May Day in the Ossuary (part 1)
16. Why did Noah have so many fur coats?
17. Fig Rollarena
18. May Day in the Ossuary (part 2)
19. A brisk walk around the museum
20. The milk float was behind our cabins

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HCTF review of The Sunken Chapel (and other dreams)