Stefan Neville
'Do not destroy...'
"Do crappy jobs breed good art? I mean only too often we end up with books,
films and music as a reaction to lifes mundane jobs, Bukowski made a career out
of documenting his ailing life, Clerks made a genre out of it so there must be
something in it. Even the NME have claimed (in reference the Arctic Monkeys I
think) that they champion music for kids in dead end jobs in dead end towns. I
remember having just that kind of job, the same ritual day in day out and going
home in the evening was the only respite from 8 hours of quite mind numbing
boredom. Stefan Neville’s ‘Do Not Destroy’ is based entirely around this ritual,
and the album was compiled from daily recordings he made on his immediate return
from a full time filing job. Taking the structures of pop folk, Neville
deconstructs the tracks and everything is piped onto 2 track tape, giving the
record a lo-fidelity warmth and honesty comparable to the early recordings of
outsider-bluesman Jandek. Neville’s deep and distorted droning however might
best be compared to early Earth if they had a heap of broken equipment to work
with. An unashamedly odd album and another interesting step for the Last Visible
Dog label."
This is the same Neville
behind Pumice (Raft (LVD), Yeahnahvienna (Soft Abuse)) as well as a collaborator
with the likes of
C.J.A, Witcyst,
Matt Middleton, Antony Milton, Chris Knox (Tall Dwarfs) and Campbell Kneale (Birchville
Cat Motel), so you should know what to expect: eccentric one-man-band lo-fi
goodness. But where Stefan's other releases have always taken the existence of
pop-music for granted albeit filtered and fucked 'til broken, 'do not destroy'
makes no such assumption.
Recorded in the
night-times, while daytimes were consumed with a mundane and low-paying filing
job, the 'Do Not Destroy' album is an exercise in desperate escapism that is
ultimately more personal than Neville's other works (and also his most
challenging.) 'Do not destroy' is the original noisy, primitive Neville, back
when making a shit-load of noise was still the best sort of music to release!
--Boomkat Music