Sexy Sex Sex

Now you know that here at 1537 we’re all about the sex.  The wilder, the more deviant the better.  Yup, not just sex but sexy sex.  Sometimes even sexy sexy sex*.  Once it was even about the sexy sexy sex sex, but I can’t tell that story here as I’m not sure WordPress would allow it and I don’t think it’s very gentlemanly to kiss and tell**.

Now you know that here at 1537 we’re occasionally all about the LPs as well as the sexy sex sex.  Now imagine if you could somehow fuse those two strands of my blog into a single voluptuous whole – the glory of it!

• I have lots of hard rock records about shagging, drinking and boobs, that’s not what I’m on about.
• I have the occasional naughty sex rhyme on my various hip-hop LPs, that’s not what I’m on about.
• I have a goodly few unfettered jazz workouts for the more rhythmically adventurous lovers, that’s not what I’m on about.
• I have a few indie-type songs about first fumbles and ‘Just Like Heaven’ -style horizontal fandangoing, that’s not what I’m on about.
• I have a few … no! Get down Prince! Down boy! Down! that’s not what I’m on about.

No, nothing too explicit here, I have something a little more tense and furtive in mind.  Think ‘Venus In Furs’ covered by Sons & Daughters, but with a synth, or ‘Axel F’ played not by Harold Faltermeyer but by a team of priapic satyrs wearing nipple clamps, that kind of tense.  The LP I have in mind is Ventriloquizzing by Fujiya & Miyagi, from 2011.  Fujiya & Miyagi^ are a Brighton-based band and no, not Japanese at all – their name came from combining a brand of record player and Mr Miyagi from the Karate Kid movies, which I think is rather neat.

I jumped into their bed with Ventriloquizzing which was a complete impulse buy from the new releases section.  I had never heard of them, the LP cover is pretty pants as far as I’m concerned (although it is very glossy^^) so I think it must have been the song titles.  I have bought so many records because of song titles, mostly swearing in fact but there’s none of that here – Cat Got Your Tongue, Taiwanese Boots, Tinsel & Glitter, Sixteen Shades of Black and Blue – these are what intrigued me here.

The title and first track on Ventriloquizzing is the best one on offer here, for my money.  Oh, I suppose you want me to go and describe the thing for you now? you’re just all so needy! ‘Ventriloquizzing’ sidles in on a couple of innocuous keyboard trills and soon locks into a beaten bass line stolen from Neu! ‘Hallogallo’, vocalist Dave Best then almost sidling in with a muted, precise almost sinister, delivery with lyrics that are all about control and domination, ‘We move our arms when you pull our strings’; I’ve always found puppets really creepy.  The keyboards are brilliant throughout but I’m particularly fond of the little, umm, climactic wave three-quarters in.

‘Sixteen Shades of Black and Blue’, is F&M’s creepy paean to S&M.  Just think how popular it’d be if they’d only added another 34 shades^*.  Fujiya and Miyagi’s version is meaner and nastier, this isn’t yuppie softcore fantasy, these acts have consequences.  Again we get stately glam rock beats and an, aptly, restrained half-sung, half-spoken delivery sounding like a man singing with a riding crop in his mouth.  It all brings Ultra Vivid Scene to mind, a band I liked, but everyone else ever seems to have forgotten, despite their sometimes fixation on the seamier aspects of life.  The mood doesn’t change an iota when it switches into ‘Cat Got Your Tongue’, which if anything is more sinister and I can hear the influence of Suicide ringing out here loud and clear, or ‘Taiwanese Boots’ and it’s staccato ruminations on consumerism.  It’s all rather exultingly uptight.

Another fave of mine on Ventriloquizzing is the pulsing, simplistic ‘Yoyo’, whether you find this hypnotic and sexy, or monotonous is probably a good guide to how you’d feel about this LP as a whole.  Me? I’m in the hypnotic camp, plus I can never resist a video featuring some ace yoyo action:

Btw: bonus points if you notice my cameo as the weight lifter.

The second side carries on where the first left off, albeit with a few extra clicks and tricks.  The spritely ‘Tinsel & Glitter’ being a real highlight, the organ sounds having been lifted wholesale from ‘Ghost Rider’ and the song as a whole sounding like it has been stretched to the point of snapping.  I also really like the grand LP closer ‘Universe’, which amidst a certain lumbering grandeur and a spiralling descending keyboard riff and a beat that sounds like a slightly asthmatic milking machine, the band repeatedly tell us over a choral backing that ‘there is no centre of the universe / you are not the centre of the universe’.  But let us also not overlook ‘Minestrone’ where these incorrigible magpies pilfer the keyboard sound from Iron Butterfly and the Doors, whilst recounting a visit from a sensual Satan*^.  Gosh!

So not a huge amount of out-and-out sexing going on here, Ventriloquizzing is more about the mood it creates.  Or hell, given that it’s more about intensity, kink, restraint and release maybe I have just revealed too much about my own inner workings for comfort.  In that case … Look into my eyes, look into my eyes, let us count backwards my pretty, 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 … now when you wake up, you’ll forget every word you’ve just read and you’ll believe you have just read a review of Iron Maiden Piece Of Mind and will comment accordingly …

Now, awake!

631 Down.

*my dodgy back, permitting.

**particularly where livestock are concerned.

^F&M?

^^wipe clean?

^*has there ever been a worse written bestseller? trust me I read 30 pages of it once.

*^F&M get big 1537 bonus points for both describing (and rhyming) the Devil’s house as semi-detached and pebble-dashed.