Cassette Review: Henderson, Mettler, Foisy, Lachance "Built Like A Brick Shithouse" (Small Scale Music)

[$6 CAD // Edition of 100 // https://smallscalemusic.bandcamp.com/album/built-like-a-brick-shithouse]

This combination of Henderson, Mettler, Foisy and Lachance is one of the few times, perhaps even the second time, I've heard something of this nature in 2015 and it is being compared really with BCH+C which is also from Small Scale Music.    It's got that free flow jazz sound that goes somewhere between noise and not and could also be along the lines of Stephanie Lak and/or Roadside Picnic.

"Built Like A Brick Shithouse" has a somewhat different story to tell than not only the BCH+C cassette but just everything in general.    It begins with horns, high hats and trumpet and has an almost traditional jazz feel to it.    This leads to car horns, tire squeals and strings being plucked.    It can go from frequency tuning to just plain wild on Side A.   It reminds me of samplings of various locations where jazz is being played.  

You have to imagine that hole in the wall bar where someone would play a lone saxaphone, but not only are those scenes are spliced together here in a patchwork sort of manner but with the car horns I kind of also can feel as if it's being observed from the outside looking in.   (In many states, Connecticut is one of them, you are not allowed to smoke inside bars and clubs and must go outside to do so)

While Side A ends with a fray, a culmination of the build from the various scenes interlaced, Side B starts off with quiet guitar sounds.    It does manage to gain some momentum throughout but just is an overall calmer and slower paced tempo than the madness which ensues previously.    I actually really like this a lot because as there are two sides to a cassette (and record), this kind of takes each side and displays them as being similar yet different.   It's got that whole Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hide quality to it and why not because if the two sides sounded similiar I feel as if it would just be boring.

So if you want to take a journey out through the streets at night to the sleepless nights you'll spend after, this is where the quartet will take you with a bang.    This plays for me the way that a good, gritty crime novel reads and in that sense it has pulp qualities to it and I just feel like it's not to be missed.