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Chrystal Belle Scrodd, "Belle De Jour"
CD reissue of Diana Rogerson's second record comes close to being accurately restored.
Klanggalerie
Once again I'm impressed with the packaging of this reissue. Having the cover and inside photos restored on nice paper in a booklet is far better than the flimsy Beastings card and anything done in a chintzy digipack. While this is the second Chrystal Belle Scrodd record (originally released in 1986), it features music which pre-dates The Inevitable. The first three songs are brief, scratchy soundscapes, recorded with bowed cymbals and droning horns while the second three songs are far more melodic, and breathe horn and other droned sounds in the same, patient tempo. "Charlie Hosts a Pork Pie Parasite" and "Chair Improvisation #4," both featured on the Zamisdat Trade Journal #4 cassette, provided soundtracks to the films of Diana Rogerson. These songs were subsequently renamed to "Source" and "Muse," respectively, the first and second songs on the original LP of Belle de Jour. But, in the shuffle to Beastings, "Muse" got listed as "Immanence" while "Immanence" got listed as "Muse" and "Soup of the Day" got listed as "iDeath." While the reissue did a good job of straightening these side A tracks out and including "iDeath" on CD for the first time, it completely dropped the ball on the side B by listing "Riding the Red Rag" as "The Demon Flower" and including "Black Mother Mountain" (a song recorded in 1993 and named "Beetle Crawls Across My Back" in a remixed form on 50 Years of Sunshine compilation) but listing it as "Riding the Red Rag." While the side A tracks are very similar to each other and not terribly exciting, two masterpieces make up the majority of side B. "Dead Roads / A Gothic Western" opens with the inter-weaved samples of some obscure rock bands grooving riffs as Diana growls, sings, and screams out the surrealistic story, one day I might be able to sing along but it still sounds like an intricate stream of consciousness. By the end, it's mutated into a bright piano and drone piece which strangely sounds like it wouldn't be out of place on a later period Talk Talk record. It's hard to figure out what exactly has or could be done on the mastering of a song like this, as a number of the samples were pulled from old records to begin with, however, there is a noticable amount of digital-sounding clicks and volume issues which are most likely unintentional and unavoidable at this point. Those looking for the missing "The Demon Flower," you'll find it playing over the tail-end of "Unknown" on The Inevitable (see above) while the fantastic epic "Riding the Red Rag" closes the album with Diana's singing voice over what could easily by a Roland drum machine circa 1985, played live with tons of delay, combined with guitar and other instruments that drone. The almost genre-defying qualities of "Riding the Red Rag" lead me to believe it could have easily been recorded at the same sessions for Melchior with HNAS. "Black Mother Mountain" closes the CD with the prominent digeridoo playing of Pete Bog along a faint pulse and a healthy amount of delay on Diana's voice, and while I truly love this song, it's rather out of place to hear a song this modern (1993) on the end of an LP recorded in 1986. Inconsistent with the pre-release promises, there are no bonus recordings included here, so I've come up with my own collection to annex these two discs. It features the vocal version of "Soup of the Day," as appeared on the various artists release United Dairies tape UDT 018, the full version of "Schizo," "The Demon Flower" all alone by itself, "Split and Well Hung" from Ohrensausen, and "Beetle Crawls Across My Back" along with the live stuff (see Live at Bar Maldoror LP and L'Age d'Or) that's yet to be released on CD since it's so Diana-heavy. Maybe with enough persuasion and a letter campaign, Stapleton, Potter, and Klanggalerie can be convinced to clean up those recordings and make that package. Don't count on it, though. - Jon Whitney
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