Audio CD review:
Killing Joke - The Courtauld Talks

Killing Joke - The Courtauld Talks

Band: Killing Joke Title: The Courtauld Talks Rating: Release Date: 01 July, 1997 Media: Audio CD Tracks:

Customer Reviews A Jaz Coleman kooky spoken word with a little extra He talks about magick, H. To quote Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars, "What a piece of junk!" The same may be your exclamation after listening to this rant by an all accounts delusional Jaz Coleman in his "Outside the Gate" era excess. P. Lovecraft's "Elder Gods", numerology and other such kooky pablum as if it is this engine of driving force for him. The faulty logic he employs would make a first year philosophy student laugh. He is a genius and a lovely man to have a conversation with, but this recording is not his shining moment. The only highlight is when they suddenly break into the atonal bridge from the song "Outside the Gate". Otherwise it can be characterised as the rants of a madman with the drummer from Outside the Gate's sessions playing sporadic percussion and Geordie Walker playing the verse repetitive riff from Pssyche really slowed down and low in the background. Killing Joke it is not. I wish I could have gotten a refund for this disc. Highly entertaining, but mismarketed as Killing Joke It's a lecture given by Jaz Coleman with occasional musical accompaniment from Geordie and percussionist Jeff Scantlebury. Consider yourself warned-- this is NOT a Killing Joke record. If you're not already knee-deep in Killing Joke, get yourself some of their music catalog (start with their self-titled album from 1980 if you like punk, 1985's "Night Time" if you like new wave, or 1995's "Pandemonium" if you like industrial) and then think about this one again. With that taken care of, "The Courtauld Talks", what a highly unusual piece. Over the years, there's all the great stories about Jaz Coleman-- his flight to Iceland to await the apocalypse, his obsessions with numerology, his flirtations with the occult and his leftist even if you're a proud liberal like me politics. Well, here's your chance to have it all rolled into one, no nebulous lyrics with odd imagery. Instead, what you get is nebulous speech with odd imagery and occasional statements of "now let me explain" that result in something making less sense than it did before (or a complete shift of topic). Blendings of science and religion and numerology and the occult and even a little bit of H. P. Lovecraft and all sorts of other stuff in what works out to be an hour plus ramble and rant that comes off like a distillation of the vision of Killing Joke's lyrics. Along the way, we do get a brief acoustic rendition of "Outside the Gate", where Coleman discusses his made up time signatures (I'm still trying to figure out how 13/12 actually exists) and all sorts of other stuff that is the work of either a genius or a madman, or maybe a bit of both. Truth to be told, I almost never listen to this, when I do, I realize how little sense it makes, how truly bizarre it is, and yet how oddly entertaining, plus how often do you get to hear Geordie on an acoustic guitar chugging away with Coleman's rambling about Mutually Assured Destruction vs. overpopulation as the soon cause of the end of the world? Bottom line, know what you're getting before you get it. I rather like it, but hey, it's odd stuff. Portentious. Insane. Enlightening. I dare you to listen from beginning to end without having some strange phenomena intersect your life within an hour. This is either the product of mental instability, profound foolishness or inspired genius. Really changed the way I listened to KJ records that's for sure. . You can see a complete list of all Killing Joke discography, or go back to the Killing Joke tabs